Ryangwy's page

It's fire damage with the silver tag, just like you can deal slashing, bludgeoning or piercing damage with the silver tag.

Now where it gets interesting is that Devils are immune fire but weak to silver. Does Moonbeam hurts them?

(Foundry says no, but foundry also says haunts weak to vitality are immune because they're objects which is obviously dumb and untrue)

I'm going to add to the Thaumaturge it has some pretty significant Hand things you also frequently come across while playing him.

But I do think that Exemplar is also up there with having (some times at least) to pre-plan a full round in advance for where your spark is going.

Chiming in to agree Exemplar is more complex than the 'all class' lists here make it look; it's very easy, with multiple transcendence from feats and very enticing actions, to end up with one action while in melee range and your spark not in your weapon ikon, whoops. Admittedly the player on mine who uses it isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I have to go 'wait, hold on, if you Gaze then Moment Unending you still have to Stride so if you use Vow of Mortal Defiance you can't Strike and you can't not Moment Unending because you used the initiative bonus-" like that. God forbid he's quickened, slowed or prone.

The Thaum can definitely get there once they're juggling around 2+ non-weapon implements. It takes a while for them to hit that, though.

Complexity is indeed a concept which might require some dividing up in separate categories.

But when it comes to reguiring system knowledge I would go actually say that all casters are in the high complexity category. Generally the people posting here already acquired the necessary system mastery to know which spells are good and the circumstances which make them good so it's likely a bit of a blind spot.

There is a steep learning curve here and the spell lists are big. Both building a good repertoire for spontaneous casters as well as good spell preparation have their specific challenges.

This complexity also translates into turn-to-turn flexibility and complexity for the casters: no other classes have as many options and variables to take into consideration.

I'd argue the Cleric cheats in this regard; for the first 4 levels more than half your spells are max level Heals (assuming you build as-intended) and that's a spell that is almost always useful; you can have complete junk in the rest of your slots and get away with it. You basic doctrine gives you either a good weapon and armour or a focus spell which, sure, there's a lot, but assuming you pick the deity first because they sound cool is just four to choose from (and you can always grab a second). Full access to the divine spell list means you can keep throwing out underperforming spells and putting in better ones.

You first cleric is, in my opinion, low complexity. Your second cleric is when you start tabbing through the deity list switching between domains, granted spells and favoured weapons. But your first one is pretty simple.

I think giving the tree Overflow just locks the phytokineticist into an even more stable loop, since you already have "timber sentinel then one action to do whatever with (likely blast)" and now you have "Gather elements, use the free blast, timber sentinel" every round.

If I wanted to keep people from spamming it, I think giving it a 1d4 round cooldown (like a breath weapon) would be much better than making it an overflow since 2 action overflow impulses are spammable (I have played a character who used Lava Leap ad nauseum.)

One 'advantage' of the 3a (effective) version is that having to move makes the Kineticist vary their turn a bit and gives some movement counterplay for enemies. A 1d4 cooldown would be more entertaining, though.

A 20th level wizard casting any serious spells out of their 1-5 spell slots in meaningful encounters is in big trouble. This is a point in the game where they can reprepare slots indefinitely from slots ranked up to 4 so it is nearly impossible to need those slots.

It's a bad example because anyone choosing that curriculum is choosing spellblending. It still ought to be better, but you're gonna choose the thesis that fits the blasting school

You're both kind of proving Teridax's point that the wizard has glaringly obvious pain points that may not be that big a power loss but feels terrible and upfront, making it the worst possible class design, though.

Frankly, this entire mess could be easily solved (along with the focus spell issue) by letting Wizards Double Major as a feat in the same way Order Explorer and Lessons work for the Druid/Witch. Cut the pointless table variance about adding spells to curriculum with permission out and just let the academic class do what you'd expect.

Magus promotes Spell-striking as often as possible, which is a problem with action rotation. No matter which sub-class/option you choose for Magus nothing will promote you to do other actions no matter how much action compressing they give you it won't be better then Spell-Striking.

Kineticist is sorta trying to be good at it's job and if you remove the unlimited Protector Tree, Fly or Invisibility what do they have outside of infinite per 10 minute heals.

Spellstriking is actually fun and you can pick the spell, though.

When multiple people have come out as saying Timber Sentinel forces any Kineticist with it to use it every turn, and being a two action they don't have a turn left to do anything fun, I think this has to be taken into account. Its like healbotting but worse, since you don't even get to roll for what you healed.

We could create an indestructible class whose only combat ability is to reduce the encounter budget and it'd be balanced (slightly powerful, actually) but also miserable to play as.

Having made my Strength of Thousands backup game (for when I only have 3 players) into a dual class game where one class has to be a spellcaster, you basically want to pair spellcaster + martial class with a good 1a attack (monk, precision ranger, crit-based fighter) or good defence (champion, guardian) because you accept that to operate at maximum capability you want to be 2a spell + 1a good action. Or one of your dual class is Summoner.

I'm tempted to say monk + arcane/primal sorcerer, because you can get blazing dive (or whatever save damage movement spell) into bespell strikes into flurry of blows, letting you very effectively gank people, but if you want to stay at range you can do that too. Probably a build that wants to lean on the flexibility of monastic weaponry.

