I'm not sure if this is the correct board to post this question to, but since this seems to be the de-facto optimization board, I figured I'd go ahead and post here instead of general.
Free Archetype to me seems like it makes both the game and the optimization mini-game to be deeper and just plain more fun. I personally intend to allow it in my upcoming game.
However, it seems to me like the optimization meta trends towards making builds without this optional rule, and I was wondering whether this is true, and if so, why.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
It's an optional rule, so by default it's not considered when it comes to builds ( unless you specifically ask for it).
Personally, I happened to see that even though a character is still bound to its 3 actions + 1 reaction per round, being given more stuff could make the game easier.
- more skills
- more spells
- better saves/attacks
- too much versatility ( everybody being able to do anything, or being able to do stuff they normally couldn't because of "choices")But fun is subjective, so if on the one hand somebody might find not appealing playing with a party with characters too versatile, on the other hand another person might find it more entertaining.
I think you're referring to dual classing, which is much more powerful than free archetype. Free archetype just gives extra class feats. It can be used for a few extra skills or spells with the right archetype, but it doesn't affect saves and doesn't allow one to do just anything.
To answer OP, I haven't tried free archetype because my players wanted to start playing the game without alternate rules at first so they could get a feel for it. Some of them think it will be far too strong and don't even want to entertain the idea. For my part, I've been enjoying the game without free archetype, but I'll admit it is compelling.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I Just don't like it, removes a lot of what I find fun in character creation that is weighting options and having to making hard choices between abilities that you want.
IF I would play or GM a free archetype game, it would be for themed games, like Skull and Shackles were everyone is a pirate and get that archetype for free.
Hello all. I run two home brew game. One I use the free arch type the other we don’t. My group likes the free arch type optional rules as it allows for more creativity and diversity of characters. However the non free arch type group (a lot of the same players) don’t feel like they are missing out. So all is good playing with or without in my opinion.
One thing - the free arch type fears have to be used for archetypes and not core class. Is this not the case? That is how we interpreted.
Have a wonderful day.
Tsa.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I Just don't like it, removes a lot of what I find fun in character creation that is weighting options and having to making hard choices between abilities that you want.
IF I would play or GM a free archetype game, it would be for themed games, like Skull and Shackles were everyone is a pirate and get that archetype for free.
I don't quite understand this. There are still hard choices, they're just different choices than the ones you used to have to make.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't quite understand this. There are still hard choices, they're just different choices than the ones you used to have to make.I Just don't like it, removes a lot of what I find fun in character creation that is weighting options and having to making hard choices between abilities that you want.
IF I would play or GM a free archetype game, it would be for themed games, like Skull and Shackles were everyone is a pirate and get that archetype for free.
Imo, it is wiser to make a comparison between a lvl1-20 progression with and without an archetype.
For example, let's compare a Champion
without the free archetype
1- Ranged Reprisal
2- Bard Dedication
4- Bard Basic Spellcasting
6- Sun Blade
8- Quick Block
10- Devoted Focus
12- Expert Bard Spellcasting
14- Divine Reflex
16- Occult Breadth
18- Master Bard Spellcasting
20- Sacred Defender
with the free archetype
1- Ranged Reprisal
2- Desperate Prayer + Bard Dedication
4- Hymn of Healing + Bard Basic Spellcasting
6- Sorcerer Dedication + Basic Sorcerer Spellcasting
8- Quick Block + Occult Breadth
10- Devoted Focus + Sorcerer Breadth
12- Expert Sorcerer Spellcasting + Expert Bard Spellcasting
14- Divine Reflex + Bastion Dedication
16- Instrument of Zeal + Nimble Hand
18- Master Sorcerer Spellcasting + Master Bard Spellcasting
20- Sacred Defender + Quick Shield Block
Obviously you could do better synergies, but this might be enough to show the differences in terms of possibilities.
That said, I'll quote what I previously said
But fun is subjective, so if on the one hand somebody might find not appealing playing with a party with characters too versatile, on the other hand another person might find it more entertaining.
