Thunder999's page

Fire kineticist looks awesome until you realise that the second a devil shows up you go from doing damage good enough to replace a martial to plinking away with a puny d6 blast and maybe doing a tiny bit of automatic damage with Thermal Nimbus and are therefore borderline irrelevant, at least that Nimbus damage incentivises you get up close, so enemies might waste a turn or two attacking you rather than someone useful.

This would be easily fixed by allowing extract element to work on any immunity, but that won't ever happen.

That's stronger than any 9th level healing spell, so I'd say it's not allowed, wish/miracle etc. either duplicate a 9th level spell or do something of equal power, anything better than a 9th level spell is not in line with that effect.

Magus definitely suffers a bit from being ranged in that Starlit span is weaker than the other Hybrid studies in terms of available feats (not just hybrid specific ones, but also some just don't work as well or at all with a ranged weapon) and not getting an extra benefit from arcane cascade, the focus spell is also a tad underwhelming (it's ok, but you'll have plenty of fights where it doesn't really do anything).

Guidance is useless, guidance is 1/hour and only lasts a single round, you're not going to predict crit fails that well and unless there's a crit fail it's literally no better than normal guidance.

I'd just like to point out that doing 55% of fireball damage is even more underwhelming when you realise the sorcerer could cast 2 fireballs out of every single spell level it's got and still have as many spells left as psychic starts the day with.

The int one is nasty when it triggers, flat footed makes the attack more likely to crit and therefore more likely to actually interrupt and stupefied ruins your spellcasting next turn too.
It's just also much more avoidable.

Whereas the charisma one is damn near impossible to avoid, emotion effects are everywhere.

Druids can get flight for a focus point at level 8, literally half this level, out of combat 5ft air walk is nice, but it's not really on par with real flight.

Flight is strong because you can be out of a melee enemy's reach, bypass the need for climbing and swimming.

All this does is let you float over water and maybe not trigger a trap, but we're 16th level, traps probably aren't overly reliant on pressure plates at this level.

I'm just hoping Psychic casting isn't switched off by every emotion effect in the game in 2e, being able to cast in silence sounds great until you realise literally any enemy can turn you into a commoner with a simple intimidate check.

Agile only works on finesse weapons, which are generally just worse than other options.

You're not getting an agile Falchion, falcatta, fauchard, glaive, butchering axe etc.

Oh and remember you need 13 strength for power attack, and piranha strike only works with light weapons so is not an adequate substitute.

Agile weapons only deal 1x dex to damage even when two handed, as compared to 1.5x strength on a two hander.

So a dex based character is doing significantly less damage with a worse weapon.

If you've got any buffs available then buff+cascade is a decent first round too.

Familiars really don't do anything, it'd be one thing if they were just some free RP thing, but witches and one kind of wizard are treating them as a major class feature.

You have some support for summoning, but summoning spells really aren't great in 2e, so it's hardly worth spending feats on.

Oh, it's a mistake, I was really hoping we'd just finally got a blasting spell with actually good damage.

Using it with cones or lines is nice in theory, but I just don't see a magus actually using line or cone spells much to begin with.

I don't see the point, I guess you could do some gimmicky stuff with Starlit Span or Lunging spellstrike an line or cone effects, but that's it.

You're giving your spell an extra failure condition, then allowing all the usual defences, and given you're a magus you probably don't have impressive save DCs, all in return for a single extra strike.

I'd rather cast and strike sepereately, if I don't have three actions I'll skip the strike.

Normal spellstrike is good because it's either free damage on your attack from a cantrip or making that spell attack roll spell of yours much more accurate than it would be for any other caster by using your weapon proficiency and weapon runes with it.

Riddlyn wrote:

Why wouldn't you want your casting stat to be at least be 14? If cantrips are your bread and butter that's more damage. With a 16 in int and str that's +6 to damage per spellstrike.

Well, instead it could be +3 damage AND +2 hp/level and +2 fort saves and +1 will saves [or swap the +1 and +2's].

Or you could instead get a +3 to demoralize checks. Think about a magus that gets a few innate cantrips [say from race] and pumps their cha: they do the +3 damage from the cantrip and get to use Cha skills well but still have the magus cantrips to fall back on for weaknesses and such. And you could go sorcerer multiclass if you wanted extra spells.

