Lightdroplet's page

Themetricsystem wrote:

I am personally just wondering why all characters and important NPCs don't just start with 3 Focus Points. They could have easily trimmed at least two pages of text from the book just by simply doing this and that space could have been used to define a half dozen or more "generic" Focus Actions or abilities such that make logical sense in connection with the idea of "focus" such as taking extra actions to "Aim carefully" with a Ranged Attack, to gain a circumstance bonus to a Skill Check, or even to remain conscious for one round at a time when you're brought to 0 HP.

The way it was implemented isn't bad, I just think that they make it needlessly contrived and contradictory while also taking up WAY too much space in the CRB defining it over and over and over and over and over it as opposed to giving it to everyone right upfront and tanking the amount of space available in most spellcaster class entries, for real, just trimming the Focus Pool language from Class Feats alone would save enough space for at least 2 or three more Class Feats for any given spellcaster or Focus Spell user.

It is what it is though.

That actually feels like too much. Heal companion, for example, seems pretty big. I wouldn't object to "1 focus point, 2 starting at level X, 3 starting at level Y" too much, but I like the idea that if you want to be able to do a thing more, you have to work at it (by taking another feat that adds to it).

Remember that even if your max Focus is 3, you will only get 1 point back from Refocusing unless you have the class feats that allow you to get more Focus Points when Refocusing.

Hobit of Bree wrote:

I'm struggling to find anything about how bows and arrows interact. Any cite wrt the level 9+ bow not working with low-grade cold iron arrows would be very welcome!

Precious Materials rules. If you use low grade ammo on a bow that's over level 8, the ammo will not receive the benefit of any runes above that level. For example:

"Low-grade items can be used in the creation of magic items of up to 8th level, and they can hold runes of up to 8th level."

I don't see how that states that you need high grade arrows for higher level bows. Ammuntion doesn't hold runes, the weapon does. Never is it stated that the runes on a weapon are somehow transferred to the ammunition. In fact, if that were the case, runes would become useless since both weapon potency and striking runes have the "etched onto a weapon" Usage line, and pieces of ammunition aren't weapons, meaning the runes would be deactivated due to not being etched on the correct type of item.

I don't see why not. The crit failure effect of Pick a Lock mentions the picks are broken, not destroyed, and anything broken can be repaired by using Craft. Pick a Lock even specifically calls out using Crafting to repair broken sets of picks.

The shield rules are a mess, and work much better if you just make Sturdy into a potency rune equivalent for shields.

I think Monitor would cover it, since it is the blanket term for Neutral outsiders much like Celestial is for Good ones and Fiend is for Evil ones.
There already are a few CN outsiders with only the Monitor trait.

Poisoner is honestly just outright bad without scaling DC in general

Can't say I disagree there. Poisons already need all the help they can to land since Fort tends to be a strong save for many monsters, and Poisoner does almost nothing to help them outside of Pinpoint Poisoner.

Errata 2 gets rid of the Powerful Alchemy feat and gives it to Alchemists for free. How does, or should, this affect the Poisoner Archetype? Do they still fuction as written?

The archetype is still the same, since that change only applied to the Alchemist class. Poisoner might eventually be changed, but it wasn't in the errata because that was CRB errata, and not APG errata.

Also, why doesn't Poisoner get a way to increase the DC of poisons they create? It seems like a pretty severe oversight.

They can make higher level poisons from level 6 onwards, so the DCs somewhat scale. But yes, Poisoners have no way to actually scale poisons besides making higher level poisons. With the removal of the Powerful Alchemy feat in the Errata, the same happens to archetyped alchemists, so I'm guessing this is an intentional, albeit annoying omission.

Seems to me that it was phrased that way to keep players from running roughshod all over GMs every time a new book is released.

Sure, characters have access to common options, but players still need to okay new books and their content with the GM.

I don't see it as an error to be fixed, but an active attempt to future proof the GM's autonomy.

Yeah, that's what seems like the best way to do it: if your GM allows a rulebook, you can prepare common spells from it. If he doesn't, you can't.

The PFS rules had to be written the way they were because PFS GMing is very different.

So... let's consider what PFS does. While this doesn't necessarily dictate what happens at your individual tables...

Yes. Clerics, druids, and wizards are initially hindered compared to other classes.

"Learning Spells - Some members of the community raised questions about how their cleric and druid characters could use the new spells from the Advanced Player’s Guide. We’re happy to provide a solution! Any prepared spellcaster can use the Learn a Spell activity to learn any common spells they have access to from tutors at the Grand Lodge. This adds no additional material cost beyond the standard cost for the Learn a Spell activity."

