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Finally got to playtest the Guardian with a level 10 (Warpriest, Guardian, Barbarian, Commander) combat against a pair of Stone Giants and a Great Cyclops

For most of the combat, the Guardian was planted in a choke-point between two large rock formations adjacent to the Warpriest, soaking damage and effectively being a wall the enemies had to deal with. This forced the Great Cyclops to burn actions climbing over the rock formation the PCs were hiding behind (as it was Huge and couldn't squeeze through elsewhere) and one of the Stone Giants wasted theirs going around, forcing it into a 1v1 with the Wrestler Barbarian, which ended poorly for it. The Commander hung back and mostly just spammed Set-Up Strike (shortbow) and Strike Hard!. By the time the Great Cyclops got over and engaged the party in melee, both of its Stone Giant lackeys were effectively dead already, resulting in the Warpriest, Guardian and Barbarian ganging up on it while the Commander shouted commands from just outside its range.

My main takeaway for the Guardian is that it felt way better in practice than i thought it would (Quick Intercept resulting in Intercept Strike + Shield Block, meant a potent reduction in damage which felt really cool to pull off). However the big issue is that the Guardian doesn't really have much to do on its own turn (most turns were just Raise a Shield, Strike, Step/Strike again) and these dry turns were very contrasted by the Warpriest the Guardian was adjacent to the whole combat. The Warpriest out-damaged the Guardian for most of the combat (even when the Guardian swapped to 2handing his bastard sword after his shield broke halfway through the combat) and on top of that was throwing out 5th Rank Heals, Blesses, 3rd Rank Fears, Heroisms etc.. It really made the Guardian feel anemic in comparison despite the amount of damage he was soaking.

Taunt came up twice the entire entire combat, both times it was used to debuff an enemy that was already engaged with the Barbarian, which made it feel less like a proper taunt and more like a variation of demoralize. Though it did feel good when the Stone Giant rolled a 1 and got a -3 to its Escape checks (they were unarmed melee strikes, so I'm assuming they were supposed to apply) against the Barbarian's astronomical Athletics DC to escape grapples.

In conclusion, I do think the Guardian solidly has its place in the roster of classes of PF2e and it does feel cool to protect your allies and eat all their damage, allowing them to finish the fight virtually unscathed. However, I feel like the Guardian simply needs more sauce. As is, it's a very reactive playstyle that lacks ways to meaningfully contribute on its own turns. I'd love if it had more mobility options to allow them to protect more than just one ally at a time and maybe more enemy debuffs could help to draw aggro to the Guardian as a consistent annoyance that the enemies actually WANT to get rid of.

EDIT 1: spelling
EDIT 2: Threat Technique, Guardian Armor and Tough to Kill were such non-features that didn't come into play at all that I forgot to even mention them. Oops, lol.

I don't get why some tactics have the Banner trait and others don't.

Yeah same, whether or not any given feat does or does not have the banner trait feels very arbitrary and I can't really spot any pattern to it.

To use an ability that has the banner trait, you must be holding your banner in one hand or wielding a weapon it is attached to.

I'll be honest, I completely missed that Plant Banner shut off everything with the Banner trait, but you're so right. Plant already had the glaring vulnerability of allowing enemies to steal your banner as a single action with no check (since it's an unattended object now), but with this on top I really don't know if the Temp HP and extra aura range is worth it.

There's a level 2 feat for that in the playtest

SHIELDING TAUNT [one-action] FEAT 2

FLOURISH, GUARDIAN
Requirements You are wearing a shield.
By banging loudly on your shield, you get the attention of even the most stubborn of foes. Raise a Shield and then Taunt a creature. Your Taunt gains the auditory trait, and the target takes a –1 circumstance penalty to their save.

It feels like the danger of going down is very real for the Guardian. Makes me wonder why it isn't a 12 HP class when taking damage is its primary purpose.

Why doesn't the Guardian get something decent like DEFENSIVE SWAP instead?

It is kinda baffling that the Commander gets access to a near straight upgrade to one of the Guardian's key features. Definitely an odd choice.

I definitely agree that this feature should be expanded upon. It's probably the easiest avenue for differentiating the Guardian from other classes, which I feel the class could absolutely benefit from.

