AestheticDialectic's page

But you are readying to prepare for a charge, not reacting to it.

While drawing a nodachi takes time, when you have it drawn, you should be able to Brace it as a reaction if someone tries to charge you.

This isn't like a RPG where "both sides pick their actions and then the round plays out". In those cases, if an opponent picked to Brace and you picked to charge, you have to commit to it... and probably get skewered.

In Pathfinder or any TTRPG, including D&D, which that problem was there as well as far back as 3E, it's turn by turn per character. Unless you and your GM can hide Bracing, you have to spoil your strategy.

Last time I checked, the one at the receiving end of the Braced weapon doesn't get a Perception check to swerve around it and avoid taking precision damage.

Okay first:

A brace weapon is effective at damaging moving opponents. When you Ready to Strike an opponent that moves within your reach, until the start of your next turn Strikes with the brace weapon deal an additional 2 precision damage for each weapon damage die it has.

Second:

You prepare to use an action that will occur outside your turn. Choose a single action or free action you can use, and designate a trigger. Your turn then ends. If the trigger you designated occurs before the start of your next turn, you can use the chosen action as a reaction (provided you still meet the requirements to use it). You can't Ready a free action that already has a trigger.

If you have a multiple attack penalty and your readied action is an attack action, your readied attack takes the multiple attack penalty you had at the time you used Ready. This is one of the few times the multiple attack penalty applies when it's not your turn.

Think about what is happening in combat where you ready a strike, versus a normal reactive strike. When you sacrifice your actions to hit someone when they move towards you, that is literally holding until they get close and then reacting and hitting them which can take the form of the movie cliche where you pull your spear up at the last second to impale someone charging you.

What you are asking for is exactly counter to the thematics of what you want it to be. You are essentially asking for additional triggers on your regular reactive strike which is a twitch reflex where you see an opportunity to strike and take it. This is more akin to attacking one guy and Batman style suddenly punching the dude running up behind you.

And yes, ofc if the enemy can grok you're holding out and waiting for them to make a move so you can catch them and capitalize on it, well... There is a reason a lot of real warfare involved a lot of stalemates

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

Oh, certainly, a sufficiently intelligent enemy can absolutely avoid a telegraphed attack without it being necessarily adversarial GMing (though I'd caution a GM from assuming every sapient combatant is automatically aware enough to recognize the false opening for what it is in the heat of combat). No, I was responding to JiCi's report that bracing reveals your plans to the GM--a take rather distinct from whether some enemies might be able to recognise a ready action.

Like I said, why can't you brace a weapon as a reaction instead of a 2-action move?

They did this in Braveheart and that sequence became quite iconic in cinema.

Why can't I go "Hold, hold, hold, NOW" when an enemy charges me again?

This is quite literally what readying an action is in this circumstance

Give me an example of a battle where this is useful past level 14. During the actual battle that doesn't interfere with your other party members hammering the creature.

This is all theoretical. Give me an application for wall of stone in a battle with creatures past level 14 and the higher level game I play with.

For me a wall of force or a wall is mostly used to divide a group during the battle once we draw them to a location where we can split them due to limitations on the room size or some other terrain factor. The creature we use it against must be strong enough when striking that forcing them into a piecemeal situation is necessary.

If we can just nuke hammer a group of mooks, then we do that without using the wall. A chain lightning at high level with double damage on a fail once you've reached Master casting or higher with an Apex item is going to nuke hammer really hard. Then your martials are going to focus on clean up duty taking out the weakest targets fast.

If you have a high AC martial like a champion or monk or a control martial, they are going to control the targets as they rush. Their AC will be sufficiently high that the enemy will miss a great deal.

What you do not want to do is impede your other party members from doing their schtick. High level PCs like barbs or fighters or other casters are going to want to hammer the entire group, so they don't want the group impeded from the AOE damage hammer.

So if you want to slow the enemy's action economy, you use a mass slow as this impedes actions while not impeding your PCs from hitting them with AOE.

If you impede line of sight for the enemy, you do so for your own party as well.

I'm wondering why in these examples, there seems to be no regard for the power of your other party members and what they're doing. So what are they doing when you are shaping these walls and using wall of stone at high level? Is the wall even necessary? Is it really doing anything or slowing the other PCs from killing the creature or dropping AOE?

At high level, we usually have a fast moving martial like a monk or another martial with a racial and general feat to improve movement with an item to improve movement, then they fly up and trip the target out of the air with high athletics. If there are multiple fliers, we blast them down. If we're high enough level, we're using Falling Sky to bring them down in a coordinated fashion.

I'm trying to understand what you are fighting at high level where this tactic is useful. What the rest of your group is doing. Why you are setting this up and what's strong enough to force this set up.

My group does use walls, but generally only if required and the wall needs to be strong enough to prevent the enemy from breaking it quickly. It's not a great action user. It's better to drop a high level slow on a group to keep the action economy across multiple rounds, not put some monster in a position to break walls down while impeding your party.

You're theory crafting right now. Show me the fight that you're using this on. I'll see how we would handle it. Right now, all this stuff you're theorizing about at the high levels is not what we do. We don't want enemies taking time busting walls. We want them grouped and able to receive the nuke/AOE hammer.

Our defense are already strong with level 4 invis pre-cast. At very high level, we walk around with hidden mind active countering detection. We don't need walls as the nuke hammer at high levels decimates mook groups real, real fast.

Set the scene. Show me what you're fighting to use this tactic past level 14 or 15.

Deriven, I would really appreciate it if you took the time to condense points and not feel the need to tell me everything. It is enough to bring up the concern about what the rest of the party is doing without mentioning AoE several times or each individual thing other party members could do.

I really don't want to dwell on something that is this off topic and not particularly important. We are kind of losing the plot here, but I am assuming that you are doing this plan with your party and it suits the composition. If I provide a specific examples the result will be us debating the fiddly details of the exact example rather than the overall point which is that sometimes Wall of Stone is better than Wall of Force. A clear example in this thread of people getting lost in the weeds over details rather than the larger point happened when Teridax gave a specific example of the blasting capabilities of the animist. I don't want that to happen here.

I would absolutely agree that the way you play walls in general are probably not necessary at all, which further makes your insistence on arguing something this trivial a real vibe killer. There is no singular party composition, and no single best way to play the game. Which is part of why disagreement on the animist exists here to bring it full circle. Some of the difficulty in talking about the power of a class is the granularity of how people play

I wouldn't matter if you did that anyway. Look at that. It's made with the assumption that the enemy wouldn't just break down a wall at a time until getting to the last one, then busting it down once they are all ready to engage. Then your party has to what? Go into the wall maze to get to the enemy?

If you did that, why couldn't an enemy just wait for you on the other side using your wall against you if you tried to set it up in that complicated a fashion? If you tried to cast it on a group in movement, they would have to position perfectly for you to bend the wall in that fashion?

If you cast it in advance, it just creates cover points where the enemy can bust it slowly while your buffs tick down and your party can't do much unless they go into the maze.

