
Xenocrat |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Initial thoughts on the paradigm shifts.
2nd Level Options
Disrupt Attack: Yikes, I'm not spending resolve and a reaction for a small chance of retroactively forcing a miss. Not often enough to take this ability, anyway. It would be weak if there were no save, but since there is...
Disrupt Creature: No save shaken is good, using a spell slot to accomplish it for minimal duration is less so.
Eldritch Secret: This is good, off list spell access is always nice as is an extra spell known.
Overlapping Forms: +1 AC is nice, but enough to burn my first standard action in combat? I doubt it.
Prevent Wounds: The scaling on this is not great. At 8th level I can use a resolve point and a reaction to prevent on average 10 points of damage. If I'm in the back, got a max resolve build, and rarely go down myself then maybe I take this to pour life into my dumb frontliners, but it's not an obvious choice.
Push Grenade: This looks excellent! +2 to saves against grenades and all instantaneous effects and spells with a burst radius and a saving throw. That's the explosive blast spell, but it's also all explode weapons and many traps. And by shifting it 5-15', you can often completely avoid damage to some/all of your party and potentially hurt enemies instead. No resolve cost! Of course, once you take it your GM will never attack you with that stuff.
Shift Resistance: This is theoretically good against an enemy with resistances if your whole party has the wrong weapon, but it only lasts 1 round, has a save to negate, and only works once per day per creature. Pass, you should have multiple damage types anyway.
Thwart Ability: As a reaction and 1 RP, allow an ally a new saving throw with a +2 bonus against any spell or ability that does damage. Certainly better potential upside than Prevent Wounds or Disrupt Attack.
5th Level Options
Inhibit: Trade your standard action for a chance, only, to stagger an enemy for 1 round. No thanks, we hated this on the Solarion and nothing has changed. Or spend 1 RP to use Slow as a single target spell like ability. Meh? Maybe if you have lots of resolve to blow and you burn spell slots at a prodigious rate on other things.
Optimize: The 10 speed boost is trash, the 1 RP for a single person haste has the same possibilities and limitations as Inhibit's slow.
Resist Elements: This compares favorably to Prevent Wounds in that it stays up for rounds/level and has similar scaling. Get hit twice by the same energy and you're already ahead.
Shifting Offensive: Changing damage type on a weapon is good. Not costing resolve is excellent. Requiring a standard action is understandable. One round duration? Trash.
8th Level Options
Flash Teleport: It's fine as a short range escape. It fixes the potential AoO problem on the Technomancer version.
Hobble Creature: Upgrade Disrupt Creature to no save stagger it. Duration is still poor, but spending a 3rd level spell to unavoidably stagger a boss for 3 rounds is preeeetty powerful.
Magic Deletion: Spell Resistance for 1 round, giving an even CR threat a 55% chance to fail his spell. It's ok?
11th Level Options
Dart Aside: Every RP expensive, but if you have a wall or corner to hide behind and break line of effect this can be a nice way to no sell big attacks that hit you.
Shaped Infinities: I don't know that Infinite Worlds effects are so big or powerful that the ability to exclude a 5' square really matters much. Why isn't this a lower level option?
Substitute Mind: It's the Technomancer's Reboot Mind very slightly upgraded, and it's still pretty bad and highly limited in applicability.
14th Level Options
Shifting Immunity: Ugh, it's Shift Resistance with a 3 round duration (good) and immunity instead of resistance (good) but still gives a save and has a 1/day limitation (trash). Avoiding immunities is what backup weapons and fusions to shift energy types are for.
Swapping Step: Force two creatures to swap positions. Both get a save, so not super great for scrambling enemies, but it's a move action and no RP cost, so just spam it constantly. But 1 target per day, so use judiciously for ally tactical movement. I like it.
Unveil Reality: Stun a creature for 3 rounds. It gets a save and it's mind affecting, 1/day limitation. But no RP cost, so it's a good bread and butter move against single targets when your spells are low. Quite nice.
I'm not going to dig up my analysis of the playtest paradigm shifts, but I think the dogs remained dogs and the overpowered one(s) got reined in appropriately. You've got 1-2 good choices at every level and some other defensible ones, it's probably as much as we could hope for if we didn't want to break the Technomancer's spirits.

Xenocrat |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

All the 2nd level Paradigm Shifts need to be measured against the 2nd level Esotericist archetype options, which come from a menu and DO NOT lock you into later archetype abilities - you can keep your class abilities if you want to.
2nd Level Esotericist Options
Esoteric Lore: Twice per day reroll a Mysticism check for certain skill uses. No thanks.
Magical Devotion: Bonus spell slot of your highest level! Pretty much all Witchwarpers should be taking this, think of it as a free Infinite Worlds use if nothing else. There's a trivially easy to avoid limitation on using this spell against tech things or targets.
Spellshield Technique: Spend 1 RP to avoid losing a spell when you're hit by an AoO or other effect that would disrupt you. There's a feat that does this, but it has a prereq. Still, you'd probably be better off taking Magical Devotion and those two feats even if you really want this.