Amaya/Polaris's page

That seems a touch hyperbolic as conclusions go...if you're somehow shooting enough to run out past very early levels, you can probs craft some with downtime or work something else out with your GM. Basic ammo isn't really meant to be a problem in most cases.

As for Drifter, combination weapon melees being incentivized is a little weird, but it's less so than original Singular Expertise was, I think. Combination weapons are closer to standard ones in overall power now, and maybe they figure that the slight reduction in traits and/or die sizes is enough to make them okay to give at full proficiency — you can just ignore the firearm part flavor-wise, at least.

(The other weird thing is not allowing bayonets and reinforced stocks to get the better proficiency, and I wonder if that has anything to do with two-handed stocks ending up super strong by finesse standards/for something you can attack seamlessly with. :b )

Also, someone please bring whoever's working on that FAQ page a mocha latte or a chocolate bar or something, can't imagine it's very fun ^ ^;

That was a design decision, hon...and it only came up on the dev side in relation to Commander. I think you should try to gently lower your hopes of that being changed.

I just got Sure Strike from Divine Access at Lv 11, after having to redo the character for the remaster. Oh well, wasn't necessarily going to use Moonlight Ray that often even still. ^ ^;

Wonder if that means spell attack runes could be officially added some day...

Player Core

Several feats got improvements to be more appealing for the characters they’re meant for.

Ooh, what could those be?

There was a lot of cool ideas there, it made for an interesting read. Kudos :>

I haven't gotten to play a Magus in a long while, but from what I recall, I found managing their various actions to be a fun little puzzle (if one that rammed into my indecisiveness on occasion), and I love the aesthetic and places where it really makes good on its gish fantasy.

It does sort of work against itself design-wise on occasion, wanting you to have a variety of martial and magical actions and lean into the class's special hybrid mechanics, but also ending up with those structures being a bit harder or less rewarding to make use of than alternatives that maximize gambling for huge numbers. (I do find variety and general gish/hybrid stuff satisfying, but god do I love winning the lottery and exploding a boss turn 1. ^ ^) I was really happy to play Twisting Tree, both because I found it a very neat idea and execution and because its features felt cohesively smooth and balanced in their distribution; I don't think I would've enjoyed things quite as much if I either felt dependent on Cascade for the core appeal of my subclass(/playstyle), or was built for never ever wanting it at all.

And I didn't get an attacking focus spell back then, but I was really tempted to. I know Spell Swipe was likely designed with the expenditure of a spell slot in mind, but I wish it simply worked fully with any attack spell by copying the effect, because being The Blazing Bolt and Imaginary Weapon Feat just makes the latter even more attractive. They probably couldn't have known even with the long development pipelines, but it's funny how that lined up. :b

In any case, I find it really nice that being a martial with a strong focus on magic lends itself to fun flavor and the strongest possible benefit from caster-focused things that dip into attacks or martial support, like spellhearts and Bespell Strikes and a lot of Sixth Pillar feats (which kind of feel like lost Magus content, honestly). I find it lovely that there's a special Magus-focused staff you can do fun things with if your GM's into it! Sometimes it really does feel like one of the best blends of those worlds in the system, and it likely is, but I'd still be happy to see it get tweaks and core additions down the line so it can realize even more of its potential. Considering the likely difficulty of nailing down the bounded caster design, especially with a playerbase that all wanted very different things from those classes, I'd say it was a pretty good go at it which would benefit from all that's been learned since then. ✿

Bloodrager is conceptually intimidating and might take some levels to truly get going, but it's honestly got such a sick design. The ability to regain spell slots, the huge bonus damage making the archetype accuracy for their spells work, their whole gameplay cycle with bleed and drained and recovery, Hematocritical being really cool...I didn't think much of them before, but I'm interested in trying one someday because that flavor of spell-and-blade appeals to me a lot. :3

I'm inclined to agree with some others that Exemplar and Animist are both really cool and well-made classes for the most part. Ooh, and Seneschal has such a great blend of flavor and fresh mechanics, too~

I was not expecting to check out this thread and find so much devil's advocacy for such an obviously overpowered option. It's looking like Hell's Rebels in here. :b

No one's actually gone into detail here, so. TL;DR for the following post: there's a few potentially underwhelming things but yes, they're largely worth it.

