NGL I'm a little surprised at how hostile the reaction to the OP is here. This is like, pretty standard weird rules quirk territory.
I am not seeing any hostility towards anyone, but especially not towards the OP (who seems to have correctly divined that they are incompatible, barring an additional rule which does not exist, but can easily be house-ruled in.).
Squiggit wrote:
glass wrote:
By your own wording, they are "mutually exclusive" - by definition therefore, you cannot select both of them. You have to pick one or the other.
You missed the 'otherwise' there which is kind of the point.
But there is no "otherwise" in the rules, that is purely your invention. They are not "otherwise incompatible" - they are simply incompatible. It is not possible to simultaneously both take and not take the class archetype's Dedication at level 2, and there is nothing that exempts you from either requirement.
Unless you can provide a rules quote to the contrary, in which case I will of course reverse my position (but I would still ask you why you had not provided it already).
Squiggit wrote:
'Obviously I shouldn't allow my players to stack them' is a perfectly reasonable ruling, but so is 'obviously this is an exception to the norm since the feat is packaged with the option.'
Either are fine at your own table, but OP is just pointing out the lack of explicitness here, hence the thread being in rules discussion and not advice.
No rulings are required. The first is RAW, the second is a perfectly reasonable house rule.
Ancient Elf not removing the restriction on taking additional dedication feats is not unclear.
You can select two character options that provide you with feats that are both otherwise mutually exclusive with each other.
There's no defined rules mechanism for resolving the inconsistency and we've already seen multiple opinions on how the interaction should be resolved.
That's like, the literal definition of unclear.
Is "you cannot select incompatible options for your character" really a rule that needs to be explicitly stated? IMNSO, that is the obvious default. By your own wording, they are "mutually exclusive" - by definition therefore, you cannot select both of them. You have to pick one or the other.
I don't think this is an edge case, and I don't think the rule Ascalaphus quotes is even necessary. There is simply no issue here to solve.
Accusing others of invoking abuser tactics over a class discussion? Mods don't get paid enough for this s&+%.
Kinda yeah. While I understand (and share) the frustration of the people talking about "gas lighting" they really should find a different term. By definition, gas lighting requires a close personal relationship (family, romantic partners, close friends); an abuse of trust from one of the people the victim should be able to trust the most. Even if the tactics may be somewhat similar, forum posters do not have the kind of relationship necessary for gas lighting to be possible.
No forum poster is going to make me question my grasp on reality (although they might make me question theirs).
Gas lighting is a truly awful practice, and using the term where it does not apply trivialises that.
Which is not to say posting in bad faith, or making arguments so poor they are indistinguishable from bad faith, are okay. They very much are not, but they are a long way short of gas lighting.
TLDR: Please don't cheapen the term "gas lighting" by using it for frustrating forum conversations.
Guys there is a thread for discussing that balance change, move it there please.
Replying across threads is hard to do with the board software not supporting quote notifications and links back in quotes, but I shall try....
moosher12 wrote:
All this assumes an equal distribution of creatures in adventures. Which, nice as it would be to get a more balanced distribution of creatures, isn't exactly how it's done.
Unicore wrote:
It is really not psychic players complaining about this.
Quoting a couple of posts from the Impossible Magic thread, to respond to them in a more appropriate setting.
moosher12 wrote:
Tridus wrote:
There's ballpark ~100 non unique creatures weak to slashing or bludgeoning. I can't get an exact number because I can't get the filter to behave how I want it. Probably doing something wrong. Comparatively, there are exactly 2 weak to force, and they're from the same AP. So in terms of exploting weaknesses, this change is a massive loss.
There are ~288 non-unique resistant to both bludgeoning and slashing from what I can tell on AoN (usually in the form of physical resistance), but that's out of ~2840 non-unique creatures.
All this assumes an equal distribution of creatures in adventures. Which, nice as it would be to get a more balanced distribution of creatures, isn't exactly how it's done.
It does, because that is a reasonable assumption (the only reasonable assumption) across the span of the whole game. Obviously the theme of an adventure is going to affect the mix of adversaries compared with monster books. But there are a lot of adventures and they do not all have the same theme. So you cannot assume that the mix more favourable to either version of IW.
Unicore wrote:
It is really not psychic players complaining about this.
Add me to the list of non-Magus players complaining about it, although TBF I have never played a Psychic either - for PF2 I have mostly been the GM, and have only been a handful of sessions with a PC (I cannot remember which classes, but I am pretty sure not Magus).
"If you used an action that specified, “If the next action you use is a Striketo cast a psi cantrip,” an activity that includes a Strikecasting a psi cantrip wouldn’t count, because the next thing you are doing is starting an activity, not using the Strike basic actioncasting a psi cantrip."
