Ryangwy's page

I have also found that, by RAW, hero points are both lackluster and unintuitive—it's better to reroll things you're good at and failed, even if it feels unimportant, than it is to spend them important-feeling rolls that you're bad at. MAP-0 strikes are a better candidate for a hero point reroll than failing at your worst save. I personally don't like this, since it makes them worse at being a player-side fudge factor.

That's a weird thought - rerolling your MAP-0 attack is often just going to be a piddly amount of damage... unless it's a buffed attack, in which case the player is not going to find it unimportant. Meanwhile, a critically failed worst save is often more likely to upgrade to a fail than the failed MAP-0 attack to a success (unless you're playing a fighter/gunslinger against -2 enemies who have a bizarrely overbuffed DC) and if it's just a fail, well, the player can decide if sickened 1/whatever the fail effect is something worth gambling a hero point on.

I'm not sure what kind of mechanic would be better on a roll you genuinely suck at rather than a roll you're good at but rolled bad, and I'm not sure we'd want one because the point is... you are bad at those rolls.

Problem is: the game changes drastically from low levels to mid levels. my point is that 1-5 pathfinder is a COMPLETELY different game than 7-20 pathfinder mathematically speaking

Thing is, that's a feature, not a bug, of the class+level genre in general - basically, because the design of class + level means people get increasing number of options as they level up, early levels need to be faster (and hence, more lethal) to avoid getting into a rut and latter levels need to be slower so that players and monsters alike can actually dig into their bag of tricks.

PF2e is already a lot more equal than, say, 3.PF or 5e in this regards. It can't do better than 4e, but that's because 4e does a lot of signposting about party and enemy composition and class power choices that gives it a much more reliable baseline as to how players and monsters will interact with each other on a level-by-level basis. If you can't guarantee that both players and monsters alike will have a certain expected set of options, you instead get the situation as described.

I was just saying that the fundamental lore part is not a reason ... for anything. It's not huge and you can put it in basically any book.

Well, they've described what went into GnG remaster and why the Inventor got such minimal changes, and basically in order to do a reprint-remaster, everything needs to be on the same page taking approximately the same number of lines. As such, the fundamental lore is mostly an issue because it's 8 dedicated pages plus one very awkwardly positioned large paragraph and maybe a few more spots I missed, and there's just nothing to fill that space with (esp since the eight pages are fancy with custom fonts and images). Same for runelord/elementalist.

Basically, it's a physical issue, not a conceptual one. The moment you take something out of the book, it's no longer reprintable.

That is a big chunk but the runelord stuff was also totally revamped in the new magic school book. It is not a guns and gears thing where they can just do a few tweakes and changes to put things up to remaster. Major sections of the book are simply no longer valid.

Agreed that 'what are they putting there' is a huge issue with 'reprinting' SoM, same as Gods and Magic. Everything regarding schools, out, and that's not just the school primer alone but also the opening where they point you to the school primer. Both headliner archetypes, out. Just the existing Magus errata alone will likely cause a page jump, so more to do. And what do you do with the school-mentioning items like grimoires?

Personally, I think the Recharge feature should be removed from Spell Strike entirely.

Since Spell Strike already takes two actions to use, you can’t spam it across multiple turns anyway. Removing Recharge would help reduce the heavy action cost of the class.

Have you considered using your conflux spells to, you know, recharge, instead of spamming Imaginary Weapon?

No, seriously, Spellstrike is a stupidly powerful feature that's normally priced as three actions flat (Eldritch Archer, Beast Gunner), removing recharge would require nerfing spellstrike into the ground because, what, people can't restrain themselves from using it every turn? I guess they could slap a dragon breath-like 1 round cooldown instead, and also while they're at it remake every single conflux spell (you know, one of the magus core class features, which the hybrid studies are built around) and every other recharge action compression feat.

Personally? I think they should remove the Recharge feature from Spell Strike all together.

I mean, Spell Strike already requires two actions to use, so it's not like you can spam it in multiple turns. That would remove some of the more glaring action tax from the class in my opinion.

I mean, does any other class require you to spend an Action just to use its key feature more than once?

Recharging for Spell Strike is an 'action tax' in the way Panche for Finishers are - this is a ridiculously powerful ability that normally costs 3 actions (see: Eldritch Archer, Beast Gunner) there's no way they're making it 2 actions flat.

Besides, a lot of Magus feats and all their conflux spells are about action-compressing Recharge, you'll be flat out making a new class from scratch.

Magus could use more common-action + recharge feats, like reload and recharge, but hell no to removing recharge.

It's not just that no one has yet managed to counter-argue in a direct and clear way that the point I'm "complaining about", even in agreement with the OP, is not a valid point. No one has yet managed to point out in a simple and direct way that the point I'm defending is invalid, wrong, or already adequately met by the system, or would cause a serious problem for balancing or would prevent/hinder existing builds. Instead, almost all the answers I've been given have been things like "no, the fighter is flexible with weapons but you have to specialize or accept the fact that this type of build will be subpar" where I usually counter-argue by saying 'why? If the idea, even inherited from PF1/D&D, besides being implicit in the class feature and in examples, is precisely for the fighter to be flexible, what is the benefit and meaning of this restriction? Why not simply remove it or add feats that allow for a little more flexibility by taking extra weapon groups?' and the discussion for some reason ends up going back and forth due to attempts to show that I am either seeing things from the wrong point of view, or I did not correctly understand some need for limitation, or it simply goes beyond the scope of allowing a wider range of character concepts built on the fighter by removing or reducing an obligation of specialization along with several normal digressions that occur in the middle of the discussion.

