siegfriedliner's page

Transpose is a tenth level summoner feat that lets you switch places with your eidolon (via teleportation) it's kind of cool.

I was thinking that for a necromancer having a similar feat to switch positions with their thralls would be very cool and would add some mobility to thralls they don't currently have.

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This is one of the things which I think shows how what the hobby treats as the traditional view on what meta-gaming is and what should be done about it are rooted in inherently GM-versus-players mentality.

To be honest, calling "metagaming" is usually a way to try to bludgeon disruptive players back into line. I don't think there's a consensus view on what is and isn't metagaming—and there definitely won't be one for a game designed to be a tactical game like PF2E.

Heck, "metagaming" is viewed very unusually in most online 2E discussion spaces. For example, when was the last time you heard anyone say, "But your magus has no reason to suddenly gain psychic powers—that's metagaming!" Yet that is precisely one way (and a very common way) to bludgeon people with the metagaming hammer in other games. "Why are you doing this optimized build that makes no sense for you in-character? That's metagaming!"

I also think there's never been a clear line across the hobby on what metagaming even is. A lot of puzzle-filled dungeon crawls are fairly metagamey, and are designed as challenges to the player rather than a challenge to the player's character. Is it metagaming to use OSR tactics in these situations, like the 10ft pole or using water to check for traps? Does it depend on if your character would think of it themselves? Different tables tend to fall in different places on this issue.

Besides, even if the person described in the original post is clearly being a bit silly, I think there's reasonable arguments not far from where they are. Things that are good play (like using Bon Mot before Synesthesia) can indeed begin to feel a bit metagamey to some sensibilities. I can reasonably see someone asking, "Why do you always insult them before you cast spells at them? That's oddly calculated and repetitive. Would your character really do that? Isn't it pretty mean? You're so nice out of combat." Likewise, it'd be fair to ask, "Why are you casting Fear all the time? Do you enjoy people being scared...

I take it as written that caster know that irritated and afraid enemies are more susceptible to mental magic and ruthlessly exploit any advantage they can get. Because exploiting all advantages is the only way to become and old or experienced adventurer.

Rune of Clumsiness
Whilst inscribed on a person they are clumsy 1

When invoked they must make a reflex save or fall prone and take some bludgeoning damage from a dramatic prattfall. Possibly 1d6 per two levels due to the inclusion of the prone effect.

Damaging runes scale in line with blast spells (fireball, lightning bolt etc) at 2d6 those damages can be fair high and usually just above that of a strike and are balanced against being two actions and only once per turn.

Now from reading the feats and actions are designed with spamming runes in mind so you can have 2-3 going off per average per round with a little optimisation. So it appears that the runes have been designed to be used several times a turn like strikes but without the limitations of MAP and with damage on par or better than strikes which seems stranger.

What is even stranger is how throughly the designers have been conservative especially in the playtest before this in limiting the damage of at will spell like abilities for example the kineticists could only dream of having a damaging effect that scales at 2d6 each level where the runic smith can do it multiple times per turn and later include some area effects with considerably smoother action economy.

Which has me questioning why the change to a more adverenturous design choice.

pH unbalanced wrote:

The one thing I just want to be sure and say is that I am not interested in playing a Runesmith as a blaster. I want to play it as a competent martial who can provide meaningful party buffs and other support. I would expect to get more value from etchings than from invoking.

This isn't to say that I don't want blasting to be viable -- because I hope it is able to support that playstyle for people who want it. I just hope that the power curve on the blasting isn't *so* high that they have to weaken the parts of the toolkit that I am actually interested in to keep its overall power in line.

Thank you.

When one imagines a martial Runesmith, do high explosives enter the picture? Heck, does tagging Runes on enemies themselves as one's default attack routine spring to mind? Right now, free hand + shield w/ boss/spikes is the best supported build.
This whole blaster aspect, esp. at will and competitive, boggles me.

what I am getting from the class in terms of imagery is more of an anime magic user who puts lots of exploding magic circles on thing. It's not an aesthetic I dislike.

This maybe be play style issue but if I am putting a lot of thralls near enemies it's probably to save my allies and actions to flank and that isn't the situation I would use necrotic bomb which I would probably use by placing a thrall next a several enemies and detonating on the spot.

I understand you point but why you will care about to use an Escape/Stand action when you can create another thrall with same action and Strike?

