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I've never seen anyone raising that point (and I'm used to Alchemist). Also, it's rare for an Alchemist not to raise Crafting. I know some players tend to always raise the same skills without caring about the internal consistency of their characters, but these ones are rarely interested in playing an Alchemist.

Yeah, I think it's just a question of freedom. You can handwave healing as a GM, or not, depending on the situation.
Clearly, rolling dice is pointless if the result has no in game impact (even if players do love to roll dice so sometimes they will do it just for the sake of rolling them).
But there are many situations where your out of combat healing output has an impact. Sometimes, it's even just for verissimilitude: Do we really spend 2 hours healing when we are supposed to be on the clock?

Overall, the system is fine. It's one of the few things you absolutely need to handle properly in a party, but it's extremely easy to reach the bar.

I am seriously wondering if the alchemist even has a way to break the team or do anything particularly powerful in the course of the game even when I don't limit it or it is just the dripping water class that's always adding drips of damage but never a fire hose or flood of damage. Just drip, drip, drip incapable of really impacting the game in a powerful way like a caster with a powerful spell or a martial with a crazy crit.

I do like the Alchemist. With the remaster it's fine. But it's still a tough class to play, so if your player is just throwing bombs don't expect anything crazy.

Among the good things it can do:
- The item bonuses to skills are crazy in skill heavy environments (skills in PFS impact loot for example).
- It's the best out of combat healer in the game, at no cost.
- It is an amazing trip martial if you have many weapons to put Clown Monarch on (but it's forbidden in PFS).
- Has caster level of utility, just different. So once again it depends on the GM.

It's combat skills are not impressive (but still not bad), but it makes up for it with other roles.

Hi, SuperBidi. Long time no read. Good to see you.

Hi Raven. Yeah, the late P/SFS adventures... well, I won't start on that. But I have hope the Pathfinder Infinite adventures will put me back on PFS.

Anyway, given a list that says what the classes are good at, and combining that with ThrabenU's three part tier list, it should be easy to pick a class depending on whether you're new or of moderate or experienced player ability.

The only really useful information is how hard it is to play a class. Roles don't really exist in Pathfinder. All classes can do damage, even if they are not equal in that regard, but overall any party will deal ok damage. And all classes can tank, even if for some of them you have to take a few feats to make that happen (especially Light Armor Proficiency if you are a cloth caster).

And you're set. Have fun and good game!

None of this really matters, the tactical hideaway compartment arm cyber augmentation has always allowed you to throw three grenades (or four if you have two arm augments and one of the rare unrestricted quicken ancestry feats) before this archetype came along.

What matters is cheap or free grenades. Grenadier doesn’t provide that. Mechanic does, and Junk Spell lets you create 10 minute duration grenades to load your hands before combat.

The tactical hideaway can't store Reusable Grenade Shells.

With 3 Advanced Grenades you deal 9d8(+6) for free. You obliterate everything up to level 11 where casters start to be competitive (but they have limited spell slots, when you don't have any limit). Stating that it's not a problem for a single feat and playstyle to just obliterate everything during the span of 9 levels, the most played ones on top of that, is factually wrong.

Afterwards, you can just buy lower level grenades to avoid the extreme cost, and obviously stick with the Advanced Grenades when danger is not big enough. A Ultimate weapon is 100k, 3 Superior Grenades are 4.5k and you deal 18d8(+9) of damage with them which is stellar even at level 16.

Most players have issues using consummables, as they feel they are throwing money out of the window. So they are undervaluing their actual strength, like you do. This single feat is way out of bounds (and I haven't even tried to optimize on it, as it seems you have ideas to get free grenades to reduce the overall cost).

Grenadier Dedication is insanely broken. Quick Toss allows you to throw 3 grenades per round, ending with twice the damage output of a top spell slot at no cost (if you have Reusable Grenade Shells, and you definitely have them). That's so completely out of bounds it has to be forbidden around all tables.

And I love how you get to Expert at level 5 for literally no effect.

I don't think you can use Dynamic Frequency Scaling to use temporary spell gems, given that it already says it produces temporary spell gems you can't use it on if you use a normal spell gem. It will require and get errata, though, for those who cannot see.

I definitely agree they shouldn't work together as it's broken, but still it does. And without any ambiguity. So bringing an RAI ruling here is hard. I expect most tables to allow it by default, and environments like SFS to allow it without a second thought.

