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Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.I've not seen Wands of Tailwind actually become meta anywhere I've played
Everyone in my groups has access to it or equivalent by level 5 or so. Basically most players have a move of around 40ft by then. It significantly changes the balance of the game.
When I GM I often respond by bumping movement rate of the monsters, so it's not a great experience.
40 ft speed encourages using move actions to run away from slower melee monsters constantly, which is brutal in conjunction with Slow—and Slow comes online around the same time. This is the exact kind of tactic that universal attack of opportunity existed to penalize in older editions, and the tactic is even stronger in the 3A economy, since attacking once and running still leaves you with an action. Only player movespeeds keep the tactic in check. Once player movespeed is increased, kiting melee monsters is pretty abusable again, and monsters all need to be faster or have better ranged options to compensate. It's better to just kill the busted item granting the movespeed bonus (which wasn't designed to go onto martials to begin with) than start redesigning every monster.
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Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.I've not seen Wands of Tailwind actually become meta anywhere I've playedEveryone in my groups has access to it or equivalent by level 5 or so. Basically most players have a move of around 40ft by then. It significantly changes the balance of the game.
When I GM I often respond by bumping movement rate of the monsters, so it's not a great experience.
I'd like to hear how this does this.
The kiting tactic is vastly over-rated unless you have a party with zero Reactive Strikes as moving far puts you out of range to use reactive attacks on the monsters.
It takes you out of range for 30 foot heals.
It splits the party for buffs.
It also isolates party members unless they somehow all roll the same initiative.
The best way to counter this would not be to increase monster move speed, but pick the one that rolled low initiative and destroy them. Continue along the process killing them piecemeal as they spread themselves out running 40 plus feet a turn after attacking.
This to one of those theoretical ideas that works in theory or in some rare circumstances, but leads to pretty serious, exploitable problems once the GM adjusts tactics accordingly.
I've seen kiting tried a few times. It mostly splits the party and leaves them open to real issues in PF2.
Not really having a problem with kiting.
Often it just works and I end the encounter and move on. But it's not worthwhile unless the whole party does it.
My players just use the high speed to close to melee, save on actions, and make sure no one escapes.
Letting no one escape is on me as when I'm running games, they always come back with consequences.
I'm surprised at how much other tables ban things; I don't think I've ever had to ban something at my tables...
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Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.I've not seen Wands of Tailwind actually become meta anywhere I've playedEveryone in my groups has access to it or equivalent by level 5 or so. Basically most players have a move of around 40ft by then. It significantly changes the balance of the game.
When I GM I often respond by bumping movement rate of the monsters, so it's not a great experience.
Have you also had to ban elves, monks, or swashbucklers? Because all those can hit 40 Speed before L5, when wands of R2 tailwind are generally available.
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This community: PF2 is the best balanced crunchy TTRPG ever. It's GM-friendly so just run it stock and have a blast.
Also this community: This option is taken 2% more frequently than I'd like and that option is a 4% power advantage on a select range of classes. So out comes the ban hammer.
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Have you also had to ban elves, monks, or swashbucklers? Because all those can hit 40 Speed before L5, when wands of R2 tailwind are generally available.Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.I've not seen Wands of Tailwind actually become meta anywhere I've playedEveryone in my groups has access to it or equivalent by level 5 or so. Basically most players have a move of around 40ft by then. It significantly changes the balance of the game.
When I GM I often respond by bumping movement rate of the monsters, so it's not a great experience.
I never said I banned it. I haven't. I was just explaining how I saw it.
A move of 40 was a floor not a ceiling.
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Have you also had to ban elves, monks, or swashbucklers? Because all those can hit 40 Speed before L5, when wands of R2 tailwind are generally available.Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.I've not seen Wands of Tailwind actually become meta anywhere I've playedEveryone in my groups has access to it or equivalent by level 5 or so. Basically most players have a move of around 40ft by then. It significantly changes the balance of the game.
When I GM I often respond by bumping movement rate of the monsters, so it's not a great experience.
The kiting is mostly an issue when the whole party can do it, as mentioned above. The reason tailwind wand makes the issue salient is that everyone can get it, regardless of what character creation choices they made. You would have to make more significant tradeoffs to set up the kiting otherwise.
