siegfriedliner's page

Does the cat +1d4 prescions damage scale with mature and sepcialized?

Thanks for your help my conclusion was that I need to be a goblin two weapon ranger riding a velocraptor.

Soryy I should have said Flurry I kind of forget the existence of the other options

I am starting at level 1 with the two weapon feat and animal companion (human ambition).

So I am building a ranger for a pathfinder 2e game and I was looking at getting my self a fine animal companion but have been struck down by options paralysis what would you say is the best?

Does dangerous sorcerery apply to each missile if it does its a much better spell.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Huh.

This thread makes a nice change from the "ArCaNe EVoLuTiOn mAKeS WiaZaRdS OBSolEET" posts I've waded through recently.

The forum is awash in panicky threads of people claiming class X is so hosed, for just about every possible value of X.

To be fair I feel it has a wonderful symmetry too it. We had years of people denying their was martial caster balance problem in pathfinder 1e.

puksone wrote:

I have never seen anyone ever saying dpr is everything and is the only important metric...but a lot of people arguing dpr isn't everything.

Then you haven’t been paying much attention to Alchemist threads. Putting aside complaints about Mutagenist, DPR is pretty much all those threads talk about.

As for DPR as a metric, it will pretty much always be a conversation topic; and among those talking about it will crop up the few who use it as some hidden truth of hierarchy. Although conversations tend to lean towards categorizing better or worse, most seem to agree it’s the individual build that holds the most weight.

It would be nice if other threads popped up with metrics on optimizing Debilitation’s and Healing, or some such. The game is still new enough though that DPR will be the most comfortable and relatable topic that people will talk about for the time being.

To be fair it's not like the alchemist has high defences, skill supremacy, unique and impactful effects going for it, it needs to be good at something.

So I have seen a lot of comments that amount to why play a sorcerer when you can play x - particularly for the Cleric (divine) and the Bard (occult).

Because those classes get powerful class features (composition cantrips and Channel energy etc) which the sorcerer doesn't.

Given composition cantrips are neet and Channel energy amounts 3-6 extra top level spells I can see where they are coming from.

Do you feel these criticism are fair?

In terms of tiers do you mean something like this:

Tier 1 (S Tier): Can shine in almost any role and can often do two roles at once. Change the world at high levels.
Tier 2 (A Tier): Can shine in multiple roles but not at the same time. More restricted world changing capabilities
Tier 3: Shine in one role and pretty darn good to one/two other roles
Tier 4: Shine in one niche role and okay in one or two other roles
Tier 5: Not good

Well s tier doesn't exist in this edition and you could argue that A doesn't either, so it comes down to most tier 3 - 5 for pathinder 2e so it comes down to how well you do at the one or two things your good at.

So tier List used to be all the rage in 3.5 and pathfinder.

Its pretty early in the life of edition so we don't know what splat book spells and Feats might change things in the future. But what classes would you say are particularly good at doing their job and which ones would you saily are particularly poor.

So far I would rate the fighter as great at its jobs.

The rogue, barbarians, ranger, bard and cleric as good at their job.

The wizard, Sorcerer and druid as adaquate at their job.

The alchemist as inadequate at its job.

NemoNoName wrote:

Ah, I see yet another cohort of "move along, everything is perfect in P2E land" people have commented already.

I'm not gonna get into those discussions again, however...

Ah yes the "I am above doing the thing, now watch me do the thing but close off anyone criticising me for doing the thing because I said I wasn't doing the thing" approach to discourse.

Always a good opener -nods-

NemoNoName wrote:

If this is true, this is horrible game design. It means there is no reward for picking the best save, only expected outcome. And if you don't (or can't, because for any one of million reasons you don't have the spell for correct save), the game is saying "go home, n00b".

The benefit is that saves get an effect on successes in many cases and cannot be buffed/interrupted as easily.

Look to a Tarn Linnorm and a level 20 character

Martials other than fighters are likely at master, have a +3 weapon +6 to their attacking stat. +29 (effective +31 with flatfooted from flanking). Against a 46AC they need a 17 or higher neat, 15 or higher with flanking. (now of course they get multiple actions, albeit with MAP and will almost certainly have status bonuses. But I won't go into debuffs to foe saves)

Spellcasters will have a DC of 44 most likely. Without any debuffs, the linnorm will need to roll a 13 or higher to save on the weakest, 12 or higher on the next, 8 or higher for the strongest.

