rogue in the world specifically wants to be a Lion Blade or something.
That said, there's a few just bafflingly niche options. Like, spending an action to maybe temporarily suppress the illusions on somebody you just punched does not feel like a complete class feat to me. I get that there's some great defensive illusion spells, but I have a hard time imagining a campaign where they're so common that it was critical that such a narrow feat also have conditions and limitations.
My thought on this as a GM and something I discussed with one of my players was that I'd probably let anybody observing the illusion fade for a turn roll a Will save to disbelieve the illusion effect. Still niche though.
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magic warrior...just...just no
druid dedication + wild shape is so much better....and anybody can get wis 14 compared to focus spell prereq of magic warrior and it scales better(+2 status to attack)
those anti divination bonuses are silly....c'mon guys, those spells are story spells for GM....if they need to be there, they'll be there.
if your character is resistant, your other party member wont be...so whatever...the BBEG will get his intel one way or the other...
magic warrior...just...just no
druid dedication + wild shape is so much better....and anybody can get wis 14 compared to focus spell prereq of magic warrior and it scales better(+2 status to attack)
those anti divination bonuses are silly....c'mon guys, those spells are story spells for GM....if they need to be there, they'll be there.
if your character is resistant, your other party member wont be...so whatever...the BBEG will get his intel one way or the other...
Maybe you don't want to take druid anathema
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Those anti divination bonuses are silly....c'mon guys, those spells are story spells for GM....if they need to be there, they'll be there.
That's more than a little presumptuous, no?
I've had a fair number of GMs who throw fits when I take such spells, as it "foils their well-laid plans."
Many of said GMs are ecstatic that it's now uncommon and so they can basically forbid me from ever accessing it.
Maybe you don't want to take druid anathemamagic warrior...just...just no
druid dedication + wild shape is so much better....and anybody can get wis 14 compared to focus spell prereq of magic warrior and it scales better(+2 status to attack)
those anti divination bonuses are silly....c'mon guys, those spells are story spells for GM....if they need to be there, they'll be there.
if your character is resistant, your other party member wont be...so whatever...the BBEG will get his intel one way or the other...
or maybe you don't want all those mask shenanigans
IMO the worst of all regional archetypes
Hardly unique. Anyone that plays with different groups/DMs most likely isn't big fans of ambiguity or table variance. Less ambiguity is less work for both DM's and players in that situation.Actually your the first DM I've ever met who believes ALL AMBIGUITY must be settled before they can even start looking for players. I've typically found ambiguity to most disliked by players due to a lack of trust towards DMs (potentially because they don't know who their DM will be). Unless I've misunderstood the nature of your preferences to be more extreme then they are, I would most definitely consider that unique.
But if the term unique offends you or or if your experiences dictate there are hundreds of DMs just like you then feel free to replace the word unique with "out of the ordinary based on my experiences" :)
No offense was actually intended and I apologise if it was received. I genuinely meant it to be a description of how you approach the game without any judgement attached to it (which is why I didn't describe it as strange, peculiar, extreme or any other emotive term).
You seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings with me: I'm a player that plays online with several different DM at the same time: As such, more ambiguity make it take longer to get on the same page with other players and DM's [and the more difficult it is to jump from one game to another]. So far, the 2E games I'm playing feel like different systems/versions with the amount of difference you see from all the 'ask your DM' rules being adjudicated differently. I like to be able to join a game that says 'uses all legal rules' and have it play like any other game with those qualities and every instance of ambiguity makes that less likely.
As to offense, none taken: I just don't see my situation unusual as I play with dozens [at once, hundreds over the years] of others online that would prefer a base game as consistent between games as possible so it's quick and easy to start up and play when joining a new game. I understand that it's different from playing in a home game with a single DM but I don't think it's so "out of the ordinary" that my point of view isn't possible to understand by others that do have a home game.
This post was just to clarify things: as this is isn't really about the thread topic I'm not going to continue to reply on this subject.
More than happy to let it drop. but this post is where you gave me the idea that even if you were a DM you would still need every ambiguity sorted out up front.
