I would like to add that usually when people talk about how good alchemist they talk about how you can hand out elixirs before the encounter.
I react on that because I don't think that's true. I remember a lot of people saying how bad the alchemist is by bringing this argument but people who say how good it is use the Elixirs themselves.
Martials rarely have free hands, so outside Monk they won't use Elixirs. And casters rarely care about Elixirs.And you nearly never use Mutagens on your comrades, unless they specifically request it.
A finicky class that requires a guide to get to meet expectations stated in the book, but capable of being played well and support an entire party feels like a strong 5 out of 10 to me for the one category of in “combat encounters.” This is probably where I would put the wizard too, but I haven’t got there yet.
But more important, judging a whole class out of 1 of 4 categories is bigger mistake than under or over valuing the alchemist’s combat effectiveness in comparison to the stated expectations for the class. Unfortunately, I feel like down time is the only place where the stated expectations can match the play experience, and do so amazingly well…but many APs trivialize the ability of the alchemist to contribute effectively to the party with too little down time sessions between encounters/ chapters and levels of play (if all your formulae go 4 levels out of date after buying them but before you get to craft with them, you fall behind). Same thing happens in a campaign that gives some downtime, but has incredibly strict expectations for a character with good crafting to do specific narrative crafting. Yes the Alchemist will be shining for that, but it can impact the rope downtime can play on character preparedness for other modes of the game. Which is why I feel like the alchemist should feel like the 9 or even 10 out of 10 class for downtime, but ends up back more around 7.
The stated social encounter expectations would leave a player feeling like their character has to be a Igor from the Frankenstein movie and always bringing up how much they know about poisons and diseases at the dinner party with the king. Which is why I went so low for the class, even though alchemists can be pretty helpful to the party as a whole for social encounters, if the party wants the support. They lack the ability to do much of the socializing themselves though without building pretty heavily against the grain. So I will say could have been a contributing 7 without changing the class mechanically, but ends up more frequently at a 4 for social encounters.
A similar thing happens with exploration mode, but I already covered that and this is a long enough post.
Evaluating classes along all 4 of these, taking into account stated expectations for each will really help guide players better than telling them x class can be good if you build it exactly this way, regardless of what you might have read in the book.
Let's do Barbarian next since my dog woke me up in the middle of the night and now I can't go back to sleep.
In combat:
"You summon your rage and rush to the front lines to smash your way through. Offense is your best defense—you’ll need to drop foes before they can exploit your relatively low defenses."
This one is very on the money, but almost so much so that players will tend to underestimate the fact that they are being told that they need to bring enemies down quickly or else they are going to get dropped as enemies exploit their weaknesses. Often times players seem to approach the barbarian as a class to charge ahead recklessly, attack as often as possible, and then end up unconscious before the rest of the party even fully joins combat. It also ignores how fast Barbarians can be, and how Barbarians can often be much better as skirmishers than front line tanks, unless the party is built to exploit having an ally who gets hit a lot.
With a little clearer direction, I would put the Barbarian at 9 of 10 for combat encounters, but with what is written, I think it can be a little tricky for players to see their character meet their expectations with the barbarian, and have to give them a 7 of 10 for combat expectations.
Social encounters:
"You use intimidation to get what you need, especially when gentler persuasion can’t get the job done."
Again, this is pretty right on the nose with how the class expects you to play. CHA can feel like a waste of stats for a barbarian, but they get so much support for intimidation build that starting with even a 12 is probably fine, and since you aren't splitting skill feats with any other skills except maybe athletics, it is pretty easy to be an intimidating barbarian...however, intimidating your way through social encounters can rub many parties the wrong way, and when it is the only thing you really can do, this can lead to some intra-party drama. Making sure that the GM doesn't require intimidation to always involve threatening physical violence, but includes stern unforgiving negotiating can make this more manageable. I think the barbarian is a 7 out of 10 class for meeting its social encounter expectations if built to class expectations, with the caveat that the rest of the party needs to be on board with liberal coercion activities and hard nosed negotiation or else the class drops to a 3 or 4.
Exploration:
"You look out for danger, ready to rush headfirst into battle in an instant. You climb the challenging rock wall and drop a rope for others to follow, and you wade into the risky currents to reach the hidden switch beneath the water’s surface. If something needs breaking, you’re up to the task!"
Again, this one is pretty on point with establishing fair expectations. Barbarians do well to put some points in wisdom and to keep athletics as either their number 1 or number 2 most focused on skill. They even get a fair number of class feats to help with this, only slightly hampered by often needing to be raging to benefit the most from them, which can't be done in exploration mode. They can beat traps just by being good at spotting them and then jumping past them or setting them off and absorbing the consequences...often much more so than a rogue. A lot depends on whether GMs transition from exploration mode to an environmental encounter mode for traps and hazards, and allow the barbarian to treat traps as an enemy. I give a barbarian an 8 or a 9 out of 10 for exploration activities matching expectations.
Downtime:
"You might head to a tavern to carouse, build up the fearsome legend of your mighty deeds, or recruit followers to become a warlord in your own right."
