Teridax's page

Anyway, everybody had their main niche, but everybody also intruded on the others' niches, especially at the higher levels, but that's okay. Almost impossible to avoid, really.

If a full FA party is what you're using to normalize the Animist's versatility, then all you're effectively stating is that the Animist, by default, has the niche encroachment potential of a FA character all the time. In my experience, most party members do not typically tread on each other's toes, and while they can certainly gain secondary benefits with some overlap, they nonetheless retain distinct niches.

I'm also going to call shenanigans on that double sustain, as Effortless Captivation and Effortless Concentration only trigger when your turn begins. After you have used either free action, your turn has begun, so you can no longer use the other. I also at this point have several questions: what was the point of picking a Champion dedication on the Animist? Where was your Champion getting that third reaction each round? Why go for this overlap and compare martial potential when your Animist wasn't using gish apparitions? I can understand not going for a gish playstyle on a party full of martial classes, even with a Bard who could have supported you significantly, but at that stage claiming that your martials weren't out-martialed by a class that wasn't attempting to do so in the first place is only vacuously true.

Based on the notes in AoN, the notes on scroll rarity should be in GM Core, page 262. The rarity of specific spells is defined in the spell itself based on which rarity trait it has, e.g. uncommon, rare, or unique. I do think you make a good point about certain common spells being found more commonly than others still, so you very well could make scrolls of certain frequently-used spells cheaper while restricting the sale of other scrolls based on your internal worldbuilding.

You calling out anybody for being wordy and stubborn is pretty tone deaf when by my rough estimate your posts make up 25% of this thread by post count and 40% by word count. You can both just drop this as it appears neither of you are going to change your mind.

Given the quantity of arguments you've chosen to pick with people in the brief span of time you've been active on these forums, I don't think you're necessarily in a position to be making callouts either. I don't disagree with you, I am stubborn as well, but I've at least tried to keep conversation topical to the Animist and move conversation forward, as I did here by discussing the Animist's gameplay feel and making a few suggestions. By contrast, your grand contribution to this thread appears to be beating a dead horse:

However AoE tends to want large clumps of foes for the most efficient damage per spell slot. There's a reason we don't favor human wave tactics against modern weapons and that when such tactics are attempted losses are catastrophic.

Modern artillery can raze city blocks from miles away and is practically guaranteed to be lethal. AoE spells, by contrast, require enemies to be close enough together, and if the spell fails to kill them outright (which, given the enemy's scaling HP, happens frequently), you'll have a bunch of angry monsters rushing towards the party. Modern guns, meanwhile, are just about instantly lethal against any number of attackers rushing into melee regardless of whether or not they clump together. While the Art of War comparisons do carry relevance to this otherwise utterly irrelevant conversation, the analogy you're drawing does not. More generally, the benefits of wall spells appear to be commonly-understood by all but a vanishingly small minority of players, and something tells me no amount of patient explanation is going to change those people's minds, so we might as well move on.

Give me an example of a battle where this is useful past level 14. During the actual battle that doesn't interfere with your other party members hammering the creature.

I can't speak on AestheticDialectic's behalf, but I'll point out two problems I'm seeing with this sentence: the first is that the whole point of wall spells is generally that your party won't be hammering some of the creatures. As you yourself mention, wall spells are great because they let you split up groups of enemies, isolating some of them and forcing them to waste actions breaking the wall while your party focuses on whoever's left exposed. They're strong for pretty much the same reason quandary is strong: you effectively apply the effect you want immediately, no rolling needed, and any actions the enemy spends on dealing with the spell after that is a win. The second, much simpler problem is that if hammering the monsters through raw damage, especially just a single nuke spell, is all your party needs to do to win encounters, then chances are the encounters you're facing aren't challenging enough for utility or backup options to really matter. Nothing wrong with easy encounters, but it does change the nature of a discussion around strategic options, not that wall spells are necessarily the most topical subject in a thread about the Animist.

Every concept (more than those shown above) that I've come up with has failed to find a niche that some other class didn't fulfill better in almost every way.

So, what then, is the exemplar class supposed to be doing? It has a strong conceptual niche, but it's mechanical niche--whatever that's supposed to be--seems more and more lacking to me.

What are your thoughts on the class' role and abilities?

I would say that the other commenters have it right: the Exemplar isn't really about being the best at one specific niche, in my opinion, so much as alternating between different strengths. They can do something amazing each turn, but the amazing thing they do is meant to be different each time: if the aim is to deal nothing but damage each turn, then for sure another class will do that better, but otherwise the Exemplar can dance between Strike damage, utility, AoE, and other benefits as well, accessing a more versatile total package than most martial classes. It can be frustrating if you're trying to maximize a specific aspect of your character or if you want to use a transcendence you have from an ikon that doesn't currently have your spark, but in my limited experience it can also lead to this wonderful flow state when you chain transcendences together smoothly and make a significant impact each time.

After a bit of thinking and using a previous brew as a starting point, I've compiled a proof of concept of what an ideal Animist would look like to me. This might be worth discussing at greater length in a separate homebrew thread, but the main points include:

IMO the issues with Animist balance is the same as Remaster Rogue - a chassis that's just a little too good at everything tied to a class concept that has ridiculous flexibility already. It's one of those 'but why is giving this guy so much incidental durability core to their class concept' things when there's also the other class with less core flexibility over there who is somehow less durable as well.

I definitely agree that the Animist's durability factors a lot into this discussion as well -- unlike the Rogue, I do think there's at least some justification in that the Animist is explicitly meant to be a great gish, but the problem is that the Animist ends up with the stats of a great gish even when they're blasting, healing, and doing lots of other non-gish stuff. Whereas the Rogue's excessively good saves could easily be errata'd if the developers had wanted (and I think a lot of GMs do houserule their saves to normalcy), I don't think it would be as easy to downtune the Animist's durability, because that by itself would negatively impact a large range of their playstyles. I certainly don't think they need expert armor at level 11 as opposed to level 13, though, that just feels like one of many instances of overly indulgent balancing on the class.

Where I think the fat can be more easily trimmed, among other places, is the sheer amount of spells available to the Animist -- although not every apparition spell is as incredibly strong as laughing fit, wall of stone, and quandary each time, the fact that the class gets a Sorcerer-sized repertoire on top of the full range of divine spells to prepare from into 2 slots per rank means the class always becomes incredibly versatile on spells alone. It doesn't seem to me like this cross-tradition versatility gets appreciated very much on the class, despite being a central theme to other classes like the Witch who pay a much heftier price for a much smaller taste. As you mention, the class also gets between 4 and 8 scaling Lore skills, which barely get mentioned at all despite being situationally quite useful.

All of these are mechanics that I think contribute to the class's bloat and excessive power without necessarily making them feel directly better to play: some players might enjoy the Lore skills or appreciate the spell versatility, but that's not what everyone's looking for in an Animist I suspect, and to many it just represents more bookkeeping. The simple fact that the class is also a prepared spellcaster I think also makes the Animist more complicated without necessarily being more fun, and had the class simply been condensed into a spontaneous spellcaster with one big repertoire, they could have found themselves much more streamlined. I personally would have also preferred a purely spontaneous model simply because it would have allowed for a degree of permanent choice on the class, if it meant choosing a fixed repertoire of purely divine spells on top of their apparition repertoire.

1. Do you like the current animist class overall?

2. Do you think it is too powerful?
3. Do you think it is too complicated?

1. Not as much as I'd like, though there are aspects to the class that I do enjoy. For starters, I absolutely love the theme, and for pretty much exactly the same reasons as you, Unicore: I love the Animist as a divine caster class that is spiritual, without being about gods or organized religion. It's a character fantasy I wish was done more often in tabletop gaming spaces, and I'm glad to see it done in Pathfinder. I also do think there is a certain enjoyment to mixing and matching apparitions for their spells, and I do like some of the things the class tries to do, like draw continuous benefits across encounters or do things that complement their casting without eating into their spell slots. However, I also think the class is really messy and massively overloaded, to a degree that makes them unenjoyable even when they're genuinely powerful: what I actually disliked the most in my experience was daily preparations as an Animist, because it felt like I was basically rolling a new character every time by swapping out all of my apparitions, my apparition spells, and many of my feats. Perhaps this might be a plus to some people, but to me it devalued the choices I'd made for my character and made their apparitions in particular feel very utilitarian, rather than a source of long-lasting bonds.

2. Yes.

3. Yes. I don't think it's bad for some characters to be more complex than others, but I think the Animist's complexity isn't done very well, such that it creates a lot of bookkeeping without necessarily contributing all that positively to the class's enjoyment. Generally, complexity was the first and most immediate turn-off for people I've seen consider the class: the player generally took just one look at the Animist's's mixed spell slots before noping out of picking the class, and even if they could stomach that, the prospect of swapping out large reams of spells every day did not appeal. It's a lot of information overhead just to get started.

I may be misinterpreting this, but isn't the rule already that a scroll's rarity matches the spell's rarity? At my table I just use that, and for me choosing which uncommon or rare scrolls to drop for the party is the same as choosing which spells to let the party learn, especially as one can lead to the other.

Outside of the topic of balance, which I feel at this stage has been done to death, I do think there are other points worth bringing up:

I think the class is fine, but not particularly interesting. It's a class they tried to put too much into it and made it an unfocused class with a messy play-style.

This is probably where I've found myself agreeing the most with Deriven: for all the power the Animist has, I don't think they're all that fun to play. Their design is really messy beyond what is to be expected from a class made to broach different niches at once, and even the people defending the class's balance on this thread don't seem to have very many positive things to say about their gameplay. Although people do seem to be becoming increasingly aware that the Animist is a powerful class, the class doesn't seem to be all that popular, and from my personal experience at least a lot of players still turn it down at face value just because of how inaccessible it is. Regardless of where one sits on the balance discussion, I think it's safe to say that the class has been struggling to appeal to a great deal many players, and that's something worth addressing by improving the class's gameplay. Perhaps Unicore is right and we'll never see a rework, but I think it's a lot of wasted potential for a class with such an incredible theme to fail to interest players who'd normally love the Animist for its flavor.

I haven’t seen any new people coming in to say that the Animist is over powered, only that they like the class and what it can do.

