While all the lore stuff is missing from the playtest, it does feel like the kind of content that would get left out for the sake of focusing the more unique aspects of the class. Druids have two feats that are basically what is being asked for. I would be disappointed and shocked if the class released with out something similar.
Sure, but it’s fun to speculate on what variations the class will hold. Like the two I posted; one allows you to use a lore skill for certain social skill checks (which the int based Necromaner with a free Lore skill might find VERY useful), the other allows you to use diplomacy on mindless undead. If they somehow combined those two, part of the charismatic “I assert dominance over the undead” playstyle comes into being, since you’re suddenly able to compel mindless undead to do your bidding.
Keeping with my interest in exploration activities, that speak with dead suggestion might be interesting. Perhaps as a high level feat, you can perform a 10 minute minor ritual that allows you one question from a corpse as if you’d cast Talking Corpse. Skill check required, and only 1 per day per corpse, but no spell slot needed.
I suppose this would allow you to do Gather Information if you had sufficient corpses around.
I thought that'd be best as a skill feat if it couldn't just be added as part of Undead Lore, but I looked and found 5 or 6 archetype and ancestry feats, so my guess is that it will be a class feat.
You can use your choice of Undead Lore or Diplomacy to Make an Impression or Request things of undead creatures, even mindless undead. Even with this feat, you can only make simple requests of mindless undead. As long as there aren't any other living creatures besides you nearby, they usually let you speak. If the undead creature currently is in the thrall of a creature whose level is higher than yours, you typically need a critical success on your Diplomacy skill check.
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Slightly more powerful than either of the feats I based it on, but as this is a proper class feat that should work. Also ties in Undead lore, giving your class an edge on these checks and giving even a creature like a skeleton or vampire a reason to pick this up over their ancestry feat.
All that said, I agree this should just be something you can do, probably as part of the Undead Lore ability.
..also, why wasn't this the Bone Speaker feat? It's just a name either way, but Bone Speaker sounds like a social feat, and being able to perform an autopsy sounds like it should be called something else like Osteology or Osteopathology.
Makes sense, but language updating that would be beneficial so that the question doesn't keep coming up.
Luke's suggestion to rewrite all these spells so they just target creatures, and let void immunity and vitality immunity sort out who gets targeted, seems optimal. Though there's still spells like heal that want to have different effects depending on if the creature is healed or harmed by an energy. Maybe reword those to say "if this spell heals the target" and "if this spell harms the target"? If you refuse to be specific on what kind of energy heals the target, and place the inflection point on the overall spell itself, then swapping out void for vitality would switch the polarity of the spell as intended.
A reskinned phantasmal minion where you can summon one or more thralls to perform menial tasks for you out of combat.
An undead familiar line.
An undead animal companion line, so that you can mount an undead steed.
Some kind of bone crafting feat that lets you Craft basic, but valueless objects out of bones, so that you can make yourself an undead throne to sit on (a bone throne!).
An uncommon feat that lets you access the create undead ritual, lets you cast the ritual by yourself, and buffs it in some other respect (for instance, by improving its degrees of success).
Effectively, lots of stuff oriented more towards flavor than function necessarily, so that a Necromancer can feel like they've got a lot of stuff of their own creation around them if they want.
The familiars and companions we have now. I’d guess we’ll get more if this book does go to Geb. And as for the crafting feat, can’t you do that now? Maybe you might need a formula, but I don’t see why you couldn’t make bones into a throne using the existing feats. Especially if a player had the Bone Speaker feat.
Your phantasmal minion sound like gold though. To add to that, I now want a feat that lets you search for traps (using your thralls of course) as an exploration activity. Maybe you count as searching, but only for hazards, while also doing any other exploration activity?
Not sure how it would mechanically work out. I just want an image of any time you think there might be a hazard you just refexively create a thrall to test if anything gets set off.
Now THERE you have me. Not much I’ve suggested would reasonably apply to a huge or bigger corpse, so that’s somewhere Duplicate Foe-like summoning spell would be needed.
Although you gave me another idea. I was thinking that you could turn multiple enemy corpses into a troop, possibly as a ritual, but wasn’t sure of how to word it. Using one big corpse instead of a bunch of medium or small corpses would work a lot better.
So what's missing is something that connects the thrall you raise to the grave spell where you make something out of that thrall.
You are talking about things like Conglomerate of Limbs and Recurring nightmare right?
I know there are plenty of actions that affect what reactions are a available, but I don't know of any reactions that affect the actions you take. It would be something new.
Which suggests I'm probably not properly estimating how strong it is, but still. It makes narrative sense to me to spend that reaction to reduce the cast time by 1 action, even for Create Thrall. Perhaps especially for Create Thrall. It would be fun to open your turn, right after someone killed an enemy, to use Create Thrall and force their corpse to strike an another enemy that was standing next to them. And do it as a free action.
No reason (that I'm aware of, I'll had this back if I have to) you can't do it with Create Thrall already, but tying it into Inevitable Return seems pretty flavorful.
-Corpse Raiser: Maybe untenable given the variety of enemies, but I'd like to see more done with raising actual corpses in the field. Might be a touch too evil.
Most of what I can imagine for this is pretty well covered already. Not only does Inevitable Return explicitly allow you to turn the corpses of your enemies into thralls, but I think create thrall and any other grave spell that creates a thrall should too. Certainly I’d allow a player to say, if they created a thrall in a square that had the corpse of a downed enemy, that they were using that corpse to create that thrall.
Some language to that effect might be nice, but that seems like a sidebar rather than rules content. Maybe tell GMs that necromancers can use any corpses lying about to create thralls if the other players are okay with that, but it isn’t required.
Edit: Oh, what if the inevitable return offered an action saving to grave spells that create thralls, as long as your new thrall is created in the same square as your downed enemy? I want to say this should probably be a feat, but on consideration it might be fine to just bake into the reaction.
