No, I can call a spade a spade because I have played the damn class on multiple occasions. It is as tied to Flying Kick as you claim regular Monks are tied to Pummeling Style. If it's not Flying Kicking, it's got absolute crap for mobility.
Anything it wants to do other than "I hit the guy, really, really hard," takes out of a tiny pool of normally non-replenishing power (Minus Ki Leech, which many GM's could reasonably deny as it is an EVIL SPELL. Not my doing, blame Paizo on that one) that fuels everything from their now-terribly weakened ability to resist a pretty common effect in poisons, to their weakened Will saves, to their still-pathetic healing, to... just about anything else, really.
Oh, and by the way, your repeated claim that they should have better will saves than a Wizard or an Oracle are kind of funny. What with still needing Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, AND Wisdom to be useful, they have to prioritize those stats.
Joy. Meanwhile, Bob the Wizard really has nothing better to do than put points into Con and Wisdom after pumping his Intelligence. Ditto for Steve the Oracle.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The irony of saying "it has more build versatility" in the same post as "Flying Kick at 5th and Ki Leech at 10th are f!!#ing NECESSARY" is palpable.
And if you don't take them at those levels, congratulations on your super-weak Brawler.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I really, really like the rogue fix. The summoner fix I'd like a lot more if they hadn't tried to force flavor into it. I don't like having to play a specific type of demon just to get the body type I'm after, you know?
I'm honestly wondering if I can just take the summoner changes except for the eidolon shifts, but I don't know if that would pan out in practice.
I don't normally mind alignment restrictions, but the USummoner's bother me. You can't magically enslave an outsider of another type. You can't have a good character with a devil offering its services while attempting to tempt the character. There's a lot of good concepts that are inaccessible - which annoys me, because I like the subtyped eidolons better too.I'd prefer Chained Summoner with unchained eidolon choices. I liked the chained spell list.Yeah... The unchained Summoner's spell list is great, but its Eidolon options are too restrictive, IMO. Specially the ones with alignment restrictions.
I asked this before in another thread but missed some Unchained changes, thus leading to confusion, so let me try again:
Does anything go wrong with the Summoner if you use a hybrid of Original Summoner and Unchained Summoner, in whih the spell list is Unchained but the Eidolon works pretty much the old way except with the Unchained Evolution Point costs(*), and then Unchained Eidolon is available as an archetype?
(*)I think that this is good enough to leave full compatibility with all of the pre-Unchained archetypes.
EDIT: Semi-Ninja'd. Speaking of which, why no Unchained Ninja?
|
Oh, and by the way, your repeated claim that they should have better will saves than a Wizard or an Oracle are kind of funny. What with still needing Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, AND Wisdom to be useful, they have to prioritize those stats.
I don't know that I really agree with that. You can build a pretty competent UnC Monk without worrying about Intelligence (they've got 4+Int skills, so while not a skill-monkey, they still have the option to contribute in a couple areas), they've got a d10 hit die so they don't need a ton of Constitution... They only things they really need are Strength, Dexterity, and Wisdom. Because of the low ki pool, you're really incentivized to pump WIS over either of the two, so on a 25 point buy you can probably go 16 STR, 16 WIS, and 14 DEX before racial modifiers. 20 point buy gets a little tighter since you're down to 2 14s before racial modifiers and any min/maxing you may decide to do with the other stats (I, personally, probably wouldn't dump anything except maybe CHA, though even then dwarf is a pretty likely race and you're already taking a hit).
They're not quite as streamlined stat-wise as a Paladin, who can get by with basically just 2 stats (CHA + either DEX or STR), but they're certainly a step up from a Fighter or Rogue, who both need at least 4 stats with positive modifiers, and probably just a bit behind the Ranger.
I find the diminishing returns of spending higher points generally will put them in a decent place compared to a Wizard (at least as decent as any other non-caster); the Wizard generally wants to shoot for that 18 in his INT so he can cultivate his long term power and bonus spells, which only leaves him points for a single 13 before dumping on a 20 point buy, or a 13 and a 14 on a 25 point buy.
I asked this before in another thread but missed some Unchained changes, thus leading to confusion, so let me try again:
Does anything go wrong with the Summoner if you use a hybrid of Original Summoner and Unchained Summoner, in whih the spell list is Unchained but the Eidolon works pretty much the old way except with the Unchained Evolution Point costs...
I think that that works out pretty well.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The Monk has s&$! accuracy forever, has bad HP for a low AC melee class, is tied down to Pummeling Charge, needs to archetype away from the core fantasy to deliver good results, is fully dependent on magic items to work well, has terrible breakpoints in power.
All true, offense was not the monk's best role. Defense, however, was. They've lost poison immunity and good will saves, their SR now requires ki to activate, and you can no longer bump your AC in combat using ki without spending a ki power on it first. You talk about having to break away from the 'core fantasy', which is entirely subjective mind you, yet you blithely overlook Paizo dropping good Will saves when that's been a part of the archetype now for ages. And honestly, how is that new monk NOT still dependent on magic items?
The UnMonk will always be more accurate, is easier to understand, is free to take any style without sacrificing its HALLMARK trade of mobility (granted, by being dependent of Flying Kick), ALWAYS deals more damage than a vanilla Monk, ALWAYS, regardless on how much Ki it has.
