Captain Morgan wrote:

The only thing that's a bit ambiguous to me is how Thaumaturge handles VERY SPECIFIC weaknesses like golem antimagic or demon sin vulnerability. You learn those weaknesses on a critical success on Exploit Vulnerability, but nothing specifically lets you trigger them from what I can tell. I might house rule otherwise, personally.

I disagree. Giving your party the knowledge to exploit it is enough. I wouldn't allow a Thaumaturge to, say, pull a Mirror out of their esoterica to trigger an Abrikalindu's hatred of mirrors (Obviously, this is for non-mirror thaumaturges. The mirror implement should absolutely work) unless they had prescient planner or can show me the mirror on their character sheet.

Mechanically you learn and can exploit any standard weakness no matter how specific on a success, whether its weakness to slashing or weakness to gingerbread cookies. A critical success also reveals any other abilities that give the creature a vulnerability but does not give any further help in taking advantage of it. In the example of a thaumaturge against an Abrikalindu, a successful exploit vulnerability would let them learn their weakness to holy and cold iron and let them establish a mortal weakness against it, but only a critical success would reveal its Hatred of Mirrors ability and even then would not give you any additional ability to exploit it.

One of the great things about the feat is you get to choose which option you use when you cast the spell. Being able to hit the right saves is critical for casters and having a single slot that can hit two different ones means it will rarely ever be a waste.

Don't know if its already on the radar but it seems adjustments to an armor's strength modifier never got changed from strength score in GM core. For fortification runes on page 226 it could also be a functional change as it just says "strength required to reduce its penalties" but it increase it by 2. If its increasing strength modifier by 2, that is twice the adjustment from before. Dawnsilver and duskwood armors on page 228 still are definitely just missed though as they reference reducing strength score, rather then strength modifier.

Given that Battlefield Control is the lion's share of a spellcaster's combat contributions (since obviously save spells are wishy-washy and spell attack rolls are practically traps without outside assistance), the Kineticist both handles this almost as well (they still have the same progression as all spellcasters), if not better in certain situations (since certain Impulses are unique options that not even spells can replicate), and can do so all day, meaning if we're comparing combat potential, Kineticist wins out, and the pluses to attack rolls is just icing on the cake at this point. Even a simple forcing of tactics (i.e. spreading out to avoid incoming AoEs) is a win for the Kineticist, because their presence is causing this shift in tactics for the martials to then go and pick them off one-by-one (with them helping on top of it). Sure, a spellcaster's presence can do this as well, but Kineticist can still genuinely provide this when it's Encounter #6 of the day, whereas a spellcaster might not (since they would have actually blown their slots at the apparent opportunities, and are probably limited to lower level weak spells...

We clearly have very different experiences with the game. I find battlefield control to be a situationally useful effect, but save spells are the bread and butter of my caster. You are missing a huge advantage of save spells by dismissing their effect on a save.

Even on long days the caster should still be an asset unless all the encounters are challenging enough to need several slotted spells. Even by level 5 a caster has 7 spell slots, 10 for 4 slot casters, enough to throw a spell every encounter on top of focus spells (about equal to an impulse). Don't dismiss those low level spells either. Illusory Object is still a staple for wasting enemy actions. While a Kineticist might be more impactful on those long days, conversely they are less so on 1 or 2 encounter days when a caster can nova their spells.

Velisruna wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Not really, when that larger toolbox is compensated by lack of quality tools, and the game is balanced assuming quality tools are being used, especially in the late game.

You do know the toolbox being talked about is the entire spell list? Are spells like Wall of Stone, Slow, or Synesthesia not quality enough? The Kineticist needs to be better at their attacks because they have much less options for targeting defenses, where the caster can wait for the right moment to unleash a massive spell attack.

The only defense a Kineticist can't target with their abilities is Will Saves, which is a handful of spells at-most. Also, can't wait for "the right moment" if it either never comes or isn't possible due to party compositions.

