Vallarthis's page

I expect it's less about balance and more about added complexity, crowding the typical battle map, and one player's turn taking a lot longer. Better to make that an opt-in thing for brave GMs.

I can't be the only one thinking that sounds a lot like the Thu'um/Shouts from Skyrim (and is delighted).

Ooh, I would *definitely* play a Runeknight. That sounds very cool.

As a GM, if a player believes they have found an 'optimal' strategy, I feel I'm not doing my job (especially if it's boring). A few ideas to liven things up:

- a hungry beastie has been following the trail of corpses left by the party, and when the rest are busy in the next room, it decides the bard will make easy pickings.
- the baddies have skirmishers of their own, who sneak around to attack from behind.
- a spellcaster baddie casts summon monster through the open door, or heightened silence on their bruiser.

Or, to come at it another way, institute an Anathema for the bard class: you lose the power to inspire courage in someone if they see you acting cowardly. Important to make sure they know this isn't calling them a coward for playing smart, just trying to give them a more interesting challenge and help the mechanics line up with the fiction.

Obviously this isn't a lot of help to you as a player, but it's what I got.

"Breach-loading flintlock with paper cartridges" was enough for me to suspend disbelief just as easily as with crossbows' unrealistic loading time, but everything Michael just said makes the question actually cool instead of an obstacle to be overcome.

Midnightoker wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

I suppose, but we can extend that argument to, say, a horned helmet that does D4 piercing, or even one of the specific armors (I think there are Full Plate ones) that have an attack. Would you let someone throw their armor or helmet that they are wearing with this ability?

Even if RAW is yes, GM FIAT and other existing mechanics (such as wearing gauntlets to make attacks with them, or armor to protect yourself, the latter of which takes excessive time to don or remove) would kick in and say no.

Imagine how hilarious this ability would be if Spiked Armor was still a thing.

You launch yourself at the enemy and then return to your hand (causing a pardox and disappearing from existence).

I now want a Cannon Ball feat with "oversized" firearms, where you can shoot someone one or two sizes smaller than you at enemies, dealing bludgeoning damage to the target, as well as half the bludgeoning damage to the "ammunition," with persistent burning damage equal to the weapon damage dice.

Hell, don't make it a feat, make it a monster ability, call it Cannon Fodder, and I'll be happy.

Specifically, an ogre loading goblins into its blunderbuss. It's begging to be a scatter attack.

Honestly since Rebounding Assault is already on the Way of the Drifter (the melee Class), I think it might make more sense to just turn this into a gap closing ability that you can regrip the weapon as part of the attack.

Like the thing that's easy to visualize is:

- Throw weapon

- Shoot weapon faster

- Half your speed Stride to target

- Draw weapon from targets chest for free

And the above is something that we've seen a lot in popular culture/video games/etc.

It's easy to understand how it can be visualized and it follows along with the Drifter's already built kit (it kinda mirrors the level 1 and Sword and Pistol).

They are already the melee-ish Class, I see no reason to have the dang thing fly back to their hand when it could be used to close the distance and focus on the target.

That also alleviates weird attack cycle shenanigans where you are fighting someone in melee, you throw your weapon at someone else, and then you get your weapon back and make a Strike against someone else entirely.

At least that's my take. If it stays in its current form, I would really hope it goes to a Feat instead of mandatory because it is a little ridiculous.

If you shoot first, then throw at the opening the bullet made, it also works for gun blades.

Excellent! I figured there would be something, but since I didn't see it mentioned anywhere I thought it bore mentioning. Thank you for the explanation!

The sword-and-pistol style is spectacular, no question, but I'd like to play a drifter who uses a two-handed gun as both ranged and melee weapon. Rules for bayonets or bashing with a rifle butt would be welcome.

Much obliged.

Personally, I'd expect, of those Classes remaining, only Inquisitor, Shaman, some of the Occult Classes (particularly Kineticist, Occultist, and Psychic, but possibly Medium or Mesmerist as well), and possibly something to handle Gunslinger (I'm still on the Drifter train, myself) will actually be converted to PF2 as full Classes.