Easier to understand is subjective in this case, I'm afraid. You're trading attack roll simplicity for extra ki management issues. If you say you've solved a problem, people typically don't take that to mean you replaced it with an entirely different one of about equal impact.
Furthermore, no, mobility is NOT the hallmark of the monk. It's unarmed and unarmored fighting. Mobility is a secondary thing, granted one which is pretty thematically appropriate but not universally present in monkish archetype characters from fiction. To that effect, we have the new monk, who has the exact same problems with unarmed and unarmored fighting as the old one. He can't punch through DR unless he's got ki in the pool. Even then, he can't get through the near universally present DR/good of common outsider oppoents without either taking a hugely expensive quinggong power or using a very specialized magic item that shuts off his ability to punch through DR/lawful. His stunning fist still fizzles for any of a half dozen reasons and quivering palm is now even worse than before. He still loses his AC bonus from being 'immobilized'. He has no accuracy boosters, even with his preferred method of fighting. His ability to fight without weapons and without armor or shield and defend himself didn't get any easier and, in fact, got worse in some respects (losing inherent functionality on ki pool, for starters). Giving him full BAB and calling it a day is ludicrously wrong.
Human Monks can easily solve the Ki issue - with Honored Fist of the Society and the FCB, they can have usually 13 ki by level 10, AND ALL UNMONKS HAVE ACCESS TO KI LEECH AS A QINGQONG POWER.
If you are relying on having to play a specific race and use all of their FCB for this purpose AND take a specific trait AND use a ki power just to manage your resource pool so that it doesn't suck...your base product has serious issues, dude.
Low Will save? Not a real issue, as most UnMonk builds should have higher Will saves than a Wizard, Oracle or whatever high-Will non-Wisdom based class.
Assuming identical saving throw items and trait/feat selections, a level 10 wizard is four points ahead of a level 10 unchained monk. Take into account the wizard probably didn't bomb his Wisdom score and has at least a +1 or +2 in it (I'd build it that way, at least) and they're definitely breaking even with the monk. This divide just gets bigger as you level further. Now, the monk can close this gap with stat boosting items and wishes...but then, the wizard can not only do the same, but can make said items, whereas the monk cannot. And remember, the wizard can have things like heroism or moment of prescience going to either give a consistent bump to their rolls or have an ace in the hole if need be. A monk only gets Still Mind, which is really limited in its application and a mandatory trade-out for the monk vows that boost the size of their ki pool. Taken as a whole, I don't think wizard and casters in general need worry about Will saves too much. The Wisdom-focused unchained monk is in slightly better territory than a fighter or rogue, but they're no longer the solid masters of mental and physical discipline that's been thematic with them for years either.
But don't knock it just because you read a summary of its abilities and you didn't find Spell Sunder + Divine Grace + 9 level casting on it.
Somewhat ironic that this ridiculous sentence seems to insinuate bias on our part. Heh.
My feelings....it was rather unnecssary. Paizo had already released a lot of 'better versions' of the problem classes. In fact, that was the last major thing before unchained (...I think)- ACG.
Slayer is 'full BAB rogue with some ranger stuff'.
Brawler is 'monk with armor and full BAB' (and already fills the 'lost high will' spot unchained covers)
And that is not even considerin other past 'fixes', such as ninjas and the various monk archetypes (I still prefer sohei over unchained).
And we of course brought up how pummeling style addressed the same problem that flying kicked aimed for (and it still seems like a rather good choice even as an unchained monk- clustershot on unarmed strikes).
So it just came as...unnecessary to me. And after that, you do not have much besides the barbarian and summoner stuff (and we already know how luke warm people tend to feel about that- it is more of a gift to GMs than the players...)
|
|
No fun Paizo is the only reason I've been able to find.EDIT: Semi-Ninja'd. Speaking of which, why no Unchained Ninja?
Why would anyone need to Unchain the Ninja? It works great as is and doesn't have most of the problems the Rogue does.
During our group's playtesting for Dreamscarred Press' Path of War, the Ninja did an excellent job of performing on par with the Warlord and Stalker. It doesn't have the same issues with setting up sneak attacks that the Rogue has, it has a pretty solid array of proficiencies that open up combat options, and Ninja Tricks are by and large quite superior to Rogue Talents.
There's just not anything you really need to "unchain" there. It doesn't need built in Dex to damage like the UnC Rogue, because it's not reliant on UMD shenanigans or desperate positioning to get its sneaks in.
It's not a "Paizo no fun" thing, it's a "Paizo already had to cut other classes that could use the unchained treatment more due to page count restrictions, so why would they waste space on something that's not broken?".
Unchained Classes, many DMs are saying stick with the unchained versions of rogue, barbarian, monk, etc.
In my opinion, unchained versions of classes is Paizos way of rebalancing the original core class. They should have done it right the first time.
Your question is basically "Why didn't they make an abosolutly perfect game this first time?" Well, it's somewhere between very hard and impossible for an imperfect human to make an absolutly perfect anything.
