YuriP's page

Taja the Barbarian wrote:

Rules as Written, it looks like the Shadow rune can be applied to

• Light Armor,
• Medium Armor, or
• a piece of 'accessory' clothing.

It can not be applied to Heavy Armor or Explorer's Clothing (or, presumably, any other piece of 'non-armor' armor).

The accessory option does seem to pretty much make the rune's armor restriction kinda pointless, but the accessory item does require its own investment slot, so it's not completely pointless I guess...

So someone wearing Light Armor can get a shadow rune, using up only one investment slot. But someone wearing an explorer's outfit with the accessory shadow rune has to use up two investment slots?

Greeeeaaatt...

But for the other side, you are not restricted to the limits of your potency rune.

So you can have, for example, shadow, slick, and stanching runes active at the same time even with your armor being only a +1 armor.

YuriP wrote:

Unicore wrote:

I think the better measure of why Caroming charge might be broken is to look at the case of having a party of 4 daredevils that all use it every turn.

I'm playtesting this in a party with 3 Daredevils, all with Caroming Charge, which proves to be quite strong against multiple enemies. But honestly, it's not that absurd. If there were 3 or 4 Kineticists casting Flying Flame every round, it would have practically the same or greater effect.

The main point is that they can all end up out of the enemies' reach, forcing them to spend actions to get closer or focus on other characters. The Daredevils can easily start and end their turn far from the enemies thanks to the Daring Stunt + Caroming Charge combo.

That said, many enemies with counter-movement reactions appear, as I did in a fight against drakes.

Flying Flame offers a basic reflex saving throw, on which enemies can get half to no damage. One of the reasons the Daredevil was more successful than the wizard was because the enemies were succeeding and critically succeeding against being fireballed, while taking full damage from the daredevil. Man, the wizard was so mad when they fireballed to two critical successes and a success. If I took the same encounter and swapped fireball for Flying Flame, the output would have been 1/6th the output from the Caroming Charge.

Therefore, if Flying Flame is fine, then it is fine to give Caroming Charge a basic Reflex saving throw against your class DC.

It's because your Wizard was just unlucky. But Stunt Damage has such a poor damage progression for a 2-action activity that, as it progresses, it ends up being even weaker than a d6 Flaying Flame with a saving throw and everything.

Basically, a full Flying Flame with Impulse Junction and Aura Weakness already equals the average damage of a Caroming Charge at level 5 and surpasses it at subsequent levels. Even without Aura Weakness, a Flaying Flame with Impulse Junction also surpasses its average damage from level 7 onwards, and even a Flaying Flame using d6 equals the average damage of a Caroming Charge starting from level 16 and is stronger when you get levels 19 and 20.

Also, as for the drake fight, from what adventure's encounter did you run. Because if you tailored a fight that does have reactive strike, that's not indicative of commonality, that's you tailoring a countered fight. Did you pick drakes because they had Reactive Strike, or did you pick drakes because the encounter called for drakes as a thematic element? Monster Core is showing 53 instances of Reactive Strike out of over 400, and Monster Core 2 is showing 46 instances out of over 300. What I'd ask you to do is pick up an adventure or adventure path, you typically like to run, and check how many instances of Reactive Strike appear in encounters in that adventure. AoN has 3669 NPCs in the bestiary. 479 of them mention reactive strike, of which an amount slightly less then them will actually have it. That's 13%. But the 13 percent only means so much, as it's dependent on whether an adventure is made with a lot of Reactive Strike monsters or not. Yes, when Reactive Strike is available, their capabilities will be diminished, but my point is, in a written adventure, how often will it be encountered? Of course there will be at least one, but is there even enough to encounter it at least once per level? If you're building encounters based on a story's progression, without regard to questions like, "I need something with Reactive Strike," how often do you get Reactive Strike?

There are 3 things to consider when talking about the proportion of monster reactions. The first is the difficulty of accurately determining this information. It's even easy to get a list of creatures that cause Reactive Strike; just go to AoN, search for Reactive Strike and Attack of Opportunity, and calculate the percentage from the total number of entries found. But the problem is that there are several other reactions with different names that function as movement reactions, such as the Twisting Tail of the "Green Dragons" or the Lurking Death of the "Deaths", which simply isn't easy to find in searches. There are a lot of movement-triggered reactions with different names in various creatures.

The other point is that this percentage is only applied to enemy types, but it's very common in APs and even in homebrew games for the GM to repeat the same creature type, especially martial NPCs, who tend to have this type of reaction quite often.

And lastly, there's the fact that the number of creatures with movement reactions increases significantly with level. While in total we have a little over 13%, when we compare level to level, this proportion is quite different, and that's only considering the standard RS/AoO:

- Against level 1 PCs (enemies levels -1 to 5): 81 out of 1377 have these reactions, that is, 6%.
- Against level 2 PCs (enemies levels -1 to 6): 108 out of 1607 have these reactions, that is, 7%.
- Against level 3 PCs (enemies levels -1 to 7): 139 out of 1846 have these reactions, that is, 7%.
- Against level 4 PCs (enemies levels 0 to 8): 169 out of 1989 have these reactions, that is, 8%.
- Against level 5 PCs (enemies levels 1 to 9): 193 out of 2110 have these reactions, that is, 9%.
- Against level 5 PCs (enemies levels 2 to 10): 209 out of 2047 have these reactions, that is, 10%.
- Against level 7 PCs (enemies levels 3 to 11): 213 out of 1953 have these reactions, or 11%.
- Against level 8 PCs (enemies levels 4 to 12): 221 out of 1850 have these reactions, that is, 12%.
- Against level 9 PCs (enemies levels 5 to 13): 229 out of 1765 have these reactions, that is, 13%.
- Against level 10 PCs (enemies levels 6 to 14): 241 out of 1661 have these reactions, that is, 14%.
- Against level 11 PCs (enemies levels 7 to 15): 244 out of 1555 have these reactions, that is, 16%.
- Against level 12 PCs (enemies levels 8 to 16): 243 out of 1417 have these reactions, or 17%.
- Against level 13 PCs (enemies levels 9 to 17): 231 out of 1264 have these reactions, that is, 18%.
- Against level 14 PCs (enemies levels 10 to 18): 223 out of 1156 have these reactions, that is, 19%.
- Against level 15 PCs (enemies levels 11 to 19): 206 out of 1048 have these reactions, that is, 20%.
- Against level 16 PCs (enemies levels 12 to 20): 203 out of 959 have these reactions, that is, 21%.
- Against level 17 PCs (enemies levels 13 to 21): 186 out of 857 have these reactions, or 22%.
- Against level 18 PCs (enemies levels 14 to 22): 167 out of 728 have these reactions, that is, 23%.
- Against level 19 PCs (enemies levels 15 to 23): 148 out of 617 have these reactions, that is, 24%.
- Against level 20 PCs (enemies levels 16 to 24): 124 out of 503 have these reactions, that is, 25%.

In other words, as you progress, the probability of the AP or GM having used one or more creatures with movement reactions gradually increases from a little over 1/20 of encounters to 1/4 of them, which consequently progressively hinders the effectiveness of the daredevil, who relies heavily on abilities that can trigger movement reactions.

I think the better measure of why Caroming charge might be broken is to look at the case of having a party of 4 daredevils that all use it every turn.

I'm playtesting this in a party with 3 Daredevils, all with Caroming Charge, which proves to be quite strong against multiple enemies. But honestly, it's not that absurd. If there were 3 or 4 Kineticists casting Flying Flame every round, it would have practically the same or greater effect.

The main point is that they can all end up out of the enemies' reach, forcing them to spend actions to get closer or focus on other characters. The Daredevils can easily start and end their turn far from the enemies thanks to the Daring Stunt + Caroming Charge combo.

That said, many enemies with counter-movement reactions appear, as I did in a fight against drakes.

Level 6 Slayer Playtest Analysis

By skipping level 5, at this level you combined the benefit of becoming an expert in martial weapons with the level 6 feat, which we decided to be Relentless Counterstrike. Although we ended up not being able to use the reaction, either because we had already used On the Hunt before, or because the Slayer was being less targeted. Given that the daredevils in the group ended up arriving faster and receiving a lot of the enemy's attention.

As this changes almost nothing in Slayer's gameplay, it just provides another opportunity to use On the Hunt, there were no significant changes to Slayer's gameplay. Something you may have already noticed from my previous posts. The fact that Slayer's gameplay experience is quite concise and even a little boring with progression.

At this level there was also no foreshadow. It's basically an exploration without much information about what will be found ahead. There was even a group of kobolds who provided advance information about a mining area, but we're not going to test it because we decided to skip level 7 of the book and go straight to the level 8 part (we'll just take the equipment and treasures we would gain, distribute it among the characters and go straight to the final fortress). In other words, there are no trophies to be acquired.

As for the quarry, we started using Instant Enmity in all fights, as they were basically one severe encounter per day, and there was almost always a prominent enemy to use this reaction on without problems. Although it made practically no difference in terms of gameplay, as they were strong enemies and difficult to crit and trigger On the Hunt, and a large part of On the Hunt came from the deaths of the weakest creatures.

That said, casting 2 Electric Arcs using Slayers Tricks remains by far the best use of On the Hunt (it's basically fireball damage with every action, only more accurate and with more concise damage), especially when there are multiple enemies.

What weighed a little at this level was the fact that we had placed a fire damage trophy on the Bloodseeking Blade. However, as the number of enemies with immunity to fire was relevant, we decided to change its trophy back to spirit and put it on the shield. I know that in the next fight we will fight a golem and that this damage will therefore be lost. But I wanted to leave it like that to “emulate” what it would be like for a player who doesn't know that he will face what comes next. Just like what happened with the fire trophy. But anyway, this brings back an important point about trophies. The lack of dynamism.