Why psychic? Not disputing, just curious. I'd have thought they were the epitome of an occult sorceror, so I must be missing something.

They haven't spent any time on the Inquisitor though? And have on the summoner? The next book is going to be Magus and summoner and there's a playtest forum for both that is hard to miss.

My apologies for being unclear. I intended to suggest that including the summoner in Secrets of Magic does a lot to expand the kinds of characters one can play, while the magus accomplishes less in this regard.

The magus clearly has an avid following, so it's not surprising they chose it. My viewpoint is skewed, I suppose, since my current game includes both a fighter/sorceror and sorceror/fighter who are pleased as punch with their characters, and of the players I know personally, several are excited for the possibilities of the summoner, and none for the magus. The dangers of getting your data from a small sample size.

It's annoying to see them spend their time on making classes for concepts that already work in the material that exists, like magus and inquisitor, when there are popular classes we can't meaningfully replicate yet like summoner, gunslinger (fingers crossed for 'drifter'), and occultist. I'm not saying they shouldn't be classes, just that it's vexing to see them take priority.

Verily, I miss pathfinder fridays something fierce, but I am resigned to the fact that the hassles of trying to do it with everyone at home make it...well, not impossible, but impractical. We'll be lucky if we get a blog post, I imagine. Sad to say.

I've also been afraid of trying the wizard and cleric classes since some issues back in 2nd edition D&D, although at least with the wizard there was also the 'OK, I cast Magic Missile, now what use am I?' aspect.

That's a joke with my group to this day.

Honestly I'd be astounded if this change hasn't already been in Mark's notebook for weeks now. He's a smart cookie, and I have every confidence the final version will be great.

The only concern I have is whether I will be able to give my dire porcupine Beast Eidolon persistent piercing damage on a crit...

Half my table loves swinginess, and therefore the d20. The other half wants a bit of reliability, and would prefer a 3d6 system. Since pleasing everyone is impossible, I can't fault them for staying with what's familiar.

Same goes for Vancian casting. If there are five different systems each with an equal share of support, they're not going to fundamentally change the system if it is going to please 20% of the audience either way. (I have no idea what the actual breakdown of support is, I just grabbed some easy numbers for sake of example).

Mammoths hang on whenever the benefit of changing isn't enough to outweigh the benefits of familiarity.

Does anyone have an idea how long the designers have before they need to hand the book over to editing to get it out in time? I'm curious how much time they have to actually digest and implement the playtest data, as that dictates an upper limit on how much the design can change. If it's, like, two months, a ground-up redesign doesn't seem feasible.

Bast L. wrote:

I hope not. Rules specificity is one of the best things PF2 has going for it, imo. Clear rules covering many situations. "Ask your GM" is just lazy. It puts more work on the GM, and makes it unclear what characters you can play, and how they'll work in a game where it's useful to plan your character out many levels in advance.

One example of PF2 being very good about rules specificity is the Prescient Planner feat. Someone wanted to take it in my game, and I was like, "ugh, I hate all those matter creation feats, they're always like, 'ask the GM if the item is okay,'" but then I read it, and PF2's version is not up to me at all. It's very clear what you can make, and no input is needed from the GM.

I need to note that I disagree on this.

PF2 has clearly leaned away from rules specificity compared to PF1, which heartily encouraged it. It's the difference between "trained/expert/master/legendary Acrobatics task to Balance" and "specific DCs for specific balancing widths in inches, with specific DC increases/decreases for angle of incline/situations". There's a lot more GM-dependent bonuses in PF2 vs the "if you flip your hat upside down and wear it, you get a +1 bonus to convincing people that you're a circus performer" of PF1.

However, I will agree that intent on some of the rules (Battle Medicine likely being the prime one) hasn't necessarily been conveyed clearly.

