Sanityfaerie's page

The Raven Black wrote:

I feel we are only missing the Shifter now.

A LOT of people want the inquisitor.

No one has that quote? Am I going mad?

I recall some sort of quote along those lines (very vaguely), but I don't recall the specifics and I certainly don't recall when it was.

I will say that they have class archetypes for "divine rogue" and "divine investigator" coming, and between the two of those and the existing Thaumaturge, I think we basically have Inquisitor covered. Here's hoping they aren't terrible.

I suspect that when they do a "shifter" it'll wind up like the Animist. The general idea of "mostly-martial who shapeshifts as a core part of their effectiveness" is cool and people want it, but the shifter itself was not so great as a class. So... either a druid class archetype that cashes in some of the core spellcasting for buffing up Untamed Form/Untamed Shift further, or a separate class that runs on entirely different mechanics and may well have a different name.

Two weapon fighting doesn't hold up well in most games. Even GURPS needs you to take a bunch of options like Ambidextrous to pull it off.

Yeah... but in GURPS you can stat everythign out in, like, five different ways. So you can do two-weapon fighting through the standard "wield weapon" techniques, or you can make it two identical linked blast attacks that require you to be holding your guns, or you can... you get the idea.

The point is that outside of that kind of game, "I want to dual-wield pistols that are also shortswords" is the kind of thing that usually isn't available at all.

...and lets be real here - the reloading issues are at least partially because the idea of the woman in that picture reloading those things in the middle of a fight is kind of silly on the face of it.

I'm continually frustrated with being inspired by cool pictures only to find the game rules make replicating them more trouble than it's worth. >:(

It might be worth considering what it would take to build that kind of character in other systems. Like, you could manage it reasonably well in GURPS or Champions or something, but in a lot of game systems, the stuff that we find awkward and/or more trouble than it's worth here would be downright impossible.

Still, fair. I've definitely had some wacky character idea wind up at the "We are... so close" point a few different times.

I'm going to guess that the Guardian will be female. The iconic Champion is female. The iconic Barbarian is female. The iconic Soldier over on the SF2 side is female. There's a theme here, and there's a reason behind it. I expect that it will continue.

Yeah... Commander feels like a medium armor proficiency martial - with viable options for a commander based on ranged weapons who'd probably go with light armor. I'd guess that shield block would be available through the class, though it might be a specific class path or as part of a specific lvl 1 class feat.

I assume Palatine Investigator is going to be 2e's version of Inquisitor since they're not going to do an actual class/Archetype called Inquisitor because of the negative connotation that comes with Inquisition and Inquisitor.

Well, the Avenger is probably picking up some of that theme as well.

My read is that they've got Avenger, Palatine Investigator, and Thaumaturge, and if you had an Inquisitor character concept, you can probably fit it reasonably well into one of those... possibly with an archetype or two to handle things like the "good at teamwork" theme.

I look at your party.

- Fighter (sword n' board w/ rogue archetype...plays recklessly and goes down a lot)
- Rogue (thief...but pretty much just rolls RK checks and casts spells, unsure of casting archetype)
- Druid (animal order and blasts a lot, unsure of archetype)
- Bard (marshal archetype, likes phantasmal killer)
- Wizard (skilled player, sneaks and uses subtle spell a lot)
- Sorcerer (fey bloodline, unsure of archetype, fairly skilled, likes mad monkeys)
- (ME) Barbarian (deer instinct, fighter/bastion/monk archetypes for reactive strike, reactive shield, quick shield block, and flurry of blows...I just find the character boring)

I notice...

You've also said that you'd prefer to be a blaster.

So taking yourself off the front line is going to make the fighter that much more likely to go down, and when they do you'll have *no* front line. Also, you're marginalizing the bard's buffign abilities pretty hard at that point.

Now, a party that's all-caster or nearly so, who's all about blasting plus some debuffs and battlefield control to slow the enemy down long enough to be blasted? That can work. Unfortunately, it's not what you have. So... I'd suggest you talk with your fellow players.

One answer is just to have a bunch of you spend some archetype feats and sprout animal companions. Having a front line composed of animal companions isn't amazing, but it should be workable. It's just that it's going to take more than just your own contribution to replace the absolute unit you're pulling off that front line by making the change.

Alternately, having one or two of them decide to switch to martials would probably help.

Your rogue should probably respec into a caster regardless. They play like they're a caster, but having it on a rogue chassis rather than a caster chassis is making them understrength. "Do the thing you're doing, but better" seems like it should be an easy sell?

Your bard's probably going to want to respec too, at least somewhat. If everyone sprouts animal companions then their general plan might still be workable but if not, then the thing they do is about to be pretty meaningless. Possibly they'd be better as a psychic?

