Subutai1's page

Hi,

would it be that hard to add a sentence to this tactic which specifies that someone, who has the Shield spell can cast it as a reaction as part of this tactic? Casters are already neglected enough as is, why not add simple things like this to help them out a bit?

Hi,

Blanket Defense at level 14 has direct anti-synergy with Paragon's Guard. As a shield user, you would want to pick both those feats more often than not. So here is the simple fix proposal for Blanket Defense:

Make it cost 2 actions and change the Requirements to: You have your shield raised. Remove "Raise a Shield." from the description of this feat.

I think the Guardian needs at least one core class feature at 1st level that makes their Strikes worth using. Simply being able to Taunt and punch someone at melee range in a single action I think would already make all the difference.

I like the idea of Taunt + Punch a lot, since right now, the last thing you want to do in melee is to taunt that melee target, so he can clobber you much more easily in return. Taunt right now is most effective from range and then running away, so the enemy only has debuffed targets in range, which flavor-wise is a horrendous design. A Tauntpunch for 1 action would be a nice trade-off (staying in melee) and action compression at the same time.

From my experience, the Guardian needs to move around a lot if they want to put Taunt and Intercept Strike to the best use. I think there's a lot of potential here to make the Guardian much more mobile, such as by removing the Speed penalty of heavy armor completely as several other players have suggested.

This is also a great idea. I would add ignoring movement penalties from shields as well, so Tower Shields become much more attractive.

Hi,

Playing a class that gives up it's own offensive potential to support others was, is and will always be unpopular. Paizo knows that as well, which is why the 2 most popular support classes are the most busted casters of them all budget-wise (Cleric and Bard). There is a steep price to be paid to do significantly less damage in a group that maybe already has a supporter, so basically half your party is support (Commander will have a similar problem). So to make the Guardian a class people will be interested in playing, will require him breaking the standard budget a martial class gets and right now, without having had the time to actually play this class yet, at least on paper it looks the budget this class is built on is way overvalued.

Ideas to blow the budget:

If a Fighter, the king of hitting, can start with expert proficiency in all non-advanced weapons, why can't Guardian, the king of defensive, start with expert proficiency in armors? As a Guardian you want to be the least attractive target on the battlefield for all enemies to hit on and then using your own mechanics to force enemies to hit you anyway. However, right now especially with taunt you become one of the most juicy targets to hit. Sure, you can choose crit resistance with Mitigate Harm, however the amount is very underwhelming and doesn't stack with all your other sources of resistance, which is another design flaw in this class.

Another idea would be to bump up the hit point level progression to d12. Why is this only utilized on Barbarians? A class that does little else than "tank" for their party surely deserves to be a little bit more beefy than your average Fighter. Give them that and instead remove Tough to Kill entirely from the class chassy, which is just a bad incentive to let the Guardian go down.

Since the Guardian falls off dealing damage with weapons, why not give him at least a class feat chain which improves his damage with shields? Here, you could either incorporate attacks with shields or damage reflection mechanics when blocking for example, or maybe both. Also, there is too little incentive to use Tower Shields, even though you would think this would be the class making the most use out of those.

If dealing decent damage is some weird anathema for Guardian, then why not make him a better Athletics user? Both Barbarian and Monk have access to permanent +2 circumstance bonus to one or multiple athletic maneuvers, Earth Kineticists get a similar permanent status bonus on those. Would it be that bad giving something similar to Guardian?

That's all my ideas so far. Once I get some actual gameplay in, I will either add new ideas or elaborate on the mentioned ones. What's your ideas to make better use of the budget of this class?

Hello,

everyone knows what this tactic is supposed to do, letting you get away from your enemies to get out of harms way. However, the way that it is written and the way actual combat in the game works, it leaves much to be desired, making it an option that will rarely be taken/used, if ever.

My first problem with it is, to be able to use it as written, your party is still in best shape: Everyone is standing and is free to step away. In an actual fight, the moment you want to retreat the most is when maybe one of your party members just got downed and another is maybe grappled/restrained/swallowed or similarly occupied. In such a dire situation that would scream for a retreat, this "retreat" does next to nothing.

Therefore, I would propose the following addition to this tactic:

----
Additionally, all squadmates can use their reaction to either Stand or attempt to Escape. Each squadmate can forgoe one Step free action granted to instead pick up an item.
----

With this addition, it would be an interesting "Oh shoot!"-button to get out the direst of situations. Note that someone still would have to heal the downed character for him to regain consciousness first. Valyrie's Charge does something similar but so much more and is supposed to be used offensively. This stays purely defensive and wouldn't step (pun intended) on the toes of Valyrie's Charge.

Also, it giving each squadmate 3 Steps makes sense for casters and ranged attackers to get out of reach. However, at very high levels, even 3 Steps are often not enough for that. Non-scaling abilities have always been a problem (example Champion's Reaction range, which just doesn't cut it in high levels). So making the number of Steps scale, for example starting with 2 at level 1 and getting an additional Step each 5 levels above the first would fix this and make this tactic useful even at high levels.

Mostly good fixes. Too bad Daze will stay useless, but I guess there are enough usable cantrips now.

I just want to underline that it's very easy to change the dying rules to be whatever the table you're playing at prefers, since this system intersects very little with other systems (basically just at the entering and leaving stages.)

Like if you want to make the Dying level you die at a different number, that's a ridiculously easy fix. Make it 10 or 100 if you want.

Which makes it so much more questionable why this new rule is the default. Experienced players and GMs know exactly what you are talking about and can adjust any rule just fine, even on the fly. So if for whatever reason the game would be to easy for those groups, they could just increase the difficulty to make it more lethal for them.

It is the new players that have understandably issues with "tweaking" rules, since they are the ones that are not yet confident in the system. This in return will lead to newer players/groups experience way more player deaths or TPKs than the game intended, leading to quitting the game before giving it a fair shot.

It just doesn't make any sense from a game design perspective, considering that PF2 is not a lethal horror simulation akin to Call of Cthulhu, where the lethality of the game is a key mechanic to show how worthless the life of your character is in the grand scheme of things. In PF2 you play a party of adventurers that become heroes over the course of adventuring, dying like flies just doesn't fit here.

