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Here, my fellow table toppers, we shall discuss those archetypes we see as horridly designed and/or egregiously offending of our sense of system balance...
To start this discussion off:
I present, the Synthesist Summoner. Not the MOST over powered summoner archetype, but it broke ALL of Paizo's own rules regarding NOT making Druidzilla all over again and was overly complicated for many players and, more often than not, played completely incorrectly.
The Blood Summoner... This guy... trades away some nifty stuff regarding the Eidolon (the shield ally and stuff like that) and gains? AN OFFENSIVE DIMENSION DOOR... a floating enhancement to his summons... OH and Planar Binding as a SLA, but still keeps his SM and Gate spells... Totally not OP at all...
The oh so famous Master Summoner... this guy can singel handedly brake a person's game... the duration of his summons gets rediculous he can consistently spam them. Also, typical things to try and slow down casters via low gear has barely an effect on them...
I could go more but I will leave it at that for now.
Oh and remember, an Archetype does not necessarily need to OVER powered to be broken...
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How about the Stygian Slayer? It sounds cool and I'd love to use it were it not for the fact that Paizo seems to have accidentally'd proficiency with all weapons away from the archetype. And the errata still hasn't fixed that as far as I can tell (The linked website still has what I have to assume was a really noticeable error).
Then there's the Totem Rager which does literally nothing and came from a far better made book.
Eldrich Psion should probably go on the list since they have released the ACG errata without changing it.
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The Empyreal Knight: A promising idea with some cool abilities - but 3 big problems...
3) It seriously discourages Aasimar, the most quintessential race for Paladins, from taking the Archetype since some of the abilities replicate Aasimar racial features without appearing to have any ability to stack;
2) You get wings. COOL! So does your Mount, which is what your Divine Bond is required to be - isn't that redundant?
3) Voices of the Spheres is the WORST TRADEOFF EVER. What do you get? You learn one language. Fiddle-dee-dee. What are you losing for that? Divine godsdamned Grace!!! Nothing wrong with trading that out for something else, but anything you lose THAT for should be as awesome as it is, not something that's less than what you get for a single skill point!
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The Spellscar Drifter It trades out much of the cavalier's charge-related abilities for firearm-related ones, including a free gun. What's missing? Challenge remains melee-only, so you can't use it with your gun.
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The Spellscar Drifter It trades out much of the cavalier's charge-related abilities for firearm-related ones, including a free gun. What's missing? Challenge remains melee-only, so you can't use it with your gun.
That could be used for an interesting switch hitter (who doesn't need much dex since they are hitting touch anyway)...but yes, probably not the intended function.
If it stacked with luring cavalier, this would be intersting...but sadly, it does not.
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http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/cleric/archetypes/paizo---cler ic-archetypes/cloistered-cleric, which turns the cleric from a mighty adventurer to an NPC.
Light armour, a handful of simple weapons, one domain, diminished spellcasting...for the other half of the knowledge skills as class skills, 2 skill points per level, bardic knowledge, and Scribe Scroll.
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Most of the wizard archetypes, but Spellslinger in particular: cool theme, weakens it vs vanilla wizard (not a bad thing) but so badly written that all of its abilities need house rules so they work.
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Driver (rogue): To fulfill all your heroic wagon steering fantasies.
Roof runner(rogue): is atrocious too...for numerous reasons.
Sea reaver (barbarian):hardly worth it even in a sea based campaign.
Skirnir (magus): So disappointing.
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Wild Rager barbarian for being an active threat to its own team.
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SpellBlade Magus is such a good archetype. Who wouldn't want to trade out one of the classes two flagship abilities to get a mediocre force weapon that is apparently so powerful that it NEEDS to be balanced around you always having to spend high level spell slots or tons of arcane points to fuel it.
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The Spellblade Magus. Yes, you can create a force dagger if you give up spell slots (or arcane points), but said dagger cannot be used to deliver spells since you lose Spellstrike.
In other words, a Spellblade cannot actually use spells with their blades.
EDIT: Beaten by half a minute!
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White-Haired Witch. A hot, smoking mess only ever held together with house rules.
Titan Mauler. Doesn't do what it was intended to do.
