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I'd assume any multiclass prestige thing's prereqs wouldn't be class based, but proficiency based.
I.E. (expert in martial weapons, expert in spells): Do the thing with a sword and a spell!
Since this is more or less turning into a thread about Gishes (with a few extra things thrown in here and there), why not make a separate forum about them?
Continued from the other thread:
The problem with this idea, IMO, is that it limits design space. If the feat just requires a certain proficiency, then any similar feat is going to be directly competing with it and there will be an inevitable "best gish feat". Plus every time you make a new class or a new way to raise proficiency you have to worry about knock-on effects of what old feats you can suddenly qualify for more easily than intended.
All of that is why I'm thinking going with the narrower design space of class feats is better. That way you can have a feat that makes fighters gish, and a feat that makes wizards gish, and they can both work a bit differently and not compete with each other.
I will also mention, though, that I personally hope Magus comes back - not as a "wizard fighter blend" but rather a class with a variety of Focus Spells intended to be delivered via weapon strikes.
Basically "spellstrike the class".
The problem with this idea, IMO, is that it limits design space. If the feat just requires a certain proficiency, then any similar feat is going to be directly competing with it and there will be an inevitable "best gish feat". Plus every time you make a new class or a new way to raise proficiency you have to worry about knock-on effects of what old feats you can suddenly qualify for more easily than intended.All of that is why I'm thinking going with the narrower design space of class feats is better. That way you can have a feat that makes fighters gish, and a feat that makes wizards gish, and they can both work a bit differently and not compete with each other.
Huh, I didn't too much about future-proofing eventual classes that add ways of getting proficiency at different times and the like. I just think Fighter 1st Wizard 2nd/Wizard 1st Fighter 2nd wouldn't mean too much distinction aside from "I sling more spells"/"I wack people with my sword harder" which is more personal style than big functional class differences imo. It's like a base Magus vs. the Kensai archetype, more slingy vs. more wacky, they still play ~90% the same
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So far (in the playtest), all feats requiring proficiency are one of two categories:
- Skill feats related to that skill
- General feats that increase that proficiency
All other prerequisites tend to be:
-class, level
-feats of the same type
-ability score
In this order of frequency.
Having feats with two required proficiencies was hypotesised by some users (namely me and CaptainMorgan built some mixed skill feats upon that idea) but tended to be a bit troublesome, and feats that require a class feature are more likely to come up (mostly in anticipation of class archetypes - a feat requiring sneak attack can only be taken by a rogue that doesn't trade off sneak attack, for example, or by someone who multiclasses rogue AND takes sneak attack).
That said, Wizards and Clerics have a few good feats for gishing, and they don't concern me too much - what does concern me, however, is the ability to run something like an elven sworddancer (yeah I'm prepping for Age of Ashes, don't judge me) by mixing Bard and Fighter. Sounds good, right? Yeah... it's the viability of light armour that worries me.
And yet fighters have features tied exclusively to heavy armour. Which is a little annoying.
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And yet fighters have features tied exclusively to heavy armour. Which is a little annoying.
More than a little, that's something I despise and sincerely hope they change.
But it matters very little for a Bard multiclassing into Fighter, and frankly that's a much better multiclass than multiclassing from Fighter into Bard, IMO.
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And yet fighters have features tied exclusively to heavy armour. Which is a little annoying.More than a little, that's something I despise and sincerely hope they change.
But it matters very little for a Bard multiclassing into Fighter, and frankly that's a much better multiclass than multiclassing from Fighter into Bard, IMO.
And Paladins...
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I mean, you can’t really place a +6 AC differential between frontliners unless you want to make Rangers and Barbarians awful, so that’s a must change - but this was about gishes.
And Paladins...Yes indeed. Having increased Armor Proficiency beyond Trained be only for Heavy Armor is just a really bad decision on all sorts of levels.
For that very reason, I'd suspect it's been changed, though I'm not counting on it.