More than happy to not discuss it any further though. I really do apologize if any of my posts in this thread offended you.
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Blessed Tattoo looks nice to me, super good if you are in an anti-demon campaign and solid in an anti-evil game as well. Also, it looks at a glance like a way to use protection against evil without being good aligned, as the object and text lack anything regarding the good trait. Maybe an error, maybe more in line with how the devs want aligned traits to work (IIRC Mark Seifter said there was something wrong about that).
I'm surprisingly not disappointed by the Eye of the Arclords feat. It isn't the best, but it seems like cool utility. The scaling does not really matter for it though, for most fights 1 minute is as good as 5. I'd much prefer it to scale in frequency, but that ship has sailed for now. Maybe a future arclord of nex archetype will help with that.
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Well I think the issue here is just the magic item bonus.
13th level wizard has 13 from Level, 4 from prof and 5 from dex plus 10 giving it 32 before magic items, likely 34 with it. Animal form at 18 + level is basically giving it one back from max no full plate armor (8 vs 9) which seems a pretty deliberate choice. The issue is that 1-2 bonus there from the magic item. If there was a wild enchant akin to PF1 that would fix it on its own if it could just stay one behind the other prof. I agree without it it’s not viable in combat. However it’s fairly matched up well with max bonuses you can get from your class, it’s just not balanced with the magic items.
Something like Wild would be helpful on one level, but it would still leave something like Wild Shape that you can actually really scale via Heightening objectively superior (and potentially overpowered).
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The more I read it the more Mage Warrior is bad. Nondetection is good only if the whole party got it all the time, otherwise a BBEG will succeed to use it. Animal Form does not scale well, AND you got a roleplay Heavy malus with your only cool thing, your mask. Damn this is bad bad bad. You wonder how Jatembe and his Warriors made it to be such famous people with such bad class feats.
I don’t know how something so bad could make it to print. It is even more disapointing when we don’t talk about a random magic tradition, it is one of the most flavorfull and cool.
On the other hand all the others go from very decent at what the dedication is supposed to be to very good for a lots of builds. Really I want to try the Mantis.
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I like the Lion Blade more than I expected to. Probably won't ever use the dedication to good effect, but Expeditious Advance and Flicker both look rather nice. Crowd stuff is skippable or it is great, your campaign will tell you.
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I kinda wonder why everyone is worried about the Mask?
Like that is how it worked for Magic Warriors in 1e too. The idea is that they are kinda like that luchador thing of "I NEVER ever remove my mask." Aka, you don't do that normally ever, so unless your party members are dicks, its not issue :p
Something like that can become a positive when the rest of the package is cool. The 1E magic Warrior wasn't amazing or anything, but it was a perfectly usable thematic gimmick char. Now it's like "I can gimp myself to get this negative trait". Ultimately, it's mostly a ribbon and doesn't matter a lot, so it's gonna be judged along with the rest of the package.
Clearly it's not gonna be the deciding factor for most people picking/not picking this...
I kinda wonder why everyone is worried about the Mask?
Because it can easily interfere with common, everyday things. I mean, just watch this guy in the yellow shirt: A prime example of the problems it can cause.
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I kinda wonder why everyone is worried about the Mask?Because it can easily interfere with common, everyday things. I mean, just watch this guy in the yellow shirt: A prime example of the problems it can cause.
But if that bothers you, then you wouldn't want to play a character who always wears a mask in first place <_<
am i reading correctly? magic warrior can't increase your focus pool at all?
oh man...
