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Hello again! Your friendly neighborhood internet dweller here once again to do a breakdown of the new Necromancer playtest. I will be going through the class by level, then do a review of the feats, then the Focus Spells. Finally, I'll be giving my summarized take on the class as a whole. This is going to be a lot of text, and I will not apologize. I've done my best to break out things into sections to make it easier to navigate.

I'd like to reiterate before I begin that regardless of how negative I may come across, I am genuinely excited for the new classes, and hope that my feedback can be some small benefit to the designers.

That being said, let's jump right into it.

BASE FEATURES/LEVEL 1
Trained in Perception, Reflex, Will, Occultism, 2+Int Skills, Simple/Unarmed, Light/Unarmored, Spell attack and DC. Expert in Fortitude.

8+Con HP, Key Attribute is Intelligence.

Essentially Psychic casting progression.

Create Thrall cantrip.

Consume Thrall focus spell.

Subclass for zombies/skeletons/spirits, grants a different focus spell for each. (Dead Weight, Bone Spear, Life Tap respectively)

Mastery of Life and death, lets you freely swap between Void and Vital damage to change your damage to whichever is better to hit the enemy with. Very cool that you can Vampiric Touch an undead this way. I like this a lot.

Undead Lore, a free lore skill that auto scales. And a pretty reliably good one in most campaigns since it's a rare campaign indeed where undead NEVER come up. Really solid.

Initial reaction is that this all seems fine. Slightly tankier than your average caster with slightly more HP and light armor. The Psychic spell progression catches me off guard, but I'm waiting to see how this "thrall" mechanic shakes out. Consume thrall is interesting in that it essentially gives you +1 max focus points over the normal cap. Subclass focus spells are interesting, but I'll break those down in the Focus Spells section.

Only concern at this point is that since thralls only get 1 hp and this doesn't scale, and they auto fail all saves and are auto-hit by attacks, any enemy that does AoE will rinse your thralls instantly. Something GMs have to be very careful about, as any AoE heavy series of encounters will have the class feeling very handicapped.

LEVEL 2-5
Inevitable Return, very cool reaction, very flavorful. Useless in big Single Boss fights, but that should be a minority of encounters.

Grim Wards,this one is interesting. The only other classes that get a save prof boot at 3 are Fighter, Gunslinger, Kineticist, Ranger, Swashbuckler and Thaumaturge, and those classes all have 2 experts at 1 with their level 3 boost rounding them out to all Expert. This looks to be the first class that get a save prof boost at this level that didn't start out with two experts. The "Juggernaut" effect vs. haunts/undead mental/possession effects is so niche outside specific campaigns as to be not worth consideration, but good flavor.

Reflex Expertise at 5. Fully expert by 5. Pretty solid. Makes it the most well-rounded in saves of all the casters on a quick review. I really need to make a spreadsheet before the next playtest to make this review process faster.

LEVEL 6-10
Expert Necromancy at 7, standard casting progression.

Perception Expert at 7, solid.

Not much to say for this level range in terms of class features.

LEVEL 11-15
Unnatural Fortitude at 11. Juggernaut is always solid. Fort Jugg on a caster is interesting.

Weapon Expert at 11. Standard weapon prof increase for a caster. Notable for a thought that will come up later. Remember this.

Light Armor expert at 13. Also standard for a caster. Same issue as Weapon Expert for later thoughts.

Master Necromancy at 15, standard caster progression continues.

LEVEL 16-20
Undying Resilience at 17, Super Juggernaut for Fortitude. Very nice.

Epitatph at 19, 10th level spell slot. Standard.

Legendary Necromancy at 19, finale of standard caster progression.

Quick Notes
So the core shell of the class appears to be a pretty bog-standard caster progression, though with just a touch more resilience from their armor and hp. Fortitude being the big benefit instead of Will like a usual caster is interesting though.

FEATS 1-5

1: There are feats here to get each of the subclass focus spells, in case you want to pick up more than the one you get.

Bone Speaker lets you use your free Undead Lore on living things that have skeletons, but only lets you find out stuff about their biology. Considering that you're almost always going to want to use this to recall knowledge about weaknesses/resistances, slam dunk here. Also lets you use UL instead of Medicine when examining corpses, niche but neat.

Reach of the Dead lets you originate a spell you're casting from a thrall within 60 feet instead of yourself. Really cool.

2: Conceal Spell, standard.

Muscle Barrier, grants the associated focus spell. This is a common theme with these feats...

Necrotic Bomb, grants focus spell.

Reaper's Weapon Familiarity, this one is interesting. It seems to lean into the idea that the necromancer might be more of a gish, lets you treat Greatswords, Scythes, and Any Axes as one step lower (Advanced->Martial->Simple). But given that your weapon prof caps out at expert, seems like a bit of a trap.

4: Body Shield. Use your thrall for cover as a reaction, and grants damage reduction if they hit. Very good, very flavorful, one of my favorite feats hands down.

Bony Barrage, grants focus spell...

Draining Strike, Once per turn, you can make a strike and destroy up to three thralls, dealing +1d4 damage per thrall destroyed, and healing 1d4 HP per thrall destroyed. Flavorful, but it doesn't scale at all? I'm assuming it has pseudo-built in scaling given that you can spam out 3+ thralls every turn at later levels, essentially letting you always get that +3d4 damage/healing every turn. Pretty flavorful and unfortunately one of the only ways to consistently make use of your thralls outside of focus points. More on that later.

FEATS 6-10
6: Bone Burst, essentially Reactive Strike for creatures passing by a thrall that is within 60 feet of you, dealing 2d10 at base, 3d10 at 12 and 4d10 at 18. Very fun, very flavorful.

Reclaim Power, once per 10 minutes, lets you drain up to 5 thralls to heal 10 hp per thrall drained, and if you drain all 5, you also decrease your "clumsy, enfeebled, frightened, sickened, or stupefied condition" by 1. This one is odd because a) does it let you decrease ALL of them by 1, or only a single one of your choice? and b) this is another one where my knee-jerk reaction is that it feels a little weak at first blush. It's only usable once per 10 minutes, you have to consume FIVE full thralls, which means even at the highest levels you need multiple casts of create thrall to get the max benefit, which means a minimum of two turns. It's a lot of action economy consumed for a relatively minor benefit compared to what other classes can do consistently. I'd personally either give this some sort of scaling or make it's impact bigger.

Zombie Horde, grants a focus spell...

8: Conglomerate of Limbs, grants a focus spell...

Osteo Weapon, grants you a free weapon that auto scales it's fundamental runes with your level. Very cool, very flavorful. Unfortunately another gish trap.

10: Desperate Surge, lets you (essentially) use a thrall to use your spell attack in place of athletics for a Grab, Reposition, Shove or Trip. Flavorful but really sketchy since you probably shouldn't be up in melee as a caster, let alone grappling.

Lifesense: Oooo, this one is interesting. 30ft impreceise lifesense is already pretty fun, but getting to just know the HP of living and undead creatures is pretty wild, and I can see some GMs out there hating this.

Quickened Casting, pretty standard.

FEATS 11-15
12: Become as Spirit, the spirit-mancer subclass upgrade. Lets you move through enemies as difficult terrain, ignore natural difficult terrain, bonus on escape checks, and whenever you destroy a thrall you get resistance against ALL DAMAGE equal to half your level. Very nice.

Necrotic Focus, Refocus to full. Fine, but i've historically found if you've got 10 minutes to refocus, you've got 30. After the remaster this became a lot less necessary.

Reinforced Skeleton, skeleto-mancer subclass upgrade. Permanent resistance equal to half your level against two damage types of limited selection and +10 status bonus to speed, upgraded to +20 whenever you destroy a thrall. Pretty solid overall.

Vital Conduit, zombie-mancer subclass upgrade. +Level HP, whenever you destroy a thrall, any adjacent enemies need to make a fort save or be sickened one. This is... fine. Definitely a let down compared to the other two.

14: Recurring nightmare. Focus spell.

Skeletal Lancers. Focus spell.

FEATS 16-20
16: Desperate Revival, reaction upon being dropped to 0 but not *immediately* killed, you suck the life out of all living creatures within 60 feet, and you regain hp = life loss. EXTREMELY flavorful but if you're going down and your party is low, this has a very high chance of dropping parts of your party. I can see accidental TPKs being very easily caused by this.

