WWHsmackdown's page

What tier does necromancer land on? Everything I've seen about the class makes it look very varied and interesting, at the cost of really wanting to stay in class for your feats (which I consider good design). Seems like one of the best focus casters

I really like this game, I hope Paizo can stay solvent over the Diamond theft. I'll keep buy rulebooks and adventures; hopefully that's enough

I definitely prefer reaper considering the close ranges of all the necromancer kit; might as well wade into melee and benefit off all the sustain in the feats and high fort save. Bonus points for going blood and getting chip heals throughout the fight

Seems like trimming words for space while getting the same point across

Place your bets! All we really know right now is it gets 2 slots per rank up to rank 9 and the bounded casting is gone. I also heard the stat spread for eidolons is outside their descriptions now and more centralized, which could mean more space for an eidolon or two.

I'm hoping for a handful of evolution feats or maybe a table of familiar ability type bonuses we could slap on them: basically a little bit of build-a-monster that doesn't have to take up class feats.

I'ma still try my damndest to make a battle preacher that runs into combat with his angel witness, but the revealed lvl 10 feat for your eidolon striking and you getting a bonus to your spell attack/ spell DC makes me think the "fight together" fantasy for summoner is still firmly more gishy than martial. I'll still multi class champion and make it work as well as it can (which was good enough last time I tried).

I also think the phantoms and the angel are gonna get brushed up, definitely the dragon too, since that's just a whole bushell of types now.

What are y'all's thoughts?

Runesmith also jives with a lot of renditions of dwarves sidestepping not being inherently magical by having magical craftsmanship.

Looks like from paizo live, only captivator and soulforger are remasters; the other five archetypes in the book are new!

Wow, is ANY player interested in the runesmith ? I have a feeling nobody ever mentions it. Even now, when we get the biggest glimpse at Impossible Magic with actual feats, pages and runes, nobody's talking about it.

Now that it can be comfortably played sword and board thanks to that lvl 1 feat, it's a very unique Frontline support. It may not be high in the priority list, but I'll play one eventually

Unicore wrote:

I think the system is ready for an occult focused book that really plays up the weird and can have the space necessary to fix the psychic along side getting 2 new classes.

That would be a book to get excited about!

But do we really need more classes? Conceptually, it seems Paizo has been scraping the bottom of the class barrel for a couple years now and there are so many existing classes that are in desperate need of additional support.

Id say yes, we do need more classes (though maybe at a slower pace), bc a "BIG BOOK OF ARCHETYPES AND CLASS FEATS" is the type of thing I suspect would be a last hurrah during a 3e play test period, signalling the end of the edition.

Paizo really did it: I don't have to archetype anymore for just about the same number of spell slots and the class feats are interesting and competitive enough to keep me from branching out! Magus really got a splendid glow up.

Very happy with the magus changes. Given all these boons, I'll gladly still deal with reactive strike. It really seems like the 2 slot casters are now distinguished by whether they get master strikes or legendary spell DC; as others noted it's a shame that psychic didn't get brought up to speed in remaster (2 slot casting and d6 cloth defenses for strong cantrips and a short, drawback-laden rage now feeling a little piddly), but maybe their page format constrained changes were already penciled in long before necro and magus/summoner were ironed out. Oh well. Overall stoked for the former wave casters and my soon-to-be blood reaper necromancer.

"I also picked up Ancestral Memories from Sorcerer, though, and I use that frequently, precisely because it compliments high-rank spells instead of preventing me from using them."

Ancestral memories is one of the only things in the game that gives casters the no-fuss 1-3 point swing on spells for one action in the same vein as martials moving to flank for strikes. Still boggles the mind that that it showed up in pc2 as a solo sorc feat.....as opposed to items for bonuses to spell saves/spell attacks that all casters could get. Seriously, keep the action buffer on the items, just make it something any caster could get.......

Anyway, to contribute to the conversation, I prefer focus spells that replace casting a spell (even if it's slightly weaker) bc I prefer using focus points as a tool for caster sustain over the adventuring day over a nova tool. If it's interesting, moderately impactful, and thematic I'm happy to use it and conserve spell slots for the next turn. Even if it doesn't scale up as effectively as a top rank spell it's still a rank -2 level worth of magical effect that you didn't have to spend resources on. In my onion, I rank a 6d10 fireball I can cast forever over a 10d10 fireball I can cast 3 times.

My first thought is a dhampir blood reaper, going full Castlevania with the vibes and making a nuisance of myself on the battlefield

As a GM I'm less concerned with moral story/setting implications and much more concerned with players getting a fun new toy. If the class is a source of discomfort or moral objection at the table, it's something that would be addressed in session zero.

