WWHsmackdown's page

Spellshifter, world rouser, and remastered captivator are all solid ways to firm up a unique identity on a caster. So yea, more archetypes for casters are always welcome.

The best at the intersection of academia and magic would be my preferred wizard.

Feats for bonuses or action compressions when casting curriculum spells. Multiple feats revolving around lores and recall knowledge checks. In chassis reductions to learn a spell costs. 4 slots free and clear with curriculum spells being free spells known. Free lores based on your curriculum. Spell substitution in chassis if swapping to curriculum spells.

That kind of stuff would be dope for wizard.

Fair enough

I never really agreed with the week downtime requirement of losing ACs and familiars. Build investments of multiple feats that need replacing shouldn't happen over what may be multiple sessions. I've never found that acceptable as a GM, so getting them back the next day has been my standard (the one or two times I've actually had familiars or ACs at my table).

Love the adventure so far! I've skimmed the whole thing for an overview and now I'm digging deep into the first section; I should have a thorough read done long before my group plays in a couple months. The only tweaks I wanna do is beefing up the town a bit as far as NPCs to interact with and changing the intro to the island.

For Mieserine, I can just have some of the ambivalent/talkative monsters turn into phantoms that join the town after combat or if diplomacy is used with some different checks to "cleanse" them. Id do that on a case by case basis where my improv or the players' makes for a memorable NPC. Obviously none of the main Arudoras since they get "cleansed" at the end. Anyway, little bonuses, interactions, and sidequests aren't the hardest thing to splice in.

As for the intro.......I was thinking the beginning of the adventure where the party randomly got schlorped to the island was a little vague and wanted to flesh it out. I'm leaning towards Florin having discovered a ritual to commune with spirits of the Arudora while within site of Bastardhall, using the opportunity to grill them about her parents. Once on the mainland side of the bridge, she initiates the ritual and it goes a little too well: The Lord of the castle senses Florin's entreaties and the magics allow him to bypass the 100 year timer and send forth Velicarn early.

The subsequent encounter of the black coach on the shoreline would then be either a fun social encounter where the party willingly travels forth to the ethereal plane....or I get to do a fun dark souls style first boss you definitely can't handle, but it's not game over and the party winds up at A1 (fully healed and no worse for wear). Then the adventure would continue as normal from there. I think it would set the stage fairly well as far as grim hopelessness, and it's the only time I'd do something so mean spirited. I just wanna add a bit more narrative flow to those beginning paragraphs of the story.

Yea, the necessity to keep investing in the companion with 4 additional feats like any AC might balance it against other witches

I think any limitation of content, that has you coming to talk to the GM and ask for permission to use, would end up with the same discourse here now.

Very excited for the Dungeons section of that book. Pf2e could stand with some more systems or guidelines for homebrewing that portion of the game.

Have you tried playing with the Scions of Domora archetype and the Spirit Guide familiar that can make Strikes and generally behaves more like an Animal Companion?

Is that something that could be tweaked to make work in a way that is satisfying, or is it something that falls way short of your design goals?

Definitely cool, looking for something beefier, though

Ryangwy wrote:

Teridax wrote:

In terms of balance, the Necromancer seems pretty solid; I personally think the class is a spellcaster simply because that's the general expectation of a necromancer class. I think it wouldn't be too big a stretch to at least give an option to remove the Necromancer's spell slots and cantrips in exchange for benefits more directly related to their core mechanics.

I do think that necromancers are expected to have access to necromantic spells in the same way summoner do summons, and 2 slot casting is just enough to enable it and give a path to getting more via items and archetypes (summoners could honestly get by with wavecasting because most summon and incarnate spells wanted to be heightened to max) while preserving enough power to enable the actual combat loop they want to do.

Incarnate spells are something I never use. They are conceptually cool, but in use not powerful enough to warrant their use. You don't have two rounds for a spell to work with its power built to work over two rounds. You want to hammer now, all of it, as hard as possible. Not "I do the arrive action, then next turn I do the depart action."

Sometimes the Paizo designers think of things in terms of cool visual rather than, "Does this work well in play? Is there a reason for a player to use this that another spell doesn't do far, far better?" The answer for incarnate spells is mostly no, there are better spells to use in those high level slots.

