If you're running some pre-remaster adventures with fiends under the Remastered rules, ESPECIALLY if you're gaming on foundry, it may be tempting to leave the evil damage on their statblocks as Spirit damage.
DON'T!
This just means that fiends that once hit "good and ONLY good" targets like a truck will now hit EVERYONE like a truck! There's a reason that the Monster Core book doesn't have it so fiends automatically hit for spirit damage!
So do your players a solid, and just remove evil-turned-spirit damage from any fiends they run into. Thank you for reading.
NOTE: If your party is up against celestials, then still remove the good-turned-spirit damage. Or if something does lawful-turned-spirit, or chaos-turned-spirit.
If you're running some pre-remaster adventures with fiends under the Remastered rules, ESPECIALLY if you're gaming on foundry, it may be tempting to leave the evil damage on their statblocks as Spirit damage.
DON'T!
This just means that fiends that once hit "good and ONLY good" targets like a truck will now hit EVERYONE like a truck! There's a reason that the Monster Core book doesn't have it so fiends automatically hit for spirit damage!
So do your players a solid, and just remove evil-turned-spirit damage from any fiends they run into. Thank you for reading.
NOTE: If your party is up against celestials, then still remove the good-turned-spirit damage. Or if something does lawful-turned-spirit, or chaos-turned-spirit.
Yeah, I'd probably advise that. I expected fiends and celestials to get their base damage buffed since spirit damage is redundant with the holy/unholy traits applying to any kind of damage, but from what I saw base damage stayed the same.
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As an alternative to complete removal (which I would agree is a better option than a simple conversion to plain Spirit damage for the reasons Nintendogeek mentions), I would propose something similar to the Champion Remaster compatibility change to Smite Evil:
In the Smite Evil feat, replace "good damage" with "spirit damage if the target is unholy".
So Fiends (and other aligned planar natives) that do 'Good' or 'Evil' damage can do Spirit damage but only to characters that are Sanctified to the opposing side.
Interesting idea, Finoan. That would add a significant downside to Sanctification, so it wouldn't just be the right choice every time.
If you're running some pre-remaster adventures with fiends under the Remastered rules, ESPECIALLY if you're gaming on foundry, it may be tempting to leave the evil damage on their statblocks as Spirit damage.
DON'T!
This just means that fiends that once hit "good and ONLY good" targets like a truck will now hit EVERYONE like a truck! There's a reason that the Monster Core book doesn't have it so fiends automatically hit for spirit damage!
So do your players a solid, and just remove evil-turned-spirit damage from any fiends they run into. Thank you for reading.
NOTE: If your party is up against celestials, then still remove the good-turned-spirit damage. Or if something does lawful-turned-spirit, or chaos-turned-spirit.
Honestly it's not that much of an issue either way. As far as I can see (looking at leukodaemons, astradaemons, gylou devils, and shemhazian demons for comparison's sake, which all exist both premaster and remaster) the "evil" damage was straight up removed and the unholy trait was added, but in all of those cases it's 1d6 evil/spirit damage either way.
On the other hand, keketar proteans now deal 3d12+16 piercing damage with their bite attacks (previously they dealt 3d10+15 piercing plus 1d6 chaotic) and azuretzi proteans now deal 2d10+5 piercing damage (previously 2d10+4 piercing plus 1d6 chaotic). So I have no idea what's going on there.
It doesn't make much difference. We're talking about maybe 3 points of damage per hit, sometimes.
I mean, if you were a PC, would you skip property runes? Cuz that's only 1d6 damage too. And higher level outsiders tended to add more dice, too. The extra damage can add up.
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Was the main purpose of 1d6 typed damage more to proc weaknesses?
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My muse Azata summon was dealing 2d6 spirit damage for a minute, so it definitely isn't just 1d6. But I didn't look that closely at others because Muse Azata is the best summoned celestial. It sucks that she lost her 2d6 damage, but she now hands out +2 instead of +1 every time she inspires, so I'll forgive her.
It's been a while since I ran a high level fiend, so the Azata usage probably made me overestimate the averages.
