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I was a bit confused that people were talking about things as if they hadn't seen them before and completely forgot about the fact that I got the book so early because of the subscription. Whoops!

Yeah, honestly? Kineticist seems pretty dope. Even the Archetype itself gives some pretty interesting options for characters who might not otherwise have access to energy damage. It's not the best at scaling, since it hits Expert at level 12 and doesn't get any higher, but the Gate Attenuator should help keep it up to speed a bit, and you can take a feat to raise your basic blast's damage. Really, what else is new for multiclass archetypes - you gotta spend to dive deeper. But I'm not sure many other archetypes give martials such breadth of damage type options.

Indeed, bumping up your Acrobatics along with whatever skill your Style (the subclass) gives you is key, since you'll be trying to use Tumble Through and whatever action your Style dictates to regain your panache whenever you spend it.

Since you're a fellow kitsune, might I guess that you're going to be a Fencer or Wit Swash?

It'd actually be kinda funny if Snowball had some heightened effect that made it actually really good.

Like, imagine if, heightened to 4th level, Snowball instead became like a rain of snowballs that automatically reduced the movement speed of enemies inside of the area and made it uneven ground or something?

If it's going to be anything like the Witch, then obviously specific in-lore schools are going to be like the specific patrons - Rare or Uncommon, with a little extra mechanic thrown in for fun.

The new schools system is interesting. I can only imagine that they're creating tags for spells similar to the old spell-school tags. Hopefully they can do it in a concise way so as to not add too much clutter to spell tags.

Otherwise, the only other way I can see them doing it without putting themselves in a corner futureproofing-wise is something fairly inelegant, like "Wizards of the school of Battle Magic may prepare one additional spell per rank they can cast; these spells must deal damage", etc.

Soothing Tonics are surprisingly useful in-combat, actually. Giving an ally Fast Healing alleviates the need for a recovery check, and actually gets them back on their (proverbial) feet easily. Had a few asses saved by them in Extinction Curse.

They died later in the dungeon, but that was from very, VERY unfortunate math rocks.

The intern overhears the arguing of two mages - both doctorates in civil engineering - as they croak their voices in favor of whether or not to make the new design for the town square a circle... or a squircle.

The intern decides to sit this one out.

Nope. Remember that Pathfinder started with dnd and then made tweaks, then more tweaks with starfinder, then big tweaks with pf2.

The dnd it all started with absolutely started with normal people (delving dungeons was basically a horror experience at the time, not a heroic one). Pathfinder 1 came out with the very clear shift to focus on power fantasy. Even the level 1 characters were more like level 2 characters of 3.x. PF2 basically can't do normal people without significant tweaking.

3.x was a simulationist system, with the ability score arrays literally coming from the math for rolling 3d6 for standard normal people array and 4d6 drop 1 for the elite top 10% of people array. Then characters coukd grow ftom normal person range to demigod/superhero range. This absolutely is ability to represent normal people.

PF1 didn't care about normal person like characters, and many of the tweaks made increased the feeling of playing heroic characters.

PF2 far more so.

Yeah, bud, I'm certainly not talking about PF1, or 3.x, or the systems that came before it. I'm talking about how ability scores are useless in PF2e, from the context of PF2e, in the game's own design. Shifting the subject over to "how things used to be" is exactly why we have this vestigial part of the system in the first place.

I mean, at the point that your characters are delving into using niche subsystems, spells, and underhanded tactics to try and get an upper hand on the BBEG before facing off with him, or even attempting to avoid direct conflict with him altogether, you've succeeded pretty hard at creating an antagonist that your players respect, and you should feel pretty proud as a GM.
If they're going that hard to search out a Rare spell and research their target, you should be willing to part with at least some crumbs of vital information for their efforts. Ten minutes is a short amount of time - you can give out something useful without spilling the whole damn can of beans, right?

Private Sanctum, much like Scrying actually, is a very good storytelling spell for its purpose. The spell was (presumably in-lore) designed from the onset to be a purpose-built anti-scrying spell. It doesn't disrupt any other form of divination, mind you - JUST scrying and mind-reading effects alongside its black-box fog. And making it so that a scrying effect could counteract it, even if powerful enough, would break a lot of the appeal it has as a storytelling tool. Imagine the inverse of the scrying situation happening:

Big Bill, Ender of Galaxies is a level 20 Wizard who is scrying on the party so that he can figure out where to Gate all these fire mephits he's been meaning to get rid of. The party's Bard, having done some research, is privy to the fact that Big Bill was a PhD in Divination before he got blackballed from his fraternity. Deciding that it'd be reasonable for such a master of the art to have forms of scrying, the Bard decides to retrain one of his 4th rank slots to cast Private Sanctum on the party's base of operations every morning.

Unfortunately, the very next morning they are beset upon by 40 fire mephits at their front door, threatening to torment them with hot coals in their boots if they aren't fed and taken home. The Bard, pressing them for information, learns that Big Bill managed to find them despite having set up this Sanctum, because he was able to penetrate his puny 10th level caster sanctum with his 20th level scrying effect, thus making all his planning and time spent retraining gone to waste. The Bard's player isn't very happy.

Sometimes, it's okay for spells to break the mold if it would allow them to better evoke their fantasy. Private Sanctum wouldn't be appealing if it couldn't do its proposed purpose, so it broke the mold of allowing opposing scrying effects to break it so that people would have reason to use it.

And one of my points is that +0 no longer represents average (nor does 10/11). It'd be fine if it did, yet mechanics suggests that one's Ancestry & Background (and perhaps more) increases this while actual "normal citizen" NPCs seldom have below 0 alongside several scores above.
Of course to be backwards compatible, Paizo probably shouldn't add a DC shift to compensate, which is why I'd like a sidebar explaining what these stats actually would look like in reality (or fantasy using iconic examples). Given level being added to proficiency which then effects skills, I'm unsure there is a good approximation, i.e. Athletics overshadows Strength for many physical accomplishments.

Your ancestries and background increase your scores because with each of them you are deviating further from "average blob of Golarion thing" into "individual". Even your average-joe citizen might have a +2 to their strength if they lifted boxes all day for a job, even if they didn't work out all day on the weekends as well.

A "normal citizen" isn't representative of an average Golarion being because they are a small group of all of the "statted" things in Golarion, typically things that are empowered and "living" in one way or another, usually via positive or negative energy. Plants, undead, golems, dragons, the tiniest to largest elementals, all of that is taken into account.

