Red Griffyn's page

You need a few things:

1.) 18 INT KAS class (Witch/Wizard are best)
-> This gives a special lore skill (from another archetype), Arcana, and Occultism off your best stat.
-> This gives nature and religion off a save stat that isn't best, but won't be dumped.

2.) Easy Access to advanced familiar with scaling familiar abilities (Witch and Wizard are best)
-> The familiar traits you want are: Independent (free action to ready), Second Opinion (gives a reaction to give a aid on any recall knowledge for a +1/+2 circumstance bonus), Skilled (Loremaster Lore), Skilled (arcana/occultism/nature/religion) or 7 total abilities which you can do by L6 with a witch or familiar thesis wizard with the enhanced familiar feat.

3.) MC into Loremaster for specialized lore
-> Lets you roll recall knowledge on anything.
-> Use the L4 skill feat to help buy yourself out of this to take the cleric MC.

4.) MC into Cleric for Domain Initiate (Dreams Domain and Knowledge L1 focus spells)
-> You want to take the dreams domain focus spell (Sweet Dreams), which takes 1 min to cast, but lasts 1 hour and gives a +1/2/3 status bonus to INT or CHA skills.
-> Then you can use syncretism to grab the knowledge domain focus spell which lets you roll at advantage.
-> In general dreams is better for your INT skills (or ones you have good bonuses for) and knowledge is better for your worse recall skills (maybe special lore skills or nature/religion)

5.) Arcane or Occult spell list so you can take pocket library and/or share lore as a prepared spell to get access to a status bonus until the dreams domain spell comes online for the build.

Obviously the build is made significantly better by a free archetype rule which can effectively get you everything by L8. If the GM is willing to let you skip your exit feats you can ancient elf cleric at L1 and enter lore master at L2, domain initiate by L4, and synecrtism by L6. I have some metrics on this kind of build vs a thaumaturge to show how it beats it up in all metrics except the general recall knoweldge (see here).

Another fun thing for INT based class is an INT psychic that uses the gathered lore unconscious mind. When you unleash your psyche you can use an action to prepare to aid anyone in 30ft using your occultism modifier. Now that the aid DC is 15 and it is tied to a skill you can bump to master/legendary ASAP you can be dishing out +3 to +4s to aid another by L9 with feats like helpful halfling (also consider the human cooperative nature feat at L1 for a +4 bonus to aid checks). By L11 you're essentially auto critting the aid with the sweet dreams domain spell up.

Another thing you can do off a rogue or investigator is dive through multiple skill proficiency archetypes that have skill feats. that lets you essentially enter an archetype only having to spend 1 class feat on the dedication and then 2 skill feats on the exit feat taxes. If you want some non-free archetype examples I have skill boosting archetypes/builds 1 to 3 here. Build 8 even has a investigator MC alchemist that at L8 actually gets the calculated splash for INT to splash damage on bombs (so INT to hit + INT to damage + extra persistent from using the alchemical gut familiar option).

In general if you don't want casting, rogue with a 18 DEX/16 starting INT will be your best bet IMO vs. investigator. Its just a superior chassis and the thief rogue can dump 2 stats (STR + either INT or CHA) so you will have bad CHA skills, but otherwise maxes save stats including your attack stat.

Another funny option for skill builds is the sleepwalker archetype. At L6 the vision of foresight feat lets you spend 1 action to roll any skill check a t advantage while you're in your sleepwalking trance (1 action to enter and lasts for 1 minute). At L18 you can even make it 'permanent'.

As other's have suggested a thaumaturge with diverse lore gets both the 'int functions' and CHA functions and they are a really consistent martial (see the PFS build link I had above for a number of them). Combo that with the dreams spell (which can give +1/2/3 status bonus to CHA skills) or sleepwalker and you can be 'ever useful' in all situations (except maybe ones that require magic solutions specifically).

Races with specified maximum ages in PF2e include:
- dwarf (350 years),
- gnome (400 years),
- Halflings (150 years),
- Lizard Folks (up to 120 years)
- Android (still some alive from the rain of stars thousands of years ago),
- automations (immortal),
- Ghoran (thousands of years),
- Sprites (1000 years).
- Leshy (immortal)
- Skeleton (immortal)

Some of those might need some 'how do you procreate' lore generation, but I'm sure the elves could figure it out. As stated in other posts, ancestries that live 100-200 years are a grey area but I'd be inclined to let it happen if I was GM. Fundamentally the feat is 'you lived 100 years and now know a lot of things because you've been alive for a long time'. There is literally no functional mechanical difference between a 100 year old halfing and a 100 year old 'ancient elf'. Its part of why the original ruling for a half-elf was silly, because you can have a 100 year old half elf regardless of whether they live to 200 years or not.

There are however, a number of races not specifically identified as having a maximum age in PF2e content, but that are provided statistics in PF1e content here. From this page this lets us add the following:
- Azarketi (i.e., gillmen) (185 years)
- Fetchling (185 years)
- Kitsune (101 years)
- Nagadji (180 years)
- Tengu (110 years)
- Consaru (Not clear but sound immortal-ish)
- Fleshwarps (not clear but if you were a race above that was fleshwarped why not)
- Golomas (not clear)
- Kashrishi (not clear)
- Shisk (not clear)
- Vishkanya (110 years)

Red Griffyn wrote:

I worked up a quick DEX AC Spreadsheet to show just how bad these Animal companions are.

...
You spent 5 feats on this plus another feat for a focus point healing spell.

OK I haven't checked your numbers but it seems like a good companion to me. Know that you can take 3 specialisation feats not 2 depending on how you are taking your animal companion. They fixed that up for the Ranger in the Remaster.

Also you only take an animal only focus point healing if it is free. For the same price you can get one that does everything that lives.

Red Griffyn wrote:

For a 1D6 DEX Maxed Animal companion on average from L1-L20

This seems OK to me. Beside Dex companions aren't where the problem lies. It is all strength ones.

Red Griffyn wrote:

So really what are the benefits? If there is a great support action that helps a PC with real attack/damage capabilities. A small pool of hit points to soak 1 round of a boss's attacks, or maybe delay for 1-3 rounds a minion. It can flank for some amount of rounds before it is dropped. Is that worth 5+ feats to you? It certainly isn't worth spending actions on healing in combat to decrease your effectiveness to keep this thing alive.

Who heals in combat? Only rarely or if you have a specialist healer.

An animal companion at level 20 will have 180ish HP and will take 2 critical hits to take down. As a speed bump that will take a boss or 2 lessers a full round.
If you are playing with animal companions or summons or eidolons, then you want to be taking buffs that benefit the entire party. Things like Haste 7 or the composition cantrips. You just don't typically have the actions or the resources to buff your minions.

I mean, sure you can take as many specializations as you want (I assumed beastmaster which already had that clause on the L14 feat). But there are only 2 dex boosting specializations so you won't increase your AC or attack stat more. The numbers I had assumed L14/L16 feats but honestly you can do better with a L18/L20 feat than bump your animal companions off stats by 1. Note if you go with a genii touched companion you can have 3 dex based boosts, but genii touched means you are 1 dex boost behind from L8 to L13 because nimble companions actually get a +2 dex mod boost vs. geni-touched only getting +1. So to get to equivalency you have to spend that L18 feat. If you go genii touched you can get barding to expert off earth/water options, but I'm not sure what that does to your other stats for a STR based option. Of course, it hurts less if you have free archetype, but I still believe there are a lot better things to do/spend high level FA feats on.

I didn't build out a STR companion, but they will be multiple dex points behind, putting them behind on AC around L14. Until then barding with no runes is providing the best AC. At half hp vs. a d10 martial I honestly think its a liability. If you have a 180hp at L20, then a CR22 monster will have a damage range of 48-63 for the two higher DPR values. So in crit space that is 1.5-2 crits. But honestly its going to be toss away high level AOE spells that wear down the companion before they even get there to soak damage, so I think a 1 turn speed bump is fair. Especially if you soak up an AOE spell on the way up there (which at L20 is likely to happen).

We agree we shouldn't be healing in combat. But many parties treat their animal companions as a little mascot and will go out of their way to bring it back up with focus spells and action burn. Its simply heresay, but I think many groups would not be okay with treating the long standing animal companion as total cannon fodder.

I personally don't have anything against people using them. But I think my biggest pain point is that they don't really fit the fantasy well for lots of people. You don't picture your tiger being murdered in 1-2 strikes and tossed aside like a play thing. You imagine your tiger mauling the face off of the villain after a super awesome sneaky pounce. It clearly shouldn't be as powerful as a main PC, but I think in the line of summon spell, AC, eidolon I'd be okay if it was slid a little bit closer to eidolon and given a bit more power.

shroudb wrote:

I mean, any Intelligence caster can pick up Loremaster at level 2 and he will be just -2 (or even just -1 in later levels) compared to a Thaum. Plus the ability to reroll knowledge checks as free action, making them as free actions, or even make 5 of them on later levels if needed.

Loremaster Lore reaches Expert at level 15, assuming you become Legendary in Society or something. At the same time, Esoteric Lore becomes Legendary automatically, and from then on you're at -4 when Recalling on a creature, and -2 when recalling anything else. Unless you use Assurance, then you're -4, since Assurance ignores the penalty Diverse Lore gives.

You also need to invest additional feats to get those extra actions you mentioned, while Thaumaturges only have to invest the single feat.

This isn't accurate.

If you want to be better than a thaumaturge you just need to actually invest in it. That is how the game is supposed to work. Those that invest can be better. You can't just expect that a caster who takes one feat at L2 and scales their INT will be the 'master of all knowledge'. That isn't investment. That is less investment then the thaumaturge that is spending multiple attribute bumps against their best interest a L1 feat, and forcing specific subclass option picks to their detriment of in combat capabilities/options. The class is a skill monkey so of course it can be good at being skilled. Its niche is generalist lore.

Its like you're complaining that a barbarian is too powerful because it can rage. No, that is a defining feature. If literally any class could beat it at one of its primary class identities by taking a L2 archetype dedication I think that would be very dissatisfying and poor game design.

Way caster can invest to be better:

1.) Intelligence as the KAS and casting stat will be higher than the thaumaturge for a well optimized build since the class doesn't need a high CHA to 'do its thing' in combat unless you're using one of the two DC implements (wand and bell?). That means that vs. a combat optimized thaumaturge you're usually +1 to +3 better in your modifier vs. them (+1 for L1-L5, +0 for L6 to L9, +1 for L10-L16, +2 L17-L19, +3 for L20). If you disagree then you have to know that the thaumaturge is wasting 2-3 stat boosts, an apex item, and implement order selections to tread the same water.

2.) Diverse lore puts most things at -2 so even if it scales faster it is designed to be widely only '1 proficiency bump' ahead at any time. That means when a loremaster lore is trained you're at best 'expert' at L7. When you go to legendary at L15 you're at effectively 'master' at L15.

3.) Caster's have easy access to skilled/independent/second opinion familiars to give an easy +1 circumstance bonus that basically keeps pace until L17 when it might go to +2 from the tome implement.

4.) Casters have access to a number of spells/focus spells that make it easier to buff. Things like pocket library, the dreams domain L1 focus spell, and the knowledge domain L1 focus spell, etc. and can easily burn lower level slots to be doing these recall knowledge checks with +1 to +4 status bonuses for much of the game.

Beyond all of that INT will also work for arcana and occultism really well making you more broadly able to deal with INT based things that recall knowledge can't possibly deal with. For example some traps/haunts/environmental effects require arcana/occultism/a lore skill to disarm them (NOT recall knowledge, but application of the skill).

I will mention that there is a rules question about whether you even can use a magical item dual-purpose as a Thaumaturge Implement.

The discussion never really went anywhere yet, but it is still an open question.

It isn't open. The number of 'rules' posts I've submitted and never got an answer would surprise you. It isn't an 'indicator either way'

But the rules are fine with it. To substantiate that point we have to cite enabling and restricting requirements surrounding implements. TLDR is that it is specifically enabled to 'all items' and nothing restricts it to any specific subcategory of items beyond what matches the form factor of the specific implement type.

Enabling Wording

Implement Definition:
"Your implement is a special object of symbolic importance: your badge as you treat with the supernatural and a powerful tool if things turn violent. Choose an implement from the options to which you have access. You begin play with a mundane item of that type, and you gain the initiate benefit for that implement. While an implement is useful to you, it typically has no value if sold. If you acquire a new object of the same general implement type, you can switch your implement to the new object by spending 1 day of downtime with the new item. As you advance as a thaumaturge, you will collect up to three implements and unlock the hidden potential stored within each, so you can mix and match their benefits to suit your situation."

Object Definition:
"object: See also item."~PC CORE

Item Definition:
"item: An object you carry, hold, or use. Items sometimes grant an item bonus or penalty to certain checks. ~PC CORE

If we instead use the definition from GM core which contains the bulk of items that definition includes pretty much all items:

Item Definition:
item: An object you carry, hold, or use. Items sometimes grant an item bonus or penalty to certain checks.
activating items 220–221
alchemical bombs 244–245
alchemical elixirs 246–247
alchemical poisons 248–250
alchemical tools 251
ammunition 255–256
apex items 270–271
armor 228–231, PC 271-273
artifacts 300–303
automatic bonus progression variant 83
building items 130–133
buying and selling 48–49, 61
companion items 272
crafting items 223
cursed items 306–307
gems & art objects 298–299
held items 273–277
intelligent items 304–305
investing items 219
item rules 219–223
item tables 320–326
materials 252–254
oils 257–258
potions 259–261
reading items 221–223
relics 308–319
runes 224, 226–227 (armor), 232 (shields), 236–239 (weapons)
scrolls 262
shields 233–235, PC 274
staves 278–281
talismans 263–267
wands 282–283
weapons 240–243, PC 275-286
wondrous consumables 268–269
worn items 284–297

If you go further to that GM core section you'll see that all of these things are items. Some are categorized in various different ways to make grouping/reading easier and provide some structure, but the blanket term item effectively covers everything. You could make your implement a 'relic' from a god if you wanted because it is still an item.

Restrictive Wording
You'll find that all restrictive wording beyond the specific item you could start with at Level 1 (see implement definition above) all come in the specific implement section rules. They typically restrict the form factor of the item but not the specific category. Lets use the 'bell' implement as an example:

Bell Implement Definition:
Bells symbolize the power that sounds and emotions hold over others, soothing with one tone and startling with another. Bells, drums, finger cymbals, and other percussion instruments are most typical, but these implements can be any type of portable musical instrument that is played with one hand. Bell implements are associated with the astrological signs of the daughter and the blossom.

So any item (as enabled by the definition for implement) that is a musical instrument that is played with one hand can work. That could include the Silent Bell for example since it is an item and it is a one handed musical instrument.

I think the primary reason think it must continue to be a mundane item is because they read that you get a mundane worthless item at L1 and then erroneously extrapolated that to be always true. The rules clearly specify you can select an item (not mundane item) at higher levels.

The debate of 'ethics/morality' often boils down to moral relativism. The various arguments above are a great slice of that. Its unlikely you'll get universal agreement because most people think 'their line of thinking' is better/more correct than other's.

Effectively what you and your party collectively decide 'is evil' is evil. It doesn't mean every entity (PC, NPC, region, or nationality, etc.) will agree with you in the world. That debate/tension is often the story catalyst/motive force that can have lead to some really fun role playing. The key to avoiding real life player tension is to just not take yourself or PCs too seriously.

For example, you could resolve the issue this way:
- Turn in PC to the authorities.
- Hold mock trials.
- PC found guilty but is sentenced to help the kingdom by aiding its citizens.
- Is called to action through various missions on behalf of the state.
- GM reveals slowly over time that the state is actually quite corrupt and evil.
- PCs realize that continuing to help the state is actually worse/more evil than the alternatives.
- PCs initiate or help an established group of rebels to overthrow the state.
- PCs become the new ruling class that has to make terrible decisions between the lesser of two evils.
- PCs are ultimately called to account for the possible atrocities done at their behest by the next group of rebels.
- An so the wheel turns again and again.