I feel like magus is never going to have a spare action to demoralise with (or bon mot for that matter) so any charisma skills would be solely for non-combat use.

Sadly most deities don't exactly have a stellar offering, not too bad for an oracle who can choose from quite a broad selection, but it sure does suck that as a cleric you might be massively screwing yourself over by picking a thematic deity rather than one who has good spells.

Arcane is good, it doesn't really have a unique amazing spell like synesthesia, but it has a much easier time targeting different saves than other lists.

Occult list is extremely will save heavy with fewer but still adequate fort save options mixed in and practically nothing for reflex.

Primal has plenty of fortitude and reflex, but basically nothing for will saves.

Arcane has good options for all three saves.

Divine is just lacking in general.

Arcane is clearly meant to be the generalist who does everything other than healing, which is perfectly adequate since medicine can handle all your healing needs, battle medicine is perfectly adequate for the emergency mid-fight heal.

It's true you don't really need a caster anymore, there's just not much that actually requires magic to do and utility spells are generally underwhelming rather than gamechanging.

Despite the complaints, I'm pretty sure this is the best setup we'll ever get for a gish and I definitely prefer it to warpriest.

Attack is probably allowed because it's really not going to be strong, a staff full of damaging spells is not a great staff, in fact it's barely better than a wand of the strongest spell.

Temperans wrote:

Guntermench wrote:

siegfriedliner wrote:

Decimus Drake wrote:

How much casting should they have gotten in terms of proficiency, max level and frequency? What of their other class features should be given up to achieve this?

I was rooting for 2/3 casting like pathfinder

2/3 can roughly be achieved with a dedication as is.

Needing multiple dedication feats to get what they should had gotten by default is not good thou.

Full spellcasting dedication (up to master + the breadth feat) nets 14 spell slots. That plus your 4 slots from wave casting gives you a total of 18 slots by 20th. "Standard" full casters get 27 slots (ignoring the 10th level slots). 18/27 = 2/3. There's your 2/3 casting I guess.

Not saying you're wrong in your opinion but if the hybrid/martial-caster classes started off with 2/3 the slots of a typical full caster and then still had the option of taking a spellcasting dedication might push them to be too strong.

I dunno....Just an analysis I figured I'd throw out there.

Those normal casters are just as able to gain more spell slots as a wave caster is.

Honestly you'd be better off giving warpriest wave casting and magus' weapon/armour proficiency progression, spellstrike doesn't work well with the divine list and is significantly less useful when used with save based spells, as rather than using your superior weapon proficiency for a spell attack you're now adding an extra failure condition (missing) to a spell with a save that already won't have the best DC (because int, or here wis, isn't your key ability score and you eventually get worse spellcasting proficiency than normal casters).

I think the new spellhearts might fix the cantrip issue though, just grab a flaming star for produce flame on your divine magus.

I'm happy to see it explicitly stated, I've been arguing that all these game mechanics are empirically observable in universe and that scholars would treat them much like we do various laws of physics.

10 is a number that shows up a suspicious amount sure, but there's plenty of physical constants that just show up everywhere in real science.

They published damage spells that don't work for neutral deities again, true neutral deities should just let you pick a damage type to use for aligned damage at level 1 (matching your own if you're not also true neutral, naturally) rather than simply locking you out of most of the damaging divine spells. Same for anyone who doesn't actually have a deity.

Elves are a classic fantasy race and as such a fairly major part of golarion lore and expected PC option.
Most races should have a fairly different outlook to humans, that's part of the fun of playing a nonhuman race.

Unless they're meant to be discovered as part of the AP I'd just let people have whatever rare and uncommon stuff they want, it's not like they're overpowered, it's usually just a flavour thing.

It's decent, at low levels it's stronger with a shortbow, but once you get a striking rune a longbow does the same average damage (2d8 and 2d6+2 are both 9 average damage) while doing more damage at a distance and having better crit damage. (And naturally with greater striking the longbow outdamages the shortbow).

It's an incapacitation effect with probably not the best DC that requires you to burn two actions and a reaction to pull off.

That honestly seems fine to me, it won't work all that often, virtually never against important foes.

Remember this is happening instead of say, move in, flurry, move away which costs an enemy who fails two actions from stun and having to move anyway.

Readying your flurry gets you a potential extra denied action, but also means that in the rather likely even you fail you're standing in melee range and eating a full 3 actions worth of enemy abilities instead.

