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Its the effect and results that matter.
If there's a wall, and you go from the bottom of it to the top without pausing or rolling any dice - who is to say whether you used a climb speed or a fly speed?
The player, that's who.
They went from the bottom of the top with a character who had wings - and there were no rolls to spoil the illusion that it could have been Flight.
So why say otherwise?
That's reskinning the results, not homebrew.
This is why I roll first on attacks, and then describe my action. Its more accurate to describe what happens than the mechanics behind how you did it, so long as it fits the situation.
This works in a close-fitting scenario like a dungeon corridor where walls are guaranteed to be next to the square/cube you occupy, no matter which it is or how high up. But when you've described your movement as being accomplished in a manner that does not require the existence of a wall (in-game climbing being described as narrative-flying), it breaks down as soon as you're in a situation (larger/wider room/cavern, being outdoors) where there are no walls and what you were doing narratively shouldn't be impacted, but what you were doing mechanically certainly should be.
If you were a native of some kind of Demiplane of Close-Fitting Rooms, such that throughout your entire existence from birth to death you were never not adjacent to a wall, then there would indeed be no functional difference between climbing and flying. I'd wager that 99+% of the time, that's not the case. Creatures do not perpetually live in such conditions; therefore, literally anyone asking why you can't fly up and grab the thing in midair the way you did before in the cave, and what the hell do walls have to do with anything at all is the "who" that "can say otherwise".
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Its the effect and results that matter.
If there's a wall, and you go from the bottom of it to the top without pausing or rolling any dice - who is to say whether you used a climb speed or a fly speed?
The player, that's who.
They went from the bottom of the top with a character who had wings - and there were no rolls to spoil the illusion that it could have been Flight.
So why say otherwise?
That's reskinning the results, not homebrew.
This is why I roll first on attacks, and then describe my action. Its more accurate to describe what happens than the mechanics behind how you did it, so long as it fits the situation.
This works in a close-fitting scenario like a dungeon corridor where walls are guaranteed to be next to the square/cube you occupy, no matter which it is or how high up. But when you've described your movement as being accomplished in a manner that does not require the existence of a wall (in-game climbing being described as narrative-flying), it breaks down as soon as you're in a situation (larger/wider room/cavern, being outdoors) where there are no walls and what you were doing narratively shouldn't be impacted, but what you were doing mechanically certainly should be.
If you were a native of some kind of Demiplane of Close-Fitting Rooms, such that throughout your entire existence from birth to death you were never not adjacent to a wall, then there would indeed be no functional difference between climbing and flying. I'd wager that 99+% of the time, that's not the case. Creatures do not perpetually live in such conditions; therefore, literally anyone asking why you can't fly up and grab the thing in midair the way you did before in the cave, and what the hell do walls have to do with anything at all is the "who" that "can say otherwise".
I dont think i misrepresented anything as a perfect, one size fits all solution as a full replacement for actual flight.
But as a limited, balanced, and mechanically in line option for representing wings before the Fly spell at level 7?
Summoners do have options that work in some scenarios to represent their wings. You just have to use a little bit of cognitive flexibility.
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The need for d20 players to have everything make perfect sense within the rules is so weird. Go play like any other game, where people don't have an issue with using their imagination, flavoring things, or embellishing events. Broaden your horizons. Slurp up a Forged in the Dark game.
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The need for d20 players to have everything make perfect sense within the rules is so weird. Go play like any other game, where people don't have an issue with using their imagination, flavoring things, or embellishing events. Broaden your horizons. Slurp up a Forged in the Dark game.
I think that the idea of bringing in experiences and aspects of other systems offends some people for some reason - despite PF2E essentially being a "greatest hits" assembly of the best aspects of PF1, Starfinder, 3.5, 4E and 5E plus some ideas from unrelated systems as well.
PF2E has a diverse ancestry, and it absolutely shines for it.
Some people have said things from those other games don't belong in 2E, which absolutely boggles my mind. Theyre already in its DNA.
Addendum: 5e players love reflavoring, so they're on the right track. 13th Age also straight up tells you to reflavor things you want to change in the rules for character building, but the people who play 13a are also the kind of people who would probably do that anyway.
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Its the effect and results that matter.
If there's a wall, and you go from the bottom of it to the top without pausing or rolling any dice - who is to say whether you used a climb speed or a fly speed?
The player, that's who.
They went from the bottom of the top with a character who had wings - and there were no rolls to spoil the illusion that it could have been Flight.
So why say otherwise?
That's reskinning the results, not homebrew.
This is why I roll first on attacks, and then describe my action. Its more accurate to describe what happens than the mechanics behind how you did it, so long as it fits the situation.