Just roll with the punches. Personally I like to have an appropriate amount of in character dialogue as to what we're doing and if what we just did was evil or whatever. After a reasonable of IRL time I call for a vote by the PCs and will abide by the democratic vote/rule (since in the real world most humans respond well to application of fair/equitable democratic voting). Where people refuse to do that, that is probably a good indicator that a out of game conversation should be had since ultimately the game is supposed to be fun for everyone. If you're constantly in the minority on 'what to do' votes and it bothers you then it might be time to find a group more compatible with your murder hobo tendencies (or lack thereof). But if 5 of 6 PCs say we shouldn't murder and 1 says I'm gonna do it anyways, that kind of real life petulance can lead to 'real' feelings of annoyance. In game tension from your actions can be fun but out of game real world tension from your actions is not fun!

Thaumaturge - Divine Disharmony (L1)

Rogue/Swashbuckler - Tumble Behind (L1/L2)
- This goes well with a the Unbreakable Goblin Heritage and 'Bouncy Goblin' L1 feat that gives you a +2 circumstance bonus to these checks.

Rogue - Dread Striker (L4)
- This will be the most reliable and earliest if you start rogue. There is a new Rare L5 reincarnation feat in the newest season of ghosts book called reincarnated ridiculer. The feat only makes people immune to your demoralize attempts if you critically fail, so it will be significantly more reliable from L5 onwards.

Gunslinger/Pistol Phenom/Bullet Dancer - Pistol Twirl (L2/L2/L4)
- The Pistol Phenom dedication will give this to you right at L2.

Water Kineticist - Winter Sleet (L4)
- Great for a kineticist because you can expand your aura, but it will remain at 10ft for others the entire game.

So you could do something like a Unbreakable Goblin Heritgage, L1 ancestry feat with bouncy goblin. Grab Tumble Behind at L1 from rogue. L2 take the pistol phenom dedication so you can do a ranged feint as long as you hold a gun. L4 take dread striker from rogue so you can demoralize instead of feint (the -1 status penalty to enemy AC is better than feinting). L5 take the reincarnated ridiculer so you can re-apply demoralize.

My GM is a jerk and said "wand of longstrider is broken it's not allowed"

Well, it isn't broken. You'll find it hard to pre-buff if your GM is going to irrationally ban any worthwhile pre-buff options lol. As always when you have obnoxious GMs homebrewing rules to spite players you're going to have likely have a real conversation with them, consider leaving, or suck it up.

If Paizo wanted to patch it they would have done so in 4 core erratas or the remaster which they republished it with a new name. Ask them if you can buy a L2 wand of tailwind.

Paizo nerfed pre-buffing in PF2e, which IMO is one of the worst things they did to casters. Pre-buffing the right thing requires real engagement with the environment, world/lore, NPCs, plot, etc. by players. All this achieved was largely to disincentivize players from engaging meaningfully with the world and turning what used to be rewarding proactive playstyles into largely highly reactive gameplay. This issue is compounded by the change of game timescales. In PF1e you could literally run through a dungeon in ~10 minutes or less if you didn't break between combats to do anything but CLW wand spam to full HP. In PF2e you're almost certainly spending 10-60 minutes between combat. That means even the 10 minute buffs are typically 1 combat buffs and can't extend to 2 without expending equivalent spell slots on healing (i.e., why not use medicine and spend 30 minutes and recast the buff vs. keep the buff and spend slots to heal). I run into this situation all the time. For example, its obnoxious that at the beginning of a dungeon we all see the signs of a big fire breathing dragon but I can't cast resist energy (fire) because if we accidentally have very easy/easy speed bump fight before the dragon or its a 10 minute walk into the cave to get to the boss room then the spell slot is wasted.

Other's are saying they think its a feature, but clearly your experience shows that it is really a bug for many people. Loss of total spell slots and a high % chance of wasting a slot are a common complaint from people coming to the system from other ones. The loss of pre-buffing (i.e., ensuring your spell slot is not wasted) as a reward for engaging with the game is one of the most dissatisfying aspects of PF2e for me personally.

In terms of what you can do, I think for the most part you'll be limited by the spell. You really need to find things with a 1 hour or 8 hour duration or you'll be left being reactive in combat. The wand of continuation can extend duration by 50% but 10 vs. 15 minutes in a game with timescales of a hour(s) are meaningless.

Some hour+ duration spells I like include (many are for niche builds or utility though):
- Ant Haul (if you dumped STR)
- Floating Disk (same as Ant Haul but I think worse because it is more restrictive)
- Illusory Disguise (I like playing sneaky face characters that disguise as enemy NPCs so I get some use out of things like this).
- Invisible Item (for stealing prominent items)
- Long Strider (almost everyone should take trick magic item just to self cast this on themselves as a L2 Wand)
- Pocket Library (for RK folks)
- Share Lore (for skill challenges)
- Post-remaster Sweet Dreams (+1-+3 status bonus to INT or CHA checks is really good, you sleep for a minute and it lasts an hour as a focus spell you can refocus -> useful for all kinds of builds and it can be cast on others, not just yourself).
- Comprehend Languages (some combats can be resolved if you just learn to communicate!)
- Endure Elements (tell the GM's hexploration weather effects to 'go away')
- False Life (I don't think its great or scales well, but it was one of the few ways a universalist wizard with bond conservation could maximize the feat (i.e., a L8 cast of false life gets you a free L6/L4/L2 cast as well on other party members for a pre-buff).
- Invisibility (I know this is 10 minutes, but put it on a scout to maximize the use of your other 10 minute/1 minute buffs and anyone can get 2 castings of it a day for free with the cloak of elvenkind and boots of elvenkind which both provide useful item bonuses to stealth and acrobatics).
- Phantom Steed (mounts and trap disarming)
- See Invisibility
- Spider Climb (eventually becomes an hour and is very fun to engage people from the roof).
- Spy's Mark (for setting a meeting location and seeing if they followed your instructions or listening to conversations that always happen in room x)
- Water Breathing (you should generally know if you are in an underwater campaign, but the L3 or L4 version is good use of GP for a party wand.)
- Deepsight (a way to get greater dark vision)
- Feet to Fins (swim speeds for water centric campaigns)
- Invisibility Sphere (invisibility for all).
- Mind of Menace (if your facing off against something that uses mind effecting spells)
- Non-detection (the leave me alone divination wizard spell)
- Nothing up my sleeves (steal that item and shove it into an extra dimensional sleeve pocket that can't been observed by others)
- Show the Way (for hexploration races primarily)
- Sparkleskin (only 10 minutes but +2 status bonus on a feint build is good and the other effect of causing dazzle is good).
- Occular Overload (not the best spell since its single target,but similair to Mind of menace, 24 hour reaction to single target debuff not on your turn)
- Rope Trick (easy sleeping hideaway)
- Veil (sneak into the party spell)
- Divination Wizard's L4 focus spell vigilant eye

There are more spells but at this point we're getting into L5+ territory where many of the below up-cast to to last all day or 8 hours instead of just 1.

Other buffs can be from alchemical elixirs/mutagens if you have a MC alchemist or alchemist in the party. But a lot of the downsides of those items aren't worth the upside so YMMV.

Psychic as mentioned is a go to for amped guidance or message. Alchemist is nice with minimial class feats for some alchemical items (but they're use is typically limited at the levels you get them).

However I'm going to suggest a silly combo for a recall knowledge master.

Step 1: take the familiar thesis (adds familiar abilities for skilled)
Step 2: take enhanced familiar at L2 (class feats) (more familiar abilities)
Step 3: MC into Cleric
Step 4: Grab two focus point spells for a god with the dreams domain and one with the knowledge domain.
Step 5: Grab the Lore Master archetype

The dreams domain initial domain spell can get you a hour long +1/+2/+3 status bonus to INT or CHA skills. Later we can supplement this with Pocket Library casts so we can spend more focus points on the knowledge domain spell.

The knowledge domain initial domain spell can give you advantage on a recall knowledge roll (basically a +1-+5 depending on the DC)

The familiar (once it has 4 abilities) can pick up skilled (occultism), Skilled (Arcana), Second Opinion (gives a +1 to +2 circumstance Bonus), and later Skilled (Religion) at L6 and Skilled (Nature) at L12 (or pick your lore master lore).

Then you can go further into cleric for spells so you can use a staff of healing for heal spells for varied support options.

You might consider a Ghoran (they have the skilled human heritage feat) and then use the L1/L9 feat for a floating Trained/Expert. If your GM will allow it an elf with the ancient heritage feat could also get loremaster at L2 along with the cleric dedication so this build is effectively done at L4 (the FA variant rule lets GM hand waive archetype exit feat restrictions). Since you plan on taking those feats at L4 and its all geared towards being a savant of recall knowledge I would think the GM should be okay with it. Otherwise you are 'done' at L6 instead.

Example With Ancient Elf and Exit Feat Hand Waive:

Class Feats
L1 - Cleric - Dedication (from Ancient Elf)
L1 - Wizard - Familiar (wizard thesis) (3 traits now)
L2 - Wizard - Enhanced Familiar (5 traits now so I'd pick arcana, occultism, and loremaster lore or religion if not allowed)
L4 - Cleric - Basic Dogma (Domain Initiate - Dreams Domain)
L6 - Cleric - Basic Dogma (Emblazon Armament for the L8 feat raise symbol)
L8 - Cleric - Advanced Dogma (Raise Symbol, ensure you take 'the general shield feat at L3 or L7 so you get +2 circumstance bonus to AC and all saves when you raise your emblazoned shield.

Free Archetype Feats:
L2 - Loremaster - Dedication (now you have loremaster lore)
L4 - Cleric - Basic Dogma (Syncretism, now you can pick another diety with the knowledge domain which also puts you at 3 focus points.
L6 - Cleric - Basic Spell Casting
L8 - Loremaster - Assured Knowledge (1/rnd free action recall knowledge with assurance only)

Ancestry Feats:
L1 - Ancestral Longevity
L5 - Ancestral Paragon (+2 circumstance bonus on any skill check as long as you take twice as long)
L9 - Expert Longevity (you can bump your loremaster lore to expert a full 6 levels early and switch it at L15 when you get legendary in arcana or occultism). Some GMs won't let this work on loremaster lore because its a 'special lore' which as far as I'm aware has no mechanical definition. But in practice you can't gain access to it from feats like 'additional lore' but most people let feats that effect lores to generally apply so you 'should be fine'(YMMV).

There are of course other high level options that are great (L12/L18 for more spells from cleric, or high level lore master feats).

Thaumaturges WISH they could be this good lol. Feel free to move stuff around based on what your GM will let work.

I think my main issue with FA is that it creates a gap between "players who are using their free archetype to maximize power" and "players who are using their free archetype for one of those archetypes that wouldn't otherwise be worth taking, but are fun and thematic."

Like there's a big difference between the Magus going FA into psychic or the monk going Student of Perfection into Jalmeray Heavenseeker and the characters who are taking like celebrity or dandy.

I feel like in a FA game it's especially important to talk to players about their expectations and goals for the game so we're not ending up with players feeling like they "wasted" their free archetype by not minmaxing.

But PF2e isn't just combat. The people taking celebrity or dandy are gaining skill bumps, gaining interesting options for out of combat (like gossip lore and even in combat things like acknowledge fan). If you spend all of your feats trying to build a nova IW magus then great, but you won't be good at the rest of the game? Not only that but I need to spend at least a L2 feat and L6 feat to do it. I can achieve a similar result (except where a true strike could happen) with force fang(just a L2 feat), no amped cantrips, and not locking my archetype selection out for 3 feats if you calculate the DPR. So we're still within a reasonable % margin of each other even if you decided to be a society heavy magus.

YMMV based on the AP, homebrew, and kind of GM you have but in a well balanced game being good at combat at the expense of skills (or vice versa) has consequences.

For example, we need to sneak into the royal wedding but maybe we have to fight our way in (potentially giving up our cover and sacrificing mission objectives), or maybe we can sneak in through the sewer (but that is a skill that folks might not have, and still we have to fight some sewer beast), or maybe our L7+ dandy will use their 'party crasher' feat to construct totally legitimate invitations and circumnavigate all encounters/skill challenges/resource drains of the options (and we arrive without being covered in blood/guts or sewer poop). Being able to tactically nuke the guards with an amped IW ranged weapon isn't in any way as powerful as the Dandy Archetype option in this case.

That doesn't mean there aren't a range of better or worse options. The game can't be perfectly balanced and there are a lot of super niche and very weak options that Paizo publishes (far more than there are marginal vertical progression improvement options).

If the GM only wants to run a dungeon crawler then yeah you won't necessarily pick skill heavy options. Vice versa if you're in a AP like strength of thousands that is very skill heavy, pushing into combat only options will get overshadowed by being an awesome skill monkey. We shouldn't keep forgetting there is an entire other part of the game (i.e., roll-play and role-play).

Its okay to have a sub-optimal build. Even in a game with all 4 of the PCs you just identified, its far more likely that people are happy because they actually built what they wanted. If at some point they aren't having fun anymore then kill/build a new character or let them retrain options they don't want anymore. Hell maybe the GM could 'do something' other than being a totally neutral arbitrator and design some more encounters that enable the thing(s) the PCs built for by taking the flavourful option (e.g., maybe a few extra fights on a boat for the pirate archetype so they can swing from ropes).

Yeah, FA is extremely cool for playing around with options and rounding out a character. I love it and wouldn't want to play without it. But in my experience you are definitely right - most characters don't need it. They'd just like it.

FA builds are just much more satisfying. This is because FA provides the following benefits:

1.) Decouples class Feats from multiclassing feats so they don't have to share a feat pool. This is closer to other TTRPG multiclass mechanics but still has the build in double level feat progression restrictions that minimizes front loaded monster builds.

2.) Expedites build completion (L6-L8 vs. L12-L14 usually for my builds).

3.) Feels far less restrictive (some paint this as meaningful choice but to me it always feels like it does away with a facet of illusion of choice in the core system design)

4.) Leads to more narratively satisfying/complex characters (one axis of a PC is their class, so being freed up to take one or more additional axis of PC development without stagnating on your primary axis is more satisfying. People can be more than one thing and grow in more than one direction at the same time. For me this just makes PCs more relateable as well.

5.) Drops nonsensical feat exit taxes. The rule opens up GM adjudication to allow you to leave an archetype without taking 3 feats total where it makes sense (e.g., the guy who wants to spend a hot 2 levels studying a different archetype and only ever takes dedication feats -> that could literally never happen with the FA variant rule).

6.) Opens up narrative continuity player choice options for people (not me) who like to build re-actively to what happens in their campaign. You can't typically afford for everyone to become a martial artist, but maybe after training at a temple it is afforded to you without much ado by the GM via this rule.

7.) Its just the right amount of additional feats to enable but not drown the PC in options. Specifically I mean that there is always another feat or 2 that could 'be good/better' on the build if I am optimizing for something. So I'm always left wanting more feats and never looking around wondering what to spend a feat on. At the same time due to the limits in place on vertical progression there are often breakpoint levels on builds where you don't 'have' to take a feat of any specific kind because its only a fractional gain, which opens up 'guilt free' flavour options to actually be selected making better PCs.

Do I need all those thing? Sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes it is no. But I would never be able to build as satisfying a PC without FA than I can with FA.

of P2, steals abilities from other classes, and adds those abilities in better forms. There are no restrictions on all its whack mechanics, and I can't understand how it was released by Paizo.