I mean, that's because a discussion on expanding the number of scenarios you get peak coverage of is always going to be a bit like this, because it's horizontal power but in a baked-in way that's hard to adjucate, it makes some people's specific fantasies pop off but also dilutes the overall class fantasy and it's also, like, seldom a top priority unless the proficiencies are really weird (like warpriest and alchemist premaster).

Like, there's a horse archer barbarian class archetype in 3.5e, wouldn't it be cool if we could let barbarian rage apply to bows and mounts? Why not? I could recycle almost all the arguments you used for this too. In the end, I think the strength of the fighter as is plus the fact the Archer and Mauler don't give legendary proficiency postmaster is a good enough argument against it, and if you want it as a feat this is a small enough matter you could do it as a homebrew, either as a (6th level?) feat or a class archetype (say, Samurai Bushi, you get faster proficiency in the katana, naginata and daikyu only). It's something with as many pros as cons and the fighter isn't really feeling lost without it.

It's not something I can argue you out of on facts because it's a narrow enough margin but also not something you can convince me of either for the same reason.

Dual Handed Assault, as already mentioned multiple times to you, allows you to... increase the damage of a weapon by using it in two hands.

Dazing Blows let you deal bludgeoning with any weapon (there are like... 10 total creatures weak to piercing)

You have Point Blank Stance to remove volley already, live with it. There is no identity-based reason why you need to stack multiple stances

While ranged fighters will have to tragically (lol) live with not having a reaction, Lunging Stance lets you apply Lunge's effect to your Reactive Strike.

Seriously, AoN is free and well organised, do you like... not read the free open archive before insisting things don't exist.

"Oh no! My shield broke! I can't fix it yet! All I have is my longsword. If only I could grab it in two hands and get extra damage."

"Oh no! My bastard sword doesn't do much slashing damage! If only I could stab with it and get piercing damage instead."

"I'm super good with my bow, but it would be nice if I didn't need to enter a stance to remove that annoying volley trait. I would use other stances instead."

"I'm super good with my bow, but it would be nice if I could snipe people with Reactive Strike within half of my weapon's range increment."

You'd think that the Fighter would...

So, yo be clear, the fighter can already do, like, a ton of these via feats, and you even specifically name Point Blank Stance here - you just... want the current feats to be more powerful, despite everyone in this thread trying to explain to you that the fighter is, already, powerful!

Like, right now, you're past complaining about the identity of a fighter and into 'well, sure, these can do the thing I'm thinking of but what if they also give +2 damage, stackable with every other feat I can take'.

Like, at least the discussion on Versatile Legend has an actual meaningful difference with a clearly stated goal, you just keep asking for the fighter to get feats that do a thing, and when you get told they already have that, insist it doesn't count because your ideal feat would stack with the existing feat. Which, come on, you're not asking for identity here, you're asking for the fighter to have vertical power increases in their feat trees beyond what they already get.

I already have trouble making a Fighter that isn't a braindead meathead that always "kicks in the door" OR that isn't "Wuxia".

That seems like a you problem - class feats are largely meant for fighting and that's true for most martials in general, take an archetype or just look at skill feats if you want to make, IDK, a fighter that tells stories.

I want to be specialized in one specific weapon group, but to also be flexible with it.

Everyone can wield a sword, but the Fighter should have 5 extra features they only can do with Sword weapons, similar to what a Gunslinger obtain.

Yes, the fighter has an entire pool of feats that are 'what they can do with the sword that others can't'. They just... don't restrict you specifically to the sword, because why would you need to? Do you really need three different ways to write 'gain +1 circumstance bonus to AC' tagged to different weapons, instead of one good Parry feat?

Besides, you then ask for ways to remove that restriction, so that's just extra hoop-jumping.

Only the Fighter has their combat trick apply to all weapons at lower levels, then have it restricted to a single weapon group at middle levels before having it again apply to all weapon groups at very high levels. It has the weird result of making the Fighter switch from being a master of all weapons to a specialist at one weapon group then back again.

The Warpriest called! Seriously, though, you're overthinking this - level 1-4 is the part where players are most likely to want to make changes to their builds reacting to how the game is ran and where it's the least disruptive, so the extra flexibility there allows for soft-swaps. Once you're past that, getting locked in hurts less (because if you're going to switch you'll likely need to swap a bunch of feats too) and provides a soft but meaningful damper on power, letting the Fighter shift it into other things. The 19th level feature is a ribbon, given when it's unlikely to affect anything and filling up a nice spot.

Ravingdork wrote:

Try 520 feet per round for an elf monk with Furious Sprint from Barbarian archetype. Without magic. Last I checked, the equivalent of 173.33 feet per action more than doubles Usain Bolt on his best day.

And the hero can do it ALL DAY LONG WITH GEAR.

Well, if you are counting it as 3 actions per round, then no, actually (unless there are some feats which allow that). Travelling speed is counted at about 1 action per round as far as I remember. And Hustling at about 2 maybe? And it's not perpetual, but could be longer than 10 minutes for such character I suppose.

