I need to cancel my subscriptions for the time being due to upcoming changes in my life, as much as I'd wish to keep them up.
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Is there a reason that the shipping is said to start today? It is still quite a while until the official release Due to the unreliable nature of predicting how long the shipping of a product will take, both to get to a given person and even just physically move all the product out out of the facility to get where it needs to be to get going to a customer, since street date is also including book, gaming and other hobby stores, product needs to start being shipped out up to 2 weeks in advance.
Indeed. I think that the Occultist (which will probably need to be renamed) would be a good caster for this combination. The antiquarian(which is the best name for the class), focuses fairly heavily not on souls or spirits, but the echos of thoughts and emotions lingering within objects themselves, which is so decidedly arcane in essence theming that anything else is a disservice, meanwhile nature spirits and the like have been referenced in other material as being somewhat different than a traditional soul(see discussion and questions answered about leshy), meaning that it and similar concepts like kami falling under primal for the purposes of magic isfairly sensible.
Could I have this order and my starfinder subscription cancelled, please?
I have a lot to write about for oracle after the past week playtesting the class and mostly avoiding the forums, but yeah, as they are now, Oracle revelations are not really anything worth a hail mary in any of the revelations. I take a look at battle and all of them are... not worth going unconcious for at all? Giving your allies a bonus on initiative(Not you) and a small amount of temp HP, +2 to level for incapacitation(requires forknowledge players probably don't/shouldn't have?), and give yourself a feat for a minute. Even your domain options require you be concious to make benefit of them. My commentary on the thread is that the current version of the oracle's curse makes sense to me, and I can't really make heads or tails of how Rysky's is supposed to work in terms of gameplay loop design. You start at the worst state and work you way down to minor/no curse? Unless the Revelation spells are REALLY stinking good, either I'd sit at max curse 24/7 with the current battle oracle(and max my pool asap despite not wanting to use them), or spend to none, and I'd make my choice out of combat, there's no real interesting play there, and if they're strong enough to be worth focusing to max curse and spending down often, it will likely be too strong. And that's before how it interacts with increasing focus pool outside of class. It has more moving parts for less interesting play decisions, even if it squeezes Oracle back into the mold of other casters.
I genuinely love the direction and concept of Oracle's direction with the intertwined curse and mysteries, and I have gotten a number of thoughts so far as I've built a few oracles to toy around with in playtest environments, but before I start to solidify my opinions I want to ask about the major curse for battle oracle. Is it intentional that battle oracles who reach their stage of major curse have a whopping 30% chance to just lose their spells as they cast them? It would put the curse closer to the severity of the other curses... and then some. Even if you have your freebie revelation spells left, an almost 1 in 3 chance to lose even those ( not to mention any combat spells, like using harm in melee for battle and bespell weapon) feels genuinely AWFUL to me, so I have to ask.
I think it's not worth any real discussion to be quite honest. At most, you could introduce a specialty skill feat if the distinctions between multiple different types of patients become relevant. If you implement any form of this kind of realism, be forward with players that this is fundamentally penalizing players who stray from the norm.
A cleric that doesnt want to be a healer at all can have either a single Heal spell from their channel or a pool of Harms, both of which make for a rather pisspoor healer without burning through spell slots.
Outside of the very early, Chiurgeon vs cleric both have their own strength and weaknesses. Cleric's healing output doesnt scale as quickly as the raw output of a chiurgeon does once chiurgeon reaches level 5, and investing in charisma is a lot of investment for a cleric that might see more benefits out of the physical stats for their own personal health. We don't have the cleric feats yet, but in terms of condition removal, the cleric has to still pick between healing and condition removal round to round, where the chiurgeon gets both at the cost of efficiency with quick alchemy and merciful elixir, and eventually that quick alchemy elixir applies a sharper burst of HP than the average Heal. The largest benefit of the cleric over the alchemist is aoe healing efficiency, which isn't always necessary.
You're allowed to hand off elixir in advance and/or feed a willing ally an elixir or potion with your own actions. You're only creating elixirs of life with quick alchemy when you need that instant burst of hit points and condition removal, with the bulk of your healing reagents spent on throughput healing during daily preparations, and will probably spread them out as the party feels like they're best split.
