Strill's page

I think the main thing is that the class was set up to allow for more variety in the spell effects you're putting out by allowing more spells, but folks on this forum are more interested in dealing damage. Nothing wrong with that, but I do think some of that is primed by both the P1 magus and by eldritch archer. The playtest magus is a way to try broadening that formula a bit, but hits the action economy wall.

I'm really struggling to understand why you thought people would cast anything other than attack spells with Spell Strike. If you cast a save spell with Spell Strike, you're running the risk of losing your spell, and in exchange you get no benefit except some piddly little extra 1/20 chance of a crit.

If you're casting a save spell, what incentive is there to spell strike when you could just cast the spell directly for immediate benefit, with no need to worry about moving into melee or striking? And if there's no incentive to spell strike, why are you even playing a magus, and not a Wizard? That incentive to use Spell Strike only exists with attack spells, and so the Magus playtesters are using attack spells.

Strill wrote:

Kalaam wrote:

Dude, the game isn't just about powergaming. Power Attack may not be optimal (though you can likely create builds or setups around it, and when you have little chances landing more than 1 hit it's valuable) and so what ? Should we remove all other Hunter Edges other than Flurry ?

Should we remove everything that isn't "the best" ?

You should definitely remove stuff that actively penalizes you, like Striking Spell + cantrip.

This is not what I was talking about.

Striking Spell as it is needs rework because it's both sub-optimal(both mechanically and number-wise), and doesn't feel good to play.

What I meant is that it's non-sensical to ask for stuff like Power Attack to be removed from the game because it's not the strongest action you can take.

That's not what I said. Power attack being worse than Double Slice is fine. Power attack being worse than (Strike, Strike) is unacceptable, because it's deceitful for the game designer to present it as something beneficial. If your DM gives you Power attack for free, then once you get your first Striking Rune, you are better off never using it because it can only harm you. It's the same as how Striking Spell + Cantrip is worse than Strike, Strike, Strike.

Feats and abilities that are worse than the default should be errata'd out of the game.

Dude, the game isn't just about powergaming. Power Attack may not be optimal (though you can likely create builds or setups around it, and when you have little chances landing more than 1 hit it's valuable) and so what ? Should we remove all other Hunter Edges other than Flurry ?

Should we remove everything that isn't "the best" ?

You should definitely remove stuff that actively penalizes you, like Striking Spell + cantrip.

The ability to cast burst-targeted spells on yourself without hitting yourself.

In play, I don't feel like my magus has completely wasted an entire turn when I do miss on a single attack roll, instead it makes me want to double down on thinking tactically next turn to maximize my bonuses and make my next attack as accurate as possible. This is an interesting and fun consequence of having the striking spell mechanic not be an all or nothing activity like eldritch shot.

Then you're being irrational. Look at the actual numbers, not meaningless things like how something makes you "Feel". Even if you had unlimited spell slots, Striking Spell would still be way behind the damage of other martials. Missing just makes it even worse.

Magus has spell tome, abosrb spell, and other stuff similar to the defensive generic stuff you listed for the champion.

Nothing on par with an extra action per turn.

That was exactly my point.

Being a martial class ( Magus is some sort of a hybrid given the spell slots ) doesn't necessarily mean you are granted to have combat maneuvers.

Champions may have few combat maneuvers, but they still get some really powerful martial feats. Divine Reflexes, Quick Shield Block, and Shield of Reckoning provide action economy. The blade ally feats provide offense. The shield ally feats provide survivability. Not to mention the fact that the Champion's reaction is just plain stronger than other reactions, having by far the most common trigger, the strongest effect, and some ridiculous upgrades. Allowing all nearby allies to make a reaction attack whenever you use your Champion's Reaction is really good.

If you look at the core classes, you notice a clear distinction in the kind of feats Martials and Casters get. Martials get feats that give more actions than they cost, eliminate MAP, or straight-up give you extra actions per round. In other words, Martials get feats which directly improve their power. Casters, however, tend to almost exclusively get feats that provide more utility, often by providing more spell slots, or focus spells, but these don't actually change how much damage a caster can deal in a round. Very rarely do casters get extra raw power or action economy. The few exceptions here are Quickened Spell, which is limited to once per day, and Effortless Concentration.

If you look at the Magus's feats, you can clearly see that the devs are working under the caster paradigm when designing these feats. Where a Fighter gets Agile Grace, lowering their MAP with agile weapons across the board, or Paragon's Guard, letting them use Raise a Shield for free every round, the Magus gets the equivalent of Quickened Spell, letting them use Striking Spell for one less action, once per day.

I really think the devs should be working under the Martial paradigm for the Magus. Give us a level 12 feat that lets the Magus cast Shield or Raise a Tome once per round for free. Give us a combat maneuver to reduce the target's saving throws, like the Swashbuckler's Bon Mot. Give us a cool reaction attack feat like every single other Martial class gets. Give us something new on par with all the cool stuff other Martial classes get.

