Wild, untamed lands hold a wealth of mystery and danger, providing the perfect backdrop for heroic adventure. Whether adventurers are climbing mountains in search of a dragon's lair, carving their way through the jungle, or seeking a long-lost holy city covered by desert sands, Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness gives them the tools to survive the wilds. A new 20-level base class, the shifter, puts animalistic powers into the hands—or claws—of player characters and villains alike, with new class features derived from animalistic attributes. Overviews of druidic sects and rituals, as well as new archetypes, character options, spells, and more, round out the latest contribution to the Pathfinder RPG rules!
Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness is an invaluable hardcover companion to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an open playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into a new era.
Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness includes:
The shifter, a new character class that harnesses untamed forces to change shape and bring a heightened level of savagery to the battlefield!
Archetypes for alchemists, barbarians, bards, druids, hunters, investigators, kineticists, paladins, rangers, rogues, slayers, witches, and more!
Feats and magic items for characters of all sorts granting mastery over the perils of nature and enabling them to harvest natural power by cultivating magical plants.
Dozens of spells to channel, protect, or thwart the powers of natural environs.
New and expanded rules to push your animal companions, familiars, and mounts to wild new heights.
A section on the First World with advice, spells, and other features to integrate the fey realm into your campaign.
Systems for exploring new lands and challenging characters with natural hazards and strange terrain both mundane and feytouched.
... and much, much more!
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-986-8
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
So I dished out 10 dollars to purchase the PDF and was wholeheartedly dissapointed. Expressing this disspointment is no longer tolerated on the prduct discussion so go figure...
This is coming from a player perspective, as I'm mainly interested in character options. There are many in this book but most fail to bring concept and mechanics thoroughly in line.
The shifter. Well we are no longer allowed to talk about it. Need I say more?
Archetypes. A few nice ones (standouts for me are the green knight and the Rogue that gets hexes) a few horrible ones (Nature magus, Menhir guardian), and a great number of boring and mechanically weak options.
Animal companions/Familiars. Many reprints, some unneeded nerfs and some new options a few of which are actually useful.
Feats: I count two good feats. One of which apparently was not printed as intended and will get nerfed. Most other feats are either barred away behind a list of prerequisites that even human fighters find dismaying or are borderline useless. Example: a feat that allows you to immitate animals with bluff but only those living in one terrain. Why?
Let me expand upon why I believe this is the worst hardcover we have seen. To date all hardcovers were able to bring something new to the game and to explore interesting concepts. The ACG despite all it's faults brought well balanced and fun classes. Ultimate Intrigue, despite not being my cup of tea, greatly expanded on class design by bringing the completly modular vigilante to the table.
Ultimate wilderness is merely a boring rehash with so few highlights that most 30 page player companions outshine it. Many of the options printed in this book make it apparent that they were not playtested or critically reviewed by someone with a good grasp of the game mechanics.
I hope that Paizo comes round to realize that listening to it's customers was always one of the foundations of pathfinder's success.
In general, this book is good. It has decent amounts of fluff (though I wish there were a bit more), and plenty of crunch. I think there are a few options I will definitely use in the future and a few aspects that got the gears turning in my head. I'll break this down into smaller reviews on each chapter, so enjoy.
Chapter 1: The Gathlain are a small flying fairy-like race. They get some decent options, some good spell-like abilities, and plenty of languages. But, as will be a common theme with this book, it was poorly edited, and the Racial Traits box does not list what creature type they are. The adjective "fey" is used in their fluff, but it's better to keep it plain and simple. Ghorans are a reprint but with more fluff than before, and a few new alternate racial traits. Their "Spelleater" racial trait is super powerful, with Dispel Magic once per day as a Spell-like ability. The Vine Leshys are a new race, near as I can tell, and have some interesting backstory. They have some fun looking alternate racial traits and archetypes.
The Shifter looks like a fun, full-bab, good fortitude and reflex, d10 hit-die class. It gets some cookie-cutter abilities from other classes, like Track, Unarmored Defense (called Defensive Instinct), Scaling Claw Damage, Woodland Stride, and Wild Empathy. The Shifter Aspects and Wild-Shape interactions look interesting, but limiting in versatility. They get a few specific animal forms to turn into (though they somehow skipped over the lion), and for the most part, they look interesting (on a personal note, the Stag is lacking, and gets a size buff without a Strength buff). The bull, bear, and tiger get their respective enhancements to ability scores, and the major forms scale with level. I can't wait to play a Vanara Monkey-Shifter. It only has one ability that scales off of Wisdom. I want to say that Paizo took lessons from the video game industry though, because you can take a feat that add Wisdom-modifier-scaling instead of just giving it from the start. More on the feats later though. A small note to add is that like druids, the Shifters are required to be any of the five neutrals. Lastly, Shifters are one of two martial full-bab classes to get no bonus feats, the other being the Paladin.
