kaid's page

I would say it absolutely works. Nothing in the feat or trigger says it doesn't. Breath of Life has limitations, but being a spell it can also be used as long as you have slots, spell gems/chips/scrolls/wands/whatever. Fish From The Fall's Edge lacks limitations but is only once per day and half the range. It's a feat for a single class that does what another effect does but slightly better/different. That seems to be in line with Paizo's 2e design and I'd argue very much on purpose.

Plus...from what I hear, there are many more "everyone dies" instances so, giving them this one win might help offset future disappointment with bad luck just ending things.

That said...

For a game surrounding a trait system, I'm shocked it is utilized so poorly. How simple to have a trait like...True-Death...with something along the lines of... The death of creatures caused by effects with the True-Death trait cannot be prevented by any means.

Funnily enough Disintegrate doesn't even have the normal Death trait and nothing in the spell says that the creature dies...so strictly by RAW it doesn't die when reaching 0HP...the creature is simply blasted to fine powder but otherwise...Dying as normal? Obviously I would never actually play it that way. But with translation issues, non-native speakers, strict rule lawyers, etc I could see where arguments could be made.

We see it happening here with a "you die" effect yet nothing saying it can't be prevented by strict RAW which opens up the argument of RAI.

haha get disintegrated would give new meaning to rub some dirt on it and walk it off as you slowly pull your ash pile back together.

In general, a LOT of the power budget of Alchemist, excluding Bomber, is weighted way too late in the progression.

Chirurgeon, as mentioned, is good after level 13, bad before. Same for mutagenist, who until the double mutagen at 13 has almost 0 subclass features. Toxicologist desperately needs level 8 to have a passable chance to inflict his poisons, and etc.

Yeah alchemists at low levels can do a lot of things OK like bombers can be a party healer or a chir can do a lot of mutagen stuff or bomb because at lower levels the difference between being specced for it or not is not that huge. I think tox is one of the few that really isn't great for others to dabble in.

One thing for chirugeon They have a fair bit of options to help remove/mitigate a variety of conditions even at lower level as an additive . So even though their healers are not as good at those levels directly but they still have a lot of utility for helping with conditions.

Guns are mostly very good for gunslingers. The stats of the guns really leans into gunslingers improved accuracy to allow for some serious crit fishing and slingers have enough built in reload stuff that getting a couple shots in a round is reasonable.

Every time I read gideron authority my brain wants to read it as the gridiron authority. I picture hobgoblins with football gear on but in SPAAAACCEEE.

You could use a buckler as a shield implement. Obvious downsides in reduced AC and hardness though.

Can even attach a shield boss to that though based on the hands entry for shield boss you might need to change grip and “hold” the buckler to use the shield boss - which might also prevent you from raising the buckler. It’s not really clear.

Using the buckler as your implement it would at least gain the bonuses to hardness from the thaum implement and it would still get the auto heal/repair stuff and being able to use it even when broken and still get some benefit to AC means not a ton of downside to blocking with the buckler now and then.

I think technically you could not shoot because of not having enough expend to complete the action but I would as a GM go with option 1. In theory you could aim your cone of fire such that you probably can do it by only having one target in it. Option 1 is just less doinking around trying to line that up.

Hello, I have a question about virtuous tanuki heritage.

Quote:

You can't become incapacitated by conventional alcohol if you don't wish to be.

What means "incapacitated by conventional alcohol" ? No off guard, clumsy, stupefied, unconscious from the stage ?

Thanks for your future answer.

If you look it up in archives of nethys it is spelled out. At different stages you are flat footed at stage 2 clumsy flat footed stupified at stage three clumsy and sickened at stage 4 and so on until you are unconcious. Tanunki can have big fun drinking everybody under the table and be as much or as little effected as they wish.

I do believe that some of the ancestry feats that got dropped for space from the playtest to the new starfinder races probably get added back. Not sure if vlaka would get any more as the galaxy guide ancestries had a more robust number of options.

I am sure they want some favorites from PF2 ancestries but they also going to want a lot of starfinder ones. I kinda suspect we get core race options from PF2 to starfinder them and then new Starfinder ancestries so I suspect probably not kholo or kitsune.

Yeah those rules are a bit odd.

For cold weapons it is generally shooting some fluid or cold ice projectile at a target. It is transmitting the energy once it is in contact with the target. Now if you had some kind of pure cold non physical gun sure maybe that would not work.