Those are still thralls tho, like ok you made it out of a dead enemy, it still doesn't really do anything, isn't animated etc.
No, I understand that. But some of your grave spells do result in thralls that are animate and have effects, and most of the rest are fueled by consuming a thrall for their effect.
So what's missing is something that connects the thrall you raise to the grave spell where you make something out of that thrall. With that, this reaction and any of the current grave spells will let you use an enemy's death as fuel for your abilities.
-Corpse Raiser: Maybe untenable given the variety of enemies, but I'd like to see more done with raising actual corpses in the field. Might be a touch too evil.
Most of what I can imagine for this is pretty well covered already. Not only does Inevitable Return explicitly allow you to turn the corpses of your enemies into thralls, but I think create thrall and any other grave spell that creates a thrall should too. Certainly I’d allow a player to say, if they created a thrall in a square that had the corpse of a downed enemy, that they were using that corpse to create that thrall.
Some language to that effect might be nice, but that seems like a sidebar rather than rules content. Maybe tell GMs that necromancers can use any corpses lying about to create thralls if the other players are okay with that, but it isn’t required.
Edit: Oh, what if the inevitable return offered an action saving to grave spells that create thralls, as long as your new thrall is created in the same square as your downed enemy? I want to say this should probably be a feat, but on consideration it might be fine to just bake into the reaction.
I really dislike the argument that this is somehow a zero sum game though, that by letting players be more flexible with their character creation we've somehow stolen something from the developers. IDK why you'd want to construct such an antagonistic relationship here.
I apologize for using the word "taken" there. I meant "moved." I didn't mean to imply an antagonistic relationship. Just, if one person was making a decision, and then it is changed so that another person is making a decision, then that first person is obviously no longer using that decision to shape what the class looks like. Or, more accurately, they are, but as in the case of witches or sorcerers, or cleric doctrines or the expansion of Champion alignments as we headed into PF2, granting that versatility is as much a decision as narrowing it to 1 or a few options.
Further edit: I didn't even intend to imply either way if what Dude-meister suggested was a good suggestion or a bad one. There's been cases like the champion's alignment where opening up what was once a set choice was clearly for the better. And I definitely would like if we got class archetypes that did exactly what he's saying, and even allow more fundamental chassis choices. That's what the archetype and class archetype system is for, after all.
I just don't think it will happen, in that way at the initial class level, for all caster classes.
But in the end, I didn't mean to start a fight, so I'll drop this here before I give further offense. Again, I apologize for my word choice.
Honestly I feel like PF2e could do with divorcing spell mechanics from the class chassis entirely and let players choose whether they are a Studied/Prepared, Repertoire/Spontaneous, Full List/Prepared caster along with what the key ability (Int, Wis, Cha) is.
But that might be just a little too much for some people potentially, especially newer players.
I tend to disagree, I don't think the design approach they take to creating classes could absorb that many choices (and so narrative tools) being taken out of the designer's hands.
A lot of us (or maybe just me) tend to think of classes as a sack of mechanics that you can apply narrative on top of. But Sayre, for one, explicitly said he takes the exact opposite approach; he starts narrative concept first and then picks out the basic structure that supports that.
And for casters, there's really not a heck of lot of structure to tinker with, since so much of the chassis is taken up by spells. Key Stat, Casting Style, List Access, and Tradition are the biggest tools in the designer's kit to flesh out their concept and differentiate classes from each other.
Further babbling on this point
Spoiler:
There is a sidebar in the CRB and now PC1 that describes the 4 traditions and how a typical caster of that tradition approaches magic.
I LOATHE that sidebar, and this is why. All the stuff they talk about there, like "Arcane spell casters use logic and rationality..." and so on, they're really describing these 4 tools, which they decide on a class by class basis, not tradition based.
In the case of the necromancer, which is an Int, Prepared, Studious, Occult caster, each of those choices was picked to come together as a specific story the designer is telling.
Int - Approaches magic in a logical, inquisitive fashion. Mostly logical, I feel alchemists are probably winging it half the time, but that's another topic. Or, to put it less charitably, their approach to magic is to meticulously dive into random rabbit holes all day and then write up (with citations, that's important) what they figure out. Lends itself to the Studious approach.
Prepared - Their magic is a carefully constructed artifice based (in theory) on their needs of the day. They strategically devise what magic they will cast every day, and hope they guessed correctly. If they don't, they hopefully have a chance tomorrow to iterate better.
Studious - Lends itself to Int, because the magic of these casters is based on the experiences and experiments of the individual caster, not just the full sum of whatever is out there.
It would be fun to imagine a spontaneous caster that cast all of their spells out of a spell book or equivalent, but on a practical level since you would wind up with a HUGE number of spells to choose from that you could pick every round of combat, that's just asking for decision paralysis and so not a serious proposal
Occult - Here we get into the specific rabbit holes our caster prefer to delve. Since we've discussed the traditions in other threads, let's just plug those conversations into here.
Taken as a whole, they describe a spell caster that meticulously experiments with and otherwise studies void energy, as well as the things it effects (namely undead).
If those tools are taken out of the developer's hands and given to the player, I think that would make it a lot harder for a designer to translate their concept into a mechanical class.
Sure, when they publish new lore, we’ll all take that as the new baseline. I won’t speak for others, but while new lore might not change my mind about what I think should be, but I will cheerfully accept whatever retroactive continuity Paizo feels they need.
So sure, next month that line I cited (which was an in world opinion, not ruled text) may get retconned or otherwise shown to be wrong, but next month that might also happen to stuff that got published last month. Or even stuff from the remastered guns and gears getting published in the next couple weeks. It’s all made up anyways, nothing is safe. But until they do either say something is not valid or publish something contradictory, I see no reason to assume it’s wrong.