The spellbook really does not feel like a negative to me when I play with a spell substitution thesis. The ability to change spells on the fly makes it way too powerful and complex not to have a bit of a limit on it that requires player buy in to really push the bounds of.

But now we're back at the 'any individual issue the wizard has, there's a thesis that solves it, but you only get one'.

Which is kind of the core problem, isn't it? The wizard has to choose which of their gaping holes to patch up and pray the campaign doesn't hit the other one. Everyone else gets to choose what cool stuff they want to do instead.

Improve the class' focus spells and make all the Thesis into wizard-exclusive feats, one of which the wizard gets for free at 1st-level. That way, they can choose multiple thesis if they want, or perhaps broaden what one thesis is capable of with additional feats.

I think they should be the masters of magic, but not in terms of potency like the imperial sorcerer, but in terms of versatility (scroll use, spell catalysts, magical item crafting, and spellshaping).

Agreed; the thesis are already gesturing in that area anyway, just make them the full thing. Why can't you have multiple thesis, anyway? Weirdest exclusive subclass flavour.

On a tangential note, I'm surprised there's no action compression for spell catalysts anywhere yet. They're so bad at being metamagic.

I think it is true that a good GM tries, within reason, to react to and adjust to their groups play style. If the group loves to talk their way past encounters, the GM provides more opportunities to try. If they want really hard fights, the GM provides them.

I think Deriven is just saying that. And I suspect that almost all of us agree with that

The difference is kinda important to understand why Deriven's games have some things work far better than for 'kick down the door' parties PF2e is designed around and some really worse, though. Which, like, probably isn't worth the posts spent debating it but is necessary to understand why Earh Bile is less useful than a longbow for Deriven's Animist.

Admittedly, Earth Bile do be very awkward in terms of damage when not hitting a weakness. It works, but it feels like it doesn't.

TL;DR, Deriven's group barely ever lets casters fights at 30ft or less, starting battles far enough most melee martials need 2 Strides to close the gap, which is probably why those 30ft vessel spells aren't doing much.

Most classes are, again, designed for parties like the ones I run - who open the door and see enemies within 30ft, then roll initiative. See Battle Cry.

I'm tempted by the idea of an arcane thesis or whatever where you cannot prepare spells to your regular slots during daily preparation (you still get your ciruculum spells), but whnever you Recall Knowledge successfully or otherwise learn something about an enemy or obstacle as a 1min downtime action (this means that in combat it's always an action tax), you can prepare up to two spells. This is fluffed ala Prescient Planner

It's probably worse than spell sub if you're any good at the game and the GM signals decently but if those aren't the case you always have the right spell at any moment. Doesn't help with the power issue but helps with flexibility and showing knowledge.

It is not a Deriven specific problem. Many adventures are designed with a few fights a day. I could literally go to your table and prove it.

Why? I recommend people think it out. Even track it yourself because I am not making this stuff up as some outlier. The entire reason we group fights or make them tough is so you might be able to cast more per day.

I mean day for a reason! Sure, there's tons of single fight days. But there's always that one AP dungeon every book (sometimes more) where you have like five or more fights and everyone knows that and (in theory) the wizard gets to be more liberal with their spells. Except your group, who will just deathball all five fights.

The median AP group will fight each one then take 30 min to rest up in between. What I've found they do is that the first round is actually a 'poke' with focus spells and cantrip while the martials Do Things to try and figure out if this is a hard fight or not, and then they start throwing slotted spells out. The wizard, in theory, can just throw a slotted spell first turn without shame.

In practice they do the poke too, the fight drags on for four rounds despite the martials doing their best and they end the day with Drain Bonded Item unused.

As a reminder, '1 min buff spells last half the functional day', 'focus spells bad' and 'there aren't enough turns in the adventuring day to cast the 9 top two rank slots the wizard gets baseline' are Deriven-unique problem.

Though the wizard has the worst focus spell setup (in terms of access and power) so that doesn't change that much either.

The wizard getting more slots as their 'feature' ends up making them a weird in-between focus slot casters like druid or necromancer who only remember their spells exist after casting three focus spells and proper spell slot rationers like the sorcerer or cleric or re-oracle; they get less oomph to their slots because they're expected to have more of them, but they're not truly unlimited with half hour breaks. You need to hit a very precise amount of spending more spell slots than other casters to leverage it well.

I think the divergent experience here is that Deriven is going to have his party cast max rank heroism on everyone then fight 4 battles in 2 min (20 rounds), so that longbow is hitting far more often than in most parties where nobody buffs the caster, while Earth's Bile needs two focus points out of three max and a constant drain of one action.

It's basically a weirdo situation no class is designed for. Except the cleric, I guess.

Honestly the thesis already covers a lot of what people want wizards to do, the problem is you can only pick one of them (and one school, another weird leftover D&Dism that makes no sense with how narrow they are now compared to old spell schools). Just like... find some way to get all of them at cost, the Druid has it, the Witch has their variant with Lessons, why is the wizard incapable of it when their themeing is academia?

