No questions of my own yet, but I'm watching the thread intently.
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I was thinking of what from the Animist will stay strictly Animist (like Witch has its Patron’s gifts - familiar ability/hex cantrip), and I’m thinking the spontaneous Apparition spells might be it (and possibly being able to select/swap apparitions). Personally, I think that is too much to not have in the multiclass Archetype. It wouldn't feel like an Animist after losing that. For comparison point - Magus. The archetype doesn't lock out spellcasting. Or focus spells. Or even Spellstrike. Many of those things are expensive to get or only work in limited fashion though. What Magus has exclusive to full class Magus is Arcane Cascade and the ability to recharge Spellstrike mid-battle. ----- What makes this difficult to try and analyze is that we still don't really know what Animist will fully look like when released.
I'm a bit on the fence about having the archetype still have the split of both Divine prepared casting and Spontaneous casting. I'm thinking that leaning more into the Apparition casting will be more on-theme and will leave it more powerful than trying to split the power with the Divine casting. So I expect that the dedication feat will give two cantrips as normal, but they will be at least partially chosen by Apparition choice. Whether only one, or both I'm not sure. There will likely also be the spellcasting feats as normal for multiclass spellcasting archetypes. Probably spontaneous slots and repertoire chosen by Apparition choice. As a separate archetype feat, you will probably be able to get the first of the Animist focus spells from the Apparition. As well as the normal two-part feat combo that lets you get Animist class feats at half your character level. ------ Another option would be for the spellcasting to be the Divine half and at that point you may as well just pick Cleric archetype instead. ------ There may be some way of getting both the Divine prepared and spontaneous Apparition spellcasting, but that is going to be real thin on either half since the archetype spellcasting feats only give one spell slot per level until an upgrade feat at level 8. Maybe the level 8 upgrade feat is when you can add in some of the Divine prepared casting to the Animist spontaneous casting that you get from the archetype at 2nd level.
I can't wait to see what Plane has to say about Animist...Now there's another class I haven't dug into yet. ;) It's like Thaumaturge but a spellcasting class instead of a martial. And instead of having to choose Implements at character creation and level up, they can pick what other classes to poach from each day.
I can't wait to see what Plane has to say about Animist...
IIRC it was not so much widely hated as surprising and expected to be a typo because it was so different from what we're used to. I think it was less hated and more like "Why does getting master in fort give them the will save upgrade?". That's what I remember too. People were actually complaining that Animist didn't get enough save proficiencies. People were confused because one of the class features gave a proficiency bump in one save and a degree of success boost in a different save as part of the same class feature.
Very nice. Looking forward to seeing the final versions.
Yeah, I was playing at level 5 and level 7. I tried being a Gish. I wasn't landing crits constantly because I was the highest accuracy character in the party. I was instead rolling at lower attack bonus than the Magus and Rogue. Even with Embodiment of Battle. So from what I was seeing in my actual play - being a Gish kinda worked but was fiddly. It certainly didn't outperform Magus. And being as good or better than an actual martial didn't work at all. I only saw an attack bonus as high as a martial when being assisted by other allies - and that same assistance on the martial instead would generally be a better choice.
Embodiment + Grudge Strike gives you reliable damage and accuracy no other full caster can come close to though. That's what I mean by theorycrafting though. First, that routine is a 3 action investment. You only get to move if you have also taken Sustaining Dance. And even with that, you only get to make one attack each round. Second, that is including bonuses. So you won't be able to benefit as much from things from the rest of your party even. Like the Swashbuckler with One for All throwing out Aid. Or the Bard's Inspire Courage. Third, Battle Oracle and Warpriest would be my counterproposals on 'damage and accuracy no other full caster can come close to'. No they aren't able to swap it out the next day, but it also doesn't take them an entire round to make one attack.
Or you can hit people with pointy sticks at least as well as a warpriest/ Gish as well as a Warpriest actually sounds about right. Though I would also point out that Animist costs more actions to do it.
