I would definitely be down for trying some of your PF2 stuff as well, Cort.
Well @Ryuken will think about running Starfinder after one of my many games I am running/playing ends and I have some more time to do it. Right now I play Pathfinder with you guys on Thursday, I am running a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign on Friday, I play in a Tombs of Annihilation campaign on Sunday morning and a Curse of Strahd campaign on Monday evening. Once one of those games ends and I can confirm the availability of people for a Starfinder game I will start the Dead Suns campaign for Starfinder. I am about to pick up part three for Dead Suns and will then have plenty to start with.
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Slightly off topic, but Foundry VTT is looking pretty sweet. Anyone checked it out yet?
EDIT: Actually, never mind. It looks like the PF2e ruleset isnāt fully implemented yet. āTis a pity.
Iām seriously considering giving Foundry a try. Itās got a very active community of people working on it and modding for it, including the PF2e rules. It has LoS, lighting, and even doors that can be open or closed. The modding API is one critical part I need to look into first.
And, for perusal and commenting by anyone interested, hereās my houserules/clarifications doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cf94TuytX73rQtK3hMSCZ8ivxrieuoRiDlkeoym6QF8/edit?usp=sharing You can highlight anything to get an icon to comment on it.
When I get around to restarting my campaign, Iāll be taking votes on which of the houserules to use and whether to use the caster changes. Hopefully Iāll have the Wizard rework ready by then, too.
I like the upgraded caster proficiency scaling so that they are on par with the martials.
My only concern with this list of house rules is the interplay between Intelligence, Recall Knowledge and Battle Assessment and how that affects the Rogue class in terms of being a meaningful addition to an adventuring party.
I feel like the party roles that a rogue could play break down along the lines of: Striker, Face, Utility, and Scout.
IIRC, the rogue is the weakest martial in terms of damage scaling, especially at higher levels and they certainly canāt compete against a Bard as a party face and I would also argue even the Sorcerer is a better face. To some extent the wizard also competes as a face with their higher number of languages and enchantment magics.
That leaves the utility and scout roles as potential places for them to shine. The wizard already brings a significant amount of utility from their arcane spell list and allowing intelligence to provide more skills boosts is going to increase that even further. Moreover, the CRB skill list already over indexes on intelligence so the wizard isnāt at a real disadvantage in any of those skills which are all quite useful. So with these changes the rogue is going to lose any edge in utility it might have to the wizard.
So this leaves the scout role as a place for the rogue to shine. Wizards already have some significant advantages with invisibility, fly, and their illusion magics. Recall knowledge is going to be a very powerful addition to their scouting ability in combat with these changes and is certainly more powerful than the CRB version of Battle Assessment. Battle Assessment gets an additional question/fact in these proposed house rules but it still has to be used in combat while Recall Knowledge can potentially be used out of combat to prepare an ambush.
I know RPGs are meant to be cooperative games and Iām sort of looking at this from a competitive view point but I also think its natural for a player to want their character to bring something distinctively useful to the table. These are really well thought out and interesting house rules even if Iām a bit hesitant with a couple of them.
PS:
Iām not bitter about the time honored tradition in D&D of nerfing rogues both with the game designerās pen and GM fiat at the table.
PPS:
Iām also not bitter about all those times Shine listened to a door in Citadel Alterien and heardā¦
absolutely nothing.
I hear you on concerns for the Rogue. Just note that Iāve played about a Rogue (starting with a lv11-12 one and more recently with one 1-4) about as much as any other class, so the following is written with that experience in mind. Not saying Iām unarguably right, just that the impacts on Rogues, and other classes, are in mind when I consider these things.
On Intelligence:
The problem is that Intelligence is the dump stat of choice in the system right now and for good reason. Itās just a no-brainer (pun intended) choice because Intelligence does nothing of value outside of features of only 2 classes and boosting a handful of non-essential skills. Note that I donāt consider the extra Trained-only skills to be worth anything significant since they are quickly and thoroughly devalued by Expert being available at 2nd level and Master at 7th and the jumps in target DCs that accompany such availability (more on an idea that spawned in a coming post).