Comparing that back to the martial
Neat: 20% chance to hit
Flat-Footed: 30% chance to hit

vs

Weakest: 60% (15% crit chance)
Middle: 55% (10% crit chance)
Strongest: 35% (5% crit chance)

Now, 2 actions usually so they do end up a bit closer, but then again the spells often do damage on a miss and have a higher base crit chance outside of the strongest save.

Again, there are lots of scenarios where these numbers can be adjusted through play. But from my experience so far it is easier to buff AC and ATK than buffing saves, and so many things decrease saves now....

Your maths is wrong for the level 20 martial non fighter who gets 20l+6a+6m+3i=35 so 50% chance to hit, the fighter gets 60% chance to hit. Also the level 20 analysis favors casters given how back ended their Proficiency increases are getting legendary at 19 is a real game changer.

What do people mean by “letting saves be rolled”? Does this mean how it currently is or changing saves into 10+saving throw as a DC and then rolling an “attack” against it.

Adding 10 to the save of enemies and having PCs roll spell attack vs it. I know its off by around 10%.

It seems weird design if it was intentional to balance casters so they had a similar chance of missing with an diminished effect than martial have of hitting. Having the default result of spellcasting actions be mitigated failure was bound to make casters feel weak even if those miss effects are worth the actions and a resoures required to get them.

Mind you I can't argue that that addition is the firsts since 4e to have has fixed the caster supremacy issue which is a good thing.

Because the roller wins on ties, and d20s average 10.5% it's actually ~like~ a +2 buff to make saves into rolls.

And saves are based around you targetting the weak one, which is usually around 3 or so lower than moderate AC for a similar level of creature.

Spell attacks vs AC are different, but you should have access to either guidance or true strike to close the gap on that a little bit too.

Why 5 vs 7 and 13 vs 15 though?

I don't really know. Doesn't make sense to me. But the no DC boosting items is definitely built into the system at east at certain points.

Lol my maths was wrong, typical. Oh well least it was in the right direction.

Its probably my fault for turning saving throws into attacks but the contrast is stark. But it was big shock when moving from 4e where everyone knew against appropriate opposition they would be hitting one a 12 plus.

So did the devs ever explain why full casters get their Proficiency boosts two levels later than martials (7,15) rather than (5, 13).

It seems a weird choice when casters already lag behind on chance to land their effect due to having no enhancement to dcs.

I do wonder if you look at appropriate enemies saves if caster were originally meant to get a boost to dcs from focus items but when they decided not to include them they did not update the enemy maths which is a pretty 4e style problem.

Mind you some of the issue may be from my 4e style homebrewed saves mechanic where the party roll spell attack vs will/reflex/Fort defence(enemy save bonus + 10) so I have to do less rolling. But that shouldn't change the maths by more than 5 percent. But the issue has been highlighting when I tell my players they miss on a 13 or 14.

siegfriedliner wrote:

When it comes to spells I imagine the the sweet spot would be on the higher end of that band because when you fail not only are you wasting your action but you are also wasting a finite resource which you need for all your best effects. So I do find it weird that these resource burning actions are less accurate 7 time out of 10.

Let's use a practical example: a 9th level party facing off against a cloud giant (level 11) as a little boss fight.

Given ability score increases and the suggested treasure distribution, we're looking at +2 striking weapons and ability scores of 18-19 being involved.

So we have a fighter with +21 attack bonus against an AC of 30, for a 40% chance of nothing happening and a 10% chance of a critical hit.

And we have a wizard with a save DC of 25 against saving throws of Fort +25, Ref +18, and Will +21, for respective chance of nothing happening of 55%, 15%, and 35%, and respective chance of a critical failure of 0, 5%, and 5%.

So while there is a "my thing didn't work" feeling that some people associate with hearing that an enemy made their saving throw, the fact that PF2 spells are typically only actually avoided on critical success means that even if you pick the wrong kind of spell for a particular enemy you're still not below the point of having good enough odds that something happens to not feel like you wasted the effort (at least not unless you are one of those folks that feels like an effort is wasted every time a roll doesn't go in your favor, no matter what the odds were).

To be fair looking at those statistics in another light they show against an appropriate boss a wizard has a 5% chance of getting their full spell effect vs a strong save, a 35% chance vs a weak save and a 15% chance on a medium save.

The wizards chances of a critical failure are the same as a fighters chance of a success whilst also burning limited resources.

Gloom wrote:

Martialmasters wrote:

SO I MISSED THE*CASTER IS UNDERPOWERED NOW* DEBATES...