Fire weapons have a few issues. For things like plasma guns it should have no impact on them look at the sun plasma works fine in space. For flame thrower weapons if the chemical they are shooting has its own oxidizer those should work fine in space until it burns its fuel out. For lasers it is a beam of light the effect on the target is heat/fire but that is not radiating through space it is from direct interaction with a physical medium of the target.

Electrical kinda depends how the weapon works but with space suites and their insulation and the vacuum arguing that those don't work or work well.

I hope the new system makes boarding/counter boarding more viable/common. That lets people use their actual normal abilities a lot more frequently. In SF1 boarding was mostly mop up efforts after a ship was already basically disabled.

Honestly for a normal laser it probably makes sense for it to not work under water. Now there should be mods you can get that change the frequency on it so it can function underwater.

Also things like sonic weapons shouldn't work in a vacuum.

I suspect we should get a bunch more weapon mods with the tech core.

Holograms might be a subset of SRO. In SF1 it was basically a mini hologram projector drone that created the hardlight hologram body. It would makes sense if they just roll them in as a "lineage" of SRO.

Watching the STF Conline, and apparently Breneris (the otter folk), Dwarves, Elves, Novians (mini suns?), Talphi (A molefolk on Vesk 4), and Orocorans are confirmed for Galactic Ancestries. Poppets are confirmed NOT there.

Greys are explained to be "Not yet, but popular." Which if some of you remember a few old threads about the greys, makes me wonder if they'll be getting an Ikeshti-style thematic makeover. They said they wanted to focus on alien species that are more uniquely Starfinder first, though.

Funny thing about poppets is basically SRO could easily be Poppets of SF2. Your animated transformer robot toy gains a soul and becomes an SRO.

Zoken44 wrote:

I love the idea of a teleporter class. However, I had three different concepts of a teleporter that I tried to jam into one concept (teleport self, teleport others, thinking with Portals)

But if we boil it down to just Portals, that does allow for a much more coherent class. you can even call them "Drifters" since theoretically this would work by shunting things through the Drift, and it has the connotation of someone not staying in one place long.

I would also add in to a thinking with portals build that You can essentially slash with them as a special attack.

What about a spontaneous primal caster, who gains some sort of buff or rider ability from the planet they are on, like a purely primal Sorcerer, but instead of bloodline, it's a shifting ability based on the celestial body they are currently closest too, including a "Void" body if they want to attune to empty space.

Sounds more like an archetype than a full class to me. It'd basically be the geomancer archetype with a sci fi coat of paint. I think that'd be cool but I'm not so sure you'd be able to build an entire class around it.

A few rough ideas I could see taking shape as classes are things like,
*A teleportation-focused class, as previously mentioned.
*A class which creates terrain or otherwise manipulates the battlefield, laying down zones of damage, difficult terrain, zones of healing or buffing and the like. Essentially the turret mechanic, but with even more of a focus on battlefield control.
*A class who pilots a suit of power armor or some other form of smaller-scale mech. This could be one way to go if making more general power armor rules turns out to be too difficult to balance or too wordy; restrict it to a singular class and let them go full warmachine, with different modules they can install into and swap out of their armor based on need. Perhaps acting a bit like a commander's tactics in that you have a few that grow as you level, and...

I think the last one some kind of power armor focused character is probably a good choice for a more tech oriented character. Still I could also see it having bioorganic/necrotech/magic tech options. Some kind of high tech death knight in his necroskeletal armor could be pretty crazy and very starfinder.

Awesome. Good to see the wand get some love. 3d6 reflex at first level is damn good

And basically being guaranteed you should be able to get it off 2+ times in a fight is great. I liked the option before but if you kept rolling bad it feels not great where you get your main damage from it once in a fight just didn't feel very useful. Getting it every other round should make it a very solid choice for a ranged attack.

On the devil advocate side for nanocyte as an archetype, it's possible that it could end up (very roughly) like the cavalier PF2e archetype where you get to choose various nanite "powers" (expanded from the android ancestry feats, maybe). "Doing cool things with nanites" does seem to be a niche that has a broader application than limiting it to a single class (or ancestry).

Also if they eventually do an evolutionist type class you could easily have a more focused nanite related sub class that covers a lot of the feel of the old nanocyte.

Thanks for posting that video. It touches on most of the major conversations on SF2e in the forums lately. (Tech Core, classes, and starship combat)

Now to go research how FTL plays.

I can't recommend FTL enough it is the best 10 bucks I have spent. It is super addictive and very fun game. It can get really hectic as you are dealing with hull breaches/boarders/managing power and systems to keep in the fight.

