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Thermal Nimbus does damage to you that you can stop with Consume Power to boost yourself. If I understand this sequence correctly, since the higher resistance is the one that takes preference, when at the start of your turn you would take damage by your own Thermal Nimbus, you can use Consume Power, have it take precedence over the resistance Thermal Nimbus has and get the extra damage, right? Or do you need to deactivate the resistance from the stance with Safe Elements for it to work due to something I've missed?

How would you rule the interaction between these two, as both checks using Assurance (and thus the focus spell doing nothing) or as only 1 of the checks using Assurance and the other one being rolled normally? Started thinking about this for reasons completely unrelated to RK, but now I would like to know other people's opinions on this.

Haven't had the chance to try out the former yet, so I'm curious about how it fares in actual play vs Opportune Backstab.

To me it looks like an interesting sidegrade. Higher level, less consistency and more feat investment for all the defensive benefits looks like a fair trade-off.

I think it starts being particularly interesting for certain builds that plan to put more damage in the Rogue's turn and skip Preparation, like FoB or Triggerbrand Salvo rogues. Lets them be more mobile outside of their turn and should make not ending turn adjacent to an enemy barely an inconvenience (maybe even desireable).

If you tried it, did you get the strike off more or less than you expected? Did you feel like the defensive aspects of the feat chain outweights the offensive drawbacks when compared to the alternative? How did you feel about skipping/delaying debilitations or other level 10 feats for it?

I've noticed Mirror Image and Synesthesia thus far, but what other relevant spells from CRB and APG have not appeared in PC1? Do you think we will get some of them in PC2?

I'm ambivalent about Synesthesia not getting reprinted, but Mirror Image will be sorely missed for sure if I end up playing in a remaster-only game.

We don't know yet if the focus spells will be poachable or not with the multiclass dedication, but I'm concerned if that ends up being the case. Some of them, like Garden of Healing or Embodiment of Battle sound a bit too good on other classes. Just wanted to post this as a reminder that we don't get to playtest the dedications and as a request to test these outside the original class if you find the time so we can give feedback for this as well.

I love where Animist is heading, but I'd rather not get another Psychic situation whose dedication is better in a lot of cases than the class as a whole.

While gish animist is looking sweet, this feat is not. Witness of ancient Battles, the would-be premier user of this feat, cannot use it properly most of the time. Similar feats in other casters kits work to varying degrees of success because striking does not lock them out of what they want to do most turns, casting a 2 action spell.

Meanwhile, an Animist wants to use Embodiment of Battle before making any strike, leaving them with no room to activate Apparition's Enhancement outside of the very first turn (unless they want to use a 1 action sloted spell slot, but that is hardly sustainable).

What I would do is make it so Apparition Enhancement can also be applied when sustaining a spell. This would most likely warrant some changes to Grudge Strike (which to be fair, already needs some changes, IMO. With this change it would be a bit too good when you get it but it would still go down in value fast as you level) so Apparition Enhancement is factored in the damage this feat does.

This would make the feat way more interesting for Animists that don't have the Witness of Ancient Battles Apparition. The turns I picture an animist wanting to strike with a weapon are those they need to sustain their focus spell and also do some other 1 action activity like opening a door or drinking a potion. 1d6 is not enough to stop casting and start striking, but it is a good consolation prize.

Mostly what the title says. A lot of what a caster can do resides in what spells they have. We know the divine list is getting quite a few changes after the remaster. Just would like to know some guidelines on the devs part regarding what to do with spells like Divine Decree.

Do you want us to run them as they are now and give feedback accordingly or do you expect us to do something else? Substituting all damage these spells do for force damage maybe?

I just think it would be good having some sort of direction in this regard for the sake of the playtest. The divine list changes look big so I think asking is in order so we can give the best feedback we can.

Next week will mark a month since the Kineticist was released (and almost a month and a half since we had all the info available) and I would like to know other people's opinions on it since I haven't have the chance to play one yet.

What general builds work best in your opinion? Which ones don't work at all? What feats did you find particularly fun to use? What elements do you think work best on their own? Which ones do you think work particularly well together? Are there any must pick feats?

Just looking at the numbers and descriptions, I'd say I'm most interested in trying either Air + Earth, Water + Fire (or just fire) and Earth + Wood + Metal in the future. The class overall looks really interesting and versatile, so I hope it holds its ground vs the existing classes.

Guess I'll try here since it looks like the proper place to ask.

The Steam Knight feat has picked my interest as a cool choice for a future character I plan to play later this year, but it has also risen a few questions.

One of the effects of the feat is that it allows you to leap up to your speed and do some damage when you leap above an enemy and end your movement close to it. My issue is that it is impossible to do this if you start from the ground, at least with how my group has been running the Leap action until now, as moving through an enemy creature space is impossible unless stated.

As I understand it, you have to choose between a vertical Leap and an horizontal Leap, so gaining height and moving more than a square horizontally are not possible with a normal Leap.

Ruling leaps like this makes it so the Steam Knight feat requires 2 actions to go over an enemy and deal damage with your movement, wich I think is TBTBT.

So this made me question if we have been reading the Leap rules wrong in any way. Either that or that the feat is missing something like "You can leap up to your speed in any direction".

So, am I missing something, is the feat missing a few words here and there or is it just a bad option?

I'm trying to put together a document to supplement my class guides. The idea is to talk a bit about the metagame of pathfinder 2E and where the community generally is at after all these years since the release of the game. Part of that document is a personal tier list of the classes.

The criteria I plan to follow is how good a class is at filling the 4th slot of any given party and how good they cover roles for the group. These are the tiers I will use to sort the classes out.

