Solarsyphon's page

Cantrips aren't on wands or scrolls because generally speaking cantrips are spells you want to cast many times and a single cast is likely not very valuable.

Staves often have cantrips which cover cantrips for casters. Spell hearts attach to weapons/armor and cover cantrips for marshals.

As for focus spells I don't think there is a rule against them being put on wands or scrolls. It's just not commonly done because many GM's see focus spells as more class specific. You also rarely need to use them for wands because many focus spells are minor modifications to other spells that are often more limited because they are usable more often.

There isn't really an issue in terms of level for each because the level would be set by the wand/scroll. A level 5 scroll with a focus spell would carry a level 5 version of the spells the same as any other spell being up cast. Which is probably poor value for the cost but is the most straight forward interpretation of scrolls /wands and avoids these choices being too powerful for the cost.

I honestly have no clue how reproduction even works in the world of pathfinder let alone inheritance and the evolutionary history of the humanoid species.

I mean they have a platonic elements style system for cosmology and physics so for all I know they have a ancient mythological style of reproduction where the man provides some kind of primal elemental fire that forms a child in the elemental waters of the woman based on the divine spiritual templates and depending on the environment you get different amounts of the other elements with the gods occasionally mixing things in.

It fits just as well our real world understanding of reproduction does.

There definitely could be a common ancestor of any or all of the races but that ancestor is just as likely to be primordial star dust or elemental chaos as it is to be some kind of ordwarfuman.

You can really make it what you want it to be, real world taxonomy will just be what is most familiar for most people

I'd probably prefer a necromancer archetype because the idea of a necromancer covers mechanics tied to a few classes like animist, summoners, clerics and wizards but anything any one class lacks can be accomplished simply with an appropriate spell list.

I think the best option would be something like the elementalist but with a necromantic theme.

The problem with doing it as a wizard school is that it might be hard to distinguish it from the boundary and the mentalist schools that already deal with deception and manipulating life force. It will be a combination of them with little unique thematic connection.

It would work as a setting specific school because then it justifies itself as a feature of the world as opposed to the more abstract types of schools in the general class but it would likely be part of a campaign and or uncommon.

The one problem with it is at 8th rank, as there are no real necromantic arcane spells there: I picked summon elemental herald simply because it's also a spell on the divine list (I specifically wanted all the curriculum spells to also be divine spells), though you could easily go for desiccate instead, or even canticle of everlasting grief if you're feeling adventurous enough to include a non-arcane spell.

I'd probably go with something like summon archmage, dessicate or boil blood. Devour life isn't arcane but would probably be the best pick.

The taunt's narrative can be a simple matter of focus. After all a mean look with demoralize can be so effective as to give a snakes venom glands performance issues.

Drawing focus to yourself with being noisy is realistically going to have allot more impact in combat than a mean look would so should be more than enough to make it harder for an enemy to hit allies by the same penalty.

As for why you would be easier to hit, it could be a myriad of reasons from them having increased animosity against you or it simply being a risky action that put you off guard.

Something interesting is that gods in Tian Xia seem to also be subjectively holy or unholy. For example the followers of Hei Feng can only choose to be holy if they are Tengu.

One thing I wouldn't mind seeing changed is wave casting. I thoroughly enjoy the playstyle and mechanics of the Magus, clunk and all, but my only real gripe is wave casting. You end up with a spell book full of spells that you mostly don't even think about anymore since you only have four slots and studious spells. I use cantrips exclusively with Spellstrike because spell slots are just way too valuable to me to blow on a bit of extra dmg. I use them for buffs or clutch utility like scouting eye or clairvoyance (Though having Howling Blizzard as a Standby Spell was solid). Along with archetyping, the ways to get spell slots are through items such as the Spellstriker Staff (staves in general), scrolls, Ring of wizardry, Grimoire, tattoo, etc. I know these items are supposed to alleviate this issue, but getting to keep a single spell slot per level under your 'wave' would go a long way I think.

Yeah I agree that spell book casting and wave casting aren't very synergistic.

There's a few solutions. One is dropping wave casting a little for lower level slots but I wonder if it would be better to simply drop wave casting entirely then. Another would be having a kind of wave spells known where the casters entire spell list scales with level as well. Finally they could add a way to make all spells scale for example by using something like the wizard feat spell combination.

I think a decent rule would be that a wave caster can choose to replace any spell known that does not scale to a level for which they have a slot with one that does in addition to new spells learnt. Call the rule evolving spells or something.

