Minotaurs are totally busted

[Squiggit]

Ascalaphus wrote:

I don't really buy darkvision being really that powerful.

It's one of those theory/practice situations. A group with darkvision can give themselves a massive asymmetrical advantage against enemies that don't by appropriately weaponizing darkness. There's very little that can trump being able to perfectly see someone who can't see you.

But darkvision is so pervasive and lighting so often handwaved that it's rarely a 'real' mechanic and mostly just an occasional oddity.

If anything the argument to be made is probably the opposite, that Paizo has effectively ruined the ability to use light as a gameplay element by making darkvision both cheap to PCs and handed out like candy to NPCs with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

Same thing with the size, tbh. There are a lot of ideas about being Large, but the practical implications are somewhat more boring. Sometimes you'll have better space control, but often that won't really matter. Sometimes you'll be moving really slowly through a small hallway or get flanked in a way you otherwise might not be, but often times you won't. Outside a few exceptions (like I'd strongly advise against playing a large minotaur in abomination vaults) it generally won't mean much.

[Bluemagetim]

Ravingdork wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

If you have an ally on one side of a large creature you have 4 squares that will give flanking. Basically an L shape on the other side of the large creature

If an ally is on the other side of a medium creature there is only 1 square that gives flanking with that ally.

So 1 ally that is survivable enough can set up a flank for up to 4 characters against large targets.

How exactly do you get four?

If you're sitting on a diagonal corner, then you only flank with someone at the opposite diagonal. In the diagram below, red flank with each other against the minotaur, but black does not flank with black or with red.

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⭕⬜
⬜⬜Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️⬜⬜
⬜⚫Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️⬜⬜
⬜⭕⚫⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜

If you're on one of the broad faces, then you only flank for two others. Again, as shown below red flanks with red, but black flanks with no one.

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⭕Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️⭕⬜
⬜⭕Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️⬜⬜
⬜⬜⚫⚫⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜

How on Golarion did you get one guy setting up flanking for four others?

EDIT: Ah. Are two of your four flankers using reach weapons? That can get you four flankers with only one setting up, albeit with two having to deal with soft cover. Still, if you're fighting 5 enemies, all the individual enemies likely aren't that much of a threat to begin with. In the time it takes for them to set that up, you and your allies have likely already killed one or two of them.

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⭕⭕Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️⭕⬜
⬜⭕⭕Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⚫⚫⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜

I love the graphics. center to center. opposing sides or corners.

My mistake this was what I was thinking would work.
XXXX XXXX
ALLF ALLF
XLLF XLLF
XXXX XXFF
Right Wrong
Thats not coming out the way i have it when I type it.

[SuperBidi]

As I play a Large character in PFS (my Goblin Mutagenist), I can at least speak about combat. Large size is definitely a problem... if it doesn't come with reach. Positioning yourself next to the enemy when you are 4 squares big is very often problematic. On the other side, once you add reach, it becomes really massive. First, because you have a bigger reach thanks to your bigger size. But also because you suddenly no more need to move much and have much more positioning flexibility.

Flanking is not really a consideration when you're large, because you'll prefer to stay in the middle of the fray so you can benefit from Reactive Strike as much as possible.

And you are actually harder to flank, as enemies can't easily get around you.

[Teridax]

While I don't think the minotaur ancestry is as busted as people say, I do think it's overloaded with benefits that are harder-earned on earlier ancestries. Darkvision in particular feels completely unnecessary, and giving a trait that's normally worth an entire damage die step feels like it should've been only made available at a higher level. I also question why this was the ancestry to try out physical-only attribute boosts when the standard so far was for them to be mixed.

While I do think Pathfinder 2e is a well-balanced system, and remains as such, ancestries have always felt a bit like the Wild West in balance terms: despite not starting out with all that much, some ancestries start out with straight-up more benefits than others, and humans are just not balanced in the same way as any other ancestry at all, which distorts build decisions. I wonder what the design methodology is behind giving different ancestries their starting Hit Points and features, besides lore considerations.

[Calliope5431]

Squiggit wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

I don't really buy darkvision being really that powerful.

It's one of those theory/practice situations. A group with darkvision can give themselves a massive asymmetrical advantage against enemies that don't by appropriately weaponizing darkness. There's very little that can trump being able to perfectly see someone who can't see you.

But darkvision is so pervasive and lighting so often handwaved that it's rarely a 'real' mechanic and mostly just an occasional oddity.

