Witch of Miracles's page

Honestly, I always felt like Hunt Prey was just learning from 1E Slayer. Studied Target was just so utterly practical and smooth compared to the favored enemy system ranger was saddled with. Sure, it took actions at lower levels... but most people would take that over their class mechanics turning off entirely when they fought the wrong enemy. It just made sense to slap 1E slayer's core thing onto the new ranger, since it accomplished something similar with less grief to the player.

Persistent damage stacking would blow out certain abilities. The runesmith playtest rune that adds bleed to weapons, for example, would've been even stronger than it already was (and it was pretty ridiculous just because you could prep them to pop later).

I personally find that really unintuitive, but that's just me.

I also think it would be bad formatting to have to check trait tags instead of just... reading the damage type next to the damage, which is the place it's most relevant.

This has all been a bit messy, but I am glad to see them taking feedback and responding quickly.

Seen more than my share of dev teams that stick to their guns, either in a misguided attempt to save face or out of sheer stubbornness. It's refreshing to see something else for a change.

I'm genuinely unsure why the game bothers to have the player suggest skills for monster ID. By RAW, the skills you can use are largely fixed anyways. Why negotiate?

At every table I've run or played at, it's been:

Player: "Hey, I want to ID this thing. What's the relevant skill?"
GM: "Arcana or Crafting."

The most negotiation we might get is a followup, "Any chance Lore (whatever) might be relevant?"

The GM is always free to allow alternate skills at higher DCs, of course. But I think that's houserule territory?

Way too dramatic of an opinion. We're gonna see clarifications on instance of damage quite soon, pretty sure. In the end, they needed to clarify it so even a bad interpretation is better than none.

The thing is, most people with a stake in the answer to the question had basically already settled on how to do it. We wanted an answer more as a formality.

Then they gave us an answer that we pretty much universally liked less than what we were already doing, even though what we were already doing was available as a way to answer.

Then they started backtracking and saying, no, we mean this other thing that's better but still confusing and still not what we were already doing and thought was fine.

The crux of it is, there was already a received interpretation. It's not errata vs. nothing. It's errata vs. what we were doing already.

I do think it's also worth noting that skill feat quality heavily influences skill selection, and Kip Up almost makes it worth investing in acrobatics by itself. A lot of other skill choices just have extremely weak feat options.

Since several people have mentioned it, I'd like to say I agree that rarity impacting RK DC was a huge miss. It'd be one thing if the bonuses in the game could really get overinflated like 1E. But the end result in 2E is that you normally do the worst at learning about the creatures you would most like to know about, both mechanically and narratively. It's really frustrating.

It's a bit of simulationism the game doesn't really handle well.

It kind of really is, which frustrate me as a GM because sometimes I like being able to let characters who want to be smart feel smart and give them info but the baseline framework for RK is so wretched. Highly action intensive, highly volatile even with training, low payoff (you essentially get one piece of information). Even purists tend to rarely run RK strictly by RAW because it's so bad, sometimes even without realizing it.

... Reminded of another tabletop I play where its RK mechanic has no failure feature (you spend the action and just get the info) and gives you the monster's entire statblock instead of just answering one question and even then it's kind of a pain to get players interested in using it.

The PF2 version is so so so so so bad and so limited it always kind of baffles me when people worry about the power level of RK options.

Yeah. I've drastically buffed RK at my table. It is a free action, lets you select what kind of info you want from several categories, rewards an additional single piece of info for every 5 over the DC you hit (though I don't refund you if you hit a category with nothing), requires you to be at least trained for topics DC 15 or higher, and cannot be tried again. The only change I ever made to this rule since I adopted it was changing it from 2 pieces of info per to 1 piece per because I hadn't really accounted for multiple players being invested in RK.

This is a massive change.

The effect is that RK simply now functions instead of never getting used.

Bardic lore, Loremaster lore, esoteric lore, and warfare lore are the textbook examples of unspecific lores. A specific lore can only hit a narrow category (e.g. Fey Lore, Undead Lore).

EDIT: As a counterpoint to the idea that esoteric and warfare lores are specific lores, consider how odd it would be if taking diverse lore made your recall knowledge DCs for the same creatures higher because it lets you use RK for anything (unspecific, on your view) instead of just creatures and haunts and curses (specific, on your view).

It just seems like a pretty raw deal. Free action is significantly better than normal, but "will fail against on-level enemies and locks you out of further checks" seems significantly worse than normal.

-8 HPs on Rysky Surgery and Nat 1 on Medicine check followed by -8 HPs is the pinnacle of fun.

16 damage at level 1 from, say, a Wizard is nothing to scoff at.

Now you just need to convince your enemies to let you heal them to death.

"Guy with a negative medicine check that moves to you and uses risky surgery+treat wounds on you for 3A" would make for a pretty funny low level enemy.

An additional clarification on how stunned interacts with slowed would be nice, given the errata. Actions lost to stunned values aren't supposed to stack with actions lost to slowed. However, that applies to actions lost at the beginning of the turn when actions are given. So it seems like the action loss now does stack if you're stunned during your turn, but does not stack if you're stunned during someone else's. Is this intentional?

To be clear, the way you want it to work is that the target loses the rest of their turn, can't use reactions for a round, and loses one more action next turn, but losing one action this turn is too much?

"The way I want it to work" really depends a lot on the triggering effect. I don't think the reward was always out of line with the action cost and risk before this ruling, though there were abuse cases where it clearly was. I don't think readied power word stun is comparable to a monk readying stunning fist, which also isn't comparable to a gunslinger crit spec proccing on target of opportunity (which requires investment to take on a class that already has a good reaction).

My complaints wrt to slowed/stunned interacting are more just "hey, this ruling creates even more bespoke exceptions and undefined interactions, and that's not what errata should do."

Personally, I've decided to ignore this errata and instead houserule that stunned says "you can't take reactions" instead of "you can't act." It solves the same issues the errata solves, and also ensures actions from stunned are always lost at start of turn while preserving the reaction denial that many uses of stunned are written to imply. This does mean there are cases where the errata is more punishing than my houserule; that's fine. I just care that the condition works as expected without a ton of special edge case rules and exceptions.

Why houserule now? My players will expect a change to this interaction that nerfs it, and I dislike the dev solution, so I'm implementing a solution I prefer. This has never even come up in any game I've run anyways.

Alright, seems like there's an enemy in Seven Dooms for Sandpoint that could apply stunned on a crit reactive strike, so there's at least /one/ out there.

Might keep looking to see if there's any from the Bestiaries and not just an AP, but it still proves that a monster exists that can do it. (And it will affect a real table, since it's in an AP.)

That's how I tend to resolve a lot of edge case "players are arguing this should work" type of things. I say "if that works, it works for the NPCs too". Players often decide that it's not actually so great when that happens.

