I personally like that Medicine takes care of OoC healing. I dislike it when in games a "dedicated healer" is required in a party because generally someone has to bite the bullet and be like "ok i guess i play cleric". With medicine you dont have to give up on fun combat feats. You can be a blaster caster or a two handed fighter and still take care of the parties OoC healing easily.
I also like that the cleric can also now prep their cool spells now, instead. The cleric in my group has done pretty neat things like take out a mob with calm emotions or lobbed fireballs and the like, dipping into her font for healing, and using medicine as her main exploration tactic
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If your party has strong magical healing (like a heal cleric or angelic sorcerer past level 3), then the need to heal to full between encounters is much reduced. 75% is usually enough for most characters to survive until getting hit with a heal spell that pretty much counters all damage. The problem is, with most dungeon design, GMs don’t really reward parties for pushing on quickly and thus the incentive for doing anything but standing around using the medicine skill is almost nil.
There is a weird “common logic” in PF2 groups that seems to say that 10 to 30 minutes immediately after an encounter, in the room the encounter happened, is a GM’s responsibility to provide PCs, but more than that is in the realm of GM fiat/kindness. And that parties should expect 4 to 5 encounters before resting.
In situations where this common logic is applied, ward medic and continual recovery are essential party feats. Magical healing will be a massive drain on party resources at this pace and item usage, if it is a constant daily pace as well, grows very expensive.
However, there are alternative pacings that can be just as fun and make those healing feats less essential. Rolling encounters, where the alarm is raised, and sections of the dungeon mobilize all at once can be a lot of fun for players because they have to consider things like creating distractions, how they will escape after inflicting as much damage as possible, or accomplish a primary goal, and then face other aspects of those encounters in an interesting and new way. This is pretty much the only way I have ever successfully introduced recurring villains at lower levels, and a lot of players get into to the hit and run /guerrilla tactics for facing down a major dungeon.
Then there are some dungeons that are static, filled with drapes and guardian creatures that can’t move between locations easily. The difference between 30 minutes and 3 hours is meaningless in that dungeon. GMs might want to incentivize parties spending hours or even days carefully investigating clues or searching for traps and characters might be better off with knowledge based skill feats and some items or scrolls for extra healing when things go south than building up for the battle /rest /battle/rest cycle that they would only encounter if they push it on them selves.
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Then there are some dungeons that are static, filled with drapes and guardian creatures that can’t move between locations easily.
I just wanted to be the first to laugh at my phone’s decision to turn the word Traps into drapes. It is time we spruce these dungeons up.
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1) Shield of reckoning can be just used once per round ( even with the quick block and divine reflexes feat ). First, it requires you to use a reaction ( not a shield block reaction or the divine reflexes ), and second, it has the flourish trait ( so even if you were able to sacrifice a specific reaction for a generic one, you wouldn't be able to use it to perform a second flourish action on the same round ).
This is not quite correct.
Flourish actions can be performed once per turn, not once per round. So you couldn't use it against the same enemy twice, but you could use it twice in the same round against two different enemies.
Then there are some dungeons that are static, filled with drapes and guardian creatures that can’t move between locations easily.I just wanted to be the first to laugh at my phone’s decision to turn the word Traps into drapes. It is time we spruce these dungeons up.
I’m more amazed that you’re willing to type that much text using your phone. I tend to keep things short and simple simply due to the irritation typing can be on a phone.
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1) Shield of reckoning can be just used once per round
Disagree. Flourish clearly says "You can use only 1 action with the Flourish trait per turn. A turn is defined as one creature's turn, as opposed to a round. So it could be used more than once vs different opponents.
Also, the trigger only requires "A foe's attack against an ally matches the trigger for both your Sheid Block reaction and your champion's reaction." Neither of those restrict you from using the Quick Block action to employ the Shield of Reckoning more than once per round. And it gets even better at level 14 when Divine Reflexes will allow you to gain a third reaction for the champion reaction. While not as good as another Shield Block eligible reaction, its is still an excellent addition.A shield has a defined hp pool, so using it more times per round will bring it to its BT faster.
This is not really a concern when combining Divine Ally-shield with a sturdy shield and Everstand Stance/Strike. At level 12, it is generally hardness 17 and 156 HP with Quick Repair and expert Crafting.
Shield of reckoning give DR to the target so, the shield will suffer the whole damage without benefitting from the champion reaction.
