Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Feats that 5e Gives Characters for Free

You can already get Dex to damage in PF, but it is limited to some weapon categories or classes (hello Stalker^^). Fencing grace allows dex damage for a rapier, Dervish Dance for a scimitar and Slashing grace allows the same for one light or one handed slashing weapon in addition to making the weapon do piercing damage as an option.

TWF right now is (from my experience) almost a rogue-only option since the rogue gives a damn about multiplicative +x damage per attack and wants to sneak as often as he can. Using a Two-handed weapon (as a fighter with that massive +hit from weapon training) with Power attack, a good crit range and a lot of STR is so, so, so much stronger and less feat expensive. But I guess 3.x editions and their derivatives are just a balancing hell since I can see your fear of making STR a dump stat when DEX becomes too good for combat.

Hrothgar Rannúlfr said:

Hi, everyone.

One of my players, pointed out that one of the strengths of Pathfinder is that it doesn't give these things to all characters for free.

He feels that mages fighting in armor should be extremely rare. Just gaining the appropriate armor proficiency isn't enough to avoid possible spell failure.

He pointed to the example of the Iron Mage from Ptolus (3X) as being something special. The Iron Mage appears to wear heavy armor and cast spells without the arcane spell casting chance. To him, that was something that would lose its specialness if such a house rule to emulate 5E were brought into Pathfinder.

So, that discussion has me questioning whether or not to apply any of these ideas, at all.

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But it's not *that* special in Pathfinder as there's several different ways to get that ability, either through classes (the magus) or feats. The difference is in 5e you dip one level of fighter (or be a dwarf) to get armour while in Pathfinder you dip a few levels of magus. The end result is the same.
Only in PF that kills your spellcasting since the magus and wizard levels won't stack.

It's a high price to pay just to be a Geralt of Rivia and cast in armour.

Saelorn said:

The real danger lies in the two-weapon fighting rules. That whole chain of feats has always been very Dex-intensive, which prevented someone from going into it with high Strength, and that's what kept everything in check - you get lots of attacks, but each one is only like 1d6+3.

It's not hard to get a single stat up to +7 in Pathfinder, but getting two stats that high is prohibitively expensive in terms of cash and point cost. If you could add Dex to damage with melee weapons, then you wouldn't need to care about Strength at all, where you would previously care about it a lot since it was multiplicative with your number of attacks. With Dex to damage instead of Strength, now you have six attacks at 1d6+9 instead of 1d6+3 (and you probably have higher Con).

Two-weapon fighting would overtake Power Attack in terms of overall damage output, where Power Attack was already much better than any other option. It's hard to say if that's better or worse than how it is right now. It's been a long time since Pathfinder was anything remotely close to balanced, so adding in another path to power would either bring greater versatility (if everyone is already limiting themselves to powerful options) or it would make the less-optimized characters fall even further behind the curve.

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Excellent points on Dex to damage, Saelorn. Definitely hadn't considered some of those, especially the TWF issue.

Lylandra said:

You can already get Dex to damage in PF, but it is limited to some weapon categories or classes (hello Stalker^^). Fencing grace allows dex damage for a rapier, Dervish Dance for a scimitar and Slashing grace allows the same for one light or one handed slashing weapon in addition to making the weapon do piercing damage as an option.

TWF right now is (from my experience) almost a rogue-only option since the rogue gives a damn about multiplicative +x damage per attack and wants to sneak as often as he can. Using a Two-handed weapon (as a fighter with that massive +hit from weapon training) with Power attack, a good crit range and a lot of STR is so, so, so much stronger and less feat expensive. But I guess 3.x editions and their derivatives are just a balancing hell since I can see your fear of making STR a dump stat when DEX becomes too good for combat.

