Naga domain got some big changes. In particular the advanced spell is completely rewritten.
Syncretism appears to have vanished.
The giant, goblin, and orcish pantheons have been added. So have infernal dukes, daemon harbingers, sakhil tormentors, and qlippoth lords. Sadly no velstrac demagogues, rakshasa immortals, or oni daimyo.
They also added stats for Aroden, the Devourer (from Starfinder), Lissala, Camazotz and some other gods.
On the other hand, actually activating the lightweave scarf requires you to cast an incapacitation spell that is well below the level of enemies you are facing, so the actual spell is an action tax that is unlikely to do anything.
You just use it as a no-save AoE dazzled, you don't care about the save or incap trait or anything. It's a really nice item, and remains so way past its level
What's even more ironic is that spellhearts can suffer the "box of wands" issue due to how silly gp costs scale.
Why would anyone buy an L15 L-Scarf to get that 2nd (incap) spell p day, when that 5,500 gp could by *TEN* of the L8 L-Scarfs for 10 daily attempts at the hit-confusion?
(That's what yall invented the Invested trait for, Paizo! If an item is p day and doesn't have Invested, yall need to really think about putting some other safety-limiter in there, c'mon.)
I continue to be amazed that every permanent magic item does not have the Invested trait. You can have 10 invested things at once! Where's the holdup?
And yeah the sack o' wands is so classic it's barely worth remarking over.
I just don't really see that bearing out in practice. Exemplar dedication is an outlier, but even then mostly as a testament to how tight the game is. PC2 and WoI are largely fine.
I'm playing an Oracle in Kingmaker, so "PC2 is largely fine" is... not an opinion I share. But hey, we might get errata at some point for minor details like "how many spells does the class get?" that we're just relying on PFS rulings for right now.
Basic stuff like that shouldn't really be in that state, but there's multiple basic, obvious problems with PC2 Oracle before even getting into the subjective stuff around what they actually changed.
Yeah, it definitely feels like a lot of power creep went on in PC2 in regards to the classes. Some classes needed it because their baseline was junk (Swashbuckler, Alchemist), other classes didn't honestly need it because they were still powerful as it is but still got some anyway (Barbarian, Sorcerer), and some classes became more confusing/nerfed as a result when all they really needed was some basic tweaking (Oracle, Champion).
(Obligatory shout out to evil champion, which was not fixed and still sucks)
Sorcerer is in a weird space. Getting dangerous sorcery was necessary given it's a highly poachable feat tax otherwise. Honestly the nerfbat to crossblooded feels like it more than kneecapped the sorcerer power ceiling, though. Being able to steal heal as an occult/arcane sorcerer was huge, as was being able to pilfer decent direct damage spells as a divine sorc or decent control (hideous laughter, roaring applause) as primal.
Some sorcerer focus spells saw boosts (dragon, imperial, and demon) but all of them were earned, given all of them had pretty garbage 1st level focus spells in the CRB.
Frankly, as someone who plays a lot of sorcerers - CRB sorc is likely stronger than PC2 sorc. Eliminating a feat tax and improving a few bloodlines doesn't make up for the orbital nuking of the crossblooded line of feats.
Now, am I happy dragon/demon/imperial got fixed and that dangerous sorcery is no longer a feat tax? Yes. PC2 sorcerer is objectively a better-written class. But again the ceiling is likely weaker.
You can make an argument that Victor's Wreath isn't as bad because most parties already have Inspire Courage/Bless/Heroism. But that presupposes a very specific party composition and is in my opinion a bad argument. Especially because Inspire Courage costs at least one action (more depending on your choices) per fight and is literally the core bard class feature.
And (say it with me now) it's also not available off a dedication feat.
I think at least 50% of the complaints are that, really. It's still ridiculously strong as a level 6 feat like Champion Reaction, a level 8 feat like Anthemic Performance, or a level 10 feat like Flurry of Blows, but the dedication thing is just wildly out of line.
So... I just had a potentially interesting/horrific idea:
A class archetype for Summoners where they trade in their Eidolon for a magical weapon born from their imagination.
They're proficiency level would be the same as Eidolons with their unarmed strikes... but only for their weapon (which I'll just call an Eidolon weapon), not any similar weapon.
Meaning, just because their Eidolon weapon takes the form of a Sword, does not mean the Summoner has Master in swords.
The justification could be that the Eidolon Weapon is actually guiding the Summoner's strikes, hence why the Summoner isn't actually that proficient with weapons.
What do you guys think?
Gives me the classic Black Blade/ Black Razor vibes.
Oh lord, not Michael Moorcock. goes off muttering something about Epic Pooh
I agree with Squiggit though that summoner could really use better proficiency. Mostly because dragon riders are sad right now, and I want them to not be sad.
I'd like to point out if you're a thief racket rogue of level 12 or beyond your might as well be dealing +2d6 sneak-attack damage raising the damage from 21 and 28 to 28 and 35 respectfully, meaning a thief racket rogue is on par with a d12 weapon Ikon. Especially if you both have Gleaming Blade, oh wait Shortswords are agile meaning the Rogue should be actually above the curve. Not to mention their Reaction to stab a gain at level 8, meaning they should do more damage on average but 3 actions to Gleaming Blade as a Barbarian is fun but nothing says gimmick stopped for a round as the phrase. "Having to move." - Which is why the Starlit Span Magus specializes in, not moving period to use their Burst Damage Gimmick!
Also unless you Transcendence with the Shadow Sheath, getting people Off-Guard in standard play is rather difficult unless you got friends/allies to help with that.
A man with a greataxe and this dedication (and inexplicably, no other class features) deals similar damage to a rogue. That's my entire point. Because the other person does in fact have other class features. They stack with it. That's why it is broken.
I was comparing with Sneak Attack to point out that this is an entire class feature worth of extra damage. Like, it's not as though rogues can't take this dedication. And it is entirely cumulative with Sneak Attack.
As can barbarians. And since it's purely the immanence effect, there's nothing stopping you from starting the combat with Gleaming Blade up. For the low low cost of absolutely no actions whatsoever.
So I'll see your vanilla rogue and raise you an entire rage instinct's worth of damage, a reactive strike, and a pile of barbarian feats. And that is why you don't hand out core class features on dedications - because THIS is what happens. It is no different than handing out Sneak Attack on a dedication. Or fighter weapon proficiency scaling. Even champion multiclass (which is notoriously OP) had the good grace to hide the reaction behind both the dedication AND a level 6 feat.
... a 2nd-level dedication feat adding 8 spirit damage to Strikes and thinking it was okay.
That's an overly simplified way of presenting it.
The dedication feat does not add any spirit damage to any strikes. It grants a choice of an ikon.
Only weapon ikons grant additional damage.
If a player chooses a Worn or Body Ikon, they get zero additional damage for their 2nd-level dedication.
The additional damage of weapon ikons' immanence is not a flat +8 damage "as a 2nd-level dedication," but +Xper damage die. Which means that, generally, at most, if taken at Level 2, it will be +2 damage to start! And it won't scale to +8 until level 19 (barring early access to Major striking runes).
And they aren't all +2 per damage die. One is 1 persistent damage per die. A couple are 1 splash damage per die. And etcetera.
