siegfriedliner's page

So eidolons don't interact with the "death and dying rules" because the moment they reach 0hps they unmanifest and the summoner has to deal with death and dying rules.

So as an eidolon never gains the dying or wounded conditions doomed doesn't do anything. As for what happens when a eidolon is reduced to 0 hps by a death effect that is a more interesting question because it doesn't have such a clear answer.

So there are a couple of questions about eidolons that weren't really answered last time I looked and I wanted to check if we had heard something since.

1st Can eidolon use mundane items (healers tools, thieves tools etc)
2nd What happens to afflictions on the eidolon when they are unmanifested (poison, disease etc).
3rd What happens when an eidolon is reduced to 0 hps by a death effect (does the specific rule that an eidolon unmanifest when reaching 0hps trump the general rule that creatures die when reduced to 0 hps by a death effect)

I mostly take the view that there is room in tabletop roleplaying for the dark themes and sanding the edges of everything leads to everything becoming duller.

But that's mainly a stance I take for people complaining about darker themes in media, massmarket censorship where material doesn't get published because it could offend because most subjects with any weight can offend someone.

I believe that their are some roleplaying games that can reach the level of art, I have seen one or two streamed call of chuthulu games that were genuinely chilling and I have had moments in games I have played that transcended the game and the mechanic and became something more.

Most of the most memorable scenes I have roleplayed or seen were people (pc) standing up in the face of unspeakable darkness and horror and so I have to believe there is a space for such in roleplaying games.

Please chill, people.

The fact that they may or may not have intended all along for Wounded to work the way it's is presented in the Remaster is entirely irrelevant. Unless you're super invested in doing an I-told-you-so dance.

What matters is that these are the Remastered rules. There is no ambiguity whatsoever as to the text of "increase your dying level by 1 (plus your wounded value)". That is just how recovery checks work now, officially. I'm confident the devs know about these discussions, and they'll issue an errata if there actually was a mistake.

You may choose to play them in a different fashion, and I wouldn't judge anyone for doing that given most people don't play in the way the Remaster assumes right now.

But please chill.

I agree though there is a little ambiguity still when it comes to taking damage.

But it's clear the intent was to make pathfinder 2e more lethal which hasn't gone down tremendously well with about half the players I play with.

It's a definite pain point one that makes me less inclined to move on to the remaster.

I have played a no weapon caster it was a bard who inspired and intimidated when he was not casting spells and the only time he felt weak was versus golems and people immune to mind effecting though that was just a failure in my build.

So whats interesting is that we now have confirmed that 1 of the main reasons to change cantrips was to nerf the overpowered cantrips at level 1. The mind boggles.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

HUH yeah unexpected, we originally thought it was a replacement for Sudden Bolt.

I wonder if we'll just get some more spell attacks, or if they'll hit the Magus with an errata that makes it not rely on spell attacks.

One thing to keep in mind is that magi have extremely limited slots and are more reliant on their cantrips and focus spells. Ignition is a significant buff for the magus with how it boosts their basic routine compared to produce flame, while thunderstrike is much better for classes like the wizard, who are significantly more reliant on their slotted spells.

Giving too micro a look at a specific interaction can lead to missing a broader macro picture where each kind of class and character got buffs in the places they most needed it.

I see Magus mulitclassing into pychics for access to repeatable big damage spellstrikes is going to become even more of fixture of core.

I don't love the wizard class I don't like prepared casters and for the most point I find the classes feat to be fairly dull.

But I don't get people casting it as a
a weak class, it has the most spells per day over every class and access to a great list of spells from 1- 10 at later levels a wizard could easily have multiple encounter defining spells per encounter.

It is a class the particularly struggles at low levels before spells get good (all of its class power is in spells rather than unique actions and focus powers) but that isn't a unique problem for wizards and from level 7 plus it's one of the strongest casters in the game.

So while the wizard may not have the prettiest exteriors or be that fun to drive but it's motor is solid prescion engineering and will get you where you need to go.

