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.
It's pretty campaign-dependent. There are campaigns where it can happen quite often, though—particularly outdoor campaigns with random encounters during overland travel, played in-person on dry erase mats or similar. The GM often won't bother to draw in much (if any) terrain because it holds up the game, so you end up with a lot of open combats.
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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.
It's considered OP in white room math, but it doesn't really hold up well in actual play, because it's not that frequent where you are in an open field.
Really, what it does best is let 2-action characters get the same (or comparable) movement as 1-action characters. So, a Full Plate Fighter can double Stride and Strike, whereas an Unarmed Spellcaster can single Stride and then Cast a Spell, and have similar distance created. And honestly, I would really just call it "balancing out the class archetypes," not "makes characters OP."
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It's pretty campaign-dependent. There are campaigns where it can happen quite often, though—particularly outdoor campaigns with random encounters during overland travel, played in-person on dry erase mats or similar. The GM often won't bother to draw in much (if any) terrain because it holds up the game, so you end up with a lot of open combats.
I’m not proud to admit that in my Kingmaker game, when we have a random encounter during hexploration, I just throw minis onto a blank battle map far more often than I ought to.
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I think tailwind is pretty powerful, but I wouldn't say it's overpowering. Now, I haven't played in any parties where everyone uses it. So completely breaking fights by kiting, I haven't seen.
But whenever it's easily available to me, I've taken it. Because almost every combat it saves me an action in one or more rounds. Often that's because I only need one action to move somewhere instead of two, so I have enough actions left to cast a spell, spellstrike, or use some class ability that wants a bit more actions.
I think it deserves its notoriety because PF2 has almost completely moved away from the PF1 paradigm of long-term numeric buff spells. Almost everything lasts only 10m at most. I really like it - my PF1 investigator was brutally powerful and scared most barbarians when it came to damage. But if I hadn't played him for a couple months I struggled to remember the exact timing sequence of the 6+ long-term buffs that he relied on to all be active during a fight.
When getting a wand in PF2 I tend to ask "am I gonna use this every day, because if not, I should get cheaper scrolls" and also "am I gonna keep using this as I level up?". There aren't many spells for which that's true. I think overall wands are not attractive enough in PF2 really. The only wands I really sought out were for 8-hour See Invisibility, Telepathic Bond and yes, lots and lots of Tailwind.
Buying a level 5 item that almost always saves you 1-3 actions over the course of every encounter is so totally worth it. Taking a wizard/druid dedication and a basic spellcasting feat to get it is even within visible distance of worth it. It's that nice. The difference between those two is that the opportunity cost of class feats never really goes down. But as you level up a level 5 item starts to look really cheap.
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.
Nice. I do that too when appropriate. Always teach your players to let no one escape or they may alert worse people that you're coming and let them know what you do.
Yeah. Speed boost does let you close faster for melee. But after the often two ancestry feats to boost movement, feats like Sudden Charge, and items, it gets so fast without the wand that my players never bothered to pick them up.
I think tailwind is pretty powerful, but I wouldn't say it's overpowering. Now, I haven't played in any parties where everyone uses it. So completely breaking fights by kiting, I haven't seen.
But whenever it's easily available to me, I've taken it. Because almost every combat it saves me an action in one or more rounds. Often that's because I only need one action to move somewhere instead of two, so I have enough actions left to cast a spell, spellstrike, or use some class ability that wants a bit more actions.
I think it deserves its notoriety because PF2 has almost completely moved away from the PF1 paradigm of long-term numeric buff spells. Almost everything lasts only 10m at most. I really like it - my PF1 investigator was brutally powerful and scared most barbarians when it came to damage. But if I hadn't played him for a couple months I struggled to remember the exact timing sequence of the 6+ long-term buffs that he relied on to all be active during a fight.
When getting a wand in PF2 I tend to ask "am I gonna use this every day, because if not, I should get cheaper scrolls" and also "am I gonna keep using this as I level up?". There aren't many spells for which that's true. I think overall wands are not attractive enough in PF2 really. The only wands I really sought out were for 8-hour See Invisibility, Telepathic Bond and yes, lots and lots of Tailwind.
