I don’t know that I want a second musical class, but a nonmagical support is something I would welcome, something like 4e’s Warlord or Starfinder’s Envoy. I’ve seen the name Herald tossed out for such a thing in PF2 before, and I quite like that.
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I certainly wouldn't object to such a thing, but I don't think you can afford to make them caster support to the exclusion of all else. In particular, you can assume that in (almost) any party there are going to be at least one or two martials because you need to have someone in the front playing meat shield. You can't necessarily assume that about casters, and the idea of a class that basically blanks itself if it shows up in the wrong party (or if the one wizard goes down) seems like a really bad idea.
Moreover, I think that having an exclusively support class is a mistake. We don't have one of those currently. Even the Cloistered Cleric can function on their own, though not nearly as well.
So... a dedicated support martial who's got enough martial skill to toss out cantrip-tier damage (or maybe even a little lower) with a reasonably heavy focus on save-debuffing? I could see it. Possibly have the "heavy focus on save-debuffing" be one of the class paths, and the others focus on other aspects of the support player experience.
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I don't mean to say it can't be done, but it feels like the class would need some way to stand on its own, too. Unless like a Summoner and eidolon you have a minion you could support as well, there'd be no way to play the class on its own.
A class that is wholly reliant on making others more powerful is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how it would fit within the framework of the game as it exists currently.
Then again, I suppose a Bard theoretically could spend every single turn casting inspire courage and another buffing cantrip/shield while never contributing to combat directly themselves, so a mundane version of that isn't an impossibility. It wouldn't entirely be necessary to make weapon attacks though no doubt they would still gain the ability (not like a wizard makes much use of their weapon attacks past early game, either, for example).
But this isn't the "Why this class idea wouldn't work" thread, so I'll keep my reservations down. It's a neat idea, I just think it's missing a little meat to flesh it out into a full concept.
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Our current Bard has music and a nice theme of cantrips but mechanically it is a Bard crossed with an occult caster. Which is just wrong for many fantasy Bards. Yes they did it in D&D but that doesn't mean it was a good idea. Most of the Bards you hear about in stories are not major spell casters
I would like to see a Bard crossed with a Rogue, or a Bard crossed with a Fighter. As in a full martial with Bard focus cantrips and feats but no occult spells.
As it stand you can sort of do it by multiclassing into Bard, but its not the same and is mechanically clunky. The character sees themself as a Bard not a caster.
In a similar vein please flesh the Marshal archetype out into a full class.
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I've been advocating for a martial, bounded Bard since the Magus playtest came out. It should be easy to implement as a class archetype, I believe just changing proficiencies, class ability boost and casting style would be enough.
Heaving to make weapon strikes would really ruin this class concept for me, being a useful party member just through your great wisdom, charisma and intelligence without any direct combat abilities is the whole appeal to me. The class should be able to reliably support everyone, but being able to turn your partys caster from a decent to a great damage dealer would just be the coolest thing ever.
What could be done instead, if have strikes be a party of it, but instead of damage they focus on maneuvers and other thing like that. Instead of aiming for the torso to do more damage, they aim for the kneecap to inflict flat-footed, or feinting on behalf of their party members. Maybe hey smacky smack, find a loose joint in the armor/scales/whatever and you get the Infinite Eye precision damage buff.
You can make great sage advice a feature, but part of that is "watch and replicate", like the coat rack in the Karate Kid reboot
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Heaving to make weapon strikes would really ruin this class concept for me, being a useful party member just through your great wisdom, charisma and intelligence without any direct combat abilities is the whole appeal to me. The class should be able to reliably support everyone, but being able to turn your partys caster from a decent to a great damage dealer would just be the coolest thing ever.
It's not that they have to make weapon attacks. It's entirely reasonable to have a martial support class with builds that would prefer to never pull a weapon... but they have to be able to. Everyone has to be able to stand on their own at least to some degree.
It doesn't even have to be a weapon. That's jsut hte simplest way to handle things for a martial. There's any number of ways to flavor it, and any number of mechanics you could hang off of it, but at the end of the day, if you put this character in a room with only what they have on their own character sheet, they have to be able to fight a monster by themselves to some degree. They don't have to be great at it, but they have to be able to do it.
