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Beating my "Core class features shouldn't be typed" drum again that I know some people disagree with, but-

I really dislike that On The Hunt confers the quickened condition, because it's a nonstackable commodity that already exists in the game as part of a support toolkit. At low levels quickened is rare so it's not a huge deal, but at higher levels in parties that can apply quickened more easily (say via heightened haste), on the hunt can end up a depreciated class feature, which is really awkward. In parties that don't have that, it's less of a problem but I also think that creates unnecessary volatility because On The Hunt is a baseline class feature whose value can change dramatically depending on who's buffing people (if anyone).

I know buff stacking can be a problem, but there's a reason full martial gimmicks are basically never typed benefits, because you don't want class features to potentially turn off depending on party dynamics.

Also I'm not sure this class is encouraging good things anyway. I feel like this class pushes GMs into throwing single boss encounters at the PCs which I don't think is a good thing to encourage. These encounters are the weakest types of encounters in PF2e.

While I think mark quarry is in an awkward spot I think this issue is being overstated a bit. You don't need a single boss enemy, Quarry works on anything your level or higher.

On The Hunt also gives you really good tempo against mooks (at least at low levels), which makes them better in multitarget scenarios than something like a Ranger or Thaumaturge that has to keep reapplying their gimmick.

Except they just tried almost exactly what you suggest and the community exploded in outrage.

The conclusion you're drawing here is extreme. The specific implementation presented in the pre-errata was kind of unpopular. There's nothing to generalize from that.

The solution to "This rule didn't work well" is to try again not to just abandon the idea of having a general rule.

I don't see why Wheeling Pull would benefit from agile. Inheriting agile is a specific feature of the weapon trait or free hand requirement, neither of which apply here.

Yeah I think there's a real threat, especially if you aren't grabbing a ton of extra tools, to be in a position where you find a few decent tools and then you just no longer care about collecting trophies.

I think it’s very likely that Paizo chose not to include a way to auto-scale Athletics or Acrobatics in the playtest in order to streamline builds. By effectively encouraging playtesters to take those skills, feedback is more likely to focus on how the class interacts with them and whether that interaction feels satisfying. Feedback about daredevils prioritizing unrelated skills like Thievery, for example, is probably less relevant for evaluating the class’s core design.

Intentionally playtesting a version of the class you don't intend to publish seems like it would just taint your playtesting data, especially when it's something so minor like this.

But if the summoner procs it twice, why doesn't Magus wielding flaming sword and spellstriking with fireball proc a fire weakness twice? They're both wavecasting gish-designs intended to fulfill the 'cast and strike' concept in different ways. They both roll separately for the spell and the strike. But from what you said about Magus, you want that to only proc it once.

I mean, there is the diagetic answer here. A Magus is described as making a strike that contains the power of their spell, with the two effects being resolved together. IT's baked into the flavor the ability.

So there's some room for the Summoner to be making two entirely separate attacks without breaking the logic here.

I think it's better to just remove the size requirement entirely. It just doesn't make sense to create a scenario where the daredevil's whole core conceit stops working.

I honestly kind of don't even know how it got this far. "All your features and feat disable against enemies that are past a certain size" is absurdly debilitating.

Looking at a few APs there tends to be a pattern where the game telegraphs a monster but puts them deep into a series of encounters which means you're 'missing' interim fights.. or it's an AP where you just open a door and there's a random monster inside.

If I was playing Abomination Vaults as a slayer the best way to manage the mechanic would be to invest in stealth so I can peek into rooms and then leave for ten minutes before immediately coming back which just... feels a little silly.

I said it before and I'll say it again; GMs and AP designers aren't going to change how they design maps for a class that is going to come out 9 years after the release of the system.

I mean, you don't need the daredevil to exist to have an excuse to not design bad maps.

So it seems like the main thing missing is crit damage on stunt damage.

It's also worth noting a Daredevil can take both for some pretty good shove damage.

Daring Stunt > Daring Reversal actually kind of crazy on a centaur daredevil with punishing shove (assuming you can find flanking to walk into but still).

I understand wanting to play a monster hunter, but do I have to be one that collects mementos?

No you don't. There are 30 other classes you can pick that are all some flavor of monster hunter (because that's just a thing you do in PF) that don't.

But the Slayer's singular unique feature is empowering themselves by taking totems from defeated enemies. So like... there's kind of a critical mismatch here.

Also, small quibble, but it feels odd you can't get acid as a damage type from a trophy. Harvesting some kind of acidic gland sounds like exactly the kind of thing you'd want to harvest.

