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Investigator feats are more exploration oriented IMO.I GMed a game with an Investigator player and the investigator looks like an "oficial metagaming" class due their abilities to get info.
The issue is that the game is about exploration AND combat.
Investigator has the smallest number of feats in the game besides oracle and thaumaturge. Which is already an inauspicious start. And around 70% of them are devoted to, er, investigating.
It'd be like if 70% of wizard feats were dedicated to discovering Mordenkainen's boson, or if 70% of cleric feats were devoted to winning theological debates on heresy. Sure, it'd be vaguely cool, but combat does happen, and the investigator class resolutely pretends that it doesn't.
Devise a Strategem is an interesting combat mechanic. Needs way more feat support, but it does make for some interesting interactions. The investigator in my game decided to obtain an animal companion so if he fails the hit roll with the Devise a Stratagem, he sends in the animal if he doesn't have the option to strike a different target.
Still doesn't hit hard enough for the feat cost.
Might be better if it worked more like Hunt Prey where once you set the Stratagem Target, it works against that target for free every round for at least one attack.
Any word on if investigator is getting the remaster treatment?
All of the Advanced Player's Guide classes (as well as the Core Rulebook classes that weren't in Player Core 1) are going to be in Player Core 2. They haven't announced any specific changes to investigator yet, though.
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It really seems like, even more than the fighter, the Swashbuckler should be *the* reactive strike class. Like you're the quick, agile, unpredictable fighter so you should be able to make quick lunges to stab people who leave an opening in as many contexts as that's reasonable.
So rather than making it a 6th level feat like other Martials get, make it a basic part of the chassis and let us build on it since the Swashbuckler making a bunch of reactive strikes with a rapier is probably less unbalancing than when the fighter or giant barbarian does it.
Give the Swashbuckler something like Nimble Strike as a reaction (possibly with a movement trigger that you can Nimble Roll towards), and something like panache for riposte on a miss wouldn't be unreasonable.
Opportune Riposte works very well in mook fights, not so well in boss fights. That is my experience with it.
It's not as good as an AoO when set up with trip. And not even close to as good as Opportune Backstab.
It's not useless, but more useful in larger groups against multiple attackers that attack the swash.
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It honestly would be fine if it triggered on any miss. It's just too conditional nowOpportune Riposte works very well in mook fights, not so well in boss fights. That is my experience with it.
It's not as good as an AoO when set up with trip. And not even close to as good as Opportune Backstab.
It's not useless, but more useful in larger groups against multiple attackers that attack the swash.
It is odd it requires a level 18 feat with additional requirements to activate on a miss. Needs improvement.
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Devise is weird because in theory it should be a free action in a decent number of fights (especially fights against major villains) but it's a bit unclear how much of a subject of a lead they have to be to make it a free action.
My group found that it was easier to just treat Devise as being a free action at all times. It's obviously not a balance concern given how frequently you'd have it if the Investigator was actually harassing the GM about changing their lead every time the plot changes.
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The investigator is number one because their offensive schtick is worse off than the swashbuckler and their feats are terrible.
In a way, yeah, but the swashbuckler is a better martial than the investigator, though I think that's kind of the point though. Investigators kinda fall in the "half martial" category in that they play like martials but have their shtick focused somewhere else (in this case, skills and skills feats). The swashbuckler IS a better martial, but it is way more clunky to play than in investigator and the extra utility in the latter certainly helps. A swash is a bad martial, while an investigator is just a bad rogue.
The bare minimum Paizo needs to do to fix the investigator is...
* Devise a Stratagem is a free action, period.
* Pursue a Lead is a one-action activity.
* Methodologies should be way more involved and allow you to use Int to whatever they do if they aren't Int-based already (For example, Forensic Medicine would allow you to use Int when to RK and treat wounds with Medicine, Interrogation allow you to use Int when Making an Impression, etc).
