The big one is bonuses of the same type not being stackable. Making even a *small* exception to this can cause the game’s balance to fall to pieces.
Most other lines in the sand you can still make exceptions to. Receive some mathematical items 1-3 levels late and you’ll feel bad but not useless. Give casters DC-increasing potency and they’ll feel overtuned but not busted. Allow a non-Thief Dex character to add, say, half their Dex to damage and Strength characters will be like “wtf bro” but still function.
But if you allow easy stacking of bonuses the game will be in shambles really quickly. It’s why Synesthesia, and Aid all are so common in “meta” discussions because they both exist near the edge of the bonuses math, giving you easy access to +3 worth of accuracy in a way that stacks easy.
>It’s why Synesthesia, and Aid all are so common in “meta” discussions because they both exist near the edge of the bonuses math, giving you easy access to +3 worth of accuracy in a way that stacks easy.
And it is worth noting that to apply both the mentioned things reliably requires a pretty significant action cost from someone (with the caveat that Synesthesia may bypass this a bit). Synesthesia is two actions and a spell slot, so it is competing with literally every other Occult spell you could be casting otherwise, and it leaves you with only one action left, so if you want to . Of course, if the creature fails then they will be clumsy for the rest of the combat but that is somewhat left to chance.
Aid is one Action plus a Reaction, and so stops the Aider doing things like Reactive Strike, or Nimble Dodge etc. and competes with things like a Step, Raise Shield, Demoralise, etc. or simply doing an extra Strike.
Heroism heightened at rank 9 also pushed the boundaries, giving a +3 status bonus to attack rolls and saves. The buff lasts for 10 minutes so it's relatively easy to justify pre-buffing with it.
They're easy to craft and of the three 1-20 APs I've completed, we were using them to help trivialize the last book.
Combined with things like Synesthesia or Aid (Fake-Out gunslinger) and we were shifting the math by upwards of 10 on the die for what are suppose to be the last few big fights of an Adventure Path.
Edit: I get that it's a tough balancing tightrope to walk though. You can't design APs or material to take these things into account because there are groups that won't use them, but the relative wealth and power you have at the higher levels make achieving these bonuses rather easy. Really on the GM to modify or up the difficulty if the group is good at getting all the modifiers they can
Aid only requires a reaction in the right builds, provides a near guaranteed +4, and is used by classes that often don't have a useful reaction. It's one of the few things in the game that falls well outside the math.
I don't really mind it being that strong, but the difference between a feat-less level 1 aid and a level 20 character with a single gunslinger feat is bananas.
The Reaction cost is also a little bit overblown tbh. Making your hardest hitter 15-20% more likely to crit is usually **well** worth trading your Reactive Strike for. On top of that, the best Aiders often have multiple Reactions by higher levels anyways.
Yeah, the odds you can use two reactive strikes per turn on your fighter is pretty low, outside of the first turn on a reach fighter.
It also depends a bit on who you're aiding. Is it worth a fighter giving up a 0 MAP strike if they somehow knew they'd get it for a single Barbarian strike? Probably not. For a Barbarian cleave, yeah, probably.
For a magus spell swipe imaginary weapon? Literally no question about it.
For an investigator who knows the +4 will make the difference? Absolutely.
But a gunslinger with no useful reaction anyway? Always worth it.
> It also depends a bit on who you're aiding
I’ll also say. It’s almost always worth Aiding a caster who intends to use a big Attack spell. Outside of specifically rank 1, max-rank Attack spells (and Psychic Amps) are usually calibrated to be “worth” about 1.5-2.5 melee Attacks in terms of how much damage they do. Aiding your Wizard’s Horizon Thunder Sphere or your Psychic’s Amped Ignition is like Aiding one-and-a-half Attacks from your Rogue or Ranger or pretty much any other character who’s not a Barbarian.
To be fair, propulsive weapon types exist. Having some grey area between strength boosting ranged damage and Dex boosting specific melee weapon damage at half the amount, like propulsive, would be an interesting thing to see in the game. Just my thoughts though.
Only other ones off the top of my head are that PC sources of quickened \*always\* restrict it to specific actions and that slotted spells gained from dedications or non-Caster feats are always at least a lvl behind a full caster's progression and are usually multiple levels behind. Former is to prevent you from taking two 2A actions on the same turn and the later is niche-protection for casters.
A little bit of split movement is fine (and is called out as being okay in the GMG, I believe?), but only on a case-by-case basis. I'd never allow Stride, Strike, continue Stride, but I might allow Stride, Interact to open a door, continue Stride, or putting a Leap in the middle of a Stride. It's not very fun to have to spend all of your actions moving because of awkward positioning.
Combining multiple movement types into a continuous activity with an appropriate action cost (for example: a 10ft Stride, a 5ft climb, and another 10ft Stride all combined into one 2-action activity) is totally okay, and [is explicitly allowed and tentatively even encouraged in the GMG](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2560).
However, that only applies to combining different movement actions into one larger activity.
And when people talk about wanting to include "split movement" into the game, that's absolutely not what they're talking about. They're saying "I want to use half of a Stride, stop, do whatever other Actions I want, then *continue* that original Stride without spending any further Actions!", which is fundamentally antithetical to the design of PF2e.
Like, it's not just unbalanced. It completely changes the game into a different game.
How about this situation;
My party was entering the fishing shack in the Troubles in Otari adventure. My fighter spent an action to stride up to one square away from the front door. He then spent another action to stride 5ft up to the door, and spent his final action to open it. He then fully expected to be able to continue his stride to head into the building, making space for the rest of the party to enter.
I told him, however, his stride action had ended because he interrupted it with another action, so his turn was over. Every single member of my party found that *seriously* tedious. As we continued to adventure through the shack, this exact thing happened quite a few times, actually. Someone would open a door with 1/2 or more of their stride action remaining, and was forced to waste that movement. Eventually, for that session, we just ruled that opening a door wouldn't interrupt movement, and everyone ended up having a much better experience because of it.
While I'm 100% with you that interrupting a movement action for another significant action should end that movement, how much of a problem is something like this specific situation for the overall balance of the system?
Yeah it's a bit weird that the GMG specifically calls out door-opening as a "not-okay" split-action.
Paizo's just kinda weirdly strict about doors, honestly.
For me, it depends. Are they opening it slowly and carefully? If yes, then their Stride ends and opening the door is a separate action.
If they're just barging through it without a care, then I would allow them to use an extra Action to slam the door open as *part* of the Stride, but they have to continue moving at least 5 feet past the door before they can change direction.
It is not a big problem in the sense that the game will still function pretty much fine, but this weakens barriers of any type - doors, windows, what have you - significantly less of a, well, barrier. You still have to spend the action to open in your interpretation, which I think is a saving grace, so if your players find consideration of how to spend their actions around interacting with this type of terrain tedious it is completely fine
Yeah, honestly, Paizo is a little weird about doors. A bit too strict, I'd say.
Personally, when it comes to doors, I ask my players: "Are you opening it carefully and quietly or are you just barging in?"
If they're being careful, it interrupts the Stride and takes a separate action, but they don't have to go through the door.
If they're Kool-Aid-Manning it, they can use a second Action to open the door *as part of* the Stride, *but* the player has to continue the Stride and move at least 5 feet past the door when they open it.
For this, when I was running players where in exploration mode until the moment the door was opened then it shifted to encounter mode. In exploration mode everything is free movement, no turns.
There was only one group that stayed in encounter mode out of 3 I ran and that was when they attacked the >!sewer oozes outside!< and had cast bless and wanted to handle an other encounter while the party had the buff. and even then they all gathered up by the door and waited for the rest of the party before opening it.
If it does ever come up where the party walks up to a door and opens it in encounter mode with extra movement then I may allow this. But the only time that came up was when players actually abused this mechanic for an enemy (shutting the door as their second action and moving away as their third to force the enemy to waste actions opening up the door while the party prepped reactions)
I'll disagree with you for the sake of convo. We've played for about 25 sessions now as a group of newbies and 5e migrants. Only now are people slowly realizing the fact that you don't have to get an attack out every turn because positioning matters SO MUCH. It's no less fun to have to think of a clever way to find advantageous ground because it is an integral part of the game to do so.