I'm not sure if this is a response to my comment about there still being hard choices or not. If it is, could you highlight what about this comparison shows whether there are less or more hard choices?
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I wanted to enlight that the "new hard choices" you are talking about, though they do exist ( because you could choose to take B instead of C regardless the fact you may have the free archetype or not ) don't invalidate the fact that given the free archetype, regardless the choice you make, you have a neat advantage compared to not having the free archetype.
I mean, having to choose between B,C,D,E,F,G and H doesn't change the fact that you are given A for free ( without the free archetype you will be choosing between, A,B,C,D,E,F,G and H ).
I see, but I never claimed that Free Archetype doesn't net you an advantage compared to not having it. That would be a pretty absurd claim.
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
I vastly prefer Free Archetype to baseline, and I slightly prefer double class feats to Free Archetype.
Some of the things I like about it include:
1. Builds coming online faster.
2. Greater variety in character builds.
3. Better emulates PF1 class capabilities (ranger/druid feels more like a pf1 ranger, for example)
4. More room to play the "character building solo meta game"
5. Doesn't break the game (don't really need to adjust encounters)
6. Less likely for a player to feel like they have nothing to contribute
I understand where people are coming from when they say it reduces the number of difficult decisions to make, but I wholly disagree with their reasoning. If you're not finding difficult choices to make, you're probably not suited for the optional rule. I could get triple or quadruple feats and still agonize over this or that.
This approach is VERY MUCH a "different strokes for different folks" thing.
Here are a few reasons NOT to use it:
1. New players. People can be easily overwhelmed with the number of options free archetype unlocks.
2. Low power campaign. If you want the party to more frequently run out of resources or optionz.
3. Low magic campaign. One of the funnest parts of Free Archetype is going for spellcasting multiclass.
4. New GM. Sometimes it's a bit hard to keep track of all the players' choices and you can have trouble keeping up with the rules those options bring.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm not sure if this is the correct board to post this question to, but since this seems to be the de-facto optimization board, I figured I'd go ahead and post here instead of general.
Free Archetype to me seems like it makes both the game and the optimization mini-game to be deeper and just plain more fun. I personally intend to allow it in my upcoming game.
However, it seems to me like the optimization meta trends towards making builds without this optional rule, and I was wondering whether this is true, and if so, why.
I am using the Free Archetype rule in my game of the Slithering to expand on character backstory and tie them to the setting or Adventure. So I'm letting them take the Magaambya or Pathfinder archetypes. If I were to run a different Adventure that introduces and archetype, I'd consider allowing players to pick that.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I like free archetype a lot. It makes characters much more flexible without making them significantly more powerful.
I think in large part the number of feats by default is set where it is to make the game more manageable for newer players. If you're comfortable with the rules, there's just aren't that many reasons not to give people lots of feats.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
We always use Free Archetype, basically since the APG came out and there were enough Archetypes to actually use-- the reason for me is because otherwise you only have enough character resources to take the good stuff, so if your adventuring content is hard in the first place, and even independently of that your players are adamant about taking power wherever they can for various reasons (video games have conditioned them to look for a meta, they're unreasonably afraid of character death, they're a perfectionist who hates the idea of not doing as well as they can and can't get away from the idea of measuring themselves) it constrains them from taking some of the fun stuff which happens to not contribute as much to your build.
In tandem with the way PF2e bounds benefits so that you can't stack numbers up as high, in theory you objectively have more feats than you can devote to meaningful power increases and can therefore let go and take some stuff that seems fun or offbeat but wouldn't fit into your build. In practice, some people do that, while other people bash their head against the wall, unable to accept that there isn't some option somewhere that can give them that more significant benefit and get really annoyed at it.
But that's just my players having some issues, I know first hand from the dual class game I'm currently playing in that you can blow like half your feats in free archetype completely and still be competitive for MVP, even without playing significantly better than sweatier builds that try to put every resource into their self improvement, as a result of the diminishing returns, I have a bunch of investigator feats tilted towards information management that the GM's style obviates through a lack of exploration and such and am performing very well mainly through the Wizard class feats and spells side of my build, while other people who keep trying to rigorously only take useful worry about not pulling their weight.
