| RootOfAllThings |
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I made this post over on the PF2e subreddit, but figure'd I'd post it here as well to get as broad a discussion as possible.
Thaumaturgist needs Esoteric Antithesis to keep up martial damage, but the need to Recall Knowledge and the weakness mechanic make it actually worst against the kinds of things Thaumaturgist seems intended to interact with.
Esoteric Antithesis requires you to not critically fail on a Recall Knowledge as part of Find Flaws. The strange and bizarre creatures as Thaumaturgist feels most flavorful fighting are Uncommon, Rare, or Unique, which means they have hefty increases to the DC of Recall Knowledge. APs are chock full of unique named foes, who RAW have a whopping +10 their Recall Knowledge DC. The Thaumaturgist doesn't feel very "magical secrets" when they're better fighting Ogres than Hounds of Tindalos.
Since DC also raises with target level, they're doubly penalized trying to "turn on" versus single, PL+X bosses. This is the Swashbuckler problem, where they're actually best mopping up mooks because their features most reliably turn on there. Its even worse for Thaumaturgist, who can't Feint a mook and Finisher the boss.
Esoteric Antithesis gives its damage bonus by granting a weakness, but if that creature already has a weakness, then Esoteric Antithesis doesn't really grant you any bonus. Consider a case where you're hunting werewolves, which seem appropriately cursed for a Thaumaturgist. His knowledge of dark mysteries tells him they're weak to silver, so he tells everyone in the party to bring Silversheen. Now the other martials do bonus damage, and Esoteric Antithesis, your entire damage bonus feature, does... nothing, because you're already triggering the weakness. The net result is that the Thaumaturgist is actually best at fighting flavorless, weaknessless humanoids.
So a Thaumaturgist is good at hunting vampires (Common, no numerical weakness), okay at hunting werewolves (Common, but double dipping weaknesses), bad at hunting Dracula (High level, likely Unique), and terrible at hunting Werewolf Dracula (High level, likely Unique, double dipping weaknesses). Against hypothetical Werewolf Dracula, you're practically a featureless martial, while everyone else proceeds as normal.
Except Swashbuckler, I suppose, who can't get his groove on, but that's another issue entirely.