1. Paizo develops a limited number of classes for PF2, and wants to focus on classes that add value to the game world that they develop and sell products for.
2. This begins with the narrative of the classes not their mechanics.
What narrative are we looking at for the mesmerist if not the PF1 narrative?
My suggestion all along has been, the original narrative here has no chance of porting over to PF2. Come up with a better and more exciting narrative that fits in the world and then the mechanics will follow.
The narrative of "the class that implants tricks in their allies heads" is very questionable for being better than other class options.
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The forums were also pretty convinced that we'd never get swashbucklers, investigators, witches, magi, summoners, gunslingers, or psychics in PF2 either... and that we'd definitely have already gotten something in the inquisitor's design space by now.
So from that perspective, people on this site saying they don't see a point in a class makes it more likely than not (not really, of course).
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1. Paizo develops a limited number of classes for PF2, and wants to focus on classes that add value to the game world that they develop and sell products for.
Begging the question that it won't add value.
2. This begins with the narrative of the classes not their mechanics.
See above, there are a bunch of ideas from tropes to unique features for the 2e system.
As an aside know which 1e class creeped out the most people in my area (myself included), and at cons over the years?
Bards.
Something about the charisma/performance + and enchantment spells and later ways to hide casting (which the psychic classes could do better in 1e but it's not an issue in 2e, which is a welcome change!) really made maladjusted creeps gravitate to them and behave badly.
Is that the Bard class's fault, or the player's?
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So, I went to the official Lancer TTRPG discord to ask their opinions. I went there so they could act as a neutral 3rd party. I have seen half of these people on the PF2 thread in that discord, so there is a mix of players. I posted this , and these are the responses I got. Take this as you will. The images should work, but if they don't I can post everything as plan text.
No one here was ever arguing to republish it with the exact same flavor, though. You're posing a question to them that no one here is considering.
2015 was a long time ago. No class from 1e should be directly ported over without editorial oversight that includes the current cultural context.
A single sentence of flavor text does not bind players to a specific way of playing, nor does it dictate to developers how they must build anything today. Whether it was written 8 years ago, or yesterday.
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I used the class description because it was objective. If I made a description, it would be ripe for bias. Also, I don't think anyone is arguing that you can't change enough to make it ok, just that you would need to change enough and separate it from its legacy. I posted the legacy.
If you want to be objective share the whole class not just one sentence that you found problematic; examine peoples' actual play experiences alongside that.
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I have a feeling that Paizo will never make an official class based a third party version sells well. They might make one independent of its 3rd party popularity, but if there is any documentation that Paizo was inspired by 3rd party stuff, it would make it way easier for said 3rd party to sue if the official version is too close to their version. I also recall that a few years ago, Paizo said they weren't going to do the Kineticist for a while becase Legendary Games kineticist was good, and they didn't see the need because of it. Plus, letting any third party stuff in PFS seems like it would open up a whole can of worms.For better or worse, you cannot copyright game mechanics. This is how Sword & Sorcery and similar (a)d&d1e clones have persisted since the late 80s. You can really only copyright setting specific things and fiction.
Pretty sure it's more to do with maintaining good faith with 3pp than copyright issues. It's not good optics to publish a class that's literally just an offical version of a 3pp class (albeit on thats was based off an offical class in a previous edition), since doing that too often gives the impression that 3pps are just doing unpaid game design work, and that's not a healthy relationship for paizo, who's been making a pretty big push to get more 3pp companies interesting in pf2e
No one can get angry that Paizo ported over a class that they made themselves.
I can't believe the gall of the new generation of Paizo staff! How dare they profit off the hard work of their forebears! It's just like these upstart youngsters to steal the work of others, add a few extra bells and whistles, then call it their own little masterpiece. Acting all proud, strutting about online as if they did anything at all, were worthy of respect and earnings for all their "hard work." *spits disdainfully*
Pitiful and lazy is what I call it! What has the world come to? Back in my day everything was fresh and unique; not stolen, adapted, or tortured into ruinous, new age social propaganda!