I do agree to a certain point in void being anathema to druids, but there are also non-druid primal casters. Like how the witch has the Devourer of Decay.
Yes, that's the point Terridax and I have been making. It only makes sense to us for Druids to be limited from casting void magic, we both think primal casters in general should be great at using void energy because they tap into the vital essence, not despite it.
NorrKnekten wrote:
We will just have to wait and see if Paizo releases a book around the subject of the void and its relation to magic.
Book of the Dead and Secrets of Magic both go into this topic. My comment about void being an animating force comparable to vitality comes right out of Book of the Dead, page 32.
Sorry, kept revising sentences and I think I ended up sounding more sarcastic and critical than I intended.
What I meant was that void isn't mentioned in that sidebar at all, so it's not actually giving us any clues on what essence they think commands void energy. Your point about the lack of void in the primal tradition is a much stronger indication, but like Teridax I feels that's more to do with what should be on the druid's spell list rather than what should be (in my opinion) primal.
Which, side note:
Teridax wrote:
Wielding void magic could certainly be anathema to Druids, or at least most druidic orders that don't focus on rot and decay/QUOTE]This is such an obviously good solution to this dilemma that I feel silly for never thinking of it myself. I would really like to see that happen officially.
So if we want to quote things why not quote the Player Core when it comes to the four essences?
Quote:
Life
Also called heart, faith, instinct, or vital essence, life represents the animating universal force within all things. Whereas matter provides the base materials for a body, life keeps it alive and well. This essence is responsible for unconscious responses and belief, such as ancestral instincts and divine guidance. The divine and primal traditions hold power over life.
I know void and vitality was part of the same coin at a point atleast from a worldbuilding aspect. Not so sure considering how little Void/Negative access Primal has had during all these years in comparison with Arcane, Occult and especially Divine.
So it kinda makes sense when you consider that the new equivalent sidebar makes no mention of void when speaking about life or vital essence.
The sidebar makes no mention of void at all, under any of the four essences, but of course you're not proposing that void simply does not exist, correct? This is probably not something we should use to draw too many conclusions about void energy, as it is not even indirectly mentioned or described anywhere in that sidebar.
Except, perhaps, if you consider that void energy *also*, like vitality, is an animating force that guides unconscious responses (in creatures with void healing at least).
Without the class being balanced enough to study properly, I can at least provide some feedback on non-balance things. As is, Engraving Strike is just fundamentally "bad game design" because there is no trade. It's just "Strike as normal, and if you hit, win bigger." Nothing in the system works like that, because that's "not how this works" from a design PoV. It doesn't even have something like flourish, nor does it interact with a class-specific restriction, like Alchemist's Additive mechanic.
The trade-off is not between Strike and Engraving Strike. Engraving Strike is definitely superior to Strike. The trade-off is between Engraving Strike, which deals more damage, and Trace a Rune, which does not require an attack roll.
I'm saying that a PC with the Tracing Strike feat has no reason to ever swing their sword for a 1A Strike. With no flourish or other restrictions, the context where one might choose to Strike over Trc Strk really does approach 0. That's unusual, and does not match pf2 design.
Passive upgrade feats typically improve another existing action. Like Calculated Splash upping splash dmg for bomb Strikes, etc.
Kind of too late to really affect this discussion, but Engraving Strike is 1/round. Based on your other posts, it seems like you (at the time of this posting at least) thought you could do it with every strike.
Though FWIW I do like your action reduction suggestion. Not sure it solves as much as you say, but it's interesting design at least.
Personally if I wanted to make the rune smith more martial, I would create resonance effects where a rune inscribed on your weapon interacts with a rune inscribed on the enemy for some sort of effect alongside invoking one of the runes.
Like for example if you had a wind rune on your weapon and the enemy had a fire rune whacking them would instead of the usual firey burst effect create a flaming vortex ring that does perhaps half damage but imbolised on a failed save and does some additional damage if they are still immobilised in the ring at the end of their next turn.
I think that might be a little too much for the class to get into, but I can see Tradition interaction feats stepping into this area. Instead of wind and fire, if you had a primal rune on your weapon and another on your target, a successful strike might hamper the movements of your target.
Another possible one might be if you have an occult rune on your weapon and you strike an occult rune bearing target with it, Rune Singer gets recharged.
If some of these resonance effects worked on strikes instead of invocations, that could incentivize keeping the passive up (on weapons and enemies at least), instead of triggering an invocation being the right choice in all situations.
Abjuration: It's not exactly something that shows up in many stories or stands on its own. You could do something with it.
Honestly a little surprised to see this come up so often. Apotropaic casters seem like an obvious and well used character trope to me, albeit one more typically associated with hybrid casters or hedge mages, rather than all-up casters.
Most of that well has been dipped into by one or more classes in pathfinder, but nearly all on martials. A caster class that focuses on action denial, zone control, AC/save bonus, and flexible resistance with its cantrips and focus spells seems pretty reasonable, though I don't have a narrative hook in mind that isn't used by one of the current classes.
Maybe using primal magic and feather tokens might be a way to go with this.
QuidEst wrote:
Divination: Diviners would usually be an "oracle" that someone goes to see, or a "psychic". The narrative fortune-tellers of stories are fundamentally at odds with role-playing games and prophecy is broken. I wouldn't expect it to get more of a dedicated class than we have.
I always found the precog from starfinder to be a quite brilliant way of going about this character trope. Pre-rolling is considered a fortune effect, so more broadly using fortune and misfortune effects seems like it would create a broad enough pile of effects to base a class on, with maybe the harrow deck as a narrative theme.
Thrall Enhancement Your thralls, while still being tied to the physical world, have an incorporeal essence. Whenever one of your thralls would deal physical damage, you can choose for that damage to be spirit or void damage instead.
