Figured I would start a thread for guessing at what the new classes will do. I remember one of the devs mentioning in a thread awhile back wanting to make a defensive arcane gish, so I am betting that is what the guardian is, I will have to see if I can find that post.
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I'm expecting this to be the Martials book like SoM was the Casters book so they should both not have spellcasting. I just hope Commander can pick either Intelligence or Charisma for KAS.
I remember now it was a post from Michael Sayre about the Rune Knight idea.
Arachnofiend you are probably right about this being pure martial considering the theme of the book, but I am placing this hail-mary bet just incase I am right haha
I also hope commander can be INT or CHA like you do.
Maybe commander could have different subclasses with different KAS?
like the CHA one is more fightery, and the INT/WIS one would be more skill monkey or something
Figured I would start a thread for guessing at what the new classes will do. I remember one of the devs mentioning in a thread awhile back wanting to make a defensive arcane gish, so I am betting that is what the guardian is, I will have to see if I can find that post.
Has something been announced? I literally have no idea what you are talking about.
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It’s the “Battlecry Playtest” to playtest the intelligent Commander and the heavily armored Guardian, kicking off on April 29th.
You can view the announcement HERE on Paizo’s Twitch stream, at the 41 minute mark-ish.
Looks like Michael Sayre is finally bringing a (official) Commander to Pathfinder… I look forward to both of these classes.
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I think the Commander is going to be like Pathfinder's take on the Envoy from Starfinder.
Not exactly a primary combatant, but a support class that can help allies and hinder enemies in non-spellcasting ways. Like an int-based Marshal.
Do we know if the Envoy is being carried over from Starfinder when it becomes Starfinder 2? Because if not, this would make sense. But if it is, then the interoperability of the rulesets would making having both of them similar….weird.
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I'm expecting this to be the Martials book like SoM was the Casters book so they should both not have spellcasting. I just hope Commander can pick either Intelligence or Charisma for KAS.
I would not be surprised if the Guardian or Commander have some spellcasting options. Especially for the Guardian, I can't imagine many subclasses of "I use my shield in different nonmagical ways". A guardian of nature would be a classic fantasy.
The two SoM classes were pretty martial-focused too. :D I mean both weren't full casters. One had a big monster friend that can eat you face very non-magically. And the main schtick of the other was to stab you with a spell-powered-up sword.
I hope that WIS will also be an option for the Commander. A wise warfare-advisor.
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Really hoping for a primal flavor on the Guardian, something akin to a martial Druid/defender of nature. The dream would be some Shifter-esque options as well.
I’ll admit, I’d be less excited about a pure martial defense-focused class, but that’s probably more my lack of imagination on how that class fantasy could be made distinct.
Guardian: it's heavily armored, the vibe is battle-related, and Champion is already magical, so I think it's safe to assume it's a non-magical defender class.
- Some sort of "taunt" or battlefield control. Perhaps a reactive strike that is narrower than Fighter has, but better at disrupting movement?
- The ability to shield others, probably adjacent, and use shield block reactions on their behalf.
- Improvements to shields. Champion already improves their stats, so Guardian might have something like Quickdraw to equip a shield and raise it, or reducing Tower Shield penalties on a subclass.
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So... both of these things are things that people have been asking after for a while.
- A legendary proficiency heavy armor tank who *isn't* magical.
- A full martial buffing class.
...and Paizo has shown themselves willing to pander to the players on things like this... carefully. (Yay pandering! I love being pandered to. The carefulness also has its advantages.)
So here's my guesses.
- Guardian will not be inherently magical. It will be possible to build a fully functional, satisfying Guardian without any kind of magic at all.
Guardian may or may not offer viable magic options. I can't say on that one one way or the other.
- It will be possible to build a Guardian that's fully competitive with purpose-built Champions in both "tanky" and "sticky"... by whatever means. This, also, will not require magic.
- If this book comes and goes and we don't have any way to use focus points to power abilities that aren't spells, we're never getting it. This is the perfect place to put such a thing.
- The Commander is going to be the closest we ever get to the old 4e warlord power of handing your attack to someone else so that they can smite the enemy with it. I'm not sure how close that's going to get, but whatever it is, that'll be the hard limit. No one else is getting closer.
