Alexander Augunas's page

Name's in the thread. Why do I need to Play Pathfinder 2E to play kitsune, grippli, hobgoblin, or kobolds in Starfinder? Like, I get that it's supposed to be a cool crossplay thing, but now I feel like I have to use my Achievement Points for Pathfinder to play what I want to play in Starfinder. It just feels bad.

What do you still need?

Interesting question!

While there are definitely a lot of great class concepts out there that I would really appreciate seeing in Pathfinder 2E, I think the thing I can definitely say that I need more than anything else is that I need a hero.

I'm holding out for a hero until the end of the night. He's gotta be strong (key ability: Strength), he's gotta be fast (+10 Speed bonus for sure), and he's gotta be fresh from the fight (maybe something to help him regain Hit Points after an encounter?).

Yeah, definitely think I need a hero, and I'll be holding out for one until the end of the night. Gotta double down on the Strength and the Speed. Ooh, I know! Maybe something to give him enlarge person? My PC really needs to be larger than life.

... wait. I just described a giant instinct barbarian, didn't I? Hm. I'll have to think more on this tomorrow.

I got a shout-out! <3

Good. It’s about time!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Come along, friends! I have such wondrously fascinating things to show you!

I am VERY excited for y'all to see this AP next year.

But tell me, Luis, does this book have rules for property values?! I NEED TO BUY A HOUSE FOR MY PC, LUIS!

This could have been called the Deck of Many Faces?!?!

WHYYYYYYYYY!

(Still looks rad, though!)

I thought the same thing watching that video! The know direction beyond crew is nothing if not honest about what they think about products, and they gave this very high praise.

Thank you!

We try very specifically to be honest about how we feel about content so that when we offer praise, our fans (and Paizo staff) know that it means something. I mean, we're biased; my name's in the Starfinder CRB and V's written hundreds of pages of awesome Starfinder content, like two whole AP volumes at this point. But it's very important to us that we're biased with integrity, and I'm glad that our honesty shines through about the book!

In addition to reviewing our early access PDF last month, we had John Compton on at twitch.tv/knowdirection to talk about the making of Drift Crisis, so if you want even more behind-the-scenes info about the book, check the episode out there. It'll also be available to listen to in podcast form tomorrow (5/13) at knowdirectionpodcast.com.

You know, unless we get SUPER unlucky, it being Friday the 13th and all.

Cool!

Thank you for taking the time to write this up, Mark! This is great. :D

Also, there were a few people who were like, "Your post got too heated and passionate so I stopped listening to anything you said."

You're perfectly entitled to that response, but I'd challenge you to question in yourselves why perceived emotion devalues the quality of my opinions in a thread literally titled, "Respectful Opinions about PF2." I may have been emotional, sure. I am an emotional person. But being emotional and having feelings doesn't invalidate my thoughts and opinions. You don't need to be an unfeeling bastion of rationality to have valid thoughts and experiences, and respect doesn't necessitate a lack of emotion.

A lot of people replied to my post and I thank you for that (as well as 22 Likes!!). Out of respect for the OP and the spirit of this thread, I'm not going to engage in a discussion for any of them, but there was this one post I saw that I wanted to speak on:

The only other major unaddressed issue I can think of is Recall Knowledge rules. Both in terms of clarity and structure.

I agree with this, mostly because all the different rules for recalling knowledge are all over the place. The rules in the skills chapter don't, like, list DCs or anything. I found them later in the GM chapter, which is weird to me. I feel like it's okay for players to generally know how difficult something is, so why put that in the back of the book?

Also, I agree that for the number of options that there are in the game that interface with Recall Knowledge in encounter mode, it's strange how vague it is. I'm currently listening to the Outcast and Outclassed 2E podcast, and there was one point where the GM-appointed Rules Lawyer was like, "Yeah PF2 handles it one way but that way is confusing so I recommend just doing it like PF1."

I don't think that's a good look for a rule, personally.

1) The Math.
Usually when I say this, someone jumps down my neck about how I'm a power gamer who can't appreciate a balanced system. For me, PF2's Math issue is that the d20 is too important. Since difficulty scales perfectly with my Level, I never feel like I'm getting better as I level up. This is in part because enemies and DCs tend to account for the highest possible proficiency rank at a given level, so if I keep my ability scores maxed and my proficiency ranks capped, I'm doing just as I did before those values rose. And if I don't, I'm objectively worse. Usually by 10 to 15%. I think PF2 needs a rebalance around assuming players are, like, a rank lower then they actually are. Design for the median so everyone can have fun, but the people who specialize do better. Not "expected."