...this is the same failed argument again. Strike is a particular, defined activity. Replacing that with different text which does not represent a specific defined activity obviously changes the meaning. (And also because you shoot your own argument in the head later in the post.)
benwilsher18 wrote:
Cast a Spell is a special activity that is an exception to this, allowing it to be used with amps and spellshapes.
"Some rules will refer to the Cast a Spell activity, such as “if the next action you use is to Cast a Spell.” Any spell qualifies as a Cast a Spell activity, and any characteristics of the spell use those of the specific spell you’re casting."
That's a good find, but it really doesn't help your case. In fact, it rather does the opposite, for two reasons. The first is that it does not carve out the exception you claim. With no elaboration to the contrary, the implication is that "next action" being able to refer to the first action of a larger activity is standard.
Secondly it does carve out a different exception: If you cast a spell, that "qualifies as Cast a Spell" for the purpose of things which care about "your next action". By that metric, Spellstrike is Cast a Spell for Amps.
A couple more: a familiar in contact with its master does not count as a seperate creature for teleport, dimension door, or other instantaneous transport spells.
Wizard bonded objects: a hand holding a bonded weapon, wand, or rod counts as an empty hand for spell casting.
I feel like we do these, even though none of them are formally in our HR doc. I should probably add them.
Java Man wrote:
Breath of life is a "cure" spell for spontaneous casting purposes.
We have not done this one, but I am tempted to add it too.
Not nearly as many as I am tempted to, because at some point it would be less a few house rules and more a rewrite of the game.
I resemble that remark! Years ago I had a massive multi-page house rule doc, decided it was too unwieldy, and started over with a new shorter one. Which started growing. The shorter one is up to 16 pages now!
TBF, that is partly due to how it presented - some things are spelled out in full rather than (or as well as) being bullet-point changes. For example, there is a table collating what each Knowledge skill covers from various sources, as well as incorporating our own changes. There are also sections covering using 3.0/3.5 content and Multitrack (our version of gestalt), an Index, and a Changelog.
Despite my tendency towards verbosity, I tried to keep the major house rules to a minimum: There are only ten (really nine, because no 3 is a partial exception to no 2):
Major House Rules:
There is no required randomness in character creation and advancement
Ability score point buy depends on class (and possibly archetype, if it changes spellcasting):
• 9-level casters get 20 points.
• 6-level casters get 25 points.
• 4-level and non-casters get 30 points.
As a partial exception to 1.2, a character who intends to multiclass can select a select a 6- or 9-level caster class at first level and still claim the higher point buy. However, if they do so they cannot take any further levels in that class until they have at least three levels in a suitable class, and until that point they gain no spellcasting from the first class other than cantrips (although they still have the spell list for the purposes of spell trigger and spell completion items, and still have their caster level).
All classes that are not Int-based 9-level characters get a minimum of 4 skill ranks per level (before Int modifier, and favoured class bonus or species bonuses where applicable). If an archetype for such a class would increase skill ranks from 2 to 4, it instead increases them from 4 to 6. Archetypes which change the spellcasting ability score or progression may change whether a class qualifies for the 4-rank minimum (in either direction).
The essence, primal, and occult magical traditions exist (with occult being distinct from psychic, although some classes are assigned to both). Appropriate classes are assigned to one of more of these, and sometimes the player can choose – in that case the choice should be made when the first magical ability is received, and is thereafter treated as a class feature for the purposes of retraining. See Appendix 3 for class/tradition assignments.
The skill list is tweaked to better integrate certain variants, improve balance, and reflect actual play and common sense. In particular, the Appraise skill is deleted, the third-party Knowledge (Martial) and Knowledge (Psionics) skills are included (with the latter being renamed Occult), and other Knowledge skills are tweaked. See Skill Changes below for details.
Non-broken third-party & D&D 3.5/3.0 content is available, subject to GM approval - a “3.P” environment. See “Using D&D 3.5 & 3.0 Content”, below.
Using a swift action on your turn does not impact your ability to use immediate actions (and vice versa).
-
There is a much longer list of Minor House Rules, because each time we come across something wonky or unclear and resolve it, we write it down. I am not going to list them all here, but most of the entries in are small QoL fixes, only affect a small subset of characters or situations, or are how you would expect it to work anyway if you had not dug into it.
Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:
Some of the more noteworthy are
- all classes with 2+Int skill points are increased to 3+ (considering bumping them to 4+)
Four as has worked fine for us, although as you can see from the above spoiler, we made an exception for Int-based full casters.
Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:
- Meteor Swarm functions as it does in 5e
I like that! Word-for-word exactly as 5e, or just the save-once-damage-once aspect?
The fact is that PF2e spellcasters only have problems because they are playing with old hardware. By that I mean they are using vancian casting on a new system.
Unlikely, given that the non-Vancian Psychic is pretty clearly less well regarded than the Vancian Cleric or Druid.