Note that the question is raised specifically for clerics and druids - and the answer is that all prep casters have access to trainers with whom they can use Learn a Spell.

Thus, at least in PFS, "in this book" is interpreted as a clear rule.

Considering PFS has very different rules for access, I wouldn't really take this as an indication of anything.

Cordell Kintner wrote:

It also says "...or from other arcane spells you gain access to." You should automatically gain access to common spells from other books.

In the end, it's really all up to the GM what spells you can get.

Access in this case refers to the Rarity system.

Yes, a GM can run a Core Only campaign, but that's not what Access would refer to in regards to the rules.

For reference.

According to the Gamemastery Guide, the core assumption regarding Common rules options is that you have access to them.

Common elements are prevalent enough, at least among adventurers, that a player is assumed to be able to access them provided they meet the prerequisites (if any).

Even if access only refered to the rarity system, the GMG makes it pretty clear a part of the assumptions made by the rarity system is that players have access to common options.

The part on Access Entries a few lines ahead that only reinforces that:

A character who meets the specifications listed there has access to that option just like they would to a common option, even though it’s uncommon

Overall, the GMG makes it fairly clear you have access (as in the rules term) to common options by default, so non-core Common spells are covered under the second clause.

Even if you ignore the GMG snippets, saying that you don't have access to Common options feels utterly nonsensical to me.

Saying the Striking Rune is overpowered is the same as saying higher level characters are overpowered. They are indeed extremely powerful in a vacuum, but in the context of the game, they're just a part of the power curve.

There are golems as low as Level 4 (Carrion Golem), so you can go fairly low. Golems seem to mostly be levelled depending on how resilient the material that constitutes them is (The weakest being made of rotten corpses, and the strongest of pure adamantine). You could easily justify an even weaker Golem by having them be made of an even less resilient material. I wouldn't go all the way down to level 1 or 2, but something like a golem that is made of carefully folded paper or flowing cloth (or any similar weak material) could make for an interesting level 3 enemy.

I really hope the recharge isn't something excessive like requiring a Focus point, or a ten minute rest: it would feel terrible to only be able to use your core feature once a fight and have nothing but normal Strikes and cantrips (i.e. worse Strikes) for the rest of the fight.

Yeah, you would have to drop the level of the devil a bit for sure. I feel like a level -2 devil would be the closest to a fair fight. The XP guidelines are definitely not made for that kind of situation, but they indicate that a -2 level enemy is supposed to be a Moderate encounter for a lone character, while an on-level enemy is an Extreme encounter to a lone character.

It's good to see there will be options for people who want to use firearms without dealing with the swingyness of the current ones. Making Gunslinger into the dedicated reload class is pretty interesting too, although I hope other classes will get some more support for Reload too.
It's kinda sad the Inventor playtest was marred by the Unstable misprint.
Glad to see gadgets are an optional part of Inventor too. There are plenty of character concepts that don't really mesh well with it, so their being opt-in is great. Didn't really trading away proficiencies for them either. One Alchemist is more than enough.

I think Paizo wanted to avoid the comparison with the latest edition of the self-proclaimed "world's greatest roleplay game".
And subclasses are pretty mechanically distinct from class to class (and are non-existent in some cases), so the subclass word is not very accurate to the rules.

However, subclass is a relatively common and short term compared to things like Methodology, Arcane Thesis, Arcane Synthesis, Reseach Field, and it still mostly gets the same point across, especially with people who aren't too familiar with 2e books.
The fact that it makes explaining the game far easier to people whose background is in other TTRPGs or other kinds of games altogether means it took off regardless.

Now, since two-handed weapons give a clear advantage in terms of damage over 1-handed weapons, it sounds like game balance-wise, spellcasters should not be able to cast while wielding a two handed weapon. But RAW, this doesn’t seem crystal clear. It seems weird to I imagine a spellcaster gesturing while holding a heavy crossbow.

The playtest Magus had a subclass dedicated entirely to casting while fighting with a two-handed weapon, and said subclass lacked any wording to indicate it was a deviation from the standard rule. Being able to cast while wielding a twohander is definitely intended.

Gunslinger MC dedication for those who want to use guns above their normal low efficiency.

Just as we have Swashbuckler MC dedication for those who want Panache, and Casters MC dedication for martials who want to cast spells.

Not only are those not comparable (Panache and spell slots are class features, not something any character can freely get), but this is terrible design.

