Would a spell that adds strike damage (for example draconic barrage) be affected by Burn It's status bonus and, if so, would the status bonus apply alongside something that adds a status bonus to the strike directly (for example divine smite).

But again, this is a narrative, not reality. Pre-remaster, the Rogue was certainly not weak, but was never considered this exceptionally strong class either...

Not sure where you've been, but rogue was considered the best martial class in the system next to the fighter until it was joined by bow magus. Rogue getting buffed saves and buffed gang up only further locked that in.

Generally speaking, I wouldnt say rogue is so much the favored child as martials are favored as a whole. Only nerfs they got were killing flickmace and crit specs. But buffs? Rogue fort saves and gang up, barbarian lost rage penalties and the action tax, assorted buffs to other classes. Casters? Witch made out like a bandit while everyone else has been almost static since launch or nerfed in some way. The focus point buff buffed everyone equally seeing as many martials either get focus spells naturally or dipped into champion, psychic or blessed one for easy points.

The party is made up of individuals that in my experience each want to be counted on for the skills they chose and the rogue gets to have great combat ability and is the equivalent skilwise of multiple non rogue/investigator pcs at once.

All that means is that the group has a psuedo fortune effect on the skill or an easy Aid bonus without abusing one for all. Though I've never been in a group that complained about skill overlap except where it left some skills not covered at all, at which point the people more amenable to the idea just abandon the overlap to instead cover what's needed. Most often seen with medicine and thievery, as far as pf2e goes.

Probably not a popular opinion here but im fine with rogue combat ability and even this fort buff but what dont like is that they get a skill feat and a skill increase every level.

I wouldnt mind if they had some extra levels than normal but every level feels unwarranted and gets in the way of party skill diversity with groups larger than 4.

Isn't it the opposite? Ensures that the party has every skill covered while not forcing people to give up on skills aligning with their character's flavor in order to ensure that diversity?

I feel like it doesn't perform as well in practice as shatter mind psychic's xd10 60ft no friendly fire cone AoE 3x per fight, every fight, with optional psy burst and the 2x unleash bonus on two of the castings with potential 4th blast with strain mind.

We already have some precedent for "attack roll vs save DC" in bola shot ammunition. If fighters are allowed to use their legendary proficiency to try and stun targets why not let magi do so in-class with spellstrike.

10 bucks says that they wanted to avoid another bow magus at all costs

Inner radiance torrent also got nerfed into the ground. What was once the second best blast at each rank due to its scaling is now just another worthless spell in a sea of worthless spells.

There's the stray magus/caster nerf with sure strike. Not that non-magi should have been using attack spells anyway, but it isn't a pf2e patch without a random caster nerf.

You can do even better with this too. Runesmith doesn't need many of their own feats (tracing trance, optional engraving strike), so you can tack on beastmaster/cavalier for free movement. Gets an extra trace in round 1 to apply preservation to thunder as well as fire and lets you retrace whetstone and retreat or target switch on round 2.

Without standard de/buffing using engraving strike with a d8 weapon is about equal on average even against a +3 opponent. The more you have, the better it gets to use over an automatic trace, so long as you only use it once per round.

This assumes you start your turn next to an enemy and you are ok with ending your turn next to said enemy.

It smacks if extreme white room optimization.

But I also think it's a fair failsafe to looking invoking to once per round.

Only your second turn. We assume a stride in round 1 and you can even make 2 at higher levels if you need to. Typical speed optimization puts you at minimum 40ft per stride which is usually plenty.

Not that this doesn't have some flaws. Resist all does terrible things over this many instances of damage, for instance.

The real strength of this though, is how it is the least whiteroomy thing you can do. The only assumptions are that you can reach an opponent on round 1, and start next to an opponent on round 2. There's no buffing, or debuffing, or ally positioning of any kind. This is entirely self-contained to the runesmith themselves.

So earliest this example works is level 12.

Your using half your daily etchings on your weapons. The enemy has you let you do this what if they have a reaction it's going to hurt.

But even with all that, limiting invocation to once per round is probably a good call.

