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So Find Flaws is neat. It asks you to make a recall knowledge check using your Cha in place of whatever the key stat for the skill you choose happens to be, the result of which determines whether you can use Esoteric Antithesis or not, or if it costs an action.
Wait. A recall knowledge... a secret roll... that you know the result of... because your core mechanic revolves around knowing the result of that check.
Double down on the Thaumaturge's included Dubious Knowledge by taking Unmistakable Lore and Esoteric Lore, and suddenly you not only can't Critically Fail, you will always get some useful knowledge (with the dubious knowledge inherent in said feat) and you Will know whether or not you failed, succeeded or crit succeeded based purely on your ability to use Esoteric Antithesis.
Is this intended? I don't know. But I feel like it may be an unintended consequence of tying a class' core mechanic to what is normally a metric the player wouldn't know.
I'm not even sure you could divorce the two honestly.
Edit: I suppose I should make a point in the post. I feel like this may lead to a substantial amount of meta gaming. It is a blank check for using player knowledge of creature's weaknesses and resistances.
Sorry I got rambly. I've been awake for a few too many hours. Am I over reacting?
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The way that Esoteric Antithesis is currently written, you end up swinging with the best weakness if you get to use the action. So if you use that feat chain to remove critical failures on Find Flaws, you always end up knowing the biggest weakness of your target. Meta gaming doesn't even have room to get involved.
That is the weird thing about Find Flaws, failure basically means you get a correct thing, an incorrect thing (both from Dubious Knowledge), and with an additional action you also learn and equip the highest weakness. The only case in which you don't get two pieces of useful info is when you critically fail, and even then you know that you got incorrect info from your recall knowledge, which is kind of useful in itself.
Note that Unmistakable Lore requires *expert* in Lore. Thus, you will not be able to take Unmistakable Lore unless you wait until level 15 or you get an Expert lore skill some other way (Although that's not very hard)
I mean, that's hardly a hurdle with most backgrounds and putting 1 skill increase into Lore: Underwater Basket Weaving. Especially when it means that you can NEVER not use Esoteric Antithesis. At worst you have to spend an action with Unmistakable Lore.
This feels really strong and unintended, but I can't see a reason why it wouldn't work as worded. Nothing is really all that ambiguous in this interaction.
The Thaumaturge will know it's recall knowledge success (or at least be able to tell if they fail, so they know if they have any dubious knowledge to deal with), and Unmistakable Lore becomes a near must have to keep your schtick relevant against virtually any foe.
Consider, even a 1st level Thaumaturge will be able to use Antithesis against any creature, no matter the level, with this set up.
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The way that Esoteric Antithesis is currently written, you end up swinging with the best weakness if you get to use the action. So if you use that feat chain to remove critical failures on Find Flaws, you always end up knowing the biggest weakness of your target. Meta gaming doesn't even have room to get involved.
That is the weird thing about Find Flaws, failure basically means you get a correct thing, an incorrect thing (both from Dubious Knowledge), and with an additional action you also learn and equip the highest weakness. The only case in which you don't get two pieces of useful info is when you critically fail, and even then you know that you got incorrect info from your recall knowledge, which is kind of useful in itself.
Sorry for swinging back so late for a reply.
The issue I have isn't for the Thaumaturge in a vacuum on their own. It makes them THE defacto recall knowledge character in the game with a single skill feat.
Think about it. No other class gets to know what the outcome of a Recall Knowledge is, even if they have an ability that let's them roll one. Rangers just have to hope the GM rolled high.
Thaumaturge on the other hand will always be able to give the party accurate information, even on a failure. And they will know if they failed, so they will know to be wary of either piece of that information, meaning the "dubious knowledge" is mitigated quite nicely.
This single mechanic breaks Recall knowledge for any party with a Thaumaturge. It disincentivizes other characters from running knowledge heavy builds (that center around foes anyway) because the Thaumaturge will simply be better.