After seeing the crit-fishing nature of the Gunslinger class (and of firearms as a whole) being discussed in many places around this forum, I thought it would be a good idea to create a single place to gather all the feedback on the relationship between Gunslingers, Firearms and critical hits.

I'll give my personal thoughts on it first:

I think this is a bad idea. We have already seen a class that attempted to make critical hitting the core of its design with the playtest Magus, and it did not feel good to play as it led to a rather unfun "feast or famine" style of play where you spent a lot of time feeling miserable between the rare times you critically hit and got to roll a bucket of dice. Now Gunslinger feels like it has the exact same problem as Magus, but I feel like it is even worse in their case for one reason.

That reason is the Gunslingers have nowhere near as many options to put the odds in their favor compared to Magi: Even with their heavily diminiished spellcasting, Magi could have access to a few magical buffs and debuffs (mostly through staves or through Martial Caster), including True Strike, which is pretty much the number 1 tool for crit fishing. On top of that, most Magi fought in melee, where it is easier to get bonuses like flanking and where cover is not an issue. Gunslingers have to fight from range and have no magic, meaning they don't get all these advantages, leaving them in an even worse state than Magi were when it comes to actually tipping the odds in your favor. They do get a few improved skill actions like Pistol Twirl on top of their +2 accuracy, but does that really compensate the relative difficulty of getting enemies to be flat-footed to ranged attacks, the penalties for cover, and the lack of any natural magical support?

Besides that Gunslinger-specific point, I fear that this design for firearms will make them underpowered for every non Fighter/Gunslinger. Firearms are a class of weapons many people wish to see in the game so that they might use it as a standard weapon the same way one would use a crossbow. However, their nature as crit-fishing weapons means their wielder wants Legendary proficiency in them for them to be really worthwhile, meaning classes that might want to use a firearm (the most obvious one being Ranger, who already has support for Reload weapons) will find themselves falling behind in damage through no fault of their own simply because they wanted to use something that fit their character concept.

In other words, this makes Firearms as a whole a trap option for anyone without Legendary scaling. I thought we were supposed to be done with these 1e-style traps whose only goal seems to be arbitrarily punishing character concepts because they aren't using something the "right" way.

This issue leads into another Gunslinger-specific one: Firearm users want Legendary proficiency to be able function at a good level, which is why Gunslingers have to have that level of proficiency. However, such a level of proficiency is definitely a rather large investment for a class, meaning that a significant part of the class' power budget is spent on ensuring basic functionality for their weapon of choice instead of on interesting features.

Now, it is possible that Guns&Gears is full of non crit-fishing firearms that would function much better without critical fishing.
But so far, the only non crit-fishing firearm we have seen is the Blunderbuss, and it suffers immensely when compared to even a simple Crossbow as it trades 100 feet of range for Scatter and Versatile B, neither of which seem like they are worth the massive range trade off. Considering the Crossbow is a simple weapon while the Blunderbuss is martial, it doesn't make non crit-fishing firearms look really good.

Considering all this, I feel the same way as I did with Magus: crit-fishing is not a good core design for a class, or a group
of weapons.
Now bear in mind that I'm not saying there shouldn't be crit-fishing guns. But I think the crit-fishing guns should be an option, instead of being the only kind of gun there is. If people want to fulfill the "One shot, one kill" fantasy, they should be allowed to. But equally, people who do not care for this particular fantasy should also be allowed to have firearm-using characters.

So, what are your personal thoughts on this?

Oh god, I hadn't even considered this. More reasonably, Martial Artist dedication gives you legendary unarmed and good stances... but sword and pistol requires a melee weapon strike :(.

Unarmed attacks do work with Sword and Pistol (although not with Rebounding Assault)

Guns are way to swingy, if you aren't crit fishing (which isn't really satisfying or consistent in this edition) you aren't really doing much with a gun.

It reminds me far too much of the Magus playtest.

Quote:

Simply, the extra attacks that you get to make with a bow at -5 and more rarely at -10 are worth more than the extra damage an Arquebus does on a crit

Simply, if you're not making any more ranged attacks with the Arquebus it doesn't matter.

That's my whole point.

If that truly is the intended design, I would argue it is definitely something that needs correcting then.

I thought we were supposed to be done with situational options that have a "right" way to be used and become traps if used the "wrong" way. That kind of design is exactly the kind of reasoning that lead to hundreds of character options in 1e being useless because they were designed around one particular situational "right" use, meaning people who couldn't guess the writers' intent were punished for attempting to use an option they liked for their character concept.