Not entirely sure that I believe it for anything other than whiteroom theory. Darkened Forest Form lets Animist work like a Wild Shape Druid - with the same drawback that you can't cast spells while in a Polymorph form. Embodiment of Battle and Grudge Strike look good on paper - kinda. It ends up being one big attack each round. But still at spellcaster levels of proficiency. Embodiment of Battle gives a bonus to attack rolls, but it doesn't really make up the difference - at least not for anything other than the highest levels of gameplay. And if you don't max your Strength score, your attack bonus will go downhill from there. And you are using your bonus types already, so your allies won't be able to further buff your attacks - they won't stack. So if you pump all of your character build power into being an off martial, you can do moderately well at it. As well as other spellcasters do. Maybe even as well as a spellcaster with a martial archetype but without needing to spend the archetype feats on it. But if you want one big hit each round, Magus, Swashbuckler, Barbarian, Ranger, Thaumaturge, Fighter, ... all do it better out of the box.
Looking at the PF1 class, I guess the split spellcasting - part prepared and part spontaneous - is coming from Shaman.
Not sure how much of Shaman is being included, but yes - Animist is most definitely the successor of Medium. Currently, Animist hasn't been released - it is coming out in the War of the Immortals book in about a year. You can see the playtest version though since that just wrapped up earlier this week. In comparison to Medium, Animist (playtest version) is a better spellcaster, but can't really be built as a martial. You also attune to multiple spirits during morning preparations, but only have one of them active at a time. You can switch which one is active with a 10 minute refocus activity when not in combat (or if playing Channeler Animist, as one action during combat). The Apparitions, as they are now called, provide some lore skills, a cantrip, one spell per level added to repertoire, and - if they are the active spirit - a focus spell.
Are these playtest forum threads and discussions still going to exist somewhere, or just get purged entirely?
While that's fair - and certainly a reasonable thing to do - I wouldn't then come on to the advice forum complaining about how unreliable my Swashbuckler damage is. Or worse, go onto the rules forum moaning to the game developers that Thaumaturge needs skill feats given out with the Tome Implement so that it compares better to Rogue. Similarly for Animist and how limiting their blaster-caster build is.
I think you misunderstood me. I'm not asking if you think that the Animist class should be more static. I'm asking if your character would be better served as a different (and more static) class since you generally used the same Apparitions. In choosing Animist, you are trying to build a character that is flexible. That is the entire point of the class. If you want to build a character that throws around healing magic and AoE damage in every encounter, you should build a Kineticist. Basically you are saying that you want to build an AoE damage dealer and healer, so you are going to play an Animist because they have Earth's Bile and can fill all of their prepared slots with Heal. It is like saying 'I want to build a reliable damage dealing martial character, so I'll play a Swashbuckler because they have Confident Finisher'. Or 'I want to play a skill expert that will rock all of the skill challenges that we face, so I'll play a Tome Thaumaturge'. I mean... Technically that is correct... But wouldn't your reliable damage dealing martial be better as a Fighter with Exacting Strike? And have you considered Rogue for your skill expert? And maybe your AoE damage/Healer should be a Kineticist?
Considering that you nearly always chose the same couple of Apparitions, what would you think of rebuilding this character as a more static class? Would that be better? I am thinking Wood/Water Kineticist since you are focusing on healing and damage dealing as a spellcaster.
It is still a huge improvement over Medium from 1e.
I did play it in an actual game instead of just whiteroom theorycrafting. I think it does do too much damage if you multi-cast it, and maybe a bit too little if you stick to one casting. I also find it to be too much of a gimmick rather than something intentional. If it was intentional that it does equivalent damage to Fireball, then it would do equivalent damage to Fireball and be limited to one casting at a time. That way it only costs one focus point instead of burning through all three of them. How many other focus spells in the game expect you to cast it three times in a row in order for it to work as intended?
