shroudb's page

shroudb wrote:

you mean... like alchemist? A perfectly working hybrid regardless his delayed specialization?

Oops, someone didn't read ahead before responding!

Teridax wrote:

Lol, half of those aren't hybrids. The Magus and Summoner are actual hybrids, and are bounded casters like the Battle Harbinger. Both have weapon specialization at 7th level and greater weapon specialization at 15th level. The Warpriest, by contrast, is a full caster with some gish elements (they are also quite obviously meant to be less gishy than a Battle Harbinger), whereas the Alchemist, despite their lack of spellcasting, has always been balanced like a spellcaster more than a martial due to their versatility and AoE-focused damage. Let's perhaps not muddy discussion with obvious red herrings.

Emphasis added for your convenience. Does that answer your questions?

No... you completely missing the mark about how Alchemist works doesn't mean that I didn't read... just that I ignored the falsehoods.

The only red-herrings here are you insisting that 2 damage make or break a martial.

That's as absurd of an overexaggeration as ever. Which was exactly my comment that sparked this discussion.

---

Now, will you stop trying to gaslight (once more) and answer this simple question:
does 2 damage make or break a martial? Because that's what you wrote before.

Martial classes, including bounded casters, get weapon specialization at 7th level, and greater weapon specialization at 15th level (or, in the case of the Summoner, greater eidolon specialization). These features are crucial to supplying the damage per hit that is necessary for martial classes to deal competent Strike damage.

shroudb wrote:

10% less damage but offers 5% more Accuracy for the whole party.

Still is ahead.

If this is the measuring stick you want to use, then everyone should archetype into Cleric and get exactly that same kind of power for just two low-level feats. "5% more accuracy for the whole party" (which itself doesn't make much sense as a statement in a game whose degrees of success are not a binary) also requires at least two actions to deploy and even more actions to bring to a radius or location that will benefit the relevant party members. Having actually tried out this class archetype, I found that trying to focus on my auras meant I was barely spending any time actually Striking, because I generally had to spend at least one turn casting an aura and moving into position, and at least one action on subsequent turns moving, Sustaining the aura, or both to benefit my party. I might as well have just played a Bard and done the job better.

shroudb wrote:

Yes.

If you think that delayed specialization, which is either 2, or 3, damage less per hit is "crucial to deal competent damage" then I simply don't agree.

You are perfectly within your right to do so, my point is that your agreement is irrelevant, because this is objectively the standard for martial classes. You cannot look at the features every martial class receives, including bounded casters, and tell me that it is normal for a martial class to only get the basic weapon specialization, and only at 13th level.

shroudb wrote:

Other features offer much more damage.

Which "other features"? Because if we're talking about Rage, sneak attack damage, and other unique damage-enhancing features, all of those sit on top of the basic features being discussed. These are also features the Battle Harbinger lacks entirely, so this is once again further evidence of the class not being up to par with what exists.

shroudb wrote:

There are no design benchmarks for hybrids. We have at least 3

...

a)once per day. Sure.

b)you mean... like alchemist? A perfectly working hybrid regardless his delayed specialization?

c)top level buff spells

d)"it's not a hybrid, it's a caster with Gish elements" just lol. That's what hybrid means. Loses something, gains something. Warpriest is a hybrid tilted towards a caster, Alchemist is a hybrid tilted towards martial.

e)don't try to gaslight, it ain't working.

I never tried to mischaracterize anything. I just pointed out hyperboles when I saw them, like stating that 2 damage is vital to make a martial work or not.

shroudb wrote:

As funny as the comic is, there's never a need for a player to know that a secret check (in this case his stealth check) was made. So no information given.

Oh no?

shroudb wrote:

If his solution is to write the check results, then isn't it just easier to write the activities themselves?

It's easier to write a two-digit number than a longer multi-digit word. :P

dunno, the gm has other problems if his issue is writting "hides" instead of "34".

Let alone that a straight up number, a week later when you resume the session means absolutely nothing. It could be a stealth, a search, an investigation, his remaining hp, anything really.

So the GM will have to write "Stealth: 34" instead of "Stealth".

So, even that is simpler!

As for excpetions, sure, they may happen once or twice, you note them down, and then you don't fall for them.

Even moreso, your idea of prerolling makes the whole argument about exceptions backfire actually, since you cannot know before hand if those exceptions will be relevant at the time the check is made while you will know if they are relevant the other way around.

Or do you expect the GM to go "remember that check you made 2hours ago? Well, reroll it now."

shroudb wrote:

You don't "pre-roll" the Stealth check.

You only roll when someone enters the sense range of someone else.

That seems like a really inefficient way to handle Stealth, and also like a good way to give up metagame information.

Most GMs I know are juggling so many things already that if they didn't write down the Stealth check result as the Stealth attempt was made, they would forget that the character was using Stealth at all.

Not really?

I find it much easier to just check up at what exploration activities my players are doing, and then do a Secret Stealth check (since Stealth is a secret check to begin with) when needed.

It is the other way around that requires a lot more bookeeping: having the player preroll his stealth and then having to check a long time later what was the roll ages ago...

p.s.
As funny as the comic is, there's never a need for a player to know that a secret check (in this case his stealth check) was made. So no information given.

The same as with Trapsotter and etc automatic secret checks, you only roll when needed, you don't pre-roll the search checks.

p.p.s
if a GM has ahard time following what exploration activities are being used, he would have 10 times worse times following what checks were made back when those exploration activities were called to begin with.

