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I know this isn't the thread for it, but sometimes it really is a bummer that classes between starfinder and pathfinder have to be so different. As others have said, would wicked to have some of the more liked and unique classes in pathfinder, and some of the pathfinder classes in starfinder. I especially like the 'gain points in combat' classes like solarian, vanguard, and soon to be evolutionist. They would be very cool in pathfinder.
That being said I do understand why there isn't much of an overlap. It makes sense.
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Something that I'd *like* to see but am almost certain I never will is the old 3.x transformational class concept, but as full classes rather than archetypes. Like, oozemorph - you're slowly becoming more and more of an ooze, but it's a full-on class (probably martial). Dragon Disciple - you're slowly becoming more and more dragon, but it's a full class (probably a wave caster). Give me some sort of full-class aberrant thing that would let me sink deep into the weird and grappling people with enormously long tentacles while their minds shatter under the exposure and whatnot.
...
This to me is what the sorcerer should be. Not just other wizard that's spontaneous with a little other flavor, I've always hated that.
Really go deep into the awakening your blood aspect of it. You should get the associated heritage feat (if one exists) for your type and gain access to those feats (perhaps even earlier) and eventually end up becoming as close to a full blooded version of that creature as you can. Fiend, celestial, azata, dragon, ooze, aberration, fey, etc.All the options we have for such now, archetypes and heritages, are significantly hampered by the fact you can pair them with any class.
There's lots of different transformation tropes to be filled, I prefer one that focuses on one creature and permanently becoming that thing. Hopefully some day we could see something that focuses on that.
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I want a Drifter class to play to the Sanjuros and Men with no name. The idea I had for achieving the theme was risk based mechanics. Possibly a boost that imparts a penalty elsewhere or a bonus that increases penalty for failure. Perhaps both.
I would call the mechanic "Grit".
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I'd suggest a poke around in the homebrew forum. Mightnightoker has been working on a Drifter class, renamed to Wanderer I think, that sounds like it has a lot of what you want.I want a Drifter class to play to the Sanjuros and Men with no name. The idea I had for achieving the theme was risk based mechanics. Possibly a boost that imparts a penalty elsewhere or a bonus that increases penalty for failure. Perhaps both.
I would call the mechanic "Grit".
I'd been holding off elaborating, but it got picked up by a 3PP. I've since revoked the original PDF access.
I'm asking for date of release, but as far as I know it's already in layout phase. I'll post an update on the original thread when I have more details.
The most significant missing class was an artificer, and we got it with the Inventor.
The rest of the missing classes could be archetypes or new alternate abilities, with one key class features being given. A Mesmerist's stare could be for bards and a Medium's spirits could be for summoners. The Thaumatheurge and the Psychic could get those in the final version.
The Kineticist is what I want to see, it could be a callback to the Soulknife as well. Give it both a Melee and Ranged Strike at 1st level, dealing a specific damage type, a point pool and a series of Talents that alters the area of effect. Melee Strikes follow the Weapon Rune progression and Ranged Strikes follow the Heightened Cantrip progression, as long as the Kineticist has at least 1 point in reserve.
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In terms of flavor, I always prefer classes that have fun, more supernatural powers. Abilities that are between martial and magic. My favorite stuff growing up were things like xmen or pokemon or what have you. Maybe that sort of thing is outside the scope of 2e, where things are either magic or not instead of the supernatural, spell-like, magic, or extraordinary of yesteryear.
One recent trend that I do very much appreciate are the open ended options, where the flavor is much more open to the player. Things like beastkin where you can be whatever animal you wish or summoner eidolons that have broad categories and build a bear options. I would love for that to continue with things like animal companions or druid forms or similar. On the other end it bugs me a lot when flavor gets in the way of mechanics - things like a dragon barbarian that has awesome mechanics but is tied to dragons (which are super boring and overdone to me, personally) and a really annoying anathema, or a giant instinct barbarian that has to have an oversized weapon (why can't I just be a hulk like character?) and another dumb anathema.
Mechanically, characters that can do fun things without spending daily resources, but still can do fun things, are awesome. Things like swashbuckler or kineticist in pf1. Bonus points the more they don't need to rely on equipment - any sort of built in weapon or otherwise makes them feel so much cooler to me, going back to things like xmen.
Classes (or at least feats) that are more specialized towards certain situations or enemies get a pretty quick no thank you from me. I could never see myself playing an investigator, or picking champion feats like dragonslayer oath.
