Squiggit's page

But as Superbidi has pointed out this is a level 1 feat so that benefit should be a minor one.

I mean, other level 1 feats include things like titan wrestler, battle medicine, or demoralizing glare that are potentially essential to making certain builds work. Plus there are other potentially high impact options like bon mot, cat fall, or even quick jump.

Even the best possible version of dubious knowledge probably doesn't go on this list. So I feel like both the claim that first level feats should suck and that it's potentially overpowered are misplaced.

I think you have maybe not been paying close enough attention.

Eh, it might be a little overstated but I don't think it's entirely off-base either. Like you bring up the Thaumaturge and Inventor but both of those are pretty safe 'hit things with a big stick' classes with only a little bit extra tacked on. The designs are very safe, tbh complaints about the Inventor not going very far with its concept are actually rather common even, so it seems like an especially poor choice to bring up. Even the exemplar, based on the playtest version, still relied really heavily on passive effects and just hitting things with your stick. Maybe the full release will improve that, but we haven't seen it yet.

The best news in that regard though is that neither the Guardian nor Commander having hitting things as part of their brief, so there might be an opportunity to divest themselves from the typical martial paradigm.

I feel like granting martial proficiency as a default without further buffing their default fist attack would turn them into a class that can punch as a backup option, rather than a class that does punch and can sword.

The unarmed attacks you can pick up in class are categorically better than any comparable weapon by a meaningful margin, and powerful fist out the gate is already comparable to a martial weapon while also sporting the free-hand trait (and the monk's upgraded version of non-lethal).

I don't really like this "should punch but can sword" mentality because it suggests that one sort of style must be treated as second class, as something only begrudgingly allowed. But the class could just support a variety of options with somewhat comparable measure instead.

I feel like even that's potentially too much.

The monk trait doesn't serve a valuable purpose just at all, and with the power allocated to stance strikes there just doesn't seem to be a compelling argument at all that this serves a balance purpose. Monks have in-house access to d8 agile finesse and 0-hand d10 weapons. That is literally better than anything on the weapon table.

Here's hoping the class interacts with the Monk trait differently in PC2. It'd be a big shame for them to break down bespoke proficiencies in PC1 and then just bring them back for the Monk alone.

I don’t know I think James Jacobs has invested a lot of time and energy into define how Sarenrae expects her followers to act

Yeah, but probably not as much time trying to subdivide the word 'evil' into multiple words with entirely different meanings. Again that largely seems to be a distinction created by players on social media websites. The statement I quoted about evil and Evil doesn't even make sense unless you're knee deep in D&D alignment chart brainrot.

The problem with interpreting it that way, or changing it to Unholy, is it fundamentally redefines the tenant to be about opposing a specific sort of creature, rather than fighting against evil itself.

Rewriting the text to reference Unholy targets means that our hypothetical follower is duty bound to oppose an Unholy cleric of Abadar, who may not actually be doing anything bad at all, but not a mundane serial killer. That totally redefines the text and, imo, is a little bit silly.

I had more I wanted to elaborate on re:Sarenrae herself, but Sibelius Eos Owm basically says it all perfectly.

Remember when debating curse efficacy game design is going to play a big part of it. Deriven's complaints make sense when you remember he's playing a heavily modified version of Pathfinder and also tends to favor extremely large maps.

For someone who's playing a dungeon crawl or AP where sightlines are naturally small, the same penalty might not even be a penalty at all.

Powers128 wrote:

It's a "good" feat but one that's unfortunately a tax for flames and storm oracles.

Flames Oracle, I understand the claim of feat tax - Flames characters are likely to want more fire trait spells than the Divine list gives. I don't necessarily agree with the claim - Divine Access is a top tier feat for its level, but I don't think it rises to must-pick or feat-tax level. But I at least understand the claim in the case of Flames Mystery.

Why does Tempest Oracle need off-tradition spells any more than any other Oracle Mystery?

IMO the problem with Access is that it's somewhat of a theme tax. Like it's difficult to really lean into the conceptual space of mysteries like Flame or Tempest without investing in extra spells, which can be somewhat frustrating.

