What combinations of Chassis and Archtypes fall into unplayable? Are there archtypes that bring casters in melee above low performing?
I suggest the following criteria but feel free to make it better.
If this is the scale
Optimal
High Performing
Feasible
Low Performing
Unplayable
and I would think the categories for judging are
Efficiency = Things like % chance to hit/crit/effect against at level creatures. Also including how big the effect is on success.
Versatility = applicability in different situations, higher score for more common situations
Internal synergy = how class abilities synergize amongst themselves to greater effect
Survivability = Not dying ability however its accomplished.
Team synergy = How well class abilities benefit team members. Low synergy scores tax actions from team members for low benefit.
Action economy = underpins all other categories as a measure of getting the benefits of other categories with the least number of actions.
the melee witch advice thread pretty much put it in either low performing or unplayable for example
Efficiency = in melee is low performing to unplayable
Versatility = might actually be high performinig as a full spell caster limited only by spell selection
Internal synergy = I think this is actually not bad since spells and hex cantrips can be very well suited to closing some of the melee hit and ac gap
Team synergy = potential for High performing for any full spell caster IMO (bard being optimal)
Action economy = Horrible, having to move cast 2 action spells, trying to fit in strikes, and sustains is extremely action hungry a playstyle and ranges from underperforming to unplayable.
I figured being a bit more nuanced as to why its not a great option gives people a bit more to decide if even if its bad in some areas it might still be giving them what they are after.
The line is too blurry for this. With the right enemies and party comp, just about anything is viable because it's a game of numbers.
Everything can be made to work if your GM is willing to help. But for APs, what I think is the baseline for anyone not doing PFS, you have a much harder time without a GM willing to change things because the difficulty is set to moderately high.
Sadly even telling someone to try it out and see how it goes can be misleading because the difference in builds can change every 5 levels.
Each of those categories would have to be broken up further into tiers, like PFS, APs and custom extreme difficulty.
For the first, nothing is unplayable I don't think, for the second if your not playing to your class's strength then you can be borderline unplayable depending on your group, for anything above that you need a certain level of system mastery to know what can work.
The line is too blurry for this. With the right enemies and party comp, just about anything is viable because it's a game of numbers.
Everything can be made to work if your GM is willing to help. But for APs, what I think is the baseline for anyone not doing PFS, you have a much harder time without a GM willing to change things because the difficulty is set to moderately high.Sadly even telling someone to try it out and see how it goes can be misleading because the difference in builds can change every 5 levels.
Each of those categories would have to be broken up further into tiers, like PFS, APs and custom extreme difficulty.
For the first, nothing is unplayable I don't think, for the second if your not playing to your class's strength then you can be borderline unplayable depending on your group, for anything above that you need a certain level of system mastery to know what can work.
Could the versatility score handle the first concern about the right enemies and applicability in different party comps?
For example you could have a trip melee build on a fighter that is more effective with melee parties with a lot of reactive strikes than parties with less of that. Thats a high team synergy score but versatility takes a slight hit because its party dependent. But not worse than high performing because trip is applicable and beneficial even if you dont have a reactive strike army with you so verisitily is between high performing and optimal. If the build is maxing strength and athletics and getting great feats/magic gear to support it then its getting the best possible % chance to land and would be optimal in effectiveness.
Feats used to compress the trip with other actions or give more out of the action used to trip would raise the action economy score, base being 1 action for a trip with no other benefit. On a fighter internal synergy is there with reactive strike so probably optimal there too but only if its a d12 weapon, it goes down if the weapon die is lower (actually that would probably mean effectiveness is lower not internal synergy.)
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I'm not sure that something is literally "unplayable" in PF2 the way it could be in PF1 (or especially in 3.5), but there's definitely stuff that lags far behind in performance AND feels bad to use, and so that's the definition I'm using.
The original Warrior Muse Bard fit into that IMO, in that I had two players in two different campaigns use it. Both got the idea that they'd be up in melee swinging weapons around. One of them even dumped Charisma in order to lean in on this concept.
Both of them eventually realized that unless it was a hasted action, they were probably better off using Courageous Assault to give the Fighter an attack rather than making one themselves. One of them handled this relatively easily and the other really didn't like it but also didn't want to change his build/class (and as the GM I did offer to let him when it became clear he wasn't happy with how it was working out).
Now, these characters DID work just fine when they were playing more like how a Bard wants to be played (as a support), but the Muse fundamentally didn't deliver on what it talked about at all and trying to do it resulted in poor performance and an unhappy player. Versatility in support options doesn't really make up for "I wanted my character to do X and it turns out there's no way to be good at X on this class", you know?
In the remaster? Battle Oracle. The Mystery does almost nothing to do what the description claims its enabling anymore (hell, the example build shows a character with armor that the mystery can't wear anymore). It's got a so-bad-its-meme-worthy initial focus spell. It needs a LOT of help in terms of feats/archetypes to kinda-sorta work, and even with all that support it will underperform at that. The book's sample build also suggests taking less Charsima in favor of more Strength/Dexterity, and while having AC is always good, dumping your casting stat on a 4 slot caster for a melee attack stat when you don't even have reliable martial weapon proficiency is actively poor advice in terms of power.
Wild/Untamed Druid is WAY better at the "being a caster that wants to act like a martial" thing, and its not like it's anything close to "optimal", but it is perfectly playable (and has awesome versatility).
I kind of suspect Animist will also outperform Battle Oracle, though, as its a low bar. What carries it is that it's a 4 slot caster and nothing to do with the "battle" part at all, so as soon as your goal becomes to use weapons it you're just lowering its potential significantly.
Fighter with most firearms and crossbows is very much a square peg, round hole situation. The fighter just does not have the tools to interact with weapons that reload. To a lesser extent, I think Gunslinger has the same problem with a lot of repeating weapons, which perform better on other classes that can work around things like bizarre effective ranges or low damage.
Are either of these unplayably bad? I'm not sure but they're definitely going to be frustrating.
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Perhaps the only unplayable builds I've seen are when someone tries to build the opposite of what their class's chassis supports (with a shout out also to those trying to be so superior at two discordant styles that they fail at both). So they're naturally advancing in all these areas they make little to no use of while investing most everything trying to reach mediocrity playing against type.
The most common example is the 6 h.p. caster wanting to Strike in melee, though the opposite of a martial trying to emphasize spells > Strikes to where they're ignoring their attack stat(s) would also apply. (Though it seems players simply know that doesn't work as I've never seen that).
As for inferior, there are similar cases where players think a half-hearted investment will pay off, i.e. they get a good AoE via an archetype perhaps, but with such a low DC it's only worth two actions if there's a cluster of low-save enemies who also have a Weakness to it. (Which mind you can be a valid situation! It's just not something to advertise as if the PC's filling in that role in a party.)
Then there are PCs with distinct gaps, like the heavy-armor martials who can't contribute during ranged combat perhaps being most common, though PCs with zero city skills also could be an issue.
Not sure it'll work breaking this all down as if there's some granular, specific facts. I think principles might have to suffice.
It's good to talk about where the line of fun and not fun to play can be when mechanics don't encourage a persons fantasy, but you really need to emphasize what the intended difficulty for the group is. You could run an all melee caster group if the GM scaled it to that group. So a lot of unplayable things are just relative issues compared to enemies or other party members.
I prefer high powered well optimized groups but I would hate for someone to think they could never play something because it's considered suboptimal. You just need the right conditions for it.
I have very strong feelings about balance and such in PF2, so the only things I'll say is casters don't survive in melee, they tend to have lower AC, have lower saves overall and lower or significantly lower HP, combining all that makes them far too squishy IMO. Generally if your a martial stick to strikes and maneuvers, if your a caster keep away from things and you'll generally be doing your thing right.
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I think it's better to think less in terms of optimal/unplayable and better to think in terms of how well the system accommodates you, and how much an idea can become a focal point of your character vs a secondary benefit.
The melee witch is an uphill battle that requires a lot of feat investment and Paizo has gone out of their way to make it a difficult experience for you, but unplayable is a harsh word. Once you get rolling you're probably fine as long as you play defensively. Striking isn't even a terrible third action to compliment your spells and sustaining, it's just very expensive.
