It's an additional rule book, "Pathfinder Unchained"
You can buy a pdf or a hardcover copy here
Pathfinder Unchained
You can also read it online for free as a Pathfinder Reference Document
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As Pathfinder developed, with new feat and class options for everyone, the team wanted to take another look at the four classes shown. Barbarian, Summoner, Monk, and Rogue all had pretty glaring things that would break games, slog them down, or make the player feel significantly less powerful than any other player simply because of the class.
To summarize, Barbarian had some needless bookkeeping with the fluctuating str/con buffs and some rage powers needed some tweaking. Not that Pf:Unchained solved anything after introducing Bloodrager and Skald in to the mix but oh well.
Summoner was at a weird point where it was overtuned compared to other classes. The eidolon and spell list needed some pull-back; Summoners were making pouncing, shapeless monstrosities with a thousand attacks per round and oh they also got Haste as a 2nd level spell. Unchained Summoner forces the eidolon to take a base form that limited what kind of evolutions it got, and their spell list was pretty heavily altered.
Monks have so many weird things going on that it wasn't keeping up with other martials. d8 hit dice, no native attack bonuses and a fairly annoying fluctuating BAB. Unchained Monk made things much more simple in terms of stuff to keep track of and made it more in line with other martials like Slayer and Ranger.
Rogues just needed a massive buff. They were falling behind other classes, even the Spiritualist, and is widely considered the worst (combat) class in pathfinder. Unchained Rogue is honestly still fairly weak compared to other martials but still a huge upgrade to core (on a personal level I think they should have gotten full bab and d10 HD like any other martial). I'm still very salty over the fact that Unchained Rogues do not have access to a ki pool through rogue talents, though.
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TL;DR: People complained about stuff, so Paizo released a book that made things worse. : D
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TL;DR: People complained about stuff, so Paizo released a book that made things worse. : D
Lol. It feels that way. I hate most of the unchained summoner. It broke more than it fixed. Barbarian felt more like “why bother”. Unchained monk was close to ok but could have used a playtest. And the unchained rogue is probably ok but it’s too tempting for dexterity based dips.
Unchained summoner altered the list so they weren't creating things like wands of level 2 haste.
Barbarians alteration makes dual wielding barbarian more of an option than simply picking up a big 2 hander.
Unchained summoner altered the list so they weren't creating things like wands of level 2 haste.
Seems unnecessary. You can still have a wand of haste. It just costs a little more. Though I didn’t like the feel of the summoner getting that particular spell early. That’s bard stuff. The summoner should be more about conjuration.
Unchained summoner altered the list so they weren't creating things like wands of level 2 haste.Seems unnecessary. You can still have a wand of haste. It just costs a little more. Though I didn’t like the feel of the summoner getting that particular spell early. That’s bard stuff. The summoner should be more about conjuration.
A wand of Haste from a Summoner costs 6000g, at least a full one. A Wizard wand of Haste would cost 11,250g, nearly double. A character at character creation can spend no more than half their gold on a single item.
A summoner wand of haste is nearly in the hands of a 5th level character, and it is in their hands with GM approval or a crafting feat to get them 50% more starting gold. A wizard created wand of haste would first be available at 7th.
On topic.
Summoner - too OP, tried to fix. Didn't really.
Barbarian - made math easier, fixed barbarian exploding death syndrome and stopped abuse of rage cycling with once/rage powers.
Monk - it was bad and didn't have any choices for players. Made less bad with meaningless choices.
Rogue - it was bad and given a way to be better than a wizard without spells in combat, but not as good as any normal martial cause that'd be OP.
Unchained monk was close to ok but could have used a playtest.
I think in this case, lack of a playtest made things better, because this way, no one caught that Empty Body was listed without a level requirement. And thanks to that, unMonk has a cool but not overpowered ability that grants the class much needed versatility.
The cSummoner's playlist is a mess, making the class way stronger than it should be (as it's de facto a full caster with reduced spells per day), and it opens the doors wide for abuse (like wands and Mystic Past Life Samsarans). It's still too strong, not the least because they didn't even touch the super strong Summon Monster SLA.
unBarb is a much better made class than cBarb, with a higher floor (i.e. better at low optimization levels) and lower ceiling (worse at high optimization levels). Ragecycling was always a cheezy abuse. The class could do with a) a rage power to fly, and b) some way to enter a Rage Stance as a swift or free action, though.
unRogue still has the problem that a melee with d8 HD; medium BAB, no accuracy boost (before hitting), and the worst saves a PC class can possibly have is quite frankly an utterly stupid idea. It still isn't actually good at skills (because almost all unlocks suck and it has no boost to skills), and lacking any way to actually be a rogue-ish character. Indeed, they actually emphasized teamwork, so much for the "loner" type!
Barbarians alteration makes dual wielding barbarian more of an option than simply picking up a big 2 hander.
