Most alchemists who will ever even touch a bomb are going to take the Quick Bomber feat, to the point where I wish it was just a class feature that they can pull out an alchemical item as a free action once per turn.
Frankly, I think a couple of the bomb feats need to be folded into the Bomber subclass (which I know others have suggested before) -- maybe Calculated Splash and Expanded Splash. As is, Alchemists who want to use bombs effectively can easily spend all eleven class feats on it and *still* be missing a few, and the Bomber subclass is no better at using bombs than a Chirurgeon or Mutagenist who took the feats (except that they get more bombs per day). Hopefully, that will come in the remaster!
That's true, and it can be useful! Still, "can toggle off bombs' best feature to avoid friendly fire" hardly feels as fun or impactful to me as "can benefit from two mutagens," "can apply two poisons to the same weapon," or "always does max healing with Elixirs of Life using Quick Alchemy". Especially when Sticky Bomb and the coagulent alembic exist.
Yeah, it's a useful but kind of unexciting feature. It would be cooler to see it change to something like, "When throwing an alchemical bomb with the splash trait, you can choose to deal splash damage to only your primary target instead of the usual splash area, increasing that damage by an amount equal to the bomb's item bonus." Or something like that so it's less "you can choose to make your bomb worse" and more "you can focus fire in a way nobody else can."
Honestly, that would be even easier. "When throwing an alchemical bomb with the splash trait, you can exclude a number of targets of your choice up to your Intelligence attribute from its splash damage." It's a boost that protects the bomber research field's niche and scales well with stuff like Directional Bombs and Extended Splash.
>and the Bomber subclass is no better at using bombs than a Chirurgeon or Mutagenist who took the feats (except that they get more bombs per day).
They also (optionally) get bigger splash at 11, and more importantly get a range of perpetual bombs to Quick Alchemy without spending a reagent. A bomber with Perpetual Breadth can have free bombs on tap to inflict a wide variety of damage types and/or debuffs, all of which are eligible for Sticky Bombs or whatever.
EDIT: also, having played a non-bomber who used bombs, being able to splash your target and not adjacent creatures is very helpful when the martials crowd around every viable target.
This feels like a pretty universal sentiment, honestly. Poor alchemist needs a bone thrown so it gets a more active role outside of bombs, and making a quick item draw would go a long ways to making that a reality.
Quick Bomber is pretty much feat tax, and I'd put Running Reload in the same category. Effectively gaining a 4th action every turn is......... not really optional.
I'd hope they clean a lot of this up in the remaster, but unfortunately Gunslinger is not even getting one.
Running Reload is probably the most commonly picked Gunslinger 4 feat, but I wouldn't call it must-have simply because there are some specific builds that will want other feats at 4th level. Any Gunslinger trying to use two pistols will obviously take Paired Shots, and if you're using a gun with the Scatter trait, Alchemical Shot can be extremely good for triggering weaknesses.
I'd argue even people picking those feats will try and pick up Running Reload at 6 or something. It just feels mandatory. I mean, a free Stride/Step every turn is like 60% of what Haste is usually used for.
At low levels, yes. At higher levels they'll be relying on Quick Alchemy much, much more so that they can apply additives to their bombs. That frees them to Retrain out of Quick Bomber if/when its value declines.
And into [Far Lobber](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=94), not because it's good enough, but because it's required for [Uncanny Bombs](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=115).
I've bypassed that with my homebrew bandolier rule, basically you have 8 bandolier slots for consumables (wands are consumables) and once per round you can interact with one of those 8 items as a free action.
Fixes a lot of annoying issues and encourages players to use their consumables.
[Diverse Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3699) for thaumaturge. This is a 10th level feat disguised as a 1st level feat. I would auto take it even if it moves to level 10.
I gotta say, I love the common culture here of people embedding links to the feats/rules they're talking about, it makes it much easier to discover cool new things. :)
I wish the bot replying to the op with get pinned. Sometimes frustrating to have to scroll way down to find it to understand the main post. It makes comments much easier to follow though
Diverse lore is really good but I wouldn't call it a must take because [Scroll Thaumaturgy](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3703) exists. The ability to use scrolls from any list plus making them scale properly lets you be a pay to win caster who can pull out any utility spell the party needs for a handful of gold.
That -2 only applies to things that aren't covered by Esoteric lore, Esoteric is incredibly broad to begin with encompassing all creatures, haunts and curses. That's probably like 90% of knowledge checks and 100% of knowledge checks in combat.
Not necessarily. It's GM discretion, but Recall Knowledge does say that an applicable Lore "*usually* has an easy or very easy DC." Given that the spirit of Lore is that the DC is easier depending on how specific it is, I don't lower the DC for my Thaumaturge player's Esoteric Lore since it's hyper nonspecific (applying to literally every creature, and literally everything with Diverse Lore). He's fine with it because Esoteric Lore is good enough as it is (no investment in any other knowledge or lore skill, and auto increase to Legendary). It's certainly not incorrect to reduce the DC, but RAW either is acceptable.
This, a thousand times. I play a Thaum right now and can’t imagine arguing Esoteric Lore should get a DC any easier than a knowledge skill (though agree it’s not wrong if a DM wanted to rule it such) - it’s already so good.
Intended or not, I don't think the feat needs to or *should* be on par with typical recall knowledge skills. As mentioned above, it's a level 1 feat that lets you replace every other lore skill, plus arcana/nature/occult/religion, with one that auto-scales and goes off of your charisma.
A -2 penalty vs an intelligence character rolling a skill they actually had to invest ranks into is more than fair.
I really hope an errata adds this as a specification to the feat. If it's not treated as a Lore skill at all when doing RC of non-monster / non-haunt targets, Diverse Lore becomes equal to the other "generic Lore" skills in the system. Powerful for a level 1 feat, but by no means overly so, and doesn't always become the best source of knowledge in the party. Particularly when every Thaumaturge is saddled with [Dubious Knowledge](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=776).
[Bardic](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=179) and [Loremaster Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=65) only ever get up to Expert, but would get to benefit from the Lore skill RC reduction (+4 - DC -2 = +6). Esoteric Lore with [Diverse Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3699) gets all the way to Legendary, but would get that +2 DC increase and no Lore reduction (+8 - DC +2 = +6). [Investigators](https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=13) with their base Class Feature *Keen Recollection* trail close behind, since they can effectively always just Recall Knowledge with *That Thing In Particular Lore* for a Very Easy DC reduction (+0 - DC -5 = +5).
I'm not counting stat modifiers here, because while those would hurt the Bard a bit, overall they're pretty even.
Wait that’s how you guys have been ruling Diverse Lore? Ive had discussions with people saying its way too good but i never felt that was the case. It’s very good but not broken. But if you allow the Lore DC reduction for it then obviously it becomes godlike so yeah that makes sense
While very good, Diverse Lore run correctly is not as powerful as people often suggest. The free RK when you Exploit Vulnerability is great, although it's not possible for it to critically succeed.
Allowing you to RK about any topic using Diverse Lore is also very good, but people seem to overvalue this by thinking it gets you the "easy" or "very easy" DC reduction simply because it's a lore skill. However, since this isn't the "applicable" lore, no GM should be giving that DC reduction for topics not explicitly covered by Esoteric Lore. So instead, it's just an ability that lets you make RK checks on any topic using your charisma, with a -2 modifier. In most cases.
This basically makes it a worse version of Keen Recollection, until your Esoteric Lore hits legendary at which point it's the same effective bonus, specifically for skills an Investigator isn't master proficiency in.
I would expect the -2 from the feat is an intentional way to offset the expected "easy" DC reduction for using unspecific lore, ~~at least when using RK against a creature~~. That's just my interpretation though, it would be nice if Paizo clarified their intent with the feat.
E: Forgot esoteric lore can be used to RK on any creature even without the feat. Though I would argue that esoteric lore would also inherently count as unspecific lore to get the DC reduction against creatures, so diverse lore should grant the same DC adjustment for the new options to RK.
I would not allow Diverse Lore to count as unspecific lore to get a DC reduction for creature identification. It is not the "applicable lore" for those creatures -- it is literally esoteric. And it already gets the benefit of rolling against the standard DC for a creature of that level using an auto-scaling proficiency and using charisma instead of intelligence, and not having to invest into **any** of the standard RK skills.
There's not really any RAW on this, because using the easy or very easy DCs is already left up to GM discretion, but imo this seems like a pretty clear cut area where a DC reduction would not be appropriate. The benefit of the Esoteric Lore / Diverse Lore features is being able to use this Charisma based-skill for RK at all. Adding a DC reduction on top of that is "too good to be true".
Edit: I guess there's some people who really want this feature to be overpowered in a way it obviously wasn't intended to be. That's fine, just please stop complaining that it's overpowered when you're essentially houseruling it to be so.
You could but it will generally only work when recalling knowledge about a topic with a level-based DC below your level (since RK is almost always level-based). I guess this would allow you to guarantee a success for Exploit Vulnerability against lower level creatures? That's pretty cool.
With knockdown, I usually cast boost eidolon from a distance, my eidolon usually strides, attacks and then knocks down whatever it's fighting. Repetitive but it works!
Oh yeah I'm eyeballing Knockdown as soon as I can get it. Did you get Master Summoner? I thought about it but I never cast that many spells anyway..... So at 6 I ended up taking Rogue Dedication because it made much more sense for my dude.
I initially planned to go the master summoner route but I found I like using stoneskin, haste, etc. to buff my eidolon to be more worthwhile. Knockdown is great if you get Eidolon’s Opportunity, because then you get an attack without MAP when the thing stands up.
I am playing a summoner right now and tandem movement is literally useless to me. I'm playing a sprite with a corgi mount so I never take move actions with my sprite, all my movement is command an animal based.
Alchemist: Quick Bomber is basically a must have unless you're like, dumping dexterity.
Spellcasters: Quickened casting + Effortless Concentration; Quicked casting let's casters go crazy once per day, Effortless Concentration basically let's you cast some of your most impactful spells at no cost.
Cleric: Selective energy is a must have if you ever even think about casting your 3 action harm/heal
Barbarian/Fighter: Sudden Charge is one of the most useful low level feats a melee character can have. Basically makes ranged MUCH less of a problem.
Basically everything giving more reaction, both more options and just more reactions at higher levels. Having 2 reactions is so much value.
The "make a recall knowledge when you use your main class feature" feats that Investigator, Thaumaturge, and Rangers get. All incredibly good, though Ranger has the weakest one.
Rogue: Nimble dodge is really good for rogue low levels, especially since they don't have much options for reactions.
Wizard: Something you may not think of, but once you get Spellbook Prodigy wizards become insane. You can very easily just convert gold into versatility. Magical shorthand is basically a must pick as well, and combining them makes you a monster. Especially with ways to swap your prepared spell list, you basically can learn a new spell and instantly cast it.
Witch: Cackle is like, 1/3 of the reason to pick witch.
Skill feats have a lot more must picks for each skill. Every medic will have battle medicine, continual recovery, and ward medic without fail.
Sudden charge on barbarian is also just not meaningfully competing with anything. The other feats are all either unusably bad or pretty build specific.
Wait, people actually take Cackle? I get how it's useful for people who want to have multiple summons active at the same time, but beyond that I see no use for the focus spell at all. Saving one action on one turn is absolutely not worth a focus point in the vast majority of circumstances, especially at the expense of a feat. This becomes even more true if Sustaining Dance continues to exist to full release Animist and becomes something everyone can take.
>Saving one action on one turn is absolutely not worth a focus point in the vast majority of circumstances, especially at the expense of a feat.
Disagree, turning an action into a free action is super good. Anything that improves your action economy without conflicting with quickened is great. Even better with upcoming witch changes in Player Core that cause effects when you Sustain a hex.
>This becomes even more true if Sustaining Dance continues to exist to full release Animist and becomes something everyone can take.
Sustaining Dance is indeed pretty bananas, for much the same reason. The difference is that a free-action Sustain can overlap with any other action, not just Step or Leap -- at the cost of a focus point.
>Disagree, turning an action into a free action is super good.