2) Feats
I hate how class feats are split up, so there's a new category at every opportunity. It makes me feel like if I don't take a new feat from the highest possible category, I'm playing wrong. And oftentimes I would be; the power level between a 1st-level rogue feat and a 2nd-level rogue feat is pretty crazy by itself. Starfinder's system of having fewer silos (usually 2nd / 8th / 14th) is much better because now I get to pick a few choices from three silos instead of one choice from ten.

Similarly, the game doesn't give enough feats for how niche many of them are. This is evidenced by how popular Free Archetype is, in my opinion. One of the most common statements I see is, "Pathfinder 2E doesn't feel complete without free archetype," and in my opinion that means the game doesn't give enough feats baseline (or that those feats aren't meaningful, but that's another discussion).

3) Free-Bies
There are a TON of feats that feel like their benefits should be rolled into the baseline effects of the actions they modify. (Group Impression, for example.) Like, "Oh, you're an expert in Diplomacy now? Cool, when you Make an Impression, you now can target multiple creatures." The only counter I've heard to this is that doing so makes it easier for players to "forget" the rules because a feat on a character sheet serves as a visual prompt for remembrance, and I honestly don't think that's a good excuse, but that's just me.

4) Rarity
This mechanic has no idea what it wants to be. It's used for like four things all at the same time: restrict access to things that class feats give you access to (see most focus spells being Uncommon), restrict access to campaign elements that could be disruptive (see dominate), restrict access to campaign elements based on an arbitrary measure of how common Golarion's developers say those elements are in their campaign setting (see every ancestry published since the Core ones), and rituals. What ends up happening is that people see stuff like dominate and possession being rare and go, "Oh no! If this is rare, something like the shoony must be as disruptive as these spells, right?" It's not a good system and placing access traits on ancestries is sort of like giving your player to gatekeep, but specifically gatekeep Paizo IP from your games I guess? It really doesn't make sense and I would prefer to see it gone.

5) Overcorrection Mechanics
If you played highly optimized PF1, it's very easy to see the places where Pathfinder 2E overcorrects things that were overpowered in Pathfinder 1E. A great example is the pest form spell, although polymorphing in general falls into this category. In Pathfinder 1E, there was a nasty build where you basically were a swashbuckler who debuffed enemies if you shared their space, and because of how Tiny creatures worked in that edition and some poor wording on the ability's part, players would frequently use items, spells, or feats to transform into Tiny creatures to activate that ability. So Pathfinder 2E responded by making sure the default way to become Tiny (pest form) put as many debuffs on you as possible. I see the incapacitation trait similarly, as well how many spells were adapted from PF1 to PF2. My point isn't that we should bring back the OP mechanics, but I do feel that Pathfinder 2E treats players as rabid beasts who need to contained rather than people who are trying to engage with a story. Pathfinder 2E is a great game and it's extremely successful, but I also know that there are a lot of people who refuse to play it because of how the game's rules treat them.

There's sort of this design idea that games need to be catered to the GM because, "Without no GM, no one can play our game!" And I think Pathfinder 2E did a good job making a game that's legit fun to GM. I enjoy running Pathfinder 2E. But none of my local friends want to play Pathfinder 2E because of how the game treats players and character building (quantity of feats is not quality of feats), so I don't get to run PF2 unless I do it with strangers online. If a game isn't fun for players to play, they won't.

6) The Investigator Class
As someone who loved PF1's investigator so much that I levelled it from 1 to 19th in PF1, I could literally write a thesis on how angry the PF2 investigator class makes me. But, like, I get legit ANGRY about it. I played investigator from Level 1 to Level 3 in a home game, and I had to ask my GM to let me swap to mastermind rogue. I loved the setting, I loved my character, I loved the plot, I loved the people I was playing with, but every time dice rolled and I Devised a Stratagem, only to roll a 6 and have nothing to do that combat because I'd be locked into that roll.... It happened so many times that I got so salty that it wasn't good for me or my table.

To me, it feels like they took every cool ability that could have been a neat thing for the investigator to do and gave it to the rogue instead, so I wish they just didn't make an investigator and folded all those investigator feats into the rogue. Maybe make an investigator racket out of them. Which is sad, because I think there's real value in having a skill-focused class that isn't flavored as a criminal, but the investigator is just flat-out worse than the rogue in every mode.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

:( Fox form kitsune still have broken legs. (Why is it necessary to limit them to 10 foot speed when transformed?)

That's more of a system-wide issue that we're just stuck with going forward, unfortunately. :/

The rules of a tabletop RPG are more than printed words on a page of a book. They're a prism of endless possibility. Where a single sentence can be struck and replaced at a whim, creating homebrewed systems radically different from the core gameplay experience. Each custom tailored to the individual needs of the people surrounding the table upon which it is played. Some rules will be beloved. Others will be scorned and scoured. But nothing will be the same.

