BOOK OF THE DEAD #4: I rant about the new necromancy archetypes! (The Rules Lawyer)
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- Опубликовано: 15 май 2022
- Next in my series on BOOK OF THE DEAD, I OBJECT to the low power of some of the options for necromancy!
Here we look at the new archetypes for USING the undead as well as undead companions, familiars, and eidolons.
0:21 Introduction
2:06 Stitch Flesh, and new Class Feats
5:15 Sublimate this feat!
7:47 Reanimator archetype
9:19 Content warning: rant
17:10 Shambling Horror house rule
17:27 Undead Master archetype
19:49 Undead companions
20:55 Creature creation rituals are too expensive
25:28 Undead specific familiars
28:43 House rule on undead familiars
29:50 Undead eidolons
31:16 Closing statement
"Sad Lich" artwork from the-art-of-B:
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CORRECTION: Shambling Horror has the duration of 10 minutes, but it lets you cast it again on the same corpse. However, you can do this for a long time only if you are Refocusing constantly.
necromancy (and frankly many other things) in pf2e feel horrifically underpowered. I did play in a game where i was a necromancer and besides the gm just handwaving things, i found the best strategy was just to be evil and think outside the box. I was playing a sorcerer with the undead bloodline. earlier on, my main strategy was to use spells like ghoul fever on peasants, turn them into undead for free that way, and then because my character was essentially undead (or via the feat description, treated as undead, by undead) i effectively just commanded ghouls with diplomacy instead since they arent mindless creatures. basically, because of the heavy restrictions paizo has put on "minions", it just ends up being better to not even have the undead effectively at your command even be minions. create zombie lords but dont make them minions. have them create and command more zombies
So... build an actual army that you have to kill first
@@emilygordbort7300 more like, exploit the heavily restrictive game mechanics so your undead allies dont fall under the "minion" trait an instead are allied npcs
While it is refreshing to hear someone positive and enthusiastic, seeing that you can identify and present issues that you have with the pathfinder material offers a balance in your perspectives that makes your overall contribution better rounded in my humble opinion.
For the sake of conversation I will present two counter arguments. 1. Even if the situation is as you describe. Having extra flexibility to acquire what is basically a free spell slot of your choice on a whim by destroying a high level companion is thematically appropriate and not without merit. Think of it as a sniper that would get the "You can sacrifice your pistol sidearm to get an extra sniper bullet". Sure strictly in terms of wealth that is not a good trade-off but sometimes you really need that bullet to come in clutch in a critical situation and being able to magically do something like this can change the course of key events.
Now you also chose a level 10 creature as a baseline. But I also noticed that the table offers the possibility to create companions for 15 gold and the feat does not specify that the spell slot obtained by sublimation is in any way related by a co-efficient to the level of the creature. This is blatantly exploitable and if that situation turned up I would find myself bound to house rule it.
Layers know how to,present an argument.😉😋
@@mister3976 Yes, I agree generally that many abilities dismissed as "bad" are still quite good because they're good for the right situation. Unfortunately with this one, you need to already have the ability to cast the spell to begin with, so it doesn't really open up a new opportunity for you. It allows you to cast it again next turn, but yes it seems like the cost vs. reward can be recalibrated.
@@mister3976 I was about to say good point but I read the feat again: the spell level must be half the minion's level or lower. So for a 1st-level slot it needs to be a Level 2 minion, which costs 105 gold. Which is much higher than a 1st-level scroll (4 gold), and someone thinking optimally will probably stock up on scrolls instead.
Yeah I recently got into Pathfinder and got very exciting when people told me that it's oh so much better than 5e in every way.
And while I gotta say I do enjoy creating characters much more my Favorite sort of Character to play, the Necromancer, feels even worse to play than it did in 5e which already was rather lackluster.