I'd also love to see the magus get spell combination as a feat option. It just synergises with the magus so well and the class talks so much about hybrid studies ect... that hybrid spells would fit right in.

Hear me out, I can explain this.

We know that magical teleportation is accomplished by going through the Astral or Ethereal plane to move to the destination, which I assume what happens is that you actually move that direction within the Ethereal Plane in a split second and then shift back to the Universe. If this assumption is correct, does it mean the Ethereal Plane could be used as a sort of hyperspace to (assuming you are godly wizard beyond the limits of the system I guess) teleport yourself to other places in the galaxy? Assuming the wizard is somehow familiar with the destination of course.

Maybe? I'm not really sure how the ethereal plane works

either
a) the ethereal plane some how provides a shorter path giving a higher velocity without a higher speed
b) the physics in the material plane are different such that higher speeds of movement are more easily achievable resulting in a higher velocity.

I lean towards the latter because the ethereal plane lacks things like gravity and seems to mirror the material plane. So we know to come degree the ethereal plane works differently and can at least seem to have the same distances as the material plane.

That said the ethereal plane at least has some odd qualities in terms of space for example the existence of places that don't exist on any other plane. So the answer may be a little of both .

A third option is simply that all physics is different and no work around for the speed of light is needed.

The schools seem pretty complete to me. I think all they need is the ability to choose from a couple of focus spells to give them just a touch more flexibility and they'll cover all of the suggestions here. I actually genuinely struggle to come up with something that doesn't significantly step on the toes of the other schools.

The only unique school I can think of is an ecological school about understanding thew world around them and that's probably a good way to bring in things like the elementalist archetype.

I feel like "necromancy" never really was one school of magic in any RPG.

There was "raise the dead and use them as pawns" which I think is covered better by the school of the boundary than it was by the PF2 necromancer. It probably isn't enough for folks who wanted the "army of undead minions: but that was never going to be a wizard class in PF2. It is an NPC class that requires rituals, narrative manipulation, and massive level imbalances to be a functional game element. Like you actually can do it as a PC, but you will only ever be a threat to enemies much lower level than you with your armies of undead...which actually works really well for all the big NPC necromancers in setting.

What is still missing though is the "I steal your life" necromancer. A school that had a focus spell that did cool things when you had temporary HP, and gave spells like false vitality, vampiric feast, and other less-undeady spells, and more "false life manipulating" type spells that work towards making the caster more tanky and difficult to kill would be a cool school. I don't know if that would be a good fit for the Ustalav school that combines some aspects of necromancy with electricity manipulation spells as well, or it that would make the theme too loose.

I think boundary covers the drain life necromancy and Frankenstein esque electrical necromancy pretty well. If you think of manipulating life force as a boundary many won't cross then the connection to boundaries is obvious.

Spiral of horrors works as well for tanking as it does for summons but you might want to replace fortify summon with a different focus spell for that purpose.

A school devoted to using calculations and arcane formulae to try and divine the future. That or a school dedicated to spying and seeing stuff from far away without being noticed.

I think divination and spying are covered pretty well with ars grammatica. The description makes them sound very focused on writing but if you think about it as generally being interested in communication and information they're an obvious pick for a kind of research spy decoding messages ect... Where as protean form is the master of disguise and mentalist is the grand manipulator.

The focus on writing and wards also easily extends to math

Gorum is the kind of character who is really only motivated to have impact by killing or dieing. They fight for the sake of fighting, has no relationships and is largely a mystery. Now book that subverted that could be very interesting, something like " the lost teachings of gorum" where we find out they were actually quite introspective and wise but that doesn't require them to be alive. For that reason he was an obvious god to kill.

As for how he dies there are really only two ways. Either he drives the conflict in which case he will die by picking a fight he shouldn't have or agency will be taken away from him by him being killed sneakily.

Gorum would be motivated to fight powerful creatures like spawn of rovagug ect ... There is a new one of those coming made from an orc god so that is an option

People who would be motivated to fight Gorum are characters that have a general distaste for the gods which includes rovagug and characters who want to take his mantle. For example an orc and we do know the orcs are getting a new god who has a hero like name.

A decent story would be that an orc god becomes corrupted into a spawn, Gorum dies fighting them but that allows an orc hero to defeat the spawn and in the process ascend to become a new orc god.

The version I have on archives of Nethys says wish spell not wish ritual which would limit it to spell effects and things of similar power. This takes becoming a god off the table but I also think " fulfilled to the letter by the contract devil" means that it would be limited to things a contract devil could accomplish which probably doesn't include divine ascension.