Yeah although I sort of get it. Now that it is fully PF2 compatible doing some class archetypes may make a lot of sense like I can easily see biohacker becoming an alchemist class archetype.

well... I'm sad, but optimistic. At a Dev Panel recently it was confirmed that the Nanocyte would be brought into SF2e as an Archetype instead of a full class. I had hoped for a full class, but we'll see what the Dev's built of it. It's coming in Tech Core.

A bit sad it won't be a full class but could be a neat archetype to add flavor to a class. A mechanic with a nanocyte archetype could be a pretty fun thing to work with. I assume there will be feats to create nanite armor or weapon and maybe to deploy the nanite swarm cloud.

Guilt of the grave world also has some good examples of how use the cinematic starship combat stuff. It overall seems pretty fun and engaging enough. I do want the tactical combat rules because I like some crunch but there are a lot of space type things where the cinematic mode probably makes more sense so I suspect even once the tactical rules are out people wind up doing hybrid.

It's not just that but the way that I've seen Toxicologist played is a very hot topic. You generally poison every single weapon your Martials use and depending on how you read Toxicologist the poison immunity gets override with acid damage because it is possibly YOUR poison, which is the way I see Tox being used, an amazing first Strike with poisons on every Martial Weapon in the party...Is it cheesy, very...Is it intended, unsure because Paizo has yet to fix this issue.

It just another one of those things where you look back and question the Balance....

That does not seem like it should be a question that tox poisons use their class ability vs poison immunity. It does not matter whose blade it is on the tox made that poison so the effect is their improved capability. A poison has no idea if it is on your weapon or somebody else's weapon.

For that yeah you basically need the others to have enough consumables to get her on her bony feet so that she can heal herself up.

One thing to note in starfinder is a lot of abilities that affect movement have the transversal trait. With that trait you can substitute any movement type you want for the abilities movement. So for things like the solarian stellar rush instead of doing the two actions to stride you could use the two actions to fly.

The main hinderance though is stepping. I sort of recommend taking the feat that lets them have legs initially then they can evolve out of it later as they get more transversal options.

(We don't know when it'll be out, just "later than GenCon" so far. Late 2026 is also possible.)

Yeah I am holding out some hope for it being the fall/winter release. I can see them wanting it to be a gen con release but I am not sure holding onto it that long is going to be viable.

Erm, ackschualualy. Formians originated as a D&D creature.

Though that's probably why the lore is sparce. I have a similar issue where bugbears have very little Golarion lore, and it urks me, because I've been curious to see what it'd be like if they got the goblin/hobgoblin treatment.

I think the lore/art/descriptions are different enough for formians to not be an issue. Basically the word formian would basically mean ant like so pretty generic.

For those who don't want the complexity, they can just save up their free formulas? Not for higher level formulas, of course. But if you don't want to spend the time going through the item lists looking for the next thing because you are happy with the items you are already able to create, then I don't see why that should be forced to happen at that exact time.

Just write an IOU for the level of item formula that you would get and continue playing.

I don't see a GM having any issue with it if their players just want to hold off but they may want you to note the level of those formula so you don't save up to suddenly get a bunch of higher ranked things. Still I see alchemists as wanting their apothacary shop worth of different things. Versatility on the fly with the VV is one of the big strengths of the alchemist. The bigger your library of formula the better you can whip out the right tool for the occasion.

You will wind up with a subset of every day used stuff but it is nice having access to make other stuff as needed in case it becomes necessary.

If you find yourself getting a bit overwhelmed getting those alchemist cards is handy so you can just have the cards for what you know in front of you staring you in the face haha.

Not having access to stabilize is a challenge but there are options for magical healing like soothe and other powers that can heal undead as long as they are not vitality based and it also works with the vitality network mystic power. Given mystics are likely going to be the main healer most people are going to come across that actually makes undead characters a bit easier to work with in starfinder than pathfinder.

griefninja wrote:

Since everyone can be a cyborg, I feel like Evolutionist's cyborg option is a little underwhelming, narratively speaking. Replacing that with the Nanocyte's nanobot swarm feels like a good way of making it a unique step above normal cybernetics.

I saw some of your other posts and realised how new to Starfinder you might be. I'm guessing you have not played SF1e? I'll try to add more context to my last reply.

