A personal take on remastering the Inventor

[Teridax]

Jumping off of this thread, I feel there's room for the Inventor to evolve a little from its initial design. The criticisms I have of the class are the following:

The class has a tendency to feel diluted, with innovations like the weapon somewhat failing to fully deliver their intended fantasy.

The class is fairly MAD, as it wants good Int, but also good Dex/Wis/Con, but also often Strength for heavier armor and more melee attack damage.

Many feats are tightly-coupled to existing innovations, making it difficult to expand them properly.

Overdrive is a fairly uninteresting and perfunctory damage buff that can be frustrating when it doesn't go off. A similar criticism can be made of Offensive Boost at 9th level.

Unstable feels excessively punitive as a trait by shutting down all other unstable functions.

Several of the Inventor's features require downtime, which isn't great for many APs. In particular, taking a full day of downtime just to rebuild a destroyed invention isn't always possible and can leave the Inventor feeling like half a class.

With this in mind, I'd propose the following broad goals for changes:

Strip back the core Inventor's power to put more power into their innovation.

Improve their quality of life by making it easier to rebuild, repair, and modify their innovation.

Rework the unstable trait to involve a Crafting check and damage the innovation, rather than the Inventor, without disabling further unstable actions.

Here would be the specifics:

Core Class

No longer trained in martial weapons (you still get this with the weapon innovation, see below).

No longer trained in medium armor (you still get this with the armor innovation, see below).

You lose the following class features: Overdrive, Explode, Shield Block, Expert Overdrive, Breakthrough Innovation, Master Overdrive, Offensive Boost, Legendary Overdrive, Revolutionary Innovation, and Infinite Invention. You gain other features instead that often provide similar benefits, listed below.

You gain the Inventive Expertise and Inventive Mastery features at levels 7 and 15 respectively, rather than 9 and 17. You also gain a new feature at level 19: Inventive Legend. This feature makes you legendary in Inventor class DC.

Innovation feature altered: unless your innovation has its HP values listed elsewhere, it has HP equal to 5 times your level, and a BT of twice your level. This includes armor, which would normally start out more durable. During your daily preparations, you automatically repair your innovation and restore its HP to maximum, or rebuild it if your innovation was lost or destroyed.

Peerless Inventor feature altered: you also gain the Quick Repair skill feat as a free feat, and don't need to place your innovation on a stable surface to repair it.

You gain a new 1st-level feature: Additional Modifications. At every odd-numbered level, you gain an additional inventor class feat. This feat must have the modification trait (these are your innovation modifications; see below).

Reconfigure feature altered: you become an expert in Crafting, can change your modifications during your daily preparations rather than downtime, and can do so without making a check.

Lightning Reflexes moved to 9th level rather than 7th level.

Complete Reconfiguration moved to 7th level, rather than 13th level, and altered to match the updated Reconfigure features (retrain modification feats during daily preparations without making a check). It also makes you a master in Crafting.

You gain a new 15th-level feature: Infinite Reconfiguration. You become legendary in Crafting, and each time you successfully Repair your innovation, you can also retrain one modification feat affecting it. You can Repair your innovation in this way even if it's not damaged.

Innovations

All innovation modifications are now inventor class feats with the modification traits, with their respective innovation as a prerequisite, and spread out across levels.

Because the Additional Modifications feature would already let you choose a modification at 1st rank, your Innovation feature would no longer provide its own initial modification (there would also no longer be any such thing as initial, breakthrough, or revolutionary modifications).

Armor Innovation

You become trained in medium and heavy armor, and gain the Shield Block feat.

Your armor uses the statistics of any level 0 common suit of armor of your choice, or any other level 0 suit of armor to which you have access. You can instead use the statistics of a 1st-level common suit of armor of your choice, or another 1st-level suit of armor to which you have access, but you must pay the monetary Price for the weapon.

You gain the armor specialization effect of your armor innovation. By default, your armor innovation's armor group is always composite, though you can modify this with a modification feat.

You gain the Static Shock two-action activity, which has the electicity, inventor, and unstable traits (the unstable trait is changed; see below): you discharge batteries embedded in your armor, dealing 2d6 electricity damage (+1d6 every 2 levels) to all creatures in a 5-foot emanation around it with a basic Reflex save. A creature that fails its save is also off-guard for 1 round, and also stunned 1 on a critical failure. You automatically critically succeed on your save against this effect.