It's also the sort of thing that most tables don't want to do just because it's boring and takes more time. But that doesn't make it less strong when it does work.
I didn't want to discuss "fewer actions to reach melee" because there is, frankly, a whole lot of variability in how tables set up encounters and how close or far away enemies are when you engage. Terrain also strongly affects the value of movespeed and the viability of kiting, as well.
I haven't personally needed to ban it because my players don't really want to slog through combats in that way and have other things they'd rather do.
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I think the only thing I've actually banned in PF2e is the Investigator, for reasons of "please don't make me think up a bunch of clues for this homebrew game I'm planning *maybe* three weeks in advance" - though I did tell my players in session zero that the aesthetics of the Guns & Gears classes was a level of technology that straight up hadn't been invented yet, on account of being in the Late Medieval, so they'd have to accept some reflavouring if Gunslinger or Inventor really grabbed them. I basically handle both rare and uncommon items as "ask first" and for the region-locked stuff try and figure out how widespread their equivalent would be for my own setting.
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This community: PF2 is the best balanced crunchy TTRPG ever. It's GM-friendly so just run it stock and have a blast.
Also this community: This option is taken 2% more frequently than I'd like and that option is a 4% power advantage on a select range of classes. So out comes the ban hammer.
Some of the people here are like that. But the community is broader than that. My banned list was empty till this Examplar dedication came along. Errata had fixed most things.
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This community: PF2 is the best balanced crunchy TTRPG ever. It's GM-friendly so just run it stock and have a blast.
Also this community: This option is taken 2% more frequently than I'd like and that option is a 4% power advantage on a select range of classes. So out comes the ban hammer.
I've told you a billion times not to exaggerate.
Considering how many responses here to "wands of tailwind are overpowered" is something along the lines of "people actually use those?", this isn't a thing that exists.
The only things mentioned being banned significantly are generally Exemplar Dedication (because being literally the best feat available to every martial in the game is clearly out of line) and things like subsystem or AP backmatter things that don't tend to get either playtested or errata, and that's mostly a case of "I don't want to deal with it".
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We never take tailwind wands. I understand the desire to optimize in that fashion, but I don't see the necessity. It's so easy to build movement in this game, you rarely need something like a tailwind wand. I would not care if PCs bought them as they are overkill the vast majority of the time and even when they might be useful, they are marginally so.
Honestly, I feel the same way, but for different reasons: I'm a dumbass who'd likely forget to use it most of the time.
My first 2e character (converted over from 1e) DIED and needed to be reincarnated because I forgot he had healing potions in his backpack he could have drank to stay alive during the boss fight!
Plus, even if I did remember I had it, I'd probably get tired of the hassle of using it every time, which I imagine is a contributing factor to why some tables ban it: even if it's an effective tool, its continual use slows the combat round down and THAT can be a kiss of death to player engagement.
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In my experience wands of tailwind are one of those things that is often talked about, but rarely seen in practice. In the roughly ten roleplaying groups I've participated in during 2e, I believe I'm the only player who has ever invested in one, and even then, I never went so far as to take Trick Magic Item on a martial for just that purpose. None have I felt that it was remotely mandatory for a build or concept.
I could kinda see the tailwind issue if its something like 1/2 the party has a high speed (from ancestry/feat/items/etc) and are further boosting it with spells, while the 1/2 are slower with no speed investment. And there's no tension due to plot timers where the fast folks think the slow people are jeopardizing the mission if they don't invest in the wands/etc. I can easily see how it both a) doesn't fit some characters build/fantasy and b) actively makes the adventure harder.
But that's a table culture issue to me, rather than a cause for a ban. The party should be more flexible on expectations; the GM might need to rein in the use of timers, especially in regards to overland travel; while still allowing the speed investment to be tactically useful at encounter scale.
Same with high speed and kiting. If its making combat boring/long/trivial/repetitive, that's a problem to solve. If you're running an AP and don't want to change up the encounters too much, talk to your players. "OK you found a hard counter, but its getting boring. Please avoid overusing it outside of dire situations and explore some new strategies." If you're homebrewing it up, look for more fast monsters for a bit drakes, quicklings, wolves. Anything than than try to out kite them, to use pack tactics to separate characters and surround one. I tend to dislike arms races like this, so might still just try the appeal to the players to tone down the kiting if its feeling like its sapping the fun.
