AestheticDialectic's page

I was playing Diablo 4 because of this play test class making me really want to play a necromancer somewhere, and was kind of thinking about how making undead "mages" appears to be a big part of the fantasy, but something extremely tricky to pull off for a class like this. Likewise Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has a class called the "Graveborn" that has a demolich companion that also casts spells. Typically in games it seems these are just undead that shoot projectiles, which is quite uninteresting in a ttrpg... but I was thinking, what if all the class's low level spellcasting got put into some kind of spellcaster thralls you could create via a feat somewhere in the mid levels. The class switches to bounded casting, but instead of something like studious spells, you can summon one or two thralls that have set spells memorized. During your daily preparations you creation a thrall or two with spells ranks up to -2, -3 or -4 prepared as the case may be. You get a set list of guys with thematic spells that you can choose from, and a later feat can maybe let you rotate them out midday

This is absolutely weaker than what we have now with more restrictions, but wins out on flavor and may give us a little more power budget to juice up thralls even more and still have a spellcasting fantasy

I may be jumping the gun because we are 6+ months away from even play testing the technomancer but I want to make a suggestion for it before the playtest drops. That suggestion being: The technomancer should be our first default flexible caster. In 1e every caster was spontaneous, technomancer included, however I feel as though perhaps the technomancer should have some kind of digital library of spells and be able to swap which ones are pre-programmed for the day. Actual factual prepared does feel too archaic for starfinder, so this is my proposal as I think it would fit the flavor of the class

I should have made this post a while ago, but in Monster Core I was really hoping and expecting with the move away from the OGL and the presumed removal of the robot dogs called "gorgons" that the "Medusa" creature would finally be renamed to gorgon. The old gorgon is removed, it is very ogl specific after all, but I just have to wonder why the name Medusa was kept given that this is the name of a specific gorgon(this is a pet issue me and my wife have, mostly that some random robot dog is called a gorgon, like... What...?)

I also wanna add the little addition that I'm glad they kept the good and cool Deinonychus art. I love him so much. Less impressed with the t rex having crocodile osteoderms. While crocodilians are very closely related it seems very unlikely from the skin impressions of the t rex that it would have this kind of skin. I know very little new art was commissioned and so I am not criticizing this reuse of art, just throwing this out there for the future hoping for more dinosaurs as animals and less dinosaurs as monsters

Another compliment I'll add is I think the fortune dragon is the coolest heckin' dude around

I want to make it clear this is not a criticism of the artists skill—they are clearly very skilled—but more to do with the fact that is looks significantly less accurate to what these animals would have looked like according to our modern understanding compared to the absolute stellar Deinonychus art in the first Bestiary. I also should mention Dromaeosaur is the family all of the "raptors" are in

For reference:
My screenshot of the Player Core Dromaeosaur

Bestiary Deinonychus

Prehistoric Planet's Velociraptor Reconstruction

Emily Willoughby's Deinonychus Reconstruction

This is important to me because I believe representing these animals as animals is important, the new player core design more so fits in the designing them as monsters trope. It is barely feather, has pronated wrists(something impossible for any dinosaur to do), has a skull more akin to a carnosaur than a dromaeosaur and it's arm feathers don't look like proper quills like we know they had. Dromaeosaurs are one of the closest relatives to the avian dinosaurs(birds). The other closest is the troodontids which looks incredibly similar to dromaeosaurs. I know it is well past the point of any art being changed ofc, I would just hope that the artists referenced paleo art when rendering these animals in the future

I may be making a very big mistake in starting this thread so I am asking ahead of time and at the start that this discussion not be about what is wrong, or not wrong, with the wizard. Instead I want to pose the question:
What exactly should the wizard's niche, theme-ing and mechanical identity be? What to you are spells that say "this is a wizard spell" and what kind of class feats and features do you feel are especially wizardy?

To give a couple examples:

The mechanical identity of the wizard in 5e according to Jeremy Crawford is their biggest and best spell list, which is contrasted with sorcerers who get to do more and be experts with their much smaller set of spells

I won't list everything I think a wizard should be here in the op, I'll post that below after reading some answers, but to help give an idea of what I'm looking for I'll say I strongly associate wizards with utility magic such as the spell knock

Beyond what a wizard is to you, I'm interested in what you think a wizard is not? For instance what shouldn't they do or be able to do? What limits should their magic have and what should be the domain of other classes? Easy example is healing ofc. It's as old as d&d that wizards cannot and should not heal, but what else should be outside the purview of the wizard?

I look forward to reading your personal head canons

It was mentioned, I believe in the Eric Mona stream that they would likely rename the Barbarian to the Berserker if they were making a new addition, but this change was maybe too big for the remaster. This peaked my interest because I already have been saying and thinking the Barbarian should be called the Berserker. I won't get into details about what Berserkers were just that if you looked at the description of the barbarian class and the Norse myths of berserkers you'd just say "this is the same image".

