The fighter is awesome in 4th Edition, but too many people decided that they couldn't wrap their brains around daily martial powers, or spellcasters who are pretty well balanced with everything else. The 5th Edition Battle Master retains a lot of those fun options, in diluted form, and even sort of lets one play a warlord, but they let spellcasters off the leash, so there's only so much fun the fighter can be.
I assume you know this, but for other folks combing the comments, some players and I are "reacting" to D&D 4th edition! We're pretty excited after our Session 0 and first battle. We will have our next session today (Mon 12/5) 5PM Pacific, but it will stream on my side channel, "Rules Lawyer Discord Community Channel" (link in video description)
If this looked interesting I'm guessing after Part 3 (and especially 4) you will be running to your FLGS or throwing money at your screen! It only gets better from here! =D
@@startingfromlevelone9510 I hope that this video series will help GMs wanting to convince their groups to give it a try. Players who like playing martials might help sway the others. Most of my other vids made general points, but weren't ideal "recruitment" tools that get at issues of high concern to 5e players.
@@startingfromlevelone9510Assuming you are a player, I strongly encourage to take the leap of faith and try DMing a one-shot, the beginner's box for Pathfinder 2e is really good. Its the best way to show off the strengths of the system
ERRATA, ADDITIONS: 1. Fighters start Expert in Perception, and they later get a free +2 circumstance bonus to initiative rolls, so this helps them get early in initiative AND if you invest in WIS you can be good trap finders in front of the party! 2. PF2e characters need their STR and DEX modifiers to total at least *+4* to get a maximum AC. (For Fighters this is easy since you're probably taking 18 in an attack stat.) BUT at Level 1, if you have 18 Strength and 10 Dexterity, you will not max out your AC until you can afford 13gp+ Heavy armor (which you can get at Level 1 if you save). Consider a 12+ Dexterity because it helps with Reflex saves, DEX skills, and thrown weapons!
For ac would say item bonus + dex = 5 and enough str to wear the armor. Though yes heavy armor brings the max ac to a total of 6 and replacing the reflex save of dex in most cases
@@ghostyuki-kfpinquisitor1038 Yeah, that's another way to put it. For this I had total newbs in mind and wanted to give a clear instruction on Ability Scores, which is an initial thing to think about in character creation. I did put the Armor chart up, tho. Not sure which would've been better for the video.
@@ghostyuki-kfpinquisitor1038 heavier armor, which provides higher item bonuses to AC, have strength requirements. I assume that’s what he is referring to.
Assuming you don't need Dex for skills, ranged attacks (probably a thrown weapon) or Reflex saves not covered by the Bulwark trait (which are rare), it feels bad to have +1 Dex. After you upgrade to full plate, it's essentially a dead stat. I think even ability boosts can be retrained RAW, but it's really clunky. Honestly, I think there should be a cheaper heavy armor type that is strictly worse than the other options (+5 armor bonus/+0 dex bonus, no Bulwark) but is affordable as a stopgap option at ~level 1-2 for characters that want to dump Dex.
My current fighter is an Automaton wielding a meteor hammer and focusing on attacks of opportunity and reach. It really is so much fun. Playing at high level opens up so many abilities that the fighter can actually become rather complex to play. It is definitely a step up from D&D
Looking forward to the rest of this series. One of my players said "but fighter is still just 'pick a weapon' basically, right?". My response was "well, yes, but also no" but I couldn't articulate my points very well. I'd also love similar series on other classes, I've fallen in love with several classes and can't explain that in a better way than just sharing some builds I've made.
Great video. I'll add 2 points: - Fighters are expert in perception at level one, that makes them even good secrets and trapfinders early on, as they can detect the more complex hazards of those level (quickly checked, the traps asking for more than expert proficieny to be detected are even level 10+) - Fighter level 1 gives you either acrobatics or athletism as a free choice at level 1, outside of the normal skill selection, showcasing even more the generosity of the system, that automatically let you take things thematic for your class (it's even more jarring for the bard compared to 5E). One "retort", tho, on the weapons, at least the feedback from my players: The albeit some exceptions like agile/finesse, the damage dice of the weapon feels far more important than the traits, due to the striking mechanism where the dice is still vastly (even more some would say) relevant with time. My players barely use their weapon traits. But maybe that comes from my group. Anyway, I'm very interested in this new series.