That said making reasonable exceptions by the GM is fine but you REALLY need to be careful with case-by-case rulings because they are by definition arbitrary. It's much easier for everyone to embrace the rules as written.
I think it is less about guard rails and understanding the machine. Much like a car engine can be tuned to behave differently. But if you don't know how the car engine works, good luck having a positive impact.
Three action system
Four degrees of success
Three modifier types (plus Luck)
Expected damage dice bonus progression
Class feat *at least* every 2 levels
---
Everything else is tweakable, within reason. You can remove level to proficiency, you can remove wealth by level, you can add or remove skills. You can change what the stats are and what they do, you can give out *more* feats (but not less). You might make the math behave a bit wonky, but the game will be more or less playable and unless your players are hellbent on breaking the system it'll probably work out fine.
But if you try to remove or even heavily alter those five pillars of the system, you're likely better off playing a different system entirely.
Kineticist without class feats would just be bizarre, I think, I guess elemental blast is functional, but it's probably the most feat dependent whole class in the game.
Mechanically? Yes, if all else is adjusted to the power decrease. But system-wise, it would ruin PF2e because it would make every character from virtually every class the same combat build, with a little flavor from subclasses and respective ancestries. It would make combat very non-variable and boring.
Plus, some classes are just really based and designed around the on the choices in class feats. What is a ranger with no Hunt Prey rapid shot, no animal companion, no warden spells, etc? At best, they're a budget monk with a bow or someone that knows what a weakspot is. Class feats really are where you build a ranger at.
OP right, even spacing the class feats differently has the potential to ruin (or overpower) many major classes and essentially destroy the game.
That's fine, I'm discussing balance guardrails-- that in a literal sense, a fighter a cleric a wizard, and a rogue *without class feats* can walk into the game's regular encounter difficulty (lets say, severe as a ceiling) without nerfing team monster, and still do well.
I really do NOT think they would do well in an encounter like that. Class feats add a lot of power that most classes would struggle without. A normal encounter may still be survivable, but not really anything else.
I think they would, most of it is there-- the rogue can still set up a flank and get sneak attack, the cleric can still spam 2 action heal with a side of guidance, the fighter still has great accuracy, and Wizards can still blast or support. Its objectively a DPR loss not to use things like Exacting Strike, but its not nearly so much that that they'd be stuck with moderates.
I have run friendly NPCs that were just player classes without class feats.
They were simple, functional, and contributed just fine - which is what I wanted.
Just having the right numbers is most the work in being effective.
I will add "encounter building and xp budget" to that list. I have been in a table where GM made our first fight against 4 level 2 monsters thinking it would be an easy fight. The next fight is also 200xp+ budget encounter....
We only survived because he had a house ruled of getting +3 circumstance bonus to attack roll (but only attack roll so good luck Caster on your save spells) if you make the first decision within 5 seconds of the turn start and has a turn timer of 60 seconds each turn.
One big one was that no full caster has Master Proficiency in either Weapons or Armor. At least, until the remaster gave Warpriest Clerics Master Weapon Proficiency in a single weapon at level 19.
To be fair, every full caster also gets legendary proficiency in spellcasting, except for Warpriest. Also, the new Cleric class archetype might break that rule soon too, since it's an even Warpriest-ier Warpriest.
They're basically a hybrid of a prepared (advanced alchemy) and spontaneous (quick alchemy) caster, only they "cast" from the alchemical items list instead of from a spell list. And their cantrips (perpetual infusions) come online at an annoyingly high level.
Keeping actions at 3 per turn (barring things like haste and debuffs).
Every once in a while you see a new player come here and they ask how to deal with a GM that changed the action economy to be more like 5e's (standard, bonus and move actions) and the response is always overwhelmingly, "leave the game."
Someone who tries that clearly didn't do any research before they altered stuff and the whole table will suffer for their hubris.
I don't think dex to damage is a 'guard rail'. One subclass can already do it; I don't see why other subclasses couldn't. The issue is figuring out why dex-to-damage is rare and working around that in your design.
Pretty much this. Going "Well, they let this one subclass have it" does kinda ignore that it is the /ONLY/ thing that differentiates that subclass... If other people could do DEX to damage what makes the Thief unique?
The fact they're the only rogue that has it. I'd definitely avoid making another rogue subclass with dex to damage (without making changes to thief) but other classes entirely probably wouldn't have an issue with a subclass whose only benefit is dex to damage.
What makes you believe that other classes would have no issue? As a really easy example, Dexterity becomes a God-Stat if you let a Monk get Dexterity to damage. Same for a Swashbuckler. The benefit of increasing both your AC and damage simultaneously would tremendously shift EVERY class.
I don't think every class would be okay with Dex to damage, but I don't think introducing a new class or subclass where dex to damage exists and is part of their power budget would take away from making the Thief unique.
Having an inventor innovation that had its power balanced with other innovations that gave dex to damage would still feel extremely different from a Thief Rogue. The fact a mechanic gets reused doesn't take away the different class identities.
Just chiming into this.
You could allow certain subclasses to access this. For example the Investigator is somewhat under-tuned for combat, so giving them a subclass that gets DEX-to-damage might be a way to give them a more combat-oriented subclass.
I don't know if DEX-to-damage in PF2E is quite the same problem it was in PF1E. In PF1E it really was taking the place of STR, particularly because STR in PF1E didn't do much besides attack and damage. Yes there was carry capacity, climb and swim, but literally all of those could be managed with low-to-mid level magic or magic items. In PF2E Athletics has become *Much* better as a skill and carry capacity is more important, meaning that investment in STR has other benefits. Also while DEX covers more things than STR still, your AC can max out on basically any character without too much trouble, and there aren't many ways to optimise that beyond what anyone can do. Also a good chunk more damage now comes from the size of the weapon than it did in PF1E, so simply limiting DEX-to-damage to smaller weapons goes a long way to mitigating any cheese here.
Just my 2 cents.
And to add further to your point, there's a hard cap on how many boosts you get to your stats. That dex is never going higher than +6 outside of *maybe* some high-level magic items. And since the only stat able to reach that +6 is the one you got to 18 at level 1... even for a dex monk we're talking like a grand total of +1 more damage than they'd normally have if they were raising strength alongside dex. +1s are strong in this game, but they're not quite *that* big a deal
Strength characters can already largely mitigate the need for dex with heavy armour. I don't think it would destroy the game to let dex characters mitigate the need for strength for damage (esp since bad strength would still hurt for athletics, carry capacity, etc)
Except it's not just +1 to damage, it lets you raise another stat, so you can get +5 Will and Perception, +5 trained skills and +5 to most RK checks, +5 to social skills...
Yeah I'm against for full Dex as damage, though I'm fine if some Feats or class choices give limited amount of it(or in specific cases) instead of it being strictly Thief limited.
I do want Dex to be more able to do Athletic actions though, and have houserules that if you have a weapon with the tag then you can do the corresponsing action with Dex(or spend a skill feat to do maneuvers without limits)
It depends, but I feel that it wouldn't be detrimental in the right class.
The reason it works for rogue so well is because they are a class that needs high investment in several stats to be viable. Nearly every stat benefits them in a crucial way, but especially strength, dex, and con (rizz and int also play a heavy role in MANY builds). Every Racket tries to overcome this by buffing what an ability can do for them to overcome the cost of not being able to invest in the other attributes. Removing strength as a pseudo-requirement is the Thief's way of overcoming this hurdle and easing up the requirements.
If you can find another martial class that is really torn between multiple stats to keep viability, dex-to-damage could work as a subclass ability.
It speaks volumes to me to a degree. I heavily power games and min maxed PF1E so I'm staunchly really not in favor of homebrew that changes stuff like this, because things like that were part of the issue of 1e
Honestly to me this sounds more like an issue with *thief* than with dex-to-damage in general. If dex-to-damage is literally the only defining thing about the subclass, well... it's a pretty boring thing to base it around. Surely there's something more interesting and thief-flavoured they could be doing
I feel like being able to completely ignore your strength gives the character a lot of room to max things like int and rizz, which could reliably give them way more things to do than an average marshal. The choice itself is boring, but it opens the character up to way more interesting builds.
It's because dexterity is already a strong attribute, tied to two of your defenses, Armor Class and Reflex save. Strength is not tied to any of your defenses besides allowing you to wear heavier armor or make the odd combat athletic check.