In Sf1e, you could have 1 augmentation in each body system (Eyes, hands, brain, etc.) There were some ways to have 2 in some body systems. So in SF1e, you could have 12 or more augmentations. In Sf2e, the limit is only 4, although now you can have more than one in the same body system. So I'm hoping that classes like the Biohacker and Evolutionist could get more augmentations slots to get back where SF1e was, and because they fit the themes of the classes.

Nanocyte was its own class in SF1e. It feels very different from someone with a lot of body part cybernetics. After the Precog was merged into the Witchworper in SF2e, people started suggesting that the Nanocyte could merge into the Evolutionist. If that did happen, I don't think that a Nanocyte niche would replace the Mechanized niche. Although I can see how the Nanocyte could fit in the Evolutionist as a niche, my main concern is whether a sub-class has enough page space to do the Nanocyte justice.

Mechanized Evolutionists aren't trying to be a cyborg; being a cyborg is just a side effect of replacing body parts over time with augmentations until they become 100% machine. Being limited to only 4 augmentations doesn't get you there. Although the Evolutionists class uses augmentations, it's more of a side benifit then a main feature of the class. So if the Evolutionists were just about augmentations, it indeed would be underwhelming

A Nanocyte Evolutionist would eventually be nothing but Nanocytes, which could be cool.

If they make evolutionist again in 2e I would nearly guarantee they can go beyond the 4 augment limit. I suspect every few levels they could get another slot in addition to their other abilities. So a normal person could have some cyborg options but an evolutionist going cybernetic is going to be like a full conversion borg.

They are kinda like wizards they start accumulating a lot of options over time. Not only do you get a couple new formula per level you can learn more by purchasing them or reverse engineering them. I think it is pretty expected that over time you are going to have a ton of options. It is a bit daunting but it is one of the strength of alchemist to have formula for random situations that pop up.

I'd wager that the Remastered magus won't be much different from its predecessor, save that starlit span will be nerfed.

I sort of expect the summoners to be pretty similar as well. Main change I expect to see is dragon eidolon is available for all magic types.

I am pretty sure this just applies to debuffs. Various conditions/spell effects especially when it refers to negating the triggering condition. I doubt a basic strike would count but given it is a once per day effect I am not sure it would matter to much if a GM allowed it. It would be kind of a waste to do it on a strike unless that strike would be fatal.

As for observed the action is not concealing you so in theory you could blip the observed status but would be immediately reobserved. Honestly it would almost make logical sense for that to happen even you lose the worm for a second in the mass of sloughed off skin but would be almost immediately picked back up again and reobserved.

I think biohackers could be differentiated enough but they would probably have to be more focused than the SF1 version.

Master of injection weapons and able to use them with good action economy. Use that to apply buffs/debuffs/healing. Kinda like mechanic mod ability but for people/critters instead of equipment.

Biohacks for more long lasting buffs should probably be less potent than a mutagen but without the drawbacks. So just pure long lasting alterations to let your party adapt to various alien worlds.

High medicine capabilty getting most use out of higher tech medical kits/equipment to be a very strong combat medic.

The biggest difference between an evolutionist and a bio hacker is bio hackers give their stuff out to help their team adapt where the evolutionist is purely self driven evolution so they themselves can be the best they can be.

Some thoughts:

Navigation. On the surface you can head north, east, etc.
In the Darklands, there might be a tunnel that starts off going the direction you want. And after several days travel, it might still be going in that direction. Who knows if it ends up where you wanted to go???
In other words, it's a maze, with inclines so gradual that the paths can cross over, and there isn't any hedge to climb over.

I'm not aware of any navigation spells that would actually help?
Casting Know Direction as an exploration activity - I'm not sure it actually helps much? If the tunnel is snaking left & right, there's no way to know if it is going more left than right. And even if tunnel turns the wrong way - you either keep going and hope, or backtrack a lot and hope there's an alternative.

But - is this actually entertaining for players, to engage with this sort of logistical problem?

Navigation I think is one of the top challenges in the darklands. Determining which way you want to go is hard and finding a path that actually goes the way you want to is harder yet. Lots of dead ends/cave ins or things that sure you can get there but um there is a 1k foot tall sheer wall that you have to ascend/descend to continue. If you are closer to the surface a rain storm 20 miles away could suddenly mean the tunnel you are in starts flooding rapidly with very little warning. Even ignoring weird critters/magic cave exploration is super challenging and dangerous all on its own.

So there are still four other missing classes, technically.

Vanguard: the armored and unarmed warrior utilizing entropy itself

Bio-Hacker: inject your enemies, inject your friends, do it all at drugs are cool!

