| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Rangers planting snares seems to be a big thing for PF2. Their preview blurb at the start of the class entry mentions snares. Their suggested downtime activity includes crafting snares (although that seems like a bad idea since you can't move them).
But I feel like snares are kind of a pain to get into.
The lynchpin of the snare ranger is snare specialist, which gives you 4 (6/8 at master/legendary) free snares a day and lets you plant those snares in 3 actions instead of a minute. This is kind of important because snares, especially at low levels, are really expensive. You definitely need the free ones.
But I have a few problems here. For one, level 4 is kind of a late entry point. I know there aren't a ton of strong low level snares but this feels like something Rangers should be able to do earlier on than that. Granted, as it stands right now the requirements mean 4 is the earliest point you could get them anyways but...
My second problem is those requirements. In order to get Snare Specialist you need Snare Crafting and Expert in Crafting. This basically means one of your first feats and your first skill increase must both go specifically into crafting in order to be able to able to take this feat when it's first accessible. That seems like an inordinately high amount of resources invested.
Especially considering that while snares are pretty good, they're not amazing. You get 4 per day at level 4 and while some of them do good damage they're not particularly game changing, especially for something you can't really use in combat given their 3 action requirement and the fact that someone has to walk into them.
It jsut feels like, especially early game, you're throwing a lot of resources into even getting these online to begin with and... I dunno, kinda wish it wasn't such a pain, because they're cool.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Personally, I feel that the "Snare Crafting" feat is a bit of a tax and that snares should be a one time use item but so long as they're not set off you should be able to spend the time to recover it.
Ranger's Snare Specialist feat lines are the only thing that IMO make snares something that you would even want to invest in.
dunno, they do seem sweet to me, they have some excellent damage/effects for their item levels usually.
yes they need some setup if you don't invest further into them (i think you can lower seting them up to like 1 action eventually?) but Shove and Knockbacks are also aplenty so it's not that hard to get people on them i think.
but if they work or not i would need to see them in an actual game to decide.
but from a quick glance, 1 class feat and 1 skill feat doesn't seem too expensive for what you get.
I'm still learning the new edition but it kind of seems that snares kick in for Rangers who want to focus on them at level four with Snare Specialist: "Each day during your daily preparations, you can prepare four snares from your formula book for quick deployment; if they normally take 1 minute to Craft, you can Craft them with 3 Interact actions."
That kind of sounds like you make snares ready in the morning, and then set them up during the day. Best part of this feat is that the snares cost nothing. At level 12, you can setup free 320gpx6 worth of snares for free.
For the more tactical and wary ranger, especially when on the defense, that seems pretty amazing.
It still is a bit sad the the ranger will be the only one due to their unholy Price. I mean, anybody else that invests a skill up and a skill feat is looking at insanely expensive and heavy items that are super situational. A snare is the same Price as a comparable alchemical bomb. Bombs are way, way better and even THOSE are overpriced. I mean really, an acid flask or a snare is 20% of your Level 1 Budget.
That is insane for Setting a tripwire with a bell. That is AFTER you paid 5g for a snare kit and you can not pick up said tripwire again.
I love the idea of having more alchemy and snares in my games. I guess I will allow at the Minimum all Level 1 snares to be built for free just from the snare kit for everyone with Craft, and then think of actually putting the ranger feat into the skill feat. It will still not be overpowered that way, because you have to invest time to set it up, get People to step in it AND fail their saves to be even somewhat interesting.
Isn't that price for when you buy them?
Crafting would cost less than half I think?| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Anyone remember Neverwinter Nights and disarming and collecting traps to use later? I think I'll probably let my players do that sort of thing quite frequently.
Ranger's Snare Specialist feat lines are the only thing that IMO make snares something that you would even want to invest in.
This is pretty much my thought. Snares are kind of expensive and can't be retrieved once they're crafted, so Snare Crafting ends up feeling a lot like a nothing feat that you just take to unlock Specialist.
The skill requirement is less painful, since at least you can do something with it, but the fact that you only get one skill increase before you first gain access to the feat still makes it sting.
Isn't that price for when you buy them?
Crafting would cost less than half I think?
Crafting only costs less if you use downtime rules, where you can spend additional time to speed up crafting.
The book suggests using downtime to craft more snares as a good Ranger activity, but as DerNils point out, snares are planted as part of their crafting, so downtime crafting snares is only really useful if you're defending a location you're going to spend a lot of time in.
Ranger's Snare Specialist feat lines are the only thing that IMO make snares something that you would even want to invest in.This is pretty much my thought. Snares are kind of expensive and can't be retrieved once they're crafted, so Snare Crafting ends up feeling a lot like a nothing feat that you just take to unlock Specialist.
The skill requirement is less painful, since at least you can do something with it, but the fact that you only get one skill increase before you first gain access to the feat still makes it sting.
Isn't that price for when you buy them?
Crafting would cost less than half I think?Crafting only costs less if you use downtime rules, where you can spend additional time to speed up crafting.
The book suggests using downtime to craft more snares as a good Ranger activity, but as DerNils point out, snares are planted as part of their crafting, so downtime crafting snares is only really useful if you're defending a location you're going to spend a lot of time in.
I just found out why I got confused, there's two ranger snare feats, one gives you free snares in the daily prep and they only take 3 actions to deploy, and another makes standard traps (full cost) take 3 turns to deploy.
Kind of tempted for a Ranger/Alchemist MC/Rogue MC who gets free Snares, Alchemical Items and Poisons free each day!
If you start as an Alch you get scaling poisons.
Dedication for Ranger. then be a human (or half) for the racial feat to pick up Rogue dedication (bypassing restrictiosn).Get poison weapn, and the snare feats! Extra range from hunt target as well.
I don't think any human feats let you bypass restrictions, if you mean natural ambition, it's talking about picking the class feat later after you've made other choices about your character first.
since step 3 in the character creation guide is pick an ancestry, it might confuse new players, since you don't have a class yet.
Zwordsman is probably talking about the level 9 feat, Multitalented. It gives you a dedication feat even if you're still locked into another dedication.
And half elves with Multitalented can ignore the ability score requirements for that dedication, so they could enter champion dedication even if they had 10 str and 10 cha.
Zwordsman is probably talking about the level 9 feat, Multitalented. It gives you a dedication feat even if you're still locked into another dedication.
And half elves with Multitalented can ignore the ability score requirements for that dedication, so they could enter champion dedication even if they had 10 str and 10 cha.
ah, for some reason I thought he meant to do this all at level 1.