ONE character with AS MANY CLASSES AS POSSIBLE in Pathfinder 2E!

hi I'm Ronald the rules lawyer and we're going to make epared in Pathfinder second edition now who is epared well it's a joke skit by puff and Forest a YouTube creator that has a character take one level of every class in Dungeons and Dragons now people should watch it he has a ridiculous backstory and of course D and players know you're not going to make a very effective character if you take one level in every class and here's a little clip how does the character play it doesn't I mean seriously I'm an Archer that can't shoot a fighter can't fight a Healer can't heal a wizard can't cast spell does that sound like a broken character to you meanwhile Pathfinder second edition claims to be the king of character customization make anything you want there's so many options but can it handle taking absur can you take a level in every class and also is it a viable character in this experiment I'll take as many classes as possible and I'll answer the first question no you cannot dip into every single class in in the game first of all there's more classes in Pathfinder but also that's not how multiclassing Works in Pathfinder and I say multiclassing in quotes and I'll explain soon why I do that but is it viable and I pose two questions in this experiment first are you able to make abser and is it still viable in other words do you still have a viable strong character that doesn't fall behind the rest of the party and become useless second if the answer is yes then do your choices matter in Pathfinder some detractors of Pathfinder say that Pathfinder is so balanced that it makes choices in your character meaningless now unfortunately I can only cover the first couple of levels today I am a victim of my own detail orientedness and I didn't want to just make a build video people who know my channel know that's not me I like to show and see how builds play in action in demonstration combats so I'm not jumping to level 20 and saying what I got in this video The Joy is in the journey we're going to go slowly and if there's interest in this video and this series I hope to do I will do follow-up videos and eventually make it to level 20 given how slowly I'm going to be going about this and that I'm going to be doing combat demonstrations I have other goals with this video series I hope to Showcase Pathfinders deep character customization show how build choices affect your in combat choices and see how combat evolves from low levels to high levels so I will kind of apologize in advance for going through this slowly anyway if I jumped to level 20 it wouldn't be possible to go over everything in ab's character given how many things you gain as you level up in Pathfinder now who am I I am Ronald the rules lawyer I am a lawyer who has been running tabletop role playing games since 2010 later in my life and I ran an after school middle school tabletop role playing game class where we did Pathfinder starfinder and d and d fifth edition Pathfinder 2E is my preferred system but I cover other systems like And subscribe also support my patreon where I now will be starting to put bonus content I'll be putting my character sheets for up S up there I also plan to post my initial plan for this video series that already goes up to level 20 on the patreon I actually wrote it out in January of this this year 2023 other events intervened and I had to do other videos there's also going to be a second bonus combat with epared on my patreon as well as other exclusive videos including me running Pathfinder 2E for D and YouTubers okay so before making upar it's necessary first to talk about how Pathfinder does multiclassing in quotes in Pathfinder you have only one class unlike in Third Edition and fifth edition d and d and firsted Edition Pathfinder I actually put out a two-part video as part of my law school Series going into character creation and going deep into why I think multiclassing had to die for characters to thrive links in the video description but in yes in Pathfinder you only have one class and abser is going to be a rogue and I'll explain that choice later as a rogue as you go up from Level 1 to 20 you get a number of class features that Advance automatically you get your sneak attack advances from 1d6 to 4 D6 you get a number of class features that improve your attacks and give you new Maneuvers let's call them and meanwhile you get a class feat at every even numbered level those class Feats give you new abilities new options to do as a rogue but you can forgo a rogue feat to take an archetype feat archetypes think of them as themes some archetypes are multiclass archetypes and give you aspects of another class here on the screen is the initial dedication feat for the Rogue archetype as you can see it gives you certain things and does not give you everything that a rogue who starts at level one as a rogue gets this meanwhile also unlocks further Feats in the Rogue archetype you can think of archetypes also as feet trees you must take three Feats from one archetype before you move on to another so you can kind of see already that if you take 10 more Rogue feats or if you take zero more Rogue Feats and instead take archetype Feats you still get all of these other things Rogues get those things are not affected these features are fixed guaranteed and meanwhile you are adding your level to all of your stats some of these features include improvements to your reflex saving throws for example and so your mathematical progression is fixed if abser were a wizard he would still get 10th rank wizard spell slots even if you were to take 10 archetype Feats in Rogue since all of your class features are fixed you can think of your class Feats as ribbon abilities for your class so what are the parameters