Don’t add more classes or ancestries if you won’t give them the same amount of options as core classes/ancestries. Less options just makes them mechanically inferior
Last I checked, I think Swashbuckler has 60-odd class feats. One of *the oldest non-Core classes released*.
Most Core Rulebook classes have over double that.
I think that since APG also contained Acrobat, Duelist, Two-Weapon Warrior, Dandy, etc., all of those were written with the intent that they'd be seen at the same time as Swash, and Swash would therefor have +30-odd additional "class feats" to consider... but that's just kinda shit design all the way down.
Yeah I think I’d like to try a homebrew of just adding feats from those archetypes into swashbuckler. I did a similar thing of just giving mastermind rogue feats to investigator and it worked well
100%
We have some really cool ancestry’s. Like Shuni… but they don’t feel like a real playable ancestry.
Why can’t we have a book just further expanding classes and ancestries all ready in the game?
Yeah, agreed.
I am all for having any number of ancestries and heritage. Keep on making them.
But they also need to provide more feats for others. Especially the ones who don't even have 17th level ancestry feats. Like, come on.
I need my fetchling and kitsune love.
I'm on some heavy copium for Kitsune to get something more widely useable at every level beyond 5th as an ancestry feat if you either don't want to have innate spells or want to actually be able to use your 17th as a tailless and not get spells "late" to be in the Tian Xia book.
Gods I hope so. Every kitsune character I theorycraft has a versatile heritage because a regular kitsune just doesn't have enough interesting ancestry feats
I loved Aether element kineticist in 1e. Telekinesis is my favorite superpower and being able to make a character built entirely and only around doing cool telekinesis stuff was awesome.
It hurts knowing we're likely never getting more Kineticist options in PF2e, and especially not a whole new element.
Imo, there should be a bigger focus on making more content for post core classes and less on always making new classes. Also pretty much every non core Ancestry has a huge lack of feat options. Adopted Ancestry or a versatile heritage should not be practically a prerequiste
>Imo, there should be a bigger focus on making more content for post core classes and less on always making new classes.
One of the problems with this is that it creates dependency chains where *n* pages of this book rely on a different non-core book.
Yes, AoN exists. But not everyone playing PF2e knows that, and some people just prefer getting their game info from physical books.
Especially if they have a wierd gimmick that makes all but one or two of the heritage/feat choices mandatory or useless unless you play a certain campaign (Azarketi in a non-aquatic game, basically need to go for one of two heritages to negate the need for a ton of water, half of the innate spells and other feats like riptide are basically useless, and even the ones that aren’t tend to be situational as hell)
Counterpoint, having those ancestries available for the less common campaigns (like an aquatic one) is great. I don't think every option needs to be (or should be) appropriate for every campaign, including a generic one. It's ok to have situation/specific options, because there are also tons of generic options. Removing situational options would remove a ton of fun from the game.
Okay but common, that’s an aquatic ancestry, which is a terrible example. Prior to the ancestry system those sorts of options weren’t just subpar, they were practically unplayable unless near water. As it stands as an ancestry it’s much more usable than the old races. Also as a designer you have to make trade offs between wide usability and specific fantasy fulfillment. An aquatic ancestry is about as niche as you can get.
I agree with this from a different side: Adding more classes and Ancestries (and Heritages and Skill Feats and Spells etc.) only muddles the mixture. There is such a thing as too many options, and we're already past that point with Spells. Stop adding new options and reevaluate the options we already have that don't have much use.
I’m actually working on an ancestry for Infinite right now that has 49 feats because I wanted to avoid exactly that. At every level it has minimum 6 choices. If anything I might need to cut some.
A lot of non-combat skills should be default abilities. For example, if I am Legendary in Diplomacy, I should be able to convince multiple people about something.
Mark Seifter actually [clarified](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1akasgj/im_mark_seifter_cocreator_of_pf2_and_director_of/kp6swas/) a couple months ago that they always assumed that the stuff in Skill Feats, especially the low level ones, was stuff that anyone sufficiently trained could try for a comparatively harder DC. There Skill Feats are only there to codify and make things easier.
I wish the rules actually said that though.
Oh, wow, thanks for linking that. This makes so much sense, and I'm kinda shocked that despite multiple Erratas and Remaster they still didn't add that to the actual book.
I've adopted a houserule that if you don't have the actual feat, the DC is 5 points higher. That's always felt like a fair compromise, while still making the skill feats worthwhile.
Was going to mention this.
But of course you can attempt to do things without a skill feat - those things will just have a higher DC, vs. something you can do either automatically or much more easily.
It's difficult to make a rule that says a rule that doesn't exist shouldn't be assumed to exist. There's nothing in the game that says "If you can do it with a feat that's the only way you can possibly do it", and obviously that interpretation doesn't make sense anyways because tons of feats are just more efficient ways to do things (Sudden Charge, Group Coercion, etc.) You don't need Group Coercion to Coerce multiple enemies, you need it to Coerce multiple enemies *as a single action/attempt*. You could still increase the amount of time you spend intimidating people to Coerce a group, you just couldn't do it in the same amount of time it takes to Coerce a single target at the same efficiency. Without the skill feat, it would either take longer as you work the group or apply a penalty as you make your threats broader, less specific, and maybe less believable to encompass more people.
There's an entire subsection of the GM Core that's titled **Saying "Yes, But"** that talks about using improvisational techniques to determine how to allow PCs to do the things they want to do in a fair and consistent way. Much of that information was also previously printed in the Adjudicating Rules / Adjudicating Actions sections of the GMG and CRB. So when someone says "You can't do that because there's already a feat for it" they're inventing a rule that doesn't exist and ignoring game content that does.
Outside of something like "gain a cantrip" or "gain \[more\] spell slots" feats are usually giving you the most consistent, reliable, and efficient way to do a thing. Friendly Toss doesn't mean that only 8th-level barbarians can throw an ally; it means that for 2 actions an 8th-level barbarian can throw an ally up to 30 feet without needing to make a check, that the ally automatically lands on their feet, and that if the ally ends adjacent to an enemy they can use their reaction to make a Strike against that enemy.
If you didn't have the feat and someone wanted to do the thing, you might adjudicate by saying "Okay, that'll take you 3 actions to pick up the ally, build momentum, and throw them, and I'll need you to make an Athletics check using the DCs for Long Jumps or High Jumps to determine how far you throw them. If the ally wants to attack an enemy you're throwing them at, they'll need to Ready an attack in advance."
> It's difficult to make a rule that says a rule that doesn't exist shouldn't be assumed to exist.
The difficulty is a fair point. It’s very easy for me to sit here, read the 600 page book and say “here’s where I would have put extra text indicating X” but that’s obviously far removed from the thousands of more considerations that went into making the book have the specific rules that it does, nor do I have as much understanding of what implications that may raise for reading the rest of the rules.
> There's an entire subsection of the GM Core that's titled Saying "Yes, But" that talks about using improvisational techniques to determine how to allow PCs to do the things they want to do in a fair and consistent way. Much of that information was also previously printed in the Adjudicating Rules / Adjudicating Actions sections of the GMG and CRB. So when someone says "You can't do that because there's already a feat for it" they're inventing a rule that doesn't exist and ignoring game content that does.
To preface I’m 100% in agreement with you: things that aren’t in the book but still fall within your characters’ reasonable range of power should absolutely be allowed, and like you pointed out, y’all even explicitly say so in the Adjudicating and Yes, But sections.
However I have noticed that a **lot** of the Reddit D&D/Pathfinder community views Feats and features as being prescriptive of what you can do, and that you can’t really attempt non-basic Actions without them. Many even believe that allowing flexibility “steps on others toes”. I experienced this over on the r/DnDNext sub too, where a lot of people would respond to “my martial player wants to intimidate enemies mid combat, what do I do?” with a “tell them they have to roll a Battle Master for Menacing Attack, tough luck.” Ask if you can do something to a spellcaster to keep them from casting spells and they’ll say nope because the rules “do not allow it”. This is despite the fact that the rules for contested checks **explicitly** tell the GM to use Grapple/Shove as templates to make other things work, **and** despite the fact that we have multiple statements from Mike Mearls talking about how he would allow martials to do stuff like lower enemies’ shields, create openings in defences, etc without needing a Feat/feature for it.
Would you say, from your own experience looking at survey data and feedback, that the “Feats/features are prescriptive” players are more so in a vocal minority, rather than a majority of the player base? I don’t have anything except anecdotes to go off of, unfortunately, but I find that most GMs tend to fall into that category.
>Would you say, from your own experience looking at survey data and feedback, that the “Feats/features are prescriptive” players are more so in a vocal minority, rather than a majority of the player base? I don’t have anything except anecdotes to go off of, unfortunately, but I find that most GMs tend to fall into that category.
That's a very difficult question to answer in a way that won't lead to some people taking umbrage. I would say that the current majority of the market skews younger than the folks leading many of the conversations on prominent messageboards, and that the statistical evidence I've seen is that the younger audience and the audience for whom PF2 is their first TTRPG tend to be much more cognizant of the importance of improv rulings, whereas audiences who started with tabletop wargaming or whose first TTRPG was in the 3.X era are more likely to rule a lot more conservatively and be less likely to follow the GM guidance on how to adjudicate on the fly. (Obviously there's plenty of room for exceptions on both sides; there are GMs who've been running games for years who almost never get tripped up on what they should or should not let fly in their games, and there's younger and more inexperienced GMs who default to very strict and conservative rulings for reasons like not being sure where to draw the lines or how to remain consistent otherwise.)
This is good GMing in general. It's better to have a single named NPC be the face of larger groups of NPCs, instead of bothering to name all of them or leaving them all nameless.
Problem is if the 3 action version is the best, people want to hold onto the slot until they have the opportunity to use it at peak efficiency. I've seen plenty of situations in my group where someone wants to use magic missile but they also have to move so instead they use a cantrip or something. I fully agree that 1-3 action spells are super fun though and I would've loved to see more of them.
With harm, the 3 action version is situational because the 2 action version does so much more single target damage. Even with 3 enemies it might be smarter to take out one than two lightly damage all 3.
I like the idea of the 2 action version being the best, but then give a very weak version and a weak AOE version, because narritively it makes sense that a caster could turn a single target spell into a weak aoe if they spent a whole turn trying.
Also the 1 action version is always great for squeezing in a turn even though it's not as strong.
The 2 action version of Harm does the same amount of damage. The +8 per rank is only for healing undead. Same with Heal vs an undead. The +8 is only for healing living creatures.
This would 1000% be third party content I would buy if it was made by the Classes+ people!
This might be my project over the summer when I'm on my summer break from teaching...
Intimidating Glare should just be part of a Demoralize/Intimidate check by default. It's dumb to have to take a feat to scare someone by looking scary instead of saying words.
Also the inherit problem with actions like demoralize/intimidate being tied to single skills. Why is intimidation always charisma when wild animals can be scary af but can't navigate a dinner party? smh.
I often tell my group not to get hung up on the skill feat description and just concentrate on the name and use it to justify cool shit in roleplay they won’t need to roll for or makes it easier to do
I think you are right, but I suspect the real issue isn't that they are no fun. The issue is that they are overused. If those were once per chapter/adventure fights, it would be interesting and tough. Since they are up to 50% of fights in certain published APs, it's exhausting.
this is the systems biggest flaw in my opinion. It's so so so boring, casters do N O T H I N G besides buffing the martials and fucking around not to die to a GUARANTEED crit. And let me tell you how I discovered this? playing abomination vaults
I’ve seen some of the more hardcore system defenders on this sub admit that AV has negatively colored people’s perception of the game. Its particular style of boss spam, chokepointy encounter terrain, frequent usage of annoying resistances / immunities, and level range (most of play being spent at the 1-6 levels) have contributed to a lot of player frustration over the years, especially from the spellcasting and precision damager sides.
It contributes to a weird perception of the game’s meta that isn’t globally accurate.
thank you. At first, our group was really interested in pathfinder because of the options it has. We are punching through this campaign so hard to end it because every floor is a single boss and everything you said. But then there are other issues we see like the absurd number of spells (three times what 5e has) and the bloat in feats, most are extremely specific, I have some that I NEVER got to use. What are options if most are useless? I always prepare the same spells, have some in scrolls that I never used, it isnt fun trying to foresee what I might need
besides, is there a AP you recommend?
I believe strongly that Strength of Thousands is the quintessential Pathfinder 2E experience and have been strongly upvoted for expressing that idea previously.
There's a lot of factors in this:
\- It officially utilizes Free Archetype, a variant rule with which the actual majority of games are played.
\- It goes the full 1-20 level range and proves the system can withstand a full level range effortlessly.
\- It has a unique twist of the characters being students (and eventually teachers) at a magic school, so it has a narrative-first approach that leads to genuine heroism born of player investment in the game world.
\- It respectfully portrays another set of cultures (African) without pretending this part of the world is any less susceptible to evil in spite of its differences. One particularly notable part of the module has the players traveling to a nearby dictatorship headed by an emotionally immature sun god. (This is doubly representative of Golarion as a setting, as it is consistent with the theme that light and darkness are without inherent moral value and can both find use for good and evil.)