Compared to 3.5, pathfinder has many improvements. Just like with many online games, its ocasionally needed to rebalance things once you see the worst current problems, as well as (with summmoners) deal with unexpected exploits from ultra-optimized min-maxers.
Most of the designers aren't power gamers and don't make new material with that expectation. Plus there are just too technically-legal combinations to find them all right away, which is how you get those crazy summoners with 7 extra attacks per round, barbarians with +40 to all saves, and monks that can solo the Tarrasque in 1 round.
Unchained Classes, many DMs are saying stick with the unchained versions of rogue, barbarian, monk, etc.
In my opinion, unchained versions of classes is Paizos way of rebalancing the original core class. They should have done it right the first time.Your question is basically "Why didn't they make an abosolutly perfect game this first time?" Well, it's somewhere between very hard and impossible for an imperfect human to make an absolutly perfect anything.
Compared to 3.5, pathfinder has many improvements. Just like with many online games, its ocasionally needed to rebalance things once you see the worst current problems, as well as (with summmoners) deal with unexpected exploits from ultra-optimized min-maxers.
Most of the designers aren't power gamers and don't make new material with that expectation. Plus there are just too technically-legal combinations to find them all right away, which is how you get those crazy summoners with 7 extra attacks per round, barbarians with +40 to all saves, and monks that can solo the Tarrasque in 1 round.
Still, Paizo did build in a mechanic that allows them to alter released class already- archetypes. That was already plenty of room to build upon it.
If rogue had an archetype that traded out trap finding stuff in order to get debilitating strike... or even traded trapfinding and some sneak attack dice for an archetype that gave studied target... would there have been any problems with the class? It would have solved one of the key issues with it (no build in attack roll boosters), and it would have been within paizo's preexisting systems.
Sure, this wouldn't help in the frightfully common 'core only' (a phrase that every monk player fears), but unchained wouldn't help much there either.
I mean...this pretty much encapsulates my feeling about unchained and monk archetypes...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm only going to touch on UnRogue because Rogue is the class that is dearest to my heart, and the one that needed the most help. Generally, I think the changes are basically putting lipstick on a pig, and the class is still bland and woefully underpowered. Ah well.
The good:
- Finesse training: this needed to happen.
- Some of the Talents: Minor and Major Magic got much-needed fixes and are now usable; the talents to upgrade sneak attack damage are welcome; the small upgrade to Surprise Attack is good.
The meh:
- Unchained Skills: mostly, the benefits range between minor and useless. Making Rogue skills actually powerful and sometimes better than magic through things like the Distraction ability (Chained Burglar Archetype) and the old Darkstalker feat would have been preferable. Unchained "skill unlocks" are a band-aid on a gushing wound, and they make the Diplomacy skill even more broken, which is just dumb.
- Danger Sense: a good step to de-couple the Rogue from the trapmonkey niche and give it a flat Perception bonus, but it didn't go nearly far enough. 1/3 levels on a class that is supposed to fill the "scout" role is pitiful, and the Rogue will still be outclassed in Perception by many other classes, and even many familiars, animal companions, and so on. Perception is the most powerful skill in the game, and the Rogue is one of the weakest classes. Making the Rogue the unquestioned master of Perception (like straight class level bonus to the skill) would be one good way to go about addressing the issues with the class. But no...the UnRogue gets 1/3 because balance.
The bad:
- Debilitating Injury: what the hell is this?! In what world does this ability make any sense? I can understand a Rogue inflicting status effects on sneak attacks...but for only one round?! How, exactly, is the fluff for this supposed to work out? The Rogue is somehow good at...not actually injuring people (because that would be totally unbalanced), but at "bewildering" or "disorienting" people by, you know...stabbing them...in a "special stabby way" that normal stabbing doesn't accomplish. What the crap?! This is a nonsense 4th Ed. type of power, and the devs should be ashamed of themselves for putting it in the game. Booooo!
They should have just made it function like caltrops where it's permanent until the victim rests or gets a single point of healing. That would have been both powerful and flavorful without being unbalanced, because at higher levels tons of things either have fast healing or are immune to precision damage, anyway.
The sad thing about Debilitating Injury is that it was a good idea...yeah, let the Rogue do real damage to people (rather than generic HP damage) when he hits them with a sneak attack...but in the name of "balancing" one of the weakest classes in the game, it was instead turned into a one round video game "debuff" which has nothing to do with anything remotely resembling "martial realism". This just grinds my gears. "Realism" is often cited by the devs as a reason why martials can't have nice things. And yet...when "realism" would call for martials to actually have nice things (like persistent status effects from "debilitating" precision damage), they get temporary "magical debuffs" instead because balance. Incredibly lame.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't normally mind alignment restrictions, but the USummoner's bother me. You can't magically enslave an outsider of another type. You can't have a good character with a devil offering its services while attempting to tempt the character. There's a lot of good concepts that are inaccessible - which annoys me, because I like the subtyped eidolons better too.I'd prefer Chained Summoner with unchained eidolon choices. I liked the chained spell list.Yeah... The unchained Summoner's spell list is great, but its Eidolon options are too restrictive, IMO. Specially the ones with alignment restrictions.I asked this before in another thread but missed some Unchained changes, thus leading to confusion, so let me try again:
Does anything go wrong with the Summoner if you use a hybrid of Original Summoner and Unchained Summoner, in whih the spell list is Unchained but the Eidolon works pretty much the old way except with the Unchained Evolution Point costs(*), and then Unchained Eidolon is available as an archetype?