If his solution is to write the check results, then isn't it just easier to write the activities themselves?

Shroudb and Ravingdork, why are you arguing dishonestly?

Any one feature isn't the clincher. Its the accumulation of multiple aspects of the design that are poorly thought out:

1.) Don't follow Paizo's own design benchmarks for baseline class chassis.

2.) Are done better by other options.

3.) Lack of thought made for turn rotations/necessary action compression to make it functional in the way the feats suggest (e.g., burning 4 actions in R1/R2 for two auras)

4.) Lack of integration with the rest of the cleric feat lines (e.g., can't fit in emblazon/domain spells when you're locked out until L4)

5.) Tying what should be 'features' to feat taxes (should have just been given).

Its the 'malicious compliance' version of 'give them a expert/master at L5/L13.

lol

What was dishonest about my answers.

Let me point you again to what I was replying:

Bluemagetim wrote:

Just realized something.

Why were people saying battle harbingers dont get weapon spec?
Or were they just upset it doesnt happen until 13th level?

Martial classes, including bounded casters, get weapon specialization at 7th level, and greater weapon specialization at 15th level (or, in the case of the Summoner, greater eidolon specialization). These features are crucial to supplying the damage per hit that is necessary for martial classes to deal competent Strike damage.

Yes.

If you think that delayed specialization, which is either 2, or 3, damage less per hit is "crucial to deal competent damage" then I simply don't agree.

Other features offer much more damage.

1. There are no design benchmarks for hybrids. We have at least 3 different hybrid benchmarks in magus-summoner/warpriest/alchemist

2.No they aren't

3. I disagree on the premise that pf2 in general has strict "rotations". You apply the aura, and the amount of auras, as needed for each encounter.

4. different specs like different feats?

5. I do somewhat agree that there are too many good feats on harbinger that could have been features

shroudb wrote:

Ok, let's not overeact here.

Specialization is nice, but it's nowhere near "mandatory to deal competent Strike Damage"

At level 7, even with a one-hander, when you get it it would increase something like 2d8+4 (13) to 2d8+6 (15), nice but hardly mandatory.

That's more than a 15% damage increase for every hit you deal. I do not think you or some others quite realize how significant of a difference that is, especially when multiple threads have been written about how some people will reject certain weapons over smaller relative differences in damage.

shroudb wrote:

At level 15 improving spec to greater spec will increase something like 3d8+2d6+8 (28.5) to 3d8+2d6+11 (31.5).

Even at that level, that is still over a 10% increase in damage. Again, this is far more significant than you are making it out to be. Without these features, martials would be genuinely weak in Pathfinder, which is why they have them in the first place.

And this isn't to say that everyone needs both at those levels to ever want to Strike at all, either: the Warpriest gets caster-grade weapon specialization and sub-par Strike accuracy, and that's totally fine for them, because they're more of a gishy caster who will often use their third action to Strike, rather than a full gish. If a caster wants to opt into a gishier build, their regular weapon specialization and worse accuracy will be fine for those purposes, because given their niche as a full caster, it is totally okay for them to have worse baseline Strikes than a martial. When the subject of discussion is a full gish, however, one who gives up significant amounts of power to be able to Strike like a martial class, that does become a problem, because the end result is a class that sucks at casting spells, but sucks at committing fully to Strikes as well.

10% less damage but offers 5% more Accuracy for the whole party.

Still is ahead.

It "sucks" fully commiting to save based spaells, it "sucks" fully committing to just Strike. How about you play it as suppossed to, which is using both spells and Strikes to actually do good?

You made your position pretty clear on your impressions of the archetype, others have made their (opposite) position pretty clear.

Only time will tell which one was more correct.

The only sure thing is regardless who is closer, the fact remains that for all those people asking for better weapon progression on a warpriest, for which there were a ton, this archetype fullfils that void perfectly.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

What? No, the enemies don't automatically all roll to spot the PC. That's silly, and ludicrously stacked against the PC due to the number of rolls involved. You roll a single stealth check and see if anyone in the room's perception DC is high enough to still notice them.

How do you adjudicate it if someone is already sneaking around, then sneaks into the sense range of a bunch of creatures, such as by entering a room?

It doesn't really make sense to re-roll Sneak on the PC side, as in theory you would need to re-roll it each time a square of movement enters a new creature's LoS / perception range. Gets even weirder with other edge cases.

You don't "pre-roll" the Stealth check.

You only roll when someone enters the sense range of someone else.

Ok, let's not overeact here.

Specialization is nice, but it's nowhere near "mandatory to deal competent Strike Damage"

At level 7, even with a one-hander, when you get it it would increase something like 2d8+4 (13) to 2d8+6 (15), nice but hardly mandatory.

At level 15 improving spec to greater spec will increase something like 3d8+2d6+8 (28.5) to 3d8+2d6+11 (31.5).

If you're using an agile/finesse weapon, you're already down to d6. Going from d6 to D4, even in endgame, is just a -4 to the average damage. If you pick up useful traits a lot of the time, they outmatch the 4 damage loss.

shroudb wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

What do you care as a rogue? You become hidden, then use a few actions to attack twice and move again with mobility and another stealth check. Third attacks aren't great anyway. You're still going to win that action and damage exchange with rare exception.

If you Stealth away, you aren't triggering Opportune. If you're triggering Opportune you aren't Undetected. That's what I'm saying.

No one said anything about 3rd attacks.

You either play with Undetected and do your 1st+2nd (map) attack, OR you play with Opportunist and do your 2-3 full map attacks.