Again, not a major concern with the benefits listed above
sturdy shield...Hardness 13 ( 15 because of divine ally )
hardness 17 with Everstand Stance
damage
According to the GameMastery Guide, average damage at level 10 will range from 33 for extreme Strikes down to 17 for low Strike. Even if we err on the side of extreme damage, we're looking at 33 average damage. With hardness 17, that's only 16 damage to the shield, with a BT of 78, or four blocks. I'm inclined to round up to five since one shot is never going to reduce the shield anywhere near zero and losing the +2 to AC in round three/four is not a bad choice given the enemy is likely on the verge of defeat and you have mitigated in the neighborhood of 124 damage (between shield blocks and retributive strike). And I am not worried about repairing for the next battle because on average I am going to fix 132 hit points for expert Crafting with Quick Repair.
Overall, I think you are underestimating just how powerful the combo is, though admittedly less so if your GM is unusually restrictive with their rules interpretation.
I really doubt their intent was to give more than 1 flourish per round to any character
You are free to rule it however you want in your game, but in general the rules for PF2E are meant to mean what they say and not what they don't. The rules (RAW) much more readily support my application of the rules than your interpretation.
This discussion is making me even more strongly consider using a stamina system to reduce the perceived urgent need for medicine feats.
If a character goes down, a healer can bring it back, able to fight.
It can also stabilize the character, indeed, but would be 1 player less during the encounter ( stabilize a character is mostly an early game feature, unless a very rare scenario occurs ).
I've seen magical healers stabilize fallen heroes even though they still had a few font spells left in a number of games.
As both a player and a GM I've had to bite my tongue for fear of being accused of telling others how to play. Still, it sucks for me and the other player because we have to struggle all the harder (if a player) and it sucks for the downed player because that's more time spent not playing.
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I mean obviously you can do whatever you want in home campaigns, but an organized play GM might give you a funny look and say no, because neither of those feats allow you to use the Shield of Reckoning reaction.
I’m more amazed that you’re willing to type that much text using your phone. I tend to keep things short and simple simply due to the irritation typing can be on a phone.Then there are some dungeons that are static, filled with drapes and guardian creatures that can’t move between locations easily.I just wanted to be the first to laugh at my phone’s decision to turn the word Traps into drapes. It is time we spruce these dungeons up.
That's nothing. My twin brother, Galactic Geek, will sit through an entire movie night tak tak taking away on his phone to make a single post on the Sea of Thieves forums.
Also, I didn't once question the mention of drapes, since tapestries and room dividing curtains are totally a thing one finds in dungeons. XD
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I've seen magical healers stabilize fallen heroes even though they still had a few font spells left in a number of games.
True, but there are a lot of situations where the player that is down needs to stay down. Giving him a few hit points to get back into the fight just makes him a priority target for the enemy if they are still close and greatly increases the chances of getting dropped again. No one wants to be standing with a few hit points and Wounded 2, when an untimely critical hit is slammed in their face. If you think being unconscious is a downer, try being dead.
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At least one character gets the healing skills, at least Continual Recovery and Ward Medic. Just makes things a little easier to keep the bookkeeping easy.
I've seen magical healers stabilize fallen heroes even though they still had a few font spells left in a number of games.True, but there are a lot of situations where the player that is down needs to stay down. Giving him a few hit points to get back into the fight just makes him a priority target for the enemy if they are still close and greatly increases the chances of getting dropped again. No one wants to be standing with a few hit points and Wounded 2, when an untimely critical hit is slammed in their face. If you think being unconscious is a downer, try being dead.
Between hero points and the fact that a downed character's initiative changes to before the enemy (allowing them to get some distance or take other appropriate action) I don't really see this as being much of an issue too often. Certainly not more than being bored to tears because you, in effect, got kicked out of the encounter due to poor teamwork.
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It came up three times in just our most recent session.
The other two times, the PCs learned their lesson and when the PC was down with Dying 2 or greater they did not use any healing other than Stabilize.
As it was, two of the three times the player was out of Hero Points. They tend to use them for saves and for skills when their is an immediate and direct penalty for failure like a crit fail on a Disable check or an Athletics check to climb when they are a good distance above the ground.
Unrelated, the martials (rangers, barbarians, rogues) in my games always seem to be out of Hero Points while the casters seem able to horde them. Not sure if that is common or just an oddity of my game. I admit my marital players tend to be my more experienced and focused tactically, so more likely to burn them to ensure success.
Maybe your martials just assume someone else will heal them if they go down. :)
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Hah, generally true, though I'd rather see then change up some tactics and reduce the effectiveness of their enemy's abilities. I lost count how many Strike-Grab-Auto damage special action sequences I have landed, yet they keep insisting to use that 3rd action on full MAP attacks. Just been a struggle to get them to embrace PF2E tactics with three-action rounds.
