Squiggit's page

I have one group that gets some decent use out of it, but the other one tends to play a lot of APs fairly straight and has mostly just decided as a group that Stealth isn't a useful skill.

In that respect I don't think you really can quantify the efficacy of the feat, because it's entirely a matter of how much the players and GM want it to matter.

Yeah I would discourage this not because of cheese but because it's just a terrible decision. Utilizing the two-handed trait makes you worse.

The nature of runes will also likely fall into another unfortunate pitfall that impulses do; unlike spells which are constantly being added, we will likely see the runes printed on release and then none for years (maybe a couple niche ones in an ap).

I get the concern but that's not so much a pitfall as just a design feature of the game. Nobody really gets long term support except casters via spells. It's not wrong to say we won't see a steady stream of runes, but we won't see a steady stream of exemplar ikons or inventor modifications or barbarian feats either. So I'm not sure how much sense it makes to frame this as some special problem only runesmiths and kineticists have.

Bluemagetim wrote:

A summon will cause indirect harm.

If you are reaching to this level of abstraction, the class will begin to have basic functionality issues.

Any aid whatsoever they lend to the party would then count as indirect harm.

I disagree that summoning a rampaging fire elemental to kill your enemies is particularly far down the abstraction table here. I'd probably be fine with it, but it's not really that much of a logical jump for a class that's not supposed to use elemental power to harm people.

... It's also a pretty big leap to say that being discouraged from summoning elementals somehow loses basic functionality.

"My anathema says I can't harm people with elemental magic... so I summon a fire elemental to attack" definitely feels like something I can see someone getting side eyes over, and I wouldn't be all that surprised to see a GM calling that a no go.

Remember to look back at the old prohibited schools.

Looking back at depreciated rules that don't count anymore only seems like a way to cause confusion. I think "don't" is better advice than "remember to" because the rules are different now.

I'd caution against that, taking away a chunk of someone's class features is a big deal and shouldn't be something that's too ambiguous about.

Especially in this case where the rule itself has a lot of disagreement over it. Letting someone push their luck on a clearly worded anathema is one thing, but getting a player after the fact over an out of character disagreement on what a rule means feels a little antagonistic.

- Fury Cocktail and Bestial Mutagen, among other comparisons. To me, this illustrates there’s no mechanical divide between food and non-food, and so probably fine to just allow most elixirs.

TBH I get the opposite conclusion here. The fact that food gets its own subheading, we have an archetype that interacts exclusively with food, and that only certain items have food analogs, tells me that the distinction is meant to matter.

If the goal was to let Wandering Chefs make everything but flavored as food, the archetype could just say that.

Because yes, the line between "beverage" and "drinkable medicine" is imo an arbitrary distinction that doesn't really work.

I mean I get where you're coming from but I also imagine you'd get some weird looks if you tried serving someone pepto-bismol when they asked for a drink.

1. What makes the Animalistic Fury Cocktail acceptable as food, but the Bestial Mutagen not acceptable? (Edit: Or, Firefoot Popcorn acceptable, but Energy Mutagen not?) I think any reason besides “flavor text” has to address this satisfactorily.

I don't think it's reasonable to say "besides flavor text" when flavor text is the driving distinction here.

Like that may not be ideal but that's clearly how these items are defined in practice.

It's kind of weird to see people pretending we didn't have literal years of "casters are worthless" discourse predicated along the OP's point of issues with low level play and a lack of experience with the system. Discourse that has somewhat faded as people have gained more knowledge about the system and experienced the game at a wider variety of levels.

Some of the posters in this very thread have been involved in those debates, and in fact have pointed to the way casters mature as they level up in previous discussions.

I think the OP has a reasonable point: Level 1 Pathfinder players wildly differently than the game does at pretty much any other breakpoint. Even level 2 changes a lot of assumptions about the game and by level 5 and up you're in an entirely different world.

Yet lots of new players have washed out because of those very specific low level experiences, or had their entire view of the game defined by them.

We've had each of those discussions so many times it's kind of wild to me to see people arguing that it's not true. Is it just that it's framed as a criticism of the system and people are having a kneejerk reaction to it?