This works in a close-fitting scenario like a dungeon corridor where walls are guaranteed to be next to the square/cube you occupy, no matter which it is or how high up. But when you've described your movement as being accomplished in a manner that does not require the existence of a wall (in-game climbing being described as narrative-flying), it breaks down as soon as you're in a situation (larger/wider room/cavern, being outdoors) where there are no walls and what you were doing narratively shouldn't be impacted, but what you were doing mechanically certainly should be.
If you were a native of some kind of Demiplane of Close-Fitting Rooms, such that throughout your entire existence from birth to death you were never not adjacent to a wall, then there would indeed be no functional difference between climbing and flying. I'd wager that 99+% of the time, that's not the case. Creatures do not perpetually live in such conditions; therefore, literally anyone asking why you can't fly up and grab the thing in midair the way you did before in the cave, and what the hell do walls have to do with anything at all is the "who" that "can say otherwise".
I dont think i misrepresented anything as a perfect, one size fits all solution as a full replacement for actual flight.
But as a limited, balanced, and...
You're acting like it takes some kind of hyper-obscure, specifically-crafted scenario before "just climb and call it flying" breaks down, when all it takes is being in a space of 15' by 15' by 15' or more. That is a ridiculously common occurrence.
I think reskinning is fine even when it fails to account for uncommon situations, but that's not the case here. This reskin can't even satisfactorily answer the question "why are walls necessary?".
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"It's not flying, but you/your eidolon can mag-lev up vertical surfaces (a la Karl Urban's car in Total Recall)."
I'd raise an eyebrow at the futuristic aesthetic and wonder how this is working in the case of a forest, but at least it begins to answer the question "Why are walls necessary?".
(And in the case of the latter, I'd even be fine with some BS about "ironwood" because at least the reskinning is trying to engage with the existing world.)
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I think the problem is that such an abstraction breaks down in all but the most specific circumstances. Flying isn’t just something you say to get over a hole . It’s a tool, a mode of play
And if the “balance” of flying is such a concern why can’t we just limit it to minutes per day?
At level 9, you get it for 1 minute for every 10 minutes you spend to refocus. For free.
That's objectively better than any "minutes per day" variant you might get at level 8 (the earliest possible level in line with established paradigms) as a feat.
Its literally a mandatory class feature already.
I disagree that it’s better that it’s better. I’d rather have some short term continuous flight. If my eidolon has to fly up a really tall tower for example he wouldn’t be able to stop every minute for a Gatorade . Admittedly this would be more helpful to an eidolon without the distance restrictions but that’s another thing I think is way to restrictive.I think the problem is that such an abstraction breaks down in all but the most specific circumstances. Flying isn’t just something you say to get over a hole . It’s a tool, a mode of play
And if the “balance” of flying is such a concern why can’t we just limit it to minutes per day?
At level 9, you get it for 1 minute for every 10 minutes you spend to refocus. For free.
That's objectively better than any "minutes per day" variant you might get at level 8 (the earliest possible level in line with established paradigms) as a feat.
Its literally a mandatory class feature already.
Rechargeable flight means at level 9 my winged eidolon can fly in every single encounter in a day if its important to me.
X minutes of flight limits me to, at best, flying in X encounters.
I would always take Rechargeable myself, as I would consider the example you presented to be a significantly less common an occurrence than wanting to fly in an encounter.
Sure, but you get the most out of flying outside of encounters.
I'll grant that is a reasonable perspective, in general, though I think it could be debated ;)
But. I typically only play published works and adventures, and I've yet to encounter a tower or edifice an Eidolon can't reach the top of in a minute.
More significant obstacles that would take longer than a minute to navigate are generally on the scale that 10 minutes wouldn't be much better.
So while I agree you've described a hypothetical scenario where this would be a limitation... its not a practical issue that I've witnessed in published material.
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So what happens if someone casts "earthbind" on your "flying eidolon"? They just wasted their spell because its not really flying and not a valid target.
Or someone has "grease" prepared but decides not cast it on the wall because you are "flying"?
The reflavoring you are suggesting does not work for me, but if your group is cool with it, have it at.
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So what happens if someone casts "earthbind" on your "flying eidolon"? They just wasted their spell because its not really flying and not a valid target.
Or someone has "grease" prepared but decides not cast it on the wall because you are "flying"?
The reflavoring you are suggesting does not work for me, but if your group is cool with it, have it at.
No one is suggesting that anyone would in any way be confused in this case. The goal is not to mislead anyone, or similar.
Everyone knows the truth.
But everyone plays along because its a cooperative experience, and the goal is to have fun.
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Keep in mind, you do get two natural attacks. One is regular, and the other is agile and lower damage. Your angel can have their holy smite hammer and smack people with their wings and have those be two different things.
