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At this point I'm going to assume they're not actually doing class archetypes like the synthesist or the Hyde Alchemist until proven otherwise.
To my knowledge, no it won't be. That being said we are months away from it, so who knows what might be revealed between then. I do think if it is in it it will be one of the things they tease. It is something a lot of people want.
That being said idk if Rage of Elements is the place for it, it's hard focus on the elementals I don't know if it will be the place for a generic/broad class archetype. I'd be happy to see it. But I don't know.
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The devs have mentioned wanting to make such a thing, but it hasn't been mentioned for this book - and was so beloved/infamous in 1e that I think it would be headlining if it were. Rage of Elements is very tightly themed to the elemental planes; something as general as Synthesist is a poor fit.
From what we know, the big mechanical draws are the 2e Kineticist class, an Elemental Instinct for Barbarians, an Iron Order for Druids, and new Geniekin options for the new Metal and Wood planes.
If it was in, I'd expect them to shout it from the rooftops, given how popular it is. So I doubt it.
The other reason I doubt it would be in is theme. As pixierose said, the theme is elements and the Synthesist doesn't fit that.
So yeah, sorry to disappoint :/
I'm mildly concerned that we haven't heard any news of elemental eidolons yet; they seem like something that would have been talked about already. The book is still over half a year out though, so I have hope.
There was a goofy water elemental that my party named Squidicus that I'd love to graduate from recurring joke to full character.
Look what I just found...
https://twitter.com/paizo/status/1563640057885765634?lang=en
Yeah... that's explicitly the marketing department saying that they don't know, and trying to build a bit of hype.
Do we have any confirmation (or even strong implication) on the elemental barbs at all, or is that just a "some people really want it"?
I mean, I admit, I'm one of the people who want it. It's just that I'd largely given up on it, and I wanted to know if there was reason to think that was premature.
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I'm mildly concerned that we haven't heard any news of elemental eidolons yet; they seem like something that would have been talked about already. The book is still over half a year out though, so I have hope.
There was a goofy water elemental that my party named Squidicus that I'd love to graduate from recurring joke to full character.
Look what I just found...
https://twitter.com/paizo/status/1563640057885765634?lang=en
Yeah... that's explicitly the marketing department saying that they don't know, and trying to build a bit of hype.
Do we have any confirmation (or even strong implication) on the elemental barbs at all, or is that just a "some people really want it"?
I mean, I admit, I'm one of the people who want it. It's just that I'd largely given up on it, and I wanted to know if there was reason to think that was premature.
Elemental Barbs comes from an interview with Paizo posted on a website. Can't remember the name at the moment Wargaming? maybe. That's where the iron druid thing came from too.
Elemental Barbs comes from an interview with Paizo posted on a website. Can't remember the name at the moment Wargaming? maybe. That's where the iron druid thing came from too.
Awesome. Thanks!
Wargamer has exclusive preview rights these days on PF2 stuff, I believe. They broke the news on Highhelm, covered Sky King's Tomb, and is where both of those new subclasses were mentioned.
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...and I notice that in that same article they mentions that they now have hybrid impulses for every pair of elements (like water+fire gives you steam impulses)... so that's cool. Seems likely what they're doing for all of the would-be lightning/ice/acid kineticists out there.
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"Class Archetype? Never heard of her!"
In all seriousness though, at this point, I'm seriously left wondering if there is a kind of bias on the development team against Class Archetypes akin to how JJ has a distaste for anything "traditional Dwarf". The kind of mechanical niche they offer has IMMENSE potential and to date, it's sorta just been ignored. I mean, seriously, the potential for making cool stuff with Class Archetypes is so huge that they could EASILY make a book with NOTHING both Class Archetypes, say 10-15 of them per Class they've printed to date and I would guarantee it sells like hotcakes, especially if they make the, flavorful and include a lore/fiction section that ties each of them to a region, cause, role, or organization in the setting.
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"Class Archetype? Never heard of her!"
In all seriousness though, at this point, I'm seriously left wondering if there is a kind of bias on the development team against Class Archetypes akin to how JJ has a distaste for anything "traditional Dwarf". The kind of mechanical niche they offer has IMMENSE potential and to date, it's sorta just been ignored. I mean, seriously, the potential for making cool stuff with Class Archetypes is so huge that they could EASILY make a book with NOTHING both Class Archetypes, say 10-15 of them per Class they've printed to date and I would guarantee it sells like hotcakes, especially if they make the, flavorful and include a lore/fiction section that ties each of them to a region, cause, role, or organization in the setting.