This is the one category that really feels off base and reaching for fictional guidance that the class itself provides nothing to support. Heading off the to tavern to build up a fearsome legend of your mighty deeds sounds pretty cool, but what is that exactly in relationship to down time activities? Very sympathetic GMs might let it translate into going into taverns and using intimidate to gather information or make friends, but that is a big stretch that almost runs counter to the rules of the game. Recruiting followers to become a warlord in your own right also sounds awesome, but feels entirely unsupported by the game, and counter to doing anything actually useful for the party in either APs or in a PFS scenario. I give the barbarian a 1 out of 10 for downtime expectations, in part for stating a common narrative fantasy of the class that it cannot really hope to match, and for the actual lack of useful things mechanically for a barbarian to do in downtime without picking up some archetype feats that lead away from how the class is typically played.
if you were going to do it, I would keep it relatively simple
first you make two divisions. combat vs non-combat
you break down combat into damage, control, tanking debuffing, buffing
non-combat gets broken down into utility
you can then rate classes how well they do each, by assigning 5 to be best
and go from there.
5 the best
4 not the best but more than adequate
3 avg = doable under the right circumstances
2 poor
1 fighting the system
I think it is a mistake to divide the game into combat/non-combat for this analysis.
Part of what is going to skew all of this is if the developers created the classes to be balanced around 4 distinct phases of the game, intending a character to participate in all four (as established in the roleplaying the X), and yet players are lumping 3 of them together and not really comparing what the class is stated to do but against general expectations that are being imported largely from other games.
As for the alchemist, I think that it is interesting that the class is apparently stated to be able to throw bombs and provide support to allies in the form of elixirs from level one apparently, but that mutagens are not really designed to considered until higher levels. Having not played a higher level alchemist, but having a fair bit of experience as a player and GM with level 1 alchemists, it doesn't seem feasible to trying to bomb and do much with Elixirs until level 5ish, or at least, even being a bomber through multiple combats a day seems to require hitting level 4 or 5, much less having anything left in the tank for other abilities. Thus a lot of alchemists I see that people have fun with, end up focusing entirely on elixirs and a crossbow for most of lower levels.
Also, intending Mutagens not really to be effective until higher levels seems counter to the design of having a class path that focuses on it from level 1. These 2 things together seems likely to result in a fair bit of player frustration...
you have to divide combat vs non-combat or you are going to get an accurate picture. it's just a fact that rogue and investigator have the most potential utility outside of combat.
one of the beauties of PF2 is that you as a fighter for instance can sacrifice some of your combat prowess and gain a lot of utility through the archetype system.
Every ranking system has to include the caveat that it is only covering the base classes staying base class. because the truth of the matter is most classes with the exception of clerics at healing, fighters at fighting and rogue as mastering all skills, they can be as good as most other classes at the same role with some investment
...if you were going to do it, I would keep it relatively simple
first you make two divisions. combat vs non-combat
you break down combat into damage, control, tanking debuffing, buffing
non-combat gets broken down into utility
you can then rate classes how well they do each, by assigning 5 to be best
and go from there.
5 the best
4 not the best but more than adequate
3 avg = doable under the right circumstances
2 poor
1 fighting the system
I think it is a mistake to divide the game into combat/non-combat for this analysis.
Part of what is going to skew all of this is if the developers created the classes to be balanced around 4 distinct phases of the game, intending a character to participate in all four (as established in the roleplaying the X), and yet players are lumping 3 of them together and not really comparing what the class is stated to do but against general expectations that are being imported largely from other games.
As for the alchemist, I think that it is interesting that the class is apparently stated to be able to throw bombs and provide support to allies in the form of elixirs from level one apparently, but that mutagens are not really designed to considered until higher levels. Having not played a higher level alchemist, but having a fair bit of experience as a player and GM with level 1 alchemists, it doesn't seem feasible to trying to bomb and do much with Elixirs until level 5ish, or at least, even being a bomber through multiple combats a day seems to require hitting level 4 or 5, much less having anything left in the tank for other abilities. Thus a lot of alchemists I see that people have fun with, end up focusing entirely on elixirs and a crossbow for most of lower levels.
Also, intending Mutagens not really to be effective until higher levels seems counter to the design of having a class path that focuses on it from level 1. These 2 things together seems
I don't agree actually, I think a lot of casters get a lot from archetyping because to be honest a lot of their class feats are terrible to borderline useful to very situational useful
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The reason I think you need to include the four phases of the game spelled out in the book for each class is because I believe the game is supposed to be about more than a string of combat encounters, and was built to be more. Many APs don’t use all four modes of play that well. Most PFS scenarios do, with kind of an exception around down time, although players do get a lot of it there, it is entirely personal and not collaboratively narrative like the rest.
But in many APs down time is supposed to be collaborative and story focused, but I think most players, GMs and adventure writers don’t know what to do with it yet since it’s implementation in pathfinder is pretty unique and different. Eventually though, I think APs will get better and better with it, if it is supposed to be an essential part of the game, which seems the intention.
Exploration and social encounters are in a similar boat, often with a history of just having the loudest/first to speak up player set the course for the rest of the party in a “hand of the chess board mentality.” As a GM and a player, I love that PF2 structurally is trying to curtail that and I strive not to let that fly in games I play either.
If people keep pretending like the game is 90 percent combat in the way they talk about the game and create guides for others, then it will stay that way. This doesn’t mean it is wrong to enjoy combat encounters or prefer them for your table, but pushing new players to think that was the intention of the game will decrease its appeal to many players, and discourage designers from exploring the other modes of the game.
Bard:
In combat:
“You use magical performances to alter the odds in favor of your allies. You confidently alternate between attacks, healing, and helpful spells as needed.”
This feels pretty right on the money, although the order of contributions probably changes around level 7 from making attacks, healing, casting spells, to casting spells, healing and then attacking. Everyone talks about how well the Bard does in PF2, and I think a huge part of that is because it exceeds the stated expectations for its class. If any class in the game deserves a 10 out of 10 for combat contributions, it is the bard.