That's a classic, particularly in 1E (do you really want the BBEG to use the exploding runes trick you're talking about? do you? no? that's what i thought).

But in general all this errata really does is resets back to "Stunned 1 means losing 1 action", which is what it does anyway. There's now no longer a timing edge case where Stunned 1 can be transformed into "Stunned 1 round", which is far stronger (and rarer) condition. Which is fine, really, since if it happens organically you're still taking an action away from a creature that likely planned its turn based on having it.

It's not exactly the same as if it were inflicted outside your turn, though. Stunned isn't supposed to stack with slowed when subtracting actions at start of turn... but it sounds like the new ruling implies you could lose 1A to being slowed and then get stunned midturn and lose another action. It's an edge case, but it doesn't sit right with me. It's all edge cases for this ruling, sure, but...

If the table is expecting me to change how stunned works now anyways, I'm probably just going to houserule stunned to remove "you can't act" and replace it with "you can't take reactions" at this point. The edge cases are less annoying to me and it feels cleaner.

I guess I'm also really confused that people think this is a good ruling if they disliked the old RAW. I feel like the primary point of annoyance would usually be losing actions on your current turn with no warning, and the secondary concern would be how many you ultimately lose to the condition. It seems like given the choice between the errata ruling, the previous RAW, and a third ruling that just keeps stunned from affecting you until the next turn except for -maybe- denying reactions, the third would be by far the least annoying to deal with.

Psychics have some self-stunning options.

I only see Violent Unleash, but it is -really- funny in the context of this conversation.

Violent Unleash
Trigger You Unleash your Psyche.
The force of your mind unleashing itself wracks your enemies with a violent shockwave. You deal 2d6 force damage to all creatures in a 20-foot emanation, with a basic Reflex save. This explosion is taxing, making you stunned 1.

At 5th level and every 2 levels thereafter, the damage increases by 1d6.

On the previous RAW, this eats your whole turn when you use it and is nonfunctional. On the errata ruling, it's also weird, because it's basically now the same as if it costs an action on the current turn. It feels like it's written with the assumption the Stunned 1 has no consequences until your next turn.

Thank you for pointing this out. This is a great addition.

can say Galvanic Chew is an alch item that provides a Reaction to save or get stunned on contact.

Also a good addition; thank you. I had actually seen this once before, but it was while I thought "you can't act" was flavor text.

I think the stunned issue mainly came in two parts.

1) The "you can't act" part of stunned is load-bearing and also has some obtuse consequences.
2) Almost every way of inflicting stunned (playerside, at least) was designed to avoid inflicting it during someone else's turn, but the ability to ready actions kind of got forgotten in the mix, so any 1A thing that inflicts stun can potentially inflict stun on someone else's turn at a heavy action cost.

Almost every time I've seen confusion or frustration around how stun works, it's been because of the sentence, "you can't act." It initially confused me; I assumed it was flavor until reviewing multiple other parts of the rules that used it in a very clear mechanical fashion. It's also kind of absent from the condition shorthand; Stunned 1 just sounds like it should only "you lose an action next turn," and the "you can't act" part is left out of that number. And "you can't act" is only really relevant for denying reactions and free actions, because "stunned for x rounds/minutes/etc." is itself explained in the stunned rules and says you lose all your actions when they're given for the duration.

Reactive Strike or any other reaction with a Stunned rider is the easiest way. That doesn't require any action economy: it just messes with players turns.

Yeah, but do you know of any off the top? I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out how to even form a query to search for this, now that I'm trying. Simply searching for monsters that inflict stunned, I can see that a Banshee can do this at level 17 with Vengeful Spite if you crit fail—but that doesn't feel terribly out of line to me in the grand scheme. I'll keep looking, I guess.

Except that enemies can do this too. Turn this back around on players and go "oh your turn ends before you get to do anything because I just made you stunned 1 as a reaction" is unfun nonsense.

This was always pretty clearly an edge case interaction that wasn't intended and never should have been run RAW because the outcome was absurd. It absolutely needed to be fixed, and they fixed it the correct way by changing the interaction so that it works more consistently with the power level Stunned is supposed to be.

The fact that some ridiculous edge case interactions don't work now is just how it goes, but GMs never should have let them work in the first place.

Need to run out soon, so I'll check this later, but I'm curious how many enemies can do this without the GM intentionally blowing a large amount of actions to ready abilities—something that would be player-favored in a lot of combats.

For example, I am significantly less scared of a kurobozu that does something like move up and ready stunning flurry than a kurobozu that just attacks a lot. It's obnoxious, yes, but the kurobozu just wants to move and attack a ton. The tactic also makes it harder for the kurobozu to use steal breath.

I do think that if this was a concern, a more direct fix that would've kept functionality would've been to just replace "you can't act" with "you can't take reactions" and leave the old mechanism for losing actions at start of turn intact. That solves almost every problem we've brought up so far, though it might cause some new ones I haven't thought of yet. (E.G., It would allow stunned enemies to talk, which they currently can't.)

Witch of Miracles wrote:

I think what bothers me most is that I feel like none of the implications here are good.

IDK man. At its most basic this only just reaffirms that stun 1 does what it says it does and doesn't arbitrarily turn into stunned 4 under hyper specific conditions.

That's unequivocally a good thing, it's just making the effect more consistent within weird edge cases that were always rules contradictory

"You can't act" is clear if you accept it's rules text. "Each time you regain actions, reduce the number you regain by your stunned value, then reduce your stunned value by the number of actions you lost" is clear.

The errata adds a additional clause that makes it behave in neither of these clear ways. That is not "more consistent." That is "bespoke exceptions."

There's a general rule in the system that you only gain or lose actions at the start of your turn. This errata is the only exception to that I know of in the game, aside from starting combat with a reaction when the GM says you can and class features that say you gain reactions at the start of combat even if you wouldn't otherwise.

It's only less intuitive in the sense that "stunned 1 but I lose more than one action" sounds superficially odd. But stunned is already kind of unintuitive anyways, because one of its primary uses in actions and spells is denying reactions—and that is wholly unrelated to the whole "lose actions at the start of your next turn" thing and entirely related to the consequences of the "you can't act" thing. If you look over how spells like Confusion use Stunned, and how abilities like Stunning Finisher use stunned, it becomes more obvious that the "you can't act" clause is a pretty load-bearing part of stun.

Don't you think it's equally unintuitive that, say, a readied Stunning Finisher could deny reactions from the opponent if they succeed their save but not if they fail it? That's certainly odd, but it's a consequence of the errata.

Stunned crit spec is balanced like slow crit spec, so having it take away the same number of actions (just at different times) in all circumstances makes sense.

I'd argue they're not balanced alike on purpose. Stunned spec is on firearms and slings, while slow is on brawling. The play pattern for those weapons is vastly different, and firearms on slinger are still weaker than, say, fists on a monk. So it's not odd firearms would have a stronger critical specialization if they're generally a weaker weapon. It fits with their highroll, crit-focused theme.

