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It didn't exactly strike me as a problem with the commander playtest for some reason, but Runes being an entirely new thing, is making me aware of how we are starting to get a whole lot of unique categories that are really going to complicate character building, especially with the Free archetype variant.
Oracle abilities
Commander strategies
Runesmith Runes
on top of focus spells and there becomes a pretty intense metagame of maximizing what resources are available to a character.
It also tends to undermine the modularity of the basic system in my mind.
Oracle abilities have their own set back with the curse, so I didn't find that one problematic, and I maybe just liked the commander strategies enough to not feel off about them, but couldn't "rune magic" essentially just be a new tradition of magic and use spell slots and cantrips to do everything the Runesmith class does, perhaps making the class a wave caster to keep the martial chassis?
It feels like doing otherwise is kind of just repeating the mistake of the kineticist neither casting spells not making strikes.
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The game is not really balanced around free archetype, so minmaxxing causes by using that variant rule should be taken as an acceptable risk the GM considered when using unrestricted free archetype (as in FA that's not restricted to some campaign specific archetype/theme).
In a game with standard rules, multiclassing to unlock those ability is a trade off with normal class feats.
Another commonly brought up point is that all caster are pretty "samey", giving them distinct feature actually makes them more distinct.
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I was thinking about the different pools of resources like this the other day, except I was considering it a positive, not a problem to be solved. If we want more classes, it's kind of required so we don't end with Star Trek aliens, just reskinned humans, or in this case "martial chassis + one shtick" & "full caster + one shtick". Those are simple enough to homebrew (much less balance), while Kineticist & this pair are beyond anything I could have dreamt up (much less balanced). That's professional output there IMO.
ETA: balance clause
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While I definitely feel like the game has serious thematic opportunities for more wave casters and would love to see more warrior-mage blends among classes, I'm not really sure I see where you're coming from with making the runesmith a spellcaster.
In fact, Runesmith seems to fill what I felt was something of a missing thematic niche between spellcasting and magic item creation, and actually kind of fits pretty neatly adjacent too an artificer headcanon concept I had pulled together once. It almost feels like something that could have belonged in the game from the beginning, ever since generic magic weapons gained the magic rune concept in the playtest.
To me, spells already have a very well-explored mechanical niche, and I'm not sure a 'rune-wielder' that casts spells by drawing runes really does anything that doesn't already exist in the game. Glowing runes already appear when wizards and clerics cast spells. A new class that draws runes and the result is just regular spellcasting hasn't really found a mechanical niche to go with its themes, and I'm skeptical that you could take the runesmith's mechanics of set-and-fire runes and apply it to regular spell effects without breaking something about how spellcasting is balanced mechanically.
Certainly, I don't see even a full caster would have enough repertoire to collect enough 'runes' that are just individual spells, much less a wave caster being able to feel like they actually know enough about magical linguistics to fulfill their thematic niche or really matter to their gameplay loop.
I don't really understand the question of maximizing available resources to a character, but I don't play with free archetype, and I'm not clear why it matters that characters can have a couple different resources by having a couple different multiclasses. If these archetypes end up broken because they give you too much power for the resources they cost, the problem seems to be with what you get from the archetype, not so much the fact that the resources are different.
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Fair, though, if your concern is more toward "How and when are we going to fill out all the runes that is needed for the runesmith to do its job when those runes are bespoke parts of the class and not general tools that several classes share", that's a valid concern, although not one that I think is worse than the question of how/when classes get new feats published.
Yes we all know Kineticist needs more options but it's one of those edge cases where the entire class screams Nature. Not many of the APs and stuff focus around that enough to add in new impulses but I agree Kineticist needs help and as long as some classes don't end up like that. Runesmith could easily be Kineticist 2.0 with rarely new options added.
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IF these were broadly available mechanics I'd agree with the OP, but they aren't. They're class features, which means using them means either picking that class or the archetype, which is a necessary buy-in to that silo of abilities. So the complication is something you have to volunteer for.
Runes could be spells, but I think that'd just leave us with a class that's much less unique and interesting than what we're getting now.
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My biggest problem with new classes getting unique silos of abilities are:
1. They all stack with each other instead of competing for set resources, like most core classes. Luckily, bonus types remain contained, so it is not the greatest threat to game balance, but the rune smith’s abilities tend not to just offer direct status bonuses, so there are many classes that operate much better with some specific runes in the party.
2. If being a member of X class is the only way for a character to access them, then providing new material for those options is only supporting 1 class, whereas new spells and items are things almost any character can use. My party often uses scrolls and alchemical items for example, but even with 2 kineticists in the party, new material for Earth or Metal kineticists is entirely unusable.