Effortless Concentration, a free sustain at the start of every turn. I'll admit I don't know how many occult spells require sustaining, and only 6 of the printed focus spells for the class benefit from sustaining. This could be insane or useless depending on the spells available.

Flesh Tsunami, Focus spell.

18: Bind Heroic Spirit, Focus Spell.

Ectoplasmic Aura, You + allies within 30 get +1 Circumstance to AC, enemies within 30 need to make a save or lose access to reactions. Interesting but seems... meh for 18th level.

20: Living Graveyard, focus spell.

Morem Ultimatum, 2nd 10th level slot.

Perfected Thrall, focus spell.

Quick Notes

Okay, there are 34 feats in the playtest. Of those, 14 of them grant Focus Spells. That's 41/% of feat options as focus spells. I'm not super fond of the idea that this class is seemingly wholly reliant on it's focus spells to do almost anything with it's key "Create Thralls" ability. Only 6 of the feats let you do anything with your created thralls, two of those are situational reactions, one of them is only usable every 10 minutes, one will essentially never be used more than once a fight (osteo armaments), and Desperate Surge should probably never see the light of day, meaning that the only way to use your thralls outside of focus points in any consistent fashion is Draining Strike, which is requiring you as a caster to make a melee strike, which you're not great at. This is a bit of a let down for me. Let's hope the focus spells are awesome to compensate.

FOCUS SPELLS

1: Bone Spear, respectable damage. Sac a thrall to do a 15-foot line that deals 2d8 scaling by a d8 every spell rank. Slightly higher avg damage than fireball. Not a save based action, it's a spell attack vs. every creature in the line, and counts as 2 towards MAP, but doesn't increase until you've made all your attacks. Solid damage, solid scaling, solid option.

Create Thrall, the bread and butter Cantrip. Creates a thrall that lasts for 1 min within 30 feet. Scales up at 7, 15 and 19 for +1 thrall. You get a spell attack against a target adjacent to one of your thralls for 1d6 + 1d6 per 2 spell ranks, scaling to a max of 10d6. Respectable damage on the summon. At higher levels I can only imagine the chaos of how many thralls you can spam out. The fact that they're actual creatures and as such can provide flanking is something I have a feeling people might miss at first blush but can provide a LOT of value all on it's own.

Dead Weight. This... is a choice. Launch a thrall at single enemy within 15 feet of it make a fort save. Crit success no effect. Succeed, -10 penalty to speeds. Failure immobilized but can escape. Crit fail, grabbed, can escape. TWO MASSIVE ISSUES. 1) No matter if they fail, the duration is ONE ROUND. Which means as written, even if they crit fail, they're only grabbed for a single round for your 1 focus point. 2) "This spell ends if the thrall is destroyed or a creature that failed the save successfully Escapes." Thralls have 1 HP and are automatically hit by strikes... which means that literally any creature can just make an unarmed strike and auto-kill the thrall, no need to escape. This is honestly one of the worst spells I've ever seen. This needs a SIGNIFICANT overhaul prior to release.

Life Tap. Sac a thrall within 30 feet, to the thrall stride to a target within 30 feet and have it make a fort save. Crit success no effect, success, fail, and crit fail make it drained 1,2,3 respectively for 1 minute, and you can have yourself or an ally within 30 feet of the now-moved thrall gain HP equal to the amount of HP lost. Decent option. Bone spear really blows this out of the water though.

Muscle Barrier. Sac a thrall within 60 to grant you or an ally within 15 feet of said thrall 10 temp HP and +1 status to athletics until the HP is gone, scaling +10 temp HP per spell rank. I think this might be the single largest temp HP granting effect in the game since it can theoretically scale up to 90 temp HP, which isn't nothing. Very interesting. Kinda wish the athletics bonus scaled too, at least a little.

Necrotic Bomb. Sac a thrall 60 to make it go boom, 10 ft emanation for 1d12 void (or vitality!) damage, scaling 1d12 per spell level. 9d12 makes it just sub-fireball in terms of average damage. Respectable. Kinda wish you could make this emanation bigger, but at the same time you can quite literally litter the battlefield with thralls. If this ability wasn't a focus spell it'd go nuts. As another point of comparison, Fire Kineticist can do slightly less average damage in twice the emanation every other turn starting at 8. So I guess you're trading frequency for damage with this class.

2: Bony Barrage. Sac a thrall within 30 to make a 30 foot cone, each creature in the cone makes a reflex save vs 2d10 piercing, scaling by 1d10 every spell rank. If there's a thrall in the targeted area, you can sac that thrall to a) give your allies in the cone immunity to it, and b) +1 status to AC until the start of your next turn. Pretty solid. Less damage than bone spear but bigger AoE and nice secondary effects.

3: Zombie Horde. Now this is a freakin' spell. Sac a thrall to create a 10-foot burst of Zombies. It's difficult terrain, and any creature that starts its turn in the space takes 3d4 (+1d4 per rank) bludgeoning with a basic fort save. Lasts 1 minute. Once per round on subsequent turns, you can sustain it to move the horde up to 10 feet, and if it moves into another thrall, it consumes the thrall and makes the burst 5 feet wider. If you play your cards right, that means it'd cap out at a 50 foot burst. Not high damage but consistent, wide-ranging, highly thematic. I like this one A LOT.

4: Conglomerate of Limbs. You create a grappling machine. Create a thrall with 40 (+10 per rank) hp instead of the usual 1, whenever an enemy begins it's turn next to the thrall, fort save or be grappled for 1 rd or until it escapes. Subsequent turns you can sustain once to make it move up to 15. This is what Dead Weight wishes it was. Can potentially grapple multiple enemies if they're in close quarters, can re-grapple targets on subsequent rounds, probably dies to 3-4 attacks but at least that's soaking decent amount of attention.

5: Nada.

6: Also Nada.

7: Recurring Nightmare. Create a special thrall within 30 feet that can share space with creatures, and can fly. Lasts 1 minute. If it is summoned into or ends it's movement in a creatures space, will save or be frightend 1, crit fail frightened 2. On subsequent turns, can make it Fly 60, OR re-create the Nightmare if it was destroyed, which is super interesting. None of the other "Focus Point Thralls" have this benefit, which I find interesting. I kinda wish they had this, but I also understand why they don't.

Skeletal Lancers. Create 5 thralls within 60 feet, they each have a lance and 10ft reach. Any time an enemy within their reach makes a strike, they take 5 piercing, but no more than once per strike. Can sustain each subsequent turn to make any number move up to 30 feet. Doesn't scale, which I find sad. Honestly by this level 5 piercing is almost nothing, the only thing that makes it reliable is the fact that they essentially take the damage EACH time they strike, so if an enemy is strike happy (like a lot of monsters are), they're "essentially" taking 10-15 persistent piercing damage, and that can apply to a lot of creatures depending on how creative you get with your positioning. My only gripe here is that they still have the 1 hp auto-kill of thralls. I'd really like if this had the recurring nightmare benefit, maybe let you re-create up to 1 of the lancers if they've been destroyed?

8: Flesh Tsunami. What a spell name. Sac a thrall within 30 to create a 60 foot cone, turns the cone into greater difficult terrain, if there's another thrall in the cone, you make each enemy in the area make a fort save. Crit succeed nothing, succeed, -10 speed for 1 round, fail -20 speed for 1 round, crit fail, immobilized for 1 round or until it escapes. This feels like dead weight all over again. This is a very high level spell, that requires you to sac 2 thralls and a focus point for full value, and it... makes people move less for one round at most. The greater difficult terrain lasting a minute is nice, but the actual effect of the saves feels so niche as to never warrant using.

9: Bind Heroic Spirit. Here it is. The epitome of the gish trap for the class. +3 status bonus to attack rolls and saving throws for one minute. Whenever you successfully strike, create a thrall adjacent to you that lasts 1 minute. This is exactly what the class needs to even try and function as a gish, and you don't get it until ****ing 18th level. Credit to Ronald The Rules Lawyer here, but I really think this should be implemented WAY sooner and scale as you level. Maybe at level 6 for +1, then +2 at 12 and +3 at 18? It'd at least slightly close the gap between the classes inherent lackluster attack rolls and a martial. As it is this feels like a "Oh I'm level 18, guess I'll re-tool my entire character to function as a gish now" which is a massive feelsbad in my mind.