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Is it really a problem that Thaumaturges are pretty good at their core gimmick? That doesn't really seem broken to me.
Failing still sucks, because you don't know which piece of info is accurate and you have to spend an extra action on your combat mechanic (which gets really expensive in a fight with multiple enemies).
"No one else should ever make RK checks" also ignores that Find Flaws is only useful for monster ID in an encounter. For any other type of RK, the thaumaturge loses their unique benefits and is probably going to kind of suck anyways because their Int and Wis are low.
Unmistakable Lore feeling like a mandatory safety net for letting Find Flaws work on rare/high level (and especially both) enemies feels like a problem... but the rest of it doesn't.
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Is it really a problem that Thaumaturges are pretty good at their core gimmick? That doesn't really seem broken to me.
Failing still sucks, because you don't know which piece of info is accurate and you have to spend an extra action on your combat mechanic (which gets really expensive in a fight with multiple enemies).
"No one else should ever make RK checks" also ignores that Find Flaws is only useful for monster ID in an encounter. For any other type of RK, the thaumaturge loses their unique benefits and is probably going to kind of suck anyways because their Int and Wis are low.
Unmistakable Lore feeling like a mandatory safety net for letting Find Flaws work on rare/high level (and especially both) enemies feels like a problem... but the rest of it doesn't.
Dubious Knowledge is a problem all the way up until you use your Antithesis strike to proc a weakness. Once you proc the weakness, you will know the damage type they are weak to definitively. Your custom weakness will only proc against foes with Weakness 5 at 8th level or higher. Weakness 10 at 18th or higher.
Unless you don't think the Thaumaturge is supposed to know the weakness they proc, but the text is pretty explicit.
You search through your esoterica to find the right trinket that
will apply a weakness to your attacks against the creature
you Found Flaws in. You Interact to apply specific esoterica
to yourself and your weapons; you can perform this Interact
action with the hand holding your implement. Your unarmed
and weapon Strikes against the creature become magical if
they weren’t already, and you cause them to apply one of the
creature’s weaknesses even if they don’t deal the correct type
of damage. If the creature has a weakness with a value of 2
+ half your level or higher, set the type of weakness to the
creature’s highest weakness. Otherwise, you create a custom
weakness with a value equal to 2 + half your level; this
weakness applies only to your Strikes. For example, against a
tyrant, you might attach a chain broken to free a captive. This
effect lasts until you use Find Flaws again.
That is not something the GM does for you in secret. It is something the Thaumaturge does manually. And you only use your custom weakness if it is higher than the highest natural weakness the enemy has.
So guaranteed Knowledge, which in my opinion anyway, is problematic for the game.
The two don't really interact at all though. Dubious Knowledge gives you some good information and bad information, Antithesis makes you deal extra damage.
So, great, you're dealing 2 + half level (or more if the monster has a higher innate weakness) bonus damage but it still doesn't tell you which piece of information you got is helpful.
You might not even get any information at all about the monster's weaknesses from a failed check, since Find Flaws doesn't give you any unique information on a failure.
The two don't really interact at all though. Dubious Knowledge gives you some good information and bad information, Antithesis makes you deal extra damage.
So, great, you're dealing 2 + half level (or more if the monster has a higher innate weakness) bonus damage but it still doesn't tell you which piece of information you got is helpful.
You might not even get any information at all about the monster's weaknesses from a failed check, since Find Flaws doesn't give you any unique information on a failure.
I mean, worst case, you don't get information about any weaknesses from Find Flaws since that is very GM dependent, but you DO get that information from Antithesis by proccing a weakness that your party can then exploit.
And if you had critically failed, Unmistakable Lore makes that not matter. You can still Antithesis.
If the design team meant for Antithesis to be that Surefire, why include an option where you can't use Antithesis at all?
I mean, worst case, you don't get information about any weaknesses from Find Flaws since that is very GM dependent, but you DO get that information from Antithesis by proccing a weakness that your party can then exploit.
