We do have images for them though.... kind of. One of them certainly looks Occulty and might even be missing a finger. That might just be some sort of character thing for the iconic or a mistake on my part, though.
It is over in todays blog.
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sidz?Save-the-Date-Pathfinder-Pla ytest-Stream#discuss
The most occult thing I can see if having a lot of knickknacks, but that's just the default for Wayne Reynolds iconics because he bothers to draw all the Christmas tree equipment that most art ignores.
I'm calling Animist as one of the classes. I am getting a tribal/shaman/bloodrager type vibe. And we don't have a good representation for that not quite primal, not quite divine caster.
Does Demigod really make sense as a class and not an archetype or ancestry? I mean a sorcerer is walking a line between ancestry and class, so it is not impossible, but it really feels weird for all demigods to be mechanically the same class.
Demigod just feels like a lot to me. I have trouble picturing that being balanced against other classes of the same level, rare tag be darned.
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Demigod is also a term often used in Pathfinder to describe gods of a certain power-level. Strikes me as extra confusing to also use it for a class which presumably would start at a much lower power level.
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Demigod is also a term often used in Pathfinder to describe gods of a certain power-level. Strikes me as extra confusing to also use it for a class which presumably would start at a much lower power level.
I think Demigod is a good guess.
Anyone know of Hunahpu and Xbalanque and their trials in the underworld of Xibalba?
This (second) character might be the surviving demigod twin, whose sibling ?representing the sun gets beheaded by Camazotz.
Look at the symbols and the patterns. Lack of metal in the armour.
I thing this person is from Arcadia!!
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As much as I like Harrower, Harrower is already an Archetype.
And as Super Zero pointed out, we can have some duplication between classes and feats. But if we have a class Harrower, then what does the Harrower Archetype refer to: the AP archetype, or the multiclass archetype?
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For the second one I’m convinced: demigod…or hero-god?
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Commander would be something I'd really love, I just really like the fantasy of being a martial with such skill that I control the battlefield through tactics and getting my allies to use their abilities to the fullest potential, but I feel as if there might be some design overlap with features already present in the game. Hopefully if one of these classes does end up being a Commander sort, that it carves out a sufficient and mechanically unique niche.
I did get some polynesian vibes from one of the pics so good to see someone else is thinking that. So with that my first thought the jumps into my head is Maui so maybe some kind of legendary hero class like in the vein of people like Beowulf, Maui and Hercules would explain the Rare tag.
A quick class glance at the wikipedia page for Shugendo (don't know if that is the same thing as Shungenja) feels like a really cool fit a class
If you had read just the first paragraph of that page you would know that a shugenja is a practitioner of shugendo.
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I'm wondering if the shirtless character might be the rare class, named something like Ascetic. A class similar to the Vow of Poverty Monk from PF1, restricted to few, if any, possessions. It might have to balance itself out with increased innate power. It also goes against something core of Pathfinder (and Wayne Reynolds character art), that being characters eventually having a ton of gear on them.
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The day player options for being a demigod is published this system will have officially jumped the shark, for real, power fantasy ego tripping characters is already enough of a problem now but enabling things with an official class would only multiply that issue.
I mean, they did say that one of the new classes is tied to the big event they have forthcoming, and we know at least one God is going to die in that event. So it could be just "A God asploded and you got irradiated with God energy- the class."
What if Irori achieved some form of enlightenment that allows him to "die" by transcending beyond death into a new state of being beyond godhood? But, in the process, he gains more compassion and shares some of his knowledge/awareness/essence with some of his followers, certain yogis, inkyo, monks, and ascetics already working towards self-improvement and enlightenment before he moves on, thereby creating a new class of enlightened ascetics working at ascending onto a new path...
I mean there are some parallels in certain regions and religions in the real world and the are some books on Tian Xia coming out before the book these classes will be published in.
What if the rare class is called Pathfinder instead of Ascetic, Demigod, Ascendant, or whatever...?
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Demigod just feels like a lot to me. I have trouble picturing that being balanced against other classes of the same level, rare tag be darned.
I mean if you look at the great heroes of classical myths, a huge number of them are technically demigods: Achilles, Perseus, Theseus, Orpheus, Romulus & Remus, Cú Chulainn, Hanuman, etc.
These are all people who did great things in myth, but they didn't start out vastly more powerful than other people. Like there's no way Perseus succeeds in his task without considerable help from his relatives (he gets the sack that can contain the Gorgon's head from Hesperides, an adamantine sword from Zeus, a helm of invisibilty from Hades, sandals that let you fly from Hermes, and the Aegis from Athena.) This sounds like an RPG character to me.
Archivist
And that IS a serious guess.
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My issue is that demigod doesn't seem like a class with unified mechanics. Like you would need demigods that are good at combat, demigods that are good at skills, demigods that are good at magic etc. and the name implies a lot of power which means either the class is the best at what other classes do or a demigod of war is outperformed by a fighter. (also demigod was a term in 1e to refer to certain deities that weren't quite as strong as the bigger gods,but could still have clerics, like the archdevils, but that might have changed.)
Some people might see the lack of unified mechanics as a feature, not a bug. PF1e’s Vigilante with two streams (avenger or stalker) that then spawned a bunch of “sub-classes” via archetypes (over two dozen like Warlock and Magical Child) was a chassis that enabled a legion of concepts.
Likewise the Kineticist - while PF2’s Kineticist seems super robust and infinitely expandable, PF1’s was definitely fertile ground - Legendary Games Ultimate Kineticist Compendium ran to a whopping 280 pages of new blasts, archetypes, feats etc.
