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Half a decade into PF2? Do you... count time the same way the rest of us do? We're just getting up to four years.
Also I don't recall Core PF1 having that great of support for what you're saying.
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But your not doing it the exact way they want
So it's not good enough
Isn't it better to use the tools the game gives you, rather than complain about the tools they're never going to give you?
Like PF2 is never going to let you summon the lantern archon barrage from PF1, nor is it going to let you play like "the Diablo 2 Necromancer" where you have 20+ minions following you around at all time. You're limited to 1 strong minion at a time, and you get basically one extra action this way. They're never going to let you operate 20 independent mobs in a turn, that was awful when people played that character in PF1- I'm glad it's gone. One player's turn isn't supposed to involve as much stuff as several other player's turns combined since this is a cooperative game about teamwork.
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Boring is purely subjective, best to edit that clarification because I love being a toolbox caster and I often feel I still have a theme, I'm just not one tricking.Aside from healer what other themes are officially supported without the need for a class that has only just been released?
In addition to the ones already talked about there are distinct archetypes for charm/illusion casters (Captivator) and shadow spells (shadowcaster). Captivator in particular is quite potent.
Pet necromancer- Isn't that just the Undead Master archetype from Book of the Dead? You get an animal companion except it's an undead monstrosity, and it's as good as an animal companion. You could alternatively be a Summoner with an undead Eidolon.
No, the appeal to the old Necromancer was picking up the bones of the Giant or Dragon the party just beat and knowing that he would shortly be adding a new pet to their arsenal. It was burying into libraries and busting out the scrying orb to find just the right new creature to slay and turn to your cause.
It was knowing that alongside your heavy hitters, you could have a screen of skeletons to keep the riff-raff away.
Holy DPS is probably going to be a lot more viable now that alignment damage isn't a thing but we'll have to see the remaster.
I'd just like a proper smite-happy Paladin back. Proper top-tier holy vengeance that can burst higher DPS than a fighter when those smites land but who's generally not on that level once the smites run out.
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Out of curiosity, what reason do you have for this thread to exist? To want PF2 to go back to PF1 design ethos? Because that ship has sailed. Do you want new classes? Do you just want to complain? I'm just... confused.
Out of curiosity, what reason do you have for this thread to exist? To want PF2 to go back to PF1 design ethos? Because that ship has sailed. Do you want new classes? Do you just want to complain? I'm just... confused.
I want the designers to see that people want to be able to play styles that are very much unsupported.
I doubt anything will change given that we see Paizo staff essentially telling caster players to get good on Twitter but it's important that they see our desire for options.
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No, the appeal to the old Necromancer was picking up the bones of the Giant or Dragon the party just beat and knowing that he would shortly be adding a new pet to their arsenal. It was burying into libraries and busting out the scrying orb to find just the right new creature to slay and turn to your cause.
It was knowing that alongside your heavy hitters, you could have a screen of skeletons to keep the riff-raff away.
That seems like a fun character for exactly one person involved in the game and decidedly not for anybody else. So it shouldn't need to be explained why we're not getting it back.
"I have a horde of minions and we have to take detours so I can get more" is a thing for video games, not for cooperative tabletop games.
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Here's the thing - those playstyles are supported, it's just that you're asking for a very specific way for it to be supported which doesn't fit with the design that PF2 has now.
I'd like to be a Holy DPS - the paladin actually dishes out some pretty amazing damage. But you seem to want specifically smites that add flat damage.
I'd like to play a pet necromancer - which... there are plenty of ways to go about that. But you want more minions? Don't want to use rituals? Don't want to engage with the minion abilities?
I'd like to play a summoner - I mean, name the way you want to do it and you can. Again, it seems like you're asking for controlling hordes which (as has been pointed out) generally wasn't fun or effective.
I want a themed caster - this has been available since day one and remains available. It's just that it's never going to be the best way to go since you are outright stating, "I'd like to trade away versatility for theme."
That seems like a fun character for exactly one person involved in the game and decidedly not for anybody else. So it shouldn't need to be explained why we're not getting it back.
