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So I have a gripe with Pathfinder 2e regarding feats that cease to be useful and should be retrained out for other feats.
Most Untamed form feats reach a point where they are not viable in combat and the only reason to hang onto them is because they are a prerequisite.
Helpful Halfling seems like an oversight. Every level in skill gives +1 higher benefit on a critical success to aid ... EXCEPT legendary — it just isn't mentioned. So a character with the Uplifting Overture feat literally gets nothing once they are legendary in perfotmance. They can't critically fail a DC15 check by then, so the feat literally does nothing. Is this an oversight? It should be corrected to give legendary +5.
Does Paizo insist on having a design philosophy that encourages/requires retraining feats? To me, most retraining causes ludonarrative dissonance, as it wipes the character's past abilities.
Personally, I feel feats should be useful for a character's entire career. Retraining should be to "fix mistakes", not be part of an advancement plan.
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Many feats are useful for a characters entire career. Some become less useful. Some become totally useless.
I personally don't see this as a big deal given how easy retraining is in most campaigns.
I also think its actually moderately realistic much of the time. People DO lose the ability to do cool things (represented by feats) when they stop practicing them, spend their attention on other things, etc.
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So I have a gripe with Pathfinder 2e regarding feats that cease to be useful and should be retrained out for other feats.
Most Untamed form feats reach a point where they are not viable in combat and the only reason to hang onto them is because they are a prerequisite.
Helpful Halfling seems like an oversight. Every level in skill gives +1 higher benefit on a critical success to aid ... EXCEPT legendary — it just isn't mentioned. So a character with the Uplifting Overture feat literally gets nothing once they are legendary in perfotmance. They can't critically fail a DC15 check by then, so the feat literally does nothing. Is this an oversight? It should be corrected to give legendary +5.
Even if Legendary in a skill, you can totally critically fail by rolling a Natural 1 on the check. So the feat is still useful for Legendary.
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Even if Legendary in a skill, you can totally critically fail by rolling a Natural 1 on the check. So the feat is still useful for Legendary.So I have a gripe with Pathfinder 2e regarding feats that cease to be useful and should be retrained out for other feats.
Most Untamed form feats reach a point where they are not viable in combat and the only reason to hang onto them is because they are a prerequisite.
Helpful Halfling seems like an oversight. Every level in skill gives +1 higher benefit on a critical success to aid ... EXCEPT legendary — it just isn't mentioned. So a character with the Uplifting Overture feat literally gets nothing once they are legendary in perfotmance. They can't critically fail a DC15 check by then, so the feat literally does nothing. Is this an oversight? It should be corrected to give legendary +5.
If you're legendary in it and the GM is using a DC 15, you literally can't critically fail unless you have +0 ability bonus in that skill with no item bonus (and if its legendary that probably isn't true).
With a +1 ability bonus, the worst you can roll in a legendary skill is 25 (15 level + 8 legendary + 1 ability +1 on the dice), which is a success at DC 15. The nat 1 reduces it to a normal failure.
Of course, Helpful Halfling is legacy content and the base DC back then was 20 which you could critically fail, and also not every GM lets you aid anything at a flat DC so it'll be more useful in those cases.
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So I have a gripe with Pathfinder 2e regarding feats that cease to be useful and should be retrained out for other feats.
Most Untamed form feats reach a point where they are not viable in combat and the only reason to hang onto them is because they are a prerequisite.
Several of them give you some kind of bonus in other forms, but yes, the whole untamed form thing has issues in general. That's a frequent conversation around here.
Helpful Halfling seems like an oversight. Every level in skill gives +1 higher benefit on a critical success to aid ... EXCEPT legendary — it just isn't mentioned. So a character with the Uplifting Overture feat literally gets nothing once they are legendary in perfotmance. They can't critically fail a DC15 check by then, so the feat literally does nothing. Is this an oversight? It should be corrected to give legendary +5.
Helpful Halfling is legacy content back when it was DC20 which you could crit fail, and the GM is allowed to change that DC so it could be more useful in some cases. You also won't be legendary in every skill, and it works for all of them, so it always works unless you're only ever going to aid with legendary skills, and that's a choice you're making rather than a problem with the feat.