Y'all are assuming:

Fights are always going to start before you can buff/plan

Of course. Why would you roll initiative if the fight hasn't started yet?

Don't really know what to say if you consider buffing "wasting" your turn.

Why is that hard to understand? The first rounds of combat are the most impactful. Taking an enemy out of the fight in the first round means that your party isn't getting hit by that enemy for each successive round like they otherwise would've. If you instead spend your turn buffing, you're not accomplishing anything useful until that buff comes into play. If the combat ends without your buffs being used, they were a waste.

For example, imagine you cast Haste on yourself, and then take two more turns before the fight ends. Haste was a waste there because you spent two actions on the first and most important turn, to get an action on the second and third turns, where those actions are less impactful. You gained no net actions, and instead traded actions now for actions later, which is bad if you could've been dealing damage during the first turn instead.

If you cast Haste, the fight must last for at least three more turns before you come out ahead on actions. Even then that's a questionable metric, because one action spent to finish off the final enemy at 1 HP is a lot less likely to turn the tide of a fight than one action spent at the start of the fight to take out an enemy early on before they can hurt your party.

I agree. It seems like Magus as currently written has a feast or famine playstyle of very large highs and abysmal lows, even more than Swashbuckler. I don't personally think it's a fun design, and it can be overall unhealthy for the game by encouraging stacking everything on one character for exponential returns.

That's not true. The Magus's "feast" turns, on average, do not exceed the damage which a Flurry Ranger puts out every single round. In other words, it's all famine.

The "math says magus is terrible" stuff floating around the boards is debatable and dependent upon certain assumptions that can be shifted in game play relatively easily.

In play I have found it true that it is a mistake to assume that you will always be able to striking spell and attack every round, and choosing to do so with a spell slot spell when the situation is unfavorable to you is going to lead to frustration, but full casters are often in the same boat math wise.

What I have experienced (with three separate magi in playtest situations) is that it is pretty easy with tactical play to "break" the math in the Magi's favor and make it so that they score crits with their weapon attacks about 20-25% of the time. I make way less attack rolls than I have with any other martial, and it plays much more like a chess match of trying to lure the enemy into where I want them to be at the start of my turn, but it is a great "thinkers" martial class. Right up there with the investigator.

Lining it up so that you can true strike with a weapon attack is way too much work for too little benefit for an every round activity, but when you cast your highest level attack roll spell into a weapon and still have it charged at the start of your turn, having a true strike option (from staff, or extra spell slot) is much better than expecting it to land from swinging twice.

As fun as crits are generally with PF2, I have had the most fun I have ever had with any class landing those double crits with weapon and spell with the magus. It has happened at least once every session (but only once with a spell slot spell). I don't know how much more "better" you can make the magus without creating a broken class.

I do think that the Caster MC path looks really appealing on paper but leads to less fun in play, because getting cool attack feats from your dedication is a lot more fun than just getting more spells. The spells that are the most fun to cast with your striking spell set up are your highest 2 level spell slots...

And where are you getting the actions necessary to cast, attack, and cast True Strike? Just so you know, the guy who calculated Magus damage also did a chart showing the damage you can do if you have an extra action each round, which you spend to cast True Strike. If you use True Strike, a cantrip, and Striking Spell, your damage matches a flurry ranger. If you cast True Strike, and then use Striking Spell with one of your highest-level spell slots, your damage is 30% higher than the flurry ranger for that turn.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MF6VgiV4wUue4SXE2611hP4kjlcVl_Aj69YKTCA wtZc/edit

An extra action, a 1st-level spell slot, and one of your few high-level spell slots for damage 30% above par is certainly better than the terrible damage the Magus does now, but I think the Magus should also get a bit better at-will damage, if they have to jump through so many hoops to get any burst damage at all.

All of that? Really? The one thing Fighters have over other martials is +2 accuracy. With one weapon group. No rage or totems, no Sneak Attack, no Inspiration or Panache. And no spells of course.

They get a lot more than that.

They get about the equivalent of two general feats from Shield Block and Battlefield Surveyor, whose initiative boost is on-par with Incredible Initiative.

They also get two bonus class feats that they can swap out each day, as well as Attack of Opportunity, which is also worth a class feat.

Finally, they get armor expertise, as well as access to some extremely powerful feats at level 10, such as Agile Grace, Debilitating Shot, Disarming Twist, and Combat Reflexes. Each of these is on-par with the best core class features of other classes. Agile Grace puts you on-par with a Flurry Ranger, Debilitating Shot and Disarming Twist give your party a devastating action economy advantage against bosses, and Combat Reflexes is pure extra action economy.

Strill wrote:

What do hit & run tactics accomplish?

Do you never play with monks? A monk can spend one action to enter melee, one action to hit you twice (possibly inflicting slow or stunned or prone), and then one action to get so far away from you that you would take 2 or more actions to reach them.