I think they're really neat! I put them on my angel summoner along with traditional summon spells

Thought about putting this in general but I think it's better left a homebrew discussion.

Id love a class archetype that switches out a witches familiar for an animal companion. What do y'all think that would entail as far as what the witch chassis has to give up? Would you still pick from the printed patrons or would a singular bespoke patron have to be made balanced around having an animal companion? Would there be a reduction in familiar abilities? Would you have to bump the witch down two slots?

I'm no expert in design so I wanted to ask the class what they thought such a class archetype would look like.

Eoran wrote:

Perhaps an animated pen would not be upset about it.

But if you think that you can convince Farien to willingly suffer a violent and explosive death regularly, I would be interested in hearing what logical reasoning you use.

I will give them money. Moreover, because I know the value of a life, I will give them lots of money.

Choked on my cereal reading this, lol

Good point, yea that might be gm dependent. Id allow it, but I let most things slide if I don't smell cheese so ymmv with other GMs. If the GM does allow it, a familiar focused necromancer would certainly be interesting

Claxon wrote:

graystone wrote:

Well, that pitch doesn't actually inform me about anything useful in creating my character. Like 0%. It doesn't tell me what options I can use to make my character, what things you don't want to see in a character or even a simple house-rule/ban list. I've heard your pitch and I still can't fill out thing 1 on my sheet.

I haven't come to the table with a character, I'm waiting to find out what options I have for a character. It's only after I've heard the options and completing the character that I make a background to fit the mechanics. So I wouldn't even put a Katana on my sheet if I didn't know I could take it and that would happen before I made any background justification for it: so asking for justification first is asking for something that doesn't exist, hence my frustration in doing it that way. So, for instance, I'd pick a Gunslinger...

I'm guess I'm confused by your statement, or perhaps I needed to state the implicit assumption which was "Commonly available stuff is fine, anything else needs approval".

Genuinely, did you not understand that implication on what was allowed?

But I guess more generally, what I was trying to say is, if you are playing a character raised in Sandpoint (which to the best of my recollection has no inherent connection to anything providing firearms) and told me you wanted to play a gunslinger, my default answered would be "No". But if you came to me and said you wanted to play a character whose parent had fled the life of the shackles as soon as they had enough money, but had made it out with a old coat pistol. And that your character had an interest in it since they were child, and worked with the local alchemist to learn how to create black powder and the blacksmith to learn to smelt lead I would consider it.

Yes, you seem to not understand. You're effectively telling me I can only take uncommon as I don't have a backstory when I make up the character. You're in effect asking for something I do not have. I...

A ban list is a lot of combing and scrutinizing work, and the person you're asking that work of is already doing all the work for every session after session zero

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Look, rarity tags are by no means perfect, but a system that makes general European fantasy the assumption, while tagging most things outside it as well as tagging things with narrative or balance impact, puts the power firmly in the GMs hands to dictate what is and isn't acceptable in the story being told while also reducing their need to heavily scrutinize every bit of the character sheets. The players have to come to THEM, and that I think is both admirable as a game mechanic and respectful towards the person literally doing all the work to make the whole game night possible in the first place. Paizo empowers the GM with the 2e engine in almost all regards, and I sincerely hope they never stop

One reason we are talking about a Regional trait is that Pathfinder 2nd Edition no longer sticks to a general European fantasy setting. Player Core includes the Oriental-inspired monk class and the weapons bo staff, katar, kama, khakkara, nunchaku, sai, and temple sword with the monk trait. The last 6 of that list are uncommon. The uncommon martial weapons list also includes 3 other uncommon Oriental weapons, the katana, kukri, and wakizashi. Of the 15 uncommon martial weapons in Player Core 8 are Oriental and 6 are racial. The remaining one is the spiked chain, a fantasy weapon with no real world origin.

With the publication of Lost Omens Mwangi Expanse and Lost Omens Tian Xia we have plenty of lore for adventures outside European-based Avistan. Paizo has published adventure paths for those other locales. Imagine a PC in Season of Ghosts, set in Willowshore in Tian Xia, wanting to wield a European-based morningstar or rapier. They are common, but they would look out of place in Tian Xia.