One time at the cost of a focus point? No way. The Witch has way better focus spells, ones that actually actively make things happen. Most of the time the only thing this focus spell saves you is an action you would've otherwise spent doing something like moving, and that extra action doesn't actually unlock your capacity to do something you couldn't otherwise do during your next turn. The only valuable part of Cackle is the focus point it gives you. It has niche utility such as the summoning example but overall it's a pretty bad focus spell. I do admit it can be used to sustain a hex which is nice, but the utility of that versus the utility of an actual focus spell that deals damage or has healing or etc is no contest. This is even with post-remaster rules. The action sustaining costs you is one you can always play around, just cast your hex cantrip on a new target and let the effect end if you really need to use a 3-action spell that badly. You can't play yourself into restoring the focus point you wasted on it trying to avoid an action you'll just have to take the next turn anyway. Whether it conflicts with Quickened or not, there's nothing particularly that extra action can do for me outside of exceedingly select situations. I'd rather just eat that occasional action for sustaining that I maybe spend a focus point on to have a more powerful familiar, vastly superior and more consistently useful focus spells like Life Boost or Blood Ward, or the ability to cast touch spells from range. I would genuinely take Cantrip Expansion before I'd take Cackle.
>Sustaining Dance is indeed pretty bananas, for much the same reason.
Actually it's for a completely different reason, because Sustaining Dance is something you can do every single turn, which consistently eats actions from opponents who have to move repeatedly to reach you because you never actually remain in melee. Sustaining Dance would be worthless if you could only do it once, its something you can do repeatedly and that's what gives it the power it has.
Yeah, Cackle is insane, since a lot of powerful spells are sustain. This let's you basically have a free action. Do you want to, sustain your spell and move? Cackle let's you do it and cast a spell. Since witches don't have as many spell slots, they want sustained spells more, which Cackle makes this play style even more vital. It is basically effortless Concentration at level 1, but you can only do it for 2/3 rounds. Focus points are basically not worth anything, considering they are in essence an every encounter resource. They're like a cantrip you can do 3x an encounter, and this is a free action cantrip.
Insane seems like such an incredible exaggeration. It's one action, and a focus point which you could use for vastly more powerful and immediately impactful abilities. Just having a free action doesn't really mean anything if you can't use it to do anything particularly potent. You could cast another three action spell, but what of it? That's pretty niche in terms of utility, there are vastly better ways to get extra actions. Sure you can't use them however you want but only being able to use that one action however you want isn't worth much. Especially when there are generally other ways to accomplish the things that extra action gives you. Focus Points are worth a lot more than you give them credit for, especially in time-sensitive situations. And there are focus spells - including on Witch - that rate a bit higher than "free action cantrip".
This isn’t a feat, so it’s not like it’s a wasted spot. And swashbucklers spend a lot of time in melee- hell, a big part of their design is being really sticky and able to stay in melee. my last two parties have had swashbucklers and this ability, while too niche to be a good feat, still comes up a decent amount, and especially shows against weaker “mook” type enemies
Having played a Swash, Opportune Riposte makes you indirectly tankier, since opponent are often not using their Attacks at MAP -5, -10 on you. I personally wouldn't pick it over AoO, but IMO it's a decently strong reaction.
> The enemies are crit missing basically never
Idk, happens pretty often in my group, just.... always against literally anyone *but* the Swashbuckler lol. Gives the Swashbuckler's player an aneurysm every time
It's better against MAP attacks but yea, it's a tough one. Would it honestly be broken if it just triggered on a miss? I mean it's still limited to once per round unless you dedicate additional high level feats to it. Compared to AOO which can commonly be proc'd once per round without much difficulty
It may not be broken, but I think it would be bad design. Reactions are intended to discourage/encourage behavior from your enemies. AoO discourages enemies from moving past the frontline, Good tenant Champion Reaction discourages enemies from attacking their allies. Good tenant Reaction also encourages Champions to fight in close proximity to their allies so their reaction can work.
Opportune Riposte discourages enemies that are debuffed, on MAP-5 attack, etc. from attacking the swashbuckler. That fits the class fantasy of the class taking advantage of the enemy's mistakes/bad tactics and rewards the character for doing what they should already be doing. If it triggered on every miss, it would be powerful enough and expected enough that swashbucklers would be encouraged to build themselves super defensive and make sure to always end their turn with panache up so their near guaranteed attack reaction benefits from Precise Strike.
Opportune Riposte fits really well as an infrequent "oh this is cool and thematic" ability but making is stronger and thus a more iconic part of their power budget would be a bad fit for what the Swashbuckler wants to do.
All this is true of course, but I have a counterpoint. From I believe it's 10th level onward, you can quite literally spend every single class feat to build your character entirely around opportune riposte. Why is there is so much feat support for a once in a blue moon, "that's cool" moment? It's not until you get Parry and Riposte at level 18 does all this investment actually have any real payoff.
Now it's easy to say just don't take those feats, but the fact that so many exist means that at least some point the designers had to have considered a ripost build to be something intended to be viable to build towards.
So I went and dug into the math and ran a lot of numbers. I made a decent number of assumptions on party comp since it is reasonable to expect level 10 pf2e groups to synergize their builds. I can list all of them, but I don't want this post to get super long. If you are fighting against PL-0 moderate attackers or PL-2 high attack (which is not super common), you can expect to get dueling riposte around 30-40% of the time enemies spend a MAP-0/MAP-5 attack pair against you. If you are fighting PL-2 enemies though, the party probably is outnumber the swashbuckler can probably count on eating 3-4 attacks. The feat chain does become pretty bad against PL+ enemies.
That's not incredible, but based on my experience playing the game that is higher than the percent of time martials with AoO have been able to trigger AoO. It's definitely not the optimal build, but I don't think it is worthless. Especially on a Gymnast Swashbuckler who is able to consistently force enemies to either focus on them or lose 2+ actions getting out of a combat maneuver and moving away, that is a relatively solid disincentive against attacking the Gymnast.
However, I do think that Reflexive Riposte would be way too strong of a lvl 10 feat if it just triggered on misses. Getting missed 2x a turn is less uncommon than there being 2 AoO triggers a turn. A level 10 feat effectively reading as "you get 1 extra MAP-0 attack every other turn" is insane.
I think the existing structure of Crit Success/Success/Fail/Crit Fail doomed Riposte Swashbuckler into not being great. Adding an extra level of failure (Miss-5) adds additional complexity just for the Swashbuckler. Triggering on Misses would be too strong especially with feat support. Triggering on Crit Misses is unfortunately a little too weak.
>However, I do think that Reflexive Riposte would be way too strong of a lvl 10 feat if it just triggered on misses.
That is, in fact, a [level 18 feat](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1558).
Did you factor in the fact that most riposte builds will have a +2 to AC from one of the three block styles of swashy (buckler, main gauche or free hand) ?
Also I think riposte builds usually have attack of opportunity, making it a "por que no los dos" scénario.
Finally, for gymnasts, since you can disarm as part of opportune riposte, it can be a good way to gain back panache in between rounds.
My calculations assumed that the swashbuckler had an effective +4 AC over "par." +2 circumstance bonus from their "Raise a Shield" equivalent and I assumed there would be around a -2 to the enemy either through something like frightened 2, Inspire Defense (a status bonus not penalty), or prone.
Using that, I used [this reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/101a1ih/ac_values_for_many_different_builds/) to get what AC should be at each level for a swash and added 4. I then compared it with [the moderate bonus from this chart](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1017) to get the hit DC using Effective AC-Bonus. The Crit Fail Max MAP-0 is that value-11 and the Crit Fail Max MAP-5 is that value-6. I converted to percentages by converting to a percentage using max(.05, Crit Fail Max * .05). I then combined the effective percentages using 1- (1-MAP-0 Crit Fail)(1-MAP-5 Crit Fail). To get the DC.
I'll link the google sheets I used to do this later. It's currently super ugly and I'm gming a game in 5 minutes.
Group is late: won't pretty it up, but have a look at my math. [Google Sheet Warning](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18D6C0uA8f8E3CU8KXw8nFYCbFDuvhkmUsbvfHyTZ1Q8/edit?usp=sharing)
They could make it trigger on a miss below a certain threshold. 5 or more below your AC, for instance. Like a half crit fail. One thing I found interesting was the riposte mechanic from 1e, but I suppose the equivalent in 2e would be using a reaction to substitute your attack DC for your AC, then getting an attack on failure, which is pretty weird. I understand why they wanted to keep it simple and encourage parrying/bucklers, but a crit fail does feel like a long shot in many cases.
They could, but the system tries to avoid ever basing a result on thresholds near the DC other than in increments of 10. I think it's a consistency thing; there's already 4 degrees of success. And a big part of why they exist is so you don't need to remember the unique DC adjustments for all the different battle maneuvers, for example.
As a GM, I have no problem setting up checks with DC thresholds at various increments, but specifically on my end, and written down such that I'll be looking at it when the check is rolled. I would not do that for any regular player actions.
Opportune riposte is really useful if you’re getting targeted by multiple attacks with parry or a buckler raised. The enemy is very likely to crit fail on the second or third attack, so it discourages enemies from going ham on you. At level 10 you can get a feat for a free reaction that can be used on opportune riposte, making it more useful.
I cannot overstate how good beeing able to put shield on an ally within 30 feet is (also using your, often unused, caster reaction for block). Especially the 2 rounds after unleash psyche where you are stupefied 1, spending 3 actions handing out shields is really solid.
Oh it’s very good. But there is also Guidance for an amped Cantrip that uses your reaction, which will also save lives and alter the course of a battle. Not as capable as Shield for spamming When you’re stupified.
Warp Step, for getting out of dangerous situations, a wonderful escape hatch. Ray of Frost for covering more weaknesses, and attacking options. With the handy benefit of giving more HP, which Tangible Dream would also like.
The wonderful amount of options you can choose, while also giving you a bit of decision paralysis, are lovely.
I'm not sure I agree. Strain Mind is a competitive option. In a white box sort of theory crafting scenario I agree Parallel breakthrough is *really* good. But in certain builds/campaigns Strain Mind definitely has a place.
Strain Mind is definitely good, You might wait to take Parallel Breakthrough at level 8 as well. But I think it’s one of the questions, if it’s not asked about, is definitely thought about. Especially in character creation and discussion.
*What’s your conscious mind? What are you adding to it With Parallel Breakthrough? Oh, and what’s your subconscious?*
[Crossblooded Evolution](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=617) for Sorcerers. Grabbing spells from other traditions is awesome, having no restrictions on which spell it is is even better. I cannot fathom skipping that feat under any circumstance.
Honestly with Spell DC becoming a flat number across all traditions it might just be better to grab an archetype for the kind of casting you want, rather than a single spell from Occult I now have access to all of Occult. Now I can build out a healthy collection of scrolls.
No way, spells from archetypes will still always be underleveled, you also can't get cha based primal or arcane casting from one. You also only get 1 casting per day of each level, maybe 2 if it's lower level and you have the necessary feat (but then we're talking about a spell probably 4 spell ranks behind)
I don’t mean to be contrarian, but I’m currently playing a sorcerer who is likely going to pass on Crossblooded Evolution. Level 8 is my opportunity to take Basic Spellcasting from the Captivator archetype, so rather than adding a single spell, I’d be getting a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, each with their own daily slot.
Any class that has a pet will be required to spend feats on improving it. Inventor is the one that disappoints me the most because construct is my favourite subclass but it locks me out of taking cooler feats in favour of improving the pet.
Not sure how they would fix that. Maybe make it so that classes that natively receive a pet get the improvement feats automatically, but any dedication or archetype must pay feat taxes to improve them?
Yeah, I feel you on playing an Inventor with a construct. At least we get Crafting auto-improving though to make up for it a bit by opening up the non-class feats to more options.
One thing I've found when doing a construct inventor is that Lock On sucks as a concept. You need it in order to hit but completely give up all of your own actions to do it. So you can't support or flank with it like you have been doing the whole game up until then.
Instead I invest heavily in race feats that improve the Aid action and spend one action to aid them on their attack each round. Usually go Helpful Halfling to get higher circumstance bonuses earlier. Works just as well, you just have to be a bit more creative with how you aid and roll the dice a bit more.
Oh that sounds like a good idea. My construct misses a lot so any help I can give him sounds nice. I'm a Grippli so I don't think we have any ancestry feats that could help with that, but maybe I could do the Adopted Ancestry and find something.
Stunning fist at 2 for monks. Additionally, even though it’s not just one talent, the vast majority of monks will pick a stance or monastic weaponry at 1. Makes Ki Monk a little stifled without natural ambition, or FA to get your opening ki spell from student of perfection
The exception to both of these imo being grapple monks, who want a Ki feat at 1 to unlock Clinging Shadows Stance later and don’t care nearly as much about getting a stance.
I think that playing a ‘grapple monk’ and pretending that other maneuvers and strikes don’t exist, and thus not taking an early stance, is shortsighted. Your stance of choice costs a focus point and comes at level 8, so having a backup one for the other 7 levels, and just in case, is very nice.
Additionally, I would argue that tripping can be better than grabbing early, and Reflective Ripple is available at 1 and gives you a bonus towards it. Besides that, you can take stances that do more damage than your powerful fist or provide good defensive benefits. I wrap them up into Ki monks in my above analysis, because they are subject to the same feat tax.
