|
Too cheap how? What you are asking for is a class feature you can take in the normal cost of leveling without giving up anything that puts you on par with an at level martial. While a fighter has to forgo 5 class feats, invest a skill plus 3 increases to still not get the top 2 level of spells. And only be decent with buffs and utility spells. And you think that's a fair trade off? It's not and it's unbalanced. Now if you want an archetype that does that I can see that.They actually cost 5 feats, 3 skill increases and 1 skill to start.Yeah, and that seems too cheap now. Especially for the Fighter.
I have exclusively been asking for an archetype.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think the 6th Pillar archetype from Ready? Fight! Is going to be changing this conversation. Casters now have a path to get Master unarmed proficiency at level 16. The archetype as a whole is like a monk/caster hybrid.
I believe it will be available july 7th and on Articles of Nethys shortly after that. It is a special archetype for the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix that starts with a level 8 dedication that gives you expert proficiency in either unarmed strikes or spells as long as you have that proficiency in the other. The other feats are interesting. They include a level 12 metamagic feat that lets you move as a part of casting a 2 action spell for a free action. It looks like a pretty cool archetype. The 14th level feat lets you cast a ranged spell as a touch spell and get a +2 circumstance bonus to the attack and then make an unarmed attack or athletics check against the target.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think the 6th Pillar archetype from Ready? Fight! Is going to be changing this conversation. Casters now have a path to get Master unarmed proficiency at level 16. The archetype as a whole is like a monk/caster hybrid.
I wonder if it's that one that Mark was talking about as being on the instant errata list. Certainly could have potential for that.
I think their does probably need to be a shifter focuses archetype that would allow you to progress your unarmed attack/natural attack proficiency so that you are capable while in your base form.
It would need to progress more slowly than what martial characters get and would need to be class feats, but I think it is reasonable to give up to master proficiency with unarmed/natural attack for shape shifting focused people.
As an option, yeah, sure, why not.
Yet again, there can be much quicker, easier, more universal, and most importantly lore-friendly solution - re-introducing good-old (Tenser's)Transformation spell.In older edition it allowed spellcasters to do precisely the same - mainly getting their (base)attack bonus equal to fighter's of same level. At the cost of not been able to cast anything else during spell duration.
If it matches (just going by the other increasing proficiency feats like for Sentinel) your unarmed to your spellcasting proficiency you'll have casters that are better at punching than monks, which would be wild and incredibly irritating.
No it does not do that. It gives you expert prof at level 8 in either one, as long as you are expert in the other. It does the same for master at 16
I only looked at the tool box for feats, so I don’t know the context exactly but I think you gain access to these archetypes by learning them from other contestants. So I think the idea is that the archetype represents BPC fighting styles that players can learn. The archetype provides no version of powerful fists so you are either martial rating it up with feats 2,4 and 6 or maybe getting by with an ancestry attack. It is a pretty limited proficiency boost for casters.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yup mark mentioned in the books thread that the 6th pillar archetype is something they already have flagged for errata, looks like it slipped through the cracks. Specifically the level 16 feat.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That's a shame. No fun allowed, I guess.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
The dedication and the 16th level feat in particular, yes. The proficiency ones. Not to say nothing else might shift if and when we came up with an errata fix, as first off as you mention here the rest includes some relatively extreme stuff too, and secondly presumably we need to replace the proficiency stuff with new benefits in the eventual errata, and that might have knock on effects. But for now, only the proficiency stuff (dedication and 16th level feat) is a known quantity because it explicitly violates the design guidelines for proficiency.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
That does sound awesome, sadly my campaigns mostly end by level 12.
You should revist that. Higher level is a much better place in PF2 than it used to be in PF1.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
... But for now, only the proficiency stuff (dedication and 16th level feat) is a known quantity because it explicitly violates the design guidelines for proficiency.
Yep even from the brief description in this thread those proficiency modfiers are clearly out of normal bounds. It would end up in so many builds. The various other proficiency feats would copy it everywhere.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The dedication and the 16th level feat in particular, yes. The proficiency ones. Not to say nothing else might shift if and when we came up with an errata fix, as first off as you mention here the rest includes some relatively extreme stuff too, and secondly presumably we need to replace the proficiency stuff with new benefits in the eventual errata, and that might have knock on effects. But for now, only the proficiency stuff (dedication and 16th level feat) is a known quantity because it explicitly violates the design guidelines for proficiency.
Can you talk more about the design guidelines for stuff like this?
There seems to be a lot of asymmetry in martial proficiency access which caster archetypes would look to violate. What is the internal costing that makes Master spellcasting attainable by anyone (especially since they don’t fit the Wave casting model) but Master weapon proficiency needs to be closely guarded?