Can someone check if daze has the same short description on the spell lists of the other traditions?

All 3 spell lists have the same short description:

Daze Cloud a creature’s mind to make it off-guard or slow.

Sounds infinitely more interesting than the actual spell effect. It could be possible that they forgot to replace the actual spell rules with the new ones and just copy/pasted the old rules by mistake. Would make more sense than nerfing the worst damage cantrip in existence.

The comparison that I draw is between Cleric and Rogue. Everyone knew that Warpriest had many problems, even Paizo. They did a great job fixing it with the Remaster. The end result is you finally have a real choice between choosing Cloistered Cleric or Warpriest, since both are legitimately fun options now.

On the other hand, the dumpster fire that was the Mastermind remains completely unchanged, even though it was basically in the same state as Warpriest. Sure, no one forces you to play it, but in its current state, it might just as well not exist at all. Missed opportunity in my opinion.

Subutai1 wrote:

So far, my biggest dislike is the logic (or lack thereof) behind the balance shift of Rogue rackets. The by far strongest racket, namely Thief, got the biggest buff. Scoundrel and Ruffian got slight buffs and the weakest racket, so Mastermind (ignoring Eldritch Trickster), is completely unchanged. I don't consider fixing Recall Knowledge to finally work at all any buff to it whatsoever.

I understand that they had to hurry with Player Core 1 release and couldn't fix every single tiny issue the game had. But how do mess up something as obvious as Rogue rackets this bad? There is not a single person in existence that would consider Mastermind stronger than Thief or Ruffian, yet for whatever reason it was considered to be "fine" as is, not needing a single change. How?

What did Thief get?

They get DEX to damage to finesse unarmed attacks now, so for example Wolf Jaw from Wolf Stance, which are d8 agile, backstabber, finesse attacks, which are much stronger than any other attack a Thief had prior access to. Especially since Ruffians new martial/advanced weapon access is limited to d6 attacks, those weapons are a joke compared to Thief's access to those unarmed attacks.

So far, my biggest dislike is the logic (or lack thereof) behind the balance shift of Rogue rackets. The by far strongest racket, namely Thief, got the biggest buff. Scoundrel and Ruffian got slight buffs and the weakest racket, so Mastermind (ignoring Eldritch Trickster), is completely unchanged. I don't consider fixing Recall Knowledge to finally work at all any buff to it whatsoever.

I understand that they had to hurry with Player Core 1 release and couldn't fix every single tiny issue the game had. But how do mess up something as obvious as Rogue rackets this bad? There is not a single person in existence that would consider Mastermind stronger than Thief or Ruffian, yet for whatever reason it was considered to be "fine" as is, not needing a single change. How?

Player Core pg168 Rogue Resilience 9th - I dont believe the intent is to get Success = Crit Success when a save moves to Expert. That (in every other area) only happens when a save moves to Master.

Not completely correct. See Bravery class feature of the Fighter. It gives you expert proficiency in Will saves and success = crit success to fear effects.

This should definitely not be the default. From the perspective of a new player, the game is already sufficiently hard, especially many way overtuned official Adventure Paths. Making it easier to lose your character will likely lead to deterring new players. It will most likely contribute even more to the famous statistic that most players end their journey before level 3.

This being an optional rule for veteran players is perfectly fine though.

Rebirth in Living Stone: It's a strange impulse thats a stance and a sustainable impulse at same time. Considering that as a stance it competes with Assume Earth's Mantle only to get temp HP this doesn't worth at all.

You might want to read the stance again. Aside from some minor buffs, this stance makes you immune to critical hits. This ability alone makes you the tankiest character in the game against bosses, since they crit you all the time.

Sure you give up your grapple supremacy, if you choose this stance. But if your job in your party is to be the sturdy frontline tank, then there is no better feat in the whole game for it.

Look at what other tanks get to mitigate crits: Fortification (Greater). A lousy 35% to negate a crit, so anything but reliable. A crit immunity was unheard of before.

Part of the issue I'm having trying to figure out a Kineticist grappler is "how are you going to get an item bonus to your grapple attempts" (the junction gives you a status bonus). The best I can come up with is "MC Monk for Gorilla Stance (compatible with armor, but it's a stance) and buy Handwraps."

By simply getting the standard Athletics items? I. e. Lifting Belt, Armbands of Athleticism etc.

The impulse is level 12, though, so you're spending over half your career behind the curve. Just pointing it out.

Since you make baseless claims all the time, here are the actual numbers:

Comparing to the 2 best grappler classes in the game, Monk and Barbarian.
At level 1-4 you are indeed behind by 1 point in Athletics, here you primarily Elemental Blast, unless you know you are facing a low Fort enemy that is easy to grapple and said grapple has a purpose.

At level 5-7 you are the best grappler in the game, being 1 point above everyone else.

At level 8-13 Barbarian and Monk take over by 1 point thanks to Furious Bully and Clinging Shadows Stance.

Level 14 you are equal.

At level 15-16 you are better by 1 point.

Level 17-19 you are equal.

Level 20 you are 1 point behind.

And this is comparing to the best grapplers in the game. Since you mentioned Fighters, those would be better level 1-4 and you would be better the rest of the game.

However, what puts you above all other grapplers is the ability to place your own hazardous terrain, which you can do starting on lvl 8. Said terrain gives you control over how your enemies move around the map and are also a great target for Whirling Throw or even Shove to make your playstyle not just gimmicky but also very effective.

If you want to see an example build for this, here you go: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43udt&page=2?Who-are-your-Rage-of-Elements -PCs#90

The problem with skill junctions is they only make you trained, they don't upgrade proficiency. Burning a junction on that seems like a poor choice when you could get resistance/gate junction/impulse junction, especially since you already get plenty of skill feats and skill increases.

Who cares about the trained skill? The reason to take a skill junction is a permanent +1/+2/+3 status bonus to said skill, which more than compensates for the fact that you can only start with 16 in a skill attribute.