Overall, I'd say the book is off to a decent start, with a few minor editing issues.
Chapter 2: The Archetypes look good overall. There are some cool looking Barbarian options, including the Spring Rage rage-power, which allows an older character rage with the vigor of their younger years. On the other hand, the fact that an archetype was made specifically for functioning in swamps is kinda disappointing.
The Thundercaller bard archetype looks really fun, basically an "I PLAY LOUD AND THUNDEROUSLY" archetype. The Feral Striker brawler is an interesting take on the brawler that can use Feral Aspects from the Shifter instead of combat feats from martial flexibility. It adds a nature themed versatility pack to an already great chassis. The Green Knight Cavalier archetype is built off of the Order of the Green, and is an interesting improvement on the Cavalier kit. The Saurian Champion is a dinosaur riding knight that I can't wait to play, and it looks strong.
Interesting goof by Paizo, but the pdf has links to each class subsection that has archetypes in this chapter, except, for some reason, the Fighter archetype. It's mistakes like this that bring down the value of this book for me, because it shows that they didn't take care in editing the book, which shows they didn't care enough about the customers in general. Speaking of mistakes,the Hunter archetype "Treestrider" gets a new take on the Animal Companion ability. It turns out that "as a free action, a treestrider must select an ape as her animal companion." I didn't know that you needed an action for that, but such is life.
Aside from that little typo, the Hunter archetypes are all well made. The Kineticist gets an expansion on its Wood Element. The rest of the classes look like their archetypes range from way-too-niche to pretty dang amazing. I like the variety, and I'm sure Paizo does too, they seem to have a real "take the good with the bad" attitude toward their game.
This brings me to a subsection of the Shifter archetypes. Starting from the top is a strong archetype called the Elementalist Shifter which is well built but less animalistic. The Fiendflesh must be evil, so don't expect this to be at your table unless you've got an evil campaign. They take on the aspects of three types of fiends; the Daemon, Demon, and Devil. One gripe I have with the wording of this archetype is that the capstone you get at level 20 says "she also gains... spell resistance equal to 15 + her Shifter level", but given that this is a level 20 ability and Pathfinder hasn't branched out to epic levels, it's kinda pointless to use that wording instead of just "spell resistance of 35". But that's a really minor thing.
The Oozemorph is unique, but also has the weird inability to talk for most of the day due to being unable to maintain its humanoid form for more than an hour a day at level 1. It lifts the "Morphic Weapons" ability from the old 3.5 Warshaper PrC, with changes to how many natural attacks it can make, and it changed the name to "Weaponry". Looks like an intriguing archetype to play.
The Rageshaper is a wreck though. A poorly designed Barbarian-Shifter that can become a Gargantuan creature at level 20. It gets Rage That Grows at level 1, but only for 1 round a day. It takes a full-round action to start the rage, provokes attacks of opportunity, and gets minimal benefits from growing to Large. I'm sure it was a good idea when it came to the table originally, but it was watered down into a pile of garbage. It gives up every ability from the Shifter and only keeps the Track and Wild Empathy abilities, and if you wanted that, you could just go Ranger. And to make the horrible archetype worse, it trades away the decent "Defensive Instinct" ability for a pathetic, static, un-scaling +2 Natural Armor and DR 2/- (at all levels, even 20). What makes it worse is that this applies in the Rage only. Overall, it's a bad archetype that never deserved to leave the cutting room floor.
The Verdant Shifter is a cool archetype, I don't really have anything to say about it. The Weretouched gets only one animal to turn into instead of the four that the normal Shifter gets, but they get the Hybrid and Animal forms, so it's still not the worst trade-off.
The rest of the classes that get archetypes are all reasonable except for a couple exceptions. The Avalancher Slayer archetype is basically "I fall on people, and they die." It's kinda like the runt of the litter that tries to be a Slayer but falls flat on its face. The other exception is the Feral Champion Warpriest archetype. It gets better Claws than the Shifter does by scaling like Sacred Weapon does instead of the meager Claws scaling. They also get animal-only Wild Shape with an effective druid level equal to the Warpriest level minus three. Bummer they only get one blessing and even then its only the Animal one, but it's a sacrifice I'll make gladly.