Usain Bolt isn't travelling or hustling either, I'm not sure why people insist on using the peak performance of a person in a situation where there is nothing to focus on except running and comparing it to the combat speed of game characters expected to hit those values even when they are bleeding, on fire, trying not to get backstabbed by a goblin...

BotBrain wrote:

The idea that fighter is alone in getting functionally nothing from is dedication is not true.

Also the fighter does have "fighting styles" - that's what its feats are for, and it get more than any other comparable class thanks to combat verstality.

Then where are the feats that have "expert / master / legendary proficiency in [this weapon group]" as a prerequisite?

Like, to be clear, is your particular criticism that fighters do not specifically have that particular line, despite it being the most useless line possible in PF2e (because every class except Warpriest gets proficiency bump at very predictable levels, meaning you can absolutely calculate the level for which a Fighter has Master in a weapon group and anyone taking Fighter Archetype will only have Expert)?

You've been ignoring my post naming the feats that do what you asked fighter to do in favour of repeating your desires for having feats worded a specific way that don't measurably differ from the Fighter in practice

Devils are at least consistent, which fits their lawfulness. All Devils are weak to the same thing, so a mixed group of devils you're prepared for can end up quite easy to handle.

Daemons are quite irksome, especially since they have the inflated HP pool that comes with a 'common' weakness but holy is surprisingly restrictive to apply. The death immunity only ever comes up with Scare to Death in my experience, but it does make swarms of lower level ones even more of a hp pool than normal.

Still better than aberrations, I suppose. If I never have to run another gogiteth in an AP it would still be one too many of their damn no-weakness selves.

Frankly, the idea that AC alone can ever make a character too good is absurd, even in a game as tightly balanced as PF2. I merely pointed out that you could solve the issue by capping how much AC you can have before a shield stops being useful and that it's realistic for it to work that way.

Raising a shield as a discrete action each round is about as tactical as rolling a skill check to unsheath your sword or measuring each round by the number of steps your character can take and giving each action a step count cost rather than an action cost. At a certain point, everything taking an action goes from being tactical to being a pure tax.

There's nothing wrong with a shield just working all the time and a separate defensive action existing to fill the roll that raising a shield does now.

Taking an action isn't a tax because in the three-action system your third action (which might not actually be your third) is considered significantly less valuable than the first two. Basically, if a round is 6 seconds, your 'first' action is 3 seconds, your 'second' is 2 seconds and your 'third' is 1 second - raising a shield is that last one, a tiny tax on your regular combat routine that's trading off against 'step back 5ft', 'making a quick, inaccurate stab' and 'telling your enemy you're going to do things to his mom'. It's already an improvement from D&D, where characters can never be shields down which is equally unrealistic.

Also, the attempt to compare speed against the best record of a professional athlete again forgets it's based on consistent movement in combat and not peak theoretical movement on a dedicated running field. The monk isn't doing the 200m race, they're crossing 200m while being on guard against enemy attacks, across rough terrain that doesn't cross the line to becoming difficult, while maintaining the ability to stop, start and turn on a dime. A 200m race would be a skill challenge modified by base speed.

Except that a Fighter who picked the Sword group cannot apply the Versatile trait on all associated weapons... or getting rid of the Volley trait on all Bow weapons... or adding the Jousting trait to all Spear weapons.

... You're describing the Inventor now, you realise? Why would the a weapon master add more traits to weapons, instead of having feats that key off the existing traits on weapons like, IDK, the Fighter?

Also, they can already get rid of volley, it's called Point Blank Stance. Do you actually read the Fighter before you make such weird complaints?

Squiggit wrote:

That's not an answer, and the fighter being more generic than its specific alternatives is the point, not a problem.

It's not generic if it's supposed to be a weapon master.

Sure, it can often way more often than other martials, but... since when "quantity is better than quality"? It should go like this:

A cleric uses Sword A to get Effect B.
A rogue uses Sword A to get Effect C.
A wizard uses Sword A to get Effect D.

A fighter uses Sword A to get Effects B, C and/or D, because he's the weapon master, not the cleric, rogue or wizard.

A "weapon master" should select different critical effects, apply various traits and so on... and right now, it's not.

But... a cleric and wizard (assuming training) uses a sword to get effect A (the base traits of the weapon), badly.

How is the fighter not the weapon master? He explicitly gets all the effects of the weapon 10% more than other martials and far more than those chump casters.

Sorry, the point is that you're right about RL "atheist states" but that's why they are *not* a match with Rahadoum at all. Rahadoum seems downright idyllic, if you are a normal citizen. It's an incredibly stable country where citizens are free to travel, and they have a govt structure that represents its people quite well. The harms of the avg Rahadoum citizen are all written to be genuinely external and not the govts fault, such as plague, foreign aggression, etc.

The "atheist states" IRL were the opposite of that, with ice-pick assassinations, mismanaged famines galore, etc.

It's not an exaggeration to claim there has never really been an atheist state IRL. USA tried to split the difference w/ "the wall btwn church and state," but that's not the same thing. And how to consider asian countries with less history top-down easy to label religions, and more individual shinto, etc histories is yet another can of worms.