(*)I think that this is good enough to leave full compatibility with all of the pre-Unchained archetypes.
EDIT: Semi-Ninja'd. Speaking of which, why no Unchained Ninja?
I would say yes. I think they should have been more restrictive in summons per day (1+cha) because that can be overwhelming even without the master summoner archetype. I know because I have one in pfs and they left this aspect untouched.
Secondly, I've always felt there were options not explored, such as eidolons with higher intelligence and charisma (and lower physical stats), options few more feats less ep etc, a caster eidolon whose options were not overly restrictive. Some of these could have been written and the class would/could be weaker. Instead either version is set up to be a dumb dpr monster.
As for the Unchained summoner, I hate it and when I try to read it I get physically ill thinking about what a travesty this class is. I hate the enforced flavor of typed eidolons (which would have been great as an option). I think they should have weakened summoning as I described. I think the spell list is a little too restrictive. Yes, some spells like haste needed to be nerfed, but only some.
And I say this as someone who adored the flavor of the original summoner but knew it needed a nerf. I just feel as if this nerf is basically the worst work Paizo has done, does nothing to attract people to the class, and is just blah.
Hope this was helpful,
Kerney
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Unchained Rogue is a significant upgrade. Like its predecessor, the class needs help from the rest of the party to rock-n-roll. When any rogue/sneak attack-based class has that help, the bad guys die like flies.
Unchained Barbarian is a nerf. The rage power completely brain-farted on boosting Fort saves along with the temporary hit points to fully replicate the old Constitution bonus. I won't get into the 'stances' and modified rage powers as most of them are meh or a flat downgrade. (Superstitious, I'm looking at you - why lose the bonus on the one source of Bad Things characters need the MOST help in succeeding against?!)
Unchained Summoner was unnecessary. It's really PFS Summoner. If anything, the following 6-level spellcasting classes should have been modeled on the Summoner's original spell list - tightly themed with access to spells that are worth using at about the same level that 9-level casters get access to, albeit only those tied to that theme.
Unchained Monk was a good idea, except poor Will saves (why?), and a perpetually tiny ki pool that gets less mileage/day that it did before. Not cool. The new abilities are kinda sweet, but 2 ki/use is VERY steep for a 1-use ability. If their ki pool scaled analogously to the 4th-level-with-WIS-bonus spells/day progression that'd be different.
??? Maneuvers are the... the poster child of weak/situational options. Outside of dirty trick, most maneuvers are either 1) limited in use (lookin at you reposition) 2) have huge swaths of things immune (trip...)
With vanish trick you can prettyvreliably get sneak attacks...
??? Maneuvers are the... the poster child of weak/situational options. Outside of dirty trick, most maneuvers are either 1) limited in use (lookin at you reposition) 2) have huge swaths of things immune (trip...)
With vanish trick you can prettyvreliably get sneak attacks...
He said Warder and Stalker. That means "Weaboo" Path of War Maneuvers. Not regular PF ones, which do pretty much suck outside very specific builds/situations.
Oh lol. My GM is particulair on 3pp stuff and.I havent read up on it myself lol.
Oh lol. My GM is particulair on 3pp stuff and.I havent read up on it myself lol.
But seriously, it's good stuff. I wish the original Book of Nine Swords was out on the web, but I haven't been able to find it yet, if so.
??? Maneuvers are the... the poster child of weak/situational options. Outside of dirty trick, most maneuvers are either 1) limited in use (lookin at you reposition) 2) have huge swaths of things immune (trip...)
With vanish trick you can prettyvreliably get sneak attacks...
I think that there sometimes is the idea that you must be optimized to be fun.
My wife and I created a 10th level Ninja for her based on Ja'qen from Game of Thrones. As such, she has as, among her other Ninja Talents, Vanishing Trick, Sudden Disguise, and Assassinate. When she wants to use Assassinate, though, we actually role-play getting the victim's guard down, and she then has to banter with the person for an actual minute to roll the Assassinate check.
Is this optimal? No optimizer is going to ever say take anything besides Invisible Blade as the 10th level trick.
Is this more fun? Hell yeah... role playing moments with this combo are a helluvalot more interesting than "you invisibly slice them to death every time".
I really think we're mixing "optimization" for "fun" sometimes.
Well that works too.
I made a.Vishkanya ninja Assassin once that took advantage of her natural poison and my alchemist buddy tobchange my poison to contact and I roleplayed going to our target in a.party, chatting with him and applying the poison to his cup of alcohol. Once he fell asleep I rped it as him drinkin to much (i had a HIGH bluff lol) and put im on a bench and assassinated him.
And honestly there are mote than one way to.build an optimized ninja. It depends alot on what ypu are tryong to do. A sneaky assassin will want assassinate (vanish near target, study them, them assassinate).
I think that there sometimes is the idea that you must be optimized to be fun.
Possibly... But that's not what's going on when people talk about maneuvers...
