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Alchemical Crossbow with Crossbow Ace or Gravity Weapon and Repeating Heavy Crossbow are decent precision ranger options. I think gunslingers are better with crossbows though. Sniper with rogue multiclass especially. I played one at level 4 that one-shot an enemy in the opening round of four out of five combats.
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Feb 18, 2023 11:13
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So my second player has made a 14 CHA Bard. When I tried to talk him out of this he told me that Pathfinder 2e has "fake options" if he can't make a 14 CHA bard, and that it was possible to make an effective INT based Fighter in D&D 3.5E (he saw this in a movie). We're adults so I was able to reach an agreement/understanding, but it's going to be tough. The party is a Swashbuckler (built pretty well), a Crossbow Ranger with 16 Dex, a Wizard (also built "correctly" and by that I mean didn't sabotage his key ability) and the aforementoned 14 CHA Bard. Wish me luck. This feels like it's going to flop bad and they're going to blame the system.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:08
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one idea would be to let him run with the character as-is but offer to let him re-spec when he reaches level 2. To avoid this sounding like "this is going to suck because you suck", possibly make the offer to everyone.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:16
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:(he saw this in a movie) 
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Feb 18, 2023 18:17
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Lamuella posted:one idea would be to let him run with the character as-is but offer to let him re-spec when he reaches level 2. To avoid this sounding like "this is going to suck because you suck", possibly make the offer to everyone. That's great advice and exactly what I had already done, but I'm glad to hear the idea reinforced. It's true though. Dorkness Rising, and literally in the Wiki they say "they took 'artistic licensing' with feats and abilities and class features". Which of course means it was bullshit, but he remembered it and was like "D&D3.5 is a good system! It lets you be the smart fighter!" Pernicious propaganda imo. 
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Feb 18, 2023 18:19
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Lamuella posted:one idea would be to let him run with the character as-is but offer to let him re-spec when he reaches level 2. To avoid this sounding like "this is going to suck because you suck", possibly make the offer to everyone. i've basically remade my character every level in the 4e epic level campaign my gm's been running for half a decade now because i keep wanting to try other stuff and this is our last hurrah with the system, and i can safely say it loving owns doing so
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Feb 18, 2023 18:19
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:So my second player has made a 14 CHA Bard. When I tried to talk him out of this he told me that Pathfinder 2e has "fake options" if he can't make a 14 CHA bard, and that it was possible to make an effective INT based Fighter in D&D 3.5E (he saw this in a movie). The designers of PF2E wanted to get rid of ability scores to maybe prevent this kind of weird rear end thinking, but the people in the playtests voted heavily against it, so we still have vestigial ability scores where your boosts should be decided by your class/subclass choices. Trying to imagine how great a time I'd have a bard with -2 to my spell DCs. I mean I guess you have 16 str or dex which lets you be an incredibly mediocre martial, but you can already do that while having an 18 cha. Oh you're also -2 on performance so you can't lingering performance for action economy. It's so bad. Don't let your players sabotage themselves and then claim PF2E is bad because they tried to be bad at it, thanks.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:28
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:It's true though. Dorkness Rising, and literally in the Wiki they say "they took 'artistic licensing' with feats and abilities and class features". Which of course means it was bullshit, but he remembered it and was like "D&D3.5 is a good system! It lets you be the smart fighter!" Pernicious propaganda imo. I'm not doubting you could probably make some kind of int based fighter using a handful of obscure splatbooks from the many dead forests worth of 3.5 supplements, but like... that's the movie where a guy uses a huge mound of his own dead PCs to create cover. I don't think anyone should be using it as an accurate depiction of 3.5.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:28
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This is why I will forever hate mental ability scores. Name Intelligence something else, like Magicality, and you'd never have the issue of people treating half of your stat sheet as roleplaying decision.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:41
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The Bee posted:This is why I will forever hate mental ability scores. Name Intelligence something else, like Magicality, and you'd never have the issue of people treating half of your stat sheet as roleplaying decision. Ability scores bug me the most for skill checks, because most skill checks are usually tied to one ability. Like, lock picking for example. Usually that's Dexterity, and that makes enough sense. But why not Intelligence? (You happen to know this particular lock is a Model 7 Keepem'out and that they all have a trick that pops them right open.) Wisdom? (You fiddle around with it and happen to hear a tiny click.) I know there are systems that allow it, and not every ability score is going to be relevant to a given skill check, but it's still something I'd like to see more of.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:49