I think this is a pretty clear example of why individual statements have to be taken with a grain of salt, as AestheticDialectic, Ryangwy, and Old_Man_Robot have all come in to point to the class's power and push back against those trying to downplay it.

The animist really suffers from this in play as well. People expect you to be the healer and that really cuts heavily into your spell slots.

So the Animist isn't strong... because players demand you to be a healbot every time you play a caster and you just cave every time? Are you sure this isn't just a problem with you and the players at your table? Because the very few times I have encountered pressure from my fellow party members to build a caster exclusively around healing, I made it very clear to them that I was not going to build my entire character as a buffer to their mistakes, and while I still packed healing on my class, I did not warp my entire build to center around it. You don't even need to do this on an Animist, who gets a healing vessel spell and Embodiment of the Balance, so once again this is a purely theorycrafted concern that the class soundly addresses in practice. I would also push back against the notion that a caster that doesn't choose to be a healbot is playing selfishly, as there's far more utility besides healing and damage contributions from casters are valuable too.

I think that is going to be true at a ton of tables, especially as the animist does have serious action economics my issues in the low levels and playing highly versatile characters at high level takes a lot of resource management that most players won’t do.

Which action economy issues would those be, out of curiosity? Because as pointed out by several people now, the Animist's action economy is exceptionally good in practice, not poor. While the Animist certainly has above-average complexity, arguing that it's a problem at high level when every character is a lot more complex than at level 1 does not strike me as a very sound argument either. In general, a lot of this rhetoric seems to stem from a lot of performative hand-wringing in an online forum instead of coming from play experience, and I can assure you that it does not take all that much play to see that the Animist is a very powerful class indeed.

There is a big difference between people agreeing that the Animist is good and them agreeing that the class is too good and needs to be dialed back in some significant fashion. Some people also disagree that the animist is all that good, so you have multiple different conversations here zipping right past each other with absolutely nothing like a general consensus being established.

As mentioned above, though, the "Animist is okay but nothing special" crowd on this thread appears to be made pretty much exclusively of people who have chosen to tunnel-vision on theorycrafted blasting and nothing else, whereas the increasingly larger crowd of people criticizing the class's overall power appear to be coming in after playing the class. What's worse, even when it does get shown that the Animist is an amazing blaster, those people just stick their heads in the sand and continue to repeat themselves as if nothing happened. We are, for instance, currently pretending you and I that an entire thread didn't get created for the explicit purpose of trying to downplay the Animist's blasting, in which it was proven that the Animist was not only a top-tier blaster, but could even out-nova even the other biggest bursters in the game: even by the extremely arbitrary and contrived standards established by people who wanted to set the class up to fail in online discussion, the Animist passes with flying colors. That people would continue to repeat falsehoods after that says ultimately more about the people than the Animist, and I personally don't put much stock in those value judgments.

I will say, however, that all of this discourse around the Animist does highlight one of the greater tragedies with casters in PF2e: as this very thread shows, some people simply do not value versatility at all, and to them the entire measure of a caster class boils down to how much damage they can output on paper. The Animist could be 99% as good as every other specialist all at once, and some people would still think nothing of the class just because they're only 99% as good as the game's biggest blaster when it comes to blasting. Forget about all the utility and other wonderful things the class can produce, it's all about blasting, all of the time. In some ways, it's not really much unlike the martial-caster discourse in discussion spaces for other games like D&D 5e: despite how obvious a gap there is, a lot of people will still argue the opposite until the cows come home, usually by trying to force discussion down to an extremely niche topic on paper that has little relevance to actual play. It makes me a bit sad, because I do also think the Animist isn't all that fun to play for a bunch of reasons and would like to see the class improved, but even now I don't think we're ready to have that conversation yet, because sheer power is the only thing that matters to some people (and, specifically, blasting power).

Is it just me, or does this thread largely feel like the same points have been getting repeated for like 4 pages?

While there has been a fair amount of repetition going around, I do think there has been a meaningful development nonetheless: 4 pages and about 3 months ago, the discussion was largely centered around a small handful of people asserting that because the Animist didn't beat the literal most extreme blasters at blasting, the class was nothing special. Since then, however, many more people have come to this thread with actual play experience and come to pretty much the same, alternate conclusion: it doesn't matter whether or not the Animist beats the absolute top-of-the-line blasters, the class has so much going on across all of their stats and features that they overperform.

I also do think it's worth highlighting the distinction here: there are still a couple of the usual suspects repeating themselves by insisting on centering conversation around hyper-specific Sorcerer novas and the like in order to make the Animist look worse than they are, but doing so fails to address the larger point made about the Animist's holistic capabilities. Even if the Animist isn't a top-tier blaster, which I believe they are, they still have so much else that specialized blasters don't have that it doesn't even matter; they're still way above the curve. Insisting that the Animist has no top-tier strengths doesn't mean the class lacks strengths, much less that they have any significant weaknesses.

What has also been interesting, in my opinion, is when a few people have tried to invent drawbacks for the Animist, because I think it's ended up saying more about the people making the argument than the Animist itself: specifically, the criticism was that the Animist was locked into a rotation and thus forced to spend actions Sustaining, but in practice I think the opposite is true. The Animist has no need to Sustain, and they absolutely do not need to lock themselves into anything. In fact, one of their major strengths is the ability to radically pivot and do something completely different as the situation demands, and this I think might explain why some people might be struggling with the class if they've played it: while the Animist can be played along a specific rotation and do well, the class works at its best when played flexibly and when all of its many options are considered holistically. Going in with a one-track, min-maxer mentality and playing the class like one big hammer, as some keep putting it, is the absolute worst way to play them (and, I'd argue, any class in PF2e). Reducing any class down to a subset of their capabilities is never the best way of assessing their power in my opinion, and in the Animist's case treating them as just a pure blaster or a pure gish reduces them down to a fraction of their kit. The Animist is never just a blaster, a gish, a healer, or a controller, they're all of this and more, and have the unique ability to mix and match strengths normally excluded to specialists. Whether or not someone is capable of appreciating this holistic power to the Animist I think is really where you can draw the dividing line between those who believe the class is too strong and those who don't.

I'm very glad someone is approaching additional Kineticist elements; I'd very much like to see different elements turned into impulses and junctions and I think this sets a very good model for aether and void. I also think there is a solid identity to these elements as implemented, with void being about damage, darkness, and regaining Hit Points, and aether being about defenses and manipulation of mobility. I also just love the flavor text of "you punch through the Universe."

Looking through the impulses and junctions, here are my criticisms:

Even yesterday we were fighting a creature with a 20 foot reach whip that could grapple easily and move targets around the battlefield with the whip. It had a powerful fire aura. And some crazy mobility and AOE spells it could drop at range. Against such an enemy, I'd love to see the Elf Step strategy while this creature is moving 80 feet plus a round with dimension door all the time.

Just say Balor. As it so happens, the Animist is exceedingly well-equipped to handle one, with quandary as but one spell they can access that lets them time the creature out. Even if we were to assume the monster was a PL+4 uber-boss, they'd only have a 50% chance to escape on the first turn, giving the party ample opportunity to prepare against them. The class's weak Will saves make them a prime target for cheap control spells like laughing fit that easily rob it of its reactions and potentially its actions too, and Forest's Heart lets them grapple the Balor with a 65% success chance from outside their whip and aura range. None of these are options typically available to divine casters, but all of them are readily available to an Animist, who also gets to trigger several of the Balor's weaknesses at at time with spells like moonlight ray. I'm quite surprised you'd think the creature would be such a challenge for a well-optimized party that has an Animist, to be honest, and more generally I'm curious: how did your party actually deal with this enemy? What does your party even look like? It seems that by "optimized" you instead mean "extremely rigid and incapable of adapting", which is perhaps why you're struggling with simple scenarios like these and the Animist, a phenomenally adaptive class, in general.

And there go the goalposts...

I love the Resentment Witch I'm playing, but yes, when it comes to blasting she her bags are packed. Not that anybody minds or expects otherwise.

I'm not sure calling out the ridiculousness of holding four slots per rank as the minimum requirement for blasting power, or any sort of spellcasting power in general, really qualifies as moving the goalposts. You may refer to the extremely basic comparison to the Imperial Sorcerer as but one example; earth's bile is an extremely helpful spell for blasting even if its damage doesn't single-handedly beat that of a two-action spell on paper.

I also find this argument silly. But then I'm the one saying that Animist is a generalist and can't beat the specialists, and especially when it comes to this focus on blasting.

Oh hey, speaking of goalposts, I think I found the ones you were trying to move!

First off there is some serious underestimation of what other classes can do, and most definitely when it comes to blasting. While the Animist is a partial spontaneous caster, it is not a full 4 slot spontaneous caster with all the bells and whistles.

Once again, dismissing the Animist's ability to be a top-tier blaster on the mere basis that they're only a three-and-a-half slot caster, rather than a four-slot caster, is ridiculous, and goes beyond simply asserting that they "can't beat the specialists". It is quite clear you're holding "has to beat every specialist at all of their specialties simultaneously" as the criterion for determining whether or not the class is at all overtuned, a criterion that now several different people who have played the Animist have challenged.

And Animists can't have more focus points than others, so why would they outlast anyone?

The mere fact that I have to explain this to you raises significant doubts over how much play experience is factoring into this discussion, I'm sorry to say, because this should normally be immediately obvious from just running a single encounter. Just to lay it out as plainly as I can:

It's like, every class is getting As in 1 or 2 subjects but failing everything else (which is a good thing in this system). The animist on the other hand is getting all Bs and Cs and maybe a couple Ds. That's the issue at hand - whether that's a good thing or not and if that aspect needs to be balanced.

Does the animist have a significantly higher role GPA than the rest of the classes (a class of classes :P )?

I do think so, and I largely agree with this assessment -- I do think the Animist is genuinely A-grade in several respects, but even if they weren't, they'd still have more than any one given class. This by itself I think could be fine if the class was like the Bard, and the things that made them above the curve were benefits that directly lifted everyone else up, but I don't think that's the case with the Animist: they can certainly provide support and switch to dedicated supporting easily, but their ability to fill virtually any gap in the party's capabilities I think easily leads to this "pick me" playstyle where they keep snagging the spotlight, including potentially on occasions where another party member could have capably handled a task.