I believe it was confirmed somewhere that they are giving proficiency increases to non-heavy armor wearing classes. Specifically I'm pretty sure I heard that rogues were getting Legendary in light armor and Rangers Legendary in medium. If not then that's quite silly and makes me very sad. Also I think you guys are forgetting Monk's getting Legendary in unarmored (which doesn't really matter, just saying "only Legendary in heavy" is a bit of a misnomer). As for Ediwir trying to bring us back on point, let'say they fix the armor thing. What then? What builds would open up that you think would or wouldn't be viable given all other mechanics involved?
My concern was more "Paladins are THE heavy armor class, that's the class we think of when we think of heavy armor" than them being any good at heavy armor.
Admittedly I was tempted to say this, They do have powers to whack things over the head, but their primary role is that more defensive style with retributive strike, so I'd assume that's why they made their big abilities be Heavy Armor only.
The thing that really bothers me is thinking that they'll be even more pressured to use a shield than normal. Strangely I'm usually the guy who's all for using shields and would be happy to get more excuses to use them, but I don't want to see a class that's shoehorned into only being in one role.
Also I'd like to say on record that.. Well I don't think it was totally turning into a gish conversation before as much as it was about the idea of combining lots of classes together, but gishes just tend to be the most common things you get from mixing classes whether you're a Fighter Wizard trying to play Magus, a Champion taking a bloodline for the sake of its unique powers, a rogue going arcane trickster with either (which I still want to see the ability to get ranged legerdemain on a rogue because actually reading what arcane trickster can do I'm surprised it isn't used more, hocus-pocusing someone's wallet from 30 feet away sounds fun).
I just like the general idea that those hoping to combine classes can do so, and even find a few relatively rare and unique talents to help set them apart from the crowd once they've dedicated enough. I think that would give players this sort of feeling of "Aw Sweet!"...
Although I guess the issue with that would also be that you'd need single class dedication feats like that too so that not literally everyone multiclasses.
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My concern was more "Paladins are THE heavy armor class, that's the class we think of when we think of heavy armor" than them being any good at heavy armor.Admittedly I was tempted to say this, They do have powers to whack things over the head, but their primary role is that more defensive style with retributive strike, so I'd assume that's why they made their big abilities be Heavy Armor only.
You can be defensive and not focus on a specific armor type, this nips numerous Paladin ideas and visuals in the bud.
None of the Paladins I've played, hilariously with the exception of my Vindictive Bastard, wore heavy armor. Armor was never a focus for them.
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This sure is a thread about gishes, yep. I even split it off from another thread to avoid derailing that thread... :P
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This sure is a thread about gishes, yep. I even split it off from another thread to avoid derailing that thread... :P
Yeah... You should know by now that everyone is real bad about rabbit trails..... My biggest curiosity is... WHERE MY BOY SELTYIEL GONNA BE AT?!? What's he gonna look like with the new art designs? Is he going to be a bigger badass then he originally was? THESE are truly the questions that bother me in this state of waiting. For he is the Iconic gish, his existence is going to directly relate to how well they work in this system. On a more serious note, I am wondering how many different types of gishes there can be, Arcane Trickster, Arcane Archer, Eldritch Knight, Ascetic Monk (punching you with an extra special brand of magic), given this mix & match system there are so many options, what CAN'T we do is a better question
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Heavy armor is in a tricky design space in the playtest. It gave you the best AC in PF1, but most characters lost class features if they used it. In the playtest, it wasn't better AC than medium armor (or light armor at high levels) but almost no one loses class features anymore, drastically improving access to it. Therefore, it can't simply be the best armor or every class winds up using it as the default. And that is bad for lots of reasons.
In PF1 it usually wound up on fighters, paladins, and clerics, with fighters getting class features that made heavy armor better and better for them. Those 3 have the most incentive to wear heavy armor in the playtest, and now paladins get those class features too. Personally, I'm pretty OK with this. Opening up the doors for other classes to use armor is good, but making it the best option for rogues is bad. So if you can make it the best option for fighters/paladins/clerics, that seems OK. Mind you, those classes all have trade offs for using heavy armor between speed and armor check penalties, but they gain better AC. That seems fine to me. The only real issue I had was the "Armored Fortitude" specifically letting you treat a success as a critical success only while wearing heavy armor. That is lame.