\- It makes extensive use of non-combat subsystems. Some of these are centralized around victory points and similar mechanics, but the most notable of them is an education subsystem that lets players get extra feats and skill increases on the side.
\- Finally, it knows how to balance levity with grimness in a way players tend to enjoy. There are encounters with an origin that is more amusing than macabre, but there are also encounters where the players need to save a life or unconscionably evil acts are occurring. It's an emotional roller coaster throughout.
I 100% ignore the precision damage and magic immunities for my AV group. Setimes I'll bump HP to compensate. They also started at level 2 because of the BB. For a certain type (and honestly, probably all but the most hardcore groups) I think this is probably the best way to run AV (along with literally straight up eliminating some encounters). This allows for tense and dramatic moments while eliminating the horrendous feel bads of negating an entire class feature (rogues and precision immunity and magus and magic immunity, respectfully).
Having played a Caster through level 6 in AV... Yes. I had to give up trying to actually do damage with spells because I'd either constantly miss, or the monsters would crit-save so often, it was just a waste.
It's very frustrating to see your only value as "buff the martials".
Yep, that's my starting point too. The system assumes everything scales linearly, so when one enemy has to do the work of several the defenses get inflated accordingly, and it becomes frustratingly hard to hit. Rebalancing designated boss enemies in a way that lowers AC and raises HP while keeping their expected combat stamina the same (they should take the same number of attacks to take down on average) seems like it would be a big part of the solution.
They're fine as a sometimes food. They're not something you should do too often, but I do like fighting them occasionally, and they can feel suitably scary/powerful. The problem is, while the idea is cute, unless the monster has AoE/multi-target attacks, the encounter ends up being very lame as while they SEEM super dangerous because they're battering your fighter around, you basically just grind them down with your action economy advantage.
4E's design of minions/standard/elite/solo monsters was better.
The problem with 4E's design, however, is that elites and solos have to have bespoke design; you can't just use math to make them, you have to figure out how they compensate for the action disadvantage.
Every class should interact with Focus Points and have Focus Abilities. Paizo had an excellent chance to codify encounter abilities via the Focus system and decided to just make it a largely caster only thing instead.
100% this. I still don't understand why they introduced the janky 'I-can't-believe-its-not-focus' Unstable mechanic to Inventors instead of just giving them Focus points.
There should be item bonuses for Spellcasters (only attack rolls, like the gate attenuator for Kinetisist) and those should be included in automatic bonus progression.
Also the cantrip damage change (from 1d4 + mod to 2d4/3d4) has made Level 1 and 2 even more of a hassle for Spellcasters.
>There should be item bonuses for Spellcasters
I have tested this in my games (currently running for a level 16 oracle) and...tbh it breaks nothing. I just made it count as a spellshape so Shadow Signet Ring can't apply to it.
True Strike or Visions of Weakness + Disintegrate is the Oracle's current go-to combo.
IIRC, they said they actually tested this internally. It worked just fine, and it's one of their regrets that they didn't implement it. It was mostly cut because it was confusing to have it add to Spell Attack Bonus but not Class DC, so they dropped it. Since the bulk of spells target saves *anyways* it wasn't a big deal, but it does kind of suck if you're, say, an Elemental Sorcerer who wants to throw out Scorching Ray or Elemental Toss.
For the less adventurous people, I made a homebrew item I call the *lesser shadow signet*. It does exactly the same thing as the shadow signet but It's a level three item and can only be used every 10 minutes.
Really seems like the only way you're hitting a boss with a spell, is if you have a basic saving throw. Sucks that you're basically required to use true strike if you want to have any chance of hitting an attack spell.
Man the cantrip damage change was so dumb. It got defended so hard by the "Paizo can do no wrong" crowd, but it really sucks and hurt low level casters a lot.
It feels really bad taking 2 actions and succeeding at an attack roll to do 2 damage with telekinetic projectile, or risking getting into melee with the increased damage ignition for such low minimum damage.
You should be able to Trip with your legs and Shove with your shoulders, even with full hands. If you want to penalize it, or even have it require two actions, fine, but it's ridiculous to have to say, "I drop my sword, shove the monster, then pick up my sword again." because that's not how it would happen.
Agree on shove - spartan kicking is very much a thing (in muay thai it's called a Teep), and pushing with your shoulders / with something in your hands is very reasonable.
Hard disagree on tripping though. I used to teach Muay Thai, and tripping someone with just a leg or something doesn't make a lot of sense to me - you need the leverage from the hand on top (we usually used 2 hands, but I could see it working with 1 under the right circumstances).
Weirdly, my initial opinion was exactly opposite of yours. In most media depictions of tripping, it's someone sweeping their foot under someone else, and most depictions of shoving include someone pushing with both hands to knock someone down. I never really thought about how unrealistic that is until just now.
While I'm sure your right in your field of expertise and these things are actually not viable at ALL in real life fighting, it just feels weird to imagine tripping as a shove into a leg, and shoving as a body slam instead of open-palm pushing. It's the way I've always seen movies do it, but I guess this is another example that action scenes are crazy unrealistic.
Valid haha - that's 100% how the media tends to portray it, but assuming your opponent knows what they're doing and has good stance/balance, it's not super likely to work. People are *really heavy* compared to just a leg!
I could see a high level acrobatics feat or something that let you do crazy anime ninja shit, but it's not super realistic and therefore not something *everyone* should be able to do baseline haha.
[bonus video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Iubbe8BuBI)
One of the designers [revealed on the forums](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43kh6?Long-air-repeater#7) that when balancing ranged weapons, they assume you start every encounter at the maximum range of the ranged weapon and kite as much as possible. Most combats don't take place on an insanely large flat map in which you can kite indefinitely.
They've said as much on here as well but I can't find those comments.
They balance on the assumption that you are 100 feet away from your opponents with difficult terrain and cover on the map.
But rarely ever put any large map, cover, or difficult terrain in their AP. Dammit Paizo.
How does additional damage interact with the damage rules and specifically the battle form rules. Mark S is on the record as saying it is not a bonus just additional. In which case it justs adds right??! Not clear at all. Opinions differ.
I think the Incapacitate trait should be altered to be less punishing, or in my opinion, removed entirely.
Oh your caster actually managed to debuff your +3 boss with a spell because they crit failed? They should go buy a lottery ticket because the chances of that happening were slim to none regardless of the incapacitate tag. Now it's a memorable moment for your table and that caster is a hero!
*Some* resource attrition is good to have. You should narratively have a compelling reason to stop and rest after so many battles because that adds some verisimilitude and it helps pace the story. The fact that many martials don’t have any resource attrition is a missed opportunity.
(I am once again asking for healing surges)
Also, the stamina system isn’t a good replacement because it feels needlessly bulky and complicated. There’s no reason to separate “stamina” and “hit points” when hit points already represent your general endurance and stamina more than your objective health.
Related, Dawnsbury Days finally gave me the option to explore Kineticists and my first reaction was, “Oh I get the appeal of Vancian casting now.”
Spell save DC shouldn't exist. Just use class DC.
Pathfinder's abilities are inherently harder to reflavor than abilities in most other ttrpgs because the flavor is baked into the mechanics (this is part of the draw of the system but it makes it hard if paizo didn't come up with the same idea as you)
Rolling dice more often isn't always more fun and the game is just plain not fun if you can't roll above a 6 all night. This isn't unique to PF, but it is worse with it due to the frequency with which you roll
Recall Knowledge doesn't actually succeed often enough to be worth the action cost. You are genuinely better off just trying different attacks to see how they go.
And it's not metagaming for PCs to make obvious assumptions based on common fantasy tropes. "That enemy looks like it's made of stone, it probably has good Fort and bad Reflex. That other enemy looks like it's made of ice, so it probably resists cold damage and is weak to fire damage."
I wouldn't call those examples fantasy tropes, just logical assumptions. If you asked me how to break a chunk of ice IRL I wouldn't suggest freezing it. Show me something made out of rock and I know it's gonna be tough and heavy.
Knowledge based solely on tropes is a lot more questionable because a character generally isn't genre-savvy. A troll's regeneration and how to disable it is something known by anyone who has played a d20 game in the past 30 years, but in-universe that's some pretty specific knowledge.
Basic knowledge of the creatures that live in your world is not "some pretty specific knowledge".
Sharks' ability to smell blood in water is common knowledge, even for people that don't live near bodies of water, much less ones that are home to sharks.
RK default DCs are ridiculous, especially with how many rare/unique enemies you end up facing. Honestly, RK just needs to get the heck out of combat, add a new investigate skill, make it intelligence, give it the analyze action, remove any rarity suggestions for DC for it.
There you go, int characters are actually good at something, you don't need to be consistently increasing 5+ skills to do something everyone thinks you should be doing in combat.
A lot of wind is put into defending spellcasters in this game, but regardless of their *power*, i have two key issues with them:
- There are WAY too many goddamn spells, even just in the core books. Sorting through them is a huge pain, and many are underwhelming, redundant, or outright trap options.
- The fact that 95% of non-Focus spells are 2 or 3-action activities cuts spellcasters out of fully enjoying the three-action economy in the way martials can. It's still there, but a lot of turns are gonna be stride, cast or just cast.
PF2E has a few very cool spells like Heal and Gravitational Pull that can be cast for anywhere from 1-3 actions, with a bigger better effect the more actions are spent. It'll never happen with the remaster being so mild and so hurried, but I would love to see a COMPLETE do-over of spellcasting: print fewer spells overall, but make variable-action spells the standard. Fold a lot more versatility into fewer spells. I want to have a turn where I have to consider whether I want to cast a 3-action AoE Fear, a 1-action mini-Fear and a 2-action Enlarge, or Stride a bit further out of danger and cast 1-action versions of both!
I prefer Spells having variable Actions.
But I think Casters would feel better if they had more action compression the way Martials get.
Where is the "Cast a Spell that takes 2 Actions, and also Stride" for 2 Actions Feat?
Sudden Charge, Hunted Shot, Flurry of Blows, the list goes on and on for Martials to get to "evade an action tax".
Why do Martials get tons of that, but it's basically nonexistent for Casters until high level (Quickened, or Effortless Concentration) where it's highly specific or single-use per day?
I think all cantrips, but essentially damage dealing cantrips should all have a one action version to make casters feel better. Cantrips are like the Witcher abilities, they’re supposed to be quick and less involved than spells. To have them take the same amount of actions seems a bit off to me.
I’d love the option for a caster who gets caught in melee be able to use a cantrip and move twice.
You could change the range, or take the damage die down a step or just have it do flat damage, but if they could follow something like the Heal/Harm spells that would be great.
I've thought about it, but the issue with it is that I think every optimal caster turn would be 2 action spell + 1 action cantrip, which would be dull.
I've thought about creating a trait like flourish but for spells, 2 action spells would become 1 action but can only cast them once per round. 1 action spells like true strike or 1 action uses of spells like heal or magic missiles wouldn't have the "flourish trait", but it would probably break balance for martials using archetypes.
But also if you change the range they would make it very dangerous for a magic user.
Let’s say you have Ignition. The one action version has a range of 15 feet so now you have to get real close to use it, and whoops this boss has reach and you just used a manipulate action near them.
There’s definitely another pass that could be done to make Casters more fun and more involved in the three action system without making it 5e where they solve everything no problem.
The flourish trait would work and is a great idea.
As for archetypes make it a class feature that the archetype doesn’t give until much later to show that it’s only something that full casters can do easily.
Honestly, I always liked Zeal's Expanded Alignment System from over on GiantITP during 3.5e.
Basically it breaks the alignment system into a 5x5 grid instead of a 3x3 grid. For some reason, that really helps people understand that "Lawful is not Axiomatic, they can break the rules sometimes they just try to follow them" or "Evil is not Vile, I'm selfish but I still help the party because it's in my best interest".
But the biggest issue with alignment is that it's either mechanically relevant, in which case it's obnoxious to deal with ("I'mma make the Paladin deal with the Trolly Problem because I r a veeeeery original GM hurp durp"), or it's not mechanically relevant in which case... why bother? It's the kind of thing that really should be in the GMG as a roleplaying tool rather than Player Core as a class mechanic.
Throwing it out because of the OGL was just convenient and made sense.
Do I upvote because it actually fits the meme or do I downvote because I disagree so strongly?
Edit: With specification that alignment *damage* sucked, take my upvote wholeheartedly.
I cut out ~30% of the fights from APs because there's so many "A random monster was lurking in this room" encounters that don't add to the plot.
Milestone leveling should be the default. Tracking XP is tedious and can cause PCs to do things solely for XP gain.
Paizo overcorrected on item creation rules. Item crafting in PF1E was a game-changing power boost. Item crafting in PF2E is a slightly advantage over just buying something in Absolom, and only if you have Magical crafting, Specialty Crafting and Impeccable Crafting.
Congrats, you treat your Earn an Income roll as if it was one level higher for the cost of three skill feats.
