You can also just request the downtime- let your GM know that the party would like to a semi extended period of downtime after the current arc. Most campaigns aren't balls to the wall adventuring the whole time I don't think.
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Retraining is inherently kind of gamist, but that's also its purpose. The point is if you take a feat and end up wishing you had taken a different feat instead, then you can. Locking people into choices, which may be bad choices for that character or that campaign, is just a way to put more pressure on those choices and make people feel bad when they make the wrong ones.
If you're really in the situation of "I don't get to do [thing I invested in] at all, I wish I had invested in [something else]" then that's an inherently gamist situation and the GM should make allowances since the GM is responsible for the game being fun.
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You can also just request the downtime- let your GM know that the party would like to a semi extended period of downtime after the current arc. Most campaigns aren't balls to the wall adventuring the whole time I don't think.Using significant down time for major retraining seems like something that should be avoided. It also promotes taking feats early that offer short term or tactical advantages over longer term abilities. From an immersion standpoint, having significant feat changes also seems a bit fake. Someone going from being “really good” at something to “really good” at something else and bad at the original thing feels off.
A couple of weeks ago I was our group medic, I’m no longer good at that, but watch me do flips and tumble, I’m a master acrobat! Oh, and I know I used to be a tiger style martial arts fighter, now I am a master of wolf style. Before you ask, no I can’t still do tiger style, my brain and reflexes honed over years of fighting have been cleared of that through a week of master Li’s teachings.
All of that is less important than making sure the player can enjoy their character, large scale retraining is in the game, so a GM has a fine line to walk in blanket disallowing it. Like, I think if it's happening too much, it warrants a conversation, but that doesn't mean players should just be expected to accept being stuck with their build because their GM is feeling finicky about something they're explicitly allowed to do by the game rules.
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Oh codswallop, there are few to no feat choices that even come close to "screwing yourself" at later levels.
Some extremely niche options stop providing a benefit if used poorly but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to learn how to plan around them when you do know the feats.
This is nothing even remotely like the planning involved with a pf1e character. Heck, it has less impact than choosing feats generally will in 5e.
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Oh codswallop, there are few to no feat choices that even come close to "screwing yourself" at later levels.
Well there are some niche feats and those niches might just never occur (e.g. "Underwater Marauder").
If you took Underwater Maurader and you have yet to get wet in the course of the campaign and there's no indication that you ever will, that's the sort of thing the GM should probably let you retrain.
Like it's entirely possible when you took that feat, it was in the plans for there to be an underwater part of the campaign, but the story took a different direction and now you're in the middle of the desert.
I don't disagree and think retraining should be there when needed. Mistakes happen and characters grow in different directions as they progress. My point is I would rather more thought go into character creation and planning up front. In the end, players will be more happy and less retraining will be required. Making retraining completely easy and without consequence takes away from immersion and changes the mindset of how decisions are...All of that is less important than making sure the player can enjoy their character, large scale retraining is in the game, so a GM has a fine line to walk in blanket disallowing it. Like, I think if it's happening too much, it warrants a conversation, but that doesn't mean players should just be expected to accept being stuck with their build because their GM is feeling finicky about something they're explicitly allowed to do by the game rules.You can also just request the downtime- let your GM know that the party would like to a semi extended period of downtime after the current arc. Most campaigns aren't balls to the wall adventuring the whole time I don't think.Using significant down time for major retraining seems like something that should be avoided. It also promotes taking feats early that offer short term or tactical advantages over longer term abilities. From an immersion standpoint, having significant feat changes also seems a bit fake. Someone going from being “really good” at something to “really good” at something else and bad at the original thing feels off.
A couple of weeks ago I was our group medic, I’m no longer good at that, but watch me do flips and tumble, I’m a master acrobat! Oh, and I know I used to be a tiger style martial arts fighter, now I am a master of wolf style. Before you ask, no I can’t still do tiger style, my brain and reflexes honed over years of fighting have been cleared of that through a week of master Li’s teachings.
I sort of interpret that as character growth, if you start out with Power Attack and later retrain to Exacting Strike when it starts to fall off, it doesn't mean the character forgot the maunever, it means they've changed their fighting style and don't practice the original move anymore.