Oh, I think I skimmed and misread those as examples instead of exceptions; I remember being baffled at why they'd need to prevent a familiar from opening something. That's 100% my bad.

Also like to note that pets being unable to use actions with the attack trait means that they can't escape grabs and the like. Very bizarre change. Feel quite sorry for any witch whose familiar is grabbed now.

EDIT: I misread this stuff. See below. 100% my bad

...Also seeing a friend point out they broke the use of the Fly spell in conjunction with battle forms with this errata.

Page 301: The polymorph trait has been updated to clarify how Speeds work. In the second paragraph, before the final sentence, add: “You lose your Speeds and gain those of the battle form.” The last sentence of the first paragraph has been adjusted for space, but has the same function: “Unless otherwise stated, polymorph spells don’t allow the target to take on the appearance of a specific individual creature.”

Yep, that does it. What the heck?

...are people really complaining that Stunned now only takes away the number of actions listed on their condition value in all circumstances instead of potentially getting 4 actions for the price of 1?

I am complaining, yeah, because the cases in which this could be a problem almost universally cost you 2A+1R and required an enemy save. The two exceptions I know of are Power Word Stun (which is still 2A+1R, but always works and has longer range, so it's broken and should've been hit on its own) and crit reaction attacks from firearm users with critical specialization (which require the attack to crit and a save against class DC, require you to not use fake out if you're a gunslinger, and probably are more likely to occur on builds for the bad gunslinger subclasses than the good ones anyways).

It's among the most edge case interactions in the rules outside of readied power word stun. Outside of PWS, it mostly nerfs things that don't need additional nerfs.

It's not like stun is some plentifully available status effect. The ways to stun enemies on their own turns are already limited, high risk, and expensive (readied stunning fist), or heavily gated by rng and feats (crit spec firearm crit on target of opportunity). The only exception was readied power word stun, which is only online at high levels to begin with.

I think what bothers me most is that I feel like none of the implications here are good. To me, it says the devs must think one of the following:
-that readied stunning fist or firearm strikes going off as a reaction and critting with crit spec are too strong, which is just false
-that PWS is too strong and that they should just nerf stunned to account for it instead of nerfing power word stun itself, which is a bad balance approach, and that it's further a good idea to create a bespoke exception to gaining and losing actions just for stunned in the course of doing so, which I also consider a bad design approach
-that they didn't realize that stunned already kept you from taking actions if you were stunned on your turn and thought how the interaction worked was unclear, which means they didn't understand the rules as they currently exist

No matter what, I don't like it.

Resentment witch was not a stray, 1000% deserved. Now they can only extend slow success once, still really good.

PWS needed to be fixed (it deleted boss turns completely, no save) but agree on the other cases not mattering much and it being aesthetically annoying.

Disappearance was an outright broken OP spell that let you quickened stride and become undetected, with very little counterplay from the enemy. Now it's less awful.

Resentment Witch largely makes the rest of the table better at doing their jobs and still has all the downsides of being a prepared spellbook caster in a game that strongly favors spontaneous casters. Things that are strong in a way that tends to make the rest of the table feel strong are much less concerning than things that eat other people's lunch, so Resentment Witch wouldn't have been at the top of my priority list to smack down.

PWS should've just been hit by itself. Tacking "this can't be readied" onto it would've been ugly, but would've had less collateral damage. As it stands, this clarification is actually an indirect nerf to gunslinger of all classes, since their crit spec inflicts stunned.

Disappearance was absolutely broken (or worse, depending on the table), but now it can't even perform the function it's intended to perform. I just can't get behind that. It's not like this game gets errata every two weeks; the spell may well be nonfunctional until the end of the game's lifespan.

Oh geez. That's. Uh. Well, that's comedy.

That really rubs extra salt on the wound on kindle inner flames being """upgraded""" to give a rune instead of just giving flat fire damage forever. I should really houserule that (and the other similar kin auras), honestly.

I think I actively dislike this errata round.
-One of the only good prepared spellbook casters caught a massive stray.
-Stunned is now less intuitive (and arguably nerfed) to cover an edge case, the only abusive version of which is probably readied power word stun. (Gun crits with crit spec and stuff like readied stunning fist are not terribly abusive.) Previously, getting stunned on your turn would've had "you can't act" lock you out of actions until your next turn, and then you'd lose the actions at that time and it'd wear off. Now it just wears off immediately if you run out the stunned value? And it also creates its own special edge case, via errata, that violates the general principle that you only gain or lose actions at start of turn. If stunned is going to work this way, why can't I get actions on the turn I haste myself? I hate this sort of arbitrary inconsistency.
-Disappearance appears to be absolutely gutted. It no longer says it works on imprecise senses, so against any enemy without a special precise sense, it's no better than rank 4 invis. A lot of special senses are imprecise, too. It now doesn't work against a lot of enemies that foil senses works against. I'm not sure this is even remotely worth an eighth rank slot.

I need to look over more, but this is not a winner for me. Clarifications confirming how the community already handled things (i.e. instances of damage) are nice but ultimately not useful; meanwhile, a lot of the other stuff has been actively annoying.

I'm hesitant to really place blame on any individual event or party. I understand thinking the new options did start to feel less coherent with previous system design close-ish to when some of the system's major original designers left... but there was also just a lot going on in the company around that time, and I'm not really one to try to ascribe the quality of a whole company's product to a few people to begin with.

It's more likely that a hectic schedule, employee turnover in general, and a combination of other problems (the distributor issues, the economic climate, etc.) have made it an especially difficult time for the company and its workers. It'd be stranger for that not to show in the product.

I feel like my expectations changed from new content being more tightly designed and fitting into the game's very controlled vision to new content being a much more scattershot experience.

It's hard to say where in the process things have changed, from the outside, but there's a lot of design decisions now that just don't match the initial balance of the game, and abilities, spells, and class features with basic errors (be those templating, formatting, or proofing errors). Two examples from battlecry that immediately stick out to me are Helpful Reload and Shock and Awe.

Helpful Reload is, bluntly put, a wild cheater spell and I have no idea how it got printed. It fundamentally upsets Gunslinger balance and action economy. "Spend a reaction and a rank 2 spellslot to reload an ally's weapon" should never have been printed.

Shock and Awe, just... there's a lot going on here.
-The save block refers to a "target" even though it's a 50 foot burst.

-The duration is 1 round even though the effect is instantaneous, and it makes no mention of what happens to enemies that enter after the initial effect.

-This is more subjective, but the spell itself just feels wrongly tuned. It's 3A for a 50ft burst that only targets enemies, inflicts frightened 1 on success, frightened 2 and stunned 1 on failure, and frightened 3 and stunned 2 on a crit failure. It also has keyword soup (auditory, emotion, fear, illusion, mental, visual). This is... weird.