None of the weapon ikons give a universal damage boost. Each only apply to a subset of weapons.
It's true, it gives you a choice of ikons. Which is actively stronger than just always handing you Gleaming Blade. Because giving a choice makes it even more versatile than it would otherwise be, depending on your build. Want to steal shadow sheathe for thrown weapons? Go ahead. Want an aura of +1 to hit? Indulge yourself.
But let's assume you steal Gleaming Blade or Shadow Sheathe (because they're really good in combat, and players are not fools). I'm not sure people are fully wrapping their heads around how much bonus damage this actually is.
math:
Shadow sheathe deals +3 damage per weapon die against off-guard people. That's 3 damage at 2nd level, 6 damage at 4th level, 9 damage at 12th level, and 12 damage at 19th level (going by automatic bonus progression, which is usually what you expect PCs to purchase as well).
Meanwhile, Sneak Attack (the full class feature, exclusive to people who actually take the Rogue class) deals 3.5 damage at 1st level, 7 damage at 5th level, 10.5 damage at 11th level, and 14 damage at 16th level.
Shadow sheathe's damage curve is, um, very similar to Sneak Attack. In fact, one might even say the numbers are basically identical.
You may protest, and say that rogues can fight in melee too and don't need to use thrown weapons. Sure, that's fair. And I raise you Gleaming Blade, which can be used with a greataxe as opposed to just finesse weapons. So you're dealing, assuming other damage modifiers are equal (they aren't because rogues don't have a high strength modifier like greataxe people do, but whatever):
So yeah. You're basically handing out Sneak Attack. On a multiclass feat. If you think Sneak Attack is balanced as a multiclass feat, then feel free to houserule Rogue dedication as giving full Sneak Attack. I don't know anyone who thinks that is sane, but you may think so, and if so: have fun.
Several people have suggested making immanence abilities unavailable to multiclass exemplars, but what about banning them from having weapon ikons instead?
Wouldn't fully solve the problem. Victor's wreathe isn't a weapon ikon but is still completely nuts. It's a 16th level cleric feat...as a dedication. Which also gives, as a side benefit, one of the best ways to remove effects (curses, drained, whatever) in the game. It's especially bonkers post remaster, where things like Sound Body, Clear Mind, etc require counteract rolls to work.
It fixes the alleged problem of having "nothing" to do offensively against creatures with all three mythic resilience saves. Of course it does less damage than an average strike, you're not a martial. A martial can't apply mythic proficiency to 3-4 strikes per round for 1 minute off a single mythic point expenditure.
You're also dazzling it constantly if you keep hitting it every round.
Still does nothing for the core problem of mythic Resiliency: making any non-support spell obsolete.
Imagine if Mythic Resistance instead downgraded attacks. And the solution was "grab a cantrip with your fighter, problem solved!".
I admit. I do remain completely appalled that mythic martials can bypass mythic resistance but casters have no equivalent for mythic resilience. It's just very poor design and if someone with an ax to grind against wanted to pick it up, it's sort of sitting right there as an argument in the old "Paizo hates casters because my wizard can no longer kill pantheons at level 10" debate" that we've been seeing since 2E came out.
I don't think they hate casters, for the record. But I do think it's bad design.
Are most Exemplars' abilities linked to electricity and sound, or can you change it?
I recall an ability that deals extra electricity damage on a critical hit.
What if my deity is fire or winter-based? Is there an alternate way to change the damage without leaning too much on houserules?
Yes - there is a level 1 Feat called Energized Spark that lets you pick a damage type that you can change your Spirit damage abilities to. Your Dominion Epithet at level 7 also gives you this Feat for free with two choices of damage types.
I totally missed that. Thanks for pointing it out. Very thematic.
On the scale of RPG systems the Exemplar archetype is hardly a blip. In most systems, it would not even be noteworthy as an outlier.
But that doesn't really mean anything. Like, 'other system' is right there on the tin, an unintelligible unique set of rules. Giving a 5e character Pathfinder proficiency bonuses instead of their own would be really overpowered too.
Oh and Exemplar Dedication would be really broken in Fate Core, considering that attacks often do 1-2 damage and it's not uncommon to be rolling 3-4 dice on a fresh character if it's your main skill (or it might do nothing at all I guess if you don't interpret Fight or Shoot checks as weapon die).
... It's like, fundamentally nonsensical to point out whether an ability would be disruptive in another system.
It's not about porting the rules to a different system as is, but judging the impact of a small bump in melee damage in the grand scheme of things. If an archetype that grants melee martial characters +10-20% damage is what's going to break your experience it shows that PF2, or perhaps just its players, is a brittle system.
5e, for all the forumgoers here disparage it, is a far less brittle system. It does rely on a strong social contract and ensuring that your group wants the kind of game the GM wishes to run, but it is also a system that isn't derailed when a strictly better option is printed.
5e as written is exceptionally brittle. Even within classes there's subclass options that are worthless and subclass options that break the game. (See Trickery vs Twilight clerics). You cannot run the system as written without having to make a lot of homerules and edits, espeically as you start breaking into the high levels.
Every 5e game i've been in or ran has banlists for this reason, and those banlists make the ones here blush.
I've run it without one before, but never at high level (past level 9). High level 5e needs to be hacked into working. High level PF 2E works shockingly well as-is and requires basically no modification. It honestly plays better than low-level games, in my opinion.
On the scale of RPG systems the Exemplar archetype is hardly a blip. In most systems, it would not even be noteworthy as an outlier.
But that doesn't really mean anything. Like, 'other system' is right there on the tin, an unintelligible unique set of rules. Giving a 5e character Pathfinder proficiency bonuses instead of their own would be really overpowered too.
Oh and Exemplar Dedication would be really broken in Fate Core, considering that attacks often do 1-2 damage and it's not uncommon to be rolling 3-4 dice on a fresh character if it's your main skill (or it might do nothing at all I guess if you don't interpret Fight or Shoot checks as weapon die).
... It's like, fundamentally nonsensical to point out whether an ability would be disruptive in another system.
It's not about porting the rules to a different system as is, but judging the impact of a small bump in melee damage in the grand scheme of things. If an archetype that grants melee martial characters +10-20% damage is what's going to break your experience it shows that PF2, or perhaps just its players, is a brittle system.
5e, for all the forumgoers here disparage it, is a far less brittle system. It does rely on a strong social contract and ensuring that your group wants the kind of game the GM wishes to run, but it is also a system that isn't derailed when a strictly better option is printed.
5e's system is brittle in the sense that it literally cannot be sustainably played at the majority of levels it supposedly supports. It really only functions at levels 3-9 or so, and even there some options blow others out of the water (hypnotic pattern and fireball, I'm looking at you).
Level 1 and 2 PCs routinely get splattered by critical hits. At higher levels, PCs can trivially demolish encounters with wall of force and forcecage, break the action economy with planar binding, break the actual economy with a whole host of tricks, and of course all the usual high-level rocket tag that D&D is infamous for (domination, plane shifting enemies to hell, etc). The saving throw DCs of high level monsters make system math break down - try making a DC 25 Intelligence saving throw with a "mere" +4 intelligence modifier. Go ahead. I'll wait. You'll roll a natural 21 on that d20 at some point, right?
