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...lots of good points...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.
WIS is a strong stat, and I am spending a lot of resources to mitigate dumping it, but they reinforce. This character would generally have Investigate as their Exploration action, and so will usually be using INT for initiative (due to Gossip Lore covering Religion/Nature creatures).
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.
Diplo would be trained (to get Dandy), so this character would probably have Bon Mot, but wouldn't be great at it. A decent option for a third action.
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.
Very good point, on The Inscribed One cantrip hex -- I had not noticed that it targeted anyone. I don't love that cantrip hex at all -- but if you think about it as spending an action to proc your familiar ability to provide flanking, with the free Recall Knowledge as a throw-in, then it kind of works? But I'm totally with you on preferring Spinner of Threads, and the occult list is my personal favorite list, but...(cue cliffhanger)
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).
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.
Totally fair. Ceremonial Knife was the other contender for me -- and in a 5-9 campaign I think I agree that's the stronger choice. If we're going to 20, I think Feeling Your Oats will be more valuable later and this is the cheapest place to pick it up.
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.
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.
Even with minimal investment, The Inscribed One gives you an autonomous familiar which can provide flanking. Which, depending on the group, is either extremely helpful or useless. It'll sure divert some attention from the martials! Glad I've got Phase Familiar.
But here's the more incisive question we should've asked:
...Why aren't we playing a Bard?
There are only two good answers to that question. The first is "story reasons" -- which is unanswerable, but unsatisfying.
The other is (resume from cliffhanger)...you need to use the arcane list. For some reason.
(And also the whole Spon caster vs Prep caster thing. Which I don't care about, but someone else might.)
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So, the point of this thread is *not* to build the most optimized character possible for a niche. It's talking about building a character with a minimum level of competence given parameters which are *not* optimal.
Psychological studies show that the sweet spot of the satisfaction curve is being successful 75% of the time, and that's generally what I shoot for with characters -- can I do my thing successfully 3 times out of 4? If I can, then I'm having a good time. Being successful 80% or 85% does not significantly increase my fun, so I don't optimize in that way -- I'd rather strive to have more things that I am 75% successful at.
That's what I would call baseline for feasible -- can you succeed at "your thing" 75% of the time.
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.
Ok so if I got this right, your assessment is it is never a worthwhile trade to get something other than dex con wis?
Meaning if you got two and left one at +0 to get str or int or cha its always not worth doing?| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
This whole conversation loops back around to why I find the "you require X, Y, and Z to be feasible" to be uninteresting. It shuts down character concepts before they can even begin. That's not to say that others can't play that way, but when it becomes holy writ it's frustrating.
A witch with the Dandy archetype and a high Charisma is a fully-functional and feasible character. It's not even on some low scale of "can't do anything it sets out to do." But because that CON/DEX/WIS lags, it's called a liability because "the math is so tight," which is an accurate statement, but is not the whole picture.
These little catechisms get circulated around the community until it goes from "Yeah, you might take a bit more damage from a nasty save," to "This character cannot function because they will be dead." It negates player agency and choice and also makes a game that we love look like a pile of incredibly difficult math. As someone who regularly gets new players into games, the reputation that Pathfinder is one wrong number away from impossible is frustrating to have to surmount, especially when it leads to confirmation bias after poor play or poor luck.
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Optimal to feasible to suboptimal isn't a very wide gap in PF2. I don't know that worrying about it over much is worth the time.
You can be a character that is optimal at one thing like say trips and then suboptimal at other stuff for fun will work just fine for PF2. They trip to do their group thing and then do some other things for fun and build up some other stats or skills for non-combat stuff.
I have one player that doesn't work very hard to be very optimal. Sometimes they get hammered a bit, but mostly they have fun and some of their choices like building up a Lore or stacking skills because this player loves skills allows them to act in situations where optimized combat players are pretty useless.
This can help the DM and overall group. They still perform well enough in combat as you level the raw stats are less important than the magic items, proficiency increases, and other selections like spell choice, feats, and the like.
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These little catechisms get circulated around the community until it goes from "Yeah, you might take a bit more damage from a nasty save," to "This character cannot function because they will be dead." It negates player agency and choice and also makes a game that we love look like a pile of incredibly difficult math.
I feel like the only person I actually see repeating this claim is you though.