As far as I can see, we know almost nothing about the Guardian other than "heavy armor defender martial, has a taunt". So it could be all sorts of things.

That said, it's likely that the Guardian has ways of convincing the enemy to cluster around them... which can synergize well with a class that's all about the area attacks. It's just going to mean looking for ways to make the whole thing a bit more party-friendly. Possibly we'll get an updated version of Backfire Mantle that isn't spell-specific?

I'm also curious about the Envoy/Commander combo. Will there be a way to leverage party-buffers buffing each other's buffs?

So Drifter, Dual-Weapon Reload, and focus on pistols with bayonets and be prepared to pay through the nose for them since this isn't just two weapons' worth of runes but two Blazons of Shared Power as well?

You could conceivably replace one of the blazons with a set of doubling rings, but other than that, yes.

Or ask your GM to use Automatic Bonus Progression.

That would make this a lot more feasible.

You actually don't need two muses because there is no "combo." You either take Lingering to extend your standard composition, or Martial Performance to extend your Fortissimo; they are mutually exclusive. Yes, Martial Performance can work on Lingering Composition, but most encounters are over for that to matter. The argument would make more sense if you utilized a Harmonize while Hasted to keep two different compositions somewhat extended, but that is a whole different animal compared to what the discussion is about.

If Martial Performance is pointless in the face of Lingering Composition, then Lingering Composition's own critical effect is similarly pointless.

Also, Lingering Composition does, at times, fail. So Martial Performance can be useful as a backup there.

They're not anything like as mutually exclusive as you're making them out to be.

I'm prepared to be... cautiously optimistic.

It would be really nice to have the possibility of class archetypes that aren't simply terrible on their face.

We'll see.

Pointless distinction is pointless to make.

Bards making strikes isn't a problem. Basing your spellcasting/buffing efficiency on making strikes is where the problem is, since you can very easily have several rounds where you do nothing but apply a song, whiff, and move or do nothing with your third action, all because your strike rolls are garbage or you're up against a really high AC foe.

I freely acknowledge that my grasp of bard feats is not anything close to encyclopedic. Thank you for the clarification.

As for the problem, you're looking at it wrong. It's more like this:

- In any given turn, you're probably going to want to have a composition up an running. You're a bard. It's kind of the bard "thing".

- For any character who takes Warrior Muse, you're going to want to be making strikes from time to time. Pick a round where you try to take a shot at someone.

--- If you miss, you lose nothing.
--- If you hit, and you haven't extended this play of this composition yet, you get an extra round on it. That's cool.

If it was using Lingering Composition, it goes from 3/4 to 4/5. If it wasn't, it goes from 1 to 2. Either way, it makes life a little easier for you.

So do I use something like the Way of the Pistolero and just attach bayonets to both pistols? Yes, air repeaters make action economy much easier but I'd rather avoid them for the purposes of immersion: Guns & Gears states they're largely an Arcadian invention, which means if you're playing in Alkenstar, you'll have to do a lot of explaining to your GM, either about how you got them or why you're an Arcadian on the other side of the world.

Looking at them, the things she's got are pistols with large, integrated bayonets. There's no transforming involved.

Also, from the looks of things, her pistols are single-shot.

I note that you could take Thaumaturge dedication, and then ammunition thaumaturgy. That would let you reload at least one of your weapons without real trouble... though I wouldn't suggest that kind of shenanigans unless you were Free Archetype, and possibly not even then. This character really does look like one that would benefit from Dual Weapon Warrior, after all.

Things I Like about Paizo.

- I appreciate their overall market strategy. They're playing the FLGS game writ large - pour blessings into the community until people buy your stuff out of gratitude and appreciation and wanting to give back. I appreciate that. It results in a much nicer player experience than... the market strategies of certain other companies.

- I appreciate that they're willing to learn. I appreciate that, when they've made mistakes, they've been willing to actually admit that they made mistakes and then work to fix them and then had those fixes stay fixed. It's as if they actually respect the intelligence of their community as a whole. I appreciate that.

- They put a lot of effort into Doing It Right. I don't know how they do what they do. I have no visibility behind the curtain... but I can see that the things that they produce have real quality, in a number of ways, and I know enough about some of those kinds of quality to know that they are legitimately hard problems that pretty much inherently indicate that someone put in real work to make it all happen.