Even with a strong social contract most GMs eventually start having to ban things simply because the encounter rules break down and because player options get ludicrously obscene. Most of the people I know who play PF 2E literally signed up for it because they were sick of 5e being the way it is.
As to the thread topic, I don't have the book yet, and I want to be positive as it seams a lot of great things but my favorite thing, Eidolons, don't seem to have any exceptions to work with mythic so I'm a bit bummed. As a gish, adding mythic to just one aspect of your character instead of both doesn't feel great.
I think eidolons probably work okay with mythic actually. At least as far as "being functional" with it. "Your eidolon's Strikes benefit from the fundamental and property runes on your handwraps of mighty blows" includes mythic runes (which are fundamental runes). So at least its strikes won't bounce off mythic immunity. But yeah, Mythic Strike isn't going to work.
It's actually a really good point though - I didn't even consider summoner until you brought it up.
Mythic runes, IIRC, are level 20 only. Eidolons (and animal companions) are going to be very sad about the mythic resistance abilities NPCs can get and that PCs ignore every level up until then.
You know that's fair, I sort of forgot about that. Equally fairly, it's pretty trivial to houserule.
Not to mention any time a "good" god DOES do something controversial, or is just connected to it, this playerbase NEVER lets them live it down (Sarenrae and the Pit of Gormuz, the Cult of the Dawnflower, the trumpet incident with Iomedae in Wrath of the Righteous, etc.). Like, do you WANT your gods to be <_<
Yeah when I said that, that's what I was thinking about. Between Pharasma briefly being anti-abortion, Sarenrae creating the Pit of Gormuz, Torag and the Quest for the Sky being compared unfavorably to Manifest Destiny, and Erastil being pro-patriarchy, people get really annoyed when "good" gods don't match real-world modern (Western progressive) morals. So most of that stuff has been scrapped over time to make them less controversial. Which is good, I think, for the game reaching a wider player base.
What this means in practice is that there's very little reason for anyone to have an ax to grind against the gods, precisely because the designers made certain that their (modern Western progressive) audience wouldn't have an ax to grind against them. It's the entire point. None of the "good" gods are going to smite people for no good reason.
As to the thread topic, I don't have the book yet, and I want to be positive as it seams a lot of great things but my favorite thing, Eidolons, don't seem to have any exceptions to work with mythic so I'm a bit bummed. As a gish, adding mythic to just one aspect of your character instead of both doesn't feel great.
I think eidolons probably work okay with mythic actually. At least as far as "being functional" with it. "Your eidolon's Strikes benefit from the fundamental and property runes on your handwraps of mighty blows" includes mythic runes (which are fundamental runes). So at least its strikes won't bounce off mythic immunity. But yeah, Mythic Strike isn't going to work.
It's actually a really good point though - I didn't even consider summoner until you brought it up.
There is no point in having ions without the immanence ability. Some work ok, but many transcendence abilities rely on having the immanence active. The Ikons are kinda too individual to balance easily with set limits. It makes more and more sense to me that the dedication is a “talk to your GM about how to implement this/see if it is even a fit for the campaign the GM wants to run.” It feels like any other attempt to bash it apart and then back together again is just going to make the whole dedication useless.
Even if you feel like a +2 spirit damage ikon is too much, do you really feel like all of them are too much? You can just ban certain ones.
Of course, going back to the old days of GMs having to go through everything with a fine toothed comb to figure out what options are okay and what ones aren't isn't really something I want to see PF2 devolve into.
Getting away from that is a feature. If fixing that makes the archetype weak... Summoner Dedication would like a word.
But I think its okay for them to have just said "this wasn't a good fit for an archetype so we didn't do it" vs "this ranges from powerful to the best feat in the game for every martial, figure it out on your own."
Yeah, I think "dedications are sometimes weak" is just a fact of life. It's absolutely not worth..."fixing" like this. And I'd rather that Exemplar dedication were too weak than too strong, especially given that as a player I'd cheerfully burn the feat on the dedication if I could later unlock immanence with, say, an 8th level feat.
The fundamental tradeoff here is whether or not you'd prefer a weak option (which again, already exist in spades) or an outrageously strong option that probably 50% of GMs aren't going to allow anyway. I'd prefer to not audit my players' builds for broken things, because it's annoying and breeds ill will.
Oh, and obligatory shout-out to the kineticist, who (as usual) can't use this autopick martial damage booster. Because never forget: every universal boost to martials like this drags kineticist down by comparison (and diminishes casters, but that's another problem).
...No offense meant, but an ideology can be just as full of human imperfections as any religion.
I'd name some, but I'm not sure I should.
Once more related to this thread:
Did anyone else get "Shaman King" vibes when they first heard about the Animist?
Because not only did I, but everything I've heard from the release seems to mostly confirm those vibes.
It can definitely be flawed, but I meant it in the sense that you will never get hit by lightning because that ideology woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Most of the Paizo holy deities aren't really that similar to Zeus and company, though. Obviously this doesn't apply to the unholy gods, but someone like Shelyn or Arshea seems pretty omnibenevolent. I don't really think Arshea goes in for thunderbolts at all, honestly. Their anathema is literally "being too judgmental."
I mean, not that I want to tell you how to play. If you want Shelyn or Arshea or whoever to go all "and then I turned him into a shrub because he forgot to burn the thighbones of an ox at my temple one Friday twelve years ago", you can. But it just doesn't match the character Paizo is trying to present, as far as I can tell. They're not going to blast you just for kicks or because they got cranky one day.
For the record, I support clerics of ideals 200%. They're awesome. I just think that this critique of the deities is less valid than it often is in ancient polytheistic societies like Rome, where religion is built around bribing the gods to do what you want and living in constant fear of getting cursed/zapped/blown up.
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Besides, let’s be real: I highly doubt the developers are going to include capitalism or dictatorship among the covenant options.
I'm guessing the covenants will be more like edicts and anathemas. Things like "killing is wrong" (Qi Zhong's anathema) or "have you considered making people miserable today?" (literally Zon-Kuthon's edict)
So after paizo nerfed the monk archytype to no longer offer the monks stiker feature at 10th level, I am dubious that they intentionally let you grab the exemplars striker feature/ source of extra damage at level 2 because they haven't done than before and its too powerful for a second level feat.
They nerf older options to better sell newer options.
This was probably planned to sell more copies of WoI to the power gaming crowd.
When something new comes along that Paizo wants to sell, ONLY then will the Exemplar archetype get its nerf.
If that were true, champion dedication would have been nerfed for giving the core class feature away at 6th level in player core 2.
I really maintain trying to ascribe motives is overcomplicating things. I do think this is just a blatant error. It reminds me of late 3.x, where they had such a frantic publication schedule that things routinely broke because there was no time to test everything. And because nobody was able to cross check interactions between every one of the dozens of sourcebooks they'd published.
And also power creep for more sales with paizo's content policies makes absolutely no sense. Nobody is going to buy a $70 book for one archetype when the entire rules corpus is available online for the low low price of absolutely no money whatsoever. If it were WotC, sure, but literally every player option is publicly available on Pathbuilder, AoN, and Demiplane.
