The only argument I can think of against ranged swashbuckler is that the fantasy of that class is about being daring, fearless and running into danger with a smile on their face, while ranged weapon (and ranged combat in general) gives off an impression of "safeness" and "carefullness", that is antithetical to the class. I'm pretty sure that ranged swashbuckler options are limited because of that, because one that would simply hit things from affar from the safety of the backlines would simply lack "panache".
The obvious choice would be to make a "gulch gunner" kind of deal, of giving them ranged weapon but rewarding them only if they use them in close quarter, but I don't know how they could balance that in PF2, were most creatures don't have attack of opportunity.
I mean, you CAN play a ranged Swashbuckler. You just have to use throwing weapons. It still has some pain points because Tumble Through and several of the styles don't mesh well with trying to stay out of melee.
Swashbucklers can't use bows because getting Finisher damage on a bow would be extremely silly, same deal with Thaumaturges.
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I have been playing a Hellknight fighter. A few observations on things I have encountered.
1) The rules around precious materials like Adamantine and Cold Iron, Mithril, or silver etc. Specifically, the rune restrictions limiting the level of runes based on the quality of the material.
Example, a +1 striking cold iron low quality longsword cannot be upgraded to +2 greater striking, unless you first upgrade the quality of the cold iron from low quality to standard.
This feels like an "artificial" restriction. You can upgrade an ordinary weapon with high level runes. You don't need high-grade steel or wood to do so. Increasing the quality of the precious materials increases the hardness, hit points, and Break Threshold, but other than that really doesn't do much except serve as gatekeeping for runes.
A standard-grade or high-grade cold iron weapon doesn't do more damage to demons or fey than a low-grade one. If it did, then upgrading your material qualities might be more worthwhile. For now, the only reason to upgrade is the rune restrictions.
2) I would like to see a higher level feat for armor or weapon proficiency that lets you increase your proficiency by a step.
3) I'd like to see some errata for prerequisites that aren't obtainable at the appropriate level. For example, the feat Armiger's Mobility (Lost Omens World Guide) is a level 8 feat that requires expert in Heavy Armor. This pretty much restricts this choice to champions only as they can get expert at level 7, but fighters cannot get it until level 11. This seems to be gatekeeping Hellknights to Champions not Fighters.
4) Hellknights have a feat tax in that have to select multiple dedication feats. (Arminger at 2 and Hellknight at 6). I'd like to see Hellknight Dedicaion allow you to select another Hellknight/Arminger feat as a bonus to rebate the feat tax.
Maybe some of this will get fixed if they do a Hellknight book in the future?
Pretty sure I'm gonna start allowing INT to bomb throwing in my home games.
Hey now, don't give away my investigator/alchemist hack!
A niche request:
Ruffian Rogues should include non-agile/finesse unarmed strikes on their sneak attack and crit specialization list. Just list it as "any simple weapons and unarmed strikes"
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I think after having read the thread and thought about it.
1) Unchained classes for the witch, alchemist and maybe gunslinger and swashbuckler.
2) Alignment based feats and spells that actually give you something when your alignment is neutral or you're worshipping a neutral god.
Pharasma is the most powerful god in the setting her followers should get some power damnit.
3) More varieties of champion.
I'm not sure that Divine Access is a must take, I'm currently playing a cosmos oracle with pretty much no intention of taking it, although that might be the exception to the rule.
That’s the beauty of it all. Cosmos is the most independant mystery from Divine Access because of its small deity list, solid focus spells, and its favorable curse balance.
Every Oracle getting a free Divine Access feat would appropriately help many of the other mysteries without overimproving an already solid one.
I don’t understand the flavour of divine access.
Like my bones oracle is a neutral pharasma woshipping anti undead person, it’s be lovely to have access to cloudkill and she can get it through divine access. But only through some evil pro undead gods portfolio.
She’d never willingly worship that, so what is divine access?
Here's something I wished they "addressed": why +3 maximum, and not +5? How hard would it have been to balance a +5 bonus, in addition of making Striking "the bonus times the die"?
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They did. During the Playtest.
At it was far, far, beyond awful. +3 and Greater Striking are already way too much power taken away from martial characters and put into mandatory items, for my taste, imagine Paizo keeping +5 weapons like the playtest?