- I appreciate the position they take on... political matters, shall we say. It's refreshingly no-load. Golarion is really good about enabling all sorts of people to play as adventurers that are like them... but it's not preachy about it. It's just sort of quietly there in a no-big-deal sort of way. We're not here to make each other unhappy about who wants to do what with who or how many of them there are or little details about what shape their body happens to be. We're here to get everyone together and go on a crusade against Tar-Baphon. Come on. Let's focus on what's important.

- I love the engagement. I really do. I love the fact that I can toss ideas and insights out there and the devs can and sometimes do read them and I can feel like I've managed to contribute at least a little in my own small way. I love the whole beta thing - all of it. I love the real, obvious benefits it brings to the final result character classes that wind up available for use.

- I love that Golarion has multiple distinct countries built on structural evil that continue to exist and function and have a place in worldwide geopolitics that isn't just "evil empire trying to take over the world, soon to be wiped out by destined heroes". I love that we have different ones, based on different things, that they don't necessarily all get along, and that, at least at a first-order level, each of them makes sense as something that could endure for a reasonable length of time without collapsing to bizarre demographic impossibilities (Hi, GW!)

I'm just generally in favor of Paizo. I think they're nifty.

Ooh now THAT would be a good one too; it allows for him to have gotten dishonourably fatally attacked without being able to counterattack (which is what I believe they're going for), but WITH him still being able to strike back against his attacker. Like sure their IMMEDIATE goal (killing Gorum) succeeded, but their OVERALL goal (using his essence for their own purpose) failed.

...especially if the Gorum-splosion did some real damage with the backlash.

...although...

Are we absolutely certain that the PCs aren't the ones to do him in?

Doube-post for Great Justice: I really want to think that's Yivali on Arazni's finger, and I think a deity looking after those who are unwillingly undead might actually get some care and consideration from Pharasma and her followers.

I think it's much simpler than that.

Pharasma hates people who create undead.
Arazni hates people who create undead nonconsensually.

That's really more than enough for a fruitful cooperation right there, as long as they stick to the bits that they agree on.

I mean, it might grow past that. It's true. I'm not saying that it couldn't. I'm just saying that it's not necessary.

Plenty of magical swords over the history of fantasy literature have reshaped themselves, and if there's an outright sword-deity, I'd be willing to bet it can embody all sorts of sharp and pointies.

Yeah... but I'm betting that Gorum's sword has pride. It's a deity in its own right, after all. It could... but it won't.

Is anyone suggesting that they intend to take this feat without warrior muse? Nethys seems to be suggesting that warrior muse is a requirement here.

But, really, if you're talking about this feat and then complaining that it means that you have to make strikes, you're looking at it wrong. The point of this feat is that it's for bards who already want to make strikes. If you are not already a bard who wants this thing, then this feat is not for you. If you are already that kind of bard, then it's a nice little action efficiency booster on the martial strikes you were already going to make.

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Pronate11 wrote:

I'm just going to say, they revealed a living sword deity, and it looks oddly close to Gorum's sword....

Gorum: (dies)

Gorum's Sword: (ascends to godhood from long association and godsblood)
Gorum's Sword: Revenge!
Arazni: Oh, hi there. Aren't you a cutie?

GS: "Sorry, dear, you're not my type. Unless you want to spec over to greatswords?"

Arazni: "I could be convinced."

So I'm puzzled. I don't say it's impossible, but as of now I have hard time seeing what they'll do with the Guardian that doesn't end up as being just another Champion (or a superior Champion).

Well... let's come up with some then, shall we? Well talk about Holy Champions, and specifically abtou their defendery aspects. The Unholy ones are... different.

The Champion has legendary skill at heavy armor. That will likely be the same.

The Champion has a lot of divine-flavored set dressing. That's cool and all, and the Guardian *won't* have that, but it's nto core mechanics. A Guardian that's just "Champion with the Divine influence scrubbed off" would be a seriously sad champion.

The Champion has some potions that give extra shield love, and a few even-more-optional options that let you take damage on behalf of your buddies. the first is cool but not fundamental, and the second is pretty lean.

The core of what the Champion brings is the Champion's reaction - a relatively short-ranged (within 3) power that reacts to an enemy damaging your friend, generally reduces damage done, and then does some other random useful thing. They've got that reaction, and then they've got a bunch of ways to buff up that reaction and/or use it more often. So we need to be Not That.

...and we know that we have a taunt.

Now we don't know *much* about the taunt, but the funny thing about a taunt is that it's fundamentally proactive, rather than reactive. It's something that you do before the attack is made, to convince the enemy that they should be attacking you instead. Like, the simplest form of a taunt is an attack vs Will that forces the enemy to not make any attacks that don't include you.

ah... and we know that the Guardian is Martial. That keeps us from getting *too* crazy.

