thenobledrake's page

Mmkay. Yeah, "everything's concealed" doesn't mean you're blind.

Ah yes... because the GM needing to change how they describe things (the thing I said) is the same as your character being blind (the thing you're putting in my mouth).

Nuance really is dead on the internet.

My point is that the GM, especially if running an AP, has a way they intended to describe an area. That description can end up providing information different than what a character would reasonably have, whether it's "there's a green hand painted on the white flag" that should actually be "there's a hand painted on the flag" because darkvision isn't in color (except for when it is), or it's providing details that should be less certain to have been noticed because the flames oracle is cursed to perceive the world differently.

And since the curse is such an integral part of the identity of the class, it seems weird to me if anyone was satisfied with not having it impact the game in every way the mechanics implied that it would. Especially if those people are complaining about the impact of curses being reduced with the remaster version.

>without the whole of the campaign being skewed to account for it, at least

Yeah, I'm gonna have to call citation needed on this statement you keep making. Who hurt you? My curse literally never disrupted the campaign nor required anyone to cater to me. Has anyone else experienced this?

Flames curse in a campaign that isn't hard-locked to close quarters.

Sure, I'm being mildly hyperbolic, but it's just like the old "we have to rest because the caster is out of slots" in that the old curses required special consideration outside the standard for a campaign. I bring up the flames curse because it's one that requires the GM to constantly be altering the descriptions from what they would normally say to what is actually visible to the flames oracle - like the "I have darvision" meme, but in reverse because the GM probably told you something you actually don't see.

Idk, if monster stats are made with the assumption that the item bonuses are there then I don't think numerical bonuses from gear should be a thing. No power from items, just options. The rest of PF2e's entire paradigm is predicated on the chargen build math being out of your hands so item potency seems like a vestigial sacred cow....and I'm always down for tasty burgers

It literally is vestigial.

Its inclusion in PF2 is the result of Paizo asking (the wrong) questions during the playtest and acting on the feedback that they received. The problem is that they asked something along the lines of if people liked magic items being powerful and they received feedback saying yes - but they didn't also ask the important part as to whether people still wanted powerful items with the knowledge that they would not be outside the balance math.

Which is why we get potency runes that you can't do without in the long-term and even more can't get by without striking runes even though even the people that wanted powerful magic items would rather skip them if they're actually required to hit the expected baseline.

Old curses were having strong impact but were coming with strong bonuses.

That's the problem, though.

The bonuses you were supposed to want came alongside the penalties that prevented the class from actually being functional - without the whole of the campaign being skewed to account for it, at least.

A perfectly played remaster Oracle should never engage with their curse

That's just actually wrong because, unlike the prior curse mechanics that were always more bad than good for you despite having really strong benefits, the new cursebound stuff is actually mostly upside given the new curses are actually rather tame.

Plus it's just asinine that we're in a conversation in which someone else is telling me "well then you really didn't want to play oracle in the first place" and you're talking about being dissuaded from using your unique class options because of the minor penalties that come along with it.

Also, equating a rather general backlash to a case of No True Scottsman sounds like an oversimplification, don't you agree?

The oversimplification here is that you've taken my specific response to the specific case of me being told that where I thought I was talking about people that want to play oracle but couldn't because the old mechanics got in their way, I was actually talking about peopel that weren't interested in playing oracle, and decided to pretend that I'm saying that's the only form of people liking the old oracle better.

...but like a third of the curses are so bad you'll rarely want to risk them.

This is exactly where people insisting former oracle was "better" lose me.

All of the new curses are far easier to tolerate in practical campaign scenarios than the former curses are, but there's some kind of mental block making it so that where new curses can be bad because they're hard to deal with old curses are good because they're hard to deal with and that doesn't register as nonsense.

Turning the whole discussion into a kind of No True Scottsman because anybody that had a problem with old oracle's mechanical implementation, and apparently also anyone that thinks the new oracle actually does have the same lore despite mechanical differences, isn't a real oracle fan.

In other words, someone who doesn't want to play the oracle. Like I said.

Now you're arguing semantics, if giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not actually trying to just be deliberately obtuse.

The old version of the class caused hurdles that had to be dealt with in order for anyone to play it and it not be objectively worse than any other available option - so it's basically just gate-keeping to say that only people that went through with playing it anyway "want to play the oracle".

It's not "I'd like to play this class if its mechanics were completely different". It's "I'd like to play this class but it kind of just doesn't really work without being given special treatment" and the fix for that which Paizo came up with was incidentally significantly different mechanics.

...the remaster was clearly aimed at appeasing people who never wanted to touch the class in the first place.

That's kind of an unfair statement.

You're downplaying the people that absolutely did want to touch the oracle, but found it too complicated in terms of making the character actually function within the scope of a campaign that is not catered specifically to them.

The idea can be appealing while the mechanics do more to get in the way - especially once the change in refocus rules made what used to be an advantage of being an oracle no longer applicable.

Just like how many people had issues with the superstition instinct of barbarian because it put a larger degree of burden on the rest of the game around that player's character to make the character fully functional, the pre-remaster oracle was an "I wish that weren't such a pain to make feel good in play" option for many people.

So even if the design was aimed at people that didn't play oracles previously, that doesn't mean it wasn't aimed at making oracle appealing for people that like the idea of the class.

So, by your own admission, the HP of monsters increases proportionately to the damage increase brought about by property runes at those levels?

No. The opposite.

The increase in HP of monsters appears to occur at a steady rate despite that player damage increases occur at particular level ranges.

There is no evidence of an increase design to counter-balance acquisition of a property rune.

If damage runes were part of the baseline there would be an extra increase in creature HP at the levels that they become available, not a steady rate of increase, and especially not a steady rate which trends toward smaller and smaller increases at every level.

Damage runes are absolutely not factored into the assumed baseline.