I am the Everyman Gamer. I am your guide through these vast new tabletop experiences. Follow me and dare to dabble in design, and ponder the question... What if (you just house ruled that a kitsune's pest form doesn't adjust their speed)?

Also, shameless plug, I should have Kitsune of Golarion published on Pathfinder Infinite this week, and a tweak to this is something that appears in that PDF! :D

Ramanujan wrote:

I enjoyed the first 90%, but I didn’t get the ending.

I’m guessing the ability use at the end is a reference to something I’m not familiar with?
Did I miss it being foreshadowed in the text?

Vellero's vanguard powers activated for the very first time and crushed the boulder into powder before it could kill them.

Yes! Specifically, I was trying to show what an entropic strike might look like; he touches the boulder and the bonds between the rock fall apart, changing from boulder to stones to pebbles to gravel to dust in an instant.

^It says basalt overlaying metamorphic rock, which is fully possible. I don't know of a specific example off the top of my head, but it must be very common on Earth, since basaltic lava can be erupted over metamorphic rock. (Intrusive rock of the same composition is more properly called diabase if still relatively fine-grained or gabbro if corase-grained, although diabase is sometimes called basalt.)

This is basically what I was going for, caribet. Idea was that as one of the oldest and largest mountains in the Pact Worlds system, the mountain is mostly made of really old, strong metamorphic rock but it has a crumbly layer of igneous rock on top of it that ultimately makes the mountain tricky to climb, because if you dig a piston in and it's not rooted in some of the metamorphic rock, your body's weight might just make a chunk of the igneous rock crumble away and send you plummeting towards the ground a few miles below.

Of course, Dhareen wasn't expecting any geothermic activity from the mountain because Akiton's core has been cooling for centuries, meaning eruptions and earthquakes on Akiton would be even more uncommon then they are for us on earth. Good thing Vallero is a fledgling vanguard! ;)

Anyway, sorry if my geology wasn't perfect! Maybe "basalt" is just the best Common translation for a Shobhad concept?

Thank you, Paizo, for the opportunity to write this tale!

ALRIGHT! That was heart-poundingly AWESOME!

May or may not have been considering creating a shobhad character for SFS recently...

This reaction made me smile! Glad you liked it so much. <3

Great story Alex!

Thank you! :D

I agree that it's not very clear whether manifold array limits the maximum item level of weapon you can manifest as a gear array.

I can see an argument that the effective level reduction of manifold array should apply to the maximum item level of weapon you manifest, but I also agree with Milo v3 that this interpretation essentially makes it so you can't use gear array to form a weapon, because weapon damage is bounded by your level and having a weapon that is significantly lower item level is not going to be helpful. (Would having a lower-level cybernetic augmentation be helpful? Maybe? But weapon certainly wouldn't.) It also creates an option trap where you basically have to keep lower-level weapon and augmentation options to not lock yourself out of being able to use one of your class features.

I think this could use an FAQ clarification, but in the meantime it should probably be ruled in favor of player fun.

Hi people in my latest game I'm playing a kitsune outlaw from the Azlanti Star Empire and was wondering how they would be treated their

Species in the Azlanti Star Empire fall into five categories:

2) Second-Class Sapients: Gathols, gosclaws, neskintis, screedreeps, shatoris, slivaras and vilderaros

3) Non-Citizen Sapients: Brakims, dessamars, elanayas, filsoks, mercoys, stelliferas and volotins

4) Enslaved Sapients: Androids, hortuses, iztheptars and tromlins.

5) Non-Sapient: All others.

So, let's take a look at your question. Kitsune in Starfinder aren't on this list, so they're non-sapients. In your tailless form, you'd probably be considered a member of that sapient's class while you were disguised as them. For example, you'd be a non-citizen as a brakim, a second-class sapient if you're a gosclaw, or a first-class sapient if you're a pureblood azlanti.

BUT let's say your tailless form is a pureblood azlanti ... and you get caught. You're something AWFUL to the Azlanti, then. You're basically a silverfish, right? A parasite pretending to be something far above your station, and therefore you're likely disposed of promptly like a parasite. Below non-sapient, likely reviled.

There's a reason that the Azlanti Star Empire is an evil empire. ;)

In the spirit of this, I’m going to provide some of my own thoughts on what I perceive to be the evolutionist’s rough patches, aka my top 3 “concerns” and what would make me think twice about whether I wanted to play this class, below. I hope that we can start a dialogue that creates more top-rate feedback for the Star Chamber!