Sometimes, I do think it is worth it anyway for some classes, and a lot of folks think so for the runesmith. I am just starting to feel like things like Ikons and Runes are kind of “already bespoke game space” of items and magic that might just be adding complexity to the game, especially if they could be things that are not so class locked. I think the alchemist is to alchemical items relationship is a very strong feature of PF2, that new classes (even ones I like, like the commander) don’t get at all.
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It didn't exactly strike me as a problem with the commander playtest for some reason, but Runes being an entirely new thing, is making me aware of how we are starting to get a whole lot of unique categories that are really going to complicate character building, especially with the Free archetype variant.
Oracle abilities
Commander strategies
Runesmith Runeson top of focus spells and there becomes a pretty intense metagame of maximizing what resources are available to a character.
It also tends to undermine the modularity of the basic system in my mind.
Oracle abilities have their own set back with the curse, so I didn't find that one problematic, and I maybe just liked the commander strategies enough to not feel off about them, but couldn't "rune magic" essentially just be a new tradition of magic and use spell slots and cantrips to do everything the Runesmith class does, perhaps making the class a wave caster to keep the martial chassis?
It feels like doing otherwise is kind of just repeating the mistake of the kineticist neither casting spells not making strikes.
Short answer? Yes. Long answer: Mythic showcases the real problem here. Kineticist is extremely poorly supported by mythic, because it's basically its own silo that doesn't interact with anything else. If new rules don't take accommodation specifically to cater to Kineticist, they don't tend to work on that class. (Summoner has similar problems in how mythic and Eidolons basically don't mix without house rules.)
More silos and "this is a special thing that doesn't interact with other parts of the system" means more of that. Looking at past support and new options being added, they also tend to cater to the core classes and mechanics only. The more isolated and unique something is, the less likely it is that any material in the future will ever add to it or take it into account.
Alchemy is actually a great counter point: while new alchemical items are of primary benefit to the Alchemist class, anyone can use them and they can be put in as loot that has widespread applicability. This isn't creating a new system that only interacts with Alchemist.
Likewise, new spells apply to a broad variety of classes, as do new weapons/armor/etc.
But once classes that are heavily silo'd come out, thats it. We almost never see anything added to them after the fact. We're unlikely to ever see much in the way of new impulses/cursebound abilities/runes/commander orders/etc unless we get an AP focused heavily on a theme that suits that extremely well.
This is a bigger issue than free archetype is, although FA dipping into some of these things can be problematic (Oracle Archetype is an extremely good one now because it gives you an extra pool of renewable resource). Ultimately a variant rule that people choose to use is simply less of a concern for the system design than rulebooks introducing new systems and then future rulebooks basically forgetting those systems exist.
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I think personally the best solution would be offical guiadance on how to houserule things into systems that don't officially name them.
For example, a side bar in WoI that said "There are many activites, such as a kineticist's implulse blasts, that don't count as a weapon strike. You may want to consider allowing them to count as weapon strikes for the purpose of mythic rules", could have gone a long way.
That way we can have our cake and eat it to, where we are given an offical fix without paizo needing to bend every silo to comply to every optional rule.
I hope this makes sense, I struggled to word it properly.
I think generally classes are intended to be "feature complete" on release with the logic that page space in future releases is limited and it's better to use this on relatively universal options like archetypes rather than "things that only apply to characters of a specific class." Like the Barbarian was in the initial release of PF2 and has had two subclasses added (one of which was later made core) and has basically only had feat support in three books (HotW, RoE, and KoL).
So is the downside here that we run the risk of future mechanics not interacting with tracing/etching, similar to how Mythic offers little for the Kineticist and Magus? I will wait to see how the fall Errata addresses this, since we only need to wait a week to see this.
Since honestly I think "players have a bunch of different pools to draw from in order to make their characters" is inherently a good thing, since the way you address the "players feel overwhelmed" problem is that you don't play Free Archetype and you might limit what options are available. Since as someone who enjoyed the CharOp game in PF1, though I understand why it's gone, I like having a bunch of different silos to consider.
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1. They all stack with each other instead of competing for set resources, like most core classes.
OK. Thinking about this for a while now.
I think this is not so much of a problem. These abilities are still competing with each other for resources.
Yes, an Oracle will get both focus points and cursebound abilities which behave similarly to focus spells but with an added downside. Kineticist gets Impulses that they can use freely. Exemplar gets Icon abilities. Runesmith gets rune abilities. Alchemist gets Versatile Vials.
But there are two resources that these all compete for.
