shroudb's page

Gang up is often though as an offensive feat.

But imo it really isn't, it's either a defensive feat or an action economy feat:

In the majority of occasions, people can stride and gain flanking, so the thing that Gang up offers is either defensive:

"Get flanking while staying near the people who can guard and heal you and not 20ft away"

Or action economy: "get flanking without spending the action to move".

I do think that this is indeed covered by "do anything else".

Basically the player has the power to choose the order of stuff that happens at the start of his turn except for the "regain actions" which happens last.

Since Avert ends at this stage, and the Basilisk Reaction happens at this stage, the player has the option to choose to 1st resolve the Reaction and then end the Avert.

Similarly, because the "regain actions" happens always after that, if he becomes Slowed he will indeed be normally affected by it when he tries to regain his Actions.

So, in both cases I agree with your rulings.

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The other way to rule, that would lead to similar results:

PC turn starts:
This is the window that the Basilisk HAS to use the reaction, since that's the trigger.

Reactions interrupt the thing they react to, which in this case is the "start of turn".

Now the ball is in the player's hands:
He HAS to "immediately" roll his Save, and due to "simultaneous actions" that Reaction has to be the 1st thing to fully resolve before anything else happens.

AFTER the save, it's now the player's turn to continue with his Start of Turn stuff, that includes the duration of Avert ending and regaining actions.

So, same result overall, but a bit less agency for the player.

For high level Alchemist feats, i really like the extend/eternal/improbable chain. to give yourself something like permanent Haste, or permanent flying and etc.

so something like Uncanny/extend/eternal/improbable/Perfect would be my choice

in more detail:
Uncanny (yet again) doubling your range is very helpful, since at those levels 30ft range often means that you would have to move closer to get enemies since the battles often have high speeds. The negating the Cover/shield is just a little icing on the cake.

Extend, even on its own, is very helpful for the long duration buffs like Mutagens, conserving you precious vials, since even with something like Collar of shifting spider, it makes them still last 1h, or 2h without. Same with stuff like bravo brews and etc.

Eternal is amazing for some of the buffs you want to have, making sure you're not wasting time applying them in combat, or again conserving Vials for the longer duration buffs since with just 1 vial you are good for the day.

Improbable adds a lot to the toolkit, since they are a lot of magical potions, even with the level restriction, that are amazing to have in your kit. Shoutouts are haste and fly, but even stuff like Minute Echoes (Precise Hearing), or Rank 4 Shrinking, or Truth Serums, and etc

For level 20 the more impressive feat imo is Revivification, but it's really only doing something when you're dying already. For a bomber that you are usually not in the frontlines, I think Perfect Mutagen, to finally have your Quicksilvers not making you explode, is pretty good I guess.

No. Unfortunately, Psychic spellcasting does nothing about the manipulate Trait.

The one thing it does is allowing you to cast without speaking, so you can cast in Silence and etc (although the manifestations themselves are still very audible, so it's not like *they* won't be heard from across the hall, it's just that you don't need to speak.)

Tridus wrote:

Ally Orb is a great item in this AP if you don't have a cold iron weapon. It's a talisman so you affix it to the weapon, then when you want cold iron, spend an action to activate it.

You won't need a lot of them, but for key fights it can really help. Astral and Holy are both awesome runes in this AP, and as gesalt mentioned Energy Mutagen for Fire will help and even the dirt cheap base ones will activate weakness which is what you really want it for.

Also, have a ranged weapon that at least has basic runes (like a returning Chakram or something). I won't say why, just trust me, lol. You will want a non-melee option at times and throwing weapons are one handed which is nice.

Do I need a returning Rune on my weapon or can I just get a potion of flying and deal with threats in melee?

As someone playing in this AP (so no spoilers please) so far I've found that I'm ok with my ranged weaponbeing throwing my face right at the enemy^^

We did get somewhat lucky though in a fight that *could* have been troublesome for me by our Oozeform caster Nat20 on his Grapple two times in a row lol, keeping *things* in my vicinity.

Ravingdork wrote:

What about holy damage? I've got a fighter / mind smith who really wants to add it to his cold iron attacks for better demon slaying.

Holy Rune/Champion Dedication/Get someone to cast Infuse Vitality. Simply being Sanctified doesn't add it to your strikes (ie: from the Tattoo).

Sanctified Soul from Exemplar can give your Strikes Holy damage as long as you pick up a Weapon Icon with the Archetype, since you do need a Spirit damage source from an Exemplar ability specifically to trigger it.

If the ground is that loose, walking on it in the first place probably isn't feasible, as it's likely a quicksand hazard (which has special rules for Swimming out of it).

According to the swamp rules, a lot of swamp is really just difficult or greater difficult terrain.

Thank god then that a huge dragon dug an equally large hole straight into that murky watery ground then, making it that much loose that you can try to dig yourself out.

Keep in mind that Buried only says that "usually" you cannot dig yourself out, not "always". And that surely sounds to me as a case of "you can indeed try to dig yourself out": Loose, watery, swamp, dug further by a dragon.

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Keeping in mind that what a GM tries to do is create stories for his players, and this indeed creates such a moment without even breaking RAW, I don't see why not.