Construct Innovation

You gain the Detonate two-action activity. This is effectively the same as Explode, except the damage dice are d10s, and you automatically critically succeed on your save against this effect.

Weapon Innovation

You become trained in martial and advanced weapons, and your weapon innovation can also be an advanced weapon of appropriate level and availability.

You gain the critical specialization effect of your weapon innovation at 1st level.

If your weapon innovation is based on a simple weapon, you gain the Complex Simplicity modification feat as a free feat. If your weapon innovation is based on a martial weapon, it gains one of the following traits of your choice: versatile B, versatile P, or versatile S.

You gain the Fragmented Attack two-action activity, which has the inventor and unstable traits: hidden devices, shrapnel, or other volatile bits of material erupt in a 5-foot burst within your weapon's reach, or first range increment if it's ranged, dealing 2 of your weapon's damage dice (+1 every 2 levels) of its damage type with a basic Reflex save. You can apply your weapon innovation's traits to this activity as if it were an attack, with effects on a hit occurring on a failed save, and effects on a critical hit occurring on a critical failure. If your weapon innovation uses ammunition, you spend one ammunition to use this activity. You automatically critically succeed on your save against this effect.

Unstable Trait
The unstable trait is altered: after you use an action with the unstable trait, your innovation takes damage equal to your level, which ignores its Hardness, based on the result of a normal Crafting check for your level: no damage on a critical success, half damage on a success (minimum of 1), full damage on a failure, and double damage on a critical failure. Failing the check no longer prevents you from using further unstable actions, so you can keep using them until your innovation is destroyed.

Feats

Feats that have a different effect based on your innovation, such as Megaton Strike and Full Automation, are instead split into separate feats for each innovation. These feats have the modification trait and have their respective innovation as a prerequisite.

Feats that would be incompatible with the above changes, such as Ubiquitous Overdrive, would be removed or adapted to work on their own. For example, Variable Core could be used to alter the damage type of an innovation's inherent unstable action, and the Overdrive Ally feat line could instead list its own Crafting check to give an ally a persistent damage bonus.

Haphazard Repair would be removed, as the updated unstable trait and Quick Repair feat would both invalidate the class feat's benefits.

Additional feats could expand existing innovations. For instance, you could have a Mixed Materials modification feat for your armor innovation that would let you change its armor group.

Particular mention goes to the weapon innovation, whose modifications are currently all about strapping extra traits onto the same weapon. Transforming modifications into feats should allow for many more modifications that provide actual actions to do with the weapon innovation, such as Fighter-esque maneuvers with a twist in the form of an unstable option. The same could be done for the armor and construct innovations as well.

And that should about cover it! The general idea here is to make the Inventor more customizable, with more things to do in general without necessarily becoming straight-up more powerful (you'd have worse single-target damage, for instance, in exchange for better AoE). Rather than simply not be able to do things, here the intent would be to incur different kinds of costs when possible (i.e. with the unstable trait damaging your innovation instead of shutting down all unstable actions), or just improve accessibility across APs (i.e. changing downtime features to daily preparation).

[TheWayofPie]

All this sounds awesome except not getting medium armor by default. Strength builds are unviable without medium armor.

[Teridax]

TheWayofPie wrote:

All this sounds awesome except not getting medium armor by default. Strength builds are unviable without medium armor.

This is true. The intent was to make Strength builds more specific to the armor innovation, with the weapon and construct innovations favoring Int+Dex+Con+Wis, though I might have missed the class wanting to go Strength with a weapon innovation for more on-hit damage as well.

[Tactical Drongo]

Splitting feats into multiple with similar effects seems inefficient to me
Rather make a little note for inbovation specific stuff

Spares one the hassle to make three almost identical Versions of the same feat

[Teridax]

Tactical Drongo wrote:

Splitting feats into multiple with similar effects seems inefficient to me

Rather make a little note for inbovation specific stuff

Spares one the hassle to make three almost identical Versions of the same feat

The problem is that every time you release a new innovation, you'd have to edit the feat. It also means that every time you release a new innovation, you'd need to include some effect for that feat, even if the two otherwise have nothing to do with one another. It effectively causes those feats to become tightly-coupled with existing innovations, which doesn't scale very well with future design (and I suspect may be a contributing factor to why we haven't seen more Inventor subclasses). By contrast, splitting those feats wouldn't change most builds (most Inventors don't go for a dual innovation), but would avoid those same issues while also decluttering those feats, as you'd only need to read the effect concerning your own invention. It also means that if you want to build off of one of those feats for a specific innovation, you easily could, instead of having to consider all of the ramifications of other innovations.