To summarise the wizards fundamentals are fine it could do with some glitz and a fancy paint job.

I am not a fan of prepared spell casting in pathfinder since 1e I have ended up keeping a similar spell liar each day so I didn't drive myself mad trying think about the perfect combination of spells. I do that for spontaneous too but at least that's once per level only.

Wizards were and are the most prepared spellcaster in the game, they are to put it bluntly the highest effort spellcaster to run and if you got your preparations wrong one of the most frustrating to play.

But people like that about them. Any change that would make them less teeth grindy for me would deprive wizard players of their fun.

So who agrees with me that spontaneous casting is easier, funner and possibly more powerful because of the amount of choice you have for each spell slot on the spur of moment.

Or who likes micromanaging a big list of spells each morning to find the ultimate combination ?

Ps this is a mostly tongue and cheek post inspired by the anamist and kinetesist getting me thinking about different styles of spell preparation.

So there are a couple of quality of life changes I think would make the anamist funner to play.

First letting them you wisdom for thier granted lore skills will do a lot to see those skills used.

Second making them a 3 slot prepared caster who can sacrafice spell slots of equal level to cast apparition spells (like the Cleric could do for cure spells in 1e) would make the tracking a little easier rather than having two different sets of spell slots.

I think adding the flourish trait to some of the vessel spells would also stop people stacking earth's bile in an unsightly fashion.

Pronate11 wrote:

Super Zero wrote:

But my question is, what does that even mean?

How do you "remove" a big chunk from a book that's already been published?

Scissors

It's a goofy thread, generally, since it's just not how publishing works.

I don't think we should jump on the OP too much for being unfamiliar with that, though. Do we need to continue this thread, given that seems to be resolved?

I have been following a playtest for another game and that experience has given me a great desire to praise paizo at every opportunity for taking risks and breaking moulds. So even if the kinetesist lack a tiny little bit of polish I will take thr opportunity to sing it's praises when they arise.

So what may not have been apparent from opening is I am in favour of monsters having exploitable weakness and resistances that means you can't use the same tactics on all monsters.

Ideally I would want most monsters to resist some damage types and be vulnerable to others and have a strong, weak and average saves.

For example oozes should be cool because they force martials to change up how they approach a fight, but because there are not enough monsters like oozes a lot of players don't have different weapons for different occasions. So oozes can feel mean in the same way that golems can feel mean in that they can be encounters were one or more party member can't contribute at all.

But if there were more monsters with weaknesses to specific physical and elemental damage types then everyone would diversify their approaches and a whole lot more of the diverse tools that exist in the game would see use.

I'm sure not the only one here, but I think the keneticist should go back to testing. Or rather back to the polishing table.

There are quite a few things that need to be addressed on how things work. This makes the current form seem a bit too rough for my liking.

I am new to pizo, so I am not sure this is the norm when it some to newly added classes.

No it's a good class and I and a lot of people are really happy with it. But if you had said that about the alchemist I would have agreed ;)

So there is a big post about the nature of wizards and how they are balanced around the expectation that wizards can always target every defence.

I don't want to go to much into either the logistics of that both in terms of spell lists or the knowledge to prepare the right spell for the right day.

But if save jan-ken-pon is meant to be what wizards are about then I find it really frustrating that their are a lot of monsters with very similar defences so you can't really play the game to your advantage and also their are a lot of enemies with immunities to the majority of the things their weak save protects against.

For example I recalled on a monster and the gm informed me that will was its weakest saves which seems really cool and useful information apart from the fact the monster was mindless and immune to all mind-effecting effects which are 90% of all will saves (and all of the will saves I had prepared), which was a little bit frustrating and a near complete waste of action.

So what do people think, do you as a wizard successfully target enemies weak saves most of the time and how often do you manage to find a weak save to target ?

pixierose wrote:

I think the fighters power is a bit exaggerated. Most other martials get riders to damage of some kind that make their attacks hit harder, fighters lack that in exchange for the accuracy, an accuracy that is still affected by the dice rolls.