You can look at the creature building guidelines and see the HP values at various levels and then details like moderate column at level 7 to 8 the maximum of the range goes up by about 20% and then from 8 to 9 goes up by about 20%, but the leaning of those "abouts" switches direction because it goes from slightly more than 20% to slightly less than 20%, where the opposite would be true if the higher damage capability of using property runes that do damage rather than any other property rune available (because you can't actually have both) were influencing HP values.

ABP is in a position where it is both under- and over-stated.

First, it never even remotely claims to be a replacement for all of the magic items in the game, just for the ones that it says it is a replacement for (and tells you not to include if you're using it)

But then it also gives out more than magic items would ever actually give in a standard-rules game because the skill bonuses are more numerous that a player would likely actually choose to have, more potent in at least a few cases because some skills don't have an item in the books that goes up to a +3 bonus, and broader in their application as most items add to a particular skill for particular uses rather than a blanket bonus to every use of the skill. Same goes for Perception bonuses, which ABP presents as a blanket bonus for all Perception checks for all characters where in a standard rules game most characters wouldn't end up with a bonus to Perception at all, and most that do have one would have it be limited to vision-based Perception checks.

So people shouldn't treat the chart as being a list of "must haves", nor as a exhaustive list of what you get if you choose to use the variant rule.

With D&D 5e all the reasons a campaign can fade before reaching higher levels exist.

With PF2e all the reasons a campaign can fade before reaching higher level except for the game mechanically collapsing exist.

As a result, there's a touch more "we made it to high level" moments to be found in the PF2e sphere. It still takes finding a group of people that can keep their schedule well enough to keep their interest and make progress toward that point - a thing I personally struggle with because I'll have a campaign running fine and then be suddenly struck by an unshakeable desire for a complete unrelated thing (often a completely different game) that starts competing for all my mental attention and I usually end up starting out planning it on the side as a "when we're done with our current thing" but it often ends up being that I mention the new thing to the players and they say "let's just do that."

Or I get to a point where I can't figure out what comes next because the new idea won't get out of the way and I have to call the end of a campaign so that I don't run poor quality sessions trying to force it to continue.

...I'm not sure what character would be excited to use a karambit.

A finesse-based rapid attack build that either specifically wants bleed damage (great in campaigns that feature mostly living creatures as opponents) or doesn't have any critical specialization access.

The weapon is a pretty specific intersection of things being a 2-damage type "crit build" knife that is both agile and finesse. So it has a noticeable niche that it fits into, it's just down to whether a player wants to play in that niche or not.

If you're using a d4 weapon, it should be because it's got traits that you are frequently making use of - or if it is a backup weapon for a just-in-case scenario that happens to have come up.

Which is to say that I am not in the position of having never seen someone make the choice to use a d4 weapon. Many players pack a dagger "just in case" but something like a whip can easily be a focal-point of a build.

And I think it's pretty amusing that most of what's being said against treating d4 weapons as viable is basically "if it's not the best, it's useless" false tiering.

Giving the Wizard a 5th slot and doing nothing else wouldn’t fix any of the problems with the class.

It would successfully make them unique. But I would rather have a class more with more mechanical depth and interesting mechanics than just a pile of spell slots.

The Wizard should be so much more than just Generic Spell Slot Man.

While I am mostly of the opinion that there's not a significant problem with the wizard class that needs fixing...

I agree that just throwing more spell slots at it wouldn't really change the situation much. It's not actually the spell slots that are making other classes appealing in ways that makes people question "why play a wizard?", and even if it would make the class more likely for someone to play it I think it falls in the same "yeah, they'd probably jump to the class if you gave it double HP too" boat of stuff that isn't really a good idea even if it does accomplish the goal you're looking for on a surface level.

Where there is currently room to expand the wizard and make it a unique and interesting class... technically wouldn't be entirely unique because a significantly high-level other class could use multi-classing to get it too; feats.

Player Core started us down the road toward wizard being a unique sort of "master of the arcane" by adding in a couple of spellshape feats that do nifty things - but we could certainly use more, and it wouldn't be a horrible change if the wizard class were actually given some interaction with them by default rather than only if you pick a particular thesis.

At least that's my opinion, as spellshape feats tend to have that "I know magic better than you do" kind of feel to them.

On side note can somebody explain why Wizard still get less basic trained skills than other intelligence casters even after Remastered.I fail to see any reason behind that

It's one of the weirdest legacy elements left in the game since it was one of the various creations of the D&D 3rd edition team that has just stuck to the game since for some reason.

I've always been a bit confused by it since it clearly wasn't a "well, there should be some downside to casters since we've given them so many other massive buffs" from the design team at the time since it only affected wizards at the time. So it seems like there was some thought that high-intelligence characters should be skilled, but not so skilled that they look more skilled than the "skill focused" classes.

Which is how anything with a heavy focus on having a high intelligence score ended up stuck with a base of 2 skill points so their likely-to-be 4 more from intelligence didn't overshadow a bard's 6 point base or easily match up to a rogue's 8 point base.

I think the only reason that legacy has survived is because the optical illusion that they have a comparable numbers of skills that happens when building an int-based character with a +4 intelligence and any other characters with a +0 intelligence.

The Sorcerer focus spells Angelic Halo and Undead's Blessing, both clash with Sorcerous Potency the class feature. They are still useful because they provide twice the bonus. But this sort of unavoidable conflict in a subclass is going to annoy a lot of people.

It should be changed.

Both focus spells in question also do something else so the "clash" isn't actually making them poor options.

There's no need for a change, no matter how many people might take issue with "but this bonus seems smaller because I already had part of it".

I rate incapacitation spells as inherently worse

Okay... then it's pretty strange to also say;

The kind of effects given the incapacitation trait don't lead to fun or interesting gameplay and I appreciate how much the trait nerfs them

.

