Aiuen, The elf-gate key seems pretty busted, its basically a save or die at that point, just place your sigil somewhere thats a 100% certain death to a creature and teleport them there.

Wait, people lamented getting rid of alignment? Alignment already sucked in D&D 3.

The very fact that that's so many complaints about casters shows they have a problem. If that problem is that they're underpowered, as asserted, or the problem is that they're too poorly written for many to be able to build them effectively (as you assert) it's still an issue with the classes. Castors were historically balanced with risk (d4 HP) vs reward (Lightning bolts that deal d6/level and bounce to hit targets (and party members if you're not careful) repeatedly. A lot of the risk has been deminished over the years (though most casters remain squishier than most martials) but opertunty / reward has taken over. Many players seem not to feel the that the opportunity cost is worth the reward, and many previously spellcasting exclusive things can be replicated far more consistently with feat chains (I have a Champion in my party that puts out more healing a day with Risky Surgery than the dedicated cleric). I honestly don't know is castors are underpowered, but I know they have a _problem_ because of how many people feel they are, and I always warn new players that this is a common feeling, and while they can do a lot of cool stuff as a caster, and they can be very flavorful, a lot of players _do_ feel let down by them in PF2e. Even with this warning, my party is 50% casters, and one player has has a long meeting with me between sessions trying to find a way they can be as effective as they want to be as a caster, and some changes did have to be made for their concept to work. They're still far from the most powerful party member, but they can kinda sontheir thing now.

They go all the way back to a game I designed in 1983. Get the etymology correct, sir. Love your channel, though.

Thank God bloodlines dont have useless unarmed attacks anymore! It never made sense why the squishy, 6 hp, no armor proficiency and bad attack bonus caster got unarmed attacks of all things...

Btw for the lifesense thing I think you're thinking about it wrong, I've always read it as the ability to detect undead as well because it's like thermal. Thermal vision sees heat, but it also can see cold spots, we don't call that cryo vision though. Just an extra little bit of thought on that comment you made about that ability. PS Life and Unlife. The undead aren't dead after all.

Looks fun🎉

"The map is not the territory." While I find the model covers basically any situation I can expect to find in combat, I appreciate the reminder that the grid is an imperfect translation of the battlefield. I have used rulers and straightedges for rapidly assessing these things, but have also made clear templates for areas of effect that the players can use to visualize. It can be easy to get caught up in interpreting the world in 5 foot squares and I am certainly guilty of inflexibility at times. Thanks for providing a well-reasoned alternative.

Martials have level masteries, sure. And I find 'em boring as all hell xD

Shield block can be used with a buckler which does not occupy your hand.

Im not from the us . Normally i agree with most things you say , and i appreciate you content on ttrpgs, But this video seems a bit too emotional , and rushed , and just kinda seems like a long personal rant . Next time i think you should let the script Cook a bit more in the oven . im just going to wait for the ttrpg videos in the corner.

I count my blessings that my players are NOTHING like the ones commenting on this story. I do not run "balanced" encounters in my game, and we have switched from 5e to AD&D 2E. They want to roleplay and be immersed and aren't interested in fake difficulty and forced storylines. Our most recent session where the party was one more bad dice roll away from a TPK was the most fun they've ever had. They failed their mission, lost a bunch of their treasure and have been majorly set back but our group chat has been buzzing all week about how much they cant wait to see what happened next after we return from the holidays. They're well aware my monsters arent fake and dont fudge die rolls. Death happens. But they play smart and its combat as war rather than sport.

I appreciate your videos and watched a bunch of them before trying PF2e. I'm playing in a Beginner Box game right now and really not finding it easy to learn at all. We are playing in Foundry VTT. It has dozens of options for actions and its difficult to learn and remember all of them. It's difficult to know what question to ask. It doesn't feel like it was made for real beginners. Plus with the automations I'm finding it harder to learn how the rules work. Do you have any suggestions? Should I try again in an in person game? Far more powerful characters in the party dominate every fight, to the point where I don't think I have much if any impact on the outcomes. I've tried a lot of beginner box type products for other games, including Starfinder, and found them much easier to get into. I wanted to try PF2e to see if it fixed the issues that I have with 5e but in practice I'm finding it harder to learn than 5e (which doesn't mean I 5e's flaws are less of a problem.)

"Wrestles with optimization" or "optimizes with wrestler"?

I know late, but i find it so WILD about what you are describing around 20 mins in, about the design not being transparent and wotc not sharing who designed what and what the goals and intentions were, becasue that is the EXACT OPPOSITE approach they do with Magic the Gathering In fact, the D&D branch seems to greatly ignore what tenets the MtG branch is following

You say this as if casters aren't resisted 90% of the time.

