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Not sure if this should go here or another subsection, my apologies if I'm off. I'll try to be brief for the benefit of those reading. It is possible that I am off in my assessments due to the newness of the content.
Compared to previous editions of similar games, Strength and Constitution do not give as much relative benefit when compared to other attributes. Mental ability scores have either remained the same in value or increased. The value of Dexterity has increased.
In PF1e, Constitution gave +1hp per modifier bonus, and HP totals averaged between 3.5/HD (Wizard) to 6.5/HD (Barbarian). In PF2e, HP totals have nearly doubled from 6/HD to 12/HD. The relative value of Constitution is halved.
The number of attacks and damage multipliers in PF2 have decreased. Gone are the x4 criticals and 1.5xSTR bonuses. Criticals are now governed by attack roll total rather than natural die results, making them much harder to optimize for. It is also less likely (impossible?) to get more than four attacks in a round, whereas in PF1e two-weapon fighting and extra attacks were commonplace. Though less noticeable than Con, Str no longer gives as much damage output as it did in PF1e.
The benefit of higher DCs on spells is more pronounced now that nearly every offensive spell is both weaker and can now crit.
Intelligence still gives one skill per modifier, but each skill training is relatively more useful due to the smaller skill list (as you require fewer total skills training to learn every skill). Charisma now gives resonance in addition to its previous bonuses, and Wisdom still governs the most important saving throw.
Dexterity now becomes the most important defensive stat for all characters due to the importance of AC in an enviroment where attack bonuses and AC are more bounded together, and the lowered importance of constitution. Melee characters need at least 14Dex to make the most of Half-Plate armor.
My recommendation: Remove Ancestry based HP and replace it with your Con score, or Con/2. An 18 Con Barbarian would have 34/25hp at level 1, and a 10Con Wizard would have 16/11hp. Not sure for Strength, maybe have successive attacks add more strength damage?
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This doesn't contribute much to your overall issue, but any hasted monk can make 5 attacks in a round.
More on topic, I don't think Con needs help. It boosts HP/level and fort saves (and probably still holding breath? Haven't really bothered checking). That's plenty of contribution in my opinion.
Str is a different issue and might need a little help. The damage boost it offers becomes negligible fairly early compared to raw weapon damage. It does boost your encumbrance, but I have a feeling many will still ignore encumbrance. I kinda like the idea of stacking the damage on second/third attacks except that it adds more math to the heat of battle. So I'm not sure what to do there. (Maybe athletics being keyed to Str is actually enough here and it might not need anything; I don't have a lot of experience with how skills work in-game)
Dex is definitely too powerful right now. Literally everyone needs it to keep up on AC unless starting at a higher level (which only solves the problem to a degree for heavy armor users). With +/-10 on attacks, AC is so flipping important. And it determines reflex saves. And acrobatics.
Wis is perhaps too powerful, but I think it isn't as bad as dex. It governs will saves, perception and therefore initiative in most cases. But I'm also not really sure how to change that. You can't hand initiative back over to Dex in its current state. Maybe give it to...
Int needs help. It really, really does. It only gives you X trained skills at creation and never matters again. In 1e you got a skill point per level so it at least had value after level 1. Move perception here maybe? A lot of people wouldn't like it, but it would make Int a decent stat.
Cha is in a questionable place right now, if only because they're changing resonance. We'll see how that pans out. Hopefully it remains useful.
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re: WIS too powerful
Although WIS is useful for initiative (if you're not sneaking), remember that WIS has been reduced in usefulness in regards to resisting mental effects because most save or suck spells have been reduced in power and usually require a critical failure to have a dire consequence.
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re: WIS too powerful
Although WIS is useful for initiative (if you're not sneaking), remember that WIS has been reduced in usefulness in regards to resisting mental effects because most save or suck spells have been reduced in power and usually require a critical failure to have a dire consequence.
You make a great point. I hadn't accounted for that. It does make it a touch less important.
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most save or suck spells have been reduced in power and usually require a critical failure to have a dire consequence.
A lot of monsters have at-will 1-action abilities that are as strong as 2-action spells. They will spam them repeatedly every turn until you do crit fail. You must have your saving throws high enough that you only crit fail on a 1, and that generally means pumping Dex/Con/Wis.
Hierarchy of ability scores (in a general sense; specific builds may value some scores higher; obviously intelligence is important for wizards):
1) Dexterity:
Governs AC, reflex saves, ranged attack rolls, and finesse attack rolls, and can even be used for initiative with the stealth skill. Also governs the generally useful acrobatics skill. Best ability score in the game.
