How to Play Martials in Pathfinder 2e

welcome back everyone I'm the ballot gamer and we're back with yet another new series and I'm gonna call it make it work as where I try to explain some of the basics from a game system predominantly is going to be Pathfinder 2E though obviously I might do it for some other game systems as well so I hope you all enjoy this is going to be my kind of super cut version of how to play some of the basic elements of these games and today we're going to be starting off with one of the most basic of Basics when it comes to Pathfinder 2E and that's going to be the Marshalls so Marshalls right what is a marshall class well Marshall class is a class that typically has a little bit more HP than its constituents and on top of that they focus on using martial weapons or unarmed combat so you hit things with either our weapon or your hands and you can do it at ranged or you can do it in melee Marshalls are the 5D characters they are about fighting and thus their casa is very focused on getting the most out of the three Action System now I mean all classes really are but while the casters can really just root in place and cast their spells up wherever Marshals need to consider their movements they need to consider where they need to be on the battlefield especially if you're trying to front line for your team and so getting the most out of the year three Action System is going to be important but let's get to the basics so Marshalls kind of play three main roles when it comes to Pathfinder 2E you got your Strikers who are predominantly focused on striking or hitting the enemy as much as possible or as hard as possible Strikers are all focused on using Feats and abilities that alter their strikes to do either more or to get extra effects out of them for instance the monk has an ability to call 48 blows that lets them strike twice as an action it's really good and allows them to interweave extra actions into their action economy well for instance the fighter or the Barbarian gets access to Power Attack which does a single attack that does extra damage now it's not quite as effective as striking an enemy twice but it's twice as likely to hit as you don't have to worry about your multi-attack penalty when striking an enemy and multi-attack that's actually something very important something you're going to worry about a lot with Marshalls is the multi-attack penalty and it works something like this when you strike on your first time in a round you have no penalties and and any bonuses that your abilities might give you so for all intents and purposes your multi-attack penalty for your first attack is zero now your second attack it's going to be either five or four depending on if you're using a agile weapon or if you're using a flirt if you have flurry with Ranger and if you're just not five is the standard if you have an agile weapon your next attack is at -4 and if you're a ranger who's using a flurry weapon your next attack is at minus three it's really really good and this obviously is a big shot to your overall accuracy a minus five is essentially a minus 25 chance to hitting your Foe and depending on your foe that's pretty big that's a pretty massive difference in How likely you are to strike your opponent now if you're a fighter who naturally has a plus 10 difference to hit an enemy or not obviously that's only a minus 15 difference and that's not such a big deal but most other Marshalls it's something to consider and there are ways to mitigate it but we're not going to get into the too much into the extra of what we got going on here and let's talk about your third multi-attack before we do anything else on your third attack it's either gonna be at a minus 10 minus 8 or minus 6 depending on agile flurry what have you minus 10 is a minus 50 chance of hit and is very much something you should avoid at all costs now A minus eight is really not that much better so you need to find ways to better intermix your attacks and so make sure that you're making the use of Your Action economy don't waste your time on a minus fifty percent chance of strike or even a minus 25 when there are other ways you can change this overall we'll get into that in a little bit but overall for a striker that's the big thing you want to strike as much as possible or hit as much as possible your job is to do damage that's what a striker does the next Roll Up is damage mitigator or tank now tanking is somewhat hard in Pathfinder 2E is there's no real aggro mechanics in the game you can't force enemies to attack you now depending on your DM enemies might just attack whatever's in front of them and so your objective is just to get up in front of everyone and to take those hits so you're going to want to wear heavy armor as much armor as you can stack onto your character because it will make a difference especially against the weaker enemies now if you're going against a boss enemy it really doesn't matter too much if you're wearing that much armor because most boss enemies for your level or level appropriate enemies have the ability to hit you that matches your AC giving them a pretty high chance to hit you regardless having a higher armor is very important but on top of that you also want to invest in your con because you get HP based on your con modifier and it's multiplied by your level so if you have a calm bonus of plus two then it's going to be two times your level in extra HP your character will have it's something that's very important to have and not only that if you're playing a champion the you have amazing damage mitigation not for yourself necessarily but for your allies with your Champion's reaction where you can negate an amount of damage equal to two plus your level that's a lot of damage as long as you and you are at close to your Ally and the enemy doing the damage so you obviously want to position yourself defensively getting in the way or at the very least you want to be close to allies are currently being attacked now another way you can mitigate damage is for instance the Barbarian rage this is self-damage mitigation you gain a number of temporary hit points equal to your con modifier plus level that's a lot of extra beating your character can take and the Barbarian also has the highest amount of HP per level of 12 plus com modifier per level which is pretty big so obviously you want to get up in front of combat you want to have good armor and another thing I forgot to mention as well you want to get a shield Shields are really good if you get the shield block reaction which is a really good reaction though you do need to pick a general feed up or you need to be a fighter some spellcasters even can get this as well but it's really good because it allows you to you raise your shield on your turn which boosts your AC but as a reaction you can actually negate an amount of damage you're about to take equal to your Shield's hardness this can mitigate a good amount of damage and then you and your Shield uh take the same amount of damage that is left over after the hardness so your Shield might break but there are ways to get around this of course regardless get a shield it reduces the amount of damage you take ASA reduces the chances of you being hit and obviously if you're using Rage with temporary hit points or the Champions mitigation ability for your allies your job is to make sure that the damage is going where it needs to go or if it's slipping by it's at least mitigated as much as possible now there is a third type of martial and it's very interesting because it's not very martial specific but it's only martial classes that have it and that is the support or skill support style of Marshalls now obviously there's a lot of abilities you can use to Aid your allies even a barbarian can't use something like intimidation to give the fear status to an enemy which reduces their ACS DC's and skill checks as well as their