What I mostly see is people saying that certain build ideas will weaken a character in certain ways, and that that's worth acknowledging when someone asks for build advice and also hey maybe it'd be nice if Paizo didn't make some stat combinations so much worse. Maybe there was some of this in the melee witch thread, but even that leaned quite a bit into a fairly extreme example of cutting against the grain.
So if you're worried about people getting the wrong impression maybe you should stop signal boosting this to begin with?
I'm speaking from what I have seen in numerous online and real space games. I'm not saying that this is "every member of the community says this," but because you are not seeing this does not mean that it isn't an actual thing. Our experiences, separate as they are, do not negate one another.
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Ok so if I got this right, your assessment is it is never a worthwhile trade to get something other than dex con wis?
Meaning if you got two and left one at +0 to get str or int or cha its always not worth doing?
My assessment is that if you are not investing in KAS, your accuracy stat, AC to cap (via some means or other), and saves on most characters, in that order, you are usually doing something strictly worse—something that makes you more likely to die in the long run, or keeps you from reaching the performance bar both the game and the player expect. (Newer APs are nicer, and you can get away with more; this is, in my opinion, to their credit. I'd be less afraid of playing a cool offbuild in Season of Ghosts than Abomination Vaults, and I want it to stay this way.) WIS is typically the safest place to deviate on paper, though AC could be okay if you're ranged and play at a table where the GM rarely or never runs encounters that will target the backline. But I'd prefer not to deviate.
There are exceptions to this. I think the tradeoff can be worth it if you're getting something unusually strong for it, or the pickup patches holes in your party. I'd entertain wizard getting 14 CHA for Sorc archetype and access to ancestral memories, for instance. But that kind of power for that level of tradeoff (remember that wizard feats are not particularly good anyways) is probably about what I'd want to get in exchange—and I'm also assuming you never increase CHA past 14 in this scenario, too, so your saves aren't lagging that much. I'd actually consider playing that Dandy Witch, as well, in the rare case it perfectly covered the holes in the party in a way I couldn't cover with a Bard. (I'm not sure there is such a case, but I'm not infallible by any means.)
In general, if you want my personal opinion? I want a game to have FA (and ideally Gradual ASI) before I'll try playing anything too cute. I'll always color in the lines in a vanilla PF2E game because the opportunity cost is too high on doing otherwise, imo.
That's what I would call baseline for feasible -- can you succeed at "your thing" 75% of the time.
I'm inclined to agree, but the math for the game isn't really set up this way. My estimate is that in combat, 60 to 70% is the most common success rate for an optimized character with teamplay—worse for harder fights, better for easier fights, slightly better if you're a fighter trying to hit something.
Fully invested skills scale more as the game progresses and start having excellent success rates, sometimes upwards of 80% and 90% for specific on-level usecases; save DCs mostly sit around 45 to 55% failed saves, iirc, with the whole "partial hit on enemy success" deal as compensation.
Generally, I think success rates are about 5-10% too low for my tastes on most things for most of the game (and whether it's 5 or 10% depends on the level). Lategame skills are a very noticeable exception.
This whole conversation loops back around to why I find the "you require X, Y, and Z to be feasible" to be uninteresting. It shuts down character concepts before they can even begin. That's not to say that others can't play that way, but when it becomes holy writ it's frustrating.
A witch with the Dandy archetype and a high Charisma is a fully-functional and feasible character. It's not even on some low scale of "can't do anything it sets out to do." But because that CON/DEX/WIS lags, it's called a liability because "the math is so tight," which is an accurate statement, but is not the whole picture.
These little catechisms get circulated around the community until it goes from "Yeah, you might take a bit more damage from a nasty save," to "This character cannot function because they will be dead." It negates player agency and choice and also makes a game that we love look like a pile of incredibly difficult math. As someone who regularly gets new players into games, the reputation that Pathfinder is one wrong number away from impossible is frustrating to have to surmount, especially when it leads to confirmation bias after poor play or poor luck.