Iām not sure exactly what you mean by āthe CRB skill list already over indexes on intelligenceā, so the following may be completely irrelevant. If you mean āMore skills are based on INT than any other ability scoreā, thatās mostly true. However, youāve got 4 skills (and treating Lore as a full skill might be too generous) that are all about just knowing things and are even interchangeable in some cases. None of them open up additional courses of action outside of the rare times a scenario gates actions behind knowledge checks. And Crafting, even with my changes, does little beyond increasing the party wealth somewhat. None of the INT skills let you do anything you could not otherwise do.
Meanwhile, Wisdom gets 4 skills, or 5 if you count Perception as essentially a skill. Almost the same number of affected skills, but Medicine and Survival are active skills that allow new courses of action, and Perception is rolled more often than any skill in the game even if it wasnāt also Initiative for most PCs. Wisdom is also a casting score, and it even governs an important save.
DEX and STR govern fewer skills, but those skills are all action skills, and both stats can apply to attack rolls, damage, and AC. CON doesnāt need any skills since HP and Fort saves are both vital to not dump. All of the CHA skills actually do things (though Performance is definitely very niche for non-Bards), and they can even emulate the knowledge-gathering of the INT skills by getting info from other people. Intelligence is just plain less useful than all other ability scores.
My goal is to give players a reason to at least consider raising INT without being a Wizard or Alchemist. The standard arrangement of boosts right now is whatever-your-class-keys-off plus CON plus WIS plus DEX-if-not-wearing-heavy-armor. If you donāt need the DEX as that last score (because of armor cap or itās already your key score), the choice is usually CHA or INT. So INT really needs some kind of boost, and I couldnāt think of anything that made a lot of sense aside from going back to Pathfinderās roots of āmore INT = more skillsā.
Keep in mind the extra skill increases from Intelligence can only be used on INT-based skills. Also note that even a Wizard/Alchemist cannot get more than a single extra skill increase in their first 9 levels. Perhaps most importantly, a sneaky, DEX-focused Rogue (or the possibly-upcoming INT-based one) is actually in a good position to invest in INT and double down on being the supreme skill monkey. And if, overall, the number of extra increases feels like too much, the underlying formula has a super-simple adjustment knob.
I think you really underestimate how destructive Rogues can be in combat. They do take some time to get up to speed (lvs 1-5 are kinda painful for them, though 6 is where most classes actually start coming together), require more assistance than the other martials, and will never quite get to Barbarian levels of ass-kicking, but a damage-focused build (which can also be skill-focused thanks to the Rogue design) can dish out crazy damage. My lv11-12 Rogue build was only moderately damage-focused and a Sneak Attack from him averaged 28 damage but could have been as high as 36 average. Gang Up meant he had an almost perpetual -2 to all enemy ACs and constant Sneak Attacks. At the same time, he went all-in on sneakery and still had space for full Bard archetype casting progression to snag illusions. He consistently out-damaged the Spirit Totem Barbarian in the party and wasnāt any less durable (though thatās in part due to the Barbarian having only 12 CON for some reason, being able to Create a Diversion and ninja vanish helps).
As for other roles, the Rogue canāt Face quite as hard as a Bard can (though thanks to the game math, social spells tend to be really risky), but they can almost match a Bard at social skills (or actually match them if you pick the CHA Racket) while also being peerless sneaks with powerful melee ability. And steal some Bard spellcasting for the low-level illusions while theyāre at it. But again, most of this stuff takes a while to come online.
As for scouting/sneaking, spells in PF2e canāt really replace a dedicated scout character like they could previously. Illusory Disguise doesnāt remove the need for Deception, Invisibility for actual sneaking is meaningless without Stealth (and is pointless in Encounter mode without a Rogue in particular; more in a moment), Silence is too short duration to help in most cases, and even the 8th-level spell Disappearance can be blown by Seeking enemies if you donāt have a good Stealth DC. Clairvoyance, Prying Eye, and Scrying all have potent uses, but each has its own limitations and uses, but they all have an interesting flaw (beyond spell slot drain): Good luck using them regularly if you donāt have natural darkvision, or at all if you donāt even have natural low-light vision.
