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So... one of the interesting things about the two wave casters we've seen is how they are different from the 2/3rds casters of PF1. A lot of those just got "here's a pile of magic. Here's a pile of other stuff. You make it work." For summoner and Magus, though, the casting and the martial side are integrated by design into a greater whole. The magus is a weak martial character who exploits his grasp of magic to make up the difference. His defining class features don't make sense for anyone *other* than a martial/magical mix. The summoner handles being half of a caster by effectively making themselves half of a character. In both cases, the class structure to make the magic and the martial harmonious are interesting and somewhat complicated.
So... what else might we see? I'm not asking "What other wave casting classes might we see?" because it's pretty trivial to look at any 2/3rds caster from PF1 and say "we could have one of those." I'm asking what other interesting structural stuff might we see that could blend wave caster magic with a partial martial and have the end result work as a harmonious whole. Preferably, it would be concepts distinct enough from the existing summoner/magus that they couldn't be more easily handled with a class archetype or two.
...and, for my sake, let's please just let shifters be. We can leave the arguments on whether shifters should be spell-based to the shifter threads.
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For starters.... I might suggest some sort of wave caster oracle setup. Unlike the normal oracle, your "curse" effects grow with every spell you cast - not just your focus spells. As the curse accumulates, spellcasting generally gets harder or more dangerous or whatever, but you get benefits in melee. Curse resets on refocus. Wading into battle without your curse going leaves you somewhat weak, compared to standard martials. Casting a whole bunch beforehand will turn you into a serious blender, but the last few casts get pretty dicey, and there might not be a lot of fighting left to do at that point. Judging how many spells to throw before you get stuck in is a big part of the strategy of the class. Possibly an Occult caster aberrant theme?
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I'd like to see the Eldritch Trickster go more Wave Caster than its current multiclassing approach. It'd trend pretty close to magus, but I think slacking on damage and combat feats to get more skill stuff could work.
A wildshaping druid class archetype that turns them to Wave Casting could be pretty choice. Shifter can be its own thing.
Just spitballing, but I'd be interested in a Weirdo Caster that's half-caster and the other half is a more different caster. Say, its main focus gets the wave casting top slots, while its secondary focus gets some built-in multiclass-casting-ish progression. So, a Weirdo Caster might be a cleric of nethys with top slots giving them Prepared Arcane casting while their lower slots are all Prepared Divine.
Wave-casting Bloodrager seems very attractive to me as well.
The concept is a bit out there and doesn't fit super well into anything but Numeria, but a magitech/biomancy construct class would be awesome to see. Heavy focus on ranged combat, basically mobile artillery.
My idea would be that your character is the pilot/brain of what is essentially a mech. As a spontaneous bounded caster, you still load your spells into your mech, but instead of just shooting it out of a cannon or something, you modify the spell with special metamagic-esk actions and then you shoot it out of your cannon. Instead of a weapon attack and a spell, you just have the spell, but super-charged and using your regular attack modifier rather than your spell attack modifier. Focus spells that make that particular spell absolutely insane.
You could have some weird stuff like loading fear into your cannon, charging it with the beam action and then firing a beam that has to pierce targets in line (one/separate attack rolls vs each creature in sequence, ends if you fail one or you reach the range limit) and deals mental damage plus the effects of the spell on each hit (maximum targets for the spell effect still apply ofc).
Okay, for the druid class archetype I can see it - reduce standard casting to wave casting, and your "half martial" is just beefing up Wild Shape a bit until it hits an appropriate point. Might as well add a bit more love to form spells in general, really, for those cases where they want to take a form outside of wild shape, and are willing to spend a spell slot to make it happen.
For the Eldritch Trickster/Bloodrager thing... okay. Sure. We can point at it and say "that might be cool" but how would you mesh the two together? That's kind of my point, here. Paizo did some pretty cool stuff with martial/magical integration on its first two wave casters, and I'd love to see that continue going forward... but it's not entirely trivial to come up with ways to do that that are both interesting and unique. The whole point of this thread is to come up with ideas that they can poach for it.
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So... bloodrager. Well, what can we work with here? Thematically, h's a towerign mass of rage with spells flying off of him, with both rage and bloodline. Where can we go from there for ideas?
- Can self-target area-effect spells. Those spells don't harm the bloodrager (they explode outward rather than inward) and if they have an area of effect, it follows the Bloodrager as they run around the battlefield.