In a 1-player game, that works fine, but if you have a party of four players, it doesn't matter how far away the monk is, it matters how far the closest party member is. The whole party has to be two strides away for that tactic to waste two of the opponents' actions instead of one.

Always requires an action and a successful skill check? After You lets you always start with Panache by simply choosing to go last.

Initiative is worth about half a turn's worth of actions on average, if all initiative modifiers are the same. If your initiative modifier is superior, you're sacrificing even more actions on average. After You is a net loss in action economy.

If you have Finishing Follow-Through, then taking out a foe with a Finisher means you never lose Panache in the first place.

If there were other ways to get free panache throughout the fight, I might give that feat some credit, but on its own, it's too unreliable to compare to Gang Up, and the Rogue's other free flat-footed options.

Well, frightened takes an action to inflict and "gang up" doesn't function with hit and run tactics from your melee buddies.

What do hit & run tactics accomplish? They make the enemy spend one action to move towards your team? And in exchange you're sacrificing two actions from each of your melee characters, plus some more actions from your ranged characters whenever they end up too close? So with two melee characters, that's a sacrifice of four actions per round minimum, maybe 5 or 6 actions if some ranged are out of position, and in exchange you eliminate one action of the enemy's? And that only works if the enemy doesn't have Attack of Opportunity or a ranged attack? That's a poor trade on your team's part. Can you not think of any other way of eliminating the enemy's actions?

As far as Frightened is concerned, it can be inflicted by a caster, whose third action is worth less than a a martial character's. Frightened depends on team composition, but it's one of multiple options for Rogues to get free flat-footed, which is my point. Between all the different ways, Rogues don't have to worry about flat-footed.

"After You" makes gaining Panache literally free.

After You is garbage. If your initiative modifier is equal to the enemies', then Sacrificing initiative is equivalent to sacrificing half a turn's worth of actions on average, or more actions if your initiative was better than the enemies'. That's not worth gaining panache.

I don't really like the "Swash has incentive to Feint, Demoralize, etc" line... Because so does the Rogue, when they can't get FF any other way,

When would a Rogue not be able to get flat-footed in any other way? Is there some enemy that knocks the party back every round to invalidate gang-up?

Strill wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

It's easier to get Panache than it is to inflict Flat-Footed, FWIW.

What game are you playing? It's way way easier to get flat-footed than Panache. Panache always requires you spend an action, whereas if you move around an enemy to flank them, that flank can potentially continue on into the next turn. Panache always requires you pass a skill check, whereas Flat-footed does not always require that. In the worst-case scenario for a Rogue, they can roll to Feint, which is equivalent to what a Swashbuckler would have to do. In the best-case (typical case) scenario for a Rogue, they take feats like Dread Striker and Gang Up, so they don't even have to spend an action or roll at all to get Flat-footed.

I don't know what your table plays like, but it's clearly very different from my own because keeping Flat-Footed on a PC or NPC for more than half an initiative round without MULTIPLE characters spending actions to make it happen is extremely challenging.

Does your group just move into melee and the martials & monsters just turret on one another until combat ends? Flat-Footed is one of the easiest conditions to clear or avoid unless you're being MAJORLY focused to the point where your attackers have dropped their own defenses.

Beyond that, you're trying to say that the Swashbuckler having to spend an action to get Panache is somehow more taxing than needing to maintain constant pinpoint tactical positioning and teamwork. It doesn't add up to me.

What pinpoint tactical positioning? Have you looked at Rogue feats? They make it trivial to maintain flat-footed.

Swashbuckler is much more mobile than Rogue is, more durable due to extra HP and potentially bonuses on Saves, and as built-in incentives to use debuff non-attack actions like Demoralize (or Feint, or whatever) every round. It also occasionally gets a solid DPR buff from Opportune Riposte, which is worth noting.

How can you say they're more mobile when they're wasting so many actions gaining back panache? If you compare Swashbuckler to a Rogue, the Swashbuckler is going to spend an action to gain panache, whereas the Rogue is just going to spend that action to move around and flank the enemy instead. Who moved more in that scenario? You think that a measly +10 speed makes you faster when you sacrificed a potential move action to get it?

It's easier to get Panache than it is to inflict Flat-Footed, FWIW.

What game are you playing? It's way way easier to get flat-footed than Panache. Panache always requires you spend an action and roll a successful skill check, whereas if you move around an enemy to flank them, you require no rolls, and that flank can potentially continue on into the next turn. In the worst-case scenario for a Rogue, they can roll to Feint, which is equivalent to what a Swashbuckler would have to do. In the best-case (typical case) scenario for a Rogue, they take feats like Dread Striker and Gang Up, so they almost always have their opponent flat-footed without any actions or rolls at all.