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There are only a few people that sort of double think work and it tends not be the players of rules heavy games like this.
Seriously, this needs to stop.
Attempting to minimize other groups of people, and labeling a willingness to be narratively flexible as "double think" is derisive as all get out.
There are plenty of people who play PF2E exactly like this, and for whom it is a game of choice for exactly this reason.
This sort of exclusionary "PF2E is only for people who are beholden to mechanics over imagination" stuff is not how the game sells itself, at all.
The implementation of summoner in the playtest - including its attacks, like you noted - is demonstrably in line with the design paradigms of PF2E. You can see it in how the class is built, when it gets abilities, and in the tradeoffs it makes for its strengths.
It feels disingenuous in the extreme to suggest that the people who like the core of the playtest class are the ones who "dont get" PF2E or where it places priority on mechanics over narrative.
This game is designed to embrace a wide range of players, and sometimes that means making things accessible. Simple, versatile mechanics are synonymous with accessibility.
But knowing and accepting something can't fly whilst also accepting that it is fly is textbook defention of Orwellian double think I am not using it an insult its just what you call embracing two contradicting narratives at the same time.
Mechanics are narrative are different things.
The mechanics are how you resolve actions and events.
The narrative is a collaborative illusion and story everyone at the table agrees to participate in.
They do not need to match, and the narrative is what everyone agrees it is.
You can be the guy at the table who opposes letting an Eidolon describe mechanical climbing as flying when appropriate... but why would you be?
If they're following the rules and it makes sense in the narrative, arent you the one at that point disrupting the collaborative illusion? It sure seems like it to me.
As I said earlier in pathfinder 2e for the most part the mechanics are not separate from the world they are the gravity and invisible hands that define what is possible in that world.
The idea that mechanical flight is flight mechanical climbing is climbing, that mechanical swimming is swimming that the fear spell scares people that fireballs are hot seems critical to me.
And yet it was noted that elemental attacks and resistances are to be represented on Eidolons through the Summoner's choice of items in 2E. Its not that your eidolon can't have elemental attacks, but the implementation has been shifted elsewhere in the system and its on your imagination to tie it together on a case by case basis.
The Intent behind seems to be that while the absolute number of options available to the class have been reduced and simplified, many of the old functions of specific mechanics are intended to be addressed and implemented by players creatively to create the Eidolon they desire - if such a thing is important to them and can be created through the system creatively, that is how it is done.
Denying the idea that this creativity can be used to address an earlier desire to be able to use an Eidolons wings to navigate vertical obstacles as if flying is absurd, if the method chosen to represent that is within the rules as written.
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I think the main problem is that players and GM need things to have universal properties so we can understand how they interact with novel circumstances.
Take, water for example. we know what water is and how it behaves. its wet, it cold, it puts out fires etc...
if we encounter a pool of oil and we just say to use swimming rules for water because, hey there both liquids that's fine for the circumstance but what if one players gets it into his head to light the pool on fire.
if the GM says "no i just said it was shimmering oil to make it cooler it's actually just water." that feels bad and makes the world less immersive.
This is an issue in a video game, not a tabletop RPG.
In PF2E, the GM has the ability to determine a hazard level, check one chart to determine how much damage it should do, and have people roll a reflex save at the standard DC for the level of the hazard. Whoosh.
Pf2e makes going from narrative to mechanics easy by making mechanics broad and simple.
imagine if the players were fighting this creature if they knew it was climbing and not flying they might try to trap it in a slick ice hole whereas if the creature is described as flying they would not, even if mechanically it was climbing
I'm sorry, I'm think we may have drifted off the real topic here.
I'm talking about making accommodations for player characters/assets who thematically could reasonably fly, but for balance reasons can't actually do so for 2/4 more levels.
Not as a general replacement for flight, and not for NPCs or monsters who have no need for such an accommodation.
Theres no "need", mechanical or narrative, to make an accommodation in that case.
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Climbing subbing in for flying is a good example of something that is too much of a stretch for a lot of people. It may work for some folks, but it's just too different for a lot of others.
Does it not bother you that someone who is flying through the power of creativity is also mechanically walking at the same time as he is flying for all the purposes including difficult terrain, dangerous terrain, pressure pads even oily surfaces like the grease spell? I hate contradictions like that.
I'm finding collaborative solutions for players within the rules of the game, for reasonable concerns which arise due to the need for gameplay balance.
That may mean a little but of additional suspension of disbelief, but if it works and isn't cheating...
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For someone who prides themselves on running homebrew games, you seem to not know how reskinning works. You don't touch the mechanics, the players are clear with what is actually happening, you aren't using different rules. You're just changing the look to better suit the story.