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Or... was it Orion who shot at Apollo's chariot and he swung down to see what was up?My Greek mythology is admittedly weak, but I think that might have been Heracles during one of his twelve labors...
It was indeed Heracles, as far as I recall. Very, very fortunately, the god in question (I forget whether it was Apollo or Helios at this point) took it in good humour.
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I’m very surprised to hear someone turned off by these. They’re some of the most exciting class power fantasies I’ve heard in years.
Personally, namedropping Maui, Hercules and Sun Wulong is a massive turn off. I only know of Maui thru Disney, but have read and seen so many versions of the other two. And taken as a whole, the loud, brash, bombastic trope is a massive turn-off. I hate the gods, and deities as a concept so having a godling running around punching out suns ruins most campaigns I could think to play in. Not to mention the folx who are drawn to playing such.
None of the thaumaturge-esque Ikons as presented feel new or interesting.
The Animist looks a little too specific in the way its named apparitions/spirits are named…and the similarities to Medium/Shaman aren’t to my liking.
I’m more interested in the Animist in the hope of playing tribal folk like iruxi or kholo but given I’m mosty turned off anything except humans I’m left with few options that aren’t necessarily going to be either derivative or caricatures of real world tribal groups.
So there isn’t really anything thematically for me here at all. Given that Michael and James are good designers I’m hoping the mrchanics leave broad enough appeal to really make something I’m interested in playing.
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Edit: foundry team is fantastic so should be able to have fun putting them through their paces this 3 day weekend. Also so glad the name wasn’t actually demigod.
The classes are both done already and the playtest module will go live tomorrow when the playtest document drops. Animist is basically designed in a space that is nigh-unautomatable for us, with swapping of spell lists and lore skills being one of the largest gaps in what the system can do right now. Exemplar is in a good place though, there's only one thing I left unfinished that could still be done and maybe I'll circle back but I wanted to take a day off last weekend too :D
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I think the thing about the Exemplar is that you don't *need* to be Hercules, or Gilgamesh, or Hanuman, or Cú Chulainn, or Maui. The class should be able to cover any "larger than life" folk hero- you can also be Joan of Arc, Pecos Bill, Davy Crockett, Odysseus, Xena, or Ned Kelly.
Personally, my playtest character is going to be based on Luchador nonpareil "El Santo" (mostly the version of him from the movies.)
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I’m very surprised to hear someone turned off by these. They’re some of the most exciting class power fantasies I’ve heard in years.Animist sounds cool, especially with the 3.5 binder flavor, but I don’t think the exemplar makes sense as a class to me, and yeah, it kind of “turns me off”.It’s a martial with a broken off piece of divinity inside them - not enough to be a true demigod, but such that they can do superheroic things with their bodies and faux-relics.
Hercules and Sun Wukong were both namedropped, and I think pretty elegantly sketch out a class fantasy.
Yes, the exemplar sounds like something that would rather belong in a superhero game, but it’s a superhero that — for balancíng reasons — can’t be more powerful than anybody else. How very sad.
I have no idea who Sun Wukong is, but Hercules sounds like someone who should be on a totally different power curve than anybody else, and to me this simply doesn’t make any sense as a class balanced against the other classes.
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I have no idea who Sun Wukong is, but Hercules sounds like someone who should be on a totally different power curve than anybody else, and to me this simply doesn’t make any sense as a class balanced against the other classes.
Sun Wukong is the Monkey King from the Chinese epic Journey to the West - i.e. the inspiration behind Son Goku of Dragonball fame.
He's definitely in a comparable mythological "weight class" to Heracles.
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I’m very surprised to hear someone turned off by these. They’re some of the most exciting class power fantasies I’ve heard in years.Animist sounds cool, especially with the 3.5 binder flavor, but I don’t think the exemplar makes sense as a class to me, and yeah, it kind of “turns me off”.It’s a martial with a broken off piece of divinity inside them - not enough to be a true demigod, but such that they can do superheroic things with their bodies and faux-relics.
Hercules and Sun Wukong were both namedropped, and I think pretty elegantly sketch out a class fantasy.
Yes, the exemplar sounds like something that would rather belong in a superhero game, but it’s a superhero that — for balancíng reasons — can’t be more powerful than anybody else. How very sad.
