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I'm on board with a lot of this. Some of the proposals look like they could be satisfied by existing options, e.g. Predictive Purchase to pull out a handy scroll, whereas others would justify the larger-scale changes you could only get from a class archetype. Giving the class archetype Subtle Spell and even some extra action compression on top would definitely be thematic appropriate, and I agree a class archetype would make it easier to make some tradeoffs from the base chassis to accommodate more power elsewhere, such as with bounded spellcasting.

It's good to see an update on this, though I do agree that these playtest postmortems tend to be a bit more fleshed-out, and what little details were shared aren't coming across as especially exciting to me given the lukewarm reception both classes got. In particular, while consensus across different spaces was that the Daredevil was too squishy for their own good, there was also a popular view that simply increasing the class's HP, as opposed to giving them other improved survival benefits, would be the most boring and thematically inappropriate way to buff the class. That there is no mention of Mark Quarry on the Slayer when it was most commonly cited as the class's biggest pain point is also troubling. I do still believe Paizo has the ability to really knock it out of the park with both classes on their final release, but I'm drawing more from past achievements than the contents of this blog post for that feeling.

While the monk clearly has its origins in martial arts movies and mostly-fictional shaolin fantasies, it's also something that's becomes established as an RPG archetype in its right, both in various TTRPGs (like the one we're talking about and its ancestor) and also video game RPGs (Warcraft, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Pillars of Eternity, Path of Exile, about a million others). Which is not unlike the druid, or cleric, or paladin, or several other classes.

I would be careful to avoid relying too much on other RPGs as a cultural model rather than primary sources, because a huge number of those RPGs share the same DNA. Warcraft and Diablo's classes in particular are heavily based off of D&D, and many other RPGs that have followed have either taken inspiration from D&D as well or Blizzard's own games. Using D&D-descended games to justify tropes in another D&D-descended game comes across to me as a case of the serpent eating its own tail.

As for the mechanics being discussed around ninja and samurai, I've started drafting two separate brews just recently, one to update the Eldritch Trickster and the other to provide a grab bag of iaido-themed and switch-hitting character options. The general aim here is to try to provide specific options players are looking for when trying to emulate a specific ninja- or samurai-themed character, while keeping those options thematically broad enough that they can conceivably work with a larger array of concepts. Assuming these options satisfy (which isn't necessarily the case, just for the sake of the argument here), what would still need to be covered?

Neither does the exemplar though, and I'll use your own words here:

If the words of mine that you have to use are that the Exemplar can be reflavored to not do the thing it has an entire sidebar expressly dedicated to doing, then it stands to reason that the Exemplar does do the thing, it's just up to the GM to go out of their way to work around that. Keftiu summarizes the issue with your rationale pretty succinctly, and as I point out above, just because a problem has a solution doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

I'm not really against the idea of the exemplar "warping the narrative" as, like Squiggit, its something arguably every character in a high fantasy TTRPG does. Its not like I expect the exemplar to be a one-man army like most myth heroes usually are either, but what I'm trying to say is that there's narrative dissonance between what the class tells you it is and what the class really is, because if you put all the lore about the Godsrain to the side, the exemplar can still exist as a martial divine sorcerer.

That's not particularly true, though, for the reasons already mentioned above. Even high-level adventurers don't need campaigns to be rewritten around them and their personal story, which is why narrative-warping concepts like "prophesized monarch of a nation" or "deity in the making" are reserved for mythic destinies. The Exemplar, by contrast, incurs that kind of distortion, particularly if a GM is trying to accommodate their epithets organically. This is also why the "martial Sorcerer" thing doesn't fly: a Sorcerer can certainly be born with powers, but that doesn't mean they automatically tread the domain of legends, no more than someone born near a nuclear power plant in the modern day will become an immortal folk hero just because they glow slightly green.

I don't think Squiggit is arguing about mechanical balance here

Yes, they are:

Exemplars aren't even particularly good at warping the narrative like a wizard or cleric can with the right spells.

And here too:

Like a GM can certainly decide to give a unique ability to influence the narrative, but that's a specific choice being made by the people at the table and has nothing to do with the class... which is basically just an okay utility martial mechanically

They also flat-out admit to it here:

Agreed in general, but when you talk about a class having undue narrative weight, how much that weight actually exists in practice has to be part of the conversation.

If mechanics weren't part of the discussion, they didn't need to be brought into discussion. Clearly, there is a conflation here between mechanical balance and theming.

but rather how rarity traits are an unnecesary tool because a GM can choose what options to restrict or not on their own without them, and the fact that Paizo uses them to represent how rare something is on Golarion only exists to confuse people because most people will see an "uncommon" or "rare" trait and immediately assume something must be wrong with it, like being more powerful than other options of its level or that the GM should take it into account for whatever reason. This isn't the case though, and in fact, as you point out, most things with rarity traits are usually really bad, so it creates a dissonance where new GMs assume these should be restricted for some reason, but they don't know the reason why they should be.

Just because you personally fail to see the value in rarity traits does not mean everyone else has to as well. Rarity clearly does have a purpose, and it helps save the GM the kind of headache that comes from those options being freely available in other games and requiring either a lot of accommodation or a personal ban list. While I can agree that rarity tries to do a few too many things at once in Pathfinder, it undeniably fulfils a useful function in auto-banning things that could otherwise make GMing much more complicated, like coming up with a true name for every creature, and making those opt-in rather than opt-out by default. Again, not every fantasy adventure has to accommodate guns and robots and walking demigods, and rarity empowers the GM to keep those out of the stories they want to tell without having to constantly be on guard for stuff a player might include on their character. I'd argue it's also empowering for the players too, who can feel safe to include any common option without having to ask the GM for permission first, and then talk about rarer options when marked.

But we're not talking about rules elements. We're talking about the baggage you're bringing to the table. No subsystem can deal with that.

We are quite literally talking about a rules element that helps tag and separate the kind of baggage being brought to the table. Rather than have every individual GM argue "no, I'm not including firearms in my fantasy campaign because that's not part of the setting I want to have," we can instead slap a tag onto that stuff that signals "hey, this stuff might not be appropriate for every fantasy campaign, so talk to your GM first about it."

Agreed in general, but when you talk about a class having undue narrative weight, how much that weight actually exists in practice has to be part of the conversation.

Correct, and narrative weight is fundamentally separate from the mechanical weight that is factored into Pathfinder's balance. This is why you can play a minor deity in a mythic game and have abilities tailored for your godhood that are weaker than regular class feats of the same level.

And it's just factually true the exemplar has exactly as much narrative weight as the GM is willing to give it, which can be said of sorcerers and paladins and fighters and rogues too.

By that same token, a person who leaves the windows wide open in their house during a snowstorm has to deal with exactly as much snow in their house the following morning as they're willing to not shovel out. That doesn't make closing the windows the less practical option. Similarly, a GM with an Exemplar in the party has to work against the thematics baked into the class, which is not only likely to still incur additional work, but is also likely to disappoint the player if not communicated properly, especially if their epithets end up coming from nowhere.

narrative of the game and that's just... not true. Nothing about the class demands that. You can play an exemplar the same way you'd play a champion or rogue and nothing bad happens, nothing breaks, nothing gets contradicted. This whole dilemma is invented. so it's important to point out that the issues being described here literally only exist if the GM wants them to, irrespective of whether or not anyone is playing an exemplar.

I feel like you've been around long enough to know what the Oberoni fallacy is, and why you're committing it here: yes, I agree with you that the Exemplar can be reflavored to just be a character with funky superpowers, and the GM certainly can ignore that sidebar and all the other elements of the Exemplar's theming that can have them warp the narrative around them. However, just because the problem can be fixed doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist, and claiming that these issues are "invented" when there is literally an entire paragraph of text explaining how the GM should try rewriting their adventure around this class strikes me as pointlessly contrarian at best.

