nicholas storm's page

Unless the belief that fighter is the worse class, all this stuff about fighters belongs in another thread.

I played a fighter in age of ashes and handily outdamaged everyone else in the party. It's far from the worst class. IMO that would be investigator.

I played a fighter with mostly max sturdy shields. I found until I got an indestructible shield, I usually shield blocked once or maybe twice per combat, otherwise the shield would break.

The shield ally doesn't do anything to make it better. Just accept you can't block every attack. If you don't like the shield ally, you can always take one of the other blessings. Speed is always useful.

nicholas storm wrote:

The errata where the avenger has to mark prey before sneak attacking with deity's weapon, kind of ruined the archetype for me. I don't think it's worth marking prey to get the damage. With thief you can dump str. With avenger you have to invest in strength if you want to use a non finesse weapon.

Well, only Thief has the ability to completely dump STR with no meaningful penalty to their damage. There are several other Rackets available for Rogue to choose from. It is best to compare Avenger to the standard case rather than a particular case that best suits your argument.

Ruffian Racket for example. They can also Sneak Attack with more than just Agile and Finesse weapons. They don't have an action cost needed in order to enable that. But their damage die size is limited. Similar to Avenger, they also don't have the ability to completely dump STR and in fact can choose STR to be their key Attribute.

For Avenger, there is no additional action cost needed if the weapon being used is Agile or Finesse.

The action cost is only needed to get the ability to Sneak Attack with a martial weapon with a base damage die size larger than d6.

It is also completely valid to play an Avenger that uses an Agile or Finesse weapon.

It's valid, but if you are an optimizer, at that point you may as well play a thief rogue.

The errata where the avenger has to mark prey before sneak attacking with deity's weapon, kind of ruined the archetype for me. I don't think it's worth marking prey to get the damage. With thief you can dump str. With avenger you have to invest in strength if you want to use a non finesse weapon.

I just don't think the katana is good enough to wreck a class to use it. It is a terrible weapon for monk, because it doesn't have any way in the rules to use it as a monk weapon, meaning the monk's best class ability flurry with blows can't be used with it.

Either play a different class or use a different weapon. The Khakkara is a very good weapon. Blunt is the best damage type and it does d10 two hand. Or you can reskin a temple sword and call it a katana.

Superbidi, I was looking at your build since it seemed interesting. As a lizardman, you can't raise cha and dex, so starting with something like STR 2 DEX 3 CON 1 INT -1 WIS 1 CHA 3 ? Or alternate with STR1 DEX 4 CON 1 INT 0 WIS 0 CHA 3?

I can understand the dissatisfaction. Sai, Nunchaku, and Bo Staff are all on the list of Monk weapons, so why isn't Katana?

Reading through all the various options and possibilities from this thread, this is what I am finding most useful.

If the build needs Finesse trait (dex to hit), then the Wakizashi would work. Stick to the one hand weapon and dual wield if desired.

If being 2-hand full time is fine then the Elven Curve Blade for Dex build would work.

If non-finesse is fine (strength to hit) and 1-hand with two-hand trait is important and houserules are allowed, a Temple Sword with the removal of the Trip trait and addition of the Two-Hand 1d12 trait would work (stats-wise it basically becomes a Bastard Sword with the Monk trait at that point).

There are very few ways for a monk to flurry with a d12 weapon. For balance purposes, there is no way I would approve that trait swap.

I think I will make the Finisher tag work more like a flourish. I am not seeing a reason why a finisher prevents all further attack actions.

The investigator does 5d6 once per round and they made it far easier for remastered investigators to get the Devise a Stratagem as a free action. I see no reason why one additional d6 of damage should lead to such an intense limit on the swashbuckler other than the name "Finisher" which I guess the designer wanted to be a killing blow type of attack.

Since it doesn't actually work this way in the game, I'll consider the "finisher" more of a deadly technique of the swashbuckler they can use once a round without additional limitation. I'll adjust if I see problems with it.

I think with the need to obtain panache every round and a maximum of one finisher a round and MAP, that should all be enough to throttle the finisher to the right level of power, especially compared to the rogue or fighter or barbarian.

That change is what I lobbied for the swashbuckler. What harm is it for a swashbuckler to do finisher/attack/panache instead of attack/finisher/panache.

I would go even further and remove weapon restrictions. Paizo adding all these fiddly requirements to classes that don't need them frustrate me.

I find the main "finisher" ability to be garbage in concept and execution. Play a better designed class.

The class can use the barricade buster, just not as it's innovation. Weapon innovation sucks anyways.