But so much has changed in the armor equation for PF2 since the playtest. High strength offsets movement penalties. Dex is less of a god stat since casters use their casting stat for attack rolls. And all the math has pretty drastically shifted. So I'm not really sure what to expect from armor at this point.
Edit: My bad, Max.
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Seltyiel was already the most mercurial iconic - he started as an Eldritch Knight, then was retconned to be a Magus. I think if PF2e keeps Magus as a base class (again, I hope it does, spellstrike-the-class sounds awesome to me) he will continue to be a Magus, otherwise he will probably go back to being a Fighter/Wizard multiclass.
This sure is a thread about gishes, yep. I even split it off from another thread to avoid derailing that thread... :PYeah... You should know by now that everyone is real bad about rabbit trails..... My biggest curiosity is... WHERE MY BOY SELTYIEL GONNA BE AT?!? What's he gonna look like with the new art designs? Is he going to be a bigger badass then he originally was? THESE are truly the questions that bother me in this state of waiting. For he is the Iconic gish, his existence is going to directly relate to how well they work in this system.
Admittedly I do need to ask... What's so special about seltyiel? I haven't really heard much of his story other than edgy elf boi.
My favorite characters to play have always been the armored martial-casters. PF2 seems to handle that pretty well from the start w/o needing anything extra. Fighter/[Wizard|Sorcerer] or [Wizard|Sorceror]/Fighter had different feels to them.
I got my armored casting (and w/o ASF there's no longer need for class features to give that too you), I got my weapon & armor proficiency, I got my spell casting. Level 4 you get the bonus feat for extra damage if you cast and hit in a round for a nice synergy (typically hard to achieve w/o a haste effect though)
No, it's not spell-strike crazy crits (magus), no its not extra-spell on a weapon crit (eldritch knight), but I think I'm prefering the basic multiclass approach. -- For me its been able the versatility of capabilities, rather than the super narrow nova potential that the magus represented.
This sure is a thread about gishes, yep. I even split it off from another thread to avoid derailing that thread... :P
Well talking about gishes and then asking to avoid abilities that gishes could take or classes that they can be built from seems off IMO. For instance a paladin being forced into a defensive build would seem quite pertinent as a gish could be built with that class and clearly impacts which class is your base class and what abilities you could expect to pick up. So I'm not seeing any of the talk about classes, armor and armor abilities/proficiencies and such a derail in the least. In fact I think most of the content of PF2 is relevant to gishes on one level or another.
I’m confused. We started talking about Gish Prestiege class requirements and then went to heavy armor. @.@
I’m confused. We started talking about Gish Prestiege class requirements and then went to heavy armor. @.@
It's not really confusing if you look at the posts.
#1 fighters were pointed out as getting you armor/weapon proficiencies for those type of requirements.
#2 it was pointed out that paladins and fighters are heavy armor focused in their abilities so it's abilities don't work well for a lighter armor based Gish Prestige class like "an elven sworddancer".
#3 people pointed out that it was annoying that those classes seem pigeonholed by this and limits concept/gishes that otherwise should work [or work better] if those classes had abilities for other armor types.
So it was a simple, easy and natural progression of the topic of gishes and the smaller sub-topic of gish Prestige classes.
Look for posts from Ediwir and Deadmanwalking if you're having trouble finding the posts in question.
No, i can read just fine. I was more curious what Max was starting the thread on; though that Elven Sworddancer concept sounds neat. There’s a particular Gish build i like that focuses around False Life, Blood Magic and Rage myself.
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I agree with the OP that class feats are a good way to go. Having some generic options would be fine, but the best way to tailor a good gish that isn't just a fighter with spell slots or a wizard with better melee attacks has to be done with specific features built with the options available to a given class or character in mind. That's what made Paizo's partial-casters so good (mostly) and what makes EKs so comparatively boring.
