| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sorry Paizo for such a feedback. I was quite thrilled by the Commander (and worried by the Guardian) and finally I'm disappointed by the Commander (and the Guardian is awesome).
Current Commander is just a 2-trick poney who gives his actions to allies. That's boring, it doesn't look like a Commander to me.
I'd have prefered the Commander to have active abilities. After all, you are suppose to devise tactics to win the battle, not just telling you ally: You attack!
For example:
STRIKE HARD! [two-actions]
BANNER COMMANDER TACTIC
You command allies to attack when the enemies are beffudled by your tactics. Every enemy in your Banner aura makes a Will Save against your class DC.
Failure The opponent leaves an opening for your allies' attacks. Choose one of your Quadmates that can Strike the enemy as a Reaction. Each Quadmate can only make one Strike thanks to Strike Hard!
Critical Failure As failure, but with a +2 circumstance bonus to the attack roll.
Or:
DOUBLE TEAM [two-actions]
COMMANDER TACTIC
Your team works together to set an enemy up for a vicious attack. Roll a Warfare Lore check and signal one squadmate affected by your commander’s banner who has an opponent within their reach. That ally can Shove or Reposition an opponent as a free action using your Warfare Lore result to resolve the action. If their maneuver is successful and the target ends their movement flanked by you or another squadmate, you or the second squadmate can attempt a melee Strike against that target as a reaction.
Or:
FORM UP! [one-action]
COMMANDER TACTIC
You signal your team to move into position together. Signal all squadmates affected by your commander’s banner; each can immediately Stride as a reaction, though each must end their movement inside your banner’s aura. Every enemy that uses a reaction triggered by your allies' movement must succeed at a Will save against your class DC or see their Reaction disrupted (but still used).
Or:
PINCER ATTACK [one-action]
COMMANDER TACTIC
You signal an aggressive formation designed to exploit enemies’ vulnerabilities. Signal all squadmates affected by your commander’s banner; each can Step as a free action. If any of your allies end this movement flanking an opponent, that opponent is Flat-Footed to you and all your Squadmates until the beginning of your next round and must succeed at a Reflex save against your class DC or fall prone.
These are just examples, but the goal would be:
- Make all tactics circumstantial. Tactics should be circumstantial. Using the same tactic (Strike Hard!) every round is preposterous. The Commander should adapt to the situation.
- Use your Class DC and Warfare Lore skill a lot. So you know why you have high Intelligence.
- Give more tactics to the Commander (obviously as they are circumstantial) so the class feels more interesting (if I want an easy to use class, I don't choose the Commander).
- Give more freedom on how to play the Commander. As of now, the best routine for a Commander is Strike + Strike Hard! It means that you either use a ranged weapon or a mount. With circumstantial tactics, the number of actions used on your tactics will vary and you won't end up with always the same routine.
Side notes:
- I think it'd be great to have other skills used for some tactics, like Intimidation, Deception, Arcana, whatever, encouraging the Commander to develop a unique set of tactics, skill proficiencies and stats array. I'd love to have some Commanders using Arcana for magic based tactics, while other Commanders will have high Charisma for demoralizing/deceptive tactics when other Commanders will have high Str/Dex and attack more often by themselves.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My "changes" are not to tune it up or down, but to avoid the constant and repetitive use of Strike Hard! because it's the best thing you have to do each and every round.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Pincer Attack is often going to be the best thing you can do in a round to set up easy off guard on multiple enemies, take flanking off allies or allow them to not trigger a reaction, and close up unrestricted movement lanes towards your backline once 2+ frontliners engage.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I agree. Pincer Attack and Strike Hard! are the 2 outliers. I feel it depends on the number of allies (and if there are rogues among them).
Strike Hard! can help doing quite the damage, as long as you have a 2-handed Fighter or Barbarian in the party. Strike Hard! + free Stride (Mount, Corgi Mount) + Strike is definitely an optimized routine.
I honestly believe there's a ton of overlap with the current tactics. We have I don't know how many tactics that are Step + whatever or Stride + whatever. At that point I would prefer for the class to have two basic "you make an ally attack" and "you make an ally move" tactics and then have the tactics themselves add effects to those two options kinda like metamagic / spellshape feats.
I do disagree tactics should be situational though. When I think of a commander I think of a class that allows me to stay in the back and play chess with the rest of the party. To fullfill that fantasy I need to have basic actions that I can reliably use every turn.
I'm also not entirely sure the commander should use skills for their tactics because it will eventually create a situation in which a commander wouldn't realistically be able to make the DCs of certain tactics by virtue of not being highly proficient in the required skill, which can sound nice to make different-feel commanders but I don't think that's what Paizo is going for here.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I do disagree tactics should be situational though. When I think of a commander I think of a class that allows me to stay in the back and play chess with the rest of the party. To fullfill that fantasy I need to have basic actions that I can reliably use every turn.
It depends on what you call situational. If the situation is "better against lots of enemies" you should be able to use it often, same for "targets Reflex" which is situational as you'll obviously try to use it on low Reflex enemies.
What I dislike with the Commander is that it always works. You'll always use the same routine fights after fights because there's no point in variation as your routine is already the best you can get.
IMO the best will be if the commander's tactics ends like Impulses where you have the EB that's very good general use but there are tons of other impulses that competes with it for different situations and strategies.
So I'm not against have a good general use tactic but the other tactics even the most situational ones needs to be competitive with it to avoid become "a monkey of one skill".
