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Unfortunately, I will not be able to play these classes in any meaningful way, so my impressions come only from reading them.
Daredevil:
- I noticed that all the Daredevil Stunt Feats have a requirement that an opponent must be no more than 1 size larger than you, which is fine of course. But Daredevils do not seem to have any class features or feats that allow them to affect larger sizes, like Titan Wrestler does for Athletics. Is that intended? It seems to me pretty against theme to force the Daredevil to grow themselves if they want to affect bigger things, and it disproportionately affects Small daredevils, who will not be able to use their cool feats on anything bigger than Medium unless they use magic or other effects to increase their size.
- In the same vein, Stunt Feats have the Attack trait while calling for generic Athletics Checks or Acrobatics Checks. It's clear that we would apply MAP to these as normal, but how do we determine if Agile applies too? None of them say they require a free hand, so a Daredevil could do them with a two-handed weapon, or with both hands occupied. I assume the player would decide, but does that mean they could just choose Fist anyway, since the Fist profile applies to other non-listed unarmed attacks you can make. This could do with some clarification, I think.
Slayer:
- I really think the biggest issue right now is Mark Quarry being a 10 minute exploration activity that can simply fail. It makes Instant Enmity and Endless Enmity almost must haves from what I can read, and it seems very similar to Person of Interest and Suspect of Opportunity from Investigator but even more restricted. Since quite a lot of Slayer features revolve about your Quarry, and unlike Investigators (which are pretty broad) your Quarry is one single creature that you have to somehow know of in advance, I think it'd be better to make it a lot more similar to Hunt Prey, otherwise I don't forsee the gameplay loop with a Slayer being very fun.
- The Signature Tools are just not balanced against each other at all. Bloodseeking Blade* is by far the best, followed by Warded Mail, and the other two are severely underwhelming. The Vials, in particular are very bad since Ignition Vial provides damage worse than a cantrip (2d4+ 1d4 every two levels, compared to Haunting Hymn which is 1d8 + 1d8 every two levels) but has a frequency of once per minute until specialised. I realise that because it's Relentless one of the actions can be the one you get from Quickened if you trigger On the Hunt, but that honestly is still not good enough.
*Minor point, but since it can be any kind of weapon, maybe just change it to Bloodseeking Weapon? It feels very strange to refer to a crossbow as a Bloodseeking Blade.
Those are my main observations. Overall I am pretty underwhelmed by the classes presented here. They both work mechanically but personally do not excite me in any way. It's a pity I won't be able to play them to see if that changes my outlook, but life is life. I hope other people have fun putting them through their paces.
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Haunting hymn scales by 1d8 every two ranks. The Ignition Vial scales by 1d4 every two levels, which is twice as quickly. So Ignition Vial is in line with a cantrip's damage and slightly above ancestral breath weaoons.
It does feel a little underwhelming, though.
Thats what I get for not properly checking. I wrote worse, saw they were equivalent, was going to change it and forgot.
It's still not very good since it's cantrip damage but with more restrictions. At least the ancestral breath weapons recharge every 1d4 rounds and are just an ancestry feat. The vials are one of your two Tools, they should really be usable more often from the get go.
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I don’t see much point in either of these as distinct classes.
Most Daredevil *mechanics* should be available to any combatants to make combat more interesting. As a side note, the name totally rubs me up the wrong way. It really does conjure the worst concepts in my mind, though that is slightly mollified by folks saying “Jackie Chan - the class”. It does feel anachronisitic, and for folks saying the term has been around for almost 400 years, well so have “poop” and “the” and they don’t sound out of place.
The Slayer looks like a recombination of parts of 1e Inquisitor, a little bit of 2e Thaumaturge plus “Witcher-lite”. Again, some of these abilities could just be feats/abilities Fighters/martials can take, and that is exactly how I will use them. The “Witcher-vials” look terrible. I was homebrewing a straight Witcher class (using Toxicity as a condition, that always has a value) ripped straight from the Witcher 3 wiki (having never played the CRPG) and it was super fun. This looks, as I suspected, anemic and ultimately both uninteresting and unsatisfying. The trophies look *completely* anemic.