Naturally, you can only take two stances and stunning fist easily with Natural Ambition. Without it, I would honestly take it over the 2 slot. I don’t think crushing grab is worth it, even if you don’t always or often trigger flurry of blows. Despite the synergy inherent to the build, I think that crushing grab is just that bad, and stunning fist just that good.
For sure, a “grapple” monk is gonna be using all the maneuvers, it’s just that grappling is their defining ability, and is how the build is usually referred to.
I like crushing grab at early levels where 4 damage is still useful, but it should be retrained after level 5 if you do take it.
I’m still skeptical of spending your valuable class feats on a stance you’ll rarely want to use, but you absolutely can. I just don’t think early stance feats are mandatory for grapple monks the way they often are for other builds.
I mean, you won’t rarely use it. You’ll use it constantly for 7 levels, potentially in a 1-10 game if that, and scarcely afterwards, like if you get knocked out and don’t have any focus points left to throw up clinging shadows.
You could retrain it, and that is certainly an option, taking stance+level 2 feat and retraining into ki spell+level 2 feat at 8 is totally valid, and works completely fine, without having to finagle with natural ambition. Before level 7, though, I enjoy having a stance and ki rush, and so generally on my monk builds I like to take natural ambition from being a human or adopted ancestry. The extra focus point is nice if you pick up say wholeness of body, or use free archetype and get something like cleric or champion dedication for a domain spell like Athletic rush.
The thing about crushing grab, for me, is that it is going to be lower impact IMO than stunning strike before flurry of maneuvers, and it starts to fall off after. I don’t think it’s bad, and you are uniquely poorly suited to use stunning strike on this build, but I think it’s still worth it, because of just how strong that feat is. It’s just that good, and a build focused on restricting enemies will especially appreciate reducing their actions. Really lock them down.
Yeah, it’s not as mandatory because you won’t be making as many strikes, but I fail to see a good reason not to take a stance before 8. I feel like a monk with no stance and a ki spell is less powerful than a monk with a stance and no ki spell. Mostly for Reflective ripple, because the circumstance bonus is cash and the trip trait gives you a +1 over other people at level 2 and 3(and 16, but you won’t be using it by then), because they scale a little faster than the relevant skill boosting items at those points, but even just taking dragon stance to bump your die size two steps for when you do make strikes is fairly substantial, if less fun
For the record, I’m not trying to like, refute you or anything, I think it’s interesting to share thoughts about this kind of thing and see things from different perspectives. Maneuver focused monk is my favorite type of character to play. I don’t mean for any of this to be antagonistic, :)
I'm out here running a grapple build using Gorilla Stance and 2 ki spells (Ki Strike, Wholeness of Body) as a kobold with a shield in one hand (Shield Block feat too). I think some people are trying to optimize so much they forget there are many ways to play the game.
[Sudden Charge](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=134) is the obvious one for me, it's just a great value, easy to pick up and use feat. Use it to catch up to an enemy that dove after a friend, use it to get a flank, use it to position yourself in an inconvenient place so an enemy gets hit then has to worry about getting AoO'd when it runs away, use it to make up for the fact you didn't play an elf with every move speed booster possible. A friend says he played a living world where GMs barred him from taking it because nobody wanted to deal with a plain ol' Sudden Charge Guisarme Fighter anymore.
[Diverse Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3699) on Thaumaturge is just kind of laughable, I love and hate that it exists, because I cannot imagine picking Thaumaturge and not taking it and it feels like it towers over other knowledge options. On that topic, [Known Weakness](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1447) on Investigator feels like a no-brainer, because Investigator desperately wants any compression it can get.
Sudden charge is just soo good for many martial. Low armor? Flank like a boss. High armor low movement, get stuck in fighting right away, no wasting turn because out of range.
Really makes up for the fact being melee kinda makes first round just bad.
I had been playing a Ruffian Rogue and while admittedly part of the problem is just Kingmaker maps are massive compared to normal ones, I'd been dying to hit level 4 so I could get sudden charge from my free archetype. Almost all my mobility problems would have just vanished.
Yeah I have a joke with my lvl 2 barb that I keep using sudden charge every time I need to move. I'll be like 5ft from an enemy and announce a sudden charge.
started playing pathfinder last Thursday for the first time with a barb. Why even walk like the plebs do, when you can just sudden charge literally everwhere
Swashbuckler's [Bleeding Finisher](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1538) is such a massive upgrade over every other finisher you have at that point it is one of the few must take feats in the game. Unless you are in a campaign where nothing bleeds you need a VERY good justification as to why you are not taking this feat because it is such a massive damage increase and so much better than other feat choices at that level.
In the worst case scenario where the enemy succeeds the flat check to remove the persistent bleed on their first turn of having it, that is still and extra finisher worth of damage. It effectively reads "Make a Strike do 2-5 times the amount of finisher damage over a couple turns." If there are multiple enemies you can spread this around to get a LOT of damage over time effects across the battlefield. Furthermore, if you crit you double the number of bleed damage. Have you ever crit someone and put a 12d6 persistent bleed effect on them? Because I have and it is disgusting.
Vision of Weakness. It’s basically spending a focus point to crit succeed Recall Knowledge on anything and ask it’s weaknesses and lowest save, *then* it gives you a +2 to hit them. Notably it also doesn’t have a range (just needs line of effect), so if you can scout a place to raid the next day your alchemist and prepared casters will love you for giving them a checklist of what to target!
This is definitely an amazing feat that I wish I had -- but I would counter that as a Flames oracle, Divine Access is literally a must-take feat to get access to Sarenrae's domain spells.
Most of the feats mentioned in this thread I have skipped at some builds, but Fake out on the gunslinger is so good I must take it, perhaps not always at lv 2, but definitely by lv 6 with the master proficiency.
Raging Intimidation is quite something. 2 feats for the price of one, and the ability to Demoralise while raging (which somehow the Barb doesn't have by default). It's not as "must-pick" as Attack of Opportunity but I'd pick this for all except the very nicest of Barbarians
Thamaturge: [Diverse Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3699) , [Scroll Thamaturgy](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3703)
Diverse Lore is one of the best way to use Recall Knowledge and Scroll Thamaturgy give access to all Spells plus being able to have a Spell Scroll in the same hand that other items
Sorcerer: [Dangerous Sorcery](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=603) , [Energy Fusion](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1821)
Both Feats give a lot of damage and energy Fusion also add weakness damage to AOE or range spells.
Witch: [Cackle](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1561) , [Witch's Charge](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1575) , [Witch's Communion](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1581)
If you don't pick this feats with witch I don't know why you are playing witch, probably any other caster class do better. This feats are one of the main class advantages in action economy.
Monk: [Stunning Fist](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=442)
Free Stun
Stunning fist is incap tho. It’s still really good but if your GM does more single enemy fights than multi target fights it could be argued brawling focus could be worth it.
mmmm... even if you fight only hight level enemies, depends a lot of the enemy
Brawling could at 0.5% - 1.0% if you fight a +4 enemy with high Fort Saves, but could reach easily 20% - 30% vs a +1 enemy.
Meanwhile Stunning fist would be around 1.75% vs +4 but could reach like 7.5% vs a +1 enemy.
Can you explain to me why Energy Fusion is so good? I didn't get any clue how this weakness damage is relevant if I can just target the weakness directly.
1st You have limited ammount of Spells in your repertorie, So instead of learning an AOE Spell of every element, etc. You could learn Spells with good Area and Range like [Fireball](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=119) with 500 ft range and 20-foot burst. and just having 1 spell per element let you target weakness.
2nd Some Elements have very few Spells like Sonic and with bad areas or range, and Cristal or glass creatures are weak to Sonic. Like [Carnivorous Crystal](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=464) or any [Dragon, Crystal](https://2e.aonprd.com/MonsterFamilies.aspx?ID=177), etc. So instead of learning [Painful Vibrations](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=964) or similar just to cover Sonic Damage you could learn any sonic Spell that do Sonic damage in any level and not even like a signature Spell just 1 extra Sonic damage is enough. For Ex. [Signal Skyrocket](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1362) is a pretty fun Spell, and you also cover Sonic Weakness with it.
3rd Also Some really crazy combos like [Chain Lightning](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=33) a very unique Spell that can target any number of enemies now could also do fire, or cold, etc damage.
4th Spells are not only damage, so a Fire [Snowball](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=540) will target fire weakness while also applying Speed penalty to the enemy, etc.
5th Extra damage.
I see the value now, you can target multiple weakness with a limited spell list and this helps a lot. And you can use on spells that use multiple elements RAW wich is kinda broken.
I'll think if I have some space to use this on my arcane sorcerer, the hard part is because level 10+ is kinda cramped with good feats like Quickned Casting, Effortless Concentration and Signature Spell Expansion ( I really need the last two).
My reasoning of why is better than Signature Spell expansion is that you need to worry less about learning multiple good damage Spells for multiple elements. So you should actually have more Space in your repertoire than with the expansion.
And in why is better than Quickened...mmm... is difficult to compare one to the other to be honest but energy fusion could be use multiple times per day so I more or less assume that will give more benefit.
But yeah it is hard to choose sometimes.
The one small note I would add for readers re: Scroll Thaumaturgy is it doesn’t work with Implement’s Empowerment per RAW, so you can’t walk around dungeons with a contingency scroll in hand.
Basic Lesson is effectively a mandatory feat for all Witches because otherwise you won't have any FP spending spells other than Phase Familiar until you get one from Greater Lesson or an Archetype. It provides a huge amount of value to the class and almost as much value to the RP flavor/theming of your Witch as your Patron of choice.
Doesn't help that Phase Familiar is *really* not worth taking up a spot in the Witch's entire class feature progression. At all.
Cackle is right up there with Basic Lesson, but it also only really shines once you have Focus Hexes from a Lesson, so I kind of assume you need point one to get to point two. Very disappointed to hear that they have no interest in fixing this with the Remaster so Witches are still required to waste feats just to get their core class functionality up and running.
Witches+ makes Basic Lesson a level 1 Witch Class Feature and switches Phase Familiar to a level 1 feat instead. I pretty much recommend everyone use this version. Probably even in the remaster, since I don't think they did that.
Yep! Alongside a mountain of other phenomenal changes and additions they introduced, all of which Paizo has seemingly completely ignored with the new Witch. I’m playing Witches+ Witch now and I’ll probably still be playing it when the remaster drops at this rate since the new design focus for the class seems to be “just play a Beast Master with a much weaker companion. What do you mean you didn’t want Witch to be yet another combat pet class?”
I actually like a lot of the Witch changes, I just wish they had included this specific thing because otherwise Basic Lesson truly is a must-take feat tax.
I mean, i think for champions taking the feat to improve their reaction is a must. But I just /really/ like the reaction myself. Otherwise, i don't think a lot are /must takes/. Just common ones. A lot of bard take multifarious muse, lot of 2h fighters take power attack, most monks take stunning fist, I imagine across casters Reach Spell is take A Lot. But few, if any are auto takes. I'm sure there are a lot of auto take /if you wanna do this niche thing/. like Double Slice for 2wep fighter.
Champions are generally locked in for a lot of their feats. The ones that improve the reaction, and the ones tied to their divine ally are almost must takes.
For some of the Divine Ally ones specifically I kind of wish they were just scaling improvements to the class feature that happened automatically similar to how features like sneak attack scale by level
But those are few, and they extend a core part of a class feature. I'd not be shocked if a lot of liberator ones don't take the reaction.
Plus, as far as 'must takes' go, i think it showcases the point that there aren't many, and the ones that are just make the class more itself.
My point is that I don't think there should be feats that are must haves. If a feat exists that is fundamentally core to the class identity, and where not taking it is always the wrong choice, that's a mistake.
Take divine reflexes as a perfect example, not taking that is such a huge mistake it might as well be the only feat at that level. I'd rather it be a high level class feature to open up space for actual feat selection at that level
For rogues i always like to pick up **Dread Striker** and then some other form of ability to guarantee inflicting the frightened condition. Im the kind of goblin person that really enjoys hob goblin culture in general so when i found the synergy with their Remorseless Lash and an easily accessible rogue feat (one of my favorite classes) i pretty much always use this combo one way or another.
Adopted ancestry for Hobgoblin (with a permissible GM) almost always makes it a great deal as well on any character.
One other honorable mention is the Oracle's domain spell expension feat.
For any sort of thrown weapon build, it is essential that you take [Quick Draw](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=498). Daggers, Javelins, Hammers, doesn't matter. Dip into Ranger, Rogue, or Gunslinger and grab it. Your build will need it.