At this level, I can clearly say. The Slayer needs to be able to change trophies in combat, preferably at the cost of just one action. In the current situation, the trophy is practically a rune; you choose the one you think is best for most cases and go with it. If you don't have a good foreshadowing of what you're going to face, you won't know which trophy to use, and even if you do, it's most likely just 1 or 2 creatures; it's unlikely you'll have a general foreshadowing unless you're fighting fiends or the undead in an adventure focused on this type of enemy. And moreover, we have Monster Lore, which is almost useless. For the Slayer, who cannot touch his trophies, knowing whether the creature in combat has any immunity, weakness, resistance, or attacks of a certain type to protect himself with trophies on the shield is of no use. Since you cannot exchange them in combat, and investing heavily in intelligence just to use your RK to help the group is a sacrifice that is normally not worth it for the character. I can't imagine people failing to invest in constitution or strength to invest heavily in intelligence just to have a better chance at an RK that won't even be that useful to you directly. So Monster Lore has been useless at the end of the day, no use for the character, no significant effectiveness due to low attribute.

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As both Daredevil and Slayer don't get anything exclusive at level 7, I'm thinking about talking to my friend so we can jump straight to level 8. Slayer even gets a feature to start combats with reactions like Guardian, but I still don't think it's worth doing a playtest at this level just for that reason.

Level 6 Daredevil Playtest Analysis

This level “accumulates” the benefit of level 5 and 6, however, due to limitations of the adventure for level 5, coupled with the fact that the only thing it really provides to the character is the standard improvement in proficiency with martial weapons that every martial class receives, this part can be largely “ignored” in terms of playtesting with one exception. The fact that, at level 5 and 6, weapon proficiency is practically the same as skills, taking away the natural “advantage” of maneuvers over Strikes.

As we are now testing 3 variations of Daredevil, each one took a different feat at this level:

- Pure Daredevil: Headsmash
- Daredevil fighter: Reactive Striker (via fighter archetype)
- Daredevil guardian: Larger Than Life (via guardian archetype)

Speaking of this feats. Headsmash, like other pressure feats, proved to be excessively punishing and inefficient. It is interesting because, thematically, it follows well the premise of taking risks to have greater benefits, with benefits in success and critical success, and harms in failure and critical failure. The problem is that, like other press feats in the class, the benefits do not outweigh the risks.

What I found interesting about Headsmash is that the effects of glitches are actually reasonable. On failure, you deal half Stunt Damage and release the target, and on critical failure, your target can grab you or leave you prone. But in success you basically have the effect of Stunning Blows, only much more limited. Let's do a quick comparison below:

Stunning Blows:
- Expands Flurry of Blows
- It only requires that 1 of the 2 Flurry of Blows Strikes hit to make the target test fortitude against your DC to be stunned or not. Being stunned 1 on a normal fortitude failure and 3 on a critical failure. This gets the incapacitation trait for this.

Headsmash:
- The target must already be grabbed or restrained by you and both must be adjacent to the same prop (i.e., no using a prop behind the target).
- By the press trait, you are forced to only be able to use this action while suffering MAP.
- You test your atletics against the target's fortitude, if you hit you cause Stunt Damage and it tests fortitude against your CD and if it fails, similar to Stunning Blows, the target is stunned 1. But if it is a critical failure and it is stunned 2 (and not 3 as in Stunning Blows) and even then, it receives the incapacitation trait as well.
- If you fail the Athletics check against the target's Fortitude, you release the target but deal half the Stunt Damage.
- If it critically fails, it has basically the same effect as Grapple's critical failure.

Can you see the problem? Failure and critical failure are even fair for a risk-taking class. But for a press action with fail and botch effects, it had to have much better success and critical success than a nerfed version of Stunning Blows. And that's my biggest fear for these risky press skills. Even though it provides adrenaline, it doesn't have much use in the third action either, which ends up being a minor or insignificant benefit in practice.

Meanwhile, the multiclass fighter version I got Reactive Striker. Which even raised another question about Daredevil in my head, why didn't they give him Reactive Strike? Whether as a class feature or as a feat? For a deredevil-style class, with a bold concept, being able to do Reactive Strike makes perfect sense. But no, the 2 reaction feats that were given are very circumstantial and not very effective. One gives control over forced movement, which is cool, but requires you to be adjacent to a prop and adrenaline, and another that also requires adrenaline to give +2 circumstance to AC against the attack and allows you to Stride at half speed. They're not bad, but they're also far from notable reactions.

In fact, Daredevil Fighter has been notably more enjoyable to play of the 3. Precisely because it provides good press feats and a good reaction.

Daredevil guardian has proven to be OK, receiving +6 damage from Shove to add to Stunt Damage is not bad, especially when done with Daring Stunt, but it is far from being incredible as many people thought. Additionally, as it only works with Shove, it is very dependent on flanking the target with a prop. Which also reinforces the importance of being small to use allies and enemies as props. Furthermore, now with Larger Than Life, it is possible to do this even with Huge creatures. In the end, it's not bad, but it's also not that spectacular for a feat that requires all the positions of things to be fulfilled.

Otherwise, things were no different from previous levels, whenever possible the daredevils used Caroming Charge against multiple enemies, or risk-free press feats to Strike enemies and Daring Stunt whenever there was no enemy with reactions against movements.

Speaking of reactions against movements, this level in this part of the adventure was notable because in almost every encounter there was at least one enemy with reactions against movements, and the most annoying ones possible, which were several enemies with Twisting Tail, which disrupts movement actions, which left the Daredevils much more limited, and as none of these enemies were weak, Galvanized Mobility could not be significant enough to justify the attempts to use Daring Stunt and nullify it (including nullifying the adrenaline gain) and taking damage. Which for me reinforces the need for this class to better deal with reactions, either by preventing them from being triggered or by giving a more significant bonus to AC.

I picked the Hasty Celebration with the Daredevil Tanuki because I thought it was super thematic with the class, too bad I haven't had the chance to use it yet.

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As both Daredevil and Slayer don't get anything exclusive at level 7, I'm thinking about talking to my friend so we can jump straight to level 8. Slayer even gets a feature to start combats with reactions like Guardian, but I still don't think it's worth doing a playtest at this level just for that reason.

Yes, Caroming Charge is easy to execute due to Daring Stunt's high efficiency in providing adrenaline. However, as Unicore correctly pointed out, if you need to do anything else during your turn, you won't be able to execute it. Therefore, conditions like Prone and Grabbed easily limit Caroming Charge.

The rarity of these conditions largely depends on whether you were lucky enough to avoid a critical failure with your Daring Stunt (except for Relocate attempts). That said, it's quite rare for a Daring Stunt to critically fail, except against stronger creatures.

It depends on the level and the adventure.

For example, I'm currently testing by replaying level 6 encounters from Cult of Cinders, and almost all encounters at this level have at least one creature with movement-triggered reactions. And I know that number tends to increase as the level goes up.

Yes, my tests agree with you.

Since the Stunt Damage isn't that impressive and Caroming Charge puts the daredevil at risk of triggering multiple reactions, in practice it doesn't prove as OP as it seems on paper.

That said, I miss a test so enemies can do something. Automatically dealing damage without a chance of failure, in my opinion, even goes against the concept of risk in the class. Maybe a basic Reflex save or something like that.

The other point about Caroming Charge is that it's too strong for a level 2 feat. It should probably be a level 4 or 6 feat.

As for not being able to deal the same damage multiple times, we already have the general rule about duplicate effects; people just forget it.

So, regarding the armor issue, I think many are focusing too much on the modern context of daredevils, considering only our contemporary world where armors are light in general. I can't see the same problem when translating this to a medieval fantasy world, where this type of daring character can't wear medium armor.

Furthermore, medium armor isn't exactly full plate armor. They are sets typically more focused on protecting internal organs well without excessively hindering overall mobility. Armor like Hide Armor, Scale Mail, Chain Mail, and Breastplate are good examples of armor that offer a good degree of protection, a high weight, but try not to overly restrict mobility.

I think a nice and simple solution for this is for the class to have auto-scaling on at least Athletics or Dexterity (I think ideally we need both, because otherwise every DD is going to choose one and use their 3rd/7th/15th skill increases for the other) and change Stunt Damage into something more versatile. I like Teridax's suggestion from another thread where he said Stunt Damage could be replaced with a fist attack after you make a succesful Athletics check, and while I think that would be fine, I think that still keeps the damage of Dex-DDs lower for no reason.

Not wanting to belittle your solution, because it's also something I think the Daredevil needs to avoid having its skill selection locked, forcing it to invest in Athletics and Acrobatics. But this solution deals with a different problem.

In practice, the structural flaw goes beyond having or not having automatic proficiency in these skills; it also stems from the fact that it forces a MAD on the class. You simply can't make a Daredevil without investing heavily in both attributes, even if you are automatically legendary in Athletics and Acrobatics. When you have a class full of press feats with a high risk of failure, you can't afford not to have a high attribute in the feat you intend to use.

This falls more into the category of allowing the use of Dexterity for Athletics and Strength for Acrobatics or creating an alternative to Daring Stunt that doesn't depend on Athletics for acrobatics builds. In addition, improving or replacing the Strength bonus from Stunt Damage with a fixed bonus or an extra die, or, as Teridax suggested, a Strike as a free action (this would allow not only better use of runes but perhaps even a ranged attack, helping to justify a build focused on Dexterity).

In other words, automatic proficiency isn't the solution to the problem but the minimum that needs to be done. Many more things need to be adjusted for the class to be worth playing with Dexterity as a key attribute. Otherwise, it's better to simply remove it and focus only on Strength.

I don't think the dexterity-focused daredevil necessarily needs to be removed (although it's a valid option). But for it to continue, a whole range of mechanics that make sense with it needs to be written. Something that doesn't currently exist.

A good example to reflect on this is the rogue, which has both a subclass 100% focused on dexterity, the thief, and one focused on strength, the ruffian.

In the thief, we have dexterity in damage instead of strength, a focus on thievery, stealth, and acrobatics, the primary use of light armor, and an entire set of unique feats.