Fair enough, I just wouldn't want to get rid of the whole system bc of its inconsistencies; I like that problematic stuff is gated and the system is actively in my corner in curbing choices from problematic mechanics or players. I don't disagree that it could stand to be refined

"You should be willing to talk to the GM before just making your own character."

"It's the GM's world and his game to enjoy as much as it is your's."
"Isn't it better to have a backstory where you've collaborated with the GM to explain how things about your character within the context of the story rather than just 'hey, I saw this neat thing'?"

I don't disagree with any of that. Once again, here's my sticking point:

"The guy playing the Human Fighter is not told he also needs to be willing to talk to the GM before making his character."
"It's the GM's world and his game to enjoy ad much as it is the player of the Human Fighter."
"Isn't it better for the Guy with the Human Fighter to also need to cooperate with the GM on his backstory to explain how he gets to the campaign start rather than just 'hey, I saw this neat thing'?"

If this is about cooperative storytelling, why doesn't the game just tell everyone "Don't just build your character first and assume it'll just fly, no matter how rare or dirt-common you may think it is. Everyone should expect a Session Zero first."? When some players are shown "cool thing from the game" and then also told "No, you can't just see 'cool thing' and expect that to be enough" while other players can just see "cool thing", and can legitimately not have to think "but how do I pitch this to the GM?" or "I hope this campaign actually allows this?", that's what tells them they're less welcome or wanted.

Bc 9 times out of 10, human fighter is going to slot into whatever game the GM is prepping bc the concept is so broad and flavorless. Katana wielding exemplar kissed by the sun god Shizuru from Tian Xa might require a little more thought to work in

Look, rarity tags are by no means perfect, but a system that makes general European fantasy the assumption, while tagging most things outside it as well as tagging things with narrative or balance impact, puts the power firmly in the GMs hands to dictate what is and isn't acceptable in the story being told while also reducing their need to heavily scrutinize every bit of the character sheets. The players have to come to THEM, and that I think is both admirable as a game mechanic and respectful towards the person literally doing all the work to make the whole game night possible in the first place. Paizo empowers the GM with the 2e engine in almost all regards, and I sincerely hope they never stop

I really like the second wave of class archetypes: blood rager, vindicator, avenger, and battle harbinger (fingers crossed for an errata to it's slots) we're all very cool additions to core classes. Heck, war mage from Battlecry gave us a wizard with access to a third focus point and some interesting identity that wasn't solely tied to spell slots; just make sure to slap a shield on that squishy boi!

As a rare thrall targeting spell that doesn’t destroy the thrall it’s good for a necro familiar or one of the super thralls with some durability and mobility.

I didn't give undead familiar too much attention bc of all the stuff that destroys thralls, but you're right: thrall charge, song of the soul, and deathly scream are all pretty awesome on a necro going for some kind of familiar build. I never thought of all the utility. Getting enhanced familiar would probably be important to make it beefier

I have to get this out of my system: I really do not like the remaster of magus and summoner. The two new classes are fantastic, the "updated" are not. Bounded casting at least looks interesting. 2 slot casting is the least creative way to handle power budget. In addition, reduced slots make sense on psychics and necromancers who have reliable damage dealing methods outside of slots, but still using caster chassis (although not the most interesting). Giving them to d8 martials is very unbalanced.

I can't help but find this very similar to the situation with the oracle.
Some mechanisms seemed clumsy, so slap more spell slots onto it? Did it make the class more popular? I don't think so.

Considering that I always slapped wizard or witch on magus while slapping sorc or bard on summoner bc the slots from wave casting were too anemic, I'm very happy with their remasters. Now they have enough juice to be gishes with parties that want a FULL adventuring day.

Necromancer seems plenty strong enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with both the remastered classes. Psychic....meh, I think the cloth caster health and defenses are a bit too low for what it's getting, but the psychic issues compared to the magus/summoner are firmly a psychic problem and not a matter of the two being remastered too strong. I don't consider the magus or summoner were buffed up too much ala oracle; wizard/sorc slots and an additional pseudo focus pool was just a bit too much for a d8 caster chassis.