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The rest of the missing classes could be archetypes or new alternate abilities, with one key class features being given. A Mesmerist's stare could be for bards and a Medium's spirits could be for summoners. The Thaumatheurge and the Psychic could get those in the final version.
The Summoner doesn’t really have any possible way to be bent into the shape of a Medium. Did you mean Spiritualist? They were explicitly folded into the Summoner class with Phantom Eidolons.
I’d love to get Mediums back in some form.
EDIT: Psychics did get a very Mesmerist-y feat in the playtest; I imagine they’ll have more of the same in the final release. Mesmerist doesn’t really have a class fantasy unto itself and fits really well done like this, IMO.
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The term Medium was explicitly used in Secrets of Magic in the Divine Tradition Treatise. So I would be surprised if it didn't see a return as a Full Class.
Personally, I believe the Mesmerist should be a Psychic Concious Mind option. Each of the choices presented in the Playtest encompassed a classic Psychic practice, for which I feel mesmerizing/hypnotizing fits. For context, Distant Grasp is telekinesis, Infinite Eye is clairvoyance and precognition, and Silent Whisper is telepathy (with some measure of hypnosis in Nudge Intent). If you ask me, Mesmerizing Gaze, on top of being the same level Feat as Deeper Breakthrough, has the potential to be a Deeper Psi Cantrip if it were retooled a bit. Maybe make their standard Psi Cantrip some sort of gaze attack that deals mental damage, boom "Hypnotic Will" Concious Mind.
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One thing that I think could work for a family of new classes is that the four magic traditions are based on combinations of antipodal essences, but what if we had classes that focused on a single essence instead.
The Medium could be the spiritual essence class.
The Kineticist could be the material essence class.
An Evolutionist or similar self-warper could be the vital essence class.
Something like a mesmerist could be the mental essence class.
Which is to say none of these are spellcasters, but they could have magic abilities like focus spells/cantrips and class features that are magical which exclusively interact with their singular essence.
One thing that I think could work for a family of new classes is that the four magic traditions are based on combinations of antipodal essences, but what if we had classes that focused on a single essence instead.
The Medium could be the spiritual essence class.
The Kineticist could be the material essence class.
An Evolutionist or similar self-warper could be the vital essence class.
Something like a mesmerist could be the mental essence class.Which is to say none of these are spellcasters, but they could have magic abilities like focus spells/cantrips and class features that are magical which exclusively interact with their singular essence.
While such patterns help identify where there's space for development, either James or Mark said it would not guide Paizo's decisions. They have enough ideas boiling around and enough other needs/gaps to fill without giving preference based on filling in any gaps based on balancing representation of magic traditions (et al).
Personally I prefer that they begin with the story, lore, and archetypes (in the sense of genre, not game mechanic).That said, most if not all of those four example classes will likely appear eventually; I just doubt they'll be presented as four facets reflecting meta-traditions.
I kind of wonder if interacting with the Four Essences might sorta be how the Thaumaturges magic works to a degree. Their magic would have to theoretically interact with them in some way, as most magic does. Since they aren't spellcasters, wherein they are combining two or more in some way to produced effects tied to each Tradition, perhaps they are interacting directly with each Essence instead? Just a thought. I feel like Dark Archieves would defiently be the place where secret tomes on the very nature and fabrib of magic would likely exist. So the tiein could be there?
I'd like classes that really want to be in medium armour or light armour.
There's plenty of classes that want to be unarmored or can get the benefits of heavy armour but there's no classes that would choose to wear medium over heavy armour by choice unless they really need the 5 speed.
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Repeating the desires for a warlord. I'd also love to see the herald/envoy type beat, as well.
Mechanically, what I want is a defender other than champion. Champion is great, but there are so many defender mechanics that could be done that it's disappointing we still don't have them after 3 years. I do worry that anything a new defender could do would be overshadowed by champion reactions, but those are like, the strongest class feature in the game probably.
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Yeah, it's kind of weird we haven't gotten a defender class that didn't require being a zealous adherent to a deity and was open to all alignments. I mean, the Evil Champions aren't really even Defenders since their reactions and stuff are selfish/offensive.
Repeating the desires for a warlord. I'd also love to see the herald/envoy type beat, as well.
