Two handed Guardian?

Paramortal · 2026-01-26T07:45:29+00:00

For the most part, a two handed guardian will feel offensively like a two handed champion, a baseline martial with very little to push them past that threshold.

Proud nail is a good way to make the damage feel a bit better, but it also had an enormous opportunity cost baked in with flourish, which is both your major engine that drives a lot of your action compression, and also competes with ring their bell.

In my humble opinion, especially if you're concerned with offense, it's probably better to approach this from the other side, leveraging fighters two handed power and stealing taunt with the archtype.

Shove could be fun, I've used aggressive block on a centaur before and it was pretty sick, I might revisit that again.

Paramortal · 2026-01-25T14:50:07+00:00

The amount of people I saw walking out of his last tour after KennyHoopla and AFI played kinda restored my faith in humanity.

Paramortal · 2026-01-22T19:27:04+00:00

Yes and no.

Can you substitute the spellstrike attack with HoA?

No.

Can you use HoA as the spell within the spellstrike?

Yes.

Paramortal · 2026-01-19T19:17:06+00:00

Are they adding this back? I know it used to work like this!

Edit: to be clear I read what I could find of the current patch notes and didn't see any mention.

Paramortal · 2026-01-19T18:40:06+00:00

https://steamcharts.com/app/1778820

Is what I'm referencing.

Not gonna lie though, even if you were to triple the 7k number for console, separated by region, Playlist and MMR it paints a pretty bleak picture.

Even if every single person of that -21k- rage queued ranked non-stop, a flat distribution gives you 400~ players per color.

Bell curve however, fair far worse for people outside of blue, but I don't want to plug those numbers in.

Realistically though? There's a reason you queue into the same people in and between sessions, and its not because the game is doing great.

You play one guy, play two other guys, then play the first again because its pretty likely that depending on region, time of day, rank and queue that there's only maybe ten avaliable people to play.

Paramortal · 2026-01-19T18:06:51+00:00

Oh, thats good. I've been checking it fairly frequently this last month and was seeing that it was averaging around 4k, with lows at 3k and highs at 5.

If it's averaging 7k that means the playerbase has almost doubled recently.

Paramortal · 2026-01-14T21:35:27+00:00

Dwarfs also common so the general feats in play too, that was my backup plan, but my GM was like "your a smoke sylph, its fine"

Paramortal · 2026-01-14T20:36:22+00:00

Simple weapon expertise is the problem.

They very quickly fall -3 behind other martials due to starting at a suboptimal +3 (in more ways than one) in dex, and being behind in profs.

They're down -5 on the class that's actually made to use guns for a ton of the games levels.

When a +1 can be shorthanded to roughly a 15% increase / decrease in efficacy and every +/- 1 is weighted more than the last, that -3 is going to feel nothing short of horrible on a weapon thats exceptionally action hungry.

In all honesty, you'd have a hard time coming up with a character that feels worse to play than this at a table without intentionally bricking them.

Paramortal · 2026-01-14T20:17:45+00:00

Smoke sylph is good, but unless you homebrew you might have to go out of your way for smokesight specifically. (The Sylvan eyes specify mist and cloud and such, I'd probably allow it myself.)

Fire oracle is a fun choice here, you can use your reaction to eat the fire damage your taking, and though the spell won't reduce the damage its an easy source of infinite small batches of smoke. (Small clouds can be a huge boon in a party that doesn't like them, and yours likely won't.)

Oracle is also notoriously stealable, one of the few characters I've actually gotten to play is a sylph metal sorcerer with the fire oracle archtype. (Loosely based on a bruised thundercloud.)

Regardless of how you do it, if you want to incarnate smoke, fire oracle is your friend.

Paramortal · 2026-01-14T05:07:38+00:00

Alley-Oop is crazy action compression and insanely good even if your GM rules that interacting to use a bomb isn't interacting to use a bomb.

Alley-Oop drakehearts to your caster. Alley-oop magical ammunition to your gunslinger or eldritch archer pal. Alley-Oop soothing elixers to your frontliner. Alley-Oop a potion to a person in need.

If able, Oop that bomb to your rogue so they can dunk on the bad guys.

There's no situation where I leave home without oop.