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think the 1-trick pony problem is due to not getting enough starting tactics. Even one more could make a huge difference, but with only 2/4 you have to keep one tried-and-true one in your loadout, which doesn't leave you enough situational ones to actually react to situations.
I do disagree tactics should be situational though. When I think of a commander I think of a class that allows me to stay in the back and play chess with the rest of the party. To fullfill that fantasy I need to have basic actions that I can reliably use every turn.It depends on what you call situational. If the situation is "better against lots of enemies" you should be able to use it often, same for "targets Reflex" which is situational as you'll obviously try to use it on low Reflex enemies.
What I dislike with the Commander is that it always works. You'll always use the same routine fights after fights because there's no point in variation as your routine is already the best you can get.
I mean, how is that different from any other martial in the game? A TWF martial is going to use Double Slice or Twin Takedown every turn, a two-handed one Power Attack. Archer rangers will use Hunter's Shot, a thaumaturge is going to be using Intesify Vulnerability. If the commander ends up using one or two tactics more often than others its effectively the same that most martials already do in the system.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, how is that different from any other martial in the game? A TWF martial is going to use Double Slice or Twin Takedown every turn, a two-handed one Power Attack. Archer rangers will use Hunter's Shot, a thaumaturge is going to be using Intesify Vulnerability. If the commander ends up using one or two tactics more often than others its effectively the same that most martials already do in the system.
Because it's boring. If you give always the same actions to the other characters and don't even roll the dice yourself, why are you even playing? It's like some propositions I've seen in the Commander threads where the Commander could just give its 3 actions to other characters every round and go watch TV as its all they do.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
When they said the Commander would be the "prepared martial" I was expecting a martial with the play pattern of a caster, where you have a wide variety of situational options to choose from round by round. Only having two and therefore only having room for "tell an ally to strike" and "tell your allies to move" is way less interesting than just playing a martial yourself. Class desperately needs some sauce.
I mean, how is that different from any other martial in the game? A TWF martial is going to use Double Slice or Twin Takedown every turn, a two-handed one Power Attack. Archer rangers will use Hunter's Shot, a thaumaturge is going to be using Intesify Vulnerability. If the commander ends up using one or two tactics more often than others its effectively the same that most martials already do in the system.Because it's boring. If you give always the same actions to the other characters and don't even roll the dice yourself, why are you even playing? It's like some propositions I've seen in the Commander threads where the Commander could just give its 3 actions to other characters every round and go watch TV as its all they do.
Its boring to you, but not to me. I want to be able to see how my party members tear through enemies because I was the one that allowed those actions to happen. But besides that, I said many times that I'm not against them allowing commanders to go into battle as long as I'm able to not do it. Both playstyles can easily co-exist without trouble, but the current iteration doesn't because there's a ton of stuff that requires you to actually make strikes in the class.
Give players the choice to play what they want. I want a lazylord, you want a warlord. Both can exist within one class.
That's why I said that the ideal is to have both. 1 or more good general tactics to be repeated frequently and many other tactics more situational to be used when the circumstances are advantageous to them.
It's like spells you can take a one good spell (specially focus) to use always as possible and many others to use when the situations demands them more.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
But besides that, I said many times that I'm not against them allowing commanders to go into battle as long as I'm able to not do it. Both playstyles can easily co-exist without trouble
You keep saying both should be able to co-exist but then a lot of your suggestions amount to trashing the version you don't like. Hard to get a read on.
But besides that, I said many times that I'm not against them allowing commanders to go into battle as long as I'm able to not do it. Both playstyles can easily co-exist without troubleYou keep saying both should be able to co-exist but then a lot of your suggestions amount to trashing the version you don't like. Hard to get a read on.
Because I don't bother about a warlord playstle, I want a lazylord, but Paizo isn't going to make a class just for me but rather a class that everybody would want to play. But besides, mention a single time I mentioned something that would make the warlord playstyle worse, because so far I'm asking for commander to have the option to be a lazylord.
You have explicitly asked for the commander to have slower weapon progression, which would directly make the version that goes into battle and uses weapons worseBecause I don't bother about a warlord playstle, I want a lazylord, but Paizo isn't going to make a class just for me but rather a class that everybody would want to play. But besides, mention a single time I mentioned something that would make the warlord playstyle worse, because so far I'm asking for commander to have the option to be a lazylord.But besides that, I said many times that I'm not against them allowing commanders to go into battle as long as I'm able to not do it. Both playstyles can easily co-exist without troubleYou keep saying both should be able to co-exist but then a lot of your suggestions amount to trashing the version you don't like. Hard to get a read on.
Yes, that's a thing I proposed initially (and that I wouldn't certainly mind) but its been a while since I mentioned that one again because I know people aren't going to like it. I also said a ton of times after that I don't bother if they have martial or whatever progression as long as I can play the lazylord, so don't ignore one thing I said to prove your point. To be honest, I would want to know how a version of these two classes with the delayed progression would look like. A martial support and a martial tank that aren't forced to attack but rather have their budget and effectivity mover elsewhere. I also think a lot of people have been asking for a "full support martial" since PF2e released and now that people are asking for it people want yet another regular martial with regular progression and some stuff sprinkled over it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There's actually no need to change much. I like what's already there, but there's definitely room for more tactics that include the commander in them. Those will probably make it.
There's a simple way to be included in most of your tactics: Grab a mount. All the Mobility tactics will suddenly work on you (well, on your horse).
From my reading, a mount for a Commander is like an Imaginary Weapon for a Magus: a no-brainer.