Besides, the Heavy Crossbow is a weapon that already fills the exact same "shoot once, then drop it" niche (with more reliable damage, even better range and an equally as punishing mechanic to prevent repeated shooting), and it is one of the worst weapons of 2e. We don't need another weapon to join it.

Nothing is stopping you from dropping the gun and drawing something else.

Apart from the prohibtive costs of multiple guns (at low levels) or multiple runed weapons (at high levels).

A level 1 character barely has enough money to buy a single firearm, while a level 20 is expected to have a single level 19 permanent magic item (i.e. a single +3 major striking weapon)

That tactic only works in the small time interval between the moment when buying multiple guns becomes feasible and the moment where you are expected to acquire magic weapons to keep up with the rate at which enemy HP and AC grows.
That goes double for guns, since their role as crit-fishing weapons means every single +1 matters.

How about a feat that lets you reload the fire arm without the free hand. hold it under your arm pit and reload. It would probably be awkward but characters are suppose to get pretty fantastical at later level.

Such a feat already exists (Two-weapon Reload for the Dual Weapon Warrior), but I really think Gunslinger should get it as a baseline. It is necessary for one of the Ways, and extremely useful for another of the Ways. I don't think having a feat that close to 2/3rd of all Gunslingers have to pick if they want their advertised fighting style to function is a good idea. 2e was supposed to move away from mandatory feats to fix problems that shouldn't be problems in the first place.

NECR0G1ANT wrote:

RexAliquid wrote:

oholoko wrote:

RexAliquid wrote:

You quick draw your melee weapon. It still has runes on it.

You mean reload, quickdraw blade shoot? If so that actually sounds really smart and I kind of like it.

But also only works one time, since the new rings are two weapons only... Not two groups or two types of weapon.

You can put your sword away before you reload again, then quickdraw it next round.

Reloading and sheathing weapons each cost an action. A two-action penalty is too steep for melee gunslinger builds to be viable.

Either you use your firearm primarily, or your melee weapon. It's okay that it's hard to do both at the same time until the mid game.

Why is it okay? Every other martial can get their intended fighting style going by level 1 or 2.

How is getting to two groups Legendary at the time when the fighter goes Legendary in only a single group at that level not stepping on toes?

Oh, I didn't think about the intermediary levels, and just looked at the end result. My mistake.

In fact, right now it's not very clear how the Intimidate skill given by the cortex modifications works when by RAW the construct does not speak a language.

Actually, it's pretty clear, and the construct suffers the same problem that every Intimidation-focused creature with no language has: You can Demoralize using Intimidation without speaking any language, but it will be at a -4 penalty.

Making it specifically swords and axes seems weird. The Drifter is pretty weapon type agnostic. Giving the scaling for free to a Drifter with a sword but not a Drifter who uses a knife, hammer or fist feels arbitrarily restrictive.

I do think something along those lines should happen though, otherwise, archetypes for proficiency are just too good.

Maybe a better way to do it would be to move the "choose a group to become a master in" level 13 feature down and make it so that it brings the chosen group to be equal to your firearm proficiency instead of keeping it one proficiency level behind. It still wouldn't step on the Fighter's niche as Fighter eventually scales up to Legendary in everything, whereas this would cap out at Legendary in Firearms/Crossbows+ 1 other group.

So um... Why not roll a crafting check against your own inventor class DC?

To reset unstable that is. Just a thought.

I like Unstable as a separate mechanism from Focus. The chance built in means that whether or not it continues to function is in question, unlike with Focus. Focus, if you have a focus point, it will work. Even an Oracle, they KNOW what will happen. This is more in keeping with the mad scientist we are all wanting to play.

Rather than rolling against your own class DC, I feel like it would be more appropriate to roll Crafting against a levelled DC the same way Overdrive does.

While I definitely agree it should be something given to the Gunslinger class, I really think it should not be a feat. Feats fixing issues with the core design of a class is exactly the kind of bad design 2e was supposed to have left behind. I don't really want there to be a level 1/2 feat option that will be mandatory for every Drifter Gunslinger.
Being able to use reload actions without an empty hand feels like it could just be a core Gunslinger feature, or at the very least, a Drifter style feature.

I guess that is my exact question, how much damage is worth reload 2? I would love a reload 2 weapon that is worth it.

Are there 3 action attack cantrips to compare it to?

Weapon damage is hardcapped at 1d12. And even that does not seem enough to be worth the trouble.

Firearms are not supposed to become common place in Golarion.

After all, Alkenstar has had them for centuries now. If they have not spread further, there must be a reason.

