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I started working on a guide for the animist a few months ago, starting with the playtest material and then adjusting with the final release (I got an early PDF with the subscription). I also had a bunch of free time last week. None of this is final and I don't expect every judgement to be on point. Feel free to read it over and let me know if you have an suggestions. As with my thaumaturge guide, I will site those whose advice I use. This will be a work in progress and I will update it regularly. Please don't comment saying it's too early for a guide. This is equally purposed as a review and to give exposure to people without access to the class and and start discussion about various aspects of the class
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Good guide in general.
But I think that you are MASSIVELY overestimating what most GMs will let you get away with using Lore skills. To try and claim that hunting lore + forestry lore can substitute for survival is, in my experience, just not remotely the case.
Thank you. I agree that a couple lores shouldn't cover an entire skill but in the section you are pointing out, I say that hunting and forest lore should be adequate for TRACKING and perhaps COVER TRACKS not the entirety of basic survival actions. This is making me think of reformatting that section for clarity.
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I think it would be helpful to rank the strength of each vessel's given spell list. There are some STINKERS on some lists (sigil, mending, safe passage) which I think impacts their overall enjoyability as your spontaneous casting is limited.
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I’m looking forward to seeing the completed review. I was debating whether to even try to save my battle oracle with a rebuild into a new class and have heard the animist is a viable option. Once I get the book and read through it, I might return here for some ideas. Thanks for putting this together.
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Thank you. I agree that a couple lores shouldn't cover an entire skill but in the section you are pointing out, I say that hunting and forest lore should be adequate for TRACKING and perhaps COVER TRACKS not the entirety of basic survival actions. This is making me think of reformatting that section for clarity.Good guide in general.
But I think that you are MASSIVELY overestimating what most GMs will let you get away with using Lore skills. To try and claim that hunting lore + forestry lore can substitute for survival is, in my experience, just not remotely the case.
Someone can likely sell me on using Forest Lore to cover tracks in a forest. That will immediately stop working as soon as you're in not-forest of course.
Likewise, someone can probably sell me on Hunting Lore for tracking something that would relate to hunting: game animals. Someone trying to sell me on using Hunting Lore to track Bandits is going to have a difficult time.
Someone can likely sell me on using Forest Lore to cover tracks in a forest. That will immediately stop working as soon as you're in not-forest of course.
Yeah, I will buy "Forest Lore" can be substituted for Survival for a lot of things when you are in a forest. But as a GM I have the ability to decide when you're no longer in the forest, and Survival is still applicable in grasslands, desert, swamp, coastline, etc.
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This is a very thorough review, well done on writing this! I agree with the vast majority of it, including some of the more minor aspects like the Medium's flavor text contradicting the mechanics of the feat they get at 1st level. I don't have very many points of disagreement, save for perhaps a couple of small points:
Beyond that, my qualitative assessment of the class is that as written, it's still got nearly all of the excessive and unnecessary power it had in the playtest, but also quite a bit of jank from elements added later on, like the Liturgist. The class compares not just favorably, but advantageously in my opinion to a post-remaster Oracle, which I consider an already overpowered class, with just one less spell slot in exchange for far more flexibility, survivability, and much stronger features.
More than anything else, what irks me is just how much the Animist reads to me as this pick-me caster: I'm not like other casters, because if you pick me, you get the defenses of a Druid, the spell repertoire of a Sorcerer (which you can swap out every day), and the capstone feat of a Bard (at level 1). I'm not like other casters, because if you pick me, you get to have all of the benefits of a more specialized spellcaster (and even the benefits of some martial classes), except with none of the long-term commitment or drawbacks. I'm not like other casters, because if you pick my version of generic caster feats, they're straight-up better. Pick me. Pick me. Pick me. It would probably be less irritating if it weren't for the fact that several caster classes got reworked at around the same time as the playtest and weren't treated nearly as favorably: just compare a Shaman Animist to a divine Witch, for instance, and see how much more limited and less statted the latter class is compared to the former.