So I'm going to say that the taunt is a one-action activity, based on intimidate. It starts by inflicting a relatively simple penalty on attacking people who aren't the guardian, and goes up from there - each class path adds something special to the taunt, and there are feats that add things to the taunt, and somewhere around level 8 they get a feature where taunts don't expire if you're adjacent to the foe, and around level 12 there's a feat that lets you throw out taunts as an area effect, and once it's fully stacked it's basically a massive debuff on trying to do anything useful with your life other than attacking the guardian, as you are utterly consumed with red rage.

...and then of course there are other feats and/or class features that do things like make taunted foes off-guard to the other members of your party because they're focusing all of their effort on *you*.

The Redeemer Champion gets a reaction to an enemy causing damage that says "you feel super-guilty. Would you like to decide to not attack after all, or face significant penalties?" The Guardian gets a reaction to an enemy taking a swing that says "You're taunted now. Would you like to decide that that attack was against me instead, or face significant penalties?" The Guardian is basically a whirling vortex of "all the hate is coming my way. They might not be a divine class themselves, but they likely will want the aid of a cleric.

That's one idea, at least.

Which is strange actually. The question is what is the primary quality, being alive/dead/undead or being a deity? Does alive/undead even make sense for an immortal and indeterminate entity like a deity? If it really does, deities actually seem to be much closer to mortals.

Right now, there are only a very small number of things we know For Sure about the nature of divinity. From *my* knowledge of those...

- Deities are able to support clerics. This is pretty much definitional. Things that can support clerics are deities and things that can't aren't.
- Deities have basic unaging immortality.
- Deities do not require worshippers. There's no particular evidence that they even get any meaningful resources from acts of worship. Having worshippers is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a deity.
- Deities can be based on almost anything. Gorum certainly wasn't ever a mortal. We've had a fair number of deities that started out as demons (ie, soul-tainted qlippoth). Gozreh is another one for the "not really ever a mortal" side of things. Vildeis started out as a Celestial - a creature that simply emerged from the stuff of the plane of Heaven.

I... think that's it? There might be something in there about having some direct influence over their domains. There might not be. I don't know. Other than that, though? Not a lot.

I'm just going to say, they revealed a living sword deity, and it looks oddly close to Gorum's sword....

Gorum: (dies)

So... the things I perceive.
- the option of using a ranged weapon is very much there.
- It's... kind of a freebie? Like, you fire off the composition, you take your shot, and if it hits, great - you've got another round. If it doesn't, then that's a bit sad, but it's not that big a deal.
- This works that much better with martials who are just dipping bard.
- It *stacks* with lingering composition. If you manage to land any strikes at all while the composition is lingering, then you effectively just upgraded that lingering roll to a crit. That's not terrible.
- You know, sometimes you're going to *fail* that lingering composition roll. This feat helps you out there, too.

So the only real downside on it is if you weren't already planning on making strikes... and if you weren't already planning on making strikes, then you really ought to be picking a different muse.

Now, there's an entirely different question of "if I have this already, do I really need lingering composition?". The answer to that is going to depend on a lot of things - among them how much you value the feat you might save by not taking lingering, and/or how much you value the focus point you might save by not casting it.

I still have no idea when and how Arazni has become a deity. In Tyrant's Grasp, Arazni was not even a demigod, just a powerful mythic character. Now, Tar-Baphon is still a mortal (albeit very powerful), yet Arazni has become a full-fledged deity? Did she touch the Starstone?

Arazni was a goddess even before she was a lich. Then she died, which made her into a dead goddess. Then Geb stole the corpse and raised her from the dead, which made her into an undead goddess. In PF1, she had statblocks both as "deity you can worship and get cleric spells from" and "exceedingly murdery mythic lich". Then Tyrants Grasp happened which mean that she stopped being undead... but was still a goddess.

On the other hand, I hardly see how the Guardian will position itself next to the Champion as they seem to share the very same specialization in the very same way. I hope we won't end up with one replacing the other if they end up too close from each other.

4e had the Warden, Fighter, Paladin, Battlemind, and Swordmage, all of whom filled that same role, more or less, and all of whom did it in distinctly different ways. I don't think it's going to be a problem.

silversarcasm wrote:

Arazni is not still undead and hasn't been for 2e! At the end of 1e the radiant fire severed her connection to her soul cage, freeing her from her lichdom and leading to her ascension to a full goddess!

Oh, so does this mean she has been fully true resurrected? Without any connection to undeath at all?

I'm pretty sure that she has an Undead domain at least, so "without any connection" is probably not accurate. She certainly is going to have a decent number of undead followers. She herself isn't undead anymore, though, as far as we can tell.