Furthermore, consider a stone pillar. It fits into a single square, so technically its size is Medium, except for its height. But it looks perfectly suitable as a Prop to me.

A prop can be anything large and sturdy enough

for you to push yourself off of. This includes a creature
that is larger than you or a wall, column, or other durable
terrain feature.

"a creature larger than you" OR "a wall, column, terrain"

basically, the size comparison is mostly for the Creatures, for terrain features, it's everything the GM can allow but generally sturdy things, regardless of their size, qualify.

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On a thematics viewpoint, the way they describe Props as something YOU use to cartwheel, I think the picture they are trying to paint here is not just straight up brute force (which would make sense that the larger you are, the best you push people) but rather that you use the Props as leverage of sorts for your own body.

So, the smaller you are, the smaller the leverage needs to be.

It specifically works in a swamp only, so no dragging them under solid earth i'd say. With that in mind, I'd certainly allow someone to try to dig themselves up from the "Muck" with the appropriate Athletics checks.

It's a bit tough to parse for sure, but it says the following, parentheses mine:

"decrease the Strength score required (to ignore the check penalty and reduce the Speed penalty) by 2"

You are reducing the required Strength score by 2 (or, in remaster terms, you reduce the required Strength modifier by 1), not the Speed penalty.

I believe there is no way with items alone to get full Speed while also having a combined 6 AC from base Bonus + Dex Cap. That's the basic trade with heavy armor vs the other categories, +1 AC for -5 Speed. You need something like Unburdened Iron to get around it.

Dawnsilver armor would get a heavy to have a penlaty of -5, so with Strength requirements it would drop it to no speed penalty.

I'm a big fan of the Witch thematically and was a huge fan of the PF1 Witch, as many others did, I found the OG pf2 witch pretty underwhelming, but recently came back to the game as I may have found a group to play with (yay!) and found that the Witch has been remastered.

Now it seems like a fairly obvious power boost, but I do know that I have a habit of overlooking potentially great power boosts. Like completely glazing over oracular warning somehow.

I was thinking of going with a generic toad familiar, using independent plus familiar abilities to get some movement speed for a little scout fellow. I rather like the idea of a winged toad spy. lol.

Was gonna do spinner of threads with phase familiar. Phase Familiar just seems like a no brainer and I like fate witches.

I was thinking something like this for class feats, so have I missed some obvious biggy?

2) Basic Lesson - dreams, for an early control option - retrain to reach spell to avoid incapacitation problems around level 5 ish.

4) Familiar language - seems good to be able to talk to the scout.

6) Greater Lessons - Lesson of shadows - nice focus blast

8) Cackle - to play work with Malicious Shadows, retrain at 16 into steady casting

10) Quickened Casting - No brainer?

12) Coven Spell - seemed fun, kind of wondering if this is more style than substance

14) Patron Presence - Big bad vibes from the winged toad sounds hilarious

16) Effortless Concentration - Again, no brainer?

18) Patron's claim - incredible visual, decent blast with a nice rider and free focus points. What's not to like

20) Witches hut - very much a style over substance choice but realistically I probably won't even get this far and if I do, I almost certainly won't play much more beyond it. So why not go for style?

So come on, tell me, what incredible class defining option have I completely glazed over.

Spirit/Stitched Familiar at level 8 is maybe the strongest remastered feat imo.

Phase Familiar seems bad to me: spend a focus point for some minor resistance that may not even save the familiar. Instead Puppet can really help with positioning the familiar/activating it (especially with stuff like Spirit familiar) and in worst case it's "1 extra action" for the round.

For familiar survivability, Lifelink seems way better, you only use it when the familiar is about to die and it's not like you have a host of reactions either way.

Cauldron/Double double is a decent feat chain, much better at higher levels, but even at easrly levels, you can somewhat think of 1 max level potion as the equivalent to something like maxslot-1 spell.

shroudb wrote:

So, a Small Daredevil has a big advantage on being able to proc Stunt damage by using his allies, or enemies, as props

And a big disadvantage in terms of the number of class feats that simply won't function against ~40% of the bestiary. You can just not take those, but we're talking about a pretty substantial number of class feats that don't function an awful lot of the time.

I kind of find with both of these playtest classes that they put onus on the GM to effectively run things a certain way so that they actually fully function.

oh, no objection on the positives of being larger: you get access to basically all feats.

i was just pointing out that there was actually a counterbalance with being smaller: you more easily proc Stunt damage.

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And what i dislike is how polarizing some preexisting options make stuff for the class.

As I meantion before, take as an example Guardian dedication, allowing you to count as an extra size large for those feats (in addition to the heavy armor negating the MAD of the class and the doubling of your Stunt damage).

now your Small character counts as medium, allowing you to natively do the feats up to large.

add a size-changing rune on your armor for when you are in a big enough space and you fight bigger threats, and now you can affect up to Gargantuan 1/day.

You need more times? pick up some fury coctails.

and etc.

For high levels (16+) a Light Pick is also an interesting weapon.

Load it up with "do stuff on a crit" runes, like rooting, and go ham with Risky Overextension.