Tier 1: Regardless of party composition, the class will always feel like a good addition to the group, and in a lot of cases, it will be the single, best addition you could have made for it. The class can fill several roles for the party and it is one of the best, if not the best, at a single or several roles.
Tier 2: The class ranges from an adequate addition to being the best addition to the party in some niche cases. The class can adequately cover several roles for the group, but usually not as many or not as well as the Tier 1 classes.
Tier 3: The class is usually a decent addition to any party, but it is overshadowed by higher tiered classes. They offer good role coverage, but they are hardly the best, the most versatile or the most intuitive.
Tier 4: The class is hardly a good addition to a party outside very specific groups. They cover some roles, but there are other classes that do what they do better.
Tier 5: Barely functional or a direct, inferior version of another class, subclass or build. No redeeming qualities.

The roles I've considered for the other classes are:

Damage (both single target and AoE)
Defense (in combat healing, condition removal, damage mitigation and other types of protection. Not counting personal endurance)
Buffing and debuffing
Battlefield manipulation (Disruptive reactions and the ability to create traps, hazards, difficult terrain, walls…)
Utility (Skills and other stuff like out of combat healing, access to spells like Comprehend Languages or abilities like the Thaumaturge Lantern Implement)
Ability to frontline (is the HP, AC and saves enough to be where the monsters are?)
Resilience to disruption (range, action compression, mobility…)

I'm having problems with placing a few classes, so I'd like some help in that regard. Not looking for people to just place them, I'm more interested in the reasoning behind it.

These ones are:

- Gunslinger: I only have experience with Sniper and Triggerbrand, and only at very specific levels. I think the class belongs in tier 3, but I'd like to hear more opinions on the matter.
- Inventor: Never seen the class since the playtest, just heard about it. No idea where to place it.
- Summoner: I have only seen the class at low levels. My general impression is that it is a tier 3 class, but I don't have enough info to know for sure.
- Wizard (familiar, metamagic and staff): I know they are bad based on my experience with the other two types of wizard, I just don't know how bad they are because I haven't seen them in play.

We don't dare to dream here.

Being realistic, most classes besides Witch, Alchemist, Oracle and Champion aren't getting any mayor changes, if they even get changed at all.

Obviously, all aligment-related feats will be changed for all classes (Champion, Cleric, Sorcerer and Oracle have a few of those, I believe), and all divine spellcasters will most likely be buffed due to aligment being changed to a Holy/Unholy kind of deal.

The focus spell change will probably be that all sources that give you a focus spell also give you a focus point and that you can always do another activity while refocusing as long as you are not in an encounter.

I also expect a lot of clean up work regarding confusing writing, ambiguous rules and misleading flavor text.

As for classes with "very minor changes" I expect (besides the proficiency changes we already know about):

- Investigator gets to forgo the INT to hit and the precision damage for a normal attack roll against the target of DaS.

- Either Swashbuckler gets a feature similar to Singular Expertise that slighly boosts damage dealt with finesse weapons or gets the flat damage boost from panache increased. The class gets the current bonus to skill that Panache gives at all times only for checks that would give Panache on a success, doubled when you have Panache.

- Since Staves are getting changed, I can see Staff Wizard getting some changes as well. Impossible to know since they could do a million things with them.

As for the classes we know are getting mayor changes:

- I'd like to say that I believe Alchemist will get martial proficiency, but seeing how reluctant Paizo has been to that in previous errata, I'm not sure. If that ends up being the case, I expect the subclasses to have way more impact in making the current alchemical items stronger via class features rather than feats. I also expect the class to have less room to make items outside their field of expertise. Finally, I also expect some sort of "alchemical cantrips" of sorts at level 1 that are worse than current lvl 1 consumables (like a damaging ranged attack for bombers, d6 fists for mutagenists, a weak poison for Toxicologist and the ability to do medicine stuff at a very short range for Chirurgeon)

- Champion causes will change a lot, but the reactions will be more or less the same. My guess is that they will add to each god what causes are compatible with them instead of the compatible alignments. Tenets of good and evil will disappear with alignment, leaving specific, additional edicts and anathemas based on the champion's cause on top of the deities ones. This may pave the way for more causes, but I wouldn't count on it.

- Oracles will probably get Divine Access as a starting class feature (with the option of making the choice again with what the current feat is) and have all curses slighly balanced between them.

- Witches will most likely get 8 HP per level. Niche cantrips will be slighly changed for the better, the ones that are usable now will stay the same. Familiars will get a comprehensive list of things they are supposedly able to do and witch familiars will get special abilities on top of that. Most feats that are not focus spells will be revamped since most of them are hot garbage.

So what's your take on this?

Like normal errata, basically. It would be a great help for those that rely on current books or AoN and it would make discussion after release much easier. I tremble in fear whenever I think of having to check everything manually on AoN to update my few books with the changes.

I don't know if the team in charge is planning to do so or not, but I really hope they do.

I was tinkering with a fighter build as back-up for one of my current characters and I just gave this weapon a good look for the first time. Now I think it is nuts on Fighter.

First of all, it has prone crit spec. We all know how strong that is. Second, it has the same damage the Glaive has, which already is a really good weapon, specially if you go for Certain Strike at level 10. Finally it has Sweep, making Swipe a really good option with it, making you not only good at single target, but giving you something good to do against multiple enemies.

It can also do Bludgeoning damage, which is the best type of physical damage generally speaking.

I just wanted to bring it a bit to the spotlight because I've seen no one talk about it. I'll for sure give it a try somewhere in the future. Are there other weapons from TV that you think have gone under the radar as well?

It's been a while since this has been discussed, and some new bits have been thrown into the ecuation:

- Knockdown errata: What once readed like "if you strike, you apply the critical success effect of a Trip" was subject to errata in a way to make sure it is clear that you still make a trip in the process, triggering effects like Brutal Bully or The Harder they Fall. Not only the latter gets to apply sneak attack twice when rolling once, but the whole matter also sets a precedent for a similar case being in favor of the ruling.

- Triggerbrand Salvo. It has better Sneak Attack value than Spellstrike + Magical Trickster, while being usable every turn and costing just one action and a reload related action afterwards to reset it (like Triggerbrsnd Salvo + Running Reload), rendering the TGTBT argument a bit pointless. Note that combination weapons don't have exactly bad stats for Rogue Weapons and that you can get proficiency in them with Unconventional Weaponry.