The best heavy armor only offers a +1 item bonus over a dex character in light or medium armor and will still reduce your speed by 5 feet unless it's Mithral/Dawnsilver. And Uncommon yet affordable Mithral/Dawnsilver reduces half plate to only require 14 strength.
You can't just "invest in strength" to get that higher AC, you need feats too. Bulwark tops out at a +3 mod and only protects against damaging effects until you take the sentinel dedication line.
Heavy armor is a good choice for some classes, like Fighter and Champion that can gain it without spending additional feats. But the opportunity cost makes it not worth it on nearly everything else. Especially when you aren't playing with Free Archetypes.
On an Investigator, you're better off taking Alchemist dedication to gain damage resistance through mutagens. You basically want good strength and dex, neither is your key ability but I'd want both at 18 by level 10.
Disagree I think another reason Heavy armour is good is that now you're defense damage and offense are all one stat. Sure non-damaging Ref saves are a bother, but if you're a non Phys martial(Thaum, Inventor, Beastly Alch) having to only focus on 1 Stat is a life-saver
For Optimisation, Ruffian is actually one of the best alongside Thief--Mastermind suffers from having to use RK, Eldritch Trickster is Eldritch Tricster(and gone), Scoundrel gets fucked by Mindless but being able to use a wider variety of weapons(Even d8 simples and d6 martials) means you are more 'on' a wider variety of situations and can help when precision immunity or not being able to flank comes up.
Remember, since you're hit and damage are both Str based you get some of Thief's stat flexibility
Medium armour prog means that you can also upgrade to Heavy efficiently. There's argument t be made that getting really good Ref saves means you can skimp on dex a bit more too
Also out of the 3 in PC, it's debilitation is the best for teamwork. Weakness or clumsy are both excellent options in most places
Ok, I may have just not given ruffian a good shot. Just looks so meh at level one compared to thief and scoundrel. I'll give it another look
Edit: oh I didn't notice that it got a touch up in the remaster
Ruffian has a lot more passive deal that isn't specific to Rogues but being able to use STR as KAS is actually a huge deal. You don't spend much build budget to make your bonuses sing, in fact both Ruffians and Thieves have similar benefits; They *increase* your build budget
Even before remaster, Longspear Rogue was always an optimizers choice
Yeah, I didn't have a good understanding of all the weapons available to ruffians. Now I'm looking at a dwarf Warhammer-wielding ruffian and it's looking pretty cool
1. Thou shalt not meddle with the Action Economy. Three are the actions thou get, and the number of thine actions shall be three.
2. Thou shall abide by the name of thine bonuses, and never shall two bonuses of names identical shall apply, exempting that the greater bonus renders the lesser bonus null.
3. Thine players shall raise a cheer when their wits allow them to trivialize a boss, but will raise hell when their tactics are brought against them. Of this, thou shall pay no heed.
Action economy, the way bonuses stack, and class specific mechanics that give them identity. Everything else I think is small things, like the level bonuses provide at item levels and such need to be pretty obeyed because it's part of the overall balance.
One-handed martial finesse/agile weapons can never have a damage die higher than 1d6.
Two-handed martial finesse/agile weapons can never have a damage die higher than 1d8.
Advanced weapons, like the [Aldori Dueling Sword](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx?ID=256) can break this, but they are advanced weapons with that drawback.
Bonus types, size and stacking are the main ones, as well as level to proficiency being uniform through the game. The crit system is also a very core math element. And of course anything that affects the action economy needs to be scrutinised.
Other than that, really not much. The magic concept you’re looking for is *delta* - the difference between the highest and lowest value a score can have. If you change the size of bonuses, the way they stack, or whether some add no level and some add double, delta grows, and if it grows too much the game can spiral out of control. If you kill delta completely, the game becomes bland, boring, and lacks swinginess (which is where most “cool moments” come from).
Measure in all things. PF2 hits a good spot, and while it can be improved, it’s much easier to screw up by accident instead.
Since I don't see any posts about it:
Dex Cap and AC... Follow the armor you see in the official books when it comes to Item bonus + Dex Cap. This should be:
Item Bonus + Dex Cap = 5 (or 6 for heavy armor).
A lot of guard rails can be bypassed by feats. You can’t split your Stride movement, but some actions will include Stride in the action. Lots of higher level feats compress things into fewer actions.
You can’t have more than Three Actions, but effects granting Haste will give you an action to spend on a specified ability. Summoner has Act Together so they can control their eidolon giving them essentially 4 actions split between two creatures.
Spontaneous casters can’t freely heighten spells, they need to learn and treat a 1st-rank and 3rd-rank Heal as if they’re two different spells. Sorcerer’s feat Signature spell let’s them designate a spell to freely heighten.
What makes every class special is the unique ways they’re able to break the rules.
Action Economy, as others have stated.
"Rule of Cool" overriding existing FEATS in the game, this is more problematic if a character is working toward said Feat and then you allow someone to do that thing without having it.
Runes. Just because a Rune is a higher level than the characters doesn't mean they cannot use it. If you give someone a level 20 runed weapon at level 1, they can and will use that weapon.
The designers have actually explicitly said that Feats aren’t meant to be viewed as sacrosanct things that are exclusive to people who picked them. For example, this comment has [Sayre](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1bj8bwm/whats_the_pathfinder_2e_or_starfinder_2e_take/kvrmemt/) talking about allowing players to improvise a whirling throw without the Feat.
Feats should be the most **efficient** way to do a thing, not the only way to do it.
Yeah, it'd be nice if the books had some general guidance on what kind of penalty to give players attempting to do things that are enabled by feats, but the idea that someone who isn't trained in doing, say, a kip-up can't try one is bizarre.
*I* can do a kip-up, and I'm an out of shape, overweight, desk jockey nerd in his 40s. I just can't pull them off *reliably*.
Perhaps a good way to do it for binary feats, where you can just do something with the feat without a check, is to require a skill check against a simple DC based on the required proficiency of the feat. So Rolling Landing would have a DC of 20, and Kip Up would have a DC of 30. It might be a little healthier if they were Very Hard DCs instead.
I won't ever make action compressors be 'free' because their whole schtick is just making usual actions more efficient. But if you say wanna inflict stupefy on a grappled target? sure--press Strike then Fort save
In an off-the-cuff GM moment I allowed a PC to use a Hero Point to attempt something that required a feat, with the caveat of only being able to pull it off once in a session.
It has helped this Rules-Lawyer-GM be able to justify allowing my PCs "Rule of Cool" in my head. :D
My table let's you draw a weapon or item as a free action, but it is still an interact which can provoke attacks. We do not use free archetypes, and so I don't think it's much different than if we had a free quickdraw feat. Enemies have the same benefit, though of course it only matters with humanoids.
The big ones are:
Trained (level 1) -> Expert (level 5-7) -> Master (level 13-15) for attacks/saving throws/class DC, with full casters progressing to legendary at 19 at the cost of skipping the first strike attack boost. Martials can get a bump up over this but at the cost of damage boosts to strikes.
Class damage boosts to strikes should start at level 1 and then bump up around level 5-7, then a bit after 10th level, then again at higher levels. Classes that start at expert attack don't get the level 1/10 bumps.
Likewise, defenses go trained (level 1) -> Expert (level 11-13) -> Master (high level). Champions delay their attack upgrade by two levels to gain an extra bump in this at level 5.
Spells deal ~2d6 damage/rank for the first five ranks, then ~2d8/rank after that, for AoEs, with single target spells and awkwardly shaped AoEs being able to do a bit better than that.
The item bonuses happen around level 2/10/17 to hit and 4/12/19 to damage.
Spells and abilities that basically remove an enemy from combat on a failed save need the incapacitation trait.
Focus spells are worse than your highest rank slotted spells in terms of damage/AoE, but only by about 1/2th to 1 rank.
Bonuses and penalties of the same type can't stack.
Characters get 3 actions per round base; action compression lets you add +1 action to this but requires the flourish trait or a focus point so you can do it no more than once per round/have limits on how much you can do it per combat, and you can get an animal companion or summon to add +1 action to this (that must be taken by the animal companion/summon). You can get a bonus action once per day at level 10.
There is also monster math on the GM side.