The effects are good enough that you're happy to see them nerfed, and yet you're also holding the incapacitation trait against the spell. It's like having your cake and eating it too when it comes to trying to argue that heightened spells aren't obviously less potent than native spells of higher ranks.

Especially when delivered in such a "nah." <refuses to elaborate> fashion.

It's more granular than that. Level 1 and 2 spells are more of an exception, but typically the damage dice are comparable and like heightened slow and heightened fear are spells I would consider as good as the levels they are heightened to for that heightened effect

I'm still not seeing it.

For example, fear heightened is a great spell because of the multiple targets, but it's not really comparable in potency to a debuff like praralysis, blindness, or even agonizing despair which are all natively the level it needs to be heightened to to affect more targets. And if you go further heightened than that the comparison becomes even more obvious that heightening spells isn't given any special "needs to be roughly equal" consideration because it doesn't ever get better than 3rd rank and higher rank spells absolutely do keep getting better.

Similarly, heightened slow doesn't really stack up to something like petrify outside of the "but what if I need to debuff multiple targets?" question.

Both are basically in the same boat as comparing damage dice that do stack up pretty well to area/targeting that clearly doesn't, even though they go the other way around and have better targeting but a noticeably less potent effect upon those targets.

That's even worse...

I mean, sure... but you've completely missed the point.

Since you're seemingly really caught up on the spell slow, the point I was making was that sometimes you're giving up two 1st-rank spells for another slow so you are actually getting a good deal.

thenobledrake wrote:

And the spell blending thesis is most potent when the spells you are preparing in those higher rank slots are actually native to that rank, not when heightening something since heightened spells are naturally not as potent.

I just wanna make a correction here. Mark Seifter on one fo the Roll for Combat streams said explicitly that heightened spells were designed to be just as good as spells of that level (otherwise what is the point?). This isn't 5e, they actually took this into account and looking at the numbers, especially for damage spells, it appears mostly consistent with this claim

If Mark said that, so be it.

...but they missed that mark on a wide variety of spells, so without being told they tried to make heightened spells equal to natively higher level spells, I'd have literally never known.

It seems so obvious that things like breathe fire heightened to 3rd rank are just plain out-done by things like fireball, even though the damage ranges might be similar.

So the wizard paying lower level slots to load up on higher level spells isn't an advantage. It's just a waste of lower level slots.

You're kind of half right here. If you've got a good grasp of which spells are going to actually shine for you when you spend the actions to cast them, giving up 2 for 1 can end up being a bum deal.

What do they get for say doing a level 7 chain lightning versus a level 6? 1d12 damage? What did they give up? Two 3rds? Two slow spells, two hastes, two 6d6 fireballs for an extra 1d12 damage?

Spell Blending for more high level slots isn't much of a gain in PF2. The highest level slots are not clearly the most useful.

This is where the wrong half comes in; if you up two 3rd rank spells to spell blend, you can get a 4th or 5th rank spell out of, not a 7th.

And the spell blending thesis is most potent when the spells you are preparing in those higher rank slots are actually native to that rank, not when heightening something since heightened spells are naturally not as potent.

So it's not a comparison of a 6th or 7th rank chain lightning, it's a comparison of whether the use of two howling blizzard spells (60 foot 10d6 cone with option for 500 foot range 30-foot burst for 3 actions) is better than the use of an eclipse burst spell (2-action 500 foot range 60 foot burst for 8d10 of the same sort of damage, plus 8d4 void, and some extra interactions with light and potential blindness).

And that's just comparing spells of similar use case. Things can be even more worth blending if the higher rank spell you would pick up as a result has a whole different use case that is more likely to come up that day.

...Do you really want to blend away a 6th and a 3rd for a 9th...

And this bit makes it seem like you're not actually familiar with how the spell blending rules work because you explicitly cannot blend slots of differing ranks.

...it means the remaster wizard is a 3.5 slot caster compared to the 4 slot premaster wizard.

It's not actually any different than it was.

The old schools, just like the new schools, had varying degrees of evergreen spells available to them to put into that 4th slot. Having more options to choose from does not necessitate that the options are actually going to be something you'd care to learn, nor that something you learned would remain worth not just putting in your 4th slot but also casting - and that's the thing I think people overlook; that a spell you prepared but were pretty much certainly not going to spend the time casting is functionally the same as not having that spell prepared.

Question.

The problem people have with the 4th slot being curriculum based.

Is this an issue that has come up in playing the class for you or is it the idea of it that keeps you from wanting to play the class?

This distinction is big.
If you are playing a wizard you will likely pick a school with spells you mostly want and I dont think in practice the issue will be as big a deal as its being made out to be here.

As more schools options are made more choices of lists will be available and this problem of I dont like what i have to slot in the 4th slot will be kind of moot.

The only problem encountered during play with the 4th slot being limited is that sometimes what you can put into a particular slot isn't actually all that useful to actually cast.

But even then, it tends to be a problem that is mostly in the realm of perception because the thing causing the spell you can prepare to not seem useful is that it is lower rank and dependent upon heightening to stay relevant, and that is a thing that would apply to most spells. It just feels different to definitely not be able to stick one of the few "evergreen" spells into that slot even if you do happen to have it in your book.

Also, this thread is falling into the trap of overcharging the Wizard for the concept of prepared casting when it’s not exclusive to the Wizard.

As a wizard fan myself and someone that thinks the PF2 remastered wizard is good enough (yes, other casters are better in general, but unless things are identical something is going to be better than something else - so long as everything is good enough I'm happy), this is something I can agree with.

The spellbook limitation used to make sense because the arcane list was more diverse and potent than other lists, but over numerous editions and games through the decades expansion and improvement has happened that puts the current state in PF2 that unless you're looking for healing/recovery the spell lists are pretty close to equal.