Ten class archetypes per class? That seems like it'd be such a huge waste to me. I don't mean to disrespect your interest in the idea, but based on Runelord, that would be writing ninety to one hundred thirty-five class feats for each class, and then locking those so they can't be used without a specific archetype. Even on the low end, that's double the feats that most of the post-core classes have; on the high end that's more feats than everything the Fighter has. The idea of further narrowing down the applicability by tying them to specific regions, causes, or organizations... I could see there being multiple archetypes in that hypothetical book that never saw a single play by anybody with how niche that gets.
I absolutely want a Synthesist Summoner, and I'm happy we're getting a Metal Druid class archetype, but it's got to be something you want changed about how the class works or it's wasteful to lock it in a class archetype- it belongs as regular class feats or as a general archetype. We can certainly use some more of them, but I definitely wouldn't want a lot of them.
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I don't expect a big book of class archetypes bc the developers aren't making an apg2. With that in mind, we're just going to see occasional class archetypes where thematically appropriate in focused theme books. That's not to everyone's taste but I can't fault writers and designers wanting a unifying thread to focus and inspire during development
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I don't mean to disrespect your interest in the idea, but based on Runelord, that would be writing ninety to one hundred thirty-five class feats for each class, and then locking those so they can't be used without a specific archetype.
And your point is... what exactly? That could/should be the whole point of said book and there is nothing to say that those Class Feats that are made would have to be exclusive to just that one Class Archetype or even that Class itself either, there are tons of Feats that can be accessed in multiple ways.
The release of this type of thing would make Character diversity, though it isn't non-diverse as-is, absolutely explode in terms of being able to break the mold of what each Class can do.
There are already over 100 Archetypes while there are only 5 Class Archetypes. The concept lends itself extraordinarily well toward opening up additional types of sub-class or "classpath/role" options and would be able to solve pretty much every chassis-locked problem or weirdness that is usually tied to fantasy traditions and tropes such as the Champion "Class budget" being irrevocably tied to them using Heavy Armor and relying on Reactions, Rogues only using a handful of weapons, Clerics who have to play beholden to strict Anethema, and Inventors being forced into a kind of pseudo-steampunk style instead of being able to be played as a skilled Blacksmith/Armorer.
The value left on the table by ignoring Class Archetypes is just immense compared to yet another milquetoast and unfocused Archetype that hardly does half of what the "idea" behind it suggests because they HAVE to be so generally applicable versus tightly focused.
I totally respect your opinion and the discussion though. Anytime I have the chance to expand on the value I see behind this neglected and dusty corner of the rules I'll gladly take it.
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I think there is a bias against them, but mostly in that they're limited in who can take them. It's content that can't be used by everyone, might as well just make another normal Archetype and give everyone some more fun."Class Archetype? Never heard of her!"
In all seriousness though, at this point, I'm seriously left wondering if there is a kind of bias on the development team against Class Archetypes akin to how JJ has a distaste for anything "traditional Dwarf". The kind of mechanical niche they offer has IMMENSE potential and to date, it's sorta just been ignored. I mean, seriously, the potential for making cool stuff with Class Archetypes is so huge that they could EASILY make a book with NOTHING both Class Archetypes, say 10-15 of them per Class they've printed to date and I would guarantee it sells like hotcakes, especially if they make the, flavorful and include a lore/fiction section that ties each of them to a region, cause, role, or organization in the setting.
I feel like this argument falls a little flat them when those "normal archetypes" include things like sleepwalker dedication or psychic duelist. Yeah like, strictly speaking the synthesist is a single class option and therefore has a narrower potential set of use cases, but that doesn't inherently make it less usable. I've seen orders of magnitude more people express interesting in the synthesist than I've seen anyone even mention Crystal Keeper.
I don't mean to disrespect your interest in the idea, but based on Runelord, that would be writing ninety to one hundred thirty-five class feats for each class, and then locking those so they can't be used without a specific archetype.And your point is... what exactly? That could/should be the whole point of said book and there is nothing to say that those Class Feats that are made would have to be exclusive to just that one Class Archetype or even that Class itself either, there are tons of Feats that can be accessed in multiple ways.
The release of this type of thing would make Character diversity, though it isn't non-diverse as-is, absolutely explode in terms of being able to break the mold of what each Class can do.
There are already over 100 Archetypes while there are only 5 Class Archetypes. The concept lends itself extraordinarily well toward opening up additional types of sub-class or "classpath/role" options and would be able to solve pretty much every chassis-locked problem or weirdness that is usually tied to fantasy traditions and tropes such as the Champion "Class budget" being irrevocably tied to them using Heavy Armor and relying on Reactions, Rogues only using a handful of weapons, Clerics who have to play beholden to strict Anethema, and Inventors being forced into a kind of pseudo-steampunk style instead of being able to be played as a skilled Blacksmith/Armorer.
The value left on the table by ignoring Class Archetypes is just immense compared to yet another milquetoast and unfocused Archetype that hardly does half of what the "idea" behind it suggests because they HAVE to be so generally applicable versus tightly focused.