--> The nearest comparison to this, imo, is synaptic pulse. 30ft emanation, 2A, stunned 1 on success, 2 on failure, stunned for 1r on crit failure, mental and incap traits. So compared to synaptic pulse, +1A buys you... a decrease in how good it is at stunning enemies (it's like it has incap even against lower level enemies), but better targeting, and you staple third rank fear onto it.

----> Those improvements come at the cost of a whole lot of keywords that enemies can resist the spell with, though, and the increase in AoE size is honestly not that helpful. And frightened and stunned have a degree of anti-synergy, because you're debuffing fewer actions and thus making the frightened less valuable. This doesn't really matter in practice (as yeah, I'd rather inflict stunned than not), but it kind of muddles the usecase of the spell compared to Synaptic Pulse.

--> A second comparison is freezing rain. Freezing Rain is a good mark for what a 3A spell might provide at Rank 5, and it's also about action denial. It creates difficult terrain in a movable 20ft burst, and deals damage against all creatures inside and makes them save against slowed (slowed 1 for 1r on fail, slowed 2 for 1r on crit fail) on sustain.

----> Shock and Awe provides an alarmingly large amount of instant value compared to freezing rain, mostly mitigated by the keyword soup and the fact the AoE on Shock and Awe is pointlessly large. In comparison, Freezing Rain can provide more value over the course of an encounter, has damage as a rider, and works via mechanisms that are more difficult to circumvent.

The spell just feels off. It's like it's being actively nerfed with keyword soup in exchange for this massive AoE it has and just doesn't need. And the usecase for the mechanical effect is less clear than most comparison spells even if the effect is quite strong. I just feel like it's tuned wrong along multiple dimensions just looking at it. I don't feel like I saw much of this sort of "it's just off in weird ways" design in larger books, before.

I would like to just add to this conversation that one of my first GMing experiences for the system was Malevolence, and I actually had a Tangible Dream psychic in that game that /did/ play as a glass cannon melee.

It was, frankly, a pretty exciting play experience for the player. Their highrolls were memorable, and they were indeed constantly in danger because they were so squishy. And they were quite high impact for a caster at those levels (particularly at level 3 and 4) in exchange for the risk. Those are probably some of the best levels for the build, honestly, because they're smashing things with 4d8+4 imaginary weapon when psyche is unleashed and the accuracy penalty on casters hitting AC hasn't gotten too out of hand yet. They really carried their weight as a damage dealer for the party.

It's not like Tangible Dream psychic is some theoretical build that no one does because they know melee spell attacks are bad. It's a genuinely attractive playstyle for some people, and the nerf is pretty painful.

Shocking grasp was a rank 1 spell attack roll spell that targeted one enemy in melee. It had slightly better base damage but didn’t heighten as well and was outpaced by imaginary weapon by rank 3.

Thunderstrike replaced shocking grasp in the remaster. The lowered base damage and increased heightening as well as making it a saving throw targeting spell and gave it range. It didn’t lose damage to gain those things. 2d8 heightening is too high for a focus spell, period. It was especially too much for a spell that can have two targets.

Making the base cantrip target 2 enemies, even at 1d6 and melee, would be plenty to make it stand out. It doesn’t need to do more than 2d6 heightening as a focus spell.

These are focus spells designed for a class with limited spell slots, though. They need to carry more weight. They are the compensation package for getting bad casting.

If they were going to bonk it, I'm shocked they didn't do something like chop off a d8 off the amp at rank 1. That would've put it in line damagewise with that one necromancer focus spell from the playtest, with the downside of needing to be in melee (compared to the necromancer's downside of needing to sac a thrall).

Amped IW wasn't even particularly strong on psychic itself past early levels. It's horrifically dangerous to use. And the damage nerf is a direct nerf to IW's safety: it is much less likely to finish off enemies at early levels.

I haven't seen anyone mention, but did they at least increase their spell slot count if they reduced the focus spell damage...?

I've had issues with hazards and haunts since I started running the system (and my first foray into that was Malevolence, so I've had more than a few of said issues). The OP has the right of it.

The biggest issue in my experience is that most solo hazard encounters don't seem to consider that the party can just... avoid them. There's usually no reason to interact with them unless you're forced to, and you're rarely forced to, so you don't. The party is informed it's there (or isn't and someone triggers it), and then they just walk around it or something. It's silly.

And like the OP says, even if you don't avoid them they often have no long-term cost. (Malevolence at least does do something about this, to its credit.) They feel like bug bites in too many cases instead of an actual scare, for all the reasons the OP describes.

Hazards as part of another encounter are a different story, obviously. But hazards just in an otherwise empty hallway or room, or along your travel route, just are not the stuff unless they're really really really scary.

I wouldn't allow people to Avoid Notice if there was no cover or concealment to hide behind, and place them at the nearest cover point where they would be able to peak around and see the enemy when initiative is rolled.

This is a sensible fiction-first way to handle it, but I can already think of at least one case where AP text is written as though the party members are allowed to use Avoid Notice while traveling along what look like open roads or similar on the map—and it has the mechanical effect of reducing the flat check for random encounters.

rules snip

That is a good catch, though that admittedly doesn't say what to do if the map lacks reasonable hiding spots. The "you're just seen" interpretation is clearly consistent with the other rules, though, yeah.

I do think there's a bit of an intuitive conflict here, insofar as your ability to use Avoid Notice, to subsequently roll Stealth as initiative, and parse that by following the rules in "Initiative with Hidden Enemies" isn't really dependent on the map... but whether you're in plain sight is pretty clearly dependent on the map.

I'm not sure there's a clear answer to this one, honestly. I think it's just an artifact of transitioning from loose, abstracted exploration rules (where the game just assumes you have a way to hide or stealth regardless of the actual terrain) to tighter grid-based combat system with a fixed map (where that assumption can quickly be broken). The GM is kind of left to decide how to square that difference.

Honestly, the prevalence of multiclass archetypes, in particular, is a symptom of the game both failing to scale in certain ways (early class abilities poached via archetyping scale worryingly well) and the game failing to provide in-class solutions to obvious problems (granting strong 1A abilities and reactions).

Too much of the game's mechanical payload is frontloaded. The result is that archetyping grants you features on par with in-class feats of a much higher level in terms of real, in-play value. It's admirable to want to make the stuff you do at level 1-6 remain relevant to a degree throughout the game, but this is a consequence that wasn't really designed around.

And we've talked at length already about how desirable it is to get good third actions and reactions on classes that might natively lack them.

I would also like to say that even in FA games, no players at my tables or the tables I play at have known to take psychic on magus without being informed by a GM. Even then, one of those magi never bothered with it and is still very happy with their build, being a more RP-first player.