I'm using "average" here to mean a true abstraction of everything equaling out, not "pull any citizen off the street" kind of average. Which is why I agree that there should be a sidebar, because that kind of average isn't always intuitive when you forget to consider that that means EVERYTHING on Golarion, including the plants and wild animals and dragons and giants and such.

Assuming I am not allowed to reimagine anything other than the class's name and I have to rename every class? I'll also attempt to not use anything that has already been posted.

Core Rulebook

Alchemist: While this is already a sufficient name for the class, perhaps it might be more evocative (and potentially fitting for the insane madlads that science their ways around a magical world) to call themselves Concoctors, as their efforts surely don't always revolve around turning lead to gold!

Barbarian: Berserker is such a good alternate name that it's been thrown around a lot already (Even back in the 3.5/PF1 days). Can I come up with a worthy alternative? Probably not, but how does Rageforged sound?

Bard: People always say that the Occult list doesn't feel very bardic, but those people have probably never heard a truly alien, haunting hymn and felt cold dread deep in their soul. Since bardic talent can manifest in many ways, maybe something along the lines of Musetouched might suit those folks better?

Champion: Admittedly, I think this class's name is perfect. My brightest hope is that with the rending of alignment from the system, this class will have something more akin to 1e Cavalier's creeds, which represents the time-honored tradition of people, in a self-driven affair, placing stock in their beliefs SO HARD that their drive to impose increases drastically, separate from but not excluding faith. Let's call them the Oathsworn.

Cleric: This one's hard, though I love the idea of some person on Golarion getting confused because someone made a "clerical" error... anyways, a deity choosing a follower to carry a sliver of their divine powers along with their baggage? Devout seems like a fine description.

Druid: As neat and tidy as it is to call the tradition representative casters (tradition)ists, since I didn't call Clerics "Diviners" then we gotta go with something else. Also Primalist was already mentioned, sooooo... how about Naturalist. Hey, it's technically different from Naturist, okay?

Fighter: Always been a pretty generic name for a fairly generic class, but in 2e they actually have quite a an identity - Maneuvers and Weapon Mastery focus. As much as I want to crib 5e's Battlemaster title for this, it's technically under the Coastal Wizard umbrella, so instead I'll go with the less-infringing Battle Savant.

Monk: Focus on perfecting one's own body, and form with either one's hands or a specific weapon? Call 'em the Honer.

Ranger: Oh boy. Somebody who makes a point to etch into their memory the knowledge of the various lands they drift through, and the creatures and peoples that make their homes there? Let's make it weird. The Encyclogist, from the same root as "encyclopedia" (all-around education). Nobody ever said I couldn't make up new words, did they?

Rogue: Somebody took away all the good synonyms up above, so now I'm left a bit high and dry. Well, the common thread of all of the rackets is that they really REALLY care about being thorough and precise while also having a catalogue of good skills. Perhaps the Professional would be fitting, especially once more rackets start appearing.

Sorcerer: Someone who has innate magical abilities because somebody in your lineage mixed some strange blood into you? You're a Genealogian.

Wizard: Clearly folk of (magical) science, they should take some etymology from the modern sciences if we're reading research papers with titles rivaling theoretical mathematics. "Wizards" is like calling a PhD a "Scientist". The "more correct term" would be an Arcanologist. Sure, you could shorten that, but for some reason when I try I hallucinate something about a "reservoir" and "exploits" and I get shivers. I wonder why.

Hasn't it also been scientifically proven that our brains are pretty good at understanding the relativity of situations and numbers?

It's not that a +0 represents "no ability," it represents "average," as in "compared to this stock photo of the perfectly average Golarion being you are +/-0 away from them."

The difference is that learning C has applications and rewards for learning it, since other languages are highly related to it and/or were influenced by it. In contrast, ability scores serve two functions in PF2e, to my knowledge.
Both of which are entirely superfluous.

Ability scores:
>Determine whether or not your character is eligible for multiclass dedications. Thing is, every multiclass archetype requires a 14 of the class's relevant key ability scores, which could be easily replaced by a +2.
>Determine whether or not you ignore a piece of armor's Check Penalties and 5 ft. of their Speed penalties. But, much like the last, all of the Strength score requirements are even numbers, thus easily replaceable by its equivalent modifier.

I will say that one big obstacle in attempting to keep "The Old Guard" (as much as I find those divisive terms distasteful) happy in Paizo's case is trying to tell people that the alignment they're so used to is now going to become an optional rule (as one example).

But, due to the short spaces with which Paizo has to talk about these changes AND the simultaneous need to not spill every single detail of the books, they don't tend to spend a lot of time with the "this is the compensation" aspects.

While I can only assume that the GM Core book will include Alignment as an optional rule - as currently running No Alignment is - I don't remember them ever confirming nor denying it? Despite the fact that it would make total sense to just swap the status of the two things, if people don't get a clear confirmation, all they'll hear is "Alignment Gone" with a vacuous hole left in it.

All they can say is "This is what we're changing" with only very little (if any) whys or hows, and that does make people nervous.

I will be kind of sad that true neutral characters no longer get to avoid some of the most awful affects of enemies by nature of not being aligned to anything.

To be fair, it was always a bit weird that neutral characters were just... IMMUNE to aligned damage. They should have at LEAST taken half damage or something.

Hells, sometimes being on-the-fence or in the middle of a spectrum of ideals could get you even MORE targeted by the people on either side for various reasons, so there's even an argument for neutrals taking full, opposing taking double, and allied taking half.

As much as I would love it too, don't get me wrong, I'm just putting that out there that it does, by definition, alter the amount of boosts that are given, and thus is probably less likely.
I don't figure that we'll get anything more than a "cosmetic" change to ability mods, as much as it'd be nice to help out inherently MAD classes.

The most elegant way to handle it would be to forbid modifiers of +5 until 10th level, +6 until 17th (Apex items are level 17+), and +7 until 20th.

I mean, if you're suggesting that you would only need one boost to bump up to those numbers at those levels, then that increases the number of available boosts people have, meaning higher stat totals across the board and no tradeoff for specializing.