Overall thoughts: I like Darkened Forest Form. It feels a lot like Wild Shape, but it is a bit more limiting to use - that sustained duration does cost quite a bit. I like Discomfiting Whispers even if I didn't get to actually use it. It feels like it has a really nice combat impact, but is also rather tricky to use well. It makes an interesting challenge for the entire party to try and work around. I like Earth's Bile as long as it is limited to one casting at a time. It makes a good spell in comparison with things like Wildfire and Elemental Toss. It might be better if it was an instant duration and two action cost - like those other blasting damage focus spells - rather than one action and sustained. I don't like Embodiment of Battle. It doesn't do enough for a casual player who is just building an Animist character to have fun with. And potentially it does too much for a min-maxer who poaches the spell to put it on a Fighter. As a character built for dabbling with a little bit of everything, Embodiment of Battle would have left me swinging at least 3 points behind the Magus on Strike attack bonus - and that is after building Strength up to +3 (which is not really normal for a spellcaster class - certainly not something obvious that a casual player is going to do). I think this spell would work better if it did a level/rank based attack bonus replacement - the same way that Animal Form does. Simply that: at level N, you get attack bonus +x. It prevents shenanigans with putting it on a Fighter, and prevents trap options for casual players. I really like the way that the Apparitions have so much riding on them. The focus spell, the cantrip, and the repertoire spells. No matter which one you choose an Apparition for, you have to just suck it up and try to force-fit use the other stuff you get with it. Which is how I ended up with Fire Wall and Aqueous Orb. I had Fire Wall as a result of wanting to play with Earth's Bile in the previous fight. And I had Aqueous Orb simply because I wanted to use all of the Apparitions at least once during the playtest and Vanguard of Roaring Waters ended up on this day's preparations. The Divine Cantrip slots feel really limited. Only having two of them stings. Especially with the above point that getting another cantrip that I do want has strings attached. It means I may not get a focus spell that I want instead. I would actually prefer if I got three Divine cantrip slots and could only choose 2 Apparitions max. For more reasons than just the Cantrips. I think having so many Apparitions is a bit too much. It makes the disperse feats less costly since you will have plenty of Apparitions left and probably chose one primarily for the purpose of sacrificing to the dispersal ability. Having fewer Apparitions attuned means that each one is important. Also, if the Apparition gives a particular ability of a different class, it also means that the Animist is taking over less of the roles of other characters. A narrower amount of poached abilities. Which means that the ability that they do get can be at fuller power without completely invalidating the other characters. I also love the Wandering feats. I picked up Blazing Spirit, but I didn't have opportunity to use it. At least, not that I remembered to actually use it with. But the idea of those feats is absolutely fantastic. I just wish that they were available at earlier level than level 6.
Final Battle So in the interests of playtesting more scenarios that actually come up in a game - we leveled up to level 7 and fully healed, but had to keep our daily resources from the previous battle as spent. Which for me wasn't much. I had used one Rank 1 spell. We did also have to keep the conditions - which for me meant staying at Drained 1. The combat was advertised as being more difficult, but having the same theme as the last one - a battle against undead. This time inside the crypt that we had fought at the surface of previously. It ended up being against a vampire count, a vampire mastermind, three vampire spawn, two dire wolves, and two wolves. Crowd control FTW. Opening round of combat, the vampire count dominates the party's Magus, one of the dire wolves attacks, and I drop a Fire Wall across the room to split the enemies. The enemies are happy to sit on the other side of the fire wall with their fast healing and wait us out. The Kineticist has to tank the hit from the dominated Magus (which is a bit questionable of a ruling that Dominate can cause an ally to attack their friends - but it is what the GM went with). So I used Aqueous Orb to shove the Magus into a corner where it couldn't reach any of us without diving into the Aqueous Orb or running through the Fire Wall twice - both of which are self-harm actions that were ruled couldn't be ordered to do. ⬜⬜⬜⬜Most enemies
So the Kineticist and Psychic had a round or two of taking shots at the enemies while they figured out how to try to deal with the Fire Wall. The vampire mastermind tried for a couple of rounds to use Dispel Magic on it, but since it was a Rank 4 spell he had to succeed at the roll - and he failed both times. But the Magus also failed to shake off the Dominate effect for multiple rounds. So he got to sit in time out. Once two of the vampire spawn, one of the dire wolves, and one of the regular wolves were down, I got bored and charged through the Fire Wall myself - which I note does not have the ability to be Dispelled. Anyway, charged through the Fire Wall and lashed out at the vampire count with Searing Light - aided with the crit success of the Psychic with Swashbuckler archetype, All for One, and master proficiency in diplomacy. Which was enough to put the roll of 18 just barely into crit territory. So I vaporized the vampire count in one spell. After that, it was a bit of a free-for-all. The Kineticist put up Protector Tree around me - which was a good thing since it soaked up the almost 30 HP of damage that the swarming wolves and vampire spawn ripped into me with. I would have survived the round either way, but it would have been close. The Magus shakes off the dominate finally and uses Dimensional Assault to cross the Fire Wall, the Psychic uses Amped Warp Step to cross, and the Kineticist uses Deflecting Wave as they cross to negate all of the fire damage. Vampire mastermind tried to dominate me. I succeeded at the save and only got stunned 1. Note on vampires and dominate:
I am not sure if Apparition's Possession would work on these creatures Dominate ability or not. The creatures would have a counteract rank too low - so Apparition's Possession should work against that. But it is casting an innate spell - and one that is way too high for their creature level. It is a rank 7 spell - which most definitely is high enough to override Apparition's Possession.
