The power of the wild world flows through you. You are a spellcaster and can cast spells of the primal tradition using the Cast a Spell activity (see Casting Spells).
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At 1st level, you can prepare two 1st-rank spells and five cantrips each morning from the common spells on the primal spell list, or from other primal spells to which you gain access and learn via Learn a Spell.
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Since your key attribute is Wisdom, your spell attack modifier and spell DC use your Wisdom modifier.
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druid dedication wrote:
You cast spells like a druid. You gain the Cast a Spell activity. You can prepare two common cantrips each day from the primal spell list or any other primal cantrips you learn or discover. You’re trained in the spell attack modifier and spell DC statistics. Your key spellcasting attribute for druid archetype spells is Wisdom, and they are primal druid spells.
Contested by people in denial maybe. They killed needing anything past the initial dedication 4ish years ago via dev comment and then they re-killed it in the remaster.
Fortunately, we're all a few rungs below "active dev with his name on the front cover" so without additional commentary or errata it's pretty clear who has the right of it.
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You keep telling yourself that. While supported by the devs, I don't believe it's actually printed among the rules anywhere. It doesn't take much to find a GM that disagrees with the statement.
Good thing "supported by the devs" and "the pfs ruling" are pretty good arguments and more than enough to get legacy content at every table I've ever heard of. Possibly because of how much would simply have stopped existing when the remaster first hit.
If a gm wants to make a house rule, that's fine, but I'm not going to account for deviation from the default when I make any sort of recommendations or arguments. Much like how I don't assume anything with a rarity tag without a common access point is legal, since you need gm permission to deviate from lack of access.
Well, you should never prioritize str over dex, for one. Mountain stance is a trap that springs shut the moment you need to fly or swim and should be avoided in any game that goes past level 5ish.
Not like you're compromising damage either. You have much higher damage potential with wolf stance (agile, backstabber, works with archetype sneak attack) vs something like dragon. Just run +2 or +3 str to start.
Max dex then puts them 2 above baseline (rogue) and 1 above non-legendary plate. If you don't want to take it further with shields and the like that's on you. If you just don't like the image of a monk with a shield ask your gm to flavor it as a parry or qi-infused cloth or bracers or whatever.
A Cloistered Cleric needs two armor proficiency feats to get heavy armor from the Champion MCD. Bit pricey IMO.
If one can manage the stats, it remains a great MCD even without that investment, tremendous even if one's party plays in formation. Kingmaker fights do require some mobility and skirmishing though and there are competitive alternatives, but Champion's one to keep on the list until the end.
Champ gives you medium and a general feat after that gives you plate. Easy enough to have at level 3.
Since you're a cloistered cleric your're probably on dex/con/wis/cha right?
Bard if you want to add illusory object and lingering inspire to your toolset. Add chelaxian scion if you want dirge of doom.
Kineticist to pick up protector tree. In the later levels you can fork it into air for things like permanent full party flight.
Druid gets you a blasting focus spell and some primal slots.
Beastmaster will give you free movement once it gains independent and you can ride it.
Swashbuckler gets you one for all as a useful reaction.
Casters have plenty of dead feat levels and cleric is no exception, so you should be taking archetype feats with many of your normal feat slots as well. You're also not locked into one archetype so even if you can't afford kineticist or the cha stuff at 2 there's plenty of space for them at 6+.
Are there any saves involved? Bosses are notorious for making spellcasters’ big shot Hail Mary magic tricks underwhelming with their above PC levels saving throws. So you’ve got two to three PCs focusing on this one trick assuming that the initiative order works out completely in their favor, any boss minions don’t gum up the works, the bad guy fails any saves, and minions don’t or can’t pull him out? That’s a lot of PC planning based on many assumptions, and seems like a whole passel of white room theory crafting.
Most of the water spells have no save and there's no save on the mask reaction. Follow up like walls to slow minions have no save and containment is a ref save which unconsciousness applies a -4 penalty to. Even using something like vacuum which is incap with a save doesn't mean much when it still creates an airless environment and then the creature has their air ripped out with the mask.
