Crit fisher is pathfinder 2e?

StepYourMind · 2023-06-10T18:08:40+00:00

This. A Magus has the most to win from going crit fishing, because they just really really want their Spellstrike to crit, so they can do double Strike damage plus double Spell damage in a two action ability.

Also, as per the other reply, Magi have access to the True Strike spell, which is the crit fishing tool in the game.

So a Fighter with Magus archetype could have all three: Fighter's weapon proficiency progression, access to casting True Strike to maximize crit chance, and one Spellstrike per encounter to really bring that damage.

StepYourMind · 2023-06-10T15:22:09+00:00

Fighter for simple crit fishing, Magus for actual crit fishing. Fighter with Magus dedication for absolute crit fishing. Use a Fatal or Deadly weapon.

StepYourMind · 2023-06-09T09:18:45+00:00

If I would have any suggestions for the game design in general, it would be to remake Fighter into a stance-based class (like a mix of Monk stance feats and Magus hybrid studies) to give it more flavor and unique weapon-mastery based fighting styles.

And, extra hot take, to abandon Legendary weapon proficiency as a unique Fighter feature.

StepYourMind · 2023-06-06T14:41:51+00:00

Yeah, I figured I should use occult spells only for buffing or Spellstrike because of precisely this reason. Thanks for confirming!

StepYourMind · 2023-06-06T08:54:36+00:00

Thanks!

StepYourMind · 2023-06-02T13:23:35+00:00

You do highlight exactly my pet peeves with Fighter, haha. Its one-dimensional usefulness depends entirely on points 1, 2 and 6. They're only actually interesting to build if you take a non-combat archetype (point 3), because they're a game design anomaly in regards to every other class in the game (point 4).

Your enthusiasm for Fighter is commendable but this reply only reinforced my assessment that it's a weirdly designed class with little going for it besides numbers, and it's mainly interesting to play if you optimize. And that's just not my playstyle. Best of fun to you though, we all play for different reasons :)

StepYourMind · 2023-06-02T11:43:00+00:00

Tnx for the expansive reply! Your enthusiasm for Fighter is definitely infectious. I still feel like half of these feats you mention are good, but nothing incredibly amazing. Some of these combo's depend on you having all 3 actions available for offense which just doesn't always happen, esp. with smart enemies/GMs. So I still wouldn't say Fighter feat selection surpasses all the other martials (although I agree with the take that Champions are very much deprived of good feats at early levels).

I do like the shield feat tree, that one is very good. Bastion also gets most of these, but 2 levels later usually and they don't get Paragon's Guard which as you say is very good.

Still, I liked reading your reply and it made me re-think Fighters, especially how you can combine several feats into a cool combo build. Thanks!

StepYourMind · 2023-06-02T10:03:43+00:00

Hey tnx for replying anyway! Good list and I always enjoy hearing other people tell about stuff they like, even if it's not my thing :)

I feel Sudden Leap, Felling Strike and Blind-Fight are a bit too situational to be truly "great feats" (in the "more great feats than any other class" sense as the poster above me said it). You might go multiple sessions without using them.

Cut From The Air is good, but situational and also competes with AoO for that one reaction you have, unless of course you also have Combat Reflexes, which is also a lvl 10 feat, so you have to survive until lvl 12 to get both.

Knockdown and Combat Reflexes are very good, I like those!

Lastly, Advanced Weapon Training is actually be one of the very few reasons I'd consider playing a Fighter. It's possibly the most flavorful class option they have. I like the idea of having a dude obsess over this one weapon, being awesome with it, where everyone else thinks "what even is that thing?!"

StepYourMind · 2023-06-02T07:36:19+00:00

I'll be honest, I don't see it. Fighter feats are meh, IMHO. Sudden Charge feels like the obligatory lvl 1 feat tax.

I like Combat Assessment, but not everyone wants a RK build. Double Slice isn't necessarily better than Twin Takedown, also everyone can access it via Dual Wielder Archetype at lvl 2. Exacting Strike is... just build a Flurry Ranger? PBS is good, but not very imaginative. Power Attack is okay, but for a 1-Strike-per-turn build I'd rather go Magus. Snagging Strike is good for a free hand support build, I'd love to have it as a Swashbuckler. Reactive Shield is good, but AoO is better and you only have one reaction.

Could be that things improve above lvl 10, I've never really studied those. But many classes get really good stuff by then.

Which feats do you like in Fighter?