- Esoteric Lore is an uber lore, but unlike Bardic Lore or the Loremaster, it auto-scales at the minimum level. The other lores cap at expert when you've spent 4 skill increases to reach legendary at 15th. It's also Charisma based?!? What sense does that make? Why does Charisma have anything to do with knowing things? 1 feat let's you apply it to any topic at a -2, but the accelerated, free skill increases nullify and blow past that compared to Bardic/Loremaster. Further, those other lores are Int-based. Thaum's class stat is Cha, so this is pretty much assured to be maxxed. There's another thread arguing that this is required for the Exploit Vuln shtick, but that grants bonus damage even on a fail, so why does lore have to break in favor of this 1 class?

Esoteric Lore:

Esoteric lore/diverse lore is not as bad as it seems. The role of 'jack of all trades recall knowledge' is in fact a thaumaturge's niche. Esoteric lore/diverse lore allow them to only be marginally better at that universal lore role vs. full casters who get to maximize casting stat and obtain similar universal lore (e.g., bardic lore, lore master archetype, gossip lore, etc.).

I've evaluated 6 cases in this spreads sheet to substantiate that point of view. The six cases include:

1.) INT Caster (wizard/witch) vs. Thaumaturge that wants to be good at arcana/occultism

2.) Druid with Familiar vs. Thaumaturge that wants to be good at nature/religion

3.) Cleric without Familiar vs. Thaumaturge that wants to be good at nature/religion

4.) INT Investigator vs. Thaumaturge that wants to be good at arcana/occultism.

5.) INT Caster Generalist Lore vs. Thaumaturge that wants to recall knowledge on anything.

6.) Non-INT Generalist Lore vs. Thaumaturge that wants to recall knowledge on anything.

These six cases are tested against 3 different thaumaturges that represent a Low (L), Medium (M), and High (H) level of investment into maximizing their esoteric lore. These include:

1.) Low (L) - CHA 16 to 18 at L5

2.) Medium (M) - CHA 18 to 20 at L10

3.) High (H) - CHA 18 to 24 at L20 (always boosted and APEX item at L17)

In cases 1 to 4 what is shown is that for the baseline knowledge skills, a INT or WIS based caster can easily maintain supremacy vs. the L/M/H esoteric lore optimized thaumaturge. So IF another INT/WIS caster class wants to be better at focused skills they can be. Your second focused skill will lag for L7/8 and L15/16 until your next skill increase, but the margin is there to still be better even with that.

In Cases 5 to 6 what is shown is that the thaumaturge is generally a better universal lore generalist, but only marginally so over either INT or non-INT casters (average is generally < than 1 ahead for all cases with most levels being between 0 to 2 ahead). Essentially they are given a niche that has them generally 2 ahead for other generalist lores which is higher from L5 to L9 before casting stats boost to 20 and when they have master with the -2 (or effectively expert vs. trained of other general lores).

There are many variations of what I've put in that sheet that people could take offense with, but the general trend won't change. There is tons of margin for people to be selectively better at 1-2 skills (even if you remove a source of bonus or apply a lower Lore based DC) than the thaumaturge (making it the secondary roller). As a jack of all trades lore roller that is the role its intended to fulfill and it is marginally better than others (so other full caster classes like bard/wizard/witch don't get to eat it's lunch when they already have tons of power from spells and class features).

Maximizing CHA (is not required and suboptimal)
There is very little incentive to maximize CHA on a thaumaturge and I'd recommend folks go for the Low CHA progression (16 to 18 at L5) vs. the medium or high CHA progressions from the last section of this post. The reason is because they only need a failure vs. a standard level DC to trigger personal antithesis. There is no level where you can critically fail except on a 1 (see tabulations here), so we have to evaluate the marginal gains between personal antithesis vs mortal weakness.

Bestiaries 1/2/3 have a total of 1072 monsters. Of those monsters only 33% have weaknesses at all (this doesn't exclude double counted monsters with multiple weaknesses so that % is lower). 11.85% of that the total 33% has weakness 1-5 so almost immediately the personal antithesis is higher/obsoletes it. You really are talking about a marginal DPR increase on about 21.2% of all creatures you might face. The improvement between CHA 16 to 18 vs. 18 to 24 is capped at 5% from levels 1 to 15 (at which point your personal antithesis is at weakness 9-10. So we can really discount a further 12.22% of monsters with weakness 5 to 10. That leaves us with about 9% of monsters in the bestiary 1/2/3 with weakness 10-20 in the level range of 15 to 20 where we see any significant improvement (10 or 15% increase to success rate or better) from pumping CHA.

Meanwhile we've wasted at least 3 attribute boosts (L5, L10, L15) and the Apex item (L17). The -1 to hit from the apex item alone will drop your DPR by ~15% and all but erase any benefit you could get from applying mortal weakness. But 3 stat boosts is a significant loss to give you marginal damage boosts on 9% of the monsters for the last 5-6 levels of the game. Remember that we started with ~70% of monsters not even having a weakness so heavy CHA investment is detrimental to the classes saves/hp/damage/AC since it is MAD (wants STR/DEX/CON/WIS/CHA whereas most casters want DEX/CON/WIS/Casting Stat).

Esoteric Lore Only Applies to Recall Knowledge (which misses tons of skill usage situations)

Esoteric lore only works on recall knowledge, which excludes a lot more things than you might think, things like:
- Disarming traps/hazards/haunts that typically have non-thievery skills
- Skill Application Challenges (e.g., use nature to find a path, but isn't a recall knowledge, figure out what stuff in this room with worth the most gold/recover it, using a lore like sailing lore to actually sail a boat)
- Chases Subsystem
- Listed uses for each skill (e.g., deciphering writing/taping ley lines/identifying magic/using various skill feats, etc.)
- Rituals
- Influence Subsystem
- Research Subsystem
- Infiltration Subsystem
- Hexploration Subsystem

So while the thaumaturge skill monkey can always roll to know about something, recall knowledge is NOT a substitute for the actual skill that others have (in particular the application of said knowledge vs. just knowing it).

Overall

Esoteric Lore gets a bad reputation. But mathematically it doesn't compete against caster's top 2 skills (i.e., nature/religion or arcana/occultism). It carves out a minor niche for the thaumaturge as a universal lore skill user where it is ahead by a slim margin from L1-L20 but never drastically ahead (i.e., other full caster's can't eat the thaumaturge's lunch in this niche). It only applies to recall knowledge and can't replace most of the uses of skills in the game that have versatile applications and interface with tons of skill based gameplay/subsystems in the game.

I suspect the major issue is that the community believes that having a INT or WIS primary class stat should entitle that class to being the best at two of the 4 primary recall knowledge based skills. As a community we need to reinforce that if someone wants to be better at a skill they have to invest in it. If they didn't the game would be deeply unsatisfying. If you just lazily put in a skill bump you simply might not be 'the best' at it vs. someone that is burning up 3 attribute boosts and taking a lower AC/HP/Saves/Damage and dropping their DPR by ~15% by wasting an Apex item.

Also, speaking of "the class fantasy" when it comes to the Alchemist is a bit of a stretch. Prior to PF1, Alchemist was not a thing at all. And PF1 Alchemist is notoriously overpowered (and I can tell from experience) which allows it to embody more fantasies than it should.

If you base yourself on the description of the Alchemist, the class is pretty much delivering the fantasy (it's mostly speaking of tinkering with
a great number of alchemical items).

Class fantasy of the alchemist is easy. For me it is a bomber extraordinaire.

Right now the alchemist is a pill dispenser model that is best at giving out its items instead of using them. I honestly don't even care about most of the options that contribute to it's versatile power (healing potions, poisons, etc.). I want the option to sacrifice all of that and bomb the s##! out of people with different radius, selective positioning, strategic energy uses/debuff bombs. I want Master scaling for attacks with bombs/unarmed strikes (so mutagenists can have their cake) and master in class DC. I want my proficiency and item bonus to hit to match a martial progression so that I can 'RELIABLY hit' with the bomb against an at level threat without any dead levels. I want that token pirate who is a little crazy throwing bombs as their pass time.

I don't even get what you mean by alchemist wasn't a thing prior to PF1e. Not only is that irrelevant because PF1e is old enough to provide the basis. It also just isn't true? Alchemy at least goes back to DND2e or the ebberon setting (I think 3/3.5) where it was typically a subclass feature of wizards or artificers. Iconic items like the alchemy jug go even farther back to DND1e published in 1979.

But lets stay within the 'realm of pathfinder'. The PF1e alchemist was a 'non-support/selfish' class. It couldn't share its mutagens without the infusion discovery. Every odd level its bombs got more powerful (basically the sneak attack of the class and you wouldn't claim SA doesn't tie to a rogue?). It was a 3/4 BAB class which translates to a martial in the PF2e system.

Since we both played PF1e alchemists you'll agree then that a LARGE portion of the class was throwing bombs. Just because it was overpowered because touch AC didn't scale at all with level doesn't mean we can't have a balanced PF2e version. No need to try to infer that I want some kind of overpowered class.

Calm down there!

...Now this to declare incompetence on the part of designers, which is what was understood to me in your answer, it is too far away, because if it was the case we would not even be arguing, the game would simply have been a flop, which it wasn't.

And going to the specific case of the alchemist, warpriest and the remaster and etc. What we have is not a case of incompetence, but of vision divergence. What you, and part of the community wanted for the class is different from what the designers wanted with the same class. What the designers wanted was to make all-round classes that they didn't fall into the CoDzilla problem, something that almost everyone agrees, but while the designer chose to leave these super versatile classes at the cost of reducing their power and efficiency in each area, to thus prevent them from overshadowing other more specific classes, many community members preferred to be part of this versatility to be sacrificed in place of a specialization that provided a greater power for a specific role in competitible with that of other classes.

But it is not incompetence, but you who want something different from which the class was designed to do.

This is an important factor, because none of the erratas, nor does the remaster actually try to change the base design of any of the classes, precisely to prevent any of them change so significantly any of the classes to the point that this breaks someone's build who is already playing and likes the class...

I didn't say and have never said Paizo designers were incompetent. So anywhere in your post where you use that word, you've not understood my critique.

There are key system elements that are not designed well and have not been fixed after many years of trying. I wouldn't say they are the majority or highly numerous, but I and other's shouldn't be silenced in identifying them. Largely this happens because of the community insistence that it was 'good and Paizo can do no wrong' which stifles constructive discourse/idea generation and sharing. As well, Paizo designers have generally refused to go back and make big changes to existing design. That refusal to take a bold new direction is what I'm trying to point out and why I'm not optimistic that 'this time' will be any different. The alchemist is exactly one of those design elements. They tried it out, they tried fixing it multiple times in 3-4 erratas or with various items in various books and it still isn't a very satisfying class or what most in the community consider 'fixed'. It is almost a meme at this point that the 'alchemist will be fixed in the next big w/e item book that has all the best new alchemical items your brain can think of'. If your car engine is broken, you don't repaint the car and hope it works nor do you have to necessarily trash it all and buy a new car. But 'step 1' is to acknowledge the problem and then go hire a mechanic to fix the engine/bring in replacement parts. So Paizo needs to 'acknowledge the problem' (specifically the 'root cause' of the problem) and then fix the root cause of the problem with more impactful/bold/meaningful changes that need not deprive people of what they currently love.

Avoiding a CODZILLA is a noble goal. However, this point your making isn't hyper relevant. I don't hear anyone saying that the base chassis of 'bounded caster' is overpowered. So a bounded caster chassis cleric, druid, bard, etc. will equally not be overpowered. They could have used 3 pages to describe a new subclass for cleric/druid/bard that are bounded casters subclasses and still left the current remaster warpriest in the book. They could have published a new bounded caster archetype or class archetype to convert a base caster class into a bounded caster. You know just like how they literally did the exact same thing to convert a prepared caster to spontaneous caster in the same book as the magus via 'flexible caster'.

Everyone keeps proposing this false dichotomy of it must be A OR B. They can easily give us both A AND B. What I want doesn't have to come at the expense of what others like from the current system design. I don't even care if you call it warpriest/inquisitor/shaman/shifter/skald/bloodrager/hunter/mesmerist (the name is irrelevant). However, the game is clearly missing the spiritual successor to many of the 3/4 BAB and 2/3 Caster hybrid classes from PF1e. Its been years since the magus and we still don't have a bounded caster that uses the divine, occult, or nature spell lists despite me seeing so many posts asking for it. Everyone and their brother on pathfinder infinite has seen the desire for the design space to be filled and published something but the primary system designer can't see what is right in front of their faces? (**tinfoil hat goes on**)It has to be on purpose/deliberate at this point, which makes constantly critiquing them for it all the more important if you want to see the stuff before year 10 when the edition wraps up and they start publishing PF3e (sucks to be you PF1e shifter). (**tinfoil hat comes off**).

Honestly at this point I just want PC2 out so the guys at team+ can get the new base design and expedite publishing Alchemist+. That has a high probability of delivering on what I want, just like literally every other Team+ publication vs. Paizo.

I think if Paizo had entered into remaster space with the base assumption that the core/APG classes needed to be re-approached with the amazing new design principles/philosophies applied to the thaumaturge, psychic, kineticist, etc. that we would have come away amazing new remaster classes. Don't just slaughter the DND sacred cows but also the pathfinder/2e sacred cows as well. PC1 hasn't shown us that they are doing that. However, nothing would make me happier than for me to by hoisted by my own petard and eat crow in July 2024 and say that the new alchemist is awesome. I just would not bet money on that happening.

Karmagator wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

Lots of hand wringing over the ability to uh- be pretty good at getting selective information about the setting from the GM.

It says some nice things about the game when an ability that by definition can't break anything is what we're fixating on as 'overpowered.'

Diverse Lore on its own is awesome, both from a narrative and mechanical perspective. Without the context of other classes, it doesn't break anything, quite the contrary. It's purely what it does to the niche of other character and INT that's the problem.

I can see Super Bidi's point.

On these boards intelligence and intelligence-based classes are sold as the ultimate users of Recall Knowledge to the benefit of themselves and the party to prove that intelligence is an equally valuable stat. Most of the intel casters are mostly using this option, often with the Additional Lore feat to obtain Recall Knowledge skills based on intel.

Here comes this Tome Thaumaturge that pretty much says, "I'm the best at Recall knowledge and I use Charisma." By the way, I can get more Legendary skills than you intel classes much like a rogue. I'm the most awesome skills to figure things out, while I also build up my Athletics and Acrobatics.

Basically, they are stepping heavy on intel class toes and intelligence is already a stat that could use some feats to make it better.

Well then these boards should not be falsely conflating the ideas of caster and skill monkey. I think a good chunk of people that advocate that position at the table are the STR/DEX/CON/WIS MAD martials who don't have enough ability score increases to have CHA and or INT at any meaningful bonus and thus need to rely on another class to fill that role in the party. That is fine and as shown above most INT/WIS classes can mop the floor with the thaumaturge in RK rolls with investment in their casting stat 'fiefdom', but they are not the defacto 'I'm good with skills classes'. Those are clearly the rogue, investigator, and thaumaturge who all have different niche manifestations of 'skill monkey'. In the same way that rogue, investigator, and thaumaturge aren't full casters with spell slots and all the world bending things those can do.

Where your casting stat is INT you may also be good at arcana, crafting, occultism, and society with fairly minimal investment. Where your casting stat is WIS, you may also be good at medicine, survival, nature, and religion with minimal investment. Where your casting stat is CHA you may also be good at diplomacy, deception, intimidation, and performance with minimal investment. The only caster with any real claim to skill monkey has historically been the bard but that was also back when it was a 2/3 caster/gish and not full caster. So maybe buff bardic lore (but that class's compositions are pretty powerful and the caster has a clear support niche in PF2e vs. knowledge class so its probably not a great idea).

I mean count me in for beefing up INT skill uses. I'd love a good one action debuff like bon mot/demoralize or a X to Y type feat like in PF1e were society can be built up to be effectively the same as diplomacy or bluff for 90% of uses.