10: Perfected Thrall. Create a 200 HP thrall, and you can use it as a source to destroy, but each time you woulud destroy it it instead loses 20 hp. I wonder if you can repeatedly sac it to the same effects for something like Draining Strike or Reclaim power... anyway. On subsequent turns, can move and make a spell attack through it to smack for 7d6. This is... fine? Like by this level you're not hurting for destruction fodder when you can make 4 thralls for 1 action, and since the spell otherwise does nothing the turn it shows up, it's a 200 hp body that you can then try and hit things with for the next 9 turns to do mediocre damage. Average 24.5 damage assuming you hit... I dunno. Like this is cool on it's face but the more I think about it the less interesting or impactful it becomes.

Living Graveyard. Summon a massive animated graveyard within 100 feet with 400hp. it also summons 5 thralls. Each round after you can sustain it to make it move up to 60 feet and make 3 new thralls. Very cool, hyper flavorful, absolutely wild to imagine in person. Ultimately, I have no idea what this is useful for. If you need thralls, you can spend your one sustain to make 4 rather than 3 from the graveyard. if you have the free-sustain feat I guess it's 3 free thralls a turn, but given how few things you can use them for once you run out of focus points, I feel like your thrall creation will RAPIDLY outpace your ability to consume them.

FINAL SUMMARY/REVIEW

I absolutely adore the flavor of this class and I'm so happy we're getting to explore this niche finally. It has a lot of potential, and as always I'm sure that the class will see a massive improvement between now and release. Ultimately my fully summarized thoughts are as follows:

1) If the class wants the option to be a gish, Heroic Spirit needs to come way earlier or there need to be more options to support it. I think making heroic spirit lower level and scaling is a quick and easy way to do that.

2) The class needs more consistent ways to make use of it's thralls outside of focus spells. Even if there was a cantrip you could take to just command a thrall within range to make a new attack, that'd be something. Anything to make use of these thralls your spamming across the battlefield once you're out of focus points.

3) Dead Weight and likely Flesh Tsunami seem incredibly underwhelming, Dead Weight especially. It's a spell that costs you essentially 2 actions to make an enemy lose at most 1 action if they decide to pop your undead balloon of a thrall, and if they weren't planning to move anyway they can just fully ignore it.

4) There are a few things that create an effect "from where the thrall was" which is odd when most spells and such create an effect "centered on one corner of the square". Might need a language clean up.

5) I like the idea of the spells that can consume multiple thralls for bigger effects. Bony Barrage and Flesh Tsunami as obvious examples, but also stuff like Reclaim Power or Draining Strike, it's an interesting way to handle some "pseudo-scaling" that could be achieved at lower levels but is easier as you get higher and can spam your thralls out faster. It really leans into this flavor of the Necromancer building their horde and then using it to great effect, even if we can't achieve the stereotypical horde of undead storming the gates.

6) This is purely a thought, but maybe a feat to give them access to the Create Undead ritual? Could let players at least try and live up to the ravening horde fantasy with the right resources.

7) Similarly, giving the class some version of the Command/Improved Command Undead feats from OG Core Rulebook.

All told, I'm very much looking forward to how this turns out. Thank you again to the designers for all your hard work, and thank you for continuing to bring incredible classes to the game.

Tune in next time for my breakdown of the Runesmith!

I cannot wait for this. In 1E the NPC Codex got an insane amount of use because I tend to run a lot of humanoid-centric campaigns. As it is I currently have to do a lot of custom stat blocks.

I'm really looking forward to the revamped Guardian. The core theme is such a compelling one that I know a lot of players will likely enjoy, we just need to see it deliver on the theme a little better. And with the the way Paizo has historically generally nailed releases after the playtest feedback, I'm really looking forward to this release.

Quick Thoughts:

Love the idea and implementation of the class so far.

1) Ready, Aim, Fire! Seems highly over-powered for it's cost and level, especially when compared to Executioner's Volley 4 levels later. It generates up to ~10 free actions, and up to 6 reaction strikes. There's also a slight confusion on if it allows multiple people in your Squad to use a cantrip or just the one.

2) Plant Banner: Two issues
2a) The fact that an enemy can just turn it off with an interact action seems weird, even if that would proc Reactive strikes, since it's a fairly short-range aura which means unless your entire party is firing from range, odds are it won't be too difficult for an enemy to come in and just take it. I'd prefer to see some mitigation factor where either the aura boost is larger or the enemy needs to make some type of saving throw to remove it.
2b) The jump in the temp HP it provides is really jarring. At level 14 you're getting ~5 HP per round, at level 15 you go to ~20 HP per round. Maybe add an intermediate step at level 10 that boosts it to Int + 1/2 Level, make it a little smoother.

3) Quickening Banner: given the sheer action economy a lot of the Tactics provide, this feat ends up feeling really lackluster in comparison. I understand that because it doesn't have the usual Tactic-style restrictions it has a lot more flexibility, and it's essentially a tactic that doesn't take a prep slot... it still just feels underwhelming to me in comparison. I'd almost prefer it take two actions but not have the 10 minute cooldown. That might be too good though. It just feels really odd to have tactics that can, at level 1 every round, spend 1 or 2 actions to generate 6+ FREE actions not including reactions, and then here at level 14 you spend 1 action to generate 6 actions only once per combat effectively.

Overall, I really enjoy this class. I had significantly less negative feedback regarding it than I did the Animist or the Exemplar playtests, so massive kudos to the design team for really hitting the nail on the head here.

The fact that the updated crafting doesn't address complex crafting/quick setup at all makes me a little sad, but I guess I can homebrew the interaction.

God I really hope the Assassin archetype gets a fix in this book. It has several major flaws and could really use some love.

Especially the fact that, the way it's written, you essentially can't use it at early levels of Free Archetype Variant without locking yourself out of two FA feats.

The flavor of it not working on you is weird, and if you rely on the ability, you encumber allies in combat if you do anything other than huddle up and ignore all your other ikons.

This is a super funny take I hadn't even considered.

Bulk is hard. It's measurement isn't exactly linear. 1 Bulk is 5-10 lbs, but a medium creature is only 6 bulk despite the fact that your average human would be around 150-180lbs. Large creatures are 12 bulk. Huge creatures are 24 bulk. Gargantuan creatures are 48 bulk.

For scale, a Trebuchet is considered Gargantuan, so in that instance your character could drag around a Trebuchet. If you had the Enlarge ability from Warped by Rage, you could actively carry it around as your bulk limit doubles. EDIT: Actually, Warped by Rage makes you Huge not large, so your bulk limit would quadruple. You could carry around a trebuchet with minimal effort.

Though, where are you getting the drag value? I remember things like that from older editions but I haven't been able to find that in 2e rules.

If I were a youtuber, this is where I'd insert a clickbait title. Instead, I'm just going to give you a massive wall of text. Apologies in advance, and I don't honestly expect any replies, but I hope my input is of some small benefit to the designers. I'm going to go over the class chassis, then the ikons, then feats. Starting FROM THE TOP

Initial Profs + Level 1

Perception, Saving Throws, Attacks, Class DC are all solid.

Skills is odd because the only other classes to date that had Int+2 Skills were Champion, Druid, Cleric and Wizard. I'm assuming the real comparison point here is Champion, since Druid/Cleric/Wizard lose out on some skills in exchange for their incredibly versatile spellcasting. In the Champion's case, they do often end up feeling slightly lackluster during RP due to the skill limit but they have the flavor of the "Paladin" behavior to lean on. Actually no, re-reading champion, Champion also has the bonus skill from their deity. As does Cleric, and Druid gets one from their order, so this skill limit is really only present on Wizard, an Intelligence focused class. For lack of a better term, the fact that Exemplars are already fairly MAD (They want Strength, Dex, Con, and Cha at the least), most Exemplars will have at most 10 Int. This has the side-effect of making Exemplars the "Dumbest" class.

Defenses is also rough because of the light armor limit. I get the sense from this class that the desire is to go glass cannon, but given the proclivity of heroes and their ability to shrug off incredible blows, this feels somewhat counter-productive. Medium armor prof would be my preference, and I foresee a lot of Exemplar-Sentinels in our future. Not a fan of this honestly, I'd prefer to see at least Medium armor included.