Buying a level 5 item that almost always saves you 1-3 actions over the course of every encounter is so totally worth it. Taking a wizard/druid dedication and a basic spellcasting feat to get it is even within visible distance of worth it. It's that nice. The difference between those two is that the opportunity cost of class feats never really goes down. But as you level up a level 5 item starts to look really cheap.
I don't think Tailwind is near that powerful. It's best use is closing or as Gortle stated: stopping runners.
Monsters don't benefit from excess movement or players unless they have an attack sequence and abilities that can use it. If you had a party of ranged attackers and lots of room, then maybe.
Nice. I do that too when appropriate. Always teach your players to let no one escape or they may alert worse people that you're coming and let them know what you do.
It's just Chekhov's gun.
There's also another consideration that can pressure parties to take wands of tailwind: overland travel speed. It's increased by a mile an hour for every 10 ft of base movement you have. So the tailwind wand can let you cover 8 more miles per day than you would otherwise in the best case—a fairly significant increase—and putting it on any slower party member(s) alone will always gain you at least 4 miles.
The tailwind wand also works in combat, unlike traveling horses or something similar. And a trained skill, a skill feat, and 160 gp for 10 ft status to speed is pretty cheap in the grand scheme.
Nice. I do that too when appropriate. Always teach your players to let no one escape or they may alert worse people that you're coming and let them know what you do.
Maybe I'm overgeneralizing your statement, but I'd be really concerned that this would just lead to my players killing a bunch of people they don't need to or want to kill out of fear of GM retaliation. It's one thing to do this during a castle infiltration or something, where the guards will alert other guards, etc. I can understand that for sure. But doing this after isolated encounters seems like it could make players paranoid and encourage murderhobo behavior.
Nice. I do that too when appropriate. Always teach your players to let no one escape or they may alert worse people that you're coming and let them know what you do.It's just Chekhov's gun.
Not every runner can be Chekov's gun, so I imagine you use this judiciously.
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.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?
Aristophanes is closest. I just…don’t like the way people play them. I would say that almost every halfling I’ve ever played alongside was a cheery git who liked food, jokes and had a rustic double-barreled surname that contained at least some pipe, food or drink noun. Bonus points for being a bard. Almost every dwarf was a dour proud alcholic warrior either hidebound or exiled by clan and had a double-barreled surname that contained at least some anvil, ale/drink, forge, fire, ore or metal in the surname. Bonus points for Scottish accent or general Scottishness. Almost every Pathfinder gnome I’ve played alongside was an eccentric quixotic natterer wearing ridiculous outfits and had a first name that was completely ridiculous and a surname that repeated three to four syllables and also burnt my retinas. Bonus points for being an Illusionist caster of some kind.
It’s not just that they are…goofy, but incredibly stale tropes.
Goblins are often numbskulled “savages” with “funtimey” misunderstandings. I like the real-Earth mythology of Leshy, but here everyone plays them as some kind of botanical idiot-savants. I have a penchant for vegepygmies from old ADnD (and definitely not as illustrated in the PF1 Bestiary) and would allow one over a leshy. Inability to speak and all. Puffs of pheromones anyone?
Sure all these things are thematic. And can be reskinned. I guess both mechanics and themes are to me interrelated, and my point (somewhat abbreviated above) that “modern GMs are afraid to change the game” is actually this whole thing put in practice. I’m not afraid to excise half the core races because I hate them. The books are guidelines for how to run the exact game you want to run, and don’t be afraid to do that.
Now if you had a different take on dwarves, halflings and gnomes, or goblins or leshy then sure, I’m all ears. Poppets probably got thown in there in a fit of pique, but they might work.
But not shoony. And not gnomish flickmaces (have you actually seen what that looks like, and how it is supposed to…work? I care not for how jank the mechanics are…it’s the optics….) and no elves with a name you might see at your local bowling alley. I was going to say “no Samurai called Jack” (as a nod to my displeasure at Elves called Anthony), which actually comes from an ancient Dragon magazine article whose title was “Whaddaya mean Jack the Samurai?” but then someone made a cartoon called… Samurai…Jack.
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In light of War of Immortals being available, I am now actually banning something in my games - because "kilted breastplate" is visibly a hoplite's armour, and quite literally none of its traits are accurate (ah, yes, the ~30kg heavy infantry armour, notable for restricting mobility, should definitely be a light armour with the flexible trait). This ticks me off, so I'm refusing to deal with it in my games.