Strictly speaking, this starts at level 6: tracing trance. 2x etched runes (whetstone x2). whetstone, thunder, fire, persistent runes known. Here at level 6 the invokes alone deal 18d6 damage each and you even have extra known and etched rune slots to apply +int mod.

As you level up, this gets stronger as you can apply mods to both whetstone runes as well as pre-apply sun-fire and move it with transpose to even allow yourself an extra action to strike or something else on round one. You also get access to persistent fire damage at 9 that scales from 1d4 to 6d4.

As for the reaction, yeah, it's the magus problem. Your local bard has roaring applause or other anti-reaction tech and will be happy to supply it for this kind of damage.

gesalt wrote:

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

What is the different in double invoking vs Tracing a Rune of Fire & Rune of Thunder?

The fire rune is auto-reapplied by persistent rune. So the second invoke is another set of slash+fire+lightning

I don't think the persistent rune is often helpful unless you are applying it in melee in round 1 and expect them to be at range in round 2.

Round 1: Apply fire plus persistent diacritic, invoke. Fire is auto reapplied.
Round 2: They've moved away, if you'd wanted to reapply fire normally it would take two actions now, for three total to get two uses across two rounds.

But having both fire and thunder available instead of fire plus the persistent rune is probably better, IMO. Maybe there's some interaction with the utility/support runes (apply shield rune to ally, who then moves away?) that make it more efficient. For max damage I don't see it being of much use.

But they're both applied?

Turn 0: Bidi's opening setup starts you with two pre-engraved esvadir runes (slashin).

Turn 1: You use the quickened action from Tracing Trance to Stride, trace ranshu (thunder), atryl (fire) and sun (persistent).

Turn 2: invoke fire, thunder, slashing. Fire reapplies itself. Trace thunder. Invoke fire, thunder, slashing #2.

What is the different in double invoking vs Tracing a Rune of Fire & Rune of Thunder?

The fire rune is auto-reapplied by persistent rune. So the second invoke is another set of slash+fire+lightning

I didn't even consider double invoke in one round and we can add even more as we get more engraved runes, like adding persistent 1d4 fire or int-to-damage to the slashing runes along with sending a pre etched sun-fire rune to squeeze in one more action somewhere.

Oh yes, this is quite beautiful. This thing, with absolutely 0 party support, and after squeezing in a little extra average damage from those extra runes, even exceeds our friend the imaginary weapon magus at full de/buffing.

As bosses don't die in a single round, you can add an extra rune for the Runesmith (4 runes first round with the Stance and then 2 during second round and Invoke) so it outdamages the Fighter by 50%.

Also, high AC is the base, high Fortitude isn't (on average, monsters are between moderate and high in Fortitude when they are slightly above high in AC).

I'm planning to look at a basic 3 round rotation of:

1) stride, transpose sun-fire from ally to enemy, engrave strike thunder with slash-enhanced weapon

2) invoke all runes, auto-reapply fire, trace slashing, engrave strike thunder

3) invoke all runes, trace slashing, engrave strike thunder

If you have anything you'd like me to consider instead, or that I'm missing, let me know.

It's occult guys. You grab the usual illusion staff, use your thralls for battlefield control and AoE abilities against groups of mooks that might actually fail their save once in awhile and reserve your slots for soothe, invis, heroism and anti-single target spells like synesthesia, slow, etc

If anything, I think the damage is being overstated. This is without any buffing or debuffing against a +3 creature with high AC and high saves. Note that this also ignores the extra damage spike of detonating your own slashing rune, so take that into account.

It's good damage, don't me wrong, but the moment you add the usual buffing and debuffing runesmith falls way off as the chance for martial crits rises. Even just off guard does this.

Edit: The hell with it. I'm going to need to math out a proper 3 turn routine with this. Does anyone know if you can transpose a diacritic enhanced rune, or just the base version?

Nah that's just chart naming. The name doesn't auto adjust with the changes you make. I can confirm that, assuming both high AC and high fort, but also not assuming any other buffs/debuffs, that trace strike+trace+invoke is doing some funny damage especially at higher levels.

I could try more later, but I'm assuming this doesn't actually scale as well as the usual stuff because fort doesn't have an equivalent of synesthesia.