That and necrotic bomb are the two most obvious sources for void damage that doesn't discriminate against living or dead targets.
I think...that they haven't fully made up their minds on that particular point. Or Occult could be either or both, depending on the need of the writer.
AestheticDialectic wrote:
I imagine a primal necro would be throwing elemental skeletons at dudes
For me, it was "Death is a natural part of Life" flavoring that we see in many characters in literature and TV. The most recent one that comes to mind is Death in the MCU, who is presented as the green witch in the TV show she appears in.
Edit: as an aside, that comes up with surprising frequency in the text of this playtest class. I say surprising because if I were writing this class and coming at it to justify occult casting, this is not how I'd start off:
Impossible Playtest pg 2 wrote:
Death is as common as life, if not more so. Despite this, death and decay are considered subjects of the macabre, and those willing to dive headfirst into the fascinations they invoke are necromancers. These occult spellcasters seek the ever-changing borders of life and death, manipulating the energies—vitality and void—to suit their will.
I'd personally start by punching up occult's access to spirits and the restless undead, and maybe bring up the shadow pseudo-essence I mention in my previous post.
But if I was trying to justify twisting the primal tradition until it's arm broke, that is almost exactly what I would say to do it.
Beyond that, the idea of the musical or mentalistic necromancer is ill-supported outside of intentionally niche games like Crypt of the Necrodancer, and while we can agree that souls are important to necromancy, the mind is much more contentious, especially as the most common forms of raised undead are mindless.
If this is tripping folks up, I do have an explanation (of sorts) of why mind wound up with so much undeath when it seems like a reach. Basically, in my personal evaluation, Mind wound up covering too many concepts. All the obvious mind/memory spells of course, but also most emotion effects seem to be mind (which surprised me, I thought they'd be "spirit" by virtue of being on divine and occult lists, but no arcane and occult had more), illusions, and anything shadow related.
I think it's by this last element that Mind wanders into undead and, in some ways, shows its opposition to vital essence. On Golarian, the energies of the void are accessed by the filter of the Netherworld, or the old shadow plane. So because Mind is the essence most closely linked to shadow magic, they wind up with easier access to void energy.
Note, I've never fully liked this, and I am not defending it now. Hell, I don't even know if my guess is correct. But it's the explanation I came up with after analyzing the various traditions way back when.
Regarding primal necromancy, I personally wasn't advocating for fungi necro and those tropes. No objection to them, but I was thinking standard undead, just using the primal spell list. That they currently don't line up is part of the appeal to me, that would allow this specific class a limited ability to combine those themes while still leaving the primal tradition itself mostly untouched (I say mostly because I do want at least a couple primal void spells), since most of how they'd use those themes would be with their focus spells.
But I just realized we may well see something like that soon, maybe very soon. That seems like a good fit for backmatter in one of the spore war adventures. Well, not a class archetype of course, but maybe some feats or an archetype.
PF2e traditions in practice was a design decision that Paizo designers made in order to solve the madness that is D&D and PF1e where each class has its own spell list
I think you are being a bit hyperbolic. We already have classes that include extra spells, such as sorcerer bloodline spells, wizard school spells, animist apparition spells, and oracle mystery spells, among others. Perhaps we could focus on the three necromancer sub-types—bone, muscle, and spirit—and assign them some fixed spells, with the usual caveat of consulting the GM to add appropriate spells as needed. I don’t understand the significant fuss about traditions when it’s clear that Paizo is consistently supplementing the gaps in the four traditions' spell lists.
That would be reasonable enough, it's the "toss all the vital and void and spirit spells in the game" want in the other thread that I objected to. It's one thing to get a flavorful and limited infusion of off-tradition spells; it's quite another to get every written and to be written spell of those traits. One is just that, flavor. The other is breaking the point of the traditions in the first place.
Arguably, having a spell system where every spell is in a trait group and your class gives you access to entire traits instead of traditions might be interesting, but that's not the system we have now.
Biggest problem is actually (once again) the Runes available. Far too many want to be matter, with few options that could go the other 3 essences.
But assuming that is somehow rectified.
(may as well use Mathmuse's terms)
New default: Runemages (what I'll call this class for this post) gain a new Lore: Rune skill. Any crafting check the Runemage's class abilities or feats would use this skill instead. Like the other special lore skills, it can't be picked up using standard skill points, but your proficiency automatically increases with level.
Matter - Runesmith. Can use crafting checks in place of Lore: Runes if higher.
"Engraving Strike" is renamed "Runesmithing". Functions the same, but the flavor text now describes you using your weapons as if they were your crafting tools, your mace and swords strikes as artful as your smithing hammer and engraving tool and you;'re able to use your strike to draw the rune, rather than drawing it backwards and stamping your enemy.
Mind - Runelord. Can use society. "Backup Runic Enhancement" becomes "Seal of the Runelord", with identical mechanics.
Life - Runesworn. Can use Survival. I'm of 2 minds here. Remote Detonation works, especially since it is an action saver, but I also like the idea of them gaining an ability to place a rune on the ground, and being able to invoke it there, with the creature occupying that space taking the effects of the invocation as it they had the runes applied to them.
Spirit - Rune-singer. I'm sure this one is obvious.
.
These were kind of just thrown out here, but Runesworn aside I actually feel like the flavor of Runesmithing and Seal of the Runelord is stronger than the current feats. Engraving Strike seems kind of slapstick, and Backup Rune kind of bland. And I'm reimagining the two teleportation runes as if the Runelord was commanding your presence to be where she wants you to be.
Far too complex for this class though, so I don't see it happening. It's fun to imagine the class reworked through those 4 approaches though.