You have a free hand for the maneuvers, because when you strike it's always a crit you basically are fighting with a d8 weapon (that adds an extra die on top of it) and you also proc nasty effects like rooting them in place.

Given at those levels Haste is cheap, you can reasonably have a round that you Daring Stunt an enemy to go next to him and Trip him, then you follow up with basically an attack at just -1 (-3 but off-guard) that guarantee to root him in place, and then you use the hasted action to move away.

Leaving the enemy having to spend 3 actions (one to break the rooting, one to stand up, one to move to you) just to get to you.

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Ofc, the other option at those levels is going with a club weapon, and always forcing the enemy away, plus Crushing for an extra guarantee Clumsy/Enfeebled 2

I think Agonarchy was saying (though maybe not) that the worse off the Daredevil is, the more dangerous they become. So they might intentionally get drunk as an example, to get the penalty to activate a bonus they'd prefer. Ex. Add +1 damage per die for every -1 to attack you suffer from Status penalties. Gain X temp h.p. when you begin your turn with a -1 Status penalty to AC. And so on.

This would make them scrappy, and balance vs. their current resiliency, which is poor for a melee combatant (average AC, mediocre h.p.).

I may have misread that, but I'm a bit sceptical on the "get a penalty to get a bonus" approach, given my experience with mutagens.

to my knowledge, the only type of debuff/buff that seems to be working fairly well is Enlarge/Giant barbarian, and that's because the primary penalty (less AC) is somewhat mitigated by the fact that getting reach indirectly adds survivability (in addition to the damage offered by such effects).

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I think the "get scrappy" mentality can be maintained simply due to the fact that they have weaker defences IF they move the Temp HP down to a reasonable level from level 19.

That would allow them to get hit/take damage, and keep on fighting through the temp hp, which gives the illusion of a more scrappy battle.

I would want to see if people would be so eager to take Punishing Shove (and other similar feats like Brutish Shove) if Stunt Damage worked with grapples and trips as well. It can't be denied grapple and trip are much better maneuvers than shove, so if Stunt Damage worked with them then Punishing Shove and Brutish Shove wouldn't be as much of a problem because I feel most people wouldn't be bothered with shove if they had they choice to ignore it.

But answering your question; I think they could theoretically errata these feats to make shove deal damage innately, while also providing a circumstance bonus to damage on top of it. If Stunt Damage worked in a similar way, then presumably both the innate damage from shove (and hopefully grapple and trip too) would be lower than that of Punishing Shove, and the circumstance bonus wouldn't stack either way.

Let's say Punishing Shove was changed to "When you successfully Shove a creature, that creature takes an amount of bludgeoning damage equal to your Strength modifier. If you are an expert on Athletics, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to damage when Shoving, which increases to +6 if you are a master, or +12 if you are legendary." while Stunt Damage was changed to "Whenever you have adrenaline and force a target to move, knock it to the ground, or grab or restrain it, the target takes an amount of bludgeoning damage equal to 2d6 plus your Strength modifier. If you are a master on Athletics, you gain a circumstance bonus to damage for the purposes of this ability equal to your Strength modifier, or double your Strength modifier if you are legendary." (Don't mind the numbers too much here)

Brutish Shove is a bit harder to tweak, but I feel Brutish Shove (or a similar feat) should exist in the daredevil's list anyways.

Ideally, Shove itself could also be errata'ed to deal damage and both Stunt Damage and Punishing Shove were entirely a circumstance bonus on top as well.

I'm not sure that RAW that would work. Since Punishing Shove would be its own instance of damage, and Stunt damage would be its own instance of damage. Even if both had circumstance bonuses, it wouldn't change anything.

What would need to happen would be for Punishing Shove (or any other source of damage really, like "so Strength damage when you grapple as an example) and Stunt damage were the same Instance of damage.

And I'm not sure how you can word Stunt damage to simply be added to a preexisting source of damage that may, or may not, be present in a maneuver rather than be its own instance of damage.

I think it would be interesting to explore a daredevil that got bonuses based on debuffs. The worse off they are, the more dangerous they are. Basically expanding on some of the drunken master concepts, but broader.

I mean... that would make them even closer to a Gymnast Swashbuckler, who already gets a bonus to damage when hitting a "prone, grappled, or restrained" enemy.

I think they are on the correct path with moving the damage towards the maneuvers themselves, if they are trying to differate it from swashbuckler, but they simply need to do so in a better way than what they have in the playtest.

So, while a Gymnsat is better at "first do a maneuver, then Finish off the debilitated enemy" the Daredevil could be the one that "pummel them into a wall", or "trip them and smash them to the ground as you do so", or "grab them by the head and smash their face to the ground" type of warrior. Preferably all in a single "motion" (round). Like an action hero that charges at the enemy, pins him on the wall, then throws him on the ground, and stomps on his face like a wrecking ball.

I think they're going to need to build stunt damage directly into the abilities, otherwise they're going to have to police forced movement abilities across the whole game.

They could make it part of Risky Trait with an add-on restriction for further abilities:

"Maneuver Specialist (level 1): You gain the Titan Wresler feat. For its effects you may use Acrobatics instead of Athletics and it gains the Daredevil Trait."

