There's been a fair amount of annoyance regarding the renaming of class abilities to class feats, but one of the things that kind of caught my attention is that by doing this, it becomes easier for an archetype to be universal among classes.
EX: Say every second or third level you get a "class feat"
An archetype could then be designed such that multiple classes could apply the same archetype, and they simply forfeit a class feat (or general feat or whatever) for a set ability per archetype.
I feel like this would be a great way to implement divine champions for all the various gods. Give them an archetype that replaces class feats from a couple of thematic classes with divine individually deity focused powers.
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Regarding archetypes, Jason gave out some information in his Game Informer interview a few weeks ago. Cross-posting in case anyone hadn't seen it yet.
NEW INFORMATION from Jason's Game Informer interview:
The new version is built upon the idea of classes that have all these feats that they give you. When it comes to archetypes, it makes sense that they have additional feats you can choose. In the new game, they work similarly to how they did before, but instead of telling you what you’ll lose, you’ll get a package of feats you can choose instead of the feats from your class. They work just like an add-on package for you to choose from. It allows them to be more open and it’s not tied to specific features of classes. This kind of speaks to whatever character wants that to be a bigger part of their character concept. The rogue might want to be a pirate, but so might a wizard. It might have a feat or two that’s better at casting spells that burn sails or knocking holes in boats with lightning bolts. There could be a wide variety of abilities that speak to how the class works and you choose the ones that are appropriate to you. In this case, the archetypes allow us to expand the character types that we have. We’re not just at 12 classes, but we have dozens of different character concepts to explore from that decision alone, not to mention all the choices you have within skills and feats. It’s about giving you as many tools as possible to make the character you want to play as. Archetypes are a big tool that allow us to do that. They’re a box of toys that we can let people play with to customize their character. The playtest will have a number of archetypes in it, but we’re not putting them into the final version until we have time to test it out.
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With the way we redesigned them, they can connect to a specific class, but they don’t have to. We can design an archetype that speaks directly to what sorcerers are supposed to be and exclusive to them, but for something like ‘pirate’, there’s nothing that says that anyone can’t decide to be part-pirate. That’s a concept that you can apply to almost any character. It doesn’t make sense to recreate the archetype for each class when we can create a suite of feats that speak to what the pirate is, and then pick the ones that you want as needed.
They clearly have a design goal in mind for that. For example you might get a magic item that gives you a feat, and you can select a class, ancestry or general feat, because all of them are feats
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I like how we can now say "A counts as B for the purposes of spells and feats" instead of "A counts as B for the purposes of spells, effects, feats, abilities, etc". Sometimes the latter created unneeded ambiguity and unintended consequences.
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I hadnt seen that, thanks for reposting. I'm actually really stoked to hear it. I just really hope design makes archetypes for the divine, preferably absorbing a lot of the PRC abilities from classes like heritor knight and devoted muse.
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Having so many different things named Feats though...
If Dodge and Power Attack and Heighten Spell could all be Feats in first edition while doing vastly different things why is it a problem that "class unlocks" are called feats now? Especially since now you're also choosing from a list much in the same way as you did with Feats.
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I agree that the unification of many things under the term "feat" is a feature, not a bug. It provides a way to create a lot of game mechanics (such as archetypes) to interact with feats without having to use long phrases like "feat or talent or discovery or deed or revelation or rage power" etc. Moreover, this makes such mechanics future proof: When a new class is added at a later point, generic feat-based mechanisms will remain applicable without any need to adapt their text.
The same idea applies to spells as well, and I think that's why they're called spells whether one gets them from spell points or spell slots.
PF1 suffered quite a bit from terminology inflation for things that were similar, and that created confusion. For example, when the alchemist came out with extracts and mutagens, these things were very similar to potions, but because they were called something else, all the pre-existing set of rules for potions became confusing. Thanks to unification of terms, PF2 gets rid of this problem.
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Having so many different things named Feats though...If Dodge and Power Attack and Heighten Spell could all be Feats in first edition while doing vastly different things why is it a problem that "class unlocks" are called feats now? Especially since now you're also choosing from a list much in the same way as you did with Feats.
Because those were Feats you spent your General Feats on. There was 1 list. Classes and Archetypes had Bonus Feats they could pick from or shortcut to, but everyone still had access to those Feats.