Strill wrote:

Ventnor wrote:

Question: how is Survey Wildlife different than Impressive Performance, or Natural Medicine, or Acrobatic Performer, or any other Skill Feat that lets you substitute one skill for another in a specific circumstance?

The difference is that it's unclear what the baseline version of Survey Wildlife is without the feat. For contrast, Natural Medicine uses the Treat Wounds action, whose rules are explicitly written out in the book.

You seem to be assuming that Survey Wildlife lets you substitute one skill for another, but I don't see where there's any indication of that.

… in the actual feat.

As others have mentioned here, Survey Wildlife says you make one Survival check, followed by a Recall Knowledge check. There's nothing that says the Recall Knowledge check is Survival too.

Question: how is Survey Wildlife different than Impressive Performance, or Natural Medicine, or Acrobatic Performer, or any other Skill Feat that lets you substitute one skill for another in a specific circumstance?

The difference is that it's unclear what the baseline version of Survey Wildlife is without the feat. For contrast, Natural Medicine uses the Treat Wounds action, whose rules are explicitly written out in the book.

You seem to be assuming that Survey Wildlife lets you substitute one skill for another, but I don't see where there's any indication of that.

If a rule truly was holding back your game and the fun of your players, toss it.

Of course. That's what we do at my table. I'm here to complain that that I shouldn't have to go that far.

Strill wrote:

That's something you had to reverse-engineer through implications, guesswork, and creativity. Not something that's written anywhere. People play RPGs with rules so they don't have to be a trained game designer just to run the game.

No, it isn't. I would never have assumed that I could do an analysis of all creatures in an area in ten minutes in the first place. That's a step or five beyond what I'd remotely expect Survival to do on its own.

The only reason you stuck "10 minutes" into that statement is because you have enough practice at studying game design to identify that part of the feat as a limiting factor that's easy to adjust, as opposed to any other part of the feat. Some people can't just look at a feat and reverse-engineer the author's intentions on the fly in order to reconstruct a baseline skill action. As I said before, you shouldn't have to be a game deisigner just to run the game.

hyphz wrote:

That's exactly the thing, though. A feat is not just a handy way of providing rules for a particular activity. If they want to do that, that's cool, they can do that, and PF2e even gives a nice way to do it - a standard action.

A feat implies that a PC must take it and give up something else in order to do it, and that those PCs who don't take it can't do it. (It's by no means a Pathfinder unique problem. Even some of those indie games "with GM resolution" make this mistake.)

That’s the point though, and probably the reason more of these aren’t just new skill activities available to anyone with the required proficiency. Making them feats minimizes the number of new rules at any one table while allowing everyone not at that table to just wing it. Until someone actually takes the feat, any non PFS tables can just ignore its existence.

Of course, the problem with that is that with PFS, all of the rules do exist, but PFS is probably the most likely place to find that mechanistic playstyle Zapp talks about, due to the need for everyone to be on the same page. It probably is just best in that context to assume that anything not codified by an existing skill activity or feat is done at a high difficulty level until officially made an option.

It doesn't minimize the number of new rules at any one table at all, and it makes it much HARDER to wing it! Every feat is adding a new implicit skill action, because you should logically be able to accomplish something similar to the feat, even without it. Except because that skill action isn't codified, you have to figure out how to wing it without invalidating the feat, and that's much harder to do than just winging it on your own.

If you're not skilled enough to reverse-engineer the feat and figure out what the normal skill action should be, then your only options are either ban the skill action, or ban the feat.

Strill wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

I think it's great how someone can read what a feat does and say something like "So narrow, why is this here?" as if all the rest of the feats aren't just as narrow.

Because they aren't all narrow. Some of them are extremely common. Intimidating Prowess is pretty much a bonus to every intimidation check. Battle Cry gives you a free action once per combat. Glad-Hand comes into play every time you meet a new character. Cat Fall takes long falls that are typically a rare occurrence, and allows you to make them into a standard combat tactic. Quick Recovery applies after every fight. Assurance can come into play every single round if you build your character around it. Trick Magic Item can amount to a passive +10 speed if you use it to purchase a Wand of Longstrider (lv2).

An encounter that isn't hindered by using Intimidation? "narrow."

Combat? "narrow."

And on through the rest of all existing feats - they only apply in particular circumstances, and there is no singular correct campaign formula that dictates how parts this, how many parts that, and so on are included in the recipe. So "this feat only applies in certain circumstances" is not something that is more true of one feat than another, which means stating it as a negative against one feat, but not against all feats is logically inconsistent.

I'm sorry you have such an antagonistic GM.

Strill wrote:

Imagine...

There are all kinds of hypotheticals one can postulate, but those are specific cases. You could "what if" the game to death if you wanted to. The issues I took was with the general application of the idea that unless the rules specifically permit you to do something, the GM should automatically deny it. That is patently ludicrous and not at all the way GMs have been encouraged to run their games going all the way back to Gygax.