From what was transcribed in another thread, the ‘Healer’ Alchemist path can make 3 healing pots per daily batch at 5th level, and 13th level i think, all healing pots heal for max rather than rolling. They seem like they will have a good place for anyone looking to fill that roll. The Max healing only comes from elixirs created through quick alchemy, making it more of a panic button. But in comparison to a cleric, action distribution/efficiency generally still leans in favour of the cleric but the Alchemist is certainly no slouch. Using a mix of playtest numbers for elixirs and final rules for the alchemist class, cleric channel and the Heal Spell, using only 3 of a 5th level chiurgeon's 9 resonance(assuming 18 or 19 int) grants 27d6 worth of quick healing outside of treat wounds without accounting for using crafting in place of medicine for treat wounds, so about 94-95 hit points, compared to an average fighters 60-70 max hit points at level 5, but a cleric focused on channeling can heal double the alchemist's number if they focus on charisma for channeling and healing single target, healing around 180 HP just off of channeling. Keeping spending at about the same percentage of resources, this increases to 21d6 per reagent and 4 reagents spent at level 8, now healing for a whopping total average of 294 HP, and cleric healing fails to scale at the same rate, the same cleric channel healing an average of 250 off of single targeted channels, but once aoe healing is involved the healing skyrockets back to 350 or so. Alchemist healing early on is not very effective, assuming numbers for healing haven't changed, but the amount of healing they can output increases incredibly fast as they level and hit each new elixir breakpoint.
So... I'm a huge fan of a lot of things in second edition changing from both 1st edition and the playtest version. It's not about the fact that " you must have magic items". Not entirely I guess. My problem and I'm sure a few others that might have been misunderstood... Quality was perfect, it was fine conceptually. What we have here is exactly the same MECHANICALLY... but the packaging is absolutely ruined. There's no longer such a thing as "an incredibly high quality but nonmagical weapon" that has benefits over a basic blade. Magic weapons and armor are now functionally ubiquitous. There's no master blacksmith creating fine weapons and armor for the party without the power of "magic". It comes off as cheap and worthless, at least to me. Yes I can always reflavour it, but in the playtest it was the default other than the fact that magic items out scaled quality. I now have to explain this to parties when I GM, and probably get questioning looks of "what's the point" or feel some twinge of disappointment as my future ifrit or dwarf has to call upon the powers of magic for what should have just been a very fancy sword unless the GM decides that they agree with me.
How does the order of the boosts change that? It still makes ir so that you could only have an 18 in your key score and no other stat at 1st level, right?The order shouldn't matter. Adding +2 to main stat 2nd or 4th still gives you the same bonus. Being able to take the 2 flaws to raise str to 18 for the wild druid was what I was referencing. This doesn't change that, as you're not gaining +2s in the right set up to get a second 18 or an eighteen outside of your classes favored stat. Ancestry stats look more like this now: +2,+2,-2, +2 Floating, and Optional (+2,-2,-2 all floating, +2 plus -2 cancel out and allow another +2 or -2 in that stat). Highest a stat can be out of this step is 12, and no bonuses have been added outside of this step, so at most you can apply 3 more boost to a given stat.
I personally just refuse to sorcerers free spontaneous heightening without also giving the prepared casters the ability to spontaneously heighten/cast their spells as well, which I absolutely dont want beyond a shadow of a doubt, because that just kicks sorcerer back down in terms of having any advantage. The reason I cant just give it to sorcerer is that it would make divine sorcerer and likely other spontaneous classes with time extremely restricted in expected spell list when it comes to a proposed meta, with the second concern being opportunity costs in general. With free heightening the expectation that a sorcerer fill every single slot on the spell list, if not immeadiately but with time on level up/downtime to change their spells known, with the spells meant to remove and counteract anything and everything, and any other spell that's too invaluable to not carry around in an easily heightened form. Every Sorcerer ever would have to carry dispel magic, restoration(assuming it's on their current list) and the like, and there's a bunch of them. There's no meaningful choice to be had. Even if you had a divine sorcerer and cleric in the same party, there's NO value in having the cleric take those spells with the normal prepared rules when the sorcerer can have them at a much much lower opportunity cost. As is, a wizard should almost never carry around a dispel magic if they share the party with a spontaneous caster, but the limited number of heightenable slots keep it from being a burden on expectations for a sorcerer, which let's them build how they want.