I strongly agree with both of you. You seem to be using relative terms with different points of reference: Cyouni is comparing it to PF1, whereas Bast appears to be referring to something more like 5e. PF2 is, in my view, the best of both worlds.

A "Hide User" button for these forums would be a great quality of life improvement.

Were they perhaps partial to the Bloodrager in 1E? This seems like an interesting effort to recreate it.

I'm glad they had fun, that's really all that matters.

None of us have ever played 1e, as it happens. I'm pretty sure this player would have loved the bloodrager, though. :)

Midnightoker wrote:

Nice write ups!

On this portion:

Quote:

The third magus was the shooting star magus with a Returning javelin. His build included 0 magus class feats, instead taking all barbarian multiclass feats, and he had a great time. With rage and giant instinct's oversize weapon, he actually had better damage than the other group's powergamer maul user.

Can you describe how they were able to make Rage work with the Magi. Did they cast spells and then Rage and duke it out? Or did they opt for Moment of Clarity?

Just curious how that interaction worked out.

And Clumsy seems extra rough for a thrower.

Can't see the payoff for so much investment, though thematically striking somebody w/ lightning javelins seems like a cool, primal, barbarian theme.

Oddly, despite taking shooting star synthesis to work with his javelin, his actual weapon of choice was a bastard sword. The javelin only got used when he couldn't or shouldn't close to melee.

Nice write ups!

On this portion:

Quote:

The third magus was the shooting star magus with a Returning javelin. His build included 0 magus class feats, instead taking all barbarian multiclass feats, and he had a great time. With rage and giant instinct's oversize weapon, he actually had better damage than the other group's powergamer maul user.

Can you describe how they were able to make Rage work with the Magi. Did they cast spells and then Rage and duke it out? Or did they opt for Moment of Clarity?

Just curious how that interaction worked out.

Yeah, he'd cast any buffs he wanted, load a spell into his weapon, then rage and rely on weapon attacks to see him through thereafter. I expect moment of clarity would have been his next feat if the character leveled up. I'm not saying it was an excellent build, but he was having a blast with it and didn't seem to suffer much from not spellstriking in the latter turns of combat.

I've had the second (and final) session with the second group now.

The phantom summoner continues to feel straightjacketed by the manifest action taking a full 3 actions. She had plenty of opportunities for neat tricks by unmanifesting the eidolon or warp it back to her side, but losing a whole turn to do it was prohibitive. The one thing they did that took advantage of the eidolon's impermanence was that when the rest of the party escaped a bad situation but the eidolon was trapped behind, they decided to just run and hope she hit the 100' limit or, failing that, if it got dropped they could heal her and still all be out of harm's way.
The summoner proved unexpectedly resilient again; the party was split into two groups, and both were getting hammered with AoEs, with the summoner in one group and the eidolon in the other. Despite getting both sets of attacks, the summoner held on and kept fighting on both fronts.

The two slide caster magi played pretty much exactly as you'd expect magi to play: they scoot up to a baddie and spellstrike. These two use cantrips exclusively for spellstriking, saving their slots for things like Fly and Haste, or Weapon Storm for area effect. The players talked a lot about which cantrips they were using, and the consensus was that Electric Arc is the best because it still has an effect when your spell roll or DC fails, which is often, and Telekinetic Projectile is for when you are confident of a successful hit (like smashing through a wall). Other cantrips are only worthwhile for trying to hit elemental weaknesses, they concluded.
With slide casting, the class plays very much like the consummate gish it is meant to be, at least against lower-level foes so your spells can hit often enough. One of the players is running a warpriest in another game, and the other has a fighter/sorceror, and they both have a lot more fun with those characters than they did with the magus. There wasn't a big flavourful hook, apparently.

The third magus was the shooting star magus with a Returning javelin. His build included 0 magus class feats, instead taking all barbarian multiclass feats, and he had a great time. With rage and giant instinct's oversize weapon, he actually had better damage than the other group's powergamer maul user. The other two magi were a bit jealous of his character for having an option besides setting up spellstrikes.

