The sea of trap options in this game is demoralizing to wade through

[Colette Brunel]

The sea of trap options in this game is demoralizing to wade through. I have run groups through two iterations of The Lost Star, two iterations of In Pale Mountain's Shadow, and two iterations of The Rose Street Revenge. I have assisted all of my players during character creation, which means going through options, which means wading through 2e's sea of trap options.

There are just... so many trap options in this game. For example, take the cleric, perhaps the game's strongest class due to its rock-solid chassis and its abundant resource pools. The Sarenrae pure caster cleric is probably the strongest build in the game right now... but what if someone was to try a cleric of a different deity, with less optimal domains? Then the player would be diving into a sea of trap domains (courtesy of a contact of mine), and goodness help them if they opt to channel negative energy, because then they will be unable to top off the party's hit points between battles.

Or take the archer fighter. The archer fighter is fairly good by 10th level solely due to Debilitating Shot, but before then, an archer fighter struggles to be relevant compared to melee fighters. An archer fighter has to blow an action at the start of combat on Point-Blank Shot, bows still deal significantly less damage than melee weapons, Attack of Opportunity is useless on a ranged fighter, and fighters get pigeonholed into heavy armor by 7th level.

Or take barbarians who choose any totem other than Dragon or Fury. The Animal, Giant, Spirit, and Superstition are all weak trap options for their own reasons, especially that crippling anathema on Superstition.

Or take monks who do anything other than prioritize Dexterity over Strength and use Tiger Style, then Tangled Forest Style at 8th level. Sacrificing Dexterity means sacrificing AC when a monk is already a punching bag for critical hits, and a monk's attack spam playstyle more or less demands agile weapons.

Or take paladins who actually bother with sinking a feat into Warded Touch just to use lay on hands. It is a weak power, and it quickly gets obsoleted by Channel Life at 4th, used to top off the party outside of combat.

Or take the majority of the feats of the pirate archetype, which are extremely situational even in a dedicated pirate campaign like Skull & Shackles. Boarding Action is especially egregious among these, again, even in a campaign with plenty of naval action.

Or take individual trap options à la carte. I can point to nearly any page of ancestry feats or class feats in this game and point out which ones are complete and utter rubbish. Page 91 is a good example: Dual-Handed Assault, Quick Reversal, Twin Parry, Revealing Stab are all overwhelmingly situational, and I would probably say that Swipe and Improved Bravery are bad purchases too. Page 108 is another good instance: Hospice Knight, Warded Touch, Dragonslayer Oath, Fiendbane Oath, and Shining Oath are all awful, and even the best 2nd-level paladin feat, Divine Grace, is middling in power level.

Or take entire classes, like the ranger, or worse, the alchemist. I dare say those are trap classes altogether (no pun intended for snare rangers, though I suppose those are traps too with their Bulk 8 snare kits).

I really think that Paizo needs to sit down at some point and actually consider what they want the power level of any given option at any given level to be, because the benchmarks are all over the place. A contact of mine has written an essay on this here.

[masda_gib]

I can't answer to all things, just one thing I found while reading the essay.

I think the rules on Trap #5, Quick Reversal doen't wor as your contact writes. The way I read it, you don't need a second action to make the second strike on a failure. You get the second strike as part of that one action you use to make the first strike.
So the cost is much less and I think this feat is OK. It says it has a cost of one action and doesn't say that you have to add an action like other feats do.

So at least this is a case of getting rules wrong (and the rules being a bit unclear maybe).

[Colette Brunel]

Quick Reversal has the press trait, which means that you need to already be suffering a multiple attack penalty to use it.

[Unicore]

Playing an Archer Fighter, the situation is not as bad as you make it out. Not having to move to attack gains back a lot of action economy, especially with how few monsters have AoO. Also they are not forced into heavy armor. With a maxed out Dex, the numbers are the same for fighters if they stay with light armor or move to heavier armor, but they take none of the movement penalties. THe scaling of the proficiency bonus for heavy Armor is to make up for the fact that the attribute bonus to AC does not scale.

[Colette Brunel]

Unicore wrote:

Playing an Archer Fighter, the situation is not as bad as you make it out. Not having to move to attack gains back a lot of action economy, especially with how few monsters have AoO.

The low damage is a non-negligible concern.

At 1st-level, a guisarme fighter is dealing 1d10+4 damage (average 9.5) while controlling a sizeable portion of the battlefield. They likely have Sudden Charge.
At 1st-level, a bow fighter has a shortbow for 1d6+2 damage (average 5.5), they control none of the battlefield, and they spend an action at the start of combat for that.

Or, suppose the character started at 5th level instead.
At 5th level, a guisarme fighter is dealing 2d10+4 damage (average 15), still while controlling a sizeable portion of the battlefield. Sudden Charge still serves well, here.
At 5th level, a Strength 18 longbow fighter is dealing 2d8+2 damage (average 11), so the gap has closed a smidge, yet they still control none of the battlefield, and they still spend an action at the start of combat for that.