Proficiency for sure was a major reason why I wanted to have the above take on the racket apply a save penalty to off-guard creatures. Applying sneak attack more easily to spells is a key reason why I wanted to make Hiding better for the racket, but ultimately I don't actually believe that an Eldritch Trickster needs to be ranged: there are plenty of ranged casters already, and I think it'd be much more interesting for a magical Rogue to be able to exploit all the ways of rendering targets off-guard, such as flanking or Feinting, for their spells, even and perhaps especially if that leads to a character that prefers to casts spells at melee range.

I do agree however that there is a good case to be made for a class archetype here, and in general I think the different ways to implement a magical Rogue sit on a sliding scale: on one end, you have your "bag of tricks" character who still fights mostly with Strikes, and uses a bunch of small spells for utility, and on the other end you have your "magical assassin" character who uses spells as a primary means of dealing damage in a fight. I'd say the above implementation sits slightly away from the former end of the scale, as they do offer combat benefits but mainly offer a lot of smaller spell slots to play with, whereas there's room for a class archetype on the latter end of the scale that offers bounded spellcasting. The one caveat to all this though is that I think the end result ought to play meaningfully different from a Laughing Shadow Magus, which already combines roguish elements with bounded spellcasting and caters to a similar niche.

But if a GM doesn't want to do that they can just... not?

Gee, if only the game had some kind of system to enshrine in the rules what gets included in the game only at the GM's discretion? I'm sure those elements would be considered more rare than others.

Because the exemplar isn't that anyways. Like a GM can certainly decide to give a unique ability to influence the narrative, but that's a specific choice being made by the people at the table and has nothing to do with the class... which is basically just an okay utility martial mechanically and a martial analog to a divine sorcerer in terms of flavor and origin.

The whole notion that there's an either-or choice between 'delicately balancing' the exemplar's narrative weight or banning it is nonsense because the exemplar only has as much of that as the GM decides to give them, same as literally every other character.

The class as presented in War of Immortals has an entire sidebar telling the GM to ask what epithets their Exemplar player wants and changing their story accordingly so that the class's epithet reflects their actions through play. No other class gets this. Reading the short form on AoN might not immediately convey this impression, but the class is quite plainly presented as one whose mere presence is what starts creating legends around them. You can choose to not do any of this if you want, but that is part of the default package.

I also feel it's rather silly to conflate the class's mechanical balance with rarity here, and generally, it seems some people here are clinging to the repeatedly disproven notion that "rare" means "overpowered". It doesn't. In fact, a lot of rare game elements are crap, like true names, and mythic destiny feats are generally worse than most non-mythic feats you could get at the same level. If the Exemplar were as game-breakingly powerful as the heroes of myth they're inspired from, then what they'd need isn't the rare tag, but a severe balance pass.

But an exemplar isn't the "chosen one" of a deity either, its one of the (likely) thousands of people who happened to get a small fragment of Gorum's soul after he died.

Note that PossibleCabbage only brought up "the chosen one" as a trope; the notion that the Exemplar is chosen by a deity is your own addition, one that nobody else is arguing. War of Immortals goes at great length to detail the impact of the Godsrain, and the number of Exemplars to have come out of it is in fact rare.

An exemplar doesn't need Gorum to justify its existence, and if it doesn't need that, it also doesn't need the rare trait. Paizo did it because they wanted to have a poster child class for the Godsrain, but they could have easily just released the exact same class without the rare trait and still explain the class recently got a boost in numbers because of the Godsrain. After all, the exemplar is explicitly built to emulate characters from IRL myths. And you know what? Earth does exist on Pathfinder's universe! So its likely someone like Achilles or Cuchulainn actually existed on Earth at some point and likely were exemplars. No dead god required.

I certainly agree that Exemplars needn't be exclusive products of the Godsrain, and that was definitely Paizo trying to tie the class into their proprietary IP, but the potential Exemplars you cite are similarly rare, and not necessarily the best team players either. Achilles is surrounded by other more distant descendants of Greek gods, yet even in a story as complex as the Illiad, his very presence warps the narrative around himself for much of the epic. Similarly, Cú Chulainn is a dominant figure of the Ulster Cycle who exists more as a force of nature that Conchobar can barely keep under control for the most part. While there are certainly examples of stories where a legendary figure can still fit as part of a more grounded ensemble cast, as with Sun Wukong in Journey to the West, that's a delicate narrative balance that not every GM might be able to deal with, nor want to.

"Got caught in a storm and now has magic powers" is literally how the iconic exemplar became an exemplar. And that's like- the end of it.

Nahoa fought a demon owl in an impossible battle and transcended his own mortality by seizing his divine spark while traveling across worlds. I'm not sure we read the same backstory.

"Your very existence starts to shape the culture of the world" is just being a PC in a high powered fantasy game. Fighters do that too.

Sure, at high level if the GM allows it. We're talking about a class that already starts to do this at level 1.

This is what I mean by no sauce. There's so much "what if we just describe the normal narrative of an AP but pretend it's a special toxic trait of this one class" that doesn't actually link to anything.

Exemplars aren't even particularly good at warping the narrative like a wizard or cleric can with the right spells.

I feel there's a lot of deliberate downplaying going on where the class's key thematic elements are being intentionally ignored. Like yes, if you ignore the fact that the class is very much presented as a demigod with weapons and abilities that transcend those of mere mortals, and whose fancy titles are literally a class feature, then sure, that entirely different class you have in your mind might be bland and inoffensive enough to pass. That's not what the Exemplar is, though, and not every adventuring party in Pathfinder needs to accommodate a potential god in the making. If we can accept that it's okay to not have every adventuring party running around with guns, robots, and katana, then I don't see why this wouldn't be okay too.

PossibleCabbage may have a different take on this, but my own is that those casters who are empowered by one or more divine entities don't necessarily fall into the "chosen one" narrative: if you're a Champion or a Cleric of a deity, you are a chosen one among thousands for that deity alone, in the sense that you serve that deity and have powers to help with that. If you're a divine Sorcerer, you certainly could be the descendant of a god, and that could fit that kind of "chosen one" narrative, but you could also be one of similarly many people who were born under weird circumstances or whose ancestors had dealings with an outsider.

By contrast, the Exemplar's whole thing is that they're so special that their name is already starting to become legend: your ikons and epithets aren't just things that make you powerful, they're an intrinsic part of your story that are each so epic as to define who you are. It's not even that you were chosen, so much that you're already the kind of person people are writing stories about that will be told for generations to come, perhaps forever. Your very existence as an Exemplar already starts to shape the culture of the world around you, and that incurs farther-reaching narrative ramifications than "I'm a priest of Sarenrae" or "I got caught in a storm once and now I can shoot lightning from my hands".

I agree with the others that the rare tag is for thematic reasons: having a legendary demigod in a fantasy party is quite likely to warp the narrative, even if the balance remains fine.

As for the point regarding balance across ikons, I think the issue is simply that some ikons are a fair bit weaker than others. I think it's inevitable that the Exemplar will need a weapon ikon to deal competent Strike damage, and that much is stated in the class's ikon list, but otherwise I think ikons ought to have comparably strong immanences and transcendences: as the OP mentions, it's not just that the archetype can just sit on a single ikon's immanence and not worry about its weaker transcendence, those ikons aren't going to be as popular on the main class as alternatives that can do both well. This I think is something that can be fixed with errata, which ideally ought to also remove the baseline immanence effects of ikons from the multiclass archetype.

Trying to narrow a few bits of feedback here down into a few concrete points:

I think the main counterbalancing factor to sneak attack damage on spells is that you're only working with archetype-grade spellcasting, so your spells will be of a lower rank than the blast spells full casters can use, and you'd have far fewer of them to cast as well.

To stay with that fireball example, the earliest you'd access that spell from your spell slots is at 8th level, where full casters can cast 4th-rank spells with expert proficiency. If you were to catch enemies off-guard with surprise attack and then cast your one fireball for the day, the circumstance penalty to the enemies' Reflex saves would make your spell as accurate as that of a caster with expert proficiency, and your 2d6 sneak attack damage would give it the equivalent of 4th-rank damage. This is also pretty much as ideal a case as it gets, as afterwards your spells end up being 2 ranks behind those of full casters. All that effort to do that just once in a day, when a caster of that same level could cast four 4th-rank fireballs at the same level of effectiveness for far less effort, I think is okay for a subclass.