"Stunt damage: If you Succeed on a maneuver that's part of an Action with the Risky Trait then you also deal X damage. Maneuvers that are part of a Risky Action can only benefit from feats with the Daredevil Trait."

"It's up to the GM" but as a general rule, I'd expect something solid enough to support your weight would count.

So yes to a 5ft wall, no to shrubbery, no to illusions.

As for the size, that matters for creatures more rather than structures, but you check the Daredevil size rather than the target.

What if Stunt damage progressed 1d6 at odd levels and did not add an ability modifier?

1st/3rd/5th/7th @ 1d6/2d6/3d6/4d6?

It still wouldn't fix the fundamental problem of a single level 1 Guardian Feat doubling it's damage, making it a "mandatory archetype".

shroudb wrote:

It says to check the sidebar about what is a prop.

And the sidebar says:

Prop: A prop can be anything large and sturdy enough
for you to push yourself off of. This includes a creature
that is larger than you or a wall, column, or other durable
terrain feature

So, for a Small Daredevil, a Medium size creature IS a prop.
But for a Large Daredevil, it requires a Huge creature to be a prop.

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So, a Small Daredevil has a big advantage on being able to proc Stunt damage by using his allies, or enemies, as props

My point is the TARGET must check the requirements not you. You being Large can shove a small creature into a medium one, and the target ( small ) check against the prop ( medium ) not you.

You being medium would not be able to shove a large creature into another large creature.

That's not what it says.

It even mentions that it is YOUR size that matters twice:

"anything large and sturdy enough
for you to push yourself off"

And

"larger than you"

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Basically, a Prop needs to be big enough that YOU can use it to propel yourself, so the Smaller YOU are, the Smaller the Prop needs to be.

Edit: even in the playtest stream by the devs, when he tried to Shove one enemy to another, you hear him say "oh, the enemy is the same size as ME so I can't use him as a prop".

shroudb wrote:

Samir Sardinha wrote:

With 6 of 24 feats until level 6 ( where most adventures occurs ) requiring "The target can’t be more than one size larger than you." Instead of we seeing a lot of Halfling and Goblin Daredevils we gonna see Minotaurs, Centaurs, Awaked Animals, Jotunborns... That's not looks like the intention of the class.

Sincerily, Centaur Daredevil, Hor Singaround.

On the counterpoint, Small Daredevils can Shove enemies on their medium size allies to proc Stunt Damage, while a Large Daredevil can only Shove things to walls.

Edit: also serious "you don't say so..." about "most" adventures being 1-6...

Stunt Damage

When you smash your enemy into the scenery, it does real damage. Whenever you have adrenaline and force a target to move, and the movement is interrupted by a prop (see sidebar), the target takes an amount of bludgeoning damage equal 1d6 plus your Strength modifier. This damage increases by 1d6 at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level.

I considered that the target must fill the requirements of the prop, not the player for the stunt damage. But yeah, you can't use a fellow medium player to Propelling Strides.

About the "most" adventures, yeah, it's not rocket science but still wanted to justify why I cut off at level 6, and there is no other feats at higher levels of daredevil with a size requirement.

It says to check the sidebar about what is a prop.

And the sidebar says:

Prop: A prop can be anything large and sturdy enough
for you to push yourself off of. This includes a creature
that is larger than you or a wall, column, or other durable
terrain feature

So, for a Small Daredevil, a Medium size creature IS a prop.
But for a Large Daredevil, it requires a Huge creature to be a prop.

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So, a Small Daredevil has a big advantage on being able to proc Stunt damage by using his allies, or enemies, as props

With 6 of 24 feats until level 6 ( where most adventures occurs ) requiring "The target can’t be more than one size larger than you." Instead of we seeing a lot of Halfling and Goblin Daredevils we gonna see Minotaurs, Centaurs, Awaked Animals, Jotunborns... That's not looks like the intention of the class.

Sincerily, Centaur Daredevil, Hor Singaround.

On the counterpoint, Small Daredevils can Shove enemies on their medium size allies to proc Stunt Damage, while a Large Daredevil can only Shove things to walls.

Edit: also serious "you don't say so..." about "most" adventures being 1-6...

I don't understand why they don't simply port over sf2 the travelsal trait...

“Hey GM! Can I pause the main quest to go out to hunt a creature with my level or higher with a lot of damage types to make some trophies for me?”

yeah, I'm not seeing the issue.

Assuming that you get a trophy per level or something, that would just translate into 1 point difference in what the trophy was boosting.

It's no different than the wizard dropping everything they are doing when they level up and going to Absalom to full their spellbook with every new spell of that rank that they want to have in reserve.

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to put it more simply:

you can't simultaneously complain that "the trophy source is irrelevant" AND "if you make the trophy source relevant people would drop the main quest to hunt for it".

I agree Stunt Damage likely isn't going to be a thing on release in its current state. Its just too weak right now. The thing is, what feature could replace it? The daredevil needs some kind of damage steroid because the things the class wants you to do with it don't deal damage innately, but if the replacement to Stunt Damage deals, well, damage, Paizo is going to run into this same problem again regardless.