Meanwhile, Rogues have a handful of class feats that are quite powerful for stealth, to the point that two in particular are almost mandatory if you like sneaking around (and cannot be replicated through magic): Sneak Savant at 10th level turns Failures on a Stealth check to Sneak into Successes, and Blank Slate at 16th makes you 100% immune to all forms of magical detection short of Nethys himself scrying you (which is probably a typo, but even the likely correct version still requires a lv20+ creature or 10th-level spell to spot you). You simply cannot sneak in Encounter mode with any expectation of success without Sneak Savant, and Blank Slate comes around right as creatures with the nastier magical senses are becoming really common.
I actually think Sneak Savant should be a lower level feat, made a class skill feat (there are a handful of feats that require a particular class or archetype but you take them with a skill feat slot instead of a class feat one), and maybe changed to scale up in power as you level instead of just being such a titanic change to in-combat sneaking. Iām good with other classes needing to go Rogue Archetype to pick it up.
For utility, nothing can really replace Thievery, and Rogues get both the best Perception proficiency and the single best feat ever for anyone on trap duty. The Rogueās biggest contribution to utility aside from that is usually the fact that they can cover twice as many skills as the normal PC. Weāve talked at length already of my opinion of utility casting, so I wonāt belabor that point other than to say I donāt think most casters are going to offer substantially more utility options than a typical Rogue. Different options, sure.
I actually think what you feel about Rogues being lackluster is likely caused by the issue I alluded to earlier and will put in its own post once I muddle through my own thinking about it. The short version is that DCs of all types have an issue with their design, and Rogues, as skill monkeys, are going to be running into that issue constantly with everything they try to do outside of just stabbing someone.
On Battle Assessment:
Currently, Recall Knowledge is almost useless for combat purposes unless the GM ignores the RAW guidance on what information should be provided. You get only a single, well-known trait, with examples like a Troll having regeneration that is stopped by fire. Even setting aside the maaaaasive table variation the rules produce (stories available upon request), Recall Knowledge rarely provides enough value to justify spending the actions (and risking failure).
My changes there are intended to 1) provide better guidance on how to use RK and BA, 2) define RK as a viable means of learning useful information, and 3) ensure BA is still more powerful in a narrower field per its description. The main part of 3 is only usable against things you can see clearly and only for stats and attacks (not things like magical abilities), but it provides not only more pieces of information but more precise information. The Wizard using RK might learn that the enemy has Reflex as its weakest save and a claw attack with moderate accuracy, moderate damage, and mild additional poison. The Rogue using BA would learn that the enemy has a Reflex save of +14, and a claw attack that is +18 and does 2d6+6 slashing and 1d8 poison damage, and then still have another question to ask about its AC or another attack or something. BA also has an inherent bonus of pitting Perception and only Perception (which Rogues can be really good at) against one of two DCs that many creatures are garbage at, instead of one of 4 different skills against a level-based DC that will always be right in the middle.
RK absolutely needs a boost, but BA was completely boxing it into pointlessness by RAW. My intent is that they end up doing largely overlapping jobs while also each having some advantages over the other to distinguish them. In effect, BA is a low-cost, Rogue-only alternative to RK that is more potent but also more narrow. I think they should be pretty good as written, but I obviously would love to give them some playtesting.
So, the much-teased ālater postā. Right, letās get down to it: I think DCs are broken. Or maybe it makes more sense to say I think player bonuses are gimped. Now to explain.
This is going to be roughly 100% opinion, so Iām expecting disagreement, but hereās what Iām thinking. Games like Pathfinder are about a number of things like role-playing, exploring a new world, pursuit of tactical victory, and way too many others for me to list. One of the biggies, though, is the Power Fantasy. I use that phrase to encapsulate that feeling of improvement as you level and see your abilities increase, the feeling of being a competent adventurer with honed skills as your character enters the mid levels, the sense of just plain being better at your chosen specialties than other PCs/NPCs/opponents, feeling heroically capable, and that simple sense that gaining levels = gaining power. Probably a lot of other things go into that, but hopefully that gives you an idea of what Iām talking about.