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The apparition spellcasting is very limited compared to a true spontaneous caster.
The fact that the spells are set in stone for each spirit means that you can't pick the universally good spells like a spontaneous and have a repertoire that's always great for all your slots.
I don't buy this at all, as the Animist's apparitions are already chock-full of great spells, like acid grip, fireball, or laughing fit. You may not have access to the full breadth of a spell tradition by picking and choosing individual spells, but that's only because you have access to spells from every tradition, on top of divine prepared spellcasting, and your repertoire spells can change every day according to the situation. What's more, whereas spontaneous spellcasters have to choose between learning multiple copies of the same spell at different ranks or only being able to cast the spell at a fixed rank, the Animist gets to heighten any of their apparition spells, once again a benefit so powerful it is normally reserved to a 20th-level class feat. When classes like the Cleric and especially the Oracle are ready to pay a lot for even just a sliver of that spell access, there is no doubt that this is massively powerful in and of itself.
Tere are similar restrictions for most other playstyles, like if you want to play control, you will be limited to fewer slots of specific control options granted by the spirits rather than having like a sorcerer the option to pick the optimal control spell for each encounter all day long.
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Don't get me wrong, it's a great spellcaster, but his day-to-day flexibility is limited by his output.
In a sense, since the apparition slots are so few, they do not differ drastically from those of a prepared spellcaster.
So instead of comparing with spontaneous casters, it's much ore applicable to compare with prepared spellcasters, and yes, as always, if a prepared spellcaster happens to have prepared silver bullet spells in all of his slots somehow, he's great, but that doesn't match the flexibility of the spontaneous having always something good for each slot.
This I think belies a severely blinkered approach to assessing the Animist where you're constantly thinking of them as either just a spontaneous or a prepared spellcaster, when in practice they're both. You can always supplement control spells from your apparition repertoire with prepared divine spells, blast spells with prepared divine spells, healing spells with prepared divine spells, and so on and so forth. Conversely, whatever is lacking in the divine spells you've prepared, you'll always have plenty of different apparition spells to fill in the gaps from one moment to the next. It very much is a "best of both worlds" situation here.
If you close one eye then sure, from a certain perspective it may seem like the Animist has only few slots to play with, but that's only because you're ignoring half the class's spell slots. On top of all the other benefits listed, the Animist gets this bespoke spell slot progression that leaves them just one slot short of being a 4-slot caster, so not only do they get to leverage both the fine-tuning of a prepared caster and the immediate flexibility of a spontaneous caster, they also get to put that to full use with massive amounts of spell output, and so on top of some of the best focus spells in the game.
IMO, it's better to have some all day long reliable options rather than try to pigeonhold yourself into 1 style as an Animist exactly to avoid that problem.
Like, even if you're trying to use control, having one of the martial based focus spells available so you can instead shift to that and whack some mindless foes that appeared. Or, even if you are trying to be a blaster, don't go all in, pick up Bile for a reliable option for that and keep in your backpocket some defensive options in case someone ambushes the party or you need to fortify the frontline, and etc.
I'm not sure why this is being said when the entire point being made here is that the Animist doesn't have to pigeonhole themselves, because they can in fact cover multiple roles at once, and so extremely well. It's not just that the Animist can easily end up encroaching on the niche of a specialist, they can do so for several specialists at a time, and completely switch up their specialties from one day to the next. I don't think it's being appreciated enough just how bonkers the Animist's flexibility is, and while that's arguably the intended appeal of the class, the underlying problem is that they simply do not pay for this versatility like other classes do, and in fact seem to get benefits that are given out more sparingly to more specialized characters.
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Wizard don't even have anything that makes it really shines as a control... If anything it again favors animist that because is divine have access to Calm spell very early, and later easily pick Wall of Stone and Quandary with apparitions.
But yeah I agree with Teridax, animist is really over the top, heck it even gets the armor increase to expert at 11 instead of 13, just to show how special it is and the multiclass don't even let you get a single focus spell.