If anything the argument to be made is probably the opposite, that Paizo has effectively ruined the ability to use light as a gameplay element by making darkvision both cheap to PCs and handed out like candy to NPCs with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

Same thing with the size, tbh. There are a lot of ideas about being Large, but the practical implications are somewhat more boring. Sometimes you'll have better space control, but often that won't really matter. Sometimes you'll be moving really slowly through a small hallway or get flanked in a way you otherwise might not be, but often times you won't. Outside a few exceptions (like I'd strongly advise against playing a large minotaur in abomination vaults) it generally won't mean much.

Oh yeah, I did a survey of monsters with non-light based vision at one point (darkvision, entropy sense, etc) and it's, uh, almost all of them pretty much.

[Grankless]

Times like these that make me pray 3e just throws out attribute mods in general. Certainly for ancestries.

[Gortle]

Squiggit wrote:

If anything the argument to be made is probably the opposite, that Paizo has effectively ruined the ability to use light as a gameplay element by making darkvision both cheap to PCs and handed out like candy to NPCs with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

I'm certainly of that opinion. As the GM I want to have the dark back as a scene element.

[ssims2]

It seems to me that the designers consider Large size (with 5-foot reach) to be a substantial downgrade. Consider the "mini-taur" heritage, which drops you from Large to Medium and changes your horn damage from 1d8 to 1d6 agile. Agile is considered to be worth one die size in damage, so the latter change is balance-neutral, meaning the downgrade in size is considered equivalent in power to gaining one 1st-level ancestry feat (since the benefits of a heritage are generally equivalent to a 1st-level ancestry feat in power). Why is Large size (with 5-foot reach) considered such a sizeable downgrade in power?

One thing I have missed from this discussion is what I call threat-to-space ratio. Basically, this is a comparison between the number of squares that a creature can threaten and the number of squares they occupy. The more squares you can threaten, the more enemies you can attack, flank, or potentially interdict, should you have reactive strike or similar reactions. The more squares you occupy, the more enemies can do the same to you. So a threat-to-space ratio represents how flexible you are offensively compared to how vulnerable you are defensively, all other factors being equal.

I'll calculate using two dimensions. You can calculate using three dimensions and get similar results.

A Medium or Small creature occupies 1 square and threatens 8, so they have a threat-to-space ratio of 8:1.

A Large (tall) creature with a reach of 10 feet occupies 4 squares, while threatening the 12 adjacent squares, plus 16 squares 10 feet away. This results in a threat-to-space ratio of 28:4, or 7:1, which is close enough to the Medium/Small ratio that this is not a factor.

A Large creature with a reach of 5 feet (like a PC minotaur or centaur) occupies 4 squares while threatening only the 12 adjacent squares. This is a threat-to-space ratio of 12:4, or 3:1, substantially lower than the ratios calculated above.

...

However, I'll note that the Minotaur and Centaur base chassis are both at the high end of ancestry power. Using AFE (ancestry feat equivalents) to measure chassis strength:

Elf (as an example of a Player Core ancestry): Speed (30 feet, worth +1 AFE over the default 25 feet) and Low-light Vision (worth +1 AFE) = +2 for the base chassis

Minotaur: Size (Large, worth -1 AFE as described above), Darkvision (worth +2 AFE, 1 for low-light vision and another to upgrade to darkvision), Horns (worth +2 AFE, 1 for the unarmed attack and another to increase the damage die from the default 1d6 to 1d8) = +3 for the base chassis

Centaur: Size (Large, -1 AFE), Speed (30 ft., +1 AFE), Darkvision (+2 AFE), plus two other minor abilities each work around half an ancestry feat = +3

...

Last, I'll mention that the most obvious downside to being Large as an ancestry is that you can't turn it off when it becomes a problem. Somebody who can cast enlarge can become Large when it is beneficial to do so, and when it would be a drawback, they just don't cast the spell. If you're Large all the time, you just have to deal with the downsides, which can range from annoying to potentially lethal.

[Squiggit]

How do you figure horns are worth two feats? Iruxi Sharp Fangs is already an ancestry feat that gives you a traitless d8 attack. Tengu and Nagaji (along with some feat options like orc tusks, ganzi tails, or dhampir fangs) are d6s, but they're d6s with an extra trait, which is part of the budget.

There are only a couple naked d6 ancestry attacks that I can find (hard tail goblin feat, gnoll anestry bite, saberteeth catfolk feat) and it seems more the case that those are just underbudget since they aren't really the standard.

[pH unbalanced]

Squiggit wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

I don't really buy darkvision being really that powerful.