It's not good use of a wall anyway unless the DM just keeps making the enemy run forward through the wall coming out piecemeal like its a hallway. High level enemies as far as I'm concerned would just bust it down piecemeal until they got to the last wall, Then prep behind it to bust the last wall then attack as a group or pull back into their room and wait for you if you need to advance anyway.

That's the plan with wall of stone. Not a great plan in a group game.

You can use all kind of different configurations under different circumstances with different effects for different reasons. It can be shaped in any way possible within the grid. You can make a perfect 5x5 box with an enemy in it you just can't intersect 10x10 for instance through an enemy or object. What you do here is shape it so they have to break more than one layer forcing 2-3 actions at minimum and putting it in such a way some enemies are out. You force one or more which are more of an issue to deal with the wall while you deal with others just as you would with wall of force, but in this case you can mold it to the place you are in and create more layers to get more wasted actions. Likewise teleportation with wall of force is trivial, one layer and it is see-through/invisible. Wall of Stone blocks light of sight and they don't know where the wall begins and ends because they didn't put it up so the DM can't simply have a teleporting enemy teleport out without the possibility of just ending up in a different section of your "maze". Because of this they also can't know which wall is the last wall to stop before and wait for you. That's knowledge they can only have by seeing over the wall or through the wall which is solid stone. You don't have to have an opening at all either btw. It can be several concentric boxes. You can also place it on spell effects. It only doesn't work if it passes through objects or creatures. So you can place atop any persistent damaging area if you'd like and force the issue. Create a little oven. It's not always the correct choice, but it is so open ended it can be used in nearly infinite ways

Of course it’s possible to layer, you just do something like this:

https://imgur.com/a/9saOdMb

Where red is dungeon walls and purple is the wall of stone. You can also do it without the dungeon walls but not as many layers, and not as well spaced such that the enemy has to step inbetween breaking wall segments.

(Apologies for the terrible art, did this on my phone)

I meant in a one square hallway being able to layer without gaps, I don't think it is possible

...what I actually disliked the most in my experience was daily preparations as an Animist, because it felt like I was basically rolling a new character every time by swapping out all of my apparitions, my apparition spells, and many of my feats. Perhaps this might be a plus to some people, but to me it devalued the choices I'd made for my character and made their apparitions in particular feel very utilitarian, rather than a source of long-lasting bonds.

It certainly feels mechanically like something that would be part of an intelligence based class's identity such as the wizard more than what the animist is supposed to be. Swapping these out, being utilitarian and all that. It's really something that I feel runs exactly contradictory to the class fantasy

Outside of the topic of balance, which I feel at this stage has been done to death, I do think there are other points worth bringing up:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I think the class is fine, but not particularly interesting. It's a class they tried to put too much into it and made it an unfocused class with a messy play-style.

This is probably where I've found myself agreeing the most with Deriven: for all the power the Animist has, I don't think they're all that fun to play. Their design is really messy beyond what is to be expected from a class made to broach different niches at once, and even the people defending the class's balance on this thread don't seem to have very many positive things to say about their gameplay. Although people do seem to be becoming increasingly aware that the Animist is a powerful class, the class doesn't seem to be all that popular, and from my personal experience at least a lot of players still turn it down at face value just because of how inaccessible it is. Regardless of where one sits on the balance discussion, I think it's safe to say that the class has been struggling to appeal to a great deal many players, and that's something worth addressing by improving the class's gameplay. Perhaps Unicore is right and we'll never see a rework, but I think it's a lot of wasted potential for a class with such an incredible theme to fail to interest players who'd normally love the Animist for its flavor.

A huge part of it for me is that the Necromancer class is going to let me do this commune with spirits fantasy better with a more interesting mechanical basis and a focus on battlefield control which is my favorite thing to specialize in. So for all the roleplay I would love to do as an animist, the necromancer offers a better version. I really do in some sense feel like they took what is basically a kind of necromancer and tried to make a full class out of it and idk who out there is into the class? Someone must be. It has to be someone's favorite class, but those people appear to be few and far between

Actually it's shapeable on a per 5ft basis ("placing each 5 feet of the wall"). For some reason the damage is tracked in 10ft panels though. But anyways, my point exactly: You control how the wall is shaped, curving it around enemies and layering it as you wish.

Yeah I was just referring to the fact it is damaged in 10-foot increments. So even as several 5-foot layers it would break two at a time (assuming it is even possible to layer it this way, I would have to see someone argue this possibility with a visual demonstration to know, but I think it isn't)

What do you mean? The Remaster made the divine list a top list or at least near the top. It was almost immediately noted when the alignment damage was shifted to spirit. It became much better for general blasting.

Right after the remaster came out I pointed this out to you, specifically stating that occult being the best list is now antiquated(iirc, semantic memory is not my strong suit) and you did not agree with me, but we are on the same page now wr2 this

To some degree as a personality type forums likes these attract and mostly retain people who have a tendency towards tunnel vision, and probably most especially people who try very hard to compensate for such rigid tendencies which can make them negativistic to seeing this trait in others. I would definitely say this problem exists across the board on both sides of the argument. I think if I tested most users on these forums with a block design test they would mostly score at or above their intelligence-sans personality, which typically indicates this kind of details oriented way of doing things that can have black and white thinking, tunnel vision and obliviousness. It does have the upside of a better understanding of part-whole relationships and deductive reasoning skills, as well as a better ability to quickly pick up mechanical procedural skills. This test is also used in autism evaluations but being good at it doesn't mean you have autism

This is kind of an aside, but I do think we should have patience for this behavior because it's likely to be very common here as I think a game like this and this social format will attract more of this kind of person

At the end of the day one thing I agree with Unicore about is that I don't think there is a hell of a lot they can do to fix these issues. She may disagree with me about the class being the strongest, but the degree is not like one might expect in a different game where the performance is so above and beyond it breaks the fundamentals and is impossible to balance around. The animist mostly is an issue for me because I think it sets a bad precedent going forward and also exacerbates some of what I don't like about the design of the spell lists as they exist presently. Unfortunately this is just endemic of the system and can't be changed until a new addition. "It is what it is". They can also be functionally a resourceless caster but that's not necessarily bad...

I think that time will validate and vindicate my stance as more people have more time with the class and the public perception slowly shifts. When I and others first noticed that divine was now the best list and at that time cleric the best class, I remember Deriven disagreeing quite strongly but now has come around to seeing what divine is now capable of. I think something similar is gonna happen here. So far only a few people here and one YouTuber ThrabenU, has talked about this. At least that I have seen, and the book only came out this summer, right? So it's still fresh and new. These games move relatively slowly

All this does is show me that some people just don't play this game at a very high level. Wall of Stone gets wasted by the mooks I play against.