Yeah. "It's rare therefore it's okay that its ridiculously overpowered" doesn't fly. The fact that it's rare is a convenient excuse to ban it and have cover from the system to do so.
I don't really think the intent was to make it this powerful and hide it behind the Rare tag. I think it's more likely someone just didn't think it through that well in the rush to get the book done. It certainly wouldn't be the first instance of that in this year's books.
I'll be more concerned if they don't rein it in during the errata.
Like I said in the other thread, I get it. They were in a rush to change things after WotC decided to blow up the entire OGL space in a crass and legally tenuous cash grab. I can't blame Paizo for not editing everything as thoroughly as they normally do, given they had to put out four 300-page books in the space of a year on top of keeping to their existing production schedule. It sounds like a nightmare on the backend.
Given they're re-releasing Guns & Gears and Gods & Magic (as Divine Mysteries) I expect similar treatment for the other two big player-facing books (Dark Archive and Secrets of Magic), likely all within calendar year 2025. But once that's complete, I sincerely hope balance returns to normal.
It also means that OP stuff isn't a problem because a GM can just exclude it from the game.
Ultimately an incredibly lazy and toxic way to approach game balance.
I've said it before, but that attitude to balance in game design is why I will never GM PF1 again. I'm older and have limited time to prep now, I'd rather spend it on things like story than on dealing with busted content.
Literally this. I had a similar experience with D&D 5e, and it's an absolute pain. I honestly would not be surprised if it's one reason people get burnt out on GMing in general.
Red Griffyn wrote:
Tridus wrote:
Hence why Exemplar the Class is allowed while Exmplar the Archetype is banned at my table (pending errata).
OR you could do some minor interim homebrew and still allow it at your table?
I could, but its not like people are starved of archetype options. This isn't a problem that desperately needs solving with homebrew, as once you remove the power creep, I suspect the number of people that truly need Exemplar Dedication in their build for narrative reasons is pretty small (and if that does come up, I can grant an exception only for certain ikons).
Yeah there are...what? A few good archetypes? Mostly for martials, not casters? Off the top of my head I can think of:
-Champion (everyone, for reactions)
-Sentinel (everyone, for armor)
-Kineticist (everyone, for aura stances and reactions)
-Bastion (martials, for shields)
-Rogue (martials, for sneak attack, mobility, gang up, opportune backstabber)
-Sniping duo (martials, for archers only)
-Psychic (casters/magus, for focus spells)
And now this. I suppose mythic ones are also on the table now (apocalypse rider looks quality as a dip, as do prophesied monarch and eternal legend) but they're both 12+ and probably not allowed at a lot of tables because they're part of mythic. Sort of shocking given the sheer volume of archetypes out there.
Well, results from our first playtest with Exemplar archetype allowed are back. Unsurprisingly, all the martials took it because duh.
The barbarian archetyped into champion (paladin), taking nimble reprisal and reaction before archetyping into exemplar. The actual champion (grandeur) also grabbed exemplar. It was somewhat sickening. Barbarians really hit like a bus with that thing in play. And archetyping for sanctification helped in some fights too.
I am saying rare options don’t really need to be so well balanced because the game doesn’t hinge on them.
The game doesn't 'hinge' on any one specific thing at all, regardless of rarity. This is a poor reason to not try to design the game well.
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I think people having a view of examples as just another new class in the game are missing the point of the class being rare in the first place.
The point of it being rare is because of its narrative features (though tbh, even that is somewhat overstated) not to be a red flag that Paizo's going to be lazy about balancing it.
I genuinely can't wrap my head around this cope. This isn't a trend, Paizo just published a problematic feat. They've done it before, with rare options, with uncommon options, with common options. The ideal thing here is for Paizo to issue errata for it, which they probably will.
The sheer amount of fumbling around to try to somehow justify it is just boggling to me.
I think the reason people are fumbling is because it's sort of patently obvious that they dropped the ball with this feat. So there's not much disagreement that the ball WAS dropped, meaning the only thing to talk about is why or how. And being human beings, we all want to justify or explain things, even when the explanation is extremely dull.
I really don't think it's more complicated than "they accidentally published a super strong option that breaks the game and also happens to be Rare, they should just errata it and move on." All this talk about whether it's not actually a problem because GMs can ban it due to Rarity, and whether or not getting +2 damage/die when you multiclass "fits the fantasy of being a god" is extremely silly and reminiscent of ancient Greek astronomers trying to add epicycles and deferents to fix their geocentric model of the Earth rather than admit it was broken. The Exemplar Dedication feat is broken. The authors likely spent less time writing it than the community here has spent talking about it over the past few days. Regardless of whether or not it's Rare, it's not balanced. Just fix it and move on.
Why would the dedication for a rare class not also be rare?
Well, technically in the original book as printed, the class is Rare but the archetype isn't, so ask the devs...(yes, they errata'd this, but I had to make the joke).
More seriously - I believe shroudb is making the point that it's extremely silly to ban the archetype for Rarity reasons when the actual argument is that it should be banned for mechanical ones. Because nobody has a problem with actual Exemplar (the class) despite it being Rare.
Why are we banning all of the uncommon/rare things at our table?
That is not the point of the rarity tag. The point of the rarity tag is, "talk to your GM about this option."
We are talking about a book far removed from core options with thematic themes that are not always going to be a good fit for every campaign anyway. I am not saying "hey paizo, never look at the balance implications of this option!" I am saying, like the 6th pillar archetype from Fist of the Ruby Phoenix, this isn't as big a deal as other aspects of the game currently waiting for errata.
The overall power creep implications of rare options are just not that big of deal as folks here are making them out to be.
My point is less that I recommend banning all Uncommon and Rare options (which I absolutely don't), and more that power creep is still power creep, regardless of whether or not it's Rare. So using the Rare tag as a smokescreen for banning overpowered things is going to have a chilling effect on Rare options in general while doing nothing to stop power creep. It's like driving fifty miles an hour over the speed limit but blaming the other person's broken turn signal when you get into an accident with them.
It may not be a problem at your table, but if "Rare" becomes equated with "ban it, that's OP" in the general mind of the community that's really an issue. And ignoring the power creep implications of an option just because it happens to be Rare (again, Exemplar archetype ISN'T Rare BECAUSE it's overpowered, people really need to stop making that particular bad faith argument) means that when non-Rare power creep appears you have fewer options to deal with it.
I kinda do this... but instead of banning them I weakened the heightened effect and put another two heightened tiers.
It is exceptionally powerful in the hands of an organised party for its cost and tends to devalue a whole heap of class options.
I didn't do this because it was powerful though, because I ran two campaigns and it was a boring mechanical choice with no RP attached.
Another similar change I have made is reducing the amount of extra dimensional storage across the board. Because I found players got type 1 bags of holding and stopped caring for higher tiers and bulk became a thing of the past so early. I tend to change this depending on campaign though.
I don't think I have actually banned anything else though, rarities get played around with and some options are disallowed for lore / theme reasons but they are fairly few and far between.
Amusingly my group just accepts Tailwind as a fact of life and moves on, though another party I regularly play with is low-optimization and just never uses them. Scrolls of 7th level haste in the hands of a high level (16+) party similarly get the nod.