By design, characters in Pathfinder tend to be a decent B- or C-grade at a few things alongside whichever specialty they may have, and when more or less everyone's the same, this creates opportunities where everyone gets a turn to shine, even if it's not something they're the best at. Intelligence classes, for instance, tend to be quite decent at Recalling Knowledge, whereas classes like the Druid or Warpriest Cleric are known for being quite survivable on the frontline and able to mix in some competent Strikes. When you have a class that's a cut above decent at most things, it becomes very easy for those characters to get outshined, whether or not it's their specialty. More annoyingly, it becomes very easy for the Animist to end up hogging a lot of the spotlight, not just at the big things but at the little things too.

AestheticDialectic mentioned that the class can be okay in the hands of a socially conscious player, and I think it's worth highlighting the opposite: a player who isn't necessarily aware that they're hogging the spotlight, or who has a tendency to take on any challenge they have a reasonable chance of accomplishing regardless of how much attention their character has taken up previously, can easily end up annoying their teammates by denying them a chance to express their own characters' full repertoire of abilities. In one instance where a player at my table was running an Animist, I had to make a gentleman's agreement with them to avoid certain builds, simply because they'd ended up treading far too close to other party members with them. This is why the Animist's balance I think is something worth criticizing, and not just worth highlighting: I do think the class has a ton of other problems, notably that it's not very approachable, but the simple fact that it can do too much on one character I think has legitimately caused issues at my table and required me to intervene, whether on my own character or another player's.

Which once again comes back to what I'm talking about. You used a bunch of resources to set up a sustain spell that may or may not be useful in the given situation.

If the spell wasn't useful in the given situation, I wouldn't be using it. Thankfully the Animist ends up with up to 55 spells to choose from at any given time, so it's not like their choices are limited.

First off there is some serious underestimation of what other classes can do, and most definitely when it comes to blasting. While the Animist is a partial spontaneous caster, it is not a full 4 slot spontaneous caster with all the bells and whistles.

This just in, apparently every class needs to be an Oracle or a Sorcerer to even qualify as good. I guess Resentment Witches better pack it in, then.

But more seriously, I find this argument both silly and emblematic of the discourse around the Animist: it's never about assessing the complete picture, or seeing how the Animist performs overall, it's always about claiming that the Animist can't possibly be overtuned, because they don't beat the literal best at X at the thing they're best at. This, despite the fact that the Animist has in fact far more spell slots than the average caster by having 4 slots per rank up to max rank-2, and gets to stretch their spell output even more thanks to their vessel spells and plenty of resourceless actions in their feats. The Animist has in my opinion some of the best spell output in the game, if not the best, and can outlast even 4-slot casters by using vessel spells to supplement their slots.

Yes, earth's bile is a good blasting focus spell, but other classes can have good focus blasting spells too. Other classes, and especially Sorceror, can stack more damage boosts. An Animist will not beat a blasting focused Oracle and no one will beat a blasting focused Sorceror.

As shown with a simple example of earth's bile + fireball, an Animist absolutely can out-blast an Imperial Sorcerer, and so before factoring in benefits from the Animist's subclasses and feats. If you think other classes can stack more damage boosts, that to me suggests a lack of awareness of feats like Channeler's Stance and Cardinal Guardians.

Range matters. Your Animist will be in the frontline. Especially at the higher levels casting there comes with a whole slew of complications you need to be prepared for, and the tools for that aren't really in your kit.

This reads as fairly off-base to me on a number of levels. For starters, the Animist is perfectly capable of casting from a distance if they so wish, and has the raw spell output for it even without vessel spells, but also very obviously has the tools to survive in both the frontline and the backline, including fantastic action economy, top-tier defenses for a caster, and access to the entire divine list, including amazing mobility spells like air walk.

Sustaining sucks. This is why Liturgist isn't broken and why when I was playing an Animist I even trained out of Elf Step. It simply wasn't good enough.

As I recall, the issue you raised over this was that you couldn't Step into difficult terrain. How come you didn't pick Feather Step? At high level, that should've normally been a trivial investment. I find this statement all the more perplexing considering how the action cost of Sustaining can be eliminated entirely via feats like Maneuvering Spell, and how the Animist has enough Focus Points at high level to not even need to Sustain their vessel spells if they don't want to.

What makes all of this so weird is that this has essentially no correlation to my play experience with the Animist. My character encountered zero struggles with surviving damage or Sustaining, in large part because they made use of divine spells to boost their already-strong base survivability and didn't force themselves to spend actions Sustaining vessel spells on turns where it was inconvenient (that, and I was playing a Liturgist). They had ample room to try out new builds and excel at them, and on several occasions performed well enough that I had to rein them in to not step on the toes of my teammates, who were nonetheless playing and building their own characters optimally for the party. In general, it was patently obvious that they far fewer limitations than any other class and could simply do far more in general, to the point where they sometimes felt like a dual-classed character. Coupled with a few exploits that massively increased their power and that I had to petition to houserule against, notably Channeler's Stance and its damage bonus applying to earth's bile's persistent damage, this is about as close as it felt to me to playing a 1e caster in 2e, and not necessarily for the right reasons in my opinion.

Just looked at Hungry depths. Not very good for a group fight. Now I know why I don't know it very well. I would not use it as it leads to problems for group set up and movement. Not something I would cast as it would interfere with how the group operates. Need very tight area to use a sustain damage spell against groups.

The fact that it's on the Lurker in Devouring Dark's spell list would normally have it ring a bell to someone who's played an Animist, but also the fact that it starts off at a perfectly inoffensive 5-foot radius makes it extremely easy to lay down in any fight, with added potential for area denial. The fact that the caster has full control over how wide to make the area I'd say is a plus, especially compared to spells like fireball that may end up harming party members in tight spaces and messy melees.

I'll also bring up how this is one example of spells at the Animist's disposal that target Reflex saves: as we all know, being able to target all three saves is quite a big plus, and this is something the Animist can do far more easily than any other divine caster thanks to their apparition and vessel spells. The divine list naturally targets Fortitude and Will quite well, but isn't quite so good with Reflex saves for the most part. Having access to many more Reflex save spells rounds this out nicely, and once more adds to the class's adaptability. By contrast, one of the Elemental Sorcerer's weaknesses that doesn't get brought up much in these discussions is that they're overly reliant on Reflex saves for blasting, and struggle quite significantly against enemies strong in those saves. Thus, whether the Animist is blasting or debuffing, they can adapt their spells to an enemy's saves far better than most other classes.

Check the damage of this against a comparable well built martial or caster at that level.

I did, it far exceeds even an Elemental Sorcerer's nova. I'd be curious to hear in your own words what a "well built martial or caster at that level" would be doing to beat this.

This is an example of what I was talking about where a player like Teridax to impress new, inexperienced players tries something like this to make the new players go, "Oooh, how did you do that" whereas experienced players would have already softened the targets at range with longer range AOE spells than [i]earth's bile, not being having weak save casters Elf Stepping within 30 feet of the big nasty with auras and gazes and AOE abilities themselves hammering the party, and taking down the enemy faster and more efficiently than this combo which Teridax seems to think just works with no opposition, moved into perfect position with no rounds spend closing the distance to get within 30 feet of the target, and no one else in the party built very well or doing anything to hit them from farther away while his animist moves into 30 foot range and somehow executes all of this by round 3.

Not how my groups work. Just getting into position to start all of this would take some time, but Teridax ignores things like movement, target changing, enemy abilities that can hammer you within 30 feet, or enemy mobility or movement that can outrun their abilities.

All of which get used in fights I'm in.

He's just making up this ideal series of actions that looks great on paper, but would take more to set up in play, especially with other group members doing activities from farther away to open the battle.

I'm going to be quite honest: it's clear that you have no idea what you're talking about, and that you're trying to make up for this with repeated personal attacks against my competence and experience and a whole lot of bluster.

As you'll have noted, I listed that particular rotation only upon request, and only as an example of something the Animist can do that is patently ludicrous. At no point did I state that this is to be expected in every encounter, which is why I relied on much simpler comparisons to show that an Animist does not need any specific build to be a top-of-the-line blaster, among many other things. The simple point I have made, which others who have actually played the class have validated, is that the Animist is an overstatted, hyper-versatile class even before one starts talking about the exploit potential to their class features and feats. One of their greatest strengths is their adaptability, a quality you have utterly failed to recognize as a result of relying almost exclusively on min-maxed theorycrafted builds and white room scenarios whenever you come into these kinds of threads to state your opinions. With the Liturgist, one of their own strengths is their action compression and mobility, which you initially approached from a place of ignorance by not knowing how Tumble Through worked, and then from a place of vindictive houseruling when you realized this made the subclass very strong indeed. Perhaps the biggest reason why you appear to fail to appreciate the class's potential is because the class is genuinely complex, and thus cannot be easily grasped in the same reductive way you appear to have approached every other build in the game. Calling non-martial classes "selfish" for daring to not spend their every action supporting the martials reeks of inexperience, and does not set a very solid premise for judging what such a versatile caster can do.

So, to be clear: I'm not saying an Animist should spend three turns setting up to lay down four spells in one turn. I'm with Ryangwy here: you're getting lost in the weeds, Deriven, while conspicuously failing to acknowledge some of the most basic aspects of the class that make them notably strong, including a base chassis that exceeds even the Druid's, better focus spells, far more versatility, and just generally better features all around. The Animist clearly is built different compared to other casters, and if you still think that they're nothing special, chances are you still haven't played them adequately, if you've even played the class at all.

Okay so the animist strategy you want to compare to other builds is:

No, and I have provided the exact, single-turn sequence that forms the basis for my comparison to an Imperial Sorcerer, while explaining how extending the comparison across turns favors the Animist even more.

Just to help you undesntand why I'm pushing on the focus spells, it's because in our first exchange (lately) roughly 6 hours ago, I responded to your comment to Deriven about Circle of Spirits providing access to two focus spells. So I naturally wanted to think through a build that uses circle of spirits to get out a second such spell, and see how effective that rotation could be. It sounds like we both agree that if the animist wants to go for high burst damage and is willing to drop slots spells on it, then that circle of spirits rotation is not the way to go - there are better ways the animist can pump out fast damage. Is that fair?