That protector tree ability of wood looks nutty to me on paper. It just acts a protective blocker of damage against strikes as long as one of your allies adjacent. Is there something I'm missing? That thing gets up to 90 to 100 hit points.

It's great damage absorption with 10 damage per Spell rank. Compare that to one of the best spells in the game, Heal, which heals 12.5 damage per Spell rank.

However, note that it can only block attacks. All those monsters that have special abilities or spells to damage party members will not care about your trees.

This slides Cleric out of top healer spot, and slides Storm Druid into top or second to top ranged DPS slot (need to think about how often a gunslinger crits before I'm sure on that).

Nonsense, a max Cha Cloistered Cleric with Positive Luminance will still be the premier healer, no matter how cute you try to be with your Lay on Hands. Healing Font is just that powerful.

Concerning Storm Druid, on low levels when you have a limited amount of spell slots, the better focus spells will really shine. However, the higher your available spells slots, the more obsolete focus spells will become, even with said change. They will still be better than cantrips, sure, but you will still want to use at the very least 1-2 of your highest or 2nd highest spells slots at the start of each fight, as those higher level spells are a lot more powerful than a low range single target damage spell, that gets hard countered by high reflex. Just compare Chain Lightning to same heightened level Tempest Surge, feels like a waste of actions in comparison.

The average quality of focus spells has improved over time, but there's a lot of lackluster ones from the CRB. Domain spells are the main issue there I feel, but there's others that are underwhelming.

It's pretty hit or miss overall.

So just like with everything else in PF2 (or any TTRPG for that matter)? Spells are hit or miss, items are hit or miss, feats are hit or miss.

I would argue this is by design, so the choices you make when building your character are meaningful. At the same time, you still have options that are subpar but flavorful. Not everyone wants to minmax every single character they build, but minmaxing is still possible within the given boundaries.

There is a stance oriented monk build that gets interesting with the level 10 Prevailing position feat, that is more of a defensive build monk. A +4 circumstance bonus to either AC or Reflex vs the triggering attack is almost ridiculous for tanky it can make a monk in a fight vs a solo monster. A follow up feat that does something interesting every time you enter a stance could be a cool way to support that. Like if mountain quake triggered automatically but only when you entered Mountain stance, and other stances had other abilities that trigger when you entered a stance, I think it would present a cool parallel and interlinking track to Ki spells.

As someone else already mentioned in this thread, the problem with all the stance switching feats is that they come online way too late. I would bet less than 5% of all PF2 players reach lvl 16+ with their chars, so feats at that range and higher are practically irrelevant.

To make all the stance switching stuff a real option for Monks, it would have to be in a level range between 4 and 10 with the apex feat for this build at 12, so other classes couldn't pouch it.

Also, I suspect that Ki will get getting a minor buff in the remake because it can deal alignment damage, which can probably be changed into Spirit Damage (which I hope will mean more effectiveness against incorporeal creatures, encounters that always suck).

You can already choose Force damage with Ki Strike, so this would change next to nothing.

What about giving Monks a lvl 12-14 (so no other class can multiclass into it) class feat that would restore a focus point on a critical hit? This would make a Monk who is centered around focus usage unique compared to other classes but still keep him at bay thanks to his basic martial proficiency.

With all the spoilers for Player Core 1, we should have a better estimation for how Player Core 2 might look like.

From my experience with Monk, I would argue it is one of the best designed PF2 classes. However, there are still a few functional flaws:

1. Ready action Flurry of Blows with Stunning Fist has game breaking potential. Stunning someone during their own activation not only steals them one action on their following round, but also completely ends their current activation.

Suggested fix: Clear up the rules for the Stunned condition.

2. Mountain Stance Monks starting combat with "their pants down". The way stances work, you cannot start combat in a stance, which means that a Mountain Stance Monk who usually has very low Dex has a very high chance of getting critically hit into oblivion before he had the chance to act. You can work around this by hiding behind party members, but this is very anticlimactic for the flavor of a Mountain Stance Monk, which is being a hard to move and tanky frontliner. And no, a level 12 class feat is not a fix to this problem.

Suggested fix: Add following text to Mountain Stance:
Special While in Exploration Mode, if you chose the Defend Activity, instead of Raising a Shield you can enter this stance once combat breaks out.

I feel that it is eating the psychics lunch which is a shame.

It is still a buff for the Psychic, albeit not as large of a buff as for any other focus caster. Sure, his level 1 class feature will not be as significant as it was before, but you still can refocus faster than anyone else and you are still happy to pick up another focus spell, so you max out your focus pool to 3 and can use the full 3 focus every single fight.

Also, I would argue that a Psychic has better use for his focus points than many other classes thanks to a large array of amp abilities, giving him more flexibility than most.

But it also really makes having a good focus spell that much more important. I hope they keep this in mind when they're updating focus spells for the Remaster, because now having a bad focus spell is going to be that much more of a downside.

This is true. But regarding that point, I believe with this change, it will be more feasible to see characters that will go beyond 3 focus spells. This will not increase the maximum focus pool of 3, but will give those characters more answers for different problems that might occur either in or out of combat.

So even if you choose subpar focus spells, those might come in handy in specific situations and otherwise, you go back to using your focus pool for your staples.

Hello,

With the announced change to refocus being able to get you back to up to 3 Focus points after every single fight, it opens up a huge plethora of Focus centered builds, that albeit were already there but were gatekept behind high level class feats, which allowed you to refocus more than a single Focus point after a fight.

This is of course assuming you have the Focus pool, so most likely having 3 different focus spells and the time, as the refocus of each Focus point requires a 10 minute break. But those requirements are still much much better than high level class feats that most characters rarely saw.

Also, depending on your party composition, this change might allow for much longer adventuring days before having to long rest, which is a big plus in my book.

There are so many new builds I wanna try just because of this one change, for example:

A Medic Champion that throws out 3-4 Lay on Hands each fight in addition to battle medicine, feeling like a full fledged healer.

A Monk with different Ki spells finally feeling like a low-mid level Monk build variant that was missing and/or lacking, which was an effective spell focused Monk.