One is feats. Yes, you could have a character that has 3 focus spells, a few cursebound abilities and can go up to cursebound 2, and a couple of Impulse abilities. But getting all of that is going to take the majority of their feat slots even with Free Archetype.
The other resource they compete for is actions. That character that has focus spells, cursebound abilities, and impulses still only has three actions each round to do any of them with. They may be casting Impulses during the first round, focus spells the second, and throwing in a cursebound action on each of them, but that is still only three actions each round.
So it may not be worth it to add Runesmith Runes to that character. The added flexibility is nice, but because of the resource needed to get them and to use them, going that route has diminishing returns.
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Has this become an issue in play? Or theorycraft?
Seems a similar (non-)issue occurs w/ martials, if one were to try to pick up a Barbarian's Rage, Sneak Attack, a Thaumaturge's MCD version of their damage boost, and so on. Lots of potential to stack there too, but has it surfaced outside of for silly speculation (maybe only mine, possibly Raving Dork's too).
Has anybody found it worthwhile to pick up an imbalancing amount of "silos"? Seems it'd be rather costly, with little to show for it that couldn't be gotten elsewhere easier.
Like it feels like fundamentally the first thing people choose in the course of making a character is "a class" and this comes before "I want to be the best at [whatever thing]." They might find, on examination that another class might be better and switch, but you start out wanting to be an Oracle or a Kineticist or a Rogue and at that point you've already siloed yourself in terms of "what class mechanics do you need to learn."
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If being a member of X class is the only way for a character to access them, then providing new material for those options is only supporting 1 class, whereas new spells and items are things almost any character can use.
I mean this is just describing why Paizo doesn't publish class feats very often.
Like this just kind of reads like an argument against class features, or maybe against classes in general.
Mythic showcases the real problem here. Kineticist is extremely poorly supported by mythic, because it's basically its own silo that doesn't interact with anything else.
I think this misses the trees for the forest. The kineticist has issues because its abilities are sort of written in an awkward way.
Other 'silos' the OP mentions like runes or ikons don't have that problem, so the issue clearly isn't classes having distinct mechanics, it's just that Impulses have some questionable writing choices.
You could solve this by turning the Kineticist into a generic spellcaster and all impulse into spells, but you could also solve it without gong nuclear by just adjusting some of the underlying rules.
I mean there's errata coming next week that might well address the various incompatibility issues with Mythic rules.
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While I love free archetype.
I'm also ok with classes being so feature rich that you don't need to.
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I think personally the best solution would be offical guiadance on how to houserule things into systems that don't officially name them.
For example, a side bar in WoI that said "There are many activites, such as a kineticist's implulse blasts, that don't count as a weapon strike. You may want to consider allowing them to count as weapon strikes for the purpose of mythic rules", could have gone a long way.
That way we can have our cake and eat it to, where we are given an offical fix without paizo needing to bend every silo to comply to every optional rule.
I hope this makes sense, I struggled to word it properly.
Counterpoint: I'm paying the system authors for books to figure this stuff out. That's literally what I'm buying. I'd like to have the product I'm buying already work with the other product I bought, not tell me "hey we know this doesn't actually work with this other stuff we put out, but feel free to fix it yourself."
That feels like a very 5e way of doing things, where a lot of content is put out that isn't really well fleshed out and the onus is put on the GM to actually make a functional game out of it.
One of PF2's traditional selling points has been that the rules generally work well together and don't trip over each other or create problems with themselves that often, making it a relatively easy game to run for its complexity without many house rules. "Just use house rules to fix the system" is not going in the right direction at all.
If they're now creating too many cases where they can't actually support all the silos and things they're putting out, maybe thats a sign that there is a problem with the design direction itself and that they shouldn't keep doing more of that. Putting the onus on GMs to just make it work themselves isn't a great alternative.
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I think personally the best solution would be offical guiadance on how to houserule things into systems that don't officially name them.
For example, a side bar in WoI that said "There are many activites, such as a kineticist's implulse blasts, that don't count as a weapon strike. You may want to consider allowing them to count as weapon strikes for the purpose of mythic rules", could have gone a long way.
That way we can have our cake and eat it to, where we are given an offical fix without paizo needing to bend every silo to comply to every optional rule.
I hope this makes sense, I struggled to word it properly.
Counterpoint: I'm paying the system authors for books to figure this stuff out. That's literally what I'm buying. I'd like to have the product I'm buying already work with the other product I bought, not tell me "hey we know this doesn't actually work with this other stuff we put out, but feel free to fix it yourself."
That feels like a very 5e way of doing things, where a lot of content is put out that isn't really well fleshed out and the onus is put on the GM to actually make a functional game out of it.
One of PF2's traditional selling points has been that the rules generally work well together and don't trip over each other or create problems with themselves that often, making it a relatively easy game to run for its complexity without many house rules. "Just use house rules to fix the system" is not going in the right direction at all.
If they're now creating too many cases where they can't actually support all the silos and things they're putting out, maybe thats a sign that there is a problem with the design direction itself and that they shouldn't keep doing more of that. Putting the onus on GMs to just make it work themselves isn't a great alternative.
I'm not saying they just let us do it, I'm saying they put out a sidebar, or a web supplement or something that says "If this doesn't work for you, do X/Y/Z". Obviously kineticist is perhaps a bad example because it should have just worked out the box, but I was using it to highlight one potential way of "future-proofing" things like mythic rules so if we ever get another class that's isolated from the system, a GM can go "This is the guidance paizo has given to resolve this"
I do get your point though, obviously the preferable thing is for the system to work out the box.
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The more new class-specific systems we get, that are distinct from the attacks and spells most classes use, the greater the risk at least some of them will be forgotten in future products, like the Kineticist in Mythic.
Are we really looking expectantly forward to batches of errata in the future ?
I agree with the OP specifically on the grounds that I feel most customization options could take the form of feats. I do quite like the Kineticist's model of framing impulses as feats, and believe that is a good model to follow for things like tactics or runes. I also agree that siloing these class features as "something else" makes them interact less well with mechanics like Mythic, though I also think the issue there is simply that Mythic rules and feats were poorly-written and didn't really try very hard to cover every class equally.
What I disagree with, however, is with wanting to gate these things behind a resource: neither runes nor tactics are meant to be gated by anything other than actions, so making them at-will activities with a per-target immunity when necessary works just fine. In the case of the Oracle, having essentially two focus pools actually works against the class, in my opinion, because they have so many resourceless things to tap into that it devalues their plentiful spell slots (and vice versa). Thus, in a hypothetical future edition where gameplay elements were further streamlined, I'd happily support condensing all of these things, spells included, into feats, and de-silo them that way, without worrying immediately about resource constraints unless the class is expressly meant to be resource-gated.
The answer is kinda but also if you don't add new mechanics, how often will it be till we run out of martial ideas? Kineticist is the first big problem in the pond and it needs help but how?
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Is there actually a Kineticist problem, or is the problem just that "Mythic really doesn't map on to this class"?
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Is there actually a Kineticist problem, or is the problem just that "Mythic really doesn't map on to this class"?
The problem is just that Kineticist abilities are written specifically to not benefit from Strike or Spell based support, which means they have trouble utilizing generic resources.
But trying to generalize it out into this Huge Problem that's going to Ruin The Game sounds better for grievance posting.
Yeah, I like the Kineticist but "don't play the Kineticist in a mythic game" seems like a workable solution, since most games aren't going to be mythic and I'm going to want something that maps onto one of the callings pretty well anyway.
I think "Mythic Callings speak to a fairly narrow set of characters" is a bigger problem than "Kineticists can't get mythic proficiency on their impulses/blasts" anyway.
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"Mythic is kind of disappointing" is more of a problem than "mythic is particularly disappointing for kineticists" (and spellcasters, and builds that rely heavily on metastrike feats/abilities instead of plain Strikes).
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"Mythic is kind of disappointing" is more of a problem than "mythic is particularly disappointing for kineticists" (and spellcasters, and builds that rely heavily on metastrike feats/abilities instead of plain Strikes).
Those aren't really mutually exclusive. Part of why "mythic is kind of disappointing" is because for some classes, mythic is extremely disappointing.
A GM saying "I want to run a mythic game next" and seeing every player rush to play a martial so they can actually take full advantage of mythic is a big problem and would still be one even if mythic was great for martials.
Was there not also an issue where the Commander couldn’t assist the kineticist/kineticist couldn’t take advantage of Commander abilities during the Battlecry playtest? Or was that not so much the Kineticist and more the wording of the Commander ability?
Id rather deal with jank or have classes be islands if it means classes get bespoke, unique mechanics. It's a worthy trade off: necromancer and rune smith are much more engaging to me than wizard or druid
The new Errata this Monday the 16th should fix the Kineticist if Paizo is to stay on their word.
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The new Errata this Monday the 16th should fix the Kineticist if Paizo is to stay on their word.
Which word was "we will definitely fix everything people think is wrong with the kineticist in the next errata pass"?
I believe they will do their best to correct anything that stood out enough in the process of gathering errata that can be fixed in the meantime, but many folks seem to feel as though the fix they personally think is most important was a solemn vow, but I don't know that I've seen an actual promise to fix anything specific in any errata to date.