About the Liturgist vs Medium, if the person is not using something like Elf step to step twice and sustain twice, the Medium with 2 main apparition is indeed close action wise, but Liturgist having Circle of spirits as the lvl 1 feat still puts it ahead though.
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The point being that you're a generalist.
An animist will not be as good in control as a control dedicated wizard. An animist will not be as good in blasting as a blaster sorc. An animist will not be as good at healing as a healer cleric. An animist will not be as good in shifting as a druid. And etc.
An animist will be generally good biut mostly in being more wide in the things he can do as opposed to how good he can do a single thing.
As Kyrone points out, this is simply not true. In an ideal world, sure, the Animist being the most versatile class in the game ought to be counterbalanced by an equal amount of dilution, as happened with the Alchemist. In practice, though, not only are you a generalist, your abilities genuinely do eat the lunch of specialists. As John R., I, and others point out in our individual assessments, the Animist accesses many different abilities that are not only top-tier for any caster, but even breach some of the game's most fundamental niche protection and allow you to outdo even martials. Forest's Heart, for instance, is the best unarmed stance in the game by a mile, and the kicker is that you don't even have to commit to the feat either, because the wandering trait lets you swap it out at the same time as your apparitions. As Kyrone points out, you get faster armor proficiency than any other caster, just because. This class has massive "I'm so special" energy, to the point where I fear they may be even more prone to Main Character Syndrome than any Exemplar in the party.
And the problem here isn't just that this class eats the lunch of several other classes at once; I think this massive day-to-day flexibility might actually harm the Animist as well. Right now, the class has one subclass that's leagues ahead of the others, and whereas most classes at least have a bedrock of 10-11 class feats that stick with you throughout your adventure, many of the Animist's feats can be swapped out daily too. In letting the Animist completely reinvent themselves every day, I see a big risk in every Animist eventually converging into essentially the same character, a constant risk with any prepared spellcaster that this class turns up to 11.
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If you have issues with the class itself and its balance, maybe take that to a separate thread?
Thank you. I agree that a couple lores shouldn't cover an entire skill but in the section you are pointing out, I say that hunting and forest lore should be adequate for TRACKING and perhaps COVER TRACKS not the entirety of basic survival actions. This is making me think of reformatting that section for clarity.Good guide in general.
But I think that you are MASSIVELY overestimating what most GMs will let you get away with using Lore skills. To try and claim that hunting lore + forestry lore can substitute for survival is, in my experience, just not remotely the case.
I think that probably depends on the table. Most of the ones I have played at specific trumps generic. So if somebody has hunting lore then if you are hunting that would be a valid thing to roll against vs survival which is just generic all of the things.
So if you are good at hunting and good at forests your ability to find food there would be really good but survival also covers if you are on a mountain or in a desert or the plains. We always treated lore skills is you are specifically really interested in/good at this one area of expertise.
By RAW, Lore skills can be used to Recall Knowledge and to Earn Income. Period.
Anything else is a homebrew rule and should be marked as such if a guide assumes it's true for most tables.
Something interesting occurred to me: spirit familiar effectively creates a new familiar every day when you attune to your apparitions. I see no reason why the familiar has to be the same form when this happens, especially given it can be an entirely different spirit. That's relevant for specific familiars. Even the witch has to wait for a specific familiar to die before getting a new one, so tactically optimization comes with awkward RP.
Feels like familiar master archetype is worth special consideration, especially if you have free archetype and take liturgist instead of shaman. Feels competitive with witch. Even though cackle is a helluva drug, most table IME rule multi class witch familiars don't revive if killed, and there's weird redundancy if you take spirit familiar to patch this. Where as familiar dedication just lets you get Enhanced Familiar instead.
There's no to get vessel spells through the animist archetype, right? They would be super appealing for a witch.
There's also stuff like influence encounters using lore skills to influence. There's plenty of support for using lore for other stuff.