A Magus recharging all his spell strikes via conflux spells.

A Cackle spamming Witch, although I will wait out the full remastered version of the Witch, since the announced overhaul seems to be quite significant.

What new builds are you interested in, that this change will open up? Or is there someone who does not welcome this change for some reason? If so, why?

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Is disarm one of those traits that's valued highly? Since I legitimately don't see very many disarm attempts. Players seem to look at "it only actually disarms if I critically succeed" and just not bother with it as a tactic.

TLDR Disarm is essentially weighted the same as other maneuver traits because the maneuver itself is structured to be balanced with other maneuvers.

***

Disarm is kind of interesting. As a trait, it's weighted about the same as any other maneuver trait, because the maneuver itself is structured to be fair to the players. Tactically, it's essentially a two person activity on the player side, where one player sets up the maneuver and the other person executes the actual disarm. The math that creates that staging process is important, because once a creature or player is disarmed there's a high probability of them just being out of the fight for most intents and purposes.

While monsters may or may not have weapons, a party full of PCs almost certainly has at least one character who's heavily reliant on their chosen gear. So if the fighter is faced with an ettin boss monster and the ettin uses its first action to disarm and gets the effects of what is currently a critical success the majority of the time, the fighter's ability to deal damage or use weapon-oriented feats has been mega-nerfed, and they're going to provoke AoOs each time they try to pick up the weapon (and a crit from one of those AoOs will disrupt the action they tried to use, forcing them to try again). Even under the current rule, the fighter has taken a rough hit to his AoO class feature and has a fair chance of getting the critical effect anyways; if disarm were to say, last until the end of the fighter's next turn, his entire primary damage-dealing class feature, legendary proficiency, would be effectively shut off.

For a character reliant on their weapon, there's no worse debuff than being disarmed. Players who use tag-team disarm tactics will generally find that...

But why not make the disarm debuff on success last until the end of the targets turn, except said target uses an interact action to adjust its grip? This would result in creatures that don't plan to attack with said weapon to ignore this debuff entirely or alternatively, use an action to get rid of the debuff. This would bring disarm on the same usefulness level as trip and grapple, meaning it costs 1 action to get rid of the success effect.

Right now, even the scenario you describe with double disarm characters is very niche and disarm is simply not worth the action 99% of the time.

I am starting to think that the best quality of life upgrade would be for paizo to make the FA rule a non optional one, but baseline.

As much as I like the free archetype variant rule, it will never be the default, as it would most likely overwhelm new players trying out the game for the very first time. Imagine coming from DND5E, where you have basically 0 character customization, to now having not only your class customization but also like 100+ archetypes you have to go through to decide from.

Is disarm one of those traits that's valued highly? Since I legitimately don't see very many disarm attempts. Players seem to look at "it only actually disarms if I critically succeed" and just not bother with it as a tactic.

The disarm trait being weak is caused by disarm itself being by far the worst combat maneuver in the game. Maybe they will release more feats or effects later down the line that will improve disarm itself. Once they do that, the disarm trait will suddenly be desirable.

Repeating Hand Crossbow Compared to the air repeater, it loses 1 magazine size and the agile trait but gains 30 feet of range and a die size. Comparing other weapons, trading agile for a die size seem about even. It has a lot more range, but having to reload more often is a pain. The thing that makes this one questionable to me is that the air repeater is a simple weapon, a full two categories below the repeating crossbow, yet it only seems really similar or only a tiny bit inferior.

The RHC technically predates the air repeater, but its most recent printing is in the same book as the air repeater.

The repeating hand crossbow is the strongest weapon a Gunslinger or Thaumaturge can wield, so it is perfectly fine as an advanced weapon. On the other hand, I haven't found any purpose for an air repeater yet aside from LARPing as John Wick with the Bullet Dancer Dedication.

Subutai1 wrote:

I guess Paizo will now transition to releasing whatever, in the style of throwing all kinds of crap on the wall and just see what sticks, instead of practicing quality control.

They basically have already, most stuff post the Core book (and I have my gripes with the core book) have been below core power and rather random with how well it works (see the Witch and Magus, for one).

The only explanation that makes sense is that dropping the splat books lost them a lot more money than anticipated, because they're pumping crap out faster than they can finish designing it. Which also counters the quality control issue they wanted to solve by not doing splat books.

If thewastedwalrus is right, then this is simply an error on the AoN website, in which case my rant can be ignored. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions so quickly, but in my defense, I have never encountered an error on AoN before that. Props to the author of the website for that.

The STR animal companions do have some options like grappling that don't work so well for DEX based companions.

Even that advantage gets kinda moot when you have Advanced Maneuvers such as the one from a wolf.

Right now, there is not a real choice on how to build an animal companion and considering how tight the math in PF2 is, it heavily punishes players who would like to build a flavorful animal companion which is not nimble.

roquepo wrote:

Healing potions are the greatest offender here, with how easy it is to get both in and out of combat healing, the pricing of the healing consumables makes no sense.

I have the opposite feeling. Instead of keeping one hand free for Battle Medicine, you can just grab a potion. You can use it only once per fight (but Battle Medicine also has strong limitations) and it doesn't cost you anything but one consumable.

I've seen tons of casters with potions in the inventory and free hands. As I often play a Chirurgeon Alchemist, I fill their hands with Elixirs of Life and the overall healing ability of the party greatly increases. It's a nice third action available to everyone with a free hand.

Drawing and drinking the Potion still costs 2 actions in total, which is so much worse than Battle Medicine, completely ignoring the abysmal healing value that an on-level potion gives you compared to Battle Medicine.

Hello,

first of all let me preface that so far, I have played and/or GMed a total a 2 adventure paths (AoA and EC), some homebrew and some one-offs/modules. What me and my friends noticed in all of those games is that consumables are way too expensive in this game (IMO in other TTRPGs as well, but we are talking 2e specifically here). In the following I will try to explain why I think this is bad.

