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I really do like the Lessons versatility witch has, and the different spell list. It really allows you to create your own patron per se rather than just being locked into archetypes like the 5e warlock... But speaking of Archetypes, the Class Feats it has now are super restricted to the 1e-style Basically-a-lesser-hag-but-a-PC aesthetic, with few exceptions.
@Rainzax The problem with that is, it's an enormous nerf to those using the Divine List, for them most of their spells only work by alignment or based on whether or not a thing is alive or dead. That in and of itself is a huge issue that needs fixing. @wheldrake Again, your current approach is all well and good as long as nobody touches a class where it's relevant, because then it forces it's way into a game it might not be warranted. As for that final bit, the issue THERE is that, objective by who's standards? The very nature of objective morality forces the writer, first paizo's devs then the GM, to enforce their own morality as law in the universe... So the result of this can be pretty disconcerting and generally incredibly immersion breaking for me, hence why it's usually removed.
Anyway, mention of it being present in the upcoming Gamemastery Guide got me thinking, how exactly should Alignment be removed? The Angelic Sorcerer by Default has Divine Lance, so in order to do this we need to deal with Law, Chaos, Good AND evil damage. And that's about it, champion aside classes don't really have alignment restrictions, and even if you took out the demands of the tenants of good, each archetype we have makes it's own demands plenty clear. So, how to reconcile away these damage types, becomes about the only issue. (And of course, subbing in other domains for the gods who do have those explicit domains.) (And I guess replacing detection of alignment with detection of outsiders?) Now, I feel like Good and Evil damage can kind of be reconciled with another quirky mechanic, Positive and Negative energy. This doesn't do any changes to most, say, Healing and Harming spells, just rewords them a little, but it means the *aesthetic* of good and evil damage can sort of be maintained. I'm of course talking about Radiant and Necrotic. Heal would still heal, or deal radiant damage to undead, but Good damaging effects would instead deal Radiant damage to everyone (with Celestial creatures having resistance to it as one might expect, and fiends and vampires and such having weakness). And necrotic works fairly well as the darker mirror to this, although in some cases maybe just using fire would work better? However, to fully integrate such an approach you'd likely want to have a few straight up Radiant damaging spells on both the Arcane and Primal lists, not as many as the former-good spells, but enough. And, of course... The hell would you do with Lawful and Chaotic damage? A gimmicky approach like the one 5e took for wild-magic-ish spells just feels kinda weird, but all the same these two seem to defy any attempt to just automatically replace all instances of Lawful damage with X, so I'm very curious to see how Paizo handles that.
Still a bit frustrated that it's drawing on mostly edgy pop culture anarchy rather than the actual political and philosophical movement, but aside from that it's pretty cool stuff.
There's a clear double-standard here. Chaos opposed to Law instead of Order is inherently weird, to be honest. Although, it does provide a clear and uncommon place for a few societies which would be most similar to modern anarchism/anarcho-communism. Order, but through a concerted effort towards equality and freedom, and a constant effort to maintain that and prevent unjustified hierarchies for emerging. (Which is more complex than it looks and gets into ideas like, yes trust the doctor in matters of medicine, but that authority doesn't carry over into other situations unless they have earned it there too.) Unfortunately, what we GOT instead of an interesting attempt at a medieval society following those ideals without the same advancements that enable it in the modern era, was Galt. And Galt was shallow, confusing and ultimately just kind of a rubbish place nobody would want to live in.
THIS! This has been nagging me for AGES! Hell most common folk wouldn't even have a single preferred deity, unless it's one tied to their profession like Posiedon was for greek fishermen. It's only when you get into the hardcore clergy that you started having Seers following Apollo and priestesses of Athena and so on. Yet in this you're expected to follow 1 special god more so than the others by default, they're treated more like individual religions than a pantheon coexisting.
How did this get so far off topic whilst I was sleeeping? Guys, focus on the issue at hand, we were talking specifically about how Signature Spells being a class feature screws over the multiclass Spontaneous Casters. The issue is scaling and needing to waste spells known on the same spell repeatedly, when you only have a verry limited repertoire of 1 spell per level for the majority of your time as a multiclassed caster. Whether or not you can waste higher level slots on non-scaled spells is completely irrelevant.
I mean, that'd basically just be adding the Spontaneous Casting feature to the Basic Spellcasting feat; "At level 6", but otherwise the same as the level 3 feature (Which is also only one spell known per slot level.) That said, I'm all for it, looking at the design of the classes it just looks like a core mechanic they put into the class features section so that new players wouldn't be overwhelmed with having to learn that system straight away.
Precisely what I was getting at, Squiggit. Heck, adding Signature Spell would resolve the issue in your last paragraph somewhat too, but also weirdly enough only for your higher level slots, not for your first level slots. And then you take Breadth at 8th level and that starts fleshing out your lower level slots, I guess.
The feat explains, you have one slot and one spell known, and you gain more at certain points described within the feat itself (Essentially you gain one higher level slot and spell known every 2 levels, provided you keep taking the feats at 12 and 18, you're just a bit late having started at four.) From there the main way to get more, really, is to get (Something, in sorc's base bloodline?) breadth, which will, at the level 8 you first get access to it, only affect level 1 spells (Two lower than your highest level slot), but as you get higher slots it starts to really make an impact. However, the Prepared multiclassers can make a much better use out of that than the spontaneous ones too.