2) Wisdom:
Governs will saves, perception (which is default initiative), as well as the very useful medicine skill. Not as useful as dex, but everyone benefits from a high wisdom.
3) Constitution:
Governs fortitude saves and hit points. Hit points aren't as important this edition (still good to have, mind you) but the fortitude save boost is as important as ever. Everyone can always use constitution.
4) Strength
Governs non-finesse attack and bulk. Necessary for high-DPR builds since finesse weapons tend to deal less damage (str-to-damage is a nice perk, but not huge in this edition). Not everyone needs Str, and it can be dumped in many situations.
5) Charisma
Governs the trifecta of skills Intimidate, Deception, and Diplomacy. Also affects resonance, but that's not a big deal after the very low levels. Useful to have, but if you need a dump stat it's an easy pick.
6) Intelligence
Governs how many trained skills you get. However, due to all the different ways we have to become trained in skills this is basically never necessary. 10 intelligence is more than sufficient to be a skill monkey. This is a terrible ability score that should always be dumped unless you're a wizard or alchemist.
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Yeah Int needs buffed I jsut haven't thought of a good way yet.
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Time to move CHA much higher on the list since it now governs how much you can use your core class abilities (for many/most classes, I think). Certainly some classes like Monk, Druid, Wizard, maybe Ranger, maybe Barbarian, could be severely gimped by dumping CHA.
Plus some characters don't have any core abilities that need powering atm. So it would just be magic items for those.
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Time to move CHA much higher on the list since it now governs how much you can use your core class abilities (for many/most classes, I think). Certainly some classes like Monk, Druid, Wizard, maybe Ranger, maybe Barbarian, could be severely gimped by dumping CHA.
I disagree actually. While I haven't completely read through the resonance test document yet, I find the options you have for using focus just aren't strong enough to encourage charisma investment. For the most part I'd rather have a passive +1 to a saving throw than an extra use of one of these options. The same goes for spell points; the vast majority of spell point powers are on the weak side, and certainly aren't worth investing a dump stat for. Certainly for wizards and monks, I can't see them even conceivably invest in Cha unless they received a major balance overhaul. Monks simply can't afford to be Cha-invested, and Wizard powers are just too weak to justify being Cha-invested.
With that said, I do think in principle it could work. We can look at the Cleric's channel pool as an example in this regard; the channel pool class feature is certainly succeeding in getting clerics to invest in charisma. However, channel gives you an effect that is equivalent to your highest level spell slots. The current power level of focus abilities is multiple orders of magnitude weaker than that. If Paizo wants charisma to be an attraction for everyone in the way it currently is for the Cleric, they're going to need to buff focus and its related powers massively. At the current level of power, I can't see it allowing charisma to break out of its "usually a dump stat" designation.
Remember that Constitution also governs the rate at which you heal and recover, and also what you get out of Treat Wounds.
Remember that Constitution also governs the rate at which you heal and recover, and also what you get out of Treat Wounds.
There's nothing stopping a player from simply using Treat Wounds until everyone is full, right? Players are only bolstered against it on a critical failure?
Critical failures still happen, and if they roll in before you're full, end of the line and what you have you have.
Plus there might be time constraints on occasion, and -let's be honest- who wants to keep rolling 10 checks in a row for 5hp?
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Critical failures still happen, and if they roll in before you're full, end of the line and what you have you have.
Plus there might be time constraints on occasion, and -let's be honest- who wants to keep rolling 10 checks in a row for 5hp?
The same people who use wands of CLW, I imagine.
Dexterity now becomes the most important defensive stat for all characters due to the importance of AC in an enviroment where attack bonuses and AC are more bounded together, and the lowered importance of constitution. Melee characters need at least 14Dex to make the most of Half-Plate armor.
I think dexterity is less important for AC, because it really just determines what type of armor you are going to wear. In fact, armor now becomes an outward symbol of what your dexterity is.
See someone in full plate.... they have a dexterity bonus of 1 or maybe 0
half-plate, their dexterity is 14.breast plate: they have a 16 dexterity.
No other stat allows you to normalize its benefits by wearing equipment as much as dexterity does.
Every one of my characters maximizes their AC not by dexterity, but by armor.
The difference between 16 armor and 18 armor is often the difference between getting crit on a 20, or being crit on 18s, 19s, and 20s. Pumping AC is relatively more important due to this fact. Heavy/medium armor is basically something that lets you get around having a low DEX, rather being its own boon. The AC of a non-shield Fighter and a Rogue are pretty similar.