I have no idea who Sun Wukong is, but Hercules sounds like someone who should be on a totally different power curve than anybody else, and to me this simply doesn’t make any sense as a class balanced against the other classes.
I think you have so high expectations from the Exemplar "superhero class", not all superheroes are Superman, there are superheroes like Wolverine, that I think the direction they are going
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I have no idea who Sun Wukong is, but Hercules sounds like someone who should be on a totally different power curve than anybody else, and to me this simply doesn’t make any sense as a class balanced against the other classes.
I mean why though? Like, if you want to be more high powered that's what higher levels are for.
But if you want to be a level 2 divine martial who imbues their weapon and armor with power I don't see why that should be taboo.
I don't see why that should be sad.
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I mean, Other classes can do crazy op(i don't necessarily mean mechanically, i mean within the narrative) things. Barbarians can create earthquakes, rogues can vanish in plain sight, anyone who picked up intimidation can stare at people and kill them. Casters and Kinetecists can do all sorts of magical wild stuff. Thaumaturge can follow an enemy who teleported, no matter where they teleported too. And the list goes on, especially if you include some of the adventure path capstone feats.
The Exemplar will have powerful evocative abilities it seems, but I imagine those will come in time and you won't literally start at it with level 1. What you do have is a divine spark, blessed with a tiny bit of divine energy that has enhanced you physically in someway, that you can channel to do non-mundane things.
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The nice thing is that in about half a day we're going to have our hands on the actual playtest document and we can see how much the Exemplar steps on the toes of other classes and/or distorts the "feel" of a PC with specifics.
Since a lot of things are handled by "Do you think Cat Fall letting you survive reentry undamaged is silly? Well, then don't do that" standard.
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That is not to mention that the "make my items better" is a concept that lore wise belonged to Champions, Magus, etc.
Why would champions need to own that entirely though? It's not like blade ally and the ikons are even particularly similar to each other.
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One more thing that I'll say in its favor, from a mechanical perspective at least, is that this is cracking open the door at least a tiny bit on providing Martial PCs ways to gain, use, and do interesting things with Focus Points that aren't JUST SPELLS. Now THAT has me interested for sure, though I'm not sure it tracks that you have to literally be blessed with narritivium essence of a dead god corpse in order to be able to access it.
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First off, congrats to everyone for pretty much nailing the concepts of the classes in their predictions based on some scrolls and a nipple.
Second, we're all in agreement that the Exemplar is Exalted but changed a little so that the teacher doesn't notice, right?
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Second, we're all in agreement that the Exemplar is Exalted but changed a little so that the teacher doesn't notice, right?
Not really, it has some components of that but it has absolutely zero opt-in at all, the Exemplar is just effectively someone who got sprinkled with god corpse dust and was turned into some kind of mutant/superhuman with a touch of divine seasoning. As far as I can tell it's somewhat more akin to Sorcerer or Oracle in that way rather than like the kind of hyper-religious scholar that Exalted is.
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Second, we're all in agreement that the Exemplar is Exalted but changed a little so that the teacher doesn't notice, right?
I mean, Exalted is explicitly doing the "let's cross classical mythology with shonen anime" as their inspiration. Pathfinder can also borrow from classical mythology, part of what makes it "classical" is that it's accessible to everybody.
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Bit of a weird analogy but I think a good way to explain the difference between the Exemplar and the Fighter might be to think of them like the Sorcerer vs the Wizard. The Fighter is for the warrior who's mastered the art of combat through training and experience on the battlefield, the Exemplar on the other hand is somebody whose combat prowess just comes from being lucky enough to get imbued with divine power. It's a pretty common narrative trope that the Fighter's always been a bit poorly equipped to handle, and I think it's a meaningful addition to the game overall.
Also it'll let me finally play a character like Jagganoth from KSBD so I'm feeling very hyped for that.
I wonder if these class playtests will be on Pathbuilder. Can't remember if the previous playtests were.
