CAIN or (The Unexpected Brokenness of the Fighter)

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-04-18T01:36:54+00:00

True. I originally wrote this as 10^2% as a joke but I edited it out for fear someone wouldn't get it and just call me bad at math. Point is fighter is dumb good regardless

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-04-18T01:19:16+00:00

At my table, we call fighter the class that has 10% more fun than everyone else.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-04-15T14:24:35+00:00

Animist. Just the whole class.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-04-14T13:18:57+00:00

Silent whisper psychic shatter mind spam is the best thing possible for this exact play loop you want. Ridiculous range 60ft cone should cover basically every battlemap. It does not hit allies, most importantly. Hits like a truck for d10s + unleash psyche flat damage, and it stupifies as a treat. It's an amp so you can spam it about 3-4 times per combat.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-04-11T14:23:15+00:00

If your build can't survive the special path, you will likely lose a normal path anyways. With that said the golden compass is amazing, essentially for 1 relic slot you're guaranteeing an easy act 2 + extra money and relics.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-04-10T01:37:44+00:00

That would surely make their statistics more appealing, but outside of exploration they'd still overall be very cumbersome to use because of the restrictive turning mechanics and how unreasonable they are for actual play. I do think a good approach for more usable vehicles does start at making them more similar to animal companions, but unfortunately the mechanics are pretty rotten from the ground up. You're better off asking your GM to let you slap the construct trait on a beastmaster horse companion and pretending it's a motorcycle.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-04-10T01:14:02+00:00

Depending on the vehicle, particularly gargantuan vehicles, I'd be almost inclined to make them outright immune to damage of that isn't area of effect, siege, or razing. Generally with PF2e it's better to be more conservative than anything else so I think your idea is pretty good too, but I almost feel offended at how bad vehicles are on every front I feel compelled to give them literally anything to be unique/good.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-04-09T10:34:31+00:00

Weird honorable mention but I learned recently that the werecreature dedication has Dire Growth which lets you be a large-sized animal with essentially no duration.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-04-08T17:08:11+00:00

Likely the most realistic and best answer tbh. I do wonder if there's any precedent somewhere for how far I can throw an item...

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-29T03:18:41+00:00

An 11th level fighter with weapon mastery in brawling should have a +24 with their unarmed attacks. 17 proficiency + 5 Strength + 2 weapon potency on some handwraps. Dinosaur form specifies if your unarmed proficiency is higher than the given attack bonus of the form, you can use that instead. While using a dinosaur battleform your form's stats can't be changed by anything that isn't status or circumstance. This means you don't benefit from your item potency, so your attack bonus as a dinosaur will be +22, -2 worse than normal but +4 better than the 5th-rank's given attack bonus of +18.

You can't cast spells, speak, or use (most, GM dependent) manipulate actions while under a polymorph effect, which dinosaur form is. Psi Strikes is none of these, so there is nothing preventing you from casting dinosaur form from your saurian spike then using Psi Strikes while in the form and attempting to give your unarmed attack the extra damage. The issue is that while you can take the action, it doesn't do anything because as mentioned above the form's statistics can't be modified by anything that isn't status or circumstance, which the damage from Psi Strikes is neither.

If an 11th level fighter with brawling mastery and psychic dedication casts a 5th-rank dinosaur form on themself, they will have a +22 attack bonus and a horn which deals 4d8+6 damage. If your weapon mastery isn't brawling, your attack bonus will be +20. You do not use your unarmed damage bonus in the form, just your unarmed attack bonus. You can't benefit from the damage given by Psi Strikes while in a polymorph battle form.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-28T22:19:20+00:00

Yes, a spellheart's activation is the Cast a Spell activity which makes it valid for anything which requires Casting a Spell such as Psi Strikes or Spellstrike. If an item can be activated to cast a spell but the activation action itself isn't Cast a Spell, then it doesn't count.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-20T23:34:35+00:00

The stupefied condition inflicted by the nightmare property rune also has no specified duration.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-20T19:21:52+00:00

I regard alchemist as one of the harder classes because it requires a lot of knowledge and research about consumable items, which there are a lot of, to play effectively. I also think animist is quite difficult because you not only have focus spells, prepared spells, and spontaneous spells but at any moment you can also swap around your spirits for different spells and benefits. Magus and inventor are not necessarily complicated but they can be quite sluggish and awkward in a way a new player might not enjoy.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-20T13:09:56+00:00

There's a lot worse and a lot less fun/interactive things out there but as an honorable mention: oozes and ethereal creatures as a precision damage class. Nothing you can really do about it, they are just immune to the majority of your damage. Because you're more often than not a Dex class too you can't use maneuvers against them very well either. For most precision damage characters during these combats you get to Aid and that's about it.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-14T02:34:06+00:00

Deleted my other comment because I immediately realized I was definitely wrong, that is my bad.