Next thing you're going to tell us is that there isn't an expensive opportunity cost in the form of having to learn a new combat poison recipe every single level or having to take multiple feats and multiclass into rogue so you have a relevant DC, right? The current state of the alchemist class and its feats aren't really super thrilling to me. Everything tends to feel either too specific or feat-tax like.Powerful alchemy is still in and looks mostly the same, and the 10th level feat to barely keep poison DCs relevant seems to still be there too, though text is hard to tell with our screenshots in places.
I think "infusing your sword with a variety of magic powers and hitting people with it" has a long and flavorful history in games and fiction. Combined with the fact that Magus was a fan favorite, I firmly believe it will come back - but redesigned so that the core theme is applying a variety of rider effects to melee strikes, instead of being specifically a gish. I'd like to say that bespell weapon is less channeling various magicks through a blade and more making good efficient use of residual magic. The concept people have of spellstrike isn't necessarily about the mechanical benefits, though it would be fairly strong mechanically in second edition. Large flashy magical strikes are what I want from a magus like character. Focus based with spells like a wide flaming cleave or a lightning overhead with the same extended attack mechanic as the fire giant did in the playtest. Maybe options focused on various self buffs or curse/debuffs that cling to the opponent hit by the blade. Bespell just feels like a small bonus for using your last action or two to attack a creature in comparison.
Dumb question along the lines of runes. Are runes basically just making a item magic? or is it literally a item you attach to any weapon so if you have a greater frost rune you could swap as you want to new gear you find? It was very much a defined option in the playtest, and I dont expect that to change.
Leshies and Lizardfolk seems like a terrible decision. There are lots of more popular ancestries. While I'm sure there's at least some more popular races, leshies earn a lot of immeadiate popularity when they were added as a race in Ultimate Wilderness. Plus. running the spectrum of races, and not just doling out the current popular race names is better imo. It lets people find new favourites and gives a shot to races that might not be as popular simply due to the fact that they're a latecomer or overshadowed by certain other races with ridiculously undeserved amounts of popularity (no names being named here). Plus, leshy are cool, and they're different from most other races. They're literally starting off with shining a spotlight on a race that isn't even a humanoid.
Something I'd like to see, based on the similar classes from starfinder, the Solarion and the Vanguard, is a class with some kind of building resource. I really hope that classes with more complex mechanics aren't going to be completely absent from second edition. Maybe something like a martial/caster hybrid class that "galvanizes arcane power" as they charge in and swing their blade before unleashing it with fancy burst attacks or self buffs. Another thing I'd like to see, maybe based on a reworked kineticist, is a class with a straight-up stance system. Some abilities having modified effects based on current stance or are only available in a given stance, with maybe feats that allow them to transition from one stance to another more fluidly than a monk.
The problem with picking the lock in Doomsday Dawn was not that it took multiple successes, it was that the DC was way too high for a 1st level character on the lock in Part 1. I think that only really works with binary success or failure. Once you're playing with 4 degrees of success/failure, while you dont need to have everything have all 4 degrees, something being completely binary feels off, and using the success/failure to determine how long it takes also doesn't feel quite right, since it means you roll before you even functionally start picking the lock, but you cant reduce the time it takes to pick the lock if you roll a critical success. Picks breaking immeadiately on a critical failure doesn't feel great though, I wish they could take at least one crit failure and have the picks be recoverable( ie deal 1 point of damage to the pick, with 2 "HP").
a There's 4 lines going into pathfinder second edition. Without accounting for shipping, you'll have roughly 60 every quarter for a rulebook, around 40 either quarterly or every other month for the world guide(combined replacement for campaign setting and companion), 25 a month for adventure paths. Last line is the module line, but I'm not sure about that line.
