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Trimalchio wrote:

Everyone seems to have a different line on where martials should be. Personaly, a level 20 fighter should be on par with the upper half of marvel heroes, like silver surfer, hulk, Thor, etc reskinned for fantasy of course.

Yeah, Thor (and Wonder Woman) are excellent examples of peak martials.

Linked for the pre-fight analysis not the animation or results

Not sure I could ever imagine a pure martial being Thor, an actual god, with the power to, without his magic items, still control primal parts of the universe. Not to mention, outside of other gods assailing him, he's immortal. There are some questions about whether or not he is vulnerable even then. He's certainly impervious to anything else mundane, to the extent that even planet destroying events do not hurt him. THat's WAY BEYOND just being a 20th level martial class.

Wonder Woman, on the other hand, does feel just about right - assuming the lack of deific powers, such as pseudo-immortality.

I'm still trying to figure out when/where it became a thing that a PC's on-sheet alignment determined behaviour, and not the other way around. Picking an alignment at creation is just a rough idea of how you think your PC will be at THAT MOMENT IN TIME. That doesn't mean the alignment will never change as the result of decisions that arise through normal gameplay.

Sure, there are some, mostly Paladins and Druids that need to be mindful of their alignment, but that is actually baked into the very fabric of the class' persona. Paladins needing to remain LG is a GOOD thing. It's what gives them their abilities. Looking to maintain a balance so that nature can exist in harmony is the very definition of the point of a Druid. These PCs still start off with arbitrary alignments. Then, through making decisions, that alignment might shift deeper into their favour, or start to show where they are starting to slip against their ethos.

MASSIVE alignment shifts should always be a truly rare thing. Alignment shifting a point or two (on a scale of 0-100) is not the end of the world. If it is, chances are the PC has had plenty of time and opportunity to examine their behaviour before that.

This is such a fine line that I'm not sure there is any way that Paizo can create a system in PF2 that isn't going to piss off a major portion of the player base.

On one hand, it's great that there are already 10 classes that can engage in some sort of healing. It's EVEN BETTER that they are looking at making is so players of any class can invest in healing skills/feats and be mundane healers using bandages and salves.

On the other hand, if these same characters are able to eliminate the likes of Mummy Rot and other status-altering effects, then what in the world is the point of playing a cleric that actually plays to type? If anything, playing a cleric to type quickly becomes as much a hindrance as it helps with resource allocation. Sure, the healer can come along and magically spell things away, but they aren't contributing nearly as much in combat and other situations, and those magical heals just aren't really all that NECESSARY. In smaller groups, anything that isn't necessary for survival and advancement is usually quickly discarded.

Maybe Paizo finds a way to make a balance, but I fear any system that tries to balance the two will have too many loopholes. Sure, mundane healing can keep a disease or poison from killing a person, but maybe it doesn't actually CURE it, and that healing needs to be applied regularly (once per day?). You would still need some sort of magical healing to remove blindness and such, but there are multiple ways in which someone can come by this, not just through clerics.

I understand the concept of "If a role is required, it isn't special."

By the same token, if a role is irrelevant, then there are a ton of other issues.

Likewise, in over 30 years of gaming, I can count the number of campaigns on one hand where the party didn't have a strong melee fighter or two. Why? Because it WAS REQUIRED. No muscle in the party tends to make parties too squishy to survive. Yet I don't see anyone looking for eliminating fighters from parties.

MMOs took their lead from AD&D. There's something to be said for a balanced party of a fighter, a rogue, a divine caster (Cleric/Druid) and an arcanist. IT's awesome when one member is able to branch out and help out in another area, but there still needs to be some reason for a player to specialize in one of these paths. If all of a cleric's healing abilities (short of resurrection) can be duplicated through mundane means, there is little point to playing a cleric to type and a massive emphasis on playing against type and embracing an archetype other than healer.

I can't count how many times I have played in campaigns where my healer was merely dead weight because the party didn't need one, due to wands, potions, and other mundane healing.

Another palad...alignment post. Cool.