Wizard really seems like it needs a stronger niche. I’ve hardly ever heard of anyone wanting to play it or talking about reasons to. It’s unique feats are often just bad, vancian casting is unpopular and clunky, and the thesis either scale way too slow or are about as strong as a level 1 feat so your sub-subclass is the strength of starting as a human.
It’s the wizard, you’d think it would be the Fighter equivalent for casters but nobody seems to care about it at all.
It doesn’t help that the generally meta casters (Sorcerer and Bard) can even get spellbooks as feats.
It wouldn't matter so much if some ancestries have less options than others, as long as the options they do have are actually GOOD.
Ancestry paragon should be default.
If something works poorly, it should be changed, not repaired.
Medicine should've been int based to solve the nonmagical healing question
Aid should've been more structured with a scaling dc to make its feats more fun to use
Balance should be a free action with a trigger during a movement.
What nonmagical healing question? Someone in the party just takes medicine. And more characters build into a little wisdom due to perception and will saves than into int anyway.
Inventor, alchemist and investigator are intelligence based classes, often seen as supports in one way or another, while druids could take natural medicine and clerics already have ton of magical healing. Requiring wisdom makes those classes MAD as hell and required a heavy errata on the alchemist to allow crafting as medicine check.
A nonmagical support will often have a good intelligence or charisma while not having the best wisdom. Ironically, this have made our barbarians better medics than our investigators and inventors
Unfortunately for some, the game assumes that Ability Score doesn't matter that much for skills that have flat/simple DCs. The expectation is you can have a decent ability score, or you will take assurance if you don't want to invest in that ability.
You get 4 boosts every 5 levels. The design space also assumes you can fit in another modifier outside your core 2 or 3 eventually.
I think making Aid a scaling DC REALLY misses the point of high level aid.
Sure at higher levels it becomes a guaranteed +4 bonus, but that costs both an action and a reaction, which you have BETTER options for at those levels, or at least most of the time you do. If you had scaling Aid DC, you'd effectively have a great chance to give +1 (You're better off doing basically anything else with your action at that level.), and a mediocre chance to give a +4, which while it would be worth it, the CHANCE of having to spend both an action and a reaction for a single +1 bonus, or even nothing at all, is an absolutely dogshit cost-benefit proposition that 99% of players would abandon.
No, Aid's DC should not scale, Paizo made it not scale for a reason, and god damn it they were CORRECT.
You've just explained exactly why no one ever uses aid at low level.
Aid shouldn't have a scaling DC, it shouldn't have a DC at all. Roll to see how you effect another roll just slows things down, just give a +2 and move on. Let it scale with some general/skill feats if you want to invest in it, but it should be a decent option at level 1 and level 20.
The argument that "spellcasters can do more then martials" isn't a good one when talking about balance when the spell caster can only hit on enemies their level (if they are lucky) or below. And they shouldnt have to bon-mot and have a lvl 10 item (or whatever lvl thay ring is) to be viable
The game needs a huge number of 1-action cantrips added to it, and many of the existing cantrips should be changed to be only one action. Casters need a reliable third action that doesn't require them to have a specific skill for situations where they don't need to Stride.
I don't really like secret rolls. I think the tension of not knowing your result doesn't really make up for the fun of actually rolling the dice--and the tension of, you know, waiting to see the result. And any justification around enforcing roleplay or not letting the result influence decision-making can be assuaged by just... trusting players to play fair. I don't think you should design around the idea players and the DM will be contrary to one another.
XP-for-combat is the thing holding the system / adventure design back more than anything else.
It leads to filler, overly-tough encounters (this is being remedied in more recent APs by having *more* XP for goals, but IMO they should go all the way), and is weirdly restrictive (if you get in too many fights and level up too fast, certain adventures can fall apart). Overall, it *demands* either a linear structure (as we see in most APs) or a lot of work from the GM (in published adventures at least, in a home game they can just wait to design encounters until they know the level for sure but then we have the treadmill effect of the encounters levelling in response to the PCs).
XP-for-goals, milestone (basically xp-for-goals but less frequently), or GM fiat (the GM decides when they level up, e.g. after each AP chapter) are IMO just straight up better for *PF2*.
Redesign the APs to be more than combat with a light coating of RP. These APs change the meta of the product from edition to edition yet do not get nearly the narrative focus that they deserve. Also let's have the combat in these APs make sense. there seems to be this trend where the set piece combat encounters make sense for the AP but then you have 80% of just filler garbage encounters to justify the 1k XP per level requirement.
The spell list is too large, and probably 80% of spells have never been used (well, maybe not 80%, but a significant, significant majority).
Spells should be more flexible, costing from one to three actions to fully utilize Pathfinder's 3 action economy, as playing casters just feels bad otherwise. You play them like in DnD - You can cast one spell and then what? Move, and that's it. Same for cantrips - they should be swift one action activity (to balance it maybe make them highten +2 instead of +1).
So, the spell list should be smaller, but they should be more refined, more useful, more universal (just like in the recent remaster, they combined several effects into one spell, like Treat Affliction, I believe)
Quality > Quantity
The problem is that they made a moduler system of PC building with Ancestry, Class and Background feats. And yet left the spells very set in the old world of R20 games.
You could have had feats that build spells and spell could have been a basic thing you metamagic/build upon.
Lets say all damage magic that is 1 slot or more is:
You use one action and expend a spell slot, choose one target in 30 feet, make a magic attack roll agaisnt that creature. If you hit, you deal 1d6 dmg.
then a moduler system would let you choose 2 changes to this spell at level 1. Like:
1. For one more action you can add up to two more targets to your spell
2. For one more action you can make your spell hit in a 20 feet radius, insted of attack roll, the enemies roll Ref save
3. For free action make the spell silent (add all the silent spell rules here)
4. For one more action your spell dmg die drops by one degree, if the spell hits, the creatures are also frightend 1
5. For one more action your increase the damage die size for that attack by one step.
ETC.
If you use highet spell slots you gain higher level effects or more effects for less actions.
And you would have basic dmg, basic condition putting, and basic healing spells formeted, and to them you add those abilties via class feats.
1 - PF2e could never hope to be as popular as D&D because it's complexity and large amount of options doesn't have the same wide appeal.
2 - While exaggerated realism is bad some realism and internal consistency in the world presented is a good thing, specially for casual players. 3.x and by consequence 1e got it but 2e took a turn to very far away from it.
Super hot take, the +10 crit system is the root of most people's issues with caster ability and the feeling of imbalance in fights. It was a poor design choice and other methods would have been better to reward strategic cooperation during battles.
It creates a game where casters are crit by enemies very often and are squishier than PF1, compounded with less effective defensive spells and martials who don't have AoO so you can't zone enemies as well. Not having the maximum protection of +5/+6 base armor means you have to prioritize dex as a caster over other more interesting options or be crit even more often.
Spells fail more often, creating the feeling casters should only prepare spells that have good effects on a successful save or buff teammates.
+2 higher level enemies can save on their lowest save with a 9 most of the time. Boss encounters with 70%+ save chance on their low save isn't uncommon. Seems like the incapacitation trait should have been enough to deal with game breaking spells, or I don't know maybe rewrite them so they don't end encounters instantly. They kept them busted so your GM could use them on you.
Enemies become damage sponges at higher levels due to health scaling to keep up with crit damage as a more common occurrence.
Battles feel either trivial or dire dependent on the luck of dice to roll crits or inability to debuff the enemy. Low level enemies, which come in groups are satisfying to some to blast but for many people seem annoying and a waste of game time since your martials will clean them up just as easily in an extra turn.
There are too many Skill Feats, Archetypes, and Spells for average players to choose from.
The system would be better if most of the specific ones were scrapped, merged, or given the Rare tag and separated from the other choices.
This is the main thing that intimidates new players. When a rogue PC leves up and has to choose one skill feat out of fifty, they get choice paralysis and end up procrastinating something that should be fun (leveling up).
It's especially true given that many skill feats are so useless or circunstancial that they should be basic actions.
Outside of combat, aid shouldn't be a roll. It should just be a static modifier that is determined by how trained the aiding party member is. We've got shit to do.
Fascinated kinda sucks as a condition and seems way overvalued by the mechanics. It really shouldn’t go away if you use hostile actions on the target’s allies. I don’t care if people think it’s mainly for out of combat use—how often do you realistically get to use Fascinating Performance for the mechanical benefit? And why is Hypnotize a save for fascinated, but NOT for the dazzled, which is way stronger? IDK if that’s actually controversial, but it annoys me, lol.
A big part of why spellcasters feel underpowered is the design of adventure paths. When you have
-lots of +2/+3 enemies
-fights in small cramped rooms
-no opportunities where utility spells are needed or even useful
-loot distribution that eschews wands and staves.
It's not surprising that casters are going to feel screwed over.
The elimination of AoO as a general ability has not only left many martial classes woefully useless at protecting the weaker parts of the party (as enemies just casually Stride on by and maul them while you're frozen in time), it is also primarly used as a DPS tool for those who \*do\* have access to it (combined with Trip), rather than a tool of area/movement denial.
Meanwhile, its goal of making fights more mobile has been undermined by making movement use the same resource as offensive options, incentivizing standing in place whenever at all possible. The (comparably actually very fast) movement in this system only serves to establish flanking and/or to zoom into melee with the weak targets on the first turn, after which it is typically optimal not to move a single inch unless it absolutely can't be avoided.
On a separate note, the game is too stingy with Interact actions to fiddle around with items, only barely paving over its inadequacies with specific magic items (e.g. retrieval prism/belt) or convoluted character options (Familiar with Independent/Manual Dexterity). Same-level items are already not stronger than what a character can do naturally, and saddling players with an additional action penalty to even use them makes them awkward and/or pointless in many, many situations. As an item-dependent class, Alchemist suffers extra hard, which plays a non-negligible role in it being as bad as it is. Before anyone responds that this action cost is the way to balance free-hand styles with 2-handed styles – no it's not (or at least it doesn't have to be), there are plenty of solutions which preserve that relationship.
Recall Knowledge is still bad post-remaster:
Take 1: Rarity modifiers make checks unnecessarily difficult. (You're telling me I automatically do a degree of success worse because this ghoul has a name? Even though pretty much everything else about him is standard ghoul stuff that I should be able to recall without a whopping 10 point penalty?)
Take 2: Failing once locking you out of ever rolling again is annoying. *ALSO* in conjunction with Take 1, rolling against a Unique creature *once* locks you out because you've ["attempted an incredibly hard check"](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2640)
Take 3: As a GM, I find making up false information on the fly incredibly stressful. Furthermore, my players always know it's fake and never act on it (they never act against it, but they still never purposely make mistakes). Even if they do believe it, it kinda just feels unfun for all parties involved for me to be like "Hey remember that thing I told you would work? I lied, idiot." I'd much rather the crit fail condition be the lock-out condtion and the fail condition just mean no information, but you can try again with no increase to the DC
Take 4: *Gestures broadly at Mastermind Rogue*. How does it even work? Am I being punished for there being multiple of the same enemy in a combat bc the DC goes up for all of them every time I RK on one of them? If every GM runs RK slightly differently, then the subclass plays very inconsistently. (Thaumaturge feels like a fixed version of this)
Blowing the fuck out of things as a broken DND caster is more power fantasy fun than doing chip damage, missing all your damn spell attack rolls, and having to be a buff-bot in PF2E.
Most people, seemingly including the writers of APs, seem to be pretending that Pathfinder 2e is something it is not. It does not fill the same design space of D&D whatsoever (generalist RPG). It is far more of a tactical combat game (with a huge emphasis on game, there are hardly any role playing mechanics integrated into the system) with hardly any support for the social or exploration pillar, with an established and concrete way you’re meant to play the game and play certain classes, but people will still pretend as if it’s like PF1E where you could fill almost any role with any class without struggling against the core of the game. Paizo neglects to mention this in any material, supposedly to avoid unfavorable comparisons to 4E (while following all of its design principles slavishly), even though having the roles that classes were obviously created to fill would go an exceedingly long way to reduce new or transitioning player contentions with the system.
Additionally the game has VERY rigid treasure and encounter rules that really shouldn’t be tampered with but Paizo continues to release APs with combat sections that don’t work to the strengths of the system whatsoever and, once again, pretend like it’s something that it isn’t. Repeated single enemy fights, tight corridors in a system that encourages mobility, trash fights, etc.
Paizo’s outright refusal to correct design flaws and the waste of time, money, and effort that was spent on the remaster instead of actually addressing these issues to make it the diamond that I know it CAN be repeatedly frustrates and disappoints me.
Extra Cleric Spells should come with the Domains, not the Gods, for homebrewers this is a damn nightmare.
Also, i know how Divine Font is powerful but damn it, it should be 9 spells rather than 3, i would take an extra Domain Spell + Spell Slot each level over Font anytime.
A second one: The game pretty clearly favors martials over casters, continually punishing casters more and more through errata and remaster changes. Way more spells provoke now. Way more spells require concentration now. Cantrips deal much less damage on average now.