The other thing too is that Kineticist can still do a lot of the toolbox things, they aren't like Fighters who can't do any of it. Wall of stone for Earth Kineticist is a thing. So is flight. Fireball-esque effects as well. They are more like Elementalist spellcasters that function all day than they are some purebred martial like a Ranger or Barbarian who have little to no magic potential.

They have good battlefield control and can blast vs reflex well but their debuff and fort targeting effects aren't great. And missing an entire defense (outside of an air level 18 impulse) is massive. They are far more like the Magus or Summoner except making an inverse trade off for their spell-like powers. While wave casters get all the flexibility of spell slots, they get even fewer per day and with worse casting ability. Kineticists get all day powers at par for DCs or better for spell/impulse attacks, but with much less flexibility in their abilities.

Also it's a weird or inefficient party where AC isn't being debuffed. Most damage comes from attacks vs AC and most classes will naturally get some way of reducing it. Even a simple flat footed and minor debuf is massive swing. Heck even a party of all Fighters and Barbarians can achieve that much.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Not really, when that larger toolbox is compensated by lack of quality tools, and the game is balanced assuming quality tools are being used, especially in the late game.

This is one of my biggest beefs with current PF2e spellcasting. It seems like there are so many spells that are not being regularly used, with a few standouts. It's why we always get the same spells brought up (Sythesthesia, etc) when talking about how spellcasters are ok.

Part of this is a lot of strong CRB spells set the bar on the power of a spell. You aren't going to see fireball but better get printed. So other spells need to be more niche, but because they aren't as universally useful, they get used less and thus are less talked about.

Not really, when that larger toolbox is compensated by lack of quality tools, and the game is balanced assuming quality tools are being used, especially in the late game.

You do know the toolbox being talked about is the entire spell list? Are spells like Wall of Stone, Slow, or Synesthesia not quality enough? The Kineticist needs to be better at their attacks because they have much less options for targeting defenses, where the caster can wait for the right moment to unleash a massive spell attack.

With the current one of the classes being playtested having easy and early access to being (un)sanctified how should we treat those abilities when they don't interact with the current rules? Should we have them triggering good/evil weakness or do they do nothing until we are actually using the remastered rules? I'm leaning on the side of letting the abilities work as they are intended to eventually function for better playtest data, but I also see the argument of how this is doing too much interpretation of the rules for society play.

Honestly I think getting rid of alignment will make it more likely we see a "neutral" champion cause. Before each cause had to try to represent its box on the alignment chart, and there was only one cause per box. The good and evil causes already didn't completely cover their alignments well. Redeemer hardly fit all of the NG deities for example. But without alignment, causes are more open; you can have a champion of nature cause without it needing to be the true neutral cause. They could even print more good causes if they wished, just give each cause its own sanctification requirements that must be compatible with your deity's. All they need is an anathema, a focus spell, a reaction, and a handful of feats based off the cause.

My pick for an unchained option would be having more proficiency tiers at only +1 apart, and use that to replace the weird staggered proficiency some classes have now. If you had six proficiency tiers going from level+1 to level+6 you could do things like have wave casters be one tier lower than full casters, rather than having them be on par some levels and -2 at others. It could also work for things like warpriest's weapon proficiency since having them at full martial progression is seen as too much, but as they are now, they slide around from completely fine to "why am I doing this to myself?".

A fighter with combat reflexes might be able to get off 2 attacks with a readied strike + opportunity attack if they don't step after entering your reach.

Or you get 15' reach from enlarge or similar effects.

SuperBidi wrote:

That's not how KCC works. KCC allows you to make a RK check with a second skill, but not to replace the first one, just another RK check. So if you can't get information with Occultism this second check will give you no information.

Still, it's quite nice, I agree, as it allows you to use Bardic Lore as a backup to your Occultism RK checks. So, it's strong, but not overpowered.

Other way around. First you try with Bardic Lore for RK on any topic. Then, if you failed, you retry with Occultism (which isnt' nerfed in the same way).

That does seem at least a little OP to me. Works pretty well with the Thaum's Esoteric Lore, too.

If you're going to assert that it only works in cases where both lores would apply independently, you're basically asserting that the feat is useless except in the edge cases. That interpretation clashes with the idea behind the flavor quote, too.