For example: I start with a +4 to Int at level 1. Normally, at level 5, I would place my half-boost to Int (for a 19, still +4) and my 3 other boosts into whatever. That effectively means that, because I want to specialize, I only have 3 real +1 boosts available to me at level 5. Then, at level 10, I get my regular 4 boosts again (as my next Int boost will bump me up to +5).
This repeats if I wish to continue on into +6, giving me a total of 14 effective +1 stat boosts since I wanted to specialize

Now, if we only have a restriction on when we can get those mods based on level and don't require two boosts, then now suddenly at level 5 I can simply choose a stat below +4 that I wouldn't have been able to before, and again at level 15 for a stat below +5. This gives me two extra +1 boosts. I'm not sure if this really is a gamebreaker, but it does fundamentally alter the way that boosts are intended to work.

"You get 14 boosts if you want a +6 or two +5s, 15 boosts if you want a +5, or 16 boosts if you stay +4" is the intended tradeoff you get for specializing vs. spreading your stats throughout the game, it seems.

>Refocus becomes practically automatic after 10 minutes

>Remove the "have to use a point or wait an hour" limitation on Refocusing

>Spice up each class's Refocus feats to be more than a boring +2/3 per refocus

>Just make it so that "You have as many Focus Points in your pool as you have Focus Spells, up to a maximum of 3 points". None of this "the feats give you the point but only sometimes" nonsense

I think those are the biggest clerical issues with Focus Pools and Points without getting into the weeds of individual classes and Focus Spells, and frankly is all I expect from this part of the Remaster.

Honestly, them confirming that they're sticking with Con being the primary stat for Kineticists already kinda gave me a kick in the gates - er, expectations.

Con is a fairly important stat, sure - HP is pretty necessary if you don't like spending an unlucky day on the floor, and Fortitude saves can cover some fairly nasty effects.

But, unfortunately, by tying the class's main shtick with Con, they've all-but guaranteed an essential incompatibility with every other class in the game via MAD. It will be more tricky for a someone to archetype into or out of Kineticist simply by virtue of it having a one-of-a-kind class DC. Ability boosts are plentiful when they show up, at least, so it's not like it's anywhere near impractical, but still, it's not gonna be any Rogue/Investigator or Wizard/Alch dream.

Failing that, though, I'm still excited to see what kinda stuff being a universalist gives us versus being a specialist.
I can only hope there's some form of resistance-overcoming mechanic so that a Firebender isn't gonna suffer the FULL penalty for fighting, say, a swath of devils. Still some resistance might be fine (after all, choosing to fight Hell with Fire should come with some consequences) but there should be some early-to-mid level thing that scales up as resistances do. Maybe even some kind of high level feat that allows you to supernaturally ignore resistances from your damage entirely. Now that'd be pretty epic.

Universalists will (hopefully) not feel left in the dust, perhaps gaining some kind of mutability to their damage.

Personally, though? I want the prestidigitation-like feature to be more than just situationally useful. Even if it takes feats - I want some way to turn my elements into out-of-combat utility. Perhaps my raging fire allows me to be more intimidating, allowing me to use Con instead of Cha for certain checks?
I dunno, I just foresee some jank involved with having a class scale with a stat that doesn't correspond to ANY skills.

Huh - I dunno where I was getting Thriae having 4 arms. Odd. Well, a four-armed ancestry would still be a neat challenge for the designers, and I do so love seeing the results of Paizo's experimentations so far.

As a burgeoning bee-keeper myself, I can confirm that you are right about the dimorphism of real life bees. Funnily enough, male bees do typically physically outsize their sisters, but they (again, typically) have no stingers and are usually there to perform mundane work such as hive building/maintenance and of course mating with the queen.

The possible diversity of Thriae heritages would be cool to see. Fun fact - wasps are more closely-related to ants than they are bees. So I could definitely see heritages that rival that of the Sprite with heritages based on different bee, wasp, and ant families.

Honestly, the fact that the 'Monk' trait exists on weaponry even still in 2e is weird to me. I get the idea - the class fantasy is about honing a specific style or a few to near-perfection, so they shouldn't get access to all the weaponry the Fighter (whose class fantasy is "weapon versatility") gets. They didn't want every monk running around flurrying with a Buster Sword.

But consider that there were warrior monks called the Negoro-shū in the Kii Province who were extremely proficient in not only firearms but also other traditional martial weaponry of the era and region, like the naginata.

If you chose to hone in and master a Buster Sword when you began your journey to self-perfection, why SHOULDN'T your monk be allowed to go around cross-slashing around the battlefield when they hit level 10, even 20?

A more reasonable way to do it could have been, say, choosing one, two, or possibly three weapons/weapon groups at level 1. These would be the weapons that your sect (or yourself if a wandering enlightenment-seeker) consider their "monk weaponry". Their class features can only be used with their chosen "monk weaponry", and they only gain proficiency in their chosen weapons/groups.
Then, you could even include feat choices that are exclusive to those who chose a certain weapon group (e.g. a Pole Dancer stance that is exclusive to monks who have proficiency in polearms).

That way, the mechanics still flavorfully allow for wuxia-inspired self-perfection character growth without stymying them with ONLY Eastern-inspired weaponry. Don't get me wrong - nunchaku are still cool! But so is a Gunk. Or Cloud Strife.

As for the question of representation? I don't rightly know - I didn't grow up in any of the cultures that inspired these classes, so my opinion is from that bias - even having done some basic research for making characters, nothing really matches living the culture yourself.

Few people bat an eye at Witch (or 5e's Warlock), and even fewer at Wizard, despite the fact that at many points in time these words (or other equivalents) have been used both interchangeably AND referring to unique peoples and events. Someone mentioned Final Fantasy, and I wouldn't doubt that was one of the many things that have sort of culturally warped the term "Monk" in the sphere of pop culture. Even FF14 still uses it to this day!

Do I think names can't change if the culture once again changes around Pathfinder/Paizo (as culture tends to do) and later finds the use of the word unacceptable? No, I'd be perfectly fine with a name-change. Frankly I've already warmed up to the idea of Barbarians becoming Berserkers - it frankly fits the chassis a lot better and takes away the baggage of the former title's implications of "less civilized and intelligent peoples".

Classes: We need more options for the ones we have. CRB classes get a lot of love for obvious reasons, but it has been implied multiple times that the books up to Secrets of Magic (Maybe DA/GnG/RoE too? I forgot) are considered "Base", so it'd be great to just... get more. Honestly by this point even the CRB classes are lookin' kinda dusty, sans the new spells and weapons and items we keep getting.