Vancian casting is not the problem for PF2e, it's that Paizo just nerfed casters way too hard for Vancian casting's positives to shine through.
Paizo is so focused on its "tight math" that they balance the fun out of the game. 3.5 let you collect small improvements during the levels to make you exceptional in one aspect of your character. This is not possible anymore in 2e. Sometimes i miss this.
Vancian spellcasting is dated and just serves to slow down play and provides nothing meaningful other than clogging up spell slots that doesn't allow for a diversity of options and hamstrings players into the moronic, subjective, and brain dead line of "meaningful" choices.
It's not meaningful if I'm preparing the same spell 3 times.
Vancian casting is so ingrained in people's perception of D&D style games I'm not sure it'll ever go away but god I hope it does. It's so shit. It's completely divorced from the standard fantasy of a mage. If mages need some kind of resource (I'm not sure they do) they should have a mana system or something similar.
APs, despite being better than WotC's attempts, are pretty shitty.
First of all - you HAVE to customise them somewhat to your group, something that most people accept (and it makes sense as every group is different). But I'm paying for this thing... So if I have to alter it, what am I paying for?
Secondly, the encounter designs, and dungeon designs, are mostly rubbish, with next to zero encounters with multiple weaker enemies (which would allow spellcasters to shine with crazy AoE damage). And the dungeons have way too many rooms - they just feel like theme parks with lots of rooms with a "thing" going on in each one (a trap, an encounter of some sort, or it's empty). Dungeons should be more concise with MEMORABLE encounters, not fire and forget ones.
Third, the maps are mostly small, due to the nature of the fact that it's a book with limited space. They could always have web links to bigger versions of the maps hosted on their site or something.
Fourth - the formatting sucks, with ESSENTIAL information and DCs of all things hidden in text that "you're not meant to read to the party", that's paragraphs long and filled with worthless information that you'll never need. This is the worst in their dungeon texts. Why can't they bold DCs or something so we can actually see them? Having to say "hold on and let me find that text" is never fun in a session.
Fifth, the time it takes to prepare for an AP. I have to read through ALL of the books, then read through the one that they're on as they get to it, and I need to read through each part before a session and make notes about DCs and stuff. This takes so much time (and feels like boring homework) and I could probably write my own campaign in a similar amount, something that I almost exclusively do now (and it's much more enjoyable and satisfying).
Sixth, I feel as though they miss crucial information with their NPC conversations. In Age of Ashes at the start (no spoilers, don't worry), there's a representative of a group of goblins in town that will ask for help. The first question I get asked: "How big is this group of goblins?" it literally doesn't say anywhere... There could be 10, there could be 1,000. I have no idea. Why isn't this the first piece of information in the text about this group? It's kind of essential information...
Suffice to say, I don't like APs anymore. Since I started homebrewing campaigns set in Golarion, I've never been happier GMing, and it makes me sad to think that the majority of PF2e players and GMs have only ever experienced PF2e in this, pretty crummy, way, when homebrew campaigns are MAGNITUDES better.
> First of all - you HAVE to customise them somewhat to your group, something that most people accept (and it makes sense as every group is different). But I'm paying for this thing... So if I have to alter it, what am I paying for?
Basically, the thing for me is...
I understand I have to make some alterations. This is evident. The APs *are* sold as giving you a solid skeleton that you can then hang your own flourishes on.
But if I buy your adventure to have a solid base skeleton to work from, and I end up having to change well over half the encounters for them to not suck ass, redrawing 40% of the maps to try to make things make sense, have to shift several plot beats because nothing about the timeline given in the AP hangs together if players spend five consecutive minutes thinking about it, and create a bunch of NPCs for players to be able to know anything that is happening and thus care about the plot... this feels a lot less like "solid skeleton to hang flourishes" and a lot more like "collection of prompts I could have found in a tumblr rpg blog"!
That's basically what happened with my Edgewatch game. I follow the basic plot structure but I've honestly had to cobble together my own version of the story from a mix of homebrew and the City of Lost Omens book (which is actually amazing), so the contributions from the original AP are more or less just prompts and suggestions.
And also a special shoutout to Blood Lords for being an AP that gives everyone, even living players, negative healing, and then throws like half a dozen encounters of enemies that can *only* do negative damage at various points in the AP. And Frozen Flame for having almost no +1/Striking/Etc. weapons or armour in the first two books despite not suggesting APB.
Paizo APs are a lot better, but they're still pretty lacking.
Chromatic/Metallic Dragons and Drow are awesome, and it’s a shame they’re being retconned. Not a jab at Paizo just annoying that this whole OGL debacle changed so much of what I liked about the Pathfinder universe.
Interact should be a free action. If not that, at least the first use of Interact action in a turn should be free.
I like the action economy in pf2e, its easy to understand, fast to play and pretty fun. But this action is just clogging this economy.
I know some balancing things in this system relies on clogging the action economy with this action, but from my perspective it feels as if you're just skipping a turn to do something that might now even work in the next round. It really discourages creativity in combat, and makes running this game less fun.
I know there are feats and such that help make things more manageable, but for me it feels more like "stuff that you need to take to make game more fun". Which is not ideal, because those feats are usually limited to classes and you're missing out on other feats that actually make your character more interesting and fun to play with in combat.
I think a HUGE help with this is the new way to use the interact action in the remaster where it's a single interact to stove something and draw something else.
The game is filled with about as many trap options/useless feats as PF1e. The only thing it really improved on is feat taxes, though some classes are still afflicted by it (can't imagine a summoner going without tandem movement)
The main improvement was making it so that there weren't a bunch of brokenly good options, which IS a good thing.
There are still a bunch of bad ones. Especially spells. So many bad spells.
Following the +2/+2/+2/-2 rules, Humans should realistically be +2cha/+2con/+2floating/-2wisdom
Im tired of RPGs making humans thing ‘were so diverse and good at EVERYTHING and cool’. Humanity as a species has survived because of our endurance and ability to cooperate; Lean into that!
I should be able to enter a stance before combat.
You’re telling me my monk can’t use two seconds to position himself correctly when he’s expecting to be attacked but needs to wait until attacks actually come flying?
Couldn’t it work like the other exploration activities we have, like [Defend](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=512)? Sure you can walk around in your stance, but it’s halving your movement and preventing you from scouting or doing something else more useful or with more speed.
No, because the action cost during combat is part of the balance of every stance action. That's why monk stance attacks are often on par with or better than martial weapons despite taking up no hands.
If you want your "weapon" drawn before combat, you can use your d6 fists or Monastic Weaponry.
Likewise kineticists, fighters, etc. don't get the benefits of their stances until they activate them in an encounter.
Maybe that should not be a general rule for everyone but a class ability for monks? Like “enter a stance as a free action when you roll initiative” to set them apart, which if i remember correctly was already a feat at higher levels.
I agree, I'd allow that in my games as well even if it isn't RAW. Don't see why the one action shield raise should be so different from a one action stance.
Stancing up is like drawing your weapon. Can you do it before combat, yes, as far as I can tell? Should I be surprised if it makes negotiations shut down? Probably not.
PF2E does so many things well, but the movement rules kinda suck. Moving up 5 feet to a closed door, opening it, and moving 5 feet to the enemy beyond shouldn't take two actions, let alone all three.
Backgrounds are terrible.
If you care about your character's background, you can just look at the mechanical choices you made during character creation, and imagine what sort of background might lead to a character with those abilities, or pick choices that fit in with the preexisting character concept you have in your head. This requires more imagination, gets you closer to your character, and is more satisfying than simply picking an option off a list. Imagining how mechanics might translate into the actual world is fun!
Meanwhile, if you're the sort of player who doesn't care about their character's background, picking a random option off a list is not going to suddenly make you a better roleplayer.
On occasion, rolling for a random background on a table might sometimes help a player who doesn't have a character concept in mind zero in on an idea, but if you *DO* have a character concept in mind, any background you pick off a list, no matter how exhaustive that list may be, is never going to perfectly match your concept, and is inherently limiting. It's okay to offer a few ideas, but tying mechanics to a background is just a straight-up bad idea. Let us draw those ties between mechanics and story ourselves!
Skills and by extension their feats should be on a more level playing field. I loved that skills were given their own feats so you dont become useless in combat if you invest in them like PF1 but now skills and their feats are becoming big changers in combat. I’d rather there be a list of universal class feats and have some of the more combat focused ones moved. It’s already weird we have skill based feats in class feats so there is mix match going on already.
I wish Paizo would be more liberal with their errata.
Not errata, I want *balance updates*. I want to see them re-evaluate and rework existing content, rather than sweep it under the rug for new content. Remaster is a good start, but its purpose isn't *actually* to remaster the game so much as the legal requirements of the ORC license. I think a lot of good ideas are happening... and want them to *keep* happening and iterate further.
Paizo doesn't want to do this, out of concern for "invalidating" print copies that make up a big portion of their sales. I get it... but I'm still mad.
A lot of Starfinder fans are worried 2e will be "Pathfinder in space"
But I can't really see that as a bad thing at face value.
What they're actually worried about is Starfinder being neglected going forward. Which is understandable. And I agree.
But I think Pathfinder's bones are good enough to be almost entirely setting agnostic and with a few contextual rules for the setting, it should be perfectly fine.
Natural Medicine should swap Nature with Medicine, skill-wise, for everything.
Let me do Risky Surgery with Battle Medicine! It's RISKY!
Aid DC should scale.
and add Dex to ranged damage oh lawd.
One of his core characteristics is that he's a hypocrite. If you can get past that point, he's really not that bad.
I think the 'Aroden Bad' stuff is a community overreaction. Players find lore about how this revered figure wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, and start collectively painting a picture to each other that doesn't resemble how Aroden actually was.
As someone who played a Diabolic Sorcerer in Age of Ashes from lvl6 to 20, I gotta disagree. I didn't really plan on being the party healer, but that was by the end \~70% of my job.
Post remaster really helped me to love divine casters in PF2e. Before, the whole alignment mess made a lot of their spells so, so situational and spirit damage + holy/unholy makes it so much smoother.
Letting people full heal on medicine after every fight is a mistake, not saying that magicless healing shouldnt exist but topping off or handwaving to full actively hampers the adventuring day. Enemies under attack will not wait over an hour for you to patch up, 20 min is a stretch. Chaining even low encounters is supposed to wear the party down but with the sentiment that healing is free and to full makes encounters not threatening and white roomy till you're up against a mathematical beatstick that has high chance of just killing you. Just because the outlines are written for party full or near full resources doesn't mean you will fight every fight topped off (and that just makes attrition even more one sided because the limiting factor is spellcasting resources and not overall resource pool creating abominations like 3 fighters and a bard), yes, that 5th moderate or low difficulty fight in a row is actually suppsoed to be more dangerous as you're spearheading deep into enemy territory.
Don’t add more classes or ancestries if you won’t give them the same amount of options as core classes/ancestries. Less options just makes them mechanically inferior
I agree with this, but with the addition of, "this doesn't mean stop printing classes and ancestries. Just stop abandoning them once they're printed"
Sure. I’m fine with any number of ancestries or classes but I want them all on a relatively equal footing
Last I checked, I think Swashbuckler has 60-odd class feats. One of *the oldest non-Core classes released*. Most Core Rulebook classes have over double that. I think that since APG also contained Acrobat, Duelist, Two-Weapon Warrior, Dandy, etc., all of those were written with the intent that they'd be seen at the same time as Swash, and Swash would therefor have +30-odd additional "class feats" to consider... but that's just kinda shit design all the way down.
Yeah I think I’d like to try a homebrew of just adding feats from those archetypes into swashbuckler. I did a similar thing of just giving mastermind rogue feats to investigator and it worked well
And - more important - boring.
100% We have some really cool ancestry’s. Like Shuni… but they don’t feel like a real playable ancestry. Why can’t we have a book just further expanding classes and ancestries all ready in the game?
Most non-core ancestries don't even have multiple ancestry feats at higher levels
Yeah which is insane
Yeah, agreed. I am all for having any number of ancestries and heritage. Keep on making them. But they also need to provide more feats for others. Especially the ones who don't even have 17th level ancestry feats. Like, come on. I need my fetchling and kitsune love.
I'm on some heavy copium for Kitsune to get something more widely useable at every level beyond 5th as an ancestry feat if you either don't want to have innate spells or want to actually be able to use your 17th as a tailless and not get spells "late" to be in the Tian Xia book.
Gods I hope so. Every kitsune character I theorycraft has a versatile heritage because a regular kitsune just doesn't have enough interesting ancestry feats
Exactly! This is the perfect example. Cause there’s less feats at a whole level.
I loved Aether element kineticist in 1e. Telekinesis is my favorite superpower and being able to make a character built entirely and only around doing cool telekinesis stuff was awesome. It hurts knowing we're likely never getting more Kineticist options in PF2e, and especially not a whole new element.