White room testing has its value but so does actual play, and from personal experience I've had combats or whole sessions where the fighters accuracy boost did not save it from bad rolls. This is a major outlier, but I do recall the time my level 5 fighter wiffed their entire turn and their friendly neighborhood paladin crit 3 times in a row.
The developers also feel as if fighters are qoeking as intended.

Are you really going to sit here and use an anecdote to excuse the disgusting mess that is an Improve Knockdown Fighter? Show me any single action in the game as efficient as a Fighter knocking a boss flat on their back while dealing damage.

Whirlwind Attack/swipe on 2 or more enemies, lava leap (raise shield , leap, area effect explosion), double slice (on enemies with resistance), synesthesia, level 6 slow etc

For out of combat healing from the moment you get continuous recovery you can at least I the games I play be full between encounters.

The focus spell definitely dilates the time this takes.

As to whether that affect balance that's very much going to be game dependant. Is the difference between healing up for ten minutes rather than an hour going to change anything is going to be entirely game dependant.

When your 1-action Sustain has more impact than being able to cast another different 3-action spell all while not having to spend any spell slots or additional Focus Points (which is functionally true for all of the sustained Focus Spells that people are actually talking about) then the point that "well if they sustain they cant use their limited existing actual spell slots for 3-action spells" is completely moot. The Animist gets MORE power out of taking Stride + Sustain for the 1 Focus Point they spent last round or the round before that or the round before that than pretty much any other caster gets for spending the whole turn NOT moving and casting a 3-action spell. That's the issue and why it isn't balanced, and yet, we STILL have people begging for a free action Sustain Feat for Animist, it's bonkers.

That's hyperbole, the 1 action cantrips are some of the strongest 1 actions abilities in the game but they don't compare with the best two action abilities in the game let alone 3.

For wildshape in particular your choosing between spending two actions on round 1 or 1 per round so in fights longer than 3 rounds it's not as action efficient. So with give an take I would rate it as fairly equivalent.

I think once you have used the impulse junction to improve the damage of an impulse it stays improved.

My take on the wording was that if you some how managed to get two two action impulses a turn you couldnt get the impulse junction twice.

keftiu wrote:

Given the choice between classes like the PF2 core Alchemist and Monk or classes like the Kineticist, I'm taking the latter every day of the week.

EDIT: To be less snide - I don't think a dev team growing the confidence to try new things as we hit the five year point in a complex game's lifespan is a sign of the end times. My hope is that the Remaster helps everyone else feel as cool as the new options have been for the last little while, because it's been clear not everybody's at par for a long time now.

Can you expound upon that?

Why would you take the Kineticist over the Alchemist or Monk?

I am not sure what their beef with monks are (though I suppose if you want to be a elemental monk kinetesist does it better)

But alchemist as a class is one with many problems it's overly complex, it's power is utterly situational and massively requires forknowledge of what your up against and your not the best at anything other than making items.

For mythic stuff I want to feel like Hercules or Chuchulain.

Leaping hundreds of feet, throwing building size boulders, causing an earthquake with a mighty stomp (admittedly the barbarian can do this already). Dancing on top of the edge of a blade.

I am not sure how you could do that without affecting the balance of the game and I am certain I am going to be disappointed.

But unreasonable expectations aside I am looking forward to see what they come up with.

Lots of answers in the time to make a single graph.

So, here's the comparison.

I've considered 2 actions, as this is the most common situation in actual play.