As a result I think if you summoned a contract devil asking to become a god they simply couldn't do it. At most you might be able to convince them to help you make a deal with a more powerful devil or assist you with some other plan you have for power but even arch devils probably aren't going to be able to simply make you a god.

IF you want to become a powerful magical being that could probably be accomplished if the contract devil has the assistance of a tyrant devil but I think a tyrant devil is likely to simply try to kill you and take your soul. If you can some how survive and convince a tyrant devil to make you into a devil then you could become anything up to another tyrant devil but doing so won't be cheap. Based on the legacy stat block it would cost you at least 1024 souls to become a tyrant devil if they charge you at cost and they almost certainly will not. You will be likely paying allot more because they are going to want a significant profit and may be worried about creating a rival.

So this is the process of diabolic ascension to me

1) summon a tyrant devil
2) survive / defeat the tyrant devil
3) sign a contract with the tyrant devil to become a tyrant devil
4) acquire the lemures necessary for the transformation
5) pay your side of the contract
6) die and become a lemure to undergo the transformation into a tyrant devil

Failing this process at any step likely results in you becoming a diabolic servant of the tyrant devil or being destroyed entirely.

I mean, there is magic so anything can happen but I can give you some suggestions of some types of stories that might be compelling.

My first thought is that given that gnolls often worship Lamashtu who i associated wit mutant births that some gnolls may engage in some unorthodox breeding practices to receive her blessing in the form of monstrous hybrid off spring but I doubt that is what you are after.

Werewolves are also magical so that is also an option. This version of a werewolf may have involved some kind of wolf sickness that effected the pregnancy or a spirit that when killed possessed the unborn child.

You can also sue the gnoll rules without the gnoll lore but you will want to avoid feats that draw attention to lore specific aspects of gnolls.

I like the oracle conceptually and lore wise but I don't think it delivers. The introduction seems to describe it as like a wizard cleric whereas the actual mechanics function more like a sorcerer cleric.

I also dislike the lore mystery existing because you have this class that is about mysteries and then one subclass of it which is basically knowledge hence hogs allot of mechanics that should be open to the whole class. Like buffs to recall knowledge.

As for the question of sanctification I really worry the oracle gets too homogenized with the cleric. Being a charisma caster is predisposed to social skills making it predisposed to being a preacher like many clerics already are. It already some what improved in the remaster because the cleric is no longer dependent on charisma for it's font but I think adding sanctification will move it back the other way so more will need to be done to separate them.

I personally would like to see oracle focus on things like summoning and divination because I think they fit the historical idea of a divine mystery seeker or oracle. I'd also like to see them become intelligence casters with charisma divine casting left for something like a preacher class where it makes sense to do things like performance ect..

AestheticDialectic wrote:

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

I don't like that Gouging Claw is even more a mandatory cantrip for Magi.

If I'm playing a Magus, I want to do magic with my SWORD, not a shapeshifted unarmed strike! And casting it through a weapon just seems SILLY! What, your sword shapeshifts into a claw that you swing like a backscratcher with a bad attitude?!

I personally rather use ignition over gouging claw

Really? According to this analysis here ignition is one of the worst damaging cantrip options...

Ignition seems to be balanced as a melee cantrip with ranged as an extra effect. I think the analysis also under values fire damage because resistance is common but fire weakness is also common making it a pretty good thing to have in your back pocket. I don't think the melee ranged versatility is actually useful because players tend to pick one or the other exclusively.

It's honestly kind of weird that melee cantrips seem to do less damage. Needle darts is an average 7.5 while gouging claw is an average 7. Allot of ranged cantrips do an average of 4-5 but they're all multi target so easily do double.

I think either melee ignition and gouging claw need more damage or ranged ignition needs a change like being made a reflex save. Having the versatility of reflex save or ac attack may be worth it's lower damage.

The wizard could take all of the money they saved from not having to learn the spells and use it to scribe scrolls, so I do see it as being powerful as the wizard could have almost any known spell ready at any given time.

Scrolls are not unique to the wizard and for allot of utility spells you are often better off simply buying scrolls and never learning or preparing them due to their relatively rare uses and the cheap cost.

There isn't even a significant decrease in the cost of obtaining the scrolls due to how crafting works.