1) The description of this class made me think it was gonna be a shapeshifter and it’s not, and that frustrated me. Starfinder’s polymorph rules aren’t great for combat, so I thought based on the description that this was gonna be the combat polymorph class and it wasn’t, which was really disappointing to me. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the negatively surrounding the Playtest stemmed from this missed expectation.

2) EP is too much like vanguard points. This is an aesthetics thing, but I feel the EP mechanic works too much like a vanguard’s entropy points in practice. They’re both even different kinds of EP, which is bound to get confusing. In talking with John, since this class is supposed to feel like “corruptions the class,” I think the stronger option is to model the progress after an affliction. Instead of EP bench marks, give the class steps similar to an affliction with each step having a minimum level requirement to attain it. A much more homogenized progression would likely help sell the feel of a transformation, since that way there is a tangible point where you’re “fully transformed” aka “transformed as far as you can.”

3) This class wants to be a combatant / expert hybrid, but it lacks the math to do either well. One of the biggest problems with the evolutionist is that in order to have maximum effectiveness in combat, they need to spend their points on a full BAB. Even if that isn’t the only way to spend your points, it’s always going to feel like the only way to spend your points. Additionally, this class doesn’t have enough starting skills, and since Intelligence isn’t it’s key score (unlike operative or
biohacker or mechanic), it is always going to feel dramatically behind. The evolutionist needs 6 skill ranks per level for the same reason the vanguard does; it just doesn’t have the combat power to justify having fewer.

Additionally, instead of spending EP for a BAB bonus, it should just have 3/4 BAB but gain a scaling boost to attack rolls with unarmed strikes and adaptive strikes, similar to how the biohacker handles the same problem. (Though maybe with better bonus scaling, since the biohacker’s bonus doesn’t fully make up for not having full BAB.

James and I asked John tons of evolutionist questions! Check ‘em out here in our hour-long interview!

Obviously because of the nature of the interview, we couldn’t ask every question we got and at this stage of the Playtest, the Star Chamber hasn’t been able to thoroughly assess feedback yet, so we’re hoping to have either John or Joe (perhaps both) back for our October or November show once the data’s been reviewed for an update on how the playtest went. But since it’s still going, please continue to give your feedback because it is being listened to!

Knowing who you are and feeling safe to express your love is so important and I'm overjoyed that Paizo not only recognizes but celebrates its diverse staff and freelancers all year long.

I'm so proud to have the opportunity to write in this post, as Alexander Augunas' post from the Paizo Pride 2019 and our subsequent talks for the past two years were instrumental in helping me understand myself and build up the courage to come out. My only regret is not having met you a decade sooner.

Paizo has fostered an anti-toxic community that makes me feel safe and accepted being who I am, and I can't thank our community leaders enough for giving us this space.

D'aw, silly foxtato. You didn't have to thank me publicly like this. Being friends with you is more than enough.

Hey, you even used a picture from my Hao Jin assignment for the blog! Thanks, Alex! :D

The Slayer favored class bonus for catfolk states "Add 1/3 to the result of any sneak attack damage that the slayer deals after all sneak attack damage dice have been totaled." What does this mean? 1/3rd of what? A point? The total? 1/3 of the total seems OP, but if it is just 1/3rd of a point, why did they add "after all...totaled?

ReWord Option 1: Add 1/3pt to the total of all sneak attack damage dice rolled.

Option 2: Add 1/3pt to each sneak attack damage die rolled.

Option 3: Add 1/3 of the total result of sneak attack damage dice rolled.

Hi! I'm the author of this section. The correct operation is:

1) Roll your sneak attack dice.
2) Total the damage you rolled on your sneak attack dice.
3) Add +1 damage for every 3 times you selected the Favored Class Bonus.

For example.

"Alex is playing Kohdaehan, a catfolk slayer. Kohdaehan is 9th level, so he has sneak attack +3d6. He's also taken the catfolk slayer favored class bonus at every level, so he's picked it 9 times. When he sneak attacks someone, he rolls 3d6 ( [4] + [1] + [6] ), totals the result (4 + 1 = 5, 5 + 6 = 11), and then adds +1 for every 3 times he's chosen his favored class bonus (9 / 3 = +3, 11 + 3 = 14 damage from sneak attack).

As a general rule, most Favored Class Bonuses are balanced around 6 selections being about as good as a feat. This is why in Blood of the Beast you get Magical Tail for selecting a kitsune Favored Class Bonus 6 times, or why many classes give bonus features that could be selected with the Extra Rogue Talent or Extra Revelation feat 6 times). At 1/3, this means 6 selections is +2 which is about the same as Weapon Specialization.

Hope this helps!

Personally, since most class feats that give skill feats give you two skill feats (or a skill feat + something else), I'm of the opinion that if your archetype gives skill feats (such as Dandy), you can use your free archetype feat to take two skill feats that the archetype provides.