I honestly would want to know why people don't consider spontaneous casters as vancian casters when they are pretty much the same thing.
Simply answered by pointing out that they are, definitionally, not "pretty much the same thing." They are different things. Opposite things, even. Conversely, I don't know why a handful of people want to broaden the definition of "vancian" to the point of uselessness.
Vancian casters memorise/prepare/slot individual instances of spells, and each specific instance is used to cast that spell (and only that spell). Spontaneous casters do not have to do that - their slots are fungible, and only assigned to individual spells at casting time (which admittedly makes "slot" a poor term in that case, as nothing is ever slotted into them).
exequiel759 wrote:
Most, if not all the problems from the psychic (and arguably a ton of casters in the system as well) comes from the fact that its a vancian caster.
Zero of the psychic's problems arise from its being vancian, because it isn't. Please stop trying to redefine words with a well-understood and useful meaning. Especially when you already have "daily".
The fact is that PF2e spellcasters only have problems because they are playing with old hardware. By that I mean they are using vancian casting on a new system.
Unlikely, given that the non-Vancian Psychic is pretty clearly less well regarded than the Vancian Cleric or Druid.
benwilsher18 wrote:
Spellstrike is an activity that includes casting a spell, so it does not meet the requirement of the new amp wording "if the next action you take is to cast a psi cantrip" as your next action is not to cast a psi cantrip, it is to Spellstrike. The rules are pretty clear on this.
You may be correct, but that quote is not persuasive and neither are any of the other arguments posted in the thread so far. Absent a stronger argument to the contrary, I have to agree with Angwa.
The quoted example refers specifically to a "Strike" and is analogous to the wording of Spellshapes which require Cast a Spell. However it is disanalogous to the text of the new Psi-Amp as quoted in this thread, which does not care which particular activity you use to cast a spell, only that you do in fact cast (small "c"). And you cannot appeal to its saying "action" rather than "activity" because casting Imaginary Weapon is already an activity even with Cast a Spell.
As The Raven black said, this has been the operation of things for a long time. Since 1E, even.
That might be the issue though - they are applying PF1 logic to PF2, but they are not the same. In FP1, resistances with very common but vulnerabilities were much much rarer. So a rare damage type is almost always an advantage. But in PF2, weaknesses to particular damage types is much more common - if not as common as resistances, then not far behind. More things resist Bludgeoning than Force, but more things also take extra damage from Bludgeoning than from Force. So it is no longer as pure an upgrade.
Without doing any in-depth analysis, I would guess Force is probably still an upgrade over Bludgeoning, due to incorporeals if nothing else. (It does still help against Incorporeal, right?) But I doubt it is enough of one to offset the reduced base damage, especially at higher levels.
Might be time to find a system that better serves your needs
There are no other systems. PF2E is better than D&D5E and pointing out what doesnt work mathematically for PF2E to change for PF3E and you coming in here telling me to find a diff system is as dumb as me pointing out what problems our gov has and some random person saying, "if you dont like america the way it is, leave." Lol
There are literally dozens of other systems besides PF2E and D&D 5e
Thousands, probably. But Verzen was clearly not being literal when they said that there were no other systems. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to find a group to play whatever their first choice would be - they get to choose from the 2-3 most popular systems (at best).
Blades in the Dark exists, but if everyone you know will only play D&D or PF it's existing doesn't do you much good.
The direct answer is that Wild only helps with armour bonuses (and implicitly shield bonuses, although it forgets to actually say that) and enhancement bonuses thereto. Wild does not help with activated abilities, so they still do not work. And it also does not help with bonuses of other types, but they would generally continue to apply anyway so it does not need to. So far, so good. However, by explicitly allowing most types of bonuses and explicitly disallowing activated abilities, the part of the quote you bolded leaves any armour properties which are neither (such as energy resistance in your example) undefined.
It is clear that Wild does not change the effects of such properties, so if they worked for normal amour they would work for Wild armour. But it is not remotely clear if they work for normal armour.
EDIT: Just realised that the post I quoted was from 2017 so the OP may no longer care. Oh well, I've typed it up now. You've given me something to ponder, at least.
rsbrehm wrote:
What about Wild armor even working with, lets say, Wizard Polymorph spells? Does it work or not? I haven't found any definitive answer other than some who say "armor of the wild only works with druid wild shape because the enchant only mentions druid wild shape."
That is the definitive answer. The Wild property says it helps people using Wild Shape, so that's what it does. Things do what they say, and don't do what they don't say.
It doesn't say it allows you to benefit from the armour bonus when under the effect of a wizard's Polymorph. It also doesn't say that it allows you to benefit from the armour bonus when you have left the armour at home. So it does neither of those things.
I was going to link, but it wasn't loading the other day when I tried to find it so I went with Tarondor's guide instead.