Dare I ask how will an ooze ancestry even work ^^; ?

I'm gonna need some explanation on how a giant cube can wield weapons, y'know :P

Given how God of War Laufey will feature a cube called Phranque, played by Jack Quaid, this will somewhat be required XD

I'm assuming anthropomorphic oozes like plasmoids in 5e

And the rarity system *lessens* the need for the DM to scrutinize the player's character sheet with a fine tooth comb, there's going to be outliers like the wizard curriculum, but a permission based design philosophy is going to have them come to you! Anything that helps lighten the burden of GMing is a welcome feature (and such frequent considerations for the person behind the screen is half of the reason pf2e has been so widely successful).

Unicore wrote:

In PF 1, you just usually had GMs deny entire books instead of specific options.

But at least it wasnt official sub system in rules and books didnt have tags to support such behaviour. You can never fully escape whims of GMs, such is the nature of this hobby. But I don't like a system inside system that supports such behaviour.

In 3.5 GMs also banned stuff. But it wasn't that easy. Players and GMs had to negotiate on equal foot, not one side only asking for permission because rules say they can't unless GM says so. Different dynamic. Equal.

The GM is doing all the work, they should have more of a say. The rarity system as written facilitates that: if I'm doing generic fantasy the players asking for permission helps me weed out stuff that's going to bypass the narrative or clash with the vibes. It's not perfect, but it does a job that I appreciate. Most importantly, it facilitates all this happening during character creation and level ups, not in session where I have to immediately be the bad guy and ruin the mood

I said my piece in the Impossible Magic thread, but to reiterate, it has made my job as a GM easier. In that light, I think it's a good system.

Well, I think nearly everything I cared about in this book got killed by that day 1 errata pass.

What stuff?

I'm pretty happy with how necro looks. Create thrall is a pretty versatile focus cantrip that's providing a lot of utility between flanking, "ranged" damage, difficult terrain, and a myriad of other benefits depending on subclass. The focus spells are suitably punchy and, bc of mastery of life and death, necromancer is one of the most accessable and ally friendly blasters in the system. Refocusing like a psychic coupled with other focus regeneration abilities in class means that necro should stay fairly juiced in everything except long combats.

I think two slots per rank is plenty for a class that's going to lean so hard on focus spells......given the proficiencies and excellent feats that necro gets. I personally see necro as lessons learned from psychic

WWHsmackdown wrote:

The rarity system is one of the many examples of tedium and conflict being excised from the 2e engine for the benefit of the GM...

As a forever GM I can't really agree at all.

The rarity system wears too many hats (an item might be rarity locked because it's narratively disruptive, because it's literally just less common, or because the devs couldn't be assed to balance it).

Worse, because it's a bespoke list of items, it's in my experience led players to be much more hostile to the idea of general ban lists. In every other system in the world, GMs tailoring options is pretty normal... but because PF2 bakes in GM-permissive options, it's led to players being much less comfortable with 'their' options (i.e. common things) being restricted.

... And then the whole concept of rarity as a mechanism for requiring GM permission gets nuked anyways because common options that grant access exist.

Some subclasses granting uncommon spells is problematic, but I've definitely benefited on the whole with the rarity system as a GM

I'm one of those GMs that asks for permission for uncommon and above rarities; and I'll say that 90 percent of the time it's all gucci. 10 percent of the time it's something that doesn't fit my themes, bypasses portions of my narrative, or is tuned a bit too high and I simply say "nope, that's not gonna work in this campaign".

Then beyond that, I can largely turn my brain off to the nitty gritty of the PCs' builds aside from making sure they get situations to shine. I can then focus on narrative, NPCs, encounters, and PC character development hooks involving their backstories..... all the actual rewarding parts of GMing.

The beautiful thing about the way the rarity system is written, the fact that permission is required, CODIFIED, it has resulted in a MARKED decrease in grumpy arguments over the small handful of things I don't want in the game. In that sense, the rarity system is awesome and I really appreciate it.