At the end of the day when people say they had a bad experience we should 'believe them' but we shouldn't just say their anecdotal experience nullifies the fundamental system math. If upon further investigation there were a series of cumulative mitigating factors then there isn't really anything wrong, just a series of unfortunate events or deliberate choices that manifested as expected.

In this case Super Bidi said they weren't willing to invest feats, spells, etc. into being better at a skill and they weren't supposed to be the main RK person. So they made other build choices and suddenly weren't beating the people who specialized into being able to do the RK role. That sounds like exactly how it should have gone. Person 1 invests in role X, Person 2 does not and thus Person 1 is better at performing role X. There are still a lot of unknowns that impact the takeaways that are important to understand:

- Were there a series of bad or good rolls in gameplay that might have biased the takeaways unfairly?
- Did they have a good session 0 for the party to discuss what they were building for and what roles people would fill.
- Did their GM afford them moments to shine with skills they did select (particularly arcana/religion/nature/occultism) that weren't just recall knowledge based like chases/skill challenges/rituals/social encounter sub systems for NPC influencing/practical applications/etc. (it doesn't sound like that is yes since they say those come up once in a blue moon).
- Did they set the DCs for things appropriately or just always set Lore DCs as lower?
- Was this only lower levels or higher levels when the thaumaturge falls farther behind.
- Was there a player issue where the thaumaturge kept the spotlight on themselves too much. This is also part of the social etiquette/contract session 0 should establish (i.e., even if you're the best at something you don't have to be the primary on it every time and let others tell the stories they want). Was the GM enforcing this or engaging every player well to prompt them into trying something even if another player might have a better bonus?

So while I respect they had a negative experience, in this particular case, I don't think their specific experience provides convincing evidence of the conclusions they drew (i.e., that diverse lore is overpowered). Even if you collected the same experience they had at a statistically significant number of tables so it wasn't anecdotal, it still wouldn't show that the feature is overpowered, just that the way the community engages with the feature/RK rules/skills in general is not the same way the game designers intended. Perhaps if everyone assumes INT casters should have more RK built in with no investment because thats how every PF2e person wants the game to go, then that is a design change Paizo can make/support to improve player base perceptions/optics (but that isn't the same conclusion as 'diverse lore' is overpowered).

And during all of this you are discounting the fact that this is comparing the Thaum, who needs zero investment in terms of skills to do this, to characters who need to to spend all their skill increases and several skill feats (for Additional Lore) to have the same impact in even a handful of areas. And even then there are plenty of levels where the proficiency for their secondary and/or tertiary skill needs to catch up.

This thaumaturge had to put ability score increases that are counter to the martial chassis (i.e. CHA past 18), give up half its subclass (until L15), take a L1 feat, potentially put their implements into a non-optimized order (to get tome first vs. at 5) and then give up the penultimate L17 subclass implement upgrade to get the best chance they had at recalling knowledge, and give up the Apex item in their attack stat (bad idea) so they could potentially recall knowledge better. Its hardly zero investment.

The caster meanwhile can spend 1 class feat on enhanced familiar and/or use a subclass (i.e., familiar wizard thesis or just wait to L6/12 for witch since their familiar auto gains abilities) or ancestry feat to get a base familiar. They don't give up attribute increases because they were always going to bump INT. They give up some daily resources of their 2 levels lower than highest level slot which gets easier to do as time goes on and are generally obsolete at in combat slots (but even without library lore they are ahead of the thaumaturge at every level). IMO the thaumaturge is investing way more into closing the gap and still failing.

Of course it gets to do this for all recall knowledge (not just arcana, occultism, religion, and nature) which is a versatility type power. The thaumaturge is not beating any one person on the thing they invest into but has a wide set of recall knowledge capabilities (jack of all trades and master of none). It is literally their niche! You guys are complaining that one of the knowledge classes who gained their knowledge from pooring over esoteric books and memorizing written in the margin conspiracy theories from the library can't get to know a little about a lot? A flagship class feature is literally 'making up weaknesses' because you know something that no one else knows (that gibbering mouther's hates the silver when paired with the fermented crud off my socks and good thing I have a vial ready to apply to my weapon). They are literally a knowledge manifest into reality class so comparing them to casters who incidentally have a matching casting stat is like comparing apples to oranges.

But again it is limited to recall knowledge and this has to be stressed so much because everyone keeps hand waiving it. Ask yourself if knowing about something in any way qualifies you to do the thing? If you know about boats does that make you a sailor (clearly no). If you know about art theory does that make you an artist (clearly no). So esoteric lore cannnot replace sailing lore, art lore, or 'insert any lore/knowledge skill' in practical applications (i.e., sailing the boat or whipping up 4-5 gallery pieces so you get an invite to the super secret evil art auction). Hell the thaumaturge is so 'assured' of their knowledge that they often come away with literal false facts about the very thing they are supposed to know. Are you guys metagaming out what the false fact is or playing it properly and exploring the extremely fun situations that arise from following the false facts?

As for the investigator, I think there is a clear niche separation. The thaumaturge is about already knowing a weird esoteric thing that could be useful. The investigator is about finding out something no one knows. That is knowing vs. investigating/learning as the niches they fill. Of course if you're good at investigating/learning you'll also end up knowing a lot so there is crossover but it isn't actually the primary niche of the class. Most of their class features and feats point them in this direction. Even still they have benefits over the thaumaturge, like the caster:

- As you said they can gain circumstance bonuses (so net neutral with the tome implement until L9 when its just +2 vs. the +2 from tome gained at L17). Also typically the things you recall knowledge on are related to your lead but you could always diversify to familiar master for the familiar trick if desired.
- They can take the alchemical sciences methedology and make on level cognitive mutagens which nets them a +1 to +4 item bonus (that gives them typically a +1 item bonus over the caster and thaumaturge).
- They typically have INT as their primary stat that is fully invested into because it doubles as their attack stat in many cases. That puts them at a +0 to +3 ahead of the thamaturge who again is likely capping CHA at 18, 20, and not wasting their APEX item on CHA (but on their primary attack stat of DEX or STR).
- They get twice the skill increases and skill feats as the thaumaturge. which will mitigate, even further the L7/L8 and L15/L16 levels discussed previously for non-primary skill increases.
- They don't have a -2 at all levels from the top skill proficiency level.

I redid my spreadsheet with the investigator right here and the results are similar to the caster vs. thaumaturge.

Ascalaphus wrote:

If you were supposed to be the party's main knowledge person, why was the magus playing a Tome thaum?

I was not supposed to be the main RK guy, I was supposed to have 3 skills to Legendary. There's no other class that get such a wide bonus to skills where the rest of the party is supposed to just take the remaining bits. A Tome Thaumaturge can roughly maximize 9 skills (proficiency + stat), that's more than half of them. For someone like me who likes skills, it's a big impact. I know others don't care about skills but I do and as such I'm very much impacted.

And I'd ask you (in general, not in particular) to not put the mistake on "me". I chose nothing but to play a caster in a party with none of them, my choice made a lot of sense, I just did not expect to be pushed aside the skill game.

@Red Gryffin: No, I won't invest feats and spells to compete with another player. If another PC is at the top of a bunch of skills, I'll just choose other ones.

If you won't invest in being the best then someone who does could be better than you. If that wasn't true then the game would be poorly designed and deeply unsatisfying.

Playing a caster does not entitle you to be the defacto INT/WIS recall knowledge master. Its just a low/no hanging fruit that is easy for people to say 'I'll do it' because their casting stat is the same as the skill. You wouldn't expect the barbarian who just has max STR to be as good at athletics as the guy that picked the tripping weapon, dipped into archetypes/class feats to boost their action economy to trip/tripping bonus, etc. If you would, then you aren't appreciating the incredible versatility of the PF2 game design that enables a wide variety character concepts that aren't just TTRPG tropes.

As for max proficiency, the thaumaturge is only getting their base 3+2 from Tome to legendary. They are unlikely to have max stat in any of those skills because again maxing CHA on a thaumaturge comes at a huge penalty to martial capabilities since they need to maximize their attack stat (not CHA) and any diverse lore skills you're trying to count are automatically capped at a master equivalent proficiency (because of the untyped -2 penalty and only RK related uses). That sounds a lot like the baseline` investigator and rogue that get 6 skills to legendary from L15 to L20. The rogue can even do far better by using skill bumping/skill feat heavy archetypes to snag a ton of skills to master way more than they normally get via using their skill bumps every level. Everyone can also sneak 2 more legendary skills in society and acrobatics via the twighlight speaker/acrobat archetypes or many more expert and master skills via the investigator/rogue archetypes. As well anyone can go sleepwalker to roll skills at advantage or take the L5 elf feat to rolls skills with a +2 circumstance bonus by taking twice as long (still useful in combat for many use cases).

On my best rogue free archetype build for Strength of Thousands I was able to get 12 extra skill proficiency bumps from archetypes alone and another 7 proficiency bumps from the academia subsystem used in that AP. By L20 I had 8 skills at legendary, 4 at master, 3 at expert, 1 at trained, and 1 additional int based bump at L20 I couldn't use because every named skill was already better at least trained. Now that twighlight speaker exists I can probably do even better.

Imaginary Weapon Magus does break the game insofar as it makes every other archer option look absolutely pathetic.

The cantrip isn't overpowered. The class (more specifically subclass) isn't overpowered. Its only the intersection of the two that gets you on par with a melee martial (but still not massively ahead or anything). I did some recent DPR calcs that I posted to 1-2 thread here and unless you are getting a true strike + amped imaginary weapon (which may come at the cost of a spell strike turn) you aren't really pulling ahead of standard starlight span longbow + force fang with non-amped imaginary weapon (it was a bit of a non-intuitive result).

I've said many times across these boards that ranged options are not very engaging and that is a holistic game design issue. That one corner case interaction worked its way through for a compelling ranged damage option isn't 'overpowered'. Most if not all classes need their ranged options/subclasses re-worked because there is almost always a feat tax or complete lack of synergy/accessibility with class chassis features. The Starlight Span hybrid study and Arcane cascade is a perfect example of that. The subclass focus spell sucks, its L4 feat sucks, and a class chassis ability (i.e. a meager +1 to +3 damage stance, which is almost always a DPR drop) doesn't even work with the subclass. From the perspective of the starlight span magus everything in the class design incentivizes finding a MC focus spell outside the magus class that has > cantrip damage to spam because there isn't anything in class for it. A IW amp style focus spell for all magus could be added that has a scaling 2D6 or scaling 2D4 + a recharge and you'd never hear about imaginary amp ever again (carrot vs. stick). There are two easy paths though if you wanted to nerf rather than improve the base level game design. Either build into all psychic cantrips a scaling damage die size (think fire kineticist impulse junction that all psychics get at L1 or L3 that is locked to the class). Or swap the tier 1 and tier 2 cantrips for that conscious mind so you can't poach it from the L6 multiclass feature.

But Yurip makes the same point I've made elsewhere. The Magus is spending ~2-3 feats, locking into an archetype, closing their action economy down to a science, and only gets to do it starting at L6. So ultimately they are investing for nova bombs at the expense of everything else and in such combats where they get to fire 3 nova bombs (1-2 at advantage from a hero point or true strike) and never have to move, and never have cover, then and only then are they meeting the melee martial paradigm. Which many melee martials like a fighter can close the gap in DPR over rounds 4/5/6 and come out fairly equivalent. It is literally the most boring play loop I can think of and by the time you've been trying to do it from L6 to L8 for every combat I'd think most normal players would be looking for the GM to kill them so they can start a new PC.

Well, it kind of broke mine. I was the Witch next to the Tome Thaumaturge that was so good at RK that I was left with no real skill to improve.

So diverse lore means you are at best -2 behind on the leading recall knowledge rolls of an INT/WIS based class. So still a position for you to be the primary on INT/WIS knowledge skills. It also only works on recall knowledge, which excludes a lot more things than you might think. That includes disarming traps/hazards/haunts that typically have non-thievery skills, that includes skill challenge applications of things (using nature to 'find a path through the woods), or listed skills like deciphering writing/taping ley lines/identifying magic/using various skill feats, etc. In most parties you should have 2 people who can 'do a thing anyways' because oftentimes one person fails. That to me sounds more like a session 0 issue. If I was a wizard/witch with maxed int, maxed arcana/occultism I'd be the primary roller with thaumaturge providing the jack of all trades back-up. Especially since most thaumaturges aren't bumping CHA maximally since it isn't at all required, you can easily be +0 to +4 ahead of them on any specific roll. Not only that but craft and society are both reasonably useful INT skills and WIS has medicine/survival as well. There are lots of things for others to do. I mean YMMV but in most of my games no one 'recalls knowledge' in combat anyways because before the remaster fix it wasn't even remotely reliable or useful. Thaumaturge was one of the few classes that I actually saw engage with the entire recall knowledge rules set (in combat). Out of combat you can have multiple people going through 'the library for clues', working on rituals, getting successes on skill challenges/chase sequences, etc. I think there is value in having a skill monkey that can be a face and know things. Far too often the GM asks the 'talking person' for the recall knowledge roll and its always dissatisfying to push your quiet friend the wizard who doesn't talk or want to talk to the forefront of the interaction.

Yes but as Super Bidi has been saying it is 2 and a half ranks behind your best slots. So it is worse than a focus spell and not really game breaking. Low level wands are nearly unlimited after a while anyway as the game economy just scales that way.

My main issue with it any anything like it is the infinite loop issue. Any spell caster with an infinite loop access to a spell will eventually find one that is either in or out of combat broken if you can cast it without any resource. Focus spells are typically limited in this way, but I don't imagine that '8th level spells and lower' will follow that claim.

I think one key thing that this thread points out is that Paizo has, in general, done a superb job of balancing PF2.

Nobody has managed to give a single clearly game breaking thing. We've managed to identify several things that are more powerful than their alternatives and some places where balance could perhaps be better. But even there people are disagreeing on how large a problem it is.

Agreed.

This thread is a bit backwards (sort of like a solution seeking a problem). There has to be a graded scale of what worst, worse, neutral, better, and best or the game will be truly vertically flat. For the most part the difference between neutral and best is quite vertically flat in this game so its really easy to stick close to an optimizer. I can't say the same for some of the truly niche/worst and worse options that Paizo publishes (some are bad F tier mechanically or F tier flavour wise and the worst are F in both).

But threads about 'most overpowered things' usually come from or lead to a bad place:
- GM looking to pre-ban stuff with no context.
- Player looking for options wreck their GM's game.
- Paizo scraping community meta to slam the ban hammer at.
- Gamer's with an axe to grind over some anecdotal experience where something seemed way more powerful than it normally is or as averaged across many play levels/sessions.

Basically what you're getting above is a list of 'the best stuff' but I don't think what most people identified is overpowered (some of it might be A or S tier stuff) like:
- A Thaumaturge with Diverse lore (only for recall knowledge not for general rolls using said skill) is not breaking my game.
- A bard is not breaking my game.
- A Imaginary Weapon Magus is not breaking my game.
- A post remaster rogue is not breaking my game.

The things that might be overpowered are frequently things that were published with an unforeseen exploit/mechanical interaction/AP book (where things get less review passes). For the most part many things have already been errata'd or are only good for a niche build:

Heaven's Thunder (errata'd - but really OP because fighters can use this feat and it isn't just limited to the typical dex forward monk that isn't dealing top tier damage with a 1D8 stance/lagging STR)
Starlight Armour (errata'd)
Six Pilliar Unarmed Bump (errata'd - but only good on late game wildshape druid)
Ceremonial Knife (probably a typo and will be errata'd)

Consider what overpowered means in the context of games where it is overpowered and breaks the game. How about twilight clerics in DND5e which effectively means monsters can't deal enough damage to drop anyone so the threat of death is gone. Or how about in PF1e being able to easily get +20 to +30 in skills like diplomacy and bluff and steamrolling social encounters or ensuring that most fights in a PFS scenario were socially solved/skipped with no need to roll). Just most L7+ spells in other TTRPGs where you are making infinite play loop/mass production spell caster clones that can't be killed, etc. I don't think PF2e has any of these things.

amalgamemnon wrote:

I really hope Paizo just shows us what they're planning to do with Alchemist (or even a few options) and is open to feedback on it before sending this stuff off to be printed. June isn't that far off and Alchemist desperately needs some love to not feel like garbage.

