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Yeah, Mechanic and Technomancer as is would not need that much extra tech to function. Everything in the Player Core would have been sufficient if the page space allowed for the just the two classes.

I missed the boat on the playtest for thees two classes, but wasn't one of the complaints that insufficient items existed for some of their subclasses to function properly, let alone well?

I think the bones were all there by the time they got around to writing these two, but possibly not when the first 6 were being drafted.

Another vote of approval for renaming them "Entropaths". Nicely sci-fi sounding without being TOO specific, so the designers have room to play with the concept.

Haven't dug into the feats, and haven't reviewed this thread yet, but first impression: thank pickles they changed it to a standard martial chassis. Not sure they lost much in the way of proficiencies either (have to double check), which is interesting.

And I really like the free reactions. Gives the feel of rolling first on initiative even if you rolled last. Going to see how deeply they leaned into that once I'm off work tonight and can pick it all apart.

... As a plus, in PF2e it is entirely possible to play a Guardian who is a literal rabbit or squirrel decked out in a full plate suit... albeit with the above mentioned restrictions on building with your reach in mind

Love this mental image.

I also have this view that the different elements have strengths and weaknesses by design. For me, the kineticist idea is precisely that you can play with a single element for mechanical or thematic reasons and make the most of it, but will keep the obvious weaknesses of that element. Or divide itself into multiple elements seeking to benefit from the coverage over the weaknesses of each other at the cost of sacrificing junctions.

In case it was unclear or if anyone missed it, this is specifically confirmed by the developers that they did this, and did it on purpose. In the playtest after-action report, there's a chart towards the bottom showing how they designed the playtest impulses, though they said that wouldn't necessarily be how they showed up on the actual class.

Balance isn't my biggest concern. Let what worked in history, not your weird pop culture take on things, result in more effective warriors.

I enjoy the weird pop culture takes in my games, personally. I would prefer this gam kept leaning into those.

Ravingdork wrote:

I also think it steps on some of the toes of the inventor which, by many accounts, doesn't have a lot going for it already.

The inventor crafts a custom item that only they can use, and of course, there is still no crafting rule to add and remove traits on existing weapons.

Well no, and now they never will. Adjusting the existing traits of armor, weapons, and contract companions is literally the entire mechanical schtick of the inventor class.

Giving that kind of ability out to anyone with a high enough crafting skill and the right skill feat would be like letting all martials have the fighter's legendary weapon proficiency.

Late to this party, but there's a couple potential areas of focus that can be added to the class in a relatively low impact way and wouldn't run the risk of stepping on the mechanics toes: expanding overclock, generating alchemical and other one use items (alchemical tools especially), and virtual items.

Being able to pick up at least one or two additional options for your overclock boost beyond the base overclock that comes with your programming language seems straightforward enough. One way of looking at this ability is using your magic run-off to turn ordinary tech into hybrid items, at least for a little while. Small ways to expand on that might help the class recapture some of the "magic into tech" feel.

Being able to use a similar ability to create temporary items might help more. Alchemical items especially; I'm not sure how those will ultimately be converted into SF2, but turning them into one use hybrid items might work. Since overclock is already putting magic into items, being able to prepare a couple items into being tools each day, ones that mostly use the rules for alchemical tools but have the appropriate SF2 traits, seems a logical outgrowth of that.

Virtual items aren't used much yet, but there's one line in the playtest book that caught my attention:

If not installed on a destroyed spell chip, a virtual spell chip in a

computer can be activated only in virtual reality.

Getting around that particular restriction seems like something a technomancer might be able to do, even from level 1. Since we have so few virtual items this would have limited benefit, but maybe there will be more in the tech book.

it's great for the Mechanic to be able to control minions and areas, but it'd be nice for them to do more actual mechanic stuff and play a bit more with items

I think I may like the class as written a little better than you, but I agree with this. The Mod ability gives me some of what I was hoping to see, but its not drawing in me as much as I expected.