What are your thoughts on this interaction in the year 2023? I personally don't really care about it working or not, I just want this discussed to increase the chance that this gets clarified once and for all once the eventual SoM errata hits.

This spell got released with the Kingmaker Companion guide. Haven't had the opportunity to test it yet in a game, but isn't it a bit too much on paper?

On a success, it is better Slow strictly speaking. Double the range and targets will for the same effect.

On a failure, in exchange for needing sustain, the spell adds permanent frightened 1 as long as you sustain it and every turn it can cause other creature to gain slowed 1 for a turn. I think I would take the trade-off every time.

To put it differently, I don't see the sustain as a sustain, but as the spell giving you single target cast of Dirge of Doom that can cause slowed on top to creatures other than your target. If you see it like that it sounds a bit concerning, isn't it? The immediate effect os stacking slowed + frightened is also big.

The level 5 version effect seems pretty good as well, but it is not as easy to compare to Slow 6 as the non-heightened version is with Slow 3.

I just want to know other people opinion on this. Slow already is one of the strongest spells in the game and this seems like setting the bar even higher than that.

With the release of the last LO book I went to check again the Student of Perfection archetype and noticed this. Same thing probably happens too for the initial fire and iron spells with the fire and earth traits respectively (specially if you consider the new spells), it is just way more obvious in the case of the wind spell since it creates a spell effect with the air trait.

What the title says. The feat is level 8, so you can pick it at level 16 through the dedication. Later the feat specifies that you can get it a second time again at level 14. Does the feat count as a level 8 feat or as a level 14 feat that second time you pick it?

With that I mean an archetype like the undead archetypes from BotD. Gnomes are pretty cool in Pathfinder and the bleaching process is a good part of it. Implementing it mechanically could be a good way to make it easier to implement into games.

As for what it could do and what limitations it should have, I figure it should not be common, probably even Rare, and obviously, should require that you are a Gnome (duh). As for the things it could do, I guess a really high resiliency agains emotion effects, a lot of innate magic and maybe even some amount of resistance to death effects.

This could also be a good way to implement some other ancestry options, like Drows or Centaurs, that would probably would either be problematic or dissapointing if implemented just as regular ancestries. In the case of those 2, maybe a similar approach to how class archetypes work could be good (It applies from level 1 even if you don't get it at level 1).

I know that there was an AMA in reddit yesterday, but sadly I joined the party a little bit late. If someone here also has the book, would you mind answering a few questions I've got?

- What do the Student of Perfection new feats look like? Are they many or just a few?
- What is the new archetype main deal?
- I know there are some rules for the mana wastes. Do they seem easy to use in a different setting other than Golarion?

Thanks in advance.

If I had to say what the biggest flaw in this system is it would be how hard it is to justify using a specific magic weapon over just a regular weapon with some scribbles on it. Finding that one magical item should be a able to be major turning point for a character, sadly it is hard to do that narratively when you know as a player that you will be better off using other weapon later on.

Some magic items in general suffer from this due to fixed DCs, but weapons have it worse in general due to sometimes having fixed DCs as well and having on top the property rune limitation.

I hope Treasure Vault lets us pick that one weapon our characters really feel strong about and keep it relevant until level 20. Expanding property rune slots and having scaling DCs as an optional rule shouldn't be that hard to implement.

If my rogue gets a Gloomblade from a fallen friend or a mortal foe, I want to be able to keep using that weapon without feeling like I'm gimping myself.

What the title says mostly. I was wondering what are people's opinions on these classes now that enough time has passed for players to play them and GMs to GM them.

On my part I've been playing a bit of Psychic and I'm liking the class so far. Having 2 focus spells early on is very strong and Unleash Psyche with Electric Arc feels amazing for when you don't feel like expending resources. No idea how it fares later on but I expect the class to peak around 10th level. After that I think just having more spell slots would be generally better. About the feel of the class, I would say it feels the best of all spellcasters in the early levels IMO. There is something about not having to worry about using your slots for silly stuff early on.

Haven't seen a Thaumaturge yet, but i will next weekend as a friend's PC died recently and they plan to play one. Just from building one and theorycrafting for a bit I think the class is both powerful in its own unique way and easy to slot in most teams. It also seems really fun to play. Hope my impressions stay like this after seeing it in the field.

So what are the general impresions on these classes? I'm really curious to know.

Our playtest play was done at levels 5, 9 and 14. 2 fights for each level. So far we completed the level 5 fights and 1 fight of both of the other levels. In this thread I will write my thoughts on the class after seeing it in play (I also talked with the GM and the other Kineticist and they mostly agreed with my conclusions).

Our party had 5 members. 2 kineticists, 1 dual gate one with water and wind elements (me) and an earth-only kineticist; a STR rogue, a fighter and a Cosmos Oracle. We were also playtesting homebrew ancestries on the Oracle and Fighter, so take that in mind when going over the post.

I don't know the particulars of the other Kineticist's build, but i will also talk about my impressions of the abilities he used (At this level, the earth Blast, Tremor and Restoring Mud mostly).

On my part, my Kineticist had the following stats and feats:

Stats: 14STR 18DEX 19CON 8INT 16WIS 10CHA (Leshy)

Class Feats

Lvl 1: Flexible Blasts
Lvl 1: Aerial Boomerang
Lvl 1: Tidal Hands
Lvl 2: Air Cushion
Lvl 4: Flinging Updraft

For both combats we started with one element gathered at first. I started the first one with Air, the second one with Water. We beat both combats, the first one very easily, the second one with almost a dead fighter.