Lore skills are also not uncommon in chases, infiltrations, and other skill challenges in PFS
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Thanks for all the responses. This is a lot of good feedback.
I think it would be helpful to rank the strength of each vessel's given spell list. There are some STINKERS on some lists (sigil, mending, safe passage) which I think impacts their overall enjoyability as your spontaneous casting is limited.
I will consider this a bit further down the line, probably just by color grading and not going over any further analysis for each individual spell.
I feel Charisma ought to be green rather than red: as a Wisdom caster, it's easy to feature Charisma as your fourth score, and the attribute feeds into Bon Mot and Demoralize, which are excellent in combat, as well as social checks out of combat. IMO the attribute is equally viable as a fourth attribute compared to Strength and Intelligence.
I’m going to keep it red simply because charisma contributes nothing to the animist at base, while every other attribute does. From what I can remember off the top of my head, charisma and charisma based skills don’t interact with any feats or features of the class.
I'd probably put Earth's Bile at purple. Even with the post-playtest changes limiting this to one cast/Sustain a turn, it's a huge chunk of extra damage for just one action, and lets you use all of your actions to pump out damage if you want and become a top-tier blaster. It also lets you double-dip on Channeler's Stance's status bonus to damage, to the point where I believe this combo might probably even be the strongest blasting build in the game in terms of raw damage output.
Yeah, I’m definitely bumping that up and adding reasoning. I totally did not realize that this is practically electric arc but better.
As far as the subject of the animist I can see both sides. It has been given a lot of tools for a lot of jobs, but without an archetype, it’s very much, “more tools than you need, but less tools than you want”. How that translates to balance will take a while for us to see.
Again, on the topic of lore skills, I’m going to reassess my formatting of that section and probably emphasize the high variability of GM rulings, but I do heavily agree with this:
There is a difference between homebrew and a skill basically telling you "it can be used for applicable actions but ask your GM which are applicable".
One thing that a player can take advantage is how sustained durations work, they last until the end of your next turn, to be able to play around the action economy.
This is mostly for Vessel spells that affects yourself, like Peru example you can use embodiment of battle, stride and strike then next turn sure strike grudge strike and on the 3rd turn use another focus point for embodiment again. You gain one action with that by using an extra focus point (though you lose the reactive strike between your turn 2 and 3 in this example).
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If you have issues with the class itself and its balance, maybe take that to a separate thread?
The thread title says “input welcome”. I think, given the link is to something that both a guide AND a review, and “in progress” at that all points of view are fairy useful here.
I’m going to keep it red simply because charisma contributes nothing to the animist at base, while every other attribute does. From what I can remember off the top of my head, charisma and charisma based skills don’t interact with any feats or features of the class.
It gives access to both Sorcerer and Oracle Dedications, which are as of now very attractive options.
And Strength and Intelligence don't contribute much either. So I also think that the red color is misleading: raising Charisma on an Animist is fine and can even be an optimized choice.
I'm rebuilding my PFS Oracle as an Animist as the pre remaster Oracle hasn't been grandfathered. I highly disagree with those who consider the class "highly flexible". Some Apparitions are rather weak, others ask for specific builds to be usable, some are not compatible together and many are functionally similar. The end result being that I won't prepare different Apparitions every day and mostly stick to the same ones and I expect most players to do the same.
And I agree with Shroudb: the Apparition spells are more of an issue than an asset. Most of them are bad. And as you can't use Scrolls and Staves with them and will hardly cast them repeatedly, it's better to consider them as side casting than a full on extra spell slot.
In my opinion, the class is not as strong as the top contenders but it seems really fun to play. I'll test it at a convention next week end, I'll be able to give a feedback (if anyone cares :) ).
Strength does have some more direct uses for both your armor proficiencies but also as a lot of the spirits offer melee options and/or maneuver options for which you want it high.
Intelligence is also nice if you're planning to rely on the free Lores quite a bit.
I agree for Strength, some builds will use it. As for Intelligence increasing Intelligence-based skills, that's rather obvious. If Charisma is red then Intelligence should be reddish. A few Lore skills don't make Intelligence interesting.