About critical in manuvers if you was able to critical success a thrall with a Trip you will just kill it like as you Strike it. If you use Grab and critical hit you will restrain it but as I said before try to escape makes no sense when you can create a new thrall with one-action without any checks.

Basically debuff thralls is senseless due how cheap and fragile they are and the fact that most focus spell doesn't really make then attack but uses then as fuel.

Mainly just for the 40hp grappling thrall, the 200 hp whacking thrall and the 400 hp thrall that leaves smaller thralls in its wake.

Currently there is a little uncertainty on what the DC for save based dcs (trip, tumble through etc) for thralls.

My take is that like AC if people use these maneuverd they get an automatic success but not a critical success.

So you can reliably tumble through them but they still are difficult terrain

It's worth noting that currently the focus spells thralls that move have no ability to stand up from prone so they probably need immunity to prone, grabbed or at least the ability to crawl, standup, escape ( probably using your spell attack).

I am not sure why bone spear doesn't start at 2d8.

I really like the necromancer it's cool and looks like it would be fun to play.

The most powerful feature the necromancer seem to have besides spellcasting is above average focus/ grave spells which are pretty cool and utilise their thrall mechanic.

But power wise I suspect it might be a little weak especially when compared to the new oracle and animist who have similar defences, double the spell slots and also very powerful focus spells which are comparable in strength with the necromancers grave spells.

Half the spell slots for class that seem to have similarish chassis seems like a fairly punishing. I wonder if the class could afford to be three slot ?

This is morevfeedback for the 20th level thrall grave spells but they need the option to get up from prone otherwise they are completely stymied by a 1 action trip.

That went away with alignment

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.

siegfriedliner wrote:

Angwa wrote:

Yes, Tumble Through being a masked stride, but somehow better because you do not have to actually tumble through anything is...

But that's what the action has always been from the start. Its always been stride, swim, fly plus.

It's not cheesy to use the action to do what it says it does. Honestly all this negativity about mechanics working they way they work is only going to create a bunch of pointless time consuming rolls where players move through other creatures spaces not for a tactical value but just for the sake of apeasing meaningless convention.

The problem with Tumble Through not requiring you to tumble through anyone is that it makes it more difficult to design new Feats and Abilities that interact with actually tumbling through an opponents space.

Better design would have been Tumble Through requiring an attempt to move through a space, and a different action created for generic moving that was "one of Stride, Fly, Swim etc". It's better design because then the name of the ability would better match the actual action, which is always preferrable.

Oh well. Not where we ended up.

There are quite a few feats and features that interact with the tumble through action already and the vast majority of them just state that their effect happens when you move through an opponenents square or give bonuses to the acrobatics check too move through an enemies square or have some effect based of the degrees of success of that check. Tumble behind is old as the system and we have had new material building off it every year since the game began so there isn't problem with designing new content for it.

From the my interpretation of what I read on the discord post the main reason they chose tumble through is that its a move action but more stylish and also it allows them to give a stride an rule out haste and other free strides procing the benefit. Mechanically its kind of smart that they can by just chosing the right action achieve a fair few mechanical outcomes and it saves words and space which is important for publications like these.

I suppose the dissonance is coming from the fact before now to gain any additonal benefit from the tumble through action you needed a successful acrobatics check and this is a rare exception.

Yes, Tumble Through being a masked stride, but somehow better because you do not have to actually tumble through anything is...

But that's what the action has always been from the start. Its always been stride, swim, fly plus.

It's not cheesy to use the action to do what it says it does. Honestly all this negativity about mechanics working they way they work is only going to create a bunch of pointless time consuming rolls where players move through other creatures spaces not for a tactical value but just for the sake of apeasing meaningless convention.

This might add context

Another user said:

"Honestly it’s really good to know that the tumble in that is intended to be able to be used as just a stride since there’s been a lot of debate about that. Thank you for the clarification!"

To which he responded

"I mean, if you're not backflipping as you go you're literally doing it wrong, but we were very cognizant of how Tumble Through works."

Tumble Through does this

You Stride up to your Speed. During this movement, you can try to move through the space of one enemy. Attempt an Acrobatics check against the enemy's Reflex DC as soon as you try to enter its space. You can Tumble Through using Climb, Fly, Swim, or another action instead of Stride in the appropriate environment.

I tried my hand at gming recently to mixed results and ultimately gave up after a tpk. My mistake was for 9/10 of my encounters I would feel like I was doing nothing to them so I would escalate and eventually they would just lose. But I struggled to get the encounter I were looking for where they were really challenged and then overcame it. I can't imagine I will try again any time soon.