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The hero point disparity makes sense. You primarily spend hero points to reroll checks and spellcasters don't make as many checks in the first place.
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Completely agree. Just as there are PF1 player tactics that easily lead to TPK in PF2, the same is true for GM's PF1 tactics. Two I have clearly identified are agregating encounters because of "realism" and absolutely refusing to fudge rolls.
Because PF2 builds cannot be overoptimized as in PF1, the impact of the die roll is real. And since bad luck exists, it must be kept under control by the GM's ability to usually improvise and adjust on the fly.
And because the PF2 maths are so tight and overoptimizing your PC far above monsters is no more, adding encounters together is far more lethal than in PF1.
So GMs and actually the whole party must really take this into account before using the gritty mode of never fudging and playing monsters "realistically". Because the risk of TPK is far higher in PF2 than what we were used to in PF1.
And yes, healing to full between encounters is the standard in Paizo's PF2 products.
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...If your party has strong magical healing (like a heal cleric or angelic sorcerer past level 3), then the need to heal to full between encounters is much reduced. 75% is usually enough for most characters to survive until getting hit with a heal spell that pretty much counters all damage. The problem is, with most dungeon design, GMs don’t really reward parties for pushing on quickly and thus the incentive for doing anything but standing around using the medicine skill is almost nil.
There is a weird “common logic” in PF2 groups that seems to say that 10 to 30 minutes immediately after an encounter, in the room the encounter happened, is a GM’s responsibility to provide PCs, but more than that is in the realm of GM fiat/kindness. And that parties should expect 4 to 5 encounters before resting.
In situations where this common logic is applied, ward medic and continual recovery are essential party feats. Magical healing will be a massive drain on party resources at this pace and item usage, if it is a constant daily pace as well, grows very expensive.
However, there are alternative pacings that can be just as fun and make those healing feats less essential. Rolling encounters, where the alarm is raised, and sections of the dungeon mobilize all at once can be a lot of fun for players because they have to consider things like creating distractions, how they will escape after inflicting as much damage as possible, or accomplish a primary goal, and then face other aspects of those encounters in an interesting and new way. This is pretty much the only way I have ever successfully introduced recurring villains at lower levels, and a lot of players get into to the hit and run /guerrilla tactics for facing down a major dungeon.
Then there are some dungeons that are static, filled with drapes and guardian creatures that can’t move between locations easily. The difference between 30 minutes and 3 hours is meaningless in that dungeon. GMs might want to incentivize parties spending
I will often haven encounters collapse in on each other if it makes sense for the creatures to do so. If it doesn’t, I will let the party rest for a week if that is what they want to do, but I will also have events progress in the story, often with some sort of complication. I don’t think I have had to fudge a single die in all the time I have played PF2, and I have only killed one PC to a unlucky lightning bolt crit fail, out of running 3 tables pretty much weekly.
What I do differently than many GMs, is that I give NPCs complicated motives and let my PCs exploit them in combat if it would lead to a more interesting encounter. For example, if the party is raiding a dungeon and gets through about 40% of the rooms of a unified faction, and then decides to just stop and try to heal in the middle of a large, poorly defended hall, then I might give them 10 minutes before something comes in on them, but when something does come in on them, it might be a small scout party testing their defenses, or a group that has decided to split off from the organize faction and run away, varying a chest of treasure with them. Their goal is quick movement past the PCs, and the PCs have a choice. Some times I might even let more time between encounters result in a new negotiation with intelligent creatures as morale drops. I also will have no problem having a clearly large force invade the hall and the party will have to retreat or be overwhelmed.
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...it might be...a group that has decided to split off from the organized faction and run away, carrying a chest of treasure with them. Their goal is quick movement past the PCs, and the PCs have a choice.
You are a great GM.
That would be a fascinating encounter/scene.
Like, a totally "oh s+#+" moment as the party recognizes that their healing has been interrupted, and the greedy cowards realize they took a wrong turn and are now in a staredown with a superior invading force!
Bad guys start inching around or away from the party giving them a wide birth while the party, in their shock, slowly puts together what is happening.
Then they need to decide whether to fight while hurt, or avoid the encounter and lose some treasure.
It will either be slow and and quiet, or sudden and violent.
Either way, it would certainly be memorable!
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** spoiler omitted **
Subordinate action clause says that an action that contains a basic action is not the same as performing that action. Shield of Reckoning is a reaction in and of itself. You spend your reaction on the Shield of Reckoning activity, which contains shield block but isn't shield block.
Same reason you can't use the extra action from Haste on Snagging Strike or Twin Takedown, even though those activities contain Strikes.