@valdis Oh HELL no, one extra skill is not comparable. (The other stuff is just to let the Spontaneous Casters also benefit the same way from finding uncommon or rarer spells as loot the same way a wizard or cleric might, and it still takes up spells known..) And, nope, multi-Sorcs are stuck. Arcane Sorcerers can spend a feat to get ONE signature spell, which helps them out slightly, but the rest are screwed. As for Hsui: Gods no, if anything a few other minor proficiency related buffs need to come in, stopping one rank lower than the core class leaves you at basically a general feat level, trained is, which kinda defeats the purpose since you end up so far behind the curve when people start getting Experts by default at level 13. @GMofAnything they don't have enough of those to do that. They have one per spell level before Breadth, that's literally just like the wizard but they get to change on level up, not daily..
Hsui I've already explained this, the fact that they don't have a core function of, not the specific class, but spontaneous spellcasting as a whole, is what makes the spontaneous duo weaker COMPARED TO OTHER MULTICLASS ARCHETYPES. EDIT (to better respond to your edit): The comparison to make would be most akin to a Wizard's spellbook, which the multiclasss archetype does indeed give full free access to as if they were a pure wizard/
Except it really doesn't because in the day-to-day of actually playing the character, the first time you really have a free level to breathe in terms of feats anyway is 10th level, and until you take Breadth at 8th level the Sorcerer is literally just a wizard multiclass, but instead of preparing their spells daily they only get to do it when they level up. (Because they have to Know every spell in every slot they want to use it in, until they have Breadth adding a spell known (and at that point, only a first-level one.) they can't even utilise the spontaneous-caster-ness of the class.) Additionally... Just being aware that some flavours of character get screwed over arbitrarily because their mechanics are poorly written is the kind of thing that makes me leave entire systems. That's what happened with 5e and PF1e.
But, like, Compare this to the Wizard Multiclass, who has exactly the same *list access* mechanics as his full caster bretheren, just slightly delayed and diminished in number. These weaknesses are there, and still push for a different playstyle to the reverse combo, but ON TOP OF THAT you don't have enough spells known to even properly establish your character's flavour until level 8 because you keep needing to go back for crap you've already learned just to make it keep up with the game. Like, adding Signature spells would just mean they can actually make use of their spell slots in a similar way to their original class, rather than more akin to a Wizard multiclass but you only get to change your preparations when you level up. They're so utterly weak compared to OTHER Multiclass archetypes due to the mechanics of spontaneous casting.
Signature spells is an important mechanic for spontaneous casters, helping their small Known lists not feel like quite so much of an oppressive force... However, it's technically a Class Feature, so Multiclassing Sorcerers and Bards, who would struggle under the burden of an even smaller Known list, not to mention not having the focus spells which also help alleviate the burden of the core classes on the spells known segment of their lists... They don't get it. So, they're left without what is basically a core mechanic of spontaneous spellcasting, since it's consistently given to both Sorc and Bard the instant they can actually make use of them at 3. This seems like an accidental oversight, since elsewhere in the book, discussions of spontaneous casting just assume Signature Spells are present when discussing heightening. If there were cases where you were supposed to have spontaneous casting without that feature, I feel like that would have also been worded to reflect it...
What about we just include 5e-style Short Resting and spending hit dice to heal outside of combat, but not tie that into other mechanics like they do? This way we can happily nerf Wands of CLW into the dirt without worrying too much about sustaining an adventuring party's HP bars. Alchemists and Potions need to be taken out of the Resonance system, though, it makes no sense to include those, and leaves alchemists really underpowered.
Ooooh, I like that idea Tholomyes... So, just one pool of generic "trade for class feats" feats, but pre-requisite gated; "The ability to cast spells", or "Expert with (Relevant item)" That could definitely work, yeah, though the Dedications would also need to get a slight buff, from making you Trained in weapons, to Expert, in order to enable access to said feats.
I'd have to disagree there, Daedalus, in that, that's 3 pools of feats you're talking now, one low-level curated pile of everything, which has to now find a name which isn't confused with general feats themselves, and then a more advanced martial and caster pool of feats... At that point I feel it's diminishing returns, you're adding a ton of complexity and not getting much customisation in return.
Oh, like, your Metamagics and whatnot!? Yeah, actually, that'd really do wonders for making everything a bit more neat, streamlined and customisable. Love it.
First, to explain the problem. A ton of very generic combat feats like quick draw and power attack have been class locked, including the basic lines for each weapon, and generic maneuvers which could be learned by anyone with sufficient combat training, like I mentioned above. To solve this, my suggestion is adding a new feat pool, Combat Feats. Characters with a martial class (Rogue, Monk, Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Paladin) would be able to freely spend a class feat to take any one of these combat feats. (Existing pre-requisites would remain, of course.) Characters who multiclass into one of those classes would also gain the ability to do this as part of their Archetype Dedication feat. This leaves the ACTUAL class feat design space for things which interface directly with the class' features or flavour. And, most importantly, this approach doesn't arbitrarily prevent people from making a Sword & Board Ranger or an Archer Paladin, or any similar flavours which might be slightly less common than your generic dual-wielding rangers or whatever, but is no less valid despite that. It's definitely possible to create a solid class identity for every class without randomly gating off certain playing styles just because they're not the most common. |