Social encounters:
“You persuade, prevaricate, and threaten with ease.”
IE: You are the best at charisma skills…sort of. This one is true in that it what the bard does best at first level, but the bard is pulled in so many different directions, you won’t be the diplomat, the deceiver and the intimidator all the time for the whole party well, unless you scoop up some class feat/archetype options to do so. Still, it is a class built for social encounters so I would give it an 8 out 10 base, but a 9 out of 10 with just a little bit of guidance.
While Exploring:
“You’re a font of knowledge, folktales, legends, and lore that provide a deeper context and helpful reconnaissance for the group’s adventure. Your spells and performances inspire your allies to greater discovery and success.”
Again this is pretty right on the money, with the caveat that the bard has so many good options and things they can cover it can be difficult to get to it all. At low levels the bard can struggle to provide much beyond some recalling of knowledge in exploration mode, but between spells and compositions can contribute as well as anyone by higher level. So I would be inclined to go 6 or 7 out of 10 at low level up to 9 or 10 by high level, so we will go with an average of 8 of 10.
In Downtime:
“You can earn money and prestige with your performances, gaining a name for yourself and acquiring patrons. Eventually, tales of your talents and triumphs might attract other bards to study your techniques in a bardic college.”
The bard’s description here makes it the most clear to me that no one was too certain what role down time would play in PF2 when this aspect of the classes was being written out, and I think the down time section of the classes might be one of the biggest places for a lore/narrative Errata to help moderate player expectations.
That said, the bard is very good at earning income in downtime, but only being good at earning income is similar to being able to deal massive damage in combat with mediocre accuracy…It can pull you towards wanting to do the same thing over and over again with every action, while you have other activities you could be doing that might help the whole party much more, like gathering information and making friends. With more thought the bard can easily be a 9 out of 10 here, but pushed to just look for making money and attracting other bards to start a bard college (something not even really possible without the GM developing their own system out of GMG options), I think a mediocre 6 or 7 is most fair.
I am guessing that the bard is going to come out with the highest marks overall out of all these evaluations, even if I have found the bard a little tedious to play because you just have too many options locked in that you have to be doing all of the time to provide the massive support that you can to the party.
the game can be 90% combat or it can be 90% out of combat, i have played in games that were either and neither, so you need to rate how classes function in both situations.
of course, before you start your campaign you should ask the GM what style of campaign they are going to running, so you can choose and plan your class.
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I honestly believe the best way to rank PF2 Classes is to start from what the popular wisdom of the boards is saying.
So
Tier 1 = Bard, Fighter, Druid, Champion (maybe)
Tier 3 = Alchemist, Witch
Tier 2 = all other Classes
Of course Classes recently released will need some time to be classified.
So, popularity contest rather than scores on a check-list.
I honestly believe the best way to rank PF2 Classes is to start from what the popular wisdom of the boards is saying.
So
Tier 1 = Bard, Fighter, Druid, Champion (maybe)
Tier 3 = Alchemist, Witch
Tier 2 = all other Classes
Of course Classes recently released will need some time to be classified.
So, popularity contest rather than scores on a check-list.
My problem with just ranking the classes by popular wisdom, without trying to understand why players are approaching each class with the expectations that they have for it, will not help the game improve in the future, nor help a player figure out how to play a class that they want to play most effectively. Understanding where player expectations are coming from seems like the first step, which is why I am trying to look at what the book itself is establishing as those expectations.
I think the bard more so than any other class in PF2, establishes good expectations for the class that the mechanical chassis can meet, without having to follow an elaborate guide or deep dive into the class to be able to accomplish. Its biggest issue is that it is so jack of all trades that it can be easy to feel like you are supposed to do it all, but you don't actually have the number of actions, skill boosts and feats to actually be able to pull it off.
Compared to the alchemist, where players are somewhat misguided by the narrative established by the class, as the class has many mechanics that don't fit (like being able to start off focusing on mutagens even when told they are not really a useful option for the class until higher level, and implying that the alchemist can bomb and provide support effectively from level 1, when it takes several levels to get there). Players are ranking the Alchemist generally much lower than the bard, even though both are largely "support the party" with options. Part of this is that the bard has to make minimal choices to effectively provide support, while the Alchemist has to really match their choices to the situational need of the party to be effective, and can easily end up out of the right thing to do.
This becomes a recurring theme in the "prevailing wisdom" of class assessment: Classes that are easy to figure out what to be doing generally score higher on the popularity charts than classes that have a lot of niche options.
Compound this with general bad direction for exploration mode and downtime mode, and 90 percent of conversations about classes revolve around combat encounters, and then players make campaign choices based entirely around combat encounters and the GM realizes the party is ill suited to handle anything but combat encounters and so breezes through every other mode of the game, because the party isn't built to do anything useful with downtime or exploration mode except get into the next combat encounter.
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My problem with just ranking the classes by popular wisdom, without trying to understand why players are approaching each class with the expectations that they have for it, will not help the game improve in the future, nor help a player figure out how to play a class that they want to play most effectively. Understanding where player expectations are coming from seems like the first step, which is why I am trying to look at what the book itself is establishing as those expectations.I honestly believe the best way to rank PF2 Classes is to start from what the popular wisdom of the boards is saying.
So
Tier 1 = Bard, Fighter, Druid, Champion (maybe)
Tier 3 = Alchemist, Witch
Tier 2 = all other Classes
Of course Classes recently released will need some time to be classified.