Another enjoyable vignette, curious about what it means for sorcerer. My only point of confusion is that, a glint of a blade too bright for steel sounds like an odd way to describe adamantine, since isn't adamantine supposed to be a black metal?
I don’t mean to derail and it might just be me but I have no issue with the idea (and any mechanics that enable it) of thousands of level 1 characters (an army) being able to take out a dragon or other high level nasty. It makes sense to me and is another reason that said big bads don’t blatantly rule the world (other than PCs and other high level NPCs stopping it.) Meh, different strokes I suppose. It works mostly the same way it did in the playtest, but the new rules has 2 different use cases, if you would critically fail on a 20, you now only fail, where before it would be a success, and the reverse is true now with natural 1s, so that if you were so good at a task you would critically succeed on a 1, it would be just a success, actually preventing the armies taking on minor demigods scenarios.
My personal feelings on this are that some of these, like harpies, dryads(trees have genders!), and the like are perfectly sensible to have male and female variants. Diverse representation is a good thing, but, shoving it into every possible facet isn't inherently good just because of that. I think we shouldn't have a large number of "Only this gender" races, but it's fine that some exist, as long as it's not overly problematic in its use. And there's places where there's room for exploration with "only one gender" type races. Changelings, still being a traditional humanoid race, always born female in pathfinder, is fine, because there's explorable space in that and it's not overly problematic in its implementation imo.
The thing that's most important to me that I really like is the sense of visual clutter has been massively reduced, while still giving them a TON of equipment. I really like this because honestly... the clutter on the original PF1 iconics makes me feel uncomfortable even if I like the visualization of how characters are carrying all of their things. Other than that, part of me wishes droogami wasn't a snow leopard and didn't become such a goofy looking one, and I'm not a huge fan of new sajan, but it's whatever.
Well if it makes you feel better I actually do think this Iconic looks to skinny compared to his origonal art. Isn't it more because he's more angled with a fighting posture than the first one? Because that's the way I interpret what I'm looking at. His shoulders are a little less broad, but that's the size change that sticks out to me.
Looking at these, I feel like I'm looking at a misrepresentation of this, tbh. Your copies of the new art have a noticeable quality drop, whether it's intentional or not, lines not being as clean as they should be and the whole image feels blurry instead of faded. I appreciate the images being side by side, but I don't know how I feel about how it's currently presented.
Playtest update version scaled as something like 2+level for the damage reduction of paladin actions and Qundle absolutely does not have a skill feat for it, since his background being being a field medic grants him the ability to treat wounds in combat.
I want to offer a few small counterpoints. The simpler and cleaner artstyle is something fairly true of every character. Fine detail has been sacrificed on all character designs revealed to reduce the feeling of clutter and mess that was common for PF1 iconic designs.Second of all... she really doesn't look like a small child. Her body and limbs are WAY too thin for a kid who would have a proportionally similar head. Even the kids with the body shapes typically described as "string beans" have way smaller proportioned head to body ratio. And I find the looks like an adult nonhuman weird because 1e Lini looks like a human in super dedicated cosplay in terms of human-ness. Non human humanoids shouldn't really look like humans in cosplay.
The change in her proportions feel fairly small while also making a significant difference in feeling for me. She's gone from looking like a small weird human with a skin condition who doesn't eat a whole lot to a small humanoid that feels like they could be related to the fey. I'm really happy with the move to differentiate the proportions of the races more strongly. Droogami reminds me of that one chubby tiger from zootopia, and it's not terrible, but I'm not the hugest fan of it I guess.
What about having... both? Just like half elves grant humans access to elven feats, have a full tiefling/aasimar ancestry, that represents a strong tie to the planar energies,with heritages relating to the various types of fiends and celestial and a detachable heritage that grants access to aasimar and tiefling feats and representing characters who are very much the race of their parents with a touch of planar energies.
That's... not good. I already have enough issues with Sense Motive uses being rolled into perception while removing the ability to raise it. If now my sorcerer or other character is forced to be completely incompetent at reading things socially... I'm really not happy about that.