I played a high dex fighter that used splint. I always forgot to use my resistance to piercing, so I guess I am not that great of an optimizer to tell you which one is better. It didn't matter to me is what I got out of it.

I am currently playing sorcerer as the party's primary healer (primal spell list). I also don't think I would play primary healer for 4 campaigns in a row.

In the last campaign as a fighter in age of ashes, I needed lots of healing as pretty much the only front liner (rogue went off on his own and didn't block enemies for the casters). When I got higher in level, I became pretty much self sufficient with battle medicine, a shield, and non-remastered alchemical dedication.

I would rule yes

The rules don't allow weapons to be altered other than what some classes can already do (like inventor can add certain traits to weapons). The game designers decided that the setting wouldn't have any guns with magazines.

If you want to use a gun without reload, your options are air repeater or barricade buster. I am using a barricade buster in one campaign.

I play a starlit span magus and have only used sure strike once or twice and he is level 5 now. The nerf wouldn't have affected me one bit.

SuperBidi wrote:

The whole problem of the Battle Harbinger is that you can build a Magus or Summoner to just be a superior Battle Harbinger with everything the Battle Harbinger brings to the table but better. At least, some classes, like the Investigator, have unique features that make them appropriate choices in some circumstances. But for the Battle Harbinger, unless you play a game that never goes to 7, there are strictly superior choices.

For a 1-10 game, 1-7 is most of the play space. You're talking about telling a player to play for months with a concept they don't want to get up to a somewhat better instantiation of the concept they do want. In a game that may only go months.

Both may be better overall choices, but nobody wanting a divine gish is going to take Magus, and nobody wanting to spam 4+ aura spells per game day is going to get that from Summoner until at least level 6. Even then, the Summoner pays a high 'spell opportunity cost' to play that way, while a BH doesn't.

At low levels a regular warpriest kicks the ass out of the battle harbinger. Battle harbinger is just a poorly implemented idea.

Here would be my home brew battle harbinger:

1) Full martial with regular martial weapon specialization, key stat STR or DEX. Gains shield block and heavy armor. Standard martial weapon and armor progression.

2) Scrap the battle aura font and give it back the regular cleric divine font, change the language to have the spell level equal to a cleric that has regular spellcasting.

3) Remove wave spellcasting from the class. It adds archetype casting feats at level 4, 12, 18 that can be taken with class feats. Divine breath at level 8. Divine spell list with deity spells added to allowable spells. Adds scaling religion skill that increases at level 3, 7 and 15.

4) Gain bless, bane, benediction and malediction cantrips at level 1. 1 Action to cast and lasts one round. Sustain action sustains all cantrips active. Double cantrip cast feat for one action at level 8. Add free sustain feat at level 16.

The problem with the battle harbinger is that it gives up too much compared to the warpriest.

When I compare the warpriest to the battle harbinger, the battle harbinger plain sucks. In exchange for a +2 to hit at levels 5-6, 13-18 and +2 AC at levels 19-20, they trade:

4-6 highest spell slots from healing font (I consider harbinger font to be nearly useless). Lots of spell slots (wave casting vs regular casting). At level 10 you are looking at 4 spell slots (-/-/-/2/2) vs 20 spell slots
(3/3/3/3/8)

Shield Block

Master spellcasting at levels 19-20 and 10th level slots

Comparing the battle harbinger to magus, they have lack of STR/DEX key stat, loss of martial weapon specialization, lack of magus class features in exchange for the the aura font class feature which I think is a very weak class feature. I think Paizo missed the opportunity to make that aura feature more robust by having some kind of level scaling built into it.

It's not the lack of martial weapon specialization that makes the class weak; it's all of it's features in totality. I think a better battle harbinger would be take the magus class and give it divine spells instead of arcane and trade arcana for religion. Most people would probably say that is worse than the base magus, but it's still better than the battle harbinger in my opinion.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=873

The main problem with how the dedication works is that the dedication gives around 50% of the power of the base class. Normal dedications might be around 3%. Since the base class can only have one ikon active, having 3 ikons instead of one is not really that much more power. I assume the dedication will be errated at some point, just like everyone kind of knew
jalmeri heavenseeker was going to be errated.

The problem for the champion is if they want weapon critical specialization, they have to take blessed armament or get it through say an ancestry feat. Blessed armament is the only way in class to get weapon critical specialization.

The blog post is last october. It is quite possible Paizo costs have gone up between Howl of the Wild and War of Immortals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXyWNjck3XI

Roll for combat has a lot of videos on the economy of gaming. This is one.

