Schreckstoff's page

I'm using Vance's adjusted rules and it's still pretty slow. My players got lvl 3 on turn 7. And now that hex XP rewards are going down and most easy milestones have been claimed it's gonna take a while to reach lvl 4.

I imagine that Paizo thought Kingdom turns would take much less time than they do. I'm doing them over discord and a turn usually takes at least 30 minutes.

I'm playing with 2 players and it's working fine with just 1 character for each of them. I play a 3rd character that changes based on the story and sometimes a 4th if needed.

I'd like classes that really want to be in medium armour or light armour.

There's plenty of classes that want to be unarmored or can get the benefits of heavy armour but there's no classes that would choose to wear medium over heavy armour by choice unless they really need the 5 speed.

Yes. I believe they purposefully made the core classes the best as far as raw power is concerned.

And they made the later classes a little lower powered but best at fulfilling their thematic role.

And they really hit the target.

The only class widely recognized as a bit too strong is the Bard. IMO because they made it a full caster in addition to Inspire Courage : it was a new balance to find.

The only class likewise widely recognized as too weak is the Alchemist. Though there are concerns about the Magus.

And they try and find innovative ways to plug the holes while not destroying the balance of the whole system, like Shadow Signet.

Excellent work overall AFAIC.

that item is amazing thank you, it's so hard to find out the good items for classes.

nick1wasd wrote:

As to "replacement damage stat" argument, we have the Thief Rogue with Dex, and every Investigator with Int...

These two are not the same. Thieves add Dex mod. to all damage rolls with finesse weapons.

Investigators never add Int mod. to damage. Rather, when an Investigator substitutes their Int mod. to strike, s/he may apply their Strategic Strike precision dice to the damage.

oh really? it says dexterity based AC so I thought overshooting would work.

The stat distributions are generous enough that you can justify 12-14 in str and/or dex to get some archetypes alone.
Even 12 dex for a champion helps against clumsy and for non aoe reflex saves.

You can but the problem is that you're capped at 16 starting strength with the swashbuckler.
Most encounters are balanced around characters having an 18 in their primary ability score too.

I think that's good. AoOs aren't a given and figuring them out and dealing with them is a core component of 2e combat.

I'd allow it but only to convert multiclass slots to wizard spellslots since the number of multiclass spell slots is rather defined at 1 per level. Or 2 for any 2 below your max level spell with the breadth feat.

You raised Medicine because Battle Medicine doesn't work with Natural Medicine and you still need master proficiency to improve treat wounds healing, I think.

Blessed One dedication would be a great increase to your healing output per combat if your GM allows it.

If you're raising athletics I'd consider going for a Gnome Hooked Hammer since it's an arguably better weapon group (Hammer=Flail) and offers trip in exchange for only being a d6, two-hand d10 weapon.
Which means either picking unconventional weaponry or the Gnome ancestry.

Yeah, that's why I don't play monks. All classes need CON and WIS, monks need both STR and DEX, which leaves INT and CHA out.

Don't need str and dex if you don't care about dealing low damage in the early levels.

With the extra action economy and extreme speed there's a ton of skills you could focus on that need either int or cha. or you could multiclass into a divine or occult sorcerer, witch or bard to make use of the amazing spellcasting scaling monks get.

And similarly mountain stance monks don't need high dex.

The staff acrobat archetype was from the Extinction Curse AP and is pretty strong and your group really could use another martial so that'd get my vote.

Gymnast Swashbuckler would work well with the tripping but the filcher's fork is the only finesse weapon that works with staff acrobat. This would mean playing a Halfling or grabbing unconventional weaponry as a human. And since the weapon is 1handed you'd be able to hold a shield and tank like that. Being a 1d4 weapon is rough however damage wise and swashbucklers don't get as much out of agile.

Maybe a ruffian rogue with a regular Staff. It's a Two-Hand D8 simple weapon so you get to sneak attack with it, weapon doesn't have reach tho.

Champions always like reach weapons and Fighter is the easy fallback when you just want something that's good at hitting things.

In a couple weeks the Magus should come out which would be a very different kind of martial too.

Butterfly Sword proficiency you can get from the dedication but yeah the monk trait of the Wind and Fire Wheel, and the Hook Sword look like a thing primarily for fighters that dedicatr into monks.