Past that is the obvious. Minions can be burst or boxed out before even trying this, not to mention that each minion takes up encounter budget. Too many minions and you don't even have a boss anymore. Initiative is a non factor since delay exists; not sure how people keep forgetting about that. "Focusing" on this trick has a cost of a single item and a single spell slot which is downright trivial and has no impact on overall character or party building.
It's white roomy only in that it's one of those things you do once or do during a one shot and then everyone agrees to not use it like any other cheese strat.
Your best bet is probably to just lab it out yourself sometime. Start with something deliberately overtuned, some +5 monster with all the sliders turned up, custom nonsense, the works. Then start chipping away at it until it becomes barely manageable.
Then why did the immunity appeared in the Remaster ?
My money's on devs not liking how the magus got mileage out of multiple true strikes per fight if they ever spent a round not spellstriking. Same reason IW and psychic dedication got hit.
Gestalt said, above, that Trip is better than Grab. Generally speaking this is correct.
However, trying to Trip someone is an action. Trying to Grab someone is an action. But look at the overall sequencing...
Attack someone, one action. Then try to trip them; second action at -5.
Grab is the same two actions with MAP on the second.
Combat Grab: one action. Attack and if you hit, the target is grabbed. That is excellent action economy! That's effectively two attacks for one action. This is balanced out by the fact that Combat Grab is a Press action; it has to be done as a second attack at -5.
Slam Down: two actions. Attack someone, and if you hit you can try Trip them; both attacks are 0 MAP. Any succeeding attack is at -10.
A few things here.
The first is that you're neglecting the MAPless reactive strike (multiple if there are multiple melee PCs) if they try to stand up or crawl away.
The second is that if they decide not to stand up, that's just permanent off guard and a permanent debuff to their own attacks. This also ties into action economy as the grappler must maintain the grapple with actions while a tripped target stays tripped indefinitely.
The third is that slam down is actually kinda bad. Iirc you mathematically have better outcomes with manual trip into strike as far as making sure you have something occur.
I don't understand. When a spell had the time to apply? Not on monk's turn. Then there's no spell and no danger of drowning at all.
Yeah, that's on me. I was still in the headspace of weird reactive strike stuff. This works in the proper order as well, ripping the air out of someone in an already airless environment.
There's also the option of letting yourself get quickened round 1 (ally, potion, etc) and using your own wand to drop a wall or vacuum together with a quickened strike and reaction. That's a bit more involved though.
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Huh, are all the items that have focus point stuff that only work for one class like that or is it just the mask?
All of them. Makes the magus free action teleport ring pretty useful for literally everyone.
I mean the ability specifies that you regain consciousness at the end of the users turn, if not woken earlier. I am not sure how many GMs will not allow for getting dunked in water or any environment that your body functions radically differently and not have that wake you up.
This whole thing sounds like a rules lawyer player trying to auto kill enemies by bludgeoning their GM with rules that defy common sense, and then suggesting it’s a massively broken ability that needs errata.
Yes, you would wake up from the item's effect, but you have a second source of unconsciousness being applied to you by the drowning/suffocation rules. It's those rules that keep you asleep, same way as if you were under two sources of any condition and one went away while the other did not. You wouldn't suddenly recover from both.
The suffocation rules are pretty forgiving. If you can’t breathe and are unconscious, it’s a dc 20 fort save against light damage. You’ll wake up in one round, the DC doesn’t have time to get scary by the time you should be fine. The set up on trying to make that insta-Killy is beyond excessive. And the build to get the unconscious condition to last more just your own turn is not that great. Again, the actual activation ability is a little out of line and should have a save of some kind but it is really not going to break the game.
Actually I just read it again and you don’t fall prone or drop anything. I don’t even think it needs a save as a once a day ability any more.
Yeah, the torturous setup of a martial landing an unarmed strike followed by a friend's 3rd rank aqueous orb at -4 reflex or automatic wall of water (doesn't require unoccupied spaces and doesn't offer a ref save to move outside the wall) which cause drowning which means they don't wake up because their access to air isn't restored.
At later levels your friend could cast a 7th rank vacuum instead and the save doesn’t matter unless you somehow believe that an unconscious creature with all their breath removed can hold their breath.
