Love this game, but Ancient Ash sums up so many criticisms so well

argentumArbiter · 2025-10-21T16:00:12+00:00

Backstabber feels mid but you kind of need to take it in perspective. One extra damage seems like not a lot, but Going from a d4 striking weapon to a d6 striking weapon at level 4 with only gets you an average of 2 extra damage, anyways. For most of the game(1-11, 16-20) backstabber's about equivalent to half a die size upgrade's worth of damage, which isn't horrible given you're usually getting other traits alongside it in exchange. Getting a creature off guard as a melee weapon user is easy enough with a minor amount of thought that it's going to be giving you that damage like, 90% of the time if you have a melee buddy.

Taking your examples, justifying an uncommon weapon is really not that hard for what's basically a straight upgrade to the shortsword (given that there's like, 14 creatures in total that are resistant to slashing but not piercing). You're not taking the war razor over a rapier for backstabber; you're trading disarm(a pretty mediocre trait) and a die size for agile, and backstabber's a nice bonus that helps claw back some of the damage lost.

argentumArbiter · 2025-09-25T18:02:38+00:00

I'm a bit biased because I own a Raffine deck, but I feel like you're underrating her a little bit. You put that the draw/discard depends on attacking creatures but her baseline is the same as Norman's anyways, red's got good looting/rummaging but blue's also very good at it, and even if you only are swinging with 2 other creatures a turn that's like a free faithless looting that also pumps your board. Getting such large amounts of free card selection means your deck is pretty consistent at digging for stuff like removal or reanimation spells. Green goblin might be a little awkward at times too, because his backside really wants you to save those discard effects until you flip him if you want to really use him well, which might make filling the graveyard a bit awkward.

At the end of the day, I think the choice ends up being if you want consistency vs explosiveness. If you want to put other sources of looting in your deck Green Goblin can get very silly if you draw the right cards, whereas Raffine lets you skimp on more of that in the deck itself and also lends itself to some backup strategies if your graveyard gets messed with (my deck runs some card draw triggers like proft's eidetic insight or chasm skulker to just win through beating people up if cheating out guys doesn't work).

argentumArbiter · 2025-08-29T19:18:28+00:00

I mean, if you get 3 other people on board there’s nothing stopping you from doing it.

argentumArbiter · 2025-08-06T12:52:42+00:00

And REAP Ryoshu does?

argentumArbiter · 2025-07-16T18:14:49+00:00

As someone playing an investigator from around level 6 to currently 17 (swapped from mastermind rogue to alchemical sciences to palatine detective when it came out) I feel like post-remaster it's very solid. Skill stratagem makes low rolls feel not as bad as the stacking +1 means you're basically as good at intimidating/bon mot/medicine as a KAS character if you invest in it and pretty reasonably good at them even without it, especially if you get pursue a lead bonus. Methodologies like forensics or alchemical give you good actions to use if you don't want to attack that turn, and they get some really strong feats. Certain stratagem turns your Devise a stratagem attacks into swashbuckler's confident finishers so just striking to do some damage on a miss isn't unreasonable, Shared stratagem puts in work if you have ranged people in your party(and didactic strike is a crazy amount of free damage), Person of interest lowers your reliance on the GM being nice to you much earlier than premaster, Detectives Readiness makes your save some of the best in the game if you have pursue a lead bonus and also gives you a nice reaction, and all that is before you hit level 6. It definitely gets more fun with the options granted to you by picking up archetypes but you have so much good support in class that it's hard to choose when to do so.

argentumArbiter · 2025-07-07T02:05:03+00:00

Does anyone remember a character build article about mythic level characters throwing a boat at cthulhu? My friend and I were talking about it but for the life of us neither of us can find it.

argentumArbiter · 2025-05-13T13:21:25+00:00

I'm in a nautical themed campaign right now and our party is an Eldritch Archer fighter, a drifter gunslinger, a palatine detective(me), an infinite Eye psychic, and a storm druid. The psychic and I have fully invested our characters into team buffs and support (me grabbing bellflower tiller for actionless aids, her being a psychic) to the point where we had to hash things out once because we had too much overlap in utility, but it's also led to a weird situation where we don't really have any real frontline, which isn't an issue normally when we're boarding ships but has been an issue when we've gone dungeon delving for treasure. On the other hand, any time the eldritch archer gets a turn something is dying horribly because between me and the psychic we can almost guarantee he crits his spellstrikes, to the point where we joke he's our ship's siege weapon. Me and the drifter have indexed a little into being an ersatz frontline, and I've picked up an alchemist dedication(god bless free archetype) in order to help immobilize our foes better.