Tridus wrote:
Quote:
How many could you play through with the same characters?
The older ones all go from level 1 to high level (16 to 20), so you really can't with those because you need a level 1 character again.
You could theoretically play two in parallel with slowed advancement, but it would create a lot of work for the GM to make them hang together without getting in each-other's way.
Tridus wrote:
Quote:
Are they all set in the Golarion setting?
Pretty much, yeah.
If we're talking Paizo adventure paths and ignoring Starfinder (reasonable, given where we are), then there are three exceptions (the first three, from the Dungeon-magazine era). If we go beyond that then obviously there are a few more.
Tridus wrote:
Quote:
What are some of the pros and cons to adventure Paths?
The big pro is a lot of work is done for you. There's a story, characters, traps, monsters, treasure, and such. It's all there, ready to go. This is a massive time saver if you can run the adventure, even if you change some stuff.
IMNSO there is another big pro which does not get talked about enough: IME, having a campaign with a fixed-but-distant end point is great for campaign longevity.
Before APs, I tried for years to run campaigns that started at level 1 and continued to high levels. I literally never succeeded. Every campaign stalled out after five levels, tops.
I have just run the numbers at level 7, and it looks like you are correct for attributes up to +3. I don't know what Wis my player's PC has OTTOMH, but they're a bard so I very much doubt it is higher than that (without then Medic boosts, +3 is ahead of Assurance but only by a fraction of an hp per roll).
When I ran the numbers, I was forgetting the bonus for an expanded healers kit. So attributes up to +2 where Assurance is ahead, not +3. Which quite likely still includes my player's bard.
glass wrote:
Whether or not there actually is a treadmill is not what matters (practically speaking, there is always going to be for level-appropriate challenges - that's what makes them level appropriate). What matters is how much it feels like one.
Now that's subjective - maybe the way things are staggered in PF2 does not help how it feels for you. But I think it does for me and, I suspect, quite a few other people.
Just to be clear, when I said this I was defending the principle of proficiency increases being staggered, not the specific implementation with regard to Spell Attacks.
The Raven Black wrote:
So great that people want spell attacks to hit as easily as a martial's Strikes but do not consider the access to save spells, the free heightening of damage and all the other tricks a caster takes for granted that a martial lacks.
Actually, I am pretty sure everyone is considering Save spells - they are precisely what makes Attack-roll spells such a trap. If all offensive spells had attack rolls, the the internal balance would be much better (external balance is another question, of course).
D&D 4e had attacker roll for every kind of attack, and it worked great. PF3 should do that IMNSHO. And then rebalnce from there as necessary.
OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:
All of this discussion of spell attacks vs. saves is quite pertinent to my current experience. I get the feeling the casters in my game find the “vs. save” spells kinda deflating merely due to not rolling to attack - I’m rolling the opponents saves behind a screen…I guess it really affects a sense of agency.
Good point, and another reason to make everything "attacker rolls".
The only ability that ghost touch confers on incorporeal creatures is to pick it up, move it around, and attack with it. Hitting objects is an attack, and so is a Combat Manoeuvre, so they can do those (provided it is Combat Manoeuvre you can normally do with a weapon). So that covers 2 and part of 1.
As for 3 and the other part of 1 (moving small objects around without attacking them), that depends on how much weight the GM puts on "Essentially, a ghost touch weapon counts as both corporeal or incorporeal." Personally I would allow them to do anything that a corporeal creature count reasonably do with their sword, but conversely would not allow then to, for example, take it through walls. So that covers A and B (albeit somewhat vaguely).
C at least has a fairly concrete answer - the description of the Incorporeal quality states "It has no Strength score, so its Dexterity modifier applies to its melee attacks, ranged attacks, and CMB."
EDIT: I am not sure what you mean by the last line. PF1 is long out of print; the only "official word" you're likely to get at this point is what was printed in the books back then. I cannot even find the PF1 FAQ any more! (Does it still exist somewhere?)
Medicine is one of the skills that assurance is wonderful for. If you do the math (and ignore hero points) you pretty much NEVER want to roll a healing check if you're just looking at average HPs healed.
I have just run the numbers at level 7, and it looks like you are correct for attributes up to +3. I don't know what Wis my player's PC has OTTOMH, but they're a bard so I very much doubt it is higher than that (without then Medic boosts, +3 is ahead of Assurance but only by a fraction of an hp per roll).
OTOH, he already has five feats and two Skill increases (counting Trained but not counting the free one from Medic Dedication) invested in this. Telling him he needs to spend yet another feat (which isn't even part of the Medic Archetype, so could not come out of his FA slots) to make it slightly quicker is not something I am interested in doing. Much better to house rule it to be significantly quicker without any further investment. And, to bring this back on topic, hope it is less fiddly and investment heavy in PF3 when it finally arrives.