Another feat that was changed was Cobra Stance - originally it allowed the monk to do poison damage instead of physical (cool, but not exactly top tier); now the Cobra Strikes do Piercing Damage, are Venomous (a strike that connects does persistent poison damage) and Deadly D10. Basically, Cobra Strike went from "well, let's change the element" to "someone is going to die". Oh, and the stance boosts Fortitude saves.

🙃🙂 Speaking of the Wrestling Dedication being decent, I wonder if there are any other unarmed combat dedications... Like one for Boxing/Pugilism, etc. I gotta browse AoN more.

Around 18:20, pleas4 exolaine hie a healer's toolkit aotu-succeededs. I can not find anywhere that is stated.

I think PF2ER has achieved a pretty good balance. I just don't like Vancian magic for my wizards

Nice hahaha. Resident thaumaturge wrestler here. Just got whirling throw. Looking forward to seeing my gms face soon. Swingripper has deeply influenced my dive into wrestler. I love how he referred to you when he talked about the changes to running tackle haha. Also, thanks for shouting him out. Hilarious at the end of the clip

When the team based game has strategies that benefit the team 😈

Why is this conversation happening right now on Reddit again.

It is extremely difficult to optimize pf2e. It's one reason I'm not the biggest fan of it.

Meggan cam let's goooooo

Congratulations to the most ardent and enthusiastic advocate of PF2e Wrestling the world has ever seen 🎉

To use a Fourth Edition DND analogy, Wizards get more daily actions and Witches get more encounter actions. I think it’s a wash 9/10 times but they have different budgets.

:) Look its not my fault your bosses are so grabbable Same time next week?😊

I agree with the assessment that this feels like a new design direction, and I also see a lot of similarities with the Exemplar. In fact, I've already found myself confusing a few of the Exemplar's Ikons and their effects with some of the Runes!

Saw one of your videos and wasn't really happy about it. Then I looked for another one and I have stumbled on this one. To put it lightly, Im not gonna be sticking around here.

The Animist sounds interesting mechanically, but in terms of flavor, I’m having trouble distinguishing it from the Witch, Druid, and Cleric.

Your game group example of Maze is one good spell out of a ton of terrible ones - it's also a LEVEL 8 SPELL. I'll enjoy that when I get a level 15+ character... which I think I've had once in 12+ years of playing? Most spells on the list aren't worth having on your list or even the actions they take to cast them. I was fine as a wizard not doing the most damage - though I liked that I could build a character that way. I do not think current spellcasters are good at much of anything. I see a lot of +1 buffs and -1 debuffs. That isn't a power fantasy, that's a rounding error. Spells that used to target areas just target one guy - who can save and you've done nothing with your turn. It's all well and good to say, "The Fighter should be best at fighting..." but in many campaigns that are centered around combat, not contributing more than just very little with finite resources doesn't feel very good. If casters do all of those other things you describe, they aren't going to be good at dealing damage either. PF2e is a bad martial combat simulator. I'd rather play a miniatures game.

One thing it seems everyone else have overlooked is that, with a Shield Boss/Spikes, "Shield Duelists" are a very viable playstyle, especially with the Runesmith. I am surprised to see there isn't a "The Blade is My Pen" feat that enables Sword+Board builds to still trace runes, but it's an interesting restriction imo. I wouldn't be opposed to new class feats coming out that enable a two-weapon/weapon+shield playstyle to work on the Runesmith, but I also wouldn't be bothered if the class was forced to be free-hand, either. Both seem like interesting design directions for the class.

At 7:34 Offbeat Outlaw lists a set of damage numbers to illustrate the martial/caster divide. I know from my own experience (and a bevy of other forms of evidence) that the divide is real, I'm just curious if anyone knows exactly where they got those specific numbers. Is there a video they made or an article they are referencing? I would love to have access to it for the sake of sharing and citing.

Okay, I really like this class for flexibility (the flavor is great, too). It provides you with a nice set of tools to deal with combat in a variety of ways and some out of combat skills and abilities, too. I think two key factors in considering balance are 1) the very limited number of runes you can know (the class has a tool for every situation, but you can't have them all as a character so you can't assume you've a full Batman utility belt) and 2) your key attribute is Intelligence so you'll be a little behind on accuracy and most-likely multi-attribute dependent. This is something I like about Paizo's balancing in several of their classes: initially you think something is incredibly broken but upon further analysis realize the devil is in the details. Also, this might be an interesting class Archetype for one-handed weapon users--you have an option for the dangling third action. In a similar vein, splicing this onto an Investigator sounds sick. Devise a Strategem, then depending on the resultant roll use Engraving Strike (assuming you take it) to guarantee a traced rune or use conventional Trace a Rune if you don't have any good options for a skill-based action if your DaS roll is low.