The primary issue is that your return on investment is fairly low. Yyou're spending a lot of feats to appropriately improve your weapons and armor but still will never be particularly tanky nor particularly good in melee combat. You'll never be a striker first, there just isn't enough support in the game to give you that. And you're especially struggling at low levels because you haven't had time to make those investments.
... But like, if I was starting at level 10, a witch poking people with a polearm when they have spare actions, kitted out in heavy armor and employing personal buffs and sustained spells is probably going to be like, genuinely fine as long as they don't mind missing more often than other martials and generally doing noticeably less damage. There's nothing really wrong with that if you're playing an AP or home game around the same level.
I don't know that anything is unplayable in PF2. That's a hard bar to reach with the tight, balanced math.
I look at it more as strong, average or mid, and weak. Even weak is still playable, but will have weak performance compared to the average.
PF2 is an odd game to talk about in terms of power.
Caster power at low to mid level seems to be heavily based on innate features versus spells. Then at higher level as their proficiency increases and the number of spells and magic items increases, caster power tends to be be based on optimal spell choices with features varying in power and use.
For martials power seems to be fairly linear improving as your class features upgrade. If you're strong at low, you'll be strong at high level. If you're weak, you'll likely end up weak meaning you'll do less damage.
Then it kind of depends on the aspect of the game. A rogue will be strong in all parts of the game. Whereas an investigator might be weak in combat, but strong in exploration, downtime, and dealing with story. I know the investigator I ran made party information delivery very easy because they were absolutely the strongest at non-combat lore and information checks. They were also great at Recall Knowledge, crafting, and exploration. The Investigator basically has feats that let's them walk into the room and the DM might as well let them read the module or encounter non-combat information.
Whereas a fighter or barbarian may be strong in combat, but almost useless during exploration, story, or downtime. They stand there waiting to swing their weapon doing nothing.
A sorcerer might be strong in combat and great a social situations, but weak in lore. A wizard may be weaker in combat, good at exploration and downtime and much better at intelligence based lore and skill checks on top of being able to use spells they can change out if Spell Substitution to conduct investigations.
You have to rate a class by the mode of play you're in.
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I think builds with poor stat allocation (typically anything other than maxing KAS and AC, though there are exceptions) and poor skill increase spends will not be technically unplayable... but they will feel very bad. They will succeed a displeasingly low amount of the time, and die noticeably faster. The performance ceiling in PF2E is set in a place where the performance floor feels awful, and I actively try to steer players away from choices that would put them closer to the performance floor unless they know what they're doing. For me, it's part of ensuring those players aren't burned by the system out of the gate.
Now, I think you can build a melee sorc if you want. (I've tried for fun.) It will be noticeably worse than just playing a magus (or a psychic, or a kineticist, etc.) but you can make the build. It isn't particularly effective—but it is interesting to just play a buff/saveless caster with a reach weapon. Should you, though? Probably not. And the same goes for most other funny builds.
I will say, though: any table that wants to push weird, suboptimal builds should use gradual ASI. It helps a lot of builds that can't max their to-hit stat at L1. Free archetype also helps by giving you ways to shore up missing proficiencies and patch up build holes. You can play scuffed builds way more easily with both of those in place.
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My niche in games is to take features that are considered Low Performing or Unplayable and to put together a build around them that is High Performing or Feasible.
It doesn't always work, and doing so means I break a lot of the Cardinal Rules (more often than not my KAS is not maxed at Level 1) but it also means I find some interesting synergies, and hidden gems.
As others have said, the math is so tight in PF2 that honestly, as long as you understand tactics, you can provide value even with a weak character. I'm always striving for better than that, but it is good to know that even worst case I am helping my teamates to succeed.
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I think there are two main questions whose answer will usually determine the success of a build:
For question #1, the basic principle is that Pathfinder 2e is a game that implements a strong degree of niche protection, such that the ability to branch out of your niche is costly and limited. It's not automatically bad, as the entire purpose of archetypes is to let you branch out, but the farther removed the thing you're trying to achieve is from your niche, the less likely your build is to feel super-strong, especially if you're trying to cover too many bases at once. By contrast, if your build is something your class already covers well, or can at least accommodate well, it's likely going to work a lot better. Obviously, dumping your class's key attribute and trying to do the opposite of what they're supposed to is likely to perform poorly.
For question #2, the issue with a lot of build discussions is that players don't necessarily set the right expectations: with the melee Witch, for instance, had players set expectations appropriately low, e.g. "I want my Witch, a squishy full Intelligence spellcaster, to survive slightly longer if attacked in melee and opportunistically make Strikes when the situation arises," then perhaps there would've been room for more satisfactory builds. Instead, the expectation was "I want to make the Witch, a squishy full Intelligence spellcaster, also a full-time Strength melee combatant on top," and unfortunately that sets the build up to disappoint. Thanks to Pathfinder's many build options, it's possible to let characters opt into a little bit of power outside of their niche, but expecting a character that fills a niche to hold up to specialists in a completely different niche simply doesn't work out well.
All of this is to say that I don't think it's really that common to have entire builds that are unplayable, short of dumping a class's key attribute, so much that literally any build is going to be good and bad at different things, and the class you choose will inevitably prevent you from being great at some stuff. Builds that try to breach that niche protection entirely aren't always weak, as they'll still be at least decent at several different things, but they usually feel weak because they fail to achieve what they set out to do.
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These boards will also offer up a variety of answers that run the gamut based on their preferred playstyles. Like pH unbalanced I like to look at lesser-used builds or "weak" options and work them into full characters that utilize them to the best of their ability.
But there is a not insignificant portion of the forums that are looking to get the most out of every number and option, which certainly isn't a bad way to play! The language of "optimal/feasible/unplayable" should help to differentiate the goals of play here. Someone wanting a character that fits their concept (using the melee witch as an example) is likely not looking for "optimal" but rather "feasible." As we saw in the thread, it's certainly a feasible idea, even if they won't be "top of the game."
I would be hard pressed to find anything unplayable, even purposefully. I had a player show up to his first game of PF2 and did the opposite of everything I recommended for his first game. He made a catfolk wizard with the summoner dedication and leaned heavily into the fey spellcasting aspect of the eidolon while aiming to be a melee powerhouse with a scythe. His only spells prepared boiled down to Create Water and Shocking Grasp (which was snubbed in favor of Striking). It was a wildly underperforming character, but the player showed up to every session and all of the players had a great time.
Like, at the core of it, that's what so much of character builds come down to: will I have fun playing this with other people? If I derive joy from doing "the most" across the board, then I would lean towards optimized characters. But I feel like feasible and fun often gets forgotten when we talk about play.
EDIT: To add, that catfolk wizard played in an Abomination Vaults game and didn't even manage to die! There's another meta layer there of "difficulty decided by community" being altered between personal experience.
I think PF2e is pretty robust and I agree with other posters about correct expectations. A caster can be built to fight and and a martial can be built to cast. That versatility usually sacrifices some of the raw power of in-class feats and that all seems fine and just. You can reflect just about anything; that thing being as effective as you want depends on your perception. The math is fairly predictable, so everything *plays* within expected bands, which is an admirable design goal imo. No right or wrong answers just the narrative you want and how it mechanically reflects. I may have one or two quibbles, but nothing's unplayable, PF2e really doesn't let you touch the math enough to make anything unplayable (which again, I respect immensely as a dm).
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You can sus out 90% of feasible characters by just looking for a few key points:
See, I think I just disagree with this fundamentally - asking that players build in specific ways to be "feasible." This leaves us with a "Con, Dex, Wis, and KAS" cookie cutter that gets brought out at character creation and leaves little wiggle room for player input. It feels like a starting from mechanics and working backwards to a concept which clashes with what so many people come to the hobby for.
I run PFS and am a big advocate for PF2 and when I get new players (especially players coming from another popular game), then tend to say "I have been told that PF2 is very restrictive and I have to do X, Y, and Z." While this is good advice (keeping an eye on your defenses, having a plan for your actions, etc) it's an unnecessary barrier when the game functions just fine without checking these boxes.
See, I think I just disagree with this fundamentally - asking that players build in specific ways to be "feasible." This leaves us with a "Con, Dex, Wis, and KAS" cookie cutter that gets brought out at character creation and leaves little wiggle room for player input. It feels like a starting from mechanics and working backwards to a concept which clashes with what so many people come to the hobby for.