Spells like water walk, water breathing, earth bind, veil ect... are great problem solvers but are only needed in specific environments or against specific enemy types. As you are unlikely to use them in many campaigns, let alone most days preparing them is often just wasting a slot. As a result they are usually more useful as scrolls and not worth learning. knowing all of the spells wouldn't change that.

breithauptclan wrote:

From the look of it, some classes are getting buffs to bring them up to the power ceiling. Especially classes like Witch and Cleric.

The cleric's a little weird, because in some ways it was already quite strong. Like, yeah, they have buffed it, but it looks like they did that mostly by bringing the floor up on "warpriests" and "clerics who don't use their ancestry to cheese into non-Divine attack spells", rather than augmenting the Cleric as a whole.

Yeah, I'm really more worried about the divine list than I am the cleric because like you said people currently use tricks to escape the divine list and the divine list is often seen as weakness of classes that use it.

I hope they can give it more of a niche in this remaster with the spirit damage change. It would be nice if rather than the divine list just being offensively weak it had a specific role related to attacking the spirit and discriminating between the holy and unholy.

To get back to the topic of remaster witches (I know, how dare I?!? :) ), has anyone come up with clever ways to use the new Coven spell feat? The damage version is trivial and will come up often enough, but the spellshape part seems a bit limited by th low number of spellshape feats available to the witch. And there's few archetypes that give you access to more. I have yet to find something that makes it really stand out (other than the already awesome "use a reaction instead of an action" bit, of course).

The main advantage I see is being able to add metamagic to those big 3 action and two turn spells. There is possibly something in archetyping for example the elementalist could change allies spells elements to trigger weaknesses and add bonus effects but I don't know how effective that would be in practice.

Hopefully there is also more metamagic available to the witch or a follow up feat which adds more uses to this ability. It seems too high level though, I wonder if it's that high just to avoid archetypes getting it because it would actually be fund for other classes to get so you can have a proper coven of 3 casters without everyone having to be witches.

To answer questions:

Sibelius: Yes, the official PFS scenario reduced the DC for all lore skills by 2. Sadly, even though the two animists had access to 6 extra lore skills each, it very rarely came up. Hilariously, the most useful lore skill was Kols Lore that the Gnome had from Gnome Obsession and his background.

Elemental of Cuteness: Yes, he was using that attack on his throwing knife with the returning Rune.

really? They have a pretty broad range as unspecific lores. They cover environments and societal positions like criminal organisations, militaries and knight orders.

I guess the issue is probably just there isn't support for lore checks like an ability that lets you make a lore check or the ability to speck into it by letting you pick intelligence as main stat or using wisdom for lore checks.

The animist won't be better at casting heal/ harm than the cleric. It will have other spells to cast which are probably better instead but I think it's the cleric that needs to be changed in this case. At the moment it's really the heal and harm specialist as opposed to the divine list specialist and that's too inflexible. They have a good selection of feats but many of their feats deal only with these spells. Playing a domain that doesn't relate to heal / harm feels weird for clerics because so much of the class is tied to them.

I'm hoping they expand it and lean into spirit/vitality/void damage and the sanctified feature in the remaster. I'd want things like changing the damage of divine spells to the damage type that matches your deity like the exemplar does, having damage spells ignore allies you bless when those spells are sanctified like selective energy and converting domain spells into divine spells by making some of their damage spirit damage so they can be effected by the clerics feats. I think the point of heal and harm was to get the idea of holy and unholy but the new sanctified system seems allot better to achieve that.

Nothing prevents me from playing a cruel and deeply evil Exemplar who is Holy.

Seems about right to me...

I just don't have a strong association between holy and good.

I could see each Apparition having its own anathema.

I like the idea of using apparitions narratively to give them character and the class has enough flexibility that losing access to an apparition due to anathema is not a big issue. This is especially true if more spirits are to come and you as a dm are happy to replace a spirit with another when one leaves due to circumstance. In that way they probably make allot of sense to have an anathema.

However, it's possible they may be going with the idea of the spirits having personalities instead. For example the steward of stone and fire is "quick to anger and slow to forget" so may not want to help you protect some one who has wronged you or it in the past.

The personality lines along with something in the class description that says something like " an apparition may choose not to help you if what you are doing conflicts with their personality and apparitions you have not prepared may rush to your aid if it suits their interest" would work pretty well.

I'll quote this very recent blog post from Michael Sayre:

Quote:

Will the exemplar get more ikons and epithets? The exemplar will definitely see new ikons post-playtest, and the chances of new epithets are pretty high, though we’re still sifting through data about the degree to which these mechanics are working for folks. The final form that epithets take based on your feedback might have some influence on how many are published in the final product.