I don't quite agree with this, because the grand conclusion is simply that Circle of Spirits is not very useful for improving an Animist's blasting potential, a fairly basic observation that can be made just by looking at the Animist's vessel spells. However, if we're still restricting our discussion to the limited subject of pure damage, then using Circle of Spirits to combine embodiment of battle with either shapeshifting spell does in fact produce arguably the best gish Striking build in the game: not only do you get to shapeshift without resource restrictions like an Untamed Druid, you also get to boost your Strike accuracy more than said Untamed Druid while also adding bonus damage on top. With devouring dark form, you could even potentially make use of Grudge Strike, an otherwise terrible feat, and spend two actions Striking with greater accuracy than a Fighter, while spending your remaining action using Elf Step to Sustain both your vessel spells and make a second Strike in the process.

I will say, however, that damage is arguably the least interesting part of this, and the true strength of Circle of Spirits is that it immediately lets you switch to whatever you need in the middle of combat, which is particularly useful if your party starts dropping low on HP and you have a Custodian of Groves and Gardens, or you realize the enemies within spitting distance of you are weak to Will saves and would start tearing each other apart if you were to cast nymph's grace. It basically means you're only two actions and a Focus Point away from casting exactly the vessel spell you need out of the two to four that you have available, and because your vessel spells are Sustained, it doesn't even require you to drop any previous vessel spells, especially when it becomes so easy to Sustain them.

Oh great! Show me that rotation. I'd love to see it.

Sure thing:

Fair to say, then, that the animist build you're dicussing does less than both types of sorcerer when no slots are used, compares nicely to the imperial when slots are used instead of strikes, but can't blast as well as a built-for-blasting caster?

No, that is not fair to say when the Animist build being discussed outperformed an Imperial Sorcerer on two separate comparisons, one involving spell slots, and one involving Strikes and no spell slots, and would always outperform an Imperial Sorcerer when no spell slots are used given how the latter inherently lacks damaging focus spells. Your claim is similarly misleading when the Imperial Sorcerer is in fact a built-for-blasting caster, and is known for being one of the best thanks to the relative +3 it can give to its spell DCs. The only fair statement that can be drawn from the above is that the Animist's paper damage when using strictly no feats, no subclasses, and none of its other apparitions sits above that of an Imperial Sorcerer (with extra Focus Points and a buffed focus spell) and behind that of the specialized caster with the most extreme on-paper damage in the game. This in and of itself falls apart when including the Animist's actual other apparitions and features, as the class does end up able to outperform even an Elementalist thanks to their ability to Sustain three spells on the same turn that they cast a fourth, while giving a +10 status bonus to the damage of three of those spells and a +2 to their DCs.

Because there is no factoring to be done for them. The elemental sorcerer uses one save spell and then one attack spell per round, so MAP is not a factor for them. Your animist does one save spell and two strikes in round 2, so MAP factors in to the damage estimate for their 2nd round total.

Once again, that is not what I am pointing out. What I am specifically referencing is that elemental toss only does something on two degrees of success, whereas save spells do something on three. There is very clearly a double standard at play when you cite differences in accuracy in order to downgrade the Animist's Strike damage, but are perfectly willing to ignore major differences in accuracy between spell attacks and save spells when listing the Elemental Sorcerer's damage, comparing its combination of spell attacks and save spells to two save spells.

Well it sounds like you mean that to be an insult, but yes I will agree that the comparison is telling us something useful about the two builds. I'm not even implying the sorc is better here; no-slot 76 is fine, and I think many players would like that over 2-slot 127. Other players won't.

I don't mean it as an insult, but I am certainly calling out dishonest argumentation here, which I shall make more explicit: you expressly chose a severely mismatched combination of focus spells on the Animist for your initial comparison in order to make their damage look worse than it is. I asked you to justify your choice of darkened forest form as a focus spell, and you refused to answer. When I corrected your math and showed that the Animist won out in that comparison, you then tried to discredit my amendments with claims that have since proven to be false. When I then produced a much more sensible comparison that had an Animist and Imperial Sorcerer both spend their full turns casting a focus spell and a slot spell, in which the Animist won despite intentionally downgrading the Animist and upgrading the Imperial Sorcerer, you immediately abandoned that comparison altogether and chose a Sorcerer subclass whose damage on paper was much easier to inflate, despite protesting against similar inflation prior in the conversation. What this is telling is that you are not so much interested in sincerely comparing the Animist's capabilities to other contenders, so much as trying desperately to make the evidence fit a predetermined conclusion. What the above comparisons have shown is that the Animist does not need to make much effort at all to be one of the best blasters in the game. If not even an Imperial Sorcerer spending a Focus Point each turn to boost their blasting power is good enough for you, then you will perhaps need to explicitly state what your minimum cutoff point is for a good blaster.

But what he's not talking about is how bad the class is for any other options. Be the Liturgist or you're no good. Take Apparition Quickening or you don't stand out.

I don't have to talk about this because both of these claims are hokum. As shown above, even without a subclass at all or Apparition's Quickening, the Animist performs extremely well. Everything the class gains from their practice is a bonus, and the fact that the Liturgist is broken by itself simply adds to the class's issues.

I think sustain spells are over-rated.

I really don't get this. If you took out the sustained duration to earth's bile, it would still be a powerful single-action damage spell even if you only used it once. The fact that it and other vessel spells can be Sustained to produce its effects again and again is a bonus, and the fact that it and other vessel spells can be Sustained at quite literally no added action cost is a bonus on top of that. I've mentioned in the past that a lot of arguments against the Animist try to dress its strengths up as weaknesses, and this is a clear-cut case of what I'm talking about.

Ancestral memories is roughly +5% for the second round. A more direct comparison for L9 would be elemental toss. Using that and fireball would be: R1 (10d6+5)+(5d8+5) + R2 (8d6+4)+(5d8+5) = 127.

Oh, I'm sorry, was one of the most blast-oriented Sorcerer builds not enough for you? Why switch to the Elemental Sorcerer when the Imperial Sorcerer with a buffed focus spell was an equally valid comparison for level 9? Where are your accuracy calculations now that you've switched to the Elemental Sorcerer and their focus spell that does nothing on a failure?

The second strike has MAP. You're not factoring that into your calculation, you're instead treating it has having the same damage average as the first attack.

Hold up, that's not what I'm challenging here. I am specifically challenging your claim that I counted three attacks, when I very clearly counted only two. Clearly, your claim is false, which is why you're having to pivot here, just like you're pivoting on Sorcerer subclasses when it turns out that a basic Animist build with no subclass outperforms a notable blaster. Your concerns about MAP also appear to be greatly exaggerated when you've explicitly chosen not to factor in accuracy at all in your above Elemental Sorcerer math. The fact that you have to resort to the most extreme example of a blaster caster in order to make the argument against the Animist's blasting power when another notorious blaster caster fell short is telling.

And once again, to labor the point: this is just a fraction of the Animist, on a class that is built to have versatility as their primary strength. As many others have mentioned, the class can easily remake itself to be a healer, a buffer, a gish, and so on, including during the same day, and that is a massive amount of power you appear unwilling to acknowledge at all. This is on top of exceptionally strong class feats that I and others have brought up, including all of the buffs to the Animist's spell damage and accuracy, the many-times-a-day spell quickening, the casting of slot spells without expending spell slots, the +4 to initiative and Seek checks, and the 30-foot-range unarmed grapple stance on a class that has access to Reactive Strike. The best part? Most of these feats can be swapped out every day too, making them far stronger than many other class feats whether or not you want to argue by caster standards.

The enduring fallacy of these conversations is that in order to discredit the Animist, people have to force themselves to tunnel-vision on just one aspect of the class and compare that fragment to the totality of entire other specialist classes to argue that it doesn't exceed them individually. It's not just that the Animist can and does outperform specialists, as noted by the above comparison to an Imperial Sorcerer, they can do that while having everything else in their kit. This is a game where classes like the Animist or Wizard pay for their versatility with horrible base stats and weak features: the Animist not only exceeds these classes in versatility, they also get great base stats and immensely strong class features to boot. No matter which way you slice it, the Animist is an extreme outlier in terms of class balance.

I very much agree with this. Personally, I think the mechanic could have been perfectly fine in its playtest iteration, Sustaining Dance, which siloed it into its own bespoke action. Funnily enough, the feat was noted for being really strong in the playtest, so it's weird that it got made into a mechanic that is both even stronger and far more prone to abuse.

I will say, though, I do want to labor the point of Dancing Invocation's busted free Sustains being RAW, despite them being too good to be true, because there's a lot of denial going on in this thread where some people are simultaneously claiming that the Animist isn't too strong, while also essentially house-ruling the class to be a lot weaker than they actually are. One can't have it both ways without committing the Oberoni fallacy, so either we can accept that the Animist has bits of design that are really prone to abuse and ought to be addressed, including via houserule, or we can stop trying to fix the problem whose existence we're also attempting to deny.

But it has multiple flaws that do not make it the broken undisputed best caster some of you want it to be. A large amount of your apparition spells will always be mediocre to kinda bad, most of your focus spells need you to be in close range on a durable for a caster but still a caster chaise, your daily versatility is substantially restricted by your attribute modifiers, and the lower levels can be rough. It's still a very good class, but it's just a very good class, not some unstoppable behemoth.

Virtually none of this is true, though. There are plenty of really good apparition spells, including the aforementioned fireball, and many other classes pay a heavy price just to access a single okay spell from outside their spell list, let alone thirty-six signature spells. The range on the Animist's spells makes no difference in the near-totality of encounters found in APs, and will continue to make no difference unless you run your encounters at such large scales that many other classes would start to suffer, chiefly the melee martials. The Animist's chassis not only has the best defenses out of any caster, but also beats certain martial classes on certain key defensive statistics, notably due to the Animist getting expert AC at 11th level compared to the 13th level of 8 HP/level classes like the Gunslinger, Investigator, and Rogue. The Animist is a Wisdom caster, giving them some of the greatest attribute-based versatility in the game, and picking Strength as a fourth score allows the class to use all of their apparitions extremely well, so the claim that they're restricted by their attributes is nonsense. Their lower levels are where their extra Focus Points and strong defenses shine the brightest, and those allow them to perform far better than other casters at those same levels too.