Teridax wrote:
While I'm not super-keen on [keeping attributes but not applying them to attacks], I suppose the main reason why is because I'm personally struggling to see what attributes bring to the table that other mechanics don't already.
As I think I said upthread, I am in favour of keeping attributes, but I also kinda agree with this. I would much rather they be gone entirely than be hanging around cluttering things up, while not applying to important rolls that you would intuitively expect them to apply to. That seems like the worst of both worlds.
Squiggit wrote:
I'm a little skeptical of this. The 'treadmill' never stops being a treadmill because of staggered proficiency, it's just that certain classes become uniquely bad at things at certain level brackets.
Whether or not there actually is a treadmill is not what matters (practically speaking, there is always going to be for level-appropriate challenges - that's what makes them level appropriate). What matters is how much it feels like one.
Now that's subjective - maybe the way things are staggered in PF2 does not help how it feels for you. But I think it does for me and, I suspect, quite a few other people.
At low level? Because a specced out Medic should never take that long once they have Continual Recovery, Ward Medic, and Assurance. (One of my problems with Medicine is that Continual Recovery just feels like a feat tax and I plan to house rule it into the skill itself next campaign I start.)
My AbV group is 7th level IIRC. They definitely have Ward Medic and Continual Recovery (along with a couple of other feats). I don't think they have Assurance because that seems to be a reliable way to just miss DCs most of the time.
The Golarion-set ones (which is all except the three published in the Dungeon-Magazine era, which are set in Greyhawk) are all assumed to happen in chronological order, but with a few exceptions it doesn't really matter what order you play them in - you should probably play the Runelords APs in order, but aside tat most of them are fairly standalone (there are call backs which could constitute minor spoilers, but nothing major).
I mean, once PF1 characters had triple digit HP the "happy stick dance" was exceptionally clunky. If you're using CLW you're burning on average half a wand to heal someone back to full. If you're actually rolling that as the rules tell you to, it's a stupid amount of rolling to see how many charges you use. I'm honestly convinced people who prefer how this works in PF1 just aren't running it RAW
Y'know what, that's fair. We do "bulk CLW use is 11 hp per 2 charges" - something so common that I forgot it was technically a house rule (it usually worked that way even at PFS tables, which weren't supposed to use house rules).
Tridus wrote:
If you're just averaging it and skipping the rolls... well you can do that in PF2 as well except you need fewer rolls because each one is healing WAY more health.
You could average the healing amount as a house rule, but you cannot average a check - you cannot skip the rolling in PF2 without completely reworking the subsystem and everything that depends on it. Which is a rather tall order.
Ascalaphus wrote:
It's far, far from the only option?
* Lay on Hands (champion, blessed one)
* Animist has some focus spell for it
* Water and Wood kineticist have options
* Thaumaturge (chalice) has an (awkward) option for unlimited healing
* Exemplar can heal themselves (no scar but this)
* Alchemist can make soothing tonics every 10 minutes
I am not going to look up the details of all of them, but the ones I am familiar with are not remotely enough to keep up with the hp attrition in a reasonable timeframe. For example, Lay on hands is 6 hp per rank to one target every ten minutes. That's at best half of one first-level character's hp, and characters will gain at least as many hp every level as LoH gains every two levels. So (apart from spikes when you get your second & third focus points) it will start slow and get slower.
Maybe your PCs do not take as much damage as mine, but IME it can easily take an hour to 90 minutes of in-game time for a fully specced out Medic to get everyone back on their feet. For an LoHer you could at least double that.
pauljathome wrote:
In my experience unless there is a time crunch or the like after battle healing for most groups becomes something like
Player: Can we heal up?
GM : Yes. You're all healed up.
Saying the GM can ignore a bad rule does not make that rule any better (and is a classic Oberoni fallacy). Especially in this case, where handwaving in this way invalidates a big chunk of one players build (a chunk that they may not have wanted in the first place, but got stuck with).
I like PF2 (seemingly more than the OP), but there are a few issues I hope PF3 addresses when it eventually shows up.
Personally, I hope that PF3 does not get rid of attributes. However, I do think that a class's attack attribute should go from effectively baked in to actually backed in.
My biggest issue with PF2 casters is the way their spell slots scale. PF1 casters started with a few, and then scaled up to so many slots that there was barely a restriction (which was lucky because the cantrips were terrible). PF2 tried to fix the huge number of spell slots at higher levels, by starting even lower but still scaling up quickly. Whereas I think the number of spell slots should start more generous, but scale up much less.
Then there are feats...you pick a lot of them, sometimes two or more per level, and they are often pretty small individually. They are well siloed, so it's not as onerous as it could be. But I would still like there to be slightly fewer feats that were each slightly chunkier.