New rules are always coming out that did not exist before. If a feat is created to codify how a certain action can be performed, and the existence of that feat invalidates the actions of what you want to allow your characters to do without said feat, then leave it out of your game. As some are keen to say, there is no such thing as RAW (rules as written). There is only rules as interpreted by the GM. As long as the GM is consistent in their rulings, do whatever is in the best interests of your game.

You're missing the point. Feats never codify how a certain action can be performed. They codify how it's performed when you have the feat, and leave you to guess as to how it might be performed without the feat. Creating a reasonable baseline method of performing that action, without making the feat obsolete, is something that takes a great deal of effort and game design talent, which defeats the point of using a mature game system.

If you're not talented enough to figure out how the action is supposed to be done without the feat, then your choices are either ban the players from doing anything that's not in the book, or ban the feat.

Survey Wildlife provides such a benefit under such circumstances. It allows quicker analysis of creatures, and allows one Recall Knowledge to apply to all of them.

The only thing it's presence shows is forbidden is using Survival to identify specific animals which anyone who read Nature and Survival should already be aware of.

That's something you had to reverse-engineer through implications, guesswork, and creativity. Not something that's written anywhere. People play RPGs with rules so they don't have to be a trained game designer just to run the game.

So, let's examine this in detail.

First, why would you tell him there were Dire Wolves? Recognizing creatures is very explicitly Nature rather than Survival and allowing people to do it with Survival is pretty weird.

Because Survival training, as the book describes, means you're adept at living and surviving in the wilderness. Part of surviving in the wilderness is not being eaten. In fact, Survival allows you to track creatures, which suggests you know how to identify such tracks.

A lawyer would read the Survival entry and make the assertion that you could live and survive in the wilderness, and learn to track, without knowing anything about the animals you're tracking. That's what a strict, non-permissive interpretation of the rules says, after all. Any sane person would argue otherwise. That's why if you play under a permissive GM style, where players are allowed to do things that their characters should logically be able to do, it's natural to assume that someone who lives out in the wilderness will know how to recognize and avoid dangers, especially if they can follow animal tracks.

If you do play with a permissive DM, where players can do things their characters should logically be able to do, then every feat that makes assumptions about what players can do by default becomes a hassle of rules that must be untangled and reconciled with your own assumptions. Feats which provide a benefit over and above the default, such as Glad-Hand, work fine under this paradigm, however.

Second, we need to deal with the 'finding out what creatures are nearby' part of Survey Wildlife.

So I'd say to the player that I screwed up (there should've been a Nature check as well as a Survival one), but also that he (the player) should've spoken up that he can Survey Wildlife, since that would be better in a couple of ways, and that the advantages of Survey Wildlife are as follows:

1. It only takes 10 minutes. So if he'd said 'Yeah, I do that too using Survey Wildlife' he would've rolled first. This low time frame also means you can retry it until you succeed if there's unlimited time, so that's cool. Heck, you can try it six times if you have only an hour. Someone without the Feat needs 'arbitrary GM decided time' and probably wouldn't have time to retry in most circumstances.

2. Survey Wildlife's Recall Knowledge check applies to all creatures in the area. I'd have a normal person's Nature check apply to one at a time like the rules say, and probably also at a -2 penalty since they're attempting to identify the creature without seeing it.

Both are very real advantages of the Skill Feat in question.

Now, that's just my own interpretation, but I feel it's a pretty reasonable one, and don't think it results in people not being able to do a basic thing due to a Feat's existence.

I'm sure it is a reasonable interpretation, but it requires a ton of effort to unpack the rules implications behind the feat. Determining things like "how much time does it take to identify tracks without Survey Wildlife" or "Why do I need to make a Nature check AND a Survival check" is a bunch of tedious busy-work that you have to be a game designer to reverse-engineer properly. For the average person, this is all painful tedium which makes feats like Survey Wildlife an actively negative part of their game, and leads to the simple solution of just banning them.

I think it's great how someone can read what a feat does and say something like "So narrow, why is this here?" as if all the rest of the feats aren't just as narrow.

Because they aren't all narrow. Some of them are extremely common. Intimidating Prowess is pretty much a bonus to every intimidation check. Battle Cry gives you a free action once per combat. Glad-Hand comes into play every time you meet a new character. Cat Fall takes long falls that are typically a rare occurrence, and allows you to make them into a standard combat tactic. Quick Recovery applies after every fight. Assurance can come into play every single round if you build your character around it. Trick Magic Item can amount to a passive +10 speed if you use it to purchase a Wand of Longstrider (lv2).

I've seen some threads and comments around here, asking what class people most want to see brought back. I'm pleased and pleasantly surprised to see that generally speaking, Magus is the first and most popular pick. In my eyes, that's great. I'm a huge fan of the Magus' theme combining spells and martial prowess in ways other classes can never replicate, and I'm hopeful Paizo takes note of the community interest. But something comes to mind that I can't help but question.