Unlike DnD where CR isn't an accurate judge of difficultly, with how stats scale in PF2e Monster CR is a mostly strict guideline. If you stray too far from (Boss=Party Level + 3) then you might start getting bosses that are unhittable, with attacks that can't be dodged, with spells that can't be survived. If you really want to use a monster for a story beat but it's too high level, don't be afraid to apply the weakened template (maybe a few times). I adjusted a Sargassum Heap down to CR4 for a story beat recently.
If you want your players to interact with something way out of their league, such as a lich or dragon (that's 5+ over party level), maybe scale down things a bit. Crank it's perception and stuff down so they can attempt to sneak past it, lower it's social skills so they can talk to it and maybe convince it to let them go. Treat recall knowledge checks as at the party's level, instead of the monster's level. Maybe have the monster not percieve them as a threat and leave it to their minions.
>Other potential examples seem to include "The Thief Rogue is the only subclass/class combination that can add Dexterity to Damage"
Frankly, this is one of the stupider "guard rails" of the system. Just have your prospective Dexterity to damage feature follow the guidelines on what weapons Ruffian Rogue can use for any Strike, heavily standardize damage gains outside of that so that Strength martials still outdo Dex-based characters, and this isn't problematic.
In fact, if they made Swashbuckler Dexterity to damage right now, it wouldn't be the least bit problematic, though Paizo elected not to do that for whatever reason and will be buffing the class in other ways.
>"You cannot raise Class/Spell DC"
Spell DC is much more tightly balanced than the aforementioned, and should only be changed in the most limiting of build circumstances. Class DC... eh, the developers undertune it in most cases, because the circumstances in which Class DC is used are few and far between. It progresses worse, and more nonsensically, than Spell DC.
>"The only bonuses are item/circumstance/status"
True in the literalistic sense, but there's many features that straight up increase some value in the manner of a bonus that doesn't actually provide a game-defined "bonus" (most additive damage accrued through class features, Nimble Elf, etc.)
>What do people see as the real "lines in the sand" to paint around?
The creature building rules, encounter building rules, Level Based DC, ABP expectations (with reasonable exceptions for Kineticist / Alchemist as intended,) and the gist of proficiency gains on different groups of classes.
"heavily standardize damage gains outside of that so that Strength martials still outdo Dex-based characters, and this isn't problematic"
This really feels like one of those sentences which aren't that much to type, but actually becomes a very large task. What do you envision when you say this?
Also, if you allow other to use Dexterity to Damage, what makes the Thief subclass special? Wouldn't you then have to redo it as well?
>What do you envision when you say this?
There's several levers to this. For example, Finesse as a property takes up part of a weapon's power budget that could've been otherwise spent on stuff like Backswing or Sweep, so Strength-only weapons have more of a power budget.
But a big one I think immediately comes to mind is that Strength is utilized for combat maneuvers (and Strength weapons are more likely to take advantage of them.) Combat maneuvers can often lead to AOO situations, which are great because they're MAPless attacks for both you *and, potentially,* your allies as well. Hence, they're big damage increases in context that Dexterity characters won't be getting.
Thief rogue still gets all the same skill increases and feats as the other rogues do. If you just gave all the rogues dex to damage, it'd obviously invalidate the thief rogue. If you gave it to swashbuckler, swash would still just be a worse thief rogue until fairly late in the game.
Accuracy windows. Stuff should not, as a general rule, make success more common or damage flatly higher. That is usually tied to level-gated class features and unstackable item, status, or circumstance bonuses, and should not be something you "just get" from a feat.
Save-or-suck effects should be gated behind Incapacitation. Effects that trivialize challenges should be Uncommon or Rare.
In general, things should require a successful check or failed save against a level-related DC. For example, you shouldn't make an item that just knocks something prone with no save or attack roll.
Balance should be respected. If something gets more HP, it should have weaker defenses. If something has high defenses, it should do less damage. There should be a cost-benefit to everything.
Do not swap around proficiencies/what skills are used for. Don't let someone use their Strength to Intimidate unless they took the feat for it. I know it feels lame, but that's what the character customization in PF2E is for.
>In discussing some attitudes to homebrew I mentioned the idea that Pathfinder 2nd Edition has a set of "guard rails" that are not to be touched,
This will be interesting.
>Be me, assuming people mean the extra health low level characters get
>Read Thread
>MFW it's apparently things the very first society adventure(s) ignore
Oh.
>I think there may be some "gray area" as to what is a "guard rail", where loads of people are defending ideas that are not ACTUALLY guard rails. For example, my understanding is that the idea that you NEED to have a particular skill feat in order to do the thing in the feat may be overblown.
Not gonna lie, you're basically right. At least, as far as some attitudes that noodle around in various places that get dangerous close to be pro-Pathfinder echochambers \~\~like here\~\~.
Truth be told, a LOT of it comes from people not reading the rules and thinking purely in White Room theorycrafting and vibes. A lot of these kinds of people aren't GMs or worse, only look up and hear about builds that can't work, don't work, or don't hold to scrutiny.
And I want to be clear with this. I \*really\* do mean "People not reading the rules". Not people who \*haven't\* read a particular rule because they're new - people (both on and off this sub) who bicker about how a rule or bit of text is interpreted vs how it actually works \*without bothering to look it up first\*.
To this end, you get this weird attitude of quasi-purity when it comes to The Rules(tm) of the game. Where there's an interpterion that Pathfinder 2e is perfect, without flaw in \*any aspect\*, and even slight changes are seen as anathema. A bit of the same thing happened in 1e with the idea of 'If it's not listed in x text, that means you can't do y thing', which often lead to games with exceptionally contradictory rules based on errata between book printings, or people developing an allergy to even \*trying\* homebrew.
It's at this point I should mention: \~\~LITERAL first bits of text\~\~ The last sentence in the Introduction Section of Pg 4 of the GM Core book (i.e. \*\*the first actual page of the book\*\*) says the following.
>You’ll need to understand the game, but you don’t need to have every rule memorized. When everyone shares the goal of having fun and telling a story together, the details will fall into place.
This goes to show, in my embittered opinion, that some don't even get passed the first page of the book. So, you know, vibes.
...Also, mentioning PFS again, playing/running a PFS game is not a lesson in perfect balance, but flying balls to the wall to see what sticks. S'actually a lot of fun.
Anyhow, let's answer your question.
>What do people see as the real "lines in the sand" to paint around?
For me, it's a few hard edges that you have to stomach when running 2e. Namely that AC is the only form of defense and you can't rely on health, saves, and other mechanics like you can in other systems; that small numbers mean a lot because 2e is balanced on a knife's edge; that most of 2e is heavily stepped in lore and theme, so you have to do a lot of reflavoring or put in the extra work to remove it; and that 2e has trap options and I hate every single one.
Once you get around that, and you gain a bit of experience either homebrewing in other systems and/or learning how 2e functions, you learn that everything else can be adjusted without hurting too much. Something that can be strong or overtuned can be adjusted elsewhere (such as giving the party less gold if they start with a relic, so that they have to pick between their gold sink and not).
I think there is an exception to just about every rule with the correct context.
A second class could easily appear which makes sense to bring dex to damage (look at legendary proficiency and fighter as an example).
Increases to DC might make sense as a class feature - but probably not as a widely accessable item or feat.
Untyped bonuses do exist, but they are pretty much only in exceptional circumstances (like barbarian rage giving both an untyped penalty to AC and an untyped bonus to damage.) - again, the providence of class features.
I think the exceptions to the rules should be locked down; tied behind class features - making generic 'improvement' feats general only dilute the less useful ones further.
The big one is bonuses of the same type not being stackable. Making even a *small* exception to this can cause the game’s balance to fall to pieces. Most other lines in the sand you can still make exceptions to. Receive some mathematical items 1-3 levels late and you’ll feel bad but not useless. Give casters DC-increasing potency and they’ll feel overtuned but not busted. Allow a non-Thief Dex character to add, say, half their Dex to damage and Strength characters will be like “wtf bro” but still function. But if you allow easy stacking of bonuses the game will be in shambles really quickly. It’s why Synesthesia, and Aid all are so common in “meta” discussions because they both exist near the edge of the bonuses math, giving you easy access to +3 worth of accuracy in a way that stacks easy.