There is a list of spells I found on the divine list, and not on the occult list, that would be included on this list that occult doesn't get including Massacre and Necromancer's Generosity. In fact most were void tagged and not vitality or spirit tagged. So it does a lot more. I also wouldn't be opposed to them being arcane and then getting this feat/feature, as frankly anything occult has for a necromancer it appears arcane has it too...
Massacre I overlooked, and you make a pretty good argument there. Curious that it’s on arcane and primal, but not occult. That brings up something to consider; this class should be very good at death effects. If the occult list lacks those, and that’s one thing I did not check, then that’s a problem.
Necromancer Generosity I did see, but I counted it as a healing spell. It looked like many of the ones not occult were more on the healing side, or I could see living without. But again, you’ve got a point about massacre.
Arcane lacks the undead spirit spells that occult shares with divine. I assume those were what tipped the scale towards occult; certainly they were what caused me to be okay with occult.
To me the difference is that arcane not having healing spells is a big balancing factor to nerf an already incredibly versatile spell list, while I don't see a druid or primal sorcerer getting a noticeable mechanical advantage from getting necromancy spells on the primal list. And even then, nothing stops an arcane witch from picking up the life boost spell, so I don't see how thats that different compared to a primal caster getting necromancy powers through class abilities.
I find the concept of a primal necromancer so exciting specifically because it plays against the stereotypes associated with primal castersband yet works imo really well thematically. Ofc I don't have big hope that paizo will agree with me here, but it can never hurt to try. And maybe at least something like a class archetype could be possible in the future...
Despite my arguing in another thread in defense of occult, I actually strongly agree with you that primal would have been pretty cool. It SHOULD have access to void, IMO. Druids shouldn't, I'm okay with that, but I think primal casting itself should. Or at least there should be a way for some primal caster to spec into it with a class archetype or just an archetype. The access ability that AestheticDialetic wrote here would work really well with a primal caster, probably even better than his proposal to add it to occult, since the number of concepts you could suddenly play would be so much greater.
I'm fine with occult as the only choice, but I'll definitely admit you make some compelling points. I would even give up my opposition to healing necromancy if it was done via primal magic instead of divine.
It occurred to me last night that if you really wanted, you COULD assign a skill to each essence for this class, using the next tier of knowledge skills:
Matter - Crafting
Mind - Society
Life - Survival (or Medicine)
Spirit - Performance
If this was the skill by which you drew or created your runes, and each gave you a bonus rune of that essence type, and maybe each had a level 1 feat associated with each skill that as part of it allowed you to use the alternate skill 1/minute, you'd have pretty clear class paths built into this.
But maybe not. The primary benefit for rune singing is the 1 action saving 1/minute, I wouldn't want to just give that to all runesmiths.
Don't have time at the moment to truly get into the weeds, but I can probably make a more complete pitch for this idea when I get home this afternoon. Likely you'd want to have a basic Lore Rune skill that is your default skill check (and automatically levels with your class DC) and the level 1 feats let you use alternate skills instead.
This is all just off the top of my head, so don't take it for anything serious. I just wanted to bring up the idea of skills matching essences.
Beyond personal preference? Nothing objective. I've pretty much already outlined my thoughts, but okay.
If I want to play a character that demonstrates great mastery over vital and void energy, and does so by using heal and harm spells, I would play a cleric. That's more or less what the class is designed to do; during the original cleric playtest the font mechanic was more central to the cleric's design than even your chosen deity. The feats don't mostly turn on the font now, of course, but you being a direct tap into either Creation Forge or the Void is still pretty important.
So to provide a different kind of character narrative, I want this class to demonstrate the ability to use void and vitality to damage their enemies, but I am less interested in seeing them use it to heal their allies. That, to me, is too big of a mechanic overlap with the cleric, despite replacing the font with Thralls as their battery.
For me, if I want to play a healing necromancer like you've described, I would probably just play a cleric or bones oracle and hope that there's some kind of archetype that gives access to the Thrall mechanic. Or I'd use one of the existing necromancer archetypes like Reanimator. I can imagine the "Mastery of Life and Death" class becoming a cleric feat, though probably pretty high level compared to the level 1 for necromancers (another reason to leave out heal/harm, those spells would make that ability too strong at 1 and force it higher up in the class).
For me, that’d be the worst of all worlds. You’d water down anything interesting about picking the occult list AND reinforce my least favorite aspect of the divine tradition. If healing is that important, then they should just use the divine list and be done with it. Then at least something interesting and transformative, namely that this would be a divine clash with no particular reference or need for any outside entity empowering you, is going on.
Also, had this class been based on primal or arcane, then yeah, sure, that’d make sense. But not occult. That’s too close to divine for that to make enough meaningful difference, aside from the increased access to healing.
I’m probably sounding harsher than I intend, and I apologize for that. If that helps you play the character you want, then it is impotent fur you to say so. But for me, it’s probably the most boring option they could possibly take.
With all of that said, though, being in favor of making the Necromancer occult on practical grounds does not contradict believing that the divine list would be a closer thematic fit for the class. All else held equal, and if there weren't so many divine casters already, I do think it would have made more sense to make the Necromancer divine, and doing so would've given the class access to all of the necromancy spells the occult list lacks. I think it is valid to criticize the thematic dissonance between a class that is clearly meant to harness vital essence in some form, yet uses a tradition that isn't based on vital essence at all, and I would go as far as to say that this thematic disconnect is pretty obvious when you look at the grounding and contents of each spell tradition.
To be clear, I'm not arguing on a practical basis. I guess I didn't really directly say this in my last post, but I think occult was a deliberate choice to give the class a different set of thematic grounding than the divine list would have offered. In particular, picking a list that eschews heal and harm entirely, which are the most flexible and direct void/vital spells in the game, tells a different story about how this class handles those energies versus how the cleric does.
One that the developers may have chosen to tell with this class on purpose.