Come to think of it, my ancestry feats aren't actually pulling a huge amount of weight either-- and like they can objectively do useful things, it just isn't as necessary to force them to when you have so many levers to pull that you've already created something potent without expending the remaining ones.
On the fence at the moment about using Free Archetype. I currently plan to do so for themed campaigns where everyone would get the same archetype, but unsure if I want to allow it as a default - especially since themed games would then be restrictive by comparison rather than a fun bonus.
Gonna be trying Ancestry Paragon in my next game, so I'll probably consider it after that.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I like free archetype.
My personal favored usage would be that at level 2 you get a dedication and then at each even level you get bonus feat usable only for feats from that archetype.I'm not sure if I'd even allow the bonus feats to be used for chained archetypes (like the Hellknight archetypes where you can start one even if you haven't satisfied the feat tax on the others dedication yet).
In the unlikely event that a player somehow managed to take every feat their archetype offered before hitting 20 (like by being a rogue and taking an archetype with skill feats) I'd give thema free retaining, essentially moving an archetype feat into the new archetype slot and having then take a legal feat in the previous non-archetype slot freed up.
I'm doing this with my players mostly because leveling up already is a lot for their first campaing and staying in the same archetype makes it a lot simpler.
Free Archetype from a character story perspective can quickly get silly because you can dip, get what you want and dip into something else shortly thereafter.
OTOH you can get precisely what sort of build you want that way. Like I built a Swashbuckler to help out my players that had 3 archetypes by lvl 8 because I needed Eldritch Researcher for Shield Cantrip, Acrobat for Master Acrobatics scaling and Blessed One for Lay on Hands.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Since the APG's release, I've been doing a modified free archetype that has felt good at my table. At level 1, every player gains a dedication, but that's it; they have to get archetype feats with their class feats from them on. It helps distinguish them a bit more early on (or it did before the breadth of options increased) while also giving them a few hard choices as they level.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Answering the question in the topic, I haven’t used it because I almost always have at least four players, and usually more than 4, so niche protection becomes a little bit of a concern. The one time we had only three players at the start we just made an extra PC Cleric that one of the players runs. Then we picked up a fourth player, so we still ended up with a 5 PC party.
It’s my understanding that the upcoming Mwangi-based AP uses the rule, though, and we plan to play it, so I guess I’ll be trying it out.
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I’d always run double class feats before free arch. Lots of people just don’t want an archetype for their character, and DCF lets them remain on par while not forcing them to take something they don’t want. Also solves many issues with higher than 2nd level dedications and the like.
That being said, I don’t think just letting people run amuk with unrestricted free archetype is great either. It does cause some party imbalance. Some archetypes are quite strong, I’d estimate about +0.3-0.5 levels on average, whereas others basically do nothing. I’d at least restrain people to the same “group” of archetypes such that everyone is taking a high power combat archetype or a flavour archetype, not a mix.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think it depends on the types of players at your tables (as does... well, a lot of considerations for 2e in general).
If you all don't want the game to possibly become too easy and/or like to optimize things a lot, Free Archetype is likely not your cup of tea.
Characters don't tend to be *super* powerful with FA unless they take the Goldilocks combo of feats, which depends entirely on the campaign and the context of the other PCs. But if you do find that Goldilocks combo then things might start to feel too easy.
Most of the time with FA variant the biggest thing to worry about is making sure that there's nobody stepping on each other's toes.
I like the rule personally, and I've built characters with and without it. It really does feel like you have to *search* for ways to break it, and it allows you to mechanically express some deeper character concepts that might otherwise feel too claustrophobic. But I can see where it can possibly become 'Too flexible', especially in APs where the party isn't meant to have it.
Double Class Feats is an interesting rule that you could possibly use alongside FA - basically people who want to spread their interests wide would use FA and someone who wants to play a character that wants to specialize uses DCF.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I do not play with free archetypes. I haven't seen the need to add them.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I play with free archetypes, I like the extra dimension of character customization it adds and am not concerned with the extra power it adds. Most of my players aren't optimizing much, they grab an archetype that lets them do something cool the base class doesn't support and run with it.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Echoing what's been said before, I enjoy them.
