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Because of a liberal amount of authorized leakes by people like nonat1s and the Rules Lawyer, I have gotten the alpha build of my Thaumaturge's guide up the day of Dark Archive's offical release. I'd love some feedback, I know I've made probably a million mistakes. But I hope you like it and find it and find it useful! Let me know what you think with some constructive criticisms!
On the kitsune marrtial artist build... the early martial arts styles all explicitly limit you to only using their built-in attack, which means that you're going to have to jump in and out of stance if you actually want to use foxfire.
Stumbling Stance is especially odd because its advancement feat Stumbling Feint (at level 8) only applies if you have Flurry of Blows... which Martial Artist does not offer.
On the other hand, if you're willing to go monk for your martial arts needs... Stumbling Stance is Monk lvl 1, so it's just as accessible as it was before, and that opens up Flurry of Blows at 10 (which is fantastic for any unarmed build, especially one that has no native flourishes) and then Stumbling Feint at 12 (which makes Flurry of Blows that much better - especially for someone who's got solid Charisma). Unfortunately, Stumbling Feint only works in Stumbling Stance, and therefore can't help you with your foxfire attacks.
Of course, if you're already taking Monk for Flurry of Blows, you might want to seriously consider Stunning Fist as well... as at that point you should probably be firing off a flurry pretty much every turn regardless.
Side note - wand casters should be investing in some means of consistently making ranged strikes. If nothing else, grab ammunition thaumaturgy and an air repeater. Half the point of wand is that it's an in-class way to deal damage that doesn't care about MAP.
Also, your wacky build options missed the one about the Kenku fan build that uses Lightning Arc instead of the wand.
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Side note - wand casters should be investing in some means of consistently making ranged strikes. If nothing else, grab ammunition thaumaturgy and an air repeater. Half the point of wand is that it's an in-class way to deal damage that doesn't care about MAP.
Also, your wacky build options missed the one about the Kenku fan build that uses Lightning Arc instead of the wand.
For the Kitsune marital Artist, I mostly assumed no stance and just punching for a d6. Thaumaturges deal so much damage anyway, I figured dropping in and out of stances wasn’t worth it.
As for the wand caster, between action economy of moving, and exploiting vulnerability so you can (at level 9) intensify weakness, I figured the action economy couldn’t cover it.
Don’t know what arc lighting tengu build you mean. Point me to it and I’ll write it up.
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I've debated whether or not to say this, but you asked for feedback.
I'm not going to read your guide. It might be okay, but it seems impossible that you'd have any relevant actual play experience with a class that was released less than 24 hours ago.
I hope that it's good, but honestly, I'd encourage you to take this post down and let this percolate a bit -- maybe play the class and offer first hand experiences or spend time discussing with others to consolidate their experiences rather than rush to be the first one with your name of the cover.
I disagree with your intervention.
You don't need experience to write a guide. When you read the Fighter (for example), you can say without mistake that you need to focus on one type of weapon and that the free-hand Fighter is a thing.
Also, you can be knowledgeable enough about the game to know what tends to work and what doesn't.
Releasing a guide at day 1 is really helpful as it's the moment where no one knows about the class. If you want to build a Thaumaturge right now, you have absolutely no guidance. Early guidance, even if it's not backed up by experience, is still better than no guidance at all.
Also, guides can (and even must in my opinion) be improved over time. It can be a current state of knowledge about the Thaumaturge.
And guides discussions also gather inputs from a lot of people, once again something helpful to improve everyone's knowledge of the class.
just because you are suggesting to use the gnome flickmace i can say that you are an evil being and must be rightfully smited. Away with your black magic.
In all seriousness though, i believe you should get a bit more experience before presenting a guide, not necessarily a 1-20 playthrough but you get what i mean.
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Guides can provide interpretive and creative help to those without the time or ability to fully read, understand, and integrate a class’s options with other game mechanics. This has value without play experience if the analysis is correct.