I feel like the most probable outcome here is for Paizo to ignore it in mean time, but eventually errata Punishing Shove and similar features to be a circumstance bonus. After all, they have a year and half to do this, which means they have (I think?) 3 chances to do it before the release of the class.

Stunt damage *could* stay, with the specific triggers on it on Feat abilities.

The troublesome thing is the part that pairs up with Shove, which could simply be changed to something like "When you Strike a Prone or Grabbed enemy, or an enemy adjucent to a Prop you add you Stunt Damage."

That keeps feats that build upon Stunt damage working, gives a reason to open up with maneuvers and follow them with Press Strikes, and gives those Risky "Do a maneuver and then a strike" feats even more purpose.

The fact that you can now trigger it more often is counterbalanced that it now requires a Strike to proc as oppossed to be procced "for free" by the Shove, and even if it comes up more often, currently it's underpowered so the boost wouldn't be unwelcomed. If that proves to be "too much" you can always lower it to Sneak attack progression or something.

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The problem with changing Punishing Shove and etc to "circumstance bonus" is that a bonus needs to be added to something. Shove by itself doesn't have a damage roll to "add" a bonus to it.

So it does require Punishing Shove to be its own Instance of damage rather than a Bonus to damage.

I don't mind the frequency myself, I think the idea behind the trophies is not something you do every battle, but something that it is reserved for the big bad of a story arc. That's also supported by the fact that if you start higher level you basically get 1 extra per two levels, indicating that it's not something that would trigger all that often.

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That said, you do bring some valid points, and personally for me, the most annoying thing is that there's no real incentive to hunt down higher level threats, or more dangerous threats. There's no "feels great to finally get that ancient dragon!" moment when that puny wyrminling 10 levels ago gives the same bonuses.

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For that, the easiest solution would be to have the Trophy bonuses be Tiered based on the level of the Trophy itself.

We already have a lot of Reinforced benefits keying off the Slayer's level, a simple switch from "Slayer level" to "Trophy level" could keep the theme of hunting higher and higher level threats as you keep progressing to keep the flavour of the strong trophies being actually stronger.

With probably a caveat that since now the abilities do not "auto-heighten" maybe they could have some higher numbers since inevitably it would be impossible for all of your trophies to be equal to your level (so basically they will have to be rebalanced around a Trophy a few levels lower than you).

I think this shines a light on what I think is a design flaw that could have turned into a problem at any point, and is likely a problem now: there's a ton of untyped damage riders in a game that otherwise goes out of its way to prevent stacking the same bonus via typing.

When it comes to spell damage, for instance, a lot of bonus damage tends to be a status bonus, so a Psychic couldn't take Dangerous Sorcery from the premaster Sorcerer to add triple their spell's rank to damage. Even for comparatively more minor feats like Burn It!, the bonus damage is a status bonus. For martial attacks, though, the typing is far less consistent: in this particular case, there are a lot of mechanics that were clearly designed to make the Shove action a bit better under the same circumstances, but because Punishing Shove, Powerful Shove, and stunt damage are all untyped, they all stack with one another. It doesn't help that Practiced Brawn bumps up successes to crits on attempts to Shove: individually, each of these benefits grant a large bonus to an otherwise relatively situational action, but together on a class that already wants to Shove, that's a lot of excessive synergy that risks making this kind of archetype-heavy build path optimal on the Daredevil (or as optimal as trying to Shove enemies into props gets).

All of which is to say, if these instances of damage were errata'd as circumstance bonuses to damage, then the problem could likely be avoided entirely. Centaur Daredevils would still have a fun time auto-crit Shoving enemies into props (assuming the props are large enough or you took the Ponygait heritage), but otherwise you wouldn't be pushed to archetype into two separate classes to triple-dip into collision damage.

This case is a bit more nuisant than that. Martial bonuses do tend to follow the similar status/circumstance/item types like caster bonuses, with the exception of "additional" or "extra" damage instances popping out here or there that you do not see in casters. But even those additional or added sources of damage are pretty well regulated.

The problem in this occasion is not so much the type of bonus that adds the damage, but it is two separate damage rolls, with different triggers and timing, but both of those are keyed to the same Action.

In this case, I think the main problem stems from the fact that because Shove was weak as a baseline, instead of fixing that baseline they instead thought of adding different abilities to it to try to bring it up on par.

But the danger here, an what happenned, was that the amount of those added abilities simply reached a critical mass.

Each one of them is individually weak, and when you add it to an already weak ability, it doesn't really stand out. Even two of them together do not actually break the power threshold of the game (or else you would have already seen threads of Centaur Guardians being "op"). But now that we have a third ability on top of that, it suddenly went over the threshold.

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I do not believe that the fix is as easy as simply changing the type of bonus offered, since that will do practically nothing.

The only realistic solution that I can think of is rather blant: Since the current abilities on the live books are enough to reach, but not breach, the threshold, no more "add x to Shove" abilities should be added. And that includes Stunt damage.

Stunt damage is already a very weak mechanic imo to begin with, completely scrapping it from Daredevil, and instead finding another source of martial damage for the class, would be for the best, even if that's the more troublesome solution for the developers.