Your character is more powerful, but not too much more powerful, and allows for more options and flavoring if you want.
The hard action economy and stat stacking means it's impossible to be run-away powerful with it, but it definitely lets you have more options at your disposal.
If your players like feeling a little more powerful, go for it!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you have more than 4 characters, or you have powergamers in your group, or for any other reason you want to add free archetype for flavor, but without adding much power, you can restrict which archetypes are available.
For starters, remove from the options the multiclass archetypes. They could still use their normal class feat slots for those multiclass archetypes, but not the extra ones. They would have to give up main class power for the multiclass power.
That does still allow things like an Alchemist taking Archer archetype to help out with their Poisoner build. Or Sentinel archetype for spellcasters to improve their armor options with.
If that is still too much power to allow your players to have, then you can just give a list of archetypes that you are allowing for free archetype. Or even restrict it down to one single archetype for a themed game.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've played with Dual-Class, Free Archetype, Ancestry Paragon and Free Archetype + Ancestry Paragon and loved them all. Now if I could just find a game with Dual-Class + Free Archetype + Ancestry Paragon! ;)
As to more powerful? A bit maybe, but the sheer variety of character types you see means that even when you have a party with the exact same classes and races, you see quite different outcomes.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think the attraction of the Free Archetypes optional rule stems from a feeling I've often had when creating a character for PF2: most of the characters seem "feat starved" and there are so many cool & interesting feats that I feel like taking on a given character, but I can't.
This isn't helped by the fact that all the campaigns I've had the opportunity to play in are very low level.
We started the current campaign I'm running **without** Free Archetype rules, for the simple reason that all my players were new to PF2. A year and a half in, with 30 sessions under our belts, I finally did add in the Free Archetype rules, retroactively, but for story reasons. My PCs discovered an ancient Azlanti artefact that allowed them to share in some of the memories of ancient Azlanti heroes dead some hundred centuries. This happened when they were 8th level, so it was a bit of a chore to go back & select four archetype feats in one go, but my players have matured in their understanding of PF2 rules, and it worked well as a reward.
If I were starting a new PF2 campaign tomorrow, with experienced players, I'd state up front that we were using Free Archetype rules. It adds a little more breadth and complexity to PCs, and just feels right.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
Just a clarification:
The only difference between a normal character and a free-archetype character is that the character receives an extra class feat at 2nd level and every even level thereafter that they can use only for archetype feats.
Free archetype forces you to take archetype feats.
So you could not in fact double down on your class feats, unless you take an archetype that gives you those class feats, such as a druid beastmaster or a fighter mauler.
As for my opinion, I've found games without free archetype to be a bit boring and constraining, I now allow it in all of my games, except for my newbie game, where I feel it would only confuse them more.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I have played in several games with Free Archetype and I have yet to like it for several reasons.
1- Party Homogeneity: In each free archetype party at least one person had Lay on Hands. Each party had at least one primary spellcaster with a dedication into a different spellcaster with the same primary stat but different tradition. Each character with full hands had the Shield cantrip. All in all, free archetype led to each party being mostly the same to the others.
2- Power Increase: Free archetypes made it easy for each character to have access to a focus spell, a good reaction, and a good third action. Each character could plug whatever holes in efficiency their build has with ease, which significantly increased their power. The only time I have seen a free archetype party actually threatened was when half the party went ahead and triggered a second encounter while the other half signaled a retreat. Even then, there was only risk to two characters.
3- No Gaps: In a regular party of 4, chances are the party covers most bases but has two or three gaps that result in a meaningful weakness in the party composition. Free Archetype does away with this. The party has more skills and each character has a wider array of capabilities. There is nothing the party has to avoid or work around, they can just brute force whatever they come across except for really high numbers.