And there are more than enough guides out there based in part on play experience that is just wrong because they misunderstood the rules and could have used a preplay guide before they started down the wrong path. There’s a Starfinder guide writer who always has one or two fundamental rules misunderstandings that he’s been playing wrong for months and is now trying to spread. But the other 95% of his guide is usually pretty good.
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To all you who said I can't/shouldn't post a guide until I've played the thaumaturge a bunch:
1) Did you miss the fact that this is an alpha build? I put it up there very clearly. Third line of the entire document, in bold too.
2) You . . . DO realize I can change this if I get things wrong . . . right? Like, this is a google doc, it's editable. I'll even put a note in if I change something major so that people coming back to the guide will see I got something wrong.
3) How . . . how much PF2 do you think I play? There's something like 84 possible combinations of Thaumaturge just from the implements alone. By your logic I'd have to do a deep play of like, 100 different thaumaturges to 'accurately assess' how to play one. Instead I used my knowledge of the system, my system mastery, and some educated guesswork to come up with a decent idea on how the class should play. As I play a thaumaturge, I'll edit any things I find but honestly, knowing the class abilities and having decent system mastery gives you a pretty good idea of how the class'll work.
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Anyway, there's no authority or credentials that can say if one of us knows the game well enough to write a guide.
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I have not read this guide yet but I want to throw my hat in the ring and say, I approve of this attempt to write a guide and Vamp's willingness to lend their two-cents to players who want help in making their first Thaumaturge.
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Guide writing is cool and we don't have enough guide writers in the community for gatekeeping guides to make much sense.
Yeah, it's early, but you can still look at options and try to analyze them. If new options or refuting opinions come to light as the class matures, guides can always be updated, or at the very least disagreed with/debated by other users.
In general I think it's a lot more helpful to say something like "I don't like this part of your guide because..." rather than nebulously criticizing the idea of the guide itself.
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I appreciate this guide! I've been very excited about the Thaum and have been pouring over the rules. But this guide still caught a bunch of rules and interactions that I would have missed entirely on my own. Thank you for the effort!
Side note - wand casters should be investing in some means of consistently making ranged strikes. If nothing else, grab ammunition thaumaturgy and an air repeater. Half the point of wand is that it's an in-class way to deal damage that doesn't care about MAP.
Also, your wacky build options missed the one about the Kenku fan build that uses Lightning Arc instead of the wand.
For the Kitsune marital Artist, I mostly assumed no stance and just punching for a d6. Thaumaturges deal so much damage anyway, I figured dropping in and out of stances wasn’t worth it.
As for the wand caster, between action economy of moving, and exploiting vulnerability so you can (at level 9) intensify weakness, I figured the action economy couldn’t cover it.
Don’t know what arc lighting tengu build you mean. Point me to it and I’ll write it up.
The Foxfire Kitsune Martial artist build that you suggest explicitly has Martial Artist dedication and a stance listed in its required feats. It mentions Stumbling Stance in particular as one to consider. If that's nto what you meant, then you should perhaps go back and look at it again.
The issue with the wand caster if you're *not* generating standard strikes in any way is that it's kind of terrible. Baseline, it does less damage than a cantrip. With adept and intensify, it's arguably marginally better than a cantrip, but it's still taking three actions rather than two, and "marginally better than a cantrip" still isn't great. Cursed Effigy can help a bit, but for that you need to make a strike with physical damage. Now, at level 17, you can take it up to Paragon, which actually starts being decent, and at level 19, the intensify action becomes a freebie, but until then you're swinging like a caster who's run out of spells and that's just not good enough.
The Kenku fan build is based on the following bits:
- Storm's Lash (lvl 1 kenku feat): gives Lightning Arc as an inherent spell
- Tengu Feather Fan (lvl 5 tengu feat): lets you activate the fan as many times per day as you like to cast a heritage/ancestry cantrip based on your class DC.
- Cursed Effigy (lvl 8 thaumaturge feat): single action that you can take when you are exploiting vulnerability on a target. Gives that target -2 penalty to saving throws versus items that use your thaumaturge class DC.