Familiars are largely tacked on 90% of the time, there's exceptions (a consumable heavy character with a Valet+Independant familiar who hands them potions or scrolls being the most useful) but familiars are extremely weak mechanically.

Honestly most NPC thieves should either know better than to steal from the one group of people who are willing and able to hunt them to the ends of the earth and kill them for what they took.

Nothing quite invites wrath like stealing from an adventurer and no common thief can evade them.

Spellbooks aren't an issue, secluded grimoire is perfect protection for them.

Spell component pouches can be an issue, so if your group does that everyone should just carry as many as they phyiscally can so noone can ever sunder enough to matter and prepare mending every day to repair them after combat.

What role could a divine wizard fill without being a worse cleric, I don't think an extra spell of each level per day would be worth losing your fort saves, HD, BAB, weapons and armour.

I really don't see how this could be worth it to anyone but the wizard, 2 spells/level is just not nearly enough when spells are the only combat relevant ability you're going to have (the cha based casters are spontaneous so you're not even going to be good at intimidate/bon mot without sacrificing a save stat).

Until it looks you right in the eye it's just another horrible ugly monster, but when you meet its gaze you feel how wrong this abomination is.

Doing piercing damage is just not very relevant, enemies with DR/piercing or any other piercing vulnerability are extremely rare.

A better than normal crit multiplier or crit range is the second best trait a weapon can have (behind reach).

Slashing and bludgeoning DR are about equally common, though slashing weapons are better because keen is one of the best non-numerical enchantments.

Champions are definitely more restricted than any other 2e class or even the 1e paladins.

Paladin isn't too different, though the change from legitimate to lawful authority does hurt as it doesn't let you just decide that the local tyrant is unfit to rule and therefore illegitimate.

Redeemer is majorly restrictive, expecting you to try and redeem all the evil people instead of just fighting them like every other adventurer.

Liberator isn't too bad until you realise you're not allowed to convince people not to be evil. Not too bad because while you can't threaten or coerce people into not being evil, nothing says you can't punish them for it with as much lethal force as you want.
Not hard to play, but really, really stupid. Who'd have though chaotic good would be the smite them all alignment, just make sure not to tell them why, that might count as coercion which we can't do.

Tyrant is awesome and basically just tells you do what you probably already wanted to.
(Pity touch of corruption is garbage to anyone but a Dhampir, because evil champions look much more fun)

Desecrator is a tad vague if you ask me.

Antipaladin is also pretty easy to play for anyone evil, just crush anyone who gets in your way, pay no heed to the law, and steal and decieve whenever it benefits you.
So basically just be entirely self serving and as violent as the average PC.

The Hybrid classes were some of my favorite PF1 classes, so I'd like to see some more of them return and or see some new ones.

Slayer
Skald
Bloodrager
Brawler
Also I'd like to see a class that's a lot more like PF1 Warpriest than the PF2 Cleric Doctine.

2e ranger pretty much is slayer, hunt prey is basically studied target and the precision edge is very similar to the sneak attack, and ranger doesn't really do casting anymore, just like slayer.

Skald could be fun, though 2e seems a lot more focused on niche protection so I doubt we'll get the ability to just give other people barbarian rage.

A barbarian with sorcerer dedication feels like a bloodrager to me, most of the Instincts are pretty overtly supernatural (breath weapons, energy damage, natural attacks etc) and grabbing a few spells is easy.

I'm not sure what brawler would be, martial flexibility probably wouldn't work with 2e's much more limited pool of feats and other than that it's just a more mundane themed monk.

A warpriest that's actually close to 1e warpriest would be nice, but seems unlikely. You could always just be a fighter with cleric dedication.

At levels 1-4 casters with weapons are nice, with the right ability scores you can be only a single point behind a martial in accuracy, you can even cast magic weapon to be really good for a fight.

Then the martials get to expert proficiency, monster ACs go up accordingly, magic weapon is no longer actually good and there's never another spell that gives nearly the same boost, your AC isn't good enough for anything dangerous to ever miss.
And now you're probably better off just moving further away from the enemy, using metamagic or even casting shield rather than flailing inaccurately at an enemy for unimpressive amounts of damage.