You didn't miss anything of value. This is an old and tired debate that has people divided into two camps. For the most part however, anyone I've played with who has played a caster in a game for a reasonable amount of time has enjoyed it.

Agreed.

This is what? The 6th or 7th thread about this now?

The last one was my one and I noticed at least 2 more before.

I think a lot of gamers view a 65% chance that your action doesn't have a result as "a complete waste of time"

I mean, I've seen arguments on this very forum that treat a similar chance of reduced effect - rather than no effect at all - as if it were unbearable.

So I believe in terms of player satisfactions about a 50-65 percent chance of success is meant to be the sweet spot. Low enough so there is a significant risk of failure but high enough that you aren't often getting round after round of demoralising failure (Flurry of misses).

When it comes to spells I imagine the the sweet spot would be on the higher end of that band because when you fail not only are you wasting your action but you are also wasting a finite resource which you need for all your best effects. So I do find it weird that these resource burning actions are less accurate 7 time out of 10.

Having thought about it most of the nature witch characters I can think of probably would be moddelable just fine by a druid.

Interestingly non evil witches in fictions tend to be really defined by place so you get swamp witches, sea witches, village witches/wise women. In terms of abilities that cross all witches the only things that come to mind are divination (flavoured by locations) curses,healing and potions/tinctures.

I’m not a huge fan of primal for the witch. Primal magic uses the vital essence, which is based around a connection to and or faith in something (nature in the case of primal magic). Witches aren’t wisdom casters, and aren’t based around a faith in or instinctual connection to nature, they learn through lessons from their patrons, and are int based. So based on the essences, Witch should use a magical tradition that has the mental essence, either arcane, occult, or pick one of them. Of those two lists, I think occult fits the flavor of witch the best.

But the nature witch is one of the most common tropes for witches in fiction.

Dirge of doom seems like a witch power just change the name to Maddening Cackles and your done.

So I would have thought at level 20 the max possible damage a martial could do is playing a reach lunging dueling fighter Multiclass paladin using a flickmace (preferably embiggened by an ally for that sweet 25ft reach) and making hay with combat reflexes (extra aop per turn) improved combat riposte (extra riposte per turn) and Boundless Reprisals (extra reaction per enemy turn) and the paladin defensive reaction.

Assumimg teleport are not ubiquitous melee enemies would have to go to a lot of trouble to avoid triggering aop if you have maxed reach even at level 20, so you should be getting 1 to several extra attacks without penalty per turn.

So has anyone yet got to level 20 and does this play out or is it just theory crafting?

Back in the high fantasy days kings would have been some of the biggest, strongest and most well trained fighters around in the best equipment.

I apologize, but my participation in this thread is not for or about you.

You don't like my joke, fine - maybe someone else will appreciate it. You are allowed to move on with your day without telling me to shut up.

Nice a perfect passive aggressive apology I like the everything before the but trope.

So obviously objects making saves are basically just balance mechanics rather than a reality mechanic. So don't tell your players that your pillar is making a reflex save and just narrate the scene depending on how much damaged the pillar takes from blackened to broken. Its a bit meta but almost always best in a system like pathfinder 2.0 to derive your fiction from the outcome rather than mechanics that lead to them. The miss that kills an enemy should be given more attention than the crit that doesn't.

Weird. I had begun thinking that I was the only person who knew about Shadow Skill.

Anyway.

Which character are you trying to emulate? They all do things pretty differently. Or do you mean "Shadow Skill" the techniques used by Elle and Gau?

Mainly the actual shadow skill technique, the idea you can talk yourself strong, psyche yourself up is very much the heart of the mythic berserkers.

So an action to rage/ chant martial arts language doesn't need any real adaption. Its the how to get a martial artist causing big explosions, without massive amounts of adaption the options are the 20th level stomp feat and the dragon breath feat both of which thematically could be used for kurudan martial arts.

So this made me wonder if you teleport out of a bottomless pot do you still maintain your momentum.

siegfriedliner wrote:

Ninja pillar

Honestly I feel an object should be makimg fortitude checks against anything an object needs to save against.

Then this thread could have been about "how come a friggin rando pillar gets to make a fort save against fireball but my super-powered-dragon-man barbarian can't?!