Chapter 3 is the Feats chapter, and it's a doozy. Clinging Climber is cool. It basically allows any character with enough strength to access the Tree Hanger feat that is a Vanara exclusive. I guess that's alright though, since the latter gives a couple goodies the former feat does not. Command Animals gives Charm Monster to a cleric as early as level 1. The Eagle-Eyed feat really helps the Aerokineticist with their 960 foot range attacks. Exotic Heritage is a feat that allows you to take a mutated bloodline and functions as Skill Focus for Eldritch Heritage. Really cool so far as feats go.
Extended Animal Focus and Extended Aspects allow you to add your Wisdom bonus to the number of minutes per day you can use Animal Focus and Aspects (for minor form). It's a shame though, that what should have been a part of the base Shifter class is locked behind a feat tax. Way to go Pathfinder, as I said earlier, you took a lesson from the video game industry, and it was one of the worst ones you could take. This alone shifted my score for this book one star down. I pray you don't do this any more than this Paizo.
Flinging Charge looks like a fun feat. If you have a Blinkback Belt and a Spear, you can throw the spear at the start of the charge, then draw it during the charge, then attack with the spear at the end of the charge as a melee attack. Bummer you can't use Pounce and this feat, but I guess it'd be a fun feat to use in a game. They also buffed the Spring Attack feat line by giving an Improved and Greater form. It's basically just Bounding Assault and Rapid Blitz from 3.5, but renamed more intelligently.
The Greater and Improved Hunter's Bond feat allows you to play a Ranger with the Teamwork Hunter's Bond more efficiently, albeit at a feat cost. Moontouched is a feat that makes your saving throws better at night (except for Will). Mutated Shape gives you an additional natural attack appendage when Wild Shaping, like the Morphic Weapons ability from 3.5's Warshaper. Shifter's Edge is especially strong so far as feats go. It builds off of Weapon Finesse for a Shifter's Claws, but instead of merely granting Dexterity to Damage, it gives a much better "Shifter level to damage" effect, which is probably stronger after level 6 than just straight Dex-to-Damage. There are other interesting feats, but I think I've gone on enough. There are some pathetic feats in addition to great feats. Overall, I like this chapter.
Chapter 4 is interesting and gives tools for a GM to create a better overland area, which at least in my games is a dwindling art. Looking through my dad's old AD&D notes and conversations online, it used to be that wilderness travel was common. I don't GM much, but looking through it, most of the wilderness stuff is at least partially realistic. Having forded chest deep rivers though, I feel like it's not really a Strength Check, it's more of an Acrobatics check. But I guess Pathfinder wanted to find a use for Strength.
The Herbalism bits are pretty interesting. Bone Reed aids natural healing, which could be really useful before Restoration is available to the party. Angelstep helps prevent death, which can be really useful. There's a section giving advice on what kinds of spells are useful in the wilderness, so I like that. It kind of redeems the book in a way. There's rules for trophies and weather as well, consolidating the rules of the latter into a single book.
Chapter 5 is good, and I absolutely enjoy the options for animal companions and familiars. Much of it seems like it's a padded chapter because a lot of the options are reprints, but it's always nice to consolidate lists. There's cool new Animal Companion Archetypes as well, and the familiar archetypes are cool too. There's also new Companion tricks, and they look good, for the most part.
Chapter 6 is lost on me for the most part. I don't play spellcasters, and I dislike GMing for them. But the spells I looked through looked pretty good, and the one everyone is talking about, Snowball, is a change for the better I feel.
Chapter 7 brings some cool items into the game, though I feel like the Trekking Poles add the wrong benefit. From personal experience, they don't add distance to a day's travel. The value of a trekking pole is in taking weight off of your back. It should add more of an Endurance type benefit to forced marches. But I guess I'm not a game designer.
Overall, the book is pretty good, but suffers from a lack of decent editing and the Shifter seems like it was either poorly playtested or Paizo willingly let it come out with its flaws in place. I would expect more respect for the customer. There are some great player and GM options, and I can't wait to use this in a fitting campaign. That was a tad long-winded. If you've read this far, thanks.
This is my second swing at this, the first got eaten by the webform.