Opportunist is more damage, Undetected is more survivability. But you can't do both simultaneously. You have to pick your poison.

I don't care about being undetected save when I open the combat. After that opening round, then you're striking the target and adapting tactics according to how your group plays.

And that's fine, but it's different from what the OP's issue was with him being unable to find the rogue of the party constantly, which would mean that the rogue is sacrificing damage to increase his survivability.

That's mainly why I prefaced my post with "it depends on who you are worshipping" instead of saying "all gods". Because I'm sure there are a few weird ones. But for the majority of the gods, as I was saying earlier, it would be a big nono, at least for me.

What do you care as a rogue? You become hidden, then use a few actions to attack twice and move again with mobility and another stealth check. Third attacks aren't great anyway. You're still going to win that action and damage exchange with rare exception.

If you Stealth away, you aren't triggering Opportune. If you're triggering Opportune you aren't Undetected. That's what I'm saying.

No one said anything about 3rd attacks.

You either play with Undetected and do your 1st+2nd (map) attack, OR you play with Opportunist and do your 2-3 full map attacks.

Opportunist is more damage, Undetected is more survivability. But you can't do both simultaneously. You have to pick your poison.

Lia Wynn wrote:

TheFinish wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

The Dedication says "You can take the Cleric Dedication feat without needing to meet its prerequisites and before you take two other feats from the Razmiran priest archetype, but you must choose Razmir as your deity."

But what if I DO meet the prerequisites? Can I select a deity other than Razmir then? It seems that, that requirement is only needed to cheat the standard prerequisites and gain the Dedication perks.

It later goes on to say "when gained in this way" implying that you can gain it another (the standard) way.

If you do meet the pre-requisites then yes you can take Cleric Dedication for any other Deity you want, following the usual rules. And you could still keep taking feats from Razmiran Priest, since the archetype doesn't require you to take Cleric Dedication for Razmir at any point, nor does it say you lose the benefits if you worship another god.

The thing is though, because Razmiran Priest only has 2nd, 6th, 10th and 20th level feats, the earliest you could take proper Cleric Dedication would be 12th, or 9th with Multitalented.

An interesting quirk here that I'm not sure is intended is that you could, technically, take Razmiran Priest Dedication and then, using either Multitalented or just waiting until level 12th, take Cleric Dedication and choose Razmir as your deity, gaining actual divine power from him. Since gaining devotee powers from him only requires having the Archetype, not the Archetype's particular brand of Cleric Dedication.

Or you could be a Cleric of a proper deity, take the dedication, then change your deity to Razmir. Which is even funnier.

Actually, you could take Cleric Dedication at 4 with Razmiran Priest. The dedication feat itself allows this in the first sentence of paragraph two.

You can, but it's not "proper" Cleric Dedication. It has several caveats (you don't need to meet prerequisites, it uses Charisma and not Wisdom, the spells are Occult, you can only...

I feel like the God you worship with your "real" Cleric dedication will have something to say to you for being a charlatan that follows Razmir, dons his mask, and, at least publically, call him a God.

It does depend on who you really worship though, but at least in my tables most of the actual Gods will simply not abide by that.

My experience playing a rogue that could turn invisible is they were so brutal, that trying to attack them at high level was a massive waste of actions while the rest of the party beat the person down.

The rogue is providing flanking for everyone swinging at the target.

Rogue is getting Opportune Backstab.

Rogue can sneak and move as needed with mobility and Swift Sneak with Stealth built up with items.

At 16th level 4th level invis scrolls are super cheap.

Blank Slate is straight up detection and similar spells don't work.

If they decide to do an archer or thrown weapon, then it's even worse when invisible. Full sneak attack from range. Then the target has to move to them.

Reflex saves so good that reflex AoE doesn't work great.

Generally strong will save too.

Now with Fortitude saves providing the succeed and get a crit success and that General feat that boosts Fort to master, they have all good saves with crit success.

They don't need strength, so they stack up Dex, Con, Wis, and whatever other stat they want.

They get six Legendary skills. Tons of skill feats.

This DM is going to hate it even more when they get Master Strike on top of already getting Debilitating Strike with Double Debilitation and then add in the thief feat that boosts sneak attack to 6d6 while making the target flat-footed to everyone.

Unless you want to completely screw the rogue player by making a brutal enemy specifically to kill them, just give up trying to one up them.

Rogue is easily the most powerful martial class in the game and one of the most powerful classes. You might even call them overpowered at high level within the group paradigm. They're just a brutal Pf2 class.

Opportune backstab doesn't play nice with a full stealth build since the moment you use it you're only hidden until the end of your next turn when you re-sneak to get undetected.

So if you go with Opportune there's no reason to go into all the hassle to become Undetected since it'll be irrelevant anyways if you break it always before enemy turn (if you time it to be after enemy turn, there's no guarantee that the enemy will stick to be adjacent to you, in fact, it's almost certain that he'll move away if you did that tactic even once...) by yourself.

I believe the OP is conflicting Legendary Sneak with Sneak Adept.

Sneak Adept will make every Sneak Attempt a Success unless the Rogue Critically Fails.

So, in theory, they could, with the rank 4 Invisibility of the cloak, do something like Strike, Strike, Sneak away, and they will be Undetected until they Strike again next round. Or Sneak in, Strike, Sneak out if the enemy is away.

Their Sneak with Foil senses and Sneak Adept means that if they don't critically fail the check they are Undetected from every sense.

It is indeed very powerful.