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So it looks like for most creatures the change was:
- remove the separate alignment damage die
- increase the damage die size to compensate for losing the separate die
- give them a holy/unholy trait so their damage can trigger weaknesses
The net effect of that seems more that neutral PCs now take a bit more damage from fiends that good PCs used to already take.
So it looks like for most creatures the change was:
- remove the separate alignment damage die
- increase the damage die size to compensate for losing the separate die
- give them a holy/unholy trait so their damage can trigger weaknessesThe net effect of that seems more that neutral PCs now take a bit more damage from fiends that good PCs used to already take.
This seems to be true for the Pusk and Ort.
That said the following daemons, demons, and devils didn't seem to gain anything to compensate the lost evil damage.
Cacodaemon
Leukodaemon
Astradaemon (in fact this one seems to have been given an overall damage nerf, probably for the best given Essence Drain...)
Brimorak
Succubus
Omox (Slime ball actually got nerfed)
Sarglagon
Phistophilus
Gylou (though for some reason Monster Core swapped the order they list the attacks from how its listed on AoN, weird...)
Nessari
Vrolikai got leveled up to 20 anyways, and Shemhazian had exactly ONE of its four attacks get buffed.
Vordine, the obvious replacement to the barbazu, does do more physical damage but the Barbazu hit much harder vs good targets with its glaive and the Vordine's secondary attacks lack a lot the nasty extra effects the barbazu had. So I'd call it an overall nerf, and a well deserved one as I always felt barbazu punched above its weight class.
Others I wasn't able to see an obvious connection or replacement for so I'm not sure.
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If you're running some pre-remaster adventures with fiends under the Remastered rules, ESPECIALLY if you're gaming on foundry, it may be tempting to leave the evil damage on their statblocks as Spirit damage.
DON'T!
This just means that fiends that once hit "good and ONLY good" targets like a truck will now hit EVERYONE like a truck! There's a reason that the Monster Core book doesn't have it so fiends automatically hit for spirit damage!
So do your players a solid, and just remove evil-turned-spirit damage from any fiends they run into. Thank you for reading.
NOTE: If your party is up against celestials, then still remove the good-turned-spirit damage. Or if something does lawful-turned-spirit, or chaos-turned-spirit.
I'm not really seeing a problem here. The whole point of Spirit Damage was to equalize the damage to entities of all alignments (besides constructs it seems, but no such thing as construct PCs, so it doesn't matter), not have to rely on alignment-based effects, and we could still have a Weakness based on Sanctification traits instead, which PCs won't have, even if they have Sanctification (unless there is a general rule I'm missing). Evil fights Evil all the time, and those turned into boring slugfests at-best and complete disappointments of class features at-worst. It's almost as bad as two dragons of the same immunity and element fighting each other.
Also, it's just a 1D6. There are far worse things that many fiends have besides a bonus 1D6 damage to players, none of which was reliant on characters being Good-aligned (or in this case, Holy Sanctified). DC 20 bleed flat checks are BS and will basically kill a player even after the fight is over. Being able to Cone-Strike all enemies without repercussions/MAP is also pretty broken. Or having way more AC/HP/To-Hit/Resistances. And that's just a couple of the abilities known commonly to fiends. Compared to those, a bonus 1D6 damage is hardly anything to cry home about.
I'm not really seeing a problem here...
That extra 1d6 per hit can add up, especially at lower levels when PC's don't have all that many hit points. So I must respectfully disagree on how impactful that damage is. ESPECIALLY when you combine it with the other abilities you mentioned.
DC 20 bleed flat checks are BS and will basically kill a player even after the fight is over.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thought the Barbazu was BS. I'm not sorry that it's been kicked to the curb. ;-)
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Automaton and Poppet don't get the immunities non-player constructs get. They have souls and can take spirit damage.
I'm not really seeing a problem here...That extra 1d6 per hit can add up, especially at lower levels when PC's don't have all that many hit points. So I must respectfully disagree on how impactful that damage is. ESPECIALLY when you combine it with the other abilities you mentioned.
