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Possibly the same reason as PF2 tbh, consolidating the 'types' of characters. Both games did away with 2/3rd casters entirely.
Mostly agreed. It's interesting to note that PF2 and D&D5 both have full-caster Bards and at-will cantrips. But this is coincidental; PF1 and D&D4 also had at-will cantrips, and PF2 made Bards full casters to give all four traditions a full caster class in the core rulebook. (I have no idea what D&D5's reasoning for making Bards full casters was. Bards were the only "Tier 3" core class in D&D3.5; they didn't need "fixing"!)Probably two-fold:
1. Bards were seen as weak in 3e, and they thought they could use the buff.
2. 5e doesn't have 2/3-casting like in 3e. There's full casting, there's half casting (what paladins, rangers, and artificers have), and there's third casting (what eldritch knights and arcane tricksters have).
1-4 is still half casting. It's only one slot different from 1-5. 1/3 would be 1-3. 1/2 used to be 1-4 but it could be either as half of 9 is 4.5 anyways. So you gotta choose to round up or down
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Yeah, Rogue dedication starts you off with trained but with no further advancement. It still gives you all the other goodies at least, whereas I still think the initial Fighter dedication is only slightly better than training in a single skill on its own.Did the Rogue Dedication's granting of light armor proficiency change to match the change to the Armor Proficiency feat or does it also still not increase in proficiency?I really like the change to the Weapon Proficiency general feat but the initial Fighter Dedication and Diverse Weapon Expert haven't changed at all to compensate.
...I have the same question.
I think if this is true, that both Fighter Dedication and Rogue Dedication not giving the same scaling for their respective proficiencies that General Feats do is possibly an oversight.
=)
That's really interesting.
So if I understand the new rules, a Wizard could take the Rogue dedication to become trained in light armor, then take the Armor Proficiency feat to become trained in medium armor, then take the Armor Proficiency feat again to become trained in heavy armor.
When they hit level 13 they would become expert in unarmed defense, medium armor, and heavy armor, but would still only be trained in light armor.
That does seem a bit weird.
So if I understand the new rules, a Wizard could take the Rogue dedication to become trained in light armor, then take the Armor Proficiency feat to become trained in medium armor, then take the Armor Proficiency feat again to become trained in heavy armor.
When they hit level 13 they would become expert in unarmed defense, medium armor, and heavy armor, but would still only be trained in light armor.
That does seem a bit weird.
If that's the case, I see it getting fixed fairly quickly.
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As I've grown in wisdom I know longer see anything in PF2 getting fixed fairly quickly.
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Possibly the same reason as PF2 tbh, consolidating the 'types' of characters. Both games did away with 2/3rd casters entirely.
The sad thing is that most players in PF1 considered 2/3 spellcasters the best designed classes in the game, since they both provided versatility and power and flavor all without breaking the power ceiling (which was already broken by Core Wizard anyway).
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Possibly the same reason as PF2 tbh, consolidating the 'types' of characters. Both games did away with 2/3rd casters entirely.The sad thing is that most players in PF1 considered 2/3 spellcasters the best designed classes in the game, since they both provided versatility and power and flavor all without breaking the power ceiling (which was already broken by Core Wizard anyway).
It was definitely sort of a curious design choice to take what was almost universally considered the best stuff PF1 has on offer and design PF2 to never have anything like that.
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I think they initially tried to do this and ultimately couldn't come up with anything at the time.
Then they evolved into things like Wave Casting and whatever the Psychic has going for it.
It does make me wonder how much different/better certain existing classes would be if they were converted into Wave Casting/Psychic progression.
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It was definitely sort of a curious design choice to take what was almost universally considered the best stuff PF1 has on offer and design PF2 to never have anything like that.Possibly the same reason as PF2 tbh, consolidating the 'types' of characters. Both games did away with 2/3rd casters entirely.The sad thing is that most players in PF1 considered 2/3 spellcasters the best designed classes in the game, since they both provided versatility and power and flavor all without breaking the power ceiling (which was already broken by Core Wizard anyway).
Spellcasting archetypes kind of are those, though. Especially when using Free Archetype rules. (Or Ancient Elf or Arcane Trickster.)
The scaling is all over the place and it is bizaare.
Let us take Armor Proficiency. It now scales to expert at lvl 13 now, yay! Good improvement, nice for casters.