Regarding armor... It feels like a big thrust of 2e is giving players flexibility in defining who their character is through mechanical options, all the different flavors of feats and other choices seem specifically tailored around that idea of granular customization.
Given that, tying ANY class feature to a specific type of armor seems needlessly restrictive. If the problem then becomes that one type of armor is the winning choice or that the different classes of armor start to lose distinctiveness, then maybe the armor system needs another look in general.
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No, i can read just fine. I was more curious what Max was starting the thread on
Ah, sorry I didn't get that from your first post. It's easy enough to miss or overlook part of a post so I thought that might have been it. I have to admit I too was curious what subject didn't fit in this one and needed a new thread.
though that Elven Sworddancer concept sounds neat. There’s a particular Gish build i like that focuses around False Life, Blood Magic and Rage myself.
Yeah, both sound cool.
Having some generic options would be fine, but the best way to tailor a good gish that isn't just a fighter with spell slots or a wizard with better melee attacks has to be done with specific features built with the options available to a given class or character in mind.
Yep, I agree. I would just hope that such tailored abilities don't take too long to come online or it's going to be hard to feel like it's own individual thing. IMO, I don't want to wait to 8th, for instance, to feel like my gish is finally hitting its stride.
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@Gray: I could have been more specific with my post. For me it wasn’t the subject itself as much as the almost immediate turn It took. I was also trying to figure out where Max was going with their post with how they worded it.
Having some generic options would be fine, but the best way to tailor a good gish that isn't just a fighter with spell slots or a wizard with better melee attacks has to be done with specific features built with the options available to a given class or character in mind.Yep, I agree. I would just hope that such tailored abilities don't take too long to come online or it's going to be hard to feel like it's own individual thing. IMO, I don't want to wait to 8th, for instance, to feel like my gish is finally hitting its stride.
Using the Grey Maiden Prestiege as an example, would that be too late in your opinion? Dedication at 6th but has a lot going for it, and a number of the abilities being fairly powerful in comparison to class feats of the same level?
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Admittedly I do need to ask... What's so special about seltyiel? I haven't really heard much of his story other than edgy elf boi.This sure is a thread about gishes, yep. I even split it off from another thread to avoid derailing that thread... :PYeah... You should know by now that everyone is real bad about rabbit trails..... My biggest curiosity is... WHERE MY BOY SELTYIEL GONNA BE AT?!? What's he gonna look like with the new art designs? Is he going to be a bigger badass then he originally was? THESE are truly the questions that bother me in this state of waiting. For he is the Iconic gish, his existence is going to directly relate to how well they work in this system.
As MaxAstro already stated, Seltyiel has moved around A LOT, first he has a half elf EK, then a half elf Magus, then when Dhampirs became a playable race he became one of those, but through all of that, one thing has remained constant. He's the most dangerous iconic around. Not the most powerful, not the smartest, not the fastest. But if you're alone with him or an extended period of time, you're either dead, or a friend. Plus when it comes to popularity/recognizably polls, he's always in the top 5, being beaten out by Amiri, Varous, and Merisiel.
. Of course that was more than 4 years ago. Maybe that changed?
I'd like to see some dedications for classes like magus, arcane archer, arcane trickster, rage prophet, etc, but atm it's not hard to get the feel of any of them using just multiclassing. With how 2e works I feel making any of these an actual base class is a bit superfluous.
Outside of arcane pool (easily replicated via class feata that grant focus powers), defenses against AoO with casting (again, not hard to make in a single class feat), and spellstrike (again, easy to do with focus powers or a metamagic class feat), there's nothing magus offers that a fighter/wizard or wizard/fighter can't get in 2e
Also... I'm admittedly a bit confused about the idea that they gain different proficiency levels with different armors. I'd think that if you were legendary with heavy armor you'd be legendary with medium and light as well.
Edit: also.. Do you add your proficiency bonus to AC? +20 AC by 20th level sounds like a LOT for just proficient (since it's Character Level), and also would seem to make proficiency bonuses kinda redundant since...