I was thinking about Commander last night. I was thinking about the fact that having a tactics/buff class be specifically prepared stuff was a bit weird. Like, Wizard is a prepared caster, and that makes sense, because a lot of the spells that the wizard is going to bring to the table are of varying levels of effectiveness against varying enemies. The more you know about your upcomign enemies, the better you can pick your spells, right?

But for a leadership/buff class, the important information for picking your powers is who your allies are. So for "prepared martial" to be a concept that really makes sense in the same way, you'd have to have a situation where you might wake up on any given morning with an entirely different *party* to work with.

Oh.

So yeah. That whole "prepared martial" thing is going to be a really big deal for PFS... and that's interesting because it means that the fundamental requirement of "it as to function in PFS" doesnt' require any of a number of other crutches that we might otherwise have come to expect and assume.

...and I think that means that lazylord is suddenly a very real possibility, because if you have the ability to adjust to your party as a daily thing, then you don't need to have anything like as much of your personal effectiveness in the form of the ability to directly inflict damage for yourself.

...which in turn suggests that we might see enough budget freed up that it might not be a slot-martial thing after all - or at least not have to be. (Personally, I'd prefer noslot, but that's me) Interesting stuff, regardless.

Another neat thing is that we maybe get to find out what happens when you have a god that dies but their worshippers don't stop. What does that do? does it do anything? If they go before Pharasma to be judged, how does she deal with that?

When I saw "Triumph of the Tusk" I was excited that I was getting a sequel to Quest for the Frozen Flame. Ah well!

Well...

James Jacobs wrote:

I suppose Curtain Call works best as a sequel to Abomination Vaults.

The oddest pairing is probably Quest for the Frozen Flame, which will be my pitch for finally getting around to doing that one (so you can turn it into an opera!)

You may be in luck.

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Wow. My timing on that last one was just really bad, wasn't it?

At the same time, yes. The Commander is very Warlord. That's cool. More party op more better.

Just for you, because you're cool and I like you, I'll drop one little commander hint ahead of the playtest that will have you theorizing until release day:

If you're a casual fan of TTRPGs, the commander sounds a lot like a warlord (or a marshal, or kind of even some bards, etc.)

The sentence I wanted to use that we decided was a little too technical for a broad audience announcement (and probably legitimately not spicy enough), is that one could fairly describe the commander as a "prepared martial" kind of similar to the way one might talk about a "prepared caster"...

Senpai noticed me!

Uh, er... ahem.

I see. Thank you.

So yeah. The commander is going to have some sort of prepped daily loadout of powers. Interesting. The more interesting question is going to be whether these are also dealing with daily slots. Because i could see it going either way.

So on the one possibility, this is a warlord-type who preps a playbook each day of the things that they're able to do, and can then do those things throughout the day.

The other possibility is that we have the "martial caster" idea, where you're filling and expending daily slots like a caster, but it's entirely nonmagical (and involves a lot of passing power effects to your allies). So... sort of like the kineticist in reverse.

Given the description... I think I might be inclined to believe the latter. I'm not sure about this, but the idea of handing out extra actions, reactions, and so forth seemed a bit too strong for something you could just do all day long. Taking care of the rangerblender's mobiity issues and also letting your big beefy barbarian get another large hit or two and also... you get the idea. It seemed like it might be a bit much. If they were effectively tactics-as-slot-spells, that would be a lot more in line with expected power levels.

It also occurs to me... nothing said that the Commander was going to be a martial-exclusive buff class. Especially if they actually are using slot tactics, there's a lot of space for buffs and assists on the more caster-inclined characters as well.

Oh, and if they're a prepared martial, one way or the other, they almost have to be int-primary.

Wow. My timing on that last one was just really bad, wasn't it?

At the same time, yes. The Commander is very Warlord. That's cool. More party op more better.

"a desperate quest to prevent the greatest threat Golarion has ever known from escaping an ancient prison"

Oh. Hi, Rovagug.

I actually kind of like that aout Golarion. Like, in a lot of other fantasy universes, that would be teasing some new dreadful Sealed Evil In A Can. Here? It's just really obviously Rovagug.

Hold up. I just realized... we don't know for certain that the Commander is the PF2 Warlord. What if it's the Martial Summoner instead?

Or heck - what if it's both? Your main character doesn't have much in the way of ability to deal direct damage, but they do have an array of non-spell buffing abilities, and then you have a second eidolon-but-not character who actually does the face-smashing? We have been asking for a Martial Summoner, after all...