Then there's the feats that trigger off of, require, or otherwise interact with Cursebound...

The important point to all of this is that for as mechanically dull as they are, Cosmos/Flames/Tempest curses don't really do much in most situations, and the Battle/Bones/Life/Lore curses are fairly mild and bearable, especially with preparation. You don't even unlock the stages where the Tempest/Battle/Bones weaknesses and Battle/Bones/Lore save debuffs get more severe until the majority of campaigns are reaching a close, at Lv 11 (or 17 for when Lore grows largely unusable), and there's no longer much incentive to reaching the really bad stages, or a level lock to Refocusing more than 1 point, or an inability to drop your Cursebound condition below 1, so...more than ever before, you can just ignore the really bad parts of the curses for the most part.

It would take a lot more in the way of truly awful Cursebounds (or all of the curses being as punishing as Ancestors) to not be worth dealing with these largely mild drawbacks, and thankfully most of the Cursebounds are also genuinely nice to have rather than middlingly coasting by on that truth.

If the class must rely on its feats for most of the subclass flavor now, there should really be more Cursebound feats to give the missing Battle/Life/Lore/Tempest benefits, ideally even some that are actually unique, and the weakest subclasses/Cursebounds deserve some tuning to stand with the rest. Still, I'm glad it's mostly solid on the power front (this whole entire post having not even mentioned the extra slots and spells the class now gets >w>; ), and I'm sure it'll be interesting for, especially, the many new characters blissfully free of legacy character concerns~.

The bigger issue is that Ancestors still has what's probably the most punishing of the curses via stacking Clumsy. It's the worst at using its own former benefits (and Cursebounds in general) because of it.

I do like the way casters are being done lately, and that includes the overall idea of this rebuilt class — the sting in my earlier post was mostly from the point of view of my existing Oracle and what I already liked about the class.

I'm still deathly curious about all of the unknown details, but one thing that's kept sticking out to me is how they're going to handle the bonus spells for the mysteries that are already squarely within the Divine purview. Like, Flames and Tempest are obvious big winners which practically demanded Divine Access for staple elemental spells, and you could probably get some neat off-list stuff for the ones like Cosmos, Battle, Time (whenever that is), Lore, and even Ancestors, for their slightly occult flavor. But I'm not sure what you do for Life, when the only vital/void/healing spell that isn't Divine already is like, Soothe, and Bones might be in a similar boat. ^ ^;

It's worth noting that even the slow-and-steady option might cost less in total than a Serum of Sex Shift, and might also be good for people who want some HRT for its gender-affirming effects but not the whole endpoint of the process. My girlfriend didn't like how the serum could make some trans narratives among adventurers harder/more awkward to explore by its existence, well-intentioned as it is, so even if one can quibble with the prices I'm glad for the existence of a somewhat humbler alternative that maps better! Totally your right to adjust the costs of such things, of course.

As for the meat of the post, hi y'all, thanks for sharing your stories! Happy neurodivergent transbian here, and it's been good to explore and learn what I am through the TTRPG space — I get to be among people who like all of me because of it, too. <3

... we get a bazillion spells like “Thread Laces” and “Boop Snoots”.

Ooh, sorry, which book is Boop Snoots in? Is it on the Divine list? AoN doesn't seem to have it yet and like, my kitsune's dating a kobold and a ysoki and there's a bunch of pets around, it's a very target-rich environment.

As much as I dislike Restoration, there's two big ways that it isn't obsolete: it lowers a condition without a check, and it helps with Doomed at spell rank 4 rather than spell rank 6 like Clear Mind. (Specifically non-permanent Doomed because that needed to be a distinction I guess.)

And if Paizo wanted to errata Synesthesia, there was absolutely nothing stopping them from getting around to it in the five and a half years since it got put in the playtest book with exactly the same effects it's always had. Aside from player discontent, I guess, and that didn't stop them from poking at cantrip damage or whatever. ¯\_('•')_/¯ It seems silly to say 'there must be a game design reason these weren't reprinted, they should be banned!' when all official guidance on the matter so far has been contrary to that.

what am I missing?

