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Vanguard Warden
Apr 5, 2009

I am holding a live frag grenade.

Andrast posted:

Hell, swashbucklers are undertuned even when their poo poo works properly.

I keep being confused by people saying that Swashbucklers are weak, but then I remember that I took Monk archetype on mine for Wolf Stance at 4th and Monk's Flurry at 10th for both an extra Strike every round and a 1d8 unarmed attack with agile, finesse, and backstabbber rather than the piddly 1d4 or 1d6 weapons you'd have to use otherwise. Braggart style also seems vastly superior to other options because the Battlecry and You're Next feats turn your panache on for free or as a reaction a lot of the time on top of Tumble Through giving it to you as part of your movement.

Even with lots of optimization though they still fall a bit behind a straightforward Double Slice Fighter, yeah. Hopefully some of the weaker styles get some love in the remaster. If gymnast style could get something like Combat Grab that would actually trigger panache it would help a ton, especially if you didn't have to find it in an archetype.

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Andrast
Apr 21, 2010


Vanguard Warden posted:

I keep being confused by people saying that Swashbucklers are weak, but then I remember that I took Monk archetype on mine for Wolf Stance at 4th and Monk's Flurry at 10th for both an extra Strike every round and a 1d8 unarmed attack with agile, finesse, and backstabbber rather than the piddly 1d4 or 1d6 weapons you'd have to use otherwise. Braggart style also seems vastly superior to other options because the Battlecry and You're Next feats turn your panache on for free or as a reaction a lot of the time on top of Tumble Through giving it to you as part of your movement.

Even with lots of optimization though they still fall a bit behind a straightforward Double Slice Fighter, yeah. Hopefully some of the weaker styles get some love in the remaster. If gymnast style could get something like Combat Grab that would actually trigger panache it would help a ton, especially if you didn't have to find it in an archetype.

The biggest issues with the Swashbuckler are at the lower levels where all their features are at their worst. At higher levels your skill checks become more reliable so you are not stuck without panache nearly as often and the swash has some stellar higher level feats, which helps them catch-up. After that they feel pretty good, they still aren't particularly stellar at any aspect but can do their shtick effectively.

the_steve
Nov 9, 2005

We're always hiring!

I'm quickly coming to the realization that people who go on about how losing precision damage is cool and Good and should happen more actually are just grogs who are overcome with jealousy when the rogue gets to roll a big fistful of sneak attack dice.

Arrrthritis
May 31, 2007

I don't care if you're a star, the moon, or the whole damn sky, you need to come back down to earth and remember where you came from

Blockhouse posted:

Yeah losing precision damage doesn't "make you normal", having it does

This is more or less where i'm at w.r.t Investigator, Swashbuckler, and Rogue. I think if skills were more fleshed out with in-combat options as an alternative I would be more okay with precision damage immunity, because then you'd have plenty of other things that you can do when you're fighting against a creature immune to your sneak attack/stratagems/finishers. Currently the skill selection is alright but there's still going to be instances where the bluff/intimidate/diplomacy guy is going to be up against something that's immune to both mental and sneak attack and feel absolutely useless for a fight (maybe they'll do a recall knowledge round 1 but RAW that's only one action and might end up being actively harmful to the group). Other martial classes don't run into this issue nearly as often and spellcasters only run into this issue very seldomly (golems, but even those have a workaround).

Precision Damage Immunity was so frequent in abomination vaults that my swashbuckler ended up reclassing into bard and having a much better time. Granted they weren't the most optimized character, scoring a critical finisher on a ghost and having it do two total damage killed all enthusiasm they had for the class.

sugar free jazz
Mar 5, 2008

Dick Burglar posted:

Rangers, rogues, and swashbucklers already have to meet certain requirements to get their precision damage, and that precision damage brings them roughly up-to-par with other martials. It does not make them more powerful than other martials. Just saying "gently caress you, your class damage mechanic doesn't work, even if you do meet the requirements" for a good chunk of the bestiary is a lovely design paradigm that should die along with a lot of the other garbage ideas that got ported over from D&D. The idea that anyone is trying to defend precision damage like it's some kind of secret OP strat that "deserves" to be shut down sometimes because otherwise they might be "too good" is laughable.