So, popularity contest rather than scores on a check-list.
Well, I think the popularity contest actually ranks the Classes based on the expectations of people who played them and whether those were fulfilled (satisfaction) or not (frustration).
I honestly believe the best way to rank PF2 Classes is to start from what the popular wisdom of the boards is saying.
So
Tier 1 = Bard, Fighter, Druid, Champion (maybe)
Tier 3 = Alchemist, Witch
Tier 2 = all other Classes
Of course Classes recently released will need some time to be classified.
So, popularity contest rather than scores on a check-list.
For a brief look at what the "popular wisdom" is like elsewhere, consult the following:
S: Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Thief
A: most things, some specific builds/subclasses of Bs, Thaumaturge (tentative)
B: Gunslinger, Inventor, Investigator, Magus, Psychic (tentative), Swashbuckler, Witch (non-divine)
C: Other Divine casters
D: Alchemist
Well, I think the popularity contest actually ranks the Classes based on the expectations of people who played them and whether those were fulfilled (satisfaction) or not (frustration).My problem with just ranking the classes by popular wisdom, without trying to understand why players are approaching each class with the expectations that they have for it, will not help the game improve in the future, nor help a player figure out how to play a class that they want to play most effectively. Understanding where player expectations are coming from seems like the first step, which is why I am trying to look at what the book itself is establishing as those expectations.I honestly believe the best way to rank PF2 Classes is to start from what the popular wisdom of the boards is saying.
So
Tier 1 = Bard, Fighter, Druid, Champion (maybe)
Tier 3 = Alchemist, Witch
Tier 2 = all other Classes
Of course Classes recently released will need some time to be classified.
So, popularity contest rather than scores on a check-list.
I largely agree, I just want to add in looking at the source of those expectations. Are people approaching the alchemist class from the expectations provided within the game? Or from past versions/other fantasies? In PF2s case, I think this is muddled and explains quite a bit of the disconnect, especially in comparison with the bard.
because the party isn't built to do anything useful with downtime or exploration mode except get into the next combat encounter.I am not sure I got your point.
What exactly would you expect for players to do during downtime or exploration?
Some APs build whole narrative and mechanical expectations for downtime and for exploration.
One of the reasons I like abomination vaults so much is that it takes the first big steps for formalizing both down time and exploration into the game beyond earn more money and get to the next encounter.
Other APs before played with these, but catch flack for abandoning them after one book.
PFS scenarios are also pretty good at structuring longer duration exploration and down time encounters that can’t be resolved well in combat encounter mode. It is where you see some of the most innovated adventure design, and is very much worth looking at as a GM if you are home brewing and want more than dungeon crawling and time between dungeon crawling
Exploration and social encounters are in a similar boat, often with a history of just having the loudest/first to speak up player set the course for the rest of the party in a “hand of the chess board mentality.” As a GM and a player, I love that PF2 structurally is trying to curtail that and I strive not to let that fly in games I play either.
How does PF2 try to curtail that? Because it's kind of always works like this. And I guess will be unless you forbid free-speaking for characters/players. What I mean if somebody has said something you can't just revoke that and characters arguing against each other in front of all NPCs is often not a good strategy. So unless it's somehow forbidden and regulated, it seems unavoidable.
Not to mention that inventing good replies on the spot is not everyone's ability and sometimes the loudest/first to speak up player's idea could be the only one.
You don’t have to forbid free speaking to encourage preplanning and for the GM to hit the pause button and ask what everyone else is doing before resolving the social encounter round. The GMG really encourages this, PFS encourages it, and it would be nice to see more of it in APs too.
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I honestly believe the best way to rank PF2 Classes is to start from what the popular wisdom of the boards is saying.
So
Tier 1 = Bard, Fighter, Druid, Champion (maybe)
Tier 3 = Alchemist, Witch
Tier 2 = all other Classes
Of course Classes recently released will need some time to be classified.
So, popularity contest rather than scores on a check-list.
I tend to dislike popular wisdom. I won't say that it's all wrong, but there are massive bias to it. Among many:
- Expectations. We saw it when PF2 has been launched, casters were "the worst" just because players were coming from PF1. A couple of years afterwards, there's no more "casters are weak" thread.- Difficulty. Simple classes will always be rated higher than complex ones. Because a bunch of players mess up with complex classes and whine about them. So you may count that into the class tier, but I think it's not legitimate. It's for example the reason Cleric is rated so high in my opinion despite being just average. And the Magus on the other hand suffers from how tough it is to play it.
- Meta. There's always a defined meta and classes that fit into the meta tend to be rated higher than those who don't fit. The Inventor for example is a victim to that, as it doesn't fit the meta.
- Fun. Fun classes are rated higher. For example, spike damage classes are rated higher than constant damage ones because they attract attention when they get a damage spike. Active classes are also rated higher than passive ones, which is why high damage dealers tend to always be at the top of the charts (look at the Fighter that you put on par with the Bard when the Bard has both a very strong specialization and a high versatility while the Fighter has a very strong specialization but no versatility).
Anyway, I don't say popular wisdom is bad, but it's far from perfect.
The "casters are bad" threads are not being done because most of the people involved: Gave up and left, gave up and are now keeping quiet, accepted the changes with some misgivings, or where on the side of "casters are fine" from the start.
You can still see plenty of posts complaining about something or other related to non-bard casters.
We are in a hundreds of post discussion about tier lists and not a single one of them puts caster behind martials. And there's not a single person before your last post to raise a concern that it may be wrong.