It might be more helpful to use the "info hazard" angle for the wands of tailwind type "free power."
I've got a PC on the shelf, and originally had them as a Goloma (30 base spd) with Fleet & Nimble Hooves.
Knowing that tailwind is there, and how easy/cheap it is really did factor in the decision to swap to Human. I myself can never know how much, but any time I look at spending ancestry, or even general feats on +5, I remember the wand and frown. If I never learned about it, never thought about how a cheap wand is worth 2 feat slots, then I couldn't have had my enjoyment dented like that.
It's similar to discovering other "way too good" strats. I'm sure many, if not most, people here can relate to some option being far more mechanically powerful than it "should" be; that opinion arising from seeing that power imbalance of options hurting the fun.
That's why I'm trying to phrase the ban like "the least bad way to maximize everyone's fun."
Because for those that don't care about using the wand, the ban doesn't matter. But it really can help others to remove such options from the equation. Some tables may be memetically infected by the Tailwind, others with kiting cheese, others may never swing a Strike until the foe is Tripped, etc.
It's important to note that being exposed to a meme via a text thread doesn't mean it's taken root. Seeing them in play can be a very different "exposure experience."
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I kinda want to ask what yall would think of a ban on elemental property runes.
It's kinda sad that I've only seen someone buy a Ghost Touch rune once (Abmn Vlts), and post L8, it's really only been elementals. I had a Gunslinger join before L8 who was excited for their Bane rune, but it literally never functioned once, and they were visibly aggravated.
And another gunslinger joined thinking that the Conducting rune worked automatically whenever he used any elemental ability (Energy Shot).
Now, people talk about how cool some of the runes are, such as "the chainsaw rune" or discussing possibilities of the Spell Reservoir rune, but I've never seen someone select one.
They always end up just picking 2 elementals.
My Alchemist stands out even for using Wounding.
It's just notable in hindsight that property runes have been the source of both excited talk and aggravated grumbles at multiple tables, yet are so blatantly skewed that I've never seen most of them in play.
I'm real curious if that one with the Extending anecdote knows if the player first encountered the rune as a discovered drop/loot, or if said player genuinely chose to try it over the +1d6 damage runes.
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I'm real curious if that one with the Extending anecdote knows if the player first encountered the rune as a drop, or if said player genuinely chose to try it over the +1d6 damage runes.
If you're referring to me, I was going through the options with my son and he specifically wanted Extending. They took a trip to a market to get one (not a hard thing to do in Extinction Curse).
He's very much a "this sounds cool" style of play person. And he was right: it was cool, especially when he used it to hit a Hag flying around that thought it couldn't be hit by the little Fighter. :D His other rune was Flaming, which is both good and cool (flaming greatswords are iconic).
We're playing Kingmaker now and his Flurry Ranger has Inventor Dedication because he thought it would be neat to have a weapon modification (which he's using for Trip, so he can trip and then Twin Takedown with reduced MAP). That is very clearly not an OP power combo... but yeah, its pretty cool.
I think what can happen is people who play in circles with optimizers tend to attract other optimizers and thus see that style of play as normal, while some other games are very much not that and the idea of taking a Wand just never dawns on them because it doesn't suit the character.
That can make it feel more common than it is in other circles of play.
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This community: PF2 is the best balanced crunchy TTRPG ever. It's GM-friendly so just run it stock and have a blast.
Also this community: This option is taken 2% more frequently than I'd like and that option is a 4% power advantage on a select range of classes. So out comes the ban hammer.
I've told you a billion times not to exaggerate.
Considering how many responses here to "wands of tailwind are overpowered" is something along the lines of "people actually use those?", this isn't a thing that exists.
The only things mentioned being banned significantly are generally Exemplar Dedication (because being literally the best feat available to every martial in the game is clearly out of line) and things like subsystem or AP backmatter things that don't tend to get either playtested or errata, and that's mostly a case of "I don't want to deal with it".
