Tsubutai's page

You have 3 focus points an encounter at most. Do you want a few high quality spells or a bunch of filler spells that are a waste of space?

I wouldn't want more damaging conflux spells, but some more utility options would be very good. Look at the options that the Monk gets: there are straightforward damage focus spells like Inner Upheaval and Medusa's Wrath but it also has options for self-healing/condition removal (Harmonize Self), teleportation (Shrink the Span), flight (Wind Jump), aoe blasting (Qi Blast), an extremely powerful defensive buff (Embrace Nothingness), and just going Super Saiyan (Qi Form). Sure, you can only use three in any given combat but being able to pick which ones you're going to use means you have tools to deal with a wide variety of situations and enemy abilities. I'd like the Magus to have a similarly broad array of options to pick between.

The easy way to buff the Inexorable Iron conflux spell would be to have it knock enemies prone on a regular fail rather than only on a crit - that would at least make it an interesting alternative to Force Fang for off-turns. Alternatively, they could lean further into the regenerating aspect of the subclass and have it give some healing.

I agree that Targe is more or less OK, it just feels a couple of steps below Firmament/Shadow.

I don't think that more strike options are necessarily needed, though - you can always take one of the fighting style archetypes like Mauler or Duellist if you want.

I've GM'd for a Laughing Shadow magus from levels 1 to 11 and played an Inexorable Iron magus to level 17, so I feel I have a reasonable level of experience with the class beyond the meta Starlit Span builds. IMO it's playable as-is - the biggest issues are that many conflux spells are just plain bad, the class is desperately lacking in feat options (especially at higher levels - with the remaster having condensed the refocus feats, there is a grand total of one level 18 feat to pick...), and the fact that Arcane Cascade is so underwhelming for some hybrid studies that it doesn't really justify the action cost to enter it. I wouldn't want to get rid of Arcane Cascade as the OP suggests - the concept and flavor are too cool to ditch IMO - but it does need to be buffed either by being accessible as a free action after casting a spell or by being made powerful enough to justify the setup requirements. IME each hybrid study has its own unique issues so it's more productive to go through them one by one to highlight pain points.

The first thing that stands out is that Starlit Span is a massive overperformer in power despite all its other unique features ranging from mediocre to non-existent; being able to reliably spellstrike every single turn is just that good. The second is that Laughing Shadow and Aloof Firmament should probably be the reference power level to aim for if the class ever does get further attention from Paizo: they both have starting conflux spells that are very useful because they directly alleviate the mobility issues of the melee magus, their two unique feats are both powerful and consistent with the flavor of the subclass, and they get very useful benefits and damage from arcane cascade. Twisting Tree is in quite a good spot too - its Cascade benefit of effectively getting to simultaneously wield a two-handed d8/deadly d6 reach weapon and have a free hand is great for utility. Its conflux spell is too situational to be regularly useful, however. Targe is slightly worse - the conflux spell offers decent action economy but does nothing to address the mobility problem, and the Cascade benefits are decent but nothing to write home about. Inexorable Iron and Unfurling Brocade are both pretty bad even though I love their flavor. Inexorable Iron's focus spell requires a crit fail against the magus low spell DC to do anything useful and its Cascade bonus provides too little temp HP to be really useful - a maximum of 10 per round at level 20 is just not really worth bothering with. Its unique feats are also very underwhelming. Unfurling Brocade has the issue of being far more MAD than any other hybrid study due to wanting both Str for grapples and Dex for AC (the others can all either dump Str or grab heavy armor proficiency/mighty bulwark and dump Dex) while also having bad feats and an underwhelming cascade benefit.

Given the above, the first thing I think the class would benefit from is a ground-up rework of Inexorable Iron and Unfurling Brocade, looking at their conflux spells, their unique feats, and what they get from Cascade. The second is just more feats to pick from, especially at higher levels - above level 12 the options become very thin indeed. Some feats could also stand to be rethought - for example, Hasted Assault could be great given the action economy issues of the class, but an extra Strike isn't really it; the feat would be much more attractive if the hasted action it granted could be used on move actions instead of Strikes. The third thing, which will hopefully be addressed at least partially in the forthcoming Lost Omens magic book, is the lack of Attack spell options.

This is great and I'll be buying on day one. I'd love another pack that compiles monster token art from non-bestiary rulebooks like Book of the Dead, Rage of Elements, and Howl of the Wild next!