Also, nobody cares that "rogues are good out of combat." D&D and its clones are about combat. Pathfinder has done a better job of making out-of-combat more interesting than most editions of D&D and its clones, but the glut of the mechanics of the game are still unquestionably focused on combat.

the by far biggest problem with casters in pf1, and the primary way they were nerfed in the transition to pf2, was out of combat utility and problem solving. combat is a substantial part of pf2 absolutely, but it is not a combat only game and has never been designed to be only about combat. if that is the way you are approaching the game i think you are making a pretty big mistake. while pf2 isn't a rules lite half page osr hack, it is still a table top role playing game and not a combat simulator.


none of these classes are even bad. precision rangers have absolutely no problems with damage, they are easily one of the strongest physical damage dealers in the game. swashbucklers have a ton of tricks and are a really good choice. rogues have a massive toolkit to use, have a huge amount of out of combat utility, and are still really solid in combat. they have a situational weakness to something like 5% of enemies.

Lurks With Wolves
Jan 14, 2013

At least I don't dance with them, right?
Personally, precision damage immunity is like trying to fight someone with opportunity attacks as a Magus, or trying to fight flying enemies with a greatsword and a bad ranged option it's annoying to switch to. As the flavor for a fight every now and then, it's fine. Precision damage immunity shows up a bit more often than those other scenarios, but rogues et al probably have more things to do without compromising their core skillset than other classes so it kind of balances out. But once you hit a certain density of that type of encounter, it stops being an interesting thing to work around as part of your enemy variety and it starts being a pain in the rear end.

(Of course, part of the problem is that things that are immune to precision damage tend to have other immunities, so the possible ways to play around them are even narrower and you get sick of having to do those specific gameplay changes that much faster. And immunity to precision damage tends to be spread across a whole enemy type you'd theme an adventure around, vs opportunity attacks not being on every generic warrior once you get past the first bestiary. There's objectively room for improvement, is the point.)

Dick Burglar
Mar 6, 2006

Impermanent posted:

Every class needs to he able to equally contribute in combat because the entire game is centered around combat. The other stuff is cool but no one has ever picked up a a pathfinder or dnd book so they could become a half orc hostage negotiator. There are other games that build around that if you want to do that. This sounds like some real "I've never played a non dnd based rpg" stuff happening over here.

Rogues have utility, and pathfinder does a better job than most dnd games of expressing that by letting them use that in combat with the various skill based actions and feats that make that meaningful inside of the central conflict resolution system of the game. This thing about "a ranger is there to do damage" is also ridiculous if you put it in line with the rogues utility. The whole deal of a ranger is that they're great to have in the outdoors! They get to be survivalist tracker woodsy people with great utility dealing with all that while still getting their normal damage when they want.

To be fair, "great to have when outdoors" is a pretty underwhelming, unexplored niche, and mechanically there's almost nothing there. The class feats that involve tracking are basically trap feats because they're so bad. They're unlikely to even come into play unless your GM goes out of their way to give the ranger specific times to shine and, even if the GM does that, those feats are competing with class feats that enhance your combat capabilities. Nobody sane is going to trade combat effectiveness for being able to do a silly, niche side-activity slightly better.

sugar free jazz posted:

the by far biggest problem with casters in pf1, and the primary way they were nerfed in the transition to pf2, was out of combat utility and problem solving. combat is a substantial part of pf2 absolutely, but it is not a combat only game and has never been designed to be only about combat. if that is the way you are approaching the game i think you are making a pretty big mistake. while pf2 isn't a rules lite half page osr hack, it is still a table top role playing game and not a combat simulator.


none of these classes are even bad. precision rangers have absolutely no problems with damage, they are easily one of the strongest physical damage dealers in the game. swashbucklers have a ton of tricks and are a really good choice. rogues have a massive toolkit to use, have a huge amount of out of combat utility, and are still really solid in combat. they have a situational weakness to something like 5% of enemies.

lol no the biggest problem with casters in pf1 was being able to trivialize entire combat encounters by themselves.

also, yes, pf2 is a glorified combat simulator, as are all dnd games. skills (especially when excluding their in-combat applications) and other non-combat rules make up a hilariously small percentage of the rules and mechanics. nobody is saying you cant play pf2 as something more than just a combat simulator, but be real, dude. that's where the crunch is. the reason spells can also trivialize non-combat encounters is because the non-combat rules are so much more poorly defined, and largely exist to facilitate said spells as mechanics themselves.