In the ruffian class, we can deal precision damage with any martial weapon that deals d6 or less damage for martial weapons or d8 for simple weapons. We also have access to medium armor (and easily heavy armor if you're willing to spend an archetype feat for it), high athletics allowing for the efficient use of athletics' maneuvers, and an entire set of unique feats.

The daredevil lacks precisely that. An entire body of writing focused on making a dexterity daredevil work. As it's written today, the difference between making a Strength or Dexterity Damage Defeat is basically the difference between deciding whether to start with +4 Strength and +3 Dexterity or +4 Dexterity and +3 Strength. Since you basically need both, as you're fighting a character where a good portion of the abilities depend on strength to use athletics and get some more melee damage and acrobatics and AC depending on dexterity. Not to mention the Press feats that are mixed between the two.

Perhaps the designer's intention was precisely to make a class that forced both to risk having to keep the constitution reduced. But if that was the case, then the community didn't understand, didn't like, and didn't accept it well.

There's also the possibility that these classes were simply designed in a rush on the eve of delivering the playtest, which would also justify all of this.

Curiously I'm planning to add the Stunt Damage to next Strike when reach the level 8 in the daredevil fighter build adding Brutish Shove fat to it and using a Scythe.

This way I will able to Trip with Daring Stunt while get adrenaline and then use Brutish Shove with MAP-3 to Strike and Shove to do Stunt Damage with the same action.

The difficulty is that I need a good prop to do this (maybe I have to get a companion or as the caster to summon some large creature to use as a prop).

I'm having the same feeling. The main problem with Stunt Damage isn't the damage itself, but the difficulty in finding a use for it. Perhaps a better approach would be to incorporate it into maneuvers—and I mean all of them, including Trip and Grapple and the class's extra maneuvers—and deal damage on successful hits, not just critical hits like some press maneuvers do.

Caroming Charge, on the other hand, I haven't tested at high levels yet, but I already imagined it would lose efficiency with progression. Since it's something that can be spammed at will, I don't really like comparing it to spells with daily usage limits. Instead, I prefer to compare it to impulses, which, because they can be used freely from the start, make more sense in the comparison.

Current damage of Charoming Charge, focusing on strength:
LvL 1-4: 1d6+4 = 7.5 avg
LvL 5-8: 2d6+4 = 11 avg
LvL 9: 3d6+4 = 14.5 avg
LvL 10-12: 3d6+5 = 15.5 avg
LvL 13-16: 4d6+5 = 19 avg
LvL 17-19: 5d6+6 = 23.5 avg
LvL 20: 5d6+6 = 24.5 avg

There are other important additional advantages and a significant disadvantage to Charoming Charge: the fact that the DD can move at 2x its speed, which not only allows it to damage virtually all enemies in the encounter, but also allows it to finish in a good position, avoiding. This makes it difficult for enemies to retaliate without spending movement actions. However, it also has the major disadvantage that if there are many enemies reacting against movement, it practically makes the activity unusable.

Now let's compare it to Flying Flame. I'll include the increase to d8 and the weakness to fire here, but I won't include Thermal Nimbus because it creates a combo with more feat and action requirements. However, this is probably how most fire kineticists would fight, so if you like, you can imagine them dealing half of the level as extra damage per round.

The average damage of Flying Flame will be calculated as the enemies having the Reflex save DC that the kineticist has as a class DC, just to simplify the calculation. It will be multiplied by 75% (0.75) considering that half the chance is for the target to hit and the other half is for the target to take half. Critical misses and critical hits cancel each other out, since one causes nothing and the other causes double.

Flying Flame's average damage, including the benefits of Impulse Junction and the weakness of Aura Junction (lvl 5-20):
LvL 1-2: 1d8 = 4.5*0.75 = 3,375 avg
LvL 3-4: 2d8 = 9*0.75 = 6.75 avg
LvL 5: 3d8+2 = 13.5*0.75+2 = 12,125 avg
LvL 6: 3d8+3 = 13.5*0.75+3 = 13,125 avg
LvL 7: 4d8+3 = 18*0.75+3 = 16.5 avg
LvL 8: 4d8+4 = 18*0.75+4 = 17.5 avg
LvL 9: 5d8+4 = 22.5*0.75+4 = 20.875 avg
LvL 10: 5d8+5 = 22.5*0.75+5 = 21,875 avg
LvL 11: 6d8+5 = 27*0.75+5 = 25.25 avg
LvL 12: 6d8+6 = 27*0.75+6 = 26.25 avg
LvL 13: 7d8+6 = 31.5*0.75+6 = 29,625 avg
LvL 14: 7d8+7 = 31.5*0.75+7 = 30,625 avg
LvL 15: 8d8+7 = 36*0.75+7 = 34 avg
Level 16: 8d8+8 = 36*0.75+8 = 35 avg
Level 17: 9d8+8 = 40.5*0.75+8 = 38.375 avg
Level 18: 9d8+9 = 40.5*0.75+9 = 39.375 avg
Level 19: 10d8+9 = 45*0.75+9 = 42.75 avg
Level 20: 10d8+10 = 45*0.75+10 = 43.75 avg

Here it's easy to see that, from level 5 onwards, Flying Flame already causes more average damage than Charoming Charge, which perhaps justifies why the designer included Charoming Charge without checks. The designer knew its damage progresses slowly and without critical hits, although it's still a bit strange to automatically deal such damage, especially at low levels. It still stands out for basically having the same damage as a d6 weapon. Perhaps it makes more sense for its feat to increase to level 4 or even 6 instead of adding a check. Because its main advantage for me is allowing me to end my turn away from enemies right after dealing damage while risking triggering several reactions and forcing me to give up the activity. In the end, I'm finding it even more balanced than I initially imagined.

The problem with Bloodscent is, as I've already pointed out, that since I play a lot online, most of the information is already known. The VTT shows it. Even the effects and conditions often need to be public, not only to avoid blinding the player to whether the abilities they use are working or not, but also because many abilities have conditions as requirements and malfunction if the player doesn't know them, such as reaction triggers and ability requirements that depend on specific conditions.

In none of the games I play does the GM hide conditions or the enemy's state. We may not know them numerically or as a percentage, but my GMs, even in person, say things like “He seems fine”, “He's a little injured”, “He's already quite injured”, etc. That's why Bloodscent makes little sense to me. And honestly, if I had to take a class feat from a specific class that was released 7 or 8 years after the game was launched, I would be able to know more or less how the enemies are doing. What effects and conditions I applied is working? What's they current condition? I probably wouldn't be playing this game.

Imagine someone casting a fear spell and the game master always secretly rolling the spell and never revealing the result. That person will never use fear in the game again because they don't even know if it's working.

That's why, IMO, it's a feat that doesn't make much sense unless your GM is so bad to a point that you need a class feat to force them to show something.

Level 4 Slayer Playtest Analysis

At this level, Instant Enmity was brought back, but in the level 4 feat slot, because it simply seemed better than the available options.

That said, I'm starting to question whether it's really worth worrying about the target being your quarry. The only target where this would be truly beneficial would be in the fight against the Greater Barghest, where the quarry effect against the target's physical resistance would prove useful. But in practice it wasn't; this effect was already negated by the runes, while the Greater Barghest had reinforced its resistance with Blink, but Blink provides Resist All Resist Any, which doesn't exactly qualify as “your quarry is resistant to physical damage.” Perhaps some more permissive GM might consider it, but I know many wouldn't, as I didn't.

The curious detail is that at this level we finally had more than one quarry. An NPC gave details about two of the strongest enemies we faced, who were indeed high-level enemies. But, as I said above, the quarry doesn't make that noticeable a difference, besides providing trophies (of which we now have 7, with 2 in use and 5 unused, which puts us at the limit of trophies allowed, at least until we get other feats that use trophies). Because against the greater barghest, we only managed to trigger On the Hunt once due to a single NAT 20 we rolled against him (his AC was too high to cause a critical hit without the NAT), while in other encounters, the reaction was basically triggered by the death of other creatures.

Otherwise, there were no notable changes from what was already discussed in the previous levels. On the Hunt allows you to use 2 EA in a round against the various weak enemies that were still alive, and the slayer using Honed Strike whenever possible.

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The next analysis will be of level 6, since level 5 of AoA mostly has few relevant deathmatches. The only extreme one is easily resolved through conversation.

Level 4 Daredevil Playtest Analysis

At this level, as previously mentioned, the playtest shifted to the last chapter of the first AoA book to test at level 4.

Now that we've reached a level where we can take archetype feats, it's time to replace the fighter PC with a daredevil archetype fighter and the ranger PC with a daredevil archetype guardian. The goal here was to test the theoretical combinations of the daredevil with fighter press feats and the daredevil with the combined damage of stunt damage and punishing shove.

The chosen ancestry for both was ancient elf. However, in the very first fight, against a group of hunting spiders in a large cave chamber, this choice became problematic for the daredevil guardian. Since it's a medium creature, it can't use other medium creatures as props, which for most of the fight prevented it from dealing damage with Shove. Attempts to push the target towards the wall were unsuccessful, as the GM (myself) moved the spiders away from the walls because I interpreted that they felt cornered (and rightly so) and preferred to move away from the prop. There was only one Shove against the wall that I allowed, but that resulted in a failure, so in this combat the Daredevil Guardian didn't even manage to test its main advantage.

Seeing that it would be very difficult for the Daredevil Guardian, we opted to change its ancestry to Leshy Aiuvarin and used Elf Atavism to take the Ancient Elf heritage. This was thematically valid, since Leshys are thematically immortal and therefore valid to meet the soft requirement of Elf Atavism to take Ancient Elf (“…you couldn't take the Ancient Elf heritage unless your non-elf ancestry also has a lifespan measured in multiple centuries”).