I think that's unfortunately a problem with attributes that players just have to roll with. I wouldn't say it's a massive issue in the majority of cases, since most classes either depend on just three attributes and can freely choose their fourth (e.g. the Cloistered Cleric, Fighter, or Thief Rogue), or rely on a fourth attribute that makes a lot of sense to pick on the class anyway (e.g. Bards and Charisma, or Wizards and Intelligence), so it's only a handful of classes that are pulled in slightly too many directions, e.g. the Inventor or Investigator.
I agree with you that maxing out all of these important attributes isn't the minimum requirement for "feasible", though -- it's perfectly possible to have a viable character that doesn't have maxed-out AC or saves, or that starts out with only a +3 to their key attribute, and unless the table's running nothing but severe or extreme encounters every time (which does happen with certain official APs), that character's likely to feel perfectly okay. All of that does make the character less optimal, though, so there does come a breaking point eventually -- to take an extreme example, if I took a Sorcerer, dumped my Dex and Charisma, and instead built specifically towards Intelligence and then also boosted my Strength, Con, and Wis, my character would likely feel pretty weak even at a more laid-back table, because at that point I'd have bent over backwards to give my character the worst possible set of attribute modifiers for their class. I'd miss my spell attacks much more often, enemies would crit succeed against my spell save DCs much more often, and I'd also get crit much more often to the point where my character would be much more likely to die even in easier encounters, so it also wouldn't necessarily feel very fun to play. Downgrading each of those modifiers means sacrificing some element of offense or defense that comes up often, and while every +1 isn't mandatory, every +1 does count in Pathfinder, so past a certain point it does make itself felt.
One thing the game lets you do is keep high effectiveness in your class abilities and if you get some versatility through an archtype you can still have up to a +3 towards its effectiveness.
What gets left behind when you do this is the supporting stats for surviveability. You also can miss out on the action economy benefits from class feats you gave up to dedicate and get basic archtype features. But that archtype can give more ways to achieve internal and team synergy.
This is kind of the reason for the different categories. To assess the gains and losses of archtyping and the stat choices to support it vs statting just for the class chassis and only getting feats in class.
One general thing with effectiveness is it will always lag behind for proficiencies not given in chassis. So thats acts as the balancing point when you go for versitility your class isnt able to do normally. Buffing is exempted of course.
I would think feasible is achievable without a +4 in the starting stat and with the lagging proficiency. If the bar for feasible is set at +4 and on level for the class proficiency then nothing outside of class given proficiency can be rated feasible.
The line is too blurry for this. With the right enemies and party comp, just about anything is viable because it's a game of numbers.
I agree for example if your melee front line has 2 champions in it then you can get away with the rest of them being a lot softer. Even if that includes melee wizards and witches, or a divine sorcerer pretending they are a war priest.
It is doable if the take as 16 Str and get into armour and shield it may not even be that bad. Is it optimal hell no, because a full caster just doesn't normally have the actions to use all their spells and do shield/melee. But you can imagine spell load outs and certain campaigns where it might work fine.
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I think the example of a character who purposely makes choices to make their character harder to play (a Charisma dumping, Strength maxing sorcerer) isn't what I was talking about. I mean, a character who can't cast their spells is likely not the character they want to play (if they are still choosing spells with save DCs). However, that's not to say the build is poor out of hand, just that it can't be used in the way.
If a player were making a character this way, I wouldn't assume they were going to play heavily invested in spells and had a concept that required those abilities. It is feasible, but not optimal. You even said as such and then veered into why it should aim towards "optimal" when that wasn't the point.
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You can sus out 90% of feasible characters by just looking for a few key points:See, I think I just disagree with this fundamentally - asking that players build in specific ways to be "feasible." This leaves us with a "Con, Dex, Wis, and KAS" cookie cutter that gets brought out at character creation and leaves little wiggle room for player input. It feels like a starting from mechanics and working backwards to a concept which clashes with what so many people come to the hobby for.
I agree with you broadly, but at the same time a con/dex/wis + kas (bonus points if one of those is your kas) really does feel a lot safer and more comfortable than the alternative, both in terms of playability and building. It can be kind of a strain to build other statlines, especially early game.
I wouldn't say that such a build is unplayable, but I think it is worth acknowledging that Paizo designed the system to make building a character who is both intelligent and charismatic more punishing than one who is intelligent and dexterous or charismatic and wise (etc).
That's something at least worth discussing with new players. In a home game I'm going to make accommodations regardless, but in more rigid settings I've seen people show up with characters like that, always go last, fail lots of saves, and then decide they'd rather just play a less hostile tabletop.
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My niche in games is to take features that are considered Low Performing or Unplayable and to put together a build around them that is High Performing or Feasible.
It doesn't always work, and doing so means I break a lot of the Cardinal Rules (more often than not my KAS is not maxed at Level 1) but it also means I find some interesting synergies, and hidden gems.
As others have said, the math is so tight in PF2 that honestly, as long as you understand tactics, you can provide value even with a weak character. I'm always striving for better than that, but it is good to know that even worst case I am helping my teamates to succeed.
Likewise, my elder daughter likes to make weird builds workable with the right combination of additional abilities. She is so skilled that they end up above average.
In my Ironfang Invasion campaign, she built a high-Dexterity goblin champion with liberator cause. Champion does list Dexterity as a possible key ability score. She realized that the weakness of the character would be a low Strength bonus to damage, so she asked if her Divine Ally (Steed) could be a velociraptor. The champion Tikti was defense and the velocirapter Liklik was offense. Animal companions are vulnerable due to fewer hit points, but Tikti regularly reduced the damage to Liklik. Or she asked Liklik to hang back and instead defended a fellow party member who needed protection. The ability of the pair to switch between either dealing damage or protecting the party on a moment's notice made them quite useful.
In A Fistful of Flowers she made a leshy barbarian Grothnar. All the PCs in the mini-campaign were leshies, and despite leshies being Small they do not have an attribute flaw in Strength, so this build is fairly normal.
In Strength of Thousands, she decided to make the Gelid Shard artifact-based archetype work. She created the eldritch-trickster flashwarp rogue Roshan with Ifrit versatile heritage. Roshan's eldritch-trickers multiclass is elemental-bloodline sorcerer and her free archetype is Gelid Shard. My daughter hopes that with two spellcasting archetypes and the Magical Trickster rogue feat Roshan can function as a blaster spellcaster. However, she realized that in a seven-member party with the champion as the only other character favoring melee--the others are a magus archer, a kineticist, and three primary spellcasters--Roshan often won't have a flanking partner. Instead, Roshan is expert in Athletics and grapples opponents to make them off-guard. She plans on Dread Striker later, so that frightened opponents will be off-guard, because many of her allies can Intimidate or cast Fear.
My elder daughter seldom writes backstories for her characters, but Roshan is so convoluted that she made up a story about an accident in her mother's laboratory with a portal to the Plane of Fire burning and mutating Roshan. Her mother saved her with the cold from a Gelid Shard.
I think the example of a character who purposely makes choices to make their character harder to play (a Charisma dumping, Strength maxing sorcerer) isn't what I was talking about. I mean, a character who can't cast their spells is likely not the character they want to play (if they are still choosing spells with save DCs). However, that's not to say the build is poor out of hand, just that it can't be used in the way.
If a player were making a character this way, I wouldn't assume they were going to play heavily invested in spells and had a concept that required those abilities. It is feasible, but not optimal. You even said as such and then veered into why it should aim towards "optimal" when that wasn't the point.
To be clear, the example I picked was intended to demonstrate that there is such a thing as an unplayable character in PF2e -- and, more specifically, a threshold past which downgrading important attributes on your character will incur noticeably severe tradeoffs. The point isn't that we should all be optimal all the time, the point is that past a certain point, trying to create "wiggle room" for a character at the expense of the optimal stats will start to significantly impede that character's ability to function. Downgrading your key attribute to a +3 instead of a +4 at level 1 is probably fine at most tables, for instance, but downgrading it to a +2 is pushing it, and anything below that is likely to perform poorly. Dexterity is not a stat you want to completely dump even when it's not your key attribute, unless your character has lots of Strength and can wear heavy armor. It's valid to accommodate players' character fantasies and make them work without obsessing over every little +1 all the time, but Pathfinder is also a crunchy game that runs on some pretty solid math, and you can't ignore that math entirely, so you do have to boost some attributes for practical purposes. This is why Wizards in Pathfinder tend to have fair amounts of Dexterity and Constitution, even though most people's idea of a wizard is neither dextrous nor hardy.