However, Divert Control doesn't have a level limit. Even if it was ruled that the level 5 vampire is able to actually cast the rank 7 spell as a rank 7 spell instead of as a rank 3 spell, then I can still use Divert Control to ignore the effect for its duration. I tried out Darkened Forest Form at that point. I had to move to somewhere with a bit of room though in order to have the space needed to take on a large size. So one action to move and one action to transform and one action spent on stunned 1. And after that, I still had problems with the large size of the Animal Form spell getting in the way. Allies taking up all of the convenient locations to stand, terrain getting in the way, things like that. Typical Wild Shape problems. Hoping that gets fixed in the Remaster in general. The combat stats of Darkened Forest Form worked quite nicely though. I was rolling Strike attacks with the same bonus as the Magus. And hitting a regular strike with slightly more damage than the Magus did with just a Strike. Granted, spellstrike with telekinetic projectile still did quite a bit more damage. Also, having to sustain the spell did become a limiting factor. I did not feel nearly as mobile as the other party members or even the vampire mastermind that we were chasing around the room. I don't think I ever managed to actually make a Strike attack at the vampire mastermind - just the various remaining wolves and vampire spawn that were there. Still, mopping up and taking out the trash felt pretty good for a spellcaster.
We'll be sad to see you go. But it is understandable. And congratulations. Assuming that congratulations are in order rather than condolences.
Yeah, that is exactly my thought too. The Animist is presented as having a wide variety of choices that can be built and rebuilt daily during daily preparations. So the idea that the proper way to play the characters built from this class is to always pick the exact same Apparition so that you permanently have the one 'primary weapon' spell available seems like it is a design failure. Which is a good thing to note and point out during the playtest, but it is something that the developers need to fix - not something that we should promote keeping as part of the final class.
Why is one focus spell your main weapon? Not even Psychic or Oracle really feel like they only have their focus spells to use. Maybe Wild Shape Druid could say that they one-trick their one focus spell.
A Second combat Still at level 5, same as last time. However, I am built to actually switch around what Apparitions I am partnered with on a regular basis. Also, this time we knew what we were getting into and had plenty of time to prepare for it. Instead of being surprised. Two Wights, a weak Ghost Commoner, and a Muse Phantom. I also sampled the Earth's Bile cheese. With the full cheese ruling that I can cast it multiple times on the same area and have all of them affect everyone in the area multiple times per round. So round 1 of the combat, I nuked the area with both of the Wights. They were both in single digit HP afterwards. I also caught the Muse Phantom in the area, but it was remarkably ineffective against the Resist All 5 that it has. Earth's Bile has two different damage types and is hitting three times. So instead of one big damage pile that would only be resisted once, it is six different damage piles of 2d4 each. The only reason that the spell did any damage to the phantom at all was because it nat-1'd one of the three save rolls. So it only took chip damage. But in total, doing almost 90 HP of damage in one round and being able to do it again the next round seems a bit much. Not that it was worth doing again the next round since the two ghosts were practically immune to the spell and the two wights were practically dead. Anyway... I also got to try out Apparition's Possession. The Muse Phantom tried to possess me. I succeeded at the save. Strange oddity with the Possession spell:
If you critically succeed at the initial save, you are not affected by the possession attempt. Wonderful.