Can't you? A trophy gets damage types from any type of damage the creature could do that isn't from spells. Acid just isn't on the list of options for your generic free trophy.

So, I'd note that slayer's trophies are hard capped at 5 in reserve, plus whatever are currently on tools. There is no way to increase this limit that I can see. That keeps the tracking to a more manageable level imo.

Also, there's only like 3 feats specifically for each tool, most of the feats are not tied to anything in particular.

On the flip side, with only one per tool and five in reserve in the right campaign it seems like it's going to be not hard to cover all your bases relatively quickly. Unless you're chasing very specific abilities it feels like you could just ... finish your trophy mechanic by like level 6 and then just not do that anymore.

Yeah in general I'd like to see more weird stuff with Trophies worked into the design.

I also think that the starting trophies for higher level characters should maybe be a "work with your GM to pick your monsters" kind of thing. It adds overhead to building the class... but it really kind of bugs me that a Slayer built at level 10 is likely going to have worse class features than a Slayer built at level 5 and played to 10. Loot and stuff can obviously have a big effect on power level, but it's a little awkward when we're talking about a core feature of the class imo

The ability to trigger weakness or resistance a bunch of times within an attack was odd... but I feel ilke this is a slightly overcorrection in the other way by having unrelated elements combine, but disconnected sources, like the spell and strike in spellstrike or the damage from flame wisp (which seems phrased to be a separate thing) could still trigger weakness multiple times.

The spellstrike example is especially odd because strictly speaking they're not even the same source (one is spell damage, the other is a strike).

Is this going to mean that every activity that includes multiple attacks should treat combining weakness/resistance all flurry as a general rule?

Or is this more unique to Spellstrike because of the underlying idea that you're delivering the spell through the strike?

TBH I had always thought being good at double tapping weaknesses with spells and stuff like arcane cascade was an intended benefit to being a magus, but eh.

Thank you so much for the further clarifications on weakness and resistance.

The trophy mechanic seems central to the class' identity. You hunt monsters and take parts from them to celebrate the kill and make yourself stronger by reinforcing you gear. It's neat, it's cool, it's like their one singular meaningfully unique thing.

But there's a hard cap of 5 unused tools and then reinforcing your actual tools, but also a soft cap based on the number of tools you have and what their mechanics are.

It seems like it in practice it wouldn't be especially hard to softcap your tools, or even hardcap them by midgame and reach a point where you have to throw away old trophies or just stop using the mechanic.

In the most extreme example I feel like in its current form I could take bloodseeking blade, pick electricity damage for my starting trophy (because electricity is cool) and only claim another trophy if I get another slot (which could hypothetically be never) and be fine.

That's an extreme example, but just broadly I think the current setup makes it too easy to eventually just be 'done' worrying about trophies long before a campaign ends.

The description of the item made me think like, this was the thaumatuge-adjacent setup (as opposed to the alchemist-y one or the weaponmastery/pf1 ranger one), but the action just doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

Having a backup weapon always on hand is kind of neat, but daggers are low damage an their throwing increment is really low.

The castlevania subweapon vibe is kind of fun, but they don't have the range or damage or utility to really work like that.

But if part of the design is to create something that engages more with the environment, making it work better without scenery would be kind of antithetical to the function.

Maybe it's okay to start saying that empty squares with a bunch of enemies on one side are not good map design.

You don't really. These are variations on a theme. Certain characters will work better as a Daredevil than they would have as a Swashbuckler or Monk or whatever, but there's no profound paradigm shift here.

In Paizo's defense, does there need to be though?

... The Slayer does really just feel like Paizo's own Revised Ranger thing though, yeah.

The daredevil's terrain based mechanics are really interesting to me because I feel like historically PF2 has done very very little to like, encourage environmental interaction. Most classes stand still and hit things and a distressing number of battlemaps are near featureless rectangles.

It does make me kind of wish some of this was more system level stuff, because it's using a class to address what I think are more basic design concerns, but it's cool!

... I'm struggling a bit with the Slayer. The concept space is really cool but I'm having trouble with the execution. Big parts of it really do hit my initial concern that chunks of the class feel like another try at the Ranger, which is frustrating from both ends.

Chymist's vial is kind of a let down. I get why it has the direction it does, but I kind of wish it integrated more with actual alchemy mechanics.

I also think these threads get a bit silly but OP feels kind of bad faith idk if we really need to try to dunk on people who don't like certain class names.

Maybe the book will finally come with support for this extremely basic fantasy trope/aesthetic. Hopefully in a class agnostic way.

Obviously we'll have to see the core playtest, but I also sort of worry about the core gimmick of 10 minutes to pick a primary quarry and requiring that prey to be your level or higher. I feel like that could lead to some serious problems in certain campaigns, depending on how impactful the quarry mechanic is.