I dislike the color red as it conveys that raising Charisma would somehow be bad when actually you have to choose between Strength, Intelligence and Charisma for your fourth attribute and none is really better than the others.
A class which gets 4/6/8 lore skills it can swap out every day and free legendary crafting proficiency during downtime, and which lacks the third actions for Demoralize and Bon Mot, should indeed rank intelligence over charisma. I don't really care about color rankings, but charisma is pretty clearly the stat with the least value for the class package by itself. Which is kind of a shame given how mich the liturgist evokes performance, and how the class lends itself to the role of "speaker."
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I think it's more accurate to say that the Animist can pump Dex/Wis/Con as a core and then put their fourth ability score wherever they want. Charisma is fine if you're interested in investing in Charisma skills. So are Strength and Intelligence. None of them have much innate value if you don't either.
Calling one 'lesser' is misleading because a dex/wis/con/cha animist isn't going to really be worse in any meaningful way in the first place. They're going to be less good at RK and better at Diplomacy but that's just kind of what you expect anyways.
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I think it would be helpful to rank the strength of each vessel's given spell list. There are some STINKERS on some lists (sigil, mending, safe passage) which I think impacts their overall enjoyability as your spontaneous casting is limited.
Given the fact that ALL of your vessels spells are signature spells a few stinkers (or, generally, much more likely very situational spells) is fine.
As an example, assuming you are level 5+, does it really matter all that much what the spells fpr the Steward of Fire are? Fireball is going to be your choice against non fire resistant enemies anyway :-).
The key is to get at least 1 spell of every level that you're going to want to cast a LOT, and the rest covering some edge cases. Any combination of spell lists that does that is going to be just fine.
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I think it's more accurate to say that the Animist can pump Dex/Wis/Con as a core and then put their fourth ability score wherever they want. Charisma is fine if you're interested in investing in Charisma skills. So are Strength and Intelligence. None of them have much innate value if you don't either.
Calling one 'lesser' is misleading because a dex/wis/con/cha animist isn't going to really be worse in any meaningful way in the first place. They're going to be less good at RK and better at Diplomacy but that's just kind of what you expect anyways.
Personally I'm going with full plate and bumping BOTH Int and Cha. Who needs Dex? :-) (yeah, I know Bulwark doesn't solve all problems but it does solve a heck of a lot of them)
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The level 2 feat that turns heal and harm into apparition spells fixes all the problems players might have with “stinkers” on the spell list. A level 2 wizard feat that let you add a spell to your school spells would be immensely popular.
The animist hurts for skills something awful. Without also boosting INT, you probably aren’t getting more than 1 charisma skill without ignoring the rest of the wisdom skills you already get a +4 to. I really wish the lore skills granted by the apparition could key off wisdom to symbolize that it is the spirit holding and organizing the knowledge, but the way it is does incentivize INT just under STR as the strongest choices for the class.
which lacks the third actions for Demoralize and Bon Mot,
I really think you are focusing on one or two Animist builds. Maintaining 2 Vessel Spells is a thing that leave you with a third action, and the Emanation Vessel Spells will often ask for a Stride for positioning purposes. So there is room for Bon Mot or Demoralize, depending on your build.
I think it's more accurate to say that the Animist can pump Dex/Wis/Con as a core and then put their fourth ability score wherever they want. Charisma is fine if you're interested in investing in Charisma skills. So are Strength and Intelligence. None of them have much innate value if you don't either.
Calling one 'lesser' is misleading because a dex/wis/con/cha animist isn't going to really be worse in any meaningful way in the first place. They're going to be less good at RK and better at Diplomacy but that's just kind of what you expect anyways.
That's a false equivalency. An animist needs to invest permeant skill increases and other long term build choices to be good at Diplomacy. But every animist gets those floating lores for free, and has Traveling Workshop and Embodiment of Battle whenever they want. Investing in charisma instead of strength or intelligence will make you worse at using class features you already have.