for our experiment making abser first I will do as many classes as possible within the limits of the system since you have to take three archetype Feats in one archetype before we can move on to the next I will also try to make eper a viable character our experiment after all is to find out whether you can make eper and make him viable I will also start with the core four the classic four of fighter cleric Wizard and Rogue before moving on to other classes and as you can tell I'm only going to do multiclass archetypes there are other archetypes not keyed to a certain class things like beastmas that lets you have an animal companion which any other class can take things like wrestler or poisoner that's a whole other world of character customization that is possible that we we will not touch on we already have enough on our plate also lastly and very importantly we will be using the very popular free archetype variant that I believe the majority of tables at least those that post on the Pathfinder 2E subreddit use that give you a bonus feet every even number level that can only be used on an archetype why because it lets us get as many archetypes as possible and we want to make it as absurd as possible so we need to do it if we weren't using it we would only be a to get four archetypes so let's start at the beginning at level one it'll be a long journey though I hope you will enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it so let's get [Music] started abser is going to be a rogue and after I left them I was on the streets for a while and I met a guy who taught me the secret to being a rogue now why I've chosen Rogue I'll get to when I get to that part of character creation you start with your an ancestry first and for him he's going to be a human you also get a Heritage which is kind of like what D and D would call a subrace and in Pathfinder there are versatile heritages that let you take on aspects of other ancestries and one of them is to be part Elf or iuv Varin formerly known as half elf it gives him lowl light vision and also unlocks the ancestry Feats for elf and aarin and for his first level ANC feat he's actually going to choose from the human list and take Natural ambition a human feat that gives you a bonus class feet next is his background which can reflect his upbringing or his profession and he's going to be a criminal he is going to be a rogue uh after all as his one class and he's also going to be on the lamb which makes sense for absur because he's going to be journeying across the landscape and encountering guilds and other organizations that let him take up abilities of other classes a background gives you two skills and his will be stealth and underworld lore and a skill feet and his will be experienced Smuggler which will make it easier for him to conceal items and sneak them past authorities next is his class and he's going to choose Rogue now why do I choose Rogue uh first of all it has to be one of the core four also I did not want to pick a spellcaster because the spellcaster even if they don't choose any more class Feats and just choose archetypes they're going to get all of their spell slots up through 10th Rank and so for many people that will already answer the question for them is abser viable and I wanted to make it harder for us to do that and strain the system so I chose a non-spell casting class and another reason is that Rogues are multi-talented by nature and that fits his theme he gets to get lots of skills and skill Feats and we also get to show off that part of the system meanwhile during all of these steps he was building up his attributes and we have his strength of plus one dexterity plus 4 Constitution plus 0 intelligence plus two wisdom + one and Charisma + one it should be no surprise that he has maxed out his dexterity as a rogue but as you can see I've spread the boosts Out Among the other attributes to set up for taking other multiclass archetypes you need to have a plus two at least in one or two attributes in order to take any multiclass archetype and it's worth pointing out now that obser and DND D is kind of not really possible if you are using Point by and you'd have to be very lucky in rolling your stats because you need to have a 14 in pretty much every uh ability score um except Constitution whereas in Pathfinder 2E because it's generous with attribute boosts you get to increase four different attributes every five levels you can kind of do it with the core character building rules okay so we now move on to what he gets from being a rogue first you get sneak attack you get to do an extra 1d6 Precision damage when you hit a foe that is off guard there are many ways to make a foe off guard and this is if you do it with an agile or finesse weapon or a range weapon but if it's a throne weapon it has to be agile or finesse next is surprise attack in Pathfinder 2E you can sometimes roll a skill for your initiative role that is not perception which is technically not a skill either if you roll stealth or deception for initiative and doing something appropriate to one of those two skills surprise attack means that every foe who has not acted yet is off guard to you so this is good for obvious reasons let you do your sneak attack so AB SAR is going to be skullking in the shadows or we'll have an advantage if he starts a fight in the middle of the conversation next is he is trained in light armor or unarmored defense and he's trained with simple and Marshal weapons now what does trained mean he gets to add his level plus two to his ability score modifier to determine attacks or in the case of armor his armor class abser will also be an expert in perception reflex and will Saving throws next is what you might want to call a subass his big Choice as a rogue there are several