Galactic edition>>IF YOU ARE ASKING A QUESTION, PLEASE SPECIFY WHICH GAME YOU'RE PLAYING<<<Previous thread: >>93597188/pfg/ (pathfinder 1e) link repository: https://pastebin.com/RSt0rF0T/p2g/ (pathfinder 2e) link repository: https://pastebin.com/1zySxwm3/sfg/ (starfinder) link repository: https://pastebin.com/5yp9s2U3/3eg/ (D&D 3.X) link repository: https://pastebin.com/VMRsxB2m/pacgg/ (pathfinder adventure card game) link repository:https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_games_considered_the_bestThe T̶r̶o̶v̶e̶ Vault (seed, please!): bit<dot>ly/2Y1w4MdTQ: Do you trust in 15% chance to succeed?
What should I make as a backup character for my Cleric of Sarenrae who’s our party healer with the Medic archetype? I’m also the only caster as everyone else is a martial.
>>93624452Bard, oracle, another martial just to tell your party to fuck off.
I DM'd the first two chapters of Cosmic Birthday, aside from how high the computer checks were in the first area I felt like it went okay. Just had to wrangle the sandbox intro around the block party they describe tenements having.
https://www.humblebundle.com/games/beamdog-owlcat-rpg-masters pretty nice bundle for owlcat games
>>93624452>>93624461Adding to the list, Chirurgeon Alch, if you want to have more potential healing output than a Cloistered Cleric. Alternatively, if you found Cloistered Cleric heal overkill already, then you can go with stuff like a Water/Wood Kineticist, who has less heal, but much more utility overall. Both would infinitely extend your parties adventuring time, since you have no daily resources to run out of, just like the rest of your party, so you can go all day long.
>>93624452Since the backup should probably also be healer: Another cleric, but this time Zon-Kuthon's, who heals just to keep people suffering as long as possible.
>>93624452Human fighter, obviously, and immediately kill your current character. Why settle for an inferior class?
>TQDecades of playing X-COM have made me mistrust chances as high as 80%, so I don't trust any percentage I haven't personally stacked for max success with a backup plan in case of failure. It's made me a very meticulous player.On another note: Which class in PF2e is the most "dynamic" to play? Another player in one of my games got eaten by a bulette, and wants to play something with a "toolkit", where he "gets to make interesting choices round by round", but doesn't have to manage daily resources. I'm inclined to pitch alchemist, but that class is also really fucking complex, as you'd have to dig into the billions of alchemical items, so it feels hard to recommend. Any other options?
>>93625425Some sort of kineticist might work
>>93625438I've never played a kineticist myself, any specific recommendations on elements/combinations? He generally tends to play frontliners as some kind of control/tank/damage mix, so anything in that ballpark would likely appeal.
>>93625456Earth/Fire or Metal/Fire. Earth and metal get good heavy armor so he can frontline. Fire has lots of damage, including a damage aura that hits enemies on turn start or if they come into it. You take the junction that makes enemies weak to your fire and stack pretty good passive damage. I think Metal has an ability that makes it difficult terrain to move away from you, so obviously you use that to incentivize people to stay near you. You go Str secondary and pump Athletics to trip/grab to further make it so enemies stay near you. You also go str so you can add it to your elemental blasts. I like weapon infusion because you can add traits to your blasts every time you attack, like if you need a short ranged attack, add propulsive to add your Str to damage, reach if you need to melee someone 10 ft away, agile for lower MAP, etc..
>>93625264Honestly that’s a really cool idea but a Kuthite cleric is forced to take a Harm font, which means blowing all their prepped slots on Heal and assuming that using Heal doesn’t break his anathema of comforting those in pain. Works for non-Clerics/Champions thoufh.
2e-ishMight not be the best place but is anyone aware of the exact flag in foundry if I want to make an effect with brackets based on the total amount of other effects on the target? so if it has 2 buffs its +1, 4+2 etc. I've beentrying with actor|effectcount but doesn't seem to be picked up
>>93625994Recode all other effects to give +1 to X, then scale the damage of your new thing by X's level on the target?
>>93624185Could you imagine the mentally stunted individual who thinks fishing for a 15% chance of success is a good idea over another option with an 80% chance of success? Luckily there's no one here who's that dumb.
>>93626491not same anon, but well if the 15% chance gets the immediate result i want, while the 80% gets only a partial progress towards the thing I want to get I'd say it's not that astonishing. Overall if I need 4 or 5 of those 80% successes, the math kinda checks out and it's similar to the immediate 15% chance. The difference is that one it's immediate towards the objective and the other you can feel progress but takes more tries.
>>9362649115% chance you auto winvs80% chance you deal 1/20th the boss HP so actually its 5% progress
>>9362656285% chance for 0% progressvs.80% chance for 5% progress
I can see why you guys hate playing casters if you're literally just praying on 15% odds every fight (who effects aren't even substantially better than if you'd just cast Slow or Fear or something normal). Your party must hate you.
>>93624185>TQ: Do you trust in 15% chance to succeed?I routinely get screwed over attempting things I should be good at but also my PC has passed every single Acrobatics check thrown his way despite having a measley +1 DEX mod and no training in the skill. So... I guess so?
The whole argument is retarded because neither result of that hypothetical 15% roll is desirable. Both wasting your turn on a long shot that the majority of the time will accomplish dick all, and trivially, anticlimactically defeating the encounter in one turn fucking suck. That's the whole problem with 3.PF's fucktarded spell design. A spell should never be able to single-handedly defeat an encounter, no matter how low the chance and how many saves the enemy gets to roll. Because both the best and the worst case scenarios make for terrible gameplay.
I think that while the Starfinder 2e mystic's vitality network is a fantastic class feature, the witchwarper's quantum field needs plenty of work.The two spellcaster classes of Starfinder 2e are highly competent simply by virtue of being 4-slot spontaneous casters with 8 base Hit Points and access to spell lists other than divine. This is a much better deal than what is given to a druid, a wizard, an oracle, or a sorcerer.I find the mystic to be a great class. In Field Test #5 ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uY4sl-mIPvK98qkh9JbpvvodeZDZeRDFo3vifcmZpaU/edit ), I played a 1st-level healing connection mystic in eight combats, and a 5th-level healing mystic in ten battles. The healing connection mystic has barely changed in the full playtest, so this experience is still valid. In the full playtest, I played a 3rd-level healing mystic ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/19o9Yl6nhpX2rkPwVq3Z3C6zhqTS-1iIBpkaTUckyhA4/edit ) in nine fights encounter details here https://docs.google.com/document/d/196qPZKPwtGQrw8kTtPlS8d8JGID4Y0CftrWLPwgdH-g/edit , playthrough report coming later).The mystic's Infusion is one of the best focus spells in the entire game, both as combat healing and as noncombat recovery. Depending on the flow of the adventuring workday and how much it taxes resources, a mystic with Infusion can be either somewhat worse, on par with, or slightly better than a healing font cleric; the very fact that a mystic with Infusion comes close to a healing font cleric is a great testament to just how competent it is as a sustainer. Anthem on a rhythm mystic is not bad, either. Even better, any mystic can pick up Infusion at 6th level by taking expert Medicine proficiency and New Epiphany. I think that from 6th level onwards, a rhythm mystic with New Epiphany for both Anthem and Infusion is one of the best support spellcasters in the entirety of Path/Starfinder 2e.
>>93626681I have also played a 3rd-level anomaly witchwarper ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k9kKgl_s9O5Y_z2rBpP9wsLJUBjI-AJgn13t5aFKy00/edit ) in seven battles so far. The quantum field just is not good. In all seven battles, despite my earnest efforts to use Quantum Pulse and Warp Terrain, it simply has not mattered. This is not a case of "Oh, but you see, the quantum field is actually forcing the enemies to move or stay put in a way that they did not originally want to." No, the field has not even been doing that. Thus far, whenever an enemy has moved out of the field, or has stayed put in the field, it wanted to do so anyway, field or no.This anomaly witchwarper's allies include a degradant solarian with Black Hole and a bombard soldier. On paper, this sounds like good party synergy. "The witchwarper creates a quantum field and fills it with ally-friendly difficult terrain, the solarian pulls them right in, and the soldier bombards and suppresses them!" In practice, the quantum field has never added anything of value to this party's playstyle. For example, on one occasion, the witchwarper filled the field with difficult terrain, and the solarian successfully Black Holed two enemies into the middle of the field, prone... but since said enemies wanted to Stand and then spend two actions on offense anyway, the difficult terrain did not actually accomplish anything.Maintaining, upgrading, and moving the quantum field is such a hassle. It just is not worth the action economy, I have found. There is too much value in the witchwarper's non-focus casting and too little value in wrangling the quantum field. If a witchwarper Strides and then casts a two-action spell, then the field is gone: unless the character triggers anchoring spells (I have done so only once, so far), which demands its own finicky positioning.
>>93626693The opportunity to Take Cover in Warp Terrain came up once or twice, but most of the party simply did not have the action economy necessary to Take Cover. The soldier with Shot on the Run was an exception, but the soldier was able to Take Cover using preexisting terrain pieces anyway. Staying mobile was generally significantly more important than spending actions to Take Cover in these combats.I have heard success stories from other people playing witchwarpers. I do not doubt the veracity of these tales. However, I suspect that these accounts take place in cramped combat arenas with tightly packed enemies. I have been playing in wide, open spaces (official Starfinder poster maps, at that) where enemies are spread-out.If a mystic's healing simply works, no questions asked, while a witchwarper's quantum field pays off only if the map is small and enemies are squeezed together, then I personally find the mystic to be a much better class. I have felt very frustrated trying to make the quantum field work, and have seen no meaningful payoff thus far.How do you think the witchwarper's quantum field could be improved?Also, I would like to say that having to draw a three-dimensional quantum field against flying ranged enemies (of which there are several in Starfinder 2e, such as 1st-level observer-class security robots, 1st-level hardlight scamps, and 2nd-level electrovores) was one of the greatest tabletop troubles I have had to endure in a while.
>>93626699Some of my GM's thoughts on the quantum field:>The enemies will be mobile if they don’t have anything else to do (which is fairly often, might as well just move instead of taking a MAP-10 attack), but the presence or absence of the field has never changed what I was considering making the enemy do.>In theory the field should be good as something you drop on top of a cluster of enemies in a chokepoint or behind cover. The first is map dependent, and the second - the enemies just aren’t scared enough of what the base field does for it to meaningfully affect them.>So my opinion is the base field needs more juice in some regard, maybe some Start of Turn trigger that way if you drop it on top of enemies and they don’t move, you get something meaty incentivising them to move out of it, but they always have the chance to respond.
>>93626679Sure but the argument is a continuation from last thread where some people got mad at the idea that there are good and bad spells and most of the spells in 2e are bad and not worth using. Hey you guys ever notice how... you can say that the Champion has no reason to use any Focus Spell but Lay on Hands basically ever and every other Champion Focus Spell is a waste of space and it's all fine and good but if you say a similar thing applies to full casters then redditors go apeshit? Why is that? It's so bizarre to me. Nobody's out here recommending Hag Bloodline Sorcerer or for you to take Home in Every Port over Fleet/Toughness/Incredible Init or whatever but when it comes to the actual spells somehow the idea that some are just better than others causes seethe.
>>93626730Is lay on hands the only thing champion is good at and only build around spamming lay on hands?
>>93626848There is very little reason to use Focus Points on things that aren't Lay on Hands as a Champion. I don't know if PC2 changed that. It might have.
>>93626730yea some spells (lots of incap spells) are utter dogshit and some are overtuned.Would something like incap spells work as normal when the target is under 50%hp alleviate the bad incap spells problem? Is there some kind of abuse I'm missing?
>>93626730I was looking over Primal spells and it is weird how some of them scale. Heightened Thunder Strike seems to just be better than the rank 3 blaster spells in the same school thanks to the additional d4 sonic damage unless you're playing someone who has Spellslinger. Obvious exceptions to Lightining Bolt, which seems far and away the best damage spell on the tier, and to Moonlight Ray against undead. It's kinda frustrating because there's a lot of cool fluff spells floating around the lists that just feel hard to take. Stuff like Moth's Supper which has the potential to be super thematic, but it's really just 12d4 healing over an hour and an additional boost if someone first aids you. An average of 30 HP for a spellslot isn't... idk. It isn't nothing. But it's competing with >zap three motherfuckers for 4d12 and just don't take that 30 damage in the first place>Slow>all the Wall spellsI assume every tier has this problem. I know the tier 2 spells in Primal have shit like Guiding Star, a really cool idea, rubbing elbows with stuff that feels almost mandatory to take, like Sound Body. It's actually really frustrating trying to decide between sticking to a theme or maximizing how helpful you'll actually be to your teammates.
How viable is a party of Starlit Sentinels with FA?
>>93627302As viable as a normal party is and then however much starlit sentinel adds on top of that, I suppose. It's not like you're giving anything up in the normal character budget to do this, since FA is extra.
>>93626909>>93626679The point of incap is that those save-or-die spells are desirable to some people and fit a fantasy, but they specifically shouldn't be able to end an encounter. The problem isn't the incap spells. It's Synesthesia and Slow doing the exact same thing, often in lower spell slots, but without incap.
>>93626914On the other hand, you get so many spell slots and scrolls are so cheap that you really should be able to cast Guiding Star whenever you want.
>>93626730>when it comes to the actual spells somehow the idea that some are just better than others causes seethe.It's impossible to discuss this sort of thing online because retards like you will always miss the point. I'm not interested in "some spells are better than others". I'm interested in "a spell is literally useless because it has a degree of failure attached to it". Again, THIS is a problem associated exclusively with PF2e because of the Power of +1. If someone ended up with no spell slots at all they'd still never cast that scroll of Cursed Metamorphosis. And it also speaks a lot to the community's obsession with big bosses, because Incap spells actually even work normally against PL+1 enemies half the time. That's right, you can incapacitate half of a Severe encounter out of relevancy. Try casting Cursed Metamorphosis. NOOOOO GM IT HAS INCAP IT'S NOT GOING TO DOOO ANYTHING I'M SCARED OF WASTING ACTIONS AND LOOKING LIKE AN IDIOT BAWWWWW*sigh* fine i'll cast it, electric arc missed last round anyways (fucking caster accuracy....)WHAT DO YOU MEEAAAAAN I HAVE TO DRAW THE SCROLL WHY CAN'T I JUST CAST ITTTTTTTTT NOOO I'M WASTING ACTIOOOOOOOOOOOOOONSIt's insufferable. That's the community you get with PF2e.
>>93628422I'm the guy building a Beast Gunner from last thread. I'll only have a single slot per level. >ScrollsUnfortunately we're in an 'everything is fucked' post-apoc setting so magic consumables are not easy to find and even spellcasting classes are race and background gated. A big part of the campaign plot is actually trying to bring magic back. I plan to talk to my GM about just adding a couple neat fluff spells to my repertoire (like Guiding Star, since my guy is astronomy themed) but I'm trying to balance my list between flavor and usefulness right now and it's kind of annoying. As an aside: I've never really enjoyed scrolls as a mechanic in any system. Not PF2e, not 5e, not Divinity: OS or Baldur's Gate. Something about spells being turned into consumables trips my autism, idk.