I'm sorry, you're saying that Rahadoum is treated as more idyllic than any modern day example of a state that outlaws all expressions of religion, and you're also saying that Rahadoum is being treated badly in Pathfinder worldbuilding?

State atheism exists and largely is used by authoritarian regimes to terrorise minorities and remove existing cultural practices that were inconvenient for them. So yes, the only nation in Golarion with enforced atheism is an authoritarian asshat because that is in fact how it happens IRL. The fact they get to good at science instead of the RL effect of that very refusal to acknowledge dissenting views making those state atheist countries hilariously bad at science is already a very kind gesture on Paizo's part! Any country willing to proclaim that all gods are evil in direct contradiction to objective reality should not be capable of the critical thinking to develop scientifically that well!

I don't think there's any reason to believe that Rahadoum is a more biased nation than Cheliax or Thuvia or Osirion or Molthune or Taldor. They just have different biases. Everybody generally operates from the assumption that their experience is normal. Nothing about Rahadoum's anti-divine bias gets in the way of anybody doing research, unless that specific research is related to divine things.

Like Rahadoum is entirely capable of discovering antibiotics, the integrated circuit, plastics, or general relativity.

Sure, but (and I know a lot of people don't use the words to the same rigor I do) the things you mention are technology, not science. Science is a method, technology is a result, Rahadoum takes 1/4 of the generally accepted paradigm of how magic works and tosses it behind the shed which is scientifically far more harmful than most other nation's biases and that does result them having progressed more in a technological way on account of, well, shooting themselves in the foot magic-wise and forcing them do so.

Not that I'm trying contradict, however I am curious where the bits about rejecting science come from for Rahadoum.

I was under the impression, that because they reject the divine they were more advanced in science/medicine.

But maybe it's that they reject anything that paint divine associated things in a positive light.

I used the term 'scientific method' specifically, because a lot of people seem to mix up science with technology - Rahadoum heavily emphasises technology, the use of consistent, well documented methods to achieve reliable results not hinged on singular people. However, they reject the scientific method because that's about removing bias from your observation and this is a very biased nation! The moment anything remotely divine occurs they immediately label it as something to remove and that's not scientific at all.

I mean - as far as I can tell, Rahadoum is supposed to be on the darker shade of grey. They're a nation who responded to trauma via oppression of faith, and who categorically reject scientific fact and indoctrinate their people in something that's objectively false.

The fact that it might not be official state policy and it just coincidentally happens that if you teach all your kids that religions and gods are responsible for everything wrong in the country then bad things happen to religious people doesn't change that much.

Regarding the use of dominate or similar spells, yes, with sufficient resources and time, you can achieve the same result, but I never claimed otherwise. It seems like you're struggling to grasp my point: it’s not about power or results; it’s about whether it can fulfill a fantasy. Pathfinder 1st Edition, with its numerous classes, archetypes, feats, and spells, can fulfill many fantasies. It’s not about the power of these fantasies or their outcomes; it’s about the fantasy itself.

I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not, but the fantasy of magic jar and possession with no time limit is inherently powerful. You can't separate the fantasy from it's power when the fantasy is, in fact, killing someone and then creating an absolutely loyal minion with their exact stats.

(OK you could ground up build a TTRPG with, IDK, mental HP and stuff and where dying or not possessing your body doesn't prevent you from acting such that getting possessed is bad in the way getting stuck in acid fog is bad currently, but as anyone who's ever played Book 5 of Extinction Curse knows it really doesn't work that way)

2- are my standards too High? Cause when Someone says that flying flames has good damage i'm appalled. But they're surely not lying for the fun of it, so the problem Is either their or my expectations. Who's right In this case?
PS: my "High standards" for stuff might be like that because my First real experience with this system was abomination vault

I mean, what are you comparing to? Single target melee damage from martial classes that start next to the enemy and are benefitting from short ranged buffs like bless, inspire courage and runic weapon? Because yes you'll be outdamaged by the greatpick fighter or the greataxe dragon barbarian, but they don't have, you know, range. Or area (ho boy does AV have stuff that's trivalised by area abilities and murders single target martials)

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Why do we always do this when it comes to Wizards?

I mean mostly because people like talking about Wizards more. It's not like they're unique here, or even the worst example of a kind of meh class with boring options.

It's just when Paizo dropped the ball with the Remastered Ranger everyone said "wow that sucks" and that was the end of the discussion.

In all fairness, the Remastered Ranger also didn't lose anything. The classes that meaningfully lost something in the remaster are way more talked about, even if you could argue that Oracle and Alchemist had a net gain. The wizard didn't even have that!

I like the idea of a feat the wizard can take mid level to improve their thesis or dip into a second.

I will continue saying that giving all wizards a second thesis at 5th level is simple, cost minimal space, and largely increases horizontal rather than vertical power, because most of the thesis are targeting different aspects, except for staff nexus and spell blending. And I'm not that sure staff nexus + spell blending is too much power for a wizard.

(They should still get feats that let them add another school, which both solves their 2 native focus spell issue and make the school slot feel less dead)

My theory for why they don't want divine necromancer is twofold - first, by simply having a giant stack of harms, the cleric is already really, really good at keeping your stack of animated bones alive and it's going to be hard to top that (see: Battle Harbinger vs Warpriest). So they just... don't let that comparison happen.