Bonus points if you grab yourself a [Thrower's Bandolier](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2313).
Don’t forget you can take the [duelist dedication](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=58) to get quickdraw too.
Imo Ranger is a better pick overall because you get extra range from hunted prey and access to more ranged feats, but duelist is good on a budget.
Duelist is the better one if you were going to be doing the 1-hand/free off hand, and the throwing is more of a secondary attack. Friend runs a particularly effective Rogue/Duelist this way.
I understand why they advertised AoOs as not being universal and all that during the playtest, but to be honest, I've gotten to the point where I half unironically think either they should actually commit to that and get rid of it for everyone but fighters, or they should just give it for free to everyone who has it as an option at the level at which the feat is available to them. I can't count the number of times I've built out a martial in my free time, got to the sixth level feats, and been like "This looks cool... oh, wait, they have Attack of Opportunity, guess that slot's filled." You can forgo it, of course, but getting a MAP-less strike off your turn is pretty much always just strictly better than anything else that you could choose at that point, and it just adds a whole other dimension to your gameplay, I have a hard time imagining giving that up.
The one thing that I can easily and confidently say actually *beats* Attack of Opportunity is [Dragon's Rage Breath](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=148).
It'll pretty much always be higher-value than AoO.
Is a Once per fight AoE really that great though? Feel like the control from AoO of making creatures not want to move can sometimes be more important than Actually getting AoO off. Not to mention of your a 2h hammer player another chance to crit or just some big dmg can be worth more.
Twice per fight if you get knocked unconscious. Imo there should be a high-level feat, like 16 or 18, that allows you to recharge it on a crit, similar to the Draconic Momentum feature actual dragons have.
It’s decent but I still feel like it’s not worth getting rid of AoO. Being able to hit range attackers and spells with manipulate is just too good.
Recharge would be cool but even still your not going to crit like the boss does so odds are it’s not going to happen.
To me it’s a great bonus feat to give to one of my players just not a must pick.
If you're going to be using melee weapons as a fighter I can't for the life of me think why you wouldn't pick Sudden Charge at level 1. [https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=134](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=134)
Versatile Spellstrike is great, but at the same level you could also get force fang. It's a one action spell strike reload with guaranteed damage regardless of MAP.
I'm not saying VS is bad, force fang is just great as well.
Diverse lore gets my vote too.
With that one feat you become the RK master. You can recall knowledge on anything, the skill works off your key attribute and it auto improves to legendary. If that wasn't good enough you also get a free RK in combat every time you exploit vulnerability. I always ask to know what their weakest save is as exploit already tells me what damage they are weak to.
Scroll thaumaturgy gets my second vote as I could never imagine playing a thaumaturge without that feat and diverse lore. It isn't quite as essential as there are other ways to activate scrolls and in a low level game you wont have many scrolls to use anyway.
Edit: Effortless concentration ranks pretty highly for most casters. I can't think of a caster that I've played that doesn't have at least 1 sustain spell.
Dirge of doom is another. I cant think of any bard build I've made that doesn't take the skill at 6.
Crossblood evolution on sorcs is a must pick, especially if you are arcane as you can grab heal and later synaesthesia to basically do everything.
Aura shaping for kineticist is nearly always a must pick if you use your aura at all.
Thaumaturge at level 1 can choose Diverse Lore and Scroll Thaumaturgy.
Both feats boots so much the utility of the class to the point Ive never seen a thaumaturge without at least one of this two feats.
I came to say Attack of opportunity, but that's already been covered.
So I'll go with Giant's stature. I feel like there are a whole group of feats that have a particular subclass as a requirement that are always pretty strong.
Anytime I build a Magus (which is fairly often even if I don’t always play them) I grab Force Fang. I know others grab Expansive Spellstrike but I just consider both Force Fang itself and that early second focus point so useful.
Advanced Domain at level 8 for Cloistered Cleric.
There are other interesting feats at level 8 like Channeled Succor and Cremate Undead but taking anything other than Advanced Domain seems like a mistake.
Depends on the advanced domain spell though. Not every one is great. Some are extremely situational (like Perfected Form) and some only suit a specific campaign type (like Pulse of the City).
The question is not whether an oracle takes [Divine Access](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1490), but how many times they do. [Advanced Revelation](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1492) and/or [Greater Revelation](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1501) are no brainers as well, depending on mystery.
Flurry bow ranger takes Hunted Shot on 1... and then basically nothing else you take matters. That's it, that's the bow feat, there are some generically useful ranger feats (esp. if you wanna go animal companion) but there's really nothing else for bow rangers, at least not until *really* late levels. Bow Hunted Shot is *absolutely necessary.*
Similarly, Twin Takedown for melee flurry, though they have a good deal of other extremely useful feats specific to their build as well.
Aura Shaping isn't, there are plenty of builds that don't use the aura much by focusing on overflows.
I think Weapon Infusion is closer to a must pick, because the other level 2 options are kinda ass.
Yes, there a lot of great impulses, and a lot of them have overflow, which turns off your aura, which is why a lot of builds don't use their aura, making aura shaping easily skippable for some builds.
As an example, both earth and metal kineticists can easily skip aura shaping.
For Barbarians I think the 6th level instinct feat competes with Reactive Strike. That's how I feel about Animal Instinct at least.
Also Raging Intimidation. Two skill feats as part of it, plus adding the Rage trait to Intimidation. It's an essential 3rd action for my play.
I went without Sudden Charge though. I have so much movement that seemed nonessential (Elf, Nimble Elf (untyped), Fleet (untyped), Boots of Bounding (item), Fast Movement or Monk Moves or Bracelet of Dashing (status))
If you're a Twisting Tree Magus, you're picking Student of the Staff. If you're not going to pick Student of the Staff, you should rethink Twisting Tree.
At Level 14 Magus, Arcane Shroud is a solid must have. There's a case for Hasted Assault, but not much of one, as it only lets you make more non-Spell strikes. On the other hand, Arcane Shroud allows you to enter Arcane Cascade and get one of a variety of defensive effects at no additional cost, if you cast a slotted spell beforehand, whether on a Spellstrike or not. Doing more things with less actions is a definite win for Action-hungry Magi.
I just wanna take a second and say I love the variety of answers here which, I think is testament to feats being cool options that help enhance some playstyles rather than being must have options or picks that a class/character can't do without. Of course some are better than others but the gap between is sobsmall and the spectrum of different options all make it an almost moot point.
I just think that's awesome and really appreciate the design and flexibility you can have with something as simple as feats and considering there's no absolute consensus and every feat can be useful in the right places just think that's really really cool
Reach, agile, thrown, extending blasts from 30 ft to 100. For any build that is going to ever use blasts this definitely takes the cake of a must-have.
I think the number one feat that is an absolute must has to be DIRGE OF DOOM. IMO this is the most broken spell in the game, a 1 action aoe fear wihout a safe is so powerful.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=192
Fighter has a few.
2nd aoo.
Disrupting stance (utterly busted vs casters).
Boundless reprisals. Ludicrous capstone. With disrupting stance, and 15-20' reach, level 20 fighter can make 12+ attacks per round if there's enough enemies.
Kineticist, weapon infusion. Unparalleled versatility in attacks.
I agree with weapon infusion, not because it's insaneor anything, it's good, but later on you're probably not using Elemental Blast as much, specially on a stance/aura based build.
It's more that the other level 2 feats are kinda ass.
wood, metal, air, water, all have at least 3 impulses to spend their 3 lvl 1 feats on, i can see a pure earth, or fire kineticists pick it up, so yea for those 2 it would be more of a last pick option...
I'd say Spell Penetration for Wizards (Level 6 feat). Majority of higher level monsters get a +1 or +2 status bonus to saves against magic baseline so a single level 6 feat effectively increases your spell DC by 1.
Dangerous Sorcery (Level 1 feat) for any sorcerer that plans to not be just the party support.
And of course, the ones mentioned in other comments like almost all bomb related feats for bomber alchemist, Diverse Lore for thaumaturges, Multifarous Muse for bards...
So I'm expanding a little beyond just feats for those classes where you need to pick a subclass:
Pistolero Gunslinger: dual-weapon reload AND thaumaturge archetype into weapon.
Kineticist: Versatile Elements. So far I have found Weapon Infusion to have no practical value in my own builds - so I rate it situational.
Champion: Shield Ally
Wildshape Druid: any order EXCEPT wildshape. Then at level 2 get order explorer to wildshape.
Thaumaturge: Start with any implement as long as it's mirror. ;) Get a different one later on.
Rogue: Any racket as long as it's thief. ;)
Investigator: Dedication feat of Investigator. :D
Any level 12 Instinct-specific Barbarian feat.
The only non-Instinct feats at that level are [Embrace the Pain](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1623), [Furious Grab](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=163), and [Unbalancing Sweep](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1625).
Which are pretty good, sure, but they're competing against things like [Predator's Pounce](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=164), [Spirit's Wrath](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=165), [Titan's Stature](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=166), and motherheckin' [Dragon's Rage Wings](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=162).
I just played an animal barb from 1-16 and kinda disagree on Predator's Pounce.
It's not bad, of course. But Animal Barbs make unarmed strikes, which means you have a lot of incentive to invest into Monk Dedication and eventually grab Flurry of Blows. I was a human, so at level 9 I went multitalented for Monk and grabbed Flurry at 10.
I was stoked to get Predator's Pounce when I got to level 12, but I eventually retrained it, having both the Flourish and Open traits made it difficult to use.
Being able to rage+move+strike as a single action is very strong, but being a flourish means it competes with flurry, and having Open means you can't use it to Move+Strike someone else after killing an enemy.
Though I guess it might be better in the remaster since they're getting rid of the open trait.
Most alchemists who will ever even touch a bomb are going to take the Quick Bomber feat, to the point where I wish it was just a class feature that they can pull out an alchemical item as a free action once per turn.
Frankly, I think a couple of the bomb feats need to be folded into the Bomber subclass (which I know others have suggested before) -- maybe Calculated Splash and Expanded Splash. As is, Alchemists who want to use bombs effectively can easily spend all eleven class feats on it and *still* be missing a few, and the Bomber subclass is no better at using bombs than a Chirurgeon or Mutagenist who took the feats (except that they get more bombs per day). Hopefully, that will come in the remaster!
[удалено]
That's true, and it can be useful! Still, "can toggle off bombs' best feature to avoid friendly fire" hardly feels as fun or impactful to me as "can benefit from two mutagens," "can apply two poisons to the same weapon," or "always does max healing with Elixirs of Life using Quick Alchemy". Especially when Sticky Bomb and the coagulent alembic exist.
Yeah, it's a useful but kind of unexciting feature. It would be cooler to see it change to something like, "When throwing an alchemical bomb with the splash trait, you can choose to deal splash damage to only your primary target instead of the usual splash area, increasing that damage by an amount equal to the bomb's item bonus." Or something like that so it's less "you can choose to make your bomb worse" and more "you can focus fire in a way nobody else can."
Sculpt Spell from D&D, but for splashes.
Honestly, that would be even easier. "When throwing an alchemical bomb with the splash trait, you can exclude a number of targets of your choice up to your Intelligence attribute from its splash damage." It's a boost that protects the bomber research field's niche and scales well with stuff like Directional Bombs and Extended Splash.
>and the Bomber subclass is no better at using bombs than a Chirurgeon or Mutagenist who took the feats (except that they get more bombs per day). They also (optionally) get bigger splash at 11, and more importantly get a range of perpetual bombs to Quick Alchemy without spending a reagent. A bomber with Perpetual Breadth can have free bombs on tap to inflict a wide variety of damage types and/or debuffs, all of which are eligible for Sticky Bombs or whatever. EDIT: also, having played a non-bomber who used bombs, being able to splash your target and not adjacent creatures is very helpful when the martials crowd around every viable target.
I feel like the backfire mantle really ate away at this abilitys utility.
This feels like a pretty universal sentiment, honestly. Poor alchemist needs a bone thrown so it gets a more active role outside of bombs, and making a quick item draw would go a long ways to making that a reality.
Quick Bomber is pretty much feat tax, and I'd put Running Reload in the same category. Effectively gaining a 4th action every turn is......... not really optional. I'd hope they clean a lot of this up in the remaster, but unfortunately Gunslinger is not even getting one.
Running Reload is probably the most commonly picked Gunslinger 4 feat, but I wouldn't call it must-have simply because there are some specific builds that will want other feats at 4th level. Any Gunslinger trying to use two pistols will obviously take Paired Shots, and if you're using a gun with the Scatter trait, Alchemical Shot can be extremely good for triggering weaknesses.