Me thinks the poster doth exaggerate the number of their admonitions somewhat.
That said, the point I raise is PF2's duality. It is balanced but has done so by excising things from its past edition. It bans entire concepts, like the traditional summoner style of play or undead horde necromancer, to achieve what it wants. Then it takes the things at the edges of what it can handle, encounter ending spells for example, and limits them such that many players find them so unfun as to not be used.
Yet even within these walled gardens the community debates if this construct of everything left after the least balanced bits of PF1 have been excised are themselves well balanced. On the scale of RPG systems the Exemplar archetype is hardly a blip. In most systems, it would not even be noteworthy as an outlier. Yet here, where things are close enough that what the feat provides threatens little in terms of upsetting the apple cart, players cry for it to be banned.
It is interesting to see the uproar a few extra points of damage can cause.
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Yet even within these walled gardens the community debates if this construct of everything left after the least balanced bits of PF1 have been excised are themselves well balanced. On the scale of RPG systems the Exemplar archetype is hardly a blip. In most systems, it would not even be noteworthy as an outlier. Yet here, where things are close enough that what the feat provides threatens little in terms of upsetting the apple cart, players cry for it to be banned.
It is interesting to see the uproar a few extra points of damage can cause.
I think you're right, but I think this is actually quite the compliment: you're correct, in many other games the Exemplar archetype would be a drop in the water, because despite the medium being several decades old, TTRPGs as a whole are not very well-balanced or consistent in the character options they hand out. By having this element deemed a clear outlier, PF2e demonstrates that its core balance and design are so well-made that these things can be easily noticed and acted upon. Asking for that balance to be held isn't shameful, but in line with 2e's general philosophy of aiming for a balanced game with lots of varied options.
It's also for this reason that I think the discussion around wands of tailwind represents an evolution in that respect: again, in other TTRPGs we can easily name, having must-pick options that you'll see in every party composition is a given, but because PF2e's players have aligned themselves with a design philosophy that aims to eliminate false choice, including must-picks, some players have begun to apply that same philosophy and greater scrutiny to elements that see more frequent use than alternatives. That these elements aren't as game-changing as must-picks in other games is no obstacle to the fact that there is room for Pathfinder to evolve further in the future along the same direction it's set itself. Methinks the poster doth exaggerate how representative the select few doing this are of the larger community somewhat, but even those choosing to ban these elements at their table with the consent of their players aren't doing anything wrong.
Ah, yes, Tailwind wands.
Best way to counter those is to just use potent ranged attacks (kiting won't matter when they can hit you from most any distance anyway), have AoO (sure, you can move 40 feet, but you're getting whacked every time you do once they get in your face), or have super enclosed areas (can't move 40 feet when there's only 20 feet of area to work with, and I dare them to fireball the room they're all in).
But I can understand that not every situation will have these, nor can I expect tables to match the difficulties I present to the players.
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On the scale of RPG systems the Exemplar archetype is hardly a blip. In most systems, it would not even be noteworthy as an outlier.
But that doesn't really mean anything. Like, 'other system' is right there on the tin, a different set of rules that's fundamentally incomprehensible to PF2's framework (and vice versa). Giving a 5e character Pathfinder proficiency bonuses instead of their own would be really overpowered too.
Oh and Exemplar Dedication would be really broken in Fate Core, considering that attacks often do 1-2 damage and it's not uncommon to be rolling 3-4 dice on a fresh character if it's your main skill (or it might do nothing at all I guess if you don't interpret Fight or Shoot checks as weapon die).
... It's like, fundamentally nonsensical to point out whether an ability would be disruptive in another system.
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I kinda want to ask what yall would think of a ban on elemental property runes.
It's kinda sad that I've only seen someone buy a Ghost Touch rune once (Abmn Vlts), and post L8, it's really only been elementals. I had a Gunslinger join before L8 who was excited for their Bane rune, but it literally never functioned once, and they were visibly aggravated.
And another gunslinger joined thinking that the Conducting rune worked automatically whenever he used any elemental ability (Energy Shot).