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Two-handed weapons also seem fairly cut and dry to me, I don't see anything that grants you an exemption from needing a hand free to use them.
I'm super open to being convinced otherwise on this point, because lightly armored, two-handed weapon user getting their athletics maneuvers sounds super sweet and fun to play. Grapple would likely be off the table, but having access to all the others would be great.
The simple answer here is that the action itself does not say they need to, all the Stunt Feats have the same Requirements line: "The target can’t be more than one size larger than you" and nothing else.
They then call for an Athletics Check or an Acrobatics Check, depending on the Feat. If we go look at the skills themselves, you will notice they do not say you require a free hand to use them in general, with that stipulation being instead on the specific skill actions (like Grapple, Trip and so on).
Therefore, when the Stunt feats call for these checks, and they don't specify needing free hands, then...they don't need them. Many of them have the same effect as an Athletics action (for example, Rebounding Fall Stunt is essentially a fancy Trip), but because of how they're worded they do not need free hands. Hence my question for clarification.
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as to the free hand questions, I can see that going a couple of ways:
1: Error by the writers, they forgot that they normally specify this and do intend for you to need an open hand.
2: The idea is you are using your weapon as part of the action, like planting your great-sword in the ground and using it to support you while you double leg kick-shove the opponent.
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After a first read, these are the changes I'd make to the daredevil.
* The class should have 8 + Con hit points and/or access to medium armor. In its current state I find the class to be too much fragile for someone that is supposedly putting themselves at risk frequently. I would totally trade Daredevil’s Endurance for it.
* Propelling Strides should instead be a 5 ft. speed increase that becomes a 10 ft. speed increase if you pass adjacent to a prop during your move action. 30 ft movement speed is important for leaping and jumping around so it makes sense for this class to have easy access to it.
* Stunt Damage pretty much only works on a shove and that's kinda lame as shove is IMO the worst Athletics maneuver. Since the class has a ton of synergy with grapples and trips, I think it should apply to all Athletics maneuvers and not just shove. Plus, the floor should count as a prop as well.
* There's just too many feats with the flourish trait. I also think a bunch of feats (like Pressing Pummel) are too weak to have the press trait and should IMO be heavily buffed. A ton would be indirectly buffed if they made stunt damage proc on stuff other than movement at least.
* I think "daredevil" is a bad name. Brawler would have been perfect (and with that said, it needs the monk's Powerful Fist).
Now I'll list the changes I'd make to the slayer.
*All the slayer's signature tools feel barebones. This wouldn't be that bad if you could have more than one (or if you could at least switch them everyday, ideally I would want to have both) but as is they feel lackluster and bit dissapointing. The specializations feel weirdly weak even in comparison with the rest of the tool's features. Critical specialization at 7th level? Really? And only if I pick bloodseeking blade? +1 striking daggers? These need to be revised.
* Mark Quarry is just wrong, like really wrong. To the point it kinda kills the whole class for me. I don't know how Paizo thinks adventure planning goes but in my experience its really rare for someone to truly know in advance what they are going to face during the day unless they search for bounties in town or stuff like that. It kinda feels they took the worst of the ranger's hunt prey and the investigator's pursue a lead and made it a fundamental feature of the class.
I feel the most elegant solution here (other than removing it or making it optional) would be to instead mark a designated area or zone, allowing the slayer to know highest level threat in that area and allowing them to take a trophy from it if they manage to defeat it. This is way easier to implement in a campaign and it would also work much better in already existing APs like Abomination Vaults where you really don't know what you are going to be against next.
In fact, I think Paizo should probably make Mark Quarry a exploration activity that you can do in tandem while doing another exploration activity (or make this a feat like Perpetual Scout). For example, a slayer scouts ahead while keeping an eye on footprints, claw marks, or other signs the quarry could leave behind.