ability to hit so there's it's something that's very important you can do obviously and having a higher intimidation makes it more likely for you to intimidate an enemy or to critically intimidate an enemy giving them an even higher fear penalty but the Rogue and the investigator gain a lot of skills they gain the skill every level and a skill fee every level meaning they have a lot of utility outside of combat or even in combat if they want to go like the battle medicro so your job is mostly to Aid your team in whatever way you can outside of combat whilst doing still some good damage both these classes obviously have the ability to do extra damage whether it's the Strategic strike or sneak attack they also have a large variety of other ways they can affect combat as well not only about that but there's a variety of archetype dedications like the like the Mueller Dedication that is specifically designed to knock back or knock down their enemies an enemy that is prone has a minus two to their AC for being flat-footed and a minus one to their attack rolls until they stand up and not only that but standing up causes them to provoke attack of opportunity from like the fighter so there's a lot of ways you can use skills like Athletics or intimidation or even skills like bone mutt which is from the diplomacy skill line that allows you to drop in enemies will says which is really good for some of your spell casters regardless the support style Marshall is designed to look to get the most benefit out of a combat by either reducing enemy abilities giving their team bonuses or whether in Exploration mode you just have a lot of abilities like a lot opening doors with lock picking or pickpocketing whatever it is your character is designed to have a lot of different things you can do and be kind of a multi-purpose jack of all trades alright last section of this video here Marshall tips first of all invest in a skill that assists you in combat whether that's Athletics intimidation or deception these are the three major ones though there are some other skills that can be helpful in combat as well but these are the three major ones because Athletics is based on strength which a lot of Marshals are based off of and this allows you to grab an enemy for instance which can make them flat-footed which makes it easier for yourself and your allies to hit them as long as you have a free hand or trip your enemy means because when an enemy is prone they are still flat-footed but they also have a penalty to attacking and it is easier for your allies to hit your enemy as well and it provokes attacks of opportunity though you gotta recognize that there are certain situations grappling is good against enemies that don't have a strong fortitude so scroll on your enemies not strong enemies tripping is good against enemies that are not very agile so enemies are big and hulking are very victim to being tripped though you might want to pick up the Titan wrestler skill feat which allows you to use these abilities on creatures up to two sizes larger than you so this is something to keep in mind fainting is another one I really highly recommend you look into I already kind of mentioned how fear can reduce ACS and such like that but deception does it better and it's for you essentially what it does is you faint the enemy before you strike them this makes them potentially flat-footed which reduces their AC by two remember when I was talking about Strikers when we're talking about the minus five or even minus 10 that it could be to strike the enemy well now these numbers become a little bit more manageable that minus 2 can make a minus 5 into a minus three that's only a 15 percent less likely chance to hit and if you're a fighter that's already 10 up that's only a five percent drop chance which means a fighter with faint is very likely to make two strikes on a round easy peasy and that's a good use of your third action in a combat round if you don't need to move this can be done in a wide variety of situations as well especially when flanking is not really available you want to give yourself every opportunity to deal damage to your Target and so when you add faint into your rotation more or less rather than attacking three times and maybe hitting the second and almost never hitting the third you're attacking twice but you're hitting the first and very likely hitting the second as well which just improves your overall damage potential I mean you can look at fainting an enemy as a 10 damage increase because you're 10 more likely to hit enemies which is really really good it's something that you should not underestimate at all and then obviously intimidation is good because the fear status works on everything it can even make your spell casters more likely to hit with their spells because the fear of status effect also reduces the enemy's saves so obviously if you're a marshall even if you're the most fighting and fighting Marshals you get skill increases invest in one skill increase get the highest chance of creating those kind of skills because they do help indeed and you can look at archetypes like the Mauler that makes it where you're hitting an enemy with a two-handed weapon and knocking them clean onto their ass because you are just overpowering them use whatever you can to make the combat better for yourself and for your allies and Marshalls please look at your three Action System get the most out of it don't just attack a bunch of times I know it's tempting when you're a monk to sit there on the enemy and just flurry blows and strike strike and strike four times to try to hit for those extra shots and hey it's not necessarily a bad strategy in some situations but you're better off intermixing like doing a fluria blows faint and then another attack or faint flurry blows and do something else grapple whatever it really doesn't matter the only thing that really matters is how you're using your Action System and that's going to be my Marshals make it happen as well it's easy now obviously there's a lot more we could talk about we could talk about weapon traits and how that affects your character we could talk about weapon runes and enchantments and the kind of stuff you need to know but honestly when it comes to Marshalls just know that getting the most out of the three Action System means a lot to you and your gear is also super important I didn't mention this before but make sure that you're getting the best weapons and using the best armor that you have in any situation as you're more reliant on your gear than a spellcaster as there's not much spell casting gear and the game is not balanced around spell casting gear but the game is balanced around Marshall fighting gear with weapons and potency runes and the like so get potency runes get fundamental runes and well just make sure your character is as geared up as you can and that's going to be it for me I hope this was helpful if there's anything I could have added or could have done better please let me know down in the comments and as well if you enjoy these Style videos I really do need your help a like especially with the algorithm changes recently is going to mean a lot so it's the least you can do to kind of help make sure this content does well and if you want to see more like it you can subscribe as well you can also follow me on Twitter or join us in the Discord linked down in the description where we talk all things tabletop including war games like Warhammer 40K so if you want to talk with me and my friends and join our wonderful Community that's the place I'd recommend being but that's gonna be it for me thank you all so much for watching good luck with your games look at the bad luck to me and I'll see y'all next time bye

Channel: BadLuckGamer

Views: 2,707

Keywords: Character Creation, Pathfinder 2e, How To, Character Builds

Id: hbxbPvGW2N8

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2022