Ancestries:
>Stheno are cuties and absolutely need to be a thing right-stat yesterday. Frankly the chassis is practically built-in already (feats notwithstanding) due to the Bestiary entry being level 1.
>Thriae would be interesting due to the dynamic of an "individual out-of-the-hive," and it'd be neat to see if they've come up with a way to make four arms balanced yet, haha.
>Honestly, more buds with non-bipedal body types would be kinda sick just in general. Taurs and such. The potential for motley crews is already hilariously high; what's the harm in some more weirdos joining the mix? (And I happen to be one of the weirdos that likes Medium-sized centaurs, so big and smol horses please).
>An innately Large ancestry would be an interesting experiment! I do think not giving them reach at level 1 is the most obvious place to start mechanically to alleviate some GM panic attacks. By this point I'm pretty sure we all can kinda get over the narrative hurdle of "but the city is inconvenient for large folk" since the same held true for Sprites being Tiny, and heck even smallfolk tend to have a hard time if they aren't in a society that tends to their needs. If we can accept the fact that out-of-place adventurers are going to have to deal with being out-of-place, then this is not really much different.
>Not sure if this is a reasonable want, but new Ancestries have the same issue as classes - their potential for new content is inherently less than CRB ancestries, since they have to justify their narrative space in a book's theme (especially Uncommon and Rare ones). So I'd like newer ancestries to come out with more options in general, that way they're sorta future-proofed.

I just don't buy that popularity plays much of a factor. We *did* get Daemon Form, after all, and Paizo's got a reputation for having spells that are very targeted towards niche audiences.

CLEARLY there's a conspiracy going on here. Big Angel and Big Fiend are working together to make people forget about the other celestials [end sarcasm].

But honestly I feel like Angel Form would feel fine as a 7th level spell if there were ALSO equivalent 6th level spells to mirror the fiends. There'd still be asymmetry, but since there's no "generic fiend" it'd at least be justified.

There's also the small irritation of Battle Forms in general being the only spells in the game with a clear "upgrade ladder" instead of having reasonable heightened effects like most spells. Really kills the flavor vibe.

I've been thinking a lot about inhabitants of the Outer Planes recently. Having finished a very long Wrath of the Righteous (the CRPG) campaign and being about to start up a 2e-converted Hell's Vengeance tabletop campaign, it's hard not to think about demons and devils and azatas, and such.

When I was noodling around, attempting to build my Knight Commander in 2e for S&Gs, I noticed a few spells from the Arcane list at 6th level that hadn't immediately caught my attention when I first flipped through Secrets of Magic: Demon Form, Daemon Form, and Devil Form. "Neat," I thought. "Wonder if the Divine list has the celestials as battle forms." Look at the Divine list, 6th level, and... nothing.

Now, in reality, I'm not too surprised. The creatures of the lower planes have always had a bit more of a spotlight on them, mostly due in part to the fact that adventurers that are on grand quests that involve Outer Planes tend towards the Good spectrum, thus they're often trying to fight Evil, and so Evil needs to be more fleshed out and interesting. But then, of course, flipping over to 7th level Divine list, I find one celestial form that irks me probably more than it should: Angel Form.

Now, don't get me wrong - I have nothing against angels as creatures. I do like the fact that there is a type of celestial that represents the willingness of "good" outsiders to work with each other, even if their planes represent different core beliefs. What does frustrate me is that angels tend to be used in substitute of ALL the good outsiders, rather than being a separate interconnected group, much like in this instance.

For those not in-the-know, much like how the three Lower Planes each have fiends unique to them - Devils from Hell, Daemons from Abaddon, Demons from the Abyss - each Upper Plane also has its own set of unique inhabitants that represent the different facets of their homes: Heaven has Archons, Nirvana has Agathions, and Elysium has Azatas.

So why, then, do we only get Angel Form? Archons, Agathions, and Azatas are all about as diverse, both mechanically AND flavorfully, as Devils, Daemons, and Demons, and yet we end up with another example of the long list of making all the Upper Planes seem like one blob. If the argument was to save space, then why didn't we get, say, a Fiend Form instead of all three spells?

If you were to create a Battle Form spell for these three outsiders, how would you do it? Which members would you choose for these forms and what abilities would they get?

IMO the best way to do 'neutral' causes is to not actually have a Neutral-alignment-locked cause but rather an alignment-agnostic cause that follows general themes. Pharasma and plenty of other gods hate undead? Undead-smiting cause; alignment-agnostic, as Evil characters can be disgusted by undead, too.
I'm drawing a blank on coming up with more off the top of my head since Champions aren't my class of choice, but that seems like the easiest way to bring neutral Champions into play.

I'll admit I've been pleasantly surprised and pleased by the sheer breadth of ancestries we have at our disposal - there really is something for almost every kind of campaign at this point, especially when you add versatile heritages into the mix.
I do agree it would be nice to get some more support for non-core ancestries, or at least have them come out with some more options at the start to account for how specific or niche they are, since that means that they're less likely to get stuff. I mean, unless we get another AP/Lost Omens book set in Mwangi or other nearby places, we likely aren't gonna get much more for Gnolls or Grippli or Anadi for a bit. But I'm also aware that the current "give options only when they're fitting for the book" is a fine way of doing things for the Lost Omens line. I'm not parched for new Kitsune feats or anything, especially when there's plenty of quality Infinite content I could use for home games.

As for new ancestries? Some proper merfolk would be awesome for an underwater adventure line, especially if there's more than just the typical fish-tails (scylla are cool, yo). Maybe even a versatile heritage for aboleths/aberration type? They seem to like being in the briny deep dark.

More creatures with non bipedal forms would be neat. Snake-leggeds or centaurs or such. Always interesting to see the kinds of tradeoffs you might get for non-standard movement.

Thriae are neat, especially since you could argue for both a Thriae that is still linked to the hive or one that is entirely independent. I think some of them have that four-arm problem, but if we're assuming they're tackling gameplay challenges like this as they come, then I wouldn't be too worried about that.

There is one big group of PC possibilities I would be interested in. We have outsider heritages for the aligned planes, the elemental planes, but what about native outsiders (remember that typing)? Like Kami, for example. It'd be cool if there were heritages or ancestries based upon those spirit-like entities of the Material Plane.