Besides that, however, I do agree that the Eldritch Trickster needs benefits that you can't get just by picking a multiclass dedication, which is why I think it's important that it gets to exploit the off-guard condition better for any kind of spell. I'm not super-worried about the damage a Rogue might deal with this, because the class can already deal a lot of damage with Strikes, so as long as the benefits match up to those you'd get from other rackets (which, considering the strong benefits you get from the Thief, is a decently high bar), then I'd be happy.

Springboarding off of the samurai and ninja thread, one subtopic of that discussion was around the Eldritch Trickster racket: in short, the racket has the potential to satisfy a bunch of character concepts, among them that of a magical ninja, but more broadly that of a sneaky magic-user who uses a combination of skills, spells, and sneak attack damage to fight and navigate different challenges. In practice, though, the subclass has a few pitfalls: for starters, it interacts quite poorly with archetyping and Free Archetype rules, as it locks you out of other dedications. Perhaps even more importantly, though, it doesn't make the Rogue that much better at using spells in a sneaky way, as Hiding by default doesn't benefit your spells and the racket offers no special benefits in that regard. For this reason, the Eldritch Trickster has largely been left behind in favor of simply picking up a spellcasting archetype at 2nd level, and the racket hasn't been updated for the remaster either.

In my opinion, there are different ways in which the racket could be updated, but here I'm opting for an economical approach which I've outlined in this brew. In summary, here are the changes I'm proposing:

When this discussion comes up, I think the most useful part of it is when people bring up what they think is missing from the ninja or samurai fantasy they're envisioning in PF2e: if the only thing that's missing is a class specifically called "the Ninja" or "the Samurai", then that's the kind of want that's either easily satisfied by renaming existing classes like the Rogue or the Fighter, or that will likely never be satisfied due to the very existence of those classes that fulfill those themes already. If the ask is more for a certain range of mechanics that have yet to be implemented or made available to a particular class, then making those options available would benefit the game as a whole, including players wanting those specific character fantasies like a iaido practitioner or a magical assassin.

In this respect, although there is a measured discussion to be had around orientalism, overexposure of certain tropes, and how that can lead to things like oversimplified perceptions of certain cultures, underrepresentation of other cultural elements, and confusion between myth and historical fact, I also feel that kind of discussion is a bit of a red herring when it comes to wanting a particular character concept in-game. In the end, I think it boils down to people either wanting a pre-packaged option with a specific name attached to it, regardless of its contents, or wanting specific character options that can be attached to what we have already in order to better blend certain themes with game mechanics. If we can identify the latter and come up with options for those, as has happened in prior discussions, then that I think would satisfy the players who are able to be reasonably satisfied, and who can't already be satisfied by existing options.

My memory on this may be fuzzy, but I remember part of the reason behind neither the Ninja nor the Samurai getting included is because both get vast amounts of exposure already, and the authors wanted to dedicate the page space for the character guide to less-represented elements of the various cultures Tian Xia takes inspiration from.

Mechanically speaking, I do think there are some elements of both character fantasies that could probably be fleshed out a bit more, such as weapon draw-based bonuses, parkour, and sneaky magic that isn't locked behind the high-level archetype that is the Shadowdancer. As others mention, however, and as Unicore points out with the Monk, I don't think those need to be locked behind an archetype specifically called the Ninja or Samurai, or even be specific to an archetype at all. A stealthy magic-user who can climb up terrain could certainly be a ninja, but could also be Corvo Attano from Dishonored. This may not necessarily appeal to the players who specifically want a class that's called the Ninja or Samurai, but it would effectively provide more options to achieve certain character fantasies around both concepts.

On one hand, the assumptions made to round the distances and speeds here are sound. On the other hand, I'm not sure whether Speeds of 7 meters would really be the best to handle, and players who are unused to the metric system are likely to chafe with this change for similar reasons to us metric-users. I feel this is one of those instances where it might be worth taking another leaf out of D&D 4e's book and abstract distances as squares, where a square's worth of distance is 5 feet, and whatever Speed you have is the number of squares you can move. It's not a real measurement system, but for the purposes of measuring distances in encounters, it doesn't need to be!

I mean, you were the one that went on a tangent about how the investigator isn't as bad when compared to the rogue (which I think its weird coming from someone that made a post about Unchained Investigator)

... I'm sorry, where did I do this? Not only is it you who went on a completely irrelevant tangent about an Analyze Weakness Rogue vs. a vanilla Investigator, I have repeatedly outlined in this very thread the ways in which the Investigator is worse off than the Rogue. At no point have I ever claimed the class "isn't as bad", and I am struggling to see how you could have even come to this conclusion in the first place.

when the reason why I made that comparison in the first place was to show how even its two best class features (DaS and Strategic Strike) aren't satisfying to use (DaS) or are watered down versions of rogue features (Strategic Strike and Sneak Attack), needing other feats or features to lessen (but not solve) some of their issues,

This similarly feels like an attempt to rewrite history: your tangent came about in this post of yours, where you hijacked my reply to someone else to try to claim that DaS feels bad just because it doesn't tell you how much you precisely need to hit with your Strike. The claim, much like your comparison, is spurious.

which is something your brew doesn't adress either.

So here's what I don't get: you say the Investigator needs the tools to plan and adapt their turn; my brew gives them access to every trained skill action in the game, and makes them competent at every skill action. You waffle on about DaS's action costs, and seem to want to continue deliberately ignoring the fact that I removed the action cost for the main class, and removed the need for the usual feats to take away that action tax. You make an ill-advised comparison to a Rogue spending additional actions piling on sneak attack damage; my brew buffs Strategic Strike's precision damage. What problems does my brew not address, then? Because if the issue you take is that the class does not serve you a free successful Strike on a silver platter as a free action, forgive me if I take that ask with a grain of salt.

Also, as I said like twice already, I still think that even a rogue that needs to expend 1A for DaS still overshadows a free action DaS investigator because even if the investigator gets better action economy it really doesn't have much to do with it. I don't recall a single good 1A feat from the investigator and from their skills their only "always available" option is feinting, with demoralize or treat wounds being mostly a once per combat thing usually.

I'm sorry, but this is ludicrous. It's not just that getting extra actions on one's turn is a major benefit that many classes are desperate to have, there's a huge number of useful single actions that the above provides: for starters yes, you can Demoralize, Feint, Create a Diversion, and use Athletics actions, and what's more, you have good access to all of these before even factoring in skill increases. Supplement this with feats like Bon Mot, Dirty Trick, and Battle Medicine, and you've got a huge range of tools at your disposal. In addition, however, the above Investigator gets access to both Quick Alchemy and spellcasting from their feats, no archetype required, meaning they have even more ways to spend actions in ways that bypass their attack stratagem. If you're struggling to think of ways to contribute that aren't Striking in spite of all this, I don't think that's an issue with the class.

Yeah, you can get spells from an archetype or whatever, but ignoring the fact that you'll have like 2-3 spell slots for most of your career, you'll only really be able to use those for buffs because nobody with archetype spellcasting progression is going to be bothered with spell attacks or save spells. Not to mention the reason why we are considering these as options in the first place is because someone chose to play a watered down rogue, and the comparisons made here were made against one of the weakest rogues possible.

This too is factually incorrect: with an Int spellcasting attribute, an Investigator will have the same spellcasting proficiency as a full caster until level 6, and taking those subsequent proficiency increases (which, had you actually read the contents of my brew, are part of the class's baseline feats, not an archetype) means the class will only be at a -2 relative to a full caster, compared to the -4 of most martials with a spellcasting archetype. This is not power a Rogue accesses as easily, nor something they can access in the same capacity without sacrificing their Striking power. At this point it doesn't really come across like you've done anything but skim through the details you've spent far more time and effort trying to shoot down, as you don't seem aware that I buffed DaS in all the ways your comparison gets wrong.