Where I wish more criticism was made is around the Animist's gameplay enjoyment, which was a real problem in my experience. Managing all of the moving parts of the Animist's kit is really fiddly and I think entails more bookkeeping than with any other class, for instance, and I think the class's ridiculous versatility genuinely gets in the way of being able to appreciate any individual component to their power in great depth. The extremely utilitarian nature of the Animist's apparitions and feats made it difficult for me to roleplay long-lasting bonds with any apparition, such that the end result felt like a class that was designed more to be min-maxed than enjoyed for its unique flavor. I can therefore see why they'd fail to appeal to a lot of players despite their power, and to me that is all the more reason to change the class in order to make them feel smoother to play, even if it would mean giving up on some of their excesses.

That's the spell I thought you were talking about.

Remind me again when I brought up darkened forest form prior to you using it in your comparison? As I recall, even you cited that it wasn't appropriate for what you were trying to show, given that you were comparing single-target Strike damage to AoE spells.

Fair. +9. And fair about the persistent, so +3 more there. It's still not as much.

If 12 damage is no significant difference to you, that raises even more questions as to the criteria you are applying to this comparison.

Second strike has MAP, so it counts less, and obviously the Animist may not choose to do that.

Why is the Animist choosing not to deal damage in a purely damage-based comparison? What are you deciding to have them do instead of that Strike? If we're factoring in MAP, which does not constitute the 100% reduction to damage that you made it out to be in your prior comparison, why are you choosing to factor in accuracy only here when it would be to the Animist's detriment, rather than across the entirety of both classes' abilities?

IOW, to do a fair comparison, you should compare 3a of animist attacks to 3a of alternative attacks not 2a.

I fully agree, which is why I produced a much more straightforward example of an Animist and Imperial Sorcerer both using three actions to blast across two turns, with the former using earth's bile and the latter using ancestral memories. If you want to do attacks, we can try a different comparison against a martial class.

No that's assuming a 3rd action MAP attack hits

You're going to have to explain that rationale to me, because I'm only counting two attacks here. Elf Step to Sustain both spells and deal earth's bile damage in the process leaves you with two actions to make two Strikes. Because each Strike deals 2d10+9 damage, the total is 4d10+18. Your math appears to still be wrong.

YW, but IMO it shows no such thing. It shows that a very specific build played to a very specific tactic can do okay in a very specific context.

A very specific build... as in an Animist using only a portion of their basic class features and just one ancestry feat? And still outperforming the alternative you chose for the comparison using limited daily resources? As appears to be the unanimous consensus, the Liturgist is by far and above the strongest Animist practice, so for all intents as purposes it is the Animist, and non-elf Animists absolutely still can pick that feat via Adopted Ancestry if you're really dead-set on choosing another ancestry and don't want an aiuvarin heritage either.

What makes this response all the stranger is that I took your example and made it much more concrete by comparing an Animist to an Imperial Sorcerer using all of their actions, without including Elf Step at all and with boosts to the latter class's power. The Animist still handily won, using no feats whatsoever and only a fraction of their class features. You appear unwilling to address this at all. You can still choose to perceive the class as nothing special by whichever arbitrary standards you have set for yourself, as an increasingly smaller handful of others have done in response to evidence, but in doing so all you're doing is highlighting the subjectivity of these value judgments instead of properly justifying your opinion.

After catching up with the discussion, I have one thing to add; I think RAI it is intended that if you use Elf Step you are not using Step twice, and so you should not be allowed to Sustain twice with Dancing Invocation. This follows the Subordinate Action rules and other action compression features like Twin Weapon Takedown not counting as using Strike twice, or Sudden Charge counting as Striding twice, etc.

Although I sympathize with wanting to rein in Dancing Invocation, this reads as a severe misinterpretation of subordinate actions. You do in fact Step twice when you use Elf Step, and that counts as Stepping twice. Similarly, you do Strike twice when you use Twin Takedown, so you do apply on-hit effects like the bonus damage from the Barbarian's Rage to each Strike, and you do Stride twice when you use Sudden Charge. That is what those abilities say you do. By that same token, using those spells you mentioned would in fact allow you to Sustain vessel or apparition spells as a Liturgist. While this normally would be too good to be true, the rules are not ambiguous on this at all: it is too good to be true, but it is also RAW. This IMO highlights the dangers of adding action compression as a passive rider to everything you do instead of siloing it to its own composite action, as is standard practice in PF2e and was the case for that feature's predecessor in the playtest. This is the only instance to my knowledge of a class becoming more broken on-release than during its playtesting stage.

The example is too vague to come to any conclusion whatsoever. Everything depends on how many opponents are on the field and how they are positioned, not to mention what class that fireball-tossing caster is and their potential 3th action.

You may be referring to a different example, but one was just given of an Animist and an Imperial Sorcerer both using fireball and all of their actions, with the latter having all of their class features counted and slightly boosted, and the former only having one apparition counted. I'd say that narrows it down by quite a bit, so unless your "many reasons" involve encounters exclusively composed of groups of enemies distributed all around the exact circumference of a 20-foot burst, I do think that makes comparisons fairly simple too. Given how vaunted the Imperial Sorcerer's capacity for blasting is, I also do think that that constitutes evidence of the Animist being perfectly capable of outperforming specialists without much effort or any significant build investment.

I'm not sure why you think I'm talking about max-DPR Animist here (that's Teridax and Deriven's particular combination and the Animist I'm GMing for is no where near there). I'm talking about how the Animist by default gets access to multiple good DPR builds and support casting on the same chassis with no build cost.

I will second this too. I bring up DPR builds in response mainly to Deriven's claims that the Animist's can blast, and blasting generally seems to be an obsession in both this thread and in caster discourse in general, but the truth of the matter is that the Animist can do so much more than blast. This I think is something that's getting continuously overlooked in this kind of conversation as well: whereas casters often have to specialize to be good at a specific thing, the Animist can do a whole bunch of different things extremely well before feats even start to get involved. There are above examples for blasting, but the Animist can similarly become an extremely strong gish, a powerful support, and generally the strongest all-rounder in the game by far. As you mention, whereas most classes have to retrain or at least wait until their next daily preparations to switch up their build, the Animist can reorient themselves in-between encounters, in fact even during encounters with a single action. This is on top of being able to rebuild their own feats in addition to what are essentially their real subclasses every day. To me, this is evidence of how criminally underrated versatility is in most online gaming discussion spaces.

R1: A1 cast earth's bile for 3d4+3d4+3 (aoe) A2: Circle of Spirits to switch. A3: cast Darkened forest form.

Could you please explain the reasoning that led you to combine the blast spell with the shifting spell, as opposed to, say, embodiment of battle and devouring dark form?

I'm failing to see how this is unbalanced. Any one of several full casters can R1: 2A 10d6 fireball, R2 8d6 fireball* = 18d6 (aoe) across the same two rounds the animist has done 12d4+3 (aoe) +2d10 (single target).

Well, for starters, your math is completely wrong. You don't seem to have included elemental form's damage bonus, for instance, and appear to have only included a single Strike, so your damage would be 12d4+6 (remember that persistent damage happens every round, and you're counting two rounds' worth of damage), + 4d10 + 18, for a total of 76 damage across those two rounds using zero spell slots, as opposed to the 63 damage of both those fireballs using two of your highest spell slots. Thus, even when using two vessel spells that have no synergy with one another and using no spell slots, you are still quite significantly outdamaging two blast spells cast from the two top ranks of a spellcaster's slots.

I would like to thank you for this example, by the way, as it also helps debunk the notion that the Animist needs to be hyper-optimized around a specific playstyle to start getting too strong: as this shows, even a player who doesn't know what they're doing can easily end up outperforming alternatives.

EDIT: This is worth taking further in my opinion, as earth's bile easily blows even an Imperial Sorcerer out of the water. Putting aside the action compression for a second, earth's bile x2 plus fireball at max rank and max rank-1 deals a total of 12d4+6+18d6 = 99 damage. An Imperial Sorcerer using ancestral memories x2 (let's generously assume they get the +3 bonus right away at 9th level) and two max-rank fireballs deals (20d6+10)x0.825 (boosted damage multiplier) / 0.7 (unboosted damage multiplier) = just over 94 damage. Even when using higher-rank spell slots and more Focus Points, a blast*-oriented Sorcerer using the fullness of their class features can still get out-blasted by an Animist using only a fraction of their own power.

* And debuff-oriented too, as ancestral memories boosts the failure chances for powerful crowd control spells like slow, but people online don't seem to care about that aspect of the subclass that much.

I love that the number of spell slots only matters for Deriven to attempt prove this class isn't cracked, but also doesn't make wizards any better. Like c'mon. Which is it? Ignoring the fact they're just simply wrong about number of slots where the animist clearly is 3/rank at top rank and 4/rank for the rest. Why is the wizard having 5-6 top rank slots not a benefit, but the animist having 3, like most classes, such a penalty?

Also, y'all need to chill on the imperial sorcer. It's decent, but it has one trick. I would put sorcerers in the middle of the pack of classes and call it a day

I'll second both of these, the double standards going on in this thread are wild. Spell slots are seemingly the be-all and end-all to spellcasters when it comes to the Animist, a class with above-average spell slots, but not the Wizard. The Animist is apparently "slowed 1" because they can cast powerful single-action spells alongside their slot spells, but then the Imperial Sorcerer is apparently the strongest blaster in the game despite needing to sit still and spend 3 actions boosting, then casting their spell for one Focus Point and spell slot a pop. I can't tell whether this stems from a terminally online forum zeitgeist where people just parrot the same opinion without any regards for play experience, or whether people do run encounters in such a way that the monsters have taken to politely ignoring Imperial Sorcerers as they stand completely still and paint a giant target on their back.

Maneuvering spell is a very nice feat. It does not qualify for earth's bile though: "Trigger You begin to Cast a Spell that requires at least 2 actions to cast."

That is not what I am referring to at all. You're supposed to cast earth's bile, a vessel spell that thus qualifies for the Liturgist's Dancing Invocation, and can then Sustain it as a free action each time you Cast a Spell (that requires at least 2 actions to cast). That is why the quote refers to "a free action every turn". I'm quite surprised this was not your first thought, to be honest, considering you said you had an Animist in your party.