Second group is an even split, two magi and two summoners.

The first magus chose sustaining steel, and as a result of needing to move around the battlefield a fair bit didn't get to use spellstrike much. If he had played a fighter with a maul and spellcasting multiclass instead, I don't think I would have noticed the difference. That player is a powergamer sort, and built his character with an eye towards maximum spike damage. He got one really good spellstrike in which made his night, but he expressed that those moments appear to be so few and far between, he probably wouldn't play another magus in its present form.
He did take martial caster to get himself some Jump spells, which was a spell several of our magi sought out, each independently. Some sort of feat or focus spell for a jump slam would probably be very popular.

The second magus was the same shooting star magus from first group, because we had a dropout last minute. I'll discuss him with the other group.

The first summoner chose a dragon eidolon. He badly wanted to use the breath weapon, but the rest of the party kept running into melee and leaving him without an angle, so he hasn't had a chance to use it yet. Evolution surge was deemed very good, providing scent and speed at crucial moments. When it came to casting spells, he opted to cast Haste on a magus, so obviously he feels the summoner has better action economy than the magus. There isn't all that much to say about his first session: everything was basically fine. The eidolon was fine in combat. The number of spell slots was fine. Managing two bodies was fine. He would entirely happy playing the summoner as-is.

The second summoner chose beast eidolon, and as a roleplayer type, is having a ball being two characters (one an adorable leshy, the other a Hulking bear). He ran a one-man good-cop/bad-cop routine on an NPC and discovered the power of two skill attempts against the same problem. This player hasn't had much experience with PF2, but doesn't appear to be having a problem grokking one character with two bodies. In fact, all the summoners I've run for so far don't seem to have any trouble wrapping their head around the shared HP pool, but none of them played PF1 to have preconceived notions of how the summoner works.
He tried a primal roar, which would have been useful if he had rolled better. The fights so far have been too close to use the charge.

The broad overview I've seen from all the players so far is that the summoner is pretty fun and effective in its current form, whereas the magus looks good on paper but struggles to make good in practice.
All the magus players have expressed a desire for more low-level spells, while the summoners haven't complained about their spell slots at all.
Probably the most common single phrase I've heard from my players is "slide casting is fun, but".

It looks like they're going to stick with Cha is the primary stat for all spontaneous classes. Which...ug, but I think they'll continue in that fashion.

Also, there's no Con classes at all, so hopefully that will be coming at some point. Kinetecists are the obvious choice, but perhaps other classes that are pure focus/cantrip classes would also be appropriate.

CON would work for the summoner, if there is a will to go that direction. You manifest your eidolon by sharing your life force with it.

I have two groups I and running through a scenario, I thought I would put my observations here. We've just started, I'll add more as we play.

The first group is 3 magi and a summoner.

Two of the magi chose slide casting, and the third chose shooting star with returning javelin, which I thought was clever. All three had plenty of fun with their schtick, and the shooting star player didn't seem annoyed about not getting the free move. There was plenty of talk at the table about how cool the various magus feats and features were, and they all made liberal use of the fact you can hold your spell in your weapon for a round to split a spellstrike up, which made them able to be more flexible with their actions than I was expecting.
The overall first impression from the magus players was that it is a class with lots of fun ideas, but missing most of your spells makes it a bit of a bummer in practice.

The summoner kept getting tripped up by manifesting taking a full turn. They were moving through a foggy town, not knowing if the next creatures they encounter are going to be monsters to fight or panicy townsfolk to rescue (who might freak out about her ghost), and guessing wrong meant she lost the first round of combat. Everyone felt a full round to manifest was punishing.
Once in combat, though, the eidolon proved a powerful tank, what with the summoner standing out of danger healing herself. The player seemed satisfied with it's attacks and damage, even though she only used boost eidolon once.

Some of them have been liberal with their slotted spells, so we'll get some data on their endurance in the next session, I'm sure.

