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I'm talking about dipping martials (or even general combat feats), which was viable throughout PF1 and was actually a way to make them interesting. Fighter 1/Rogue 1/Monk 1 was viable as early as level 3. Monk 1 (Scaled Fist), Paladin 2, Gunslinger X (Mysterious Stranger) was viable. Or say something interesting like Fighter 5/Rogue 1/Oracle (Warsighted/Clouded Vision Curse) w/ an interesting play on Blinding Sneak Attack/Racial Heritage(Tiefling). Ooo, Dual-Curse Oracle would work great in that build too...but I digress...
The point is that any of the above builds would not be options in PF2, since anything more than maybe 2 classes is fairly prohibitively not an option (or at least heavily penalized by the system). And even then you're punished for looking outside your class with the Dedication feat tax.
And those restrictions seem needless. If devs had an issue with class dipping to gain powerful low level abilities (say, monk AC bonus), then rebalance the power which should never be a level 1 power. Fix the overpowered ability, don't limit the choices. Hell, look at the way Duelist PrC AC bonus works...people don't dip that as much as they do Monk since the AC bonus is dependent on Duelist levels to get the maximum benefit.
I mean, you can't get a 3 classes at level 3, but that's a pretty niche thing. You can get 2 classes by level two though, and 3 by level 8, and 4 by level 9 if your a human or have Adopted Ancestry. And when you do so, all of your abilities from all of your classes, which wasn't generally a thing in PF1.
However, I also want to clarify: what makes all those dips appealing to you, and what about them are you losing out on other than having lots of class names on your sheet?
Scaled Fist/Pally/Mysterious Stranger is obviously one of those CHA to everything builds-- we don't really have that sort of thing in the playtest anyway so it seems moot, nor do we have funs. But you can absolutely do an Irori style Paladin and I'm sure once we have guns you will be able to add those too.
What would you be going for with a monk 1/rogue 1/fighter 1 though? I see a lot of proficiencies which clash with each other, plus redundant class feats. Seems like something you'd need to tweak to heck with archetypes to make work. Where as a PF2 Fighter with the monk dedication looks like a super viable slugger out the bat-- better accuracy and better AC than the monk can get for a long time, and they can afford to dump dex to get Dragon Style damage.
And those restrictions seem needless. If devs had an issue with class dipping to gain powerful low level abilities (say, monk AC bonus), then rebalance the power which should never be a level 1 power. Fix the overpowered ability, don't limit the choices. Hell, look at the way Duelist PrC AC bonus works...people don't dip that as much as they do Monk since the AC bonus is dependent on Duelist levels to get the maximum benefit
Didn't they also already do this? Monks no longer add a mental stat to AC, they get a scaling proficiency bonus that they need to sink levels into.
Also, this seems to conflict with you yearning for a CHA to everything build. Setting aside stuff that has either been permanently excised from the game like that, and content like the oracle or gunslinger which simply doesn't exist yet, I'm struggling to see what sort of options.
Fighter 1/Barbarian one still results in a 2nd level character that can rage once per day. Rogue/Fighter actually lets you utilize the better armor of the fighter and nets you a new thing you can do in combat. I guess Rogue/Fighter/Barbarian isn't a thing at level 3, but honestly what is that build even going for.
to become specialized you instead gain more versatility in your specialization
Unfortunately this is achieved at the cost of robbing people of the ability to wipe their bottoms unless they have a feat that allows that extremely specific use of toilet paper
I feel that I am the same kind of player as Go4TheEyesBoo
I want to add one thing:
Building those characters are fun because the player is coming up with the concept.
It's not as fun if the concept and the mechanics are prepared in advance by someone else.
The fun lies in researching ways to make your own idea work.
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However, I also want to clarify: what makes all those dips appealing to you, and what about them are you losing out on other than having lots of class names on your sheet?Mainly because I prefer interesting builds over the typical Wep Focus/Wep Spec/Power Attack/etc DPS-optimized powergame nonsense. Typically I like to go for some kind of flavor concept and then build a competitive char around it. It doesn't need to be minmaxed to the hilt, as long as it holds its own. Hell, I've dipped with spellcasting classes before to make builds more interesting. One time I thought have a dual black blade build sounded pretty badass, so I went Bladebound Kensai Magus 3/Blade Adept Arcanist 3. BAB was s#&~e, spellcasting progression was f%$%ed, couldn't really cast with a sword in both hands, but man was it fun to play (and to RP). Sawtoothed Sabre + Slashing Grace is really the only thing that kept it competitive. At some point I was going to get a Glove of Storing to help with casting issues, but the campaign ended before I got the cash.
