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Yeah, I really hope they thoroughly change the mechanical implementation of spellcasting in PF3e. Spontaneous vs Prepared without silver bullets is just one area of tension. As others have also pointed out there's also caster's daily attrition vs martials having absolutely zero attrition.

But there's also multiple area's of tension regarding low level vs high level as you transition from relying mostly on cantrips and focus spells to spellslots and focus spells.

The first is that there will come a point you have plenty of slots and the GM would really have to go out of their way to put you into a situation where attrition is an issue.

The second is that the spells come in 10 ranks of increasing power. They've done a lot to tone down the LFQW issue, but the higher level spells really are just plain better and start dominating anything else you have, including whatever your class brings to the table.

This is compounded by the fact you generally cast the same spells as all other casters. Sure, every tradition has some unique spells in an attempt to give it its own identity but in my opinion not nearly enough. Classes also don't interact enough with their spells to bring any distinction that way.

Sufficient resourceless out of combat healing is something you'll need. Might spice things up to be denied it on ocasion but it'll be decidedly anti-fun for this to be the baseline. The party will need to invest in this, and for most party compositions this will be someone picking medicine, continual recovery and ward medic, but could be something else.

Still, out of combat healing is basically a very routine out of game administrative process that in itself is hardly exciting or leads to direct roleplay and rewarding interactions.

I needs to be done but I hesitate to call such a passive thing a role?

^^this, yeah.

I feel there is a middleground on the axis between fun and immersion that is being excluded. These aren't even concepts that should be considered sitting on opposite ends of an axis.

The system expects out of combat healing, and provides many ways to achieve it but by now it's wildly inconsistent how much should costs in character build choices, in game resources, speed, success rate, etc. Lots of pointless mechanical fiddliness and weird variance that boils down to answering the question of how much the party can recover in 10 minutes.

It really could do with some streamlining.

I do think certain classes are going to excel at certain roles no matter what: the Champion and Guardian can be built in many ways, but will always be excellent tanks, for instance, just as Bards will always have a way of buffing their team, and that I'd say is perfectly fine. The mistake D&D 4e made was making roles super-categorical and having classes lock themselves into a small subset of MMO-style role options, when the beauty of many TTRPGs is that roles are more fluid, and each character tends to fill in many roles at once in varying amounts. Champions aren't just tanks, for instance, they also protect their allies and damage enemies, whereas Bards and Guardians can control or debuff enemies in addition to their other capabilities. Essential as out-of-combat healing is, it's also something anyone can pick up by investing in Medicine, so unlike other TTRPGs and definitely unlike most MMOs, there's no specific need for anyone to lock into a healer class or the like if they don't want to, though PF2e certainly makes healing a lot of fun.

Eh, between sources, hybrids, themes, paragon and heroic paths and your build options 4e's roles were actually just as fluid as PF2e. Just because roles existed and designed around did not mean you were locked in at all. Only if that was your deliberate choice. You really had an insane amount of freedom in your build options.

Explicitely designing around roles for the tactical combat part of your RPG does make it more gamey. That's definitely true, but it comes with upsides too.

Anyway, PF2e combat is also pretty gamey and tactical, and it definitely leans heavily into tactical role design.

Yeah, this is the downside of not explicitely designing around roles in the tactical combat part of the game.

To put it in d&d4e terms the only two roles from there you can really find in Pf2e are striker and controller and those two are really all you need.

You can get parts of the defender and leader roles, enough to lean into them as a secondary focus, but not really enough to make it a primary role.

Yeah, seems bizar to disallow calming an animal by a PC with legendary nature. The circumstances might move it from automatic to making a check at most.

And this is before considering we're talking about a druid with animal empathy who is also a master in diplomacy.

Seriously, frightened animals can be calmed down. People do it all the time. I love my horses but I assure you they are very prone to seeing dragons at inopportune times, but most of the time you can prevent them losing control. I love my cat as well, but the carrier which only comes out to go to the vet, yeah, also a dragon apparently, but he can be put in there without forcefully wrestling him...

There are classes which do actually have roles baked into the base chassis so I would not say this is useless, even if overall PF2e does not design classes explicitely around roles and things get especially blurry around spellcasters. As an aside, I would define roles as confined to encounter mode.

The obvious ones are the classes with extra damage mechanics. Some, e.g. Rogue and Barbarian, are definitely more effective than others so it's hard to establish a baseline but there are classes who will be better at dealing damage no matter how you build them.