I think the traditions aren’t anything more than a convenient vehicle for what they’re really after, the ability to combine runes to create synergistic and discordant effects. Someone mentioned words of power…probably in this thread. Might as well have been. But anyways, one aspect of Rune magic that frequently comes up is that in combination, some runes have greater reactions when use at the same time. I think traditions are a way to deliver that playstyle without having to get bogged down with paring specific runes with each other and deciding how they’d go. Instead, you can just have broad categories, and a pool of runes that can be applied to any one category, and anything in those categories counts.
It’s no different than if the runes had been assigned elements, or sanctification, or “Land, Sea, or Sky” groupings, all of which I’ve seen used to divvy up runes in a writer’s magic system. The divisions are arbitrary, the important part is that they’re divided at all. Since in pathfinder we’re already used to the idea that magic effects are tied to certain essences via specific traditions, traditions are as good as anything else for this purpose. Arguably tying the runes to essences would be better, as you’re really getting into the idea that runes are a kind of raw, pimoridial magic if you go that route, but traditions also give runesmiths a reason to pick up different skills, and essences would lack that.
First, love that weapon trait. I can definitely see that being a thing.
A special buckler might work as well.
Mathmuse wrote:
Runes for allies enable a playstyle as a support class, and I dub that Rune-Singer because singing reminds me of the bard. Just like the bard spends a action every turn to boost the party (my current campaign has two 4th-level bards: one sings Courageous Anthem and the other sings Triple Time), the Rune-Singer hopes to have a spare action to Trace a Rune on an ally. Though I named this playstyle after the Rune-Singer feat, the feat's once-per-minute limit makes it unable to sustain a regular playstyle.
I had a different vision for that 3rd play style. Runemages would function just fine at the support play style that you're ascribing to Runesingers. What Runesingers would be better at is offensive options. They can stack 2-3 runes onto an enemy at range over the course of 2 rounds, and use their crossbow and remote detonation to blow them to bits. So, Atryl, Ranshu, and either Sun or Ur. Tracing Trance would allow this to be an every round playstyle, with Runesinger allowing you to use your initial round to position yourself correctly. Distant Invocation would free you up a little more.
I started to describe that kind of character upthread, but mentally I was imagining a siren-type or talisman-mage character that applies curse on top of curse, or ephemeral ofuda, onto an enemy.
Apples and oranges: there is ALWAYS going to be spells that are on theme that aren't on a classes spell list when classes do not have a bespoke spell list.
Correct, which is why you should perhaps not have brought them up as examples of thematic healing spells for a necromancer. If that is truly the best you can provide, then perhaps it may be time to admit that the occult list does not in fact provide the "mastery of life and death" that AestheticDialectic is asking for, certainly not as well as other spell lists.
I've begun to feel that is kind of the point. Because the cleric already possesses the class abilities and divine spell list access to provide the kind of character narrative you're looking for. A class archetype that excises your deity would be better (and ideally gives you Thralls), but right out of the box if you go all in on the heal/harm feats your character is very much that wielder of life and death that you're talking about. Picking up the necromancer multi class archetype once available will get you the rest of the way.
Which means this class should probably take an at least slightly different approach. Limiting access to healing, while providing access to all the attack options for void and vitality as well as the ability to freely swap the energy of the two at will and at need demonstrates a different kind of mastery.
But I don't insist on it. I just don't think more healing, or the divine list, is the way to go for this class.
It's okay to just want to see healing necromancers. There's no need to drag anything else beyond your own interest into this discussion.
Personally, I don't want to see them. I don't think it fits the theme of the class they're going for, and with spell schools dropped the whole "healing is necromancy" no longer applies to this game. Even with the description of necromancers as wielders of vitality, I read that as weaponized vital energy. So I'd rather they lean into Master of Life and Death and release some void and vital spells for the occult list that can only be used to harm, and that necromancers are uniquely able to cast at both the living and dead to equal effect.
I might also want to see Spirit Mongers get the choice of dealing spirit or vital damage as their thrall upgrade, and maybe add a 4th Grim Fascination that leans into shadow/netherworld aspects.
I imagine the two unarmed strike targeting runes qualify. Runic tattoo says "on your body" but "body" is not a target of any runes. The closest we get is "creature" (a synonym for body) and "unarmed strike" (a part of everyone's body).
Good catch.
I also note there's no particular requirement that the rune you tattoo works when applied to your body. Probably should have that language and is meant to, but at the moment you can slap anything on there. I don't know why you would, but in case a wonky combination does come up that should probably be hemmed out.
Possibly even to the point of saying "you can use this with any rune that can apply to a creature, apply any armor rune to your skin as if it were armor, and weapon runes to your unarmed strikes if they meet the requirements of the rune".
Or start there and narrow it down to the intended application range. Maybe be even start with the narrowest (runes that apply to a creature) and have later feats that add on possible rune types for tattoos, with each tattoo feat letting you place on another tattoo. Shield runes and object runes seem hardest, but I can imagine possibilities.
For shields, maybe a feat that allows you to place a shield rune on your palm or whatever and get benefits of, say, the Shield Cantrip (except without the 10 minute restriction probably). Or something that similarly gives you the benefits of a raised shield without occupying a hand (which I guess would address a few problems). I can imagine the effect I want, but I had too long of a night to properly word it. Visually I am imagining the Illumians from the 3.5 Races of Destiny sourcebook.
I don't know, man; I kind of like the elemental wizard. Being able to cast Element Embodied is nice, and polymorph spells like the Animist Avatar are some of my favorites.
Then to Gortle's point, a class archetype that allowed wizards (and magi and arcane witches/sorcerers/summoners) to cast primal instead of arcane spells would have enabled you to do exactly that without the need for a custom list.