For martials, it gives them scaling heavy armor.... except for lvl 11-12 and 19-20 for most classes, when they get their proficiency bumps early.
Why on earth? Just make it scale. It is clunky, akward, and makes zero sense to have it scale except for a few levels.
Weapon proficiency is equally strange.
A lvl 1 ancestry feat will give you scaling martial/advanced proficiency AND crit spec.
A general feat will give you caster scaling only.
A lvl 12 class feat with fighter archetype gives you expert?
It makes no sense that these things co-exist.
Blame it on level-based proficiency scaling and differentiating classes via said scaling.
It probably should improve whenever your class bumps it, but I'm sure that could cause other problems.
Given the changes in everything else. I am going to assume that these are editing mistakes or simply changes that are going to be in future books.
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One thing I don't like:
The Changeling and Nephilim heritages are still dead choices for ancestries that already have darkvision built in (like Dwarves,Goblins, and Orcs). Since there's the clause to upgrade low-light vision to darkvision, and fully 3/8 of the ancestries in Player Core 1 have Darkvision, you'd think they'd have a clause for "what happens if you take Changeling as a Versatile Heritage on an Ancestry that has Darkvision already."
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One thing I don't like:
The Changeling and Nephilim heritages are still dead choices for ancestries that already have darkvision built in (like Dwarves,Goblins, and Orcs). Since there's the clause to upgrade low-light vision to darkvision, and fully 3/8 of the ancestries in Player Core 1 have Darkvision, you'd think they'd have a clause for "what happens if you take Changeling as a Versatile Heritage on an Ancestry that has Darkvision already."
Do you not take the Heritage for its feats ?
I do not remember players taking this kind of Versatile Heritage just to boost their PC's vision from Low-light to Darkvision.
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One thing I don't like:
The Changeling and Nephilim heritages are still dead choices for ancestries that already have darkvision built in (like Dwarves,Goblins, and Orcs). Since there's the clause to upgrade low-light vision to darkvision, and fully 3/8 of the ancestries in Player Core 1 have Darkvision, you'd think they'd have a clause for "what happens if you take Changeling as a Versatile Heritage on an Ancestry that has Darkvision already."
Do you not take the Heritage for its feats ?
I do not remember players taking this kind of Versatile Heritage just to boost their PC's vision from Low-light to Darkvision.
Sure, but how this works is if you want to play a Changeling and take Changeling feats it works out that if you pick an ancestry other than Dwarf, Goblin, or Orc you get something from your Changeling Heritage that you wouldn't if you picked Dwarf, Goblin, or Orc. So there's an opportunity cost (you only get one heritage) about making your pitborn or angelkin PCs a less-subterranean ancestry.
You can see how they accommodated for some ancestries already having low-light vision, with the clause " you gain darkvision if your ancestry already has lowlight vision." So there's no reason they couldn't have another clause for "what you get if you already have darkvision". They just didn't do that.
The game is generally good about refunding you if you gain a redundant feature through a character choice, so places where this doesn't happen stand out.
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One thing I don't like:
The Changeling and Nephilim heritages are still dead choices for ancestries that already have darkvision built in (like Dwarves,Goblins, and Orcs). Since there's the clause to upgrade low-light vision to darkvision, and fully 3/8 of the ancestries in Player Core 1 have Darkvision, you'd think they'd have a clause for "what happens if you take Changeling as a Versatile Heritage on an Ancestry that has Darkvision already."
Do you not take the Heritage for its feats ?
I do not remember players taking this kind of Versatile Heritage just to boost their PC's vision from Low-light to Darkvision.
Sure, but how this works is if you want to play a Changeling and take Changeling feats it works out that if you pick an ancestry other than Dwarf, Goblin, or Orc you get something from your Changeling Heritage that you wouldn't if you picked Dwarf, Goblin, or Orc. So there's an opportunity cost (you only get one heritage) about making your pitborn or angelkin PCs a less-subterranean ancestry.
You can see how they accommodated for some ancestries already having low-light vision, with the clause " you gain darkvision if your ancestry already has lowlight vision." So there's no reason they couldn't have another clause for "what you get if you already have darkvision". They just didn't do that.
The game is generally good about refunding you if you gain a redundant feature through a character choice, so places where this doesn't happen stand out.
I understand, but I do not see what they could give that would not be too strong.
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I understand, but I do not see what they could give that would not be too strong.