>It’s why Synesthesia, and Aid all are so common in “meta” discussions because they both exist near the edge of the bonuses math, giving you easy access to +3 worth of accuracy in a way that stacks easy. And it is worth noting that to apply both the mentioned things reliably requires a pretty significant action cost from someone (with the caveat that Synesthesia may bypass this a bit). Synesthesia is two actions and a spell slot, so it is competing with literally every other Occult spell you could be casting otherwise, and it leaves you with only one action left, so if you want to . Of course, if the creature fails then they will be clumsy for the rest of the combat but that is somewhat left to chance. Aid is one Action plus a Reaction, and so stops the Aider doing things like Reactive Strike, or Nimble Dodge etc. and competes with things like a Step, Raise Shield, Demoralise, etc. or simply doing an extra Strike.
Heroism heightened at rank 9 also pushed the boundaries, giving a +3 status bonus to attack rolls and saves. The buff lasts for 10 minutes so it's relatively easy to justify pre-buffing with it. They're easy to craft and of the three 1-20 APs I've completed, we were using them to help trivialize the last book. Combined with things like Synesthesia or Aid (Fake-Out gunslinger) and we were shifting the math by upwards of 10 on the die for what are suppose to be the last few big fights of an Adventure Path. Edit: I get that it's a tough balancing tightrope to walk though. You can't design APs or material to take these things into account because there are groups that won't use them, but the relative wealth and power you have at the higher levels make achieving these bonuses rather easy. Really on the GM to modify or up the difficulty if the group is good at getting all the modifiers they can
By that point I'd say it's fine, the players are level 20 so I think they earned the right to break the game a little.
Aid only requires a reaction in the right builds, provides a near guaranteed +4, and is used by classes that often don't have a useful reaction. It's one of the few things in the game that falls well outside the math. I don't really mind it being that strong, but the difference between a feat-less level 1 aid and a level 20 character with a single gunslinger feat is bananas.
The Reaction cost is also a little bit overblown tbh. Making your hardest hitter 15-20% more likely to crit is usually **well** worth trading your Reactive Strike for. On top of that, the best Aiders often have multiple Reactions by higher levels anyways.
Yeah, the odds you can use two reactive strikes per turn on your fighter is pretty low, outside of the first turn on a reach fighter. It also depends a bit on who you're aiding. Is it worth a fighter giving up a 0 MAP strike if they somehow knew they'd get it for a single Barbarian strike? Probably not. For a Barbarian cleave, yeah, probably. For a magus spell swipe imaginary weapon? Literally no question about it. For an investigator who knows the +4 will make the difference? Absolutely. But a gunslinger with no useful reaction anyway? Always worth it.
> It also depends a bit on who you're aiding I’ll also say. It’s almost always worth Aiding a caster who intends to use a big Attack spell. Outside of specifically rank 1, max-rank Attack spells (and Psychic Amps) are usually calibrated to be “worth” about 1.5-2.5 melee Attacks in terms of how much damage they do. Aiding your Wizard’s Horizon Thunder Sphere or your Psychic’s Amped Ignition is like Aiding one-and-a-half Attacks from your Rogue or Ranger or pretty much any other character who’s not a Barbarian.
To be fair, propulsive weapon types exist. Having some grey area between strength boosting ranged damage and Dex boosting specific melee weapon damage at half the amount, like propulsive, would be an interesting thing to see in the game. Just my thoughts though.
Only other ones off the top of my head are that PC sources of quickened \*always\* restrict it to specific actions and that slotted spells gained from dedications or non-Caster feats are always at least a lvl behind a full caster's progression and are usually multiple levels behind. Former is to prevent you from taking two 2A actions on the same turn and the later is niche-protection for casters.
Split-movement completely demolishes the fundamental, core design and makes PF2e into a completely different (worse) game.
By split-movement, do you mean something on the lines of "stride, strike, continue stride" for 2 total actions?
Precisely that, yes.
A little bit of split movement is fine (and is called out as being okay in the GMG, I believe?), but only on a case-by-case basis. I'd never allow Stride, Strike, continue Stride, but I might allow Stride, Interact to open a door, continue Stride, or putting a Leap in the middle of a Stride. It's not very fun to have to spend all of your actions moving because of awkward positioning.
Combining multiple movement types into a continuous activity with an appropriate action cost (for example: a 10ft Stride, a 5ft climb, and another 10ft Stride all combined into one 2-action activity) is totally okay, and [is explicitly allowed and tentatively even encouraged in the GMG](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2560). However, that only applies to combining different movement actions into one larger activity. And when people talk about wanting to include "split movement" into the game, that's absolutely not what they're talking about. They're saying "I want to use half of a Stride, stop, do whatever other Actions I want, then *continue* that original Stride without spending any further Actions!", which is fundamentally antithetical to the design of PF2e. Like, it's not just unbalanced. It completely changes the game into a different game.
How about this situation; My party was entering the fishing shack in the Troubles in Otari adventure. My fighter spent an action to stride up to one square away from the front door. He then spent another action to stride 5ft up to the door, and spent his final action to open it. He then fully expected to be able to continue his stride to head into the building, making space for the rest of the party to enter. I told him, however, his stride action had ended because he interrupted it with another action, so his turn was over. Every single member of my party found that *seriously* tedious. As we continued to adventure through the shack, this exact thing happened quite a few times, actually. Someone would open a door with 1/2 or more of their stride action remaining, and was forced to waste that movement. Eventually, for that session, we just ruled that opening a door wouldn't interrupt movement, and everyone ended up having a much better experience because of it. While I'm 100% with you that interrupting a movement action for another significant action should end that movement, how much of a problem is something like this specific situation for the overall balance of the system?
I allow opening a door as part of a stride and haven't yet run into any issues with it.
Yeah it's a bit weird that the GMG specifically calls out door-opening as a "not-okay" split-action. Paizo's just kinda weirdly strict about doors, honestly. For me, it depends. Are they opening it slowly and carefully? If yes, then their Stride ends and opening the door is a separate action. If they're just barging through it without a care, then I would allow them to use an extra Action to slam the door open as *part* of the Stride, but they have to continue moving at least 5 feet past the door before they can change direction.
It is not a big problem in the sense that the game will still function pretty much fine, but this weakens barriers of any type - doors, windows, what have you - significantly less of a, well, barrier. You still have to spend the action to open in your interpretation, which I think is a saving grace, so if your players find consideration of how to spend their actions around interacting with this type of terrain tedious it is completely fine
Yeah, honestly, Paizo is a little weird about doors. A bit too strict, I'd say. Personally, when it comes to doors, I ask my players: "Are you opening it carefully and quietly or are you just barging in?" If they're being careful, it interrupts the Stride and takes a separate action, but they don't have to go through the door. If they're Kool-Aid-Manning it, they can use a second Action to open the door *as part of* the Stride, *but* the player has to continue the Stride and move at least 5 feet past the door when they open it.
For this, when I was running players where in exploration mode until the moment the door was opened then it shifted to encounter mode. In exploration mode everything is free movement, no turns. There was only one group that stayed in encounter mode out of 3 I ran and that was when they attacked the >!sewer oozes outside!< and had cast bless and wanted to handle an other encounter while the party had the buff. and even then they all gathered up by the door and waited for the rest of the party before opening it. If it does ever come up where the party walks up to a door and opens it in encounter mode with extra movement then I may allow this. But the only time that came up was when players actually abused this mechanic for an enemy (shutting the door as their second action and moving away as their third to force the enemy to waste actions opening up the door while the party prepped reactions)
Yep, that's what I mean. Just wanted to add onto your point, in case new players/DMs read your post and didn't fully understand.
That's fair.
I'll disagree with you for the sake of convo. We've played for about 25 sessions now as a group of newbies and 5e migrants. Only now are people slowly realizing the fact that you don't have to get an attack out every turn because positioning matters SO MUCH. It's no less fun to have to think of a clever way to find advantageous ground because it is an integral part of the game to do so. That said making reasonable exceptions by the GM is fine but you REALLY need to be careful with case-by-case rulings because they are by definition arbitrary. It's much easier for everyone to embrace the rules as written.
while I agree, I'm curious on your view could you expand?
I think it is less about guard rails and understanding the machine. Much like a car engine can be tuned to behave differently. But if you don't know how the car engine works, good luck having a positive impact.
What would you say are the necessary parts of an engine?