It's just that it's a martial with a mental key stat, defenses that are typically on the weaker side, and a linear, sometimes action-heavy damage booster that's solid but doesn't get boosted by or interact with much in turn.

It definitely gets more in raw power/utility to make up for being a martial with a mental key stat than the others in the game, but taken on its own, it makes some sacrifices when it comes to total damage/defense compared to more dedicated martials and obviously can't offer as much utility and support as casters, so it totals out to being within acceptable boundaries for the game. (Specifically, for the original CRB classes, which tend to have the simplest and strongest selection.)

Where it does get a bit too overpowering for my taste is Recall Knowledge, because Esoteric Lore eats a good bit of that space's lunch even before the absurdity of Diverse Lore enters the picture. But, other RK-centric options and such tend to at least hold up okay in comparison, as far as I've seen — and much like Bard's dominance at party support, RK isn't something I tend to ban a class over being too good at or anything.

That's pretty plain, yeah. Spellstrike is a humongous amount of extra damage on a big chunky activity you need to spend some 3rd action to recharge, so you generally want to keep its accuracy as high as is feasible when you use it since so much output rides on it. :o

That said, I agree that you shouldn't entirely miss out on conflux spells if you can help it, with Shielding Strike and Dimensional Assault having 3rd-action utility (Thunderous Smite is a cheap way to trigger swarm/troop weakness!), and Force Fang offering extra damage when you need to recharge as a first action for back-to-back spellstrikes. Using an opportunistic mix of conflux spells and archetype focus spells seems like the best bet to me, especially if you end up with 3 focus points. ~★

Little quibbles with edge cases aside (they exist but that's for another thread), the new state of condition removal spells is SO much better, I am livin' as a Life Oracle who can feasibly (albeit with some effort!) cover all of that now. Turning 8 condition-clearing spells (Remove Fear, Remove Paralysis, Restoration, Restore Senses, Remove Disease, Neutralize Poison, Remove Curse, and Stone to Flesh) into 4 (Sure Footing, Sound Body, Clear Mind, and Cleanse Affliction) that address everything the old ones did and way more, and do it more practically for combat, is nothing short of blessed. ~w~

Speaking of blessings, Bless isn't the only spell that Became Real and suddenly changed what Divine can easily do, because Protection is now a Common spell that simply imparts +1 AC and saves for a minute! (And has Circle of Protection in its heightening! Though not the Rk 4 version that lasts an hour.) It was bizarrely difficult to get ahold of a basic-ass defense buff in this game, and Protection fills a much appreciated role for that reason. 'w'

Only anathema is listed as something that could potentially break your connection.

Pharasma is simply too cringe to effectively address her undead problems. And that's okay. I, too, am a highly-occupied woman who fails at my biggest goals sometimes. ~w~

The image caption on page 79 should IMO tell the name of their lineage like the other image captions do.

That's kind of a reach for being relevant errata, especially since the whole flavor of nephilim now is that it can include influences from several planes, and thus it's just as likely that the character marked 'Nephilim' isn't of any one lineage and features both celestial and fiendish traits.

A rather extensive work, it seems! Much appreciated ~w~

*points at all of the other books that have specific familiars*

To avoid being snippy for a moment, this isn't intended as a system reset or whatever, that elf feat still exists and so do specific familiars and so does all of the other content from all of the other books released since 2019. If you thought this was a hard reset or expected these remaster books to include everything made thus far, I'm afraid there was some communication or logistics you missed.

Yeah that's a really cool read, thanks for sharing more :3

... the Wizard has a chance to become the worst caster in the game with no real area where it shines.

Some players would prefer the Wizard to be as good as other casters, which is definitely a legitimate complaint.

