nonbinarysunset's page

The remaster wording for the Casting Spells section in Player Core made it infinitely easier to play a character who does not/can not communicate verbally, which was an extremely welcome change for me. I could be missing something, but the playtest seems to be pretty clear that etching/tracing and invoking runes - while they produce magical effects - are not the same as casting spells, and so might not have the same easy guidance to point to when trying to make a nonverbal runesmith.

Basically I'm just hoping there's a little bit of specific additional wording or something in the final release that makes it as easy to do this with runesmith as it now is for casters. My current GM is awesome and would definitely let me flavour a character not having to literally speak the sounds that invoke runes (and not have to rely on a voicebox or anything), but it sucks to run into difficulties when someone has a very strict interpretation of flavour as part of mechanics.

The description of what kind of presence the mystic might be in their party is very appealing. As is the importance of their bonded allies to them. And Cloud Storage is a very fun idea for a feat!

This class is so delightfully flavourful and mechanically interesting so far that if it ends up with a connection based on dreams or something similar, I'm gonna have to consider whether my favourite psychic will continue being a psychic!

Doubly so if the mystic ends up with a level 20 feat that is in any way like psychic's Become Thought. There's a lot of fun ways a mystic could do conditional personal reconstruction after death, when they have cool features like bonded creatures and the vitality network to key off of.

"Val wanted to sleep off the mosquitos" is such an excellent line, haha. Its gonna stick in my head for a long while. A simple and casual statement that punches up the impact of "walked face-first into a swarm" in a veeeery fun way. Poor Valeros.

The examplar Iconic really shouldn't be taken as a reference given how many conventions of the lore it breaks. Like you know, PC characters not being destined to be gods or have the power of gods (Mythics are demigods at most).

nothing about nahoa becoming an exemplar contradicts any of the expectations/understanding I had for/of golarion as a setting, so I'm good with not dismissing the work of writers offhand. especially when we've only seen/heard about tiny slices of it, removed from the full context.

and anyway - while he's a perfectly acceptable (and easy-to-point-to) recent example of a nephilim who wasn't born one - the lore was already very clear on this stuff. the "supernatural origins" sidebar on pg. 29 of the APG covers it in detail as applicable to all versatile heritages. and then both the assimar and tiefling heritage entries in the same book explicitly mention being touched by the celestial realms/bearing the mark of the fiendish realms, contrasted against directly descending from the relevant extraplanar beings.

I have a lore question. How can a leshy be a grimspawn?

a significant infusion of daemonic power/magic, most likely? which could come from a variety of sources after their creation, or perhaps even have been involved in the process of creating them somehow (intentionally or otherwise).

this kind of thing comes up quite often in golarion lore, and is the main answer to questions like "how do draconic bloodline sorcerers exist?" and whatnot. the exemplar iconic was not born a nephilim, for example.

I personally think it would also be fun if occasionally leshies just end up inheriting things like that from whoever created them. like an angelkin amurrun druid creates a leshy who unexpectedly has the potential to end up as an angel bloodline sorcerer, or something.

People are already capable of playing any CHA KAS class as like, quiet but still good at exerting their personality/being persuasive and what have you, so I don't see how the stat forces anything. There's no real reason Examplars can't have some optional CHA expression in their chassis and do the same, even with what its thematically inspired by/with their potential narrative arc going on.

Thaumaturges aren't inherently loud. Psychics can easily be reserved daydreamers or calming presences. Oracles can be contemplative hermits. I'm always trying to make characters as nonverbal as possible for my own comfort, so this is something I think about a lot.

Scaling off of CHA means you have some extra incentives if you're also going for decent Deception, Diplomacy, or Intmidation on the Exemplar. If it were to use even non-KAS stats like WIS or CON you'd be getting stronger saves, skills/HP, and spells, which might be a lot. But I'd still prefer entertaining that thought (its more in line with like, Monk) than jumping right to STR or DEX.

This was very enjoyable to watch (especially at 9am in the morning while getting ready for work. Good energy for the rest of the day!). From the sound of things, I think there's a significant amount of fun to be had in playing an Exemplar who is a little less than enthusiastic about their burgeoning heroic reputation. And especially the growing list of epithets.

You got splattered with god juice, or caught in the explosion of a divine relic, or whatever else. But using your randomly obtained supernatural talents to help people doesn't mean you want to be a legend. You could just be doing your best to do right by people in whatever way you can, and you can't help the fact that the stories about you are getting a little wild. Even if they are kinda true.