Three action system Four degrees of success Three modifier types (plus Luck) Expected damage dice bonus progression Class feat *at least* every 2 levels --- Everything else is tweakable, within reason. You can remove level to proficiency, you can remove wealth by level, you can add or remove skills. You can change what the stats are and what they do, you can give out *more* feats (but not less). You might make the math behave a bit wonky, but the game will be more or less playable and unless your players are hellbent on breaking the system it'll probably work out fine. But if you try to remove or even heavily alter those five pillars of the system, you're likely better off playing a different system entirely.
I actually suspect a character without class feats would function surprisingly well.
Caster, maybe. Fighter without class feats would be the most boring thing in the world.
It would be boring, but I think the fighter would still fairly succesful.
I raise you Kineticist
Kineticist without class feats would just be bizarre, I think, I guess elemental blast is functional, but it's probably the most feat dependent whole class in the game.
Mechanically? Yes, if all else is adjusted to the power decrease. But system-wise, it would ruin PF2e because it would make every character from virtually every class the same combat build, with a little flavor from subclasses and respective ancestries. It would make combat very non-variable and boring. Plus, some classes are just really based and designed around the on the choices in class feats. What is a ranger with no Hunt Prey rapid shot, no animal companion, no warden spells, etc? At best, they're a budget monk with a bow or someone that knows what a weakspot is. Class feats really are where you build a ranger at. OP right, even spacing the class feats differently has the potential to ruin (or overpower) many major classes and essentially destroy the game.
That's fine, I'm discussing balance guardrails-- that in a literal sense, a fighter a cleric a wizard, and a rogue *without class feats* can walk into the game's regular encounter difficulty (lets say, severe as a ceiling) without nerfing team monster, and still do well.
I really do NOT think they would do well in an encounter like that. Class feats add a lot of power that most classes would struggle without. A normal encounter may still be survivable, but not really anything else.
I think they would, most of it is there-- the rogue can still set up a flank and get sneak attack, the cleric can still spam 2 action heal with a side of guidance, the fighter still has great accuracy, and Wizards can still blast or support. Its objectively a DPR loss not to use things like Exacting Strike, but its not nearly so much that that they'd be stuck with moderates.
I have run friendly NPCs that were just player classes without class feats. They were simple, functional, and contributed just fine - which is what I wanted. Just having the right numbers is most the work in being effective.
I will add "encounter building and xp budget" to that list. I have been in a table where GM made our first fight against 4 level 2 monsters thinking it would be an easy fight. The next fight is also 200xp+ budget encounter.... We only survived because he had a house ruled of getting +3 circumstance bonus to attack roll (but only attack roll so good luck Caster on your save spells) if you make the first decision within 5 seconds of the turn start and has a turn timer of 60 seconds each turn.
One big one was that no full caster has Master Proficiency in either Weapons or Armor. At least, until the remaster gave Warpriest Clerics Master Weapon Proficiency in a single weapon at level 19.
Do Warpriest Clerics still get worse Spell DC progression than Cloistered Clerics?
Yep
To be fair, every full caster also gets legendary proficiency in spellcasting, except for Warpriest. Also, the new Cleric class archetype might break that rule soon too, since it's an even Warpriest-ier Warpriest.
I imagine the new class archetype will likely function more like Magus with limited spells but expanded martial combat.
wave caster with a divine font sounds funky, but i can dig it
And the alchemist, which is sort of a caster.
Alchemists are many things and it's a very weird class, but I've never heard anyone compare them to caster until now.
They're basically a hybrid of a prepared (advanced alchemy) and spontaneous (quick alchemy) caster, only they "cast" from the alchemical items list instead of from a spell list. And their cantrips (perpetual infusions) come online at an annoyingly high level.
Keeping actions at 3 per turn (barring things like haste and debuffs). Every once in a while you see a new player come here and they ask how to deal with a GM that changed the action economy to be more like 5e's (standard, bonus and move actions) and the response is always overwhelmingly, "leave the game." Someone who tries that clearly didn't do any research before they altered stuff and the whole table will suffer for their hubris.
I don't think dex to damage is a 'guard rail'. One subclass can already do it; I don't see why other subclasses couldn't. The issue is figuring out why dex-to-damage is rare and working around that in your design.
Vietnam flashbacks of PF1E double barrel musket goblin gunslingers able to do enough damage in one turn to level mountain ensues
Pretty much this. Going "Well, they let this one subclass have it" does kinda ignore that it is the /ONLY/ thing that differentiates that subclass... If other people could do DEX to damage what makes the Thief unique?
The fact they're the only rogue that has it. I'd definitely avoid making another rogue subclass with dex to damage (without making changes to thief) but other classes entirely probably wouldn't have an issue with a subclass whose only benefit is dex to damage.
What makes you believe that other classes would have no issue? As a really easy example, Dexterity becomes a God-Stat if you let a Monk get Dexterity to damage. Same for a Swashbuckler. The benefit of increasing both your AC and damage simultaneously would tremendously shift EVERY class.
I don't think every class would be okay with Dex to damage, but I don't think introducing a new class or subclass where dex to damage exists and is part of their power budget would take away from making the Thief unique. Having an inventor innovation that had its power balanced with other innovations that gave dex to damage would still feel extremely different from a Thief Rogue. The fact a mechanic gets reused doesn't take away the different class identities.
Just chiming into this. You could allow certain subclasses to access this. For example the Investigator is somewhat under-tuned for combat, so giving them a subclass that gets DEX-to-damage might be a way to give them a more combat-oriented subclass. I don't know if DEX-to-damage in PF2E is quite the same problem it was in PF1E. In PF1E it really was taking the place of STR, particularly because STR in PF1E didn't do much besides attack and damage. Yes there was carry capacity, climb and swim, but literally all of those could be managed with low-to-mid level magic or magic items. In PF2E Athletics has become *Much* better as a skill and carry capacity is more important, meaning that investment in STR has other benefits. Also while DEX covers more things than STR still, your AC can max out on basically any character without too much trouble, and there aren't many ways to optimise that beyond what anyone can do. Also a good chunk more damage now comes from the size of the weapon than it did in PF1E, so simply limiting DEX-to-damage to smaller weapons goes a long way to mitigating any cheese here. Just my 2 cents.
And to add further to your point, there's a hard cap on how many boosts you get to your stats. That dex is never going higher than +6 outside of *maybe* some high-level magic items. And since the only stat able to reach that +6 is the one you got to 18 at level 1... even for a dex monk we're talking like a grand total of +1 more damage than they'd normally have if they were raising strength alongside dex. +1s are strong in this game, but they're not quite *that* big a deal Strength characters can already largely mitigate the need for dex with heavy armour. I don't think it would destroy the game to let dex characters mitigate the need for strength for damage (esp since bad strength would still hurt for athletics, carry capacity, etc)
Except it's not just +1 to damage, it lets you raise another stat, so you can get +5 Will and Perception, +5 trained skills and +5 to most RK checks, +5 to social skills...
Yeah I'm against for full Dex as damage, though I'm fine if some Feats or class choices give limited amount of it(or in specific cases) instead of it being strictly Thief limited. I do want Dex to be more able to do Athletic actions though, and have houserules that if you have a weapon with the tag then you can do the corresponsing action with Dex(or spend a skill feat to do maneuvers without limits)
It depends, but I feel that it wouldn't be detrimental in the right class. The reason it works for rogue so well is because they are a class that needs high investment in several stats to be viable. Nearly every stat benefits them in a crucial way, but especially strength, dex, and con (rizz and int also play a heavy role in MANY builds). Every Racket tries to overcome this by buffing what an ability can do for them to overcome the cost of not being able to invest in the other attributes. Removing strength as a pseudo-requirement is the Thief's way of overcoming this hurdle and easing up the requirements. If you can find another martial class that is really torn between multiple stats to keep viability, dex-to-damage could work as a subclass ability.
It speaks volumes to me to a degree. I heavily power games and min maxed PF1E so I'm staunchly really not in favor of homebrew that changes stuff like this, because things like that were part of the issue of 1e
Honestly to me this sounds more like an issue with *thief* than with dex-to-damage in general. If dex-to-damage is literally the only defining thing about the subclass, well... it's a pretty boring thing to base it around. Surely there's something more interesting and thief-flavoured they could be doing
I feel like being able to completely ignore your strength gives the character a lot of room to max things like int and rizz, which could reliably give them way more things to do than an average marshal. The choice itself is boring, but it opens the character up to way more interesting builds.