While I've seen lots of comments asking for Magus, nobody really says what they actually want out of the class. Besides having an even mix of martial and magic "gish" instead of archetype dabbling for one or the other, nobody's really gone into specifics. I've seen some want it as an archetype or some want it as a class focused on focus spells. Seeing as how I've been trying to do my own theoretical write-up of the Magus class anyhow, I figured I might as well ask the question: What do people want to actually see in the Magus class? What do you think best encapsulates its theme? Hell, what do you think is the actual theme of the class?

Answer! Talk! Discuss! Maybe if Desna is kind Paizo will see this thread and give consideration to the conversations within. One can hope, right?

I want a character with more spell slots than the meager sampling what you get from a multiclass archetype at low levels, but fewer than what you get from a Wizard. Preferably somewhere halfway in-between.

Zapp wrote:

You're supposed to say no unless the player can prove he's allowed to do something.

I do not recall seeing this rule codified in any Paizo product and I strongly disagree with it.

It is codified implicitly. Imagine you're a new GM, and you have a player whose character concept is a wilderness tracker. He says "I'm an experienced tracker, so I want my character to use his Survival skill to check for dangerous animals." You say "sure, roll survival". He rolls a success, and you tell him there are dire wolves nearby.

After the game, another player comes in and tells you "Hey, I took the Survey Wildlife feat, but that other guy didn't. If he can find out what animals are nearby with just Survival, then what does my feat do?"

What do you tell him? That his feat does nothing? That the other player will have to take Survey Wildlife? Do you tell him that Survey Wildlife's benefit is that you can make the check in 10 minutes, and not some other arbitrary timescale? If so, what is the alternative timescale? 15 minutes? 30 minutes? an hour? a day? Since you're running under narrative time, and not a strict clock, when will the ability to make that check faster come into play, and how will it be beneficial? If you say that you need Survey Wildlife to make the check at all, then does the other player who didn't know about Survey Wildlife get a chance to rebuild his character since he didn't realize that he needed one particular feat in order for his character concept to work within the rules?

Furthermore, how do you address the fact that your original ruling is mechanically more powerful than Survey Wildlife? You only asked for a Survival check, but Survey Wildlife requires two checks, one survival check, and then a recall knowledge check on top of that. Obviously Survey Wildlife, which cost a feat, has to be better than the alternative, so does that mean that you have to make the checks harder for anyone who doesn't have it?

The simple solution to all of these questions is that the designers did not intend for you to be able to survey wildlife at all without the use of a feat, and in order to run the rules as written, you were supposed to tell your player "no, you can't figure out what dangerous animals are nearby, because it's not listed as a possible action in the Survival section of the book."

If you instead choose to GM without telling the players "no" all the time, then every feat like Survey Wildlife which gets added, is another annoyance and complication to your GM style. Most likely, you just tell the players not to take it, and that it is off the table.

The advantage of the monk is they have a good scaling DC for occult or divine spells. I'm able to make a flurry attack with an Electric Arc cantrip witout suffering the -10 penalty against multiple targets.

My current electric arc does 5d4+4 damage versus my best martial strike of 3d8+7 or an average one of 3d6+7 if I upgrade to a Greater Striking Rune. It depends. Against two targets within 30 feet, the electric arc has great potential damage. Single target might be better to swing depending on the AC.

Monk is a little weak on damage. Their action economy is better with Flurry. Which I why I worked in the cantrip.

If you tried calculating those numbers, you'd find that what you just said is completely backwards.

"My current electric arc does 5d4+4 (16.5) damage versus my best martial strike of 3d8+7 (20.5) or an average one of 3d6+7 (17.5) if I upgrade to a Greater Striking Rune. It depends. Against two targets within 30 feet, the electric arc has great potential damage. Single target might be better to swing depending on the AC."

You've just shown that your strikes are all stronger. What's more, you're missing out on a potential of two property runes that could give you an extra +2d6 (+35% to +40%) damage per hit. So the actual breakdown of average damage should look like is:

Electric Arc: 16.5 x2
Strike 1: 3d8+2d6+7 = 27.5
Strike 2: 5d6 +7 = 24.5

I'm playing in a group now with a monk and fighter as the main damage dealing martials.

Dwarf Fighter is a Hellknight wielding a +2 Greater Striking Halber.

Half-elf Monk is wielding a +2 Striking handwraps of might fists.

The fighter is dealing is 300 of the damage of the monk. Part of his is account for with the stronger weapon. The main damage comes from using Power Attack with a higher base accuracy in a group dynamic.

So is this normal? Is the monk particularly weak at martial damage dealing? Are most fighters the strongest damage dealer in a group?

Our group also has a wizard focused on damage. The wizard deals over 300% greater damage to the wizard. Our fighter even missed two critical hits due to concealment in one fight and still dealt that much more damage.

I think the first fight was like 357 damage to 119 for the monk to 77 damage for the wizard over 7 rounds.