>>93628402My issue isn't with incap specifically, but more generally with this design of "spells should do HUGE things that can totally dominate the monsters if the dice roll just right" that was shit from day one, and has inexplicably endured all the way into PF2e. Spells shouldn't be able to do that, because success or failure, it sucks.Spells should have lower action commitment, be more available, but also more limited in what they could do. Casters should become the actual thinking player's choice of class, by scaling with how well you can combine your spells to create desirable conditions and situations, shape the battlefield to your party's advantage, tactically outplay team monster, or stack the odds in your favor. Spells should be building blocks you dynamically assemble into scaling advantage by making a sum larger than its parts.
>>93628594That's a shitty problem to have but yeah, when you don't follow the rules of the game you have a hard time. Especially since this is one area where the rules of the game are already insufficient (suggested number of magical consumables to give casters).
>>93626730>Sure but the argument is a continuationJust stop responding.>>93624452Soothe is a really good spell if you want to force an Occult caster to be dedicated Healer. I believe Resentment Witch should be maxing WIS second because high Initiative is very important, and if you take a background that gives Natural Medicine, as long as you're trained in Medicine, you can grab Battle Medicine and Assurance Nature, and double as a Recall Knowledge bot and primary healer.
Why isn't there a funky "use occultism to treat wounds" skill
>>93628890cultivator from tian xia character guide does exactly that as a 10th lvl feat Three Pecks of Dew, makes you Sanctified and Holy, you can Subsist with occultism by eating qi in the environment instead of food, you can Refocus and Treat Wounds simultaneously, and if you do so, you use Occultism for Treat Wounds and don't need a healer's kit
>>93628946Fucking awesome.
>>93628813Natural Medicine doesn't work with Battle Medicine. Yes, it's retarded.
Low-level ranged damage in Starfinder 2e feels swingy, luck-dependent, and pea-shooter-like.I have played through nineteen battles at 3rd level ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/196qPZKPwtGQrw8kTtPlS8d8JGID4Y0CftrWLPwgdH-g/edit , actual play report coming later). The first ten were with a ranged envoy, a healing mystic, a ranged operative, and a radiant solarian ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/19o9Yl6nhpX2rkPwVq3Z3C6zhqTS-1iIBpkaTUckyhA4/edit ). The rest were with a ranged operative, a degradant solarian, a bombard soldier, and an anomaly witchwarper ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k9kKgl_s9O5Y_z2rBpP9wsLJUBjI-AJgn13t5aFKy00/edit ).I do not like low-level damage. It is less of a problem when critting lower-level mooks, but is palpable against on-level opponents. For example, a 3rd-level enemy has, on average, 45 HP.https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2891This is also an issue in Pathfinder 2e, but less visible there due to an emphasis on melee, and due to extra damage. A low-level ranger can deal an extra 1d8+2 damage with precision edge and Gravity Weapon. A 2nd-level thaumaturge can push out another +5 damage with implement's empowerment and a personal antithesis.I think it feels worse in this new game. There were many, many occasions when I rolled a 1 or a 2 on a damage die, and it dismayed me. There were numerous moments when an enemy was left at only 1 or 2 Hit Points, which was likewise disheartening. The bombard soldier had it worst when their stellar cannon was rolling an extremely luck-dependent 1d10, but even the operative had it bad at times, sometimes rolling an anticlimactic 3 on 1d10+1d4. The envoy's front-loaded, low-level damage felt consistent in comparison, simply because it was rolling with a flat modifier, however modest. I do not know how to solve this. I can say, though, that rolling a stellar cannon's flat 1d10 against an on-level enemy with 45 Hit Points feels like a daunting gamble. That is a feast-or-famine roll.
>>93629258There was a moment when the envoy attacked an enemy, but did not have Get 'Em up due to having lacked the action economy to do so. The envoy landed a critical hit with a d10 seeker rifle. The envoy rolled a 3 on the 2d10. That felt frustratingly anticlimactic.
>>93629258Let SF2e guns roll Recall Knowledge in lieu of a damage roll. Critical failure: 1 damage per die, Failure: 2 damage, Success: 3 damage, crit success: 4 damage. +1 on a crit success for each die size above d6.
>>93628510What causes a man to make a histrionic screeching post like this? This is awful. It's also wrong. I'll list a few of the ways.>Using a 6th level spell as an example that the player won't have access to for at least half the game in most circumstances>Saying the odds of success are 50% when it basically does nothing outside of Failure>The failure effect would hurt but it's not encounter ending.>Fort save>Dogshit range>Single targetSo the odds of actually doing the thing that you said it would do are like 10-15% on a PL+1 and below enemy. And best case scenario, it wastes 1 turn for a PL+2 and above enemy. Anon, I'm going to be real with you. Insisting on using a scythe on your lawn when there's a perfectly good mower right next to you isn't intelligence and this bizarre obsession you have with insisting on using worse options to "own the 2e fanbase" isn't healthy. You seem very angry and miserable and I think you'd be happier if you just cast Wall of Force or something and shut down half the encounter that way.
>Fighter just gets two extra feats for existing >they can be swapped out for new ones as part of daily prep and one can act as a prereq for another jfc fighter just gets so much STUFF. In my head I'm going>Yeah but they've got like zero out of combat utility But at the same time a lot of my out of combat checks have been dogwater so it's not like that would have made a difference in my case.
>>93628402>It's Synesthesia and Slow doing the exact same thing, often in lower spell slots, but without incap.those are literally some of the only spells in the entire game worth casting. if you remove them casters are straight up final fantasy white mages who purely exist to heal and buff since at least you don't only have a 20% chance of Heroism or Heal working, and nobody likes being a passive buff-bot like they're playing fucking 2006 world of warcraft as a paladin mindlessly cycling blessings.anyone who argues that slow and synaethesia need to be removed or nerfed is really just a bad faith faggot unwilling to state their real viewpoint, which is "casters should be an NPC class or not even exist", there are over 1400 spells in this fucking game and fewer than 100 are worth using, with you comfortably being able to only cast a dozen or so in actual combat for your entire career and barely miss out. It's insane to me that 4th edition managed to have Fighter, Cleric, Sorcerer, Ranger as fun and playable and on even ground with one another back in 2008 and now 16 years later we just have retarded Dragon Magazine rejects looking at their work on 3rd edition and saying "Okay, what if we just made Wizard into the new Monk where we make them dumb and bad on purpose, just as Sean K Reynolds intended!"
Incapacitation should exist just to make sure bosses don't get a critical failure.It's that simple. Create a Boss tag and make incapacitation only apply to it instead of level.>but it's video gameyI don't care.
>>93630251PF2e is already pretty video-gamey with how they handle creature stats. A lot of creatures have stat lines that the players just straight up can't achieve, rolling around with two +6s at level 9 or whatever. I'm in a PWL game and we regularly bump up against monsters that have +2 to hit over anyone in the party and their good saves always outstrip ours. It's weird watching the GM roll stuff and seeing results that would literally be impossible for me to get. Which is to say just tagging something as a boss for incap purposes would be fine if it let the spells tagged with it be more useful overall, since the rules are already made up and the points don't matter.
>>93630189>>Yeah but they've got like zero out of combat utilitythis isn't even true btw, they get Master Perception when even fucking Animist (THE ENTIRE CLASS LITERALLY BUILT AROUND SEEING THINGS OTHER PEOPLE CAN'T AND BEING PERCEPTIVE OF THE NATURAL AND SPIRIT WORLD LMAO) never advances beyond Expert. More importantly, Fighter gets half a dozen free feats more than anyone else, which means you are in a better position than any other class with baked-in """"""utility"""""" options, because unlike losers like Ranger who are stuck with Survival even if they don't like it, a Fighter gets to Build-A-Bear their own utility from whatever they want with the oodles and oodles of free goodies they're given that nobody else gets. The people who say "Fighter has no utility" are unironically brain damaged, it's like saying you would rather be given $100 and a free tinderbox to prepare for a camping trip instead of being given $1,000 to buy whatever you want to prepare. Yeah, you have to spend it yourself, but no fucking retard would argue that 10x as much budget isn't better than a fucking free water bottle and zippo, which is the """"utility""""" features most other martials get in exchange for being poverty-stricken losers. >Free Attack of Opportunity, something every other martial must spend a 4th/6th class feat or greater investment to obtain, and also available right from level 1 so you're a menace even in AP Book 1s>Free Incredible Initiative (Battlefield Surveyor), an extra General Feat>Free Shield Block, an extra General Feat>Free Critical Specialization, which not everybody can even get if they want it with class feats>Free Armor Specialization, equivalent to a class feat>Master-Scaling Heavy Armor Proficiency, equivalent to a class feat or dedication for other martials>Master in 2/3 saves plus Perception, other classes would literally take Canny Acument multiple times to get this but aren't even allowed to>COMBAT FLEXIBILITY FOR STRAIGHT UP +2 CLASS FEATS
>>93629034Why? I understand why RAW but holy shit why was this necessary?>>93630215Fear is also good. I agree with everything else you said, except your exclusion of Fear and your choice to argue with this idiot who is unwilling to change their subjective opinion about something that can be reduced to math and proven wrong.>>93630315Why does anyone expect monsters are somehow immune to balance issues affecting classes, spells, and APs?Fun encounters are against NPCs you create. Any monster you use, whether it's from Monster Core or some obscure AP, needs to be test driven against you playing as your party members. You cannot trust Paizo to write balanced monsters.
>>93630429>Fear is also good.there's too many ways to have permanent uptime on frightened for fear alone to ever be worth playing a caster in a world where slow and synaesthesia are removed. especially when the martial methods don't even rely on a save
>>93630215You actually think those spells should be the baseline power of the spell system in pf2? We back to rocket tag?>roll high initiative>cast rank 3 Slow on the level 16 boss>nat 1>encounter over, next boss gm
>>93630447something that only happens 5% of the time is not a serious concern, sorry. if PCs are dealing with permadeath or character loss on an unlucky natural 1 to monster effects and curses and shit, and anyone can just die from full health if they crit fail a monster's big damage attack, why would a 5% chance matter the other way around? You'll have 19 encounters where it doesn't come up at all, and then one story where people can laugh about it years later. Who fucking cares, have you ever played a single TTRPG? Why is pic related okay for monsters (PERMANENT UNTIL EIGHT HOURS OF DIRECT SUNLIGHT BTW WHICH ONLY ALLOWS YOU TO REPEAT A SINGLE SAVE) okay but Slowed 2 for a single minute on crit fail against a purposefully kneecapped Spell DC with delayed proficiency and no item bonuses *not* okay? And this shit doesn't have Incapacitation either, by the way.
>>93629034>>93630429To add, it also means that you can heal undead with Battle Medicine without Stitch Flesh. Paizo stupidity works both ways. That said, I understand why in the case of Natural Medicine. Medicine becomes pointless if you can do all its main actions with Nature. They scale with the same stat and Nature can be used to recall knowledge and do other activities. What they should have done was just add an exception for Battle Medicine and just make the Nature DC harder.
>>93630497Because monsters and players are different? Because monsters don't exist outside of their one combat most of the time? A combat that ends anticlimactically in one failed save is forever a wet fart in place of what should've been a tense encounter, a player struck by some long-term debilitation like this is a sidequest for the cure, or a narrative consequence as you take downtime to find a healer, etc. Have you ever played a single TTRPG?
>>93630555>Because monsters don't exist outside of their one combat most of the time?This is an argument in favor of PC effects vs Monsters being stronger since it doesn't matter since they're unlikely to survive past an encounter. If Slow's crit fail was "YOU ARE PERMANENTLY SLOWED 2 UNTIL YOU BASK IN THE SUN FOR EIGHT HOURS" it would literally not matter one bit for its usefulness as a PC spell. Meanwhile, monster effects with permanent durations or crippling effects that last days/weeks/years are super fucking annoying to deal with as PCs and are disproportionately unfun.>A combat that ends anticlimactically in one failed save is forever a wet fart in place of what should've been a tense encounterbeing permanently slowed 2 until you grind the adventure to a halt and AFK sunbathing for 8 straight hours to merely get another roll is way more unfun than getting lucky (WHICH PEOPLE LIKE, WHY DO YOU THINK GETTING LUCKY IS UNFUN???) and winning a tough battle easier than you normally would because the dice favored you. Thanks for proving my point, at least. Also "monsters and PCs are different" is not an actual argument when they're targeting the same AC, using the same 3 saves, using the same fucking spells, and Summons literally pull monsters directly out of the Monster Manual to fight for you. You can literally Summon a creature with a nasty effect like that curse and have a monster roll a natural 1 for an automatic downgrade failure even as a PC, the fuck you mean "Muh monsters and PCs are different" lol, even with the reduced level of summons, rolling a 1 plus the downgrade from failure to crit fail means it's irrelevant, it's still a 5% chance most of the timekill yourself you retarded paizo drone bootlicker
>>93630633I was halfway through typing an actual response when I realized you're just a seething retard and not worth engaging with in any reasonable manner. Shame.
>5% of the time it's possible to get lucky and win a single encounter and move on to the next one, so we HAVE to make 1300 of the 1400 spells in this game purposefully unplayable dogshit!I denounce the fighter lobby and the state of Fighterville
>>93630185You can't call me wrong and then be objectively, insanely wrong in every respect>level 6It doesn't matter what spell it is, how strong it is, or how early or late they get it. If it says incap, they won't cast it. Incap, to this community, immediately means that it has no effect. Zero effect, not that it's bad, that it literally doesn't do anything in the game. You could give it to them for free and they wouldn't cast it, they'd cast electric arc instead.>odds of success are 50%I said they worked normally against PL+1 enemies half the time. When you get rank 3 incap spells at level 5, their incap trait doesn't trigger against level 3*2=6 enemies. On half of all levels, incap spells work against PL+1 enemies. You are stupid.>failure would hurt but not encounter endingOn average it's like six fucking wasted actions before they succeed their will save, and in any remotely permissive reading of the spell they've transformed into something that's going to get one-shot by an auto-crit.> fort saveThere are enemies with low fort saves.>dogshit rangeThey're in range for electric arc, cast the fucking spell.>single targetPL+1 enemies are half of the budget of a severe encounter.The odds are not 10-15%, they're much better than that. But even then, 10-15% of deleting an enemy is NOT NOTHING CAST THE FUCKING SPELL. It's free, I am shoving a scroll of it into your fucking hands.Admit that it has an effect. Admit that the spell does have a fucking effect, that you can have access to it, that if you have access to it you can cast it, and that it can be better than other options. Admit it right fucking now, or you're just continuing to prove my point about how retarded this community is. I'm not doing this to convince you of anything. I'm doing it to demonstrate what the community is like to that guy in the other thread.
>>93630497I was arguing if ALL the spells should be having this kind of baseline power since u guys are arguing these are the only worth casting. If all the spells had this kind of power level, it means that the 5% chance will happen every single time a spellcaster casts something of rank. And in some party compositions you might have more than 2 spellcasters.Can't you see? these 5% chances might be happening more than once in a encounter, thus increasing the chance. Maybe we should put something to limit those 5%... like some tag that stops this kind of shit especially for bosses...