I can't imagine many people even on good drugs thinking that a summon's attacks count as "spell damage" for the purposes of the focus spell vulnerability, so that won't get errata.

If you start choosing which spells do spell damage and which ones don't, you will need to make a rather long list. I let you with this can of worms.

the Witch's focus 3(?) shadow melee spell.

This spell is just bad, so the comparison is not incredible.

The other programming languages are nice, too. But they are nowhere close to Viper in terms of power. They actually all buff something the Technomancer is bad at (tanking, weapons or Summons (which are bad for everyone)). Even if they errata Dynamic Frequency Scaling, Viper stays a level above the competition.

Viper looks very strong. Being able to basically pick up effectively wands/scrolls from any tradition and just pop them off I think must make them probably the most out of the box flexible spell caster out there. You don't even need to mess around to grab them and hold them to use them. Just stick them in the backpack or pocket and blast them off as needed.

Yeah, Viper is clearly the outlier here.

I'm sad it lost its soul to become the default broken language.

I've started to play a Viper in SFS and had fun with it. But I overall agree that people will hate it. Players don't know how to use limited resources, it goes against basic human psychology. So having a class/subclass that burns through 2 limited resources, that's beyond what people can handle. So even if you can use Viper fine from level one, the fact that you have to "throw money at the enemies" to make it work will kill the fun for all players but the masochistic ones or those able to put aside their bias (so roughly 2% of the player base).

Also, Spell Circuit is mostly useless. It's one action, so is drawing your Spell Gem. The interest is for DPS++ who needs hands for weapons. But as a Viper Technomancer, your hands should be used for your Spell Gems and are as such available. And being able to burn one Spell Gem instead of the one you use is so niche I don't see a point using it. As for the other Jailbreak effect of creating a Grenade... well, it's meh at best. There are better things to do with your actions (like Dynamic Frequency Scaling).

And you missed the use of Log Spell Execution. You can use a level 1 Spell Gem of Heal and now you can cast Heal out of any one of your spell slots without extra actions. So it has a very clear use: getting a heightened cast of a spell out of a low level gem with no action cost during combat. There are lots of uses of this spell... before you get Overclock Lattice, obviously, as it's so broken it just overshadows the entire subclass and turns it into a one-trick poney (casting 4 top rank spells out of one slot and 3 low level Spell Gems/Chips is just broken to no avail).

Knowing Paizo, I still selfishly hope they'll keep Viper as it is, just addressing the overall weakness of the Technomancer (hopefully by changing it to 4-slot caster and making Overclock a free action). If they improve it by addressing the perceived lack of limited resources, it'll just end up bland to me.

I accepted the Functionary proposition. I was surprised it went unchecked. In my opinion, there's a hole in the adventure. But it's hard to justify some people follow the bad guy if the proposition is too obviously nefarious. So you end up with what seems to be an acceptable proposition and some PCs may say yes for whatever reasons (because players always find unexpected reasons to go astray).

For clarity: do you mean, as we have assumed, that the GM would mark your character dead? Or do you mean they would remove you from the scenario and adjust the challenge for the revised number of players?

The adventure is over. The GM just removed my character for the end of the adventure, which surprised me (in general, when choices are given to Starfinders, the adventure handles both possible answers, I was not expecting my choice to be unhandled). And the question is just if my character survives or not. But more generally, if this is valid to consider that my character could somehow escape/survive/whatever or if it's not conceivable.

As it was my second SFS2 adventure, I don't know much about the First Ones.

I've soured on amnesia as a solution (despite suggesting it myself over in the VA discord) just because I think it makes PCs too much of a security risk for the society to send on missions. Then again, the Pathfinders and Starfinders have made a lot of questionable decisions of late, so maybe it's not out of character.

When I see the story of the Waterfall, I have the feeling that the Vigilant Seal has a lot of work to convince the Path/Starfinder Society to behave cautiously.

The functionary herself is (probably) not an insurmountable threat, but getting out of the wreck when it's on maximum alert as its emmissary returns with new blood (who are likely to be swiftly brainwashed) is.