The scenarios

The first combat took place in 2 parallel ships surrounded by water. A pirate crew was trying to raid ours. The ships were difficult terrain due to the movement for us but not for the pirates, as they were used to this kind of situation. They were all a bunch of low level enemies (There were 7 of them). We focused our strategy around throwing them to the water so they would have a hard time reaching the moving ships. Flinging Updraft felt amazing here, even if it only works on failed saves. Between that and shoves, we pushed 3 enemies far enough that they were left behind. The others were dealt with really soon afterwards. The other Kineticist mostly used melee Blasts (he wanted to provide flanking to the Rogue and the fighter, I think) and Shoves. He used Tremor in the first round, but it didn't felt impactful enough (the low area makes the difficult terrain a mild inconveniece at best, like with Scatter Scree, and the damage was pretty low). During the first 3 rounds I mostly used Flinging Updraft, but i sneaked in an Aerial Boomerang that hit 2 enemies that felt OK (damage was still low-ish, but it didn't felt like a waste of actions). After a 4th round in which i only blasted, I killed the last enemy with a second Boomerang after failing an Air Blast.

The second combat took place in a forest, with some bushes,trees and rocks. There was also a river but we moved away from it really quickly so it was a non-factor during combat. The enemies were 2 Owlbears (we use owlbears as a sort of benchmark at low levels) and a Manticore. First round I used Flinging Updraft to jump from the river over a wall to land closer to the enemies and attack with the Air blast. The 120 ft felt good, but also a bit excesive. The other Kineticist just moved into position and waited. The fighter took the front lines and thus the monsters jumped on him. After they were grouped, I used Aerial Boomerang, hitting the Manticore and 1 Owlbear. I thought about using Flinging Updraft again as the fighter was grabbed by one of the owlbears, but I decided against it since it was also immobilized by the Manticore strikes. On the way back it hit 1 enemy as well. The other Kineticist attacked at range during that second turn and used Restoring Mud to bring back the Fighter that just felt unconscius (some unlucky crits downed him at the beginning of the third round). The healing at range part felt powerful, but the amount healed was ridicule. Iirc he 3rd and 4rth turn he used Blast + Restoring mud again, once on me and once on the Rogue. The last two turns I switched to water and used Tidal Hands twice, with a Water blast thrown in there as well, I was also grabbed, which felt horrible due to the Impulse trait inner workings. In one of those uses, I hit the Oracle with tidal wave. He succeeded in his save, taking the frightening amount of 2 damage after applying the damage reduction it has due to its curse.

Conclusions

So, for my level 5 observations:

Overflow abilities damage is low. Not by a large marging at these levels (you don't feel like you are wasting actions at least), but it is low indeed. Aerial Boomerang felt better than Tidal Hands, which felt better than Tremor. Blast damage is also low, even more so than the save abilities, and only being trained felt completely unnecessary and uncalled for.

Single element makes no sense, they barely get any benefit compared to dual. Same thing applies when comparing Dual and and universal. All of these should get another wave of free feats later on (and maybe a unique action economy enhancer as well at mid levels).

The bad action economy of the class at these levels felt somewhat justified (in a world were it dealt a good amount of damage, that is), but as we soon would confirm, that is not the case the higher the level you go. The healing capabilities are also really low considering you can only use them once per fight, they are barely worth the actions.

Flexible Blast feels mandatory for most builds, so it should be baked into the class. The class also needs Medium Armor proficiency.

Water and Wind being completely physical element choices at this level feels wrong.

The impulse trait is too restrictive for the class. Not only you trigger things like AoO with everything you do, but you also feel misserable when you are grabbed. This needs to go.

Flinging Updraft feels great at these levels. It should work as a sort of benchmark for utility impulses at low levels IMO.

As for my recomendations:

Damaging save impulses need CON to damage at these levels (and way more later on, but I will reach that on another post). Blasts need not only to be better overall (more die damage, better traits),but also add CON to damage as well (Maybe full CON for melee and half CON for ranged).

Kineticist needs Expert at 5 with their blasts.

Some impulses need better effects on top, not only damage. Healing need to heal more (or add more temp health), they are barely worth the actions they cost.

Impulse trait should not have the manipulate train on it.

Add cold/lightning damage to water and Wind, at least on the save effects. Also, everything targetting reflexes is boring and deletes the biggest strength targetting saves has, being able to choose. Add some fort targetting impulses as well.

When we finish the 2 combats we have left I will write a similar post for my level 9 and 14 thoughts (spoiler, they are not particularly positive so far).

Whith that I mean that it should be a trait tagged into certain feats that can be avoided in character creation.

As to what that burn mechanic is, I can picture it as a stacking special Drained condition that affects HP and saves but not the class DC and that lasts for a whole day. These feats, due to their cost, can have a greater effect than usual.

Since damage, action economy, CON as a main stat and true elemental blasts are being thoroughly discussed elsewere, I think there is some room to talk about utility stuff as well. I personally think the combat stuff will end up being OK in the end, but I'm a bit concerned that utility ends up not being discussed enough, and thus not tuned as well as it could, do to the glaring weaknesses that the playtest version has.

So, which utility feats do you think justify their level, action cost and effect? Which ones do you think are overpowered or underpowered and can't compete with direct combat powers? Which ones do you think need to be revised, better explained or maybe reworked a bit? Let's discuss.

I agree with the general sentiment of the class being really low in overall damage and power. I think the biggest contributor to this is the relation between action cost and the power level of said actions. In actuality, all overflow abilities take 1 extra action due to the need of gathering the element. I think the gathering mechanic in isolation is perfect, but its execution and implementation has been a bit sloppy and the overall impact it has on the class has been underestimated (similarly to reload in the Gunslinger playtest). I have a personal idea on how strong I think this feats should be in relation to their cost:

3+1 actions: Should be on par with on level spell slots. They are not limited but as if they were since you need 4 actions to set them up. They should also be slighly stronger than that if their effect is not completely frontloaded on the turn they are used. Buffs like Earth Mantle should never take 3 actions to cast, the worst the action economy is, the worse an effect that does nothing with those actions gets, since the pay-off comes later.

2+1 actions: Comparable to 2 action focus spells, maybe slighy stronger. Out of combat both of these get as many uses as they want and in combat, unless it drags out, you will get 1 to 2 uses for both, but with worse action economy for the Kineticist overflow abilities in exchange of being more reliable than focus spells.