Unicore wrote:

Also they are not forced into heavy armor. With a maxed out Dex, the numbers are the same for fighters if they stay with light armor or move to heavier armor, but they take none of the movement penalties. THe scaling of the proficiency bonus for heavy Armor is to make up for the fact that the attribute bonus to AC does not scale.

Oh, sorry. I meant pigeonholed into heavy armor at 11th level, not 7th level; 11th level is for fighters, and 7th level is for paladins.

In any case, your assertion seems to be incorrect. All armor of leather and above caps out at maximum Dexterity modifier + base AC bonus = +7, which means that by 11th level, any fighter still has their highest AC in heavy armor no matter what.

[Rysky]

While there still remains much to desired in this new system being playtested, seeing as how when Starfinder first came out OP led a crusade that the only viable way to play a Solarion was to actually play a Soldier and multiclass into Solarion otherwise your character would be worthless I tend to find their claims suspect on lots of things, especially labeling thigns they don't like as "Trap Options".

Colette Brunel wrote:

The Animal, Giant, Spirit, and Superstition are all weak trap options for their own reasons

Case in point, Spirit Totem is Awesome! That miss chance saved my RotR Barbarian a bunch, though I'm sad that it doesn't work against Reach anymore (atm) the ability to negate ranged attacks is a welcome boon, as is making your Damage Positive or Negative aligned.

As for Quick Reversal I agree with Masda (I'm pretty sure a Dev commented on this as well), you miss with your first and on your second attack when you would normally be taking penalties is when it[Press] kicks in. It stands to be spelled out better I presume.

[Rysky]

Colette Brunel wrote:

they control none of the battlefield,

Seeing as how they can hit everyone in said battlefield with a Full Attack this isn't really true.

[Colette Brunel]

The only good thing about the spirit totem is the 6th-level Spirits' Interference class feat, which comes at 6th-level. The base spirit totem ability is still more or less overly situational dreck, as is the raging resistance. The core meat of the spirit totem is bad, and a single class feat does not salvage it.

Quick Reversal is bad because it is too situational. It requires you to be flanked, it requires you to be on your second (or third) attack, and it requires you to miss that second (or third) attack. That is far too many conditions for the class feat to be reliable.

Compare Quick Reversal to, for example, Improved Brutish Shove, which is a meaningful and unconditional improvement to a bread-and-butter class feat, Brutish Shove.

"I can hit everyone in the battlefield with a full attack" does not equate to control, because it does not actually restrict movement options. A reach weapon fighter actually does exert meaningful control, since they can threaten many squares with Attacks of Opportunity, with their only real weakness being their diagonal gaps.

[Blave]

The rating for the domains is more than questionable. I mean, the author gives "Know the Enemy" a bad rating. His reasoning?

Quote:

Know the Enemy is a free action triggered when you hit an enemy with a melee Strike. It allows you to roll to Recall Knowledge with the option to use lorekeeper’s fortune. As a cleric you should never be melee attacking, so this is bad.

Emphasis mine. And I have nothing to add.

I've only read up to knowledge and I already STRONGLY disagree with a multitude of ratings.

Honestly, if that's one of the foundations for the thesis "the game is full of trap options", this thesis is simply wrong.

There are weak and even useless feats and abilities in the game, no doubt. But it's not nearly as bad as you (and the author of the domain-document) make it look.

[Rysky]

Colette Brunel wrote:

The only good thing about the spirit totem is the 6th-level Spirits' Interference class feat, which comes at 6th-level. The base spirit totem ability is still more or less overly situational dreck, as is the raging resistance. The core meat of the spirit totem is bad, and a single class feat does not salvage it.

Calling something "dreck" because you don't like the option in an attempt to make the option look bad isn't really helping your cause.

It's not situational either, your damage becomes either Positive (extra ouchies for Undead) or Negative (ouchies for absolutely everything else) aligned so that will always be useful, and being able to hit incorporeal creatures is a godsend, you tend to fight them more than you would think. And Resistance vs Negative and anything from Undead attacks is awesome too as they're a common enemy.

And you get Interference at 6th, the same as 1st. Which is also when you get access to all the the Totem powers as well.

And Spirit's Wrath is an upgrade vs the original version, hopefully later they'll give us the aoe endcap too.

So yeah, very much disagree that it is "dreck"

Colette Brunel wrote:

Quick Reversal is bad because it is too situational. It requires you to be flanked, it requires you to be on your second (or third) attack, and it requires you to miss that second (or third) attack. That is far too many conditions for the class feat to be reliable.

Compare Quick Reversal to, for example, Improved Brutish Shove, which is a meaningful and unconditional improvement to a bread-and-butter class feat, Brutish Shove.

Flanked and full attacking is something that's going to occur to a Fighter a lot, being a front liner. Also it remains to be seen if you can use it on the second attack or if it can only be used on the third. Brutish Shove is nice, but it requires 2Handers, and IBS is 2 a 2 Feat investment.

Flanked and full attacking is something that's going to occur to a Fighter a lot, being a front liner. Brutish Shove is nice, but it requires 2Handers, and IBS is 2 a 2 Feat investment.