This is not particularly true in practice, at least not from level 6 onwards when the Magus gets imaginary weapon and becomes able to deal slot spell-grade Spellstrike damage 3 times per encounter. This, and not the Magus in a vacuum, is the standard I'm operating on, especially as I don't think the Magus is too strong a class even with that combo. This is similarly why I don't believe this would meaningfully affect the Magus's damage output overall, even if it absolutely would massively buff the Magus's ability to output single-target debuffs and crowd control, because the Magus already operates at a level where using slot spells instead of imaginary weapon would not constitute a major damage increase.

This is one thing if it's for personal use at tables with a certain expected level of optimization; you don't need to worry about it. But if it's for general release, you need to be aware that classes that have high built-in floors can cause issues at low optimization tables.

It can be true that this magus does less damage in most encounters than IW magus. It can also be true that this magus does significantly more damage in most encounters when built by a player that doesn't know much about PF2E optimization as compared to stock Magus. And that can make it a problem.

Easily optimized classes and subclasses (i.e., ones that you can optimize with little system knowledge, usually just by picking class feats that fit what the class/subclass seems to want you to do, or ones that have mechanics that give them a good baseline regardless of feat selection) are often the strongest classes in practice at most tables. I'm worried that this class proposal has a very, very high baseline in virtue of its mechanics.

Some things I'm immediately leery of:

-Both the magus players I've run for have enjoyed having the option of using slotted arcane spells available for utility or damage, and saw it as a significant perk of playing the class. I do not think they would be happy to lose the ability to, say, cast invisibility on half the party if they felt it would be a good plan for the day. This is especially true for magi in parties without two full casters.

I don't /personally/ think this is optimal and wouldn't play magus this way, but it is clearly a play pattern people ask for and would want to preserve.

-Comparing your attack roll against a fortitude/reflex/will DC to see the outcome of a spellstrike spell is a 4E takeaway that makes some sense, but I think this could result in some worrying interactions. Saves aren't designed with martial accuracy progression (especially the to-hit bonuses from items) in mind.

-Cantrip spellstriking is still pretty okay damage, especially with Force Fang as a recharge. None of the magus players I've had felt like they underperformed when using gouging claw spellstrikes, even if slotted spellstrike or amped IW spellstrike are more damaging. The buy-now-pay-later nature of spellstrike (i.e., you get 3 actions of damage for 2 and pay the third later) is a fairly significant tempo advantage at times, even just with cantrips. It is frontloaded burst at MAP-0! Spellstriking with cantrips still needs a recharge cost to account for this tempo advantage.

-You're effectively letting magus pick a slotted spell to use as a focus spell with spellstrike, no? If you're doing that, the spell rank should be capped to one or two lower than the max a 10th caster gets at the same level, to keep it more in line with other focus spells. Even with this limited casting, though, I'm certain there will be some extremely wonky abuse cases.

I know you're not mechanically making them focus spells, but as a renewable cast, I think the same power level guideline should apply.

I also think the number of slot spells available is both unspecified and incredibly important. Frankly, I cannot see this being balanced unless it's either just a single top-rank spell per encounter and that's it, or you get maybe 3 top rank-2 spells if you'd prefer a larger quantity.

The issue is that you've taken slotted spellstrike from a daily resource that might not be spent into a per-encounter resource that is guaranteed to be spent. Magus damage now has however many slotted spellstrikes per encounter as a baseline.

-Between the last two changes (guaranteed slotted spells for use in every encounter and removing spellstrike recharge on cantrips), you've massively increased Magus's damage floor. Even unarchetyped, magus damage is acceptable right now because they deal massive damage on crits. Removing spellstrike recharge on cantrips increases the damage floor substantially by removing action inefficiencies and granting magi better mobility. It also has a massive knock-on effect: a ton of archetypes that were terrible on Magus because it was action-starved are viable choices, because it has 1A open far more frequently. This is neat from a build perspective, but it hugely increases the baseline powerlevel of the class.

I feel like these changes have way too much of an eye towards the current power ceiling of magus when archetyped for focus spells, and don't take enough account of the floor.

-I think the general flavor of magus that attracts people is "INT caster with a sword." Things like recharging spellstrike with more typical martial skill actions (athletics, intimidate) don't feel as on-flavor unless they're attached to a conflux spell. There's a reason the main skill-action-plus-recharge is Magus's Analysis. And generally, I think this entire overhaul risks alienating people who come to the magus to get half a spellcaster and want to feel like a spellcaster some of the time.

I feel like the proliferation of alchemical items that solve common problems is far more of a nail in the coffin than trick magic item, which eats a skill feat and doesn't work with a lot of useful spells.

Like, if you haven't looked at the alchemical item list in a while, you really, really should. Some of the stuff on there is more than a little good.

What if we are looking at this all wrong? What if Psychic Dedication is not Overpowered but all other Dedications for Spellcasters are Underpowered? Psychic gives you the one thing you'd want most from a Dedication. What is all Dedications did that to some degree? Psychic grant focus spells which is better then ANY cantrip (Yes AMP'd Cantrips are both Cantrips and Focus Spells).

That feels much like the problem here, Psychic is frontloaded because it feels amazing. All other Spellcaster Dedications feel weak and like you're wasting a class feat to get a under performing feat to say, here have 2 cantrips AND 1 skill, which is better then the lackluster Cantrip Expansion feat.

Yeah, you can say Psychic is not broken. Magus is not broken but once they unite their hands together they become something more powerful then their individual parts.

As a reminder before the Remastered a lot of classes were grabbing Dangerous Sorcerer just for the flat 1-10 damage on thewir slotted spells.

As long as we agree that casting dedications allow you to use items like wands and scrolls, I think every casting dedication has a pretty significant frontloaded benefit. I feel like I remember seeing in another thread a long time ago that PFS locks all that behind the basic spellcasting benefits, though? Unsure.

The issue that a remastered magus has to deal with is that the focus spell space of the class was given over to conflux spells that recharge the spell strike. When you MC to get spell attack roll spells, you do lose out on the recharge focus spell option. That doesn’t really matter much with the starlight magus but the rest of them do have action economy issues with having to spend an action just to recharge. Just adding in conflux spells that use an attack roll ihas more complications that it might seem like.

You don't lose the option at all. You're still free to spend your focus points as you see fit. And psychic even gives you focus points more quickly than just going plain Magus, considering you get good focus spells at 2 and 6 instead of just at 2 (Force Fang) and then possibly never afterwards (depending on your opinion of Hasted Assault). If you really are in a situation where using a conflux spell multiple times is beneficial, you can use it more often for having taken psychic archetype—not less.

shroudb wrote:

agree on the fireball (because it's visible as soon as it leaves your person), disagree on the "the direction the pain comes from"

Witch of Miracles, Deiven, shroudb:

That's not how fireball works. The explosion of fire simply appears; there is no "trail back to the caster."