Honestly the elementalist list seems like an attempt to have primal casting without druid casting, if that makes sense. All 4 traditions are very tied to the trappings of their base class, but primal has it the worst in terms of the number of spells that seem druid rather than primal. For instance all the speak with animal/animal ally spells and the like. Fits perfectly with a druid! I am less convinced that vital or material essence should enable that, when mind might be more appropriate. It works, don't get me wrong, but the explanation seems as forced as animate dead on the arcane list.
Thus, the only sensible way to apply Vital Composite Invocation at 6th to 8th levels in the playtest is to draw two Pluuna runes on the creature, one divine and one primal.
I personally would allow diacritic runes to count towards this, even if they technically aren't applied to the creature (though of course are through their base rune). That would allow you to use Sun- for it as well.
I'm a little torn on if runes applied to unarmed strikes should also count as being on the creature for the purposes of feats like this. Makes logical sense, but might get weird. If it was allowed, that would open up Esvadir and Marsyll. Same logic and question for ancestries that allow you to apply armor runes directly onto your skin, and if armor runes applied that way count as on the creature.
One that focuses on casting runes in combat and weaving them from afar as a mage, and then the other a magic item crafter who can make runes that are longer lived for special effects on equipment they and their party use, be it sword and shield or rune etched arrows..
I often feel the same about alchemists. A "caster" version that acts as a vending machine and lobs bombs (which is the weapon group that acts the most like a spell cast, right down to damaging on a miss but not critical miss) and a martial version that either gets more benefits or ignores the penalties of alchemical items they craft and use on themselves might have worked better than trying to split the difference like they did.
I want to like this class. The fantasy is one that has long appealed to me, and there's a few combinations I like.
I am curious what appeals to you about the fantasy of the Runesmith. Such information can help shape the Runesmith into a coherent design.
I come at this from a couple angles:
1. Narrative: I like playing with the idea of someone that is able to imbue objects with magic, and work power through symbols. Several series I've read do variations of those two themes.
A specific character that this class unlocks for me is Charlie Gale, a Bard in a magic system that is run off runes ("charms" in universe). She has a semi unique ability to sing her charms onto something, where everyone else has to trace them (mechanically closer to etch in effect but the action of tracing is identical).
As an aside, she's also a time traveler that uses primarily primal magic (literally journeying to the Woods, an analogue to the First World, for her big magics like time travel). People had a hard time grokking what I was talking about when I suggested that as a primal flavoring for time magic class paths, like the precog witchwarper.
2. Gaming: I have fond memories playing multiple runesmith/runeblade/artificer classes, and am eager to see a good PF spin on it. The inventor saw to some parts of the 3.5 artificer; this will give us the other half of that class I think.
3. Design: I like seeing item classes, especially ones that generate items for free. Runesmith Runes aren't quite a new set of magic items, but close enough for me. I still wish one of them was on the caster chassis instead of martial or support, but this only makes sense as a martial given its emphasis on strikes.
For me, the important aspects of this design are the passive rune benefits, and the ability to apply them all over the place at need and at will. Probably why I favored using existing runes in the first place (again, I am acknowledging I was wrong with that; surprisingly its because existing runes are all too weak to compete with Runesmith Runes, even before the invocation effect is factored in), my greedy imagination saw hundreds of options instead of the 20 we got. Invocations I'm less enthusiastic about, though for the purposes of keeping this as a mental stat martial I feel they are needed, as they let you to prefer one big strike per round instead of MAP strikes.
Crafting is also of secondary concern for me. It works, but it's been done a lot and I would like to see a different take. Perhaps a linguistic/Society check would have been an interestingly different take. I don't insist on that, crafting does work, just my personal thought.
I'm not sure how you could even attempt to preserve the class' interesting mechanics by tying them to property runes.
I don't really disagree, but unfortunately for me personally, this very attempt to preserve interesting mechanics has resulted in a class that kills my enthusiasm entirely every time I look at the list of runes. Which means that I am letting my dislike of the current slate get in the way of how I see the class. I guess I just have to hope there's enough space in the real book to have options I find interesting.
I want to like this class. The fantasy is one that has long appealed to me, and there's a few combinations I like. So despite my current distaste I really do hope it does well.
But to get back to Mathmuse's point, something could be done to better integrate runes into the class, though you're right putting it in the middle won't work. I was pretty satisfied with the alchemy crafting feat on the gunslinger, it brought some semi-disparate part of the design together for me without getting in the way of the real abilities. A few more feats like Elemental Revision would go a long way for me I think.
Had similar thoughts, and did not like the conclusions I came to.
As I see it, there's 3 ways the rune mechanic can go.
1. What we have: bespoke magical mechanics that are carved out from the rest of the system so as to not interact weirdly with it, but also is unlikely to get much support going forward. Also have to use a lot of page space to once again give basic options like "additional fire damage on a strike". Edit: points though to the designers for creativity with doing this by lowering the target's fire resistance. If it made the target vulnerable once their fire resistance was 0, that'd be even cooler.
2. Spells in a can: runes become a class specific way to generate spell casts, sort of like temporary scrolls.
Personally unsatisfying to me, but the benefit would be the designers could let the specific effects of runes be someone else's headache, and concentrate their efforts on making the application, creation, and usage of runes in combat and exploration modes interesting.
3. Runic Alchemy: The runesmith class mechanic becomes the ability to use runes (the magic item) better than any other class. Specifically they'd be able to quickly generate and apply those runes for free on the battlefield as a consumable, and add an activation effect to the passive rune. Probably want a third creation option "Engrave" to differentiate between runes that are meant to be applied permanently as normal (engraved) and those meant to be invoked (etched and traced).
I personally favor this approach right now, as it presents runesmiths as masters of those specific class of magic items, but what is interesting to me might not be the best for the game.