If you fail the save, you get a new Save each round and if you critically succeed at the save, you can expel the possessing creature. But if you succeed at the initial save, then you have a passenger and no save each round to even try to remove it. After I turned on Apparition's Possession, the Muse Phantom elected to voluntarily dismiss the Possession effect. That was mostly done to resolve any rules ambiguity. But it also meant that the Muse Phantom at least had a chance to continue to influence the outcome of the battle. Otherwise it would be fighting all of us alone 1d4 hours later. Sustaining one copy of Earth's Bile on one of the Wights ended that one. I couldn't hit the other Wight because of positioning. There was an animal companion used for flanking that was in the way. I would have had to hit either the bird or a different ally - or both - in order to hit the Wight. So I tried sustaining the other copy that I had actions to sustain with against the ghost commoner. But it has the same resist all 5 that the muse phantom has and didn't nat-1 the save. So it took no damage. The Kineticist ended the other Wight. Then the Magus spellstrike nearly ended the Muse Phantom. Finally I finished the fight with a 3-action rank 1 Heal that did the last couple of HP damage on the Muse Phantom and the Ghost Commoner decided to go back to sleep in the crypt since the annoying bard keeping it awake went away. Takeaways Earth's Bile cheese ruling definitely feels too powerful. Even if it is only at levels right after it gets heightened. The fight ended after 2 rounds. Mostly because the Wights got absolutely incinerated in round 1. No, having resist all neuter the damage that Earth's Bile deals does not mean that the cheese ruling is balanced. Animist definitely feels better as a spellcaster than as a Gish. Even at level 5 which is one of the worst levels for casting proficiency. The Magus could land a spellstrike with a roll of 4 as long as the Muse Phantom that they are targeting is off-guard. Their +15 attack bonus is 4 points better than the +11 Impulse attack bonus that the Kineticist has. Part of that is because ABP doesn't include anything for replacing the Gate Attenuator item bonus. But Animist wouldn't get anything to increase either their spell attack roll or spell DC, so I would be sitting at the same place as the Kineticist in either case - several points behind the martials at attack bonus.
I just tried out Earth's Bile. At level 5, so I think that is again right after the heightened bump happens. The damage amount wasn't a problem. I have a full writeup of that that I am working on. But if I was to change Earth's Bile, I wouldn't shrink the AoE - I would just prevent the overlapping area from being effective. If a target could take damage from the spell only once per round per caster, then it would be fine. Having it be a fairly large AoE does make it more interesting. Good in some situations, and hard or impossible to use well in others.
Its weird because I don't really think of a lot of concepts were the ancestry is important enough to pick first. It depends on if the concept is based on the class, or if the concept exists first and is trying to find a class that matches. I'm a Gnome wanderer who talks to the dead. That's the concept. So Ancestry is pretty much set. Started as a Medium in PF1. In PF2 I have been theorycrafted and rebuilt repeatedly. For Background, since Secrets of Magic came out, Seer of the Dead was top pick. But once Book of the Dead released, Willing Host replaced it. As for class... Well, Animist isn't even fully released yet. Before the playtest not quite a month ago, I have used anything from Psychic with Exorcist archetype, to Ancestors Oracle. Sometimes Thaumaturge. Also with the release of Animist Playtest, I have more freedom of choice in background and can use that for more of the 'wanderer' mechanics instead of having to use background to try and get the 'speaks to the dead' mechanics going.
I see that as one possible interpretation and flavor of the characters made from the class. I don't think that should be mechanically enforced as the only possible interpretation and flavor that all characters made from the class need to follow. Just like Druid being a worshiper of nature is one possible interpretation - and is the interpretation that was the foundation of the class to begin with. But that isn't the only possible interpretation of the class that is currently possible.