Secondly, their way around the 'all minions are secretly powerful because they are bags of hp' issue is probably that whatever the necromancer has is not going to be healable, or else have too little hp to be worth using the main strength of the divine spell list for necromancy on. In which case you might as well give them a different list.

Now Arcane vs Occult is definitely a more dubious call, list-wise, but I think the vast majority of undead with spells are occult spellcasters, not arcane, and many of the undead AP archetypes are also occult over arcane, so probably this is one of those things they have been trying to do for a while.

I think there's room for an arcane buff-focused martial. But it really can't be the Magus, because yes, spellstrike does kind of warp the class around it but a less powerful spellstrike also kind of just sucks (remember the playtest, guys?) and the Magus has a substantially larger fanbase than the Oracle (NEVER FORGIVE) plus spellstrike genuinely being, like, really neat in it's current existence.

Also, let's be real, a buff focused arcane martial would look like the Battle Harbinger. Very much a 'think carefully' thing. I don't think it's unworkable, I'm fairly certain the vast majority of buff spells either have no target or are willing creatures only, and arcane (and primal) have the advantage of not having to budget around someone putting heroism in every slot, but it's A Thing.

I'm going to generally agree that 10 min buffs are prebuffs and 1 min buffs are meant for use in actual combat, with maybe one cast before combat that triggers the combat, and that does creates a bit of an issue for the battle auras at higher levels when your divine caster has so many better things to cast.

I feel like Battle Harbinger really, really wants to go ham and stack at leas two auras each battle, but that takes two turns and most combats don't last long enough for that to pay off. It really needs some way to reduce the action cost of it's font spells - one action cast on rolling initiative, two action cast and Strike, cast now for one action flourish but become slowed 1 next turn, basically anything that means you can reach the battle while still casting your 'signature' spells.

Also, being able to raise the status bonus/penalty is a good idea and it's a shame it's locked behind the unlikely event of critting on a Strike.

exequiel759 wrote:

GameDesignerDM wrote:

I've never had any issues with Fighter flavor or anything like that when it comes to adventuring, or anything else, really. In fact, the Fighter to me is one of the easiest classes to justify being just about anywhere, anytime, in any place.

Exactly. The whole thing about the fighter is being vanilla, precisely to fit everywhere.

That's the problem, it doesn't excel at being unique.

For the only class to obtain Legendary Proficiency for weapons, NOTHING capitalizes on this. The whole "weapon master" aspect is non-existant.

You want something unique for the Fighter compared to other classes? Here are some suggestion:
- Adding the Deadly or Fatal trait to ONE weapon of their choice
- Adding the Agile trait to ONE weapon of their choice
- Adding ANY trait to ONE weapon of their choice

These ALONE would be more interesting, because it would show how the Fighter can use one weapon WAY better than other classes.

That's the Inventor, though. Like, seriously, customising a single weapon is the Inventor, I'm not sure why you think it's a fighter. The fighter can already 'add' the trip and shove trait to two handed weapons, the parry trait to one handed weapons, super agile, isn't that a better demonstration of their weapon mastery?

Everything the life essence covers is in the domain. The class would likely combine things from archetypes like hallowed necromancer, reanimator, a tiny bit of what the animist does with one of it's subclasses, and so on. It's actually extremely huge if we aren't narrowly focused on the least interesting aspect of "makes undead"

I suppose the issue is that everything outside of 'make undead' already exists on the Divine/Occult list, or us very specific anti undead/haunt niche stuff. We just had a speak-with-spirit Animist subclass and it's not, like, popular or anything. The only thing not already enabled by the pile of BotD archetypes is precisely the 'make a lot of undead' thong which is why most people think of that when you ask for a full class.

Nobody is allowed to complain that Paizo hates their favourite class unless it's wizard or oracle.

Also, please find some way to glue the cool premaster oracle benefits back.

On a more positive train of thought, there really is a lot of desire for some kind of 'smite' that is usable by martials with divine influence. I wonder if an archetype that would provide a 'smite' focus spell could be added, that requires divine casting and a focus point pool, that would be suited for Champions and monks but also be usable by other martials who acquire divine focus spellcasting somehow. The feats would give bonuses vs various thematic enemies and/or expand the list of bad things you can inflict.

I've never gotten that impression from PF1E—that diegetically, a 20 Fighter should be as strong as a 20 Wizard. I don't think PF1E intends them to be the worlds apart they are, but the tropes PF1E emulates consistently have wizards at the top of the totem pole in power, and most of the 1E APs and stories I've looked at indulge these tropes. Magic is typically stronger than the mundane in high fantasy. (Admittedly, by incorporating so many wizard and magician tropes at once, PF1E blows out the high fantasy scale and ends up in its own world. But anyways.) The game does bear that out mechanically, and the gap only gets wider as levels progress. I think every game designer can tell you the class with wish (or even just limited wish, when it becomes available) blows out the class without it. You'd have to ascribe incredible ignorance to a designer to think they were trying to balance fighter to be exactly as strong as wizard and gave you PF1E fighter and wizard. I would assume PF1 designers wanted to lessen the gap, but knew they could not (and did not even try) to remove it entirely with spells as they were. You'd have to break 3.x compatibility to do that. (And PF2E did, and succeeded almost too well at balancing them.)