Then there is the rigmarole of Medicine checks after each fight. Which is more annoying than PF1's happy stick dance, because it takes longer at the table and distorts the character build of which unlucky player drew the short store more. Don't get me wrong, I like that Medicine is a viable option now; I just wish that a) it was a bit less fiddly, and b) it wasn't the only option.
That ties into my last issue (that I can think of OTTOMH): Magic items are underwhelming, especially consumables (and consumable adjacent things, like wands).
Regarding the whole oracle thing: I had not played PFS since before COVID (for various reasons largely unrelated to PFS itself), and I was looking at getting back into it a little while back. That notion coincided with, in fairly quick succession, the oracle debacle and the similar screwing over of players with legacy clerics of Gorum. There was also the gutting of Campaign Mode for no discernible reason, which I became aware of at the same time (not sure when it actually happened).
As a result of those things, I did not get back into PFS, nor will I any time soon (definitely not under the current leadership, possibly not ever).
In my case, it did not put me off Pathfinder entirely (although I can see how it could for others). But "not put[ting] me off" is way too low a bar - PFS is supposed to encourage me to play and buy stuff (and through me, other people), not merely avoid driving me away.
My Thursday group is still going through Curse of the Crimson Throne. We decided to stick with it until we are done exploring Scarwall (at which point we will rotate back to my PF2 Abomination Vaults game).
On Sundays, we finished the first chapter of Strange Aeons (we're still not much the wiser about what's going on, but we have a target for further investigation next chapter), a couple of weeks ago. So we rotated back to Savage Tide, with an extra player). We have had one session so far, in which we basically had one fight, and met the new character. In the Abyss!
Each impact is one instance, and applying the highest res/weakness among all 3 kinds, trait, type, or custom, literally covers all possible edge cases.
Pretty much. You'd probably want to call out a few specifics/exceptions (like persistent damage should probably create new instances each time it fires). But it is almost certainly less text than the current mess.
One for people trained in simple weapons, one for Martial, one for advanced
I am not sure I'd go quite that far, but I could certainly see two out of the three for most weapons. Maybe all three for spears? The seem to scale from simple to advanced.
(My homebrew system, which I am very slowly developing in the background, does something equivalent. For the five-ish weapons which currently exist in the system.)
ETA: (Forgot I had another reply open in another tab.)
Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:
If you need to hide what you are planning to do from the GM in order to make use of your abilities, you are playing with a level of adversary player-GM relationship that is almost certainly outside the range accounted for by Paizo designers.
I think the point with Brace is that it is not just obvious to the GM, it is obvious to your opponents in-character too. Their reacting to your obvious preparation is not adversarial GMing.
OTOH, for a larger party the longer you spend waiting for your next turn, so the more potential there is for people wasting time to be galling.
The counter to that is if you are in a large party (largest I have experienced is 8), having one player say ‘I do nothing, next person’ speeds things up and is less of a wait than the guy who laboriously counts up every bonus on every attack to see if he hit (‘Dude, you missed on a 12 on your last attack, of course an eight misses, you don’t need to go through the flanking/prayer/bard/heroism arithmetic on your fingers for the third time this round…’)
IME, that happens very rarely.
It is generally the people who contribute the least to ending the fight that take the longest over their turns (either because they are the ones re-adding-up their bonuses every turn, or because they are desperately trying to find a significant contributions, but failing).
Like someone else upthread, one of my groups has a summoner that mostly casts haste on the first rounds and then usually does nothing thereafter (he does even waste time with acid splash). But that is just the summoner himself...the eidolon is contributing plenty.
Make sure you are retraining your lvl 1 feat for that. Pretty sure it is only available then.
Since it has no prerequisites, I am pretty sure it is available any time you get a feat slot. What am I missing that suggests otherwise?
Tom Sampson wrote:
The only thing the increase in caster level does not count for is progressing your spells per day for spellcasting.
It also doesn't count for spells known (or anything else which is a function of class level rather than caster level).
Dasrak wrote:
Now, there is some ambiguity about how this would stack with other caster level bonuses. For instance, if you also had an Orange Prism Ioun stone, which one is applied first? If Magical Knack is applied first if you're a Wizard 10/Investigator 2, you go from 10->12, then the ioun stone raises you to 13. However, if the ioun stone applies first then Magical Knack's cap kicks in and you cap out at 12.
I would argue that if you count the ioun stone first, you are applying Magical Knack's cap to the stone. But the stone's bonus should not be capped, only MK's. So you should apply the stone's bonus after applying the cap (for a final CL of 13 in the case of the example).
However, I agree that it could be better spelled out.
I also think you highlight a good point that immunities tie into two aspects of the game that are in tension with each other here: there’s immunity as flavor, i.e. “this monster has X immunity because it makes sense for them to have it,” and then there’s immunity as a mechanic, i.e. “this monster has X immunity to force the player to use different tools at their disposal.”