Sir, it's 120 feet of shapeable 10 foot sections. That's up to 12 sections enemies would have to break to get through. It doesn't matter if it can be broken in one hit. Wall of force is always one shape and the whole thing breaks when its HP is drained. You don't have to look at Wall of Stone only in such a linear fashion. It has endless possibilities of arrangements for sectioning off enemies and wasting actions, not to mention the difficult terrain. If an enemy waits for you to break it, don't cave in the stalemate. Force them to act, use the time to position yourself and do what you would do when you throw a dude into a quandary

But the game isn't only combat either, you can do so many things with wall of stone that you cannot do with wall of force. You can't even make a dome like 5e. It certainly is more sturdy, but outside of holding ghosts it's hard to find such a limited design as useful

And wall of stone works better than force for fliers because you can angle it. That's all. It depends a little on interpretation but raw seems to allow you to connect two angled walls to trap smaller flying enemies maybe. I just didn't know why they thought wall of force did anything to fliers

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Fights are fast. Everyone in the group has more powerful abilities at higher level. Not sure why you're wasting 3 actions to cast wall of stone when you have other things to do with higher level slots in the short battles.

If things are too weak, then you won't need wall of stone to deal with them. If things are strong, then wall of force is better.

You want to keep things as simple and focused as possible using your best tools at the best time.

Wall of Stone was great at lower level. Now wall of force works better. Use your fifth level slots for a howling blizzard or fireball in an easy fight to do some damage with lower level slots while saving the higher level slots for the hard fights.

I think I would much rather have a wall of stone prepped than a fireball that’s multiple ranks removed from my highest level slots. That’s a terrible use of blasting, if a fight was so easy an under-heightened *fireball* made a significant impact, I could probably have just not used a slot and if I still had to I’d do much better with a rank five command or rank six slow. Or a wall of stone that’s sapping multiple actions. And, importantly, all those preps are still good if I need the slots for something difficult. Under-heightened fireball is not going to help me in a serious fight.

As for wall of force vs wall of stone, I love me a good wall of force but for pure action denial wall of stone wins that easily. They’re going to have to bust through multiple layers, and they can’t walk around it. Really you should prep both, wall of force is great for fliers and as a wall you can put any angle (sometimes relevant), but for grounded enemies wall of stone is the all time GOAT of wall spells.

I don't see what wall of force does that wall of stone doesn't when it comes to fliers. I think the fact you can angle and shape wall of stone makes it the clear winner. Wall of force is always a straight line which is a massive downside

How many actions does it take for them to get a buff up and then start debuffing the enemy compared to the bard? The difference between can do something and is good at doing so is really in the action costs in PF2.

I believe it is exactly zero difference in number of actions

I can see the value if the extending is required, but I don't see the value if the spell lands.

I'm not sure why you value the condition extending of the witch familiar ability so highly given if a synesthesia or other debuff hits, it lasts for a minute, no extending required

That if is why resentment is so good. I expect enemies to succeed their saves, particularly the most difficult ones and synesthesia is 1 round when the enemy succeeds. So I highly value that the witch can extend this indefinitely. Same goes for slow to use another example. Yes synesthesia and true target together are brutal, Witches can do this, and they may not buff as easily as the bard but if they need to they still can given they have the same spell list with the same number of slots

I think the bard is still the best occult caster. I think the resentment witch is good, but their familar has to get too close to the battle. At the levels I play a lot at, familiars are going to have trouble making their saves to survive all that AOE stuff from high level enemies with gazes, auras, and the like.

This misses the forest for the trees a bit. The Bard I would argue hasn't been exceptional for some time now. While yes familiars can be vulnerable this in actual play can be worked around and sometimes done so through the very means that makes this good depending on what you're up against. Maintaining any debuff on any enemy simply because they didn't critically succeed a save is so backbreaking that the fiddly aspect is well and truly worth it, especially when that debilitation shuts down the ability to do the kinds of attacks you listed

The fact the animist can so easy cross-list is a big deal, yeah. My Animist player complained about the lack of Reflex targeting spells, then I just pointed them at the vessel they forgot existed. Done. Which caster can just do that?

At the risk of being taken too seriously... A wizard with prep time :)

The fact that it's on the Lurker in Devouring Dark's spell list would normally have it ring a bell to someone who's played an Animist, but also the fact that it starts off at a perfectly inoffensive 5-foot radius makes it extremely easy to lay down in any fight, with added potential for area denial. The fact that the caster has full control over how wide to make the area I'd say is a plus, especially compared to spells like fireball that may end up harming party members in tight spaces and messy melees.

I don't get the impression that Deriven and his play group value area denial and other forms of battlefield control outside of direct forms like Quandary that 'just work', or at least I got this impression when Wall of Stone was categorized as utility by him some time back during a debate about wizards. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way they construct their groups, and what the encounters they run are like, don't require or don't engender play that makes this sort of tactic necessary/optimal

I'm a power gamer that plays with mostly power gamers. I'm telling you from that perspective that it doesn't look very broken to me except Apparition Quickening which you still have to plan for. That is the one feat that is a bit broken as Quickening multiple times per day is pretty strong.

I mostly just want to clarify that I think it is the best class in the game, not that it is broken, or overpowered as one might think of it. I think it is problematic design, but it won't necessarily ruin people's games if you have a socially conscious player at the helm. I think the resentment witch for example is both the best debuffer and the best occult caster in the game atm, and I while don't think an animist is *quite on that level* I do think it makes a convincing doppelganger but is simultaneously able to pivot out of that easily and do someone else's schtick to similar degree of competency.

You talk about how some of the heights of power come from picking things like elf step, but this is the kind of thing that really makes this bothersome. Regardless of whether people purposefully play suboptimally or not, that potential exists

Edit for some clarity and spelling errors

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

I think the fundamental tension in this whole discussion rests on two things:

1) The Animist is one of the most powerful casters in the game.
2) The Animist is one of the most complex classes in the game.

With the valdity of point 1 being contingent on your capacity to handle point 2.

The way I think of it is like Magus. You have Starspan Magus with Psychic dedication, using IW starting at L6. This is a very specific build. it is a very offensively powerful build. If someone were to argue that this build does more damage than Paizo wanted the power curve to do, I think that argument holds some water. OTOH if someone were to say that Magus is hands-down the best martial at all things martialing because this build exists, I think I'd have to disagree on that. Teridax has found a animist build that does good damage without slot resources, but it requires a specific ancestry selection, then a specific animist practice selection, at least two specific feat selections, and then a specific daily prep routine. And like starspan+IW it doesn't come online at all until mid level play (3 levels after starspan does). So if someone wants to argue that Paizo didn't anticipate the elf step etc. animist combo pumping out as much non-slot damage as it does, then like the Starspan, I'd say that argument holds water. But if someone were to argue that this combo means the animist class is the best caster at things casty...well, like a claim that this combo makes the magus the best martial at martialy, that seems a lot less credible to me.