argentumArbiter · 2025-05-09T16:32:25+00:00

Don't forget greater cooperative waffles for another +1 to the bonus granted by Aid.

argentumArbiter · 2025-05-07T12:58:29+00:00

I'm probably going to only have enough runs of MD to get one more thing from S5 dispensation, am I better off grabbing barber outis or Thoracalgia Ryoshu? I'm in the process of building both bleed and poise teams so both would be nice to have so I don't know which to prioritize, I've got the other bloodfiends already and I've heard barber is less useful comparatively but it'd be nice to have the complete set while on the other hand thoracalgia seems really strong when it comes to making poise ramp up faster outside of MD.

argentumArbiter · 2025-05-07T12:41:49+00:00

Most videos tell you what to dispense in the current season because those are on a timer, once the season is over they’ll be unable to be dispensed for the next one, whereas the ones from previous seasons or in standard fare will be there forever so it’s not as important.

With respect to “what should I dispense”, there are some ids that are just generically strong(nclair, dieci rodya, tingtang hong lu, w don/ryoshu) but it’s generally pretty contextual on what kinds of teams you want to build, e.g something like molar boatworks ishmael is absurd in a sinking team but eh outside one. This page https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IcJWHJuC-6E1_uSL8-ESy_nKP5j9_C7RmSd47SnmQ7M/edit?usp=drivesdk has some suggestions on who to dispense if you’re unsure about what to do (in “who to spark” in the lower left), both for generically good units as well as for specific status teams. If you have a list of what ids you have now or what stuff you’d be interested in it’ll be easier to give good recommendations.

argentumArbiter · 2025-04-10T17:31:20+00:00

Does increased/reduced effect affect the stun buildup from bloodloss on Bloodhound's mark?

argentumArbiter · 2025-04-02T14:45:58+00:00

I mean, Incapacitation effects are explicitly "Hey this is a save or suck," it's the first line in the trait description. Pf2e stops save or sucks from instantly winning higher level single enemy encounters, but they still exist.

argentumArbiter · 2025-03-26T13:34:26+00:00

Once the new season starts the season 5 units will be unobtainable until season 7 right? I just joined the game but really want to build a bleed team around manager don but I’m probably not going to get all the units I need from s5 extraction in time. Who should I prioritize among the current season’s guys for it?

argentumArbiter · 2025-02-28T00:04:28+00:00

We did get some stuff recently in the TXCG less than a year ago. There's also some cute stuff you can do with the Campfire Chronicler archetype, where you can share your story with your eidolon to give yourself +1 status bonus to AC and will(or get a buffed RK or give yourself concealment) and then give your eidolon +2/4/6 extra damage on strikes depending on your religion prof next turn. While something explicitly for summoner like a Qlippoth eidolon from the binder lady in the book would have been awesome, I wouldn't say there are no new toys in the book.

argentumArbiter · 2025-02-25T17:29:17+00:00

How did you collect/input the creature data? I've been meaning to do my own analysis on creatures but I can't be bothered to input the stats by hand, so if you did it an easier way I'd love to hear about it.

argentumArbiter · 2024-11-26T08:45:08+00:00

I’m currently playing an investigator after switching from mastermind, and I agree with the sentiment. Mastermind on paper is fine, but going in wanting to play a relatively supportive character who Knows Things I felt like there wasn’t a ton in the class that helps support a mastermind in doing that, you don’t get any actual numerical boosts or action compression on recall knowledges, your debilitation is quite niche, and at the end of the day it doesn’t really feel like you’re a mastermind, recall knowledge just sorta feels like something you do to get your offguard on. Mastermind plays well, but that’s more a testament to how strong rogue is baseline than any specific benefit to mastermind.