I've finally chosen the Tome Implement. First, because the Intensification is better. Also because it's no Status bonus so it kills the discussion about buffs.
I've used either Exploit or Intensify Vulnerability every round, with 50% one and 50% the other (@shroudb: which I think is close to what you should get with this Thaumaturge considering you need only one action to attack every round).
I haven't been able to properly map Exploit Vulnerability, so I've considered Personal Antithesis damage bonus only (which should be the most common situation anyway).
I haven't taken into account the +1 circumstance bonus to your first attack from Tome Adept as it depends on a RK check. That's a significant bonus but I really don't see how I could map it.
At level 17, the Tome gives a +2 circumstance bonus to all your attacks. At that stage your damage should be crazy.
At level 19, you get Exploit/Intensify Vulnerability as a free action. I've tried to map it, but poorly considering that it affects the benefit of Intensify Vulnerability. The level 19-20 graphs are far lower than they should, when you succeed at your RK check and with Ki Strike you should outdamage the Fighter 2 to 1.

This build uses a d8 Unarmed Attack like Goblin Jaws or Kashrishi Horn. It needs Monk Dedication, Ki Strike and Flurry of Blows. I consider Diverse Lore and Sympathetic Vulnerabilities as basic additions, the first one because it's broken and synergizes with the Tome, the second one because it makes it easier to handle Intensify Vulnerability. Grabbing extra Focus Points is also something to consider as it fuels Ki Strike.

About reactions, the Thaumaturge can get nice ones and an extra reaction at level 14. The Weapon one is close to AoO but is limited to the target of your Exploit Vulnerability, so I think grabbing Stand Still...

Are you making sure only to apply vunerability once with flurry of blows? That was always my frustration with the thaumurge monk setup.

I've worked for 10 years in the video game industry and I can assure you of one thing: I've never seen a single game designer that was considering power creep positively. For sure, there are some games around there with power creep as a core design component but they are the exceptions not the rule. For most games, power creep is an undesired by-product of game design. Still, it's quite ubiquitous.

So I open this conversation on power creep, using our preferred hobby as gaming material.

I'll start this conversation with an example: the Magus, as I think it's a perfect illustration of the release cycle of new content.
When the Magus has been released, the overall point of view on the class was that it was way underpowered. Fragile, clunky, with an extremely constrained action economy but no real asset. I've been among the first ones (if not the first one on these boards) to raise concerns about what you could do by combining Spellstrike, True Strike and Fire Ray (as it was before the Psychic was a thing). I remember clearly some criticism I experienced at that time: Using Spellstrike with a Focus Spell grabbed through a Dedication is obvious powergamer shenanigans, no one plays their Magus like that. Roughly a year after, the default expectation for the Magus is to grab a Focus Spell through Dedication and the community point of view on the class has strongly shifted, with at least the Starlit Span being considered close to broken and the melee Magus being much closer to the average power level.

The Magus is the perfect embodiment of the release cycle of new content. When new content is released, players start to get used to it. They don't know the builds and tactics so chances are high that they will play it "badly" from a tactical point of view. Soon, powergamers start to release their guides and builds and tactics. These builds and tactics spread across the community and at some point they become the default way of playing. And it's at that point that you can really assess the true power level of the...

For this fighter beating level 10 build are you including the action cost of a stance and the action cost of exploit vulnerability into the mix. I found when your going all out on a single target most don't survive two turns and those action costs and movement really dip into your budget.

Also if I was comparing a level 10 fighter it would be either two weapons (which feels like it does the most damage) or a reach combat reflexes fighter which does the most damage in practice quite often if anyone is tripping, enlarging etc.

So I am not convinced by the tenth level animist feature that gives you a bunch more sustained spells at level 10.

I would rather the class had a consistent patter throughout. Its not a real problem but its a bit annoying.

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

Mythic rules are categorically NOT an extension of the game past 20th level.

That has me all a little concerned, given how the last set of mythic ruled crushed the already not very big on balance 1E. Me changing to 2E was in large part motivated by the much better game balance. I hope these new rules do not throw that completely out of whack.

I also am concerned I don't think you can do justice to mythic heroes and have them equivalent to equal levelled none mythic heroes.

Having two different level tracks (like mythic in 1e) is in my mind less intuitive than just inflated levels

I don't know about you but their entirely new class animist is a far closer adaption of the pathfinder 1e shaman than the 2e summoner is of the 1e summoner.