Very excited to make a dhampir blood reaper and load up on all the temp hp and health steal feats. It won't be as sturdy as a true frontliner but it WILL have a lot of staying power and versatility for a full caster.

Does this make Pallemi the oldest iconic?

July 10th will be the next Paizo Live which will cover Impossible Magic. That is also the Friday before the Subscription PDF Release.

Tis almost time, Dearies.

Won't this be one of those Gencon ste releases that subscribers don't get to see early?

Love the tragic backstory. That and the ossuary necromancer vibe do it for me. I'm excited to build a skellymancer in August

Oh thank God, the "2 levels of use treasure morphing into vendor scrap" treadmill was my major complaint of the system. Treasure doesn't feel as cool to me when "permanent" items are more like consumables with a more loosely defined, but still heavily limited, number of effective uses; effective here meaning to me a use that was worth the effort as far as chances of success (the crit system and level bound nature in this game quickly invalidates things that don't scale). If this book fixes that, it's a day 1 purchase!

They also slipped in that the narrative angle of the book will be "The Search for Nex."

It was specified that some feature that Summoner and Magus both had would see an improvement, which has left a lot of people speculating it's a change to wave casting.

Strang to change wave casting after battle herald released in the remastered timeline. Not that I'm complaining, I'd love more slots if that's the way they went with it

It's weird to me that we're only two months away from subscriber AMAs revealing all the details on impossible magic and all we really know about it is the product description. Still very excited to get it, but I'ma start tempering my expectations and expect everything that's not the two new classes to be mostly reprints and tweaks from secrets of magic.

I think hyper specific things that are opt in as far as integration, with only side-grading as far as power is concerned, is how you extend the life of the edition.

Eventually, player-wise, your system will still collapse under the weight of content as burnout and satiety lead to fewer and fewer sales for subsequent releases. Idk how to fix that though...

I just want impossible magic teasers....this last quarter of waiting is brutal. Feels like forever ago that necro and runesmith were playtested for a new book....

It's wild to me how many people want to ditch Vancian casting. I hope Paizo realizes not to listen to the vocal minority asking for that. It's a fun way for casters to interact with a dungeon-delving fantasy tabletop game. I do think room could be made for other spellcasting styles, going so far to make sure that Vancian isn't the default for all classes, but if a future edition doesn't have at least Wizards with Vancian casting, I'd probably drop the system.

And removing attributes? That seems absurd to me. The system is a fun way to show a character's innate strength and weaknesses. I could see them getting shifted a little, and I could definitely see them fixing up partial boosts, but outright removed? Absolutely not. It's a part of the DNA that makes Pathfinder what it is.

Pf2e is designed largely as an encounter based system and not an "adventuring day" one. It leads to wildly different levels of feels bad when casters fail their two actions on a limited resource versus martials failing their one action on an infinite one; it also places different stamina constraints on a party where the martials may want to keep pushing despite the one caster in the party being tapped out of meaningful contribution and mentally checking out for the rest of the combats while they absently sling cantrips and their one focus spell in tier 1 of play.

(IMO of course) It's the lingering sacred cow that would do the most good with its slaughter. Its erasure would also greatly help with streamlining by way of necessarily shrinking the repetiore of tricks that most casters have and allow for casting classes to specialize more heavily into niches and get more flavorful and impactful spells. Necromancer gets all those cool, fun, evocative abilities BECAUSE it only has two slots a rank to lean on when not doing it's class stuff.....imagine how cool classes like that would be if ALL THEY GOT were those tailored class things; I'd much prefer to live in that world of caster design. Kinecist is the way: put the casting in the class, not spell slots.

Someone who'd like to take shield based feats AND have fighter tier weapon proficiency?

Exactly! As a DM, what I prep is the broad stroke of what's happening. Players are going from A to B. The smoke and mirrors of being a DM (the real magic that makes it all worthwhile) is the audibles and rejiggers to add or reflavor content in such a way as to convince the players there was ever a C destination to begin with (even though it's really just B with a different hat). Being a DM is just like The Prestige. I fully support failure effects being written into APs!

To do otherwise is just to run a freeform sandbox.....which is completely valid! But not the type of story I like to run, nor the type of story that Paizo makes for their APs.

My preferred end of life product would be the developers grabbing all the archetypes, class archetypes, spells, and items that have ever been cut for space along with plenty of new class archetypes and releasing a last hurrah that they don't name player core 3 (so it's sales might be better).

