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That isn't my experience with the master summoner. At higher levels you could have 10 plus summons a day cast as a standard action. A single summoner could with feats do crazy amounts of creatures at a 1 minute per level duration. So you could have 5 to 10 or more creatures on the board in addition to the normal party every battle. Each creature must move, then attack and if they have spell-like abilities they can use can take even longer.
But the master summonner is a PF1e only thing. Of course you can summon far more creature in PF1e, basic summon spells allow you to summon 1d4+1 creature at once, you get far more spells in general, and you don't need to sustain them at all.
Contrast this with PF2e, where summon spells only allow you to summon one creature at a time, where they take three actions and must be sustained (which mean that until you get a free sustain each turn, you simply can't maintain more than one summon at a time), and where spellcaster have far less spell slot (and thus far less summonning spells in general, especially since summon in PF2e only really work if they're in your highest spell slot available)... It'd take some really massive amount of powercreep for summon in PF2e to reach the level of PF1e.
Saying "summons in PF2 should be better" don't mean that you should be able to control tens of minions, it was never the question. What people want when they ask for a summon buff is not for being able to summon more stuff at once, but to be able to summon better stuff, because "expend your highest level spell slot and three actions to summon a monster of your level -4 (or -5 on even level), that may or may not obey you depending on wether the DM feel generous" just feel terrible.
That isn't my experience with the master summoner. At higher levels you could have 10 plus summons a day cast as a standard action. A single summoner could with feats do crazy amounts of creatures at a 1 minute per level duration. So you could have 5 to 10 or more creatures on the board in addition to the normal party every battle. Each creature must move, then attack and if they have spell-like abilities they can use can take even longer.You could but... Why do it? What's the point? Is there a point in wasting resources on overkill?
Also the 1 min/level only matter if you have multiple encounters happening within that time frame. Personally, I'm not sprinting to the next fight in hopes that my 10 summons still stick around: I never expect that the summons from 1 fight will make it to the next. I mean if the DM allows the archetype AND sets things up so that encounters are just a few rounds away from each other, it's not the archetype that's the issue. As such, I'm dividing summons available but what I think the number of encounters will be so if I have 10 for the day and I think I'll have 5 encounters I'm not using more than 2. For me, the main boon 1 min/level had was for utility/spell casting creatures: like summoning an Arbiter Inevitable for a 1 min/level Truespeech translator.
Never seen a wizard take this long. There is a reason you don't see the Master Summoner type of class in PF2 and likely won't see any summons like PF1. It was a painful time consuming series of actions that far exceeded the time it took a wizard to find a spell or what not. Then if they had to make saves or saves had to be made against what they do, the rolling was immense.Well, 1st you're allowing a situation where you can summon 10 creatures at a time every fight so that might color things a bit... Secondly, yeah I saw wizards take FAR longer than me with summons: you have their spells and a stack of scrolls and some wands and maybe a few staves ... and...
Because the player felt like it and had the ability to do so. He liked trying to be the "the man" who took out everything solo and flex his power as a master summoner stacking the board with creatures with reach and flight and other powers he could use to destroy things like the Lantern Archon Firing Squad and Air Elemental "You can't touch me without reach" beat down squad. It used to piss a lot of players off that this class existed that allowed this. So we banned it.
I'm sure your party was happy you were polite enough not to go crazy with it. But it doesn't change that you could have if you wanted to and it really messed up the game map and combats. It wasn't just the actions, it was also all the space the summoned creatures took up as well. It was a mess of a class that took summons to a level fun for only that player.
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PF2 summons were nerfed too much.
To me it's another one of those things that was so out of hand like the wizard and witch in PF1 that they went way too far in the other direction in PF2.
Summons are not in a good spot in PF2. I hope at some point they rework them to make them more useable across levels.
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How about this:
Have level 1, 6, 12, and 18 feats be “increase either your weapon or spell proficiency one step”. This would be instead of (not in addition to) the separate 1/5/11 progression for martials and 1/7/15/19 for casters. The system can then add to that for unusual cases (keep the fighter and gunslinger’s extra proficiency boost, for instance)
-It makes every class more flexible.