Humble Strikes is a nice feature. While I don't think it'll really change anything, it's a nice nod to the source material. Unfortunately, Martial Weapons can still get higher damage dice than any simple weapon can even with this buff, and come with a suite of useful traits that most simple weapons lack. Neat, but I think will mostly go un-used in most cases that aren't a player choosing a specific weapon type for flavor, but very helpful for those players.

Shift Immanence/Spark Transcendence. I love the transcendence mechanic, it's a lot of fun. My main pain point is that Immanence only being active while an Ikon is means that a lot of Ikons either won't see use, (mostly Worn ikons), or an Exemplar will constantly have to feel like they're "nerfing" themselves to get a niche benefit. Comparing this to Kineticist, who just has the big "on/off" switch of elememental aura, this is juggling a lot more balls in the air, and for little to no additional benefit compared to kineticist.

Levels 2-5

Quick note: the fact that Exemplars don't get a level 1 feat is somewhat baffling. They would be the first martial ever to not get a 1st level feat. I'm assuming this is because they already get so much at level 1 with the ikons, but Kineticists get a ton at level 1 as well and still get their level 1 feat.

Root Epithets: I'm assuming because these give us an additional skill training is why we only get 2+int at 1. On to specific reviews.

- Brave: A solid if not particularly inspiring ability. Requiring it to be towards an enemy is a nice nod to the "Brave" moniker, since you can't use the defensively oriented body ikon abilities and then run away.

- Cunning: An odd scenario. It requires you to spark your body, and you get a free feint, but it essentially precludes you from ever using the feint for your "big hit" abilities, since you can't then spark your weapon. A neat ability as well, but seems like an odd counter-intuitive moment to me.

- Mournful: Understated but strong. Dazzle with no save until the start of YOUR next turn is potent.

- Radiant: "free" healing is nice. Given the 10 minute immunity similarity, quick comparison to Kineticist's "Ocean's Balm", it's at range compared to Balm, and it's healing actually scales much better. At level 3 it's healing 8 hp guaranteed, as opposed to Balm's 4.5 average with a max of 8. By the time Balm scales at 5, Radiant is healing 12 guaranteed, compared to an average of 9 from Balm. Radiant is generally above rate, it's not as strong as a high-roll from Balm, but it's more consistently good. Very solid ability, and it also means the Radiant Exemplar can skip getting Medicine.

EDIT: Leaving my original (wrong) analysis there for honesty. I had forgotten that Kineticist doesn't scale like spell levels, but off character levels. As such, at level 3, Radiant heals 8, Ocean's Balm heals an average of 9, max of 16. At 5 it'd be Radiant healing 12, Balm healing an average of 13.5 with a max of 24. Final point of comparison for this is at level 9, Radiant healing will heal 20, and Balm will do an average of 22.5 with a max of 40. This means Radiant reliably hits the average of the effects of Balm, without the upside of the bigger heal or the risk of a much lower one. Though the fact that it can be done at range is still very beneficial.

Spirit Striking: Fun take on weapon specialization, especially when coupled with Dominion epithets later.

Levels 6-10

Dominion Epithet: My personal take is that I think the Worn Ikons should've been the ones to get the boost at this level, since I think the Weapon ikons will almost always be the most... well... iconic. Plus Worn Ikons get little to no support currently in the playtest until the big epithets at 15. This might change with release, but if Worn Ikons will continue to get minimal feat support, it might be a good idea to move the worn ikon buffs down to this spot. Anyway.

- Born of the Bones of the Earth: Passive is solid. Immanence is incredible and very flavorful. Transcend provides a fun repeatable aoe. Key thing to keep in mind is that because the terrain change is permanent, that Exemplar better have a way to ignore/avoid the difficult terrain or they will rapidly make the battlefield an absolute mess of difficult terrain if they spam this.

- Restless as the Tide: Passive is solid. Immanence is rough because as written you would hit yourself and all your allies, leads to a scenario where you start hoping you DON'T crit which is an odd place to be. Also only very situationally useful, against single targets you're looking at a max +4 damage. Transcendence is actually incredible. I love this one so much. Just casually shift the entire battlefield, oh and pull a target to you and smack them while you're at it. Great stuff.

- Peerless Under Heaven: Passive is solid. Immanence isn't particularly fancy but also solid. Reap the Field is actively a trap. Mathematically it's almost always worse than just striking a second time, even at a -5. This ability needs a massive overhaul, it also doesn't address what happens if you crit either of your targets. As written you technically couldn't use it if you crit the first target, though I think only the most die-hard GMs wouldn't allow that.

- Whose Cry is Thunder: Passive is fairly meh? The saving throw bonus is essentially a non-factor since most bonuses to saving throws are generic, and there are only 2 abilities in the entire playtest that are "exemplar abilities that grant resistance", and neither of them are particularly interesting. This has a weird anti-synergy with the Skin as Hard as Horn ikon, since you'd technically only get electricity resistance while the skin ikon was active, despite this ability being granted by the weapon. Very odd. Immanence is absolutely incredible. Transcend is less incredible but still very solid, good Thor vibes.

Resolve is good. Feels odd that a class that doesn't want Wisdom for any of it's abilities is best at Will saves, but thematically appropriate.

Levels 11-15

Greater Resolve: Wow, Legendary at 13. I guess this is why we don't really care if they dump Wisdom (at least at this point) since they now can no longer crit fail will saves at all.

Light Armor Expertise: YIKES, this comes super late. This reinforces my belief that our lovely designers really want this class to be a glass cannon, which seems at odds with the legendary hero trope. This would make a little more sense if some of the body ikons were stronger and granted them alternate routes to being tanky, but the body Ikons I've seen don't particularly achieve that goal well.

Greater Spirit Striking: Still cool.

Juggernaut: This is honestly what I'd expected before Resolve, but still nice.

Sovereignty Epithet: Honestly, I feel like all the worn Auras should be 30 feet at base, and these should increase it to 60. I also think that it's odd that both the Body and Weapon Epithets grant some other passive benefit when the ikon isn't utilized (Skills for Body, usually changes to spirit damage for weapons) but Worn Epithets ONLY do stuff while they're active. Yet another blow to Worn ikons.

- Teacher of Heroes: Immanence. This is solid. Very flavorful and fun. Transcend: Has anti-synergy with itself. Once you transcend, the thing you just did is only active if you then immediately shift the spark back to the worn ikon. So in order for this to actually work on the turn you use it, it's actually a 3 action ability. After that you're forced to either just not use your other ikons, or play a very hampered version of the spark-shifting game where you need to have it back in your worn at the end of every turn. Not a great feeling. Aside from that, synergizes well with the fact that you're going to get hit a lot with low AC. It's also worth noting that recall knowledge is an odd effect for a class with very few skills, and low Intelligence, another sort of odd anti-synergy in this.

- The Last Ruler: Immanence is meh. On brand, and free action demoralizes are great. Anti-synergy with the fact that you have low AC. Transcend is very nice, great for sweeping up mobs, next to useless against solo enemies, but fun none-the-less.

- Thief of Moonlight: Immanence is actively bad. At first blush it might seem solid, but the fact that it requires the target to miss (unlikely to happen in the first place with your low AC), but the fact that even if they do miss that it lasts only until the end of your next turn means that often AT MOST you're imposing dazzled on them for 1 attack. They miss their first attack, get dazzled, MIGHT miss their second attack if they even take one, then it's back to you and the ability ends. Transcend: Flavorful but risky. I'm not a fan of the incapacitation trait being added here though. This is also a notorious "Save or suck" style effect. Another "Great for sweeping up mooks, useless against bosses". The prevalence of these effects in the mythic hero class is understandable but odd at the same time. Heroes are often regarded for the great beasts they slay, not for the armies of commoners they kill.

Levels 16-20

Not much going on here. Light Armor Mastery at 19 is oof.

Body Ikons

Eye-Catching Spot: Immanence is an effective +1 AC, very nice. On brand for the "defensively" oriented body ikons. Transcend is solid as well, though your class DC isn't going to be very high most of the time.

Gaze Sharp as Steel: Immanence is fun. Transcend is horrible. It feels super weird to spend an action to grant yourself a reaction you MIGHT use, plus this is one that would often likely be wanted by a ranged exemplar who wouldn't be able to make good use of the Reactive Strike anyway.

Scar of the Survivor: Overall great, and I think as written this would become the "Default" body ikon. Immanence is solid, Transcend is fantastic but not overpowering. This is honestly the gold standard of what I think the Body Ikons should achieve.