I'm pretty sure you'll be proven wrong. Friendly NPCs inside dungeons are so classic there will certainly be one inside the wreck unless the metaplot is 5 adventures long. If they somehow managed to slip through the cracks then my character can. Getting out of the wreck seems insurmountable because we don't have much inside intel, but with the unfolding of the metaplot we will most certainly find ways for it to be possible (if not probable).

"surviving the act of following the Functionary" is what is not compatible with the lore

It's a way of rephrasing my question. And the source of my doubts, as a functionally unescapable Functionary would put it at an incredible level of threat. I've seen countless backstories of "a dragon burned my village and I'm the only survivor" that unescapable things in Path/Starfinder are very close to god levels of power.

How do you know?

I've downloaded it after the session to see what my GM was working with. Mostly nothing.

It sounds (I haven't played this adventure) like this is a case where an NPC makes you an "offer", but if you accept it you basically wouldn't survive it.

The adventure doesn't specify anything. So, there's room for interpretation. And I find that removing my character from the campaign is a harsh interpretation. That's why the lore compatibility is important: If it's really not compatible with the lore, then I also don't want to bring crazy stuff around the table. But if from a lore point of view there's no issue then there's no need to go for the harshest interpretation, in my opinion (opinions may differ).

My recommendation would be to shift your character's triggering event to something a bit more off-screen

While I agree that it would solve the situation with less friction, I find it much more interesting to use an actual in game event than to come up with an out of game explanation. Be able to play other adventures with the rest of the team would create much more interesting situations (roleplay-wise), I think. Also, it's rather uncommon to be able to use an adventure as a justification for character growth.

That's why I'm really focused on lore compliance, as it's the reason my GM brought to not allow me this action. If it's lore compliant, then I think everything's fine. Clearly unexpected (if alignments were still a thing I'd be on the chaotic side of them) but not game breaking or problematic for anyone around the table.

PS: This is my character's second adventure, so being removed from the campaign doesn't mean much, I can recreate it with close to no loss. It's not really an actual threat. But I don't want to bring a character that doesn't make sense from a lore point of view, because it affects negatively everyone at the table.

Hi everyone,

Slight spoilers from the 1-05 Sloughscar Summit.

My character is an Envoy, she's young, bold and rather immature. But as I'm not very fond of Envoy's feats, I wanted her to take Mystic Dedication. As it's not really in line with her current behavior, I wanted her to be kind of cursed, like an Oracle.
As the early SFS2 adventures speak a lot about the First Ones, I decided for her to progressively get cursed because of her exposure to First Ones "stuff" (I don't know the adventures yet so I can't be more precise).

Sloughscar Summit introduces the Functionary, who makes a rather odd proposition to everyone. Following the bold and curious nature of my character I decided to follow the Functionary. I want to consider that she followed the Functionary, and then woke up outside the Wreck, changed, and with no memory of what exactly happened. Whether she's escaped, got cold feet at the last moment or got turned and released for some nefarious intent would never be answered.

My VC/GM told me that it's incompatible with the lore and that as such my character would be removed from the campaign...
I have hard doubt that it's incompatible with the lore, as there are not many unescapable things in Starfinder (and I'm pretty sure we will explore the Wreck at some point so it's not one of them). But I can't be 100% sure.

So I wanted your point of view. Is my idea completely out of line or just far-fetched? And if you have other ideas that would work too, don't hesitate to tell me.

I second YuriP, Evolution Surge is excellent, definitely an asset of the Summoner. I've used it a lot and it's super handy.

I shouldn't have been snarky like that. Sorry.

Don't worry, no harm done.

I just disagree with you so much on your basic point. Kineticists are a fine class.

Well, we will certainly agree to disagree on that. Whether it's a question of expectations or experience, we didn't come to the same conclusion.

Versatility has huge value and it can often be overlooked.

Definitely. I'm a great proponent of versatility. But I find the Kineticist doesn't embody versatility at all, I consider it one of the most specialized class in the game. For me, it's literally a few-trick poney.

So I think our disagreement comes from something deep, on the very meaning of versatility in the context of PF2.
Anyway, I won't disrupt this conversation more than that. If people like the Kineticist, it's great. To each their own!

I meant more in the sense of positioning your self in a good turn order to take full advantage of it, not in the sense of delaying AFTER you use the reaction to extend it.

In the same way that you may want to delay yourself after an enemy before Demoralizing him in order for the whole party to take advantage of that.