You do always create manifestations unless the spell is cast with subtle spell, but... yeah, I definitely got got on tacitly implementing the classic fireball flavor.

It's a weird one because people are reading it in two ways:

1. The spell creates a tree and makes it do stuff. Since it's a spell effect that is doing it, the caster is the source point for who is an "ally".

2. The spell creates a tree and the tree does stuff. Since the tree is an actor that has some of its own stats, can be targeted independently, and can react without the caster doing anything, the tree is the one doing the blocking and thus the tree is the source point for who is an "ally".

Inside Protector Tree itself, we don't have any guidance in terms of descriptive text or anything to suggest what was intended. So people reading it one of those ways will see it as making total sense and not understand the other way.

I guess the thing that's weird to me specifically about Trip's reading is that it hones in on a convention that seems like coincidence at best—that spells like protector tree have a subject+intransitive verb or a passive voice construction up front, and don't say "you do x"—and uses that convention to argue that the point of view of "ally" changes for reading such spells. The idea that the spell would change its reading if it said "You cause a medium tree to suddenly grow in an unoccupied square within range..." strikes me as prima facie absurd.

The tree can't change locations, but it is able to move its branches based on what is happening around it.

So, define "animated tree creature". :) Sometimes I hate how imprecise English is.

Yeah. Words are inherently vague, and it's not always for the best.

In my book, it just doesn't need to be more "animated" than a dancing weapon to perform the function being requested. It could be "alive" in the way a construct creature is alive, as well, but that doesn't feel necessary.

...It's a bit weird, too, because a tree is already alive in the colloquial sense anyways. It's a tree.

The semantics get really silly if you dig deep enough. According to Player Core's glossary, one could argue that the Tree is in fact a creature while it's active:

Player Core Glossary wrote:

Creature: An active participant in the story and world. This includes monsters and nonplayer characters (played by the Game Master) and player characters (played by the other players).

While the tree is interposing itself to block damage, it's active and is a participant in the story. Since it's a creature that does stuff without someone else spending actions to make it do that, it makes sense that the tree is the one doing the thing and thus it's the trees allies that count.

Now I'm certain this isn't how the definition is meant to be used, but if you take RAW to its extremes, you get outcomes like this. Which is why I don't tend to do that when I'm making rulings for my table.

Okay, that got one heck of a good laugh out of me. Point taken.

FWIW, my usual understanding of the game is that it mostly has two classes of "thing" at the top of its "ontology," and those are creatures and objects (with objects further being split into attended and unattended objects). The difference between creatures and objects is mostly is how you can interact with them, based on what rules text references each. The lines between them are sometimes blurry (particularly in the case of constructs and intelligent items), and sometimes, you need to override rules text that distinguishes the two when it probably shouldn't. (Strike only targets creatures by RAW, which is often a problem, though I can see why they would want you to need GM permission to target attended objects.) But I see those as being the main categories of thing in the game.

The game mainly delineates between the two, in my view, to try to rule out some "unfun" interactions from the start. E.G., it rules out having enemies target your gear in most cases, and also keeps people from litigating what happens to a metal table in the area of a burning hands spell (because it affects creatures).

Yeah, Timber Sentinel is the issue. Were I to decide to nerf it, that's where I'd be aiming.

The issue is that if you do it at the Protector Tree level, you've also nerfed the spell when its cast by a spellcaster at a substantially higher cost (since casting this from a slot 5 ranks below max is basically a waste of a turn). That's part of what makes this a weird situation: the spell as a spell really isn't a big deal. It was just repurposed as a class ability where it got a lot stronger as a result.

Yeah. I agree.

As an aside, Timber Sentinel is also very strange in that it has a kind of narrative power the game has desperately tried to curb. Create Water isn't a cantrip anymore, so that you can't spend all day making a lake... but a kineticist can absolutely spend all day repopulating a forest. That's kind of silly, isn't it?

I don't really know where I'm going with this post, heh. Just musing on the thought process of the two viewpoints, I suppose. This feels like one where it'll be hard to change anyone's mind because what's different is the thought process involved in getting to a conclusion.

I definitely enjoyed reading it. I don't think I'm likely to agree with Trip on this, but it is a fun discussion.

I know you're trying to target low level casters without buffing higher level casters, but making an option do less as you level just doesn't feel good. I'm not a fan of that.

What kind of save penalty are you trying to apply? If it's a circumstance bonus, that's alarmingly strong for a skill action—but if it's a status penalty, now it doesn't stack with frightened, clumsy, etc. and looks much less attractive. The typing really matters here.

Buffing RK like this doesn't buff INT characters; it buffs RK characters. Those are very different categories. INT characters may not be able to usefully RK on a creature depending on the skills they choose. And as someone else pointed out, this can also make Trip/Grapple builds stronger, as well.

How're you handling skills with RK as a rider, like Magus's analysis? Does that still provide a save penalty?

If this is the kind of approach you want to take, I honestly think you're better off just giving every caster in the game Vision of Weakness for free, or at least adding it as a class feat for every caster and possibly removing the cursebound condition from it. +2 status to spell attack rolls is incidentally pretty good at buffing low level casters while not affecting high level casters very much, as well.

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This also won't improve the low level caster experience as much as you might expect. The biggest problem with the low level caster experience is that everything dies instantly and you have less time to affect fights. A slight adjustment to saves won't change that.

The "enemies make their saves too often" experience is also usually a result of throwing too many higher level enemies at low level parties. It's an low level encounter design issue as much as a caster issue.

Yeah I've been to this rodeo before. ;) Of course, it's not really about Protector Tree at all: back when it was just a spell, people didn't really think that hard about how it worked because it has to be heightened to keep up so it feels fine (or even rather weak considering what that spell slot could be doing). A max rank spell slot designed to protect people that doesn't protect the caster is... not good.

But then Timber Sentinel happened, and that's when these discussions all picked up steam. People largely actually want to nerf Timber Sentinel but don't see a way to do it without house rules, so instead Protector Tree gets targeted on what amounts to a technicality which makes an already meh spell pretty terrible.

I just never saw it as particularly strong past the early levels to begin with. A kineticist spending 2A on timber sentinel at level 11 to prevent 60 damage is not good; that's usually worse than using a higher level impulse for utility or AoE damage. A kineticist spending 2A at level 1 or 3 to prevent 10 or 20 damage, though? That could stop someone from hitting the floor the next time they get hit, so that's pretty good. Archetyping for Timber Sentinel also usually means that you're either using Timber Sentinel instead of casting a higher rank spell (which is usually bad) or instead of just doing your job as a martial (which is also usually bad because you're important to winning the damage race). My read has been that most people play at low levels, so people have an inflated opinion of Timber Sentinel.

EDIT: Protector Tree also falls off really fast because its AC is 10 and doesn't scale, and you just start being able to obliterate it with easy crits.