Champion and Guardian always have the basic defender catch-22 package of high defenses and survivability as well as punishment mechanics if you don't target them. This role can be a lot of fun if properly developed, but in my opinion in PF2e it lacks in mechanical support and could use more variety and toys to make it more sharply defined, but it at least exists in a basic form and these two classes come prepackaged with the core competency.

There are also classes which really lean away from the striker and defender roles and into the support/leader role. Alchemist and Commander would be the go-to examples. Still, like the defender role it feels rather basic and secondary. You don't have a lot of variety and tools if you want to make this what your character is all about, which is again a shame because with the proper mechanical support this role is easily my favorite.

The above is mostly focused on martials, because spellcasters are where it gets messy. All of them at the higher levels can be top damage dealers and they also get a complete support and controller toolkit. Some may lean more towards one of the three, but that is way less pronounced than with martials since your primary toolkit are your spells and as your level increases those generally dominate over your class features. You will be competent in all three aforementioned roles no matter how you build unless you make the concious choice not to be in your spell selection.

Exploration mode mostly only concerns itself with measuring time in the immediate aftermath of an encounter...

The party defeats their opponents, and afterwards one person searches, perhaps one investigates whatever weird thing is present, another treats wounds and the caster refocuses, etc.

When moving to the next location, which is most of the time just down the corridor to the next door or those stairs right there which only rarely would actually take 10 minutes, it is basically search for traps and hidden doors and giving modifiers for the next encounter.

You need to include things like time pressure, alert levels, more distance between encounter locations and stuff like that as well as bespoke exploration actions to interact with all this before you get a pay-off for bringing it more to the front.

The issue lies a bit more deeply in what we are comparing to what.

How can we discuss how the damage of 1A cantrips can relate to the strike of a martial when there are such differences between martials in the first place depending on whether they have a built-in dps mechanic or not?

There is no benchmark to (out)damage in the first place, whether it comes from martials or casters.

Anyway, I guess that is my main grievance with the 2e system: way too much mechanical emphasis on the caster/martial split, not nearly enough on party roles.

Another, and imho more appropriate, approach could have been to make this a skill challenge.

The goal was after all making sure a group of civilians which the party rescued could successfully evacuate. Treating their injuries isn't just restoring hp's, but could also be binding and disinfecting their wounds, providing pain relief, setting bones and providing a crutch, calming down those who are panicking, pointing them towards the safest route, etc.

And sure, give the Exemplar with the Radiant epithep an automatic success or upgrade his success level if he uses it, but it is definitely ok to say this situation required more than just restoring hp's and actually making it a group effort.

Not just Skill Feats & General Feats are trash combined with must picks, but Class Feats can suffer from this (too a smaller or greater extent depending on Class). Spells too. There is no easy solution for this, alas, except fixing it yourself.

Consumables: consider houseruling something like a utility belt where you can slot a number of consumables which you can draw as a free action. If you want to go a step further you can even waive the free hand restriction though I personally wouldn't. Won't break the game either way and you will more potion/scroll use.

Difficulty Scaling: from lvl-4 to +4 is a range of 9 levels which imho is wide enough for sandbox games. Sure, you could add half level to proficiency and broaden that range but it wouldn't make combats more interesting. You will see much less crit fails/successes within the current lvl range and beyond that you may recover the higher odds for critting but now combined with hitpoints becoming either too low or too high.

Buff spells: consider lowering the action cost to 1 action for the buff spells you don't mind seeing more in combat. This is not the biggest subcategory of spells so pretty doable, and you are also looking for more third actions so 1 stone, 2 birds.

Complexity is indeed a concept which might require some dividing up in separate categories.

But when it comes to reguiring system knowledge I would go actually say that all casters are in the high complexity category. Generally the people posting here already acquired the necessary system mastery to know which spells are good and the circumstances which make them good so it's likely a bit of a blind spot.

There is a steep learning curve here and the spell lists are big. Both building a good repertoire for spontaneous casters as well as good spell preparation have their specific challenges.

This complexity also translates into turn-to-turn flexibility and complexity for the casters: no other classes have as many options and variables to take into consideration.

Timber Sentinel can shine at certain levels and setups, but as others said it has many counters and disadvantages combined with a steep action cost.

I feel like adding cooldowns or overflow/outright making it 3 actions would just take it to the level of a trap option.

Summoner definitely counts imho, as does Magus.

Anyway, for gishing you need to have a decent reason to be using that weapon or blend magic into your weapon use.

Warrior Bards, Reaper Necromancers and Warrior Priests definitely apply. Animists have plenty of very short-ranged vessel spells so they make good gishes as well.