Colette Brunel wrote:

"I can hit everyone in the battlefield with a full attack" does not equate to control, because it does not actually restrict movement options. A reach weapon fighter actually does exert meaningful control, since they can threaten many squares with Attacks of Opportunity, with their only real weakness being their diagonal gaps.

Both weapons do since they decide movement for the enemy. "Is this place/path safe?" Bows can't AoO but they make the entire battlefield unsafe for Opponents, whereas the Reach is only for very close targets.

[Rysky]

Blave wrote:

The rating for the domains is more than questionable. I mean, the author gives "Know the Enemy" a bad rating. His reasoning?

Quote:

Know the Enemy is a free action triggered when you hit an enemy with a melee Strike. It allows you to roll to Recall Knowledge with the option to use lorekeeper’s fortune. As a cleric you should never be melee attacking, so this is bad.

Emphasis mine. And I have nothing to add.

I've only read up to knowledge and I already STRONGLY disagree with a multitude of ratings.

Honestly, if that's one of the foundations for the thesis "the game is full of trap options", this thesis is simply wrong.

There are weak and even useless feats and abilities in the game, no doubt. But it's not nearly as bad as you (and the author of the domain-document) make it look.

Oh wow that's a bad take.

There's a reason the moment I saw the "Guide Color Coding" I immediately closed the tab.

[Gorbacz]

Man, the OP reads like a "how to not feedback" bingo.

[Zman0]

Ahhhh.... Archery fighters don't lose their AoO. Bows are 1+ Hands, meaning they can wear gauntlets and strike with the "free" hand for their AoO as much as they want. Hell, they can do it non lethal with just their fist too. As for battlefield control, they can hit anyone anywhere on that battlefield.

Yeah a guisarme on a fighter is about the best melee option, but the archery fighter has the ability to hit who they want where they want on the field. When you factor crits in bows are better than they first appear.

Monks and non optimal Dex... even if you don't prioritize Dex, it costs you what, 1pt of AC thanks to the abundant ASIs and diminishing returns. You start with a 16 vs a 18, you end up having equal modifiers at levels 5-9, 15-19. Now, if you start with only a 14 you are down 1-2pts of AC over your career. This is hardly the end of the world.

While we are talking trap options, this isn't like Pathfinder didn't have any, or 5e, or gods.... 3.5. But compared to 3.P, the scope of power between optimized and unoptimized is much smaller. In this way 2e is closer to 5e.... and thats because under the good its a good bound system with level scaling tacked on.

[Colette Brunel]

Rysky wrote:

Calling something "dreck" because you don't like the option in an attempt to make the option look bad isn't really helping your cause.

It's not situational either, your damage becomes either Positive (extra ouchies for Undead) or Negative (ouchies for absolutely everything else) aligned so that will always be useful, and being able to hit incorporeal creatures is a godsend, you tend to fight them more than you would think. And Resistance vs Negative and anything from Undead attacks is awesome too as they're a common enemy.

The base Spirit totem really is bad though. It is good if you expect to face incorporeals and undead regularly often... and that is absolutely it. If you are not facing incorporeals and undead often, then it is worthless to you most of the time.

Changing the conditional damage to negative energy damage does... what, exactly? There are no enemies vulnerable to negative energy damage.

Rysky wrote:

And you get Interference at 6th, the same as 1st. Which is also when you get access to all the the Totem powers as well.

Spirit's Interference comes at 6th level, not at 1st level. This is the same level that Dragon Totem Breath comes along for a rather nice AoE damage option for a Dragon barbarian, which is a 1/hour close-range fireball.

Rysky wrote:

And Spirit's Wrath is an upgrade vs the original version, hopefully later they'll give us the aoe endcap too.

Spirit's Wrath is less effective than swinging around your +3 or +4 two-handed weapon.

Rysky wrote:

Flanked and full attacking is something that's going to occur to a Fighter a lot, being a front liner. Also it remains to be seen if you can use it on the second attack or if it can only be used on the third.

The amount of conditions it takes for Quick Reversal to vindicate itself is too high. Improved Brutish Shove may take two feats, yet it gives a constant, reliable bread-and-butter attack that is significantly less situational. Something more broadly applicable will generally be more useful than something situational, unless the latter is absolutely amazing... which Quick Reversal is not.

[Colette Brunel]

Blave wrote:

Know the Enemy is a free action triggered when you hit an enemy with a melee Strike. It allows you to roll to Recall Knowledge with the option to use lorekeeper’s fortune. As a cleric you should never be melee attacking, so this is bad.

Bear in mind that know the enemy is an advanced domain power that you are spending Spell Points on, and a cleric will only really have good Nature and Religion for reliable Recall Knowledges on monsters. Furthermore, Recall Knowledge for monsters is bad, as per page 338: it nets you only a dead-obvious fact on a success, and takes a critical success for something more subtle. With that in mind, plus the general sketchiness of melee weapon clerics over the usual formula of "pure caster, probably a Sarenrae cleric," yes, I would call know the enemy middling.

That said, I can see know the enemy being somewhat vindicated on a cleric who absolutely, positively insists on: (1) taking an advanced domain power, (2) using a melee weapon, and (3) investing in a broad array of Recall Knowledge skills.