It’s not hard at all to exclude some rare/uncommon options and not others. If you have a campaign set in Tian Xia, it is perfectly reasonable even to change the rarity of various things. Rarity tags mean players should ask the GM/talk to them about any specific choice. A GM can say “we aren’t having guns in this campaign” without banning every uncommon option. A GM can say, “that archetype is not a good fit for this campaign.” They can even say, “I don’t think that option is balanced well, and I don’t want to have one player with it or encourage everyone to pick it just for mechanical power reasons.”
A GM can say this about even common options, but the rare tag is a big flag to players “don’t assume this option is available without talking about it first.” So players shouldn’t be assuming every rare option is always available to them in the first place.
It sets a dangerous precedent if people start to equate rarity tag with power level.
It's one thing to say "this option is uncommon because it doesn't exist in this region" and a completely different to say"this is uncommon because it's too strong".
Thematically wise, if Exemplar the class is ok with an adventure, there's no reason why Exemplar the Archetype is not.
So, exactly same theme, same rarity, but one is ok for a campaign but the other is not, is just not right.
Pretty much yeah.
I mean I don't disagree that "Rare" and "Uncommon" can work as catchalls for "things that the GM may say no to", but I think we all know that the reason Exemplar dedication is Rare has absolutely nothing to do with its power level. The fact that it's both overpowered and Rare is basically a coincidence. It's disingenuous to argue otherwise.
You can say "well this isn't an issue because this dedication is Rare so it doesn't impact game balance". But that is just an excuse. The dedication isn't overpowered because it's Rare, so banning it because it's Rare makes very little sense. What happens if Commander dedication comes out in a few months, it's equally broken, and it's NOT Rare? Do you just ban it anyway, because reasons?
If you want to ban it for being too strong, ban it for being too strong. But I wouldn't hide behind the fig leaf of rarity when that's not actually why you're banning it.
For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.
Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^
It is still quite feasible to optimize a build in PF2. It's just that the difference in power with any other build will actually be pretty small.
Honestly, powergamers tend to dislike the edition for precisely that reason. There's no way to destroy level 20 monsters at level 10 the way there is in PF 1E, D&D 5e, etc due to the math.
And that helps clarify the difference between optimizer and powergamer.
2 concepts that were long seen as one.
Yup, I could not agree more. I've personally always seen myself as the former, but never the latter. Being able to build a good character who pulled their weight is what I like - not creating something so strong the GM has no way to actually challenge it, or building a character that makes everyone else at the table feel small.
In addition to the points already being made regarding Quick Bomber, I'd like to bring up two more.
The first is that Quick Bomber affects only PCs who use bombs. Which is essentially just alchemists. Much like Imaginary Weapon being very solid on a Starlit Span Magus, this feat is not warping the entire game. Rogues, barbarians, fighters, investigators, thaumaturges, swashbucklers, and champions will not try to take Quick Bomber or Imaginary Weapon.
The second is that because of that, Quick Bomber is basically internal to the class. Like it or not, the devs expected (at least some) people who play alchemists to take it. There are some very good feats internal to specific classes (Dangerous Sorcery used to be one for sorcerers, Risky Reload is very popular for gunslingers, rogues almost always take one of Gang Up, Opportune Backstabber, and now Nimble Dodge, etc), and we don't complain about those because they're part of that class's own "toolkit." Likewise, the game is obviously balanced around rogues having access to Opportune Backstabber.
Exemplar Dedication is not internal to any class. The game is obviously not built around people multiclassing into Exemplar. From a pure balance perspective, the devs obviously did not intend for every martial to get +2 damage/die, or an aura of +1 to hit. I think you can make a strong argument for Exemplar Dedication being the strongest 2nd level feat ever published, for any martial class, period. That's a problem in a way that "a bunch of alchemists will want to take Quick Bomber but basically no one else cares" is not.
We will see how many people actual go out and get 2 sorcerer feats to pick up ancestral memories as a focus spell. I think a lot of folks will read these boards and try it, but then ditch it after they realize that there will be many encounters where they have much better things to do with their actions and their focus points to be paying a two feat tax for a sometimes better than a skill check ability.
I don't think we will really see that much of the exemplar spam though because the dedication is rare and, minimally, players are going to have to really justify and sell it to their GMs to get it. That doesn't mean it won't eventually get an errata, just that it is not something that desperately needs a fix because GMs who feel it is a problem already have a rules method for dealing with it.
In fairness, while more true here, it is true of...every broken thing in the edition. The ruling of the GM is final for basically everything, especially everything that doesn't come from Player Core.
I apologize if this has already been answered, but this is a rather big thread.
I've heard that mythic destinies can have their mythic point elements removed to be used in a non-mythic game.
How powerful are the mythic destinies for this purpose? Are they suitable for allowance in a non-mythic game where the thematic elements might be allowed but the full mechanics element of mythic would not be, or are they still too powerful to be allowed in a game that does not plan to use Mythic Callings. As in, are they roughly a side grade versus an equal-level class feat? Or would they be objectively better?
I am considering whether or not to allow some mythic destinies to be claimable with class feats and free archetype feats this way, as I've heard from some folks with the book that it should work with free archetype this way. But I wanna make sure they are not so overtuned that a player who opts to not use such feats will not feel like they are getting the short end of the proverbial stick.
Most of them are fairly normal and allowable - however, there are a few things to consider.
The first is whether or not you want to allow immortal PCs. For many GMs, this breaks their setting or their rules. Most mythic destinies have a 20th level feat that makes the player character nigh-unkillable. Hopefully this isn't a violation of forum rules, but here is the full text of one (only one) of these feats:
War of Immortals wrote:
Living Epic Feat 20
Mythic
Prerequisites Eternal Legend Dedication
You are a living legend, a being who cannot be claimed by
death, as death has already passed you. You are beyond
whatever they wish to make you. When you would be killed,
you instead disappear. You reappear anywhere where your
name is spoken in the next week. Your name must be said
in the context of recounting one of your exploits, including
your death. If the person speaking your name is a close ally
(such as another PC), you return to life with only 1 Hit Point.
However, if a stranger speaks your name, you return to life
with full Hit Points and you gain a +1 status bonus to attack
rolls, Perception, saving throws, and skill checks for 1 week.
If no one speaks your name within a week of your death,
your soul enters the River of Souls, and you can be brought
back to life us ing other means.
Whether or not this breaks your game is a matter of taste, but it's certainly not appropriate for everyone's game.
Secondly, several of them are extremely, brokenly strong. Easily the most powerful is Fight Through Oblivion, another level 20 eternal legend feat which in essence renders a PC at 0 hit points still conscious but immune to all damage until they miss with an attack for four consecutive rounds.
That feat makes it virtually impossible to kill a PC with it, short of [Death] effects, disintegration, and similar abilities. Again, you have to decide whether or not to allow it - I personally would allow the former but not the latter, since it's frankly disruptive to combat. But abilities like that are pretty rare - Apocalypse Rider, Archfiend, Ascended Celestial, Beast Lord, Godling, and Wildspell really have nothing objectionably strong in them at all, it's mostly just Broken Chain, Eternal Legend, and Prophesied Monarch that lean towards the overly powerful side of things.