[exequiel759]

Not having medium armor from the get go is criminal IMO. If anything, armor innovation should give them heavy armor rather than all inventors losing medium armor.

I also don't think that spltting feats is the way to go honestly. If anything its easier to just errata whatever feat included just the previous innovations to include new innovations when they are released.

Also I'm not going to say I miss overdrive because it was fairly bad as a class feature (wow +6 to damage at 20th level if you don't crit? when do barbarians get that bonus, at 1st level if they have giant instinct?) but IMO inventors should get something somewhere to get that damage back. Probably something like a Singular Expertise-like feature that gives them 2 + 1 per Crafting prof level to damage with their innovation or literally just steal Implement's Empowerment from the thaumaturge for that.

[Teridax]

exequiel759 wrote:

Not having medium armor from the get go is criminal IMO. If anything, armor innovation should give them heavy armor rather than all inventors losing medium armor.

As noted above, the reworked armor innovation would provide proficiency in heavy armor. The problem with expecting inventors to always use medium armor is that you're implicitly expecting them to always build a bit of Strength, in addition to Dex, Con, Wis, and Int.

exequiel759 wrote:

I also don't think that spltting feats is the way to go honestly. If anything its easier to just errata whatever feat included just the previous innovations to include new innovations when they are released.

Since when is being forced to errata a feat with each release of a new subclass less effort than just keeping the content additions to that subclass? Having to errata feats each time is messy and adds extra work compared to splitting up feats that, by all rights, are each multiple feats stacked under the same name that often do vastly different things depending on your innovation anyway.

exequiel759 wrote:

Also I'm not going to say I miss overdrive because it was fairly bad as a class feature (wow +6 to damage at 20th level if you don't crit? when do barbarians get that bonus, at 1st level if they have giant instinct?) but IMO inventors should get something somewhere to get that damage back. Probably something like a Singular Expertise-like feature that gives them 2 + 1 per Crafting prof level to damage with their innovation or literally just steal Implement's Empowerment from the thaumaturge for that.

As the original post also notes, each innovation would get a bespoke version of Explode that would be even stronger than the original, and the unstable trait is reworked so that you can reuse unstable actions as many times as your innovation can take damage. This version of the inventor would likely be more powerful than the class is currently.

[exequiel759]

Teridax wrote:

The problem with expecting inventors to always use medium armor is that you're implicitly expecting them to always build a bit of Strength, in addition to Dex, Con, Wis, and Int.

If you want to make a Dex-based inventor you can freely ignore your medium armor proficiency, while someone that goes Str-based but that doesn't take the armor innovation is literally forced into taking Sentinel Dedication or whatever to get something they used to have. It's literally a nerf for the sake of nerfing when the only thing you are making is making access to something harder when it wasn't before. This change is simply bad.

Someone said wrote:

Since when is being forced to errata a feat with each release of a new subclass less effort than just keeping the content additions to that subclass?

You don't even need an errata if you think about it. If you release a new innovation and this innovation needs an interaction with something like Megaton Strike it's as easy as somewhere within the page in which you are releasing this innovation to add a * [Innovation]: and add how it interacts with said feat. Assuming this happened to be something official, it would later be added into AoN alongside the already existing interactions of said feats. Team+ literally did this with their Inventor+.

I also think that while the basic idea of this "reimagination" is really cool and I would certainly like something like this from Paizo, it's also apparent to me that you don't know how to properly balance or design a class. Why make three "bespoke versions of Explode" when you already have Explode? If anything keep Explode as is but make it so each innovation alters Explode in some way, which is not only simpler but also allows for more feats to interact with it in the future.

Also receinving twice the amount of class feats is a big no-no, even if those are limited to modifications feats. A chassis similar to that of the kineticist would be much better, something like getting two modification feats from your chosen innovation at 1st level and a couple of more at higher levels or something like that. If you want to make it easier for inventors to reconfingure their innovation then it doesn't make sense to pretty much allow them to eventually have every single modification feat they could ever have. Make those choices matter and force inventors to prepare ahead of time, as well as not literally quadruplicate the amount of options they used to have.

Also legendary class DC is another big no-no. The only class in the game that has that is the kineticist and that class relies entirely on their class DC to work, while the inventor still is a martial class besides their "bespoke version of Explode". Not even alchemists have this!