I'm somewhat surprised how much desire for RK support there is here when the wizard had their skill points kneecapped in 3.PF. They've never been reliant on skills for their knowledge before; that's always been more of the role of other Int classes.

I'd sworn that I've read somewhere the devs know -1 Str/Int/Cha are worth power and count them against an ancestry's power budget.

It sounds like I just need to buy that adventure path. Maybe i should just run that instead of my own setting to start haha.

To mine for idea, you probably only need the first book, Kindled Magic. And they actually do the thing I told you not to do, which is running 'Free' Archetype (Wizard or Druid only) in addition to the class system; my players are a bit overwhelmed at the moment juggling that and the two 'branches', and the character sheets are a bit of a mess.

But running it will probably help if you're new to DMing campaigns. A short 1-4 to get used to the mission-like system with classes in between and a final dungeon showdown, which is your plan. Book 3 onwards has the PCs 'graduate', changing things up, so not as useful.

I think that so long as this is the only thing you are doing for the players it can be fine.

I once again recommend the 1st Strength of Thousands book for their study system. The way I'd handle it is that each 'class' has a twenty level track, every even level is 'you get an archetype slot for this class's archetype feat' (which they can put any of the archetypes in) and every odd level is something else - getting additional lore for the 1st level, getting additional ancestry feat for the 3rd, maybe some kind of bonus to research rolls or rituals or something for the 5th. SoT recommends that you can have one class that is capped at your current level and one capped at half your level rounded down. I think giving a switch option is good.

So your suggestion is that I should just whole-sale cut out like Sorcerer Dedication/etc. No multiclasses, only pure dedications?

Yeah; that cuts out a lot of the choice paralysis.

The additional lores (I listed a few) would be free and not take up a slot or anything. They would just be bonus feats given.

I should point out that Spirit Lore is currently the only one being offered; I think in that case each lesson could have one (even if some are worth less than others).

By this do you mean instead of my free benefits of consumables/fulus/etc?

Right; because those archetypes offered by those classes already do free items, the value of even more free items drops.

Assuming you do classes as downtime rolls between missions, it'd be something like: crit success, advance your class two levels to the max of your level and get two benefits, success, advance one level and get one benefit, fail, get one benefit (so you didn't waste the downtime).

Well, one full advance per class might be too much. You'd have to math out how many classes you expect each C to do between each level.

I kind of created a curated list of archetypes from the available "Classes" offered by the Academy. Any thoughts or revisions?

I'll reiterate that you should probably cut the multiclass archetypes, they're too broad and unfocused and give too many options which is tricky given you're doing a new setting and everything. Cognitive load high. Are you only granting the dedication and nothing else? That's an... interesting choice.

Additional Lore: Undead is a skill feat and stands out awkwardly, especially as many other dedications grant skills

'Free consumables at start of day' are just alchemy/free crafting benefits, in general, so the archetypes for those classes offer them by default. If you want to offer mission specific gear you can - just be warned players will absolutely forget to use them. Those probably should be tied to standing in general; the people who need them most are those who didn't go into alchemy or field survival!

I think, if I was to give floating benefits to each of the classes, I would go with:

1 free research roll that doesn't take time of a relevant subject (for Research, all subjects are relevant), identification of relevant item, curse/disease removal, retraining in 1 day instead of the usual time so long as it's a relevant class, crafting at faster speed (still need to spend the money). Most of these are meant to save time, or rather bundle up downtime tasks with attending classes.

When a card game like ygo adds cards to a ban list, no player may put those cards into their decks or are limited in how they may add them to their decks (limit, semi-limit, etc). This can, of course, be modified at your own kitchen table games.

When paizo adds rarity to an option, no player may put those options on their character sheet or are limited in how they may add them to their sheet (the access rules, common things that add uncommon things, etc). This can, of course, be modified at your own kitchen table games.

By all means, tell me how those two things are different in any meaningful manner.

... Because Pathfinder 2e is a cooperative game, not a competitive one, and so modifications are far more likely? Because many APs create them for specific purpose in their narrative but don't want to spend the time adjucating if they're risky in all possible scenarios, in the same way MtG has 'Legacy' cards in Jumpstart packs because the Jumpstart pack wants it but they don't want to spend time testing it for standard?

The usefulness of the rarity system is that it means banned for a new GM but not for an experienced one, and APs help ease the process.

I completely agree the PC is dead. The question is how, what defences work, and so forth.

The death trait specifically means spells and abilities that impose death by yoinking the soul or something. Diseases kill you by, well, being diseases, ravaging your interiors and so on. You defend against them by not failing 3+ fortitude saves, or by the myriad of ways to gain immunity to diseases. You do not do so by gaining immunity to death trait effects, as they don't (usually) work that way.

No I mean if you comb through some lore books you could find something on the order of a couple hundred different specific named NPCS of wildly varying factions, ideology, magical tradition, notoriety, skill, and time period using the teleport spell such that it is implausible that all these different people from differing walks of life used it and it’s somehow not widely dispersed. It’s literally *the* powerful wizard thing, like how fireball is the somewhat powerful wizard thing.