In particular, I've come off a couple of APs that rely heavily on both random encounters (so no prep time) and groups of weak enemies (so no quarry even with). How is the slayer going to feel in an AP book only has like... 3 enemies in the whole book that reasonably work as quarries?

... There's also adventures like Abomination Vaults that have a decent number of high level enemies but don't always telegraph them. Is open a door, see a boss, then run away so the Slayer can activate their gimmick going to be an expected gameplay loop?

Mostly just speculation to kill time but I can't help but think of the way the Investigator outright doesn't function in certain campaigns in a way no other class really does if the adventure doesn't support their gimmick.

The Slayer keeps making me think of either MonHun or Bloodborne... which really makes me want the new book to either have some weird (but functional) weapon choices like those games have ... and firearm support. Let the slayer use guns, that seems on brand.

Thinking about turning my monsterslaying catfolk ranger into a slayer if the class ends up working well, the core themes seem on point.

I also have this awful ustalavan noble turned sport hunter I was building as a companion character for a campaign that I was going to make as a thaumaturge but might work a lot better as a slayer. Kind of excited about that.

My general stance is that while they do feel similar to other things thats not a reason to dismiss them outright but it is something to keep in mind during the playtest. Do these classes feel balanced/adjusted enough to warrant such close themes to previous concepts.

TBH, I'm not too worried about Paizo's ability to make the classes feel good on their own. There's only been a few classes I'd call outright misses, even some of the weaker ones have interesting stuff.

The bigger gripe, imo, is that when there are dozens of things you can't make yet in PF, it's a little bit of a bummer when the next new class is just a variation on an existing theme.

but on the other hand it sounds like this guy has some boss-bashing, "let me solo her" energy.

I mean at one point that was supposed to be the Ranger's thing too. Singling out a specific target, getting bonuses and compression for fixating on them but with some difficulty target switching.

But people complained that the ranger had action economy issues against mooks... or that even though their gimmick revolved around fixating on a single target they weren't actually any better at it than more flexible martials, or that there weren't a lot of tools to interact with your quarry beyond your edge.

... Stuff that it all sounds like they're fixing now, by releasing the Slayer instead.

That's not even getting into the Thaumaturge, who also has a monster hunter theme and a combat gimmick around singling out a specific enemy.

I mean ultimately I'm sure both classes will be fun and mechanically interesting, but I can't help but wonder why we're getting a third (fourth if you want to include the Investigator) class that fits into this extremely narrow theme instead of something more mechanically or thematically novel.

Especially when the remaster did so little to help the Ranger.

Slayer seems to take an Investigator approach to something that Thaumaturge was kind of given as the best fit for before, the monster hunter. They can designate a quarry, taking ten minutes. They get bonus damage with their signature weapon and various tracking/knowledge bonuses against the quarry, but we saw a lot of their other options work against other enemies. When they take down their quarry, they can take a trophy to empower their gear. Notably, they had support to reaction-quicken for one round on any enemy going down *or* their quarry getting crit- good for mowing through mooks or tackling a boss.

Daredevil seems geared towards addressing how bad it can sometimes feel to use a maneuver and then attack. They get risky action compression for movement and maneuvers, which gives adrenaline. Adrenaline empowers maneuvers (get damage for shoving an enemy into a wall or larger creature/obstacle) and reduces the MAP for Press actions. The class then gets Press actions to upgrade their attacks with.

Man I really don't know how to feel about that. I'm sure in practice they'll turn out interesting enough and probably not too problematic, but both of those descriptions really feel like they're heading into already traveled design space or even like, addressing problems other classes have but as a new class instead.

I would never have guessed Swashbuckler 2 and Ranger 2 in a million years.

Aside from the dying change that was reverted, PC1 was pretty good quality wise.

Other than the ridiculousness with rogues... or if you were a wizard player, or someone who liked the item dispenser alchemist, or someone who dared to hope they'd breathe some life into rangers or druids... Then there's PC2- ... and of course all the dreadful premaster stuff.

I think nostalgia does a lot of heavy lifting for people here. Mythic was sort of a big blip on the radar, but for the most part this is stuff Paizo's been doing since they were making Dragon Magazine (which was notorious for its sketchy design and balance choices).

Primal gish is my like, main want right now. Primal feels like the most underexplored type. Druid is the only dedicated primal caster. Kineticists have primal themeing but also lean into it in an very specific way.

A primal martial that leans into primal spaces more broadly could be really cool, or a primal gish... we haven't had a new bounded caster since 2021. Not necessary per se but territory that hasn't been touched in a while.