>>93630676That nigga is talking like he couldn't just run his game that way. Like, how is he going to call you a bootlicker and then pretend what Paizo writes is law?
>>93630497>something that only happens 5% of the time is not a serious concernThe +1-fellators would disagree. No you can't go around with 1 less AC you're going to get CRIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTT NOOOOO
>>93630725no, incap usually means "the GM is the only one allowed to have fun with this" >level 7 monster>7th level spells a PC won't even get until 13 at the absolute earliest>oh and 5th level aoe nuke spells because paizo knows on-level AOEs suck except against trash>DC 26PF2E is popular with spergs and forever GMs because unlike 5e, where the 4 players are having fun and the GM is miserable a lot of the time, PF2E is built with the idea of making the GM have a fun time venting his repressed nerd rage on his players while THEY are the miserable ones. This is why you only hear about shit like how good and easy its Foundry module support is, or how "encounter building is so easy and just works! In fact it works so well I TPK my players every few months, they don't steamroll my hard work I spent 3 hours building in 2 rounds like in 1e!" personally even if I'm a foreverGM I prefer systems where everybody at the table is actually having fun, so if I want "low prep" I'll play some shit like FATE or Genesys where the PCs are forced to be proactive and involved. Even in PF2E you're still a tard wrangler and it's more work even if combat is a plug and play boardgame
>>93630819>while THEY are the miserable onesUnironically a skill issue
>>93630819just don't use incap on boss enemies or solo encounters thobeing able to instantly lock a creature out of a fight even if it isn't the biggest threat on the field is still valuable.I'd rather have something like that than what we have had to deal with before.
>>93630797who the fuck cares about the strike crit. Crits for martials are just numbers, meanwhile crits for spellcasters actually end encounters.>>93630819incap should be working both ways, paizo fucked up there. Still it definitely exists an innate incap bonus just for players: it's called hero points.
>>93630405What really fucked me up is that Fighter even eats into Flurry Ranger's lunch with stuff line Triple Shot and Multi Shot stance. Like... yeah it takes extra feats to do but you make all three attacks at -2 which is the same as first attack for Ranger, and you don't pay an action tax if your target dies. I was looking into Flurry earlier specifically to exploit some busted guns my GM made but it turns out Fighter exploits them way harder. >>93630797Higher AC raises your crit threshold. It doesn't do anything about your 5% chance to get nat 20'd, but it can drop your chance to be crit from the 10-over threshold by like 20% depending on the creature, and Strikes happen all the time.
>>93630908If you ask a community member whether it's okay to have 1 less AC, they will scream about getting crit. You are going to get crit and die, that's what they want to communicate. From how people talk about Clumsy 1 or whatever, you'd think they're taking double damage.
>>93630846no, even if you're curb stomping APL+3 enemies because a buff-slut bard took a swashbuckler dedication and is handing out an effective +9 to hit to your Starlit Span Magus's nuke spellstrikes that he's also re-rolling with hero points and scrolls of true strike in gloves of storing (+4 from One For All, -1 from Dirge of Doom, -2 from Dread Striker, +2 from Heroism) it's still fucking boring. The fact there's only 4 category of bonus/penalty means there's no "skill" in 2e to begin with. You just go down a checkbox for status bonus, circumstance bonus, status penalty, circumstance penalty, and make sure that between your 4-person party you've got them all covered. It's the most boring shit ever, and any time a new player is told "sorry, you did nothing with that feat/skill/spell/whatever because it's also a status penalty and they don't stack" you can see the light in their eyes die. Especially if they're coming from systems that actually do reward stacking conditions/debilitations/etc via teamwork, like Cortex where you can Complicate Out enemies from a fight without actually doing hit point damage at all. Even 1e let you benefit from somebody being prone, and grappled, and flanked, or fear stacking from shaken to frightened to panicked, instead of just telling people "No, don't do that, it's pointless and will just waste your turn to Feint this guy">DUDE I FOLLOWED THE FLOW CHART AND TICKED ALL 4 BOXES, SO NOW I CRIT THE APL+2 ENEMY IN THIS 5-FOOT HALLWAY SIMULATOR ON A 10+!that's not skill, or at least it's not any form of player skill I'm remotely interested in fosteringg
Is this autist still desperately fighting strawmen? Jesus fuck dude, let it rest.
>>93630998Oh, you're the guy who thinks Aid is broken. I see. It's all coming together.
>>93631088>straw men5-foot-hallway-simulator is unfortunately not a straw man. Hell, Fist of the Ruby Phoenix is literally a shonen battle tournament on a featureless flat arena where you start standing across from each other
>>93631099it's not about being "broken" or whatever, it's about ticking boxes. 2e only has 4 boxes to tick and the biggest circumstance bonus to tick is the +3 from being master/+4 from being legendary. The Envoy in SF2E is worse at giving out circumstance bonuses than anyone throwing a few feats at Aiding attacks
>>93630998You don't just sound like you come from a background a having never played Pathfinder 2e with other people, but you almost sound like you've never even played a tabletop RPG before in your life and had only read rulebooks. I couldn't imagine a more blindly ignorant post that misses the point while simultaneously being entirely off base and fully displaying the skill you actually lack. I genuinely hope for the sake of the people you play with that this is bait.
>>93630998WOW you can have a 50% chance to range spellstrike crit using 6 actions congratulations! It's the boss's turn and it still has 70% of hp!It flies in the magus' face since he's the most dangerous: it pummels the magus down with it's attacks! So unfortunate that the magus focused so much only on attacks, because now he might go down... And even if he doesn't go down, let's see if the magus actually tries to recharge and spellstrike in range of a good ol' fashioned AoO.In what kind of games are you playing, where the encounters just let's you do the "flow chart and boxes"? Are you just fighting zombies? And lol even with zombies if they grab the magus', he might fails his spellstrike
>>93631182I don't think it's a hot take to say that Paizo were overzealous with how much they pruned away conditions and status effects in 2nd edition, especially for a game that's nominally a Tabletop Role-Playing Game and not HeroClix or something. If you think "Being literally paralyzed and unable to move should have an identical effect on your ability to be hit as two dudes standing on either side of you, or one guy feinting with a dagger, or being knocked prone, and none of these should interact in any way with one another" means somebody's "never played a TTRPG before" idk what to tell you. Have you ever had to explain to a new player that despite the bad guy being paralyzed, he's not actually any worse at dodging your Fireball since the only effect it has on defenses is being Off-Guard? Or explain that spending an action to Demoralize him and call him a motherfucker is actually better at making people fail to dodge fireballs than paralysis, since it's a status penalty to all checks and DCs which includes both AC and Saves? I have, and believe me the reaction to people used to playing actual role-playing games is not very positive when told this.
>>93631214>It flies in the magus' face since he's the most dangerous: it pummels the magus down with it's attacks! So unfortunate that the magus focused so much only on attacksThis is a dumb straw man, he could have flied in the magus's face to pummel him whether the magus crit or did literally nothing. He could also fly in and kill the wizard who lost initiative and didn't even get to take a turn yet because he's an int class and caps at expert perception. "the monsters will kill you if you hurt them!!!!!1111!!!!" is not an actual argument. Oh, wow, really? also what are the other 2 people in this 4-man party doing? what if there's john fighterman the guisarme man and a sword and board champion rounding out the magus and bard and they both use reactions to whack him/trip him?>In what kind of games are you playing, ones with more than two party members, for one
>>93631214Strictly speaking, Dirge and the boss being flanked benefit most everyone, and One For All can just be used on someone else. Dirge being up already also frees up the Bard to do whatever thanks to Lingering Composition; their setup is done. Like, yeah. The boss hit the magus. He was gunna hit someone anyway. You just continue benefiting from most of the benefits you already had and thwack him again. If you can Frighten him then maybe the Athletics guy can go for a Trip.
>DOING DAMAGE IS BAD BECAUSE THE MONSTERS WILL TRY TO HIT YOU AND STOP YOU FROM DOING DAMAGE!as opposed to.....what? what the fuck do you think the enemies were gonna do on their turn besides try and eat somebody? even if you have 3 people spamming Slow and Wall of Stone and Synaesthesia, SOMEBODY has to fucking do hit point damage eventually or you'll never win
>>93631280>talk about Dirge setup being done>mention trying to Frighten the target immediately afterI need to stop posting while sleep deprived.
>>93631214>It flies in the magus' face since he's the most dangerousSorry. My name is John Fighterman, and you're not going anywhere, bucko. My buff-slut bard cheerleader and sexy starlit span elf waifu are safe in my strong, masculine, +2 legendary proficiency arms.
>>93631149Hey, I've ran that part of extinction curse. The only 5ft hallways you actually fight in there are the catacombs to the upper right of the image and those are intentionally cramped so ghouls can run in from different sides and paralyze people out of position.The most egregious encounter in there was some super cramped shit in f17 with the cook but it made me realise that these maps are just broad overviews made to fit on a single page and you're just going to be running the room as however big you think it is in practice unless you're some mongoloid that's plugging it into a VTT with no flexibility.
>>93631246Paralyzed enemies can dodge attacks in a ton of RPGs. Your players sound like they'd prefer a game with as few mechanics as possible, because fluff is what matters to them. They probably also complain about the rules for putting a second hand on your sword, am I right?
>>93631331B-But the Bars and Magus are both boys
>>93631364No, the most egregious part is the fucking worse-than-actual-MMORPG-dungeons immersion breaking that happens from everybody gathering around to jerk off and treat wounds in between each encounter when this "dungeon" is a glorified apartment. The entrance to the grand hall is less than a hundred feet away, but of course you can't actually have enemy patrols or people not deaf because that's an automatic TPK especially at such low levels
>>93631270>>93631280NICE! so if something breaks our "flowchart and boxes" we have an answer with John Fighterman or whoever, and if something else bad happens the rogue might help with battle medicine or whatever. The whole 4 party members are cooperating and covering each other's weaknesses! they are playing together with coordination, actual teamplay!The fuck do you want more? how is this not enjoyable? Is the 5% slow crit chance more interesting than actual team cooperation?And if your games are really just the same ripetitive shit with "flowchart and boxes", try to wake up your gm, because the game actually gives the tools to create interesting encounters.
I know it shouldn't bother me until I actually get the full text, but man, all the TXCG leaks I've seen have just been kind of disappointing. I can't be too mad because there's stuff that's still interesting in the context of PF2e as a system (strength based ranged attacks? Neat to have the precedent now, even if Starlit Sentinel is kinda meh due to the hour cooldown hamstringing the whole archetype), but it still feels like the stuff I've seen leaked plays too safe and is too scared of being TOO cool. Spirit Warrior sounded like the coolest thing, and that's just because for the "low" cost of a dedication at 2nd and a feat at 6th I can finally escape the tyranny of needing to pay for two sets of runes if I want unarmed + weapon for style points.
>>93631394Don't worry, this is what John Fighterman looks like.
>>93631417>NICE! so if something breaks our "flowchart and boxes"It's not breaking your flow-chart and boxes at all. You're still casting Heroism or other 10 minute buffs before combat, opening with lingering composition+dirge of doom, and probably using One For All on spellstrikes as often as you can. Dread Striker is an entirely passive buff. >The fuck do you want more? how is this not enjoyable? Did you even read the original post? >>>93630998>The fact there's only 4 category of bonus/penalty means there's no "skill" in 2e to begin with. You just go down a checkbox for status bonus, circumstance bonus, status penalty, circumstance penalty, and make sure that between your 4-person party you've got them all covered. >It's the most boring shit ever, and any time a new player is told "sorry, you did nothing with that feat/skill/spell/whatever because it's also a status penalty and they don't stack" you can see the light in their eyes die. >Especially if they're coming from systems that actually do reward stacking conditions/debilitations/etc via teamwork, like Cortex where you can Complicate Out enemies from a fight without actually doing hit point damage at all. Even 1e let you benefit from somebody being prone, and grappled, and flanked, or fear stacking from shaken to frightened to panicked, instead of just telling people "No, don't do that, it's pointless and will just waste your turn to Feint this guy">Is the 5% slow crit chance more interesting than actual team cooperation?The entire criticism is that the """""team cooperation"""""" in 2e amounts to nothing more than making sure you have all four boxes checked between your party of 4/5. Do you get hard and jerk off to playing an MMO and going "OH MAN WE NEED A MAGE FOR ARCANE INTELLECT AND A DRUID FOR MARK OF THE WILD FUCK YEAHHHHH WE'RE TEAMWORKING SO HARD RIGHT NOW!"?????
>1e is won at character creation>2e is won at party compositionboth are bad in their own way but I vastly prefer the first since it means you don't end up with literal videogame scenarios where somebody wants to be X class but "sorry bro, we already have a tank and dps, need a healer" or "lol no we can't all be clothies, we'll die" I feel the same way about medicine as a mandatory feat and skill tax for whoever draws the short straw. "Well, we don't have focus point heals, so SOMEBODY's gotta be a healer!" is so ass.I can't believe Paizo threw away Healing Surges from 4e just to come up with this shit.
>>93631456
>>93631502I'd like to note you'd still probably fucking die in PF1e if you didn't have a healer, it was just slightly easier to replace a cleric with wands of cure wounds because wands in 1e were "40 casts of a spell which never come back" rather than "1 cast of a spell that recharges daily".Or just play some sort of cracked hyper-caster that's made to entirely nuke combat encounters before the enemy can move but that's neither here nor there.
>>93631542>I'd like to note you'd still probably fucking die in PF1e if you didn't have a healerThere is a world of difference between "We need a healer!" and "okay everybody chip in some gold for a wand/boots of the earth/potions/a literal hireling/whatever"An expectation that PCs will spend some of their money on necessities for doing their job is not a problem in RPGs. if you're playing Shadowrun or Cyberpunk, you're gonna be spending money on guns and ammo. In both 1E and 2E you're expected to spend your stupidly vast quantities of gold on magic weapons and armor, and in 2e they're literally REQUIRED to keep up with the game's fucking base system math. Striking runes in 2e are more of a gold tax than +1/2/3/4/5 magic weapons ever were in 1e, and you won't run into enemies who take literally 80% longer to kill because you didn't immediately return to town and upgrade your +1 longsword to a +2 one in 1e. "we might have to spend some gold on recovery items/consumables" is infinitely more palatable than "WE NEED A HEALER!" fucking MMO shit
>>93631569Eh, in my experience playing PF1e at the start of every game I feel there was at least some discussion of "alright, who's playing a cleric/oracle/druid to be able to heal and bring back the dead" since that shit's important.On the wider money on weapons or armor I'm less in touch on how necessary upgrading magic armor and weapons were in 1e other than the fact that except for crafting requirements there tended to be no explicit level in gear like in 2e, just gold costs(and for everything above like a +1 flaming sword, hilariously ludicrous gold costs. Like hundreds of pounds of gold coins per item. It was fun how silly costs could get in 1e).Other than that I do remember some discussion about the necessity of Cloaks of Resistance, Rings of Protection, Ability Score boosting items, etc, tended to be near requirements which led to the automatic bonus progression optional rules.