I was hoping this Book of the Dead would address this a little and while it did add some nice new options to Animate Dead overall summoning a creature that's 4 to 5 levels below you just kinda sucks. When your scary monster that you summon can only stand in the way for a turn or two or flank the enemy it feels like a waste of 3+ actions.
Like instead of summoning a Minion made out of paper I could strengthen my already strong allies or debilitate my Enemies much more effectively.
The only reason to summon, espeically undead, that I can see is "because it's what my character would do".... which is kinda sad.
yeah, it needs some homebrew to feel more viable in Pf2, though if you want the ultimate ideal for necromancer characters, 3.5 and Pf1 are absolutely busted in the minion master department
@@gad333mlg there really is no middle ground
The Whispering Tyrant fell because he was switched to PF2E mid war
It all makes sense now :p
He realised he sudenly only had 4 minions and no 10th level spell slot for wish
Summoning and minions in general work much better with proficiency without level. Also , I beleive that the "sacrifice of a minion for a free spell" feat could work nicely with the undead master archetype.
Yes that's a good point: in PwL the GM can use Level - 7 creatures against you.
For Undead Master, yeah it can be more useful if if you have more than one companion. Plus, it's not that evil an act, since you are "freeing" their soul!
The fundamental issue is that Archetypes can't get enough power budget because almost the entire power budget is in the class chassis for casters. As such "being balanced" on something that tries to execute on a transformative idea is always going to feel bad and ultimately the only way this could be solved is if dedications come with harsh downsides. (Or a more fundamental rework of the PF2 system but that's a lot less likely)
I really don't like saying this, but this book, as well as the recent options in Knights of Lastwall, make me think that Paizo is overcorrecting to avoid power creep. Normally, I would be happy that a developer is trying to avoid power creep, but in a TTRPG, where modifications can be made on the fly, I'd rather things be made overpowered but interesting than underpowered and bland. I'm kind of afraid of what's going to happen to the Thaumaturgist and the Psychic, because I really want them to be fun.
Very good one, I love these honest rewiew ones cause some spells/feats are just horrible and no amount of character story or rp/lore fluffy bullshit time can make it any better, good work
It’s unfortunate this book made healing undead clunkier than it has to be. First, there’s the Stitch Flesh feat which is an unecessary feat tax on undead PCs. Then there’s the fact that the book seems to have forgotten that the Undead trait makes you unaffected by healing.
The Healing trait being unable to affect undead PCs RAW causes so many issues like being unable to remove many debilitating conditions, like curses and disease. Most, if not all, of the avenues to do so has the Healing trait.
Even the Undead Healing sidebar forgets that Soothe is a spell that can only target living creatures AND also has the Healing trait. I find it disappointing that the Undead book, of all things, shows a poor grasp of the established rules on how undead interacts with healing. It almost feels like they’re revising some of these rules without actually informing us of the fact.
I agree.
Given the book's intention, has there been discussion about ignoring the "can't benefit from Healing effects" language of the Undead trait? To carry out the book's intention?
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG I’ve seen a few discussions here and there on both the Paizo forums and the 2e subreddit. Most focus on the the new Healing Undead sidebar and Soothe’s peculiar place in it and its implied hidden change, mistake, and/or inconsistency to itself or undead healing rules entirely.
Reading through the discussions, ignoring that very line in the Undead trait seems to be the most elegant hotfix until we get official word from Paizo. It keeps the new sidebar intact with all present examples and makes Soothe one step more accurate with it. Soothe would just need its targeting adjusted.
Are undead not immune to curses and diseases? They were in first edition and they really should be
@@daylearmstrong4447 pf2e seems to be really afraid of giving players any immunities. somehow even if you are playing a skeleton, you can apparently still be poisoned or suffer from disease
@@daylearmstrong4447 While the monsters are, PCs instead just get a bonus to saves against them. The book does actually give tips on if you want to make them immune to diseases (As well as being destroyed at 0hp instead of just falling unconscious), but they pretty much go "Ok, this is gonna make some encounters that were supposed to be tough instead be trivial, so like, be careful"
12:23 the use for Subjugate Undead is for when the target is within reach of something the caster is not. For example, a skeleton on the other side of a door or a drawbridge, or at the top of a battlement: you can order the skel to open the door, lower the drawbridge, start pushing other enemies off the battlement et cetera.
