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You know, despite it only giving you 1 prepared cantrip you can just use that extra familiar ability on cantrip connection to prepare a second one if it actually ends up bothering you.
It was considered good because of its choice of tradition and its hexes. Not because it had a familiar that could be ruled that you lose the entirety of the archetype if that fragile body dies.
That is why the familiar tattoo exists:)
You know, despite it only giving you 1 prepared cantrip you can just use that extra familiar ability on cantrip connection to prepare a second one if it actually ends up bothering you.
Yeah, and what was really fun - at least pre-Remaster - is that these two suggestions are mutually exclusive.
Two nerfs to deal with and you can only fix one of them.
Learned about something that may be my first major concern with the remaster. I'm not sure.
Restoration becoming sound body (plus cleanse affliction, clear mind, and sure footing) turns what used to be outright removal of many conditions like drained, enfeebled, clumsy and such into counteract checks.
This could have painful repercussions. Restoration was a 2nd level spell, 4th if you wanted to get rid of drained. You couldn't spam it, but it also didn't cost your max level slots to get rid of these things. And it didn't have a failure chance to get rid of enfeebled, drained, clumsy, stupefied, poisons, or doomed.
Counteracting does. So daily attrition becomes vastly more notable than it was pre-remaster.
I understand that the devs wanted to consolidate the hodge-podge of spells (remove paralysis was extremely situational, so was remove blindness or remove disease). I applaud this decision. However, by maintaining the counteract checks for ALL conditions, rather than just blindness, paralysis, disease, and so on, you likely CANNOT get rid of some conditions with high DCs before going on to the next combat. Drained in particular is likely to hit a LOT harder than it used to, since it often stacks with itself and rarely goes away until after you rest.
And yes, I know that clerics and champions (with mercies) exist, but not everyone has one. It's possible the devs want to shift to people using Medicine skill feats more, I'm not certain.
Hmmmm, I would have to see the rules text for sure, but if we lumped all of those effects into one spell, then it's ultimately probably something done for stream-lined purposes to make the spell universally applicable, and not create a bunch of exceptions for certain things.
Otherwise, if the idea is that they ultimately nerfed Restoration (or whatever name it goes by now) into requiring a Counteract check like the other Remove X spells (or again, whatever names they go by now), then they basically nuked Restoration from oblivion. Which is a shame, since conditions like Drained and Fatigued kill adventuring momentum; being Drained means you are far more likely to drop (and fail recovery checks, now exacerbated even worse with the changes to the Wounded condition), and being Fatigued almost always required 8 hours of rest to remove (since most Fatigued conditions do not otherwise give a duration). Seriously, having to wait multiple days for multiple Drained condition values to go away is bad, and burning spell slots to have maybe a chance (since the likelihood of succeeding Counteract checks are more likely against the player than for them) of removing them from high to mid tier spell slots, is not a feelsgood moment.
Incidentally, this does put the spell(s) on par with the likes of the Treat Condition feat from Medic dedication, which takes 2 actions and requires a Medicine check, and since Restoration had a 1 minute cast time anyway, maybe if they made it more palatable for combat (that is, make it also cost 2 actions to cast instead of it being an out-of-combat thing), it won't be that bad of a nerf, since it seems most in-combat things like this function on a counteract basis. That being said, unless they make Treat Condition into a general Skill Feat (and not simply tie it to Medic dedication), it's going to start making Medic dedication characters feel almost mandatory, which isn't exactly good design IMO.
Of course, this is also not a game where you can throw around high level spell slots all the time, since those are relatively limited, and you're intended to be throwing an average of 2 top/high spell slots per encounter (with harder ones requiring more, and easier ones requiring less/none), so having players be "forced" to prepare spells like this (and then consequently have them not work more than half the time because the math is always against them) doesn't help matters either.
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Learned about something that may be my first major concern with the remaster. I'm not sure.
Restoration becoming sound body (plus cleanse affliction, clear mind, and sure footing) turns what used to be outright removal of many conditions like drained, enfeebled, clumsy and such into counteract checks.
This could have painful repercussions. Restoration was a 2nd level spell, 4th if you wanted to get rid of drained. You couldn't spam it, but it also didn't cost your max level slots to get rid of these things. And it didn't have a failure chance to get rid of enfeebled, drained, clumsy, stupefied, poisons, or doomed.
Counteracting does. So daily attrition becomes vastly more notable than it was pre-remaster.