I mean, in that case the majority of world shaking level 20s should be clerics and druids, the universally acknowledged strongest classes. Instead, it's wizards and alchemists, the latter definitely isn't anywhere near the top. I think PF1e intends for Int classes to be more narratively relevant, as distinct from being rawly stronger, so even though a level 20 fighter, cleric and alchemist are of the same power, only the alchemist will have a strong legacy.

That's distinct from 'the designers deliberately made it such that a level 20 fighter can't win against a level 15 wizard' which was the PF1e as-played.

(There's an aspect of 3.PF1 that's really simulationist, and it's the skill system. Tragically, basically nothing except the nonmagical skill monkey classes interfaced with them as expected. I supposed a PF1e where magic does not exist would be simulationist...)

I want to play a champion of (insert chosen deity here), their is a class that is supposed to do that.

But yea probably a me problem, my head is wired weird, I do get caught in 'rpg rules as in universe science', I know I do, doesn't mean I can actually stop doing that...

I think that you're getting a bit caught up in the word Champion here. Championing things isn't the sole prerogative of the Champion any more than fighting things is the sole prerogative of the Fighter, but they need to stick a name on 'the class about divine patronage and being really defensive'. But yes, you can be an Avenger or Warpriest or take a Fighter and bolt on some appropriate dedication (Undead Slayer has been a lot of fun) and champion the cause of a deity without needing to mechanically use the Champion.

Not very simulationist in what way? There are absolutely more simulationist games than it, but I feel like saying the system isn't at least on the simulationist side of the simulationist/gamist spectrum is a stretch. What would you say makes you feel the game isn't very simulationist?

As a person whose played a heavily homebrewed game of 3.PF with a worldbuilder whose heavily into simulation, a huge issue is that PF1e simulates things that are not true of the world as described. PF1e is very simulationist if class levels are a true statement about life, if XP really does accumulate from doing certain things, if picking the right next class or class archetype or feat is really part and parcel of the level up process and that it's known and accepted that the wizard 2/fighter 2 is a person who has simply made less good choices and hence is weaker than the wizard 3/magus 1 despite both having a combined level of 4. It would be a world where countries with good background traits do in fact become military powers on the basis that their people qualitatively have +2 initiative instead of +1 to confirm crits.

But it doesn't! PF1e treats level as an equal measure of power, considers all choices as equal, doesn't care that a certain country has everyone have Diplomacy as a class skill, and so on. It treats a barricaded ritual site with 1 hour to completion as a dangerous threat that requires careful time management, not prebuffing for 1 minute then 5 minutes of running and fighting.

PF1e is simulationist in the Dwarf Fortress way, that it gives a lot of modelled behaviour that each individually make sense but often mesh to give irrational results. That's fine for Dwarf Fortress because it represents itself, the fact that the drawbridge atomiser exists doesn't affect the setting because you are the setting. But PF1e is supposed to represent PF1e adventure paths... and it's very, very bad at that.

(A truly simulationist game would be more like World of Darkness, where you can deliberately give yourself nightmares to gain XP, or stopping people's time stops them from getting XP, and that not all ways to spend XP are equal power-wise, and that's all true in-universe, that people will legit do those things to better themselves.)

It sounds like build mastery is part of the issue. To REALLY make a Psychic pop you have to poach bunches of stuff. The psychic that I was enjoying had Live Wire, Electric Arc and Tentacular limbs. The first 2 pretty much meant that I was contributing SOMETHING even on my post unleash cool down rounds, Tentacular Limbs combines wonderfully with imaginary weapon.

In my experience (NOT saying others experience was wrong, just stating what mine was) combats were usually decided (not finished, but decided except for mop up) in 3 rounds (1 prep round, 2 with psyche unleashed).

In the exceptions it was often the case that things went long enough for me to Unleash, recover from unleash, and Unleash again. The group was running away, regrouping, fighting very defensively in the middle rounds anyway.

I was also reasonably lucky with my stupefied rolls. As I recall I never flubbed a spell that I REALLY wanted to cast.

Vanilla psychic has the same issues as premaster investigator - what happens on your off turns? You can build around it, obviously, but none of the recommended stuff were native to the psychic, so often the 4th turn of battle is just 'eh, whatever, cast Glimpse Weakness and hope I make the flat check'. It doesn't help that your Psyche actions have to share space with the cool spells you want to cast while Unleashed!

While it'd severely uppend the class, I think Psychic would be a more elegant class if Psyche actions instead worked while you're stupefied.

Driftbourne wrote:

So weapon group is a purely game classification for weapon crit effect, and not related to weapons that would use similar skills.

I don't think so.

And several things, such as Fighter's Weapon Mastery ability uses Weapon Group as a categorization tool.

I think weapon groups in general are about natural groupings in people's head first and actual skill in using them second. Two-handed weapons are generally more similar to other two-handed weapon than they are to one-handed weapon in use, but greataxes and throwing axes are lumped together because we look at them and think 'axe'. That's why the crit specs are flavour-first.

This, of course, causes some issue for more niche weapons, so 'club' and 'flail' end up being wastebasket taxons for 'thing that goes bonk' and 'thing with a flexible part in between' despite them looking a lot more different than, say, swords.