I also find it strange that a kind of class of people, "barbarians" was used for a class. Barbarian starting as "not roman" and evolving to mean any society which was a "non-state society". Then ofc we all know the connotations involved with state based ideologies creating a division civilized=good uncivilized=bad therefore barbarians=bad

What I'm bringing this all up to say is that, it may be too late but I really think Paizo should just pull the trigger and rename the class. The name Berserker is awesome, the myth of Berserkers is awesome. Perhaps Paizo could state in the text somehow or somewhere that "barbarian" in other books refer to the newly named Berserker? It's not likely this will happen, but how is everyone else feeling? I'm almost stoked on a PF3E just to have the word BERSERKER heading a class

The jist is that I want to find a way to used ranged unarmed strikes to make a competent Starlit Span Magus. After seeing the Automaton feat "energy beam" I immediately knew I needed to fire magical lasers at dudes. The main issue I see is that the range increment is 20ft and it starts at a d4 and only advances to a d6. It doesn't add half strength and doesn't have deadly d10 like, say, a composite shortbow. Is there any way to get a better ranged unarmed strike or even improve this one? Preferably with a way to perhaps get phase bolt from psychic dedication(assuming any GM out there would let me go all Metroid wave beam on dudes). I saw one thing, the far shot feat from the ranger, and I know the monk has some ranged unarmed strikes somewhere but idk what they look like at all

Any help in turning this into a real build that can keep up would be appreciated

With the release of the video game Wrath of the Righteous the fact the game allowed magical vestments to stack with enchanted armor lead to a discussion on the discord where everyone knows this shouldn't stack, but a question of whether mage armor and magical vestments could stack. I initially said no because mage armor is not armor, it's a field of force that gives an armor bonus. This person however insisted that if you used it on your clothes it would then stack. This seems wrong to me as all mentions of enhancement bonuses say they improve the armor(or shield, or weapon) by the enhancement amount and that adding +5 to armor inscreases the *armor bonus* and is not added as it's own *enhancement bonus* to AC. Which I cited that if enhancement bonus was an AC bonus type that a +5 shield and +5 armor would not stack the +5 bonuses but it is intended for them to stack. To which they said *armor enhancement* and *shield enhancement* are different bonuses. However there is no text on the SRD or that I can find in my PDF that mentions these phrases at all. The text on the SRD says:

An enhancement bonus represents an increase in the sturdiness and/or effectiveness of armor or natural armor, or the effectiveness of a weapon, or a general bonus to an ability score. Multiple enhancement bonuses on the same object (in the case of armor and weapons), creature (in the case of natural armor), or ability score do not stack. Only the highest enhancement bonus applies. Since enhancement bonuses to armor or natural armor effectively increase the armor or natural armor’s bonus to AC, they don’t apply against touch attacks.

This indicates to me that the player does not receive the enhancement bonus but the item does in the case of armor, shields and weapons. The only enhancement bonus the player receives is to ability scores

So magical vestments on your clothes would not stack with mage armor as both are armor bonuses when translated into bonuses to AC

Also in the same vein, could you apply an enhancement bonus to bracers of armor?

I got to play a second level Psychic over 3 sessions, might have been four, of something my GM called "Hanged Man's Noose" I think it was a 3rd party 1e conversion or something. Y'all might know. I don't really want to report this playtest on raw data, but how it felt to play the psychic specifically. In this game I switched out my witch for a psychic and so I chose Silent Whisper and the intelligence version of the class.

Immediately I want to talk about psi-cantrips and amps because nudge intent is awful. At first it looked great that it had the ability to work as the fear spell or force an opponent to lose an action, like slow or stunned. The trade off being the enemy can choose which penalty to take which weakens the effect significantly. What I didn't account for is that anything you tell the enemy to do is beneficial and not a problem for them whatsoever. Casting a spell is always good, attacking is always good, skill action was the one I had hopes for except that it just got people grappled or something similar. Perhaps I'm not the most knowledgeable or strategic when it comes to stuff, but this spell just does nothing. 1/10 wasted action. What I would like to see this cantrip do is work the exact same except instead of taking of these specific casters the target must waste as action doing a useless ritual. This spell reminds me of my own minor OCD symptoms which operate on magical thinking where my irrational side of my brain is utterly convinced if I don't do something there will be bad outcomes. It's why in severe cases you see people doing things like opening a door seven times before entering a room. A ritual must take place or else a vague imaginary bad thing will happen. This fits the theme of the spell so well both in the need to do something and the fear component of you don't do that thing, and I feel the ability for the enemy to choose reigns in the power a bit

Message was a real all star. Unlike what another person this forum has said where message could always be used, I found I only could to use an amped message once or twice a combat. Meaning it did not force me to use it constantly. What it helped improve above all was the action economy of my teammates at the start of combat, especially the magus. This amp is fine as it is and needs no changes. Daze is daze, it's bad moving on.