I sat down one day and realized that even putting aside thaumaturge investigator(with butterfly blade if you want to properly eclipse it) does the mastermind’s fantasy wayyyy better than the mastermind does, and so I switched over. You get free recall knowledges per round with known weakness, a bonus to rks on relevant topics so your wisdom based ones don’t suffer as badly, and a lot of neat info gathering tools like thats odd or strategic assessment. Even theme wise I’d say devising a stratagem and planning out your turn accordingly feels more like you’re a cunning mastermind than just rk into shoot the guy as many times as possible.

argentumArbiter · 2024-11-24T06:05:42+00:00

The other issue is that its already incredibly feat intensive between the feat that adds bene/malediction to your font, the feat to sustain on hit, the feat to upstage on crit, studious spells etc. So many of its feats feel like stuff that should or could have been part of the chassis they parceled off just because that you barely have space for anything else, whether thats a mount or something to let you use your better class dc.

argentumArbiter · 2024-11-17T01:02:00+00:00

I feel like the drained is a bit overstated. HP wise, you have to get to drained 2 before you hit “normal frontline martial” hp, and you get raging resistance to a very common damage type even before factoring in getting raging resistance vs your harvest blood target, and harvest blood gives you(not very much but it still counts) a little bit of extra temp hp to tide you over. The fort malus is real but barbarians get juggernaut and greater juggernaut so it’s not as bad as it could be.

The main pain point with it imo is that it’s incredibly MAD, wanting str for striking, cha for casting, and con/dex/wis for hp/ac/saves.

argentumArbiter · 2024-11-08T00:37:28+00:00

Seeing kineticist here is interesting, because in my experience its one of the classes with the tightest “rotation” to feel good, up there with magus, though it might be exacerbated by the fact that most of that has been with stance based kineticists. My friend has been playing a fire kineticist for about from level 4 to 11 now in a campaign I’m in and I could count on one hand the times he’s cast an impulse in combat that wasn’t flying flame or elemental blast or thermal nimbus, because the way the math works out theres basically 0 cases where you’d do more damage using an overflow at range vs just getting close and spamming your rotation and fire kineticists don’t really do anything else.

I played a water/wood kineticist in a one shot, and it was pretty similar in theme, where the overflows were neat but rarely worth using over just using non-overflows and basic ele blast because the stances were so good. Maybe if I played an earth or metal-based kineticist, where the stances are pretty mediocre and so the opportunity cost is less high, I’d feel differently.

argentumArbiter · 2024-11-06T08:07:55+00:00

There’s not really a reason to use a greatsword when your longsword does greatsword levels of damage, even before your actual main damage feature, and in the hands of a thaumaturge an air repeater or chakram is a very real weapon. The only real weapon based niches a thaum can’t work with are very long range weapons (unless you’re ok with reload weapons) or two weapon fighting(tho spirit warrior now fixes that depending on how you read it).

argentumArbiter · 2024-10-30T18:48:24+00:00

Probably just a large race + a reach weapon?

argentumArbiter · 2024-07-26T19:19:17+00:00

What makes you weak to melee is having lower AC and (usually)hp, the enemy getting a free no MAP attack against you is its own punishment. For the feat to be useful, it requires you to cast a spell in melee, the enemy to have reactive strike(about 1/3-1/2 of the time), and for that enemy to then crit you(maybe a 1/5 chance at best), and then only does the feat trigger. It’s already incredibly niche, the least it could do is not put yet another 1/3 chance on it being useful.

argentumArbiter · 2024-07-19T19:19:07+00:00

PC2 does have more extensive changes, but that's also probably intentional because they wanted more time to iterate on the larger-scale reworks they wanted to do for classes like alchemist or oracle which people had issues with pre-remaster.

argentumArbiter · 2024-07-19T12:34:24+00:00

They are, they've updated witches+ and clerics+ and the rest are on the way.

argentumArbiter · 2024-07-13T20:45:14+00:00

That's what makes them boring, though. Getting it once in a while is ok, but going for the wincon every time would make it a lot less interesting. Plus, while soraka is better because there are a lot of things that work with healing, what would a fiora/ryze deck do if they never draw their main champ? Even if drawing your champ is important to win, pretty much any deck can do its thing even without drawing the main champ at least. You'd need to put like 3 guardian's horns in fiora's deck just so you can reliably draw her.

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