A mystic or an envoy can load up on the plasma cannon (advanced weapon) and use his full class DC, while an advanced pistol would suck.

One other ironic knock on effect here means that the plasma cannon being an advanced weapon only serves as an impediment to the soldier, since they're the only class that has a way to use weapon proficiency with advanced weapons.

It feels kind of goofy that advanced area weapons end up being freebies for everyone but the area weapon class.

One, equality among characters doesn't really seem like a bad thing to me.

I mean I agree in principle, but this is a dichotomy Paizo chose to create, so it just feels weird that there's this narrow situation where their own rules don't apply.

Like why do we even have proficiency tiers on area weapons? Just to annoy soldiers by reducing their weapon options? That's the only practical effect here.

Say something mean when you heal them so it's not very comforting.

Eh, its not like I give it much thought because, as I said, I think RK is highly overrated both from Paizo and the players.

It kind of really is, which frustrate me as a GM because sometimes I like being able to let characters who want to be smart feel smart and give them info but the baseline framework for RK is so wretched. Highly action intensive, highly volatile even with training, low payoff (you essentially get one piece of information). Even purists tend to rarely run RK strictly by RAW because it's so bad, sometimes even without realizing it.

... Reminded of another tabletop I play where its RK mechanic has no failure feature (you spend the action and just get the info) and gives you the monster's entire statblock instead of just answering one question and even then it's kind of a pain to get players interested in using it.

The PF2 version is so so so so so bad and so limited it always kind of baffles me when people worry about the power level of RK options.

Plus with Animal Instinct Barbarians, Beastkin versatile heritage, Werecreature Archetype, etc there just isn't as much of an empty niche for "someone who transforms parts of themself to fight more like an animal" that feels justifiable for a whole new class to fill.

TBH I think one of the biggest failings of the 1e Shifter (other than it being horrible) was that they decided to make it animal/druid themed when that was already the most active space for shapeshifting themes. Druids are kind of lame in 2e, so there's less of a risk of the Shifter being completely overshadowed, but the thematic overlap would still be a problem.

If we see something shifter-y in 2e I think it'd help a lot of it wasn't, by default immediately adjacent to the druid and animal barbarian.

While there's a rigorous RAW that aligns with you, Raven, there's also the more natural reading that it's telekinesis and independent of the state of one's body. Paizo has explicitly tried in PF2 to avoid writing to the lawyers plus likely felt they didn't have to spell out the basics of a trope such as telekinesis.

So while I'd also run it this way, I think the use of "rigorous RAW" and "lawyer" here is kind of misrepresentative. That suggests some highly technical reading or some strict/absurd interpretation of language here... but we're actually talking about something just plainly spelled out in the trip action.

I think what bothers me most is that I feel like none of the implications here are good.

IDK man. At its most basic this only just reaffirms that stun 1 does what it says it does and doesn't arbitrarily turn into stunned 4 under hyper specific conditions.

That's unequivocally a good thing, it's just making the effect more consistent within weird edge cases that were always rules contradictory

See the Unseen very clearly works against disappearance. I'm sorry your friend is being weird about it.

I'm a little surprised they made stuff like "do you fall out of stances that require ranged weapons if you throw yours" explicitly 100% a GM call. That's not really some wiggly edge case so much as a key mechanical consideration.

Also, was nerfing the Pet feat on anyone's bingo card???

I hope they revisit the multiclass dedications a bit. The bounded spellcasting multiclass stuff doesn't make a lot of sense. Bounded spellcasting is worse than normal spellcasting because the Summoner and Magus gets other benefits, but a multiclass magus is just paying higher level feats for worse spellcasting than a multiclass wizard.

The eidolon from Summoner archetype is really awkward too. It gets hit from too many angles, limited abilities, reduced stats, worse action economy, proficiency stuff.

It's actually not a terrible feat, but for the wrong reasons. Because eidolons have their own stats and own boosts, you can make yourself good at skills your class would otherwise be bad at. A +0 Cha rogue with a trickster fey eidolon gives themselves a +3 (that scales!) by having them use diplomacy instead.

That's pretty nice, especially on classes that get extra skill increases, but also anecdotally just not really what people who want to take the summoner archetype are actually interested in from my experience.

.. As one minor example, there's no real need for the eidolon to have stunted weapon proficiency. It already shares your MAP and actions, so it could just copy your own weapon proficiency. Somehow this would even be better for casters, because Wizards hit expert before Eidolons can... which sort of drives home how needlessly bad the multiclass eidolon is here.