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The problem with that is you'll max out one score and then gin up ideas to constantly use it for your checks, making you OP compared to people with a more even spread.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:01
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You certainly can make an effective 14 Cha bard - people made weirder things like 10 Dex monk (before Mountain Stance) and 10 Wis cleric - it just takes a level of tactical understanding that I'm not sure he has. At absolute worst, by level 6 you can Harmonize IC and Dirge, and that's not awful. That said, he'll probably want to stay away from debuffs and anything that actually requires Performance checks, and stay buff-focused. What's he actually getting from putting the two stat boosts elsewhere, anyways? Is there something he needs that bad that he can't take a 16? Or is he just trying to be a 14 Cha bard because the movie told him so? the_steve posted:Ability scores bug me the most for skill checks, because most skill checks are usually tied to one ability. You actually can do this in PF2, but it's definitely a GM-dependent thing. There was actually a situation a little while ago where I recommended Intelligence-based Thievery for the check. Cyouni fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 19:55
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M. Night Skymall posted:The designers of PF2E wanted to get rid of ability scores to maybe prevent this kind of weird rear end thinking, but the people in the playtests voted heavily against it, so we still have vestigial ability scores where your boosts should be decided by your class/subclass choices. Please fix it, but don’t change anything. - customers of anything.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:17
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There are feats to use strength for intimidation check. There are other that arguably let you do almost anything with performance. So letting someone cover a skill or range of skills using int instead of the default seems like a reasonable use of a feat too. As long as no one's becoming so strong that they automatically outshine all the other characters it's fine
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Feb 18, 2023 20:18
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I made a sub-optimal(gun using) magus and completely blew away an entire encounter and outshone all the other characters with a couple of lucky gouging claw/shocking grasp crits and anyway now I'm playing a sorcerer instead.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:30
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Cyouni posted:What's he actually getting from putting the two stat boosts elsewhere, anyways? Is there something he needs that bad that he can't take a 16? Or is he just trying to be a 14 Cha bard because the movie told him so? I have no idea. I couldn't follow his logic. Something something wanting to help the party and be versatile. I honestly think he should just play a Chirurgeon Alchemist, I think he would have a lot more fun with it. It's still non-optimal but at least it's a workable concept.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:41
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M. Night Skymall posted:The designers of PF2E wanted to get rid of ability scores to maybe prevent this kind of weird rear end thinking, but the people in the playtests voted heavily against it, so we still have vestigial ability scores where your boosts should be decided by your class/subclass choices. Every time I hear about the designers wanting to do something, but the playtesters voting against it (ability scores, automatic bonus progression, free archetype, etc) I hate those grogs more and more.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:52
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Harold Fjord posted:There are feats to use strength for intimidation check. No there aren't, Intimidating Prowess just gives you a +1/+2 bonus for having 16/20 strength
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Feb 18, 2023 20:55
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Megazver posted:Every time I hear about the designers wanting to do something, but the playtesters voting against it (ability scores, automatic bonus progression, free archetype, etc) I hate those grogs more and more. Its pretty brutal and why we have had to re learn all the lessons that 4th edition fixed a decade ago the hard way. I understand why the designers did what they felt like they had to do to cater to make this a viable product. Maybe in another ten years? I feel like games have to hide the improvements like focus spells vs encounter powers ect.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:57
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Bundle of discounted content on Pathfinder Infinite if anyone's interested: https://www.pathfinderinfinite.com/m/product/426969
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Feb 18, 2023 21:09
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M. Night Skymall posted:Don't let your players sabotage themselves and then claim PF2E is bad because they tried to be bad at it, thanks. I've played with these people and it sucks. Luckily I've mostly cut them out of my life because it turns out their shittiness isn't just limited to gaming. Megaman, did these people play 4e before this? Surely they understand needing to maximize your primary ability score. I'd be extremely suspicious that they are trying to sabotage your game, especially if they are already claiming the system is bad if they shouldn't do something so obviously stupid.