Nanocyte: we are legion... we are the swarm... we are... working out where our cloud is

Evolutionist: a class all about grafting, and transcending what you were born as.

precog was rolled into the witchwarper in this edition.

I really want bio hackers again I loved that class but it almost could be a class archetype of alchemist. It may be a case where the implementation would just be too similar. Then again they did mechanic and it has a lot of similarity to inventors.

I suspect the impossible magic book having 2 new classes + 2 remastered classes was just a bit too much on the plate to also launch tech core at the same time. I hope it is a winter 2026 release still though and it doesn't fall over into 2027.

Crouza wrote:

JiCi wrote:

Tridus wrote:

JiCi wrote:

Tridus wrote:

Leshy are really popular so I'm sure it'll happen at some point. But I don't think the thinking is around when it feels right for the character.

But Leshy show up in so much stuff that its bound to happen.

That is if we get more classes. That's also something to consider.

A Leshy iconic can happen, but it's still weird that we haven't seen one ever since they were promoted to core.

AFAIK there's a playtest coming up, and those are almost always new classes. So I think we can expect a couple more classes.

Hmmm...

- Arcanist? rolled into other classes;
- Brawler? that's an archetype;
- Hunter? there's already the ranger;
- Medium? the animist is close to that;
- Mesmerist? I keep thinking that the entire class should be a Conscious Mind for the Psychic;
- Ninja? not necessary;
- Samurai? that can be an archetype;
- Shaman? that's also the animist;
- Shifter? that's the only class I can think of...
- Skald? that should be a "muse" for the Bard;
- Spiritualist? rolled into the Summoner;

Most of these could be exclusive archetypes, just like how we got the Bloodrager, Slayer and Inquisitor.

The Shifter, using Starfinder's evolutionist as its chassis, with various specializations, such as "plant", could work for a Leshy. It's also the only class I can think of ^^;

Does this not assume 1 to 1 parity with 1e, which they haven't been doing for a while now? Guardian and Commander do not have first party PF 1e class equivalents. Runesmith meanwhile has the Mesmerist gimmick of implanting magic into your allies/yourself, and while the name Necromancer has been around a lot this Necromancer in Pf 2e feels way different than any of the ones from PF 1e.

For all we know they could make like an Entropy Mage of Time and make it a Mushroom Leshy. The classes could very well be wildly different from anything we've seen yet and fit Leshy surprisingly well. Or heck, even

...

A leshy biohacker would be pretty top notch.

Oh I also wanted to say! I think there is still hope for a leshy iconic! While it's not currently in the works, several team members also want one. So maybe if we're loud enough, we can make it happen!

Just have to keep planting the seeds so they can take root in their imagination until it blooms with inspiration.

We'll be getting an Automaton Runesmith and an Iruxi Necromancer (which I now want to see if they can summon giant dinosaur fossils :D ).

We still have no Leshy iconic... despite Paizo's sudden pivot to make them a core ancestry...

Are Leshies still niche? Has their popularity faded out? Are they waiting for a more nature-friendly class to be added?

Well Leshy are wall flowers but eventually one will step out into the sun and bloom into an iconic.

I'm glad it turned out Secrets of Magic was rolled into this book. There was so much speculation about that to the point it was almost assumed by some posters I was worried there'd be a riot if that wasn't the case.

It makes a ton of sense. So much of secrets of magic was directly intertwined with the OGL so any attempts to remaster it were going to be problematic so glad they are able to pull out what they can into a different book.

I think even a normal operative could make some decent use of a sniper rifle although probably not as their primary gun. The range+aim+kickback and maybe backstabber gives you a pretty good amount of alpha strikes well beyond the range of most things ability to respond so you are getting a fair amount of shots before you could potentially be forced to swap to something else.

They are also tech weapons so can get weapon mod upgrades which helps.

It really depends on the adventure if you are doing dungeon crawls/inside ship type fights probably don't bring a long gun. If you are exploring alien worlds in outdoor settings if your GM is willing to let you make full use of starting engagments at sniper range they are are still pretty dang good even for non sniper operatives.

I apologize for the slightly click baity title, I am a big fan of Gabe.

Anyway, just wondering what happened to the Burning Archipelago and the sun in Starfinder 2 I noticed it hasn't been mentioned at all in any book.

Just curious.

I am pretty sure I remember this being talked about a bit in the galaxy guide at least mentioning the aftermath of that adventure path and what was found as it is tying in to the return of the first ones stuff.