Would you ever look at a focus spell, nested within an archetype, as a remedy to this? Something scaling depending on feat purchasing with time limits / uses per day that mirrors the utility output of the number of spells a full caster archetype provides.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Someone mentioned it earlier in the thread if I recall correctly, but legendary spellcasting is the standard proficiency rank for spellcasters, everyone else gets one rank worse at best. Meanwhile master proficiency is the standard proficiency rank for a martial character, and everyone else gets one rank worse at best.
A spell or focus spell that grants a +2 status bonus to hit definitely seems like a reasonable possibility, though I suppose some exist already.
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Aren’t all martials effectively at legendary already? If they don’t have legendary like the gunslinger or fighter, then they have a larger damage booster feature (precise strike, studied strike, rage, edge) to make up the difference. Casters don’t have anything on top of their legendary prof. Martial prof with no damage booster (heck you don’t even get greater weapon spec) sounds completely fine.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Someone mentioned it earlier in the thread if I recall correctly, but legendary spellcasting is the standard proficiency rank for spellcasters, everyone else gets one rank worse at best. Meanwhile master proficiency is the standard proficiency rank for a martial character, and everyone else gets one rank worse at best.
A spell or focus spell that grants a +2 status bonus to hit definitely seems like a reasonable possibility, though I suppose some exist already.
I get the design wording, but as I said to that post, the functional issue would remain as weapon prof is an untyped bonus, so stacks with everything other bonus. A +2 status bonus doesn’t allow further enhancement by other status bonus, so still putting the notif caster behind. That sort of thing just doesn’t exist on the caster archetype end.
It’s probably been answered before, but I’ve never been sure why legendary casting was the default instead of mirroring the martial package of “Master by default with Legendary reserved for the best”. It’s often felt to me that “fuller” full casters like the Wizard, who don’t have the same mechanical depth as classes like the Bard or Druid, would have filled the same conceptual space as the fighter. “The best but duller” vs “the same but duller”
|
|
Aren’t all martials effectively at legendary already? If they don’t have legendary like the gunslinger or fighter, then they have a larger damage booster feature (precise strike, studied strike, rage, edge) to make up the difference. Casters don’t have anything on top of their legendary prof. Martial prof with no damage booster (heck you don’t even get greater weapon spec) sounds completely fine.
To me the issue is that profs are an untyped, Onni-stacking bonus. In a tight math system like PF2, that inherent +2 is an incredibly huge deal.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
[
I get the design wording, but as I said to that post, the functional issue would remain as weapon prof is an untyped bonus, so stacks with everything other bonus. A +2 status bonus doesn’t allow further enhancement by other status bonus, so still putting the notif caster behind. That sort of thing just doesn’t exist on the caster archetype end.
But doesn't casters also have a +2 omni bonus on their DCs and attacks? I don't really see a way martials can match spellcasters at all.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
But doesn't casters also have a +2 omni bonus on their DCs and attacks? I don't really see a way martials can match spellcasters at all.[
I get the design wording, but as I said to that post, the functional issue would remain as weapon prof is an untyped bonus, so stacks with everything other bonus. A +2 status bonus doesn’t allow further enhancement by other status bonus, so still putting the notif caster behind. That sort of thing just doesn’t exist on the caster archetype end.
Eventually… at 19th level. Compared to, say, 13th of the fighter. Though is this a tangent to this thread overall.
But as has been said in many threads, the lack of support for attack trait spells, means that for the vast vast majority of their career, as caster can expect to be potentially 5 behind their party members. If casters didn’t target AC at all, and martials exclusively did, it would be one thing, but the mix and match has just created an underclass of spell where failure is the default. But this is a while separate topic.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Aren’t all martials effectively at legendary already? If they don’t have legendary like the gunslinger or fighter, then they have a larger damage booster feature (precise strike, studied strike, rage, edge) to make up the difference. Casters don’t have anything on top of their legendary prof. Martial prof with no damage booster (heck you don’t even get greater weapon spec) sounds completely fine.To me the issue is that profs are an untyped, Onni-stacking bonus. In a tight math system like PF2, that inherent +2 is an incredibly huge deal.
For a caster though? I’d posit that if you gave a caster master weapons at 13 it would barely change anything. By that point they have a lot of good things to do with their 3rd action (assuming the first 2 are used for casting) that making a strike at 80% of a martial’s effectiveness (at best, this is what master with no booster does - and that’s only it you want to go strength and melee on your caster) is pretty bad.
Similarly I don’t think giving MC caster legendary is that big of a deal. They’re still fundamentally limited by slot level and number of slots (and stats technically). At best they’d be 80% of a caster’s effectiveness (usually lower) before taking into account stats, once per day. It would open up options for MC casters to use offensive spells more reliably though, rather than all of them sticking to buffs/non offensive (which they already use just as well if not better than a caster).
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
It would end up in so many builds.
No it wouldn't. Unarmed wizard is an unquestionably weak build and still is even with a hypothetical late game attack bump.