I don't believe it makes sense to treat "after you spark" to mean before you actually perform your transcendence activity. Transcendence is the full text of the ability you activate.

3 seems like the correct answer. The rule limits what spells a creature can cast, but the spell in question is never being cast in the first place, so it's an irrelevant restriction here. It's just a passive ability of the creature.

So the rules say that benefits from crits aren't doubled...which would suggest the answer is no.

But the game seems to treat damage increases differently, like the increased die size from Fatal doesn't shut down double damage for the whole strike (Fatal would be really atrocious if it did) and in this case Unfailing is clearly just modifying the base damage, not adding an extra source like Deadly or the other benefit of Fatal.

So you could try to argue yes on that basis, though I think no is the answer you're more likely to come across (no is also the Foundry automation answer, fwiw).

Basically any encounter with some uncommon crystal adjacent foes is much harder than written

I don't really think you can call it 'harder than written' when it's how the game is designed per every piece of evidence we have.

You can say your version of the game makes resistance less dangerous to these types of builds, but that's different.

What turn? It isn't your turn.

I'm not sure why that's important for answering the core question here. There are lots of "end of your turn" effects that can get applied during someone else's turn, and depending on the specific timing that can radically change how long that ability lasts. When has that ever been a problem?

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

Darth Grall wrote:

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

Either unnerf Multiclass Monk Archetype Flurry or nerf Spirit Warrior's Combined Strikes. Sure it is not as powerful but being able to use a d10 Finesse weapon into a 1d6 Agile Fist is kinda silly and makes MC Monk Flurry of Blows seem silly to nerf when it is a level 10 feat vs a level 2 Dedication ability.

Which by the way 1d10 Finesse weapon into a 1d6 Agile Fist is the same as 1d8 Tiger/Wolf Stance twice with Flurry of Blows.

What d10 finesse weapon is there??? I haven't seen one from Paizo above a d8 or is there something else pumping up the die size?

Whoops I meant D8, I somehow keep thinking Elven Curved Blade is d10 but still level 2 for 1d8 + 1d6 for 8 levels before Flurry of Blows with 1d4 Cooldown, on average that's on average 4-8 more damage if you use Tiger/Wolf stance vs Spirit Warrior Dedication, is it really by level 20. Is the Nerf really needed?

I don't think you can use an elven curved blade with overwhelming combination as it requires 2 hands to wield

Curve Blade is finesse and Overwhelming Combination requires a one-handed or a weapon with finesse or agile. Should be fine.

"until the end of your turn" is pretty self descriptive. I can appreciate why someone might want to change it, but it's clearly not an 'equally valid reading' to just pretend it says something completely different.

As for the effect itself... Yeah, if you use it in this scenario it lasts longer than normal, but that's not really materially different to the way, say, frightened can last much longer or much shorter based on the relative position to the player I'm not sure how much of a problem it is. Abilities with turn based timing having inconsistent durations is an intentional part of the game's design.

Part of it is the magus itself being restrictive, but part of it is just the options not having enough juice on their own.

Ultimately, if you want to introduce feats and options to change how you play a character, then at the end of the road that alternative playstyle should be about as strong (or stronger) than a 'normal' character spending feats to improve their 'normal' style.

... but Resurgent Maelstrom struggles to compete with just normal weapons.

There's this implied gameplay loop of breaking your weapon with Shattering Spellstrike or Turbulent Tide, then augmenting it with Surface Tension to effectively bump you up a couple die sizes (ish) before just wailing away to take advantage of forceful or backstabber/agile. It's a cool idea and plays differently than a standard Magus

but none of the options are strong enough when put together to make it particularly worthwhile, especially considering the cost of resetting your routine, or the fact that this is essentially replacing rather than stacking with your martial gimmick because it wants you to spellstrike less.

Maybe if Shattering scaled better, or Turbulent was good, or the Cascade benefit gave a more direct power spike, or Whirlpool came online earlier (or was even just baseline).

it's just weird and arbitrary.

You could make the same sort of argument about a Rogue who wants to use a halberd, a barbarian or thaumaturge who wishes they could effectively wield a bow, or a swashbuckler who wants a greatsword.

It's all arbitrary. Game design is like 40% arbitrary decision making. I'm not seeing why the Fighter in particular deserves this extra special consideration and desperately needs a change.