I also dislike the idea that some have paizo can't use downsides like curses in class design. It reminds me of the discussions surrounding precision damage/sneak attack, immunities/resistances (and wanting bypasses) and the toxicologist (poisoning undead, elementals, constructs, etc)

I think that's kind of a bad comparison. The weaknesses an Oracle has are something you buy into at character creation, and you're somewhat built to play around them. Theoretically, part of the whole gameplay look of the class is actively managing those downsides (how well that plays out is something of another issue).

Encountering a bunch of precision immune enemies as a rogue is entirely based on the whims of whoever created the encounter and you are not really given tools to even attempt to manage them.

However, ancestors as written is just awful... I like me a wellspring mage/wild magic sorcerer... but the dice rolling each round is clunky, it actively limits what spells you can use and in actual play makes you have to build incredibly broadly as a jack of all trades, who can't actually use chunks of their trades at will so is objectively bad at it.

I feel like the core issue with the Ancestors oracle is that you're forced to play this randomization game, but even if you do the rewards are both trivial and replacable.

The idea of 'rolling martial' this turn and adjusting my gameplay loop is kind of cool. The idea that I could be any other class and just in a party with a Bard and get the same results somewhat dampens that though, and turns your oracle mechanic into mostly just a downside.

Why is every single Pathfinder 1e demon lord, horseman of the apocalypse, archdevil, spawn of Rovagug, great old one, and empyreal lord immune to ability damage (goodbye poisons...), ability drain, death effects, charms and compulsions, energy drain, and petrification?

Don't forget mind affecting.

Reminded of someone bringing in a Psychic as a replacement character in a high level PF1 game and we went 12 encounters in a row before there was a single enemy he could cast his s$+!ty single target damage spell on because someone at Paizo decided to be cruel and label it mind affecting. There's no defending that garbage. It's not even a versimilitude thing because they just randomly handed it out to everything after a point.

PF2 has reduced this problem a lot, but it still crops up occasionally and I still rarely find it validating or interesting from a game design. Our blaster caster did not discover new gameplay paradigms or find himself engaging with Pathfinder in a unique and innovative way when we had back to back to back encounters in Abomination Vaults against wisps and golems, he just spent most of the session on his phone because he had no way to contribute to those fights.

Our Swashbuckler did not feel invigorated when something like a third of the enemies in Malevolence turned out to be precision immune, he just kind of sucked in those combats.

Paizo not touching Outwit at all in PC1 is almost as surprising as them deciding to nerf crossbows. Really don't get the thought process.

I really like the idea of a skill focused ranger, and Outwit does let you get some juicy bonuses, but the synergy is awkward (it boosts Cha and Int when you don't have a lot of reason to invest there, especially when Wisdom is your magic stat if you choose to go that route) and you completely give up any offensive gimmick for it, which is kind of a big deal. Champions get a significant bonus to AC against everyone and a unique reaction in exchange for not having a DPR gimmick, the ranger's +1 that doesn't stack with a shield and only works against a single enemy kind of pales in comparison.

.... Also +2 to stealth checks against a single enemy is a really awkward mechanic.

I think the OP is overestimating how easy it was to identify objective evil pre-remaster. While 'Evil' was a quantifiable force, there weren't always easily available tools for managing it.

So for the most part nothing is really all that different.

One other thought I had is that it might be worth looking at the exceptions to the commonalities.

One consistent theme is that the death of a god is a calamitous affair, the fallout can be disastrous even when an evil god bites it.

Except... Asmodeus.

By and large Hell is reformed at least somewhat successfully. Peoples lives are made better, bad contracts are amended, petitioners are given opportunities beyond simply being ground under infernal bureaucracy. There's a little bit in the end about discontent brewing, but nothing nearly as explicit as in the other stories.

Unlike Pharasma, Urgathoa, Nethys, or Desna, there's no fallout from his portfolio. Contracts don't suddenly stop working, law and order don't generally unravel. There are massive political changes in hell, but there seems to be almost no metaphysical consequences, even though that's a theme in many of these stories.

Unlike Urgathoa or Rovagug, there's no monkey's paw, no twisted downside to removing a great evil from the world.

I'm not sure what the implication is, but it seems very notable that our in-universe author wrote sometimes grotesque fanfiction about the horrible consequences for the death of the gods and then for Asmodeus' story presents his death as an almost unconditional win for literally everyone else.