This won't work for Thaumaturges or anyone else with Duboius Knowledge as with that feat you will always get information for any degree of success/failure.

I have to comment that I strongly dislike the idea that many high level monsters simply cannot utilize any shadow based tactics because their Darkness (which takes 3 actions and lasts only a minute) does nothing because the party has an 8 hour cantrip active since the start of the day and very few monsters have their darkness heightened beyond at most 4th level.

For example a chernobue qlippoth, which is burned by bright light, would be incapable of facing even a lower level party without taking constant fire damage because it cannot cast an area of darkness higher than 4th level using its entire turn.

This seems like more of a problem in the monster design than the rules though. Especially with 2E's monster design, creatures could be given spells higher level than their CR would normally allow. Giving a CR 10+ monster level 4 darkness seems to be a mistake in the same vein as giving a CR 16+ monster Dominate at base level. Useful for how it functions in the world, but rarely relevant in a fight against PC that have a chance against it.

Nimble losing -2 AC is rough but still workable. They end up -2 or -1 behind light/medium armor martials once the PC gets master armor proficiency and are on par until then.

I really wish savage at least got to get expert barding with this though. They would still be 2-3 AC behind Nimble which is getting below caster AC. As is they are still at least 4 AC below nimble which the errata seems to imply they aren't anymore? How they are now, being stuck at trained AC with only +6 from barding + Dex (38 AC at level 20 vs 44 for a martial PC) means nearly any attack that would hit a PC will crit and everything but what would be a crit miss will hit a Savage companion.

I'm having a similar problem where I'm stuck at 9 2E GM credits. Whenever I run a new scenario I'll get table credit for it but credit will be removed from one of my previous tables. I currently have four games I've run and show up in my sessions but don't give me table credit.

Using that with a fist attack you pinch together your pointer finger and thumb in front of your eye and go, "I'm crushing your head!"

Onkonk wrote:

I've seen several enemies with Heal who are evil in Paizo's published adventures. Every Dahak cultist in Age of Ashes have Heal, the Angazhani cultists in The Slithering also all have heal.

So they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

"The exception proves the rule" does not mean that finding examples that defy a rule somehow prove it true. In this case it could be used to mean testing (using prove archaically to mean test) the rule through its exceptions but I highly doubt that is what sophistry you were trying for here.

So the Hand Adze has both forceful and agile which is a very strong combination. Monks could even flurry with it through the ancestral weaponry feat or, for greater investment, Flurry Ranger MCD into monk and at level 10 flurry of blows with a forceful weapon that only has a -2 MAP. It also has sweep and thrown 10' for some extra flexibility as well.

The war priest in PF1 cast only up to 6th level spells. A fighter with cleric Archetype can cast up to 8th level spells. So why isn't a fighter with a cleric MC a superior war priest? You can buff yourself up to +40 attack with an MC warpriest. You can even cast heroism on yourself and attack once in the same round. Then go crazy hammering.

And as I stated, a regular cleric/fighter at higher level was stronger than a war priest even without fervor. I made a cleric 16/paladin 4 and she destroyed what a war priest could do in battle.

The claim is specious at best. There is no basis for it other than that specific set of mechanics. I can't even fault it for power gaming because war priests weren't the most powerful priest warrior type. They were ok, but sort of weak if you want to build a full on divine class hammer. My paladin 4/cleric 16 was far more powerful than a war priest concept and better at making war.

It seems odd to make this idea the basis of the idea of a concept you can't supposedly build in PF2, when you very clearly can.

Only getting 6th level spells matters less when spell scale by caster level, not just spell level and they aren't your main form of attack. Comparing spell levels across editions is very silly when 2E spells are very toned down from 1E spells (for good reason.)

I'm not going to scroll back through this 500 post thread to find where you statted your cleric paladin that "destroyed" warpriests but I'm guessing its because you had 16 levels in a full caster class and got to add you Cha to attacks and saves. It doesn't even matter if some divine multiclass build could out-math warpriests in some situations because warpriests were a strong class that played well and fulfilled the idea of a divine caster / martial hybrid as they were calling on blessings and boons and smacking face hard doing both parts more frequently than any other class could.