DC 20 bleed flat checks are BS and will basically kill a player even after the fight is over.I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thought the Barbazu was BS. I'm not sorry that it's been kicked to the curb. ;-)
Not really. It's an average of 3.5 damage per hit. It might be acquired sooner than most elemental runes, but Fiends are meant to be strong foes. They're quintessential Evil entities, so they should be both memorable and powerful. Really, Fiends and Undead are probably the two most common Evil entities in the game, and it's no surprise that they are also the most powerful types.
Also, the complaint that Fiends shouldn't do spirit damage also doesn't make sense because Celestials also do spirit damage, and nobody is making a clamoring to fix that, either. Incidentally, Celestials are even more powerful and BS than Fiends, so the idea that only Fiends should be nerfed is a joke, but also calls into question how the Celestials are warring in the planes when they should be trouncing Fiends on the daily, to the point that they shouldn't even be a challenge.
I'm not really seeing a problem here...That extra 1d6 per hit can add up, especially at lower levels when PC's don't have all that many hit points. So I must respectfully disagree on how impactful that damage is. ESPECIALLY when you combine it with the other abilities you mentioned.
DC 20 bleed flat checks are BS and will basically kill a player even after the fight is over.I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thought the Barbazu was BS. I'm not sorry that it's been kicked to the curb. ;-)Not really. It's an average of 3.5 damage per hit. It might be acquired sooner than most elemental runes, but Fiends are meant to be strong foes. They're quintessential Evil entities, so they should be both memorable and powerful. Really, Fiends and Undead are probably the two most common Evil entities in the game, and it's no surprise that they are also the most powerful types.
Also, the complaint that Fiends shouldn't do spirit damage also doesn't make sense because Celestials also do spirit damage, and nobody is making a clamoring to fix that, either. Incidentally, Celestials are even more powerful and BS than Fiends, so the idea that only Fiends should be nerfed is a joke, but also calls into question how the Celestials are warring in the planes when they should be trouncing Fiends on the daily, to the point that they shouldn't even be a challenge.
hands on hips
We had this discussion in 3.x, back when the Mages of the Shore decided it was a good idea to have dragons deliberately 3 points of CR under where they should be so that they could be "memorable" and "challenging." And it was absurd and led to TPKs when GMs didn't realize it and would throw a 10th level dragon at a level 7 party, and it was actually a CR 13 encounter or whatever. James Jacobs has a similar story if memory serves about how someone didn't actually bother to add...
First off, throwing 1D6 damage on a creature does not at all mean that I want the math/paradigm of old (since the math/paradigm of old revolves around way more than a free 1D6), so acting like that is the case, is a strawman. Just as well, there were far, far more broken things in those old systems than a free arbitrary 1D6 damage bonus. The slippery slope argument doesn't work like that.
Second off, creatures like Dragons, the example you're referencing, are still designed like that even here in PF2, even if it isn't as extreme as it used to be. They are commonly solitary creatures, have access to more powerful abilities and have higher attributes than most monsters of their same challenge rating, which doesn't surprise me, since those increased attributes and abilities compensate for the fact that it is a solitary creature, and therefore has less raw actions at its disposal, and that such creatures usually have either advance warning, or permit special tools to be effective against them in particular. It's because of these things that the game does break the math, and in fact has guidelines for how to safely do just that. It has a weakness? Give it more HP than normal. It has resistance? Less HP than normal.
Your argument for Celestials is equally laughable, as the same can be said with Fiends wielding Unholy weapons/having Unholy runes on their attacks as well. It also doesn't discount the factor that Celestials having higher attributes than Fiends should likewise provoke the same argument, if not from an even more emotional standpoint, simply because it's the same thing but on a different side of the same coin, and amplified even further by more broken stats. The only reason it doesn't is simply because PCs don't regularly fight Celestials. Being part of a group that has fought both Celestials and Fiends on a regular basis, I can safely say that the Celestials were the much harder fights.
Which also brings into question how there is even a lasting fight between the forces of Good and Evil in the planes when it's clear the book boosts the values and abilities of Celestial creatures far more than Fiends.