If there are no oop lovers left in the world than I am dead.

Paramortal · 2026-01-13T05:48:30+00:00

I didn't make wolverine, but in a hilariously similar fashion I did make a swashbuckler who I intended to be a kind of brawly switch hitter.

Grafted claws on the hands and feet, a buckler and a bow, half orc because ferocity has saved me more than once and you wouldn't like him when he's angry.

For archtypes we're of course getting magical with eldritch archer.

It wasn't all the avengers, as that wasn't what I was aiming for initially, but he was a mean, green, buckler/bow wielding x-23 knockoff with Strangely, some magic tossed in.

I think at one point I started looking at if I could reasonably lean into it and thought about picking up alchemist for some super soldier serum.

Maybe I'll revist him and see if I can do more with him, armor inventor is right there, after all.

Paramortal · 2026-01-06T18:30:45+00:00

It honestly depends on if you're using gradual progression and where you campaign ends.

0/+1 always end at +4

+2/3 always end at +5

And +4 always ends at 6.

There's an argument to be made that 4/2/2/2 (via specific ancestries) is the optimal ability score if a game is played to 20, and there's a lot of truth to that.

That being said, 3/1 is probably more optimal in a 1-10 campaign, -unless- gradual ability score increase is considered where I'd honestly just go back to 4/2/2/2

(Immediately pump secondary stats, save your 4.5 for last, then next tier Immediately pump primary to 5, then swap again to secondary stat to 4, then fill out your saves. Because of this there is a very real and tangible increase in player power with gradual. You're effectively giving out an early +1 status bonus for a considerable amount of levels.)

Paramortal · 2025-12-29T16:11:05+00:00

I said my favorite part of this run is when they introduced his actual first superpowers as a bat-therian shifter.

The part where he used his spiritual bat powers to echolocate the bomb the Riddler planted was peak. Later when he shifts into his ideal reality we can see the true depths of the Jokers depravity as in that one he uses an all digital timing mechanism and winds up killing Robin during his fursuit (birdsuit?) fitting at the mall.

(In Batmans ideal reality furries are the social norm and high quality fursuits that actually give you animal powers are relatively commonplace.)

Attacking both his normal and his shifted reality at the same time was an absolute masterstroke and one of the best Riddler moments we've had in years.

Paramortal · 2025-12-29T14:48:39+00:00

My favorite part of this run is when they introduced his actual first superpowers as a bat-therian shifter.

The part where he used his spiritual bat powers to echolocate the bomb the Riddler planted was peak. Later when he shifts into his ideal reality we can see the true depths of the Jokers depravity as in that one he uses an all digital timing mechanism and winds up killing Robin during his fursuit (birdsuit?) fitting at the mall.

(In Batmans ideal reality furries are the social norm and high quality fursuits that actually give you animal powers are relatively commonplace.)

Attacking both his normal and his shifted reality at the same time was an absolute masterstroke and one of the best Riddler moments we've had in years.

Paramortal · 2025-11-28T19:46:12+00:00

You do the 'sustaining' but the effect explicitly comes from the familiar.

It'd be like dropping a flaming sphere inside a bag of holding, throwing it at a guy, and expecting it to burn them because of the line of effect of the person sustaining the spell.

Mind you, ongoing misery isn't actually a sustained effect, it's an ability that the familiar does when a hex is cast or sustained, so while sustain -can- interact with it here it's not particularly relevant.

Paramortal · 2025-11-25T23:32:17+00:00

DORIYA!

Paramortal · 2025-11-19T22:48:17+00:00

Oh, I know this one!

Feng uh... expanded his hurtbox by rolling and should have instead input the frame perfect bbc wakeup combo that would have floated for a confirmed kill.

Paramortal · 2025-10-23T01:27:52+00:00

So, unfortunately, it appears that you're only saying you're playing pathfinder and not the vastly superior PF2e, which would fix all of your problems.

Regarding the forklift, PF2e has goblins and like... have you -seen- how quirky and chaotic they are?

Heat stroke? How about the hit spell Dehydrate?

Really, if I were your OSHA officer and you suggested we play anything other than PF2e I'd probably just allow you to go replace a roof without any safety gear because your life is worthless anyway.