You see, to be decent at a single maneuver you have to spend at least 2 feats at it (one of which is basically useless and actually makes you worse at performing said maneuvers) and must spend 4 build points in what is at best a tertiary attribute for most martial classes...
That's 4 attribute points and 2 feats just to be not awful at it... And there are more feats to invest if you actually want to be good at it.
And after all that investment, most of them can be completely nullified by common stuff like natural attacks, ability to fly or the good ol' "ultra high size bonus to CMD coupled with huge Str scores typical of large creatures".
The problem is not that maneuvers are situational... It's that they are situational, but still require major resource investment just to be usable.
Also, they can be kinda abusable at low levels against humanoid creatures, so they are hard to balance. The fact that Paizo is terrible at balancing stuff doesn't help either...
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Except what they did was go out of their way to claim alternate classes are not just archetypes that need dedicated space for theme and extensive ability changes but separate classes. Then they stayed silent when people asked how archetypes interact with the alternate class. There is no reason to not allow a direct conversion with no added text to Pathfinder Unchained. That's why it is no fun Paizo, they specifically freaked out about the topic and then just abandoned the topic without explaining anything.
Ummm, actually, that's not what happened at all.
Also, again, alternate classes being unable to take other alternate classes of the same base class does not mean they can't take FCB or archetypes.
Mark's made it clear on several occasions that he personally believes alternate classes can/should be able to take archetypes of the parent class and that there is rules support for this. The only thing the design team has done is say that you can't stack two alternate classes, and the Unchained variants are essentially alternate classes.
Also, Ninja on par with Warder and Stalker? Come on... Sneak attack is not as strong as people present it. The invisibility and greater invisibility is really, really good (to the point that rogue taking Ki pool and vanish is a solid investment) but it is not even close to maneuvers. I love ninjas, they sit between vivisectionist (which I love) and investigator (which I like) in terms of rogues.
I said Warlord and Stalker, and yes. Warder is actually the hardest hitting of the three, particularly with some of the archetypes like Zweihander, and the most likely to be able to pull ahead. A well-built ninja can sneak attack every round or pretty close to it, and can typically drop multiple sneak attacks consistently throughout an entire encounter once you hit 10th level and get access to Invisible Blade and Blinding Bomb. This keeps their damage very much in line with the martial initiator classes, who also rely on bonus damage dice that aren't multiplied on crits, especially if you do something like a Ninja with a kusarigama threatening an extended range and capitalize on AoOs.
The Rogue's biggest problems are surviving setting up a sneak attack and then being able to deliver sneak attack damage consistently, neither of which are problems for the Ninja.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The Unchained Barbarian is less of a nerf than people make it out to be. It dropped the ceiling on the class for it's peak, absolutely optimized single build, but it also raised the floor a decent amount. Many trap rage powers are significantly better. A newb can't screw up the Unchained Barb nearly as much as the original.
Spell Sunder, flight, and a few other odd rage powers suck to lose. And it's not great for the martial-caster disparity, though one could argue it's good for the "barbarian-and-every-other martial disparity."
But without even looking at the rage powers, you get:
--Temporary HP. This means in every encounter the first 2xHD damage might as well not exist afterwards, saving your party hits off the CLW wands. At level 11, you have a 33 hit point buffer that you literally give no f&&@s about. If you have a lot of combats per day this can be huge.
--Increased Damage Reduction's value is doubled. As an Invulnerable Rager, at level 11 you can have DR/11 on top of your "no f+%@s given" HP buffer.
--Superstition stacks with your Rage will save bonus! Will saves are probably the worst thing to fail, so this is great.
-- Natural Attacks, especially secondary ones, benefit more from new rage mechanics.
--If you have no Bard, Accurate Stance is free accuracy with no penalty.
--Swift Stance is twice as good.
None of these things are going to make an Unchained Barbarian as awesome as AM BARBARIAN rage cycling, spell sundering, and strength surging every round. And I wouldn't force a player to use Unchained instead of the original if they didn't want to. But I would argue Unchained is better designed if not more powerful, and if you give it access to some old rage powers you have the best of both worlds. (Minus rage cycling I guess.)
By comparison, attempts to house rule the Unchained Monk into something satisfying is much harder.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Unchained Barbarian is less of a nerf than people make it out to be. It dropped the ceiling on the class for it's peak, absolutely optimized single build, but it also raised the floor a decent amount. Many trap rage powers are significantly better. A newb can't screw up the Unchained Barb nearly as much as the original.
Spell Sunder, flight, and a few other odd rage powers suck to lose. And it's not great for the martial-caster disparity, though one could argue it's good for the "barbarian-and-every-other martial disparity."
But without even looking at the rage powers, you get:
--Temporary HP. This means in every encounter the first 2xHD damage might as well not exist afterwards, saving your party hits off the CLW wands. At level 11, you have a 33 hit point buffer that you literally give no f!!&s about. If you have a lot of combats per day this can be huge.
--Increased Damage Reduction's value is doubled. As an Invulnerable Rager, at level 11 you can have DR/11 on top of your "no f*!*s given" HP buffer.
--Superstition stacks with your Rage will save bonus! Will saves are probably the worst thing to fail, so this is great.