One time I made a UMD build, wanting a jack-of-all-trades character that could just use any item he comes across, regardless of restriction, so I found anyway I could to jack the UMD skill. I forget how I made him relevant...I think that was my dual wand using character that ventured into 3.5E and 3rd party content (Two-Wand Technique, Wand Casting, Wand Dancer, Wandstrike). We had a cool GM who let us use maximum creativity and almost unlimited resources as long as we weren't trying to be dicks breaking the game. Come to think of it, that was a pretty s*#%ty char, power wise -- again, fun to play though.
Had one char built around the concept of dropping various clouds (Obscuring Mist, eventually moving to Stinking Cloud/Cloudkill) and fighting inside of it with Fogcutting Lenses on. Think he was a Wyrwood. Or I found some other way to get poison immunity. Bit of a one-trick pony (didn't really have a counter for area casters from a...
Let me clarify. Can you give me a specific example of the sort of character you feel like you can't make now? I'm not asking about the common denominator or why you want to build them. I'm asking for end results of what your character should be able to accomplish, and perhaps what level you want to be able to achieve it.
The reason I'm having trouble following you is because most of what you listed simply isn't core. Comparing various combinations PF2 splat books, 3rd party content, and even 3.5 content to a single core rulebook doesn't really mesh.
You could argue that the PF2 framework could prevent some of those from working even if those options exist... But the PF2 paradigm is so different that you can probably achieve similar results through a different avenue. Take your UMD specialist example. Currently, that's really just a character with trick magic items and focusing on the magic tradition skills. It's probably a rogue, but it could potentially be done as any class. Or you could do a cleric who takes the bard, sorcerer, and druid spellcasting feats on top of Trick Magic Item and now you don't even have to roll for most spell completion items.
You also mention dipping classes to get more feats. But everyone gets so many more feats now anyway, and almost every class gets them at about the same rate. Also, so many things don't need feats anymore. Ranged penalties have pretty much gone the way or the dinosaur, weapon finesse is now free, feat trees are much less long, stuff like Power Attack is no longer effectively mandatory and stuff like weapon focus just no longer exists. So I'm not really sure if you actually need all those feats to execute the same concept. And given that there's a clear hierarchy of power between the feat categories, I'm not really sure that letting you mess snag extra class feats is healthy for the game.
So what core only multiclass build are you losing out on, and can you achieve similar results through different channels under the existing rules?
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The fun lies in researching ways to make your own idea work.
Aww hell nah. I don't have the time to spend going through every book anymore. I do enough research for work, I don't want my hobby to be more of it. Just give me options I can choose with minimal consideration so I can play the dang game rather than paperwork.
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It looks a little like the opposition is between those who get the most fun playing at the table and those who get the most fun from building characters. For the former, character building is something that must be done as quickly and efficiently as possible, so as not to be in the way of way. For the latter, build research is the main event and play at the table is there to test the character concept. PF1 is better for the former, PF2 for the latter.
Of course I realize most people won't fall 100% in one category or the other. Both character construction and play are exciting, just not in the same proportion for everybody. Still, I think this opposition explains a great deal of the debate here.
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In neither case did the WotC face a direct competitor staring at them with a mean, lean, well-designed game that has better brand recognition, sound marketing and a massive player base. Every time TSR/WotC did change edition, it was unopposed by any life-threatening direct competition.
When Paizo tweaked 3.5 into 3.66, it was facing a direct competition who just did shoot itself in their foot so hard that they almost fell out of the market.
But sadly for Paizo, while you can beat good brand recognition coupled with a crap product that's marketed in a shoddy way, you just can't do the same against good brand recognition, great product and marketing that's on the verge of making RPGs a socially acceptable pastime.
I'm late to the party, but 1000x this. Not to take anything away from Paizo's execution, but Pathfinder as we know it today simply would not exist without WotC driving D&D into a ditch.
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Go4TheEyesBoo’s examples of characters and how you build them just perplexes me. If your character concept requires 3 classes and as many or more archetypes and you need more than one line on the character sheet to write it then you should be throwing D20 out the window and using any one of the countless systems that have a “cherry picking” format instead of classes and levels.