The thing I can't help but notice, though, is in where the weirdness comes in. Like, the paizo devs have been getting more and more flexible with the system as they come to understand it better and better. Well, by the time this thing comes out, they're going to be capable of some pretty significant stretching away from that baseline... and the fundamental class concepts don't *need* it. The core concept of a Guardian is simpler than that of a Champion. The core concept of a Commander could be satisfied with something no more complicated than a Bard. At the same time, I don't expect them to turn out a couple of classes that could have showed up in Player Core 1. It would be a waste on multiple levels. I expect it wouldn't be as much fun for them, and I know it wouldn't sell as many books. So they're going to open up these relatively simple core concepts, and they're going to put something interesting inside. I'm curious what that's going to look like.
I'm going to guess that Guardian gets access to Shield Warden at level 6. I'm going to further guess that there's some sort of interesting follow-on feat there as well (or other form of expansion) that's Guardian-specific.
It wouldn't surprise me for Guardian to poach a bit of other stuff from Bastion and/or Sentinel, too.
Think about it. Champions only punish with damage, conditions, or allowing allies to get away. They don't really get in the way of the blow.
Might I introduce you to Champion's Sacrifice and Shield of Grace?
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Yeah, a Light Armor Guardian would be awesome and would be a good candidate for a ranged-based Guardian as well as long as they can make it distinct from the SF2e Soldier.
I dunno. "Light armor with ranged weapon" really doesn't feel particularly "Guardian" to me.
I'm really hoping Paizo changes up their class design philosophy. So far, 90% of classes have basically been variations of "generic martial class template" or "generic caster class template". It's all so samey and so dull.
Kineticist broke that trend and I'm hoping Paizo gets creative like that moving forward. That doesn't mean I want them to make a "generic kineticist template" and print 10 more classes just like it. I want new, creative, and different.
Right now, it's hard to get excited about any new classes when I know it's just going to be the same template being used over and over again.
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I'm really hoping Paizo changes up their class design philosophy. So far, 90% of classes have basically been variations of "generic martial class template" or "generic caster class template". It's all so samey and so dull.
Kineticist broke that trend and I'm hoping Paizo gets creative like that moving forward. That doesn't mean I want them to make a "generic kineticist template" and print 10 more classes just like it. I want new, creative, and different.
Right now, it's hard to get excited about any new classes when I know it's just going to be the same template being used over and over again.
I think you have maybe not been paying close enough attention.
- SoM introduced two wave casters - a new way of doign thigns that was a hybrid between the two.
- Meanwhile, Guns and Gears gave us the Inventor, who's notable for being a martial with a bunch of built-in two-action powers that function more or less like personal spells.
- Dark Archive gave us the Thaumaturge (a martial with implements that are clearly magical and also clearly not spells) and Psychic (a caster who cashes in a bunch of their spell slots for an interesting collection of other abilities,a nd who uses focus points in a new way)
- RoE then gave us the Kineticist. Enough said there.
- The upcoming book is giving us the Animist (a caster who actually has two different pools of spell slots, and gets a lot of their power from their weird little channeling mechanic) and the Exemplar (a martial who's getting a large chunk of their power from their ability to throw around little personal miracles, with an entirely new spark-passing mechanic driving the character's tactical economy.
Every step we go, it gets weirder. Now, the thing you say is true. Technically, there's still a martial chassis or a caster chassis (or both) under every class other than kineticist and alchemist. Practically speaking, though, they started out with the available martials all being pretty tight variations on one theme, and the available casters all being pretty tight variations on a different theme, and they've been branching out from there pretty aggressively ever since. Like, if you're looking at the Exemplar and thinking "oh, it's just another martial like all the others" then you really aren't understanding what's going on.
Mysterious Stranger in Fallout? He's a **Guardian** angel with a ranged weapon in light armor. Waiting for the moment to save you with a well-timed reactive bullet.
Chance are it won't happen because it seems Heavy Armor IS the thing about this class.
I feel like the thing that you want is a completely different class from the one that's actually on offer. So... what is this strange new class that you want?
Let's not forget that Michael Sayre did a Commander class for us for 1e & 2e.
If it is similar or works mechanics/inspired by that we get some credit.
Design Manager
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Let's not forget that Michael Sayre did a Commander class for us for 1e & 2e.
If it is similar or works mechanics/inspired by that we get some credit.
The commander and battle lord are distinct from each other, but in a way that can make for some pretty awesome synergies if you put them in the same party! I think a party of commanders and battle lords would have such a bonkers array of tactical options and ways to affect the battlefield that it could be a really fun way to do a campaign that has an Iron Elves / Malazan / Black Company vibe.
Hold up. I just realized... we don't know for certain that the Commander is the PF2 Warlord. What if it's the Martial Summoner instead?