With the change in ancestry, the Daredevil Guardian became much more functional, since a small ancestry allows the use of medium-sized creatures with props. This already allowed the Daredevil to use Shove to deal stunt damage with much more consistency in the following fight against a Greater Barghest, although the damage was poor in this fight due to the monster's physical resistance (10).

Regarding this, I can already say that during this level, the use of Shove with stunt damage + punishing shove was only OK. The damage of 1d6+str(4)+str(4)+2 is obviously not negligible, but positioning oneself to deal it is a bit more complex. Since the Daredevil Guardian always had to be positioned to flank the target against a prop (usually an ally larger than the Daredevil). In most cases, it's doable, but it requires you to coordinate with allies or be attentive to their movements, sometimes delaying your turn and risking triggering reactions to deal damage that, at this level, is lower than most other martials, since those at this level typically already have access to striking runes, in addition to potential extra damage, and the Daredevil Guardian also doesn't achieve the same damage in case of critical hits (Punishing Shove at least doubles, but Stunt Damage doesn't) and also comes with a very annoying critical failure effect (it makes you prone) and has a considerably high chance of occurring if you have MAP. In other words, at least at this level, it wasn't worth it.

On the other hand, the Daredevil Fighter shone! Simply using Exacting Strike instead of Pressing Pummel was fantastic. It works much better than the Pressing Pummel; you don't depend on having two actions to attack, and if you miss the first Exacting Strike, you simply make another Exacting Strike with map-3 (which is curious because using Exacting Strike twice in a turn doesn't make sense with the Fighter if it doesn't have Accelerated, but it's essential for the Daredevil because it unlocks the use of Audacious Combatant). Its hits and DPR were noticeably more consistent than the pure Daredevil's. This, in practice, points to the inefficiencies of the Pressing Pummel. But not to say that the Pressing Pummel had no highlights; in the fight against the Greater Barghest, it was useful because it was also under the effect of Blink, which gave it 5 resistance against damage, even from magic weapons. But in other fights, it was simply inferior.

Speaking of this creature, it was the only one at this level that possessed AoO, which was quite brutal, being very punishing for the daredevils. However, when you have 3 characters constantly triggering reactions, it was possible to at least mitigate it somewhat by alternating initiative using Delay, so the AoO was at least distributed among the daredevils. But certainly, if it were a lone daredevil, it would probably have fallen in the first 2 turns due to its low HP, insignificant AC against a much higher-level monster, even with Galvanized Mobility and one of the daredevils wearing heavy armor. We put the general Armor Proficiency feat on the Daredevil Guardian, since the archetype already provided medium armor.). The hit from a solo mini-boss was still too high to make a truly significant difference.

At this level, we included Opening Gambit, which worked very well in all encounters. Using athletics/acrobatics against the standard DC of the highest-level enemy isn't too difficult to win when you're an expert in the skill that uses your key attribute and also have an item bonus to it. And if the enemies are a large group but with a low maximum level, it's easy to pass the check. The curious thing, however, is that 19 + the initiative skill (usually Perception) often doesn't put the daredevil at the top of the initiative order, because usually there isn't much investment in Wisdom with him (after all, his MAD is terrible, and you need to invest heavily in all 3 physical attributes). But it was still a worthwhile feat.

And once again, the star of the daredevils continued to be Daring Stunt. For the pure Daredevil and Daredevil Fighter builds, it was very useful in compressing movement (especially the initial movement) with a maneuver plus adrenaline. For the Daredevil Guardian, it was essential for positioning the Daredevil to flank targets against props. Okay, Caroming Charge also shone in fights with many monsters, especially now that there are 3 Daredevils in the group, but it's still more circumstantial and feels more broken than Daring Stunt because it (still) doesn't have checks.

The other notable point that remains at this level is that, outside the Daredevil Guardian build, props in general have had little use beyond the extra speed (which, make no mistake, is very useful on its own). This has become more noticeable now that we use a medium Daredevil in the group. And most of the blame for this isn't even the prop mechanics themselves (which need improvement to work as well with larger creatures as with smaller ones), but rather the fact that stunt damage is less efficient than strike damage. Fights that use props are also excessively risky and don't benefit much from them.

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The next analysis will be of level 6, since level 5 of AoA mostly has few relevant deathmatches. The only extreme one is easily resolved through conversation.

I was reading the Recharge Weapon cantrip and noticed in its target the sentence “1 weapon with capacity”. But what's capacity?

In PF2e, capacity is a trait for weapons with multibarrels, but such a trait doesn't exist in SF2e; the only references that I found about the term are the carrying capacity of some containers like the Null Space Chamber, but it isn't related to weapons.

So what's the capacity defined in this spell? Is it defined somewhere?

As I said, there's already an overreaction in these forums to the change from Resist All to Resist Any. It will have far less impact than many people imagine, but now we finally have a clear rule that replaces instances of damage that were never defined.

I always thought Resist All was an excessive effect, and creatures with it weren't that much weaker in HP or AC to justify its presence.

My only complaint is that, despite this, it was never a noticeable problem that really made players revolt; it was just stronger than normal, and that's it. Therefore, for me, Paizo kind of messed with something that isn't a real problem, but the solution isn't a real problem either, so it doesn't change much significantly in my opinion.

Probably the foundry developers will implement some choice option or/and an auto-select for the highest damage.

My understood is that it will work like this example:

Some weaknesses can apply when a creature wouldn’t normally take damage, as determined by the GM. In such cases, you take damage equal to the weakness value when touched or affected by something with that characteristic. For example, a creature with weakness to water would take extra damage if it were targeted by a spell with the water trait or splashed with water.

So it will ignore the spirit damage but will take the holy damage.

So, I think there's also a certain overreaction regarding the nerf to Resist All. In the vast majority of cases, it will change very little. Monsters don't usually have much more than 1 or 2 types of damage in their attacks; it's the players who tend to accumulate different types.

For example, from the player's perspective, a champion's Resist All reaction could reduce the damage from a Diabolic Dragon's bite twice, once for the physical part and once for the energy part of the damage. Now, the player tends to choose the greater source of damage, not doubling the effect.

However, if the player were to attack a Ghost Mage with a weapon with 2 property runes that are not among the exceptions, Resist All would effectively negate these runes and still considerably reduce the physical damage. Now, the Ghost Mage will only reduce the greater type of damage, letting the remaining runes take effect, thus decreasing the difficulty of defeating these creatures.

In other words, in practice, things shifted towards the middle ground, with broad resistances not being as potent as they were for both sides. In the end, I think it was a good change, although a little less intuitive, because in my experience as a game master these resistances acted very disproportionately for both sides. But it's still far from bad; it's still a resistance that works against all types of damage, even if it no longer multiplies, while at the same time it somewhat enhances characters with multiple specific resistances.

So "Resist All X" has become more like "Resist Any X", where the creature choose X amount of damage to resist from any of the incoming damage, but no longer all of the incoming damage. This weakens many higher level creatures so their hit points might need calibration. That or create a "Resist Any Two X", though I don't think that'd be received well. Would some simply need to list out more damage types to reflect the designer's intentions? Hmm.

In practice, the old Resist All X always made too strong damage reduction from PCs (for example, in the old rule a Ghost Mage basically nullifies all the 2 non-ghost property runes and diminishes the main weapon damage).

I honestly doubt that many creature designers put into consideration the effect of Resist All put on PCs with many damage types in their attacks.

YuriP wrote:

The resistance to all becomes a bit confusing to me.

If I have a level 6 PC with a Charm of Resistance (fire 5) and I get a Resistance to All from a champion (all 8) and I get physical (13) + fire (7) damage and electricity (8), what will happen?

— I will sum the damage and then reduce all of it by 8?
— I will reduce the physical or electricity damage by 8 and the fire damage by 5?
— I will reduce the physical and electricity damage by 8 each and the fire damage by 5?
— I will reduce the physical damage or electricity by 8 and the fire damage by 8?
— I will have to choose if I will reduce the physical or fire or electricity by 8?

This is the relevant rules text from the errata:

"A single effect can activate more than one resistance at a time, but subtracts each of the subject’s resistances only once. If the subject has more than one resistance to the same damage type, they apply only one, usually the highest. For a resistance to a category including multiple damage types, like resistance to physical damage, to spells, or to all damage, if the subject is taking damage of multiple types included in the category, the subject can choose which damage type to use the resistance against."

In this case, you apply both of your resistances only once - but you apply them however you like, to reduce as much damage as possible. So in your example, your best bet would be to reduce the fire damage by 5 with your fire resistance, then you can choose to either reduce the electricity damage by 8 to 0, or the physical damage to by 8 to 5.

I don't feel like this is too complicated. I quite like it actually.

OK, I don't think that the mechanic is complicated. I only didn't understand the FAQ clarification.

Thanks for the explanation. Honestly, it's simpler and easier than the errata. :P

Oh I also need to point out that mutagenist improved a lot with its new field vial. Now it's feasible to be under the effect of up to 4 mutagens (up to 2 combined elixirs at level 13) and focus on disabling the worst effects. It still risks costing many actions, but it's now way better than before.

The resistance to all becomes a bit confusing to me.

If I have a level 6 PC with a Charm of Resistance (fire 5) and I get a Resistance to All from a champion (all 8) and I get physical (13) + fire (7) damage and electricity (8), what will happen?

— I will sum the damage and then reduce all of it by 8?
— I will reduce the physical or electricity damage by 8 and the fire damage by 5?
— I will reduce the physical and electricity damage by 8 each and the fire damage by 5?
— I will reduce the physical damage or electricity by 8 and the fire damage by 8?
— I will have to choose if I will reduce the physical or fire or electricity by 8?

Regarding the playtest, I honestly can't be very optimistic. Sure, Paizo's designers have surprised me many times, but this situation with these two classes reminds me a lot of the investigator and swashbuckler situation, which also struggled to differentiate themselves from the rogue. In their final versions, they didn't fare very well either.