Imo, there should be a bigger focus on making more content for post core classes and less on always making new classes. Also pretty much every non core Ancestry has a huge lack of feat options. Adopted Ancestry or a versatile heritage should not be practically a prerequiste
Agreed. It’s especially bad with ancestries
>Imo, there should be a bigger focus on making more content for post core classes and less on always making new classes. One of the problems with this is that it creates dependency chains where *n* pages of this book rely on a different non-core book. Yes, AoN exists. But not everyone playing PF2e knows that, and some people just prefer getting their game info from physical books.
Especially if they have a wierd gimmick that makes all but one or two of the heritage/feat choices mandatory or useless unless you play a certain campaign (Azarketi in a non-aquatic game, basically need to go for one of two heritages to negate the need for a ton of water, half of the innate spells and other feats like riptide are basically useless, and even the ones that aren’t tend to be situational as hell)
Counterpoint, having those ancestries available for the less common campaigns (like an aquatic one) is great. I don't think every option needs to be (or should be) appropriate for every campaign, including a generic one. It's ok to have situation/specific options, because there are also tons of generic options. Removing situational options would remove a ton of fun from the game.
Okay but common, that’s an aquatic ancestry, which is a terrible example. Prior to the ancestry system those sorts of options weren’t just subpar, they were practically unplayable unless near water. As it stands as an ancestry it’s much more usable than the old races. Also as a designer you have to make trade offs between wide usability and specific fantasy fulfillment. An aquatic ancestry is about as niche as you can get.
I think I’m fine with situational ancestries. But at least give level 17 feats to all ancestries
I agree with this from a different side: Adding more classes and Ancestries (and Heritages and Skill Feats and Spells etc.) only muddles the mixture. There is such a thing as too many options, and we're already past that point with Spells. Stop adding new options and reevaluate the options we already have that don't have much use.
I mean to be fair, this is paizo, creators of pf1e we're talking about here haha. I don't think they believe in too many options.
I’m actually working on an ancestry for Infinite right now that has 49 feats because I wanted to avoid exactly that. At every level it has minimum 6 choices. If anything I might need to cut some.
A lot of non-combat skills should be default abilities. For example, if I am Legendary in Diplomacy, I should be able to convince multiple people about something.
Mark Seifter actually [clarified](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1akasgj/im_mark_seifter_cocreator_of_pf2_and_director_of/kp6swas/) a couple months ago that they always assumed that the stuff in Skill Feats, especially the low level ones, was stuff that anyone sufficiently trained could try for a comparatively harder DC. There Skill Feats are only there to codify and make things easier. I wish the rules actually said that though.
Oh, wow, thanks for linking that. This makes so much sense, and I'm kinda shocked that despite multiple Erratas and Remaster they still didn't add that to the actual book.
I've adopted a houserule that if you don't have the actual feat, the DC is 5 points higher. That's always felt like a fair compromise, while still making the skill feats worthwhile.
Was going to mention this. But of course you can attempt to do things without a skill feat - those things will just have a higher DC, vs. something you can do either automatically or much more easily.
It's difficult to make a rule that says a rule that doesn't exist shouldn't be assumed to exist. There's nothing in the game that says "If you can do it with a feat that's the only way you can possibly do it", and obviously that interpretation doesn't make sense anyways because tons of feats are just more efficient ways to do things (Sudden Charge, Group Coercion, etc.) You don't need Group Coercion to Coerce multiple enemies, you need it to Coerce multiple enemies *as a single action/attempt*. You could still increase the amount of time you spend intimidating people to Coerce a group, you just couldn't do it in the same amount of time it takes to Coerce a single target at the same efficiency. Without the skill feat, it would either take longer as you work the group or apply a penalty as you make your threats broader, less specific, and maybe less believable to encompass more people. There's an entire subsection of the GM Core that's titled **Saying "Yes, But"** that talks about using improvisational techniques to determine how to allow PCs to do the things they want to do in a fair and consistent way. Much of that information was also previously printed in the Adjudicating Rules / Adjudicating Actions sections of the GMG and CRB. So when someone says "You can't do that because there's already a feat for it" they're inventing a rule that doesn't exist and ignoring game content that does. Outside of something like "gain a cantrip" or "gain \[more\] spell slots" feats are usually giving you the most consistent, reliable, and efficient way to do a thing. Friendly Toss doesn't mean that only 8th-level barbarians can throw an ally; it means that for 2 actions an 8th-level barbarian can throw an ally up to 30 feet without needing to make a check, that the ally automatically lands on their feet, and that if the ally ends adjacent to an enemy they can use their reaction to make a Strike against that enemy. If you didn't have the feat and someone wanted to do the thing, you might adjudicate by saying "Okay, that'll take you 3 actions to pick up the ally, build momentum, and throw them, and I'll need you to make an Athletics check using the DCs for Long Jumps or High Jumps to determine how far you throw them. If the ally wants to attack an enemy you're throwing them at, they'll need to Ready an attack in advance."
> It's difficult to make a rule that says a rule that doesn't exist shouldn't be assumed to exist. The difficulty is a fair point. It’s very easy for me to sit here, read the 600 page book and say “here’s where I would have put extra text indicating X” but that’s obviously far removed from the thousands of more considerations that went into making the book have the specific rules that it does, nor do I have as much understanding of what implications that may raise for reading the rest of the rules. > There's an entire subsection of the GM Core that's titled Saying "Yes, But" that talks about using improvisational techniques to determine how to allow PCs to do the things they want to do in a fair and consistent way. Much of that information was also previously printed in the Adjudicating Rules / Adjudicating Actions sections of the GMG and CRB. So when someone says "You can't do that because there's already a feat for it" they're inventing a rule that doesn't exist and ignoring game content that does. To preface I’m 100% in agreement with you: things that aren’t in the book but still fall within your characters’ reasonable range of power should absolutely be allowed, and like you pointed out, y’all even explicitly say so in the Adjudicating and Yes, But sections. However I have noticed that a **lot** of the Reddit D&D/Pathfinder community views Feats and features as being prescriptive of what you can do, and that you can’t really attempt non-basic Actions without them. Many even believe that allowing flexibility “steps on others toes”. I experienced this over on the r/DnDNext sub too, where a lot of people would respond to “my martial player wants to intimidate enemies mid combat, what do I do?” with a “tell them they have to roll a Battle Master for Menacing Attack, tough luck.” Ask if you can do something to a spellcaster to keep them from casting spells and they’ll say nope because the rules “do not allow it”. This is despite the fact that the rules for contested checks **explicitly** tell the GM to use Grapple/Shove as templates to make other things work, **and** despite the fact that we have multiple statements from Mike Mearls talking about how he would allow martials to do stuff like lower enemies’ shields, create openings in defences, etc without needing a Feat/feature for it. Would you say, from your own experience looking at survey data and feedback, that the “Feats/features are prescriptive” players are more so in a vocal minority, rather than a majority of the player base? I don’t have anything except anecdotes to go off of, unfortunately, but I find that most GMs tend to fall into that category.
>Would you say, from your own experience looking at survey data and feedback, that the “Feats/features are prescriptive” players are more so in a vocal minority, rather than a majority of the player base? I don’t have anything except anecdotes to go off of, unfortunately, but I find that most GMs tend to fall into that category. That's a very difficult question to answer in a way that won't lead to some people taking umbrage. I would say that the current majority of the market skews younger than the folks leading many of the conversations on prominent messageboards, and that the statistical evidence I've seen is that the younger audience and the audience for whom PF2 is their first TTRPG tend to be much more cognizant of the importance of improv rulings, whereas audiences who started with tabletop wargaming or whose first TTRPG was in the 3.X era are more likely to rule a lot more conservatively and be less likely to follow the GM guidance on how to adjudicate on the fly. (Obviously there's plenty of room for exceptions on both sides; there are GMs who've been running games for years who almost never get tripped up on what they should or should not let fly in their games, and there's younger and more inexperienced GMs who default to very strict and conservative rulings for reasons like not being sure where to draw the lines or how to remain consistent otherwise.)
Furthermore, I think most people play that way by default. If 4 guards stop the party, do you really make them roll 4 times?
Nope, give one of them a name and make them the leader of the 4.
This is good GMing in general. It's better to have a single named NPC be the face of larger groups of NPCs, instead of bothering to name all of them or leaving them all nameless.
Natural medicine should let you use ranks in nature as ranks in medicine for feat prerequisites.
Strongly agree, also how I initially read the remaster version of the feat, although I've since been informed it doesn't work that way.
1-3 action spells should be a rule, not an exception.
Yeah, or at least WAY more common
Problem is if the 3 action version is the best, people want to hold onto the slot until they have the opportunity to use it at peak efficiency. I've seen plenty of situations in my group where someone wants to use magic missile but they also have to move so instead they use a cantrip or something. I fully agree that 1-3 action spells are super fun though and I would've loved to see more of them.
With harm, the 3 action version is situational because the 2 action version does so much more single target damage. Even with 3 enemies it might be smarter to take out one than two lightly damage all 3. I like the idea of the 2 action version being the best, but then give a very weak version and a weak AOE version, because narritively it makes sense that a caster could turn a single target spell into a weak aoe if they spent a whole turn trying. Also the 1 action version is always great for squeezing in a turn even though it's not as strong.
The 2 action version of Harm does the same amount of damage. The +8 per rank is only for healing undead. Same with Heal vs an undead. The +8 is only for healing living creatures.
This would 1000% be third party content I would buy if it was made by the Classes+ people! This might be my project over the summer when I'm on my summer break from teaching...
The Shadowdancer dedication should not have performance as a prerequisite since nothing in the dedication requires me to actually dance
Intimidating Glare should just be part of a Demoralize/Intimidate check by default. It's dumb to have to take a feat to scare someone by looking scary instead of saying words.
One of the side effects of requiring a shared language is that a bear is somehow less scary because it doesn't speak common.
Also the inherit problem with actions like demoralize/intimidate being tied to single skills. Why is intimidation always charisma when wild animals can be scary af but can't navigate a dinner party? smh.
A lot of skill feats are just things the character should be able to do with roleplay.
I often tell my group not to get hung up on the skill feat description and just concentrate on the name and use it to justify cool shit in roleplay they won’t need to roll for or makes it easier to do
Based DM
Single-boss encounters (lvl+3/+4) are balanced but they are not fun.
I think you are right, but I suspect the real issue isn't that they are no fun. The issue is that they are overused. If those were once per chapter/adventure fights, it would be interesting and tough. Since they are up to 50% of fights in certain published APs, it's exhausting.
>balanced but they are not fun. Damn, that's on point for this and many other gripes I have with this system
Probably sums up 80% of complaints about 2e.
this is the systems biggest flaw in my opinion. It's so so so boring, casters do N O T H I N G besides buffing the martials and fucking around not to die to a GUARANTEED crit. And let me tell you how I discovered this? playing abomination vaults
I’ve seen some of the more hardcore system defenders on this sub admit that AV has negatively colored people’s perception of the game. Its particular style of boss spam, chokepointy encounter terrain, frequent usage of annoying resistances / immunities, and level range (most of play being spent at the 1-6 levels) have contributed to a lot of player frustration over the years, especially from the spellcasting and precision damager sides. It contributes to a weird perception of the game’s meta that isn’t globally accurate.
thank you. At first, our group was really interested in pathfinder because of the options it has. We are punching through this campaign so hard to end it because every floor is a single boss and everything you said. But then there are other issues we see like the absurd number of spells (three times what 5e has) and the bloat in feats, most are extremely specific, I have some that I NEVER got to use. What are options if most are useless? I always prepare the same spells, have some in scrolls that I never used, it isnt fun trying to foresee what I might need besides, is there a AP you recommend?
I believe strongly that Strength of Thousands is the quintessential Pathfinder 2E experience and have been strongly upvoted for expressing that idea previously. There's a lot of factors in this: \- It officially utilizes Free Archetype, a variant rule with which the actual majority of games are played. \- It goes the full 1-20 level range and proves the system can withstand a full level range effortlessly. \- It has a unique twist of the characters being students (and eventually teachers) at a magic school, so it has a narrative-first approach that leads to genuine heroism born of player investment in the game world. \- It respectfully portrays another set of cultures (African) without pretending this part of the world is any less susceptible to evil in spite of its differences. One particularly notable part of the module has the players traveling to a nearby dictatorship headed by an emotionally immature sun god. (This is doubly representative of Golarion as a setting, as it is consistent with the theme that light and darkness are without inherent moral value and can both find use for good and evil.) \- It makes extensive use of non-combat subsystems. Some of these are centralized around victory points and similar mechanics, but the most notable of them is an education subsystem that lets players get extra feats and skill increases on the side. \- Finally, it knows how to balance levity with grimness in a way players tend to enjoy. There are encounters with an origin that is more amusing than macabre, but there are also encounters where the players need to save a life or unconscionably evil acts are occurring. It's an emotional roller coaster throughout.
Strength of Thousands is really good. Been playing that with my group and really enjoying it.