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Feb 18, 2023 21:54
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KPC_Mammon posted:I've played with these people and it sucks. Luckily I've mostly cut them out of my life because it turns out their shittiness isn't just limited to gaming. No, but they're a big time grog who ran a 2nd edition game for years. This guy is a good guy and a long term friend and I am very surprised at this behavior. However, he seems to have fully accepted the consequences and has acknowledged that he's "doing it wrong" in some sort of attempt to explore the system. My take is that he somehow thinks he's smarter than PF2E or thinks that he's going to have equivalent power in other areas; PF2E ain't that game IMO. I do not actually believe that he knows that he's making a bad, ineffective character and I wasn't able to convince him because of his many ossified thinking traps about RPGs. He's just gonna have to learn the hard way and that's part of both life and elfgames. A nice thing is another player in email looked it over and IM'd him and said "hey man you probably shouldn't do this" without any prompting from me and another person I spoke to was like "why is he doing something the game explicitly doesn't want you to do?" and agrees that if you can control your ability scores, that's the game saying "hey man please make yourself right or you're gonna have a bad time". He compared it to insisting on melee fighting as a wizard. That's going to be helpful when it becomes obvious he's hurt himself. The thing is, I took a bit of time today and built 3 other characters who do "heal the party and have some depth but also can kill stuff" and it's not very hard, I'm actually pretty impressed by the system, the only thing you can't do of course is just set your key attribute to be dogshit. It's ruinous. In doing this exercise I found that I really actually liked Alchemist a lot despite the perception they are a weaker character class. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 22:28
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Megazver posted:Every time I hear about the designers wanting to do something, but the playtesters voting against it (ability scores, automatic bonus progression, free archetype, etc) I hate those grogs more and more. The worst part is as far as I can tell they hardly converted anyone from PF1E to PF2E anyway. The 1E subreddit basically ran off anyone trying to talk about 2E on it until they made a new 2E subreddit. Most of their influx of new players are coming from 5E, though tbf there're just so many 5E players they dwarf any other demographic anyway. They should have just made the game they wanted, those grogs were never going to play it. Cyouni posted:You certainly can make an effective 14 Cha bard - people made weirder things like 10 Dex monk (before Mountain Stance) and 10 Wis cleric - it just takes a level of tactical understanding that I'm not sure he has. At absolute worst, by level 6 you can Harmonize IC and Dirge, and that's not awful. Yeah, but that's mostly just because bards are so good it's hard to make them bad. I think the 14 cha bard is probably in a better spot than the 16 dex crossbow ranger, since at least with the bard you could potentially be doing useful things (recall knowledge? stabbing things?) and still benefiting from your songs that don't depend on cha, but as a crossbow ranger you've committed to shooting at things with a crossbow and then chosen not to take 18 in the key stat for that, seems iffy.
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Feb 18, 2023 22:33
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:No, but they're a big time grog who ran a 2nd edition game for years. This was actually a conversation I had at the session zero for the campaign I started last month. We had a mix of people brand new to RPGs, people with loads of 5e experience, and one person who had loads of 2e experience from decades ago but had been playing 5e for two years. One of the first things I said to people after some basic intro stuff was "being familiar with Dungeons and Dragons is going to help you in some ways and hinder you in others. Check any assumptions you make about howe the rules work, because several of them don't work how you think". I'm doing the start of the campaign as a self-contained adventure that will take 3 or 4 sessions and which I am deliberately structuring a bit like a tutorial. We started off with a big fight so people could work out basic fight mechanics and 3 action economy. Depending on what they choose next we're likely to do some tracking through the woods which will introduce people to things like ability rolls, perception, and traps. The adventure finishes up with a small dungeon crawl and a mini boss battle, by which time they'll have figured out if their characters work how they want them to. So far we've been pretty good at people questioning their assumptions, but we have had one instance of someone trying something that would be tactically smart in d&d but which didn't really do anything here, based on the assumption that everyone got an attack of opportunity. So we're learning.
