This seems like it should be in the Products forum.
https://paizo.com/community/forums/pathfinder/second/products
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I'm afraid I don't follow. Either you have the permission of the GM to becoming a Living Monolith or you don't. Why does the rarity change that?
While having being a Living Monolith be a GM call seems fair enough, I'm curious as to why they'd not just apply that to the dedication feat itself rather than leave it there as something you can take and not be able to progress further, locking you out of other dedication feats.
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I'm afraid I don't follow. Either you have the permission of the GM to becoming a Living Monolith or you don't. Why does the rarity change that?While having being a Living Monolith be a GM call seems fair enough, I'm curious as to why they'd not just apply that to the dedication feat itself rather than leave it there as something you can take and not be able to progress further, locking you out of other dedication feats.
Yeah, that's a bit clunky to me. Just make the whole archetype Rare, and either "Being from the Golden Road region gives a character access to Living Monolith Dedication" or it doesn't. As far as I'm aware Golden Road regional origin could make Living Monolith Uncommon instead of rare, but I don't think that actually does anything. So either make the whole archetype rare, or don't. I have no problem with it being rare, defending tombs, and so on does seem unusual in a typical adventuring party, and maybe Ka Stone Ritual adds unusual effects a GM might want to avoid, but if its true that it gates the rest of the feats, that rarity should be on the class IMO. Like all rarity problems though, it's really whether your GM is on board or not. It's not more or less of a problem either way, just a bit awkward that it's not made more obvious on the Archetype itself for readability sake.
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To clarify, Living Monolith Dedication is uncommon, but it has "access" in the form of being from the Golden Road.
Ka Stone Ritual is just plain rare, with no "access" entry. In fact, it says, "Prerequisites Living Monolith Dedication, a sphinx or living monolith with this feat performs a ritual with you," so good luck finding that in the middle of your adventuring.
From a design standpoint, there is little reason for the archetype to offer an "access" method to unlock it away from uncommon, only to then throw up another rarity barrier. No other archetype in this book is like that.
A GM has to allow characters to be from the Golden Road. It would be shortsighted of a GM to allow content from this book, allow access to be from the Golden Road and then not consider whether or not to allow the Living Monolith archetype.
It would be a dick GM move to allow all of the above but then refuse to ever allow the PC access to a sphinx or living monolith to perform the required ritual.
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Really not happy if it's true that the dedication does nothing other than make your dueling sword proficiency advance; if dedication feats (excluding the ones that give some form of spellcasting) are all going to be dead levels that you're delaying your interesting stuff to get then it's not going to be fun to take them.
Runescarred seems like it could be the key for Magical Trickster Rogues that want to just be Rogues, though, so that's promising.
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...No? Literally the entire point of those archetypes is to use their respective iconic weapon. If anything the dedication should double down on making the dueling sword more attractive.
Then from a design standpoint, why even lock Ka Stone Ritual behind rare rarity with no "access" provision?
That is a completely valid point.
Fighters and Rangers both have very clear motivation to consider the Sawtooth Saber attractive, and there's no reason to assume that the current meta of who may want what kind of weapon will stay the same forever. The moment we get an Urban Barbarian finesse weapons that aren't agile like the dueling sword suddenly start looking good for that class.
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Aldori Duelist sounds ridiculously awesome for Rogues, actually. Sure, you need to invest a couple of General Feats, but you can have them at 1st level as a Human and just start with knowing how to use the weapon, then take Dedication at 2nd or 4th, and have the flatly better weapon at pretty low opportunity costs.
It's obviously also good for Fighter, and workable for anyone who just wants to do a finesse build for some reason.
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Information about Aldori sword lord and Red Mantis assassin
For characters who wanted to be good with these weapons and not start off as fighters, this is exactly what I expected archetypes to look like. Access to fighter feats as direct archetype feats is very useful instead of having to wait until you can drop a feat twice the level of the original feat.
I am sure we will eventual see feats like this for every iconic character build from PF1 and if there is one that feels like it is missing it will probably be fairly easy to home brew in a balanced method based on "is this weapon martial or advanced, look to a previous example." and for really popular home brew archetypes, or ones that people desperately want, Paizo is pretty fast with their release schedule and new stuff will be forth coming every several months.
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Cool. I’ll be interested in seeing how well the Aldori Swordlord plays with Swashbuckler. Rogue likes it, but it’s more or less limited to humans because of the buy-in. (I’m a little more chill about the opportunity cost. General feats don’t do as much for Rogue in my personal opinion.) Fighter can get it more easily and can spare reactions, but aren’t as finesse focused. If someone is already building a finesse Fighter, though, I’ll point them to this.
As much as I enjoy all the details, though, you’re not supposed to spoil full rules until the book is actually released. It’s one of Paizo’s requests as part of releasing PDFs early.
Isn't the book pdf out the 28th? How can people get it now?
Subscribers get a PDF copy of the books when we get shipment emails.