Whether you value those features enough to let them sway what you choose as a fourth choice is a personal choice-- the class seems like it will be fine if you never touch those parts. But if you're gonna rank ability modifiers from an optimization perspective (which is what guides like this do) then charisma seems like the bottom of the barrel to me, objectively speaking.
That said, maybe guides don't need to be ranking ability modifiers anymore? It might be a tradition that outlived its usefulness with how generous the PF2 boost system is. Classes clearly identify their KAS and even give sample builds which suggest stats to prioritize. What stats you focus on beyond KAS is usually not so much a matter of class as it is role, so why do we put them in class guides?
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Embodiment of Battle whenever they want
No you can't. You can't just choose to have, by chance, a fully runed weapon, high Strength and supporting combat feats. So either you have these and you'll play an Embodiment of Battle Animist or you don't and you will just forget about it entirely.
But most importantly: Most Animists will have a theme. You'll either be an elemental Animist, a dark one, a gish one or whatever. Switching will be both unoptimized (as you can't be good with all Apparitions), useless (why would you even switch when most Apparitions are just generic combat Apparitions?) and thematically problematic if you want a defining theme.
There's a single Apparition that can be switched easily as it can be used during downtime: Traveling Workshop. That's all.
So there will be Strength-based Animists, Intelligence-based Animists and Charisma-based Animists depending on their build. And considering how Intelligence is disregarded in general, I don't think the extra Lores and Traveling Workshop are enough to suddenly turn it into a "much better choice than Charisma". As for Strength, it will either be an important stat or a dump stat, so I think a double color would be more appropriate.
I love your Guide, thank you!
- Under Practices > Liturgist you wrote, "Overall, it seems to specialize in enabling you to more easily sustain multiple vessel spells and it assures you optimal positioning on the battlefield."
- Under Vessels Spells in War of Immortals (p. 14) it is written that, "Your primary attuned apparition can use your body as a conduit, allowing you to cast a unique vessel spell."
Question: I thought that Liturgists can only have one primary attuned apparition at a time, is it correct that a Liturgist can use more than one Vessel Spell at a time? If not, I would recommend updating and moving this comment to the Medium section as they can have two primary apparitions at level 9. In addition, it would be cool to have comments on some of the combinations. For example, Devouring Dark Form and Earth's Bile both provide offensive Actions when Sustained.
In regards to the Liturgist action economy, I would love to see a sub-guide dedicated to the level 9 Dancing Invocation. Kyrone mentions Elf Step above, which is awesome, but there are several other Feats that that interact with Step (not to mention Leap and Tumble Through) that may be good. For example, the following feats might be good with with Witness to Ancient Battles:
- Goblin Scuttle (Goblin 5) > Step as a Reaction when an ally moves next to you.
- Step Lively (Halfling 5) > Step as a Reaction when a large or larger creature moves next to you.
- Elf Step (Elf 9) > Step twice. Dancing Invocation allows sustaining of both apparition spells and vessel spells.
- Dodge Away (Acrobat 6) > Reaction to get a +1 AC against a melee attack, Step if the attack misses.
- Skirmish Strike (Fighter, Ranger, Rogue 6) > Step and Strike or Strike and Step as a single action. Level 12 as a multiclass feat.
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There's a single Apparition that can be switched easily as it can be used during downtime: Traveling Workshop. That's all.
Well, as long as you don't mind getting locked into the crafter in the vault in downtime [and afterwards] and only making items for yourself.:
"You can’t use a traveling workshop to Earn Income and any item you Craft using it disappears moments after it leaves your possession, making it unwise to Craft anything other than consumable items you intend to use yourself. A crafter in the vault is extremely proud of work you do together when using the spell in this way and demands to see the results of your work together. When you cast traveling workshop as an exploration or downtime activity, you must continue to choose crafter in the vault as one of your attuned apparitions during your next daily preparations until such time as you’ve used any Crafted items in combat."