OgFernandes wrote:

Bump for the same reason as above. I'm really looking forward to an errata giving the Daikyu its appropriate traits (and hopefully one of them being Monk).

Given the requirments of the Monastic Archer Stance Feat, I am defiently of the opinion that the Daikyu was meant to have the Monk trait, seeing how the feat states "You are unarmed and wielding a...(insert irrelevant text here)...bow with the monk trait." As it stands, that would be a net 0 number of bows with the monk trait, unless you assume the Daikyu was meant to be said bow.

Also, I'd like to take issue with the name. Daikyu implies the existance of the Hankyu as well. So unless they intend to also add the latter, I'd say Yumi would be a better name here. Just throwing the idea out in case a dev does peek in here.

even if the Daikyu had the Bow trait it wouldn't work well with monastic archer stance.

Monastic Weaponry doesn't work like Weapon Familiarity feats lowering advanced to martial proficiency scaling. You'd still need to get the scaling in some other way.

I like free archetype.

My personal favored usage would be that at level 2 you get a dedication and then at each even level you get bonus feat usable only for feats from that archetype.

I'm not sure if I'd even allow the bonus feats to be used for chained archetypes (like the Hellknight archetypes where you can start one even if you haven't satisfied the feat tax on the others dedication yet).

In the unlikely event that a player somehow managed to take every feat their archetype offered before hitting 20 (like by being a rogue and taking an archetype with skill feats) I'd give thema free retaining, essentially moving an archetype feat into the new archetype slot and having then take a legal feat in the previous non-archetype slot freed up.

I'm doing this with my players mostly because leveling up already is a lot for their first campaing and staying in the same archetype makes it a lot simpler.

Free Archetype from a character story perspective can quickly get silly because you can dip, get what you want and dip into something else shortly thereafter.
OTOH you can get precisely what sort of build you want that way. Like I built a Swashbuckler to help out my players that had 3 archetypes by lvl 8 because I needed Eldritch Researcher for Shield Cantrip, Acrobat for Master Acrobatics scaling and Blessed One for Lay on Hands.

Schreckstoff wrote:

NemoNoName wrote:

It's a running theme in Pathfinder 2. For everything I like about the game, the overzealous attitudes to nerfing any chance of using things like shape changes is a serious problem. Check the Hybrid form of Beastkin.

wait what's wrong with the beastkin hybrid form? For a heritage it's pretty weak but I thought the feats more than make up for that

I mean it doesn't really do anything. The only thing you gain in hybrid form is a natural attack that's identical to the natural attack everyone gets for free anyways, except piercing instead of bludgeoning. Flight at 17 stands out as a feat, but it's only a little bit better than what other heritages with similar benefits can pick up anyways.

permanent on/off switchable enlarge, the senses and flight/climb/swim or speed increase stood out for me going over it.

but yeah the hybrid form by itself does nothing but be a sweet character choice which I was fine with as a tradeoff.

It's a running theme in Pathfinder 2. For everything I like about the game, the overzealous attitudes to nerfing any chance of using things like shape changes is a serious problem. Check the Hybrid form of Beastkin.

wait what's wrong with the beastkin hybrid form? For a heritage it's pretty weak but I thought the feats more than make up for that

Well it was confirmed that staves works on Magus, and being a prepared caster means that you can sacrifice a slot for more charges for utility, also martial caster feat was confirmed to be on the base class now, so technically the class have 6 slots (though 2 limited to specific spells). With Arcane Cascade stance requiring a spell to be cast to activate it you probably want to cast a spell at distance first anyway before going into melee.

And as always, can MC into Wizard for more slots.

oh that's a lot of possible true strikes then.

Human ancestry is one of the strongest ancestries in 2e.

An ancestry feat equalling a class feat is very strong and Humans get 2 of those depending on whether you count multitalented.
A 2nd 1st level class feat can also amount to nothing with some builds tho.

I love multi talented to grab the lvl 10+ feats only from a dedication. Flurry of Blows, expert heavy armor, uncanny dodge,... as an half elf you don't even need to meet the requirements.

The reason to do melee attacks is cause they often do a lot of reliable damage and if you're in melee range the squishy spellcasters are less likely to get hit.