-It makes most classes able to hit the same values for their “main thing” at the same levels.
-Within a class, it allows different PCs to explore different options (Alice is a legendary casting witch, Bob is a legendary hair melee witch, and Charlene is not legendary in anything, but good at both.) Even straight martials could make use of this extra flexibility if/when they acquire a caster archetype.
-It solves the problem of alchemists not hitting with bombs, witches not hitting with hair/nails, and the various ancestry-given feat attacks only being as good as your class.
You could then supplement this by making a level 1/7/14 feat be: "of weapon, spell, or armor proficiency, increase one which is not your highest". Again, this grants flexibility: some PCs may want to stick with just their primary attack type granted at 1/6/12/18 and use this progression to tank up, while others may prefer to go with sword & spell.
That would bring at least 3 of my character concepts online that aren't exactly amazing right now.
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Related desire: stronghold building expanded out beyond what was in Kingmaker. Maybe play with scale, too. We have some rules for a growing city already, but gimme my wizard tower and thieves guild rules.
Valeria: Do you know what evil lurks in yon tower?
Conan: No.Valeria: Good, you go first.
-- At the Tower of Set in "Conan The Barbarian"
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I'd like to see that the SKILL trait in feats has a different color than the other traits - for example blue instead of red. That would make them stand out more, for example in lists of Archetype feats, where it is very easy to overlook that one of the feats is a Skill feat, and not a regular Archetype feat.
"Let's see here. One order for Reanimate Thread."
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I wouldn't mind if Alchemist was able to play a bit more like the 1e Alchemist and less like a an item dispenser.How did the 1E alchemist play?
The 1e alchemist was essentially a wizard who pretended its spell slots were potions. Instead of specific magical items, it was just a collection of buff and utility spells.
Instead of bespoke mutagens, mutagen was just a class feature that let you increase your physical stats at the cost of a corresponding mental stat a certain number of times per day. Bombs worked similarly, as an independent pool of damage dealing attacks you could make a certain number of times per day.
It was also very common for Alchemists in PF1 to use alternate class features to remove part of their kit to focus more intensely on another (it was basically considered a 'free' power upgrade for a dedicated mutagenist to give up their bombs for better melee damage, for instance).
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I wouldn't mind if Alchemist was able to play a bit more like the 1e Alchemist and less like a an item dispenser.How did the 1E alchemist play?The 1e alchemist was essentially a wizard who pretended its spell slots were potions. Instead of specific magical items, it was just a collection of buff and utility spells.
Instead of bespoke mutagens, mutagen was just a class feature that let you increase your physical stats at the cost of a corresponding mental stat a certain number of times per day. Bombs worked similarly, as an independent pool of damage dealing attacks you could make a certain number of times per day.
It was also very common for Alchemists in PF1 to use alternate class features to remove part of their kit to focus more intensely on another (it was basically considered a 'free' power upgrade for a dedicated mutagenist to give up their bombs for better melee damage, for instance).
IIRC the PF1 Alchemist's items were mostly self-use only. A pretty big difference with the PF2 Class.
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There was a must-have low level talent that let you hand them out to allies.
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Hmmm based on that description I think I prefer 2E’s. Haven’t gotten to play yet but did have my Barbarian die in abomination vaults and wanted to play a goblin Chirurgeon alchemist, looking forward to the versatility and utility. I hand picked all my mutagens for the benefits of the party. I picked bombs with nice debuffs to cripple enemies. I have some neat toxins for the melee guys to apply to their weapons. I’ve got loads of healing and the medic dedication. Excited to support the party and continue researching alchemical items. I liked making this character so much I have ended up trying to make an alchemist for each subclass. I have a Dwarven bomber, a Ratfolk toxicologist with a hand crossbow looking at Drow shootist archetype and trying to figure out how to make a hobgoblin mutagenist with the bestial mutagen to be a sort of chemically imbued werewolf.