First off, the Shifter isn't as s++%ty as it seems. There are ways to play it that are pretty fun, and it gets a sweet heap of feats that druid can't take, because they are busy taking feats that make them better at assuming their role as literal god of the prime material plane, while the shifter merely becomes adequate. 'Rush and 'Finesse are especially good, especially with the new totem series of feats to get a MOUSEPOUNCE out of absolutely nowhere for a pretty solid amount of damage. I wish it was something other than a huntermonk, that Aspects were not just a mathfinder prereq for something that druids get infinite choice in, and that they put the DRAGONSHIFTER here, rather than holding it hostage for whatever player companion is going to show up in a month or two, but whatever, class works as well as any other martial(NOT WELL)
As a side note, if you are playing a wild shape druid, don't sweat about having your throne jacked. If you don't need to be crafting wondrous items or taking metamagic, those feats are equally available to you, which is nice, considering you can use them when you turn into a g#~$#%n ALLOSAURUS or ELDER AIR ELEMENTAL, unlike the shifter. Shifter would make a better skillmonkey, if he didn't have such massively limited choices of aspects, and he got bonuses to things that weren't moving around and perception, but that's pretty much the same as any other martial, so whatever.
What sucks about the shifter, in addition to being one of those red-headed-stepchildren who want to make attack rolls at full bab that paizo seems desperate to get back into the closet with extreme prejudice, is its Archetypes. Holy s%~*, these are beyond terrible. Like, the mantra of "It's for npc's, not for players!" is out the g+&!$*n window, since some of these aren't even half as able as a vanilla Shifter at just combat, and every single one gives up ALL THE NONCOMBAT S#+&. Elemental Shifter is the closest thing to useful, except it's still just combat numbers, and even then it's just worse than a druid doing the same thing. At least it says that its Elemental form alters Wild Shape, rather than replaces it, so support still exists. Not true of the others.
The fiendflesh is the big "no whining for garbage because it's for npc's!" and honestly, it's a fair cop here. If you want an NPC to become a demon and be completely useless at everything else without just being a demon casting Alter Self, THIS IS FOR YOU.
OOZEMORPH: This archetype alone took a star off this book. Just kidding, it's this and the next one. Instead of having a form of your race, you are an ooze. And can't use magic items. At all. The art for this class has a plucky girl with a huge, terminator 2-esque chrome morningstar in the place of her arm. This mace must be hollow, because it never deals more than 1d6 damage. Instead, you get more 1d6 noodles that don't fully stack with your lategame transformation, BEAST SHAPE 2 AT THE SAME LEVEL WIZARDS CAN TURN INTO TWELVE HEADED HYDRAS WITH POUNCE IN THIS BOOK.(if you want to be a polymorphous gish, holy s%+$ wizards with this crap are NUTS) Mechanically, the class also has no capstone, and the oozeshape doesn't count as wildshape, so mythic is also 100% out of things for this goofy nerd.
Rageshaper: Literally the worst archetype printed for anything in the history of pathfinder(please correct me if you find one worse than this) You give up every single class feature, in exchange for FULL ROUND ACTIVATION, PROVOKES, LEVEL ROUNDS/DAY BARBARIAN RAGE, WITH NO RAGE POWERS. You do get to grow a bunch of size categories, but since someone forgot to make the defense increase from DR 2/-, and you only get TWO MINUTES of rage at level 20, you're probably dead already? Cherry on top, you have to will save out of your rage, shifter is a poor will class, and this archetype removes wisdom scaling. If you don't manually exit out of your rage and you run out of rounds, you are autoconfused, but rather than simply hurting yourself in confusion until sun's down, big guy, you have DOUBLE chance of randomly punching things, which is fine, because your punches are hilariously bad. Oh, and starting your rage breaks all your items. I'm not even sure that you get stats from growing three sizes, since it just says you get big, much like the kineticist talent, but without the line about natural attacks getting bigger, so at least your slamclaws will get to be vital strike ready? Come to think of it, paizo seems to put vital strike on everything, maybe they actually think that's the only way characters work, and wanted to build an archetype around it!
Verdant Shifter is a Plant Type Fiendflesh, except it keeps support, so it's marginally better, especially when you take the immunities it gets.
Weretouched: You give up the ability to choose anything. This is a poor decision.
Things that Aren't the Shifter:
Races! Gathlain and Ghorans get a ton of love, and their features are all really fun. The plantmanplantshifter is also pretty decent, mostly because it doesn't surrender the tiny pool of features it gets to specialize in being bad.