The 2E warpriest falls flat to some people (including myself) because 2e is typically more challenging with tighter math that the warpriest can't seem to catch up to. I would love to make a warpriest of Gorum slapping massive Channel Smite greatswords around but the character ends up too fragile, frequently missing, and still doesn't keep up with martials even on big turns. Going for Fighter with cleric multiclass feels like 90% fighter especially early on where you have basically no spells. It gets no divine powers other than spells and it gets very few of those. You can build the concept, it just feels very weak or that it doesn't actually fit well.

No one can quite explain why buffing your warpriest up in PF1 to do battle was worth doing, but buffing your warpriest up with available spells in PF2 is not.

There are a lot of reasons this worked well in PF1 but not in PF2. The 1E most divine spell lists had many strong self-only personal buffs that couldn't be placed on others. Warpriests specifically had the ability to cast spells on themselves as a swift action allowing them to buff and full attack on the same turn.

In 2E, outside of battle form spells, nearly all buffs spells can apply to allies and martial characters make far better use of accuracy buffs than a caster can. Also, when buffing an ally they are able to make use of the buff sooner than having to wait a full round if the buff was cast on the caster.

Honestly I don't think you could fit the PoE classes or even ascendancies into a single class as they are all versatile by design. The marauder could be a barbarian or fighter or even champion with a heavy defensive set up but then you also have a totem spamming chieftain build or RF Jugg. Deadeye Rangers sling projectile spells basically as well as bow attacks while pathfinder is used for everything for its flask abuse.

If you are looking for PoE based tabletop gaming, some of the streamers put together a PoE tabletop system and streamed it a few years ago. You see them play it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnd16AlDT6s.

So if I had my familiar cast a spell using the Spellcasting familiar ability would it be able to sustain the spell with its own actions? If so then it seems that also giving it the Independent ability would let you sustain low level spells without spending your own actions. I'm not sure if this is too good as the spell has to be 5 levels below your highest but considering the feat to do this is normally level 16 and can stack with this tactic it seems very nice for what even a base familiar can do with its two abilities. The biggest use I can see for it is Hideous Laughter but Aqueous Orb, Bless, Enthrall, Mad Monkeys, and Shifting Sands are all low level spells that are still potentially useful at high levels. Other low level sustained spells are damage, incapacitation or summoning which are much less effective in lower level slots.

Which is why I would place a Knight/Samurai class not as a Master Swordman, but as a resolute non magical warrior. With the main mechanic being something that helps you survive longer than other classes.

Which is also why I said:
Samurai as the non-mounted path.
Knight as the mounted path.
And then a 3rd option for the light armor path.

The difference between what I suggest and the Champion is that the champion is a magical class that's all about punishing enemies for not attacking him. Meanwhile, my suggestion is a non-magical class that is all about denying enemy attacks and staying even when they are not getting healed.

Perhaps it could be a class archetype for champion, losing the divine magic abilities in favor of mundane powers. Exchanging the Champion Reaction for Resolve which could mitigate conditions received and keep you standing when you drop to 0 hp. Divine Ally could become what gives you your path of mounted / bow / sword master. Sharing feats could be an issue though so it still might be better as in own class just based off the paladin chassis.

I think the writing on how the spell works needs a small revision. As written when you chose misfortune, the target doesn't save immediately but on their next appropriate roll rolls twice. After they roll twice then they make a will save, which on a failure must use the lower roll, but doesn't state which to use on a success. This means whoever is under the effect would have to state which of the dice is the "original" roll to be taken on a success. I think it would be a lot cleaner if when choosing misfortune the target saved immediately to negate the effect even if this would be a very minor functional change and perhaps take slightly more words.

Warpriests seem to fall behind in essential ways.

First their doctrine is weirdly mostly defensive, largely improving their proficiency with fortitude saves and armor with their earlier expert proficiency in weapons being the only offensive benefit over cloistered.