Teridax wrote:

... a 2nd-level dedication feat adding 8 spirit damage to Strikes and thinking it was okay.

That's an overly simplified way of presenting it.

The dedication feat does not add any spirit damage to any strikes. It grants a choice of an ikon.

Only weapon ikons grant additional damage.

If a player chooses a Worn or Body Ikon, they get zero additional damage for their 2nd-level dedication.

The additional damage of weapon ikons' immanence is not a flat +8 damage "as a 2nd-level dedication," but +X per damage die. Which means that, generally, at most, if taken at Level 2, it will be +2 damage to start! And it won't scale to +8 until level 19 (barring early access to Major striking runes).

And they aren't all +2 per damage die. One is 1 persistent damage per die. A couple are 1 splash damage per die. And etcetera.

None of the weapon ikons give a universal damage boost. Each only apply to a subset of weapons.

'You might not only get +2 damage per weapon die on the only weapon you use, you might also get some other equivalent effect that's even more synergistic with your character' isn't the slam dunk argument you're presenting here.

But no, seriously, what are you trying to argue here? You haven't meaningfully disproved that Exemplar Dedication can grant 8 spirit damage to Strikes to a wide variety of builds or that +8 spirit damage per Strike at 19th level is above the curve.

Yeah, looking at the Ikons again after the playtest, I don't really think the issue is the mechanical power imbalance offered by the dedication feat, it is the fact that we basically have a class offering extra special magical items which are not usually a resource tied to class feats and class abilities.

I personally just don't think such a class needs to offer a dedication at all, because we already essentially have magical items and artifact rules to cover "My X class character finds this really cool item that they invest a part of themselves into and grows over time."

The whole Ikon system feels like a way to have a class that just uses magic items differently, which is cool, but letting other classes access that through a multiclass dedication was always going to be a disaster (hyperbole in the extreme, really "a power balancing issue"). The problem here is that the disaster errs on the side of making characters too powerful instead of too weak, like the kineticist and alchemist MC.

Thaumaturge/Inventor: Am I a joke to you?

There is absolutely no issue with a class having an item-shaped power boost that can be gained via their multiclass archetype, because they did it twice with no issues. They just, for some reason unknown to mankind, decide to give ~3 multiclass feats worth of upgrades plus unbounded scaling in the dedication itself. Somehow.

Fundamentally, the issue is that Exemplar is a good class, Exemplar dedication is a good idea, someone wrote the dedication feat while drunk and we're now left in a situation where the extremely illogical choice of having to ban the dedication feat of a perfectly functional class.

And that is fine. PF2, as a system is not falling apart. A rare option in a book a lot of folks are excited about has the potential to cause a really minor game balance issue, that will probably be most egregiously felt when one player takes this dedication and potentially out performs other PCs in a manner that feels defeating for them. Maybe some folks who were excited to immediately roll into Mythic/godsrain play have the wind knocked out of their sails, and have to talk with their tables about how to handle some new options that don't feel as tight as the rest of the game. I get how frustrating that can be, but GMs deciding just to not let players use the Exemplar dedication for now, or not using the whole class even, was probably always going to be a possibility since the class was rare from the beginning.

I feel that you're, like, severely downplaying the impact of this broken option being a multiclass archetype. Because the thing is, of all the mechanical parts of of PF2e, the core player-facing part, the one that balance and flavour hinges on primarily, is classes, and multiclass dedications are tightly tied to classes in a way nothing else is, to the point the core book, both premaster and remaster, had them when no other dedications existed yet.

It doesn't matter if it's common or uncommon or rare or even Starfinder - classes and multiclass archetypes are the core player mechanical experience of PF2e and every new one released affects how people perceive balance. No amount of 'I, the enlightened GM, will simply ban it as I need to and discuss with my equally enlightened players' changes the fact that this new multiclass archetype changes the established balance in a way that's very unnerving to people.

I don't think we will really see that much of the exemplar spam though because the dedication is rare and, minimally, players are going to have to really justify and sell it to their GMs to get it. That doesn't mean it won't eventually get an errata, just that it is not something that desperately needs a fix because GMs who feel it is a problem already have a rules method for dealing with it.

The big issue is that exemplar dedication exists alongside, well, Exemplar, plus several other rare archetypes (like Seneschal). It's going to be very hard to rarity exclude Exemplar dedication without also excluding Exemplar and the other rare stuff from that book, and that's going to be far more of an issue that the previous few obvious math errors (6P and prov were AP backmatters, but I think a lot of people just blanket banned Firebrands stuff which wasn't a huge loss then because it was just scattering of feats, but an entire class is going to be a much bigger hit).

On the other hand, I wonder if maybe this isn't intentional. A common complaint I've heard is people thinking their damage is too low, and "a feat for +2-8 damage" isn't exactly game-breaking, even if it is an autopick for a number of classes.

If it is intentional then Paizo has gone off the deep end. Intentional power-modifying stuff should be specially laid out game rules like Mythic, not yet another rare archetype in a book full of variably balanced and undertuned rare archetypes and classes. PF1e sure had a lot of 'intentional' martial damage enhancers hidden in between piles of useless feats in some splatbook somewhere and that sucked.