Now we have Class Feats that you spend your Class Feats on, Skill Feats you spend your Skill Feats on, General Feats* you spend your General Feats on, Heritage/Ancestry Feats you spend your Heritage/Racial Feats on, etc
*are General Feats still a thing?
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*are General Feats still a thing?
Yep! I believe they're at 3, 7, 11, 15, and 19. They're for things like getting more armor proficiency.
*are General Feats still a thing?Yep! I believe they're at 3, 7, 11, 15, and 19. They're for things like getting more armor proficiency.Ah, okies, thanks.
Hmm, interesting pattern.
I'm not 100% sure on the pattern; that's done with some extrapolation.
- You get five of them. (You can trade general feats for skill feats; you can get up to 15 skill feats; you get a skill feat at every even level; ergo, you get five general feats.)- You get the first at level 3.
- You always get at least one feat at every level.
From there, the pattern seems like it would be five ancestry feats and five general feats covering the odd levels by alternating.
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I like the class feat system. But, I do worry that too many options that were formerly "built-in" to races and classes might now only exist as feats. There is a bit of a worry for me that option paralysis could be a bigger problem in this version of the game, and that different classes or races or what have you might end up being rather bland. In particular, the proposed archetype system doesn't sound that interesting to me...
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Having so many different things named Feats though...If Dodge and Power Attack and Heighten Spell could all be Feats in first edition while doing vastly different things why is it a problem that "class unlocks" are called feats now? Especially since now you're also choosing from a list much in the same way as you did with Feats.Because those were Feats you spent your General Feats on. There was 1 list. Classes and Archetypes had Bonus Feats they could pick from or shortcut to, but everyone still had access to those Feats.
Now we have Class Feats that you spend your Class Feats on, Skill Feats you spend your Skill Feats on, General Feats* you spend your General Feats on, Heritage/Ancestry Feats you spend your Heritage/Racial Feats on, etc
*are General Feats still a thing?
Yeah but in 1e we had
General feats
Combat Feats
Item creation feats
Metamagic feats
Style feats
Item Mastery Feats (some of which were also combat feats)
Teamwork feats
Armor mastery feats
Weapon mastery feats (with armor mastery were subsets of combat)
Critical feats
Damnation feats
Racial feats
etc etc.
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Having so many different things named Feats though...If Dodge and Power Attack and Heighten Spell could all be Feats in first edition while doing vastly different things why is it a problem that "class unlocks" are called feats now? Especially since now you're also choosing from a list much in the same way as you did with Feats.Because those were Feats you spent your General Feats on. There was 1 list. Classes and Archetypes had Bonus Feats they could pick from or shortcut to, but everyone still had access to those Feats.
Now we have Class Feats that you spend your Class Feats on, Skill Feats you spend your Skill Feats on, General Feats* you spend your General Feats on, Heritage/Ancestry Feats you spend your Heritage/Racial Feats on, etc
*are General Feats still a thing?
Yeah but in 1e we had
General feats
Combat Feats
Item creation feats
Metamagic feats
Style feats
Item Mastery Feats (some of which were also combat feats)
Teamwork feats
Armor mastery feats
Weapon mastery feats (with armor mastery were subsets of combat)
Critical feats
Damnation feats
Racial featsetc etc.
Yeah. Setting aside whatever benefits class feats may or may not have, I like that when I am picking Skill Feats, General Feats, and Ancestry feats I only need to look under that category. Maybe 2 categories if you use general feats to get skill feats. A general feat in PF1 could be from any of those categories. That makes it super hard for a new player to know where to begin other than an optimization guide.
I like the system, I understand why some might be confused or dislike it, but it feels kind of intuitive to me.
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*are General Feats still a thing?Yep! I believe they're at 3, 7, 11, 15, and 19. They're for things like getting more armor proficiency.
Erm, does that mean a Cleric of Gorum can't choose to be proficient in heavy armor right away? That sounds like a problem...
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Erm, does that mean a Cleric of Gorum can't choose to be proficient in heavy armor right away? That sounds like a problem...
Possibly. Those numbers are highly speculative. Also, there might easily be a Cleric Class Feat for Heavy Armor even if they're correct, and you do get a Class Feat at 1st level as a Cleric.