The swashbuckler only really started working well in the remaster when Paizo made panache a reliable mechanic. The investigator, in my opinion, still hasn't found its footing even with the remaster. It gained a workaround that allows the player to choose a mental skill if they roll a bad Divise Stratagem, but ultimately it's still far from a pleasant solution for this mechanic. I still see games where players and GMs, either because they don't understand the mechanic well or because they simply consider the class too subpar, allow the use of the Divise Stratagem die to be completely optional. This allows the player to abandon a bad roll and attack the same target with a normal Strike, which honestly is really the simplest solution to the problem of this mechanic.

My fear is that the DD and the Slayer will become the new Investigator and Swashbuckler, with the designers not fully understanding or accepting the criticism and delivering a solution that most players will reject as not sufficiently balanced.

But that's just me being pessimistic; I hope the Paizo designers surprise me once again.

Regarding the excess of classes, it's a topic already widely debated in these forums, and I believe we even have a majority of opinions (at least among those who voice their opinions) that Paizo creates too many classes. I understand that classes sell rulebooks, but since RoE, this has become clear to me. It's much better for Paizo to limit itself to delivering one class per rulebook than two. This not only gives more space and time to work better on the class but also gives more room for options for the existing classes.

The Kineticist has already proven that a single, well-designed class with a wide range of gameplay options is far more interesting than two classes that divide everyone's attention.

Yes, that was actually one of the complaints we made during the necromancer's playtest. It was only possible to create flying Thralls with the recurring nightmare focus spell, but this spell was only accessible at level 14, long after most enemies and players had already gained flying speed, which comes around level 7 and becomes more common from level 9 onwards.

Is there room to make the daredevil into a skill class that replaces Athletics into certain skill actions? For example, Don't Mess With Me could change its trigger to "You critically succeed an Athletics check to Shove an enemy" and its effect to allow you to Demoralize the target using your Athletics modifier instead. It fits the idea of a bully that pushes people around to scare them, while also making the class less dependant on a 4th attribute.

Now that you pointed this out. The class could simply use its Class DC/Attack Roll to make its maneuvers. It would solve many of its problems but also would require a faster Class DC progression to become similar to the skill progression. It's a simple and elegant solution IMO.

My opinion regarding these classes is that they suffer from thematic and mechanical identity problems.

This becomes clear if we make a joke. Leonidas from 300 turns to a adventurers' party and asks:

— You, what is your profession?
Fighter: I am a fighter.
Rogue: I am a rogue.
Cleric: I am a cleric.
Wizard: I am a wizard.
Daredevil: I am a daredevil.
— What? Daredevil is not a profession!

It's a joke; a class isn't exactly a profession. But this helps to point out, for me, the root problem of the class: the fact that it doesn't define itself.

And this lack of definition creates precisely the situation that Teridax and Unicore point out. Teridax says "the DD was supposed to be a class specializing in using Props, the rest doesn't make sense" while Unicore argues "but the class has a lot of mechanics that don't care about Props, or at best treat them as optional," which is the case with Daring Stunt, Caroming Charge, and Pressing Pummel. OK, Daring Stunt can cause damage if you use Shove and Relocate, but in practice this requires another Prop to throw the target against, and it will still be inferior to a Strike. 99% of the times I used Daring Stunt it was to Trip or Grab because honestly, the damage isn't worth it. The other benefit that Teridax also mentioned affecting Caroming Charge is the additional speed, which isn't bad, but if your character is already fast or the enemies aren't very far away, you don't depend on it in most situations. And Pressing Pummel, which in my opinion is the main way to benefit from Adrenaline at low levels, doesn't care about Props.

Personally, I only use Props for speed gain since I saw that Stunt Damage required a lot of effort for little benefit, and I focused mainly on using Daring Stunt as an excellent way to compress actions to use Trip or Grab while providing adrenaline to use Caroming Charge or Pressing Pummel. This has already put me in a position where the class works even without Props. Did this make it competitive with others? In my opinion, no, but at least it made it playable and gave it a role, which is basically using Trip and Grab to primarily benefit the rest of the party while getting some extra adrenaline.

For me, the most important thing would be for the class designer to first define the class's true role, and then develop mechanics that fulfill that role. In the current situation, people don't even know what it does properly. Especially since it doesn't currently do anything that well.

The slayer, on the other hand, faces another identity problem. It was created as a kind of ranger variant class, focused on dynamically choosing prey instead of having fixed favorite enemies. A concept that made so much sense that 5e basically copied it for the ranger, and the second edition Pathfinder ranger copied this concept, improved by D&D.

Now, Paizo's designers want to reintroduce the slayer, but its main characteristic has already been given to the ranger. So, in order not to seem like a simple ranger variant and at the same time not to remove what comes from its origin, they implemented this current quarry concept, which is simply terrible. It's trying to be the Ranger who needs to mark its prey, but because it would rather not do the same, it marks poorly.

Honestly, for me, the Slayer should simply abandon the concept of the quarry as a target completely and focus fully on the concept of trophies. This makes him, in effect, a monster/bounty hunter who benefits from the rewards obtained by defeating his enemies, regardless of who they are, rather than a ranger variant.

Cellion wrote:

In my initial read through I immediately recognized that Adrenaline is there to guide you into the intended playstyle of using predominantly maneuvers by turning on the class' features. I don't think this is inherently bad.

While guiding mechanics aren't inherently bad, I do feel there's a fine line between guiding and forcing; adrenaline I think is the latter. I also think there are far more interesting guiding mechanics in the class's features already, chiefly propelling strides and stunt damage as ways to get the Daredevil's player to pay attention to props on the battle map. Were the focus on benefits you'd get from interacting with props using maneuvers, rather than adrenaline, that I think would do a much better job of guiding the Daredevil towards maneuvering enemies and making use of their environment, instead of making them jump through hoops just to turn on their class mechanics.

I also have a similar feeling to Teridax's regarding adrenaline. In general, it seems almost like an alternative form of panache in a class that thematically shouldn't depend on it.

For example, if your focus in the turn is to apply a maneuver to someone, adrenaline comes as a kind of congratulatory candy for attempting a maneuver. It's almost as if the class mechanics are saying, “Congratulations on trying to use a maneuver; here's a candy!” While when your intention is to use an ability that uses adrenaline, it becomes an “OK, you want to hit everyone or benefit from a reduced MAP, right? But this is just a candy for those who made a maneuver first; if you want to do that, you first need to try to perform a maneuver on someone, even if it has no thematic relation to the ability you would like to execute.”

In other words, in practice, adrenaline is a panache in a class that shouldn't be based on panaches, because it's not a swashbuckler, it's just a daredevil, someone who should instead be addicted to fighting unpredictably and even irresponsibly, where adrenaline would make sense if it were a simple circumstance bonus to speed and accuracy in attacks (all of them, including all maneuvers to differentiate it from the fighter) that lasted until the end of their next attack to represent their elevated adrenaline from being a daredevil.

The problem of Galvanized Mobility is that in practice it doesn't solve the main problem.

What Galvanized Mobility tries to do is to galvanize the player to try to take risks, giving a bit more safety when doing an action that triggers an enemy reaction, but in practice, when weighing the costs and benefits, the player rapidly notices that it is just better to avoid this enemy and focus in the others or just Strike normally because even it is being weaker you don't risk to take a heavily damage just to try to do the things that your class do riskly but that aren't that so better to worth.

This could work if the designer made something really significant, like “the enemy reactions made against you get a step result worse. Success attack rolls become a failure, and critical success attack rolls become a success, or if the reaction requires you to roll a save and you roll a failure, this becomes a success. If you roll a critical failure, this will become a failure”. The other option is just to make a rogue's Mobility-like feature, but IMO this goes against the concept of the benefit being worth the risks that the class tries to take.

IMO props should be abstracted at all.

This very concept of “I need to have something available during the fight for my abilities to work” is bad by itself. This will always make it a class that needs the scene/GM to have available something for the class to work on, while all other classes don't have such restrictions.

This is no different from all non-Starlit Span magus. It's like, “Cool, a gish class with many subclasses to do many roles, like Inexorable Iron to make a two-handed gish or Laughing Shadow to make a rogue gish” but in practice it's “Ok, there are too many interesting hybrid studies concepts, but many times these subclasses force me to lose a round without Spellstrike due to the waste of an action moving or risking to trigger a reaction when I Spellstrike. So while all these concepts are cool, it's more effective to just make a Starlit Span and just spam Spellstrike every round”. DD makes something like this but at the class level. You can make a cool, light, maneuver-focused class that requires a prop to get 2 of its basic benefits (currently in practice, the only real one is the extra speed because stunt damage using forced movement is just a weak Strike that can't crit), or you can simply make a fighter, making maneuvers when necessary and just Striking better at the rest of the time.

So as an initial point for the class not to fall into a Starlit Span-like dilemma, just remove the artificial disadvantages that are there just to make the class look cooler. In practice, they are just an unnecessary weight that doesn't justify itself at all.

It's a common mistake the designers make occasionally that's “It would be fun if I made a class with a mechanic who requires some special condition to work, but if I make it strong, I may make the players start an arms race to circumvent the restriction as much as possible, so instead let us make this special condition to make it OK and weak without it” but ultimately this just creates a class that is cool in concept but weaker mechanically.

I'm not saying that thematically the props shouldn't exist, but instead they are always available. A ground could be a valid Prop for example, allowing the DD to smash some faces into the ground when it doesn't have another cool object or creature closer. Or maybe the PC can use some object that it's carrying and using as Prop as part of the action. All this is inserted only in the flavor but not mechanically. When it has some cool Prop available, it can describe that it used this cool Prop instead if the player wants, again all in flavor only.

Honestly, we stop caring about the Shove Stunt Damage since level 1 because it's no better than a normal Strike. The only reason we have now to use Shove to do damage is to target enemy fortitude instead of AC. But we already know that a Vampire Bat Swarm has a higher fort DC than its AC so not even this makes sense to use.