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Side note - wand casters should be investing in some means of consistently making ranged strikes. If nothing else, grab ammunition thaumaturgy and an air repeater. Half the point of wand is that it's an in-class way to deal damage that doesn't care about MAP.
Also, your wacky build options missed the one about the Kenku fan build that uses Lightning Arc instead of the wand.
For the Kitsune marital Artist, I mostly assumed no stance and just punching for a d6. Thaumaturges deal so much damage anyway, I figured dropping in and out of stances wasn’t worth it.
As for the wand caster, between action economy of moving, and exploiting vulnerability so you can (at level 9) intensify weakness, I figured the action economy couldn’t cover it.
Don’t know what arc lighting tengu build you mean. Point me to it and I’ll write it up.
The Foxfire Kitsune Martial artist build that you suggest explicitly has Martial Artist dedication and a stance listed in its required feats. It mentions Stumbling Stance in particular as one to consider. If that's nto what you meant, then you should perhaps go back and look at it again.
The issue with the wand caster if you're *not* generating standard strikes in any way is that it's kind of terrible. Baseline, it does less damage than a cantrip. With adept and intensify, it's arguably marginally better than a cantrip, but it's still taking three actions rather than two, and "marginally better than a cantrip" still isn't great. Cursed Effigy can help a bit, but for that you need to make a strike with physical damage. Now, at level 17, you can take it up to Paragon, which actually starts being decent, and at level 19, the intensify action becomes a freebie, but until then you're swinging like a caster who's run out of spells and that's just not good enough.
The Kenku fan build is based on the following bits:
- Storm's Lash (lvl 1 kenku feat): gives Lightning Arc as an inherent spell
- Tengu...
The wandcaster also has the option of firing off multiple different types of energy (useful against skeletons) and can eventually blow up multiple people a round. Plus it is a full scale for 1/2 damage, which is pretty rare. Plus it is technically not a spell, which is great as it doesn't trigger certain things like 'gets +2 to saves vs. all spells" which is surprisingly common.
Sorry, I did copy-paste the kitsune martial artist from another thing I wrote because they were so similar, I thought I had fixed it, but I guess not. The plan is to get martial artist dedication for the d6 fists of fury (that can lethal or nonlethal for free) and just go with that, no stance needed. I'll fix that. I only do this because the Kitsune bite attack is not technically officially legal (showing up in one one-shot and not being made PFS legal AFAIK) otherwise the bite attack might be better and ignore martial artist entirely.
So the Tengu Build gives you . . . infinite legendary proficiency lightning Arcs? I mean . . . that's nice but why not just be a wizard? Seems like a long walk for a small drink of water is all I'm saying. What am I missing?
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Your writeup of Tome seems to have created an issue with the adept benefit that it doesn't actually have, by missing a detail in the general rules of Encounter Mode.
Step 1: Start Your Turn Many things happen automatically at the start of your turn— it’s a common point for tracking the passage of time for effects that last multiple rounds. At the start of each of your turns, take these steps in any order you choose:
• If you created an effect lasting for a certain number of rounds, reduce the number of rounds remaining by 1. The effect ends if the duration is reduced to 0. For example, if you cast a spell that lasts 3 rounds on yourself during your first turn of a fight, it would affect you during that turn, decrease to 2 rounds of duration at the start of your second turn, decrease to 1 round of duration at the start of your third turn, and expire at the start of your fourth turn.
• You can use 1 free action or reaction with a trigger of “Your turn begins” or something similar.
• If you’re dying, roll a recovery check (page 459).
• Do anything else that is specified to happen at the start of your turn.The last step of starting your turn is always the same.
• Regain your 3 actions and 1 reaction. If you haven’t spent your reaction from your last turn, you lose it—you can’t “save” actions or reactions from one turn to use during the next turn. If a condition prevents you from being able to act, you don’t regain any actions or your reaction. Some abilities or conditions (such as quickened and slowed) can change how many actions you regain and whether you regain your reaction. If you lose actions and gain additional actions (such as if you’re both quickened and slowed), you choose which actions to lose.