A few things to note are:

This will only work with Invisibility without requiring an extra action to first Hide first every round.

And Hide still requires a Success even with Sneak Adept (which only applies to Sneak and not Hide).

In the case that the Rogue is not under Invisibility it would be something like Strike, Hide, Sneak to become Undetected, which based on the position of the enemy means that it won't be sustainable every round. (If the enemy is away from the rogue then the rogue would need to do Sneak, Strike, Hide next round, which means it will be left Hidden and not Undetected).

Secondly, the remaster Version of the Cloak only has 1/day rank 4 Invisibility as oppossed to the pre-remaster Cloak of Elvenkind which has 2.

---

To sum it up:

If the cloak is switched to the remaster version, this tactic will only be usable 1/day unless the rogue gets more sources of rank 4 Invisibility.

Without the Invisibility the Rogue would need to spend 2 Actions instead of 1 each turn, and it would need to Succeed on the Hide check every round as oppossed to simply not critically failing with Sneak.

Edit: at that level, a more dedicated build could, with some investment and some rare stuff still be wrecking foes with Spring from the Shadows and a Quickstrike rune (which is the rare part).

In that Case the rogue could Spring from the shadows towards an enemy for sneak attack, then quicken strike for a second sneak attack as long as an ally is next to your enemy via pack tactics having the enemy flanked, then Hide, then Sneak away.

So two sneak attacks at full/1st map while remaining Undetected when it's not your turn.

Still less damage than something like Stride next to enemy, Sneak attack at full map, Quickened Strike at map, Preparation, 2 Opportunist hits for 2 more Sneak attacks at full MAP.

As pointed above, it is a Strike Action that happens when you sustain. Regardless what type of roll you do (in this case using your Spell Attack Modifier) Strikes can Critically hit by default without extra language.

nvm, missed the fact that the crit success asks for Intimidation DC.

Just to get things on track:
You are not allowed to pick up a dedication of a class you already have per the rules.

Now, if you houserule this away, sure, do whatever you want, but then again, that's not a "rules question" at this point, is it?

The spell effect doesn't really cover this type of edge case very well.

It says that other effects of the attack are delayed until the spell's effect ends. And that the effects are applied at that point.

So by strictest letter of the rules, the wizard wouldn't have the grabbed condition immediately and so wouldn't be a valid target for swallow whole, but when the spell ends the wizard would be grabbed by the creature in their current and distant location away from the monster.

So... yeah. The way that you ran it at your table is probably fine.

The creature couldn't have used the Grab ability to begin with since the hit hasn't register yet though, right?

I had this happen to my own game once.

The way I resolved it was like that:

Delay makes the hit basically not register till next round.

Even though in the monster blocks they are written as such (I guess for simplicity?), if you read the actual abilities of Grab/Knockdown/Push, they are not "part of the hit" but they are either Actions that you can use when you hit, or in the case of Improved, Free Actions with a Trigger when they hit.

Since the hit has not happened "yet" the creature can't use said Actions yet.

But if the creature is in reach when the Hit eventually registers, (in my case it was Improved Grab, so Free Action with a Trigger) so it CAN use the Free Action since the Trigger happens at that point.

So, "sustain range" is not a thing. There are abilities that say that if an affected target goes beyond x range it stops, but apart from being specifically mentioned, you can sustain a spell even beyond its range.

That said, clearly the spell could have been written better.

As written, the "range" speaks about the ally who can be affected, and is one of the two targets of the spell. The other target (the shield) needs to be touched, but isn't specifically given a range.

RAW I think that Darksoul is corerct. Since the touch part is not in the range parameters of the spell, it isn't affected by Reach spell.

But, at least in my games, I think that I would let the Reach apply to a willing target's shield. Because I simply think it's an omission to not have the 2nd target (shield) given a range parameter.

Lastly, clearly, it isn't suppossed to be able to use it on an enemy shield, since everything that targets enemy equipment says so specifically and uses the oppoenent's defences to do so.

Relevant spell text:

You grant the target insight on things to come, guiding them toward a fate they find most fitting and encouraging them to continue this journey. The creature rolls a d20 at the start of each of its turns. The creature can use the result of the roll instead of rolling for any check before the start of their next turn. If the creature does substitute the roll in this way, they gain a +1 status bonus to whatever check they substitute on the following turn. Repeated substitutions increase the status bonus by 1, up to a total of +2. If the creature begins their turn without having substituted a roll in the previous round, the spell ends.

Bolded for emphasis.

I have trouble parsing if you can only replace 1 roll/turn or multiple (using the same prerolled result).

Any input?

Either way it is very powerful, but being able to turn all your rolls into 18s or something kinda seems tgtbt to me.

The idea is that it's the doohickey that repairs itself. The bbeg is just exploiting this fact, and since he's experienced with the item, he has some failsafes to do that easier/more often.

Hence why I want the "original" ability to repair itself to be something in bound with some preexisting option that a pc may have either way, since if they get the doohickey, they do not suddenly get something completely broken.

The point I am atm is basically:
I remember in pf1 there was some kind of living special material that slowly repairs itself. Giving the bbeg a way to do so instantly is the easy part, the harder part was the power level of the "permanent" ability that comes with the item in case the players get the item that i wanted to see if there was something equivalent to give to them.

As it stands now, I think I'll simply have it repair itself in morning prep as the item ability and have the bbeg need an action and a check to do so in-combat.

While this will make it hard to "main" the weapon, since it will be broken when activated, it's less of a concern to have a secondary weapon for the players since I run ABP.