I didn't mind the loss of the spell-school-based Wizard subclasses: I always thought that was a boring way to divide Wizards. I much prefer the new "magical curriculum" subclasses. I also agree that limiting such a classic character archetype as "the Necromancer" to just another Wizard subclass isn't as cool as making it a class of its own. The Necromancer sounds cool, and I do like that it's an occult-based class rather than an Arcane-Magic user. Necromancy screams "OCCULT!"

Another odd thing about RK rolls is that they have absolutely nothing to do with how famous the creature is. In fact, the most famous creatures tend to be the strongest ones... so are the ones that you don't know anything about?? How's that again??

Defending Hasbro 😂 cringe and wrong. Lick more boots, bug

The first time I cracked a PF2e book (around the OGL crisis), I immediately felt it was DD4e done right. Siloed classes give classes unique mechanics that might become broken if mixed and matched like 3e/5e D&D, but are reasonably balanced. However, the Pathfinder mechanics actually feel unique instead of mostly the same (4e Rangers vs Warlocks with prime shot and similar mark/curse abilities are a lot more samey than PF2e Fighters vs Rangers vs Rogues vs Swashbucklers all of which can be Dex-based melee warriors and feel really different). Character scaling also feels a lot nicer. You had to give up abilities to progress in 4e, which felt awkward, since the specific debuffs and other tools weren’t exactly replicated on higher level versions of your encounter and daily powers with more damage. PF also keeps a more traditional spell caster system with slots, which helps casters feel distinct, but between focus spells on Rangers, Champions, and Monks, as well as Kineticist/Exemplar/Runesmith action-based “casting,” the space for martial characters with spell-like effects is fairly solid. And while the reasonably well-defined Standard/Move/Minor 4e actions were better designed than the mess of 5e bonus actions, the 3 action system just expands the space, and fives a lot more opportunities for class design and tactical play.

We still play D&D 3.5/Pathfinder 1. For our group the best version with endless possibilities (especially prestige classes) and great adventures. D&D 4th was a desaster, made for baby players. We didn't have any urge to try 5th, when you are satisfied, stay with it

There are maybe too many classes. There just keeps being more and more.

Im not a fan of making traditional classes far less hyperspecific (or even not having a niche anymore like wizard) in order to make everything a class.

Sorry, Kineticist, What is the connection?

This is my second go coming up of playing PF2e. I tried it a few years ago as a Champion... and I just wasn't impressed. I felt like I wasn't doing anything. Then I GMed Kingmaker in PF2e and obviously that's a whole different side of the system (gming wasn't bad and the system made it easy.) Now I'm going back and playing again - this time picking up a caster, which I am infamous for... and as I build I have to say... I'm not impressed again. The whole system feels dumbed down. I understand they wanted to level the playing field and not cause the latter levels to break the game, but it seems like every mechanic and spell that existed has been nerfed into oblivion and made irrelevant. A system where the fighter class is considered the strongest is a broken, non-functioning system. This was always a basic class - if rolling attack rolls a lot and critting is optimal play, just wow. It's a bad battle simulator without the power fantasy. I hate the design decisions of the whole thing. Spells either seems to do less damage than a martial, add little plus ones to a martial on your team, substract little minus ones to the enemies, or minorly inconvenience a foe. Consider hideous laughter, highlighted here. Best case scenario, I disable one enemy for ONE ROUND? And then slightly weaken him for another? And I get to do that, what, two-three a day at level 3 or 4? This whole system is just a huge miss from the player side.

No Shadow Bloodline...

So is this the Gideon the Ninth class? 😅

This is absolute insanity and it really does tear the mask off of your political motivations overriding even common sense. One I am absolutely assured that you have no idea what a fascist is and just use that as a moniker against anyone who is your political opponent, or has a different opinion than you. Two I have witnessed more of these Democratic socialist / Marxist like yourself standing there saying that Javier Gerardo Milei president of Argentina is a fascist yet in the same breath defend political policies from the likes of Lenin and Stalin. I would like to say I'm surprised but at this day and age I am not how swiftly you globalist extremists will scream against political opponents and side with truly conniving and dastardly people or organizations because they convince you that they share some political worldview with you. All they have to do is wave a corporate rainbow flag and make a big media show of their equity initiatives and you swallow the bait hook line and sinker.

Excellent overview of this! I was looking for a concise discussion on the Runesmith. Great work!

The problem with setting up abilities is that combats tend to be short ("I -just- got my combo going, and all the enemies are dead already!"), and starting in a weird position or suboptimal arrangement can basically mean that ability can't get used effectively at all. I like me a good "lower the boom" combo, but one rogue with "Gang Up" can often be more effective then four maguses...