In the best possible scenario, an investigator should be a pure skill-based and utility martial. A one-action Pursue a Lead would make investigators the most "accurate" skill monkey in the game, and their turns in combat should revolve around mostly using skill actions or other utility actions they may have. Did you use DaS and you know you are going to fail the Strike? Good, replace it with a skill action. After all, DaS is a free action now. Investigator feats should also improve or give you brand new skill actions to use.
This is IMO easier to fix than the swash, that requires to tweak its subclasses and most of its features. The investigator mostly needs some tweaks and new feats.
The thing is, most investigators wouldn't want to reload at all since they would not be using ranged weapons (and if they were they would be smart and use a bow /s). Step/Stride is kinda...not as flavorful? The only option that would make sense would be skill actions, but it's not like "skill actions" is a term in the game, so it would either be relegated to something very specific like RK (which would make investigators into a more dollar store rogue, specifically a mastermind rogue) or something related to your methodology (which would require you to remake all methodologies pretty much because it's not like you can do much with Crafting if you take alchemical sciencies or Diplomacy if you have interrogation unless you also have Bon Mot, which also isn't as useful if you don't have casters in the party or you make dedicated Intimidation build).
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I mean...I certainly wouldn't like to be playing in the same table as someone that's playing a martial "to stay out of range insulting and come in after everyone has beat the monster down and get the finishing kill for under 20 damage"
Bringing up panache again, because I wanted to clarify something. People are discussing panache in at least two different ways, and I want to more firmly identify them.
1) Panache is something the swashbuckler almost always has in combat, similar to barbarian rage. In that case, panache gives useful constant bonuses and enables some flashy abilities.
2) Panache is something only gained situationally, and potentially consumed when used. In that case, panache gives powerful bonuses and any damaging effect that consumes it deals high damage.
I'm not saying either approach is better, and I have no idea which one will be in Player Core 2 (or maybe it's a third one I didn't think of). I just wanted to explicitly point out that there's more than one way to handle panache.
Now here's an idea: Did anyone think of giving focus spells to swashbucklers? And would that help? Mechanically, monks can learn focus spells for extra-powerful stances, or for flashy attacks/techniques. Some of what the swashbucklers in stories do borders on the supernatural; could those be handled as focus spells?
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Now here's an idea: Did anyone think of giving focus spells to swashbucklers? And would that help? Mechanically, monks can learn focus spells for extra-powerful stances, or for flashy attacks/techniques. Some of what the swashbucklers in stories do borders on the supernatural; could those be handled as focus spells?
I don't think that giving swashbucklers focus spells is really going to be the answer to anything. People are currently able to turn feats into focus spells. They just are. Having that in your own class rather than via archetype gives you some efficiency boosts, but it's not a major improvement in overall ability, especially if it's not actively plugging into existing class mechanics (like the monk and magus get).
Past that... it's a matter of theming. I just don't feel like the swashbuckler has the same sort of magic theming that the monk does. Like, monk inspirations actually involve doing some outright magical things. Swashbucklers seem more about pulling off impossible stunts, while acting like it's not magic at all. To me, that says that they shouldn't be getting focus spells inherently. Give them that boost in some other way.
Focus spells don't fit the swashbuckler IMO. They make sense in monks because they are mystical warriors, or in the case of champions or rangers because they used to have spells since pretty much forever.
Swashbuckler in PF1e was closer to what the gunslinger is (in both PF1e and PF2e); an hyper-specialized fighter. It wouldn't make sense for swashbucklers to have spells because they are a very mundane martial for the most part, a very flamboyant mundane martial but a mundane martial nonetheless.
I also think panache works vastly different based on your style. I played a gymnast and a fencer (they were literally the same character btw, I started at gymanst but after a few levels I ask my GM to retrain my whole character). As a gymnast I used panache very sparingly. You can get panache and use a finisher on the same turn if you don't want a -5, so you either had to use once every other turn or rely on the passive precise strike bonus to damage and not use it finishers that much. Since I retrained into a fencer all my turns are pretty much like this: generate panache either feinting or with tumble through (I didn't have a good Dex before) > finisher > dueling parry. I not only deal way more damage than I used to but the class is overall more "smooth" to play.