PF2E can feel volatile even when optimized, so I don't think it's shocking this is how it turns out. PF2E's success rates, particularly at low levels, tend to sit in a very uncomfortable zone where you never truly feel confident in yourself; being unoptimized only pushes you further into uncertainty. People often don't feel like their character is good at things in the earlier levels of PF2E, even when they're built perfectly! People also often feel like their character folds like paper mache early, too. Those small +1s feel like protective amulets. "You might take more damage from a nasty save" means "you might go down from full HP" at those levels. It's not shocking the feel of low level play sticks with people.
Compounding this, early content was /hard/. People optimized in response to failures; simply put, they got burned once and didn't want to touch the stove again. Personally, I ran Malevolence and saw how the party would've died 10 times over if I hadn't buffed hero point rerolls; it stuck with me. (As an aside, it doesn't help that the default luck mitigation mechanic is genuinely poor at mitigating bad luck, especially on things your character is already likely to fail at.)
To respond more directly:
The witch is functional but strictly worse than just playing a Bard. The game's niche protection ultimately wants you to color in the lines. If your playstyle won't color in the lines, you often
-fail on 2 to 4 more die faces with the thing you colored outside the lines to get, and you often end up having something like 133% or 166% the amount of failures an optimized build would
-take a penalty to your saves, which scales with stat investment in the thing you're coloring outside the lines to do
-pay a hefty opportunity cost in feats of all kinds
-make yourself worse at the thing your class is actually good at doing to begin with
You're right that this is not truly devastating, especially in newer APs, and especially with FA. But it tends to feel bad enough in practice that people learned to color in the lines instead. I only really let experienced players do things like this, with the acknowledgement we both know here be dragons and you do it at your psychological peril. Like, do you really wanna play a STR sorc and see the fighter hit that much more often than you?
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And while you reiterate that you're saying that statline ensures a feasible character 90% of the time, I'd like to reiterate that I disagree in that it seems, to me, to be an overstatement. I also have not said that I would ever change a game to accommodate a lower performing character, though I have often on these forums encouraged GMs to adapt their games to help their player concepts shine (like providing Linguists a chance to Decipher and translate or characters heavily-invested in Survival to handle environmental Hazards and track enemies).
I've already given my definition of "feasible" to be a character who accomplishes what they set out to do. The scenario you've given doesn't fall into that - a player with no goal or idea. I see two situations in which a player like this would arrive at my table:
1) This is a player in a home game, in which case, their character concept would come out in session 0 and we can work together to guide that closer to what they want.
2) This is a player who has shown up to a PFS game and I could provide advice as to getting their concept closer to what they want after the game and then talk about how that can function within the Organized Play rules.
But I keep going back to saying that we should stop using clueless players who are scattershotting ability scores without any reference. The game as a whole assumes that the players know the rules and if we aren't assuming that either than we're just creating effigies to mock. If a wizard player dumps Int in favor of Cha, why would we assume they don't know what they're doing? Knowing nothing other than their choices, the idea that "they are wrong" comes from this idea that characters have to fit certain criteria to be "feasible" and rejects the idea that a player has made these choices with intent.
It just keeps looping back to "Sure, it could be feasible, but I know a better (optimal) way to play because of these criteria."
Fighter. How do you make one that drops under feasible?
Also I agree that we should assume were talking about players that know the game they are playing.
Assume at least +3 in KAS, go
Fighter. How do you make one that drops under feasible?
Also I agree that we should assume were talking about players that know the game they are playing.
Assume at least +3 in KAS, go
I think for martial characters, assuming the ability scores are settled, the most obvious pain points are going to be picking weapons that don't work with your class/feat choices. Don't pick a simple weapon if you could pick a martial weapon that has al the same traits (longspear ruffian rogue is the exception that proves the rules). Make sure your weapon qualifies for your class damage booster (agile/finesse for the expected, non-agile for barbarians, one handed for thaums, etc) Yes, there's exceptions to these rules but frankly I'm sick of having to put that disclaimer since it just shuts down discussion in favour of 'everything is possibly feasible' so assume I have that scribbled somewhere.
