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PF2 Fighter isn't losing anything. It's still a class feat at first and every even level. Only, remember how people complained that Fighter didn't have anything unique because combat feats could be taken by anybody? It's (mostly?) exclusive stuff now. There's a plus. The fact that Fighter gets attacks of opportunity as a class feature isn't bad- Fighter only got a combat feat before. This is an area where other classes are getting a nerf.
Weapon training is getting replaced by getting weapon proficiencies earlier. This seems like a much bigger deal- it's still +1s to attack, but it's now also giving whatever cool tricks proficiency ranks come with. (You get mastery four levels before characters can get mastery in anything else, which is pretty cool.)
The filler of armor training and bravery seems like it's getting replaced. We don't know everything in its place, but perception mastery with an extra bonus to initiative seems pretty nice.
So, what about the other issues with Fighter? Not enough skills to do anything out of combat, bad for beginners because of needing to pick out combat feats, prerequisite chains.
Skills: Before, Fighter got enough to max out two skills. Now, even if they get two skill ranks, that's:
1: Two skills Trained
3: Two skills Expert
5: Two skills Expert, Two skills Trained
7: Two skills Master, Two skills Trained
9: Two skills Master, Two skills Expert
11: Four skills Master
13: Four skills Master, Two skills Trained
15: Two skills Legendary, Two skills Master, Two skills Trained
17: Four skills Legendary, Two skills Trained
19: Four skills Legendary, Two skills Expert (or four skills Trained for a broader base)
Effectively, you get twice as many skill points, and with fewer skills you're missing out on.
Combat Feats: Making it class feats means that the space won't be as cluttered, hopefully. Certainly to start with, having things broken out by when you can take them will help.
Prerequisite Chains: Mostly gone. Yay! At the very least, no more unrelated prereqs.
Comparing combat feats and class feats, class feats seem to come out pretty well. Sudden Charge is basically a flexible pseudo-pounce available from first level- either move 3x speed and attack, or move 2x speed and attack twice. Power Attack does more damage for a specific fighting style (one big hit) without being quite as restricted as Vital Strike, since you can still make a second attack. Something like Manyshot still seems to be around, but presumably without taxing prerequisites. You can even cost opponents actions with your ranged attacks (I imagine by spending an extra action yourself)- enough to prevent summoning and slow enemies closing the gap.
As far as Fighter not getting class features for out of combat use, I think that's a better space for archetypes and other classes. Fighter and Barbarian are the classes that really focus exclusively on combat. I don't really expect the class's narrative power to be any greater than before, but I do expect the non-class options to provide more narrative capability. (We already know that a non-class thing can make you a decent healer, and we can guess that Fighter will at least effectively have more skills. We know that they'll be getting feats dedicated to skills and their ancestry.)
Have also heard that you can do all combat maneuvers decently, without provoking AOO and having a decent shot even against giant enemies. Get used to that Bull-Rush and Grapple if you want to have some cinematic moments!
Hmm. Reassessing skills. That's twenty increases- given that the max is 40-50, I don't think that Fighter is getting quite this many with just 10 Int. Two legendary skills is the break-even point (with everything else being "adequate, I guess" instead of "completely useless"). But Fighters do get Master rank in the Perception non-skill. That was formerly half of a Fighter's investment, so even if Fighter still gets just two Legendary skills by default, they'll be pulling ahead.
I'm really looking forward to a skills blog for more details, though.
Hmm. Reassessing skills. That's twenty increases- given that the max is 40-50, I don't think that Fighter is getting quite this many with just 10 Int. Two legendary skills is the break-even point (with everything else being "adequate, I guess" instead of "completely useless"). But Fighters do get Master rank in the Perception non-skill. That was formerly half of a Fighter's investment, so even if Fighter still gets just two Legendary skills by default, they'll be pulling ahead.
I'm really looking forward to a skills blog for more details, though.
Mark said earlier you can definitely expect classes, including the Fighter, to have more skills than they did before. So I don't think the Fighter is locked at 2 skills anymore like PF1.
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Mark said earlier you can definitely expect classes, including the Fighter, to have more skills than they did before. So I don't think the Fighter is locked at 2 skills anymore like PF1.Hmm. Reassessing skills. That's twenty increases- given that the max is 40-50, I don't think that Fighter is getting quite this many with just 10 Int. Two legendary skills is the break-even point (with everything else being "adequate, I guess" instead of "completely useless"). But Fighters do get Master rank in the Perception non-skill. That was formerly half of a Fighter's investment, so even if Fighter still gets just two Legendary skills by default, they'll be pulling ahead.
I'm really looking forward to a skills blog for more details, though.
Could be that advancing to something like Master or Legendary costs more than Untrained to Trained? Hmm, time to write out my assumptions.
- Mark said that the most advances you could get was somewhere in the range of 40-50 (although you'd run out of useful things to spend them on).