For Str Monks it's +1 AC until level 5, and from 10-15. Since you explicitly can't train out of it, it might be an actively bad feat to take.

The Str-Monk's AC isn't optimized right out of the gate, but you're still at Level + 17 until you can bump dex for the last time at 5th level which is better than basically everybody who's not a Dex-Monk, or a heavy armor user who raises a shield.

Like there might be some reason to leave dex at +3 for some classes because they're pulled in a lot of directions statwise, but monks aren't really one of them. I guess this does save you from putting 2 stat increases into an off-stat to hit Dex +5, but it's not like you won't appreciate the +1 to Reflex, Stealth, etc.

I think you've made a typo or a mistake with your arithmetic: you need three stat increases to go from +3 to +5, so for a non-Mountain strength monk that starts with +3 dex and boosts dex at every opportunity, the new feat gives +2 AC from level 1 to level 4 and then +1 from level 5 to level 14. For a dex monk, it gives +1 AC from level 1 to level 9. An AC increase that spans 14 or 9 levels is a very significant boost. Having the freedom to boost tertiary ability scores without tanking your AC is also significant - Dragon, Gorilla, and Stumbling stance all have ugprade feats that depend on charisma skills, for example, so being able to shift some ability boosts from dex to cha is valuable.

Tsubutai wrote:

Second, all cloth casters become just as good as regular martials at avoiding hits.

Armor Proficiency gives the same bonus to all casters right at level 3 (or 1 for Humans). It's only a change for Monks.

Aside from coming on line later, the big difference is that casters using armor proficiency have to invest in strength to avoid penalties since they'll need at least studded leather to hit the cap whereas the dragonblood feat lets them dump it and focus on other more useful stats.

The new Dragonblood heritage has a level 1 feat called Scaly Hide that gives the character a +2 item bonus to AC with a dex cap of +3 when unarmored, with the item bonus being cumulative with armor potency runes, mystic armor, and bands of force. With this feat, any monk or cloth caster with at least +3 dex can hit the +5 AC cap at level 1, when previously they'd have had to wait until level 10 (for a dex monk starting with +4 dex) or level 15 (for a cloth caster or Strength monk not using Mountain Stance) to do so. Since the effect is cumulative with mystic armor, a cloth caster willing to spend a level 1 slot on that spell can even reach the cap when starting with just +2 dex.

This has two interesting consequences - first, Monk becomes hands down the tankiest class at low levels due to the combination of Expert unarmored proficiency from Level 1 and the +1 or +2 AC granted by this feat. Second, all cloth casters become just as good as regular martials at avoiding hits.

Monk archetype imposing a 1d4-round cooldown on Flurry of Blows was a pleasant surprise.

Monk. Excellent self-healing, great mobility, decent damage/control, and gets master spellcasting proficiency innately.

Love this package, but I'd like to know if there are any plans to update it for compatibility with Monster Core, and if there are, will the update be free for existing owners or a paid add-on?

Looks great, hopefully there'll be a Foundry VTT module for it as well.

Squiggit wrote:

Champion armor progression is really janky. Ostensibly one of their unique advantages is enhanced armor proficiency but it's... only sometimes? Being consistently one step ahead like Fighters are would make a lot more sense and define their niche better.

I think that's because their armour progression is pegged to the monk - because unarmoured cannot hit max dex until 10th level, the champion has to slow-roll their expert armour or else they'd be awkwardly far ahead (they still are at levels 7-9, except against Mountain Stance monks who hit the full +5 at 6th)

If anything, that's an argument for boosting the Monk's early armor progression rather than for holding the Champion back. You could give Monks an early class feature similar to the Barbarian feat Animal Skin so that when unarmored they get a +1 or +2 item bonus to AC with a Dex modifier cap of +4 or +3. That'd allow the Champion to have a more natural armor proficiency progression and also help alleviate the severe MADness of non-Mountain Str Monks.

The class as a whole feels solid enough to not really need many changes beyond the inevitable ones resulting from the removal of alignment. There are only two things I'd really like to see:

* A variant/subclass/class archetype that is not directly tied to any deity

* As with the Monk, their bump from Expert to Master armor proficiency should be shifted from Level 13 to Level 11 so they are always one proficiency tier ahead of martials like Fighters, Rangers, Thaums, and Maguses that go from Trained to Expert armor proficiency at 11.