/jest
(Today, anyone can get angry about anything. It's positively in vogue.)
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wall of text⠀➤ Assuming the class won’t enrich the setting for some reason even though you have repeatedly have been shown cool ideas in addition to coming up with some on your own, unprompted :)
⠀➤ Making specific declarations for the entire playerbase (it creeps them out) with no support.
⠀➤ Ignore examples of playing/flavoring the class that you don’t agree with.
⠀➤ Telling us what “Paizo knows” like an authority though (to my knowledge) you are not an employee or developer there or someone with insider info.This thread is overflowing with a real disheartening vibe: "I don’t prefer it and only my way is the right way to play Pathfinder.”
I am almost certain that you are misunderstanding where I'm coming from here.
- First, on the matter of "enriching the setting", I was responding to a direct assertion that it didn't matter, by someone who was defending the Mesmerist. I was asserting that it did matter.
- Second, I have never made declarations for the entire playerbase. I was making declarations about a significant fraction of the playerbase (with no assertions about how significant it was, because I don't know). Okay, sure, I made a few, reasonable assumptions. I see other people in this thread saying "this class is creepy". I look at the original form of the class, and I can totally see where they're coming from. I assume we're not alone in this. That's all I'm doing here... and based on teh behaviors I've seen out of Paizo, that's plenty to deep-six the thing.
- Third, I gave up on trying to explain what I was asking for in examples because you haven't been giving me what I asked for, but you've made it very clear that arguing about it is really not worth my while. You've given me... links to TV Tropes pages for vaguely related tropes, and people who might fit those vaguely related tropes. You haven't given me anyone who actually embodies the class.
What the heck. You're still complaining about it. I'll try to stick my hand in that blender again. Why not? Maybe you'll listen this time. Let's try a thought experiment. You're running a game, your'e a DM with a whole bunch of system mastery, and you're homebrewing a lot of stuff. One of your players, who knows nothing of PF1, comes up to you and says "I want to play (name)." You try to throw together a class that's going to give them what they want in a satisfying way. What (name) can fill that blank where Mesmerist is actually the right answer? What name can fill that blank that isn't obviously villainous?
That's what I was asking for that you weren't giving me - an iconic character or few that we could then turn around and rederive game mechanics from... and one that would open up character concepts that new players might actually have walking in the door.
Now, it's not entirely fair, because so far as I can tell, Memerist wasnt' really built on any individual at all. It was built on the "I want to be really good at..." construction... except that in this case, the "I want to be really good at" is hypnosis. That's... niche, though. In the wider world of potential players, that's real niche.
Now, I'm going to be real here - I am, shall we say, more generally accepting of mind-control than most folks. In other places, under other names, I've written some of that fic. At the same time, out in more general spaces, those things are pretty niche. Then I think about the sort of player who's going to walk into their first PF2 game and say "I want the awesome thing about me to be that I'm good at hypnosis" and I think about what the fantasy they're chasing that way likely is, and it makes sense to me that there's folks who might not want to deal with that at the table.
As for examples of play... I mean, sure? I'm not saying that the class is fundamentally toxic. I get that people have played it well, in ways that bring joy to those around them. That's cool, and it reflects well on them. Thumbs up. Pretty much any class can be played well. (I'd say "any class" but someone might try to prove me wrong and I don't want to see the results if they succeed.) Any class can be played poorly. It's not about that.
- Fourth, on the matter of Paizo... okay. I admit, I'm making some assumptions there. I've watched them, though. They appear to be quite competent in these sorts of things, their previous actions and explanations have indicated certain of their priorities pretty clearly. (Others can be inferred from their need to remain financially afloat as a company.) They're not unfounded assumptions.