1. With very few exceptions, buying consumables for your hard earned gold is dis-incentivized, since for the price of about 3-4 consumables, you can just buy a permanent upgrade for your character. Example: On level 6, a moderate healing potion healing 3d8+10 costs 50g, an armor potency rune that gives you a permanent +1 AC costs 160g. So for the price of a little more than 3 potions you get a permanent bonus that is much stronger in the long run. You could argue to buy lower level potions, but those heal so little that they are a waste of actions during combat most of the time, which is a huge deal in 2e for how combat is balanced.

This leads to players almost exclusively saving up all their gold until they can buy a permanent upgrade for their characters, which I personally can totally understand, since the price difference between a permanent item and a one-use item at about the same level makes no sense. But I also find it kinda sad, since there are so many interesting consumables in this game and with every new book there are more and more.

2. Finding consumables often leads to the following 2 issues:

2.1. You found a scroll no one in the party can use, since no one has that spell. And even if you happen to have someone in the party with Trick Magic Item, they might not have a high enough skill level in the required skill to use said scroll, or it is an offensive spell, which makes it automatically next to useless due to the strict restrictions of said skill feat, since both the spell attack and DC would be lagging behind too much to matter. So what does the party do with such an item? Sell it.

2.2. You found a consumable item with a very niche use, for example an Elemental Gem. Now you could summon that elemental and be impressed by how useless a level 5 creature is for a level 10+ party, wasting one of your precious actions each round and being little more than a door stop. Or you could do what every sane party would and sell it for 100g.

For another extreme example, you found a Rhino Hide Brooch. Now you could use this consumable once, to effectively prevent 5 damage and if we are very very charitable, this could block a total of 15 damage from a total of 3 attacks. Or, you could sell that item for 140g and then get yourself a Belt of Good Health to have a permanent 4 hp bonus every single day, every single fight. This would still leave you with 55g, which you could spend on whatever else. How makes this consumable cost any sense at all?

Even if you happen to find a somewhat useful consumable item, you are often left with the decision "do I use this cool item once and then it is gone, or do I sell it and with that finance like 1/4 of a permanent item that I am saving for?"

As a GM, you can of course control what loot your players find and that way make for example sure you only drop stuff that your players will have fun using instead of only selling it. But this still does not solve the issue of buying consumables and many GMs are either too lazy to bother editing the loot in an adventure path/module or they prefer using a random loot generator to give out loot (both permanent items and consumables).

How we fixed this problem:

We house ruled that all consumables cost 25% of their original price. We did this about 2 months ago and never looked back ever since. Suddenly, players are looking forward to visit a new town, to check out what consumables their stores have to offer. Since consumables are now also only worth 12.5% when selling them, players have a much easier time just using them during combat without leaving with a bad feeling having just burned like 100+g with a single action. Now the players come up with creative ways to use even the most obscure and niche items, since selling them for a small fraction of the price just isn't worth it most of the time. Suddenly, the rogue can get poisons for his weapons without being a dedicated alchemist. The archer can now afford magic arrows, without feeling like he is literally shooting gold. Healing potions have now a purpose, even in a party with 2 medics and 1 cleric.

Our only concern was that classes, such as Alchemists (and the new Thaumaturge) who are able to create a limited amount of consumables for free each day would be indirectly nerfed by this house rule. But so far, we haven't noticed that in actual play with the one Alchemist we have. It is just that the Alchemist is now not the only one in the party who is using consumables frequently.

What is your experience in your own games so far? Do your players/party sell most consumables they find or are they trying to find good use for those in combat/play, no matter what? Does your GM adjust all loot specifically for your party or do you happen to find a lot of "junk" along the way?

The other great cantrip I see is Nudge Intent which is either a single target slow or an at-will fear.

Sadly, this is not the case. With the exception of one scenario, there is never a reason for an enemy not to just take the suggested action. Since he can take the action at anytime during his turn, he doesn't even lose any action for it, whereas you lost 2 actions and potentially an amp for nothing. The one exception is suggesting to a melee caster to strike. That would result in him having to stride and strike or to draw/pick up an improvised weapon and strike. But since he is a caster and thus, having Will as his best save, he just eats the save, resulting in getting Frightened 1 during his turn most of the time, which he shakes off automatically at the end of his turn, thus having minimal impact at most.

It has been widely debated, but many people agree that the bard is an overpowered class in PF2, but that over-powering isn’t really destructive to game play and fun because it is centered around team work play and making other characters better.

Since Paizo has no plans to nerf the Bard anytime soon, they obviously disagree with you and thus, the Bard is perfectly fine to compare other classes to.

Hello,

After looking at the Psychic, every fiber in my body told me that the math has to be off on this class compared to the staples in the CRB. So I thought about listing a side-by-side comparison with the most similar class, which should be the Bard, since both are spontaneous Occult casters and both of their "main shticks" outside of that are their unique cantrips. So here it goes:

Psychic vs. Bard

Key Ability: INT/CHA vs. CHA
Hit Points: 6 + CON vs. 8 + CON

Initial Proficiencies:

• Perception: Trained vs. Expert
  
• Fortitude: Trained vs. Trained
  
• Reflex: Trained vs. Trained
  
• Will: Expert vs. Expert
  
• Skills: Trained in Occultism + 3+ INT vs. Trained in Occultism + Performance + 4 + INT
  
• Attacks: Trained in Simple, Unarmed vs. Trained in Simple, Unarmed + longsword, rapier, sap, shortbow, shortsword, whip
  
• Defense: Trained in Unarmored Defense vs. Trained in Unarmored Defense + Light Armor
  
• Spells: Trained in Occult Spell Attack and DCs vs. Trained in Occult Spell Attack and DCs
  

Endgame Proficiencies:

• Perception: Trained (Lvl 1-20) vs. Master (Lvl 11-20)
  
• Fortitude: Expert (Lvl 9-20) vs. Expert (Lvl 9-20)
  
• Reflex: Expert (Lvl 5-20) vs. Expert (Lvl 3-20)
  
• Will: Legendary (Lvl 17-20) vs. Legendary (Lvl 17-20)
  