I still feel like 'failure' or a god losing sight of their purpose is a big part of their

Erastil is out-hunted. His followers then fail to track down the beast that killed him.

Cayden loses his confidence, then is betrayed by his own friends and followers.

Pharasma, the god most tied to prophecy, crumbles under it and notably her systems and psychopomps are basically useless in maintaining any order without her.

Asmodeus' entire system is brought down and repudiated by his death.

Zon-Kuthon falls, but even beyond that we then see Dou-bral abandon his station and Shelyn destroy artistic creativity in the aftermath.

Even Urgathoa, who sort of 'wins' I think is notable in that she does more to further the cause of spreading undeath and upending Pharasma's order by dying than she ever did by unliving. Doubly ironic given that Urgathoa's existence is sort of an act of defiance against that unmaking. Urgathoa's assassin also essentially fails here, in that undeath runs rampant because of it.

... Even in this story: Obviously, the gods somewhat fail to protect Golarion, but Rovagug here fails utterly at being a reality-ending threat. The battle is described as intense, but the being who was supposed to devour all of reality failing to even destroy the single world his final battle takes place on is somewhat pathetic, don't you think?

etc.

One notable connection is also the idea of a god falling in part because they've stepped away from their original purpose.

Desna is specifically disparaged for turning her attention away from watching the stars. Erastil, likewise, stops being just a hunt god and becomes a god of family and community as well. Both of them fall in their respective prophecies perhaps in part because of the dilution of their domain.

We also see a similar theme of gods trying to step 'beyond' their station. Nethys tries to tamper with the fundamental laws of reality and dooms large parts of the world for it. Irori allows his selfish need for personal perfection doom everything else. There are even shades of this in Urgathoa's death, with Arazni stepping too far by taking revenge on another god, and this story where trying to circumvent the 'natural order' by killing Rovagug here and now starts a calamity.

More than half of these stories are written in such a way that you can squarely blame everything that goes wrong on a god failing to stay in their lane, and in every story you can expect a god and/or their followers to fail to make anything better.

Kind of a flat ending, but still a really interesting series overall. Excited for War of Immortals, even if I think this story kind of misses.

I like the idea of ancestors, but I feel like if you're going to be pushed toward random actions that can change every round it should at least feel rewarding.

I know it's a taboo, but the bonuses should really be typeless. Nothing worse than realizing your martial boon isn't actually doing anything because someone else in the party has a buff is a really cruddy feeling.

I don't think Torag as an overtly-coded ancestral deity though.

I mean, he definitely has portfolio and value beyond being a cultural deity, but he's also literally called the god of dwarvenkind.

The question doesn't make sense to me. Mortal Weakness lets you hit a creature's natural weakness. Since the skeleton doesn't have a weakness to holy, "allowing mortal weakness to trigger for holy" wouldn't do anything at all. Even if you 'allow' the interaction, I'm not sure what your player is hoping to get out of it, because there's no weakness to exploit.

Yeah, the way you make a creature stronger than a level 4 challenge is by making it a level 5 challenge.

It's kind of dumb to have a standardized system of monster power and then suggest the game should intentionally ignore that system to make certain monsters stronger but mislabel them. Like, that's literally just saying developers should be lying to GMs about encounter design.

I consider subclass archetypes more of a holdover from 1E than anything else. 1E classes had more stuff baked in that you'd switch out with archetypes because you were trying to specialize in something else.

It took a long time between them writing rules for subclass archetypes, and actually publishing a subclass archetype that uses those rules. Because as it turns out they weren't really that necessary in 2E.

I don't really agree. There's plenty of room to do things with subclass archetypes. Paizo just hasn't wanted to.

I'm kind of hoping that whoever we lose gets a good death (unless it's Rovagug I don't really care then, he doesn't quite have the same vibe). The core 20 have been setting centerpieces for as long as there's been a Pathfinder, even the ones that people here like to trash still have some people to whom they mean something.

I'm not saying ignoble deaths in fiction are bad or unjustified in general, or that these stories haven't been interesting as one offs, but Torag/Sarenrae/Shelyn/Gorum/etc. dying a meaningless death mired in failure and disgrace would I think just kind of feel a bit lame and bad, imo. I know that's kind of a running theme in some of these stories, but it works here because they're one-offs, and I don't think it would work as well in the main narrative.

