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Well, there is one other thing holding them back. Which is that they don’t have a second a second max level fireball.

I’ve been thinking about Life Tap. It is a spell that I like, so I want to judge its power to see if it’s actually weak or not. And then I remembered Soul Siphon exists and is the perfect analogue.

Soul Siphon does 1/2 1d4 void damage per rank on a successful save, 1d4 void damage per rank + drained 1 on a failed save, and 2d4 void damage per rank + drained 2 on a critical failure. The spell grants temp HP equal to half the damage it does including drained.

Compared to Life Tap that is

1.125 vs 1 damage per rank on a successful save
3.5 vs 2 damage per rank on a failed save
7 vs 3 damage per rank on a critically failed save

And

.625 hp (rounded up) vs 1 hp healed per rank on a successful save
1.75 vs 2 hp healed per rank on a failed save
And 3.5 vs 3 hp healed per rank on a critically failed save.

Okay, so it looks like soul siphon easily had the advantage in damage, while life tap has the advantage in healing between the additional flexibility and mostly better numbers.

…

Except Soul Siphon is only one action. I think that really illustrates the problem with Life Tap. These abilities shouldn’t be roughly equivalent while Soul Siphon has half the action cost. Life Tap either needs its damage/Healing buffed or its action cost nerfed.

I would prefer the former because I would rather not have a near carbon copy of Soul Siphon on two different classes.

So taunt is in my opinion one of the least effective actions you can take to protect your allies.

Grappling or tripping an enemy will most of the time do more to disrupt their ability to attack your allies than taunt whilst also making them more vulnerable.

demoralising an enemy will often give just as big a penalty to attacking allies as taunting but also make the enemy worse at attacking you and will make them take more damage.

Moving adjacent to an ally or enemy so you can intercept will likely more effective way of protecting your allies than taunting whilst also setting up strikes, trips and disarms.

Sometimes even striking them will be more effective if you have a reasonable chance of defeating them.

So taunting for the most part seems an option of last resort (because there are some many better options available) and possibly shouldn't be a cornerstone of the class.

There are 2-3 benefits of taunt over demoralize. One is that it is going to be more accurate, since it has a success effect.

Two is that it is repeatable against the same foe.

Then there is better range with the feat choice. I do agree that it is a third action more than a main action. I don’t consider it to be the cornerstone of the class even though it gets more discussion.

The only type of guardian that I would expect to use it every turn are shielded taunt guardians who have better defenses to make use of it.

Polearm guardians have an easier time positioning for intercept strike and eventually a better reactive strike with that feat choice in comparison.

I think the problem with Taunt is that you are only politely asking the enemy to hit you. Make Taunt only a -2 penalty, no saves. But if the enemy does not attack you, you get a reactive strike against it.

At the table there is a big difference between "please hit me" and "I dare you to hit the wizard". The enemy now has a dilemma, attack the guardian with very high AC or attack the low AC wizard and eat a reactive strike.

That’s just Paladin with extra steps. It’s nice, but we already have Paladin.

This was definitely my first impression.

However after playing it - I don't think Taunt is strong enough for this to be a reasonable default tactic. It is just not strong enough to justify hiding your character away. Your character still needs to contribute defensively by positioning and offensively by doing at least a basic Strike. You need to get value from your two other actions that turn.

For sure Taunt an enemy that will have difficulty getting to you is a still a reasonable tactic and is a safer tactic. It is just not all you should be doing. Running and hiding most of the time is just a waste of your turn.

I agree. I think part of the reason for “why no dexterity guardian” is that taunt would be a bit too good on a player who could contribute effectively from a safe distance.

I also think that taunt is kind of optional. I’ve been doing some solo playtests, and my guardian did pretty well without touching it in most combats, but wrapping taunt up in a class feature keeps something like a sniper gunslinger from poaching it and spamming strike/taunt/covered reload from 120 feet.

I don’t want Guardian to have a charisma dependency frankly. Champion already has that for their divine smites and whatnot and I would rather that not all big knight defender classes in the game need it.

Taunt is supplementary to the guardian's more reliable tanking/damage mitigation mechanic, intercept strike.

One of Taunt's weaknesses is that it doesn't work as effectively on boss monsters. Luckily, solo-boss monsters probably don't need to be taunted. The guardian's allies just need to be adjacent to them before the boss goes, or some distance out of melee, and the guardian can get by on intercept strike.

The catch is that intercept strike is melee-ish range compared to the champion reaction's 15 foot range. If an enemy is on the rogue and the wizard 20 feet away, the guardian can only cover one. Notably, this means the guardian is most likely not taunting the +3 boss. They are probably already standing in melee with it or moving to do so. It's the other weaker enemy the guardian will taunt, and they are more likely to succeed at it, and those enemies will be less likely to critically hit you with the +2 bonus.