• Attacks: Expert in Simple, Unarmed (Lvl 11-20) vs. Expert in Simple, Unarmed + longsword, rapier, sap, shortbow, shortsword, whip (Lvl 11-20)
  
• Defense: Expert in Unarmored Defense (Lvl 13-20) vs. Expert in Unarmored Defense + Light Armor (Lvl 13-20)
  
• Spells: Legendary in Occult Spell Attack and DC (Lvl 19-20) vs. Legendary in Occult Spell Attack and DC (Lvl 19-20)
  

So looking at the proficiencies, the Psychic is either equal, worse or much worse than the Bard in every single proficiency. Also, he has 2 less Skills, which is at least a little bit offset by the option to go INT as your Key Ability score. But he still gets 2 HP less per level, which leaves him much more vulnerable than a Bard thanks to having no armor proficiency whatsoever. I have to assume that the Psychic staying on Trained Perception all game long has to be a mistake which will be fixed with the next iteration, at least I hope so. So here, the Psychic loses hard, very very hard. Let's look at the spell comparison next.

Spells:

• Spells slots: 2 per spell level 1-9 vs. 3 per spell level 1-9
  
• Cantrips: 3 free Occult + 3 from Conscious Mind vs. 5 free Occult + 1 Composition
  
• Known Spells: 2 free per spell level + 1 per spell level from your Conscious Mind vs. 3 free per spell level + 1 level 1 spell from your Muse.
  
• Focus Points: starts with 2, can refocus 2 from level 1 vs. starts with 1, can only refocus 1 until level 12
  

Losing a spell slot on every single spell level is huge and the only attempt to balance that out mechanically is giving the Psychic 2, or if we are very charitable and count a full duration Unleash Psyche as another 3, resulting in a total of 5 effective focus points per fight. Now the big caveat here is you can only use those focus points for amps, to boost your Cantrip that you chose. The problem here is, with the single exception of Message, the boosts you gain by amping those cantrips, makes those cantrips not anywhere near as good as comparative spells (be it focus spells from other classes or spell slot spells), especially since heightening those cantrips often has unimpressive scaling. Hell, I would argue that Inspire Courage is better than any amped cantrip with the exception of Message, and this is not even counting the boosts you get for your composition cantrips with focus points or other composition cantrips you get later. Also, since Unleash Psyche comes with a huge drawback most of the time, those "free focus points" are anything but free.

So where is the tradeoff? What does the Psychic do better than a Bard? I think the design philosophy wanted to put the Psychic ahead of other casters in parties that fight a lot each day. In those scenarios the Psychic can dish out a huge amount of focus points compared to every other class, whereas other casters would run dry due to running out of spell slots. However, when cantrips like Electric Arc or Inspire Courage exist, which simply outshine or at the very least easily compete with the power level of amped cantrips, that argument falls flat on its face. Is all his power in his class feats? I disagree, since Bard has excellent class feat choices as well that can easily compete with the Psychic or any caster as a matter of fact.

I am sure Paizo is very careful to not release an overpowered class that would break the balance, but as of right now with the Psychic, they shot way too far in the other direction, making this class inferior in virtually every single aspect with redeeming qualities that simply cannot compete.

In case I missed something, please let me know in your reply.

Subutai1 wrote:

Can someone explain Nudge Intent to me, as I see no practical use for it whatsoever? There is no reason for an enemy to decide against just taking the suggested action, since said action can be performed at any time during the turn and you cannot select an action the enemy cannot make. So he just takes the action whenever with no downside whatsoever, resulting in wasted actions and possibly a wasted Amp.

Has someone a practical example for me in which this cantrip is ever useful?

Making a caster with only melee attacks take Strike for example could mean that they need to Stride+Strike or eat the penalty.

IMO the bigger problem is that it triggers on their turn, which means frighten penalties will immediately go down at the end of turn (your team can’t capitalise on them), so in all cases its a worse Fear 1 which is already not an amazing spell merely passable.

The stunned 1 can be nice, but again because it triggers on their turn its not denying reactions - just a single action.

So that is the best case scenario? In which case the caster, which most likely has Will as his highest save eat the saving throw to ignore the only useful suggestion you could give with that spell. For a unique cantrip it is indeed uniquely crap.

Subutai1 wrote:

My only problem with the mounted combat rules is that a small character on a medium mount with a reach weapon has further reach than a medium character on a large mount with a reach weapon. That just feels wrong and doesn't make sense in the slightest. Here is hoping they fix that sometime in the future in an errata.

I mean, it makes sense though.

Your reach doesn't doesn't change and at a certain point you have to overcome the mass and size of your own mount. Attacking from the back of a massive dragon doesn't make your arms longer.

No, since on a large mount, your 1 inch knife has the same reach as your 7 feet lance. In what universe makes this any sense?

My only problem with the mounted combat rules is that a small character on a medium mount with a reach weapon has further reach than a medium character on a large mount with a reach weapon. That just feels wrong and doesn't make sense in the slightest. Here is hoping they fix that sometime in the future in an errata.

Lastly, yes I think a cantrip with an effective +5 to hit is likely to be performing too well compared to martial strikes (note that I'm not saying it'll entirely outdamage them, just that it will be not the intended design of spell slots = better than martial strike + cantrips = deliberately worse than martial strike = fair balance over the course of an adventure, rather than on an attack for attack scale. but who knows, it might be, I haven't done the math).

That cantrip that is performing "too well" according to you is still outshined by everybody's favorite cantrip Electric Arc (and now also Scatter Scree), which need 0 bells and whistles to be more powerful than those single target attack cantrips. As already mentioned in this thread, this ring is an attempt to bring all those sub-par attack roll spells at least a little bit closer to the much more powerful save roll counterparts. And even then, they still remain sub-par thanks to having no effect on a successful save.

The ring is fine as it is, unless Paizo decides to buff all attack spells some other way, which I would highly doubt.

I think a mitigating factor that is unfortunately ignored in a large percentage of games is vision and light levels. A lot of GMs seem to just assume that most caves and dungeons are well-lit, when in reality most caves and old abandoned crypts/dungeons should be dimly-lit at best. Because this is one of the features of the rules that is largely handwaved, humans being one of the small selection of ancestries that don't have any special vision isn't the handicap that it should be.

