Commander PFS-specific suggestion: One tactic change / day

[InsertRandomNameHere]

Full disclaimer: I had a bit of time testing out the Commander. It quickly became my favorite class. This is not some kind of "Commanders are awful" suggestion.

Commanders in Pathfinder are specifically designed with the idea that you are meant to support your allies and make them more awesome due to your coordination. In Society, I noticed after a few playthroughs that this creates one slight problem for the Commander that isn't there in home games: Commanders in Society have to generally deal with an ever-changing party makeup. This can be a slight problem because while the Commander has plenty of generally useful tactics they can prepare, a couple tactics (Shields Up, Reload) rely on having a specific party makeup to make the tactic useful.

Commander players in Society are thus currently left with two choices. Do they take the specific tactics that are really neat if you have a specific party makeup, but risk that tactic being shunted away to the side for a whole session if not enough players match the archetype to make that tactic useful? Or do they just go for a more generic build? Honestly, the generic build is perfectly fine, but the fact that Society commanders sort of get punished by taking more specific tactics that may not come into play is kind of problematic.

And yes, I'm aware that if a tactic in your repertoire isn't useful, you can just not prepare it for the day. But part of the Commander scheme is that they can change up their tactics, either with 10 minutes or as part of rolling initiative with certain feats, to make use of those tactics that weren't prepared when they come up. Thus, having a tactic that just won't be useful for a session is a bit of a debuff, particularly when that tactic's usefulness is entirely dependent on the makeup of the rest of the party.

This brings me to my proposed fix: If a Society-specific rule was established that allowed Commanders to replace one tactic in their repertoire at the start of each adventure with a previously unknown tactic, that would give Commanders the flexibility to adapt their tactics to the party makeup without punishing Commanders for playing with diverse party compositions. That way, a level 1 commander could have 4 more generically useful tactics at the start of the day, then once they meet their party and find out the party includes 2 guardians, the commander can swap out their 5th tactic for Shields Up at the start of the day without having a dead tactic slot. Then the next session, if it turns out the party has no shield-wielding tanks but 3 gunslingers, they can grab Reload at the start of the day, get rid of Shields Up, and be able to help out the party.

Any thoughts on this? Has anyone else had this problem when playing Society commanders?

[Tomppa]

I mean - you said it yourself, you can just not prepare the specific tactic if it's not necessary. You could also just hand out shields/bucklers/aeon stones with shield spell if you wanted the whole party to benefit from the shields up tactic.

Also, you have 5 tactics (if you haven't picked up more), of which you can have 3 prepared (if you haven't expanded it) but you can only have an ally benefit from 1 per turn, it's highly unlikely you'll use all of your tactics anyway, so having 1 dead tactic per scenario is hardly an issue.

There's also an additional work-around: Players are responsible for their downtime, and you need to spend your downtime before the next session. However, you could check with your fellow players what kind of characters they are going to bring, before the start of the next session, and if you find out that there's 4 gunslingers, you could spend your downtime to retrain your level 2 feat into tactical expansion and pick Reload! and something else.

That being said, reload is probably the only tactic that really, really requires teammates to do specific things to be useful. And it's an awful tactic. I tried using it in a group with 3 reload weapons (crossbow and 2 firearms) and it was... basically used never. Gunslingers often have fake out, and that requires a loaded firearm, so they like to end their turn with a loaded firearm. Other characters often have some other third action, so they'll do "[class action], shoot, reload" instead of shoot, reload, shoot. It's also massive headache trying to follow which characters have their weapon loaded and which do not, and it gets complicated if the other characters try to coordinate their loadedness to enable you to give them a reload... which you could have also spent to give them a free strike, or to give them a free move. The reload tactic just didn't feel worth the hassle.

Granted, my experience is from playing a commander just from lvl 1 to level 2, and now watching a commander dedication (with reload and gather to me) play partway through level 2 - they had reload prepared as their tactic, but decided to switch it out after it basically never was useful.

EDIT: I forgot to add that I don't really see society adding a house rule for one class to get a bit more flexible, when the class already has built-in flexibility in it. I don't think this is that much different than if a rogue player asked for free retrain out of gang up, because their group happens to have 0 other melee characters.

[InsertRandomNameHere]

.. Okay, good points. Also, I'm definitely writing down the aeon stone idea, so thanks for that!

No argument, I'm good with that retort. Mostly wanted a second opinion on the issue.

[Ascalaphus]

PFS has to walk a line between adapting what really needs to be adapted, but it also has to avoid becoming too complicated with "special PFS rules" that people have to learn on top of regular game rules. You have to look really critically if it's truly necessary to make a class function in PFS.

Because commanders have a fair amount of adaptability already built in, I don't think this is strictly necessary.

I'm curious though what peoples' experiences with commanders in PFS have been. Have other players struggled to really make use of tactics? I'm planning to make one of my own and put big (A5) reminder cards on the table to let people easily read what a tactic does and which ones are currently available.

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

When planning my own commander, I spent time thinking about the Organized Play milieu.