I also played in the same table as a battledancer and he pretty much had all the problems I had as a gymnast with his swash.
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I think the Unstable trait on the inventor was an attempt at this. Unstable abilities certainly seem to be on par with focus spells.
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I think the Unstable trait on the inventor was an attempt at this. Unstable abilities certainly seem to be on par with focus spells.Perhaps, but Unstable is kind of unreliable. I was thinking more along the lines of Tome of Battle-style maneuvers or 4e-style encounter powers, where the martial has some abilities that just work, but are balanced by frequency of use.
For example, Disarm is a really weak action, because if you could keep disarming your foe with just a skill action, that would lead to degenerate situations where you just keep disarming and they have to keep picking up their weapons, and that's kind of silly. But if you had a 1/encounter ability that was something like "Disarming strike" that let you make either an attack roll or an Athletics check against your opponent's Reflex DC and on a success they drop their weapon, that'd be a Cool Thing without being degenerate.
Right, but why not just make them focus spells at that point? Attach some kind of non magical trait if it helps, but you have a working point based format with established power levels ready to be used, why not just use that?
To be candid, I had assumed when focus spells were initially pitched to us that this was in fact their intent. And that the choice to use "focus point" instead of "spell point" was a semantic choice to have a power point that could be magical or nonmagical, depending on the class. That didn't turn out to be the case, of course, but it's why I have the view I do. Unless you're going to make a departure from the cost to cast, like Inventors and Kineticists (and Swashbucklers to a certain extent with Panache) do, I think just using that established system makes the most sense.
Edit: I'll admit that the biggest reason to not do as I suggest would be that a class would be able to use what is intended to be a completely non-magical effect to cast overtly magical spells, since a focus point is a focus point no matter where it comes from, so some kind of limiter on what you could spend your class points on, or doing away with the cost like psychics can do, would need to be added.
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There's nothing inherently magical about "focus." No reason classes couldn't gain non-magical maneuvers and abilities that use focus points, too.
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That's a drum I've been beating since the original PF2 Playtest: Focus as an overall concept outside of what does exist in PF2 as printed has absolutely nothing to do with magic or supernatural forces whatsoever, instead it is a way to describe singular concentration or effort being applied to a single task/thing/thought.
Focus could have easily taken on ALL of the mechanical space that Hero Points have minus the "save my life" function and had been encoded into rests, it could have been provided with a handful of generic uses such as rerolls, gaining a static (or perhaps even scaling ala training) Circumstance bonus to a roll when used in advance, and EVERY Class could have been given one or more ways to spend their Focus in unique ways that befit their Class, or more likely, their Sub-Class role they choose at 1st level.
The way it was rolled out makes me think that at some point there was a luminary on the team that pushed for something like this but it didn't grab the attention of the team as a whole and instead, the idea was cannibalized into being used only in SOME circumstances such as we see it for Spellcasters and the Monk as well to give a unified new resource silo that sits outside of Spell Slots and... well, the pure martials were just left out to dry.
Spending a Focus Point and an Action to use "Focused Aim" could have provided two d20 rolls on a hit without the baggage of actually making two different Attacks. "Focus through the pain" could have been a Reaction to prevent your last point of HP damage and leave you standing at 1 HP after an otherwise deadly blow. So on and so forth, it's a design space that was utterly wasted as just another way to cast Spells when... the entire concept, the word itself in normal context has a net-0 association with anything even remotely mystical or magic about it at all.
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There's nothing inherently magical about "focus." No reason classes couldn't gain non-magical maneuvers and abilities that use focus points, too.
Yes and no. There's nothing inherently magical about the concept of focus, as TMS more eloquently argues than me, but the way the system is written in PF2 it is explicitly magical. Like I said, I would rather they had done otherwise, or had just leaned a little further into the magical dressing and called them "mana" point instead of focus (which would allow them to retroactively apply an in game meaning to the word and make "Mana Wastes" as a name make more sense), but it's all water under the bridge now.
I'm fairly certain I don't have any posts saying "I hate waffles", but maybe it's somewhere in my post history.