Probably. Don't want to risk making them the best option for stacking damage.

I mean you can already kind of do that by just picking a different deity.

The whole point of deadly simplicity is to lessen the sense of mechanical penalty from picking a deity with a weaker weapon. The same logic that applies to clerics and champions works the same for Avengers.

It really feels like an oversight tbh.

-damage up to and including d10s with agile and finesse options and traits galore and a plethora of damage types.

So I want to single this out as I think it's a key problem with the debate.

What you're describing are not unarmed attacks broadly, but a specific monk feat.

Tiger Stance, Dragon Stance, Whatever. Those are very strong attacks.

But most unarmed attacks are not those.

The default unarmed attack is d4 agile finesse unarmed, which puts it a parity/slightly worse than your average simple weapon. Lots of other unarmed attack fit in this same basic profile.

The problem you and Paizo are both making is generalizing the benefits of a specific feat (that you have to spend actions to activate every combat, are mutually exclusive with other stances, and require multiple feats for most characters to take) and generalizing them to a whole category of attack, in such a way that renders a bunch of mechanics needlessly unintuitive and cripples a bunch of character ideas for no benefit.

It's frankly kind of silly.

I'm really trying to think about what the point of having the line about unarmed attacks not being weapons was trying to prevent. I know if PF1 there could have been a lot of shenanigans.

Sometimes it does kind of just feel like a pre-emptive reaction to shenanigans that don't actually exist based on PF1.

The main thing that would happen is that certain abilities that specify weapons would work on unarmed attacks too. Like a ranger could twin takedown with unarmed attacks. Maybe they just really didn't want rangers to punch people.

The other thought is that maybe it's a defensive decision against the fact that monk unarmed stances are somewhat high budget compared to weapon and break normal rules (like d8 agile or d10 that's not 2handed). But that feels like a crummy justification for warping the entire rules system and shafting so many builds.

... It's really kind of awkward for Avengers because unarmed attacks can be a deity's favored weapon, but aren't a weapon, and the text for the avenger sometimes uses the latter term as a shortening of the former.

Mangaholic13 wrote:

You know, considering how good Rival Academies is...

I think I'd like to see a martial equivalent.

Something adding a bit more lore to the Aldori Swordschools, Houses of Perfection, gladiator schools, and other places where those interested in the fighting arts go to seek training.

Feels like it could be interesting, considering Battlecry is coming soon.

Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords vibes. That was such a fun book.

This is definitely a neat concept. We have all these schools of martial combat in Golarian dn most of them don't get a lot of attention.

I always thought PF2 lent itself really well to Bo9S style content given feats and feat actions being so integral to the game. From the very first book we had things like Sudden Charge and Power Attack that showed Paizo was willing to give classes unique actions that combined action economy or altered rules, it only felt natural that as the game developed it might build on that foundation.

... but barring the Kineticist and a little bit of the Inventor, Paizo's never seemed more inclined to give us anything more adventurous than that. Even classes I thought would be shoe-ins for getting unique feat actions like Thaumaturges or Magi don't really have much.

Would absolutely love a book that explores some of that space more.

That's not an answer, and the fighter being more generic than its specific alternatives is the point, not a problem.

BigHatMarisa wrote:

I wouldn't go so far as to say the Fighter's "main gimmick" is to crit like crazy. That's not the stated goal of Fighter's design - it's a knock-on effect of their actual main gimmick (the 960 gp worth of accuracy they start with) being tied (intentionally) to the same system that governs hits and crits.

One issue I keep seeing is how "being good with every weapon" doesn't bring you more advantages.

Like I said, if the Fighter could swap crit effects from one group to another, without having to carry multiple weapons or a Shifting Rune, that would be welcomed. Dude, imagine if the Fighter could ADD weapon traits to weapons with feats. That would also be a good thing.

Essentially, "spear training" should reflect on "polearm training", "sword training" should reflect on "knife training", "hammer training" should reflect on "club training", and so on. THAT's what the Fighter is currently missing. THAT's the "weapon versatility" that should be added.