Ancestry Guide 2.0, with standardized feats, updated lists for all 50 ancestries for those standardized feats and then more new feats

Maybe! I would recommend buying Galactic Ancestries, since those metrics would help Paizo gauge whether or not to do the same type of book for pf2e.

As a frequent GM, I'm very happy that instances of damage, resistances, and weakness are now running how I always played it: one time adjustments. The idea of adding or subtracting damage multiple times, necessitating separately portioning out each type of damage to accurately add/subtract the appropriate modifiers, sounds like a pace grinding amount of busy work for the GM; the juice from that busy work squeeze looked like MY encounters melting faster or the odd resist all monster becoming a slog. I'm glad I never ran these things as written and honestly don't think the extra minutes of dice portioning and napkin math amount to a more enjoyable experience. It's a healthier streamlining. Player options getting caught in the crossfire and coming out less powerful is an unfortunate casualty, but I'll take it.

For my enjoyment, Battlecry has been one of the best rule expansion books for pf2e. Loads of useful and flavorful archetypes, two dynamic and fun classes, and an ACTUALLY FUN (for me) subsystem in the form of skirmish battles (not knocking against victory point systems, mostly just throwing shade at the SoM casting subsystems). The line between Dark Archive and Battlecry has trended up IMO, barring small mistakes and mythic not landing too hard for me. Generally I think today's game is a lot better than 2019's.

I'm of the opinion that negativity bias is a natural byproduct of people being invested in a thing for long periods of time.

I think there's a kernel of truth to both opposing sides of the current discussion: yes, being an inherent spellcaster and being able to trigger certain weaknesses more easily through Arcane Cascade are non-negligible benefits. I also agree that the Magus could do with more things to do besides Spellstrike, and it'd be a good idea for them to have more feats that let them do interesting martial things with a magic bent too. However, even if the Magus had those improved feats, I still think they'd need something a little more. Their spellcasting takes up a big part of their power budget, but is really limited in a number of ways, and Arcane Cascade, while useful, is often far more difficult to activate than is worth it.

Independently of a full overhaul to the Magus, which I think could deliver a really fun gish class but is probably not Paizo themselves ought to implement in 2e, I do think there's room for a few quick wins, in addition to what Kalaam has suggested about compressing Spellstrike recharges into skill actions and additional feats:

* Making Arcane Cascade either a reaction or a free action while keeping its trigger would make it significantly easier to turn on, and thereby enable the Magus's subclasses.

* Removing Double Spellstrike and instead giving the Magus an up-to-legendary spell proficiency track would give them more spellcasting flexibility, including when using save spells as part of Spellstrike.

* Giving the Magus heavy armor proficiency by default would save them a dip into Champion/Guardian/Sentinel to make their Strength builds less MAD. Letting Laughing Shadow Maguses apply their Dex instead of Strength to damage rolls, perhaps as part of their Arcane Cascade bonuses, would help them out with this too.

* Perhaps less of a necessity, but if Spellstrike imposed a penalty to the target's save, whether it's a -1/-2 based on a hit/crit or a just full degree of success bump down on a crit, then save spells could become more attractive Spellstrike choices. This could...

I dont think a magus should have the ability to cast a spell at legendary proficiency at endgame then strike with master proficiency in the same turn...magus can get up to rank 9 spells. Classes picking a martial or caster lane is one of the pillars for balance and niche protection in the game; animist cheats this but even that cheese can't be both on the same turn

Similarly, heavy armor is another niche that's protected unless you invest.

WWHsmackdown wrote:

I like the package the pf2e ranger offers; it and monk were the main reason I left 5e in 2019. The class lets me mark a target for extra damage and run it down with my animal buddy, all at lvl 1! My half-orc precision ranger with his hyena companion is still one of my all-time favorite characters I've played in the system. The memory of beefy bonks with a two handed weapon and telling my dog to "sic em" still brings a smile to my face.

I'm not gonna die on hills for names or themes, but I hope that pf3e will still allow me mechanically do this at lvl 1 with some class.

Me too, the point I want to make here is that a lot of what makes the Ranger a ranger is what they do out of combat: ideally, I'd like a future edition to establish a better separation between combat, exploration, social encounters, and downtime, and give each character separate options and a power budget for each. That way, you could pick a hunter class for combat that could let you mark your prey and hunt them down, with starting options for bonus damage and an animal companion, and then for your out-of-combat options you could choose to style yourself as, say, a nature survivalist, a monster slayer, a bounty hunter, an assassin, an investigator, and so on. This would ideally mean that two of our 30+ classes don't end up being basically the same class, and allow more out-of-combat-focused classes like the Investigator to flesh out their identity better in a manner that doesn't require perfunctory combat mechanics each time.