Either way, it's a fairly trivial setup to delete a single target of large size (water spells) or any size (vacuum), and costs next to nothing build-wise.
I don't know what Gestalt is talking about. Grapple is generally considered pretty good (although Combat Grab at level 2 means you only do it directly sparingly). Making an enemy off-guard and forcing them to escape if they want to charge your squishy backline is great.
Having played a similar build in organized play, I quite enjoyed it.
Enemies don't typically have much incentive to break a grapple. They can just dump all their actions into you and make you ask if it was worth it. Or worse, they have some special action and can attempt to escape with effectively no penalty because they don't care about MAP and the escape doesn't even trigger various reaction attacks.
Contrast trip. Prone adds a -2 to attacks and attempting to stand up triggers reactive strike and others.
However, restrained is a fantastic condition. Hellknight giving a metastrike that restrains on a success is amazing.
Maneuvers themselves are an incredibly mixed bag. Trip is universally fantastic, grapple was bad until they released the remastered hellknight (chain) and shove is only really good in parties built around exploiting it. The less said about disarm, the better.
Still, nothing wrong with empty hand fighter. Grab your bastard sword, pick up dual-handed assault at 4, wear a buckler and gauntlet on your off hand and have at it.
Except the penalty is likely going to be much higher than -4.
Assuming an average 10th level (its uncommon to be facing flying enemies earlier than this I feel) Str medium armor martial character with +5 Str and +1 Dex, your penalty is going to be at least -6, assuming the target is within your second range increment and not further away, and again, still not taking into account the fundamental runes needed to keep this backup thrown weapon viable, and the returning rune and Quick Draw feat for this playstyle to work at all.
At 10th level the penalty is 0 because you have had flight access since at least 7th level(fly/air walk from a melee magus or summoner), and definitely at 9th (aeromancer at human 9, flight tattoo, etc) and the extending rune (also 9) if you absolutely refuse to interact with flight.
I'm more than willing to call player skill issue on this one. If not that, then a group of players gambling on their gm being enough of a pushover not to exploit obvious flaws in their strategy.
Well, the decision on Class is long over. This is my character, so what would you do to maximize its effectiveness?
Same way you play any melee magus. Grab champion archetype for plate, fire ray and the reaction and spellstrike as often as possible. Even if you won't abandon brocade, at least abandon mauler as that thing is truly useless on the magus.
If you do this you'll at least meet the bare minimum for contributing. If you insist on trying to play brocade's "features" or on mauler archetype, then warn the table and the gm so the character can be written off as a liability.
There's nothing super wrong about forcing melee to spend a combat at -x for using a bow at +0 dex instead of whatever their str bonus is. Particularly in the earliest levels where casters likely still have magic weapon on their bar so the two weapons thing isn't even a factor.
It's a total nonfactor in the midlevels where flight becomes available and if the whole party failed to have a plan for flying enemies, or worse, knew it was an issue and did nothing, then it's not bad gm-ing to exploit that to force them into being prepared for it afterwards.
4d6 damage is terrible. Not sure how that is pseudo-giant rage. Giant barbs hit way, way harder and can have 4th level enlarge on them. That's not very good at all.
Because for 1 action you get enlarge 4 which is a status bonus to damage, clumsy 1 and increased reach, and moon frenzy 6 which is temp hp. These benefits are fairly similar to a level 6 giant rage with the giant stature feat and better than what you could get archetyping for such a thing.
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Oh well. Still gonna try it just to play something different. I've already min-maxed so many fighters, rogues, monks, and barbs that playing something somewhat weak will make for a bit of a challenge.
Eh, it's not that bad. Just strap champion to it and do something simple like transcending back and forth between gleaming blade and gaze or whatever useful ikon you pick to start with.
Ok. SO 6th level Moon Frenzy starts at 3d6, then with striking would go 4, 5, then 6.
6d6 plus 4 status for enlarge, then strength, specialization, and whatever else. That's ok, not spectacular but like a greater striking greatsword with agile.
Not sure that is quite as impressive, but it's not bad.