1+1 action: On par with cantrips. Maybe a bit weaker since you can split the action cost.

1+free action/reaction: Comparable to low level spell effects in relation to the level you get the feat.

I will try to organise a playtest session and see for myself if my thoughts on this remain the same.

I think we all agree and understand that master in weapons and legendary in spellcasting goes completely out of the bounds of what a class in PF2E should be able to do.

That said, I don't think there would be any problem in giving Kineticist legendary class DC progression paired with its weapon proficiency. The issue with spells is that they are a giant toolbox and unless their usability is kept in check, they can cause an issue where certain classes are just inferior to others (a caster with caster proficiencies vs a martial with legendary in spell DC and spell slots). There is also the issue of the ever expanding nature of spell list, where they are destined to get more and more tools as the system gets older. Kineticist will never interact directly with those as what can make use of its class DC is accessed through their feats and thus being very limited and controlled.

I think the system can perfectly acomodate a master in weapons/legendary in class DC class and that it wouldn't cause any issues with the current class design.

In order to keep these threads to a minimum and making it easier for the devs, I think it would be a good idea to put all of our fresh opinions in the same place. Let's try to make discussion around here as orderly as possible.

So far there are only 2: KingTreyIII and QuidEst

Can't get my head around this niche interaction. Amped Phase Bolt makes the enemy flat-footed against the attack and the order of actions you do with a spellstrike is Cast a spell -> Make an attack roll -> resolve both. If both are resolved at the same time I see 3 possible scenarios.

It is flatfooted against both attacks (the spell is imbued in the strike and both are resolved at the same time and with the same roll, so they count as the same attack)
It is only flatfooted against the Phase Bolt damage (possibly causing you to hit one but not the other)
It affects neither of them (since you need the result of the strike to get the result of the spell).

Personally, I think RAW it is the second one, but I also think it is the most weird of the 3. Any idea about what is going on here?

Can you use these feats through a multiclass dedication? I remember reading something about "your spell list" part only referring to the spells granted by your dedication, but I can't find it anywhere so I don't know if I am remembering wrong or something.

The text itself seems to indicate it works, so if someone can provide me with anything to know the answer, I would apreciate it.

Witch dedication gives you a familiar. Level 7 onwards you can pick Spell Battery as a master ability for your familiar if you already are a caster. That bonus spell is intended to go to you main spellcasting source, to your witch spell slots or can you choose?

I'm about to play a level 13 Magus with the Witch dedication for a oneshot. I have up to level 4 occult spells and up to level 7 arcane spells, what happens with the spell from spell battery?

I made a Ranger guide, hope it is useful.

I will update it periodically until it is as complete as the Bard guide I made last year. if you spot any mistake or errata let me know.

Seeing that there was no way to add aditional barrels via customization when I learned about the existance of scopes and such was a big surprise. Recently I've been pondering about why this is.

The 2 big uses I see for this are taking the benefit of getting 2 consecutive special reloads (Hide + Sneak for example) and getting 2 shots without reloading when dual wielding.

Most mods that alter how a firearm works offer a trade. What would be needed for this to be more or less balanced?

At first I thought about less damage, but that would make most weapons into copies of the double barreled weapons we have now (most of them would be straight upgrades from the original even).

I thought about less range, increased proficiency required, no ability to up the damage when shooting both barrels, adding a missfire chance when shooting twice in a row or twice per turn... I think a combination of these could end with a balanced weapon in the end.

2 barrel weapons make things more interesting in my opinion and adding more of that to the game could be cool. If Paizo finds a way to insert a mod like this in a way that doesn't break the game I would be a really happy man, probably one planning to play a PC with a double barrel shotgun.

All the Swashbuckler talk made me realize that Incredible Movement and Vivacious Speed are quite different. The first only applies to your land Speed, while the latter applies to all speeds, but only when you have panache (the non panache speed boost calls only for "speed" which is stated to be land speed only). Despite how similar they are in purpose and level scalling, them being this different strikes me as a bit weird.

Most extra movement types sources are based on land speed, so it is not a big difference but, in some cases, like using a battle form spell, this is actually really big.

Do you think this is intentional? Or do you believe that they should be equalized in one way or the other perhaps?

What the title says. MADness is a real problem for some of the classes, both existing, like Swashbuckler, and future, like Thaumaturge. In a very controlled manner, I think that allowing other stats to be used for damage calculations would not only be fine, but would be both flavorful and a good way to make characters less reliant on a 5th stat they will have a very hard time increasing.

While I still think Swashbuckler is one of the most interesting classes we have ever gotten, Every time I try to build a non-Gymnast Swashbuckler (which is imo the least interesting of them all) I get a little bit sad trying to balance everything but INT. Getting to choose between STR and CHA to damage while in panache wouldn't have broken anything and it would make the character building process and playing the early levels much, much better.

In cases like the Thaumaturge, I think getting a conditioned CHA to damage would help a lot too. MADness is a pain to deal with and wanting so many ability scores makes that choosing the remaining ability score, INT in the case of these 2 classes, almost impossible regardless of how you picture your character.

I would like to see the MADness of some classes adressed. I think the boat has sailed for the Swashbuckler, but the Thaumaturge and some other potential classes we might get in the future are still in time of being designed around being a little bit less MAD.

Just posted this on Reddit, need some help with this part of the guide as this playstyle is not talked about that much online and I have never seen it in play.

My questions are:
How do they feel in play in general? Does this playstyle warp the game too much for them to be effective?
How GM dependent do you think they are on a scale from 1 to 10?
How does Snare Hopping feel in play? Do you think it is effective?
How necessary is Powerful Snares?
Do you think it is necessary to invest heavily in stealth to be effective with this playstyle?
Is Quick Snares worth it or are snares something better done before a fight? What about Lightning Snares?

Would also appreciate if you could specify in your replies if you have played with them, seen them in play used by other PCs or if you are just theorycrafting, thanks in advance.