>>93631459you are assuming "team coordination" is just those 4 bonus and malus. There's also force positioning (both for enemies and allies), movement boost/denial, action boost/denial, flat checks (concealment/dazzled, blindness/invisibility/hidden, grabs and others I'm forgetting), fortune/misfortune effects... Jesus you just want that +5 to strike and -5 to ac, ignoring the rest of the game and then you blame the game there's no variety of options to teamplay.You know you can end encounters even without striking once? you don't actually need those buffs/debuffs (unless you build your character only for that, but that's on you because it's really easy to be versatile in this game).
>>93631459But that's not what it is at all. Positioning and managing your relative threat vs. durability is a big part of teamwork in 2e.>don't stand too close to my teammate so we get hit by aoes>don't stand too far so they can heal me>don't stand too far from enemies so the wizard is a better target than me>don't stand next to enemies so they can get a full attack on me>push enemies away from your allies so they can spend a full turn attacking instead of having to move>or towards your martials for the same reason>stand in position to flank for the martials if possible (OH MY GOD A CIRCUMSTANCD BONUS NOOOOO ITS BOX CHECKING AAASAAAAAHHHH)Etc. Etc. Etc.
>>93631637>you are assuming "team coordination" is just those 4 bonus and malus.I'm not the one who said that, the other anon did, and I'm explicitly pointing out how retarded it is to pretend checking boxes is """"player skill.""""">>93631417>The fuck do you want more? how is this not enjoyable?>>93631637>You know you can end encounters even without striking once?Yeah, sometimes you use an AoE
>>93631459If you're box-checking then you're fighting too few enemies. It's only possible to check boxes like that on a boss. Try checking all the boxes against 4 PL-0 enemies, it's not going to happen. And that's an Extreme encounter, so you'll REALLY wish you could hit all of them. You'll be ecstatic when that obscure feat comes up.
>>93631708>If you're box-checking then you're fighting too few enemies. It's only possible to check boxes like that on a bossMore like because it's largely impossible to box-check for AoE effects. You can't provide a status or circumstance bonus to Class DC or Spell DC which is what the vast majority of AoE effects utilize, there are almost zero circumstance penalties to saves in the first place, with 99% of save penalties being Status, so against a bunch of enemies you're correct there's not really box checking, it's just "okay dirge of doom (or 3rd level Fear, or whatever else you want to sub in) and fireball/dragons rage breath/eidolons wrath/ki blast/inventor explode/WHATEVERAoE effects have even less interaction, since half the boxes to check literally don't exist, and of the remaining two boxes one *basically* doesn't exist. If you have a powerful AoE that relies on a Will save you can use Bon Mot, but uhhhhhhhh that's basically it. Despite the name, "Flat-Footed" has zero interaction with Reflexes in this game
>>93631682>Yeah, sometimes you use an AoEand that AoE feels way better if your teammates helped to setup. The barbarian can push the enemies close together instead of striking, and the bard could use RK with bardic lore to learn the weak save instead of spamming courageous anthem-one for all or whatever abomination you had cooked in character creation.
>>93631765Right. But the core elements of positioning and threat management still exist. So obviously box checking is NOT the core of the game, the aforementioned two aspects are. Box checking was a shitty minigame they tacked on for big solo boss fights because those fights are really popular and get to ignore a lot of the core game aspects (because there are fewer enemies to manage).Your confusion exists because, like everyone else in this godforsaken fucking community, you've erroneously assumed that the worst-designed, least-balanced part of the game (solo boss encounters) are in fact the most important, core element of the game.
>>93631798>nd the bard could use RK with bardic lore to learn the weak save instead of spamming courageous anthem-one for all or whatever abomination you had cooked in character creation......have you ever played this game, like ever?"spamming courageous anthem" nigger it's a one-action activity, and even for AoEs you'd want him using Dirge to lower everybody's saves. You can't cast it multiple times in one turn, what the fuck are you talking about, do you think the effects stack or something? You're using it once with Lingering Composition at the start of the fight and then forgetting about it..God, is EVERYBODY in this fucking thread a nogames sperg?
>>93630908Multishot Stance is high-level and interferes with Point-Blank Stance. Double Shot and Triple Shot aren't very good before then, either; you're typically better off crit-fishing at high accuracy with the fighter's normal bonus.Personally, I'd recommend using the feats on an archetype of some kind. Sniping Duo, Beastmaster/Cavalier, poaching Hunted Shot off ranger for a free extra Strike sometimes, etc.I don't know what the guns your GM made look like, so that might affect this, but generally speaking Flurry ranger is worse than Precision ranger even on melee builds. The MAP reduction looks and feels really nice, but it ends up being worth less damage overall, especially if you're attacking alongside an animal companion since Precision buffs it far more than Flurry.>>93631708Dirge is an AoE, Dread Striker is passive, Heroism affects all rolls. The only one mentioned that doesn't affect all enemies at once is the Aid spam, but since we're assuming level 15 (since One For All is granting a +4 bonus), the fighter could easily have Whirlwind Strike.Since they're equal-level the bard can also hit them with heightened Calm (hell, even just Slow 6), although this is leaving the realm of "box-ticking" and entering the realm of overall party optimization, which I will say is more complicated than the other anon is selling it.
>>93631833>be dungeons and dragons ripoff written by dragon magazine authors who lost their license to make more dragon stuff>put giant dragon on the cover of the core rulebook>game is advertised with encounter rules as main selling point letting you fight dragons as a main threat>flagship first Adventure Path of the edition is all about fighting an evil dragon god trying to destroy the world and his evil dragon spawn>ACTUALLY THE GAME IS NOT AT ALL ABOUT FIGHTING DRAGONS AND YOU SHOULD NEVER PLAY IT THAT WAY, IT'S ACTUALLY ABOUT SHOUNEN TOURNAMENT ARC AND FIREBALLING A DOZEN GOBLINS WHO ONLY HIT YOU 5% OF THE TIME!riveting takes from /pgg/ as always
>>93631846Anyone shilling pf2e is yeah
>>93631846holy fuck, "spamming" like using it every single time an encounter starts. I meant "using it like a braindead because it's the most broken shit in the game and it allows me to check the status bonus checkbox, instead of assessing the situation my character is in"
>>93631869Not my problem how the game is marketed or whether it lives / dies. You sound like you'd prefer a system with more roleplaying, because the aesthetic aspects are what you tend to focus on.
>>93631869rent free
I haven't kept up with 2e news for about three months now. Could anyone give me a QRD of what's new, what changed, and what's coming up next for Remaster stuff or new Player Guides and shit? A table friend just told me "the next book is gonna have a magical girl archetype", whatever the fuck that means, and I've also been waiting for that supposed Tian Xia Lost Omens book since forever to see if brought along anything cool for spooky youkai adventures.
>>93631954They're not lying about the magical girl archetype.>>93619270
>>93631954Tian Xia World Guide came out months ago and has lore. Tian Xia Character Guide has player shit, is leaking now, and hits street date on the 28th or so. The Magical Girl archetype is cute but kind of disappointing, entire thing is tied to the 10 minute window with an hour cooldown.The Remaster shuffled a few things around but Fighter is still king. Barbarian, Champion, and Rogue all mysteriously got buffed despite already being real good, with Barbarian rapidly becoming genuinely close competition for "top martial". Bard still good, Cleric buffed, Sorcerer buffed, Oracle is completely different (but still bad), Alchemist is Functional(?) now. Swashbuckler got a SHITLOAD of QoL that makes them less of a headache to play and they might be good now. Monk and Ranger barely changed, so they remain boring as fuck.War of Immortals lands in October, main draws are Exemplar and Animist, interested in avenger rogue archetype and the bloodrager barbarian archetype
>>93632015Wow that magical girl archetype actually looks pretty strong.
>>93632125>john fighterman whacks you with his guisarme from 60 feet away, while using his melee attack bonus, and also working with any feat which has Strikes as a subordinate actionfor a single dedication feat it's one of the best archetypes in the game, up there with soulforger and dual weapon warrior and blessed one. The wording might even allow you to use shit like knockdown/improved knockdown at range. It's not a ranged attack, doesn't provoke, and uses your melee bonus and a melee weapon so I'm pretty sure it counts as a "melee strike", while stuff like crashing winds explicitly calls them ranged strikes. But even if knockdown doesn't work, anything that simply requires you wield a specific kind of weapon 100% does work, and there's a lot of feats that don't bother saying "melee strike" since they already specify you need to be using a 2handed weapon or whatever
>>93632015>>93632125SUBSCRIBERS! LEAK THE ENTIRE STARRY SENTINEL! AND MY LIFE! IS YOURS!
>>93632480>from a gnomish paddle ball to a magical girl outfitJohn Fighterman has lived a hard life
>>93632552nah you just go soulforger+starry sentinel and are literally dante. or go for a kamen rider henshin theme
Every motherfucker that asks me for the archetype is gonna have to use a skirt and thigh highs. Also, a transformation theme.
>>93632591>Every motherfucker that asks me for the archetype is gonna have to use a skirt and thigh highs. Also, a transformation theme.sure thing bro. the archetype even makes you choose a zodiac sign to associate with, it's 1000000% Saint Seiya
>>93632631Armor doesn't count.
>>93632666a skirt is a skirt
>>93632680Sandals aren't thigh highs.
>>93632591>skirt and thigh highs.TALLY HO LADS>Also, a transformation theme.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBKBI7DOLHA
>>93632703Ok, that's acceptable.
>>93632703Scottish Magical Girl is a pretty funny gag, not gonna lie
>>93630405>>93630908Ranger should just be a fighter subclass.
>>93632776Fighters have no subclasses, unfortunately.
>>93632576What does soulforger add that isn't 1/day
>>93632899>What does soulforger add that isn't 1/daynormally when you go unconscious you drop your weapons and Weapon Cords are LOST TECHNOLOGY FROM A MORE ADVANCED AGE because Jason Bulmahn personally hates them after he made a fool of himself with them in 1e, if you're a dual wielder and get knocked out it's two actions to pick up your swords and then a third to stand and if you get moved away or an ally rescues you it's even more FUBAR.Soulforger is great for dual wielders because you can simultaneously equip two weapons at once for a single action (already often as good or better than Quick Draw, which doesn't work with Double Slice), plus you're effectively immune to disarms fucking you over, plus you can later manifest them as a free action. Then you also get all the benefits fags claim unarmed attacks give for """"social situations""""" except they're even better and more subtle than actual unarmed attacks, since a fucking Monk's +3 Greater Striking Handwraps with Acid, Fire, and Thundering runes etched will be treated like carrying a goddamn Bazooka into any formal setting and will be immediately confiscated the same way a fighter's flaming greatsword will be, they both also set off magical detection like a goddamn christmas tree with all those magical and elemental effects. Soulforged weapons are in extradimensional storage and can never be lost or confiscated.A Monk thrown in prison without his handwraps is just as useless as a fighter or paladin without his weapons, meanwhile a Soulforger is always armed. It's a niche benefit but given how much losers try to pretend this is a common scenario it's worth pointing out how much monk gets fucking TURBOMOGGEDThen the once per day essence powers are good and you can just use them to trigger weaknesses on demand even as a martial and make all the casters cry. Soul Flare being able to turn misses into hits and hits into misses if a +1 to your attack or AC, retroactively, would help is also decently useful
pf2ebecause it says I can use things with the manipulate trait can I cast spells when under the effects of dragon form?
>>93633492No. Battleforms prevent spellcasting.>Unless otherwise noted, the battle form prevents you from casting spells, speaking, and using most manipulate actions that require hands. (If there's doubt about whether you can use an action, the GM decides.)
>>93632480I agree the feat is poorly written (as other examples, it's not explicit how this interacts with runes like Crushing, or whether the +1 bonus to damage rolls applies, or whether this even counts as an attack with a weapon).But good luck getting a GM who's attempting to interpret the rules seriously to treat an attack that's stated as having a "range of 60 feet" as being melee.
>>93633873>But good luck getting a GM who's attempting to interpret the rules seriously to treat an attack that's stated as having a "range of 60 feet" as being melee.already exists bro
>>93633873Desu having a ranged attack with your melee precision is already insane, trying to make it basically a free one-action Extending rune is just being greedy.
>>93633776thats gay
>>93633776Is there a battleform that especially notes being able to cast spells?
>>93633885>trying to make it basically a free one-action Extending rune is just being greedy.it's already better than that, since it's explicitly a basic Strike, you can use any feat or action that triggers Strikes with that weapon and doesn't specify melee strike which is a lothttps://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4789https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4812https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4832&ArchLevel=14&Redirected=1https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=365&NoRedirect=1it's also obviously good on a thaumaturge who can still trigger all their damage buffs and even implement's empowerment while swinging with a weapon implement from 60 feet
>>93633952>Make a Strike with the required weaponIt's a ranged strike, not a strike with the weapon. If it was just a strike with your weapon but with 60 feet range and a different weapon die, it would be worded like that instead of specifying multiple stuff that would be obvious if that were the case, like it being affected by your runes.
>>93634019>It's a ranged strike, not a strike with the weapon.no, it isn't, and even if it was a ranged strike it doesn't matter since you're still making a strike with that weapon. Even if we use your interpretation, and effects that say "make a melee strike" don't work, anything that just says "make a strike" work fine. You are explicitly allowed to make Strikes with it while in your mahou shoujo form. >REEEEEE POWER CREEPcry me a fuckin' river
>>93634019It is explicitly a "strike with this weapon"
>>93634037>REEEEEEEEEEEEEE STOP DISAGREEING WITH MElollmao, even>>93634047>You can fling bolts of starlight from your weapon with a Strike actionNot a strike with the weapon. It wouldn't have stated obvious shit like weapon runes working if it was.
you can 100% use felling strike with the ranged strikes, it's inarguable idk why people are saying otherwise.
>>93634068I don't think anyone, at least not me, argued against that.It's just not a melee strike or a strike with the weapon, otherwise you'd have 60 feet range Reactive Strikes.
>>93633929I would also like to know the answer to this question
Who cares about Player Core 2 or APs when he can have themes instead.
>>93633929>Is there a battleform that especially notes being able to cast spells?>>93634338>I would also like to know the answer to this question"is there anything nice for casters in 2e, especially an iconic feature like Natural Spell?"lollmaowhat the fuck do you think, seriouslyyou aren't even able to speak with your allies and communicate even in the ones who it makes no sense not to. Angel Form still prevents you from talking, even Avatar doesn't let you speak lol. even Righteous Might stops you from speaking despite it just being an upjumped enlarge person. if you're wanting to use battle forms you have to understand paizo fucking DESPISES you, anon
>>93634642Are you capable of answering the question without sounding like an insufferable faggot?
>>93634699>Are you capable of answering the question without sounding like an insufferable faggot?You're the one asking stupid questions about pf2e spell design when you already know there's no way they'd let you cast spells in a battle form. Be grateful they don't make you roll a skill check to cast while flying.
>>93634748I guess not.
>>93633884Wow anon crazy how that says "reach" and not "range." You sure got me there.>>93634047Why are you using quotation marks when the picrel doesn't include the phrase "strike with this weapon?"