One choice is to cancel all my subs and just hit the store once a month and look for whatever's new and buy the pdf. Pretty sure Paizo would rather I not do that, but I might. Would save me money in the long run, and space too. But I like books, and that's why I haven't made that jump. Also, manually searching for what's new would be a pain in the butt, and besides, I might miss something. :-(

That was the exact thought process, and pitfalls, I went through, with the added complication that I want this charge to always be on the 1st to maximize my credit card points. I used to have 6 subscriptions I think.

You say that, but every August there are people that whine that they're not getting their PDFs early. Every single one.

My sarcastic sense of humor keeps trying to assert itself as I write out a response, but bare honesty, this seems like not something worth worrying about. With or without a PDF subscription for rulebooks and LO lines, this is a complaint being made anyways. So why stress over the reactions of a group of people that provably cannot be placated?

Is the assumption is that instead of this being a once a year phenomenon, it’ll be every month that a LO or rulebook is released? Because it think it could just as easily work out the other way. Having the various PDF subscriptions, including the new ones I want, reinforce the idea that PDFs release on release day unless your physical subscription ships first, might get ahead of some of these complaints rather than feed into them.

But that’s pure speculation on my part, and admittedly appeals to me since it happens to justify what I want.

The biggest thing about the argument is that while in the long term PDFs do not hurt physical book sales, getting the PDF early would disincentivize brick and mortar stores from stocking Paizo books. There are already game stores that take umbrage to the current subscription process. Whether it actually hurts them or not tends to not matter to business owners who feel threatened.

And if you're not getting the PDF early at all, there are going to be people that complain when physical subscribers start getting their PDFs 2 weeks before them, even though thats not actually one of the stated benefits of the subs.

I mean, the answer is the same that is always been. PDFs get sent when subscriptions ship. “Ship date” for a PDF is the release date. Iirc, that’s how Paizo’s current PDF subscriptions work. I see no reason for that to change if Paizo expands their PDF subscriptions to the main product lines, and you’ve outlined several good reasons for that not to change.

This is the part that I get kerfluffled over, actually. I’m not asking Paizo to venture into some untested media territory that they have no institutional knowledge of how to navigate. They’ve been doing this literally for decades now, and digital ebook subscriptions are a LOT more commonplace for consumers than they were even 5 years ago, let alone 16. (Which in turn means I’m willing to believe them when they say PDF subscriptions don’t make sense for them, however disappointing that be to me. I don’t *understand*, but I believe that they know what they’re talking about).

Further, as you’ve said, early PDFs have never been advertised as a guaranteed perk. I agree that some people will complain that they aren’t getting something they were never offered in the first place, but what can you do for someone like that besides pat their hand and say, “there, there”? They’re getting what was promised and that they paid for.

Edit: honestly, having the ship date, and thus the credit card charge date, guaranteed to be the set release date has the benefit of you’d know well in advance exactly when that charge will hit. Which could very well be important for some customers. If I could *pick* a date each month for this to process, say the 1st, and you get anything that had released between your last sub date and this month’s day (again, nothing early), that would be even better for those that this is an important consideration. That is effectively what I do, assuming I remember to actually buy the pdfs on the 1st and don’t get sidetracked like I have the last 2 months. Having the website do the remembering for me would be ideal in my case, though of course I don’t think my wants are universal, or even typical.

I'd love to see PDF subscriptions. It would guarantee more purchases from me (and maybe others). I sometimes miss releases or pick and choose more than I would if I subscribed. For Paizo PDF subscriptions would allow them to see a guaranteed revenue stream.

Same. I genuinely forgot Rival Academies released recently. I'll try to remember to get it with my next batch of PDFs I guess.

Given the tariff roulette, I would really prefer Paizo lean onto their digital offerings anyways, including offering more digital subscriptions. I like the company, I like their products. Give me a more frictionless way to give you money, Paizo! One that doesn't depend on me remembering to do things.

Hopefully the new webpage they're creating will offer something along these lines, or something near enough.

So, basically, you’d like for them to trade Shield block, the general proficiency upgrades (leaving only single weapon group upgrades), and probably the flexible feats for what are essentially Ways?

I could see that happening, yeah.

