I've seen a lot of people saying that they don't think the Alchemist fills the same niche as it did in PF1. I've also seen concerns that the playtested versions of the Summoner, Magus, and Gunslinger all feel clunky and limited compared to what they were in PF1. I know those playtest classes could be improved but so could the unchained Monk and Rogue and those classes still sucked in PF1 even after playtesting, so... yeah...
So as not to be entirely negative I'd also like to invite people to suggest ways to make things others claim won't work fit within PF2's tight math. I'm interested in exploring the limits of PF2 design as the system itself interests me in ways actually playing it simply doesn't.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Classes that could go nova, operated by being souped up, or that had a pet equal to or superior to a PC are difficult to adapt if one regards those abilities as key. But that's mainly mechanics; one can still retain the flavor. Also classes/archetypes that subtracted casting for weapon abilities.
That means, yeah, the souped up battle-Alchemist from PF1 (who in some ways could also go nova), isn't in PF2. Yet the "guy who distributes useful toys to his friends" PF1 Alchemist remains.
Whether the final Summoner will let the PC swap places with the pet (with the PC inferior and the pet at PC level) remains to be seen.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
Anything that was overpowered
|
PF2 definitely reduced the significance of prebuffing. Numerical buffs to combat stats are "smaller" although a +1 will go further in PF2 than in PF1. But more importantly, their durations are shorter and you don't get as many spell slots. Even relatively long-lasting buffs like Heroism only last 10 minutes, not coincidentally the length of a Treat Wounds attempt. So squeezing more than one encounter out of a buff comes at the cost of out of combat healing. Good if you need to blitzkrieg your way through a couple of encounters with monsters that might otherwise go seek reinforcements/go on alert etc.
So yeah, heavy buffing isn't a thing so much anymore. That somewhat cuts into the classic build of alchemists, investigators and inquisitors. But the inquisitor as a divine spellcaster with weapons and a mean stare, that's totally doable. I'd say my cloistered cleric with rogue dedication, longbow favored weapon and lots of intimidate feats is pretty much that.
Alchemist didn't port over well but I think that is not because they couldn't have, but rather because they didn't want to. Almost certainly hitting touch AC is definitely on the list of PF2 style mechanics. A class with a huge gulf between unbuffed and buffed is also not very PF2 style.
But for flavor - the alchemist as a scientific class relying on tools and analysis, I'd say that's kinda there. As the list of alchemical items slowly expands, alchemists carve out a niche somewhere in between wizard and sorcerer; can know a hundred formulas like a wizard, but spontaneously make what's needed right there and then like a sorcerer.
|
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
While thinking over this thread's question, I was also thinking: what classes are EASIER in PF2? And I was thinking about the Medium.
PF1 mediums didn't really work for me. The idea that you could be playing a different niche every day didn't really work in PF1 where too much of your niche was defined by numerical build choices that were locked in. But in PF2 it might be doable. If you look at wildshaping and how it sets your combat numbers to "where you need to be" for your level, a medium could use that design style to every morning load up the "numbers you need" for the niche they're channeling that day.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I would like to say that Kineticist is easy, but given how things are its actually one of the toughest. Kineticist was a unique class even by PF1 standards, and as things go on the less I see it as possible in PF2.
There are 2 different 3pp conversions for sale on this website that I can think of, possibly more that I'm unaware of.
I'm fairly confident Paizo can do their own version.
Definitely. For instane, my preferred of the two, the Elemental Host, lacks any kind of burn mechanic, and has a harmony mechanic that makes you more powerful the more intune you are with your elemental. Those two are going to be a flavor/mechanical deal breakers for many fans of the PF1 Kineticist, even as they absolutely work for me.
I think a class conversion has 3 asks: how close they evoke the PF1 mechanics (this is the tallest order), how close they evoke the PF1 flavor (this is just creative writing imo), and how close they represent how the PF2 system updated both of those (ultimately I think this might be the most important, especially as people let go of their PF1 attachments). The investigator bears little mechanical resemblance to its PF1 counterpart (albeit it does bear some), but absolutely nails "investigation" in PF2 terms, making what could be a boring exploration activity into a critical encounter ability.