Skin Hard as Horn: I did a bigger math breakdown in this thread about how bad this ikon is. The immanence resistance is minimal and also gets deactivated during a crit, which while very Achilles makes it even more situational than it already is, and the transcendence is just... bad.

Weapon Ikons

Weapon ikons are by far the most solid of the three types. Only downside is that there are a few weapon types that aren't really supported here. Unarmed/natural, more types of Bludgeoning, and "precision ranged".

Barrow's Edge: Very solid. Making their soul bleed is awesome, and the transcend is great. Very good one.

Fated Shot: Excellent. Immanence is respectable, and spammable aoe, even a small burst, is great for a ranged martial.

Gleaming Blade: It's bonus damage and double strike, what's not to love. Solid.

Noble Branch: The Transcend needs to be clarified, but if it works how I think (ex: If I hit you for 2d10+6, the transcend does 2d10), then this is really nice and I like it a lot.

Titan's Breaker: I can crush castles with a club, just give me enough time. Honestly an incredible option.

Worn Ikons

Palisade Bangles: Immanence is solid, I'm glad that the designers realized the anti-synergy with shields and attempted to call it out, but in this circumstance it might be better to say something like "This bonus can stack with any circumstance bonus provided by shields"? Transcend is... meh. At base level it can shift an enemy 2 squares towards you if they fail a low Fort save. At 15 that goes up to 4 squares, but still not great.

Skybearer's Belt: A funny one. Could be fun for a grappler since this is "almost" Titan Wrestler while active, with some bonus carrying capacity. Transcend is a fun "Get the squishy out of harm's way" ability, but considering how often the mantra is to kill the enemy before they kill you, this is a lot of actions to do a slight reposition.

Thousand-League Sandals: Immanence is great on it's face, but an aura that grants move-speed is odd to implement in a turn-based game, especially one with such a small radius. It leads to a scenario where the exemplar almost wants to go last, so that everyone can move first, and then the Exemplar can go catch up to them before their next turn starts. Transcend is fantastic.

Victor's Wreath: Lesser Inspire Courage at all times is solid, again, wish there was a better range, but solid. Transcend is fantastic. Honestly the best one of them all in my opinion. Doing s#%! like letting people return from being petrified, giving them chances to shrug off curses, fantastic. It also doesn't "guarantee" that they can just cure any plague in a narrative, as if the town is afflicted by a plague and the Wreath gives them a new save, it may just end up hastening someone's death. Very strong in certain scenarios but not overwhelmingly so from a purely narrative standpoint

Feats 1-5

Sanctified Soul: Oh look, you become sanctified.

Twin Stars: This is an example of why I think Exemplars NEED a feat at level 1. If someone wants to be a dual-wielding exemplar, this feat is pretty crucial for them.

Vow of Mortal Defiance: Deicide, the 1st level feat. Love it.

Claim Initiate Domain: Fun. Focus spells are nice.

Leap the Falls: Animist wishes it had this. Unironically good, though I wish it wasn't inherently tied to if your body was active, but I can see the reasoning.

Thorns of Mortality: Fantastic feat. Barrow's Edge would pair well with this. Screw your regenerating monsters.

Hurl At The Horizon: Neat idea, but technically it means you often just hurl your weapon at someone... and then can't get it back without running after it. You technically can't etch returning on a weapon that isn't thrown at base. Someone elsewhere suggested also giving it a transcend that does something and returns the weapon to your hand. Or it requires you to spend your 6th level feat to also get...

Only the Worthy: Fun. Another solid Thor reference. As written you can use this like old school immovable rods, since you could command it to remain in place while in mid-air, which I'm super okay with. Love this feat.

Through the Needle's Eye: Here's that support for precision ranged I mentioned before, but this is a save against a low dc for one round of blinded. Not sure I'd ever recommend this.

Feats 6-10

Motionless Cutter: Love it. Three actions for up to possibly 4 attacks. Very gamble-heavy as there's always a chance you miss the first attack and blow your whole turn.

Reactive Strike: It's Reactive Strike. The existence of this also makes Gaze Sharp As Steel even worse.

Binding Serpents Celestial Arrow: A cool ability, but as written what exactly happens with the thrown version? Do you lose access to the weapon until they escape?

Additional Ikon: Solid, but this makes the spark juggling game harder. Also: it's not really addressed how this handles the feats/epithets that buff your ikons. If I take Additional Ikon: Worn, do both of my Worn ikons get the benefits of my Sovereignty Epithet? Do I need to pick one?

Claim Advanced Domain: More domain magic. Fun.

Dominion Signifier: Solid damage options.

Fish from the Falls' Edge: Once Per Day Breath of Life, but it also turns off your key class features for a round... Not sure about this one. I think at this point I'd rather just go the route of picking up Trick Magic Item and using a Staff of Healing. Very flavorful though.

Journey of the Sky Chariot: The first piece of worn ikon support, and it's a good one. Unfortunately, because it deactivates if you shift your spark, it essentially precludes you from using anything but your worn ikon while you're flying or you fall.

Mated Birds in Paired Flight: Very fun dual-wielding feat.

Feats 11-15

Compliant Gold: STAFF GET LONGER. Love this. Very solid.

Extract Vow of Nonviolence: This is a fun one. I think that two actions might be a lot, I'd prefer it to be a single action like Demoralize.

Warped by Rage: Another fun one. At first I was going to gripe about the enlarge getting turned off when you transcend, but the transcend fixes that. This means that with careful sparking/shifting you can maintain the enlarge indefinitely. Love it.

Destined Victory: The only other worn ikon support feat. It provides a defensive bent to a worn ikon, which is odd on it's face, but I appreciate the ability to spread the love around and make it not quite as crippling defensively to have your worn ikon active between turns. Very solid immanence and transcend, very good feat.

Infinite Blades Celestial Arrow: looks solid. If the Immanence functions like the Noble Branch transcend, it's really solid. Transcend is absolutely bonkers and I love it.

Feats 16-20

Seven-Colored Cosmic Bridge: Immanence is incredible. Transcend is incredible. Great feat.

Strike Rivers, Seize Winds: This one is... interesting. Very flavorful, but it essentially gives you a small pool of 1/day spells. Honestly pretty solid overall.

Eternity-Incinerating Blaze: Jesus christ. Now this is an 18th level feat. Inducing doomed on crits is already fantastic, bonus damage strike that also has the ability of just ERASING SOMEONE FROM TIME. It should be clarified if the target is able to be resurrected, because my knee-jerk reaction is that it'd take a Wish to restore them to the timeline.

Sunwrecker: Man. After following the last feat "I get free darkness spells on crits" is a big step down. The Transcend is equally a step down, it's a big burst of darkness that you're guaranteed to see through, and is super hard to dispel. Flavorful, but not in the same league as the previous feat.

Cutting Without Blade: this is...... fine? I guess the biggest benefit of this is just the ability to move your spark, as a free action. Lots of flavor, and then the main mechanical benefit is that shift spark is now a free action. Kind of underwhelming though.

A Place Beyond Mortality: This is oddly written? It's a once per day activated, requires you have one point in your focus pool, but you stop aging? Do you resume aging if you use that last focus point? Idk I am probably being semantic. This is a good feat. Never a huge fan of "You must die for this to see benefit" though. I guess it does let the Exemplar go a bit hog wild during the end of a campaign since they can just ignore death once each day.

Final Thoughts

Re-reading this post I realize that I might be coming across as negative. I'd like to be clear that I'm EXTREMELY enthused for this class and am already awaiting the end of 2024 so I can get my hands on the full release. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have spent this much time doing such a thorough review and analysis. I do think there are some hiccups to be worked out, but this is why we do the playtest. Few key takeaways:

1) I think Exemplars need at least medium armor, or at least need their armor proficiency to scale faster. We want them to wear light armor? Maybe consider letting them hit legendary in light armor at some point.

2) I think Worn Ikons need some love. The auras feel too small and by and large most of them feel pretty underwhelming in general. The Sovereignty Epithets should also provide some passive benefit outside of the immanence/transcend, in my opinion.

3) I think there are a few anti-synergy pieces here and there that desperately need to be addressed. The number of "if you miss" abilities is very high for a class that will have a relatively low AC. Teacher of Heroes turning off it's own ability immediately after transcending, things like that.