I feel like you must be using a very different exploration mode to me, because it feels barely interactive at all to me. You pick from the list of activities and get the listed effect.
You can decide you're sneaking, which just means initiative is now a stealth check rather than a perception check.
Investigating is just "The GM rolls some recall knowledge checks in secret and lets you know if you happen to know anything"
Scouting ahead doesn't let you spot foes in advance so you can actually plan encounters, just gives the party a +1 circumstance bonus to initiative (which is entirely redundant with both a fighter class feature and a general feat).
Search means you get to make checks to notice hidden stuff.
It's basically everything non-combat boiled down to a single sentence and maybe a (secret) skill check.

Thunder999 wrote:

Sure the GM is told it shouldn't pursue, but the PCs don't know that.

...why would the PCs need to know that?

Players should know that retreat is actually an option, even if it uses the Chase mechanics, not feel like the existence of creatures with higher Speed traits than their characters makes it impossible to ever say "Nope, this was a bad choice, I'd like to leave now."

Oh, and it also doesn't actually require knowing whether it will or won't chase you to try to run, so it's extra irrelevant that the PCs don't know this creature won't chase.

Because the default assumption of myself, and most people I've played with is that enemies aren't going to just let us escape if they have the ability to chase us down.

So it looks like the best shot at surviving is to fight it and hope we get lucky.

I'd just like to point out that the voidglutton is a fair bit faster than any PC is likely to be with its 40ft fly speed.
Sure the GM is told it shouldn't pursue, but the PCs don't know that.

Higher level encounters in APs are already nasty without overtuned monsters like this one.

Archeologist bard doesn't really fill the same role as a rogue outside of trapfinding. It's a nice option to fill the trapmonkey role when noone wants to play a rogue-style character, but it's not got sneak attack, which is the real strength of rogues.

Vivisectionist does outshine there though, since you can easily just go for natural attacks rather than TWF and be strength based to not miss the dex to damage.

I think Ancient elf is meant for people who want the traditional 100 year old level 1 elves that 2e mostly got rid of.

Because being large is a big power boost, you get better damage from using bigger weapons, higher CMB and more reach.

Sure you could make a large race that is stuck with medium weapons and has no reach, but then it'd be pretty bad, because you'd have the extra cost on armour, issues fitting in medium sized locations, penalties to AC and attack rolls and no benefit.

The primary abilities should be at will, with a small number of focus abilities available.

Gather power returns as a way to really interact with the action economy.
Most of your abilities have 1, 2 and 3 action variants (perhaps with a high level class feat that allows you to go to 4 actions while quickened or over two turns, though this seems like it's probably too hard to balance).

Your basic blast would be a 1 action single target attack with say 30ft of range and ok damage.
Each element would have a 2 and 3 action version with extra effects such as better range, small AoE or additional effects like knocking enemies prone or setting them on fire.

There'd be class feats that add new options with their own action cost you could use instead of the basics.

At say level 10 you'd get a class feature that reduces the action cost of your favourite blast by 1 (to a minimum of 1) so you could add an extra effect to it.

Maybe as a burn alternative you could pay a focus point to reduce action cost.

Reach is basically the only way to actually keep your distance as a caster, and being an extra 30ft away from the enemy is great for survivability

2e metamagic spends an action for a fairly situational benefit.
Most of the time you're better off moving or casting shield or trying your luck with demoralise/bon mot than using a metamagic.

The one I've used most is reach (because it's a level 1 class feat so an easy pick for a human/half-human), it's a nice alternative to moving closer when you really don't want to get closer than absolutely necessary.

So, do any monsters get silence, because that'd just switch off any casters in the party pretty easily, and unlike monsters PC casters don't get to also be good at other things.

I fully agree. I've never fully understood why Dex-to-damage is so lauded for a Magus. The difference between having Dex-to-damage and not having it is like 6 damage per hit at most (assuming you're playing a Dex build). Not to say that isn't worth a feat, but as you say Kurald, this is a class that has plenty of other places to find damage.

+6 damage for a single feat is a really good deal. And obviously you go dex based in the first place because you can't really ignore dex on a strength magus in the same way you can ignore strength on a dex magus unless you're high level.

Even if you don't want dex to damage (which is unusual, since there's no downside to it for an unchained rogue, no restrictions, works two handed etc.) debilitating injury is a big power boost, it's what's meant to make up for 3/4 BAB.