It's one of those theory/practice situations. A group with darkvision can give themselves a massive asymmetrical advantage against enemies that don't by appropriately weaponizing darkness. There's very little that can trump being able to perfectly see someone who can't see you.

But darkvision is so pervasive and lighting so often handwaved that it's rarely a 'real' mechanic and mostly just an occasional oddity.

This is why one of my favorite spells in PF1 was Shadowfade, which makes you invisible to creatures with Darkvision when in Darkness. (And gives you concealment in dim light to creatures with Darkvision.) It let you use your opponents darkness tactics against them.

Would *love* to have that spell available in this edition.

[ssims2]

Squiggit wrote:

How do you figure horns are worth two feats? Iruxi Sharp Fangs is already an ancestry feat that gives you a traitless d8 attack. Tengu and Nagaji (along with some feat options like orc tusks, ganzi tails, or dhampir fangs) are d6s, but they're d6s with an extra trait, which is part of the budget.

There are only a couple naked d6 ancestry attacks that I can find (hard tail goblin feat, gnoll anestry bite, saberteeth catfolk feat) and it seems more the case that those are just underbudget since they aren't really the standard.

You're probably right about this. That would put minoraurs more on par with the other ancestries, at least theoretically.

[Luke Styer]

Squiggit wrote:

It's one of those theory/practice situations. A group with darkvision can give themselves a massive asymmetrical advantage against enemies that don't by appropriately weaponizing darkness. There's very little that can trump being able to perfectly see someone who can't see you.

The PC party in the Agents of Edgewatch game I GMed did this, and it was wildly effective. I’m not sure how I’d “value” darkvision in a party that doesn’t all have it, but in a party that does, it is very useful, so when I see it on an ancestry, I tend to think “Well these folks qualify for a darkness spamming party.“

[Blave]

Aaaaaaand the extra reach is a stance now.

[arcady]

Luke Styer wrote:

I’m not sure how I’d “value” darkvision in a party that doesn’t all have it,

It's a "force multiplier" on "stupid" in a party where only some have it.

Invariably causing party splits or people who rush into things without bring a lightsource for their allies, leading to half the group being able to see and other half being in darkness and if a situation could go worse as a result, it goes even more severely worse.

Using tools like Foundry can further magnify this as the player's who's PCs can see do not see that the other's cannot see. In years past in 'theater of the mind' games I found that in any group were some lacked darkvision the GM would default to describing everything based on those lacking enhanced vision and the players with it would have to keep asking "do I see anything more?"

Now with Foundry the paradigm has flipped. The dark and low-light vision players just run off ahead and get into trouble and never think that some of the others can't see the map.
- That's more fitting to reality, if we were a pack of commoners pulled out of the local pub and told to go storm Bin Laden's compound at 3am then armed with spoons. Which is how most players act, when they ought to be acting like a well organized tactical team. But they never do.

Thus... "Force multiplier on stupid". :)

[Squiggit]

Blave wrote:

Aaaaaaand the extra reach is a stance now.

Kind of an awkward change, imo. Minotaur Fighters and Barbarians are basically unchanged, but a handful of classes with in-house stances are worse off and things like marshall archetype are now directly conflicting with one of your best ancestry feats.

[PossibleCabbage]

Squiggit wrote:

Blave wrote:

Aaaaaaand the extra reach is a stance now.

Kind of an awkward change, imo. Minotaur Fighters and Barbarians are basically unchanged, but a handful of classes with in-house stances are worse off and things like marshall archetype are now directly conflicting with one of your best ancestry feats.

I think the change to stance might be specifically to prevent the Fighter from using it with Lunging Stance, since that's a large area in which you could make (many, b/c fighter) reactive strikes.

You can still do this mind you, you'd just need to use an actual reach weapon, so you'd be hitting with d10s not d12s.

[Ectar]

Blave wrote:

Aaaaaaand the extra reach is a stance now.

RIP minotaur monks, magi, and others.

[Sanityfaerie]

Making it a stance also means that you have to spend an action starting it up every fight... and every time you get knocked out of stance for whatever reason.

As for classes who depend on their in-house stances? Unarmed combat stances of all sorts are unaffected, as they wouldn't generally ahve worked with a two-handed weapon in the first place. Kineticists won't care because they just plain don't care about weapons. Likewise has no effect on Buckler Dance, Disarming Stance, Dueling Dance, Fane's Fourberie, Graceful Poise, Mobile Shot Stance, Multishot Stance, Paragon's Guard, Point Blank Stance, Ricochet Stance, or Twinned Defense stance, as all of the above are disallowed just by the fact that you're wielding a two-handed weapon.