Imaginary Weapon and Ancestral Memories are problems too, but they're problems two feats deep into archetyping and draws from the same focus pool many of your cool in-class stuff draws on as well. Exemplar Archetype gives its main benefit immediately and said benefit is a passive that works perfectly with no action cost on whatever your class wants to do. It's a significantly bigger problem.

I think the issue with treating Exemplar dedication as a rarity discussion is that Exemplar itself isn't unbalanced and there isn't a logical reason to separate Exemplar from its dedication.

Like, yes, there's a few really good dedications out there, but Exemplar dedication is the only one that allows you to take the entire martial 'damage' booster straight out at 2nd. The only dedication that does that flat out is premaster monk... at 10th level, with at least one other feat in between.

You're also left with the awkward situation that if Exemplar is legal in your game, it's significantly mechanically better to be anything then multiclass Exemplar than Exemplar multiclass anything. Which was memed about for Champion and Magus but is actually a real concern here. Maybe there's a PF2e where Exemplar dedication makes sense but the current one, where multiclass rage never increases, where multiclass sneak attack is one dice only, where multiclass Spellstrike is 1/battle, and where many ckasses just flat out dont give away their accuracy and damage boosters, it really doesn't make sense that the Exemplar's damage booster is poachable in its full form with a singke feat.

Here's the thing to know about reddit threads: never base balance decisions on reddit threads. Reddit is a format where each individual thread quickly creates their own echo chamber, even within the same subreddit. If a thread gains traction for criticism, you will in fact find heavily upvoted people arguing for completely different fixes that would oppose each other. Also, it's a jujutsu kaisen meme, a lot of the people laughing about it would stop doing so if they thought their memeing might actually cause changes to the magus.

There's a 'handful of hyper-vocal defenders of the class on this thread' because the Paizo forum is tiny as s+%%. Try posting your OP in reddit and I assure you you'll get 3000 people telling you why your fixes are wrong, actually.

I'm not sticking my head in the sand, if you've actually read my full comments you'll see I advocate for a wider variety of conflux spells and two action activities involving recharge or Arcane Cascade to incentivize 'off turns' rather than trying to crank recharge with the most boring method possible.

I'm saying that even for the usecase you've described, your proposal is insufficient. Your proposed class will get, what a dozen level 1 class feats that are skill feats? It has a completely bespoke proficiency because you're trying to match PC proficiency to the NPC proficiency chart?

It's not 'a book of profession specific content is junk', it's 'making deliberately bad class chassis with deliberately underpowered class feats is junk'. The two are distinct. Remember, all classes are still performing math operations involving level on attacks, saves and skills. It is not particularly easier to make a level 4 rogue PC with appropriate gear than a level 4 NPC with sneak attack, battle medicine and a +1 striking rapier.

Print skill feats as skill feats, archetypes as archetypes, and provide a recommendation for which columns in building creatures to use, that's what I'd recommend.

But why do you need a class with proficiencies and everything? What merit is there to printing so much niche, specific junk (because look, it's junk, you're describing skill feats and math fixers as class feats) and slap it onto a terrible chassis, so that you can... avoid looking up the monster stat by level chart (and instead look up a completely different chart)?

Like, seriously, you described a bunch of Survival skill feats (several of which are peculiar to a specific subsystem you have in your head, like the random encounter one). You made a bespoke mechanic to create a worse than PC proficiency growth to avoid looking at a simple chart.

I've built NPCs in systems that do identical PC/NPC advancement (WoD and 3.5e) and your suggestion would be terrible even by those systems' standards, let alone PF2e.

Maybe Mythic will unlock the fabled 'summon creature of same level as you'

I'm just going to opinion that the action cost of everything in Magus is already about right and Starlight Span getting a 'free action' Arcane Cascade (because they get no benefit from it) is one of the reason they're so samey.

We certainly could use more AC+something or recharge+something actions, as feats or features, but free action AC is just making thing more samey and slapping an arbitrary two turn break on Spellstrike is an uninteresting NPE.

I rather have thing like Arcane Rush (AC, move, Strike as 2 actions) or Guarded Recharge (2 action recharge, raise a shield, parry or take cover, it lasts until end of your next turn and also gain status bonus to AC against reactions until end of your next turn) to give tempting two-action reasons to not spellstrike than forcefully dictate when and how Magus are allowed to Spellstrike

Slam Down/Double Slice Fighter raises their hand. And Combat Grab and the other press feats too, to think about it. Having run for a Slam Down Fighter, the only time they don't Slam Down is if the enemy is already prone, or they're Whirlwind Striking instead.

Frankly speaking if you play to your class and feat choices it's hard to be unfeasible, hence why it's frustrating to be told 'but what if they player knows what they're doing' because in PF2e that's good enough. So long as your martial picks a weapon usable with their feats and features and don't +0 their to hit they'll be fine.

Hmm, an actually unviable Fighter that looks functional on paper would probably be... one that takes a offensive cantrip from ancestry or archetype and uses it as their main offense, using a shield plus the last wall feat line to let them hit+raise shield in one action, so you theoretically are combining a save spell and a Strike in one turn but in practice you're wasting the +2 of the fighter and could have just played a Druid or Cleric instead. IIRC that setup needs a stance so you'll spell+stance, spell+move, then finally spell+bonk, so that's a lot of wasted turns. And it all looks synergistic on paper.