Can I ask what the use case is for an auto-repairing weapon?

In general there aren't that many ways of damaging a weapon, so needing to repair one shouldn't come up much. Unless there's some specific thing being done where the player is intentionally damage their weapon to gain some benefit, in which cost of automatically repairing the weapon should be weighed against the thing being done, and the existing methods of repairing.

Without wanting to spoil stuff in case one of my players reads here, it's about a gimmick of a bbeg who can "overcharge" something of his, breaking it in the process.

Seeing as that's something he enjoys doing, he has countermeasures to get said thing back up in working order, even when in combat, but I was searching if there was something published to fine tune said "countermeasures" (like action cost, frequency, checks, misc conditions, and etc)

I already have a good idea about what I want it to be doing, but if there was something closer than Quick Repair that I base this upon it would have been better.

Moreover, that's something that can potentially end up in the players' hands, complicating things a bit compared to if it was simply an npc ability.

Thanks for teh answers, I'm the GM, was simply trying to see if there was a "raw" way to do an implementation of something that I wanted to put in, but it seems I'll have to homebrew it.

Is there any way to get a weapon that autorepairs itself when broken?

Either rune, specific magic weapon, Archetype feats, etc.

Ty.

shroudb wrote:

And the warpriest for half of his levels is behind 2 on his attacks.

At levels 1-4, the Warpriest and the Battle Harbinger have the same base attack proficiency. At levels 7-12, the Warpriest and the Battle Harbinger have the same base attack proficiency. At levels 19-20, the Warpriest and the Battle Harbinger have the same base attack proficiency. That's 12 of the game's 20 levels, including the important bookends, so your statement is an exaggeration at best. This also does not factor in how the Warpriest can spend spell slots the Battle Harbinger doesn't have on spells like heroism to equalize the scales or tip them in their favor.

8/20 instead of "half" sure. Such a huge overexaggeration... Or simply, it could be a simplification to not waste a whole paragraph to reach the same outcome more or less...

Lol.

P.s. The slots you are "wasting" for getting "up there", the Battle Harbinger has them for free, cause you know, level 11 to get +2 heroism, is just 1 level before Harbinger gets his Auras to go +2, +3, +4.

So that's also false.

But as has already been pointed out at length by many more people besides myself, using basic facts, this isn't really true.

Your OPINION is not facts. It never was.

In fact, in the particular case you are quoting, you are fundamentally, FACTUALLY, wrong: Battle Harbinger is by definition better martial because he has better martial proficiencies. Everything else, you can argue, but here, you are factually just wrong.

Bluemagetim wrote:

1 This class can swing weapons and hit. Sure you want the extra damage martials get but theres still plenty of damage from a d12 weapon with striking dice. (Note this is why I brought up not all deities are equivalent for this class. i think the big weapons are favored here. Dual wielding would be fine but theres no room to get feats outside of archtype and still feel like a battle harbinger as it currently is like shroudb said)

This also describes a Warpriest.

Bluemagetim wrote:

2 Wave casting is what you have for harder fights. Up to 9thand 8th rank slots from the divine list leaves open a lot of options. Having only 4 of these total only means you run out of steam faster that other clerics, it doesnt mean you cant cast big spells.

The Warpriest gets this, more top-rank spells, and all of the spells of the ranks below that.

Bluemagetim wrote:

3 Some flexibility to go more caster if thats what you want. The option to multiclass archtype into druid or something like that means you can be a master caster at 18 if you want to push casting ability up a peg. You can get the feat providing more slots from within archtype as well. You also have all the standard cleric feats to choose from. AND you could have heavy armor at level 6 in class with that modest level of casting ability.

Literally any character can multiclass into another caster for more flexibility, and the Warpriest has the privilege of not needing to opt into another caster archetype for master spellcasting proficiency.

Bluemagetim wrote:

4 Class DC up to legendary opens up ideas that we have to really look into

Sure, such as?

Bluemagetim wrote:

5 the font is gravy non all of this. In the fights with many opponents bane and malediction are going to work on them a lot. probably removing some danger from their numbers advantage. even a -1 for them to hit or a +1 for ally AC is hard on those lower level foes.

IN harder fights there is still applicability. With

...

And the warpriest for half of his levels is behind 2 on his attacks.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

SuperBidi wrote:

Easl wrote:

That sounds like a great build for Ruby Phoenix or another high level campaign. But, sometimes it's not the destination it's the journey. "My level 8+..." is for many campaigns close to the destination, it's not the journey. So I'm happy to see cleric get a class archetype that gives 'aura gish' as a hit-the-ground-running option.

At low level, the Battle Harbinger is fine as a bunch of rank 1 spells is a nice feature up to level 4. It's at level 5 that their Font starts being lackluster. At level 7, it's hardly a feature and that's the moment where you'll feel like a second grade character.

And while I agree the journey is important, no one cares about a character effectiveness at level 1. The end of the journey is much more important than the beginning.

I mean, a lot of the mechanical benefits of their 1st rank spells are not unlike the Bard's, and if a Bard can maintain +1's from 1 to 20 and be considered a powerhouse class, so can the Battle Herald.

Bard still has better proficiencies, scaling, and spell list, but this is coming across as if a +1 status bonus to attack rolls or AC is bad after 5th level, when the tight math and constant relevance says otherwise.

They are 1 action spells with a much bigger natural area effect and a lot of feats support.

But even so they still feel less impressive at later level unless they are suplmented by haste, herorism, synaesthesia etc spells the bard have a much more of at a higher DC.