It gets harder and harder to focus on just helping out your local community when you've got a huge heaping of expectations - and renown you didn't ask for - on your plate. Even more so if folks are going around spreading your tale without your input. There's always more individuals, organizations, and local governments reaching out to you for help. Bigger numbers of people you could be helping as your power grows. And its still fulfilling to be doing right by those in need, but the scale of things is getting a bit beyond what you were aiming for. That's a lot of pressure! And all of it from a completely random divine accident.

If the immortality feat mentioned in the stream is like the similar ones other classes have, in that its optional and not a base class feature at high levels; the Exemplar can still very much be played like any other empowered but fundamentally mortal character. Still several more hours 'til the playtest is out, so maybe I'm wrong on that! But either way, I think the mechanical and thematic elements of this class can be applied in much broader ways than many people are assuming. And there's a whole bunch of different stories that can be told involving them, rather than just straight up real world mythology hero stuff (not that those can be any less interesting than the alternatives).

The Rare tag seems to be here because, in-fiction, Exemplars literally just happened. And in very specific circumstances at that. This method of expressing divine power could end up spreading around Golarion through family lines (or other means) by the time of a theoretical PF3e. It doesn't have to limit characterization, playstyle, or narrative. There's a lot of interesting stuff to work with here!

On a semi-related note: I’m not seeing how the existence of Exemplars either guarantees OR delimits the chances of seeing Mythic play/rules released. This is a class. With some mechanics. I don’t see how that makes a Mythic ruleset more or less likely.

Agreed. And I believe Michael Sayre already confirmed on reddit that the Exemplar is in no way intended to substitute for mythic rules.

Something involving "Wyrd" could be neat, as the old definition of the word denoted someone or something that could manipulate fate. But in general, leaning into the "Weave" theme and making sure that the Precog is well-represented would be cool.

Since SF2e was announced (and Rage of Elements reminded me that they exist), I've been very taken with the idea of having a game where a Comozant Wyrd turns up lashed to the side of of a party's ship, or chilling on a random Multifold G7 Autohauler or something. I dunno if having overlap there would be ideal! Though yeah, when writing that first post I did think that Warpwyrd/Wyrdwarper or something would be an extremely unique experience for the eyes to parse. Very... sharp or pointy (?) combination of letters, lol.

Reading that Witchwarper and Precog are potentially being blended is very interesting! It does seem pretty fitting, and both mechanically and thematically inspiring. Of course I can’t not think about other classes the same way now, even as just a fun thought experiment. A Technomancer + Mechanic that combines the spell cache with exocortex tracking/multitasking, to simulcast a spell while hacking, quick crafting, or piloting? Solarian with a Vanguard-based entropy/vitality option, instead of photons/gravitons (sounds like a page count nightmare lol)?

I’m excited to see where it all leads, and what things change (or don't!) over the coming months. Mystic and Operative are sounding just as intriguing, even this early on. And the Soldier field test was real promising. None of those seem to be so directly mixed with other classes, so I can only imagine what kind of fun bolt of inspiration struck and led to it being considered with two of the non-SF1e Core Rulebook ones.

Also, as much as I loved Witchwarper as a class name in 1st edition; I do wanna echo the folks who wonder if it might be renamed. Though for seemingly different reasons?

I still think it has some extremely fun flavour to it, and I don't think it feels out of place for fantasy sci-fi or anything. But in a setting where a Witch can technically also exist as a pretty different concept, it feels a little less uniquely defining to be the lowercase witch? The increased system compatibility for PF/SF2e compared to 1e means folks might see them both at their table occasionally, or at least more frequently than in 1e. It could be a tiny bit confusing, especially when longer names are more prone to being shortened for convenience. Having strong, individual class identity and terminology feels pretty important, even if the systems are still very much separate?

If the class does end up taking Precog into itself, and if we think about space/time/alternate dimensions and timelines with the flavour from the description of the Witchwarper in SF1e (cloth, tapestry, veils etc). A class that manipulates concepts related to the fabric of reality, or disrupts the weave/existing pattern of things? Weavewarper? Warpweaver? Eh, I dunno. So many good, descriptive terms like “locus” are already part of the PF/SF2e system. It'd also be a real shame to lose the fun alliteration of Witchwarper, haha.

As enjoyable as speculating on this stuff myself is, I’m definitely much more interested in just following along with what the team comes up with over the next few years. Y’all must be practically overflowing with ideas and putting endless amounts of thought into everything as it is. Especially when so much isn’t anywhere near pinned down yet!