It takes too long. Cost too much. They are professional designers. Lets see what they come up with. Mostly they have been pretty good.

Professional designers who failed to deliver on the class fantasy for many in the community in core, errata 1, errata 2, errata 3, errata 4, and all the supplements heralded as 'fixing the class' like TV. Turns out humans aren't perfect and don't 'create' perfect things. The insistence of this community that whatever Paizo will create will be great is not healthy. For example, while the warpriest was buffed in remaster it failed to deliver on what I want from my warpriest (i.e., a bounded caster chassis divine PC). As a contrary example, they went overly conservative on the leshy seedpod range when they errata'd it to fix the issue that it didn't have a listed range (10ft instead of 30ft like the bestiary and as the community argued for) and NOW in the remaster they finally made it 30ft. So they have made mistakes and have/have not fixed them in the remaster (who knows what we'll get for this class).

It is already too late to effect something being published in June. One of the first threads I posted after the remaster announcement was will they have a playtest or any kind of formal/informal community involvement. Feel free to go read the brow beating I got for 'daring to ask' if we would have community involvement. Between that post and a follow-up post here, James Jacob has said:

You can think of everyone playing the game for the past 4 years as the playtest for the remastered rules if you want, I guess...

I can't. I'm not actually on the team doing the actual work on this project, so those aren't my questions to answer (although as folks have mentioned upthread, there are answers for some of thies out there already). Paizo will have more information when the time is right—I suspect the next big batch of info will be at Paizocon. In the meantime, please be patient...

There won't be a playtest for the remastered rules...

We'll have more information about the remastered rules at Paizocon, but there will not be a playtest involved with the remastered rules, just to be clear. This is NOT a new edition, but more akin to an errata, and as such we already know the changes that need to be made. No playtest is required, since the feedback we've heard over the past several years does that job.

Paizocon came and went and they didn't announce any kind of meaningful community involvement. So you should expect the same treatment for Alchemist that every other class got. A one off post on the blog/home page with a spotlight at some kind of con/talk/podcast/youtube channel with 1-2 of the designers. Even though a 'what they should do with remaster alchemist thread' pops up every other week (it seems) between Paizo/Reddit, I (pessimistically) don't think they culled any ideas from them and likely already went into remaster with the 'solution' they wanted.

Fighter won't get +2 to hit because battleform attacks aren't in any weapon groups for fighter's bonus to key off of (unless this changed in remaster and I missed it). Monk is the big martial for eating druid's lunch because of flurry iirc.

Hence the martial artist dedication being required. It is one of the few archetype (e.g., archer, mauler, etc.) that scales with your best weapon proficiency (in this case scaling all unarmed attacks independant of group).

With Free Archetype that could be:

L2 Druid Dedication
L4 Wildshape Feat
L4 Wild Morph Focus Spell or basic spell casting
L6 Martial Artist

So you only lose it at L5.

Otherwise I think most GMs would just let it work anyways (its silly they don't have a standard 'brawling' group anyways).

You can also avoid the issue via Free Archetype if the GM waives the exit requirement for the archetypes and lets you go into martial artist at L4.

The martial artist archetype doesn't have a ton of stuff going for it in this case though. L6 follow-up strike is sort of like a better version of the fighter L1 exacting strike feat. The L8 grievous blow is going to cause a whole bunch of table variation because 'weapon dice' for a battle form isn't well defined. Otherwise its a long dry spell until L14 for path of iron (which is great), but means a long time to meet exit requirements. At that point you're probably better being a Human/Half Elf so you can go monk at L9 and grab flurry of blows at L10.

One thing I might change is bumping partner in crime to blue. Deception and thievery come up both in and out of combat. Combining it with Independent allows for all kinds of build assists and keeps many classes competitive when they aren't CHA key stat builds. For example, the L6 convincing illusion feat from the wizard class is amazing for lockdown/battlefield control (Illusory object for example). Your familiar can help augment the deception check needed to basically force an enemy to keep believing your illusion. Its also one of the very few ways to get circumstance bonuses to these skills.

Now with a seperate sheet that includes the impact of property runes gained at L8, L10, and L16).

L1-8 is still rough. But L9-L20 shifts everything to the green/yellow zone that would make a wildshape build even worth it. So yeah, as a GM I'd absolutely be letting druids add property runes onto their stuff. The only levels where they pull ahead a bit too much is L11 and L12 (before martials get the +2 for master weapon proficiency). So in those cases maybe you could allow that second damage rune to only turn on at L13 if you were worried about DPR in an non-optimized campaign/group.

I expanded on my spread sheet to show the DPR, Attack Modifier, Damage Modifier, etc. for the best druid form at every level and non-fighter martial with no class features/feats at every level. The summary of the DPR calculation in on the DPR tab in COL C for moderate ACs (top table) and High AC (lower table). Note, there are some persistent damage attacks for certain forms (these weren't considered).

Key takeaways are that the druid has only two levels (level 9 and 11) where they can use plant shape (since it has a worse attack bonus so they can get the +2 status bonus to hit to bump DPR) where DPR is higher than the 'genirco non-fighter martial'. You'll still be behind when class feats and features are input, but these two levels are probably okay.

They have 4-5 levels across 20 where they are at a <15% difference from the generic martial construct. I'd expect it jumps another 15-30% ish when you factor in feat support, class features like rage, etc.). These are levels that are IMO 'maybe okay' since its on a full caster and now they have a weird mediocre martial 'versatility' option. I don't think it will be fun to play based on your abilities, but the 'I transform into a huge sized w/e will probably carry it'.

They have 8-9 levels across 20 where they are 15%<x<30% difference from the generic martial construct. This is a threshold for what I'd consider 'not worth it' because any in class features/feats will really jump this gap another ~15-30% at least. So why are we wasting our best spell slots/actions to be outputting 50% of the DPR of a martial? Intuitively I'd think there has to be something better/more effective we can do with our spell slots and turns.

They have 3 levels across 20 where they are >30% difference from the generic martial construct. These are essentially a no-go for me.

The big problem with all that is that there is still some unknown amount of DPR (I'd guess 15-30%) that druids are leaving on the table vs. a martial with class feats/features. To achieve this 'mediocre result' the druid has to pick a subclass, take 5 of 8 class feats that expand their wildshape ability to get the result, keep up to date their handwraps (just the +1/+2/+3 fundamental runes), figure out how they shift into ever increasing sized forms, and use they're apex item on STR (or lose DPR at L18 only, which IMO is worth it lol to avoid that issue).

I don't think giving them some damage runes will significantly move the needle, so as a GM I'd allow it. Overall it isn't as bad a treatment as summons got from PF1e to PF2e, but I personally won't be building a wildshape druid given these values. I think a lot of what might carry it for people is the 'wow factor' of turning into a dragon with a breath weapon or similair. Also some of the forms do have other little effects (mostly at higher level). But by those levels your spells will be doing some very awesome things in terms of mass debuffs/buffs.

Again these are just a very limited analysis of single MAP=0 strike data. Normally I'd work up something in the community tool with graphs and full round or multi round DPR, but the tool is not well set-up to deal with the wildshape spells and having to do the probability calculations the hard ways is time consuming/sucks. Without proof I'd state that these DPR % differences will get worse when we consider multiple turns and multiple strikes because the druid class has no in class support to reduce MAP (most of the agile strikes in forms are significantly reduced damage vs. the biggest damage dice) or action compression feats that enable a higher likelihood of getting 3 or 4 strikes off in a round and/or piling up on your MAP=0 attack (e.g., power attack).

Overall I'd shelve the wildshape druid to some future dual class game that I probably will never get to play.

Due to the lack of a dislike, downvote, or other mechanism to silently disagree with a topic I'm going to opt for the good old-fashioned:

-2

I respect your opinion, I just think it's wrong and also more than a bit silly.

-2 to this post for the same reason lol.

You doing a thing that I usually don't recomend with magus that's using a focus spell from other class (in this case an AMP) instead of use a Conflux spell. The reason is simple. The conflux spells gives an extra Strike while compress you action economy of the recharge so:

Dimensional Assault: Teleport (move without risk a reaction like [s]Attack of Oportunity[/b] Reactive Strike) + Strike + Recharge the SpelStrike in same action.

Force Fang: Recharge the SpellStrike and does an auto 1d4+1 every 2 ranks in same action.

Shielding Strike: Recharge + Strike + Rise a Shiel/Cast a Shield Cantrip in same action.

Shooting Star: Rechage + Ranged Strike + Ignore concealment and cover of the target for you and anyone against your target until the start of your next turn.

Spinning Staff: Recharge + Strike vs 2 different targets in your melee range.

Thunderous Strike: Recharge + Strike + a fort basic to do an additional 2 vs all creatures in a 15 ft cone that includes your target. If some creature critical fails this check it also falls prone.

I made a comparison graph using PF2Calculator helping to show that even AMPed Imaginary Weapon isn't more effective than a Conflux Focus Spell.

I'm not sure how you're getting to this conclusion by comparing single round spell strike DPR? The reason starlight span MC psychic is so pervasive is because you can use Amped IA every round (now for 3 rounds every combat from L6 onwards). You just recharge/spell strike and there isn't a need to move. Whereas, conflux spells necessarily come with one or more of the following multiround DPR decreases:

1.) You recharge in the same round, thus the MAP for any conflux spell 'strike' action economy booster is a MAP-10 strike.

2.) You recharge in the next round, thus the MAP for any spell strike after the conflux spell is a MAP-5 strike for both strike and associated spell.

3.) For all conflux spell (including force fang) you are also losing any associated DPR with using your amped IA vs. the standard IA because you can't be both spending focus points on amping as well as recharging (i.e., you're losing 1 or 2 amped IAs to recharge on subsequent turns which can amount to 1D8 to 9D8 of of damage dice for each focus point you spend on a conflux spell).

4.) Worst case, you miss a spell strike turn and are only getting 1-4 basic strikes in a turn.

If you're going to 'compare' results it has to be at a minimum 2 round cycles to capture where the DPR loss comes. In a typical 5-6 round combat that means you are going to lose multiple rounds of cumulative DPR from multiple instances of #1/2/3/4 (likely in at least half of your rounds in some combination of 1&3, 2&3, or 3 if only force fang, or most commonly 3&4).

Beyond that, another point of why the archer is better than a melee magus is because they can true strike/spell strike on round 1 with a higher probability than a melee magus. Round 2 you can spend a hero point for a free action true strike effect or a guiding luck halfing L9 daily use. That true strike increases DPR by ~40%, so being able to do that once or twice a combat will give you a massive nova turn that leave's other Magi trying and failing at playing catch-up the whole combat.

Since starlight span (like most ranged options in the game) doesn't interact with basic class features like arcane cascade you also help avoid using arcane cascade which is a trap option for the class except in very specific niche cases (e.g., you're fighting something with weakness and you want the rider damage to trigger it or you aren't spell striking at all and instead trying to do a 3-4 strike turn every turn and give your best flurry ranger impression). Typically, for martials, the loss of 1 action often translates to a 'loss of a MAP-10 strike'. But for the magus its much worse since really it translates to a whole round with no spell strike because that single extra action spent was needed later in the combat for positioning or recharge (but you used it to enter the stance in round when damage is most needed to clear enemies off the board). Since magi are typically doing 1 strike a turn you never reclaim that 1-3 damage per strike (i.e., 1-3 DPR per round for 5-6 rounds where you hit) vs. the loss of a spell strike which is closer to a 1D8-18D8 for an IA cantrip amped or not amped.

I'd recommend you re-run your cases for multi-rounds (at least 2 if not whole combat simulations) if you want to see how the two play-styles compare in the community calculator. But you can probably look at a 2 round comparison and then multiply the damage gap by 150-300% as a rough approximation.

Red Griffyn wrote:

The more your chassis reinforces a 1 strike per turn rotation the more swingy your play will be. I don't find that very satisfying. I'd rather have 1 of 2 strikes hit than no strikes hit.

First, I don't see much wrong with homebrewing a magus that uses the divine list and calling it a 'warpriest' if you really want the wave casting. Your GM may want to monitor whether the "gets all spells" trait of the cleric was OP or okay on a Magus chassis, but that's up to your table. So I'd say if that's what you really want, try it.

But second, a gish does NOT need to have full martial proficiency to be a two-attack-action weapon-wielder. The gish casts, then weapon strikes. The martial weapon strikes, then weapon strikes. The trick is remembering that the secondary strike with the weapon is functionally equivalent in both cases. The martial gets that secondary strike at 4-5 points below the "martial max proficiency" because of MAP. The gish caster gets that secondary strike at 4-5 points below the "martial max proficiency" because of the proficiency difference. but they both have about the same chance to hit with that secondary weapon strike. If you welded a higher weapon proficiency on a full caster chassis, you'd get something that was actually better than a martial at that secondary weapon attack. And that's no good.

The gish requires 3a to do both. But is that too terrible? You have full casting in addition to a weapon strike. And it's pretty comparable to the Magus which you want, because the Magus also uses all three actions to perform two strikes in rounds where they use their spellstrike.

See my third and second last points. There is already 3rd party content that does it better than Paizos that Paizo took heavy inspiration from in making their changes. I also don't want a divine magus because I don't like the insanely tight combat routine action loops. I also want a bounded caster druid/cleric/bard because they have unique feats that you can't just get as a 'x tradition spell list magus'.

I'm not saying a gish needs to have full martial proficiency. Its a sliding scale between martial to caster. What I'm saying is that if you do have martial proficiency it is IMO a much better experience and chassis for all the reasons stated in my last post.

I strongly disagree with your comparison of spell + strike as strike strike. First a spell is likely 2 actions + strike which means you don't have spare actions for movement, demoralize, bon mot, battle medicine, a 1 action focus spell like lay on hands, etc. If you need to cast a spell to it also means you literally can't dive into so many archetype options for 2 action activities so you just lose so many build options. The whole point is maximal action flexibility, not getting pigeon holed into an action sequence Paizo thinks my gish should have.

Also trying to compare spells to strikes is a bit of a fools errand. One uses martial proficiency against a typical AC. The other uses spell strikes with no item bonuses against enemy AC or saves vs. weak/medium/strong saves (if you can figure it out). There are far too many things to address there to call them equivalent without way more analysis backing up your point.

I don't understand what you're talking about about 2nd strike equivalency. I feel like you didn't read my post at all. I'm not talking about giving martial proficiency to a full caster. I'm talking about using the bounded/wave casting progression. That is balanced as evidenced by the magus/summoner we're all fine with.

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Too light on fixing the warpriest? That's definitely a take; I feel like clerics (and especially warpriest) made off like Robin Hood level bandits with this remaster

Some folks were of the "wave caster or bust" mindset. Warpriest is still a full caster that has levels with lower accuracy than martial classes. As good as the buffs are, anyone who mainly wanted that to not be the case is out of luck.

The few people here are correct. I'm on record in many places in these forums/reddit advocating for a bounded caster chassis subclass for the cleric, druid, and bard.

I don't advocate for the people who like a caster heavy gish to lose their warpriest. But I won't pretend like it provides a satisfying martial forward gish for my playstyle. Call my thing the inquisitor or zealot or w/e instead of warpriest and give it to us. Here are the main points:

- There are tons of great feats in cleric, bard, and druid that you can only access at reasonable levels if you start in those classes (i.e., MC in those classes only lets you get feats at twice your level so anything L8+ basically come along too late or not at all). Each already had 20+ in class feats to make a gish with little or no added feats required.