- Focus spells that add effects to the current rage, allowing you to customize your rage to a degree. you want to freeze your foes as you grapple them? You want a flaming aura? We got what you need. Gives you two or three at first level, so that you always have more focus spells than you have focus points to use on them.
- Doesn't get normal cantrips. Does get focus cantrips that only cast while raging, designed to be quick-casting enough to work alongside a martial combat style.
- Some sort of ability to cast spells more effectively when you crit. Possibly built into the focus spells - they're all just "reaction: when you crit while raging". Possibly include some ability (perhaps bloodline-specific?) that lets you make crits more likely while not improving your chances of hitting normally. Basically the idea is that they become very swingy, and when they crit, the magic happens.
- Alternate option on the above: pulling a crit while raging lets you cast a focus spell without spending a focus point. Possibly as a high-level feat: "if your previous action this turn included a strike in which you critically hit your target, spend one action to cast a bloodrager focus spell without expending a focus point." I really like the idea that critting could make my Aura of Awesome Rage-Power that much more awesome.
- When you enter your rage, you get to cast a single-target buff spell on yourself as part of the action. Sustaining spells in a rage is explicitly allowed, but they also get a relatively early Effortless Concentration feat that only works for your rage-entry spell. Possibly have another feat (or a bloodline) that allows you to rage-enter with spells that are not self-buff spells. Hey - some people just like to open with a fireball.
Not sure that this *all* fits (or maybe some of it would need to be shuffled into feats) but it builds together pretty nicely as a thematic whole. The bloodrager is a tower of magical rage that runs around the battlefield covered in magical effects, and explodes (in a good way) when he gets crits. Basically all of your magic goes into either instant effects that are designed to not steal too much time from the smashing or ways to make you happy and your enemies sad while you're standing next to them and hitting them with things. If you find yourself actually spending two actions to cast a two-action spell, you're probably doing it wrong.
It would be big and loud and very swingy - not any more powerful overall than the other, more consistent adventurers, but prone to moments of pure awesome, especially when demolishing its way through relatively low-threat enemies (for whom crits are more frequent). Basically, it's designed to play in a way that would be very satisfying for the sort of person who looks at the barbarian and says "It's not a bad place to start, but can I get one that's on fire and explodes?"
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For Eldritch Trickster? I got nothing. Maybe I come back to it later.
The concept is a bit out there and doesn't fit super well into anything but Numeria, but a magitech/biomancy construct class would be awesome to see. Heavy focus on ranged combat, basically mobile artillery.
My idea would be that your character is the pilot/brain of what is essentially a mech. As a spontaneous bounded caster, you still load your spells into your mech, but instead of just shooting it out of a cannon or something, you modify the spell with special metamagic-esk actions and then you shoot it out of your cannon. Instead of a weapon attack and a spell, you just have the spell, but super-charged and using your regular attack modifier rather than your spell attack modifier. Focus spells that make that particular spell absolutely insane.
You could have some weird stuff like loading fear into your cannon, charging it with the beam action and then firing a beam that has to pierce targets in line (one/separate attack rolls vs each creature in sequence, ends if you fail one or you reach the range limit) and deals mental damage plus the effects of the spell on each hit (maximum targets for the spell effect still apply ofc).
Okay, but you're spending your spell slots for ammo. You're spending your focus spells to juice that up. You get four big booms a day... and other than that you get cantrips? What are you doing when you're *not* blasting people with megaspells?
If we can get the structure to work in a satisfying way, we might be able to do things to make the fluff a bit more accessible, but it sounds like this idea takes five-minute adventuring day to a whole new level, and that's not a good thing.
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A wave casting holy warrior. Magus-like divine caster built around the channel smite idea.
So... the Eldritch Trickster...
First, the Eldritch Trickster as-is is fine. He's a rogue who dabbles in magic. Sure. I wouldn't play one, but I haven't seen people complaining that they're terrible. This would be for a different thing.
In particular, thematically, the rogue brings two things to the gish game. First, they have a focus on skills and utility rather than pure combat. That's what the Eldritch Trickster does, really - they expand their bag of tricks to include a bunch of spells, too. That's not really suitable for the wave caster, though, as the "small numebr of high-level spells" doesn't really mesh with the "I have a lot of utility to work with" schtick.