Oh this archetype sound like an amazing way to build a Wulfgar son of Boernegar with his hammer Aegisfang.

If it is you can delay your turn to be exactly where you want it to be in the turn order at the cost of your reaction for the turn.
And this is only true under the assumption that the enemy will rush you w/o ranged options or having better reach than you.

It's also not a bad idea to have access to a ranged attack. Be it bow and arrow a cantrip from your ancestry or an archetype.
Or you could spend your first turn recall knowledge, raise a shield or other helpful actions.

For a spellcaster with AoE attacks it's particularly important to go first.

I'd talk about this with the GM it should be easy enough to at the very least categorize bludgeoning and electricity damage as nonlethal for a spellcaster.
I was listening to a podcast play Agents of Edgewatch and the GM included an item that made any damage automatically nonlethal vs nonmonster enemies.
If you love the sorcerer then that's all the more reason to find a way to make it work that doesn't involve spending a feat and extra actions constantly in fear of murdering someone you shouldn't.

And if you feel dejected about your characters having died that is totally valid and you should bring that up with the other players and GM imo.

That sounds like a very deadly campaign and as though a player should pick up stabilize as a cantrip.

A spellcaster is a good idea with that group as nobody covers that niche rn. Even with the archetypes.

Since the investigator covers intelligence a charisma primary or wisdom caster would fit particularly well depending on whether you already have people invested in either.

So oracle/bard/sorcerer or druid/cleric. Warpriest got a bad rep due to their proficiencies being worse in the long run but a bow is a decent 3rd action as long as you didn't do a spell attack roll that turn.

Beastmaster would also work well with that group and is fantastic with free archetype.

Tumbling strike mentions ending up specifically on the other side of the creature you tumbled through.

You move through the enemy's space to an unoccupied space on the other side of the enemy from your starting position.

So I'd expect the same wording on tumble through if you had to go straight through the enemy

I don't have the GMG so I was unaware of the ABP. Yeah, that will fix my problem. We are currently level 8 and the fighter had a +1 flaming katana that the party pooled their resources to get. The rogue is currently just using twin +1 daggers.

The players were excited when they found a +1 striking greatsword (no one uses 2 handed though). When they transferred the rune to one of the rogue's daggers the rogue was a little upset that now the magic rune of destructive magic only added a d4 instead of a d12. He traded that dagger to the master smith that was upgrading the katana to help pay for it.

This is why I said they don't like them flavor-wise.

there is also the doubling ring for dual wielding that mirrors the fundamental runes from one weapon to the other one you're wielding at the same time. So you don't need to buy two +1 striking daggers just one and a ring for 50 gold

I like the idea of being able to stitch together singleton adventures and APs like these w/o the extraneous work of converting parts of a 6 part AP to work w/o the rest of it.

I would sixth sense that.

"You know you're in danger but you don't know from what or from where."

They now have the option to delay their turn or look for clues in the surroundings raise their shield, buff someone, ready an action,...

For 2) Athletics vs Fortitude DC sounds right to move grabbed characters. Don't know about appropriate distances.

I'm in favour of people being able to heal up to full if they have the means to do so between encounters but also to instill in players that there are possible ramifications to that.

I tend to move encounters around or prepare enemies for a fight in those cases.

Malk_Content wrote:

Martial characters can do a lot of that stuff with feats. Man its like you've not even read the stuff you are complaining about.

Then why would they gain anything by targeting those saves with -2 or -3 to the save DC over just attacking that weakness with their usual full proficiency? I'm not the one saying the spells give martial characters the ability to attack different saves and I wasn't the one who said that martial characters can't apply solid debuffs when they do attack those saves. I'm just asking how offensive spells fit into things of martial classes can already fill those same offensive niches with other abilities.

athletics maneuvers are attacks though so you'd get more than a -2 on either the maneuver or the ensuing attack.

I saw the ethnicity requirements primarily as being a "choose one" kinda deal.
In the sense that your background only matters if you or your GM plans to do something with it so the only thing picking one of those does is closing you off from other ethnicity requirements.

You could pick more but at that point you kinda have to have a justifying backstory.
Or just be a Witch protecting desert viking.