Granted I'd also love to fight the Blackfire Adepts, but it's easier to imagine adventures where the Riftwardens appear more easily than the Blackfire Adepts, I think because I'm not super clear on what the Blackfire Adepts' end goals or motivations are; I just think their ability to summon stuff and fling around blackfire is super cool.

It seems like the Blackfire Adepts are... mostly just apocalyptic nihilists? They've got "evil and crazy in bad ways" and not much more than that. They're the sort of people who worship Rovagug. The only thing that sets them apart is their methods.

So, if you want to fit them into a campaign... well, start with a nice, standard apocalyptic nihilist start. Like... Andoran. Andoran used to have nobles, right? Fairly unpleasant ones? And then suddenly it didn't. So now we have a nice little spot for third-generation Andoran noble expatriates who've been raised on the idea that the land and peasants and slaves that were rightfully theirs were stolen from them. Oh, and ready access to tomes of evil magic, too - they manged to take most of the Forbidden Library with them when they fled.

So now this kid is a seething mass of resentment that hates the world in general and Andoran in particular, and this one particular city in Aondoran most especially, because he heard stories about how their family was rightful rulers and it was great and then their people betrayed them. So really what he wants, more than anything, is to Make Them Pay. Well, the people who actually did the "betraying" are probably all dead by now or something, but killing off their descendants should do the trick, right? Anyway, the kid decides that this is the generation when the family Gets Their Revenge, and he's the one that's going to do it. So, like any self-respecting ex-noble of Cheliaxan derivation who needs power, the first step is to go around making deals with extradimensional entities. You start with Grandfather Asmodeus, and work your way down from there.

Somewhere along the way while he's trading for power, one of the entities he's dealing with puts him in contact with a member of the Blackfire Adepts. The Blackfire Adept, in turn, manages to convince him that, hey, causing the city to simply cease to exist in a Horrible Dimensional Shredding Incident would be a great way to get his revenge. The Adept then happily hooks him up with some pertinent rituals and a few more contacts (also Adepts) and sends him on his way.

Now we fast-forward to about a decade later. You have this guy, along with whichever minions he's managed to acquire by whatever means (payment, will-binding, lies and trickery, good old-fashioned charisma... whatever). He's actively working to set up a ritual to try to catastrophically rend the wall between realities in the vicinity of this particular smallish Andoran city (or town, or largish city, depending on your level range). He has powers and resources that he got from years of trading favors with Horrible Things and many, many long nights of studying forbidden tomes. He knows a lot of dimensional magic. The party's job at this point... well, honestly, you can probably write the rest of this story just fine without my help.

There you go. One ready-made adventure starring a reasonably coherent Blackfire Adept, and nary a Riftwarden in sight. Bonus points for the party if they figure out that he's telling each of his minions different lies and manage to turn one or two of them. Hopefully they don't try to turn the one that's actually a demon in disguise.

I'm really hoping Paizo changes up their class design philosophy. So far, 90% of classes have basically been variations of "generic martial class template" or "generic caster class template". It's all so samey and so dull.

Kineticist broke that trend and I'm hoping Paizo gets creative like that moving forward. That doesn't mean I want them to make a "generic kineticist template" and print 10 more classes just like it. I want new, creative, and different.

Right now, it's hard to get excited about any new classes when I know it's just going to be the same template being used over and over again.

I think you have maybe not been paying close enough attention.

- SoM introduced two wave casters - a new way of doign thigns that was a hybrid between the two.
- Meanwhile, Guns and Gears gave us the Inventor, who's notable for being a martial with a bunch of built-in two-action powers that function more or less like personal spells.
- Dark Archive gave us the Thaumaturge (a martial with implements that are clearly magical and also clearly not spells) and Psychic (a caster who cashes in a bunch of their spell slots for an interesting collection of other abilities,a nd who uses focus points in a new way)
- RoE then gave us the Kineticist. Enough said there.
- The upcoming book is giving us the Animist (a caster who actually has two different pools of spell slots, and gets a lot of their power from their weird little channeling mechanic) and the Exemplar (a martial who's getting a large chunk of their power from their ability to throw around little personal miracles, with an entirely new spark-passing mechanic driving the character's tactical economy.

Every step we go, it gets weirder. Now, the thing you say is true. Technically, there's still a martial chassis or a caster chassis (or both) under every class other than kineticist and alchemist. Practically speaking, though, they started out with the available martials all being pretty tight variations on one theme, and the available casters all being pretty tight variations on a different theme, and they've been branching out from there pretty aggressively ever since. Like, if you're looking at the Exemplar and thinking "oh, it's just another martial like all the others" then you really aren't understanding what's going on.

Mysterious Stranger in Fallout? He's a **Guardian** angel with a ranged weapon in light armor. Waiting for the moment to save you with a well-timed reactive bullet.