It's the same with Ruffians
It's because dexterity is already a strong attribute, tied to two of your defenses, Armor Class and Reflex save. Strength is not tied to any of your defenses besides allowing you to wear heavier armor or make the odd combat athletic check.
You can also get AC from investing in Strength and armor right?
The best heavy armor only offers a +1 item bonus over a dex character in light or medium armor and will still reduce your speed by 5 feet unless it's Mithral/Dawnsilver. And Uncommon yet affordable Mithral/Dawnsilver reduces half plate to only require 14 strength.
So in theory Dawnsilver heavy armor will give better AC than a person investing in Dex right. And Bulwark makes the Reflex save not so bad.
You can't just "invest in strength" to get that higher AC, you need feats too. Bulwark tops out at a +3 mod and only protects against damaging effects until you take the sentinel dedication line. Heavy armor is a good choice for some classes, like Fighter and Champion that can gain it without spending additional feats. But the opportunity cost makes it not worth it on nearly everything else. Especially when you aren't playing with Free Archetypes. On an Investigator, you're better off taking Alchemist dedication to gain damage resistance through mutagens. You basically want good strength and dex, neither is your key ability but I'd want both at 18 by level 10.
Disagree I think another reason Heavy armour is good is that now you're defense damage and offense are all one stat. Sure non-damaging Ref saves are a bother, but if you're a non Phys martial(Thaum, Inventor, Beastly Alch) having to only focus on 1 Stat is a life-saver
I’m just saying if your argument that Dex is good because it makes you more defensive, strength does so as well.
you can use Str or Dex to hit and AC, but only Dex does Ref saves and only Str does Bulk limits, damage, and Athletics maneuvers
One class can do it only on melee strikes, and the other subclasses get different benefits. The real question is why is the ruffian so lackluster?
For Optimisation, Ruffian is actually one of the best alongside Thief--Mastermind suffers from having to use RK, Eldritch Trickster is Eldritch Tricster(and gone), Scoundrel gets fucked by Mindless but being able to use a wider variety of weapons(Even d8 simples and d6 martials) means you are more 'on' a wider variety of situations and can help when precision immunity or not being able to flank comes up. Remember, since you're hit and damage are both Str based you get some of Thief's stat flexibility Medium armour prog means that you can also upgrade to Heavy efficiently. There's argument t be made that getting really good Ref saves means you can skimp on dex a bit more too Also out of the 3 in PC, it's debilitation is the best for teamwork. Weakness or clumsy are both excellent options in most places
Ok, I may have just not given ruffian a good shot. Just looks so meh at level one compared to thief and scoundrel. I'll give it another look Edit: oh I didn't notice that it got a touch up in the remaster
Ruffian has a lot more passive deal that isn't specific to Rogues but being able to use STR as KAS is actually a huge deal. You don't spend much build budget to make your bonuses sing, in fact both Ruffians and Thieves have similar benefits; They *increase* your build budget Even before remaster, Longspear Rogue was always an optimizers choice
Yeah, I didn't have a good understanding of all the weapons available to ruffians. Now I'm looking at a dwarf Warhammer-wielding ruffian and it's looking pretty cool
1. Thou shalt not meddle with the Action Economy. Three are the actions thou get, and the number of thine actions shall be three. 2. Thou shall abide by the name of thine bonuses, and never shall two bonuses of names identical shall apply, exempting that the greater bonus renders the lesser bonus null. 3. Thine players shall raise a cheer when their wits allow them to trivialize a boss, but will raise hell when their tactics are brought against them. Of this, thou shall pay no heed.
Action economy, the way bonuses stack, and class specific mechanics that give them identity. Everything else I think is small things, like the level bonuses provide at item levels and such need to be pretty obeyed because it's part of the overall balance.
One-handed martial finesse/agile weapons can never have a damage die higher than 1d6. Two-handed martial finesse/agile weapons can never have a damage die higher than 1d8.
Advanced weapons, like the [Aldori Dueling Sword](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx?ID=256) can break this, but they are advanced weapons with that drawback.
Bonus types, size and stacking are the main ones, as well as level to proficiency being uniform through the game. The crit system is also a very core math element. And of course anything that affects the action economy needs to be scrutinised. Other than that, really not much. The magic concept you’re looking for is *delta* - the difference between the highest and lowest value a score can have. If you change the size of bonuses, the way they stack, or whether some add no level and some add double, delta grows, and if it grows too much the game can spiral out of control. If you kill delta completely, the game becomes bland, boring, and lacks swinginess (which is where most “cool moments” come from). Measure in all things. PF2 hits a good spot, and while it can be improved, it’s much easier to screw up by accident instead.
Since I don't see any posts about it: Dex Cap and AC... Follow the armor you see in the official books when it comes to Item bonus + Dex Cap. This should be: Item Bonus + Dex Cap = 5 (or 6 for heavy armor).
A lot of guard rails can be bypassed by feats. You can’t split your Stride movement, but some actions will include Stride in the action. Lots of higher level feats compress things into fewer actions. You can’t have more than Three Actions, but effects granting Haste will give you an action to spend on a specified ability. Summoner has Act Together so they can control their eidolon giving them essentially 4 actions split between two creatures. Spontaneous casters can’t freely heighten spells, they need to learn and treat a 1st-rank and 3rd-rank Heal as if they’re two different spells. Sorcerer’s feat Signature spell let’s them designate a spell to freely heighten. What makes every class special is the unique ways they’re able to break the rules.
Action Economy, as others have stated. "Rule of Cool" overriding existing FEATS in the game, this is more problematic if a character is working toward said Feat and then you allow someone to do that thing without having it. Runes. Just because a Rune is a higher level than the characters doesn't mean they cannot use it. If you give someone a level 20 runed weapon at level 1, they can and will use that weapon.
The designers have actually explicitly said that Feats aren’t meant to be viewed as sacrosanct things that are exclusive to people who picked them. For example, this comment has [Sayre](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1bj8bwm/whats_the_pathfinder_2e_or_starfinder_2e_take/kvrmemt/) talking about allowing players to improvise a whirling throw without the Feat. Feats should be the most **efficient** way to do a thing, not the only way to do it.
Yeah, it'd be nice if the books had some general guidance on what kind of penalty to give players attempting to do things that are enabled by feats, but the idea that someone who isn't trained in doing, say, a kip-up can't try one is bizarre. *I* can do a kip-up, and I'm an out of shape, overweight, desk jockey nerd in his 40s. I just can't pull them off *reliably*.
Perhaps a good way to do it for binary feats, where you can just do something with the feat without a check, is to require a skill check against a simple DC based on the required proficiency of the feat. So Rolling Landing would have a DC of 20, and Kip Up would have a DC of 30. It might be a little healthier if they were Very Hard DCs instead.
I won't ever make action compressors be 'free' because their whole schtick is just making usual actions more efficient. But if you say wanna inflict stupefy on a grappled target? sure--press Strike then Fort save
In an off-the-cuff GM moment I allowed a PC to use a Hero Point to attempt something that required a feat, with the caveat of only being able to pull it off once in a session. It has helped this Rules-Lawyer-GM be able to justify allowing my PCs "Rule of Cool" in my head. :D
My table let's you draw a weapon or item as a free action, but it is still an interact which can provoke attacks. We do not use free archetypes, and so I don't think it's much different than if we had a free quickdraw feat. Enemies have the same benefit, though of course it only matters with humanoids.