Mechanically, what I want is a defender other than champion. Champion is great, but there are so many defender mechanics that could be done that it's disappointing we still don't have them after 3 years. I do worry that anything a new defender could do would be overshadowed by champion reactions, but those are like, the strongest class feature in the game probably.
I have always been a fan of the idea of fully defensive class, and feel it is a wholly underutilized concept. The Champion is fitting, but doesn't fully immerse itself in the idea how I'd like it. I know we have Archetypes like Sentinel and Bastion to scratch that itch. But those are more about your characters personal defense. I want a Class or Archetype that fully embraces the "defense of others" trope. Actions and reactions whose sole use is taking or mitigating damage for their allies. I'd even be down with something in it maybe toying with their HP for use with special abilities. With defense as their core concept, they should definitely have one of the highest HP pools as well. Call it Defender, Protector, or, my personal favorite, Guardian. But I really need this in my life.
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One thing that I think could work for a family of new classes is that the four magic traditions are based on combinations of antipodal essences, but what if we had classes that focused on a single essence instead.
The Medium could be the spiritual essence class.
The Kineticist could be the material essence class.
An Evolutionist or similar self-warper could be the vital essence class.
Something like a mesmerist could be the mental essence class.Which is to say none of these are spellcasters, but they could have magic abilities like focus spells/cantrips and class features that are magical which exclusively interact with their singular essence.
Problem I see is that, in the fundational mechanics of the game, Essences are never used per se. They appear only as an in-world explanation for the 4 Traditions.
And I do not expect this to change, because they will not go back and add the Essence tags ex post. At most IMO, we could have a class that draws on 2 adjacent Traditions, like using Arcane and Primal to be a master of Material.
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My pitches:
-echoing the tactician/warlord thing. Imo, I'd like to see both the classic "grant aoe buffs and give other people extra actions" as well as as teamwork style feats, and the ability to support both martials and casters. In my head, the teamwork feats would work similar to sniping duo, where you pick a single teammate to cooperate with the teamwork style feats, but one of the main class features is being able to pick different partners for each feat (so you can pick your gunslinger ally for the redirection shot, your melee guy for a gang up type thing, and your caster for something that makes manipulate and concentrate actions not proc reactions, etc) to give the class a flavor of someone who is good at directing the masses, but learned how to fight REALLY well with their closest allies
-an actual stealth mage (this is probably a better archetype than actual class). Eldritch Trickster rogue is really clunky for this concept, and really feels more like rogue with magical tools than an actual sneaky mage. Wizard with rogue dedication can pull this off somewhat okay, but I'd like an archetype to open the concept up to any caster (witch and sorc feel especially appropriate for this type of deal)
-I like the idea of a monster shifting class; paizo has taken stabs at it before with master chymist, beastmorph, shifter, brute vigilante etc, but not really much of like an actual class dedicated to mutating yourself as your main thing for both utility and combat.
-a class focused on actually summoning. I was a little disappointed in the summoner for 2e because it plays more like a pseudo martial that's less good at being a martial than a martial, but better at casting than martial with a casting dedication. There's nothing wrong with this inherently, but my personal favorite way to play a 1e summoner was use my eidolon as an out of combat utility summon, and in combat, I'd mostly use support spells and my summoning pool as my main combat thing. In my head, such a class would work basically like a wild shape druid, where you get a focus spell to summon with a narrow range of options, and you have to spend feats to expand out your options (perhaps to also include some incarnate options) as well as there being feats that let you enhance your summons. I could also see this being an archetype, perhaps even a summoner class archetype (perhaps trading away the initial free evolution and locking the 2nd level feat to get the focus spell)
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-an actual stealth mage (this is probably a better archetype than actual class). Eldritch Trickster rogue is really clunky for this concept, and really feels more like rogue with magical tools than an actual sneaky mage. Wizard with rogue dedication can pull this off somewhat okay, but I'd like an archetype to open the concept up to any caster (witch and sorc feel especially appropriate for this type of deal)
Yes please.
Gimme spellthief wavecasting spotaneous occult!
One thing that I think could work for a family of new classes is that the four magic traditions are based on combinations of antipodal essences, but what if we had classes that focused on a single essence instead.
The Medium could be the spiritual essence class.
The Kineticist could be the material essence class.
An Evolutionist or similar self-warper could be the vital essence class.
Something like a mesmerist could be the mental essence class.Which is to say none of these are spellcasters, but they could have magic abilities like focus spells/cantrips and class features that are magical which exclusively interact with their singular essence.
While such patterns help identify where there's space for development, either James or Mark said it would not guide Paizo's decisions. They have enough ideas boiling around and enough other needs/gaps to fill without giving preference based on filling in any gaps based on balancing representation of magic traditions (et al).
Personally I prefer that they begin with the story, lore, and archetypes (in the sense of genre, not game mechanic).
Michael expounded on it in...I think my incarnation of this thread but I'm not willing to place money on it. In any case, in a previous version, he explained that he finds the idea of plugging classes into a grid like that far too limiting to the way they design classes, as you place a box around your ideas before you even really start with the idea. To which I would reply, yes, but starting concept first instead of mechanics first is also placing strong limits on what you would explore with the class, 9it's just that the limits are on what mechanics you'd use rather than what concepts are suggested.
Overall, he's the professional game designer, not me. I simply see a logical inconsistency in his argument, in that he is willing to accept one set of limitations but not another. Or, more accurately, he prioritizes one set of freedoms more so than another set, one where I favor the opposite.
It's a creative process, so it can go both directions (and more, of course). Yes, Paizo shouldn't use the grid as a touchstone, guide, or limiting factor, yet they could perhaps spark inspiration from it. Or perhaps not, such is the way of creative endeavors.
-a class focused on actually summoning. I was a little disappointed in the summoner for 2e because it plays more like a pseudo martial that's less good at being a martial than a martial, but better at casting than martial with a casting dedication. There's nothing wrong with this inherently, but my personal favorite way to play a 1e summoner was use my eidolon as an out of combat utility summon, and in combat, I'd mostly use support spells and my summoning pool as my main combat thing. In my head, such a class would work basically like a wild shape druid, where you get a focus spell to summon with a narrow range of options, and you have to spend feats to expand out your options (perhaps to also include some incarnate options) as well as there being feats that let you enhance your summons. I could also see this being an archetype, perhaps even a summoner class archetype (perhaps trading away the initial free evolution and locking the 2nd level feat to get the focus spell)
Okay. It's an interesting idea for a rather extreme class archetype. Keep the wave caster thing, lose the eidolon and tandem actions, and give you a focus spell summon. You could even have evolution feats apply to your summonthing, rather than to your eidolon. Then just add something to give you reasons to stack slotted summoning spells even though you have a focus summoning spell, and the flavor is pretty solid. That still elaves two problems.
- First, less of an issue, is that we don't want to encourage anyone to take too many actions in their turn. A notable part of the fantasy is the "fill the battle with summons" schtick - playing a character who's a one-person army because they're one person who literally brings along an army. That's a non-starter because everyone else at the table hates it, and it's something that PF2 has consciously decided to not allow. So whatever gets put in to allow the idea of both a focus summon and a standard summon, it's unlikely to be having both of them out at once. Possibly you can mix the two together somehow, so that you're throwing your focus summon into your standard summon to have it come out beefier? Something. This is manageable, but it is something that any implementation is going to be limited by, regardless of the fantasy.
- Second, potentially more importantly, is that using focus resources to throw disposable bodies on the field is potentially problematic in a few ways. That's why we got "eidolon HP sharing" in the first place, after all. Entirely disposable tanks, even if they're not particularly good tanks, are potentially kind of OP. Having a designated trapspringer who just requires 10 minutes to resummon is the sort of thing that can trivialize a number of encounters, and so forth. Now, I'm not saying that this is flatly impossible. After all, the champion shows us that we can have healing as a focus spell, and that's... at least marginally adjacent? It's a major issue, though, and putting together something that has enough oomph to be actually satisfying for the people who aren't abusing it, while not being gamebreaking for the people who are, is potentially an issue. PF2 has traditionally been very leery about handing out disposable minions, and I think they have good reason.
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Springing traps is a non-issue because "summoners" can already do it. All they need to do is spend 10 minute treating the wound with battle medicine and they recover all their HP. So saying a focus pool of summons would break things seems off to me.
Same for the "too many actions". That is physically a non-issue with how Paizo made minions/summons work. Even if Paizo added a feat that gave all your summons a reaction (which they currently lack cause minion trait) it really doesn't add that much as to break things.
The design choices that Paizo has made pretty clearly indicate that they consider these things, or something like them, to be an issue. Simply asserting that they're not an issue is not going to be compelling in the face of that, and therefore is not going to make it any more likely that they're going to be willing to make a summoner archetype in this way. The way to actually make it more likely is to consider what their real concerns are, and then try to figure out ways to build the class that would get you want you want without causing the issues that they want to avoid. I'm trying to help with the first of these two tasks. If you believe that I am incorrect, and that their concerns are other than the ones I've suggested, then by all means please share.
Personally, I'd always assumed the "summoning" bit of the Summoner was bound to be a sticking point for many. Which is why I had preferred the name "Invoker" instead. Granted, I see no issue with the current classes fantasy, as it is doing what it says on the tin. Just not in a way many would want. That's just me though.
I'm doubtful we will ever see a summon-focused Archetype or Class myself. I think the closest approximation to the idea of "minion master" I feel many want to play would likely be a Summoner with the Beastmaster and Familar Master Archetypes. Honestly, I think the best gauge of whether or not something like this could work is to see how they handle Undead Minions and Companions once Book of the Dead drops.
The various Necromancer adjacent Archetypes there is certainly going to play with a similar idea to some extent. How they deal with raising corpses will likely color how they would handle conjured creatures in the future. That said, I feel like it's unlikely to be anything gamebreaking. Like, I think the rule that was established in the Core Rulebook of not being able to control any more than 4 undead creatures at a time is likely a hard one. A similar limit is very likely to be placed on summoned creatures, if one doesn't already exist(?). Paizo doesn't want to include any or many options that have potential to break or ruin the system they've obviously put a lot of work in maintaining. But, if the BoD Archetypes show any options which allow a player to really focus on playing with their minions instead of their own character, who knows. I'm really just throwing out dribble for the sake of promoting conversation on the matter. Not that it's likely needed.
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I'd expect Undead Master to be very, very similar to Beastmaster. I'm not going to guarantee it, because they've certainly done unexpectedly interesting things in the past, but that's what I'd be expecting. I wouldn't be surprised if it was somehow mutually exclusive with animal companion as well.
I believe that somewhere there's a "4 minions at a time max" rule, but I couldn't swear to it. If so, that would cover... basically everything we've been talking about other than the eidolon.
I'd expect Undead Master to be very, very similar to Beastmaster. I'm not going to guarantee it, because they've certainly done unexpectedly interesting things in the past, but that's what I'd be expecting. I wouldn't be surprised if it was somehow mutually exclusive with animal companion as well.
I believe that somewhere there's a "4 minions at a time max" rule, but I couldn't swear to it. If so, that would cover... basically everything we've been talking about other than the eidolon.
The only mention of the 4 minion limit that I'm aware of is in the description of Critical Success for the Create Undead Ritual. Leaving out rituals you're capped around 4-5 anyway. 2 sustainable spell summons (requires Cackle), 1 animal companion, 1 familiar, summoner eidolon or inventor construct.
Actually, spontaneous idea, but perhaps it could work to a degree; just not to the degree I think most that want it would like.
I'll just use Master Summoner from 1e as a kind of base. Their shtick, to have as many minion style creatures on the field to play with. For the sake of conversation, we will say that the cap for minions is 4. Now, we will say it is an Class Archetype for the Summoner; the idea could work for other spellcasters too, but for simplicity sake we will go with that.
So, at level 1, they no longer gain access to an Eidolon; at least not the same kind of Eidolon. They still have one, but it functions as a sort of special summon instead. Maybe you trade Manifest Eidolon for "Summon Eidolon", which gives this Eidolon the Minion and Summoned traits, but it is still a bit studier than most conjurered creatures? Not sure on this bit honestly. Maybe make it a focus spell, just to evoke the spell-like summoning Master Summoner had? And they don't gain Act Together, they purely have to direct their Eidolon as they would any other minion.
Anyways, the Summoner still gains things like Evolutions as such, but these Evolutions are used to apply to the summoned creatures, whether you summoned Eidolon or those summoned via spells. Where spells are concerned, they are still a Wave Caster, so their spells are limited, furthermore by being only summon spells. But, their whole feat economy focuses on improving these creatures. These creatures, no matter what you summon or how many, share an HP pool, perhaps your own, with a sort of break threshold, where depending on how many uou have summoned at once and the total HP, there is a limit to how much an individual creature can take? Idk.
Back to the improvements. The Master Summonera whole feat progression is about granting these summons special augmentations/evolutions to make them more interesting and robust. So any evolution Feats, to an extent, apply to these creatures. Mind you. Again, you can only have four at a time. But, perhaps to sort of capitalize on action economy, there is a Feat or feature that allows you to summon two or the same creature with one spell? At a point, due to wave casting, your doing to run short on how many creatures are going to be there, because you're going to run out of spells. To this, you still have a summon in the form of your Eidolon, but they are clearly less powerful than a regular Summoners would be. But, by giving them the ability to summon 2 at once, if helps their action economy a bit, which will laregly be focused on commanding these summons. Further, in an effort to improve them, perhaps they, like Eidolons, can use your characters Reaction. This would still be limited to one reaction per round. So if you have two, say, Guard Dogs, and something happens happens that triggers, say, Eidolon's Opportunity, than only one can use it?
I'm not really sure how this could play out in practice. I'm just kind of shooting out random ideas that came to me. I haven't actually had a chance e to play a Summoner yet. So it's all sort of theoretical.
EDIT: Also, Command Undead is where they mention the 4 limit cap. I can't find anything in regards to conjured creatures, but 4 seems like a fair cap to me.
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The only mention of the 4 minion limit that I'm aware of is in the description of Critical Success for the Create Undead Ritual. Leaving out rituals you're capped around 4-5 anyway. 2 sustainable spell summons (requires Cackle), 1 animal companion, 1 familiar, summoner eidolon or inventor construct.
You can do it without cackle. Effortless Concentration can let you pull it off just fine. As a witch, if you have both, you can manage three. Of you have Effortless Concentration, Cackle, and three focus points, you can have up to four running (though at that point you literally have no other actions_.
Turn 1: summon
Turn 2: sustain with Effortless Concentration. Summon.
Turn 3: sustain with EC, cackle x1 (1 total focus point spent). Summon.
Turn 4: sustain with EC, cackle x2 (3 total focus points spent). Summon.
Turn 5+: sustain with EC, sustain with 3 actions.
...now, this is pretty much never going to be a good idea, and assumes that no one is killing your summons while they accumulate, but (so far as I can see) it would work.
Also, Eidolons are explicitly not minions.
The only mention of the 4 minion limit that I'm aware of is in the description of Critical Success for the Create Undead Ritual. Leaving out rituals you're capped around 4-5 anyway. 2 sustainable spell summons (requires Cackle), 1 animal companion, 1 familiar, summoner eidolon or inventor construct.You can do it without cackle. Effortless Concentration can let you pull it off just fine. As a witch, if you have both, you can manage three. Of you have Effortless Concentration, Cackle, and three focus points, you can have up to four running (though at that point you literally ahve no other actions.
Turn 1: summon
Turn 2: sustain with Effortless Concentration. Summon.
Turn 3: sustain with EC, cackle x1 (1 total focus point spent). Summon.
Turn 4: sustain with EC, cackle x2 (3 total focus points spent). Summon.
Turn 5+: sustain with EC, sustain with 3 actions....now, this is pretty much never going to be a good idea, and assumes that no one is killing your summons while they accumulate, but (so far as I can see) it would work.
Also, Eidolons are explicitly not minions.
Totally forgot about effortless concentration and Eidolon not being labeled with Minion trait. Thanks for the info!
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The only mention of the 4 minion limit that I'm aware of is in the description of Critical Success for the Create Undead Ritual. Leaving out rituals you're capped around 4-5 anyway. 2 sustainable spell summons (requires Cackle), 1 animal companion, 1 familiar, summoner eidolon or inventor construct.You can do it without cackle. Effortless Concentration can let you pull it off just fine. As a witch, if you have both, you can manage three. Of you have Effortless Concentration, Cackle, and three focus points, you can have up to four running (though at that point you literally have no other actions_.
Turn 1: summon
Turn 2: sustain with Effortless Concentration. Summon.
Turn 3: sustain with EC, cackle x1 (1 total focus point spent). Summon.
Turn 4: sustain with EC, cackle x2 (3 total focus points spent). Summon.
Turn 5+: sustain with EC, sustain with 3 actions....now, this is pretty much never going to be a good idea, and assumes that no one is killing your summons while they accumulate, but (so far as I can see) it would work.
Also, Eidolons are explicitly not minions.
You missed that the Eidolon can cast its own spells with Magical Adept and Summon its own creature on Turn 0, then sustain it with Act Together still leaving the Summoner with 3 actions.