All 3 have pretty obvious problems and potential headaches. I'm not fond of option 1, but I also dislike the options they have presented, so that may be coloring my judgement. Genuinely not sure which way I even want them to take this class.
I'm just curious why they didn't just make a bunch of invocation and a few Diacritic options, and say Runesmiths have the ability to trace and etch runes they know how to create, and when they do the runes gain an invocation ability of their choice. Invokes could have traditions assigned to them, which might bring into the game interesting choices, like do you get more out of putting a Divine Invoke on that ghost touch rune, or Arcane?
Edit: I guess to put this another way, get rid of the base feats and add only Diacritic runes, which could be applied to the normal runes we already have in game.
Page space, if they're only printing the Invoke and not the passive, it seems like they could add more into a small footprint, which would leave room for them to add (or remaster) more types of runes besides armor and weapons.
I understand the desire to have a new set of rules and items to play with, but I feel the class might be better off if they are able to get more functionality out of the runes we already have in game, rather than have an entirely new subsystem which may never see an update.
I'm just reading over the Thrall sidebar, and the spell, and the description in the text. None of it mentions movement speed. and as someone pointed out we are allowed to flavor them as spirits... So even at level 1... would they necessarily fall? I mean, Even if we suppose they linger in the air, they still can't chase the target down, or anything. So would a suspended spirit thrall really be that wild of a supposition?
So, relevant to the entire discussion but especially this, the grave spell "Recurring Nightmare" says:
Recurring Nightmare wrote:
You conjure a thrall within range. Unlike other thralls, the nightmare can share space with other creatures, and other creatures can move through its space with ease. This thrall doesn’t fall if in the air, and any ability that would make it Stride makes it Fly instead.
Does a couple other interesting things, like allow you to Sustain to keep popping it into another creature's space so you can harass them, but the bolded section implies that normally Thralls do just fall if they're created in air. I suppose you can detonate them with Necrotic bomb, but otherwise yeah they just drop. It also seems to confirm that it is perfectly valid to create a thrall within the 30' sphere; they just fall and instantly get destroyed if they do. I would say they fall after making the Create Thrall melee strike against a flying enemy if one is there, swiping at the enemy even as they slide past like a cartoon cat shredding curtains.
I'm just guessing at this, so if we've gotten developer feedback that Wile E Coyote thralls are not, in fact, intended, then that's that. But it may need to be spelled out in the spell itself, perhaps by adding an "Area a square on the ground within 30 ft" section to the cantrip, and saying that the thrall is created in that area, as we see with the Zombie Horde grave spell.
Otherwise it seems like a simple upgrade to Create Thrall that gives it a longer range, and perhaps allow your thralls to simply hover in air (if you chose, creating a thrall and letting it fall directly on your enemy seems fun too), would solve several problems.
It was one of those "holy butts. Did I come up with this? This seems too smart to have come from me" moments. And attaching it to this class works really well with the flavor they're going with. My original idea was that the Medium would coax a spirit into becoming a trap. A Spirit Monger necromancer can just snap their fingers and force a thrall into becoming one.
Thinking further, since you could place limits on the number of active haunts up, and they fade after a minute (possibly extended by a focus point), this would likely work as a grave cantrip.
Guess we'll see what the final class looks like, and I can always toss it up on Infinite if nothing similar gets put in.
I'm not so sure due the number of feats that companions requires. Maybe the designer wants to use this book space for other feats once that you can get this companion via archetype.
IMO, it'd be a perfect time for a sidenote saying 'hey, interested in an undead companion or familiar? Look here!'. Or they could add such feats as 'additional feats' without reprinting them in the book.
Or if they do reprint those feats, remaster and reprint the entire Reanimator and Undead Master archetypes. Both are appropriate for what I assume the book will be about.
GhostlyLion wrote:
Personally, I would love to see more on the spectral side, more interaction with ghosts and haunts, for example, like the animist’s apparition sense feat, or something along those lines.
A random idea I had a while ago while pomebrewing a Medium class was a feat that let you, as a psuedo-focus spell, create a haunt that used the rules for snares with a couple changes. The concept would probably work even better on this class using a thrall than my own version.
Naturally, I don't expect to see something quite like that, but something that lets you make a haunt or other kind of necromantic hazard could be a cool way to reuse a couple existing (and underutilized) aspects of the rules.
This is the case of thralls IMO. Once that the game doesn't just said "thralls are too stupid to Interact with things" the people will put in question "oh but why my thralls cannot Interact, they can Strike but cannot Interact. This dumb" when probably the idea is to make thrall to work like any zombie that can only bite, scratch or bang the things without any motor coordination and reasoning to do nothing more complex than that and that's strong due they numbers than due their capabilities.
Except that’s not actually the problem you had upthread. The problem was you saw “interact” and wanted it to be “activate”, which is a different activity entirely.
And no, I don’t think thralls are supposed to be ravenous zombie horde or the like, under the necromancer’s control. It’s the difference between thralls and minions, and thralls aren’t minions. Minions have their own will, however suppressed , but thralls are, well, in your thrall. They have no movement, no ability, no needs, wants, or motivations beyond what you explicitly give them, and that does not come cheap. It would be more accurate to describe thralls as physical extensions of your magic and personality than a discreet creature in their own right, one which you control instead of embody.
It’s not supposed to. That’s the point n8_fi has been arguing. Well, they’d be able to set off traps and trigger reactions, and that’s not nothing, but a lot of what you’re saying wouldn’t really be enabled by this.
And yeah, you be better off with a bunch of skeleton retainers (if that’s allowed). The difference being retainers have actions of their own. Thralls don’t.
I think what you’re trying to create is a minion heavy character. Maybe using a troop’s statistics so they’d all have to make the same action and move as a group. That I could see doing what you’re talking about, but thralls won’t get you there.