Also, the complaint that Fiends shouldn't do spirit damage also doesn't make sense because Celestials also do spirit damage, and nobody is making a clamoring to fix that, either. Incidentally, Celestials are even more powerful and BS than Fiends, so the idea that only Fiends should be nerfed is a joke, but also calls into question how the Celestials are warring in the planes when they should be trouncing Fiends on the daily, to the point that they shouldn't even be a challenge.
In my initial post here I did, in fact, say to remove spirit damage for celestials and other outsiders.
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Yeah, the way you make a creature stronger than a level 4 challenge is by making it a level 5 challenge.
It's kind of dumb to have a standardized system of monster power and then suggest the game should intentionally ignore that system to make certain monsters stronger but mislabel them. Like, that's literally just saying developers should be lying to GMs about encounter design.
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Yeah, the encounter building system is supposed to help the GM estimate difficulty. It's not a "budget" system where "you're only allowed to use a level X creature here, so could you stat out this creature as X+2 but call it X so I can use it here and have it be more powerful than I'm allowed to use?"
If you want a memorable dragon, use a dragon of party level +3, not +1. Don't say that you're using a level+2 dragon but use the stats of a level+4 creature. You're just lying to yourself (and as a writer, to editors and GMs).
My argument wasn't about whether 1d6 here or there is good/bad. As I said earlier, I don't think it matters.
My issue is with the mindset that certain monsters (fiends, undead, dragons) should be "harder" or more "challenging" than other monsters of the same challenge rating. That mindset is problematic. And leads to dead PCs.
Ability scores do not matter. Like, at all. What matters is damage per round. That's generally pretty equivalent.
And of course celestials are more difficult to fight. I presume you didn't get to hit their unholy weaknesses? They also have healing, and healing is not balanced for NPCs. I remember fighting Tomb Giant squads in a module that were ridiculously, idiotically under-CR'd because 2-action heal and harm are absurd.
That logic really doesn't work - by that logic all in-setting alchemists should be dead from natural selection because their class is comparatively weak. Lore is not mechanics. Moving along.
There is a table that shows expected creature values for a given challenge rating, ranging from Weak to Extreme. Fiends, Dragons, and (some) Undead are usually on the Extreme ends of those challenge ratings (to compensate for them having certain counters to them), and again, have abilities that aren't wholly reflected in a given challenge rating. To suggest this doesn't happen when the rules outright allow this is a disingenuous argument.
Yet another strawman. Never said it was strictly ability scores, as it's solely about their modifiers and special abilities. Really, there is no reason to list ability scores for creatures when they do absolutely nothing for the statblock, and instead just create inconsistencies in listed stats. Paizo should have just engaged in their "Math doesn't matter" design wholesale when it came to their statblocks; who cares what their Charisma is when it does nothing mechanically?
Evil PCs (well, any PCs, really,) are disincentivized to take Unholy weapons due to the infrequency of encountering Good creatures. Why take a property that is only good in maybe 1 of not even 10 fights, when most of them are against Evil or Neutral-type creatures?
The funny thing is, clerics in the AP I played didn't have fonts like PC clerics do. Just seems to me that Paizo doesn't vet all forms of such abilities, in which case that's just a quality control issue. And guess what? APs and monsters have that issue the most.
Lore and mechanics go hand in hand, as that is the point. Lore doesn't say that Nex and Geb are 10 Intelligence morons, so their mechanics (if any) clearly won't reflect that. There is no reason to perpetuate the Stormwind Fallacy by suggesting mechanics don't matter to the lore when they most certainly should.
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There is no reason to perpetuate the Stormwind Fallacy by suggesting mechanics don't matter to the lore when they most certainly should.
You need to verify what the Stormwind Fallacy is about as it speaks about players, not world-building.
Also, suggesting that because one angel is stronger than one demon then demons should be already eliminated is a complete ignorance of tons of other factors, mainly the biggest one: numbers.
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This is like that time when Darksol insisted Stormwind had anything to do with NPC wizard kings not making sense because player character fighters could beat player character wizards in a cage match.