For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.
Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^
It is still quite feasible to optimize a build in PF2. It's just that the difference in power with any other build will actually be pretty small.
Honestly, powergamers tend to dislike the edition for precisely that reason. There's no way to destroy level 20 monsters at level 10 the way there is in PF 1E, D&D 5e, etc due to the math.
The memories of long-dead spellcasters grant you their
knowledge, making your spells more formidable. You gain
either a +1 status bonus to the next spell attack roll you attempt
before the end of your turn or an enemy within 60 feet takes a
–1 status penalty to the next saving throw they attempt against
a spell you cast before the end of your turn.
Heightened (5th) The bonus increases to +2 or the penalty
increases to –2.
Heightened (8th) The bonus increases to +3 or the penalty
increases to –3.
So what's the 'unintended abuse' combo that makes it a problem?
It's not really..."unintended." It's just that the focus spell is absurdly great on basically every spellcasting class in the game. Debuffing saves never goes out of style. It scales extremely well and as a level 1 focus spell is extremely easy to pillage for basically anyone who multiclasses sorcerer.
It's still not as strong as the Exemplar dedication (because the requirement of +2 Cha is stricter than +2 Str/Dex and because it takes two feats rather than one to steal it, plus some classes actually have better uses for their focus points) but it's probably the best comparison.
I'm getting that picture! It's still difficult for me to really see the benefit of a 75/25 crit vs an 85/35 crit, but I do see the main issue of "all your numbers are at least 2 points lower than they are expected to be" turning a "slightly harder than usual" encounter into a "you'd best hope RNG goes your way long enough to live, because you're basically screwed!" encounter.
May do some re-thinking and re-tooling and run a swashbuckler tank type, though- that sounds appealing. There's something I like about a tough nut to crack that isn't using the typical route of sword+board and heavy armor...
Just wanted to clarify here that "at least 2" is going to be "more like 4" in some cases. eg: You get to boost a skill proficiency at level 9, so there's an additional +2. Investigator gets to boost another skill at level 8 since they get one every level (so does Rogue, though the Investigator ones are limited in where you can spend them).
So trying to do your best things feeling really hard makes sense, since your best thing should probably be at +4 from what you were doing it at, and 55% success chance feels a LOT different than a 35% success chance. If you're level 9, +2 item bonus items start becoming available and that's an added bonus on top of that for your best thing, so now you're suddenly pushing 60% or even 65% if you didn't have a +1 item.
Investigator is a cool class. I've seen some folks play it ranged and do quite well. That build isn't a damage power house, but it's an absolute beast at skills, can be a great medic with Battle Medicine (and the Medic Archetype), and can also dish out reasonable ranged damage while doing it. The Player Core 2 update making Devise a Stratagem easier to get as a free action helps a ton since you get a bunch of flexibility in how you spend your turn.
Swashbuckler also got improved in Player Core 2 a lot. Check out that version if you're going to play it. :)
I'm sorry your first shot at it was so rough. That's an...
Yeah I have to second this. Both Investigator and Swashbuckler come from the APG originally, which was notoriously undertuned. Almost everything in it is balanced a little low for combat.
I recall the first time I GM'd pathfinder 2 I had a swashbuckler player who never felt like they were able to contribute or do that much. The class, quite simply, was at fault. Remaster fixes some but not all of these issues.
As other people have said it sounds like you may also have a GM issue. The math is extremely tight. PCs are capable of getting killed in moderate encounters even without small parties, being lower level than they should, and potential rules misunderstandings by the GM. There is no real fix for this other than just talking to your GM.
And I'll be honest. As a GM, I often only put new players into Low or Trivial difficulty encounters against lower level monsters until they actually learn the system. The game is pretty unforgiving otherwise.
This is such a bad take. There are a host of things for spell strike balanced around 1d12 or 2d6 per rank. Imaginary Weapon is 2d8 which is a big step up. Then there is the multitargeting ...
You are saying there is a problem with the design of the class instead? Look Magus works fine. It may not be for you, or what you want. Fair enough but lots of people like it.
I love the concept of the Exemplar. It just seems to have some issues around the edges.
Animist on the other hand repulses me as a concept.
Imaginary weapon is strong spell balanced around by it's inherent riskiness, it's a spell attacks that focused can't be combined with ring that lets you target fort or Dex DC so inaccurate and requires you to being melee with two enemies to get it's full effect.
I have seen it get a psychic pc killed because those two enemies then immediately retaliated.
The Magus and especially the starlight one entirely bypasses the elements that make using it risky and make the spell a lot better.
So imaginary weapons is balanced in the context of the psychic and not in the context of the Magus so that issue isn't with the spell but with the Magus or the multi class rules.
Yeah again the issue with Exemplar isn't just that it's strong. It's that it really is an autopick for every martial class. As opposed to psychic archetype and imaginary weapon, which is an autopick... for starlit span magus... and still takes more feats and investment to pull off. There is a literal order of magnitude difference here.
I'm actually not sure why this solution wasn't used...but the most likely reason is that Spellstrike was seen as way too strong with mythic proficiency.
That, and the devs may not have wanted to wrangle granting mythic proficiency with activities that grant multiple Strike actions.
Oh I meant just letting you reroll a single attack roll with mythic proficiency. Like hero points.
Mythic Immunity (23rd): The creature is immune to either harmful spells cast by non-mythic creatures, or Strikes made with non-mythic weapons and unarmed Strikes from non-mythic characters. Only the most powerful creatures (typically level 25) should be immune to both.
Vulot (pg. 178), a creature 21, has the following immunities:
War of Immortals wrote:
Mythic Immunity: Vulot is immune to harmful spells cast by non-mythic creatures, Strikes made with non-mythic weapons, and unarmed Strikes from non-mythic characters.
Since Vulot is not level 23, let alone level 25, this violates the level guidelines for this ability.
Verex-that-was (pg. 207) also has immunity to both strikes and spells despite only being level 24, however that seems more intended than Vulot.
Obviously these are only the guidelines for the template, rather than ironclad rules - but I thought I'd post it here just in case it actually was an error.
Yeah I do think we're still feeling the fallout of the remaster. Polish goes out the window when you have to redesign your entire game system and do 4 unplanned releases (Player Core, Player Core 2, Monster Core, GM Core) over the span of a year and alter your setting to avoid lawsuits.
This is the real reason they got rid of Gorbacz.
Yeah I should not have phrased it that way, that was not meant as criticism.
What I meant was that having to do the remaster and 4 new books unplanned means that I'm not surprised there were some weird things in 2023-2024 releases (like Roiling Mudslide not having an area, etc). I think people should cut them a lot slack for that and not pounce on everything they see as being broken when the product (let alone any potential erratas) hasn't even been officially published yet.
Anyway, I remain happy they put out the book and I hope the response is positive on other platforms so that they continue to support the stuff in it.
The playtest really shows the way some people think they want something without really being able to understand the full impact of the system.
People were really upset about striking with blasts and wearing handwraps. so instead we get blasts that are their own unique action and gate attenuators. A change that accomplishes almost nothing positive but cut off the class from almost every form of support.