I reckon it's only as legitimate as any other preference for casters, and not every preference can be fulfilled at once in the single product. There's a lot of good Arcane spells, and Wizard has never stopped being the caster with access to the most slots, flexibility, and situational boons for casting them — their feats can be boring, sure, but some of them are very good in those niches, and they've often been dismissed or kind of ignored in discussions of the class spanning back to the start of the edition. Arcane Thesis is also weirdly scorned despite being rather unique among caster subclass options and having some powerful options other casters don't get. ¯\_('•')_/¯

There is a reason they killed Leadership in PF2 and also why there is practically nobody mourning its loss.

*looks at the Entourage feat*

*...and the Celebrity archetype*

I know it's different, this is a joke don't worry about it :b

Did you read the one that extends any condition by one round? There's a range. :b

And there's also more to 'saving the Witch' than just the familiar benefits, there's some simple ways they seem to be taking to make it more appealing beyond the base power of being a caster. Those that like Rune (or The Inscribed One now) can get good use out of the ability in some setups, anyway — flanking is strong but usually requires having two people (who don't automatically revive later) in dangerous positions, and the particulars of a familiar can make them useful stand-ins to enable an offense.

I'm willing to wait and see what they cook on that. Whatever it is, it'll be designed for PF2E and not PF1E.

Seems pretty reductionist.

Animist will sort of be that, I think? The flavor's probably different since it's a middle ground of it and Shaman, but it serves the same general purpose as well as the same thematic thrust. And the iconic situation is the same as any other, if they don't return as iconic of a class that doesn't mean they're not still extant in the world of Golarion.

Ooh, liked that a lot actually. The dialogue and descriptions are both pretty great. :>

There's, like, an entire nation of people with dragon blood or something. I have to imagine there would be some neat culture bits for those who have more of it than others, if they keep that setup or decide to make new ones! They include culture bits for ancestries with defined cultures in their setting, broadly speaking — there isn't much of a concentration of automatons or fleshwarps.

Also, there were a good few popular 3PP renditions of Kineticist, for years before the book where it's so big it's the only class was announced, so y'know. It's okay to publish stuff people want sometimes.

masda_gib wrote:

With those changes and the backstabber trait of the arbalest, Crossbow Rangers will make good assassins.

The Assassin archetype gives a +2 bonus to deception against your marked target (useful for the new Crossbow Ace) and Expert Backstabber doubles the backstabber trait bonus damage.

Still no getting around that marking your target takes up your entire first turn.

Have you considered maybe doing assassin things? Stealthily casing a joint, hanging back and studying a proud, boastful enemy while the others are bantering or challenging them, or finding a way to scout unseen or unrecognized all work.

If you have a few seconds outside combat, you can mark, and if you're being ambushed then no defending yourself from a surprise attack is not an ideal time to try to assassinate 'em, that being something that requires some planning and preparation. Which is fine, in my book, because the bonuses and extra benefits that can be gotten are good to have but not the core of a class's damage or whatever.

(That all said, the archetype's a bit nicer for switch-hitters since the base Mark For Death benefits agile/finesse melee weapons with extra traits, but everything else in the archetype is weapon-type-agnostic as far as I can tell, so it's a good option overall.)

You know what would be cool? And something I've unconsciously wanted since I first read through Sorcerer years ago? I want the fiendish bloodlines to have a blasting focus spell or two that draw on their origins, and thus have the Unholy trait...and also the Sanctified trait. So if you mostly draw on the hellish magic of your bloodline to fight but are sufficiently buddy-buddy with Nocticula or Ragathiel, then hey presto, your innate hellacious firebomb or whatever that burns at the core of celestials is also Holy and bears blessings against fiends. (And burns a bandit as surely as most anything else.) That would be sick. :3

Ditto for celestial bloodlines getting unholy blessings in a campaign like Blood Lords!

So with Thunderstrike you take away the best spell for Magus. You reduce the damage and make it a save so only Magi that take Expansive Spellstrike can use it and because its a save the already reduced damage is going to be even less but the Magi casting stat is not its primary. I don't see the benefit.

I have to imagine that there's another melee attack spell somewhere, and that it was done with all of the other casters in mind. They were missing a simple 'smite with lightning' spell aside from the arguably overtuned AP-access Sudden Bolt. ¯\_('•')_/¯

Magus aside, they weren't lying, it's a much stronger spell for the average caster now. It's about 30% less damage at 1st rank but scales about 40% harder (so they're about equal at 2nd rank and Thunderstrike overtakes at 3rd), and a round of Clumsy is often a better effect to have than persistent electric in the armored case.

