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The supreme court of Pathfinder has found the Animist guilty of the most heinous crime of all: being overpowered!
Thus it has been sentenced to capital punishment, to be carried post-haste!

However, its defense lawyer has proposed an alternative: nerfing the class so it is more in line with the currently existing ones, and in exchange it will be spared the death penalty.

The supreme court accepted the proposal, but the Animist's defense lawyer has no idea how to do that, so they have turned to YOU for help.

How would you nerf the class?

A couple notes:
1) We are trying to nerf it to the power level of the other classes, nerfing it into the ground is not a useful idea, but the Animist can end up a little bit more powerful than standard if the alternative would leave it too weak.
2) Try to keep the mechanics as close as you can, but if if to make the Animist more balanced you have to drastically alter it, that's fine, I just ask you to explain your reasoning.
3) If you feel that the multiclass archetype needs changes other than those resulting from changes to the main class and/or the main class is altered enough that the multiclass archetype needs changes, feel free to write them as well.

So, the long awaited Tech Core Playtest is finally here, bringing with it the Mechanic and Technomancer, who are the last in a series of classes whose Key Attribute is Intelligence (Paizo really loves smart fellas, uh?).

They're both pretty neat classes, who both funnily seem in some way to improve on classes Pathfinder has already taken a shot at with Technomancer having a better implementation of "schools" and "school slots", and Mechanic filling better the idea of an Inventor capable of modifying their gear.

But this isn't the point of the post.

The point is that Mechanic's Key Attribute only covers half of the class. Allow me to explain:

-The Mechanic starts trained in Simple and Martial weapons, and increases its proficiencies at level 5 and 13, like every single Martial and Gish in the game;
-It gains Weapon Specialization at level 7 and improves it into its greater version at level 15, like every other Martial and (good) Gish;
-Its not going to use its Class DC as often as a Kineticist and Soldier or a Spellcaster with their Spell DC to warrant worse Strikes, except when selecting a Mine Exocortex, which is only one of the options available to a class.

Mechanic is a Martial, there's no doubt about that, and as a Martial it's going to want to Strike its enemies, and to do that they're going to want to have their Strength or Dexterity at +4 to hit as often as possible, but uh oh, its Key Attribute is Intelligence, which can't be used for Strikes.

This means that in order to reach the power other classes reach by having a +4 in their Key Ability Score, Mechanic is going to need to have to also get +3 in Strength or Dexterity, leaving the rest of the stats at either +1 or 0 (I have ignored Ancestries with 3 boosts and a flaw for simplicity's sake).

Needless to say, this isn't great. It doesn't ruin the class by any means, sure, but that doesn't mean it can't be better, as seen with the Cleric and Investigator remasters. (Admittedly a big buff for Cleric)

How do we fix this? The answer is surprisingly simple: just allow Int to be used for Strikes' Attack Rolls.

Ok, it's not just that.
Remember when I said that Intelligence can't be used for Strikes? That's not completely true, there is a class that can add the Intelligence modifier instead of the usual modifiers to the Attack Rolls of Strikes: Investigator.

How do they do that? Thanks to Devise a Stratagem, which allows to use Intelligence when Striking the target of the ability instead of Strength of Dexterity, so long as the weapon has the Agile or Finesse traits, is Ranged or is a Sap.

Now, we can't just slap Devise a Stratagem on the Mechanic, since that's the Investigator's thing, but we can draw inspiration from it, by tying the ability to add Intelligence to a Strike's Attack Roll to one of the Mechanics preexisting abilities.

There are two ways we could do this, in my opinion:
1) We can allow you to add your Intelligence modifier when Striking with a weapon under the effects of Modify, or
2) We tie it to the Exocortexes (for example, when a creature has taken damage from one of our Exocortexes).

What do you think?

TL;DR Mechanic should be able to add the Intelligence modifier to Strikes' attack Roll

So, Fighter.

