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Stux wrote:

Secondly, nothing in the feat says you get to pick the class levels and other build choices of your cohorts or followers.

Actually ultimate campaign says "A cohort is generally considered a player-controlled companion, and therefore you get to decide how the cohort advances. The GM might step in if you make choices that are inappropriate for the cohort, use the cohort as a mechanism for pushing the boundaries of the game rules, or treat the cohort unfairly." and that while followers generally do not need to be statted because of how weak they are, if it does become important it says to use the same guidelines as cohorts in that area.

Fair, though the phrases 'generally' and 'The GM might step in' leaves a lot of interpretation here. You're probably right on the default here, but on the other hand it would not be using a house rule for the GM to make choices for you.

Stux wrote:

Quote:

Thirdly, nothing in the feat says you get to directly control the cohort and followers.

Ultimate Combat says the following on the subject of whether you control "Sentient Companions: A sentient companion (a creature that can understand language and has an Intelligence score of at least 3) is considered your ally and obeys your suggestions and orders to the best of its ability. It won't necessarily blindly follow a suicidal order, but it has your interests at heart and does what it can to keep you alive. Paladin bonded mounts, familiars, and cohorts fall into this category, and are usually player-controlled companions." It does say that GM's can change this in their games, but the default is specifically that players do directly control cohorts.

Fair again, though I would contest that 'direct control' and 'obeys your suggestions and orders to the best of its ability' are not the same thing.

Obeying your orders means you have to give an order, and that the order needs to be heard and interpreted. They may fail their perception to hear the order if they're on the other side of the battle, or they might not follow it in the smartest way if they aren't very intelligent or perceptive.

In most games going through that every combat round would be maddening, so direct control might be given to save the bother.

That all just reinforces my real point in all of this is though: this is a VERY complex feat!

You can do all kinds of silly things with many guns and extra arms and what have you. If that's fun for you then awesome!

Personally, I'd be happy with just using 2 revolvers. 12 shots between them before the reload, so 2 full attacks based on your attack pattern in the OP, with change in the chamber after. Then you can drop one gun and keep going one handed for the rest of the combat to allow you to reload perhaps?

Big advantage of this is having just two guns makes magical enhancement on every shot much more viable!

Of course this assumes your game is allowing Advanced Firearms, but if so you should be able to afford them at level 7.

Leadership is the ultimate "You need to consult your GM" feat.

^This.

It has the potential to be incredibly powerful for a feat, and to be very complicated to book-keep, and to massively slow down combat. Exactly how this is handled will vary massively from group to group.

First up, check your GM and group are ok with using it at all. If they aren't, I would respect that. It is totally out of line with the power and scope of basically any other feat.

Secondly, nothing in the feat says you get to pick the class levels and other build choices of your cohorts or followers. It says you attract them, and that cohorts 'typically' have class levels. A lot of players work under the assumption that you get to build your cohort, but your GM would be perfectly in their rights to read the feat as meaning that the GM chooses an NPC (either an existing one in the campaign, or a new one the GM has created), and have them appear and offer you their service. Same goes for followers.

Thirdly, nothing in the feat says you get to directly control the cohort and followers. It says they are 'loyal' and will 'assist' you. But that doesn't mean they won't have their own motivations, quirks, and baggage determined by the GM that might make them unable or unwilling to perform certain tasks.

Basically, even if they allow the feat it's vital that you speak with your GM about how exactly they interpret it!

Very interesting. An anti-mage of sorts.

Why stop at magic items and standing effects though? A 'Snatch Arrows' type ability that works against spells could be a lot of fun! Snatch the magic missile out of the air and absorb the energy in to your magic pool.

No, I guess ultimately, I wish this wasn't a class at all, but rather an alternate casting system for prepared casters in general, like Word Casting or a series of archetypes (if it had to be legal for PFS play). I don't see why this is a class on its own.

Pretty much agreed. It feels like a wizard with alternate casting. Very little flavour to it, kind of bland.

However it looks like a Sorcerer/Wizard is on the cards, so the real matter at hand is what would we rather have than what we have currently?

In my opinion it needs to be doing something way more radical to differentiate it from either to justify its existence. Something as out there as perhaps you pick a school and you can ONLY cast spells from that school. All spells from that school are known to you though, and you prep a number of them per day and can spontaneously cast from those prepped. Then you have a real reason for the alternate spell mechanics, the class is clearly and unequivocally not as straight up powerful and versatile as a Wizard or Sorcerer can potentially be, but is very powerful and versatile within its niche. You could also have school powers that are better than the norm for wizards to make up for their super-specialisation.

First off I'll start with some positives. Generally I really like the classes presented for the ACG. They enable a bunch of character concepts that would have been at best a bit clunky to implement previously. I would even go as far as saying that the 10 new classes could form an alternative core that might even be better than the actual core in some ways (splitting the Rogue as a concept in to Investigator and Slayer for instance, most people I know would rather be focusing on one of those roles or the other in my experience).

Having said all of this, the Arcanist is the one class that troubles me. Not necessarily for the reasons that some others have posted. I don't believe it obsoletes the Wizard or the Sorcerer, as from a crunch perspective there are going to be times where any of the 3 classes might be the optimal choice. I also don't necessarily think it is over powered (though what it can do with metamagic may prove to be, we will see how the playtest goes!).

The problem I have is two-fold:

1) Mechanically I really don't think there was any necessity for this class. The design space between Wizard and Sorcerer is incredibly slim. What Paizo have done to help give the Sorcerer some real identity is great, but it took some hard work to even get that far. And now a new class is forced between the two where there really isn't room for one. I think the issue is that all three classes focus on full casting arcane spells from the same list. Any other mechanics added are gravy, but won't define the class. This is in stark contrast to how the other 9 hybrid classes feel.

2) From a fluff perspective it does not open up any space for new character concepts. Anything that could have conceptually been an Arcanist could easily have either been a Wizard or a Sorcerer.

I realise it is almost certainly too late to completely redesign a class completely, but I felt these issues with the class needed to be registered. There are definitely interesting ways that arcane casting could have been hybrid-ed in to other classes that hasn't really be covered with Pathfinder so far (Sorcerer/Rogue doing stealthy, manipulative stuff anyone?), and that feels like a little bit of a missed opportunity in the circumstances.

As I say though, I don't want to be too much of a downer, I am loving the rest of what I have seen!