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I love the inventor. I think it is a really cool class with a really unique flavor, though I think we can agree it has a few things that could be improved. I'll not adress all of them here, but I'll go a little in-depth about one of them which I think Paizo should adress when the non-CRB and APG classes receive their errata in the Remaster; Overdrive.
Overdrive is, technically, fine as is, though I find it a little swingy at times and unreliable when compared to other damage sources in the game. This is specially evident when compared to other similar features like a thaumaturge's Exploit Weakness, which is not only less swingy because it still has a positive effect even if you fail the check, but also is way more powerful. I want to clarify that I don't intend to make the inventor stronger necesarily, since I'm not giving the inventor a damage boost it couldn't have otherwise get on its own, though I do want to make it easier for the inventor to exploit it's potential and get that boost easily.
Overdrive
[Inventor] [Manipulate]
Frequency once per roundTemporarily cranking the gizmos on your body into overdrive, you try to add greater power to your attacks. Attempt a DC 15 Crafting check.
Critical Success Your gizmos go into a state of incredible efficiency called critical overdrive, adding great power to your attacks. Your Strikes deal additional damage equal to your Intelligence modifier for 1 minute. After the Overdrive ends, your gizmos become unusable as they cool down or reset, and you can't use Overdrive for 1 minute.
Success Your gizmos go into overdrive, adding power to your attacks. As critical success, except the additional damage is equal to half your Intelligence modifier.
Failure You make a miscalculation and nothing happens.
Critical Failure Whoops! Something explodes. You take fire damage equal to your level, and you can't use Overdrive again for 1 minute as your gizmos cool down and reset.Special When under the effects of Overdrive, you can still use the Overdrive action. You can't extend your Overdrive's duration this way, but you can turn an overdrive into a critical overdrive if you critically succeed. A failure has no effect on your current Overdrive, and you end your Overdrive on a critical failure.
The rationale behind these changes is that I wanted to make Overdrive into something similar to the aid action; a check that you'll likely fail (or rather not critically succed in this case) during the very early levels but that eventually you'll (critically) succeed easily pretty much everytime. I tried to keep the damage in line with a barbarian's Rage so an inventor would always stay slightly behind in damage if possible because, well, an inventor shouldn't out damage a barbarian IMO.
(I'll calculate the average damage between all instincts for the sake of not comparing the inventor against every single instinct in the game, though the numbers of each instinct will still be there).
#1 Chart (Barbarian Instinct Damage
#2 Chart (Barbarian Damage)
#3 Chart (Inventor Damage)
DC 15 was my sweet spot because, well, it's the same as a 1st level DC and I never knew why it did become harder to overdrive as you became stronger (it makes sense for the thaum because you are facing a foe, but an inventor is literally just turning on his tech), and because it's likely that an inventor wouldn't start to critically succeed more often until 6th-8th level. At 9th level an inventor with Assurance is guaranteed to critically succed with Overdrive, though since barbarians get their +5 Str at 10th level which not only increases its damage but also it's accuracy it IMO makes it fair.
#4 Chart (Difference in Damage Between Both Classes)
At the only point in which the inventor is ahead of the barbarian is at 5th level if the inventor crits their overdrive. Otherwise the inventor is always laging behind in damage against the barbarian.
Would you like to see something like this when the errata for the classes that will not appear in Player Core 1 and Player Core 2 is released for the Remaster? Thx if you are reading this.
While OP's fix to Overdrive I think would be an improvement, I dislike the mechanic in general for a couple of reasons:
Thus, while I agree that the inventor could use some tweaks, my proposal would be the following:
Thus, rather than crank up a damage steroid, you'd rely on your explosions, other unstable actions, and your innovation to supply your damage. Each time you'd explode for damage, you'd risk overloading your innovation as well, so hopefully that would focus the risk-reward element a little more too.