I'm playing in two different games right now and one of my characters is actually a human fighter. He's a blast to play. I invested heavily into strength and charisma and use the sword and board style with Marshall free archetype. He's insanely useful in combat. He hits hard, crits often, can demoralize or bon mot enemies, use his Marshall stance to provide support, raise shield to hunker down, and I picked up fleet as my general human feat so he's maneuverable as well.
I should add, for people who are new to PF2E, because I've built my character this way I've got too many useful options in combat. My action economy is always clean. Turn 1. Demoralize, inspiring marshal stance, move. Turn 2. Move, strike, raise shield Turn 3. Bon Mot, strike, step Turn 4. Strike, aid, raise shield I'm never in a position where I feel like I have to give up an action or a turn. Sure, it can be a lot to remember for newer players, but that's why you start at level 1.
As someone who is joining Pf2e for the first time and is planning on playing a Fighter, I really really appreciate this video! Can't wait for the future parts! 😌
My fighter is a female dwarf who realised that all the dwarves around her act the same. She decided to go into a quest to find herself. After trying every type of weapons she could find including strange futuristic one and firearms, she realises the perfect weapon only exist in her mind...She had materialised it. (Fighter/mindsmith)
'Polearm master/Sentinel' build is possible in Pathfinder too, stepping out of enemies reach to exploit your own reach weapon, using whirlwind to attack all enemies within 10 feet, and a lvl20 fighter feat gives you a reaction in all of your enemies turns not just your own.
I’m already sold on fighters. PF2E Fighters are fun, flavored & I’m a little envious of my wife for choosing one. Maybe consider a similar series for Wizards, how they can meaningfully control the battlefield in middle tiers& some good 3rd action choices.
Interrupting casting with opportunity attacks sounds great on paper, but 3.5e also had that. And in practice it hardly mattered because there were must-have feats that hard countered it, and monsters had feats, so... Is that not the case in PF2?
There aren't many counters in PF2. 3e and PF1 had Casting Defensively and ways to improve Concentration to succeed on that. Also, a crit success by the interrupter disrupts the spell, without the caster getting a Concentration check to try to ignore it. There are no such mechanics in PF2. The one thing I'm aware of for PCs is a 6th level feat called Steady Spellcasting, where you have a 20% chance of your spell not being disrupted, which is pretty small. You can improve the chances of that with a Hero Point though. But I don't see it taken up by many caster players. And I'd say a rough guesstimate is that 5% of "caster" enemies have a similar ability. Also, there is the VERY powerful Disruptive Stance a (Level 10 feat) which I mention in the next video, which disrupts a spell on a regular success!
After playing the Cypher System for a while, I started to get a little bored with the one-action system in that game and how limiting it felt, on top of the general game design that leans away from much combat. I looked into 2e before I picked up cypher, after I quit playing 5e. I got into 2e by watching your response to Taking20s video about “illusion of choice” and now I find myself returning to it because of that beautiful 3 action system. I’m binging all of your videos and I absolutely love fighters! Thank you for introducing me to this fantastically designed game.
I believe they changed the Voluntary Flaws system at some point. On Archives of Nethys (I dont own any printing of the book) the character creation chapter of the Core Rulebook mentions "Optional: Voluntary Flaw" as just taking 1 flaw with no benefit, it's for flavor. However, there is something called "Alternate Ancestry Boosts" which allows you to ignore your Ancestry boosts and flaws and replace them with 2 boosts and no flaws.
My game tastes run more towards OSR games (preferably Basic D&D based) but I agree that PF2's Fighters are better than 5E's. A 5E Fighter is a good class and can deal a lot of damage, but they still fall short of what casters can do.
As far as 5e goes, I've given up on playing martials, which is too bad because I prefer their vibe to that of casters. In PF2E, however, martials got a massive glow-up, especially the fighter. They did them justice.
I feel like the complaints about 5e fighters are kind of overblown (I once TPKed a party of spellcasters with a battlemaster) but I also think there's no doubt that PF2's martials seem more fun than 5e's. Still think they ought to be given utility though. Ok, this was really just to help you with the algorithm. Thanks for the video!