It really annoyed me when I first came across this because I had started skipping transcribing enemy ability scores in roll20 because they had no relevance.

Tell your wizard or alchemist to reroll healbot cleric or your group is probably going to have a bad time.

the wizard could just take a dedication and get access to heal that way.

That's a really bad argument since Multiclass dedications are heavily powered down.

Devise a stratagem won't let you use int, Sneak attack doesn't go beyond 1d6 extra damage,...

Meanwhile Beastmaster is powered up.

Beastkin can cover a lot of bases but I'd still like to see Jackals and similar.

Also a big fan of dragon heritages since kobolds don't quite do it for me.

There's a whole untapped market of non central European fantasy.

Kappas, Tanuki, rabbitfolk, monkey king,...

Schreckstoff wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Schreckstoff wrote:

With the Magus there's an Arcane Fighter now and the monk and paladin are occult/divine fighters leaving a hole that is a primal fighter.

Which could be the shifter but wholly elemental themed would be nice too.

Other than that it's difficult to come up with something that couldn't be an archetype or class archetype instead.

The Ranger is at least as much the primal fighter as the monk is occult, and Barbarian gets a taste of that too. I'm not saying that there's not space for a more heavily primal-themed martial or semi-martial class, but I don't think the "occult fighter" slot is filled all that well either.

That's totally right particularly the barbarian covers the primal fighter pretty well.

And the monk picking a tradition is just windowdressing since the abilities from it are mostly monk themed instead of borrowing from a tradition.

Which means what's actually missing most is an occult fighter, which is kind of hard to categorise being lovecraftian and other bizarre things.

The Hexblade from 3E is the only thing that comes to mind that would fit that mold. I vaguely remember a few third party classes that also used the debuff/hinder mechanic on a fighter frame. It would be a neat design space to explore.

I was thinking of the 5e hexblade but demonic pacts would be divine in nature.

Given Bards are the quintessential occult spellcasters so an occult melee hybrid could just as well be a dancer class of sorts. Something like a areliguous dervish.

I think the only thing Paizo mentioned at being potentially too powerful are the resiliency feats that grant you extra HP for every dedication feat you take.

Schreckstoff wrote:

With the Magus there's an Arcane Fighter now and the monk and paladin are occult/divine fighters leaving a hole that is a primal fighter.

Which could be the shifter but wholly elemental themed would be nice too.

Other than that it's difficult to come up with something that couldn't be an archetype or class archetype instead.

The Ranger is at least as much the primal fighter as the monk is occult, and Barbarian gets a taste of that too. I'm not saying that there's not space for a more heavily primal-themed martial or semi-martial class, but I don't think the "occult fighter" slot is filled all that well either.

That's totally right particularly the barbarian covers the primal fighter pretty well.

Which means what's actually missing most is an occult fighter, which is kind of hard to categorise being lovecraftian and other bizarre things.

For versatility free archetype is amazing.

For my players they've been simply picking 1 archetype/class and stuck with that progression.
But for the GM character I'm playing to assist them I went into 3 archetypes by lvl 8 to plug some holes in the party composition.

Eldritch researcher to provide occultism recall knowledge checks and the shield cantrip
Acrobat for automatic Acrobatics progression (it's a swashbuckler)
Blessed One for more in combat healing.

The character doesn't outshine my players either since they picked their niche and slightly improved them via archetypes.

it should really be part of the rules that whenever you get a focus spell you get a focus point up to 3 to avoid all that language.

If natural ambition allowing for 2 focus points at lvl 1 is the concern then natural ambition maybe is the problem.

Odd you picked Cavalier when Beastmaster is the one that's strictly better. Though it's also even better on a Ranger or Druid so there's that.

Hahah that was my thought exactly

There are a few archetypes that are just poorly balanced.
Staying with the beastmaster for instance. If you take the druid feat for animal companion you only upgrade your druid animal companion but if you take the beastmaster animal companion you upgrade all your animal companions from any source.

It's a minor balancing gripe though as strong archetypes are great for allowing more varied build paths.
And staying in your class can be worth it when you want a high level feat of another archetype but taking another archetype would lock you out.

I am also a big proponent of free archetype though.