If anything, the feat support for the battle auras is extensive.

I mean, my one gripe with the Archetype is about how many of the Archetype feats you feel obligated to take...

That said:

My overall impression is that the +1 is enough till mid-level, and it's exactly at those levels that it starts to fall off that you get feats to scale them up to up to +4.

I don't expect to reliably hit +4, but even at just +2, for a party wide aura, that's very much worth the action cost.

Having started to peruse Divine Mysteries, they desperately need to errata the art of Apsu on his entry. I'm trying to finish this book, not collapse laughing at how silly the poor chubby, sagging, whiskery dino-lizard looks. Did he pick his skin color because someone selling divinity insurance said it was the cheapest color to cover? No one that shade of green does anything interesting or gets in trouble.

I also had to double back on that one cause I had first read the Avatar forms and THEN saw the picture.

For reference, the Avatar form for Apsu is:
"When casting the avatar spell, a worshipper of Apsu typically grows spectacular dragon wings and their skin becomes covered in platinum scales."

But his picture has Mr. Mustache Green dragon...

Baarogue wrote:

That's how it would work with anything else, right? Like if you only failed against a slow spell the first time but crit failed on this bonus save you would end up worse off. Why would afflictions be an exception?

The issue there is that most spells don't actually present an ongoing effect, they just leave behind a lingering condition.

Take Slow as an example. The spell says they're slowed 1 for 1 minute on a failure. The Exemplar uses OMTG and the ally gets a new save against the slowed condition.

If they save, the condition goes away, this makes sense. If they fail, it doesn't. But since they're making a save against the CONDITION, rather than the effect, I'd argue that a critical failure wouldn't make it worse.

It's a weird nitpick, but this is a pretty unusual ability in the first place.

EDIT: For further clarity, this ability also creates a weird gray area regarding saves.

Using the slow example again. Lets say PC1 fails against the slow spell, he is now slowed for 1 minute. Exemplar uses OMTG. PC1 now makes the save. Is he now only slowed for 1 round? Does the slowed go away entirely?

My reading is that if someone is just saving against a condition, arguably a save makes it go away, a failure of any kind means it stays the same.

But it's always possible I'm misinterpreting something.

No, if they're crit fail the second save it's the same as critfailing the save vs the Slow, it will get worse.

Because that's the "effect" of the Slow spell they save against.

You don't get to pick, it says that you get a second save vs "an effect or condition" so if there's an effect, you save against that, if there's a standalone condition you save vs that.

Actually that's a goblin dog, not a dog. You can tell by the rodent-like teeth and tail. The pustules on its shoulder also show up on the 2E Bestiary/Monster Core art of the goblin dog (Though the 1E Bestiary art lacks this trait).

Which makes it even funnier since Goblin dogs are basically just oversized rodents that have nothing to do with dogs.^^

shroudb wrote:

No, what I'm stating is that most of the stuff you are saying are 100% subjective and not objective.

I love how you use that as an argument.

Yes, all we say is subjective. That's great. Thanks for stating the obvious.

Still, I can say this Archetype is crap. And I can say something that I find very much an actual argument: a bunch of rank 1 spells is not a unique gimmick. It's just a bunch of rank 1 spells.

This archetype is subpar in absolutely everything. A Summoner does everything a Battle Harbinger does but better. A Bard will do the "unique gimmick" so much better that I question the use of the word "unique". I think "weak gimmick" would be a better description of Battle Auras.

Still, you're objectively wrong about one thing:

shroudb wrote:

YOU may not like the archetype

I DO like the archetype. Not how it has been implemented. But a balanced Battle Harbinger is definitely something I'd like to play.

And I'm used to play weak classes and options and get the most out of them, so when I state the Battle Harbinger is so bad I wouldn't even play one, it's holding some weight.

A bard is better at buffing but has Caster Martial proficiencies instead of Martial ones.

They have a bunch of rank 1 spells that they auto sustain, auto force multiple saving throws, autoheighten the effects to previously unreachable heights. Yes, that's unique to them.

Not a single other class can reach as high modifiers for the whole group as they can.

A divine summoner is the closest indeed, but also completely different in how and what they do.

Again: There hasn't been a single good comparisson because there is none to be found that does the things the Battle Harbinger is doing.

Still, I can say that the Archetype is just fine and totally in bounds (power wise) with other options in the game.

shroudb wrote:

What you "think" is not necessarily true.

What you're stating is because I have the correctness of stating my point of view as a point of view and not some godly truth, then my point of view bears less weight than someone else's point of view stated as a godly truth.

Well, the debate progresses :D

No, what I'm stating is that most of the stuff you are saying are 100% subjective and not objective.

YOU may not like the archetype, YOU may think that it's weak.

That doesn't somehow make it weak objectively.

Similarily, I as well, like you, can only make an opinion based upon my own experiences, the way we play, the groups we play with, ttk, etc.

Based on the same exact things you based your opinion upon, I see the Archetype as just fine.

Neither of us has an objective viewpoint, and it's almost impossible to have one seeing as the Archetype has unique features compared to what we had so far:

It's a fully divine gish, with full martial progression, top rank divine slots, and a unique gimmick.

Most of the things I see in the thread comparing the Archetype to lack fundamental things compared to what the Archetype is providing to have a base to compare to.

Bluemagetim wrote:

I appreciate you asking SuperBidi. I admit that was a hyperbolic call out. You can call it clunky if you like. I don't think it is though.