Just as a note, voluntary flaws no longer work this way as of the most recent errata. Instead, much Tasha's Cauldron added flexible ancestry bonuses to abilities, anyone of any ancestry can choose to take the two free boosts that a human gets instead of the fixed boosts and flaw.
I think what truly makes 5e's Fighter so uninteresting is how feats in general made all Martial classes have to choose from a very select range of weapons for optimization. If you aren't using GWM or Sharpshooter, you're not gonna deal satisfying amounts of damage, so much so that the only Fighters I've ever seen without those feats were all universally either poorly optimized dual wielders (which I like a lot, but usually feel underwhelming when playing them because of the bad dual wielding rules) or using a shield, so basically trading off offense for defense. Considering how 5e prioritizes aggressiveness, that's not very good either. I was so insanely happy when I heard that duelist fighters are a good build in Pathfinder2e, I always wanted to play one, I love the duelist aesthetic, but I knew that, if I did a duelist, it would be just plainly worse than an optimized Fighter. Not only does Pathfinder make this playstyle super fun and rewarding, it also made a whole damn class to specialize in it, the Swashbuckler, aka the love of my life. I just love Pathfinder so much...
As someone who's considering making the jump to PF2E, I find this to be an intriguing video that's right up my alley. Looking to play an Orc Fighter sometime later today, with the Sudden Charge feat and the Hold-Scarred ancestry subrace. A quick question: Is "Bully" a fighting Style as per CRB 148? Or is it something else? I get a sense that it is a fighting style, but wanted to clarify since I'm completely new to PF2E. T.I.A.
It generally has succeeded imho (obviously), but there's a couple of outliers, gnome flickmace and pick being 2 of them. But I haven't heard of GMs actually banning them for being egregious.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG mmm fair enough. If it's not as drastic as halberd and hand crossbow in 5e then it's an improvement (or mainly, if no options are as poor as longsword and duel weilding)
I would say there's only one real outlier that is the gnomish flickmace. Being a one-handed reach weapon on the flail group with good base damage is just a bit too good for sword and board builds among others. Picks are also really good because of how deadly they are with crits but you trade that ability for very low base damage. Good for crit fishing builds and not much else. There are lots of other good choices for weapons depending on what you want out of your build, what weapon group you want to focus on and what weapon traits are most useful.
@@joshuawinestock9998 Oh yea nothing is as egregious as 5e weapon choice selection, as others have mentioned Gnomish Flickmace is very strong for builds that are sword and board/fencing style and want to use reach... But it is locked to specific builds/ancestries. In terms of Martial v Martial weapons there are a lot of deep choices for people that care about 1-5% optimizations, but also everything is tightly balanced so all those options are within 1-5% of each other and "best" is situational based on a lot of factors!
Yes they fixed the martial/caster disparity. Now martials rule combat, and spellcasters struggle to find a niche in combat. Also 2e definitely didn't fix the fun part of fighter--they certainly fixed the limited part (atleast when weapon fights aren't a factor), but the 2e Fighter has the same problem with 5e fighter. Tons of options at the start, but once you pick a weapon, the field of viable feats goes down drastically. They also still have no out of combat utility outside of standard skill progression.
"The undisputed King or Queen of consistent, single target damage, and you're tougher than casters." Okay, that's also true in 5e though. That's not really the problem.
Not always - Optimization guides usually accomplish the highest ACs possible with caster levels that give you access to 5e's Shield spell, or Bladesinger's Bladesong ability (+INT to AC). And casters often have better saves that prevent domination and other debilitating mental effects.
Not really. Compared to the other martials (including the half-casters), the fighter really doesn't get much above the other martials when we are talking reliability until AT LEAST lvl 11.
First, Id take issue with the premise. Battlemasters are excellent for basically the entire game. Paladins are better. Maybe Lore bards and Wizards are better. But that's arguable.
am I the only one that thinks fighters are a bit too strong there? You can literally explode a caster in 1 turn if you win initiative, which is somewhat easy to do.
At Level 1 maybe, but I find that after a few levels the HP pools of creatures is usually high enough that you never can knock out something in one turn that is at least your level or higher.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG maybe you cant 1 turn a cleric, but a wizard? Dunno man, a lvl 15 fighter just needs to win initiative and the lvl 15 wizard is dead in 1 turn (considering a strenght fighter 2 handed). You'll literally hit every swing, not counting crits. And if you build right, you can still have pretty high saves. You'd also have too many HP to be 1 turn by the wizard of the same level. Thats why I think fighters are stronger.