What we could do was change the DD focus to the Giant Bad to try to Trip it and Caroming Charge the swarms, but the GM didn't send all the bats at once; instead, it sent the first swarm first, and as we were killing it, the bats' death scream was calling for the rest of the bats.

All that said while RAW is valid my GM friend doesn't accept that swarm can be forced moved by Shove or Relocate for him this doesn't make any sense for a swarm. He treats it as something Paizo forgot to include.

Even if he didn't rule like this because of the swarm characteristics, to be able to share space with other creatures, difficulties to use them as Props. The GM is who decides what's a valid prop or not, so unless they are flanked by a large wall, even allowing them to be Shoved, their forced movement hardly would be “interrupted by a prop”.

Level 3 Slayer Playtest Analysis
Sorry for the delay; this time I took a while to post due to lack of personal time.

This post will refer to the last level (3) of playing The Fall of Plaguestone. In the next level, the test will refer to the last part of the first AoA book, where players are expected to be at level 4.

In this level, we swapped the rogue ruffian for a fighter.

--

At level 3, the Slayer didn't gain anything truly unique. So we focused on replacing Instant Enmity, which wasn't proving very useful, with Slayer Tricks.

And honestly, it was well worth it. Initially, we tested it with Infectious Enthusiasm and Shield, a combination that was actually quite good since Infectious Enthusiasm stacked with Honed Strike. But since the character was already built with high Wisdom, we later switched to EA via Adapted Cantrip, and it was much better. Even with a lower spell cooldown, being able to cast two 2-action cantrips whenever an enemy died was a lot of fun.

The rest was basically the same experience as level 2. The difference this time was that the final boss was a quarry, which helped speed things up 3x due to the group's two critical hits against her plus the death of her bodyguard.

So, in summary, the Daredevil is able to use all its actions on offensive abilities, but aside from Caroming Charge, most such activities are significantly lower impact than their same action equivalent in other classes? So you roll the dice more often but it ends up being less impactful, like some sort of reverse-caster issue (where they have very impactful 2-action limited resources abilities)?

I wouldn't wanted to say that they are less impactful (this was in terms of DPR only), but that they don't worth they cost-benefit.

For example, a DD can try to do a Daring Stunt to Disarm + Rebounding Fall Stunt to try to Trip with MAP-3 + Wheeling Pull Stunt to Grab with MAP-6. But you have a high risk of taking the critical failure effect and not only failing to make all the maneuvers but also suffering from several backfires.
If you critically fail with Rebounding Fall Stunt you can't Stand in this round, if you critically fail with the Wheeling Pull Stunt you can trigger an AoO. The risk of critical failure is high due to the MAP, and critical success only triggers basically with a NAT-20. While the only real benefit is basically to be able to do these things with a small MAP. In this situation we are seriously tempted to just choose to use Pressing Pummel because it will get the MAP benefit without the maneuver risks.
These maneuvers to worth should have a better success effect to make the concept of high risk but with a high reward to work.

Rebounding Fall Stunt gets close to this because it can deal stunt damage too, but only in your critical success that, as I said, will only trigger when you roll a NAT-20, which is not enough IMO. It should do this in a success and double damage in a critical success.
Wheeling Pull Stunt is similar but more complicated. If you critically succeed, you can try to move the target to a Prop and do the stunt damage but you still need to have a Prop closer to do this.

And the cherry on top is that you can kind of do what Daredevil sets out to do with these Press feats, better with both the fighter and the ranger, with the only drawback being that they don't have a movement action as well-compressed as Daring Stunt.

The fighter can easily perform an athletic maneuver like Trip on their first action and follow up with a Double Slice or Exacting Strike or even the Vicious Swing itself (which honestly isn't worth it in this situation). They might not be able to make this work in the first round or in rounds with target changes because they might need to use Stride.

The Flurry Ranger can perform the maneuvers with an even lower MAP than the DD itself, since its MAP for agile attacks is -2 and -4. The problem is that against multiple enemies, Hunt Prey makes this kind of thing not work so well. Plus, they also need to use Stride occasionally.

But most importantly, they don't run as many risks as DD does.

Level 3 Daredevil Playtest Analysis

Sorry for the delay; this time I took a while to post due to lack of personal time.

This post will refer to the last level (3) of playing The Fall of Plaguestone. In the next level, the test will refer to the last part of the first AoA book, where players are expected to be at level 4.

In this level, we swapped the rogue ruffian for a fighter because we thought that comparing the DD's MAP-3 with the fighter's “MAP-3” (actually -2 because of the agile weapons). This, by default, means that in practice its MAP-5 behaves like the MAP-3 of other martials. This would be more interesting than comparing it with damage that we've already noticed the DD doesn't have.

In this level, the DD doesn't gain anything unique or significant, except for Galvanized Mobility. Which honestly wasn't that efficient.

At this level, there were many fights against groups of enemies, where once again the Caroming Charge proved formidable, being basically the main way to deal damage to multiple enemies in the entire group, and where the DD truly shone.

That said, against the final boss, her alchemical “bodyguard” possessed AoO, which quickly made the use of Caroming Charge too dangerous because, besides being able to cause AoO himself, the only maneuver available to gain Adrenaline was Daring Stunt. Even with the +2 benefit of Galvanized Mobility, taking AoO from a creature with a +14 hit chance that dealt 2d6+7 damage was not an acceptable risk for a DD with 20 AC (22 with Galvanized Mobility) and 43 HP! Taking an attack with a 60% chance to hit that dealt an average of 1/3 of the HP, with a 15% chance of taking a critical hit and taking double damage, was not an acceptable risk. Fortunately, the boss stayed away to protect herself from her bodyguard's AoO attacks. The GM considered that moving her would be worse because, in addition to losing the area attack, it would give the other PCs space to focus on the boss. This allowed the DD and the boss to duel for a while.

Another thing this level confirmed again is the DD's uselessness against swarms. We faced 2 swarms of bats, where the DD was basically reduced to giving Strikes since swarms are immune to maneuvers, and we agreed that, by similarity and logic, these immunities would extend to Press maneuvers.

Which, incidentally, once again gave me the opportunity to test the Flying Hurdle Stunt in a situation where it should be worthwhile, but, wow, it was so bad.

The situation was as follows. After the boss's bodyguard was destroyed, the other PCs began to move against her. The GM, seeing that she was going to be surrounded, moved her to a corner, thus preventing the PCs from benefiting from surrounding her—a perfect situation for the Flying Hurdle Stunt to shine! Except it didn't! In practice, on the very first attempt, we suffered a critical failure because her reflexes were +13 against an Athletics of +12 with MAP-3. This begins resulting in a critical failure, leaving the DD clumsy for 1, and failing again on the second attempt. In the following round, we failed again, this time with a failure using MAP-3 and a critical failure using MAP-6. Only in the third round of this process did we achieve a critical success due to a NAT of 20, and even then only after suffering another critical failure with MAP-3!

It was terrible; the chance of failure and critical failure in these maneuvers is very high, especially when you need it most, against strong opponents with terrain advantage. At the end of the combat, talking with my GM friend, we considered that, if it weren't for playtesting, we would probably opt to leave a free space. The martials adjacent to the boss simply try to relocate the boss.

Another point tested this time, after understanding that I couldn't benefit from the Audacious Combatant with normal Strikes, was to start using the Pressing Pummel instead. And the overall experience didn't change much, it only increased the feeling that the DD deals little damage, since it's very common to miss the Strike with -3. When the Pressing Pummel hits, the extra d10 damage doesn't feel like a big hit proportional to so many misses. It's OK at the end of the day because it's important to have an activity that allows Strikes to benefit from the Audacious Combatant. However, it gives the feeling that the Pressing Pummel becomes a must-have feat to make the class minimally functional.

In the end, what kept the DD interesting throughout this adventure was, by far, the Daring Stunt. It simply gives you a great sense of efficiency in your action economy by allowing you to always use all your actions offensively. The +10 speed when near a Prop meant the DD never had to spend actions just to get closer to an opponent. Plus, the other PCs benefited greatly from the fact that I almost always had at least one enemy Prone or Grabbed.

At the next level, we decided to remove the fighter and ranger from the party and add two more DDs, but multiclass, both being ancient elves with fighter and guardian archetypes. This allows us to test how much these MCs “fix/improve” the DD in practice while also seeing the real difference in playing with small and medium DDs.

YuriP wrote:

This same argument is valid for D&D too. I don't consider the changes from 5e to 5.5e like a fully incompatible edition in the same way as the remasters aren't either. I can even extend this to 3.5 and 3.0. In the end, all they are glorified errata that are due to have a bit higher number of balance and improvement changes and to the desire to try to earn a bit more selling as a “new edition”.

Exactly. 5.5e isn't a big enough change to warrant being called a new edition, and neither is the remaster. I don't agree with the name change but they are trying to bill 5.5e as its own edition. That's something Paizo are just simply not doing.

As I said this is all downstream of WOTC getting caught out with the OGL situation and having to backpedal other things they were going to try after losing their goodwill. That's why they want to make this new edition seem "new" because I do genuinely believe their original intent was a 5e that would go into infinity and they're trying to break from that. 5.5e implies a 6e in a way that 5e 2024 doesn't. It's not a decision about finding the most optimal possible name, it's marketting giving up fighting the players and signalling a change in priorities.

My theory is that a large part of the 5.5e base is precisely because it happened because WotC failed in its objective of destroying the OGL.

What WotC/Hasbro wanted was clearly and blatantly to make more money from D&D. The problem is that they saw the OGL as an obstacle to this (when, in my opinion, it was always an asset that the suits at WotC never knew how to use well to their advantage). So the original idea was:

— To destroy the OGL to prevent a new “Pathfinder” from emerging.
— To create a new edition without the OGL, mainly to monopolize the VTT market.
— To earn royalties from the market for third-party material that used D&D rules as a base and facilitator.