Per the playtest document, Thralls are explicitly non-minion non-summoned creatures. Surely there must be some spells or abilities that allow us to exploit this mass creation of easily hit and killed creatures.

You can work around difficulty getting reaction attacks off with ranged reprisal off a champion archetype with their reaction attack, any sources of reach improvement, an ally with amp message, etc. Getting at least one reaction off each turn shouldn't be a problem even limited to 5ft innate reach.

I never take Fly (even if I always have a Scroll in case of), I consider that everyone is supposed to handle basic fights by themselves. That's why I say the party needs to think about these situations because there are no real assumptions you should make as everyone plays differently.

I fully agree. Everyone should have their own flight by level 9 when the tattoo becomes available. But sure, if the local mage isn't taking fly to cover 7-8 then you itemize for it with a backup bow or extending rune. It's trivial in any case.

Easier? I think we don't have the same definition of "combined encounters".

What's yours? I assumed multiple consecutive discrete groups of enemies with at minimum a round or two delay between reinforcements.

It depends on the tactical acument of said groups. Groups of tactical players who are used to play together can settle on a whole bunch of strategies.

Enlighten me then. What are two or three different ways that a single one of your groups use to handle the same type of severe or harder encounters?

The game is complex enough to support much more strategies. Flying enemies, spellcasters, bruisers, archers, difficult terrain, visibility issues, swarm of enemies, solo boss, easy encounters, tough encounters, combined encounters, etc... so many combinations that can lead to so many strategies.

Dealing with flying enemies, visibility and difficult terrain are handled by basic itemization or fly, a spell just about every caster takes. I wouldn't say buying an astral rune to deal with ghosts, or a wand of see the unseen are part of battle strategy, for example.

Easy, tough (swarm) and tough (solo) are what I outlined, though I'd say higher level rather than solo because you can still end up with a +3 with a few mooks. Combined encounters are just swarms, typically made easier by the delay.

That leaves adjustments for enemy type. For example, silence 4, wand of choking mist, slow, trip, grapple, etc are all tools you can use to make an enemy caster's life miserable through action denial and action taxes. Big brute? Slow, trip, reach stacking, difficult terrain, striding away, etc. All tools to make their life miserable through action denial and action taxes. Same strategy, slightly different implementation.

Is this an oversimplification? Of course. Action denial alone isn't going to win a fight and is typically only one component of the larger battle plan. My point is that groups tend to settle on an overall strategy and apply that strategy to all fights of a given type. Which they typically need to do so they can fit the tools to handle the other type of tough encounter.

What I'm not saying, is that there are only one or two strategies in the game. There are a lot of different ways parties can go about the business of killing the opposition. Just that they'll typically do it the same couple of ways every time, barring the rare circumstance where they can't.

I don't agree with RD's tone but I definitely agree with the conclusion: Lots of players don't want to speak about strategies. It doesn't mean that they can't adapt to strategies, just that it will have to come through experience and not pre-battle discussions. Obviously, there are also players who will never learn, but they are in the minority from my experience.

A lot of the time you only really need three strategies per party. One for cruising through fights that don't matter, one for dealing with higher level enemies and one for dealing with large groups. Once your party knows what they're doing in these situations, there's rarely any need to adjust your overall combat strategy.

Both have Flourish, though.

That's what I get for thinking it might be fun to check without thinking it through all the way. In that case double slice falcata is probably the way to go until level 18 where impossible flurry chakrams outperform them.

Turns out flurry of blows + twin takedown will perform slightly better than double slicing on the flurry ranger. You might also manage to squeeze out slightly more damage using Tamchal Chakrams instead (d6, agile, deadly d6), though they are effectively the same outside of higher level or extreme AC opponents.

Mathematically, at level 17 if you stack double slice, agile grace, haste and archetype twin takedown on the double pick fighter, they'll be about equivalent to a double falcata ranger using the same but with archetype double slice. At 18, impossible flurry ranger pulls ahead a tiny bit. Assuming your goal is to just press the strike button as many times as possible, the ranger will finally do it a little better than anyone else at 18.