More modular but still not completely "classless" would be a fun direction for a new edition, yea

I like the package the pf2e ranger offers; it and monk were the main reason I left 5e in 2019. The class lets me mark a target for extra damage and run it down with my animal buddy, all at lvl 1! My half-orc precision ranger with his hyena companion is still one of my all-time favorite characters I've played in the system. The memory of beefy first-hit-bonks with a two handed weapon and telling my dog to "sic em" still brings a smile to my face.

If memory serves I did lean I to one or two, tracking/terrain feats but that was me leaning into the class's nature flavor as opposed to seeking it out from the outset.

I'm not gonna die on hills for names or themes, but I hope that pf3e will still allow me mechanically do this at lvl 1 with some class. If Hunter still had all of that it would still serve just as fine as ranger.

The maneuvers scaling as you level would be nice.

Teridax wrote:

benwilsher18 wrote:

"I want to Spellstrike every turn for an entire adventuring day"

and

"I never want to Spellstrike with a spell as weak as a standard cantrip".

If people really want both of these things as they seem to, then I think that their expectations for the remaster are way too high.

I think it's less this, and the fact that people don't want to have to contend with the opposite of both. If you can only Spellstrike half the time at best and are also largely relegated to cantrips when you do, what's the point?

I agree that as the Magus is now, if you Spellstrike once every two turns instead of every turn, and only ever use cantrips to do it, you won't feel like a very strong damage dealer compared to other martials that are easier to play and much more durable.

But I don't think that they will try and solve this by making it easier to Spellstrike every turn, or by making resourceless Spellstriking stronger or easier to acquire. I feel like they will buff things like conflux spells and class feats instead, and probably give Starlit Span a slap on the wrist at the same time. And I think people will likely be upset about this...

Conflux buffs, feat buffs, and additionally a cascade buff would be a great direction for the class. I'd trade every turn spellstriking and focus spell spellstriking for that in a heartbeat; others would too, though I fear you're right and the class's fanbase would be divided down the middle on whether it would be an upgrade or a downgrade.

I do have concerns that creature weaknesses and HP were mostly calibrated around an understanding of instance of damage that is no longer accurate, but that will probably be pretty minor, with most resistant all creatures a little easier now, and thus less likely to get complaints. I guess small creature errata can be dolled out as creatures pop up as too easy or too hard. This just seems like a relatively massive change to embark on at this point in the game’s life span, so it feels like there could be a lot of knock on effects that will manifest in play.

Does this also mean that “use only the highest weakness” is pretty much only going to apply to trait based weaknesses like weapon material? That whole rule might need some revising too to make sure it isn’t over applied and every instance of damage can only ever have one weakness applied to it.

If this was always intended then mid-late game pathfinder as well as early game munchkinism was always intended to melt enemies exceedingly quick provided the right set up. I'm choosing to think that wasn't the case, and if it was, I'm glad the general understanding among us plebs was decidedly NOT that.

So Daredevil is "Jackie Chan: the Class". It is use your environment as a weapon, throw anything within reach, and strike as often as you can to break your enemy, live on the edge. It is also the "opposite" of a caster, in that putting them in a confined space actually helps them. but it does rely on the GM to populate an environment well.

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I kept thinking of Drunken Master and Rush Hour while reading the daredevil class

Awesome! The encounter balance is no longer in danger. My fears as a DM are mollified; back to enjoying the system!

WWHsmackdown wrote:

*Monkey's paw curls and 4e is remade.* I would be down for this though, lol

Paizo DID remake D&D 4e already, it's called Pathfinder 2e. The first time I opened the rules for 2e and read focus points, I laughed so hard that it alerted people. There's something so funny about the company that existed to compete with 4e just looping around to reinventing "at will, encounter, and daily powers".

It hasn't gone *quite* far enough. We still have to dispose of spell slots

Yea I guess it's *viable* at most tables, just sucks when the class falls apart the second you try and make something of it.

My inexorable iron magus went witch archetype for more spells slots and focus spells. I had no focus spells to spellstrike with but life boost gave some nice sustain. Idk where the panicked rush for focus spell spellstrikes comes from; magus has viable build paths

At this point, we'll need a 3e that rethinks martial/caster hybrids that aren't separate classes and summoning spells.