i'm trying to make any kind of build that would work well with this archetype(mechanically)...and can't find any real reason to take it(beside RP and fluff)
maybe if they made 1 big benefit it could be unique and very cool
"you can cast spells in your battle form of chosen mask animal"
Lets look at the archetypes in order they came
The Pathfinder Agent seems kinda niche to me, not a fan tbh
Aldori Duelist ist a fun archetype for fighters and rogues and possibly for everyone else who wants to pick up some dex based fighting (and is okay to be resticted to one (admittedly very good) weapon)
Lastwall Sentry seems fine if you go to an campaign where you mostly want to bully undead, but the decication + shield warden seems to be nice for players who want to defend their allies
Living Monolith looks pretty good for any frontliner, not much to say about that - though dwarves might get a fetish on you ;)
Red Mantis [u]INfiltrator[/u] because, seriously, there is not much assassination going about, the abilities are in line whith what the red mantis peeps could already do but seriously lack in the assassination department
Student of perfection gives one...really not much, the feats are good but there are so few...one would guess there are more then three feats about a monastry where people train for decades
Magic Warrior - I don't think those guys deserve their name, there is little warrior and even less magic stuff going on. Also their whole 'no identity' schtick seems to be rather counterproductive for like 90% of campaigns availebe, I don't know why I would choose them...well, okay, the transformation has a few benefits but still
Hellknight Armiger has me surprised by not needing to be either lawful or evil (with lawful being the bigger surprise) so basically a good infiltrator could become an armiger. The feats are a mix between somewhat specific and very good, a solid dedication
The RUnescarred is interesting if you want to grab some 'Ace up the sleeve' tricks and for everyone who does want to go unarmored (makes bracers of armor much more reasonable)
The Lionblade seems good for people who want to infiltrate, so it is a good addendum for the red mantis - they get some nice abilities, Already knowing that the blade part of their name has not much to do with fighting prowess it was less of a letdown then the red mantis assassin or the magic warrior (but whoever named the group originall Lion Blade after a common weapon discriptor and a valorous animal didn't know jack about how to name properly organisations...)
Re: Student of Perfection: How many pages does each archetype take up?
Re: Student of Perfection: How many pages does each archetype take up?
Uno.
Edit: This includes art, feats, and focus powers. The Student of Perfection has a lot of focus powers.
They’re all exactly one page and there is one archetype per region/chapter?
Student of perfection gives one...really not much, the feats are good but there are so few...one would guess there are more then three feats about a monastry where people train for decades
I think that is intentional. It clearly is built for monks (though others can use it) and the monk class covers a lot of the impossible and amazing abilities learned in the monastery, you just also get your houses unique mystic style.
They’re all exactly one page and there is one archetype per region/chapter?
Yes. The book is primarily about establishing the lore and plot ideas for campaigns set in Golarion.
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I think that sort of enforced parity is a poor choice (and was one of the major downsides of D&D 4e).
If we have a shallow archetype because 1 page wasn’t enough to fully realise it, and an archetype where GMs are forced to homebrew half the information required to enter the archetype because there wasn’t enough room to detail even one hellknight order, it sounds like both archetypes would have benefited from one being excluded altogether and the other archetype getting the extra page to flesh it out properly.
Hopefully this is just early edition teething issues and it doesn’t continue for the duration of the entire edition.
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It's definitely an issue, but Armigers wouldn't vary much based on order anyway. I suppose that's why things are as is. I half expect actual Hellknights to have alignment restrictions as well : formation's over, time to get serious.
Next book should give us the details, but needing a second book to use this well is... Not ideal. At least I might get to know what happened to the Coil, hopefully.
I am surprised the Red Mantis is lacking its one defining feature, the fact that those they kill do not come back. Not a big mechanical deal, but a tad sad.
I'm hoping the Magic Warrior will get more eventually. It is something they can do now, as they've mentioned, and I'm okay with MW being the first to'try that. Not like it has puch to lose.
If Aspect provided a bit more in terms of senses, or the mask did more for stealth and such, it could be a great intrigue/investigation archetype and I wouldn't mind missing on the shapeshift - it's kinda superfluous as is.
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I think that sort of enforced parity is a poor choice (and was one of the major downsides of D&D 4e).
If we have a shallow archetype because 1 page wasn’t enough to fully realise it, and an archetype where GMs are forced to homebrew half the information required to enter the archetype because there wasn’t enough room to detail even one hellknight order, it sounds like both archetypes would have benefited from one being excluded altogether and the other archetype getting the extra page to flesh it out properly.
I mean, the Pathfinder Agent has 5 feats, the Duelist has 7, the Lastwall Sentry has 6, the Living Monolith has 7, etc. I think the size of the archetype is mostly a function of "we know people aren't going to want to spend *all* of their class feats on this."