Maybe the elf no longer wants to specialize in the elven curve blade, so they replace the ancestry feat, does it matter? Maybe a magical power they had goes dormant and they pick up something else. Maybe their magical powers move on so they stop practicing inefficient magic and replace those spells with something better suited to their developing magic.
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Ya know, it's too bad the forum software truncates the text you're replying to. After all, how awesome would it be to end up reading forty seven pages of background text in every post just to get to the one-liner at the end?
I sort of interpret that as character growth, if you start out with Power Attack and later retrain to Exacting Strike when it starts to fall off, it doesn't mean the character forgot the maunever, it means they've changed their fighting style and don't practice the original move anymore.
Maybe the elf no longer wants to specialize in the elven curve blade, so they replace the ancestry feat, does it matter? Maybe a magical power they had goes dormant and they pick up something else. Maybe their magical powers move on so they stop practicing inefficient magic and replace those spells with something better suited to their developing magic.
Except that per the rules you don't just not use whatever after you've retrained, you don't remember how to use it.
It's a game, so in a sense none of it matters. Still, a lot of the abstractions in Pathfinder feel a bit... I don't know, uncomfortable to me.
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I sort of interpret that as character growth, if you start out with Power Attack and later retrain to Exacting Strike when it starts to fall off, it doesn't mean the character forgot the maunever, it means they've changed their fighting style and don't practice the original move anymore.
Maybe the elf no longer wants to specialize in the elven curve blade, so they replace the ancestry feat, does it matter? Maybe a magical power they had goes dormant and they pick up something else. Maybe their magical powers move on so they stop practicing inefficient magic and replace those spells with something better suited to their developing magic.
Except that per the rules you don't just not use whatever after you've retrained, you don't remember how to use it.
It's a game, so in a sense none of it matters. Still, a lot of the abstractions in Pathfinder feel a bit... I don't know, uncomfortable to me.
I mean, the mechanics are neutral on whether or not you remember how to use it, they basically just determine that you *can't* use it anymore, and what your retraining actually consisted of is up to you and the GM. Whether that's because it just not a part of your fighting style you practice anymore, or you actively forgot, or whatever is up to you to figure out based off what makes sense. It's like "hey I learned a way better style of fighting for myself, so I got rid of my bad habits, which was literally throwing haymakers" or whatever.
E.g. losing an ancestral magic could just mean you grew out of the ability or it feel dormant, but losing a power attack is literally a sword technique you dropped from your practice routine, so it isn't something you can reliably do anymore, and can't combo into your normal attacks so your character knows better than to try, like maybe they discovered something new that works for them much better.
A sorcerer meanwhile just stops practicing a particular spell and focuses their attention and memory on something new, which takes up the bulk of their focus.
The abstraction doesn't exist unless you force it to in the first place, imnsho.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the choice making, I don’t want to de-emphasise it. (I’d never assign stats like that then see what ancestry and background gives me that array - It seems backwards to me).
I guess that’d be efficient, but is that really how you do it in practise?
So, I took your prompt above of “a fire themed wizard from an aristocratic, elven family” and decided to see how long it would take me.
Couple of notes:
* I have a Google Doc template I use as my "character sheet".
* I did this with intent to see how fast it could be done.
* I used AoN for this, so maybe add a couple of minutes if using hard copy.
* Optimization was NOT a goal for this, but I think it ended up decent anyway.
* I accept that, in my haste, I may have missed something.
* I used the class kit because they are super handy and do a good job of covering all the starting gear I would typically choose anyway.Given that... Alerion Farflame
Start to finish was ~20 minutes.
Things I do differently when I'm not optimizing for speed:
* Hyperlink all my stuff.
* Experiment with different combinations of things until something sparks joy.
Cheers. The last step certainly adds a lot when I create a character too, but for this purpose I’m ignoring that. I also prefer rolling stats in order, but I realise that’s way outside the expectations of PF2, so I’m ignoring that too.
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. Also idk how fun the combat would be on a vtt.As someone who has to run fully on Roll20, PF2 works really well there. The in built sheet is really nice and lets you set up most everything to be doable with a single click. Takes a bit of pre-game effort to get a smooth in game experience but it flows nice and fast.I'm running Age of Ages on Fantasy Grounds right now - first time using Fantasy Grounds - and it's the smoothest play experience I've ever had.
2e feels like a very natural fit for VTTs, IMO.