You all know the meme of 'Human Fighter'. It's as basic you can get: no worrying about being a multi eyed paranoid horse-thingy, no getting worked up setting up sneak attack, no spell slots to worry about, you just go up to the enemy and hit them in the head until they die.
Easy, clean and simple.

Now, Pathfinder Second Edition has brought a whole slew of improvement for the Martial classes, allowing them to contribute to the team as much as their spellcaster friends.

Among these changes, Fighter was given more of an identity to call its own. In D&D, Fighter is the class that... fights good. Kind of vague, don't ya think?
In Pathfinder 2e, Fighter is the class that... fights good. OK, that hasn't actually changed, but it now actually means something, thanks to the class' unique niche of being one step ahead in weapon proficiency compared to other Martials of the same level, allowing them to hit AND crit more often (Shut up Gunslinger. You too, Rogue. Off guard is not a proficiency bump.)

And that's where the problem lies.

See, most martials have a preference for weapons due to their mechanics: Barbarians don't like Agile weapons, Rogues want to use weapons with Finesse and Thaumaturge suffer by being a martial with a Key Attribute different from Strength or Dexterity etc.

Now, you'd think that Fighter with their higher proficiency would be the most free to choose a weapon, and for the first 4 levels you'd be right, but once you hit Level 5 you can say all of that goodbye, because Fighter Weapon Mastery forces you to commit to a single Weapon Group.
Want to use that cool Lance you found that shoots lighting? Too bad, you choose Polearms for your weapon group, and Lances's weapon group is Spears, not Polearms (why are they different we may never know), so you sell it because the rest of the party is playing Thaumaturge and you don't have the time to retrain.

Now you might say this is in exchange for some class feature Fighters get at level 5.
Well, let's see:
Nothing. Fighters don't get anything that other Martials don't also get at that level.
In fact, you could argue they get less, since other Martials have their weapon proficiency uniformly increase, even for weapons they cant' really use. The only other thing unique to Fighter is Combat Flexibility, and that is a Level 9 Feature.

You could instead say that's to keep the class from becoming too strong, except that's not true, since for the first 4 levels they get free reign to pick up any weapon they like (except Advanced ones but they're another can of worms I'm not gonna get into) and swing it around with their higher proficiency. Not only that, but once a Fighter reaches Level 19, they gain the Versatile Legend feature, allowing them to once again ignore weapon groups just like in the good old days. And I haven t heard a thing about Fighters terrorizing those level ranges.

So, we've established that Fighter in its current state is literally unplayable by being forced to only pick a single type of weapon.
Where do we go from here?

Well, for all I ranted about Fighter Weapon Mastery being a bad feature, the idea of a Fighter specializing into a single Weapon Group isn't a bad one.
It just needs some polish:

First of all, it needs to be a choice on whether you focus on a single weapon group, or none at all.
Second, the choice should be made at level 1. Such a core part of a character's build should be made immediately, to let the character invest in it ASAP without it being kind of a waste (I'm looking at you Invulnerable Rager and Harbinger's Protection).
Third, there needs to be some kind of actual benefit for the tradeoff. Thankfully, Paizo has already done my job with the Slinger's Precision class feature: bonus precision damage, either +2 or +1d4. Since Fighter is all about consistency, I'll go with the +2 damage.
If that's too strong, we can instead let Fighters use Advanced Weapons of their weapon group without incurring in the proficiency drawback, since the budget for them is only one step of the damage die higher compared to Martial weapons. Whatever the bonus is, proficiency for weapons of other groups should be reduced to Trained and remain a step behind. Also, remove Versatile Legend, it's obsolete either way.

And if a Fighter doesn't want to specialize, no problem. They'll still get to enjoy a higher proficiency with their weapons.

So TL;DR fighter should have a choice between specializing or not, all the while keeping their higher proficiency bonus.

Yay! Thanks for the work on getting this out. Excited to see it when the FAQ page gets updated.