Mysticism vs. Arcana, Nature, Ocultism and Religion

[Trashloot]

Im really interested in what you guys think about going back to Arcana, Nature, Ocultism and Religion.

I really liked the fact that Starfinder 1 said that people started to realize that magic is one giant research field. It felt like a cool continuation from the Feat Unified Theory.
I also have a few problems with the fact that Religion and Ocultism overlap in some campaigns. Mysticism was a cool catch all solution for the old problem of "damn i don't have any enemies / plot elements in this adventure path which require nature / religion / ocultism.

I have read throug almost all of the playtest adventures by now and they mostly found good uses for the "new" skills from pathfinder 2e. But im not sure if they fit the setting entirely. I really liked the fact that the gods of Starfinder 1 had a bigger impact on society. You could neatly attribute some plot elements to mysticism or culture but you could also not involve them in your plot. Now, if you don't want religion to be a dead skil, you have to include them in your plot.
The birth of the newborn adds a lot of potential for weird cults so including ocultism in your games should be easy. But i think some of the old SF1 Plots might have not enough occult themese to make ocultism useful.

Im super curious if you like the "new" skills or if we maybe should advocated for a return of mysticism. I mean we got Piloting and Computers. If we delete Arcana, Nature, Ocultism and Religion in favor of Mysticism we would be very close to the amout of Skills PF2e has. We could maybe Keep Arcana as an oposition to mysticism or we could bring back life science. (But i never liked the overlap betwen life science and medicine.)

What are your thoughts on this topic?

[moosher12]

I am not really in support of the conversion, because it will really mess with compatibility. which is to say, Clerics, Wizards, Druids, and Bards would all use the same skill.

And considering Nature, Arcana, Occultism, and Religion cover this range of creatures:

Aberrations, Animals, Astral, Beasts, Celestials, Constructs, Dragons, Dreams, Elementals, Ethereals, Fey, Fiends, Fungus, Monitors, Oozes, Plants, Shades, Spirits, Time, and Undead, basically, everything except for humanoids can be identified by a theoretical Mysticism, which makes it disproportionately strong for the purposes of Recall Knowledge.

[PossibleCabbage]

I mean, one of the things about the four "magic skills" is that they're not *just* magic. Religion is also about "various cultural practices relating to religion" (like "identify a holy symbol"), Nature is also related to actual nature (like "identify a mushroom"), and Occultism is related to actual esoterica (like "make sense of the ramblings of this seemingly mad person".) Arcana is sort of the outlier since it's kind of just about magic, but each of the four skills are used for identifying different sorts of things.

So one skill for all of this is way too strong.

[Trashloot]

I don't see how this is more messy then computers and piloting. I mean Piloting is a Lore in PF2e and a Skill in SF2e. We are already having the problem that SF2e has the same amount of skill increases as PF2e while having more skills. And lets be honest you will always have to convert something when you want to pull content from one game and implant it to the other game. The Druids animal companion dies the moment a space suit is needed. Sylvan is almost useless on a space station. Polymorph Spells kill you because they absorb your space suit and don't protect you from space and earthquake is either useless or absolutely broken depending on if it can rupture the hull of a spaceship. So i think having to switch Nature to Mysticism is the last of your problems ^^". (I totally understand your point. I just want to offer a counter point.)

As for recall knowledge: You could just rearange the recall knowledge Categories.

Computer:
- Constructs

Crafting:
- Constructs

Society:
- Dragons (Dragons are just Aliens (see Triaxus))
- Undead (Undead are just Aliens (see Eox))
- Celestials (They are basically Aliens now. Abadar is a business man.)
- Fiends (They are basically Aliens now. Hell Drives are outdated tech.)
- Monitors
- Humanoids

Mysticism:
- Aberrations (Some of them could fall under Society now because many of them would just be aliens now.)
- Astral (this is a really small category)
- Dreams (this is a really small category)
- Ethereals (this is a really small category)
- Time (this is a really small category)
- Shade (there is only 1)
- Beasts
- Elementals
- Fey
- Spirits

Survival:
- Animals
- Beasts
- Fungus
- Plants
- Oozes (I understand when you want to put them in Mysticism)

I think you can basically throw everything you can talk to in to society. And Religion is basically just an aspect of society anyways. I never liked the fact that survival couldn't be used to indentify animals because nature needed a reason to exist. If we remove Nature we could finally give Survival a purpose outside of Tracking and Subsisting.
My list could obviously be improved. But Society and Survival could function as counter balances for Mysticism.

[keftiu]

I admit, I'm bummed to see one of my favorite bits of lore go away for practical reasons. The idea that Golarion's magical understanding trended towards Jatembe/the Magaambya's over time - "magic is magic" - was such a fun bit of progression!

[Trashloot]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I mean, one of the things about the four "magic skills" is that they're not *just* magic. Religion is also about "various cultural practices relating to religion" (like "identify a holy symbol"), Nature is also related to actual nature (like "identify a mushroom"), and Occultism is related to actual esoterica (like "make sense of the ramblings of this seemingly mad person".) Arcana is sort of the outlier since it's kind of just about magic, but each of the four skills are used for identifying different sorts of things.

So one skill for all of this is way too strong.

Well, if you look at the playtest adventures you see that Arcana can most often be used as a stand in for Computer/Crafting. Because magic has become integrated in to most tech. (Just a fun observation)

[moosher12]

Though that would make a Druid need both Survival and Mysticism to do what it could with Nature. which would feel like a nerf.