After all, we can always extend archetypes in later books. Nothing is keeping them from printing more Magic Warrior feats in a future book about the Magaambya.
I think that sort of enforced parity is a poor choice (and was one of the major downsides of D&D 4e).
If we have a shallow archetype because 1 page wasn’t enough to fully realise it, and an archetype where GMs are forced to homebrew half the information required to enter the archetype because there wasn’t enough room to detail even one hellknight order, it sounds like both archetypes would have benefited from one being excluded altogether and the other archetype getting the extra page to flesh it out properly.
I mean, the Pathfinder Agent has 5 feats, the Duelist has 7, the Lastwall Sentry has 6, the Living Monolith has 7, etc. I think the size of the archetype is mostly a function of "we know people aren't going to want to spend *all* of their class feats on this."
After all, we can always extend archetypes in later books. Nothing is keeping them from printing more Magic Warrior feats in a future book about the Magaambya.
If you think Student of Perfection has enough feats, maybe talk to Seisho about that? He was the one who first raised the idea it didn’t have enough.
if he is right, then I think we would be better off without either Armiger (which requires homebrew content or PF1e content) or without Student of Perfection (which apparently doesn’t have enough room to breathe).
While future content can be released to make previously released content functional, I think we can all agree that it’s better when content is fully functional upon first release.
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The fact that I insist on the Magic Warrior being so bad is not a min-max thing. I could totally play a character who studied the art of Jatembe and refuse to remove his mask. I will probably negotiate with my DM to invent a few spells, an Anathema, and I will push his roleplay in my description of his spells and his culture. And it will look damn cool and fun to play and I will not loose class feat for that.
Of course the same could be said about each Archetypes, but the thing is that even if they are not broken, they are all at least (because some of them a just pretty nice) decent at what they are supposed to do. Mantis give your Sawtooth and Crimson/Mantis abilities jut like PF1. Lion Blade too. But if you studied the magic of one of the greatest human of Golarion and his acolytes, from at least one of them launched the Shory into the sky , which are the topic of legend, you got an Animal Form that does not scale and you better have an hole in your mask to be able to eat. Come on, let’s have some respect for the setting. I found the Archetype to be one of the very very rare trap option of PF2.
Let's not forget that this book was supposed to be released alongside the (much crunchier) CRB and Bestiary and was intended to give people a capsule version of the setting. It's probable that the 2 pages for backgrounds/archetypes in the book was like the "minimum amount of crunch" in a book that's supposed to be mostly setting details.
But it certainly would have been fine if we'd printed a few fewer backgrounds (which are hard to get excited about) and some more archetype feats.
I think it's pretty likely that the student of perfection archetype gets extended with a different archetype for each school, which has as prerequisite the specific ki spell for each school. It seems more sensible to do this like an Armiger->Hellknight thing where we go Student-> Master of Untwisting Iron, or whatever. Unfortunately Student of Perfection doesn't have the same language as the Armiger where "you can take the next one, even without 2 feats from this dedication" but there's probably a way around it.
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On scaling and problems it causes. That doesn't invalidate the whole archetype. I'm a firm believer that not every piece of content needs to fit everygame, or even most games. Rarely have I been in (or run) a game in which the rough level range wasn't laid out before session 0, its normally in the summary sent out to see if folks are interested in the first place. So plenty of games will end before scaling becomes a problem, and you'll likely know whether or not that is going to be the case.
That doesn't seem like much of a defense though, because it's not like better scaling would somehow make the archetype worse for a low level campaign.
Like it's great that it's gonna be fine in your campaign but I don't see why that necessitates thumbing our noses at people who play in campaigns that might go to a higher level (especially since PF2 supposedly makes high level play a lot more functional and relevant in general).
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One thing I wonder is if a bunch of these archetypes aren't built with a "prestige" version in mind. Like the Armigers points out that Hellknights and Signifers and the like are going to exist, and the Aldori one says "One day, you hope to demonstrate your skill at swordplay in order to become acknowledged as a true swordlord" so "Aldori Swordlord" is presumably an archetype down the line. It makes a lot of sense for the 4 different schools of perfection to each have their own archetype. Presumably there will be a higher level pathfinder society archetype for if you've moved up in the organization, etc.