But then you get to make a in bruge reference and ask "are you an inanimate object"

So I was thinking what changes I would need to make to barbarian into a martial artist from shadow skills. So there main stick hypnotising themselves with martial arts language to surpass their physical limits so so pretty comparable to rage and firing hadukons. So I was thinking some type of mix between dragon and animal totem to get the required effects. So which feat do you think animal totem would have to lose to justify giving them a dragons breath feat?

Ninja pillar
Honestly I feel an object should be makimg fortitude checks against anything an object needs to save against.

So I do feel giant barbarians damage increase should have scaled better than the dragons, at first level a +2 to damage vs - 1 to AC and Reflex is a just about even trade at level 20 it's an awful trade.

I think even a extra +2 at each each specialisation level would have done it, so +6, then +12, then +22 would have been better.

Or maybe just adding another damage type to barbarian resistance or more temporary hit points from rage so you can play out the easy to hit but hard to take down concept of the giant barbarian better.

Does the movement from tumble through provoke attacka of opportunity as usual?

Does actually tumbling through an enemies square provoke (as you leave a square thy threaten)?

So I play testing the a level 4 Swashbuckler in a roll20 game (late to the party) so I am really tempted to take Impaling Finish because it looks but I am wondering if it is awfully impractical.

How often does the positioning to make it work come up in natural play without literally shoving enemies into place ?

Also do diagonals work ?

So say you are x and have two enemies y adjacent

y
xy

If you moved diagonal

y
0y
00x

would y y be eligible targets for this feat ?

Zaister wrote:

ikarinokami wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Why aren't Ranger, Barbarian and Champion just Fighter feats?

they certainly could have been, like in previous edition of D&D.

Which are these previous editions of D&D you are referring to?

Dungeon and Dragons

Advanced Dungeon and Dragons
Advanced Dungeon and Dragons 2nd Edition.

Those were kits not feats totally different thing.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I mean, you can build a competent fighter as a duelist. But there's absolutely nothing in the fighter that rewards risk taking, showiness, and braggadocio. These sorts of things are part and parcel to the fictional archetype of "the dueing swordsman" that thematically Swashbuckler absolutely deserves to be its own class.

The fact of the matter is that if we do something as an archetype there's a limited amount of space there to add new mechanics. So if some broad theme is strong enough that it requires more mechanics than that to represent, it should be a class.

By this token, why is Aldori Duelist considered fine as an Archetype, while Swashbuckler needs its own class? Where is the dividing line?

Because swashbuckler is an general fiction trope which people have seen i films, tv ,novels and comic books and the aldori dueilst is just an example of that trope based a small part of gonalorian.

Though I might get annoyed when we get to the point we have a musketeer(gunslinger) rather than a musketeer (swashbuckler) because Dumas is one of the fathers of the swashbuckler genre and I want to fire my pistol once and do fancy fencing.

So I was looking at the swashbuckler class and noticed it had a raging athlete equivalent.

Does anyone else feel it's a bit sad that these classes have a feat that looks like it would be brilliant for the exploration pilar of the game (a buff to climbing, swimming and jumping) but can only be used in combat.

So I feel that it obvious that armor that fits the 7th Half Orc warrior also won't fit the 3.5ft Goblin warrior and visa versur, that's just simply a part of the narrative. But get a sufficiently demented smith to make the alterations or magic and then I am more flexible on the situation.

It defiantly more brutal I had my first party tpk in the plaguestone game, I went in as a level fighter hit a bad guy twice (double slice) doing about 15hp and then the boss who was 3 to 4 levels higher than the partycrit me (on a 14 or 15) which put me down to 5 hp and got a free action shove which pushed me in a trap which knocked me out.

The rest of the party flailed in effectively against his AC as he took 1 out per turn. Unfortunately we didnt have a healer because the gm told me afterwards he didn't have that many hit points and if I hit with another double slice I could have taken him out. It kind of killed the game but that roll20 for you.

You really don't get to say that I can't address a specific piece of a rule because of context (which, by the way, I only quoted the part that provides the context I was addressing, so yes I can do exactly what I did, thanks) and then turn around and say that when you read the full passage you can effectively ignore text the author chose to include, presumably for a reason.

The sentence I originally quoted is as much a part of the rule as the sentence before it that you claim spells it out clearly.

And if the sentence I originally quoted doesn't have a bearing on what wielding means, why is it included?

So by ready to use I assume it means if you have an action or reaction available to to attack/block/maneuver with it you can immediately do so and a one handed large sword wielded in one hand would meet that criteria, as you could choose to strike and make attacks of opportunity with it without having to spend any actions to ready it.