-- Natural Attacks, especially secondary ones, benefit more from new rage mechanics.
--If you have no Bard, Accurate Stance is free accuracy with no penalty.
--Swift Stance is twice as good.None of these things are going to make an Unchained Barbarian as awesome as AM BARBARIAN rage cycling, spell sundering, and strength surging every round. And I wouldn't force a player to use Unchained instead of the original if they didn't want to. But I would argue Unchained is better designed if not more powerful, and if you give it access to some old rage powers you have the best of both worlds. (Minus rage cycling I guess.)
By comparison, attempts to house rule the Unchained Monk into something satisfying is much harder.
The problem with the new barbarian rage is that it ONLY gives temp hp and attack/damage bonuses. The old version uses to bump CMD, Fortitude saves, and Strength-based skill and ability checks. The really, truly painful thing about this is that all Paizo had to do was change one sentence in the original barbarian class' Rage description to accomplish what needed to be done.
The increase to Constitution grants the barbarian 2 temporary hit points per Hit Dice instead of an increase to their current and maximum hit points.
That's it. One sentence. Not even all of one sentence either. Instead, they took a weed whacker to the thing and this awesome class feature got it's flavor and utility pared down a ton.
As far as rage powers go, I actually did an analysis of the new barbarian list when this book came out. Of the 53 rage powers listed, 13 are the same as they once were, sometimes slightly reworded. Four are new and kinda nice, though not amazing; one of those is a stance. Nine powers got improved, though 6 got nerfed. Fifteen were changed, often to make them require a full-round action, restricting their use to once a day, or putting in odd restrictions regarding adjacent foes.
Then there's the stances. Not even going to get into how these would've worked brilliantly as a concept for an unchained fighter or how they seem to go against the flavor of a barbarian. We have something like ten stances now, all of which require a move action and none of which can be active at the same time. If you want to move between stances, you have to use more move actions to do so. It's a hit on the barbarian's action economy that isn't needed and doesn't address any existing imbalance issues that class may have had beforehand.
Now, I've never played a barbarian before, but I always liked the concept of rage powers just being something you fire off while slashing away, snarling mad in a melee. It seemed appropriate and fun. This new thing Paizo is doing, not so much. If I wanted to fight in proper stances and such, I'd roll up a monk or some other character who could take style feats. It just seems to be another instance of Paizo trying to fix a problem that didn't exist, for whatever reason.
|
|
Barbarians were never "Fighters with worse AC".They were in Core, now back to the original topic.
Rynjin was probably still pretty on topic, since the status of the Core Barbarian is relevant to the OP's question about why so many players and GMs like the Unchained variants.
I also kind of have to wonder if someone who would say the Core Barbarian is just "a Fighter with worse AC" has even read the Core Barbarian. Core Barb gets his Will bonus while raging that kicks the pants off of Bravery, more hit points + DR, Uncanny Dodge and Trap sense which are both pretty nice perks, as well as a slew of handy Rage Powers like Superstition, Quick Reflexes, Swift Foot (goes nice with Fast Movement), Internal Fortitude, Intimidating Glare, etc. Core Barb was definitely not just a "Fighter with worse AC", but had a solid leg up even then.
UnC Barbarian is still an improvement over Core-only Barbarian, but not punching at the same level as Core product line Barbarian with the APG, UC, etc. backing him.
I do appreciate that the UnC Barbarian is a bit easier for a new player to actually sit down and play and understand, even if I think they could have done more with the page space and maybe made the UnC Barbarian easier to build as well.
|
Like quite a few others in this thread, I don't really like the UnClasses overall;
UnBarbarian: I don't like the 'book-keeping' changes. Static bonuses rather than stat changes seems to cause more problems than it solves. That said, I'd let players take some of the UnRage powers.
UnMonk: It fixes all of the major problems of the Monk... just not as well as the house rules I'd come up with to do the same things. The whole ki powers bit has potential, but implementation is a mixed bag. Might prefer to let Monks swap UnMonk ki powers for class abilities they don't want.
UnRogue: Improvements to an already good class. Maybe a little TOO scary now. Some of the new talents are problematic, and they only partially fixed deadly sneak (now works for d6, but not with abilities that give d8 sneak attack dice).
UnSummoner: Takes the summoner in pretty much the opposite direction I would want it to go. I'd replaced the different eidolon forms with a single 'generic' form that can then be easily modified into the standard forms... or something else entirely. This expands the forms into themes based on different outsiders.
Superstition is not handy in core.Then what the hell do I take at 2nd level? Everything else is garbage.
Lesser Beast Totem?
I think you are, perhaps, overvaluing some aspect of the core rogue if you think they were I'm good shape to begin with. I'm still confused as to why they kept it at two poor saves, if for no other reason than it not falling in line with the conversion guide. There doesn't seem to be much on the unchained chassis that warrants two poor save progressions.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The Unchained Barbarian is a straight nerf to the class. Its Stances are fairly garbage, it deals less damage overall (its morale bonuses are no longer multiplied by 1.5 when using a 2H weapon), and none of the new or reworked Rage Powers are very good. The only thing remotely decent about it is getting temp HP, and that's for ease of use, not because it's better. Barbarians were never "Fighters with worse AC". Barbarians generally had BETTER AC than Fighter because of Beast Totem, and all of their Rage Powers gave them unique abilities Fighter couldn't get, so I have no clue where that's coming from.