I'd like to see a number of minor changes:

* Brawling Focus to become a class feature obtained at relatively low level rather than a feat - most martials including Champions can get crit spec as part of their regular class progression rather than having to pay a feat tax for it, and I can't see any good reason for the Monk to be different in this respect.

* The bump from Expert to Master unarmored proficiency to occur at level 11 rather than 13 so you don't have a weird gap where their armor proficiency becomes equal to that of other martials that go from Trained to Expert at 11 (Fighter, Ranger, Thaumaturge, Magus) when high armor proficiency is supposed to be one of the Monk's unique things.

* Either Flurry of Blows to be removed from the Monk archetype entirely or Monks to get a non-poachable Flurry upgrade (maybe a significant MAP reduction on the second strike?) at level 10. As it stands, Monk is the only martial class whose signature attacking quality can be poached in its entirety at full power without limitation or restriction, which feels pretty bad.

* Ki Strike to get a couple of buffs: first, the status bonus should increase to +2 at rank 5 and +3 at rank 9 in parallel with the damage dice, and second it should last for 2-3 rounds rather than one to make it more useful at low levels.

* There should be some new weapon stances, particularly for staves/polearms, and some of the existing weapon stances (hi Shooting Stars...) should be buffed.

* They should get a class feature that lets them spend an action to get a +2 circumstance bonus to AC like Raise a Shield while unarmed or wielding a Parry weapon. Say no to shield monks!

In an FA game, Swashbuckler is a solid dip for any Cha caster to take with Multitalented because you can grab One For All and the reflex save proficiency bump feat and then be done with it.

Of course. Rogues are always getting +3 CON bonus. They just dump their class's key attribute. It's so obvious.

There's absolutely nothing stopping a Thief rogue from starting with 18 dex and 16 con.

There's no bad stat per se but there are clearly some stats that are more powerful than others and more favorable to have as your key attribute - dex and wis are at the top of the tree since they govern saves and AC/perception as well as boosting skills with excellent skill feats, then con because every PC wants hit points and good fort saves, then str/cha, and finally int.

I've been running Mantle of Gold (book 1 of the Sky King's Tomb AP) with my group, which features half a dozen or so quests that are resolved using some variant of the Victory Point subsystem. I've found that the presentation of these quests makes them quite hard to run because the details of the quest and the progression of the subsystem are spread over 5-6 pages. While the wealth of detail given on those pages certainly helps flesh the quests out, it makes it very difficult to quickly discern the quest's structure or refer to the text when running it. In addition, points that tie into other quests or future events can easily be overlooked, especially if they are not highlighted. I therefore think it'd be good to include a one-page cheat sheet that outlines the flow and structure of the event (i.e., the number of tasks available to the PCs, the number of VPs to earn in each one, and the number of rounds of checks that the PCs can perform), any unique features of the quest, points that tie into other quests or events in the AP, and the rewards available to the PCs if any. To show how this could work, I've created such a cheat sheet for the *Burntown Temps* quest from the first chapter of Mantle of Gold, which takes up 5.5 pages in the existing text. The cheat sheet can be seen here (minor unavoidable spoilers for Sky King's Tomb): https://i.gyazo.com/d8728648b128929f3f7189f9053d9d4e.png

I really think that including cheat sheets like this would make it a lot easier to run subsystem events in general and greatly reduce the amount of prep GMs need to do to run them well.

Didn’t they playtest a similar “expert proficiency, but success to critical success shift with the animist though? I don’t think there is a hard “not possible” line with saving throw boosters.

The animist didn't get degree of success boosts on all three saves, though, which the remaster rogue apparently does. Having a class with upticks on all three saves absolutely is a major departure from the existing design.

Tsubutai wrote:

JiCi wrote:

The fighter may be balanced, but I feel like it's missing unique class features to differenciate it from other martial classes.

Some will be quick to defend the Legendary proficiencies, but... what else?

Bravery is a major unique point - Fighter is the only class that gets to upgrade successes to critical successes for all three saves. It is also the only class that gets bonus swappable class feats.

Bravery only works against fear effects.

A fighter gets no Legendary save.

Yes, I know that Bravery only works against fear effects. That's still much more than any other class gets on their 'weak' save. IME, the master to legendary upgrades are much less valuable than the expert to master upgrades because crit fails are much less common than successes and players will generally reserve hero points to reroll crit fails anyway. Master - Master - half Master is a significantly better save profile than Expert - Master - Legendary.