I do believe that 'pigeonholing' is...kind of the point of the idea.

As Paizo designers have made abundantly clear that they significantly value versatility in balancing, (and this will remain the case since that's a reasonable thing to do lest gigabrain caster players easily break the game in two with that unchecked power,) the current default state is for all casters to be able to do many, many things...less effectively than an option-limited specialist could, and with need to properly leverage that versatility to be as effective as they're designed to be.

Which directly links to the issues some of the playerbase has with casters, on both feel and mechanics. The general inability to specialize in a theme rankles in such cases, especially because it's a common desire that links to more fantasy archetypes than just, like, Merlin. Or the absurdly versatile D&D mage. I'm generalizing here, but I think that's the crux of the issue.

Given how P2E now relies on feats to offer abilities, it's safe to assume that if an element is falling out, they can rectify it with new feats, thus new powers.

Just trying to be optimistic here ;)

I don't think any of them fall behind, actually. It might be cleaner to focus more on overflow or aura, but it doesn't actually seem that hard or bad in any way to have a balanced spread of options. And in all the Kineticist discussions I've seen on the Pathfinder Discord server, few can seem to agree on which elements are the "best" and which are the worst, everyone has different favorites and different mono and dual and multi builds they're favoring and different things they value that the class lets you focus on — which is always a good sign.

I wonder how effective a dedicated healer kineticist is. Between oceans balm and dash of herbs, An unlimited source of heals (per 10 minutes per target) sounds damn good.

Unlimited healing is not hard to get in this edition, but for sheer convenience, you just take Water/Wood and maybe Medic or Blessed One and live the good life, I reckon! Nothing as big as two-action Heal or as convenient as, I dunno, Vital Beacon or something, but you get a nice variety of auto-refreshing means to heal with a variety of bonus effects, including help with persistent damage from Ocean's Balm (but just fire and not acid, weirdly), flat value increase from Fresh Produce, AoE and affliction healing from Torrent in the Blood, and condition healing from Dash of Herbs.

As a bonus, if you invest in Wood's temp HP junction(s), it becomes a really neat choice for Protector's Sacrifice from Blessed One, or even Life Link from the Oracle archetype. Class feats and actions are both at a bit of a premium when playing a Kineticist, but it still seems like you can make a rather fun and effective healer with it.

(Alternatively, don't do that and use the extra refocus to get your spellstrikes back more frequently if you aren't fussed by Arcane Cascade. Pretty easy to do by getting Force Fang.)

There would be a lot of things that are a lot more similar to PF1E if their only motivation was money, that's a strange argument to me. Like, a lot of core design stuff is practically diametrically opposed to what PF1E allowed you to do or expected of you for a reason, I gather, they didn't just shuffle things around randomly and end up with stuff like heavily constrained bonus types, big simplifications of action types and core progression, decoupling of enemy-building from player options, and sharp reduction of caster resources and individual power by coincidence.

My headmate really likes her ysoki Fighter's rat familiar, and was vaguely tossing around ideas for somehow playing her as a caster if said ysoki ever bit the dust. An awakened familiar could be fun! I don't yet have ideas for the others, but I'm very glad for their inclusions. :>

Don't have the time to read the rest of this thread, just wanted to say-

Squiggit wrote:

Temperans wrote:

Obviously barkskin is transmutation because it is changing matter.

And yet...

Like I said they gave away stuff that belonged to transmutation to other schools. That and many more spells used to be Transmutation. ...

why would they do this...

-that this hits exactly the same note as a common alignment-debate thing for me, in that 'no this slightly vague and overlapping classification is clear and obvious, lots of people are just doing it wrong!' isn't really a healthy state for a mechanic in a widespread game to be, no matter how right you think you are or how simply you think it could be righted if the designers did x.