/*****************/
Finally, I'm pulling this into it's own section, because this matters. "I don’t prefer it and only my way is the right way to play Pathfinder.” You've missed it. You've missed the whole point of what I've been trying to say this whole time. You've missed it entirely.
So, first, it's simply not true. I mean, I don't prefer it, because it's likely going to be a wave caster, and it's real hard to get me interested in classes that have spell slots. Also, the mechanics as described feel kind of janky to me... but neither of those thing matters... because my opinion doesn't matter here. My preferences don't matter either.
I am not your enemy. I am also not your audience. What little damage there was to be done by my opinion was done days ago, and convincing me or "proving me wrong" is worth exactly nothing. Your only plausible audience here is Paizo itself. They're the only ones who can write an official PF2 Mesmerist, and if you were willing to settle for anything less, then... well, Legendary published one over a year ago. My understanding is that their stuff is pretty decent.
So... the goal that is here to be plausibly sought is to convince Paizo that they want to publish a Mesmerist at some point, rather than publishing some other class that they could be publishing instead. It is my personal assessment that there are a number of practical issues that make Mesmerist unappealing to them. I've tried to explain those. I've also tried to help with the process of coming up with something that was similar to Mesmerist, that might have whatever it was that you wanted from Mesmerist, that would be significantly more appealing, and therefore more likely to see print.
If you think I am incorrect? There is no need at all to engage with me. "This one random guy on the message boards thought it was a bad idea" might carry a little weight, but I doubt it carries much, and what little weight it carries is as a matter of probable customer reaction - not the sort of thing that you can shift by arguing with me now. You may feel free to assume that I am wrong and ignore me. If you think that my points have validity, though... I really am trying to help. You want this class... what about it do you want? What is the gold here to be salvaged, and turned into the core of something beautiful? What can we grow from this idea that will actually be worth publishing? I'm pretty sure that PF1 nostalgia isn't going to be enough by itself - not when PF2 itself is about to hit its fourth year, and not for a full class that some players would find actively off-putting.
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"I really am trying to help"
…says the person writing walls of text about about how the concept is awful and there are definitely no mesmer characters in any media or history ever.
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Tropes aren't a class narrative in and of themselves, they are a set of expectations that can be used to guide or frame a narrative.
There have been a couple of broad trope based classes that lack narrative distinction in PF2 because they are so fundamentally baked into the genre. Fighter really does not really have a narrative. Then there is the Wizard, that I think some players are frustrated by, because it got some additional narrative added into it in PF2, but is trying to hold on to all of the old genre expectations and tropes in it but also fit better into the added narrative elements of PF2. As a specific example of this tension and narrative dissonance, making the wizard class so academic that your character has a thesis is q really cool idea to me, but holding on to "schools of magic" (which really don't have anything to do with schools or even philosophies in PF2) while narratively constraining magic in traditions first that don't necessarily play well with schools of magic being studied beyond specific traditions has really hurt the narrative niche of wizards badly.
Psychic might be a good example of a loose class narrative that was punched up and really brought to life by developing the ideas of the conscious and subconscious minds and focusing more on the traditions of magic and what that means in the game world, getting the right feats/abilities to make breaking the expectations of traditions work for certain subclasses.
If the assertion is just that "Hypnotist" is the essential class narrative here, combining magic, con artistry, and mental manipulation, I think there is a very fine path to walk in making a new class that needs to exist in PF2's Golarion without bringing up a lot of the PF1 baggage.
I appreciate Phmtn88's effort to get a narrative started, but personally I struggle to take that description and visualize a character, but maybe other people can help build on it? That one still sounds very much like a Eldritch Scoundrel Rogue with a Psychic dedication to me, and sneak attack is such a powerful mechanic in the game, that most classes that have tried to do something like it, but different have ended up worse off for it (in my opinion).
It seems like the goal is narrative like the magus that is more equal parts magic training and another kind of training, but maybe more skill focused than combat focused? A character who is not necessarily a great combatant on their own, but uses their combined skills and mental focused occult magic to walk enemies into traps and create big advantages for their allies? Hmm, this is currently very close to the bard though, so maybe not unique enough to justify a new class.