They have gotten better at being precise with language and tags not 4e precise but a lot better.

Also gynast means your have a decent decent strength which is good for early game damage.

So I was looking at some of the more common attack patterns for this class and I was wondering would most people risk getting the -5 penalty to their finisher or go for the more likely hit with their higher damage attack and do more movement and demoralizing and bluffing with their extra action.

So Tumble, Finisher, Demoralize/step or Strike, Tumble, Finisher?

I suppose at level 6 and onward's the feat that lowers the MAP penalties and wielding a short-sword (agile) does reduce the penalty to -3 and assuming flat-footed that still leaves a good chance to hit a lot of foes.

Quote:

You can use a weapon built for a Large creature if you are Small or Medium (both normally and when raging). If you’re not Small or Medium, you can use a weapon built for a creature one size larger than you. You gain access to one weapon one size larger than you, of any weapon type otherwise available at character creation. It has the normal Price and Bulk for a weapon of its size (page 295). When wielding such a weapon in combat, increase your additional damage from Rage from 2 to 6, but you have the clumsy 1 condition (page 618) because of the weapon’s unwieldy size. You can’t remove this clumsy condition or ignore its penalties by any means while wielding the weapon.

Quote:

Wielding Items

Source Core Rulebook pg. 272
Some abilities require you to wield an item, typically a weapon. You’re wielding an item any time you’re holding it in the number of hands needed to use it effectively. When wielding an item, you’re not just carrying it around—you’re ready to use it. Other abilities might require you to merely carry or have an item. These apply as long as you have the item on your person; you don’t have to wield it.

Wielding, IMO, pretty clearly means using.

It's unlike PF1, they tried to stop all the silliness of "wielding" that happened there.

So yeah, Giant Instinct Barbarians don't get the extra damage on Thrash because they're not using their weapons to deal the damage.

This may be me being stupid but according to that definition of wielding requires you to be holding a weapon (in the correct number of hands) and be ready to attack with it so as far as I can see if you wielding a 1 handed large weapon in one hand and medium weapon in the other hand you would still be wielding a large weapon for the purpose of the rage boost and clumsy. If you attacked with the medium weapon you would still be wielding the large weapon and still clumsy so why wouldn't the rage bonus apply ?

Basically the condition for the rage bonus isn't making an attack action with a large weapon its wielding one which the provided definition showed are different things (being ready to attack =/ attacking).

I see what he is saying, unless there is a specific ingame defenition for wielding (is their?) then you don't need to be attacking with a weapon to wield it and its the wielding of the weapon rather than the attacking that increases the rage bonus and then the rage bonus applies as standard to all melee attacks.

So you should be able to hold your mighty large one handed flick ace and be punching someone in the face at same time getting the bigger rage bonus on the punch (halved because of agile of course).

Ps playing devil's advocate here the only reason to rule it this way is to avoid punishing giant barbarians that want to grapple and thrash though I suppose you could count a person as a large weapon for the purpose of that feat.

I would guess something like the hatchet it's an L bulk item that weighs 3lbs so 270lbs. I'll try to add a weight column to my quick looter guide later and get you a real answer.

With the new backpack errata you can carry 20 more hatchetts for at total of 330lb with 110 hatchetts

So I was wondering assuming an encumbered bulk of 9 what is the max weight of equipment you could carry without being encumbered using pathfinder ones weight for objects any ideas?

So the errata changed the bulk of an adventurers kit to 1 and also ruled that backpacks help you ignore 2 bulk for the purposes of encumbrance.

The adventurers kit comes with a backpack so I just wanted to check this was correct.

So if you have an adventurers kit (bulk 1), a healers kit (bulk 1) a climbing kit Bulk 1 and a Repair Kit Bulk 1 and place them all in the backpack included in the adventurers kits backpack (hitting the 4 bulk max for a backpack) it will only count 2 bulk of that towards encumbrance?

I imagined a stone or metal ball attached to a cable/elastic cord that you bowl at the enemy and bring back with a flick of the wrist.

Or just a one handed flail with an oversized chain.

Either way a stupidly impractical weapon in reality.

Hi so I feel the main reason the alchemist is underwhelming is that alchemical items seem pretty weak, obviously as these are items that everyone can buy so some limits should be in place.

I was thinking for an alchemist if you had a feature let's call it empowered alchemy that halved the number of items you could produce but doubled the damage and healing they did and say removed or halved the penalty from elixirs and mutagens that might make the alchemist feel more effective.

What do you think?