This kind of mentality is precisely why they use the in-universe designation of 'uncommon' rather than the out-of-universe designation of 'disruptive' (and thus lump together things that are actually uncommon but not disruptive like inventors in).

So if we were to subtag things, what is that list?

:Regional [Region gated]

:Cultural [Culture gated potentially might be able to replace regional if you want a less positionally tied gating name if you only one to use one of them]

:Access [If we keep Focus spells, etc. as Uncommon, and just tag them that they are only uncommon because they should be bough with a feat cost, from appropriate class]

:Narrative [For things known to potentially ruin certain types of campaigns/storylines]

:Adventure [I'm not exactly sure what to call this, but sometimes I think things were made uncommon in an AP because they didn't go through as much rules/mechanics vetting as something that was going in a rulebook would, and it is know it will work well enough for this adventure, but hasn't been thought through with everything else out there, and won't be exhaustibly checked against all future things, and in reality isn't likely to see any formal errata. This seems like a reasonable thing for GMs to be aware of.]

:Theme [This could potentially be used to flag something known, like guns in fantasy which is something many people may balk at]

FWIW people have been proposing something like this every two pages; it seems there's broad consensus on something like this, it's just nobody actually follows up

Personally I'd put regional, cultural and theme into the same bucket, since it's all the same amount of scrutiny, and I think Paizo will probably lump narrative and adventure together because the two reinforce each other (being 'unknown chance of screwing up campaign balance')

And as I *keep* saying, “Rarity” is an incorrect term for “potentially disruptive”.

Sure. Like the Rarity system all you want, but there’s no denying it is often at best a) arbitrary and presumptive and at worst b) used incorrectly.

The 'problem' being solved here is that there is (was?) a table culture where GMs had to justify choices by lore

So the easiest way to squeeze in these kind of warning without upsetting the 'games are recreation of reality' crowd would be to make them as rare as they are potentially disruptive

One of those weird quirks that many people didn't encounter but was certainly a big presence, especially in the 3.5e/4e split

OTOH as the GM, and since everyone would start level 1, and I'd actually get to see whose characters are what, perhaps I can make a more informed tailored list? Although I'm not sure if your suggestion to is homebrew new feats or create a curated list of extant feats and archetypes tied to a class.

Like the most obvious one would be the Alchemy class gives Alchemy benefits, which could be broken down further into things like Poisoner or Wandering Chef as choices.

What I did personally for my campaigns (APs but with limited Archetypes) was known archetypes but occasionally fleshed out with additional feats (I gave AP spellcasting archetypes the expert/master feats they sometimes lack, for instance, and appended some Champion feats to enhance Undead Slayer)

You have some obvious lines here, already, based on your curriculum

Lore can grant those knowledge-based archetypes. Folklorist, Loremaster, Linguist, Campfire Chronicler

Demonology is a bit tricky because no current archetype grants what you want; I recommend adapting Undead Slayer and borrowing some CHampion Archetype feats (or just flat out Champion feats at level + 2) to up the holy damage and demon smiting. You can add Pactbinder and Living Vessel for a darker take.

Curse Breaking seems to eat into the anti-undead space here; Curse Maelstorm is the obvious pick but it seems you also want Exorcist and if you dare Blessed Necromancer (you'll need quite some effort to figure out what spells apply for that one; I recommend changing 'necromancy' to 'vitality and spirit/holy'). Maybe Archeologist for trap searching?

Alchemy is the obvious pick for any of the crafting archetypes, whether it's Wandering Chef, Poisoner or Fireworks Technician. Maybe even Alchemist dedication, I wouldn't recommend class archetypes in general due to mental load and power, but anyone taking this lesson is asking for that mental load

Weapon Training is where you dump those weapon archetypes. Archer, Mauler, Duelist, Fan Dancer, Martial Artist, even Bastion. Not Sentinel, though, that one's too much of a free pick and doesn't really count as a weapon.

Ritual is obviously Ritualist, but I think you could add Familiar Master and friends to the list; get youa buddy who can help your darn rituals.

Field Survival has plenty to pick, Herbalist, Horizon Walker, Scout. Would avoid Medic/Beastmaster/Cavalier here, they're a bit of a power pick.

Waive the three feat limit for these within their group.

I'm quite okay with a rarity system, but regional availability and options being potentially disruptive being lumped together into one system is problematic to me. There should be separate rarity systems for these two aspects of rarity.

I think most people agree that focus spells and core book (or core book equivvalent, like GnG) stuff that has regional or ancestry reasons for the tag be separated out, it's just whether everything else needs a distinct tag (and/or the effort of doing so meaning we should scrap the rarity system) being discussed here.

I used to make my own maps in DungeonDraft, and I also tried Dungeon Alchemy, but I am afraid that making my own maps for every single session and sometimes multiple maps for the early game where it's more "choose your own adventure" might burn me out. But maybe if I start preparing everything now, in advance and then later actually run the game I could get well ahead of schedule?

