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Stunning was a good point of comparison for this - but that is tied specifically to your flurry. Where this just says 'you should never use a strike again'

Okay so against a +1 or higher guy you have to
Crit Succeed an attack (Downgrades to hit)
then they have to crit fail the save (upgrades to fail)

For this ability to do anything.

But against equal level enemies or lower, it replaces your strike.

That feels.. more correct?

Guess I need to wait for the Errata.. I am the GM of this particular game and one of my players is very excited for this ability.. But I am dreading him replacing all of his strikes with this and stunning out every normal enemy (Some guy on reddit did the math and its like 80% chance to stun if you spam, with a 10% chance to completely remove their turn on a crit fail).

Huh, so unpacking Super's comment

"If a spell has the incapacitation trait, any creature of more than twice the spell's level treats the result of their check to prevent being incapacitated by the spell as one degree of success better, or the result of any check the spellcaster made to incapacitate them as one degree of success worse."

Does that mean if you make a strike that has incap it reduces the result by one tier? Thats..rough buddy.

While I agree with the 'strike shouldn't deal damage' - They generally call that out right? Strikes as written say 'you swing and deal damage on a success'.. The ability makes way more sense if it doesn't deal damage, but I feel like that would be called out.

Does it not deal damage? Stunning fist says 'If you strike and deal damage' - this one is also missing that line.. So either this triggers on a miss (because its missing the line to hit) - or It just makes them make a save without damage?

Or is this 100% the total package.. Deals full damage and brings a stun for the family.

The Barbarian level 10 feat seems like a strict upgrade to strikes, that has a high probability to take multiple actions from an equal level enemy. Is there any drawback to spamming this? Usually these sorts of abilities usually have 'Press' or 'Opening' on them to prevent them from being just a better strike. Is there something I am missing or as the GM should I be getting my fort saves ready on every.single.attack.

Nudge Fate

I find Nudge fate pretty lack luster within combat. Its two actions and your focus to grant an ally a reroll, which translates ~ +5 to hit on a single attack.

That means that ally has to have something to do with their 1 action that is better than the 2 actions you spent on it.. There might be some combo power with a spell caster but.. I'd really rather just use bard song for its constant +1.

I believe Nudge fate shines in encounter mode, where you approach a trapped door and you grant the rogue rerolls on disarming, or before a big athletics check you toss it on your monk. Can't really use it in a diplomatic encounter unless someone can explain the insane laughing person though.

Evil Eye

To compare it to the other commonly referenced spell (evil eye) I also find it a bit lack luster? Its fear that makes me spend actions every turn, doesn't come with the possibility of a crit fail flee, and doesn't fade naturally..

Not fading is potent, but eating my action to do it is a tad annoying and personally doesn't seem like fun gameplay for every turn to start with 'cackle'... unless some neat feat support comes for the ability in the full book.

Cackle seems pretty rough for the class to lean on so heavily as its 'thing' - Most of the other classes have an ability at level 1 that sets them apart from the rest of the pack to do their corner of the party.. but cackle sort of just fulfills an incredibly niche thing that will probably come up once.. maybe twice in an entire campaign.. that makes it not feel too great.

Wow, thats crazy. That makes the bard fear song superior to the bard hit song unless you use inspire heroics.

Doesn't look like Frightened lowers AC - the other status effects that do specifically call it out (sluggish being a great example).

The 55% chance to hit i was noting against equal level is then followed up by a 50% (ish) chance for them to halve the damage, which is part of the problem i was calling out, but True strike is an incredible idea that really helps with this problem.. Thank you!

Frightened
You’re gripped by fear and struggle to control your
nerves. The frightened condition always includes
a value. You take a conditional penalty equal to this
value to your checks and saving throws. Unless specified
otherwise, at the end of each of your turns, the value of
your frightened condition decreases by 1.

Currently running a game going on 16 6-7 hour sessions, we're just now getting into level 13 and looking at spells and finding some strangeness.

Referencing the spreadsheet put together by adresseno (Thank you!)

Spreadsheet.

And comparing the average touch ac versus player chance to hit, touch spells suffer tremendously. Disintegrate is one of the key ones we're comparing now, but several necromancy spells leading up to this have required both a hit and a failed save to have any real impact.

At our current level, our caster has a coin flip to hit a monster that is lower level than her with a Disintegrate, that monster then has a decent shot at passing the save, and taking half damage, giving two shots at the spell being far worse then just firing off magic missile.