Dick Burglar fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Oct 14, 2023

Chevy Slyme
May 2, 2004

We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.

Lurks With Wolves posted:

Personally, precision damage immunity is like trying to fight someone with opportunity attacks as a Magus, or trying to fight flying enemies with a greatsword and a bad ranged option it's annoying to switch to. As the flavor for a fight every now and then, it's fine. Precision damage immunity shows up a bit more often than those other scenarios, but rogues et al probably have more things to do without compromising their core skillset than other classes so it kind of balances out. But once you hit a certain density of that type of encounter, it stops being an interesting thing to work around as part of your enemy variety and it starts being a pain in the rear end.

(Of course, part of the problem is that things that are immune to precision damage tend to have other immunities, so the possible ways to play around them are even narrower and you get sick of having to do those specific gameplay changes that much faster. And immunity to precision damage tends to be spread across a whole enemy type you'd theme an adventure around, vs opportunity attacks not being on every generic warrior once you get past the first bestiary. There's objectively room for improvement, is the point.)

Yeah. The problem isn’t “precision damage immunity exists”.

It’s just too common. As An Ooze Thing it’s probably fine tbh.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

Dick Burglar posted:

lol no the biggest problem with casters in pf1 was being able to trivialize entire combat encounters by themselves. thanks for playing, better luck next time

That was certainly part of the problem, but I thought it was the conventional wisdom on here (and also on certain other sites that are focused on 3.5 charop) that the main problem with casters in various 3e-inspired systems is that they have too much "narrative agency" compared to martials. Granted, some of this (on other sites, not here) is the result of people getting so into extreme charop that they regard actual combat as largely a "solved problem" and consider the main challenges of interest to be creating infinite copies of yourself and the like, but some of it is rooted in problems that come up in actual play.

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Oct 14, 2023

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc
Alternatively undead should have precision damage weakness as the default, your rogue should be able to slice through the zombies brain/stab the vampire in the heatt/smash the skeleton to pieces by breaking the spine.

Dick Burglar
Mar 6, 2006

Silver2195 posted:

That was certainly part of the problem, but I thought it was the conventional wisdom on here (and also on certain other sites that are focused on 3.5 charop) that the main problem with casters in various 3e-inspired systems is that they have too much "narrative agency" compared to martials. Granted, some of this (on other sites, not here) is the result of people getting so into extreme charop that they regard actual combat as largely a "solved problem" and consider the main challenges of interest to be creating infinite copies of yourself and the like, but some of it is rooted in problems that come up in actual play.

I addressed this in my edit. A lot of non-combat rules basically exist to facilitate non-combat spell effects, and to set up said spells as mechanics. The fact that non-combat mechanics are so broken is also an even more damning example of how D&D-alikes absolutely are combat simulators. Nobody cared to fix this poo poo over multiple iterations of D&D, because nobody cared about the non-combat crap.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

Piell posted:

Alternatively undead should have precision damage weakness as the default, your rogue should be able to slice through the zombies brain/stab the vampire in the heatt/smash the skeleton to pieces by breaking the spine.

I like this idea. Let them have resistance to certain damage types, but hit them in their weak point and they crumble much faster.

Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin

Running into enemies that are immune to your character's combat gimmick is cute once per campaign but any more than that gets very old very quickly. The density of monsters immune to precision damage honestly seems arbitrary.

Facebook Aunt
Oct 4, 2008

wiggle wiggle




Sometimes fighters and barbarians complain that they have nothing to do outside of combat. The charisma characters do all the talking to NPCs. They just stand there scratching their butts while more versatile characters figure out traps and puzzles.

Alchemists are a "martial" whose optimal move is always to give away their class features to other characters. Leaving them with what, shooting a crossbow? They don't get any bonus damage there.

Do champions have a way to reliably increase damage? I haven't seen it. But that could be because the champion in my game decided to go with a tower shield, which can give him +7 AC if he spends two actions to raise a shield and take cover. He doesn't do much damage, lol.