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The Mysterious Stranger Gunslinger - somehow gets good press despite losing Quick Clear, which is downright crippling to a Gunslinger. The ability to add your Charisma modifier to damage from level 1 is quite attractive, yes, but less so is the Lucky ability, which really is not a good trade as written, and the fact that the saving throw DCs for Deeds that provoke them are still technically based on Wisdom, diminishing its luster.
Sword Saint Samurai - a sad fate for a worthy concept; there should be an option for unmounted Samurai, as well as for iaijutsu. This archetype and its hard-to-use Sneak Attack ripoff, and too-little-too-late other features, is not the answer, however. Not the hero we need, not the one we deserve, either.
Geisha Bard - What it gains isn't terrible, but isn't good enough for what it loses; the Tea Ceremony would be much better if its benefits lasted longer; Geisha Knowledge may play to the Bard's strengths to a degree, but I still don't think it's as good as standard Bardic Knowledge; losing the ability to wear or cast spells in armor, and without any alternative defensive feature, is quite a bummer.
Crossblooded Sorcerer - an appealing idea, but the price is too high; losing spells known the way it does is all kinds of terrible, and the Will save penalty is just kind of insult to injury; losing spells per day rather than spells known would be a far preferable alternative.
Scrollmaster Wizard - another cute idea, poorly executed; its signature wind up being much too expensive (unless maybe you're finding a lot of expendable scrolls as loot), and money tends to be more fleeting in the hands of Wizards than in those of many other classes already.
Reanimator Alchemist - I can't say I don't consider it worth playing, but its drawbacks are pretty ugly; not only does their reanimation solution take an HOUR to work, but more advanced solutions don't give them control over their creations, which wouldn't be so bad were it not for their lack of ways to achieve control (as opposed to Wizards and Clerics, who can rectify the situation pretty easily); also, while it takes 7 levels before they get to reanimate anything, they suffer from diminished Bomb power from the very beginning, so the archetype is strictly inferior for the first 6 levels (and they have to sacrifice Bomb dice every time they gain another level of reanimation solution).
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The Mysterious Stranger Gunslinger - somehow gets good press despite losing Quick Clear, which is downright crippling to a Gunslinger. The ability to add your Charisma modifier to damage from level 1 is quite attractive, yes, but less so is the Lucky ability, which really is not a good trade as written, and the fact that the saving throw DCs for Deeds that provoke them are still technically based on Wisdom, diminishing its luster.
I personally like the idea of Trench Fighter 3 with Amateur Gunslinger (for Quick Clear; choose not to convert to Extra Grit when able)/Mysterious Stranger Gunslinger 1/Whatever the hell you want X. Dex and Cha to damage, keep Quick Clear, and still come online a level before normal Gunslingers.
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Crossblooded? the archetype for those who do not actually want to play that class but only dip it?
Myrmidarch? the ranged magus who cannot actually spell combat with his chosen weapons?
Card caster? the same as above?
Skirnir? the magus that fight with a shield, but can't use spell combat unless his other hand is free and when he does he lose the shield AC?
Really, 90% of magus archetypes are broken in the sense that they do not actually work because they do not bother rewriting spell combat/spell strike to make it actually working with the new combat style.
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I sometimes forget the following 2 classes are "broken", since we house rule them a solid fix.
Warrior of the Holy Light - Sacrificing your spells for some very minor boosts would have been somewhat ok (if not for the fact that they are super weak in comparison to spells), but the cost of the boosts is already paid by paying a Lay on Hands to use it.
House Rule: We "fixed" it by allowing the Warrior of the Holy Light to have both Divine Bonds, and treating his level as being 3 levels lower for the Divine Bond, and adding the Celestial Template at 6th level instead of 11th for the mount.
Packmaster Druid - Splitting your HD amongst your companions was the equivalent of not having companions if you had more than 2 companions.
House Rule: We "fixed" this by taking the CR XP of a companion of the same level, and splitting that up. So, when you should have had a 6th level companion, you instead can split the CR (2,400) out amongst 3 companions (800, 800, 800 for example, to receive 3 companions all level 3).