Int is at a kind of interesting point right now. Some of this occurred to me because of some comments in another thread, which I have copied below. Basically, I think Int is actually pretty useful, even if you aren't an alchemist or a wizard. The skills it governs include some very good ones. Crafting and Practicing Trade can net some solid economic gains in any game with downtime. Arcana seems to be the skill to identify any magic items without the Primal, Occult, or Divine tags as far as I can tell. Crafting is used to identify Alchemy. Society has swallowed up the underrated linguistics deciphering usage, and Intelligence and Society are the main gatekeepers for additional languages.
The issue is that Intelligence doesn't do a lot if you don't want those skills. Like, I think every party benefits from having a high intelligence, but not every character does. That's where Charisma was in PF1-- face skills are really good to have, but not every character in your party needs it. But in PF1, investing in being a face meant not only giving up precious point buy currency; it also cost skill ranks on top of that. So a fighter who boosted Charisma to 14 but left Intelligence at 10 could be good at diplomacy, bluff, and intimidate if he was willing to use his FCB or was human, but that meant not putting ranks into perception or climb or swim.
Intelligence now is at a better point than Charisma was before, because investing in it lets you not only be trained in your INT skills, but everything else you wanted to be trained in as well. It doesn't let you get more skills to expert, but intelligence skills also seem to have the most trained only uses, so you actually get pretty good return on investment for training in those.
I dunno, do we think that every class should need every ability score? Everyone needs to be bad at something. Heavy armor users may neglect dex, wizards may neglect strength, etc.
I'm running an AP with a military genius monster, and I realized that her Diadem of Intellect is actually an amazing get, even for a party with no Intelligence based classes. (At least until other potent items become available.) Taking the crafting fighter from 10 intelligence to 18 is huge, and training in 4 more skills and a +3 to Recall Knowledge... Pick the four magic skills and he's suddenly gained a +11 to all of them. Yowza!4. Intelligence deals with all lore skills.This is a good point in Intelligence's favor that I shouldn't underestimate either. Before the -4 untrained update, the wizard and alchemist were rocking the Influence system in War for the Crown as much or more than the Cha characters because they could roll obscure lores untrained that were the best skill for any given NPC (much lower DC), take a -2, and still be excellent at it (compared to using a harder skill anyway). With the -4 now, multiclassing bard for Bardic Lore could still be a powerful move for an "Int Influencer."
As for Strength defenses, we had an initial build idea that called for basically a Might save (handling all the knocked prone and combat maneuvers that got moved to Fort saves). The problem with using Athletics as a direct defense, especially with the change to -4, is that the other saves travel together, both in terms of trained or better and the armor potency rune improving them, so PCs that need to defend with their Athletics DC get wrecked unless they raise Athletics as a new "mandatory" skill (this I know because I tried it after we put a kibosh on the Might save idea, and that happened even with -2). Having saves based on all 6 ability scores was also on the early drawing board in terms of having each stat matter in different circumstances (Cha for mind-affecting, Wis for curses and soul-affecting, Int for illusions which wound up getting Perception instead, Str for might-based and combat maneuver stuff and taking Fort stuff that isn't about health, and Dex and Con the same). But of course, that is a pretty big departure (and 5e wound up doing something very very similar too).
The issue is that Intelligence doesn't do a lot if you don't want those skills. Like, I think every party benefits from having a high intelligence, but not every character does
I'd agree; the main attraction from Intelligence right now isn't more skills, but rather that it makes you good with intelligence-based skills. In that sense, the party does benefit from having someone who can do Int, but if you aren't a Wizard or Alchemist it's a significant sacrifice to grab it and you really want someone else to cover it.
The comparison to PF1 charisma is actually fairly apt in that regard.
I dunno, do we think that every class should need every ability score?
Intelligence is the hot potato that everyone wants someone else to handle. It's not a problem that some people are dumping Int, it's a problem that almost everyone is dumping Int. The other five ability scores are all attractive to different kinds of builds in their own ways even without considering what skills they offer, and I feel that Intelligence needs that same kind of attraction.
DEX is even more important than I thought before - this is on account of the whole ranged touch attack Touch Armor Class rigmarole.
What then at this point is the function of introducing this rigmarole for basically no net difference in about 97% of the cases?
They could scrap TAC, and just say casters make ranged attacks at their primary stat + training. For the 3% of monsters they want to make more vulnerable just put an entry into the Beastiary or something.
I can only think of 1 reason why Paizo doesn't do that... (something, something, don't want to be accused of copying 5e even if it is an actual good idea)