The way I see it is that a lot of ancestries have an "improve your vision" heritage. So this is considered to be equivalent to other standard heritage options.
Since you could choose to be a leaf leshy instead of a fungus leshy, or a sensate gnome instead of an umbral gnome, or an arctic elf instead of a cavern elf, it seems reasonable to give like "a level 1 skill feat".
Alternatively, There could just not be very many orc or dwarf or goblin changelings or Nephilim out in the world (since there weren't in the lore previously) and so there doesn't really need to be an extra incentive to always pick ancestries that already get darkvision by default. "There aren't really very many of these in the world anyway" can easily translate into, "there was no reason to incentivize players to pick these choices, except that they really want to play this option that has the world, and game stacked against them."
I mean, I personally hate darkvision as a starting player option in any RPG because darkness is such a interesting environmental element to build an ecology around...until it becomes bypassable by a large pool of unequal options (some characters can bypass it all day starting at level 1, other need equipment or spells that they can't get until level 3, or even later if they are waiting for someone else to cast it on them). But that ship sailed a long time ago.
Certainly, if you wanted to represent that certain versatile heritages are more common among Dwarves, Goblins, and Orcs you should make those heritages give something other than "improved vision" or at least "grant something if the ancestry already has darkvision."
Like Dwarf Oreads should be more common than Dwarf Changelings, so when we get the remastered geniekin and the rest of the planar scions, please make sure they don't do the same "vision upgrade" thing if you want to represent "these are found among Dwarves, Orcs, and Goblins."
Like it's kind of weird that mechanically it makes more sense for a Dwarf to be an Undine than an Oread as it stands.
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Certainly, if you wanted to represent that certain versatile heritages are more common among Dwarves, Goblins, and Orcs you should make those heritages give something other than "improved vision" or at least "grant something if the ancestry already has darkvision."
Like Dwarf Oreads should be more common than Dwarf Changelings, so when we get the remastered geniekin and the rest of the planar scions, please make sure they don't do the same "vision upgrade" thing if you want to represent "these are found among Dwarves, Orcs, and Goblins."
Like it's kind of weird that mechanically it makes more sense for a Dwarf to be an Undine than an Oread as it stands.
Thing is the character does not get to choose.
Only the player does.
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Yeah but it's still a shoddily done mechanic. Dead features are never going to look like good game design.
Certainly, if you wanted to represent that certain versatile heritages are more common among Dwarves, Goblins, and Orcs you should make those heritages give something other than "improved vision" or at least "grant something if the ancestry already has darkvision."
Like Dwarf Oreads should be more common than Dwarf Changelings, so when we get the remastered geniekin and the rest of the planar scions, please make sure they don't do the same "vision upgrade" thing if you want to represent "these are found among Dwarves, Orcs, and Goblins."
Like it's kind of weird that mechanically it makes more sense for a Dwarf to be an Undine than an Oread as it stands.
This makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be better to categorise vision in steps, so that stacking heritages with low-light vision and darkvision would be simpler (e.g. “your vision improves by one/two steps”). Greater darkvision at level 1 might perhaps be strong, but would at least avoid that kind of collision.
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Thing is the character does not get to choose.
Only the player does.
Sure, but the whole "you can get the human stat array on any ancestry" thing was motivated by "mechanics make certain ancestry/class combinations less desirable" phenomenon. Diagetically there are certainly Gnomes who become Barbarians, Dwarves who become Oracles, Leshies who become Wizards, etc. but those choices were weaker than alternative ones because of the ancestral stat flaw so players were disinclined to play them, so they changed the rules.
What I'm saying is that going forward it would be good to see fewer versatile heritages that have the whole "improve vision" bonus for the heritage since it does nothing for certain ancestries. Pre-remaster you saw this on Aasimar, Aphorites, Ardande, Changelings, Dhampir, Duskwalkers, Oreads, Suli, Sylph, and Tieflings. Player Core 1 is 2/2 on the same thing. It would be nice going forward if we had more Versatile Heritages like the Ganzi, the I̶f̶r̶i̶t̶ Naari, Talos, Undine, etc. that don't give dead features to certain ancestries.
It's just surprising to me that they didn't address this in Player Core 1 since the percentage of "core ancestries with darkvision" actually went up compared to the CRB (3/8 instead of 2/6).