That's something at least worth discussing with new players. In a home game I'm going to make accommodations regardless, but in more rigid settings I've seen people show up with characters like that, always go last, fail lots of saves, and then decide they'd rather just play a less hostile tabletop.
I have never said, "Don't make recommendations to your players, let them go in blind," but I do object to broadly saying "Feasible characters require X, Y, and Z." Even in my original post, I did say that I had a player who opposed my recommendations. We are assuming, in good faith, players that understand the rules to the game - new or not.
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I stress, we have to assume that players making characters understand the rules to the game they are playing. A spellcaster without spellcasting ability is not built to cast spells and I wouldn't assume that's their goal. If they state "I want to be great at spells and at melee," then you can say, you will have to make concessions.
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I feel there's a slight tension here between "new players want to build a character around concept first, stats second, and we should accommodate that," and "if you're building a character in Pathfinder you should know which stats to boost in order for your character to work". Going back to that Sorcerer, a player could give them a starting +4 to their Charisma and still have a pretty weak character if they dump Dexterity and Constitution, whether or not they go fight in melee. Even if those stats don't need to be maxed out, downgrading them for others doesn't come for free, and there comes a point where doing too much of it will weaken your character too severely for them to function well. You might not need to max out your Dex, Con, Wis, and KAS, but you also likely don't want to dump any of these, let alone two at once.
In general, attributes I think are the most common wrench thrown into the works of "you can build a character however you want". In a game that tries to do away with false choices, attributes give you at least one that you're essentially forced to boost to a significant extent for your class to work, along with several others you'll want to keep within a healthy range at least to avoid becoming too fragile. It's also a major reason why some builds don't work well, because some mechanics depend on an attribute to work (for instance, Striking with a warhammer), and if your character's already pulled towards four attributes, they end up becoming too MAD to work well. This may perhaps make sense for broad things like trying to make an Intelligence cloth caster also a Strength-based melee combatant (though there are ways to sort of achieve this), but less so for otherwise intuitive concepts like "I want a scheming Witch who's ridiculously good at Deception": you can certainly become good at Deception as a Witch if you put enough increases into the skill, but then the Sorcerer could just be trained while you're legendary and they'd still roll higher than you on those checks thanks to their Charisma mod. You could boost your Charisma as well to catch up, but given that you have atrocious defenses that you'd very much want to shore up, there's only so many times you can boost the stat until that concept starts to really eat into your effectiveness. By contrast, if you want to be really knowledgeable about baking, you can take Additional Lore for Baking Lore and be the best baker around. Both are perfectly valid concepts to have on a Witch, it's just that one is arbitrarily more difficult to achieve than the other thanks to attributes.
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It sounds like you're linking "intent" and "optimal play."
A witch who intends to be very good at Deception will be, at most, a single point behind a sorcerer who wants to be THE BEST at Deception. That's feasible. Not optimal.
A witch who intends to be THE BEST at Deception will be hampered only by their singular class ability boost missing, but can still be THE BEST within their group. A feasible concept.
Now, take that and expand it out and you are saying "I am willing to take the hit to a saving throw/the expense of other skills to achieve this." Feasible as a character, not optimal when viewed as a whole (if you see optimal builds are requiring maxed saving throws at every point).
A player who intends to make a character in such a way is assumed to understand the cost. Otherwise, we aren't talking about feasible characters, but players who don't understand the game.
I mentioned new players only as a reference point to the reputation that we as a community have grown around our game. "Pathfinder is a game of optimal numbers," which it isn't. "Pathfinder is a game of illusory choices," which it isn't. "Pathfinder is too difficult because of the knowledge needed to make a feasible character," which it isn't. It's disheartening to see the same things tossed out in a thread specifically talking about the difference between "optimal" and "feasible."
Since it's come up in the thread, the Strength Witch thread is something I weighed in on and it's important that "intent" was what I addressed.
So I had a player using a "muscle witch," in the Premaster days in a game of The Slithering. It was wildly successful, though it may not be the exact sort of witch you're looking for. I don't have their build on hand, but they were an orc Curse witch who stayed just behind the champion swinging a meteor hammer and generally using a combination of Evil Eye, occult buffs, trips, and Cackles for action economy. It was amazingly devastating, but the champion on the team did also pick up Attack of Opportunity which made for nasty set 'em up, knock 'em down combos.
It seems that you're looking more for the brute force of damage dealing, which is not something I have experience with. I'm sure it could be done, but don't neglect the rest of your toolkit!
The poster was looking to use a necksplitter in melee combat, which is definitely more difficult to achieve if your intent is to compliment or use the witch's abilities. There are better classes to get the most of this concept. The concept is likely not going to be fulfilled and would hardly be called optimal, but it COULD feasibily be done, so long as expectations are managed.
Also the very idea of optimal is relative. No character can be optimal at everything. Often (maybe not in all cases) to be have optimal effectiveness and action economy you have to trade off optimal versatility and optimal team synergy and maybe optimal surviveability.
Something has to give to be the best at something.
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A player who intends to make a character in such a way is assumed to understand the cost. Otherwise, we aren't talking about feasible characters, but players who don't understand the game.
I feel like that's a big thing to assume or handwave, especially when you yourself mention that some players you encounter have a bad impression of Pathfinder specifically because of that gap. Clearly a huge part of the problem is a gap in understanding. So no we really shouldn't assume that, because high system mastery players making weird builds on purpose is a very very small subset of people this discussion is relevant for.
I feel like that's a big thing to assume or handwave, especially when you yourself mention that some players you encounter have a bad impression of Pathfinder specifically because of that gap. Clearly a huge part of the problem is a gap in understanding. So no we really shouldn't assume that, because high system mastery players making weird builds on purpose is a very very small subset of people this discussion is relevant for.
A player who intends to make a character in such a way is assumed to understand the cost. Otherwise, we aren't talking about feasible characters, but players who don't understand the game.
Maybe I should rephrase:
"If we're going to have a discussion about feasible characters - we should assume a baseline of knowledge or else we're just going to boil points down to system mastery."
A player who does not know the rules of the game are players that will face hurdles regardless of their character.
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You can sus out 90% of feasible characters by just looking for a few key points:
Do you have maximum possible KAS and, if it's different, attack stat?
Do you have max AC and are upping your saves (exception: reflex on bulwark) when possible (yes, some builds cannot do the first and the second, that's usually a sign it needs a lot of system knowledge)
Do you have a constructive 3 action and 2 action plan, for when you're next and not next to an enemy?
(Spellcasters) Did you remember to pick decent combat spells, targeting at least two different saves?Now, there's 10% of characters who fail one or more of the above but are still feasible if played well, and it's important to note that 'feasible to play' and 'the player will actually play it well' might differ (see: Warrior Bard, but also finesse builds that drop Str) but that guideline really is most of it.
This is too high a bar for "feasible", in that if you're doing these you are much closer to high performance. Case in point: my Kingmaker group has an Inventor whose two highest stats are INT (unsurprising) and CHA (because he wants Summoner dedication and we're using FA). Said Inventor has a Construct Companion who has done a respectable amount of work for us.
Early on he took Mindsmith Dedication because he likes the concept, and waded into melee. His STR and DEX are both terrible (like +1/0), so his AC is terrible. This was not feasible in that as soon as any kind of threatening enemy turned on him, he got destroyed. It only worked because we have a Cleric and an Oracle and thus have a LOT of healing.
After a few levels he realized that wasn't working that well and started using a bow (eventually Mindsmith gets a ranged attack, but for now its a bow). While this still isn't especially good due to his low DEX, it's definitely feasible: he's been doing it successfully for several levels now. His construct companion is up in melee (he doesn't use the eidolon in combat at all) and he's behind it using Explode and shooting an arrow or two, which don't have great accuracy but hit decently hard thanks to Overdrive.