Their accuracy is almost always worse from either not having strength or dexterity as key stats or having lower proficiency.

They fall behind in flat damage from their class three times over compared to fighters and other martials from weapon specialization. Their proficiency is often lower reducing the damage they gain from it, they get it 6 levels later than other martials and they never gain greater weapon specialization.

Plus they are worse at condition removal than a cloistered cleric as most of those require a counteract check which is determined by your wisdom and proficiency.

Then they lack the buffs to close the math distance and the ones that should close the gap are either unreliable (death knell) or work better on better combatants (heroism).

It seems like the warpriest that pours most of their spells and abilities into being a martial combatant still ends up rather unimpressive at it. A fighter spending all their feats on the cleric multiclass would make a better warpriest than a warpriest.

The one use I see for them is in very small groups where being able to pull double duty as a frontliner and caster is of much more value than having a specialist in each role but even then the fighter still gets a lot of the utility from spellcasting with the mutliclass feats without compromising their frontlining abilities as much as being a cleric does.

And for some reason heavy barding only gives a companion +2 AC because they can't have more than a +2 item bonus to AC.

While in the traits themselves aren't balanced against each other that doesn't matter as the weapons themselves are what need to be looked at. No weapon with agile has more than 1d6 damage other than the sawtooth saber but that's an advanced weapon. Backswing and sweep can be found on weapons with up to 1d10 or 1d12 damage alongside other powerful traits like forceful. Some weapons even have a combination of the two traits like the hatchet which has agile and sweep traits.

Arachnofiend wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

Doompatrol wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

A mean, a big thing about Cantrips is that they are literally free. You get them as spells known without additional expense, and they continue to upgrade them without spending money, unlike the archer who is going to spent at least 40,000 GP on their bow (likely much more) over the course of their career.

It would suck to play an archer if the cantrip blaster can be just as good as you at this with minimal investment.

How does the damage from blasting spells stack up to archers?

It depends. A True Strike boosted Disintegrate does quite a lot of expected damage.

I suspect caster damage gets pretty nutty once you get to the point your 1st level slots can just be True Strike.

Dunno, I've been pretty underwhelmed by the numbers on spells such as Flame Strike and Finger of Death, is it because they are Divine? An archer can probably do more damage in any one round than those spells at the level you get them.

Most blasts don't get to use True Strike, either.

I doubt an archer could do more damage than Finger of Death in a single turn without crits; 70 damage is a lot for 13th level. That's about 1/3 to 1/4 of an equal level monster's hp and it still does half on a "miss" and has the potential to crit as well. As for flame strike (and the same would go for spells like fireball or cone of cold) it is not and should not do the same damage against a single target due to its aoe. As soon as you put a second monster in the area the damage it can deal doubles. The issue may be that there isn't single target and aoe blasts at every level, but that issue will hopefully be resolved in time, at least for the blasty spell lists which divine is perhaps the least directly offensive list.

The way it reads is this:

There is a kobold attempting to ambush the party. The DC to spot the kobold is X. But since only one person needs to spot the kobold and everyone gets a check the DC is X+5.

So somehow the kobold got sneakier because lots of people were looking for it.

Or better put, "When multiple characters all have a chance at a check, it is more likely one will roll high and succeed; thus if you want a group skill challenge to be as difficult as one attempted by a single PC you need to increase the difficulty." So in your example the kobold didn't get better at stealth because multiple people could see it. The GM gave them a scout better at sneaking so the challenge of finding it would be about equal to a single PC trying to find a normal kobold.

There seems to be some mistake with animal companion armor. Animal companions can only get up to +2 item bonus to AC (pg. 214) yet heavy barding provides a +3 item bonus to AC (pg. 295) and its Dex cap seems to balanced around the full bonus applying.

I've got a couple questions from trying to make a ranger with an animal companion. First, specifically with the ranger, their animal companion also gains the benefits of their Hunter's Edge so if they had the Precision Edge (which does additional precision damage on the first attack you hit with in a round) can both the ranger and companion trigger it in the same round?