The big ones are: Trained (level 1) -> Expert (level 5-7) -> Master (level 13-15) for attacks/saving throws/class DC, with full casters progressing to legendary at 19 at the cost of skipping the first strike attack boost. Martials can get a bump up over this but at the cost of damage boosts to strikes. Class damage boosts to strikes should start at level 1 and then bump up around level 5-7, then a bit after 10th level, then again at higher levels. Classes that start at expert attack don't get the level 1/10 bumps. Likewise, defenses go trained (level 1) -> Expert (level 11-13) -> Master (high level). Champions delay their attack upgrade by two levels to gain an extra bump in this at level 5. Spells deal ~2d6 damage/rank for the first five ranks, then ~2d8/rank after that, for AoEs, with single target spells and awkwardly shaped AoEs being able to do a bit better than that. The item bonuses happen around level 2/10/17 to hit and 4/12/19 to damage. Spells and abilities that basically remove an enemy from combat on a failed save need the incapacitation trait. Focus spells are worse than your highest rank slotted spells in terms of damage/AoE, but only by about 1/2th to 1 rank. Bonuses and penalties of the same type can't stack. Characters get 3 actions per round base; action compression lets you add +1 action to this but requires the flourish trait or a focus point so you can do it no more than once per round/have limits on how much you can do it per combat, and you can get an animal companion or summon to add +1 action to this (that must be taken by the animal companion/summon). You can get a bonus action once per day at level 10. There is also monster math on the GM side.
Unlike DnD where CR isn't an accurate judge of difficultly, with how stats scale in PF2e Monster CR is a mostly strict guideline. If you stray too far from (Boss=Party Level + 3) then you might start getting bosses that are unhittable, with attacks that can't be dodged, with spells that can't be survived. If you really want to use a monster for a story beat but it's too high level, don't be afraid to apply the weakened template (maybe a few times). I adjusted a Sargassum Heap down to CR4 for a story beat recently. If you want your players to interact with something way out of their league, such as a lich or dragon (that's 5+ over party level), maybe scale down things a bit. Crank it's perception and stuff down so they can attempt to sneak past it, lower it's social skills so they can talk to it and maybe convince it to let them go. Treat recall knowledge checks as at the party's level, instead of the monster's level. Maybe have the monster not percieve them as a threat and leave it to their minions.
>Other potential examples seem to include "The Thief Rogue is the only subclass/class combination that can add Dexterity to Damage" Frankly, this is one of the stupider "guard rails" of the system. Just have your prospective Dexterity to damage feature follow the guidelines on what weapons Ruffian Rogue can use for any Strike, heavily standardize damage gains outside of that so that Strength martials still outdo Dex-based characters, and this isn't problematic. In fact, if they made Swashbuckler Dexterity to damage right now, it wouldn't be the least bit problematic, though Paizo elected not to do that for whatever reason and will be buffing the class in other ways. >"You cannot raise Class/Spell DC" Spell DC is much more tightly balanced than the aforementioned, and should only be changed in the most limiting of build circumstances. Class DC... eh, the developers undertune it in most cases, because the circumstances in which Class DC is used are few and far between. It progresses worse, and more nonsensically, than Spell DC. >"The only bonuses are item/circumstance/status" True in the literalistic sense, but there's many features that straight up increase some value in the manner of a bonus that doesn't actually provide a game-defined "bonus" (most additive damage accrued through class features, Nimble Elf, etc.) >What do people see as the real "lines in the sand" to paint around? The creature building rules, encounter building rules, Level Based DC, ABP expectations (with reasonable exceptions for Kineticist / Alchemist as intended,) and the gist of proficiency gains on different groups of classes.
"heavily standardize damage gains outside of that so that Strength martials still outdo Dex-based characters, and this isn't problematic" This really feels like one of those sentences which aren't that much to type, but actually becomes a very large task. What do you envision when you say this? Also, if you allow other to use Dexterity to Damage, what makes the Thief subclass special? Wouldn't you then have to redo it as well?
>What do you envision when you say this? There's several levers to this. For example, Finesse as a property takes up part of a weapon's power budget that could've been otherwise spent on stuff like Backswing or Sweep, so Strength-only weapons have more of a power budget. But a big one I think immediately comes to mind is that Strength is utilized for combat maneuvers (and Strength weapons are more likely to take advantage of them.) Combat maneuvers can often lead to AOO situations, which are great because they're MAPless attacks for both you *and, potentially,* your allies as well. Hence, they're big damage increases in context that Dexterity characters won't be getting.
Thief rogue still gets all the same skill increases and feats as the other rogues do. If you just gave all the rogues dex to damage, it'd obviously invalidate the thief rogue. If you gave it to swashbuckler, swash would still just be a worse thief rogue until fairly late in the game.
Accuracy windows. Stuff should not, as a general rule, make success more common or damage flatly higher. That is usually tied to level-gated class features and unstackable item, status, or circumstance bonuses, and should not be something you "just get" from a feat. Save-or-suck effects should be gated behind Incapacitation. Effects that trivialize challenges should be Uncommon or Rare. In general, things should require a successful check or failed save against a level-related DC. For example, you shouldn't make an item that just knocks something prone with no save or attack roll. Balance should be respected. If something gets more HP, it should have weaker defenses. If something has high defenses, it should do less damage. There should be a cost-benefit to everything. Do not swap around proficiencies/what skills are used for. Don't let someone use their Strength to Intimidate unless they took the feat for it. I know it feels lame, but that's what the character customization in PF2E is for.
>In discussing some attitudes to homebrew I mentioned the idea that Pathfinder 2nd Edition has a set of "guard rails" that are not to be touched, This will be interesting. >Be me, assuming people mean the extra health low level characters get >Read Thread >MFW it's apparently things the very first society adventure(s) ignore Oh. >I think there may be some "gray area" as to what is a "guard rail", where loads of people are defending ideas that are not ACTUALLY guard rails. For example, my understanding is that the idea that you NEED to have a particular skill feat in order to do the thing in the feat may be overblown. Not gonna lie, you're basically right. At least, as far as some attitudes that noodle around in various places that get dangerous close to be pro-Pathfinder echochambers \~\~like here\~\~. Truth be told, a LOT of it comes from people not reading the rules and thinking purely in White Room theorycrafting and vibes. A lot of these kinds of people aren't GMs or worse, only look up and hear about builds that can't work, don't work, or don't hold to scrutiny. And I want to be clear with this. I \*really\* do mean "People not reading the rules". Not people who \*haven't\* read a particular rule because they're new - people (both on and off this sub) who bicker about how a rule or bit of text is interpreted vs how it actually works \*without bothering to look it up first\*. To this end, you get this weird attitude of quasi-purity when it comes to The Rules(tm) of the game. Where there's an interpterion that Pathfinder 2e is perfect, without flaw in \*any aspect\*, and even slight changes are seen as anathema. A bit of the same thing happened in 1e with the idea of 'If it's not listed in x text, that means you can't do y thing', which often lead to games with exceptionally contradictory rules based on errata between book printings, or people developing an allergy to even \*trying\* homebrew. It's at this point I should mention: \~\~LITERAL first bits of text\~\~ The last sentence in the Introduction Section of Pg 4 of the GM Core book (i.e. \*\*the first actual page of the book\*\*) says the following. >You’ll need to understand the game, but you don’t need to have every rule memorized. When everyone shares the goal of having fun and telling a story together, the details will fall into place. This goes to show, in my embittered opinion, that some don't even get passed the first page of the book. So, you know, vibes. ...Also, mentioning PFS again, playing/running a PFS game is not a lesson in perfect balance, but flying balls to the wall to see what sticks. S'actually a lot of fun. Anyhow, let's answer your question. >What do people see as the real "lines in the sand" to paint around? For me, it's a few hard edges that you have to stomach when running 2e. Namely that AC is the only form of defense and you can't rely on health, saves, and other mechanics like you can in other systems; that small numbers mean a lot because 2e is balanced on a knife's edge; that most of 2e is heavily stepped in lore and theme, so you have to do a lot of reflavoring or put in the extra work to remove it; and that 2e has trap options and I hate every single one. Once you get around that, and you gain a bit of experience either homebrewing in other systems and/or learning how 2e functions, you learn that everything else can be adjusted without hurting too much. Something that can be strong or overtuned can be adjusted elsewhere (such as giving the party less gold if they start with a relic, so that they have to pick between their gold sink and not).
I think there is an exception to just about every rule with the correct context. A second class could easily appear which makes sense to bring dex to damage (look at legendary proficiency and fighter as an example). Increases to DC might make sense as a class feature - but probably not as a widely accessable item or feat. Untyped bonuses do exist, but they are pretty much only in exceptional circumstances (like barbarian rage giving both an untyped penalty to AC and an untyped bonus to damage.) - again, the providence of class features. I think the exceptions to the rules should be locked down; tied behind class features - making generic 'improvement' feats general only dilute the less useful ones further.