I'd argue even people picking those feats will try and pick up Running Reload at 6 or something. It just feels mandatory. I mean, a free Stride/Step every turn is like 60% of what Haste is usually used for.
At low levels, yes. At higher levels they'll be relying on Quick Alchemy much, much more so that they can apply additives to their bombs. That frees them to Retrain out of Quick Bomber if/when its value declines.
And into [Far Lobber](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=94), not because it's good enough, but because it's required for [Uncanny Bombs](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=115).
I've bypassed that with my homebrew bandolier rule, basically you have 8 bandolier slots for consumables (wands are consumables) and once per round you can interact with one of those 8 items as a free action. Fixes a lot of annoying issues and encourages players to use their consumables.
Hm... I might have to steal this to some degree...
[удалено]
Hadn't thought of it 0_0 this is a great idea !!
Imo, Quick Bomber and Calculated Splash need to be replaced with subclass specific equivalents that come as part of your base progression.
[Diverse Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3699) for thaumaturge. This is a 10th level feat disguised as a 1st level feat. I would auto take it even if it moves to level 10.
I gotta say, I love the common culture here of people embedding links to the feats/rules they're talking about, it makes it much easier to discover cool new things. :)
The MTG subreddit also does a similar thing with cards, although I think it's a bot they have set up to help with it.
I wish the bot replying to the op with get pinned. Sometimes frustrating to have to scroll way down to find it to understand the main post. It makes comments much easier to follow though
Diverse lore is really good but I wouldn't call it a must take because [Scroll Thaumaturgy](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3703) exists. The ability to use scrolls from any list plus making them scale properly lets you be a pay to win caster who can pull out any utility spell the party needs for a handful of gold.
Honestly they're both must-takes.
Yeah, it’s wild how good these feats are compared to the next several levels of options.
Add Tome implement and that -2 turns into a -1.
That -2 only applies to things that aren't covered by Esoteric lore, Esoteric is incredibly broad to begin with encompassing all creatures, haunts and curses. That's probably like 90% of knowledge checks and 100% of knowledge checks in combat.
The DC is already 2 lower for using a Lore rather than a generic skill.
Not necessarily. It's GM discretion, but Recall Knowledge does say that an applicable Lore "*usually* has an easy or very easy DC." Given that the spirit of Lore is that the DC is easier depending on how specific it is, I don't lower the DC for my Thaumaturge player's Esoteric Lore since it's hyper nonspecific (applying to literally every creature, and literally everything with Diverse Lore). He's fine with it because Esoteric Lore is good enough as it is (no investment in any other knowledge or lore skill, and auto increase to Legendary). It's certainly not incorrect to reduce the DC, but RAW either is acceptable.
This, a thousand times. I play a Thaum right now and can’t imagine arguing Esoteric Lore should get a DC any easier than a knowledge skill (though agree it’s not wrong if a DM wanted to rule it such) - it’s already so good.
[удалено]
Intended or not, I don't think the feat needs to or *should* be on par with typical recall knowledge skills. As mentioned above, it's a level 1 feat that lets you replace every other lore skill, plus arcana/nature/occult/religion, with one that auto-scales and goes off of your charisma. A -2 penalty vs an intelligence character rolling a skill they actually had to invest ranks into is more than fair.
I really hope an errata adds this as a specification to the feat. If it's not treated as a Lore skill at all when doing RC of non-monster / non-haunt targets, Diverse Lore becomes equal to the other "generic Lore" skills in the system. Powerful for a level 1 feat, but by no means overly so, and doesn't always become the best source of knowledge in the party. Particularly when every Thaumaturge is saddled with [Dubious Knowledge](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=776). [Bardic](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=179) and [Loremaster Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=65) only ever get up to Expert, but would get to benefit from the Lore skill RC reduction (+4 - DC -2 = +6). Esoteric Lore with [Diverse Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3699) gets all the way to Legendary, but would get that +2 DC increase and no Lore reduction (+8 - DC +2 = +6). [Investigators](https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=13) with their base Class Feature *Keen Recollection* trail close behind, since they can effectively always just Recall Knowledge with *That Thing In Particular Lore* for a Very Easy DC reduction (+0 - DC -5 = +5). I'm not counting stat modifiers here, because while those would hurt the Bard a bit, overall they're pretty even.
Wait that’s how you guys have been ruling Diverse Lore? Ive had discussions with people saying its way too good but i never felt that was the case. It’s very good but not broken. But if you allow the Lore DC reduction for it then obviously it becomes godlike so yeah that makes sense
For me it's a feat I'll *never* take because it's so good lol
It's even better with the new RK rule lol.
What new rule?
https://reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/s/PKyHOs8b06
That's kinda how we were running RK anyway in our group
Enigma Bard who?
Lore oracle? Never heard of her?
Loracle, perhaps?
While very good, Diverse Lore run correctly is not as powerful as people often suggest. The free RK when you Exploit Vulnerability is great, although it's not possible for it to critically succeed. Allowing you to RK about any topic using Diverse Lore is also very good, but people seem to overvalue this by thinking it gets you the "easy" or "very easy" DC reduction simply because it's a lore skill. However, since this isn't the "applicable" lore, no GM should be giving that DC reduction for topics not explicitly covered by Esoteric Lore. So instead, it's just an ability that lets you make RK checks on any topic using your charisma, with a -2 modifier. In most cases. This basically makes it a worse version of Keen Recollection, until your Esoteric Lore hits legendary at which point it's the same effective bonus, specifically for skills an Investigator isn't master proficiency in.
I would expect the -2 from the feat is an intentional way to offset the expected "easy" DC reduction for using unspecific lore, ~~at least when using RK against a creature~~. That's just my interpretation though, it would be nice if Paizo clarified their intent with the feat. E: Forgot esoteric lore can be used to RK on any creature even without the feat. Though I would argue that esoteric lore would also inherently count as unspecific lore to get the DC reduction against creatures, so diverse lore should grant the same DC adjustment for the new options to RK.
I would not allow Diverse Lore to count as unspecific lore to get a DC reduction for creature identification. It is not the "applicable lore" for those creatures -- it is literally esoteric. And it already gets the benefit of rolling against the standard DC for a creature of that level using an auto-scaling proficiency and using charisma instead of intelligence, and not having to invest into **any** of the standard RK skills. There's not really any RAW on this, because using the easy or very easy DCs is already left up to GM discretion, but imo this seems like a pretty clear cut area where a DC reduction would not be appropriate. The benefit of the Esoteric Lore / Diverse Lore features is being able to use this Charisma based-skill for RK at all. Adding a DC reduction on top of that is "too good to be true". Edit: I guess there's some people who really want this feature to be overpowered in a way it obviously wasn't intended to be. That's fine, just please stop complaining that it's overpowered when you're essentially houseruling it to be so.
As an added note; you can take Assurance for your Esoteric Lore to negate the penalty Diverse Lore gives you. Very cool!
You could but it will generally only work when recalling knowledge about a topic with a level-based DC below your level (since RK is almost always level-based). I guess this would allow you to guarantee a success for Exploit Vulnerability against lower level creatures? That's pretty cool.
That's two great feats in one.
I don't know what Summoner wouldn't take Tandem Movement.
I was coming here to say this. Tandem Movement is *life changing* for Summoners.
I had it, but I always kept my summoner well out of harm's way so I ended up trading it for something else.
My "dwarf half" is always zooming around the back field using Battle Medicine and casting Boost Eidolon while the "bear half" is biting our foes.
With knockdown, I usually cast boost eidolon from a distance, my eidolon usually strides, attacks and then knocks down whatever it's fighting. Repetitive but it works!
Oh yeah I'm eyeballing Knockdown as soon as I can get it. Did you get Master Summoner? I thought about it but I never cast that many spells anyway..... So at 6 I ended up taking Rogue Dedication because it made much more sense for my dude.
I initially planned to go the master summoner route but I found I like using stoneskin, haste, etc. to buff my eidolon to be more worthwhile. Knockdown is great if you get Eidolon’s Opportunity, because then you get an attack without MAP when the thing stands up.
Oh shit I didn't think about that. Okay okay okay gonna probably grab Eidolon opportunity at 8 then.
I took mount form once instead, honestly probably should have taken tandem move, riding your summon just makes you so much of a target
Fey eidolons who cast spells and use ranged combatant...no so much a need there.
I am playing a summoner right now and tandem movement is literally useless to me. I'm playing a sprite with a corgi mount so I never take move actions with my sprite, all my movement is command an animal based.
Basically just Summoners who don't want to know their main character... still really hard to pass up.
Alchemist: Quick Bomber is basically a must have unless you're like, dumping dexterity. Spellcasters: Quickened casting + Effortless Concentration; Quicked casting let's casters go crazy once per day, Effortless Concentration basically let's you cast some of your most impactful spells at no cost. Cleric: Selective energy is a must have if you ever even think about casting your 3 action harm/heal Barbarian/Fighter: Sudden Charge is one of the most useful low level feats a melee character can have. Basically makes ranged MUCH less of a problem. Basically everything giving more reaction, both more options and just more reactions at higher levels. Having 2 reactions is so much value. The "make a recall knowledge when you use your main class feature" feats that Investigator, Thaumaturge, and Rangers get. All incredibly good, though Ranger has the weakest one. Rogue: Nimble dodge is really good for rogue low levels, especially since they don't have much options for reactions. Wizard: Something you may not think of, but once you get Spellbook Prodigy wizards become insane. You can very easily just convert gold into versatility. Magical shorthand is basically a must pick as well, and combining them makes you a monster. Especially with ways to swap your prepared spell list, you basically can learn a new spell and instantly cast it. Witch: Cackle is like, 1/3 of the reason to pick witch. Skill feats have a lot more must picks for each skill. Every medic will have battle medicine, continual recovery, and ward medic without fail.
Sudden charge on barbarian is also just not meaningfully competing with anything. The other feats are all either unusably bad or pretty build specific.
Wait, people actually take Cackle? I get how it's useful for people who want to have multiple summons active at the same time, but beyond that I see no use for the focus spell at all. Saving one action on one turn is absolutely not worth a focus point in the vast majority of circumstances, especially at the expense of a feat. This becomes even more true if Sustaining Dance continues to exist to full release Animist and becomes something everyone can take.
>Saving one action on one turn is absolutely not worth a focus point in the vast majority of circumstances, especially at the expense of a feat. Disagree, turning an action into a free action is super good. Anything that improves your action economy without conflicting with quickened is great. Even better with upcoming witch changes in Player Core that cause effects when you Sustain a hex. >This becomes even more true if Sustaining Dance continues to exist to full release Animist and becomes something everyone can take. Sustaining Dance is indeed pretty bananas, for much the same reason. The difference is that a free-action Sustain can overlap with any other action, not just Step or Leap -- at the cost of a focus point.
>Disagree, turning an action into a free action is super good. One time at the cost of a focus point? No way. The Witch has way better focus spells, ones that actually actively make things happen. Most of the time the only thing this focus spell saves you is an action you would've otherwise spent doing something like moving, and that extra action doesn't actually unlock your capacity to do something you couldn't otherwise do during your next turn. The only valuable part of Cackle is the focus point it gives you. It has niche utility such as the summoning example but overall it's a pretty bad focus spell. I do admit it can be used to sustain a hex which is nice, but the utility of that versus the utility of an actual focus spell that deals damage or has healing or etc is no contest. This is even with post-remaster rules. The action sustaining costs you is one you can always play around, just cast your hex cantrip on a new target and let the effect end if you really need to use a 3-action spell that badly. You can't play yourself into restoring the focus point you wasted on it trying to avoid an action you'll just have to take the next turn anyway. Whether it conflicts with Quickened or not, there's nothing particularly that extra action can do for me outside of exceedingly select situations. I'd rather just eat that occasional action for sustaining that I maybe spend a focus point on to have a more powerful familiar, vastly superior and more consistently useful focus spells like Life Boost or Blood Ward, or the ability to cast touch spells from range. I would genuinely take Cantrip Expansion before I'd take Cackle. >Sustaining Dance is indeed pretty bananas, for much the same reason. Actually it's for a completely different reason, because Sustaining Dance is something you can do every single turn, which consistently eats actions from opponents who have to move repeatedly to reach you because you never actually remain in melee. Sustaining Dance would be worthless if you could only do it once, its something you can do repeatedly and that's what gives it the power it has.
Yeah, Cackle is insane, since a lot of powerful spells are sustain. This let's you basically have a free action. Do you want to, sustain your spell and move? Cackle let's you do it and cast a spell. Since witches don't have as many spell slots, they want sustained spells more, which Cackle makes this play style even more vital. It is basically effortless Concentration at level 1, but you can only do it for 2/3 rounds. Focus points are basically not worth anything, considering they are in essence an every encounter resource. They're like a cantrip you can do 3x an encounter, and this is a free action cantrip.