If you buy Paizo Humble Bundles you should have accumulated a pile of 'free' maps you should be able to load into Foundry. Additionally, there's a bunch of free map modules in Foundry by various people, and if you have any official AP there's even more to plunder. Do them up, put in themed folders, and don't feel ashamed of reusing the same Forest map across multiple sessions. Your players won't care, especially if you have them enter from different parts of the map (official APs offasionally rotate the maps to get extra use out of them).

Houses are going to be a bigger weakness if you haven't been building up flipmat jpegs in your digital orders

Each completed mission earns:

Gold
Academy reputation using the reputation in GM Core, or a homebrewed deeper version potentially
Promotion in rank (I want to create a ranking system inspired by typical isekai type anime like bronze, silver, gold, etc up to orichalcum and adamantite style adventurer ranks? Or is this redundant with academy reputation? Too many layers?)
Better equipment as provided by the school armory/shop. The school should have everything an adventurer needs, and for rare items perhaps specific missions need to be undertaken to gain the materials so the school can make it. Tie it all together. However, probably few things should be off limits. I would include like uncommon and rare spells in this and have a school library that grants access to such things
Access to Advanced Classes within the school which, tied with rank and reputation could grant greater benefits to the characters. More circumstance bonuses with higher numbers, more consumables or higher rank/grade(?)/item level(?) consumables, etc. Or perhaps this is where uncommon/rare spells/rituals may be unlocked?
Aftermath Feats if applicable? Aftermath Feats appear in Dark Archives around page 55

I recommend taking a good look at Strength of Thousands for how you may want to structure this. Basically have multiple parallel levelling track capped by your actual level. Actually, in general, you look like you're doing the first three books of Strength of Thousands plotwise, so do read them regarding balance between missions and dungeons, ways of integrating a levelling system and so on.

I would strongly recommend not having Free Archetype so that you can offer more feat-based rewards for going down certain mission and academic trees. Have each academic class correspond to a small pool of archetypes and levelling up that class, whether through downtime studying or taking specific missions, unlocks higher level feat slots. Keep them to a maximum of two tracks per character, and players will be incentivised to seek missions corresponding to the tracks they take. This means each character can theoretically have thrice as much feats as base, or 1.5x of FA, which is why I don't recommend adding FA on top of it. If you want Ancestral Paragon, you could tie it into the academic system as well. Put most of it in one unified system for ease of tracking of the players.

Also, if you want the shop to matter, turn off ABP. If you want more weapon variety, hugely discount them for doing certain quests (but remember to never offer items above the current player level).

I think overall this is probably a noble goal if applied to a handful of options that could be problematic at certain tables. My issue with the rarity tags (perhaps ironically) is that they're just too common. According to AoN, there are at least 6,000+ entries in their PF2E database with the uncommon or rare tag. Out of around 6,000 entries in the ewuipment category, around 2,900 have either of those tags, or nearly half of them. I think it's poor game design for so much of the system's content to be categorized this way and has probably encouraged bad habits in content writing if Paizo devs feel so free to churn out massive loads of content that they don't feel should be presumptively permissible at any table. It's a bit of a cop-out; by slapping rarity tags on something you neither need to worry about making it generally suitable...

I mean, that's how the AP system works. They barely have time to make the AP itself fun, now you want them to worry about whether the special stuff they sprinkle for flavour is 100% compliant to standard?

(That's why equipment is by far the biggest category, because bespoke items for a specific AP are the easiest thing to churn out)

Paizo is pretty open that they keep the lights on through this kind of churn and that they're aware they run the chance of breaking other campaigns outside the one those items feature in from long experience. Whether Lost Omens books which theoretically have more oversight need the uncommon tag is a broader question but fundementally this is work that needs to fall somewhere and 'on players if they really need that option and can't find a common substitute' is as good a place as any

Still, deciding on genre or any other campaign restrictions happens in the pitch or session zero so all in all honesty I don't see a need for tags as this tends to be so very, very campaign specific that it makes little sense to generalize into a system.

But what about the GM and player groups not experienced enough to do session zero? Because that's the group that benefits the most from being able to blanket apply common everything. Yes, players too, as it heavily cuts down on decision paralysis without the static atmosphere of 'core book only' that was the advice given in PF1e era.

No, it very much does matter that 2e’s version of contextual spells aren’t OP BS that was excused because it was meant for that one context. Because this means they don’t cause problems when used outside the original context, and there’s no “danger” to games from them being used whenever a player pleases. “Oh no, someone cast fireworks blast, my game is ruined!” - this has literally never happened.

Bone Croupier (which actually didn't get printed with the Uncommon tag!), Heavenseeker. It happens.

The problem I have with rarity is that it's inconsistent. Here's some examples.

Rarity is not meant to denote if something is more powerful, but there are many rare things that are clearly over-tuned for the level they are. I'm sure everyone has seen an example of this. Rarity is 'meant to signal if something might cause a problem in a DM's campaign', but often something is uncommon for no reason other than 'it's a little weird'.