And I think the game math ends up undercutting it currently. If you go back and watch some discussions with Jason Bulmahn, Paizoās Lead Designer, thereās one where he explains that the whole game math is based around PC success chances always hovering around 55% for a character built to do that thing. This is borne out in analysis of the game math of a character using its best proficiency and best ability score against a level-based DC consistently resulting in a 55% success chance, give or take 5%. Likewise, a martial attacking the average enemy AC at every level is usually 55% success chance, sometimes ticking up to 60% and even 65% a couple times. We wonāt talk about caster hit chances here, but targeting a random save also averages about 55% success for them.
55% success means 45% failure. Does that scream ācompetenceā to anyone? On your best day, at your best task, you succeed slightly more often than you fail, and thatās supposed to be a hero? To me, the whole Power Fantasy falls apart because of this. It doesnāt matter that you are super-humanly strong/quick/smart, because the DCs you face are explicitly tuned so that you fail about as often as the village idiot trying to draw water from the well and forgetting half the time to hold the rope. And you never actually get any better at anything. The best you can ever do is hold steady and hope to gain other advantages that make up for the lack of basic progress.
The problem isnāt necessarily that the DCs use 55% as the starting point. Itās that they strive to maintain that 55% in spite of every āimprovementā you gain. Becoming a Master of a skill doesnāt actually make you any better at it; you just donāt become worse. By the same token, failing to upgrade a skill as soon as you can means that, in practice, you actually do become worse at it because you fall behind the DC increase. As a result, thereās never much feeling of actual growth. Even a lot of spells do this as you see the damage increases fail to ever make gains against rising enemy HP totals, and Iāve found myself seeking spells primarily for the ones offering new/unique effects (and finding pretty few at most levels).
I donāt think the 55% is a bad baseline or starting point, but Iām thinking that character design choices should make a bigger impact than they do at the moment. Iāve been thinking about what sorts of things I could try to shift things just enough to restore the Power Fantasy without going too far and just breaking everything. It also shouldnāt be anything too complicated to implement. And if it could spread PC performance out just a bit, I think that would also be good.
What Iām thinking at the moment is simply to change the proficiency bonus from +2 per rank to +3. Trained would be level +3, Expert level +6, Master level +9, and Legendary level +12. It would be a barely-noticeable boost initially that gradually grows to a significant but not overwhelming difference (a 20% difference at the most). In many cases, classes canāt even get Legendary proficiency in core elements such as attack rolls and armor, making the ones that do a little more special.
Iām curious what everyone thinks and if there are any serious flaws Iām overlooking. I think the difference will be most noticeable at the extremes: Fighters will enjoy landing hits with impressive consistency, and Champions will be able to shrug off many more blows from weaker enemies and almost completely negate the crit advantage bosses normally have on them, for example. The biggest potential issue I see at the moment is Fighters landing a lot more crits and maybe even getting >5% crit chances against bosses. Buuut is that really a problem? HPs get pretty inflated as levels go up, and a GM can always toss in an extra enemy or two if itās needed.
Anyway, Iām seriously considering a trial run of this, maybe running several sessions with it in effect in a month or two. I would want to run it without most of my other potential houserules to make sure I get a good sense of its effects.
EDIT: Itās like I get paid by the word or somethingā¦
I havenāt given a lot of thought to this so my math may be wrong, but I would expect based on the current rules that fighters will be hitting approximately 65% of the time (not considering MAP) and the other martials will be following at around 55%. This feels about right to me, although I will say as a player itās always super disappointing to wait 20 minutes or however long it takes for your turn to come around only to wiff.
I just remember in D&D 3.5 (never played PF1) that we had the opposite problem. At high levels both players and monsters would almost 95% of the time hit. You practically had to roll a nat 1 to miss. Which kind of made AC obsolete. So PF2 has kind of gone the route that most MMOs seem to take which is, yeah, the numbers are bigger, and the mob graphics are scarier looking, and the player avatars look more god-like but in reality nothingās really changed since level 1. That doesnāt feel like a problem to me. Personally, I feel like the point of progression whether it be leveling up or getting new gear is the dopamine rush. Once that wears off players are looking for the next big anyway.