I do kind of agree that the Guardian could use more sauce to make it stand out more. As is it kinda feels like a Fighter/Champion hybrid class like they used to do in 1e, which has been pointed out already in this thread.

Combat Medic, Deceptive Tactics, Plant Banner, and Rapid Assessment all open up some interesting Archetype combos for Wizard and Witch. They're all L1 or L2 feats (rather than tactics, like the swim and climb switches), so they will be almost immediately available to anyone taking the class archetype.

see now the "Requirements You can prepare at least two tactics." on Combat Medic makes me think that they thought of this and the Commander archetype will only let you prepare one, thus locking those feats to Commander and Commander alone unless a higher level feat in the archetype lets you prepare a second tactic.

Is the banner required to be on hand? Cant you mount it on your armor like the woman image in the playtest page?

More specifically, you are supposed to be a 1-handed martial, like the thaumaturge? Or you are supposed to rely on plant banner to use 2-handed weapons?

Speaking of which, what are the statistics for the banner, object wise? Suppose someone fireball the square with the banner, for example. It's just destroyed?

I agree that we should have something stats-wise for the banner since it's so important to the class functioning. The Thaumaturge's Esoterica trait works the same way, but there it's easier to justify not having specific stats as it represents a menagerie of trinkets and baubles as opposed to a single tangible banner that can be planted or stolen.

A quick question about the reactions given by the various tactics - are these EXTRA reactions, or does a squadmate have to decide to use them vs. whatever reaction(s) they already have?

I'm guessing the latter, but would like confirmation.

Your squadmates need to use their own reactions, yes. Though the 1/round Drilled Reactions class feature lets you give one of your affected squadmates a bonus reaction that can only be used for tactics.

That doesn't mean they cant exemplify a PC build or adventuring concept—far from it! In fact, NPCs like Irabeth are a great way for us to build representation into the game and to explore in-world stories for people that we, as the creators of the adventures you play, can't do. They (or perhaps the gods) are the closes we can get to publishing details about the "main characters" of an adventure.

Out of curiosity, would this mean that if Irabeth shows up again in an Adventure Path for whatever reason, she'd be a Guardian instead of a Paladin? (or a Guardian-like character since NPCs are built differently from PCs)

we shifted this one a little bit earlier in the cycle which means that our text production is a bit ahead of art at the moment.

Ahh, that explains it. Appreciate the quick response!

To expand a bit on Michael's response—we won't "promote" an established NPC to the status of iconic, because an iconic's story is flexible. They're stand-ins for your PCs in the art we publish.

That also makes sense. Got a bit ahead of myself when I was skimming through the doc and vocally shouted "IRABETH???" on the bus since I was so surprised lol. Likewise appreciate the response!

I got really excited thinking that Irabeth was being promoted to Iconic since she's the art used alongside the Guardian rules, but it seems like that's just placeholder art? Previous playtests have included sketches/pencils of their relevant Iconics alongside a blurb that gave some info about them, which is noticeably absent in this playtest doc.

I do love the idea of Exemplar being the simple weapon class that can bring them in line with martial weapons and do cool stuff with them. It really fits the theme of reaching mythical status while coming from simplicity.

I feel this is a bit of a straw man, because so far I'm seeing only one person even remotely looking like they're defending the Animist's current spell slot implementation. The general consensus appears to be that the current stacking of different types of spell slots is cumbersome and could do with a change, but I don't think that automatically means we need to switch to flexible spellcasting, or abandon the hybrid casting model without looking for alternative means of implementing it.

Personally, I find the way Animist currently mixes both prepared and spontaneous slots to be pretty fun and I wouldn't mind it sticking around to release. Plus it's no more complicated than a Wizard taking the Psychic archetype (so long as you have your Apparition entries on-hand, which why wouldn't you?).

Just to reiterate the above: if the Animist had the standard 3 slots per level as a prepared divine caster, but then could have apparition spells override those prepared spell slots and use them for spontaneous casting, you'd genuinely have the best of both worlds.

Isn't this effectively what 1E Cleric had in place of Divine Font? Being able to cast a Cure Wounds in place of your prepared spells using their slots? That could be an interesting way to go about it.