Others have commented on Punishing Shove (Guardian, 1st) and its impact on Daredevils. This thread is to insert that into the zeitgeist, address the issue if it is one, and extrapolate together from there.

Punishing Shove
Trained Athletics, 1st: Shove adds Str damage
Expert, 3rd: Str +2
Master, 7th: Str+6
Legendary, 15th: Str+12
Double damage on a Crit Success.

Stunt Damage
1st Str+1d6
5th Str+2d6
9th Str+3d6
13th Str+4d6
17th Str+5d6
Not doubled on a Crit Success, requires target to hit a Prop.

I dislike how you'd get Str twice, but they do occur separately (once when Shoved and once when the Shove's resolved/target hits Prop). This feels like a lot of damage, but is it?
1d6+8, 11.5, so Barbarian damage, except targeting Fort and in two instances re: Resistance (w/ few having Weakness to it). And you don't actually get it until 4th, so 1d6+10, soon to be 2d6+10, 17, at 5th. That's a bit behind the martial curve. And it goes up to 5d6+26, 43.5, which others surpass, but the Daredevil hasn't invested any gold yet also reap no benefits of triggering Weakness. So that feels fine in the end to me, WHICH IS WORRISOME FOR HOW WEAK STUNT DAMAGE IS WITHOUT IT.

More prominent question then becomes, does this feat make MCD Guardian a must-have if Shoving a lot? (And Daredevil feats offer a lot of Shoving.)
If Stunt Damage is/gets internally balanced to be competitive, then it seems yes, add this on top. That's a lot more bonus damage than you can pick up w/ other MCDs. If Stunt Damage is not competitive, that would be it's own major design flaw. MCD comes with armor too, maybe Aggressive Block, and as someone else suggested, Larger than Life. MCD kinda overshadows class feats. Daredevil then encourages playing a one-trick Shove pony, a big, armored bully.
Seems most ways of nipping this require heavy-handed interference, with the exception perhaps being to give Daredevil Punishing Shove...then let them apply it to more maneuvers, and if they involve a Prop, Daredevil gets a perk, perhaps a Save...

and then you combine that with Centaur, and you have 2d6+24 at level 7. Above what even a Giant Barbarian can do (which at that point would be 2d12+16).

And that's on a class with feat choices allowing you to, at that level: Stride+Shove, followed by Strike+Shove at -3, followed by whatever other action you want for the round (which could be another Shove for all you care...)

The problem here is the ability budget.

Using your example of Daring Reversal, it's 2 attacks for 1 action that use the same MAP.

So far, balance wise, we either had 2 attacks for 1 action that had normal MAP and those usually had Flourish.
OR
two attacks for 2 actions that used the same MAP

Daredevil abilities break this "balance paradigm" with having both benefits simultaneously but with having the Risky and Prop requirements to balance them out.

Rushing X (maneuver, strike) also break the usual balancing of "2 actions with 1 action cost usually have Flourish" as well as the level requirements being far lower than normal for such actions (which usually come online around level 8-12 as oppossed to straight up starting with it from level 1).

If we combine all the above, it would lead to scenarios that a Daredevil could do 6 "actions" each turn, and from really early as well.

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So, all in all, I do not mind the Flourish on such strong abilities, especially since there are other abilities in the kit without the Trait.

As a sidebenefit, I think that not repeating the same action in the same round adds to the "action hero" image of Daredevil, since he has to do more varied things and this adds to how dynamic his turns are as oppossed to repeatitive.

Oh oh, looks like Strength daredevil is Double Attribute Dependent, too.

the more you look at it, the more it looks like Guardian becomes almost a mandatory archetype:

removes the dex requirements since you can wear heavy
doubles your Stunt damage
allows your feats to work vs 1 size larger.

and that's just by level 6 lol.

When you get Advanced/Quick Alchemy benefits from multiple sources your just use the highest number:

Advanced Alchemy Benefits: You gain the Alchemical Crafting feat if you don’t already have it. In addition, you gain advanced alchemy, which allows you to create a certain number of infused alchemical consumables each day during your daily preparations without the normal cost or time expenditure, as described on the Alchemist page. If you gain advanced alchemy from more than one source, use the highest number of alchemical consumables per day rather than adding them together, but you can make items of any type allowed by any of your advanced alchemy abilities. For instance, Herbalist Dedication lets you create 4 alchemical consumables with the healing trait, and Poisoner Dedication lets you create four alchemical poison consumables. If you had both feats, you could create 4 total consumables, but they could be any combination of healing and poison items.

Quick Alchemy Benefits: You gain the Alchemical Crafting feat if you don’t already have it. In addition, you gain the Quick Alchemy action, which lets you create short-lived alchemical consumables with a special action, and you can create a certain number of versatile vials during your daily preparations to fuel Quick Alchemy. Unless otherwise noted, you can’t regain versatile vials throughout the day the way alchemists can. The individual archetype tells you how many versatile vials you can create each day, and might impose special restrictions or benefits for how you can use them. If you gain versatile vials from more than one source, you use the highest number of vials to determine your maximum rather than adding them together, but you can use the vials for any Quick Alchemy option or other use of versatile vials you possess.

shroudb wrote:

Larger than Life from Guardian is worded slightly different than Titan Wrestler, mentioning "or similar abilities" so it should work with them size restricted abilities of Daredevil, since their maneuvers are "similar" to normal maneuvers.