The problem is that the backlash from third-party creators and the community was strong, scaring and shaking Hasbro's plans in this regard. And this, along with Jess Lanzillo's departure, simply undid all of WotC's planning. My view today is that D&D 2024 only became a 5.5e (not just in nomenclature, but in effect) because of the OGL crisis. If the crisis hadn't happened, I believe they would have actually made a new edition precisely to make the previous edition obsolete. Not intending to improve the system itself, but simply to extract more money. However, since the crisis occurred and they found themselves in a position where switching to a more closed license would likely be a bigger setback, they chose to abandon any plans to make a new edition. They opted to restrict themselves to making the new edition as this “super errata” we have today. This is precisely to avoid the risk of releasing a new edition that might be poorly received and end up opening space for a new “Pathfinder” using the rules of the old edition. Ultimately, if 5e was still working well under these conditions, it's best not to abandon it.

Paizo could have never really gone with 2.5e or PF2.5.

Imagine, if you will, Paizo setting out to remove as many lingering traces of D&D-isms as feasible. For legal reasons, they need to be sure that the casual consumer doesn't confuse it with Dungeons & Dragons. It's a massive undertaking. What do they call it? Well, they sure can't follow the exact naming convention that D&D used for their major mid-edition overhaul that Pathfinder came out of.

Using 2.5 would have been shooting themselves in the foot when it came to the actual goal of the Remaster. Sure, D&D doesn't have ownership over decimal versions, but it could still be brought up to help show a larger pattern for the civil case. D&D formally adopting 5.5e just means that Paizo definitely can't do that for the Remaster.

This wouldn't cause legal problems; that would be stretching it too far. This type of versioning predates and is more prevalent than WotC's use of it.

There are many other things retained in the PF2e remaster that would provide a much stronger argument, which were kept because Paizo's lawyers saw that it would be a very forced argument for WotC to use legally against Paizo, such as terms like AC and Saves. Using a versioned edition with a dot is far from serving as any kind of legal argument for plagiarism or anything like that.

...

Or to look at it another way, if you build a character using the 2014 PHB then try to use it as a 5.5E character, you'll find you're missing background ASI, origin feats, weapon masteries, etc. It's a very different beast. But if you build a Pathfinder character following the legacy CRB, while you would need to convert your Ability Scores to Attribute Modifiers, for the most part everything else is working perfectly fine.
And that is why 5.5E deserves to be numbered as a half-edition as 3.5E was back in the day while PF2E remaster is mostly just a minor footnote

No, they aren't missing; these things have simply changed location, but they're still there. The fact that, for example, the attribute bonus has moved from race to background isn't a problem, unless you want to mix the rules instead of simply importing the entire character.

This issue also occurs in the PF2e remaster in several places. For example, you can't simply take the old Legacy Oracle Mysteries and try to use them in the remastered version; it simply doesn't work; it's incompatible in terms of rules. Or try to use many of the old Witch Patron Themes; you'll be missing the entire familiar mechanic. There are simply rules that cannot be merged due to incompatibility. But this doesn't prevent you from using, especially pre-made characters from the previous “version” in the new one. In fact, this is the main compatibility factor that makes it easier for game masters; you don't need to rewrite an NPC or monster from an adventure you already have ready or that doesn't exist in the remaster, just use it following its original rules normally, and it will work.

YuriP wrote:

This same argument is valid for D&D too. I don't consider the changes from 5e to 5.5e like a fully incompatible edition in the same way as the remasters aren't either. I can even extend this to 3.5 and 3.0. In the end, all they are glorified errata that are due to have a bit higher number of balance and improvement changes and to the desire to try to earn a bit more selling as a “new edition”.

I like the term subversion with a period because it clearly and directly indicates that “look, it's the same game, compatible with the same material, just with several improvements”. Even though the term “remaster” conveys a similar message, it still causes confusion because it can still seem like a new edition to laypeople, especially when they see the term “legacy” elsewhere.

I have to admit I'm confused by these two paragraphs. You start off by saying that using the “.5” designation is a way to market “glorified errata” in a way that “can earn a bit more selling as a 'new edition',” but then say that you like it because it it clearly communicates that it is the same game, but with some balance changes. Those seem like two contradictory positions to hold; either the .5 designation is intended as a marketing tactic, and it's confusing to players because companies are trying to pass off errata passes as new editions, or it's a method for clearly communicating that the .5 edition is the same game, just with some errata changes.

The thing is, you're reading this as a criticism, and that's not the message; it's just an observation.

My point is that the versions with a dot, especially these .5 versions, are simply major errata that WotC made for commercial gain. But ultimately, they are errata, and the fact that they don't change the “major version” basically serves to reinforce that it's not a new version that would break compatibility and completely rework the game. Simply drawing inspiration from older versions, other systems, and their learning. And in this respect, this type of nomenclature makes sense and sends a very clear message.

Firstly, doesn't this work more as a mark against using the .5 designation, though? Your playgroup aside, if common consensus is that .5 edition stuff encourages people to stop using the old material and buy the new stuff, and Paizo's goal with the Remaster designation is to communicate to players that they don't have to do that, then that sounds like a black mark against switching the designation now, doesn't it? I don't mean to negate your own opinions or experiences here, and largely agree with you that such designations can be confusing, but you talk about both your personal experiences and how they ran counter to the more public narrative and discourse. If public discourse sees a .5 designation as an invalidation of the old material, and Paizo isn't looking to invalidate their old material, then using the .5 designation wouldn't serve them.

Actually, no. The real problem people had with the .5 in 3.5 was that, at the time, many felt “betrayed” by WotC for releasing a new edition only 3 years later. The next problem was that, over the years, the community itself began to reject material from 3.0, considering it too outdated to be used, which worsened the reputation of 3.5 somewhat, as the community itself began to treat everything before it as having been “abandoned” by WotC (when in real was the community that done this), when in fact they gave the same argument that Paizo also uses in the remaster: “that the new edition does not disqualify the previous one; if you already have 3.0 you can continue using it normally; 3.5 is just 3.5 with rebalancing and improvements like an errata.” And honestly, this issue will happen with the remaster as well, and I would even bet on it to a worse degree, because the change in nomenclature opens up even more room for it. The fact that they use the name “remaster” to avoid the stigma of using versions with a period in the past only serves to pretend that it will be different, when it will not be.

In the end, it was a naming decision not very different from the one WotC made when they decided to use 2024 instead of 5.5, and that ended up hindering more than helping. A mistake on their part that Paizo can learn from.

I also want to push back on the “D&D 3.75” nickname for PF1E being a positive, or at least an unalloyed positive. This is my own anecdotal evidence, but I generally heard that term thrown around more as an epithet or as a derogatory term used to highlight how similar Pathfinder was to D&D 3.5. The connotations shifted over time, particularly as people became less and less satisfied with 4E, but it wasn't how the term was used initially. The negative impression would be reinforced if Paizo suddenly decided to change their edition naming. The Remaster has been out for, what, a couple years now? We have to consider things like institutional memory when thinking of rhetorical changes like renaming; if people have associated a .5 designation with trying to sell errata as a new edition in the past, as you do, or if it risks invalidating materials without that designation, as you've pointed out, then switching from the term Remaster to 2.5 this late in the game would risk associating Pathfinder 2E with both of those trends, and for not all that much benefit.

I understand your point, but I disagree with it.

Those who stigmatized the nickname 3.75 were precisely the fourth edition community and D&D loyalists. From the beginning, this nickname was one of the main factors that attracted new players to PF1. It clearly demonstrated Pathfinder's proposition at the time: to attract an audience dissatisfied with the changes of the fourth edition with a system that focused only on improving the previous edition of D&D without creating drastic changes and without breaking compatibility with existing materials. Especially for DMs, such adventures. If it weren't for this nickname and the message it conveys, I don't believe PF1 would have had the success it did at the time. After all, like me, I believe many here ended up in the Pathfinder community precisely because they were curious about “what kind of game is this that proposes to be an improved 3.5?”.

Even today, Pathfinder benefits from this. Even though it's a system with a thoroughly different set of rules from D&D, Pathfinder 2e is still primarily considered an alternative to D&D, as a conceptually similar TTRPG, but much more customizable, better balanced, and more game master-friendly. That's why I've never been against applying D&D concepts here, because Pathfinder is largely based on that: taking advantage of what works and attracts the attention of the medieval fantasy TTRPG community, especially the market leader D&D, while simultaneously rewriting and correcting the various points where D&D goes wrong.

I'm not sure it would reduce doubts. Name changes are going to confuse people pretty much no matter what, and at this point you're asking for a second name change on top of the name change you are already pointing out is confusing. That sounds like it's just going to lead to more confusion to me, not less.

Look, there will always be doubts, but I believe it would reduce them. Today, especially after the 2024 D&D nomenclature change to 5.5e, when someone comes and asks me, “OK, but what is this Remaster in the book, and what's the difference between the books that have it and those that don't, and what is what AoN, Nexus, and PFS call legacy?”, I can simply say “Oh, the remaster is just a PF2.5, it's the same game with improvements,” and many people will automatically understand because the term is clearer and is already used by WotC.

You have a good point when you say that, because the remaster is already being used, changing the nomenclature now could cause confusion, but simply formally adopting the stance that the remaster is a PF2.5 probably helps more than it hinders.

It's explicitly listed as Medium (in caps too, on AoN), so it is a Prop for Small/Tiny PCs, though I agree that yes, not impeding movement means Forced Movement into its space wouldn't hit anything (at least at my table). But for bonus speed and whatever other Prop uses are out there (if any?), it works. There goes my idea for a basic one-round combo.

Hmm, maybe an Earth impulse. Igneogenesis unfortunately comes in adjacent, but you could raise up the cube beneath yourself then hop over to Shove. Whirling Grindstone feels like it'd be funny, albeit kinda pointless. Seems like the notable barriers are 3-action Impulses, so not much to go with there. There might be low-level scrolls one stock up on (and take an MCD to avoid spending an action to Trick Magic Item).