Why this might be very useful? Because enemy necros usually have undead as STAFF, not only as guards... You take control of Igor the zombie butler, have him walk in (while looking through his eyes by means of the other spell) and set fire to the entire place, poison the boss, whatever.
Its definitely nice to see someone review this honestly. Necromancy is tied with evocation as my favorite school of magic and as a wizard player I was really disappointed with how PF2 handled this. My table made a few changes to make necromancy feel viable. First we made it so your minions only have to be lower than your level, no specific amount, and that the components of the create undead ritual do not get used up so that it is a one time investment. This change was made because we found that the rate at which they got destroyed made them nothing but a money sink, especially with this new feat that encourages you to destroy them for spell slots. The other change we made is that we removed the limit on how many you can have because the action economy does that already. Unless I am mistaken you can use one action to command one minion, not all of them, so having more than three with you at a time is impractical. We also renamed animate dead to summon undead and made animate dead a two action spell that requires an appropriate set of remains to create the undead you want. This last change was made more for flavor because animate dead as it is feels more like conjuration than necromancy. Sorry for the mini-rant, keep up your great work!
"First we made it so your minions only have to be lower than your level"
What bonus would a higher level Animate Dead then give you? Since that is what usually determines the level of the minion.
I like your home-rules and may see if I can use them in my game. Because, yeah, they really nerfed necromancy hard. In this book, you can become a lich at level 12, and have some matter of guaranteed self-resurrection. But commanding even a squad's worth of undead buddies? It's too much to ask for dude!!!
I definitely agree with you that Necromancer has been nerfed into the ground. With the rest of the community I was waiting for the Book of the Dead to come out hoping that they would introduce some additional options that make it more evocative to play but unfortunately it didn't do that. Because of that I have introduced some of my own homebrew to hopefully improve things a bit for Necromancer players.
In my opinion, 'Stitch Flesh' is a weird feat tax for having Undead players or companions. In my opinion, I would allow 'Treat Wounds' to function on Undead with a prerequisite of either having a Medicine Proficiency of Expert. Undead players should be able to do this at Trained Proficiency given their more intimate knowledge of their own bodies.
The costs of Create Undead and most Rituals have always been a major contention for me. Especially with as much time as it takes to perform them and the built in limits of the rituals. My preferred house rule, especially for the Create Undead Ritual (Though I would usually prefer it for most rituals) is to require the money invested in the ritual as Focus materials that can be reused on that ritual. For the purposes of scaling rituals such as Create Undead, I consider the Focus material (a solid onyx of at least a certain value) to function on all of the lower level versions of the ritual as well. There are some rituals however that I still keep as consumable ritual materials such as Resurrection. I find that this does a LOT to encourage ritual use and enables someone to actively play a Necromancer.
For the purposes of the Undead Master Archetype, I would allow them to have a variant of the 'Create Undead' ritual that only works on their Bonded Companions but can be performed by themselves without any required materials or focus materials. If they lose the body of their companions then they can spend downtime to search for a suitable replacement similar to how familiars can be replaced.
'Their Master's Call' is almost a carbon copy of the feat 'Beastmaster's Call' so it shouldn't be used as an example as to why the Undead Master didn't get all of the feats that the Beastmaster gets.
Unfortunately, I didn't do much to the Reanimator's additional feats because I'm not sure what the best method currently is on that. Off-hand though, I could easily see raising the -4 level limit to -1 drastically increasing the viable range of undead that they could take over.