A +1 damage to off-hand attacks doesn't really change anything. One less feat needed helps, but TWF's main problems persist.
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It still surprises me that people don't like the unmonk. I kind of think they're a tone of fun.
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The unchained barbarian can go dex-based, which would certainly make two weapon fighting easier.
The unchained barbarian can go dex-based, which would certainly make two weapon fighting easier.
They can go dex based AND the accuracy stance exists.
Also its +1 damage from 1-11 +2 damage from 11-20.
Ubarb can build a TWF pounce from beast totem, crit fishing character that ends up with a net bonus to hit.
Lets go 11th level, ignoring any magic items or feats.
Base: +11/+6/+1
TWF + ITWF : +9/+9/+4/+4/-1
With Rage: +12/+12/+7/+7/+2
With Rage + Accurate Stance: +15/+15/+10/+10/+5
Pretty damn solid for not including a Str bonus to hit, any magic weapon, any feats or anything.
Frenzy barb > Immortal king barb
I'm pondering if I should respond, or just wait until Slim Jim gets into Savage Technologist fanboy mode...
Seriously though, I'm not saying unMonk wasn't (slightly) better at TWF than cMonk, I'm saying that thte difference is so small that it doesn't really help - Barb is just not that good at TWF, no matter which version you use*. For the record, a Savage Technologist with Reckless Abandon would have the exact same attack roll, only with an AC malus instead of needing to spend a move action after entering the rage to activate the stance.
*) Doesn't even get a usable unarmed archetype to use the "10-finger-discount" (a.k.a. handwraps).
Frenzy barb > Immortal king barb
Dual grief WW > both.
I'm pondering if I should respond, or just wait until Slim Jim gets into Savage Technologist fanboy mode...
Seriously though, I'm not saying unMonk wasn't (slightly) better at TWF than cMonk, I'm saying that thte difference is so small that it doesn't really help - Barb is just not that good at TWF, no matter which version you use*. For the record, a Savage Technologist with Reckless Abandon would have the exact same attack roll, only with an AC malus instead of needing to spend a move action after entering the rage to activate the stance.
*) Doesn't even get a usable unarmed archetype to use the "10-finger-discount" (a.k.a. handwraps).
Frenzy barb > Immortal king barbDual grief WW > both.
TBH i was marrowwalk smite cheese.
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The unmonk is just a little better at flurrying. But it’s also better at mobility. It can hit more reliably outside of flurry and has flying kick for semi pounce.
The unmonk is just a little better at flurrying. But it’s also better at mobility. It can hit more reliably outside of flurry and has flying kick for semi pounce.
IIRC it also includes the quigong monk archetype which most people just auto picked up anyway cause it had no cost associated with it.
It does include the Qinggong Powers as Ki Powers. The Ki Power class feature is overall much better than what a cMonk gets, anyway: Empty Body is aviable 15 levels earlier, Abundant Step is aviable four levels earlier (which also means earlier access to Dimensional Dervish), Restoration is aviable three levels earlier, and Ki Leech is aviable one level earlier and doesn't have to compete with Restoration. There are also a bunch of new abilities, e.g. Insightful Wisdom which can easily save party members.
@Melkiador: Don't forget the 1.5xStr bonus for two-handed weapons, and free proficiency with reach weapons.
@Melkiador: Don't forget the 1.5xStr bonus for two-handed weapons, and free proficiency with reach weapons.
Yeah, and that can be nice, but then you have flying kick which is very good, but requires at least one of your attacks to be unarmed anyway. So, focusing on something other than unarmed strikes just feels bad to me. It's part of why I think that the uMonk could have benefited from a round of playtesting.
I mean, flying kick is essentially pounce even if the "kick" part misses. A lot of classes would like to have that.
It's not that the ability isn't strong. In fact, part of the problem is that it's so desirable. It's that it works better for one play style than any of the other styles that could be really fun. It's not bad. It just doesn't feel right.
Yeah, and that can be nice, but then you have flying kick which is very good, but requires at least one of your attacks to be unarmed anyway. So, focusing on something other than unarmed strikes just feels bad to me.
I get what you mean, which is why I like Ascetic Style a lot. Mathematically, using the ki bonus attack for Flying Kick when needed works well enough so that weapon based unMonk without Ascetic Style is on par with Dragon Style or Jabbing Style.
Another PC is an unchained summoner. If the DM had let him play a chained summoner I would have left the game.
That seems silly. Especially since the power level difference is very small. The only meaningful nerf was making pounce slightly harder to get. But instead of getting to make fun combinations of things, the eidolon has been roped into arbitrary limits that don’t actually make it any weaker. And the multi limbed pounce monstrosity is still the flavor of the day, which was the one thing I’d hoped they’d try to fix.