Now, however, if you look at a particular build idea for a wizard there's a solid chance you could use the same idea and build a druid or sorcerer or psychic (or kineticist) and come away with a more satisfying (and if druid also more versatile) version of the build.

The unique thing a wizard gets is to have more of the highest rank of spells per day than other classes do, even if only just barely. Yet since spells are far more balanced and reasonable things that doesn't feel like it is entirely well-balanced against other prepared casters being better at "you can change your list every day to suit the circumstances" since they get all common spells on their list to choose from and non-prepared casters being better at casting a useful spell more times per day because they don't have to prepare multiple castings.

It's just also not so much of an unfairness as to be worth the risk of over-correcting, in my opinion at least, since there isn't any obvious change to make that doesn't just make wizard the clearly better option.

If I'm not mistaken, those charts express (close to) the same thing in different ways.

That's kind of inaccurate.

The first charts shows what a GM should be handing out at each level and some of that will be lasting but some of it will get spend in some way so going by 100% of that chart would be inaccurate to what a character actually should have at any given point.

The second chart gives a starting level that is intentionally lower.

To see the (nebulously defined at best) actual value of stuff a character should have at any given point you have to read the accompanying guidance on those two charts to see that a character "should be a bit higher" (GM core page 60, last paragraph) than the second chart.

This feels like it could easily be the start of a thing like how flying ancestries showed up with a harder time having unlimited flight and then later on changes were made to make it easier to get to that.

Because it really doesn't seem like anything short of giving away the benefit of heavy armor without some kind of penalty you can't get around is actually unfair even though the particulars of the ABC ability boost system made it incidentally impossible to reach optimal AC for some builds. As pointed out there are already a lot of ways to reach that AC sooner than presumed, and that's without including that rolled scores can do it even with the reduced boosts given with that optional rule or bringing gradual increases optional rule into the mix where basically any build can reach their optimal AC value sooner thanks to being able to lead with a boost to dexterity.

It's a "yes, but also no" kind of situation.

Your large backpack still only ignores 2 bulk and can't carry 5 bulk, but there's a good chance the items you're putting in that pack are ending up with their bulk classification altered because you're a large creature.

For example, the standard adventurer's pack; the backpack itself, bedroll, rations, waterskin, and arguably the soap would be scaled to your size and thus take the same equivalent of bulk as medium-scaled items would for a medium character, but the chalk, flint and steel, rope, and torches don't need to be large sized so they would be considered negligible to you even if they wouldn't normally be considered that for a medium character.

Then when you go putting other stuff in you follow that same procedure, so while a medium creature's backpack could be stuffed to the brim with 49 potions, a large creature's backpack could hold however many the GM decides to be willing to allow because their bulk would each be "-" rather than "L" since they don't need to be scaled to the size of the creature using them.

The question of how much air is lost is an ambiguity unintentionally created by the remaster removing discreet components from spells and making them all normally require some manner of speaking.

The fact that the loss of rounds of air is timed to the end of the characters turn does help this situation in that if you cut yourself free in a single turn or provide yourself a way to no longer be suffocating that is complete prior to the end of your turn, you're no longer suffocating by the time you'd lose any rounds of air.

However, that's not the only problem when it comes to trying to get free of having been swallowed whole; many of the rupture values in the game are so high that since the damage is required in a single attack or spell only a character specifically built toward the particular options that can be used actually has any chance of cutting themselves free.

For example, the classic adventurer-eating monster the Cave Worm has a rupture value of 24. A character at 13th level being able to do 24 damage in a single attack or spell with a light weapon or unarmed attack is basically out of luck with a not fully-powered option in one of those lanes. If you have for example a fighter that is trying to use their backup weapon and is looking at 2d6+9 if they picked a back-up that is within their main weapon category, which means they can only rupture on a critical hit.

Why is it preserved? It looks like the 3-action target section completely overrides the spell's Targets section.

It's not preserved, and it shouldn't be... but some people have the expectation that the text wouldn't just say "all living targets" if it meant all living targets, it'd add on some redundant explicit phrasing like "all living targets even if unwilling".

How is that Shadow Signet ring doing?

It remains unpicked by myself or any of my players because it is a means to cover for a failing we do not often experience. It is training wheels and we're all comfortable riding a bike.

...I know it is the optimal option 90 percent plus of the time if not higher.

Then it shouldn't be impossible for you to tell me whether a ghost commoner is a more common enemy to face than an ogre glutton or vice versa... and yet... numerous posts back and forth and not once have you done anything to show me how the game, not your own personal preferences, has shown you how to properly weight enemy usage rates so that you can produce the "90 percent plus" number by means of anything other than an extraction from your own posterior.

So go sell what you're selling to someone else who plays this game based on what they want to believe versus how the mechanics work.

Because the only possibilities are to agree with you or to not care at all about mechanics... of course there's no possibility you could be confident and yet mistaken. Totally impossible. You're definitely infallible because of your experience despite that you're disagreeing with people that are also significantly experienced.

"there's nothing you can say to convince me" isn't actually the good state to be in that you're treating it as. But if you really aren't even remotely possibly going to have your mind expanded by this conversation, please stop responding to my posts - if you continue to respond I'll have to take the claim that you will never change your mind as hyperbole and assume you're still seeking understanding, and I will continue to respond as the whole reason I'm engaging in public discourse about something is because maybe I will change my mind - y'know, kind of the point of the whole process.

Having played most of the 2e AP's and a couple of custom campaigns, sorry, no, tripping has always proven to be the overall top go-to tactic.

You're mixing up having the sample size you've personally had experience with and the actual full range of data.

Because there is no meaningful designator that makes the campaigns you have experienced "the ones the game considers normal" and any campaigns that people could experience that you haven't experienced but the game also supports "the ones the game considers weird."