They certainly can be in tension with each other, but IMNSHO the devs give out immunities to creatures where not doing so would make more sense from both points of view.
The red dragons from my previous post is such an example. They are flesh and blood creatures; they are not made of fire like a fire elemental. Sure they are fire themed and heat adapted; resistance (likely quite-high resistance) is appropriate, but they don't need to be immune from either a game play or flavour PoV.
But someone at TSR decades ago decided that "fire breath = fire immunity" and nobody seems to have questioned it since.
benwilsher18 wrote:
At least critically hitting them is easy, and that can debuff the enemy with critical specialization and rune effects.
Just checking: I think oozes are immune to the extra damage from crits, but can still suffer other effects triggered by it. Is that correct?
IMO, the existence of immunities (including precision) is fine in principle, they should be given out extremely sparingly.
Unfortunately game designers tend to dish them out way too generously. Which is understandable - if you're designing a monster on a particular theme, it kinda makes sense in the moment to give it immunities related to that theme. Which is fine on an individual-monster basis, but scales horribly. What you need to do, for the game as a whole, is fight that tendancy, hard, and only give immunities where not doing so would be utterly non-sensical.
In more recent games (like PF2), designers have realised that they need to fight against that tendency, but they still are not fighting hard enough IMO. For example, PF2 red dragons are still immune to fire, despite being flesh-&-blood creatures (TBF I don't have the new dragon book, and I could not find cinder dragon stats on AoN, so that might be changing).
As a side issue (not really applicable to swashbucklers), I also think that a Fire Kineticist should be great at fighting fire elementals, not near-helpless against them. She is a master of fire, and they are literally made of the thing her whole class is all about! However, I seem to be the only one who thinks that.
I'm personally not a fan of both making a staff's attacks work like casting a spell and also making runes apply to those attacks; that feels like it's stepping on the toes of martial classes. I would definitely apply runes to the staff's attacks if the attacks keyed off Dex, however, or even if they worked like normal weapon attacks but used the casting stat to hit.
I don't understand what the difference between "work like casting a spell" and "work like normal weapon attacks but used the casting stat to hit" would be, in any practical sense.
Presumably the target audience for these kind of staves is typically going to have better proficiency with Spell Attacks than Weapon Attacks?
I am! I am still reading through it, so I have not got to the new stuff yet, but I am enjoying enjoying the recap.
However, I do have one fairly minor complaint: You rather oversell the length of the Dungeon-era APs. Saying that they are twelve chapters rather than six without without clarifying that the chapters are much shorter implies that they are twice as long, when the reality is much less than that. They cover 21 levels, as against 16-20 for the PF1-era APs. They are longer, but in some cases only by 5%.
(Unless you did clarify that and I missed it, in which case apologies.)
Witch of Miracles wrote:
True story: how much you like the back half of Curse is 1/3rd determined by how much you enjoy playing Castlevania in your PF game.
I am currently exploring Scarwall in CotCT (as a player), and I am enjoying it. I have heard of Castlevania, but I have no idea* what it is.
(* Well, not literally "no idea". I can guess from the name that it involves castles and vampires, which might or might not actually be in Romania.)
Obviously, if they were giving X/level, they cannot stack. But their not stacking would also be a potential problem if we are making investment in relevant archetypes count again. Because a Wizard with 5 Champion feats and 5 Fighter feats is just as invested in being a front-liner as someone with someone with 10 of either, but under some of the revised proposals would have a lot fewer hp (obviously, that matters a lot less if we cap the number of feats that can contribute fairly low, but that seems unsatisfying to me).
I think that for better and for worse, Pathfinder 2e is a game that aims to prevent a Wizard from becoming as much of a frontliner as a Fighter, even if the Wizard opts into lots of Fighter feats. I'd thus be okay with capping the benefits of resiliency feats and preventing them from stacking, such that a Wizard could get partway there but not all the way.
Nor should they be, but that is orthogonal to the comment you quoted. A wizard with lots fighter feats is served fine by many of the proposals, whereas a wizard with that many feats taken from two or martial Archetypes has the same amount of "martial investment" but significantly fewer HP. That was what the counter-proposal at the end of my post sort to address.
This is a valid point. I think the issue of stacking martial archetypes can be addressed simply by making resiliency feats not stack
Obviously, if they were giving X/level, they cannot stack. But their not stacking would also be a potential problem if we are making investment in relevant archetypes count again. Because a Wizard with 5 Champion feats and 5 Fighter feats is just as invested in being a front-liner as someone with someone with 10 of either, but under some of the revised proposals would have a lot fewer hp (obviously, that matters a lot less if we cap the number of feats that can contribute fairly low, but that seems unsatisfying to me).