The fact that we have only a lightning epithet means that they wanted to playtest something like that; it doesn't mean that they don't plan to add other similar options, especially if such design is well received.

Yeah, I get the sense that they put a range of power for abilities e.g

Peerless under heaven being basically standard martial abilities while the others are more magical and elemental. They're likely looking to what abilities people gravitate to tune the class to match.

IMO the main problem that Exemplar has (besides main character syndrome) is that the class handweaves 90% of your background. While classes often are a recollection of tropes which kinda makes certain kinds of backgrounds more common in certain classes, in the case of the Exemplar itself you are always going to be someone with a god's fragment within you and that's IMO limiting. Not even the Sorcerer is as forced into a single origin as they have multiple power sources that could be empowering them and the reason why they have those powers in the first place also isn't as set on stone. You could be a descedant of X, got empowered by X because you spent a lot of time in a place which was full of X energies, or probably your powers were something that was infused into you through some weird ritual. Exemplar doesn't have this luxury and every single one of them is forced into the same origin story.

The class could function allot of ways. They could lean into the story/ fame aspect or they could lean into the spark of power aspect and make it a fragment of power from any legendary creature.

Allot of legendary monsters are tied to divinity any way and killing a demonic dragon like Sigfried did resulted in a near identical ability to Achilles.

The legends theme is also baked in to the epithets system.

The main reason the idea of str or dex casting comes up is the feat STRIKE RIVERS, SEIZE WINDS it would be a clear progression to have str or dex domain spells then cap them off with that feat but a similar progression could be obtained with other spells. I could see the exemplar having a couple of different feats to get sets of spells themed as feats of skill and they could key off a variety of ability scores.

Why not a trickster feat where you can get charm person or keyed off charisma and a lower level feat keyed off strength.

What I find is that allot of people looking to optimize tend to go strength and dump dex unless the class requires dex for your class dc or they want to prioritize ranged attacks. It's not that high dex and low strength is unviable it's that high strength is always good for martials and dexterity is disposable. It's a combination of athletics being one of the best combat skills, heavy armor having a slight ac advantage, strength offering a slight damage advantage and many of the best weapons are not finesse ( though some of these weapon could use a nerf).

That said most of my exemplars have been dex based for thematic reasons. Chiron because ranged horse boy, Nilbog because stealthy goblin. Currently the mournful epithet enables stealth in melee which is what I used for nilbog but people seem to think that will be nerfed and less reliable after the play test. It wasn't exactly meta but I liked the idea of using mournful and gaze as sharp as steel to hide in melee then get a reactive strike from hidden.

I'm not against dex to dmg option and honestly I don't know why some people are against it. IMO it just works for thiefs so I don't know why this solution cannot be used for other classes (including this is one of main reasons why I prefer rogues over swashbucklers for light melee characters).

I think it's a game balance thing. The idea being to keep strength/ dex balanced by having a clear delineation of their roles but I think the result is just that dex only melee doesn't exist.

Currently its the case that strength can replace dex on some classes through using heavy armor but its not the case that dex can replace strength in any classes.

While it could use a hint as to where his power actually comes from, I think Nahoa's backstory actually illustrates a good point. The entire "you are a god(ling)" part of the class' theme being the default is really unnecessary. If anything, it limits the concept for very little gain. Words like god, demigod and the like have a lot of implications when it comes to power and status that lower levels and most narratives have no reasonable way to accommodate. Let's be honest, how many GM's will happily elevate a player over the others like this and how many will just say you can play one but aren't a demigod?

So instead of keeping the theme as-is and adding that sidebar, why not the other way around? Scrub every mention of godhood from the text and leave your source of power more open. Bestowal by a greater power, overcoming great adversity (such as in Nahoa's backstory as presented in the document), birthright, fate and so on. Basically a (usually) more involved sorcerer who gained great physical prowess instead of magic.
And to keep the possibility of playing an actual demigod in, you add a sidebar to that effect.

I think this would be much more reasonable.

It's kind of odd to me that there is this implication of great power in being related to a god that doesn't seem to carry over to being related to things like dragons, fiends, celestial or fey. Allot of pantheons contain members of those other groups, allot of pathfinder gods are based off those groups and allot of members of those groups are based off historical gods.

The gap is not that big in the sources of these characters. Loki the god isn't even the strongest norse character named loki that has been found in norse myths.