Or heck - what if it's both? Your main character doesn't have much in the way of ability to deal direct damage, but they do have an array of non-spell buffing abilities, and then you have a second eidolon-but-not character who actually does the face-smashing? We have been asking for a Martial Summoner, after all...
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Hold up. I just realized... we don't know for certain that the Commander is the PF2 Warlord. What if it's the Martial Summoner instead?
Or heck - what if it's both? Your main character doesn't have much in the way of ability to deal direct damage, but they do have an array of non-spell buffing abilities, and then you have a second eidolon-but-not character who actually does the face-smashing? We have been asking for a Martial Summoner, after all...
From the blog post put up a few minutes ago -
"The commander is a martial support class that can issue commands to her allies, granting them extra movement, actions, reactions, and more. The guardian is an armored tank, who can taunt opponents and maximize the effectiveness of heavy armor to be a bulwark against nearly any threat."
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I think you have maybe not been paying close enough attention.
Eh, it might be a little overstated but I don't think it's entirely off-base either. Like you bring up the Thaumaturge and Inventor but both of those are pretty safe 'hit things with a big stick' classes with only a little bit extra tacked on. The designs are very safe, tbh complaints about the Inventor not going very far with its concept are actually rather common even, so it seems like an especially poor choice to bring up. Even the exemplar, based on the playtest version, still relied really heavily on passive effects and just hitting things with your stick. Maybe the full release will improve that, but we haven't seen it yet.
The best news in that regard though is that neither the Guardian nor Commander having hitting things as part of their brief, so there might be an opportunity to divest themselves from the typical martial paradigm.
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If you listen closely, you can hear the champions renouncing their respective deities en masse now that following one is no longer required to apply for a heavy armor license.
It's gonna be hard getting used to falling it a taunt and not a mark, but the Guardian sounds VERY exciting to me.
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Wow. My timing on that last one was just really bad, wasn't it?
At the same time, yes. The Commander is very Warlord. That's cool. More party op more better.
If you listen closely, you can hear the champions renouncing their respective deities en masse now that following one is no longer required to apply for a heavy armor license.Sentinel.
I'm never gonna live this one down.
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Something is clicking for me... the Commander class... new divine Dragons... the God of War is dying... Airships... an isolated asian inspired area... Guild Wars 2 what are you doing in my TTRPG?
In seriousness. I like the sound of these and can't wait to see what they do to make them their own classes.
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Wow. My timing on that last one was just really bad, wasn't it?
At the same time, yes. The Commander is very Warlord. That's cool. More party op more better.
Just for you, because you're cool and I like you, I'll drop one little commander hint ahead of the playtest that will have you theorizing until release day:
If you're a casual fan of TTRPGs, the commander sounds a lot like a warlord (or a marshal, or kind of even some bards, etc.)
The sentence I wanted to use that we decided was a little too technical for a broad audience announcement (and probably legitimately not spicy enough), is that one could fairly describe the commander as a "prepared martial" kind of similar to the way one might talk about a "prepared caster"...
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Wow. My timing on that last one was just really bad, wasn't it?
At the same time, yes. The Commander is very Warlord. That's cool. More party op more better.
Just for you, because you're cool and I like you, I'll drop one little commander hint ahead of the playtest that will have you theorizing until release day:
If you're a casual fan of TTRPGs, the commander sounds a lot like a warlord (or a marshal, or kind of even some bards, etc.)
The sentence I wanted to use that we decided was a little too technical for a broad audience announcement (and probably legitimately not spicy enough), is that one could fairly describe the commander as a "prepared martial" kind of similar to the way one might talk about a "prepared caster"...
Called it for the class playtest, just 3 years too soon (in the Save the Date! Thursday, December 17, 2020 blog post) :
"Warlord / tactician (the prepared Martial?) and likely Gunslinger are my bets."
"But I would love to see a class expanding on these concepts even further. Especially if it could change its focus during daily preparations (what I call a prepared Martial).
No reason only casters (prepared) can take great advantage of getting relevant information on enemies, traps, ... before getting into the fray."
My oracular powers are truly astounding !!!
I really hope commander has feats to have some sort of cohort like with teh PF1e Leadership feat, though hopefully not as broken as that.
I'll wait to see guardian to properly make a judgment about it, though right now I feel the name sounds kinda simple and its role seems to overlap a little with champion, because even if people wanted to have a faith-less champion to play a tank that role could easily be covered by a class archetype (specially now that Paizo remembered those exist!). I know the name isn't going to change unless a ton of people ask for it, but I feel something like "custodian", "steward", "warden", or even something like "defender" (which would be the opposite of fighter, the class that fights, while the defender would be the class that defends).