Most characters carry a melee weapon, a ranged weapon and a small back-up weapon. Carrying more seems pointless. You guys argue that a "golf bag" is required. There's the problem: a Fighter's "one signature weapon" should equal to many.

For instance, a Fighter should be able to deal Piercing damage with every Sword weapon, as not all of them have "Versatile P".

What would you take away from what's already one of the best classes in the game for the pile of extra features you want to give them?

I hope Rival Academies does well and encourages Paizo to look more at themed books that cover a certain concept or institution across a wide region.

Like Rival Academies is sort of Schools of Golarion, so in that direction I'd really like to see.. Restaurants of Golarion/Golarion Cookbook... Museums of Golarion... Ruins of Golarion.

tbh I think a ruins of golarion/archaeology book could go really hard as a combination of dungeon crawling hooks, exploring ancient mysteries, and maybe a bit on the institutions that support these things.

As for more traditional LO content. Vudra, the impossible kingdoms, the place that's been hinted at and vagueposted about for years and seems so ripe for a huge expansion and deep dive. Though I'm also realistic about the fact that it's probably low on the list and one of the most likely regions to just not get a PF2 book at all.

I'd like to see a planar book that explores other planes. I really liked Rage of Elements and would love to see a companion book. I don't think you could do 'the rest of the planes' in one book, but a book focused on the transitive and energy planes or an outer sphere book could be great. Tho with how much divine content we've had lately I think an outer sphere book might be a harder sell.

Transitive plane book with void/aether kineticists, and a new class tied to the first world or shadow plane? IDK sounds cool.

Like the Mythic rules were something they could have playtested, but so are the rules for guns.

One of those works as an entirely new subsystem meant to fundamentally change the tone of the campaign and the other are normal weapons so I'm not sure those elements are really on the same level (though the fact that guns in pf2 are also kind of a flop maybe makes it even worse).

While we intend to keep the necromancer firmly as a spellcaster rather than pushing it to “gish” territory, we will be looking into ways to make the occasional scythe attack more engaging.

Excited to hear this. Melee necromancer stuff seems kinda fun, if troubled in the playtest.

... Remember the necromancer is godawful at melee, not only are they full casters but they're already designed to spend MAP on attacks. So there's room to make internal melee support kind of strong and still end up with it not being very good or problematic overall.

Squiggit wrote:

Trip.H wrote:

Rahadoum being a fascist theocratic state would be unacceptable because it's putting the (downright cartoonish) evils of that nation at the blame of a real minority group's unique beliefs.

Rahadoum's dogma doesn't really map to any real world minority group though.

He is claiming that the minority is atheism and that it maps to and that this is anti-atheist propaganda like evanglical christians would say that atheists are atheists just because they hate the Christian God.

But a key tenent of the Laws of Mortality is that gods are real, but represent an alien threat to the mortal world.

While I know in some extraterrestrial groups the idea that religion is misinterpreted alien contact exists, that's still not a great fit and definitely not broadly applicable.

The Laws of Mortality are also highly dogmatic and contain their own core commandments. Atheism, not as a rule but generally speaking, tends to be individualistic and rejects organized dogma. Arguably rejecting organized dogma is the whole point, moreso than just the rejection of the divine (in fact it's not even uncommon for atheists to sometimes hold onto a couple of supernatural or quasi-spiritual beliefs).

Fundamentally, the Law of Mortality is an organized religion. It's even codified in the game as one, with edicts and anethema and favored skills. You can lose your Law of Mortality granted powers if you stray from the faith!

The only connection to atheism here is holding a negative view of the concept of god, but even there there are radical differences in both theory and praxis, which makes it remarkably tenuous outside the most surface level of connections.

I guess you could draw stronger parallels to like... edgy mid 2000s 4chan misotheism, but I don't know why you'd tie yourself to that belief system or try to paint it as representative of nonbelief more broadly, because it clearly isn't.

Rahadoum being a fascist theocratic state would be unacceptable because it's putting the (downright cartoonish) evils of that nation at the blame of a real minority group's unique beliefs.

Rahadoum's dogma doesn't really map to any real world minority group though.

But this is a clear case of "you haven't done a crime or anything, we just want to understand what's happening and make sure you're not contagious."