For fighters, their feat selection tends to fall into several silos. Obviously, don't take two handed weapons if your feat choices need a shield or free hand! More subtly, taking Vicious Blow on a weapon with low damage is a poor choice, since that additional +1d4 isn't much of a deal. I feel like an easy way to get an unfeasible build that doesn't technically violate your feat choices is to go for a freehand build using a one handed, non-reach weapon with non-damage traits - I'm thinking the flail, kuriki, sai, nunchaku and main-gauche here, from player core, but there are others in splats that are even worse. The 'problem' is that your free hand already has, essentially, trip/shove/grapple/disarm/agile/monk/versatile B+nonlethal already, so picking a weapon that overlaps that wastes their trait budget. This is going to be very on the line - you're a dice or two behind a freehand build that picked a better weapon, and there's going to be times your free hand is occupied with a potion or something and you'll clap for having trip on your weapon, but you'll be doing a lot of lugging around traits that...
Weapon selection is a big lever to go between optimal and less.
Lets at least assume the player is sticking with martial weapons which is a benefit of their class as another assumption.
Fighter. How do you make one that drops under feasible?
Also I agree that we should assume were talking about players that know the game they are playing.
Assume at least +3 in KAS, go
I think for martial characters, assuming the ability scores are settled, the most obvious pain points are going to be picking weapons that don't work with your class/feat choices. Don't pick a simple weapon if you could pick a martial weapon that has al the same traits (longspear ruffian rogue is the exception that proves the rules). Make sure your weapon qualifies for your class damage booster (agile/finesse for the expected, non-agile for barbarians, one handed for thaums, etc) Yes, there's exceptions to these rules but frankly I'm sick of having to put that disclaimer since it just shuts down discussion in favour of 'everything is possibly feasible' so assume I have that scribbled somewhere.
For fighters, their feat selection tends to fall into several silos. Obviously, don't take two handed weapons if your feat choices need a shield or free hand! More subtly, taking Vicious Blow on a weapon with low damage is a poor choice, since that additional +1d4 isn't much of a deal. I feel like an easy way to get an unfeasible build that doesn't technically violate your feat choices is to go for a freehand build using a one handed, non-reach weapon with non-damage traits - I'm thinking the flail, kuriki, sai, nunchaku and main-gauche here, from player core, but there are others in splats that are even worse. The 'problem' is that your free hand already has, essentially, trip/shove/grapple/disarm/agile/monk/versatile B+nonlethal already, so picking a weapon that overlaps that wastes their trait budget. This is going to be very on the line - you're a dice or two behind a freehand build that picked a better weapon, and there's going to be times your free hand is occupied with a potion or something and you'll clap for having trip on your weapon, but you'll be doing a lot of lugging around traits that...
These sound like good considerations. if your going to free hand then a flail is not optimal, kind of better to pair with a shield when you want to use athletics to trip or disarm and are picking up swipe to take advantage of sweep. Flail to me feels like a weapon that enables a defensive control set up.
But I would probably put that as a weapon choice that isn't optimal or high performing for a free hand fighter. But it is still feasible to run around with a flail and free hand and get by just fine.
Frankly speaking if you play to your class and feat choices it's hard to be unfeasible, hence why it's frustrating to be told 'but what if they player knows what they're doing' because in PF2e that's good enough. So long as your martial picks a weapon usable with their feats and features and don't +0 their to hit they'll be fine.
I haven't been trying to pull a "gotcha" with anything I've said. Like, if we are starting from a position of someone who doesn't know the rules of the game then the problem isn't the build, but the player so that's a different topic, right?
We could spend pages upon pages talking about poor performing builds, but if it turns out that it was just a player who randomly assigned every choice and never learned the rules of the game that they play X number of hours a month, then what is even the discussion? Like... don't do that, I guess.
I even stated on the first page:
I would be hard pressed to find anything unplayable, even purposefully.
Im thinking fighter is just a class that cant really fall under feasible.
Wizard however can be low performing with spell selection having so much range.
Wizard however can be low performing with spell selection having so much range.
I wouldn't disagree with this, but it's also - thankfully - easier to change without dealing with Downtime and Retraining. Wizards have the benefit of being able to have a low performing spell list one day and change it out after a night of rest. Sorcerers and other spontaneous casters will have to stick with those spell selections until they have the Downtime to Retrain. Depending on the GM/game, this could be a bit trickier.
So is the problem with the build or the player? And what are we discussing here?
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I mean the thing is "an Intelligence-based barbarian who does Recall Knowledge checks" is not an unplayable build. It's not optimal, but I would call it feasible. It can be done amd a player who wants that can have a lot of fun. A barbarian who wants to be the best at Recall Knowledge may have to adjust their expectations away from "optimal" to "feasible."