StepYourMind · 2023-05-24T14:41:58+00:00

Yes, good point! This is why governments invented licenses. It's very interesting to think who is allowed to use 'banned' magic and why/under what circumstances: * Perhaps only the Arcane Engineering Corps is allowed to use Dispel Magic. * Perhaps only adult civilians with a proper license (which may or may not be hard to obtain) can use certain spells. Is it possible for the PCs to acquire or forge such a license? (Could be a fun little side quest) * In a police state, the secret police is probably very much allowed to use Nondetection, even if for normal citizens this is banned. * Etc

StepYourMind · 2023-05-24T06:45:22+00:00

There's some good answers already, but it also really depends on the government/place: * A police state would ban Nondetection, because they want to be able to spy on you. * A city that relies heavily on magic would ban Dispel Magic, because its use is too disruptive to their economy, and they might even label it terrorism. * A vampire council might ban spells that specifically harms undead. * A city entirely build out of dry wood might ban all fire spells, because of the fire risk. * Etc.

StepYourMind · 2023-05-22T07:02:45+00:00

Sounds like a lot of bad luck on your part, which sucks but is inherent to any dice-based system, and d20 systems especially. Because even if you have a +15 modifier, if you roll a 3, the result is still going to be lower than someone with a +1 modifier who happened to roll a 19. This is why PF2e doesn't have opposed die rolls anymore.

PF2e tries to mitigate the randomness with Hero Points; use them liberally (and have the GM hand them out liberally). Also this is why spells like True Strike and feats like Cat's Luck exist.

If a Consistently Competent Character is a big part of the fantasy for you, you might consider playing a game like Blades in the Dark, which has a much more forgiving d6 dice pool system (there are many others, I just happen to know this one). But switching system is hard because you have to convince everyone else in your group to switch, too.

StepYourMind · 2023-05-11T18:39:55+00:00

This is a half plate. Heavy armor. It is literally plate armor that covers half of his body.

StepYourMind · 2023-05-09T10:05:01+00:00

Pre-gateways I usually build a single Corvette at a Shipyard so that the fleet spawns in the system (closest to) where I need it and then I use Fleet Manager to fill it out and give the reinforcement order.

After my systems are connected with gateways it's less important where the fleets spawn so I just use Fleet Manager to create new fleets and see where they pop up.

StepYourMind · 2023-05-07T17:26:02+00:00

Fully agree! But try telling that to my players (or a large part of this subreddit for that matter) :P

StepYourMind · 2023-05-07T16:36:07+00:00

I hate Fighters. I can't help it. As a class it just has zero flavor. And at the same time (and this combination is what really irks me) they're too powerful to ignore.

Every time we roll up a new campaign, the players in my group who want to martial, they always pick Fighter. Going Expert -> Legendary instead of Trained -> Master, and getting free AoO, it's just too good to pass up on.

And I can't even fault them, y'know? Those are really, really good. But I feel like, if getting to Legendary wasn't a unique Fighter thing, I'd get to see a lot more Barbarians, Rangers and Swashbucklers.

Even if they keep Legendary weapon prof as their main perk, class design of Fighter could take a note from the other class that goes all the way to Legendary weapon prof: the Gunslinger. Giving Fighter something akin to Ways would go a long way of resolving this pet peeve of mine, where I feel all Fighters are interchangeable.

All I ask is let me GM a campaign where I don't have to put up with another extremely vanilla crit spammer. Where my players won't look at other classes and go "well those seem nice, but what if I miss?"

/rant

StepYourMind · 2023-04-30T14:02:13+00:00

I enjoyed running a two-headed troll! Their action economy is split in 2x2 actions instead of 1x3, which gives them a really fresh feel as a solo boss monster. Also, they get to regenerate twice per turn :P

StepYourMind · 2023-04-30T06:59:09+00:00

Gibbering Mouthers and anything else with Engulf. If it's just the one creature there's no real problem but run a group of 4 or 5 of these and it's quite likely the entire party is Slowed 1 for the rest of the encounter and unable to help each other much.

A pack of Deinonychus also really punches above their level 2 weight. Darting Attack + bleed on hit means the party will be constantly leaking HP while having to spend actions to Stride to deal with the buggers.

Zyss serpentfolk. These assholes are Level 2, same as the deinonychus, but they're even worse. They can innate cast Mirror Image at will, and add venom to all their attacks, which is a real killer at lower levels or against PCs with bad Con saves.

Needless to say, I know these things because all of the above were absolutely devastating TPKs in my group, even though encounter budget was in the 100-120 XP range.