one of them is a Ruffian which lets you bully people and and actually make strength your key ability score that's a fun one but he's going to choose to be a classic thief the thief's advantage is that he gets add his dexterity modifier to his damage when he attacks with a finesse melee weapon you cannot do that by default in Pathfinder 2 e and the thief is the only Rogue and also the only subclass in the game that can do this next is his class feet but he gets two because of his natural ambition feet first epsod will be a trap finder he will get a bonus to finding traps and avoiding traps but also if he's focused on something different than searching for traps in Exploration he will still get a free check to search for traps his bonus feet will be tumbled behind in Pathfinder you can try to go through an enemy space using your acrobatic skill and when he does so that enemy is off guard to his next attack so it's a great way to set up that sexy sneak attack damage next he gets skills and boy does he get a lot of skills he got two from his background which is normal and also being a rogue he gets stealth for free and because he already had stealth he get that turns into a free skill he gets thievery from his Thief Racket and he gets seven more skills plus his intelligence bonus of two so that means he has 13 skills at level one Rogues are the best at skills in the game and on that same thing theme every other class has only their skill feed from their background at level one and get another at every even numbered level but Rogues get a skill feed at every level in the game including level one and so his skill feed is going to be intimidating glare other people need to talk to enemies and be understood by them to have a fair chance of making them scared but obar can just look at them for equipment he's going to get the standard gear including thieves tools and he's also going to dual wheels he's going to wield a Rapier and a dagger you can see UPS's level one character sheet that I made in hero lab on my patreon if you support it now what happens when he levels up um let's not do that yet actually let's do combat demonstration let's see how abser performs in a combat now now why make a level one combat demonstration abser has not branched out of his base class yet well one I thought it would be a good Baseline so that we have something to compare to but also there's just a lot of things you can do in Pathfinder combat it's good to establish the variety of things he can do as a rogue because his build choices later will affect his play in combat obser has made some friends a fighter cleric and Wizard and they have ventured into this underground cave complex to find and raid an evil underground Temple they see this ogre up ahead and a giant spider on the ceiling an obsurd Whispers to them and says hey let me lead the way follow me don't make a noise so he does that and they each make individual stealth rolls which does give them away to the enemy the ogre pretends not to hear they go ahead and reach their position of course the entire time obser is simultaneously looking for traps the ogre got ready to attack them and after she notices that they're not getting out of their little hiding space she decides to start walking forward and it's at this point the party de decides to Spring their attack they all roll initiative and the party rolls stealth for initiative abser gets to go first he has a good stealth after all and he got A plus two bonus from cover in Pathfinder you get three actions and moving up to your speed is an action he's going to move up here into this spot and attack the ogre with his Rapier his Rapier has an attack of plus seven and the ogre has a 17 Armor class however he has surprise attack and the ogre has not acted yet so the ogre is off guard and has only an AC 15 abser strikes with his Rapier and he rolls an 18 and total 25 and that is 10 bigger than the ogre's Armor class so that's a critical hit in Pathfinder 2E that means his damage is doubled and he had sneak attack so he actually gets to roll his Rapier D6 and sneak attack D6 add his dexterity uh to damage and that all doubles but also the Rapier has the deadly DH rate that means that when you critically hit after you double the damage you add another d8 to the damage so this is going to do a lot and it's going to do 25 damage to the ogre Warrior that's half of her health ogres are level three creatures they're like a boss creature for a level one party Fighters are more accurate but obser is deadlier with his crits and we're not done he has three actions he has one more action he can attack with the same weapon multiple times over the course of his turn however each subsequent attack will be less accurate so his Rapier only has a plus two bonus however his offhand weapon the dagger is a little weaker than a Rapier but it's an agile weapon it has a smaller multiple attack bonus and it's going to be more accurate right now it has a plus three now if you're playing in person you'll want to write down these bonuses ahead of time he's thinking of stabbing the ogre with the dagger which is still off guard to him or maybe he wants to throw it at the spider on the ceiling and the spider is off guard also since it hasn't acted yet but he doesn't want to do that he's not in the safe position right now another issue is that he does not get his deck bonus to damage throwing a weapon something to do for emergencies so what he's going to do is stride away remember his Constitution is only plus Z the ogre does not respond most enemies don't have opportunity attacks and by making distance the ogre now has to spend an action walking up to upair the rules reward you for skirmishing in combat basically which any character can do in this game but obser kind of has an incentive