I agree and use Fantasy Grounds for AoA as well. In two 4-hour sessions my players have cleared out the entire top floor of the citadel. Hand drawn maps, minis, manual rolling and monster referencing would probably have doubled that time or at least required a third session.
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I also note that there are not actually that many feats in PF2 that offer short term gain that is later eclipsed by a better feat, especially as anything you retrain you must qualify for at the level you originally got it.
Clearly you've never played a monk to high level.
There's nothing quite like that feeling you get when you've invested in a whole bunch of mobility options on a monk character, pick up Wind Jump, and realize that nearly all of your feats just became redundant or unnecessary.
Many of the class' feats will also invalidate many skill feats/options.
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Well except for the fact that the FG ruleset is not fully automated, and it takes a lot of work even to implement the ruleset into all the effects to take advantage of existing automation. It takes much longer to build a character in FG because of that. The spells absolutely are not fully drag and drop automation, and very few feats are automated (the last few releases have added more automations- at the cost of not getting the bestiary yet). Their stated policy is that they do not consider themselves an automated character builder with a rules engine like you could expect from an RPG video game. D&D FG is better but that is only if you buy the third party effects packages.
So what usually happens is you waste trying to figure out what did not calculate properly and fixing it (like alignment damage is not working or whatever the problem is - often well after the fact)
I had this problem a lot at first, but once you understand what is/isn't automated it gets a lot easier - especially if you are willing to put in a little extra prep work to automate things yourself. Considering that FG saves me massive amounts of time compared to what I was using before (MapTool) I still end up spending a lot less time.
The other thing that is a lifesaver is ShadeRaven. ShadeRaven is an absolute hero of the community. He's put together modules that contain every spell (currently up to 6th level) and every Bestiary monster (currently up to... 15th level I think?) with full automation programmed in. His modules also include automation for feats, class features, and weapon specializations.
Definitely the greatest discovery I've made since originally starting with FG.
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I also note that there are not actually that many feats in PF2 that offer short term gain that is later eclipsed by a better feat, especially as anything you retrain you must qualify for at the level you originally got it.Clearly you've never played a monk to high level.
There's nothing quite like that feeling you get when you've invested in a whole bunch of mobility options on a monk character, pick up Wind Jump, and realize that nearly all of your feats just became redundant or unnecessary.
Many of the class' feats will also invalidate many skill feats/options.
For any class, there is also the "You bought this weapon/armor General Proficiency feat earlier, but now your class weapon and armor proficiencies increased and those choices are now sub-par and can never increase beyond Trained"
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I see Predator's Pounce that replaces Sudden Charge. But in these cases, where you get a high level option completely replacing a low level option, as a DM, I give a free retrain. This is a bit different than "I completely lost one power", it's just that you are far better at this power, but it changed name and feat level.
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I see Predator's Pounce that replaces Sudden Charge. But in these cases, where you get a high level option completely replacing a low level option, as a DM, I give a free retrain. This is a bit different than "I completely lost one power", it's just that you are far better at this power, but it changed name and feat level.
Sudden charge doesn't require you to be raging though, and raging all the time isn't ideal.
It also requires you to be unarmoured or light armoured and be animal instinct.
So the player in this situation can either, see that predators pounce is going to replace sudden charge for them and ask the GM if they will have time to retrain it at some point... Or choose not to take it and still not be gimped.
I maintain, it is exceptionally hard to ruin a character through poor level 1 choices in PF2e.
I see Predator's Pounce that replaces Sudden Charge. But in these cases, where you get a high level option completely replacing a low level option, as a DM, I give a free retrain. This is a bit different than "I completely lost one power", it's just that you are far better at this power, but it changed name and feat level.
Sudden Charge is double Speed, and can be used with movement that isn't a Stride.
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One of my biggest gripes is exactly what’s being mentioned above, the mostly replaced feat. Take very sneaky. A cool ancestry feat until you get swift sneak, at which point it’s still useful, but marginalized. Same goes for legendary sneak and very, very, sneaky. I see so many instances where one type of feat comes into obvious contention with another. Some, I’m less concerned with, like trap finder. You at least get a lifetime of use off it before Legendary Sneak overlaps it’s biggest benefit.
then don't take feats that overlap? nothing is forcing you
I think you make it sound less convenient than it is, Krazmuze. 80% automation is still pretty good compared to other options.