Nelson Mandingo
Mar 27, 2005




Impermanent posted:

Rogues have utility, and pathfinder does a better job than most dnd games of expressing that by letting them use that in combat with the various skill based actions and feats that make that meaningful inside of the central conflict resolution system of the game. This thing about "a ranger is there to do damage" is also ridiculous if you put it in line with the rogues utility. The whole deal of a ranger is that they're great to have in the outdoors! They get to be survivalist tracker woodsy people with great utility dealing with all that while still getting their normal damage when they want.

That's great. But I'm talking about in-combat. Same with Rogue. Having a lot of outright immunity to what they bring to the table in combat is overly punishing.

Which goes to my other point, I don't feel like damage immunity should really be a thing outside it being appropriate thematic elements (a fire elemental will probably not care about fire damage) or having a way around it. Having just straight precision immunity is trying to fix a problem (precision damage classes are too powerful!) that doesn't exist.

Nelson Mandingo fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Oct 14, 2023

sugar free jazz
Mar 5, 2008

Dick Burglar posted:

To be fair, "great to have when outdoors" is a pretty underwhelming, unexplored niche, and mechanically there's almost nothing there. The class feats that involve tracking are basically trap feats because they're so bad. They're unlikely to even come into play unless your GM goes out of their way to give the ranger specific times to shine and, even if the GM does that, those feats are competing with class feats that enhance your combat capabilities. Nobody sane is going to trade combat effectiveness for being able to do a silly, niche side-activity slightly better.

lol no the biggest problem with casters in pf1 was being able to trivialize entire combat encounters by themselves.

also, yes, pf2 is a glorified combat simulator, as are all dnd games. skills (especially when excluding their in-combat applications) and other non-combat rules make up a hilariously small percentage of the rules and mechanics. nobody is saying you cant play pf2 as something more than just a combat simulator, but be real, dude. that's where the crunch is. the reason spells can also trivialize non-combat encounters is because the non-combat rules are so much more poorly defined, and largely exist to facilitate said spells as mechanics themselves.


by far the biggest problem with pf1 casters was non combat stuff. there's a reason why tongues, shadow walk, teleport, scry, and other non-combat spells are now uncommon or rare. another chunk, like detect magic, knock, dimension door, and others were substantially reduced in terms of what they can do. zen archers, ragelancepounce, and charge cavaliers trivialized combat in ways casters could never approach but just did not have the non-combat utility to totally drive entire campaigns the way casters did.

pf is not a glorified combat simulator, those things exist and pathfinder is not one. measuring rules lines is a weird way to think about it. when i think about how much time is spent each session on combat vs non combat, even in a very combat heavy ap, it's definitely well over 50% non-combat.

Mister Olympus
Oct 31, 2011

Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

Facebook Aunt posted:


Do champions have a way to reliably increase damage? I haven't seen it. But that could be because the champion in my game decided to go with a tower shield, which can give him +7 AC if he spends two actions to raise a shield and take cover. He doesn't do much damage, lol.

If a champion chooses paladin or blade ally those both get some damage boosts, and both gets going pretty decently. Steed ally, depending on mount type, can also contribute either passive damage or extra attacks, though investing in a mount is probably better done via Cavalier archetype.

But it’s possible for a champion to not choose ANY of these options and be stuck with being a generic martial with a lot of support and defensive stuff, though. Having a champion is very strong, it’s just hard to see and value the every-turn damage reduction as much, let alone the increased amount of missed attacks and successful saves based on champion’s higher defensive number progression.

All the options individually are also much less added damage than a fighter or gunslinger’s increase crit, a precision class’s added damage, spellstrike, or similar. If they take ALL the offensive options it might add up to something close.

Vanguard Warden
Apr 5, 2009

I am holding a live frag grenade.

the_steve posted:

I'm quickly coming to the realization that people who go on about how losing precision damage is cool and Good and should happen more actually are just grogs who are overcome with jealousy when the rogue gets to roll a big fistful of sneak attack dice.