The fighter may be balanced, but I feel like it's missing unique class features to differenciate it from other martial classes.

Some will be quick to defend the Legendary proficiencies, but... what else?

Bravery is a major unique point - Fighter is the only class that gets to upgrade successes to critical successes for all three saves. It is also the only class that gets bonus swappable class feats.

I think the fighters power is a bit exaggerated. Most other martials get riders to damage of some kind that make their attacks hit harder, fighters lack that in exchange for the accuracy, an accuracy that is still affected by the dice rolls.

That's not strictly true since fighters get more bonus damage from Weapon Specialization than other martials as a result of their higher proficiency. They also benefit more from runes and weapon modifications with powerful effects on crit like Phantasmal Doorknob and Crushing Runes because as the class that crits most frequently they are most likely to proc those effects.

3-Body Problem wrote:

R3st8 wrote:

Honest question why is clone bad? I feel like its overrated because unless you get a party wipe your allies will bring you back and you can always go to a major capital and pay a lawful church to revive you later, besides we have feats that have a similar effect like the psychic's "Become Thought" or the animist "Eternal Guide" so why not just slap a similar feat on wizards and call it "Arcane Clone" or something? it just feels weirdly arbitrary to me.

I can give some context here.

When combined with Magic Jar which I insinuated when I mentioned both spells in the same post, Clone allows you to not worry about defending your abandoned form. If you ever wish to return to the body you had before you can just die and pop back up as yourself.

Can't you just do the same as a psychic and use Possession + Become Thought?

Possession is an uncommon spell and thus not expected to be available by default, while Become Thought is a level 20 capstone feat that will only be available for a few sessions in a typical 1-20 campaign; on top of that, its resurrection effect can only be used once per in-game year. It's not at all comparable to a spammable spell that becomes available at level 15.

Oh and as for electric arc its not 2d4 + ability mod (till the remaster when the mod goes away) its D4 + ability mod unless you heighten it. Heighten it and its not per day its 2d4 (in circumstances) + ability if you use one of your 1st level slots which makes it limited per day.

Uh, this is not how heightening cantrips works at all. Cantrips automatically heighten to the highest spell level you can cast and never consume a spell slot when cast. Electric arc cast by a level 3 or 4 caster always does 2d4 + mod damage and can be cast an unlimited number of times.

At level 17, the Tome gives a +2 circumstance bonus to all your attacks. At that stage your damage should be crazy.

Unless I am misreading the Tome implement's description, this is incorrect: the circumstance bonus to attack rolls never rises above +1. The Paragon benefit is:

"The initiate benefit's circumstance bonus to Recall Knowledge from holding your tome increases from +1 to +2. When you succeed at the Recall Knowledge check granted by the tome's adept benefit, the bonus applies to all attack rolls you make before the start of your next turn, not just your next one."

The increase from +1 to +2 *only* applies to the initiate benefit, i.e. the recall knowledge check. The adept bonus changes from applying to the first attack to applying to all attacks, but it is not increased.

Anytime we have failed to complete the entire mission objectives it's not been from combat it's been from martial characters getting multiple crit failures on social skill checks. Just about every thread about optimizing characters or improving a class I've seen is centered around combat.

This was my experience in PFS games as well and is why I eventually retired my PFS Monk for a Thief Rogue who could cover a lot of skills that were commonly missing in pickup games. It's much less of a problem when you're playing ongoing campaigns with regular groups who know enough to coordinate their skill proficiencies so more or less everything is covered, and I suspect that's why it's not talked about so much.

Who's taking any of the following as a standard daily loadout option: Aqueous Orb, Bind Undead, Blazing Dive, Bottomless Stomach, Bracing Tendrils, Clairaudience, Cozy Cabin, Crashing Wave, Cup of Dust, Curse of Lost Time, Distracting Chatter, Dividing Trench, Dream Message, Elemental Annihilation Wave, Enthrall, Familiar's Face, Feet to Fins, Firework Blast, Ghostly Weapon, Gravity Well, Hypnotic Pattern, Impending Doom, Levitate, Locate, Magnetic Acceleration, Meld into Stone, Mind Reading, Nondetection, Oneiric Mire, Ooze Form, Organsight, Paralyze, Percussive Impact, Persei's Precautions, Phantom Prison, Rally Point, Roaring Applause, Rouse Skeletons, Safe Passage, Sea of Thought, Secret Page, Shadow Projectile, Shifting Sand, Shrink Item, Sparkleskin, Temporal Twin, Time Jump, Wall of Virtue, Warding Aggression, and Web of Eyes.