Ha ok, I misunderstood your point. But it's hard to do it then as you need the combat to be extremely stable (and if the GM is nasty, monsters can also Delay once they understand how your power works).

Everyone cries about the fire resistances, no one gives credit for easily triggering fire weakness three times every round on one guy (blast, aura, AOE impulse) and twice on any others close enough.

The Fire Aura Junction gives a fire weakness to the enemy (equivalent to low Fire Weakness according to the GM core) and you can't combine weaknesses. So you only trigger high Fire Weaknesses and you only get half of the extra damage then.

So, you have NOT seen a kineticist using Jagged Berms then. But you still claim it is just plain bad. Interesting.

Sorry, Paul, I assume I annoyed you because our conversations tend to be more civil usually.

This conversation is, overall, about the Kineticist, not just Jagged Berms (and I have the right to find it bad from reading it ;) ). I personally consider the Kineticist to be one of the weakest class in the game, both from reading the class and seeing it played. I've seen countless people praising its versatility but I've seen the exact opposite: A class stuck with a couple of tricks desperately trying to sell them to the GM and the players.

And that is the key to a decent kineticist. You have several different tools in your bag, picking the one that meets the situation.

I've seen a lvl 1-10 Metal Kineticist, a lvl 2-10 Earth Kineticist, a lvl 6 Earth/Fire Kineticist, a lvl 1-4 Air Kineticist and a lvl 1-4 Wood Kineticist. The Wood Kineticist was a pain, as Timber Sentinel is a pain to handle (strong, but annoying from a GM perspective and even from a player perspective). The Metal, Air and Earth Kineticists were bad, the Earth/Fire one was disappointing (it's a solid build, the player seemed solid but the end result was not impressive at all).

I've also kind of played a Water Kineticist (got it from Free Archetype on a high level character) and it was worse than expected (and I wasn't expecting much).

So, maybe no one manages to be decent with a Kineticist. From my point of view, it's just bad.

In both cases, the Champion can choose to delay his turn to be more strategic and help PC 2 and PC 3 with his revealing light.

You can't Delay to extend the duration of effects. They would still end at the moment you Delay.

The Kineticist in my group who loves to use Timber Sentinel and Jagged Berms would like to disagree with you.

Yeah, Timber Sentinel again.

It looks like the class could be renamed as Timber Sentinelist.

Jagged Berms is bad even if I see how it can combo with Timber Sentinel (again).

@Easl: I think we are no more speaking about the same thing.

Lightning Dash ages badly: At level 4, a 2d12 30-feet line spell is really nice, at level 8 a 3d12 35-feet line spell is rather meh.

Similarly, when I speak about Medic, I don't speak about a Kineticist taking the Medic Archetype. I'm speaking about the fact that if the Kineticist is a healer, then everyone is because everyone can take the Medic Archetype for the same cost (a few feats) and get better at healing than a Kineticist.

Same goes with Dedications. Do you think you'll need a dozen casts of Wall of Stone? I hardly think so, walls are super nice to have but it's not a routine, it's for specific situations. Having a couple of Wall of Stones per day is all you need and Dedications can provide you with that quite efficiently.

Roughly, a lot of what is supposed to give the Kineticist its versatility is actually available to everyone for similar costs (even if I realize I made a mistake, you get Wall of Stone at level 14 with a Dedication, but still at the cost of a level 12 feat).

Lightning dash is interesting. While an initial read of it might think of it as a move power, it's actually more a line attack with an 'escape reactive strike' clause. The damage scales similarly to all the other 2a overflow impulses, so IMO it really should be thought of as an attack power.

I don't know why you reacted to me speaking about mobility as I agree with you that Lightning Dash is an offensive Impulse.

First, it's not either-or.

You have access to infinite number of feats and actions?

That's the main issue of the Kineticist, in my opinion. Very often, you can get equivalent abilities by just grabbing an archetype. For example, at level 12, you can cast Wall of Stone with a Kineticist. But actually, at level 12, you can cast Wall of Stone with a spellcasting Dedication.

Swipe is not degenerate, the double dip of the axe crit specialization is. Imagine two scenarios: a) there is a boss that the PC can only crit on a 20; b) there's the same boss, but they have an adjacent minion that the PC crits on a 15. This boss is weaker in the last scenario than in the first, and this is clearly not intended and a degeneration of the design that creates weird incentives.