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Feb 18, 2023 22:44
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"You could be an Intelligent-based Fighter in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5!", I say as I make a Bard with 14 Charisma in Pathfinder 2e, a game that is not Dungeons and Dragons 3.5
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Feb 18, 2023 22:44
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Froghammer posted:"You could be an Intelligent-based Fighter in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5!", I say as I make a Bard with 14 Charisma in Pathfinder 2e, a game that is not Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 The other thing is that a lot of the messy options are just different things now. That smart fighter, was it even a fighter? Or does the investigator in pf2 cover what they were trying to accomplish? Or was the warlord (I admit I know gently caress all about 4e) the battlefield tactician an int fighter wanted to be? People get really hung up on what things are called which is why I'm glad the champion opted to dump the baggage even if it's the same thing. You don't have to worry about a poo poo DM trying to make you fall despite the rules trying real hard to kill that up front. Ideally we'd be able to file off the need for titles and just go, 'Im making a divine brawler's and everyone would know how it's different from a primal or arcane melee character without having to have discussion about what qualifies as a paladin. The more I read pf2 knowing that they got push back on most changes, the more the language in that book reads as hostile to people who take progress as a personal affront.
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Feb 18, 2023 23:04
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M. Night Skymall posted:The worst part is as far as I can tell they hardly converted anyone from PF1E to PF2E anyway. The 1E subreddit basically ran off anyone trying to talk about 2E on it until they made a new 2E subreddit. Most of their influx of new players are coming from 5E, though tbf there're just so many 5E players they dwarf any other demographic anyway. They should have just made the game they wanted, those grogs were never going to play it. the 16 Dex crossbow ranger, if they were not a new player, is kind of more defensible though, because if it's part of an actual long term plan, there's good reasons to do that. (tl;dr, from 5-9 and again from 15-19, i.e. half of the characters lifespan, they are on par with the person that started at 18, and also have two stat points in some other stat that is presumably benefiting them that the player who took the 18 missed out on. It's not always optimal, but it's justifiable if you're going into it eyes open and with a plan, in a way that starting at 14 is not. That said, none of these people are going into this with a plan that justifies the choices being made, they're just off doing stormwind things.)
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Feb 18, 2023 23:06
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Thing is, if the person's justification for a 14 dex bard was character based rather than mechanics based, I'd absolutely buy it straight away and have no worries at all, as long as they were going in with eyes open.
Lamuella fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 23:10
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Lamuella posted:Thing is, if the person's justification for a 14 dex bard was [character based rather than mechanics based, I'd absolutely buy it straight away and have no worries at all, as long as they were going in with eyes open. Basic Optimization is an in character decision. People want to be good at the things they do especially when being good at the things they do is the difference between life and death.
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Feb 18, 2023 23:14
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That's certainly a valid way of playing, and the way that most people play, but if someone knew that they were mechanically disadvantaging themselves for narrative reasons, I wouldn't object to it. In the d&d game I'm currently playing, one of our party is playing a monk who has taken a vow of poverty. The character has a philosophical stance, stemming from his backstory, that rejects possessions beyond his quarterstaff and begging bowl. Mechanically it's a pain in the arse as we have to keep track of money for him, can't depend on him carrying anything, and if he happens to have money he'll just give all of it to the next person who looks like they need it. However from a character and storytelling point of view it leads to some very interesting stuff, as he's navigating a world with deliberately imposed limitations. I'm not saying I'd do it, just that I'd understand it.
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Feb 18, 2023 23:45
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That's not what he's doing. He wants to cast spells and those use his CHA. He literally made a Bard that's pretty bad at Bard'ing "My player made a Monk that's lousy at being a Monk and gets his rear end beat in a game where we're guaranteed to get in fights that, if we lose, have bad consequences" is not the same as "don't give this guy money. He gives it away"
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Feb 18, 2023 23:49
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oh absolutely, in your case the guy is just being an idiot. And even for deliberate disadvantages I wouldn't do it with a group who weren't okay with it.