Oh right the Red Mantis adventure came out. Anything good in it? The Red Mantis archetype always seemed a bit undercooked
>>93634877Not really as far as I know
>>93635000ohI heard they got a new magic school and everything but I guess that wasn't enough
>>93630189>Yeah but they've got like zero out of combat utilityWrong. They have access to skills at the same level of any other martial class, athletics is the most versatile skill in the game with some of the best skill feats and you have master rank perception which is complete bullshit because fighterman can now innately have better social insight than a literal psychic and the class who is basically the god police (champion). Just because you arent pulling skill increases out your ass like the rogue doesnt mean you dont have out of combat utility.
You guys bitch like my wife
>>93630251This is the only true answer. PF2 is already a fucking video game with its focus on balance to a ridiculous level where skeletons can die of aids and familiars cant feed people potions even if they have hands. I dont know why Paizo didnt just go all in on the actual pros of being a video game like 4e did. Special boss rules, minions and healing surges would make 2e much better.
>>93635206It's just this one autist who obviously never played in an actual campaign with actual people, and has no idea how people build characters or run encounters outside of his nogames white room theorycraft world. He then keeps dragging in strawmen and makes us watch as he dropkicks the shit out of them.
>>93635206pssssh you don't have a wife.
>>93635213Things I wish PF2e had ripped more or less whole cloth from 4e, instead of the half-assed rip off they actually did>healing surges>monster roles and tiers>utility spells as explicitly out of combat rituals that don't clog up your constrained spell slots you want to fill with combat spells>impactful items with game-changer and build defining abilities>way more focus on positioning through abilities with baked-in movement, more forced movement, etc.>square-based distances and movement, fuck feet, and fuck this awkward calculating of diagonal and burst radius distances>I don't care that my fireball is now a cube, call it firecube, fuck it>stop making me guess whether this dude is within 40 ft. from the center of my burst, and how I have to awkwardly place my pie plate to get everyone inside
>>93635215>nogames Jesus, same song and dance regardless of where you go on /tg/>>93635218Good idea. I'm just going to agree and hope she goes away.
>2eIm thinking of having 12 NPCs follow the party on their exploits. Should I stat them as monsters or player characters a few levels lower?If the second option, how many levels lower for the players to feel they are clearly better than the NPCs but they’re not useless? I would of course have in universe explanation for a limit on how many they can bring with them to battle.
>>93635488What are the NPCs supposed to do? Just be cheerleaders? A general support/supply train? Are they supposed to participate in battle?Personally, I wouldn't stat them at all, at least not the traditional way. Running X additional NPCs with full action complements in combats is going to bog down the action something fierce. If they're supposed to be weaker anyway, you can handwave that they can't face party level encounters properly, and just make them support pieces on the map that don't take full turns. Something like this:>all support NPCs act at the start/end of each round>they get one action to stride 25 ft. or step 5 ft. towards the nearest enemy by the safest route>characters can spend an action to give one or two support NPCs another stride action, to move them where they're needed>enemies next to support NPCs get an equivalent penalty to AC/saves, or take X additional damage per support NPC>NPCs don't have classic HP, they can take 2 instances of damage before going unconscious and have something like level-2 equivalent AC and saves in case they get targeted or stand in a spell
I am really not a fan of how the 2e envoy is stuck draining an action on Get 'Em (and sometimes, sometimes, maybe, a different directive) every round until 13th, and how its personal damage bump almost never scales.I have played a 3rd-level envoy across nine battles by this point. (During Field Test #5, I played a 1st-level envoy across eight fights, and a 5th-level envoy in eighteen combats. The envoy has not changed that much.) The class is set up to almost always burn an action on Get 'Em every turn. Sometimes, sometimes, maybe, a different directive is relevant, such as Take 'Em Alive. Otherwise, it is Get 'Em all the way: and since it is already buffing the envoy's own Strikes, why not toss in a Strike, too?Character level 13th is when an envoy receives Show 'Em What You Got, an all-purpose directive useful in nearly every fight. At character level 14th, an envoy can pick up Ready to Roll to free up an action during their first turn, and at character level 16th, Extend Directive likewise frees up an envoy's action economy. Before 13th, though, it is a long, long stretch of Get 'Em spam. It is not as if an envoy can use class feats to pick up other directives on the same level of overall usefulness as Get 'Em; directive choices are rather limited.The class just does not feel that flexible.I also dislike how the envoy's personal damage bump is only ever half Charisma modifier (i.e. +2) before ~17th level, when an envoy can finally pick up an apex Charisma item and raise their Charisma modifier to +6. Even then, it is only an increase of +1. A low-level envoy feels like a reasonably consistent personal damage dealer thanks to that +2, and I do not think anyone is saying that a low-level envoy is overpowered; would it be so bad if this personal damage bump were to scale somewhat better, like the way a thaumaturge's implement's empowerment scales per base weapon damage die?
>>93635488I'd say stat them as character 1 level lower, but don't bother fill all the skill feats, other feats, or even class feats. Just give them the few feats, features and spells that make them stand out: raging intimidation on a barbarian, or grabbing monk specialist, or plant druid spell spammer (with only plant prepared spells)...This way they are not useless in their niche, but suck in versatility because they're not gonna gonna be good in other stuff.>>93635544this is also a fine solution, maybe a little bit complicated, but definitely better than bog down with 3 more actions (or more if you balance the encounter with more xp budget due the +1 party size).Overall if you have 4 or less players and they are fine with helping controlling the npcs (just ask them), stat them 1level lower otherwise it might slow down combat
>>93635637>maybe a little bit complicatedIt's honestly a lot less complicated in practice than it looks. I've run huge set piece battles with this system, with about a dozen town guards helping the party hold back an orc raid, with more reinforcements filtering in over time, and despite all the extra bodies on the field, the encounter ran smoothly. Automating NPC decision-making and cutting out rolls for them entirely means you can resolve their turn in about a minute or two tops.
Anyone got a link to txpg leaks? Or the scrubbed PDF?I'm trying to see what the deal is with this elemental alchemy.
>>93635659rereading maybe you're right.. it sounds like a mix of a complex hazard and "command a minion". In your experience you feel you have to adjust encounters budget with ur method?
>>93635700>In your experience you feel you have to adjust encounters budget with ur method?Definitely, though how much depends on how impactful you make your support pieces. In the above example, I've let each adjacent town guard lower an enemy's AC and Reflex by 1, and increase all damage they take by 2, and I threw about two severe encounters' worth of enemies at the party, let them take a ten minute break, and then sent another two at them. It worked out tense, but the additional and more reliable output meant they could chew through more enemies before they became a problem.
>>93635676No, you impatient nigger. You would know if we did because it would also be in the share thread.
>>93635553What kind of character are you playing your Envoy as? Is your GM running the Paizo Playtest stuff or are you guys doing a homebrew campaign?
I dont understand how https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1452&Redirected=1 worksits supposed to be the new spell that replaces blade barrier but it just seems more clunky and weirdly worded? how am I supposed to use this effectively?
what are some ways to teleport only an object far distances in 2e? other than the spell teleport
>>93636001It appears you create a spherical force field, and everyone who is in one of the outermost squares is affected by it and makes a save. Why they chose to make it a clunky circle you have to awkwardly resize and reposition for maximum enemy coverage, as opposed to a fucking wall you can shape however you want, is not a question I can answer, but that appears to be the case.
>>93636026okay I see. I was afraid that was going to be the explanation but I understand. thanks for the help. guess I will just ask DM if I can use blade barrier instead
>>93635469>Good idea. I'm just going to agree and hope she goes away.You just have to wake up bro.
>>93635913We have been running homebrew adventures. Here is our outline:https://docs.google.com/document/d/196qPZKPwtGQrw8kTtPlS8d8JGID4Y0CftrWLPwgdH-g/editI have played the 3rd-level adventure twice, controlling different parties.
>>93630819>unlike 5e, where the 4 players are having funPaid opinion, discarded
>>93635637>>93635544Thanks for the answers. The NPCs have some relevance to the campaign is why the party picked each of them up and just lost their base of operations and are on the run. I’ll go with that custom supportive thing, because it seems a good way to justify taking them but only really “needing” to take 1 to 3 in combat. It also means I can do things specific to the NPC that may not be covered by classes.
>>93636087>tranny>redditor Jesus H Christ. Things have changed. Could you kids dab in the direction of a an alternative thread that... You know what? I'll just play Lancer.
>>93636523He actually got banned from the PF2e subreddit for asking why the HRT potion didn't have a save so he's likely just autistic.
>>93635553Also, Get 'Em being a circumstance penalty is very annoying when it does not stack with off-guard. At one point in our games, the solarian was flanking and missed by 1: and would have hit if Get 'Em was an untyped penalty instead.Get 'Em is not so strong and math-breaking that it absolutely must be a circumstance penalty, I think.
>>93636559It is a very stupid question to ask, because the answer is pretty obvious: the designers didn't assume people would use the item that's solely for roleplaying somebody on HRT(I guess for the same reason combat wheelchairs exist) to poison people.
>>93636523>Things have changed.nothing's changed you stupid fucking newfagthat guy's been here longer than you've been alive
>>93636683Obviously, but my point is that he's clearly just super mechanics minded. Otherwise he wouldn't have had the forum sperging out about estrogen burger dogwhistles by asking an question as innocuous as >why doesn't this potion have a save in the off chance someone sneaks it into something?
>>93636683Then the designers are retards that should of known half its audience are still edgelords and degen furries. I don't particularly care about trannies but what annoys me is this item is in the book purely to virtue signal and took up space for some other elixir that could of provided some kind of mechanical benefit. Why would anyone want to RP going through HRT? I thought that crowd just wanted to be treated as the gender they think they are, why are we romanticising the concept of being trans?
>>93636849>Why would anyone want to RP going through HRT? I thought that crowd just wanted to be treated as the gender they think they are, why are we romanticising the concept of being trans?Because it isn't enough to go through their challenges by themselves, they need to have others take part in it as well.
>>93636849Some people are more interested in playing what they are in real life than playing an idealized version of themselves, something like that.
>>93636849>why are we romanticising the concept of being trans?because they're deranged fetishists
>>93636849Because being a tranny is about attention. Even more than being a woman, they want the special status that comes with being part of the privileged, protected class of "tranny". So naturally, playing a "mere" woman is a massive step down, because now they're just normal again, hence the elixir.
>>93636959Shitty fetish really, go the full way with domination spells and girdles of the opposite gender.
>>93636775Zer isn't gonna fuck you, bro
>>93635553>>93636628Commander ate Envoy's lunch and then left nothing but scraps, it's funny how we will now have Thaumaturge as a Cha class that does Int's job better than it, and now Commander is an Int class that does the concept wildly better than the Cha Envoy."Personal damage boost" was a fucking mistake and Envoy has like 1/5th the number of directives it needs, and the ones it has besides maybe that level 13 one are all kind of dog-ass. Maybe I'm just salty because I wanted the option to be a pure support space idol with the perform subclass, that could get away with not shooting a gun outside of emergencies, but I guess that wasn't possible in SF1e so fuck me in SF2e.
>>93637875I earnestly agree with the sentiment that the commander cannibalized a good chunk of the envoy's potential design space.
>>93636559Wait he got banned from the 2e sub? That’s a shame, it was always very fun to see people’s responses to his posts.
>>93636559>likelyHe’s mentioned in posts on his profile that he is severely autistic.
>>93638202>look up the reddit profile out of curiosity>it's fucking EdnaHoly shit, I actually remember that name from playing 4e years and years ago. I have no positive associations with it, either.
>>93638124The fact that PF2e and SF2e are going to be fully compatible is probably going to lead to a lot of weirdness where classes in one or the other system are kind of going to each eachother's lunches.Unless Mechanic turns out to be *awful* or explicitly interacting with things only with the Tech tag I could definitely see it functionally replacing Inventor in PF2e.
>>93638351Considering Inventor in its current form is a constant uphill struggle to accomplish very basic things even just semi-competently, I wouldn't be surprised.
>>93638351Well, they seem to be remastering Guns & Gears like the rest instead of just doing an errata update, so maybe it won't be complete ass.
>>93638417If nothing else, the remaster has served a couple classes really well, and Inventor in particular has nowhere to go but up. So it can't really get any worse.
>>93638444Yeah, even if they pull an oracle and completely change the mechanical flavor of the class, it's still a net positive because it would be a step above diet barbarian.
>>93638351Fighter with Inventor dedication so you can nab scaling Crafting practically replaces Inventor as-is. A Powersuit with the Heavy Construction modification is just a suit of Gray Maiden Plate that can offer you a +1 circumstance bonus to Athletics if you spend an action and pass the check for Overdrive. The more I compare the two, I think the only thing Inventor is sorta good at is stacking flat damage on strikes. You get +1 to Overdrive for every rank of crafting beyond Trained, you get a bonus d6 if you're smacking something with your innovation, plus INT mod. Let's say it's level 9 and you're 18 STR/18 INT>+4 from STR>+5 or +7 from Overdrive>+2 from weapon spec >+1d6 from Offensive Boost That's 12-19 damage just kind of slapped on top of your strike. You can even tack on a little extra by going Marshal and picking up Dread Marshal which isn't a bad little piece of utility now that it can be AssurancedThe problem is that Inventor is >an 8 HP class, and does not really want to be hit even in a power suit>MAD as fuck >has an action tax that isn't even 80% reliable until lategame and never 100%>has absolutely no action compression on top of said tax>has a list of neat abilities that worsen its action economy issues and compete with each other>no ability to negate MAP or boost accuracy If you manage a crit you're seriously going to fuck up someone's day but good luck doing that with any reliability. You're going to crit less often than even other martials due to your key stat and are a level of profeciency behind Fighter. You can't even be all that flexible tactically because it's hard to find the points for WIS and your Perception scaling is the worst in the game. All this might almost be worth it if Inventor was the Gadget version of Alchemist and could be a vending machine for their buddies, but even the diet version of that costs class feats.
Is pf2e actually more fun with free archetype rules? Redditors seem to think it is, which makes me assume otherwise.
I'm still on the fence with my Mirror Thaumaturge with a Marshal FA. I'm torn between weapon and regalia, and if weapon, if I ought to get access to a Flickmace instead of just using an asp coil. I've got my eyes set on a Hooking Rune regardless. I'd appreciate any and all advice, especially with people that have tried any elements of the theoretical build before.
>>93638731More feats are only not fun if you're a brainlet.
>>93638731I don't run it as full free access, I either have my players run by their specific concept for me to okay it or give a few generic options for people who don't care.Multiclass dedications are free game
>>93638731Unless you play with the kind of optimal build chasing faggots some of the people in these threads are, it is more fun. More than a couple classes have their base feat pool strained with things that just allow them to do their job/one thing reasonably well, to the point where accommodating an archetype and its feats is just not feasible. And even then, there's several archetypes that offer decent/fun options that just always miss the line to "good enough to actually take". Free archetype solves both these issues by giving you the option to take an archetype that rounds out your character, adds some flexibility, or gives you more fun abilities to use at no cost to your baseline functionality.I've mostly played with free archetype, and both building and playing is more fun with it. You may have to add a monster on the DM side, depending on what your players do with their free feats, but most of the time that's not really necessary, especially since remaster fixed some of the more egregious one feat dips.