Striking runes don't add dice, they only set a number. So you have 3d6 base (per 6th rank moon frenzy) and 4d6 with major striking. Its only use is to be a psuedo giant rage that ends if you don't enter a transcend body, transcend weapon loop (which tbf is basically already how you play an exemplar).
pauljathome wrote:
I think it is considerably above average, unless you are considering barbarian to be "average"
That's correct. Average accuracy, average feats, average skills, average AC, above average damage bonus, average reaction, can't access plate AC without losing free action rage, locked into str/dex/con/wis because of this... yeah, pretty average.
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While there are definitely specific archetypes for specific builds that will be better than Exemplar the Exemplar archetype is going to be best possible option for lots of builds (especially martials that are basically just looking for more damage) and very good for many, many others. it has crazy flexibility and lots of raw power options.
I wouldn't call slamming champion/gunslinger/swashbuckler onto just about every melee/ranged/caster that can support them "specific archetypes for specific builds." That's more sneaking sleepwalker onto tome thaumaturge for infinite advantage on infinite knowledge or bolting snarecrafter onto legendary class DC classes to throw lightning snares under a quandry'd enemy.
In any case, I'm not saying exemplar archetype isn't good. I'm saying it's rarely an efficient use of feats to take it before level 9 in non-free archetype games.
The class itself is kind of just an average martial.
The archetype is at its strongest in any game that doesn't progress past level 4 where you take it at second level or at first with ancient elf. For longer or higher level games, there are better archetypes available (like champion), but much like the pre-nerf psychic, you eventually slam it on every character in a free archetype game or at level 9 with multitalented. The archetype is also useful as a build enabler with stuff like shadow sheath.
Cast a spell is still an activity right? Surely the local caster can use guidance to move the spotlight around or something. Not like immunity would stop that either.
So why are you not giving me examples of those "good spells" so I can mention them to my player, rather than going on about the incompatible archetypes he should have?
I have neither the time nor the inclination to write my own version of Gortle's spell guide (which would be 99% identical anyway). If the bard player doesn't want to go through their spell list themselves they can use that, though they should be wary that his guide doesn't mark uncommon and rare spells, last I checked anyway.
If you're having 6-8 encounters per day, that's fine. They only need to cast one or two ranked spells per encounter and can spend the rest of the time cantripping.
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email stuff
Seems like you don't quite understand that pf2e casters exist primarily to buff martials, apply 1 turn debuffs to bigger enemies and occasionally sweep up chaff. Those underwhelming success effects are what the entire viability of casters rests upon in this system and are why so few spells are worth knowing.
Sounds like this is not one of those those times - trap options are definitely "the system's fault".
Ok yes, that one is the system's fault, but things like the bard being the party medicine slave or failing to recognize that 1 of the boss's actions is worth more than two of theirs are not.
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Free up actions to do what? The only other useful actions he gets from the bard class are his spells, and those are situationally useful at best.
One for all (swashbuckler archetype) and the handful of spells in the system that don't suck like illusions, the good buffs, any spell that has a strong "success effect" for single target, AoE incapacitate spells that will remove a mook or two on failure. Most turns will quickly devolve to good spell, one for all, reaction aid. Understanding what constitutes a good spell is another one of those player skill things.
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Also, having a "spammable reaction" would conflict with counter performance, which (while situational) is one really useful when it applies, and has saved the party's bacon a few times.
And all those turns it's not getting used is a wasted reaction. Wasting action economy is bad.
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Exactly, and you shouldn't. A class should be able to do its job without having to do a deep dive into archetypes. That is precisely the problem I have been complaining about!
They can do their jobs without archetypes. They do their job better with archetypes. You also need to not build or play your class badly. In the bard's case it means recognizing that most enemies will pass their saves and only mooks have a reasonable failure rate and picking and casting spells accordingly.
The party are: Thaumaturge, fighter, rogue, ranger. And the bard of course.
This party should be casually ripping through severe encounters so their builds and play patterns must be super questionable if they're having the kind of trouble you're saying they do.
Yeah, insulting my players will totally solve the problem. They obviously have the relevant proficiencies as those things are kinda fixed. They have maxed out attacks stats, and a semi-permanent effective +3 beyond their own scores between the bard and the rogue. But the enemies' numbers are just so much higher.