"the rest of Rahadoum believes these people are criminals akin to clerics of any faith, regardless of the involuntary nature of this divine power" does not really read like "we're only locking you up for your own good while we figure out what to do" (which still isn't really a great stance).

It always seems like whenever a fiction setting has a group of hyper-atheists there's some contingent of players that aggressively latch onto them like this.

because that is a crazy bad writing idea to publish.

Between this and your stuff on pharasma earlier I think it's safer to say that you have some very particular opinions about how certain things should be portrayed and ran and this happens to be a writing choice that runs counter to how you think the world should be presented.

But that's not the same thing as "Crazy bad" or even "not good" really. It's just a thing.

I mean war of immortals outright states that a significant portion, if not outright majority, of Rahadoum supports the mass incarceration of people altered by the Godsrain because anything divine is inherently criminal.

Alahazra's story is not some uniquely negative take on Rahadoum it's their bread and butter. If there's any outlier it's probably that her parents didn't hand her over to the pure legion themselves.

These are not the hyper enlightened atheists living in a rational utopia that some people on the internet really want to project on them.

You're missing it a bit. No one is having trouble parsing that sentence. If it was the only bit of lore there'd be no issue, because it's relatively straight forward.

The trouble is that numerous other sources tell us that Rahadoum does take issue with divine magic more broadly, and not merely just theism.

So it's only really squaring the circle by just not addressing the actual contradictions.

I don't think this is a case of a change in the lore - for one, it was only ~6 months between releases, so their development was happening at the same time.

That's not much shorter than how long it took them to redesign Anadi. So I'm not sure that's necessarily wholly indicative on its own.

The general edicts and anathema of the Laws of Mortality can be to challenge religious power and to resist religious aid, and Rahadoum can allow specific non-deific faiths to operate in their borders.

I think the hangup is less about the green faith and more about their stance on divine magic. The LOWG piece says they don't have a stance on non-theistic divine magic, but their anathema references divine aid broadly, mortal healing stops functioning in the presence of divine magic, and it's even been established in other discussions that post-WoI Rahadoum is struggling to reform its stance on divine energy and issuing new proclamations protecting people unwillingly infused with divine energy in the wake of the godsrain forcibly creating swaths of new nephilim/sorcerers/oracles/exemplars. It doesn't really make sense that they need to change their official position on those things if that was already the case.

It's not a big deal but the statement in the LOWG does feel like it kind of contradicts everything else. So I'm inclined to think it might be in error.

Agree, and I think they'd dislike Divine magic even from non-religious casters, i.e. atheist Sorcerers.

100% Their anathema even says "divine or religious" aid is off limits. So divine sorcerers or exemplars or nephilims casting innate spells whose power is imbued into their being, or oracles who potentially might be acting contrary to the divine order entirely are still on the s%!% list.

For that they would need some divine-meter.

It seems like whatever supernatural force empowers the laws of morality does, to some extent.

The medical training you receive with the Mortal Healing feat physically stops working if there's a lingering presence of any kind of divine magic on the target, and if you ever stop being an atheist you lose the benefits of that training altogether until you repent.

So clearly there's some sort of metaphysical divine sense involved.

The average person might not be able to discern at a glance but clearly there is some kind of mechanism at play that makes it relevant, or at least something to be on guard from.

Wizards haven’t got any new Wizard-specific content in the last 6/7 books, be they rules or LO. (There was an AP with a new school however! )

I haven’t seen Rivals yet, but Wizards have long overdue some actual content.

A lack of actual class feats is just sad to see. It’s hard to think of a book more perfect to drop a handful of new feats for specific things.

With Monks in SoM, Barbarians in RoE, Druids in Dark Archive, Barbarians again in WoI

It's pretty clear imo that the next batch of wizard feats goes in battlecry.

Why not both?

You can ask for a new Psychic CM without having to also say another class shouldn't get something. Both are thematically reasonable.

Do you mean in terms of playing one? Look at your lessons and maybe consider talking to your GM about retraining your patron if you're unhappy with how you're playing. It's one of your main decisions and patron balance is very haphazard.

If you're talking about houserules, I think the class really needs a way to get at least a second hex cantrip. It's basically the cornerstone of your class but also writes you into a corner pretty badly since you only ever get the one.