If you are thinking in terms of PrCs, there were 10 lvl PrCs, 5 level PrCs and even 3 level PrCs!
Student of perfection might be a 3 level PrC or something (and TBH, I might just take it for the Perfect Strike Reroll, swapping Focus for Rerolls is a pretty good deal).
prototype00
I think that sort of enforced parity is a poor choice (and was one of the major downsides of D&D 4e).
If we have a shallow archetype because 1 page wasn’t enough to fully realise it, and an archetype where GMs are forced to homebrew half the information required to enter the archetype because there wasn’t enough room to detail even one hellknight order, it sounds like both archetypes would have benefited from one being excluded altogether and the other archetype getting the extra page to flesh it out properly.
Hopefully this is just early edition teething issues and it doesn’t continue for the duration of the entire edition.
Why does everything have to fall back to 4e comparisons for you? Just make a 4e thread if you want so we don’t have to read edition wars again and again. On the matter of archetypes there were plenty of archetypes in PF1 that only had very small changes to the base chassis of the class. Some archetypes were huge changes to the class but some only touched one or two class abilities.
Student of Perfection isn’t a deep archetype right now but the powers you get are very strong. You get Ki Strike with the dedication and a focus point and then one more feat gives you the reroll on unarmed attacks, which has usages for plenty of other classes than monk. Going to a third feat gives you a choice of some pretty powerful focus powers and will allow you to max out your focus pool. So despite being a shallower archetype the choices given are very powerful and I wouldn’t be surprised given the power/desirability of rerolls that it will end up being the most used archetype from this book.
Here is a question for you: if it has one or two feats that are SO GOOD you expect lots of people are going to take it, does that not suggest those feats might be overpowered?
Out of interest: how good or bad is the dedication? Does forcing you to take it help balance out the other feats? If it doesnt, is there an issue with making some of the feats monk feats?
Out of interest: how good or bad is the dedication? Does forcing you to take it help balance out the other feats? If it doesnt, is there an issue with making some of...
IMO, it's not bad: For a monk, it lets you pick ki abilities and your multiclass feats can be the same. The same can be said for anyone that uses unarmed attacks as the second feat is a reaction to a missed unarmed strike with another unarmed strike.
The last feat, PERFECT KI ADEPT, is a bit of a mixed bag [it lets you pick one of 4 abilities]: Iron Buffer gives a god bit of temp hp [and scales], Wind Rush is one action that allows two move actions that can go up to 45 degrees up in the air - both are cool. Wave Advance is a cone that pushes foes and if you push them far enough to hit a solid object, they take damage - interesting but situational. Flame Revelations lets you see through illusions on a creature after you hit them... Meh...
Overall it's fine. Do I wish there were more feats? Sure, having only 3 multiclass feats total isn't great but at least they are pretty solid as long as you watch what you pick for the last one.
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I mean, the big problem with the Student of Perfection is that you need to take Perfect Strike to get out of the archetype. Otherwise it's pretty good I think.
It's just that with only 3 feats, you need to take the entire archetype in order to grab a different dedication later.
Thanks graystone. Those feats do sound good. Although...
I mean, the big problem with the Student of Perfection is that you need to take Perfect Strike to get out of the archetype. Otherwise it's pretty good I think.
It's just that with only 3 feats, you need to take the entire archetype in order to grab a different dedication later.
Would there be balance issues with just moving these out of an archetype and giving them to the monk?
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I mean, the student of perfection dedication is very nearly strictly better than the ki strike feat, since it's Ki Strike + a skill increase and a lore.
Only downside is that it locks you out of other dedications, and that it's a level 2 feat instead of a level 1 feat. Of course, I've seen a lot of monks take a stance with their level 1 feat and a ki power with the level 2 feat.
I'm currently trying to figure out if it's possible to the 3 mountain stance feats, the living monolith archetype, and the student of perfection dedication + untwisting iron ki spell in anything resembling a sensible order.