You have tons of situations like this one. The Swashbuckler has a feat to gain Panache when flanked. Alchemist can deal splash damage to a creature by hitting a nearby one. Etc...

It's a case of turning a negative situation into a positive one through clever play. It is not a problem in and by itself unless it makes the strategy way too strong (and it isn't as you still need to score a critical hit and the resulting damage is nowhere close to high).

So... how does that work?

Rules don't cover every cases. That's a case where the GM has to come up with his own ruling.

Polymorph effects can't be combined and the game uses a counteract check when you get affected by a second Polymorph effect. So I agree with Baarogue, it's certainly the best way to handle a direct incompatibility between 2 effects.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Where do you get the part about not actually being a generalist from?

The Kineticist can:

Things the Kineticist can't really do:
- Single target damage. Your AoE Impulses are actually more damaging than your single target Impulses. Obviously, you can deal single target damage through AoE Impulses but they don't carry the expected damage of a single target damage dealer.
- Heal. Medic Dedication is just straight up better and accessible to everyone. The only thing you do is out of combat healing.
- Control (besides walls). The Kineticist has access to a lot of control Impulses but they are for the biggest part just plain bad.
- Skills. Worst class in the game for skills.

Another problem of the Kineticist is the cost of being a jack of all trades. First, Impulses are your main weapons and focusing more on utility than offense is not really a good choice. Also, offensive Impulses age badly so you need to use your top level Impulses for offensive options.
And then there's the "element" issue. It's great to be able to do a lot of things but each of these things are limited to a few elements. And grabbing new elements takes time (levels), and comes at an actual opportunity cost: not getting a junction.
So before very high levels, the Kineticist is nowhere close to a jack of all trades. And even at high level it hardly competes with a caster. The Kineticist is a few-trick poney.

Other than the much-lauded +1 to attack, what else makes the Bard (or indeed, any other class) a serviceable generalist?

I don't consider the Bard a Generalist. Bard is first and foremost a buffer/debuffer. There are much more versatile classes in the game.

PS: I very often see players mistaking specialized characters for versatile ones. Having the potential to do a lot of things is not enough to be versatile, you need to be able to do these things "simultaneously".

Kineticist, Animist and prepared casters are not versatile. They can, on paper, do a lot of things. But they are mutually exclusive: If you prepare a spell then you don't prepare another one, if you choose one Apparition you don't have another one, if you take an Impulse you don't have another one. The end result being that at a specific moment, your actual choices are limited. And having limited choices is not exactly the definition of versatility.

On the other hand, the Summoner is versatile. It can deal martial damage, cast spells and use skills, and these are not really exclusive, it can do all of them always. And because it has more actions than other classes it can actually do them simultaneously. Which is why the Summoner is, in my opinion, the undisputed most versatile class in the game.

The kineticist is a jack of all trades, and a master of none.

The Kineticist can hardly be called a jack of all trades. It's mostly an AoE damage dealer with martial level of tanking.

And considering all the hoops I have to go through to get it to work in the first place, (Being next to enemies, having Aura Junction and Thermal Nimbus up, having to hit multiple enemies with Flying Flame, not using Overflow impulses to not turn off my aura) I wished it was better and not just barely more than the Fighter.

In PF2, complexity is not rewarded. The game puts everyone in the same ballpark when played to their best, which tends to push towards simpler classes if all you want is effectiveness.

Also, the Kineticist doesn't compare to martials (who are best at single target damage) but to casters (who are best at AoE damage).

And being a Fire creature doesn't really solve the issue as Extract Element is mostly useless against Fire-Immune creatures (which most Fire creatures are).

Yeah, Kineticist is weak.
Pyrokineticist is fine in damage when you combine the Aura Junction and Thermal Nimbus but you need to position yourself in the thick of things (even if it becomes easier at level 10). And of course you lose all of that against Fire Immune/Resistant enemies.

But overall, the class is nowhere close to impressive, you need to find a broken ability (Fire Aura Junction, Timber Sentinel) and just focus on it to perform ok.

A spellcasting archetype can't be a trap option. For an option to be a trap option it must somehow be misleading, which spellcasting archetypes are not.

Now, it's not a strong option. It doesn't really interact with the class.

