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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!

"You rally your allies, carrying them from the brink of disaster to the verge of victory. Each ally in your aura can immediately attempt a new saving throw with a +2 status bonus against one ongoing negative effect or condition currently affecting them, even if that effect would not normally allow a new saving throw."

So against most things, this is fine. One time effects that go away either after a set time or a specific condition.

However, given that failing a save against an ongoing affliction could in fact make it worse, does using this risk advancing the affliction?

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.

Many feats and abilities state something like "your body ikon gains the following:"

How do these intersect with having multiple ikons of the same type? Do all of them get the bonus? Do you have to pick one?

Checking in because I'm a little curious about my current subscription. It's been pending since the 18th, and I'm seeing people talking about receiving their PDFs, which to my understanding usually occurs once their order has completed. I'm just curious if I'm stuck in a queue or if there's an issue.

I posted this in the analysis thread for a simple post, but I also thought I'd post it here and get other people's thoughts. For reference, I spent most of my time with inventor focused on armor-inventor, mostly because I love the hell out of an iron-man style inventor concept.

So I know I'm super late to this discussion, but I felt a bit let down by the 18th level armor-inventor feat. Both weapon and construct got a spammable "ultimate" ability, whereas the armor got effectively one-shot big DR.

Now with unknown changes coming to the unstable trait, it's hard to say for sure how that ability will turn out, but that discrepancy felt odd.

I'm also very glad that unstable itself is seeing a change. Inventor is arguably one of my favorite classes in PF2 thus far, but my biggest gripe with it was how much of the design space revolved around various abilities/feats that all keyed off the same essentially once per encounter resource. There's a plethora of things you can do, but you can effectively only do one of them (2 with the 14th level feat) in a given encounter. I would've much preferred to have unstable work on a case-by-case basis (I.E. Each action with the "unstable" trait would only need to roll if itself had already been used previously), but I also recognize that that would add a lot of bookkeeping that PF2 has thus far been trying to avoid.

Maybe instead of a hard-and-fast one use, then you have an 80% chance of never using it again for the encounter, develop some kind of ramping difficulty? I.E. Your first use is guaranteed, and then maybe make the flat DC 5, then add some number to that for each use of further unstable actions. I'm not sure how to balance the "risk" element, as losing access to it entirely seems fair but it also means that a single unlucky roll early (like rolling a 1 on your first check) suddenly cuts you out of the unstable abilities entirely, but if you don't make the risk bad enough (like say oh you take this small amount of damage if you fail) then players will just muscle through and not care about the risk at all.

Personally I think my ideal version of this would be some version of what I described above, where you have an "Instability" counter. For each unstable action after the first, you add 1 to the Instability. At the end of the action, you roll a flat check, with DC of 5+2xInstability. If you fail the check, you take 1d6 damage for each point of instability. And maybe as part of the class itself you have a cap on how unstable your invention can become before it stops functioning, with that cap increasing as you level so you can push it further.

As a final note, I'm also not a fan of the Infinite Invention class feature at 19th level. I completely understand the thematic and design choice that led to it, but at the same time I can't help but feel that it almost removes the "identity" of each sub-class at 19th level. For the first 18 levels they all have a distinct path and flavor and then at 19th level they just unite into one homogenous blob. I'd almost prefer this as an 18th level feat instead of a core feature? If someone wants to take this path with their inventor by all means, but I feel like having it as a core capstone-style ability is weirdly out of flavor for the one-minded obsession that the class shows up to that point.

Just to be clear: I absolutely love this class and would play it even if printed as is, I just hope that some things can be made even better. Overall I think it's a great class with a lot of awesome ways to be built, but armor-inventor definitely feels like it got the short end of the stick, and I feel like designing a significant part of a class around a single once-per-encounter resource kind of flies in the face of PF2's apparent design philosophy of trying to provide characters with a large toolkit to mix and match on the fly.

So this is a weird issue I'm stumbling on with targeting 15th level enemy with Power Word Kill.

It states:

"15th: If the target has 50 Hit Points or fewer, it dies instantly; otherwise, it drops to 0 Hit Points and becomes dying 1, or increases its dying condition by 1 if it’s already dying."

The stumbling block I'm hitting with the final line. Unless I'm missing something, if you currently have the dying condition, you should be at 0 hp, which means that the first qualifier (sub 50 hp) should trigger first, rather than simply increasing the dying condition.

By my reading his creates a weird grey area where if a creature is already "dying" it wouldn't instantly die but would instead simply increase it's dying value by 1.

I tried looking for any FAQ or Errata on this and didn't see anything, so I figured I'd come here and ask.

I'm sure other people have pointed this out, but I felt it was egregious enough to deserve it's own thread.

I for one am mostly okay with resonance as a way of solving the christmas tree and CLW heal stick paradigms that plagued 1e, but there are a few areas where I feel like the system breaks down.

Especially regarding bag of holding. This is an item that at it's core should be very simple. But currently, read as written, if you wish to put anything into the bag, or take anything out of it, you must spend a resonance point for each thing.

An item that a 4th level character can pick up, means that this item will blow through your resonance points in about 2 turns of trying to store any actual amount of things inside it, let alone wanting to get stuff back out later.