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Feb 18, 2023 23:55
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So another thing I did is made around 9 different characters of all kinds of types and gave them 3 sentence back stories and while they are not CharOps masterpieces they are not awful. I had fun making them too. I am just telling the players that if they are not happy at any point they can go grab one of those PCs and play them for the rest of the session and then either keep playing them or respec or remake their character.
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Feb 18, 2023 23:55
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Does this guy also understand that losing that extra +2 in his primary stat also reduces his ability to get critical hits in most of his class-based actions by 10%? Pathfinder's die-rolling rules make +1's and +2's a lot more important than they were in D&D. I mean, I understand the spirit of eschewing min-maxing for role-playing purposes, but this feels more like shooting himself in the foot just to be contrary. If he has some fascinating master plan that makes what he's done worthwhile, we'd like to hear it.
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Feb 18, 2023 23:59
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M. Night Skymall posted:The worst part is as far as I can tell they hardly converted anyone from PF1E to PF2E anyway. The 1E subreddit basically ran off anyone trying to talk about 2E on it until they made a new 2E subreddit. Most of their influx of new players are coming from 5E, though tbf there're just so many 5E players they dwarf any other demographic anyway. They should have just made the game they wanted, those grogs were never going to play it. I think this is really uncharitable. Stuff like free archetype and automatic bonus progression was never even presented as part of the playtest from what I remember (it certainly wasn't in the playtest rulebook or doomsday dawn, and the other playtest adventure the public got to try was focusing on attunement), and even if it was, it's okay for them to be variants instead of part of the basic rules. Part of what makes Pathfinder 2e compelling is its flexibility while remaining mechanically/mathematically strong, and while the options you like fit your playstyle, they don't work for everyone. Conversely, I've been having a lot of fun and success with suggesting Pathfinder 2e in OSR spaces, because proficiency without level facilitates really good old-school style play without taking away from the system's strengths. The Pathfinder 1e reddit was absolutely hostile towards 2e, but that doesn't reflect the larger community that was playing Pathfinder 1e. Paizo very clearly aimed at their enfranchised player base who were interested in Golarion and Paizo's products, not just "more 3.5", as part of 2e, and it was successful for them commercially and creatively (they were up front about Pathfinder 2e doing very well commercially before this whole thing with WotC trying to kill the OGL and people jumping ship). There's more people playing Pathfinder 2e than just "5e converts" and there's more people not playing it than just "grogs." e: to be clear, this is responding to "the optional systems i like [automatic bonus progression and free archetypes] should be part of the core rules and they only aren't because gently caress grogs" not "well the system should accommodate me only having a 14 in my key stat"
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Feb 19, 2023 00:07
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if your position is "well this guy is playing a vow of poverty monk so I understand the decision making process of this other guy i think it's reasonable" you gotta change your standards man that poo poo's all garbage.
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Feb 19, 2023 00:09
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sugar free jazz posted:if your position is "well this guy is playing a vow of poverty monk so I understand the decision making process of this other guy i think it's reasonable" you gotta change your standards man that poo poo's all garbage. Thankfully that's not what I was saying.
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Feb 19, 2023 00:09
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then why are you playing with any of that poo poo
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Feb 19, 2023 00:10
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sugar free jazz posted:then why are you playing with any of that poo poo I was drawing a distinction between doing something non-optimal for character reasons (which I think is justifiable if everyone's okay with it) and doing something non-optimal because you assume you know better than the rules (which is the actions of an idiot). If It wasn't clear that I was placing Megaman's Jockstrap's friend in the second category rather than the first then I wasn't communicating well.
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Feb 19, 2023 00:14
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| # ? May 29, 2024 10:32 |
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I created loads of students for the wizard school. Namor knockoff. Magic book eating sewer rat. Sentient ball of goo monk. Finding weird combos is crazy fun.
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Feb 19, 2023 00:23
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