@@TheZealo That's a situation that doesn't come up in almost any game. Plus, there is the turn needed to reach the caster, and after the 1st Strike a crit is MUCH less likely. More appropriate is a Lvl 15 wizard facing a strong melee brute, let's take the L16 Rune Giant. Even if it happens to have Rune of Flames activated (costs 1 action), and it reaches the Wizard in 1 action and crits on both its greatsword strikes (+33 vs AC 36, so the chances for this are about 6%), that is an average 94 damage. The wizard likely has 98 hit points from being L15 alone, and that is not taking into account HP from CON and Toughness which are extremely likely at this stage.
The fighter is awesome in 4th Edition, but too many people decided that they couldn't wrap their brains around daily martial powers, or spellcasters who are pretty well balanced with everything else. The 5th Edition Battle Master retains a lot of those fun options, in diluted form, and even sort of lets one play a warlord, but they let spellcasters off the leash, so there's only so much fun the fighter can be.
I assume you know this, but for other folks combing the comments, some players and I are "reacting" to D&D 4th edition! We're pretty excited after our Session 0 and first battle. We will have our next session today (Mon 12/5) 5PM Pacific, but it will stream on my side channel, "Rules Lawyer Discord Community Channel" (link in video description)
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Yep, I've been trying to follow it. It warms my heart to see people enjoying it.
4e is neat but it has shitty verisimilitude
I should finally give Pathfinder 2E a go that all sounded pretty interesting.
you will never come back
If this looked interesting I'm guessing after Part 3 (and especially 4) you will be running to your FLGS or throwing money at your screen! It only gets better from here! =D
My biggest regret about the current group of 5 I’m running is that I couldn’t convince them to play pf2e
@@startingfromlevelone9510 I hope that this video series will help GMs wanting to convince their groups to give it a try. Players who like playing martials might help sway the others. Most of my other vids made general points, but weren't ideal "recruitment" tools that get at issues of high concern to 5e players.
@@startingfromlevelone9510Assuming you are a player, I strongly encourage to take the leap of faith and try DMing a one-shot, the beginner's box for Pathfinder 2e is really good. Its the best way to show off the strengths of the system
ERRATA, ADDITIONS:
1. Fighters start Expert in Perception, and they later get a free +2 circumstance bonus to initiative rolls, so this helps them get early in initiative AND if you invest in WIS you can be good trap finders in front of the party!
2. PF2e characters need their STR and DEX modifiers to total at least *+4* to get a maximum AC. (For Fighters this is easy since you're probably taking 18 in an attack stat.) BUT at Level 1, if you have 18 Strength and 10 Dexterity, you will not max out your AC until you can afford 13gp+ Heavy armor (which you can get at Level 1 if you save). Consider a 12+ Dexterity because it helps with Reflex saves, DEX skills, and thrown weapons!
For ac would say item bonus + dex = 5 and enough str to wear the armor. Though yes heavy armor brings the max ac to a total of 6 and replacing the reflex save of dex in most cases
@@ghostyuki-kfpinquisitor1038 Yeah, that's another way to put it. For this I had total newbs in mind and wanted to give a clear instruction on Ability Scores, which is an initial thing to think about in character creation. I did put the Armor chart up, tho.
Not sure which would've been better for the video.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG mostly just wondering what str has to do with maximizing ac
@@ghostyuki-kfpinquisitor1038 heavier armor, which provides higher item bonuses to AC, have strength requirements. I assume that’s what he is referring to.
Assuming you don't need Dex for skills, ranged attacks (probably a thrown weapon) or Reflex saves not covered by the Bulwark trait (which are rare), it feels bad to have +1 Dex. After you upgrade to full plate, it's essentially a dead stat.
I think even ability boosts can be retrained RAW, but it's really clunky. Honestly, I think there should be a cheaper heavy armor type that is strictly worse than the other options (+5 armor bonus/+0 dex bonus, no Bulwark) but is affordable as a stopgap option at ~level 1-2 for characters that want to dump Dex.