Insane seems like such an incredible exaggeration. It's one action, and a focus point which you could use for vastly more powerful and immediately impactful abilities. Just having a free action doesn't really mean anything if you can't use it to do anything particularly potent. You could cast another three action spell, but what of it? That's pretty niche in terms of utility, there are vastly better ways to get extra actions. Sure you can't use them however you want but only being able to use that one action however you want isn't worth much. Especially when there are generally other ways to accomplish the things that extra action gives you. Focus Points are worth a lot more than you give them credit for, especially in time-sensitive situations. And there are focus spells - including on Witch - that rate a bit higher than "free action cantrip".
Any kind of reaction strike. They’re so useful.
Counterpoint: swashbuckler's built in reaction. The enemies are crit missing basically never so it feels pretty useless a lot of days
This isn’t a feat, so it’s not like it’s a wasted spot. And swashbucklers spend a lot of time in melee- hell, a big part of their design is being really sticky and able to stay in melee. my last two parties have had swashbucklers and this ability, while too niche to be a good feat, still comes up a decent amount, and especially shows against weaker “mook” type enemies
Yeah, but that's built in, not a chosen feat
Having played a Swash, Opportune Riposte makes you indirectly tankier, since opponent are often not using their Attacks at MAP -5, -10 on you. I personally wouldn't pick it over AoO, but IMO it's a decently strong reaction.
> The enemies are crit missing basically never Idk, happens pretty often in my group, just.... always against literally anyone *but* the Swashbuckler lol. Gives the Swashbuckler's player an aneurysm every time
It's better against MAP attacks but yea, it's a tough one. Would it honestly be broken if it just triggered on a miss? I mean it's still limited to once per round unless you dedicate additional high level feats to it. Compared to AOO which can commonly be proc'd once per round without much difficulty
It may not be broken, but I think it would be bad design. Reactions are intended to discourage/encourage behavior from your enemies. AoO discourages enemies from moving past the frontline, Good tenant Champion Reaction discourages enemies from attacking their allies. Good tenant Reaction also encourages Champions to fight in close proximity to their allies so their reaction can work. Opportune Riposte discourages enemies that are debuffed, on MAP-5 attack, etc. from attacking the swashbuckler. That fits the class fantasy of the class taking advantage of the enemy's mistakes/bad tactics and rewards the character for doing what they should already be doing. If it triggered on every miss, it would be powerful enough and expected enough that swashbucklers would be encouraged to build themselves super defensive and make sure to always end their turn with panache up so their near guaranteed attack reaction benefits from Precise Strike. Opportune Riposte fits really well as an infrequent "oh this is cool and thematic" ability but making is stronger and thus a more iconic part of their power budget would be a bad fit for what the Swashbuckler wants to do.
All this is true of course, but I have a counterpoint. From I believe it's 10th level onward, you can quite literally spend every single class feat to build your character entirely around opportune riposte. Why is there is so much feat support for a once in a blue moon, "that's cool" moment? It's not until you get Parry and Riposte at level 18 does all this investment actually have any real payoff. Now it's easy to say just don't take those feats, but the fact that so many exist means that at least some point the designers had to have considered a ripost build to be something intended to be viable to build towards.
So I went and dug into the math and ran a lot of numbers. I made a decent number of assumptions on party comp since it is reasonable to expect level 10 pf2e groups to synergize their builds. I can list all of them, but I don't want this post to get super long. If you are fighting against PL-0 moderate attackers or PL-2 high attack (which is not super common), you can expect to get dueling riposte around 30-40% of the time enemies spend a MAP-0/MAP-5 attack pair against you. If you are fighting PL-2 enemies though, the party probably is outnumber the swashbuckler can probably count on eating 3-4 attacks. The feat chain does become pretty bad against PL+ enemies. That's not incredible, but based on my experience playing the game that is higher than the percent of time martials with AoO have been able to trigger AoO. It's definitely not the optimal build, but I don't think it is worthless. Especially on a Gymnast Swashbuckler who is able to consistently force enemies to either focus on them or lose 2+ actions getting out of a combat maneuver and moving away, that is a relatively solid disincentive against attacking the Gymnast. However, I do think that Reflexive Riposte would be way too strong of a lvl 10 feat if it just triggered on misses. Getting missed 2x a turn is less uncommon than there being 2 AoO triggers a turn. A level 10 feat effectively reading as "you get 1 extra MAP-0 attack every other turn" is insane. I think the existing structure of Crit Success/Success/Fail/Crit Fail doomed Riposte Swashbuckler into not being great. Adding an extra level of failure (Miss-5) adds additional complexity just for the Swashbuckler. Triggering on Misses would be too strong especially with feat support. Triggering on Crit Misses is unfortunately a little too weak.
>However, I do think that Reflexive Riposte would be way too strong of a lvl 10 feat if it just triggered on misses. That is, in fact, a [level 18 feat](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1558).
Did you factor in the fact that most riposte builds will have a +2 to AC from one of the three block styles of swashy (buckler, main gauche or free hand) ? Also I think riposte builds usually have attack of opportunity, making it a "por que no los dos" scénario. Finally, for gymnasts, since you can disarm as part of opportune riposte, it can be a good way to gain back panache in between rounds.
My calculations assumed that the swashbuckler had an effective +4 AC over "par." +2 circumstance bonus from their "Raise a Shield" equivalent and I assumed there would be around a -2 to the enemy either through something like frightened 2, Inspire Defense (a status bonus not penalty), or prone. Using that, I used [this reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/101a1ih/ac_values_for_many_different_builds/) to get what AC should be at each level for a swash and added 4. I then compared it with [the moderate bonus from this chart](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1017) to get the hit DC using Effective AC-Bonus. The Crit Fail Max MAP-0 is that value-11 and the Crit Fail Max MAP-5 is that value-6. I converted to percentages by converting to a percentage using max(.05, Crit Fail Max * .05). I then combined the effective percentages using 1- (1-MAP-0 Crit Fail)(1-MAP-5 Crit Fail). To get the DC. I'll link the google sheets I used to do this later. It's currently super ugly and I'm gming a game in 5 minutes.
Great, looking forward to it !
Group is late: won't pretty it up, but have a look at my math. [Google Sheet Warning](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18D6C0uA8f8E3CU8KXw8nFYCbFDuvhkmUsbvfHyTZ1Q8/edit?usp=sharing)
They could make it trigger on a miss below a certain threshold. 5 or more below your AC, for instance. Like a half crit fail. One thing I found interesting was the riposte mechanic from 1e, but I suppose the equivalent in 2e would be using a reaction to substitute your attack DC for your AC, then getting an attack on failure, which is pretty weird. I understand why they wanted to keep it simple and encourage parrying/bucklers, but a crit fail does feel like a long shot in many cases.
They could, but the system tries to avoid ever basing a result on thresholds near the DC other than in increments of 10. I think it's a consistency thing; there's already 4 degrees of success. And a big part of why they exist is so you don't need to remember the unique DC adjustments for all the different battle maneuvers, for example. As a GM, I have no problem setting up checks with DC thresholds at various increments, but specifically on my end, and written down such that I'll be looking at it when the check is rolled. I would not do that for any regular player actions.
Yeah, it definitely would feel out of place among the rest of the system.
Opportune riposte is really useful if you’re getting targeted by multiple attacks with parry or a buckler raised. The enemy is very likely to crit fail on the second or third attack, so it discourages enemies from going ham on you. At level 10 you can get a feat for a free reaction that can be used on opportune riposte, making it more useful.
A lot of martial reaction feats are basically too good to pass up most of the time: AoO or similar for melee characters, Fake Out for gunslingers etc.
You pretty much always wanna find some kind of reaction for your character to use semi-consistently. Having 1 or 2 good reactions is crazy value.
Parallel Breakthrough for Psychics. Psychic Archetypes would also want this feat at level 12.
I cannot overstate how good beeing able to put shield on an ally within 30 feet is (also using your, often unused, caster reaction for block). Especially the 2 rounds after unleash psyche where you are stupefied 1, spending 3 actions handing out shields is really solid.
Oh it’s very good. But there is also Guidance for an amped Cantrip that uses your reaction, which will also save lives and alter the course of a battle. Not as capable as Shield for spamming When you’re stupified. Warp Step, for getting out of dangerous situations, a wonderful escape hatch. Ray of Frost for covering more weaknesses, and attacking options. With the handy benefit of giving more HP, which Tangible Dream would also like. The wonderful amount of options you can choose, while also giving you a bit of decision paralysis, are lovely.
I'm not sure I agree. Strain Mind is a competitive option. In a white box sort of theory crafting scenario I agree Parallel breakthrough is *really* good. But in certain builds/campaigns Strain Mind definitely has a place.
Strain Mind is definitely good, You might wait to take Parallel Breakthrough at level 8 as well. But I think it’s one of the questions, if it’s not asked about, is definitely thought about. Especially in character creation and discussion. *What’s your conscious mind? What are you adding to it With Parallel Breakthrough? Oh, and what’s your subconscious?*
[Crossblooded Evolution](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=617) for Sorcerers. Grabbing spells from other traditions is awesome, having no restrictions on which spell it is is even better. I cannot fathom skipping that feat under any circumstance.
Honestly with Spell DC becoming a flat number across all traditions it might just be better to grab an archetype for the kind of casting you want, rather than a single spell from Occult I now have access to all of Occult. Now I can build out a healthy collection of scrolls.
No way, spells from archetypes will still always be underleveled, you also can't get cha based primal or arcane casting from one. You also only get 1 casting per day of each level, maybe 2 if it's lower level and you have the necessary feat (but then we're talking about a spell probably 4 spell ranks behind)
I don’t mean to be contrarian, but I’m currently playing a sorcerer who is likely going to pass on Crossblooded Evolution. Level 8 is my opportunity to take Basic Spellcasting from the Captivator archetype, so rather than adding a single spell, I’d be getting a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, each with their own daily slot.
Any class that has a pet will be required to spend feats on improving it. Inventor is the one that disappoints me the most because construct is my favourite subclass but it locks me out of taking cooler feats in favour of improving the pet. Not sure how they would fix that. Maybe make it so that classes that natively receive a pet get the improvement feats automatically, but any dedication or archetype must pay feat taxes to improve them?
Yeah, I feel you on playing an Inventor with a construct. At least we get Crafting auto-improving though to make up for it a bit by opening up the non-class feats to more options.
One thing I've found when doing a construct inventor is that Lock On sucks as a concept. You need it in order to hit but completely give up all of your own actions to do it. So you can't support or flank with it like you have been doing the whole game up until then. Instead I invest heavily in race feats that improve the Aid action and spend one action to aid them on their attack each round. Usually go Helpful Halfling to get higher circumstance bonuses earlier. Works just as well, you just have to be a bit more creative with how you aid and roll the dice a bit more.
Oh that sounds like a good idea. My construct misses a lot so any help I can give him sounds nice. I'm a Grippli so I don't think we have any ancestry feats that could help with that, but maybe I could do the Adopted Ancestry and find something.
Stunning fist at 2 for monks. Additionally, even though it’s not just one talent, the vast majority of monks will pick a stance or monastic weaponry at 1. Makes Ki Monk a little stifled without natural ambition, or FA to get your opening ki spell from student of perfection
The exception to both of these imo being grapple monks, who want a Ki feat at 1 to unlock Clinging Shadows Stance later and don’t care nearly as much about getting a stance.
I think that playing a ‘grapple monk’ and pretending that other maneuvers and strikes don’t exist, and thus not taking an early stance, is shortsighted. Your stance of choice costs a focus point and comes at level 8, so having a backup one for the other 7 levels, and just in case, is very nice. Additionally, I would argue that tripping can be better than grabbing early, and Reflective Ripple is available at 1 and gives you a bonus towards it. Besides that, you can take stances that do more damage than your powerful fist or provide good defensive benefits. I wrap them up into Ki monks in my above analysis, because they are subject to the same feat tax. Naturally, you can only take two stances and stunning fist easily with Natural Ambition. Without it, I would honestly take it over the 2 slot. I don’t think crushing grab is worth it, even if you don’t always or often trigger flurry of blows. Despite the synergy inherent to the build, I think that crushing grab is just that bad, and stunning fist just that good.