Not to bring other thread discussions into this one, but we can absolutely disagree with how well something does or does not work on those 3 criteria, while still enjoying how a class functions on its own terms. Maybe the eventual conversion of the Adept will be a complete miss for many, but still fun and flavorful to play on its own merits.
I think a class conversion has 3 asks: how close they evoke the PF1 mechanics (this is the tallest order), how close they evoke the PF1 flavor (this is just creative writing imo), and how close they represent how the PF2 system updated both of those (ultimately I think this might be the most important, especially as people let go of their PF1 attachments). The investigator bears little mechanical resemblance to its PF1 counterpart (albeit it does bear some), but absolutely nails "investigation" in PF2 terms, making what could be a boring exploration activity into a critical encounter ability.
Correction: 4) how well the class covers the roles and playstyles the PF1 version did, which is separate from how well it evokes specific PF1 mechanics. Even without trying to duplicate the PF1 mechanics, this can be a bear, and can make or break how well the conversion is received. I don't know if I would consider it the most important, but I do consider it the most polarizing.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
2/3rds casters in general are hard to adapt. PF2 Bard is fun to play and the PF2 magus looks neat, but it's also pretty apparent there are some significant conceptual and mechanical differences from their PF1 to PF2 incarnations and perhaps even moreso for the Warpriest and Magus. I feel like this archetype gets hit the hardest by the PF2 transition. PF2 is just fundamentally not designed to handle this type of character at all.
Casters that rely on unique gimmicks like the Witch. Again, the PF2 witch is pretty serviceable, but it's also clearly missing a lot of the key mechanical draws of its PF1 counterpart.
Right now, PF2 has pretty strongly avoided giving anyone any kind of unique resource. Panache is the closest but even that's binary and simplified. In that context I'm not quite sure how you'd transition classes that relied on those types of pools, like the Occultist... and again it's something you see with the Magus in one of their defining features (the arcane pool) not having any real equivalent.
The loss of higher level spell slots does mean that you can't heighten spells for level appropriate challenges. (And having typed that out, feels the most correct)
I would guess this, yeah. Also PF1 6ers usually gave access to spells at lower spell levels, something that was eliminated in this edition.
They tried a third way in the SoM playtest, so we’ll see how that shakes out. I imagine whatever form that takes, that will be our “6th level” caster equivalents. Limited numbers of total spells, but those spells at the highest available slots.
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The decision to remove the 6th level spell casters always struck me as odd, as they usually ended being of PF1s most popular classes with that balance of attack power to buff ability.
I suppose with the changes to buffing would shake out this wasn't considered as viable. Or it could have been a desire to keep the spellcasting system streamlined. The loss of higher level spell slots does mean that you can't heighten spells for level appropriate challenges. (And having typed that out, feels the most correct)
I have to agree, 6 level casting with 3/4 BAB was Paizos design strength, with that chassis they made some real hits and the best designed classes for the system. And no surprise, you get your Sword and Sorcery fantasy in one character.
Having their biggest strength fundamentally be incompatible with the system they made entirely on their own has been baffling me since the playtest. I'm still a little confused as to the premium placed on magic in this new edition, with all the changes to it, and the action system, I think it's over valued and caster design rarely gets to play with the system as fully and in as satisfying a way as the martials do.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The decision to remove the 6th level spell casters always struck me as odd, as they usually ended being of PF1s most popular classes with that balance of attack power to buff ability.
I suppose with the changes to buffing would shake out this wasn't considered as viable. Or it could have been a desire to keep the spellcasting system streamlined. The loss of higher level spell slots does mean that you can't heighten spells for level appropriate challenges. (And having typed that out, feels the most correct)
I have to agree, 6 level casting with 3/4 BAB was Paizos design strength, with that chassis they made some real hits and the best designed classes for the system. And no surprise, you get your Sword and Sorcery fantasy in one character.
Having their biggest strength fundamentally be incompatible with the system they made entirely on their own has been baffling me since the playtest. I'm still a little confused as to the premium placed on magic in this new edition, with all the changes to it, and the action system, I think it's over valued and caster design rarely gets to play with the system as fully and in as satisfying a way as the martials do.