* I think trophies are cool but they are likely going to become a chore really fast. Assuming you have a way to use it every session (I already mentioned this isn't likely in most campaigns earlier) you'll likely end up with like 20 trophies by 5th-7th level assuming you started the campaign at 1st level. I'd personally would prefer if it was like for thaumaturges in that your esoterica isn't something you have to really care about and its more abstract in nature, probably making the Field-Forged Tools feat a baseline feature at 1st level (Inventor used to get the Inventor class feat at 1st level when it was a master-tier skill feat before it was made into an expert-tier one) to keep a bit of the flavor and mechanics of taking parts of the enemies you take down in your adventures. I'm sure most are going to disagree though.
* As I said with Mark Quarry, I think it would be nice if you could Reinforce Arsenal as part of using another exploration activity, mostly to streamline the classes' between encounters sections. Probably limit it only to Mark Quarry and Reinforce Arsenal to be used at the same time if was a bit too much?
* A bit of a minor nitpick, but Tip of the Tongue should be part of Monster Lore at 1st level or be a 3rd-level feature at max.
* I kinda skimmed over the slayer's feats but so far the major problem I found is that they are too many subclass-specific feats which (paired with the problems I mentioned in the signature tools section) kinda makes me think most slayers are going to look same-y with one or two paths for each signature tool.
TLDR; I think Paizo has beaten the "these should be class archetypes" allegations I had initially on the stream, but I still think the classes need some time in the oven to be fully realized. I'm kinda eager to actually play them and see if there's something else I missed.
...and I forgot to mention the size issues in some of the daredevil's feats (luckily OP addressed that) and that the class needs auto-scaling in Athletics and/or Acrobatics as well. I hope we don't get a swashbuckler situation again where we need the Remaster to have auto-scaling on the skill we use all the time.
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The daredevil's terrain based mechanics are really interesting to me because I feel like historically PF2 has done very very little to like, encourage environmental interaction. Most classes stand still and hit things and a distressing number of battlemaps are near featureless rectangles.
It does make me kind of wish some of this was more system level stuff, because it's using a class to address what I think are more basic design concerns, but it's cool!
... I'm struggling a bit with the Slayer. The concept space is really cool but I'm having trouble with the execution. Big parts of it really do hit my initial concern that chunks of the class feel like another try at the Ranger, which is frustrating from both ends.
Chymist's vial is kind of a let down. I get why it has the direction it does, but I kind of wish it integrated more with actual alchemy mechanics.
It does make me kind of wish some of this was more system level stuff, because it's using a class to address what I think are more basic design concerns, but it's cool!
Yep. As I initmated upthread, most of the Daredevil’s activities feel like maneuvers that, given the right locations/setup (environment, “props”, enemies) any adventurer should be able to attempt to make combat much more dynamic and exciting.
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I'm very concerned about the Daredevil having a focus on press actions which is inherently going to be at lower accuracy. I just don't like it as it currently is. I feel the features are fairly underwhelming and the class just feels all over the place.
I dislike features that are super reliant on the GM, so I'm concerned about the prop mechanic.
Many of the press actions have critical failure effects which I really don't like, sure some of them are risky, but this is on a press action, so afterwards, your MAP is going to be at -10, and you're only going to have one action left over so I don't see the value as it only lasts until the start of your next turn.
The class is lacking decent reactions, so I see people MC into Fighter or something.
I don't like how Slayer basically doesn't function if you aren't fighting a higher or equal level opponent, if you're fighting humanoids, or if you just didn't get to use the feature due to no info. I feel this class pushes DMs into throwing high level foes at the party which I don't think needs to be encouraged.
These classes can work with a lot of changes I think, but I think these changes need to be radical as to be mechanically unique, more so for Daredevil who doesn't feel unique in the slightest.
I think the adrenaline mechanic should just go personally, and the class should just have some really nice and unique benefits off the bat like being able to do press actions at 0 MAP or something.
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I'm very concerned about the Daredevil having a focus on press actions which is inherently going to be at lower accuracy. I just don't like it as it currently is. I feel the features are fairly underwhelming and the class just feels all over the place.
It sort of feels like the class should fighter levels of of accuracy to offset press action lowered numbers.