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I don’t understand the flavour of divine access.
Like my bones oracle is a neutral pharasma woshipping anti undead person, it’s be lovely to have access to cloudkill and she can get it through divine access. But only through some evil pro undead gods portfolio.
She’d never willingly worship that, so what is divine access?
Oracles aren't required to worship anything at all. The basic idea is that you are more closely connected to things like "the Death Domain" than you are to any specific deity. So you're connected directly to your domains, which are shared between a bunch of different dieties who also connect to those same domains.
Since you're connected to the domain, and so are specific gods, you have access to some of that god's power without the approval, knowledge, or permission of the god. You basically have a backdoor into the portfolio of even deities you might hate because you're connected to the domain itself.
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Here's something I wished they "addressed": why +3 maximum, and not +5? How hard would it have been to balance a +5 bonus, in addition of making Striking "the bonus times the die"?+3 was the compromise between people who didn't want items to matter and people who wanted items to matter.
If you allow +5 what it does is equivalent to increasing level by 2, without actually giving more abilities. Making the game much easier for martials, and a bit easier for weapon using casters. If you don't give pure casters something extra they will however feel even worse than now (Bet people will say its fine because casters can just use abilities without rolls).
I never really understood the whole we want items to matter, therefore we’re making them an essential part of the maths for any martial character to keep up.
This is one the things I think Mathew mercer should get some credit for. 5e attaches maths accuracy to magic items just like 2e. But he was able to come up with rules for magic items that made them feel special and enhanced classes flavourfully rather than generically.
I think most people would be okay magic items having powerful abilities that ramped up, so long as they weren’t essentially to their fighter actually doing their job. As in reliably hitting what they’re swinging at.
I don’t understand the flavour of divine access.
Like my bones oracle is a neutral pharasma woshipping anti undead person, it’s be lovely to have access to cloudkill and she can get it through divine access. But only through some evil pro undead gods portfolio.
She’d never willingly worship that, so what is divine access?
Oracles aren't required to worship anything at all. The basic idea is that you are more closely connected to things like "the Death Domain" than you are to any specific deity. So you're connected directly to your domains, which are shared between a bunch of different dieties who also connect to those same domains.
Since you're connected to the domain, and so are specific gods, you have access to some of that god's power without the approval, knowledge, or permission of the god. You basically have a backdoor into the portfolio of even deities you might hate because you're connected to the domain itself.
Oh I know they don’t have to worship a god connected to their mystery. She chooses to as an act of defiance against whatever power made her how she is.
I like your back door analogy though. That could be another act of defiance.
I think the blockage I’ve been having is I feel like feats represent something active that the character intends to happen and I’ve been trying to justify how she’d intend that.
Thankyou.
The whole reason for the oracle curse, I like to believe, is that accessing divine domains directly (rather than mediated through something like worship) is bad for your health if you're a mortal. The Oracle has some of my favorite flavor of any class.
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+3 was the compromise between people who didn't want items to matter and people who wanted items to matter.
I wouldn't call making characters helpless without the appropriate magic weapons much of a compromise.
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I mean the basic reason that magic weapons increase the dice you roll is that in PF1 when you were rolling like 1d8+45 for damage, the d8 didn't actually matter at all and the entire premise of the game is "rolling dice when you care about the outcomes is fun."
But adding something like Weapon Specialization for when your character is without their magic sword of doom so they still do some damage was the compromise.
Here's something I wished they "addressed": why +3 maximum, and not +5? How hard would it have been to balance a +5 bonus, in addition of making Striking "the bonus times the die"?+3 was the compromise between people who didn't want items to matter and people who wanted items to matter.
If you allow +5 what it does is equivalent to increasing level by 2, without actually giving more abilities. Making the game much easier for martials, and a bit easier for weapon using casters. If you don't give pure casters something extra they will however feel even worse than now (Bet people will say its fine because casters can just use abilities without rolls).
I never really understood the whole we want items to matter, therefore we’re making them an essential part of the maths for any martial character to keep up.
This is one the things I think Mathew mercer should get some credit for. 5e attaches maths accuracy to magic items just like 2e. But he was able to come up with rules for magic items that made them feel special and enhanced classes flavourfully rather than generically.