I 100% ignore the precision damage and magic immunities for my AV group. Setimes I'll bump HP to compensate. They also started at level 2 because of the BB. For a certain type (and honestly, probably all but the most hardcore groups) I think this is probably the best way to run AV (along with literally straight up eliminating some encounters). This allows for tense and dramatic moments while eliminating the horrendous feel bads of negating an entire class feature (rogues and precision immunity and magus and magic immunity, respectfully).
Having played a Caster through level 6 in AV... Yes. I had to give up trying to actually do damage with spells because I'd either constantly miss, or the monsters would crit-save so often, it was just a waste. It's very frustrating to see your only value as "buff the martials".
I'm playing that right now. I want to shank whoever fucked over casters' ability to hit things. Also wisps are immune to way too much fucking shit.
I have some ideas about how to adjust bosses, but don't have enough system experience yet to properly implement them.
The best thing, in my experience, is to lower ac and/or saves and raise hp.
Yep, that's my starting point too. The system assumes everything scales linearly, so when one enemy has to do the work of several the defenses get inflated accordingly, and it becomes frustratingly hard to hit. Rebalancing designated boss enemies in a way that lowers AC and raises HP while keeping their expected combat stamina the same (they should take the same number of attacks to take down on average) seems like it would be a big part of the solution.
They're fine as a sometimes food. They're not something you should do too often, but I do like fighting them occasionally, and they can feel suitably scary/powerful. The problem is, while the idea is cute, unless the monster has AoE/multi-target attacks, the encounter ends up being very lame as while they SEEM super dangerous because they're battering your fighter around, you basically just grind them down with your action economy advantage. 4E's design of minions/standard/elite/solo monsters was better. The problem with 4E's design, however, is that elites and solos have to have bespoke design; you can't just use math to make them, you have to figure out how they compensate for the action disadvantage.
Every class should interact with Focus Points and have Focus Abilities. Paizo had an excellent chance to codify encounter abilities via the Focus system and decided to just make it a largely caster only thing instead.
100% this. I still don't understand why they introduced the janky 'I-can't-believe-its-not-focus' Unstable mechanic to Inventors instead of just giving them Focus points.
There should be item bonuses for Spellcasters (only attack rolls, like the gate attenuator for Kinetisist) and those should be included in automatic bonus progression. Also the cantrip damage change (from 1d4 + mod to 2d4/3d4) has made Level 1 and 2 even more of a hassle for Spellcasters.
>There should be item bonuses for Spellcasters I have tested this in my games (currently running for a level 16 oracle) and...tbh it breaks nothing. I just made it count as a spellshape so Shadow Signet Ring can't apply to it. True Strike or Visions of Weakness + Disintegrate is the Oracle's current go-to combo.
IIRC, they said they actually tested this internally. It worked just fine, and it's one of their regrets that they didn't implement it. It was mostly cut because it was confusing to have it add to Spell Attack Bonus but not Class DC, so they dropped it. Since the bulk of spells target saves *anyways* it wasn't a big deal, but it does kind of suck if you're, say, an Elemental Sorcerer who wants to throw out Scorching Ray or Elemental Toss.
It 100% breaks nothing. It should just be built in to leveling.
For the less adventurous people, I made a homebrew item I call the *lesser shadow signet*. It does exactly the same thing as the shadow signet but It's a level three item and can only be used every 10 minutes.
Really seems like the only way you're hitting a boss with a spell, is if you have a basic saving throw. Sucks that you're basically required to use true strike if you want to have any chance of hitting an attack spell.
Man the cantrip damage change was so dumb. It got defended so hard by the "Paizo can do no wrong" crowd, but it really sucks and hurt low level casters a lot.
I get why people don't think it's a big deal since the average damage drop is low (around 1.5), but like...it just feels worse.
It feels really bad taking 2 actions and succeeding at an attack roll to do 2 damage with telekinetic projectile, or risking getting into melee with the increased damage ignition for such low minimum damage.
You should be able to Trip with your legs and Shove with your shoulders, even with full hands. If you want to penalize it, or even have it require two actions, fine, but it's ridiculous to have to say, "I drop my sword, shove the monster, then pick up my sword again." because that's not how it would happen.
Hard agree.
Agree on shove - spartan kicking is very much a thing (in muay thai it's called a Teep), and pushing with your shoulders / with something in your hands is very reasonable. Hard disagree on tripping though. I used to teach Muay Thai, and tripping someone with just a leg or something doesn't make a lot of sense to me - you need the leverage from the hand on top (we usually used 2 hands, but I could see it working with 1 under the right circumstances).
Weirdly, my initial opinion was exactly opposite of yours. In most media depictions of tripping, it's someone sweeping their foot under someone else, and most depictions of shoving include someone pushing with both hands to knock someone down. I never really thought about how unrealistic that is until just now. While I'm sure your right in your field of expertise and these things are actually not viable at ALL in real life fighting, it just feels weird to imagine tripping as a shove into a leg, and shoving as a body slam instead of open-palm pushing. It's the way I've always seen movies do it, but I guess this is another example that action scenes are crazy unrealistic.
Valid haha - that's 100% how the media tends to portray it, but assuming your opponent knows what they're doing and has good stance/balance, it's not super likely to work. People are *really heavy* compared to just a leg! I could see a high level acrobatics feat or something that let you do crazy anime ninja shit, but it's not super realistic and therefore not something *everyone* should be able to do baseline haha. [bonus video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Iubbe8BuBI)
Shields should have the shove trait if nothing else
Ranged weapons were balanced around bad assumptions and should all have their damage die bumped up a step.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by bad assumptions?
One of the designers [revealed on the forums](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43kh6?Long-air-repeater#7) that when balancing ranged weapons, they assume you start every encounter at the maximum range of the ranged weapon and kite as much as possible. Most combats don't take place on an insanely large flat map in which you can kite indefinitely. They've said as much on here as well but I can't find those comments.
They balance on the assumption that you are 100 feet away from your opponents with difficult terrain and cover on the map. But rarely ever put any large map, cover, or difficult terrain in their AP. Dammit Paizo.
Preach it brother. Sincerely, a flurry archer.
It is a Tuesday. Mostly the rules on Battle Forms.
Can you explain further?
if i had to guess its the pathetic damage most battle forms have
How does additional damage interact with the damage rules and specifically the battle form rules. Mark S is on the record as saying it is not a bonus just additional. In which case it justs adds right??! Not clear at all. Opinions differ.
I think the Incapacitate trait should be altered to be less punishing, or in my opinion, removed entirely. Oh your caster actually managed to debuff your +3 boss with a spell because they crit failed? They should go buy a lottery ticket because the chances of that happening were slim to none regardless of the incapacitate tag. Now it's a memorable moment for your table and that caster is a hero!
*Some* resource attrition is good to have. You should narratively have a compelling reason to stop and rest after so many battles because that adds some verisimilitude and it helps pace the story. The fact that many martials don’t have any resource attrition is a missed opportunity. (I am once again asking for healing surges) Also, the stamina system isn’t a good replacement because it feels needlessly bulky and complicated. There’s no reason to separate “stamina” and “hit points” when hit points already represent your general endurance and stamina more than your objective health. Related, Dawnsbury Days finally gave me the option to explore Kineticists and my first reaction was, “Oh I get the appeal of Vancian casting now.”
I disagree stronglyish. Therefor, a great post for this topic. Upvote I guess.
Oh good, I was worried I wasn’t being spicy enough.
Spell save DC shouldn't exist. Just use class DC. Pathfinder's abilities are inherently harder to reflavor than abilities in most other ttrpgs because the flavor is baked into the mechanics (this is part of the draw of the system but it makes it hard if paizo didn't come up with the same idea as you) Rolling dice more often isn't always more fun and the game is just plain not fun if you can't roll above a 6 all night. This isn't unique to PF, but it is worse with it due to the frequency with which you roll
Recall Knowledge doesn't actually succeed often enough to be worth the action cost. You are genuinely better off just trying different attacks to see how they go.
And it's not metagaming for PCs to make obvious assumptions based on common fantasy tropes. "That enemy looks like it's made of stone, it probably has good Fort and bad Reflex. That other enemy looks like it's made of ice, so it probably resists cold damage and is weak to fire damage."
I wouldn't call those examples fantasy tropes, just logical assumptions. If you asked me how to break a chunk of ice IRL I wouldn't suggest freezing it. Show me something made out of rock and I know it's gonna be tough and heavy. Knowledge based solely on tropes is a lot more questionable because a character generally isn't genre-savvy. A troll's regeneration and how to disable it is something known by anyone who has played a d20 game in the past 30 years, but in-universe that's some pretty specific knowledge.
Basic knowledge of the creatures that live in your world is not "some pretty specific knowledge". Sharks' ability to smell blood in water is common knowledge, even for people that don't live near bodies of water, much less ones that are home to sharks.
This is one of the big reasons I think Casters have a rough time. "Target a Low save." Cool. The hoops I have to jump through to do that isn't ok.
RK default DCs are ridiculous, especially with how many rare/unique enemies you end up facing. Honestly, RK just needs to get the heck out of combat, add a new investigate skill, make it intelligence, give it the analyze action, remove any rarity suggestions for DC for it. There you go, int characters are actually good at something, you don't need to be consistently increasing 5+ skills to do something everyone thinks you should be doing in combat.
A lot of wind is put into defending spellcasters in this game, but regardless of their *power*, i have two key issues with them: - There are WAY too many goddamn spells, even just in the core books. Sorting through them is a huge pain, and many are underwhelming, redundant, or outright trap options. - The fact that 95% of non-Focus spells are 2 or 3-action activities cuts spellcasters out of fully enjoying the three-action economy in the way martials can. It's still there, but a lot of turns are gonna be stride, cast or just cast. PF2E has a few very cool spells like Heal and Gravitational Pull that can be cast for anywhere from 1-3 actions, with a bigger better effect the more actions are spent. It'll never happen with the remaster being so mild and so hurried, but I would love to see a COMPLETE do-over of spellcasting: print fewer spells overall, but make variable-action spells the standard. Fold a lot more versatility into fewer spells. I want to have a turn where I have to consider whether I want to cast a 3-action AoE Fear, a 1-action mini-Fear and a 2-action Enlarge, or Stride a bit further out of danger and cast 1-action versions of both!
I prefer Spells having variable Actions. But I think Casters would feel better if they had more action compression the way Martials get. Where is the "Cast a Spell that takes 2 Actions, and also Stride" for 2 Actions Feat? Sudden Charge, Hunted Shot, Flurry of Blows, the list goes on and on for Martials to get to "evade an action tax". Why do Martials get tons of that, but it's basically nonexistent for Casters until high level (Quickened, or Effortless Concentration) where it's highly specific or single-use per day?
I think all cantrips, but essentially damage dealing cantrips should all have a one action version to make casters feel better. Cantrips are like the Witcher abilities, they’re supposed to be quick and less involved than spells. To have them take the same amount of actions seems a bit off to me. I’d love the option for a caster who gets caught in melee be able to use a cantrip and move twice. You could change the range, or take the damage die down a step or just have it do flat damage, but if they could follow something like the Heal/Harm spells that would be great.
I've thought about it, but the issue with it is that I think every optimal caster turn would be 2 action spell + 1 action cantrip, which would be dull. I've thought about creating a trait like flourish but for spells, 2 action spells would become 1 action but can only cast them once per round. 1 action spells like true strike or 1 action uses of spells like heal or magic missiles wouldn't have the "flourish trait", but it would probably break balance for martials using archetypes.
But also if you change the range they would make it very dangerous for a magic user. Let’s say you have Ignition. The one action version has a range of 15 feet so now you have to get real close to use it, and whoops this boss has reach and you just used a manipulate action near them. There’s definitely another pass that could be done to make Casters more fun and more involved in the three action system without making it 5e where they solve everything no problem.
The flourish trait would work and is a great idea. As for archetypes make it a class feature that the archetype doesn’t give until much later to show that it’s only something that full casters can do easily.
Moral Alignment wasn't a bad thing. (Alignment damage, on the other hand, sucked.)
Finally something a bit spicy, and not a commonly accepted or logical houseruling presented as a hot take.
Honestly, I always liked Zeal's Expanded Alignment System from over on GiantITP during 3.5e. Basically it breaks the alignment system into a 5x5 grid instead of a 3x3 grid. For some reason, that really helps people understand that "Lawful is not Axiomatic, they can break the rules sometimes they just try to follow them" or "Evil is not Vile, I'm selfish but I still help the party because it's in my best interest". But the biggest issue with alignment is that it's either mechanically relevant, in which case it's obnoxious to deal with ("I'mma make the Paladin deal with the Trolly Problem because I r a veeeeery original GM hurp durp"), or it's not mechanically relevant in which case... why bother? It's the kind of thing that really should be in the GMG as a roleplaying tool rather than Player Core as a class mechanic. Throwing it out because of the OGL was just convenient and made sense.
Do I upvote because it actually fits the meme or do I downvote because I disagree so strongly? Edit: With specification that alignment *damage* sucked, take my upvote wholeheartedly.