- Blog said skills advance every other level.
- Blog or Mark (I forget) said Rogues advance more often.
- The max advances should be from Rogue.
- Classes give some base amount of advances.
- All advancements cost the same.
- Mark implied Int increases how many ranks you get.
- An increase in Int corresponds to +1 rank per time you increase skills.
- Corollary: You would need only 18 or 20 Int to get the known max advancements.
With that, we have a contradiction. If the max advancements can be obtained from Int alone… and not even a reasonable guess for max Int… we cannot square everything away. I'm having trouble buying that Int somehow gives less than one rank every time you increase skills. On the other hand, an extra +2 Int (an extra +1 mod) giving 2.5 Legendary skills seems off too.
Aha! I think I've got it! Int bonus and class determine starting skill rank advances. Int bonus doesn't change how many skills you advance when leveling up, though. That would explain the 40-50 range (Rogue gets a total of 40 advances from class, and Int from 10 to 30 explains the range). Then, suppose classes are more fair. Every class advances two skills every time they get to advance skills. 20 advances total. Rogue instead advances every level instead of only every other level, getting 40 total. Bard and a couple other classes might get similar (but lesser) treatment of some sort?
That would make the Fighter skill progression I showed correct (ignoring possible restrictions on how many skills can become Legendary/Master in a given level). It also would explain why Fighter and other classes get more skills- they can max out four, or at least experts in a bunch of things.
I always figured you could spend a General feat to buy more skill advances than normal.
I always figured you could spend a General feat to buy more skill advances than normal.
I do think I remember seeing a dev make a comment to that effect.
Huh maybe I'm missing something somewhere but will INT still effect number of skills or is it gonna be a static number across the board?
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Mark said earlier you can definitely expect classes, including the Fighter, to have more skills than they did before. So I don't think the Fighter is locked at 2 skills anymore like PF1.Hmm. Reassessing skills. That's twenty increases- given that the max is 40-50, I don't think that Fighter is getting quite this many with just 10 Int. Two legendary skills is the break-even point (with everything else being "adequate, I guess" instead of "completely useless"). But Fighters do get Master rank in the Perception non-skill. That was formerly half of a Fighter's investment, so even if Fighter still gets just two Legendary skills by default, they'll be pulling ahead.
I'm really looking forward to a skills blog for more details, though.
Could be that advancing to something like Master or Legendary costs more than Untrained to Trained? Hmm, time to write out my assumptions.
- Mark said that the most advances you could get was somewhere in the range of 40-50 (although you'd run out of useful things to spend them on).
- Blog said skills advance every other level.
- Blog or Mark (I forget) said Rogues advance more often.
- The max advances should be from Rogue.
- Classes give some base amount of advances.
- All advancements cost the same.
- Mark implied Int increases how many ranks you get.
- An increase in Int corresponds to +1 rank per time you increase skills.
- Corollary: You would need only 18 or 20 Int to get the known max advancements.With that, we have a contradiction. If the max advancements can be obtained from Int alone… and not even a reasonable guess for max Int… we cannot square everything away. I'm having trouble buying that Int somehow gives less than one rank every time you increase skills. On the other hand, an extra +2 Int (an extra +1 mod) giving 2.5 Legendary skills seems off too.
Aha! I think I've got it! Int bonus and class determine starting skill rank advances. Int bonus doesn't change how many skills...
Oh, you can get 40-50 increases on the right rogue hellbent on getting skill rank increases instead of other skill options, not counting your starting trained skill picks. The range represents how increasingly unlikely you would be to put that many resources into it for diminishing returns on the sorts of skills you can pick. A more realistic rogue will be in the 30s at level 20 counting starting trained skill picks.
I'm still waiting for what legendary proficiency in weapons actually does. The examples we've heard from skills are extreme to a superhero degree like living without air for survival or being able to steal armor off of someone. I'm expecting you get to use Giants as melee weapons or cut so hard it creates a tornado.
Unfortunately, seems likely.
Its going to be interesting to see the line that is for sure.
Fighters are getting a lot of love. Early access to several (many?) feats, perhaps some exclusives. And the same access (as near as we can tell) to skills as any other class.
That's a big difference compared to PF1.0 where fighters (and clerics) are skill-starved in comparison to classes with high INT or high base number of skills in PF1.0.
Raising your shield is looking more and more like a really cool ability, especially considering that expert, master and legendary shields are going to be a thing, not to mention magical ones.
One thing we haven't seen any early hints about is armor values, armor proficiencies and the base mechanics of AC. I suspect this is another spot where fighters (and other martials) will shine.
Everybody is going to have new and cool things to do with their reaction action, from shield blocks (acting as hefty DR) to dodging (hinted at for rogues) and cool things like the paladin's Retributive Strike. I suspect spellcasters will have some sort of counterspell action available with their reaction, and presumably everyone will have access to Attacks of Opportunity, if potentially a little later than the fighter.