Are you playing a Remastered Witch or a Premaster? The Witch got a lot more unique and stand-outish in the remaster, so if you aren’t using the remaster, I would look into that!

The Remaster is nice, but it doesn't really help that much, especially if you're playing one of the many patron themes that doesn't have an amazing familiar ability (and even then, you're basically relying on your GM playing around you to make it work).

Fundamentally it's kind of just a second rate caster by design: it combines a wizard's chassis and spellbook with a druid's spellcasting mechanic. Ostensibly it does this in exchange for having potent focus spells and unique hex cantrips, but those don't carry water by themselves and the class has been largely overshadowed both as a pure spellcaster and as a focus spell expert by modern movements in the game (not that it ever really was exceptional in the first place).

In some ways the remaster made things worse, by polishing but not fixing a number of core options, muddying up the storytelling with the bizarre hex lore rewrite, and while some familiar abilities are okay, the risk and the GM buy-in are really somewhat problematic given both the benefits to the witch and the downsides. In practice familiar abilities are almost bait, or just designed to be a source of animosity if the GM doesn't enable it enough.

There are some genuinely good witch builds, but fundamentally they all tend to rely on finding one specific good thing and centering your whole identity around it, which isn't really a good look for a class.

I get the impression that Paizo sort of expected you to 'make up' for the lack of skills with basic kinesis and utility impulses, but leveraging those is really hit or miss and requires both specific scenarios and a lot of GM buy in that makes it a much more unreliable solution, imo.

No Kineticist feat in Tian Xian Character Guide was questionable though...

Reminded of when everyone thought the spooky mystery book Dark Archive would definitely have cool toys for Investigators but it ended up just having a few druid feats instead.

Or Monks being one of the classes with its own section of new stuff in Secrets of Magic.

It doesn't help that in general Paizo is very reluctant to devote much book space to class specific content in general and the Kineticist is an extremely page-space heavy class to begin with.

that is quintessential rules lawyering.

Is it? Nothing in this discussion is really hinging on some twisted interpretation of the rules or bizarre, fringe interaction or absurd selective literalism. Untrained lore checks is specifically written into the book as a thing you're allowed to do and untrained improvisation does nothing other than give you a bonus to untrained skill checks.

Now we can argue over whether it's a good or bad thing, but acting like people are performing some profane alchemy on the rules text feels like an overreaction. The mechanics are pretty much all right there. There almost isn't another way you could interpret the underlying rules.

I guess the question is how do you gate "which weapons are appropriate for swashbucklers" if not "agile or finesse"?

What if... we don't?

A swashbuckler with a greataxe sounds fun and opens up thematic space that's hard to leverage in PF2 right now, and fundamentally nothing about being a brash and showy fighter really seems to necessitate or require using small weapons in the first place.

So there's basically no reason to make katanas finesse that weren't also reasons to make a longswords finesse.

The trouble with the realism argument is that the finesse trait doesn't really make sense at all from that perspective, both in the idea of a 'zero strength' melee weapon and in the idea that you don't need dexterity to effectively wield heavy arms.

It doesn't help that weapons that historically were valued because they required less raw upper body strength (a number of polearms) basically never get the finesse trait, but smallswords that give you almost no leverage somehow do. Like despite your dismissal up above, a finesse halberd would make more sense than the existing light mace.

In general, the power level of General Feats isn't super high IMO.

Incredible Initiative is a +2 to init.

Toughness is bonus HP and reduced recovery checks (by 1). (I don't personally see many people take this)

Fleet is +5 movement speed.

Canny Accumen increases proficiency in one save or perception.*

*Technically it makes you an expert until level 17 where you become a master. It's good for shoring up your weak save progression.

Those are "good" but good is relative. None of the bonuses are mind blowing.

I think Clever Improviser's "you're untrained proficiency bonus is equal to your level instead of 0" is enough without letting it also get a -5 to DCs for any/every recall knowledge check.

Kind of funny, because my take is that even running it RAW of all the feats mentioned here Untrained Improvisation is one of the weaker ones on that list (ymmv depending on the campaign)

Fleet and Canny Acumen are super nice feats I see multiple times in every game I play and Incredible Initiative isn't that far behind. Even toughness I see not super uncommonly on MAD frontliners.