But during that time I played there was one item that came to really irritate me the humble phantom doorknob spellheart. It's an item that blinds on a critical hit and blind is one of more annoying conditions to monitor.

If I was to gm again I probably would ban it to save me the headache. This lead me to wander what other items, feats and archetype do other gms frequently ban and so I thought I would ask this question here.

Just an update Michael Sayre was on discord and said

"Or, and hear me out here, maybe those are two completely different things.

Quick Spring's problem was that it was functionally two Strides for the cost of one as a single feat.

Animist had tons of playtest feedback pointing out how quick and easy it was to get Leaps to the same functionality as Strides so the 9th-level liturgist ability is intentionally "a move action with style while you Sustain". (And as others have noted, it's not literally all Strides, because it won't work with e.g. quicken effects that let you Stride.)"

So it's raw and Rai were in fact in alignment

Tumble Through is a move action that includes a stride and once you use the action you have the option at any part of you stride to tumble through an enemies space but don't have to.

As Liturgist doesn't have a requirement in that you tumble through successfully (unlike tumble behind and several other features that interac with tumble through) I believe using the action is enough.

You have still used the flurry of blows and its flourish even if you kill the enemy with your first hit and only effectivley strike. The action you take doesn't change just because you didn't use all of its features.

So after paizo nerfed the monk archytype to no longer offer the monks stiker feature at 10th level, I am dubious that they intentionally let you grab the exemplars striker feature/ source of extra damage at level 2 because they haven't done than before and its too powerful for a second level feat.

Which means there is some typo, or failure of joined up thinking going, or maybe their is a limitation that got emitted due to space that really shouldn't have been.

Which unfortuantly means that I can't imagine I will be able the to the use Archetype with any gm any time soon which is a shame I hope the errata comes soon.

So kineticists have a closed actions system where they have specific actions only they use and interact with. Because they are a closed internal system they will inevitably struggle with a lot of team work mechanics.

This was highlighted by the commander playtest where none of the classes action enabling worked for them apart from movement abilities and is playing through again in mythic.

In the playtest for commander indicated that they would include some tactics to include kineticists but there failure to do so for mythic doesn't fill me with faith that they will remember to do so.

Now personally I am not sure why they made it as closed a system as they did given impulse attacks are for the majority of the time worse than strikes allowing strike action support to apply to them would be fine. The same could be said with impulses and support feats for spells. Paizo were too conservative in the kineticists and this meant to they now have do additional work if they want to keep the class relevant with any new meta.

What I find funny about the mythic proficiency is that inversely scales with level to a certain extent.

If you are level 2 and use rewrite fate to re-roll a saving throw with mythic proficiency and are only trained in the skill then you get an equivalent of a +8 to that save (& a reroll) if you are levl 15 and legendary in that save you get a +2. Now a +2 and a reroll is still really really good but a +8 plus a reroll is insane so rewrite fate at least is going to have less of a wow factor as you level.

Trip.H wrote:

As a brief aside, I need to ask how many tables allow an Amped Img Wpn spellstrike to hit 2 targets? Because that's *very* much against the rules, and a Magus being able to do that would certainly contribute to their damage output going over the top. No idea how much that "houserule" could be involved in the perception....

Even then, the gap between a d6 & d8 cantrip seems... a bit over-focused on.

Nobody takes IW to hit 2 targets which the rules indeed clearly do not allow, or just because it is a D8 cantrip instead of a D6.

Could it be you missed the real reason people value IW so much?

-> Amp Heightened (+1) The damage increases by 2d8 instead of 1d8.

Unless your spell swiping or whatever the 8th level feat is which its kind of perfect for.

I have just started to play test a melee focused soldier and am finding it very solid at level 1.

You can do a lot of damage (by starfinder standards) and have a nice reaction.

But looking at options for levelling up I noticed a lot of feats that require an area effect weapon and can't be used whilat wielding a two handed melee weapon and a lot of area attack + actions that clash with whirling Swipe.

I was wondering if whirling Swipe was a stance that gave melee weapons the burst 5 and unweildy trait would that be broken it would certainly add a lot more options for a melee soldier.

So when I think of the solider class in starfinder 2e I get an image in my head of Arnold Swartzenger in cheesy action movie smoking a cigar and making awful quips and mowing down a hoard of faceless minions with a machine gun.

