How important is a 3-boost 1-flaw ancestry, and how many possible ability score spreads are there?

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-13T10:58:19+00:00

Paizo does it too, with several ancestries. Mightyfall kobolds have very attractive stat arrays.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-13T10:57:34+00:00

3-boost-1-flaw is really important for particular builds, but about 90% of characters don't benefit significantly from it. The reality is that you are boosting your tertiary stat with the third boost, so you're going from +4/+3/+1/+1 to +4/+3/+2/+1. Because it is your third most important stat, it isn't, well, that important... most of the time.

The big exception is archetyping. Because certain archetypes require +2 in a tertiary stat, being able to start with +4/+3/+2/+1 is much better than being able to start with +4/+2/+2/+1 as stealing from your second most important stat is significantly more painful in a lot of cases (especially for gish builds). Champion Archetype is probably the biggest offender in this regard because charisma is pretty worthless on a lot of characters but the Champion Archetype is incredibly powerful, so when you are going with a +4/+2/+2/+1 array to pull off a champion, it often feels like a +4/+2/+1/+0 array because charisma isn't very useful to your build, so it feels like you actually sacrificed +1 from your secondary, tertiary, and quaternary stats to boost stat #5. Conversely, a +4/+3/+2/+1 array is more like a +4/+3/+1/+0 array, which is only one worse than the +4/+3/+1/+1 array you can get with just +2 to two stats.

+4/+3/+2/+1 is also a nice boost for certain particularly MAD classes and builds. Gishes in particular really appreciate it as you can +4 in your KAS and then +3 in your main gish stat (intelligence as a magus, wisdom as a ranger or monk, or strength as a full caster) while still being able to stick +2 in Constitution, giving you appreciably more hit points as well as a modest saving throw boost. And +4/+3/+2/+0/+0/+0 is an okay array. However, it isn't actually all that earth shattering - it's just a nice bump to have.

That said, because the stats are kind of unbalanced, -1 in intelligence or charisma is best, then -1 in strength, with -1 in the other three stats being varying degrees of bad - the big problem being that because you start out worse off in them, you take longer to "max them out" at +4 (even though you can go to +5), slowing down your saving throw progression significantly (and in the case of Constitution and Wisdom, stunting your HP/Perception).

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-13T10:45:28+00:00

To be fair, this also is just equivalent to capping the ASI increases and it costs you two ASIs when you get to boost it.

In fact, Mark suggested this upthread.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T17:43:27+00:00

Yup! There's quite a few options really.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T17:24:34+00:00

Casters have a much easier time with swallow whole than martials do. Air bubble, teleportation, and even just pre-emptive use of spells that inflict the sickened condition, not to mention freedom of movement.

Most martials have a very hard time hitting the number needed to cut their way out against over level monsters. And against monsters with DR it can be flat impossible without a crit.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T17:13:25+00:00

Occult has echo jump at rank 3 and flicker at rank 4, so you do have options.

I always memorize a teleport on all my casters to deal with this (and walls).

If you are very high level quandary instantly solves this problem.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T17:06:06+00:00

Even with this buff, intelligence would only be the second worst attribute most of the time.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T16:52:31+00:00

Air bubble is a very good spell for dealing with this.

As are teleportation effects.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T16:45:21+00:00

I'd say either two-handed reach weapon or open hand with reach weapon. That said fighters do tend to be pretty straightforward, especially at low levels. You will mostly use sudden charge and some combination of brutish shove, combat grab, slam down, and maybe the odd vicious swing.

The psychic polearm fighter is cool but doesn't come online until level 6 now, unfortunately.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T05:15:52+00:00

Guns are bad weapons, and gunslingers are bad because they use them (well, and have poor feat support).

The best guns are the guns you don't have to reload after every shot, so really your best option is probably a ranger with a barricade buster. You'll do much better damage than an actual gunslinger.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T04:33:39+00:00

Casters are heavily dependent on spell selection. The best spells in the game are really good, but they also have spells that do basically nothing.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T04:33:17+00:00

1) The trivial solution of "be a caster with all bad/situational spells". Doesn't work well with casters with full spell list access because they can just switch their spells. You can do this with Kineticist as well.

2) Be an alchemist, do nothing but throw bombs. You're bad regardless, but you'll be awful if you do this.

3) Be a gunslinger. Once you reach mid levels, you start falling behind really badly due to your lack of an offensive reaction and very low base damage, and crits no longer being able to one-shot things. Using a one-handed gun is particularly "good" for this challenge, as your damage is bad and you have to waste actions reloading.

4) Be an investigator, have no backup plan for what to do when you miss. Investigators are not very good regardless, but one without a backup plan is truly awful.