There's no question at all here that he would be performing at a higher level in combat if he ditched the idea of having Summoner Archetype at all and instead leaned more into "I want to be good with this mindsmith weapon" or "I want to be good with this bow", but at the same time: it's hard to claim what he's doing now isn't "feasible" when he's been doing it for months of the campaign since he got out of melee.
This player is very much a concept first player and he got to build his concept, so he's happy. The other players are content now that he's not getting blown up in melee constantly, so there's no table issue. In terms of optimization he is clearly leaving a lot on the table, but he's bringing enough to be feasible.
Is some of that because we have two people that can heal and a Thaumaturge with Amulet? Yeah, probably. But that shows why this conversation is so complicated: what's entirely feasible in one group might be totally unworkable in another, both for reasons of other characters making up for a weakness and some tables just have different expectations of how optimally they want to play.
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It sounds like you're linking "intent" and "optimal play."
A witch who intends to be very good at Deception will be, at most, a single point behind a sorcerer who wants to be THE BEST at Deception. That's feasible. Not optimal.
A witch who intends to be THE BEST at Deception will be hampered only by their singular class ability boost missing, but can still be THE BEST within their group. A feasible concept.
Now, take that and expand it out and you are saying "I am willing to take the hit to a saving throw/the expense of other skills to achieve this." Feasible as a character, not optimal when viewed as a whole (if you see optimal builds are requiring maxed saving throws at every point).
In order for a Witch to be just a single point behind a Sorcerer in Deception while both are committing maximum skill increases, they'd have to max out their Charisma at every single opportunity (which is a huge cost to a character already dependent on four attributes) and pick a Charisma apex item at the expense of their Intelligence. The claim is therefore only true on a technicality, and does not acknowledge how one character would be making unrealistically large tradeoffs to achieve this while the other can achieve this strength as a simple extension of their base class.
More realistically, if a Witch and Sorcerer both increase their Deception at regular intervals, the Witch will be between 4 and 7 points behind the Sorcerer, a huge gap, and reducing that gap to, say, just 2 by boosting Charisma regularly means that each attribute boost level will have you sacrificing a boost to one of your defenses or key attribute. I am very much not talking about optimal play here, I am merely pointing out that attributes inherently make simple character decisions like these arbitrarily costlier to achieve and less effective overall.
A player who intends to make a character in such a way is assumed to understand the cost. Otherwise, we aren't talking about feasible characters, but players who don't understand the game.
As Squiggit points out, this clashes directly with the "concept first, stats second" narrative you were suggesting for newer players. Ultimately, some part of the math does get in the way, and while it's not necessarily restrictive in the sense that you're forced at wandpoint to build a certain way, it's still the case that some builds will be much more successful than others depending on how well they abide by the system's use of what is ultimately a fairly arbitrary and legacy-driven subsystem of attributes.
I mentioned new players only as a reference point to the reputation that we as a community have grown around our game. "Pathfinder is a game of optimal numbers," which it isn't. "Pathfinder is a game of illusory choices," which it isn't. "Pathfinder is too difficult because of the knowledge needed to make a feasible character," which it isn't. It's disheartening to see the same things tossed out in a thread specifically talking about the difference between "optimal" and "feasible."
I'm with you there, I've seen these kinds of comments made on these forums and I do think it's important to counter them with facts and a broader perspective around character-building. Pathfinder is absolutely a game chock-full of valid choices (far more than any other TTRPG I've played, and I've played a few), and even when factoring in attributes there is a huge number of interesting ways to build a character, such that it's a regular activity on these forums or the subreddit to find lots of different ways of achieving the same concept. Although math is important in Pathfinder's design and balance, that does not make it equally important to every table, and it's perfectly okay to make a suboptimal-yet-fun character in a roleplaying game when the aim isn't ultra-competitive and maximally tactical combat (which isn't the case for most tables).
With that said, I think that when defending the game and its design, it's all too easy to lean too hard the opposite way, and I think it's also worth countering some opposite statements that I find equally false: I've often seen people promise that Pathfinder will let you build literally any character, which is misleading at best and incorrect at worst. I've similarly seen people handwave Pathfinder's math and claim that it doesn't really matter when building and running your character, which is also flat-out wrong. Making promises like these I think sets false expectations that inevitably lead to disappointment when newer players take this to heart, build a character that doesn't mesh well with the game's math, and then don't understand why their character doesn't feel amazing to play. In the worst cases, those players do end up blaming the game and accusing it of being unbalanced or too restrictive, when the less attractive but more realistic promise of "you can build almost any character you can think of, but some will work better than others based on how well they align with the game's design" would have set appropriate expectations and allowed them to get much more enjoyment out of less optimal builds.
Are we talking past each other? Because I have not said "every character is going to be some level of optimal," but rather that with effort near everything can be feasible. I have also asserted that saying "you require X, Y, and Z to be effective" is something that I disagree with.
I have not said "players should pick anything with zero guidance and zero understanding of the rules." The GM is there as an arbiter of the game and the rules themselves act as a way to help players achieve the vision of their character. Saying "you can't just make any character and call it a day" implies either:
A) The player does not understand the rules - i.e. I want to make a spellcasting fighter who can fight as well as he casts spells.
B) There is no GM to guide players in their decision-making - i.e. I want to make a mastermind rogue focused on social intrigue in a game revolving around wilderness survival.
I don't think that we can measure "doesn't feel amazing to play," but I also don't think we can accurately measure optimal and feasible. In my mind, nearly any character can be feasible with the right play and the right group. But my idea of fun focuses on the story aspect of the game, which includes character death, so my fun may not be equivalent to another poster's. So when it comes to "this character satisfies me when I sit down to play them," I feel like that's quite separate from "is a feasible character."
In a previous comment, I brought up a character that I would never, ever in my life ever want to play. I think that most people would not be satisfied playing that character and any GM would be encouraged to give that player a full rebuild. It worked at doing the thing it wanted to do, which was provide a good experience for the player who could still contribute not only to the story and exploration, but to encounters as well. It was a feasible character, but to me - personally - it was unplayable because I would not be satisfied playing that character.
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In order for a Witch to be just a single point behind a Sorcerer in Deception while both are committing maximum skill increases, they'd have to max out their Charisma at every single opportunity (which is a huge cost to a character already dependent on four attributes) and pick a Charisma apex item at the expense of their Intelligence. The claim is therefore only true on a technicality, and does not acknowledge how one character would be making unrealistically large tradeoffs to achieve this while the other can achieve this strength as a simple extension of their base class.
What you say is true, but is that the goal? Are you trying to be equivalent to a Sorceror spending as many resources, or to the "typical" Sorceror. I'm usually aiming for the latter. Do most Sorcerors hyperfocus Deception? Ones who focus on Illusions probably do, but the others probably have it as their 2nd or 3rd skill if they put anything into it at all.
Then you've got slice in time and what other resources you want to spend. Let's take a Witch with a 14 CHA. If the Witch takes Dandy Dedication, they will be an Expert in Deception at level 2, which gives them parity with a Sorc. If the Sorc doesn't train to Expert till level 5, you've stayed current with them this entire time -- but the Witch bumped their CHA at level 5, and the Sorc didn't (they spent it, but their bonus doesn't change), so now they are only 1 behind. And if they go Master at 7, but the Sorc doesn't go Master until 9, they actually pull ahead for a couple of levels.
Congratulations, you've maintained Deception parity with a typical CHA-caster throughout the entire PFS playable range at the cost of your 3rd best stat, a 2nd level feat, and focusing your training on the skill.
One of the *major* things that you have to look at when you try unusual things in PF2 is *when* do you want to do them. Because you probably can't bend the math over the entire 1-20 career, but it is absolutely possible to do so over a 4 level range. The biggest avoidable cost that no one talks about is wasted stat bumps. The only levels where it is *ever* superior to max your KAS is Levels 1-4, 10-14, & 20. If most of your play is at other levels, you are actually better off starting with multiple 16s. Your character will be better overall the fewer times you have to pay the double stat bump tax.
Are we talking past each other? Because I have not said "every character is going to be some level of optimal," but rather that with effort near everything can be feasible. I have also asserted that saying "you require X, Y, and Z to be effective" is something that I disagree with.
I don't think there's a "we" here. No part of my responses assumes that you're claiming every character is optimal, nor anything to that effect. I am, however, directly countering the claim that "near everything can be feasible" in Pathfinder, with or without effort, because Pathfinder 2e is a game that protects its niches and prevents certain builds from being feasible, such as a full spellcaster also being a full martial class in the case of a Strength melee Witch. I feel conversation is also starting to break down with claims such as these:
I don't think that we can measure "doesn't feel amazing to play," but I also don't think we can accurately measure optimal and feasible. In my mind, nearly any character can be feasible with the right play and the right group. But my idea of fun focuses on the story aspect of the game, which includes character death, so my fun may not be equivalent to another poster's. So when it comes to "this character satisfies me when I sit down to play them," I feel like that's quite separate from "is a feasible character."
If we really are going to lower this discussion down to the level of "it's all subjective, so we can't possibly say things that can be agreed upon," then we might as well pack it in, ditch Pathfinder's entire ruleset, and just sit down to play make-believe. If we are to talk about Pathfinder's design, however, then we should perhaps not dismiss the existence of objective facts: there is in fact such a thing as optimal character-building in Pathfinder, and it is objectively quantifiable in various ways, even if the standard for what counts as "optimal", "viable", or "feasible" is more nuanced and varied than is often assumed. One can even go as far to say that some attributes are objectively more powerful than others, a statement itself made by the very developers of this game. The existence of masochists does not prevent pain and suffering from being generally seen as undesirable, and by that same token the existence of players who enjoy builds like a zero-Charisma Sorcerer does not prevent those builds from being generally regarded as weak. Such extremely dysfunctional builds are likely to be rejected at all but the most permissive of tables, and are unlikely to function well at all in official APs, so there are benchmarks we can set here.
What you say is true, but is that the goal? Are you trying to be equivalent to a Sorceror spending as many resources, or to the "typical" Sorceror. I'm usually aiming for the latter. Do most Sorcerors hyperfocus Deception? Ones who focus on Illusions probably do, but the others probably have it as their 2nd or 3rd skill if they put anything into it at all.
If the intent is "I want to be the most deceptive character in the party", then I would say yes, a Sorcerer simply being trained in Deception and still rolling higher is an obstacle to that. The example you list of a Witch starting with +2 Charisma, using their 2nd-level class feat to get expertise in Deception as early as possible, and then boosting Charisma at every opportunity just to still be mostly behind a Sorcerer who delays their own skill increases in the skill isn't dissimilar to the example I listed of a Witch committing excessively large amounts of resources towards the same goal. At the end of the day, it still says the same thing: a Witch committing as many resources as possible towards this one thing is going to severely hamper their character's core effectiveness and still be behind a Sorcerer who can increase their Deception as a normal part of character progression without dipping into their defenses or key attribute. This I'd say isn't so much a case of niche protection as it is one of attributes arbitrarily making certain builds vary significantly in effectiveness.
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What you say is true, but is that the goal? Are you trying to be equivalent to a Sorceror spending as many resources, or to the "typical" Sorceror. I'm usually aiming for the latter. Do most Sorcerors hyperfocus Deception? Ones who focus on Illusions probably do, but the others probably have it as their 2nd or 3rd skill if they put anything into it at all.
Thern you've got slice in time and what other resources you want to spend. Let's take a Witch with a 14 CHA. If the Witch takes Dandy Dedication, they will be an Expert in Deception at level 2, which gives them parity with a Sorc. If the Sorc doesn't train to Expert till level 5, you've stayed current with them this entire time -- but the Witch bumped their CHA at level 5, and the Sorc didn't (they spent it, but their bonus doesn't change), so now they are only 1 behind. And if they go Master at 7, but the Sorc doesn't go Master until 9, they actually pull ahead for a couple of levels.
Congratulations, you've maintained Deception parity with a typical CHA-caster throughout the entire PFS playable range at the cost of your 3rd best stat, a 2nd level feat, and focusing your training on the skill.
To me, this is just saying "you should be happy with having to invest way more to match a different character that isn't investing nearly as much, and you only match them before they bump their proficiency."
So you can 1) sacrifice a class feat to archetype, locking you out of more relevant archetypes—like Sorc, which I hope you wanted with that 14 CHA—until you burn through more archetype feats, and 2) sacrifice saves. And all just to be slightly better than a sorc that isn't -trying- to be good at deception for a few levels throughout your playrange?
This is supposed to be a favorable analysis, right?
If it's objectively quantifiable, how do you define "optimal" and "feasible"? Because we can see in this thread that making such nebulous terms something that people can agree on is quite difficult.
I have always seen "optimal" as the best choice in a set of actions. This means an optimal character would have the "correct" ability scores, feats, skills, and defenses within a given concept.
I see "feasible" as a concept that can contribute effectively to the game. A feasible character does what it sets out to do - be it a fighter with face skills, a gun-slinging monk, or a melee witch. Concessions could have been made to make the all around play experience smoother, but it works.
And not that it's been mentioned much, but I see "unplayable" as a character that can't do anything it sets out to do effectively. A wizard who wants to use illusions, but dumped Int and focused on Str (a poor understanding of the rules), a cleric who wants to shoot guns as well as the gunslinger (should likely be steered towards a gunslinger with a cleric or medic dedication depending on how they want to accomplish their concept), or a character that can just do everything (expectations are out of line with how the game functions).
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To me, this is just saying "you should be happy with having to invest way more to match a different character that isn't investing nearly as much, and you only match them before they bump their proficiency."
Before this gets lost in the weeds, the concept isn't "the best at Deception," it's "a witch who is the best at Deception." If a player tells me they want to play a witch who is really good at Deception, I would assume they would want the witch part of their concept more than "incredibly deceptive."
And you are potentially comparing against a character who isn't there. Like, if you have two people in the party angling to be the face character and one happens to be a Charisma-based class, well, yeah - maybe there should be a discussion at the table. But a player who wants to play a witch and sees a role needing to be filled ("Wait, we don't have anyone with Deception? Yeah, I can play in that space.") doesn't mean that they aren't feasible or that they should play something else to fill some optimized criteria.
If it's objectively quantifiable, how do you define "optimal" and "feasible"? Because we can see in this thread that making such nebulous terms something that people can agree on is quite difficult.
I think Ryangwy did in fact make some decent points, even if I disagree that they're the minimum requirement for feasibility: because your key attribute is important to your class, it is generally optimal to boost it over others. Because Dex/Con/Wis control your defenses and Perception while the remaining scores mostly plug into skills or other ancillary benefits, it is generally optimal to boost those over the remaining scores. Picking options that depend on mechanics your class is already good at (such as a feat that has you make a Strike on a Fighter) is generally optimal compared to picking options that depend on mechanics your class is bad at (such as picking a Wizard dedication and then preparing déjà vu on a -1 Int Fighter).
Note the use of "generally" here, because this standard assumes a general context of playing an adventure where you'll have a mix of combat and exploration, i.e. most APs, and things are only optimal within a given context. If you were playing a purely social campaign with zero combat or exploration, for example, then it would be optimal to boost mental scores over anything else, regardless of your class, and if your adventure were all about running a magic item shop where you crafted and sold magic items, then Crafting would become the best skill in your adventure. Context is important, even if we can agree that some contexts are more relevant to discussion than others (such as the general mix of challenges Paizo includes in their APs, rather than niche homebrew campaigns hyper-focused around a specific subset of gameplay). Paizo acknowledges this as well, which is why their APs list certain skills that are more or less likely to see use in the adventure.
Also important to note is that optimal need not be used as a binary measure, a common problem in this sort of discussion: just because a character is not perfectly optimized does not mean they're not strong, let alone viable or feasible. If you want to sacrifice a bit of Wisdom for more Charisma and better face skills on your Monk, for instance, your character's still likely to hold up well.
I have always seen "optimal" as the best choice in a set of actions. This means an optimal character would have the "correct" ability scores, feats, skills, and defenses within a given concept.
I think we're actually of pretty similar minds in this respect, and ultimately what you're stating here is that the aim of a build adds context that affects the standard for what is optimal -- it is not the only factor, but it's an influence. If you're trying to build a party face, increasing face skills and boosting Charisma will objectively make you better at what you set out to achieve. Similarly, picking a class that lends itself well to building a party face will be optimal towards that goal, and that sets a concept-first approach rather than a class-first approach, the latter of which would be the case when trying to make a specific class like the Witch into a party face or a full martial.