So the other side of the rogue is on inflicting and exploiting debuffs, and that works really well. This would be a class built around setting them up and knocking them down. Focus spells would be heavy on inflicting negative conditions in various ways and/or would be more effective if used on targets suffering from various conditions. They'd have lots of ways of inflicting conditions that penalized saving throws. They might have an extra increase to spell DC when targeting flat-footed targets. The whole idea of it would be that you'd inflict debilitating conditions that would reduce their ability to make saves, you'd use that vulnerability to drop your big spells on them, and your big spells would generally involve further longer-lasting debilitating effects that you could exploit with other abilities. You walk back and forth across the Magic/Martial line, with the connecting thread of inflicting debuffs and then punishing the enemy for having them. Probably make the class Occult-based.
Okay, but you're spending your spell slots for ammo. You're spending your focus spells to juice that up. You get four big booms a day... and other than that you get cantrips? What are you doing when you're *not* blasting people with megaspells?
If we can get the structure to work in a satisfying way, we might be able to do things to make the fluff a bit more accessible, but it sounds like this idea takes five-minute adventuring day to a whole new level, and that's not a good thing.
Agreed, there needs to be a lot of more to it than just that.
For your regular Strikes, I think cantrip-esk spells (using your weapon attack modifier) are pretty ok - as long as you can get a little more interaction in there. At the end of the day, unless you are playing a fighter or something, a martial only has like two or three attack actions/activities you use on your turn as well.
Having gotten my first experience with the kineticist in WoTR now and gotten a taste, the Legendary Kineticist mechanics seems like a solid platform to base this on. One-action "shot cantrips" (name wip - basically unique cantrips like hex cantrips or composition cantrips) that are vaguely comparable to ranged weapon attacks, which you get from your class path. "Charges" that cost 1 focus point and modify your spells/shot cantrips, which you get at certain levels or from feats. "Gather Charge" allows you to use charges without spending a focus point, but cost 1 action.
I'll have to make some pretty hefty changes to that formula, if only because just ripping of existing material feels wrong. But it is a start. Now I know what I'll be homebrewing for fun now...
Probably not super suited for a bounded caster, though, now that I think about it more. It's a lot closer to a champion, ranger or monk with their discount spellcasting.
A wave casting holy warrior. Magus-like divine caster built around the channel smite idea.
Maybe? I'm interested to hear more about this. How is this different from the whole Magus spellstrike thing?
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Another concept - this one a bit more shashbuckler-esque. Basically, you start out with the standard wave caster underpowered martial schtick (in this case a generally dex-based high-mobility acrobatic type) but every time you hit the enemy with a standard martial attack, you build up a bit of a charge. Then, when you cast a spell, you can unleash that charge to make the spell particularly impressive. subtypes would have the swashbuckler schtick of each of them giving you some extra way to build charge. The total amount of charge you could accumulate at any one time would go up with level and/or with feat expenditure, and a lot of the feats would be either ways to gain charge faster or ways to spend charge usefully - mostly as a sort of stackable metamagic (as long as you have the charge to buy each metamagic effect individually) but possibly for other advantageous effects.
When you run out of dailies... well, charge-boosted cantrips aren't as good as charge-boosted slot spells, but they're still not bad.
Their big "why are you special" schtick is that their biggest spell effects are going to be straight-up bigger than anyone else's... it's just that they have to invest a fair amount in getting them fully juice, the can't pull them out until mid-battle (because they need to build up charge first) and they don't get very many per day. They're lousy at openers, but great at finishers.
...and an idea (perhaps) for inquisitors. Inquisitors are about judging and punishing... and, honestly, that sounds like a defender/reaction-based play to me.
So the idea is that you have a built-in single-diamond action that lets you make one of a number of judgments. Judgments last until the end of your next turn or until you make a new judgement (though class feats could certainly muck with that action economy in various ways) While a judgment is ongoing, you can take a reaction to punish anyone who breaks it - letting you target them with a two-action spell. Judgement is somehow fundamentally warning, though - once you call divine judgement on a given behavior, everyone's going to know that you're standing ready to punish it.
Becomes potentially more interesting if you only get a few judgments off of a longer list, and more interesting still (but also potentially more unwieldy) if your available judgments are somehow based on your chosen deity. (like, say, you get available judgments based on their available domains). If you don't want to take it *that* far, you could have it just based on subtypes.