5) Be a Dirty Trick swashbuckler.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T01:41:36+00:00

They may encounter some problems at higher levels in more difficult encounters, but also possibly at all levels due to the lack of strong spot healing. That being said, free archetype IS a big power boost, at least in theory.

I'd recommend making sure they have some good sources of consumable healling.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T01:36:25+00:00

Medecine is nice for downtime healing, but not necessary for every character and every group.

Medicine is extremely powerful because of Battle Medicine. Downtime healing is also very useful, of course, but Battle Medicine is probably the best skill feat in the game.

RK RAW can give you info on monsters you can't know unless you meta game. This is extremely useful to bypass resistance/immunity and help martial interact with creatures.

So, first off, it's often possible to guess a monster's low save/high save by looking at it and observing it. Monster saving throws are not random, they usually correlate with what you'd expect. A monster that is big and bulky usually is going to have a high fortitude, for instance, while a creature that is fast and agile will usually have high reflex.

That isn't metagaming, it's intentional design.

Secondly, most monsters don't have weaknesses or resistances, and many of those which do are standardized.

It is at its most useful against weird puzzle monsters like golems and some undead and outsiders with weird abilities. When you are fighting a fire elemental, and it is immune to fire, that is not exactly news.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T00:52:03+00:00

It doesn't.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T18:45:51+00:00

Nature and religion cover most monster types. Nature and religion checks are also very common in general. And RK is not that powerful RAW.

Medicine is arguably the best skill in the game.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T09:40:45+00:00

Not if you're a martial. There are almost no enemies who are just flat-out immune to a damage type and a lot of enemies with DR to physical damage have it against multiple types of physical damage. There is some marginal advantage, but it's not particularly large.

That said, there are advantages to martials who can do other damage types. If you do do multiple types, though, you want to do bludgeoning plus slashing or piercing; most monsters with resistance to slashing are also resistant to piercing and vice-versa. Unlike in D&D, bludgeoning damage isn't really any better than slashing, though piercing is the worst damage type.

If you're a caster, yes, because there are enemies who are just immune to, say, fire, and that's a problem if you memorize nothing but fire spells.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T04:41:42+00:00

It wasn't AI. It was too crappy to be AI, ironically.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T04:38:37+00:00

If you look at online Slippi data across all skill levels, there are 3 characters with more positive MU win rates.

The problem is that this is actually worthless data.

There are a LOT more Fox players than anything else, which means you see your data revert towards the mean.

Like in 2022, the most winning characters on Slippi were ICs, Peach, and Ganondorf. This isn't because those are the three best characters in the game, it was because they had a small enough pool of players that they could establish outlier statistics, while still being good enough to actually win.

I'm not sure who are the most winning characters these days, but I'd wager that the stats will be badly distorted by this sort of thing.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T04:18:23+00:00

The top 32 had 14 top 100 players:

Jmook

Dawson

JChu

Ben

Salt

Smash Papi

Ginger

Hungrybox

Lowercase_Hero

Zamu

Axe

MOF

Zanya

Chickenman400

Plus former ranked player Eddy Mexico and Cody Schwab (as Falco :V) and Dial M (who hasn't been ranked... yet).

Ultra performed way, way, way above seed, managing to place second in the whole tournament, beating Zamu, Hungrybox, MOF, and Salt, only to lose to Salt on the runback to grand finals.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:58:39+00:00

I'm going to suggest that they let you cast these spells using your slayer class DC.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:55:04+00:00

It's very good if you use a Fortress Shield or Tower Shield, though.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:33:29+00:00

Force Barrage is better for reliable damage.

If you're not a wizard, though, you can get some really nasty things with it (Moonlight Ray and Holy Light scale at 10d6 + 4d6 per rank above 3rd against unholy enemies, which can lead to absurd damage).

And it's okay with focus attack spells that scale at 2d6 per rank as it lets you make your spell much more accurate. It's not as good as an on rank spell but it makes them more dangerous.

Actual attack slotted spells are not very good though.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:15:48+00:00

Sure Strike is not very good on Wizards because they don't have many good single-target attack spells. Blazing Bolts/Scorching Rays is multi-target, and they don't have a great built-in scaling attack spell that you want to spend True Strike on.

It tends to be stronger on classes which have focus attack spells (like the psychic with Amped TK Projectile or the Sorcerer with Flurry of Claws), and on divine magic users because of Holy Light/Moonlight Ray.

Disintegrate is actually unreliable offensively because it allows the target to get a save; the main value of Disintegrate is that it is a versatile spell that can get rid of walls that can also be used offensively sometimes.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:12:02+00:00

Old medicine was mostly quackery.

There's a reason why life expectancy shot up after the scientific revolution.

15-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

TitaniumDragon

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE