I fixed “right off the bad”.
And, just to be clear, are you advocating for a utility 10 for the arcanist’s upper range?
Thanks again
If we're keeping things in the 1 - 10 scale, yes. Looks like Arcanists are already there in both the spreadsheet (at least first page -- didn't check exhaustively to see if the other pages said something else) and in the write-up document.
Did we cover how good the heavens Oracle is at control? You have to grab the metamagics for all the things that are immune to mind effecting, but what field of focus doesn’t eat up a lot of feats.
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Not sure how high, but I'd say at least a 9. And that 18 charisma is what you'd expect minimum at level 1. By level 8, you'd have 2 level boosts and at least a +4 headband. So, that puts you at at least 24 charisma, for a +7 modifier. Now, no level 1 spell is meant to be that meaningful by level 8, but the heavens oracle does pretty well at it.
And of course, at level 8, you have hypnotic pattern, which will lock you down in concentration, but is a pretty strong control too.
Edit: on reflection I’d put it at a very high 8 or a regular 9. It’s incredibly powerful for a very long time. Almost game breaking until fairly late level. It can shut down many whole encounters before they even get started. But it does lack in versatility of which saves it can go after.
The list doesn’t really account for this, but if it can’t control something it still has great options of damage or healing.
The list of who gets 10s looks about as right as we can get without the Psychic turning something up to 11 (I don't know what that would be, so saying just in case).
So Cleric doesn't get any 10s, but on the other hand isn't condemned to be bad in any one area (except Skills) unless you're specializing in one area and have to sacrifice something elsewhere.
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I doubt there would ever be 100% agreement on such a list, but you've clearly put a lot of work into it and it looks good.
Wow, looks like Psychcs end up really hurting on stuff other than Debuff/Control. But now I should go look for Iluzry's Psychic guide . . . .
Psychic is one of the few classes I’ve never even seen in actual play. At the same time, nothing in the class entices me enough to want try it myself. Any class fantasy I’d want out of it, I think I could do better with the mesmerist.
^Come to think of it, I also haven't seen any of the Occult Adventurers classes other than Kineticist in play (PbP) either. The one Kineticist I saw was seriously overpowered (one-shotted a Dragon that Ironfang Adventures put up as a main opponent in the middle levels), but that's not a 9/9 caster anyway.
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I mean, I have personal experience with all of the other full casters, and I've played beside most of them too. But I think psychic magic is just really unpopular. And the psychic's spell list just feels very blah, while not having strong class features to make up for it. Like, the witch spell list is pretty blah too, but you have those amazing hexes, so it doesn't really matter.
It doesn't help that psychic seems to be more based on binary save or suck spells while the class wants you to be reliant on a non casting stat of wisdom or charisma. The whole thing just feels really bad to me. And judging by the lack of representation, it must feel bad to a lot of people.
I mean, I have personal experience with all of the other full casters, and I've played beside most of them too. But I think psychic magic is just really unpopular. And the psychic's spell list just feels very blah, while not having strong class features to make up for it. Like, the witch spell list is pretty blah too, but you have those amazing hexes, so it doesn't really matter.
It doesn't help that psychic seems to be more based on binary save or suck spells while the class wants you to be reliant on a non casting stat of wisdom or charisma. The whole thing just feels really bad to me. And judging by the lack of representation, it must feel bad to a lot of people.
I agree, except that I would rate the Witch spell list higher -- depending on which Patron you choose, a Witch can actually be a decent stand-in for a Cleric or (with the addition of the right Metamagic feats) a decent battlefield controlling blaster. Having a decent subset of the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list AND a decent subset of the Cleric/Oracle spell list (with a few other debuffing spells sprinkled in) is not terrible -- not great, but I would rank it above the Psychic spell list (although admittedly I have been disinclined to study the latter exhaustively, due to the high complexity to reward ratio of the Psychic's other class features, in contrast to, for instance, Kineticist, which is high complexity but evidently also high reward).
CockroachTeaParty's Psychic guide didn't include anything from Psychic Anthology. Debilitating Pain and it's mass version are near broken, having played an abomination psychic from level 4 to level 20. I felt dirty the few times I cast Glimpse of the Akashic. Reflective Barrier proved useful at high levels.
It also doesn't include the Magaambyan Telepath archetype which lets you mind control plants and replaces your discipline spells with a Druidic spell per spell level.
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Northern Spotted Owl-
I have looked at your guide and spreadsheet. There is little if anything I would say is wrong, but some things I think that could be added.
Going by class on which I have something to say.
Oracle
Oracles can be completely different depending on the mystery selected.
The Ju-ju Oracle, the one that gets the Spirit Vessels revelation, is one of the best necromancers in the game by dint of that mystery alone and gets some other good stuff as well.
The 3rd party Snakes Mystery gets to be a powerful summoner by taking one
revelation Snake Summoner. The other revelations are good too making this a fine choice if allowed.
Druid
I think the Saurian Shaman archetype deserves to be called out as powerful and flexible.
The totemic summons gives great power and flexibility to your SNA. You can add feats to make SNA better still and get hold of a Rod of Giant Summoning asap.
A sly trick is to take the Destruction domain and when eventually you can summon Cylopes you have a deadly combination that costs not a lot to set up.
Finally, the bonus feats you eventually get while wild shaped promise added combat power. Your wild shape lacks the flexibility of many other druids but you can't have everything.
Witch
The Ashiftah archetype is wondrous.
Witches excell where due to a small or strangely constituted party the caster/s are overworked. If you take the extreme example, if the party has only one caster the best choice imho is a witch.
Firstly, just because witches have more healing magic on their list than other arcane casters does not mean you don't need a divine caster. You do. But if you have a witch with a wand of CLW you go a fair way to covering for the lack.
Secondly, the fact hexes don't run out gives witches a lot of stamina. You solve problems with hexes when you can and preserve your spells for the problems you can't. And if you are out of spells, it isn't the disaster it would be for, say, a wizard as you still have your hexes.
That's kind of tough. The original Juju (if I understand this right) was meant as an NPC for some AP or scenario of some sort. I'm not sure most DMs allow it as a PC class, because it is rather over-powered. So I'm hesitant to rate the Oracle class based on it, or honestly on a 3rd party mystery.
Since Spirit Vessels has not been banned by Paizo or altered by errata, I personally would include it in rating the class but note that many GMs won't allow it.
I just updated "Lion Shaman" to "Lion Shaman & Saurian Shaman" -- those are in fact the best choices. And totemic summons is already specifically called out.
One of the Druid guides goes into raptures over the Saurian Shaman and I think he is right about this. Lion Shamans can use Totemic Summons to call felines and Draconic Shamans Lizards. But the Saurian Shaman gets dinosaurs and reptiles which gives them many more options, which makes it the best of the 3 imho.
Of the categories we rated, I think the "Class Feature Score" best matches what you're talking about with hexes. And the druid & witch rate a 10.
I do like the Ashiftah witch quite a bit. Do you think any of our ratings should be adjusted in light of her?
If I was going to write a guide it would be to the Witch class. I might have done so if PF 1st ed wasn't being gradually replaced by 2nd ed.
The existing guides are OK but they are all rather dated and none of them go into how to play the class correctly. So I tend to go on as I did in my last post at any opportunity.
Since the Witch deservedly gets the maximum for class features I don't think a change is needed.