| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
No. This fundamentally misunderstand what focus spells are from a lore and mechanics aspect.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
No. They're not casters, so they shouldn't have spells. Plenty of things in the game have a 10 minute cooldown and aren't focus-based, like Treat Wounds with Continual Recovery, the Exemplar's Radiant Epithet, repairing a shield, etc.
I agree that focus spells mechanics are great but they are linked to spellcasting and are spells. Mechanically makes sense to use it but thematically will put in the same bag of spells something that the Paizo designers doesn't want for these classes.
This creates opportunities and restrictions. Like picking an archetype with focus spell they won't give you more uses for your 10 minutes ability but for other side you can go beyond the limit of 3 resources per encounter and will recover then independently.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Please keep them the way they are!
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
An ability with a 10 minute cooldown and an ability with a focus point cost are fundamentally different.
Fire Ray is a focus spell, you can cast it three rounds in a row once you have three focus points, and then you need to refocus. But each ability with a 10 minute cooldown is tracked separately, so once the Thaumaturge drains their chalice they can't drain their chalice again for 10 minutes, but they can do anything else they want including another ability with a 10 minute cooldown.
The reason champions, rangers, and monks have focus spells is that the PF1 Paladin and Ranger were actual spellcasters and the Monk had a whole bunch of Ki spells.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If focus points are so obvious why are you literally the only person who wants them on the class?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I agree with 25speedforseaweedleshy for a reason they have not covered. I fear that the playtest Runesmith has too heavy of a tracking load. Focus spells would be less tracking effort than cooldowns.
In this comment, a tracking means remember any decisions across turns, minutes, or hours that are not a permanent part of the character sheet. Some tracking is mental; other tracking might require temporary notes. The position, condition, and hit points of a character are also tracked, but everyone tracks those and we have tools such as miniatures on a playmat to aid tracking them, so I will leave them out of this argument.
Consider what a player of a wizard has to track during a game session.
1) The wizard has to select prepared spells for the day.
2) The wizard has to track which spells they have cast already, marking the empty slots.
3) Some spells have durations. Other spells have to be sustained.
That's it. Furthermore, spontaneous spellcasters have simpler tracking than prepared spellcasters.
Compare that to what a player of a runesmoth has to track during a game session.
1) The runesmith prepares some etched runes before combat.
2) The runesmoth traces some runes with a duration until the end of their next turn, tracking that duration.
3) Those runes have locations to track, such as on gear, on the runesmith, on an ally, or on an enemy, in addition to their duration.
4) Some runes are invoked, destroying them and creating effects. The effects sometimes have durations.
5) Some feats, such as Vital Composite Invocation and Clashing Composite Invocation, have cooldown periods to track for each type of special invocation.
Focus pools are easier to track, "How many focus points do I have left?" than cooldown periods, "How many minutes left for Vital Composite Invocation's cooldown? How many minutes left for Define the Canvas's cooldown?" In a tracking-heavy class, the best design minimizes the effort of tracking.
Furthermore, despite the arguments in this thread, runesmithing is not so different from spellcasting. Back in Pathfinder 1st Edition, a character had to be a spellcaster in order to craft magic items. In PF2 only the Magical Crafting feat is required, so yes, tracing a rune is more crafting than spellcasting. However, invoking a rune is an activation, and sometimes activating an item takes the Cast a Spell action. If we make Invocation into a cantrip, and the special Invocations into focus spells, what lore would be broken?
And Invocation is different from most activations because it can be conducted from a distance. I believe that only a Command activation can function from a distance. I searched the GM Core for the word "command" and only the Walking Cauldron magic item takes commands. The Mirror of Soshen is also control from a distance through a bond rather than a command. The spoken word imagery in the Runesmith is probably to make Invocation seem like activation by Command Word, but Invocation would better fit its action at a distance as a spell.
And I would like if a Runesmith could learn Reach Spell spellshape to invoke from a greater distance. In my brief runesmith playtest so far, runesmith Virgil could not take advantage of the 30-foot invocation range because he carefully stood outside a basilisk's 30-foot range for Petrifying Gaze.