Finally, it wasn't mentioned in the book but I would also allow Undead Hordes using the "Troop" rules to be animated or created as a Necromancer's minions. Doing this would allow them some of the feeling of being able to command a horde of undead back. Using the Create Undead ritual as I described above a Necromancer can also create quite a number of undead that may indeed be friendly or helpful to them if they're not mindless, or possibly follow a simple order if they are mindless. This allows some creative setup by Necromancer players if they have the time and freedom to create a horde of their own.
I didn't expect to ever think a necromancer PC would be behind the power curve but it looks that way. Maybe it's because in nearly 40 years of playing they've always felt like they were so far ahead of the curve they couldn't see it.
Crawling Hand is super interesting as (at least to me) it shows how Paizo has committed to breaking the mold on having combat utility familiars. They can give interesting and useful abilities, but gate the specific familiars with weakness traits and familiar ability prerequisite costs. I think that’s fantastic in terms of creating a balanced familiar with useful abilities without adding more familiar/master abilities that are powerful that they become mandatory.
The other thing that excites me: with Lend a Hand, it can sorta help a witch catch up if you want to be a little more frontline. An athletics witch would really enjoy that +1 circumstance to attack especially once they give it Independent. With Guidance and Nudge Fate, could actually have a decent maneuver spellcaster.
Though that does compete with my other idea of a creating an action sink familiar. Casting Sanctuary on a faerie dragon after it uses breath weapon to stupefy/slow enemies. The lower will save from stupefy means they have a higher chance of crit failing and unable to attack the familiar for the rest of the time. Could be great in narrow passage ways with a master’s form familiar. It’ll appear to block the way and enemies would waste their time tumbling through instead of realizing they can just brush past the familiar. Since it’s a transmutation/polymorph effect, it can’t be disbelieved.
Edit: Can make a funny story arc where master’s form is used to help give the crawling hand/talking head their bodies back.
You really have to wonder why subjugate undead doesn't just have the incapacitate trait, isn't that what it's for? "Oh I have an undead targeting dominate" Incapacitate.
Shambling horror just WHY the "since last sunrise restriction" having a bag of corpses you can animate sounds amazing and worth the lvl-4 vs. lvl-2 over animate dead.
I remember a lot of complaining about people not using rituals in 4e and my response was "I give my players ritual components they see a lot of use" but, the price of animate dead is just so excessive i imagine my players would just sell the components for half value.
All in all, yeah book of the dead is...a lot of underwhelming. But on some level i don't know if it couldn't not be. Do I think these options could be better though, yeah, definitely.
The default for PF2e sould be Prof without level and alot of these issues go away. After playing pf2e a bit and being very frustrated at alot of the very strict math we started playing with pwl and have been having a blast and the players feel like there spells actually do things
yeah the math i think is what mainly annoys me about pf2e. theres this constant feeling that your character is hard capped at every corner, sometimes to the point it doesnt even make sense rp wise. like why can an npc make an undead army but for some reason a player character cant? why can a player playing an undead still suffer from poison and disease but any npc undead cant?
What's PWL?
28:00
The polong only makes the creature Drained 1 on a fail. Which is still cool! Even cooler, to me, is that it can observe through the possessed creature's senses. I wonder if you could use share senses on the familiar while it is possessing another creature? I doubt it would ever come up, but it's neat.
I belive Share Senses would work
Your undead becomes an undead of your level -4 is a great houserule
It kinda allows for wizard banter
The only undead I would consider making with a ritual is the skeleton mage. It's basically extra spell slots and casts per turn. Probably the best value oer level.