Though it is a neccesary effect, it doesn't feel like a 18th level feat to me. It being integrated into Implement Mastery would make more sense, so you could have a implement on each stage naturally and would liven build options up a lot later on.

A good substitute for it could be a feat chain consisting of a feat that gives you an extra level 1 implement at level 16, followed by a level 18 feat that makes all your implements level 2, followed by a capstone that makes all your Implements level 3.

Now that Valet + Independent on familiars was confirmed to not work due to Valet requiring a command, Manual dexterity + Independent still works, right?

Interact is a manipulate action so with 2 turns you can still grab an item for free. 1 turn for getting the object, second turn for handling it. The item would be stored an you would be a willing ally to your familiar, so there should be no problem.

It is way worse that what many of us assumed valet + independent did but it is still a decent usage of a familiar I think.

I personally find tier disscussion pretty fun. Sadly, in regards to Pathfinder 2E, it is pretty much dead.

This happens because the old way of tier-ing classes just don't work here due to how skills are handled, how spellcasting is and the way pathfinder math works. All classes are between tier 3 and 4 of the old system. The end.

That's why I'm thinking, how should one do a proper tier classification criteria for this system? It is clear to me that problem solving capabilities is still the way to go, just measuring combat prowess would be pointless as roleplaying is far more than that. Should we re-define tiers? Or maybe make separate lists for combat, exploration, social aspects and so on?

The more I play and the more characters I build, the more I realize how different character optimization is between martials and casters.

For the most part character optimization for martial characters is done in character creation. You can do insane things when you start building a martial character, as there are lots of synergies between the different feats and class features you will get as you level up. Choice of weapon or weapons also directly affects how you will use the feats and abilities you have so this step is incredibly rich.

Casters instead have most of its optimization process happening mid play. Managing your different limited resources, turn management for buffs and debuffs, more strict positioning due to emanatins and line or cone AoE ,0 pre-casting, etc. Some martials have to deal with some of these things too, but always to a much lesser degree and most of the time they don't even have to as they can rely on other things.

I'm not saying that one of the other are better, that martials are boring or easy to play or that caster creation is lame. Martials still need to take lots of meaningful decisions mid play and buiilding a caster needs lots of time and thought put into it if you want to squeeze the most out of them. I just want to verbalize my thoughts on this because I find it very interesting.

Of course this is just my opinion, feel free to disagree.

After reading the feat multiple times, I'm not really sure if the Handwraps apply to this.

On the one hand they state that it is the Wisp the one that makes the attack, and the feat specifies its own item bonus, so maybe the intention is that it doesn't.

On the other hand, I don't know if the wisp thing is enough to count the attack as one from a different entity, as it is not its own creature.

In case you think they don't apply by RAW, would you find it too umbalanced to houserule it so they apply?

The more weapons get released, the more painful the lack of martial weapon options the Rogue has gets. There are lots of cool weapons like the Starknife, the Spiked Chain or the Kukri that either are impossible to use with a Rogue or needs a specific ancestry and Ancestry feat combo (I'm ok with Gnome or Goblin weapons to work like this, but they are also gated through rarity and there are other weapons that makes no sense you have no way to use them). In the same way Monks can get more options as more content gets released through new stances and Monastic Weaponry, Rogues could use a level 1 or 2 feat that gives them proficiency with all Finesse martial weapons.

For me this is the only stain in a otherwise outstanding class, so I hope we get something similar in the future.

I put this incorrectly on the General Discussion subforum, so now I'm putting this here.

Here is the link.

I made a guide. Check it out!

A week ago I made a post to talk about my players experience playing the new classes and my experience DMing them.

This weekend we tried doing the same but jumping to level 10. Just a reminder that this were pure combat games, you will not find nothing here about out of combat utility and such. First, here you have some info:

- Most things from the first try stayed the same for this one like lowering unstable check, allowing Specialty Crafting with Overdrive or the exact rules we used.

- All players got a +2 striking weapon with a property rune of their choice (all of them picked one of the level 8 damage runes, the sniper gunslinger showed interest in Grievous but as there are no rules for the firearm group he went with Flaming instead), a +1 Resilient armor, any magic item that gives +1 item bonus to a skill they use in combat, and in the case of the Sniper, some low level fire bombs (He told me he wanted just fire bombs for some reason). I also offered them to pick any cheap magic item they thought would help them but all of them told me they were fine as they were.

- We just had time to do 2 combats, the first on against one single boss slighly under severe difficulty(I messed up a little bit with the monster choice, will explain later( and a severe encounter against a bunch of level 8 creatures (4 marsh giants and 4 stone giants). As their party is very umbalanced, this encounters are supposed to be more difficult than normal, take that in mind.

- The layouts I used were a closed square with lots of 10ftx10ft columns for the boss fight and an empty map for the mob fight.

- I made a slighly mistake with the solo boss. I used a Clockwork Assassin as I could look into 3 things at once, how do these classes fare against high AC, how do they work with phisical resistance and how they work when concealment is in play. Sadly I forgot one crucial thing. This creature had a crippling weakness to electricity. All 3 inventors had megavolt (not much of an issue as the creature has insane reflexes, ended up rolling nat 1 on one and failing one save) and the armor inventor had the level 10 feat that does electricity damage when hit. To compensate I went all in in trying to down as many of them as posible instead of playing a low intelligence creature like a low intelligence creature. In the end it was decent enough I think.

- Pistolero's Challenge doesn't specify which DC should be used. We went with will for this test.

Before talking about their impressions I will describe how the fights went:

- The first one was weird. They figured out instantly that the creature had weakness to electric damage. Armor inventor stayed in front and they played around corners to make themselves difficult to hit except for the armored dude in the middle of the room. First the creature tried to down the armor Inventor ASAP as it was also the only one with electric damage on their strikes, the creature managed to get the armor inventor to 1 HP after he used Orc Ferocity but soon the creature HP was so low that that strategy stopped being an option. The creature then switched targets to the nearest target, managing to down the pistolero. Sadly it was to late to do anything more as they exploited that the creature had to effectively run from the 1 hp inventor.