I understand that the devs wanted to consolidate the hodge-podge of spells (remove paralysis was extremely situational, so was remove blindness or remove disease). I applaud this decision. However, by maintaining the counteract checks for ALL conditions, rather than just blindness, paralysis, disease, and so on, you likely CANNOT get rid of some conditions with high DCs before going on to the next combat. Drained in particular is likely to hit a LOT harder than it used to, since it often stacks with itself and rarely goes away until after you rest.
And yes, I know that clerics and champions (with mercies) exist, but not everyone has one. It's possible the devs want to shift to people using Medicine skill feats more, I'm not certain.
Hmmmm, I would have to see the rules text for sure, but if we lumped all of those effects into one spell, then it's ultimately probably something done for stream-lined purposes to make the spell universally applicable, and not create a bunch of exceptions for certain things.
Otherwise, if the idea is that they ultimately nerfed Restoration (or whatever name it goes by now) into requiring a Counteract check like the other Remove X spells (or again, whatever names they go by now), then they basically nuked Restoration from...
I kinda like your suggestion combined. It could have a 2 action cast that requires a check and a 1 minute cast that doesn't require a check.
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.
=)
Amusingly, my reasoning was exactly the opposite:
• if only one archetype was updated then the other not being updated was likely an error.
• if neither archetype was updated then that was likely deliberate.
Brains are funny things. :)
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It feels the remaster was super rushedThat's because it was, for reasons entirely out of Paizo's control.
Kinda get it, but "entirely" is a bit...They did have a choice to go entirely away from dnd stuff with 2e, was there a big rush to put it out under ogl, no other alternative?
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Kinda get it, but "entirely" is a bit...They did have a choice to go entirely away from dnd stuff with 2e, was there a big rush to put it out under ogl, no other alternative?It feels the remaster was super rushedThat's because it was, for reasons entirely out of Paizo's control.
Pretty sure they, and literally everyone with a functioning brain, wasn't expecting WotC to set themselves on fire in order to flail about and tear down what's been built up for over 3(?) decades.
As far as I know cutting off DND/OGL influences completely wasn't on the table before that since such a drastic shift would alienate the playerbase.
Then WoTC did a big string of dumb-dumbs aaaand here we are.
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Kinda get it, but "entirely" is a bit...They did have a choice to go entirely away from dnd stuff with 2e, was there a big rush to put it out under ogl, no other alternative?It feels the remaster was super rushedThat's because it was, for reasons entirely out of Paizo's control.Pretty sure they, and literally everyone with a functioning brain, wasn't expecting WotC to set themselves on fire in order to flail about and tear down what's been built up for over 3(?) decades.
As far as I know cutting off DND/OGL influences completely wasn't on the table before that since such a drastic shift would alienate the playerbase.
Then WoTC did a big string of dumb-dumbs aaaand here we are.
Indeed. Using OGL stuff was extremely convenient as you had a true treasure vault of useful bits and pieces pre-approved vis a vis IP issues.
There was absolutely no reason to not take advantage of this open source.
Until it proved maybe not so open after all.
And it is this convenient way of working for all publishers that they are recreating through the ORC.
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From the material I've seen, my main criticism is the amount of typos and general imbalances. I hold Paizo and their products to a very high standard of quality, as that's what they've delivered for the longest time, yet I get the impression recent releases have been somewhat less polished, with some more serious errors in writing and content that is less evenly balanced. Perhaps it's my fault for expecting the remaster to also be a balance pass, but given how Paizo did rebalance numerous spells, class features, and feats regardless of OGL relevance, it feels strange that they wouldn't address known outliers like Electric Arc or the rogue's Mastermind racket, despite both being called out by the developers as significant over- and underperformers respectively.
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From the material I've seen, my main criticism is the amount of typos and general imbalances. I hold Paizo and their products to a very high standard of quality, as that's what they've delivered for the longest time, yet I get the impression recent releases have been somewhat less polished, with some more serious errors in writing and content that is less evenly balanced. Perhaps it's my fault for expecting the remaster to also be a balance pass, but given how Paizo did rebalance numerous spells, class features, and feats regardless of OGL relevance, it feels strange that they wouldn't address known outliers like Electric Arc or the rogue's Mastermind racket, despite both being called out by the developers as significant over- and underperformers respectively.
Electric Arc did get addressed. It got its damage lowered while almost every other cantrip got some kind of buff.
Mastermind didn't get directly addressed, but they did clarify how Recall Knowledge can be used for a unique identity and the creature type separately, which probably solves the biggest question mark for mastermind.
Beyond that, I don't think perfect balance was ever on the table. They had a limited time to make changes. And even some of the new content is poorly balanced against each other. Compare the occult patron familiar abilities to the Inscribed One.