I agree with Deriven that blasing power needs spell slots.

How fortunate then that the Animist has more slots than a 3-slot caster. I keep seeing this defense of the Animist online where people essentially cover up one eye or the other and pretend that the Animist only has their apparition slots or their divine spell slots, when the entire point to the class is that they have both. Not only that, but they have extremely good access to resourceless damage that can be used on the same turn, along with synergistic feats that boost the damage and accuracy of the Animist's spells even further.

Recently saw a melee animist, his focus spell does not balance basically being slowed 1 permanently. Waiting till lvl 9 to only having to move seems very long, and still not good enough.

I'm not surprised your Animist would struggle if nobody seemed aware of how to use Dancing Invocation to take the action costs out of Sustaining vessel spells entirely. It is a similarly common argument on these forums to pretend that the Animist is "slowed 1", when vessel spells frequently have built-in action compression that has them do something when Sustained, such as earth's bile. Dancing Invocation lets the Animist double-dip into that action compression and accomplish four to five different actions in single non-flourish action.

What some people don't seem to realize, seemingly even in play in your case, is that the Animist really isn't compelled to Sustain their vessel spell every turn like some people pretend. The Animist starts off with a pool of 2 Focus Points, which in most encounters is more than enough to cast a vessel spell, drop it, and then pick it up again later on. You even get a third Focus Point entirely for free as part of your progression. Thus, unless you're trying to combine multiple vessel spells together, they're essentially just much, much stronger hex cantrips, and in fact can be used even more freely due to having no per-target immunity. Spending an action to Sustain a spell when not doing so would have been more beneficial and would have incurred no downsides is thus a product of player error, not the spell's design.

You are half-prepared and half-spontaneous. Your spontaneous slots are extremely limited.

You start off with at minimum two different spells to choose from on your 1st-rank slot, and end up with a spell repertoire as large as the Sorcerer's. This is in addition to the divine spells you can prepare into your prepared slots. The Animist's spellcasting is one of the least limited in the game, and a major contributing factor to their versatility. The fact that you have to cut the class's spellcasting in half and pretend they only have that half to play with to me demonstrates that a severe degree of mental gymnastics is required to believe the Animist is limited here.

You start off with two apparitions. Then end up with 4 at very high level. You'll have three most of the time.

For the record, each apparition gives you nine signature spells, a focus spell (and free Focus Point, so you get a full pool without having to pick any feats), scaling Lore proficiencies, and an extra avatar battle form. That by itself is a lot more than many caster subclasses, you get two of those to start with, you double that number over time, and you can swap all of those subclasses every day. Again, that's a lot of versatility, and a huge amount of added power.

You get one vessel spell at a time. You use it with focus points.

Circle of Spirits lets you easily use multiple vessel spells in the same encounter, so in fact you get two to four focus spells for free.

You can maintain one stance at a time until very high level.

Unless you pick a very specific Monk feat, you will never be able to be in more than one stance at a time no matter your class. This is a rather perplexing argument.

They don't have a lot of blasting capability. It's ok. Mostly focused on fire.

They have the best blasting capabilities in the game. It's not just earth's bile in combination with excellent blasting spells like execute, it's also Dancing Invocation letting you Sustain additional spells on top (it's even possible to deal damage with four different spells on one turn), Channeler's Stance granting a status bonus damage that the Animist can double- or triple-dip on, and Cardinal Guardians giving a relative +2 to your DCs as a free rider. Unlike most casters who rely almost entirely on their spell slots for this, the Animist always can reduce the cost by incorporating focus spells.

They don't get the sustain with step until level 9. That means sustaining a vessel spell is a pain until level 9. Then only the Liturgist gets this ability. Then it just ok.

Even before level 9, Sustaining most vessel spells means you get an additional effect out of it, like earth's bile firing its mini-fireball. There's already built-in action compression in those focus spells, and that's before you get access to the feature that lets you do up to six actions in one. Dancing Invocation genuinely breaks the game's action economy, and makes it extremely easy for the Animist to do everything they'd want in one turn. I will highlight here the hypocrisy of simultaneously knocking the Animist's Sustained vessel spells while acting like the Imperial Sorcerer is the best blaster around: using ancestral memories to boost a spell takes up all of a Sorcerer's actions for their turn and makes them a sitting duck, which is a significant drawback for a 6 HP/level cloth caster. The Animist, by contrast, has 8 HP per level and better armor proficiency than even the Druid, so they are far more durable in addition to being more mobile.

It is also worth noting at this point that this conversation was had before, and Deriven didn't realize that Tumble Through, one of the actions that triggers Dancing Invocation, allowed you to Stride freely in any direction, as well as use any other form of movement. When practically the entire active population of these forums gathered together to force him to acknowledge this fact, he marched into the errata suggestion thread and demanded that the action be removed from the game entirely, as he could not fathom that this freedom of movement was intended. He has also stated prior that he refuses to run the action RAW simply because he dislikes it, so I would take his assessment of Dancing Invocation with a grain of salt.

Teridax sells it like fights are long enough for the animist to be a great blaster and great melee combatant.

If you mean at the same time, then sure, switching takes time and is difficult to happen in a 3-round combat. But becoming any one of those is easy, and the Animist can achieve this just fine thanks to their single-action vessel spells. I do invite people to follow Deriven's advice and give the class a try to see for themselves.

The animist has a very limited number of spell slots.

I know I debunked this a couple of times already in this post, but this is the kind of comment that makes me believe that a lot of people knocking the Animist here, including some of the people crusading against the class like Deriven, might be exaggerating their claims of play experience or fabricating them entirely. The Animist very obviously does not have "a very limited number of spell slots", and this is a notion easily debunked just by looking at the class's spell slots, let alone playing them in practice. The Animist is a three-and-a-half-slot caster specifically designed to stretch their spell output further with vessel spells, and who can cast slot spells for free, so their spell output is among the largest in the game, and certainly not "very limited".

Deriven similarly neglects to mention the Animist's wandering feats, which allow the class to rebuild not only their apparitions and thus their spontaneous spell loadout each day, but also key aspects of their build through feats as well. Despite the immense added flexibility this provides that, as Ryangwy mentions, is costed very highly on other classes, these feats are often incredibly strong by themselves, such as Medium's Awareness granting an always-on +2 to +4 bonus to initiative and checks to Seek, or Forest's Heart offering the best unarmed fighting stance in the game.

All of which is to say: in a game where classes pay an extremely high price for individual benefits such as versatility, resourceless blasting, a full pool of Focus Points, or strong base stats, the Animist gets all of these and more. The class is absolutely chock-full of benefits and features that are incredibly overgenerous from level 1, and which make for an excessively strong class even before getting into their ability to become competent at practically any niche, or the Liturgist's ability to break the game's action economy over their knee. Forget even about the hyper-optimized builds with Elf Step and Maneuvering Spell: simply playing the Animist out of the box without tapping into its exploits makes for one of the most versatile and overstatted classes in the game. Were it not for the class's massive initial information overhead turning away so many prospective players, I suspect they'd become much more of a problem.

The only reason Teridax thinks the striking ability of an animist is strong is because he doesn't play in groups where they use heroisim or status bonuses on martials. My group buffs up martials, so the status on attack and damage doesn't stand out.

What a remarkably presumptuous statement. Of course my parties use heroism; that still doesn't prevent the Animist from having incredible base stats for a caster, a ton of spell slots, and all of the other aforementioned benefits. As AestheticDialectic and I have pointed out to you already: all of this is before factoring in the Animist's breaching into other niches. The fact that they can match and even exceed a Fighter in Strike accuracy without expending any spell slots is but another advantage, and buffing with heroism only goes so far.

It's far more productive to heroism the barb or fighter than let the animist try to play martial using their vessel spell with a status bonus that doesn't stack with heroism or bard abilities.

Let? Do you dictate how others should play at your table as well? Because the Animist here ought to be "let" to play however they like, and using their gish benefits makes them a capable pseudo-martial with utility to spare.

The only reason anyone would see the animist as on par with martials is because they are in a group where they don't bother to buff or fight cooperatively with martials.

Not the main point of this reply, but I'm not a terrible fan of this mentality where the whole party is supposed to kowtow to the martials and be entirely subservient to their Striking power. That's not at all how I've seen parties play in practice, and often I've seen martials support plenty by using Athletics maneuvers to destabilize enemies and make skill checks to help casters blast. There's a lot of rather distasteful assumptions going on that I'd rather not prod at in great detail, but the bottom line is that the Animist performs extremely well as a gish, is a top-tier blaster, and has many other great advantages to boot even when they're not attempting either playstyle. This has nothing to do with lack of experience, and everything to do with actually playing the class and experiencing their power firsthand.

To answer the OP: yes, that is how it works RAW, and contrary to what one or two people might be suggesting in this thread, it really is a huge power boost. Although you can't Sustain two separate instances of earth's bile, you can effectively use earth's bile as a free action whenever you Cast a Spell with Maneuvering Step, and Elf Step also lets you Sustain an additional spell (I'd also point out that Feather Step is a 1st-level general feat that lets you Step into difficult terrain if that ever gives you trouble). This can lead to other combos like witness to ancient battles into devouring dark form which, while requiring a lengthier-than-average setup for a battle form, does mean you can end up Sustaining both spells with a single action, which also lets you make a Strike as part of that same action, while also having better Strike accuracy than most martials. For comparison, Skirmish Strike is a feat available only at 10th level at the earliest to anyone who's not a Ranger or Rogue, which only lets you Step and Strike once in its action, which also has the flourish trait, and which is altogether considered very, very strong.

Give the animist a shot. It's a class that is all over the place.

I can only speak directly from my own experience, but it is precisely because I have played the Animist that I think they're way too strong. Their stats and abilities aren't just for show: they're genuinely a lot more survivable than any other caster, they have more spell output than most other casters, especially when factoring in their focus spells, and the Liturgist's action economy exploit really makes a huge difference. Even before discussing their niche-busting, the class just has way too much going for them: earth's bile may not look like much on paper, right up until one realizes that it's a one-action spell, and one that can be laid down every turn. With a feat like Maneuvering Spell, it effectively becomes a free action every turn. Coupled with the Animist's other synergistic feats, and the class up on a whole other level in terms of blasting, let alone gish potential and other utility. Imperial Sorcerers are very strong, but are also sitting ducks when they use ancestral memories to boost their spell power, a critical weakness that the Liturgist avoids while outputting equal or greater spell power.