This whole thing only bothers me because "it means the tree's ally, not you!" is such a strange reading. If someone thought that Protector Tree was itself just written wrong, or was poorly balanced and wanted to change it, that'd be something else entirely. But I just don't see how to get to "the spell protects the caster" by RAW. And Trip seems to be arguing that the RAW is that it's talking about the tree's ally. So I'm left scratching my head. That's the part that especially bothers me.

I guess I'm also kind of baffled by the assertion that Protector Tree creates a animated tree creature. That's just... not necessary for the spell to work, and not said by the spell.

This stuff is more "I'm really nitpicky about semantics (both as part of who I am and because my degree trained me to be)" than it is that I think it's essential to keep Timber Sentinel from protecting the caster. I do think it's too strong at early levels if it protects the caster, but it falls off pretty fast. If it turned out I was wrong and Timber Sentinel protected the caster, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Which is a waaay worse pain than that of just reading some text, getting the wrong conclusion, and taking the ego hit of being corrected later.

...Haven't I already conceded I was probably wrong once already in this topic, in addition to elsewhere in other conversations? For example, I already said that I probably value single feat dip amped guidance less than is warranted because of both choices from other players in games I've played in (like aggressively pursuing status bonuses) and some house rules at tables I've played in and ran at (like giving out hero points more often, and usually running with FA) leading me to misjudge its utility. And the topic about subordinate strikes also had me change my rules interpretation via the discussion in the topic.

I do take people's arguments seriously. There wouldn't be a point in participating in these conversations otherwise. I care a lot more about having a well-supported opinion than I care about being the one who "wins" an argument. I'm just pressing really hard on this reading of Protector Tree because it doesn't click for me at all.

Avenging Wildwood is templated from Protector Tree, sure. But I'd also say Avenging Wildwood is miserably poorly written and misunderstands how Protector Tree functioned—or is at least wholly disanalogous to Protector Tree. Avenging Wildwood acts like some kind of psuedosummon that doesn't follow the standard summoning rules, and it's left in this horrifically defined space where it's not really a creature and not really an object and not really a summon either despite acting like most of the above in some way. If the spell were written normally, the tree would either be an unattended object (like I think protector tree is), or would have the minion trait and act like a summon, or wouldn't have any statistics at all and wouldn't be something enemies can interact with (like the "swarm" from animated assault, or something with the Incarnate tag). Instead, it's none of the above, and is its own arbitrary rules object that works in ways implied only by the statistics it has. Given this, it's pretty easy to believe the spell is poorly written and just says "but allies can pass through its space" when it should say "but you and your allies can pass through its space." That's small peanuts compared to the most fundamental parts of how the spell works not fitting into any established framework for how an effect like this should function.

On top of that, it's pretty clear from the lack of statistics other than AC and HP in Protector Tree that the tree is supposed to be treated as an unattended object. And the lack of AC scaling on the tree makes this even clearer. You'll note that Protector Tree also makes no mention at all of animating the tree, either. Avenging Wildwood is... something else entirely.

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I'll also note that basically every time you should be included in an effect that targets your allies, the game says "you and your allies." As an example of a similar effect to protector tree that explicitly includes (or in this case excludes) the caster alongside their allies, you have Bridge of Vines: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=2294

Bind Undead, you'll note, is an even better case for arguing that the "tree's allies" reading would be a nonstandard stretch; it could choose to refer to the minion's allies, but instead uses the standard "you or an ally" phrasing. The same goes for Summon Deific Herald, which summons an incarnate entity and then refers to "you and your allies."

There's just no reason to think the game really meant to refer to the tree's allies without the game explicitly telling you. It goes against the way basically every other well-written spell is worded.

If the spell was intended to exclude the caster, it would not say "protect you from" and instead would say "protect your allies from"

A Medium tree suddenly grows in an unoccupied square within range. The tree has AC 10 and 10 Hit Points. Whenever an ally adjacent to the tree is hit by a Strike, the tree interposes its branches and takes the damage first. Any additional damage beyond what it takes to reduce the tree to 0 Hit Points is dealt to the original target. The tree isn't large enough to impede movement through its square.

There is nothing in the text of protector tree that implies it protects the caster. There is nothing that implies "ally" means "ally" of a magically animated object here. There's no reason to think the reading deviates from the normal reading of ally, and a whole lot of reason to think it doesn't because of how strong the spell is if it also protects the caster.

The Ghoran ancestry feat is more evidence than the person who wrote the Ghoran feat runs Protector Tree wrong and it slipped past QA than anything else. It wouldn't be weird for it to; I've seen more people who assume you count as your own ally in pf2e than people who know you don't.

EDIT: To be extra clear, I think it would need some wording like this for me to think it protected the caster on the grounds of it checking the tree's ally:

"...You and your allies count as the tree's allies. Whenever an ally of the tree is adjacent to the tree and hit by a strike..."

There is nothing even remotely close to that, so it makes more sense to assume it uses the default syntax and reference for a spell, where "ally" means the caster's ally.

I do not like ramp up abilities. Too much movement, too many other PCs doing their stuff, and targets often don't last long with the crit rules whether a spell crit or melee crit from multiple party members launching attacks.

Yeah, same. Ramp-up works if fights are long enough that the thing you're ramping up to still has a significant impact; however, the early turns of an encounter are the ones that matter most here because fights don't go on long enough for it to be otherwise. It's not great to spend a few turns getting ready for your big attack, only to realize that the fight is mostly decided by the time it goes off—and that's exactly what'd happen with backloaded abilities in this game.

Dragged out fights can exist in this game, but they're so far outside the normal course of play that designing backloaded abilities for them is a rough sell. And sustained spells kind of fill that backload niche better anyways; you do get progressively more value from them the longer a fight drags out.

Right, so I'm a GM of multiple games and get to see how much people are failing by when things actually matter. Someone's estimations are off here, but they're not mine. This is a popular ability for a reason: it makes a huge difference when it matters and it matters frequently.

I'm running once a week right now, and it's barely coming up more than once a session. I can't argue with it coming up more often for your table, though.

I will say that I'm running below level 11, which skews the result a bit.

Aid has a massively higher cost in that it takes both an action and a reaction, and it often makes absolutely no difference to the outcome whatsoever despite all that investment.

Investing an action and a reaction to do nothing is far worse action economy than having a good third action option in the first place that always makes an impact and having a reaction left available for whatever reactions you have, of which Amp Guidance might be one.

There are very few third actions that have guaranteed outcomes, and the ones that do aren't usually that large unless you spend resources. Glimpse Weakness is the first one that comes to mind in context, though I also brought up force fang earlier. It's mostly 1A casts that have significant reliability.

A typical 1A skill action will give a -1 to an enemy on a success and a -2 on a crit success for about a round, and then that penalty may or may not be relevant. Given the high bonuses available from aid and the low DC, plus the bonus typing, I think aid is pretty competitive with a lot of non-cast uses of a third action and reaction, as well.