"If I have no friends, then I am completely useless in a fight" simply isn't going to fly as part of a class concept unless your class inherently comes with some friends baked in.
Now, if you wanted to do something like start with a summoner, and cash in all of the spellcasting for pure partial support abilities? That's much more workable.
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I don’t understand the “no weapons” insistence. The closest play experience to what I’m seeing floated was 4e’s Warlord, who had lots of abilities flavored as shouting commands and tactics to their party… but they were also absolutely in the thick of things, in good armor and swinging a weapon around. Heck, much of their support keyed off of them making attacks that opened opportunities for allies to do things off their normal turns!
It was a blast, and I’d sooner see something like that in a game this tactical than trying to make a noncombatant class work.
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I don’t understand the “no weapons” insistence. The closest play experience to what I’m seeing floated was 4e’s Warlord, who had lots of abilities flavored as shouting commands and tactics to their party… but they were also absolutely in the thick of things, in good armor and swinging a weapon around. Heck, much of their support keyed off of them making attacks that opened opportunities for allies to do things off their normal turns!
It was a blast, and I’d sooner see something like that in a game this tactical than trying to make a noncombatant class work.
My read: They've got a fantasy in their head of someone who's not magical, and not using a weapon - just helping. They don't want to be awesome. They want to help other people be awesome. Adding to the damage pressure themselves taints the fantasy, especially if it's something that they're expected to do regularly.
I think this is solvable, actually. In particular, if we lean into the debuff side of things, and allow, for example, a buffed form of Bon Mot that deals a bit of psychic damage on the side, and perhaps similar "significant debuff plus a bit of damage" effects in other ways, that could work, especially if each of them involved a degree of investment and was only once per turn.
Admittedly, at this point it starts wandering into the territory of [url-https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43n2y?Lets-get-stranger-ideas-for-new-classes#1]the other "new classes" thread[/url].
The problem with that, though, is mindless foes. Their fantasy is pure martial, after all. That basically means that it's the moviotns you make with your body and the words coming out of your mouth, and that's pretty much it. If you won't allow any sort of magical access at all, then there's no real justifiable way to damage mindless creatures other than crude physical assault. I think that in order to really make it workable, you'd have to accept something at least as magical as, say, a barbarian. If you're willing to go that far, and your'e willing to have them destroy enemies with the power of their hurtful, hurtful words, then it turns back into something that at least can be built.
Class Feature: Insult Anything. There is nothing in the whole of the world that is truly safe from the vicious edge of your sharpened tongue. You can target even mindless foes and terrain features with verbal and emotional attacks. Temporarily making an an iron grate self-conscious enough to penalize its will save may not necessarily achieve all that much, but you can do it. You likewise ignore any resistance or immunity to psychic damage that your targets may possess.
...and something about Withering Invective, which attacks against Fortitude, and deals negative energy damage.
Admittedly, at this point it starts wandering into the territory of the other New Classes thread.
I feel like anyone looking for this fantasy should take a peek at how Paizo has done it before, with Starfinder's Envoy class... they have plenty of barking orders and slinging insults, but it's ultimately still a class that starts with three weapon proficiencies and has a part to play in any fight. Within the fiction, any adventurer with nothing to defend themself with but words is going to be laughed out of the tavern - or fall to the first golem or zombie that crosses their path.
I'm sympathetic, I truly am! I ran an incredibly nonviolent campaign of Songs for the Dusk, and have a deeply troubled relationship with how core doing violence is in our games and entertainment. That doesn't stop PF2 from being a game played on a combat grid, and I think a pure talker just isn't going to last there.
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Huh. There's nothing inherent to the idea of "Martial character with both str and dex as dump stats" that's incompatible with the current system (other than, perhaps, keeping your AC up) but I'm not sure how I'd actually pull it off in a satisfying way.
Huh. There's nothing inherent to the idea of "Martial character with both str and dex as dump stats" that's incompatible with the current system (other than, perhaps, keeping your AC up) but I'm not sure how I'd actually pull it off in a satisfying way.
It is possible to do this with the Investigator as is.
AC is pretty important for a frontliner, so I'm pretty sure you're going to want medium armor and 4increases between Str and Dex to max out your AC, but that's not a huge ask since you get 11-12 at chargen. You can be fine with your 14 str and dex forever with scale mail (or 16 and 12 with a breastplate, or 12 and 16 with a chain shirt).