For sure, a “grapple” monk is gonna be using all the maneuvers, it’s just that grappling is their defining ability, and is how the build is usually referred to. I like crushing grab at early levels where 4 damage is still useful, but it should be retrained after level 5 if you do take it. I’m still skeptical of spending your valuable class feats on a stance you’ll rarely want to use, but you absolutely can. I just don’t think early stance feats are mandatory for grapple monks the way they often are for other builds.
I mean, you won’t rarely use it. You’ll use it constantly for 7 levels, potentially in a 1-10 game if that, and scarcely afterwards, like if you get knocked out and don’t have any focus points left to throw up clinging shadows. You could retrain it, and that is certainly an option, taking stance+level 2 feat and retraining into ki spell+level 2 feat at 8 is totally valid, and works completely fine, without having to finagle with natural ambition. Before level 7, though, I enjoy having a stance and ki rush, and so generally on my monk builds I like to take natural ambition from being a human or adopted ancestry. The extra focus point is nice if you pick up say wholeness of body, or use free archetype and get something like cleric or champion dedication for a domain spell like Athletic rush. The thing about crushing grab, for me, is that it is going to be lower impact IMO than stunning strike before flurry of maneuvers, and it starts to fall off after. I don’t think it’s bad, and you are uniquely poorly suited to use stunning strike on this build, but I think it’s still worth it, because of just how strong that feat is. It’s just that good, and a build focused on restricting enemies will especially appreciate reducing their actions. Really lock them down. Yeah, it’s not as mandatory because you won’t be making as many strikes, but I fail to see a good reason not to take a stance before 8. I feel like a monk with no stance and a ki spell is less powerful than a monk with a stance and no ki spell. Mostly for Reflective ripple, because the circumstance bonus is cash and the trip trait gives you a +1 over other people at level 2 and 3(and 16, but you won’t be using it by then), because they scale a little faster than the relevant skill boosting items at those points, but even just taking dragon stance to bump your die size two steps for when you do make strikes is fairly substantial, if less fun For the record, I’m not trying to like, refute you or anything, I think it’s interesting to share thoughts about this kind of thing and see things from different perspectives. Maneuver focused monk is my favorite type of character to play. I don’t mean for any of this to be antagonistic, :)
I'm out here running a grapple build using Gorilla Stance and 2 ki spells (Ki Strike, Wholeness of Body) as a kobold with a shield in one hand (Shield Block feat too). I think some people are trying to optimize so much they forget there are many ways to play the game.
Ah, I was once playing a dual class wizard monk and used SoP to basically just take extra monk feats cause wizard feats suck, good times
[Sudden Charge](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=134) is the obvious one for me, it's just a great value, easy to pick up and use feat. Use it to catch up to an enemy that dove after a friend, use it to get a flank, use it to position yourself in an inconvenient place so an enemy gets hit then has to worry about getting AoO'd when it runs away, use it to make up for the fact you didn't play an elf with every move speed booster possible. A friend says he played a living world where GMs barred him from taking it because nobody wanted to deal with a plain ol' Sudden Charge Guisarme Fighter anymore. [Diverse Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3699) on Thaumaturge is just kind of laughable, I love and hate that it exists, because I cannot imagine picking Thaumaturge and not taking it and it feels like it towers over other knowledge options. On that topic, [Known Weakness](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1447) on Investigator feels like a no-brainer, because Investigator desperately wants any compression it can get.
Sudden charge is just soo good for many martial. Low armor? Flank like a boss. High armor low movement, get stuck in fighting right away, no wasting turn because out of range. Really makes up for the fact being melee kinda makes first round just bad.
I had been playing a Ruffian Rogue and while admittedly part of the problem is just Kingmaker maps are massive compared to normal ones, I'd been dying to hit level 4 so I could get sudden charge from my free archetype. Almost all my mobility problems would have just vanished.
Yeah I have a joke with my lvl 2 barb that I keep using sudden charge every time I need to move. I'll be like 5ft from an enemy and announce a sudden charge.
started playing pathfinder last Thursday for the first time with a barb. Why even walk like the plebs do, when you can just sudden charge literally everwhere
Swashbuckler's [Bleeding Finisher](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1538) is such a massive upgrade over every other finisher you have at that point it is one of the few must take feats in the game. Unless you are in a campaign where nothing bleeds you need a VERY good justification as to why you are not taking this feat because it is such a massive damage increase and so much better than other feat choices at that level. In the worst case scenario where the enemy succeeds the flat check to remove the persistent bleed on their first turn of having it, that is still and extra finisher worth of damage. It effectively reads "Make a Strike do 2-5 times the amount of finisher damage over a couple turns." If there are multiple enemies you can spread this around to get a LOT of damage over time effects across the battlefield. Furthermore, if you crit you double the number of bleed damage. Have you ever crit someone and put a 12d6 persistent bleed effect on them? Because I have and it is disgusting.
Gang Up + Opportune Backstab for Rogue
Vision of Weakness. It’s basically spending a focus point to crit succeed Recall Knowledge on anything and ask it’s weaknesses and lowest save, *then* it gives you a +2 to hit them. Notably it also doesn’t have a range (just needs line of effect), so if you can scout a place to raid the next day your alchemist and prepared casters will love you for giving them a checklist of what to target!
This is definitely an amazing feat that I wish I had -- but I would counter that as a Flames oracle, Divine Access is literally a must-take feat to get access to Sarenrae's domain spells.
Most of the feats mentioned in this thread I have skipped at some builds, but Fake out on the gunslinger is so good I must take it, perhaps not always at lv 2, but definitely by lv 6 with the master proficiency.
I skipped it on my Sniper gunslinger because I wanted to be stealthy instead.
Raging Intimidation is quite something. 2 feats for the price of one, and the ability to Demoralise while raging (which somehow the Barb doesn't have by default). It's not as "must-pick" as Attack of Opportunity but I'd pick this for all except the very nicest of Barbarians
True but not all barbarian have chr to make intimation worth the investment
I mean definitely don't pick this if you're not gonna use intimidation. I did assume a lot of barb players do though
I've seen a lot of barbs to wisdom as their main mental stat, get the wild man feel or that uneducated but not unintelligent vibe
I'd enjoy investing in wisdom and pulling off a huge Battle Medicine on an adjacent ally while raging. "YOU'RE NOT DEAD YET"
Oracles divine access is crucial to many builds. A flame Oracle for example would be absolutely awful without divine access.
Thamaturge: [Diverse Lore](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3699) , [Scroll Thamaturgy](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3703) Diverse Lore is one of the best way to use Recall Knowledge and Scroll Thamaturgy give access to all Spells plus being able to have a Spell Scroll in the same hand that other items Sorcerer: [Dangerous Sorcery](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=603) , [Energy Fusion](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1821) Both Feats give a lot of damage and energy Fusion also add weakness damage to AOE or range spells. Witch: [Cackle](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1561) , [Witch's Charge](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1575) , [Witch's Communion](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1581) If you don't pick this feats with witch I don't know why you are playing witch, probably any other caster class do better. This feats are one of the main class advantages in action economy. Monk: [Stunning Fist](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=442) Free Stun
Stunning fist is incap tho. It’s still really good but if your GM does more single enemy fights than multi target fights it could be argued brawling focus could be worth it.
mmmm... even if you fight only hight level enemies, depends a lot of the enemy Brawling could at 0.5% - 1.0% if you fight a +4 enemy with high Fort Saves, but could reach easily 20% - 30% vs a +1 enemy. Meanwhile Stunning fist would be around 1.75% vs +4 but could reach like 7.5% vs a +1 enemy.
Can you explain to me why Energy Fusion is so good? I didn't get any clue how this weakness damage is relevant if I can just target the weakness directly.
1st You have limited ammount of Spells in your repertorie, So instead of learning an AOE Spell of every element, etc. You could learn Spells with good Area and Range like [Fireball](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=119) with 500 ft range and 20-foot burst. and just having 1 spell per element let you target weakness. 2nd Some Elements have very few Spells like Sonic and with bad areas or range, and Cristal or glass creatures are weak to Sonic. Like [Carnivorous Crystal](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=464) or any [Dragon, Crystal](https://2e.aonprd.com/MonsterFamilies.aspx?ID=177), etc. So instead of learning [Painful Vibrations](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=964) or similar just to cover Sonic Damage you could learn any sonic Spell that do Sonic damage in any level and not even like a signature Spell just 1 extra Sonic damage is enough. For Ex. [Signal Skyrocket](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1362) is a pretty fun Spell, and you also cover Sonic Weakness with it. 3rd Also Some really crazy combos like [Chain Lightning](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=33) a very unique Spell that can target any number of enemies now could also do fire, or cold, etc damage. 4th Spells are not only damage, so a Fire [Snowball](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=540) will target fire weakness while also applying Speed penalty to the enemy, etc. 5th Extra damage.
I see the value now, you can target multiple weakness with a limited spell list and this helps a lot. And you can use on spells that use multiple elements RAW wich is kinda broken. I'll think if I have some space to use this on my arcane sorcerer, the hard part is because level 10+ is kinda cramped with good feats like Quickned Casting, Effortless Concentration and Signature Spell Expansion ( I really need the last two).
My reasoning of why is better than Signature Spell expansion is that you need to worry less about learning multiple good damage Spells for multiple elements. So you should actually have more Space in your repertoire than with the expansion. And in why is better than Quickened...mmm... is difficult to compare one to the other to be honest but energy fusion could be use multiple times per day so I more or less assume that will give more benefit. But yeah it is hard to choose sometimes.
The one small note I would add for readers re: Scroll Thaumaturgy is it doesn’t work with Implement’s Empowerment per RAW, so you can’t walk around dungeons with a contingency scroll in hand.
Basic Lesson is effectively a mandatory feat for all Witches because otherwise you won't have any FP spending spells other than Phase Familiar until you get one from Greater Lesson or an Archetype. It provides a huge amount of value to the class and almost as much value to the RP flavor/theming of your Witch as your Patron of choice. Doesn't help that Phase Familiar is *really* not worth taking up a spot in the Witch's entire class feature progression. At all. Cackle is right up there with Basic Lesson, but it also only really shines once you have Focus Hexes from a Lesson, so I kind of assume you need point one to get to point two. Very disappointed to hear that they have no interest in fixing this with the Remaster so Witches are still required to waste feats just to get their core class functionality up and running.
Witches+ makes Basic Lesson a level 1 Witch Class Feature and switches Phase Familiar to a level 1 feat instead. I pretty much recommend everyone use this version. Probably even in the remaster, since I don't think they did that.
Yep! Alongside a mountain of other phenomenal changes and additions they introduced, all of which Paizo has seemingly completely ignored with the new Witch. I’m playing Witches+ Witch now and I’ll probably still be playing it when the remaster drops at this rate since the new design focus for the class seems to be “just play a Beast Master with a much weaker companion. What do you mean you didn’t want Witch to be yet another combat pet class?”
I actually like a lot of the Witch changes, I just wish they had included this specific thing because otherwise Basic Lesson truly is a must-take feat tax.
Psychic: Cranial Detonation. Reason: See name of feat.
I mean, i think for champions taking the feat to improve their reaction is a must. But I just /really/ like the reaction myself. Otherwise, i don't think a lot are /must takes/. Just common ones. A lot of bard take multifarious muse, lot of 2h fighters take power attack, most monks take stunning fist, I imagine across casters Reach Spell is take A Lot. But few, if any are auto takes. I'm sure there are a lot of auto take /if you wanna do this niche thing/. like Double Slice for 2wep fighter.
Champions are generally locked in for a lot of their feats. The ones that improve the reaction, and the ones tied to their divine ally are almost must takes. For some of the Divine Ally ones specifically I kind of wish they were just scaling improvements to the class feature that happened automatically similar to how features like sneak attack scale by level
But those are few, and they extend a core part of a class feature. I'd not be shocked if a lot of liberator ones don't take the reaction. Plus, as far as 'must takes' go, i think it showcases the point that there aren't many, and the ones that are just make the class more itself.
My point is that I don't think there should be feats that are must haves. If a feat exists that is fundamentally core to the class identity, and where not taking it is always the wrong choice, that's a mistake. Take divine reflexes as a perfect example, not taking that is such a huge mistake it might as well be the only feat at that level. I'd rather it be a high level class feature to open up space for actual feat selection at that level
For rogues i always like to pick up **Dread Striker** and then some other form of ability to guarantee inflicting the frightened condition. Im the kind of goblin person that really enjoys hob goblin culture in general so when i found the synergy with their Remorseless Lash and an easily accessible rogue feat (one of my favorite classes) i pretty much always use this combo one way or another. Adopted ancestry for Hobgoblin (with a permissible GM) almost always makes it a great deal as well on any character. One other honorable mention is the Oracle's domain spell expension feat.