I'm very concerned about the Daredevil having a focus on press actions which is inherently going to be at lower accuracy. I just don't like it as it currently is. I feel the features are fairly underwhelming and the class just feels all over the place.It sort of feels like the class should fighter levels of of accuracy to offset press action lowered numbers.
I was personally thinking that they could ignore the limitation of using press actions only when under MAP. There could be some limitation around it if necessary. Also it eats into the risky flavour, but there surely is a way to work that in. Though I'm not convinced the class being centred around risk is a good idea anyway.
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I honestly like a MAP +0 for the first press action each round. Its certainly more unique than flurry ranger's benefits but only for press actions.
So, I'd note that slayer's trophies are hard capped at 5 in reserve, plus whatever are currently on tools. There is no way to increase this limit that I can see. That keeps the tracking to a more manageable level imo.
Also, there's only like 3 feats specifically for each tool, most of the feats are not tied to anything in particular.
On the flip side, with only one per tool and five in reserve in the right campaign it seems like it's going to be not hard to cover all your bases relatively quickly. Unless you're chasing very specific abilities it feels like you could just ... finish your trophy mechanic by like level 6 and then just not do that anymore.
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Yea the narrative tension between a player of a Daredevil looking to utilise a world of *possible* props and a GM that likes to present a well-realised but singular vision could cause a lot of issues.
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The Daredevil feat Caroming Charge seems a bit too strong, it's must have adrenaline, 2 actions stride twice and move through enemies doing stunt damage to each, no save no hit rolls. So a simple turn for a Daredevil is Daring Stunt for a Stride or Leap + an Athletics maneuver (trip or shove into a prop). Then spend the other 2 actions to run through as many enemies as you can. For a very good deal of damage d6+str with absolutely no rolls needed, except for the Grapple, Reposition, Shove, or Trip.
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Tbh I would probably ditch the tools entirely and make the class revolve around its trophies more. Like, if you have a dragon's trophy you can choose to attach it to your weapon for the extra d6 of energy damage, to your armor to receive a bonus to the dragon's highest save, or somehow use it to gain one of its senses or special abilities. They could make a huge list of possible benefits you can gain from a trophy and that every day the slayer has to choose 5 benefits (since the limit of trophies is 5) from that list. It would be like playing a customizable ranger that sometimes has 4 actions instead of 3.
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I've said this elsewhere, but that suggests two issues to me:
1: Slayer becomes the new Kineticist as you have to design trophies and trophy feats around every different monster type, and likely multiples. This would be a HUGE undertaking. I don't deny that would be a cool class, but they have stated how time consuming and labor intensive the Kineticist was. I don't seem them likely to do that again.
2: that would then be a class that CANNOT choose it's own feats as the options available would be limited by the enemies available in the campaign.
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I've said this elsewhere, but that suggests two issues to me:
1: Slayer becomes the new Kineticist as you have to design trophies and trophy feats around every different monster type, and likely multiples. This would be a HUGE undertaking. I don't deny that would be a cool class, but they have stated how time consuming and labor intensive the Kineticist was. I don't seem them likely to do that again.
2: that would then be a class that CANNOT choose it's own feats as the options available would be limited by the enemies available in the campaign.
I don't think it needs to be that complicated to work.
Let's say the "you ignore an amount of that resistance equal to 1 + the number of weapon damage dice", "your first Strike each turn deals 1d6 additional damage of one of the trophy’s damage types", "Make a Strike with +2 circumstance bonus to the attack roll and ignore the target’s concealed condition (if any)", "You gain one special vision ability the creature the trophy was claimed from had", "Creatures in a 15-foot cone take 2d4 damage with a basic Reflex save against your class DC. The damage dealt is one of the trophy’s non-physical damage types", "You gain a +1 status bonus to saving throws against creatures with any of the trophy’s traits", "you gain resistance to physical damage equal to 2 + the value of the armor’s potency rune", plus other effects from slayer feats were instead part of a list of possible benefits that you can choose from a trophy, allowing the slayer to prepare them each day, would IMO be more than enough to represent the concept of the class.