A second question, there seems to be an error with either heavy barding or the AC item bonus cap for companions. Under the rules for companions it states they can not get more than a +2 item bonus to AC, yet heavy barding gives a +3 bonus and the dex cap seems to be balanced around the whole bonus applying. Is there something I am missing here?

Yep, link here.

Edit: And right after making this post I saw your comment on the page. I'll this up incase anyone else needs to be redirected.

Here is the image for mine #27.

It looks like Old Cheliax doesn't extend to the northwestern tip of Garund. I wonder if this means Cheliax lost control of the Arch of Aroden, or if the sea is used as the border just for simplicity on the large scale map.

Velisruna wrote:

Tsriel wrote:

Looking to trade into this slot. I have a ticket for The Journals of Tular Seft on Friday @11am, but I'm not certain I'll make it in time. If anyone is able to trade and wouldn't mind doing so, please let me know.

I saw a trade for this slot and was going to do it, but it said it was no longer available when I tried. If you got in, congratulations! If not, let me know and I'll trade you.

Velisruna - I need to help run a booth on Saturday so I can't make this event. If you still need a ticket, I have one.

I was offering to trade out of this slot with someone who wanted to trade in. Thanks for the offer though!

I think Horizon Hunters seems like a great replacement for the Grand Lodge. The "loyalty to the society above all" thing drove many of my characters away from it that would have perfectly fit Horizon Hunters. Though from the sound of it the factions are likely to more represent the ideals of the society so some of the others may also look like Grand Lodge replacements, just because so many of the factions in PFS 1E were very separate or even partially external groups.

I am hoping the Dark Archive with Zarta as the leader return in some form. I love the theme of that faction and the arc Zarta got in the later seasons. It is also an appropriate faction for the society, seeking out knowledge, and containing and studying dark relics.

The event says this is a 7-11, but the scenario says 5-9. I assume the scenario's description is more accurate, but clarification and correction would be nice.

Looking to trade into this slot. I have a ticket for The Journals of Tular Seft on Friday @11am, but I'm not certain I'll make it in time. If anyone is able to trade and wouldn't mind doing so, please let me know.

I saw a trade for this slot and was going to do it, but it said it was no longer available when I tried. If you got in, congratulations! If not, let me know and I'll trade you.

Amazingly I have ended up in two Mark Seifter games! I think the demon would be fun to play, understanding the angle of "Reality is where all the fun torturable creatures are; I'll lose all that if I don't work with these law-bringers and do-gooders." I doubt anyone is happy about the arrangement but even demons can be smart enough to work against their nature in the short term for more mayhem later.

If I'm not the demon, the Azata would be my second choice.

Bard: Duettist + Sound Striker
Duettist gives you a familiar that can use your performances and sound striker gives you performances that deal damage. Yes, it will burn through performance rounds but you can output a lot of damage in a single round when needed. At level 8 you can do over 16d6 sonic damage for 6 rounds of performance. If only it stacked with thundercaller as well.

For those who actually enjoy planning out characters in a spreadsheet here is mine: link.

It is not original as it is based off a PF1 sheet I found a few years ago and have been using since. Unfortunately I could not find the original sheet again to give credit. If you want to plan out a build without needing a sheet for every level, I find this very useful to organize my decisions from level 1 to 20. If people have any requests, recommendations, or corrections, let me know and I will try to apply them.

While this is interesting and useful, another analysis that could be informative is if you are spending all your actions to attack. Either doing a power attack and an attack at -5, or three attacks at -0/-5/-10.

Pookiebear wrote:

ya, I was working with a lvl 4 wizard build... where the wizard could 'true strike' as a verbal-only non provoking (I think) spell, then power attack with a bastard sword (2 handed at that point).

I'm not sure, but it would seem to be a very strong eldritch knight sort.

I think it takes an action to change your grip with a weapon so I think that isn't possible. You could truestrike and power attack one handed and the shift grip next round. Or at least that's how I am interpreting the carrying and using items section in the equipment chapter.