For example, if a standard human ranger gets into a fight at night time in the wilderness (or a cave), even if the wizard is helpful and casts the light spell on the rangers bow (so that the ranger isn't blind), they have a 25% chance of automatically missing any target beyond 20 feet, and can't even target anything beyond 40 feet. The lack of low-light or darkvision isn't trivial.

You can do things to mitigate this (be a half-elf, buy a magic item, etc) but that requires your human to invest resources a dwarf or elf wouldn't have had to.

Fully agreed. Ever since Fantasy Grounds introduced lighting in their VTT, we noticed how much of a drawback having no darkvision actually is. Sure, you still might get low-light vision, but it doesn't even come close to the utility of darkvision.

And yes, tracking the actual lighting on a physical board in real life is next to impossible, which is why this huge drawback gets ignored all the time and thus, allowing humans to have no drawbacks at all. Paizo should have foreseen this, since PF2 is by far not the first game having this issue of lighting not playing any role in ~98% of all games and because of that, given humans another drawback to bring them more on par with every other ancestry.

Hello,

First and foremost, this topic is not about the power level of Monks. I played multiple ones so far and they are perfectly fine power level wise and in what they can do.

My problem with the 2E Monk is the lack of being able to attack a lot. And no, I do not consider 5 attacks (Flurry of Blows + Haste) a lot, since this is something every single martial class can accomplish with ease thanks to Archetypes/Multi-Class.

In every single other fantasy game (be it TTRPG or computer games) the monk is the class that can dish out the most number of attacks per round (or per second in real time games), albeit those attacks are not as hard hitting. Be it the 22 attacks per round the PF1 Monk could achieve, or abilities such as "Way of the Hundred Fists" in Diablo 3, Monks were always the kings of multiple attacks that hit like a wet towel.

For whatever reason Paizo decided to give the Flurry Ranger the most attacks per round with a total of 7 (Impossible Flurry + Haste) in 2E. So on top of getting the best multiple attack penalty mitigation of all classes, they also get the most attacks per round.

To avoid stepping on the toes of Rangers, I would propose the following class feat to implement this Monk trope into the 2E system:

Class Feat "Tireless Flurry" Feat Level 12
Traits: Monk
Prerequisites: Flurry of Blows

Effect: Remove the "Flourish" trait from Flurry of Blows.

This would allow the Monk to dish out as many attacks as the Flurry Ranger, but lacking the multiple attack penalty mitigation from Rangers, those attacks will be -8 at best and thus, all but optimal action usage most of the time. It has to be level 12 or higher to avoid multi-class shenanigans. 12 should be fine, as it is mostly a flavor feat and not one making you actually stronger.

I am aware that this feat would open up to 3 Stunning Fist effects per round in theory. But once again, with a -8 to hit thanks to MAP, this will almost never be relevant.

What do you guys think? Do you agree with Monk lacking this trope or do you not care about it at all? Also, if you think the Ranger should remain to be the only class that can dish out 7 attacks per turn, why?

I feel like the basic problem with Ki Strike is that you will never use it once you get better ki powers and you want to save ki points for self-healing, teleporting, flying, AoE, etc. But "save your bacon as a reaction" is always going to be relevant.

Ki Strike being nothing more than a feat tax to get to other Ki Powers is a topic of its own that needs to be addressed. With how small the Ki Pool is no matter what boosting a single strike with a non scaling +1 to hit is a joke, especially considering that it does not stack with actually useful buffs like the bards Inspire Courage.

Themetricsystem wrote:

So the benefit here seems to be the ability to attack foew that are flying or on much higher ground because the attack resolves before the PC begins to fall from the High Jump.

Interesting.

And extra movement.

Long jump is stride+jump (hence why it's 2 actions)

Flying kick is either a jump or a long jump followed by a strike.

So, for 2 actions you stride, jump, strike.

For your original question:

There IS benefit taking quick jump:

In order to benefit from long jump you need at least 10feet movement prior to the athletics.

So, if you're pressed for space and can't do that (flying kick someone at the other side of a pit and your adjustcent to the pit as an example, or cornered and etc) you can "flying kick" using the long jump distance even without moving 10ft first.

In effect, if you take Quick jump, you may as well change Flying kick from "jump or long jump+strike" to "long jump+strike" since there's no longer a reason to just jump.

In addition, you also get to ignore difficult terrain for the jump portion and jump over obstacles.

In the end of the day, you can flying kick an enemy that's much more than 1 stride away and Flurry him, getting something like 60+ movement and 3 attacks in a round (level 4 character with starting speed 30 is at a minimum of 55ft + 3 attacks).

The thing is, Flying Kick is completely useless and a waste of a feat if you can have Quick Jump instead. The only reason to ever get Flying Kick is for the action economy as you said yourself. But Quick Jump already gives you the action discount, plus it gives you the option to do something else other than attack after the 1 action for the long jump. And on top of that, it also gives you the advantage of not needing to stride before the long jump.

Also, Quick Jump lets you attack the foe first and then long jump away from it, which is also something Flying Kick cant do, giving you much more hit & run potential. Long jump to foe => Flurry => long jump away etc.

So you are wasting a class feat for something a general feat does better in every way. How is Flying Kick ever worth it?

The class feature Third Path to Perfection gives you the "choice" between bumping up a save by +1 or bumping another save by +1 and automatically make any success of it a critical success. How is that even a choice? The legendary proficiency does not feel legendary at all.

In order for this class feature to be a real choice, the legendary proficiency should give you something interesting like letting you reroll the save once, if you rolled a fail or crit fail.

Being legendary in something, should be something you would really want to achieve and represents you being out of this world good in that particular thing. How is +1 to save rolls legendary exactly, when being elevated from expert to master does so much more?

As it stands right now, no one would select legendary proficiency over a second master proficiency.