I totally respect your opinion and the discussion though. Anytime I have the chance to expand on the value I see behind this neglected and dusty corner of the rules I'll gladly take it.
I appreciate the discussion as well.
My impression of the rules is that class archetype feats that are also given to the parent class just wouldn't be archetype feats. If that standard were relaxed, and certain class feats were introduced that counted towards class archetype completion, then sure. At the same time, my main interest there is mostly "Heck yeah, new class feats."
I did have some disagreements with the idea as you were presenting it. Further niche specializations (region, organization, etc.) exacerbates the weakness of class archetypes. If they did release a Rogue with all martial weapons in exchange for something else, why would that benefit from being tied to Galt? I think people would be annoyed to have Champions finally get a version that allows less armor focus, only for it to just be a Desnan thing.
I also think you could get most of the benefit by just focusing on the top three things that come up a lot for each class. "Rogue wants martial weapons- what's an appropriate trade?", "Metal is natural, so why can't a Druid focus on that part of nature?", "I'd like more reason to play a more nimble Champion", etc. Ten each is 210+ pages already if the feats are short and there's no art. Put another way- in the space of 10 class archetypes each, you could have 3 each, and have enough space left for another shot at doing a better version of every existing generic archetype, plus a couple multiclass archetypes.
And finally, class archetypes have a significant cost to variety as compared to "just add more class feats" or "make some new class paths" by locking out other archetypes for a while. Even if you think general purpose stuff is milquetoast, people still sometimes want a familiar, or an animal companion, or a little bit of magic, or to be a ghoul. For class archetypes that enable something very different, a type of character people have been wanting to play, that tradeoff is worth it. But it should be significant enough stuff, not just a bunch of class archetypes for the sake of class archetypes.
I feel like this argument falls a little flat them when those "normal archetypes" include things like sleepwalker dedication or psychic duelist. Yeah like, strictly speaking the synthesist is a single class option and therefore has a narrower potential set of use cases, but that doesn't inherently make it less usable. I've seen orders of magnitude more people express interesting in the synthesist than I've seen anyone even mention Crystal Keeper.I think there is a bias against them, but mostly in that they're limited in who can take them. It's content that can't be used by everyone, might as well just make another normal Archetype and give everyone some more fun."Class Archetype? Never heard of her!"
In all seriousness though, at this point, I'm seriously left wondering if there is a kind of bias on the development team against Class Archetypes akin to how JJ has a distaste for anything "traditional Dwarf". The kind of mechanical niche they offer has IMMENSE potential and to date, it's sorta just been ignored. I mean, seriously, the potential for making cool stuff with Class Archetypes is so huge that they could EASILY make a book with NOTHING both Class Archetypes, say 10-15 of them per Class they've printed to date and I would guarantee it sells like hotcakes, especially if they make the, flavorful and include a lore/fiction section that ties each of them to a region, cause, role, or organization in the setting.
Yeah, I definitely do agree with this. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit for class archetypes that hasn't been picked yet. But I think Summoner could have at most one other class archetype of anywhere close to that level of draw. After it got Synethesist and hypothetically something that focused more heavily on summoning, it'd be more or less tapped out on big-ticket stuff. I can think of plenty of other cool options, of course, but nothing that'd really compete with a cool general archetype.
Being realistic, what class archetypes can we actually expect besides Synthesist?
Like, I don't think we are getting specialist martial Alchemist in the forseeable future with all the Treasure Vault stuff. I also think we are getting neither Bounded Warpriest nor Bounded Bard any time soon either looking at this year releases. And these would be some of the easiest concepts to test and implement, something like a Bloodrager would be way more work on their part probably.
I expect some down the line, i just don't expect them any time soon.
Being realistic, what class archetypes can we actually expect besides Synthesist?
Like, I don't think we are getting specialist martial Alchemist in the forseeable future with all the Treasure Vault stuff. I also think we are getting neither Bounded Warpriest nor Bounded Bard any time soon either looking at this year releases. And these would be some of the easiest concepts to test and implement, something like a Bloodrager would be way more work on their part probably.
I expect some down the line, i just don't expect them any time soon.
Bounded or slotless witch (more hexes and hex cantrips), Unfamiliar witch, bounded druid (for people who *really like* battle forms), and Martial Summoner are all on the list as well.
I agree that we're not likely to see them any time within the next few years, though. That kind of stuff is all going to be late-stage.
I remember having this discussion about class archetypes before.
Basically the idea is that if the concept is general enough, then a standard archetype is better. If you want to play a Wizard that uses Siege weapons, we should have a standard archetype for using Siege weapons that the Wizard or anyone else can take.
But if the concept is a fundamental change to a class or a small subset of classes - but isn't enough different to warrant an entire new class - then a class archetype may be the right choice.