I do hope you are right, of course, but should it happen that somebody find something they didn't fix, I'd rather not see complaints that Paizo broke their promise when the 'promise' was a game of telephone that started with "were working on X" and ended on "they have guaranteed XYZ"
The errata has been announced for monday, but I caution anyone from reading more into statements of intent than there is.
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Was there not also an issue where the Commander couldn’t assist the kineticist/kineticist couldn’t take advantage of Commander abilities during the Battlecry playtest? Or was that not so much the Kineticist and more the wording of the Commander ability?
There was one, and only one, tactic that directly impacted spellcasters by helping them with their action economy when casting a cantrip. (It was a "special" entry; the main point of the tactic was to help people switch to a ranged weapon option with better action economy.) Some people were annoyed that this helped spellcasters but not kineticists.
Paizo, in the form of one employee in one post on these forums (edit: I looked, it's not in the post-playtest debriefing blog, so it was in the playtest forums that are now inaccessible), said they were looking at possibly making Commander tactics in some way help kineticists. This has since blown up into a weird, surprisingly widespread cult that believes Paizo has promised to rewrite the kineticst so that it works better with all game systems that enhance or support strikes or spells but not impulses.
The easier and perhaps better thing to do is drop the cantrip reference from that Commander tactic. Spellcasters, and kinetcists, can still benefit from the generic mobility or "I carry a shield" ones if they want to.
Cultist example:
The new Errata this Monday the 16th should fix the Kineticist if Paizo is to stay on their word.
There's no actual promise for Paizo to fulfill along these lines. If you get a single Commander tactic in the final release next August that does anything at all to help a Kineticist use an impulse, including a blast, then the one-off "maybe we will" comment of one employee will have been fulfilled.
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The commander's mobility strategies are amazingly helpful to anyone laying down AoEs. In our playtest, it was bonkers how good completely repositioning the entire party right before all the casters got to go. They really didn't need to do more to help casters (or kineticists) than that.
Personally, I kind of think Kineticist and Runesmith are narratively...not opposed...but necessarily, partially incompatible, especially for the etching stuff. "Hey, I add runes to stuff" and "Hey, I barely use stuff" can afford to be not a great synergistic combination, in my opinion. So I don't mind Kineticist and Runesmith stuff being different. The runesmith stuff just feels so much like a "I modify runes (and can make some temporary ones) like an alchemist modifies alchemical items" class that I think it is a bit of shame that so much of the cool dynamic way they interact with the action economy is going to be locked out for other characters.
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Paizo, in the form of one employee in one post on these forums (edit: I looked, it's not in the post-playtest debriefing blog, so it was in the playtest forums that are now inaccessible), said they were looking at possibly making Commander tactics in some way help kineticists.
Does this link not work for you? The playtest stuff gets sent to the bottom of the forums and you can't post there but its still visible.
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The new Errata this Monday the 16th should fix the Kineticist if Paizo is to stay on their word.
You've alluded to this a few times, could you elaborate?
Do you have a link to the promise you keep referring to?
Also what do you mean by fix? I know it's frustrating that certain abilities and buffs don't help the kineticist, but some of your posts seem to imply that the class is somehow fundamentally broken or in an extremely dire situation, which has not really been an experience I've seen echoed to a great extent elsewhere... which makes it feel odd you're treating it so matter of factly.
Would be interested in hearing the details.
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Does this link not work for you? The playtest stuff gets sent to the bottom of the forums and you can't post there but its still visible.
Paizo, in the form of one employee in one post on these forums (edit: I looked, it's not in the post-playtest debriefing blog, so it was in the playtest forums that are now inaccessible), said they were looking at possibly making Commander tactics in some way help kineticists.
Thanks, I didn't know where to look.
But lmao, I found the post that started this crazy game of telephone that somehow evolved into a Promise to Fix the Kineticist.
We're definitely looking into it, and have a couple ideas we're tinkering with to look at increasing compatibility without needing to do bespoke callouts for the kineticist in every tactic.
It just feels like Paizo painted themselves into a corner with the classification of Kinetic Blasts for any future synergy with classes like this. It just feels bad to think that (IMO) one of the best classes in the game, can't play nice with the likes of a Commander.Hoping somebody smarter than me can figure out a way to make it mechanically work, so that this class isn't excluded, and so they have the option to do a future class similar to Kineticist that doesn't use strikes or spells can be done without worry for compatibility issues.
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Yeah, it's quite a reach to go from that playtest feedback response for an unreleased class, to "we're changing Kineticist to fix this problem next errata."
It seems more likely that Commander might get adjusted so that its commands can affect a wider variety of actions in general. That would benefit more than just Kineticist.