This part makes more sense when you realise the main purpose of rarity is to ensure all the AP player content made on punishingly tight deadlines by a mix of freelancers and scenario writers with mediocre grasp on core balance can immediately be ignored by most GMs. These are the options by far the most likely to be unbalanced in either direction because they don't get the attention big books do (which didn't stop LO: Firebrands, bubt well) and also pollute the database witha lot of junk. And conveniently, because they're restricted to an AP, saying they're uncommon makes sense, in-universe (because a lot of people need in universe reasons to prune their local table).

Now, it's definitely a mistake to lump together focus spells and core book regional content with them (especially as both are given a feat-based way to bypass, creating confusion). But I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.

(I'm still mad that core book uncommon spells can be accessed by remaster wizard schools, because apparently it's more important for wizards to randomly make games unfun than to be fun to play. Those schools aren't even good!)

Buddy, you are the one talking in anecdotes: "tables exist", "it has happened"... vagueposting much? And nobody is claiming to be oppressed (wtf?)

You are the one arguing that the rarity system exist to "discuss things with official backing" and yet the official society rules has gotten rid of most of it. You can literally rock up a PFS table anywhere in the world, playing any scenario published, with your strawman of a Katana-and-Pistol dual-wielding Kholo Exemplar right now, and nobody would bat an eye and everyone will have a good time. But somehow this is anecdotal? And your alleged snowflake tables getting triggered by a Samurai-coded Paladin aren't? What are we even talking about?

Well... yes? I don't have sweeping data showing it's a problem either, I'm not Paizo, I can only report my observation of tables from D&D and PF games I've heard of or seen. And you were the one to bring up inclusivity and claim that 'all common' is an inclusivity problem, ergo you are saying doing so is oppression. Or 'not inclusive' or whatever, you're assigning a moral fault to that.

PFS tables, I've already established, have their default be the Pathfinder Lodge. All scenarios are already pre-filtered to be ones that do not have a problem with those. This is not the default for all campaigns set in Golarion because needless to say most campaigns in Golarion are not based out of the Pathfinder Lodge, which is a very specific organisation.

Ryangwy wrote:

Uh, actually, there is, because the default play area of Lost Omens has far more longsword wielding paladins than katana wielding exemplars. And the latter requires a discussion on exoticism, xenophobia and realism that the former doesn't (this is why orcs were uncommon premaster and are only common now due to in-universe changes to Golarion societies).

Oof. Is all that baggage anywhere in the rules or are you projecting? Because nowhere in the description of the Katana it says that's somehow more exotic/xenophobic than a Longsword.

Yes, PFS has established that for the Pathfinder society, these options are, in effect, common (except in the rare circumstance where an enemy would Recall Knowledge the player). However, there are in fact many tables for which such a person wandering around in, say, Andoran would draw more attention. In what way? Is this something the player wants? Is this something the other players, who are also part of the group, want?

I can only tell you that those tables exist and that the rarity system was made for them to be able to discuss things with official backing, because 'anything goes even if it makes others upset' is far more of a group killer than 'please don't play a samurai unless the whole group agrees what it means to have a samurai in Andoran'.

And no, it's not about inclusivity. You really, really aren't being oppressed by being told that Kholos and firearms are not suited for all campaigns that any given GM may want to tell so ask before showing up with your Kholo Gunslinger. Yes, that is more likely to be an issue than showing up with a leshy ranger. This is something that has happened enough times Paizo knows it. Your table is an anecdote.

In terms of balance, the Necromancer seems pretty solid; I personally think the class is a spellcaster simply because that's the general expectation of a necromancer class. I think it wouldn't be too big a stretch to at least give an option to remove the Necromancer's spell slots and cantrips in exchange for benefits more directly related to their core mechanics.

I do think that necromancers are expected to have access to necromantic spells in the same way summoner do summons, and 2 slot casting is just enough to enable it and give a path to getting more via items and archetypes (summoners could honestly get by with wavecasting because most summon and incarnate spells wanted to be heightened to max) while preserving enough power to enable the actual combat loop they want to do.

I mean that they are also Uncommon for the sake of Recall knowledge for example and this is valuable and this interaction should remain.

That would be quite confusing as there are focus spells granted by uncommoon and rare feats that should be harder to spot (Wronged Monk's Wrath, for instance) and on the flipside Courageous Anthem is Uncommon because it's a focus spell and I'm not telling my players 'well, it's a Bard, you've RK'd him, buuuut that mysterious one action tune he's playing is like, +5DC higher than that, you have no idea what it does'.

There is no reason to treat a player wanting to play a Longsword-wielding Paladin any differently than a player wanting to play a Katana-wielding Exemplar: both fill the same thematic role and use official, 1st party rules - that should be enough. But somehow nobody expects the former to meekly walk into session 0, character sheet in hand, and beg their GM for permission to play their character.

Uh, actually, there is, because the default play area of Lost Omens has far more longsword wielding paladins than katana wielding exemplars. And the latter requires a discussion on exoticism, xenophobia and realism that the former doesn't (this is why orcs were uncommon premaster and are only common now due to in-universe changes to Golarion societies).

Like, if it never comes up at your table, that's nice. But the rarity rules were written in the blood of tables for which it did.

Expert, Master and Legendary in Crafting should also allow you to treat the class DC "some levels lower than your own".