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To expand for those that don't know, without commenting on the conversation at hand:
The Stormwind Fallacy (named for a user on the old WOTC optimization boards that proposed it) is a cornerstone of character optimization communities, the fallacy is that people think that character optimization and roleplaying are inversely proportional.
In reality you could play the strongest build in pretty much any game with deep motivations, a comprehensive backstory, and a well realized voice; or you could conversely play the weakest build in any game without roleplaying much at all.
This reality sometimes manifests very obviously as the people with the highest system mastery also being the people most invested in the game's narrative, but not always. There's also a perpetual subset of the TTRPG community that tries to measure roleplaying by the lack of optimization, in a very hipsterish, gatekeeping kind of way.
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To expand for those that don't know, without commenting on the conversation at hand:
The Stormwind Fallacy (named for a user on the old WOTC optimization boards that proposed it) is a cornerstone of character optimization communities, the fallacy is that people think that character optimization and roleplaying are inversely proportional.
In reality you could play the strongest build in pretty much any game with deep motivations, a comprehensive backstory, and a well realized voice; or you could conversely play the weakest build in any game without roleplaying much at all.
This reality sometimes manifests very obviously as the people with the highest system mastery also being the people most invested in the game's narrative, but not always. There's also a perpetual subset of the TTRPG community that tries to measure roleplaying by the lack of optimization, in a very hipsterish, gatekeeping kind of way.
And to take it a step further, what it is NOT is at all applicable to NPC and monster mechanics.
The Stormwind Fallacy (named for a user on the old WOTC optimization boards that proposed it) is a cornerstone of character optimization communities, the fallacy is that people think that character optimization and roleplaying are inversely proportional.
One thing that I think isn't Stormwind Fallacy, but is often confused to be: Mechanics that give non-combat abilities should cost something. Building a character to be a powerhouse in non-combat challenges shouldn't come for free. Especially if only some classes are able to do it.
My best example in PF2 is Investigator. A lot of non-combat power built right into the class. But it does seem to cost some of the combat ability.
The counterexample being Rogue. It has non-combat power available that is pretty much the equivalent of Investigator, but it doesn't seem to cost any combat ability to have that.
But in both cases, and whichever side of this debate you happen to fall on, the arguments are not Stormwind Fallacy. Here I am talking about game mechanics balance - not role-play vs optimization.
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The Stormwind Fallacy (named for a user on the old WOTC optimization boards that proposed it) is a cornerstone of character optimization communities, the fallacy is that people think that character optimization and roleplaying are inversely proportional.
One thing that I think isn't Stormwind Fallacy, but is often confused to be: Mechanics that give non-combat abilities should cost something. Building a character to be a powerhouse in non-combat challenges shouldn't come for free. Especially if only some classes are able to do it.
My best example in PF2 is Investigator. A lot of non-combat power built right into the class. But it does seem to cost some of the combat ability.
The counterexample being Rogue. It has non-combat power available that is pretty much the equivalent of Investigator, but it doesn't seem to cost any combat ability to have that.
But in both cases, and whichever side of this debate you happen to fall on, the arguments are not Stormwind Fallacy. Here I am talking about game mechanics balance - not role-play vs optimization.
Its sort of interesting, because it depends a lot on the culture of the game-- sometimes this can actually lead to a meta enforcement where the expectation becomes combat optimization, because there's a tacit understanding that if the lack of noncombat capability leads to a more frustrating game, the GM will start dropping and smoothing the problems those options are meant to solve-- whereas if players happen to have them semi-frequently, there isn't a default expectation that it needs to be smoothed over.
Language stuff frequently falls into this trap, I've noticed, a lot of 4e character optimization guides treated them as traps because "If the inscription is important, the GM will give you another way to get that information"
The Stormwind Fallacy (named for a user on the old WOTC optimization boards that proposed it) is a cornerstone of character optimization communities, the fallacy is that people think that character optimization and roleplaying are inversely proportional.
One thing that I think isn't Stormwind Fallacy, but is often confused to be: Mechanics that give non-combat abilities should cost something. Building a character to be a powerhouse in non-combat challenges shouldn't come for free. Especially if only some classes are able to do it.