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3X and its derivatives are certainly balancing tightropes, for sure, Lylandra. That's one reason I moved to 5E as a base, for a long while. It was more forgiving, balance-wise. However, the main player in my group longs for more options and a return to BAB. He wanted to go 1E, but wasn't satisfied with the lack of class features and feats. After discussing the math behind-the-scenes of 1E v. 3X/PF v. 5E and showing him the sheer volume of monsters already available for PF/3X that need no conversion when running on that math, he was nearly sold. All he asked was to be able to gestalt class features that 1E classes had that he liked onto the PF/3X versions (which I wasn't opposed to as I'm a fan of the 3X Gestalt rules, anyway).

I'm not familiar with how the Stalker gets Dex mod to damage. A quick review (too quick perhaps) on d20pfsrd.com didn't reveal it. My review was probably too quick.

Jester David said:

But it's not *that* special in Pathfinder as there's several different ways to get that ability, either through classes (the magus) or feats. The difference is in 5e you dip one level of fighter (or be a dwarf) to get armour while in Pathfinder you dip a few levels of magus. The end result is the same.
Only in PF that kills your spellcasting since the magus and wizard levels won't stack.

It's a high price to pay just to be a Geralt of Rivia and cast in armour.

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Thanks, Jester David.

You're right about casting in armor. And, that's the point of using the PF rules over the 5E rules. In 5E it's much easier. So much so that it isn't special. In PF RPG, a character must earn it and must pay the cost.

But, I'm not all that concerned about killing spellcasting as an expense of arcane casting in armor. I don't use a hard cap of 20th level in my games. So, a character could theoretically become a 20th wizard and be sufficiently multiclassed in Magus with enough levels to cast in armor. Hasn't happened and we use slower XP advancement charts than even the Core book gives (we like really slow advancement to savor the first two tiers of play while still allowing a full level progression), but it could still happen.

Hrothgar Rannúlfr said:

3X and its derivatives are certainly balancing tightropes, for sure, Lylandra. That's one reason I moved to 5E as a base, for a long while. It was more forgiving, balance-wise. However, the main player in my group longs for more options and a return to BAB. He wanted to go 1E, but wasn't satisfied with the lack of class features and feats. After discussing the math behind-the-scenes of 1E v. 3X/PF v. 5E and showing him the sheer volume of monsters already available for PF/3X that need no conversion when running on that math, he was nearly sold. All he asked was to be able to gestalt class features that 1E classes had that he liked onto the PF/3X versions (which I wasn't opposed to as I'm a fan of the 3X Gestalt rules, anyway).

I'm not familiar with how the Stalker gets Dex mod to damage. A quick review (too quick perhaps) on d20pfsrd.com didn't reveal it. My review was probably too quick.

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A stalker can take the stalker art killer's implements which gives him weapon finesse and deadly agility (a PoW feat that allows to use dex for damage with a finesse weapon) for any chosen melee weapon. Which seems quite mandatory unless you prefer a STR stalker.

I think that 5e is more forgiving as well. We didn't change to 5e because our players love options and tinkering and the new edition seemed a bit too narrow and "backwards bound" after 3.x/PF/4e.

Speaking from my experience with my last two (three?) campaigns, be careful with Gestalt though. We love Gestalt as well and since we are 2 players + 1 DM, we use it to broaden our class features and utility by playing Gestalt. However, if PF is a balancing nightmare, then Gestalt PF is a balancing hell. One can easily build one perfectly synergizing character whose options are not only a bit broader, but whose combat capabilities are greatly enhanced by Gestalting(i.e. Fighter/Rogue, Dervish Bard/Swashbuckler...), while the other character may be a simple broadening build that suffers from terrible MADness (Monk/Wizard). You will want to define a common ground for your players in termy of class (especially combat) synergy or designing appropriate encounters will be almost impossible.
Also, Gestalt options seem to favour DEX based classes since any kind of arcane spellcaster will most likely dump STR and go DEX for AC. The characters in our ongoing camapigns are based on 3x DEX/INT (the gunslinger/alchemist left us sadly), DEX/CHA and DEX/WIS. We did have full CHA (double caster), CHA/INT and STR/CHA before, but the DEX options seem so much stronger.