I think most people would be okay magic items having powerful abilities that ramped up, so long as they weren’t essentially to their fighter actually doing their job. As in reliably hitting what they’re swinging at.
Good thing is that PF2e already does that. There are many, many interesting items already in the game. They start to get really good after level 10, but around 4-9 you have some nifty stuff to play with, in my opinion.
The thing, though, is that most people think of +X in terms of video games, where the progression through stat bonus is expected... However, you have a much shorter experience with the same items, which makes the treadmill invisible, on top of you also getting more skilled in the game and experiencing more content.
In TTRPGs, you have many, many hours of experience with the same items, the experience it emulates is quite different from games (RPGs or not) and it's far slower. Thus, +X mandatory items feel like spending money just to barely function, since the treadmill is more noticeable, the time spent with +X of each tier is significant and, if you're martial, you know that without that +X Striking weapon, you are basically nothing against the challenges that are worth your time.
At the time of the playtest, the discussion was heavy on this topic. Lots of people here, which are basically those that think enough about this game to realize these things, wanted the christmas tree effect to be gone. However, the surveys showed that people wanted these items. Personally, I think it's mostly due mix to lack of understanding and adherence to tradition. Thankfully, Mark Seifter, one of the main designers of PF2e, was on our side, so the Automatic Bonus Progression rule was published quite fast post launch.
I doubt it will happen and I've already been pretty vocal about it but a compromise for the 'half your characters power is about the items they use' issue is permanent augments/weapon tattoos/etc. That way you still have incentive to make money or get excited when you get runes and such, but getting your weapon destroyed or taken away doesn't mean the adventure comes to a halt until you get a replacement.
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However, the surveys showed that people wanted these items.
I don't know that this is true: people could want magic items to be meaningful [magic effects] AND not want these items in particular [adding math]. A LOT of the surveys had broad categories to pick from, leaving more nuanced answers for a general feedback block that people may or may not have filled in. So while people wanted impactful magic items, I'm not sure they were thinking +1-3 weapon runes in particular.
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However, the surveys showed that people wanted these items.I don't know that this is true: people could want magic items to be meaningful [magic effects] AND not want these items in particular [adding math]. A LOT of the surveys had broad categories to pick from, leaving more nuanced answers for a general feedback block that people may or may not have filled in. So while people wanted impactful magic items, I'm not sure they were thinking +1-3 weapon runes in particular.
The questions in the survey singled out fundamental runes, not magic items as a whole. I remember that the discussion about the survey results clearly showed to paizo that the majority of answers wanted items to have a mechanical impact on hit chance, AC and etc.
People might not have voted specifically to +3 Greater Striking Weapons or +3 armor/Saves, but they did vote for the mandatory items that enhanced combat stats and nothing else. Whether they knew it meant items that the system expects them to have in order to keep up with the difficulty curve or not, that's irrelevant now. But I'm sure more people would be against them if they knew what they have always meant mechanically-wise.
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However, the surveys showed that people wanted these items.I don't know that this is true: people could want magic items to be meaningful [magic effects] AND not want these items in particular [adding math]. A LOT of the surveys had broad categories to pick from, leaving more nuanced answers for a general feedback block that people may or may not have filled in. So while people wanted impactful magic items, I'm not sure they were thinking +1-3 weapon runes in particular.The questions in the survey singled out fundamental runes, not magic items as a whole. I remember that the discussion about the survey results clearly showed to paizo that the majority of answers wanted items to have a mechanical impact on hit chance, AC and etc.
People might not have voted specifically to +3 Greater Striking Weapons or +3 armor/Saves, but they did vote for the mandatory items that enhanced combat stats and nothing else. Whether they knew it meant items that the system expects them to have in order to keep up with the difficulty curve or not, that's irrelevant now. But I'm sure more people would be against them if they knew what they have always meant mechanically-wise.
I recalled the questions included runes, but I don't recall the specific question. Yeah, I don't know if it was a vote for the runes as/is. When I said '[adding math]', I'm not sure people were thinking/connecting a +1-3 to hit with +1-3 dice of damage; IMO, not all votes for weapons making it easier to hit were a vote for the majority of damage coming from that rune: that's what I was saying about nuanced answers.
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PF2: no one is above the math.