Other Archetypes: Uh, crap. A whole bunch of these give Shifter things to non-shifter people. They are, as you can probably imagine, quite s~$%. Don't use them. Special shoutout to the Strawberry and Blue Raspberry Ranger Archetypes(the first two, you'll get it) both of which are crazy narrow, but pretty entertaining, the AVALANCHE SLAYER, which corrects a dnd classic to "Slayers Fall, Everyone Dies" Seasonal Witches are damn near strictly better than normal witches, don't know why they don't have to give up ANYTHING, Barbarians got a HEAP of aesthetic an interesting rage powers, including the HOLY S$+$ build enabling Spring Rage(If you've ever wanted to play Cohen the Barbarian or Billy the Hero, this is how). Altogether, some good, some terrible, some bad, some GREAT, as per usual in a hardback.
Feats: G@*%$@NIT PAIZO YOU WERE DOING SO AVERAGE. Holy crap, this section might have been put together by someone who had never played pathfinder before? Animal Ferocity is the new worst feat in the game, STEP ASIDE MONKEY LUNGE, as, as written, it unambiguously gives a -5 penalty on some rolls. The description in the grid says it does something different, which makes me think Editorial has some 'splainin to do. A whole genre of feats in this book are "things players could do before because this is a trpg and not an mmo, but now require a feat." Make fake tracks? There's a feat for that, but now rather than an opposed survival check, or whatever your dm chose, they can break it with a roll that a ranger of your level, not even a CR appropriate ranger, will 95%, and they autobreak it as soon as they get to the end of the trail, which is comically short. Make a birdcall? THERE'S A FEAT FOR THAT, that you need to take for EVERY TERRAIN OF ANIMALS YOU WANT TO PRETEND TO BE, and also people can roll perception or sense motive to oppose your bluff check. Apparently my second cousin is CRAZY high level, because he can make not just a pigeon coo, BUT ALSO AN OWL HOOT AND A DUCK CALL, that's three feats, dude could have picked up Animal Ally in those slots! There are a bunch of reprints, errors, etc here, section is generally trashy. Except for one feat(BRANCH POUNCE) which helps enable my newly beloved Avalancher Slayer, that one is great.
Spells: Some are cool. There is a pounce spell, but it's a standard action, and you can only use natural attacks on the subsequent charges. Ooze form is cool. Magical Beast Shape was a mistake. Pretty much everything else is without consequence.
Systems: Exploration is bad, more narrow mechanics that can define a campaign, but leave people hanging around doing nothing while Ricky Ranger gets to apologize for every roll for half an hour. Magical plants are TRASH, holy s*%+ they are bad. Like, one of them is a Heroes feast for ONE PERSON, ONCE A YEAR, for TEN THOUSAND GOLD. Herbalism is neat though, even though the preparation makes it a free upgrade for alchemists and investigators. Trophies are fine,not really earthshaking that you can make a demon into an evil item, or a big, hearty thing into a defensive effect. The companions and familiars section has a TON of reprints, but whatever, it's a good section, just know next time paizo released a player companion that's good from cover to cover, the whole g$#++$n thing is getting reprinted in a hardcover book a year or two down the line(hence the FAR FAR above)
Campaign: Great, a whole s$@+load more tables for finding what the weather is like while the party waits for the ranger to finish doing the exploration. Green Faith gets some stuff, but no crunch at all other than two archetypes that seem to have lost their way. This also has the second little jump of plagiarism, with "Druids of the Fang," the first being the Blighted Defiler Kineticist, who is literally a Dark Sun defiler, in addition to being a musclewizard.
Anyway, book is never great, hyperbolic love for Falling to Victory with slayers aside, and where it's good, it's aight. Where it's s&~#, it's IRREDEEMABLE s#~!. Starts at 5, loses one for shifter being the spirit of mediocrity and reprints, loses another for unusable and untested options, and more power for wizards and alchemists, and witches than rangers, druids, and hunters.
OMG! If that's the case, then my wildest dream of a Pathfinder version of the 4e Warden class seems like it might finally be coming! SQUEEE!!!
Also, re: wilderness-themed AP, seems like Ironfang Invasion, the current AP, is kinda fulfilling that role, especially in the first couple books. Guess the release of all these wilderness books gives me an excuse to wait on trying to get into a group or starting one up myself.
I hope there will be an archetype that allows you to play an Shifter who isn't limited to just animals. I'd like something closer to a doppelganger in that they can shift into the shape of humanoids as well.