Unchained Monk is a better beatstick in melee with a 2H sword than the original Monk, but that's about it. With archetypes (especially Zen Archer, Sohei, and Sensei) the Monk has many more options for use, and doesn't have to spend Ki to activate EVERY ONE OF HIS CLASS FEATURES.
I disagree. The morale bonus was only +1 to damage +2 at 20th. Not a big deal. Accurate stance is great. I used to use reckless abandon to do what Accurate Stance does taking the the hit on AC so I could use Power Attack more often. No hit AC with Accurate stance. Now will save bonus from rage stacks with superstitious. Increase damage reduction is double from 1 to 2 DR each time you take for +6 DR if you take all 3.
|
|
Superstition is not handy in core. Superstiton is a trap in core without the bonus to AC from beast totem or their archetype in full armor, the human favorite bonus, the rest of the superstition chain, raging vitality and other stuffs. THe other rage power were not impressive, not necessarily bad but most were not better than feats. The barbarian low AC was an actual problem there.
Eh, I disagree. The Barbarian's AC really isn't that low, Superstition is still superior to SR and provides up to a +7 to all saves vs. spells, SLAs, and supernatural abilities which is far more useful than anything the Fighter has going on, and there's lots of Rage powers (as I already noted) that provide abilities that are more handy than what a Fighter can get out of feats at the same exchange rate.
The problem with the new barbarian rage is that it ONLY gives temp hp and attack/damage bonuses. The old version uses to bump CMD, Fortitude saves, and Strength-based skill and ability checks. The really, truly painful thing about this is that all Paizo had to do was change one sentence in the original barbarian class' Rage description to accomplish what needed to be done..
CMD: Hurts a bit, I'll admit.
Fortitude Saves: Honestly, have you ever played a Barbarian and felt you needed MORE Fortitude? Would definitely take the trade off for will, personally.Strength based skill checks: How often do you even do these, especially while using a combat resource like rage? If it comes up often enough to care, then you may as well grab the upgraded rage powers and get a climb or swim speed.
Strength based Ability checks: I can honestly think of like, one time I've actually made one of these. Maybe breaking webs is more common than I give it credit for?
On Stances: Actually, I agree with almost everything you are saying there. It's an odd choice. There are some pretty simple tweaks one could house rule with them, though.
Overall, I would agree with you that the Unchained Barbarian was never NEEDED, and it ain't perfect. It's not a bad product though. With one exception. Who the hell wrote Knockdown Stance? A stance you need to enter which is downright worse than the Improved Trip feat? UGH.
|
|
Please, that's no fun Paizo. The Unchained Rogue was specifically used to address the core issue with the rogue that ninja only partially fixes. Artificially limiting the new chassis from the old an busted's alternates is a meaningless restriction that has no explanation why, mechanically, it is there.
Nonsense. The ninja is a well balanced and functional class, the Rogue wasn't. The mechanical reason for keeping the two separate is as simple as one needed fixing and the other didn't. Or there's the simpler rules precedent of "you can't have archetypes that modify or replace the same ability". The Rogue gets Trap Sense, which is replaced by Danger Sense on the Unchained Rogue and No Trace on the Ninja. UnC Rogue modifies the Rogue Talents ability, Ninja replaces it with Ninja Tricks. There's at least two firm points that would have prevented the two from stacking without Paizo saying anything.
Honestly, the same goes for not even trying to change some more popular monk archetypes to match Unchained - but that at least would require space in the already dense book. I respect a publisher not being able to physically fit the rules for it and saving the option for archetypes later (though I doubt anything Unchained will be well supported).
Depends entirely on the popularity of Unchained. They've already dropped Player Companion products featuring Unchained Monk support, so your skepticism seems unfounded so far.
And Mark saying "oh I think this" and "that is a misprint" and "I hope the FAQ goes through" when errata has been raining from the sky is Paizo not doing anything to clear up the issues. The design team set up a restriction with no explanation, Mark spent time commenting his individual thoughts, and then things went quiet.
Considering that most of that errata is for books that have needed it far more than Unchained, that doesn't really mean anything. Errata coincides with the release of new print runs on the product. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a new print run on Unchained. The largest request I saw for clarification on alternate classes taking base class archetypes was a post with 33 FAQ clicks (including my own) surrounded by a handful of people going "Wah, wah, wah, Paizo won't do what I want exactly when I want no matter how many names I call them!" You may also be aware, we've just come out of convention season where essentially the entire Paizo staff is on the road traveling to conventions that are vital to their success as a business. I'm certain that once the design team has had a chance to actually sit down and seriously look at the issue, they'll get a FAQ out on the matter.
Oh so you mean they keep up in damage. That's fine, ninjas do a good amount of damage but are still feat taxed and getting DEX to damage allows for more options even though "invisible greatsword ninja" is not a bad direction already.
They keep up in damage, have equal or (usually) better out of combat facility, and they're no more feat taxed than any other martial class. They don't need Dex to damage because they don't struggle in delivering their Sneak Attack the same way the Rogue does. If they really want it, they can access it the same way everyone who's not an UnC Rogue does, with an agile weapon.
