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I know this is probably six months too late but can we please not refer to the original or standard campaign as classic . Classic is a word that describes what the core campaign is trying to be and should not be used to distinguish between core and the one with the gunslinging summoners and psionicists in it. Thank you for your cooperation.
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I know this is probably six months too late but can we please not refer to the original or standard campaign as classic . Classic is a word that describes what the core campaign is trying to be and should not be used to distinguish between core and the one with the gunslinging summoners and psionicists in it. Thank you for your cooperation.
No
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Is there any word on what is/is not going to make the cut out of Unchained for PFS play?
I can't seem to find anything in the forums aside from this speculation thread, and I don't want to purchase the thing if it's just gonna be a paperweight when there are so many other offerings begging for my attention?
Thank you for your time!
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Global Organized Play Coordinator
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Is there any word on what is/is not going to make the cut out of Unchained for PFS play?
I can't seem to find anything in the forums aside from this speculation thread, and I don't want to purchase the thing if it's just gonna be a paperweight when there are so many other offerings begging for my attention?
Thank you for your time!
Today's blog when it goes live.
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Today's blog when it goes live.
Is there any word on what is/is not going to make the cut out of Unchained for PFS play?
I can't seem to find anything in the forums aside from this speculation thread, and I don't want to purchase the thing if it's just gonna be a paperweight when there are so many other offerings begging for my attention?
Thank you for your time!
*ducks and covers!* "Holy Moly, wasn't expecting that swift of a response from someone that high on up the food chain! Thank you very much and apologies if it felt like a nag!"
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Eh... yes and no. You could think of it as errata, and that's a valid view, but I tend to think it as an incredibly thorough playtest. It was released, it was played, it was found wanting, and they fixed it.
Earlier in the thread I said that I hadn't seen much of the abuse which is discussed on the forums in my own area. I still stand by that statement. However, that doesn't mean the abuse wasn't possible. To be honest, the encounter difficulty expectations in PFS mean that you don't need something as strong as the APG Summoner to get by. The class can be toned down a bit without really becoming a problem for the player. And if the redesigned class also happens to carry a lot more inbuilt flavor (with one means of still coming up with whatever idea you want)? Well I am all for that.
So the Summoner gets scaled back to better fit the difficulty levels expected of the overall campaign, while the home front GMs can decide for themselves which of the two classes is a better fit for their game. The GM's who already allowed the APG summoner might be more inclined to keep it, seeing Unchained as a book of house rules. Meanwhile, players who didn't have access to summoners before (under GMs who had banned the class) might be able to increase the options and flavor of their game by having a new class become available.
The only people who really lose out are those who were in love with APG summoners but play games under GMs who prefer the Unchained varient, and those who wanted to play Summoner archetypes in PFS. For them, it's a genuinely unfortunately loss. Here's hoping that the upcoming splat books will keep unchained classes in mind, and offer some new archetypes for Summoners and the new Monk.
Tomorrow I'll be able to take my first look at Unchained. I'll be seriously reconsidering the option of rebuilding my level 7 Summoner to the Unchained varient. On the other hand, the level 1 Unchained Monk Weapon Adept I was planning to build... is sad. :(
(Not that I don't understand the decision. Weapon Adept gives a lot of power for practically no trade-off in the new version of the Monk.)
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I don't know they obviously see the summoners class as being utterly broken, so much so they didn't mind insulting 90% of there fanbase by banning before they could have access to the replacement. If it was that bad to begin with then it probably shouldn't have been released to begin with.
I'd be more inclined to agree with you if they didn't grandfather in the existing APG summoners.
So that "90%" is really just people who had a summoner with between 0 and 3 exp. It's honestly a pretty small figure.
But I'm happy to be the 10%!!!
I was wondering does the option to rebuild PFS Rogues also apply to ninjas?
Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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I was wondering does the option to rebuild PFS Rogues also apply to ninjas?
No. Ninja's are regarded as a separate class in this case:
Alternate classes play by their own rules. Otherwise, knight of the sepulcher wouldn't be able to exist, since it alters or replaces abilities that alter or replace paladin abilities.