Also potentially interesting if each judgment comes with some sort of a buff for you, or aura buff for your party, as well as a punished behavior. That might mean that it was most of the available awesomeness budget for the class, but that could work.
...but in general the idea here is that the class is designed to want to cast its spells (smitey smitey spells) through its reactions, and so goes martial with the rest of its time for something to do. Admittedly... we'd need to have some reason why they don't just make every round be "two-action spell, plus judge". Maybe you can't Judge on rounds where you've already cast a spell? This idea could probably use a bit of help.
Maybe a tanky based wavecaster, something like casting non cantrips spells(but allowing focus spells) can give resistance or temp hp equal to the spell level or something like that. Maybe even with the chance that passing spells from evemies could boost these defenses as well. Could be a potential interesting mechanic for a Bloodrager type if they wanted to give its own unique identity.
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Regarding mechanics. Both the Summoner and Magus have something that let them get around MAD/normal stat restrictions to some extent. Summoner gets two statlines and the Magus gets to make spell attacks with Str/Dex.
Probably something to consider when looking at mechanical ideas for future wave casters too.
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You could take the basic magus proficiency package and instead of tuning it in an "offense" direction (since Spellstrike, Arcane Cascade, and your hybrid Conflux spell are all about attacking & doing damage) you could put that in a defensive/buffing direction and end up with a class that feels quite different.
I see the wavecasters concept as good alternatives for some classes concepts we corrently have:
- Warchant: A Warrior Muse's Bard but without spellslots and cantrips (yes, not even a wavecaster) instead of just allow Martial Performance as level 1 feat. It's receive a default martial progression for martial weapons, heavy armors going to mastery proficiency + shield block. I also giving some especial feats to allow them to use composition cantrips while use some maneuvers like strike/shield block - Instead of being a full class this also could be easily be an archetype focused in martial classes, giving them composition spells and feats to allow a good economic usage for them while do others maneuvers like strike/block.
- Wavecaster Warpriest: It's simple, take warpriest, remove the fullcasting to wavecasting, add master proficiency to both attack and armor and now you have a good warpriest - this could be done with class archetype to avoid create a entire new chassis for cleric and also could be used for others divine casters like oracles and divine sorcerer.
- Shifter: I don't think that convert druid to wavecasting is a good solution here. An archetype that give Wild Order feats already solve the question. Just add the ability to use the your own AC and attack modifier and your class DC for special abilities like breaths how currently happens to barbarian Dragon Transformation but as part of dedication (maybe increasing the dedication feat level like happens to Elder Archer) and have fun!
- Monk Elementalist Wavecaster: Because the new elemental stances are just too mee! It's would work like Magus but focused in elemental spellcasting like Elementalist and unarmed attacks. And yes you are thinking right this would be like a Avatar: The Last Airbender monk :P - This could be an class archetype for monks
- Ranger Wavecaster: Basically a primal magus. Light armored with more focus in tracking or maybe even some MAP bonus and/or but this maybe could be too OP - This could be a class archetype for Rangers but probably would do many changes in class chassis.
- Arcane Trickster Wavecaster: Basically a thief with wavecasting instead of just receive a free MCD, probably loosing sneak attack but receiving a special spellstrike instead that works when the opponent is flat footed without need to recharge - This also could be a class archetype not only for thiefs but also for investigators (spellstriking after Devise a Stratagem) and even swashbucklers (with panache reloading spellstrike) too.
From what I've heard about the Bard, I agree that the "more martial bard" probably doesn't have spell slots at all, and may not have standard cantrips. That should give a decent amount of available space for turning them into someone who can stand on the front lines while belting out a jaunty tune. I suppose you *might* be able to manage it as an archetype, but my grok on things is that standard bardic buffing is a bit too much to try to build entirely out of feats.
I don't see the wavecaster wildshaper druid as a replacement for the shifter. It's really not. (I want my full-martial non-druidic Shifter!) It's basically just the druid version of the wavecaster warpriest (which is also a solid idea). Both of those should be pretty easy to design and balance as class archetypes.