Spell school doesn't matter nearly as much as alignment and isn't player-defined so it's inherently a different case, but still, conveyance matters in a social game! If it's not supposed to be objective it could probably stand to not be presented that way, and if it is, they should go off of more objective traits. Focusing on what spells are actually intended to do instead of how they do it makes sense for the subjective side, and that in turn leaves room for future subclasses. (On a side note, hopefully Cleric gets some of that?)

Just occurred to me that at last, Paizo has the perfect opportunity to fix their greatest crime: make Ancestral Paragon Lv 1 again, so that humans can take a heritage or ancestry feat to take a general feat to take an ancestry feat to take a general feat to take a skill feat, as is their Aroden-given right!
(Making more gained proficiencies scale with class stuff would be cool too :b )

Reading through these comments has been an emotional rollercoaster. Ultimately I'm cool with backing it at a digital level and seeing how that goes. Dumb fun Pathfindery game to play with loved ones would be a pleasant niche if I can keep the AV knowledge sufficiently divorced (or as a victory lap after running it with 'em) ~w~

Amaya/Polaris wrote:

Oh wow that's a lot sooner than even I was willing to believe. Looks nice~. (For some reason I was expecting to see a 4th Iconic there; even the current CRB has 3!)

Ummm… there are 4 iconics on that cover; (left to right) Feiya, Harsk, Kyra, and Merisiel.

Oh! I think I vaguely saw him at first and then got lost in the sauce. ^ ^'

I vaguely recall mentions that Witch as it is lacked space so they only put in the most basic/obvious ideas for the fantasy, that stuff like Hexes runs with a lot of restrictions and with hindsight they could remove or relax some of them, and that they want more guidance on the role of the patron and stuff.

Oh wow that's a lot sooner than even I was willing to believe. Looks nice~. (For some reason I was expecting to see a 4th Iconic there; even the current CRB has 3!)

By all given accounts, the same events that spurred on the influx of sales earlier this year also spurred on the rush to figure out what to do re:licensing and reprinting. Like, the most opportunistic thing they did was probably putting their stuff in a Humble Bundle of pretty enormous value, and maybe some sales and advertising or whatever. Considering they can't reasonably stop selling their premier thing at a critical time for most of a year, I'd much rather that influx come with sales and bundles rather than raised prices.

Aside from that...this is just a microversion of the same grief people have when anything new comes around to be focused on in place of the old. You've got people in this thread who lament that 2E isn't more like 1E and lots of stories of 'I spent all of this money on 1E books, what do you mean the system's being sunset!?'

I might be exaggerating a little, don't mean to. But, like, s#%! costs a lot of money to make for a lot of reasons, and there are always diminishing returns. New will usually supplant old in the spaces where money needs to flow for survival. Sometimes that's abused, but it's largely the way of this world, and it's weird that so many people('s brains) don't accept that. Alignment is bigger than the past biggest errata targets, but...not by much, still, and if you can deal with alignment the rest is pretty trivial to keep up with one way or another, with or without purchasing some restructured books.

Anything that would normally be part of errata is eligible to be changed, plus a little more, so possibly here and there. But nothing beyond the certain class revisions has been confirmed.

(For my own pet concern, I do hope Investigator in combat will get a good look despite not being mentioned as one of those classes! It's often harder to use and weaker than Rogue for pretty thin and GM-dependent exploration benefits, the fundamental tools to play it best (non-Strike backup attacks like cantrips) aren't in it at all, and there's very little to make melee with it worthwhile. Swashbuckler could also use a little love as restrictions and power goes — APG classes in general seemed to lack time to bake.)

It's unclear. However, despite folks saying X is getting rebalanced, it isn't clear that any class beyond the witch is going to be receiving quality of life adjustments.

Alchemist was specifically described as continuing to be revised, and Champion as needing adjustments for the removal of alignment. Reasonable to assume they meant similar big looks for Oracle: though I personally find it mostly fine at a core level, there's certainly imbalance between the power of Mysteries, Divine Access as a feat has proven weirdly centralizing and complicated, and it's annoying that overloading a curse is boring and heavily restricts your use of points. (Unless, again, you take things the class doesn't provide, then it's not an issue.)

Problem players are a problem for their own reasons, the exact excuses involved are rarely the culprit.