Once again, like spellcasters, I think the biggest problem for people who liked the pf1 alchemist is that they lost the ability to specialise. If you wanted to be a bomb throwing machine, you could sacrifice some other part of your kit for that, if you wanted to focus on poison, you could sacrifice your bombs, if you wanted to be a melee monster, you could sacrifice bomb also for sneak attack, if you wanted to be a support...
There was basically lot of way to play alchemist "right", without having to fear underperforming. Arguably, generalist was once again the best, but as it wasn't needed to succeed, in my experience most alchemist actually specialised heavily in some part of their kit.
And like casters, PF2 balanced the class around that "generalist" approach, whithout giving much option to focus specifically on one part without hurting yourself, leaving those that liked to play specialized version of the class without a clear successor. If you want to be a "mad scientist" bomb throwing machine, or a mutagenic warrior, you are better off playing another class and having an alchemist in your party that provide the bombs or mutagen.
I hand picked all my mutagens for the benefits of the party. I picked bombs with nice debuffs to cripple enemies. I have some neat toxins for the melee guys to apply to their weapons. I’ve got loads of healing and the medic dedication. Excited to support the party and continue researching alchemical items.
The thing you have to remember with this is that it requires the party to buy in and accept what you make: for instance, I almost never use a mutagen even as an alchemist because I don't enjoy the awful penalties that come with them. As such, all the research put in wouldn't help much. Same with poisons as you either have to pre-poison them or spend actions to apply them which leads to you using it on creatures you wouldn't have opted to use it on or eating actions to use it when you want to [for melee]. Healing also eats actions from those getting healed unless you yourself are bottle feeding them. So overall the experience has more to do with the group you're in a lot of the time.
There was basically lot of way to play alchemist "right", without having to fear underperforming. Arguably, generalist was once again the best, but as it wasn't needed to succeed, in my experience most alchemist actually specialised heavily in some part of their kit.
I'm not sure I really agree with this part. The loss of specialization is keenly felt, but I think part of the reason for that reaction was how free that specialization was. Generalists struggled, poisons were just trap options, and bombers had serious resource issues. It was really only mutagenists who had a clear W in the older system.
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I will fully admit that a big part of my hatred for the PF2 Alchemist is that the Hyde build was all I really cared about in PF1 and you straight out can't do that anymore. It's probably the single most popular archetype that PF2 just doesn't support.
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It's less effective than in PF1, but bestial/feral mutagen builds are remarkably competitive in terms of damage output (the biggest problem is you need to archetype out for goodies like AoO) while also being the most resource efficient way to play an alchemist (which means they also get the best utility just by existing).
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It's less effective than in PF1, but bestial/feral mutagen builds are remarkably competitive in terms of damage output (the biggest problem is you need to archetype out for goodies like AoO) while also being the most resource efficient way to play an alchemist (which means they also get the best utility just by existing).
I keep trying to build a hobgoblin Werewolf based on Warwick from League of Legends who in most of his backstories (he's had 3) became a Werewolf due to alchemy. So I am trying to do the whole "class fantasy" of injecting myself with a serum and beasting out then going ham in melee.
Everyone has basically told me this is pointless and bad and I should never do this and feral mutagen is a trap and should never be picked and in fact if I want to do this just actually go play animal barbarian with maybe alchemist dedication.
However my entire point is that I like the Alchemist so much I want all 4 research fields and to build characters around them.
I have a Dwarven Bomber, a Goblin Chirurgeon I am actively playing in Abomination Vaults, a Ratfolk Toxicologist based on Twitch from League with a hand crossbow. I thought I had figured out a way to quickly apply pepertual poisons mid-combat with the help of a familiar (who would quick alchemy poisons then hand them to me and i'd apply to the bolt and strike) but it doesn't work how I thought it did.
So the last is a Mutagen and I wanted a ferocious melee combatant who used mutagens to become a savage beast with the beastkin heritage too, but apparently this is the worst thing in PF2E you can do according to some.