With master summoner you get two tenth level spells, 1 ninth and two eighth.

Obviously two tenth level summon spells are still only going to be situationally better than one ninth level spells because of how situational summon spell are.

I dunno. I don't necessarily like hard coded legendary/lair actions.

But in my own campaign one made set piece battles within the pf2e rules and they were amazing.

You want to push your players make a really powerful encounter and turn it into a puzzle rather than something they can brute force

Puzzle encounters are fine as long as the players have all the pieces otherwise they are an exercise in frustration.

As far as New Stuff that kineticist might receive:

- New standard feats: Okay. Sure. Whatever. Classes get new feats sometimes. I don't think it's a big deal one way or the other, though. Like, I look at Gunslinger. That's been out for almost two years. The extra feats that it's gotten in this time, after its core book? They maybe offer a bit of customization, but they aren't really changing the class a lot. So I'd expect feats like that to show up, and I don't really expect them to matter in a meaningful way.

- New Elements: They could certainly add new elements without breaking balance. On the other hand, adding new elements properly is going to be a significant amount of work, and a not entirely trivial amount of page space. Finding thematic niches that the other elements don't cover isn't necessarily going to be trivial. Mostly, here, I don't see the need. If Paizo wants to do it, cool. No problem. To my eyes, though, it's significant effort for questionable payoff... and that's before we get into the bit about it straining the currently perfectly-balanced thematics of the class. Still, like I said, it's not like I'm unwillign to enjoy new elements if they *do* show up.

- New kinds of junctions: Technically possible. Could easily run into balance issues. Might be interesting if done well. Seems really unlikely.

- Alternate junction options (like, say, a variant water impulse junction that did some other thing, where you had to pick one or the other): See "new kinds of junctions".

- Additional impulses in existing elements: Here's where I take issue. This is something that it's very easy to want, and it seems like it should be possible without power creep, but it just isn't so. There are a lot of constraints on the impulse options of the standard two-element Kineticist that are fundamentally part of the balance of the class. If Kineticist was weak, then sprinkling in 3-6 more impulses per element would be a really straightforward way to buff the...

I am not convinced that adding more impulse feats would be anymore of an issue for balance than creating more spells which we have seen dozens of already. You still have a limited amount of impulses you can pick. Honestly given impulses are in most cases inferior to equivalent spells (but not all) I think you should be worrying about spells far more.

I am not convinced it would be fridging which indicates a women is killed for the emotional impact that will have on their loved ones. If someone kills any of the gods that will be because of what they represent, their portfolio, their power, none of the gods will ever be just a love interest. Their death who ever it is is going to be far more universe event like the death of Archbishop Franz Ferdinand than Alex Dewitt stuffed in a fridge to ruin Guy Gardeners day.

About the OP. The feeling I had is that he is looking for faults in the class, which honestly turned out very well in my opinion.

The
Captain Morgan already responded perfect it and Golem Anti-magic/Will-o-wisp wasn't a problem exclusive of Kineticist but that in practice affects every magic user and depending from interpretation even magic weapons. But it's an issue that will likely go away if it goes into the remaster.

Calliope5431 wrote:

...

Other commonly noticed issues include:

-The fact that kineticist 19 changes the class dramatically and does not interact favorably with having a stance up at all, and it being ambiguous exactly when this happens.

-Fire kineticist aura arguably not working with overflow fire impulses.

-No rules for having impulses as exploration activities

1. I don't think that Final Gate restricting and forcing to choose between it or others Free-Actions that needs to trigger in the beginning of the turn was unintended. Maybe could better explained but I think this is right.

2. Sorry but overflow impulses don't disable the aura effect before they are resolved. Impulses requires aura to work and the Impulse trait is clear about it. If the aura ends during your overflow channeling you will loose the control over it. Theres nothing "arguably not working" here. But yes, I believe that this could be better clarified.