Because of this, the Recall Knowledge at the start of your turn from the Tome Adept benefit must always take place before you regain your actions so you won't be losing one of your three actions to it, even without any text saying that it is a free action, or optional.
The wandcaster also has the option of firing off multiple different types of energy (useful against skeletons) and can eventually blow up multiple people a round. Plus it is a full scale for 1/2 damage, which is pretty rare. Plus it is technically not a spell, which is great as it doesn't trigger certain things like 'gets +2 to saves vs. all spells" which is surprisingly common.
Sorry, I did copy-paste the kitsune martial artist from another thing I wrote because they were so similar, I thought I had fixed it, but I guess not. The plan is to get martial artist dedication for the d6 fists of fury (that can lethal or nonlethal for free) and just go with that, no stance needed. I'll fix that. I only do this because the Kitsune bite attack is not technically officially legal (showing up in one one-shot and not being made PFS legal AFAIK) otherwise the bite attack might be better and ignore martial artist entirely.
So the Tengu Build gives you . . . infinite legendary proficiency lightning Arcs? I mean . . . that's nice but why not just be a wizard? Seems like a long walk for a small drink of water is all I'm saying. What am I missing?
"eventually" is after level 17. Yes, at very high levels, wandcasters get notably better. If I were told to build a lvl 20 thaum for a one-shot, I might go for that... but the vast majority of the active life for most characters will be well below that. They're even worse int eh very early game - one suggestion I've seen is to take wand as your second implement, but first adept.
Admittedly, the fact that you deal half damage on a successful save is meaningful, and not something I was taking into account... but electric arc gets the same. It's still in cantrip or even subcantrip territory for much of your career. The saves versus spells and the choose your element thing are situationally useful, but they're not enough to bring it up. At a basic level, if you're planning on having your primary contribution to the fight be "I have a wand and I fling magic", then you're not contributing enough.
Now, a wand plus even a mediocre attempt at a ranged strike? That's a potentially significantly higher degree of contribution. It lets you throw damage on turns where you can only afford one action's worth of attacks on the enemy, and on turns where you can afford three such actions, it lets you do *both*. It also gives you access to Cursed Effigy, which looks like it was pretty much made for the wand. This gets even better if you're using an unarmed attack of some sort and monk it for the FoB at lvl 10, though that does take some building towards.
The tengu build gives you lightning arcs with full proficiency on a martial chassis. The point here is... casters fire off their two-action spell, and then they have an action that they have to figure out how to use. Martials make their first attack, and then every attack that follows gets worse because MAP. If you have a decent spell attack and also have a decent martial attack (which both the fan and the wand can give you as a thaum) then you can take the best of both, and (on turns where you don't need actions for anything else) you can do a nice bit of damage that way. From a thaum perspective, the tengu trick is basically a way to spend two ancestry feats and get something that functions same as or better than the wand for much of your career, thus letting you act as if you're a wand-caster while investing in other implements.
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Your writeup of Tome seems to have created an issue with the adept benefit that it doesn't actually have, by missing a detail in the general rules of Encounter Mode.
Because of this, the Recall Knowledge at the start of your turn from the Tome Adept benefit must always take place before you regain your actions so you won't be losing one of your three actions to it, even without any text saying that it is a free...Step 1: Start Your Turn Many things happen automatically at the start of your turn— it’s a common point for tracking the passage of time for effects that last multiple rounds. At the start of each of your turns, take these steps in any order you choose:
• If you created an effect lasting for a certain number of rounds, reduce the number of rounds remaining by 1. The effect ends if the duration is reduced to 0. For example, if you cast a spell that lasts 3 rounds on yourself during your first turn of a fight, it would affect you during that turn, decrease to 2 rounds of duration at the start of your second turn, decrease to 1 round of duration at the start of your third turn, and expire at the start of your fourth turn.