Books are going to keep increasing in price. I decided that physical space was why I was switching to PDFs, but probably cost would play into it somewhat now. The technology for displaying PDFs has gotten to the point that I can even read books on my phone, but still prefer to read on my PC.

I saw a youtube video from Stephen Glicker from Roll for Combat explaining the tremendous cost increases for physical books in the last few years. I am pretty sure Paizo is not making any more money by raising the prices of the books; rather defraying the increasing costs they are paying.

They scale the same way as any spell for a spontaneous caster - they don't. You have to either take them at every level or make them signature spells.

Also you list blood magic effects on area effect spells, but the blood magic only affects 1 enemy. If you fireball 5 guys, only one enemy takes the extra damage from blood magic.

I am in the camp that lie doesn't take any actions. It is listed as a skill with no action cost. Also, why would lying take more actions than telling the truth?

Even if you could benefit from runes for deadly scaling, it's not worth the cost to increase damage on a critical. You save so much gold that you can use for other stuff by not having to buy handwraps.

nicholas storm wrote:

Considering that ancestries with claw and bite attacks (lizard folk and goblin) put those attacks in the brawling group, I think any reasonable GM will put the bestial attacks in the brawling group.

To do otherwise brings me back to why I hate the RAW argument from the pf1 boards.

If unarmed attacks had to go in a weapon group, then yes, I agree they'd go in brawling. Except unarmed attacks, unlike weapons, don't require having a weapon group, and some explicitly lack one. Since there's no requirement or principle to reference, one IMO should take it at face value that the attacks provided do not have a weapon group. This isn't to be persnickety, it seems straightforward given how the other unarmed attacks spend the type-space to include it over and over and over again.

That's unfortunate for the Fighter, but they're the masters of weapons combat so I don't see a narrative need to patch this gap. And they have all the brawling options to choose from, which who knows, might have intentionally been a point of balance that Paizo would've been aware of from PF1 experience.

I play PF2 with an expectation that if something is not listed, but inferred that it should be the inferred assumption. PF1 was filled with discussions about how rules should be defined or you can't make your own decision about the rule. PF2 was designed to not care about how the exact rules were written and have people interpret it in their games how they think the rule should be.

What I listed is what I think the way the rule should be. If you disagree, play your game how you like. I just don't have to pay any attention to how you play your game.

Considering that ancestries with claw and bite attacks (lizard folk and goblin) put those attacks in the brawling group, I think any reasonable GM will put the bestial attacks in the brawling group.

To do otherwise brings me back to why I hate the RAW argument from the pf1 boards.

It's more reason to invest in dex, unless you want bad reflex saves.

Unless you plan on wearing full plate for bulwark and maybe get mighty bulwark if you don't enjoy being tripped, dex is still a good investment.

needle darts to all lists is a big boon to divine as a decent attack cantrip.

dragon form was added to all lists

The math for keen for a reasonable situation:

Base to hit 9 on D20:

1 attack, no keen avg damage is 0.7xdamage of attack
1 attack, keen avg damage is 0.75xdamage of attack
Keen gives about a 7% increase in damage; to break even with a 1d6 rune, you need to do around 49 damage per attack.

2 attack, no keen avg damage is (0.7+0.4)x damage of attack
2 attack, no keen avg damage is (0.75+0.45)x damage of attack
keen gives about a 9% increase in damage; to break even with a 1d6 rune, you need to do around 35 damage per attack.

3 attack, no keen avg damage is (0.7+0.4+0.15)x damage of attack
3 attack, no keen avg damage is (0.75+0.45+0.2)x damage of attack
keen gives about a 12% increase in damage; to break even with a 1d6 rune, you need to do around 24.5 damage per attack.

So really keen does less damage than a 1d6 rune until high levels with lots of attacks per round.

And the guy who has a keen rune in one campaign I am playing forgets it, so it literally has added 0% damage for the entire campaign. When you use a VTT and don't roll dice, it's easy to not check a 19 roll.

Mathematically keen rune is a poor choice for a rune slot. You are better off not using it regardless of whether a weapon can use it or not.

Prepared spellcasting needs to go.

I don't think this is going to be addressed in pc2, but the main problem with swashbuckler is finisher ending attacks for the round. I calculated situations where the swashbuckler does more damage by never using finishers and attacking multiple times per round.

I would either get rid of finishers ending attacks or add in a map reduction on finisher attacks.