As such, there were lots of fabulous tactics like Shields Up and Reload that I bypassed. I went with three that I thought would be useful no matter what, and two that would be situational but might turn up in a PFS scenario.

____________________

TACTICS:
____________________

Prepared:

Gather to Me! ◈ [one-action]
Mobility
Commander Tactic
Source Battlecry! pg. 25
You signal your team to move into position together. Signal all squadmates; each can immediately Stride as a reaction, though each must end their movement inside your banner’s aura, or as close to your banner’s aura as their movement Speed allows.

Squadmates can use Gather to Me! while Burrowing, Climbing, Flying, or Swimming instead of Striding if they have the corresponding movement type.

Pincer Attack ◈ [one-action]
Offensive
Commander Tactic
Source Battlecry! pg. 26
You call for an aggressive formation designed for exploiting enemies’ vulnerabilities. Signal all squadmates; each can Step as a reaction. If any of your allies ends this movement adjacent to an opponent, that opponent is off-guard to melee attacks from you and all other squadmates who responded to Pincer Attack until the start of your next turn.

Strike Hard! ◈◈ [two-actions]
Offensive
Brandish Commander Tactic
Source Battlecry! pg. 26
You command an ally to attack. Signal a squadmate within the aura of your commander’s banner. That ally immediately attempts a Strike as a reaction.

In Portfolio

Mountaineering Training ◈[one-action]
Mobility
Commander Tactic
Source Battlecry! pg. 25
Your instructions make it easier for you and your allies to scale dangerous surfaces. Signal all squadmates; until the end of your next turn, you and each ally gain a climb Speed of 20 feet.

Special If you have this tactic prepared, you can use Warfare Lore in place of Athletics for checks you make to Climb.

Naval Training ◈ [one-action]
Mobility
Commander Tactic
Source Battlecry! pg. 25
Your instructions make it easier for you and your allies to swim through dangerous waters. Signal all squadmates; until the end of your next turn, you and each ally gain a swim Speed of 20 feet.

Special If you have this tactic prepared, you can use Warfare Lore in place of Athletics for checks you make to Swim.

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

I do love Tomppa's idea of just handing out shields and aeon stones, though. Brilliant. Bring a pack animal to carry all the shields!

I think that we have enough flexibility in the class itself to handle what we need to do, but I admit that random parties limits our power curve as Commanders. Still, I found plenty of tactics that I thought would see use no matter what the party was.

Hmm

[Commander Hiromi]

I don't think any adjustment is necessary. Before expert tactician at L7, the only tactic that is grossly dependent on party composition is Reload!, and Reload! is a trap. Like Tomppa said, the mechanics of classes that actually use reloading weapons rarely line up in a way that makes the tactic useful. It's one of those powers that is fantastic in a vacuum, but just doesn't work that way in real play. And that's assuming you've got a prepared table to use it, which you're obviously not guaranteed here.

There are lots of PF2 powers that aren't as good as they sound on paper, and quite a few that aren't ideal for organized play. Reload! is both, but there's a lot of other choices that do just fine.

I do like the idea of a mid-level commander who brings some spare bucklers or aeon stones to enable Shields Up! (or Mirrored Wall at 15+), though. Dusty rose prisms are 50g, and more non-shield-wielding characters really should consider picking one up, just in case.

Tomppa wrote:

...you can only have an ally benefit from 1 per turn...

I just wanted to note that that's not strictly true for two reasons.

First, remember that Drilled Reactions effectively allows one ally to use a tactic's granted reaction for free. When my playgroup first read this, everyone assumed that was to allow someone to keep their "normal" reaction available for class stuff like Reactive Strike, Shield Block, or assorted champion things. And it can be. But it ALSO means that you can have an ally double-up on tactical effects. I can and have used Pincer Attack (>) to allow the entire party to reposition and inflict off-guard to the enemies, followed up by having a high-damage melee Strike Hard! (>>) to drop a full attack-bonus Strike into one of those off-guard targets prior to their place in initiative.

Second, not all tactics actually burn reactions in the first place. Defensive Retreat is probably the (no pun intended) banner carrier here, although you can also do some things with Coordinating Maneuvers (the Step is a free action; the Reposition is a reaction, but is also optional) or End It! (but I loathe End It!...). With Expert Tactics, there are occasionally reasons to burn Take the High Ground in exactly this way (because it grants a free-action Stride for just one action, it's situationally better than facially similar move-and-optionally-do-something tactics.

[Super Zero]

A given ally only being able to use one Tactic per round is part of the Tactic trait.

"While you can use multiple tactic actions in a round, a character cannot respond to more than one tactic per round, regardless of source."

[Commander Hiromi]

Super Zero wrote:

A given ally only being able to use one Tactic per round is part of the Tactic trait.

"While you can use multiple tactic actions in a round, a character cannot respond to more than one tactic per round, regardless of source."

Welp. I'm an idiot. I must have read right past that sentence twenty times. At least I've only run the commander build thusly in non-Society play.

...I'll show myself out now.