When I play D20 I accept that my character is a specialist with benefits that others don’t have but I can’t do some things others can, a role or “class” you might say... That’s just how D20 was built. Over the years they’ve tried to make it easier to break that mold but the only ones that seem to have worked at all was PF’s archetypes, though they’ve gotten to the point of being too numerous and in the case of a few outright better than the base class, and now IMO PF2’s multiclass dedications.
People seem to want these endlessly convoluted characters and I guess if that’s how they get their rocks off whatever but I’m just glad that my group stays out of that playground.
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Go4TheEyesBoo’s examples of characters and how you build them just perplexes me. If your character concept requires 3 classes and as many or more archetypes and you need more than one line on the character sheet to write it then you should be throwing D20 out the window and using any one of the countless systems that have a “cherry picking” format instead of classes and levels.
When I play D20 I accept that my character is a specialist with benefits that others don’t have but I can’t do some things others can, a role or “class” you might say... That’s just how D20 was built. Over the years they’ve tried to make it easier to break that mold but the only ones that seem to have worked at all was PF’s archetypes, though they’ve gotten to the point of being too numerous and in the case of a few outright better than the base class, and now IMO PF2’s multiclass dedications.
People seem to want these endlessly convoluted characters and I guess if that’s how they get their rocks off whatever but I’m just glad that my group stays out of that playground.
I mean, I can get wanting to play something really specific and using every available tool to do it. The issue I have is that I haven't seen a character concept that needs 3 classes out the gate in PF2 to whatever thing you want the character to do. (Or at the very least, an example of that which is relevant in a discussion of core only.) There are just so many ways PF2 is more open ended about stuff like that.
Go4TheEyesBoo’s examples of characters and how you build them just perplexes me. If your character concept requires 3 classes and as many or more archetypes and you need more than one line on the character sheet to write it then you should be throwing D20 out the window and using any one of the countless systems that have a “cherry picking” format instead of classes and levels.I suspect the difference is creatively connecting and overlaying different-sized pieces rather than just fitting together a mound of equal-sized blocks.
I don't find those convoluted characters particularly attractive but I can appreciate how people might enjoy using their creativity to construct them. It requires some artistry which you would lose with just the raw building blocks.
That sounds like a preference for complexity rather than depth. It isn't about the end result, just about being able to spend a lot of getting there.
I guess that's consistent with gwynfrid's hypothesis though.
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If your character concept requires 3 classes and as many or more archetypes and you need more than one line on the character sheet to write it then you should be throwing D20 out the window and using any one of the countless systems that have a “cherry picking” format instead of classes and levels.
If your character concept doesn't utilise 3 classes with multiple archetypes, then you shouldn't be playing Pathfinder. What's the point of a mix-and-match class system if you're not going to make use of it?
;)
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The fun lies in researching ways to make your own idea work.Aww hell nah. I don't have the time to spend going through every book anymore. I do enough research for work, I don't want my hobby to be more of it. Just give me options I can choose with minimal consideration so I can play the dang game rather than paperwork.
Engineering mentality says, I want to be think less so let the system be simple and easy to use. To hell with dumpster diving through ten years worth of trap options and splat books.
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I'm late to the party, but 1000x this. Not to take anything away from Paizo's execution, but Pathfinder as we know it today simply would not exist without WotC driving D&D into a ditch.In neither case did the WotC face a direct competitor staring at them with a mean, lean, well-designed game that has better brand recognition, sound marketing and a massive player base. Every time TSR/WotC did change edition, it was unopposed by any life-threatening direct competition.
When Paizo tweaked 3.5 into 3.66, it was facing a direct competition who just did shoot itself in their foot so hard that they almost fell out of the market.
But sadly for Paizo, while you can beat good brand recognition coupled with a crap product that's marketed in a shoddy way, you just can't do the same against good brand recognition, great product and marketing that's on the verge of making RPGs a socially acceptable pastime.
Sadly, there is a lot of truth here.