All of those would still lean heavily into their caster chassis with martial shenanigans more as a side gig than their main focus.

Just piling in and having static battles in dungeon rooms is definitely not how our groups play either. The moment you get to such situations things tend to get very, very messy real quick.

If the opponents aren't mindless they won't just stay silently in that room either to be conveniently slaughtered like idiots. They will call out for help, run towards reinforcements or a more defensible position and basically use any and all suitable tactics.

Rolling battles and encounters collapsing in dungeons/houses/castles are pretty normal for us, so yeah, it's mobile and dynamic and if you want to survive that you'd better look for chokepoints and use the terrain so just a little battlemap simply won't work.

Prepared casting would be more tolerable if the class features were much stronger. Druid and cleric are prepared casters, but they have such strong class features you don't even notice.

Well, not entirely, but those classes most certainly have much more going on to make them more than a bunch of slots and legendary proficiency, because that is simply not enough to stand out. All full casters have that.

It's simply too generic, and class abilities way too focused on manipulating slots do not change that fact and in fact is just doubling down on this. All other caster classes try to have more going on than just their slots and spell lists. Some may be more successful than others in that regard, but Wizard does not even try and makes it all about that, imho to the detriment of the class.

As for the prepared vs spontaneous discussion, I always find it very weird that there are people thinking prepared casting is just fine. Just let those classes prepare their repertoire on a daily basis, with their only signature spells locked in with the usual retraining + level up changes, but let the actual casting work 'spontaneously'. Preparing and changing up your repertoire on a daily basis will be an advantage, sure, but until now not enough of one to even make me consider doing stuff like giving them less signatures or other similar restrictions nor have any of the classic spontaneous casters at my table complained.

If we're tweaking the current PF2e class I would give spell substitution as a baseline ability.

In addition, also baseline, a free action Focus Spell that lets you select a spellshape (selection widens with heightening) and does not lock you out of applying a second spellshape.

And either generally for the INT attribute I would consider trained in a regular skill or Addition Lore if you pick a lore skill, or alternatively specifically for the wizard a feat that upgrades all your lore skill picks like additional lore does.

Yup, Nymph's Grace is hideously effective in the right circumstances, especially at the higher levels where the balance shifts to the dangerous encounters being the ones with lots of opponents.

Yeah, a decent ranged weapon will give you a nice third action option if you go dex. You don't always have to move, or use battle medicine, raise shield and whatnot.

Bastion of Blasphemies starts at lvl 5, so, while you start to have some slots there will be many occasions where just a ranged attack and save cantrip will be a turn well-spent. Your weapon attack is actually more accurate than spell attacks at this level and the next as well and depending on weapon do pretty comparitive damage for 1 action.

Sure, martials are more accurate, but if you follow up a save spell your attack will generally be at least as accurate as their second attack for a long while. It's honestly a fine choice to use as a third action.

Anyway, when picking deities, focus spells and spells in general keep in mind that at the level this AP starts spell attacks are in a bad place so favor save spells against enemies you suspect are your level or higher.

I am now mostly interested in casters which minimize slot-based casting, or modify it in an interesting and worthwhile way.

There are only so many combinations of primary ability, spontaneous/prepared, 3 or 4 slots and tradition you can make. The higher rank spells start dominating over whatever class features you have and you will have enough slots.

There is also too little in-class incentives for the full casters to cast particular kind of spells. This means there is broadly speaking a very short list of spells worth casting which is shared by all full casters. The end result is that higher level casters all start to feel less distinct instead of more distinct despite their 10+ levels of class features and feats.

Yeah, not sure I share your view on kobolds being less likely to interact with normal society than orcs, goblins or basically anyone else, because what normal society even means changes drastically depending which point on the map you pick.

Like your SoG example shows. But not just where you set the campaign, also its theme makes all the difference in what would fit and what wouldn't.

The ambiguity lies with when 'The thrall is then destroyed' happens.

Is it part of the 'Reach of the Dead' spellshape action or part of how the next action which is 'Cast a Spell' is modified?

Imho it should be understood as you modify the next spell you cast and then destroy the thrall.

If the destruction of the thrall is not part of the spellshape action but a modification of the spell then if, for whatever reason, you do not cast a spell as your next action, no thrall is destroyed. That does not feel right to me, but YMMV.

Can you even spellshift a summon spell?

'Requirements: You are within the affected area of an ongoing spell, or you can physically touch an object or creature under the effects of a spell, and you are holding your conduit.'