This means it's not something you just drop down for exploration/downtime if you intent to actual craft something. If you make a batch of healing elixirs, you're stuck with Crafter in the Vault until you drink them in combat... You're better off ignoring that it can be used in exploration/downtime IMO. Better to use it short term to repair and open locks.
This means it's not something you just drop down for exploration/downtime if you intent to actual craft something. If you make a batch of healing elixirs, you're stuck with Crafter in the Vault until you drink them in combat... You're better off ignoring that it can be used in exploration/downtime IMO. Better to use it short term to repair and open locks.
There are adventures where you need to repair a castle both in PFS and APs. I was speaking of these kinds of uses. Otherwise, I agree it's not a good fit for an adventuring day.
I haven't worked it out yet but there may be something to see here, Elf Step + Skirmish Strike + Strike:
= 3 Actions
= Step twice + Step and Strike + Strike + Sustain a Vessel Spell + Sustain an Apparition Spell x2?
= Step x3 + Strike x2 + Sustain Embodiment of Battle + Sustain Invoke Spirits x2?
How far can this be pushed? Elf Step + Peafowl Strut + Strike:
= 3 Actions
= Step twice + Step twice and Strike + Step (Peafowl Stance after a hit) + Strike + Sustain a Vessel Spell + Sustain an Apparition Spell x5?
= Step x5 + Strike x2 + Sustain Embodiment of Battle + Sustain Invoke Spirits x5?
Caveats:
- This is feat intensive to say the least (Elf Step, Monk Dedication, Monastic Weaponry, Peafowl Stance, Peafowl Strut, and maybe Ancestral Weaponry)
- Peafowl Strut would be level 20 as a multiclass feat
- I think my GM would call the police as soon as this comes online at level 9
There are adventures where you need to repair a castle both in PFS and APs. I was speaking of these kinds of uses.
I'm not sure that it can be used in those instances though. There is a thin line between repairing and rebuilding so it's iffy. Repairing a wall might involve replacing sections instead of actually patching an existing one, and with Traveling Workshop replaced sections could vanish depending on how the DM rules.
Now if the DM's on board, then yes in those instances it can be of use but the chances it comes into play seems unlikely. IMO, Traveling Workshop is too fiddly for me to use it in exploration/downtime activity: It'd be more for repair/lock pick during the adventure.
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I love your Guide, thank you!
Thank you! I'm glad you like it!
- Under Practices > Liturgist you wrote, "Overall, it seems to specialize in enabling you to more easily sustain multiple vessel spells and it assures you optimal positioning on the battlefield."
- Under Vessels Spells in War of Immortals (p. 14) it is written that, "Your primary attuned apparition can use your body as a conduit, allowing you to cast a unique vessel spell."
Question: I thought that Liturgists can only have one primary attuned apparition at a time, is it correct that a Liturgist can use more than one Vessel Spell at a time? If not, I would recommend updating and moving this comment to the Medium section as they can have two primary apparitions at level 9.
Any animist that has Circle of Spirits (a 1st level feat that the liturgist starts with for free) can change their primary apparition for an action, allowing the possibility of having 2 different vessel spells active. The feat also increases your focus points helping to make this possible.
In addition, it would be cool to have comments on some of the combinations. For example, Devouring Dark Form and Earth's Bile both provide offensive Actions when Sustained.
I thought about this and actually worked on it for a bit but there are so many possible combinations and so few significant interactions, I decided against finalizing that section.
In regards to the Liturgist action economy, I would love to see a sub-guide dedicated to the level 9 Dancing Invocation.
I am personally against promoting abuse of this feature any further just because I draw a line on optimization. I really believe dancing invocation crosses that line and needs to be nerfed a bit to one trigger per turn or something. Just skimming a reddit post from yesterday where people were commenting about their animist builds, I think I was the only one who was explicitly not running a liturgist (I'm playing a medium). It's a small sample size but I don't think anyone other than myself even mentioned the other practices. That tells me that the practice has an unfair advantage that people don't want to miss out on.