Now, people talk about how cool some of the runes are, such as "the chainsaw rune" or discussing possibilities of the Spell Reservoir rune, but I've never seen someone select one.
They always end up just picking 2 elementals.
My Alchemist stands out even for using Wounding.
It's just notable in hindsight that property runes have been the source of both excited talk and aggravated grumbles at multiple tables, yet are so blatantly skewed that I've never seen most of them in play.
I'm real curious if that one with the Extending anecdote knows if the player first encountered the rune as a discovered drop/loot, or if said player genuinely chose to try it over the +1d6 damage runes.
First off, nowadays Ghost Touch is just a low-level placeholder for an Astral Rune, which is Ghost Touch plus 1d6 Spirit. That said, I try to *always* have one weapon with Ghost Touch/Astral, and one weapon with Merciful.
If Merciful were toggleable like in 1e, I would keep it on my main weapon, but since it isn't I keep it on a backup weapon because too many things are immune to nonlethal. I value the ability to not kill people above an extra 1d6.
On the scale of RPG systems the Exemplar archetype is hardly a blip. In most systems, it would not even be noteworthy as an outlier.But that doesn't really mean anything. Like, 'other system' is right there on the tin, an unintelligible unique set of rules. Giving a 5e character Pathfinder proficiency bonuses instead of their own would be really overpowered too.
Oh and Exemplar Dedication would be really broken in Fate Core, considering that attacks often do 1-2 damage and it's not uncommon to be rolling 3-4 dice on a fresh character if it's your main skill (or it might do nothing at all I guess if you don't interpret Fight or Shoot checks as weapon die).
... It's like, fundamentally nonsensical to point out whether an ability would be disruptive in another system.
It's not about porting the rules to a different system as is, but judging the impact of a small bump in melee damage in the grand scheme of things. If an archetype that grants melee martial characters +10-20% damage is what's going to break your experience it shows that PF2, or perhaps just its players, is a brittle system.
5e, for all the forumgoers here disparage it, is a far less brittle system. It does rely on a strong social contract and ensuring that your group wants the kind of game the GM wishes to run, but it is also a system that isn't derailed when a strictly better option is printed.
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While it does potentially speak more about the tightness of the system that people are willing to drill down a bit further to look at options, it also seems kind of clear from this thread that a lot of bans are more about specific brainrots than actual game mechanics.
A lot of the bans being discussed hinge on highly personal use cases and ancedotes... which is absolutely fine, no one is wrong for disliking something or not wanting it in their game, but that makes it somewhat harder to translate it into a more grandiose statement about the game.
... It kind of stands out to me that we get like, a short essay on the deleterious effects of Tailwind, while elemental runes get brought up as an addendum when my play experience suggests the latter are much more pervasive as a must-pick option, while tailwind has been more of a novelty that certain players like.
It likewise stands out to see a poster lament modern GMs' unwillingness to change the system to their liking then declare the exemplar is off limits because of its descriptive text.
This isn't to disparage any opinion, all of these choices are extremely valid and reasonable within the context of their own ecosystem, but imo it speaks to how highly personal the decision to ban something from a table often is.
Gnomes, dwarves and halflings.
Leshy, goblins, poppets and shoony.
Gnomish flickmaces.
Elves called Anthony, or Justin or Frances.All banned.
I get shoony and kinda everything behind it
but why ban half the core races?
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5e, for all the forumgoers here disparage it, is a far less brittle system. It does rely on a strong social contract and ensuring that your group wants the kind of game the GM wishes to run, but it is also a system that isn't derailed when a strictly better option is printed.
I like how in one post you criticize people for being too sensitive to small, irrelevant balance concerns and then in the next use those same concerns to call the system 'brittle'... which is it?
I mean you probably know which it is because your post here is bait, but it's still silly.
Also I'm getting the feeling you've never been in on many 5e charop discussions because the system gets torn apart pretty regularly in those too (or you have and the misrepresentation is part of the bait, idk). It's kind of just what people do.
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Gnomes, dwarves and halflings.
Leshy, goblins, poppets and shoony.
Gnomish flickmaces.
Elves called Anthony, or Justin or Frances.All banned.
I get shoony and kinda everything behind it
but why ban half the core races?