"I have a horde of minions and we have to take detours so I can get more" is a thing for video games, not for cooperative tabletop games.
I never had an issue with it either as a player or GM. People can take short turns with a horde of minions and a full list of memorized spells and long turns with a Fighter who's only choice is to power attack or not.
As for the sidequest, you do that during travel or downtimes. Research, scry, prepare what's needed to defeat your new minion, and go fetch your new minion. Scry + Teleport w/o Error means it's barely even a detour.
I'd like to be a Holy DPS - the paladin actually dishes out some pretty amazing damage. But you seem to want specifically smites that add flat damage.
That's the whole appeal though. The Smite Paladin does big bursts of damage some of the time and plays second fiddle to the other melee characters the rest of the time.
I'd like to play a pet necromancer - which... there are plenty of ways to go about that. But you want more minions? Don't want to use rituals? Don't want to engage with the minion abilities?
1) That chooses how to allocate what undead they want from a pool of undead HD they can control
2) Chooses which creatures they create as undead under their control3) Gets feats that support customizing their undead
I'd like to play a summoner - I mean, name the way you want to do it and you can. Again, it seems like you're asking for controlling hordes which (as has been pointed out) generally wasn't fun or effective.
I don't as much care about a horde here but if my summons are going to be my primary combat output I do need them to contribute to the same degree as Slow or Synesthesia when cast from a slot of the appropriate level.
I want a themed caster - this has been available since day one and remains available. It's just that it's never going to be the best way to go since you are outright stating, "I'd like to trade away versatility for theme."
You should be able to trade breadth for depth and make a themed caster that can actually keep up rather than some Alchemist or Investigator-level mess.
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As a goblin merchant (sorcerer) I feel PF2e is great at themed casting.
Cantrips:
Approximate: Merchants have lots of counting to do this saves time.
Bullhorn: There is no better way to announce sales at the market.
Infections Enthusiasm: Great way to help me and my assistant to persuade a customer to buy something.
Time Sense: Great way to make sure you don't miss the best times of day to sell stuff.
Detect Magic: If it's magic, I'm certainly going to charge more for it.
1st level spells:
Alarm: Got to protect the shop at night.
Mending: If I can fix something I find, I can sell it for more.
Illusonry disguise: This is how I check the prices of other shops in the market without them knowing.
2nd level spells:
Draw Ire: Since I'm well trained in deception, diplomacy, intimidation, and goblin insults so, Draw Ire is a great way to give those skills a bit more punch.
Out of all the spell casters I've played, this character is one of the few, if not only one, to have actually used all the spells they know.
I was actually afraid to play this character at first. I didn't want to be the cause of a TPK but it's been surprisingly effective and fun to play.
And yes my mother named me Cleavis after a meat cleaver :)
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snip
These are just mechanical problems - as in you want the mechanics of PF1. It's like asking for Coke to taste more like Pepsi when Pepsi already exists. You can say that you want devs to see that there is an interest in these sorts of builds, but if you aren't going to accept that they're going to be within the design of how the game works.
There isn't going to be a class that routinely breaks through the accepted DPR assumptions and controlling massive amounts of creatures is either going to be "my GM is cool with me rasiging up undead with the Troop tag" or not going to happen. I mean, you can do all of these things, but you just do them in PF2. I'm not sure you're making a compelling point that you're being underserved when instead you're just turning up your nose as the entire system as a whole.
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I get the feeling that when poor Michael Sayre reads the op He is going to feel very misunderstood
The Essence of His Post is less 'theres one way to Play a caster' and more 'don't put all your eggs in one basket and Play tactically'
Not Putting all eggs in one basket means in this context things like 'if you want to be a Blaster, bläst more then one element type'
And If you want a mono-Element spellcaster of some Sort you know what you are getting into
Also that 'if you Cast mostly on your enemies, try mit to Attack only one save' which should be fairly achievable with at least most themes
And playing tactically means of course trying to find weaknesses, be it direcly (Recall knowledge), indirectly (my friend with the flame weapon punches' the enemy real good!) Or from a rudimentary Assessment (Hes big and tough, rather Go for Reflex then for con)
Imagine playing tactical in a Game that emphasizes it at every other turn
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I mean, if Paizo did print something that let one player regularly take like 6+ actions during their turn, I would ban whatever that is from my table before all the subscribers get their PDFs.