I think one way to view it is that casters can play with others' action system. Forcing ennemies to waste theirs, helping allies save some of theirs.
The fact that most spells are 2 actions kind of "cripple" their action play,that much is true, and I hope Secret of Magic adds more spells that have different effects based on the number of actions spent, and more interresting metamagic feats to play around with your actions.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Anything that was overpowered
I didn't consider the Inquisitor to be overpowered, but rather the epitome of what all classes should have been generally capable of. In general all the 6th level progression spell caster captured this pretty well.
But I don't think you can capture the same feel, because everything is less powerful in PF2 than PF1.
Ultimately, PF2 has a very different feel than PF1.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The thing I'm most worries about is kineticist in 2e. I want an all day blaster, but I feel like they're basically going to be doing cantrip levels of damage if their blasts have riders like damaging an area. They can't outshine a martial, after all. Who knows though. Just trying not to get my hopes up for my favorite class, trying to convince myself elemental sorcerer is good enough to be my favorite
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Kineticist was treated as a martial in PF1, I don't see why it would be any different in PF2. They definitely won't have a Vancian spell list.
"Shouldn't be expected to outshine the rest of the martials" is a good place to put expectations, though. Because if they were just better than other martials, instead of a sidegrade, then releasing the class at all would be a mistake.
Even a side grade would be pushing it, imo. Maybe in certain situations, but kineticists should also have a lot of utility that something like a fighter or barb wouldn't have.
Maybe a better comparison then would be the more utility focused martials, namely the Rogue and Investigator, who do competitive damage but pay for their exploration mode dominance with weaker defenses.
I mean I personally would be okay with that, but we'll see. Probably won't come out for a long while anyway.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Having looked over a few Pathfinder 2nd Edition classes, it looks to me that the actual released versions of Oracle and Witch really don't capture the feel of the 1st Edition versions. This is especially the case for the Oracle, for which tying each Mystery to a single Curse has greatly decreased tee diversity. The diversity of Hex options for a Witch has also greatly decreased, although at least they get compensation by getting the choice of 1 of 4 spell lists to start out with (although tying certain Hexes to the spell lists by way of the Patron partly makes up for this). The release of future material may yet restore Witch diversity, but the combinatorial loss of diversity for Oracles means that no practical amount of release of new material that would fit in before Pathfinder 3rd Edition will restore the Oracle.
| 12 people marked this as a favorite. |
The 2nd edition Oracle lost an illusory choice diversity (seeing as most people only picked the incredibly good curses), in order to become the most internally diverse class in second edition. Every mystery is effectively it's own full subclass in a way bloodlines, wizard schools, druid orders are not.
That is because of the mystery design, not in spite of it.
Flavour-wise the strictly thematic curses actually capture the intention of the class better in 2nd edition too. Just IMO.
I was a big Oracle fan in 1e and remain so in 2e. Pick-and-mix curses were never what appealed to me about the Oracle.
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
Never played the original oracle but knowing my munchkin self I'd never be able to pick anything close to a thematic choice if I was in control of picking the curse. I'd pick whatever synergized best. Looking at these oracles (many of which I want to play) I just think about how to play within their style. I think that's the better approach. Oracles are cool AND they're fluffy as hell. If anything I'd say the divine list is the only drawback but domains and deities allow for a whole lot of spell poaching. Witch may have dropped as a just ok caster class but oracle smashed it out of the park.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The problem with the Witch isn't necessarily that it's bad, it's about what you'd expect for a PF2 caster, it's just that the PF1 witch's two defining features were that it had a really unique spell list and access to spammable at-will magical abilities.
And while the PF2 witch matches the flavor of its PF1 counterpart, neither of those mechanics survived the transition really at all. The flavor is spot on, but I can see why someone who was really drawn to the mechanical features of the PF1 version could feel let down.
Though that's hardly a witch specific issue, either.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm pretty sure every PF1 Oracle I played took Tongues or another do-nothing curse that could be ignored because I only cared about the mysteries. The curses that had real drawbacks rarely had bonuses that made them even remotely worth it. The PF2 Oracle's design is waaaaay more compelling and many of the curses present themselves as interesting problems to solve rather than annoying burdens (Ancestors my love I will play you someday).