The reason why magic items are an expected part of the game is because otherwise there is no aspect of character development not tied directly to leveling up. With players finding treasure character progression gets another dial for GMs to turn. GMs can give parties goodies that exceed their level upon occasion and it if fine because the curve balances. Some APs missed this memo and don’t include enough early runes for players to find stuff that feels special, but that is an easy thing to fix. The biggest problems with APB are that it can be used against casters that need wealth to buy their items because their items provide extra spells, not bonus numbers, but 2. All character growth happens at once, when a character levels up, and thus characters risk becoming stale by the 7th or 8th encounter before a level up
I think Dex and Ranged get conflated too much here. Ranged is situationally good, but Dex in the absence of that is usually not great and we only see classes specifically choose Dex when their builds demand it.Dex rogues and swashbucklers are popular because their mechanics are built around Dex.
Ranged Inventors and Magi are somewhat popular and strong, but their melee builds tend toward strength based ones because they're simply better (especially at low levels). You'll see archer fighters and some throwing barbs, but you'll almost never see either of them with a rapier.
If you're optimizing for damage strength is just better. Things start to get muddled when you try to do literally anything else with the character though, since unless you have access to heavy armor you still need dex investment. You can get an 18/16/12/12/10/10 spread, or an 18/14/14/12/10/10 as a human. IF there's an ancestry that fits you can get 18/16/14/10/10/10 or 18/16/14/12/10/8. Obviously you'd need to make sacrifices to be more versatile (which isn't something pf2 rewards often).
These spreads work fine for things like fighters and champions, who can afford to dump dex with basically no penalty. But without it your options are dump defense or dump damage, which is where the decision between dex and str is tougher, and a lot of character concepts will require investing in other stats. Like a ranger who uses snares wants to invest in int.
When it comes to ranged dex vs melee dex, ranged dex is just better unless your class forces you into melee (see swash/rogue). These classes can't afford to invest in both str and dex (unlike fighter), because they're MAD (Inventor, Magi, alch, casters) so they won't get any bonus damage to their melee attacks, and in general finesse weapons have the same damage die as their ranged counterparts.
Part of why you see a bunch of melee strength magus/inventors, especially at low levels is because big damage is way more exciting than a higher AC and...
I think Squiggit was talking more generally here. The meaning I got was that investing a lot into dex is unlikely if your class doesn't demand it. Not that they will put literally nothing in dex. All characters will do their best to max out their dex cap, after all. Medium armor builds also want to not suck at reflex saves.
I don’t understand the flavour of divine access.
Like my bones oracle is a neutral pharasma woshipping anti undead person, it’s be lovely to have access to cloudkill and she can get it through divine access. But only through some evil pro undead gods portfolio.
She’d never willingly worship that, so what is divine access?
Oracles aren't required to worship anything at all. The basic idea is that you are more closely connected to things like "the Death Domain" than you are to any specific deity. So you're connected directly to your domains, which are shared between a bunch of different dieties who also connect to those same domains.
Since you're connected to the domain, and so are specific gods, you have access to some of that god's power without the approval, knowledge, or permission of the god. You basically have a backdoor into the portfolio of even deities you might hate because you're connected to the domain itself.
Oh I know they don’t have to worship a god connected to their mystery. She chooses to as an act of defiance against whatever power made her how she is.
I like your back door analogy though. That could be another act of defiance.
I think the blockage I’ve been having is I feel like feats represent something active that the character intends to happen and I’ve been trying to justify how she’d intend that.
Thankyou.
There's a pretty good case that Oracles aren't meant to choose their powers, what with the curse aspect. Personally, I roleplay that most of my spell repertoire was not chosen by my character. They just periodically wake up with new powers they don't initially know how to control.
Might not fit your character, but something to consider when you look at feats like this.
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Oracles have some interesting curses and abilities. Debilitation Dichotomy is a powerful focus spell. I've seen that spell do some nasty damage, while the oracle still gets to launch an attack or do another 1 action option.
You can get some damage resistance as an oracle. Some of the focus options are very nice.
It has a lot of flavor and makes for a good alternate hybrid healing class. I've seen an Ancestor and Battle Oracle in action, so far they've been effective mixing support healing and damage dealing while picking up some archetype abilities to stack with the curse like tripping with Ancestor.