I would be inclined to make a single feat called Martial Resiliency which is shared by the relevant Archetypes. Then it could give X hp per level, plus Y hp per feat from any Archetype which includes it (with X possibly being implemented as granting Toughness, partially or wholey).
If we made X=2 and Y=4 for other feats, then with ten feats invested you'd get 40 + 9*4 = 76 extra HP, or an average of 3.8 per level. That seems like a reasonable ROI on a normally 6 HP class, but is obviously too much on an 8 HP class. It also removes the Barbarian's special handling.
Oh, how about this:
Martial Resilience grants Toughness, and if your main class is 6 HP per level, the HP benefit of Toughness if doubled. In addition, for each other feat you take from a relevant Archetype (to a maximum of 9), you gain a number of HP equal to the difference between the Archetype's class's HP and your own class's (counting 6 as 8). If you already have Toughness, you can immediately retrain it for free.
Keeps the max HP just below the class you are borrowing from, and keeps the barbarian special without messing with prerequisites. In fact we don't need the max HP prereq at all: Pure martials can take it, and it is basically just an alternative way of getting Toughness, unless they Archetype into Barbarian. Which makes sense - they are already invested in being Martials, so Archetype feats do not represent any extra investment.
Thanks everyone. I was looking for a simple list, not feats written out in full with an asterisk. In my defence, the the paragraph I mentioned in the OP does not say they are denoted by asterisks (because where it comes from, they aren't).
As the title says. Based on a not-terribly-random sampling, it seems like about 2/3 of the Archetypes on AoN repeat the paragraph of rules text about Additional Feats, seemingly taken from Player Core p.215. But none of the one I looked at actually seemed to have any Additional Feats listed to go with that text.
So are they actually as rare as they appear to be, or am I just missing where they are listed?
Like, nobody does this and there's no RAW or RAI anywhere to suggest you should apply the same resistance ten times to a single attack or whatever. It's not a thing.
It very much does seem to be a thing in at least some cases. Hence the thread.
Tridus wrote:
I'd rather have some examples instead of errata, because the errata would have to be really long to actually cover every case and they won't do that due to it being impossible to fit into the book's current layout.
Examples only help if they are correct to the RAW. And deriving correct example when the underlying RAW is inconsistent is impossible. There's no easy way out of this, unfortunately.
yellowpete wrote:
Trip.H wrote:
(btw, I still have had no one claim to resolve what happens with flurry-combine attacks and mis-matched bonus elementals. )
This doesn't seem that complicated, no? You just treat it as you would a single attack that has both rune effects on it.
Which means what, exactly? What exactly "a single attack" means with regard to instances of damage (if anything at all) is the crux of the question.
Having finally got AoN to load so I can see what they currently do, I think I mostly agree.
I do think it would be nice if the number of feats in that archetype has some influence, but I obviously we don't want the barbarian archetype to end up with more HP than a actual barbarian, and there is also the issue of different martially-flavoured archetypes on the same character. So I am not sure how to implement that cleanly and fairly.
Firstly, could you unpack the first line a bit; I do not get the reference at all. Although I do want some butterscotch Angel Delight now (do they even still make it?)
Secondly, I disagree with basically everything that Azothath said: They seem to be trying to blunt the impact of your changes. Whereas I think that, if anything, they are not impactful enough. For example, I don't think Fighters getting fewer skill ranks than Rangers is justifiable, so I would set the minimum at 6 (to spend as they like).
Thirdly, Move Action rather than Swift Action for re-saving against Fear effects is an upgrade if you're running away. You get two extra goes at the save, and don't go anywhere (and the two extra goes applies even if you're not). I would leave it at a Swift (but still make it At Will).
Fourthly, I am not sure I follow Weapon Training. Are you saying Weapon Spec (and GWF/GWS) are deleted, or just don't stack? And Weapon Focus provides scaling benefits rather than the normal +1? If so, that is not a bad idea, but I think it could be implemented/presented more cleanly. I would just say that each Weapon Focus applies to a whole Group now, and the bonuses scale with Fighter Level (and you can immediately retrain and redundant Weapon Focus feats for free).
Alternatively, fighters could count as having Weapon Focus (and subsequently GWF, WS, and GWS) with every weapon with which they are proficient.
IMO, the Fighter's theme compared with more specialised martials like the barbarian and paladin should be broad & deep competence. Ever since WS was introduced in AD&D 2e, it has been contrary to that theme, and it only got worse with 3.P trip builds and the like.
_
TLDR: I think your proposal is a good start, but I don't know what butterscotch has to do with anything.
ISTM that the whole thing is a big old mess, and it needs errata whatever the devs originally intended. Both to confirm what an instance of damage is, and fix the rules that only work with the other definition (of which there appear to be examples in both directions).
I will also say that, even if they originally intended "type as instance", they should probably change their minds and define it as "attack as instance". Fewer worms in that can than the other.