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IIRC a couple of designers have commented that they were looking for inspiration from the Troop mechanic for the "summons a horde of minions," character fantasy. However they weren't going to copy it word for word for PCs because they felt it was too complicated for something that would show up every combat.
Now whether that worked out like they hoped in time for Book Of The Dead to fulfill the desire for Necromancers with an undead army is yet unknown.
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You missed that the Eidolon can cast its own spells with Magical Adept and Summon its own creature on Turn 0, then sustain it with Act Together still leaving the Summoner with 3 actions.
Ah. Good catch. I'd been thinking of the combo as witch-specific, but it's true that it would be possible to grab cackle via archetype and then build up your focus spell supply through whatever. The summon that your Eidolon manages is going to be pretty weak, though. Badly underleveled summons aren't great.
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Personally would like to see something akin to the Path of War classes, though how the various Manoeuvres would work in the bounds of the 3 Action economy is a question.
Thematically a Warder isn't that far off Champion, though won't be able to keep the +AC aura or the AoO relating abilities it has. Harbinger is also an interesting one, playing off of using Curse abilities to hamper foes. Warlord isn't that far from Swashbuckler in spirit, so could be archetype maybe.
Otherwise, could see the Manoeuvre list becoming streamlined by taking advantage of the Heightened framework given by spells. Sticking point might be the Stances as 2E would want those kept in Feats, but perhaps chance for some more Focus Point Stances like the Monk has?
I think something inspired by path of war could be wonderful.
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I mentioned this in another thread and everyone jumped on me and called me an idiot, but I think an inquisitor would be a good canidate for the magus-style spellcasting but also have the option to cast from any tradition. So like, an inquisition against pollution would be a primal caster, or an inquisition against stifling learning would be an arcane caster.
I mentioned this in another thread and everyone jumped on me and called me an idiot, but I think an inquisitor would be a good canidate for the magus-style spellcasting but also have the option to cast from any tradition. So like, an inquisition against pollution would be a primal caster, or an inquisition against stifling learning would be an arcane caster.
This would be an interesting take on it, but I feel Divine works well enough for their Tradition. Mostly because a lot of Deities already provide the means of filling those stories out. A Inquisitor of Gozreh would be against pollution, while an Inquisitor of Nethys would be against the stifling of learning. Similarly, I feel to be an Inquistor, one would need an almost religious ferver or zeal towards their cause, still making the Divine Tradition fitting.
That said, it certainly isn't a bad idea imo. I could be wrong, but it's likely a lot of the pushback was probably from those who are kind of exhausted by classes that have "Versatile Traditions". We have a few of them now in the Sorcerer, Witch, and Summoner; so I think most people would like to see more interesting caster ideas. Singular Tradition classes or even ones that use maybe two or three Traditions work just fine I think, and more of those seem to be what people want to see at this point. Taking a step back from having every potential Caster being a "pick-a-tradition" would be refreshing. But, I personally like your idea. It makes sense imo.
Path of War's model is honestly kind of what I was expecting PF2 to do originally with unique Martial activities. Instead it's mostly just stuff like Power Attack which is kind of boring.
Inventors have some neat feat actions so it's something I hope they lean into with future classes, and with future support for existing classes, assuming that ever starts happening again.
What I really want to see are characters that can just interact with the game in unique and cool ways without being super resource strapped, which is a problem with full casters and focus spell based solutions.
Taking a step back from having every potential Caster being a "pick-a-tradition" would be refreshing.
Refreshing in what way? It's not like if we took three traditions away from the witch it would suddenly be a more exciting class.
That's not to say every caster needs to be tradition flexible, but it's a really economical way to to let more players play the characters they want without having to wait months or years for some alternate class to release.
Personally, I don't feel any kind of way about it, afterall, I am working on a homebrew class atm that does have a choice in all four Traditions. But I know there are some people who would like to see something else done. Not every magic-user needs be placed in a "build-a-mage" factory where there Tradition is concerned. Paizo seems like they have certain stories they are trying to tell through their classes, and I think a Casters Tradition tends to be very much a part of that. Otherwise every Caster would do it.
That said, I feel the best way to handle granting different Traditions to those Casters with a set Tradition could be a simple Class Archetype which allows you to just change your Magical Tradition and nothing else. It'll allow players to tell more interesting stories with their characters, but is something I think would likely be Rare and require a conversation with your GM. Not sure if that'll ever happen. I feel the best place for that would have been in SoM. But who knows. Maybe we will see books on each Tradition that features them.