Why can't gods get their arse whooped by the local river spirit and hire adventurers to get their golden idle back?

For some reason the class gives me a image of a Fate's hero (from Fate's games/animes) too (probably because they are based on legends) and there's some sort of heroic figures that are based on high dexterity.

It's because fate as a similar view of hero's where their power comes from feats and legendary objects associated with them. The naming convention is also very similar for the abilities and they reference allot of the same heroes.I wonder if we will get any of the fate memes with exemplar such as archers rarely actually using bows, every swordsmen inexplicably being a blonde haired women and having a guy with a spear every adventure who gets betrayed and dies.

Any way on the topic of dex and strength. Exemplar is maybe the class to really mix up weapons and do things like allowing dex to add to damage or do things like wield two handed weapons in one hand or one handed weapons in two hands for extra damage. Part of the class is about making unique legendary ikons so maybe they should also have unique fighting style with unique properties like chuchulain throwing a spear with his foot. The humble strikes ability could also maybe use the ability to add a weapon trait to simple weapon in addition to increasing the damage dice because simple weapons are also often behind in traits as well as damage.

A feat that does something like let you add dex as precision damage instead of strength on a finesse weapon seems like a solid idea. It's also possibly a good idea for the gaze as sharp as steel which needs something to replace it's reactive strike feature that is both redundant and incompatible with the ranged weapons many people will want to use with it.

There are a few ikons I think are missing. For example, an intelligence ikon. Allot of famous heros are known for their strategy and tricks, and many martials have abilities that enable recall knowledge at low level where as the exemplar has it only at high level meaning you have to build for it but gain nothing for a long time.

There are some great myths to pull from like the Fionna and the salmon of knowledge. In that story Fionn burnt his hand on a fire cooking a magic salmon so when he sticks his thumb in his mouth to think he gets god like knowledge bestowed by the fish. It's honestly perfect for an intelligence based body ikon. It would be easy to just make a special lore as the immanence and as a transcendence you gain a defensive bonus against any one you succeed on a recall knowledge on. Intimidation is in a similar situation.

I also think there should be a healing/ support option. There are things to base it off like the Caduceus or the Conga scepter of Mwindo.

I think that thematically the skin should be all 3 bludgeoning, piercing and slashing. Even if it means they have to add it gradually put it in or add a feat for it.

I think extract vow of nonviolence has a similar issue to crash against me and also needs a buff. Vow of non violence could also act as a disarm and give a status penalty to damage as the weapon is frightened. Two actions for what would essentially be the two actions of disarm and demoralize with a charisma flavor and possibly a lower dc.

Disarm could also work for crash against me. If a critical miss while you have transcendence causes an enemy to drop a weapon, making those 3rd attacks with the -10 penalty very risky, potentially a -12 with the other effect of crash against me.

There are a few abilities that revolve around void damage, fire or darkness:

Thorns of mortality is a quintessentially undead ability that does void damage and prevents healing

Eternity incinerating blaze is basically hell fire that deals void damage and inflicts doomed.

Sun wrecker casts darkness on a crit and steals the light from the sun on transcendence

Dominion signifier allows you to deal void or fire damage depending what dominion epithet you chose.

Mournful makes people cry

I could make a a death exemplar by going

Barrow's edge, Mournful, peerless under heaven, thorns of mortality, initiate domain death, advanced domain death, dominion signifier and sun wrecker.

If you're willing to reflavour things you could take stuff like seven colored cosmic bridge which with dominion signifier could do void damage and allow you teleport as an inescapable avatar of death.

It could be a good idea to decouple domain signifier from the dominion epithet and make it a lower level so there can be more choice of elements, earlier on so people can get to their desired style asap

Gortle wrote:

siegfriedliner wrote:

First letting them you wisdom for thier granted lore skills will do a lot to see those skills used.

It is a slippery slope. I'd rather see the role of individual ability scores protected.

I am not to worried their are already wisdom knowledge skills (nature, religion) so this would just be in keeping with the instinctual Vs learned knowledge. Not to mention thaumaturge already went their and wisdom is a lot easier to justify than charisma.

I always thought the thaumaturge should be an intelligence class, it's actually one of the least charisma feeling classes for me. For example both the animist and the exemplar feel closer to a charisma class than the thaumturge because the exemplar is this larger than life personality based on legends and the animist deals with spirits. Both classes could function with charisma as a choice of main stat. Meanwhile, unless the flavor of the thaumaturge is supposed to be that you are so convincing when lying about knowing enemies weaknesses and history that it actually becomes true, I don't think it makes sense. Is it just because the incredible investiture feat requires high charisma and they use items? everybody uses items...