The rarity system is one of the many examples of tedium and conflict being excised from the 2e engine for the benefit of the GM.....benefiting the longevity of the campaign and thereby benefiting EVERYONE.....bc a happy GM is happy to keep running the game

Am I the only one who's not feeling the Living Nexus archetype, mainly because you CANNOT overflow by yourself?

It has to be "another creature within 30 feet that Casts a Spell OR use an action, activity or reaction with the Arcane, Divine, Occult or Primal trait."

For actions alone, only going by class features, without considering feats, it means that if there's no spellcaster, you need an arcane dragon, Champion, Witch or Kineticist to Absorb Magic from.

It's gonna happen fairly regularly, and if it doesn't, and the GM was gonna purposefully throw physical bruisers with nonmagical abilities to turn off half your build, then you still win bc you and your party are now facing the enemy type that is easiest to counter with fairly basic tactics. Also at a basic level, Id expects most parties to have 1-2 casters

There's also a big opportunity cost to branching out for focus spells. If that archetype doesn't jive with how your character is written, you're suddenly stuck in until AT LEAST 2 more feats and AT LEAST level 8.....that's nearly the end of Tier 2. For most published adventure content you've completely locked yourself out of archetypes to express your character unless the focus spell pick was also the narrative blend you wanted, in which case, there's really not much of a problem

My player chose to play a psychic knowing how I run adventures. I offered the recovering a focus point at the end of unleash and the player turned it down because they are trying to get a feel for the class in all kinds of encounter types. The encounter total xp was 470 because they went in kicking the door down. The party was a psychic, a cleric, a fighter and a gaurdian. The fighter set off every trap and the terrain was massively in favor of the enemies. most of the waves were level -3 creatures with some level -1s and the end boss at level 4 with 2 level 1 body guards. It pushed the party to extreme and they used a lot of scrolls and potions to top up HP in rounds where enemies or allies had to do a lot of repositioning to continue the fight.

I GM to make the dungeons and encounters feel alive and part of a moving world. My players like this style of play and would not have me GM if they didn't. We sometimes run into one off encounters that only take 2-3 rounds to play out and 25 minutes to play out, but everyone gets excited for when things get stuck in and we know an encounter is going to last our whole 2 hour session, or sometimes longer.

I would not call focus spells an additional slotted spell, at least not one that is in your top 2 ranks of spells. That is a big part of why I think it is not a good idea to encourage new players to try to maximize their focus spell casting. Like casting cantrips, even at level 1, if you can get 3 or 4 enemies in a breathe fire spell (or a colorful spray spell in the case of my psychic), and you know more are coming in hot, use the spell slot. Have a second in a scroll in your back pocket and you might manage to take out 80 to 120 xp in one turn. That can really help out when the goblins are throwing stink bombs and shooting big boom guns that can nearly drop a PC with one crit.

Isn't that a matter of table variance, though? Like, yea, for tables that collapse encounters like a living, breathing, simulationist SWAT infiltration, focus points will be a fairly miserable waste of build currency. In a game we're combats are fairly contained to themselves, they'll be a stable tool in the arsenal.

It is simpler for the game to tell you “if you like doing this thing from inside your own class, you have to find a set of specific archetypes that will let you get to your FP max as quickly as possible,” instead of just providing something better tailored to the class in class? Minimally, if people love the current rule change so much, it seems like they should just have “focus caster” the archetype. And have it come with one action focus spells at level 2 and 4, and have focus in the name so it jumps out as the intended way to boost your own class’s focus spells.

Most classes with focus spells have the feats to get 2 within tier 1 of play and 3 within tier 2 or early tier 3. I'm not seeing a rush to leave class for focus spells at my tables unless the archetype has other things the player wants for their character.

gesalt wrote:

No, I don't find it awkward to take the feats that most quickly and efficiently achieve my mechanical goals. It's not like every character in this system isn't already archetyping to get better things than their class feats can give them. In some cases, it's focus spells that don't suck and focus points to use them, in others it's armor, reactions, utility, etc.

In non-FA games, I rarely take archetypes unless I really want to play a character that narratively fits into a specific archetype from the story idea I have for them. I wonder how many fewer Blessed Ones there would be in Golarion if characters didn’t need to go get an extra focus point?