Not sure I want summons to be actual creatures under a spell's effect because that comes with a lot of ugly bagage.

But what about the GM and player groups not experienced enough to do session zero? Because that's the group that benefits the most from being able to blanket apply common everything. Yes, players too, as it heavily cuts down on decision paralysis without the static atmosphere of 'core book only' that was the advice given in PF1e era.

That is why I mentioned giving more guidance and structure for setting up campaigns and teaching how you should go about it and what questions need answering.

Currently the rarity tags are all over the place, and in ways that often are hard to understand or frankly make no sense at all. Are there less kobolds in Golarion than elves or dwarves? Or are they more geographically concentrated? Are they more mechanically powerful? Less appropriate in a standard campaign than a leshy?

Just saying that many of these rarity ratings feel utterly arbitrary and unhelpful.

My main problem with the rarity system is that at this point it seems almost random. A Captain is uncommon, but an Assassin is common? A Blessed One is common but a Draconic Acolyte or Dragon Disciple is uncommon? There is little rhyme or reason here.

Separating them into categories could help, also for the writers to help them think before assigning a rarity tag, but I question whether it wouldn't be easier to give more guidance and structure for setting up campaigns and inviting the GM and players to actually think about these things.

A regional or organisation specific restriction makes sense at face value, but that is because of the understandable choice from Paizo to link much of what they write to setting specific things as it's more flavorable even when they could easily be written more generically. Blackcoats could be any mercenary/military group, Bellflower Tillers or Firebrands can also rebranded as whatever political faction. Heck, a katana is just a one-edged curved blade which is something that is present in just about all cultures and there is zero mechanical need for Exemplar to have a divine spark and be linked to the Godsrain, etc.

There's the mechanics and the story/narrative elements. The latter you can play around with as much as you want, and especially if you play outside of Golarion you will have to that anyway, but you can also do this when playing within the setting.

And than there is the whole slew of campaign specific restrictions. I mean, if you don't want black powder weapons or steampunk in your setting that's probably because you want a traditional fantasy feel. Or perhaps even a campaign without divine magic or with a more limited selection of ancestries. Or because you want travel and distance to matter no long range teleporting. Still, deciding on genre or any other campaign restrictions happens in the pitch or session zero so all in all honesty I don't see a need for tags as this tends to be so very, very campaign specific that it makes little sense to generalize into a system.

And painful. Violent, explosive, and painful. Don't forget the painful part.

Pfah, it's over in an instant for you. It's just painful, violent and explosive for everyone else.

But okay, I get it, it's a bit of a nuisance and you won't get to spy on me for the Patron until tomorrow. How about every final sacrifice gets you 1 hour of relaxation in Wand of the Pampered Pet's cache?

Come on, that's an excellent deal, you want it right? Right? *waves the wand around*

I want things to fit the fantasy paradigm rather than use excessive gamist mechanics. I don't mind balance, but I don't want martials with daily powers or such when their fighting should just be skills they can endlessly use.

I want casters to have real power with limits being what holds them back from taking over the world. I think daily slots is the best way to do this. Though I do hope they move to all spontaneous casters.

Then toss in a few classes like the Kineticist or the 5E warlock for a different flavor for those that like those type of mechanics.

I feel wizards and casters in general should stand out as more powerful in these types of games just like they do in most fantasy books. I know this is a game and that power should never reach the power difference in 3E/PF2 every again, but definitely maintain the high level casters are very powerful and scary capable of destroying cities and doing crazy stuff. That should not be something they can do endlessly.

The best thing to come out of 4E to me was PF1. The Paizo design team kept things feeling like a fantasy game. That's very important to me. I won't play a game with things label at will, dailies, and encounter powers. I expect the design team to put work in to make things feel fantasy appropriate by class while still keeping it all balanced.

I will always be thankful Paizo provided an alternative game that I liked when WotC decided to force 4E on the player base. I hope Paizo never tries to force that type of game on us.

Eh, pf2e is just as gamist and crunchy as 4e and 3/3.5e. They might have done it in different ways, but all of them really wanted you to break out the grid and minis, play it like a turn-based game and really engage with the minutiae of its mechanics.

As for powerful high level casters needing daily slot casting, why would they need that?

Sure, you can keep daily resources, though hopefully not the fiddly 3xR5, 4xR4, etc way, but a sort of mana pool of XX ranks of spells.

But why not give them a smaller encounter-based pool (could be mana points for ranks of spells, or change all spells to focus spells and use focus points, or a combination of both).