Obviously if I wanted a build for my fantasy this I would go action hero and take the machine guns and spec into intimidate.

When I think of the envoy I think of Johnny silverhand scheduling a gig just outside the corpo office he wants to infiltrate.

For mystic I think jedi though no specific jedi and for witchwarper bizarrely mass effect adepts come to mind.

I don't really have a good idea in my head of what 2e solarian is meant to be and the operative will always be Molly Millions (neuromancer) and Thane (mass effect) in my head.

So what images do the starfinder class invoke in your heads ?

I think a general feat that let you treat one advanced weapon as a martial would be good for both systems.

siegfriedliner wrote:

Against a single target soldiers should do decentish damage (for a ranged combatant) area Fire for them is a compressed action with a mapless strike added on and if your going for the best weapon (the vector cannon) a d10 strike is pretty comparable to archery damage outside of a crit.

If you have a lot of lower level enemies then area Fire is likely to be better than a strike and against one high ac enemy quite often you will get some damage rather than none when they succeed the save. Enemies fail saves without adding the item bonuses in that extra 5-15% chance of failure/critical failure will add up.

By level six soldier can make an area attack a strike and strike at -5 which is pretty good whilst potentially debuffing several enemies.

That seems very solid to me, honestly i think they are likely to put out more damage than most kinetesists (who they seem to share space with the at will area effects) whilst having extremely solid defences and protecting allies.

So, a lot of this relies on the expectation that the Soldier will be able to hit multiple enemies at a time, which in practice is simply not the case. In particular, this does not address the concern of the Soldier's flexibility, so let's ask the important question here: what does a Soldier do when they can only affect one target at a time? And the answer is simple: the exact same thing they do when they can affect multiple targets at a time, which means spending at least two actions making an Area/Auto-Fire and applying Primary Target. This is arguably too strong on an automatic weapon where you can just spend your entire turn dealing damage to a single target (not an intended strength of the Soldier), as Squiggit mentions, but its also just really not flexible for a martial class in general, because you have to dedicate most of your turn to this one thing instead of being able to break up your turn into three bite-sized actions. The fact that you're still pushed to do the exact same thing for...

I am certain you can use primary target on a single target with area Fire as area Fire say you can (specific trumps general)

Given they have included primary target as a/the core feature of the class, mixing it up between area and single target damage is the intended playstyle. They are meant to have some competency in both like a Magus (with might and magic)and primary target is there spell strike action economy enhancer.

Now you may not enjoy this hybrid playstyle but it's clearly intentional.

I have heard a fair amount of complaints about the solider but from my perspective it seems a really robust class.

The solider is playing the role of a defender but it is playing it in a very different way from the champion whilst still being effective. Stacking penalties to hit allies might not be the most exciting way to defend allies but combined with overwatch it will be defective.

Defensively it's strong it has good saves and great ac.

Offensively it seems to be fairly strong as well it's two action combo of area effect strike and strike for 2 actions without map aren't bad especially using a d10 weapon. You can from level 6 have a combo of move shoot area effect weapon and strike twice (0 and -5 map) and that should do decent damage).

Not to mention they can deal with swarms and a large number of weak enemies quite well.

Xenocrat wrote:

Dragonchess Player wrote:

I've been fiddling with character concepts* for the last week or so and have some observations:

1) Starfinder has a "ranged meta" (as mentioned in the Playtest Rulebook). Simply charging across open ground to attack opponents using ranged weapons in melee is a horrible idea; move from cover to cover (usually pretty common in modern/futuristic environments) until the character can get close. The playtest solarian "can create and maintain all three different manifestations" when attuned, so use the Solar Shot action with the solar flare manifestation while moving from cover to cover until getting in melee using the solar weapon.

Solar Shot has a max (not increment) range of 15 or 30 so it’s not very helpful. Use a rifle (free hand solar weapon) or pistol with decent increment.

Fair enough. Looking more closely as Solar Shot, it's the equivalent of a one action cantrip without the concentrate and manipulate traits instead of the SF1 solar flare ranged weapon equivalent. Maybe increasing the range to 20 ft or 40 ft would help.

Teridax wrote:

Dragonchess Player wrote:

In short, the solarian has ways to "survive" (and contribute) until they can do their thing in melee combat.