I have played with casters that have made effective use of Gravity Well, Impending Doom, Ooze Form, and Shadow Projectile and I have *absolutely no idea* what Roaring Applause is doing on this list since it's one of the strongest control/boss-debuffing spells in the game. Stripping reactions alone can turn a boss fight around, and the failure effect (target automatically provokes AOO every turn and is slowed 1 in addition to losing all reactions, for as long as the caster cares to sustain the spell) is functionally an instant fight-ender.

I would change panache so that once you get it, you retain it until the end of your next turn and it is not consumed by doing a finisher. That way you actually get to use things like the panache speed boost, precise strike, and your bonuses to panache-generating skillchecks, making it easier to retain panache over the course of a fight.

I'd also make Parry and Riposte a level 12-14 feat rather than 18.

Yeah, it'd be great if there was a low-level class ability along the lines of dueling parry. Something like this:

-----------------------
Monk's Parry

One action
Requirements You are unarmed or wielding a Monk weapon with the Parry trait
You can parry attacks against you with your limbs and weapons. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to AC until the start of your next turn as long as you continue to meet the requirements.
------------------------

Then change the AC bonus of Crane Stance and Crane Flutter from circumstance to status so they're not made redundant by this and shields.

For bonus points, add a level 10-12 feat that lets you have Monk's Parry constantly active.

You don't need a lot of mobility to flank. Sudden Charge is what I refer to as practical mobility versus the monk having 65 to 70 feet of movement in one action but no need to travel that far too often for most combats.

Sudden charge is two actions to stride twice and then strike

With the same two actions, a monk can stride about the same distance and then strike twice with flurry.

I don't quite see how the former is "practical mobility" but the latter isn't, despite being strictly better.

Ki Strike is a pretty decent damage booster for Monks, especially with the upcoming refocus change making it possible to consistently use it twice per fight at level 2 and three times by level 4. It could stand to be buffed so that it adds the higher of a d6 or the current weapon/unarmed attack damage dice, but eh.

As for Monk changes that I'd personally want:

* A bo staff/polearm stance. Just copying and pasting Whirlwind Stance from the Staff Acrobat archetype would be fine. It's wild that the class has sword and bow stances but not a stance for one of the iconic martial arts weapons.

* Monks (and Champions) to get their bump from Expert to Master (un)armor(ed) proficiency at level 11, when fighters, rangers, and maguses get their bump to Expert, rather than 13 so you don't have a weird two-level interlude where half of the offense-focused martial classes are just as good at defending themselves as the two martials that are hyperspecialized in defense.

Things I want, in no particular order:

Monks to get a bo staff/polearm stance. Just copying and pasting Whirlwind Stance from the Staff Acrobat archetype would be fine. It's wild that the class has sword and bow stances but not a stance for one of the iconic martial arts weapons.

Swashbucklers to get auto-scaling proficiency in Acrobatics and/or their Style skill. If the core functionality of a class depends on passing skill checks then it should always get auto-scaling proficiency in the relevant skills, in the same way that Inventors get auto-scaling Crafting and Thaums get auto-scaling Esoteric Lore.

Monks and Champions to get their bump from Expert to Master (un)armor(ed) proficiency at level 11, when fighters, rangers, and maguses get their bump to Expert, rather than 13 so you don't have a weird two-level interlude where half of the offense-focused martial classes are just as good at defending themselves as the two martials that are hyperspecialized in defense.

Champions to get access to Paragon's Guard stance. I really don't like the fact that the iconic sword and board class doesn't get to eliminate the action tax of raising a shield until level 20 when Fighters and Swashbucklers can do it by level 12.

Panache to be something that persists for a fixed duration once acquired rather than earned and then spent on a Finisher immediately afterwards. If getting panache meant retaining it until the end of your next turn and it was not consumed by doing a Finisher, it'd be a lot more attractive for non-Gymnasts to take advantage of their panache bonuses and Derring Do, and a lot easier to keep panache up, especially against bosses. I think that'd address a lot of the Swash's current pain points.