Taunt convinces enemies to walk into the guardian's intercept strike range and not leave. There are several layers of positive and negative incentives at play.

One, the enemy faces cheap debuffs from a distance as long as they ignore the guardian that can negate their hits and crits.
Two, a successful or critically successful taunt might make the guardian the easiest target to hit on the field.
Three A, approaching the guardian will likely end the cheap debuffs,
Three B, this is because a guardian is disincentivized from taunting in the enemy's face in melee.
Four, once they are in melee and no longer getting taunted, they could leave, but that would mean using another move action to move away.
Five, if they leave the guardian can go back to taunting them and the enemy will be back at incentive one.

All of this is really just to convince an enemy that being in the guardian's intercept strike range is less annoying than bothering the wizard or cleric. And part of why this works is because of the double-edged nature of taunt. If taunt was just something that the guardian could spam with no consequences as a third action it would just be worse evil eye on something both too tanky and not threatening enough to change targets over since the enemy would have to down the guardian to get the debuff to end. ie, the debuff version of the evil champion problem. Actually, evil champions get a fear aura at level 4, so it would still be the evil champion problem but worse.

I feel like the commander should be able to command their horse, but the minion rules don't seem to allow that. If that is the case, and the commander can command their horse, then I can see why their mount animal companion progression would be somewhat delayed, because they would have the action compression of moving their mount and using a tactic on their allies from level 1.

I just skipped Egede because it was dumb. I rolled a shadow demon on the random encounter table afterward and played up that the party was being stalked by it as it sought to test them against weaker demons and possess someone.

For Ritalson you are a little late for this, but I started the party at Ritalson’s manor and made him kind of sketchy from the start, but seemingly helpful.

Ritalson’s stay block has dream message, so you can use that to keep him in the story narratively contacting and assisting the PCs. Also keep up the appearances of him in a monster suit. He shouldn’t ever be truly far away even if he is in the background imo.

I gave the party a short pre-AP adventure fighting bandits and a rogue Gatewalker on the way to Seven Arches so they started the campaign at level 2. Changed very little about the entire sequence up to Bolan. I just an extra mook monster where they were needed and Bolan’s Trick Trap Treehouse still gave them a hard time.

They also just might not have a way to turn off the augur regeneration at Kaneepo’s treehouse unless they brought a holy cleric or were psychic and pooled together their money to buy a silver weapon for the fey dungeon.

Later on, the deadliness went down, but I also nerfed the jungle Drake fight and it still almost killed a PC immediately before they get sent into more fights.

I have a couple of questions, please, if you don’t mind:

1. Is there a replacement for the Bulette? I know the Krooth is relatively similar but I was curious about if they made a full replacement.

I didn't see a 1 to 1 analog, but the adamantine dragon does the bulette's gimmick. They have an ability to burrow through the ground, leap out and bite something.

I will say, I agree. I want an unarmed option, because I specifically want to make a dragon exemplar.

However, all the gods in pathfinder have a favored weapon. The baby divinity exemplar to have their own favored weapon too. Fists and natural weapons should absolutely be options though.

Someone has to be the most potent combat healer, and I think the cleric still has that, and the best at using 3-action heals.

I think cleric is still has the somewhat unenviable position of being the best at using the divine tradition. They have access to all of their potential spells every day from the start, and they can prepare more divine spells than animists can.

Animist is the best divine spell poacher in the game, hands down, but it has to give up part of its native divine casting ability to do it.

Now, a lot of people feel the divine list is the worst spell list in the game, so being bound to less of it is only an upside, but you know.

Water:

--- Conclusion: I'd take this for the healing and/or forced move. One of the auras is also pretty nice from a debuff standpoint... though the heavy use of overflow (and three-action overflow specifically) makes liking it for its auras not necessarily all that great. Everything else would be something that I adjusted to because I wanted those things, rather than being a thing I wanted for itself.

No one has really talked about water yet, so I wanted to contest this.

2 action overflows that leave you an action to recover your aura/stance. These are fairly self explanatory. You can use these and still put your aura back up.

Then there are 3 action overflows which don’t. All of them, including the composite 3 action overflow, have a range of at least 120 feet. Water is the only element that consistently has effects at this range, as most elemental impulses sit around 30-60 feet. And this is well outside the range in which Winter Sleet, Water’s main combat stance is relevant.

The 3 action impulses impair vision and/or affect movement that slow down enemy approaches and make ranged enemies miss. The exception is the non-flavor capstone which is a gap closer.

In close range, water switches gears, enters one of its really good stances and sticks to 2 action overflows which are on more of the short range side in order to continue to mess with enemy movement, provide off-guard, and fish for slows on as many enemies as they can.

A more dedicated healer might use sea glass instead, but I think water needs outside support to manage it, medic dedication or wood.