If it played more like a monster, high stats and few abilities, would that step on the toes of other party members? If your Eidolon had at least as much + to hit as a fighter, but no shield block, lunging stance, power attack, etc, could you balance that?

Could we find a way to use the monster creation rules to make balanced Eidolons?

I contend that the opposite is the way to go. The to-hit bonus is the crown jewel of the fighter class, and if the eidolon matches it there will definitely be some hurt feelings. Perhaps more importantly, having few abilities means they will get boring fast. NPC monsters with few abilities are great because you fight them once or twice, see them do their schtick, and then fight something else. If you fought cyclopes for an entire adventure, you would be entirely sick of cyclopes by the end. On the other hand, more abilities is more room for customization, and more opportunity to make the eidolon feel monstrous or bizarre.

Vallarthis wrote:

Grankless wrote:

The idea of an artificer not only has legs, it's got like a dozen of them and they're powered by steam and barreling towards us at high speeds.

Just so long as it's Uncommon. Turning Golarion into a steampunk setting should be opt-in.

I don't think Grankless was specifying Steampunk with that visual buuuut Golarion has plenty of tech scattered throughout, a lot of Clockworks and golems but in Numeria we have Scifi non-stop and in Numeria we have plenty of Clockpunk stuff as well as guns.

Artificer aka magical crafty person is all over the world of Golarion.

And Numeria is awesome, but laser guns pretty much stay in Numeria, and that is a good thing. Even black powder weapons are handled carefully, which is also good. Golems aren't really 'tech', they're magical as all get-out and based on mythology.

Magical crafty person, sure, go nuts, but a steam-powered spider machine is pretty much the definition of steampunk. I suspect we don't actually disagree on the fundamental point here.

The idea of an artificer not only has legs, it's got like a dozen of them and they're powered by steam and barreling towards us at high speeds.

Just so long as it's Uncommon. Turning Golarion into a steampunk setting should be opt-in.

Figured it might be something worthy of discussion.

Definitely. I've tried playing this sort of character before a few times myself, and my finding has been that it's fine to have that preference, as a character trait, but building your character with the expectation of solving your problems that way, or something you are dogmatically committed to, is just fundamentally at odds with the heart of the game.

A pacifist negotiator is useless against animals, constructs, oozes, most aberrations and elementals, plenty of undead...

It only works in adventures tailored directly to that class, which does not bode well.

You have to be careful how much freedom you give for where you manifest your eidolon because of transpose. If you can manifest it anywhere within 100ft, with transpose that becomes a 100ft teleport at will.

Vallarthis wrote:

It might be best to make 'Monster: the class' (can't think of a decent name to propose) separately, fully and solely martial, and let the summoner focus on its own identity as a two-part PC. I would enjoy playing both of those.

A lot of these evolution would work great as racial feats. but if it was custom monster race. Most GMs would just go NOPE.

Could you elaborate on why? I am unclear on the reason.

It seems at least as easy to make a balanced class about being a freaky monster as it is to make a successful synthesist setup. Just off the top of my head I could imagine a Frankenstein monster with a sewing kit and a penchant for self improvement. I defy anyone to say that wouldn't be a hoot :)

It might be best to make 'Monster: the class' (can't think of a decent name to propose) separately, fully and solely martial, and let the summoner focus on its own identity as a two-part PC. I would enjoy playing both of those.

I would note that Synthesis builds negate the exploration mode issues of double checks, since the summoner can just ride inside the eidolon. As of course does taking the size increase so you can just ride on top of the eidolon. ...

Why not just have the eidolon carry the summoner without 'riding' it? They can heft 8 bulk before being encumbered, and carrying a medium character is pegged at 6 bulk. Hooray for piggybacks!

I'm confused why one would want to add disarm, trip or shove to unarmed attacks. Couldn't the eidolon take those skill actions regardless? Is it just to get the potency bonus from the summoner's handwraps/invested weapon?