They are all just the work of some GM (because even the authors of the APs are just some GM) that picked out what they wanted to pick out to suit the idea they had for a campaign, just like if someone out there somewhere in the hobby decided to run a campaign that literally only uses undead as adversaries just because they felt that was a cool idea - that's not actually a "weird" campaign; it's a theme just like any other that any GM might choose to use.

That's where my problem with "most of the time this build is optimal" arguments; we're not all actually playing the same campaigns, and there's no info in the books that backs up "most of the time." as anything different than "depending on GM preference."

Which is why no one has ever even bothered to try and answer my prior question of which monster is more likely to be faced by a party of 4th-level characters, an ogre glutton or a ghost commoner; because there is no objective data on that kind of detail.

How do you reconcile this assertion with the reality that people don't actually seem to have nearly as much trouble discussing assumptions, baselines, or norms as you seem to suggest they should?

Most discussions I've seen involve people that use accurate terminology; they say stuff along the lines of "in a campaign where this situation occurs frequently this option will be potent" rather than actually saying things in the kind of phrasing that I'm arguing against in this thread of "this is the best option in most campaigns".

Most people can understand the importance of the difference between what we can say (what the creatures in the books look like, even the percentage of each which have a particular trait) and what we can't say (which creatures players are going to encounter more often than others).

Most people also don't land on the attitude some folks in this thread have of insisting their view of a "normal" campaign is objectively correct and anything that deviates is "unusual" even though both are literally identical in terms of the GM that set them up choosing whatever they felt like choosing.

Most people also understand that APs are just an example of what some GM chose to do, and not actually the same as each other to meaningful enough degree to treat as "this is what's normal and everything else is unusual", nor intended by Paizo or the authors to be anything more than just one possible adventure (which is why they don't all follow the same patterns in the first place).

You yourself accidentally allude to this, when you point out that random distributions and global averages aren't helpful because certain monsters might be used more often than others.

There's nothing accidental about that. It's hard to make the point "Which creatures a GM uses more often than others is up to that GM, not something the book instructs the GM to do" without acknowledging that some creatures will get used more often than others.

It doesn't at all undercut the point I'm making, either, since even though each GM individually can say whether they use an Ogre more or a Ghost more that doesn't mean the game book actually told any GM which one they are supposed to use more and doesn't create any kind of guarantee that a player can use to make a build decision independent of knowing their GM and the campaign in particular and land on a good answer.

Yeah I'm baffled this doesn't even have Overflow or something on it. Just "I can spam this spell infinitely with it auto-heightening" vs how limited it is for an actual spellcaster trying to use it.

The situation here starts with protector tree not really being a good spell; there are other protective spells that work regardless of positioning, those that can work on you (the caster) if you need them too, and as a result aren't as likely to just not actually do anything.

Then it gets used as an impulse and needs some kind of buff as a result, thus it can be used over and over (but just one active tree at a time). That does seem like a big boost in power, but it still comes with all the limitations - which are best highlighted by the fact that in most parties you can't win the encounter by huddling around the tree, you need to go after your enemies if they move so you'd need to be not adjacent to the tree to fight them, which while is technically "the GM working around it" it is not to a degree that is actually unreasonable from an in-character perspective when compared to any other detail that would lead to favoring a particular target or strategy.

And imagine how a player would view the ability if it were overflow; they use the impulse, the fight moves away from the tree or the enemy happens to just focus on attacking the tree-maker because that's crazy magic, so they've got to re-channel their elements and have nothing to show for it. It'd be enough that people would skip the ability entirely.

So basically, we're stuck between the available degrees because it might technically be too potent right now but only just barely, but there's no room to make it less potent without over-correcting because even just making it take another action would put it solidly in the "that sucks I'm not gonna use it" bucket.

That said I find Point Blank Shot awkward for throwers. You could hold a broken bow in your spare hand and retain the Stance while throwing with your other, but if you set that bow down, you lose the Stance as soon as you release to throw or perhaps more pertinent to this discussion, as soon as you weren't throwing it so it became a melee weapon. (Not that I'd necessarily enforce that, but I do wish to know RAI re: PBS & thrown weapons.)

It's true that it is a bit awkward that the stance works just fine if you're holding a dart you never intend to throw in one hand and doing all your throwing with the other hand, but if you're trying to use a variety of thrown weapon that isn't on the ranged weapon table things grow far more complicated.

...the majority of the time...

That's what makes you wrong.

There is no way to establish which scenarios are more frequent than others because there is no guidance presence in the game that says which enemies the GM should choose to use most often.

The math is a variable, and you're making an error by using a set value that you made up. To illustrate, let's talk about "average reflex DC";

How is average reflex DC calculated in order to know the average success chance of a trip attempt? Do we look at the creature building guidelines to see what the values are for a reflex modifier at various levels on the chart? If we do, our math is inherently flawed because the game makes no guarantee that the selection of enemies actually faced will result in that exact value.

Do we instead look at all existing creature stat blocks and find an average by adding together all the values and dividing by the number of creatures? If we do, our math is inherently flawed again because there are not actually any guarantees the game makes that we will face a non-weighted random distribution of any available creature the the selection of enemies actually faced may result in a different average.

So what does that leave? Using the set of creatures that the GM has actually selected to use in the campaign, weighting their values to match how often the GM is going to use them. That's the only way to get an actually accurate number - but it's also something we can't completely know going into building a character because the GM probably only has a general theme to share and isn't actually running the numbers for every creature across any particular level of their specific campaign.

Which means what? That we can make statements and be accurate if they take the form of "this option will be optimal within situations such as this" like "slam down is optimal against enemies susceptible to trip and without significant resistance to the type of damage your weapon does or higher reflex DCs."

But we can't accurate say how often those situations will be encountered. We can't actually say what kind of encounter or campaign themes are "exceptionally rare" And there is no difference between one selection of creatures and the next that makes one "just picking monsters like regular" and the other "extreme DM manipulation".