to do it more it's only his first attack that's likely to crit after all before his next turn the fighter comes up and raises his shield and tries to attack the ogre he hits it and draws its attention the ogre goes all in against the fighter and lands a critical hit 27 damage uh the fighter can't block enough of that to prevent a knockout so he's knocked out the ogre then stalks over to abser and tries to make an attack against him and he is going to hit o 13 damage ober's almost out the cleric heals the fighter and moves forward the spider drops down from the ceiling and attacks the cleric and poisons the cleric and makes her off guard as well with the poison the wizard casts Force barrage formerly known as magic Missile spending three actions and shooting three missiles against the spider obser is next what he's going to do is try to Tumble through the ogre to use his tumble behind feet and make it off balance he rolls acrobatics he needs to beat a 16 and he succeeds so it's now off guard to his next attack and now he attacks with his Rapier and that is a hit and that is going to do sneak attack damage 12 damage to the ogre he is a hero he could do a killing blow with his dagger but he's not that heroic he's going to walk around um and go behind this rock at higher levels he'll have more options open up to him as he gets more ability abilities but there are other things that have not happened yet that I'm going to demonstrate really quickly that any character can do and which obser may want to do because attacking two three times isn't always good because you have that penalty to your accuracy basically there are other ways for obser to make an enemy off guard to him and he more than anyone else wants to set up an alpha strike because he can get that sneak attack damage if they're off guard and with his Rapier if he can get a critical hit he gets that juicy deadly d8 damage setting someone up to be off guard can turn a regular hit doing average 7 and 1/2 damage to a critical hit with his Rapier with sneak attack doing 26 and2 damage so what if the party delays and waits for the ogre to approach well the ogre goes up and attacks the fighter and severely wounds him fighter jumps back in and goes to the opposite side of the ogre and makes an attack this sets up a flank if you're standing on opposite sides of a foe that foe is off guard to your melee attacks obser can walk up and make two attacks with his weapons and he can score or a sneak attack two times let's say the ogre started far away and spent her whole turn going up to here he's been hiding but he can't use surprise attack on her because she has acted already he can sneak forward at half speed to a point of cover let's say the corner of the swall and attack from behind it he'll have to roll stealth to stay hidden then she would be off guard to this attack you have to have some cover or concealment let's say dim light or darkness and the ogre can't see well in that area he can also hide behind cover if it's reasonable at melee or from range which makes him hidden and the ogre off guard also abser has many skills one of them being deception he can do the faint action against the ogre Warrior to create an opening making her off guard also if he's at range or if he's in melee he can create a diversion say something distracting or point which way it's not easy to pull off multiple times however hiding and sneaking were skills fainting and creating a diversion were also skills using his Charisma absurds many talents are becoming useful also with his Charisma he can try to demoralize the ogre Warrior and say something frightening they don't share a language however so minus 4 penalty but he has intimidating glare he just needs to look at her and has a good chance of making her frightened so I'll put a list up on the screen of all of the things abser can do at level one so where are we at with abser at level one there is no question that he is a rogue he has been tumbling around the battlefield skirmishing going in and out using his skills positioning distracting foes tumbling through them to open up opportunities to get those nasty crits he has a rogy rogue and this was all at level one using the base rules only again the free archetype rule variant only kicks in at level two all right let's move on to level [Music] two first I'll explain what happens at every level up you gain hit points and as a rogue it gets eight hit points every level he doesn't roll any dice he just gets all eight and all of his stats that he is trained or expert in he goes up by one all of his attacks his armor class as well even levels are almost always the same you get a class feed and a skill feet however you usually don't get a skill increase everyone else needs to wait until level three to get one of those and then they get one every other level after that he gets a skill increase starting at level two and every level after that and he will get a free archetype feat but with his bonus skill increase he's going to boost his stealth skill to expert he's going to be an expert at skullking in the shadows he can roll that for initiative his bonus has gone up from plus 7 to+ 10 also as an expert the party can follow his lead something called Follow the Leader in Exploration mode even if they're untrained they can add their level and regardless they get to add a plus two circumstance bonus to their stealth checks when doing so for his skill feet he is going to choose quiet allies when the group is avoiding notice together they don't need to each make a role they only need to make a single roll for the person with the lowest bonus abser can have lead stealth Ops and infiltrations for his class feet he is going to choose twin faint because he's dual wielding this is a good idea for him he spends two