Yep, thatās correct on average. However, that is the average based on a few things that are important to consider. First, itās a best-case assumption that you always use the weapon with your best proficiency and always pick up the next Potency rune as soon as it becomes available. Second, this is fighting an on-level enemy. Against a PL+1 enemy, that 55% for most martials becomes either a 50% or 45% depending on the level. Against a PL+2, itās 40%. PL+3 is 35% or 30%, and PL+4 is 25%. Third, this is using the average AC, pulled down by casters, Oozes (which seem to universally have incredibly low ACs), and such. A quick scan suggests around 20-25% of creatures at most levels have ACs above the average, with variance typically in the range of +/- 3.
So consider the combination of how often you fight higher-level enemies and how many of them are likely to be above average in AC. Add in the same perception problem that casters suffer from, that low-threat enemies and encounters make less of an impact on our perceptions and therefore matter less. In the encounters we actually care about, that 55/65% for martials/fighters is probably more like 40/50% in practice. Thatās a part of where Iām coming from in saying the Power Fantasy is undercut by the game math. The most memorable encounters also happen to be the ones where PCs will feel the weakest.
Itās also worth considering that most PCs at most levels will be getting only a +1 or +2 bonus to most stats out of this change. The +3s will be narrow, high-level gains for almost everyone (Fighters are unique in getting Master in one weapon group at 5th, and then they and all other martials get Master in their full set of weapons at 13th), and the +4s will be typically limited to a single aspect of a class and only gained at high levels. I did a little looking, and most classes get just just 1 Legendary thing. Barbarians get Fortitude, Champions get armor, Fighters get weapons, and all casters except Bards and Warpriest Clerics get just casting (albeit at the almost pointless 19th level). The exceptions are that Bards get both casting and Will, Monks get a save of their choice and Unarmored defense, Rangers and Rogues get both Reflex and Perception, and Warpriest Clerics and Alchemists get no Legendary anything.
PF1 had that a little bit, but it wasnāt as severely broken as 3.5. Typically a martialās first attack could be around 80% to hit (there are ways to ramp that up more, but not open to most builds), some could get ways to make 2 or 3 attacks at that bonus, and the rest of their Full Attack iterative attacks fell by 25% with each attack just like MAP works in PF2.
Because of the necessity of using higher-level enemies in many encounters, I donāt expect this will end up feeling (or being) like too much. But thatās what playtesting is for.
Just for the record. Rasinarās hit record bears out the Math that Cort is talking about. Prior to this last game on Thursday. He missed his first swing a little more than half the time if not more. The second and if I was able to do a third basically was hail maryās that depended on the dice. There was basically little I could do to influence the outcomes on those rolls, other than maybe flanking. You really canāt count on those ever hitting.
Its one of the reasons I redid him from the two handed maul to a shield and warhammer. Iāll at least get some use out of 1 of my other actions other then the first attack by raising my shield. And I had to redo his feats to allow him some leeway to do his retributitive strike which thankfully is not subject to MAP. So Iāll be able to swing maybe twice in one round and possible hit at least 50 percent of the time. If the dice gods are with me two times in a round.
Mith
I had this big thing written up about the Pathfinder 2e math being exacerbated by modern TTRPG design, but it was boring.
Hopefully yāall have noticed that with the exception of the Water Weird, Iāve shied away from the big single mongo mob encounter(s) that we had a lot of in Age of Ashes. Iāve liberally sprinkled (party) level -4, -3, and -2 mobs throughout the encounters youāve faced and with the exception of Ptahmose the Dread Wraith (+3), the highest other thing youāve faced was +2. The idea being that this combined arms type of encounter design rewards team work and makes sure everyone has something to contribute whether thatās healing, tanking, debuffs, AE, single target dmg, etc.
After reading yāalls big walls of text, one thing I realized that I could have been doing and will now do in the future is not limit my encounter budgets by that arbitrary plvl-4 floor. Since weāre not leveling by xp gain, and instead doing milestone leveling, I can throw encounters at yāall with levels much lower. Like the good old days of AD&D; encounters of 20 level 2 draconians for a party of 8 level 8 characters, or the crazy rooms with 666 skeletons in them (Queen of the Demonweb Pits, lvls 10-14). Okay, maybe Iāll shy away from 666 skeletons, but it would be cool.