But that's my opinion, YMMV.

Or maybe the unexpected return of the Ruby Phoenix herself threw things off a bit?

Honestly, I don't think it would, but I'm biased because I wrote Hao Jin's entry in Lost Omens: Legends. Hao Jin's kind of unique among the Lost Omens: Legends in that she had more words devoted to her than almost any other character in that book simply because she's intrinsically tied to her tapestry. When I wrote Hao Jin's article, I had to read through about a half-dozen scenarios, the Ruby Phoenix Tournament module, and a few articles scattered throughout a bunch of different Campaign Setting Guides, Player Companions, and so on.

When I finished all my research (especially her content in Season 10), I came to this realization: Hao Jin only really established the tournament as a way to ensure she had a positive legacy, but when she returned to Golarion she realized that hosting a Dragonball Z-style match wasn't really enough to undo the fact that she effectively stole cultural treasures and locked them away in her own private museum for over 300 years. So a lot of what you see Hao Jin doing is like a form of repentance, giving back things she took and working to actually build herself a newer, better legacy.

I personally think that keeping the tradition of the Ruby Phoenix Tournament, which is now over 300 years old, makes perfect sense for her from this regard. First, why would she want to rob Goka of a time-honored tradition if returning traditions to people is sort of her motivating operation now, and second, what better way to build your legacy than to preside over the fighting tournament that bares your name?

I suppose we'll see soon enough whether or not I'm right, though. ;)

CorvusMask wrote:

Aww man this survey skips over AP bestiary entry alien races :'D I would have liked to have expansion on some of those!

AP alien archive races are in a fill-in-the-blank at the bottom! Trust me, I had the same reaction. Amrantahs and moyishuus... Give me more!

The Star Chamber will be able to spot my survey specifically because of that box. >_>

The short answer is all of them. 500 page Core Rulebook Length Species Archives, please.

I almost like the idea of a Precog that can choose their casting stat from among Int, Wis, or Cha rather than having it specified for them by, well, anything.

Like, what if your anchor is a Doomed Future, and your spellcasting comes from your attempts to analyze (Intelligence or Wisdom) or prevent (Charisma) that fate? You could do a lot of cool stuff that way!

So much great stuff out this week. Thanks for the shout-out, Aaron and Katina! <3

Some thoughts:

— I agree with Rysky that familiar abilities aren't technically point buy, but I get where Verzen is coming from in saying that they are. Ultimately, I think the distinction doesn't matter much when both of you are basically saying is, "I pick options from a menu" and the argument is whether a specific word is printed in the book.

— I agree with Rysky that alternate Speeds most certainly aren't flavor. They're powerful enough that it takes players feats and spells to access them. I think what Verzen is trying to say (and what Ronyon is definitely saying) is that Speeds aren't an interesting option when your eidolon's core chassis feels like it ought to have it. Dragons that can't fly aren't really dragons. I'd argue that the same is true for angels.

— I agree that as written, synthesis makes casting obnoxious. I lived that live on Twitch.tv/KnowDirection. I also agree that my casting was never taken away; it was just extremely inefficient and overall made me feel worse for playing synthesis. To me, the fact that I was so effective despite not being able to show my spells is less of a sign of balance and more of a sign of how difficult it is to break PF2 because of how regimented its mathematical progression is.

— I don't think anyone here hates the summoner. I think that people want to make sure that the summoner doesn't get a reputation for being the most broken class in the game. I'm also certain that's why it's designed as conservatively as it is.

— I think it's clear that the designers probably intended for Synthesis to be more like the summoner's Merge With Eidolon feature from PF1. However, the word "Synthesist" has a specific connotation in PF1 that immediately sprung up for a ton of people in this thread. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I think it shows that the summoner needs a class path. Furthermore, the summoner already has an easy way to do this; just have each path give an action and a conduit spell, with the "buddy cop eidolon" summoner's being the two that are already in the game: Act Together (or whatever it's called; I literally never used it in our playtest game because I was too busy being the green power ranger) and the normal baseline conduit spell. I don't think making this change breaks the summoner and only serves to give the class more of an identity, which it honestly lacks.

I'm curious to see what people think about this and the synthesist summoner in general, but please, enough with the unnecessary attacks. I'd rather not see them escalate and get this thread locked. It would be obnoxious to have to restart the conversation somewhere else. :P

I miss when Michael was still in the thread...

Ssssssh, don't blow his social identity LandSwordBear! I figured that if he wanted to come in here in his social identity, he would have. But instead he came in his Many Guises identity and I respect that. ^^

Race Builder? Broken.