I'm personally a big fan of incorporating skill feats into things that boost your attributes; it's one of the things I think backgrounds do very well. In some cases, feats like Hefty Hauler can be used as stand-ins for what existing feats already do, as Mathmuse points out above.

That's the point though. A bad rogue still does the "one Strike per turn" shtick miles better than the investigator even with worst versions of its class features. That same rogue could arguably skip on DaS entirely and instead make Analyze Weakness > Strike > Strike and as long as one of those hits they are still doubling their sneak attack die, while also potentially adding their normal sneak attack die to the second Strike too. The investigator can't compete with it.

But that's the point: they don't. One Strike per turn for your Rogue is two to three actions, and one to two actions for the Investigator, so the latter has significantly greater action economy advantages here, including the ability to cast an entire spell on that same turn. For sure, the Rogue will deal more damage than the vanilla Investigator if they make multiple Strikes, which is why I buffed Strategic Strike's damage, but that is not making "one Strike per turn".

What I'm also struggling to understand is why you're specifically referring to the vanilla Investigator here and not the version in my brew that works differently from what you're describing: in my version, DaS is always a free action, the version you get from the archetype is always a single action, and Strategic Strike's damage is a d8. Clearly, what I've written addresses a lot of the concerns you're repeating, because I've buffed the Investigator's damage and made their action economy far more consistent. Rather than trot out whichever pre-canned argument that was ready-made for a broader discussion, it would be better to actually discuss the piece of homebrew central to this thread, don't you think?

In my original example I'm assuming the rogue is going to be using 3 actions to make a single Strike as well, which I feel isn't too different from what an investigator does.

By the conditions you list, though, it isn't. I was assuming you were referring to a free-action DaS for the Rogue, but in this particular case I don't even think it's all that strong or interesting for the Rogue to spend three actions making a single Strike, not when they could have spent three actions making two Strikes and boosting the damage for one. Meanwhile, the vanilla Investigator will want to pick options to get that free-action DaS, which my brew bypasses entirely by making it a free action by default: regardless of the stratagem you opt into, you have three actions to use on your turn, and that's not something the above brew makes poachable.

I feel there isn't another example as egregious as this of a class doing other class's shtick this better than the class that's supposed to be doing it, and even when I do agree the archetype problaby shouldn't allow a free DaS either, I would prefer this didn't became a monk situation where Paizo's solution wasn't to buff the monk but rather nerf the archetype and leave it like that (and releasing a really similar and somehow stronger feat two weeks after the nerf, but that's a different discussion).

I can easily think of far clearer cases of some classes eating the lunch of others, as with the Animist and the Druid, but in this particular case I think there is room for both: the Investigator can be made stronger, and the archetype can be made to avoid giving the best bits of the class entirely. Worth noting that my implementation of the archetype gives a toned-down version of the Investigator's Stratagem feat for free, so I would argue that it is in many ways stronger than the current version, while still avoiding spillover into the core class's key strengths.

If I have to be honest the more I think about your brew the more I warm up to it, but I still think a few things feel out of place in execution (like Int to skills innately and not being part of DaS, or the "You count X proficiency for skills" features which I feel should come a bit later), so while there's promise here, I think it needs a bit more polish.

This is fair, I'm certainly up for polishing this brew more. I will say, however, that substituting Int to skills only for DaS would severely mess up their usage in exploration and social encounters, to the point where it may defeat the purpose entirely if Interrogation-style Investigators end up still being crap at actual interrogation scenarios using Charisma-focused skills. I could perhaps rearrange certain class features so that they align closer to skill proficiency bumps, but I feel there's once again precedent in this in the Trap Finder feat, which lets you count as legendary when it comes to disabling traps as early as level 7.

The Counterspell Feat for a wizard is a React which to me I believe everyone only get's one a round. I am not as worried regarding it becoming counterspell ping pong for that reason. You get to counterspell and they can try to counter your counterspell and that's it.

That is the counterspell ping pong. Characters only get one reaction in D&D 5e, and that's enough for Counterspells to start flying all over the shop. PF2e at least has the benefit of Counterspell itself not counting as a spell, so you can't nope that nope, but the fundamental problem remains the same: if your "nope" button is overly broad, that's going to lead to lots of turns where essentially nothing happens, because someone's spent a resource to cast a spell and you've spent a resource to make sure that spell doesn't get cast, and vice versa. It's fine when it's a thing that occasionally happens, not so much when it happens all the time.

That's the main problem why DaS doesn't feel good to use, because you are working with half the information most of the time. You could easily roll a 12 on your DaS and still fail because you weren't flanking with that attack or because you were attacking a CL+2 foe or whatever. If I have to make plans around my DaS result I would want to know exactly the number I need to roll on the dice to be able to hit the foe, because otherwise even a supposed good roll can become worse than a bad roll because you engaged that turn with the idea of actually hitting the target, when in reality you were never going to be hitting it in the first place.

A mastermind rogue with the investigator archetype and the Known Weakness and Analyze Weakness feats can, by 6th level, make a DaS + RK, use Analyze Weakness, and make a Strike that deals double their sneak attack damage against an off-guard target regardless of flanking or range, and this assuming the the rogue doesn't get a free DaS as that could allow them to potentially do something else with their first action too. This isn't that different from the action rotation of a regular investigator in most turns, so why is another class that even without it can still easily overshadow the investigator and get to do the unique thing of the investigator much better?

While DaS could potentially tell you the result of your Strike if you were to attack ahead of time, I don't think that's strictly necessary: sometimes a roll will be ambiguous, and that creates a bit of tension when it comes to deciding whether to still go ahead with a Strike, at which point missing would still let you attempt another for the same number of actions. Similarly, if a Rogue can make better use of DaS than an Investigator, that to me suggests the archetype is giving too much by default, which is why I changed the archetype in the above brew to always have its version of DaS require a full action: in the scenario you mention, this would mean your Rogue wouldn't get to use Known Weaknesses, and would be spending three actions making a single Strike, which has its uses but wouldn't be as good as an Investigator using DaS to Strike with a +1 bonus and then follow up with another.

What I mean is, what if you had an Investigation Lore with the 3/7/15 scaling most class skills get nowadays, but make it that when you become trained in this lore (1st level) you gain Untrained Improvisation, then when you become an expert (3rd level) you count as trained in every skill for the purpose of skill actions, then when you become a master (7th level) you count as expert in every skill for the purpose of skill actions and become trained at every skill, and finally when you become legendary (15th level) you count as master in every skill for the purpose of skill actions? I feel this would be a really smooth way of implemeting these abilities.

I can't speak for everyone, but I'm personally not terribly interested in yet another universal Lore skill, as I find that to be really uninspired. I also think it would take up a lot more power budget than simply being trained in the relevant Lore skills, and I don't see how this would ease the bloat or simplify anything at all by attaching those other features to its proficiency ranks. On a more fine-grained level, this would make levels 7 and 15 fairly overloaded for the Investigator and levels 9 and 11 pretty weak. If we want to rearrange the class's features accordingly to accommodate this, that to me just means more complication that these changes intend to reduce.

I like the above as a baseline option, though it would mean having to redo the Defensive Stratagem feat. I think that in practice, that would still make some rolls awkward (a roll of 10 might still fail for a Strike against a boss, for instance, but might be enough for them to succeed against you), but so long as skill stratagems are still an option, that should smooth things out somewhat still.

While I can certainly empathize with the notion that the Investigator would probably be better-suited as an exploration-focused archetype, given how Pursue a Lead is arguably their most iconic feature and the rest is there mostly just to give them some level of combat effectiveness, I do think Intelligence is absolutely the attribute for the Investigator. Some detectives may be charismatic or strong, but they always have the smarts to solve a case. I also do think there's plenty of in-fiction examples of investigators being polymaths and otherwise at least a little bit versed in everything, something that's already partially represented by Intelligence giving lots of trained skills. A class that's competent at every skill in my opinion leaves room for others to excel at their respective specialties, potentially more so than a class that can overlap much more with those specialties via extra skill increases.