Thus, the lore does not forbid making Invocation a spell. Next, we need to consider the mechanical difference.
A focus spell can be activated repeatedly until the focus pool is emptied. A cooldown effect cannot. Thus, focus spells are more versatile. The other difference is that a cooldown period passes automatically with time, but filling a focus pool requires a 10-minute Refocus activity. Most classes have a characteristic ability to Refocus, such as a bard performing or songwriting, a cleric praying or engaging in worshipful service, or a druid communing with or tending to nature. These classes also a 12th-level feat to fill a focus pool faster. Refocus is more deliberate than cooldown, which is easier for tracking the feature. I presume that a runesmith could Refocus by studying rune designs or by etching a rune.
To decide whether a change to focus would fit the Runesmith feats, we need to figure out why they have a limit.
- Vital Composite Invocation, feat 6, seems obvious: it is a healing effect and the game needs to slow down healing for dramatic tension. But a champion's Lay on Hands demonstrates that healing works fine as a focus spell.
- Chain of Words, feat 10, is an extra 5d6 force damage to all creatures in a line, a powerful effect that should not be routinely used every turn in combat.
- Clashing Composite Invocation, feat 10, forces a Fortitude save to avoid being sickened. Sicken condition costs one action for a Fortitude save to remove, so it could mess up action economy against a single powerful foe. However, Clashing Composite Invocation takes two actions of its own and requires two runes placed in advance, so that is four to six actions to sicken. That means a natural limit of only one sickening every two turns. It might require a focus cost due to its power, but not a cooldown.
- Astral Composite Invocation, feat 12, forces a Will save to avoid being stupefied for 1 minute. A 2nd use on a successfully stupefied creature would have little additional effect. I do not see a mechanical reason for a cooldown.
- Define the Canvas, feat 14, lets creature-targetting runes target all creatures in a 20-foot burst for 1 minute. The only reason for a 2nd use would be to establish another area if combat moves. I do not see a mechanical reason for a cooldown.
- Henge Gate, feat 14, creates an area that can automatically trace a rune on ammunition. The only reason for a 2nd use would be to establish another area if combat moves. I do not see a mechanical reason for a cooldown.
- By Your Name, feat 16, not only has a cooldown of a full hour, but it also can be used against any individual creature only once every 24 hours. It lets the runesmith put a diacritic rune on their runes on the creature that reduces the creature's saves against the base rune. This effect has a duration of 1 minute, so the only reason for a 2nd use would be to target a different creature. I do not see a mechanical reason for a cooldown nor a reason for its especially long cooldown. It also feels like a Save-Or-Suck effect, which I thought were discouraged in PF2, and making it awkwardly limited does not correct the Save-Or-Suck aspect.
- Sun-, Diacritic Rune of Preservation, rune 1, is put on another rune and automatically recreates the rune after its invocation. It says, "Special You can have only one copy of sun-, diacritic rune of preservation applied at a given time, and once you invoke it, you cannot Etch or Trace it again for 10 minutes," so it has a cooldown. But it is a rune rather than a special invocation, so would not be affected by special invocations being changed into focus spells.
In my opinion, the only mechanical problems with a focus spell rather than a cooldown on the 8 cooldowns would be with Chain fo Words, which could be effectively novaed, By Your Name, which is an unbalanced mess in any form, and Sun- which cannot be converted into a spell. The other 5 special invocations would work better as focus spells.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Only being about to trace or invoke 3 times a fight quite kill interest in the class I think.
It doesn't really work without a massive redesign.
Kinda how I feel about Necromancer, once you empty the tank what else do you get that is special outside of Create Thrall and potentially the Thrall Reaction feats which seem to be shaping up as mandatory.
Runesmith would need a bump in defenses if you gave them only 3 runes each fight, which means Trace Trance is now official useless and you would hae people trying to figure out how to optimize runes in every fight.