I think str monks are still viable but you need to be more careful in your playstyle on early levels. Using combat maneuvers actually compensates for a lack in AC because you deny actions to the opponent who has to stand up, break free, escape or whatever and by that can't use these actions to attack.

The stat development in this version allows easily to get high stats in multiple areas. You can have 18 str and dex on lvl 5 without sacrificing anything (one of the stats can be 19), so this whole idea of dex or str build is kinda pointless.

No one is concerned about a monk at level 5, since by then, he will most likely have bracers of armor and thus, no longer lack behind other frontliners in the AC department. The real problem is getting there without being forced to one build and one build only.

I'm okay with the relatively poor starting AC. Level 1 has more HP now thanks to racial HP, and it's not thaaaat bad to have to invest into Dex. A 18Str 10Dex 16Con monk would be weird after all.

If you feel vulnerable with 14Dex (and level 1 AC of 14) then you can take Crane Stance for another +1 to AC. Then retrain it later.

Have you actually played the game yet? With your proposed solution in form of Crane Stance, your "more HP" will not last all that long, since you are eating crits left and right. On top of that, you now hit like a wet towel thanks to Crane Stance.

Crane Stance should give you above average AC for the cost of doing much less damage than the other styles (which gets much more obvious with magical handwraps). +1 AC is not a solution for a STR build I am afraid.

In fact, i believe Crane Stance should be the monk equivalent of a shield bearer, thus +2 AC for the lower damage trade off seems more than reasonable.

Having played a dwarf with Ancient's Blood with 8 CHA now, I see the following design flaws of this feat:

Since this is a heritage feat, you have to take it on level 1. The +2 magic resist bonus seems nice but not as nice as one might think at first. On low level, you hardly ever encounter a mages or casters in general and therefore, will have minimal milage of this effect at most. Howeve, at low level is where your low CHA and the -2 Resonance from this feat matters the most. Sure, you have very few or no magic items at most for the first couple of levels, so this is not a big deal. But you will also be limited to the use of any potion and especially healing potions. Basically, you cannot run such a character without a dedicated healer in the party. Also, since the +2 magic resist is a reaction, even on later levels it is not as impressive as it reads on paper.

My proposal to fix this feat looks as follows:

Remove the flat -2 Resonance malus from the feat and instead let the reaction cost 2 Resonance per day, but if used once on a day, any future uses that day are free. This way, the -2 Resonance malus only applies whenever you actually use this feat and not constantly and thus, making it not as heavily punishing at low levels as it currently is.

Subutai1 wrote:

MER-c wrote:

I do wonder if Style Strike will make a return, it was a fun aspect of Unchained Monk for me.

From what people wrote who actually played the new monk, stuff like Flying Kick is now a class feat. So yeah, at least this one is back (which was arguably the best one anyway). Most likely, you will see the others as well, but you will have to pay for those with class feats.

As they were an active component of levelling up, you were pretty much doing the same thing there anyway, except you weren't given the option of spending that level up on something that wasn't a Style Strike.

That arguement is fine for basically any other class and its transition between PF1 and PF2. But the unchained monk already got a good amount of bonus feats, plus Ki powers, plus static class features each level just to keep up with other classes. Now in PF2, all of those features share the same resource, which is limited to 10 in total, whereas with PF1 unchained monk it was 6 bonus feats, 9 Ki Powers and a ton of class features that seem to miss right now as inherent abilities and instead can be bought via class feats (Stunning fist, Evasion, Ki Strike, Still Mind, Purity of Body, Style Strike, Improved Evasion, Tongue of the Sun and Moon, Timeless Body, Flawless Mind, Perfect Self).

So yeah, sure you have even more options now on how to build your monk, but no matter how you build him, you end up with less than half the features the PF1 unchained monk had, which leaves a bad taste behind.

But again, without the full picture we won't know how this will really pan out. The unchained monk was a great way to fix the basic PF1 monk, which was one of the worst classes for more than one reason. And releasing the unchained monk showed that Paizo felt the same way. I just hope this time around the monk will be good to go from the get go and still be versatile and interesting to play and not a one-trick pony forced to specialize into one corner, because of the lack of resources that the PF1 basic monk was plagued with.

JoelF847 wrote:

Since monks use kicks, punches, elbows, headbutts, etc. could we re-name all of their abilities to not use the word "fist"? They're all unarmed strikes, so instead of powerful fist, can we have powerful strike, and have stunning strike instead of stunning fist, etc?

Have to agree that stunning fist doesn't seem very stunning anymore. Either re-name it or make stunning a more likely result. Having it only happen on a crit hit and a crit save failure is pretty unlikely.

I suspect you guys are missing a point: this isn't PF1, you aren't competing with spellcaster with spells that can stun people easily.

From what we have heard of color spray it probably stun a target only on a critical failure.
Apparently, most spells will end up applying lesser conditions on normal failures.
So downgrading most of the Save or Suck effects from spells require to do the same for the abilities that can be used every round forever.

Without seeing a more extended selection of spells it is difficult to judge, but we should wait the complete playtest to judge.

I don't have a problem with stunning fist actually "stunning" the target very rarely. I have a problem with it having a 2 action cost, which from what we have seen so far will almost never justify its cost, if you can do so much more with those 2 actions instead.

I would much rather have a 1 action stunning fist that only triggers on critical hits than the current iteration, since as it stands (and of course we will not have the full picture until the full playtest release) it is not only a once-in-a-blue-moon proc effect but also a once-in-a-blue-moon situation that would justify wasting 2 actions for using it.

Sure you can move and then use one stunning fist on the target caster, with a somewhat decent chance of stupefying or at least getting the target flat footed (still has to hit, damage and then the DC to at least fail). But why not instead punch the caster 3 times after your move? And yes, the hp pools for everyone got quite a bit larger in PF2, so a kill might be unlikely but it should still at least setup a kill, which the puny debuff is most likely not, since even a rogue has a much better time setting up flat footed for himself as he had in PF1 (numerous feats, no default AoO, Skill feat god so he can grab some in acrobatics etc.).

Also, do we even know yet what stunned does in PF2? I couldn't find any info on it in the "Conditions" blog.