- The second fight was extremely simple. Is giant in range? If true, smack, If not throw rock. I wanted to see how they did in a difficult fight against low AC creatures, and it ended up being kind of weird. gunslingers crit sometimes and took a good chunk of health but they were severely outperformed by Inventor's Megavolt spam. One of the inventors ended up using 3 succesful megavolts in the fight, one free, one against flat DC11 and the last against flat DC17. Pistolero ended up fighting half of the fight from the ground because she got there with hit the dirt + return fire and just didn't want to get up. They ended up winning the fight with no KOs.

Now for the impressions:

- Armor Inventor liked more the class, said he had more things to do compared with level 3 (pretty obvious but true and valuable feedback nonetheless). He realized that the first fight was not how things are supposed to work but he told me he felt the class was decent.

- Weapon Inventor also liked the class at level 10. He tried megaton strike in the first combat and it ended up being useful against a monster with phisical resistance. Again nothing special, it feels like the most vanilla of the 3.

- Pet inventor felt the pet became just bad at level 10. I agree, the pet didn't manage to hit once the boss, even when flanking, and most of the class features of the construct inventor that give damage work through the pet. I agree with him that this needs work the most out of all 3 Inventors. A class feature shouldn't feel worse than the animal companion chain feat and construct requiring feats to proggress to end up being worse than Ranger's feels very bad.

- Sniper gunslinger felt he did nothing in both fights. He dropped the arquebus (a wise choice IMO) and took a musket. He had deflecting shot and he liked it. He did pitiful damage in both fights and he hit most of his shots. He didn't use vital shot once because even if he had the opportunity to use it in the second combat, he felt he couldn't afford to do it if he wanted to contribute to the fight.

- Pistolero gunslinger liked a little bit more the class at level 10, but still doesn't enjoy it overall. She seemed to love the Hit the Dirt + Return Fire Combo and also used redirecting shot twice. She had lots of opportunities to use Pistolero's level 9 reaction but she felt that hit the dirt was just better in every situation she was put in (Giants never critically failed a melee hit against her so I understand).

And to end it all, my personal opinions:

INVENTOR

Out of the two, I think Inventor is by a long margin the one that needs the least work. Even so, I still think that it needs some help to compete with the existing martials. Trying out level 3 and 10 ended up being a good idea as in this levels the inventor is lagging 1 behind in accuracy compared to other nonfighter martials and that -1 ended up mattering a lot in these games. I believe a +1 to hit on Overdrive critical success would be awesome (can be a enhancement to the current item bonus so it doesn't mess with weapon traits and spell buffs).

Moreover, overdrive damage scales poorly with levels. +2/4 damage at level 1 is great. +2/5 at 10 is meh. +3/6 at 20 is completely ignorable. Inventors have no action economy enhancers so its damage boost should scale a little bit more.

In adittion, all of us agreed that loosing your actions when risking for an unstable action feels terrible. Also, and this is a personal opinion, I don't think a explosion unstablity should work the same as a megavolt unstability in case of them ending up doing some damage back to the user.

Megavolt damage. Wow.

Also, I don't like at all that you can't switch your weapon innovation to a composite bow. The fact that an armor innovation Inventor can do more damage than a weapon innovation Inventor bothers me. Making then start with a level 0 weapon for free and then allowing them to switch to another one they got or bought would be far better.

And to end with Inventor, we have yet another case of Apex Item-itis. For a class as reliant on unstable actions as the current Inventor is, having to sacrifice another +1 to hit to keep your Class DC decent is bad. Having to take this choice is bad.

GUNSLINGER

And then we have gunslinger. This class is a mess.

First we are going to talk about firearms. They are bad. Period. Reload is a huge setback and when you compare them to other ranged weapons outside of slings and crossbows (which are terrible options right now that no one should use for comparison reasons) they just can't compete. And not only they can't compete, they aren't fun to use. Reload is not fun.

Which takes me to my second complaint. Why reload is not fun? At least it should be fun when playing the gunslinger as they don't have the option to just chose another ranged weapon (well, they could, but then what's the point of playing gunslinger?) Why a gunslinger can't use an action economy enhancer like Risky Reload with a special attack like Shooter's Aim. And specially, why has the gunslinger even have to pick feats like Risky reload or Running reload when they just level the playing field a little bit with other ranged weapons?

Also, guns with other classes are just unusable. Guns should be decent, comparable to other ranged weapons most of the time and above average in the hands of a gunslinger in the same way a bow gets better in the hands of a ranger than in the hands of a rogue.

Current ranged weapons aren't even that great (they do less damage on a hit than melee, which is fair, but also they have to deal a lot more with cover, lesser cover specially so they hit less often than melee weapons). They aren't bad but they also are not incredible. All good ranged builds are good either because of a damage boosting/action economy enhancer class feature like ranger or because they have good support capabilities like fighter. Gunslinger has no damage boosting class features (You could say Firearm Ace but in the long run its damage is too low), has to deal with reload, and its support capabilities are somewhat comparable (still worse IMO) with what an archer fighter offers but doing less damge in the process. They have to expend all their low level feats to just be in a similar spot a level 1 character of other class would be if it decides to use a ranged weapon.

Some feat choices for a gunslinger are not choices. You just cannot forgo running reload, and specially you cannot forgo firearm ace at level 1. You either pick them, or your class sucks. That's not good design.

Now something good, Gunslinger reactions are awesome. The fact that they are better because they only work when you have a loaded weapon is gold. Special mention to return fire. It is the most cinematic feat I've seen in play ever.

Pistolero's Retort is cool, but should be a lower level feat, not a class feature. Specially not a level 9 feature. I haven't seen a Drifter in play but I feel the same about their level 9 class feature.

Sniper features being locked mostly behind stealth is awful IMO. I like being able to build a stealthy sniper, but stealth being mandatory to play a gunslinger with a rifle goes nowhere.