So, sure, there may be a lot of silent people thinking otherwise, but it looks far fetched to me. Obviously, I can't say you're wrong, just that I don't see anything left of these debates.Still, I agree that there are critics about some caster classes. That's true and I will never say all casters are fine. Just that, on average, they seem on par with martials.
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Just that, on average, they seem on par with martials.
I really wish that average was distributed a little more evenly across level 1-20. The early game for a lot of casters can be miserable, because as you level not only do you get way more spells, but they have greater effects even against on level, and above level, enemies. And you have to deal with things like not hitting the AC cap natively until level 15 when you get 20 dex... Really wish, for example, that a spell like Mage Armour meaningfully helped with that by giving you a +2 item bonus/+3 dex cap.
Personally I just stopped playing casters from level 1-~8ish, but maybe the Psychic will change that.
I honestly believe the best way to rank PF2 Classes is to start from what the popular wisdom of the boards is saying.
So
Tier 1 = Bard, Fighter, Druid, Champion (maybe)
Tier 3 = Alchemist, Witch
Tier 2 = all other Classes
Of course Classes recently released will need some time to be classified.
So, popularity contest rather than scores on a check-list.
I tend to dislike popular wisdom. I won't say that it's all wrong, but there are massive bias to it. Among many:
- Expectations. We saw it when PF2 has been launched, casters were "the worst" just because players were coming from PF1. A couple of years afterwards, there's no more "casters are weak" thread.The "casters are bad" threads are not being done because most of the people involved: Gave up and left, gave up and are now keeping quiet, accepted the changes with some misgivings, or where on the side of "casters are fine" from the start.
You can still see plenty of posts complaining about something or other related to non-bard casters.
I stopped participating in those threads because I played to higher level and found out casters are not bad. They are quite powerful at higher level and can do more than martials. I found martials became exceedingly boring the more I leveled up in PF2. You were often still using the same feats you were using at 1st level as a level 15 martial, while casters had a wide array of spells and innate focus abilities that made them far more interesting and fun to play than martials.
Major example of this is Double Strike or Power Attack. My players were still using this at level 9 because the action cost made it nearly impossible to move and use anything else. But my casters by level 9 were sifting spell list, did better cantrip damage, and if they felt like it had access to a melee or ranged weapon to make a spell attack. It's far easier to get bonuses to weapon attacks than it is to boost the effectiveness of spell DCs. That generally makes a multiclass caster using a weapon more versatile than a multiclass martial using a spell to attack.
@N N 959 Hey, another BG veteran ! (Was Alastar back on there, hence the name) that is also where I saw my first tier list, I had found it inspiring and I don't remember much insult slinging around it, just debate.
@Deriven: I know exactly what you mean, I'm a level 13 fighter in siege of the dinosaurs right now and it's honestly so boring.... We have free archetypes and I'm still like... "EVERYTHING I DO IS STRIKE!" even the class feats are "strike and do this" it's so goddamn boring... I like the campaign and I can't just shift but I have zero versatility and impact and I'm looking forward to finishing it so I can play anything else than a fighter. I'd even do a barb or a Monk over a fighter.
Casters suck pre 8: yeah it's a tough spot, I've played 4 casters in those lower levels and it's a tough place. I did have success with careful cantrip selection and clutch spells, but you really gotta be sure of what you're doing when you're dropping a spell. Now my druid is on the verge of level 7 and will be my only caster managing to reach mid levels, so I'm hoping I'll get to start trying more stuff.
I'm reading the posts just having a busy weekend, thanks to unicore for your fun excerpts on classes, they're entertaining!
@N N 959 Hey, another BG veteran ! (Was Alastar back on there, hence the name) that is also where I saw my first tier list, I had found it inspiring and I don't remember much insult slinging around it, just debate.
@Deriven: I know exactly what you mean, I'm a level 13 fighter in siege of the dinosaurs right now and it's honestly so boring.... We have free archetypes and I'm still like... "EVERYTHING I DO IS STRIKE!" even the class feats are "strike and do this" it's so goddamn boring... I like the campaign and I can't just shift but I have zero versatility and impact and I'm looking forward to finishing it so I can play anything else than a fighter. I'd even do a barb or a Monk over a fighter.
Casters suck pre 8: yeah it's a tough spot, I've played 4 casters in those lower levels and it's a tough place. I did have success with careful cantrip selection and clutch spells, but you really gotta be sure of what you're doing when you're dropping a spell. Now my druid is on the verge of level 7 and will be my only caster managing to reach mid levels, so I'm hoping I'll get to start trying more stuff.
I'm reading the posts just having a busy weekend, thanks to unicore for your fun excerpts on classes, they're entertaining!
@N N 959 Hey, another BG veteran ! (Was Alastar back on there, hence the name) that is also where I saw my first tier list, I had found it inspiring and I don't remember much insult slinging around it, just debate.
@Deriven: I know exactly what you mean, I'm a level 13 fighter in siege of the dinosaurs right now and it's honestly so boring.... We have free archetypes and I'm still like... "EVERYTHING I DO IS STRIKE!" even the class feats are "strike and do this" it's so g$&!*#n boring... I like the campaign and I can't just shift but I have zero versatility and impact and I'm looking forward to finishing it so I can play anything else than a fighter. I'd even do a barb or a Monk over a fighter.
Casters suck pre 8: yeah it's a tough spot, I've played 4 casters in those lower levels and it's a tough place. I did have success with careful cantrip selection and clutch spells, but you really gotta be sure of what you're doing when you're dropping a spell. Now my druid is on the verge of level 7 and will be my only caster managing to reach mid levels, so I'm hoping I'll get to start trying more stuff.