Nothing really changes compared to the current system, except avoiding the situation of the daily resources classes running out of juice and ending the adventuring day or being forced to continue with cantrip spamming.

The destroying of cities and other equally crazy campaign-warping power honestly should be kept out of encounter-mode and relegated to rituals/downtime (and accessible to all classes).

Also, please tone down the edition warring. There are lots of bad things to say about WotC and Hasbro, but they didn't force anyone to play 4e. 3.5e still existed and had a metric ton of content, the OGL was in place and new content was still being produced, including eventually PF1.

Besides, if you only tried 4e with just the basic books and the pre-MM3 monster fix, you honestly do not have the full experience. Between themes, paragon, epic paths and all the feats and support for different subclasses they added I can assure you it was a very different beast.

I think 4E was on to something with "every class has daily, encounter and at will abilities". We can do "nobody has daily abilities", but I'd like to move away from "some classes have daily abilities, others don't".

Definitely! PF2's focus points are an ever better iteration on that since you can use it to fuel whatever encounter abilities you wish to use and avoiding putting the 'once/encounter'-limit in the ability itself.

Much cleaner and opens quite the design space for adding class specific shenanigans.

What I really still want to see in PF2e is a pure focus spell caster who does not have any spellslots at all.

I for one hope they ditch the daily slots entirely in PF3, but for now focus points will do just fine.

In fact, Remaster didn't really change anything for us because this was the first houserule we introduced.

Anyway, I personally really dislike the tension between classes which run on daily resources vs those that don't. It always tends to create issues.

Correct, I do think persistent damage is damage, and thus benefits from modifiers to damage in the same way as regular damage. The point I am making here, however, is that neither weapon specialization nor sneak attack are damage modifiers, they are additional damage. These features do not modify damage like a status or circumstance bonus, they are separate components of additional damage that are added to an existing instance of damage, typically Strikes. Moreover, sneak attack damage uses the attack's damage, and would be unable to interact with the persistent acid damage supplied by the unique effect of ooze ammunition in your example (though the precision damage would still be acid damage due to the ammunition's effects).

Not sure if I see the logic. If we treat persistent damage as just regular damage, and I deal it with a strike using a weapon I'm specialized in, what exactly is stopping the interaction? Same with Sneak Attack. If it is regular damage from a spell, melee or ranged attack, then everything that applies to those should work, so why only status and circumstance?

Why not? Also, Burn It! gives not one, but several bonuses: the +1 is for any persistent fire, whereas the higher bonuses apply to spells and items, which can include their own persistent damage. It only "goes out of its way" to specify one bonus out of several, and the bonus is treated as completely ordinary. Nothing there supports your interpretation that this is a break from the rules.

Ok, lets agree to disagree.

Neither weapon specialization nor sneak attack are bonuses to damage, though, they are their own damage that gets added to your Strikes. I feel like a lot of the complication here is coming from not really understanding how certain mechanics work, or at the very least conflating separate mechanics that have nothing to do with one another.

But that persistent damage is part of the damage of the strike, and according to you should be treated as regular damage and get whatever stacks with regular damage. Also, when speaking about damage in the rules there is just damage dice, ability modifiers, bonuses and penalties. Specialization and Sneak Attack can not be anything else but bonus damage. Anyway, just status and circumstance bonuses then?

Burn it! gives a bonus to persistent damage because it goes out of its way to tell you it does. Yes, it is possible to get bonus damage to persistent damage, but that does not mean all bonuses to damage apply to persistent damage.

Like, I shoot you with ooze ammunition. I'm specialized, so I get that bonus on the persistent damage as well? And if you're offguard do I add my sneak attack? Anyway, I'm sure we can stack some impressive numbers with the right attack/weapon/class...

Much easier to just say they are different things.

That blog statement is just downright bad...

How would a contract that is already in place incur an upkeep in billable lawyer hours? How many addenda and changes could there have been over the years, and more importantly how many did they expect to make going forward because that is where the cost savings would be...

There are alternatives for the artwork besides AoN, so I don't see that work going away, and they have other partners besides them requiring tracking and actually charging royalties, which in the case of AoN is a big fat zero and hence very close to no work at all.

Most importantly however, because it seems the most transparent lie, I very much doubt that this so-called 'negotiating' they were supposedly doing amounts to substantially more than just the notice they are terminating the deal. AoN released their statement for a reason after all, which very much reveals that there was no good-faith two-way conversation going on. Also, the CUP is in place so what could be in this new potential agreement that is not the art and getting the content in advance? It does not leave much else on the table so what on earth is there to negotiate over in the first place!?