This is just a guess on my part, but I surmise that it's because those Ancestries tend to bring out the..."Whimsical" side of some players, which can be disruptive if the GM is trying to run a more serious campaign.
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I mostly play PFS, so I haven't seen any GM bans except...
Sparky the Electric Bard took in the Dubious Knowledge feat as it seemed like it would be a lot of fun. After the third time I used it, the Judge (my local VC/5 star judge) asked me to change it out for something else. It was becoming a burden to him to come up with semi-believable false facts and slowing him down. I agreed to this with alacrity, as I always believe in making things easier for the Judge.
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On the scale of RPG systems the Exemplar archetype is hardly a blip. In most systems, it would not even be noteworthy as an outlier.But that doesn't really mean anything. Like, 'other system' is right there on the tin, an unintelligible unique set of rules. Giving a 5e character Pathfinder proficiency bonuses instead of their own would be really overpowered too.
Oh and Exemplar Dedication would be really broken in Fate Core, considering that attacks often do 1-2 damage and it's not uncommon to be rolling 3-4 dice on a fresh character if it's your main skill (or it might do nothing at all I guess if you don't interpret Fight or Shoot checks as weapon die).
... It's like, fundamentally nonsensical to point out whether an ability would be disruptive in another system.
It's not about porting the rules to a different system as is, but judging the impact of a small bump in melee damage in the grand scheme of things. If an archetype that grants melee martial characters +10-20% damage is what's going to break your experience it shows that PF2, or perhaps just its players, is a brittle system.
5e, for all the forumgoers here disparage it, is a far less brittle system. It does rely on a strong social contract and ensuring that your group wants the kind of game the GM wishes to run, but it is also a system that isn't derailed when a strictly better option is printed.
5e as written is exceptionally brittle. Even within classes there's subclass options that are worthless and subclass options that break the game. (See Trickery vs Twilight clerics). You cannot run the system as written without having to make a lot of homerules and edits, espeically as you start breaking into the high levels.
Every 5e game i've been in or ran has banlists for this reason, and those banlists make the ones here blush.
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I mostly play PFS, so I haven't seen any GM bans except...
Sparky the Electric Bard took in the Dubious Knowledge feat as it seemed like it would be a lot of fun. After the third time I used it, the Judge (my local VC/5 star judge) asked me to change it out for something else. It was becoming a burden to him to come up with semi-believable false facts and slowing him down. I agreed to this with alacrity, as I always believe in making things easier for the Judge.
Really? PFS seems like the easiest place to run dubious knowledge. Preplanned recall knowledge checks come with prewritten crit fail text, and failure in combat are easy- You can give an either/or statement (E.G. The monster is weak two slashing or fire, you're not aure which), or fake a crit success and say the opposite for one of the questions.
While it does potentially speak more about the tightness of the system that people are willing to drill down a bit further to look at options, it also seems kind of clear from this thread that a lot of bans are more about specific brainrots than actual game mechanics.
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It kind of stands out to me that we get like, a short essay on the deleterious effects of Tailwind, while elemental runes get brought up as an addendum when my play experience suggests the latter are much more pervasive as a must-pick option, while tailwind has been more of a novelty that certain players like.
I think it's mostly that Tailwind is just a/the best example case to point at and shout about to "get through to" some of the people that would rather not confront / edit the system.
I've been surprised more than once hearing that someone would never dare touch any rule, either out of reverence or due to fear/worry. Such a person often will go surprisingly far to refute any evidence of imbalance, because that might mean that they'll need to adjudicate/edit the system.
So, so many of the other examples (like Property Runes) end up being excused/rationalized in many different ways. Because it really isn't clear most of the time; whether or not a problem is really "worth" a houserule is generally as unquantifiable as it gets.
The Tailwind example is just as "undeniable" as this gets.
An R2 wand should not grant the same move speed as 2 feats put together.
[1 Wand] ~= [2 feats] is just so obviously too good, that it helps cut through the buts to get at the issue beneath. That pf2 isn't perfect, and that (imo) any "good" GM will have some houserules that don't fill gaps, but outright are against the RaW. And that this includes balance/power considerations.