I'm reading the posts just having a busy weekend, thanks to unicore for your fun excerpts on classes, they're entertaining!
I played a fighter too. They do great damage. But like the bard, they do one thing so well that not to do that thing is to not use the class optimally. With the bard I spent the majority of my actions buffing with harmonize because most of the time, it was the best thing to do. With the fighter I spent the majority of my time swinging because it was the best thing to do.
When I play some other class like a sorcerer or druid, I have several things I can do well enough that when I do them I still feel like I'm playing optimally. My sorcerer has cool focus powers on top of spells. My druid can heal, do direct damage, do a buff, or wildshape or use animal companion and enter melee. Much more versatile. I like not doing the same thing every round. That gets so boring.
I did take the Champion Archetype for my fighter. But even doing the block damage and striking gets old after a while. It's the same boring sequence from round to round over and over and over again. Works really effectively, but so does using a hammer to pound a nail into wood and I don't want to do that all day.
InventorIf you already have casters, then you want another martial, not an Inventor. This is a hill I will die on. Inventor is a perfect example of a tier 4 class.AoE-based parties don't want single target martials at all. Especially at high level, you take an Inventor above every other martial if you have already a strong AoE dominance. It's a niche, but the Barbarian on the other hand has no niche where it's the best.
The meta evolves because the game environment evolves. If for example Paizo releases a ton of classes with a lot of hit points, healing will drop and the healing based classes, too. But if Paizo releases a strictly better Bard, for example a Bard with 2 extra hit points over the normal Bard, then you create a tier 0 for this character. You don't put the old Bard at tier 4 because suddenly there is no reason to take it over the new Bard.Relative systemWell, yes, of course it is relative. That does not mean it is a bad system. Most tier list for online games are relative too. When a new character in a fighting game releases, if it has an impact of the meta, it will change the rating of other characters that functionally are the exact same as before.
From my experience, there is just parties with too much AoE, very little AoE, or the right amount. There is no such a thing as AoE-based parties if you want to be efficient, as there are no single target-based ones.
Inventor is an OK class power wise, but the only really good synergy point I see they have going for them is Shared Overdrive and the utility stuff. Their AoE is very limited, their accuracy/damage is a bit too low and they are squishy for the frontlines. Eveytime I saw an inventor I thought that another class would do a bit better. That said, my experience with the class is limited, so maybe I'm wrong.
Regarding the Bard thing, yes, if Paizo ever releases a Bard+ that is strictly better than current Bard, current Bard would become a tier 4 class by the metrics (which to me it only says that the writing of the tiers should be different, not that there is an issue with the idea itself). If we are rating synergy, there is no room for absolute measures of power. If we are measuring how good a class is relative to others when trying to fill parties, a relative measure is the only thing that makes sense. A class that is strictly worse than other that fills the exact same spot is hard to recommend when you can just play the other one. Luckily, most classes we have that are on the weaker side are "generally weaker but" territory, so at least they have a niche.
As a side note, 100% agree on casters being more fun to play. Most martials end up getting boring to me in combat if I play them for a while. Also, I don't think casters are that weak at low level if you are going for certain things. Magic Weapon, Magic Missile, Heal and Electric Arc can cover perfectly the very first levels, and level 5 onwards you get things like lvl 3 Fear and Slow. My group and I started a new campaign not that long ago and I feel like the MVP half of the fights as an Arcane Sorcerer (currently level 6).
When I play some other class like a sorcerer or druid, I have several things I can do well enough that when I do them I still feel like I'm playing optimally. My sorcerer has cool focus powers on top of spells. My druid can heal, do direct damage, do a buff, or wildshape or use animal companion and enter melee. Much more versatile. I like not doing the same thing every round. That gets so boring.
Same. Playing a Fervor Witch currently. At level 3 right now. I have about 15 different things that I can do. About 6 of them would be useful on any particular round. My biggest hassle is choosing which ones to actually do.
There are other classes that are mechanically more powerful, I suppose. But having to do the same few things gets really boring.
On cleric, I don't understand "no restriction" on spells known. Does that mean besides Uncommon and Rare?
And also how do they easily poach from other spell lists. I don't know how a divine caster would cast from other lists. Unless you are talking about spells from domains or something.
I played a fighter too. They do great damage. But like the bard, they do one thing so well that not to do that thing is to not use the class optimally. With the bard I spent the majority of my actions buffing with harmonize because most of the time, it was the best thing to do. With the fighter I spent the majority of my time swinging because it was the best thing to do.
When I play some other class like a sorcerer or druid, I have several things I can do well enough that when I do them I still feel like I'm playing optimally. My sorcerer has cool focus powers on top of spells. My druid can heal, do direct damage, do a buff, or wildshape or use animal companion and enter melee. Much more versatile. I like not doing the same thing every round. That gets so boring.
I did take the Champion Archetype for my fighter. But even doing the block damage and striking gets old after a while. It's the same boring sequence from round to round over and over and over again. Works really effectively, but so does using a hammer to pound a nail into wood and I don't want to do that all day.
The major issue I happened to see with combatants is the lack of attacks / maneuvers. Fighter is obviously the exception, having tons of attacks and possibilities, but it's rather common for a player to just pick up a single attack and use it over and over.
Just to say that the issue is not the class, but how the player decides to play it.
The most common example I can think of is double slice.