3. In practice don't need specific rules for exploration activities. The lack of a negative and Improvising New Activities already predicts and rules over things that isn't a pre-made exploration activity. Actions and activities are governed from the inside out you can do encounter actions during exploration mode and exploration activities can be made during downtime just the opposite that's forbidden. These are just abstractions to make the GM...

When it comes to final gate they used a a different choice of wording to the other feats it's effects doesn't happen when your turn begins but on your first action. Which adds an element of confusion that probably could have been solved with consistent terminology.

I didn't know we had a pbp forum could someone link me so I can take a look ?

Manifesting your kinetic aura tells the anyone who know what it means that your a kinetesist and what elements you have which is something you might not always want to advertise.

Well, I am also simply asking the question. Noticing the difference in proficiency level gain and discussing it is a worthwhile activity.

A simple change of giving the spellcasting proficiency increase earlier without changing anything else would affect a lot of other areas. Spells often do area effects or otherwise impact multiple targets. Save values are different than Armor Class values. Basic Save results deal half damage when the target succeeds at the save, but Strike does not do partial damage if the attack roll does not exceed AC. There are many differences between martial weapon attacks and casting spells.

So if we are not considering changing proficiency increase level without adjusting other aspects of spellcaster characters, and we are wanting to make the spellcaster characters more similar to martial characters - is that what is actually desired? Do we want to make spellcaster characters more similar to martial characters in many aspects?

Is gaining Expert proficiency earlier something that people are willing to pay for in other aspects of their spellcaster characters? Perhaps a class archetype that gives the proficiency increases at the same rate as a martial character, but limits the selection of spells available to ones that generally only do damage and single round effects. The character idea being that instead of a general spellcaster, this spellcasting character focuses on combat - dealing damage with spells with great accuracy, but struggles to do other things that spellcasters typically do.

If game balance made it necessary for casters to have less chance of their effects working at level 5 and 6 then that balance issue would continue at later levels where due to spells getting better casters get better.

Given 5 and 6 are already not great levels for casters I would prefer a smoother progression.

I believe this is because martial proficiencies are designed to keep pace with enemy AC whereas caster proficiencies are designed to keep pace with enemy saves. Monsters are generally supposed to have at least one low save, per the monster creation rules and AC advances faster generally.

Now this results in spells that target AC generally being weaker, since very few creatures have low AC and your proficiencies are lagging.

If you look the monster building guide creatures saves scale with the proficiency bump at level 6 a level before the proficiency bump happens which seems like an odd choice.

3-Body Problem wrote:

I doubt anything will change given that we see Paizo staff essentially telling caster players to get good on Twitter but it's important that they see our desire for options.

You... may actually need to get good, though. Lots of people in this thread have suggested various mechanics and archetypes you can take advantage of in order to hone in on a particular flavor. Others have carefully explained why certain PF1-isms aren't present in PF2, and how to adjust your approach accordingly. All this advice is being offered up to you, and you're shutting it down and demanding the devs craft bespoke builds for you rather than using the available tools yourself.

I agree that casters as they stand require a disproportionate amount of system mastery to use effectively, making them difficult for new players to approach. I agree that the caster meta feels a bit restrictive due to the limited number of consistently useful spells. But like... people are trying to help you have a good time despite these flaws, and you're ignoring them because kineticists use impulses instead of spell slots and necromancers aren't Pokémon trainers.

So like... part of the problem here is an active refusal to actually learn how to build and play a flavor-forward mage.

I have seen several casters played in such a way that they are nearly completely useless (they cast the wrong spells on the wrong targets and contribute occasionally chip damage and no utility) and can't remember thinking that of any martial I have played with.

I suppose they could just let you have a modifier of 4.5 which would be entirely irrelevant for anything but initiative where it should let you win ties.

But they could have half attribute bonuses like count your attribute as one higher for the purpose of skills.

I'm beginning to suspect that the people losing their marbles about the remaster changes are playing a completely different game than me, or are at least looking at things from a wildly different perspective.