[masda_gib]

Qick Reversal gives you a free bonus attack when you miss - that's when you want a second chanceSince you have multiattack penalty, you will be missing often. How is that bad?

When I am flanked when my turn stats, I have 5 tries to attack someone with it.

And, when using a sweep weapon, I get +1 to attack on every attack except my first when using QR smart. QR and sweep weapons have good synergy.

[Colette Brunel]

Rysky wrote:

Bows can't AoO but they make the entire battlefield unsafe for Opponents, whereas the Reach is only for very close targets.

Zman wrote:

Ahhhh.... Archery fighters don't lose their AoO. Bows are 1+ Hands, meaning they can wear gauntlets and strike with the "free" hand for their AoO as much as they want. Hell, they can do it non lethal with just their fist too. As for battlefield control, they can hit anyone anywhere on that battlefield.

Yeah a guisarme on a fighter is about the best melee option, but the archery fighter has the ability to hit who they want where they want on the field. When you factor crits in bows are better than they first appear.

A bow does not quite make "the entire battlefield unsafe for opponents," because they are still free to move around willy-nilly. By your logic, having any spellcaster present makes "the entire battlefield unsafe for opponents," because a spellcaster can cast spells from afar.

Attack of Opportunity, on the other hand, is actual lockdown that discourages movement.

You are also underestimating Sudden Charge, what a reach fighter takes in place of the action-demanding Point-Blank Shot. That really helps get into position to begin with, and to start the lockdown.

An archer fighter can make attacks of opportunity with a fist or a gauntlet, but it is not going to be that strong. 1d4 + Strength modifier might discourage a very low-hit-point enemy from doing something, but anything more formidable might as well just take it. By 4th- or 5th-level, 1d4 + Strength modifier more or less becomes obsolete, unless an archer fighter shells out the cash to make their fist or their gauntlets +1 magic on top of their bow, which is a major dip in the budget.

Zman wrote:

Monks and non optimal Dex... even if you don't prioritize Dex, it costs you what, 1pt of AC thanks to the abundant ASIs and diminishing returns. You start with a 16 vs a 18, you end up having equal modifiers at levels 5-9, 15-19. Now, if you start with only a 14 you are down 1-2pts of AC over your career. This is hardly the end of the world.

The stretch from 1st to 4th level with Dexterity 16 on a monk will be quite rough, since that is absolutely rusty dagger shanktown. Given the way critical hits work, that monk will be quite a punching bag.

[Colette Brunel]

masda_gib wrote:

Qick Reversal gives you a free bonus attack when you miss - that's when you want a second chanceSince you have multiattack penalty, you will be missing often. How is that bad?

When I am flanked when my turn stats, I have 5 tries to attack someone with it.

Remember that critical failures do not trigger failure effects on press attacks, so the window is narrower than it looks.

masda_gib wrote:

And, when using a sweep weapon, I get +1 to attack on every attack except my first when using QR smart. QR and sweep weapons have good synergy.

I do not think a +1 bonus is salvaging Quick Reversal.

[Blave]

Know the enemy is cheap at one SP and you can choose to spend another SP for a second chance to succeed. If you're already a melee cleric and hitting the enemy anyway, you just saved an action.

And I have no idea since when "pure caster" is the usual formula for clerics. From my experience, melee and hybrid clerics are way more common.

[Pramxnim]

I haven’t read the entire document, but as soon as I saw Animal Companion being listed as a benchmark feat I already have to disagree with the assessment.

Animal Companion is as bad as a trap option can get. It requires significant investment and starts to lag behind as soon as PCs start getting magic items. The companion has Wizard level hp and is both more inaccurate and easier to hit than other PCs. They might get maximum modifier in their main stat (+7, or +8 if you’re a Druid who specialized twice) earlier than PCs (at level 16 for Rangers, at level 14 or 18 for Druid), but the complete lack of magic item bonus to attack and AC make them mostly useless for high level fights. An action spent commanding your animal companion to attack has a baked in MAP because their attack is 1-5 behind a PC, and they deal less damage to boot. That makes the ‘benchmark’ feat line a glorified flanking buddy and some extra hp that gets expended quickly once monsters try to hit them. I like the idea of the feat line, but the implementation fails at higher levels because Paizo forgot to do the math.

[Zman0]

Yes, the gauntlet falling behind is more a factor of the asinine idea of tieing weapon damage dice to the magical enhancement and not the character's level. Many aspects of the game suffer from this inherent problem. My table will be using extra dice at level 4/8/12/16/20 instead. Though, you'd be able to spare some coin for your gauntlet to keep it one or so potentiates behind. It not being a great attack is a far cry from your straw-man of them having no battlefield control because they "lose" their AoO.

Point Blank Shot is only necessary for longbow fighters who already get their higher damage dice. For a composite Short bow user, they will often be better of throwing out their third attack with their MAP and crit fishing.