But for 2019 and 2E this point cuts both ways. It is true that trying to unseat D&D when D&D is doing great is not a reasonable expectation. (Yes, anything is possible, but this is way out on the long tail of low probability, to the point of not going to happen)
But it also provides a clear object lesson. WotC had a great team. Mearls is still on a short list of the great designers to emerge from the 3X era, and he had numerous outstanding names supporting him. The people who complained were mocked for questioning the expertise of these seasoned professionals. It was all "just the vocal minority ranting on websites". But now we take it as an obvious point to say "driving D&D into a ditch".
It can and did happen then. It can happen now. Paizo has made indications that they are listening and willing to make harder chnages that WotC did. At least until they just left the old D&D mired in a ditch and started over with a whole new D&D the built back over on the road.
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The thing about that approach that I like, though, is that giving classes meaningful abilities at 1st level is hugely good for the game IMO. Classes are more fun if they are frontloaded, because let's face it, low levels kinda suck.
People talk about not wanting to wait until 4th level for their multiclass build to come online - I don't want to wait until 4th level for my singleclass build to come online.
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It doesn't help me that I still haven't heard a character you feel you can't build, as opposed to a bunch of class names being listed on your sheet. Could you please give me an example?
But what I'm saying is that, as proposed, from what I've looked at on my hardcopy Playtest book + forum discussion + paizo posts, it currently doesn't look inviting for me. It's looking like a minimum of 3 feats to cross-class (1 Dedication which likely doesn't give you much you want, the feat you want, plus another feat to meet the "get another Dedication unlock"). So that's potentially 2 garbage pre-requisite feats just to get to the one cross-class feat I'm looking for. And that's a turnoff, especially because I see it as an unnecessary limitation that doesn't need to be there if you balance the abilities properly.
I think you're going to have a hard time convincing me that you can't find any use for a dedication feat, or a any of the other multiclass feats. Any dedication feat nets you at least one skill training and a once per day use of a powerful class feat, and that's without talking weapon and armor proficiency. And your third feat can easily turn that into an at will ability.
Fighter gets you attack of opportunity, which is way stronger this edition, and Paladin gets you retributive strike. I'll note this ability getting this ability once per day is deceptively powerful because an enemy doesn't know you have it before you use it, and doesn't know it is once per day afterwards so will probably have their tactics influenced by it.
Barbarian gets you rage. Rogue gets you surprise attack and sneak attack. Ranger gets you hunt target. Monk can get you Powerful Fist and Flurry of Blows.
And by contrast, it also doesn't prevent you from getting the higher level abilities of your base class. Mutliclassing as a martial meant permanently delaying your various scaling benefits and higher level features. So your getting a new kind of freedom for all that there's a new restriction.
VMC is a good idea. Pre-requisites & feat taxes for the sake of pre-requisites & feat taxes are not.
VMC is a feat tax. It is literally the current system but significantly less flexible because you don't choose what levels to give up feats and you can't do 3 or more classes. I don't understand how you can think the current system limits creativity and go in for VMC.
It also doesn't help that it looks, feels, and smells alot like 4E character building. And it's almost entirely done away with "dabbling" in classes.
I can't help you with a knee jerk reaction based on a dead system I barely played. *shrug*
If you're dipping a feat (+dedication) into a class, you're investing a solid chunk of your total character development into it.
...And giving up a whole level wasn't a solid chunk of your total character development?
For instance, in PF1, if I wanted to be a fighter dipping a spellcasting level to gain access to a long duration self-buff (Mage Armor/Enlarge Person/Shield/etc), that's pretty much not a thing anymore, because the "character investment" is larger and the outcome different (since i'd more or less be buying the equivalent of a PF1 5th level caster with the feat investment, rather than the 1 level I want). Making the 99% fighter, 1% caster isn't a thing in PF2.
Dang, you're literally the first person who has complained about getting too many spell slots in the playtest. XD
I also don't see how retaining your full equivalent of HD, BAB, weapon training, and armor training feels like you're less of a fighter than a character who is now permanently behind their expected curve because they took a level of spellcasting.
On top of that, I suspect you can achieve this only first level spells result through different means. Barbarians can get Enlarge Person at will, Bracers of Armor are literally Mage Armor this edition, and Trick Magic Item with a staff can get you those low level spells too. Staff of Abjuration nets you various defensive buffs and Shield, and staff of transmutation gets you Enlarge.