And would this new agreement also not cost billable lawyer hours both in drafting it as well as this mysterious upkeep?

I think there are two problems with this:

1. The statement isn't true, with Burn It! as a clear counterexample of a condition benefiting from a status bonus and the source being relevant. More broadly, the source of a condition does matter: for instance, if you're clumsy from synesthesia, then counteracting the spell will cause you to no longer be clumsy. Warp mind specifically denotes its exception by stating that its effects are instant, and therefore can't be removed by counteracting the spell.

2. Even if we were to follow this reasoning, it does not contradict the case of status bonuses to damage, as the buff simply injects a status bonus into the condition at the moment where it is inflicted, which it retains once applied, in the same way that many effects inject a specific condition value when applying a condition (including the value of persistent damage!). In the case of applying a status bonus to blistering invective's persistent damage, for instance, the damage roll for the persistent damage would simply be 2d6+2.

What I mean is that everything is set when the condition is inflicted. Burn it! changes the value of the persistant damage, because it does so specifically, and that would not go down if the goblin gets killed the instant after inflicting it, nor would it go up if the goblin's Bard ally casts Fortissimo the next round. There is no dynamic link which you have to keep track of.

As for your second point that a general status damage bonus to damage might apply to persistent damage as well, that kinda goes to weird places imho.

For example, a Sorceror casts Blistering Invective, which is an instant spell. Would you really let Sorcerous Potency work on that? The spell wouldn't really do damage multiple times, arguably not even once as it just inflicts the persistent damage condition in that instant. Would you perhaps let it apply only on the first tick? But if so why not on a potential second or third as it is an instant and not a sustained spell and it isn't be the spell doing the damage anymore but just the condition?

Question: why is this an either-or? Why are we assuming something can only be damage or a condition, instead of considering that it may be both?

This is indeed a fair question given the wording.

The reasoning behind my answer to that question is that once inflicted conditions just exist and run their course. Their sources aren't tracked and any buffs or debuffs that affects those are irrelevant.

If you throw an acid flask that persistent damage is not your damage. It is the condition running its course. If for example you benefit from Courageous Anthem it wouldn't do anything because that persistent damage is not a PC or NPC which is allied with the Bard. It's just a condition without agency.

Same logic with EB's persistent damage and Channeler's Stance. The Animist could enter or leave the stance but why would that change the value of a condition? The Animist does not 'own' that condition after all.

Persistent damage from a spell is generally dealt when a spell is cast, and in some cases Sustained, so the instance of persistent damage occurs at that moment, even if the actual damage from persistent damage happens later in the way described by its own rules. A clear-cut example of this would be blistering invective, which deals 2d6 persistent fire damage when it is cast.

Blistering Invective is not worded in a substantial different way than for example Acid Flask or Ooze Ammunition. It being a spell that is cast does not change anything, and if we want we could swap to Courageous Anthem and an Acid Flask.

You are taking damage from an ongoing effect, such as from being lit on fire. This appears as “X persistent [type] damage,” where “X” is the amount of damage dealt and “[type]” is the damage type. Like normal damage, it can be doubled or halved based on the results of an attack roll or saving throw. Instead of taking persistent damage immediately, you take it at the end of each of your turns as long as you have the condition, rolling any damage dice anew each time. After you take persistent damage, roll a DC 15 flat check to see if you recover from the persistent damage. If you succeed, the condition ends.

Persistent Damage is a condition and its value can be influenced by how the target saves or your attack roll, like in numerous other cases, like frightened 1 on successful save, 2 on failure and 3+fleeing on crit fail.

So, the question is: are you dealing damage or inflicting a condition with a certain value (which happens to deal damage at a later stage)?

I personally think it is just a condition, but the way they always talk about you/your spell/your weapon/... dealing X persistent damage, i.e. using the exact same language as dealing regular damage, obviously makes matters less clear.

This is just such a weird decision o.O

Do they think they'll sell more directly or through Demiplane because AoN will update slower in the future? Enough even that it is worth the negative publicity of making life more difficult for the most remarkable and beloved volunteer community resource this game has nurtured because it is insufficiently monetized?

I really can not imagine this decision resulting in any upsides or increase in revenue for Paizo...

Yeah, sure, if you don't mind being confused in exchange for a R-2 spell and likely losing a round it's okay.

Just to clarify: I think the situation where a R-2 spell in exchange for a round of confusion is the best course of action is vanishingly rare.