Which is why trying to say "this is the optimal choice for this class" is at best arriving at the correct answer while having done all the wrong work to get there, and more often than that is just a nonsense statement because there is no "common spread of enemies"; GMs pick whatever with no particular weighting besides their own preferences.

Unless, of course, you've got a citation to some part of the books that I have missed which says otherwise. Any little blurbs saying which creatures to favor picking you want to point me towards? Something which says leaning toward larger-sized creatures and thus making trip builds less likely to work (until options that don't invoke the actual trip mechanics come into play) is "extreme DM manipulation" and not just an equally valid stylistic choice to not doing that, perhaps?

If you're playing in a campaign with lots of incorporeal creatures, then the slam down build isn't likely to be optimal, though a two-hander fighter may still be very good.

Which is why calling the slam down build optimal outside of knowing campaign particulars will never make sense

Regardless of what you want to believe, class optimization works and works very, very well. It is an empirically driven process that very much leads to high performance play.

Regardless of what you want to believe, there is no way to determine the performance of a particular build other than to put it up against variables that are campaign dependent.

How often does trip succeed? Depends on the campaign.
How will an opponent respond to being tripped? Depends on the campaign
How often will you face each type of enemy that you face? Depends on the campaign.

Yet you arrive at both the conclusion that "most of the time" is measurable and supports your claim and the absolutely obnoxious attitude that you are empirically correct and everyone else is actually not even interest in optimization.

And you triple-down on the obnoxious superior attitude by being dismissive and derisive towards everyone else with your "that's not your cup of tea" sort of statements that show you won't even entertain the idea that someone else could be optimization-interested and still think you are wrong because you pretend you don't need to know the campaign the character will be in to know what will be the optimal choices to make for it.

Most APs...

Have a booklet that explicitly exists just to guide players in making choices for their characters so as to not end up picking options which are less effective because of the parameters of the campaign.

Which even though playing an AP is not the "DEFAULT" still aligns perfectly with what I've been saying and disproves the idea that there is a way to say "this is usual, but that isn't" because the APs are all over the place in terms of what is or isn't useful for that campaign.

For example, let's look at a gunslinger I played. A pistolero with the marshall archetype so I could demoralize, feint via pistol twirling, and crank up the critical hit chance. A character that would perform excellently in a campaign other than Outlaws of Alkenstar because that AP happens to use a significant number of mindless enemies.

no one's tried to argue with Deriven on its performance, just on the concept of optimization.

Because Deriven is only wrong by failing to account for campaigns being inherently variable.

The Slam Down build is powerful, that's not in dispute. What is in dispute is that if you play the Slam Down build in a campaign that the outcomes are a binary of A) it is the optimal choice, and B) the GM is doing something "unusual".

The rest of us are saying that whether the Slam Down build is the best choice or not depends on campaign particulars, just like anything else, so declaring it the objectively most optimal kind of fighter is absolute nonsense. It's like saying a fighter will objectively have a 60% chance of a hit or better on an attack - even if it's true of one campaign, it's not guaranteed to be true of all campaigns, and that it can be true of any campaign should not be confused for that being the only thing that is just as likely to be true.

When you change the default assumptions of how a game is played...

The default assumption does not allow for designation of some campaigns as "normal" and others as "unusual".

They are all just as much whatever the GM decided to set up.

Campaign optimization is different from class optimization.

Yeah, in that the former is a real and meaningful thing and the latter is at best a fool's errand because how well any given option available to a class performs depends upon campaign particulars - like how effective Slam Down will be depending on how high the AC and Reflex DC of your enemies are going to be.

The very fact that you wouldn't even play a martial in a particular campaign shows that you acknowledge the extreme case that results from this reality. That you can't see that there is a less extreme case in which a martial is still a high-performing option, perhaps even still the highest-performing option, but that favors a different feat over Slam Down is a Dunning-Kruger-esque blind spot.

You use the outrageous example of the all-ooze campaign, which is a highly specialized kind of game that the players should know about and build for, because it nullifies the Slam Down build.

It's not "outrageous" it's just one example of many that are equally likely. It's also not the only situation in which the Slam Down build is less useful than it might otherwise be.

There is also, again, no debate that players shouldn't know campaign style before building their character. So your continued implication that anyone is talking about blindsiding players is just proof that you're not participating in the discussion in good faith.

The point of making the example of the ooze-heavy campaign is the same reason I asked whether it was more normal to face an ogre or a ghost; that the campaign particulars are so integral in determining what is optimal that there is no way to call a character optimal without knowing them.

Then you're retreating to the "normal variation in campaigns" position, trying to pretend that you don't know that hyper-focus on one creature type is a specialized game.

Every campaign is equally "specialized" as a direct result of the nature of the game being that the GM picks enemies by their own choice of parameters and priorities.

"normal variation" covers every possible configuration.

A "usual campaign" is one where you can show up with a generically useful character sheet and expect not to hit a brick wall because the nature of the campaign invalidates your choices.

Then there is no such thing as a "usual campaign" because there is no such thing as a character that will not possibly get "hard countered" by having been created independent of knowing campaign styling in advance.

And again I ask where in the books you find any evidence that the GM is told what ratio of enemies vulnerable to which tactics is the baseline from which you are determining "generically useful", because you're really just treating your conclusion as sufficient evidence for itself so your counter to my claim of "an ogre glutton and a ghost commoner are equally likely to show up in a campaign" appears to be "nuh uh".

For decades, the advice has been that if a GM lets you sit down at a table with a character whose abilities are rendered useless or near-useless by their campaign design, it's their fault for not informing you. That is VERY true in an all-ooze campaign. This is "good faith."

Where you're messing up the argument is that no one is talking about the GM looking at what the player has built and countering that build on purpose or not being upfront and accurate about what sort of campaign they are running.