This one is interesting, because I think it's worth commenting that one of the major issues with the Race Builder specifically was that rather than being designed to balance degrees of power, it was very clearly designed to try and create the illusion that all the core races were perfectly balanced between one another when they weren't. There's no other reason for the system to charge what it charges for the dwarf greed racial trait, after all. :P

Tuning doesn't mean anything if the system can't support it, you need the system to be build from the ground up to incorporate point buys for it to work.

I agree with this, and I think many of the people in this thread agree with it too. Which is why they seem to be advocating for adding a point-buy system to the eidolon now, while the class is in beta.

Personally, I don't think it's impossible but I also think that any potential abilities you buy with the system can't be on the power level of what was in PF1. Any abilities you buy should be small things like, "I gain low-light vision" and not "I gain the rake special attack."

Familiars do not use point buy, y'all can keep claiming that till all y'all blue in the face but it won't make you any more right.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this, because while I've never played a PF2 character with a familiar, I would have classified its options menu as a point buy system too with what I remember about it.

Rysky its is a matter of tuning. point buy systems are not inherently broken. Its how the devs tune them that makes them broken, why do you keep trying to perpetuate that lie that those types of systems are broken.

Are familiar broken? Because they literally use a point system with each ability costing 1 point.

I think Rysky made it pretty clear that the reason they don't prefer a point system for the eidolon is that the point system was definitely busted for the APG Summoner and arguably busted for the Unchained Summoner.

An interesting point about familiars is that most of the abilities you're purchasing are flavor heavy or of limited power to the familiar in question. There are some with some oomph to them, but overall you're not really talking about customization for combat effectiveness. You're talking minor perks for the eidolon itself.

Do you think the eidolons would be better if they had a small list of abilities they could purchase and 1-2 points, as well as summoner feats that added points to that pool? What type of powers do you think would be appropriate for the eidolon to choose from?

One of the immediate differences and concerns that I see is that familiars have their own independent section free from the druid / wizard / witch class because so many characters can take familiars. If only the summoner can have eidolons, does it make sense to put that much energy into a system that only the summoner benefits from? Or does it make more sense to put the eidolon in its own section, like animal companions and familiars, with the expectation that somewhere down the line other classes will be able to gain the eidolon?

I do think it is a shame a synthesized eidolan can't benefit from feats the summoner picks up as a multi-class character, but I also see why...

In fairness, there was nothing I did in during a single combat in that game while synthesized that I couldn't do while unsynthesized. Out of combat, sure; couldn't cast my healing spells for the party. But in combat, while I was synthesized. Nah, my eidolon could have done all that without me. My summoner would have just had to be cool with sitting at the front door to the room rather than getting to be the Green Power Ranger.

I don't think buff spells are great for the synthesist summoner, since most of them have really short (ie 1 minute ish) durations IIRC. That being said, in my playtest game I took heal, restoration, and similar out of combat spells and I was fine.

That being said, I would rather the summoner getting the ability to cast spells while synthesized than the synthesist summoner sacrifice more interesting options for numbers.

But I do really want Synthesis to be on PAR with that of Fighter or Barbarian in terms of martial capabilities.

I don't think it should be as mathematically good as the fighter, but mechanically it should remain as interesting as them.

Yeah I agree. Honestly, they should have 4 options. One where the summoner and Eidolon at more of a team 50/50 on. One that is synthesis. One that gives up the Eidolon for Summon Monster and one that makes it so my Eidolon is more powerful but my Summoner is barely useful for my Master Blaster build. =)

I don't know if giving up the eidolon is something that would work for the new design for the summoner. I think just giving the summoning-focused summon two extra spell slots per day of their highest and second-highest level that could only be used to cast summoning spells is probably fine. It would give them as much high-level casting as a sorcerer / wizard / druid while keeping the limiting theme (those bonus spells are summoning only).

Verzen wrote:

Personally I think that might be a grey area. If I was walk around and I see a gorilla look at me and beat its chest and scream, you'd bet I'd be demoralized!

This issue has already come up with animal companions with intimidate: without an explicit exception it make it pretty useless. Even if the intent was for the roar to not need speech, it should note it.

In fairness, this is sort of a design issue that PF2 inherited from PF1, and it's one that didn't get addressed until Ultimate Wilderness. (I wrote the first drafts of the Animal Companion feats, and specifically wrote an Animal Companion feat for PF1 that let Animal Companions use Intimidate without relying on their own Charisma modifiers).

Not gonna lie, I've been hoarding fame on PF2 and SF characters since those campaigns came out, and I don't think I've bought anything with them. I'm interested to see a new system that's streamlined and hopefully more transparent. The part that always lost me was having to referencing the Guide to OP.