Each new DM represent a completely different game so no surprised there.

The question is fundamentally ill-formed. It makes an unstated assumption that simply isn't true.

Kineticist is, by design, neither. It is its own third thing. "Caster" and "Martial" describe real things in this game with fairly involved definitions, and kineticist isn't either one. Attempting to stretch either to fit is a mistake, and will do more damage to the caster/martial dichotomy than it's worth.

I'd say that prior to this, Thaumaturge and Inventor had chunks of this third thing as well (and Alchemist had a big chunk of its own fourth thing). It's just that there were enough bits of martial in there that we could pretend that it was just a weirdly shaped martial. Kineticist doesn't have any martial or any caster... and personally, I'm very happy about that.

Its the coolest thing about the class.

So for thematic casters I am think the firestarter (fire and cold stuff), the dread necromancer (necromancy and fear stuff), the mentalist (mental stuff), the telikinetic (forced movement, projectiles, crushing hands, shields etc) the traveller (teleportation, flight, forced movement);the dreamer (illusion and conjurations).

Stuff that you could use to tell a story about your powers origins. The problem with these is that you run into the same immunities or strong saves shutting down all your abilities as a package.

I am not sure there is a solution to this or at least not one the Devs have come up with other than don't specialise. Certainly if you look at pyrokinetic in ROE it is still at the mercy of creatures with fire resistance and immunity and no fire trait (devils and some demons and a few other monsters).

Martialmasters wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

I feel sorry for all the caster PCs whose GM forbids buying scrolls to supplement the few slots they have.

Casters can use scrolls, right ? Or is it only a martial thing ?

It's not as great as you think it is in early levels

Unless your DM ignores wealth tables

Hard disagree, my low level casters use a ton of scrolls. More than my high level casters actually as with bigger spell lists I rarely need supplemental casting. Also I have less free hands at high level.

That depends on party setup and wealth in the early game persuading your party that wealth should be spent on consumables rather than permanent items can be quite hard.

Personally I think the biggest spellcasting has is there are a great number of bad spells. I means spells that are not just situational but always rubbish. The difference in power between spells is probably where nine tenths of optimisation still exists. So I don't think that the best spells need to improve I definitely think the worst do otherwise there just traps for those who don't research their spells or have play experience.

If the power level between spells of the same level was a lot closer then we would have a lot less players thinking casters are scop because they chose the wrong spells. We could have curated lists of spells (like the new wizard colleges) that could all be thematic and viable.

But in practice the new schools will live and die based on whether they have a few or more of the few great spells regardless of their flavour or anything else.

Spells are the nearly the only part of the game we still have ivory tower game design where we give people a big bundle of tools of incredibly varying quality and tell them to get on with it.

What I would like to know for those with a lot of good stories is how much of a percentage of their time playing do the good stories represent especially compared to the percentage of time your spells fizzled (high saves and immunities) and you struggled to be effective at all (wrong spell for the job, out of spells due to a long day etc).

Errenor wrote:

Weapons would be nice if you had more free hands. You can get a wand or a scroll rather early, and sometimes having a shield also helps a lot. So such juggling is not always useful.

Laclale♪ wrote:

Message from michael sayre, for remastered rule

Twitter got completely broken and doesn't open without account, so the last parts of the message can't be found.

for those that can't access twitter:

1/4 One of the tricks to playing a slot-based spellcaster in #Pathfinder2e is that you can treat each of your spells like silver bullets. You can create the circumstances to deploy them in, or you can just pull the trigger when the circumstances naturally occur.

2/4 There's not really such a thing as a one-trick pony in PF2. *Every* class has the ability to buff, debuff, and coordinate to some degree. If a wizard has a spell in the chamber for each of the potential circumstances that might arise, all they have to do is be ready to pull.

3/4 When the enemy is frightened and off-guard, pull the trigger on a high-damage attack roll spell! When they're coming in strong, use a save-based spell to have an impact even if they succeed their save. When magic is the wrong tool, buff the fighter or change the terrain!