The rest of us are not arguing that a GM should counter player builds; we are arguing that builds are variable in their effectiveness depending on campaign particulars.

It's you and deriven that are, for some reason, equating "an undead-slaying character works better in an undead-focused campaign and worse in a campaign that has few undead show up" with undead-slaying options being less optimal than other options and trying to frame any GM running an undead-themed campaign as "unusual" or deliberately impairing a character.

How many campaigns have you actually sat in where most encounters consisted of a single creature, specifically one that invalidates certain tactical approaches? I bet it's none. This is "unusual."

My own personal experience, which isn't actually "none" by the way - I've personally participated in campaigns that have only used undead, demons, devils, wizards, and "beasts" (that one meaning vermin, animals, and magical beasts as were the designations at the time) as antagonists - is irrelevant to the discussion because we are not talking about what any particular GM has chosen to do, we are talking about what the game presents as equally valid options to all readers, past, present, and future.

I find the argument of "no book definitions of readily understood terms" to be disingenuous and hostile.

The disingenuous thing going on here is the continual pretense that the claim of a "usual campaign" doesn't need any kind of evidence beyond the claim that everybody knows what it is.

It shouldn't be hard, if you're actually correct, to answer a question like the following; which is a more unusual encounter for a 4th level party, an ogre glutton or ghost commoner?

And then show where the game materials provided information that lead you to that conclusion.

I do so hate it when the burden of proof falls to someone and, not having a strong case, they counter with "the burden of proof is on you."

It never gets anyone anywhere, nor furthers the discussion productively.

Yeah, that's why it's a real bummer that's all that props up the "it's both a melee weapon and a ranged weapon" argument.

Zero cited evidence, just "it doesn't say it doesn't" and a bad comparison to a feature that explicitly uses the word "gain" so there's not even ambiguity that the rules might be talking about a replacement.

You're overselling the point.

In this case, that's functionally impossible.

Because this:

This is a highly specific and unusual choice by the GM

Is not at all true.

No theme, no matter what it is, nor how strongly it is adhered to or diluted by off-theme encounters the GM chooses to make it, is any more "unusual" than any other.

There literally is no such thing as "the usual campaign" in a more specific fashion than "the GM sets up the campaign."

And when you add stuff like:

In a normally designed, good faith campaign

to the discussion you become just as much a problem as Deriven has been being because you are claiming that either a campaign fits the parameters you've chosen to optimize under or else the GM is designing it not in good faith or in an abnormal fashion..

Tell me exactly, with book citations, where the game spells out which encounter designs and monster selections are "good faith" and which aren't, because I have never seen any such thing - it is as normal and good faith for a GM to choose any creature of a given level as it is to choose another, and without something that says otherwise there is no "this is normal design, and everything else isn't."

thenobledrake wrote:

Since the way that rules work is to explain what things do rather than list all the things that they don't

Exactly.

And the rules say it's a melee weapon.

All I'm asking is for you to show me a rule that says that this melee weapon suddenly is no longer a melee weapon.

I don't care what you say about ranged weapons.

If you claim that this melee weapon is somehow not a melee weapon, then you need to show that. That's how the rules work.

The burden here is that you need to find a place where the rules say a weapon can be both a melee weapon and a ranged weapon simultaneously.

Because as I already mentioned everywhere in the rules that talks about the classifications does so with separate language.

So you need to prove that "it is a ranged weapon when thrown." is carrying an implied "also" rather than an implied "instead of a melee weapon." Because it does not say "it is also a ranged weapon when thrown" or even "it counts as a ranged weapon when thrown."

Especially because the language in the combination trait continues the trend of making it clear that things are either a melee weapon or a ranged weapon, not actually both simultaneously, by not just saying "a combination weapon is both a melee weapon and a ranged weapon." and instead making a big deal out of keeping the separation.

Optimizing builds off class strengths. It doesn't care about types of campaigns unless that information becomes relevant.

That information is inherently relevant.

I am still not sure why this is such a hard idea to comprehend or why it turns into these contentious discussions.

It is a hard idea to comprehend because it is incompatible with the reality of the game; you present "the optimal fighter" but the parameters you are treating as constant to arrive at that conclusion are actually variables - you simply dodge reality by saying there is a different sort of optimization (campaign optimization) and acting as though a character exists outside the context of the campaign such that "optimal fighter" and "optimal fighter for a specific campaign" being separate things isn't relevant.

And the conversations turn contentions because you refuse to acknowledge that you are saying that you've got the whole game solved so all the things you're saying are objectively correct and those of us seeing them as subjective or situational at best due to the inherent variability of the game are doing "something else."

Because you're so locked out of entertaining the very concept that you might have arrived at a flawed conclusion you're coming off as saying that you could show up at anyone's campaign and have your character crush the encounters - and if it doesn't it's because the GM "artificially" limited your build, not because there's no such thing as a "normal" campaign.

But yes, the conversation has gone on too long... unfortunately it will never end so long as you continue to post with an attitude like you are the big smart authority with all the correct answers and everyone else are struggling with the "extraordinarily easy to comprehend" concept; that concept being what is or is not optimal (which inherently depends upon campaign specifics for any practical examples).

My builds work at any table unless as you have done what you did above to artificially limit them.

That two-hander trip melee is the best build for a fighter given a common spread of enemies without an artificial constraint to defeat it.

So... anything that doesn't adhere to your expectations is "artificial" or not "a common spread of enemies"?

I guess that would mean you can tell me what "a common spread of enemies" is in specific terms and it won't be literally the same as any arbitrarily selected grouping of creatures? You'll be able to show, step by step and with book references, exactly why those creatures rather than different ones of the same levels are not "artificial" but others would be.

Why you believe that an empirical process can't determine the best options in PF2 is beyond me. It has noting to do with how I run the game or the campaign I play with.