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Well they weren't going to just hand out Greater Darkvision at level 1. At some point it had to end, you still get to pick from all the other feats and get the flavour.One thing I don't like:
The Changeling and Nephilim heritages are still dead choices for ancestries that already have darkvision built in (like Dwarves,Goblins, and Orcs). Since there's the clause to upgrade low-light vision to darkvision, and fully 3/8 of the ancestries in Player Core 1 have Darkvision, you'd think they'd have a clause for "what happens if you take Changeling as a Versatile Heritage on an Ancestry that has Darkvision already."
Do you not take the Heritage for its feats ?
I do not remember players taking this kind of Versatile Heritage just to boost their PC's vision from Low-light to Darkvision.
Sure, but how this works is if you want to play a Changeling and take Changeling feats it works out that if you pick an ancestry other than Dwarf, Goblin, or Orc you get something from your Changeling Heritage that you wouldn't if you picked Dwarf, Goblin, or Orc. So there's an opportunity cost (you only get one heritage) about making your pitborn or angelkin PCs a less-subterranean ancestry.
You can see how they accommodated for some ancestries already having low-light vision, with the clause " you gain darkvision if your ancestry already has lowlight vision." So there's no reason they couldn't have another clause for "what you get if you already have darkvision". They just didn't do that.
The game is generally good about refunding you if you gain a redundant feature through a character choice, so places where this doesn't happen stand out.
Aren't there a lot of places where the rules say If you already have Darkvision, increase the range by 30'?
Cause that would be my goto here.
The other way to fix this would be to build in a "you gain either [improved vision] or [other thing]" into the heritage. Like everybody gets to pick between like, better vision or resistance to something. It's just that for some people that choice is obvious.
This you could just do with errata, but it's worth thinking about before they print a bunch more of these.
Like something like "You gain low-light vision, or you gain darkvision if your ancestry already has low-light vision. Alternatively, you may instead gain spirit resistance equal to half your level (minimum 1)" could work for Nephilim.
Aren't there a lot of places where the rules say If you already have Darkvision, increase the range by 30'?
Cause that would be my goto here.
Be advised that this would result in a goblin nephilim's darkvision being 30' further than their day vision. Which, honestly, I'm kind of here for. If you stack vision enhancements on darkvision you gain x-ray vision.
The film taught us that it is no good to have x-ray vision.
Careful what you wish for, the simplest way to fix some combinations getting nothing is to make every combination get nothing.
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Careful what you wish for, the simplest way to fix some combinations getting nothing is to make every combination get nothing.
That would probably be better for the game, tbh. Darkvision kills a lot of what makes creating dark spaces to explore interesting.
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I don't think there's a single place that specifies vision ranges of any kind in the game. Other senses yes, vision no.Aren't there a lot of places where the rules say If you already have Darkvision, increase the range by 30'?
Cause that would be my goto here.
Now that I think about it, it is entirely possible I am glitching back to PF1 rules.
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It's really only skills and skill feats that we see the option to choose something else outright. There's lot of places where a choice means you don't get a benefit and there's no recompensation. A Fighter taking the Archer dedication gets very little. And options that give you a class feat don't have wording to choose another (though you can retrain out of the original choice, I suppose).
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Do you not take the Heritage for its feats ?
I do not remember players taking this kind of Versatile Heritage just to boost their PC's vision from Low-light to Darkvision.
Generally speaking, I take a heritage because it fits my concept for the character, not for whatever benefits might accrue.
If outright greater darkvision would be too strong, maybe something like full-color darkvision?
From what I've been reading in this thread and others it seems like players would look at this and say "yeah, okay. What's in it for me?"
Careful what you wish for, the simplest way to fix some combinations getting nothing is to make every combination get nothing.That would probably be better for the game, tbh. Darkvision kills a lot of what makes creating dark spaces to explore interesting.
That sort of change is really another edition though. As it is most player who don't have darkvision will pick up an item to compensate eventuallly. When I GM it doesn't really matter all that much, but I really think it should. It is an important dimension of some stories but for many groups and most adventures it just gets lost in this game.
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darkvision ... is an important dimension of some stories but for many groups and most adventures it just gets lost in this game.
In fairness, there are LOTS of things that are important dimensions of stories that don't work well in gaming.
My favourite example is the ability to speak lots of languages. This can be pretty much the central contribution of a character in a story. But after a few minutes of linguistic fun language problems are generally just boring as all XXXX in a role playing game.
But there are many others.