I wouldn't mind an anathema mechanic on Animist to balance for power. It could easily work the same way as the taboo mechanic on the PF1 Medium. Maybe disperse an apparition if its taboo is broken and the duration of dispersion depends in how egregious the taboo violation was. I don't think it should just be a punishment mechanic though. There should be some benefit to taking on the restrictions of an Edict/Anathema from the Apparition. It should also be opt-in like the Taboo system was. Maybe (if Channeler gets absorbed into the base class) that if you have taken on and kept the Edicts and Anathema requirements then you get the Channeler's current ability to switch to that Apparition for one action. If you break the Anathema, then you lose that Channeler ability for that Apparition for the rest of the day and you immediately have to choose a different Apparition as your primary apparition. You can switch that Apparition to primary again, but only for an hour at a time.
Now, that said - one of the things that I did have a lot of fun with as a Medium was the Taboo system. You could opt-in to getting basically an Edict/Anathema from the spirit in return for additional benefits.
Animist is supposed to compare to Cleric, Huh? Where did you get that from? Sure, there are several playtesters who have pointed out the mechanical comparisons between Animist and Cleric - because both have Divine tradition prepared spellcasting and know all of the common spells automatically. The mechanics are almost as close to Divine tradition Witch. The only thing missing is knowing all of the common spells of the Divine tradition automatically. But as far as flavor and lore - which is what would drive Anathema and Edicts - Animist is closer to Phantom Summoner, Psychic or even Thaumaturge. At least as far as base class. If we include archetypes we have Exorcist, Ghost Hunter, Ghost Eater, Hallowed Necromancer, and Soul Warden. Of all of those, the only one that would make sense to have Anathema and Edicts with is Soul Warden - and that is because of its close ties to Pharasma.
Also regarding build process. It kinda feels bad that I am level 5 and still don't have even an option of any Wandering feats. I may not even pick them - I like stealth casting, but it would be really nice to have the option of a few to opt in to at earlier levels.
First, some build details: Playing at level 5.
Today's Apparition and Spell preparation selections: Innate:
Animist spells
Apparitions
Takeaways from build process: I do not get very many cantrips. Two divine cantrips to be freely chosen. So it is a hard decision to choose between buff cantrips like Guidance, Utility cantrips like Light, Healing cantrips like Stabilize, and damage cantrips like Divine Lance. And the Apparitions don't always help much either. Today I got Shield, Telekinetic Hand, and Tangle Vine. Shield is kinda useful - if I didn't spend a general feat on Shield Block. The other two I don't expect to find much use for. This is such a big problem that I picked up a freely chosen primal cantrip from an Ancestry feat so that I would always have a damage dealing cantrip available. Animist spell slots and Apparition Repertoire also has pretty much the same thing. Freely chosen Divine spells - which is nice. But limited spell slots. It makes for hard decisions on what to focus on - Healing, buffs, debuffs, damage... you can't do it all. And the Apparition Repertoire doesn't always help. We are at level 5 and fully equipped. What exactly am I going to do with Runic Weapon? How about Ghostly Weapon? Wall of Shrubs? Some others may or may not be useful depending on what we encounter during the day. Safe Passage, Veil of Privacy, Enlarge, Invisibility. But even with those, the spell slots available to cast them with are very limited. I couldn't cast Invisibility more than twice during the entire day, for example. And one of those castings would be a 'heightened with no additional effect' by using my one 3rd rank spell slot - which means, oh darn I can't cast Ghostly Weapon any more today. Encounter 1: general role-play. The party came into town with an assignment to check in with the local town leader and ask for more details on what the problem is. We arrive and find that the leader's home is currently being repaired. Apparently someone or something replaced the door to their secure accounting room with a brick wall. Workers had to break through the wall in order to access the room again - at which point they found that nothing had been taken. Takeaways: Having a bunch of lore skills available is actually really nice. I ended up being able to use a couple of them during the poking around at the 'crime scene' and the approach through the town - Farming and Herbalism lore to check out the town itself, and Underworld lore to check into ideas of why someone would want to do this type of non-crime. It was also amusing to stealth cast Telekinetic Hand to make myself seem spookier. Encounter 2: first combat. I am currently configured with Imposter in Hidden Places primary, which means Discomfiting Whispers as focus spell available. Inaccessible until after the battle is Garden of Healing and Embodiment of Battle. So with Discomfiting Whispers, my combat strategy was to grab my shield and Gnome hammer and fight from melee range using my 5 foot emanation spell to debuff the enemies I am fighting. We stumbled unexpectedly across some bandits that were raiding an