actions and makes an attack with each weapon and no matter what happens with the first attack the foe will always be off guard to the second attack remember a lot of the ways he can make someone off guard only lasts for one attack for his free archetype feet he is going to take wizard dedication this is our first quote unquote multiclass he needs an intelligence of plus two which he has in order to take this feat and be level two obviously he gets the cast to spell activity and he becomes trained in spell casting for wizard spells he uses his intelligence bonus he also gets a spell book that has four Arcane cantrips and every day he can prepare two of those cantrips which he can cast an unlimited number of times that day he also gets trained in a skill Arana he already has Arcana so he gets a free skill here he's going to become trained in occultism he now has 14 skills he is trained in and he's expert in one of them notably the dedication feat does not give him everything that a wizard gets at first level you only get what is spelled out in the feat itself now a level one wizard would be getting a lot more they would be getting a spell book that has 10 Arcane cantrips and six first rank spells they would have first rank spell slots and be able to prepare five cantrips a day they would have an Arcane thesis which is the wizard subass that gives you a special ability and they'd have an Arcane school which gives them a bonus spell slot per Rank and a rechargeable Focus spell that they can cast repeatedly throughout the day and Arcane Bond a magically bonded item that lets the wizard recast a spent spell once per day abser gets none of that and we will see as abser levels up how he will advance his skill in the Wizardry arts for his gear he will have 5050 gold for people wonder dring I am giving him the average of level two wealth and level three wealth for a new character so this reflects where he is Midway through level two he is going to get a plus one Rapier a magical weapon that takes up most of his budget and with what little that remains he is going to get a consumable item as a wizard he can use any scroll with an Arcane spell on it Arcane is one of the four magical Traditions but he is going to get a scroll of sure strike formerly known as true strike scrolls are only four gold each so let's do another battle since the party became level two obser has advanced in status and become the gang's leader being a level two Rogue now he spots an ogre up ahead and tells the party be quiet follow my lead and let's uh sneak up ahead so whereas before they had to each roll stealth they only need to have one of them roll stealth now and they get a bunch of uh bonuses they get to add their level even if they're not trained so this is much more like likely to succeed and it succeeds they're unnoticed by the ogre all while absurd is searching for traps the party Springs their Ambush and they all roll initiative obser now has a bonus to initiative of plus 12 because the stealth is now expert and he benefits from cover abser is first but decides to act after the fighter so he delays the fighter is going to run up make an attack on that ogre he hits and he's going to back up and Retreat the cleric had a much higher stealth bonus this time so she's actually in front of the ogron initiative she's going to move here and shoot fire Ray which is a 60ft range spell does she hit the ogre yes she does there's a very cool animation as she does about seven damage the ogre runs up with a battlecry ogre hook in hand and attacks going to hit and try to hit a second time and that misses because the ogre is acted already abser needs to make the ogre off guard to him so he's going to go up tumble through he succeeds and now it is off guard to him he can now do his new twin faint feet but he's going to play it a little safer this turn because that would use up all of the rest of his actions he's going to make a single strike with his rap here and he has a plus 9 to hit instead of a plus seven because of his level up and he has a magic weapon that's one short of a crit I'll put some math up on the screen by the way to show um his DPR has gone up significantly just from uh since level one that's 12 damage to the ogre Warrior thanks to sneakers attack and for his next action he can do the whole variety of things he saw he could do before but he can now do a new thing which is to cast a spell he's going to cast The Shield cantrip it increases his armor class by one and also gives him a reaction if the ogre hits him and Deals damage he could lower the damage by five that gives him some protection so he can stand there to set up his next turn note that he can dual wield he doesn't need a free hand while casting spells that is something in Pathfinder 2E that is is now much truer in the remaster nearly every spell in the game does not require a free hand next is the hunting spider which is going to go down from the ceiling run up and attack the fighter it hits next is the wizard he's going to walk up and cast breathe fire formerly known as burning hands he's going to stand at the safe spot and then Target our enemies that's going to do nine damage and they get to do reflex saves and the ogre fails while the spider succeeds the fighter is going to wait for the cleric to act first the cleric is going to cast the bless spell in a 15ft radius all of her allies will get a plus one bonus to attacks and to fear saving throws she also tries to demoralize the ogre by saying something holy but the ogre doesn't care um she's not able to use her glare the way upser does the fighter is now going to get into a flanking position now buffed by this bless spell and how is a Godly plus 12 to attack uh just a regular hit he makes another strike and it misses level fight was a severe