I see a lot of math flying around, but IMHO it's simply to early to tell, since we don't know the whole gamut of AC calculations and defensive actions which will bear heavily on it.
IMHO defensive actions will play an important part in limiting the need for a dedicated healer character. The more wounded you are, the more incentive there will be to use actions (and reactions) for an active defense boost.
I'm hoping we'll see more and more conditions linked to attack actions (perhaps criticals, perhaps specific types of weapons) and stuff like very big critters (like giants) being able to toss adversaries around with each melee hit, or negate some defenses as simply being too feeble to matter.
As far as the narrative power of fighters and other martials, I suspect a lot of that will come down to the cool things that have been hinted at for skill feats and extreme skill mastery.
Will we be getting a blog post about mounted combat and flying combat and movement?
Oh, you can get 40-50 increases on the right rogue hellbent on getting skill rank increases instead of other skill options, not counting your starting trained skill picks. The range represents how increasingly unlikely you would be to put that many resources into it for diminishing returns on the sorts of skills you can pick. A more realistic rogue will be in the 30s at level 20 counting starting trained skill picks.
Thanks! If my assumption of one rank per increase is correct, that sounds like it's in the ballpark of eight-to-ten Legendary skills.
Looking forward to seeing the what the rules are for this! Looking forward to my more-than-just-sociable Sorcerers.
Have also heard that you can do all combat maneuvers decently, without provoking AOO and having a decent shot even against giant enemies. Get used to that Bull-Rush and Grapple if you want to have some cinematic moments!
Have heard any class can do anything without provoking an AoO, unless the character standing next to them has used a feat selection to take a feat that allows them to react.
Oh, you can get 40-50 increases on the right rogue hellbent on getting skill rank increases instead of other skill options, not counting your starting trained skill picks. The range represents how increasingly unlikely you would be to put that many resources into it for diminishing returns on the sorts of skills you can pick. A more realistic rogue will be in the 30s at level 20 counting starting trained skill picks.
So, I didn't start this off as a Rogue thread, but I wanted to follow up on this after seeing the Rogue blog.
30 as a base is interesting. Regular classes have ten levels that they increase skills at (counting first level), so the normal number is some multiple of ten (before Int and background get involved). Rogue has increases more often, but with half the levels covered, that means that they don't get more than twice as many. That sounds like 50% more to me, a base of 20, and like my initial guess for Fighter's skills was correct.
We also learned that Rogue gets a skill feat at every level. If a skill feat can be used to increase a skill's proficiency, 40-50 comes from deciding if you want to spend just your "free" skill feats, or even the ones that other characters get.
It presumably takes 4 advancements to max out a skill. If you start running out of useful skills in the 40-50 range, that sounds like there's about ten major skills.
I think this works out pretty well! If a normal class gets 4 out of 10 skills, it means that different characters have good odds of covering at least some different things, and a party of four gets 16 skills maxed… pretty good redundancy so as to likely cover everything. A party of three gets 12 skills maxed, and can cover everything.
Meanwhile, a Rogue gets 6 or 7 skills maxed, going from "less than half of the major skills" to "more than half of the major skills". That still leaves room for the rest of the party to each have a unique skill specialty the Rogue doesn't have. And, if they just want to cover everything, they can spend their bonus skill feats to get all the major skills. As an added bonus, they have just enough skill feats remaining to take one skill feat for every skill!
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There are significantly more than 10 skills. I'm thinking around 20.
We already know for sure about the following 12:
Acrobatics
Athletics
Crafts
Deception
Intimidation
Lore (Various)
Nature
Occultism
Society
Stealth
Survival
Thievery
And it seems a solid bet that there are Sense Motive and Diplomacy equivalents, and quite probably several others. And that's 20 or so even if there are only 5 Lores. There are likely more Lores than that, though quite possibly no more than a couple per character.
I think the diminishing returns are more in the area of actually getting Skill Feats and becoming really good at the skills you've already got.
There are significantly more than 10 skills. I'm thinking around 20.
We already know for sure about the following 12:
Acrobatics
Athletics
Crafts
Deception
Intimidation
Lore (Various)
Nature
Occultism
Society
Stealth
Survival
ThieveryAnd it seems a solid bet that there are Sense Motive and Diplomacy equivalents, and quite probably several others. And that's 20 or so even if there are only 5 Lores. There are likely more Lores than that, though quite possibly no more than a couple per character.
I think the diminishing returns are more in the area of actually getting Skill Feats and becoming really good at the skills you've already got.
I'm not counting Lore, Craft, or Perform as primary skills, because they have too many options for a specific one to show up too regularly. Your argument still stands, though, and your explanation for diminishing returns makes a lot of sense!