I am sort of irritated that the archer monk can't negate the volley penalty with a longbow (short of a level 20 feat which lets you have two stances at once) when the PF1 ZAM was literally the best at "standing adjacent to someone and shooting them with arrows."

same it bothers me to no end that the ancestral weaponry feat only applies to melee weapons and only to weapons with the actual ancestry trait. Instead of all the weapons that your ancestry makes you proficient with.

feat taxes are much alleviated by free archetype which I would encourage everyone to try out.
If you're concerned about power creep then just use the free dedication at lvl or of the player's choice if the archetype unlocks later

I was obsessed with advanced weapons for a bit but I ended up disappointed with most of them.

They are either so good but specific that unconventional weaponry felt cheesy to get access to them or kinda underwhelming for the feat investment.
Also to go on a tangent natural ambition, multi talented and unconventional weaponry from the human ancestry are so powerful.

I see levels as a game mechanic for the most part, an extrapolation of power.
Just like player wealth makes very little sense in a worldwide economy and is just an abstract gamey thing.

Villagers vs a giant w/o players to observe/participate wouldn't happen in encounter mode either. If we presume that villages don't just lose to a giant but are very weak then we gotta presume that they have tactics to defend or some other form of protection.

If for instance my players decided to start acting against villagers and other lvl 0-1 people I'd take away their level bonuses but keep proficiency, ability scores, etc.

I personally do not make my players track ammunition unless there's some special circumstances or special ammo.

Archers really suffer in the early levels imo. You'll do very little damage compared to martial melee classes but the reach does get more important in higher levels.

With the Magus there's an Arcane Fighter now and the monk and paladin are occult/divine fighters leaving a hole that is a primal fighter.
Which could be the shifter but wholly elemental themed would be nice too.

Other than that it's difficult to come up with something that couldn't be an archetype or class archetype instead.

I like the stance analogy a lot, it makes sense to spend an action to start it but also to not have to spend actions to keep it going.
You're spinning the weapon but to keep it spinning doesn't take much effort.

Now I just wish there was a stance that'd allow you to attack while hampering.

I would prefer it to be more open ended that being a class/archetype/etc. Maybe have some feat chains but I would prefer the history of the character to inform the choices more than just what is powerful.
Similarly I wouldn't want simple combat prowess but something that goes beyond the mortal realm and in thematic ways.

No it isn't. At the levels where trained proficiency is appropriate for PCs and monsters, it is the difference between "I have to wait several days, and in that time the heroes can attack me several times fully ealed up for free each time".

As monsters gain hit points they also gain skill proficiency levels. You never see a high level monster with a +8 modifier, for example.

But you do see monsters at every level without the skill at all. Which is precisely my point.

I fully get that the game requires you to be able to heal up between encounters, and that Paizo wanted to get rid of CLW wands. But they could have so easily implemented this in a way that doesn't assume a trained skill. They could have implemented it as a heroic ability that many monsters could gain too. I mean, if heroes can spend a single action to get a fallen ally back on their feet, it is not unrealistic to assume a Tyrannosaurus Rex would heal back up if you just leave it alone for an hour.

If you don't invest further into medicine you'll be healing on average 18 life per hour per character once you always crit. That is not a lot of healing a couple levels into the game. If you let the party game it completely then that's fine if you don't like it you could let the animal attack them while they are healing, flee, get reinforcements,... If you want dynamic then add dynamic to your games.

If you are saying that your heroes can't track down and kill wounded monsters you are playing a quite different game than me...

Anyway, the game's world building isn't helped by lopsided rules.

Yes, if you treat an adventure as a roller-coaster where nothing outside the adventure is ever important, this is not a big issue.

I just wish Paizo cared more for all the players that want to use their game for something more than that...

This is an example illustrating this. Don't make free rapid healing possible and then just give it to heroes, or your game will feel videogamey and artificial as a result.

Ok let's take the Caustic Wolf from Plaguestone's first fight with a +8 to survival so that's a DC 18 to track.

Survival is very niche as a skill imo since it doesn't fall into the medicine, spell casting, combat or stealth category. It's a thing the GM actively has to include because stranding characters that can't subsist themselves somewhere w/o resources is going to be a struggle. Which mostly just leaves the scout archetype and tracking. Tracking can be pretty important to be fair but most other skills offer much more than that.