Give gunslingers some ways to interact with cover. If posible something that is not cover fire, that feat is awful. Something like negate cover penalty if with a step you would have a cleaner shot and shoot.

Way of the pistolero should be splitted in two, a proper 2 weapon Way and a 1 handed Way. They need diferent things to work, merging them makes no sense.

Also Way of the shotgun. Pretty please.

Give some action economy enhancers at level 1. Make each initial deed give a diferent way to improve reloads instead of what they give right now. The initial Deeds we have right now are pretty meh.

FIREARMS

Here is just some talk in specific about firearms, nothing related to classes.

All martial firearms need some serious help. I find simple ones to be almost okay.

Something to take into account when balancing reload weapons is that they benefit less from things that apply on hit like weapon specialization or property runes like flaming. That ends up making their damage harder to improve as you level up. Hope Paizo is aware of this.

Arquebus needs a lots of things to be an actual weapon. First, more damage, then bipods and finally sniper not depending on flat-footed to work (more damage would be good too, something like half dex wouldn't be bad). In the forums I posted some days ago about merging sniper and unsteady and give the extra damage when not receiving a penalty from the trait. I still abide by that. Also allow to negate the penalty by dropping prone, would be pretty cool.

Now I mentioned the bipod, I came up with this: Bipod, takes 1 action to set up, is attached to the arquebus, negates unsteady. You can retract the bipod with another action. Moving with the bipod extended imposes a huge speed penalty.

IMO Most firearms should be able to be shot from the ground with no penalty to the attack roll.

When buffing scatter weapons, I think it would be wiser to improve scatter rather than giving the blunderbuss a higher damage dice. Instead of 1d10 + current scatter I think it would be more interesting 1d8 + double damage scatter. Average damage on the main target would be the same but damage on secondary targets would be higher. Besides, the weapon would be "worse" at long range with the second iteration, which makes more sense.

And that's it. I'm sorry if the second half is disorganized but it is pretty late where I live and this took a long time to write.

My group and I decided to split our playtesting in 2, a series of combat encounters at level 3 and another one at level 10. So far we completed the level 3 part, and tonight we are going to continue with level 10 characters. First, some info.

Another player joined us in the last moment, so it was a 5 PC party. A sword and shield Armor Inventor, a Pet Inventor using a dueling pistol, a Weapon Inventor using a shortbow, an arquebus/musket Sniper gunslinger and a Pistolero gunslinger with a dueling pistol.

All encounters were between average and severe dificculty (the bossfight was halfway between severe and extreme). I think there is testing to be done with easy and extreme encounters too, but after 4 fights in a row we decided we had enough of level 3 gunslinger and inventor.

The encounters in question were: 2 encounters against on level enemies, a low level horde of enemies and a High AC bossfight with a sidekick/meatshield.

They had to choose an exploration activity before rolling initiative.

For the map layout I went with water pools, high grass (concealment), buildings and fences (half cover). Didn't include darkness because it would feel more of a ancestry test than a class test.

After the first fight we decided to lower unstable DC to 11, as 17 just felt too bad. Players seemed to like the change. Also as we didn't know if specialty crafting could apply or not for overdrive, in the end I decided to allow it.

All players had a +1 weapon as its only magic item. No consumables either. Every fight they regained all resources and had a single shared hero point.

Taking that into consideration lets share my player's opinions.

Armor Inventor felt good. The class worked as intended mostly, and in the boss foght he gambled for a second Searing Restoration that ended winning them the fight. He and the construct were the only frontlaners in the party, so he would have gone down the most were not for Orc Ferocity. His only caveat were level 1 inventor feats. He neither the other inventors used both rocket jump or tamper that are supposed to be level 1 combat feats.

Weapon Inventor felt good too. Overdrive with ranged weapons dealt a lot of damage. Nothing special here.

Pet Inventor liked the pet a lot, but guns + inventor felt bad as hell. He had 2 actions to work with every turn as he had to command the construct, so moving into range and shooting felt clunky. He told me that he would rather use a rapier for the level 10 testing, and I'm sure his character will be far more effective.

Sniper gunslinger managed to do almost 40 points of damage in one shot with the arquebus in the first fight, and even so, he asked me to change his +1 rune from the arquebus to the musket for the rest of the game so yeah, arquebuses feel very bad (he made more attacks and did the same damage in 3 turns against a high AC boss with the musket than what he did in 5 with the arquebus). He had lots of fun playing with a fence in the boss encounter, jumping above it to gain cover, hiding and shooting from safety. He had both firearm ace and Risky reload and with that he managed to stay almost on par with the ranged inventor. He didn't like something that I will explain later.

The Pistolero Gunslinger didn't like the experience. She picked pistol twirl, and as good as the feat would be for a bow user, firearms don't have the action economy to support it. She did the least amount of damage (she rolled slighly below average, but she is aware of that) and most of the time her turns consisted in move, reload, strike due to dueling pistol low range. She and the other gunslinger seemed to agree that anything that is not Firearm Ace + Risky reload will feel bad at low levels and honestly I kind of agree with them.

I noted the amount of damage all of them did and such but honestly, I think how the classes feel is the better feedback we can give to Paizo right now. For the most part they have done a great job at balancing classes and adjusting numbers belongs to the realm of the internal playtest anyway.

What the title says. Something like an arbalest, like simple crossbows but with deadly and more range or something. Just give crossbows some love.

My group and I intend to give the new classes a try next week. We will try them at level 3 and at some medium level yet to be decided. We intend to just do some test battles (just rolling dice and hitting things) to be able to send some feedback, and I want to ask what you think we should test.

I thought of testing a horde of low level enemies, a few on level group of enemies and a boss battle for both level 3 and higher. Are there some interesting situations worth testing out? Like specific creatures or terrain layouts.

Also I would like to know what level would be best to test between level 5 and 10 (don't want to go higher because I don't want to overwhelm them with too many things).

And finally, we haven't decided what would be best, to go one full Gunslinger party first and later another full Inventor party or to make a mixed one (they are a group of 4).

Any help you can provide will be much appreciated.