While I'm not really a fan of lumping the books into expectations for primarily one tradition or not (Dark Archive was pretty unique for being primarily occult-themed, and Rage of Elements seems to be more 'Elemental Planes and Elemental Planes accessories' than full Primal), I will say if we get a book whose design ethos is primarily divine-adjacent, it would be absolutely hilarious if it was written as though the bookkeepers of different faiths were vying for space on the page in various levels of tones. Similar to the forewords between the tradition masters in Secrets of Magic.

As for options and contents within the book? Obviously, a couple more Cleric doctrines would be interesting. Maybe an option for an (ironically) godless Champion?
It's hard to talk about specific gods, since that starts to tread the line of Lost Omens line products rather than rulebook products. But perhaps some kind of suggested variant system for creating custom Boons and Curses for players in campaigns where the gods of Golarion aren't present, or perhaps are following splinter sects of gods, or similar situations.

Yeah, all of the base casters (the ones from CRB and APG) get 3 slots for every spell level 9th and below except for Sorcerers, who get 4. Wizard gets a 4th on a technicality because of its Arcane School giving an extra slot for spells of that school specifically, or because Universalist gives you Drain Bonded Item 1/day for every spell level, basically equal to a 4th slot.

I also agree that the Psychic doesn't *invalidate* the Occult Witch so much as it makes me as an Occult Witch a little jealous. Like, gee Psychic, your mom lets you have TWO Focus Points at level 1? AND automatic Focus Point progression? AND feat-free Focus Point spending choices??? AND A LEGENDARY SAVE? All I got was Wizard progression with forced Improved Familiar Attunement for 1 less spell slot per level.

But in reality the spontaneity of Psychics (and their crippling half-slots) does set them apart enough for Occult Witches to still shine, even if those moments are more niche than most would probably think in a vacuum. Not to mention their focus (heh) on blasting for a good portion of their identity with utility being mostly relegated to the 2-slots a day.

Witches are much closer compared to Wizards since they literally have the exact same progression in everything including slots (before school slots). This is why the "Arcane Witch is just diet Familiar Thesis Wizard" comes up a lot, though those arguments tend to forget the feat lists for the classes being meaningfully different enough to matter.

While I don't wanna go on another of my monthly Witch rants (I already used it up in a Reddit thread this month!) the Psychic's plethora of in-built features did make me look a little jealous, even though I immediately knew why it was the case once I saw those slots per level. I just want Basic Lesson to be a 1st level class feature, man. When the wheat-bread poster boy *Wizard* gets more choices for uniqueness than you at 1st level then it feels a little bad (no offense Wizards, y'all are cool).

To maybe stir the conversation to a less comparative one - after all, we all can kinda see that Bards can have pretty big di...geridoos. And honestly continuing to stroke that thing is probably not very productive (it is a wind instrument, after all!). Bards have big buffs and debuffs that can work damn well if the battle can be positioned around them enough, and Occult Witch is able to single out targets from most any position and do similar things with slightly less impact-per-turn but also more choice in what they can do in-between. It also varies heavily table-by-table which can work in more scenarios. That much is clear and repeating it with a bunch of stats in a vacuum doesn't do more but reaffirm the latter fact.

Backpedaling a bit, I kinda want to explore the idea of unique familiar and master abilities for the Witch. I think it would be cool if all Witches got access to a small-to-medium list of odd-themed general choices while each patron theme would then grant them a small list of abilities unique to them.

I'd like to hear what ideas others have for either this general list or maybe some for specific patrons. Exact balance doesn't necessarily have to matter (to a sensical point, of course), it's likely best (or at least, for me, more fun) to design these things top-down, as it were.

For reference, the list of current Patron themes are Curse (Occ), Fate (Occ), Fervor (Div), Night (Occ), Rune (Arc), Wild (Pri), Winter (Pri), and of course good ol' Baba Yaga (Occ).

From the "People of the Mwangi" section, under Rarity:

To reflect the cultural makeup of the Mwangi Expanse, GMs might consider adjusting the rarity of various applicable ancestries.

● Kobolds, lizardfolk, and orcs are considered common ancestries.
● Gnomes and goblins are considered uncommon.
● Certain uncommon ancestries with strong ties to Garund, such as catfolk, gnolls (page 110), and gripplis (page 118), can be considered common if the group and GM so choose.

So the notion that an ancestry's rarity changing based on location does in fact lie with the GM. This makes sense, since your party might be something like a Pathfinder Society messenger group from the Inner Sea and so it wouldn't make much sense to change the list of common ancestries for them. Unless, of course, the GM allowed one of the characters to play as a guide for them, in which case that player could be allowed a different set of common ancestries to pick for that feat.

Unfortunately, if a GM wishes to play a campaign of their own design, it is ultimately on them to decide what ancestries their players will be allowed and whether or not a discussion can be made therein. There's no real avoiding that unless you're playing an AP which specifically restricts ancestries or something.

I think it depends on the types of players at your tables (as does... well, a lot of considerations for 2e in general).

If you all don't want the game to possibly become too easy and/or like to optimize things a lot, Free Archetype is likely not your cup of tea.

Characters don't tend to be *super* powerful with FA unless they take the Goldilocks combo of feats, which depends entirely on the campaign and the context of the other PCs. But if you do find that Goldilocks combo then things might start to feel too easy.

Most of the time with FA variant the biggest thing to worry about is making sure that there's nobody stepping on each other's toes.

I like the rule personally, and I've built characters with and without it. It really does feel like you have to *search* for ways to break it, and it allows you to mechanically express some deeper character concepts that might otherwise feel too claustrophobic. But I can see where it can possibly become 'Too flexible', especially in APs where the party isn't meant to have it.

Double Class Feats is an interesting rule that you could possibly use alongside FA - basically people who want to spread their interests wide would use FA and someone who wants to play a character that wants to specialize uses DCF.

Yeah, I doubt they will *never* print feats for newer ancestries - they seem to be on top of supporting everything they make pretty well so far - it's just most likely that when writing these books, after they slotted all the feats they created for those ancestries into levels, that none of them seemed to fit the power of a 17th level slot.