The most common use case I see UI taken for is either for flavor purposes or when someone is worried about non-team skill actions but lacks skill increases.

... Not that it's bad mind you but because general feats are so premium I see it get crowded out a lot.

The Pathfinder Wizard has little to do with Gandalf at all

TBH one of the weird quirks of the PF/D&D wizard is that it has little to do with anything other than its own history.

There's no wizard in fiction (ironically sometimes even true of explicitly D&D/PF fiction) that resembles the D&D wizard in any way. Even spellcasters from Vance's books, the namesake of Vancian magic, don't actually really resemble the modern D&D/PF wizard in any meaningful way (fwiw the ranger and druid are also kind of in this same space).

The class is just kind of a tangled knot of self-referentialisms that leave it in this very weird and always problematic design space.

There's nothing wrong with something being wholly its own thing disconnected from other references but it is sort of weird that the Wizard spends so much time masquerading as a cornerstone archetype when in reality any attempts to connect it to anything outside its own legacy is an exercise in frustration.

I think this is ambiguous enough that you can't find an interpretation that everyone will agree is "clear RAW" for this.

I don't really agree.

This is a "feels intuitively cheesy" thing like tumbling without tumbling, but there's no RAW issue. I've been thinking about it a lot and there's genuinely nothing at all to support the counter position other than bad vibes. Which is fine. It's not a big deal to house rule and I don't even think it'd be bad to reverse things and make RK trained only just for Lore, but there's no RAW argument here.

The other elephant in the room here is how many layers of GM fiat there are here: GM sets DCs and GM chooses what/how much information to give out (with a little bit of extra player agency for creature identification).. there's no real room to exploit anything here.

Like at its 'worst' what happens is someone may benefit from slightly higher accuracy if I feel like it on checks for me to give them whatever information I feel like they should have. What's supposed to be setting me off here?

Plus like, Int is kind of garbo. If Lore was a wisdom skill I might be more inclined to houserule but eh.

But then I ask, what class isn't like that?

Most of them. Most build defining options generally work at least to an acceptable level. Even 'bad' options tend to either have good alternatives or themselves represent more niche content.

Most classes aren't nearly as limited in option scope either, because the kineticist relies on their feats to define core gameplay more than most other classes.

Both of these mean that bad options or restrictive choice can be way more problematic for the kineticist.

Like the closest analog here is spells, but there are 120 level 2 arcane spells compared to two fourth level air kineticist feats. Clearly the impact of having an ill fitting or problematic option is on an entirely different scale here.

The wizard also doesn't lose access to spells if they decide to take an archetype instead.

To just kind of vaguely handwave the whole thing away as "well everyone has a bad feat or two" is just completely missing the whole point.

it will never end because there will always be a lot of things that someone doesn't like.

Man this is such a nihilistic take. Why even bother because you can probably find someone somewhere who won't like something? That's ridiculous.

Bardic Lore is a single level 1 feat I'm not sure why we're acting like it's some huge investment.

This is why Firework Tech has to say that you recharge your vials like an alchemist, because v vials are an item, which do not spontaneously refill themselves.

Not correct. Firework Tech has to explicitly enable recharging because the Quick Alchemy benefits feature specifically disallows recharging, because otherwise you might have them as that's part of the description of versatile vials.

Nothing wrong with your overall conclusions but if we're going to be this fussy over details might as well be as accurate as possible, because that's a critical piece of information you missed (which is fair, the rules are all over the place and kind of a mess).

But what it does do is tell Logan "wow I can't even talk about how I'd like something to feel in play without someone trying to twist that into a rules argument." And then we wonder why communication is so poor.

So there's some moderately confusingly written rule and when trying to figure out how it works some people look back at developer commentary from before the book was released and try to figure out what the intention might be.

It seems unnecessary to try to insert some malicious intent into that. It's okay for people to just not agree on how an ability should work.

It's fascinating how strong some of the feelings are around this setting. Reading posts with just so much raw contempt for certain fictional background characters is really interesting.

I guess it's a testament to the overall setting itself that people let themselves get that invested.