The reason it is "beyond you" appears to be a complete blindspot for the reality that yes, everything you think about the game absolutely does have to do with how you run the game and the campaign you play with.

Because what you are trying to say is that there is a specific set of "normal" parameters for a campaign, and your comments make it clear that this set is not - in your mind - "whatever the GM chooses."

So to you there's a "normal campaign" and an "artificially constrained campaign" where as to reality there are dozens of different equally normal themes for campaigns that have different parameters but are no more or less artificial than any other potentiality because there is no "fighting a dragon right now would be normal, but fighting demons instead is artificially constrained".

To make sure the example is relevant; there's no specifically called-out-by-the-game-as-normal ratio of enemies that are harder to trip you'll be facing. An ooze-heavy adventure is as normal as a goblin-heavy adventure is as normal as a giant-heavy adventure is as normal as literally only ever battling undead.

You merely demonstrated that it is (also) a ranged weapon.

Again, there's no binary rule.

There is, though.

Not in an explicit "a weapon is either melee or ranged, never both" statement, but in the treatment of every statement made about weapons, including the way the tables are set up in regards to weapons.

Most notable in the passages that show that the authors are working on the assumption (whether it's flawed or not) that everyone will understand a weapon is either melee or thrown but never actually both, is the explanation of damage rolls.

"Damage rolls for melee weapons and unarmed attacks typically add your Strength attribute modifier."

"Damage rolls for ranged weapons typically don’t add an attribute modifier, though you add your Strength modifier to damage rolls for thrown weapons or half the modifier to damage rolls for ranged weapons with the propulsive trait."

If we're supposed to read melee weapons with the thrown trait as being always a melee weapon and sometimes also a ranged weapon it wouldn't be worded the way it is. There also probably wouldn't be any thrown weapons on the ranged weapon tables (example: darts) if adding thrown was meant to confer dual status to a weapon because having some thrown weapons be a both-at-once weapon and others only ranged.

And the strongest possible argument against the argument you are making which equates to "the rules don't say I'm wrong"; the rules don't actually say you're correct, either. Nowhere does anything say a weapon can be both a ranged weapon and a melee weapon at the same time.

Since the way that rules work is to explain what things do rather than list all the things that they don't there's just no reason but wishful thinking to believe that the clause in the thrown trait is meaning in addition to remaining a melee weapon rather than instead of.

In particular, this framing of "the DM artificially making your build ineffective" when faced with circumstances that differ from the ones you've grown used to seems to carry with it this baggage of assuming that your way is the normal way, or maybe the correct way.

That's what I was going to point out.

There is nothing "artificial" about one campaign's set up favoring some builds more than others, it is an entirely natural and unavoidable result of the GM setting up the campaign in the first place. And with the game assuming every campaign, even if run by the same GM, is going to have differences (which is the point of their being far more enemy options that anyone could make sense of jamming into every single campaign) the only actually reasonable evidence-based conclusion to draw about character builds is that they too should differ alongside the campaigns they are used in especially if the desire is to have a character be "optimal".

How can you say something like "The best way to build a fighter is make them a trip fighter with knockdown. Take the boosted reactive strike. Knock stuff down, hit it when they get up. This does the most damage." while also acknowledging that you have to adapt to the assumptions of a specific campaign?

It gets even messier when you add in comments in a different thread downplaying the boundless reprisals feat because of how allegedly difficult it is to set up situations to get enough reactions to make it worth taking the feat.

He thinks everyone else should play the way they have fun playing. So please don't put words in my mouth that I did not say.

I apologize that I have made you feel as though I'm taking something from your comments that isn't present behind them.

However, when you say things like:

I'm certainly not going to let someone tell me something is true I know empirically is not true that I've already tested myself. I know what works the best the most often and that's what I care about.

(bold added to highlight the key part) you are heavily implying that you are actually thinking other people would be better off playing the way you play.

Or at the very least treating your own preference for how to play, the unstated "...in campaigns run the way I prefer" that goes at the end of bold section of text above, like it is not just one preference among the many.

And what's "true" is different from table to table, even further highlighting the ways in which everything you say about how the game plays shouldn't just be taken with a grain of salt, it should be outright ignored.

Because you do not "know empirically" how accurate your claims such as how much risk there is to using actions that potentially trigger reactions. There is no such empirical value to be had, it's a known variable - at least to anyone not letting "I've been doing this long enough to know what I'm doing" get in their way of knowing what they are doing.

I think Paizo's intention with property runes that do damage was for people to feel like they weren't a necessity, and to encourage looking at other sorts of properties.

Of course that's a bit of a fool's errand in the first place because damage is the most easy to understand the overall effect of benefit and so many challenges are overcome by stacking up damage until it reaches a particular total, so a lot of people are going to see "this adds damage" vs. "this does something else" and come away thinking the damage is better full stop.

Then limiting damage runes to not being able to stack the same one likely sits in the same headspace design-wise as how personal staves work; the assumption is that there is a theme being built toward, where the player is often actually just wanting, to borrow a phrase from another game, "more dakka".

...I'm going to offer players optimal build options...

Optimal, but only within the narrow vision of how you personally formulate campaigns.

Which means your designation of "optimal" is actually near entirely useless to any reader not playing in your exact campaigns.

It's like if I kept going around posting about how all the best options are the things that can help you in negotiations and diplomacy because I happen to have decided the best campaigns are the ones that focus on running a quaint little business in a well-populated area with guards that normally take care of all the nasty combat situations that would otherwise come up; it's totally fine to run whatever kind of campaign you want, Pathfinder handles a lot of variety, and it's fine to express options as beneficial within a particular set of parameters - but you go too far by presenting your own choice of parameters as "this is the way this game is played" like anyone that arrived at a different conclusion is just "not playing optimally" rather than the reality that others can be playing optimally and differently than you do