The difference is that the Magus here is a one trick pony. The animist gets to do all the lateral thinking swiss army knife stuff that the wizard is known for and what gave the wizard the limiters it has. It gets to do this sort of pivot into anything without 6 HP, no armor, and so on, and do it with the baseline divine list no-less which to my evaluation is the best list in the game, far and away above arcane. Not to say arcane is bad, or that the wizard can't be good, but that the animist can switch shit up as it feels while having decent feats, a good chassis, access to all four traditions, good focus spells, ways to emulate aspects of non-caster classes and so on. "Old man robot" demonstrates this well in how they talked about their play experience with the class. I am not as interested in the specifics here so much as the general shape of the thing. This class is an amorphous blob that fits into any crack and crevice, and is able to do so with a high degree of competence and that already is an issue

Edit for additional clarity: I don't think the class trivializes the game, just that it is when ranking all classes top to bottom, at the top. The strongest and most flexible class, and the flexibility is one aspect of the strength

I love that the number of spell slots only matters for Deriven to attempt prove this class isn't cracked, but also doesn't make wizards any better. Like c'mon. Which is it? Ignoring the fact they're just simply wrong about number of slots where the animist clearly is 3/rank at top rank and 4/rank for the rest. Why is the wizard having 5-6 top rank slots not a benefit, but the animist having 3, like most classes, such a penalty?

Also, y'all need to chill on the imperial sorcer. It's decent, but it has one trick. I would put sorcerers in the middle of the pack of classes and call it a day

Teridax wrote:

… Deriven, you clearly still haven’t played the class. In the three hours since you said you would, all you’ve done is just rattle off feats independently of each other and given surface-level assessments of how they seem to you on paper, with no supporting experience. This is, as I recall, not the first time you’ve tried to fake credentials in this way, and in fact not even the first time you’ve done so for the Animist. All of this effort spent arguing could have been spent actually trying out an Animist in an adventure.

Just reading through and I feel that it hasn't really been mentioned that it is not necessary for the Animist to be equal or better than another class at certain niche's it just needs to be comparable or close. The Animist can be good at almost any niche with basically zero real investment.

Since this thread was made in August it has become evident that the animist is the undisputed best caster in the entire game, and arguably the best and strongest class overall. So it's interesting to see that be debated at all. It's definitely cracked even without considering how it can step on toes

AestheticDialectic wrote:

I personally don't like the idea of 1hp enemies. It can feel pretty deflating when you realize anything could have killed them.

Good news: PF2 subverts this on the Necromancer with 1HP allies instead. ;)

Made me chuckle. Wait for the class has been long and arduous though ToT

Frankly, it's taken very little from 4e, which is a shame. The incredibly, enormously varied playstyle between each class (the whole "every class is identical!" meme is so objectively untrue that repeating it makes those who do so sound like they've been trapped in a crystal for 15 years), the valuable and varied monster roles, "minion" rules, making different ability score values actually matter (my kingdom for choosing between what adds to defenses!), static defenses in general (I never want to roll a damn save again)... bring some of these to the theoretical 3e, please god.

I personally don't like the idea of 1hp enemies. It can feel pretty deflating when you realize anything could have killed them. I also think the problem people had was that all classes were structured around at-will, encounter and daily powers, and each felt simply "like spells" or not super differentiated between magic and mundane as well as abstracting away any mechanical reflection of the lore behind how spellcasting works. Ofc classes had different abilities and different expected roles. Wizards were explicitly "controllers" while the warlock was a "striker". This is quite boring though and shows too much of the scaffolding of the system. It felt barren at the time and today

ScooterScoots wrote:

R.E. IW, some damage calcs

Assume a 19-20th level magus hitting a spellstrike:

10th rank amped IW: 90 average damage

9th polar ray: 54 average damage + 40 (drained 2 on level 20 enemy) = 94 damage

9th rank blood feast: 94.5 average damage, get half that in temphp

8th rank polar ray: 45 damage + 40 drained = 85 damage

8th rank blood feast: 87.5

Ah yes, the stunningly game breaking power of doing exactly what magus can already do, just a bit more often and without the good rider effects. Truly this shatters the game's balance over it's knee, the most powerful combo in the game.

And just like that you've wasted perfectly good 8th and 9th rank slots on something your focus points could be doing. You're also committing yourself to being useful 4 times per day instead of 3 times per refocus. You're also foregoing actually useful arcane spells to do...4-5 damage over your focus points with 9s and less damage period with the rank 8s.

You know what's better than any of those spells? Maze/quandry. True target. Disappearance. A dozen other spells I can't be bothered to list. If you have 1 real fight a day, sure. Come back and tell me how this strategy works out for you when you need to do 4-6.

The point is that it isn't a huge power outlier with the capacities of the class. Casting those other spells is often taking off a turn of damage and doing the Magus thing in favor of pretending to be a dedicated spellcaster and still completes for actions with IW. Any place you want to use quandary is the same place you would be very happy to use your slots for great feast

But I do think that the Magus shouldn't be designed in such a way it has access to a spell like quandary and I really wish it had divine font for damage spells and only went up to like rank 5-6 for regular slots

I believe some of the lead developers(designers?) of PF2E quite literally worked on 4e. That's why we got the commander and the guardian. Which are 4e classes with new names

AestheticDialectic wrote:

Madhippy3 wrote:

I disagree. This is a long thread and it isn't filled with wizard defenders. Everyone has one reason or another to explain why the wizard is only playable compared to where other classes are excelling.

Yeah because these arguments have been going on for years now and most people are exhausted. You're late to the party

That doesn't rebuttal what I said in the slightest...

In fact this thread is from August of this year...
I am not jumping in a necroing an old thread. This is a modern problem. the discussion isn't tired, its 399 posts.

I didn't say or imply you necro'd anything whatsoever. I said that you are talking as if it's only criticism of the wizard that exists and nothing else. That it is unanimous, or near unanimous that people think the wizard is in a bad spot. If you had been here, as in on the forums not this specific thread, paying attention for the past few years you would know that this topic has been pretty divisive with people on all sides of the issue. Many people strong defenders of the current design as it exists, and even the post-remaster version. There is no shortage of individuals who like the wizard as it is and find it powerful. Talking about it as obviously very bad and that everyone agrees it is bad is unobservant and myopic. I would like changes to the class, but I think it's still around A tier overall. It's a solid chassis, it would be nice if it was S tier, but I don't ever want to argue about the wizard ever again. Everything that could be said has been said. Let's move the hell on

I disagree. This is a long thread and it isn't filled with wizard defenders. Everyone has one reason or another to explain why the wizard is only playable compared to where other classes are excelling.

Yeah because these arguments have been going on for years now and most people are exhausted. You're late to the party

While I respect that there is a lot of fun theory crafting happening, a few of these ideas we would be lucky to get in a 3e as it is to major a change. I am not convinced that making the Wizard more potent is bad merely because it doesn't fit the idea of the versatile wizard, which we acknowledge wasn't everyone's idea of a wizard anyways.

It doesn't really matter about making it wrong as long as we don't make it worse, because the current wizard is the worse it has ever been. It is so bad it created a misconception about the Arcane list that started this thread. This is all a hope dream, but if there is ever going to be a Reremaster of the Wizard that we will see and be able to enjoy in this edition we should theory craft towards simpler changes to the class. So far we have a lot of that.