4- Punishes Clean Characters: This is the selfish reason. I like to build characters and I do not build them with free archetype because that shouldn't be something I can rely on. When I build a character with a tight build to fit around a character concept, I do not want a free archetype. But if I don't take it, I am weaker than the rest of my party. Not wanting to hold the party back, I have to slap some extra concept on my character like an aberrant growth. Not something I am a fan of.
In my opinion, free archetype is a crutch. People like it because they like more power. There may be a few who actually use it to take things like Archaeologist to fulfill a character concept better, but I have yet to see it.
PS: All this is from player side experience, I do not allow free archetype in games I run for the above reasons.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think free archetype is fun in the optic of creating player flavor.
If all you're doing is just using it to add more power than yeah, I wouldn't allow it.
But otherwise who's gonna take dandy or celebrity or linguist...
Unless you're playing a stargate campaign and the GM makes obscure Go'a'uld dialect a key point every game.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My personal perspective is also that if you're a little worried about this pushing the power level, make it so the free archetype variant only allows certain archetypes (up to like "only non-multiclass ones"). One of the reasons I really like it is that it makes taking some of the flavorful, but kinda weak archetypes eat a whole lot of class feats and if you want to go all in on being an Oozemorph or a Living Monolith instead of cherrypicking select feats because you need your class stuff then I'm all for it.
I plan to implement a scaled down free archetype variant rule.
The archetype feats are at levels 2, 6, 10, 14, 18.
This is mostly to be able to more easily replicate 1e characters in 2e.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I wouldn't play at table that didn't use it, dual class, or double class feats because of how small I find class feats. So I need a lot of them to make me feel like my character has anything interesting to play around with.
| 12 people marked this as a favorite. |
In my opinion, free archetype is a crutch. People like it because they like more power.
This seems like a weirdly hostile reaction to a variant rule some people enjoy.
My experiences have been pretty much the opposite. The power increases, particularly for higher optimization groups, are relatively minor. Usually amounting at best to a character getting a bonus they would have picked up anyways a couple levels earlier than normal. What it mostly does is improve flexibility, character autonomy and the ability of my players to build out the character concepts they're interested in. All of which have mostly been good things that aren't particularly disruptive in the long run.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
2- Power Increase: Free archetypes made it easy for each character to have access to a focus spell, a good reaction, and a good third action. Each character could plug whatever holes in efficiency their build has with ease, which significantly increased their power. The only time I have seen a free archetype party actually threatened was when half the party went ahead and triggered a second encounter while the other half signaled a retreat. Even then, there was only risk to two characters.
Just make the encounters harder..?
If there is no risk to the party that's on the GM, not the players.In my opinion, free archetype is a crutch. People like it because they like more power. There may be a few who actually use it...
That's quite presumptuous of you to think you know why people like something. Especially considering how many people in this very thread explained why they like it, and it was not because of the power increase.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I run with it as an option each character can take; half the party so far uses it and the other half doesn't, and neither seems to be too far apart in effectiveness, but that might just be the archetypes chosen (Wizard with Hellknight dedication and Druid with Familiar Master vs. Witch and Swashbuckler). Neither the Witch nor Swashbuckler's player have found an archetype worth taking so far, but that might change in the future.
So far it's allowed for characters to expand on something thematic to them without compromising their class identity, and I can't imagine running future games without access to it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I have played in several games with Free Archetype and I have yet to like it for several reasons.
1- Party Homogeneity: In each free archetype party at least one person had Lay on Hands. Each party had at least one primary spellcaster with a dedication into a different spellcaster with the same primary stat but different tradition. Each character with full hands had the Shield cantrip. All in all, free archetype led to each party being mostly the same to the others.
2- Power Increase: Free archetypes made it easy for each character to have access to a focus spell, a good reaction, and a good third action. Each character could plug whatever holes in efficiency their build has with ease, which significantly increased their power. The only time I have seen a free archetype party actually threatened was when half the party went ahead and triggered a second encounter while the other half signaled a retreat. Even then, there was only risk to two characters.