- Stride + Double Slice
- Double Slice + Parry
- Double Slice + shield cantripor even a 2h fighter taking power attack, to use it against target with physical DR, just relying on the normal strike ( or maybe lunge ) over and over.
Classes like the champion have it hard, not having special attacks ( by lvl 12 they may get divine blade ), but other classes have it quite easy.
So, it's the player's fault ( wrong mindset ) for min maxing and use the most efficient rotation even when the game...
Well as an exemple my fighter is a dwarven longhammer (customised weapon, advanced, dwarven trait, reach, hammer group, 1d10 bludgeoning, shove, 2 hand) wielder.
I have the following maneuvers:
Combat assessment
Sweep
Brutish shove
Disruptive stance
(Flex) power attack
I'm master in athletics and in medicine, with the right items and skill feats.
All of these maneuvers are "roll strike+ some small rider" so whatever I'm doing, I'm rolling a strike. If it's an unlucky night, like it often is, where I can't roll above 5 well then I contribute zero to the fight, or very little. Even when I do hit, compared to the magus in my team or a barbarian, I hit like a wet blanket for 3d10+9. It's more on a Crit but the again... Unlucky nights happen a lot.
So whatever I do, whatever happens, I'm still just rolling strikes.
I could drop a hand from my weapon and use athletics maneuvers, and I do if it's appropriate, but then I lose my ability to attack of opportunity twice per round, and critting with my hammer makes them prone anyways. So tripping isn't really valid, British shove makes me shove them anyways, and grappling is fine, but useless agaisnt multi ennemy groups.
I'd take a champion over this, at least I'd have some agony over shield rotation, focus spells, smite evil, blade of justice etc. Etc.
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From my experience, there is just parties with too much AoE, very little AoE, or the right amount. There is no such a thing as AoE-based parties if you want to be efficient, as there are no single target-based ones.
At high level, if you rely on single target damage to put enemies down, half of the fights will be a slugfest. That's when you need to move to AoE based damage. But that's something very few parties do, as they have too many martials with a lack of multi target damage.
Eveytime I saw an inventor I thought that another class would do a bit better.
Well, actually, that's quite true. At low levels, you'll prefer another martial. At high level, a caster. But if you want to play from level 1 to 20, Inventor is a very nice class as it starts quite high and doesn't fall behind at high level thanks to its heavy AoE damage.
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the game can be 90% combat or it can be 90% out of combat, i have played in games that were either and neither, so you need to rate how classes function in both situations.
of course, before you start your campaign you should ask the GM what style of campaign they are going to running, so you can choose and plan your class.
A home game in ANY system can be ANY thing. I have played board race games which we made into conquer the world of the game. That ability is not reflection of the actual games focuses.
What is a reflection is the granularity of each game phase (e.g. combat vs exploration) and the published adventure components. By these standards, the comments are pretty accurate that the game is 90% combat (esp. in PFS scenarios and APs where exploration etc is pretty much handled by a quick couple of arbitrary die rolls)
I would dispute that, while combat takes up more of the time, I feel like a lot of AP have very long scenes that don't involve combat.
Aoe, Aoa, SoT have a lot of subsystem scenes where you must do heists, chases, research, tell tales, help poor laborers, investigate clubs, ingratiate yourself with local guilds, hunt down a camel. In SOT so far there have been several games without a single combat.
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the game can be 90% combat or it can be 90% out of combat, i have played in games that were either and neither, so you need to rate how classes function in both situations.
of course, before you start your campaign you should ask the GM what style of campaign they are going to running, so you can choose and plan your class.
A home game in ANY system can be ANY thing. I have played board race games which we made into conquer the world of the game. That ability is not reflection of the actual games focuses.
What is a reflection is the granularity of each game phase (e.g. combat vs exploration) and the published adventure components. By these standards, the comments are pretty accurate that the game is 90% combat (esp. in PFS scenarios and APs where exploration etc is pretty much handled by a quick couple of arbitrary die rolls)
If you count in words or number of pages, combat is very much in the minority though. Even in PFS.
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If you count in words or number of pages, combat is very much in the minority though. Even in PFS.the game can be 90% combat or it can be 90% out of combat, i have played in games that were either and neither, so you need to rate how classes function in both situations.
of course, before you start your campaign you should ask the GM what style of campaign they are going to running, so you can choose and plan your class.
A home game in ANY system can be ANY thing. I have played board race games which we made into conquer the world of the game. That ability is not reflection of the actual games focuses.
What is a reflection is the granularity of each game phase (e.g. combat vs exploration) and the published adventure components. By these standards, the comments are pretty accurate that the game is 90% combat (esp. in PFS scenarios and APs where exploration etc is pretty much handled by a quick couple of arbitrary die rolls)
If you count in terms of time spent during PFS session, combat is the overwhelming majority though
<edit - I don't know how much actual PFS you play>
You've clearly never played PFS scenarios like 1-10 or more recently 3-12. Combat was fleeting, but the sessions still last 4 hours or better with a group having fun.
In none PFS my group that plays Extinction Curse is at least 50/50 of combat and noncombat
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the game can be 90% combat or it can be 90% out of combat, i have played in games that were either and neither, so you need to rate how classes function in both situations.
of course, before you start your campaign you should ask the GM what style of campaign they are going to running, so you can choose and plan your class.
A home game in ANY system can be ANY thing. I have played board race games which we made into conquer the world of the game. That ability is not reflection of the actual games focuses.