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Well, for me a good example of an exemplar is the wonder woman. A person with a divine spark, a magic weapon (lasso), a magic object (bracelets) and who has great deeds, but does not overshadow the other teammates. King Arthur is also a great example. Figure with a divine air, a magic sword that does not overshadow Lancelot, who is even recognized as a more skillful warrior. So, even though it's not my type of class (I'm definitely going to play as an animalist), the exemplar looks amazing.Both of those are just fighters with magical equipment that are not at all related to their power.
King arthur is a normal guy who was chosen by the magic sword and the lady in the lake. Diana is a demigoddess but that is not her class. Heck the entire reason why magic weapons deal 4d6 damage is because people wanted to feel like King Arthur when playing a martial.
That is not to mention that the "make my items better" is a concept that lore wise belonged to Champions, Magus, etc. Now it belongs to hercules? Who was famous because his powers were his strength and wit, not that he has a magic weapon.
Diana is a warrior with a divine spark, tell me how does she not fit in as an Exemplar?
About King Arthur, he is recognized as someone chosen by God.
And Hercules has the breastplate of the Nemean lion. A magic item he uses. To me it looks great. It's not a class I'm going to play as, but I'd love to have her in my party.Her class is Fighter. She is divine because of her ancestry not her class. King Arthur is a Champion that relies on their magic item not being divine, again not an examplar. Hercules is a Fighter with high Int. He is divine because of his race not because of his class.
All of those are characters with a mythic spark and a regular class. Not regular characters with a special class.
Pretty sure the writers of those characters would disagree.
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We already have at least one class that can reflect something from ones lineage(not the game term), and I don't see people saying sorcerers sthick should be left to ancestries.
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Well, for me a good example of an exemplar is the wonder woman. A person with a divine spark, a magic weapon (lasso), a magic object (bracelets) and who has great deeds, but does not overshadow the other teammates. King Arthur is also a great example. Figure with a divine air, a magic sword that does not overshadow Lancelot, who is even recognized as a more skillful warrior. So, even though it's not my type of class (I'm definitely going to play as an animalist), the exemplar looks amazing.
The Exemplar wasn't really clicking for me until you mentioned Wonder Woman. That would be a super fun character to build with this chassis (albeit one that would probably require some homebrew since I doubt Paizo will give us a lasso of truth or bullet-deflecting bracelets as ikons).
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So the thing I notice about the Exemplar is the cadence of it. Like, the lore of the character and the suggested presentation style is very bombastic. You make a big deal of yourself in a big way. Now, as long as you can keep that to the character, rather than the player, that can be a lot of fun for all involved (with the right table). Still, yeah. Glad about the Rare tag, because there are a lot of tables out there where it would not be the right table.
For playstyle, though... there's this very strategic cadence to it. Which buff do you want next? Which power do you want next? You're constantly juggling it around and planning ahead, and a lot of your character build is going to be in planning out plausible routes of where you might want to move your spark under different conditions. I was initially thinking that those feats that add more of the "spend the spark" powers to a single icon was going to be a bit of a waste, but I'm now realizing that those are going to be critical, because they offer you additional options on how to get it out.
In some ways, it gives them a combo system, where you bounce your spark from one move to the next, and you spend feats to buy extra moves to assemble your combos with. I think that on a tactical level it's going to be a very interesting and very different playstyle and feel than any other class.
For those who have trouble with it from the "low-level demigod" idea... you're looking at it wrong. This isn't about being a demigod. It's about being a legend... and a lot of the really good legends start small. You build your saga as you go. Your saga empowers you, and that lets you do More Awesome Things, and that strengthens your saga and lets it empower you more. It's a very Viking idea. (I'm sure that there are other cultures that do it to, but I've had reason to study Vikings a bit lately, and there's stuff here that feels very Viking.)
Like, yeah, you could always tell those stories with other classes... but they'd be implicit rather than explicit, and they wouldn't lean into it in the same way, and there's some awesome and fun character concepts and stories that you can throw around using Exemplar, so what's the problem? If it fits your table then that's great and if it doesn't (and there are tables that it just won't fit), then that's what the Rare tag is for.
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I also like the idea of the Exemplar as someone who might be a martial equivalent to the oracle tbh.
Now this isn't exactly the intended flavor, but being chosen by a divine entity( not necessarily a god) and being burdened(cursed even) with purpose, could be a fun way to play the character.