>>93638731Depends on what you want out of the game, I think it increases fun and lets players actually ever interact with archetypes instead of only their mandatory class feats, but also increases the likelihood you want to kill whoever designs archetypes, because so many feel like incomplete shit and Dedication feats locking you out of other archetypes result in situations where you end up with some useless dogshit you don't want just to fill a feat slot. Houserules can fix that, but I didn't give 1e a pass for that shit so why would I give 2e a pass?
>>93638731If you're going to play a build autism game you might as well go full build autism. My group played through the first half of our first AP without FA then tried it and haven't gone back. It enables a lot of wacky builds. My current character is an Investigator/Medic/Wizard/Halcyon Speaker/Cleric/Eldritch Archer. That kind of tomfoolery just isn't doable with ten class feats.The game works fine without FA, by the way. There's nothing saying you have to use it, but I'm definitely a vote in favor.
>>93635553Envoy is the most clear and obvious instance of Paizo being shackled by 2e class design and "muh balance" when making Starfinder classes, compare it to Bard in terms of utility and it's just night and day.
>>93638731I like it just because the Archetypes offer you a lot of options for character flavor. Some shit gets a little wacky, like Beastmaster just being the best way to get a companion, period, but it also opens you up to do odd combos of multiple Archetypes, bridge level gaps that a lot of the Archetypes have, or just get some cool fluff abilities that let your dude stand out in roleplay without dumping your power level. The only 'losers' in FA are the classes that had a bad class chassis to start with but even they get a boost. They just don't open up as many options as some of the others.
>>93638731free archetype should be standard no one is giving up class feats for dedications unless they're really good
Any word on Season Of Ghosts pf2e foundry module zips on any of the troves?
>>93639064vtt trove got moved but its the
>>93639153Any chance for a link to the new location? Sticky is old
>>93638731Speaking of Free Archetypes, what's a good one for a pure casting cleric with high charisma?
>>93640243Another casting archetype. Depends on what spellcasting you want out of it.
>>93640243Medic is always good assuming you’re the party healer. Otherwise Druid if you want double up on Wis casting or Sorcerer/Bard if you want to double up on Cha casting.
>>93640243Imperial bloodline sorc, pick up the first bloodline spell so you can make your spells land more. Or bard for anthem.
>>93638906I'd take multiple dedications on Summoner no problem, and Summoner actually has good class feats. If you're a wizard or something wtf is the point of staying in-class?
>>93640493I'd say there are fewer classes like summoner, wizard and magus than there are like them.
>>93640243bard is the best casting archetype in the game unless you'll never reach 8th level
I am currently running into a scenario wherein a Starfinder 2e solarian is fighting a vampire (yes, there is one in the playtest), and between their photon-attuned solar weapon and their off-hand bone scepter, the solarian is more effective using the latter. Rather silly how a sunlight blade is less effective at hitting a vampire than an undeathly femur.This is coming not too long after the solarian was having trouble with umbral echoes, because the solar weapon likewise has no capacity to trigger Light Vulnerability.
>>93641152I mean, if the sunlight blade is TRUE sunlight than 3 consecutive hits from it should insta-kill the vampire as each exposure adds 1 to their slowed value.That does raise the question of how the fuck vampires and werewolves function in space though. Vampires probably need to be completely enclosed at all times when within a vacuum unless they're SUPER far away from a star.Meanwhile Werewolves just... um... yeah moon phases only really exist planetside don't they?
>>93638351Operative is just better Gunslinger. Bard and Guardian are just better Envoy. Literally anything would be better than Inventor
>>93630215>you don't only have a 20% chance of Heroism or Heal workingYou in fact have only a 5-10% chance for Heroism to work, per check, for the next 10 minutes. Or 10-20% for 6th rank, and 15-30% for 9th rank. It's the number of rolls that it applies to which saves the spell's value. It lasts long enough to be used out of combat and still buff the character for the whole fight at no cost to actions.
I have txcg but how do I scrub my name from it?
>>93643318I'm surprised nobody has told you how. Last time I donated .pdfs I gave them to the cleaner in the share thread. After it comes back to you, you can do whatever you'd like with it. I'd recommend donating it to "/filerequest/sobgcm8zCMs" because he's a good guy, but really you should only do what you're comfortable with.
You deftly scale the Monastery walls and infiltrate the garden sanctuary within. You swiftly dive behind a tree in response to a nearby noise; A trio of young novice girls lay on the ground before you, exhausted from a day of training and sparring. They are on their backs, panting, and giggling, while doing stretches. They playfully tangle their unshod feet with each other's; one girl's foot linked with another's, demonstrating their innocence, skinship and sisterhood.They stand in the way of your quarry within the Temple's inner sanctum.What is your next course of action?
How is PF2 balanced if the AC of level 1 characters can differ by 14 points?
>>93644485Fireball
>>93644485Recall Knowledge. What manner of beast is this?
>>93644627That sounds like an extremely autistic and improbable set up that is irrelevant for 99.99% of tables.
>>93644627Shields don't count.
>>93644699That's still an 11 point difference. An attack that misses the Dragonblooded Monk will crit (and most likely kill) the Poppet Wizard.
>>93644706Wizards are trained in Unarmored, so a -1 DEX Poppet Wizard would still have 12 AC. The lowest you can get is 10, by wearing untrained light armor with a +1 item bonus.
>>93644733And the Monk can get AC 21 by using Rain of Embers Stance.
>>93644485>rolls to seduce the tree
>>93644744Stances don't count either. Realistically, the wizard should have 12 AC - you can't balance around players who intentionally harm themselves. You might as well ask how the game is balanced if the Fighter can one-shot his wizard ally.
>>93644760>Wizards and Ancestries with Dex penalties don't count, either, as that's also players harming themselves.
>>93644793Those are realistic choices to make. What's the reason why your player is wearing light armor that lowers their AC over wearing nothing?Anyways if you want to include in-combat actions and decisions that actively harm you, don't forget you can drop prone in combat.
>>93644754This Leshy is looking to be a tree climber I see.
>>93644485Roll deception to pose as a wandering shoe salesman. Can I get a circumstance bonus to my check for my lie being so reasonable, because there's an obvious demand for footwear here that a canny merchant would naturally want to exploit?
>>93644485Rape
Wait, sorcerers can no longer poach other bloodline focus spells?doesn't that just make anything thats not imperial plain out worse?
What's the best cantrip for Eldritch Shot? Live Wire?
>>93644485>toss a coin to the far side of the room>all three girls immediately stand up and walk over to investigate>knock them all out and steal one of their outfits to impersonate her despite looking nothing like her
>>93645176The Temple is a no shoes zone
>>93645576Live Wire or Gouging Claw. The persistent damage will help keep your dpr up on turns where you have to move or do something other than eldritch shot again
pf2Im level 5 monk (high str, dex, wis), that just few sessions, before were a cleric and part of his character is to get back to being a cleric. I build him to be around stances and unarmed attacks, and now MG gave us ability to get extra class feat.I was thinking of unlocking QI and maybe in future unlock QI blast for some aoe. We don't seem to starve for dmg as a group so it's mostly for just be able to hit more than one target.Other than that I was thinking of taking archetype. What would be a good and flavorful, for someone cleric wannabe. Is cleric a good archetype? Are there any other that could be good?
>>93645941monk's tankiness comes from just being a monk (and/or a scalie), you could pick up a champion dedication to eventually grab the reaction.Qi spells that require saves are....there i guess however there are some older archetypes that go more into them (students of perfection, jalmeri heavenseeker which deals with electric damage so would be fitting a lightning related god)spellcasting archetypes lag for quite a while and even on top end are more about some buffing/utility over damaging effects. Cleric has some half decent stuff just that a lot of them deal with manipulating Heal spells for which you don't have that much "ammo"Oracle is also an option from divine related archetypes and could fit in well thematically if you'd treat the cursebound as "penance"
>>93645941Take Harmonize self if you haven't already. It's decent healing and basically allows you to nullify and poison or disease you might acquire over the course of your character's career
>>93645576Either Live Wire or Imaginary Weapon (amped)
>>93647335Wait, can you use touch cantrips with Spellsling?NTA but I always figured you had to be in range of the weapon and the base cantrip
>>93647382You're imbuing it into the weapon/ammo, not casting it simultaneously as you make a strike. That's why Gouging Claw is also usable.
>>93647454Huh. Well the more you know. Thanks anon.
>>93645941Spellcaster dedications are universally busted as hell because you can learn shit like Shield to free up your hands and then you get access to the full fucking spell list which means you can now FOREVER cast spells from scrolls. Scrolls are really cheap and insanely powerful compared to the typical consumable and they do all sorts of crazy shit. Especially as a Monk with two free hands, just the dedication turns you into a pretty strong caster. Even if you take the Expert+Master feats, you're only ever going to be about as good at actually hitting your spells as a Magus but that's still fine. And obviously there are tons of great buff spells and healing spells that don't need proficiency at all, especially on the Divine list.
Speaking of dedications - the consensus before seemed to be that free archetype is good because the majority of classes can't/don't want to give up class feats for an archetype.Are there classes where that's not the case, or where going into a particular archetype is so good, it actually eclipses the class feats on offer? The only case where I myself have done it is with staff acrobat on monk, because the feats and stance in the archetype are actually just really good and generally on par with what the class offers. Are there other cases? Or is it all just niche builds at best?
Is Major Striking worth it? Getting from x3 to x4 is nice, but not as significant as the previous increases and it's far more expensive compared to the +3 potency compared to Greater Striking. That 30k is a significant part of your wealth at that level and could buy some nice property (runes).
>>93648321I've seen people go for 10+ levels of Magus with only a single class feat.
>>93648321I don't know how it is with the remaster but before it, champions basically always took some kind of dedication at 2nd, masrshal being pretty popular because all the feats there were dogshit and their first level ones weren't great either.Otherwise, wrestler was ever a solid option for non-fighters investing in strength and athletics.
>>93648376Are Magus feats that shit? Or are some archetypes just that good for it?
>>93648420They're pretty shit. The one feat taken was for an extra focus point.
>>93645517That was...never a thing.If you are talking about the Crossblooded Evolution nerf, that still only allowed you to get spells from other traditions, not other focus spells. But Sorcerers never had a feat that let them have two different bloodlines or bloodline focus spells.Paizo is a little odd when it comes to which casters can multiclass in on themselves. There's no consistency, Bards, Psychics, and Druids can do so while Witches, Wizards, and Sorcerers can't (and technically Clerics but there is only one feat that demands you being a Warpriest).
>>93648321With the remaster, champion and cleric and even witch now want their class feats.Magus is the obvious one that basically never wants their feats.>>93648420Go look them up. Keep in mind reading them that the biggest focus of a magus is using their weapons around spellstrike and buffs. That means they can always pick a dedication that buffs them when using said weapon. Mauler with Inorexable Iron, Bastion with Sparkling Targee, Archer with Starlight Span.Hell, I've seen a Laughing Shadow pick Rogue and Eldritch Archer for eldritch shot options before I saw him pick any class feat.
>>93648420I love Magus but A) they are pretty shit outside of a few standout cases or basically mandatory to complete your subclass (read: Twisting Tree or Sparkling Targe) and B) the way Magus is designed incentivizes you to find ways to specialize on either their martial or caster abilities, which the feats don't do. Archetypes fill in a lot of gaps and makes the class much smoother to pilot when you have something like Fire Ray, Amped Ignition, or Imaginary Weapon on your side.Class Feat design always feel weirdly phoned-in, they can never decide how important they should be. It isn't a position I particularly envy, but sometimes Paizo just does not put in the care on how much they should emphasize feats as means to customize your character and just go back on the 1e design of "lol funny knacks, should have archetyped dumbass".
>>93648420The only class feats I've ever looked at before level 16 that weren't subclass feats were >Force Fang For the guaranteed damage that recharges your spellstrike >Expansive Spellstrike When I'm looking for a certain theme or want to use Draw the Lightning>Fuse StaffWhen you'd want to play Inexorable Iron and can't really use Spellstriker Staff>Arcane ShroudBefore it got nerfed into garbage.
>>93648503>Class Feat design always feel weirdly phoned-in, they can never decide how important they should beI can agree with that. It's always a weird mix of features that feel like they shouldn't be a feat, but rather baked into the basic feature, are all but mandatory to perform as the chosen subclass, or are weird flavor choices that basically do nothing of value, or only lead into something of value 10 levels later, but you gotta commit now and suffer the wasted feat slot that could've been spent on something that's useful now and not in two years.Ideally, classes should bring all the basic functionality, and feats then serve as either further specialization into one thing, or branching out into another at the expense of raw power in either.
>>93648566>feats then serve as either further specialization into one thingI think those would enter the “should be baked into the basic feature” very easily.
>>93648587I meant it more in the doubling down sense. I think there's definitely design space for "you like this particular aspect of the class? Here's some tools to really go nuts with it" when it comes to feats. Adding on, improving, or expanding individual features into the main thing, where they might otherwise be just kind of one aspect. Like, I could see a world where a series of feats exist for Inventor that really focuses on Overdrive. Increasing its bonuses, adding more bonuses or abilities, making it more reliable, or making the fail state into a feature unto itself, like maybe you explode when you fail on overdrive, and deal some relevant damage to enemies near you, and it also doesn't go on cooldown for a minute. Stuff like that, that really allows you to go deep on one feature over the others.
is pathfinder a good system if I wanted to rub like a NOT-League of Legends like setting?
>>93648321Fighter with Beastmaster is sorta just better at Ranger's thing than a Ranger with an animal companion. You lose out on outdoor survival and tracking feats but those are so campaign dependant it often doesn't matter.
>>93648321I feel like every caster can comfortably take archetypes because the core spellcaster chassis is so reliably powerful. Martials need to pick up feats to do things like move and attack, or double slice. But casters can just buy scrolls - the spells already have all the feat-power baked into them.
PF2eIs Alchemist (Chirugeon) a good class? I want to heal everyone.
>>93648616>like maybe you explode when you fail on overdrive, and deal some relevant damage to enemies near you, and it also doesn't go on cooldown for a minute.Shit, if it worked like that out of the box it would go a long way to fixing the class. It would make crit failing Unstables feel less punishing too, although you run into a sorta funky deal where no one ever wants to stand next to you, but Explode already does that.
>>93648871Runeterra's a pretty basic fantasy setting outside of the few unique oddities (Yordles, Hextech, Shadow Isles being the ghost zone but actually around in the mortal plane) and honestly it rips off more from Golarion than you think (makes me wonder why they did a crossover with D&D and not Pathfinder), so it's completely doable. Some stuff like gods, races, and where the tech stuff is will naturally be adjusted for such but Pathfinder gives you plenty of wiggle room to build whatever fantasy setting you can imagine.>>93648940It's pretty good at that. The recent buffs gives you plenty of ranged healing powers, you still get INT-to-Medicine from previous errata, you still have plenty of tools to support the team. You might feel a little squished out if you have any other magical healer thanks to how much they save on action economy or get much more powerful heals faster, but as impactful healing is in 2e, the diminishing returns are real and Alchemist is still a good force multiplier that can now go all day.Just don't think you need to go all in on healing (Alchemist is meant to be more flexible and built wide than tall from Day 1) and you should be good.