Yeah they kinda should at least put 2e for the new stuff just for clarity it is a bit confusing.

For SF2e it sounds like SRO is coming with the tech book this year. Failing that you could easily reflavor the PF2 jistka automata in this way as they are basically just magical construct robots with sentience.

The change to how the wisp and blade soul charges works is pretty much how our table was running it. Seemed unlikely the intent was it just infinitely gained charges over time. So having press gang being a resource gatherer and then wisp being the spender seems reasonable.

The holo flag projected on a ship I think is to enhance their ability as space pirates if you are boarded or you are boarding somebodies ship you being a space pirate is suddenly a lot scarier more existential threat.

Yeah, Shelyn is not focused on technical perfection. Rather it's the action of creation itself that matters. Someone creating art with their heart invested in it is making her happy even if it's technically not very good.

Shelyn is the proud mom who puts up all the pictures her lil kids make on the fridge with love and pride.

Oh, and as long as we are fixing that immunity issue, poison immunity is also waaaay too common, imo. Like, 3x or more than what it should be.

It's very similar to that question of elemental creatures being immune / not immune to precision damage. I get why it might make ~narrative sense to want to grant psn immunity broadly at first glance, but as soon as you take a look at what's actually immune...

Yes, I can see full psn immunity staying for undead and even constructs. That's reasonable enough.
But aberrations? Fiends? Random L4 unique Teifling NPCs? Plants? Even Fey?

Holy hell, poison immunity is thrown on waaaay too many creatures, and it should not be there. Plants are an especially aggravating one, as some writers think plants should be categorically weak to poison, while other say they are categorically immune. Have fun with that.

No, it's not reasonable to represent a little L3 cicada's affinity for psn by granting it full immunity, that's nuts.

If Paizo treated other types like poison, you'd have every fire-throwing creature become outright immune to fire, instead of that immunity being exclusive to the "made of fire" sorts of elemental-adjacent creatures.

Looks like 825 psn immune vs 267 precision immune vs 148 fire immune, btw.

Yes! Heck poison immunity is so common they had to make the alchemist poison spec have a special carve out so they can effect immune targets.

Do we have a definite date for Tech Core yet? It could have been pushed back to make room for the playtest.

The only thing officially announced is the ancestry book. I assume tech core was aimed around gencon time but it could be later if they want more play test time before finalizing it.

Even if Eidolons did not get a full set of skills on their own I think it may make some sense for str ones to get athletics and maybe dex ones getting acrobatics. The eidolons getting one scaling skill I don't think breaks anything and makes sense that the pseudomartial pet is good at the more physical side of things.

Powers128 wrote:

I assume they'll eventually get around to a secrets of magic remaster. Summoner is fairly strong as is. Some of the initial eidolon abilities are pretty boring though. I'd also like to see more stat spreads for the eidolons or even the ability to just choose the stats ourselves. Not sure why it has to be just one of 2 builds.

It is highly unlikely there is going to be a Secrets of Magic Remaster. A chuck of it would have to be replaced. They'll probably be a whole new book covering that content.

I do agree that some more Occult Eidolons, as well as one that are not Phantoms.
Actually, now that Dragons are tied to all four traditions, many the Dragon Eidolon could cover more than just Arcane?
Actually, Summoner could also do with a few more options for Arcane alongside Occult, since Arcane is currently only represented by Dragon and Construct.

And like others have stated before, the issues Summoner has with Mythic are more an issue with Mythic, rather than Summoner.

...I just had a wacky thought, but what if Synergist was a Summoner Class archetype that combined Summoner with Magus?

I have to imagine if/when summoner gets remastered Dragon will be an option for each tradition given how dragons work now.

I agree that the way you are describing Akashic Dragons is how most of them would be like; however, there's no right answer here. An Akashic Dragon will behave very differently if it's a friendly NPC, a neutral NPC, or (very rarely) the Big Boss monster. Also, where they are from could make a big difference; an Akashic Dragon in the Azlanti star empire might be the curator of the department of propaganda's library of disinformation, known to the public as the Library of Truth.

Hellknights trying the contract trick, likely wouldn't write the contract themself but would call upon the highest level lawyers from hell to do so, and would likely be in a contract so long it would take years to read, and other efforts would be made to distract the dragon during the reading of the contract. Here, the people pulling this off would be the Boss monster.

The Akashic Dragon I'd personally like to hang out with is the one in charge of the Library of Galactic Music.

It is all fun and games until the dragon starts blasting retro EDM death polka.