Monk AC being 1pt lower at levels 1-4, yes that will hurt, but you are vasty exaggerating how much it turns him into a punching bag. Its along the lines of taking ~10% more damage. And there is an opportunity cost, in favoring strength that would be extra melee damage and we can't forget killing something faster is its own for of defense.

See, you don't make entirely bad points, but the way you come across and present your arguments and use hyperbole you really alienate people who want to have a reasonable discussion.

[Starfox]

In my observation, there are many timmy options in PF2 even BEFORE you look as deep into classes as Colette has done. This is particularly true of skill feats, but happens in all feat categories.

This is a list of examples, not complete in any form or fashion.

Ancestry/Elf/Ageless Patience - this is likely to make you earn less money

Ancestry/Goblin/City Scavenger - Few games have this much social realism

Class/Alchemist/Combine Elixir - While good, this will cut the usual short adventuring day of PF2 even shorter :o

Class/Fighter/Mirror Shield - Unlike the other feats that let you riposte on a critical miss that apply to very common attacks, this applies to a kind of attack that is rare.

Class/Paladin/Retributive Strike - Unless you count as your own ally (which makes this weak but ok), the best paladin tactic is to have a reach weapon and stand behind allies, forcing opponents to attack allies to trigger Retributive Strike. Since so much of the paladin class hinges on Retributive Strike, this makes the entire class very questionable as written.

Class/Sorcerer/Bloodline - This is written assuming all the spell lists are equal. Compare the abilities of the various other classes that have these spell lists (wizard, bard, druid, cleric), and this is obviously not something Paizo really believe themselves.

Feats/Skill/Assurance - This is NOT your old take 10.

Feats/Skill/Forager - Social realism again, but this time it is at least cool.

And so on, ad nauseum. Avoiding timmy options (options that are either so conditional they never come up, or just give too small a bonus to matter) should be a central goal of RPG design. The reason is that role-players will often choose these options because they are thematic, which makes timmy options punish role-players.

Sorry if this comes off as a bit of a rant, I actually like PF2 quite a bit, but there are lots of bad things that need hammering out.

[Pramxnim]

On the topic of Quick Reversal, I’ve done the math for Certain Strikes (one of the strongest feats for a melee, non-Agile Grace Fighter) and the failure chance is roughly 45% for a wide range of accuracy (anything between 5% and 50% accuracy), so basically most of the time.

Under the right conditions, Quick Reversal will give you a chance to retry your attack. As others have pointed out, you will be flanked a lot when playing a frontline melee character vs enemies that employ tactics (so, most of them). Say you have a 55% accuracy with your 1st attack, you’ll have 30% and 5% accuracy with your 2nd and 3rd attacks.

QR will improve your accuracy by about 45% in each case. So your 30% to hit and deal damage becomes 0.30 * 1.45 = 0.435 (43.5%) and your 5% becomes 7.25%. You also get another chance to fish for a Critical if you fail to hit, and when you’re basically fishing for a crit in the first place (with your 3rd Attack), getting another chance to do so is very valuable.

In conclusion, QR is not a trap option, since the conditions for its activation are not rare for a melee Fighter and it adds an appreciable benefit to your 2nd and 3rd Strikes (a 45% increase in accuracy).

Now if you want a real trap option, I suggest looking at the Barbarian’s Dragon Totem Transformation, where you get to transform into a level 12~ creature at level 16, lowering your attack bonus and AC drastically and rendering you pretty ineffective in battle. Unless they clarify the form to use your own attack bonus and AC values, the feat is less than worthless, it is actively harmful for your character.

[Kryss]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Calling something "dreck" because you don't like the option in an attempt to make the option look bad isn't really helping your cause.

It's not situational either, your damage becomes either Positive (extra ouchies for Undead) or Negative (ouchies for absolutely everything else) aligned so that will always be useful, and being able to hit incorporeal creatures is a godsend, you tend to fight them more than you would think. And Resistance vs Negative and anything from Undead attacks is awesome too as they're a common enemy.

The base Spirit totem really is bad though. It is good if you expect to face incorporeals and undead regularly often... and that is absolutely it. If you are not facing incorporeals and undead often, then it is worthless to you most of the time.

Changing the conditional damage to negative energy damage does... what, exactly? There are no enemies vulnerable to negative energy damage.

Actually, everything living is hurt by negative damage. If you go look at undead they do not have a weakness from positive damage either.

Positive damage does more to undead, Negative damage does more to living...

[Colette Brunel]

Pramxnim wrote:

Under the right conditions, Quick Reversal will give you a chance to retry your attack. As others have pointed out, you will be flanked a lot when playing a frontline melee character vs enemies that employ tactics (so, most of them).

Maybe it is just me, but when flanked, it generally seems like a better idea to get into a better position (the ever-useful Sudden Charge is excellent for this!), potentially even becoming the one to flank, and then swinging away. Quick Reversal requires that you insist on standing your ground in your current position.

Kryss wrote:

Actually, everything living is hurt by negative damage.

Your point being? Everything gets hurt by an extra +X conditional damage from Rage, too.

[Xenocrat]

Kryss wrote:

Colette Brunel wrote:

Changing the conditional damage to negative energy damage does... what, exactly? There are no enemies vulnerable to negative energy damage.