>>93648871>League of Legends>continents are, from largest to smallest>Wuxia>Western Fantasy>Fantasy Brown people as envisioned by California Whites, also the giant pit into R'lyeh>Steampunk>God of War but with the whole constellations thing>Steampunkland>Pirates n' Ghosts>Smurfs with furBoth Golarion and Runeterra are kitchen sink settings designed to appeal to everyone. However, Runeterra is based on focus group results and DEI.The system has nothing to do with it. The setting is everything you hate but 50 times worse.
>>93648871no, since every single caster in runeterra isn't railroaded into playing Support when you queue for league of legends matches. Actually threatening mages are supposed to exist as a foundational element of the setting
>>93649326Could just play 1e to get that experience.
Is there anything like a player handout/cheatsheet/table guide for Starfinder 1e?
2eWhy can my thaum use an actual weapon as a weapon implement but not an actual magic wand as a wand implement
>>93650391die casterpuke die we don't want you here LEAVE NOW
>>93650391What exactly forbids you from using a magic wand as a wand implement?
>>93648587>>93648616I still fully believe that way class feats are implemented and so aggressively tiered on top of the state archetypes exist in, makes things pointlessly frustrating for little to no gain. There are also so many class feats that baffle me as to why they don't just bake it into the class itself, or into a subclass. Why present the false equivalence of something like "would you like any feat other than the one that gives your champion more reactions?" or "would you like diverse lore or would you like useless shit that will never come up on your thaumaturge?", or worse yet "any magus feat has the same value as any other class feat".Paizo seems so focused on making sure they could say you're making a choice every level they forgot to make sure the choices actually felt equal or interesting and not just like idiot filters a lot of the time.
>>93650440Agreed. I mean I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to accidentally creating a "meta". That'll happen no matter how well you try to balance, some feats will just be the best pick at a particular level, I get that. But some stuff is just egregious--like Divine Reflexes, which you mentioned. Or the new Person of Interest feat for Investigators. They had to know that that was a must-have, the class needs it to function. It would've been so easy to just make it a level 1 class feature. Then they do weird stuff like bake Dangerous Sorcery into sorcerer in their remaster--which is great, I agree with that--but how the hell is Dangerous Sorcery more necessary for sorcerer than Devise a Stratagem is for investigator? Like where's the bar here?This is true of every game to some extent but there's a good number of picks here where it's like "how could they have possibly thought anyone would pick anything else?
>>93650440>>93650518That's the thing, they clearly know what works, but then just don't apply it where they should. Auto scaling skill proficiencies is brilliant, every class that needs a certain skill to function should get it. Wizards should get auto scaling Arcana, for example, to open up skill choice. Dangerous Sorcery is built into their class, why isn't Cackle built into the Witch? Reactive Strike also shouldn't be a choice. You either get it or some equivalent at a certain level, or you don't. I would even bake it into the dedications. Once you take X amount of archetype feats you gain access to this class's reaction.
>>93624185PF2EIm drafting up this funny gimmick boss fight and I need some second opinionsThe main "gimmick" of this fight is it's going to be against one very intimidating PL+4 swordfighter (basing him Hannis Drelev's stat block) with a slightly higher AC and saves for his level.The gimmick is he's a tiny creature, and he has only 10 hit points. He has a skill that causes all successful saves to be crit successes, and can use a reaction when he crit fails to reroll.So the gimmick of course, is that he looks intimidating, but the moment anyone manages to land a hit on him or actually make him fail a save, he keels over and dies instantly.Good encounter? Y/N?idk if there's anything I could do to make it more interesting. The fear is of course that one player will just nat 20 on their very first turn and immediately kill him.
>>93650745Maybe revealing how many hit points he has in advance would be funnier.
>>93650745>PL+4 with higher AC and saves for his level>saves to crit successes, reaction to reroll crit failHe'll be untouchable unless there's a souped up fighter in the party.Consider giving him resistances and/or regeneration instead, a good crit still can one hit him.
>>93650745I don't see a problem with nat 20 on turn 1, that's the funniest possible result.
>>93650745Force Barrage would instantly put him in the dirt.
>>93650790his AC is only slightly higher, I checked and the highest to hit in the party will still hit him on an 18 or higher roll. Goal is I want him to be almost untouchable but the moment he is touched he diesAlso I did make his fort save kinda shit. One because none of the spellcasters have fort spells but also it's funny >>93650813true>>93650817I have perceived this outcome, one of the casters has it but he rarely uses it. Would also be funny though
>>93650745It's him.
>>93650894what if the players just run away after missing on a 16
>>93651070That's why his HP should be announced in advance.
Starfinder 2e's guns feel awkward not just because they are swingy, luck-dependent, and pea-shooter-like at the low levels, but because the cover and object rules still treat them as bows and crossbows.Setting aside the issue of low-level gun damage, the cover rules still assume that guns work just like bows and crossbows. A character who wants to shoot around a corner without incurring cover on their own attacks can do so only if the GM specifically allows it; and even then, it "usually takes an action to set up." This might make sense for bows and crossbows, but is a real stretch for guns.https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2374The object rules, likewise, handle guns poorly. Suppose the PCs have gotten into a firefight in a rural area, where there are still wooden walls. Can the PCs shoot through the wooden walls? It is unlikely when said wooden walls have Hardness 10, Hit Points 40, and Break Threshold 20. In fact, a baseline missile launcher firing at a wooden wall will deal only 1d8 damage and 1 splash damage: nowhere near enough to scratch that Hardness 10, let alone blow a hole in the wall.https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=3189There could stand to be rules on how guns slightly change the cover and object rules.
>>93651112so are they somehow worse than the guns and gears guns
>>93651102that makes no fucking sense and ruins the joke why on earth would he do thatif they run, they run, their choice
>>93651173Because then they'll keep gambling for the hit to the end.
>>93650894Makes sense for the low fort. Definitely describe him as frail looking, even for his size. If they ask his HP, just say he's at death's door and let them figure it out. Sounds like the fight could be interesting, but I would give him enough HP so a single force barrage doesn't take him out.
>>93651070my players definitely wouldn't and the setup for it is a "this is a progression boss"it's a dungeon crawl and he's basically the boss at the end of the floor
>>93651166Worse than standard PF weapons seems to be a recurring theme with the SF stuff. Guns aren't on painglaive's level of sheer why does this thing even exist but they really don't stack up all that well. And the longbow fetish is still definitely on display.
>>93650623>Reactive Strike also shouldn't be a choice.i tried so hard to get the idiots on the Paizo forums to understand this. Obviously I'm the idiot for thinking they wouldn't have the most retard takes about simple concepts like any martial wanting just a little of what Fighters get that makes them a serious threat from Level 1 into forever.I hard agree with this. Reactive Strike should NOT be a class feat for anyone. It should be gained when a martial gets their Level 5 proficiency bump.
>>93653160My group just houseruled it that everybody who has one of those just gets it as a bonus feat whenever they'd normally be eligible for it but I like that better.
>>93653160As a gm I'd be cool with it so long as I get to give it to every melee mook, every dog, cat, owlbear, everything that isn't explicitly a caster.We can retvrn to tradition. Of games.
>>93653379>I get to give it to every melee mook, every dog, cat, owlbear, everything that isn't explicitly a casterWhy would you need to give it when that is basically already the case?
>>93653391It's not.
>>93653402Maybe, but it is common enough that it would be just confirming the rule.
>>93653402I haven't gone through and exported the Nethys creature database and parsed the numbers here but purely anecdotally, once you hit about level six (around the time PCs get Reactive Strike), basically everything that you really wouldn't want to use Reactive Strike on your has it. Like, casters and ranged characters don't, but they wouldn't be using it even if they had it. Meanwhile basically every big beefy monster with reach or fighter NPC with a sword's got it. In practice, the AoO situation in 2E isn't really much different than it was in 1E, except some PCs have to go through the extra step of buying it with class feats now.I'm definitely in the camp of people who wouldn't mind if Reactive Strike went back to being universal (or if it and its equivalents like Disrupt Prey and Stand Still became baked-in class features). Everybody who can take it or an equivalent does so, so it's not like it provides much build variety, and enemies that would benefit from it tend to have it anyway.
>>93650745>Good encounter? Y/N?Depends. As far as being an actual, fun encounter goes, it's pretty shit. As a pure fakeout/joke, it's pretty good. Which is it supposed to be?
>>93653748There are 400/1268 monsters in AoN with reactive strike that aren't uncommon or above, since a good chunk of these are bosses for APs or PFS. 600 if you count uncommon.430/1150 if you only count monsters from the three bestiaries and monster core.It's not really that common, considering most of the time you're fighting groups of the same monster.
>>93653817>400/1268One third, which if we assume that there is about the same amount of caster/support and ranged type enemies as there is melee enemies, it means that about all melee enemies have reactive strike...
>>93653748Just did a quick check using aon search for creature_ability:"reactive strike OR creature_ability:"attack of opportunity", limited to common and uncommon.It's 212 out of 1859.I guess you're just really unlucky or have a GM who cherry picks certain monsters. And so is everyone else who shares your perspective.
>>93653831>which if we assume that there is about the same amount of caster/support and ranged type enemies as there is melee enemiesThat would be incorrect, actually, the majority are melee only.
>>93653748Reactive strikes are in a bit of a weird place. I actually prefer only dedicated roadblocks or frontliner types to have it, because I like the mobility in 2e fights. Getting to weave through enemies does a lot to make combat feel less like the bogged down 5 ft. step and full attack fiesta that 1e was. If reactive strikes were to become universal again, they'd also have to add non-provoking movement options to all frontliner and skirmisher classes, or we're back to everyone just shuffling slightly into the flanking conga line.Alternatively, make reactive strikes more flavorful by giving classes a selection of distinct triggers on theirs. Like, a tanky fighter could get one that only triggers if the moving enemy didn't deal damage to the fighter that turn, rogues get one against enemies moving out of flanking, etc.
>>93653832>>93653817That's about what I'd expect--I'd be more interested to see how that breaks down when accounting for melee creatures versus creatures that wouldn't be using it anyway. For instance, I would not be shocked to learn that most bestiary NPCs with a longbow don't have Reactive Strike. But I have a feeling the number gets a lot closer when you remove those from the equation. It's not that "most NPCs have reactive strike", it's that "most NPCs that could benefit from reactive strike have reactive strike." I'd probably cut out NPCs below level six or so too, since that's around the time you'd be expecting the party to get it.For the record, when I said "parse the numbers", I meant doing some actual analysis. I could have pulled that statistic myself, it's just not very helpful lol.
>>93653844The remastered monster core starts doing this.Forest trolls for instance lose their reactive strike and instead get a reaction to make an attack at random when their weakness to energy damage is triggered.
Does mutagenist even need int? Can you get away 10 int?
I would make fighter pick a AoO with a feat before giving everyone AoO.
>>93653888Int increases the amount of Versatile Vials you can keep on your person at any given time. Without Int, this is just 2. And while those can be your 2 mutagens, you would STRONGLY benefit from having more VV on your backpocket for elixiring yourself on top of those mutagens (or being the local heroin dealer). Soothing and Numbing Tonic, or any of the thousand of alchemical items which are the class namers are all going to be highly useful to have at a moment's notice.
Pf2e: Is there any rules reason for why a Bravery Baldric cannot be charged through the use of Wands of Fear on yourself?Balance wise its doing actual alchemy of converting 60gp wands into (for the Haste Baldric) 360gp wands that don't require the wand in your hand to activate, so it feels REALLY strong. But I can't find a strict RAW reason for why it wouldn't work. Am I missing something?
>>93653932Yes, the gm might be upset and cause rocks to fall.
>>93653847Just for an example of why things need to be filtered for the numbers to mean anything, the list on AoN has over 30 entries for noncombatant background NPC like merchants or innkeepers. And, for reason, the database includes the level 1 pregens from Seekers of Knowledge.
Tian Xia Player’s Guide pdf when
>>93654356check under your foreskin
>>93654376But anon, what if he's american?
>>93654356>Tian Xia Player’s GuideHoly shit I am so tired of this fucking document already. Its mid at best and will literally just be remembered for being "the magic girl one" because everything War of the Immortals is going to blank it out of consciousness in just eight weeks.
>>93654442I want it because I’m going to run Season of Ghosts and having more Tian Xia appropriate options would be fun to give my players. One of them wants to play a Goblin and another wants to be a Kobold, and with the Tian Xia heritages both of those have some bonus flavor to them. Plus I want to know if there’s more weapons and spells.
>>93654472That's fair. Sorry for spurging, anon. I hope your game goes well.
>>93653847There are 410 common and uncommon creatures of level 6+ that don't have ranged strikes or innate spells. Only 60 of them have reactive strike of AoP.
>>93654601Reactive strike usage goes up in percentage as you go through the levels (its actually monotonically strictly increasing as a percentage of the numbers of creatures for a given level).
>>93654442and best of all it wil llikely need WotI because neither book has rules on what specifies a kaiju if you'd want to make your own while introducing Kaiju Stance that requires seeing one and plopping any random high level monster is just lol lmao, am i to buy a fucking 3pp 5e book on kaijus to actually run this shit
Well you guys just don't like fun.
For 1e Im making a skirmisher ranger with a switch-hitter playstyle. Is it possible to also go TWF for their melee, or should I go for swapping to a 2h sword or 1h with empty offhand?
>>93655209Mostly asking for flavor purposes
>>93655209>Is it possible to also go TWF for their meleeRanged and TWF are both kinda feat heavy if you want to do them at least passably. Ranger has it a bit easier with Combat Styles, but it still requires quite a lot. I would recommed splurging on Training enchantments to make it work a bit better if your GM allows it. I personally have a bit of soft spot for empty offhand builds with Weapon Trick, but that too has kinda heavy requirements(but it works with Weapon Cord, which is bonus). Doing 2h is probably easiest though.
>>93650623>>93653160>>93653347I don't think every class automatically needs reactive strike, but I do think the decision to make every level that grants a feat add more feats to the pool is actively harmful to the ability to design interesting feats that feel good to make a choice between. It doesn't feel like horizontal growth when I have to choose between reactive strike or any unique level 6 class feat, it feels like an IQ test.
what are the best guns for a dual-wielding operative in pf2/sf2
>>93655998The issue with reactive strike is that for most classes there is little to no use for their reaction. There are those shitty pursuit reactions that no one takes but that's pretty much it for classes that aren't a fighter, champion, or maybe a rogue with nimble dodge. If there were actually useful reactions available to classes like the barbarian or the ranger, it wouldn't be an issue
How do Alchemists work? How are they getting their glass bottles and alchemical juices? Notably 1e Alchemists because 2e is a soft fluffy narrative game that facilitates the answer "He just always has glass bottles and alchemical juices, don't think about it too hard."Actually, no. 2e is more confusing because all alchemical gear is explicity non-magical so it can't be explained away as magic. I can believe a 1e Alchemist magicking glass bottles out of thin air just from reading his alchemy book. Explain 2e right fucking now!