While I still believe the focus point recovery change flattened the game and was a bad solution to the problem of players wanting to be able to use their built in focus powers more (with in class, in encounter focus point recovery activities being a much better solution), I do think it would be worth Paizo’s time to still go back and look at focus point use and recovery, class by class and get that right beyond the way traditional focus point recovery works. People like the overall implementation of focus spells so much that I think they are resistant to anything that sounds like taking their toys away, but I think it is a pretty objective position to point out that the current remaster fix looks and plays janky and hodgepodge.

Objective? Idk, it all seems simpler and more intuitive now

Changes in design philosophy are also apparent across the years: comparing dark persona or violent unleash from the psychic to desperate revival from the necromancer (which is ally friendly bc of mastery of life and death) makes me think "man, cool flavor feats for casters have come a long way in ease-of-use and power"

This sounds both like people trying to RAW the mechanics and munchkin-ing it out istead of going for RAI

while you are technically right, as a long term GM I would simply say no to both of those

as you said, the first one is easy to reign in as a combat only thing
where people really don't want to waste actions on self-harm

for the second, my suggestion would be to also make it combat only with the addition of 'not your own blood' which fits the general magical logic of the class (you cant draw you own power, it is already yours)
and if you really want to waste actions in combat, hurting you allies, be my guest
they should make an attack check though
if the ally in question holds still for getting hit, they become off guard
but they still keep up their combat movement

Yep, that player would receive a firm "no" from me and that would be as far as those shenanigans got

The children yearn for a return to 4e (which is hilarious to say bc I'm in my early 30s). THERE'S DOZENS OF US! Having started with 5e I can confidently say there aren't many pillars of D&D mechanics that I couldn't live without, especially spell slots. 4e unified a bit too much mechanic-wise in its resourceless structure, which made classes feel samey. I don't think a future attempt would make the same mistake. Hell, all the martials and kineticist feeling very different in play seems proof enough for me

Unicore wrote:

ScooterScoots wrote:

R.E everyone in the thread grousing about magus and focus spells for the 10 millionth time, I’ve done the damage calcs on this and fighter wins handily. And that’s under the ideal whiteroom conditions where magus gets to spellstrike every single round, real non-whiterooms are not so kind to the easily disrupted magus action economy.

Go complain about fighter instead please.

I don’t think magus focus spell spell striking is too powerful a thing by itself. I think that a lack of good damage spell attack roll slot spells, and a class design that pushes players outside of their class make it clear that the magus class isn’t doing what it is supposed to be doing. I think, given the remaster changes to the game, the original playtest magus is really just a better design, with maybe letting cantrip spell attack roll spells work with the one roll for spell attack roll and weapon strike.

The focus point recovery change just made it super clear that “the right way” to play a magus is against its class design. Like the class should not be getting evaluated on the assumption that every magus is going out of class to get access to focus spells, and it is a bad sign that automatically recharging spell strike and doing something else doesn’t feel better than blasting with out of class focus spells for the vast majority of players. I just don’t see why having magi use focus spells for spell striking would be better than just having spell strike do its own kineticist like infinitely repeatable options that could be picked up as feats.

Makes sense. A full class rework would have been great. I think magus is in a good place now with the changes to bounded casting - able to truly blend martial and magic, without being overpowered - but that you still need to archetype to keep spellstrike’s DPR high enough is annoying. I wish it was redesigned to offer comparable damage without having to do that, or a bit less damage with less action routine fragility (though...

I don't understand why the magus needs comparable damage in regards to spellstrike dpr, especially in light of all the remaster slots it got. I don't need to be doing fighter, barb, or rogue damage when I have a toolkit that varied; honestly id feel bad for the other guys if I did. I only need spellstrike to feel like a lot of damage in the context of it being a single strike, that's it. Other classes doing more with two strikes ultimately makes me think "who cares, I can do so much more than damage...."

It wasn't liked because they took a style unique to a class (warlock and dragonfire adept) and applied it to everyone, taking away from the uniqueness.