I'd prefer Chained Summoner with unchained eidolon choices. I liked the chained spell list.Yeah... The unchained Summoner's spell list is great, but its Eidolon options are too restrictive, IMO. Specially the ones with alignment restrictions.
Agree. The unchained eidolon has a lot of grand ideas that were not well thought out. It really could have used some form of open play testing.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Unfortunately, those grand ideas made it even more chained than the original. Funny how that worked out.
As both a GM & a player I'm going to go at this one class at a time & try to give an opinion on both sides.
Barbarian: It all comes down to the math here. My players are casual and don't always keep track of things like I feel they should but I let them focus more on the Role they want to play so if I have to keep tabs on what they are doing because they got too into being the badass they wanted to a simple pool of temporary Hp is more manageable than keeping track of multiple seperate stat increases.
As a player, I don't see much difference between them. The math does makes turns go quicker.
Monk: The GM side could not care less about it.
The player in me likes the open options & the fact that the new monk is viable through all 20 levels without an archetype & is slightly less dependant on uber high stats in everything.
Rogue: As a GM it's good to see the rogue having its own place again. Last couple core rogues that were ran with my group ended up dead before they had a chance to shine. Yes you could go a little more specialized with the Ninja, Slayer Investigator or Bard but having a true Rogue to fill out the party again is nice.
As a player its nice to be able to take back some ground as both a skill specialist & a melee assassin.
Summoner: As a GM this class was monstrous, even when not optimized it could hold it's own in an encounter, The spell list was weird, & it forced higher level encounters on the party. Now with some reigning in it seems more balanced all around though I have yet to see it in action.
As a player I hate losing options & the limits on the eilidon don't exactly have me jumping for joy but due to my GM experience I get why it was done.
I was debating changing my first-level PFS barbarian to Unchained, but I decided not to do so. The rage power I want most, knockdown, now requires a move action to activate. That is enough to dissuade me.
I mean, Knock Down was already a pretty crappy rage power to be honest. I think you would be better off just taking Dirty Fighting and Improved Trip.
I would say yes. I think they should have been more restrictive in summons per day (1+cha) because that can be overwhelming even without the master summoner archetype. I know because I have one in pfs and they left this aspect untouched.I don't normally mind alignment restrictions, but the USummoner's bother me. You can't magically enslave an outsider of another type. You can't have a good character with a devil offering its services while attempting to tempt the character. There's a lot of good concepts that are inaccessible - which annoys me, because I like the subtyped eidolons better too.I'd prefer Chained Summoner with unchained eidolon choices. I liked the chained spell list.Yeah... The unchained Summoner's spell list is great, but its Eidolon options are too restrictive, IMO. Specially the ones with alignment restrictions.{. . .}
Does anything go wrong with the Summoner if you use a hybrid of Original Summoner and Unchained Summoner, in whih the spell list is Unchained but the Eidolon works pretty much the old way except with the Unchained Evolution Point costs(*), and then Unchained Eidolon is available as an archetype?(*)I think that this is good enough to leave full compatibility with all of the pre-Unchained archetypes.
{. . .}
Alternatively, what about reduce the duration on the SLA summons? Cutting down to 1 + ChaMod per day might be too restrictive if your adventuring day is 15 hours instead of 15 minutes, but getting 1 minute per level instead of 1 round per level is an awfully big jump in power.
Secondly, I've always felt there were options not explored, such as eidolons with higher intelligence and charisma (and lower physical stats), options few more feats less ep etc, a caster eidolon whose options were not overly restrictive. Some of these could have been written and the class would/could be weaker. Instead either version is set up to be a dumb dpr monster.
+1 on this. If they were going to mess with the Eidolon options (separately from the issue of fixing Evolution point costs), they should have provided options for a different ability score array. Do we really want an Angel Eidolon to be just 2.5 steps smarter than a turtle? An awful lot of the summons are goig to be smarter than the Eidolon, with both Chained and Unchained Summoner, and they did nothing about this.
As for the Unchained summoner, I hate it and when I try to read it I get physically ill thinking about what a travesty this class is. I hate the enforced flavor of typed eidolons (which would have been great as an option). I think they should have weakened summoning as I described. I think the spell list is a little too restrictive. Yes, some spells like haste needed to be nerfed, but only some.
Another +1 for this. Would it have hurt them so much to introduce the Outsider-themed Eidolons as an archetype?
And I say this as someone who adored the flavor of the original summoner but knew it needed a nerf. I just feel as if this nerf is basically the worst work Paizo has done, does nothing to attract people to the class, and is just blah.
Yet another +1 on this. "Unchained" applied to what they did to the Summoner sounds like one of those naming schemes that George Orwell warned us about.
I actually have a question. People keep saying that unchained monk can't take normal monk archetypes, when that's completely untrue. Unchained monk has access to all quiggong monk abilities and therefore can just slot in any missing ability that is needed to qualify for normal monk archetypes. It's kinda janky admittedly and this usually means that the archetypes should really just say "replaces ki ability as level x", but they're still compatible. What am I reading differently here than everyone else.