The last iteration of the Shield rules (where shields could take 2 dents, but blocking only gave 1 at most) meant it was impossible for a fresh shield to break in one block. Is that still true in the final rules?As you can see throughout the process when we kept answering the question multiple different ways on the streams, that last playtest iteration was mostly a patch on an issue involved with calculating the dents and HP. Using HP, it is possible for your shield to break, or even be totally destroyed, in one hit, but you get to know how much damage is incoming before you decide whether to block, so that only happens if you choose. Looking at how much it would take to destroy Linda's dwarf's shield in one hit, though, even on a crit that's not going to happen unless they're fighting something way beyond their level. Even a balor would be hard-pressed to do that much in a single crit. Is there any meaningful distinction between using a light or heavy shield, or is it still the kinda janky back and forth that it was in the playtest, where you'd go back and forth if you're just after hardness,even though it messed with your AC?
I'm loving most of if not all of the changes here, especially for the alchemist, though I feel like the class still has a few kinks that need to be worked out for each of the research categories, though I'll absolutely check them out in what little play time I have available to see how it matches against my gut. Bomber: the master proficiency in bombs might be enough to resolve the to hit issue, alongside the alchemist goggles, but I feel like the class wants a proper variant on the spell duelist wand and gloves. Chiurgeon: what this option grants you feels lackluster, though I know I shouldn't doubt the amount of raw healing alchemist has now. Mutagenist: Minor mutagens were absolutely on my list of wants, but the issue I have with mutagens and elixirs still remains. They want to a temporary counterpart to magic items, but they just can't compete long term. While they tend to come at a high value for their level(until spells and effects come into play) magic items replicate the value of these. The only thing that stands out as unique for the quicksilver elixir is that you gain a large movement speed boost and it was the expected way for you to play a bomber, because it was the only way to get a good item bonus for your bombs. The reflex save bonus competes with your armor, the hit bonus competes with magic weapons and the skill bonuses compete with skill items. And while for skill items it might mean you can choose to skip the skill item, for saves and attack bonuses, it makes any combat benefits to a mutagens FEEL bad. I'd rather mutagens grant a smaller benefit to combat abilities, but stack with your equipment. I'd would also like to see mutagens move away from being "acts like improved stat" and to something more like types of specialization, such as "duelist's aid" that improves melee defense, "crackshot mutagen" that specializes in ranged bonuses and perception, and so on, since the items are no longer providing direct stay benefits. Poisoner: The alchemist still suffers from the general DC failure issue that the poisons have. Instead of granting some weak benefits to resisting poison, can the variant have viable poisons at various levels? Maybe it's an issue that's potentially solved eventually by taking some feat taxes and rollout of various poisons trickling out with new rulebook and sprats, but that's a long time down the road, and until then, poison users feel weak and worthless and even then, they'll have a money/formula tax every level to make sure they're using a quality poison so that they feel like they stand a chance targeting the often strongest save at any given level. A feat that allows a Poisoner to combine quick alchemy with poisoning their weapon would be nice. Adding an additive or two for poisons would be nice. Things I'd like to see for alchemist in the core rulebook other than the stuff I talked about above: Make alchemist compete less with magic items and instead more with magic or a mix of both. I'd like to see more additives for all 4 researches. More items is a no brainer, but the most important thing in my eyes would be tools and bombs beyond level 1, such as cement foam or liquid pellet grenades.
Also why are there so many feats that require you to create a thing using Quick Alchemy? And the level 9 ability that grants half your level to resonance but only for Quick alchemy feels like it comes far too late.
Just out of curiosity, what are alchemists spending it on? I'm honestly surprised with your experience, as the group that I had been GMing for had no issues with the first chapter, in terms of staying healthy against me TRYING to be brutal, and the party had ONE source of healing beyond 3 store bought minor elixirs of life, being that of a paladin, whose other party members consisted of a rogue, monk and ranger, only the Rogue of which I would have described as optimized in play and playstyle. The group made it all the way and beat the quasits, including handling the centipedes, before the quasit poison whittled down the paladin enough with some bad rolls that they left to lick their wounds and come back the day after, finishing up with the closest to dead on day 2 was the bear after taking a serious beating from the final fight and not a single lay on hands used to heal until after finished the skeletons, the rest of the goblins and the boss.