This is very much a "Will not happen" deal, but, I would love an alchemy book. Many alchemcial items, especially strange ones that don't fit anywhere else, and a wealth of alchemical items and feats for not just alchemist, but everyone. Imagine a barbarian archtype centered around mutagen use, a sorcerer bloodline where you've got strange alchemical ooze powers, new fleshwarped feats representing being an alchemical experiment.

The reason I don't think this would happen is it'd be an unprecidented amount of focus on essentially one class. Ironically, if we didn't have alchemist yet, it'd be more likely to happen. There is also the fact that the "alchemy book" was probably treasure vault.

The obvious solution to that would be to have more classes that utilized Alchemy. At least one entirely new class, maybe 3 or 4 class archetypes and new class paths as you suggest, and several new archetypes that focus on specific alchemy categories, and we're mostly there.

I would add to your list gunslinger munitions crafter, that can activate an alchemical bullet at the same time they reload it and get some versatile vials to craft with.

Conclusion

In the end, the eidolon ends up having a much stronger offensive power than the companion and this without costing you an absurd 6 feats!

Honestly, if you are a caster and want to have a "companion" then you should seriously consider playing as a summoner. Because you will probably regret spending so many feats on a companion and receiving so little.

But if you want to play as a martial then the situation may be different. I would honestly recommend that you consider playing as an inventor because his companion receives many more benefits and is a true construct, with all the immunities that a construct would normally have, and is Repaired instead of Healed, which can be a problem to "heal" him in battle, but with Quick Repair, from level 7 onwards you can heal him without spending resources in a very efficient way. Besides, if he is destroyed, you can rebuild him the next day.

Not sure if anyone else feels this way, but I tend to think of the summoner as the "companion" and the Eidolon the actual character, at least as far as comparing proficiencies goes. Not sure if I ever checked point for point, but I recall the summoner's proficiencies winding up somewhere near a companion.

So basically you get a companion that can use scrolls.

The Occultist was essentially a "psychic magus" that has been reworked into the Thaumatheurge... sadly without the occult spell list. A single implement grant that spell list, in exchange of not getting any other implement would be welcomed.

Tangent to your main point, but from my guesses at the power level of these options, I don't think you'd need to give up other implements. Getting basic, then expert, then adept bound spellcasting benefits seems pretty reasonable as the benefit of a passive implement. Paragon could unlock 8th and 9th rank spells for this.

So...yeah. Count me as another one hoping to see something like this.

I haven't changed my opinion on this, though given all the chances to errata that have not been taken, I no longer think this was some kind of error.

But, still, I think the basic bounded spellcasting benefits (BBSB) should be:

Usually gained at 6th level, these feats give you a 1st-rank spell slot and a 2nd-rank spell slot from that magical tradition. If you have a spell repertoire, you can select one spell from your repertoire as a signature spell. Archetypes refer to these benefits as the “basic bounded spellcasting benefits.” At 8th level, you replace your 1st-rank spell slot with a 3rd-rank spell slot. At 10th level, you replace your 2nd rank spell slot with a 4th rank spell slot.

instead of

Usually gained at 6th level, these feats give you a 1st-level spell slot and a 2nd-level spell slot from that magical tradition. If you have a spell repertoire, you can select one spell from your repertoire as a signature spell. Archetypes refer to these benefits as the “basic bounded spellcasting benefits.” At 10th level, you replace your 1st-level spell slot with a 3rd-level spell slot.

This would:

On the note of Elementalist class archetype, I'd like to see new Kineticist impulses. I noticed when I tried to make a pure air kineticist (no electricity) that the pickings were a bit slim.

Not to say there isn't enough to make a complete class, just more choices would be nice.

I never really dug into the final version of the kinetics, but is there a way to repurpose existing impulses so that they work for multiple elements?

Seems like that would be a straightforward way of expanding options without eating up page space.

Like, say, Deflecting Wave. I could see that being an Air or Metal impulse pretty readily, with almost no change to the description even.

And no, I'm not saying "just house rule it". I'd appreciate it if Paizo made it so every non-overflow impulse had 2 or 3 possible elements, to give elements a wider pool to choose from without increasing page count. Having it done on Paizo's end would allow them to reinforce the strengths and weaknesses of each element.

But as I said, I'm not fully up to speed on the release version of kineticists, so I may well be asking for something that already exists. If so, ignore me.