I mean you can try to throw out two auras each battle and in some fights that might be the right thing to do to swing numbers in the party's favor but im not seeing clunky as a mandatory way to play the archtype. I think a two aura fight would be one that requires more of a number shift and based on your party capabilities you can choose to slot the status affects that the rest of your party isnt doing for the group. Yes other clerics can also do that but that competes with slots and this has it in font(unfortunately only all options with a feat).
This is still a cleric though is not as versatile as warpriest but it still has spell slots to utilize and it gets to pair that with full marital accurate strikes.

Now there is a gradient of choice in cleric. You can go with a full caster with cloistered, a caster leaning with warpriest, or go wave caster with battle harbinger.
If you want to swing swords hands down you cant to it better of the three than with harbinger. Also they have a math adjuster font rather than a hp restoring or damage dealing one.

These have a place as is. Though I did voice my concerns with the class.

But the Battle Harbinger can be all of that AND clunky.

As of now, I think it's the worst option in the game for a class/subclass. That's not a small issue.

Bolded for emphasis.

What you "think" is not necessarily true.

I think that as a full martial with top rank divine slots and a unique gimmick centered around group buffing/debuffing it's fine and serves a niche that didn't exist thus far.

Dragon domain's 1st is significantly altered as well.

Got a huge buff for martial minded casters (flat damage on Strikes for a minute) but you can now only launch a single dragon before it ends.

Naga advanced domain is straight up busted lol.

I agree that Dissapearence is straight up "undetected" not merely Invisible.

See the Unseen wouldn't help, but Truesight will get its usual counteract check vs the Illusion.

shroudb wrote:

Heroism is single target, Fear is 1 round, Bard doesn't have Martial Proficiency, and etc

I think the idea is 1 aura on round 1, and then Strikes, with the Wave spells or potential 2nd auras to augment your power/options for the more difficult fights.

My point was that casting what is for almost all intents and purposes a 1st rank spell is not a good battle plan from level 5 onwards. And while you can spend resources in the form of feats to make the battle auras better, a) other clerics don't have to in order to keep their font competitive, and b) those improvements only start to kick in later into the fight, so in the critical opening stages of the fight you're spending your actions to cast a first rank spell you hope will grow into a better spell.

The key difference between Heal Font and Bless Font is that a +1 to attacks is relevant in both level 1 and level 9.

Basically healing Font has to scale to stay relevant, a boost to attack or AC is always relatively the same impact regardless your level.

At higher levels, giving everyone a +2 is a significant party power boost. In harder fights, with 2 Auras up, giving something like effectively a 4+ point swing for either attacks or defence is even better.

Will it work for all parties/playstyles? No. But for what amounts to an Archetype, it doesn't have to.

A good comparison point might be something like the victor's wreath aura on exemplar, or the marshal archetype's aura.

The action cost doesn't really seem in line with Marshal, especially?

Well, there are some key differences:

Marshal is a Stance, barring you out of other stances.
Marshal requires 1 extra feat to get.
Marshal will always be 15ft while Herald can scale it up to cover the whole party.

Marshal costs 1 action instead of 2

Are those enough upsides to justify the extra action cost? I'd say yes, although I'm sure for some it's a no.

The harder the battles, the more power goes to the Auras. The easier/shorter the fights, the more power goes to the 1 action saved.

Zoken44 wrote:

That's a good point, while you get the full martial proficiency, this is still a support class, hence the lack of crit spec. You don't need spec because you are enhancing the chances of your allies landing crits, and thus you get partial credit for your allies crits

The problem is the opportunity cost of casting a font spell. If you spend two actions to cast one, that's two actions you could have used for something else. By the time you have 3rd rank spells, the opportunity cost of what you could have cast if you were a regular cleric (Heroism, Heightened Fear, Infectious Ennui, Roaring Applause, or any number of excellent spells your god might grant). And as you level up, the disparity gets exponentially worse.

And then compare the Bard. The Bard spends one action and a focus point to create a much larger aura with better bonuses for most of the fight, and they still have all the regular spells.

Sure, Battle Harbinger has better martial proficiencies than non-Wave casters, but they can't use them effectively and cast spells at the same time.

Heroism is single target, Fear is 1 round, Bard doesn't have Martial Proficiency, and etc

I think the idea is 1 aura on round 1, and then Strikes, with the Wave spells or potential 2nd auras to augment your power/options for the more difficult fights.

Battle Harbinger will give way higher bonuses/penalties than a wand.

I don't know why there is such negativity.

It's a full Martial with wave casting and a unique thing with its scaling Auras.

To me it still seems absolutely fine.

Bluemagetim wrote:

What did everyone expect in a gish class?

Im confused by all this expectation a gish class wouldnt have bounded casting.

The criticism comes from the fact that

1) The class fights worse than any other martial due to the worse weapon specialization growth combined with not getting a physical attribute as a key attribute.
2) The spell save DC progresses worse than summoner or magus, the two existing Bounded casters, and in order to make your font slots more than just rank 1 spells most casters would retire by level 5 or 7, you need to invest a ton of feats, while other clerics' fonts scale without any investment.

1) there are other martials without Str/Dex as primary.

Being 1 behind for half the levels but giving +1 to both themselves and the rest of the party is not bad.

Weapon Spec being lower is indeed a malus, but not really gamebreaking imo, especially since at the levels of Greater Spec you start having the option to scale your Auras which will result in bigger overall damage gains.

2) their Class DC that the Auras are based scales faster than any other Class DC though, meaning easier to land those debuffs, especially when you start forcing new saves as a free action later on.