I know you removed most of the bloat features in your brew and turned them into feats, which is a really good change, but the class its still tight in its class budget and that leaves too little room to improve a class that needs huge changes.

I feel this assessment is really not correct, for a number of reasons:

Rather than a system in which you use primary attributes to determine your secondary skills based off of them, why not have a system that does it backwards? One wherein your secondary skills determine your primary attributes?

This is an approach I find quite interesting. Although I struggle to think of how it could fit PF2e's framework, the idea of becoming better at adjacent things you're good at via the accumulation of transferrable skill comes across as a more organic expression of the cross-skill aptitudes that attributes try to emulate, plus it calls back nicely to skill synergy mechanics from editions past. I may prefer Pathfinder without attributes, but would still be very keen to see examples of this kind of implementation, whether in existing games or just as a simple proof of concept, as it sounds like it could open up completely new ways of building a character.

"If the Investigator isn't strong enough to afford not to Strike for a turn, then I'd say they ought to be made strong enough." is the important part here. You can't really make the investigator strong enough to restructure their whole turn at random without making a ton of changes to the class. I'm sure we had a similar opinion of the daredevil and slayer; classes with a ton of restrictions that, even when those restrictions are lifted, is still underperforming. The investigator is the same.

I don't agree with this at all. The Daredevil and Slayer's restrictions came from limitations baked into their mechanics that disabled entire class features throughout the whole of combat; this has nothing to do with anticipating one bad Strike on your turn and adapting on the fly. Being able to instead become the equivalent of an expert at minimum in every skill in the game on a skill stratagem, with full access to their associated actions, I would say more than qualifies as being "strong enough", and more importantly, versatile enough to have plenty of alternative options. Importantly, being competent at all those skills out of combat is also what would give the class a big box of tools to play with during exploration and social encounters.

Regarding everything else, I acknowledge that I made some mistakes and I appreciate the corrections, but I still feel that your approach is too extreme and doesn’t align well with the overall design of PF2e. If you want to keep the Intelligence modifier to every skill bit, I'd probably make it part of Skill Stratagem. Attack Stratagem is the one that gives Int to attacks already, so it would make sense for Skill Stratagem to do the same for skills.

You may have to explain how a change can be, at the same time, "too extreme" and yet insufficient. The key issue I take with your approach isn't that it makes mistakes or even that it's too conservative, but that it's simply way too focused on diluting the Investigator's core gameplay in favor of more Striking, which I find incredibly dull. It's clear that you dislike the idea of the Investigator having to commit to a particular stratagem that isn't attacking, and rather than make those different stratagems more rewarding or give the Investigator strong options, your proposal just makes it so that they don't have to follow any particular stratagem at all, and instead just Strike as much as they can regardless.

What I find strange as well is that for all the changes you're proposing, which are deceptively extensive, there's no mention of strategic strike damage: even with your proposal, the Investigator would be a mediocre Striker compared to the Rogue, as the former gets to only apply their full precision damage once per round. By contrast, my brew proposes to dial that precision damage up a step, which can be increased further as needed. Effectively, I'm proposing a version of the Investigator that may not Strike every turn, but can deal some solid damage when they do, whereas your version encourages them to spend more actions making weak Strikes. I don't see how that really lends itself to the class's fantasy or makes for more interesting gameplay.

I'm of the opposite mind, I find the Beastkin ancestry to be both underpowered and underdeveloped. 1d4 piercing damage is one of the worst unarmed attacks you can get, and because the transformation doesn't state it counts as an attempt to Impersonate or grants a bonus to pass yourself off as someone or something different, as is otherwise standard for effects like illusory disguise, threefold aspect, or the Reflection ancestry's benefits, it offers no benefits to disguise yourself RAW.

Though this is somewhat tangential, I've been sitting on a homebrew Beastkin rework that remakes it as a hybrid versatile heritage based on the awakened animal ancestry. Relevant to this conversation is a 1st-level feat that takes the current Beastkin's transformation and lets you actually use it as a disguise to Impersonate. Because awakened animals have access to a large array of different Speeds and unarmed attacks, tying the Beastkin to those I think would give them those same options with minimal added effort.

Its not that substitutions cannot occur, thats fine (it occurs in many places, and I even recommend changing this to another one), its that changing *everything* goes against the norms of the game in a way I find quite staggering.

Its strong in a non-combat way as well, to be sure, but its a bizarre non-combat way. Sure, you see occasional single-skill stat replacements, but this is a sweeping change that really does feel unsettling to me, it rubs against the very nature and purpose of the attribute system

Putting aside how I find there are plenty of valid reasons to challenge the attribute system, particularly with a class as locked into their attributes as the Investigator, is changing the way one plays the game not the purpose of a class? Being legendary in any weapon group of one's choice also goes against the norms of the game in ways that have tremendous, sweeping consequences, yet that's what makes the Fighter great. Similarly, the Kineticist's entire model of having a legendary class DC and at-will magic breaks the game's norms, and that too is what lets the class shine.

1. Attack Stratagem I presented is almost a 1:1 with the current version, except it doesn't have the fortune trait and doesn't require a target. It also says right there you need a melee weapon, melee unarmed attack, or thrown weapon with the agile or finesse trait to benefit from the substitution too.

While this may be true, that is still ambiguous writing that lends itself to gaming the system, which is why I simplified the attack stratagem in my brew to just "you substitute the d20 roll on your next Strike against the target".

I get the idea of "foretelling an attack" that DaS has but I think that brings unnecesary problems and makes the class clunky in play because a bad roll isn't just a failure in that particular check but likely the need for you to restructure your whole turn to avoid using it pretty much.

I still do believe this is a feature, not a bug. The whole point of anticipating and avoiding a bad roll is that you get to restructure your whole turn and adapt. If the Investigator isn't strong enough to afford not to Strike for a turn, then I'd say they ought to be made strong enough.

Not exactly. The investigator only has extra skill increases to Int, Wis, or Cha-based skills, unlike the rogue or Starfinder's envoy.

This is incorrect. You're thinking of Skillful Lessons, which grants extra skill feats that are locked to mental attributes. The Investigator's skill increases aren't locked to any attribute.

I initially was more on-board with your brew's approach of less skills but more class features to go around it, but the more I think about it the more I agree with RyMarq in that's a bit wonky and, ironically, it ends with the investigator being worst at skills which is arguably its main selling point making the rogue both better at combat and skills than it, while right now the rogue is just better and combat and slightly worse at skills. I can see an "untrained skill monkey" class or archetype working, but I don't know if it fits the investigator.

I'm not sure how this can be said for a class that would end up with a +29 minimum modifier to all skills, giving them a 50% baseline chance to succeed on standard skill checks of their level without any aid or investment (and this is before factoring in the +2 from a skill stratagem). This would in fact make you better at skills in which you're presently legendary, but for which you attribute mod is 0.

I'm not really a big fan of classes giving you feats (like a class giving you Toughness and Endurance, rather than giving you effectively the same effect and allow you to stack it with the feat), plus, I'm sure Untrained Improvisation isn't part of any feat's requirements. Not even Incredible Improvisation which used to require Untrained Improvisation pre-Remaster doesn't require it anymore.

But you are giving the class the equivalent of a feat, whether you like it or not. Spelling it out simply means that you don't end up with two mechanics doing the same thing, and means that if a future mechanic does have Untrained Improvisation as a prerequisite, your implementation would be ready for it. That's what future-proofing is about.

This was because there's already a lower level feat that applies your Pursue a Lead bonus to saves, Detective's Readiness.

Detective's Readiness applies only to creatures related to your investigation. Unless you're counting Person of Interest as a default part of the Investigator, you're not going to have that bonus to your saves all the time.