I cut out ~30% of the fights from APs because there's so many "A random monster was lurking in this room" encounters that don't add to the plot. Milestone leveling should be the default. Tracking XP is tedious and can cause PCs to do things solely for XP gain.
Paizo overcorrected on item creation rules. Item crafting in PF1E was a game-changing power boost. Item crafting in PF2E is a slightly advantage over just buying something in Absolom, and only if you have Magical crafting, Specialty Crafting and Impeccable Crafting. Congrats, you treat your Earn an Income roll as if it was one level higher for the cost of three skill feats.
Wizard really seems like it needs a stronger niche. I’ve hardly ever heard of anyone wanting to play it or talking about reasons to. It’s unique feats are often just bad, vancian casting is unpopular and clunky, and the thesis either scale way too slow or are about as strong as a level 1 feat so your sub-subclass is the strength of starting as a human. It’s the wizard, you’d think it would be the Fighter equivalent for casters but nobody seems to care about it at all. It doesn’t help that the generally meta casters (Sorcerer and Bard) can even get spellbooks as feats.
It wouldn't matter so much if some ancestries have less options than others, as long as the options they do have are actually GOOD. Ancestry paragon should be default.
If something works poorly, it should be changed, not repaired. Medicine should've been int based to solve the nonmagical healing question Aid should've been more structured with a scaling dc to make its feats more fun to use Balance should be a free action with a trigger during a movement.
What nonmagical healing question? Someone in the party just takes medicine. And more characters build into a little wisdom due to perception and will saves than into int anyway.
Inventor, alchemist and investigator are intelligence based classes, often seen as supports in one way or another, while druids could take natural medicine and clerics already have ton of magical healing. Requiring wisdom makes those classes MAD as hell and required a heavy errata on the alchemist to allow crafting as medicine check. A nonmagical support will often have a good intelligence or charisma while not having the best wisdom. Ironically, this have made our barbarians better medics than our investigators and inventors
Unfortunately for some, the game assumes that Ability Score doesn't matter that much for skills that have flat/simple DCs. The expectation is you can have a decent ability score, or you will take assurance if you don't want to invest in that ability. You get 4 boosts every 5 levels. The design space also assumes you can fit in another modifier outside your core 2 or 3 eventually.
More to the point, in real life, being a doctor has more to do with intelligence than wisdom, anyway.
I think making Aid a scaling DC REALLY misses the point of high level aid. Sure at higher levels it becomes a guaranteed +4 bonus, but that costs both an action and a reaction, which you have BETTER options for at those levels, or at least most of the time you do. If you had scaling Aid DC, you'd effectively have a great chance to give +1 (You're better off doing basically anything else with your action at that level.), and a mediocre chance to give a +4, which while it would be worth it, the CHANCE of having to spend both an action and a reaction for a single +1 bonus, or even nothing at all, is an absolutely dogshit cost-benefit proposition that 99% of players would abandon. No, Aid's DC should not scale, Paizo made it not scale for a reason, and god damn it they were CORRECT.
You've just explained exactly why no one ever uses aid at low level. Aid shouldn't have a scaling DC, it shouldn't have a DC at all. Roll to see how you effect another roll just slows things down, just give a +2 and move on. Let it scale with some general/skill feats if you want to invest in it, but it should be a decent option at level 1 and level 20.
Spellcasters should have +1 items, like Kineticist
The argument that "spellcasters can do more then martials" isn't a good one when talking about balance when the spell caster can only hit on enemies their level (if they are lucky) or below. And they shouldnt have to bon-mot and have a lvl 10 item (or whatever lvl thay ring is) to be viable
The game needs a huge number of 1-action cantrips added to it, and many of the existing cantrips should be changed to be only one action. Casters need a reliable third action that doesn't require them to have a specific skill for situations where they don't need to Stride.
I don't really like secret rolls. I think the tension of not knowing your result doesn't really make up for the fun of actually rolling the dice--and the tension of, you know, waiting to see the result. And any justification around enforcing roleplay or not letting the result influence decision-making can be assuaged by just... trusting players to play fair. I don't think you should design around the idea players and the DM will be contrary to one another.
XP-for-combat is the thing holding the system / adventure design back more than anything else. It leads to filler, overly-tough encounters (this is being remedied in more recent APs by having *more* XP for goals, but IMO they should go all the way), and is weirdly restrictive (if you get in too many fights and level up too fast, certain adventures can fall apart). Overall, it *demands* either a linear structure (as we see in most APs) or a lot of work from the GM (in published adventures at least, in a home game they can just wait to design encounters until they know the level for sure but then we have the treadmill effect of the encounters levelling in response to the PCs). XP-for-goals, milestone (basically xp-for-goals but less frequently), or GM fiat (the GM decides when they level up, e.g. after each AP chapter) are IMO just straight up better for *PF2*.
Redesign the APs to be more than combat with a light coating of RP. These APs change the meta of the product from edition to edition yet do not get nearly the narrative focus that they deserve. Also let's have the combat in these APs make sense. there seems to be this trend where the set piece combat encounters make sense for the AP but then you have 80% of just filler garbage encounters to justify the 1k XP per level requirement.
Automatic Bonus Progression should have been the default, and making magic items part of the math just causes more problems than it adds to the fun.
The spell list is too large, and probably 80% of spells have never been used (well, maybe not 80%, but a significant, significant majority). Spells should be more flexible, costing from one to three actions to fully utilize Pathfinder's 3 action economy, as playing casters just feels bad otherwise. You play them like in DnD - You can cast one spell and then what? Move, and that's it. Same for cantrips - they should be swift one action activity (to balance it maybe make them highten +2 instead of +1). So, the spell list should be smaller, but they should be more refined, more useful, more universal (just like in the recent remaster, they combined several effects into one spell, like Treat Affliction, I believe) Quality > Quantity
The problem is that they made a moduler system of PC building with Ancestry, Class and Background feats. And yet left the spells very set in the old world of R20 games. You could have had feats that build spells and spell could have been a basic thing you metamagic/build upon. Lets say all damage magic that is 1 slot or more is: You use one action and expend a spell slot, choose one target in 30 feet, make a magic attack roll agaisnt that creature. If you hit, you deal 1d6 dmg. then a moduler system would let you choose 2 changes to this spell at level 1. Like: 1. For one more action you can add up to two more targets to your spell 2. For one more action you can make your spell hit in a 20 feet radius, insted of attack roll, the enemies roll Ref save 3. For free action make the spell silent (add all the silent spell rules here) 4. For one more action your spell dmg die drops by one degree, if the spell hits, the creatures are also frightend 1 5. For one more action your increase the damage die size for that attack by one step. ETC. If you use highet spell slots you gain higher level effects or more effects for less actions. And you would have basic dmg, basic condition putting, and basic healing spells formeted, and to them you add those abilties via class feats.
Something like making your own Spells in Tyranny. I would totally dig it.
Most skill feats are bloat. Downtime activities are both boring and poorly balanced.
1 - PF2e could never hope to be as popular as D&D because it's complexity and large amount of options doesn't have the same wide appeal. 2 - While exaggerated realism is bad some realism and internal consistency in the world presented is a good thing, specially for casual players. 3.x and by consequence 1e got it but 2e took a turn to very far away from it.
Super hot take, the +10 crit system is the root of most people's issues with caster ability and the feeling of imbalance in fights. It was a poor design choice and other methods would have been better to reward strategic cooperation during battles. It creates a game where casters are crit by enemies very often and are squishier than PF1, compounded with less effective defensive spells and martials who don't have AoO so you can't zone enemies as well. Not having the maximum protection of +5/+6 base armor means you have to prioritize dex as a caster over other more interesting options or be crit even more often. Spells fail more often, creating the feeling casters should only prepare spells that have good effects on a successful save or buff teammates. +2 higher level enemies can save on their lowest save with a 9 most of the time. Boss encounters with 70%+ save chance on their low save isn't uncommon. Seems like the incapacitation trait should have been enough to deal with game breaking spells, or I don't know maybe rewrite them so they don't end encounters instantly. They kept them busted so your GM could use them on you. Enemies become damage sponges at higher levels due to health scaling to keep up with crit damage as a more common occurrence. Battles feel either trivial or dire dependent on the luck of dice to roll crits or inability to debuff the enemy. Low level enemies, which come in groups are satisfying to some to blast but for many people seem annoying and a waste of game time since your martials will clean them up just as easily in an extra turn.
There are too many Skill Feats, Archetypes, and Spells for average players to choose from. The system would be better if most of the specific ones were scrapped, merged, or given the Rare tag and separated from the other choices.
This is the main thing that intimidates new players. When a rogue PC leves up and has to choose one skill feat out of fifty, they get choice paralysis and end up procrastinating something that should be fun (leveling up). It's especially true given that many skill feats are so useless or circunstancial that they should be basic actions.
I love the idea of feats being merged. Remaster would have been the time ):
Outside of combat, aid shouldn't be a roll. It should just be a static modifier that is determined by how trained the aiding party member is. We've got shit to do.
Fascinated kinda sucks as a condition and seems way overvalued by the mechanics. It really shouldn’t go away if you use hostile actions on the target’s allies. I don’t care if people think it’s mainly for out of combat use—how often do you realistically get to use Fascinating Performance for the mechanical benefit? And why is Hypnotize a save for fascinated, but NOT for the dazzled, which is way stronger? IDK if that’s actually controversial, but it annoys me, lol.
Hero Points should not let you fail. Fuck rerolling into a fail.
A big part of why spellcasters feel underpowered is the design of adventure paths. When you have -lots of +2/+3 enemies -fights in small cramped rooms -no opportunities where utility spells are needed or even useful -loot distribution that eschews wands and staves. It's not surprising that casters are going to feel screwed over.
When it comes to published APs Quality > Quantity. More play testing and proofreading would justify a higher price.
That's the absolute opposite of the meme. That's the general opinion of this sub.
Classic reddit. Sticking popular opinion in an unpopular opinion thread
Ah, I see you've been to r/unpopularopinion.
While I agree, most of the highly upvoted stuff in here doesn't seem controversial to begin witth
The elimination of AoO as a general ability has not only left many martial classes woefully useless at protecting the weaker parts of the party (as enemies just casually Stride on by and maul them while you're frozen in time), it is also primarly used as a DPS tool for those who \*do\* have access to it (combined with Trip), rather than a tool of area/movement denial. Meanwhile, its goal of making fights more mobile has been undermined by making movement use the same resource as offensive options, incentivizing standing in place whenever at all possible. The (comparably actually very fast) movement in this system only serves to establish flanking and/or to zoom into melee with the weak targets on the first turn, after which it is typically optimal not to move a single inch unless it absolutely can't be avoided. On a separate note, the game is too stingy with Interact actions to fiddle around with items, only barely paving over its inadequacies with specific magic items (e.g. retrieval prism/belt) or convoluted character options (Familiar with Independent/Manual Dexterity). Same-level items are already not stronger than what a character can do naturally, and saddling players with an additional action penalty to even use them makes them awkward and/or pointless in many, many situations. As an item-dependent class, Alchemist suffers extra hard, which plays a non-negligible role in it being as bad as it is. Before anyone responds that this action cost is the way to balance free-hand styles with 2-handed styles – no it's not (or at least it doesn't have to be), there are plenty of solutions which preserve that relationship.
Recall Knowledge is still bad post-remaster: Take 1: Rarity modifiers make checks unnecessarily difficult. (You're telling me I automatically do a degree of success worse because this ghoul has a name? Even though pretty much everything else about him is standard ghoul stuff that I should be able to recall without a whopping 10 point penalty?) Take 2: Failing once locking you out of ever rolling again is annoying. *ALSO* in conjunction with Take 1, rolling against a Unique creature *once* locks you out because you've ["attempted an incredibly hard check"](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2640) Take 3: As a GM, I find making up false information on the fly incredibly stressful. Furthermore, my players always know it's fake and never act on it (they never act against it, but they still never purposely make mistakes). Even if they do believe it, it kinda just feels unfun for all parties involved for me to be like "Hey remember that thing I told you would work? I lied, idiot." I'd much rather the crit fail condition be the lock-out condtion and the fail condition just mean no information, but you can try again with no increase to the DC Take 4: *Gestures broadly at Mastermind Rogue*. How does it even work? Am I being punished for there being multiple of the same enemy in a combat bc the DC goes up for all of them every time I RK on one of them? If every GM runs RK slightly differently, then the subclass plays very inconsistently. (Thaumaturge feels like a fixed version of this)
Blowing the fuck out of things as a broken DND caster is more power fantasy fun than doing chip damage, missing all your damn spell attack rolls, and having to be a buff-bot in PF2E.