abandoned shrine. There was an archer, a hellhound, a spellcaster of some sort, and one other guy that didn't really end up doing much. This was primarily a ranged combat. We had an archer above us on a cliff that we either had to use ranged attacks to target, climb the cliff face, or move quite a ways to get to a ladder to climb up. So my combat strategy pretty much failed. I couldn't reach the archer. Or the spellcaster. One of our party members used two stride actions to get to a position with cover that was closer to the enemies. Then the hellhound spent two actions on stride to get to that ally and attack once. For my first action I grabbed my hammer and shield, and moved a bit closer. For my second round though, I still had to use two stride actions to get into melee range with the hellhound and only barely made it. I didn't get to choose an optimal position and had only one action left anyway. So Strike it is. But even on third round when I have the actions available, I still can't use my focus spell without hitting the one enemy and two of my own allies with a Misfortune effect. The Kineticist did most of the work taking out the archer on the cliff. Launching sharpened tree branches worked rather well. The Magus first drove away the hellhound into retreating, then one-shot the other random bandit with a spellstrike crit. Takeaways One, Animist isn't a gish. With a 16 strength, I am rolling Strike attack rolls at 3 points lower than the magus and rogue. Even the +1 bonus from Embodiment of Battle isn't going to make up the difference for that. So I am not entirely sure what Embodiment of Battle is used for. It doesn't seem powerful enough to be worth the action cost of casting, much less sustaining. Even with it, I am still not going to be hanging with the martials. Discomfiting Whispers I still think is really cool to use. It just wasn't suited for this ranged combat encounter. This would have worked a lot better in a dungeon crawl scenario where we already have our weapons readied and the enemies close in on us. Then I would have more actions to get into good positions where I can let loose with the spell. Also, it is probably best when paired with melee or short range spells such as Ignition, Needle Darts, or Chill Touch. The shield is maybe a good choice for protection, but it does cost another action to Raise Shield. Raise Shield, Sustain Discomfiting Whispers, and I only have one action left - which isn't enough to cast a cantrip with. Impressions so far: Animist is like being a prepared spellcaster for most of your build - not just your spell slots. It is like the difference between Wizard and Sorcerer. Sorcerer has more spellcasting power. They have limited spell choices that they have to stick with, but as long as they can find one spell to use, they can cast it enough times to be effective for an encounter. Wizard has more flexible options, but they have to guess right. If they fill their spell slots with spells that don't end up being relevant, then they aren't relevant in the encounters. If they do guess right, then they are going to be quite effective. And since they have more options, then if both the Sorcerer and Wizard know what is coming up, the Wizard can prepare for it more effectively than the Sorcerer can. Animist seems to work the same way. If I know what to prepare for, then I can prepare for it quite effectively. Very flexible - like a Wizard. But I can even get things like Lore skills and eventually feats that can be switched in and out as part of that preparation.
We moved the playtest part of it there. Running through a handful of encounters with no context. Just to test out the mechanics. Are you interested in keeping this story going here though?
With no time rush on this, the story was going well. Though I would request being allowed to rebuild details when the finalized class drops.
Give me evil clowns, or give me death!What about both ? They seem quite compatible. Well, from what Michael Sayre said earlier, the flavor is up to the players. At most you are asking for multiple flavor prompts to be listed for each apparition. Both Pennywise and Bing Bong would be using this same Apparition entry. The only reason that we need that spelled out in the Apparition explicitly is for GMs that for some reason have a moral aversion to allowing fun.
Apparition's Quickening becomes significantly less balanced due to lacking a 1/hour timer or something similar, as Animist players can and will just burn all of their spirits in the Boss Fight to spam Quicken with no repercussions in most cases. If you know that you are going into a boss fight and also know that you won't need to do anything else for the rest of the day afterwards, yeah - spamming Apparition's Quickening to cast spells faster is an option. Not entirely sure it is a good option to burn through all of the Apparitions using that. You will want to keep at least one around for the focus spell. Maybe for the repertoire too. But dispersing two or maybe three Apparitions could be a clutch move. But like I said, this depends on knowing that this is the boss fight and the only (or at least last) fight of the day. Otherwise you can end up with rather reduced options for the rest of the encounters that day. So as usual, if the player knows what is coming up in the day (whether legitimately or metagaming), then Animist looks a lot stronger than if the player is being surprised by the day's encounters.