4/4 PF2 wizards can have an answer for anything, and when they do, there's no better ally to have whether in combat or exploration.

Ah shrodinger's wizard who had always prepared the right spell for the job at right time and had perfect knowledge of when to pull the trigger. But unfortunately shrodinger's wizard is neither Alice nor dead he simply doesn't exist.

It think the change is fine cantrips apart from electric arc were never great and this hasn't changed that. The changes to focus powers should be a far bigger positive for most practitioners than this is a negative.

I'd they wanted elemental overlap to exclude you from taking fork the path in the future it needed to say so with either a requirement asking you need to be a single elemental kinetesist to use the feat or just a line saying so (ala jinx).

A prerequisite only applies to the requirements you must have to meet before accessing a feat. Currently their are no rules for legally taken feats being invalidated by future choice and that's a good president to keep.

We don't want future options invalidating older options it's messier and more likely to lead to confusion. So prerequisites should remain pre and if they want a continuous eligibility check for a feat they should make it a requirement.

Sure. And I am going to put that logic at the end of the list.

You can't use Escape while in a Polymorph Battle form like Animal Form.
You get the benefit of the Horse animal companion while not mounted on it.
You are not able to even attempt strength-based Strike attacks against an incorporeal creature.
You will have a different number of focus points depending on which order you take certain focus spell feats.
Neither Harm or Heal will affect a living, but Negative Healing character like a Dhampir, or Revenant.
You can take a feat that you meet the requirements for, then take a different feat that violates the requirements of the first feat and still be able to use both feats.

Some of those seem very dubious readings of the rules even from a purely raw impression and all of those are bad for the game.

Not forcing someone to retrain a feat they were eligible for at the time they took it is good for the game. It makes character auditing easier rather than forcing you to audit all your features and their relation to each other at all levels. Its not broken interpretation for the most part composite feats aren't better than single element feats so why make things more complicated.

As for the sentinel armor things that isn't anymore of an exploit than picking an option that is good at low level for low level and retraining it to an option that scales or works better at high level at high levels. Which is what a lot of retraining ends up being about and clearly retraining working as intended.

The current rules indicate you meet any prerequisite before taking a feat and when retraining a feat you must meet the prerequisites that applied to the feat at the time you took it.

There is nothing in the wording of the feat that indicates you lose access it you fork the path at later levels which you can do. Unless I am missing a general rule that you must always meet the prerequisites for feats in perpetuity to use them then I think this works just fine.

It also works for me narratively your focus on a single element allows you to learn an edge use of an element that borders on another. Learning how to open your other gates shouldn't cause you to forget what you had already learned of your original element.

A martial's Strike generally does more damage and only costs one action, so it benefits more from true strike. True strike + Strike takes 2 actions, but true strike + takes an entire turn.

True strike is a 1st-rank spell fhat doesn't require any spell DCs, so martials can pick it up fairly easily. True strike cast by a martial, especially one that has a powerful attack, is much deadlier than the same spell cast by a spellcaster.

I am not sure I agree unless the enemies AC is high level +1 extreme or level +2 high onwards most martials will do more damage on average with two hits than a true strike plus strike.

magnuskn wrote:

Knights of Last Call do a deep dive on the Kineticist (4 1/2 hours stream).

I finally finished watching this, and now I can say one thing for sure about this class.

It is stupidly OP!!!

Looks like we have a competitor worthy of Fighter for the best class in the game

That's not the impression I got the class is fairly midrange on any spectrum but coolness. Not as good as a martial as a real martial not as good a caster while their resources are available but they have all-day utility

My take is currently the best thing about being a fire kinetesist is the sweet level resistance to fire and cold effects which stacks with your aura.

Level x 2 resistance is to make fire and cold attacks the most common type of elemental damage in the game a lot less threatning.

Whereas as the other elemental resistance will come up a tenth as often.