Something niche I realized you can do with Create Undead that might make Macabre Virtuoso slightly better
You need 15 gp (per casting), a Bag of Holding and Final Sacrifice. This works best on a Sorcerer because FS can be made a signature spell and you have a lot more spell slots than something like Bard
Create 4 Severed Heads, leave them in a Bag of Holding that's always slightly open (so you don't need the action to open it), then when you need a big fireball, face towards a group of enemies, look down in the bag, and scream something like "Number 3, fly as far as you can in the direction I'm facing." (Note, I'm a noob to pathfinder, this assumes they can only take 1 action when commanded using a single action, if they use both actions when summoned then you'll have to be specific about how far they fly)
It takes 3 actions instead of 2 but you now have 4 cheap and powerful fireballs, and you don't have to worry about them dying before they can do anything because they exist for the sole purpose of exploding and maybe reaching things on high shelves. They're never out of the bag long enough to get targeted by anything.
Bonus: Severed Heads are Mindless, so if they're your minion they won't do a damn thing until you tell them to. So you don't have to worry about them trying to get out of the bag and chew someone's throat out.
Having Macabre Virtuoso obviously helps a lot with this strategy because you can rebuild your head bombs with only 4 hours and without requiring some guy trained in Religion to cooperate
Love the music.
I love the fantasy of the Diablo Necromancer (none evil). They may work with spirits and ghost but i dont see in a corrupting forceful way and more shamanistic. Like an elemental shaman may command elemental spirits.
Also there should be a clear distinction between what is in essence "animate object" (animate Dead) but resticted to bones and flesh and alot of Create Undead does where you actualy use souls...... . Thats how it (mostly still (changed skeletons from neutral to evil) worked in pf 3.5 if you but all information from various places together.
But no in golarion undead=almost always evil. And i hate golarions setting and have a serious beef with the designers for that.
Shambling horror lasts indefinetly, its duration only applies if you make another one.
Undead eidolon gets less resistances than constructs, yet they are harder to heal. Lifelink surge doesnt work
True about Shambling Horror, but you need to cast it every 10 minutes using a Focus Point, and so it's probably not feasible for a long period of time.
I was wondering what you think about Battleforms and Summons in general. My group I DM for feels that Battleforms and Summons are much too weak for the investments.
I houseruled the ghost archetype and necromancer feats almost immediately. They felt very weak.
I focus on very low lvl undead when creating them and combine it with the eyes of the dead spell. Being able to whip up something like a zombie snake or zombie fly in 4 hrs and send it on a recon mission is pretty good. No one needs to risk anything like a familiar or something since if it's killed, you only spent like 15gp. Creating higher lvl undead is just a waste of time and money like you said.
Yes but have you ever tried to have a Graveknight as a butler or maid?
Interesting discussion of the materials! Unfortunate if the nerf was too strong but is always a balancing act getting such things right. Excited for the next episode on being undead themselves
Maybe Troup types creatures for undeads would help give the "army of skeletons" feel better but otherwise it's true that necromancers seems kind of underpowered.
Maybe removing or reducing the level limit would be enough, or allowing you to pay your highest slot of Animate Dead to "raise" a ritually summoned minion that fell in combat.
Would something like
"up to a creature of your level -2, and creatures of your level -4 get the Elite template" help I wonder...
Hm, I don't know if there is a spell to summon a troop, but there should be!
I'm unsure about a specific universal solution, as there is the push/pull of how available the potential target of the right level (Level - 4) is. If a GM populates encounters with it, it can make the feat feel better. But if a GM doesn't, then yes I think some experimenting with it (your proposal might be a good starting point) might be a first experiment.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Yeah its true that depending on the target it can vary a lot too. Some creatures even at lower level might have very useful abilities on their own right too.
I think the main downside is for ritualy summoned undeads that are just... too costly for what they are.
It would have been nice to see undead troop rules make an appearance.
As in, rules for creating troops?