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I'm honestly astonished at the number of people who think that rules creation and creative writing of this scale is something that is trivially easy to do. That somehow it can be done perfectly.
The most accurate analogy that I can think of happens to also be something that I am quite familiar with. Software development. Software is a set of instructions that a computer can use. Software also interacts with other creatively generated data such as images and text. Software is also written by groups of people rather than a single individual.
Software development is not something that is new. It has been studied and improved on for well over 40 years. Many of the foundational theorems of computer science were written almost 100 years ago.
And many of those foundational theorems of computer science have to do with what is possible and what is not. And one of the most interesting and perhaps surprising foundational theorems is that it is not possible to create perfect instructions. It is also not possible to validate those instructions for correctness. Not in a general case. You could perhaps prove that a set of instructions presented are indeed perfect and correct, but you couldn't create a general process that computers or interns could follow to correctly conclude correctness of instructions of future instruction sets.
So there is no process to simply 'check the rules for balance', or 'find all of the typos'. It cannot be done. It is quite literally, and very scientifically provably, impossible.
Instead we have multiple people making judgement calls on balance and reading through hundreds of pages of text until their eyes burn looking for 'incorrect' words. Not even misspelled words - which can be found by computer. Places where the wrong word was used, such as this.
-----
Also consider this:
How long would it take you to put together a 30 piece puzzle? One of those that are for 2 year olds, and are about 3 to 4 inches on a side.
I could probably do that in less than two minutes.
So if we just extrapolate that, this would mean that I could put together a 3000 piece puzzle in less than 200 minutes - or about three and a half hours. Right?
No, that doesn't make any sense at all. 3000 piece puzzles take days, if not weeks, to put together.
How about if we put more people on the task of putting this puzzle together. If we get 200 people together and each person is in charge of 30 of the pieces, then that means that the entire 3000 piece puzzle can be done in two minutes.
Right?
No?
As the game rule set gets bigger, it becomes more challenging and more time consuming to deal with. As more people are needed in order to get the job done, the complexity of keeping all of the developers working together increases.
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Electric Arc did get addressed. It got its damage lowered while almost every other cantrip got some kind of buff.
Mastermind didn't get directly addressed, but they did clarify how Recall Knowledge can be used for a unique identity and the creature type separately, which probably solves the biggest question mark for mastermind.
Beyond that, I don't think perfect balance was ever on the table. They had a limited time to make changes. And even some of the new content is poorly balanced against each other. Compare the occult patron familiar abilities to the Inscribed One.
As I understand it, Electric Arc's damage is still 2d4 per target, with a 1d4 increase per target. This is still better than other damage cantrips due to the reliability of half damage on a successful save, while also scaling better than most other cantrips as well. By contrast, Daze's initial damage got changed to 1d6 rather than spellcasting modifier while still only heightening every 2 spell ranks, which is a nerf to what was already largely considered one of the worst cantrips in the game.
Unless I'm missing a change in text for the Mastermind, you still only get one instance of your racket's feature per enemy, as you only get the bonus if you identify the creature, i.e. you succeed on a RK check where the nature of your query was along the lines of "what creature is this?". If you gained the benefit every time you succeeded on any RK check against the creature, that would've been a massive buff that would've brought the racket up to par with the Thief, but as it stands I don't think that's what was implemented.
And rushing through at the expense of quality is the issue I'm describing: I don't know how accelerated the process was compared to Paizo's usual development pipeline, but clearly the result isn't quite up to the high standards the developers have set for themselves, which I think is risky for a game built on quality and good balance. It also makes me feel that there was a degree of scope creep involved: if the rush came from having to divest from the OGL, then the remaster should've focused on just that and taken out or replaced all OGL content, with as few balance changes as necessary. However, the remastered books also change a lot of content in a way that doesn't relate to the OGL, which includes quite a few rebalances and a lot of extra work. It's going to take even more work in the future to errata all of the errors, fix the mistakes, and cover the material that's been left in the dust anyway, so it may have been better to focus on a much smaller scope.
I like a ton of things in the Remaster, but some things I dislike:
1. The change to the dying & wounded interaction rules. I also dislike that there has been no advance discussion, no player surveys, and no explanations about why they have done this.
2. They didn't fix the well-known mastermind rogue RK issue (which I'd go as far as to call a 'bug'), given they did go in and make changes to other rogue subclasses.
3. The better-clarified RK rules are still far too stingy with how much information they give out IMHO.
Which mastermind issue is this?
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Which mastermind issue is this?