• You can use 1 free action or reaction with a trigger of “Your turn begins” or something similar.
• If you’re dying, roll a recovery check (page 459).
• Do anything else that is specified to happen at the start of your turn.The last step of starting your turn is always the same.
• Regain your 3 actions and 1 reaction. If you haven’t spent your reaction from your last turn, you lose it—you can’t “save” actions or reactions from one turn to use during the next turn. If a condition prevents you from being able to act, you don’t regain any actions or your reaction. Some abilities or conditions (such as quickened and slowed) can change how many actions you regain and whether you regain your reaction. If you lose actions and gain additional actions (such as if you’re both quickened and slowed), you choose which actions to lose.
Thanks for pointing that out, though it raises a few more questions and you have to get pretty in the weeds to figure it out. When I get time I’ll include a note.
I mean, the whole problem in the first place is pretty deep in the weeds.
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there are more than enough guides out there based in part on play experience that is just wrong because they misunderstood the rules and could have used a preplay guide before they started down the wrong path.
Its just one of the ways we learn, to check how others interpret the rules. Guide writers also like being corrected. Its embarassing of course, but its better than remaining wrong IMHO. I do still find an odd bit here and there where I misinterpreted a rule. I also try to acknowledge the grey areas of the rules, or if I disagree with a popular opinion.
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I don’t think the Tengu build works the way you think it does. Fist of all, the fan is not a weapon, implement, or esoterica, so it turns off implement empowerment (maybe a REAL KIND GM would let it count as regalia?) Secondly, cursed effigy requires you to hit the target of your exploit weakness with a physical attack first, then, as an action, you can give them a -2 penalty to their Saves. but only the guy you are exploiting weakness on, so if you electric arc, only one guy takes the penalty to Saves. I mean, I can put it in, but it takes a turn to get going, requires a physical bit, and you gimp yourself by turning off implement empowerment for the strike that you have to make. And after 1-2 turns your target will be dead anyway.
Nice guide so far! Two weapons I think you overlooked are the Air Repeater and Long Air Repeater. They have d4 damage dice, sure, but that isn’t as big a problem with all of the Thaumaturge’s damage bonuses. They’re also simple weapons, which means a level 1 character with access to them has a 1-handed ranged weapon that they don’t need to use an action to reload.
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Nice guide so far! Two weapons I think you overlooked are the Air Repeater and Long Air Repeater. They have d4 damage dice, sure, but that isn’t as big a problem with all of the Thaumaturge’s damage bonuses. They’re also simple weapons, which means a level 1 character with access to them has a 1-handed ranged weapon that they don’t need to use an action to reload.
I'll put the air repeater in. Looking at the description of the long air repeater, I think it is supposed to be two-handed and there was a misprint, because it keeps referring to its 'one handed variant.' (the air repeater)
Side note, the air repeater is still uncommon (even though it is simple) meaning you can't just buy it at level 1 unless you are from the Shackles, Alkenstar, Drougun's hold, etc.
I wonder what other stuff we could dredge up that uses class DC to utilize cursed effigy with. It has to come from an item specifically. I think it's only really meant for scrolls. Anything else?
They've got a feat that lets them use their class DC in place of an item DC. It's either once per encounter or once per day.
I don’t think the Tengu build works the way you think it does. Fist of all, the fan is not a weapon, implement, or esoterica, so it turns off implement empowerment (maybe a REAL KIND GM would let it count as regalia?) Secondly, cursed effigy requires you to hit the target of your exploit weakness with a physical attack first, then, as an action, you can give them a -2 penalty to their Saves. but only the guy you are exploiting weakness on, so if you electric arc, only one guy takes the penalty to Saves. I mean, I can put it in, but it takes a turn to get going, requires a physical bit, and you gimp yourself by turning off implement empowerment for the strike that you have to make. And after 1-2 turns your target will be dead anyway.
Hmmm. Hadn't thought about the loss of implement empowerment. I also hadn't thought about the idea that you could turn otherwise useful nonweapon things into implements.