The design philosophy on this one is simple: They don't want anything giving a +5 bonus, let alone something so readily available and not that difficult to do. It's too big a bonus for how the game works.
As for Uplifting Overture? Some feats don't combine well with other feats and that's entirely normal. If the only reason you're taking this one is to help the one that guarantees max result on Aid, then yeah, at some point that won't do anything anymore.
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Helpful Halfling ... They can't critically fail a DC15 check by then, so the feat literally does nothing.
Whoah, whoah, whoah.
Since when does giving a +4 bonus without needing to roll the check transform into "literally does nothing"?
Name anything else in the entire game that gives a +4 bonus for a single action and has no resource cost or cooldown whatsoever.
I think you are confusing 'doesn't keep getting even better' with 'isn't any good'.
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Canny acumen is the prime example. If you use canny acumen to become expert in perception, then your class gets expert perception a few levels later, it’s now doing literally nothing. No ribbons, no nothing. It’s only other effect doesn’t activate until 17th level, which may be 10 levels away.
Obviously you can swap this out for another general feat at the level up that obsoletes it, like come on.
I’d say the same for anything that doesn’t involve your character losing abilities, i.e. what in universe distinguishes someone who has an armor proficiency general feat for heavy armor then picked up champion and changed the general feat to fleet from someone just gaining fleet? It looks exactly the same. It’s not like they lost the ability to wear heavy armor or anything, all they did was get faster the same way anyone who gets fleet suddenly gets faster in a level.
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As for game design, the patterns that I notice:
* Teamwork is more powerful than individual builds. That is why things like Aid and Keen Follower give higher bonuses than self-boosting feats or even spells and consumables.
* Boosts to checks don't scale much. That is because the check bonus that they are boosting is already scaling with level. An example is Bard's Courageous Anthem. It doesn't scale at all ... and is considered one of the best abilities in the game (in no small part because it affects yourself and all of your allies at the super low one-action cost).
* The Polymorph Battle Form spells like Animal Form failing to scale to high level is a notorious problem that people have been complaining about for a long time. It isn't Untamed Form's fault. Or its upgrade feat's fault. That is something that needs to be fixed with the Form spells.
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Helpful Halfling ... They can't critically fail a DC15 check by then, so the feat literally does nothing.Whoah, whoah, whoah.
Since when does giving a +4 bonus without needing to roll the check transform into "literally does nothing"?
Name anything else in the entire game that gives a +4 bonus for a single action and has no resource cost or cooldown whatsoever.
I think you are confusing 'doesn't keep getting even better' with 'isn't any good'.
...Aiding does that anyway when you're Legendary, which was their point. Neither of the benefits apply at that point.
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...Aiding does that anyway when you're Legendary, which was their point. Neither of the benefits apply at that point.
Which means that the feat is still saving them having to buy Legendary in that skill. So they could put that Legendary into a different skill than what they use for Aid. A character doesn't get very many Legendary skill boosts.
It still doesn't do literally nothing. Unless they decide to build the character to not use or need it anymore.
...Aiding does that anyway when you're Legendary, which was their point. Neither of the benefits apply at that point.Which means that the feat is still saving them having to buy Legendary in that skill. So they could put that Legendary into a different skill than what they use for Aid. A character doesn't get very many Legendary skill boosts.
It still doesn't do literally nothing. Unless they decide to build the character to not use or need it anymore.
You’re probably putting legendary into the skill anyways because it’s rare you only use a skill for aid and legendary is where some truly baller skill feats unlock.
You could maybe do other ones first though.
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...Aiding does that anyway when you're Legendary, which was their point. Neither of the benefits apply at that point.Which means that the feat is still saving them having to buy Legendary in that skill. So they could put that Legendary into a different skill than what they use for Aid. A character doesn't get very many Legendary skill boosts.
It still doesn't do literally nothing. Unless they decide to build the character to not use or need it anymore.
You’re probably putting legendary into the skill anyways because it’s rare you only use a skill for aid and legendary is where some truly baller skill feats unlock.
You could maybe do other ones first though.
Indeed but the feat now get you the max Aid bonus on all your Master skills. Which can be quite a lot if you are a Rogue or Investigator or if you took these as Dedications.