The Wand is kind of a paradox of an item in that it's both something that requires investment to be good (it's fairly underwhelming at initiate), but also isn't really designed to be reliable, as it's fairly low damage and has no interaction with your core class mechanics. Because of its action economy, it ends up being a bit worse than it even looks since using Fling means you can't strike twice, which is a fairly big deal when your core martial gimmick is raw bonus damage (that of course, doesn't even work with your wand).

The intensify is also pretty frustrating, as activating it means your whole turn is just spent on Fling and it's not exactly a game changing amount of ramp up.

Often the best 'use' of a wand implement is just taking it and forgetting it exists until you run into an enemy you can't fight effectively through normal means, in which case it's a free source of backup damage.... but that's kind of a boring answer.

If you want to make it work as your main implement, you really want a ranged option. Default suggestion is probably the boomerang, since you can make it Returning and it has a fairly decent range. Repeaters can be okay, but it puts a limit on how many attacks you can make (at least before you hit a reload wall) that can be a bit risky to play around. The shorter your combats on average the safer repeaters are though, so there's a group dynamic element there.

Bell is a good second implement to make your wand scarier, those debuffs are pretty sweet, though Bell (and the other reaction implements) while cursed effigy can provide a similar alternative (at least for you) that isn't too punishing to keep up if you have access to Haste. Mirror (even just left at initiate) is somewhat notable for giving you at-will pseudo-teleportation. There's no specific synergy here, it's just handy to have (though depending on terrain you might be able to exploit your range by moving somewhere melee enemies can't get to you). Tome is also a decent option because it provides some benefit even when you're not holding it.

I'd generally avoid Regalia, because it's best sitting in your hands during a fight and you can't really afford to do that if you're swinging your Wand around. Chalice and Lantern... exist. There's no special synergy or useful interaction there but if you really want them. Lantern's combat benefits are situational enough you won't be hurt putting it away (and when it does come into play it'll probably be important enough you don't mind losing your wand).

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that you really want a source of reliable Quickened for this build. Your action economy is extremely tight and only allows for one strike if you want to use your wand, so you scale really well with Quickened. Haste lets you strike twice and use your wand, or strike and activate effigy while still using your wand, or intensify your wand and still get a strike out, or still get to use both your abilities after you apply Exploit. It's a really big deal.

I know Haste benefits everyone, but this build in particular (along with some others with choking action economy that care about striding or striking) significantly improves its usability if you can get that buff consistently.

Honestly, I think a future adventure path kind of tipped their hand:

Shelyn dying will result in a loss of creative spirit across the board.

Curtain Call is all about producing an opera.

One of these things does not sound like something that can easily be done in light of the other.

Well, Shelyn causes artistic spirits to falter in these stories that are explicitly not canon and even in universe suspect to be the product of an ulterior motive.

No matter which god they off, "this god's death fundamentally breaks an aspect of reality" is probably not a concept they can sustain into the long term anyways.

It's also something that's both inconsistent within these stories (some deities don't seem to alter their portfolio at all when they die) and something that becomes sort of problematic for the setting if played straight over a long period (both in terms of actual setting material and in its indirect commentary on gods themselves).

So I don't think it's a reliable consideration.

... Though honestly even taking the supposition at face value it could go either way. A story about defying the curse of a failed deity to create an opera in a world that's lost its artistic spark sounds AP worthy.

Theoretically, archetype subclasses allow you to create a subclass that's slightly more powerful than normal (because it costs a feat) or changes some aspect of the class that is normally beyond the purivew of a subclass.

In practice, Spellshot is just kind of terrible, and fails to live up to any of its potential. It doesn't really serve any purpose as a class archetype and would still be kind of bad even if it wasn't.

It almost feels like it's an archetype just for the sake of having a class archetype.

Can't say my experience or preference is the same as yours.

This kinda makes me change my mind about the OP subject. If spells like Synthesia are driving caster PCs to not only repeat the same tactics and spell lists game-to-game but insist all the other non-caster players dance to their tune, removing such spells has shifted in my mind from 'unnecessary detrimental removal' to 'better in that it encourages a wider set of play styles and an exploration of a wider set of spell choices.'