People wouldn't be falling all over themselves to spend their level 16 feat on something like this unless they were already playing that character to begin with... and someone trying to play that character needed the help anyways.
All this feat does is made Warpriests of Irori and a bunch of other niche concepts slightly less terrible.
I wish spellcasting had a little more teeth compared to the difficulty level of AP encounters but secrets of magic and future ap balance might address this. I certainly don't want martials to lose their niche. Reliable, average dpr per turn is the realm of the martial. It should stay that way.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It would end up in so many builds.No it wouldn't. Unarmed wizard is an unquestionably weak build and still is even with a hypothetical late game attack bump.
People wouldn't be falling all over themselves to spend their level 16 feat on something like this unless they were already playing that character to begin with... and someone trying to play that character needed the help anyways.
All this feat does is made Warpriests of Irori and a bunch of other niche concepts slightly less terrible.
Pretty much, although you can use the increased unarmed prof to scale your other weapons with an archetype/ancestry feat, it's still not going to be very good.
EDIT: Never mind, apparently you can't, all of those scaling feats specify "given weapon or weapons" which unarmed strikes are not. The only way to leverage this (i.e. to make it not use your terrible d4 base unarmed) is with an ancestry feat for an unarmed attack, or an archetype into monk/martial artist for a stance/powerful fist.
Well perhaps mot then. Will have to wait till I see the final product and the errata.
I wish spellcasting had a little more teeth compared to the difficulty level of AP encounters but secrets of magic and future ap balance might address this. I certainly don't want martials to lose their niche. Reliable, average dpr per turn is the realm of the martial. It should stay that way.
I agree with this on the surface, but a caster who wants to go on a martial bent shouldn't be as bad as they are in this edition either.
Especially when it comes to transformation spells being used, like on a sorcerer. Many of the form spells give a static to hit value, which can scale up. However, if you want to stay in a specific form it has the problem of not scaling up across all levels. Sure you can use your attack bonus if it's higher, but once that happens you're far behind martials.
IMO, the ideal position for a caster would be to be 2 points behind martial characters (not the fighter) for attack rolls at all times in exchange for having to use one of their top level spell slots that will prevent them from casting any other spells.
They can flex into being an almost martial, if not quite as good. This happens (and everything works) as long as you use the latest transformation spell (that grants a to hit).
But there are some options that don't grant the to hit, and many transformation options stop scaling at a certain point, forcing you to the next form even if you wanted to be a bear and not a dragon (which is bad for RP IMO).
I think the best way to handle it is to revise the offending spells to all grant the to hit bonus, and to allow spells to scale up in terms of to hit/damage/AC and other relevant things all the way up to 10th level spells.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
After reading Mark's posts, it seems like the reason the 6th Pillar is being errata'd is specifically because of its interaction with transformation spells.
The archetype itself is not designed around casting polymorph spells. It is designed around casting spells every turn, but being able to attack with an unarmed strike as well. In that context, the proficiency bonus really doesn't seem that broken. But in the context of having a whole big pool of transformation spells and then being able to attack every round with big damage attacks at a big proficiency bonus (especially the druid) that is where the developers must be flagging immediately as a problem. I probably wouldn't have caught that myself until I had a player make a wild shape 6th pillar druid and realized it was a martial who had the ability to pick its massive damage type at will.
The thing about form spells is that they skew fairly high on the damage die and lower on the attack roll in a fashion similar to a barbarian. Even Animal form has some options that are comparable damage at levels much higher than martials get at level 13 or 14 (4d8+7 damage is not bad even for many a level 15 martial).
It seems to me like transformation spells specifically are the reason why casters can't get martial attack proficiencies (since weapon proficiency boosts almost all transfer back down to unarmed attack boosts). What is a little interesting to me though is that the practical effect of turning 6th pillar dedication and 16th level feat into something that granted a +2 status or circumstance bonus (stacking to +4 at level 16) would typically be a higher bonus to attack with level appropriate form spells than a flat proficiency boost. I guess the bonus could be fairly easily controlled to only apply when you are not polymorphed or in a special stance, although the archetype does have a stance feat for casting defensively.
The archetype really needs accuracy boosting to make the magus like cast a spell and strike mechanic work though so a damage boost instead would not be very functional to the archetype.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The problem I see is that multi-classing takes a martial character from non-existent casting to mediocre, which is a significant buff, but a caster stays at mediocre fighting abilities. If one wanted to change this, I think the best way would be to increase proficiency for multi-classing, although delayed compared to proper martials (I'm thinking something like expert at 8th, and master at 16th or 18th, three or five levels behind, just like martials multiclassing as casters. This way, casters get some decent fighting from their multi-classing, without making it too strong for someone multi-classing martial-to-martial (which wouldn't benefit from proficiency increases).