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Not everyone builds characters founded in classical tropes, though. My projectionist mesmerist concept started with "I want turn into the Zoltar machine from the movie Big." Fortune telling carnival tickets for everyone!
Another local PFSer was a cynical cigar smoking victorian gnome illusionist whose own eyeball floated around. Such a memorable PC. Not problematic whatsoever.
Some people really liked the "out there" Pathfinder, and classes like the Mesmerist totally enabled creativity that went beyond what you could find in standard fare. This is one thing I have found somewhat lacking in 2e though it's getting better. Another niche a mesmerist class could fill.
Not everyone builds characters founded in classical tropes, though. My projectionist mesmerist concept started with "I want turn into the Zoltar machine from the movie Big." Fortune telling carnival tickets for everyone!
Another local PFSer was a cynical cigar smoking victorian gnome illusionist whose own eyeball floated around. Such a memorable PC. Not problematic whatsoever.
Some people really liked the "out there" Pathfinder, and classes like the Mesmerist totally enabled creativity that went beyond what you could find in standard fare. Another niche a mesmerist class could fill.
Okay. Thank you. This, then, is a need.
PF2... doesn't have as much of the wacky stuff. You know? I think I agree with you. There's a healthy range of options, and a lot of culturally grounded stuff, but there isn't nearly as much that's just oddball and weird. In particular, it's short on ways to play a character that...
- Is weird
- Where that weirdness is backed up by practical rules mechanics
- Those rules mechanics are themselves unlike what everyone else gets.
- The mechanics are interesting and cool and offer something approaching fair value for the cost, rather than being obviously mechanically inferior to more normal options.
I don't think that the Mesmerist specifically is necessary for this, but I can see how it was a place where such things were available in PF1, and why you'd want it in PF2 if that was what you were jonesing for. Regardless, this is a need. It's one that I think that PF2 would benefit from filling, and it's worth coming up with solutions for and advocating for.
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Not everyone builds characters founded in classical tropes, though. My projectionist mesmerist concept started with "I want turn into the Zoltar machine from the movie Big." Fortune telling carnival tickets for everyone!
Another local PFSer was a cynical cigar smoking victorian gnome illusionist whose own eyeball floated around. Such a memorable PC. Not problematic whatsoever.
Some people really liked the "out there" Pathfinder, and classes like the Mesmerist totally enabled creativity that went beyond what you could find in standard fare. This is one thing I have found somewhat lacking in 2e though it's getting better. Another niche a mesmerist class could fill.
For similar examples, the other mesmerists I can recall from my PF1 experience:
- A CG therapist who uses their mental powers on allies more often than enemies, sent along with the party as mental health support for all the stuff Pathfinder Society Agents go through. They were helpful for debuffing enemies, adding some damage to ally's attacks, and had helpful buffing spells - and the occasional offensive mental magic.
- An infiltrator, who could use their mental powers to read thoughts, and used this to get information on and access to enemy organisations, and then with this scouting done could return to the party to join in on engaging those enemies.
- A Vox mesmerist, an archetype who use audible instead of visual components to their mesmeric power, who was a succubus-descended tiefling and that affected their vocal mesmerism. A concept that could be done badly, but she was also an LG paladin who got very frustrated with the way that her mesmeric powers were interpreted, and was well-loved by the whole lodge.
- One mesmerist who lent into the as-written flavour, a swashbuckler mesmerist in my Serpent's Skull table who did basically do the "evil mind-controller who uses his mesmeric abilities to get his way", though Serpent's Skull is an AP in which that isn't particularly disruptive and the other players enjoyed the character.
There's definitely room for Mesmerists who aren't evil, and as has been previously mentioned, the Captivator archetype in pf2 provides pretty good examples of how this would work. The class had an interesting design space mechanically that could be fun to have return in pf2, and there's plenty of thematic space that isn't disruptive for the average table, in my opinion.