The problem I have with the tools is that I don't really feel like I'm the "prepared ranger" the class implies it is, because even if you can prepare your trophies each day, if you chose bloodseeking weapon you are always preparing in regards to damage, when I feel that, individually, the effects of the tools aren't really that good to begin with. Yes, the bloodseeking blade's ignore resistances, extra damage, and extra accuracy are great, but clearly they aren't individually because otherwise they wouldn't be bundled together. I also think it would be more fun and fitting if you could choose each day to be a DPS, tank, or a more support-oriented slayer, unlike a thaumaturge that makes that choice once in their whole career when choosing implements.
I've said this elsewhere, but that suggests two issues to me:
1: Slayer becomes the new Kineticist as you have to design trophies and trophy feats around every different monster type, and likely multiples. This would be a HUGE undertaking. I don't deny that would be a cool class, but they have stated how time consuming and labor intensive the Kineticist was. I don't seem them likely to do that again.
2: that would then be a class that CANNOT choose it's own feats as the options available would be limited by the enemies available in the campaign.
I don't think it needs to be that complicated to work.
Let's say the "you ignore an amount of that resistance equal to 1 + the number of weapon damage dice", "your first Strike each turn deals 1d6 additional damage of one of the trophy’s damage types", "Make a Strike with +2 circumstance bonus to the attack roll and ignore the target’s concealed condition (if any)", "You gain one special vision ability the creature the trophy was claimed from had", "Creatures in a 15-foot cone take 2d4 damage with a basic Reflex save against your class DC. The damage dealt is one of the trophy’s non-physical damage types", "You gain a +1 status bonus to saving throws against creatures with any of the trophy’s traits", "you gain resistance to physical damage equal to 2 + the value of the armor’s potency rune", plus other effects from slayer feats were instead part of a list of possible benefits that you can choose from a trophy, allowing the slayer to prepare them each day, would IMO be more than enough to represent the concept of the class.
The problem I have with the tools is that I don't really feel like I'm the "prepared ranger" the class implies it is, because even if you can prepare your trophies each day, if you chose bloodseeking weapon you are always preparing in regards to damage, when I feel that, individually, the effects of the tools aren't really that good to begin with. Yes, the bloodseeking blade's ignore resistances, extra...
Couldn't agree more exequiel, I like Slayer significantly more than Daredevil but I think it needs to do more with the trophies to really stand out. Tools are cool, but I'd rather they emphasize the Trophy system.
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Or Slayer just needs to seem to do more with the Trophies. By which I mean maybe the individual trophies (and tracking of) could be shifted into nebulous & conceptual (much like Esoterica) while the benefits could come in packages (much like Implements).
So you might pick up Dragon Slayer for your trophy case one day, get those specific abilities, maybe with choices for different breath weapons, but otherwise clear and concise. (This would somewhat resemble a 3.0 Binder, kitting out each day to suit one's daily role or next target, rather than last target.)
Or the choices could be stickier, getting beginning, intermediate, and advanced, but with options to switch/rebuild when you slay a significant enemy represented by one of the other monster types. Maybe quickly at that, post-combat trophy-taking with later option for during combat (with some sort of AoE Fear/Demoralize effect of course).
Might get messy balancing with Tools, but if they have their own lanes/bonus types it should be manageable (and allow for more customization).
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Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I feel like it's an issue that none of the other tool options function as a damage boost. The Warding Mail kind of skirts it because it's reasonably defensive, but you're not a heavy armor class like Champion or Guardian (should it give heavy proficiency?) where going all-in on AC and taking hits can make up for the lack of direct damage (plus, those classes have additional tools to mitigate party damage)
A slayer with Warding Mail is a heavy armor class.
Page 18 of the playtest document: "In addition, you become trained in heavy armor. Whenever you gain a class feature that grants you expert or greater proficiency in medium armor, you also gain that proficiency in heavy armor."
Also, at 7th level with Specialized Arsenal: "You gain access to the armor specialization effects of this signature tool, and the initial benefit grants resistance to all damage dealt by your quarry."