It interacts poorly with the Additional Knowledge rules. You can only use the racket class feature once per enemy at full bonus. And once you fail the check, you can't use the class feature on that enemy again at all.
Edit: Oh, and that is if the GM is being generous and allowing the DC to reset when you do Recall Knowledge on the second enemy of the same type. Otherwise you get your Racket ability once per enemy type.
Hopefully per battle. Because otherwise if you are fighting a bunch of same type of enemy, then you get your Racket ability once per enemy type for the entire campaign.
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It literally comes down to having many sets of eyes scouring each page for needed changes/readability/comprehension and if a page reads well but has one little spot that isn't remaster compatible it can get missed by every set of eyes that crosses it until it is released and many more people have the chance to look through the pages with their own interests in mind focusing their attention in areas the staff didn't spot. It really is a big undertaking.
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I'm honestly astonished at the number of people who think that rules creation and creative writing of this scale is something that is trivially easy to do. That somehow it can be done perfectly.
Who in this thread has said any such thing?
I think what you meant to say was "...who seem to think that..."
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I'm honestly astonished at the number of people who think that rules creation and creative writing of this scale is something that is trivially easy to do. That somehow it can be done perfectly.Who in this thread has said any such thing?
I think what you meant to say was "...who seem to think that..."
I think you are glossing past posts that you don't like to read.
No, I am not going to call out anyone specifically.
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I'm not sure anyone here has even implied that writing or altering rules is anywhere near easy. Really, this is a thread inviting people to share the things they don't like about the remaster, and most did exactly that in respectful fashion, with the remaining users opposing some of those dislikes. The only thing I find strange is that some people went into a thread whose explicit purpose is to invite criticism of some of Paizo's work, saw that criticism, and took umbrage at the fact that people were expressing criticism in a thread about giving criticism. It really is a case of going out of one's way to find an excuse to get offended.
For those that are saying that a Dev said you can attempt different recall knowledges on the same creature if it is of a different Recall Knowledge skill, may you please link that so I can see it in text?
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Which mastermind issue is this?It interacts poorly with the Additional Knowledge rules. You can only use the racket class feature once per enemy at full bonus. And once you fail the check, you can't use the class feature on that enemy again at all.
Edit: Oh, and that is if the GM is being generous and allowing the DC to reset when you do Recall Knowledge on the second enemy of the same type. Otherwise you get your Racket ability once per enemy type.
Hopefully per battle. Because otherwise if you are fighting a bunch of same type of enemy, then you get your Racket ability once per enemy type for the entire campaign.
It also essentially doesn't interact with the Recall Knowledge improvements, despite being one of the relatively few RK-focused options in the game, which is possibly the most baffling thing about all of this. That's like making a cake and the birthday child is the only one not allowed to eat.
Normally, you can now ask pretty much any question about an enemy and get an answer if you make the check. If a MM wants to use their ability, they cannot do that. Instead, as Teridax pointed out above, you have exactly one question you can ask: "What is that creature?" (or something to that effect). Once you try that on an enemy, it is completely up to the GM if you can even try a second time. With a particularly harsh interpretation (see breithauptclan above), you could even say that applies to entire enemy types.
And lastly there is the usually excessive demand on skill increases and skill feats placed on any dedicated RK character. It was purposefully avoided on the Thaumaturge because it is annoying, but older options don't have that privilege.
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Mastermind and various Swashbuckler styles could use the Battledancer Swashbuckler treatment of 'any time you succeed at the base skill check DC, you get the benefit - even if it doesn't have any other effect'.
Battledancer still has the added bonus of being able to make the check against all of the available targets at the same time and getting the best result.
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I'm not sure anyone here has even implied that writing or altering rules is anywhere near easy. Really, this is a thread inviting people to share the things they don't like about the remaster, and most did exactly that in respectful fashion, with the remaining users opposing some of those dislikes. The only thing I find strange is that some people went into a thread whose explicit purpose is to invite criticism of some of Paizo's work, saw that criticism, and took umbrage at the fact that people were expressing criticism in a thread about giving criticism. It really is a case of going out of one's way to find an excuse to get offended.
It is a general trend that I am seeing. I am speaking up in opposition of the idea rather than attacking any one or multiple people. I am trying to educate and inform.
I put it here because it seemed the most on-topic thread for it.
I think the worst instance I have seen recently was a thread yesterday that got necrobumped by someone who just went on an anti-Paizo rant that had nothing to do with the topic of the thread. I flagged the post as spam. Since I can't find it now, I am guessing it got deleted.