Hah. As a Gnome and a bit of a prankster, I would definitely be noticing and partnering with Lost Glee apparitions. Just for the fun of it. Getting a nice spell repertoire and a sustained version of Mirror Image as a focus spell is pretty nice too.
Maybe a prequel encounter with something that we ran into on the way to the village?
"I'll let you keep it. It is getting late. The White Goose Inn is where we are staying, yes?"
Talin tosses a weird glance, then turns to the rest of the group, whispering "What's going on in there?", she points towards Lanni's head. Getting a bit of a twinkle in his expression, Lanni quickly and silently* casts Telekinetic Hand and starts one of the bits of rock floating upwards. "Ah, I guess I didn't properly introduce mysel- Hey!" he shouts at the floating rock. "Put that down." He drops the rock and discontinues the spell while glaring at it for a second. Then turns back to Talin. "Anyway, I'm Lanni. Our resident haunt and paranormal expert. I can see why I was called in on this case. Bizarre disappearances of doors and other such things are what I deal with." "I also make friends easily. Both living and ... less living."
Working on mumble-mumble-nda part 3?
"Curious," Lanni comments as he takes a look at the strange bit of rusted metal. "You have any ideas?" he asks to no one you can see.
:⁂:
I'm the type that will put the DC for information as the spoiler header and just post the information directly. Yes, it can be metagamed. But also yes, it absolutely speeds up the gameplay - as well as giving us hints of what is available to be interacted with. We're big kids. We can handle playing nicely.
"Yeah, it certainly is strange. I can't figure out what the point of blocking up a door would be. Especially not like this where it must have taken a lot of magical ability - and still wasn't all that effective. It took, what, maybe a couple of hours for you to bust down the wall and get to your stuff, right Talin?" :⁂:
Lanni figdets a bit. "But as strange as this is, and as annoying as it would be to have your stuff messed with - I'm not seeing much more we can do here. We can keep our eyes open for information. But as far as doing something - how about checking in with the Kobolds?"
"Oh good, you made it here too." Lanni greets Thatch as he comes over. "Yeah, I would guess magic was involved somehow. Hard to tell now though."
Lanni takes a seat in the gazebo and snacks on some of the fruit. After hearing of the various goings-on, he mentions "Well, I don't know all that much about kobolds. Fey I am a bit more familiar with. But not these ones specifically." ----- Lanni follows Talin through the house, not paying much mind to the bits of debris.
Lanni bursts into giggles. He tries his best to laugh quietly to not disrupt the rest of the conversation. :⁂:
He gets his giggles under control and says to the other two gnomes he is with, "OK, so we have some fey that are being a bit more active than normal, some kobolds that are mobilizing for something, and we need to figure out if, how, and why this Symulli guy repossessed this particular door." "What do you think? Talk to Zeerd and Symulli first? Since they are closest."
"Are you Talin?" Lanni asks. "A bite to eat would be appreciated. And some more information to chew on. We weren't given much details on what we are getting ourselves into here."
After washing up, Lanni goes to the front door of the large house. He casually raps on the door. "Hello," he calls out.
offering up to many sustain and options might be a waste of feat space if the end result is that most characters pick one or two that is the thing they will always use like an extra action. At that point it is essentially just effortless concentration but at earlier levels and taking up more book space. Well, I was thinking it would also be like Gunslinger's 'reload and' abilities in that you get one of them from your subclass choice. So Sage would get 'sustain and recall knowledge', Channeler would get 'sustain and switch active Apparition', and Spirit Dancer would get 'sustain and stride up to half your speed without provoking reactions'. 'Need to sustain in order to use my class's abilities' is very similar to 'need to reload in order to use my class's abilities', so why not solve the problem in the same way?
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