I started playing a Cosmos Oracle. The DR is nice as a healer.
Oracle is not a power class by any stretch. But they can be fun and interesting while being effective and useful.
I don’t understand the flavour of divine access.
Like my bones oracle is a neutral pharasma woshipping anti undead person, it’s be lovely to have access to cloudkill and she can get it through divine access. But only through some evil pro undead gods portfolio.
She’d never willingly worship that, so what is divine access?
Oracles aren't required to worship anything at all. The basic idea is that you are more closely connected to things like "the Death Domain" than you are to any specific deity. So you're connected directly to your domains, which are shared between a bunch of different dieties who also connect to those same domains.
Since you're connected to the domain, and so are specific gods, you have access to some of that god's power without the approval, knowledge, or permission of the god. You basically have a backdoor into the portfolio of even deities you might hate because you're connected to the domain itself.
Oh I know they don’t have to worship a god connected to their mystery. She chooses to as an act of defiance against whatever power made her how she is.
I like your back door analogy though. That could be another act of defiance.
I think the blockage I’ve been having is I feel like feats represent something active that the character intends to happen and I’ve been trying to justify how she’d intend that.
Thankyou.
There's a pretty good case that Oracles aren't meant to choose their powers, what with the curse aspect. Personally, I roleplay that most of my spell repertoire was not chosen by my character. They just periodically wake up with new powers they don't initially know how to control.
Might not fit your character, but something to consider when you look at feats like this.
I’ve always felt similarly about oracles in terms of class features at least.
Feats feel different to me, for instance, Marta (character in question) has bardic dedication, basic muses whispers, basic bard spell casting, she didn’t just wake up one day and become a practicing mini bard lol.
5) New Doctrine: Also, only having two subclasses seems weak for the Cleric, especially when every other class that has subclasses has at least 3. I’ve seen a lot of people begging for a scaled fist doctrine, and I can ge behind that. Have the warpriest’s holy symbol provide the same benefits as the dragon disciple’s ‘scales of the dragon,’ and have them treat their favored weapon as if it was unarmed strike . . . and you are off to the races.
1dM has a video that presents the argument that the design space for cleric doctrines is very small, and may already be full. He argues that the warpriest doctrine was added specifically to appease playtest players who wanted a more combat-focused build for their clerics, and that the class as a whole wasn't designed with the idea that it could expand out into multiple sub-classes.
Maybe the answer is just better finesse weapons?
Longbows are d8 and there are d10 guns and crossbows.
Just limit rogues to d8 damage dice for sneak attacks (exactly like how ruffian already does it)
It would honestly have to be a weapon with a downside in order to be finesse and have a higher die size than d8. The longbow has volley and crossbows have reload.
Like there's obviously not going to be a d12 finesse weapon, since there are only six of these, a third are advanced, and 5/6 have only one beneficial trait (sweep, shove, or versatile P). Traits have different values in weapon balance and Finesse is one of the most valued ones.
The d10 category other than the ranged weapons (which all have reload or volley and capacity) is all big 2h weapons- polearms, big spears, big picks, and big flails. There's nothing really "finesse" that fits here.
If you look at the next best available category, you end up with something like the Aldori Dueling Sword (1 handed, d8, but advanced) or the curve blade/spiked chain/dueling spear (2 handed, d8, martial).
A big thing they're not going to want to do is to print a better weapon that makes obsolete a previous weapon. If they do this accidentally, they're probably going to errata the new weapon (I believe this is going to happen with the Panabas.)
It would honestly have to be a weapon with a downside in order to be finesse and have a higher die size than d8. The longbow has volley and crossbows have reload.
Like there's obviously not going to be a d12 finesse weapon, since there are only six of these, a third are advanced, and 5/6 have only one beneficial trait (sweep, shove, or versatile P). Traits have different values in weapon balance and Finesse is one of the most valued ones.
The d10 category other than the ranged weapons (which all have reload or volley and capacity) is all big 2h weapons- polearms, big spears, big picks, and big flails. There's nothing really "finesse" that fits here.
If you look at the next best available category, you end up with something like the Aldori Dueling Sword (1 handed, d8, but advanced) or the curve blade/spiked chain/dueling spear (2 handed, d8, martial).