I'd say one of the common sources of disappointment with character-building in Pathfinder is that many players go for a class-first approach, then get frustrated when their class doesn't easily give them what they want. It's usually other players who suggest a concept-first approach and propose a different class, though even then some players do get really attached to the class they want to use for their character, and won't budge when other options are shown to work better. My criticism of attributes stems from the fact that they play a big part in the divide between concept-first and class-first approaches even when that divide does not feel necessary: if a Witch could choose Charisma as their key attribute over Intelligence, for example, the class wouldn't be much more powerful than if it were purely Int-based, but would have a much easier time opting into a party face build, and such a build would match up to many representations of witches in media that some players want to emulate. Because the Witch can only use Int as their key attribute, however, party face builds are much more difficult to do with them, and that limits character expression.
I see "feasible" as a concept that can contribute effectively to the game. S feasible character does what it sets out to do - be it a fighter with face skills, a gun-slinging monk, or a melee witch. Concessions could have been made to make the all around play experience smoother, but it works.
And not that it's been mentioned much, but I see "unplayable" as a character that can't do anything it sets out to do effectively. A wizard who wants to use illusions, but dumped Int and focused on Str (a poor understanding of the rules), a cleric who wants to shoot guns as well as the gunslinger (should likely be steered towards a gunslinger with a cleric or medic dedication depending on how they want to accomplish their concept), or a character that can just do everything (expectations are out of line with how the game functions).
I'm inclined to agree with this too, and I think these are two sides of the same coin: because of how Pathfinder protects its niches, it's important to set appropriate expectations when aiming for a particular build (e.g. not expecting a gun-toting Monk to shoot as well as a Gunslinger), and because some builds require specific mechanics or interactions to work that may not exist within the rules for now (most classes lack gun synergy, and until Battlecry! releases, the closest one can get to a Commander character is the much more limited Marshal archetype), some builds will be easier to implement successfully than others. Some builds will simply not succeed at what they set out to achieve, like that full melee Strength Witch, and that's okay, because Pathfinder as a whole remains a game that offers incredible freedom of character-building.
If it's objectively quantifiable, how do you define "optimal" and "feasible"? Because we can see in this thread that making such nebulous terms something that people can agree on is quite difficult.
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I see "feasible" as a concept that can contribute effectively to the game. A feasible character does what it sets out to do - be it a fighter with face skills, a gun-slinging monk, or a melee witch. Concessions could have been made to make the all around play experience smoother, but it works.
I would say that a party of four feasible characters should be able to handle 3 Moderate Threat encounters or hazards before having to retreat to a safe camp and quit for the day.
A problem with this measurement is that some players are better at playing feasible characters effectively than other players are.
I have always seen "optimal" as the best choice in a set of actions. This means an optimal character would have the "correct" ability scores, feats, skills, and defenses within a given concept.
Optimal is easier to define. Another character cannot be made better at the optimal character's job without giving them more levels or better gear. The definition of "job," however, is still fuzzy. We could restrict the definition more tightly by insisting that the other so-called better character has to have the same class, too, because class guides assume that the class is already decided.
And not that it's been mentioned much, but I see "unplayable" as a character that can't do anything it sets out to do effectively. A wizard who wants to use illusions, but dumped Int and focused on Str (a poor understanding of the rules), a cleric who wants to shoot guns as well as the gunslinger (should likely be steered towards a gunslinger with a cleric or medic dedication depending on how they want to accomplish their concept), or a character that can just do everything (expectations are out of line with how the game functions).
Unplayable might be the wrong name for this discussion. A player could play a useless character who fails to contribute to the party's success. That character is still played; therefore, it is playable. I will instead define an "underperforming" character as one that is weaker than a feasible character, and an 'unbuildable" character as one that cannot be build under PF2 rules as envisioned by the player. I have seen newbie players who want a 1st-level character to be stronger than PF2 allows, so such a character would be unbuildable.
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What you say is true, but is that the goal? Are you trying to be equivalent to a Sorceror spending as many resources, or to the "typical" Sorceror. I'm usually aiming for the latter. Do most Sorcerors hyperfocus Deception? Ones who focus on Illusions probably do, but the others probably have it as their 2nd or 3rd skill if they put anything into it at all.
Thern you've got slice in time and what other resources you want to spend. Let's take a Witch with a 14 CHA. If the Witch takes Dandy Dedication, they will be an Expert in Deception at level 2, which gives them parity with a Sorc. If the Sorc doesn't train to Expert till level 5, you've stayed current with them this entire time -- but the Witch bumped their CHA at level 5, and the Sorc didn't (they spent it, but their bonus doesn't change), so now they are only 1 behind. And if they go Master at 7, but the Sorc doesn't go Master until 9, they actually pull ahead for a couple of levels.
Congratulations, you've maintained Deception parity with a typical CHA-caster throughout the entire PFS playable range at the cost of your 3rd best stat, a 2nd level feat, and focusing your training on the skill.
To me, this is just saying "you should be happy with having to invest way more to match a different character that isn't investing nearly as much, and you only match them before they bump their proficiency."
So you can 1) sacrifice a class feat to archetype, locking you out of more relevant archetypes—like Sorc, which I hope you wanted with that 14 CHA—until you burn through more archetype feats, and 2) sacrifice saves. And all just to be slightly better than a sorc that isn't -trying- to be good at deception for a few levels throughout your playrange?
This is supposed to be a favorable analysis, right?
Someone hasn't looked closely at the Dandy archetype -- Sorceror is a ho-hum archetype for a primary spellcaster. But Dandy gives you a number of unique social abilities -- and if I am a Witch focusing on Deception, I am all about unique social abilities. As an INT character, I'd pick up Gossip Lore at 4 without thinking twice. (But if I were interested in a different archetype, Dandy is relatively easy to get past because it has a lot of skill feats -- though to be fair, not any *deception* focused skill feats, so the ones I could take are pretty marginal.)
But this was an off-the-cuff analysis of how I would approach someone else's challenge "Witch who is within 1 in Deception of a Sorceror". I guess I could put together a few more details. For this I am looking at effectiveness from 5-9, which is the sweet spot of PFS play.
Lvl 1-4 (5-9)
STR 10 (10), INT 16 (18) WIS 10 (10) DEX 14 (16) CON 14 (16) CHA 14 (16)
STR is useless, WIS is relatively unimportant -- my class gives me good Will saves and Gossip Lore at 4 will cover recall knowledge from Religion & Nature. If you really care, move 1 bump from CON to WIS. You could also absolutely have had your 18 in INT to start, but since we don't care about Lvl 10 wouldn't bump it beyond that.
If I've decided to focus Deception, then (to my mind) I want to grab illusion spells, so we'll be either occult or arcane. I *love* Spinner of Fates, so that's my inclination, but Inscribed One actually has some interesting interplay with Recall Knowledge (which we're running through Gossip Lore) so might be better for this character. Lets do that.
I've already chosen my class feats at 2 & 4. Let's go with Feeling Your Oats (so I care even less about WIS) and either Basic Lesson or Shredded Familiar at 8.
Not going to look too closely at Skill Feats, but Lie to Me is automatic.
At this point we can see the character's role -- Deception Face, Wide but Shallow Recall Knowledge, primarily a Control Caster, with lots of illusion spells, a few spells that do what the illusions pretend to do, some select offensive, utility as you like. You know, an arcane caster.
This character is at least Feasible, and should be High Functioning in a mixed social/combat game. Definitely looks fun.
If I were building for higher levels I would throw a point of CON into INT to get that 20 at level 10, and I would start diverting some DEX to WIS at 10. (So endgame DEX = 18 and WIS = 14).
Could I do this *better* as a Sorceror? The parts that would be weaker are the Know-It-All parts and whatever you are leveraging off your familiar, so depends on how you value that. Also you'd be a Spon caster instead of a Prep caster, and those play differently.
