Alterna's page

With 392 posts at the time of writing I doubt you'll be getting much out of even more ranting, but here's my list:

1) is 100% the Elder Mythos Cultist (Cleric). It takes something I've always loved (the elder mythos) but that never made sense (an extremely wise individual that worships... an insane god that wants to destroy the world? What?) and turns it into something logical. Of course this CN gnome believes Cthulhu is the ultimate savior of gnomekind, he has a WIS score of 7 and has neither patience nor common sense!

I'm a big fan of archetypes that convert casting scores in general, since it opens up race-related concepts and character options without the nagging feeling you're hampering yourself mechanically, but the Elder Mythos Cultist absolutely takes the cake in sheer flavor and the wonderful roleplay opportunities it presents.

2) is the Vivisectionist (Alchemist), especially when combined with the Beastmorph (Alchemist) archetype. The concept of a character who gains a lot of his knowledge from physically dissecting his enemies is bursting with flavor, and it combines so incredibly well with the beastmorph archetype because you not only gain knowledge from dissecting your enemies, but make their power your own. 'Fight scary flying drake, kill it, dissect it, become the scary flying drake' is one of my absolute favorite concepts. The cold and calculating Scaleheart skinwalker alchemist with both of these archetypes is easily in the top 3 of favorite characters I've ever created.

3) is probably the Gun Chemist (Alchemist). It's cool, it's flavorful, and it makes so much sense for an alchemist to have figured out how a gun works. A lot of GMs ban guns outright, and a lot of my gun-wielding characters have rather odd reasons for acquiring one of Alkenstar's finest arms, but the gun chemist has no need for the latter and a surprisingly good chance of making it past the former. My one regret is that there's no discovery that allows you to infuse your extracts into your bullets instead of bombs, I'd love to be able to play a ratfolk with one of Outlaw Star's caster guns.

4) Speaking of Outlaw Star's caster guns, this is one of the archetypes I love the most in concept and hate the most in execution: the Spellslinger (Wizard). You give up so much and gain so incredibly little for it. The Eldritch Archer Magus is an infinitely superior version (as long as you play a human or half-elf and pick up Rapid Reload and firearm proficiency at first level), so I just pretend this archetype never existed and play that instead, but I'd truly love for 2e to have a caster gun wizard archetype that wasn't plain awful or held together by duct tape and racial feat bonuses; I adore the concept too much to really give up on it.

5) to end with a positive note, one of the archetypes I really like in execution the Urban Barbarian/Bloodrager (Barbarian/Bloodrager). Besides the distinction between the standard barbarian's hotblooded rage and the urban barbarian's 'cold' rage, which helps create two very distinct sub-classes with very different flavor, I'm a big fan of the fact that there's an option to play with DEX-focused builds with the barbarian. It opens up so many options for battlefield control through Combat Reflexes, or better ways to play a barbarian at range, at a not insignificant but ultimately appropriate cost. The standard barbarian isn't better or worse than the urban barbarian, it's just different, and that's how all archetypes ideally should be in the end.

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Honorable mentions go to archetypes like the Invulnerable Rager (Barbarian), Tempered Champion (Paladin), Skirmisher (Ranger) and all those other minor archetypes that replace very small parts of a class. While a lot of my favorite archetypes radically change the flavor and mechanics of a class, I've a soft spot for these small archetypes that only change one or two class features you might not want and replace them with something you might like better. While they're not my favorites, I'm sure I'd greatly miss having them if they didn't exist in 2e.