3- No Gaps: In a regular party of 4, chances are the party covers most bases but has two or three gaps that result in a meaningful weakness in the party composition. Free Archetype does away with this. The party has more skills and each character has a wider array of capabilities. There is nothing the party has to avoid or work around, they can just brute force whatever they come across except for really high numbers.
4- Punishes Clean Characters: This is the selfish reason. I like to build characters and I do not build them with free archetype because that shouldn't be something I can rely on. When I build a character with a tight build to fit around a character concept, I do not want a free archetype. But if I don't take it, I am weaker than the rest of my party. Not wanting to hold the party back, I have to slap some extra concept on my character like an aberrant growth. Not something I am a fan of.
In my opinion, free archetype is a crutch. People like it because they like more power. There may be a few who actually use it...
I would never trust someone's assessment of a class I knew was using Free Archetype in combination with a class that isn't good and only made so by shoring up its weaknesses with Free Archetype. It's not really playing PF2 Core to get a real assessment of how each class works and its strengths and weaknesses compared to another core class.
I can already see optimizing with Free Archetype. You could make any class seem fine using such a option.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
1- Party Homogeneity: In each free archetype party at least one person had Lay on Hands. Each party had at least one primary spellcaster with a dedication into a different spellcaster with the same primary stat but different tradition. Each character with full hands had the Shield cantrip. All in all, free archetype led to each party being mostly the same to the others.
I don't agree with your entire post, but this rings true to me. I'm on my fourth group that has used Free Archetype and every group has beelined for Medic and Blessed One, even under my reduced free archetype rules. It's still fine for me, but it was brought up very casually when I was building out the fourth group like, "Okay, so someone should grab Blessed One since we'll need the Lay On Hands."
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
1- Party Homogeneity: In each free archetype party at least one person had Lay on Hands. Each party had at least one primary spellcaster with a dedication into a different spellcaster with the same primary stat but different tradition. Each character with full hands had the Shield cantrip. All in all, free archetype led to each party being mostly the same to the others.I don't agree with your entire post, but this rings true to me. I'm on my fourth group that has used Free Archetype and every group has beelined for Medic and Blessed One, even under my reduced free archetype rules. It's still fine for me, but it was brought up very casually when I was building out the fourth group like, "Okay, so someone should grab Blessed One since we'll need the Lay On Hands."
Is that specific to free archetype though? Medic and/or Blessed one are things I see picked up incredibly frequently in normal/society games too. Especially if there isn't some other kind of healer.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
1- Party Homogeneity: In each free archetype party at least one person had Lay on Hands.
With Blessed One being a thing, meaning it only takes a single feat to get Lay on Hands, it's not uncommon for me to see parties NOT using the optional rule have someone with it so I'm no sure that's a very good example.
Each party had at least one primary spellcaster with a dedication into a different spellcaster with the same primary stat but different tradition.
A common complaint of casters is that their class feat selection isn't very good and/or is boring: as such, I'm not surprised to see someone archetype. Heck, I use ALL my oracle feats to archetype.
Each character with full hands had the Shield cantrip.
This is another one that's not really affected by the optional rule: with SO many ancestries/heritages offering cantrips, it's not exactly hard to get a shield cantrip with it being on 3 out of the 4 spell lists.
2- Power Increase: Free archetypes made it easy for each character to have access to a focus spell, a good reaction, and a good third action.
Well you picked 3 things that aren't very hard to get in the first place so earlier is relative. A good 3rd action is usually 1 skill away and a focus spell or reaction are 2 though you'll most likely get one from your class easier.
3- No Gaps: In a regular party of 4, chances are the party covers most bases but has two or three gaps that result in a meaningful weakness in the party composition. Free Archetype does away with this. The party has more skills and each character has a wider array of capabilities.
You have a normal party with skill gaps? I can make a rogue or investigator with almost every skill herself. IMO, if you're making parties with gaps, you are opting to do so. Pretty much the same with abilities: you can usually make a party that covers all the basics if you want.
4- Punishes Clean Characters
*shrug* You do you. I'll instead say 'it rewards those that have a concept and go with it, by letting it come together easier/quicker.'