Or course it goes without saying that Iād keep the plvl+4 ceiling, otherwise weād be venturing into surefire TPK territory.
P.S. Another thing to noteā¦ In the past when Iāve used milestone leveling in adventures/campaigns Iāve run Iāve always reminded my players that there are perfectly viable option for ending encounters that donāt involve combat, i.e. talking your way out of it, sneaking past it, or just running away from it. Unfortunately weāre all murder-hobos at heart and that never really flies. (Yes I realize that the linear tomb of Ptahmose was laid out in a way that prevented skipping anythingā¦)
I feel like the remedy depends on what weāre trying to fix. If the issue is the power fantasy then why not just design encounters with more low level mobs as @Rando mentioned?
On the other hand, if the issue is unfavorable math against higher level mobs then I feel like the game offers some pretty good ways to address this - flanking obviously but also skill actions like recall knowledge, grapple, trip, and demoralize are all things that we could be doing a lot more of that weāre not currently doing (myself included). So I think smarter play would help us here (admittedly to a point - PL+4 is still pretty darn scary) and potentially maybe a bone from the gm occasionally - like maybe a way to exploit something in the environment that allows us to get a leg up on a boss.
Regardless, Iām willing to try anything once. So if the 3 point proficiency increase is what the group wants then that is what Iām willing to play with. But this is going to be a very big shift to the meta.
Well truthfully whether Rasinar hits or not, he really does earn his place if by doing nothing else than Being a Field medic outside of combat. So I never really felt like he was useless. He was soaking up damage which is what a champion does. My main problem with him was I had designed him before anyone else had said what they were playing. And I was not familiar with champions in general other than from watching how Cort was playing Valk. But that didnāt really make me familiar with the classes feats. And because I was doing the two handed weapon thing, he took more damage than I thought he was going to when I made him.
I was not really commenting on how @Rando makes his encounters. Since he is more than willing to let us modify our characters after us playing with them. I was just saying that from the perspective of Cortās house rules that yeah the math as it stands now makes me feel more like an everyday dwarf rather than Heroic level dwarven Champion. Is that necessarily a bad thing, not really if the campaign isnāt designed for you to be Heroic level.
Itās sorta the difference between playing a street level campaign in Champions versus a Superhero level campaign. I personally will play either one.
Mith
I mentioned it before, but Rasinar doesnāt have to take on all the healing duties outside of combat. Jebaxak also has Continual Recovery, I had just forgot to add it to my sheet when we made the characters. Of course, to hear @Cortillaen tell it, Jebaxak must automatically have the same healing curse as Huulm 
No worries Ryu. I was just mentioning. At this point with Ward Medic and Mastery in Medicine, Rasinar can practice on up to 4 people per 10 minute interval now. we can just divy up the out of combat healing going forward.
Just to be clear, Iām talking about trying this in a few session I run, not adding it to Randoās game. Everything in my houserules doc is just stuff Iām toying with for when my campaign spins up. If anyone else wants to adopt parts of it, cool, but Iām not expecting that at all.
So just to be obsessive, I looked up all the ACs from the monsters under āAā and āBā in Bestiary 1 and cross referenced those with Table 2-5 in the Gamemastery Guide and tallied the ACs into bins according to whether they were greater than High, High, Moderate, and less than Moderate and observed the following totals:
> High: 17
High: 21
Moderate: 12
< Moderate: 3
I think I only saw one example where the AC actually equaled Extreme (and none greater than Extreme), and this doesnāt take into account which monsters are encountered more frequently but anyway I believe this supports the claim that monster ACs skew high.
So I guess the +3 per proficiency would fix this, but I still wonder how thatās going to affect class meta. I suspect we would see Fighter, Champion, and Monk become the most dominant martials and Barbarian, Ranger, and Rogue get left behind. Also, the poor Alchemist.
Oh @Cortillaen, I know this is only a proposal for your campaign so no worries 
Okayā¦ I have a questionā¦ errā¦ observation rather.
One thing we rarely use in our group is the Aid reaction. I think we mightāve used it like once when we were trying to get through the the portcullis on level 2 a few nights back. and even then @Rando had to nudge us.