I feel like the dedication should also give one cantrip, and that basic and expert spellcasting should be other feat options.

So yeah, gives a little "works against itself" puzzle to solve.

Agreed. The skill stuff the dedication gives is interesting, but a cantrip slot (and/or a Vindicator specific focus cantrip) would actually enable the entire playstyle with a single feat. The more I think about the more head scratching this all seems.

Does anyone knows (based on previous playtests or as some insider info) when we should wait for official release of Necromancer and Runesmith? Playtest has ended 31.01, and after release I believe we'll have new class features, runes for Runesmith, subclasses and so on. What is the usual gap between playtest end and release?

Playtests are generally about a year ahead of the book’s publication, but have been as short as 10 months from playtest to street date and of course have sometimes been longer. It’s possible we might see these classes release at the very end of this year; as mentioned Guns and Gears had a January playtest and October release, but I assume this will more likely be the early release of 2026.

New class options? I just thought of one just now that I think be fun. When you take in the fact Battle Harbringer has a feat at every level but level 14 and then at 18 you got to ask yourself something. Has any other sub-class/class option received so many custom feats to go along side it? They also have multiple feat choices at certain levels as well, increasing this as I feel Battle Harbinger might be the only Sub-Class/Class chassis which has multiple feats dedicated to them at the same level, where is the love for all the other doctrines or sub-classes. I want to see Flurry ranger get almost 10 exclusive feats, maybe we can do this to Barbarian!?

For a cleric, your deity is your subclass. If you compare what your deity gives you and what, say, a sorcerer bloodline gives them, they're pretty comparable.

Doctrines are functionally a class archetype, and of course BH literally is one. I've mentioned multiple times, including probably in this thread, that I wished they'd designed warpriest as "warmage", and made it the first class archetype, applicable to any caster class. Would have addressed multiple pain points, not least of which would be this frequent (and perfectly understandable) misclassification.

Now that we have BH as the blueprint, if I want anything, I think I'd like to see what a class archetype that turns any caster class into a wave caster, as BH does for clerics, would look like (if possible at all, of course). And if It can't be a single CA, then at least 1 or two that could hopefully cover multiple classes.

Finally getting a warmage CA would be cool too, but I think that's less critical now, and also something that PU could probably handle pretty well.

Better than nothing.

I just feel like he wants an all up minion, with its own actions that they can use to cast spells all day. It's not impossible, but that doesn't seem to be the design direction they're going with.

Admittedly, the idea of being able to cast 2 cantrips a round, or a spell and a cantrip (using your 3rd action to command and then the minion using their 2 actions to cast) seems cool and not very game-breaking. I'm hesitant because that's not really a thing yet, but I did just say that new classes are for pushing the envelope, so maybe I'm too hesitant.

2. Give them four slots. Don't limit them by school. Just give them four slots each. With the oracle now having four slots and sorcerers, just give the wizard their four slots.

I'm still puzzled this did not happen. I personally would have done this, and turned spell schools into "spells you can prepare without needing them in your spellbook, they're spells you just know." It's mostly flavor still, but would lean into the idea that these spells and the theories behind them were so thoroughly studied that even ones you can't yet cast are indelibly entered into your mind.

The way I see it is there would be bespoke ones with specific spells they have prepared that can't be changed and aren't limited to occult, but the class itself wouldn't cast many spells

To be honest, I’m not sure this would be as satisfying for you as you imagine, unless these were cantrips instead of slotted spells. Because what happens to the Thrall once they’ve cast their spell? Just stand there? Plus there’s the issue of action costs; I don’t think they’ll introduce something that greatly breaks the action economy to allow more than 4 or 5 actions a round.

But what I do see possible is a minion that adds on to your spell casts. Perhaps 1pt additional void damage per spell rank, like sorcerer’s potency and some of their bloodline gifts. Since it depends on you having a particular minion up, and is locked to either void or (through master of life and death) vital damage, it might fly.

I too like the idea of thralls being more than potted plants. It’s just a matter of fitting them in to the current action economy, or figuring out safe ways to push the envelope (for which I count on the developers; opening new narrative and mechanical territory is what new classes are best used to accomplish). Your suggestion about using them as the lowest level of spell casts is pretty cool, but other options might work as well.