Unless it would absolutely break the game I am not convinced that letting flexibility be from a huge spell list, swappable spellshapes and spells between combat, and emphasis of spell power through earlier Expert, Master, and Legendary is something to simply dismiss because its not perfect for everyone. It is practical on a printing level and thats what might, with luck, get Paizo to change. Things that already have page space get moved from the feat and thesis side to the class chassis side, and you change Trained to Expert, Expert to Master, Master to Legendary, and delete the redundant Legendary, where you find them related to Spell Modifier. Secondarily Paizo can emphasize more exclusively Arcane spells with new book releases.

While there might be more fixes to add, this is simple and practical. It doesn't matter if it isn't the wizard everyone wants because the wizard we have is the wizard no one wants. We need a buff for the wizard practical enough that someone is going to want to play it and Paizo is willing to print it. Hell my suggestion is so simple it could be done in an errata.

You're overstating it quite a bit here. The wizard like all casters in this game has a solid baseline and is perfectly acceptable from a balance perspective. It has powerful feats and features, and can sneak in power through a deceptive ability to inflate the amount of slotted spells it has well above what other casters can do. The problem with the class is that the skill floor is too high, and the skill ceiling feels too low given the high skill floor. The "juice isn't worth the squeeze". The class as is doesn't actually need a whole hell of a lot as evidenced by the fact people really only want more feats and for spell substitution to become a baseline class feature

In fact, if we were to put Vancian casting aside for a moment: suppose that if in this hypothetical framework, casters get magic from feats in the same way that martials get their own abilities, that would open up a huge amount of space for each of those casters to get much wilder class features. If Kineticists can get master armor proficiency, legendary Fort saves, effectively 10 HP per level, a bunch of other goodies, and still get six bonus impulse feats that they can progressively swap out, imagine what you could give to a Sorcerer or a Wizard: with a 6 HP/level cloth caster chassis, I'd say it would be extremely easy to justify a Wizard having twice as many feats as other classes, or being able to retrain their spell feats on a daily basis or even faster alongside other arcane-themed benefits. Casters tend to struggle with having fun feats because most of their power and complexity is focused on their spells already, but if their feats are their spells, it would be easy to give the Wizard heaps of spell feats that could each feel genuinely really strong.

I am quite attached to a 3.5e homebrew that amounts to a spell point systems in reverse mainly because of thematics. They use the terminology "spellpoint" and "mana" but what I like is that casting spells is additive rather than typical mana systems in video games which are subtractive. While the execution needs work, the flavor of casting spells building up stress in your mind and body tickles something in my brain. What I would like is that all spells become at-will and use a modified version of this system where it's 10 minutes rests like focus spells to clear your accumulated strain from exerting yourself, it is designed to such that you are expected to maybe cast 1-3 of your most powerful spells in an encounter. Lower rank spells contribute less strain and eventually none. Like focus points I would prefer the pool be done with small numbers if possible rather than what they have. I think this could be combined with spells as feats too. Spells could have five, or maybe 4(?) tiers associated with proficiency Novice, Trained, Expert, Master, Legendary, or alternatively Trained, Expert, Master, Legendary, Mythic. We can tag spells into traditions, classes have a traditionbthey give access to. Each class can fit under a super class and this is handle through tags like you're saying and this sorts them into different broad categories of how their magic works. The wizard group not getting spells through feats, or exclusively feats. Wizards pick from the same spell list of the tradition the class gives you, but they prepare a set amount in each proficiency tier, and while prepared they use the same strain system. How much they can swap them, and how many prepared "slots" they get can be determined by the class itself. Maybe necro gets less flexibility because they have bespoke spells like the playtest necro. What I cannot innate magic, and granted magic, can function the same but granted magic could have fewer spells given by feats and more bespoke abilities? Trying to figure out what makes these two better than the wizard classes I conjured up. I definitely want to move past one-and-done vancian magic, and I think most people do too. Feels like variant rule territory

I feel this is a request more specific to the Wizard than anything else. If even the Sorcerer could wield magic in the form of at-will feats and still feel like a spellcaster next to magical martials, the problem isn't that spellcasters need spells as their own separate thing, spell slots, and Vancian spell preparation to be seen as such, but that the Wizard in particular is exceptionally well-suited to being the archetypal Vancian spellcaster with a big bag of tricks, and it would feel weird if strictly no character class offered that mode of play. I think it is entirely possible to have a Vancian caster in a world where spellcasters don't normally use spell slots, and if the Wizard were the only class to use this system, I think they'd have a much better chance of standing out for their versatility. Otherwise, though, I do think complexity should be opt-in, and don't think spellcasters as a group of classes need to be defined by having dozens of limited-use powers.

As for Bards, Clerics, Druids, and other caster classes, I think perceptions of those have already shifted past spell slots anyway: a lot of people expect Druids to be strong shapeshifters, for instance, and that's not something you can get in large amounts while also having dozens more spells you could cast at maximum potency. Bards I think have always toed the line between magic-user and skilled performer, and I think it would be okay if the line between performance and magic were blurred for them. Clerics, meanwhile, I think could benefit significantly from a categorization system like the one you mention, if this categorization meant each deity provided access to a whole range of spells based on their domains, rather than three specific slot spells and a few focus spells. I'd go as far as to say that Vancian spell preparation doesn't even necessarily make the most sense for either Wisdom class, so it'd be worth seeing how either would feel without it.

It could be the case in our hypothetical system we are half dreaming up here that we have our four traditions, and for magic that is innate(sorcerer, kineticist) or magic given through patronage(cleric, oracle) that class feats give you the spells, but if you're under the wizard super class you get something more like our current system. I am also kind of feeling that it would be cool to have each use a different stat. I really feel that instead of charisma innate magic should be a new stat called volition or willpower, or constitution like it is for the current kineticist. Likewise I think it is logical that divine/granted magic be keyed off charisma as you are invoking, beseeching, what gives you the power to perform the magic. Then our studied magic, our wizard super class, is all intelligence. Wisdom gets rolled into intelligence, and I really truly feel wisdom only felt appropriate for the druid, and I suppose now the animist, but I really did not feel fit the cleric. Especially because charisma in the etymological origin is a divine gift. I very much agree that classes that aren't literally the wizard or spellcasters that are essentially wizards with stronger themes, a kineticist system works perfectly fine and it's really dudes that are performing the magic themselves as spells as something learned and created, that they are the only ones I really want operating closer to how it is now, but with tweaks that move us out of spells being a daily resource perhaps. I also feel that the two aforementioned groups of innate and granted magic would be characters that more naturally incorporate non-spell abilities and skills into their kit, where our wizard-like characters are purely about spells. Druids shapeshifting and having animal companions, Clerics wearing armor and recreationally swinging a weapon etc

AestheticDialectic wrote:

What I don't want to see with a spells as feats idea is a recreation of 4e. Spells didn't feel like spells in that game, and ironically martial abilities felt like spells. There was a lot that didn't feel distinct. It works better for kineticist, but if spells are tied to feats in some way it needs to function in a way that makes it stand apart and feel different from playing a non-magical character

I agree with your entire list, particularly grouping certain feats under certain categories so that it's easy to distribute them across classes without having to special-case them every time, but I especially want to touch upon the above because I think this would be especially relevant in the context of arcane magic. I would personally want spells to be made into feats, and I do think a lot D&D 4e's design has ended up proving quite successful when implemented elsewhere, but I also agree with you that its big mistake was in abstracting too far: because it took a gameplay-first approach rather than a flavor-first approach and tried generalizing classes to broad functional roles across martial-caster boundaries, the feeling of distinction between spells and martial abilities was lost. That, along with the balancing of spells compared to 3.5e, was in my opinion a major reason why so many players hated caster classes in that edition.