Cursed effigy is awkward in general, but that's baked into the feat itself.
I was hoping that the Beast Gunner archetype would be an interesting pick for Thaumaturges, since they have a feat that lets them replace a magic item’s fixed DC with their Class DC and a lot of beast guns have fixed DCs. Unfortunately, most beast guns are 2-handed and the only 1-handed beast gun needs 2 actions to reload.
Kind of sad about that, TBH.
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Something that I noticed while reading it: you mention the Blazons of Shared Power in the weapon section, under the recommendation of Longsword and Warhammer.
From what I'm getting out if that text, the Blazons only work when both weapons are wielded at the same time, I believe, since they're meant as a cost-saving measure for dual-wielding PCs, so they don't bankrupt themselves buying two of every rune they plan to use. Given Thaumaturges appear to need one hand free to swap between implements, I don't think the blazons would work if you have one of them in hand and the other sheathed, switching as needed.
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Something that I noticed while reading it: you mention the Blazons of Shared Power in the weapon section, under the recommendation of Longsword and Warhammer.
From what I'm getting out if that text, the Blazons only work when both weapons are wielded at the same time, I believe, since they're meant as a cost-saving measure for dual-wielding PCs, so they don't bankrupt themselves buying two of every rune they plan to use. Given Thaumaturges appear to need one hand free to swap between implements, I don't think the blazons would work if you have one of them in hand and the other sheathed, switching as needed.
Ah, dang, you are right. My bad. Would you believe I . . . meant to say you have to be juggling them with juggler dedication?
I'll fix that. Does limit your options though. Ugh.
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Thanks for writing the guide. It was an enjoyable read, and I appreciated the frequent pictures.
The current guide reads:
I don't think this is correct. Personal Antithesis "imposes a custom weakness" on a creature, and the rules for calculating damage say, "If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value."Double-Dipping Weaknesses
It is possible to double dip a weakness, sort of. If your attack already trigger’s a monster’s weakness, you can instead choose to give it a personal antithesis instead. So, if fighting a Troll and you have a flaming weapon already, you can instead choose to give it a personal antithesis, and trigger both its fire weakness and it’s ‘you’ weakness.
Yeah, that's a bit in the weeds, but after the magus controversy, I THINK it has been ruled that different 'types' of damage are different instances. So if your longsword with a flaming rune does 1d8+3 slashing damage, and 1d6 fire damage, those are different 'instances' of damage. (after all, resist all applies separately to both.) So if your longsword has a flaming rune, and you hit a troll, your personal antithesis goes on the longsword damage, and your fire rune triggers the fire weakness separately.
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I think I have not seen mention of the Pathfinder Agent archetype. It is very good for a RK Thaumaturge (as it is for any RK character actually). And it improves your Esoteric Lore to Expert at level 2.
While not explicitly stated (which is something that needs errattaed) I think that Esoteric Lore is a lot like Bardic Lore in that it isn't a 'lore skill' so much as a class feature. As such it only levels up when your class says it does. Just like other classes can't snag additional lore for esoteric lore or bardic lore, you also can't use skill increases to get it up. But it goes to expert at level 3 anyway, no real need to throw a class feat at it just to make it expert one level early.
Also, updated the guide to have level 6 class feats. I thought they would be cooler but . . . eh, after looking at them none of them are that great.
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I don't know if you noticed this yet, but you have a section where you say,
"Double-Dipping Weaknesses
It is possible to double dip a weakness, sort of. If your attack already trigger’s a monster’s weakness, you can instead choose to give it a personal antithesis instead. So, if fighting a Troll and you have a flaming weapon already, you can instead choose to give it a personal antithesis, and trigger both its fire weakness and it’s ‘you’ weakness."
This does not always work, because of the following rule regarding weaknesses:
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=345
"If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value."
