| Fuzzypaws |
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I wanted to keep this separate from the main Archetype blog thread.
I am foreseeing a problem coming down the pike in Pathfinder 2 that other games like Magic the Gathering have had to grapple with in the past. Namely, "wasting" single word or common phrase names on fairly narrow and rarely seen bits of game content. Really good and powerful names get "burned up" early in game development, leaving later design to struggle with a bunch of {adjective}{quality} {noun}{verb}er names.
You see it in the Archetype blog with Sea Legs for a Pirate Archetype feat (that doesn't even really have anything to do with the phenomenon of "sea legs") when that name should be reserved for a broader-access skill feat. You see it even more with the much more "valuable" name Unbreakable, which while at least appropriately powerful is inappropriately thrown away as an ability for a rare prestige class.
Please don't do this. Archetypes and prestige-archetypes, and frankly also Ancestries, are the bits of game design which should get the late-stage MTG names. Save your big guns for stuff in the class feat, skill feat and general feat lists. Plllleeeeeease.
| Darksol the Painbringer |
This assumes such feats are only locked with certain classes and archetypes.
Maybe certain feats are accessible to multiple classes, and aren't locked behind super-rare combinations. Whirlwind Attack is an example of a feat that might be class-specific, but we know Barbarians and Fighters both have access to it, making it either General, or usable with multiple classes that list it as a feat to take. (Or maybe they made Whirlwind Attack Barbarian only now, in which case they're nerfing fighters even before the playtest happens! I knew they'd resort to their "Fighters can't have nice things" mentality eventually! I just didn't know how soon...)
In addition, Archetypes can be taken by anyone who meets the requirements, meaning these abilities aren't as restricted as you make them out to be. A Paladin, Fighter, or even Ranger or Barbarian, can take the Gray Maiden Prestige archetype, even if the latter two might require a bit more investment into it; similarly, anyone with 12 Dexterity and access to Acrobatics and Lore (Sailing) as trained skills can take the Pirate archetype.
Besides that point, they will eventually run into this issue regardless of how hard they tried to avoid it simply because of how bloat works. Eventually, all of the super niche names will be taken up, leaving them to utilize the common names, and eventually when all names are taken up, they'll have to create completely new ones using completely different words. For example, they might make a feat called "Sweg" to have it grant +1 to Diplomacy, Intimidate, Deception, and Lore (Underworld) because they decided to use words/names like Intuition, Street Smarts, etc.
| AnimatedPaper |
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think what Fuzzy is worried about is that all the general-sounding names are going to quickly be taken. You're right, they COULD retroactively grant access to the same feat in another archetype if it is appropriate to that archetype. In the case of Unbreakable, I hope they do. But if they don't, there was a bit of wasted opportunity to name Unbreakable "Unbreakable" instead of something more specific and thematic, like "Unshattered Angel" or "Survivor in the Queen's Service". Basically, anything in an archetype should be named as if all the one word names had already been taken, so that they CAN be taken at a later time and place.