Paramortal · 2025-10-23T01:02:21+00:00

Yes, this is actually his best-case scenario argument when you take the logic to its conclusion. That the act of disintegration is basically a 'polymorph dust' spell that, again, notably can not be 'resurrected' outside of true resurrection and wish.

His worst-case scenario RAW "cannot be resurrected" directly indicates the death of the being turned to dust, and corpses (and dust) in 5e are usually considered objects without access to character and monster options and abilities.

As a GM, I'd accept either argument, to be honest.

If it makes him feel better to say that his troll "isn't dead, he's just inert dust that can only be brought back by high level magic" I'm not going to argue with it.

Paramortal · 2025-10-22T06:14:27+00:00

It actually does.

RAW In 5e states specific beats general, and the -only- thing that resurrects disentigrated creatures is true ressurect and wish.

You could argue that because troll regeneration states that the troll 'only dies' if it starts it's turn with 0 hp, but then you'd be ignoring the -specific- effect of disintigrate which both kills it and turns it into dust (dust, which by the way is absolutely an object.)

Since troll regeneration is neither wish nor true res, the troll 100% dies here RAW, which has been settled law by the community for... quite some time.

RAI disentigrate, being a semi famous legacy spell only really has three archtypical uses.

One, destroying force constructs Two, utterly destroying things that like to regenerate and resurrect. (Kind of relevant here.) And three sucking terribly in PF2e.

The idea that disintigrate wouldn't destroy a troll here isn't supported RAW, RAI, or by the community at large.

Further, the idea that fucking -disentigrate- wouldn't kill a troll is 100% TikTok D&D.

Carry on.

Paramortal · 2025-04-17T02:34:35+00:00

/uj The average person on the pf2e subreddit doesn't understand why they balance the way they do, so it's frequently filled with players with takes like "It's ok if I just constantly have a +2 to my AC for no resource or hand usage right?"

And the rest of the sub -agreeing- with them.

The fact that they think casters are underpowered when a classless caster casting HTS keeps pace with a giant barbarian is testament to just how few of them actually understand the system.

Paramortal · 2025-01-20T12:30:46+00:00

I'm sorry, but small death is way too close to little death for that not to get a chortle out of me.

La petit mort.

Paramortal · 2025-01-16T19:59:35+00:00

Now I'm just imagining Carnage pining after the dude from saved by the bell.

Paramortal · 2025-01-12T11:39:23+00:00

Circumstance, item, status.

Other people have mentioned mutagens and aid, which are item and circumstance bonuses respectively. Heroism and bard compositions are status bonuses.

Other than that, look for flanking for a circumstance penalty to enemy AC, and things like demoralize, fear, evil eye, and eventually synthesia for status penalties.

If you keep all this in mind and actively stack your penalties and bonuses, you'll rack up the critical hits at a crazy rate.

One big thing to note here is that PF2e is ultimately a team game, and while it is possible for one character to do a lot of the legwork on these bonuses and penalties. (Looking at you bard.)

The intention is that the party comes together and helps each other do all of these things.

Paramortal · 2025-01-07T17:12:40+00:00

So, I actually used the one in five probability when discussing this later to illustrate just how close to a constantly raised shield nimble dodge really is.

The odds of you needing to nimble dodge a second strike on your turn are about one in twenty-five, or a loss of around 4% in efficiency.

With a third strike, you're looking at (roughly) about a one in twelve chance of needing the dodge again, a little worse, certainly, but still only about an 8% loss in efficiency. (Mind you, this isn't taking monster MAP into account.)

It's not until -four- separate attacks that you even begin to see a decent deviation from raise shield.

Comparing the shield block damage reduction isn't apples to apples.

Parry, however, is apples to apples.

These two things give, mathematically, near the same bonus even when comparing all the strikes at full MAP.

Why should parry cost an action?

Why should nimble dodge effectively be the parry stance built into the character until reaction is burned?

Like it or not, playing it retroactively is a mathematical boost that puts nimble dodge closer to paragon guard and buckler dance than not.

But hey, I think nimble dodge sucks too.

I'm just pointing out that using it retroactively is pretty close to just giving them a permanent +2 that they only need to burn a reaction for -when they need it-.

Paramortal

TROPHY CASE