We're also comparing aid to the options on a character that lacks a strong reaction economy anyways. If your options are committing to aid and floating your reaction for a chance at an amped guidance that might not come, that's pretty different than trying to aid on a character with stronger reactions. (Also worth noting you aren't required to aid if you spend an action preparing and have something better come up, even if it makes the third action worthless.)

You seem really fixated on "it can cause crits", while somehow completely ignoring the flipside of "it can prevent crits." Turning a crit fail that would shut down/control/drop/kill an ally into a failure that doesn't is a massive swing to a battle. You also get to apply this where it matters, when it matters, instead of having to guess ahead of time what the enemy might do and who is going to roll a 2 on their save.

Preventing critical failures is good, but that's the primary use of hero points, and a lot of critical failures aren't fixed with a +1 anyways because they're the result of a nat 1 success downgrade.

I do think this points out something I hadn't considered, though, which is that the value of amped guidance is actually somewhat lower the more often hero points are given out. I do give out hero points at a rate that's on the higher end.

Counter Performance is much more specific on what it can be used on and also requires Performance, which for most characters is not worth investing into at all. It's a great ability when its relevant, but hanging an entire argument on "this doesn't actually come up that often" only to turn around and offer an example of something that comes up even less often doesn't really make sense.

I think for me, this was more about contrasting the party utility of a larger ~3 feat investment into bard (which is usually high) vs. the drought of usefulness for psychic after your initial investment. I think it's relevant for comparing the value of the archetypes overall, but you're right that if we're focusing solely on the dedication, it's a moot point.

Definitely a blind spot. Any class that has good feats but has a dead/weak level or even just a level with something you can live without benefits immensely from an archetype like Psychic. Magus is the obvious one, but it works on a lot of classes. Like it's a great pick on Oracle which has a bunch of stuff you likely want but it's easy to find a single feat level to go pick up an Amp and never think about it again (like on any mystery with a lousy Advanced focus spell or where the level 10 Cursebound feat is poor).

Wouldn't you just opt into Quickened Casting on Oracle at 10 instead? I'm also a bit lost on the magus point, because you need at least two feats invested into an otherwise weak conscious mind to get amped imaginary weapon, and the earliest you can get it is 6 (which competes with reactive strike).

Still, point taken.

An aside, but I was asking myself if Oracle benefitted that much from the additional reaction, and saw that battlecry recently did add an odd amount of strength to the reaction options on the divine list. Curse of Recoil is a much less situational filler reaction than schadenfreude, and while Helpful Reload isn't useful in every party, I'm shocked that spell was even printed; the effect it has on gunslinger action economy is profound. (Martyr's Intervention remains quite strong if allowed as well, of course.) Oracle also doesn't seem to have as easy access to some of the better reaction domain spells as one would've hoped, since they seem to require mysteries that look less attractive. Battlecry really did just buff the divine list a bizarre amount, in that regard.

There's a few dedications like this. Exemplar Dedication is one of the single best feats for most of the martials in the game. Anyone who wasn't going to archetype otherwise can find a feat to invest into that for far more return than they'd otherwise get. Alchemist is the same because of just how much raw utility Quick Alchemy gives, even if you never put another feat into it. Psychic is in this situation too.

Point especially taken wrt exemplar. Literally forgot about that one because it's just banned at my table.

Looking over these feats, it seems like a throughline in a lot of the outlier dedications is that they give one skill training (or none) instead of two, and often give it in a less valuable skill for combat. I can sort of see the logic at low levels, but the value of skill training falls off a cliff at higher levels, and the value of alchemy benefits, ikon damage, and amped guidance does not.

You're ignoring other Amp options and also now saying that what you said was an easy to get bonus is now super high value.

Something can be both easy to get or common, and also high value. E.G., the first way to heal to full out of combat is extremely high value for a party, and there are a lot of ways to achieve it. Additional out-of-combat healing drops off sharply in value after you have it.

By the same token, amped guidance is less valuable the fewer rolls it can proc on. If your party prioritizes getting status bonuses, then amped guidance loses rolls it can target.

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Looking over all this, I think you've generally made fair points. I think a lot of how my tables and the tables I play at run does devalue amped guidance, somewhat. That's leading me to be more down on the option than might be warranted.

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Cantrip expansion sucks. It’s a bad feat and shouldn’t be used as a power yardstick here.

I brought it up earlier just to point out how bad some class feats are compared to archetype feats. I don't think anyone was really using it as a benchmark for where power "should" be.

snip

The flipside of being "unable to waste reactions" on amped guidance is that it also doesn't actually give you a use for your reaction unless someone fails by 1 or 2. The amount of times it's useful is lower than I think people give it credit for. Between it not stacking with other status bonuses and the limited opportunities to use it, you can go an entire night without amped guidance actually giving you a way to use your action economy. This a downside, not a benefit. If you're trying to fix your action economy via archetyping, an inconsistent reaction isn't actually that good. You want something you can consistently take advantage of.

In a lot of cases, spending an action and reaction to aid every turn would actually be more effective than sitting back and waiting to use amped guidance. That gives a larger bonus with a typing that's much more difficult to come by and can cause crits, even if it also uses your third action. It's a bit apples and oranges because of that, I admit, but aid is an option everyone has to use reactions without spending any feat slots.

Amped guidance is very visible (because you only use it when it changes an outcome) but also not very effective (because it can only change one outcome between turns and can never upgrade a success to a crit). I think the visibility tends to make people overestimate how good it is and how often the ability actually procs.

I agree that it's particularly clutch when it works on saves, but there are other reactions you can poach later on in other archetypes that are good for that, and they can be more effective within their niche. (Bard counterperform comes to mind.)

I think I'd also note that I can't think of any character I've made that would only want to dip into an archetype for a single feat, outside of a character taking multitalented as their level 9 ancestry feat. This could be a personal blind spot, but most characters I've seen either have class feats they don't want to skip; have pretty specific things they want to get out of archetyping (e.g. reactive strike or crashing slam) and need to spend multiple feats to get them anyways; or have bad enough class feats that they're glad to take two more psychic archetype feats before jumping ship to another archetype. Psychic dedication becomes less and less competitive with higher level class feats and higher level dedications as your character levels, as well. I just can't think of a character that has their level 2 class feat free that also has the rest of their feats tied up so tight that a single dip into psychic dedication is slam dunk.

Imagine if just taking the Bard Dedication gave you courageous anthem and Lingering Composition in a single feat basically. That's kind of what Psychic does.

This is wildly overestimating the value of amped guidance. Spending a single action and a focus point for 3 turns of +1 status to hit and damage and +1 status to saves against fear across the entire party is far higher value than being able to upgrade a single failure to a success (or critical failure to failure) per round at the cost of one reaction per round if the miss is within 1/2 of hitting depending on level.