This is a very minor nitpick, but why your innovation has HP equal to 5 times your level and a BT equal to twice your level? Ignoring the fact that this is ridiculously high even with your unstable action changes (which I also don't like that much, I think someone somewhere either on this forum or in the subreddit suggested a way better alternative but I don't remember it exactly now) it also breaks the regular convention that BT is pretty much always half the item's HP, so if anything, it would be something like 5 times your level in HP and half that amount BT.

I also think the Inventor > Quick Repair change kinda makes the the whole "You automatically repair your innovation and restore its HP to maximum" kinda pointless because it's likely already going to be at max HP anyways even between encounters. The change itself isn't bad because honestly Inventor wasn't a good feat already and now with the Remaster is even worse and Quick Repair is always going to be much more useful and flavorful to inventors than Inventor would ever be (and I wouldn't even have a problem if you even added your level to the amount of HP you restore with repair, or that bonus scaled much higher than it does for other classes like 15 if you are trained, 20 if you are expert, 30 if you are master, and 40 if you are legendary. After all, even when Inventor was a bad feat it was still a 7th level skill feat granted at 1st level, while Quick Repair already is a 1st level feat so I think needs a boost of some kind to be on "equal footing").

I honestly think that you (or someone else) has to make a scribe.pf2.tools and make an actual homebrew of this remastered inventor because I like the overall direction of this project, though I think it needs a lot of tweaks to make it better, simpler, and more balanced.

[Teridax]

exequiel759 wrote:

If you want to make a Dex-based inventor you can freely ignore your medium armor proficiency, while someone that goes Str-based but that doesn't take the armor innovation is literally forced into taking Sentinel Dedication or whatever to get something they used to have. It's literally a nerf for the sake of nerfing when the only thing you are making is making access to something harder when it wasn't before. This change is simply bad.

I would perhaps look at the larger context of the changes before crying wolf and calling the whole thing a nerf. In particular, I significantly buffed Explode and its different variations, plus bumped up the Inventor's class DC to legendary at high level, which would give the class significantly more Int-based AoE damage. I also explained the reasons why in literally just the third line of the entire post:

Teridax wrote:

The class is fairly MAD, as it wants good Int, but also good Dex/Wis/Con, but also often Strength for heavier armor and more melee attack damage.

There is no world in which you can commit to Strength as an Inventor without suffering heavily, because you are already pulled in four different directions when choosing which attributes to raise. Medium armor proficiency does not change this. With the above implementation, you get the same AC by putting in the Dex you'd have to increase anyway, and if you wanted to commit to Strength instead you could opt for the armor innovation and properly dump Dex.

exequiel759 wrote:

You don't even need an errata if you think about it. If you release a new innovation and this innovation needs an interaction with something like Megaton Strike it's as easy as somewhere within the page in which you are releasing this innovation to add a * [Innovation]: and add how it interacts with said feat. Assuming this happened to be something official, it would later be added into AoN alongside the already existing interactions of said feats. Team+ literally did this with their Inventor+.

Team+ content is homebrew, and AoN, while excellent, is not an official resource. What you are asking is for official Paizo content to require poring through multiple different rulebooks just to get the full understanding of how a single feat works. That defeats the whole purpose of PF2e's modular design.

exequiel759 wrote:

I also think that while the basic idea of this "reimagination" is really cool and I would certainly like something like this from Paizo, it's also apparent to me that you don't know how to properly balance or design a class. Why make three "bespoke versions of Explode" when you already have Explode? If anything keep Explode as is but make it so each innovation alters Explode in some way, which is not only simpler but also allows for more feats to interact with it in the future.

You are quick to accuse others of incompetence, yet appear reluctant to turn that critical eye towards your own abilities, which makes for poor critique. Putting aside how many official subclasses provide different iterations upon the same move (just look at the Gunslinger and each way's different reload), the benefit to bespoke versions of Explode is that they help differentiate those subclasses better, and better accommodate their individual niche. Static Shock applying crowd control reinforces your ability to tank when picking the armor innovation, whereas Fragmented Attack complements the added customizability of your weapon innovation by applying its traits. Perhaps the details of these particular iterations could use some refinement, but that you'd fail entirely to even conceive of the benefits of more tailored mechanics as a whole, despite their plentiful existence in the game already, is your problem, not mine.

exequiel759 wrote:

Also receinving twice the amount of class feats is a big no-no, even if those are limited to modifications feats. A chassis similar to that of the kineticist would be much better, something like getting two modification feats from your chosen innovation at 1st level and a couple of more at higher levels or something like that. If you want to make it easier for inventors to reconfingure their innovation then it doesn't make sense to pretty much allow them to eventually have every single modification feat they could ever have. Make those choices matter and force inventors to prepare ahead of time, as well as not literally quadruplicate the amount of options they used to have.