*Monkey's paw curls and 4e is remade.* I would be down for this though, lol

(Won't be the perfect answer after focus spellstrike get nixed in the next book)

Fingers crossed

Beyond all the balance concerns, this clarification adds a lot of bookkeeping for damage calculation, and the GM reward for all that extra work .......is the boss melting faster if the martials are properly built and buffed. From the GM perspective, this just seems bad from both ends, unless you're a GM that actively hates running combats and would sooner have your players receive their victory endorphins and pat them on the back while cheekily placing gold star stickers on their forehead. The idea of each martial getting an extra 20-40 damage early-mid game on EACH BONK......it *really* boggles the mind.

Ultimately, it's not a concern for me bc I flatly won't be running this ruling, but I really do feel for pfs GMs and GMs using automated programs.

It's a bad change. Weakness wasn't made to proc more than once per smack; I won't be using that rule for my tables.

Had a thought: What if we're the reason we're not seeing more class archetypes? Like, the vast majority released so far were met with pretty firm negativity for not being strong or cool enough, or being pale imitations of their PF1 versions. Maybe the devs just gave up and decided to go back to building hybrids with full class power budgets because we told them that class archetypes weren't enough?

And by "we," I mostly mean some loudmouths on Reddit. Paizo has got to stop going on Reddit. (I am on Reddit lmao.)

I think all the second wave class archetypes for the system have been pretty great! You're not wrong though, a lot of people online were puzzlingly grumpy over content that seemed perfectly serviceable. I think class archetypes would fare better if they didn't have an opportunity cost of feat investment at 2 as well as being locked in until you get 3 feats. Just a hunch though. Then, I think they'd be judged less on whether or not they're an "upgrade"

Daredevil makes me finally wanna roll a Vanara, probably Son Wukong coded, whose just a hyped-up chaos-gremlin-brawler. Slayer with alchemist archetype sounds like a better approximation for witcher.

Ravingdork wrote:

Started stream. Heard "new classes" instead of "much needed support for existing classes." Closed stream.

It's especially frustrating because these aren't even new thematic/mechanical niches. iPhone behavior.

Like, if they're better than Swash and Ranger, then that's two obsolete classes. But if they're not better, then what's the point? Very lose-lose for Paizo.

Not to bring up that other elfgame or anything, but they might've had the right idea with their pretty robust and modular subclass system.

Oh God no, I can never go back to waiting 5 years for an additional class, and then it falling flat. This is a million times better, foibles and all (though, honestly, I don't have issues with these two classes and think the larger community has been primed for histrionics ever since the psychic remaster, barring the damage instance clarification)

Swashbuckler is a lot better in PC2

I'm intrigued by the class choices. I'm sure the book will bring it all together, but the announcement was out of left field.

YuriP wrote:

This creates a situation where, for traditional spellcasters, the fewer attack spells the designers add is better, while magus go in the opposite direction, where the fewer saving spells is better.

Therefore, the idea of ​​giving some benefit to the magus to use saving spells in SpellStrike, ideally occurring in parallel with standard spellcasters receiving some item bonus for attack spells, wouldn't solve the problem, but it would make it less bad, or at least more similar to the kineticist when using attack spells derived from items like scrolls, wands, and staves having a superior bonus due to the Attenuator. At the same time, this will reduce the situation of dispute between classes where one prefers one type of defense while the other prefers another, and therefore they end up competing for space so that new spells ideal for each can be cast.

This is the crux of my issue with the Magus as they currently exist: right now, they desperately want more of a kind of spell everyone else hates. I genuinely believe you could turn every current attack spell in the game into save spells, and it would only benefit casters, yet this would deprive the Magus of what few spells that synergize with their defining ability. This is why I believe that given appropriate tradeoffs and adjustments to outlier spells, a Magus that could make use of any spell with a roll, not just attack spells, would be in a much more secure position. They don't strictly need that change, but it could certainly make them less dependent on a dying breed of spell.

The other issue I take in this context is that despite being the poster child for gish classes in Pathfinder, the Magus is actually pretty terrible at casting spells: the only spells they make great use of is attack spells, which they basically use like Strikes, and their spell DC is generally terrible, which makes them poor users of save spells. This limits them to only a subset of the spells available to them, to the extent that you have people...

I do consider Summoner a martial as well. I'll admit my definitions are limited: master or above strikes being a martial and legendary casting being a caster. I think of of magus and summoner as being martials with some casting without needing a caster multi class archetype. Animist getting to be both (by way of sustaining a focus stance that switches it to martial proficiencies) is a design line that I didn't enjoy being crossed.