I like the concept behind Dual Studies, but it doesn't feel right as a class feat. I would like to see it worked into your initial proficiencies. Maybe a summoner-specific skill feat.

Do archetypes taken by the summoner apply to the eidolon? Or perhaps you could pick to which of you the archetype benefits apply?

I want to have my angel Lay on Hands, and a dragon with Panache.

Disadvantage on saves that hit both of you is pretty rough, and not what I would have expected from how the rest of the class feels. I would have thought you roll once, and use that die result for both saves.

Overall, though, the class looks cool and I want to try one.

I've been wondering if an exile from the darklands could have darklands lore, as a terrain lore in the vein of forest lore or desert lore, or if that's too broad.

A Nex/Geb/Mana wastes AP could be a good fit for the 11-20 half of a split 3-and-3 AP if Abomination Vaults/Fist of the Ruby Phoenix does well enough for Paizo to continue with that model.

As always I think a full class is better because it will inherently come with a multiclass archetype.

Also, I think hero point manipulation really should be a full class with a multitude of different feats.

Not to mention that having more classes is always good in my book. No need to limit things.

The problem there is actually getting it printed. An archetype could show up in something like an adventure toolbox in the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix AP, whereas a dedicated samurai class would likely need to wait for a full dragon empires book. I hear the first one didn't sell great, so that could be a long time coming, if at all.

Also, archetypes dedicated to a theme or concept seem more flavorful than multiclass thus far, although that's wholly subjective. A multiclass archetype has too much ground to cover to get to grips with each aspect the main class touches on.

The samurai would make a decent LN champion. Their code is just as strict, but elevates duty and loyalty above any question of morality. They are about as bound to their lord as a paladin to their god. Use the "tenets of bushido" instead of "tenets of good/evil/neutrality", and their focus spells could be more ki or resolve themed. Ronin could be the CN counterpart, perhaps.

What is the best spell for a Spellcasting familiar?

I would have said Heal, in case you drop and they can bring you back up,

Effusion wrote:

Mellored wrote:

Any good way of turning your familiar into a mount?

You have to make it one size category larger than yourself, so I guess you can cast enlarge on it. It lasts 5 minutes so it could get you through a combat.

that gives you flying a few levels earlier.

A creature needs the Mount special ability to fly with a rider, pretty sure.

The default system works fine if you pick a class, then imagine your character based on that class identity. Where you run into problems is if you design a character first, and then try to fit that design into a class's silo. I enjoy the latter sort of character very much more, but there is always something that doesn't fit into any class's defined boundaries. I don't really want a double helping of class feats; I see the benefit of a tight budget. Just a free dedication, though, would help by extending the available possibility space in the direction I'm trying to go without the speedbump of buying access.

Looks like some didn't notice Nudge Fate has a slightly different lockout than most hexes:

"...changing the outcome appropriately. The spell then ends, and the target is temporarily immune for 1 minute."

The lockout happens when the spell actually accomplishes something, not just because you cast it. That feels a lot better.

Unrelated, but is it clarified anywhere if the witch MCD familiar has one less ability than normal for a familiar (making it 1), or one less than normal for a witch's familiar (which would then be 2)? I would assume it's the former, but it's ambiguous.

A nephilim aasimar lineage would be really easy: just two feats. A lineage feat at level 1, and "nephilim magic" at level 9. With flavour text, that's one column. There just needs to be somewhere thematically appropriate to tuck it in, if enough people want it.

I think playing someone with a gigantism condition feels very different from someone who is very big, while being a typical size for their ancestry. Do correct me if I'm wrong.

You know what would be really easy to implement? A half-nephlim human heritage. The PF1 nephilim entry describes them having half-human children, which are basically like humans but especially big and strong. You might even be able to fit it on a single page, and it sounds like it would satisfy the majority of what people are looking for. Maybe do a Large size full nephilim eventually, maybe not.

A giant-themed ancestry definitely sounds cool, but this would be easy to get out quickly and satisfy a lot of people.