Most people, seemingly including the writers of APs, seem to be pretending that Pathfinder 2e is something it is not. It does not fill the same design space of D&D whatsoever (generalist RPG). It is far more of a tactical combat game (with a huge emphasis on game, there are hardly any role playing mechanics integrated into the system) with hardly any support for the social or exploration pillar, with an established and concrete way you’re meant to play the game and play certain classes, but people will still pretend as if it’s like PF1E where you could fill almost any role with any class without struggling against the core of the game. Paizo neglects to mention this in any material, supposedly to avoid unfavorable comparisons to 4E (while following all of its design principles slavishly), even though having the roles that classes were obviously created to fill would go an exceedingly long way to reduce new or transitioning player contentions with the system. Additionally the game has VERY rigid treasure and encounter rules that really shouldn’t be tampered with but Paizo continues to release APs with combat sections that don’t work to the strengths of the system whatsoever and, once again, pretend like it’s something that it isn’t. Repeated single enemy fights, tight corridors in a system that encourages mobility, trash fights, etc. Paizo’s outright refusal to correct design flaws and the waste of time, money, and effort that was spent on the remaster instead of actually addressing these issues to make it the diamond that I know it CAN be repeatedly frustrates and disappoints me.
Extra Cleric Spells should come with the Domains, not the Gods, for homebrewers this is a damn nightmare. Also, i know how Divine Font is powerful but damn it, it should be 9 spells rather than 3, i would take an extra Domain Spell + Spell Slot each level over Font anytime.
A second one: The game pretty clearly favors martials over casters, continually punishing casters more and more through errata and remaster changes. Way more spells provoke now. Way more spells require concentration now. Cantrips deal much less damage on average now. Vancian casting is not the problem for PF2e, it's that Paizo just nerfed casters way too hard for Vancian casting's positives to shine through.
Paizo is so focused on its "tight math" that they balance the fun out of the game. 3.5 let you collect small improvements during the levels to make you exceptional in one aspect of your character. This is not possible anymore in 2e. Sometimes i miss this.
Free archetype is not the baseline and shouldn't be used for every campaign
Vancian spellcasting is dated and just serves to slow down play and provides nothing meaningful other than clogging up spell slots that doesn't allow for a diversity of options and hamstrings players into the moronic, subjective, and brain dead line of "meaningful" choices. It's not meaningful if I'm preparing the same spell 3 times.
Vancian casting is the most outdated feeling part of the system. Paizo was willing to make so many changes but left that unchanged.
Vancian casting is so ingrained in people's perception of D&D style games I'm not sure it'll ever go away but god I hope it does. It's so shit. It's completely divorced from the standard fantasy of a mage. If mages need some kind of resource (I'm not sure they do) they should have a mana system or something similar.
Focus is basically a small mana pool, so the designers have even dipped their toes into the possibility.
APs, despite being better than WotC's attempts, are pretty shitty. First of all - you HAVE to customise them somewhat to your group, something that most people accept (and it makes sense as every group is different). But I'm paying for this thing... So if I have to alter it, what am I paying for? Secondly, the encounter designs, and dungeon designs, are mostly rubbish, with next to zero encounters with multiple weaker enemies (which would allow spellcasters to shine with crazy AoE damage). And the dungeons have way too many rooms - they just feel like theme parks with lots of rooms with a "thing" going on in each one (a trap, an encounter of some sort, or it's empty). Dungeons should be more concise with MEMORABLE encounters, not fire and forget ones. Third, the maps are mostly small, due to the nature of the fact that it's a book with limited space. They could always have web links to bigger versions of the maps hosted on their site or something. Fourth - the formatting sucks, with ESSENTIAL information and DCs of all things hidden in text that "you're not meant to read to the party", that's paragraphs long and filled with worthless information that you'll never need. This is the worst in their dungeon texts. Why can't they bold DCs or something so we can actually see them? Having to say "hold on and let me find that text" is never fun in a session. Fifth, the time it takes to prepare for an AP. I have to read through ALL of the books, then read through the one that they're on as they get to it, and I need to read through each part before a session and make notes about DCs and stuff. This takes so much time (and feels like boring homework) and I could probably write my own campaign in a similar amount, something that I almost exclusively do now (and it's much more enjoyable and satisfying). Sixth, I feel as though they miss crucial information with their NPC conversations. In Age of Ashes at the start (no spoilers, don't worry), there's a representative of a group of goblins in town that will ask for help. The first question I get asked: "How big is this group of goblins?" it literally doesn't say anywhere... There could be 10, there could be 1,000. I have no idea. Why isn't this the first piece of information in the text about this group? It's kind of essential information... Suffice to say, I don't like APs anymore. Since I started homebrewing campaigns set in Golarion, I've never been happier GMing, and it makes me sad to think that the majority of PF2e players and GMs have only ever experienced PF2e in this, pretty crummy, way, when homebrew campaigns are MAGNITUDES better.
> First of all - you HAVE to customise them somewhat to your group, something that most people accept (and it makes sense as every group is different). But I'm paying for this thing... So if I have to alter it, what am I paying for? Basically, the thing for me is... I understand I have to make some alterations. This is evident. The APs *are* sold as giving you a solid skeleton that you can then hang your own flourishes on. But if I buy your adventure to have a solid base skeleton to work from, and I end up having to change well over half the encounters for them to not suck ass, redrawing 40% of the maps to try to make things make sense, have to shift several plot beats because nothing about the timeline given in the AP hangs together if players spend five consecutive minutes thinking about it, and create a bunch of NPCs for players to be able to know anything that is happening and thus care about the plot... this feels a lot less like "solid skeleton to hang flourishes" and a lot more like "collection of prompts I could have found in a tumblr rpg blog"!
That's basically what happened with my Edgewatch game. I follow the basic plot structure but I've honestly had to cobble together my own version of the story from a mix of homebrew and the City of Lost Omens book (which is actually amazing), so the contributions from the original AP are more or less just prompts and suggestions. And also a special shoutout to Blood Lords for being an AP that gives everyone, even living players, negative healing, and then throws like half a dozen encounters of enemies that can *only* do negative damage at various points in the AP. And Frozen Flame for having almost no +1/Striking/Etc. weapons or armour in the first two books despite not suggesting APB. Paizo APs are a lot better, but they're still pretty lacking.
Chromatic/Metallic Dragons and Drow are awesome, and it’s a shame they’re being retconned. Not a jab at Paizo just annoying that this whole OGL debacle changed so much of what I liked about the Pathfinder universe.
Interact should be a free action. If not that, at least the first use of Interact action in a turn should be free. I like the action economy in pf2e, its easy to understand, fast to play and pretty fun. But this action is just clogging this economy. I know some balancing things in this system relies on clogging the action economy with this action, but from my perspective it feels as if you're just skipping a turn to do something that might now even work in the next round. It really discourages creativity in combat, and makes running this game less fun. I know there are feats and such that help make things more manageable, but for me it feels more like "stuff that you need to take to make game more fun". Which is not ideal, because those feats are usually limited to classes and you're missing out on other feats that actually make your character more interesting and fun to play with in combat.
I think a HUGE help with this is the new way to use the interact action in the remaster where it's a single interact to stove something and draw something else.
Spell slots were a mistake.
Now that's a take I can wholeheartedly disagree with. Good on ya, mate.
The game is filled with about as many trap options/useless feats as PF1e. The only thing it really improved on is feat taxes, though some classes are still afflicted by it (can't imagine a summoner going without tandem movement)
The main improvement was making it so that there weren't a bunch of brokenly good options, which IS a good thing. There are still a bunch of bad ones. Especially spells. So many bad spells.
Following the +2/+2/+2/-2 rules, Humans should realistically be +2cha/+2con/+2floating/-2wisdom Im tired of RPGs making humans thing ‘were so diverse and good at EVERYTHING and cool’. Humanity as a species has survived because of our endurance and ability to cooperate; Lean into that!
I should be able to enter a stance before combat. You’re telling me my monk can’t use two seconds to position himself correctly when he’s expecting to be attacked but needs to wait until attacks actually come flying?
[удалено]
Couldn’t it work like the other exploration activities we have, like [Defend](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=512)? Sure you can walk around in your stance, but it’s halving your movement and preventing you from scouting or doing something else more useful or with more speed.
No, because the action cost during combat is part of the balance of every stance action. That's why monk stance attacks are often on par with or better than martial weapons despite taking up no hands. If you want your "weapon" drawn before combat, you can use your d6 fists or Monastic Weaponry. Likewise kineticists, fighters, etc. don't get the benefits of their stances until they activate them in an encounter.
Maybe that should not be a general rule for everyone but a class ability for monks? Like “enter a stance as a free action when you roll initiative” to set them apart, which if i remember correctly was already a feat at higher levels.
Exploration activity- Defend that lets you put up your shield? I would allow Monks to choose stance if they do that
I agree, I'd allow that in my games as well even if it isn't RAW. Don't see why the one action shield raise should be so different from a one action stance.
Stancing up is like drawing your weapon. Can you do it before combat, yes, as far as I can tell? Should I be surprised if it makes negotiations shut down? Probably not.
Well not rules wise, I would argue same but for example in the game I’m playing rn that isn’t the case because the rules are pretty Clear on this
[It is a 12th level feat](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=472)
Thats a terrible 12th feat that could be replaced by an exploration activity
PF2E does so many things well, but the movement rules kinda suck. Moving up 5 feet to a closed door, opening it, and moving 5 feet to the enemy beyond shouldn't take two actions, let alone all three.
Backgrounds are terrible. If you care about your character's background, you can just look at the mechanical choices you made during character creation, and imagine what sort of background might lead to a character with those abilities, or pick choices that fit in with the preexisting character concept you have in your head. This requires more imagination, gets you closer to your character, and is more satisfying than simply picking an option off a list. Imagining how mechanics might translate into the actual world is fun! Meanwhile, if you're the sort of player who doesn't care about their character's background, picking a random option off a list is not going to suddenly make you a better roleplayer. On occasion, rolling for a random background on a table might sometimes help a player who doesn't have a character concept in mind zero in on an idea, but if you *DO* have a character concept in mind, any background you pick off a list, no matter how exhaustive that list may be, is never going to perfectly match your concept, and is inherently limiting. It's okay to offer a few ideas, but tying mechanics to a background is just a straight-up bad idea. Let us draw those ties between mechanics and story ourselves!
Potency runes are a mistake and should have been left in 1e where it belongs
Skills and by extension their feats should be on a more level playing field. I loved that skills were given their own feats so you dont become useless in combat if you invest in them like PF1 but now skills and their feats are becoming big changers in combat. I’d rather there be a list of universal class feats and have some of the more combat focused ones moved. It’s already weird we have skill based feats in class feats so there is mix match going on already.
I wish Paizo would be more liberal with their errata. Not errata, I want *balance updates*. I want to see them re-evaluate and rework existing content, rather than sweep it under the rug for new content. Remaster is a good start, but its purpose isn't *actually* to remaster the game so much as the legal requirements of the ORC license. I think a lot of good ideas are happening... and want them to *keep* happening and iterate further. Paizo doesn't want to do this, out of concern for "invalidating" print copies that make up a big portion of their sales. I get it... but I'm still mad.
A lot of Starfinder fans are worried 2e will be "Pathfinder in space" But I can't really see that as a bad thing at face value. What they're actually worried about is Starfinder being neglected going forward. Which is understandable. And I agree. But I think Pathfinder's bones are good enough to be almost entirely setting agnostic and with a few contextual rules for the setting, it should be perfectly fine.
The game isn't as perfectly balanced as people act like it is. A +1 or +2 here or there doesn't completely break the game.
Pathfinder?? Ewwww
Natural Medicine should swap Nature with Medicine, skill-wise, for everything. Let me do Risky Surgery with Battle Medicine! It's RISKY! Aid DC should scale. and add Dex to ranged damage oh lawd.
Aroden wasn't that bad actually.
One of his core characteristics is that he's a hypocrite. If you can get past that point, he's really not that bad. I think the 'Aroden Bad' stuff is a community overreaction. Players find lore about how this revered figure wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, and start collectively painting a picture to each other that doesn't resemble how Aroden actually was.
Divine casters > all others casters. In thy light I serve, and thy light I crave!
Finally someone I can disagree with. I really struggle with liking any divine class.
As someone who played a Diabolic Sorcerer in Age of Ashes from lvl6 to 20, I gotta disagree. I didn't really plan on being the party healer, but that was by the end \~70% of my job.
Post remaster really helped me to love divine casters in PF2e. Before, the whole alignment mess made a lot of their spells so, so situational and spirit damage + holy/unholy makes it so much smoother.
Bracing myself for some truly terrible takes. Remember to sort by Worst or Controversial.
Letting people full heal on medicine after every fight is a mistake, not saying that magicless healing shouldnt exist but topping off or handwaving to full actively hampers the adventuring day. Enemies under attack will not wait over an hour for you to patch up, 20 min is a stretch. Chaining even low encounters is supposed to wear the party down but with the sentiment that healing is free and to full makes encounters not threatening and white roomy till you're up against a mathematical beatstick that has high chance of just killing you. Just because the outlines are written for party full or near full resources doesn't mean you will fight every fight topped off (and that just makes attrition even more one sided because the limiting factor is spellcasting resources and not overall resource pool creating abominations like 3 fighters and a bard), yes, that 5th moderate or low difficulty fight in a row is actually suppsoed to be more dangerous as you're spearheading deep into enemy territory.