Core ancestries, of course, will always just have more options because the core rulebook ancestries not only came out first (so new non-lore rulebooks will almost always have at least a couple things for them just by association), but are meant to be "peoples that are common and permeate throughout most of Golarion". Thusly, even lore books have a small chance of containing things for them - since it's likely that there's a unique culture of them pesky humans even in, like, the Darklands.

Wizards definitely need, like, something too. Their whole shtick seems to be "default caster that other casters bounce off of to feel unique" which does kinda blow.

Maybe if the Arcane Schools did each something unique? Universalists obviously get an extra feat and *any* first level spell choice, as well as the neat Drain Bonded Item-per-spell-level thing. Why don't the other schools do more than give you extra slots and a fixed spell of 1st level (plus the school spell). I guess you could argue the School Spell *is* the unique thing but like... eh?

Also the Arcane Theses could stand to be more than they are. Staff Nexus seems the most out-there of them (which, considering it came from APG rather than CRB, makes sense and at least shows that more interesting things may be on the way).

Wizards' theme should probably be "THE most flexible Arcane caster" as a theme, but, yeah, even one more spell slot doesn't really help that all too much.

I think having a hybrid caster chassis is fine if there's a reason to take a little less defense and spell versatility.

...Which, for the Witch, again, is supposed to be their Hexes. Thus, why I think it would be fine if they got two free lessons, if we got literally nothing else.

I don't think it's fair to say 'The witch is built unlike the other casters' and then in the same breath say 'Well the other classes have to pay for their Focus Spells so why shouldn't Witch'. And the answer is because the whole class is themed around giving up a spell slot per spell level to gain a wide array of Focus Hexes to toy with and a Familiar that is more versatile than all others.

Also agree that the getting rid of the hex cooldown (or at least not making them the length of a whole damn encounter) would really improve things. One hex per round is... unnecessary, but I'm not sure if it's really harmful. At the very least it would stop people from saying "well Witch's first turn is almost always just casting two Hexes and then sitting on them lol".

You could also argue because "positive damage" is the essence of life and living, that positive damage to living things (that can receive it) could be somewhat like a cancer - it spreads throughout the body, creating masses of tumors as cells refuse to decay and die, becoming faster and more efficient at mitosis, while its genetic material never decays. And eventually ends in the body overheating from all the chemical reactions, or (in the case of that one monster in Bestiary 3 that heals you too much) you literally explode.

Positive damage to undead, though, is probably something more akin to, say, 'restarting' chemical reactions that the necromantic magic halted, causing cell functions to resume - which, since there's no more blood flowing through the body, causes it to decay.

Well, you can't really fairly compare the two - Pathfinder 1st edition had *ten years'* worth of content added to it, even more if you want to count things that could port over from 3.5e.

Pathfinder 2e has been out for a year and some time now, and the designers are doing their best to get 'caught-up' so-to-speak on the most wanted carry-overs while still maintaining quality.

And I'll say that 2e has a *lot* less "trap" feats than 1st edition, even relatively. This is due to the game being designed around 'vertical' growth (that is, your character getting 'better' at something numerically) being mostly automatic, and the feats you pick are designed more towards 'horizontal' progression (as in, the amount of options your character has at any given point in time). Sure, not every feat in every class is perfect (else we wouldn't have this thread, of course) but the main theme of the character-building part of the game seems to be in the direction of "flavor by feats, get better with time". There are still some feat "trees" of course, which allow you to get better at a theme you picked before, but they usually don't give you hard numerical advantage, rather giving you things like Extra Focus Spells or augmenting an action you have.

For an example pertaining explicitly to Witch characters, the new Ruby Pheonix adventure path's hair feats are a great point to look at. You take the Living Hair feat because you like the idea of a witch whose hair can beat the crap outta people and just generally be a threat. The later feats don't increase that damage (that can be augmented with just Handwraps, as somebody confirmed above), but they augment the hair with extra traits, like reach and the ability to channel certain Hexes through them. And yes, while they aren't the 'optimal' choice per se, and I think they could be better, that's not relevant to the argument - that being Pathfinder 2e's design is made such that "trap" feats typically only come about due to balancing, rather than the ideas of the feats. In an ideal world, you aren't missing core character progression when you pick any feat in the class.

...Which, of course, is why the Witch feels so out-of-place for me, and for a few others that agree with that consensus.

Quote:

When you successfully cast a hex focus spell that requires 2 or more actions to cast and that doesn't require a spell attack roll, if your target is within your reach, as part of the spellcasting activity you can make a hair Strike against the foe before applying any effects of the hex. If this Strike misses, the hex has no effect.

Sigh

Hexes that cost two actions: Malicious Shadow, Curse of Death, Restorative Momemnt, Glacial Heart (Rare).

Three of them are Major Lessons, and Malicious Shadow you literally save one action get a Shadow that still increase your MAP.

That's the thing that bugs me. Like Elemental Betrayal would be awesome. Get yourself some Flaming Handwraps, and you've got Grapple Flaming Reach hair with Elemental Betrayal hex cast through your hair.

But Elemental Betrayal is only 1 action and thus doesn't qualify.

Yeah, that was kinda my problem with it, too. Like I get it - getting a spell for the equivalent of a whole action less is pretty powerful - if not for numbers, then for sheer economy and versatility.

But, like, did it *really* have to be restricted to two-action hexes? You already have to make an attack roll to hit someone or else the hex is completely lost regardless, and all the hex cantrips have a per-target cooldown anyways! And even if you *do* hit they still have to, you know, roll their regular saves anyways? It's basically just a feat that says "When you cast a two-action hex on an enemy that's within your hair's reach, you may perform a Strike against them as a free action."

Actually, that would be better - you don't waste the spell if you miss!

At the *very* least it was seen and changed a little bit. I personally would argue for more leniency, but the GM clause is there so hopefully that allows for tables to better use this ancestry.

It's surprising how much a single line that basically just reaffirms Rule 0 can change the dynamic of a rule. Like, sure, a GM can technically do whatever they and the players are okay with - but if even the book says it then it feels a lot less like a jury-rig and more like a 'we decided this.'