I don't think the problem is intractable, though, and in my opinion the best way to drive a distinction between the magical and the mundane is to identify what separates the two: for healing, for instance, a skilled medic might be able to work miracles, but would likely need to be close to their patient so that they can use the right tools on them. If they're crafty, they might perhaps have healing potions they can lob, but that still requires producing an item and throwing it. A Cleric, by contrast, can simply chant a prayer and close an ally's wounds from a distance, because their healing is not a product of their own physical capabilities so...

Sure the effects are an important part but I also think the mechanics of using magic being distinct helps much more in creating the divide. Particularly when we have magical martials such as champions, monks and the thaumaturge. A big thing for me especially is how many abilities, kinds of effects, do we get to select for a spellcaster at a time? Is it a separate feat track like impulses? Kineticist for example do far fewer things than our current casters. It works well for them, and may work well for a sorcerer, but it wouldn't feel right for a wizard. Innate magic and spellcasting could function differently and sorcerers can be the poster child for this innate magic system, and kineticist later being another inmate magic class if they bring them back again. Sorcerer and kineticist want a streamlined system of fewer effects to choose from and few abilities they have access to at a given time. For better and worse I do think even as people disagree about the wizard in our d20 fantasy people are going to want more breadth than this system might offer. I do want to move past vancian magic, but I also think that I would want the wizard in specific to still be able to fill up their book with as many spells as possible. I do also think druids and clerics shouldn't be given their whole list and it should be limited by choice of subclass/deity. I also think that we could argue Bard should be moved under the hypothetical wizard super class as they're studious in the lore

I think fighter progression for a wizard's spell attacks and DCs would be a bit too much. However, I'm of the opinion that most of the arcane thesis should have been made into baseline features of the wizard, turned into regular feats, or directly removed. Experimental Spellshaping feels like the perfect analogue to the fighter's Combat Flexibility, Improved Familiar Attunement doesn't make much sense in the wizard now that the witch exists, and I could easily see Spell Blending Staff Nexus becoming feats. Spell Substitution just feels right as a baseline wizard feature, more so in PF2e where the wizard doesn't really have much in regards to features.

For 2e I want an unchained wizards that resembles what the playtest Technomancer in SF2E looks like. Their emphasis on spellshaping is pretty much exactly what the wizard needs to feel like a wizard, and they should just be switched to 4 slots and call it a day

4 slots, the Technomancer jailbreak class feature, being able to free action swap prepared spells with school spells, totally redesigned from the ground up schools. Thesis should all be feats or removed, I agree

I would personally like the default scaling for casters to be like martials in capping at master but the "my whole thing is casting" classes like Wizard and probably sorcerer, to cap at legendary instead. This requires a different formula for saves and spells than 2e has... the things I want are kind of long and numerous

1. Super Class as feat packages. "Wizard" is no longer a class but a super class. Classes such as necromancer, magus, and possibly even witch might fit under the wizard super class and as such have a shared pool of feats that offer baseline features that related casting classes should get. Wizard super class might have more feats that manipulate spell slots, make scrolls, wands an/or staves, have more spellshape feats etc. Then the book space for class feats does not have to include effortless concentration for every caster and similar such feats. Likewise for martials you might have Warrior/Fighter as a super class, and some thematic word for the hit and run/more dexterous martials like rogues and rangers. The Magus for example might get to count as a wizard and a warrior. We can do hybrids

2. Casters should be like martials have scaling that is designed to cap at master and having legendary be something special for casters who are singularly focused on casting very powerful spells

3. Spell ranks condensed down to fewer than 10. 5 is the number I like, but it can be 7 or 4 etc

4. Sorcerers and other spellcasters who do innate magic get moved to a kineticist like system for spells and casting spells for these characters builds up strain that alleviates after smalls rests after combat. Hitting your threshold causing you to hurt yourself, accidentally knock yourself unconscious etc. Rather than be a pool of points it's a limit and you build up. Lower rank spells eventually become worth zero strain becoming more like cantrips. This system can be universalized to all casters too but previously vancian casters don't pick from feats, but instead slot spells each day that they can cast effectively at will until they hit their cap and have to take a break

5. Spell lists get massively trimmed down to skeletons that support a framework of a kind of play style and thematics. Specific in and out of combat roles, but then simultaneously subclasses give additional spells that round out a given character. Necromancer might be occult or arcane but get a massive list of thematic divine spells. Or it might just be a divine list caster but get some spells from occult or arcane to round it out

5.5 Force spells become unique to arcane. Spirit takes up the role of force for divine and occult casters. Primal gets neither and other similar tweaks to sharpen identities

What I don't want to see with a spells as feats idea is a recreation of 4e. Spells didn't feel like spells in that game, and ironically martial abilities felt like spells. There was a lot that didn't feel distinct. It works better for kineticist, but if spells are tied to feats in some way it needs to function in a way that makes it stand apart and feel different from playing a non-magical character

This is probably worth an entire separate discussion by itself, but shortening spell lists down to sharper identities I think ought to make it worth questioning the extremes of high saves and immunities that we see now: although the idea of a fire elemental being immune to fire makes thematic sense, it also shuts down the very notion of a pyromancer character, for example, who either ends up incapable of doing anything or needing to use a mechanic like the Kineticist's Extract Element, which doesn't work against every enemy and makes fire Kins very sad against devils. The fact that so many enemies are straight-up immune to mental effects makes it similarly difficult to play mentalists -- which is troublesome, because mentalism is a very big part of the occult tradition in particular.

While targeting two saves is generally to be expected for primal and occult casters in particular, and there are alternatives when both saves are high, the alternatives are generally to revert to pure support by handing out buffs or heals, which is not what every caster player wants to do. By contrast, martial classes can generally expect to deal some measure of Strike damage, because attack modifiers can be much more easily raised to overcome even extreme AC, and it's extremely rare for monsters to be immune to BPS damage (though sadly not precision damage). A designer a while ago mentioned that this system of harder counters existed to pressure casters to leverage the versatility of their spells to the fullest, but I think enough time has passed to show that a lot of players don't really care all that much about more versatility past a certain point, so much as a minimum degree of reliability.

This is likely to be stuff we're unlikely to see until 3e, but I'd quite like counters in general to be softer: it's fine for enemies to resist certain effects better than others, but immunity is something that should only be used if there's a guarantee it won't shut down someone's character, if it should be used at all. It's great...