My current fighter is an Automaton wielding a meteor hammer and focusing on attacks of opportunity and reach. It really is so much fun. Playing at high level opens up so many abilities that the fighter can actually become rather complex to play. It is definitely a step up from D&D
Looking forward to the rest of this series. One of my players said "but fighter is still just 'pick a weapon' basically, right?". My response was "well, yes, but also no" but I couldn't articulate my points very well. I'd also love similar series on other classes, I've fallen in love with several classes and can't explain that in a better way than just sharing some builds I've made.
Great video. I'll add 2 points:
- Fighters are expert in perception at level one, that makes them even good secrets and trapfinders early on, as they can detect the more complex hazards of those level (quickly checked, the traps asking for more than expert proficieny to be detected are even level 10+)
- Fighter level 1 gives you either acrobatics or athletism as a free choice at level 1, outside of the normal skill selection, showcasing even more the generosity of the system, that automatically let you take things thematic for your class (it's even more jarring for the bard compared to 5E).
One "retort", tho, on the weapons, at least the feedback from my players:
The albeit some exceptions like agile/finesse, the damage dice of the weapon feels far more important than the traits, due to the striking mechanism where the dice is still vastly (even more some would say) relevant with time.
My players barely use their weapon traits.
But maybe that comes from my group.
Anyway, I'm very interested in this new series.
Thanks. Will add your addition to my errata
I'm playing in two different games right now and one of my characters is actually a human fighter. He's a blast to play. I invested heavily into strength and charisma and use the sword and board style with Marshall free archetype. He's insanely useful in combat. He hits hard, crits often, can demoralize or bon mot enemies, use his Marshall stance to provide support, raise shield to hunker down, and I picked up fleet as my general human feat so he's maneuverable as well.
I should add, for people who are new to PF2E, because I've built my character this way I've got too many useful options in combat. My action economy is always clean. Turn 1. Demoralize, inspiring marshal stance, move.
Turn 2. Move, strike, raise shield
Turn 3. Bon Mot, strike, step
Turn 4. Strike, aid, raise shield
I'm never in a position where I feel like I have to give up an action or a turn. Sure, it can be a lot to remember for newer players, but that's why you start at level 1.
Don't forget Free archetype, it's what made me love this system :D
This showcase is deliberately limited to Level 1 human fighters, but I DO touch on archetypes later in the series!
It's what makes 3/4 of my builds even function lol.
A lot of people seem to take FA for granted when they post builds. It's far from everywhere. Heck I have yet to play in a game with it.
Very nice start for this short series. I will show this to a friend who thinks about starting Pathfinder 2E and leans towards the Fighter ^^
That was the exact reason for this series! (The biggest reason at least) Hope it goes well!
Thank you very much! This should prove to be a big help.
Fighters gonna fight. Thanks for another great vid!!
For the algorithm!!!
Very cool exploration of the system!
Great start to the series! Fighters are so strong in 2e, it's no joke.
Martials in general are.
As someone who is joining Pf2e for the first time and is planning on playing a Fighter, I really really appreciate this video! Can't wait for the future parts! 😌
Nice. Love fighters
My fighter is a female dwarf who realised that all the dwarves around her act the same. She decided to go into a quest to find herself. After trying every type of weapons she could find including strange futuristic one and firearms, she realises the perfect weapon only exist in her mind...She had materialised it. (Fighter/mindsmith)
This guy is pretty cool
'Polearm master/Sentinel' build is possible in Pathfinder too, stepping out of enemies reach to exploit your own reach weapon, using whirlwind to attack all enemies within 10 feet, and a lvl20 fighter feat gives you a reaction in all of your enemies turns not just your own.
I have clearly put off playing a Fighter for too long. Maybe if my barbarian manages to die.
This was a really good breakdown! Would love to see your perspective on the other core classes as well, after this series is done of course.
I’m already sold on fighters. PF2E Fighters are fun, flavored & I’m a little envious of my wife for choosing one.
Maybe consider a similar series for Wizards, how they can meaningfully control the battlefield in middle tiers& some good 3rd action choices.
For the Algorythm.
Great video, Ronald! Can't wait for part 2 I love me some fighter builds!
Seeing the fighter advancement chart is shocking for a 5e fighter player ... So much stuff each level !!
All hail the hypno-toa... I mean the algorithm!