Wealth by level for a single character also makes no mention of level 20 items, whereas they exist, cost more than "WBL" for a level 20 character(This chart is clearly just meant for a character who suddenly joins at level X). Elixirs of healing are a party consumable, and should likely be accounted for in party treasure gain in some form through taking money out of the pocket of party currency and breaking down the value of the lower level consumables gained at level 6/7.
Based on costs, compared to other consumables? No, they're absolutely priced correctly, it's just that crafting isn't the huge discount it was in PF 1, it allows you to guarantee that you'll be able to get what you want, but making money off of it in any form has been balanced to fit alongside your friends that'll be performing at bars and eventually theaters, or the bouncer who works his way up to a convoy manager.
It looks not like it's not supposed to be for exactly on-level items, but more for mass producing lower level items that you'll get use out of, ie, a level 7 mass producing a bunch of lesser elixirs of life, 8 in a single pay half upfront for 72 GP, and reduce the leftover cost by 2 GP a day, 3 on a critical Success, which will be easier at a higher level.
So I just saw that mutagens don't even work with Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy since they are uncommon . . . RIP Mutagens The Item crafting rules say, take 4 days, -1 day for each character level above item level, spent half at the start(15SPish) and half at the end(15SP), but you can spend additional days crafting and using the crafting skill to reduce the cost for each day work, discount based on level/proficiency. Consumables like elixirs can be made in batches of 4 at a time (there's a reference that this isn't always a case in an alchemist ability, but other references to batches don't seem to have anything about variable batch size) A level 4 Expert alchemist that makes 4 Lesser Elixir of lifes (level 4)
When they decide to finish crafting, they must pay the remaining balance left on crafting the item, so the alchemist who spent 5 extra days reduces the cost of his batch of elixirs by 3GP and must pay the remaining 21 GP(whole cost of batch is 48 GP, half(24) is paid at the start of craft, made 3 gp worth of crafting effort, leaving 21 GP unaccounted for). EDIT: Ninja'd super hard while trying to write this.
Pathfinder first edition was honestly completely terrible at monsters and players following the same rules. And now with second edition, they're honestly closer to following the rules like players are. Their level sets their baseline, their role likely defines their hit points and hit rate as well as skills, and their significant abilities will in ways mirror that of PCs.
Hit dice were ugly and frustrating. A CR5 monster doesn't have 5 hit dice, it has 6 or 8 or even 9, whatever they need so the monster doesn't suck, and then they had to play fun with numbers to make the stats work and the powers were too strong or too weak. The " hound of xul" has 24 charisma because it needed it's unearthly belch to be about DC 26, but they couldn't touch con and strength without giving it too much hp or damage because it's a magical beast, and then they gave it a + 2 racial bonus on the DC because even they thought going for 28 charisma would be overdoing it. Edit: fighting weird autocorrect decisions by mobile.
I'd rather suggest taking a number of dents equal to the hit points of the shield. 1-2 damage per block would feel incredibly terrible. I understand that it might have come off as strong during your game, but reducing it below 4 damage might be balanced (This is going to be based on price of shields, value of character's reaction and actions compared to raising shield) in some ways, but it'll likely feel terrible in practice. Blocking 5 damage feels good at level 1, and if in turn shields come off as as more disposable, I might be fine with that. I'll admit I don't know much about shields, but if say dealing more damage than the hardness to the shield is a serious blow to the shield, wouldn't it be reasonable that after one or two serious blows that the shield would need repair? Otherwise, the AC bonus and damage = or below hardness represent glancing off and blows that don't heavily damage the shield.
I'll also be releasing a homebrew monster daily, in case there are not enough in the playtest.The listing of creatures by name takes up 3.5 pages in the Playtest Bestiary. They've iterated in the past that they want us to be using the creatures in the bestiary (and PC built npcs to an extent?) to test if their framework for producing monsters even works before giving us the framework, because homebrew creations can start to quickly fall outside of numbers expectations and provide less useful information from groups that are doing custom campaigns and one shots since that information would be useful in its own right otherwise.