My best example in PF2 is Investigator. A lot of non-combat power built right into the class. But it does seem to cost some of the combat ability.
The counterexample being Rogue. It has non-combat power available that is pretty much the equivalent of Investigator, but it doesn't seem to cost any combat ability to have that.
But in both cases, and whichever side of this debate you happen to fall on, the arguments are not Stormwind Fallacy. Here I am talking about game mechanics balance - not role-play vs optimization.
Eh. I agree with your general point, and will even grant the investigator can be viewed as undertuned compared to the rogue... But both classes have 8 hp per level (compared to the true martial 10 HP baseline) and are limited to lower damage weapons. The investigator performs worse in combat but Pursue a Lead and Clue In provide it a small but real edge over the rogue on skill checks. (And that's before you touch feats which further push Investigator towards skills and rogues towards combat.)
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To expand for those that don't know, without commenting on the conversation at hand:
The Stormwind Fallacy (named for a user on the old WOTC optimization boards that proposed it) is a cornerstone of character optimization communities, the fallacy is that people think that character optimization and roleplaying are inversely proportional.
In reality you could play the strongest build in pretty much any game with deep motivations, a comprehensive backstory, and a well realized voice; or you could conversely play the weakest build in any game without roleplaying much at all.
This reality sometimes manifests very obviously as the people with the highest system mastery also being the people most invested in the game's narrative, but not always. There's also a perpetual subset of the TTRPG community that tries to measure roleplaying by the lack of optimization, in a very hipsterish, gatekeeping kind of way.
This last point seems the origin of the fallacy to me. And also the fact that rules-light TTRPGs should be "narrative" or "roleplay-oriented" in opposition to rules-heavy TTRPGs that should somehow reduce the quality of narration or roleplay for whatever reason.
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Yeah the monster creation rules for demons say to give them smhigh HP to compensate for their multiple weaknesses, but that's a general monster design principle at play. Pre-remaster, the creature buildig specified fiends should get extra evil damage on their strikes. That was notably replaced in the remaster building rules; they now specify fiend strikes have the unholy trait instead.
I never bothered to look at how fiend damage compared to the strike damage guidelines with and without the evil damage, but if you assume that let fiends punch above their weight class it would have been limited to only good PCs. With that factor no longer at play an no general rule applying extra damage to holy creatures that lack a weakness, there is no reason to keep that extra damage.
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About Celestials: They were on average weaker than the fiends... So based on that, it just seems like they kept that status...
Then the real question is: Why were they weaker on average?
My guess would be that by having the de-facto good guys being weaker than the de-facto bad guys on average enable multiple things.
It explains why these "good guys" have so many "truce deals" with the bad ones. You tend to be more accommodating to people that can beat you up. :P
It gives a reason for the need for all the heroic adventurers to save the day.
It let GMs drop celestial allies that won't necessarily overshadow the players even against same-level fiends.
And in the end, the actual difference was small enough that it took almost 5 years and a remaster for more people to actually catch that. xD
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Very interesting, Calliope. You are doing the Lord's work.
Re: celestials being weaker. It might not just be the expectation that PCs will fight a lot more fiends. Narratively, many celestials aren't soldiers first and foremost. Angels are primarily messenges, for example. Azatas are expressions of pure joy and focus on things like music. The only celestials in monster core who jump out to me as soldiers are the archons.
This isn't scientifically documented like Calliope is doing, but I'd wager that celestials have more skills and spells on average than fiends. Probably better bonuses, too. I've certainly noticed more healing and buff spells in their innate options. They feel more like they should use the Skill Paragon road map, which defaults to moderate damage.
Fiends, on the other hand, are basically all rooted in violence, barring a few exceptions like contract devils and succubi. It makes sense that they'd trend towards high for offense and defense.
One thing I'm noticing from all the monster nerfs Calliope is documenting: it is bringing monsters in line with the creature building road maps instead of just defaulting to high values for strikes, damage, and AC for anything which might get into a fight. This is a good trend, both for being consistent with their own rules and for making the game more forgiving for new players. The creature buildig rules said to use moderate values often, but bestiaries rarely bore that out.