I was thinking like you'd make some floating skulls or something each morning and then each would have 1 spell of each rank up to your max rank -2 or something, but if it's too unnecessary and unwanted it's NBD. I just thought making caster undead would be sick

QuidEst nailed it though, since it’s coming out of your slots and uses your DC, this is just a reflavored “Reach of the Dead.” And honestly it’s questionable how much its even a reflavor; the description could very well be talking about your thrall doing the casting but using your magic, and exploding from the strain.

Which suggests a higher level feat where it doesn’t explode. Not sure what the actual effect should be, but revising Effortless Concentration so that it turns your thrall into a minion with the ability to do a sustain action on your behalf sounds…well actually it sounds kind of boring but well within the bounds of current feats.

I had that thought. The biggest problem is that regular runes are so much weaker than Runemaster runes. The most egregious example being the Shockwave weapon rune versus Marsyll. Most others aren't quite that far out of line, but there's definitely a lot more going on with Runemaster runes.

So, no, you'd need to add a general invoke or you'd need something like Define the Canvas that let you trace the rune on all your allies.

Easiest would likely be to set an invoke ability keyed to traditions, maybe as few as 1 of each. It would need to be required that you assigned a tradition to each rune as you created it, of course. Slightly less easy would be tying 4 invokes to an essence each, and so able to be applied to 2 possible traditions.

That would also solve the problem you brought up in another thread regarding how thin the choices for traditions are that would activate the combination invocation feats.

Fair point. Especially with Undead lore part of the class chassis.

What about leaning into the melee necromancer vibe? I think it might help with making it feel like a diablo necromancer if this one had some Strike feats that interacted with their thralls. Like, say, a 1 action Flurry of Blows ability that let you roll 2 spell attacks at your normal MAP progression if you have a thrall adjacent to you. And have it not expend the Thrall.

Not sure how exactly I'd want to see it, but basically give the necromancer fighter or monk feats that are your Thrall making strikes alongside you. That way they're moving and doing things without giving your character any additional actions (outside of what's normal for a feat anyways). They already have a couple of the defensive fighter feats, might as well add a couple offensive ones if they can make the flavor work.

Also, I want a focus spell that lets one of your thralls make a strike that deals persistent poison damage and the disease trait.

I was thinking that the Necromancer could be limited based on their grave fascination. Skeletons for Bone Shaper, zombies for Flesh Magician, but I don't know of any mindless ghosts or spirits to go with the Spirit Monger. If are any, I'm sure they are at least less common than the other two.

Haunts maybe? I could see this letting you always be able to use diplomacy when trying to disable a haunt.

There is precedent for monstrous ancestry archetypes in PF2E. That'd be the best approach I think.

Background would likely be too weak to satisfy, because the thing that the desired ancestry features are competing for is a skill feat. And I've seen enough Starfinder races at this point to know a lot of the stuff you'd want in one are more powerful than a skill-feat tradeoff. You'd likely need to sacrifice the skill and lore trainings, and potentially one of the attribute boosts to keep a similar power scale.

I never fully put it together, but the ancestral lore feats are essentially a way to get an additional "background" into your ancestry, with its 2 skills and the additional lore feat.

Which suggests you're correct about what needs to be traded. To get an ancestry feat, you'd need to sacrifice everything except the boosts.

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.

I think some combination of Grave's Voice and Undead Empathy should do the trick.

Like, say:

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.

-

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.

Stuff I'd like to see implemented as feats:

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.

AnimatedPaper wrote:

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.

AnimatedPaper wrote:

Castilliano wrote:

-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

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.

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:

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).

Mathmuse wrote:

Trip.H wrote:

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.

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.

and at level 1 you could use void warp and grim tendrils to damage undead.

Both of those only damage living creatures immune to vitality damage.

Pretty sure that’s what Luke meant about target massaging, you have to ignore the target or effect limits of the spells to use them for this.

Scouring pulse is good though, good find there. Also, its faction specific, not AP specific.

Spirit Monger

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.

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:

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.