Btw, I skimmed over the feats of your brew and I really like them! I didn't notice initially you removed methodologies, but turning their effects into feats was certainly a great move. All methodologies except for alchemical sciencies feel like trap options, so turning them into feats kinda gives the investigator some of that factotum-like feel of someone that can learn bits and pieces of other classes that I think the investigator currently lacks.

I do think Clue In having a 10 minute immunity is a bit too much though. I know the original has it too, but the original wasn't an Aid and, honestly, was really bad. If the gunslinger can have Fake-Out I think the investigator can have something similar as well.

Much appreciated! With regards to Clue In, I think the key difference here is that the reaction can be used for any check, not just attack rolls. I think it could be fine to remove that immunity with a higher-level feat, but as a 1st-level feat, I'd say it's already quite strong.

I'm also a big fan of the Factotum; it's my main inspiration for the above model of giving the Investigator universal competence in skills and easy access to lots of alternative actions like alchemy and magic.

Looking at the above proposals, here's the critique I have at the moment:

A very odd remake.

Int for all skills reads *very* wonky in the game. I would recommend this instead for DAS skill replacement rather than just increasing the number.

For me, having a high number of skills is kinda *the thing* Investigator does that I want, so reducing that for a greater combat budget seems a bit strange to me.

I would prefer this for achieving your goals rather than the systems that go so strongly against game norms. Skills counting as different ranks? Int to everything? These are strange to track and not deeply thematically rich to me.

I'm a bit perplexed by this for a few reasons: the first is that substituting Int for other attributes is very much something the Investigator already does, including with Athletics via the Athletic Strategist feat. The reason given is simple: you apply your mind to find clever solutions to problems at hand, working smarter rather than harder in this case. Similarly, counting as a different rank in a certain skill is also a part of the Investigator's existing class features, namely their deductive improvisation feature at 11, and in my experience this has never been at all difficult to track.

The second reason is that the claim that I'm reducing the Investigator's skill budget in favor of their combat budget is entirely false: this rework gives you a far better baseline modifier to many skills, lets you use far more skill actions competently, and gives you far easier access to feats that require a proficiency rank in certain skills. It is because of this massive increase in skill-based power that I'm reducing the Investigator's skill increases and feats to the default, not because of any increases to their combat power.

That's Odd is annoying as all heck to GM for, and it has to be at the forefront of your mind at all times while the party is exploring or you will stumble on it awkwardly. In actual play, it is a constant thorn in your side.

As for Devise a Stratagem, it was always a bit annoying to navigate when to give it as a free action or not, since the power of that feature encouraged gaming the Pursue a Lead system with investigations that allow for more potential free action DaS targets versus what actually narratively makes sense. For one game, I just let them get it as a free action all the time and it worked out fine.

These for sure are two of the biggest issues I have with the class as well, and I've tried to address both in my brew. That's Odd adds a constant mental burden on the GM to come up with something for the Investigator with every location, and I've tried to instead simplify it down to essentially always Searching for hidden doors and objects. DaS and its benefits hinging on investigations means that players often end up trying to game the system more than lean into the class's intended roleplay, which is why the above decouples the investigation minigame from combat benefits.

It is a ranged weapon class. You are way too frail to end turns next to enemies and too action starved to move twice/have no movement compression built into your class. This is without even thinking about trying to boost STR for damage. I think it is fine for that to be the case, I just think it needs to be spelled out better in the descriptive text. I think trying to make it accommodate a full melee build is just setting players up for failure.

While this is true for the Investigator in practice, I don't think it has to be true always. As a baseline, the class has similar defenses to the Rogue, and with a free-action DaS has the action economy to go for hit-and-run playstyles. With better support, I do think there's room for melee builds as well. I definitely agree with you that for all the overlap between the Investigator and the Rogue, it's good to have a skill monkey class that's more on the lawful side by default, just for variety's sake.

To be fair, I'd probably allow this for both skills and attacks if I'm totally honest. It feels really bad to not be able to attack one turn because you happened to have a low roll on your DaS. Yeah, the investigator is clearly an out-of-combat class, but this is still a combat-heavy system and the investigator is going to be fighting in it.

I think it would be really cool if there was a mechanic that could allow you to expend those low DaS rolls for some benefit, so in every turn that d20 can be useful in some way. I imagine something like Detective's Readiness, giving your Pursue a Lead bonus to saving throws against creatures related to your investigation. It could initially only apply to skills, and eventually apply to more things through feats like attacks or AC.

The way I see it, DaS is effectively how you avoid wasting an action on a Strike that was going to fail, as you're essentially making that same roll beforehand. Similarly, choosing a non-attack stratagem is how you're expending that low roll, as you're instead turning it into a skill check bonus. I have a homebrew class that plays with extra dice rolls that I think you'd really like in terms of substituting both high and low rolls, but that's a somewhat different theme from the Investigator's in my opinion.

I would suggest playtesting this if you can, as that can help give a more direct impression of the impact. YMMV, but in my opinion counterspelling is one of those mechanics you don't actually want to be too good: in another tabletop game we probably all know about, Counterspell is a thing you can do for any spell, just by expending a spell slot, and combat against spellcasters often devolves into pressing the "nope" button against each others' spells (including noping that nope button), which leads to a lot of wasted resources and turns and a lot of associated frustration. The fact that it won't happen often is in my opinion a good thing, and encouraging the Wizard to research a particular opponent's spells and prepare them just for the purpose of counteracting them to me is a good way to lean into the class's fantasy.

Where I can agree that there's disappointment, however, is in the effectiveness of counteract checks: if you're fighting a higher-level spellcaster, your counteract check is likely to fail, and because their spell will almost certainly be of a higher rank than the spells you can cast, your spell will fail to counteract theirs. Thus, Counterspell can easily be ineffective during some of the few times where it comes up. If you think Counterspell is effective when it comes up, then don't mind this, but if not, you could always play with some kind of a bonus to your counteract check, or even a bump to the check's degrees of success, so that when the opportunity comes up to counter an opponent's spell, your caster will be very likely to counteract it.

This is much appreciated, thank you! I can definitely get behind letting the Investigator use DaS's d20 roll for their skill stratagem from level 1 as well, so long as it remains optional (so that you're not stuck if you roll a 1 or the like). There's definitely room for more stratagems as well in the class's feats.

As for the criticism of the skill progression, that's fair, and I've made the mistake of underestimating the versatility of skills in prior brews. I could probably move the "you count as an X in every skill" to higher levels, though the intent with making the class count as an expert in every skill at level 1 is for them to then be able to pick feats requiring them to be an expert at level 2: because the above only gives you as many skill increases and feats as a regular class, you'd have to choose which ones to pick more carefully, but you'd get to bypass a lot of the usual prerequisites and pick the ones that work best for you instead.

The Investigator is one of those classes that could definitely use some kind of unchained rework in PF2e, and the Unchained discussion thread got me thinking about what that kind of rework would look like. I first wanted to break down the class's problems, particularly since despite some of those problems being obvious, others were a bit more difficult for me to clearly articulate in my head to start with. After giving it some more thought, I think the Investigator's issues come down to three major pain points:

The TL;DR being that the Investigator being tied to heavily to their minigame makes for a very gimmicky class that isn't terribly strong or even wholly functional, and that can be very annoying to GM for to boot. Although the Investigator ought to feel good when investigating, they shouldn't feel like a fraction of a class when their gimmick isn't relevant to an encounter or challenge, which is often.

Based on this problem statement, I've worked on a proof of concept for how the Investigator could be made to change: this is the result. The main points of change are as follows:

I like the idea behind this change, though I think it would help to clarify the statement of intent with it. From what I'm seeing, it seems like the intent is to let Reposition be used to exchange places with creatures, in particular allies, which could always be special-cased into the action unless the aim is to also enable this on enemies.

Re: point #4, although tying a class's key modifier to that of a skill is an elegant solution for many spellcasters and martial classes, it does hit a few edge cases with classes like the Kineticist and Magus, whose identifying skill uses a different key attribute. That much can be fine, though, it'd be okay for these classes to be both good at that skill and their stats.