This really limits gameplay choices for wizards, in PF1 we had the problem of 'some spells are just the wrong choice' and most of the PF2 spells that say touch feel like the wrong choice because it is a massive gamble if you're going to hit, then bypass their save as well.

Love to hear some other thoughts on this!

Most recent update includes..

Stance: A stance is a general combat strategy that you enter by
using an action with the stance trait. After you take an action with
the stance trait, you can’t take another one for 1 round. You can enter
or be in a stance only in encounter mode. A stance lasts until you get
knocked out, until its requirements (if any) are violated, or until you
enter a new stance, whichever comes first.

This seems an attempt to streamline the rules around 'Stance' and 'Open' for monks. Does this remove the 'Open' Trait from current monk stances? Is the intent a monk can 'Attack, Move, Stance' now? Otherwise the inability to do one for 1 round doesn't really change anything, since they'd still have open.

Thank you for any clarifications!

The only strange thing that happens with the boss is that player 'choice' around their ac evaporates pretty quickly. Or atleast that is how it felt? Since no matter what they do I am going to clober them on a 4-5 even against raise shield / dodge / etc.

Though I do see the rationalie that hitting the players often is definitely good, its the critting them so often that feels odd to me.

I'd much rather hit them on a 2, and crit them on a 18 19 20 area like PF1 was.

So recently in our playtest group I tried seeing what it would be like to throw an 'extreme' challenge at them. In this particular case my group is a party of 6th level adventurers with appropriate gear level and three NPCs with them.

They go into this fight after two minor encounters which consumed two heal spells from the cleric and one second level spell from the wizard, as well as a trap that did a bit of damage, so for the most part we're in tip-top shape, and aware that an extreme threat is infront of us.

The creature in question was a Kalavakus Demon (Horned Demon)- I should start by saying it was absolutely masterfully redone from the previous version, the flavor and style of this fight was so much fun.

The problem came from the creature (and others of the level) +to hit versus the PCs armor.

Yes this creature is 4 levels higher and thus 'Extreme' but nearly every time I picked up the dice it was a crit, if it wasn't a crit it was a hit. The creatures AOOs also would often result in a crit - +20 to hit against 22 ac on several of my party members.

While it was still a mostly enjoyable encounter that they barely made it out of, having every attack round not be a question of 'hit or miss' and being of 'hit or crit' was a bit jarring. It was also basically impossible for the monster to fail most save or suck spells to help mitigate this problem.

Have others experienced this in their playtesting? High level creatures seem like they're game enders if not managed properly.

Thanks Draco18s- Do you have a place to reference which rule that is for my group? Or is it a dev post somewhere around here?

Quick question for the hivemind - Does Inspire courage

You and all allies in the aura gain
a +1 conditional bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saves
against fear.

Add damage to spells?

The example i am considering is magic missile, at higher levels it can send an absolutely massive number of missiles at a single enemy. Would it apply the damage bonus every time? With an inspire heroic going into an 18th level wizard's inspire courage would be MVP.

Thanks!

Lunias- This has been an absolutely awesome read. The amount of work you put into this is staggering.

Quick question for you - What're your thoughts on the *reverse* aka- how monsters hit players?

Doing some napkin math on it and running some lower sessions in the playtest I've found it extremely easy to hit players, and often times have crits fly off from 17-18-19s on the dice , creating dire circumstances very quickly.

Looking at high level play it seems that this trend continues. Do you find similarly?

Absolutely amazing book - Vigilante looks great, had a few questions about the new 'Brute' Hulk style character.

From the way it reads it seems like it becomes large size but gets none of the benefits of actually being large (Aside from reach) except getting -1 ac for size and then -2 from the class, on top of its armor breaking at low levels when it transforms this can result in a sub 10 ac for virtually no benefit(besides reach). It also misses the first round of any combat you weren't ready for, with no option i saw to reduce the transformation time.

It then requires them to attack their allies and has a very gross exhaustion / fatigue mechanic slapped on there as well. I was curious if anyone else had reviewed this and came to the conclusion that while its very well built from a flavor perspective, from a play ability perspective at low levels it seems some what unmanageably bad.

Am I misunderstanding the class and missing the benefit of the transformation? I very much love the theme but it seems like some of the other products (Blood rager/Chymist) seem to offer similar character options without the massive drawback.

Love the rest of the book! So much amazing stuff.