I liked the Oracle curses. Even the strong ones. Perhaps especially the strong ones.
Not on an oracle though; I developed a real appreciation for the breadth and diversity of options when I made a Vigilante archetype that used curses.
I'm a bit sad that curses will always be focus spells now. I'd be interested in a similar mechanic that gave a series of martial abilities instead, probably on a different class (or an archetype).
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think people forget 1 thing about the PF1 Oracle design.
The problem was not the mix and match nature. But what the curses actually did were not very well balanced. Make the curses balanced accordingly and suddenly the problem goes away.
Unless all the curses are incredibly pervasive, to the point where none of them are able to be mitigated or ignored easily, or all the curses have very minor penalties, this won’t work. Try coming up with even 3 curses that all provide roughly the same level of penalty in 1e. I guarantee you, it’s basically impossible - one of them will always be easy to mitigate, or just generally less bad than the rest.
The newer design at least lets you staple large benefit large penalty and small benefit small penalty. I do think it still kind of flopped a bit design wise, given the oracle is paying 1 slot a level relative to a divine sorc, and gets in return light armor, 2hp/level, better will saves and their curse (of which, most are pretty even penalty/benefit wise) - the curses should definitely have had a lot more benefit.
Classes that could go nova, operated by being souped up, or that had a pet equal to or superior to a PC are difficult to adapt if one regards those abilities as key. But that's mainly mechanics; one can still retain the flavor. Also classes/archetypes that subtracted casting for weapon abilities.
That means, yeah, the souped up battle-Alchemist from PF1 (who in some ways could also go nova), isn't in PF2. Yet the "guy who distributes useful toys to his friends" PF1 Alchemist remains.Whether the final Summoner will let the PC swap places with the pet (with the PC inferior and the pet at PC level) remains to be seen.
Summoner could easily have a pet of equal or greater power. The issue is that it has to be a fundamental core class feature, rather than just being feat-tier. I think there's also space for something like a fighter/summoner or ranger/summoner hybrid class that loses spellcasting entirely to give a bit of martial to both beast and rider. Heck, make it barbarian/summoner so that you can offer a shout-out to the Tower of Rage silliness build from PF1.
I think there's space for "operated by being souped up" over next to the barbarian. The issue with the battle-alchemist was that the alchemist spent too many of its build credits on being the "guy who distributes toys to his friends" and also "I always have exactly what we need in my pocket" and didn't have any left to make him a real combat monster. It's not that the idea of a meaningful battle form with costs/limits/drawbacks is inherently impossible in the system.
Going nova is, admittedly, more of a problem. I suspect that we'll see the outer limits of that one in the Magus, as someone with a small number of highest-level spell slots and a damage focus. Going beyond that, though... the basic issue is that if you make someone too good at burst damage, you have to dial back on their baseline damage to compensate, and the designers don't *want* someone who epitomizes the 5 minute workday to that degree.
I would say that the Medium is probably the trickiest class to convert. As best I can tell, nobody has even tried to convert that one yet, whether at Paizo or at Legendary Games.
I mean, if I can do a version, I'm fairly sure Paizo could do it much better.
Besides the approach I took, I can think of at least 3 other ways of going about it. I think it's more that Mediums aren't exactly high priority for conversion.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Unless all the curses are incredibly pervasive, to the point where none of them are able to be mitigated or ignored easily, or all the curses have very minor penalties, this won’t work. Try coming up with even 3 curses that all provide roughly the same level of penalty in 1e. I guarantee you, it’s basically impossible - one of them will always be easy to mitigate, or just generally less bad than the rest.I think people forget 1 thing about the PF1 Oracle design.
The problem was not the mix and match nature. But what the curses actually did were not very well balanced. Make the curses balanced accordingly and suddenly the problem goes away.
Allowing for campaign/party-specific situations interacting variably with the 1st Edition Curses, I could come up with a few examples that seem not too far off with respect to power level (not exactly the same, but close enough to middle of the road that they are neither must-haves nor must-avoids) -- but rather than going to that trouble, I'll point you to a guide where somebody already did this: Just jump down to "OCL360: The Curse of Sight" and look for Oracle's Curses having the same overall color rating (or even the same combinations of Benefit and Drawback color ratings if you want to get really specific); even allowing for a few mistakes in the ratings, the situation isn't all THAT bad, except for a few Reds (like Clouded Vision).