All because people freaked out about 'strikes' ... a really impressive bit of self sabotage.
JiCi wrote:
Dare I ask what would happen balance-wise if blasts could be treated as Strikes and impulses as Spells?
Worth noting that impulses are already treated somewhat as spells, just mostly only to the kineticist's detriment. Immunity to magic, bonuses to saves against spells, and effects that prevent or restrict spellcasting all work on impulses too.
But since using an impulse is not the Cast A Spell activity they're walled off from most of the good stuff.
But to answer directly, kineticists are a pain in mythic and you really have a much more limited pool of feats and options you're allowed to benefit one.
Magus isn't nearly on the same level. Yeah, they're bummed that Mythic Strike doesn't work with Spellstrike, but so is every martial that relies on specialty activities to function. But that's okay we can just not take that feat as a Magus.
This, yeah.
The playtest of Kineticist GAVE it more interaction with the system. People got (somewhat justifiably) annoyed because making blasts of fire "unarmed strikes" meant that they functioned like unarmed strikes, complete with bizarre stuff like being buffed by Handwraps of Mighty Blows. Which made minimal sense.
I maintain that the unarmed strike rules are too broad anyway though. Why do Nagaji spitting venom at people (another unarmed strike) benefit from wearing Handwraps of Mighty Blows? Especially when Tian-Dan Dragon Spitting energy is modeled as casting a cantrip? Shut up, that's why.
The issue is that by walling blasts off from the existing rules Rage of Elements opened up a Pandora's Box of unintended consequences. This is one of them. The system was never made to accommodate anything beyond the caster/martial divide of "casts spells" or "stabs people with a sword". That's why psychics are spellcasters rather than psionics being its own thing.
The actual fix is that there probably needs to be some sort nomenclature for "non-physical strikes" that isn't just lumping them in with fist attacks. But that would be a pain to write (and most PCs would never interact with it...) and so we have venomous saliva getting damage bonuses from magical boxing gloves and blasts of elemental energy inexplicably unable to benefit from mythic power like literally everything else in the game can.
Dare I ask what would happen balance-wise if blasts could be treated as Strikes and impulses as Spells?
You guys make it sound like the Kineticist would simply break the game, mostly because they have unlimited usage of their abilities.
It really depends on what sort of strikes and spells they were. Assuming they WERE treated in the most generous way possible (they count as unarmed attacks and leveled spells, which bluntly I do not think the implementation would be), we don't KNOW the full results because the CharOp brigade hasn't been let loose on those mechanics. But here's the immediate fallout I can think of:
If by some unholy miracle you can add runes to the strikes (again, this seems basically impossible and would never be the implementation) everything immediately shatters because kineticist damage almost doubles. No one is proposing this though (at least not without drastically cutting blast damage to compensate for it), so it's more of a "doomer" argument than an actual problem.
More realistically, every kineticist takes action compression feats via multiclass. Two blasts at -0 MAP per turn is pretty high damage with Double Slice. Two blasts for one action with Twin Takedown is likely broken because kineticists can use their other two actions on MAPless impulses, but the class is action-hungry as heck so Hunt Prey is legitimately pricey to use.
Kineticists can multiclass for spellshape feats. Most of these are actually fairly weak and the strong ones (Scintillating Spell) are out of reach of multiclass characters.
Then comes the other side of the coin, which is whether or not martials and normal spellcasters can poach blasts or impulses and abuse them that way. The current archetype rules say "absolutely not" and cripple multiclass characters' ability to use blasts and impulses at all. So it's probably not an issue. And bluntly, I do NOT think blasts would be written as weapon Strikes anyway.
So tl;dr the devil is in the details for WRITING how these things count as spells/strikes (which is probably why it hasn't happened) but I'd imagine that and fear of what people MAY discover is the actual holdup rather than any immediate balance concerns. And potentially fear of people complaining that their special non-spellcasting class is suddenly casting spells.
So kineticists have a closed actions system where they have specific actions only they use and interact with. Because they are a closed internal system they will inevitably struggle with a lot of team work mechanics.
This was highlighted by the commander playtest where none of the classes action enabling worked for them apart from movement abilities and is playing through again in mythic.
In the playtest for commander indicated that they would include some tactics to include kineticists but there failure to do so for mythic doesn't fill me with faith that they will remember to do so.
Now personally I am not sure why they made it as closed a system as they did given impulse attacks are for the majority of the time worse than strikes allowing strike action support to apply to them would be fine. The same could be said with impulses and support feats for spells. Paizo were too conservative in the kineticists and this meant to they now have do additional work if they want to keep the class relevant with any new meta.
If I recall correctly, the big feedback from the playtest was that people actually WANTED elemental blasts to be separate from strikes. Or at least from the weird unarmed strike mechanics it had.
And I get why! Kineticist is beautifully designed. The tailor-made closed system enabled something really elegant and unique, and there's a reason it's my favorite class.
At the same time, making blast not a strike so that it doesn't work with Double Slice, Twin Takedown, etc seems excessive when it could have just been a non-weapon variant of Striking (Double Slice and such call out weapons). Ditto making impulses into special variant spells. I'm guessing the reason is again elegance of design - the devs didn't want to confuse people with exceptions and ad-hoc carveouts to the Strike rules, and they wanted to follow the feedback that wanted a "non-spellcasting non-striking" class.
In a sense this is just the monkey's paw of open playtesting. People got what they wanted, and what they wanted was an extra-special class divorced from the standardized rules of the rest of the system. In another sense though it feels like it could have been done much more elegantly - for instance, via Mythic Strike just generally boosting attack rolls (which would also rescue Magus). I'm actually not sure why this solution wasn't used...but the most likely reason is that Spellstrike was seen as way too strong with mythic proficiency.
I think the negatives are getting a lot of attention because there are some really glaring ones, which raises yet more questions about Paizo's ability to actually polish content at the rate it's coming out. But in general there's a lot of good stuff here.
I loved Exemplar in the playtest and the final version has continued that love affair.
Animist looks great fun. Super flavorful, lots of options, multiple play styles that should be viable. That's exactly what I want out of a class and I'm pretty excited to make one. I don't want to say its my favorite spellcasting class before I've actually played it, but just conceptually? It's definitely up there. Considering I didn't really "get it" during the playtest at all, super positive about it now.
Flip side: It's just gotten me frustrated all over again at what was done to Oracle. Look at Battle Oracle and compare to the melee focused Animist, and it's like they're written by different companies.
That's not a negative on War of Immortals of course, since its class turned out pretty good. But it certainly doesn't feel great.
Yeah I do think we're still feeling the fallout of the remaster. Polish goes out the window when you have to redesign your entire game system and do 4 unplanned releases (Player Core, Player Core 2, Monster Core, GM Core) over the span of a year and alter your setting to avoid lawsuits.
So basically, I expect the next 12-18 months will see a settling down and hopefully the devs can chill a little now that they've averted an OGL fiasco. And I expect quality control to improve once that happens.
One is a three-action "undo this event as per a success (but not a critical success) on a Wish ritual." It's stated that "This will bring serious consequences back to haunt you some day. Altering the rhythm of causality is likely to draw the attention of certain aeons. Fey norns won’t be too happy with you fraying their precious threads of fate either."