- The closer your base chassis enables a DPR competitive 2 action attack sequence martial the more it will mesh well with existing archetypes. Classes like the magus/summoner really struggle with being so action taxed for their main routines/class. Also the martial side of the summoner can't benefit from martial archetypes do you are just left out in the cold for much of the other available published content.

- The more your chassis reinforces a 1 strike per turn rotation the more swingy your play will be. I don't find that very satisfying. I'd rather have 1 of 2 strikes hit than no strikes hit. Its the same reason people might pick a 1D12 weapon vs. a 1D8/1D12 fatal weapon (some people enjoy larger risk reward play, but people like me don't). Typical martials are around 60-70% (average 65%) accurate on their first strike so even a -2 or -1 at various levels just takes you that much farther from the 'feel good in play' zone of 70% that is well known in game design.

- The bounded caster chassis for all of these would play differently (this is a common thing people reply to me). They all have different spell lists, feat lists, and play styles. Cleric is a 'self buffer', bard is a group buffer, and druid is a wildshaping martial with versatility in weapons/forms/form capabilities. Clerics/Bards/Druids all play differently from each other as casters so a bounded class version would be just the same.

- Its been over 2 years since the secrets of magic magus bounded caster chassis was published. Why do we have to wait to the end of the edition product cycle for a 1st party bounded caster of each magic tradition. You could even make a class archetype for any caster to take that modifies the base chassis and has a handful of common feats and it would still be great as long as you get to take the base class feats. I will generally state though that cleric/bard/druid have that in class feat support, but wizard/witch/oracle might suffer more here with that approach.

- 3rd party content already exists for this. Cleric+ has an amazing warpriest on that chassis. I've played it and love it. Exactly what I wanted. They significantly beat paizo to the punch by decoupling CHA from the font and its self evident that paizo took inspiration from their great work (e.g., Paizo has a L8 feat called zealous rush that is basically the exact same feat as Clerics+ zealous dash at L6). Kudos to Derry Luttrell and Tony Saunders for publishing this stuff a year before Paizo. Obviously the issue is that most GMs won't entertain 3rd party content and it isn't legal for PFS, despite this stuff being well balanced.

- In general the further you stray from the baseline martial chassis with your KAS as STR or DEX the worse the experience will be for a good subset of people. The base martial chassis has certain saves/attack/AC proficiency scaling that means you aren't ahead or behind others. That means you don't have multiple levels where you are worse than others or have to engage with spending half your class resources (e.g., casts of heroism or quicksilver mutagens) to get your accuracy back in spec. I'd much rather have less spell slots, but a guaranteed +2 to hit than wasting actions in combat trying regain baseline functionality or running around with mutagen type debuffs. In the same way, having AC that lags is basically a death sentence for being on the frontline (now even more true given the clarification on dying rules) so you're going to be limited in what you can do as a real gish if you don't follow the martial proficiency scaling.

Access to the Jalmeri Heavenseeker dedication would be awesome.

So I've been begging for this one for years and I'd love this!

My question here though is can we maybe open up a way to communicate some of these boons opening up? I get why you don't want people farming for boons that have 'power implications' (e.g., PFS1e one that gave you an extra feat), but for ones that are just giving access to an uncommon archetype like this I'd love a blog post or a pin in the forum or similar. Many of us have waited a long time for some of these things to become boons and it would sort of suck to miss out on something for a year or more because you simply didn't hear about it.

siegfriedliner wrote:

Its a prerequisite not a post requisite so your not violating after taking the feat because it only references before you took the feat.

See here for response. I think I have said all that I can.

Your missing key language in the rules stated here:

Reading Rules

Primarily:

Prerequisites: Any minimum ability scores, feats, proficiency ranks, or other prerequisites you must have before you can access this rule element are listed here. Feats also have a level prerequisite, which appears above.

Frequency: This is the limit on how many times you can use the ability within a given time.

Trigger: Reactions and some free actions have triggers that must be met before they can be used.

Requirements: Sometimes you must have a certain item or be in a certain circumstance to use an ability. If so, it’s listed in this section.

The game clearly states that meeting a pre-requisite grants access to a rule option. It is not a continual test/check to see if you continue to meet the pre-requisite. That kind of check is clearly stated as a requirement. It makes complete sense that you could take the L8 kineticist feat, fork at L9 and no longer meet the pre-requisite to take it again at L10+. If it was a requirement, then that would always be checked before you tried to use the parent-child relationship feat/ability. Requirements are used, for example, for monk stances to say you are unarmoured which means its a constant state check before you use the ability.

Access does not equate to requirement in the game and it is clearly delineated.

Plain language examples help a lot. If I have a ladder and lawnmower in my locked shed then a pre-requisite to me gaining lawful access is having a key to the shed. When I go to open the door it will open if I have the key and give me access to the ladder. I now leave that ladder in the backyard since I'm using it all weekend and lock up my shed. The next day I want to mow the lawn so I go to the door, but opps I lost the key. The shed remains locked and I can't access the lawnmower, but I can access the ladder that has already been removed/gained lawfully.

Its the same thing with the kineticist. The key/door is being single gate, the ladder is the L8 feat, my losing my key is the L9 fork, and my inability to take the feat at L10+ is my poor lawnmower forever locked away. Its a simple concept and there isn't any 'exploitation happening' just logical evaluation of the rules of the game. In other words, no one has 'stolen' the ladder despite it now being outside the locked shed.

Its just pretty clear it doesn't need clarification on RAW or RAI.

Lets use a plain English language example with ladders, trees, and cats:

I need to get a cat down from a tree and it is 30ft up. I have a ladder worth 20ft of height (that I can clime really fast) but because I had the ladder for ~20 years I climb the branches slowly (since I never practised climbing trees for my entire life). Alternatively, I never bought a ladder 20 years ago so I climb branches at a moderate speed because all moments in my life to date where ascending trees has been required I essentially practised the skill.

Option 1: I can climb fast on the ladder for 20ft and then slowly for 10ft to save the cat

Option 2: I can climb the tree 30ft at moderate speed to save the cat.

Both options 1 and 2 are valid linear sequences of events/history. You can always, with no discontinuities trace a line from year 0 to today.

What is not valid is Option 3:

Option 3: I climb the ladder fast, then pseudo re-write history so I never had a ladder (yet remain in the tree and now acquire moderate climbing speed capabilities) so I can climb the remaining 10ft at moderate speed.

This is clearly the 'fastest' option but allows for exploitative optimization and narrative breaking event sequences. You can no longer draw a line from year 0 to now because there is a discontinuity after climbing the ladder yet then getting rid of it.

You guys are all arguing about whether option 1 and 2 are valid. They both are! The retraining rules and RAI are super clear that they are fine with Option 1 and 2 but want to prevent option 3. Hence why you'd have to retrain every sequence of skill, feat, etc. backwards so that narrative continuity remains.

Taking that L8 feat and the associated pre-reqs are dependant on the narrative sequence of events from L1-L8 and not anything after L8. Its like saying mid way through the tree there is a jet pack. My buying and climbing a ladder has nothing to do with me finding a jet pack in the tree and using that to jet 10ft higher. Just because climbing the tree might not reveal the jetpack to you because the natural starting point for climbing vs. natural place to put the ladder is different (i.e., the jet pack is well hidden to those that start climbing on the other side of the tree with thick low level branches) is irrelevant.

You guys don't have to 'like the feat'. You can find it annoying, OP, unsatisfying, etc. But RAW and RAI its doing exactly what its supposed to do.

I don't think there is any clarification required and you guys are overthinking it. The game only cares that you meet the prerequisites at the time and level you take the feat. There is no 'check' at a higher level that you continue to meet the prerequisites because there is no way for a higher level feature to impact your meeting prerequisites at that lower level. Simply said, you can select elemental overlap at L8 and then fork because not matter what you do at L9+ you are always and forever meeting the pre-requisites at L8 in your build whether you look back at L9, L12, L17, L20, or any other level above L8. The only thing that would impact this is if you tried to retrain your L1 or L5 gate/element selections, which is covered by the retraining rules.

If that wasn't true and the design philosophy then you would be able to retrain a lower feat to a higher level feat because NOW at your higher level you meet the pre-reqs regardless of whether you met them originally at the lower level.

Reading Rules says:

Prerequisites:Any minimum ability scores, feats, proficiency ranks, or other prerequisites you must have before you can access this rule element are listed here. Feats also have a level prerequisite, which appears above.

Note meeting the pre-req gives you access at the level to take it and there isn't anything saying you must continue to meet the pre-req to maintain access (i.e., open the door but no closing that door)

Retraining further supports this by stating:
When retraining, you generally can’t make choices you couldn’t make when you selected the original option. For instance, you can’t exchange a 2nd-level skill feat for a 4th-level one, or for one that requires prerequisites you didn’t meet at the time you took the original feat. If you don’t remember whether you met the prerequisites at the time, ask your GM to make the call. If you cease to meet the prerequisites for an ability due to retraining, you can’t use that ability. You might need to retrain several abilities in sequence in order to get all the abilities you want.

Note only cares about the level you take it as a 'timeline superposition' of your build. So long as at L8 your character was a single element kineticist only then you're fine. You can retrain anything you want except anything that impacts on that 'state' of your build (i.e., couldn't touch L1/L5 gate/element selection without first retraining the L8 feat in serial fashion).

siegfriedliner wrote:

The path of least resistance fix to a alchemist is give them marital proficiency in weapons and armor.

It's not fixing, it's giving up. The Alchemist is not a martial. Making a martial out of it because it's too hard to make a proper fix is not what I want.

Bombs work quite fine.

Hard disagree. Not my alchemist! I want a martial bomber with a clear progression that aligns with everyone else and is not super janky because Paizo can't balance differing item progression with expected class proficiency progression.

Just like with the warpriest we can acknowledge that people want different things from the class. You want something closer to the existing and still a lot of folks want a martial bomber.

It isn't giving up to give people what they want. The class is extremely polarizing in the community and its rare that the community can so clearly identify a singular fix that they think will get them what they want (give them martial weapon proficiency scaling).

I also don't think we know for sure it will be level 19. We know it is in Final Doctrine, which is currently level 19 but that could change. I think it likely will stay the same for parity with legendary casting, because that seems likely to remain unchanged across all casters.

The funny thing is when Clerics+ looked at doing the same thing during their playtest it was, by their accounts, highly divisive. Many folks said it it was way too late which is why they ended up on a class archetype that changes the class to a bounded caster with martial progression.

Turns out if you engage the community before sending stuff to print (e.g., via surveys, via playtests, etc.) you find that stuff out! The catchphrase of 'we have been playtesting for 4 years' is clearly inaccurate.

As it stands Paizo took a 'nearly meaningless' step in the right direction. A L19 feature is 'great' if all you do is high level one shots, but across all 20 level campaigns, its going to be like 6 sessions across 1-2 years? It is essentially a ribbon feature that only serves to muddy the waters because now we all have to say 'yes they get master, but too late for it to matter' and have that silly debate until we get PF3e.

As for 'if the doctrine changes level', there is no indication of that right now. Even still, unless it goes to the 13-15 level range its just a sliding scale of bad to meaningless.

The drawback people complained about for Warpriest was losing legendary casting and not getting anything in exchange that couldn't be acquired through feats. Legendary casting is 19th. Getting master weapon proficiency when the miss out on legendary casting makes plenty of sense to me.

A wave caster should just straight up be a different class because it needs different feats to support it. Cleric's pile of extra top-level Heal spells (or Harm in an undead campaign) seem like they more or less cancel out a big part of the wavecaster drawback. My point of comparison is Summoner needing a feat just to swap a top-level slot for two summoning spells for a measly three total, while a hypothetical wavecaster Warpriest would be walking around with six or seven at late levels.

Over to Bard, they're already basically only one point of accuracy down from a martial instead of two. They shouldn't be put one point ahead.

But, hey. It doesn't matter much if I think it's broken or not. We have the announcement on what Warpriest is, which is what a lot of people asked for.

(I think Eldritch Trickster is often placed ahead of Mastermind, because the latter relies on successful recall knowledge checks in combat.)

The drawback people complain about are in two camps as evidenced by OP and you. One group wanted a simple exchange of Legendary casting and Master Weapons (i.e. a 85% caster 15% martial split). One group wanted a divine wave caster with martial weapon proficiency (i.e., exert/master at L5/13 or a 50% caster 50% martial split).

There is no need to have a divine wave caster be a separate class because the cleric base feat set already has a generous portion of great feats for a wave caster. That includes:

- 4 emblazon feats,
- 3 domain focus spell feat options with tons of workable options (e.g., advanced travel domain gives a focus point fly spell)
- L12/L18 refocus feats (now just 1 in remaster)
- sap life
- divine weapon
- 3 channel related feats that would be great on melee clerics or to expand versatility
- L10/L12 replenishment feats
- 2x alignment armament feats
- eternal bane/blessing
- a ton of 'situational' feats I wouldn't pick but I bet others would (things like castigating weapon).

So that is 20+ base feats that a gish would want AND want at the earliest possible level instead of half level from a MC. The wave caster subclass could just re-jig font and should/decouple it from CHA anyways. I'd recommend looking at the Clerics+ third party content because its a way better martial cleric than the warpriest at all levels. They 'did' add a handful of feats, but they didn't need to do too much in reality. A real life example of non-paizo designers doing a much better job than paizo.

That doesn't preclude making new a divine bounded wave caster class with some special feature, but its been almost 2 years since wave casters came into existence and Paizo seems allergic to the idea. Not addressing the gap in the warpriest OR not adding a new 'battle cleric' type subclass is a missed opportunity and leaves a massive gaping design space hole unfilled.

All of that applies for the bard as well. Tons of in class feat support with very little else needed such as:
- 5 warrior muse feats already that would work great.
- Hymn of healing, base inspire courage/Vigorous Inspiration/Discordant Voice, dirge of doom, House of Imaginary Walls, Inspire Defense, lingering composition, and soothing composition would be great on a martial bard
- 3x Masquerade of Seasons Stance feats,
- L12/L18 refocus feats (now 1 in remaster space)
- Versatile Performance, Inspire Competence, bardic lore, Eclectic Skill, and know it all for skill based boosts to augment your base class features.
- Soulsight and Shared Sight

That is 25+ options already in the base package plus all the caster feats (metamagics and L10 spells) that would also be useful like quickened metamagic, effortless concentration, etc.

Cleric is themed as self buffer, Bard as party buffer, so you don't need any magus style spell strike feature or arcane cascade add on. 1 or 2 action economy feats (like a sudden charge) is really the only thing you'd need and maybe a feat to cast a spell + move so long as it only impacts you for cleric or an allied party member for bard.

Saying a bard is -1 from martial is pretty silly. There are tons of competitive compositions that would be way more fun. Even a new composition that can add/swap a rune for the party so they could trigger weaknesses could be really fun. Imagine a L10 martial bard running up and dropping a 1 round 10ft imaginary wall to partition off a hallway for some battlefield control. Thinking every 3rd action must be a inspire courage or dirge of doom is a failing of imagination.

Making bombs just scale with runes would be one way to smooth the progression (but it has the problem of making non-dedicated bombers require two sets of runes, which would suck a lot), but all this stuff about nerfing effects and stripping away mechanics feels like the opposite direction and just kind of boring.

Alchemist improvements should be focused on keeping the core of the class' identity while making them run better: proficiency improvements that don't leave weapon wielding alchemists out in the cold, crafting scaling, adjustments to feats, smoothing of progression, rebalancing of some particularly wonky items and their overall scaling.