So much as a Demigod/Hero would personally be a huge miss in terms of theme, mechanically it could be really exciting, and allow for broad and imaginative concepts.
There’s hope for you yet.
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A god complex is already one of the biggest PC personality issues across the whole of RPGs and I can't think of anything that would prop up that overconfident, arrogant, and toxic style of play more than publishing a class that literally says they are functionally and factually just better than everyone else.
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A god complex is already one of the biggest PC personality issues across the whole of RPGs and I can't think of anything that would prop up that overconfident, arrogant, and toxic style of play more than publishing a class that literally says they are functionally and factually just better than everyone else.
This is a good argument for making a class like this Rare, not "never make it." Since like, there are people you can play Scion with and they wouldn't be obnoxious about it. You can let those people have access to the class.
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A god complex is already one of the biggest PC personality issues across the whole of RPGs and I can't think of anything that would prop up that overconfident, arrogant, and toxic style of play more than publishing a class that literally says they are functionally and factually just better than everyone else.
I don’t have any fears of Paizo making a “functionally and factually better” class - and there’s no rules fix for a bad player.
You design the game for people who play it in good faith, not the jerks.
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For the record: Michael has said that both classes have been guessed!
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For the record: Michael has said that both classes have been guessed!
I for one am glad that I guessed both "Jessica" and "Happiness".
For the record: Michael has said that both classes have been guessed!
*Quietly pulls back out disguise kit*
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Pedantic aside - When speaking of many pre-modern mythic structures, there is little to no distinction between "demigod" and "hero". It has been a few decades since I have published in the area, but I will try to clearly lay out the specifics here, using mythic systems derived from IE sources (Hellenic being the most recognizable). All heroes were, by definition, demigods since being a demigod (that is, technically having some divine heritage) was the prime requirement for hero status (hero was not a moral status). The other requirement for hero status was death. So, all heroes in these systems had to have some sort of divine lineage and had to die. The earliest example comes from a non-IE source (which probably influenced later IE manifestations of this, but people can get all contentious about it), Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was a demigod and was a hero, because they are functionally the same thing.
One of the possible reasons for this was nature of hero worship. Heroes in mythic material often complicate the distance between divinity and mortality, and in death provide alternate modes of worship in cultures like ancient Greece. Dead heroes become localized deities that received offerings, as opposed to larger cultural gods (again, turning to ancient Greece, we have the Olympians here). Figures like Hercules and Asclepius are conspicuous in not following this particular distinction, and the tortured mythologic traditions that try to reconcile there movement from hero/demigod to god attest to how uncommon this was.
Demigod as a class would be, in my mind, a bad take. First, it is not a role, but inherent quality more along the lines of ancestry. Second, it has not functional element except be better than anyone else.
In terms of demigods who were only noted for the strength, there are PLENTY of examples such as Asclepios. The use of magic in many mythic systems had deep cultural connections, and in fact characters like Medea , Ariadne, Phaedra and Helen all qualified as heroes (Medea, Ariadne, and Phaedra being associated with magic).
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Nevermind the specific name of "demigod," I think some kind of blessed hero very distinct from the devout Champions and Warpriests of the world could be a whole lot of fun as a class - potentially quite fitting as someone beefy and Fantasy Pacific Islander.
The Taotake and their neighbors have been waiting very patiently for the spotlight.
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If the names have already been said I'm gonna guess it's avatar and animist. Avatar channels the power of one divine entity and the animist channels the power of varied colloquial spirits
A god complex is already one of the biggest PC personality issues across the whole of RPGs and I can't think of anything that would prop up that overconfident, arrogant, and toxic style of play more than publishing a class that literally says they are functionally and factually just better than everyone else.I don’t have any fears of Paizo making a “functionally and factually better” class - and there’s no rules fix for a bad player.
You design the game for people who play it in good faith, not the jerks.
I agree 100% with this principle; unfortunately, I have often seen design decisions and majority opinions on this boards going in the opposite direction. I mean stuff like: "This enables players to [do bad thing], so we have to remove it from the game".
If the names have already been said I'm gonna guess it's avatar and animist. Avatar channels the power of one divine entity and the animist channels the power of varied colloquial spirits
Avatar is a good guess.
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I'm hoping beyond hope it IS demigod because that means mythic rules is finally in the pipeline in the next few years!
I’m not sure that one guarantees the other…
In PF2, the vigilante is very much better suited to be an archetype than a full class. The same really feels true of the design space for any kind of mythical hero to me. It just gives so much more flexibility that way than trying to explain why such a class gets legendary X proficiency, but not y. What a lot of folks are describing with their takes on a demigod or avatar class sounds very similar to PF1’s take on the sentinel prestige class which still feels like something that loses flexibility by being a full class instead of an archetype.
Are people hoping for something more like a divine or outer planes kineticist than just more champion options, an Oracle, or cleric/warpriest?
Most of the play tests we have done so far have involved playtesting a new mechanical system being introduced to the game. I could buy that the new system is mythic rules, with one class fully engaged in that system and thus being rare, while the other skirts it, being a scholar of myths and legends instead, but I guess all of that really boils down to whether large scale war, or a small group of mythic heroes will be most heavily influential in the god killing story line. Usually Paizo leans towards the small group of heroes, but that can sometimes make the “PCs will do the big setting changing thing” difficult, because PCs don’t tend to follow the script. It usually has to be “NPC does the setting changing thing” and then the PCs have to stop it or mitigate the consequences.
Do we know if the book these classes is set to release with will come before or after the player core 2?
Difficult to say. One of the two is going to be the GenCon release. I lean towards PC2 coming out first, but we'll probably get confirmation on Thursday or Friday.