Hard for your party to exploit anything when you failed your RK check and don't actually know what the enemy's weak to.
Sure, you're doing extra damage, but that doesn't tell the party Sorcerer if they should be casting fire spells or trying to do bludgeoning damage or anything else.
And if you had critically failed, Unmistakable Lore makes that not matter. You can still Antithesis.
If the design team meant for Antithesis to be that Surefire, why include an option where you can't use Antithesis at all?
Like I said, Unmistakable Lore's interaction with Find Flaws might be a bit problematic, I'm just not seeing a problem with most of your other points.
I mean, worst case, you don't get information about any weaknesses from Find Flaws since that is very GM dependent, but you DO get that information from Antithesis by proccing a weakness that your party can then exploit.Hard for your party to exploit anything when you failed your RK check and don't actually know what the enemy's weak to.
Sure, you're doing extra damage, but that doesn't tell the party Sorcerer if they should be casting fire spells or trying to do bludgeoning damage or anything else.
Ah but that's the thing. Once you trigger a weakness, you as the Thaumaturge know what that weakness is. You would have to, since you know what "bit of esoterica" triggered it. And again, Antithesis isn't something the GM applies behind the screen. The feat only talks about the Thaumaturge setting the weakness to the highest weakness. That makes it knowledge that the Thaum now has that he can relay to the party.
And if you had critically failed, Unmistakable Lore makes that not matter. You can still Antithesis.
If the design team meant for Antithesis to be that Surefire, why include an option where you can't use Antithesis at all?
Like I said, Unmistakable Lore's interaction with Find Flaws might be a bit problematic, I'm just not seeing a problem with most of your other points.
I may be overreacting, but I don't see any combination of feats or class abilities that take a secret check and make it an un-secret check as being good for the system. Sure, that won't matter at all if your GM just doesn't do secret rolls. I've had GM's that prefer players to have agency in things like knowledge checks. Granted not in PF2, mostly older d20 systems.
But taking that decision out of the GM's hands is problematic in my opinion. And to have that available as early as 2nd (1 class feat for Esoteric Lore, 1 skill increase to any given lore you have from a background etc.. and one skill feat) definitely sets off alarm bells in my head.
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Ah but that's the thing. Once you trigger a weakness, you as the Thaumaturge know what that weakness is. You would have to, since you know what "bit of esoterica" triggered it. And again, Antithesis isn't something the GM applies behind the screen. The feat only talks about the Thaumaturge setting the weakness to the highest weakness. That makes it knowledge that the Thaum now has that he can relay to the party.
Nothing in the description of Antithesis gives you information. You apply a bit of esoterica and it works, but it works for you, not necessarily for anyone else. That's the whole conceit of the class feature.
Automatically knowing weaknesses is not RAW and I don't think it's RAI either.
Ah but that's the thing. Once you trigger a weakness, you as the Thaumaturge know what that weakness is. You would have to, since you know what "bit of esoterica" triggered it. And again, Antithesis isn't something the GM applies behind the screen. The feat only talks about the Thaumaturge setting the weakness to the highest weakness. That makes it knowledge that the Thaum now has that he can relay to the party.
Nothing in the description of Antithesis gives you information. You apply a bit of esoterica and it works, but it works for you, not necessarily for anyone else. That's the whole conceit of the class feature.
Automatically knowing weaknesses is not RAW and I don't think it's RAI either.
Damage is not a secret metric. There is no reason for the GM to obfuscate how much of what damage you have done to a creature given in the general combat rules, nor in Antithesis.
And again, Esoteric Antithesis refers to setting the Weakness as something the Thaumaturge is doing, not the GM.
If the creature has a weakness with a value of 2
+ half your level or higher, set the type of weakness to the
creature’s highest weakness.
I suppose the GM could keep the damage type secret, but why? No rule is telling the GM to keep that information secret, so it should be open information.