A player who is making these choices with no goal or intention is a separate problem from the build. I don't know what you'd want to talk about. We can just lambast players for not reading the rules, but is that really fruitful? What do you want this line of thinking to move into?
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Fighter. How do you make one that drops under feasible?
Also I agree that we should assume were talking about players that know the game they are playing.
Assume at least +3 in KAS, go
I've seen someone in PFS play a Fighter that uses a staff, at level 4, without a striking rune. They were still doing more damage than cantrip users and obviously had better survivability.
It takes actual effort to make a Fighter that's bad in combat.
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So your qualifier for "feasible build" involves player skill and expectation. To put it more succinctly, your definition of "feasible" looks like:
"A build that works without requiring a higher level of knowledge of the game's systems."
I don't think that's a bad definition, especially if you want to involve a more nebulous sort of measurement like "player skill." But I do wonder if it rules out entire classes like the wizard or alchemist.
I also don't know that we've explored "not feasible" within this thread as the OP has created five categories (which have mostly gotten ignored, if we're being honest): Optimal, High Performing, Feasible, Low Performing, and Unplayable. Going by the inclusion of player skill into the equation, it seems like what you woul see as "not feasible" would be a build that can work with a deeper understanding of the game.
We may just never agree on these things as my definition removes the actual player understanding of the rules. What you call a "not feasible build" could be "feasible" to me because the math and rules of the game allow it to.
Frankly speaking if you play to your class and feat choices it's hard to be unfeasible, hence why it's frustrating to be told 'but what if they player knows what they're doing' because in PF2e that's good enough. So long as your martial picks a weapon usable with their feats and features and don't +0 their to hit they'll be fine.
Hmm, an actually unviable Fighter that looks functional on paper would probably be... one that takes a offensive cantrip from ancestry or archetype and uses it as their main offense, using a shield plus the last wall feat line to let them hit+raise shield in one action, so you theoretically are combining a save spell and a Strike in one turn but in practice you're wasting the +2 of the fighter and could have just played a Druid or Cleric instead. IIRC that setup needs a stance so you'll spell+stance, spell+move, then finally spell+bonk, so that's a lot of wasted turns. And it all looks synergistic on paper.
This.
The way to make the Fighter class fail is to...not build a Fighter.Odds are that yes, there's player ignorance, but sometimes it comes from having played previous RPGs (so being unaware of one's ignorance!). My first 3.0 PC was a Dex Ranger with modest Str because I figured I could pick up a Girdle of Giant Strength to leap to a high strength later. Nope. Stat items (which hadn't been published yet!) operated differently than in previous editions. And then we found this above-level non-Finesse magic weapon only I had proficiency in. Oy.
In the early forums I'd seen veteran players try to build gishes or glass cannons (the kind of PCs that flourished at many 3.X tables). No, you can't have your magic be your primary offense even when you multiclass via an archetype with every feat. And yes, you do need defenses and resilience because enemies will survive long enough to Strike. (And no, you can't pump your AC to avoid all damage either.) Also no, there's no way to get Dex-to-damage on your Fighter. Power Attack is both optional and bad on a low-die weapon. And so on.
Odds are that these builds wouldn't exist "in the wild" as it were, what with discussion at the table. And I haven't seen such errors in years (not on the martial side that is). Even if one stumbled into this narrow crevice, then adjustment of one's expectations plus Retraining can solve most issues.
Which is to say, that PF2 makes it so if one actually builds the kind of PC one's class is designed to build, then you'll have a functional PC. No system mastery needed, only an understanding of basic fantasy genre concepts (and no Mary Sue expectations). And there's a lot of cushion for eccentricity too. So yes, it's nearly impossible for a person who wants to fight with weapons to build a dysfunctional Fighter. Thank goodness, er, Paizo. :-)
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Goblin merchant sorcerer (alchemist archetype) that doesn't use spells in combat.
Efficiency = Optimal, All character options were chosen to be the best merchant, especially spells and feats. Optimal for role-playing easy to stay in character, and fun to play.
Versatility = Optimal in social encounters, Feasible in combat, good at using a sling (16 dex) access to alchemical bombs for versatile damage.