Actually, everything living is hurt by negative damage. If you go look at undead they do not have a weakness from positive damage either.

Positive damage does more to undead, Negative damage does more to living...

This isn't correct. Nothing in the bestiary (currently) takes extra damage from positive or negative damage. You're trading slashing/bludgeoning/piercing damage for negative or positive, which accomplishes...nothing. It's just damage.

Positive damage can overcome incorporeal resistances, but this ability already makes all of your attack count as ghost touch, so that's useless.

[Pramxnim]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Pramxnim wrote:

Under the right conditions, Quick Reversal will give you a chance to retry your attack. As others have pointed out, you will be flanked a lot when playing a frontline melee character vs enemies that employ tactics (so, most of them).

Maybe it is just me, but when flanked, it generally seems like a better idea to get into a better position (the ever-useful Sudden Charge is excellent for this!), potentially even becoming the one to flank, and then swinging away. Quick Reversal requires that you insist on standing your ground in your current position.

Kryss wrote:

Actually, everything living is hurt by negative damage.

Your point being? Everything gets hurt by an extra +X conditional damage from Rage, too.

Nothing is stopping you from moving out of flanking after your 2 attacks. You could Strike -> Quick Reversal -> Stride.

You could already be flanking with an ally from where you are, so there’s no need to move into flanking position. The enemy could have an AoO, making repositioning tricky or risky (and Stepping can be done after attacking). There could be other reasons you might want to remain in place (to hold a choke point, to lure enemies in for the Wizard to use an air spell etc.)

Point is, you’re not locked in to staying in place in order to use Quick Reversal, or you might have another reason to not disengage from a position where you’re flanked.

[Unicore]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Unicore wrote:

Also they are not forced into heavy armor. With a maxed out Dex, the numbers are the same for fighters if they stay with light armor or move to heavier armor, but they take none of the movement penalties. THe scaling of the proficiency bonus for heavy Armor is to make up for the fact that the attribute bonus to AC does not scale.

Oh, sorry. I meant pigeonholed into heavy armor at 11th level, not 7th level; 11th level is for fighters, and 7th level is for paladins.

In any case, your assertion seems to be incorrect. All armor of leather and above caps out at maximum Dexterity modifier + base AC bonus = +7, which means that by 11th level, any fighter still has their highest AC in heavy armor no matter what.

And is barely moving across the battle field (-10 to speed) until level 17. SO for one less AC, a ranged fighter in light armor with a max Dex is capable of moving 2 times and firing and that glaive wielding Fighter is never going to be able to catch her, thus making the 1 point of AC irrelevant. Or by level 10, the ranged fighter has debilitating shot and then the heavy armor fighter has only 2 actions a round and is really never catching the ranged fighter.

Light armor vs Heavy armor is a tactical choice bigger than the AC value. At lower levels, fighters really don't want to be wearing heavy armor if they can get to the AC+7 any other way. At higher levels, they might choose the Defense over the movement, but it doesn't make the movement a Trap option, especially with a difference of 1 or 2 by 17th level.

[Nathanael Love]

This can't be true, I was informed feat taxes and trap options had all been removed,and indeed they were the reason we needed 2E in the first place.

[Rysky]

Colette Brunel wrote:

The base Spirit totem really is bad though. It is good if you expect to face incorporeals and undead regularly often... and that is absolutely it. If you are not facing incorporeals and undead often, then it is worthless to you most of the time.

And Evil Clerics, and Necromancers. These aren't small niche enemy groups.

Colette Brunel wrote:

Changing the conditional damage to negative energy damage does... what, exactly? There are no enemies vulnerable to negative energy damage.

Yet. And conversely there's not really anything Resistant to it either.

Colette Brunel wrote:

Spirit's Interference comes at 6th level, not at 1st level. This is the same level that Dragon Totem Breath comes along for a rather nice AoE damage option for a Dragon barbarian, which is a 1/hour close-range fireball.

... at 1/hour that's not really impressive as you seem to think it is. Given the choice between the two I'd go with the option to negate ranged attacks that's always on while I'm raging.

Colette Brunel wrote:

Spirit's Wrath is less effective than swinging around your +3 or +4 two-handed weapon.

Yes, unless you don't have the weapon for the moment or you can't use it (like you're grappled). Or the enemy is out of range (I admit that I missed that the Spirit uses your MAP but that only diminishes it's usefulness slightly). I think it's better since you use your CON instead of CHA now.

Colette Brunel wrote:

The amount of conditions it takes for Quick Reversal to vindicate itself is too high.

Two. Two Conditions. Two very common conditions. Getting flanked, not that rare. And taking more than one attack, which if you're a Fighter, is a given. So the "conditions" are borderline minimalist, not hoops to jump through.

Colette Brunel wrote:

Improved Brutish Shove may take two feats, yet it gives a constant, reliable bread-and-butter attack that is significantly less situational. Something more broadly applicable will generally be more useful than something situational, unless the latter is absolutely amazing... which Quick Reversal is not.