I also question the notion that versatile characters fall off with more optimized parties, as I find the opposite to be true: generally, optimization implies optimizing towards something, and overly-specialized builds tend to be quite brittle when things don't go their way, which in PF2e is often. By contrast, although hyper-versatile characters may not necessarily impress in online theorycrafting, their ability to do well in any situation is a huge bonus, and the Animist is arguably the most versatile class in the game. Parties that are at least competent in more or less everything tend to fare a lot better in my experience than parties that are amazing at a few things and terrible at everything else, and the Animist is able to be not only competent, but solid at quite a few different things at any given time. Even though it may not seem like it, it does mean that the spotlight can end up shining on them more than any other party member simply because they're at least passably equipped for any given situation.

There is a reason only a handful of players are claiming its too strong and why Paizo isn't making any quick moves to limit this supposedly overpowered class.

Paizo doesn't make quick moves in general when it comes to rebalancing classes post-release, though, and has historically taken months to years to address certain notable outliers. From what I've seen, I don't see a lot of players trying out the Animist at all either, because the class is notoriously inaccessible with its mixed spell slots and swappable apparitions. Those that have played the Animist for any substantial length of time, however, do seem to lean towards acknowledging that the class is bananas when optimized properly (and, in this case, optimized around their exploits, rather than towards any particular specialty), hence the most recent wave of comments.

Where I can agree, however, is that once you've played an Animist, you've basically played them all, which I think ultimately ends up leading to the same conclusion: the Animist as currently balanced and designed doesn't seem to be successfully appealing to that many players interested in the class's theme, but does catch the eye of min-maxers looking for a mechanically dominant option in a game that was meant to leave that mentality behind a whole edition ago. The class arguably could do with a once-over, not just to balance it properly and remove its exploits, but simply to make it more appealing to the players who like the flavor but don't want to deal with a mess of overcomplicated and unappetizing mechanics.

It is not undisputed. Sorc, particularly imperial sorc, is definitely up there, as is bard. None of the animist focus spells come even close to lingering dirge of doom or inspire heroics.

I feel that's looking in the wrong places, though. The Animist does have strong focus spells, but their power also comes from their immensely superior base chassis, extra spells, tons of hidden versatility, and the Liturgist's absolutely cracked action economy. They also very much can out-blast even Sorcerers. The Bard and Sorcerer are both classes that can become very good at a specific thing, whereas the Animist can become very good at lots of things at once.

I think the better solution to this kind of problem is to just provide classes with more internal complexity knobs, tbh. Separating them into bespoke tiers does the system a bit of a disservice because in many respects complexity can be non-diegetic and because of that there's no reason separate tiers of complexity shouldn't be able to co-exist (like they can already do right now!).

I may be misunderstanding this, but the ask in the OP is to separate tiers of power, rather than complexity. I too would like complexity to be a dial that can be easily turned up or down for any class at any time. The ask for different tiers of power is more because I think those represent different ways of balancing the game and characters, which implicitly exists already but is tied to a more incremental leveling curve that also entails ramping complexity.

My proposal then would be to basically build PCs as NPCs.

I'm personally a big fan of any system that lets players purpose-build PCs to suit their exact playstyle, so this gets my vote. That's unfortunately not what 2e is made to do in that same way, because you have to first start with the framework of a class that ties up most of its power budget into very specific abilities, but it's something a brand-new framework could accommodate a lot better. Even before 2e, there's always been player demand to be able to play monster PCs, so that could be something for a future system to try working towards instead of giving players ersatz monster ancestries like the Dhampir or fairly limited monster archetypes. Being able to tune directly to the required power tier to play certain monsters to the full extent of their abilities, such as a vampire's gaze or a lich's revival, could also help address the problems of current builds being forced to adhere to a much lower power level for the most part.

I view heroic tier as the tier in which characters are in danger and forced to resort to cunning and daring to overcome that danger. If the character can overcome danger through sheer power, then that is power fantasy. In mythic the characters go beyond power to reality bending to accommodate their theme or destiny.

So far my list is cozy, wonder tale, heroic, power fantasy, and mythic. Is that too many or too few?

I think some of the elements you mention are more differences in genre and flavor rather than power: cozy fantasy for instance is something you could apply to any power level, because opening a coffee shop at your local fantasy village and becoming a barista to the gods themselves are both valid expressions of that. I also think what you describe as wonder tales and heroic play fall into the more grounded tier of power I was thinking about, in the sense that those kinds of adventures are about ordinary people whose abilities an average player could conceivably see themselves having (plus whichever level of magic would be considered ordinary in a high fantasy environment, if that is indeed the setting).

Meanwhile, what I'd describe as heroic play is more the gameplay of PF2e, where even level 1 adventurers are a distinct cut above average and often engage in overt heroics (or villainy!). At the same time, the party at those levels isn't necessarily doing massively over-the-top things either, which I think is what starts to define epic or superheroic play. Mythic I think goes a step even beyond that, where your actions effectively redefine the setting. This creates different considerations for canon and West March-style games as well: although it can be possible to run even superhero adventures alongside each other in a shared canon, mythic play I'd say ought to need accommodation as their own canon for each given adventure, simply because any given party could create, destroy, or irreversably change entire nations, worlds, or planes of existence.

You know, Teridax, a lot of what you're talking about are design decisions I've seen before, just in other systems, ones which tend to be more generic and try to cast a wider net in terms of genres they want to help facilitate. The one that comes to mind offhand is AGE, but I think the Plotweaver system, the one which powers the Cosmere RPG, will also fit this mold once it's released.

This isn't a criticism. I like both of those systems; AGE is my current comfort read when taking breaks between studies and teaching. Just an observation and a suggestion for places to look should you want to move forward and fiddle with some stuff.

This is a good shout, thank you for these! Indeed, I've been shopping around for ideas, and in the process also did take a look at intentionally genre-agnostic systems like Genesys and GURPS. One thing that I'd like to flesh out, which in a development pipeline would likely be much farther down the line after any sort of MVP, is the differences between power tiers: what are the essential qualities of a grounded, more OSR-style adventure that make the characters feel vulnerable and forced to resort to cunning over heroics? What are the quintessential aspects of mythic play that allow the party to feel like demigods? Heroic play I think is easier to conceptualize, as that's the foundation for PF2e's gameplay, so that could make for a solid starting point.

We live in an AI world now. Use prompt engineering to get ChatGPT

Ew, no. I do very much want to try my hand at a proof of concept, but the absolute last thing I'd want to do is resort to IP theft and LLM-generated slop. I don't think any such product would have much chance of impressing anyone.

@Teridax I'm just going to agree to disagree on this. I see what you're asking for, and think it could be a cool project for a larger team, but I don't see it working for Paizo and their current staff and general design philosophy.

This is fair, and I won't ask you to agree with me. I don't have an internal view of Paizo's team and processes, but I personally do firmly believe they draw from a pool of highly experienced designers who do apply some of the principles I mention to their work, and are well-organized enough to output high-quality content at a good pace. I don't think Paizo's work is perfect every time, especially not when crunch starts to take over, but even then I've loved many of their recent content releases, including the improved Guardian class.

Perhaps some of this might be projection on my part, but one of the reasons I'm so rah-rah about modular design is because it's a bit part of software engineering, which is my line of work: although the end goal of a project might be this online platform or a full suite of applications, the process is always to break this big thing down into bite-sized chunks that can be isolated from one another, and thus developed and tested independently of each other as much as possible. PF2e I think adopts a lot of elements of software development into the writing and structuring of its rules, and so I think that could be taken even further in a future system. For instance, rather than try to deliver gameplay for combat, exploration, and downtime, you could just isolate the minimum viable product down to combat, and worry about the rest later. Similarly, rather than worry about delivering content from levels 1 to 20, you could just choose one of the aforementioned power tiers and start by designing for just that, further reducing work needed for your MVP. There's even more ways to apply this principle, such as by starting without considerations for terrain, lighting, and other environmental factors and then adding those in later, but the general idea here is that modular design lets you only need to worry about a small component of a larger body of work, and have a release schedule that lets you output usable content much more frequently and with less overall effort required.

That big one this morning probably had a full hour of thought put into it. Was seriously considering recycling it into a post/essay later, not possible now.

I would perhaps consider asking (politely, and calmly) for a transcript of the post that got deleted, as it is likely to still be on record somewhere.

"Calcified blue pond" is my own term that refers to those once-pioneers that are still squatting atop their turf, x years later. Once upon a time, the drop of printing & shipping costs meant Paizo was a blue ocean pioneer in a new possibility space. These days, Paizo is so crusted & calcified it refuses to decouple the concept of "doing errata" from "doing another print run" which is imo blatantly insane. Yes, don't fix that broken text that is itself hurting sales, until the stock of defective product is sold out. Great idea. Leave every loyal customer who did buy using that defective product for as long as possible. Great idea, when your business so depends upon book subscriptions.

This is systemically perfect for slowly ruining your own business model, lol.
Why tf would any pf2 newbie subscribe to the print books when those first versions are so notoriously unreliable? And if they are subbing for the early access pdfs, which do update w/ errata, then they are *not* subbing for the books, lol.

I'm going to be a bit more direct here and ask you to please stop. This thread is not your personal soapbox to rant against Paizo, and literally no part of this wall of text you have just produced relates in any way to the topic of discussion. If you really want to talk about how the company is running itself into the ground or engaging in unacceptable design and balancing practices, please feel free to do so in another thread. Hijacking the conversation in this way to center it around your pet hates is not only disrespectful, but actively harmful to any hopes you may have of rallying people to your cause.

The alignment of SF with PF says to me that Paizo is all in on the 2e system for at least 5-8 more years. If Paizo had a 3E in mind, they would've leapfrogged the new SF edition into it, with the idea of aligning PF to the new system in a few years.

