Tarluk's page

I love the mechanics and flavor of Devise a Stratagem; it's such a cool way to have a martial character based around intelligently finding and executing weaknesses. But it feels disappointing and restricting to have the entire class be so strongly tied to this specific Sherlockian flavor, where the wording of the other half of the class's features is so tied to detective mysteries and so dependent on the GM's ability to work around this specific expectation and improvise accordingly, which no other class is reliant on. You can't even get Devise a Stratagem through the Investigator archetype without needing to get On the Case first through the dedication.

On the other hand, I've seen many characters which take Investigator Dedication *solely* for the On the Case feature, ignoring Devise a Stratagem entirely and just taking the cool detective feats to make a cool wizard detective for themselves, and characters who do get the Investigator archetype for both On the Case and Devise a Stratagem get almost all of what the Investigator has to offer in just 2 feats (the only restriction being that Devise a Stratagem can only be used with Strength/Dexterity...but how does that matter for martial classes? And it misses the Intelligence-focused flavor that the feature is based around).

I've been wondering about making a personal homebrew for the Investigator class, with the class being renamed to something like Savant (keeping some flavor-agnostic feats such as Flexible Studies and Predictive Purchase), the Sherlockian features/feats like On the Case being split off into a separate archetype, and the Savant class instead being reflavored and able to pick a semi-free archetype dedication based around areas of study like the new Investigator archetype, Archaeologist, Medic, Horizon Walker, Scroll Trickster, etc; you could get access to each feat in that archetype 2 levels earlier and get free feats for that archetype about every 4 levels after level 2. The Savant multiclass archetype in turn would be based primarily around Devise a Stratagem (gained through the level 2 dedication, usable with *exclusively* the Intelligence modifier once per minute, with a later-level feat to make it once per round).

I'm curious what y'all think of the rough idea, or if I'm missing something with On the Case or the Sherlockian flavor of the class.

Magus is great! Having only one spellstrike per encounter is fine if you consider that most fights are decided by turn 3 and that you most likely have stuff from your primary class to do on the other two turns. Grabbing some of the magus focus spells is also very good for many martials. Shielding Strike for a action efficient shield usage or force fangs for a guaranteed damage third action will definitely come in handy for everyone.

The spellcasting isn't great, but the archetype itself has good stuff to offer.

True; on some level I think my bias on a given multiclass archetype is affected by whether it sports feats that just seem overly lackluster to take. So the action compression of Spellstrike is great, but the spellcasting feats having to feel so lackluster because Spellstrike is gotten so early makes it feel a bit disappointing. Fighter might have some really good feats, but the dedication being little more than a single skill for most folks who want it feels like an unfortunate tax. Kineticist may be very strong through the impulses, but it's a bit of a bummer that tapping into the flavor of Elemental Blast through the archetype is largely discouraged.

Barbarian is excellent on mid level martials, especially Fighter. +6 damage at level 6 is extremely high. Swashbuckler is good for reactions, One For All mostly but Guardian's Deflection is absolutely awesome (but expensive).

Yeah, but the +6 damage comes at the cost of -2 AC *and* -1 to Reflex saves. Other Instincts only increase Rage damage up to 3 or 4 and no higher. Considering the tradeoff of an action *and* -1 AC *and* a minimum of 2 feats, is that worth it for the martial classes compared to sticking to their own feats or choosing a different archetype? And as flavorful as Paizo's suggestions for alchemists or spellcasters to select the Barbarian dedication might be, they definitely don't seem as practical to build around as it might be for those classes to dip into Fighter dedication.

And doesn't Swashbuckler Dedication just do nothing with the remaster now that the +1 circumstance bonus and +5 speed bonus are split into a separate class feature? It doesn't seem intentional considering how the dedication was designed in Advanced Player's Guide.

The talk surrounding the Exemplar dedication being very frontloaded and Paizo's design philosophy on multiclass dedications to maintain niche protection ending up with many varying power levels has made me wonder which multiclass archetypes could use a bit of adjustment, and which are in just the right place.

Summoner and Magus leave a lot to be desired, to the point where I struggle to see how Summoner's dedication could be useful at all. And Magus' spellcasting feats being bounded seems like overkill when you only get a single use of Spellstrike anyway.

Investigator seems quite powerful, being able to take both of the class's main features at level 4 with little restriction; the only one being that you can't use Intelligence instead of Strength or Dexterity, which seems rather trivial for Fighters or Champions.

Fighter seems rather odd, it's a feat tax for most classes which already has martial weapon training, and the martial profiency doesn't scale even though many other weapon training dedications already have a simple solution for this, so it's still a feat tax for everyone else too. At least it's a fairly simple homebrew fix.

And I'm not sure if I'm missing something with Barbarian, but I don't really see how just the base Rage with nothing else is all that useful; +2 damage that doesn't scale at the cost of having -1 AC *and* having to spend an action to get it? And only being able to get the Instinct ability with nothing else alongside it at level 6? I don't really see how this is worth it for anyone outside of a Fighter with free archetype. (And the suggestion of spellcasters being able to use rage as a last resort, while cool as hell in concept, is just absurd with the current implementation.)

Would be curious to hear y'all's thoughts on the multiclass dedications and archetypes. :)