Also legendary class DC is another big no-no. The only class in the game that has that is the kineticist and that class relies entirely on their class DC to work, while the inventor still is a martial class besides their "bespoke version of Explode". Not even alchemists have this!

This is a weird one, because your main opposition here appears to stem from the fact that what I'm proposing is unprecedented, which is already a silly argument in and of itself... except as per your own admission, what I'm proposing isn't unprecedented. Putting aside how the Kineticist exists, what I'm suggesting is simply to shift modifications to the feat system and make room for that, which can be done in a perfectly power-neutral manner. You forget that Kineticists not only get an extra impulse feat every 4 levels, but also get the choice of a gate junction or expanded flexibility through a new element, each of which is power on par with that of a feat, so in practice, they too get similar progression. Whether it comes from class features that grant their own benefits or class features that grant extra feats is not really what determines the power of those features. You claim that the Inventor is "still a martial class", but as mentioned already, more of their damage output in the above version comes from AoE than from Strikes, so in that respect I don't think legendary class DC is what would break such a class.

exequiel759 wrote:

This is a very minor nitpick, but why your innovation has HP equal to 5 times your level and a BT equal to twice your level? Ignoring the fact that this is ridiculously high even with your unstable action changes (which I also don't like that much, I think someone somewhere either on this forum or in the subreddit suggested a way better alternative but I don't remember it exactly now) it also breaks the regular convention that BT is pretty much always half the item's HP, so if anything, it would be something like 5 times your level in HP and half that amount BT.

If it is really important for you that the BT remains exactly two and a half times the item's level, you are most welcome to have it your way, as I picked the number for convenience and am not terribly attached to it. As for why the value is "ridiculously high" (it's not, and I urge you to consider what that HP would look like at lower levels especially), part of it is to accommodate the updated unstable trait. If you happen to stumble across that "way better alternative" once more, feel free to send it my way, as I'd be curious to read more about it.

exequiel759 wrote:

I also think the Inventor > Quick Repair change kinda makes the the whole "You automatically repair your innovation and restore its HP to maximum" kinda pointless because it's likely already going to be at max HP anyways even between encounters.

By this logic, your pool of Focus Points shouldn't replenish during your daily preparations either, because you'd just need to spend half an hour at most to Refocus before or after. That you would criticize such a basic convenience feature is puzzling.

exequiel759 wrote:

I honestly think that you (or someone else) has to make a scribe.pf2.tools and make an actual homebrew of this remastered inventor because I like the overall direction of this project, though I think it needs a lot of tweaks to make it better, simpler, and more balanced.

If you have any specifics to suggest, I'm all ears. While I have used Scribe in the past, I see no real reason to direct people on this forum to a separate website when I could just as easily format and present the meat of the ideas here, as the above isn't large enough to warrant its own document.

[exequiel759]

I'll honestly just answer to this one bit because you are ignoring every criticism in this post...

Someone said wrote:

Team+ content is homebrew, and AoN, while excellent, is not an official resource.

I don't know...isn't this literally on the homebrew and house rules tab? AoN is literally endorsed by Paizo so it's literally way more official than literally everything in this post and and the whole homebrew tab.

[Teridax]

exequiel759 wrote:

I'll honestly just answer to this one bit because you are ignoring every criticism in this post...

I would not call acknowledging and responding to your reply point by point "ignoring criticism", but if that's what lets you ignore the fair share of criticism directed at your own argumentation, you do you.

exequiel759 wrote:

I don't know...isn't this literally on the homebrew and house rules tab? AoN is literally endorsed by Paizo so it's literally way more official than literally everything in this post and and the whole homebrew tab.

How does this pertain in any way to what I've said? The point is that Paizo does not print books under the expectation that you need to be holding multiple books in hand just to figure out how a single feat or spell functions. Pathfinder 2e's design is expressly designed to be as modular as possible and easy to reference, which is precisely why I'm criticizing feats that are too tightly-coupled to a fixed set of subclasses. If they were broken up into individual feats for each subclass, that would represent no loss in readability or mechanics, and would allow future subclasses to be added just fine without having to consider all of those bundled-together feats each time.