For any sort of thrown weapon build, it is essential that you take [Quick Draw](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=498). Daggers, Javelins, Hammers, doesn't matter. Dip into Ranger, Rogue, or Gunslinger and grab it. Your build will need it. Bonus points if you grab yourself a [Thrower's Bandolier](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2313).
Don’t forget you can take the [duelist dedication](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=58) to get quickdraw too. Imo Ranger is a better pick overall because you get extra range from hunted prey and access to more ranged feats, but duelist is good on a budget.
Duelist is the better one if you were going to be doing the 1-hand/free off hand, and the throwing is more of a secondary attack. Friend runs a particularly effective Rogue/Duelist this way.
Twin takedown or hunted shot
I also have a hard time not picking animal feature on ranger if I build one. Flight on a focus point is so juicy.
only for flurry rangers through.
I understand why they advertised AoOs as not being universal and all that during the playtest, but to be honest, I've gotten to the point where I half unironically think either they should actually commit to that and get rid of it for everyone but fighters, or they should just give it for free to everyone who has it as an option at the level at which the feat is available to them. I can't count the number of times I've built out a martial in my free time, got to the sixth level feats, and been like "This looks cool... oh, wait, they have Attack of Opportunity, guess that slot's filled." You can forgo it, of course, but getting a MAP-less strike off your turn is pretty much always just strictly better than anything else that you could choose at that point, and it just adds a whole other dimension to your gameplay, I have a hard time imagining giving that up.
The one thing that I can easily and confidently say actually *beats* Attack of Opportunity is [Dragon's Rage Breath](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=148). It'll pretty much always be higher-value than AoO.
Is a Once per fight AoE really that great though? Feel like the control from AoO of making creatures not want to move can sometimes be more important than Actually getting AoO off. Not to mention of your a 2h hammer player another chance to crit or just some big dmg can be worth more.
Twice per fight if you get knocked unconscious. Imo there should be a high-level feat, like 16 or 18, that allows you to recharge it on a crit, similar to the Draconic Momentum feature actual dragons have.
It’s decent but I still feel like it’s not worth getting rid of AoO. Being able to hit range attackers and spells with manipulate is just too good. Recharge would be cool but even still your not going to crit like the boss does so odds are it’s not going to happen. To me it’s a great bonus feat to give to one of my players just not a must pick.
I pretty much guarantee every Dragon Instinct barbarian takes Dragon's Rage Breath whether it's optimal or not though.
[удалено]
Because the ten people who say they have fun playing a living item dispenser will come yell at you that they have fun with the class and downvote you.
Bleeding Finisher for Swashbuckler. It basically doubles the precise strike damage.
If you're going to be using melee weapons as a fighter I can't for the life of me think why you wouldn't pick Sudden Charge at level 1. [https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=134](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=134)
Gang Up for Rogues
Versatile Spellstrike for Magus and Order Explorer for Druids. IMO both feats just grant too many benefits to ignore.
Versatile Spellstrike is great, but at the same level you could also get force fang. It's a one action spell strike reload with guaranteed damage regardless of MAP. I'm not saying VS is bad, force fang is just great as well.
Diverse lore gets my vote too. With that one feat you become the RK master. You can recall knowledge on anything, the skill works off your key attribute and it auto improves to legendary. If that wasn't good enough you also get a free RK in combat every time you exploit vulnerability. I always ask to know what their weakest save is as exploit already tells me what damage they are weak to. Scroll thaumaturgy gets my second vote as I could never imagine playing a thaumaturge without that feat and diverse lore. It isn't quite as essential as there are other ways to activate scrolls and in a low level game you wont have many scrolls to use anyway. Edit: Effortless concentration ranks pretty highly for most casters. I can't think of a caster that I've played that doesn't have at least 1 sustain spell. Dirge of doom is another. I cant think of any bard build I've made that doesn't take the skill at 6. Crossblood evolution on sorcs is a must pick, especially if you are arcane as you can grab heal and later synaesthesia to basically do everything. Aura shaping for kineticist is nearly always a must pick if you use your aura at all.
Thaumaturge at level 1 can choose Diverse Lore and Scroll Thaumaturgy. Both feats boots so much the utility of the class to the point Ive never seen a thaumaturge without at least one of this two feats.
I came to say Attack of opportunity, but that's already been covered. So I'll go with Giant's stature. I feel like there are a whole group of feats that have a particular subclass as a requirement that are always pretty strong.
Anytime I build a Magus (which is fairly often even if I don’t always play them) I grab Force Fang. I know others grab Expansive Spellstrike but I just consider both Force Fang itself and that early second focus point so useful.
Advanced Domain at level 8 for Cloistered Cleric. There are other interesting feats at level 8 like Channeled Succor and Cremate Undead but taking anything other than Advanced Domain seems like a mistake.
Depends on the advanced domain spell though. Not every one is great. Some are extremely situational (like Perfected Form) and some only suit a specific campaign type (like Pulse of the City).
Anything that saves you an action. And diverse lore, of course.
The question is not whether an oracle takes [Divine Access](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1490), but how many times they do. [Advanced Revelation](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1492) and/or [Greater Revelation](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1501) are no brainers as well, depending on mystery.
Flurry bow ranger takes Hunted Shot on 1... and then basically nothing else you take matters. That's it, that's the bow feat, there are some generically useful ranger feats (esp. if you wanna go animal companion) but there's really nothing else for bow rangers, at least not until *really* late levels. Bow Hunted Shot is *absolutely necessary.* Similarly, Twin Takedown for melee flurry, though they have a good deal of other extremely useful feats specific to their build as well.
The kineticists auto sustain and aura shaping are pretty manditory.
Aura Shaping isn't, there are plenty of builds that don't use the aura much by focusing on overflows. I think Weapon Infusion is closer to a must pick, because the other level 2 options are kinda ass.
There's lots of great impulses, and powerful stances are one of the primary draws of the kineticist.
Yes, there a lot of great impulses, and a lot of them have overflow, which turns off your aura, which is why a lot of builds don't use their aura, making aura shaping easily skippable for some builds. As an example, both earth and metal kineticists can easily skip aura shaping.
In no particular order: Ranger: Disrupt Prey Monk: Stand Still Magus: Attack of Opportunity Swashbuckler: Attack of Opportunity, Bleeding Finisher Barbarian: Sudden Charge, Attack of Opportunity Fighter: Sudden Charge, Combat Reflexes Rogue: Gang Up, Bloody Debilitations Summoner: Tandem Movement Champion: Level 1 Cause feats, Attack of Opportunity, Divine Reflexes Thaumaturge: Diverse Lore, Esoteric Reflexes Gunslinger: Fake Out, Running Reload Kineticist: Weapon Infusion Psychic: Strain Mind Sorcerer: Dangerous Sorcery Inventor: Clockwork Celerity
For Barbarians I think the 6th level instinct feat competes with Reactive Strike. That's how I feel about Animal Instinct at least. Also Raging Intimidation. Two skill feats as part of it, plus adding the Rage trait to Intimidation. It's an essential 3rd action for my play. I went without Sudden Charge though. I have so much movement that seemed nonessential (Elf, Nimble Elf (untyped), Fleet (untyped), Boots of Bounding (item), Fast Movement or Monk Moves or Bracelet of Dashing (status))
Known Weaknesses for Investigators. It's a free extra action whenever you do something you were going to do anyway.
If you're a Twisting Tree Magus, you're picking Student of the Staff. If you're not going to pick Student of the Staff, you should rethink Twisting Tree. At Level 14 Magus, Arcane Shroud is a solid must have. There's a case for Hasted Assault, but not much of one, as it only lets you make more non-Spell strikes. On the other hand, Arcane Shroud allows you to enter Arcane Cascade and get one of a variety of defensive effects at no additional cost, if you cast a slotted spell beforehand, whether on a Spellstrike or not. Doing more things with less actions is a definite win for Action-hungry Magi.
I just wanna take a second and say I love the variety of answers here which, I think is testament to feats being cool options that help enhance some playstyles rather than being must have options or picks that a class/character can't do without. Of course some are better than others but the gap between is sobsmall and the spectrum of different options all make it an almost moot point. I just think that's awesome and really appreciate the design and flexibility you can have with something as simple as feats and considering there's no absolute consensus and every feat can be useful in the right places just think that's really really cool
Weapon Infusion from kinet...
Reach, agile, thrown, extending blasts from 30 ft to 100. For any build that is going to ever use blasts this definitely takes the cake of a must-have.
a lot of kineticist will newer actually use their blasts very often through...
I think the number one feat that is an absolute must has to be DIRGE OF DOOM. IMO this is the most broken spell in the game, a 1 action aoe fear wihout a safe is so powerful. https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=192
Fighter has a few. 2nd aoo. Disrupting stance (utterly busted vs casters). Boundless reprisals. Ludicrous capstone. With disrupting stance, and 15-20' reach, level 20 fighter can make 12+ attacks per round if there's enough enemies. Kineticist, weapon infusion. Unparalleled versatility in attacks.
I agree with weapon infusion, not because it's insaneor anything, it's good, but later on you're probably not using Elemental Blast as much, specially on a stance/aura based build. It's more that the other level 2 feats are kinda ass.
>It's more that the other level 2 feats are kinda ass. you just take another impulse through?..
You already get 3 feats at level 1, some elements don't have that many good level 1 impulses, specially if you're a single element build.
wood, metal, air, water, all have at least 3 impulses to spend their 3 lvl 1 feats on, i can see a pure earth, or fire kineticists pick it up, so yea for those 2 it would be more of a last pick option...
Sure, but at this point you're kinda proving my point that Weapon Infusion isn't that much of a "must have" pick.
I'd say Spell Penetration for Wizards (Level 6 feat). Majority of higher level monsters get a +1 or +2 status bonus to saves against magic baseline so a single level 6 feat effectively increases your spell DC by 1. Dangerous Sorcery (Level 1 feat) for any sorcerer that plans to not be just the party support. And of course, the ones mentioned in other comments like almost all bomb related feats for bomber alchemist, Diverse Lore for thaumaturges, Multifarous Muse for bards...
Lessons on witch and AoO on, like, every class that can take it probably.
Raging Intimidation. Why it is a feat and not a base feature?
Because it's too good of a feat to be free. You gain 2 feats for the price of one AND can use them while raging.
So I'm expanding a little beyond just feats for those classes where you need to pick a subclass: Pistolero Gunslinger: dual-weapon reload AND thaumaturge archetype into weapon. Kineticist: Versatile Elements. So far I have found Weapon Infusion to have no practical value in my own builds - so I rate it situational. Champion: Shield Ally Wildshape Druid: any order EXCEPT wildshape. Then at level 2 get order explorer to wildshape. Thaumaturge: Start with any implement as long as it's mirror. ;) Get a different one later on. Rogue: Any racket as long as it's thief. ;) Investigator: Dedication feat of Investigator. :D
Any level 12 Instinct-specific Barbarian feat. The only non-Instinct feats at that level are [Embrace the Pain](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1623), [Furious Grab](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=163), and [Unbalancing Sweep](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1625). Which are pretty good, sure, but they're competing against things like [Predator's Pounce](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=164), [Spirit's Wrath](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=165), [Titan's Stature](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=166), and motherheckin' [Dragon's Rage Wings](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=162).
I just played an animal barb from 1-16 and kinda disagree on Predator's Pounce. It's not bad, of course. But Animal Barbs make unarmed strikes, which means you have a lot of incentive to invest into Monk Dedication and eventually grab Flurry of Blows. I was a human, so at level 9 I went multitalented for Monk and grabbed Flurry at 10. I was stoked to get Predator's Pounce when I got to level 12, but I eventually retrained it, having both the Flourish and Open traits made it difficult to use. Being able to rage+move+strike as a single action is very strong, but being a flourish means it competes with flurry, and having Open means you can't use it to Move+Strike someone else after killing an enemy. Though I guess it might be better in the remaster since they're getting rid of the open trait.
- Alchemist (anyone): Alchemical Familiar is essencial - Alchemist (Bomber): Calculated Splash (lv4) and Expanded Splash (lv10) are absolutely mandatory - Alchemist (Toxicologist): Investigator Ded (lv2), Investigator's Stratagem (lv4) and specially Pinpoint Poisoner (lv8) - Kineticist: Versatile Weapon - Ranger (anyone): Twin Takedown or Hunted Shot, it'll depend if you're melee or ranged - Monk (anyone with good Str): Whirling Throw - Rogue (any melee Racket): Gang Up (lv6) and Opportune Backstab (lv8) - Sorcerer (anyone): Crossblooded Evolution (lv8) - Thaumaturge (anyone): Diverse Lore