Two main reasons why the class is not so satisfying to play is:

1) Too much of the class power budget is stuck in the alchemical items themselves. Something needs to be done to put that budget back into the class. Otherwise the class will continue to known for getting early access to an awesome item, but unable to use it itself and better to hand it off to other group members. If you want to combat the vending machine feeling of the class, the class itself needs to be good at using its own items (more than other classes). I'd love it if they didn't balance bombs to fix that, but its probably unrealistic to suggest all the power bumps without doing any power removal from the items. This actually means you can ease up on giving these items to other classes and makes the items more impactful in play or more likely to be used by others. Now, my suggestion there may not be the right tweak, but its one way to consider it. You can afford a second rune set if bombs are important to you or they could be put onto a thrower's bandolier or similar then you really need to just use throwing weapons to keep one rune set. Either way it helps protect alchemists as the prime users without making it insurmountable for others to use those same items.

2) The proficiency scaling of the class is all over the place. It isn't caster or martial, sometimes its better (3 levels with quicksilver mutagen) and frequently its worse. The system math is highly tuned to two key proficiency scaling sets for martials attacking or caster spell DCs. But the alchemist is neither of those AND this manifests as -2 to +1 net (with mutagens and their downsides) for their entire career. That isn't balanced and it just doesn't need to be the case. If it could align with other martials 90% of people's complaints would go away.

Alchemist Fixes
- Key Ability Score (KAS) selection of STR, DEX, or INT
- Expert/Master Proficiency in Unarmed Strikes, Simple Weapons, and Bombs at L5 and L13.
- Gloves that transfer weapon property runes to bombs. Essentially add the runes to pre-made bombs and quick alchemy bombs
- Increase low level infusion count to give more resources at early levels or provide the perpetual infusions at L1.
- Weaken bombs/alchemical items overall to justify these buffs to the class
- Give auto scaling E/M/L in craft as a class feature at L2/7/15.
- Improve MC to just give and advanced alchemy level of level-4 like the gunslinger as a L6 feat. The current scaling doesn't make a ton of sense.
- Re-balance on mutagens. The downsides for most of them are just super awful compared to the limited benefits you're getting (looking at you mandatory quiksilver mutagen for bombers that drops effective HD to 1D6 and forces you into 20ft radius to go be roflstomped). mutagens in general should be comparable to a level -1 or -2 spell and with no downsides. You don't see someone casting heroism on someone get 2hp/level less or a -2 to fort saves. If the alchemical items were more or less treated like weak spells or consumable weapons I think the balance would be far better.

Suggested downgrades to pay for other things:
- Item bonuses should only be +1/+2/+3 and not go to +4. They should align with other martial runes (this is specific to things like the quick silver mutagen).
- Persistent damage reduction or die decrease as needed.
- This probably won't be popular but if the bomb of 'x' was just another weapon with a base damage dice and clear instructions on what gets striking applied then you can avoid the janky item levels we see now where L11 bombs are +2 greater striking (one level after +2 runes, but 1 level before greater striking runes). This could make things like the thrower's bandolier or a pair of bomber gloves so you can apply it to quick alchemy items just simply work because its essentially a 1D8 'fire knife' that you're throwing.
- Slight weakening of the skunk bomb from TV
-Likely a re-balance of sticky bombs and Bomb Coagulant Alembics.

So what you're looking for here is not a cleric, but a new warpriest class, much more martial and Magus-inspired. What Paizo wants to deliver is a well-rounded warpriest spellcaster, who has chosen to be better at using weapons and armor than focusing completely on his spells, but who is still primarily a spellcaster.

Let me maybe clarify my position. 100% the warpriest does not provide me what I want. I don't hold any illusions about that.

The bigger issue is that the title of warpriest carries with it a bias of what the class was in PF1e, which was a much more martial version of a cleric (not a caster with some martial dressings). Personally I don't care if they keep the existing subclass, keep the title warpriest, etc. But after many years of debating with people (especially before the magus) many people still argue this thing does the martial forward caster gish as a divine class.

Secrets of magic and thus 'a balanced gish' chassis (i.e. wave caster/bounded caster) was published on September 14, 2021. Its almost been 2 years and people clamouring for that same framework but with a primal, divine, and occult basis. The critique here is more far ranging then you might suppose because in essence any of the 3/4 BAB, 2/3 Caster Classes from PF1e are simply not represented in the current game. The closest we have is the thaumaturge which is almost like an occultist but without any of the occult spell casting and of course the magus.

Again call it what you will but if there was a book that only added a bard (a better warrior muse), cleric (a better warpriest), and druid (a better wildshape melee combatant) bounded caster class archetype or subclass choice it would satisfy so many current design niches that aren't fulfilled. Part of the issue (and why fighter MC with them isn't an option) is there are some really great feats already in those classes that would work extremely well with a martial forward bounded caster chassis (but only if you're getting them at the expected level, not if you're getting them at 1/2 level like in a MC). Think about how much time and money a new class/playtest would be as compared to one that just had 80-90% of its content already written in the existing classes.

Of course Paizo isn't bound to make a symmetrical system with those mechanical niches being populated but the holes become glaringly more obvious the longer they are left with 'no attention'.

Magus focuses on bounded casting with casting being offensive.
A cleric could focus on bounded casting with casting being a self buff.
A bard could focus on bounded casting with casting being a party buff.
A druid could focus on bounded casting with casting being use of nature/animal companions/wildshape.

There are more combinations and asks but those might be better for an actual new class if it needs a mechanic like 'spell strike' that is more disruptive to game mechanics/not well supported in the current game.

Red Griffyn wrote:

Warpriest already plays painfully in L5/L6 (waiting for expert)

You're not waiting for expert at those levels. You're using your (effectively) full spell casting proficiency. And when the other casters go to expert, you have (effectively) full martial proficiency. And when the martials go to master, you've already been at full caster and full martial proficiency for two levels.

Level 15-18 will really be the only levels you're behind both, martials and casters. Not ideal, but you are also casting level 8+ spells by that time, which is already a great deal of power. Getting juggernaut is also no small thing.

So lets say my player concept is that I'm a martial forward gish with a divine flavour. Your trying to tell me that I have to start with an 18 in my casting stat, 16 in my striking stat, keep CHA scaling for font, and someone also get STR for damage (if using finesse weapons) or DEX for reflex/AC (if using non-finesse) or CON for HP. What you're suggesting is an insanely MAD martial gish that is narratively unsatisfying.

Instead of getting to 'hit with weapons' as my thing at the expected scaling accuracy/math of the system I have to wait 2 levels. So fundamentally I have to put my concept on hold. Your surrogate for that is to cast spells/cantrips (even if that isn't the thing I want) for 2 levels. If I did max out my WIS to allow for this period where suddenly get worse at the thing I want to be good at (since monsters scale while I don't) then I necessarily hurting my build/concept because the 2-4 boosts I put into WIS to keep it maxed didn't go to STR/DEX/CON/CHA (i.e., dilution of my core concept). If I don't put in WIS as you suggest I'm stuck with what I just described, 2 levels of getting worse (not just no progression because monsters scale) in 'my concept' with a painful few levels of back-up options. I could only foucs on support spells or things without DCs but then your whole argument that I have 'maxed' spell DC is moot because it isn't being used.

THAT is why it is painful. You can't have it all so the argument that proficiency in weapon use and proficiency in spells are interchangeable at all levels isn't accurate. They are two independent things that provide two independent manifestations of my character. One does not replace the other (mechanically and conceptually) and both require investment at the expense of the other (mechanically).

Even if you were of the opinion that they were equivalent in power then we fall back to the other complaint spectrum of the warpriest (i.e., why bother with weapons at all and just be a cloistered cleric focused on WIS and pick up sentinel at L2/shield block at L3 and be a better version).

What Paizo is suggesting is that the painful L5 to L7 hiccup in progression of your PC be a simple preview to another longer and drier dry spell of L13 to L19. Of course getting it at all is an improvement. But that is why I'm calling it a half measure. Put it at L15 and maintain the same painful 2 level precedent would have made way more sense (it wouldn't make the warpriest playable for me but I wouldn't complain about it). Put juggernaut at L19 so they still have it.

Or do what Clerics+ did (which is IMO is the best warpriest to date). Give weapon proficiency E/M at L5/L13, give a martial level AC/Saves scaling, pair back the chassis to a bounded caster to balance it, decouple the font from CHA so you can focus on being the best Martial you can, add a few action economy booster feats like other martials, allow for options in your doctrines so they aren't just 'proficiency boosts' but exciting parts build/player agency, etc.

I do hear that some people love their Warpriests as the 85% caster/15% martial it is. But clearly there is a huge community pull/desire for the 50% caster/50% martial of a divine persuasion (call it a battle cleric, warpriest, inquisitor, w/e you want). But the complaints about the warpriest are fundamentally rooted in the deviations in expectations and because there is no 'other' Paizo made option. We have to acknowledge the two desires are not the same instead of pretending the current warpriest scratches the itch. Then Paizo can make an option or as a community we can be much more open to high quality third party content that addresses the big gaps in the system in a timely manner.

So many of the changes sound great:

- ranger feats losing the hunt prey only requirement (woot!)

- Some clean up/consolidation of spells and adding scaling effects (sounds like runic weapon could be good at many levels and not just L1-L4)

- New martial crossbow (though taw launcher is worth an ancestry feat so it would have to be pretty good)

- Focus Point refocus now is going to make so many builds great (think ki focused monks or warden spell focused rangers) so it will likely be a race to get feats that add to your FP pool. This is also make MC into FP focused archetypes better (e.g., fighters picking up lay on hands, anyone going psychic, being able to ki strike like a monk, etc.). This is my favourite change announced so far (L12/L18 refocus feats are in almost all of my FP builds so half my builds just got 2 feats back!).

- Buff/new cantrips. The version they revealed was 'frostbite' doing damage but also adding weakness to bludgeoning so you can really have some teamplay elements in your cantrips. Honestly this is going help the 'I cast Electric Arc' repetition that tends to be part of caster life now (so great!).

- and others.

A few changes do not sound great or are a little worrying:

- Rogues get martial proficiency (yay!), but now their rackets will incentive usage of certain weapons (nay!). So close to just letting them use martial weapons and making the class 'just use what you like'. Now you're going to always feel pressured to use the w/e weapon incentivized by your subclass. The bespoke weapon list already had most of the top tier rogue weapons on it. The complaint was never that it wasn't getting to use the most powerful finesse weapons, it was 'I want to use this finesse weapon because its cool/thematic without spending 3 feat and going into archetypes to get scaling proficiency. I sincerely hope these 'bonuses' are trivial and minimal enough to mitigate people feeling pressured into artificially limiting their weapon options for each subclass.

- Warpriest getting master proficiency at L19 (they said it was on the final doctrine which is L19 currently). This is once a year one shot level territory or once every two years for 5 sessions territory on a long campaign. Warpriest already plays painfully in L5/L6 (waiting for expert) and it would have been painful enough to wait through L13/14 to get it at L15 (2nd last doctrine) for master in weapons. But no, what we think they need is to get it at L19? What a half measure. All this is going to do is muddle the conversation with this obnoxious call and response "warpriests are full casters with martial weapon proficiency" followed by "they get it at L19 and suffer for 6 of the 8 last levels of the game without it!" The much bigger issue is that this strongly suggests Paizo will take the same half measure for alchemists and instead of tweaking item power to give them Expert/Master at L5/L13 do something janky like this. Please... Paizo... I'm begging you... don't do this to the alchemist.

*For everyone who wants to see a good warpriest design clerics+ on Pathfinder Infinite is amazing and solves all the problems with Paizo's current and future proposed designs. They even have a paizocon bundle (all the + team books for a $25.00).

Yeah you’re lying through your teeth and trying to rewrite history there.

I think its pretty well established that there are people who like the support/pill dispenser alchemist and people who don't and want something more self sufficient who chucks bombs/poisons at will with great martial effect.

There are no discussions that prove the alchemist is good and suggesting there are is dishonest. What these discussions typically amount to is just opinions that you can play within the current game/framework as that support/pill dispenser alchemist or that a -1 to hit is not insurmountable, etc. and hand waive/gloss over the main critiques (e.g., you have bad low level resources, system assumes you are running a mutagen at all times, mutagens have really bad side effects, at L13-L20 those -1s are -2s at time or worse if you aren't constantly upped on mutagen, the class chassis proficiency progression is poorly balanced by item bonus progression leading to janky total class progression inconsistent with either martial or caster progressions, too much of the class power budget is in the items themselves which needlessly gates the items from other classes who want to throw bombs as a passtime, bombs don't have runes, KAS can't be chosen as dex, etc.). That or people disagree on the baseline assumptions for the metrics they run and thus get different conclusions (e.g., should we assume 1, 2, 3 rounds for persistent damage? do we assume CR equivalent monsters with medium AC? Are you causing splash damage to a second, third, or more creatures ~30% of the time in combat or more/less % of the time).

As with most things the complaints form from a deviation in expectations and actual performance. When lots of people say they don't like playing an alchemist its because they don't get to play it the way they want, not that it can't be played in some way that still satisfies a 'I'm useful' application case. The alchemist isn't unplayable, but it definitely sucks at meeting my class fantasy.

We should debate in good faith here. Generally trying to argue that people didn't have an experience (people dislike the alchemist or wizards/casters in general, etc.) is a fruitless endeavour. Its important to understand why people got the experience they got. Is it just bad run of dice, did they play poorly (or in a way not supported by the current class like alchemist), is the class poorly designed (even if just for a subset of levels), etc. Maybe you can convince them with math/DPR calculations, or combat simulation, or comparison to other classes, etc. but pointing to a nebulous 'discussion that proved everything about alchemists is right' statement without even the citation isn't going to move the needle for anyone.

Red Griffyn wrote:

Gortle wrote:

* Frightened 1 is -1 to all enemies attacks and -1 to all their defences. It is basically like giving everyone +2 to everything --- and people complain about fighters?

This is just straight up wrong and bad math.

It is a relative value statement not an equality. Which was clear from the very first post I said like not equal. The leaping to conclusions here is flat wrong.

You used the word 'like' as a simile. As the root of that word implies you are saying X is similar to (i.e., is like) Y. That is different from pointing out differences or where they are not alike. The context in your statements is that they are alike one another because of the 'numerical bonuses' they apply. On that basis you are saying -1 to A and -1 to B is LIKE a +2 to C. Your simile also happens to form a mathematical identify/propositional claim that is not substantiated by pure logical evaluation. There is no leaping to conclusions.

You made a nonsensical statement that is not logically consistent or consistent with math and then doubled down on it in a bunch of comments. In your response to me you are now moving the goalposts, but even then its just a bad statement through and through. Retracting the statement is your best bet to avoid further headaches and elicit the broader discussion you'd like to have on the bard.

A status penalty to all checks and DCs - looks near enough the same to me. But you can't get rid of Dirge.

Frightened reduces at the end of your turn so monsters can leave the area at the end of the turn and not be frightened. Sickened requires an interact action to vomit to try and remove it and then they make a save (at the -X status). There is no guarantee that a monster can get rid of the effect and its much more persistent/sticky as a debuff than frightened.

How many of them are single action, all enemies within 30ft, no save?

How about a crushing/greater crushing runes, fearsome/greater fearsome, and a Phantasmal Doorknob (Greater) spellheart weapon on a fighter? -2 status effects and blinded for critting. Get into flank (-2 to AC) get an aid (+1 to +4) make a crit and impose -2 status penalty and a flat check DC to miss you (if they can find you again).

The marshal dread stance just gives you a fearsome rune in essence and +x status damage.

Spears just give clumsy 1 on a crit as their crit specialization.

Demoralize is one action so as a bard you could inspire courage, bon mot (for a -2 to -3 to will saves), then demoralize for a better shot at critting for a -2 frightened status. Hell a agonizing rebuke hobgoblin can impose some mental damage on a demoralize to make it better.

Intimidating Strike uses a fighters to hit which is +2 over the demoralize skill, intimidates on a hit or better on a crit. Even a talisman dabbler could be burning up fear gems to make that -2/-3 on a hit/crit.