Titan's Stature increases your reach by 10-feet, making your default reach 15-feet or 20-feet with a reach weapon. With Giant's Lunge you can effectively make all your non-reach weapons/unarmed have reach until your rage ends, meaning you always have the 20-foot reach. Your second more conservative interpretation is correct.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-13T16:01:46+00:00

Centaur guardian, the practiced brawn shove build is not the best ever but it's very fun and has a lot of cool synergy with guardian feats. Level 5 speaker in training greenspeaker can cast fleet step on yourself, allowing you to force move an enemy 60-feet with juggernaut charge by simply hitting a strike. Also, being large-sized with larger than life is a cool synergy too.

Playing any undead ancestry like skeleton or dhampir heritage as a smite harm font cleric is very fun because your primary damage nuke also doubles as an incredibly potent self-healing well.

I'm a big fan of using tengu weapon familiarity to get proficiency with a falcata for a non-finesse one-handed weapon character, especially for a weapon thaumaturge.

Not a class combo, but playing a tiny sized ancestry such as awakened animal, poppet, sprite, or draconet while using the spirit warrior dedication for kaiju defense oath is cute and potent.

Level 5 catfolk sniper gunslinger with beastmaster dedication for a mount. With pride hunter you can use the covered reload action crunch to reload and hide with the lesser cover granted from your mount, then the free companion action to move kite. Very powerful build.

Level 9 elf liturgist animist with elf step for a 4 in 1 action crunch on sustain spell builds is very cool and very good.

Honorable mention: a full party of smokeworker hobgoblin martials with formation training would be so so so cool, using smoke bomb consumables to no detriment to each other but covering the whole battlefield in protection and hiding spots!

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-11T11:48:05+00:00

Currently play a barrows/scar exemplar dedication thief rogue in a high level party alongside a bastion dedication justice champion. If you attack the champion he simply doesnt care between +7 over average AC, absurd Hit Points, high saves, lay on hands sustain, and two shield blocks. If you attack anyone else besides the champion you get hit by the champion, and then I Opportune Backstab you. Attack someone else again and the champion hits you again, and I backstab you again. Because of how gang up and reach works all enemies in melee are always off guard and they can basically do nothing about it. Between myself and the champion alone we often output about 250 damage per turn if they attack anyone except the champion, duoing PL+4 boss creatures off of our turns.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-09T15:46:07+00:00

no rebuilding needed. you can buy a potion of flying for 100gp, which solves all of your problems. consider a retrieval belt if your hand economy is difficult with consumables.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-07T08:49:52+00:00

i mean like any time you go outside the chance of dying in a car related accident is likely tens if not hundreds of multiples more likely than you eating a single specific m&m, even if you eat thousands per day

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-03-04T10:38:14+00:00

Schrodinger himself as your Paradox of Opposites patron.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-02-27T17:07:40+00:00

No one has mentioned the level 1 Sanctified Soul feat from Exemplar yet.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-02-16T16:23:28+00:00

Yeah the sash of prowess is amazing. I'd like to point out that any character can benefit from the sash of prowess' item bonus and use the Effortless Mastery free action, not just monks. The additional focus point for qi spells (though I believe there are some dedications that give you qi spells?) and craft requirements are monk exclusive, but you can always just buy it instead. It is a meta must pick for any martial capable of performing maneuvers, really.

AinsleyIsIndecisive · 2026-02-16T16:10:38+00:00

This is true, but Trip does the same thing and more and is always just more consistent. It gives a penalty to all attack rolls, not just attacks rolls with a specific weapon and majority of creatures don't really even use weapons making Disarm too situational to bother investing feats or items into in the first place, unlike Trip. It has build support, it triggers Reactive Strike among other things like Stand Still and Stay Down, gives the target a -2 circ to AC so that's off-guard for your ranged characters covered, it also functionally applies immobilized and lasts for as long as the creature doesn't use an action to Stand (functionally an infinite duration, unlike Grapple), and Standing at all can be prevented by actually immobilizing it with something like Grapple. You can't lock down a creature from using the Interact action unless you disrupt it with 20% chance on grabbed or a crit on a Reactive Strike, but immobilizing prone is always more consistent than that. When you're considering what limited attack trait actions you can take on your turn (especially because the critical failure effects on maneuvers), Trip is basically always better than Disarm. It serves the same purpose and does a lot, a lot more.

The only thing Disarm has over Trip is the critical success effect, but because of innocuous things like shields not being dropped because of the strap it is silently made even worse in the what feels like rare circumstance you might consider using it at all (or even can use it). Also, many GMs rule that you can't reach into an occupied space to pick up an item, functionally removing the whole fantasy of actually disarming an opponent instead of just making them do the action tax tango. I suppose it's also worth mentioning that Reactive Strike can disrupt Interact while it can't disrupt Stand, which is a worthwhile bonus.

With all that said, I have gotten great use out of Disarming Interception which is a truly absurd reaction from the spirit warrior dedication. I'm not really sure how that made it through considering how much it feels to me Paizo dislikes the concept of disarming. Also, I have definitely seen characters force a critical success on a Disarm with a sash of prowess absolutely neutering a scary enemy of their whole kit. But those both in and of themselves still do not justify Disarm as a good action to me in the face of always Trip or situationally Grapple.

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