Focus Points are good but really it is either a all or nothing thing. Yeah Monks, Champions and Rangers use them but does every class need to use them? Does Kineticist really need to be remade as a Focus Spell Martial? The answer is no, no it does not and Runesmith is sitting quite happily in the same boat.
Only being about to trace or invoke 3 times a fight quite kill interest in the class I think.
It doesn't really work without a massive redesign.
Is this in response to my comment? It does not reflect what I said.
Let me give a summary:
Tracking the cooldowns on the seven special-invocation feats with cooldowns--Vital Composite Invocation feat 6, Chain of Words feat 10, Clashing Composite Invocation feat 10, Astral Composite Invocation feat 12, Define the Canvas feat 14, Henge Gate feat 14, and By Your Name feat 16--is too much work on a class that already has a ton of details to track. Switching them from cooldowns to focus spells would be easier on the player and does not break the lore.
Focus Points are good but really it is either a all or nothing thing. Yeah Monks, Champions and Rangers use them but does every class need to use them? Does Kineticist really need to be remade as a Focus Spell Martial? The answer is no, no it does not and Runesmith is sitting quite happily in the same boat.
I ran 20 levels of an adventure path (Ironfang Invasion converted to PF2) for a party with a Stormborn druid, the druidic order that gains strong focus spells. The party was very good at resource management and would run through Moderate-Threat encounters using only renewable resources such as focus points. The druid would rely on cantrips and her Tempest Surge and Stormwind Flight focus spells. Her slotted spells were saved for the Severe-Threat and Extreme-Threat encounters, for which she developed a reputation as an army killer with her area-of-effect devastation.
In the same campaign, the champion was known for her velociraptor animal companion and her protective abilities with Liberating Step reaction, the monk was known for his mobility on the battlefield and his martial Strikes and never learned ki spells, and the ranger technically learned the Ranger's Bramble focus spell, but never used it. He was known at high levels for four bow Strikes per turn.
The other focus-heavy character in that seven-player campaign was the scoundrel-racket rogue who multiclassed to draconic sorcerer. At 6th level he would cast Dragon Claws focus spell in melee, gaining claws that dealt 1d4 slashing damage and 1d6 fire damage, along with the 2d6 precision damage from Sneak Attack. The claws lasted one minute, so he never had to cast the spell more than once in a single encounter.
Thus, my experience with focus spells is that they are a renewable resource rather than an all-or-nothing thing.
The Runesmith's first cooldown feat is 6th level, and they are all feats like the monk's ki spells and the ranger's warden spells. The runesmith is not built around cooldowns and changing them to focus spells would not build the class around the focus spells.
I would be happy without Runesmith gaining focus points. I just don't like the cooldown mechanic here. We could instead redesign Vital Composite Invocation as a 10-minute activity, give a use-once-per-target immunity to Clashing Composite Invocation, and drop the cooldowns on the other special invocations without adding any other limit.
If it's once per minute or greater, it's usually once per fight. That's how I look at it.
So I haven't run into the issue with tracking on things unless it's both variable and can happen more than once in a combat, like fob dedication in remaster.
If it's once per minute or greater, it's usually once per fight. That's how I look at it.
So I haven't run into the issue with tracking on things unless it's both variable and can happen more than once in a combat, like fob dedication in remaster.
n Vault of the Onyx Citadel, 6th module of Ironfang Invasion, the party swept through the Onyx Citadel room by room. Open a door, lock the door behind them (they had stolen a key), fight the enemies in the room, open the next door, etc. They had rescued a person who used to live in the Onyx Citadel, so they had the floor plans and knew the exact route to the command center. They did not stop because stopping would let an enemy leader with their own key and an army catch up to them. Sure, they could defeat a small army, but they wanted to save their hit points and their big spells for the pair of big bad evil gals in the command center.
Under those circumstances, the party fights for longer than a minute. And they cannot take a 10-minute break.
Also, what's an "fob dedication"?
Flurry of blows dedication in remaster calls for a 1d4 cool down.