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Not everyone builds characters founded in classical tropes, though. My projectionist mesmerist concept started with "I want turn into the Zoltar machine from the movie Big." Fortune telling carnival tickets for everyone!
Actually, I think this is a major trope with no analogue in PF2 yet. Cryptic, untrustworthy oracles (even if you can trust they aren't screwing with you, can you trust whatever is empowering them?) are as old as stories themselves, yet where are my palmisters, astrologists, and harrow readers? The witch, thaumaturge, and psychic in their own ways all dance around it, but I think there's room for a class that sits squarely on it.
Let's see. Basic support class like the alchemist (except with full mental-stat martial proficiency, let's not go overboard), able to hand out one use reactions, mostly along the lines of substituting a roll with a pre-rolled number. These would be the replacements for implanted tricks, but flavored to be the result of some kind of fortune telling.
Stare could remain as is, or perhaps changed to "Doomsaying" where you offer an enemy an extremely accurate prediction of the near future.
The light amount of magic offered by bound casting fits this narrative as well.
I don't want to say this is the only way it could go, but only offer it as an example of one type of narrative that this class would speak to. It feels a bit narrow at first glance, but again I think pulling from both the mesmerist and precog could lend ideas on how it could be expanded and suggest new mechanics.
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Not everyone builds characters founded in classical tropes, though. My projectionist mesmerist concept started with "I want turn into the Zoltar machine from the movie Big." Fortune telling carnival tickets for everyone!
Another local PFSer was a cynical cigar smoking victorian gnome illusionist whose own eyeball floated around. Such a memorable PC. Not problematic whatsoever.
Some people really liked the "out there" Pathfinder, and classes like the Mesmerist totally enabled creativity that went beyond what you could find in standard fare. This is one thing I have found somewhat lacking in 2e though it's getting better. Another niche a mesmerist class could fill.
I once used the Mesmerist chassis as an alternate take on the Inquisitor basically, her painful stare reaching into their mind and forcing them to face their own guilt. This is, amusingly, what Redeemer Champions do now, though they actually need permission from their god to do it.
Captivator literally is mesmerist in the same way vigilante and cavalier were brought back as archetypes, they just changed the name so that it's a little more thematically open to interpretation.
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With a couple exceptions it feels like we're arguing in circles.
There is a camp that believes Mesmerist has a place, be it as a hypnotist, or an illusionist/duelist or both.
And a camp that believes its irrevocably tied to overtly nasty mind control elements. To them it seems no class can exist in this design space without crossing uncrossable lines.
To the latter any suggestion seems doomed to be interpreted in the most seedy way possible, "they could implant tricks to aid their allies in combat" becomes "they will invade the minds of their allies without permission and control them."
To the former, there is a wealth of obvious avenues to take the class, be it a dedication or archetype or class of its own, as bounded/wave caster.
Correct me if I'm wrong in my reading of the situation, but as it stands, I doubt we're going to reach an accord, as 131 posts in we seem to have gotten further way from an accord if anything.
I'll say this though, whether you think the class has a place or not, mind control, deception, and coercion are already well and truly embedded in the game, used by PCs everyday and have been since the core rule book. So the idea that Paizo doesn't want these elements to be used by a PC seems pretty far fetched to me. Yes some of them come with a sensitivity warning, but they're still a core part of the game.
Agreed… though it seems like people are aligning a bit on the potential strangeness and non-standard flavor the mesmerist opened. We got that going for us all, at least.
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Strangeness does seem like something pf2 is missing a bit.
Like there’s less sense of humour in the Rules somehow.
In pf1 I had a mindwyrm Mesmer mesmerist that grippli road into battle on that back of a peacock and waged war through being terrifying.
Super funny super weird character to play. I can’t really envision stuff like that working in pf2