If we're talking about your basic d12 weapon giant barbarian, dual pick is about even with it while performing better at 11+ (when doubling rings upgrade), against resistances (because double slice helps bypass it), has better damage type coverage with weapon siphons adding extra types and has no rage action tax.

If you have the party for forced movement then you just take everything in the brutal shove line and start flinging people through berms, difficult terrain and snares. Not much to it.

The dual wield build is typically pick+light pick for the big fatal and pick crit spec damage without the accuracy loss that something like double falcata would incur. Either way, you're looking at a pair of weapon siphons and a stack of bombs for some bonus damage and element coverage. Blessed one gives you sustain without worrying about hands, alchemist can make you self sufficient on bombs, or whatever else your preference might be.

Fake champion fighter can be built for shields instead of tripping. You take the champ package 2-6 and take the extra shield reaction feats and paragon's guard.

Fake monk can start with an ancestral unarmed attack feat and run up the student of perfection/heavenseeker line before using adopted ancestry and half-elf heritage to meme your way into monk for flurry.

Archer grabs a gakgung, as many damage boosters as you can fit like gravity weapon/hunted shot, dread striker/sneak attack, point blank shot, etc and then runs around later with debilitating shot, bola ammo and bow crit spec to play the lockdown game. That's just trip fighter at range though.

There's the caveman build where you stack as much static damage as possible and swing with exacting and certain strike every round.

Beyond the usual retrieval prism->item with glyph of warding to detonate a spell on yourself the turn you cast it?

Maybe set yourself up with low hp using all is one, one is all to redistribute hp so you're very low for an ally to trigger?

Or delay consequence to buy time to set the ward before dying (not sure this works)?

But mostly what easl said. Make it less spooky for allies to just blow you up along with the enemy.

Maybe just state "if and only if." Not sure how many people have the background for that abbreviation.

It's not related to the player core stuff, but mariner's curse has a itsy bitsy niche. See, unlike every other status penalty in the system, this one isn't blocked by mental or disease immunity. Is it common that these show up? No. But, if you're looking to debuff something like treerazer, mariner's curse is really all you've got. Not that I disagree with the rating in general though.

It's these sorts of things that lead me to recommend one for all and fake out all the time to dodge all the ambiguity over Aid.

Is it spelled out anywhere that taking 0 damage is distinct from not taking damage? Because more than a few game systems treat taking 0 damage as a valid damage trigger.

Use your awful athletics to critically fail to force open everything possible, thus imposing a -2 penalty on enemy attempts to force it open.

It's actually fairly permissive. Logical and not obviously self destructive leave you open to all manner of activities. Combo it with the usual cha shenanigans and you can pre-convince someone that a particularly stupid course of action is a stroke of brilliance. After that, the suggestion is insurance against things like fear, moral decency, impulsive change of plans, etc.

The fail effect of 1 minute is hard to really do anything with, but the hour version and 10 target version is a great tool for getting nameless citizens to do great and/or terrible things at opportune moments.

For the third implement, amulet. You have an extra reaction thanks to esoteric reflexes so an option to use it outside of the weapon reaction is good to have. Pretty sure all implements require being held for their special effects though.

If you have the action to spare for intensify, tome is probably the better option most of the time, even before considering existing status sources.

Half-elf would be my choice. With natural ambition you can move the scroll feat to it and replace it with whatever you want. Esoteric warden would probably be my default, but talisman esoterica has some use pre-spellhearts and maybe you stick with armor talismans instead of shelling out the extra cash for an armor spellheart anyway.

Fitting know-it-all in shouldn't be too bad. Move sympathetic vulnerabilities to 6, take know-it-all at 8. Move sentinel to 8 and mighty bulwark to 10. Move sleepwalker to 10 as well and vision of foresight to 12. Psychic dedication at 13 with multitalented and either waking dream at 14 for the 3rd focus point or go right into the casting feats and take ever dreaming at 18 or 20 instead for permanent skill advantage.

I guess past me must have disabled it at some point, or never enabled it.