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In actual practice, the obscurity of Tailwind's danger zone as a Heighten effect, and one that may need a skill feat to enable, means that specific infohazard is not going to be discovered by that many people in actual play.
This Exemplar Dedication is noteworthy because it's power is similarly "inexcusable" like Tailwind wands, but it is an option that'll be much more visible to players/GMs than the wands.
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Back to the runes.
The (imo) glaring mistake by the designers of providing damage runes inside the property rune category is something that all users of runes will encounter.
But, because this is how the runes have always been, you'll get all sorts of responses, many of which will refute the framing of such runes being a problem / contradiction of the designed intent of property runes (which afaik is only assumed, if there's a dev word on it that'd be cool to see).
If Striking Runes were supposed to be the damage runes, and Property were indeed intended for "special abilities" as the book claims, that is kinda incompatible with the elemental damage runes conceptually.
Like, I don't think anyone even knows if the devs intended for elemental runes to be "normal" and factored into martial damage estimations. IMO, all signs point to "no, not initially."
If the devs did benchmark martials to be Striking with 3d___ before their class abilities + feats + other bonuses, then that extra 2d6 that is added nebulously around L8 can go a long way to explaining the gripes about the martial/caster gap.
Yet, I really would not expect an elemental rune ban to go over well. Attempting to deny things after they've been normalized is a big hecking ask.
And, whatever the original intent from Paizo at launch may have been, the later addition of options like Astral kinda shows that they are going forward with the use of property-damage runes.
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Dubious Knowledge kicks in when you fail a Recall Knowledge check, not on a critical failure. So, more common and not pre-scripted.
I thought it was self-evident that the GM should give the success and critical failure result when a character with dubious knowledge fails a scripted recall knowledge check.
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I mean, I think fundamentally (haha) striking runes are also a problem. They're must buys to the point that the game doesn't even function properly without them. There's no red flag bigger than that.
But elemental runes are sort of uniquely unfortunate because they provide strong mathematical incentives that directly compete with 'fun' options. At least striking runes and tailwind has no opportunity cost beyond their investment, every elemental rune you use is one less of any other type of rune you can take instead, which kind of makes them a double whammy of potential frustration.
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I don't understand how tailwind could be a problem.
The only time I could see it ever being an issue is on wide open outdoor flat areas with no terrain, with a group consisting of all slow monsters with no burrow speed and no reactive strike.
That's a lot of things to line up, considering you can get boots that do the same thing, otherwise you need access to using a wand and that alone could lock you into an archetype you have no other use for.
While the vast majority of combats will be in smaller spaces where the speed is useless, or you back yourself into a corner or into more danger, or traps or hazardous terrain. There's so many ways as a GM to get around this problem with level design and encounter design that I can't imagine it being an issue. Like most things, it's a great tool to have against specific things.
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I am always a bit torn on this matter. On the one hand, I've never been big on banning things and have always relied on that players don't do anything stupid and my ability to balance things out in the game. So even in D&D 3.5 and PF 1, I never banned mechanics outrightly and I see even less reason to do so in Pathfinder 2nd.
On the other hand, I am leaning towards the traditional side of fantasy in reading as well as in rpgs. And while I can appreciate more exotic stuff when it is really ingrained in the setting (like Warforged in Eberron), a lot of the stuff added in PF2 doesn't really click with me, and now that Leshy are part of the Core books (also: Orcs), for the first time I'm thinking about simply ruling out those options for at least some of the games I would run.
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Sparky the Electric Bard took in the Dubious Knowledge feat as it seemed like it would be a lot of fun. After the third time I used it, the Judge (my local VC/5 star judge) asked me to change it out for something else. It was becoming a burden to him to come up with semi-believable false facts and slowing him down.
I popped in to say that Dubious Knowledge is the only mechanic I’ve hard banned. It’s such a pain in the neck to adjudicate.
I also use a house rule for Recall Knowledge that moves a critical failure on a Recall Knowledge check is a lock-out for the encounter, and not incorrect info. I like to encourage Recall Knowledge in combat, so I let the players ask fairly broad questions, and making stuff up in response to a question on the fly isn’t fun.