I swear to god I get overjoyed everytime someone references Angel Summoner vs BMX bandit in TTRPG discussions.
really looking forward to the combat demo, I always love those
Interrupting casting with opportunity attacks sounds great on paper, but 3.5e also had that. And in practice it hardly mattered because there were must-have feats that hard countered it, and monsters had feats, so...
Is that not the case in PF2?
There aren't many counters in PF2. 3e and PF1 had Casting Defensively and ways to improve Concentration to succeed on that. Also, a crit success by the interrupter disrupts the spell, without the caster getting a Concentration check to try to ignore it. There are no such mechanics in PF2. The one thing I'm aware of for PCs is a 6th level feat called Steady Spellcasting, where you have a 20% chance of your spell not being disrupted, which is pretty small. You can improve the chances of that with a Hero Point though. But I don't see it taken up by many caster players. And I'd say a rough guesstimate is that 5% of "caster" enemies have a similar ability. Also, there is the VERY powerful Disruptive Stance a (Level 10 feat) which I mention in the next video, which disrupts a spell on a regular success!
Comments for the Algorithm God! Likes for the Like Throne!
Is summoning viewers like summoning Beetlejuice?
*Algorithm Algorithm Algorithm*
After playing the Cypher System for a while, I started to get a little bored with the one-action system in that game and how limiting it felt, on top of the general game design that leans away from much combat. I looked into 2e before I picked up cypher, after I quit playing 5e. I got into 2e by watching your response to Taking20s video about “illusion of choice” and now I find myself returning to it because of that beautiful 3 action system. I’m binging all of your videos and I absolutely love fighters!
Thank you for introducing me to this fantastically designed game.
Awesome!
I can dispute the casters are always useful statement. My evidence, Taber Banderdash fighting those annoying wisps...
Ah, that did suck lol. There are some cool buffs especially now that you're Level 5 though.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG True.
Spread the word!
I believe they changed the Voluntary Flaws system at some point. On Archives of Nethys (I dont own any printing of the book) the character creation chapter of the Core Rulebook mentions "Optional: Voluntary Flaw" as just taking 1 flaw with no benefit, it's for flavor. However, there is something called "Alternate Ancestry Boosts" which allows you to ignore your Ancestry boosts and flaws and replace them with 2 boosts and no flaws.
Great vid can't wait for the next part, and maybe some guides to other classes down the line. 👍
My game tastes run more towards OSR games (preferably Basic D&D based) but I agree that PF2's Fighters are better than 5E's. A 5E Fighter is a good class and can deal a lot of damage, but they still fall short of what casters can do.
interesting series, I will watch it !
As far as 5e goes, I've given up on playing martials, which is too bad because I prefer their vibe to that of casters.
In PF2E, however, martials got a massive glow-up, especially the fighter. They did them justice.
I feel like the complaints about 5e fighters are kind of overblown (I once TPKed a party of spellcasters with a battlemaster) but I also think there's no doubt that PF2's martials seem more fun than 5e's. Still think they ought to be given utility though. Ok, this was really just to help you with the algorithm. Thanks for the video!
For the math babies
All hail the algorithmic gods
Just as a note, voluntary flaws no longer work this way as of the most recent errata. Instead, much Tasha's Cauldron added flexible ancestry bonuses to abilities, anyone of any ancestry can choose to take the two free boosts that a human gets instead of the fixed boosts and flaw.
And on the fifth day, he rested.
I think what truly makes 5e's Fighter so uninteresting is how feats in general made all Martial classes have to choose from a very select range of weapons for optimization. If you aren't using GWM or Sharpshooter, you're not gonna deal satisfying amounts of damage, so much so that the only Fighters I've ever seen without those feats were all universally either poorly optimized dual wielders (which I like a lot, but usually feel underwhelming when playing them because of the bad dual wielding rules) or using a shield, so basically trading off offense for defense. Considering how 5e prioritizes aggressiveness, that's not very good either.
I was so insanely happy when I heard that duelist fighters are a good build in Pathfinder2e, I always wanted to play one, I love the duelist aesthetic, but I knew that, if I did a duelist, it would be just plainly worse than an optimized Fighter.
Not only does Pathfinder make this playstyle super fun and rewarding, it also made a whole damn class to specialize in it, the Swashbuckler, aka the love of my life.
I just love Pathfinder so much...
All hail the algorithm.