And I am certainly someone who was in the camp of preferring the verisimilitude of the quasi realism that a lot of these things bring such as fire immunity on fire elementals, but like how undead ancestries and archetypes don't give you undead immunities for balance I also think that we are already in the real of combat as sport (as opposed to war) and should at least consider applying the philosophy further. I am even on record saying that I think "pyromancer" is a shallow character theme and concept. I still think so, but players should be allowed to make these kinds of characters regardless of my own personal taste and the game shouldn't shut them down

I also think slimmer spell lists let classes get more, and more interesting, class feats and features that interact with spell casting to really help differentiate casters and give them stronger identities

I would even say that I would prefer that we go from 10 ranks of spells to something like 5 but have it be more in line with 10 slots per rank or something instead. The number of ranks really feels like bloat and many ranks really blend into each other. I'm not sure we need ten whole degrees of spell power levels. To my mind ranks 1 and 2 don't really feel super distinct as much as they feel distinct from rank 3, and 3 isn't crazy different from 4 and perhaps 5 as well. Without looking at the lists it's hard to say which ranks really feel like a real distinct jump but it definitely feels to me that some of these ranks really blend together

Independently of the Wizard, I'm personally quite interested in the question of what the arcane list should look like, ideally: right now, it does most things besides vitality stuff, and while that does mean it does a lot of stuff, I think it's also been to the detriment of the tradition's identity as well as its appreciation over time. It's probably going to sound weird to talk about taking things away, but I do think that cutting off swathes of spells attached to the arcane list would make room for a sharper identity along with other, more tangible benefits.

For example: the arcane list is meant to be the junction of material and mental essence, so it stands to reason that the arcane list ought to access every mental spell out there... except it doesn't, and for good reason, because if every arcane caster could access heroism and synesthesia on top of their current spells, there'd be few reasons to pick casters of any other tradition unless it was for heal. Despite the fact that both spells could theoretically fit the arcane list, synesthesia in particular, neither can be allowed on a tradition that already has a lot of spells attached to it, even if not all of those spells are equally valuable.

With this in mind, I do think that it would help to not only give the arcane list some more spells, including spells unique to the tradition, but also prune spells that aren't necessarily the strongest thematic fit. Just as examples:

* Void spells are about manipulating life energy, and so should probably go out of the list despite having sat with Wizards across various editions.

* For some reason, the arcane list does have a couple of vitality spells that should probably no longer be there. Lifewood cage is an awkward one, though, because it's a remaster of force cage whose presence makes sense for historical reasons, but not for thematic ones, and the incongruity comes specifically from a mechanical side...

You and I have talked about it extensively, and were pretty much the only two participants on your thread on the topic, but I always want to bang this drum when it comes up. WE NEED TO MASSIVELY RESTRICT THE SPELL LISTS! STOP GIVING EVERYONE EVERYTHING PAIZO! I seriously wish we could have a version of 2e where every spell list was cut massively down to a few core roles it plays based on the thematics of the essences, occult is buffs, debuffs and battlefield control, arcane is battlefield control, utility and blasts, primal is healing, blasts and summoning, divine is healing, buffs and summoning. Something like this. Then subclasses of a class can add additional spells for theme/flavor, or an expanded role in and out of combat, change the spell list for the class if it makes sense (but for the love of God FEWER pick a lists!), or what have you. The lists are bloated with too many different things they can do and do not provide meaningful restrictions and this is most apparent with the divine list

Stop asking questions:)

I should clarify because my wording was confusing on reread. The only argument against me saying necro should get heal I am amenable to is that I wouldn't want my party forcing me to put heal in my top slots. That sucks. It's very minor though. Scrolls are a good option though, I agree

My take during the playtest was and still is that necromancer's should get a class ability that gives them access to all non-sanctified spells with the void, vital and/or spirit traits. This does include heal, but the only reason I don't think necro should get heal is because I don't want the party to expect me to waste my two top slots with heal. That's pretty much it though. Heal and similar spells can be very thematic for a fair number of kinds of necromancer

I don't think a level 8 slot on Stunned 1 even for one action something I'd use a level 8 slot for. Same as dazzled for a minute for Power Word Blind. The 50 points for power word kill is all I use.

Not sure why a primal caster has problems. They have chain lightning and fireball and blazing ray and phantom orchestra and sudden bolt and slow. On top of generally good focus spells like Tempest Surge and Elemental Toss.

Occult has force barrage, synesthesia, heroism, wall of force, and other staples I use often on top of generally good class features attached to their classes. An occult caster is a better control/buff/debuff caster is where they stand out. They have the top tier spells for that type of play. I generally focus my slots on that when playing occult over blasting.

Primal and Arcane are the blast lists. Divine is pretty blasty now too. Divine has the best summons, heals, and some good blasting now.

Divine is the best list right now. I do however want to say that arcane has the strength of letting you be a primal caster and an occult caster simultaneously just without this or that exclusive spell. Most of the occult spells you listed I can grab on arcane, and those I can't, well I can grab these other blasting spells from primal, essentially. There is definitely something to this

Okay, simple test of your guidelines: the party is deep in a forest, far away from civilization. They’ve been traveling through this forest for days to reach a long-sealed crypt thought lost to time. How do you convey to the party at that moment that deep in this crypt, the lower floors are full of clay effigies?

Good thought experiment. I think there are a few ways. First and easiest is a relevant knowledge check and with a regular success I would be willing to give a list of possible kinds of things that could be in the dungeon. Likewise, you can have art such as carvings that give an indication or clue as to what is inside. This culture is known for making constructs such as these. The outside of the tomb could have statues that look like clay effigies

I don't think you can tell them directly the lower floors specifically have them, but you can give heavy handed hints that something like this ought to be within the dungeon somewhere and they can prepare accordingly if they pick up on the hints

The worst way I can think of if having some dead previous adventurer's stuff somewhere in there and it have detailed notes and the like which might have a map or whatever

With the concern about the adventuring day, I think it is reasonable one might rest, or wait to prepare spells specifically for the dungeon. I am assuming this is like a day or two out anyways so it's reasonable they would camp outside, rest and then enter in the morning. If it is within a day, I think you try to have everything available for them to prepare(knowledgeable NPCs, library, whatever) before they depart and if they don't seek this info out, oh well

Paizo forums try not to make every thread about the wizard challenge... Lol

What's next a capitalist class? It's time to abolish class...

By that line of thought you might need to have strength and constitution to really use heavy armor and shields. Shields are exhausting to use as they are meant to be used and would require cardio and strength.

and bows of any significant poundage to actually deal damage, particularly to armored targets, would requires a whole hell of a lot of strength... Lol

Riddlyn wrote:

NorrKnekten wrote:

I believe paizo did state that they had plans for Secrets of Magic and Dark Archive remasters. Similar to how Guns and Gears were remastered.

Dark Archives might be able to get a G&G style remaster, I think that'd be a very tough job for Secrets of Magic. Way to much has changed in the remaster getting away from the OGL.

It's also notable that we've seen stuff taken from SoM and put into other remaster books. Elementalist showed up in Rage of Elements. Runelord in Rival Academies.

Hard to imagine they're planning to reprint the book normally after stripping away some of its features.