A proficient weapon will get +20 attack
A Proficient suit of Armor will get +20 AC
Meaning that no one here is actually getting any bonuses from it. Granted the different proficiency levels do, but at that rate you may as well make it that there is no base proficiency bonus and just say that every level above proficient is a +2
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You don't gain on anything against creatures of your own level.
You can, however, absolutely WAIL on anything below your level.
I guess that makes sense, I just thought it seemed a bit strange at first that it balanced out like that. Although I guess maybe that's just math. Although I never even really thought of the math in PF and how it balances out either so maybe I'm just weird. I'd just think that it would be more noticeable like you're significantly more powerful over time.
No, i can read just fine. I was more curious what Max was starting the thread onAh, sorry I didn't get that from your first post. It's easy enough to miss or overlook part of a post so I thought that might have been it. I have to admit I too was curious what subject didn't fit in this one and needed a new thread.
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To be fair, I wasn't really trying to thread police so much as I was being amused at how quickly the thread seemed to change topics. :)
@Alchemic_Genius I think the combination of spellstrike and focus spells is interesting enough to warrant it's own class, especially focus spells specifically tailored for spellstrike.
I also think it would be a bit weird as an archetype; I'm having a hard time imagining what class that archetype would be a good fit for.
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Using the Grey Maiden Prestiege as an example, would that be too late in your opinion? Dedication at 6th but has a lot going for it, and a number of the abilities being fairly powerful in comparison to class feats of the same level?
For me I don't mind it for a prestige 'class' as you're not starting off as that: IE you're working towards it. so for those, 6th is fine.
For a normal gish, like one that is trying to emulate one of the prior classes like a hunter or magus, I'd want it to start feeling like that class right out of the gate. I don't want to be a Magus [assuming it has its own feat line] and not get the core ability until 6th.
As for why I feel like that, it's 2 fold. #1 I like it when the character mirrors how I see it in my mind. A magus that can't do what I think of when imagine one for 5 levels bugs me greatly. #2 My games tend to end around 8th-10th and I don't see this changing for PF2 as they didn't end because of high level play but life issues [school starting, new job, got married, had a kid, ect]. It's one of the cons of playing online.
To be fair, I wasn't really trying to thread police so much as I was being amused at how quickly the thread seemed to change topics. :)
LOL It seems I was bad at reading intent yesterday. ;)
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Strong agreement that I want gish as a concept to be viable starting at early levels - 1 or 2, really.
I do think that if we get a dedicated gish class - Magus or Inquisitor or Hunter or w/e - it's going to be focus spell based. I don't see them giving a class ninth level spells ~and~ good martial proficiency right out the gate, and I don't see them bringing 6th level casters back either.
Much as I agree that 6th level casters were a thing Paizo was really good at writing, I totally understand why they were removed from the system.
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I also think it would be a bit weird as an archetype; I'm having a hard time imagining what class that archetype would be a good fit for.
You could start with wizard. Replace Arcane School and Arcane Focus with spellstrike and a weapon you can use your Spell proficiency roll to hit with. You can then add feats/powers for the focus spells that require spellstrike. Maybe add in a feat/ability to bump up unarmed proficiency or adds light proficiency.
I also think it would be a bit weird as an archetype; I'm having a hard time imagining what class that archetype would be a good fit for.You could start with wizard. Replace Arcane School and Arcane Focus with spellstrike and a weapon you can use your Spell proficiency roll to hit with.
Wouldn't that be a bit too good with True Strike if your weapon hit was based off of Spell Proficiency?
Wouldn't that be a bit too good with True Strike if your weapon hit was based off of Spell Proficiency?I also think it would be a bit weird as an archetype; I'm having a hard time imagining what class that archetype would be a good fit for.You could start with wizard. Replace Arcane School and Arcane Focus with spellstrike and a weapon you can use your Spell proficiency roll to hit with.
Honestly, not really. In the playtest it was common to use true strike with touch attack spells. Adding a bit of extra weapon damage on top isn’t that big of a deal especially since doing all of that is a bit resource intensive with the smaller number of spell slots.