As someone who's considering making the jump to PF2E, I find this to be an intriguing video that's right up my alley.
Looking to play an Orc Fighter sometime later today, with the Sudden Charge feat and the Hold-Scarred ancestry subrace.
A quick question: Is "Bully" a fighting Style as per CRB 148? Or is it something else? I get a sense that it is a fighting style, but wanted to clarify since I'm completely new to PF2E. T.I.A.
First
Bon Mot is from the APG
Can people confirm that pf2e really doesn't have done weapon choices that are better than others, as said in the video?
It generally has succeeded imho (obviously), but there's a couple of outliers, gnome flickmace and pick being 2 of them. But I haven't heard of GMs actually banning them for being egregious.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG mmm fair enough. If it's not as drastic as halberd and hand crossbow in 5e then it's an improvement (or mainly, if no options are as poor as longsword and duel weilding)
I would say there's only one real outlier that is the gnomish flickmace. Being a one-handed reach weapon on the flail group with good base damage is just a bit too good for sword and board builds among others.
Picks are also really good because of how deadly they are with crits but you trade that ability for very low base damage. Good for crit fishing builds and not much else.
There are lots of other good choices for weapons depending on what you want out of your build, what weapon group you want to focus on and what weapon traits are most useful.
@@joshuawinestock9998 Oh yea nothing is as egregious as 5e weapon choice selection, as others have mentioned Gnomish Flickmace is very strong for builds that are sword and board/fencing style and want to use reach... But it is locked to specific builds/ancestries. In terms of Martial v Martial weapons there are a lot of deep choices for people that care about 1-5% optimizations, but also everything is tightly balanced so all those options are within 1-5% of each other and "best" is situational based on a lot of factors!
Yes they fixed the martial/caster disparity. Now martials rule combat, and spellcasters struggle to find a niche in combat. Also 2e definitely didn't fix the fun part of fighter--they certainly fixed the limited part (atleast when weapon fights aren't a factor), but the 2e Fighter has the same problem with 5e fighter. Tons of options at the start, but once you pick a weapon, the field of viable feats goes down drastically. They also still have no out of combat utility outside of standard skill progression.
"The undisputed King or Queen of consistent, single target damage, and you're tougher than casters." Okay, that's also true in 5e though. That's not really the problem.
Not always - Optimization guides usually accomplish the highest ACs possible with caster levels that give you access to 5e's Shield spell, or Bladesinger's Bladesong ability (+INT to AC). And casters often have better saves that prevent domination and other debilitating mental effects.
Not really. Compared to the other martials (including the half-casters), the fighter really doesn't get much above the other martials when we are talking reliability until AT LEAST lvl 11.
First, Id take issue with the premise. Battlemasters are excellent for basically the entire game. Paladins are better. Maybe Lore bards and Wizards are better. But that's arguable.
am I the only one that thinks fighters are a bit too strong there? You can literally explode a caster in 1 turn if you win initiative, which is somewhat easy to do.
At Level 1 maybe, but I find that after a few levels the HP pools of creatures is usually high enough that you never can knock out something in one turn that is at least your level or higher.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG maybe you cant 1 turn a cleric, but a wizard? Dunno man, a lvl 15 fighter just needs to win initiative and the lvl 15 wizard is dead in 1 turn (considering a strenght fighter 2 handed). You'll literally hit every swing, not counting crits. And if you build right, you can still have pretty high saves. You'd also have too many HP to be 1 turn by the wizard of the same level. Thats why I think fighters are stronger.
@@TheZealo That's a situation that doesn't come up in almost any game.
Plus, there is the turn needed to reach the caster, and after the 1st Strike a crit is MUCH less likely.
More appropriate is a Lvl 15 wizard facing a strong melee brute, let's take the L16 Rune Giant. Even if it happens to have Rune of Flames activated (costs 1 action), and it reaches the Wizard in 1 action and crits on both its greatsword strikes (+33 vs AC 36, so the chances for this are about 6%), that is an average 94 damage. The wizard likely has 98 hit points from being L15 alone, and that is not taking into account HP from CON and Toughness which are extremely likely at this stage.
Step 1 : Stop playing Pathfinder.
Step 2: immediately regret your decision and reverse step 1
Step 3: stop getting mad at people for playing other systems