No. The guardian's Larger than Life refers to similar abilities in context of enemy abilities against the character:

Source Battlecry! pg. 41 - Larger than Life wrote:

When you're clad in the heaviest of armors, you have an outsized presence.

Though you don't get any larger, you're treated as one size larger for the purposes of affecting other creatures with actions like Disarm, Grapple, Reposition, Shove, and Trip while wearing heavy armor.

Similarly, you're treated as one size larger for the purposes of creatures affecting you with those same actions, as well as with Swallow Whole and similar actions, while wearing heavy armor.

I turned the points into paragraphs to make it clearer to understand.

Curiously, the homonymous ability of Kitsune ancestry can allow to Change Shape to become the size you need to affect a larger creature with the feats or props.

bolded the relevant part for you as well:

"you are treated as 1 size larger for the purpose of affecting other creatures with abilities like x, y, z."

and the Feats from Daredevil are most definately "abilities like shove, trip, grapple"

The problem with the current implementation is that because Shove in general is weak, there exist already in the system options that buff it by a big degree, bigger than anything comparable to "normal" stuff.

And when you combine that with Stunt, it breaks the math.

Like, making every shove 10ft and dealing 2d6+24 at level 8 with every shove is achievable... Which is more than Barbarian levels of damage.

Tbf, with the current format of the class, is think only by cheesing with Guardian/Centaur I see it working.

But with those it should work fine.

Larger than Life from Guardian is worded slightly different than Titan Wrestler, mentioning "or similar abilities" so it should work with them size restricted abilities of Daredevil, since their maneuvers are "similar" to normal maneuvers.

Similarly, Punishing Shove allows you to double dip on Shoving damage bringing it up to a good level.

Especially if Centaur (ponygait so that you don't have issues) or Adopted Centaur are in the table since Punishing can crit.

Centaur crit shoves bringing them up to 10ft baseline also means much easier time actually hitting a prop compared to 5ft shoves.

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So, something like a halfling with adopted (Centaur) at around level 8 could easily:
Risky charge in-between two enemies and get a Strike at full MAP for around 2d6+6, followed by another Strike at -3 for another 2d6+6, followed by a Shove at -3 that if it hits it deals around 2d6+24. And you still have an action left to disengage or try another Press at -6.

My main two issues with Daredevil are:
a)the defining features are way too weak. Basically equivalent to a level 1 and a level 6 lcass feats. That makes the whole class basically crumble even though the "design" of it, and especially some of the feats, is really intriguing.

b)Adrenaline doesn't feel like Adrenaline. There is no "sense" of chasing after new heights of it round by round. I't basically an on/off switch that it's not even hard to turn on.

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A simple change to Adrenaline imo could help with both of those:

Instead of being on/off give it a value. Make it last until end of your next turn instead of start of your next turn, but every time you refresh it each round the counter increases.

So, the 1st time you gain Adrenaline, it's Adrenaline 1, if you get next round, it goes to 2, and finally it stops at 3 at round 3 the earliest.

Then have it give something like "you gain your Adrenaline value as a circumstance bonus to maneuvers."

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Obviously, Risky actions should be rebalanced to be more... risky to continously perform, but in general I think this change would give both an edge to Daredevil mechanically that he desparetely needs atm but also thematically showcase the Adrenaline theme of getting better the higher it gets and chasing after it round after round.

shroudb wrote:

graystone wrote:

shroudb wrote:

I can't in good faith agree to the ground being a prop.

Every single "you are next to a prop" requirement becomes meaningless if so.

I think it should work for a flying character. 3D movement opens up the floor and ceiling IMO.

that's why I said "in good faith".

Permanent flying is something that comes way later in the game progression, imagining that the whole class design from level 1 is based upon a limitation that only may arise at some point around level 12+ and enven that as a very drawn out maaaaaybe, is not realistic.

I meant when they were flying they could use the floor as a prop, not that the existence of flying opened it up from 1st.

my edit was too slow lol

shroudb wrote:

I can't in good faith agree to the ground being a prop.

Every single "you are next to a prop" requirement becomes meaningless if so.

I think it should work for a flying character. 3D movement opens up the floor and ceiling IMO.

that's why I said "in good faith".

Permanent flying is something that comes way later in the game progression. Imagining that the whole class design from level 1 is based upon a limitation that only may arise at some point around level 13+ and even that as a very drawn out maaaaaybe, is not realistic.

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Unless I misunderstood your post and you meant that when you are flying you can Shove someone to the ground. Then yes, I agree it should work.

But not when you yourself are in the ground.

Given that the "defining features" of the class are basically a level 1 Guardian Class feat (Punishing Shove being Str+2/6/12 is very close in damage progression to Stunt damage, especially since it can crit) and a worse MAP reduction than that of several other classes, I think that the main thing Daredevil needs is more/better class features.

The feats are nice enough, but what the class actually gets from its chassis is basically nothing.

Feats by themselves do not help in giving a class a unique feel, and that's why there are so many people seeing that Daredevil is a worse X/Y/Z, because there's nothing unique to him.