The rarity sidebar shows this isn't particularly true anymore, since it outlines Ustalav, Alkenstar, all of Arcadia, the Shackles and Central Tian Xia as places where gunpowder weapons are common, to the point where every character from any of these regions has automatic access to Gunslinger and firearms (and Inventor too).

No, you aren't missing anything. It's a glaring issue with Gunslinger that make Drifter far less workable than it should be, and that makes the dual gun Pistolero style mentioned in the fluff text completely unusable without spending two feats on the Dual Weapon Warrior archetype.
It's pretty much the number 1 problem Gunslinger has.

I think that the designer mentioned owning several pistols and having them on a bandolier could solve some of the "single" use/reloading issues that have been mentioned. I don't know how fun that'd be, but I saw it posted elsewhere.

While it seems like a cool idea, it's pretty much unworkable. You have to pay a huge upfront cost to buy all these guns, and you'll start falling behind from level 3 because you cannot use doubling rings with such a set up unless you get a pair of doubling rings (and therefore spend an invest slot) for each pistol, which is again a huge upfront cost.

I guess a simple way to temporarily solve the Drifter issue before level 6 is to use a Gauntlet as your melee weapon. Free-hand makes reloading a gun possible even though you are technically wielding a melee weapon in your hand.
Of course, you lose all the sword&gun flavor that was intended for the class, but at least you get something mechanically functional.

You could perhaps get a pair of doubling rings for each pistol. All of the gold rings bonded to the sword and each silver to a different gun. It's strange but would be cheaper than buying a full set of runes for each pistol.

Huh, I thought doubling rings would have had something that would prevent such a thing, but they indeed do not seem to have such a limitation.

I think if single shot firearms are added, they should be built around the assumption of having a brace of them. The exception being rifles, of course.

This would provide an elegant transition between early and advanced firearms, a brace of pistols being analogous to the six shooter, and a muzzle loaded single musket being analogous to a breach loading single shot rifle.

I definitely agree, which is why this rule in the playtest doubling rings that seems tailor-made to prevent the brace of pistols style from working bothers me so.

While trying to build a sword and gun Drifter Gunslinger, I realised (as many people have already noted) that the hand economy of Reloading just doesn't work with that fighting style, so I instead decided to try and make my character into more of an old-timey pirate with half a dozen pre loaded pistols he could draw from his coat as he dropped unloaded guns.

While that playstyle seems like it could actually work pretty well, I noticed it hits a big snag rather quickly: The playtest doubling rings require that both affected weapons be selected pre-emptively rather than just adapting to weapons on the fly like the current doubling rings do.

While this wouldn't be a problem for most characters, my character trying to fight with multiple pistols found himself at a disadvantage as early as level 3, as he became unable to transfer runes from his enchanted longsword main weapon to his pistols, resulting in both an accuracy loss, as well as a rather large damage loss from level 4 onwards due to missing both a +1 potency rune as well as a Striking rune.

This left me wondering as to the reason for the change in the functionality of the playtest doubling rings compared to the CRB doubling rings.

This seems even more confusing when it seems like the only purpose of this change is to discourage the idea of creating a character who uses pistols as disposable weapons, despite the fact that said idea is a core part of the gunslinger aesthetic, even in real-life accounts of early firearm use.

Am I missing something there?

As long as it is named the Gunslinger, it should remain uncommon. To do otherwise is to open the door for pushy players yearning for that firearm.

The same could be said for Alchemist and the Uncommon Alchemical Crossbow, or the Duelist archetype and the Uncommon Dueling Sword, or the Poisoner archetype and every Uncommon poison, and yet I've never heard of any problem players attempting to get free access to something based solely on the name of the class they are playing.

Mechanically, a Gunslinger asking for free gun access would have no more ground to stand on than a Monk asking for free access to Katanas.

Besides, problem players will be problem players no matter what options the game offers them, so I don't really think every design decision should be made around the fear of it maybe being misused by problem players. Problem players are an out-of-game problem; no in-game solution will ever solve it.

About the only archetypical "gunman" the gunslinger currently represents is the "brace of pistols" bearing pirate. And it only does that, sorta, since you would have to only drop and draw with one hand to continue using your ranged Doubling Rings effectively. Assuming you have magical weapons that is.

Actually, I think this playstyle doesn't really work either. The "improved doubling rings" require you to preemptively choose the primary and secondary weapons that benefit from it when you invest the rings. If you do try to use a brace of pistols style, only one of your pistols will benefit from the rune transfer effect unless you reinvest your rings every time you draw another pistol.