Surviving is only one part of the problem, and as pointed out by a commenter who otherwise thinks the Soldier's gapclosing abilities are fine, Solar Shot is incredibly limited in its range. It is also worth noting that neither Stellar Rush nor the Solarian's base abilities will help you if your target is, say, flying or atop a tall vantage point.

It's not as if other classes have "base abilities" that help against enemies that are "flying or atop a tall vantage point," either. There are ancestry/class feats, equipment, or spells that can help; just like other characters. I find it slightly dishonest to make the enemy that is "flying or atop a tall vantage point" as the baseline evaluation standard for the "effectiveness" of the...

The Soldier is built around big guns that have some range (though range is a little bit of an issue for them regardless). Operatives movement boosts and have a subclass that supports sniper rifles and movement buffs, stealth.

The mystic and witchwarper have spells some of which have fairly solid ranges and some that allow impressive movement.

Envoys benefit from range weapons and don't lose anything for having ones with decent range.

If you build around primarily using solar weapon and solar bolt you will be the be the worst effected character when facing a dude 40ft in the air on a veranda.

Truth be told I was more interested in the thematics than anything though I am not happy with the mecanics.

What do we want our scifi melee fighter to be like and how do qe want to differentiate there playstle for them pathfinder 2e classes to support the new ranged meta.

If a solarian functions just like a big standard pathfinder martial with a lasersword then it doesn't really add much if you can play with pathfinder classes.

So I would like to see a melee starfinder character play different and be adapted to in many possible different ways the new meta.

Give them a reaction to deflect energy weapons back at enemies with their cool gravity/ energy sword, give them some teleportation or celerity or something. Make them the master of forcefields or give them some shield feats that interfere with reactions. Basically do something in the class to agnowledge the new meta other than give them a short ranged inaccurate pee shooter.

TTRPG game rules =/= reality simulator.

Which is why I mentioned dune and cyberpunk also not reality but also science fiction.

So in real life melee weapons are very much secondary weapons.Rushing at a person with a drawn gun with a knife or sword is mostly going to be a bad idea.

This plays true for most scifi setting with even more powerful ranged weapons.When settings want melee weapons to pay a big part in their setting they usually have to give some excuse to justify sword play.

For example dune has it's shields that disable damaged weapons, star wars has it's jedi who are lightning fast (so they can get up in ranged enemies faces quickly) and can deflect bullets.

Cyberpunk settings usually have active camo to stealth into range and speed enhancements to get in the thick of things in an instant and hacking to disable smartguns so the low tech solution can work.

So in the heavily ranged meta of starfinder 2e I was expecting the premier melee class the solarian to have face impressive mobility enhancement, ranged defences, or some time type of kinetic energy shielding as standard.

Currently the best adapted class to melee in starfinder 2e is the operative it has a lot of stealth synergy and mobility enhacers so you can play your cyberpunk ghost blade with them.

No other class gets these features natively but can get them with the right gear so again fairly cyberpunk. So going off the example of the operative the way primary melee weapon users are meant to operate is the path of the ninja.

Is there another way to be an effective melee combatant in the new ranged meta and how have you seen melee combat play out ?

I really don't like the defy Gravity feature for the aolarian.

There are two main reasons for this the first is I feel flight or somewhere sort of air walk should be an option available in the class feats for a soliarian as a problem that solarians are going to have to deal with fairly frequently in the new meta. So limiting it to one of three subclasses seems like a mistake.

The other reason is that it cuts you off from using cycle actions whilst your flying as if you lose gravity attunement you fall.This seems like a bit of a new player trap where players forget about cycle and end up getting into trouble.

So even when I get this feature because I would want to be able to continue use my cycle feats whilsr flying i would look for an alternative to this feature (flying shirren and jetpacks) possibly really limiting the value this feature offers.

Given that solarians are the designated melee class in the new ranges meta I feel they need more mobility for gap closing.

Currently they get a few options for mobility via feat and solar shots.

I feel the class could benefit from a speed enhancement (like the monk) and access to flight that wasn't gated behind one subclass.i also find it weird they don't get a sudden change expy which feels like it would be a bit of a no brainer.

Feat based casting with focus point boost/ amp would be how I would do it.Possibly with different refresh rate for different classes. Maybe giving the casters the option to get a really boosted version of the feat once per day at the cost of access to the feat for the day.

So unless they give the swashbuckler rogue skill increases (which they totally could the rogue already has more utility and damage than them).

Having two out of the three skills you can scale to max be dedicated to acrobatics and your style to be able to effectively use your core class feature is too limiting. You pretty much only have 1 scaled skill to differentiate yourself from any other swashbuckler using your style.