If I understand the way this is written, we can also use this for attack rolls. So as a reaction when another player attacks, we could use this to boost one anotherās attack odds. Granted it has to compete against other reactions but I suspect if we could look back on our previous combats weād find that about 50% of reactions were going unused so I feel like thereās room here to squeeze out a little more combat efficiency.
EDIT:
I forgot that Aid requires an action to setup so I donāt know if that is worth more than the 3rd action crit fish or not. 
Every plus is sacred. Every plus is great. When a plus is wasted, the GM gets quite irate.
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Iām not sure I follow what you mean here. Barbarians, Champions, Monks, Rangers, and Rogues all have the same proficiency progression for attacks. Barbarians, Rangers, and Rogues all have the same progression for armor, too. Fighters have kind of a unique offensive and defensive progression, with the one-step-better weapon proficiency and ability to wear heavy armor, though their actual armor proficiency progression is the same as Barbarians, Rangers, and Rogues. And Monks of course have their own oddball AC and save progressions.
Fighters would undoubtedly feel a little stronger since they will get +3 from that one-step-better weapon proficiency. Champions will be a little bit tankier, which I think most benefits builds that donāt use a shield, though shield builds will also be even better at their job of absorbing attacks. But I donāt think they will end up feeling like they got a bigger boost than the other classes. Barbarians will benefit greatly from missing a little less and eating fewer crits, each of the Ranger Edges benefits in its own way (even the Outwit edge will have a very valuable bump if used in a Monster Hunter feat-chain build; and I would never pick Outwit unless doing such a build), and Rogues will enjoy both a boost to all of their skill-monkeying in addition to landing their Sneak Attacks a little more.
I think Monks will stay exactly as they are relative to other classes, too: very durable (excellent AC and great saves alike), extremely mobile, but lagging in the damage department compared to Fighters, Barbarians, Rangers, and Rogues. Theyāll still want to capitalize on their mobility with Flurry of Blows and make use of the maneuver and ki options available to them.
Overall, itās just a stopgap measure I settled on because it is simple to implement, but it doesnāt perfectly simulate what I would really like to see. What I wish is that target DCs of all kinds (task DCs, enemy ACs and save DCs, etc) kept pace with a lower progression. Right now, they are pegged to a specialized characterās growth, assuming a starting stat of 18 and raising that every 5th level, taking into account every proficiency boost and item/rune bonus PCs get, and resulting in that āyou need to specialize just to keep your head above waterā feeling I talked about.
What I would have liked to see is target DCs keeping pace with just an average sort of growth from a non-specialized character. Someone who only starts with a 14 or 16 in the stat, maybe doesnāt pick up that +1 item/rune for a couple levels after it becomes available, and doesnāt get the maximum proficiency boosts or get them as quickly as possible. That way specialized PCs are actually a little ahead of the curve, instead of unspecialized ones just being behind as it is now. But thatās not going to happen, so I grabbed the simple change that gets pretty close.
And Alchemist is just Alchemist, sadly. There was a big spate of āAlchemist isnāt bad, youāre just building it wrong!ā posts on the subreddit a week or two ago that were pretty amusing. Half of them were āYou just have to follow this super-specific melee build and always have time to drink several elixers before combat, and bam! good Alchemist!ā. Lots of problems with that I wonāt get into here. Most of the others were of questionable adherence to the rules or relied upon views of the classās flaws I canāt agree with. On the bright side, there was a comment from one of the Paizo devs a few weeks ago (I forget the stream) that they are considering releasing a redesigned version of the class.
Yep, Aid can be used like that. Itās also a Circumstance bonus to the attacker, which is really rare and will stack with just about everything. The catches are that you have to spend an action during your turn to prepare, and you have to have a viable means of helping the target. Casters are the prime source of wasted reactions, but Iām not sure how they could reasonably Aid a martialās attack roll most of the time since the caster really wants to be out of reach. Most spells being 2 actions also makes it hard to fit that action to prepare in there a lot of times. It kinda depends on whether thereās anything they could be doing at range that Rando would accept as aid. Pointing out weaknesses comes to mind, though I wonder if that should be the relevant Recall Knowledge roll. Any martial who lacks a consistent use for their reaction and a use for their third action can make great use of it, though.
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