Alex - one of the issues this class has is under level 5, compared to a martial, its super weak. They should give us a 18/16/14/11/10/8 stat array to customize our Eidolons. The AOE demoralize at level 7 is great... till you realize your charisma is 10 or 12 (if you used stats on it) and doesn't have the easiest time demoralizing.

Also at 1/2 the Eidolon has 16 AC. Thats like trying to melee as a wizard with max dex.

From 1-4, the Eidolon has 16 str and trained unarmed putting us at a +6 bonus at level 1. Barbarians are at a +7. Fighters are at a +9. Since everyone basically gets an 18 in str for martials, it would help tremendously if Eidolons could get a +18 as well for str.

That's fair. I played at Level 6, so I didn't experience all of those problems. My AC wasn't awful at Level 6 (I was an expert with an 18 in Dex thanks to boosting Dex, so 24 AC) and I had an 18 Strength compared to the Strength 19 that Andrew's fighter had.

That being said, a summoner's spellcasting (while paltry) is better than what a fighter could get using one Dedication feat at 1st level. I think the trade-off between the maximum possible bonuses (or even a barbarian's bonuses) for the baseline spellcasting is a fair one, personally.

That being said, I do think summoners need more class identity built in. In the final version of the class, I personally would like to see:

—A subclass system for summoners (think investigator methodologies) that each gave a focus spell and one or two actions. For example, moving Act Together, Share Senses, and boost eidolon out of the class as things that all summoners automatically gain and adding them to this system.

—More interplay with the action economy.

—Multiple new conduit cantrips; at-will magic that summoners can do that make them feel like summoners.

Know Direction did a Live Playest of the Secrets of Magic classes here on Twitch! My character was a dedicated Synthesist Summoner.

With two exceptions (Natural Medicine and Ostentatious Arrival) I only took feats that could be applied to by Eidolon. Here are some ways I did that with skill feats / general feats.

—As was pointed out in this thread, your Eidolon copies your known Languages, so I took Multilingual (general, skill) twice.

—Your eidolon copies your skill proficiencies, so I took Skill Training (general, skill) and Natural Skill (human).

—I used my versatile heritage to take Toughness (general) as a bonus feat. Since my eidolon uses my Hit Point pool even when I'm synthesized, it applies.

—I took Diehard as my 3rd-level general feat. We share Hit Points, my eidolon and I, so if it drops to 0 Hit Points I'm dying too (technically Dying 1 in most cases, but semantics).

—I took Natural Ambition (human) for Synthesist. My other class feats were Senses (2nd), Alacritous Evolution (4th), and Ostentatious Arrival (6th).

Overall, I consider my playtest experience to be a testament to how tightly balanced Pathfinder Second Edition is. When I transformed, I was basically just a fighter with a really limited version of Sudden Charge (I took Beast Eidolon, so I had the cool ability where you charge in a straight line) but that didn't matter too much because my attack bonuses were competitive. I think we calculated it out and I was only like 1 or 2 points behind Andrew's fighter/wizard in terms of attack bonuses when my armor was active, which is more a common on how eidolons are balanced than summoners.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what I would have done with my summoner in combat if I hadn't stuck him inside my eidolon anyway; it never felt like I had any options for my summoner that were better than just giving all my actions to my eidolon, mostly because spellcasting takes 2 actions. I got the sense that the playtest has a really strong emphasis on you really only playing one of these two characters each turn, which is *fine* but considering my spells were so limited it was kind of easier to just make my summoner go away and pick utility magic that I could use out of combat. I'm not sure if that's really how the devs want the summoner to play, but it's less than the summoner doesn't have anything it can do and more that anything the summoner can do usually isn't better than just letting its eidolon slap things.

That being said, playing a synthesist summoner was really fun. I did the Super Sentai hand motions on screen when I transformed and used Ostentatious Arrival to have cheap 90s-era explosions accompany my magic transformation; definitely not how these abilities were probably intended to be used, but really entertaining for the people at my table and our audience nevertheless. I hyper-specified my build to give all my advantages to my sentai form, probably to my downside because nothing ever really stopped me from walking into a room with my armor on, beating all the bad guys, and then "Powering Down" to investigate.

In our game, we tried to have comparison points between the classes. Vanessa played a conjuration (summoning) wizard to be my comparison point, but I think I kind of screwed that up because my character played so differently to hers. I basically just used my eidolon in battle and then used its primal magic to heal people out of combat. Her summons were kind of whimpy (even if they had better utility) while my eidolon was a lion-shaped suit that was also a wrecking ball. I think a better comparison would have been to the Druid, and I think the Druid would have won out. My eidolon would have hit more often than a Druid's animal companion, but they have so many more spells and their class has so many more built-in options. You don't have to be an ape druid or a dinosaur druid; you just *are* that kind of a druid.