Seriously though, im all in favor of scrapping alignment.

Well, it didn't start out that way, however, it is impossible to discuss scrapping alignment without also finding a way to address the elephant in the room that is the class almost 100% DEFINED by alignment - a class that a large portion of the player base does not want to see eliminated.

@ Nox

Let's say the CRB has a class called Champion of Ideals.

This class had eight branches, one representing each alignment other than True Neutral.

One of these branches are the Lawful Good Paladins.

In world, absolutely nothing changes.

How does this affect you?

We already have 12 core base classes coming out. Now you want to add SEVEN MORE? The point of PF2 is to simplify.

I get what you are saying, and at first blush, it almost makes some sense. But here's the problem.

All eight versions need to be core, base classes that come with their own, mostly unique level progression from 1-20 and all of them need to exhibit the same rigid alignment restriction that the Paladin does to LG. For some, especially CN, that is going to be a logical quagmire, since the nature of CN is TO BE UNBOUND.

Furthermore, do we really need seven more martial fighter classes? And once we open that bottle, giving each alignment its own flavour, does it stop there? Or are we then going to start just making these abilities more feat-like, as plenty of players will want some of column A and a bit of column B, all while playing a PC from column C.

For the record, I'm not against more classes. I think that the more classes that are brought in as core. BASE classes, the more complicated things are quickly going to get though. In such a system, one would almost, by force, need to adopt a rule prohibiting these classes from multi-classing, just to keep things sane. Hell, in the campaigns I am part of, the house rule is already that Paladins can only multi-class with fighter or cleric, but that's a house rule we have settled on.

It seems some of the biggest reasons the existence of Paladins as a strictly LG class is even an issue really comes back to just a few glaring problems. First, there is the "Paladin of (deity name here)" issue. Paladins, don't need to worship a specific deity to obtain their blessings. They need to follow the path of LG. Outside of following that path, they could in fact be devotees/worshipers of pretty much any deity. That does not make said deity where they get there gifts from though. Granted, it would be illogical for the Paladin to worship any deity devoted to chaos and suffering, but that falls into following the LG path, not with a conflict of religious tennant. Secondly, there is the multi-classing issue. One thing early editions of D&D got mostly right (IMHO) was restricting the Paladin's ability to multi-class. They couldn't do it. As I pointed out above, we modified things to allow more fighter or, if the Paladin IS a devotee of a particular deity, cleric. Those are the only options. That eliminates the many of the incentives for players to take the Paladin dip. Players taking a Paladin dip are ALMOST always doing it for power optimization, not for story-driven reasons.

The classic Paladin archetype has been around for 600+ years now. Many players want to attempt it. It isn't easy. The fun of playing a Paladin often comes from the challenge of following such a rigid code, or else losing the gifts of Paladin-hood.

OPening up the Paladin to any alignment as some of suggested makes ZERO sense. Creating seven more base classes makes more sense, but still seems awfully fraught with problems. Then the arguments begin that rigid codes of conduct are silly and that there should be no reason for alignment to come into play. Except for the Paladin, alignment rests at the very core of their being.

necromental wrote:

Inquisitor

Oracle
Bloodrager
Occultist
Summoner
..whatever

Although depending on how they go about their base classes and archetypes, maybe none will be necessary.

Like if rogue is full BAB that's a slayer, new action economy could subsume practically all that is unique in swashbuckler, and new gun rules maybe won't need a dedicated class (i think eric mona mention it will be a class but nevermind now). Even all of the those I mentioned could be archetypes (ok, you need a 3/4 bab 6th lvl divine casting class, as that is not present in the core).

Yeah, I agree that it’s classes which are hardest to do as archetypes/another class that are most pressing.

So the Kineticist isn’t remotely like any other class, and so is a natural candidate.

Likewise, the Occultist works very differently from any existing class, and so is another natural candidate.

Ditto for something like the Harrowed Medium.

This is the boat I am in. I would be very slow to add new classes, making damn sure that some combination of archetypes, skills, and playstyles couldn't be combined with relative ease in order to create the desired class effect.