Man imagine being a spellcaster and having a favorite spell or set of spells and being told you're not only objectively wrong for feeling that way but are actively making Pathfinder worse.

Like I get where you're coming from but the discourse can sometimes feel kind of dehumanizing, especially when the attitude is largely flipped in the inverse scenario upthread.

tbh I appreciate the way every time a pattern is broken (which is pretty much every post) someone just comes up with an even more convoluted pattern to try to explain the system at play.

Repertoire casters IMO are the closest to those w/ "spell list paralysis" precisely because they don't have an easy time changing their selection once made.

While Clerics have the full list to pick from each day, the fact that they can just freely pick the next day really does mean that it's kind of a nothing-burger to see a giant list.

This has been somewhat the opposite of my experience. Repertoire casters spend some time considering spells, but not significantly moreso than anyone else and do it during what's usually downtime (i.e. leveling up) too.

Cleric and Druid style prepared casters on the other hand not only have a lot of overhead but are expected to sometimes make decisions mid session (because it happens every time they rest). While the individual decisions are more reversible, the volume and frequency are significant enough to make them problematic. To the point where a significant number of prepared casters I've had in my games simply abandon their own mechanics and play like a spontaneous caster (i.e. picking their spells once and rarely, if ever, changing them).

And if bombs cannot benefit from striking runes, then it's not a leap for a GM to rule that they do not function with "damage dice" effects.

No, that does seem like a leap. The former is based on a specific rule about consumables, which doesn't really have anything to do with the latter.

So if we imagine before resistances, you have 6 slashing and 5 bludgeoning damage. Those are combined into a single instance of damage, but each type will have the highest resistance applied.

Doesn't that contradict this line from the Resistance rules?

If you have more than one type of resistance that would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable resistance value, as described in weakness.

Double slice specifically combines the values for the purposes of damage resistance and weakness... so applying resistance separately contradicts that whole feature.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

AoN lists sorcerers as having 63 feats, and the arcane spell list alone has 684 spells to on it. Does not add much, you say?

It really doesn't, not when only 10 of those feats are any good, and maybe 50 of those spells are any good. When you have only a couple feats over the course of a few levels worth taking, and only a few spells over the course of a few levels worth taking, the idea that there is a decision paralysis to be had doesn't track.

Honestly, the amount of "dead" or nothingburger spells in the Arcane list or class feats for spellcasters, simply means that it's bloated with useless options, it doesn't add much to the decision-making other than another "Nah, this sucks." At best, it makes newer players waste more time to go through a majority of useless options to essentially either stick to the same optimized loadout that most spellcasters already take, and at-worst, they slip into the 'trap' options that Paizo keeps printing out; and players who played spellcasters in the past wonder why they're boring or uninspired.

You're missing the point with your first paragraph, and then hit upon it in your second. Wading through bad options is still adding complexity even if they aren't seriously considered. On top of that, your math still illustrates my point about feats vs spells. There are still way more spells to pick from, which means they are a significant contributor to the complexity of a caster.

So do you just... not want Paizo to publish more stuff? That sounds kind of awful.

... I also feel like "63 feats" is a bit misleading, because when you're picking you're not picking one of 63 feats you're picking one of four level 4 feats more often. I've had more players (new and old) complain about a lack of options here than an overwhelming number.

Trip, I think the high level problem is you're painting with an extremely broad brush and presenting your own preferences as indisputable fact.

That's kind of this thread in a nutshell. Like the whole premise of this thread is based on a series of assumptions built around the OP's personal tastes. It seems reasonable for someone like Trip to have a different opinion on it.

That's not entirely true either. Player Core + GM Core + Player Core 2 = CRB + GMG + APG. You're getting the same amount of content, essentially. I suppose you could have gotten away with only buying the CRB before but players sort of needed the APG for archetypes and the GMG contained way too much rules clarifications to skip.

I get where you're coming from but don't entirely agree. GMC has significant content for both GMs and players such that the game isn't fully functional without both, whereas the GMG (while an extremely nice book) was primarily an advice and guidance book, with the CRB being rules complete on its own.