Subscribers get a PDF copy of the books when we get shipment emails.
Forgot the subscription is a thing. Is it a good investment?
Edit: Well, seems it's not worth for me. In this case, the Lost Omens would cost me 37$, while shipping alone, that could take up to a month with no tracking would cost me 21$.
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the Aldori dueling sword (uncommon, a whopping 20 gp, advanced, one-handed, 1d8, finesse, slashing into versatile P, and that is it; very underwhelming)I think you are very much underestimating the value of a 1 handed d8 Finesse Weapon, but you haven't shown much aptitude for accurately valuing mechanics so far so I can understand that.
it is a rare option, which means it is extra-gated behind GM fiat.I'm afraid I don't follow. Either you have the permission of the GM to becoming a Living Monolith or you don't. Why does the rarity change that?
while I can see some of these dedications having niche usesSounds like they succeeded at their purpose so.
still waiting on my order to go though so i can read up on the aldori duest , it and the magic warrior are the ones i am most interested in, what are your thoughts on them?
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Who is the Aldori dueling sword actually for? It is uncommon, 20 gp (yes, 20), advanced, one-handed, 1d8, finesse, slashing into versatile P. It has no ancestry tag, and the Lost Omens World Guide says that "only those with a swordlord's elite training are able to wield one effectively," so it is definitely not "common in another culture," ruling out Unconventional Weaponry.
Aldori Duelist Dedication is a 2nd-level archetype feat that requires trained proficiency in Aldori dueling swords. It grants training in Acrobatics or Athletics, plus Dueling Lore, with expert if already trained. It makes you expert/master/legendary in Aldori dueling swords only if you are expert/master/legendary in any other weapons.
A rogue who wants to use an Aldori dueling sword has to take Weapon Proficiency twice just to be trained in an Aldori dueling sword, and then sink a feat into Aldori Duelist Dedication just to get the scaling proficiency.
A champion or a ranger who wants to use an Aldori dueling sword has to take Weapon Proficiency once, and then burn another feat on Aldori Duelist Dedication for scaling proficiency. A fighter can get away with just Aldori Duelist Dedication. But why bother? Finesse weapons are significantly less important for these classes; if they want to go into melee, they can max out Strength, take Dexterity 12, and call it a day. There is no Dexterity to damage for these classes.
The Aldori duelist archetype is not even that strong. It is mostly a repackaging of the einhander fighter. About the most impressive thing it can do is Demoralize as a free action on a critical Strike (not to exceed Demoralize limitations, though), and that is a 6th-level feat.
I do not see a reason for there to be a rigmarole involving a dedicated Aldori dueling sword as a weapon, a weapon of questionable mechanical utility.
In the same way that Paizo was happy to recategorize aeons and nymphs to streamline the lore, I do not see why "Aldori dueling sword" could not have been reenvisioned as a name...
well i will be making make a dex fighter because i want to play an aldori swordlord with a dueling blade, dex fighters with this sword should do well , dex to damage is imho not that important
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Well, I guess we now know what those general feats that only give trained no matter what level you are happen to be for.
I feel like the downside of "you take the living monolith dedication, and the GM denies you access to the ritual that advances it" is "you retrain the dedication" and hope the GM had a good reason (like "we're on Akiton, where are you going to get one of those?").
But human rogues getting into Aldori Dueling at 2nd level seems pretty good.
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People really complaining about how other classes can be Aldori Duelist/Red Mantis Here. Those builds are not really meant for most classes anyways, PF1 Aldoris were pretty much always Fighter or Swashbuckler and Red Mantis were Rogue, Ranger or Warpriest. When Achaekek gets published there'll be an easy way for Clerics to gain the Sawtooth saber proficiency, though they won't really need the dedication go get Expert on it.
If you want to use them on a class that's not really meant for it, well, of course it's gonna be tricky and out of place. It's more of a lore limitation than anything, really, which is fine for me. The fact that an archetype is generic doesn't mean it's for everyone, as long as two classes could use it that's good enough excuse to make it open and just set difficult requirements.
We might even get some archetype down the line with "Powerful Fist" requirement...
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This means that if, say, a bard or a rogue wants an Aldori dueling sword with scaling proficiency, they are going to have to sink two general feats into it, as well as a 2nd-level class feat. That is a huge opportunity cost that most likely not worth paying.
Versatile Heritage + General Training gets you those two general feats at first level, no need for Unconventional Weaponry. General Training even has specific language to prevent race condition bugs.
"Stuff you get from your ancestry at level 1" generally isn't so amazing that I'm not willing to burn it all on greasing the wheels for access to an archetype; the two best human ancestry feats to date are "get an extra level 1 class feat" and "multitalented", IMO.
I mean as a rogue the "skilled heritage" doesn't do much for you anyway, so you're mostly locked into "versatile" if you want to be a rogue and you want to be a plain old human, and you still have the rest of your ancestry feats available.
