Fighter, and the (seemingly) inverse feeling of Mastery. In short: "is it me or is fighter notably worse after level 10?".

[Deriven Firelion]

Bluemagetim wrote:

im not running oozes that can be tripped.

Prone doesn't mean anything to a glob on the ground.

I salute you for not allowing something that looks bad in your mind's eye. If your group is agreeable, then you're good.

Oozes probably should be immune to prone.

[thenobledrake]

Squiggit wrote:

How do you reconcile this assertion with the reality that people don't actually seem to have nearly as much trouble discussing assumptions, baselines, or norms as you seem to suggest they should?

Most discussions I've seen involve people that use accurate terminology; they say stuff along the lines of "in a campaign where this situation occurs frequently this option will be potent" rather than actually saying things in the kind of phrasing that I'm arguing against in this thread of "this is the best option in most campaigns".

Most people can understand the importance of the difference between what we can say (what the creatures in the books look like, even the percentage of each which have a particular trait) and what we can't say (which creatures players are going to encounter more often than others).

Most people also don't land on the attitude some folks in this thread have of insisting their view of a "normal" campaign is objectively correct and anything that deviates is "unusual" even though both are literally identical in terms of the GM that set them up choosing whatever they felt like choosing.

Most people also understand that APs are just an example of what some GM chose to do, and not actually the same as each other to meaningful enough degree to treat as "this is what's normal and everything else is unusual", nor intended by Paizo or the authors to be anything more than just one possible adventure (which is why they don't all follow the same patterns in the first place).

Squiggit wrote:

You yourself accidentally allude to this, when you point out that random distributions and global averages aren't helpful because certain monsters might be used more often than others.

There's nothing accidental about that. It's hard to make the point "Which creatures a GM uses more often than others is up to that GM, not something the book instructs the GM to do" without acknowledging that some creatures will get used more often than others.

It doesn't at all undercut the point I'm making, either, since even though each GM individually can say whether they use an Ogre more or a Ghost more that doesn't mean the game book actually told any GM which one they are supposed to use more and doesn't create any kind of guarantee that a player can use to make a build decision independent of knowing their GM and the campaign in particular and land on a good answer.

[thenobledrake]

Angwa wrote:

Having played most of the 2e AP's and a couple of custom campaigns, sorry, no, tripping has always proven to be the overall top go-to tactic.

You're mixing up having the sample size you've personally had experience with and the actual full range of data.

Because there is no meaningful designator that makes the campaigns you have experienced "the ones the game considers normal" and any campaigns that people could experience that you haven't experienced but the game also supports "the ones the game considers weird."

They are all just the work of some GM (because even the authors of the APs are just some GM) that picked out what they wanted to pick out to suit the idea they had for a campaign, just like if someone out there somewhere in the hobby decided to run a campaign that literally only uses undead as adversaries just because they felt that was a cool idea - that's not actually a "weird" campaign; it's a theme just like any other that any GM might choose to use.

That's where my problem with "most of the time this build is optimal" arguments; we're not all actually playing the same campaigns, and there's no info in the books that backs up "most of the time." as anything different than "depending on GM preference."

Which is why no one has ever even bothered to try and answer my prior question of which monster is more likely to be faced by a party of 4th-level characters, an ogre glutton or a ghost commoner; because there is no objective data on that kind of detail.

[thenobledrake]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

How is that Shadow Signet ring doing?

It remains unpicked by myself or any of my players because it is a means to cover for a failing we do not often experience. It is training wheels and we're all comfortable riding a bike.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

...I know it is the optimal option 90 percent plus of the time if not higher.

Then it shouldn't be impossible for you to tell me whether a ghost commoner is a more common enemy to face than an ogre glutton or vice versa... and yet... numerous posts back and forth and not once have you done anything to show me how the game, not your own personal preferences, has shown you how to properly weight enemy usage rates so that you can produce the "90 percent plus" number by means of anything other than an extraction from your own posterior.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

So go sell what you're selling to someone else who plays this game based on what they want to believe versus how the mechanics work.

Because the only possibilities are to agree with you or to not care at all about mechanics... of course there's no possibility you could be confident and yet mistaken. Totally impossible. You're definitely infallible because of your experience despite that you're disagreeing with people that are also significantly experienced.

"there's nothing you can say to convince me" isn't actually the good state to be in that you're treating it as. But if you really aren't even remotely possibly going to have your mind expanded by this conversation, please stop responding to my posts - if you continue to respond I'll have to take the claim that you will never change your mind as hyperbole and assume you're still seeking understanding, and I will continue to respond as the whole reason I'm engaging in public discourse about something is because maybe I will change my mind - y'know, kind of the point of the whole process.