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I am surprised they worded dancing invocation that way, and not "when you sustain an apparition or vessel spell, you can also take a Leap, step or tumble through action" to cut down on the nested actions that allow such movements, but remember that vessel spells can only be sustained once per turn, so trigger 3 sustains a turn will require casting a lot of apparition spells that are sustainable.
I haven't worked it out yet but there may be something to see here...
Perhaps there is nothing to see here after all. I reread Invoke Spirits and the Sustain action and now realize that there is no benefit to Sustaining this spell more than once per round. Dancing Invocation is great but hopefully time will show that it is not broken.
I am starting to think DEX is really the trap attribute option for the animist. Like you’ll want to boost it as you level for saves, but going STR early interacts well with almost half the apparitions, and having a 0 str really hurts your ability to exploit the class’ extreme versatility, while having medium armor and athletics empowers many power combinations.
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I am starting to think DEX is really the trap attribute option for the animist. Like you’ll want to boost it as you level for saves, but going STR early interacts well with almost half the apparitions, and having a 0 str really hurts your ability to exploit the class’ extreme versatility, while having medium armor and athletics empowers many power combinations.
And plate mail proficiency is only a feat away (general or dedication as fits your build).
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I am surprised they worded dancing invocation that way, and not "when you sustain an apparition or vessel spell, you can also take a Leap, step or tumble through action" to cut down on the nested actions that allow such movements
That's essentially what we had in the playtest (specifically, a unique activity that gave you sustain and a leap or step). Allowing it to work with nested actions seems like a very intentional change here.
Just skimming a reddit post from yesterday where people were commenting about their animist builds, I think I was the only one who was explicitly not running a liturgist (I'm playing a medium). It's a small sample size but I don't think anyone other than myself even mentioned the other practices. That tells me that the practice has an unfair advantage that people don't want to miss out on.
While I don't disagree with the conclusion, I think it's missing the other half of the equation in terms of examining its competition. Seer is hyper specific to a certain type of encounter, which makes it extremely campaign specific (and there aren't a lot of campaigns for it to begin with). Shaman is a familiar build, with all the pitfalls associated there and also suffers from having a level 9 feature that's just a feat. The medium's level 1 feature actively makes you worse by putting a restriction on your apparition selection. The level 9 feature is cool, and I actually think Medium is the best off at 17, but you're still dealing with that downside and the latter is so far away it's hard to really factor in when building a new character.
So while Liturgist is quite strong, it's also pretty much the best option by default because there's nothing else worth talking about unless you're in a campaign tailored toward Seer or can get to the levels medium is good at quickly.
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I am starting to think DEX is really the trap attribute option for the animist. Like you’ll want to boost it as you level for saves, but going STR early interacts well with almost half the apparitions, and having a 0 str really hurts your ability to exploit the class’ extreme versatility, while having medium armor and athletics empowers many power combinations.
That's an interesting take (not sarcasm, it's got me thinking).... I don't think dexterity is a TRAP option and I think strength will be popular for mediums, particularly one's who pick the Witness as their permanent apparition.... Hmm....
To me, either score is going to cover our armor is some way. Dexterity alone can cover our reflex save while heavy bulwark armor will require at least 1 general feat. And then you'll need to spend another feat on Canny Acumen (reflex) to meet up with a more dexterity focused build.
Athletics is utilized a bit in this class but that's a skill you'll have to invest in as well as strength to make worthwhile. Meanwhile, darkened forest form can grant you a good scaling athletics bonus without that investment.
As far as martial combat goes, dexterity lets us use bows effectively, saving us from having to use actions to stride to get into melee range but strength does let us use the big melee weapons.... (this topic has me remembering the gunslinger's Risky Reload feat now and contemplating reassessing my rating of that multiclass XD )
I don't know....strength is perfectly serviceable but it still seems to require more investment than necessary when you could just use dexterity and let the class take care of itself. I'm still not sold on strength taking over dexterity as a secondary attribute.