Meh, this EBM combo is nice for white room theorycrafting and flexing just how much damage can be done in one round, but isn't really providing much value in actual play.

Besides the fact that it only really comes online at lvl 20, it isn't exactly hard for Blaster Sorcerors to offload their FP's and trigger multiple Explosions. Imperials at this level can condense more of it in a single round instead of 2 rounds, but honestly, it is extremely unlikely this would change the outcome of an encounter.

I mean, we are assuming an anointed ally being in position to use Explosion of Power to have good effect and a lvl 20 Sorceror built for it starting their turn. That will always be a ridiculous amount of damage incoming and barring extreme luck will result in the encounter ending or moving to the mopping up phase.

It's another reason why I think the rogue and sorc are stronger. The rogue has at least two highly functional build choices and the sorc has quite a few good bloodlines, but the animist goes from very good with the Liturgist to action starved with any other practice. Only the Liturgist could remotely be seen as S-tier and every other practice is probably B or C-tier due to action starvation trying to use vessel spells.

Maneuvering Spell. That does look very synergistic with the Liturgist and Elf Step.

It is true that Liturgist is the only one which can keep up with the action economy of other classes, but from what I experienced I still believe this is still mostly playing catch-up, and looks much more impressive on paper than in high level actual play.

Sure, elf step is 2 sustains for one action, but that is only useful when sustaining twice, which will not be evident with your table's playstyle of opening combat at long range followed by mopping up the stragglers and not allowing much time to refocus. What would be two spells worth bringing into play in such a set-up, even allowing for set-up time before entering encounter mode?

Also, Elf step and maneuvering spell imho do not really synergize in the sense that you would not be using them in the same round for the simple reason that you need to sustain 3 spells to get a payoff. They have different and incompatible uses (namely reducing action cost of sustaining either 1 or 2 spells by 1 action).

Anyway, Animist is a difficult fit for what you describe. You will have to use your high rank slotted spells in the opening volley, followed by at most 1 sustained vessel spell, likely EB for the mop up. You really won't have the gas in the tank to do this in many encounters if you are going to have to play like a Sorceror, Oracle or Wizard.

Angwa,

I see you use a lot of archetype material like I do. I have not tried Sixth Pillar because I read they nerfed it a bit.

How are you using Cardinal Guardians? I noticed reading the feat that you have to use a spell from a different apparition that affects a target to set up the next spell from a different apparition to benefit from the penalty or bonus.

What are your spell combinations from different apparitions for Cardinal Guardians? It doesn't appear to affect your divine spells, just your apparition spells. I am wondering what players are doing to set up Cardinal Guardians.

I did notice the step and strike thing. Skirmish Strike looks good for the build from Ranger or Rogue archetype. Synergizes well with the level 9 ability even with a bow.

Yeah, I wasn't too impressed with the Animist's native feat choices. For me they didn't synergize with the basic chassis and in many cases add more restriction, pressure on your action economy and hoops to jump through, and you already have so many of those.

Cardinal Guardians is decent, but obviously depends on what Apparitions you take along. Any combinations of apparition/vessel spells that forces saves every round will get it rolling and there are many. Depends on what you want to do really. E.g. Mask of Terror, Nymph's Grace and Earth's Bile were spells I remembered using regularly, but obviously there were many more.

Sixth pillar was for maneuvering spell and the stance. At the level I took the stance you could fix being unarmored and +4 AC against reactions was very, very useful.

The biggest weakness with Liturgist and being in the front lines you have to watch out for by the way is getting your mobility shut down. You offload your sustaining actions to movement, so grabs and being swallowed really hurt you. Feather Step is a must-take feat.

This was the final build I played in a campaign we played until lvl 20:

https://pathbuilder2e.com/launch.html?build=1512448

(don't mind the gear or the specific spells, it was in Foundry and couldn't be bothered to fully copy those).

Some notes:
- Free Archetype and Paragon were used.

- There were rp reasons for picking ranger, and we started the campaign with that orc AP, hence Dromaar and not Elf. It wasn't bad, but for full optimization you would probably prefer to pick rogue instead and fit in Acrobat.

- There was a Bard in the party, so EoB was devaluated and got my own reaction from Champion (also heavy armor). As I wanted to cast freely and not be locked out by battle forms also invested in using a guisarme.

- Steward of Stone and Fire, Impostor in Hidden Places, Monarch of the Fey Courts, Reveler in Lost Glee were the most used Apparitions.

- Playstyle was a mobile gish, operating in the frontline and focused on disruption and blasting. You can cast and strike, which also gives you a step and leap (and 2 sustains).