I think this version of the summoner is a very stripped-down version of what the original summoner in PF1 was. I know people who liked playing the summoner for the billions of summon monster spells it had, and I definitely felt like I couldn't play that way if I wanted to (I didn't, I wanted to be a Power Ranger). This playtest has definitely solidified me on the idea that the summoner needs some sort of "class methodology" mechanic that lets you choose between the classic "flavors" of PF1 summoner, which I consider to be Minion Master (more summon creature spell slots and some of the wizard's augmenting abilities), Partner Bonded (the tandemic mechanic and focus spells that boost your eidolon), and Synthesist Vessel (a version of the Synthesist feat that lets the summoner be a Punch Summoner without so many of the restrictions on the current Synthesist feat). I think the flavor in saying that these different kinds of summoners exist not only make the class more customizable to the player, but it'll also go a long way to solidifying what makes a summoner different than a niche sorcerer, which has always been a challenge with the class.

Hope this helps!

2 Cents: I don't think it's good enough to be a feat. I think it should be like a magic item or a spell or something. It's probably too good to be a cantrip, but too weak to be a spell...it's almost like it wants to be a bonus feat at the expense of half your spells per day or something. Even then it's going to be a tough nut to crack, but I'm not a fan of it right now.

...Maybe that was more than 2 Cents. But since I've posted here it'll be easier to find this thread in the future.

May Ssalarn's idea of making a "summoner subclass" is the best way to do it then.

The eidolon being able to do them without you won't always be helpful. A water-breathing eidolon in a flooded dungeon can breathe; you can't. A climbing eidolon can brachiate around in jungle canopies or skitter along the side of a cavernous ravine; you can't. Some of those can be solved by e.g. riding the eidolon (devouring either action economy or requiring feats that also make the eidolon less versatile) and some of them can't. Moreover, riding an eidolon comes with the not-insignificant issue that as long as you're doing so, you and the eidolon effectively have "disadvantage" on all AoEs, making you much more vulnerable than a synthesis summoner in the same situation.

The flip side to that is that it often isn't helpful if the summoner can do it if the rest of the party can't do. For example, if the summoner can breathe underwater at will but the rest of the party can't, the party is either going to find a way to breathe underwater (in which case your feat is pulling the weight of a consumable or magic item instead of getting an option that would allow the summoner to do something money can't buy) or the party is just going to avoid the water altogether, in which case your special ability didn't matter.

I think that Synthesis as presented is a tool, when perhaps what you're looking for is a class path.

I'm looking for the Synthesist feat to provide a useful benefit without needing other feats to combine with it. If I take Synthesist and no other feats, I should get something for my troubles. I'm mentioned in previous posts why I don't think that's true.

That doesn't mean one is right or wrong, and I think that if you think Synthesis doesn't actually do anything then you're probably not looking closely enough or considering the array of possibilities that come up in a regular game (one of the reasons I linked frequently played adventures to each of my "here's where synthesis could be handy" examples above), but I can totally see why it might not be what someone wants from a mechanic with that name on it. I just think it's important to see that there's a significant space between "does nothing" and "does things that I don't prioritize".

To me, it seems like you're taking a holistic view: Synthesist plus an entire build of summoner feats. I'm looking at it as though I were a 2nd-level summoner with no other feats but Synthesist, or if I didn't want to take other evolution feats because they didn't provide me with any benefits. I also think it's fair to mention that a few of your examples require specific eidolons, so your examples aren't all things that a single summoner character could do.

For someone who wants to be a sentai angel who layers angel power on top of their partial caster "social" form, I can see why the current iteration would be a disappointment. It's less clear to me whether Synthesis would be more attractive if summoners got e.g. a 1st level feat as part of class, or if e.g. subbing the feat for a subclass wouldn't hurt as much as it helps, forcing synthesis away from being an option you can deploy situationally and turning it into a thing that just means that this type of summoner fundamentally plays differently than that type of summoner to a degree that isn't really true of how any other class functions.

Perhaps a better solution, like you suggested, is to give the summoner a class feature like how Druids have Orders? When you play a Druid, your Animal Companion choice doesn't lock your Order choice. (There's one for focusing on Animal Companions, sure, but you can be a Storm Druid and take the Animal Companion Feats.) You could call it something like Eidolonic Vessel and have an option for getting more spell slots for more summon creature spells, an option for better teamwork and coordination with your eidolon (maybe the tandem options all go here), and an option for merging with your eidolon into the Yellow Sabertooth Tiger Sentai.

A little bit more identity for the summon beyond "I summon X" would probably be a good thing, to be honest.