Well, the easiest would be the new Animist, who is a Divine caster but some of his apparitions grant you enough Illusion and/or "enchantment" (no longer a thing, but they are quite fey-like) spells in your repertoire and even some of the Vessel (focus) spells of said apparitions are very much in theme with fey/ullusion shenanigans.

No min level, but the DC is set by the item level, and a +1 cold iron flaming weapon would be a level 8 item due to the flaming rune, so the DC may be a bit too high if a player is low level.

Trip.H wrote:

yellowpete wrote:

Squark wrote:

On the other hand, actually activating the lightweave scarf requires you to cast an incapacitation spell that is well below the level of enemies you are facing, so the actual spell is an action tax that is unlikely to do anything.

You just use it as a no-save AoE dazzled, you don't care about the save or incap trait or anything. It's a really nice item, and remains so way past its level

What's even more ironic is that spellhearts can suffer the "box of wands" issue due to how silly gp costs scale.

Why would anyone buy an L15 L-Scarf to get that 2nd (incap) spell p day, when that 5,500 gp could by *TEN* of the L8 L-Scarfs for 10 daily attempts at the hit-confusion?

(That's what yall invented the Invested trait for, Paizo! If an item is p day and doesn't have Invested, yall need to really think about putting some other safety-limiter in there, c'mon.)

I continue to be amazed that every permanent magic item does not have the Invested trait. You can have 10 invested things at once! Where's the holdup?

And yeah the sack o' wands is so classic it's barely worth remarking over.

it still needs attachment.

so, unless you expect 10 easy combats per day to swap out 10 different Spellhearts, it's better to go with the higher level one.

I'd say that it's good for what was repeatedly asked: a more martial focused divine gish.

The main benefit is that you get full Martial proficiency.

While Auras don't scale with spell rank, they do not really need to in order to stay competitive:

A +1 to attacks or AC is equally valuable at level 1 and level 9, but a 1d8+8 hp is not as equally valuable at level 1 and level 9.

But even given that, Battle Harbinger has feats to make the Auras give up to +/-4 bonuses and penalties, as well as free sustains that will force enemies to keep rolling their saves against them until they fail.

---

I think the Archetype is fine for what it tries to accomplish.

Witch has also a great selection of feats post remaster and Oracle as well with the cursebound feats added.

I'd say it's mostly Wizard and Psychic who are bad in that regard.

Plane wrote:

Bonuses of the same type don't stack. If you get a +2 circumstance bonus from one effect, it overrides any +1 circumstance bonuses you get from other effects.

I think your answer give exactly what we looking for.

We wanted to know how calculate bonus dmg from jousting and mounted trait together.

A specialy how work last part of horse mounted trait.

That increase by 2 is to jousting and final damage is 1+2=3

Or

That increase by 2 is to mounted and final damage is 2+2=4

Sorry my english in writing isn't wery well.

increase "the trait's" damage by 2.

The trait is the Jousting. The 2/die is the Support Benefit.

So, the Support benefit is 2 per die, but if you have the Jousting Trait, you increase THIS trait by 2 INSTEAD.

So, it's either 2/die or 3/die depending if you use a jousting weapon or not.

Trip.H wrote:

Things like Spellhearts are staples of every PC that can cast a spell, and they are significant power that once did not exist. That's the kind of power creep I'm most worried by.

I thought spellhearts were essentially reusable talismans used for giving non-casters access to select spells.

It has never even occurred to me to give them to spellcasters.

The Activation of Spellhearts is Cast a Spell, which means that if you don't have a spellcasting feature in your class/archetype (and focus/innate spells don't count for that) you can't Activate the spellheart.

If an item lists “Cast a Spell” after “Activate,” you have to use the same actions as casting the spell to Activate the Item, unless noted otherwise. This happens when the item replicates a spell. You must have a spellcasting class feature to Activate an Item with this activation. Refer to the spell’s stat block to determine which actions you must spend to Activate the Item to cast the spell. You essentially go through the same process you normally do to cast the spell but draw the energy for the spell from the magic item. All the normal traits of the spell apply when you cast it by Activating an Item.

Focus spell clarification:

If you get focus spells from a class or other source that doesn’t grant spellcasting ability, the ability that gives you focus spells also provides your proficiency for your spell attack modifier and spell DC, as well as the magical tradition of your focus spells. Though you can cast your focus spells, you don’t qualify for feats and other rules that require you to be a spellcaster or have a spellcasting class feature—those require you to have spell slots.

Ok, I'm seeing lots of posts from people who are actually PLAYING psychics who seem to like their characters and lots of posts from people who don't like psychics but who do NOT seem to say that they are actually playing one (they may well have done so and haven't said that, of course).

So, my question is, for those of you who have actually played a psychic as your main class (NOT as an archetype) for, say, at least 2 levels, how many of you were satisfied with the class?

I'll start. I have and I was very satisfied with the experience. It contributed bunches to the group and was fun to play.

I've played a Psychic from 6 to 15 pre remaster.

I had fun, but I have fun with all my characters regardless of power level because I always make characters I like to rp.

Balance wise though, I didn't feel that the risk vs reward for unleashing was there. A ton of times that I unleashed out of necessity I've been bitten in my behinds which by the end of the campaign meant that I would only unleash after the important rounds of the combat was over and we were only doing clean up.

The lack of high end spellslots was very noticeable as well, I wouldn't say that the amps made up for that either, even though they were very good, they weren't 7th/8th rank slots.