Yeah, we'll have to see what the end product is like. With the nature theme, it might only be able to turn into animals, plants, and vermin, though I'd say humanoids are possible since they're also more 'natural' creatures, though I would love something less restrictive, but if it is, I hope for archetypes or feats or other potential options that would allow aberrations, magical beasts, dragons, monstrous humanoids, oozes, and other such, as well as other 'out there' options like constructs, fey, outsiders, and undead, whether in this book or future expansions, but we will just have to see.
I want something very like a spell-less synthesist, possibly with all the various polymorph chains as spell-likes. Someone who can both become an elephant and just randomly grow wings, a barbed tail, and tusks because they feel like it.
I'm really eager to see what people think of the shifter. I had the opportunity to write the class' archetypes, and I tried to cover a pretty board gamut of concepts—some of which people are asking for in this thread!—so it'll be interesting to see what people think once this beast is in their hands.
That said, November is a long way off. If I was a betting man, I'd wager there'll probably be more official news at Paizocon. So, keep an eye out for that!
I'm really eager to see what people think of the shifter. I had the opportunity to write the class' archetypes, and I tried to cover a pretty board gamut of concepts—some of which people are asking for in this thread!—so it'll be interesting to see what people think once this beast is in their hands.
I'm really eager to see what people think of the shifter. I had the opportunity to write the class' archetypes, and I tried to cover a pretty board gamut of concepts—some of which people are asking for in this thread!—so it'll be interesting to see what people think once this beast is in their hands.
That said, November is a long way off. If I was a betting man, I'd wager there'll probably be more official news at Paizocon. So, keep an eye out for that!
Even if it's not my ideas that got written up, I'm really happy to hear that the archetypes aim to cover a wide range of options!
Very interested in this mesmerist archetype!
I’ve wanted to create a mysterious, mesmerist in the woods type character for a while, but never thought I’d have an archetype specific enough to help put it together. I hope the archetype is more based on nature-focused tricks, and fey-like enchantments than it is on controlling animals, or gaining an animal companion. There are already so many druid/ranger/hunter options to do the latter.
I’ve wanted to create a mysterious, mesmerist in the woods type character for a while, but never thought I’d have an archetype specific enough to help put it together. I hope the archetype is more based on nature-focused tricks, and fey-like enchantments than it is on controlling animals, or gaining an animal companion. There are already so many druid/ranger/hunter options to do the latter.
Hmm, the fey trickster from Ultimate Intrigue sounds somewhat like what you describe?
I’ve wanted to create a mysterious, mesmerist in the woods type character for a while, but never thought I’d have an archetype specific enough to help put it together. I hope the archetype is more based on nature-focused tricks, and fey-like enchantments than it is on controlling animals, or gaining an animal companion. There are already so many druid/ranger/hunter options to do the latter.
Hmm, the fey trickster from Ultimate Intrigue sounds somewhat like what you describe?
I am actually very fond of that archetype, but would like something more focused on fey-like enchantments. The fey trickster is almost completely illusion based with its “fey veils”. A real problem with the fey trickster I came across when I ran one as an NPC, is that the druid spell list does not work very well with any of the other mesmerist class features- Hypnotic Stare, and Mental Potency lost much of its usefulness with a spell list with so relatively very few will-save spells on it. The mesmerist’s spell list was always very important to making that class work. Still, fey trickster is cool, just not very effective overall.
I’ve wanted to create a mysterious, mesmerist in the woods type character for a while, but never thought I’d have an archetype specific enough to help put it together. I hope the archetype is more based on nature-focused tricks, and fey-like enchantments than it is on controlling animals, or gaining an animal companion. There are already so many druid/ranger/hunter options to do the latter.
Hmm, the fey trickster from Ultimate Intrigue sounds somewhat like what you describe?
I am actually very fond of that archetype, but would like something more focused on fey-like enchantments. The fey trickster is almost completely illusion based with its “fey veils”. A real problem with the fey trickster I came across when I ran one as an NPC, is that the druid spell list does not work very well with any of the other mesmerist class features- Hypnotic Stare, and Mental Potency lost much of its usefulness with a spell list with so relatively very few will-save spells on it. The mesmerist’s spell list was always very important to making that class work. Still, fey trickster is cool, just not very effective overall.