I don't really see the point in bringing 10 arguments to justify it.

Please, can we avoid badwrongfun discussions?

The issue is that at levels 1 and 2, a GM needs to apply the weakened template (or make some other kind of compensation) to achieve the same kind of game play experience for moderate encounters at higher levels.

Conversely, I could say that at levels 5+ (exact starting point may vary) you can apply the Elite adjustment or redo encounters to be Severe or Extreme to achieve the kind of difficulty you're looking for.

That's a massive overstatement. Difficulty is overall the same at level 1 and 5. The main difference is that progression is faster at level 1 creating a bigger difference when you face higher or lower level enemies. Also, combats are much faster.

To me a "random death" is one where there is nothing/little a player could do to control it. So the random crit putting you a dying 2 at level 1 that results in death...that's a random death.

I really wonder what's the actual occurrence of this so called "random crit [...] that results in death". I've seen it once and in my opinion it had more to do with a broken monster (extreme damage, extreme attack bonus and persistent damage) and setup (the monster literally appeared next to us with all its actions) than something that should happen normally. All the other deaths I have experienced have been the conclusion of a large number of hits, even at low level.

PF2 is not a deadly game. Even if going down to a crit at low level happens it very rarely ends up with a death or TPK, at least not without a lot of bad luck (on top of the crit) or bad decisions.

Could you free archetype (or just archetype) into wizard, witch, or sorcerer, take Reach Spell at L4, then go to town with your 3a, 30' ranged two-target striking amped IW? It's not great range, but it's out of melee.

You can't metamagic amp cantrips. So, nope :)

Which is werid, given that that made the remaster Oracle so much more powerful but lost a lot of its uniqueness.

My gut feeling is that those interested purely by optimization will go for a Sorcerer and then grab the good Oracle stuff through a Dedication. I think you reach higher power through this method (and also you choose your tradition).

My reason for calling this out as "a problem" is because of that observation of GMs working to erase that lethality via all means available to them, including incredibly obvious foe lobotomies.

You should really question your confirmation bia because your whole post is conspiracy theory 101.

I've played roughly 300 sessions (2/3rd played, 1/3rd GMed), got 1 character killed and killed 5 as a GM. If you consider 3 to 5 sessions per level, it means getting killed once every 20 levels roughly. That's not what I'd call "lethal".

Nothing in ghostly carrier's description would suggest that. It aught to work with multiple targets

"When you Cast a Spell that has a range of touch, you can have the carrier move within range, deliver the spell to a creature there, and return to you."

It works only on one target (even if the spell can have multiple targets, you just use the carrier for a single one of them).

...

Farmhand states: "With a strong back and an understanding of seasonal cycles, you tilled the land and tended crops. Your farm could have been razed by invaders, you could have lost the family tying you to the land, or you might have simply tired of the drudgery, but at some point you became an adventurer."

Considering that level 1 is the beginning of your adventuring career, it's very much written that peasant with a greatsword is a proper description for a level 1 character.

Most of the common backgrounds consider that you got a simple life and decided to go adventuring after that (which doesn't mean that it has to be the case for all characters, you can be a gladiator or a bounty hunter, just that it's a common occurrence).

And if you look at level 1 humanoids, a lot of them are just commoners: Barkeep, Acolyte, Local Herbalist, etc...

Level 1 is not the level supposed to represent a "well-trained combatant with field experience". Also, I'm not stating that the low hit points at level 1 is "good", just that in my opinion it embodies the "peasant with a greatsword" fantasy well, fantasy that is very much written in the book. So I understand it.

I have no point of view on the original question besides the fact that it is way above my league.

If you dislike the changes and don't play in PFS: Why not just ignore them?

Unfortunately, my Oracles were PFS characters.

Also, even outside PFS some GMs use PFS rulings (I know I do).

The psychic is an extremely disappointing class in play. It reads nice on paper, but it lacks much punch in play other than a bit at the early levels.

The focus point system isn't very good unless the DM is going to ensure a sufficient rest between every fight. Even then, many of the abilities are too weak, too situational, or downright useless.

While I overall agree, it's not really answering OPs question. And I think the Silent Whisper Psychic is a nasty damage dealer. At least this one does good damage.

