I'm building my first thaumaturge for Seasons of Ghost. Tome seems great here, as I understand the game will have lots of downtime activities and opportunity to switch to optimal skills for said activities. It also pairs nicely with the folklore enthusiast background.
I've been trying to decide between wisdom and intelligence as a tertiary stat. Wisdom seems like the right choice cuz perception, but as a book worm intelligence has a lot of appeal. Plus highly specific lores seem like a great use of the Tome for downtime. Also, we have a house rule that allows any mental stat to apply to will saves, so some of the wis pressure is taken off.
But I realized the Tome creates a weird incentive structure for proficiency. You can take skills all the way from untrained to expert/master/legendary. While you can take a trained skill to those higher proficiencies, it feels a little wasteful. How do folks usually decide on their proficiencies with a Tome?
Context: Party has a bard and oracle, so I probably don't need to focus on social skills that much. Players Guide says Religion and Nature are more immediately important than arcana and occultism. There is at least one Additional Lore worth snagging, and I plan to.
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WIS/INT has a few ways to look at it.
1. You can look at it as in which skills you want to be good at and pick that ability score.
2. You can look at it in that Tome gets a free recall knowledge every round of combat and WIS is usually Initiative, so you going earlier means telling the party important info more quickly.
3. You can look at it in the sense of "I like the idea of a smart bookworm Thaumaturge" and go INT.
There's no wrong answer there. :) Don't dismiss #3, though. Character concept and what feels fun matters.
I picked my proficiencies on the basis of what I thought we'd be doing on a given day that didn't have strong coverage elsewhere in the party. We were playing Shadows at Sundown, and religious things started coming up which nobody had, so I took Religion and kept it the entire adventure. The other skill varied a lot, at one point it was Deception because I expected to need to lie to a specific NPC. At one point it was Intimidation because we had knowledge that a specific NPC was afraid of something and I wanted to exploit that. At one point it was Occultism because I thought that might be relevant to that point of the adventure (to minimize spoilers, I won't say which of these I got right).
I was already trained in at least one of those, but Trained to Master is a significant improvement and I felt boosting something I expected to use was better than boosting something I was untrained in but didn't expect to use (a smaller numerical boost but to something that will matter more often).
I don't think its "wasteful" to boost a skill you're already trained in, if its something that is going to be relevant. When the skill check matters, every bit helps, and you're talking about a +2/4/6 that stacks with everything.
Another consideration is party coverage. If 2 people in the party are already Master at something, do you want to add extra capability there or instead become good at something that nobody else can do? Tome can fill in party weaknesses exceptionally well. Personally I tend to like to let everyone in the party have a thing that their character is "the best at", so they get to have the spotlight. Maybe just my GM side talking. :) But because of that, I was less likely to use the Tome skills to take something that was someone elses "thing", unless I was doing so to be able to aid them or have a second user. That made taking it in stuff others didn't excel at really appealing, because I was shoring up party weaknesses in skills that were relevant.
Overall I was super happy with that character.
If it's going to be a skill you slot every day (like say to deal with ghosts or one every party needs that isn't covered), then advance it with your normal skill boosts. The tome's flexibility then gets full use on whatever's next, the theme of the current dungeon or even city.
I'd say that Thaumaturge (along w/ Bard) is one of the few classes than can neglect Wis due to Will advancing so swiftly to Legendary so take this opportunity to play Int (there aren't too many for martials!). If in it for the long haul, you can likely get both Int & Wis to 18/+4 (and Con/Dex too).
I actually already get to apply charisma to my will save, so I'm pretty safe there. It really comes down to whether I want to be good at perception + religion, vs good at lores. The wis magic skills are supposed to be more useful than the int ones. And my character is pretty spiritual in a discreet way. (Worships the Lady of the North Star, Mother Secrets.) But lore for the game's town is also highly recommended by the GM, and I feel like there would be other lores that could be useful to max with the tome's ability.
Side note: does every tome thaumaturge pick weapon as their second implement? I really want to like lantern as it is thematically appropriate, but it feels like juggling it and Tome feels like more trouble than it is worth. Wanting to start every turn holding the tome to get the free RK, and not having an action to trigger pulling it out, is hard.
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How is your GMs stance regarding diverse lore? I think it covers quite a lot. If you have serious downtime you can of course assign lore skills with the tome, but i would not go as far as maxing int for that.
Switching implements is really annoying. By RAW you can switch for actions/reactions, but if you have two passives you have to rely on your GM being less strict.
How is your GMs stance regarding diverse lore? I think it covers quite a lot. If you have serious downtime you can of course assign lore skills with the tome, but i would not go as far as maxing int for that.
Switching implements is really annoying. By RAW you can switch for actions/reactions, but if you have two passives you have to rely on your GM being less strict.