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Mastermind and various Swashbuckler styles could use the Battledancer Swashbuckler treatment of 'any time you succeed at the base skill check DC, you get the benefit - even if it doesn't have any other effect'.
That's exactly the house rule my table has and it has made the MM infinitely more enjoyable. We even went so far as to eliminate rarity penalties, meaning you roll against the level DC. That is often difficult enough, given that you need to keep up at least like 3 different skills plus a bunch of lores minimum, instead of 1 like a Scoundrel or none like a Thaum.
The only reason why we didn't drop the creature identification requirement as well was that the MM benefits are really spicy when you actually get them. It has no range limitation, after all.
Not ideal, but it worked for us ^^
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Also, I can only shake my head at daze once again. Usually I can see where Paizo is coming from, but nerfing an already heavily underpowered cantrip is just bizarre.
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Repeating earlier but after spending more time with Player Core I feel like there's very little new material that I think actively makes the game worse (except the dying change).
So categorically my main area of dislikes are places where Paizo has been showing themselves to be far too conservative with their design choices. Places where there was an idea, but no followthrough, or simply no effort at all.
The complete lack of change for things like Mastermind rogues or Outwit rangers stands out. The entire ranger class felt sort of forgotten either despite or maybe because of how aggressively mid the CRB version is.
Witch's Armaments is another good one. It was sort of billed as addressing the problem with what were widely considered trap options for the Witch, but it's actually just consolidating page space: living hair is unchanged, eldritch nails lost the hex + strike feature, and the new jaws are pretty much in the same design space.
There's no serious argument for a 1d8 effectively traitless attack being a good use of a level 1 feat, especially on a class that already sucks in melee combat.
So rather than hating anything specific from the Remaster, my negatives have more just been consistently alternating between "Why did they bother" and "Why didn't they bother."
Also, I can only shake my head at daze once again. Usually I can see where Paizo is coming from, but nerfing an already heavily underpowered cantrip is just bizarre.
Rules Lawyer just showed the divine cantrip list from Player Core. Interestingly, the short description of daze there says it can make the target off-guard or slow. Having Daze make the target Off-Guard for a round on a failed save seems like a decent effect. The actual spell description doesn't reflect this, unfortunately, but if this is an editing mistake, I wonder if the short description or the actual spell is wrong.
Can someone check if daze has the same short description on the spell lists of the other traditions?
Also, I can only shake my head at daze once again. Usually I can see where Paizo is coming from, but nerfing an already heavily underpowered cantrip is just bizarre.Rules Lawyer just showed the divine cantrip list from Player Core. Interestingly, the short description of daze there says it can make the target off-guard or slow. Having Daze make the target Off-Guard for a round on a failed save seems like a decent effect. The actual spell description doesn't reflect this, unfortunately, but if this is an editing mistake, I wonder if the short description or the actual spell is wrong.
Can someone check if daze has the same short description on the spell lists of the other traditions?
Wording is identical in arcane and occult lists, but that could just be a copy/paste issue and/or an issue where either the list description or the spell didn't get updated.
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As I understand it, Electric Arc's damage is still 2d4 per target, with a 1d4 increase per target. This is still better than other damage cantrips due to the reliability of half damage on a successful save, while also scaling better than most other cantrips as well. By contrast, Daze's initial damage got changed to 1d6 rather than spellcasting modifier while still only heightening every 2 spell ranks, which is a nerf to what was already largely considered one of the worst cantrips in the game.Electric Arc did get addressed. It got its damage lowered while almost every other cantrip got some kind of buff.
Mastermind didn't get directly addressed, but they did clarify how Recall Knowledge can be used for a unique identity and the creature type separately, which probably solves the biggest question mark for mastermind.
Beyond that, I don't think perfect balance was ever on the table. They had a limited time to make changes. And even some of the new content is poorly balanced against each other. Compare the occult patron familiar abilities to the Inscribed One.
Daze is not representative of other cantrips. It is pretty obviously taking a hit because it is nonlethal. Instead, look at:
Needle Darts - 3d4, twice the range, crit rider, can trigger multiple common weaknesses
Ignition - 2d6 in melee, benefits from flanking, triggers common weakness
Frostbite - Twice the range, triggers common weakness, crit rider, also a save
Void warp - same damage, crit rider, saving throw
Vitality Lash - same as void warp, but higher damage to make up for only hitting undead
Timber - AoE, save, crit rider
Slashing Gusts - multitarget with twice the range.
Gouging Claw - 2d6 plus 2 bleed.
TKP - 2d6 and variable damage for weakness/resistance.