PS. I understand wanting to troll on bad archetypes... I would be much more interested in the House Rules used to "fix" a bad archetype, if people don't mind. After all, in my experience, people pick a bad archetype because it's thematic, and we should encourage thematic roleplaying by fixing the archetype instead of punishing them for theme, with bad mechanics.
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Ecclesitheurge (and most other cleric archetypes TBH)... a more "caster" cleric that ends up being less effective at it than a vanilla cleric
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Ecclesitheurge (and most other cleric archetypes TBH)... a more "caster" cleric that ends up being less effective at it than a vanilla cleric
TBH to be honest that was annoyed me most when I looked up Pathfinder's Cloistered Cleric archetype. I'd been playing with a Cloistered Cleric from Unearthed Arcana (which is open content) in a 3.5 game that ended prematurely, we were going to do a Pathfinder redux, and I checked out the Cloistered Cleric archetype figuring it'd be similar.
Yeah, I wasn't going to go from 3 domains (one set) and slightly more spells known to 1 domain, the same spells known as a standard cleric and reduced spellcasting.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Driver (rogue): To fulfill all your heroic wagon steering fantasies.
Roof runner(rogue): is atrocious too...for numerous reasons.
Sea reaver (barbarian):hardly worth it even in a sea based campaign.
Skirnir (magus): So disappointing.
We have a Sea Reaver in our current Skull&Shackles games and it's pretty decent there - the see through fog ability lets him have concealment from fog spells while not letting foes benefit from it. Granted, my witch selects fog spells just to use on enemy ships when boarding for this reason, but the synergy is quite strong.
Spellslinger is one I really wish worked...I want to play one, but I just can't figure out a good way to make it work. I don't need to be the most optimized prince at the ball, but I need to be able to contribute.
A lot of rogue and fighter archetypes suffer from not having much to trade out in the base class. Rogue archetypes seem to come in two flavors - those that lose trap stuff, and those that lose uncanny dodge. Similarly most fighter archetypes pretty much have to lose armor training and bravery, and usually mess with weapon training.
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Any archetype with the word 'squire' in it.
I am pretty sure those are for npcs and "So your players are bugging you to let them use leadership?" situations. So yes, intentionally weakened.
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How about the Ectochymist? Trade out all of the Alchemist's bombs for a weapon blanch! Seem a little less than pwoerful? Don't worry, at level six it upgrades to a swift action that still only lasts for int modifier attacks, leaving it still strictly inferior to just getting a ghost touch weapon! Truly genius.
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Any archetype with the word 'squire' in it.I am pretty sure those are for npcs and "So your players are bugging you to let them use leadership?" situations. So yes, intentionally weakened.
Let me ask, if you took leadership, would you want any of those as your cohort? Maybe for followers...MAYBE. But me, I'd rather have an actual cohort instead of a small child in short pants who's only ability is "hand me things gooder."
Scrollmaster Wizard - another cute idea, poorly executed; its signature wind up being much too expensive (unless maybe you're finding a lot of expendable scrolls as loot), and money tends to be more fleeting in the hands of Wizards than in those of many other classes already.
the problem with Scrollmaster is you're paying for weaboo...a flavorful ability for fans of certain animated media, but the ability to use scrolls as weapons and shields is god damn terrible, and the actual good ability of the archetype comes in at level 10, a point where you've stopped caring or will do so very soon.
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You'll just never leave this :P
LOL ;)
Youre right.. I wont!
One of THE original D&D classes and the one class in the whole system with the most RP potential and the PF designers treat it like a can of rancid dog food!!!
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Ecclesitheurge (and most other cleric archetypes TBH)... a more "caster" cleric that ends up being less effective at it than a vanilla cleric
Dude. Explain to me, please, how a guy who can choose between 5 or 6 different domain spells of each level (+ subdomains) instead of 2, and can cast any one spell from any of those domains or the entire cleric list once per day, is a *worse* caster than the vanilla Cleric.
Let me ask, if you took leadership, would you want any of those as your cohort? Maybe for followers...MAYBE. But me, I'd rather have an actual cohort instead of a small child in short pants who's only ability is "hand me things gooder."Any archetype with the word 'squire' in it.I am pretty sure those are for npcs and "So your players are bugging you to let them use leadership?" situations. So yes, intentionally weakened.