In PF1EHow does greater two weapon fighting work?Lets just say we have a lvl 20 fighter with 10 STR with Greater Two Weapon FightingHis base attacks would be 20/15/10/5The extra attacks given from the two weapon feat tree all say you suffer a penalty for the extra attacks granted. -2/-5/-10Which base attack do you use for these offhand attacks? The highest?Meaning would your total attack action look likedPrimary hand 20/15/10/5Offhand18/15/5???
>>93656600base attacks at 20/15/10/5TWF imposes a -2 attack penalty on ALL attacks during your full-attack.Primary hand: 18/13/8/3Offhand: 18Improved TWF gives you another offhand attack at a -5 penalty, cumulative with the 'global' -2 penalty.Primary hand: 18/13/8/3Offhand: 18/13Greater TWF gives you yet another offhand attack at a -10 penalty, cumulative with the 'global' -2 penalty.Primary hand: 18/13/8/3Offhand: 18/13/8Greater TWF is generally speaking not worth it because getting another attack at a -10 penalty isn't very exciting for most characters.
pf2how does learning spells for spontaneous spell caster works? I know I dont have access to whole spell list, but go I have "spell book", that allow me to swap spells I learned over the campaign? Or is this always: I need to do downtime, find some spellcaster/scroll and learn magic from that, even when I knew this spell like two sessions ago?
>>93656651I figured greater wasn't that worth taking, but it does answer that it uses the highest BAB for the calculation.
>>93655209Possible, yes. Worthwhile? No. Ranger is far more feat-starved than people think and TWF is usually pretty shitty all things considered. You should decide if you want to be primarily melee or primarily ranged. If primarily melee you take Precise Shot/Manyshot with your combat style but focus on STR as usual. Your Manyshot 2x arrow will still be a noteworthy threat and your accuracy should be fine since you're not lowering it with Rapid Shot/Deadly Aim.
>>93656585They science them out of thin air. Checkmate non-atheists!
>>93653832>Just did a quick check using aon search for creature_ability:"reactive strike OR creature_ability:"attack of opportunity", limited to common and uncommon.>It's 212 out of 1859.This will be underrepresentative due to many monsters getting a reaction that's basically RS/AoO, but with slightly different mechanics. Hard to say how to filter for that to be sure, and to be clear I'm in the camp that estimates the number of creatures with any type of reaction Strike as well below 50%.>>93653844>Alternatively, make reactive strikes more flavorful by giving classes a selection of distinct triggers on theirs. Like, a tanky fighter could get one that only triggers if the moving enemy didn't deal damage to the fighter that turn, rogues get one against enemies moving out of flanking, etc.This is (sort of) already the case. Rogue doesn't have access to Reactive Strike at 6th, but Opportune Backstab at 8th (they even kept "opportunity" in the name in a different form). Monk gets Stand Still at 4th, Ranger gets Disrupt Prey at 4th, thaumaturge gets the weapon implement at [whatever], etc.Issue is most of these kinda suck.>>93656520Ranged builds do not need it and could spend the feat on something else. That's the most I can say about it. They're not negatively affected by getting the reaction for free, in the same way a bow fighter isn't.
>>93656675The latter, your repertoire is pretty inflexible. You can however just buy and use scrolls as consumables for niche stuff, they're not expensive. The only spell book a know of for spontaneous casters is an arcane sorc with the arcane evolution feat and that lets them add one thing daily to the repertoire that they've added to their book.
>>93656675You learn spells on level up. That's it. You can't learn spells from books or scrolls like a wizard unless you have specific feats. If you swap out a spell you don't know it anymore. You need to learn the same spell multiple times at different spell levels if you want to use it at different spell levels, unless you get it as a signature spell.
>>936504402e is literally Ivory Tower Design but Paizo drones pretend it's not because muh math is tight, as if that had any relevance on why making shit.like tandem.movememt a feat instead of a class feature is just ensuring trap options exist
>>93656746good to know>>93656781you can't use rules for retraining on spells?
Hello anons. I have a quick question, if you have time to answer. My question is this: What are the major differences between Pathfinder 1e and 2e? For Context:I recently got into Pathfinder 1e. A Player in a game I DM for D&D 5e invited me, and I honestly enjoy Pathfinder more than 5e already- the amount of highly detailed options is amazing for creativity and magic, which I absolutely adore. I managed to find and acquire new copies of the Core Rulebook and the Advanced Player's Guide in hardcover. I know about the Archives of Nethys, but I'm better with paper. The books for 2e are considerably easier to find in hardcover, and I'm a massive bookwyrm- so I want to collect all of the books for the game, so that I can learn everything about it. I'd rather not collect all of BOTH editions, as I'm not made of money, so I'm trying to figure out which one I would like more. I've heard that 2e attempted to balance Martials and Casters, and depending on what I read, it ended up being like D&D 4e, which I've never played- so I don't know how good or bad that is. Otherwise, I read that that it ended up feeling bloated, due to so many actions. But I just don't know. I know that anons will give me honest opinions, so I'd rather ask here. My DM and fellow Players hasn't played 2e, so I can't get an answer from them. If it matters, I usually play Casters, but I like using tactician type Martials.
>>936568752e is more like a tactical combat board game than anything else, if you love first edition you're highly unlikely to love it since it's such a strict departure. Literally the only thing the two games have in common is nominally being set on the same planet
>>93656839I agree that Tandem Movement should be a base feature of the class but it's not that much better than something like Lifelink Surge. I think people overestimate how often you need to move the actual summoner.
>2eInexorable Iron Magus/Psychic 16looking for spells I can potentially spellstrike withI've got Imaginary Weapon which is excellent but just for a bit of varietyI've got an Intelligent Metal Relic Great Axe. Relic uses Rail Dash 1/hr to get me in contact with the biggest enemy or groupMy first turn usually looks like True Target, as we have a Crit Fisher, Enlarge to Huge, then Rail DashEnemies either move out of range and bait opportunity attacks or they stay and wail on me before they get a spellswiped with a detonating amped imaginary weapon on the next turnSupporting Witch Caster uses Whirlwind to prevent enemies running away too much once I'm in commanding position of the battlefield
>>93656932it's xcom the video game reallyfunny as fuck that the actual gun version they is poo
So, I'm going to be playing a character in my first game of 2E ever. I played first edition Pathfinder for years but stopped playing tabletop altogether in the past 4 or 5 years. What's the general consensus on second edition compared to first, and is it that difficult to learn if you already know the previous edition? All I know is that our Pathfinder society scene died off when second edition came out.
>>93657203Forget everything you know. None of it is applicable to second edition.But it's easy to learn. The only real way to mess it up is to start confusing the rules with first edition. Hence, forget everything you know.
>>93657203Pretty much everything on your sheet is following the Training level calculations, where if you're untrained it's only the ability mod, and if you're trained you get Mod+Level+Training mod. Damage calculations are the only thing not following that. Instead of 1s and 20s being hard crit/miss rolls, it's a degree of success system, where rolling ten over AC/DC is a crit success, and ten under is a crit fail. Where 1/20 come in is that they shift degree of success one lower/higher, so if even rolling a 20 would be a failure, it becomes a success, while a trivial task can still be failed on a 1.The degree of success thing is really important when coordinating in combat, because a frontliner can take hits that will fail or be regular successes that a mage will likely be taking regular crits on. It's also key to be trying to inflict conditions on enemies so it's harder to hurt your team.
>>93656851You CAN retrain spells but retraining isn't a way of circumventing limits. You still forget the spells you swapped out, its mainly a way to respec something at the level.>>93656875>>936572031e and 2e are very much different games, much like D&D3.5e to D&D4e to D&D5e. They have similar endgoals in being gamey fantasy RPGs, but radically different means and objectives on doing such, so much that listing every difference would take a thread and a half alone. 1e is more simulationist (as a carryover from D&D3.5) while 2e is more a tactical wargame with moderate focuses on exploration and salvaging.Ultimately, having some experience in both systems, even if it's just creating a character, will make you understand far more the differences in design and ideas than just anons shitposting and edition warring. Each game is made for the audience of its time.
>>93656585I think 1e Alchemists have those bottles in Alchemy crafting kit: "An alchemist with an alchemy crafting kit is assumed to have all the material components needed for his extracts, mutagens, and bombs, except for those components that have a specific cost." I suppose they refill it during downtime the same way casters do their Spell component pouches.
>>93653888Int affects how many resources you get per encounter and per day. It's a really bad part of the design that you don't see elsewhere.
>>93657234>>93657942Is 2E really that different? People picked up PF because they wanted to play something like 3.5. they just threw that all away?
>>93624185>1eI'm playing with an idea for an NPC. I have a cleric of Asmodeus running a small chapel in a backwater colony run by hellknights. He owns a rather bitter halfling slave. The halfling slave wants her freedom so bad that she is tempted (by Asmodeus) to sneak into the chapel and find out the information she would need to summon a devil to bargain for her freedom.>What kind of devil would she be seeking?>What would the price for her freedom be?I'm not sure that sacrificing the cleric would be accepted by Asmodeus.>What kind of horseshit would this start in the colony settlement if she successfully pulled it off?
>>93656585The 2e alchemist scrounges materials from the environment. They do have an Alchemy kit with some glass vials and s*** in it. Other than that there's no assumption that your vials are glass, or that your bombs include anything hard to acquire. Maybe you fill an orange peel with chemicals. They only last 24 hours at the most.
>>93658572Why would you release 3.5 again for the gorillion time?
>>93658572Pretty much, yes. They felt they hit the market potential of 1e long ago (mind you it was before the big OSR retroclone boom) and wanted to make their own game more true to their actual beliefs of a "balanced" and "refined" d20 experience. Combine with Wizards of the Coast proving without a shadow of a doubt that they WILL fuck over OGL stuff, it just wasn't viable for 1e or Starfinder to be the backbone of the company.There is some disrespect to those that did just latch on to not give up D&D3.5e. Jason Bulhman and the mouse flail is a pretty repeated storytime here and I'm very certain he knows the disrespect is mutual. But ultimately Paizo wanted to corner the market on the far wider 5e newbie boon and that just wasn't going to be doable with 1e's...oddities. Even if you boil down all the feat taxes Elephant in the Room-style, the simulationism of 1e just may not be what people want anymore compared to a streamlined-yet-beefy game to build your stories around. Emphasis on yours.
>>93658572I'm an extreme newfag, so I can't really tell: what could they do for 3.5 that hasn't already been made in the last 20 years?
>>93658692and to latch on oddly enough their "new" baby is 4.5e-but-fixed while at the same time walking back on some good ideas it had
>>936587525e is too trimmed down for my tastes, but if you ignore 4e, 3.5 to 5 is a good iteration on it in that it keeps a lot of the flavorful identity of what came before while trying new things. I don't have any fun playing 5e anymore but from a design perspective, it's a good attempt. I would have expected something similar from PF 1E to 2E, but from what I could see it is very, very different. I don't see what fans of the original PF could find appealing in this system as a PF system.
>>936588235e's intent from the get was to be a Greatest Hits of D&D's mechanics. Take the good like the radical prestige classes, AEDU (file the name off, of course), racial mechanics and synergies, and streamline the game down to how people VIEW D&D in pop culture. It isn't about massive modifier stacking or getting lost in the weeds of how grappling works. It is about getting your character to do cool shit with your cool people.That is still a radical departure from 3.5e's ideas. I would even argue 4e is closer to 3.5e than what 5e is. 3.5 is so much of own beast, it is almost a period piece more than a game. This is why these threads are uniquely toxic, it is like trying to talk Traveler in the middle of a Dominion thread. Even if the hypothetical "5e Pathfinder" did exist, it still wouldn't be what people who devoted 10 years of their life to PF1e would want, so to Paizo, why even bother?Hell, they already proved it with Starfinder. That has some radical shifts in design while still keeping the 1e engine and simulationist ideas, yet very little people respected them, even after errata fixed the bigger issues with the game (fucking starships getting more difficult to pilot as you level...). Pretty much when Pathfinder2e launched, everyone was asking "When's SF2e?" and...well, here we are.
>>93658942Those are fair points. I think my biggest disappointment is that the familiarity and simulation that came with 3.5e and PF are really nowhere to be found with popular systems right now, now that 5E and PF2E have supplanted everything else.
>>93658942>, yet very little people respected them, even after errata fixed the bigger issues with the gamePeople didn't respect them because many of the changes are DOWNGRADES from what were already considered mediocre design elements of 3.5/pf1e and that people DID actually want changes to.Maneuvers in Starfinder are even more clunky and unusable than dealing with how retarded and broken CMB vs CMD scaling is in 1e, of course people don't respect them taking something that already kind of sucked and then making it even worse. Same with the item treadmill, in Pathfinder 1e the economy is a major part but at least since it's all magic and enchanting, you can just keep upgrading the same piece of gear from +1/2/3/4/5/holy/keen/agile/etc, same with armor, and there's workarounds like ABP to try and make it less annoying.Starfinder released without upgrading weapons, and the levels at which gear becomes available is also entirely arbitrary or wonky in scaling for a lot of them, so instead of just upgrading your +1 sword to a +2 sword when you're in a city, it's instead rebuying your entire wardrobe every two or three levels AND instead of most of your damage coming from class features, multiple attacks, etc with weapon damage not really mattering, in Starfinder the lion's share of your damage comes from having a weapon upgraded as high as possible. It's not like being behind for a bit and only having a +2 sword in 1e before getting a +3 one, it's like trying to play PF2E without Striking runes when you're at the level you're literally required to have them. No shit people thought that was dumb when it's even more inconvenient than 1e. Then they even took that same shitty design from Starfinder and made it foundational to Starfinder, which is why you constantly hear horror stories of people who don't have level appropriate runes or even Paizo's own adventure paths not giving enough time to use the retarded crafting and rune transfer rules to use them properly
>>93658572the entire market of 1e was basically groggy 3.5 retards who just wanted to give money for old rope but found a way to dress it upwhen that dried up, there was basically no more market left - the market is literally dying - the guy and his wife who i played 3e first with have passed away in the last 5 years due to old age.making the same shit for a smaller market just wasn't doing it - they have the stuff still available for groggy retards who have not yet embraced it in the last 20 years and the odd hipster pretending doing the nerdy equivalent of pretending he likes the cure or somethingPaizo have just provided themselves with a new workstream1e grogs aren't supposed to like it, they're honestly not fussed, they don't owe you loyalty, and they don't expect it from you. "be cool if you did", in their eyes, probably - 2E filled a niche where 5e players wanted a game that had more crunch than 5e without going full grog retard. 3.pf players must recognise here that they're not even a consideration past "it's not a problem if they don't support us, they've either bought everything, or not yet bought everything"
>>93659777>Paizo plagiarizes 3rd edition"ugh groggy retards">Paizo plagiaarizes 4th edition"INNOVATION AND APPEALING TO NEW MARKETS"lol
>>93660365More systems should steal the good parts of 4e desu
I absolutely love this idea that PF2e steals from 4e and not the tabletop games 4e literally stole all it's stuff from. Although I guess Commander is just new Warlord, so it's more valid now.
Fresh bread?