What I'm criticizing is the people that says "we have AoN, so it's ok that some things aren't reprinted just use AoN istead of books if you don't have them".

I mean that's literally always been the advice. I'm not sure why it's only supposed to be bad now.

I'm glad Paizo decided to recreate this fixed problem for the remaster.

Ectar wrote:

A shame for spells like Synesthesia that are getting removed as power outliers and not for OGL reasons.

Even thematically, was always one of my favorite spells, even in 1e.

Paizo has been quite clear from the start that Remaster would be both the removal of OGL AND a truckload of errata.

But they've also been clear about their opinions on compatibility and porting.

... Not reprinting it is the opposite of errata.

I just don't see a world where the Barbarian gets significant buffs, given that it's already an excellent class and that we've seen from PC1 that Paizo is reluctant to make sweeping changes even to legitimately bad options.

I guess I could maybe see them removing the AC penalty and dropping the THP, raging resistance, and/or bumping them down to 8 or 10 HP like a normal martial, but I don't know who that would actually make happy.

I'm a little surprised at the intensity of the discussion around this feat. From our experience, it's less that the ability is too risky or dangerous and more that it just doesn't accomplish much. Enemies get a small damage bonus (and a debuff that's already easy to apply anyways) and in exchange you get to apply the same debuff back and maybe some THP.

It's less that the feat is going to get you killed, imo, and more that spending a 10th level feat and an action to maybe make someone flat footed is kind of underwhelming.

I thought specific trumps general.

The trouble is as written that's not clear that's supposed to be the interpretation. After all, the specific doesn't contradict the general so much as just not comment on it at all.

Moving away from implicit immunities is a good thing, but definitely a reason the general rule should be updated to avoid this very type of confusion.

Were it to happen, I like the idea that it's not an assassination, not a maddened suicide, but that Rovagug is simply dead. There's no grand battle at the edge of the cage. No prophetic conflict between the rough beast and the pantheon of gods, no mysterious assassin slipping in to unmake the unmaker. Someone peers into the cage only to realize there is nothing there but a corpse.

In the going theme of ironic, strange, or twisted fates, there's something really poetic about the Worldbreaker passing away quietly and without incident. Maybe even without notice, perhaps he's been dead for centuries by the time someone realizes it.

Plus I think there's interesting storytelling room both to explore what the pantheon looks like with the thing holding their truce together gone, and perhaps even with the sudden need to dispose of this rotting god-husk, lest its rot freely leak its twisted deific energies through the cracks in the cage.

Even the most strict RAW interpretation that I can come up with doesn't prevent a character from having a Tatzelwurm as their generic animal familiar.

Both the pre and post remaster rules specifically say you pick a tiny animal. Why, I have no idea, but it is what it is.

If we have to jump through so many loops to solve the -1 to AC

We don't really though. Like, the Barbarian is an excellent class as is. people are just speculating about new stuff or potential changes.

Accurate Flurry is APG/pre-remaster content.

Here's the text of the original Impossible Flurry:

You forgo precision to attack at an impossible speed. Make three melee Strikes with each of the required weapons. All of these Strikes take the maximum multiple attack penalty, as if you had already made two or more attacks this turn.

So basically the remaster just added the level 20 feat's effect into the level 18 feat instead of keeping them separate.

As cool as this is, I really would have preferred some clarity on Aroden instead. It feels like the biggest unresolved thread in the entirety of the lore - like Paizo had a plan for it and at some point completely abandoned the idea.

As far as I know the plan has been from the very beginning to very intentionally never resolve it. The mystery of it is meant to be part of the draw. It also means if you get a cool idea for how to solve it you can slot it into your own games without having to worry much.

Of course, the simplest rule would have been not having the restriction on concentration actions at all

Unless the restriction was itself an attempt at simplification. In hindsight it's a bad choice, but in the context of "opt in complexity" and Barbarians designed to be especially straight forward, giving them a mechanic that just limits their in-combat options does help streamline them in a really weird way, which might have been part of the design.

You have to jump through a lot of logical hoops

Do you?

It seems like the main hangup is that the rules say "weapon" and "bomb" but sometimes there are things that aren't weapons or bombs with the feature. If you just assume it works normally regardless (which in and of itself isn't much of a leap) everything else kind of falls into place.