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But they did nothing to stop the multi armed pounce builds. They just delayed it a couple of levels. Single attack eidolon’s should have been at least close to as meaningful. It was literally the only thing I wanted fixed in unchained.
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But they did nothing to stop the multi armed pounce builds. They just delayed it a couple of levels. Single attack eidolon’s should have been at least close to as meaningful. It was literally the only thing I wanted fixed in unchained.
Single attack builds aren't anywhere close to meaningful for any class in the game, why would eidolons be different though?
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I get that the Monk and Rogue got unchained, but... were there serious issues with the Summoner and Barbarian?
The Fighter should have been unchained prior to those two...
I get that the Monk and Rogue got unchained, but... were there serious issues with the Summoner and Barbarian?
cBarbarian's problems were mostly two-fold, the Sudden Barbarian Death Syndrome (drop to negative HP -> rage ends -> you lose the con bonus -> you're dead), and the ridiculous abuse that is ragecycling. Both present very undesirable jumps in the natural system mastery vs. effectiveness scaling. A beginner's character might randomly die because the player didn't know the importance of Raging Vitality. On the other end of the spectrum, even with high system mastery, you need to know a very cheesy trick to archieve full potential (and even though the list of rage powers that are actually worth it to rage cycle isn't that big, the ability to repeatedly remove enemy spells or reroll failed saves is huge).
cSummoner is basically broken left, right, and center. The spell list is a joke - as I've said above, cSummoner is de facto a full caster with reduced spells per day and the strength of its casting is significantly ahead of those of other 6/9 casters (helped greatly be the amazing spell selection). The Eidolon is quite frankly just absurd, it can go toe to do at dealing damage with all but the very best martials. The problem is basically that the spellcasting is good enough to make it a functional tier 3 class (6/9 caster), but when you play it, you also put a fully functional tier 4 class (good martial) on the table for basically double a normal character's action economy. Druid/Hunter can run into the same issue, but an animal companion is way harder to get up to PC levels of effectiveness (well, making it more powerful than a Rogue is probably not that hard...); even more so for a Spiritualist's phantom or all the "mount" class features. Both the Summoner and the Eidolon are pretty easy to build effectively (the spell list has unusually few weak options, and picking pounce and maxing out primary natural attacks is all it takes), which means that the combination easily overshadows characters at the same level of system mastery.
The Summoner Monster SLA is in itself OK, but it grants a notable amount of versatility on top of what the class already has, and is rather powerful for a back-up feature.
The previous summoner was complicated and confusing.
I never understood this. What was it that was "complicated and confusing"? The unclear evolution discriptions is something unchained did not fix.
TL;DR: People complained about stuff, so Paizo released a book that made things worse. : D
Agree completely. Unchained was unnecessary and poorly executed. The classes were on the whole worse with only a few good ideas that could have been fixed by a FAQ entry. The rest were a bunch of ideas that wound up on the cutting room floor that were dusted off and crammed in to up the page count. Worst Pathfinder hardcover, in my opinion.
TL;DR: People complained about stuff, so Paizo released a book that made things worse. : DLol. It feels that way. I hate most of the unchained summoner. It broke more than it fixed. Barbarian felt more like “why bother”. Unchained monk was close to ok but could have used a playtest. And the unchained rogue is probably ok but it’s too tempting for dexterity based dips.
The Dex to Damage mechanic gets a little ridiculous. You pour everything into boosting Dex and become nearly unhittable while having a high attack bonus. Goblin rogue can out hit a fighter of the same level and out-damage him likely too if he can sneak attack consistently.
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If you think unchained rogue, barbarian and monk are WORSE you've got a skewed view of game balance.
TL;DR: People complained about stuff, so Paizo released a book that made things worse. : DLol. It feels that way. I hate most of the unchained summoner. It broke more than it fixed. Barbarian felt more like “why bother”. Unchained monk was close to ok but could have used a playtest. And the unchained rogue is probably ok but it’s too tempting for dexterity based dips.The Dex to Damage mechanic gets a little ridiculous. You pour everything into boosting Dex and become nearly unhittable while having a high attack bonus. Goblin rogue can out hit a fighter of the same level and out-damage him likely too if he can sneak attack consistently.
Very rarely is a Rogue going to have their dex more than 2 points above what a primary martial is going to have in their strength, unless you've got some weird game where people are running around with 14 strength fighters. So before BAB an Unrogue is at most +1 to hit over the fighter. But then the fighter has weapon training and BAB to raise his attack bonus, plus more attack per round. And while the rogue has debilitating injury to help provide more accuracy that's only going to close the BaB gap, and not the class feature gap.
And if the Rogue gets sneak attack, that's only going to bring them up to the fighters level and not surpass them, because again the fighter has more attacks, better or equal accuracy, and his own damage boosters that are also multiplied on critical hits.