Summoner builds were straight up bad in PF1, since one player absolutely should not be allowed to "play the game more" because of how they built their character. This is antisocial and annoying.
But if you want to play that character, find a PF1 game that will let you play it.
snipThese are just mechanical problems - as in you want the mechanics of PF1. It's like asking for Coke to taste more like Pepsi when Pepsi already exists. You can say that you want devs to see that there is an interest in these sorts of builds, but if you aren't going to accept that they're going to be within the design of how the game works.
I'm asking for the company to start bottling Coke Classic again because this New Coke isn't doing a lot for me.
There isn't going to be a class that routinely breaks through the accepted DPR assumptions and controlling massive amounts of creatures is either going to be "my GM is cool with me rasiging up undead with the Troop tag" or not going to happen. I mean, you can do all of these things, but you just do them in PF2. I'm not sure you're making a compelling point that you're being underserved when instead you're just turning up your nose as the entire system as a whole.
Paladin wouldn't break DPR assumptions on average but could spike to either outright drop a higher level mook or chunk a boss and could spend the next round with a damage/hit penalty as balance. So they're good for opening a fight or trying to end it a round early but generally only shift when they do the damage not how much they do on average.
The fun of being a necromancer is that you hand-pick what you control. Taking that aspect away really kills the class for me.
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I mean, if Paizo did print something that let one player regularly take like 6+ actions during their turn, I would ban whatever that is from my table before all the subscribers get their PDFs.
Summoner builds were straight up bad in PF1, since one player absolutely should not be allowed to "play the game more" because of how they built their character. This is antisocial and annoying.
But if you want to play that character, find a PF1 game that will let you play it.
That's not what I've been asking for. You keep confusing that I want to have the big critter and the horde for a Necromancer with wanting an army of summons for the Summoner.
I just want Summoning to be as worthwhile as casting a meta spell like Slow or Synesthesia from the same slot. That a Summoner should be able to treat their summons as a toolbox the same way other casters get to treat their spells. I'm pretty sure that, niche utility spells aside, Summoning spells are some of the worst things you can use a high-level slot on.
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You can have multiple undead companions with the undead archetype, just take "additional companion" however many times. All of your upgrade feats even apply to all of your companions. But much like the beastmaster archetype, the rule is "only one can participate in a given combat."
TBH, I think "summoning spells are overall weaker than actual PCs or companions" is a good thing for the game.
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I mean, if Paizo did print something that let one player regularly take like 6+ actions during their turn, I would ban whatever that is from my table before all the subscribers get their PDFs.
LOL So you banned the poor loremaster and enigma muse bards since it can use True Hypercognition to get SEVEN actions a round, every round! O_O
You can have multiple undead companions with the undead archetype, just take "additional companion" however many times. All of your upgrade feats even apply to all of your companions. But much like the beastmaster archetype, the rule is "only one can participate in a given combat."
That 100% doesn't fit the class fantasy.
TBH, I think "summoning spells are overall weaker than actual PCs or companions" is a good thing for the game.
So a Summoning spell is just supposed to not be very useful even when cast in a 9th rank slot? What sense does that make?
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I mean summoning spells are useful. The use of summoning spells is "the bad guys are using their actions attacking the disposable minions, rather than attacking the party." That's a pretty good use even!
What they're not really for is "doing meaningful damage to enemies."
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I'm asking for the company to start bottling Coke Classic again because this New Coke isn't doing a lot for me.
But I can think of zero companies that have gone back to start supporting old editions because financially that's... a terrible idea? You can absolutely just not like PF2 and play another game. You don't have to take a game that exists and make it into a different game that also already exists.