The newer design at least lets you staple large benefit large penalty and small benefit small penalty. {. . .}
You could do that in the old design as well, since the 1st Edition Oracle's Curses had a mixture of drawback and benefit even before considering the Mystery. The problem is that they just didn't do it very well for a subset of Oracle's Curses (*cough* Clouded Vision etc. *cough*).
I'm pretty sure we lost that particular fight. I would prefer a point system as well (though a feat-gated one in my case), mostly because all those evolution feats hogged up page space and feat slots that could be used by Tandem feats and other feats that made the summoner more than an appendage (with the option of just using all your feats to pick up evolutions if you wanted a summoner cheerleader instead of a team).
But people seemed to prefer the locked evolutions of the playtest. At least there's transmogrify to give you some of the feel, if not the full system you'd like.
|
|
I dunno, the occult book was one of Paizos best works and the missed opportunities with the Medium makes it ripe to a rework in my opinion. Fewer expectations from the last edition they can fail to meet, lots of room to grow.While I agree this is a good point, I think the reason we won't see the Medium soon is because Paizo is currently focused on two kinds of classes: the really popular ones from 1E that can help them get draws from people having heard about them, and brand-new classes that Paizo can show off to bring in more people, and because they want to stretch themselves and see the new niches PF2E can fill. Medium is a cool class, I always wanted to play one but never felt quite brave enough to hash it out, but it's not surfing the peak of the popularity wave.
As different as it would need to be I think it's possibly somewhere on the middle of those two. And the whole idea of being possessed on purpose could give us something cool like Focus Point "battle forms" that don't cause a transformation, maybe even shoving spirits into gear too.
As for the 1e version, it was good as a dip or its related archetypes but less so as a whole class.
4 ways to see it done:
-Multiclass method (full disclosure, this is the one I went with in my homebrew): Support Chassis (basically Alchemist/Warpriest proficiencies), except you get both caster and class dc progressions, as we see with the Monk and Paladin classes (also, weapon proficiency maxes at Master as well). Every odd level you get a free MC feat (which you change out each day during your daily prep), plus a battle form spell that gives you a couple class feats for the same class as your MC feats.
-Summoner Method : Sort of resembles the playtest summoner/magus. Wave casting, Martial Chassis, and you get a Synthesis like ability that grants you a selection of set abilities borrowed from other classes, like the summons that got basic abilities and their three special abilities at 1/7/17. Class feats mostly augment that Synthesis.
-Doctrine method : Mostly caster chassis, but each day you choose a set of proficiencies to boost, much like the cleric has different doctrine paths.
-Harrow Method : Greatly resembling Summoner method, except you get abilities based on Harrow cards. There's a couple different ways to set that up, with mix and match on the table if the designers are really feeling their oats.
All have options for the other class abilities, no matter which of those gets settled on. In my version, most class abilities run on an influence system that is, frankly, too finicky for PF2 in its current form. I had a weird idea that instead of becoming Stunned, you became Confused (with the caveat that you don't try to hurt yourself) whenever you lost the influence battle to your spirit, to resemble the old PF1 system but giving it a shorter duration. I'll probably base the next iteration of Influence along those lines, just to see how it plays. Sort of like how with Unstable you lost actions, with Influence you'd stun yourself and then the ghost would take over for you.
I dont think medium is hard to translate, even the original vision of it should translate well, it's just time consuming and resource intensive.
It is also the only class from the conversion document that requires going beyond the original rules. I quote: "Medium: Bard with the cleric archetype and the ability to swap archetype dedications once per day (with GM’s permission)." The archetype swapping clearly needs some work for balance purposes.
Every other proposed conversion is complete as given, with the main issues being how faithful the conversion is to the original class.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Here's another one that Pathfinder 2nd Edition doesn't do yet: Bloodrager. Yes, you could go Barbarian Multiclass Sorcerer, but since no equivalent of Mad Magic exists, you would have to use Moment of Clarity, which eats an action, so it won't work very well.