There are other classes that could be considered ranged weapon specialists though. Fighter (all weapon specialist) and Ranger (several unique ranged feats)

So not having gunslinger as common does not remove the ranged fighting style

You are missing my point. I did not say that there aren't other ranged weapons specialists. I said that that particular fighting style has nothing inherently Uncommon (as you have just proven by quoting multiple classes that also use something similar to it), so there is no reason to make Gunslingers Uncommon because Guns are already independantly gated anways and Gunslinger is now designed to be a fully functional class without Firearms, so the only thing making Gunslinger itself Uncommon achieves is make a rather common fighting style something rare.

Uncommon gunslingers are there to satisfy the fairly sizable portion of GMs who don't want guns in their games / idea of fantasy

People may not agree but it is not exactly an uncommon viewpoint

Yes, but as I said, Paizo made sure to make Crossbow Gunslingers a core option from the start so that gunless Gunslingers are a core part of the class.

While reading through the playtest document, I came across the Uncommon classes sidebar, and it made me think about something relating to the Gunslinger class:
It seems a bit wierd to make crossbow Gunslinger a core alternative so that you can reasonably play a Gunslinger that has never seen a firearm in their entire life, only to turn around and still make Gunslinger Uncommon, with the justification that many parts of Golarion aren't familiar with gunpowder weaponry.
Without gunpowder weapons, Gunslinger is just someone who mostly trained with ranged weapons, and I don't see why that particular fighting style has to be Uncommon since the problematic element (Gunpowder Weapons) is already Uncommon on its own.
2e Gunslingers don't get a free gun like 1e Gunslingers did, so it's not like Gunslinger can bypass the usual access rules either.
All this led me to wonder if Gunslinger really should be an Uncommon class.

I wouldn't allow it, not because of anything with the Paladin class, but rather out of fairness with the other classes who can't Refocus in battle.
And also because it seems wierd to me to be allowed to both continue taking an exploration activity and fight at the same time, when the rules do call out that you can't take any other complex actions or activities while you are using an exploration/downtime activity.
Finally, Sorcerers would be a bit of an issue with this ruling because their Refocus does not require them to do anything specific, meaning they would always be recovering Focus Points, which to me seems a little bit unbalanced.

Lightdroplet wrote:

Can someone with the PDF tell me if they changed the Cleric spell chart? Until then, it indicated that your font granted you level 10 slots at level 19 and 20. But now that we know that you can't gain additional slots of these levels, I wonder if the cleric spell chart has been corrected accordingly.

It hasn't been changed.

So now we have a spell chart that contradicts the rules themselves. I can see quite a lot of confusion stemming from this.

Can someone with the PDF tell me if they changed the Cleric spell chart? Until then, it indicated that your font granted you level 10 slots at level 19 and 20. But now that we know that you can't gain additional slots of these levels, I wonder if the cleric spell chart has been corrected accordingly.

Staves are also staff weapons (page 280). They can be etched with fundamental runes but not property runes. This doesn’t alter any of their spellcasting abilities.

No more shifting staves it seems. That always felt too good to be true to me, so I'm not too surprised to see it gone.

I like the bandoliers and other containers getting abstracted away into worn items. Although, am I missing something or is there nothing preventing a character from declaring every single of their items is worn? There's the 2 Bulk limit on worn tools, but nothing on other worn items.

Also, I can't help but think that the new cantrip wording will make stuff confusing when the SoM classes come out with their spell slots locked at the 9th level, but not their cantrips.

You can't gain Cantrip Extension as a general feat, so you have to push back your second dedication to 8.
As far as I'm aware, there is no caster dedication that allows you to gain two class feats before 6.

Honestly, I feel like what's missing in the line of powers is a rage power which grants you claws or a bite attack or something that would scale up (in terms of damage dice as you level) to encourage you buy hand wraps earlier that would be like preemptive power compared to the complete dragon transformation.

If you had a class feat that while raging you grew claws that did 1d10 (or even 1d8) that gained damage dice at the appropriate time when you would normally get striking runes then that would really make the transition feel less awkward because you wouldn't spend 16 levels wielding a great axe and then realize you need to drop it and buy hand wraps instead.

I feel like the reason this isn't an option is because of potential concept overlap with Animal Instinct, which is already the dedicated unarmed instinct.

It does indeed leave the dragon transformation in a wierd spot if you don't let the weapon item bonus apply, which is what makes me believe the intent is for weapon item bonus to carry over.