Any way animist makes sense to be wisdom or cha and be able to use which ever it is using for lore. Interpreted as either intuitively feeling the spirit or convincing them to aid you.

Trap finder is maybe being a bit underestimated.Non magical traps can often be auto disabled by avoiding physical triggers like trip lines or allowing traps to trigger safely for example by opening a door but not stepping through immediately. Where as haunts are more like magical traps, they often occupy entire rooms with no physical manifestation and have no real limit on triggering detection isn't as big a bonus to disabling. Additionally spirit walk is also nullified by the presence of any enemies as combat or trying to sneak past an enemy ends the search exploration ability and hence the protection where as trap finder allows you to sneak and still detect traps. It's also worth noting that haunts are relatively rare which makes the feat more situational.

That said it is perhaps a little too passive. There are a few ways to change it and make it better.

One would be that when you detect the haunt you can do a ritual to appease the spirit. This could be a roll like perception or religion and it makes it clearer that spirit walk is not a quite activity. You are chanting prayers and smoking incense

Another way is to instead have it delay reactions by triggering initiative or in other words the party rolls initiative and then the reaction occurs when it gets to the haunts turn. It would turn the surprise attack haunts often get into a regular attack and give the party some time to disable it prior to the trigger similar to how pf1e haunts worked.

Sky bearer's belt is weird because its the only one to give no combat benefit to allies

It doesn't even give the titan wrestler feat that it gives to the wearer which would itself also not be very strong because most allies who are going to wrestle would have that feat.

It could at least have given a status bonus to grapples, trips and shoves.

The class could still function if only the transcendence required cycling the spark. Alternatively you could add a lag so that each immanence lasts two rounds that way cycling could keep all 3 up or have alternative triggers like reactions that let you quickly switch immanence in response to something like being attacked or actions that include sifting immanence like a strike that switches to your weapon ect...

For example as part of divine premonition which gives reflex expert, you could give you the ability to change ikon at the start of your turn or as some other reaction.

Alternatively when you get each of the epithets associated with the different ikons you could gain the ability to switch to that ikon as a reaction when you need it. Body when struck, weapon when attacked, worn at the start of an allies turn (for the aura). It would make the class pretty reaction heavy but that might make the Gaze Ikon a more compelling choice over reactive strike if that Ikon also gave its own reaction for it.

I think the idea is that the apparitions cannot take physical form so they dont get a familiar.

In terms of role play it isn't hard to interact with the spirits as either them talking through you like a spirit medium or just having one sided conversations. Leave talking to familiars to the witch's

The only type of familiar I'd really want to see on the animist is a psychopomp familiar and soul warden would be in the set of archetypes I'd use with the animist in free archetype to maintain the same class vibe. Others are the summoner, exorcist, hallowed necromancer and soul forger ect...

They could include abilities similar to those archetypes and it would be flavorful but they don't need to.

The classic Spartans are usually shown wearing gleaming golden breastplates.

Nah we want the pseudo homoerotic almost naked himbo's of 300. All stat points into abs

On a more serious note I think the main reason to not allow heavy armor is to distinguish it from the champion which is the heavy armored holy warrior. The exemplar is the opposite direction being a lightly armored glass cannon holy warrior.

The way I currently see it, the divine spark basically lets the exemplar gain power the same way a god does, through worship which they gain by building a legend and gaining titles.

At least that's how I interpret this side bar and class advancement being around gaining feats and titles.

"As you complete deeds and grow in power, so too will
your epithets. “Brave Nahoa” might become “Brave Nahoa,
Born of the Bones of the Earth,” before completing his
destiny as “Brave Nahoa, Born of the Bones of the Earth,
Teacher of Heroes.” If you are a GM and one of your PCs
is playing an exemplar, consider speaking with them to
see if there are later epithets they are interested in taking
for their character. If so, you might even place a challenge
or encounter in their way so they can “earn” their epithet
in-story—for example, Nahoa might find himself in an
encounter where he has to dig his way triumphantly from
a cave-in, or fight through a harrowing gauntlet of earth
elementals. This deed could set the stage for him to later
take “Born of the Bones of the Earth” when he reaches the
appropriate level!"

Spirits are not super hard to come up with which I like because you could maybe give them out like items almost and weave them into the story.