Divine Lance - twice the range, hits extremely common weaknesses
Caustic Ray - low damage, but AoE at least and also a save.
Just about all of these feel balanced against Electric Arc when you compare the full scope of their packages. Electric Arc is arguably the most consistent among them, but it doesn't blow any out of the water and you'd be a fool to rely on it exclusively when the others all have advantages over it.
yeah looks like they forgot to update the entry in the main spell description based on that short description for Daze.
Daze is not representative of other cantrips. It is pretty obviously taking a hit because it is nonlethal. Instead, look at:
"Don't look at this outlier" is not a great defense when the criticism is that Paizo didn't really address outliers. Underperformers are outliers too, and by your own admission Daze clearly isn't up to par, nor is by all evidence the Mastermind rogue.
Just about all of these feel balanced against Electric Arc when you compare the full scope of their packages. Electric Arc is arguably the most consistent among them, but it doesn't blow any out of the water and you'd be a fool to rely on it exclusively when the others all have advantages over it.
Alright, just so that we can have all the facts on the table: Electric Arc post-remaster deals 2d4 electricity damage to up to 2 targets with a basic Ref save. Against an enemy with a moderate Ref save, that's an average of 3.75 damage per target at 1st rank, and 7.5 damage against two targets. By contrast, against moderate AC, even a 3d4 damage cantrip deals an average of 6 damage. It only gets worse from there, as Electric Arc's damage heightens by 2d4 per rank. With every other damage cantrip you've listed, you have to work a lot harder just to approach EA's average damage still, and the fact that you've conveniently only listed the other cantrips' respective advantages, without listing the sufficient information needed to make a proper comparison, evidences just how much you need to stretch the facts to make it appear otherwise. Although the gap is definitely less than it once was, EA remains an outlier.
is damage split between two targets inherently less effective than more damage to a single target?
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is damage split between two targets inherently less effective than more damage to a single target?
Normally yes, but the only time you're using cantrips is against mooks and those tend to come in groups.
Honestly, I find it hard to care about cantrips anymore when any fight you were using them in didn't matter to begin with. Particularly when you should be building into spammable focus spells with the refocus change.
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I like a ton of things in the Remaster, but some things I dislike:
1. The change to the dying & wounded interaction rules. I also dislike that there has been no advance discussion, no player surveys, and no explanations about why they have done this.
Everything about the Remaster was great to 'sure fine' for me. Mostly great. Until I hit this change.
It's totally unexpected.
Previously we had a lot of talk of it being in the old playtest from 2018 but it's not - I happen to have a print copy of that I bought in a store back in 2018, and also have a print copy of the first and second printings of 2.0 (bought it a second time on accident during the pandemic, didn't realize I already had it until I found the first printing sitting under a pile of books and discovered I'd bought it a year prior on Amazon).
Also: It's NOT in the beginner box - checked that last night.
This new rule apparently DID come from the GM Screen. I lack this so it's something I cannot verify.
But the idea that it was a copy-paste error as we were floating last night appears to be incorrect.
That noted...
This change has a severe impact on game survivability. Folks running the numbers over on reddit seem to come back with a near doubling at each level of dying in the chance of PC death after going down.
Dying 3 seems to be more or less skipped. You're usually dying 1, 2 if you go down a second time, or jump straight to 4.
I find this a very bad change. One of the worst tRPG game design moves I've seen since the first version of GURPS Super's. Granted I missed most of the D&D 4E/5E eras so maybe there are things others experienced I didn't...
But this single untested and unannounced change has so severe an impact on gameplay that's its currently "taken the wind out" of my enthusiasm over remaster. While I don't have to use it myself, it makes 'Society' a non-option for me.
I just don't understand how this got in there without comment.
It maybe be one tiny change in a sea of changes - but this is one that will come up nearly every session, and notably boost up PC death counts.
A typical gameplay loop I see almost every session is:
1. PC goes down before they can be healed. Perhaps from a 1-shot or crit. Now at Dying 1 or 2.
2. Some Ally heals the PC.
3. The very next NPC to act focuses the recently healed PC and downs them again. Now Dying 2 or 3.
4. When that PC gets to act, they attempt a recovery.
- Even under current rules this often lead to a PC death. Now it's a near certainty.
Banking a hero point is mandatory now. Often banking 2 as I've seen the person who spent a hero point get attacked in response.
This happens just as often with backliners as it does with frontliners, and I've seen in across 5 different game tables as a regular thing.
It was already a sore point with me and modern GMing styles... now, it's ramped to a toxic issue if I sit down at a table using this new rule.