I am sure there are things they could do to eek out another point or two, but I am not aware of anything which is reliable and affordable.
gesalt wrote:
Though since the bard apparently thinks trading 2 for 1 with slow or similar effects is bad, I guess that goes without saying.
I mean, I agree with him. Although it is more like trading two actions (and a R3 spell slot) for half an action on avearage, since any enemy you could meaningfully use it on will Crit Succeed at least half the time. That's not just a bad trade, it's horrible.
Sometimes it's not the system's fault. Sometimes it's just a skill issue and understanding that they're bad at something or doing something wrong is a good first step to improving.
Just having the baseline stats and proficiencies given by the system doesn't mean much. Already you mentioned they're doing the harmonize cantrip thing. Guess what? That's a fairly ineffective play pattern. The whole thing is a trap.
They'd be better off doing things like throwing a lingering anthem or dirge to free up their actions, a swashbuckler archetype for 'one for all' for a spammable reaction, a staff of illusion for 4+ free illusory objects per day, save the slow (or confusion to target will or containment for reflex since they have 4th rank spells) for bosses or otherwise force an action loss with an illusion, use calm on groups of mooks to try and remove one or two from combat via the fail effect, etc, etc, etc. As long as you don't target a high save, even a +4 boss is only going to have a crit save chance of ~35% and illusions force an action to see through them even before any saves are made.
Idk what the rest of the party is doing but it goes for them too. If any of them are using a bow, did they make sure to grab gunslinger archetype for fake out with a gauntlet bow? Do the melee have mutagen collars and a stock of cheap d4 energy mutagens? I know groups that, with that party configuration, would have three champion archetypes there on the front line to punish attacks and add sustain through damage reduction and lay on hands. If the bard moved to dirge, did anyone pick up bless or bard archetype for lingering inspire or some other status bonus source?
We could go on forever with this kind of thing, but I do hope I've made my point. You need more than just your base stats and class chassis proficiencies to actually perform well.
The party are: Thaumaturge, fighter, rogue, ranger. And the bard of course.
This party should be casually ripping through severe encounters so their builds and play patterns must be super questionable if they're having the kind of trouble you're saying they do.
Though since the bard apparently thinks trading 2 for 1 with slow or similar effects is bad, I guess that goes without saying.
Rules discussion aside, casters do mostly feel like dead weight in a party until they hit that level 7 point. I'd need to be monetarily compensated to play a full caster in this system before that point.
Want some wild advice? Give everyone 5-6 levels and take an afternoon to replace all the monsters with things 5-6 levels higher.
That or start an advice thread specifically for how to get the most out of a caster in the early game where they're a miserable experience.
It's rare for the same reasons Gunslinger or Inventor are uncommon. You won't find them everywhere on Golarion, and you'll find someone with a spark of divinity in them even less, so it's rare. Seems pretty simple to me.
Not to mention plot warping lore implications.
That's the point that keeps being made though. Paizo didn't have to give it flavor that resulted in a rare tag. Really, if they had just not given it the rare tag at all, its flavor would just be ignored just like how every classes' flavor sections get ignored.
Let's not pretend the speed penalty is at all meaningful in the cramped areas of a paizo AP or when the monk speed bonus means the -10 is balanced out by the inherent +15 on top of fleet and possibly boots of bounding.
Damage is probably not too big an issue either if they're at least popping 3 inner upheavals per fight. If it's free archetype or they added adopted human maybe even add rogue sneak attack on wolf strikes through multitalented rogue and sneak attacker at 9-10.
Monk with a big shield is the most common way to play a melee monk so this isn't really unexpected either.
None of this seems particularly super optimized. The taunt is funny but only inflicts off guard which should always be happening anyway, and a -1 you can mostly ignore. The drakeheart thing is just basic party support, but they could accomplish so much more by bringing a non-alchemist instead so that's not particularly concerning.
Usual iron brick problem I guess? Just kill everyone around them or stop wasting time with moderate fights.
Ultimately the exemplar is a victim of paizo deciding to make their flashy flavor text have a mechanical effect (the rare tag) instead of leaving it as they usually do, where it tries to hype up an otherwise mechanically mediocre or worthless player option.