If my memory serves, the indestructible shield has a hardness of 13 and never takes dents, and another shield of adamantine and high hardness had a hardness of 26 or 29, while lacking the nice benefit of never having to worry if your shield might shatter, and those were probably the top end of shields.
A lot of my class worries are about the strength and effectiveness of alchemist. They certainly have versatility, but their staying power and power as a general whole as of our current understanding makes the class feel, lacking to say the least. For least concerned? I'm probably going to have to go with Barbarian and Druid, with a nod to the rest of the casters.
Verdant feels a little late, Control weather is a ritual, meaning it doesn't use a spell slot. /SPAN> is a typo probably. Frequency/cooldown effects seem to be uncommon and for rare effects, such as using the shield cantrip to block and this effect. 8 HP is probably just the Racial HP, which probably stand to be 10, and they'll have a high natural con for the massive pool of HP.
And it doesn't, nor does just wanting a burnless kineticist, there's nothing inherently horrible about either. And I don't have issue with the overwhelming soul and the alternatives, though I'm aware that the balance for those archetypes were fairly under par. But as someone who has had a lot of experience with having their unique "toys" being gutted or drastically changed beyond recognizability for expanding their use to a wider audience, I'm heavily passionate about keeping mechanical soul intact for the toys I do love, and there's been a lot of anti-burn commentary in this and a few other threads. I don't want burnless kineticist to be the base and gold standard,as it would drastically change how burn would be able to function as a feature into a very limited state, and make burn optional, affecting the perception of people who play that variant in a way that has a very high chance to be viewed negatively and potentially banned from things like PFS, which affects the perception in my home games too, whether the burn variant is too weak or too strong.
I really don't want the "you do math and hurt yourself" kineticist to go away- those are the reasons I love the class. You'll have blasty options that don't have burn mechanics, and there were archetypes that replaced burn. Burn was an actually interesting give and take that I enjoyed. I love classes like it, I love the oddball classes with an overheat mechanic in video games, I like the unlimited until you push yourself. These types of classes have place and purpose, that take the games normal rules into a weird but different place. Let people like me have our classes, stop trying to strip what made the class interesting and enjoyable to us away so you can have yet another toy.
Getting 3 16s isn't possible for a human, as they only 2 racial boosts, whereas any other race can manage it, so long as 2 of the three 16's are the default race scores, one of them is the class primary ability, and the background has one of the other two abilities as its choice. Which means it's not hard to get 3 16s, just restricted in what three you can have,a dwarf can have 16 Con, Wis+ any ability of choice (other than charisma), and any non cleric/druid requires a background with either wisdom or con as an option, which isn't all but covers a fair number.
It was brought up in another thread, but the possibility that Half-Elves and Half-Orcs become Human Heritage feats might raise some eyes if they went that route. Probably still less contentious than whatever they do with Multiclassing.As someone who loves half-elves, I'd be far more upset about that, because I'd be stuck spending a feat just on defining my characters' pasts and upbringings, even if the benefits from the feat aren't something that fit the characters. It'd certainly negatively flavour my view of the entire playtest, even if I'm aware how extreme of a PoV that is. You either misunderstood what I said, or are trying to misconstrue it, so to be more clear, I don't want playing a half-elves be playing a human with a "Is Half-elf" feat that says " you're elfy" and then I'm otherwise human, because half elves and half orcs had so much going on in terms of differentiation from humans, both in the golarion setting and mechanically. I don't have an issue with a half elf feat that says "you're more human than elf and/or raised amongst people and have tried hard to learn how to fit in better, +1 diplomacy and deception, easier time convincing someone you are human". I feel like you should have more than one at first level but after seeing gnome feats, I prefer the overall changes to ancestry feats, because once you have a few, your race certainly matters. Gnomes can get crit effects for preferred weapons, even outside the handful of classes with access to crit effects? That's actually pretty substantial, considering the few crit effects they've previewed, where I usually forgot about a lot of racial traits after the first few levels in pathfinder unless they were already baked into the numbers.
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