I think robust class mechanics make for unique classes: the grave spells of the necromancer as something thematic and evocative they can do every combat is a lot more unique and defining in my eyes than druid, wizard, or sorcerer casting the same fireball spell from a top slot.

I just don't see a benefit to changing the game back towards stricter daily attrition, when that specifically hurts casters more in a system where casters are already reeled in to be in line with their martial contemporaries......relative to other systems of course. If the argument is "it makes 2 or 3 classes subject to cheese" I firmly don't believe the answer is "make the game worse for every caster". That's like sawing off your leg to medicate a scratch

I agree with the facts presented. The meta shift regarding focus points is real.

I don't agree that this meta shift is a bad thing for the game overall.

Spell slot attrition is one of the few cases of attrition in the system. The other is n/day abilities like Battle Medicine or Halfling Luck. Practically nothing else in the game suffers attrition over the course of an adventuring day. Not even HP.

Attrition is a bad way of handling encounter challenge and providing a sense of actual threat to adventuring. That is a vestige of D&D3.5/PF1 game design - where everything suffered attrition ... which in turn developed the meta of the 15 minute adventuring day.

I don't think the fix for this meta change is to revert the way that focus points work. I, for one, don't want to go back to an encounter balance meta centered around daily attrition. Especially not when only some of the classes are affected by it.

The problem is that there are still classes that are relying exclusively on their spell slots for their casting power. Wizard, most notably. Vancian casting catches a lot of shade. Justifiably so.

So I think that the better fix would be to add to the focus point casting for the classes that are weak at it. For example, Wizard needs better schools printed that have on-par focus spells so that they aren't relegated to mediocre or poor choices for focus spells to use - or pressured into archetypes to get better ones.

Perfectly stated. The system, as written, favors balance on a per encounter basis in the vast majority of its mechanics. I enjoy the focus point change bc it lets casters play the same attrition free game that martials get to enjoy. As far as I'm concerned, I hope 3e kills off the last vestiges of 3.X and does away with spell slots

As a GM I'm happy to have an interesting resource to pepper in games. As a player, I heard "once per character, ever" and promptly stopped thinking about impossible spells

I'm quite impressed with the runesmith. His damage seems insane - not the whiteroomy damage of alpha striking, though he's the best in the game for that.

But the consistent routine of strike, engrave, invoke both runes is pretty potent when you have all 3 actions - and since everything is only 1-action, you can adapt pretty easily to being slowed, prone, or needing to move.

If you have your full round, you probably outdps a giant barbarian. If you don't, you can still fight, help your friends, and even get out of combat utility if you take a couple skill runes.

Wait even the non nuking turn still out-damages the top damage dealers in the game? Surely not, otherwise fighter and barb would be twiddling their thumbs looking at runesmith doing their schtick AND having a class worth of psuedo-casting

Ooooh, a wizard school all about snooping? I'll be able to fully recreate my first ever PF2 character, a dromaar wizardly private detective named Gorvick McCue.

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Spell shifter seems strong. Sustaining an allies spell or eventually yoinking an enemies sustained spell all using your arcana skill for a higher DC seems potent. Likewise, hedge mage, living nexus, world rouser, and veil dancer archetypes all have classes they would really benefit. Honestly, the archetypes kind of slap in general with this book. I was very surprised that the book ended up having great archetypes for casters AND martials. This wasn't on my bingo card, but as much as I love the magus feat shakeup, I could easily see myself making a magus that leans fully into the living nexus

I'm a little sad that it sounds like you won't be able to play a living nexus as a monk, thanks to them needing martial weapon proficiency. Have I got that right?

I'm just gleaning from leaks so I'm not 100 percent sure, but yea, hopefully monks will be able to use it

Spell shifter seems strong. Sustaining an allies spell or eventually yoinking an enemies sustained spell all using your arcana skill for a higher DC seems potent. Likewise, hedge mage, living nexus, world rouser, and veil dancer archetypes all have classes they would really benefit. Honestly, the archetypes kind of slap in general with this book. I was very surprised that the book ended up having great archetypes for casters AND martials. This wasn't on my bingo card, but as much as I love the magus feat shakeup, I could easily see myself making a magus that leans fully into the living nexus

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.