So yeah - that's likely however, the only complaint I have about the remaster. It's just that's its a "severe encounter" level complaint for me.
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Daze is not representative of other cantrips. It is pretty obviously taking a hit because it is nonlethal. Instead, look at:"Don't look at this outlier" is not a great defense when the criticism is that Paizo didn't really address outliers. Underperformers are outliers too, and by your own admission Daze clearly isn't up to par, nor is by all evidence the Mastermind rogue.
Just about all of these feel balanced against Electric Arc when you compare the full scope of their packages. Electric Arc is arguably the most consistent among them, but it doesn't blow any out of the water and you'd be a fool to rely on it exclusively when the others all have advantages over it.Alright, just so that we can have all the facts on the table: Electric Arc post-remaster deals 2d4 electricity damage to up to 2 targets with a basic Ref save. Against an enemy with a moderate Ref save, that's an average of 3.75 damage per target at 1st rank, and 7.5 damage against two targets. By contrast, against moderate AC, even a 3d4 damage cantrip deals an average of 6 damage. It only gets worse from there, as Electric Arc's damage heightens by 2d4 per rank. With every other damage cantrip you've listed, you have to work a lot harder just to approach EA's average damage still, and the fact that you've conveniently only listed the other cantrips' respective advantages, without listing the sufficient information needed to make a proper comparison, evidences just how much you need to stretch the facts to make it appear otherwise. Although the gap is definitely less than it once was, EA remains an outlier.
Idk what to tell you. Yeah, electric arc remains the best damage option... Assuming there are two enemies within 30 feet without high reflex saves, no one is inflicting flat-footed, the enemy doesn't resist electricity, and doesn't have a weakness that another option can trigger. (Almost nothing outside of Numeria is weak to electricity.) Something is always going to be the best option. It is only an outlier if it is outrageously better than everything else. Which is not what I see anymore. I see electric arc as your most reliable workhorse, but one that won't help you at longer ranges, has less room for teamwork to tilt the odds, and less potential for doing big weakness stuff.
2d4 + some other benefits is the new default for cantrips. Electric arc's other benefit is it gets to be multitarget at minimal range. It also gets to target a slightly weaker save on average, except it's not usually weaker at the levels you need to rely on cantrips for damage. Bandits, skeletons, gremlins, goblins, and other low level staple have high reflex.
Daze is weaker than any of us would like, but that's because of one of two things:
A) Paizo missed adding something they meant to, as the flavor text alludes to.
B) Paizo values non-lethal damage higher most of us do. There are very few spells that deal non-lethal damage and they tend to deal very little of it. (Given how steep the -2 penalty for weapons, this seems likely to me.)
Either way, Daze is not indicative of other cantrips, is my point. There's definitely still bad options when you look across any given category of choices, but I'm seeing a much higher ratio of good ones than before the remaster.
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Idk what to tell you. Yeah, electric arc remains the best damage option... Assuming there are two enemies within 30 feet without high reflex saves, no one is inflicting flat-footed, the enemy doesn't resist electricity, and doesn't have a weakness that another option can trigger. (Almost nothing outside of Numeria is weak to electricity.) Something is always going to be the best option. It is only an outlier if it is outrageously better than everything else. Which is not what I see anymore. I see electric arc as your most reliable workhorse, but one that won't help you at longer ranges, has less room for teamwork to tilt the odds, and less potential for doing big weakness stuff.
2d4 + some other benefits is the new default for cantrips. Electric arc's other benefit is it gets to be multitarget at minimal range. It also gets to target a slightly weaker save on average, except it's not usually weaker at the levels you need to rely on cantrips for damage. Bandits, skeletons, gremlins, goblins, and other low level staple have high reflex.
Most occasions where you'll be using cantrips will have two or more enemies within 30 feet of you, Ref is by no means a consistently high save, unlike Fort, flat-footed is more difficult to apply on ranged attacks whereas melee is dangerous for any caster, and electricity isn't frequently resisted. Electric Arc is still a reliably better option than most other damage cantrips in most occasions, and dealing 25% more average damage than the next best option is a significant margin. Once again, it is still an outlier, because simply changing its base damage to 2d4 instead of 1d4 + spellcasting mod is but one of the reasons why it overperforms. Paizo certainly standardized cantrip damage and retouched a few, but only did half a balance pass.
Daze is weaker than any of us would like, but that's because of one of two things:
A) Paizo missed adding something they meant to, as the flavor text alludes to.