It's just that when a frontliner doesn't have medium armor proficiency, that dex becomes a huge priority.
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In addition to the Investigator and Starfinder envoy to varying degrees, I think people here are missing the obvious parallel:
The PF2 alchemist is the bad with weapons, mental-attribute focused nonmagical support class right now.
Like if you were trying to build this character in the system as is, alchemist with the marshall (or bard, or both) archetype is probably your best bet.
So as a framework what we're looking for is a class built on the alchemist chassis but instead of alchemy it has some similarly powerful package of buffs and support.
... That said "arrogant elf who treats the party like hirelings and yells at them as his way of 'contributing'" sounds more like an obnoxious NPC the party tries to get rid of than a proper party member and I'm not sure how well received a character like that would be for everyone else.
I don’t understand the “no weapons” insistence. The closest play experience to what I’m seeing floated was 4e’s Warlord, who had lots of abilities flavored as shouting commands and tactics to their party… but they were also absolutely in the thick of things, in good armor and swinging a weapon around. Heck, much of their support keyed off of them making attacks that opened opportunities for allies to do things off their normal turns!
It was a blast, and I’d sooner see something like that in a game this tactical than trying to make a noncombatant class work.
Well, there was the lazylord build, which was pretty much exactly what they're describing: you take the abilities that give out actions or provide bonuses and skip out on anything that makes attacks.
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In addition to the Investigator and Starfinder envoy to varying degrees, I think people here are missing the obvious parallel:
The PF2 alchemist is the bad with weapons, mental-attribute focused nonmagical support class right now.
And not coincidentally, many people hate the 2e Alchemist for being bad in a stand-up fight, dismissing it as an “item vending machine.”
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Well people are allowed to like different things. That is desirable. The Alchemist is just not effective enough for most.
Chiming in a bit later:
I would love to see a proper Ninja/Shinobi/Infiltrator. Something uncoupled from the Rogue and without the Monk framework like it was implemented in PF1e.
I think the theme of the class is fairly narrow, but when you look at the variety of Ninja across media and its real counterpart, you actually have some variety here that would share the same kind of divergent paths of a Swashbuckler.
Off the top of my head I think three build types would already make it class-worthy. The melee-combat type focused on damage with their unique weapons; the Ninpou user which would require a lot of interesting Focus Spells that used elemental techniques and weird stuff (Cloning, Substitution/kawarimi, Shadow-hopping and/or blending, etc), probably even dealing with Seals and Scrolls as well; The Shuriken/Kunai/ Bomb thrower that would enable a thrown build that doesn't rely on the Returning Rune and that would throw this stuff at quantity and with special effects or outright magical projectiles.
Of course, regardless of which path you choose, the class would be highly focused on Stealth and Impersonation, with class feats expanding them towards poison/alchemy, summoning stuff (this one I'm stealing from Naruto, the anime is absolute garbage but summoning is cool as hell), special benefits to Stealth, high mobility and any kind of special mechanics the class might have (Stealing some of the monk's "wire-fu" abilities would be cool as well).
A treatment of the mesmerist similar to how the thaumaturge reskins the previously released occultist - ie more focus on their unique shtick and without the spells - could make for an interesting way of doing a non-magical, non-martial support class.
Thank you for making me realize the Mesmerizing Gaze feat from the Psychic playtest didn't end up in Dark Archive. I wonder if it's merely gone for good, or saved for a later (Class) Archetype?
The PF2 alchemist is the bad with weapons, mental-attribute focused nonmagical support class right now.
Like if you were trying to build this character in the system as is, alchemist with the marshall (or bard, or both) archetype is probably your best bet.
I think you've hit the best possible solution. If you're going to build a familiar into an all-up class, the support chassis is the way to go. And if you really have to use no magic to pull this off, then the impulse format is your best bet for class abilities, except require a skill check instead of class dc. Between those abilities, an aura, and a slew of aid another abilities and additional reactions for your allies to spend (probably want giving extra reactions to be something your aura can provide), and you have the basics of something your character can do each round that reshapes the battlefield but doesn't do so via damage.
Of course, eschewing direct damage entirely can be a single subclass. Other subclasses that focus on direct damage or terrain effects seem possible too, as we saw on how the kineticist worked.