encounter and here it is a moderate encounter just above a moderate encounter just a tad next is the ogre warri who's going to attack abser and this is a crit against abser no and uh the ogre Hook is a deadly weapon that's 27 damage against abser uh that would knock him out except that he has a shield spell so he reduces that to 22 damage using his reaction um he waxes off that gigantic weapon he cannot cast Shield again for 10 minutes but this turn is not over here comes the ogre Warrior again that misses and there's another Miss so next is upur well he uh has some options he can do twin faint right now uh they have to be against the same enemy however he could try to Tumble behind using his feet to make one of them off guard and then make two attacks that might inflict sneake attack damage however he has uh he wants to play with his new toys that he learned in Wizardry school so he's going to do something else he is going to try to First Attack the ogre Warrior that misses unfortunately but his new spell that he his other spell that he knows is electric Arc he's going to do a Palpatine on them he extends out his hands to both enemies and can attack both of them with a single C trip 24 electricity damage and they have to do basic reflex they can take as little as zero damage or as much as double damage depending on which of the four degrees of success they land on so they're going to now save against it they both make their reflex saves however and each take two damage one thing to say is that if he had made a second weapon attack it would have suffered from the multiple attack penalty and being a Palpatine casting the spell that called for a saving throw did not have an attack role meant that it does not suffer from the multiple attack penalty he basically got to do two attacks at full ACC accuracy with this combining weapon fighting and casting spells it's a good option when You Face weaker foes or foes at low health and it's also good especially if you know a foe has poor reflexes the hunting spider is next and it's going to go for the fighter it lands a critical hit and he fails the saving throw as well it bites again and that is going to knock him out with its Last Action it goes for obser but misses with this shocking turn of events the spellcasters which now cludes of sared look at each other and decide it's going down they're going to bring out all of their other spells the wizard cast Force barrage but spreads its missiles between the hunting spider and the ogre Warrior this kills the spider and wounds the ogre Warrior further the cleric heals the fighter and walks up to be in position to give more healing if necessary the fighter stands up and walks around the ogre to set up a flank tries to hit the ogre with his shield and that misses the ogre War ER seeing that it's going to go after the fighter 11 damage uses his reactive Shield feet in the meantime he's down to one hit points and the ogre misses oberus next the first thing he does is swap items with one action he's going to put his dagger away and bring out his Scroll of Sher strike with action two he's going to cast Sher strike which takes one action and with his third action he's going to attack the ogre Warrior he now gets to roll the attack twice and use the better roll it's what D and D players know as Advantage also if the ogre were invisible or in fog right now he gets to ignore that penalty because the ogre's flanked it's off guard so he has a 44% chance to critically hit the ogre right now but the cleric's bless spell uh makes that a 51% chance so let's see what happens this is take one oh that's a crit that is going to probably kill the ogre and it does 28 damage afterward they look through the ogre's things and find a note from a commander apparently this ogre was just one of an army of ogres that are commanded by Frost Giants that will be threatening the realm it looks like there are greater dangers ahead for our party for this in the previous fight I planned what happened including the dice rolls to show what I wanted to show but if you're interested in a unplanned fight where I let the dice fall where they may uh I do play out the level one fight and the level two fight on my patreon uh if you support that you can see them so where are we at after two levels from our questions earlier are you able to make upser and is it still viable and if yes does that mean your choices are meaningless do we know more to answer these questions so are the choices that abser had before balanced between single classing you could call it or multiclassing well thankfully because of the free archetype variant we have we have direct evidence now we can ask ourselves if he did not have free archetype and had to choose between either twin faint or wizard dedication feet how would he Faire remember I only did free archetype for this series in order to get as many multiclasses as possible we get to do a head to head with the wizard dedication feat he got an additional skill that he did not get if he had taken twin fate besides that he had more actions that he could do on his turn they're all competing for his three actions he didn't gain more actions per turn and for twin faint that cost two actions to use remember this is the feat you spend two actions to make one attack with each weapon in each of your hands and the enemy is off guard to the second attack so if he only took twin faint and not the wizard feet he would be able to more reliably make an enemy off guard tumble behind an enemy and then make two attacks with an offguard enemy however the what what do you call it marginal benefit is smaller than it sounds because there are other ways to make an enemy off guard as we know you can flank an enemy and make multiple attacks more likely to hit also it makes the enemy off guard