It might fit better with that feat that grants you a squire... but yes, it would end up being a passive agressive thing where 'ok, you can have a cohort, but not anything actually good'.
I mean...getting another body on the field might still make it worth it (just force the kid to take UMD and act as wand monkey/item caddy). They will never be 'good', but useful for what you invested.
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Let me ask, if you took leadership, would you want any of those as your cohort? Maybe for followers...MAYBE. But me, I'd rather have an actual cohort instead of a small child in short pants who's only ability is "hand me things gooder."Any archetype with the word 'squire' in it.I am pretty sure those are for npcs and "So your players are bugging you to let them use leadership?" situations. So yes, intentionally weakened.It might fit better with that feat that grants you a squire... but yes, it would end up being a passive agressive thing where 'ok, you can have a cohort, but not anything actually good'.
I mean...getting another body on the field might still make it worth it (just force the kid to take UMD and act as wand monkey/item caddy). They will never be 'good', but useful for what you invested.
Which DM is letting you build your own cohorts and pick which NPCs want to follow you? I've always played it that the DM gets to decide who puts in an application, not the player.
On topic, the Strangler brawler archetype. Haven't looked at errata, but it gives up all of its unarmed strike stuff to do wrestling... Poorly. Because it gives up all of its unarmed strike stuff.
Dude. Explain to me, please, how a guy who can choose between 5 or 6 different domain spells of each level (+ subdomains) instead of 2, and can cast any one spell from any of those domains or the entire cleric list once per day, is a *worse* caster than the vanilla Cleric.
I cant be assed to go into detail so you'll just have to trust me ;)
But in essence..
The archetype is stuck in a limbo:
- Doing the up close and personal buff/de-buff/heal job of a cleric becomes much trickier due to its horrendous AC issues. Thus the class tends to stay out of harms way more.
- Being "more caster" like a wizard doesnt work so well either because the cleric spell list is not geared so much towards the "I'll stand at the back of the party and lob stuff in/control battlefield" role that wizards tend to do. The 'Domain Mastery' ability of the type isnt done quite right.
- Thus the archetype fails on both counts overall
- It gives up lots for not a lot back
- Paizo for some bizarre reason refuse to make a D6 divine class which would do a proper job
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- The Homunculist, who can't actually make a Homunculus (but instead gets a familiar that's called Homunculus. You know, the thing the other Alchemists get as a simple discovery without giving up their poisons and mutagens).
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How about the Stygian Slayer? It sounds cool and I'd love to use it were it not for the fact that Paizo seems to have accidentally'd proficiency with all weapons away from the archetype. And the errata still hasn't fixed that as far as I can tell (The linked website still has what I have to assume was a really noticeable error).
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A stygian slayer is
proficient with light armor, but not with medium armor,
heavy armor, or any kind of shield (including tower shields).
This replaces the slayer’s weapon and armor proficiency.
"In the Stygian Slayer archetype’s
Weapon and Armor Proficiency section, in the final
sentence, remove “weapon and”
It was changed in the errata, but d20pfsrd appears to have incorrectly edited it.
The Ectocymist: I am going to trade my bombs for something that lets weapons do full damage to ghosts and haunts? Where is this campaign, on Eox? Even then, I wouldn't take it because the corporeal undead would make me a ghost in short order. This one is especially crazy when for the price of one Discovery (Ectoplasmic Bomb, Undead Slayer's Handbook) I can keep my bombs and have them deal full damage to noncorporeal creatures and apply a Faerie Fire effect to undead.
How about the Stygian Slayer? It sounds cool and I'd love to use it were it not for the fact that Paizo seems to have accidentally'd proficiency with all weapons away from the archetype. And the errata still hasn't fixed that as far as I can tell (The linked website still has what I have to assume was a really noticeable error).
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A stygian slayer is
proficient with light armor, but not with medium armor,
heavy armor, or any kind of shield (including tower shields).
This replaces the slayer’s weapon and armor proficiency.It was changed in the errata, but d20pfsrd appears to have incorrectly edited it."In the Stygian Slayer archetype’s
Weapon and Armor Proficiency section, in the final
sentence, remove “weapon and”
Fixed.