One could argue that the lethality of low-level play is intended to contribute to the feel of lower level play, but I don't think we see that reflected in the stories produced by paizo - few of the APs I've run or prepped seem like they want you to feel like you're a peasant thrown into an incredibly dangerous situation, about to die at any moment. They mostly feel to me like pretty classic heroic fantasy, starting at a pretty good power level

You need to wait for level 2 to get your Full Plate or even sometimes your weapon (some firearms are really expensive). That's peasant's concerns.

Feelings being what they are we have all the right in the world to disagree. But I do think the feeling of playing a peasant with a greatsword is there.
I've played games where you start at a "pretty good power level" and it's not at all the same feeling: You start with all your equipment, you have most of your powers, you don't wait for higher levels for your build to go online, etc...

The only Psychic build with good DPR is the Silent Whisper one. And you have an entire spell list for fights against mental immune enemies (7.5% of the creature base, you won't face that many of them unless you play the Slithering).

Oscillating Wave has a big issue as its main damaging spells, namely Fireball and Howling Blizzard, have to be used during round 1 and as such don't benefit from any of your damage enhancement abilities (Unleash Psyche and Entropic Wheel). It leads to a kind of lose-lose gameplay where you either target a lot of creatures or deal a lot of damage to each of them but never both simultaneously.

I agree that Tangible Dream is suicidal. You need a very specific build to get the most out of it (and especially an extremely tanky build).

Any tangible dream psychic that wants to use imaginary weapon is not going to do melee. It's going to use ghostly carrier for it which turns it into a 120 foot ranged spell that hits 2 targets. As long as you can keep the ghostly carrier alive anyways

The Ghostly Carrier can only target a single creature. If you want to target 2 creatures you need one of them to be at melee range from your Psychic. Still, it's certainly the safest way to play a Tangible Dream Psychic.

You're presenting it as if people that were playing the class [...] are innately more important than any people that counted problems as significant enough to talk them out of playing the class despite their interest in it.

Of course they are. It's basic respect.

Stripping PCs of their gear will have a different effect depending on their classes, with the end result being a significant imbalance. I'd not do that personally from a mechanical point of view.

For players such as myself who were playing Oracle characters that were spellcaster types of characters roughly equivalent to a Divine tradition Sorcerer, the Remaster changes were mostly good - sometimes really good.

I was playing spellcaster Oracles, namely a Life Oracle and a Tempest Oracle. The Life Oracle lost its healing abilities and became the worst healer among all Mysteries. While the Tempest Oracle lost all its flavor, which was important to me.

Also, it's not just about being broken, it's about trading a mechanically interesting class with a bland and boring one. I already have a divine Sorcerer (my main character), getting 2 new ones is not what I wanted for my Oracles.

You're basically arguing semantics here.

When other people say "handled" they are talking about the same things you are when you say "can be annoying". The difference is not that you know how things were and the people that don't agree with you don't know, it's that you think the situation we're all accurately aware of was fine and other people don't.

There doesn't have to be some insurmountable level of difficulty in making an oracle work well in order for someone to be unhappy with the feeling that oracle takes extra effort and, because it'd be unbalanced otherwise, doesn't really get extra cool stuff compared to "I could just play a sorcerer" or "I could just play a cleric."

Sorry, but I don't get what you're trying to convey.

It looks like you are disagreeing with me while also agreeing with me and ultimately I'm lost.

Regardless, That was one of my experiences, with the final outcome being that the oracle died a preventable death because of his curse as none of the others could heal him from a nasty source of persistent damage. Something that could've been prevented with better communication or preparation for such a moment, Something that the oracle himself handled with stride as a player. The same could not be said for a few others at the table.

Sad experience. But you can be healed while unconscious as a Life Oracle, just not above 1 hp (but then the Oracle can heal themselves). So I feel it has more to do with a player who played badly than with the Oracle itself.

But I'm talking about someone playing a premaster life-oracle in a group without non-magical incombat healing or otherwise being overly hindered by Ash's Concealment/difficult terrain aura.

Having played a Life Oracle in PFS I can state by experience that it had no impact on the parties tactics.

However just as SuperBidi said, It absolutely feels like a brand new class .

For me it's the core of the grudge: A lot of characters became incompatible with the new class. When you change a class, you can't just throw characters with the bathwater, at least not without experiencing a significant backlash by those who played these characters.

We learn to love these little things...