I may be wrong but since True Strike only has a verbal casting component you wouldn't need a free hand. I can't speak for what reactions monsters might have, but it seems it wouldn't trigger Attack of Opportunity either as the Verbal Casting action lacks the Manipulate trait and doesn't meet any of the other triggers. This seems like a pretty nice combo for a gish.

Trying to plan out some characters. My fighter can't get intimidate as a signature skill without multi-classing rogue. Something is clearly wrong here. I don't see what Signature Skills add other than frustration.

Quick question, would the advocate boon from the season 8 sovereign court faction journal card reduce the cost of retraining? I have a character with the boon I want to swap around a couple levels on.

When purchasing a spellcasting service, vanity, or other prestige award that costs 5 or more Prestige

Points, the power of your reputation reduces the final cost by 1. If you have completed seven or more goals, you instead reduce
the cost of awards that cost 4 or more Prestige Points by 1.

Velisruna wrote:

If manyshot boosted the character above the rest you are either reading it very wrong or are playing very unoptimized characters. There isn't anything wrong with that but a ranger who takes the standard archery feats and uses one of their most useful spells (as Instant Enemy was mentioned) in no way relates to the wizard having the most potential to break the game.

eh

So lets say its level 6 and an optimized ranger. Thats functionally 4 attacks when full attacking with manyshot+rapid. Its really not hard for a ranged character to murder the crap out of things before melee can get there if they're throwing that many attacks.

This may be an issue of the forum overvaluing narrative power and undervaluing more than level appropriate damage. If he's for example one rounding an AP's BBEG because of his favored enemy bonus + composite magic bow + deadly aim + 4 shots that's still an issue, even if the party wizard can make his own demiplane in 12 levels.

My point is a wizard with the same level of optimization as that ranger will be just as effective at eliminating enemies but will also be able to redefine the narrative, even at the same level 6.

Just looking at 3rd level spells (there are still plenty of good non combat spells lower than this) some of the highlights (by no means the extent) of what a level 6 wizard can do: rapidly appear as many different individuals, completely mimic a dead person, travel through solid rock, contact eldritch creatures, keep someone from being resurrected or know if they are, create totally obedient miniature dragons, reliably and quickly fly quicker than most walk, turn into mist, turn a group invisible, puppet another creature (great with low morals and good bluff), pierce any magical disguise, force someone to constantly follow another, force someone away from another, make someone do something so long as it sounds reasonable, safe camping wherever and doubles as a one-way mirror in combat, solve all language problems, and allow a group to breathe underwater.

These give the wizard many more ways of approaching problems than a non-caster has and the non-combat abilities of other non-magic classes don't even come close to what these spells allow,especially at only level 5/6.

If manyshot boosted the character above the rest you are either reading it very wrong or are playing very unoptimized characters. There isn't anything wrong with that but a ranger who takes the standard archery feats and uses one of their most useful spells (as Instant Enemy was mentioned) in no way relates to the wizard having the most potential to break the game.

And wizards having the greatest ability to break the campaign itself is the main reason I considered them "OP." You can break the math easily whether with a pouncing barbarian, smiting archer paladin, or maxed DC wizard, all of which will trivialize combat. High level casters are the only ones with consistent means of breaking the campaign itself as magic allows for abilities that bigger numbers can never replicate.

Here's a number of builds I've done with 6th/9th level casting that also go into melee:
Melee Occultist
Natural attacking Skald
Sylvan Sorcerer buffing an animal companion
Wild Shape Druid build I threw together after being disappointed in the shifter
Strength based Investigator, lamplighter could be traded for empiricist depending on preference

Blend is one I wish I could take more often. It's pretty much Hide in Plain Sight as a spell, really good on alchemists or as an unchained rogue with major magic but even full casters tend to have a decent Dex for stealth. It's not on the bard list but it's still useful as a wand.

I’m not sure I would have helped a family that keeps bodies lying around!!!! What kind of game is Starfinder? I thought it was Pathfinder in space, and that doesn’t — No, actually, that sounds exactly like Pathfinder in space. Carry on.

The bodies are great for the garden; better off than leaving them in the streets.