Not really since you can only use it against creatures you're size (or 1 size larger if you nab Improved), so in that way it's more restrictive than Quick Reversal in the sense that you'll usually fight multiple opponents rather than just larger opponents. It's also a Press attack like QR. And it's forced movement isn't really useful against targets with Reach. The FF is nice though but that takes 2 Feats to come online. And again BS requires a 2Hander, not every fighter uses that. QR works with any melee weapon.

[Rysky]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Kryss wrote:

Actually, everything living is hurt by negative damage.

Your point being? Everything gets hurt by an extra +X conditional damage from Rage, too.

Unless they're Resistant to it, which quite a few things are if you're playing a Dragon Totem and thus have Elemental Damage, so not always universally universal. With Spirit Totem you're damage is always getting through, aside from Undead what's all Resistant to negative Energy aside from other Spirit Totem Barbarians.

EDIT: I just checked. The Norn is Immune to Negative. That's it. 1 Monster out of the entire Bestairy is Immune/Resistant to Negative. How many things have Fire Resistance/Immunity?

[vestris]

Xenocrat wrote:

Kryss wrote:

Colette Brunel wrote:

Changing the conditional damage to negative energy damage does... what, exactly? There are no enemies vulnerable to negative energy damage.

Actually, everything living is hurt by negative damage. If you go look at undead they do not have a weakness from positive damage either.

Positive damage does more to undead, Negative damage does more to living...

This isn't correct. Nothing in the bestiary (currently) takes extra damage from positive or negative damage. You're trading slashing/bludgeoning/piercing damage for negative or positive, which accomplishes...nothing. It's just damage.

Positive damage can overcome incorporeal resistances, but this ability already makes all of your attack count as ghost touch, so that's useless.

Well there are indeed no vulnerabilities against positive/negative energy, however there are plenty resistances against physical/slashing/bludgeoning/piercing and none against positive/negative energy.

And of course a class/feat that is specifically designed to be good against a single class of enemies can be a trap option if your GM lets you walk into such a trap (letting you chose the spirit totem in a setting without undead) or specifically spawns only foes that are not undead to laugh at you (well change tables).

Spirit wrath gives you an inherent ranged attack option. That you can use after slaying an opponent and being unable to move and attack the next one, or to hit a flying/floating opponent. With good damage without spending 2000 GP on a second magic weapon for range. That you can use when using mighty rage at the begin of combat to still deal damage.

[Xenocrat]

vestris wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

This isn't correct. Nothing in the bestiary (currently) takes extra damage from positive or negative damage. You're trading slashing/bludgeoning/piercing damage for negative or positive, which accomplishes...nothing. It's just damage.

Positive damage can overcome incorporeal resistances, but this ability already makes all of your attack count as ghost touch, so that's useless.

Well there are indeed no vulnerabilities against positive/negative energy, however there are plenty resistances against physical/slashing/bludgeoning/piercing and none against positive/negative energy.

It's still either useless or negligible in that situation. Only your bonus rage damage is converted, not your base weapon damage. If your base damage would have done any damage even without the rage damage, it does nothing. If you otherwise would have done no damage, you instead do the (small) rage damage instead. That's...not great.

[Rysky]

Xenocrat wrote:

vestris wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

This isn't correct. Nothing in the bestiary (currently) takes extra damage from positive or negative damage. You're trading slashing/bludgeoning/piercing damage for negative or positive, which accomplishes...nothing. It's just damage.

Positive damage can overcome incorporeal resistances, but this ability already makes all of your attack count as ghost touch, so that's useless.

Well there are indeed no vulnerabilities against positive/negative energy, however there are plenty resistances against physical/slashing/bludgeoning/piercing and none against positive/negative energy.

It's still either useless or negligible in that situation. Only your bonus rage damage is converted, not your base weapon damage. If your base damage would have done any damage even without the rage damage, it does nothing. If you otherwise would have done no damage, you instead do the (small) rage damage instead. That's...not great.

Uh, it's damage that's always gonna get through. That's very good.

[Xenocrat]

Rysky wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

vestris wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

This isn't correct. Nothing in the bestiary (currently) takes extra damage from positive or negative damage. You're trading slashing/bludgeoning/piercing damage for negative or positive, which accomplishes...nothing. It's just damage.

Positive damage can overcome incorporeal resistances, but this ability already makes all of your attack count as ghost touch, so that's useless.

Well there are indeed no vulnerabilities against positive/negative energy, however there are plenty resistances against physical/slashing/bludgeoning/piercing and none against positive/negative energy.

It's still either useless or negligible in that situation. Only your bonus rage damage is converted, not your base weapon damage. If your base damage would have done any damage even without the rage damage, it does nothing. If you otherwise would have done no damage, you instead do the (small) rage damage instead. That's...not great.

Uh, it's damage that's always gonna get through. That's very good.

It's tiny damage (2-7 points) that will always get through in the rare situations you can't otherwise do any damage. That's not very good at all.

Look, the effect on incorporeal monsters is fine. It's just that the conversion of your rage damage to positive/negative is pretty much justattached flavor text, it will almost never have any mechanical significance, and when it does that significance will be negligible.