If it were my table I'd probably rule that:
- Spider form Anadi could wield a shield in a spider leg in exchange for a -5 penalty to all of their speeds (Having an odd balance and needing more careful movement than normal).
- Still no conventional weapons, but they can wield held items of Light or Negligible Bulk in their pedipalps - but while they do so they cannot use their fang attack, as obviously the object is in the way.
- A material component pouch or spellcasting focus can be tied around the Anadi's... neck-equivalent area and used by the pedipalps for material (or focus) components of spells if and only if the pedipalps aren't holding anything (which... I think would just count as 'not having a free hand' but since Anadi are ambiguous that way, probably best to be specific). If another table were to use this and think that's too powerful then you can maybe make the pouch/focus require investment, like a magic item.
- There's so many actions with the 'manipulate' trait that it'd take forever to go through all of them, but let's just say a lot of these are imaginable when you remember that pedipalps on spiders are often times sensory organs/manipulators (among... other functions) and that having 8 stick legs can still be sorta dexterous as long as you're standing still.

This way there's still 'restrictions' on doing things that the body was not naturally and biologically designed for that you can then take Hybrid Shape to be rid of when you want to, but they don't lock the player out of doing these things entirely - remember; they're still intelligent and sapient spider folk. Humans do things that their bodies aren't made for all the time, after all - we just call it ingenuity!

I think many people agree with you on that one Deriven - I think the most important aspect, as others have stated in better detail above, though, is making sure that when representing another culture and their mythos - even by proxy of reference - that you do so in a way that is not reductive or, even worse, slighting to the culture in question. Obviously the aim is to make a nod to a culture in a way that fully embraces the context in which it came from. I've seen quite the praise for Mwangi Expanse on that front, for instance.

It's a difficult thing for writers to do sometimes if you're trying to represent a culture that isn't yours. Even if you're trying your best not to color things in an unintended way, if you aren't working with people of that culture or who know that culture more intimately than you then inevitably some cultural biases might sneak through unbeknownst even to you.

Never forget about your cantrips, either! Sometimes I've seen people devalue cantrips because of their low immediate damage (leading to low damage-per-round), but if you really need to save slots, they've still got by definition the best bang-for-buck, especially since they're auto-heightened to the highest spell level you can cast. Electric Arc is, of course, always a good meme, but Ray of Frost and Produce Flame aren't strictly bad, either. They're like your Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder compared to the spell slots being Firaga, Blizzaga, and Thundaga.

It's all about that mana (slot) management! Just make sure your Fighter is keeping things at arms-length.

It's a fun thing to note that, while TTRPG and JRPG games tend to be fairly different, specifically Final Fantasy has a lot of Western archetypal influence and vice versa, or at the very least came to similar ends through different means, even when looking back all the way to FF1. Nowadays it'd be hard to look at a game like FF14 and then at a modern fantasy TTRPG and not be like "huh, there's a lot of overlap here, huh?"

Speaking of cool Final Fantasy stuff in 2e, yoshisman8 on the 2e Homebrew Reddit made a cool Red Mage Archetype and even a whole Astrologian class based on those in FF14. Very neat. Relatedly, PF2Tools' creation tools are some of the best things to happen to 2e homebrew.

But as for BLM in 2e specifically? As others have mentioned, the classic fire/ice/lightning combo exists within Arcane list alongside other things BLMs have done in the series, such as Haste (for more actions) and Fly, and Lulu in FFX even has a Bonded Item as her familiar! ...Or a Poppet, if that's more your thing.

WHM is definitely either a Divine or Primal caster, considering their access to Water/Stone/Aero in some games (though those three things sometimes overlap into BLM too), as well as sometimes having access to Summons (though sometimes that's split into its own class).

Even if you did manage to nail every single RK check, I'm pretty sure even the heckin' Dark Tapestry doesn't have 45 checks' worth of Knowledge - even if you went from the wiki and improvised!

At that point I'd probably ask the player to keep it to, like, once a session at *least* just so it doesn't get annoying, and it'd be played out like a scene from Limitless or something where the character has a divine clarity moment and just remembers everything they've ever heard about the thing - (basically just giving them the whole statblock and saying "you know everything but exact numbers")

I agree with Midnightoker as well - and personally I think the biggest problem lay in the fact that the Witch, like Oracle, had expectations of a theme going into it. Yet, unlike Oracle, the major themes that bind the chassis of the class together can be skipped altogether by someone, completely unbeknownst to them.

Wizards, Clerics, Druids, and Bards all either don't have a pervasive defining theme to their class (Like Wizard, the generic smarty boy) or their defining themes are given to them naturally with *extras* they can decide to lean into later. (This, of course, brings back the topic of Wizard probably needing a look-over to actually gain a theme of their own but that's a topic for another thread).

Sorcerers have a similar style of the Witch, being super flexible background-based caster, but while they can skip their bloodline Focus Spells, they can't skip the extra spells known through bloodline nor the signature spells that come with being a spontaneous caster, which still helps them feel unique.

If you look at martials, it's a similar story - everyone that isn't Fighter gets special baked-in feats that help progress the idea of the class without having to spend extra feats for it - you still *can*, you just aren't forced to. Fighter makes up for this lack of 'progression' by just kinda being able to do whatever they want since they always get Attack of Opportunity and Combat Flexibility, letting them just kinda vibe with whatever hodgepodge you pick.

I don't necessarily think the Witch is weak - especially when you take the fact that party dynamics allow for one Witch to be able to fill almost any non-martial hole imaginable, its versatility is great and as I said, I do *like* the current iteration.

I do think, however, that we have to invest a lot more than other classes to get to what the class advertises.

From the APG Witch blurb: "Through a special familiar, your patron grants you versatile spells and powerful hexes to use as you see fit..."

We do get an inherently better familiar numbers-wise (though I just wish we got more interesting unique abilities to pick for those familiars, which in the current system is possible and might come in the future, but for now it's lackluster). And we do partially get the 'versatile spells' in the pick-a-list dynamic.

However, the other part of the 'versatile spells' and the 'powerful hexes to use as you see fit' are locked behind Lesson feats - meaning in reality not every Witch does in fact have versatile spells or enough hexes to use as they please.

I was curious how much two baked-in Lessons would change my Witch's build, so I hopped into Pathbuilder and gave her a free feat at 4th and 8th level, which had to be spent on a Basic and a Greater Lesson. And I gotta say I felt much more happy even considering the other feat options without the burden of losing out on the feeling of 'being a Witch' during encounters. Sure, I still took Major Lesson I and II - but that was because I felt like they fit the character's theme, not because I didn't feel like I had enough hexes. I was even allowed to push a couple feats earlier and even took Conceal Spell (which I couldn't fit in the build before because Basic Lesson was in the way, even though I knew my character would want to do that real bad).