Lanni Talimbi wrote:

And you cannot literally change in and out of Garden of Healing with a single action or a refocus if you didn't attune to Custodian of Groves and Gardens that morning.

You can if you are channeler, which at least as per the playtest rules is the one that you will likely be going to play as I don't see much reason to play sage honestly.

No you can't, Apparition's Whirl only let's you switch which of the Apparitions you attuned to that morning is your primary one (thus letting you use it's vessel spell). If you didn't attune to the Custodian of Groves and Gardens as one of your 2 (or 3/4 at higher levels) during daily prep, then you cannot use Garden of Healing.

I fully expect the Animist archetype to give you access to only a single generic apparition with its own unique (and weaker) vessel spell (think the Swashbuckler archetype's Basic Finisher). There's no way they'll allow martial to get their hands on Embodiment of Battle's vessel spell.

someone on the subreddit has started compiling errors, designer clarifications, etc. in a google doc

I'd also like to point out that the lack of a space to write your MAP applied attack bonuses is a major oversight

A Kineticist can only have one element gathered at a time, leaving the other hand free with nothing special to use it for, and Elemental Weapon is restricted to one-handed weapons only (we'll see if the two-hand trait being usable remains for the final release).

Only a few abilities mention using both hands (Tidal Hands, Hurtling Rockfall, Ferocious Cyclone and Fusion Blast) and half of them are only for flavor. That leaves me with the question: Why?

I feel like Kineticist should have more abilities that allow for the usage of both hands to either increase power (when doubling down on one element) or versatility (when wielding a different element in each hand).

Let me channel lightning with both hands. Let me smash people with a rock maul. Let me go full Todoroki and use ice and fire simultaneously.

As is, the heavy lean to one-handed usage feels like a pointless nerf with no thematic reason behind it.

Closest thing we have to it now is Horrid Ignition, but that's locked to Fire. Wish we had more of the "spend an extra action to add a rider effect to your blast" kind of impulses.

I think it's less no one caring and more spreading out these scenarios over 12 different posts. Probably would've worked better as a single post with a link to a survey or something.

Having your gathered element work similarly to a Swashbuckler's panache where you maintain it for a small bonus or expend it for a big boost of damage that you have to "recharge" as an action would be neat. Though it'd be important to make sure Kineticist doesn't just play like a reskinned Swashbuckler and feels distinct enough. Shouldn't be too hard though considering how wildly different the aesthetics of a Zorro and an Aang type character are.

"Each Strike counts toward your multiple attack penalty, but the penalty doesn’t increase until after you’ve made all the Strikes."

They all have the same chance to hit, they aren't affected by MAP.

Okay I felt like I had an actual decent idea.

So people want elemental defense back, con to matter and gather to not suck. How about this ?

Elemental defense lvl 1 feature:

Your constant exposure to the elemental realms has granted you (un)natural defenses.

Starting at first level you gain the following benefits:

You can choose to use your constitution modifier instead of your dexterity modifier when using light or no armor.

In addition whenever you have an element gathered, you gain the following benefits depending on the element gathered:

Earth:
You gain DR equal to X of Z

Fire:
Enemies that hit you with any melee weapon or attempts a melee action with the strike trait against you take fire damage equal to X of Z

Air: Enemies that attempts to hit you with a ranged spell or attack takes a - X penalty to their attack rolls

Water: you gain fast healing equal to X of Y.

So that's the baseline idea. Con now matters, armor issues are mitigated and gather now adds a cool buff, making it more akin to panache or conflux spells than a sheer reload.

Further feats could improve the numerical values or add additional effects.

Different gates could behave differently. Dedicated could get a higher value, dual could maybe have 2 effects active with a reduced value, and universal have the benefit of choosing between the baselines ?

It feels like a way to solve multiple issues at once, or am I trippin' ?

That actually sounds like a really good solution to me. I'd totally be down for that.

5. I find it odd that you can't attack with your weapon implement if you use it to trace patterns. It's still a weapon after all, and probably your main weapon.

"You can’t make this Strike with the implement you’re using to trace the patterns; for instance, if you’re Striking with a weapon implement, you need to use a free hand or a different implement you’re holding to trace the patterns."

You can use a free hand or another implement to trace the patterns when using a weapon implement.