Mutterer of foul curses
Curse lore and underworld lore
Gets a bunch of curse spells
Remnants of lingering malice, jealousy or evil magic. They tend to follow people around or hang out in cheerful places being miserable.
They are often spiteful and suspicious of people

Echo in quite theater
Art lore and theater lore
Music based spells and illusions
Tends to hang out in theaters or with great artists. Tends to be bombastic, excitable and performative

If I wanted a status bonus as a fighter I'd probably just get heroism whether it be from a scroll, ally or archetype because then no one would have to sustain it but I can get how a focus point is maybe too cheap for the same effect.

Personally I think that the witness to ancient battles should just lower your spell casting stat by 3 and then let you use your lowered spell attack for strikes. The progression would be similar to what it is now leaving you 1 point behind non fighter martials but it has some benefits including being easier to swap in an out of ancient battles because animist would be less multi attribute dependent. You also wouldn't have to worry about martials getting it because they won't have a spell attack better than their main attack but pretty much any caster could make use of it.

I think maybe gaze as sharp as steel should do something else, currently it gets invalidated by the level 6 reactive strike feat. It could do something like let you ready an action, recall knowledge about a creature or give you an accuracy bonus.

As for spamming the rain ability, there are other ranged transcendence abilities which would be better choices. For example, the THROUGH THE NEEDLE’S EYE ability would be great for a precision character. You are doing a called shot where you aim for the eyes.

Honestly, allot of the existing ikons would work great for unarmed attacks if there was just a feat which made unarmed attacks compatible.

Titan breaker would be great for a strong punch and a big bruiser character like an orc.

Gleaming blade would be great for agile quick attacks with fists so a monk or boxer type of unarmed

Barrows edge would be good for claws and bites

Fated shot would support the races that get an unarmed ranged attack.

Noble branch would be great to to give a kind of mystical strike the spirit vibe

I think it could be a good idea to give them a first level feat but only for things like sanctified soul and twin stars. These feats are really helping define attack style in a way that I don't think warrant creating an entire new weapon ikon for. For example twin stars allows dual wielding weapon ikons and it makes sense to allow the player to dual wield any of the existing weapon ikons. Similarly sanctified soul lets you flavor yourself as holy or unholy. In my opinion you should be able to get to the attack style you want at level 1 and things like dual wielding, damage type, weapon type and unarmed strikes should all be available then if they're going to be available at all. Otherwise you're just making them play something they don't want for a level and giving them a feat tax.

So I'd like to see twin stars and sanctified soul as first level options along with something for elemental damage and unarmed.

I personally think the extreme alignment variant is similar to the idea of having radiant and infernal damage types. For example if both radiant and good damage are limited to celestials and related abilities then they are both functionally celestial damage.

If you wanted to customize it you might assign damage types to major magical factions. Angels, demons, devils, celestial, fey etc... Creatures would be immune to their matching damage but it would effect everything else unless they have some kind of connection. It may not make sense to group all of a faction like fey together so you may exclude them from such grouping or break them into something like light and dark fey.

I also really like the intentions variant. Where alignment is about ideals and the damage dealt depends on somethings relation to those ideals. It works really well with classes that have strong beliefs like paladin or cleric.

Well, you could use spells with no clear sign where they come from like mental effects. If combined with meta magic to hide your casting it could be difficult to tell where the spell comes from so casting may not immediately give you away

You would need to do an impersonation before hand but I would say that your hiding of your spell components probably exists in the context of the impersonation i.e you conceal them by acting like they are something normal for the role you are performing or making them completely none visible. You could also use effects like shift blame.

If this were to happen I would say spell casting even probably concealed counts as interacting for the purpose of a secret perception check by creatures to see through your disguise. So this could be fairly difficult to maintain with your stealth and potentially multiple deception checks needing to hold. They could also take a seek action and get yet another attempt if they really wanted to know where a spell is from.

That's what would be required to simply appears as a non caster for example pretending to be mundane warrior. To appear as a non combatant you'd need an excuse to be hanging around a fight. Perhaps there would be may people around or you may need to spend an entire turn on a lie.

It may be something that could in the future be made into a feat like charlatan but in reverse. That feat could smooth out the process maybe by denying those additional checks from interaction and or tieing this to some clear mechanical benefit. For example hiding a spell as some other action like a stride or step to pretend to run away.

I think you are much better off simply hiding your location as suggested unless the situation particularly calls for it like attacking some one in the middle of a busy town.