There is a post about how Fighters falling off in power at higher levels and me being the fighter fan that I am my first thought was that fighter high level feats must be some of the most powerful feats in the game at least mechanically speaking.

In terms of pure mechanical strength I would rate feats that improve your action economy as the best in the game and the fighter has probably the most of these in the game,

Boundless reprisals
Weapon supremacy
Improved riposte
Paragon stance
Master of many styles
Tactical reflexes
Quick shield block
Dueling dance

So I was wondering what other class had as good a feat setup as the fighter at high level and are there any feats that are more powerful than action economy ones I mentioned ?

I was thinking it would probably work like this

Intercept:

Trigger: That ally is the target of a Strike and that ally is either adjacent or you could reach that ally with a Stride action.

You cannot stand still while your comrades might be in danger. You Stride up to your speed (unless you are already adjacent) and and you must end your movement adjacent to the triggering ally; you can use Intercept Foe while Burrowing, Climbing, Flying, or Swimming instead of Striding if you have the corresponding movement type. That ally gains a +2 circumstance bonus to their AC against the Strike.

If the strike still hits you can choose to take the damage instead of that ally and gain resistance to that damage equal to 2 + your level.

I was thinking that combining intercept foe and intercept strike would be fairly good for the classes ability to tank.

So if you spend an action to intercept a foe and they still hit you could choose to take the damage instead. It would make the guardian a more mobile defender which is good because both the champion and this variant of guardian struggle with skirmishing enemies.

It would give the guardian a real advantage over championa by allowing the to defend allies that are more than 15ft away.

Or far less complicatedly a reaction to trip an enemy who steps or strides out of your reach (ignoring the hand requirement). Might well be the simplest way to achieve that stickiness.

Champions already have the lvl 12 Divine Wall, which I don’t find that flavourful. I’d like to see something more ‘sticky’.

Possibly they should get a reaction trip when an enemy leaves their reach.

So this is a little bit of a nit pick but I found the similarity in naming between intercept strike and intercept foes a little bit confusing especially when determining which supplemental feats effects applied to each of them.

Does disarming intercept apply to only intercept strike or both intercept strike and intercept foe caused me a little confusion.

I am mildly dyslexic and I prefer rigidee rules text rather than descriptive text so this may be a just me problem. Did anyone else find it confusing?

Areas within your reach are difficult terrain for your enemies.

I kind of agree with difficult terrain though I think if they did go that route it would need to be a stance. Having to spend an action each turn for just difficult terrain seems a little weak.

So taunt is in my opinion one of the least effective actions you can take to protect your allies.

Grappling or tripping an enemy will most of the time do more to disrupt their ability to attack your allies than taunt whilst also making them more vulnerable.

demoralising an enemy will often give just as big a penalty to attacking allies as taunting but also make the enemy worse at attacking you and will make them take more damage.

Moving adjacent to an ally or enemy so you can intercept will likely more effective way of protecting your allies than taunting whilst also setting up strikes, trips and disarms.

Sometimes even striking them will be more effective if you have a reasonable chance of defeating them.

So taunting for the most part seems an option of last resort (because there are some many better options available) and possibly shouldn't be a cornerstone of the class.

I really liked tank classes in 4e and most of them had multiple ways of "tanking" because the guardian at least thematically falls into the model of a tank I think it is worth exploring how classes "tank" in other games to provide context to their mechanic in this one.

Now perhaps the simplest way to encourage enemies to attack you is just be next to them, in most editions of DnD most enemies could attack more often and do more damage to creatures adjacent to them. So when presented a choice between attacking an adjacent target or a far away one they would usually pick the one in their face.

Pathfinder 2e can quite often works like this, most gm unless they have a reason to do otherwise will have enemies targets creatures who are adjacent to them rather than move.

This was actually more true in older editions where every creature had an attack of opportunity as potentially being hit moving towards another enemy was a solid reason not to move. So a heavy armour fighter in 2e can tank by moving adjacent to an enemy who isn't adjacent to another of your allies and force an enemy to waste actions or take a hit to attack someone else.

A guardian can do this too and perhaps better, if they move adjacent to an enemy than hampering swing the enemy is forced to no only move but to try and shove them out of reach (not easy to do with a reach weapon) to attack another target.