Man I love when Paizo offers an example for an odd piece of rules text and the example just does not answer any questions.

I don't think it's intended to mean only one person gets to resist Fireball, but... you could definitely read it that way.

What about spells that you sustain? It feels a little odd to have like... Floating Flame or Spiritual Weapon only get resisted one time even though you can use them for ten turns, but that's definitely something that works with the reading too.

I'd assume that that sentence only applies to that sentence, so B. It doesn't make sense to make the archetype worse for spellcasters when it's already essentially worse because of their proficiency.

The 'regardless of whether' language muddies the waters a bit but I can't fathom why A would make any sense design wise.

... Ofc Paizo as a company sometimes likes to make things needlessly bad on purpose for no discernible reason, so if it ever gets errata'd it's a coin flip which way they'll go.

Unlikely, given that the non-Vancian Psychic is pretty clearly less well regarded than the Vancian Cleric or Druid.

They're all running on fundamentally the same basic mechanics, so this distinction isn't really important.

Somebody should tell all those thaums multiclassing into champion and sentinel for heavy armor that their builds are illegal (as nearly all heavy armors have gauntlets as part of the armor).

I mean if that's how you want to run things, have at it buddy.

The headache that would cause seems worse than the problem you're describing.

What headache would it cause?

SatiricalBard wrote:

...

Alright, I've got some answers!

For Foundry, the team has let me know that it will be getting the same treatment as the Gatewalkers compilation from last year except even more, with custom dice, new maps, and an original musical soundtrack to be released separately! So yes, there will be a new single module. They did not give me any information on price though. To be clear, this is not because we don't want anyone to know the price? That would frankly be weird. A more likely reason (and the usual reason when we don't have prices for things listed) is that it just hasn't been determined yet by the team involved.

As for our PDF, that will be available on the street date release of the hardcover, and it'll be $39.99. Also I did not receive any emails from you, so I'm sorry your questions were not answered that way!

Thank you for this, I wish it was a bit more centrally posted, was about ten minutes away from buying the chapter 2 vtt bundle assuming it'd get upgraded automatically like dark archive did.

Pulverizing Wake shouldn't be on that list either, the first part is a strike (so critting is baked in) and the second part is a basic save (which has crit mechanics too).

So it's just those other four.

They could have made a "undead horde" for necromancers that works similarly to a summoner's eidolon, in that its mechanically a single entity that shares statistics but that the necromancer can split or keep summoning in subsequent turns and thus occupies multiple spaces in the grid.

This also could allow those that want a single beefy undead to have that fantasy realized in the class as well, though it would need something else to compensate for the lack of battlefield control that the minionmancer would have.

TBH, "what if it had an eidolon but different" or "what if it had an undead companion but stronger" both sound like, really bland compared to what we're actually getting.

Like you don't need a brand new class to just be a Summoner or Druid again.

Instead we're getting something with unique mechanics and a cool theme and that's amazing. I cannot really wrap my head around the idea that a generic spellcaster with a tweaked animal companion somehow being a better option.

I understand why players like grabbing focus spells to spell strike with, but I personally dislike how much that became the 1 true build of the magus. I would much rather magi not be able to use focus spells at all and the class be adequately balanced around cantrips and the occasional nova spell slot than balanced around using focus spells to spell strike and having to stand still and waste actions recharging because every focus point has to go into spell striking.

I mean if you don't want to use focus spells you don't have to.

The main thing that focus spellstriking does that's really appealing is it frees up your spell slots for anything else, which make the magus a lot more versatile in practice. The amount of spellstriking doesn't really change.

It's also kind of out of scope of this thread, since spellstriking is something you do regardless of subclass.

... If anything more spellstrike content just makes stuff like Maelstrom even less appealing.

In a vacuum the multiclass is really weird to look at.

Psychic Dedication is just worse than other spellcaster dedications, giving you one fewer cantrip and no other benefits.

Psi Development is on a slower track than other archetype focus feats, coming at 6 instead of 4.

Then finally Psi Development is written to bypass the normal focus point rules so you still only have one focus point after picking up the amp instead of 2 if you'd gone with another archetype + focus spell feat.

Ignoring the baggage, if this was the first time the Psychic was printed, does any of that really make sense?

Brocade and Maelstrom both seem to suffer from wanting to create new ways to play the Magus (Brocade buffs maneuvers and Maelstrom gives you benefits for striking multiple times in a round) but vastly underestimate how much they need to give to make those actually superior to your vanilla playstyle so they end up turning into traps.

Unfortunately I think this is an problem Paizo runs into semi-frequently, where they don't properly budget feats that are designed to buff deficient options.