A shame, but worth stating and restating to any gm wary of it that they can strip out every last piece of background flavor the class has and nothing of value will have been lost.
Any source of airlessness plus the mask of uncanny breath can force full suffocation.
Battle Oracle spell immunity plus any buff with an immunity based cooldown like guidance.
Holy water is technically a valid choice for a thrower's bandolier.
Use an awful athletics check to intentionally critically fail to force open anything you lock up to make it harder to open.
It's been patched out, but stunning a delaying creature used to make them unable to take the free action to rejoin initiative (and it was obviously overridden by the gm anyway).
Isn't this easier to build as a thief rogue? They get sneak attack to unarmed now or you could just use gauntlets, etc.
0/4/2/2/1/0 attributes. Alchemist at 2, maybe eventually martial artist or spirit warrior to supplement the unarmed stuff. I dropped the series after book 2 so idk what else he eventually gets or what you can justify.
Perception table
Fighter with base +1 wis vs moderate
Level 01: +06 vs +07
Level 05: +12 (item +1) vs +12
Level 10: +19 vs +19
Level 15: +26 (item +2) vs +26
Level 20: +33 (item +3) vs +33
So that's on track.
What about vs high AC?
01: 18 vs 16 (half plate)
05: 24 vs 22 (full plate)
10: 29 vs 30
15: 37 vs 37
20: 45 vs 45
Would need adjusting in the earliest levels. Champion is 1 behind extreme.
Saves w/ +1 wis (scaling to +4) and bulwark (static +3) against moderate and low?
01: 07/05/04 vs 07/04 (no bulwark)
05: 12/12/11 vs 12/09
10: 21/18/18 vs 19/16
15: 27/26/25 vs 26/23
20: 34/32/33 vs 33/30
A little uneven in the 10-15 range, the numbers are fine at 09 and 16, but any save on the master track hews pretty close to moderate when the save isn't a primary stat. Key attribute master follows high, non-key attribute legendary is also high, key attribute legendary is actually also mostly high. It gets a couple levels at +1 until 20 where it's 1 behind extreme.
Hp?
01: 020 vs 021-019
05: 078 vs 078-072 (includes tough)
10: 158 vs 179-171
15: 233 vs 279-271
20: 328 vs 379-371
Alright, no salvaging this one.
Strikes vs high?
01: +09 vs +09
05: +16 vs +15
10: +23 vs +23
15: +30 vs +30
20: +38 vs +38
Uneven in places again, but largely hews to high. Non-fighter martial follows low.
How about spell dc from a full caster?
01: 17 vs 17
05: 21 vs 22
10: 29 vs 29
15: 36 vs 36
20: 45 vs 42
Little uneven. Big player spike at the very end with legendary, final attribute boost and apex.
Spell attacks?
01: 07 vs 09
05: 11 vs 14
10: 19 vs 21
15: 26 vs 28
20: 34 vs 34
Yeah, we already knew these weren't meant for players. Neat how things even out at the very end.
Overall pretty consistent. HP aside, I think you could run it as-is at levels 5-18 with only minor issues like spell attacks and martials with non-offense key stats, and nobody would be sad to see those issues go away.
Like I said in the other thread, you can probably just have the different classes use the monster building tables to replace attributes by telling you which tracks on which tables to follow as well as any changes mid progression if necessary.
Sure you'd need to account for a few things, like monster DC having item bonuses PCs aren't allowed to have or giving ever class an extra skill or two to replace extra trained int skills, but it should mostly be minor things. Worst case, you invent an extra table or two to cover things monsters don't care about.
Has the bonus of separating skills from attributes. You could just pick 3-6 for the high track and leave those extra trained skills on the low track while archetypes that boost skills let you move some of those lows to medium or high.
Attributeless is simple enough isn't it? Just make a set of tables like there is for monster building (or just use the same tables) and designate that each class follows whatever track per table. Just skip the attribute modifier table, obviously.
Yeah, I know just grabbing the followup benefit is good, was just wondering if there was other stuff since I'm not super aware of good grapple synergies since it was never worth it before now.
Even just in hellknight, there's also the level 14 feat that gives you a no-save fear 2 on stride to adjacent enemies which is also fantastic.