[pauljathome]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Maybe it is just me, but when flanked, it generally seems like a better idea to get into a better position

In my experience the "conga line of Doom" is very, very common. Everybody ends up flanking and being flanked.

[ENHenry]

Colette Brunel wrote:

The sea of trap options in this game is demoralizing to wade through. I have run groups through two iterations of The Lost Star, two iterations of In Pale Mountain's Shadow, and two iterations of The Rose Street Revenge. I have assisted all of my players during character creation, which means going through options, which means wading through 2e's sea of trap options.

Not for nothing, didn't you also say in another thread here in General Discussion that these groups you helped wade through a sea of "trap" options also had a 6 for 6 TPK?....

I'm not attempting to invalidate your opinion or anything, I'm just trying to understand better why you and your groups have had such a difficult time of it, as compared to a lot of other groups.

[Rysky]

Xenocrat wrote:

It's tiny damage (2-7 points) that will always get through in the rare situations you can't otherwise do any damage. That's not very good at all.

It's damage that will get through in every situation. That's very good.

[Matthew Downie]

Only if there are situations where the regular damage bonus does not get through. Can you give any examples where this is likely to happen?

[Xenocrat]

Rysky wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

It's tiny damage (2-7 points) that will always get through in the rare situations you can't otherwise do any damage. That's not very good at all.

It's damage that will get through in every situation. That's very good.

No, it's not. Would an ability to always inflict 2-7 points of damage when hitting purple polka-dotted hermaphrodite half-angel Red Dragons, but only when they are suffering from a curse affect and are Frightened 3 be a good ability? I'd say no, because it's not very likely you're going to face that situation. And even if you did, 2-7 points of damage per hit (assuming you can hit) is going to get you killed. If you're that outclassed, run away.

Matthew Downie wrote:

Only if there are situations where the regular damage bonus does not get through. Can you give any examples where this is likely to happen?

Exactly. Resistances generally vary between 5-15, and at the level you're facing a particular resistance your minimal damage is going to be high enough that the ability to convert your rage damage into negative/positive won't matter.

Devils are probably the best example, as they have resistance against everything but silver, so weapon types won't help you.

A raging level 7 Barbarian does 2d12+4+4 damage, minimum 10 (6 from weapon, 4 from rage that can potentially bypass resistance). A level 8 Fury Devil has resistance 5. So it doesn't matter if you have this ability, it can't help. A level 9 Bone Devil has resistance 10. Ok, if you roll the absolute minimum damage, a 1/144 occurence, this ability will enable you to do 4 points of damage (vs 0). If you roll 11 points of damage (1/72), you do an extra 3 points of damage. If you roll 12 points of damage (1/36) you do an extra 2 points of damage. And if you roll 13 points of damage this will do an extra 1 point of damage.

Expected damage contribution against a Bone Devil:

.0069*4 + .0139*3 + .0208*2 + .0278*1 = 0.1387 average extra damage per hit (not per attack).

Against an enemy two levels higher than you, this is...not useful.

[Colette Brunel]

Unicore wrote:

And is barely moving across the battle field (-10 to speed) until level 17. SO for one less AC, a ranged fighter in light armor with a max Dex is capable of moving 2 times and firing and that glaive wielding Fighter is never going to be able to catch her, thus making the 1 point of AC irrelevant.

Or maybe, just maybe, fighter class feats could be designed in such a way that they give a benefit to all fighters regardless of what they choose as their armor selection.

A human fighter building for character creation at 11th or 12th level specifically (e.g. Heroes of Undarin) may as well take only as much Dexterity as is necessary to cap out their AC in heavy armor.

A bow fighter needs Dexterity anyway, and they are not really gaining that much out of the heavy armor class features comparatively.

Unicore wrote:

Or by level 10, the ranged fighter has debilitating shot and then the heavy armor fighter has only 2 actions a round and is really never catching the ranged fighter.

Debilitating Shot is just about the one thing that vindicates bow fighters, as I already acknowledge in my opening post. Also, PvP comparisons are useless.

ENHenry wrote:

TPKs

What can I say; the math of 2e can be brutal for a GM who actually uses focused fire and who has a little luck on their side. It does not affect trap options one way or another.

[Cantriped]

Colette Brunel wrote:

What can I say; the math of 2e can be brutal for a GM who actually uses focused fire and who has a little luck on their side. It does not affect trap options one way or another.

IIRC: You misapplied the rules for Darkness; allowing your Goblins to snipe at targets in bright light from darkness without suffering the 20% miss chance they're supposed to. Thereby granting them an excessive advantage in the total darkness of The Lost Star. Which is not to say that those encounters weren't overtuned to start with, or that luck doesn't significantly affect the outcome.

[Colette Brunel]

Cantriped wrote:

IIRC: You misapplied the rules for Darkness; allowing your Goblins to snipe at targets in bright light from darkness without suffering the 20% miss chance they're supposed to. Thereby granting them an excessive advantage in the total darkness of The Lost Star.

I do not think I did. Besides which, neither group had TPKed to the goblins.