[Javcen]

I want to thank everyone that engaged with the post openly and helpfully. Honestly I knew i'd get some derision since it really seems like complaining about an already strong class. I tried to sneak that in there but I have worst hangups about the ranger(another one of my favorite classes) seeing them actually do a lot less damage than another damage focused martial in the party at the level 12 range. I want to clarify that my post was never about the class's absolute strength being good or bad (it's rather good). It was about a general lack of a feeling of specialization or growth, some put this forth as the class not being exciting to me, I am both a dm and a player simultaneously no, I don't really resent the basic concept of the class, rather I don't have a hatred for basic stuff, but the class's progression only at the later half of the game seemed far tamer than the first half that's all, I don't mind if the class is Strong or Meh as long as it's playable and has a niche, I care about the feeling of playing and progressing with it.

I am not currently playing a fighter, but I want to, it's why I don't bother dispelling accusations that i'm just a salty figher player, in a lot of TTRPGs the basic warrior class is one of my favorites, so I always liked fighter more conceptually than in actual gameplay wise. I went through a pathfinder binge, especially after realizing with how much respect this system generally tries to handle martials (they have a knack for falling off in high fantasy rpgs that i've played but my pool of knowledge isn't massive).

Unicore wrote:

I think the issue people are running into is that certain fighter builds hit the peaks of what you can accomplish in the character building phase early enough that feat selection stops being about trying to bring other builds up to that level for otherwise less effective combat styles, and necessarily has to be about “what else can you do?” Because more damage with your first attack is already topped out.

Also complicating the issue is that item usage is a huge party of hitting the maximum efficiency of character efficacy in a given encounter, and usually that ends up being more of a rock, paper, scissors type of game that works best when your allies help set you up or read the enemy’s game plan before they can get it off.

For example, The amount of additional damage you can do by targeting a weakness at higher level can sometimes mean that making as many attacks as possible, especially ones that do damage on a miss blows getting even 2 extra damage dice with a D12 weapon out of the water. Meanwhile, difficult to overcome resistances can make the exact opposite possible. Trying to fly up really high into melee against a fast, mobile, casting enemy like a dragon can see you laid out flat with a single dispel magic, other times it can be awesome.

What high level fighters do well is give themselves options, which can feel a little confusing since much of the mid game for fighters can feel like being pushed into single combat style specialization

Analysis like these actually kind of word, what I was trying to convey almost better than I did, it feels like you hit a form of ceiling at 10.

Some called this getting your basic combat routine, I admit that while not necessary detrimental (it could be a game design thing) it is a bit disappointing to me, this is, understandably, subjective though.

Looking forward to high level play is a good feeling, and having built multiple high level characters for one shots there are some genuinely fantastic features floating about there that really sell you on an interesting fantasy.

I suppose lastly on the "if you don't like it, don't play it" advice, which i'm not putting down by the way, it can often be quite salient. I'd put forth that if you want to play a master Swordsman, or a polearm master...you...you really CAN'T play anything else with these character concepts? Perhaps a Swashbuckler or Barbarian but they have their own class flavors attached that diverge significantly.

At least the class choice you have here feels narrow. This isn't a dig at the game, I think pathfinder is quite excellent at giving you multiple roads to the same ending. If you want to play say a fire mage, you can play a draconic sorcerer, a battle magic wizard, a kineticist, a psychic, a flame oracle. etc.

[Unicore]

@Javcen, I do hear you, and agree that there is an issue, but that it is mostly a perception issue as opposed to a mechanical one.

Even in your examples of “different ways to make a fire caster,” PF2 actually tries pretty hard to discourage characters who only do one thing. Like a wizard might cast a lot of fire spells and be fine, but if the try only to ever cast fire spells, they are going to have a bad time sooner or later.

The same is true of martials. With runes and feats, it can feel like your martial character wants to do the same small set of actions every round of every encounter, but it is actually trivially easy to have back up weapons that are not more than a damage die and a property rune behind, that can let you exploit the tactical situation of an encounter in ways that outperform your efforts to settle in to a static combat routine.

I think the 2 handed weapon fighter becomes one of the most difficult builds from which to convince yourself to try other things, especially if your whole party builds towards setting you up as a striker, but even in those instances, there will be encounters where flexibility and an open mind can allow you to out perform focused specialization.