Paladin wouldn't break DPR assumptions on average but could spike to either outright drop a higher level mook or chunk a boss and could spend the next round with a damage/hit penalty as balance. So they're good for opening a fight or trying to end it a round early but generally only shift when they do the damage not how much they do on average.
Right, but those sorts of mechanics don't exist any more because spikes of damage are hard to balance around when the game looks to provide a smooth experience. Like, you'll note that combats in PF2 tend to be a bit longer because you're trading away those sorts of mechanics for tactical depth. And some people don't like that. And it's okay. Some of us do.
The fun of being a necromancer is that you hand-pick what you control. Taking that aspect away really kills the class for me.
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Like the "I travel with a menagerie" fantasy is something the game has a limited interest in supporting. We got it with the Beastmaster/Undead Master archetypes that set a hard limit on "one at a time." You could put either of these on a Summoner and have an animal companion and an eidolon (a thing you couldn't do in PF1) but your actions are going to get really tight.
There are fantasies that the game has a limited interest in supporting. You cannot be a Green Lantern. You cannot be a killer robot from the future with a gatling plasma cannon for an arm. You cannot be Saitama. Other games might do these things well or not, but they're probably more interested in doing it than PF2 is.
One of the things the game is really not interested in supporting is "desecrating the corpses of the things you just killed."
I mean summoning spells are useful. The use of summoning spells is "the bad guys are using their actions attacking the disposable minions, rather than attacking the party." That's a pretty good use even!
What they're not really for is "doing meaningful damage to enemies."
Summons are worse than animal companions which are already pretty bad as you get to higher levels so unless the Summon also comes with a taunt effect why would an intelligent enemy even bother wasting an action on something that can't threaten it?
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I mean summoning spells are useful. The use of summoning spells is "the bad guys are using their actions attacking the disposable minions, rather than attacking the party." That's a pretty good use even!
What they're not really for is "doing meaningful damage to enemies."
Summons are worse than animal companions which are already pretty bad as you get to higher levels so unless the Summon also comes with a taunt effect why would an intelligent enemy even bother wasting an action on something that can't threaten it?
Most people don't play the game in full meta mechanics number crunching mode at the expense of the visual.
If you're playing critters of having in-game absolute knowledge of AC and attack bonuses of it and everything threatening it and so on, you're metagaming. In a rather sour way I might add.
Summons absolutely can threaten and harry enemies.
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Out of curiosity, what reason do you have for this thread to exist? To want PF2 to go back to PF1 design ethos? Because that ship has sailed. Do you want new classes? Do you just want to complain? I'm just... confused.I want the designers to see that people want to be able to play styles that are very much unsupported.
I doubt anything will change given that we see Paizo staff essentially telling caster players to get good on Twitter but it's important that they see our desire for options.
Ok, but you're not gonna get pf1 again...so it really comes off as old man shaking his fist at the wind. Years down the line when pf3 releases I 80 percent doubt it'll be pf1 design ethos adjacent so even trying to hasten a new edition probably isn't gonna help you in the grand scheme. It's just a whole lot of time and energy on your part for no gain
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One of things I thought has always hurt theme-based casting was the rules around Personal Staves.
When we heard of Personal Staves I was excited. At the time I was somewhat in love with the spell Gravity Well.
I was very excited to make a themed staff around "gravity manipulation".
But ended up being trait based, which, as a spell type, are generally not very robust for themes or "like-minded" spells.
Hardly a major issue, but is indicative of some of the issues faced with themed casting.
One of things I thought has always hurt theme-based casting was the rules around Personal Staves.
When we heard of Personal Staves I was excited. At the time I was somewhat in love with the spell Gravity Well.
I was very excited to make a themed staff around "gravity manipulation".
But ended up being trait based, which, as a spell type, are generally not very robust for themes or "like-minded" spells.