So, I'm only disagreeing with the part about “it's Medium and therefore can be used”. But whether objects are usable as Props or not is a GM decision. As the Prop description is written, even smaller objects can be considered Props if the GM deems it valid. The part about being larger than yours is specifically aimed at creatures. Since Protector Tree isn't a creature, at least not explicitly (objects often also have AC and HP), in my opinion it's up to each GM to consider whether it's a valid Prop or not. I would consider it valid not based on size but on sturdiness).

Based on the three playtests I've been in so far, props are pretty much just useful to give you a 10-foot speed boost at beginning of the encounter, and stunt damage pretty much never happens.

The bread and butter of my DD was daring stunt + pressing pommel.

Going into level 2, I'm taking Caroming Charge and planning to have a lot of fun with that.

I agree. But I have to notice that up to now the best thing about DD during my playtest is its mobility, including the extra speed provided by Props. So while I agree with you, I need to note that this extra speed is one of the main factors that allows my DD to effectively use all its actions without any waste.

That aside we really don't need to call it PF2.5e. Aside from the fact nobody is doing that, unlike 5.5e, the remaster isn't a new edition, and wasn't billed as one. Legacy/Remaster makes the cross compatability very clear.

This same argument is valid for D&D too. I don't consider the changes from 5e to 5.5e like a fully incompatible edition in the same way as the remasters aren't either. I can even extend this to 3.5 and 3.0. In the end, all they are glorified errata that are due to have a bit higher number of balance and improvement changes and to the desire to try to earn a bit more selling as a “new edition”.

I like the term subversion with a period because it clearly and directly indicates that “look, it's the same game, compatible with the same material, just with several improvements”. Even though the term “remaster” conveys a similar message, it still causes confusion because it can still seem like a new edition to laypeople, especially when they see the term “legacy” elsewhere.

I won't lie and say that D&D 2024 wasn't even worse than that, because it really gave the feeling of a completely new edition when it wasn't, and changing to 5.5e made that much clearer.

The big problem with this terminology is that many players on 3.5 considered it incompatible; for that reason, they thought they had to buy the new material, and many players stopped accepting 3.0 material because “it was poorly balanced” (as if 3.5 ever was) or similar excuses. But in most of the games I played, it was normal to accept 3.0 material that hadn't been reprinted, especially adventures and material for the DM to use, and we simply reinforced that the “repeated” material that should be prioritized was the 3.5 material, as it was considered a kind of errata.

This bad reputation of 3.5 as being “a D&D 3.0 with a big errata that WotC made to make more money from players” is precisely what kept D&D and PF2e from using this nomenclature up to now. But it was always very efficient in simply showing what it was about.

It is precisely in this aspect that I can't see differences in the approach of 5e and 5.5e and Pathfinder 2e legacy and remaster. For me, they are all just big errata with a new cover, and nothing is better than a versioning nomenclature to indicate this. They only avoided it because, for some players, it created a kind of bad reputation (although PF1 greatly benefited from being called D&D 3.75).

Anyway, for me it only complicates things. I was happy that WotC finally simplified things a bit on their side; I think it would be great if Paizo also simplified things and called it something clear that reduces doubts.

I also know that there are people here who argue that “oh, just because the RPG is a market leader doesn't mean we have to copy it; in fact, let's be different to show that we are better.” But I return to the point: PF1 benefited from the unofficial term D&D 3.75 because of the easy identification of what it was about (even not being an errata of 3.5 but a new game based on its rules and concepts). D&D will benefit from 5.5e because of its easy identification as well. Trying something different from this simplicity only complicates and hinders what should be simple.

We still have some people that have difficult to understand what is legacy and what is remaster content. Just have a numeric number may help to make the thing more intuitive.

But the protector tree "isn't large enough to impede movement through its square". So I can imagine it being a thin tree not something large as a medium creature. Probably with high and larger tree canopy but still with a thin trunk.

For the same reason, to make it simple.

D&D 2024 is now finally named as D&D 5.5e. They made this to make the things clearer and easier.

So now Paizo can also follow the example and finally call the Pathfinder 2e Remaster, simply as Pathfinder 2.5 too?

I don't know if Protector Tree are large enought to some GMs consider as a prop. But most walls spells/impulses for other side can cleary be used.

If the designer doesn't put this clearly it won't looks like that it will benefit from the agile trait MAP reduction in the same way that won't get many manuver specific item bonuses.
It's like having a +1 weapon weapon with trip trait. Due to the trip trait you can use this weapon not only without free-hand but also if you declare that you are using it to Trip it also gets the weapon item bonus and reach.

So once that the DD Press manuvers doesn't requires a free-hand nor have use some special trait to allow them to be considered as agile, so they are not. If we would allow them to do such thing sou they also have to get bonuses from Handwraps or other traits like reach.

So RAW these Press feat manouvers aren't agile until the designer puts that they are agile or that they would use your weapons/unarmed traits and bonuses.

You forget to add "with MAP" to all Press feats manouvers too :P

If you increase the Speed to 30ft playing as elf or centaur you can grant the Sudden Pounce become more safer because its minimum increases to 15ft yet having a critical failure effect until you get Assurance. Yet the other restrictions remains, you still need that your last square Striding be in the direction of your target, the Long Jump stil can't do curves and if you try to do this in someone that is far from 45ft you risk to fail and lose your Strike.

In this same situation the Sudden Strike allows to run up to 60ft with 30ft speed granting the Strike.

If both have to deal with difficult terrain the Sudden Pounce reduces to only 15ft allowing you to make turns + 15ft granted Long Jump while Sudden Strike is reduced by 30ft but still allowing the full control over your path.

Again I'm not saying that the Sudden Pounce is bad but it's no better than Suden Strike it has its own pros and cons, with Sudden Pounce giving the off-guard benefit for your Strike while Suden Strike giving a longer distance with more granular path control.

I said "similar" because each has its peculiarities, you can only turn on the 1st Stride with Jump indeed, so at some cases double Stride is better, but on other occasions there is difficult terrain, hazards, gaps, so Long Jump is better.

I don't know if it would be that advantageous.

For example:

LvL 1:

- Sudden Charge on normal terrain: 50 feet + Strike.

- Sudden Charge on difficult terrain: 25 feet + Strike.

The target can be anywhere within this distance, and you can move in any direction throughout the movement.

- Sudden Pounce on normal terrain: 25 feet + 10* feet (Long Jump) + Strike.

- Sudden Pounce on difficult terrain: 10 feet + 10* feet (Long Jump) + Strike.

Unlike Sudden Charge, you can only make turns during the Strike. Your Long Jump will follow the same direction you went in the last square, requiring that there are no obstacles. There is a chance of failure.
*Additionally, if you don't want to risk ending your Long Jump at a distance outside the reach of your weapon, even if you passed the test, because if you walked 10 feet and your roll only managed to jump 15 feet, but your opponent is 30 feet away, you won't be able to make your Strike, even if you passed the test, because you landed one square before them. So ideally, you should use your Stride to get as close as possible to avoid falling too far from the target, which considerably negates the advantage you would have on hard terror (and even on common if your opponent is farther away than your movement +15 feet). Besides the chance of critical failure until at least level 3, when you can use Assurance.

Sudden Pounce is much more limited than it seems. In practice, it's a shorter Sudden Charge, with a chance to cause off-guard, at least in the first two levels (from level 3 onwards, when you become an expert in Athletics, you can use Assurance on it). It has a 35% failure rate + 5% critical failure rate at level 1, and a 30% failure rate at level 2.

Against hazards, it's also quite relative, depending on the size of the hazard(s) and whether it's jumpable, which isn't always the case; many cause higher damage than the burning ground or simply cause damage just by getting close, as happens with lava terrain.

---

Regarding OTH, I completely agree with you.

Castilliano wrote:

Sudden Pounce sounds cool, leap and attack someone, right? Except for two actions anybody can already do this, and choose a better attack action.

That's actually quite wrong:

Sudden Pounce is not a Leap, it's a Long Jump.

That means it's Stride+Jump (up to Stride distance)+Strike.

Basically the feat is a better version of Sudden Charge (cause it gives similar movement plus Off-Guard)

With Sudden Charge already being a very decent level 1 feat, an improved version of it, that you can "cheat" some of it's actions via OTH is actually very strong for a level 1 feat.

It is a Flourish for the same reasons that Charge is a Flourish: it comoresses 3 actions into a 2 action activity.

Sudden Charge allows you to make turns and works with any speed. Sudden Pounce doesn't. This is very relevant in a real encounter.

Also Sudden Charge allows to make up to 2 Strides, while Sudden Pounce allows only one Long Jump.

So unless you have a cliff in your way you still are limited by your own speed and also have a failure chance.

Enemy numbers that trigger OTH would seem to trigger RS too, and earlier. Plus RS extracts a toll when the backrow begins pissing off enemies who try to Stride to them or when an enemy, i.e. a melee flyer or Quickling, tries to hit and run. And that's not counting Reach weapons and party tactics to multiply instances, i.e. Trip or kiting. That said, I'm on the fence re: how often OTH triggers (partly since it triggers when your allies are falling and you really need help!). The payoff's where most of my concern lies; let the Slayer show some relentlessness, and right from level 1 as part of the chassis, perhaps with Sudden Pounce as a given (though since I'd never take it, maybe a better version other martials envy...like they do RS).

In practice, OTH has been triggering quite a bit. But it still doesn't come close to RS, especially when the party pressures enemies to move/Stand, etc.

The biggest problem with OTH that I've seen in practice during my playtest is that it doesn't work well against bosses, even if they are your quarry, and if they aren't your quarry, it's simply impossible to trigger. This is a very different situation from RS, since using Trip against a boss becomes a basic tactic when someone in the party have RS.

In the end, there isn't a very significant difference between them, but OTH depends on the game master much more than RS, which is easier for players to control.