Second fight was 146 damage to 36 damage for the monk to 21 damage for the wizard.

It this a normal damage distribution for a fighter comparatively at lvl 10? How are fighters doing in groups?

The only other class I've seen have damage rounds like the fighter not using AoE attacks is the barbarian, precision ranger, and the rogue. Monk damage seems pretty low comparatively. Is the monk damage normally this low?

Power Attack is a waste of a feat. On its own, it's worse than just attacking, and with Furious Focus, it does the same damage as attacking. It's only good if your target has resistance.

In other words, the only difference between the two of you is the weapons you're using, and your attack bonuses.

"then uses a flurry combined with a Electric Arc"

Uhuh. Cantrips are garbage compared to martial attacks, and Electric Arc is only barely close to tolerable. It's also not using your primary stat, so its chance to hit is gonna be even worse. I'm willing to bet that getting a pair of 1d6 Property runes for your weapon, upgrading it to Greater Striking, and making four attacks per round instead of two and a cantrip, would dramatically improve your damage.

The Horde of undead army approach isn't multiplayer friendly due to turn length/action economy. I doubt any version in PF2 would allow it. The closest you might get is a 'swarm' or 'troop' singleton minion. But I think people wanting necromancers wouldn't like that apporach.

D&D 5e's Animate Dead spell works well enough. You cast the spell on nearby corpses to get one or more zobmies or skeletons, depending on the spell slot's level, and they last until your next rest. If you want to keep them longer than that, you have to sacrifice spell slots each day. In practice, this means you have a swarm of zombies and skeleton archers that individually have low HP and damage, but as a group, are on-par with other summons.

From lvl 11 to lvl 20 we Can see progression and alternatives to sturdy shields.

Like what?

Look, if you're trying to maximize Shield Block, you're literally never going to get to a point where any shield can compete with Sturdy. (Excepting like, the unbreakable one, maybe.)

If you're specializing in shields, you're specializing in shield block, because that's what the shield feats do. It's not reasonable to turn around and tell players that they now have no options for shield choice. That's bait and switch.

That's literally the design concept of the Sturdy Shield, to be the best at Shield Block. Thus, if you want the shield to have any other abilities, it must be worse at Shield Block, because that's how design works.

That's literally the design concept of the potency rune - to be the most accurate. Thus, if you want the weapon to have any other abilities, it must be less accurate, because that's how design works.

That last paragraph is how magic weapons worked in Pathfinder 1e. Now that we're in Pathfinder 2e, we've given +1 bonuses their own dedicated slots, and the game is better for it. We should apply that same game design principle to shields.

Strill wrote:

...and which make shields worth using.

+2 AC makes shields worth using all on its own. They literally need nothing else to justify holding a shield in one hand and using the action to Raise Shield, because it is seriously that powerful.

Everything else is just a bonus, and the more feats you sink into Shield Block, the more you are committing to needing a specialized item to support it.

By taking those feats, you're specializing in Shield Block, like a Fighter specializing in Swords. Except instead of choosing between all the varied weapon types, you're choosing between all the shield types - Sturdy Shields, and all the various non-Sturdy shields.

Unless you're prepared to provide quotes from the developers on what is necessary and what is "just a bonus", I suggest you refrain from acting as though you had some transcendent revelation from god that we peons must acknowledge.

Honestly, I think that's a much smaller issue than classes that aren't Champions lacking a good mechanic for forcing their foes to swing into a raised shield. Intelligent enemies aren't going to waste attacks like that, and a one handed AOO isn't the deterrent from picking a more productive target that a Champion Reaction is.

Shield Block isn't even a significant consideration in that case as a GM.

That's why Shield of Reckoning exists.

People are looking at increased Shield Stats to maintain the effectiveness of a General 1 feat like that's a given... it really shouldn't be.

Nonsense. It's to maintain the effectiveness of that feat, and all of these other feats which rely on Shield Block, and which make shields worth using.

Aggressive Block
Reflexive Shield
Shield Warden
Quick Shield Block
Improved Reflexive Shield
Divine Ally (Shield)
Shield of Reckoning
Shield of Grace
Shield Paragon
Emblazon Armament (Shield)

I guess I don't quite understand the problem or issue.

I mean of course anyone using a shield to block will want the highest hardness shield they can get at their level.

I think the only problem here is that the shields that exist at item levels in between the study shield upgrades remain at a lower hardness and thus are less useful to someone looking primarily to get mileage out of blocking.

No matter what you do, there's pretty much always going to be an optimum shield at each character level for those looking primarily for it's ability to block. In this case the hardness and hp of the sturdy line of shields is such that the family remains the best purchase for shield blockers.

The problem is that anyone who specializes in shields, is specializing in shield block, because that's what all the class feats do. That means that if you want to use any of the other shields that aren't suitable for shield block, you're s+%&-out-of-luck.