The next way the guardian could tank was through damage mitigation using usually a reaction to reduce the damage an enemy was doing to an ally, the champion can do this with all of their main reactions and so can the guardian with its main reaction, it can mitigate the damage to allies in fact better than than the champion but at the price that it takes all that damage to itself entirely bypassing its heightened defences.

This can lead to a weird situation where an enemy want to target the guardian but isn't confident it can get past his defences so targets an ally to hit the guardian. Luckily will the guardians lack of offensives chops there is less reason to want to prioritise taking the guardian down so the situation shouldn't come up that often. A Guardian who want to live is going to need to learn fairly quickly not to attempt to intercept all the the attacks.

This brings us on to punishment, if an enemy attacks your allies you can attack them back, in 2e this is so far only achieved by a paladin with their retributive strike. But there are few better ways to demotivate enemies from attacking another ally than by both punishing them for attacking an ally and mitigating their damage so its quite likely they ended up taking more damage out of the exchange than the ally they are attacking did.

Next we have mathematical adjustments this is where our taunt feature comes in, where you apply circumstance penalties to an enemy attacking an ally. I 4e the fighter could apply a -2 penalty to attacking an ally by targeting an enemy with a melee attack. This could prevent enemies attacking an ally all by itself but for the fighter it was a key part of their punishment mechanic because they needed enemies marked to directly punish (attack) them for attacking an ally. Taunt definitely works to provide mathematical adjustment to discourage enemies attacking your ally but again it does so by mitigating your own defences (in a similar vain to intercept attack) making you more vulnerable. Which means that without a really solid amount of combat healing (which unlike the champion the guardian doesn't get natively) it will be very difficult to keep the guardian conscious.

The final method of provoking enemies to attack you is doing a substantial amount of damage to encourage enemies to want to take you out of the encounter. Most martials can do this though I personally rate in 2e the barbarians as the best in house for this type of tanking, they have lots of hit points and do a lot of damage so I often in play see them targeted with much greater zeal than other classes in fact they also get a little bit of mathematical adjustment with their rage penalty and potential clumsy penalty making them really tempting targets.

So from this my main takeaways is that all classes can tank so hey don't be afraid to get in your enemies face if allies are in danger and that actually the champion is really very good tank with options to tank pretty much every way one can tank. The guardian is a good tank class but it is the most vulnerable tanking class I have seen in any edition and depending on how its played its very risk heavy class features could get it knocked out of the combat to early to really be a fully effective.

PS I forgot slowing and confusing enemies and healing are also very good ways to protect your allies too #castercando.

If you look at the core class features of the guardian intercept strike and taunt they are not going to be useful at least half the time.

Intercept attack is only really useful when you have more hit points than your ally and taunt mitigates your high defences and could easily get your character killed.

Wheras if you compare lay on hands (allways useful when an enemies hurt) and all the champion reactions (always helpful when they trigger) or even attack of opportunity (a free attack is almost always useful).

This means that guardians are likely going to require more experience to play well than a champion and will likely provide poorer results for new players than champions filling a similar niche.

Ideally I would like the guardian be offensively in a similar space to the champion who also has strong defensive features. Basic martial accuracy without any damage extra (sneak attack, fighter accuracy, rage etc).

That might mean that the guardian needs defences in line with the champion rather than above but part of the thematics of the heavy armored knight is that there axe is sharp and there a good hand with it.

Adding any complexity to combat makes it longer but some complexity is fun. I am ok with longer encounters with more give and take.But preference is key.

Obviously the commander fantasy is a little commanding, you are maneuvering your allies across the metaphorical chess board and setting them up to strike.

But in practice given no one is forced to follow a tactics and the actions are being provided by the commander so your not asking your allies to sacrafice their turn it is not any more coercive than say my bard casting heroism on my monk ally and moving in to flank the boss with that same monk ally and then expecting that monk to wail on the boss rather than choose to run away and leave my bard to be crit down by the boss next turn.

What I find funny is that The Guardian gets an incredibly powerful feature to provoke aggro and protect their friends that blows their class features out of the water and its a second level feat.

9 times out of ten moving up to a melee enemy or several melee enemies that aren't engaged with you friends and hampering sweep locking them in place next to you will do more to ensure they don't target your allies and target you instead than taunt or intercept strike.

Its a weird feature that gives you all the stickiness of epic tier 4e fighter and its a second level feat. The very best thing in your arsenal the way you actually live up to your class concept and its a 2nd level feat that will probably be poachable by a champion.