Bag of Holding (in my opinion) should be an invested item, not an activation one. A lot of items need to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb to see what exactly requires activation and what should be passive.

Hello Folks!

So a (very) long while back, I was chatting on the boards here about the idea of running a campaign where everyone actually STARTED at 20th level, around the time that Mythic was first being dropped. The idea was to run a game more centric on power-dynamics on a global scale instead of the minutiae of day-to-day adventuring. Lots of roleplaying, kingdom building, that kind of thing.

Well, that campaign has finally come to fruition, only one of my friends is running it and not me. Which means... I get to play in it.

And so, I ask of you all: What are some of the most interesting/fun/b$+*%%! 20th level builds you've seen or built? Note: I'm not only looking for combat capability (which is good) but utility and flavor. I'm also going to be looking for characters that have the ability to influence the world in some meaningful way, whether it's diplomacy, mass-summoning, huge spells, or just wrecking mountains with a single blow. And maybe a build or two just to give the GM a headache when I toss him my character ideas.

Please and thank you. I'm just gonna go ahead and pick it up in a few days at Gencon.

Okay, I've been working over the general rules and such to make sure that I'm doing things right. As it is, I've settled on a Human Oracle, with the Deaf Curse and battle mystery. Going for a "hear no evil speak no evil" theme. As it is, I'm going to play him more akin to a casting fighter than a pure caster. So, if you all don't mind, I'd like your thoughts, and make sure I did everything correctly:

Human, Oracle
Battle Mystery, Deaf Curse.
Faction: Grand Lodge
Str: 16 (10 points)
Dex: 12 (2 points)
Con: 13 (3 points)
Int: 10 (0 points)
Wis: 10 (0 points)
Cha: 14+2(5 points) the +2 is my racial bonus.

Feats: Improved Initiative, Extra Revelation
Traits: Reactionary, Observant

Revelations: Skill at Arms, Weapon Mastery (Greatsword)

Spells:
0; Detect Magic, Light, Create Water, Mending
1; Cure Light Wounds, Shield of Faith

So my basic premise is as earlier stated, "Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil", and I'm playing him as a "fighter with divine guidance". I didn't want to go paladin, because I feel that that's a little weighty on the code of conduct for this type of character, who would be more similar to a greyguard.

The idea is is that through the use of Extra Revelation, I took Weapon Mastery to substitute 3 feats for my 1 feat I would've normally had, and therefore supplementing myself a la a fighter. I've seen a lot of people on the boards saying that they need more clerics, and I figured this is a semi-capable way of filling that niche without pigeonholing myself.

Moving forward, I'll probably use up most of my feats to take additional combat feats that I otherwise would not acquire using my revelations, and then using my revelations to gain those other said revelations to supplement my feat pool and turn me into a very dynamic fighter.

I plan to use my first Ability Boost at 4 to round off my Con, and then use the rest to boost my CHA so I have enough to cast the appropriate level spells.

Also: I decided to leave my INT at 10, because with Human Skilled and my favored class bonuses, I felt I'd receive enough Skillpoints per level as it was. I also took Observant to supplement my otherwise low perception score due to low Wisdom, and because I need it for lipreading since my character is deaf. I also took both reactionary and improved initiative due to my current -2 to initiative, which ultimately cancels out the bonus and then improves upon it, having me end with a +6 to initiative, and then I think at 5 the penalty goes away entirely, and it'll be +8 base.

I am open to suggestions.

So, I've been playing Pathfinder since it's release, and have been avidly keeping track of I'd wager 80% of each new release. However, from the foundation of PFS, I've never really taken much notice of it. I hear it thrown out alot on the forums, and I know it has something to do with more restrictive rules of some kind, and something called scenarios, and then some kind of boons? Yeah, I have no idea.

Can someone tell me what exactly this is? Is this some kind of AP Nuzlocke Challenge for Pathfinder?

Alright, this recently came up in a game because I'm actually playing a Vampire, and it came up that in the listings, it says that if the coffin home is destroyed, the vampire can't reform and simply dies once it hits 0 hit points. This struck me as interesting because it reminded me of the Lich, and when I checked it pretty much said the exact same thing.

SO I had to ask, what happens if a coffin home or phylactery is destroyed, but the vamp/lich in question doesn't die, and is given time. Would they be able to rebuild said coffin home/phylactery, or would they simply forever be in danger of suffering true death? I suppose with the lich and the Phylactery serving as a home for it's soul, I can at least partially understand it, but I'm not entirely sure how the same would apply to a vampire. Even with the lich, you'd figure someone with enough magical know-how would be able to pull back that fragment of their soul given the proper time.

If anyone knows the proper rules for this, please let me know, otherwise, I'd love to hear opinions.

I recently picked up the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, and as a long-time home-brew campaign GM, I'm afraid I'm a little lost on what to do with these. I've seen modules before, and those are really just a campaign written out for you. Adventure paths seem more like well... adventures, that you can toss in as you go. My confusion lies that in the 6 Rise of the Runelords books, it seems like you go from level 1 to level like 14 in the course of 6 books. Are these just supposed to be used to supplement a campaign or what?

Sorry if this is a little noobish, I just don't understand.