Anyway, to contribute to the conversation, I prefer focus spells that replace casting a spell (even if it's slightly weaker) bc I prefer using focus points as a tool for caster sustain over the adventuring day over a nova tool. If it's interesting, moderately impactful, and thematic I'm happy to use it and conserve spell slots for the next turn. Even if it doesn't scale up as effectively as a top rank spell it's still a rank -2 level worth of magical effect that you didn't have to spend resources on. In my onion, I rank a 6d10 fireball I can cast forever over a 10d10 fireball I can cast 3 times.

This very much depends on your level and class. At lower levels what you describe is very much the case.

However, at some point the 4 slot casters (and especially the Sorceror for triggering blood magic) will have enough juice to start valuing the good 1 action or reaction focus spells more. The 2 action focus spells would still be useful to have, just less useful.

Outlier:
Sorceror - Anoint Ally + Explosion of Power

Adding Rank x D6 damage (basic reflex save) is just too much of a damage boost for something so relatively easy to set up and depending on bloodline trigger multiple times per round.

Having played it to level 20 I found Animist to be a fun and different class, but I agree with blue_frog that it is not S-tier, just a regularly strong but also overly complicated class.

It really has a lot of limitations and vulnerabilities but we already discussed that to death. Lets just leave it at this class apparently producing very different play experiences depending on your table and playstyles.

With that said, although I do consider the Rogue to be a very strong class, I wouldn't always pick them in a party even if we were going for raw strength: although a Rogue can do a lot of different things well, I would probably not pick them in a party that already has lots of utility and is very squishy, and would probably pick a more defensive martial class like a Champion or Guardian instead. In this respect, I also think it's worth asking what the tier list...

I believe this boils down to PF2e's strong emphasis on team play. Your character should always be viewed in the context of their party. A build could be great in one but mediocre or troublesome in another. In other words, you build a party, not a single character.

Some party roles run into issues when duplicated unless your table has enough trust, communication skills and experience to handle it. Two skill monkeys, two tanks, focused healers or support classes tend to be one too many when people aren't careful to let the other one have an equal share.

Obviously it can be done, and work well even, but the players and gm must work together to let everybody shine.

In that light I think it is important to think more in roles than classes. Some classes come with a particular role baked in, but for many it's all in the build.

PF2e is very much a team-based game, with the expectation that all the bases will be covered. As such I value being outstanding at your role more than being able to cover multiple ones.

Ahead of the curve:

- Rogue: a martial with an outstanding dps mechanic, feat support, reactions, perception and saves. And it's not just outstanding in encounter mode, but also brings more to the table in the other modes than most other classes. Strong at low levels, and only gets better. The clear winner in the martial bracket.

- Sorceror: 4 slot spontaneous caster with good feats and focus spells (depending on subclass options obviously). Whatever you want your magic to focus on, you can excel in it while still covering your other bases. Cha is also a solid primary attribute.

Behind the curve:

- Inventor and Psychic.

Oh, and another way is to place the fight in an environment that heavily favors the opponent or actively works against the pc's.

Hurricanes, sandstorms, earthquakes, underwater rapids, traps everywhere, a lava field, in a collapsing cave vs a burrowing creature, etc...

The idea here is to mess with the PC's action economy, make executing their standard go-to tactics very challenging to execute and make it a much more dynamic situation.

Well, to be fair, for Moment of Renewal it's just the oracle that becomes immune so it's a R8 slot and 2 actions to get con mod x lvl hp's and lose some conditions just for yourself if you cast it a second time.

Meh, heals less than Heal and clearing/lowering conditions would be very situational in encounter mode, and outside encounter mode you will have better ways of dealing with these. Definitely not TGTBT in my opinion.

Nothing currently would really be TGTBT if you allow this, but yeah, that would mean the battle curse comes with a little bonus advantage unlike all the others which does feel unintended.

On the other hand it actually makes Battle feel more like the old Oracle curses and I wouldn't mind the other Curses also having perks like this. It feels in theme for a battle oracle and it's a fun, cool perk, but nothing more, so I'd allow it.

A second initiative track and more hitpoints are things I have used as well and can say definitely worked.

There are some variations you can do. E.g. instead of straight up increasing hitpoints I've had the boss go through stages ('You fool, this isn't even my final form!').

Also once had the boss start powered-up with loads of buffs/immunities/resistances/regeneration which the players could turn off by disabling the ritual focus items sustaining them, obviously also on a timer because this was a ritual for ascending to godhood nearing its climax.