What's especially silly about people thinking like this is that damage-on-hit is actually pretty relatively weak in PF2 compared to additional hit chance. Unlike PF1 where your base damage with a shortsword would be 1d6 plus your Str mod and a few extra points for having a +X magic weapon, every character in PF2 has Weapon Specialization (or Greater) as a class feature for up to +6 damage on the martial classes and the new equivalent of a +1 weapon adds an extra whole weapon die rather than just +1. Properties on magic weapons are parallel now too rather than taking up an equivalent amount of +X bonus, so on top of an extra weapon die you'll usually get 1d6 elemental damage from a property rune too.

Put it all together and a max level Rogue (just as a clean benchmark, things scale down pretty smoothly in most cases) with a shortsword is likely swinging for 4d6+5+6+3d6 [35.5 avg] damage. Adding 4d6 [14 avg] from Sneak Attack to that is just shy of a 40% increase, so just barely less effective than a +4 bonus to hit due to how critical hits work in PF2. The same Rogue using Double Slice to bypass -4 agile MAP for a single Strike is just as good on average as landing Sneak Attack.

Facebook Aunt posted:

Do champions have a way to reliably increase damage? I haven't seen it. But that could be because the champion in my game decided to go with a tower shield, which can give him +7 AC if he spends two actions to raise a shield and take cover. He doesn't do much damage, lol.

Champions have the highest possible AC in the game with both heavy armor and up to legendary armor proficiency, so on top of that and defensive/support features like Lay on Hands they're not really supposed to dish out a ton of damage given their role. That being said, Retributive Strike is pretty drat strong as an extra attack as a reaction with no MAP. It's even an absurdly reliable trigger, as while you might be able to force an Attack of Opportunity if you can put a target in a position where they really need to move or if you can knock them prone, that's nothing compared to the trigger of "attacked anyone other than the person you need a natural 20 to actually hit".

Vanguard Warden fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Oct 15, 2023

HidaO-Win
Jun 5, 2013

"And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"
Should probably put in a feat like

Specialist Countermeasures
1 Action
You spread specialised reagents on target weapon. Choose a damage type from Acid, Cold, Fire or Lightning. For the next minute whenever your attacks would deal Precision Damage they instead deal the chosen energy type of damage.

Chevy Slyme
May 2, 2004

We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.
https://foundryvtt.com/packages/farchievements


LMAO

Impermanent
Apr 1, 2010

Nelson Mandingo posted:

That's great. But I'm talking about in-combat. Same with Rogue. Having a lot of outright immunity to what they bring to the table in combat is overly punishing.

Which goes to my other point, I don't feel like damage immunity should really be a thing outside it being appropriate thematic elements (a fire elemental will probably not care about fire damage) or having a way around it. Having just straight precision immunity is trying to fix a problem (precision damage classes are too powerful!) that doesn't exist.

oh i meant that as complementary to the point about removing immunity damage. I didn't think i had to say that in that post as well because I'm the one who started bringing up just removing immunity to damage types in the first place. it's silly and regressive to just have large parts of a character's kit not work.

I think there's maybe a point where that kind of thing would make more sense - when you're dealing with characters-as-units that are being controlled, multiple at a time, by one player. Like in a wargaming scenario or similar. In those circumstances it can be interesting to have to work around immunities and damage types. But basically since D&D became its own thing, how your character does damage has become an expression of player fantasy rather than a discrete rules option that you choose to do because of x, y, or z utility.

Going back to the kineticist, they get various ways to turn their powers into things that won't get outright obliterated by the first element immune or resistant monster they see. Because the designers clearly saw that when someone wants to play as the human torch or aang, they want their poo poo to work - not to be abruptly punished because the bad guys they're fighting are salamanders or whatever. It would feel extremely unsatisfying to be "oh my guy is a fire elemental master. and this is his lovely mace he's bad at using that he keeps around for dealing with rocks. hard to burn rocks."