There already are troop statblocks from Bestiary 3, including the Shambler Troop
Free tip. If you're a dungeon master and your player is a necromancer and they are too strong, make them fight clerics with turn undead
Create a new necromancer class, with specific mechanics that let you feel like an undead commander without letting you stockpile infinite undead. Probably a wave caster or partial caster like a psychic, though you could theoretically have it not be a traditional caster at all and spend its power budget only on undead. Set it up in three configurations: liege, keeper, and caller. Perhaps these are exclusive subclasses. In liege mode you summon from a small pool of specifically designed minion stat blocks. Thier attack and save rolls scale with you to some extent, and you can command any number of them using your actions, but you can only give them one goal or direction per command action. These minions are the weakest to balance their numbers. In keeper mode you command one potent undead, again specifically curated stat blocks, functioning a bit like an eidolon. Changing from one mode to another destroys or cannibalizes undead specific to the other modes, so switching from liege to Keeper removes your numerous minions to make way for your stronger undead. In caller mode you have a more potent single undead that requires more actions to operate properly, and you risk losing control of if you lose consciousness or something else extreme happens. After losing control, the caller undead may disintegrate, or has a powerful urge to get away from its old master, running off to become a complication later at the DM's discretion. The DM may rule that it continues fighting without your control if circumstances allow, but this is not the default expectation.
I know this is one uncommon scenario but I feel it may apply to games other than my own. I enjoy utilizing multiple necromancers who actively use animate dead together, from my players level to 2 levels below them. This creates a party level -4, -5, or -6 undead minion adversary in play without having them conflict with the experience per adversary. Sadly I don’t think this fixes Subjugate Undead. What you want out of spell like this is a valuable tempo gain, and since you’re not getting to command the controlled creature in the same turn, like if you had just summoned it, you are still losing tempo spending 3 actions on this spell… plus it says you control the creature but there is no clause where you gain control over the spell maintaining its existence if there is one, the enemy spell caster in these scenarios has no reason to continue sustaining the spell unless they aren’t aware of losing control of the creature. So this will likely last for 1 round of controlling the creature.
I once talked with DM who was drastically opposing undead under PC control\alliance due to "Undead are extremely strong with all their features and immunities", but this was in DnD. Still all those disadvantages applied to undead feel like they took it to the extremity.
Trying to build a laughing shadow magus with reanimator dedication and later shadowdancer. Any recommendations?😊
Can you animate dead to summon skeleton troop? Or create undead? I feel troops is the answer to having a larger army.
I personally would allow it... I just checked the RAW and it looks like Animate Dead refers to summoning "a creature", whereas the Troop trait says it is comprised numerous "component creatures," so I don't think it's RAW. However, Level means actual difficulty so there doesn't seem to be a balance issue involved with allowing summoning a troop - barring I would certainly test it out.
Could subjugate undead be used in social situation? Honestly in a undead centered campaign or town it can be game changing.
Yes it can, generally, as with all "combat" spells. You just have to get past the fact that you are obviously casting a spell. And yes it can be useful in the right campaign/or the GM adjusts for it as-written.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG btw, your critique encouraged me to make a "necromancer" with bunch of undead on the field.
With free archetype you can build RAW a skeleton Summoner (as in life,so in death - gnome for the familiar) "familiar master" ( for old friend familiar) "undead master" dedication ( 2 undead companion with lead the pack both specialized) "Reanimator" for bond of death along effortless concentration for 2 free sustain each turn, ostentatious arrival - master summoner - boost summons - legendary summoner for lvl 15 summons that you can boost.
Result: 2 lvl 15 undead (2 action each), 2 double specialized Companions(1 action each for 1 command), undead eidolon (2 action act toghter) you (1 action boost cantrip for act togheter).
+ old friend Familiar
Just
Neat.
I really hate the name "stitch flesh" it should have been something like mend undead. Particularly when the one type of undead they made a race rather than an archetype was Skelton.
The other thing that bugged me is putting Skelton commander at level 9 but macabre virtuoso at level 6.
Animate dead in pf2e is kind of useless since the undead dose not stick around
I think you've focused a lot on the combat implications of these options.
I'd be more concerned with what so many minions might cause OUT of combat.