I don't know about that, I think it works pretty well. If you take the infiltration bold stare (from Occult Realms) or the Sluggishness bold stare, you can target CMD or Reflex saves, and the hunter spell list has a number of spells that target these, and one could argue that both getting a larger number of spells that target other saves and aren't mind-affecting, as well as a number of spells that ignore spell resistance, has a lot of advantages over a normal mesmerist. As for mental potency, I'll be honest, I think it's a pretty useless ability for a mesmerist...most of the spells it applies to are - at least in my opinion - pretty terrible, except at lower levels...
But still, interesting to hear your perspective! I think the vanilla mesmerist is pretty good at focusing on fey-like enchantments, they get most of the spells already, and their other class abilities can definitely help there, so I'm not sure what more you would from an archetype?
I’ve wanted to create a mysterious, mesmerist in the woods type character for a while, but never thought I’d have an archetype specific enough to help put it together. I hope the archetype is more based on nature-focused tricks, and fey-like enchantments than it is on controlling animals, or gaining an animal companion. There are already so many druid/ranger/hunter options to do the latter.
Hmm, the fey trickster from Ultimate Intrigue sounds somewhat like what you describe?
I am actually very fond of that archetype, but would like something more focused on fey-like enchantments. The fey trickster is almost completely illusion based with its “fey veils”. A real problem with the fey trickster I came across when I ran one as an NPC, is that the druid spell list does not work very well with any of the other mesmerist class features- Hypnotic Stare, and Mental Potency lost much of its usefulness with a spell list with so relatively very few will-save spells on it. The mesmerist’s spell list was always very important to making that class work. Still, fey trickster is cool, just not very effective overall.
My experience was the same....I'm planning a Gnome/Vexing Trickster for Iron Fang.....hoping that will work more to my liking :P
I am very interested to see what the Shifter end's up looking like. I would like to see both an Urban version/Archetype that is more of a Mystique/Doppelganger type, as well as a an Archetype that allowed for swarm forms right out the gate (with increasing sizes/types of swarms as they level).
I think turning into a fiend would be cool, especially if there's some mechanic that slowly corrupts you, or could result in the "Beast" taking over.
Turning into demons is already pretty well established as a thing that happens in Golarion, so fingers crossed.
Since the shifter is a nature based shape shifter then animal, plant, and vermin forms makes sense. It might also get elemental and fey(if they make up those spells) as well.
As for archetypes, I hope to see a dragon based one, a humanoid(humanoid, monstrous humanoid, giant) based one, a magical beast based one, and maybe even an aberration based one.
Since the shifter is a nature based shape shifter then animal, plant, and vermin forms makes sense. It might also get elemental and fey(if they make up those spells) as well.
As for archetypes, I hope to see a dragon based one, a humanoid(humanoid, monstrous humanoid, giant) based one, a magical beast based one, and maybe even an aberration based one.
I'm kinda hoping for something that runs the gamut and gets weirder and weirder as it levels up until eventually it can shift into anything in the Bestiary, robots included.
I wish Ultimate Horror got a new class, something fun that would have fit the focus of the book. Like a non-spell casting class that gained monster abilities were could choose a path to one specific creature type/subtype or combine the traits and abilities into something really weird.
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Would be interested in seeing an archetype that transforms into a pack of animals (represented by breaking swarm rules?). Though that's mostly coming from Malazan love. Could never build proper D'ivers.
You could play both a crazy cat lady AND her swarm of furbabies!
Can't believe I've never seen this archetype! I'm gonna have to play one of these!
Yeah! Probably my favorite 2016 archetype. The book is really good as a whole- check it out and make sure you didn't miss the other cool stuff, like ancestor eidolons.
That is an awesome archetype.
Well dang, that is pretty sweet. I've been falling behind on options, thanks for pointing that out.
Still, it would be AWESOME to turn into a small pack of wolves rather than one supped up Dire Wolf or what have you. But this definitely gets you 95% of the way there.
Something else that I would like to see in Ultimate Wilderness is a new spell descriptor such as 'Plant' or 'Wood', including a list of previously published spells that would have such a descriptor including: blight, entangle, spike growth, and warp wood.
There are a number of reasons why I want a 'Plant' or 'Wood' spell descriptor including: Simplifies the 'Resist Nature's Lure' class feature to simply state that it grants the save bonus against anything with such and such spell descriptor. It simplifies the creation of feats or traits for individuals who specialize in Plant-magic. With Phytokinesis as a new Element for Kineticists, I think it is about due.
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