Internal synergy = Optimal, as a merchant spell caster, In most game sessions, I find a use for every spell and cantrip I know. I can't think of any other PF2e caster I've played that can say that.
Survivability = Feasible, has not died yet, or causes a TPK.
Team synergy = High performance, a merchant needs things to sell, so my character buys as many consumables as they can carry, and also tries to have a very diverse selection of consumables. Can work as a backup healer, and problem solver. My character frequently makes the rest of the table laugh. If we don't have a balanced party I switch characters, I always bring pregens or other characters to a PFS game just in case.
Action economy = Feasible, has lots of options but may have to dig them out of backpack sometimes.
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The issue is that your definition is so broad that short of games that let you literally cripple or kill your character in chargen, you could say anything is 'feasible' so long as it's buildable.
You may be misunderstanding me - while I do think it's truly difficult to make an unplayable build in PF2, you certainly could in the 3.X/PF1 days even if it was a solid idea. Dumb ideas like "a character with a 1 level dip in everything" were unplayable. Characters built to grab up grab up "social prestige classes" couldn't function outside of specific campaigns. I mean, there's even the debate of a pure martial being playable in PF1 if you have even a halfway decent spellcaster negating your existence (not something I agree with necessarily).
I say that to illustrate where I am coming from. If I have a concept, it's most likely going to work in PF2. Will it be optimal? Probably not. Will it be feasible? Probably!
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I mean, a definition like that gets really weird then, right? We have to figure out what the "least favorable AP by class" would be while ruling out home games. And then it varies on a GM by GM basis. It also means that characters who ARE considered optimal shouldn't be failing this test as well. Then we have a variable of what their party is doing and... like, I see what you're trying to say, but it doesn't click for me as something you can just measure and judge.
Obviously things like "a merfolk barbarian in Strength of Thousands" wouldn't exactly be feasible in that setting, but even then the game allows for such characters to work and be effective. What do you see as a character that isn't feasible?
EDIT: Follow up question, do you see there being a build that you just wouldn't allow at your tables because it underperforms? I mean this as a player or a GM.
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I think it's a test that could be run, in theory, but realistically it's not something worth the effort to test. The best use of this idea would be to think of the toughest tables and GMs you've experienced and ask yourself if your build would thrive in that environment. In practical terms this means that different players will find different things viable as a PFS only player will have a very different experience than a player who plays hard APs with a killer GM.
So like I said, it really just means it's not something that I can see as measurable. "Can this character survive a killer GM?" I mean, the answer is always going to be yes and no. I've killed optimized characters and have survived killer GMs. I've also had games where there was never going to be a chance - with a GM handing unwitting players cursed items to start and stranding them in a land where no one speaks the same language. We're veering into the realm of "video game simulationism" where we are trying to measure an incredibly subjective game. Even with the most objective boundaries, there are such an abundance of variables that it becomes untenable.
As for what I'd find "unplayable" that would be anything with AC or saves more than two points below max, that is the same threshold behind on attacks or saving throws, or a build that does the same thing as another build but worse. This means that I'd be unlikely to play a Wizard, Oracle, Investigator, Alchemist, Swashbuckler, Gunslinger, or Inventor as I don't see their flavor upside or mechanical texture as doing enough to offset bring worse than other classes the broadly fill their sane niche.
This to me was more interesting because it skews away from "feasible" to "optimal," but it sounds like - to you - unoptimized play is unplayable. I mean, we all have class preferences (I don't really vibe with the class fantasy of inventor, personally), but calling them personally unplayable for mechanical reasons is sort of the thing that I was bringing up earlier.
Having set requirements for a character ends up feeling very limiting. It's not a problem on a personal level, but it's disheartening to see happen at a community level.
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I'm far too late to the discussion, I somehow missed the thread startup. But I'll give my answer to the first post nonetheless!
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
Unplayableand 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.
Overall, I disagree with this logic, that led to a long discussion about attributes which is ridiculous in my opinion.
Playable is in the eye of the beholder:
- Some players will be fine playing low performing builds when others don't want to play anything but the top of the top.
- Some players solely focus on combat, others want a more broad experience.
- Some players can't handle certain mechanics when others thrive with them.
- Some players play with Deriven, others play PFS.