If the Inventor gets a scaling bonus to damage based on the DC they attempt same as Treat Wounds bounded by their highest proficiency, that's also another interesting way to make it scale better than basing it off Int while still making people want to max Int. And lazy people can just take Assurance Crafting and live with worse damage.

It unfortunately means Overdrive is still just 'only' damage and will probably make the 'Overdrive for one turn on failure' null (unless it downgrades it one tier of difficulty?) but that seems like a good idea?

At the very least we should have separate rarity systems for system power (i.e. "this option is more powerful than other options" or "this option may be potentially disruptive for your campaign") and actual rarity (i.e. "members of this group of people have access to this option" and "only a few of this option were ever made").

Can't be that difficult, for a future edition of the game, to just add another tag on top.

Agreed, but that said I do know why they did it that way, because for some people the only reason they can bear with a game making something inaccessible to players is if it matches the lore of the game. A lot of PF2e's slightly inconvenient things are from that, same as runed weapons as part of core progression.

Are we making characters for ourselves or for GM?

It may seem self evident to you but this, and stuff like summons, incap and so on, were built on the corpses of entire PF1e tables that did explode under those issues. They're real problems for many tables and it's just far better to put constraints first and let GMs relax later. A 'limited' player still has a pretty good game of PF2e.

(I say this as a Blood Lords GM whose PCs are 3/4th Tian Xia (and the last is a starlight sentinel vampire on the premise that being a magical girl doesn't expose you to sunlight)

Overdrive isn't even equivalent to other damage martials the higher level you are. Critical Overdrive is an 8 damage bonus at 15th level (assuming full INT investment except for an Apex item) while Fury's considered one of the lower damage instincts with 13 damage at 15th level.

Yeah, Inventor doubles down on the Str to damage sin. It should probably follow the Exemplar formula where it's based on damage dice to scale better.

I think the Inventor needs, for power level purpose, to get Overdrive for one turn on failure (possibly even on crit fail you get the choice of taking damage and getting one turn of overdrive or not getting anything) and for class fantasy purpose it really should cut the damage bonus from base Overdrive and reinvest that power budget into some kind of, I don't know, Overdrive Modification that lets you feel cool about your unique thing.

Squiggit wrote:

Far from the worst class in the game

I wouldn't say it's 'far' from the worst class in the game but there probably are classes (maybe Psychic?) and class archetypes (Bloodrager?) that are worse off.

I'd argue it's the worst class in the game, including class archetypes, for the simple reason it is the only class that runs a substantial chance of not being able to turn on their core role feature without GM interference.

Basically, every class in PF2e and SF2e have one of the following as a core class feature they're expected to have every turn from level 1, so far: extra damage (most martials), offensive action compression (monk and soldier), extra accuracy, reliably cast spells (I'm counting commander, alchemist and kineticist here)

The inventor is the sole class who can fail to activate their extra damage; the thaumaturge and swashbuckler can get theirs even on a failure (and is tied to a useful skill action anyway even in the old times for swash, whereas the inventor gets to be exactly on par with every other damage martial on a success) and their unstable actions will not fill out a whole combat. Even the psychic gets three rounds of casting spells before having to pray to the dice gods.

YuriP wrote:

My only suggestion its that I still think that focus spells doesn't need the rarity tag as general rule. Just like happens to normal spells and catrips and any other game option. By default you already can only pick a focus spell via class feature or feat. Like the same way you need a casting feature the specific declares how much cantrips and spells your character can know and prepare, the focus spells already restrict you. Focus spells already have rules that says that you cannot take them without a feature ou feat that grants them. There's no reason to have a rarity tag for them at all.

They actually do need rarity. In the rarity sense: focus spells are uncommon... because they are. They are not part of spell knowledge of every spellcaster of a select tradition.

I think the issue is Uncommon by default means you could get them as part of regular spell-taking if your GM allows it (note we have rare focus spells) but in this, and only in this case, it actually means 'no, you can never take it unless a feat or feature grants you this spell'. It calls for a kind of 'access-only' trait instead.

Currently, if you want to build a good inventor, you have to work with the innovations they give you, not the innnovations you want. This means the armour inventor is more of a skillbot with rotating resistances, the weapon inventor is BPS reach weapon with maneuver traits and the construct innovator... okay, that actually work, good on them

The exemplar definitely shows they can very well make a build-a-martial class which gets your choice of offensive or defensive boost, though. The exemplar can even get both (with some very careful juggling but eh, you signed up to play that class). That said, the biggest remaster (oracle) to date largely made the class more straightjacketed, not less, and it has a fourth innovation released which it has to work around. It's not very likely, but we can at least hope for it to be a less shitty barbarian

- "Do X instead of releasing more classes" is... I dunno, I guess read the room a bit? Paizo just isn't in a position where they can just toss out their biggest driver of book purchases for the year to go dedicate a book to a handful of non-core classes.

Kineticists are in an interesting position where their identity is tied to their choice of Impulse and gates so much that releasing four new kineticist elements could reasonably be sold as equivalent to a new class.

You may note this is not at all similar to releasing more impulses for existing elements, nor does it do anything for other classes with bespoke power lists.