Generally, I very much enjoy jamming champion onto anything that can reasonably accommodate it. Lay on hands and champ reaction is just a strong set of features to staple onto anything with bonus plate AC to boot. Fighter, barbarian, thaumaturge, if it's going melee and isn't finesse locked its a good candidate for the champion archetype.

Under free archetype, something like

1) diverse lore
2) champion dedication, scroll thaumaturgy
4) healing touch, breached defenses
6) champion reaction, sleepwalker dedication
8) vision of foresight, sympathetic vulnerability
10) waking dream, sentinel dedication
12) mighty bulwark, scroll esoterica
14) psychic dedication, esoteric reflexes
16) basic casting, elaborate scroll
18) expert casting, grand scroll
20) master casting, wonder worker

Scaling plate AC, sustain between LoH and champ's damage mitigation, super bulwark, 3 focus points, advantage on non-combat skill checks, and really ramping up magic access in the back half. Should be able to slot well into any given party.

Tome skills can be anything really. Tailor them to filling in gaps in your party's skill coverage.

Don't forget the fancy new lantern that applies a 1/day weakness to spirit damage to all enemies in an AoE for a minute. Goes great with the new astral rune too.

One of those things you might actually want duplicates of to work through a whole day.

Protip: make your illusory wall out of illusory hellknight signifer mask material. Opaque on one side, see-through on the other.

Edicts: understand yourself, indulge your interests, enjoy the peace and quiet of solitude
Anathema: place others before yourself, lose control of your emotions, seek attention
Areas of Concern: introspection, detachment, self-control, independent action

Divine Ability: intelligence or wisdom
Divine Font: heal or harm
Divine Skill: Stealth
Favored Weapon: shortbow
Domains: Freedom, Indulgence, Introspection, Void
Cleric Spells: 1st: Sanctuary, 2nd: Invisibility, 7th: Magnificent mansion

GM core page 253

It's less consistent because you're relying on the enemy acting a certain way as opposed to your party doing something very common with a high rate of success. The nimble feats don't do anything if the enemy doesn't target you with an attack or uses a non-reflex AoE or a reflex AoE that simply excludes you.

I wouldn't say 4e had some monopoly on taunts. Actually, I'm not sure 4e had proper taunting at all, just very strong soft taunts. Back in 3.5 though we had the Knight who could taunt everything in 100ft to attack them so long as their CR was low enough below theirs. Various systems also have things like total damage/targeting redirection effects and/or soft taunts so painful they may as well be hard taunts.

I do think pf2e has room to expand taunting though, soft or otherwise. It's pretty light on those shirts of effects outside of champion reaction.

Again, this feels like a really weird case to complain about the kineticist being useless when literally every martial has been dealing with this same level of resistance since day 1.

Martials have tools to go through it. Power attack, double slice, runes, energy mutagen, etc. Kineticist throws out a 2-3 action impulse, gets saved against, and might do absolutely nothing. Honestly that's really miserable when the martial at least can still be buffed to try and land crits while mindless constructs just blank most math debuffs that aren't specifically set to target them.

Rogue also has ways to reduce the action economy and avoid needing a mount. Skirmish Strike allows a 1 action step and strike. That could be combined with a feat like the goblin scuttle that lets you step as a reaction to 'move 10ft' raise your shield and strike twice a turn. I feel like there must be a way to step 10 ft so you don't lose your reaction, but I can't think of it and my AON searches aren't turning up anything.

Elf step maybe?

Not every class or tradition need have access to exactly the same things, IMO. Opportunity cost is often a reasonable way to balance. The primal doesn't get such a ring, granted. But what did they get as their level 7 item, or what did they spend their 360 gold on, and does it give them some boost to in-game power that keeps up with the boost the wizard got with their 360 gp spend?

It's happily irrelevant since the wizard isn't getting the item either unless the gm says so, but maybe the others are spending 360 gp buying access to uncommon spells that have higher impact than what a pair of 1st level slots can do.

I think I'll go with the simplest explanation that they took an OGL item that's been a classic since forever and threw it in with a rarity tag to prevent player access without gm approval. I strongly doubt balance was much of a deciding factor in the ring existing or it not having counterparts.