I can't in good faith agree to the ground being a prop.

Every single "you are next to a prop" requirement becomes meaningless if so.

Igneogenesis is a daredevil's best friend.

nah, just bring a Bear or something alongside for the ride (Beastmaster archetype?). You have your own movable wall every round without even spending an action!

On a first look, it looks about equivalent to Sneak damage, so it may seem alright.

But on a bit more careful consideration:
It can't crit
It gets no properties
You don't "add" it on existing instances of damage for resistances.
It's not even "magic".

After mid levels, physical resistance becomes more common, and unless the world somehow gets populated by solid Silver statues and Cold Iron Walls, most of that ~3d6+5 of the Stunt damage of that level range would quickly become 0-5 damage.

So, while yes, you can build a daredevil that rushes to the target, knees a devil in his jewels, and then smash the devil's face to the wall next to him, there's no real incentive to do so since the end result would be a pittance of damage.

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In short, Daredevil desperately needs a mid level+ feature similar to monk's metallic strikes but for props or maybe something like "since you use the target's own body when you smash him in the prop, you ignore X of the creature resistance"

About your 1:

The way it's written it already only applies once per target regardless how many times you pass through them.

and you deal stunt damage to each enemy you move through

It doesn't matter how many times you move through them only IF you moved through them.

I just want to point out that Combination Finisher on a Gymnast is already giving them the equivalent bonuses of Adrenaline but for their finishers instead of their Press attacks.

if the natural terrain surrounding the village is something like plains, you can switch it to a forest. Blocking something like a mounted charge from the attackers.

Forest would also give almost complete cover to the defenders of the village while they pelt with arrows the people that try to navigate through the forest to reach them (presumably since the defenders would know that it's an illusion and would have already "disbelieved" it, making the trees translucent for them but not the attackers).

Enemy combatants can also use the trees for cover to hide behind as they attack the assailats that walk through the forest, or trick the assailants to try to mimic that (trying to hide behind the trees) that will autofail since the illusory trees won't be providing the same cover.

The poi looks like it is going to be the most fun weapon to use with this feat with, but it would be awesome to get a lethal version, even if it has to lose finesse.

So many press actions can be a tough pill to swallow, but with a backswing agile weapon, if you try to trip and succeed with your daring stunt (using the poi one handed, so you have a free hand) you can make your pressing pummel attack at a -3 vs an AC lowered by 2, for essentially only 1 point behind your first attack. If you fail to trip, your attack is only -2.

Otherwise you are probably using a meteor hammer, in which case your second attack is -2 on the successful trip and -3 on the failed trip. Any worse than -3 and it doesn't seem like Pressing Pummel is a useable feat to me.

The only thing saving it is that the Daredevil class is going to pretty much always have to make a maneuver action first so this is a class that will never be making a first strike without MAP except for reactions.

What weapons have you been thinking about using as a Daredevil?

Initially (before the actual playtest came out) I too thought that it would be a loop of "stunt maneuver followed by press Strike" for most of the turns.

But there are several Pres maneuvers and several Risky Strikes. In fact, initially upon reading the feats, I was kinda disappointed by the scarcity of Press Strikes available, especially early on.

So, You could build for a Risky Strike as an opener to get your Adrenaline followed by a Press Maneuver, espcially as you get later feats and so on.

tbf, it's the ONE class that won't moan over the extremely narrow battlemaps of APs, like, it would be weird to NOT be props in the AP maps the way they usually are lol.

Well, I totally missed the 5 trophies limitation. That fixes one of the problems I had with the class.

With that said, what the point of this post then? We already know how many you can have at the same time.

He's not asking how many trophies, we know that to be tools+5.

he's asking how many tools you can get, which when you include the secondary tools, it can get quite high a number.

i think chymist is the obvioust 1st tool for such a "min-max" since it seems to have the most secondary tools (each different vial is a different secondary tool most of the time)

So if my character is 10 feet away from an active dispelling globe and casts lightning bolt directly through the middle of it, does any lightning come out of the back of the globe? Why or why not?

Yes. There's nothing physical blocking LoE.

Globe straight up says that only the part of the area that's inside the globe is surpressed. So the line after the globe continues normally.

I tend to likely BM if I don't have a source of healing even when I don't have a free hand.

Dropping a hand, healing myself, and then regripping is just two actions, and with Robust, even with a small investment (like just Expert) it's good enough.

As a matter of fact, just the previous session with my two handed fighter, when one of our casters got low and it was only me before a trap that dealt aoe damage would go off, I could still leap near him and hit the enemies, let go of one hand, and give him enough hp to not drop from the incoming aoe.

Without BM I could still have saved him by instead using a potion but that would have been 2 actions, meaning I couldn't have actually Striked and I would have to spend my entire round just feeding him a potion.

As annoying as it can be, to not have a way to directly remove, as a staged affliction you just need to go to stage 0.

Since you roll every round, so every 6 seconds, even if you need 2 nat20s in a row to clear it, statistically it would be less than a couple of hours of resting.

So do your party the favour of sparring the actual rolls and rule that with a couple of hours of rest you manage to overcome the curse.