YuriP wrote:

The increase of rage duration limit to an entire encounter duration.

I mean, I feel there's like a nonverbal agreement that most people take the 1 minute duration of most things to mean "until combat ends". I also could literally count with a single hand how many combats I had that lasted more than 10 rounds. Two weeks ago we finished Abomination Vaults and the whole battle lasted like...7-8 rounds I think? And I even made Belcorra purposefully stronger and made it so that the PCs should bring her down at least once before they could use the lenses.

To me that kind of emphasizes the point. The scenarios in which the 1 minute/1 minute rule will actually come into effect are so infrequent that it doesn't really serve any valuable purpose and just ends up being a very slim chance that your character feels awful for a bit.

From a DMing and player perspective, I think they could get rid of the rage rest duration. Barb should just be able to rage like a monk does stances or a rogue sneak attacks at this point.

Agree a lot with this one. The rest requirement is one of those odd things that might never come up in a campaign but on the off chance it does basically makes you feel miserable until you get to deal with it. It's not a balancing tool because it's not relevant enough to serve any balance purpose, which just kind of leaves it as an annoying legacy feature.

I'd also really like to see Animal get a pass over. The balance between animal types is genuinely horrible. Pathfinder sometimes makes really bad trade-offs but some of these instincts don't even have that (the only difference between deer and snake is that snake never gets reach).

Fury similarly could use a buff.

Though after PC1 and seeing them mostly pass on subclass balancing (even for classes that got significant changes) I'm not optimistic.

Perhaps the solution is Temp HP regen while raging?

What are we 'solving' though? The Barbarian's in a very good place as is, and changing things just for the sake of changing things (buff their ac but lower their hp, etc.) isn't really a 'fix' to anything.

Squiggit wrote:

Secret Wizard wrote:

Very counter-intuitive for new players.

What exactly does this mean?

The barbarian is generally considered a fairly straight forward class, I've never seen a new player particularly struggle to figure it out... and when they've had trouble it's never been because of rage's AC penalty, which is fairly straight forward.

IDK if I was going to simplify anything out of rage, maybe the duration. 10 rounds is too long to matter most of the time but can be really awkward on the rare occasion it does.

I think what they are saying is that a barbarian should not rage then run headlong into battle.

I mean its kind of tropelike for a barbarian to do that but in this game no one should do it.

I mean if they don't want to rage it kind of sounds like the class isn't for them?

Well the problem with the barbarian not raging is they are mechanically required to by their class.

How much of a problem is that? Like, rogues don't work well if they can't sneak attack and rangers are expected to hunt things or they don't have much in the way of features.

"Barbarian who never rages" feels like a fairly esoteric concept and kind of beyond the scope of "how easy is it for a new player to figure this out"

One thing I think that gives Torag a bit of a red flag for me is that he feels somewhat 'safer' to kill. He's an ancestry-focused deity in a series that's been trying to distance itself from the old trend of ancestral monocultures, and his general spheres of influence overlap the most with other existing core deities.

Kiling someone like Desna or Sarenrae might 'hit harder' but I also feel like that would kind of suck for the game because they're a much bigger part of Golarion's product identity.

I'm sure they could write the story well enough, but it just seems like removing some of these gods would just make the setting a little bit less, and I'm not even really a fan of either of my examples individually.

Who knows how much Paizo is weighing meta-considerations, but I feel like it's a question worth considering.

I feel like the biggest problems with the barbarian are in how uneven its subclasses can feel... which is somewhat bad news because PC1 mostly ignored subclass variance.

Another "gods suck" prophecy. Dou-bral is wracked with guilt, but abandons his post instead of trying to make things better, and in her grief Shelyn kills love and music.

Not saying their actions don't make sense in context, both of them are dealing with a lot of stuff here, but that it fits very neatly into the paradigm being laid out in the rest of the stories.

From experience, sweeping in-universe rationales for game mechanic changes tend to be extremely awkward and rarely (if ever) satisfying to read or experience. Especially given that often these universes don't tend to work all that hard to remain rules compliant in the first place.

It's also not always practical. Like consider your request re: Drow. If the point of removing Drow is to disentangle official setting material from other licenses and IP, then telling a story about where all the Drow went is literally undermining that.