Optimal, feasable and unplayable is entirely subjective. If you bring me a Fighter and tell me it's "optimal" you'll make me laugh (as I value out of combat a lot).
Similarly, when I see someone saying that a "melee-focused witch" or a "deceptive witch" is not optimal, I wonder what they call a "witch".
Because you can call a witch whatever character you build, the class is not written on your character's forehead. So very often these conversations only concern those who know the game, the beginner will take whatever advice you give them and if you tell them that their "witch" is better made with the Sorcerer class and Witch Dedication they'll certainly follow you.
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To bring something constructive to the conversation.
I dislike the word feasible. A character incredibly bad is "feasible" if it follows the rules. I don't understand why it could be a measure of effectiveness.
I also don't like the word optimal which supposes a single point of view. What is optimal to me is not to everyone and vice-versa.
I prefer the words unplayable, efficient and optimized.
Unplayable means that you can't play it. For example, a 13 AC melee character is unplayable as you'll be out of combat all the time and as such won't be able to "play". Similarly, a Weapon Improviser who only uses Improvised Weapons is unplayable even with the Archetype as it will fall far behind what is expected for a martial.
Efficient is where most PF2 characters sit. It's really hard in this game to end up with an inefficient character. Even if you don't max out your KAS at level 1 or don't raise all 3 saves you should still reach a level of efficiency that is fine.
For me, what makes a character efficient has more to do with how it is played than with how it is built. A player with enough system mastery, a good knowledge on how to use a third action or a reaction, how to equip properly a character, should end up efficient with whatever character you give them. From my experience, inefficient characters are more rare than inefficient players.
Optimized always raise the question of "Optimized for what?". There are definitely some optimized builds that fit certain roles really well and will in general outperform the competition in these areas. But honestly, between optimized and efficient, the difference is extremely low. For example the highest damaging martials will hardly be 20% above the average martial. So, sure, they are optimized but should we really talk about it?
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Never 2 without 3.
If I dive a bit deeper.
How can a character end up unplayable? I see a few reasons:
- When a player brings expectations from another game. Typically, those who want to recreate their PF1 or D&D5 character and expect the same gameplay/effectiveness.
- When a player brings expectations from a piece of media and tries to recreate their favorite character from a film/book. Heroes from movies/books are in general mastering a lot more abilities than a PF2 character and trying to get all of them on the same character ends up rather weak in general.
- There are a few trap options in the game. The aforementioned Weapon Improviser being one of them. But they are really few.
- There are also badly advertised options where the expected gameplay is not in line with the actual gameplay. Toxicologist comes first into my mind.
As a side note, a lot of these "unplayable" characters are actually playable if the player adapts their gameplay and expectations to line up with PF2.
About "optimized" characters, I also think it is often a synonym of "easy to play".
For example, Barbarian, Champion, Fighter, Gunslinger, Monk, Ranger, Rogue and Starlit Span Magus are simple to play when Inventor, Swashbuckler, Thaumaturge, Investigator and melee Magus are more complex.
For casters, the simple ones are Bard, Cleric and Psychic, when Druid, Sorcerer and remaster Oracle are average and Witch, Wizard and preremaster Oracle are complex.
For the ones that fall out of these categories, Kineticist is simple to play, Summoner average and Alchemist hard.
Overall, the list of simple classes also contains the most "optimized" classes and the list of complex classes contains the most "weak" classes.
So I wonder if "optimized" characters are really that optimized or if for most of them it's just a measure of accessibility.
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So I wonder if "optimized" characters are really that optimized or if for most of them it's just a measure of accessibility.
I think this plays a bigger part in it than most people maybe realize. Complicated characters are - obviously - harder to play and thus require a higher level of system mastery to make feasible, let alone optimized.
A new player is most likely going to have a hard time making say an alchemist work over something like a fighter. But I’ve seen both played incredibly well.
I liked premaster Oracle because it made me really consider my actions in a way the other spellcasters don’t. I like melee magus because to get the most out of my class I have to really work for it.
I think it comes down to player preference in a lot of ways, and while I’m certainly not an expert in optimization I haven’t seen anything that was genuinely unplayable for me - well, premaster alchemist definitely pushed me in that direction but.
You can play almost anything in pathfinder 2e and as long as you have a basic understanding of your class, you most likely won’t be unplayable.