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Someone hasn't looked closely at the Dandy archetype -- Sorceror is a ho-hum archetype for a primary spellcaster. But Dandy gives you a number of unique social abilities -- and if I am a Witch focusing on Deception, I am all about unique social abilities. As an INT character, I'd pick up Gossip Lore at 4 without thinking twice. (But if I were interested in a different archetype, Dandy is relatively easy to get past because it has a lot of skill feats -- though to be fair, not any *deception* focused skill feats, so the ones I could take are pretty marginal.)
Gossip lore has value, I'll more than grant you that. The problem is that you're basically using your level 2 feat for a skill increase (I don't see much value in Influence Rumor for most campaigns, though I have to admit someone interested in a bluff witch probably would like the flavor of it), and you're presumably also tossing away a skill feat just to escape dandy faster. It also doesn't do anything to improve the meat of your class. You're giving up another hex choice or enhanced familiar at level 2, and perhaps a shorter walk to a specific familiar at 4.
I think this would be an excellent Free Archetype pick for someone building this kind of witch, but the functionality sacrifice for a character in a normal game is high.
Sorc is substantially less ho-hum with Ancestral Memories, even if it challenges our action economy a bit. Bard is also a good choice, even if it also challenges our action economy and the desirability of its buffs and debuffs depends on what patron we take.
STR is useless, WIS is relatively unimportant -- my class gives me good Will saves and Gossip Lore at 4 will cover recall knowledge from Religion & Nature. If you really care, move 1 bump from CON to WIS. You could also absolutely have had your 18 in INT to start, but since we don't care about Lvl 10 wouldn't bump it beyond that.
STR is useless if you don't want armor some way or other and/or don't care about the check penalty on it if you do gain proficiency, yeah.
Good will saves isn't a reason to ignore WIS, imo. +1 (and especially +2) is too valuable in this game. Besides, WIS also applies to most initiative rolls. It's a strong stat.
Knowledge skills don't factor into this for me, fwiw. I would never really want the witch to cover religion or nature at a table run RAW, and you'd be better off spending skill feats on additional lore in a campaign setting.
I personally don't like the sacrifices you take to put charisma on a non-CHA character, especially without FA, or an important part of your combat routine that will rely on CHA. Bluff gives witch almost nothing for combat, either, since Feint is worthless to you. At least Diplo would grant bon mot. (I say this as someone who's making similar sacrifices elsewhere to play a Kineticist with FA Bard—my WIS is not doing me favors, even if Inspire stacked with our actual Bard's dirge is. I'm VERY glad the Bard has counterperform, let me say that.)
If I've decided to focus Deception, then (to my mind) I want to grab illusion spells, so we'll be either occult or arcane. I *love* Spinner of Fates, so that's my inclination, but Inscribed One actually has some interesting interplay with Recall Knowledge (which we're running through Gossip Lore) so might be better for this character. Lets do that.
Inscribed One is primarily good for making other characters do knowledge checks, not yourself; it's more of a combo skill to give free action knowledge checks to classes that would be very grateful for them. I think the patron is best for something like a party with a Thaumaturge as its sole melee (free RK with a bonus+flanking buddy=happy thaum). Outside of those cases, I'd prefer to just... get a better hex.
I also just don't buy that arcane has a huge premium over occult, so Spinner of Threads is the better choice between the two in my book.
I've already chosen my class feats at 2 & 4. Let's go with Feeling Your Oats (so I care even less about WIS) and either Basic Lesson or Shredded Familiar at 8.
Feeling your oats seems underwhelming with good will saves, and again, a good save is not a reason to avoid investing in WIS. This whole setup also keeps you from getting Greater Lesson on time (or perhaps taking Ceremonial Knife if you'd rather).
Could I do this *better* as a Sorceror? The parts that would be weaker are the Know-It-All parts and whatever you are leveraging off your familiar, so depends on how you value that. Also you'd be a Spon caster instead of a Prep caster, and those play differently.
True, you get knowledge and a familiar over a sorc. I don't think they're too worth it in most parties—especially the familiar, without investment—but there are benefits. But here's the more incisive question we should've asked:
...Why aren't we playing a Bard?
You can sus out 90% of feasible characters by just looking for a few key points:
Do you have maximum possible KAS and, if it's different, attack stat?
Do you have max AC and are upping your saves (exception: reflex on bulwark) when possible (yes, some builds cannot do the first and the second, that's usually a sign it needs a lot of system knowledge)
Do you have a constructive 3 action and 2 action plan, for when you're next and not next to an enemy?
(Spellcasters) Did you remember to pick decent combat spells, targeting at least two different saves?Now, there's 10% of characters who fail one or more of the above but are still feasible if played well, and it's important to note that 'feasible to play' and 'the player will actually play it well' might differ (see: Warrior Bard, but also finesse builds that drop Str) but that guideline really is most of it.
This is too high a bar for "feasible", in that if you're doing these you are much closer to high performance. Case in point: my Kingmaker group has an Inventor whose two highest stats are INT (unsurprising) and CHA (because he wants Summoner dedication and we're using FA). Said Inventor has a Construct Companion who has done a respectable amount of work for us.
Early on he took Mindsmith Dedication because he likes the concept, and waded into melee. His STR and DEX are both terrible (like +1/0), so his AC is terrible. This was not feasible in that as soon as any kind of threatening enemy turned on him, he got destroyed. It only worked because we have a Cleric and an Oracle and thus have a LOT of healing.
After a few levels he realized that wasn't working that well and started using a bow (eventually Mindsmith gets a ranged attack, but for now its a bow). While this still isn't especially good due to his low DEX, it's definitely feasible: he's been doing it successfully for several levels now. His construct companion is up in melee (he doesn't use the eidolon in combat at all) and he's behind it using Explode and...
I would put healing abilities in the high performing to optimal team synergy category.
Specifically for healing, a character that would be rated low performing at ranged for surviveability is good enough when you have party members with enough healing. But the healing was not enough to make up that characters unplayable surviveability in melee.Did I get that right?
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I would put healing abilities in the high performing to optimal team synergy category.
Yeah, definitely. I took it as a signature spell on my Oracle and I'm good to go on this front no matter what else I do lol.
Specifically for healing, a character that would be rated low performing at ranged for surviveability is good enough when you have party members with enough healing. But the healing was not enough to make up that characters unplayable surviveability in melee.
Did I get that right?
Pretty much, yes. He's getting attacked less back there since the melee characters (including his construct companion) are in the way, so our healing resources go a lot farther and he's not flirting with Wounded all the time (being Wounded 2 in melee with poor AC is inevitably ending in death).
Ironically ranged builds usually have good AC just by virtue of high DEX, so this is a really odd situation, but the net result is that it's no longer unplayable.
I feel like I need to point something else out. There is a reason I separated things into categories.
For one pumping dex con and will every stat up is an attempt to be high performing to optimal at survivability. Trading off one or more of those stats for another is a trade of survivability for something else. To my mind those something elses are effectivness in that other thing you want to do, versitility casue you archtyped into abilities that have applicability in different situations than your chassis offers, possible internal synergy( things like being able to cast fear and having dread striker to get off guard out of it) team synergy cause now some of your resources improve others not just you, and action economy.
The idea being you could have some defenses that are high performing and some that are low performing and still overall be a feasible character. It just means you have to play to tour strengths and let team mates help with tour weaknesses.
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I feel like I need to point something else out. There is a reason I separated things into categories.
For one pumping dex con and will every stat up is an attempt to be high performing to optimal at survivability. Trading off one or more of those stats for another is a trade of survivability for something else. To my mind those something elses are effectivness in that other thing you want to do, versitility casue you archtyped into abilities that have applicability in different situations than your chassis offers, possible internal synergy( things like being able to cast fear and having dread striker to get off guard out of it) team synergy cause now some of your resources improve others not just you, and action economy.
"Trading survivability" is phrase I associate with systems where such tradeoffs don't substantially increase the amount of the time you are critically hit and critically fail saves.
It is not a one-for-one trade. Again, you can go from getting crit 5 or 10% of the time to getting crit 15 or 20% of the time just for shifting two stat increases from DEX to CHA. That is a miserable choice. We are talking about doubling or tripling the amount of the time you get crit.
The same can go for moving stats out of WIS to CHA, but for will saves. And so on. Also worth noting that your backup for failing such saves (hero point rerolls) is worse the worse you already are at the save.