L3 fear is basically an amazing spell at all levels (5 enemies in 30 feat for 2 actions but can get frightened 1, 2, or 3 and fleeing (which is way better and more potent than dirge of doom). Not only that but you can bon mot + fear to eek out some more likelihood of a failure and the spell is on every caster list. There are other spells out there that do better than dirge of doom.

There are so many options and those are just 'off the top of my head' I don't have an all inclusive list but other classes can debuff and some get to do it as part of their main sequence (attacking, casting a spell, etc.). Some are single target or broader and many impose a real -2 or -3 to everything. So most '2 action' things are action economy boosters and give you effectively 2 to 3 actions in the activity (i.e., much closer to 1 action effects than a 2 action effect in the overall action economy).

* Frightened 1 is -1 to all enemies attacks and -1 to all their defences. It is basically like giving everyone +2 to everything --- and people complain about fighters?

This is just straight up wrong and bad math.

The category/subset called 'enemy defence' and category/subset called 'enemy attack' are wholly independent categories/subsets. Adding or subtracting from one does not impact the other. Just because you can find an effect that impacts multiple independent categories does not mean they now are able to combine in any numerical/meaningful way.

[e.g.] Say you have 1 orange (-1 attack) and 1 apple (-1 defence). You get paid $1.00 for every apple you have (deal 15% more damage for every -1 defence). If you put them together you don't have 2 oranges (-2 attack) or 2 apples (-2 defence). You might have 2 fruits ('an easier combat'), but your customers don't care and still only pay you $1.00 total (you staying alive longer doesn't mean you kill the enemy faster).

Your actual critique here is that you think the frightened condition is too powerful because it impacts too many independent categories/subsets called 'x/y/z' in the game.

But I question the validity of that critique because:
- worse conditions exist (e.g., sickened)
- weaker but effectively the same conditions exist (e.g., clumsy) that can be applied.
- None of the status penalties stack with each other, though they can be stacked with status bonuses (e.g., another bard inspiring courage, marshal stance
- While dirge of doom gives a guaranteed -1, other effects can get enemies to frightened 2 or 3 (e.g., level 3 fear spell, demoralize, marshal stance, fearsome runes, intimidating strike, etc.).
- A bard casting dirge of doom pays an opportunity cost of casting another composition (i.e., inspire courage which most of the time will have the same desired numerical effect but didn't cost you a L6+ feat).
- Intimidation is one of the most utilized 'skill abilities' in the game so its likely your party can and will be demoralizing (so while dirge of doom is good, it is by no means a must have).
- Fundamentally the game should enable both a buffing and a debuffing play style in the game to improve the overall feel/player agency (even if the mechanical impact is similar).

Obligatory shoutout to the Barbarians+ Bloodrager that I am currently playing and having good fun with. It's a wave caster centered around making yourself explode with AOE damage by casting spells, very cool and very different feel from a Magus.

Came here to also plug Barbarians+ (also I think the alchemical instinct is super awesome FYI incase folks are looking for something that plays as a self buffer vs. splash damage approach).

Fundamentally the bloodrager in 1e was just when I rage I cast a self buff spell. So you could homebrew a class that does that.

- 1D10
- Normal Rage feature damage is based on the spell you cast (look at bespell weapon for school to type)
- Bounded caster chassis + barbarians save progression
- When you rage for 1 or 2 actions you can cast a 1 or 2 action spell that targets self only.
- In class feats at 4/12/18 for L1-L8 spells per spell caster MC levels but only from the sorcerer bloodline list.
- Scale rage damage based on draconic instinct
- Select bloodlines from the sorcerer list.
- steal the magus's L7/11/13 studious spells class feature to give you some more slots of low level buffing.

Bloodragers did very little once raging with spells, so this way you get what you want. Arcane strike is basically the built in rage damage.

I posted this thread here asking what kind of engagement we could expect. You can skip the bickering in the middle and just look at the second last post that says effectively:

"Paizo will have more information when the time is right—I suspect the next big batch of info will be at Paizocon. In the meantime, please be patient."

So the answer is still neither yes or no but James earlier statement in the thread implies a no (but later says its for others to answer/wait for the Paizocon announcements).

Either way books coming out in November like Player Core 1 are likely already finished and not open for changes. But Player Core 2 isn't in the same state so there is an opportunity there for additional community engagement. It may or may not come out as a play test though and its probably better to assume you get no say/input and be pleasantly surprised if we do get more community engagement that is bidirectional.

I might suggest the following:

- Scale of 1 to 5 (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree). This allows for a better weighted response test to see whether people who didn't 'vote for something' actually oppose it or simply don't care. Are people who want something strongly aligned with the specific solution, or only weakly aligned. Then we can test not just a % of who is in favour vs. who is not, but also provide a weighted 'ranked ballot sum' to show the overall desire for a specific option.

- Provide a 6th option for not applicable so you can remove base votes and calculate percentages on everything with different number of responses. The assumption being that if you can't force a vote on a topic that the default is their vote is discounted from the denominator when determining a ranking/weighted response.

- I feel like the fact that the best voted option is ~67% points and its on a pretty non-offensive auto-scaling background lore that this points to a broader issue with the survey. First, that we need more respondents as a N=74 isn't that great. Second, the survey format has failed to engage the audience. I think the above two items would help resolve that.

- A clear preface on the intent of the survey built into the survey.

- Some options are intended as trade offs. Like alchemical bombs getting property runes comes at the expense of bombs power budget. The fact that people in this thread are assuming that these are all 'unbalancing options' points to either a miscommunication of the option or a bias in taking the survey that needs to be addressed in a preface. Specifically that not every option is simply a 'yes and' but may have a balancing factor for it.

- Each subsection of the survey needs a clear standard question that says something similar to "This class needs some change but it isn't represented in the options presented". Basically a way to show whether a fix is needed and test whether the present options are their preferred solution.

I wouldn't mind it, but I don't see it happening. Paizo has shown that they are perfectly ok with non-combat KAS, as shown by the Inventor & Thaumaturge. Not really sure if I would choose to go with a non-Int KAS if such was available.

Paizo is okay with non 18 KAS classes. But those classes get damage buffs built into the base class chass. Thaumaturges get implement's empowerment and inventors get extra elemental damage at higher levels.

This will be a re-occuring reply to your comments, but my main complaint is that the power budget of the alchemist is too far into the actual items and not sufficiently on the actual class. I think this is bad for two reasons:
- An alchemist's scaling is often mismatched with other classes due to deviations in item vs. class chassis scaling. This leaves weird disjointed levels.
- Because 'alchemical items' are too powerful, this necessarily limits any other class from getting to have fun and play with those same items. Bomb DCs don't scale well, MCs don't get advanced alchemy progressions that make sense, and overall it really not elegant. Instead of making the alchemist the best at using their items they are actually the best at making their items which often translates to the feeling that they should item dispense to others who are better at using their items.

This would be nice, but again, not something I see happening. So my Alchemists would be +1 over equivalent Martials from Levels 5-9, even from 11-14, +1 @ 15, even @ 16, +1 from 17-19 and finish off at even @ 20. That's a pretty major shift from current.

Same common response about class budget being in items not the class. Alchemists, with quicksilver mutagens, are at +1 for a select level range. From L12 onwards its just a steady massive downhill. PF2 prides itself on balance across all 20 levels and it doesn't achieve this at L12+ with the entire class. The change should be paired with removing the +1 to +4 scaling item bonus on alchemical items. Being able to pick a KAS of dex and get master proficiency means the class is at +0 for the entire game and achieve the symmetry/balance that I think would be better vs. the janky scaling caused by a combination of 16 KAS, not master proficiency and a +1 item bonus over a martial.

Never happening. Ever. I can stay competitive on single target damage against most Ranged Martials with just Sticky Bomb. (Depends on how lucky the GM is with DC 15 flat checks.) Add in Elemental Runes? Not happening.

The alchemist is not competitive with ranged martial meta builds on single target damage even with sticky bombs. Being competitive against a generic martial that is doing ranged stuff as a back-up option doesn't really cut it here. Bomb throwing is not a top tier ranged option and it should be. Weaker bombs + better class power scaling will allow for property runes to be used. Beyond that this change actually help resolve the issue of lower level play. The point of adding property runes is to allow prepared batches of 2 or 3 bombs to remain competitive with things like sticky bombs that use quick alchemy and burn infusions. In the past my suggestion was actually just patching the thrower's bandolier to work properly with bombs, which would be exclusive of any additives from quick alchemy, but I honestly think that is too harsh. Perhaps if needed its limited from working with sticky bombs or other additives that only deal damage increases, but there are a lot of additive options that would suffer if you threw out the baby with the bathwater on this idea.

God, I hope not. Where's the fun in that?

As discussed above. It would improve the quality of play, smooth over inconsistent scaling, put the class power budget back in the class, not the items, increase accessibility to bomb items for other non alchemists, and overall IMO improve the quality of the play experience for an alchemist.

The current scaling makes perfect sense. The goal, obviously, is to allow you the flexibility of Alchemists without granting the Level 17+ Items. Gunslinger gets better because they're only entitled to Bombs & Ammo. Similar to how the Alchemical Sciences Investigator only does Tools & Elixirs, with a much smaller pool of Quick Vials compared to Batches of Infused Reagents.

I honestly don't agree it makes sense. Its 1 until L6 then its half level until L12 in stepwise increments at L6/L10 then its level -5 at L12+. This is an example of item vs. class scaling in janky ways. Most of the items I want out of a MC are bombs and I suspect it will be similair for others. It isn't clear to me that the added versatility really needs to be taxed when item bonuses from items of those same level ranges are equivalent and don't have massive downsides (e.g., mutagens). This is part of the issue with too much power budget being in the items, you need work around solutions to post hoc justify the game design. In reality there shouldn't be an alchemist getting a +4 item bonus on attacks, it should cap out at +3 like everyone else. Even at level-4 you wouldn't get the L17+ items so I'm not sure what your critique is here. Level-4 at L6 vs. the stepwise function it is doesn't slaughter any sacred cows here and makes the scaling continuous.

Having played a Bomber to 11th level (so far), I fail to understand why some people are so dead-set against Quicksilver. Yes, I effectively have 6HP/level while using it. So what? I'm a Ranged Striker. I have Far Lobber, so I have 30'. If I need to stay further away, I can eat a -2 penalty to get up to 60'. And my speed... well, since I decided to take Fleet as my 11th level General Feat, I have 45' of movement to play with. I might invest in Boots of Bounding to go 50'. Staying out of the way is, in my experience, easy.

And as for the Fortitude Penalty... it's a matter of perspective there as well, in my experience. I've never seen an online discussion where folks are all "Well, forget Rogue. Your Fortitude Saves suck, you're a dead man." Yet that's the attitude folks seem to take about Quicksilver... and with the exception of 2 levels (9 & 10) they're exactly the same. And now, I'm 11th... and I have Juggernaut. So, Expert Saves on Quicksilver (like so many other classes) except that if I hit a Success, it's a Critical Success.

Plus, I have a best in class boost to Reflex Saves, Acrobatics, Stealth & Thievery.

Bestial + Fury Cocktails are a bit harder, because Alchemists don't get Evasion until 15th. So, for 11th & 12th they are tied for worst Reflex Saves in the game with the Oracle... and for 13th & 14th they have the worst Reflex Saves period. 15th on, they're fine.

It's Juggernaut that's hardest, imho. Alchemists only get Master Will saves (and no Resolve)... and that's if they take Canny Acumen.

Mutagens are fine. I sincerely hope Paizo leaves them alone. The fact that Treasure Vault follows the current Mutagens fairly closely gives me hope for that.

1.) 6HP/Level isn't sustainable for being super close to the action.

The alchemist should be getting better saves to offset the debuff, not just accepting their fate as a class with expert proficiency, master class DC, one save at -2 always, etc.

Overall: Its just a bad class chassis. Saves are penalized by mutagens, hp penalized by mutagens, accuracy by inflexible KAS and lack of master proficiency, DCs penalized by needing to hit then make a save (i.e., need dex and INT), etc.

You've narrowed the scenario to 3 Strikes in a turn. You've repeatedly ignored every other scenario where it may be used in favor of specific white room math.

If it's just two strikes, Double Shot without any of its upgrades is in parity with two regular strikes against ==APL creatures and immediately gets better against relative to two regular strikes as soon as you gain buffs to-hit or the enemy has its AC debuffed. It also is a net gain against APL-2 and APL+2 creatures before any buffs.

So yes, if you ignore the situations where Double Shot is a net gain, it's a "trap feat." Sure, it's not a great feat, but calling it a trap feat is disingenuous and flat-out incorrect. It works as advertised and doesn't signpost an ineffectual playstyle.

In addition, other feats being stronger doesn't necessarily make it a trap feat anyways. Otherwise, nearly every melee feat would be a trap feat compared to feats like Improved Knockdown.

Please make a new thread to continue the discussion.

Red Griffyn wrote:

Allow more open selection of each cause for all kinds of traditionally good (holy) or evil (unholy). The mechanics for the antipaladin are really cool (e.g., a selfish champion reaction, intimidation focused, etc.) but are gated behind being evil (basically removes it from 90% of games out there).

With alignment gone, I wouldn't be surprised if the selection opened up, but only within the former good and evil sides of the coin. The mechanics simply do not match, the antipaladin least of all. It is literally pure, senseless destruction of everything including yourself. No matter what happens to the tenets of good, that's not happening.

That is the current flavour text. We can separate it from the mechanics and easily make something more flexible:

- LE - A Tyrant could be an inquisitor (or call it something else that doesn't have legacy baggage) that will do 'whatever it takes' for its deity and accept no deviations from their holy word. Using intimidation, intense scrutiny/techniques to seek answers, etc. Change all of the 'weaker than you' type statements in its tenets with "others who worship another deity"

- NE - A Desecrator could be a 'self preservationist, hedonist, Deceiver, or similar'. Always trying to twist events/ideologies to benefit your self. You aren't subverting/corrupting everything, you're simply always out for yourself.

- CE - Antipaladin could be a Pain Taster, Martyr or Similar. Someone that punishes them self/opens themselves up to increased risk/pain/injury for an equally selfish gain.

I just think that most of the good/evil champions right now could simply be re-flavoured as selfless/selfish as the main deliminator and open up the mechanics more broadly without smuggling in the existing good (holy) or evil (unholy) baggage. Fundamentally and mechanically its a tank class that is different from fighters because its high defence instead of high offence. I mean you could have a selfless (within the scope of your god's followers) champion following an evil god and port over the good champion reactions. If we're opening up the can of worms, I feel like we should open it all the way up instead of just substituting good/evil for holy/unholy and calling it a day.

Quote:

* Again - a structured playtest with goals and focused effort is completely different from disparate new players saying 'this doesn't feel good' and having the Paizo community say its fine. A standardized format for obtaining opinions and popularity will always be better than trying to assess what community thought/feel is based on who comes forward to complain or praise something without any prompting.

That's probably the fundamental disagreement. I don't think putting out a survey is a better way to gather data on a class than four years of people commenting if they feel like it, making guides, etc. Putting out a survey is a better way to gather data than a couple months of that, sure.

Obviously, it's fine if we disagree on that point. It just means we're probably not going to see eye-to-eye on the topic.

Thats alright if we disagree on that.

One final thought there to try and convince you if you'll permit me. The people who engage on the community boards and are the most vocal either for or against an idea could be proportionately representative of the broader community. But they also could not be. People who don't voice their opinions often won't do it without the prompt (i.e., here is a formal request), a safe space to voice it (Paizo/reddit boards aren't free of hostilities), and a through connection to results (i.e., here is what you said and here is what is being done to address it).

Worst case scenario we could spend 2 weeks confirming our gut feeling. Best case scenario we identify a bias in our current thinking due to only hearing the loud voices and can address it before it gets published.