The other is straightforward immortality-via-leadership. When you would be killed, you instead drop to 1, become invisible and incorporeal, and become immune to all damage. You can only take mental actions, but you gain 2 extra reactions and you can Aid via telepathic advice alone. Before an hour passes you must fuse with a loyal follower. You keep your level but work with the GM to rebuild your PC from the ground up (but you keep all your previous equipment, which sounds like an absolute mess). If you don't fuse with a follower you die.
The only reason I've been so critical is I actually like a lot of the stuff introduced here and it needs only a liiiiiiiiiiittle bit of work to be excellent all around.
But stuff I like unconditionally?
- The Exemplar
- The Animist
- The Avenger
- The Warrior of Legend
- The Mythic Destinies
- The new normal and mythic items
- All the fiction in the book
Overall I'm very happy with it, warts and all.
Yeah same. I love what's in it, and therefore I'm willing to be more critical. I'm of course hyped as all get out that Archfiend and Apocalypse Rider BOTH exist (so many fiends!) and even more hyped that they're available to non-mythic campaigns and neither seems broken at all.
Godling, Ascended Celestial, and Prophesied Monarch also seem fun even if they're not my thing. And I can't begin to say how excited I was when I saw what may or may not be a picture of Arjun in the Exemplar section...
Okay guys let us think about this, Exemplar Dedication is powerful but if you nerf it and remove the immenance effect, I think we need to also nerf Psychic and stop the Imaginary Weapon Magus cheese then. This is just the Martial Version of the Imaginary Magus Cheese which I always had problems with because it feels like an unintended combination but if an extra 2 damage per weapon die is scary with a maybe usuable transcended effect then is the 2 feat Giant Instinct Barbarian +6 Rage damage also bad or 2 feat investment Gravity Weapon? Is it literally the fact you don't need 2 feats for this archetype but instead reqiuire to recharge it with 1 action like Spellstrike?
I play a starlit span magus. You don't get imaginary weapon at level 2. And even then it still costs a resource (focus points). And it's widely considered to be one of the best tools in the game.
This is substantially better. At a lower level with easier access requirements.
IMO "Strike" resistance is much, much worse than physical resistance. It's not just about "player power/ability" it's about design integrity and play consistency.
Bypassing that mythic Strike resistance is just a binary have/have not. Which defeats the whole point of it being something to consider and work around. Your party either has the tool and uses it, or they do not. There is 0 other in the moment depth to this mechanic other than "use the specific tool or suffer the consequence of not doing so."
This mechanic outright flattens the dynamic decision-making of normal gameplay by so strongly penalizing anything that does not used the prescribed solution.
And guess what, some classes like Alchemist are just shit outta luck. Good luck giving the Alchemist a "mythic bomb," lol.
.
It's all so insanely arbitrary to have a "mythic bow" be able to shoot a creature fine (with mundane arrows!) yet another creature making strike w/ a magic sword or big bomb just cannot be effective.
That type of arbitrary "It's a Strike, therefore..." instead of it being an actual characteristic of the creature to have resistance to physical damage is just so, so immersion-breaking. That Crushing Grab will do it's damage totally normally, but you had better not swing to punch at them!
Like, the design of this rule is *so* stupid,
an Alchemist can throw something like a Silver Orb bomb that creates a cloud of silver shards that deals dmg each time(turn) a foes breathes inside the cloud of razors.
It's not a Strike, and there's 0 way a GM could finesse the mythic rules to trigger that Strike resistance. Meanwhile, the frag bomb loaded with razors will have an average of half or all of it's damage outright ignored.
Another example:
Kineticist's Jagged Berms is non-Strike Piercing damage that *also has no save!* This ability outright is able to be completely 100% unaffected by the mythic defenses of foes. It's absurd that this existing thing already breaks the mechanic in...
I feel like this is a screw you to casters in a system that already does a solid job balancing for them.
I'd argue rarities are really, really not something a lot of people care about in home games.
Especially for something like exemplar, which is a Rare class. It's somewhat exceptional that it even was published - it's rarer than gunslingers! And guns! And those, arguably, are less likely to show up in a campaign setting than a magical divinely-empowered warrior.
And especially with Pathbuilder not automatically restricting any options - it's very easy for players to point and click as desired without even noticing rarity.
That's not my experience, but YMMV. I've never had a GM who simply said "ignore rarity, it's fine". I've also never had one say "anything not common is banned". The approach in my experience is "ask me."
Like, I almost never say "no". Usually I'm saying either "sure", or "sure, but you'll have to find it in character", which then gives me a plot hook for the player to go try to acquire something cool.
This archetype? I mean, I'd probably be strict if it turned into a problem where someone is always taking it or four people suddenly all want to do it for obvious power reasons, but archetypes that are already really strong compared to others exist (Champion/Oracle/Psychic come to mind) and the game has gotten by okay.
It's definitely a really strong archetype but I don't think we need to panic quite yet. Maybe there will be errata to corral it some.
Honestly most of my GMs do not care. Though like Squiggit said - this definitely poisons the well and makes it less likely they will in the future. I'd rather that the default for "it's Rare" is not "oh yeah that's broken of course you can't take it."
It's just really strong. It stands out. You can say it's okay because it's Rare if you want, but that comes with a lot of implications that I do not think most of the people here would be comfortable with, and it needs to be acknowledged, I think.
No one has seen the AP that war of the Immortals' was designed against so what some people think is OP or janky most likely is not the case you can't compare something to 1E or 2E without seeing what it is supposed to be against if you just dump an Exemplar in a normal game of course it will be OP but it is supposed to be in a Mythic game. If you don't want to play in a Mythic style of game no one is forcing you to do so but don't try to take Mythic power games from those who like them.
1) It's not Mythic, it's a normal class. Mythic is its own ruleset that has nothing to do with Exemplars.
2) It's not Exemplar that's the problem, it's other classes multiclassing into Exemplar.
3) The AP is irrelevant. This (entirely non-mythic) class and its archetype should be able to stand on their own without having a negative impact on the rest of the game, just like every other class and archetype that have been published over the past 5 years. It'd be like saying that Psychics and Thaumaturges (published in mid 2022 in Dark Archive) should only be balanced for play in Blood Lords (which came out shortly thereafter).
Also, those discussing the Exemplar Archetype and whether or not it breaks the game, could you guys please take that discussion to a different thread? Because I feel like that issue is starting to derail the thread.
To build on this question, are there any especially flavorful mythic destiny feats that jumped out at you?
Also, related question, do the destinies that have support for animal companions grant you an animal companion themselves, or do you need one going in?
a)Terrifying Mien while simple did invoke a very badass feeling reading it.
Basically whenever someone is scared, you gain resistance against them, and if this resistance procs, they cannot remove the frightned.
To me that's like scared people hitting the demigod, seeing that their damage is getting negated, and going "yup, we f-up"
b)apocalypse rider gives you the mount, but beast lord requires you to have the beast already.
How does Apocalypse Rider handle the expectation that your mount should be an incredible companion by that point?
Poorly. It only gives you a mature one. Not incredible.