So with the hellfire dispatch giving us this little beauty:
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(flourish) You attempt to subdue a target with an attack and a follow-up grab. Make a melee Strike. If it hits and deals damage, you can attempt an Athletics check to Grapple the creature you hit. If you're wielding a flail or spiked chain, you can ignore Grapple's requirement that you have a hand free, and if you succeed at the Athletics check, you get a critical success instead. Both attacks count toward your multiple attack penalty, but the penalty doesn't increase until after you've made both of them.
grappling is no longer a joke at level 8+. So, what are some obscure ways to make this check more reliable, any special things that exploit restrained specifically, etc? Aside from just layering slow on top with debilitating shot or something to keep an enemy stuck with 1 action.
If you're that worried about treerazer why not just work with the rest of your party to make sure you're in a position to cheese him with quandry? Snarecrafter archetypes dealing damage and stunning with stunning snares and instant evisceration snares, kineticist archetypes dealing automatic damage with berms, throwing holy water at a familiar to splash him for 21 and negate regen, etc.
For example, triple kineticist archetype plus quandry is average 200ish automatic damage after resistance, (3×6×(9d6-20)) kills him in 3-4 quandries even through some regen, just make sure to position the berms and the party so he can't just fly away after losing an action to break the quandry. It's not glamorous, but it'll get the job done.
Why are you so hung up on your stats? You're going to end on +7 int/cha (max casting with apex), +5 dex (max AC for non-plate), +4 con, +4 wis (base 12, boost at 5, 10, 15). And as a caster you need to blow general and/or archetype feats to access heavy armor which is a total waste unless you're going into champion archetype which needs cha anyway unless you get it through aiuvarin multitalented. Skipping your casting stat only gets you +1 con or wis in the end which is pretty pointless.
Use imperial sorc, make force barrage signature and then pick up all the generically good spells for if you get bored or are forced out of being the force missile guy. I'd say use bard or something but iirc spore war has mental immunity all over the place which weakens the occult list.
Buy and maintain multiple wands of shardstorm instead of trying to buy wands/scrolls of actually good spells.
Then just spend your feats and free archetype slots on generic good stuff. One for all, bard cantrips, etc.
Begin the campaign with a party buff, strong reaction, 1/day print a haste potion for your melee. Your base slots should suffice for force barrage as long as you switch to lower level slots for cleanup or something.
End on master fort, reflex, will and perception. Spend your archetype slots to add more bonus damage to your spells via energy fusion. If you use spirit damage spells, you can proc weakness if any of your allies use shining symbols. As you level you print more haste potions for your martials to use with potion patches.
If you don't care about perception, just replace gunslinger with more casting
A single action no-limit cantrip that uses the skill associated with that tradition's casting to Aid would actually be a great way to close the gap between cha casters that can poach one for all and everyone else.
I don't think shields are all that worthwhile in the first place. They're too much of a burden on action economy until you have quick shield block and paragon guard.
If damage mitigation/sustain is your concern the party can just build the melee to have champion archetype for LoH and the reaction or blessed one for just LoH.
It's a bit like if you came to play PF2 and wanted to play a "mechanics accurate" version fo Ultra Instinct Goku and being disappointed that you couldn't make a hand to hand fighter that absolutely wrecked everything and no one had a chance to beat. That's obviously an extreme example, but I feel it still illustrates the point.
That's more than a little disingenuous. It's not unreasonable to expect that something that was possible in the setting for any given character would continue to be possible. Sure, the method or exact mechanics might change, or take time to be published, but you don't expect things to just stop existing or become impossible if you aren't a demigod.
But yeah, I'll never understand why some people try to shove a given character into a system rather than building a character around the system's mechanics.
Also, 'setting agnostic' will kill 90% of ancestry feats. Without a setting, there's no reason for elven curved blades to be elven, for dwarves to know stonecutting, for gnomes to cast primal innate spells. You'll just be left with purely biological feats.
You don't actually need any justification for those things to be in the feat buckets of certain ancestries and not others. Just like how there's no internal setting justification for why certain feats are in some classes' feat buckets and not others.