4) I think a main comparison point with this class should be the Kineticist. It fills a similar niche of "I have a small pool of abilities I can repeatedly spam while being primarily a martial". Kineticist ends up with better AC, better attack rolls, is less MAD, has a wider variety of abilities, and is less complex to play from round-to-round. All in all I struggle to find what about the Exemplar makes them not just a strictly worse version of Kineticist in most avenues of comparison. Again, I'm very enthused for this class, I'm just sincerely hoping this gets the Kineticist treatment of seeing a significant improvement from playtest to release.

I definitely hope that they don't do the sort of mythic paths that Owlcat did in the WotR game, since I really prefer the fantasy of "you are imbued with mythic energy and are cultivating your own legend" to "you're becoming more like an angel".

The only six paths you really need are the six associated with the six attributes.

This seems to be very much a matter of preference. I've seen a lot of sentiment online of people who would very much like the Owlcat versions.

I personally would like a mix of the standard version and the owlcat versions. I think being able to a pursue "this is why I'm personally powerful, because I'm a archmage/hierophant/etc" or a "I'm becoming a mfing archlich/dragon" are both interesting ways of going about it.

I'm also here to yay parallel mythical is confirmed! (And azata mythical class/archetype too)

Are you saying those things are confirmed? If so, source? I missed it.

I'm at least hoping that Mythic is a second "tier" of archetypes if they go the archetype route. My group uses Free Archetype variant by default, and I would hate to give up that flavor if we want to use Mythic, and I don't like the idea of having to give up on class feats for it either.

Keeping in mind that if that did happen, that'd mean a group using both Mythic and Free Archetype would have a lot of stuff going on, I still would prefer that to effectively "losing" free archetype to support mythic.

I think Worn ikons in generally are pretty underwhelming in the current playtest. It might just because a lot of options for them didn't get included, but given that the only "buffs" to them come at 10+, and even then it's only a level 10 feat, a level 14 feat, and then the level 15 epithet, it just feels like Worn Ikons need a lot more support.

I also think Worn Ikon auras should be larger at a base level. (30' base and 60' when they expand at higher levels, but that's just my opinion)

Also generally speaking their powers are often underwhelming. Not all of them, but most of them seem very under-tuned, though that's also fairly par-the-course for playtests starting weak and getting improved for the release.

My worry is if you try to give some passive bonuses, then presumably the actual Transcend effects would need to be neutered to keep the same power budget. I would rather the designer's buff the other Ikons so you also feel good using them.

I'd be okay purposefully choosing in my turn to give up some of the damage to get a cool support effect. Would be a nice niche bouncing between high damage, high support, high utility since the average would be reasonable. I think right now, maybe it just feels like bouncing between high damage to mid damage + circumstantial benefit.

The way I'm looking at it is in comparison to Kineticist.

"Is This Transcend action equivalent or better than a 2 action overflow"

And in a lot of cases it's coming up short. Especially given how much of the Exemplar's power is focused into the three ikons, 2/3s of which is inactive at any given point in time.

Kineticist has a ton of abilities that are active at all times, while a vast majority of Exemplar abilities only function while a given Ikon is active. And at first blush, even when a given Ikon is active, nothing seems like it's particularly over-tuned.

breithauptclan wrote:

Castilliano wrote:

Doesn't a trap-minded Rogue (et al) negate traps as a threat? And traps seem more common, yet unless there's a distraction or the trap's OP, when does a trap activate at your table?

Plus Mobility, if one goes half speed, negates Reaction-based traps.

Neutralizing Haunts seems very on theme for Animists so they should have similar prowess. This comparison does suggest the Animist should take some action to overcome the haunt (whether it can react or not), and perhaps move slower while guarding against them.

What, exactly, are you talking about? All I am finding is Trap Finder.

Which very much does not negate traps.

If Spirit Walk worked like Trap Finder only for Haunts instead, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have this thread.

"Trap-minded Rogue" isn't a game term, it's simply saying any (typical) Rogue with a mind to address traps. And that they have little trouble with traps (w/ the exceptions noted above). I thought this was fairly well known & consistent at PF2 tables. So what I'm talking about is how builds with a high Dex/high Perception/high Thievery can handle traps on behalf of the party. Whether that build has Trapfinder (or Mobility) is secondary, though both would help.

After which I suggest that should perhaps be the baseline for an Animist to handle Haunts. Not automatic (as currently written), but reliable, and maybe requiring more investment, i.e. maybe they'd need to max out Religion or Occult proficiency to handle at-level Haunts much like a trap-guy needs to max out Thievery.

---
Separately I could imagine a party bypassing lots of Haunts, losing their Animist, and then having to exit. Gulp.

I'd say not quite. Because a trap-focused rogue still has to "engage" with the game to deal with the traps. Perception is involved, and disabling the traps. There's action occurring.

Meanwhile an Animist can just walk their party through a haunted mansion packed to the brim with Haunts and by the way it's written, nothing happens at all. No story is told. Maybe the GM tells the Animist about the Haunts they're just naturally suppressing, but otherwise nothing occurs.

The equivalent would be if a Trap-focused Rogue had an aura that said "No traps function within 30 feet". The Rogue could take a casual stroll with their entire party through a trapped hallway and nothing would happen.

EDIT: Quick edit to note, there's a difference between "minimizing" and "negating" a threat. Trap-focused rogues minimize traps as a threat, but because they can crit fail their disable checks, it's never fully trivialized. Meanwhile Animists just have an off-switch for Haunts, actually negating them entirely.

dmerceless wrote:

I don't think the issue is in the core design here, but in how underwhelming some of the non-weapon options and their Transcendences are.

Ideally, you should be pressing one "cool button" almost every round, with the tradeoff that you can't always use the same one. However, Thousand-League Sandals, Skin as Hard as Horn and Scar of the Survivor are the only non-weapon ikons with Transcendances you can reliably use and feel good about using.

With the correct build, you should almost never be manually switching, but it's not hard to build yourself into a trap where both your Body and Worn ikon are super situational (or straight up bad) and you have to manually put your spark on weapon to access the good one again.

I think that the problem is the both in core design and underwhelming of some Ikon.

In core design I think that only able to benefit from just one Ikon per round limits the utility and versatility of non-weapon Ikons too much. If you was able to keep some effect of Ikon that don't are with your Spark (like making Immanence fully passive) or give some ability that allows you the keep one of them working for some extra time (like a "Lingering Composition" to keep them working for 3-4 rounds without the Spark) this would increase their utility a lot.

For other side is possible to simply get better non-weapons ikons and have more non-weakon ikons improvement feats too. But this still keep the problem that you will basically focus in the same Ikon almost all time during encounter and maybe another during exploration mode.

I agree that it's a bit of both. A few things that come to mind:

1) Given that the "Defense" ikon is the one you'd normally want active between rounds, it means that the "Utility" ikon will actually only rarely see use, especially given that-
2) The 15 foot aura of the "Utility" ikons means that you essentially need to be in the thick of things for this to actually provide benefit, but in order to provide that benefit you have to turn off your defense-oriented ikon, meaning you're leaving yourself more vulnerable.
3) There is some minor overlap, but generally speaking the only ikons that grant offensive bonuses are the weapon ikons. Thematically this make sense, but as both the OP, others and myself have noted, this leads to either a "good turn bad turn" cycle, or you run the risk of someone doing the "shift-transcend-repeat" cycle I mentioned earlier to spam out the weapon transcendence every turn.

A few potential fixes I can see

A) Have Ikons grant some benefit when not 'invested'.
B) Increase the base aura radius of the Worn Ikons to make it a little more forgiving.
C) Have several Worn/Body ikons have more slightly more compelling effects.
D) Provide a feat or ability later that allows more than one Ikon to be active at a time.
E) Provide a Reaction option to switch your spark, which would allow you to keep your "utility" ikon active but switch to your "defense" ikon if s!&& starts hitting the fan.

In my mind, a very common desire will be for an Exemplar to find a specific spot to plant themselves and then repeat the following sequence ad infinitum:

Action 1: Shift Immanence from Body to Weapon
Action 2/3: Transcend Weapon, shifting back to Body.

This will let them use their "defensive" Ikon when it's not their turn, and their "offensive" Ikon big ability every turn.