Plus there are Ancestry feats which give you access to certain spells. And non-staff/scroll/wand items too. A Cloak of Elvenkind lets you cast Invisibility for one mere point of Resonance, for example. And in that vein, there will be more and more ways to do this through items or Ancestry feats as the game goes on
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Engineering mentality says, I want to be think less so let the system be simple and easy to use. To hell with dumpster diving through ten years worth of trap options and splat books.The fun lies in researching ways to make your own idea work.Aww hell nah. I don't have the time to spend going through every book anymore. I do enough research for work, I don't want my hobby to be more of it. Just give me options I can choose with minimal consideration so I can play the dang game rather than paperwork.
If you can achieve the same depth then simpler is always better.
But if you go too far with simple, then you end up losing your audience well before you have time to have ten years of books to weed through.
The excesses or ten years of books is a very real issue and 1E has it.
I'm sure that Paizo would love to have the same problem with 2E ten years from now.
I think you're going to have a hard time convincing me that you can't find any use for a dedication feat, or a any of the other multiclass feats. Any dedication feat nets you at least one skill training and a once per day use of a powerful class feat, and that's without talking weapon and armor proficiency. And your third feat can easily turn that into an at will ability.
Fighter gets you attack of opportunity, which is way stronger this edition, and Paladin gets you retributive strike. I'll note this ability getting this ability once per day is deceptively powerful because an enemy doesn't know you have it before you use it, and doesn't know it is once per day afterwards so will probably have their tactics influenced by it.
Barbarian gets you rage. Rogue gets you surprise attack and sneak attack. Ranger gets you hunt target. Monk can get you Powerful Fist and Flurry of Blows.
Fighter: Once per day you get a bonus attack. You might get the enemy's tactics changed for that fight, the other however many fights you can no longer use one of your class feats. Really the armor training is the real prize here.
Paladin: Once per day you get to give an ally some DR and get a bonus attack. Much like the fighter you might change that one fight's tactics. But at least this one has better secondary bonuses (all armor and 2 skills vs 1 armor and 1 skill) at the expense of a lot of options for the archetype will require following the Code, which you automatically fail if you're anything but Good (though the exact phrasing is flexible enough you might be able to get away with the non-Lawful codes... you just don't get the appropriate Reaction.)
Barbarian: Once per day you get a small bonus to damage at the expense of a point of AC and limitations on what actions you can use. As of 1.6 this benefit might last as little as 2 rounds, and is rather unlikely to last more than 3. Seeing as this is an active use rather than a Reaction, chances are that once it wears off and you don't activate it again, the enemy are more likely to catch on this won't be a recurring issue, and their tactics probably won't be altered because 'the enemy doesn't know it's only once per day'. The weapon training is the real gain here, assuming you desire Martial training anyways.
Rogue: You do not get Sneak Attack from Dedication, that's a separate feat (which gives you a gimped version at that I might add). So basically you get a Skill Feat (notoriously undertuned in the playtest) and an effective +2 to attack when you win initiative. Not horrible, but literally only applies the first round of combat, and then only if you roll well on init. On the upside you are getting 3 skills.
Ranger: Here's the biggest offender of just being bad IMHO. Once per day you get Hunt Target... without the part that actually makes Hunt Target worth using most of the time. The side benefits are identical to Barbarian's, so unless I'm specifically going for Ranger-locked feats (which a number of iconic ones are only even good with Hunt Target's MAP reduction, which you don't get,) it's better to just take Barbarian.
Monk: Flurry of Blows is a separate feat you can't even take until level 10. The only thing the dedication gives you is an average of 1 extra damage (adjusted for magic) when you punch things, and 1 skill. Not great. And of course, if you want to use a large chunk of Monk's feats you'll have to go unarmored... so you'd better pick up that extra feat to get Expert in Unarmored AC. Generally speaking if you want Monk stuff you're probably better off starting Monk and branching out.
Meanwhile the Caster multiclasses give you two auto-heightening cantrips you can cast at-will. Those are more worth taking in my opinion.
Now maybe some of this stuff may seem worth-while to someone. Personally though, I just kind of loathe once-per-day abilities, especially when I'm spending 1/10th of my Class Feats on it. Which in my eyes basically turns the 'you can use your dedication ability more than once per day' into an effective tax, unless the ability wasn't the primary goal (such as the armor and weapon trainings). That said, the other options beyond the dedication I do frequently find fun to toy with, I just kind of hate how many MC dedications are "You can do this thing designed to be central to builds once a day unless you spend another feat."