But this effectively happens to precision damage users all the time, (and poison users, although they're less common.) Whether this is because of a misguided sense of verisimilitude or through a misapprehension of what part of a character concept is a tactical choice versus an expressive, emotive choice, I'm not sure.

atelier morgan
Mar 11, 2003

super-scientific, ultra-gay

Lipstick Apathy

Arrrthritis posted:

Precision Damage Immunity was so frequent in abomination vaults that my swashbuckler ended up reclassing into bard and having a much better time. Granted they weren't the most optimized character, scoring a critical finisher on a ghost and having it do two total damage killed all enthusiasm they had for the class.

i'm playing a toxicologist in AV and oh boy am i only sticking with it rather than changing to bomber because its tied in with my character's identity and being the dangerous poisons doctor has made for great rp

(i do not think i will ever play an alchemist again, it's just such an incredibly terrible chassis. bombs and (when relevant) poisons are fantastic, but mutagens should last one hour from the start, 1 or 10 minute durations make them largely pointless through level 5 where we're at and they're also all better used by anyone else. my actual combat role is being the one person who has a shield because my actions are of such little value, so i take point with shield up and take hits for more valuable characters by blocking hallways)

atelier morgan fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Oct 15, 2023

Cyouni
Sep 30, 2014

without love it cannot be seen

Impermanent posted:

But this effectively happens to precision damage users all the time, (and poison users, although they're less common.) Whether this is because of a misguided sense of verisimilitude or through a misapprehension of what part of a character concept is a tactical choice versus an expressive, emotive choice, I'm not sure.

Well, I'll note that unless I missed an addition, a pyrokineticist is still poo poo out of luck against devils. Or a fire Elemental sorcerer. I know people were talking about how certain suggested Blood Lords concepts really sucked to play because negative damage into undead.

A swash/rogue isn't completely out of options against a precision immune enemy, anyways, though it really sucks to face. They still are relatively comparable to a Dex ranger or champion.

I'm surprised there aren't any poison weak enemies, though.

Chevy Slyme
May 2, 2004

We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.

Cyouni posted:

Well, I'll note that unless I missed an addition, a pyrokineticist is still poo poo out of luck against devils. Or a fire Elemental sorcerer. I know people were talking about how certain suggested Blood Lords concepts really sucked to play because negative damage into undead.

Weapon Infusion allows a fire Kineticist to do Bludgeon/Slash/Pierce. It’s not the best option, but it’s there before the higher level stuff comes online.

Vanguard Warden
Apr 5, 2009

I am holding a live frag grenade.

atelier morgan posted:

i'm playing a toxicologist in AV and oh boy

Yeah, I really don't know what the best way to fix the Alchemist's "vending machine" problem would be. The Perpetual Infusions and Powerful Alchemy class features obviously seem like an attempt at that because the stuff you make with Quick Alchemy needs to be immediately used rather than handed off to allies ahead of time, but spending an extra action to craft a bomb or a poison before using it just slows everything down so very hard. The part where you get less items per reagent with Quick Alchemy further encourages you to just prepare stuff in advance, and then your allies would get more use out of it than you again.

I mean, if the Quick Bomber feat lets you draw and throw one prepared bomb per action and prepared poisons let you poison an entire quiver of arrows beforehand and draw them as desired, then it doesn't seem like it would be that problematic if Quick Alchemy could be performed as a free action combined with throwing a bomb or applying a poison. The Additive feats already have their own cost in lowering the maximum base item level you can use with them, too.

Andrast
Apr 21, 2010


Bomber Alchemists are in a pretty good place thanks to Skunk Bombs from Treasure Vault since that got them a strong repeatable CC/debuff option that remains relevant throughout the entire level range. Getting your hands on a Collar of the shifting spider also helps out a ton with mutagens (along with a bunch of other goodies from Treasure vault).

None of this really changes the fundamental problems but at least they are* pretty solid from a raw effectiveness point of view. Alchemists also requires way more system mastery than any other, making them an absolutely horrible newbie class.

*depending on your research field

Vanguard Warden
Apr 5, 2009

I am holding a live frag grenade.
Skunk Bombs are absurdly good, but once again that's a Poison effect (also Olfactory) so a lot of things are going to be immune to it, and also it feels pretty hacky that Alchemists are so reliant on a single item that dropped in a supplemental book. Like imagine that playing a Wizard effectively required you to just cast Gravitational Pull from Secrets of Magic every round.