The spell list of silent whisper... I need to preface this with the fact I like prepared casters and I've never played a spontaneous casters in this game or in 1e. Perhaps it's just mean but the spells known is so tiny, it feels like a straight jacket. 3 spells known of a given level just feels terrible. It felt to me that a psychic has spell slots for rare occasions, and highly situational circumstances, as well as to be a "big gun" you can pull out in dire circumstances. With spells known this tiny, and one of them being taken up for the mediocre spell list of Silent Whisper... Is this how spontaneous casters always feel?

Unleash Psyche, I thought it was okay that it didn't boost cantrips tow shake things up, but no it was a useless feature particularly the nudge intent psyche specifically. If I wasn't so thematic I would suggest getting rid of this feature entirely

To sum up I had effectively two different spells I could cast with two spell slots, bad cantrips and a completely useless additional class feature which really just felt like a ribbon feature

Now in less casual language a big thing I want to emphasize about how I feel playing this class and looking at spell casters in this game is it seems to me they live or die on their additional class features. In 1e we had several layers of differentiation. Class specific spell lists, half, 3/4 and full casting and so on which helped make a caster feel unique with the added few benefits on top. 2e standardized all casting into full casting levels and casting from one of four universal spell lists. While in some ways I like this thematically it really highlights that the reason to play one magic user over another cannot be defined by their spellcaster alone and must come with unique ways they cast and interact with spells to make them worth existing. People are interested in the concepts presented because they are different from other casters giving the psychic potential for a unique play style and feel that truly sets them apart, but unfortunately these features in my personal limited experience just plain sucked

To me the psychic is unique in being connected to the of ideas. I think of esoteric occult beliefs and German Idealism(Hegel). I think of tarot cards, psychic readings and mediums speaking to ghosts. To me psychic power comes from the soul, which in western traditions is synonymous with the mind. I want this tapped into. I want to see a class that opens it's inner eye and sees a different world. See the world of ideas in a more direct way that other occult casters don't quite get to experience

Thank you for reading my post

This might be a weird topic to make a thread about but it's been in the back of my mind since I first read about the spell casting traditions in 2e. The definition for Occult magic is the literal definition of the word arcane. Am I the only one who noticed? If you look up definitions for the word arcane you'll find that it is relating to mysterious, secret and esoteric knowledge. The original idea of the wizard is someone who studies the boundary between the physical and metaphysical, learning *arcane* knowledge of the material and spiritual to understand and practice magic. Their practice is what the real world definition of "occult" means. Especially today. People in the real world who do occult practices very often identify as witches or *wizards*. It's spellcasting. It's really weird to me that what should be in it's totality just arcane magic is split into two halves of the same idea and practice. I know that Pathfinder 2e says arcane magic is studious and logical, which by this I think they mean it's Scientific according to our modern understanding; however the importance of language in all spells in real life practices and in the actual game world reflect the inherent logical systems in all magic. Divine, occult, arcane and primal. Verbal components reflect how language in the past was seen as magic, and by those who believe in magic today still call it magic. This is why spell is the word used for both magic and language. As for the science thing, I think it's weird to view magic as science when we can see actual science being applied in the world, but that's a different topic.

I really find it odd how these are categorized. Primal and Divine could be argued to have a similar problem in being not that different from each other, but it's a little easier to justify their separation, but occult and arcane are the same thing. Two halves of the same whole. I fail to see why they are separate and any wizard I play would be well versed in the occult, it comes with delving into magic, scientifically or otherwise

I've been seeing thread after thread about spellcasters in general, or more specifically wizards and them being lack luster in this or that fashion. On a lot of them I've wanted to ask about the role of the "god wizard" as treantmonk has put it and how viable that still is. I see most of the time spell attack and spell damage being talked about, but I've not really had much interest in blasting. In 1e I like playing the witch and wizard primarily for crowd control, debuffing and summoning, as well as occasionally buffing. I know buffing is entirely untouched and still useful as it doesn't require the wizard be mathematically super great, but how does this hold up for save or suck, especially with the incapacitation trait? I've thought of doing a wizard multiclass into witch with the arcane list since I found out the spell attack and DC is not class dependent but tradition dependent, and with how easy it is to get dedication feats this improves the amount of spells you have by 30-40% from 4 up to 6 for some levels. I've also thought about Witch MCD wizard to use evil eye and then use the wizard slots for things that don't require legendary proficiency, like wall of force, fly, haste, invisibility and so on. Some of the main crowd control, or battlefield control if you prefer, spells still seem good, though force cage is noticably weaker in PF2 compared to 5e, however in 5e is breaks the game, so it's unstable.

I guess I'm looking for build advice, what still works, what should be talked to a GM about doing to sure up weaknesses, and so on. I haven't gotten much time to play 2e, I've just DM'd a tiny amount so I greatly appreciate y'all's input