The statline thing is a really good point, an not one I was considering. for those focused on buffs and heals, you can let your casting stat lag a bit, but for those who are trying to land attack spells or punch through saves.... Well, you could always do the simple cheese PF1 thing of just changing your attack stat, but PF2 hasn't been keen on that idea (at all) and I'm a bit loathe to call for cracking that seal.
I'm going to have to think on that one a bit more. Ways get thematic and interesting partial MAD fixes without just pushing the big ugly "fix" button seem like they're another bit of "not entirely trivial".
I'd like to see the Eldritch Trickster go more Wave Caster than its current multiclassing approach. It'd trend pretty close to magus, but I think slacking on damage and combat feats to get more skill stuff could work.
God yes, gimme that Spellthief vibe pretty please.
Thing is the "pick-a-list wave caster prepared" is still on the table, even if Summoner grabbed spontaneous.
There's a rich vein to dig into on spellthieves... but there's a real balance problem for them, too. Basically, their entire schtick is stealing spells from mages. That means that in an adventuring day when you fight creatures with spell slots, they're significantly more powerful than one where you do not. You can mitigate this to a degree, but the more you mitigate it, the less spellthiefy they become. Their entire concept is *fundamentally* anti-caster. I can't really see a way to build them that would be reasonably balanced both for a "regularly fighting casters" campaign and for a campaign where nothing you went up against ever had spell slots without making a farce of the concept itself.
There's a rich vein to dig into on spellthieves... but there's a real balance problem for them, too. Basically, their entire schtick is stealing spells from mages. That means that in an adventuring day when you fight creatures with spell slots, they're significantly more powerful than one where you do not. You can mitigate this to a degree, but the more you mitigate it, the less spellthiefy they become. Their entire concept is *fundamentally* anti-caster. I can't really see a way to build them that would be reasonably balanced both for a "regularly fighting casters" campaign and for a campaign where nothing you went up against ever had spell slots without making a farce of the concept itself.
Given how Innate spells work now, it's not nearly as bad as it was in 3.5. You can definitely in an adventuring day (at least reasonably past level 2/3) encounter at least one monster with some kind of spell.
That said a backup that basically functions as "weaker sneak attack" that maybe just inflicts a condition would work too.
AKA Essence Theft
If your target is flatfooted, they must roll a Reflex save against your Essence Theft when you succeed on an attack. If your attack was a critical success, treat their degree of success as one tier lower.
Critical Success Target is unaffected
Success Target takes half damage from your Essence Theft damage
Failure Target takes full damage from your Essence Theft damage
Critical Failure Target takes double damage from your Essence Theft damage and you can use Steal Spell if the target possesses a spell you could steal.
And then make Steal Spell a Reaction that steals a spell up to your casting level allows.
That also prevents the weird shenanigans of the old Spellthief stealing ally spells and using those (which is what ultimately made them too strong).
The issue there is the whole "a class-defining feature only really kicks in when you crit" That makes sense for the bloodrager, who's all about "Big Numbers! Loud Noises!" but it doesn't really suit the spellthief aesthetic as well.
Maybe... some sort of vitality thief? like, we keep the idea where you're powering your spells off of things that you take from your foes, but we start with something other than spells - when you get a killing blow, you get a focus point back, as you eat their life. Then you might have each of the subtypes have some debuff it can apply reasonably easily, and something else that it can drain when it hits someone suffering from that debuff. So, the spellthief would have some way to inflict Stupified, and could steal spell slots if he hit someone who was already stupified (converting them into focus points). Having the effect recharge your own spell slots would be limited to crits.
Admittedly, trying to balance this one might get real ugly. We don't currently have any way for people to recharge focus points outside of refocusing, and no way for them to recharge spell slots outside of daily rest. Again, this is a pretty big seal to crack.
I think a "psychic warrior" could stand to be a occult wave caster with mechanics for ranged menuever attack rolls to simulate physic power. maybe too strong idk, but it's a cool sounding starting point.
The vitality thief was my thinking. Perhaps even a series of paths that allow your essence theft to take different forms.
You could give each path features that kick in with essence theft like a temporary Hit point gainer theft, a condition removing/inflicting essence theft, a stance theft, focus spell theft, or spell theft.
Now that might seem extreme but if these were feats/abilities that modified that essence theft ability, and you could only steal things of your level or lower it could work.
Like default could just be temp hp, then the rest are feats you pick up that further modify what you can steal. Then spell thieving is simply a feat instead of a staple.