Hardly a major issue, but is indicative of some of the issues faced with themed casting.
considering that spell schools are gone one trait staves could rely on is gone
Maybe personalized staves get opened Up a little more
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I mean, balancing attack-roll spells isn't that hard: just make them a little bit more powerful than an equivalent save-based one, to account for the fact that a regular miss has no effect.
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Mr. Morerats you always cheer me up whenever I see you but I think for me casters like Psychic and classes like Kineticist seem to embody the idea of a theme in just ways that are a lot more fun than just picking a few spells that fit what you want to do
It brings me great joy to know this smiling goblin brings you cheer. I had not considered Psychic as a class for a merchant, but I'm now intrigued by the idea, what better way to know what people are looking to buy? I'm now determined to make Psychic my next archetype I take.
There's much more fun to be had than just picking a few spells as a merchant. It's quite a challenge finding uses for all my spells. For example, our party needed to travel a long distance, and was running out of time. You can imagine how horrified I was when we realized the only way to get there was to take a dog sled. Just hearing of the foul furry beast, I drew my dog slicer and was about to attack, but logic overcame my better goblin instincts, and a compromise was made. The only way me and the other goblin in the party were going to get on a dog sled was if they put a bag over our heads. Time goes by slowly when traveling with a bag over your head, so I kept casting time sense, then asking "Are we there yet?"
(...) (1) Getting rid of class-specific spell lists, (2) tying spell effects to the slot rather than the caster's level, and (3) not allowing "problem-solving" spells to actually bypass problems (...)
(1) No strong understanding for this one.
(2) Good riddance. In the last edition, it felt like getting cuckold every time a caster enjoyed free scaling effects (not even limited to damage) sacrificing nothing; while the BAB reliant classes had to sever their leg tendons each turn to even try using their most meaningful damaging only option multiplier, the iterative attacks.
(3) If everyone got to enjoy the Combat as War style with little fear for unfair rulings, not limited to the concept of spells which just "work" when fired off, I might have had the exact same sentiments. But alas, this was one another systematically lopsided area, so Paizo went the easy path and killed the conceptually absolute problem solver spells.
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One of the things the game is really not interested in supporting is "desecrating the corpses of the things you just killed."Well, Shambling Horror? Also Create undead and all other options? It would be mostly flavor but still...
You've linked to the summoner class instead of the Shambling Horror spell!
Spells are the nearly the only part of the game we still have ivory tower game design where we give people a big bundle of tools of incredibly varying quality and tell them to get on with it.
This I can agree with, to an extent. Like there are spells that are fine first level spells, but you wouldn't want that to be one of your few spells when you're a level 1 caster. Jump is a great spell! ...but maybe you don't want that when you're prepping out your two spells for the day. Thoughtful Gift has a ton of amazing applications, but if your spell slots are limited, it's going to feel rough.
So, yeah, there's a rough bit of "spellcasters are going to require a lot more thought/foreknowledge of the game" there. And, honestly, I'm not certain how that gets fixed without going to 4e route of "all spells do X and just tweak that X slightly within parameters."
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These conversations get complicated when “I want a thematic caster” is code for “I want to be able to specialize into doing the same thing over and over again with as little need for changing up my tactics or combat round routine as possible.”
For example, elemental sorcerers are incredibly thematic in design, but still capable of having a range of useful utility spells and even different damage types. Deciding being a fire sorcerer just means being a goblin and spamming elemental toss and produce flame over and over again isn’t thematic, it is trying to over specialize, and that is what PF2 puts up pretty intense walls to block. The closest classes to that style of play are the kineticist and the psychic, but both run into problems if you try to play them too narrowly or statically.
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Yeah, I could get on board when the complaint was "Not casting Slow feels so suboptimal, I don't feel like I can use my favored Fire spells as much as I would like." but now I'm seeing the complaint as "I can't play using this EXACT and arbitrary combination of mechanical effects and self limitations that may or may not have been supported in other TTRPGs"
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You cannot be a killer robot from the future with a gatling plasma cannon for an arm.You pretty much can be, actually.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3104
An Automaton is a killer robot from the past which is completely different from a killer robot from the future ;p