That is called a bait-and-switch, and it pisses people off. Hence this thread.

The problem is that anyone who specializes in shields is specializing in shield block, because that's what all the class feats are for. That means that characters who go all in on shields have to use boring sturdy shields, while people who just grabbed a shield because they had nothing better to use get all the cool shields.

Having one more skill mean that you can ditch 2 point in INT to put elsewhere... if this is not a powerful ability I don't know what is... ;)

Why would you have that extra point in INT in the first place, when you already have 10+INT skills as a non-scoundrel rogue?

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

I'm not sure they're that much better, rogues get so many skills that like one extra skill over the other rackets and the ability to have Charisma as key ability isn't *that* big a perk, especially since I don't think you can responsibly actually make that choice over Dexterity and keep up your to-hit.... which you could do while still being able to put plenty of stat into charisma with or without the scoundrel.

Well, as the game plays now I think one more skill is pretty powerful, more importantly I think for a Court Noble this IS the class you should have... as a player this is usually my favorite type of class, not as useful in combat (but a minimum useful nonetheless)

I prefer to build my character as The "Charmer of NPC" of the Group ;)

Please quantify your statements. When you say one more skill is pretty powerful, that means you think that even though you already have

Moreover, what build can you make with a Scoundrel, which you cannot make just as easily as a Thief or Ruffian?

Group Impression: Actively makes the game worse. If three people are in a room meeting for the first time, why can my character only speak and make an impression on one at a time in a minute? Can both people not hear me speaking?

It's still useful even if you throw out the rules for how much time it takes to make a diplomacy check. It lets you make one roll against the whole group, rather than rolling against each target individually. That single roll means you succeed against everyone, or fail against everyone. It also lets you apply single-use buffs like Guidance, against the whole group.

The Paladin in my group is also incredibly disappointed with his class feats, and has opted to use a multiclassing archetype path for +2 hardness to shield. Which seems....exciting..

Did he not like any of the level 2 or 4 class feats?

Personally I would've gone for the domain focus spell.

Glad-Hand: Just builds upon their absurd, authoritarian structure of social encounters. Why does making an impression always require 1 minute? And a -5? Yikes?

You didn't read the whole feat. That check at a -5 is in addition to the normal check you get. So you get two chances to succeed on the check.

To OP: Feint is for if you don't have that many flanking opportunities. Frightened stacks with flat-footed, and is the option you use when the target is already flat-footed.

Normally you would choose Scoundrel because it gives +2 Charisma, and you want your character to have a lot of charisma-based skills. In your case, that didn't apply because you used a non-standard stat generation method.

Strill wrote:

ChibiNyan wrote:

I'm running Class Feats every single level and it has made basically no difference in power level yet. Action economy and the very careful wording of these feats prevents them from being used in powerful combinations.

What do you do about Fighters who invest heavily in action economy feats, or passive feats? Stuff like these:

Sudden Charge
Quick Reversal
Aggressive Block
Reflexive Shield
Shielded Stride
Quick Shield Block
Combat Reflexes
Paragon's Guard
Fearsome Brute
Flinging Shove
Spring Attack
Agile Grace

Can I ask you:

Which of these feats can be used at the same time?

(If all you can do each round is select between many cool and powerful action sequences and feat usages, that's not nearly as much of a power-up than if you can stack the benefits of "too many" feats together, in one and the same round.)

Most of them can indeed be used at the same time. The following feats are passive, or give you extra actions:

For the ones that can't be used at the same time:
* Sudden Charge gives you two strides and an attack for two actions
* Spring Attack gives you a stride or step and an attack for one action
* Quick Reversal gives you two strikes for one action

So in other words, you can benefit from all the passive feats each round, plus two out of three of the non-passive feats.

If you're using Dual Class, there's also plenty of feats in Rogue that you could stack onto this list, like Feats that make your target flat-footed in additional circumstances, a Feat to demoralize on a free action, and feats to apply extra conditions with each hit, on top of whichever ones you were already applying.

And that just ain't true. Millions of D&D5 Dungeon Masters run adventures without level to proficiency just fine. There's zero reason to think you can't do the same with PF2.

Hahahha yeah right. 5e's encounter guidelines are designed around attrition of party resources, with an expected 6 encounters per day. Barely anyone actually sticks to those guidelines. You instead see DMs use one fight per day, which lets casters go nuts, while classes designed for long-term sustainability, such as the Warlock, are out of luck. This leads to constant complaints on the subreddit about how Warlocks are underpowered.

Since players and DMs can't be bothered to stick to the attrition model in the book, difficult fights get trounced, and the DM is left wondering why their super-powerful boss monster got killed so quickly. You can't easily fix this, however, because if the DM makes the enemies hit harder or have more HP, then the casters either go nuts and out-heal the monsters' damage round after round, or the monsters one-hit the players. Neither feels satisfying for players and DMs who want a challenge.