to the second less accurate attack and of course it requires committing two actions the enemy might die before your second attack and it being two actions means you're you have less freedom to move around the battlefield and do other things if he had instead only taken the wizard dedication feat he would have cantrips that increase his options in combat things that are outside of weapon fighting but have their own use cases and also if he decides to free up his hand to do this he can take out a scroll and access even more spells and he can prepare different cantrips on different days and find more cantrips to add to a spell book it opens up more options and also unlocks more wizard archetype Feats if he decides to choose those to get more spellcasting abilities now neither feet was necessarily better than the other however we do see that it does have a big effect on what options you have in combat and this answers the second question does the fact that things are more balanced here make your choices meaningless and I think it's pretty clear the answer is no also regardless of which of these two Feats he would have taken his advancement as a rogue continues he is still more rogy all of his stats including his attacks and all the skills he used in combat have increased by one because he's the best at skills as a rogue he gets that extra skill increase he's able to become expert in stealth get a feet that helps his allies and his better skills also make it easier to debuff enemies and set up those juicy crits he can now lead an ambush or lead his party through an enemy stronghold and his improved skills makes it easier for him to do those things that debuff enemies and set up those juicy crits now I'll make a comment here that his advancement in Rogue is much greater than what he is getting from the wizard class you're not going to be able to take an even amount of two classes in Pathfinder 2E unless you use an official variant rule called dual class PCS that on the other hand increases the power of all characters all players at your table and your GM will need to be on board now back to eper no matter which of those two Feats he took his bread and butter Rapier attack would have the same stats and the other class Feats that he could have taken would not have changed this either detractors of Pathfinder 2 will say well that means your choices don't matter but I I think I've shown that they do matter let's look at a few examples basically they don't give you straight up math advantages that make them clearly better than competing choices so here's a few class Feats that he could have taken in Li of twin faint Nimble Dodge he uses his reaction to get plus two bonus to an incoming attack new or next a reaction when he knocks an enemy down at zero hit points he can try to demoralize somebody else within 60 ft but with a bonus that's a cool feat and unbalancing blow if he critically hits against a foe the target is off guard against him until the end of his next turn now Nimble Dodge only works sometimes your next the occasion for it only comes up sometimes unbalancing blow arguably looks like the strongest of these however it needs a critical hit to trigger and if your party can provide you a flanking buddy anyway this has less marginal benefit so what your class feeds do as the Rogue they don't improve your basic math they give you ways to leverage different situations so it's not a huge loss to forgo a rogue class feed whereas in other systems you there are some Clear Choices that make you much more effective do more damage it's often said that in other systems you can win at character creation but in Pathfinder 2E arguably and I think I've shown when you make your character an advanc it level it up your choices only begin so that's it for now so what will happen with abser when he advances in his Wizardry studies and unlocks forbidden secrets and gets kicked out of Wizardry school and has a religious Awakening if there's sufficient interest and leave a comment and also give some feedback too uh on things I could do better then I will do another part uh and level them up I already have it planned but there's a lot of work involved in preppering the PowerPoint and doing combat demonstrations Etc so I need to know if it's worth it so let me know I promise that the other videos will go faster through the levels we have to establish some foundational things here and I will not do a combat demo for every level I will not do that if you haven't yet support my patreon where you get to see the character sheets for upair level one and level two bonus content where I play out the level one and level two fights without scripting anything and I let the dice fall where the May and also my planning document that I made at the start of this year for my original plan for this video series that already goes up to level 20 but makes some points that I think I've made in other videos since and so I'm actually pairing back on that initial plan it's not fully flushed out and in fact I hope people on the patreon can give me feedback uh Corrections suggestions that will improve the final product of course there are other exclusive videos on my patreon including me running Pathfinder for D and YouTubers also check out my two series on character creation and why multiclassing had to die in Pathfinder 2E also join my Discord where we talk Pathfinder 2E and other gaming and you can also play Pathfinder 2E with the drop in organized play system that we have so that's it I have been Ronald the rules lawyer I'll see you next [Music] time [Music]

Channel: The Rules Lawyer

Views: 16,597

Keywords: rules lawyer, rpg, dnd, d&d, pathfinder, pathfinder 2e, pf2, pf2e

Id: 8NvlgkARcpY

Length: 42min 3sec (2523 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2023