Also I've heard people frequently say that Alchemists are supposed to be adept at triggering weaknesses for damage bonuses and that that's also what the very low splash damage of bombs is for, but in the last campaign I played in we ran into like zero creatures with weaknesses of any kind. If you look at the chart that people like to post around from someone combing through the bestiary, "triggering weaknesses" is largely just about fire and cold damage for elements, plus cold iron and good (soon to be holy) otherwise. A Fighter with a cold iron weapon that has a Brilliant property rune pulls that off in the vast majority of cases:

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc

Cyouni posted:

Well, I'll note that unless I missed an addition, a pyrokineticist is still poo poo out of luck against devils. Or a fire Elemental sorcerer. I know people were talking about how certain suggested Blood Lords concepts really sucked to play because negative damage into undead.

A swash/rogue isn't completely out of options against a precision immune enemy, anyways, though it really sucks to face. They still are relatively comparable to a Dex ranger or champion.

I'm surprised there aren't any poison weak enemies, though.

Pyrokineticists are fine against fire immune things. There are two 1st level feats that give you different damage types - Weapon Infusion gives you Bludgeoning/Slashing/Piercing, and Versatile Blasts for pyrokineticists gives cold damage. Even if you didn't pick one of those, however, you still have Extract Elements at 3rd level which removes any resistance to your element and turns immunity to resistance = level. And this is the worst case scenario for kineticists, every other single-element specialist gets two damage types to start with and dual-gate kineticists will start with at least 3.

SkySteak
Sep 9, 2010
As someone coming from a 5e conception of class balance and roles, how is Bard in 2E? Earlier in the thread I saw someone mention that they're actually practically the same in terms of playstyle/general role as their 5e counterparts, is that true? Do they still keep strong in combat and out of combat utility?

Arrrthritis
May 31, 2007

I don't care if you're a star, the moon, or the whole damn sky, you need to come back down to earth and remember where you came from

SkySteak posted:

As someone coming from a 5e conception of class balance and roles, how is Bard in 2E? Earlier in the thread I saw someone mention that they're actually practically the same in terms of playstyle/general role as their 5e counterparts, is that true? Do they still keep strong in combat and out of combat utility?

bards are loving incredible and my group would have had an almost full TPK last session were it not for counter-performance. (Abom Vaults level 9) That Cauthooj is rude as heck

Apart from that they have good buffs and debuffs in combat, and the occult spell list gives them some pretty dang good out-of-combat utility as well.

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

Impermanent posted:

Every class needs to he able to equally contribute in combat because the entire game is centered around combat. The other stuff is cool but no one has ever picked up a a pathfinder or dnd book so they could become a half orc hostage negotiator. There are other games that build around that if you want to do that. This sounds like some real "I've never played a non dnd based rpg" stuff happening over here.
It's been the double-edged sword of the entire TTRPG space since D&D5e dropped, and I always tell new players who are way too excited from podcasts and Baldur's Gate 3 "we'll absolutely have room for great RP and for non-combat characters to have their moments, but overall this is a combat game." Most of them map to it and enjoy, but there's always the occasional CHA/skill demon build that I have to point out will struggle in combat without a real plan.

Even so, by this point Paizo has to give the players a bit more to hold onto with each class so people calm a little bit on "x class is trash because the more intuitive builds don't put out damage like y class."

SkySteak posted:

As someone coming from a 5e conception of class balance and roles, how is Bard in 2E? Earlier in the thread I saw someone mention that they're actually practically the same in terms of playstyle/general role as their 5e counterparts, is that true? Do they still keep strong in combat and out of combat utility?
Bards are one of the strongest PF2e classes for all-around enjoyment. Much more fun than D&D5e's Bards thanks to the 4-degrees of success/failure system.

sugar free jazz
Mar 5, 2008

SkySteak posted:

As someone coming from a 5e conception of class balance and roles, how is Bard in 2E? Earlier in the thread I saw someone mention that they're actually practically the same in terms of playstyle/general role as their 5e counterparts, is that true? Do they still keep strong in combat and out of combat utility?

no idea about 5e but bards are probably the best spellcaster

Chevy Slyme
May 2, 2004

We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.