Does this really prove anything? Not really - nothing other than "If you give someone free feats they get more freedom to choose more feats". But honestly, considering most of the other Witch class feats (at the moment, anyhow) are either Metamagic, alternate playstyles, or 'get familiar more better', it didn't feel like I was becoming more 'vertically' powerful, if that makes sense. If anyone would be willing to try this in a game and say if it felt 'too versatile' or not that'd be great, but obviously that's easier said than done, and it doesn't fix the flavor disconnects that some people still have that aren't me.

I mean all Hybrid Form needs to be is just that - just a way to access the best of both worlds. It doesn't "need a reason to exist" because it already does, just as the Kitsune's does. All a Kitsune loses by changing into their human form is their Kitsune unarmed strikes, and all they gain is counting as having created a disguise when Impersonating. Hybrid Form lets them "speak in a fox form, use kitsune unarmed attacks in a tailless form, or gain a tail in your tailless form to use abilities that require one."

If you changed the limitation on spider form to only be on wielding weapons, then you would still have a great reason to pick up Hybrid Form mechanically - you would gain your unarmed strike (and possibly venom) and not be flat-footed when Climbing, *and* you would get access to weapons!

That sounds completely fine to me. As it is now, Anadi spellcasters who want to be in spider form are feat taxed into taking Hybrid Form, and even then it's still not *really* spider form. And we know how much feat taxing is antithetical to 2e.

Heyyy, looks like the Ruby Phoenix APs gave Witches a full Living Hair path to go down, so that's pretty cool. Don't know how good it is since it only goes up to 1d6 - seems mostly useful for attempting combat maneuvers and delivering hexes with reach... even though all the enemy-targeting hexes of 2 actions have 30 feet range. The Capstone is cool, too, making you quickened for one free hair Strike a round.
But, uh, that doesn't mean you can cast a spell and then deliver a 2 action hex each round because delivering the hex makes the Strike a part of the Cast a Spell action, not its own action... so you don't get to use the quickened action for it.
I mean you could cast a spell, sustain one, and then clobber someone for 1d6, but meh.

I mean I guess if you've got enough Dex hitting with finesse hair wouldn't be too bad, and damage is damage, but it's certainly no Int to hit like in PF1.

Honestly, could they not make delivering the hex part of the Strike and not the other way around? It just feels awkward. You can't even like upgrade the hair damage farther than 1d6, not even a clause for Handwraps like Kitsune's Foxfire gets.

Except, once again, look in the stat block for the Anadi Hunter, Elder, and Sage from Hellknight Hill. Their Change Shape block is worded similarly, and likely meant to be the exact same ability, usage-wise.

"Change Shape [Single Action] (arcane, concentrate, polymorph, transmutation) The anadi changes into their hybrid form, spider form, or human form. The above statistics assume the anadi is in their hybrid form. While in their human form, the anadi hunter can't use their fangs attack and loses their climb Speed. When in spider form, they can't use weapons."

I wonder if at some point they were toying with all PC Anadi having an innate Climb Speed and so had those restrictions in place so that you weren't just blasting spells from places melees could never hope to hit you from, but right before finalizing and printing somebody axed the Climb Speed but forgot to undo the extra restrictions, too.

The reason Witch's familiars are warranted so much Focus is because, in many cases, they're the primary modus of interaction between the Witch and their patron. There are lots of more reasons why a patron may not want to talk to their witch directly - they don't have all the time in the world, after all, and may be patron to more than one Witch, or cleric, or what have you - Hell, some patrons might not even be physically present, but are abstract concepts or coalescences of powerful energy like Ley Lines or something. For (the eventual) Outer God or Dark Tapestry witches out there, there's even the argument that the patron doesn't acknowledge the Witch at all.

Thusly, the Familiar is, for most intents and purposes, either a communication/teaching tool, or the direct teacher. That is why they are not only your spellbook, but also supposed to be 'better' and one of the primary foci of the class.

Familiars as a concept may not be unique to the Witch, but the idea is supposed to be they have the best and most complex relationships with them.

Looking at it, when comparing Bard and Witch as others have, it would be nice if Witches didn't have the stupidly long lockouts on their cantrips. 1 minute is, like, *most* combats (which I think was kinda the point). At least that would make the one cantrip you *do* get a lot more meaningful. (And frankly Bard's composition cantrips should gain at least a small one but that's not only my opinion, but a whole other can of worms.) If we don't get the ability for more Hex Cantrips, then at least don't lock us out of the one if it fizzled the first time! Pathfinder 1 Evil Eye and most of the other hexes were good enough to justify having the cooldown because they were practically *all cantrips*.

Even if it were something like Evil Eye having a 1d4 round-per-target 'recharge' similar to a Breath Weapon, with the slight randomness allowing for a nice variation in turns. Some... probably shouldn't even have a cooldown at all (Looking at you, Discern Secrets and Wilding Word and Shroud of Night). It would be nice if we didn't have them at all, but sometimes part of me thinks that someone at Paizo is convinced that "the enemy wising up to your tricks" is also part of the core identity of Witch...

I don't think it's fair to say that pick-a-list isn't a big deal, at least in terms of what classes get what. They may be more generic, yes, but your spell list choice is still very important when playing a Sorcerer/Witch. There's a reason that the core casters (and Oracle) are built around having a single list, after all. It can be considered 'their defining style.'

Now, do I think it should be considered as part of a class's "power budget" when designing it? ...Not really. As you said, you only get one , and currently we don't have any sort of Serve Two Masters to get funky with mixing and matching and such things probably won't come for a while since it toys with the Four Lists system in a way the designers currently haven't seemed to be comfortable with yet.

But it *is* still an important way to define your Witch. After all, a Witch that chose the Primal list will almost definitely play different to one that chose the Occult list.

I think the only problem I see with a 'deeply mechanical' patron as the way I'm perceiving your summary of it is that it would take a *lot* of text for that. Oracles do have plenty of flavor and mechanics meshed together with their Mysteries, and to do that means that each mystery took up literally half a page of text. If you're wanting to go even more in-depth than that with bargains/restrictions/similar things it'll take even more than that.