The ninja is an alternate class and does not interact with the unchained rogue class. There are no "unchained ninjas" in Pathfinder Society Organized Play.So this is saying that a ninja is just an archetype for Rogue. Now if you don't allow the ninja archetype to work with the unchained Rogue that's fine and I accept that decision, but I feel you can't just say that since it's an alternate class it can't work with the rogue changes while allowing rogue archetypes to work with the rogue changes.Sometimes an archetype exchanges
so many class features that it almost becomes a new
class itself. In such cases, the class might warrant a
representation of all of the class features, even those
that it shares with its base class. While still technically
an archetype, characters who play this class have all
the tools they need to advance their character in one
convenient location. The antipaladin, ninja, and samurai
are all examples of an alternate class.
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I don't know they obviously see the summoners class as being utterly broken, so much so they didn't mind insulting 90% of there fanbase by banning before they could have access to the replacement. If it was that bad to begin with then it probably shouldn't have been released to begin with.
If leadership had felt that the summoner class was enough of a disruption to play, they would have banned the class long before work had begun on putting Unchained together. Do they feel that the class needed to be powered down a little? It would seem so. A large portion of the forums seem to agree as well. But broken? They'd have outright banned it from the start. They've done it to more than one archetype or option before.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I don't know they obviously see the summoners class as being utterly broken, so much so they didn't mind insulting 90% of there fanbase by banning before they could have access to the replacement. If it was that bad to begin with then it probably shouldn't have been released to begin with.If leadership had felt that the summoner class was enough of a disruption to play, they would have banned the class long before work had begun on putting Unchained together. Do they feel that the class needed to be powered down a little? It would seem so. A large portion of the forums seem to agree as well. But broken? They'd have outright banned it from the start. They've done it to more than one archetype or option before.
Well, let's just say, that playing something like a fighter on the same table as a summoner with a pouncing Eidolon, at lower levels it can feel a quite unfair.
The new summoner sidesteps some of the more problematic issues (spell list, some evolutions etc. ) re balance the class a bit.I hope that the players of summoners will receive a warmer reception at PFS tables(event though I never had any complaints), and that we can now concentrate on playing more PFS^^
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If your bar for banning things is "makes the fighter feel like crap" then frankly you wont have much left available to play.
Mmmmm... I disagree actually.
There's a good amount of dissonance between what happens at a PFS table and what is said about classes on the forums. The reason the fighter class is considered low tier is that is lacks flexibility. You can build it to fight in a variety of styles, but once built it's pretty limited to fighting only in those styles. And the lack of skills and abilities that affect narrative mean that it only really excells in battle.
That's the gist of the argument used on the forums for why the fighter is a poor class. But at the gaming table, I've seen a different side to fighters. Often the characters who are considered 'broken' aren't those who can affect the narrative focus of the game, but those who deal so much damage that they trivialize encounters. On that front, the fighter is more than capable of being disruptive.
I used to spend a lot of time confusedly rotating between the forums, where fighters are sort of a joke, and the gaming table, where fighters were breaking encounters. Trying to combine the two experiences into the same worldview was really difficult for a while.
Then I realized that in a home game, the ability to affect the narrative means a great deal more than in organized play. In PFS, we use scenarios. There's only so much you can do before the GM either has to railroad you back to the plot or congratulate you on breaking the scenario and end the session. So the ability to use magic to cleverly end an encounter means less. You're still generally going down the path set before you, even if there's a good amount of wiggle room on each side. Also, scenario writers tend to include lots of things in the scenario to prevent players from easily circumventing their encounters. Clever circumventions can just as easily get your character punished as get the party out of the encounter.
So in terms of narrative power, the Fighter is a pretty poor class. In terms of battlefield damage, it's strong. Not the strongest - many classes can be minmaxed to the point of breaking an encounter through sheer offensive firepower - but strong enough (and easily enough built) to own their role in PFS.
In my area, fighters and paladins tend to the mainstay front liners that the rest of group can build around. Barbarians and cavaliers can be tanks as well, but they tend to focus a bit more on charging ahead to do damage. Fighters and paladins are more a reassuring sight to other classes. They form the center of the battle lines that the casters can hide behind and the strikers can use as an anchor to skirmish around.
So Sebastian's point about Eidolons making Fighters feel useless is pretty valid. Unfortunately, there are many classes which can be built to make another class feel useless. APG Summoner just has the ability to do it more easily than most.