Edit: I admit that I never played a magus but unless spellstrike works differently than I think it does that also requires an entire turn of setup (unless you have haste up) which definitely puts it at a less impressive DPR.
Wouldn't that be a bit too good with True Strike if your weapon hit was based off of Spell Proficiency?I also think it would be a bit weird as an archetype; I'm having a hard time imagining what class that archetype would be a good fit for.You could start with wizard. Replace Arcane School and Arcane Focus with spellstrike and a weapon you can use your Spell proficiency roll to hit with.
I don't see how. From 1-11 all that is as an equivalent of giving a normal weapon proficiency [trained] and a weapon trait equivalent to finesse. Really, it's mostly a single specific weapon that slowly increases the proficiency bonus you use with it. Add to that what Raylyeh posted.
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Edit: I admit that I never played a magus but unless spellstrike works differently than I think it does that also requires an entire turn of setup (unless you have haste up) which definitely puts it at a less impressive DPR.
With the casting rate/actions of spells, I'd assume spellstrike would be a 2 action ability that allows you to replace your free attack with the spell for an attack with the weapon and add the effect of the spell to the weapon damage. It also counts as 2 attacks for the Multiple Attack Penalty.
This means you can't cast most other spells in the same round and another weapon attack either takes a huge minus or forces a penalty on the spellstrike, neither penalty is desirable IMO.
That sounds fair enough to me though I admit that I’m not much of a game designer. If it were to work like that then you would be able to cast true strike in the same turn as your 1st action but as I said, I don’t really see any issue with that.
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Edit: I admit that I never played a magus but unless spellstrike works differently than I think it does that also requires an entire turn of setup (unless you have haste up) which definitely puts it at a less impressive DPR.
You might be thinking of spell combat instead of spellstrike. Spellstrike just lets you use a weapon attack in place of a touch attack for a spell. Spell combat is the one that takes up your whole turn, since you're basically dual-weilding with a spell in your offhand.
Edit: Touch AC going away might be more of a deathknell for Magi than any other change. I feel they're an important part of Pathfinder and should be brought forward in some fashion, but I'll admit the snippets we've gotten of PF2 rules makes me wonder how the class will fit, even before accounting for multiclass feats.
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That sounds fair enough to me though I admit that I’m not much of a game designer. If it were to work like that then you would be able to cast true strike in the same turn as your 1st action but as I said, I don’t really see any issue with that.
Yep, I don't see any issue with true strike either. Also with Arcane School and Arcane Focus replaced, you're losing out on the bonus spells and the ability to recast spells so you're not going to be sitting with a whole lot of true strikes to use. You'd have to carefully weigh a possible 'alpha strike' using a true strike vs being able to spellstrike later with a shocking grasp, spider sting or maybe some goblin pox.
I thought Wizards had a higher spell proficiency for some reason.
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I thought Wizards had a higher spell proficiency for some reason.
Their bumps are:
1 - Trained12 - Expert spellcaster
16 - Master spellcaster
19 - Legendary spellcaster
So being able to get to legendary IS cool but I don't recall the last game I had a 19th level character in.
I guess that makes sense, I just thought it seemed a bit strange at first that it balanced out like that. Although I guess maybe that's just math. Although I never even really thought of the math in PF and how it balances out either so maybe I'm just weird. I'd just think that it would be more noticeable like you're significantly more powerful over time.As others have said, the key is mainly that it creates power difference with level difference. If a level 20 character has a notably larger advantage over a level 20 dragon than a level 1 character has over a level 1 Goblin then the role of Level in power is dropping the ball somewhere. XD
Touche, I thought of it less as "More advantage against level 20 dragons than goblins" and more as going from a Zero to a Hero. To use a video game example real quick, you start Final Fantasies dealing like 15 damage, but by the end of the game you deal 9999 with each hit, and go from taking on squirrels and relatively insignificant creatures to killing God with the power of friendship.
Although I guess that feeling like you NEEDED those upgrades would be more towards keeping player power down, so maybe I just literally don't know how to do basic games math.