While I do agree that these modifiers would cease to be complex once they're all written down, the process of assembling them at character creation I think would be significantly more complex: currently, players look for ancestries and backgrounds that offer overlapping boosts towards the attributes they want, and this does a similar thing with a far larger spread of statistics, far more permutations of statistical boosts, and currently less flexibility in that all the trait feat boosts listed thus far are fixed. Even with the aid of an online tool, which I don't think ought to be counted as part of the solution, this might make character-building take a fair bit more time.

On a much smaller scale, and starting off of the vanilla framework of attributes, what if every PC could swap the modifiers on any two trained skills for free at character creation, once per character? Let's say Amiri the Barbarian is trained in both Thievery and Intimidation, but the latter skill is much more important to her identity than the former: with this swap, she could apply a higher modifier to Intimidation in exchange for a lower Thievery mod. Similarly, if Lem the Bard is trained in Deception and Occultism, but is more interested in being knowledgeable about occult magic than good at lying, he could sacrifice his Deception mod for a higher Occultism mod. This wouldn't get rid of attributes, but this would give characters a bit more wiggle room to become better at the things that truly matter to the player, without needing to tank a character's stats to get there.

Here are a couple completely off the top of my head that might be way out of line and would really stretch the essential boundaries of existing attributes:

Quick Wits

Your character keeps their wits about them even in the most dangerous situations.

Gain a +1 ability modifier to Reflex Saves; Armor Class; Perception checks; the skills: Acrobatics, Arcana, Deception, Survival and Thievery; and gain training in one additional skill.

In my mind, this Quick Wits Feat would be a weaker feat than most, as it doesn't boost any offensive abilities, but it does boost 1 more skill than most "mental ability" feats will, and is probably better than Intelligence as an attribute boost for anyone not trying to be a caster.

Slightly Gishy

Your Character's aptitude for magic is as much a part of their physical body as it is the power of their mind.

Gain a +1 ability modifier to Spell Casting DC and Spell attack Rolls; Melee attack rolls; Ranged attack Rolls; and to one of the 4 magical tradition skills (Arcana, Nature, Occultism or Religion).

I think this adds a lot more precision to the discussion and helps with feedback; thank you for sharing these examples. Just to start with the requirements set out in one of the thread's first posts:

The idea of trait feats looks really interesting, particularly its ability to capture finer aspects of characters that are normally subsumed into attributes. My main issue at this stage is that I'm having a difficult time conceptualizing them, let alone considering their limitations and risks, and would likely be able to give much more concrete feedback in the presence of tangible examples and a basic rules framework, in a manner similar to exequiel759's proposals. It doesn't have to be fully-formed, but one or two examples as a basic proof of concept with a basic explanation of the associated rules I think would go a long way.

If there is one criticism I'd make from this high-level description, it's that the proposal of a new range of feats I think brushes up against point #3 of the second inaugural post: replacing modifiers with a range of feats that provide modifiers adds complexity for both the designer and the player. There is, however, the potential for greater depth to be extracted from this system, so I do think it's still a worthwhile endeavor.

Combining this with another discussion that was going around single-action spells, what if we had single-action cantrips to begin with, and staves featured those? A cantrip wouldn't necessarily synergize with the staff's fundamental runes unless it were tuned that way, but it would still fit the bill of having staves offer single-action attacks.

I've attempted this kind of variant twice in the past: my first attempt was years ago and focused on trying to preserve an element of choice to building one's character, with a generic bonus that could be increased on some statistics through "ability feats". My assessment was that choices overwhelmingly skewed towards certain features that boosted defenses and raw power, such that there was far less choice than appeared. It was fairly straightforward and kept some of the subtleties of attributes, with more choice on how to boost skills, but ultimately I think added more power than depth by giving everyone equal access to the same benefits.

My second attempt was a bit more in-depth and instead focused on trying to completely remove attributes (as well as standard item bonuses), with multiclass dedications adjusted accordingly. This I think led to more meaningful choices in the sense that characters could choose skills more freely, and made having lots of trained skills more valuable, but was also quite complicated, such that I don't think its implementation would be practical.

It is also for this reason that I would advise people to actually try to write down what their idea of a system would be: general principles are great, but the devil really is in the details here, such that seemingly simple concepts can easily translate to complicated or troublesome implementations. There's quite a few mechanics outside of proficiencies that rely on attributes, and while it's not an unsolvable problem, it does complicate any solution that tries to be comprehensive.

I also think that if the intended goal is to have an alternative to attributes that doesn't change the math at all, doesn't disrupt choices at all, and doesn't involve any additional complexity at all, then the best system to achieve that within 2e will just be attributes. You can change their names to something different, but if you want something that walks exactly like a duck and quacks exactly like a duck, the subset of things that will perfectly satisfy those criteria will be very small.

Getting into the nitty-gritty of this, I think there are a few things to consider:

I've tried my hand at a brew that does away with attributes in PF2e, and more than once too, and each time my assessment was that it was more useful as a thought experiment than anything else: though they might be thematically redundant, attributes are so deeply baked into PF2e's math that trying to compensate for their removal tends to be more trouble than it's worth, at least in my attempts. This is why I'd consider their removal to be more of a 3e kind of change than one to expect in an Unchained book, unless someone comes up with a more efficient implementation.

You really believe that a typical hedge fund or software company or whatever is going to find an equivalent talent pool by choosing 25 year olds out of a hat rather than trying to poach local physics grad students?

Yes.

Sounds like this particular friend wouldn't do well on the sonnet task but is still overall a smart guy. That can happen. Intelligence is composed of multiple different attributes, and those can differ. I don't disagree there.

Glad to know we agree that attributes are in fact composites of many more fine-grained characteristics. One might even call them proficiencies.

That doesn't mean everyone has some equal number of stat points for it where for each deficiency they get a correspondingly strong high point, though.

Okay, and how would you like to quantify that metric? Because if we want to talk about what someone is good at in game terms, that's what proficiencies, feats, and other abilities are for. My friend's capabilities would be much better described by a proficiency rank in a Computers skill, or better yet a series of computer-related feats, than by an Intelligence score. In fact, we don't even need real-life examples for this: what Ezren can do with his Intelligence differs vastly from what Quinn can do, which in turn differs from Fumbus's abilities and Ulka's. In a world without attributes, these characters' intellect would still shine just as brightly through their respective class features, feats, and proficiencies, but the reverse would not be true.

And then we have Seltyiel: going by his backstory, the iconic Magus has awful Constitution, nondescript Strength and Dexterity, but above all exceptional Intelligence -- trouble is, if you tried to build a melee PF2e Magus in this way, you'd have a terrible time with your character, because that kind of nuanced attribute distribution is not only very suboptimal for that particular class, but actively discouraged by their Strength/Dex key attribute. Once again, attributes don't really tell the story we want them to, and trying to tell a story with attributes that strays off the beaten path will punish you with a subpar character. By contrast, expressing Seltyiel's study of arcane magic through high proficiency in Arcana is perfectly valid: even he has the skill increases for it, and can still invest in other useful skills like Athletics on the side.

Reminds me: One of the potential buffs I was considering for wizards was allowing them to cast utility spells as minor rituals.

This is something I'd quite like to see in a game that made rituals commonly-available, and established a better separation between spells made specifically to be cast during combat, and spells made for pre-buffing or use specifically outside of encounters. I'm definitely in favor of rituals being revamped in a future edition, because clearly there are spells right now that ought to have been rituals, such as augury, tailwind, or teleport, but can't be defined as such because rituals sit in this weird limbo where they technically exist, but can't be assumed to exist by default.

No need, all you have to do is look at all the firms willing to pay a lot of money for physicists to do work that has very little to do with physics (and train them to do so), and compare that to how often they source talent by interviewing a random sample of the population, let alone attempting to train them.

I am well aware of this phenomenon, and find its results sufficient enough evidence to disprove the hypothesis. I would also say that I find myself generally skeptical of many decisions made by corporate executives, and believe this particular trend more informed by a number of cultural and demographic factors than any strictly rational basis.