Although I do agree with you that we're unlikely to see any sign of 3e for several more years to come, Paizo switched Starfinder over to 2e mainly because working with the OGL very suddenly became quite dangerous. I very much do hope the developers stick to 2e for a while longer, as I'd quite like to see as much 1e content ported over to SF2e at the very least, but as I understand from the developers themselves 3e is seen as an inevitability, however distant it may be.

I also do think there's an opportunity here to capture not only players dissatisfied with the wizard game, but other demographics from editions past: there's a lot of OSR players who aren't necessarily happy with most modern RPGs making characters really powerful and difficult to kill by default, just as there are still some 1e-oriented players out there who'd really like to indulge in a power fantasy for their character without having to contend with limitations intended for lower-power play. I check regularly on discussion spaces for that other TTRPG, and while the game remains dominant in the market, it's also really stagnant: players haven't really taken consistently to the new rules, the design leads have all jumped ship for other game studios, and players seem to regularly and openly challenge all aspects of the game, even if they're not necessarily switching over. There might be an opportunity here to offer something really fresh and accessible that could cover those different bases really well.

I do agree ultimately that at the moment, though, all of this is essentially just airy-fairy forum talk. It could work, but the best way to show that it could would be a proof of concept of some kind, which takes time and effort. I don't expect Paizo to come up with anything like this anytime soon, perhaps not ever, but I do think that modularity has benefited 2e significantly over 1e, and is likely to benefit a future 3e even more if taken further.

My point also isn't that PF2 is bad and that I could do it better. It's that asking for the eventual PF3 to be PF2 but with even more feats in even more buckets is going to make the problem worse

See, this is one of the things that's confusing me, because I don't remember anyone asking for more feats in total. I'm actually asking for less content to start with, because a system that parcels its different phases of play and different tiers of power into modules could easily start with just one or a small subset of those modules, instead of having to take on nearly everything in one go like most systems do. Having to deal with essentially just two ranks of spells to begin with instead of ten means you wouldn't need nearly as many spells for each increment to feel fleshed-out, and the same principle applies to feats and other options. It means you don't have to write five versions of the exact same item with only number bumps just to keep them relevant across an adventure, which by itself would reduce text bloat by a lot. Although I'd say PF2e is much easier to design for than 1e, I do think it still has a certain degree of bloat still that could be streamlined away in a future edition, and that could make the job of designing and balancing for such a game even easier.

I'm not terribly interested in putting Paizo under the microscope here, and I really don't think that's the purpose of this thread. Sure, Paizo's products aren't literally perfect, and perhaps the company could change some of its processes to avoid certain recurring issues, but I also do think PF2e is one of the better-balanced rules-heavy systems out there, which is remarkable considering how many character options it offers. There are threads out there for proposing fixes, and threads out there for complaining about aspects of the game where the design and balance fell short. I would request that those looking to air their grievances do so in the appropriate spaces, and come back to this thread when they feel ready to engage in more topical conversation.

Although this thread's OP starts from a critical analysis of 2e's framework, the point isn't to say that 2e did something wrong: on the contrary, 2e significantly improved upon 1e by making its mechanics more modular and thus easier to balance in the long run. Just as 2e was an answer to 1e, so will 3e eventually be an answer to 2e, and it is my hope that it develops upon the system's innovations and takes them even further. Similarly, what has become normal in 2e really pushed the boundaries of TTRPG design while 1e was still the main edition, and so would I like to see innovations in 3e that seem really out there now, and would have been unthinkable seven years ago. In the context of this thread, this means even more modular design that takes the elements we have now and compartmentalizes them a bit more to make it easier to fine-tune the tone of the adventure, the party's desired level of character complexity, and when the GM wants characters to progress, whether by going up a power level, gaining a new ability, or adjusting their powers.

The idea that we need to have a Mage (Basic), Sage (Mid), Wizard (High) progression of classes with the same theme but different levels of mechanical complexity seems like a lot of work for very little gain. Especially when those classes are all supposed to be equally useful in all modes of play with special care taken to ensure balance in combat between those three classes (class options?) and every other class.

Question: how different is this from what we currently have, really? I mean in terms of implementation, specifically, as the elements for all of these exist already: we have cantrips for low-level Wizards, hundreds of spells for mid-level Wizards, and dozens of spells for high-level Wizards. We have over a thousand and a half spells in-game, and thousands of feats too across levels 1 to 20. When Paizo eventually moves to a new edition, simply designating these as abilities for different tiers of play, or different modes of play, and implementing them accordingly isn't going to necessarily add that much work compared to the normal process of creating that content already, and may in fact very well simplify work greatly. Isolating things down to combat for starters could be an excellent way of fleshing that out fully, and then applying the same treatment to other game components could be prime material for expansions that could similarly be fleshed out better than what we have now.

One of the reasons I'm advocating for well-defined and separate power tiers as well is because I do think these represent different balancing standards: even PF2e, which applies a fairly consistent standard of balance across levels, holds to this assumption by restricting certain abilities like flight to higher levels. It's not just that characters hit harder, characters at different power levels can do entirely different things altogether, including things that wouldn't be allowed at all at lower amounts of power. Quandary is an excellent example of an ability that absolutely cannot be allowed to be implemented at very low level, but that fits the flavor of epic play where a powerful spellcaster can just do things, no questions asked. Defining these different standards of balance and implementing them could, among other things, allow for a space to capture some of the trappings of OSR-style play and the vulnerability of characters that so many players appreciate, and another space to capture the real power fantasy gameplay of 1e that some players miss as well, all in a framework adapted to those different forms of play.

The thing is, PF2e does already offer plenty of ways of representing how a strong and sturdy character fights versus one that's quick and sneaky, and that's via class feats. Though it's not done now, if the interest is in representing how a character's size impacts their combat ability, it could be possible to insert some class feats as ancestry feats, raising their level requirement to adjust for the lower power level of ancestry feats. This means that a Large ancestry could perhaps have access to a few Barbarian or Guardian feats regardless of class to hit harder and carry around heavier equipment, whereas Small or Tiny ancestries could perhaps access a few Rogue or Swashbuckler feats to emphasize their speed and maneuverability. It could be an easy way to fill out the otherwise often thin feat lists for many ancestries, could open up some interesting builds for those juggling archetypes, and would allow larger ancestries to hit harder in a way that isn't just a passive bonus.

Have you heard the quote, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."? The stakes in the 1st module were 20 refugees, in the 3rd module were 4,000 city dwellers, and in the 6th module around a million inhabitants of Nirmathas and Molthune. But once we passed the number in which the PCs could meet the people face to face, the emotional stakes simply became lots and lots of people. Saving four thousand people is as urgent as saving a million people, so the stakes hit their cap.

While I certainly know the quote and agree with it, I once again think it is important to dissociate the personal stakes from the external stakes here. A million people in peril won't necessarily resonate as much without at least one familiar face in the crowd, but the fact that a million people depend on you certainly makes for a grander scale of adventure, and that's what I'm getting at here. The battles can certainly feel similar, but the fact that they're made with bigger weapons and greater powers against more powerful threats makes a meaningful difference in the tone of the story and to many players. A superhero story can have the same core themes as a hard-boiled detective novel, but the simple fact that everything is bigger and more out there makes a difference. I think it's worth exploring in depth what those differences are and how to implement them fully for different characters at every tier of power. Ideally, this should lead to the battles feeling meaningfully different at those different tiers of power, as characters should be allowed to do different things based on how powerful they're meant to be.

I think trying to quantify every single aspect of a character's power using mathematical formulas makes for great power scaling discourse, but not the most balanced RPG design. In fact, I would say that simulationism and balance tend to be at odds with one another: realistic games tend to be the kind where guns beat swords every time, and most character concepts one might have in mind are likely to perform pretty poorly. I'm happy suspending disbelief if it means my wee kobold Barbarian can hit just as well as a Jotunborn of the same class.

Yet I have seen people arguing that having more power, the ability to defeat stronger enemies, is the narrative. Teridax said, "power level is narrative scope," though he might have been arguing about PF2 as is rather than hopes for the future.

Are "narrative scope" and "the narrative" the same thing to you? Because that seems to be the only way the conflation you're making here would make sense. As it stands, I've made it quite clear that the power level of the characters and the scope of the adventure, or scale if you prefer, go hand-in-hand, something you yourself illustrated with examples of higher-level adventures raising the stakes and encompassing increasingly larger parts of the world. I once again fail to see how this relates to personal stakes, which are certainly part of the narrative but are not the entire narrative either.

The stakes were high during the war council, but the influence mechanics had no intensity.

Look, I'm not disagreeing with you that the influence mechanics in that AP are pretty tepid. However, you are still conflating intensity with personal enjoyment, whether your own or that of other players at your table, which is detracting from conversation at present. Your personal grievances of how influence was implemented mechanically is different from the adventure itself featuring high stakes and giving the party a high level of importance among people in the in-game world, which it does.

Nevertheless, remember the main issue of this thread is the relationship between power level and game complexity. Complexity is a cost because managing the mechanics can slow down player enjoyment. The influence system was an additional complexity that reduced intensity. And it had little to do with power level.

I am the originator of this thread; I do not need reminding on what the subject matter is. It does, however, bear reminding that this thread also discusses power level and how that affects the way stories are told. You are correct, the influence subsystem could be used regardless of power level, but the people you would be influencing, and the scope of your influence, would change. A party of commoners would likely be trying to influence figures of local importance in a settlement, a party of superheroes could influence a war council formed from a coalition of several nations, and a party of mythic-level adventurers might parley with a pantheon.

To bring this back to the topic of modularity, though, I do think a more modular game system like the one I'm advocating for could have a chance to do that kind of influence subsystem a lot better: right now, it's difficult to flesh out any subsystem, because it has to tie into existing skills in a way that isn't always easy to do, and it's effectively impossible to create character build options around that subsystem without those options coming across as far too niche to be worth picking. If it were treated as this self-contained bit of gameplay, however, and had options that didn't compete with the combat feats that characters normally take, then it would become much easier to develop and reuse across adventures. For sure, adding a subsystem to an adventure introduces more complexity, but if done right it can also add depth and a worthwhile new form of gameplay. The problem with that subsystem wasn't that it existed, but that it sits in a framework that prevents it from offering any particularly deep or exciting gameplay.