What is a reflection is the granularity of each game phase (e.g. combat vs exploration) and the published adventure components. By these standards, the comments are pretty accurate that the game is 90% combat (esp. in PFS scenarios and APs where exploration etc is pretty much handled by a quick couple of arbitrary die rolls)
Exploration mode and downtime mode being handled with a couple of arbitrary die rolls is a player/GM/adventure writer decision, not an inherent part of PF2. In fact, glossing over exploration mode, social encounters and downtime feels pretty counter to design of the game and involves ignoring many of its features.
I agree that some early adventures have struggled to fully utilize a relatively new system, but that is changing quickly and the blood lords AP is going to be an intrigue AP with organization building that is going to require doing a lot outside of combat, even if it likely includes a fair bit of combat encounters too.
A class comparison guide focused 90% on combat would be very misleading to a group of players getting ready for Strength of Thousands, Blood Lords, Outlaws of Alchenstar, or Agents of Edgewatch. Abomination Vaults, Age of Ashes, and Extinction Curse feel like the amount combat to other modes of play is very GM reliant, and could go either way. Not sure about Everflame. Haven’t played or looked closely at any of it.
APs are the most combat focused, especially if the GM just follows the adventure as is and doesn't add content around. With some GMs, you have like 90% of fights and nothing around. TPKs happen quite regularly in APs.
In PFS, combat is important but not that central. PFS adventuring days are quite short, mostly because you can hardly put much more than 3 fights in a 4 hour session. Overall, TPKs happen in PFS but they are quite rare.
In my opinion, the less combat focused campaigns are the homebrew ones. In general, when homebrewing, there's a higher focus on NPCs and downtime. But homebrew is obviously the most varied experience.
Actually, AoA and EC are combat centered.
Not sure about AV, but if you consider AoA and EC AP where the party/DM can do either way, I start wondering how much interpretation oriented may be the other ones...
PS: obvioualy, a party may dedicate more time to social stuff if they like to, but this regardless the system and, in this case, the AP.
I am playing through Age of Ashes now, finishing up the 3rd book so I am not deep diving into the lore sections of the writing. I know that Age of ashes suffers from the designers not having the full rules for the game developed before they were writing the first books, something they have talked about at length. Even so, the first book contains an entire 10 pages out of 90 dedicated to the gazetteer for Breechill, which is pretty much just downtime, and those 10 pages are meant to stretch pretty far because players are expected to be interacting around town, forging relationships and learning about the metaplot of the campaign from these interactions.
What APs haven't yet had as much of as PFS is specific scripts for the social encounters, exploration based encounters and down time challenges that spell out exactly how the players should be spending this time to figure out the massive amounts of lore included in each AP, but that lore is part of the AP players should be learning and they will primarily be doing that through Exploration mode, Downtime, and Social Encounters.
GMs that choose to just reveal most of it in large chunks of text shared with the PCs to move things along between combat encounters are making a choice to do so that I think is common in RPG gaming generally, but PF2 is intentionally trying to move away from.
Again, I think that PF2 is being relatively experimental within the style of game it is and thus is not being 100% consistent with utilizing these elements effectively. Also, I acknowledge that there are other, more narrative-based games with more concrete ways of incorporating these elements, so I don't think PF2 is being entirely innovative and revolutionary with these concepts overall, but they are pretty knew to mainstream fantasy D20 RPGs like D&D.
Moving forward, I think making sure players consider the other 3 elements of the game than combat encounters is pretty important, or you will end up with parties where one player is trained in diplomacy for a Blood Lords campaign and the party will feel like they have social encounters covered.
GMs that choose to just reveal most of it in large chunks of text shared with the PCs to move things along between combat encounters are making a choice to do so that I think is common in RPG gaming generally, but PF2 is intentionally trying to move away from.
I wouldn't judge them negatively. APs are written without that in mind at all and if you strictly follow the story there's nearly no interactions and such.
Now, the GM can make it work but it asks for a lot of work on their part, work that a lot of GMs don't want to put into an AP (as a lot of GMs buy APs especially to avoid that amount of work).So it's variable, but the default for APs is to be combat-centric.
Also, from my experience, a lot of APs deal with global threats, making the whole concept of downtime useless as you will soon no more meet the NPCs you are currently speaking with.
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I am not saying”you’re playing wrong” to players or GMs that want to play APs 90 % combat, they certainly can be and early PF2 APs put the same heavy burden on GMs to interpret giant chunks of lore Narrative into the downtime, social encounter, and exploration systems.
But that is changing, GMs are getting better support for it, and players should be aware that discussing how much combat to expect is a session 0 discussion with APs. Not a base assumption
From my experience, there is just parties with too much AoE, very little AoE, or the right amount. There is no such a thing as AoE-based parties if you want to be efficient, as there are no single target-based ones.At high level, if you rely on single target damage to put enemies down, half of the fights will be a slugfest. That's when you need to move to AoE based damage. But that's something very few parties do, as they have too many martials with a lack of multi target damage.
Eveytime I saw an inventor I thought that another class would do a bit better.Well, actually, that's quite true. At low levels, you'll prefer another martial. At high level, a caster. But if you want to play from level 1 to 20, Inventor is a very nice class as it starts quite high and doesn't fall behind at high level thanks to its heavy AoE damage.
I don't see any party in need of more AoE taking an inventor over taking a full caster, even at low levels, that's the thing. I don't think any party with 2 full casters will struggle with AoE damage/effects and I can't see any composition where you have 2 martials and a caster where you add an Inventor instead of another caster if the AoE is too low. I agree AoE is fundamental (as is single target damage, that's why I think Dragon Barbarian is the best Barbarian), I just don't think Inventor is ever the solution.