I remember reading that gunslinger spellshot dedication lost conjure bullet due to space considerations. So I would agree with Arcaian that ET may have been removed due to space considerations.

I would rebuild one of the rangers to have an animal companion. Animal companions get the same hunt prey edge the ranger has, so a precision ranger gives their animal companion added precision damage to their first hit. If they don't have to move, they have two chances to get the extra 1D8 damage.

On my ranger, I had a dromaesaur animal companion. Between hunted shot and animal companion, I usually had 3 attacks per round

Alchemist dedication gives you a lot of elixirs. Main problem is that until high level, they are very low level. Once you hit high level, you can do a lot of healing; and use soothing and numbing tonics for more sustainability in combat

nicholas storm wrote:

Currently playing what I consider one of the top builds in the game - fighter with alchemist dedication for feral mutagen (L16) and monk dedication for flurry of blows. It has an unarmed D12 bite, D10 agile claw, lots of elixirs for buffing and healing and hands to use a shield.

So you get the defenses of a shield with damage of a 2H weapon user with flurry of blows. The kicker is that MAP is only -3 on the claw because of agile grace and you get the bonus of 2 attacks for 1 action (flurry of blows).

You need Martial Artist dedication to get your improved Fighter proficiency with unarmed attacks.

We don't play that you do (People who play by what they consider RAW are not the way I want to play). Also, I believe this will be clarified when PC2 comes out. All of the ancestry natural weapons are in the brawling group.

Currently playing what I consider one of the top builds in the game - fighter with alchemist dedication for feral mutagen (L16) and monk dedication for flurry of blows. It has an unarmed D12 bite, D10 agile claw, lots of elixirs for buffing and healing and hands to use a shield.

So you get the defenses of a shield with damage of a 2H weapon user with flurry of blows. The kicker is that MAP is only -3 on the claw because of agile grace and you get the bonus of 2 attacks for 1 action (flurry of blows).

You are basically picking out the less exciting things and ignoring the best things about fighter. Fighter saves are fine. Master in reflex and fortitude with evasion on both puts them ahead of all casters and some martials. Evasion on reflex is better than evasion on will. Perception is fine. I never make a character and say, it's broken because it's perception is master instead of legendary.

Fighter advances armor proficiency faster than most martials (11 and 17, instead of 13 and 19).

I think agile grace is one of the best feats in the game. Having a -3 MAP is amazing. My fighter uses unarmed with flurry of blows and can do up to 5 attacks per round at 0/-3/-6/-6/-6. Using unarmed lets you easily use a shield which has amazing fighter feats like Paragon's Guard, Quick Shield Block, Reflexive Shield, and Reactive Shield.

Fighter has other feat chains that enable builds other classes can't do.

Because of page count, paizo will probably never put in a rule like that in the book.

You wouldn't want to put the rune on your main weapon. Just carry a weapon with the rune for the shapechanging effect. +1 fanged rune for 65 GP. At higher levels, that amount of gold is pretty negligible.

Of course if you have trick magic item or a caster dedication or a primal/arcane caster in the group, you could always cast or have pest form cast on you from a scroll

Investment in medicine kind of depends on how highly you value skill feats. I usually feel like medicine has greater value than other skill feats; especially if no one in the party has medicine.

I usually take a background that gives battle medicine. Unfortunately, there is no background that does this and boost STR and CHA. So if you want battle medicine as a 1st level feat, you have to boost DEX, WIS or CON and one other stat.

Feat/skill progression
Level 2 Assurance
Level 3 increase medicine to expert (automatically treat wounds/battle medicine for 2d8)
Level 4 Continuous Recovery
Level 6 Ward Medic (allows you to treat wounds 2 people); automatically treat wounds/battle medicine for 2d8+10
Level 7 Increase medicine to master (allows you to treat wounds 4 people)

I played an orc sorcerer in the slithering. I took the orc weapon familiarity feat to use a greataxe. Took the ancestry to start with 12HP. 16 12 12 10 10 18 stat spread. Starts with 19HP, uses a greataxe. Takes champion dedication at level 2. AC is very bad at level 1, but at level 2 can wear medium or heavy armor.

Since you will be playing with different classes from the other players, I think it's better to optimize for that situation. I would do 1 martial and one caster.

Magic Immunity A will-o’-wisp is immune to all spells except faerie
fire, glitterdust, magic missile, and maze.

You really don't want all the enemies to attack you. Regardless of your ability to heal yourself, if all the enemies attacked you, you would go down before you can heal yourself. Anyway heal in this game works at 30' range so if they attack your team mates, you can heal them.