EDIT: Partially ninja'd by Chess Pwn, who seems to have a gift for being much more succinct than I ever will.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I recently saw a ninja go to town with a merciful earthbreaker and swap mastery. Instantly dropped the guy.
So a while later we went to wake up and interrogate the guy, and mid-interrogation the player realized that amidst all the extra damage dice he forgot to add the earthbreaker's own 2d6 dice. That would've actually killed the NPC.
So we toyed for a while with the idea of the guy's head suddenly exploding into red sauce while we were talking with him...
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If your bar for banning things is "makes the fighter feel like crap" then frankly you wont have much left available to play.Mmmmm... I disagree actually.
There's a good amount of dissonance between what happens at a PFS table and what is said about classes on the forums.
Agree completely. As someone who plays a lot of Rogues and has never found them lacking, I've had the same cognitive dissonance between what I read here and what I see in actual practice. I just shrug and figure they're playing a different game. (Or maybe I'm just that good.)
Of course, I'm perfectly happy to accept the upgrades to the Unchained Rogue...
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Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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If your bar for banning things is "makes the fighter feel like crap" then frankly you wont have much left available to play.Mmmmm... I disagree actually.
There's a good amount of dissonance between what happens at a PFS table and what is said about classes on the forums.
Agree completely. As someone who plays a lot of Rogues and has never found them lacking, I've had the same cognitive dissonance between what I read here and what I see in actual practice. I just shrug and figure they're playing a different game. (Or maybe I'm just that good.)
Of course, I'm perfectly happy to accept the upgrades to the Unchained Rogue...
Once again we're in complete agreement pH. :)
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Indeed, Jason caught me off guard with just how much damage his ninja does in our last game. :)
Kyras (my ninja) is actually an interesting example of my point. A huge portion of his WBL is dedicated towards equipment that enhances attack, saves, and provides alternate ways to get sneak attack. I put a huge amount of focus on these three areas because these are the areas that the forums point to as traditional weaknesses of the rogue.
As a result, Kyras has very little dedicated to his AC. He relies almost entirely on miss chance for his armor. Once he got improved invisibility at level ten he actually became easier to hit because he could no longer use his wand of mirror image to raise the miss chance higher than 50%.
So I ended up with a rogue varient that has healthy saves, is very accurate (ki and haste gives him 2 extra attacks at his highest BAB), and is probably going to get sneak attack. So he's brutal on offense, but has a 50% of getting hit at best and paper thin defenses at worst. By trying to address the problems of the class that get pointed to by the forums, I've created a character who is something of an inverse image of it. Not that the rogue is touted as having excellent defense, but I still can't help but laugh at the irony.
Kyras was my first character, and the one where I spent a good deal of time listening to the forums during his building process. With every character I've created since, I've been doing more and more my own thing. Which is probably a pretty typical experience for new players who find the forums and then get a lot of play experience in their own games.
EDIT: Unrelated to my point, but bless the englightened soul who laid out the difference between a two-hand strength build and a two-weapon dex build. I've lost count of the times when I thought "had I gone with the other build, I'd be a lot less versatile and doing almost no damage right now." I'm a believer. Strength rogue builds have been the way to go. At least for ninjas, who can produce extra attacks using ki. It'll be interesting to see if the Unchained rogue can do with a dex build.
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EDIT: Unrelated to my point, but bless the englightened soul who laid out the difference between a two-hand strength build and a two-weapon dex build. I've lost count of the times when I thought "had I gone with the other build, I'd be a lot less versatile and doing almost no damage right now." I'm a believer. Strength rogue builds have been the way to go. At least for ninjas, who can produce extra attacks using ki. It'll be interesting to see if the Unchained rogue can do with a dex build.
The problem with Dex builds has always been lack of resources. You needed to waste a feat/talent on Finesse. Then you needed to spring for an agile weapon or waste another feat on Dex to damage (that may require a third feat to qualify for). This means you are behind vs the the Stregnth build that didn't need those feats.
Unchained changes that. All rogues now get finesse for free at 1 and dex to damage free at 3. Go with a weapon like the elven branched spear or curve blade, and you can have a very strong dex build with less effort than a swashbuckler.