So things like Magus that uses the Divine spell list, or Witch that doesn't have a familiar.
One thing i would like to see if they dont do a whole lot more with class archetypes is sprinkle in a couple more feats here in there that require a class feature or certain class in archetypes.
I overall perfer 2e but one thing i miss from 1e, is the way an archetype can interact with a class and change things up flavor and mechanic wise. If class archetypes take up too much space, maybe a few feats here and there would be okay enough.
Class archetypes let you do two things that standard archetypes simply don't.
First, they let you do *more*. Standard archetypes inherently have to be something that you can fit into a pile of class feats. Further, they have to not break the game regardless of who gets them, which means that you basically have to do your combo-checking across the full system. That limits how much awesome you can fit into various abilities, and it *really* limits how much you can get in the earliest levels.
Second, they let you do *less*. They don't have to fit into a pile of class feat because they can actually take things away. Like... some people might not *want* a familiar for their witch, you know?
They can also do things about balancing against a given class, and being able to assume that certain aspects of the class will be there, but that's not as significant as the other two, because you can mostly get that from class feats and new class paths as well.
Part of the problem... I think they worked themselves into a corner with how they *defined* class archetypes. Under the PF2 definitions, a class archetype is an archetype. That means that it's a pile of feats, possibly with some extra starter rules. It means that it's got a dedication feat and so on. The basic issue here is that now they can't produce one without also producing an archetype's worth of feats to go with it... so why wouldn't they just make an archetype? Well, a lot of the hunger for specific class archetypes has nothing to do with the obligatory appendix of class feats. We're not *looking* for the stuff that can be bought with that coin. The stuff that we want is the stuff that you get by selling significant chunks of your core class off in return for something else of comparable value. In some cases (like, say the slotless Summoner) we actually want to have our number of available feats go *up*. Like, seriously. "You lose all spell slots and knowledge of all spells that require spell slots. Gain additional evolution feats at the following levels." Done. I'd love a class archetype like that for the Summoner. I'm not saying that it would be entirely without effort - figuring out which feats to offer in exchange might be a bit tricky to balance... but it wouldn't require anything like the amount of effort necessary to put together an archetype's worth of feats.
Still, it's pretty clear that this is all going to be late-stage stuff regardless... and that's totally cool. I'm pretty happy with what they're putting out for right now as it is. This other stuff can afford to wait.
It is a weird balancing act that maybe, to a small degree, got overlooked. In my mind class archetypes take something away and give something of roughly equal value in return, which is all well and good. But they also cost you a precious feat. So shouldn't the value of the new features gained through class archetypes be slightly more attractive than what is lost? It seems like the few class archetypes we have are almost worse than the base options taken away (that's subjective of course, but it's how I feel about things like flexible casting or elementalist).
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It is a weird balancing act that maybe, to a small degree, got overlooked. In my mind class archetypes take something away and give something of roughly equal value in return, which is all well and good. But they also cost you a precious feat. So shouldn't the value of the new features gained through class archetypes be slightly more attractive than what is lost? It seems like the few class archetypes we have are almost worse than the base options taken away (that's subjective of course, but it's how I feel about things like flexible casting or elementalist).
Oh, that's also true. Wellspring Mage, in a build that's designed from the ground up to take best advantage of wellspring mage, spending all of the class feats that look at all pertinent or useful, never quite manages to break even in anything but the most extreme of adventuring days - and that's ignoring the cost of the feats themselves. I tried hard to come up with a build that would make it actually worth taking, and there simply was no way.
So yeah. If/when they do cycle back around to the idea of class archetypes? Ideally, not that.
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Between Wellspring, Spellshot, Elementalist, and flex-prep, I assume the "kind of a downgrade with a feat tax" is the design goal. It's too consistent otherwise.
TBH I wouldn't mind seeing Paizo giving up on class archetypes and just introducing alternate class features/pf1 style archetypes again. It seems to difficult to make them balanced and satisfying when you interlink class feature replacements and archetypes.
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elementalist have the most problem
with each new rule book add more and more spell
any neglect on elemental list update is painful to watch
Have you actually looked at Wellspring?
I'm not saying that Elementalist isn't bad. It is! I'm just saying that "doesn't get new toys when all the other kids get new toys" is not the worst thing out there.
TBH I wouldn't mind seeing Paizo giving up on class archetypes and just introducing alternate class features/pf1 style archetypes again. It seems to difficult to make them balanced and satisfying when you interlink class feature replacements and archetypes.
I think I'd strongly prefer it... and if you need to dip into the feat budget to make then thing work, then just have "and you lose X, Y, and Z feats" be part of the ACF. It's true that every class out there thus far has gotten the same basic set of feats at the same levels, but technically those feats are class features that happen to currently be shared by all classes.