I could see Magus and Summoner reprinted in the book the Rune Smith and Necromancer are in, but I don't remember why I thought this originally

I just straight up don't like jailbreaking spells being relegated to a level 4 feat. I do think it should be in the chassis and upgrade-able with feats. I'm on board with it just applying two spellshapes, but it competing with other level 4 feats, and not being a guarantee when it was the whole reason the class was cool just seems to miss the mark imo. I don't think it's particularly interesting to take a class with a unique feature that was core to it, in order to make it into a class that buffs items and gets to swap spells which is just unfortunately really boring when it's actually laid out like this

Yeah, I personally think jailbreak spell is the coolest thing the class does, but I also agree that jailbreaks should maybe just be spellshapes and the feature allow you to mix and match two spellshapes

Idk about letting class DC scale to legendary, maybe master is fine enough, but I would say this also means DPS++ will still struggle to do anything with it's gun benefit later on and I don't think we can justify buffing their ability to hit with guns much at all

I also remember talking with you and talking about overclock becoming a focus spell, and probably same with download cache. The class starting with 2(or 3?) focus points. Jailbreak then still costs 1 extra action and a focus point to set up in order to apply to spellshapes to one spell, and does come at the cost of download cache and their subclass focus spell, whatever it ends up being. Not sure if it should remain a spellshape or become a tech focused spell

In some ways I think we should have two spells per rank of cache spells, but it's not a huge deal I don't think

The main thing though I think would help is still that I think they should get class specific feats for the computers skill to enhance their ability to interface with tech while not fighting for space with the other really cool class feats

It's funny that we have two dinosaur avatars discussing evolution, and hairless ones splitting hairs.

I do plan to go back to school for either paleontology, evolutionary biology or simply to do paleoart, but suffice to say, I love animals alive and dead, and most especially dinosaurs(birds included) :)

But I like your additions which help bring clarity to what I wanted to communicate

Golarion clearly seems to have actual evolution at play, and magic just complicates the narrative but things clearly have all the mechanisms necessary, genes, genetic mutation, and environmental pressures

I don't know how the people in charge of lore wanna square the circle but I have always been a proponent of making humanoid fantasy races all human in the phylogenetic sense and this sharing a common ancestor. Orcs, Dwarves, Halfings, Gnomes, Elves, and probably even Goblins, are all clearly kinds of human. They're more like us than we are like chimps/bonobos. There can be wrinkles, gnomes are influenced by the first world, maybe a god liked humans so much they made their own kind, whatever, but to my mind, they're all taxonomically/phylogenetically human

I also just don't think our modern minds can conceive of animals existing without the process of evolution when we try and think about it hard enough. So it is bound to show up in fantasy these days

Gonna split hairs here, I apologize...

Intelligent Design is an alternative explanation to the Evolution of Species via Natural Selection, and Evolution(which is what I'll shorten this to) is not dependent on abiogenesis(life emerging entirely from natural processes with no supernatural influence)

So, basically gods, or God, can create the universe, and even go as far as planting the first seeds of life, and Evolution is not impacted by this. Intelligent Design specifically would be stating that each species is create from whole cloth as it is now and there is no process of mutation, genetic drift, environmental pressures causing drastic enough changes for species to change. Hence the terminology "created kinds" within creationism and intelligent design

I'll be clear, proponents of Intelligent Design for the most part seemingly do not know that Evolution is not predictated on abiogenesis and so their argumentation against Evolution lumps these in together

I'd personally lean in favor of giving the Technomancer a full deck of magic hacks, i.e. focus spells, at level 1: Download Spell? Make that a single-action focus spell instead of a free action every 10 minutes. Overclock Gear? Make that another single-action focus spell that you can activate on its own, instead of this thing tied to casting a slot spell. And with that, you'd get to give the Technomancer much more to do without dipping into their spell slots, and so without affecting their existing mechanics by all that much. The added benefit is that it would also let you choose how much of each aspect you want to lean into: want to just overclock? You can do that. Want to fully lean into the spellshape? You can do that. Want to just switch to your cached spells? Can do. Want to do one of each every encounter? That's something you can do too!

If overclock becomes a focus spell, I think it should be able to affect more than one thing and not just on your person. I also think it and overclocking after casting a slotted spell should exist simultaneously because I do think you shouldn't be stuck only able to do one jailbreak per focus point. Unless that gets overhauled.

I could see a technomancer at level one with 3 focus spells for download cache, overclock and jailbreak, you getting to choose between the three abilities each combat. This technomancer would not have other kinds of focus spells and that would be replaced by feats that enhance these focus spells, and finally like I mentioned before, technomancer specific skill feats for the computers skill in order to do stuff like combat hack at range etc

It's pretty obvious that the Spell Cache/Download Spell options are inspired by or codeveloped with the recently released new version Runelord archetype for PF2.

But the Runelord has a universal list of spells that all Runelords can swap to replace a prepared spell plus a rune specific list. It might be a good idea to give all Technomancers a shared list of utility/generic tech spells (e.g. delete and discharge) as part of their Spell Cache and then add on programming language specific stuff. That would allow them to be better than other arcane casters at flexibly overcoming tech problems with spells.

I'm alright with this. Frankly I wish they had four different traditions in Starfinder that matched the setting, and then had a conversion guide which said "if playing this class in Pathfinder replace the tech magic tradition with the arcane" or whatever, but we're well beyond that point

Being able to use Computers actions from a distance, and potentially also on multiple devices at once, sounds like a no-brainer feat or series of feats on this class.

I was thinking about this sorta thing specifically at work today. I don't know if there is any precedent outside of archetypes, but what if technomancer got technomancer specific skill feats for this? One of my issues is that a lot of feats on the class look really good already and choosing some glorified skill actions for flavor at the expense of some of the cool feats the class already has is quite difficult, but maybe if they take up a skill feat then we might be cooking

I do think that the technomancer is treating magic like technology more than treating technology like magic. Which I prefer, but I also, idk. You can do a lot of what is being asked for with already existing spells and with skills. Frankly with how the class should/would play as written, it seems clear to me overclocking is a ribbon feature that is the action tax to do your class ability of hacking spells. I see the flavor as the spells being programs themselves and you're hacking spell programs. No divide between magic and tech exists here imo

This is why I asked op what they wanted in specific. I'd like to know what we are replacing to do what and what the benefit is. Already I think it is clear that the class is going to have minimal hardware focused tech abilities because of the mechanic. So this is my assumption. I also find it interesting people are pointing to the original class which has the same criticism of "being a wizard in space" with little tech actually involved

If I designed the class we'd have focus spells that summoned turrets and guns, robots etc. but admittedly that's what the mechanic does

AestheticDialectic wrote:

I like that this class is a techno wizard and not a techno druid/animist. I like it being an intelligence caster who is exploiting the barriers and synergies between magic and technology, and who is "hacking reality".

I'm really struggling to hear how this isn't just the Witchwarper.

The witch warper explicitly deals in different dimensions and timelines, and the technomancer doesn't. Seems pretty different to me