A big thing they're not going to want to do is to print a better weapon that makes obsolete a previous weapon. If they do this accidentally, they're probably going to errata the new weapon (I believe this is going to happen with the Panabas.)
It seems like there's room for a d10 finesse melee weapon with a drawback. Perhaps it has trouble making follow-up attacks thus encouraging a character using it to move, attack, and use a utility action as their basic round-by-round rotation.
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I mean if the answer is that the existing options aren't really worth using on their own without special incentive, is adding drawbacks really necessary?
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I truly, sincerely do not want to reward dex martials with more damage. Figure something else out before slashing grace happens again.
I mean if the answer is that the existing options aren't really worth using on their own without special incentive, is adding drawbacks really necessary?
It's possible that an advanced d10 finesse melee weapon with no drawbacks wouldn't be an issue but that would power creep existing options. I'm personally of the mindset that it isn't an issue to power creep a suboptimal option but I doubt the designers feel the same way given their desire for strong niche protection and better undertuned than overtuned mindset.
I truly, sincerely do not want to reward dex martials with more damage. Figure something else out before slashing grace happens again.
Yeah, a basic tradeoff in basically any similar game is "more defense->less offense" and "more offense->less defense."
So ranged weapons (which can be used from a place of safety, where danger isn't) doing less damage than "a big 2h axe that you need to be right up in someone's face to use" is not a bug it's a feature. This is the same reason that 1h weapons (which can be used with a shield) do less damage than 2h weapons.
Many dex-martials can work fine with class features like the Inventor, Thaumaturge, etc. get in order to straight up add more damage. If there's a dex martial that might need help it's probably the fighter, which could be improved with more advanced finesse weapon with fatal since the fighter's basic edge is "best accuracy" and "can make any advanced weapon work." I would be interested to see how well a fighter dual-wielding kerambits could work.
Is the problem then that against reasonably powerful enemies it’s very hard to get your AC high enough to be a reasonably reliable defence regardless of build.
So what it counts the benefit of the dex build isn’t there.
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Yeah, a basic tradeoff in basically any similar game is "more defense->less offense" and "more offense->less defense."
Admittedly a bit trickier to figure out in PF2 where the AC advantage goes to strength builds, though. Figuring out how much damage every point in Reflex should be worth is awkward enough on its own.
So ranged weapons (which can be used from a place of safety, where danger isn't) doing less damage than "a big 2h axe that you need to be right up in someone's face to use" is not a bug it's a feature.
But that highlights the problem finesse builds tend to have. A rapier does not do appreciably more damage than a shortbow (it actually does less if you're low strength), while requiring you to be as in your face as the guy with the two handed axe.
You mention the thaumaturge, but one of the reasons it's even on the table is because it gets to break the rules people in this thread are pointing to as being necessary. Empowerment means their short sword is functionally a d10 weapon for them. And even then both ranged and strength options manage to be extremely compelling options, despite claims that a d10 finesse weapon would break the game entirely.
There's a reason these builds basically don't exist except for classes that get features that compel it, which makes all this hand wringing over them breaking the game feel really out of place.
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Shield usage... I swear they turned these into consumable items...
The Starfinder rules about shields seem better fit for Pathfinder.
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I will forever stand by: allow basic animal forms to last to 20 at medium size and scale the entire way. I’m looking at Frog, Wolf, Cat etc.. take the spell, scale as martial or whatever the scaling currently is, stretch it out to level 20 instead of stopping at level 10 and allow being medium sized instead of being forced to take stuff like Dinosaur Form and Kaiju Form and get bigger and bigger. I just want to play a regular feral Druid. I don’t want to be shoehorned into more mystical and exotic forms to keep up with the shape shifting shtick.
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Automatic skill scaling backported for some old classes that existed before Paizo figured out how great of an idea that was:
Alchemists lean on crafting as much as Inventors.
Swashbucklers basically have two of their skill increases locked down by design, giving them at least one for free would be a big help.
... I also think it'd be cool for Alchemists to get companion options. As a class that's basically neither martial nor spellcaster I feel like it might be the best situated to have a companion. Beastmaster archetype is okay, but having an in-house option would let Paizo give Alchemists weirder options befitting of their class fantasy.