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I wouldn't mind seeing the low level weapon innovation options get some tweaking. Some of the current options aren't bad, but there's a distinct lack of ranged-specific choices. Most of them are melee, and there's a couple that are agnostic with regard to weapon choice, but given that it's in the same book as the firearms, the lack of support for ranged weapons is very noticeable.
Yeah, if there were classes that would LOVE a legendary class DC it would be Inventors and dare I say... Alchemists.
That is such a good idea Corvus.
Alchemists, yes. But they're spell-less casters already, so that fits within the PF2 paradigm (honestly in some ways that would fit better than their current chassis, but I've whined enough about that). Inventors I'm not as certain. They just have so many pseudo-focus spells already, giving them legendary proficiency on those spells would make them a good DPS caster with full martial proficiencies. Dialing their proficiencies back to the war-priest or caster chassis would offset that of course, but I think that'd be the wrong move for inventors. Moving their key stat off Int might also work, but that seems even worse.
Maybe I'll home-brew something and play with it. I could very well be wrong and it would play out wonderfully as another psuedocaster. They'd need some kind of "damage on a miss" mechanic like splash, but overdrive could be reworked for that I think.
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Inventor is one of those classes that's just fine enough I don't expect it to ever get significant changes.
Weapon innovations kind of suck and overdrive feels really derivative and Unstable feels kind of bad after the focus change but it's all functional.
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Also, not to rain on the parade too much, but Inventor is from Guns and Gears. Which is not one of the books being Remastered. So it is looking at errata to update language to match the new core rules rather than an overhaul.
One idea is to do it like treat wounds; you can raise the DC as your Crafting improves for more bonus damage
I did like innovations, though I wish they'd have a level 1 option to use advanced weapons as innovations
This sounds interesting actually, though what would be the DCs and how the damage would scale? If you take the DC 15 / 20 / 30 / 40 scaling of treat wounds but keep the current damage progression of +1 at expert, +2 at master, and +3 at legendary I think would make overdrive worse than it already is, not to mention that most people would likely stay at DC 15 or DC 20 to crit more often and thus get their whole Int mod to damage.
Inventor is one of those classes that's just fine enough I don't expect it to ever get significant changes.
Weapon innovations kind of suck and overdrive feels really derivative and Unstable feels kind of bad after the focus change but it's all functional.
You can say that about the witch and the alchemist. The old versions worked. But when you do a simple side by side comparison to other classes it is clear the mechanics need a boost.
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You can say that about the witch and the alchemist. The old versions worked. But when you do a simple side by side comparison to other classes it is clear the mechanics need a boost.Inventor is one of those classes that's just fine enough I don't expect it to ever get significant changes.
Weapon innovations kind of suck and overdrive feels really derivative and Unstable feels kind of bad after the focus change but it's all functional.
I'd say closer to the Ranger, which almost didn't change at all.
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Also, not to rain on the parade too much, but Inventor is from Guns and Gears. Which is not one of the books being Remastered. So it is looking at errata to update language to match the new core rules rather than an overhaul.
Starting to think a class splat book that remastered the 6 non core classes (Gunslinger, Inventor, Magus, Psychic, Summoner, Thaumaturge), and introduce maybe 1 or 2 additional classes, might work as a title. Not sure what the hook would be, but I'm sure they could come up with something. I'm still impressed with treasure vault's premise; Ultimate Equipment was the one title I was sure wouldn't be brought forward in the new format, yet it worked well.
How about "Hall of Heroes", focusing on 7 regional and historical personages and their followers, as a way to reintroduce those classes as well as updates/expansions to archetypes and class archetypes? Ideally (from my personal perspective) with more class archetypes written up that can fully explore what is possible in that design niche. I guess it would land somewhere between the Adventurer Guide, Advanced Class Guide, and maybe Villain Codex in writing and presentation. Which is frankly just fine with me, I liked all of those.
