Good morning everyone! After seeing the playtest Summoner and Magus, I was inspired to make some more homebrew: the Avenger class, which is an adaptation of the old D&D 4E class of the same name.
The 4E Avenger was an unarmored, divine class with the striker role, which meant it excelled at DPS. The class was the damage focused, stealthy, assassin version of the more tanky Paladin. With Pathfinder 2e's Champion also fulfilling the tanky divine role, I felt there is design space for a more mobile, bursty divine martial. It’s something you can attempt to do currently with multiclassing, but the Champion's defensive options don't mesh well with offense.
Instead, this version of the Avenger retains most of the identity of its 4E's predecessor as an unarmored, mobile, divine warrior that deals consistent damage. The unique feature of the class is Oath of Enmity, which makes the Avenger excellent at singling out a threat and vanquishing it. Like its predecessor, my Avenger class has three subclasses. Censure of Pursuit focuses on staying mobile and never letting your target out of sight. Censure of Retribution focuses on keeping your target isolated, while being a terrifying presence on the battlefield. Lastly, Censure of Unity emphasizes teamwork.
Oath of Enmity is a strong core class feature as this 4E/5E advantage effect is rare in Pathfinder 2e. However, its limited by requiring three things: the target remain isolated (same as in 4E), only melee weapons benefit from the advantage, and you must be unarmored. There is a 1st level feat (Ranged Oath) that allows you to use Oath of Enmity with a ranged weapon but it requires specific deities and adds another conditional. I'm hoping these conditionals keep this powerful feature from being too powerful.
The Avenger can deliver high damage thanks to Oath of Enmity, but its also a relatively frail class, with low AC until Armor of Faith at 3rd level. If you want to play the classic 2-handed weapon Avenger utilizing Strength, then you pay for that extra damage with even less AC.
Overall, I based the class's chassis off of a mix between the Champion and the Swashbuckler. Like the Champion, the Avenger gets subclass specific abilities that improve over time. Like the Swashbuckler, the Avenger gets conditional speed boosts, high Reflex saves, a few extra skill feats, and extra precision.
Unlike those classes, the Avenger is only ever trained in unarmored defenses, but I intentionally kept their defenses slightly lower than the Monk's (legendary in unarmored defense) as Monks should be the legends of fighting without armor. Armor and Shield of Faith help keep the Avenger's AC from being too low.
There are a number of feats similar or the same as Champion, Rogue, and Swashbuckler feats, as some felt very appropriate to the Avenger. I opted for feats that emphasized the Avenger's strengths: mobility, divine nature, and damage. Like the Champion, the Avenger gets a fair amount of focus spells.
Focus spells or Oath Spells help represent some of the more magical 4E powers. There are too many 4E powers to make focus spells, so I tried focusing on ones that again emphasized the Avenger's themes of mobility and divine punishment.
TLDR: This my first version of the Avenger class, inspired by the old D&D 4E Avenger class. If you have any balance feedback, I would love to hear it.
Interesting take on one of my more played classes from the 4E days, can't say much on balance based only on my initial reading but it seems fine. However my internal editor caught some places that could use tidying up.
Firstly is cleaning up the Devoted Speed section as it reads fairly poorly. Recommend replacing the text under Devoted Speed with the following: "Starting at 3rd level, you gain a +5-foot status bonus to Speed. Furthermore, when advancing towards the target of your Oath of Enmity, you treat this bonus as if it was double its normal value. At 7th level, and every 4 levels thereafter, your status bonus to Speed increases by 5 feet." This would make the section far more readily understood.
This second, and final issue, is more a nitpick; Unescapable Censure should be renamed to Inescapable Censure.