And rolling vs DC is on the short list for upcoming features.
I agree that currently there are some obvious holes in the feature set - but it's a basically brand new system and the ruleset is being managed by one guy. Just based on the progress Trenloe has made in the few months I've been using FG, it seems like that 80% is going to be a lot closer to 95% by this time next year.
The real question is how good are FG's competitors? :-)
It's not that uncommon to have hours or even a couple of days for shopping and the like, but not a week or multiple weeks to retrain. There's a big difference in nearly any game I've been in.
It's a campaign style thing. Some it's easy to work in plenty of downtime at the player's whim. Others anything lengthy is rare.
Well, there's a different between "going to the market day and seeing what's on offer and buying some thing that are already there" and "I am looking for a specific item, perhaps it's made of special materials or has a specific rune on it, or it's a specific spell.
The sort of downtime that "I need a +3 Adamantine Rapier with the Answering and Cruel enhancements, let's go find one" was for. Not the sort of downtime that "oh, there's a dex belt that's better than the one I have" was for.
Except you can get all of that piecemeal. You can find the adamantine rapier in one spot, and the individual runes at different spots.
then don't take feats that overlap? nothing is forcing you
They can! Or they can use retraining later.
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then don't take feats that overlap? nothing is forcing youBecause that's the way to actually be good at the particular thing at the appropriate levels along the way. But those abilities replace each other rather than build on each other. Retraining is a solution - though for various reasons not one always available or acceptable.
That doesn’t track.
If you spent a lower level feat to get something and a higher level feat does the same thing then spend the higher level feat on something else.
It’s that simple.
In fact, this just means Very Very Sneaky saves you spending one of your precious few legendary skill feats. That’s already valuable.
The real question is how good are FG's competitors? :-)I think anyone that implements rules manually using object code instead of incomplete parsers is going to have an inherent advantage over FG. I suspect this is what D&D Beyond is quietly doing. They are adding encounter builders, combat trackers, and dice rolling, literally all they need to do after that is add interactive maps. But there will never be a PF2eBeyond long as Paizo gives free license to put all the rules on free websites and chargens - because that is the main use for D&DBeyond is chargen and rules access.
What I would like to see if the Pathfinder cRPG do a 2e version, with a complete turn based ruleset with GM mode, because you know for there the game to even work at all the rules cannot be semi-automated. Likewise for D&D a GM mode for Baldurs Gate III. Ship it with a bunch of maps like DoS:2 GM mode did, and open it up to community modules and every AP would get completed. And it would really be awesome if I could buy Dwarven Forge licensed terrain blocks to make custom maps with.
Translation: No one else has more than 80% automation right now either.
When it comes to character generation Fantasygrounds doesn't need in play automation, that is a different thing all together.
As for in play automation, you also don't need all the in play automation to run FG fast. It is the best there is out there atm and the ruleset is getting better, me I wish I could get ahold of the ruleset and rebuild elements but the dev in charge is doing it, even if it is slower than I would want.
What users are doing with their modules or side projects has nothing to do with Fantasygrounds either. Putting something on DMG is a choice and a lot of the automation options users come up with are fiddly or stop gap and not worth putting into the ruleset... But if you do want to put them in the ruleset it is hardly a challenge to override all the automated effects of spells, take you what 2-3 hours of solid work in 5e, little more in PF2e.
Sudden Charge is double Speed, and can be used with movement that isn't a Stride.
Predator's Pounce is not an exact replacement of Sudden Charge, I agree. But unless you have a race with some special movement type, there's no point in keeping Sudden Charge once you have Predator's Pounce, as Sudden Charge will become a once in an adventuring carreer ability.
Predator's Pounce is not an exact replacement of Sudden Charge, I agree. But unless you have a race with some special movement type, there's no point in keeping Sudden Charge once you have Predator's Pounce, as Sudden Charge will become a once in an adventuring carreer ability.
Or someone who doesn't want to be raging / someone who wants to be wearing medium or heavy armour.
Someone who wants the flexibility of doing the above two.
Or someone who doesn't want to be raging / someone who wants to be wearing medium or heavy armour.
I was obviously considering someone with the prerequisites for Predator's Pounce. So an Animal Barbarian with no armor or light armor.