They certainly nerfed the vampire archetype compared to the other undead archetypes
I wanted to make a PF2e necromancer until I saw that animate dead was utter trash 1 full round to animate and only lasts 1 min is BS. I understand balancing it and it was done in the WRONG way. all they had to do was only allow a small amount of undead to be allowed simple fix.
Is too much to ask to have my own army of undead :´(
Good video btw have a nice day :3
Since healing is usually restricted to target a “willing individual”, how do you heal a zombie? Can a mindless creature be “willing”? Clearly the original owner of that body won’t be willing, if it prevents transition after death.
If your concern for willingness is consent that also rules out the ability to heal creatures of animal intelligence.
RAI, that's a fair point, though I've interacted with a fair number of willful animals in my life. Fortunately, undead creatures aren't real, so we can treat them as actual creatures whenever it's plot-convenient.
@@tinear4 Oh yea for sure. The jury is definitely still out on IRL on the varying level of sentience re animal, particular predatory mammals and birds. One of my cats 100% passes the mirror test for example. but i was speaking mechanically in pathfinder.
I'm just going to say the Necromancer Master of a mindless undead controlls that aspect of it's undead life
What I'd like to see is tall (as opposed to wide) necromancer play, if we're going to approach wide necromancy as a problem. Tall necromancy doesn't exist in 5e because it focuses on a class of spells that already sucked and the best class features are strictly wide, and as I learn more about Pathfinder 2, it's mostly in the wide necromancy framework too. Just want to cook up one good, customizable zombie-- Frankenstein's monster, anyone? Am I missing anything? Edit: I guess the undead eidolons are the closest thing.
I think PF1e had a Greate Tall potential with all the diferent varient undeads you could get with Animate Dead. Still just going wide was better but in 1e you basivly needed some tall undeads as a necromancer to act as tanks
it seems pathfinder has "tall" necromancy (much more than dnd) but it looks weak
It's a rich subject none of Yours not of yours to bear and none of Yours still, You stand on Arcane playing curio thief, Stand against mine coward or face more your lying bones failure of mankind wrought the Wrath of Necromancy to Arcane Levels you face me soon Cowards Hell is Legion
I have to make a grip here. I really don't like it when people misuse the phrase "illusion of choice". Illusion of choice does NOT mean that one option is inherently better than another so you should always pick that option. It actually means the exact opposite. Illusion of choice means that all options will arrive at the same result and therefore the choice really doesn't matter.
Just a little pet peeve of mine because of a video from another RUclips personality awhile back.
If you think about it: what is the difference of one option being better than others and all options leading to the same conclusion? Mechanically none.
Your comment prompted me to do some digging as to the definition of the term. All language derives meaning from context, and here there is no prevailing clear definition. So the obligation is on a speaker to make clear what they mean, which I think I did in this case. (And happily it's possible with this term; unlike with the phrase "deceptively X" which is a HUGE pet peeve of mine!)
Given the meaning of the term in recent TTRPG discussion, I thought it would make the point more... *pointed* by using the prevailing definition (but correctly this time).
William James first coined the phrase in 1896 in his lecture "The Will to Believe". It gives the "illusion" that you have choice or free-will when in reality you do not.
It's like standing in a room with two doors on the west wall. You are forced to pick one without the option of picking neither. But it doesn't really matter which door you pick because they both lead to the exterior of the house.
It's a term in psychology and theology that references free-will and the ability of a person to choose. People like having choices, but if the consequences of choice is all the same then it is just an illusion.
@@Nastara it's not about mechanics. It's because I'm an over-analytical and literal person. Words have meaning. And an illusion is something that appears to be real but isn't. If you have optimal and suboptimal choices, then the choices are real and not an illusion.
Of course optimal and suboptimal is a whole other can of worms. What is optimal depends on your goal, which may be different for different players.
@@linus4d1 A sub optimal choice isn’t a choice. If I have to choose between trash and not trash why would I choose trash?
Lawyers..