Edit: I threw that out as a random suggestion, but I'm starting to like it the more I think about it. 7 or 8 moderately sized factions, each with 1 of those classes and a dozen or so archetypes/class archetypes, as well as a few new NPC stat blocks, sounds like something I would want to buy. Good mix of lore, player options, and GM resources.
Edit edit: Interesting, there just happens to be 8 factions in the Character Guide that aren’t fleshed out fully. Aldori Swordlords, Apsis Corporation, Bellflower Network, Eagle Knights, Houses of Perfection, Lion Blades, Red Mantis Society, and Whispering Way.
I'd say closer to the Ranger, which almost didn't change at all.You can say that about the witch and the alchemist. The old versions worked. But when you do a simple side by side comparison to other classes it is clear the mechanics need a boost.Inventor is one of those classes that's just fine enough I don't expect it to ever get significant changes.
Weapon innovations kind of suck and overdrive feels really derivative and Unstable feels kind of bad after the focus change but it's all functional.
The Ranger? So clearly behind the Fighter, Champion, Rogue, Barbarian, Thaumaturge, Gunslinger and Monk. Hmm that is putting it near the bottom.
It needs a boost.
I wouldn't put the gunslinger above the monk, but I get the overall idea.
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Starting to think a class splat book that remastered the 6 non core classes (Gunslinger, Inventor, Magus, Psychic, Summoner, Thaumaturge), and introduce maybe 1 or 2 additional classes, might work as a title. Not sure what the hook would be, but I'm sure they could come up with something.
It doesn't need a premise and I generally predict that exactly what you described is going to be released under the name Player Core 3.
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Starting to think a class splat book that remastered the 6 non core classes (Gunslinger, Inventor, Magus, Psychic, Summoner, Thaumaturge), and introduce maybe 1 or 2 additional classes, might work as a title. Not sure what the hook would be, but I'm sure they could come up with something.It doesn't need a premise and I generally predict that exactly what you described is going to be released under the name Player Core 3.
Given the accuracy of your predictions so far, I think that means AnimatedPaper's idea will never happen. :p
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Also, not to rain on the parade too much, but Inventor is from Guns and Gears. Which is not one of the books being Remastered. So it is looking at errata to update language to match the new core rules rather than an overhaul.Starting to think a class splat book that remastered the 6 non core classes (Gunslinger, Inventor, Magus, Psychic, Summoner, Thaumaturge), and introduce maybe 1 or 2 additional classes, might work as a title. Not sure what the hook would be, but I'm sure they could come up with something. I'm still impressed with treasure vault's premise; Ultimate Equipment was the one title I was sure wouldn't be brought forward in the new format, yet it worked well.
How about "Hall of Heroes", focusing on 7 regional and historical personages and their followers, as a way to reintroduce those classes as well as updates/expansions to archetypes and class archetypes? Ideally (from my personal perspective) with more class archetypes written up that can fully explore what is possible in that design niche. I guess it would land somewhere between the Adventurer Guide, Advanced Class Guide, and maybe Villain Codex in writing and presentation. Which is frankly just fine with me, I liked all of those.
Edit: I threw that out as a random suggestion, but I'm starting to like it the more I think about it. 7 or 8 moderately sized factions, each with 1 of those classes and a dozen or so archetypes/class archetypes, as well as a few new NPC stat blocks, sounds like something I would want to buy. Good mix of lore, player options, and GM resources.
Edit edit: Interesting, there just happens to be 8 factions in the Character Guide that aren’t fleshed out fully. Aldori Swordlords, Apsis Corporation, Bellflower Network, Eagle Knights, Houses of Perfection, Lion Blades, Red Mantis Society, and Whispering Way.
Trying to map the classes to the factions is fun. But it deserves its own thread. I might create one when I have some idle time.
I think enough people have taken a crap on the idea for me to participate, but you have fun.
My main point was that while we’ll likely only see errata to Guns and Gears and similar titles, it’s entirely possible a book (or multiple books) is in the works that makes space to include larger updates to the non core classes