This feels like it runs the biggest risk of the "illusion of choice" of any class to date, at least in my mind, since this rotation would potentially feel almost mandatory if you want to do "the cool thing" as often as possible.

This is actually one of my only complaints about the class. I get that at the end of the day it's not the ikon but the Exemplar who is special, but it feels weird to me for reasons I can't fully explain that the ikons do nothing without the spark. No residual divine benefit, just back to mundane status.

Apparently Michael Sayre confirmed elsewhere that Unarmed will be fully supported. So in theory that would leave only a single "item" ikon with Worn.

Calliope5431 wrote:

Wait is animist divine or primal? I thought they said divine...

Its divine.

They also said depending on your spirits you can get spells from other traditions

Jann being able to grant a crit success on a 10th level ritual as CL4 is pretty wild. The fact that it can be dominated is also a sadge because it means an 11th level occult/arcane caster can guarantee ascension.

I now have this headcanon that because of the fact that Janns are prime targets for creating new deities, Achaekek has a standing order for all his followers to kill Jann on sight.

As much as I don't like "GM may I" since as GM I'm very permissive and when I play being unable to take choices I want makes me itch. I like the custom school idea just for the nonsense that pops in my head.

Potential Arcanium Applicant: "Look at all the spells they give you access to for being an alum so cool."

Recruiter of the Hodgepodge School of Whatever the Hell You Want: slugs whiskey and hits some Pesh "Don't do it kid, we got Slow, Summon Dragon, Horizon Thunder Sphere all the good s**t. You don't need those snooty a*******s help. Now, sign right here.

Actually wheezing at this mental image, thank you.

I don't think you get it. All those things are "valuable" materials.

There is no such thing as "cheap metal", there is no such thing as "cheap stone". Even if you say "you can only make oxidized iron and dirt" the former is still highly valuable for a multitude of uses and the latter is very valuable for anybody trying to do construction.

Sure, but as far as PF2 is concerned, stone, vegetable mater, and water, are of negligible value. There's a reason why there's no listed price for water, or for stone. They aren't even listed as trade goods.

If you run a game and you want to tell a kineticist "jokes on you, your kinesis ability doesn't function because everything has too much value", that's your choice. As far as the system is concerned, basic materials like these are so cheap they don't even deserve to be given a price.

EDIT: as a quick Note, LUMBER, which is the only available trade good that might fit into this category, is worth 1 copper piece for 40 feet of board. I'd say that falls pretty squarely into the "negligible value" category.

EDIT2: I'd also note that Lumber's value probably comes more from the fact that it has in fact been processed into Lumber rather than just raw wood. So bulk quantities of wood would be worth less than a copper.

Gotcha. I was taking your word interpret to mean you thought there was some wiggle room in the rules, and I recall there not really being any outside the GM/table deciding that limitation wasn't for them and throwing it out.

Personally I'm inclined to let a player summon troops, the visual is very cool, but I may remove a troop's thresholds to damage where you can only deal a fourth of its HP in maximum damage at a time.
Otherwise it's basically a living Wall of X spell which becomes both very attractive and very good at slowing down play, meaning I'd be seeing it everywhere eventually.

Oh, totally valid and I should've been clearer. I know the PF1 summoning shenanigans were one of the reasons PF2 summoning/minions got nerfed so hard to avoid this exact trouble. I'd also probably let a player do so as well, but it'd certainly be troublesome if a PC just started clogging the field with troops.

Does it mention how the rest of the elemental lords were freed, by whom, and the repercussions for the planes and Golarian?

It doesn't say how or by who, though the implication was that it was all done by the Pathfinder's Society. It talks about how the return of the Elemental Lords caused the power shift that caused the Planes of Wood and Metal to return, and otherwise implies that tumultuous times are ahead.

Riddlyn wrote:

So are all the auras stances?

Each element also has an aura junction, that are not stances but always on when you are channeled, that can be chosen if you concentrate on an existing element instead of branching out at given levels.

To further confuse things, Earth has a stance impulse that is personal and doesn’t have general aura effects.

Earth has two stances that are personal and don't have general aura effects, if you include the tremorsense. Also Steam Knight is a Stance, and isn't a true aura effect.

the Monster Grab action has been modified. It no longer automatically grabs the target, but instead allows the monster to make a grapple attempt while ignoring MAP (both the penalty itself, and it doesn't increase further from the attempt). Also can be used as one action to extend the grab automatically.

(I apologize if anything I share has been covered, but I did a cursory review of this thread and didn't see this brought up.)

EDIT: wow, I literally just needed to scroll up that someone else had referenced this.

Yes, Grab, Knockdown and Push are all no longer automatic, but grant the creature an attempt that ignores MAP.

EDIT2: It's worth noting that this change to Grab may be considered a buff in some instances, especially with higher level creatures with improved grab, since it is now properly a Grapple attempt, which means on a crit they can Restrain.

Are there some cool weapon runes?

As far as I've seen, there is only a single weapon rune in the book, to let you use weapons underwater easily.

EDIT: Just did another check. There's another wood-themed one that can immobilize the enemy on crits. That seems to be it.

Dimension Door is apparently being renamed to "Translocate"

Surely I can’t be alone in actually liking the change? I understand the idea of consistency, but personally as someone who owns only SE-books, I buy them because they stand out. No ”cluttered” (if beautiful) artwork on the cover; simply a heavy leather tome feel, glistening titles and a shiny-ish color.

In my opinion, the SE-tomes are beautiful, and the branching out from red made me happy. I’ll look forward to having red, blue, purple, green and who knows what other nuances decorating my shelves. Just my 2 cents, but while consistency is nice, it can also get boring.

This issue that myself, and I'd wager a lot of others, have, is that back when 2e was first coming out and the SE line was announced, one of the stated goals was to have them all consistent in style. Since SoM that's been diverging, and abandoning red entirely means that the original goal has now just become a fancier leather version.

At this point I'd actually find just the regular books more pleasing, because when looking at them spine-on they're more consistent. But I also don't feel like going back and buying a few hundred dollars worth of books after investing this much in the SE series. It's more likely I'll stop buying the physical copies entirely and just get PDFs.

Meanwhile I'm refreshing my order page every 30 minutes hoping to see that "Shipped" status change.

Terriam Atram wrote:

Aaron Shanks wrote:

Aaron Shanks wrote:

Hey fans, as you know the image at this time is a mock-up, but I've asked Jon, our Community and Social Media Specialist, to have a chat with our art and editorial teams and find out what their intensions are for this new blue cover. Thanks!

We have our answer. It will be a dark blue, not Lost Omens blue, with gold foil. The Paizo has had plans to move away from a single color going forward.

I will echo the other voices here as someone who purchased the SE exclusively due to the consistency the provided on the book shelf, I am extremely disappointed in the decision to move away from the single colour for each of it's product lines. It made sense with the APs as those are all basically stand alone, but here it has really cut my interest in your physical products.

I will communicate your feedback. Thanks.

By the way Aaron, I know you aren't the one who makes these decisions, but wanted to let you know that I appreciate you communicating with the community like this.

Aaron Shanks wrote:

Hey fans, as you know the image at this time is a mock-up, but I've asked Jon, our Community and Social Media Specialist, to have a chat with our art and editorial teams and find out what their intensions are for this new blue cover. Thanks!

We have our answer. It will be a dark blue, not Lost Omens blue, with gold foil. The Paizo has had plans to move away from a single color going forward.

This is a pretty disappointing change. I will probably stop getting the special editions from this point forward then. I had originally wanted to get the special editions because the consistency was aesthetically pleasing. Now, buying just the standard editions will be more consistent when viewing them spine-on.

Really baffling choice.

Really hoping this isn't going to print in blue. It was bad enough with the cover and spine changes previously. And since this isn't identified as a Lost Omens book, it should be Red like all the others.

As glad as I am to see 1e Burn gone, I do think some sort of optional variant for this class would be an interesting way to keep the "Con key stat" idea, without requiring the class to kill itself to be useful.

I'm very much a fan of how much utility and aoe this class has, but I think having the option to take on burn (maybe inflicting self-Drained?) to buff yourself in some manner. This is not a hard-and-fast "we must have this" but a very vague thought.

Without it, however, I do think shifting the key stat would make more sense. Based on the description of the class, Con really doesn't even seem to fit into any of the lore in any appreciable way, a lot of the thematic descriptions of how things work seem like they'd be tied to Wis instead.