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- Paizo for some bizarre reason refuse to make a D6 divine class which would do a proper job
Paizo doesn't seem to like the idea of HD/BAB changes in their archetypes. But yeah, I would really like for them to import the 3.5 version of the Cloistered Cleric. Honestly, the Pathfinderized version of it almost feels like a passive-aggressive swipe at all the fans asking for a conversion.
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Exploiter Wizard - straight up better than the Arcanist. I like the prepared/spontaneous hybrid casting model, except for the part where it still follows the even-level progression of spontaneous. Make it MAD on top of that, though? Really?
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Sword Saint Samurai - a sad fate for a worthy concept; there should be an option for unmounted Samurai, as well as for iaijutsu. This archetype and its hard-to-use Sneak Attack ripoff, and too-little-too-late other features, is not the answer, however. Not the hero we need, not the one we deserve, either.
I've actually got a Fetchling Sword Saint Samurai (Order of the Dragon) who is taking 5 levels in Swashbuckler (he's currently Samurai 2/Swash 3), and I'm glad the Sword Saint archetype exists, even if it is greatly underpowered. It allowed me to ditch the bookkeeping and roleplay-awkwardness of the Mount and Banner. Sure, those are definitely better mechanically, and I realised that before I even started play him but, for me, it just wasn't worth the hassle of "what is my mount doing, where's my banner, what do I pick for my mount at this level, why is my horse an idiot, what do you mean I have to keep track of feed, feed weighs HOW MUCH, how the hell am I supposed to get Slashing Grace to work while holding this banner, how is the horse supposed to carry the banner without me, I hope nobody shanks/steals my horse when I'm in this building/dungeon, shit my banner burned down, well my horse died now what, blah blah blah..."
It helps that it's a home game and that my group is DEFINITELY NOT the most optimized gaming table out there, so I can get away with this. Also, I doubt that a Large mount and a big unwieldy banner would have helped in that mansion of zombies and skeletons we're currently in, especially in that library with nothing but 5 ft. wide spaces around the shelves.Oh, and I wear a cestus so that I still threaten while my katana is sheathed to prepare for my Iaijutsu Strike.
Some of these archetypes aren't as bad as everyone says, expecially if you're bringing up the Ecclesitheurge. You lose most proficiencies and 1d6 channel energy, but you gain a lot - a ranged at-will buff you can spend Channel on for longer duration, an arcane bond for an extra spell of any level that you don't have to prepare, a domain whose spells can be cast outside of your domain slots, and a secondary domain whose spell list can be changed every day to fit your group's needs.
The loss of AC isn't as big a deal as you think. You don't need to be right next to your targets for many spells, and if there's a few you really want to use there's a metamagic for that. The base cleric is so much less versatile than the Ecclesitheurge that you'd have to consciously try to make a bad character for the archetype to not be worthwhile to a casting-focus cleric.
Funny you should mention, I am currently trying to salvage the archetype in another thread!
Ps Blessing of the Faithful is poor.... yes its at will but its a Standard Action for 1 round for +2.... in terms of action economy buffing its dire. To make it even moderately useful you have to use a channel, which due to the reduction of 1d6 only becomes viable around 10th level... and like I said its only +2 (which at 10th+ level is pretty crap).
Pps And as for the armour loss, what is problematic is that unlike a wizard there is no way to mitigate it via arcane armour training... you CANNOT use armour or shield EVER.
- Paizo for some bizarre reason refuse to make a D6 divine class which would do a proper jobPaizo doesn't seem to like the idea of HD/BAB changes in their archetypes. But yeah, I would really like for them to import the 3.5 version of the Cloistered Cleric. Honestly, the Pathfinderized version of it almost feels like a passive-aggressive swipe at all the fans asking for a conversion.The priest from adamant entertainment is the PF version of the 3.5 cloistered cleric
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/adamant-entertainment/pri estThere was a priest-like archetype in the ACG, with editing issues, I think it has an errata now but I don't now.
Yeah, I really like it. Alas, it's 3pp so opportunities to play it are limited.