Thanks graystone. Those feats do sound good. Although...
Would there be balance issues with just moving these out of an archetype and giving them to the monk?I mean, the big problem with the Student of Perfection is that you need to take Perfect Strike to get out of the archetype. Otherwise it's pretty good I think.
It's just that with only 3 feats, you need to take the entire archetype in order to grab a different dedication later.
No, but it restricts them from other classes.
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I mean, the big problem with the Student of Perfection is that you need to take Perfect Strike to get out of the archetype.
What issue do you have with Perfect Strike? An ability to spend a focus to reroll a failure [especially a crit fail/1] doesn't seem like a bad power.
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I mean, the big problem with the Student of Perfection is that you need to take Perfect Strike to get out of the archetype.What issue do you have with Perfect Strike? An ability to spend a focus to reroll a failure [especially a crit fail/1] doesn't seem like a bad power.
It's fine. But one of the things I like about archetypes in PF2 is that you do not have to take all of the things for the archetype in order to have the archetype. When you print an archetype with only 3 feats (even if they're good) you're limited by that "can't take another dedication until you take 2 more feats" thing.
For example if you're trying to put two archetypes on a level 20 build, if you need to find room for a feat you can skip perfect strike so long as you take that one second, which is a weird dynamic.
I mean, the student of perfection dedication is very nearly strictly better than the ki strike feat, since it's Ki Strike + a skill increase and a lore.
Only downside is that it locks you out of other dedications, and that it's a level 2 feat instead of a level 1 feat. Of course, I've seen a lot of monks take a stance with their level 1 feat and a ki power with the level 2 feat.
Hmm... it’s concerning they’re already producing “this feat is like this existing one but better”. If the other feats in the archetype are as good as everyone is saying, having to take 2 of them isn’t really a penalty.
The only other balancing factor is that the dedication is level 2 vs level 1. If we look at the existing level 2 feats:
* Brawling Focus: Nice. But you first have to crit and then they have to fail a save. Not sure how often that is going to come up.
* Crushing Grab: Strength mod damage on a grapple check isn’t bad. But lots of people don’t typically plan to do grapple checks in most rounds, and if you can deal damage with a fighter’s combat grab (it isn’t clear to me that you can) then the fighter seems better.
* Dancing Leaf: Slowfall doesn’t exactly get too many people excited. Very situational.
* Stunning Fist: Only works on mooks and lesser bosses. At least they’re more likely to fail the save.
Given all the above I can see the student of Perfection dedication being a no brainer for at least a while. Which is concerning that we are already getting options like that already,
What are other people’s thoughts?
No, but it restricts them from other classes.
I would hope the class feats each class gets are good enough for you to not want to multiclass into multiple other classes.
Well, I wouldn't take Student of Perfection if I prefer Ki Rush to Ki Strike, certainly. Also the whole "it's uncommon" should prevent the stiuation where absolutely everybody is taking it (sure all your monks could be from Jalmeray, but somebody's going to prefer something different.)
It's just weird to me that the Aldori Duelist doesn't really want you to take all the feats (it has 2 4th level feats, 2 6th level feats, and a 10th level feat, with one of the 6s having one of the 4s as a prereq... most likely you're not taking all of them) whereas the Student of Perfection demands you take all the feats.
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Well, I wouldn't take Student of Perfection if I prefer Ki Rush to Ki Strike, certainly.
Sure. But would you really take ki strike if you could take ki strike++ and there were other level 1 monk feats you wanted?
Also the whole "it's uncommon" should prevent the stiuation where absolutely everybody is taking it
I really, really hope Paizo isn’t going to start using the rarity system to justify unbalanced character options.
As for having to take all of the archetype’s feats: Sure. That’s what you get when you determine every region must have only 1 page to detail an archetype and every region must have an archetype.
I think I realized my problem with perfect strike- it costs a focus point to use.
I'm not saying there are never occasions where I'd want to spend a focus point to reroll an attack, but those are rare enough that I wouldn't want to spend a feat on it.