Kineticist probably ranks at the very top of that list. It is a class entirely unto itself in how it is played and approached. Meanwhile, many of the others mentioned above feel more like they could be achieved through creative application of archetypes, skills, and RP.

I think the proliferation of classes is one of the things that has needlessly complicated D&D/PF over the years. Keep classes as incredibly basic as possible, make the add-ons and customizations where the different PC types come from. There's no need for a dedicated swashbuckler class if some combination of fighter and rogue mix can achieve it.

seriously, to me, the OP's original argument is

"When the DM makes things happen to our characters that we don't want to have happen because of a rule we don't think we should have to follow it's not fair.

In campaigns that I have been a part of, we don't share with each other our alignments. In fact, we share very little of our character's stats or composition. All that meta stuff is left on the sheet and private between the DM and the PCs.

That has, in the past, led to a Paladin paling about with a LE wizard. She was not some sort of openly evil, kill fluffy bunnies and enslave all inferior species evil. She was, however, very selfish with knowledge and power and had very little compunction against violating the physical (and later mental) spaces of others. The ends (her becoming a magical force with no peer) justified the means, so long asd those means did not bring more trouble than could be easily handled. In other words, not Lawful Stupid. She was also incredibly charismatic and enjoyed using her wiles to get what she wanted. After a bit, this also included her having fun making the Paladin very self-conscious, as she made it quite clear time and again that she was up for finding out who could out-sex whom (not in the pornographic sense- gets your minds out of the gutter, LOL).

For his part, the Paladin was very true to class when the party left the hamlet and began its adventure. When they settled in the city a bit later, the party had grown to be something of a family (sort of). They continued to have plenty of adventures, and the Paladin was a for many in the world, was essentially the face of this adventuring party. They began to gain a reputation as problem solvers - and his reputation grew as a force which truly evil people feared.

This was all fine and dandy until he had what became his "Sturm Brightblade moment" and he was called to task by another Paladin who had (through previous actions of the party) been wronged by the wizard's actions. Then it slowly came out through a pretty involved, intense, and utterly enjoyable RP session that the Paladin, through his actions working with the group, had been assisting an evil power become more powerful.

This evolved into a crisis of personal belief and had the Paladin begin questioning everything he "thought" he stood for. How could he have been a beacon of god and justice and not noticed the evil under his nose (and potentially other places). It also created a new conflict by giving him a chance to see the wizard in a new light and letting him reassess his relationship with her.

While he never became a "fallen" Paladin, he did find that his convictions did not serve him as well as they once did until after the party reached the next milestone moment in the campaign. At that point, he put his best Paladin foot forward in some pretty epic fashion that was further augmented by some great dice rolls. After that, he was able to continue to party with the wizard because he was able to make a strong case that it was his presence and influence that was keeping her from becoming an out-and-out exemplar of evil incarnate. He made it clear that he was set on keeping her from going entirely dark by helping her to learn to be good by example. He would be there to teach her and guide her to being a good person. He would also be there to end her should she slip.

This was all great RP, and it was largely dictated by the alignment mechanics with regards to Paladins paling around with evil characters. Removing the restriction on Paladins needing to be LG, or removing their prohibition to assisting evil characters would have probably eliminated this storyline.

Alignment as guidelines with SOME mechanical restrictions has always made sense to me. I do think that alignment became far too attached to too many mechanics at some point, likely late in the development of D&D 2E. It also has not helped that the systems over the years have gone out of their way to define what is and is not good and evil, instead of letting the PCs and DMs decide it.

Necromancy come to mind in this manner. At this point, necromancy is, by almost any measure, evil. Go back to AD&D though, and healing spells were from the necromancy school of magic, not the conjuration. Creating numerous subtypes of magic with alignment descriptors didn't help either. Had they just left the spells as being identified with a school, but nothing more, the alignment issues go away in terms of mechanics. The PCs and DMs then dictate how these spells interact and who can or cannot use them.

Alignment does need re-evaluation, but it absolutely should be here to stay.