Hey folks, Michael Sayre here again.
Thanks for an exciting playtest of the animist and exemplar classes! We had a ton of responses that we’re busy sifting through as we open these classes back up and start delving into what their futures might hold. We’re busy keeping the Remaster ball rolling right now, so we’re going to be pretty brief on the feedback here, but we can give you some insights into what we’ll be looking to refine and what the future might hold.
Illustrations by Wayne Reynolds
The Animist
The animist feedback has been very interesting. Most of you rated it as being moderately complicated, but there was also overwhelming support for almost all the major class features (apparitions, spellcasting, and vessel spells in particular). As such, we’re likely to keep the main chassis with a few targeted areas of improvement. Here’s what we might be changing and what might be staying the same.
- Practices: Folks have generally liked all the other individual pieces of the animist but noted that it’s very complicated. Practices are one area where I think we might be able to trim out some unnecessary complexity and tighten up the chassis. There are a couple directions we might go here, but the one I’m currently eyeing most closely is removing the practices entirely, standardizing the proficiency progression of the class, and replacing practices with invocations—unique prayers that speak to how each individual animist communes with their apparitions. This could likely be a place where a refined version of Apparition’s Possession and Apparition’s Whirl would live. It might also be the new home for Sustaining Dance; this would move it to an even more class-specific resource that is part of the main chassis instead of a feat. I’d likely be looking at introducing a few entirely new invocations here as well to speak to other types of personalized rites and prayers.
- Vessel Spells: Triple-casting the same vessel spell is something a lot of you noted as leading to degenerative play loops, and that was frankly something we’d always intended to put tighter limitations on. For the final version, we’re looking at putting some stricter limitations in place so that animists who focus on a single apparition are more heavily encouraged to use their spell slots and animists who change rapidly between different apparitions are more strongly encouraged to use a variety of vessel spells.
- Spellcasting: The animist’s spellcasting, which was a split between prepared spellcasting and spontaneous casting of apparition spells, was extremely popular with a super-majority of players. We’re likely to keep this as close to its current form as we can. I think there are a few places we can probably smooth things out to make it easier for folks to grok how the spellcasting actually works, but given the popularity of the progression itself I suspect we’ll focus on refinements here rather than big changes.
- Apparitions: We’re likely to significantly expand the number of apparitions compared to those that appeared in the playtest. We were very focused on testing out specific functions in this space to make sure all the foundational pieces worked well; now we’ll be refining the ones from the playtest and bringing in all kinds of new spirits for a variety of different themes and environments. (There’s a Lurker in Crushing Dark apparition that’s been on my idea board for a while now that I think is a shoo-in for folks who want either a deep-sea predator vibe or a Dark Tapestry association, and a crafting-oriented apparition I’m tinkering with that may or may not fit this space quite right… We’ll have to see!)
Those are the major areas of potential change I see us working on for the animist as we go forward. We’re still working our way through some of the more nuanced pieces of your feedback, though, so nothing is set in stone quite yet! Now I’m going to kick it over to James Case to talk about the exemplar.
The Exemplar
Hi everyone, James here. Let's talk about the exemplar! As always, the goal of the playtest exemplar was to test a number of mechanics in service of a strong final draft, rather than ensuring everything in the playtest was perfectly balanced. Many of you found the core mechanic of moving your divine spark—the focus of your power—into various sacred ikons to gain different effects to be fun and a fresh take on a martial character, so let’s dig in a bit deeper.
- Rarity and Tone: The exemplar has a pretty bombastic tone drawn from larger-than-life folklore and mythology. This seemed to be a big selling point in favor of the class! A few people noted that this tone means the exemplar might not fit into every campaign, though. This is intentional! We’re aware that tonally and narratively, the exemplar might not be for every single campaign, and therefore it’s pretty likely it will be staying with its current rarity to signal to GMs and players alike that this class would benefit from a brief check-in to see how it fits into the story—whether that's as one PC in a party of other classes, or in an all-exemplar party. (Now I’m thinking of the Golarion version of the Argonauts.)
- Power Spikes: To go with this bombastic tone, the exemplar was intended to have a pretty dynamic combat loop, with their defenses and offenses fluctuating to make for high highs and low lows. While the idea of dynamically changing your focus between offense and defense was very popular, we also think that we might want to ensure this isn't too swingy, so we will be stabilizing a little bit of the exemplar’s power. We're looking at increasing their defenses a tad and giving them a wider range of abilities for each of their ikon types, ensuring that you have less of a “downturn” between your Big Transcendent Weapon Moves (which, let's be honest, was what you were trying to use anyway), as well as a slightly wider range of useful supplementary abilities that you get all the time, not just when an ikon has your spark in it.
- Domain Spells: Domain spells are in an odd place—people thought they were useful, but also that they were a little boring, which makes sense since these are shared with other classes. The exemplar already has a lot to track with its spark placement and is primarily a martial character, so we’d rather lean into this as their main gameplay hook and will be removing domain spells from the exemplar in the final version of the class. However, the theme of “gaining a domain for yourself” was a popular one, so like our approach with the thaumaturge and its pact feats in Dark Archive, we will be moving this theme to an archetype later in the book that thematically aligns with the exemplar’s whole “reach into the heavens and seize godhood” thing in a very natural way.
- Epithet Recasting: A lot of you seemed to like using epithets to shape your character's story, and in fact, many people wanted these to be an even bigger part of the class. With the removal of spells, we have a little room to play here with the epithets—I have a couple of ways I'm thinking about going with it, and I don't know quite which one it's going to be yet, but I think it's a fun idea!
- MORE MORE MORE: Yes, there will be more. We know that there was not the widest selection of ikon types for the playtest, because we were looking at testing out the basic primary colors—major categories of weapon, for example—but with everyone’s feedback from the playtest, we can look at some more shades, like ikon types that are a bit more niche. Yes, there will be unarmed attack exemplars in final (however would I do my Bull of Heaven exemplar without it?), and yes, there will be a greater variety of ikon and epithet choices (however would I do my Demeter “the turbulent pinwheel of the seasons’ change” exemplar without it?) as well.
Thank you for coming along for the ride and for all your feedback! There was a lot to test with the exemplar, but with everyone's responses, we're in a good place to move forward with polishing the class up. I'll pass things back to Mike for some final notes!
And Mike takes the mic for the final thoughts!
The TLDR on this one is that it was a great playtest with a lot of positive responses and a lot of useful feedback to get these things refined. These were some of the highest-scoring classes we’ve put out as far as overall satisfaction ratings go, and we’re really pleased that so many of you were excited about these ideas and so eager to share your thoughts and experiences. Take care all, and we’ll see you next October when these classes take up arms to defend Golarion during the War of Immortals!
Michael Sayre
Design ManagerJames Case
Senior Designer
War of Immortals Playtest Wrap-up Blog
Thursday, October 12th, 2023