Chance are it won't happen because it seems Heavy Armor IS the thing about this class.

I feel like the thing that you want is a completely different class from the one that's actually on offer. So... what is this strange new class that you want?

Yeah, a Light Armor Guardian would be awesome and would be a good candidate for a ranged-based Guardian as well as long as they can make it distinct from the SF2e Soldier.

I dunno. "Light armor with ranged weapon" really doesn't feel particularly "Guardian" to me.

Think about it. Champions only punish with damage, conditions, or allowing allies to get away. They don't really get in the way of the blow.

Might I introduce you to Champion's Sacrifice and Shield of Grace?

I'm going to guess that Guardian gets access to Shield Warden at level 6. I'm going to further guess that there's some sort of interesting follow-on feat there as well (or other form of expansion) that's Guardian-specific.

It wouldn't surprise me for Guardian to poach a bit of other stuff from Bastion and/or Sentinel, too.

You are turning the question into a non-question. In a party without casters I'd play a caster and in a party without martials I'd play a martial. But that's not my question. I can rephrase it as: In a balanced party where every need is covered, would you play a caster or a martial from an optimization point of view?

If everyone else has their characters more or less set, and all of the basic needs of the party are covered, I'm looking at synergies and strategies.

(Well, okay. For me personally, I'm probably playing a kineticist, because is me, and even if not, I'm not playing a caster, because daily resources make me break out in hives, but that's more about personal issues than optimizing on effectiveness. The effectiveness thing to do at that point is go hunting for party op synergies - which could easily be either martial or caster.)

So... both of these things are things that people have been asking after for a while.

- A legendary proficiency heavy armor tank who *isn't* magical.

- A full martial buffing class.

...and Paizo has shown themselves willing to pander to the players on things like this... carefully. (Yay pandering! I love being pandered to. The carefulness also has its advantages.)

So here's my guesses.

- Guardian will not be inherently magical. It will be possible to build a fully functional, satisfying Guardian without any kind of magic at all.
Guardian may or may not offer viable magic options. I can't say on that one one way or the other.

- It will be possible to build a Guardian that's fully competitive with purpose-built Champions in both "tanky" and "sticky"... by whatever means. This, also, will not require magic.

- If this book comes and goes and we don't have any way to use focus points to power abilities that aren't spells, we're never getting it. This is the perfect place to put such a thing.

- The Commander is going to be the closest we ever get to the old 4e warlord power of handing your attack to someone else so that they can smite the enemy with it. I'm not sure how close that's going to get, but whatever it is, that'll be the hard limit. No one else is getting closer.

The thing I can't help but notice, though, is in where the weirdness comes in. Like, the paizo devs have been getting more and more flexible with the system as they come to understand it better and better. Well, by the time this thing comes out, they're going to be capable of some pretty significant stretching away from that baseline... and the fundamental class concepts don't *need* it. The core concept of a Guardian is simpler than that of a Champion. The core concept of a Commander could be satisfied with something no more complicated than a Bard. At the same time, I don't expect them to turn out a couple of classes that could have showed up in Player Core 1. It would be a waste on multiple levels. I expect it wouldn't be as much fun for them, and I know it wouldn't sell as many books. So they're going to open up these relatively simple core concepts, and they're going to put something interesting inside. I'm curious what that's going to look like.

As far as fallout goes, Gorum himself was at least nominally alined with the forces of good when the battlelines would be drawn, keeping his realm in Elysium as he did. His death is a major power shift in favor of the forces of evil. And while he was certainly a warmonger, he did enforce a certain code of conduct that limited some of the worst excesses of war. If Szuriel, or any feind really, makes a play for his position, conflict on Golarion will get a lot nastier.

Kinda? Except that I'm pretty sure that Arazni's "I've got a little list, and it's full of evil people" is at least as good-aligned as Gorum was. "Not necessarily a *huge* amount, but certainly some."

Nintendogeek01 wrote:

YES IT'S NOT SHELYN!!!

My hats remain safe.

Gorum is just so...generic.

It does sort of feel sort of like a "not with a bang but a whimper" sort of situation, and I mean that with the utmost respect for people who like Gorum.

He's just NOT that interesting of a choice.

On the bright side, he makes the resulting divine ecosystem more interesting.

/*************/

Oh... but we'd heard that there was going to be some disruption in teh Prismatic Ray. None fo them died. ZK isn't dying. None of the other Core 20 are dying... but some of the other deities that aren't core 20 are dying.

Do we need to start worryign for Black Butterfly?