What worries me is that it seems the dedications are only good for pushing the weapon into Expert/Master territory down the line, which are not going to be issues at level 2 (except the fighter). Everyone else who gets them will be seeing no benefits whatsoever for several levels unless they delay picking it.
Feel as if they could have put something else to make it attractive at low level, specially if your character concept is to get everything from the archetype.
What worries me is that it seems the dedications are only good for pushing the weapon into Expert/Master territory down the line, which are not going to be issues at level 2 (except the fighter). Everyone else who gets them will be seeing no benefits whatsoever for several levels unless they delay picking it.
So all the non-fighter martial classes who would become Swordlords (i.e. probably not the monk or alchemist) will get expert at 5th, so you can take it 3 levels before it does anything except grant skill bonuses. So it's a question of how good the followup feats are.
I can see a rogue taking the fighter dedication just for some of the one handed weapon style feats, so if this is better for that, it does more than the base fighter dedication for you.
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This means that if, say, a bard or a rogue wants an Aldori dueling sword with scaling proficiency, they are going to have to sink two general feats into it, as well as a 2nd-level class feat. That is a huge opportunity cost that most likely not worth paying.Versatile Heritage + General Training gets you those two general feats at first level, no need for Unconventional Weaponry. General Training even has specific language to prevent race condition bugs.
"Stuff you get from your ancestry at level 1" generally isn't so amazing that I'm not willing to burn it all on greasing the wheels for access to an archetype; the two best human ancestry feats to date are "get an extra level 1 class feat" and "multitalented", IMO.
I mean as a rogue the "skilled heritage" doesn't do much for you anyway, so you're mostly locked into "versatile" if you want to be a rogue and you want to be a plain old human, and you still have the rest of your ancestry feats available.
We can be quite certain that this is changing soon - the CRB heritages are already getting power creeped on by Ancient Elf.
We can be quite certain that this is changing soon - the CRB heritages are already getting power creeped on by Ancient Elf.
We're going to have like 2 months though with this book and not that one.
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That's a completely confounding argument. 2 months might as well be no time at all in campaign terms, a character that you started today very likely would not reach level 5 before that book comes out.
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This is a very good point, too. A character receiving only a delayed feat from a feat they invest in early on is being screwed out of an immediate, tangible benefit.What worries me is that it seems the dedications are only good for pushing the weapon into Expert/Master territory down the line, which are not going to be issues at level 2 (except the fighter). Everyone else who gets them will be seeing no benefits whatsoever for several levels unless they delay picking it.
Feel as if they could have put something else to make it attractive at low level, specially if your character concept is to get everything from the archetype.
Yeah, it's a delayed benefit but on the very first feat of the line. At level 5 it's probably already worth it for +2 on an advanced weapon but still, you're not doing anything until then because spent all your feats on getting proficiencies.
Biggest opportunity cost on "versatile" + "general training" at level 1 seems that you're missing out on natural ambition. But until I see a better human heritage (which isn't plane-touched or half-something) for rogues than "versatile" it seems like "versatile human + spend your 3rd level general feat on this, take the archetype at 4th or 6th" seems relatively painless for a rogue.
Non-rogues might find giving up "Skilled Human" more painful though.
If the skill boosts do nothing for you (which would include boosting to expert 2 skills, which is pretty good for a ranger or a barbarian, why wouldn’t you just wait to pick up the dedication? Or retrain into it? Especially if you like the 2nd level feats of your starting class, and you dropped the general feats to use the dialing sword, not needing to rush the archetype doesn’t seem like a broken/bad thing.
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Hmm. Another thought crosses my mind. You don't actually want to take the feat at low levels. Until you're an expert in at least one weapon, why bother? Grab your proficiencies, kick back, and take the feat when it'll boost the weapon to expert. Retrain into it, maybe; it's not like it doesn't make sense for training in that particular school of swordsmanship to take the form of a downtime activity.
I guess I'm just considering it as a specialized Fighter multiclass, and it seems like it does that all right.
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dialing sword
Aldori phone home?
Sorry ... carry on!
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The Living Monolith rarity is a holdover from 1e, where the prestige class required a ritual with a sphinx or living monolith present and 1000 GP. I guess it is still there because the Lore reason living monoliths/sphinxes oversee the Ka Stone ritual hasn't changed, and it was pushed back to level 4 to give you some time to seek out a sphinx/monolith before you need it.
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It actually sounds like it will upgrade a Skill to Expert, something that you can't get at 2nd level otherwise unless you're a Rogue (or take some other Archetype that does it) and is a permanent boost to your number of Skills above Trained. That's an excellent benefit all on its own.
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Hearing that the weapon specialty dedications require you to buy into proficiency before you can use them has really cratered my interest here and left me incredibly disheartened about the future of advanced and other strange weapons in PF2.
Incredibly disappointing on Paizo's part that they keep doubling down on all these hoops they want to make players jump through to pull off weird builds.