My standard assumption (and IIRC our group consensus) is that Diverse Lore never benefits from the reduced DC a regular lore skill gets. That on top of the -2 penalty means Diverse Lore is working at a 4-7 point deficit compared to a proper lore. Could be another point higher with Ancestral Geometry. It's a pretty big swing which can overcome a charisma investment gap. (Especially since I can only start with 16 cha on this background.)
My players guide says there will in fact be serious downtime. "You’ll face a wide range of challenges and opportunities in Season of Ghosts, particularly when it comes to downtime. This Adventure Path spans an entire year, after all, and now and then, you’ll be spending weeks at a time pursuing various downtime activities."
Lores in particular are called out. It's why I chose Tome, in fact.
"An extensive number of Lore skills are helpful in this campaign. Often when a downtime activity becomes available, a specific Lore skill will have a lower DC than something more generalized skills like Deception or Society. The most important Lore skill in this Adventure Path is Willowshore Lore, as one would expect of a campaign set almost entirely within and around this small town! Other important Lore skills that will have more than a couple opportunities to shine in the campaign include Academia, Art, Engineering, Farming, Hunting, Library, Sangpotshi, and Tea Lore. Lore skills
that will have only one or two chances to shine include any to do with non-tea food or drink, Architecture, Cooking, Fishing, Fortune-Telling, Games, Genealogy Guild, Herbalism, Jorogumo, Labor, Mercantile, Midwifery, Qi-Zhong, River, Sailing, Scouting, Theater, Underworld, and Warfare Lore.
One new lore skill worthy of note that isn’t
represented in the Core Rulebook but will become
increasingly useful in this campaign is one associated with a specific family of new monster introduced in Season of Ghosts. Once your group discovers this new type of monster, becoming trained in its lore will help you prepare for combat against them or otherwise research plot elements to come, but not having any particular training in this specific Lore skill when you begin Season of Ghosts is not only fine, but part of the unfolding plot of the campaign. It’s mentioned here merely to prepare you for future opportunities for those players who enjoy building their character’s level choices out beforehand."
I actually already get to apply charisma to my will save, so I'm pretty safe there.
You can do that? How?
It really comes down to whether I want to be good at perception + religion, vs good at lores. The wis magic skills are supposed to be more useful than the int ones. And my character is pretty spiritual in a discreet way. (Worships the Lady of the North Star, Mother Secrets.) But lore for the game's town is also highly recommended by the GM, and I feel like there would be other lores that could be useful to max with the tome's ability.
Flipside: Lores are at an easier DC and you get +1 to recall knowledge when holding the tome, so you're good at them even without a high INT.
Probably depends on if you are picking up Additional Lore or not as well. If you've got a LOT of lores you can rely on, you'll really want to maximize that. If not, you're going to need to use the broader skills more often.
Side note: does every tome thaumaturge pick weapon as their second implement? I really want to like lantern as it is thematically appropriate, but it feels like juggling it and Tome feels like more trouble than it is worth. Wanting to start every turn holding the tome to get the free RK, and not having an action to trigger pulling it out, is hard.
Yeah Tome is a hard one for that because it has no actions so there's no fast way to get it back out (and lantern has the same problem). Weapon is the easiest implement to use with it. Lantern is also passive like Tome and you'll just be spending actions to swap back and forth, or having one out at a time and that's the one you've got.
My Kingmaker party has a Ratfolk Thaumaturge that uses their Bite attack. That leaves two free hands, which solves the problem rather nicely.
House rule on the charisma to will saves thing.
Then I'd ignore Wisdom unless you're the designated Wis-skill guy since then you can be the designated Int-skill guy for when those do become important.
And try to find another skill to use for initiative like Stealth in dangerous settings, or for the city Society or a Cha-based skill (which are all useful even when redundant w/ other PCs).
It occurs to me that lantern and don't really have a major clash for levels 7 and 8. You can't stack their RK bonuses, but Tome's initiate bendfit doesn't do anything in combat beyond that +1 circumstance. Carrying Lantern in exploration and encounter mode is strictly superior. The adept benefit for Tome is a problem, but with Diverse Lore you're generally going to get the benefit of an RK check on round 1 anyway. Then you can use Intensify Vulnerability to pull out the tome, ideally during round 1 but almost certainly during round 2. Intensify counts as an implement action for the purposes of the second implement swap, right?
... Wait. Hold up. Just noticed this line: "This allows you to meet requirements of having an implement in hand to use its action." So as long as the Tome RK check counts as an implement action, you're already holding it at the beginning for the purposes of triggering the ability.
Yeah Tome is a hard one for that because it has no actions so there's no fast way to get it back out (and lantern has the same problem). Weapon is the easiest implement to use with it. Lantern is also passive like Tome and you'll just be spending actions to swap back and forth, or having one out at a time and that's the one you've got.
My Kingmaker party has a Ratfolk Thaumaturge that uses their Bite attack. That leaves two free hands, which solves the problem rather nicely.
I'm playing a tengu, so the jaws attack is an option. But tengu presents the rare opportunity to use a falcatta.