Spell slot allowance is a really big deal in PF2. It may seem like even full casters don't get that many spells per day, but by being a spell level ahead on their progression, it is usually at least a +5 top two level spell slots over the multi-class caster. Multiclassing into casting means getting 1 or 2 big spell moments a day (+ a few more if you spend a lot on consumable spell options) and a lot more lower level utility casting.
MCing into a martial class is pretty much getting you a second map martial attack that you can use indefinitely. On paper, the once or twice a day big casting moment looks a lot more impressive, but in practice the caster MC'd into a martial is going to able to use spells so much more often and effectively that they do just fine. If anything, the issue is really that casters can get access to the weapon proficiencies that they might gain from multiclassing so easily, that a lot of caster/martial character builds are better off being built around specific archetypes (like what the 6th pillar was trying to accomplish) than they are multi-classing into a separate base class, while a lot of martial/caster character builds are just looking for reliable access to specific spells, not feats and class features. We are starting to see some pretty cool archetypes that work to give martials access to those specific spells, like the shadow dancer and some of the AP specific "Creature" hunter type archetypes.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Personally very glad that feat is being flagged. I would feel pretty crappy as my barbarian if one of the casters in my party took this archetype and had the same to hit bonus as me, in addition to the amazing stuff they can already do.
I wish spellcasting had a little more teeth compared to the difficulty level of AP encounters but secrets of magic and future ap balance might address this. I certainly don't want martials to lose their niche. Reliable, average dpr per turn is the realm of the martial. It should stay that way.I agree with this on the surface, but a caster who wants to go on a martial bent shouldn't be as bad as they are in this edition either.
Especially when it comes to transformation spells being used, like on a sorcerer. Many of the form spells give a static to hit value, which can scale up. However, if you want to stay in a specific form it has the problem of not scaling up across all levels. Sure you can use your attack bonus if it's higher, but once that happens you're far behind martials.
IMO, the ideal position for a caster would be to be 2 points behind martial characters (not the fighter) for attack rolls at all times in exchange for having to use one of their top level spell slots that will prevent them from casting any other spells.
They can flex into being an almost martial, if not quite as good. This happens (and everything works) as long as you use the latest transformation spell (that grants a to hit).
But there are some options that don't grant the to hit, and many transformation options stop scaling at a certain point, forcing you to the next form even if you wanted to be a bear and not a dragon (which is bad for RP IMO).
I think the best way to handle it is to revise the offending spells to all grant the to hit bonus, and to allow spells to scale up in terms of to hit/damage/AC and other relevant things all the way up to 10th level spells.
Agreed on form spells scaling. If my druid is a very much wolf druid I'd want to use animal form 1-20. As it stands I'd probably fluff all the other form spells to be a different looking wolf (with dragon form being a large fire breathing one).
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That seems like an issue that could be fixed with a mild change to the Polymorph and Morph traits, rather than a teardown of the concept of casters getting higher prof's.
For example:
These effects transform the target into a new form. A target can’t be under the effect of more than one polymorph effect at a time. If it comes under the effect of a second polymorph effect, the second polymorph effect attempts to counteract the first. If it succeeds, it takes effect, and if it fails, the spell has no effect on that target. Any Strikes specifically granted by a polymorph effect are magical. Unless otherwise stated, polymorph spells don’t allow the target to take on the appearance of a specific individual creature, but rather just a generic creature of a general type or ancestry.
If you take on a battle form with a polymorph spell, the special statistics can be adjusted only by circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties. Proficenty with any attack granted by a battle form cannot be changed from that listed in that forms special statistics. Unless otherwise noted, the battle form prevents you from casting spells, speaking, and using most manipulate actions that require hands. (If there’s doubt about whether you can use an action, the GM decides.) Your gear is absorbed into you; the constant abilities of your gear still function, but you can’t activate any items.
Seems simple enough!
The untyped prof bonus matters and replacing it with a status bonus would be a bad fix in my opinion.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Regarding (formerly known as Tenser's) Transformation in particular, I think Righteous Might is a more appropriate model than most of the arcane/primal polymorph spells. Just polish off some of that god-stink, and inter-/extrapolate 7th, 9th, and 10th level versions of it.
I disagree, just fix all the transformation spells to grant a to hit bonus*, that scales all the way up to level 10 spells, and keeps them close but definitely behind a non-fighter martial of the same level.
*And probably some other statistics too
|
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Personally very glad that feat is being flagged. I would feel pretty crappy as my barbarian if one of the casters in my party took this archetype and had the same to hit bonus as me, in addition to the amazing stuff they can already do.
The fact that their hit bonus can only be used to make a d4+3+(str+property runes) fist strike (maybe d8 with stance/ancestry feats) in melee while yours is used to make a d12+6+(str+property runes)+16 strike is a pretty big difference.