Piell posted:

Pyrokineticists are fine against fire immune things. There are two 1st level feats that give you different damage types - Weapon Infusion gives you Bludgeoning/Slashing/Piercing, and Versatile Blasts for pyrokineticists gives cold damage. Even if you didn't pick one of those, however, you still have Extract Elements at 3rd level which removes any resistance to your element and turns immunity to resistance = level. And this is the worst case scenario for kineticists, every other single-element specialist gets two damage types to start with and dual-gate kineticists will start with at least 3.

Versatile Blasts and Weapon Infusion are both viable and work fine, but extract elements explicitly doesn’t work against Devils, which are what the example was about.

Extract Elements works on creatures with the trait of your element. So you can shut down a Fire Elemental with it. But it’s not for things that are just kind of generically immune like Devils. For that, you need some way to swap your damage type.

Now, as mentioned, there’s like, 3 different feats that you can grab to do this, but the important thing is that you do need to take one of those feats as a pure fire Kineticist or you are gonna get owned.

atelier morgan
Mar 11, 2003

super-scientific, ultra-gay

Lipstick Apathy

Andrast posted:

Bomber Alchemists are in a pretty good place thanks to Skunk Bombs from Treasure Vault since that got them a strong repeatable CC/debuff option that remains relevant throughout the entire level range.

i was just complaining about playing a toxicologist in AV and you bring up skunk bombs :v:

they are phenomenal, and considering how great summon skunk was when i played a wizard in early strength of thousands i was very enthusiastic about them

i have now ended multiple adventuring days having thrown zero of my prepared skunk bombs

Chevy Slyme
May 2, 2004

We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.
For Abomination Vaults you want Ghost Charges. Lots of Ghost Charges. Honestly AV’s early levels are a place where an actually well prepared alchemist shines more than most AP’s.

atelier morgan
Mar 11, 2003

super-scientific, ultra-gay

Lipstick Apathy

Chevy Slyme posted:

For Abomination Vaults you want Ghost Charges. Lots of Ghost Charges. Honestly AV’s early levels are a place where an actually well prepared alchemist shines more than most AP’s.

oh i've been plenty useful, its just a real shame to be such an awful waste of a piece when its actually combat time. 80% of my value would be there if my character wasn't even on the map and the remaining 20% is having HP and taking up a square

our last fight i got immediately turfed by a boss's attacks and a follow-up spell and it was great news because they wasted so many resources. wasn't worth picking me up until somebody was in position to spend a marginal-value third action to do it a few rounds later (and even then only because we needed some potions to go out and it was spending 1 action to gain 2 after i stood up)

i can accept it since i have a ton of fun roleplaying the character and with the game in general but i'm not planning to play an alchemist again

atelier morgan fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Oct 15, 2023

Dick Burglar
Mar 6, 2006

Chevy Slyme posted:

Versatile Blasts and Weapon Infusion are both viable and work fine, but extract elements explicitly doesn’t work against Devils, which are what the example was about.

Extract Elements works on creatures with the trait of your element. So you can shut down a Fire Elemental with it. But it’s not for things that are just kind of generically immune like Devils. For that, you need some way to swap your damage type.

Now, as mentioned, there’s like, 3 different feats that you can grab to do this, but the important thing is that you do need to take one of those feats as a pure fire Kineticist or you are gonna get owned.

Wow sure would be nice if rogues could take a feat and then miraculously be able to deal a slightly different precision damage to immune mobs.

Almost like the designers realized that design sucked and there should be ways around it.

Dick Burglar fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Oct 15, 2023

gurragadon
Jul 28, 2006

The game does seem to be designed in a way that every class should have a way to bypass or reduce most immunities and resistances. It seems like they really want people to use recall knowledge but what's the point of using recall knowledge to get information on an enemy if you don't have any way to use that information to your advantage? Mastermind rogue already exists so they think of rogues as at least partially a knowledge class.

I could see it being optional feats like with the kineticist as a tradeoff between being amazingly good at one type of damage or pretty good at multiple types.

Clerical Terrors
Apr 24, 2016

I'm so tired, I'm so very tired
Are we still talking about a pen and paper RPG or about some kind of MMORPG, I can't tell anymore.

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Mister Olympus
Oct 31, 2011

Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies
we are talking about a strategy pen and paper rpg ultimately descended from board games meant to simulate medieval wars, and then later the big setpiece battles of books like lord of the rings

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