Masquerade of Seasons Stance is out. Technically so is Six Pillars Stance. Those would have been pretty niche, though. Arcane Cascade is out... honestly, I tend to consider that niche as well.

Then there's the ones you might actually have wanted.
You don't get to do the silliness where Everstand Stance would let you dual-wield a shield, thus making it reach. Sadness. As earlier noted, it conflicts directly with Marshal. It also can't be stacked with Disruptive Stance, Lunging Stance, Impassible Wall Stance, Rough Terrain Stance, or Whirlwind Stance, all of which would have had some synergy in one way or another. Ah, well. Really the answer there is just to downshift your damage slightly and take a polearm... or downshift your damage a bit in a different way and get that reach by playing a leshy.

Ectar wrote:

RIP minotaur monks, magi, and others.

Required two-handed weapon, so monks don't care either way. For Magus... requires that you wanted to play a two-hander magus and then also care about arcane cascade. My understanding is that that's a pretty stark minority.

[Captain Morgan]

Darkvisuon generally only matters if you (or your entire party) are trying to be sneaky. I'd hazard a guess that most minotaur PCs aren't going to focus on that. Unless you're crossing open plains on a moonless night, it's actually a little hard to imagine a light would give your position away quicker than the 12 foot tall cow man who is too big for most cover would. Or if you are fighting some kind of human supremacy movement, because all human enemies are really the only way you can regularly leverage darkness in combat. Soooooo many monsters have darkvision. It is pretty much the default.

Outside of those situations, it will probably matter exactly one round in a campaign when the evil priestess casts chilling darkness and someone has to recast light.

[WarDriveWorley]

Captain Morgan wrote:

Darkvisuon generally only matters if you (or your entire party) are trying to be sneaky.

I heartily disagree with this. I mean sneakiness is a big factor, but even with normal exploring you want to limit attention to yourself as much as possible, even if you're not being stealthy, and having a light source while in darkness is a glowing beacon for others. Makes it much easier for them to notice you from a distance and either prepare an ambush or avoid you.

[OceanshieldwolPF 2.5]

First of all - where was the change to Minotaurs’ reach announced/detailed?

Secondly - how the hell are people posting those combat diagrams!?! I tried to “Reply” to the posts to see the formatting, but nothing showed up except just the symbols?!?

[WarDriveWorley]

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

First of all - where was the change to Minotaurs’ reach announced/detailed?

Secondly - how the hell are people posting those combat diagrams!?! I tried to “Reply” to the posts to see the formatting, but nothing showed up except just the symbols?!?

For the first question - It was posted in the FAQ .

For the second, I have no idea, but I want to know as well.

[Ravingdork]

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

First of all - where was the change to Minotaurs’ reach announced/detailed?

It's in the Pathfinder FAQ, under the Howl of the Wild entry.

https://paizo.com/pathfinder/faq

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

Secondly - how the hell are people posting those combat diagrams!?! I tried to “Reply” to the posts to see the formatting, but nothing showed up except just the symbols?!?

They're just emoji. Not many work consistently on these forums*, but some do.

I ran extensive tests a few years ago to determine which worked and which didn't.
List of Functioning Emoji

Gisher followed up my research by creating a wonderful resource for area effect templates.
Original Thread | Google Doc

You pretty much just copy and paste the symbols directly, into whatever configuration you want.

I keep the above links bookmarked for easy reference. I hear they're pretty popular for play-by-posts.

*:

Most of the time attempting to use emoji on these forums will either cause the forum goblins to eat your post entirely, or cause the emoji to not appear in your post at all (my list above have hundreds more emoji that simply didn't show up). Furthermore, even when they do work, their style can appear very different from one browser to another. ALWAYS COPY YOUR POST BEFORE HITTING SUBMIT WHEN USING EMOJI! It's probably a good practice even when not using emoji.

I hope that helps! ☺

[Errenor]

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

Secondly - how the hell are people posting those combat diagrams!?! I tried to “Reply” to the posts to see the formatting, but nothing showed up except just the symbols?!?

:-D Lol That's just the thing: they are just the symbols. By the Power of the UTF!

Well, and the fonts available on the forum and people who've found which symbols are actually the same size.

[The Raven Black]

Yes. It has been an awesome work for the community's benefits. Kudos to RD and Gisher.