Someone who wants the flexibility of doing the above two.
There's no point in Sudden Charge if you have Predator's Pounce, except the very specific case of special movement type.
Or someone who doesn't want to be raging / someone who wants to be wearing medium or heavy armour.I was obviously considering someone with the prerequisites for Predator's Pounce. So an Animal Barbarian with no armor or light armor.
Someone who wants the flexibility of doing the above two.There's no point in Sudden Charge if you have Predator's Pounce, except the very specific case of special movement type.
Or if something is more than a certain distance away, or if you want to avoid a certain area of difficult terrain, or if you want to avoid an enemy that might have AoO...
Any scenario where you'd want to move more than once, which come up in play quite often.
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Or someone who doesn't want to be raging / someone who wants to be wearing medium or heavy armour.I was obviously considering someone with the prerequisites for Predator's Pounce. So an Animal Barbarian with no armor or light armor.
Someone who wants the flexibility of doing the above two.There's no point in Sudden Charge if you have Predator's Pounce, except the very specific case of special movement type.
What does being an animal barbarian have to do with wearing medium or heavy armour? Sure you can take a class feat, but taking animal skin is hardly a foregone conclusion.
And again, predators pounce is only usable while raging... sudden charge is usable at any time. It still serves a purpose.
But it's going to be rare that a barbarian's going to be switching back and forth between medium and light armor. So, if you want to wear medium or heavy armor, you just don't take Predator's Pounce.
"Animal barbarian" isn't directly related to wearing armor, it's just a prerequisite for Predator's Pounce.
Barbarians who take Predator's Pounce will be Animal barbarians who don't wear more then light armor. Others can't or won't take it.I guess the rage argument makes sense, but if you're a barbarian, rage is the core class feature. I wouldn't expect a lot of focus on fighting without it. Niche at best.
My point was that it isn't a straight upgrade to sudden charge like what was being suggested.
Raging cannot be stopped when started so you really want to know what you are doing and sudden charge allows you to stride 3 times and attack on the first turn of a combat, predators pounce doesn't, not that niche a situation especially when aiming for backrow spellcasters.
Any scenario where you'd want to move more than once, which come up in play quite often.
You can move as much with Predator's Pounce... So I don't see your point.
My point was that it isn't a straight upgrade to sudden charge like what was being suggested.
Raging cannot be stopped when started so you really want to know what you are doing and sudden charge allows you to stride 3 times and attack on the first turn of a combat, predators pounce doesn't, not that niche a situation especially when aiming for backrow spellcasters.
Predator's Pounce is a level 12 feat, so you already have Mighty Rage at that stage.
And at level 12, not raging for a Barbarian means being quite in trouble as most (if not all) of your abilities are only activated while raging.
Tell that to ShadeRaven finally upto 5th level spells after as many months of updates. It is not at all that easy otherwise he would have knocked it out in the first week; if it was that easy devs would include manual fixing of unparsed spells as part of the release. And you would still be stuck with the roll vs. DC spells/skills because that is not in the ruleset
What users are doing with their modules or side projects has nothing to do with Fantasygrounds either. Putting something on DMG is a choice and a lot of the automation options users come up with are fiddly or stop gap and not worth putting into the ruleset... But if you do want to put them in the ruleset it is hardly a challenge to override all the automated effects of spells, take you what 2-3 hours of solid work in 5e, little more in PF2e.
You are misunderstanding the Gleeful Grognard; he was talking about the difficulty of installing user-made content, not creating it.
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Do you remember how to do calculus the way you did when you learnt it at school? I don't.
I do. But then, I went on to major in physics and take a master's in nuclear engineering, so I did use it for some years after high school. Also, I got caught in tenth grade trigonometry class reading Thomas' Calculus And Analytic Geometry rather than paying attention to the teacher's trig identity problems. So he gave me a hard one. When I used differential calculus to solve it he said "you can't do that, you don't know that yet!" :-)
My memory is deteriorating a bit now. But then, I'm 72, so... <shrug>
I'm pretty confused about the "do you remember how to do Calculus the way you did it" anecdote, specifically because I did my graduate research on nonstandard analysis which is primarily useful as a heuristic tool, so in a very real way I got a lot better at knowing how to do Calculus than I was before I went to grad school (despite doing very little Calculus there.)