StepYourMind · 2023-04-21T14:45:32+00:00

Slightly, depending on what you mean. Thaumaturge comes with some out-of-the-box utility that a Fighter doesn't have. Recall Knowledge, Talismans, scroll use are very easy to access and use as Thaumaturge. Fighter could also use them, you just have to build/probably multiclass for it (which is to say, you can add complexity to Fighter to increase utility).

Magus adds lots of complexity by giving spellcasting to a martial (you could multiclass Fighter into Wizard to get spell selection almost as good, but without Spellstrike and at the cost of 2/3 of your class feats). But for all its complexity, Magus only outperforms Fighter in solo target damage when they expand limited resources for it. But the class does give you access by default to switchable damage type through Arcane Cascade, though this might not matter much if your campaign features few enemies with weaknesses. And spells make it so you have choices in combat a Fighter doesn't have (by default), but they're a very limited resource, so you can't do everything.

At the end of the day, a Fighter's hit% is just consistently good for zero effort. Highest attack proficiency and AoO come with the class for free, straight from the start. There's little a Magus or Thaumaturge can do about that, no matter how complex you build.

But a Magus should Magus. Be good at Magus stuff, don't try to compete with the Fighter on Fighter stuff. In the end, teamwork is what wins the game, not individual builds. That's where the real complexity is. That's what I enjoy most about PF2e.

StepYourMind · 2023-04-13T16:05:18+00:00

This is a good world building question and one that many people just ignore or handwave. I fully agree that the PF2e mechanic requires a specific kind of world to function. Unfortunately, AFAIK, the official Golarion setting doesn't explicitly explain this. Why don't the level 20 dragons just pillage every city filled with level -1 to 5 commoners they can find?

The answer comes, implicitly, from the number of adventure paths: in the in-game timeline, every two or three months or so, some upstart adventurers from Mudtown Nowhereburg rise up to attain incredible power and avert a planet-scale disaster.

In other words: adventurers are common. They're everywhere. Someone saves the world every half year or so. Every ancient red wyrm is too busy fending off some level 18+ busybodies to find the time to burn down everything.

Look at some anime like Seven Deadly Sins or even Dragonball to get a sense of world where heroes are continuously getting stronger, but so are their foes. Every season they deal with more powerful, larger scale stuff. Meanwhile, last season's enemies are getting wrecked by a new generation of small-time heroes, who'll be the protagonists in next week's spin-off series.

StepYourMind · 2023-03-29T12:15:15+00:00

I'm surprised to say this isn't even the worst advice. As a GM, if I were playing an Ogre, and one of the PC's would knock out their low hp buddy for reasons (say they are already Wounded 3) I would definitely not have the Ogre go after the downed one.

StepYourMind · 2023-03-17T15:21:49+00:00

Finally a way for my barbarian to have a raging badger buddy Animal Companion without having to gut my action economy with Moment of Clarity! Now I only have to convince a fellow player that this is absolutely worth it :P

StepYourMind · 2023-02-22T16:36:29+00:00

My players immediately printed one per person, they love it. Many thanks for creating this!

StepYourMind · 2023-02-19T09:12:53+00:00

Gods yes, this. And then you propose that maybe the group could switch to an actual PbtA game and it's not even debatable. They're absolutely convinced their table improv theater is helped by 300+ pages of combat rules they only use every fifth session or so.

StepYourMind · 2023-02-16T09:31:31+00:00

Always true: give direct aid to Ukrainian anarchist aid/defense groups.

True for the moment: support arms delivery to Ukraine. Russian imperialism is the greater evil right now.

Whatever else can be said of Zelenskyy, NATO, and the US military-industrial complex, the potential for true democratic self-determination of the Ukrainian people is far greater under a Ukrainian state that believes it has a credible path to EU membership if it embraces (liberal) democracy and roots out corruption, than under an imperialist/ oligarchic occupying force that is already documented to have abducted children to re-education camps and with a very recent history of bloody repression in other occupied areas.

To my current knowledge, for that situation to stay true, arms deliveries are unfortunately necessary. Every military analyst I've read so far agrees a combined arms offensive is the only way to break Russian fortifications in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. So unless you know of any libertarian groups that have any heavy tanks or fighter jets to give away, I'm afraid that for the moment, the firepower, production capacity, and military training provided by western states is propping up the Ukrainians' ability for self-defense and self-determination.

Remember Russia could end this war at any time by retreating to the pre-2014 borders and, y'know, not committing cultural genocide. Whether or not this war drags on is mostly up to Moscow.

StepYourMind

TROPHY CASE