To cite a more anecdotal example: a friend and former colleague of mine is a far better software developer than I likely ever will be, because he has an incredible aptitude for pattern recognition and has spent most of his career hacking code together under short time constraints. However, his memory is famously awful, such that he struggles with recall that would come to most of us without effort. Forget about Shakespeare, he'd barely be able to tell you what he had for lunch on that same day, but if you sat him in front of some code and told him to add a new functionality to it, he'd be able to do so without even needing to be particularly familiar with the programming language. By the metrics cited by some on this thread, he'd have low Intelligence, but in my observed experience he has incredible powers of inductive reasoning that he uses extremely well in a highly technical field and beyond. His intelligence differs from my intelligence, which differs from the intelligence of others, and so in ways that the Intelligence attribute doesn't even remotely begin to capture in this game.

I bet that if I offered 10 string theorists unfamiliar with shakesphere 5% of their yearly income if they memorized and recited a few sonnets within the next couple days they'd do much better than 10 randos unfamiliar with shakesphere I pulled off the street. And even better if it was a comprehension task instead of pure memory.

You're most welcome to test that theory at your own expense. For my part, I think it is an extremely common human mistake for experts in a field to think themselves automatic experts in other fields beyond their purview, even and perhaps especially among people whose expertise is considered a marker of high intelligence. Almost as if intelligence were not a single unitary attribute, but a complex and nuanced set of different aptitudes and skills.

Don't bring politics into this, this conversation has nothing to do with politics or racism.

Politics and racism have the unfortunate habit of inserting themselves into seemingly innocuous topics. In this particular case, Pathfinder's ancestry attribute flaws means that you have entire species of creatures that, by the game's own mechanics, are defined as racially less intelligent than others, or racially more inclined towards brute strength than others. This has rather uncomfortable parallels to real-life pseudoscience that has unfortunately had real-life consequences on the lives on many people, continues to do so, and is made even more troublesome when some ancestries are used to reflect real-life cultures, which I suspect is why Intelligence flaws are so rare on ancestries.

I will also add that with regards to Intelligence, it also tends to generate a lot of ableism, and I've lost count of the number of times I've seen low-Intelligence characters played for laughs as if they had a learning disability, including in popular media. Even when putting aside the really gross stuff, I just don't think attributes do what some people want them to do all that well, and the more intricate mental aspects of characters tend to reflect themselves in their skills and roleplaying. As you yourself mention, it's not always the smart character that comes up with the smart plan, so looking at what a character does in the narrative doesn't paint as clear-cut a picture of their attributes as one might otherwise assume in the other examples you listed.

I will also challenge those examples and invite a different perspective: for sure, you can go to a gym and see really ripped people lift barbells, but as soon as you ask them to lift something that's not barbell-shaped, many will collapse and injure themselves, because their exercise routine might not include a lot of functional strength. That kind of person might have high Athletics, or even high Performance with regards to gym exercises, without excelling at other things requiring Strength. If you go to a library and talk to the person reading about string theory, they might be able to tell you what a Calabi-Yau manifold is, but for all their Intelligence they might not be able to recite even one of Shakespeare's sonnets: that's the kind of person who's trained or an expert in one type of Lore, and untrained in another. That person who's dancing their heart out on the floor might have incredibly corny pick-up lines, because their Performance might be a lot better than their Diplomacy. All of these things you describe are already captured by skills in 2e, and it is skills that allow far more nuanced, dare I say realistic stories about those characters to be told than attributes.

I'll also echo the desire to streamline things when possible in order to enable greater depth overall. As a programmer, my first instinct with any kind of design is to modularize its components, isolate them as much as is useful, and establish consistent standards that make those components easy to combine with each other with a minimum of unpredictable edge cases.

Beyond the general aversion to change some people appear to be having in this discussion, there also appears to be this running assumption that no longer having something enabled by default means no longer having the thing at all: this isn't true, and switching to a simpler framework often means there's still room to plug in those extra complexities people are asking for just as well as alternatives. Regarding Vancian spellcasting, I even at one point wrote a brew for a Kineticist with spell slots, not for any particular player but just to prove the point that it's pretty straightforward to set up a Vancian spellcasting framework around at-will abilities. A system where players don't have to deal with Vancian spell preparation or attributes by default is a system that could still accommodate both as opt-ins, whereas the reverse isn't as true in 2e.

I do think room could be made for other spellcasting styles, going so far to make sure that Vancian isn't the default for all classes, but if a future edition doesn't have at least Wizards with Vancian casting, I'd probably drop the system.

Although I don't agree very much with the rest of the post, I can agree with this proposal. I do think there is a happy medium to be had where Vancian casting no longer exists as the default, but can still exist as an opt-in for those who enjoy being able to prepare spells every day, and in my opinion it is easier to build Vancian casting off of a baseline of at-will spells than the reverse. In general, it'd be good to have a system that's flexible enough to accommodate more of these kinds of opt-ins, so that if Paizo does get rid of attributes in the future, there's still the option to plug those in too for those who enjoy their flavor.

Building off of the discussion on attributes, a more philosophical change I'd like to see in a future edition is for characters to be defined more by what they do than by what they have: when describing a healer, for instance, it's not the fact that they can Treat Wounds that matters the most so much as which proficiency rank they have in Medicine, what Wisdom mod they have, and whether they have marvelous medicines or some similar check-boosting item. Mechanically, this creates a lot of hoops to jump through in order to do the thing you're building for, and means you can't just pick the things you want to be good at: instead, you have a lot of actions you could do, but only a subset of which you'd reasonably want to even attempt past a certain point, and adding to those actions means having a build that accommodates the new action you're going for. Thematically, it means there's always an element of materialism to most stories that get told, which isn't at all inherently bad (there's no shame in enjoying having a +3 suit of armor or a staff of arcane might), but doesn't always fit the narrative of, say, a Monk who's sworn a vow of poverty, or a Psychic who's all about the unlimited potential of their own mind. When the game has an item treadmill where older items get discarded for newer ones, which is somewhat the case with Pathfinder, that can also inject a consumerist element to the narrative that is also not a perfect fit for every story.

By contrast, what I'd be quite keen to see is a shift towards a system where if you want to be good at a particular thing, you pick the thing and do the thing. If the item's on your character sheet, you're at least decent at it, and if it's not, then you're not. This could streamline both character-building and play significantly, but in my opinion also allow both to have more nuance, since picking a specific action needn't come with a package deal of having to invest in stats that also affect things you're not trying to be good at. This in my opinion could even apply to items and other things you have as a character, in the sense that their normally passive could be made more active: your armor doesn't just make you passively better at defense, it could give you an action or reaction that saves your bacon when a monster tries to land a particular nasty hit, and that staff that boosts your spellcasting could give you an action to supercharge your next spell. Making character-building and gameplay overall more about actions you can do, rather than more passive things that you have, could in my opinion take this edition's goals of nuanced and deep gameplay a step further.

My overall point still stands.

I don't know if it does, personally. If the original point was "attributes help tell a story about characters that help differentiate them from each other, look at how this barbarian is stronger than this fighter for instance," and it turns out that Valeros is exactly as strong as Amiri, then attributes don't tell the intended story, at least not in that example. It's not an isolated case either: I've seen many frail Wizards with higher Constitution modifiers than most starting characters, and many very unwise characters with high Wisdom mods, because the story those attributes tell clashes with the incentive to build a functional character. Consequently, there are very few characters in PF2e who are both intelligent and charismatic, or who fall short on both strength and dexterity.

By contrast, what I'd say tells the above kinds of stories much better in practice are those classes' features: Amiri hits harder than anyone else when she rages, and this is reflected in her Rage damage. As a trained Fighter, Valeros is far more accurate with his attacks than his peers, and this is reflected in his higher Strike proficiency. Ezren and Ulka are both equally intelligent, but the way in which they express that differs radically by way of one's arcane spellcasting and the other's tactics. Even in a world with no attributes, these factors would remain, and would express what those characters are good at in the exact same way.