I’m hoping both Torag and Gorum survive as they are not by far though one of my two favored gods.

Okay. Help me out. Why do you like Gorum? What is there to like about him?

Second. Under the 'Third actions' section, you have: A few of them are extremely impactful (Stitched/Spirit Familiar) but they are class dependent. Sadly, my copy of PC1 says both shed spirit and stitching strike are 2a not 1a. So those are not good examples of how a blaster can best use their third action.

If it's a familiar activity, then one caster action would result in two familiar actions, no?

So my main advice for a GM in such a campaign is to target the tree, not the PCs. It has a static AC, and the plant trait makes me think it's a full "creature" so it is not a crit-immune object.

Area-effect powers are also potentially useful here. They're not strikes, so the tree can't stop them, but they'll happily take chunks of tree HP, and the tree itself is both useless when not adjacent to anyone and makes the party generally inclined to cluster up, thus magnifying area-effect effectiveness.

The Raven Black wrote:

Also its power is greatly reduced, to the point of well-balanced IMO, if the tree cannot protect the caster as per RAW AFAICT.

While it's another knob a GM can use at their table, IMO it's pretty clear in the spell's text that the tree creature itself is subject of discussion when it gets to "an ally adjacent to the tree."

Having been part of a rather involved version of this debate, I can tell you... it is not clear.

Tbh I wonder if there ever was a choice in the planning stages. Like on the one hand they could have planned it as, "this is an event where gods and immortals are fighting. We need a god to die in the opening scenes... let's narrow down some choices."

But it could have always been, "hey we have this idea for a story, we've done a lot with this god..what if we did this adventure/event that caps off their story"

Sometimes there are stories where you make multiple characters fit a role, sometimes there are stories that can only be told or only come about because a certain character exists.

Sure. My guess is that this story started out as a part of the Arazni story. It really *does* fit as the next step in her story arc, and we've gotten a fair bit of Arazni tie-in material laying bricks for it. I don't feel like we've really seen anything like the same level of bricklaying for any deity deaths... unless maybe Torag? It's true that it would give a bit of broader context for the otherwise kind of out-of-nowhere Highhelm stuff. Regardless, I get the impression that Arazni's rise is was the driver that got this storyline going, and the fall of one of the others was initially as a way to clear some space.

But yeah, if I'm totally wrong on that one, then the fact that I'm wrong and how I'm wrong is absolutely the kind of stuff I'd want to find out about here.

Impulses are spell-like and sustained casting of spells should leave a character exhausted, and thus unable to keep up exploration activities for more than 10 minutes.

Impulses are magical, but I think it's pushing it a bit to call them "spell-like" and then draw that conclusion. They're fundamentally supposed to be the kind of thing you can keep doing over and over and over again.

Or, to be more precise, I should say that I think it's a reasonable GM ruling to assert that repeated use of impulses can exhaust you, but I think it's a reasonable GM ruling either way. I think it has to be a GM ruling. I don't believe the rules themselves provide any kind of real clarity. I personally would be ruling that it does not exhaust you in that fashion.

This still does not make the reforestation of hundreds of square miles a rapid process, however.

So... any chance we can get a really BIG gun with a professional bonus to diplomacy?

I don't expect Lamashtu because we've gotten pretty clear indicators from Paizo staff that this won't be a case of reducing the overall darkness of the world... and I don't see how you straight-up replace Lamashtu with Arazni and not have that. I mean, there are other reasons, but that's the one that stands out as compelling.

Though... I admit that once the word of who it is drops, I'd really love to hear from the folks who made the decision why they chose the god they did. I totally get why they picked Arazni to exalt, but there are so many kinds of reasons to pick something like "which major deity do we just get rid of?", and I'm really curious which ones they were going off of.

For the immortality ritual... how do they manage to get "no, really, it takes very specific things to kill you" to be at all balanced?

Given that it sounds like they're cracking the seal on "permanent power-ups through ritual magic" in general, how are they balancing them?

Are there any permanent power-up rituals that are *not* rare?

There are also misfortune effects. They won't directly increase the DC, but they can certainly make it more likely that a foe will fail their saves. Admittedly, they're pretty limited, and there's only two of them, but....

- Black Cat Curse (Catfolk ancestry feat 13) lets you once per day force someone to reroll a successful save and take the worse result

- The relic minor gift Whammy is basically a more flexible form of the same thing- still a 1/day hostile reroll, and can be used on saves, but not just saves

Of the two, "get a relic with this specific power" is going to be generally quite a lot less certain than "be a catfolk, get to level 13, and spend a feat"

Worth noting that these effects can apply to any save an enemy passes - not just ones from spells that you yourself cast.