Sounds to me like your bard is doing fine. Yes he could mix things up and if he is bored of what he's doing he absolutely SHOULD.

But giving a consistent (effectively) 10% to hit AND to crit with the way accuracy works in this system is a potent effect.

Based on your descriptions, your bard is not the problem. He might be able to do "more" but it wouldn't necessarily be "better".

Shifter is absolutely at the top of my list. I was so excited back when it was being released for PF1 and then it's actual implementation was such a let down. I understand they'd moved a lot of their design focus to SF/PF2 by that point, but it was still a bit of a punch in the teeth.

A true master of shapeshifting would be an awesome class, especially with how they've streamlined so much of old school wildshaping type abilities do.

I also am probably in the minority here but I would still love to see some version of old-school Book of Nine Rings style classes make it in. I really loved that book and the idea behind maneuver-based martial classes.

f they wanted to play a DPS role maybe they shouldn't have rolled them up as a healer...

I don't think you read OP correctly. Their main concern is that they aren't keeping up with DAMAGE TAKEN by the frontliners, as a healer, not keeping up with damage DEALT.

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Jesus, a lot of people didn't seem to actually read the original post here, they just honed in on "OP said electric arc isn't working, clearly that means x"

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In regards to OP, in most d20 systems healing is not meant to be a definitive "I am guaranteed to keep you alive" method of play. If you're fighting weak opponents it's very possible to outscale their damage with healing, but as soon as you start to reach even a moderate challenge you're going to get outpaced very quickly. Either because there are more enemies attacking than there are available heals, or because an enemy's single attack will do as much or more than what you're capable of healing for.

Emergency healing is fantastic and can really help people get out of tight spots. Expecting to be always able to out-heal any enemy you come across is never going to work. I recommend looking into other ways to contribute to a battle, especially buffing or debuffing.

I've literally not run a single game since it came out where at least one or two members of the party didn't take battle medicine.

I've run at least two games where EVERYONE in the party took battle medicine.

FlySkyHigh wrote:

At the end of the day a lot of the 1e classes got translated fairly well to 2e, so that even if it didn't function exactly the same, you got pretty much the same fantasy fulfilled.

This isn't really happening with the Alchemist.

You've inadvertently hit the nail on the head, although I'm not sure in the way intended.

Very fundamentally...

No I think you and I are pretty much in full agreement here. My only real issue with 2e is the fact that "Alchemist" was a class that was imported into the core rulebook due to it's popularity, but 2e Alchemist and 1e Alchemist are fundamentally different classes, just with a similar theme, and I think that's where most people hit a roadblock. They try to play 1e Alchemist which is essentially impossible in 2e.

For what it's worth I actually enjoy Alchemist in 2e, but I do think that it isn't quite as elegantly implemented as many of the other classes.

Er...no. Beastkin's big deal is that they can change shape. While that adequately covers Worgen, the others need something else.

Edit: and yes, I understand that just because you have an ability doesn't mean you have to use it, but what exactly would be the point of being a beastkin that never used your defining ability?

Reflavoring would probably work better, but might as well dream big.

You know what, that's fair.

Although I'd prefer a single umbrella race to cover all animal-people rather than them having to print a whole series of new races for every individual flavor of animal.

Maybe they do it as it's own book and print a bunch of races, but this is one of those things where I'm super fond of the way Were-animals were implemented in PF2. It was so streamlined that you can literally make a were-anything in minutes, because they unified the were rules. If they did something similar for Animal People TM I'd be pleased, but if I found out an entire splat book was dedicated to 15 different flavors of Animal People TM I probably would give it a hard pass.

Honestly Tauren, Worgen, and Pandarians can all be flavored as various versions of beastkin. And I'm sure plenty of GMs will allow you to flavor your catfolk as a tiger/lion folk person, or also just use Beastkin.

Essentially if your request boils down to "I want more animal people" I think we've got a solid umbrella to put them under already.

I don't think this fundamentally changes the argument, but in the interest of fair discourse, I need to point out that your math is wrong.

A caster starting with an 18 in their casting stat should only be able to advance that stat to 21 by level 15 (every boost being a single point increase above 18). If you included a level 17 Apex item, you could get it to 23. It's...

Fair enough. I was doing some quick and dirty math and using an old spreadsheet for monster stat averages, so my numbers might've been off a bit. My point remains that it's pretty much impossible to have an even level monster with a save higher or equal to your spell DC, and any monster with a save as high as a 15th level caster's save DC is grossly overleveled for the encounter.

I do appreciate you keeping me honest with my math though.

So I'm unclear exactly what might've happened with your friends, but in my opinion one of four things have occurred.

1) Your friends got extremely unlucky on their attack rolls / enemy save rolls and felt like it was very unbalanced against them.
2) Your friends GM decided to boost monsters AC/Saves to make things more challenging without understanding the underlying math balance.
3) Your friends are being hyperbolic. Human nature means that we tend to react more strongly to negative experiences and recollections than we do to positive ones. For every failed attack roll or enemy save it's equally possible there were a higher number of successful attacks/effects.
4) Whatever they were playing in is severely overtuned, but even AoA wasn't THAT overtuned in my experience, especially at later levels.

Unless there is a DRASTIC level difference between your abilities and those of your enemy, an enemy's save bonus should never be equal to or greater than your spell DC.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that by "high level" we mean level 15. A level 15 sorcerer is a Master of their spellcasting DC, and let's assume a... 24 charisma. So 6+7+15+10. That means that your spellcasting DC at level 15 would be 38. A level 15 enemy's average STRONGEST SAVE would be +30, meaning they have a roughly 60 percent chance to succeed. This is usually about how the math checks out in even-level comparisons. An enemy with a +38 to their STRONGEST SAVE would have to be level 21. Meaning that monster is 6 levels higher than the party, which is respectively 3 levels higher than even a SEVERE encounter would necessitate.

I think that after Bestiary 3, we will either see most monster entries come from campaign setting type books, or we will have more "Themed" bestiary-style books. Focused on broad categories of monsters perhaps.

I'm definitely intrigued by the comments here, but it also sounds like it's lacking some functionality that would make it more vital for me to use over things like Roll20 or other similar products.

I see this particular action a lot with players from 3.5/PF1e, and a reminder that a majority of enemies no longer have access to attack of opportunity can open up a world of action economy.

Additionally, in the campaign arc I'm running, I'll be introducing a recurring group called the Spectacle of Fate, a mysterious traveling caravan that trades goods in exchange for pieces of their customer's fate. Mechanically, they can trade hero points as a meta currency to buy on level consumables. The items bought from them vanish after the game session. The Spectacle of Fate basically acts like the shady merchants in old rpgs what were improbably set up in dungeons and such before important events

I actually freakin love this idea. I may end up implementing something similar in my upcoming game.

I'm also a fan of Mutants and Masterminds style implementation. I personally use the "Edit Scene" function of hero points from M&M in every game I run that has a hero-point style system, because in many cases when my players use it it just straight up improves the story. If a player uses edit scene and it makes the scene genuinely better, I tend to immediately refund the hero point. If the player edits the scene just to give themselves a small edge in a combat, then sure, and they've now spent that hero point.

I'm also fond of the M&M style reroll where you physically cannot roll lower than a 10, which really gives it a proper heroic feel. I'll likely be implementing this house rule in my next PF2 game.

I also find that a lot of people don't seem to take the +1 per hour suggestion very seriously. In the few games I've played in online I would usually see maybe 1 at most get passed out over the course of the whole session. Something to keep in mind is that if your heroes have more points to spend, it doesn't feel quite as bad if using one of them doesn't help them at all, but if they only have the single point each session and that single point ends up doing nothing (or even making their situation worse) then they're more likely to simply stop using them or resenting the system. I personally hand out points more frequently than even the 1 per hour suggests, because my players enjoy them and most of the time the hero points won't really upset the balance of the game.

So, why does everything keep being about "I win button" abilities in a thread about expanding limited use/cooldown-having abilities that don't have to be that?

Perhaps due to the assumed nature of the original post.

The original post itself was about "player-driven flashy moments". In most scenarios when a player thinks of "flashy" it tends to translate to "powerful".

I'm all for expanding limited use/cooldown-having abilities that aren't necessarily super powerful. I'd love to see more weapon talismans and similar type items/abilities where you get limited use but fairly niche abilities.