Not to mention that the high AC is just as easy to get with heavy armor as it is with high dex. And maybe even easier as armor has max dex limits.
If you think unchained rogue, barbarian and monk are WORSE you've got a skewed view of game balance.
Except for niche cases like a dexterity build, the unchained barbarian is slightly weaker, though it’s a lot easier to play. I’m not sure if I’d call that “worse”, but I’m sure some would.
The monk is worse in that it doesn’t natively work with most archetypes. But if you compare the base monk to the base unchained monk, the unchained version is better in almost all cases.
The unchained rogue is nothing but buffs.
The monk is worse in that it doesn’t natively work with most archetypes. But if you compare the base monk to the base unchained monk, the unchained version is better in almost all cases.
Can we please stop spreading this misinformation? For a typical Monk build, i.e. melee damage focussed (be it armed or unarmed), unMonk is miles ahead of anything cMonk has to offer, and no archetype changes that. Yes, there are archetypes that make cMonk worth playing even in the post-unchained time, but those without exception drastically alter playstyle (mounted, grapple-focussed, ranged, buff-focussed).
If you think unchained rogue, barbarian and monk are WORSE you've got a skewed view of game balance.Except for niche cases like a dexterity build, the unchained barbarian is slightly weaker, though it’s a lot easier to play. I’m not sure if I’d call that “worse”, but I’m sure some would.
The monk is worse in that it doesn’t natively work with most archetypes. But if you compare the base monk to the base unchained monk, the unchained version is better in almost all cases.
The unchained rogue is nothing but buffs.
The unchained barbarian works better with two weapon fighting, which is the highest damage fighting style, and can also gain pounce. It is a raw mechanical buff. It also doesn't drop dead at the end of close fights.
The unchained barbarian works better with two weapon fighting, which is the highest damage fighting style, and can also gain pounce. It is a raw mechanical buff. It also doesn't drop dead at the end of close fights.
Have you actually tried this build before? Because I don’t think it works as well as you think it does.
Yup, and it works just fine, though the swift action for accurate stance is slightly inconvenient. It is feat intensive, like every twf build and you don't just get to pick one stat and max it. The tools for a critfishing dual wield barb are strong.
Meh, there are plenty of ways to get flying other than class abilities; so as long as you're getting something good instead, I can't really complain about that. Like you said, it wasn't even that good.
The aforementioned accurate stance helps with thrown attacks, at least, but I haven't looked into whether building an unchained bowbarian is feasible.
Level One comparison for ease of math.
Level 1, Human: Two-Weapon Fighting, Weapon Finesse
Level 1, Human: Exotic Weapon Proficiency(Elven Curved Blade), Weapon Fnesse
So the bonuses to attack are the same at base and raging, 18 and 14 Str. Daggers for the TWF so both have 2d4 damage.
TWF, Normal: Two attacks at +3 for 2d4+3 total
TWF, Raging: Two attacks at +3 for 2d4+6 total
TWF, Unchained Raging: Two Attacks at +5, for 2d4+7 total
ECB, Normal: One attack at +5, for 2d4+3
ECB, Raging: One attack at +7, for 2d4+6
ECB, Unchained Raging: One attack at +7, for 2d6+8
An Unchained Barbarian that uses Two-Weapon Fighting can pull ahead if they get magical weapons, but they are still behind in the accuracy department so I think it even out a little. Double Slice will alleviate the damage drop off a little, putting the TWF ahead a small margin though.
With that in mind, I think Unchained Barbarian TWF can be less frustrating, but I wouldn't call it the most damaging.
Now where are those black opals...?
Yup, and it works just fine, though the swift action for accurate stance is slightly inconvenient. It is feat intensive, like every twf build and you don't just get to pick one stat and max it. The tools for a critfishing dual wield barb are strong.
I am glad I hit preivew. I hadn't thought about rage powers.
Accurate stance applies to both, so that is a wash. Powerful Stance is better for the ECB UBarb simply because of the accuracy it has over a TWF build.
Hmm... A Sword and Board TWF Ubarb bears some looking into, but it is much more feat intensive too...
Except in a close fight at level 1-5 a Regular barb gets knocked down and dies and the ubarb gets knocked down and lives.
Also, as 2 weapon fighting (with a crit fishing build) has an accuracy penalty associated with it naturally, an accuracy boost inherently benefits that build MORE than a 2hander build, its not in any way a wash, as eventually accurate stance becomes "hit an ac way higher than you need for any cr appropriate monster" vs "hit rather than miss" for 2handers. Making those extra attacks hit adds that sweet rage bonus damage multiple times, offers more opportunity to crit, and accurate stance has chain abilities that benefit crit even more.
Also why did you give the 2hander a 18-20 crit weapon but not the crit fishing TWF build?
crit fishing uses kukri, not daggers...same die type but 30% crit chance vs 20% once you get improved crit is relevant