So, for the flaming sword example, you could use the personal anti-thesis to trigger the 'you' weakness for the slashing damage that the sword does, and then the 1d6 fire damage that the flaming sword does would trigger the troll's fire weakness (I think that's how it would work, those are 2 different damage instances, right?). But, if you were attacking a werewolf with a silver sword, you could not do this, because the silver weakness is already triggered by the slashing damage, and you don't combine weaknesses.
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I don't know if you noticed this yet, but you have a section where you say,
"Double-Dipping Weaknesses
It is possible to double dip a weakness, sort of. If your attack already trigger’s a monster’s weakness, you can instead choose to give it a personal antithesis instead. So, if fighting a Troll and you have a flaming weapon already, you can instead choose to give it a personal antithesis, and trigger both its fire weakness and it’s ‘you’ weakness."This does not always work, because of the following rule regarding weaknesses:
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=345
"If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value."
So, for the flaming sword example, you could use the personal anti-thesis to trigger the 'you' weakness for the slashing damage that the sword does, and then the 1d6 fire damage that the flaming sword does would trigger the troll's fire weakness (I think that's how it would work, those are 2 different damage instances, right?). But, if you were attacking a werewolf with a silver sword, you could not do this, because the silver weakness is already triggered by the slashing damage, and you don't combine weaknesses.
Lol, we just had this discussion 5 posts up. Aparantly the writers forgot that rule because Mios did exactly what you said in his iconic fight write-up and the guys said it would work so . . . who knows?
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Mios was cheating. The glabrezu was done dirty.
"Wait a minute! Did you just exploit a bunch of weaknesses with one attack?"
"Yeah. So?"
"That's against the rules, isn't it?"
"Screw the rules! I have esoterica!"
If an attack triggers multiple weaknesses, only the highest applies.
Slightly incorrect. If an instance of damage triggers multiple weaknesses, only the highest applies.
A single attack can have multiple damage instances and trigger multiple weaknesses (or resistances) as a result. Like if your slashing weapon deals additional fire damage you can trigger both slashing and fire weaknesses (or slashing resistance and fire weakness, etc).
Also, Word of God is that personal antithesis is designed to stack with material weaknesses. YMMV on whether that means anything or not (since it contradicts the CRB and isn't called out explicitly in dark archive), but it's at least worth bringing up in the discussion.
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Hmm. Pretty sure you consider all the damage of a strike to be a single instance. It's more apparent with the resistances, which have the same rule but a separate call out for resist all?
Though if it's supposed to stack then I'll just assume errata is coming or something.
On a different note - Scroll Thaumaturgy debatably allows you to save the action you'd normally need to use to draw a scroll out before casting it.
That's actually not true, explicitly called out by the champion. If someone hits the rogue for 5 piercing and 5 fire, and 5 evil damage, and the champion reaction blocks and gives the rogue resist 5 all, then boom, no damage.
This has also been confirmed by the magus (I can't find the post I'm sorry) but like, if you spellstrike with your axe with gouging claw, against something with slashing weakness, the weakness applies to both the axe hit and the gouging claw hit.
Also! THIRD TIME this has been mentioned ON THIS PAGE. FUN
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What if the real Rule of Three missing from the playtest was our failures to read all the posts in this thread along the way?
The more I see this class discussed the fewer of its class feats I see until levels 14-20. At lower levels, Diverse Lore seems to be a staple alongside sympathetic vulnerabilities.
But mostly what I'm seeing is champion, sentinel, bard, psychic, swashbuckler and gunslinger archetypes taking up just about every other feat slot. There's also one skill monkey build using the new sleepwalker dedication that I mentioned in another thread.
For implements, tome and weapon are the only ones I see get paragon treatment with any regularity. Common combos are tome/weapon, tome/wand, tome/amulet, weapon/lantern, weapon/mirror. Amulet is a popular choice for 3rd implement as its base effect scales with level and it offers a good Reaction to use with the level 14 feat.
It's actually pretty diverse. While most builds pull from the same archetypes and follow similar patterns, you can mix and match more-or-less to your liking.