Regardless of how powerful it is, the Necromancer's core loop is creating thralls then using their bespoke actions and focus spells to blow them up. You may notice that there's not much room in this for casting spells.

If adding more spells makes the Necromancer better, then the Necromancer's core class features need to be buffed desperately, basically. It's cute they get some spells for utility and splashy effects they can share with others but like the Summoner and premaster Oracle, if they feel short on spells the problem isn't the spell slots.

In practise I think the only thing the tag system needs to be 'improved' is:

'Access-only': This is for focus spells, basically, though it's possible it might be usable for things like makeshift staves and the basic alchemist bomb. You get this only through another feature, no if or when. Replaces the Uncommon tag entirely.

'Regional': This is for ancestry weapons, our non-common classes, weird ancestries, firearms and so on. This means 'this is uncommon/rare for aesthetic reasons but we're very sure it's not more powerful or campaign breaking than common options'. Slightly easier to argue with your GM for access to this but still gives GMs the power to say no if they just don't want to see guns.

Everything else can be left as is. Whether it's the teleport spell, undead ancestries or random stuff in APs with zero oversight, all of them need GM discretion anyway, I don't think there's a point cutting it any deeper. GMs who have the experience to distinguish don't need more than the uncommon tag to figure it out, GMs who don't are better off just not touching.

I'm not sure what, precisely, the problem is with GMs just forever being 'common only'. It's been very helpful for my players because they can get into decisin paralysis especially with spells and such so being able to yeet a whole lot of things out is pretty useful. I, as the GM, can then go back and add in specific thingsif the name is catchy or I think they really need this one, but even if I don't, it's still a nice play experience.

OK, except for Wizard schools that give access to spells of higher rarity and LO: Firebrands. Those two can go die in a fire. But those two are also symptoms of underusing, not overusing, rarity, so scrapping rarity is worse

One option that I used was to do pseudo-free-archetype - each sidequest opens up a 'free' archetype slot for one player (I was doing Abomination Vaults mixed with Troubles in Otari, so this meant two sidequests every level for my four player group, and instead of any archetype I had a curated list of Book of the Dead and Abomination Vault's own archetypes only). It's a great way to give horizontal progression without vertical (because they can't get higher level feats than their level) and, if you're worried about officialness, closely matches the School of Thousands own progression system.

I think the animist did an interesting half-change where they essentially gave a level-based focus point growth and rather than giving everyone 3 focus points upright or whatever, that may be an interesting move? It'd alleviate 'wizard can't get their 3rd focus point natively' concerns too, and somewhat throttle taking archetypes specifically for more focus points. You could give archetypes a slower progression and necromancer/psychic a faster one. So long as all f it is phrased 'you have x points at y level' you don't run into the issues we have currently

I do think there is a way to square that circle by setting the appropriate scale: if everything is big and battles are being fought across mountains and wide fields, then it becomes easy to state that you can swim a mile a minute or drop a hill on someone. The problem I think is that Mythic tried to kludge in this epic feeling without altering the underlying scale: for all the florid text in the feats, we're still fundamentally doing the same things, moving at the same pace, and obeying the same balance framework. We're not really operating a cut above most adventurers, we're largely just adventurers who use Hero Points a bit differently. Mythic's design was ultimately too timid to break us from PF2e's balance constraints when that was the system's golden opportunity to let us do so, which I think is one of the reasons why it failed.

Functionally, in D&D, all those mythical foes from tales are... regular monsters with levels. And, for past D&D reasons, so are things like 'picking locks', 'untying ropes' and 'jumping 35ft'. Unfortunately, when killing a hydra, getting out of a really good knot with all limbs tied and jumping twice the Olympic record are considered the same level of difficulty, you do not, in fact, have room to escalate in scale. PF2e already tries with legendary skill feats but... see how that's tied to level?

So mythic is in a weird space where its most extreme feats are hampered twice over, once by D&D's legacy of 'if a regular human can do it the difficulty is set as a regular human' and once by the idea of level progression increasing scale.

(I'm not sure why PF1e did the thing of making mythic a side progression instead of an additional set of levels; I think it somewhat worked for PF1e inasmuch as anything that ties in to power level does, but not for PF2e)

The fundamental problem with mythic is that it's trying to evoke the feeling of, like, Heracles being able to divert an entire river and building a whole-ass mountain in minutes, but also needing to wrestle a dude twice his size to death over the course of those same minutes too, because in the old days those were 'equal' tasks in the minds of people. But we live in the modern, scientific era, and especially in the power scaling nerd space where 'being able to cut lightning' = 'light speed response' and so people start asking questions like 'why can't I build a hill and then drop it on people for mass x acceleration damage in a round if I can build a mountain in minutes' because a mountain is a physical object and not a metaphorical representation of the hero's journey.

And so you have to square being able to swim across a mile long river in a minute with not also having that much speed in combat, and that just breaks down. Or trying to deal with the 'super strike' which belongs in storybooks and not games, let alone cooperative games (see SRW for how games have to try and manage 'sure kill' techniques when players can and will use them wherever)