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Just annoyed at people responding to me as if I had said something completely different than what I actually said. Gets a bit tedious.
My comment referenced a meme from several years ago about twitter, though I often think about it here:
Twitter the only place where well articulated sentences still get misinterpreted.
You can say "I like pancakes" and somebody will say "So you hate waffles?"
No [ smurf ]. Dats a whole new sentence. Wtf is you talking about.
Probably best for me to continue taking a forum break. Stuff that I should just shrug off is more annoying than it ought to be.
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I think it would be fun for more classes to get focus spells as feats, but I basically assume that since swashbucklers and what not function on a superhuman level, they're already passively magical, and the entire concept of them being strictly mundane is long gone from PF2e's variant of the DND Lineage.
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It's literally D&D 4e encounter powers by another name.
Closer to 4e psionics than normal encounter powers, the latter recharged on an individual level. Having a resource pool that you use to enable or upgrade certain abilities is closer to the former.
... Probably not a coincidence PF2e psychics have amps like DND4e psions did, tbh.
I think it would be fun for more classes to get focus spells as feats, but I basically assume that since swashbucklers and what not function on a superhuman level, they're already passively magical, and the entire concept of them being strictly mundane is long gone from PF2e's variant of the DND Lineage.
The only D&D that probably tried to be "realistic" was OD&D. At the moment in which you can withstand several injuries and heal them in the spam of in-game hours then there's no place to claim the system tries to be simulationist or accurate to how things work IRL.
Magic as a thing exists in the very fabric of the universe in most fantasy settings, and in the case of Golarion in particular magic is pretty much a science of its own (as per Secrets of Magic at least) so I would be inclined to agree that even non-mages are empowered by the magic that exists within themselves or the universe even if they don't know how to use magic. With that said, I wouldn't like focus spell to become a generic resource for all classes (though it's not like I would hate it) mostly because as someone that used to play a ton of 3.5 / PF1e the fact that I can make a good character without relying on magic or magic-adjacent features is cool to me. Back then not playing a mage was already not being optimal with your character so playing a fighter and feeling like I'm actual superhuman that can tie his shoes without taking 10 feats or using magic feels really good.
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It's not like it would be particularly difficult either. Psionic amps are separate from normal focus spells but give focus points and have a sidebar to explain their extra rules. Create a martial variant, let's call them deeds after the pf1 pool of swash powers, and add a sidebar saying that they add to your focus pool and explain their extra rules. Don't need to call it magic or a focus spell or anything else, just treat it like psi amps.
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I think it would be fun for more classes to get focus spells as feats, but I basically assume that since swashbucklers and what not function on a superhuman level, they're already passively magical, and the entire concept of them being strictly mundane is long gone from PF2e's variant of the DND Lineage.
I think we maybe shouldn't just splash spells on absolutely everything. Like, yeah, it's true - even mid-level pure-martial characters can do some pretty impossible things. That doesn't mean that handing them spells wouldn't change them thematically.
Now, I wouldn't necessarily mind seeing some of the pure-martial classes get non-spell ways to use focus points, but slapping them with spells just makes everything more samey in bad ways. Let's not do that.
I think fighters can be the exception and should *not* have encounter powers on their class.
All other martials, yes. Please in fact. But I like that fighters occupy the “relatively uncomplicated gameplay” niche, and wouldn’t want them to pick those up.
Besides, there’s archetypes aplenty that they could pick up to get encounter powers if the player chooses. That I have no objection to, I just would prefer them not to be part of the baseline fighter or on any of its class feats.
Here’s a question … if we give martials a focus non-spell ability, what ahopens if they then grab a focus spell?
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I think things like "encounter powers" for Martials are a fine idea, but the way you recharge whatever metacurrency limits them shouldn't be "you pray or meditate for 10 minutes."
The Inventor's Unstable mechanic where it takes 10 minutes to repair the thing that overheated and started making a concerning noise is the right way to do this. If we're going to limit an ability to only be used a few times per combat we have to think about "why can you only use it a few times per combat" first.