B) Paizo values non-lethal damage higher most of us do. There are very few spells that deal non-lethal damage and they tend to deal very little of it. (Given how steep the -2 penalty for weapons, this seems likely to me.)Either way, Daze is not indicative of other cantrips, is my point. There's definitely still bad options when you look across any given category of choices, but I'm seeing a much higher ratio of good ones than before the remaster.
The nonlethal trait on weapons does not majorly impact on their damage or other distribution of power. You are also dodging the point, which is that no matter which way you slice it, Paizo didn't really address the outliers, with Daze and the Mastermind rogue being two examples of infamously bad options that were kept in poor shape in the remaster (Daze is in fact a flat-out worse spell, and is now presented in misleading fashion, likely due to a mistake). You specifically opposed my criticism that the remaster material contains typos and visibly imbalanced content, yet here you are, acknowledging that the material contains typos and that some options are notably worse than others. If you don't know what to tell me, perhaps it might be because you're still trying to argue against criticism even after it's been shown that it's backed up by facts.
Except for the Undying ability of the witch's familiar, there are no rules governing the deaths of standard familiars, it would seem.
I've gone and methodically searched for every instance of "Familiar" in Player Core and GM Core looking for it once another poster mentioned that they couldn't find it either.
The closest rule that I could find addressing something like this is the Special entry of the Pet feat (from which familiars are based):
Insofar as I can tell, it's either resurrection, or retraining for a week to release your dead familiar.
Except for the Undying ability of the witch's familiar, there are no rules governing the deaths of standard familiars, it would seem.
I've gone and methodically searched for every instance of "Familiar" in Player Core and GM Core looking for it once another poster mentioned that they couldn't find it either.
The closest rule that I could find addressing something like this is the Special entry of the Pet feat (from which familiars are based):
Insofar as I can tell, it's either resurrection, or retraining for a week to release your dead familiar.
You're going to keep playing it as you do which makes them more fun and interesting.
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is damage split between two targets inherently less effective than more damage to a single target?Normally yes, but the only time you're using cantrips is against mooks and those tend to come in groups.
Honestly, I find it hard to care about cantrips anymore when any fight you were using them in didn't matter to begin with. Particularly when you should be building into spammable focus spells with the refocus change.
Lets say an encounter lasts 3 or 4 rounds. A caster will use a spell slot, use a focus spell, use a lower level spell, use cantrips.
You might just be using cantrips to help close a fight already going your way so maybe it doesn't matter if its electric arc or needle darts or anything else.Maybe cantrips should have been balanced for 1 action casts with the flourish tag?
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Huge number of likes for this? Time for me to object.
there is no process to simply 'check the rules for balance', or 'find all of the typos'. It cannot be done. It is quite literally, and very scientifically provably, impossible.
That is technically true but useless in practice statement. We live in the real world. Software systems have to be good enough to work. Or they are useless. At least with game systems like this we have a human element in the loop - for now anyway.
Paizo in general have done a good job with PF2 I really do like the game. It is clear that they have an editing and checking process that catches a lot of the issues.
But every now and then we come across some real howlers. Example the Kingdom maths in Kingmaker - it just doesn't scale or work at all. Everyone who uses it has to patch it. In fact it is so bad that it is clear that they didn't test it in its final form. So Paizo have some gaps in their process that they need to fix. Another one of these is the wounded condition. It was midly unclear in the original rules, but not so much that it generated much discussion. A few poeple noted it but 90% of people just ignored the possibility of the more lethal interpretation. Even a few people at Paizo.
Instead we have multiple people making judgement calls on balance and reading through hundreds of pages of text until their eyes burn looking for 'incorrect' words.
I have little sympathy for people who cry wolf before reading and thinking about it. Or who read the text and come up with a meaning that doesn't work when there is another simple meaning that clearly does.
No one is ever going to agree on balance as we all want a different spot. You are just going to have to accept a certain level of noise. Likewise those people who disagree just have to accept that the designers want something else.
But every now and then we come across some real howlers. Example the Kingdom maths in Kingmaker - it just doesn't scale or work at all. Everyone who uses it has to patch it. In fact it is so bad that it is clear that they didn't test it in its final form.
Is that even Paizo's fault though? I thought they brought in mercs for that project.
But every now and then we come across some real howlers. Example the Kingdom maths in Kingmaker - it just doesn't scale or work at all. Everyone who uses it has to patch it. In fact it is so bad that it is clear that they didn't test it in its final form.Is that even Paizo's fault though? I thought they brought in mercs for that project.
James Jacobs I think wrote those rules and didn't have much time or help to test them as the project needed to get done and out. There was a lot going on at the time that affected normal operations.