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This is something I noticed on both of the playtest classes. Necromancer can effortlessly opt into feats that deal with the other types of undead, and Runesmith explicitly has a lot of feats that only work if you inscribe multiple tradition runes. To be clear I think this is great, I love having the option to be really non-committal with my build. That said I love even more to cling to one specific narrow idea and build everything around it! And currently neither class supports that fantasy especially well. A full vitamancer ghosts only build simply doesn't have enough feat support, and a full Arcane runesmith even less so.
It's a lot of space to support that. "Only ghosts" implies "only skeletons" and "only zombies", so you need three sets of parallel options. "Only arcane" is a factor of four. It might be possible, but it might be at the cost of something else.
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They want to avoid you being able to put all your eggs in one basket and outperform the people that didn't.
This has been a running theme of this edition.
I don't think DMurnett is asking to outperform others. It's more like asking to have enough eggs to choose from that you can fill your basket with all brown eggs, all white eggs, or a combination of the two
The tricky part comes when you have three, four, or perhaps even more varieties of eggs, and you may not have enough page space room on the egg selection table to support all those options.
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Well, Pathfinder 2e is dedicated to "you will be at least okay in absolutely anything you decide to invest in" and "you cannot be significantly better than comparable options by investing absolutely everything you can into one thing."
But I don't think the OP is asking for that. Being an "only ghosts" necromancer would simply involve "let me take ghost-themed feats instead of like bone burst and zombie horde. Or just recontextualize things so I can make an ectoplasmic tsunami rather than a flesh tsunami or have ectoplasmic armaments in lieu of osseo armaments.
It would genuinely be cool if there were bone/flesh/spirit theming options for more things.
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It's a playtest, there'll be more feats and runes in the final version.
Now, will there be enough feats to be a full ghost Necro or a full Arcane Runesmith... time will tell (but as others have said, it means providing a long list of feats and runes to make it just fine).
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I do want to clarify this myself because it seems some people weren't quite sure what I meant by this post (which is understandable and I thank the people that explained it in my stead.) I don't want specialists that outperform builds that go into multiple things, I'm not some *shudders* min-maxxer. In fact I'd be perfectly fine if that gave you some pretty nasty blind spots! 'Tis a team game, is it not? I don't mind if, say, a mono-tradition runesmith doesn't get access to certain functions, because they shouldn't! That should be the price to pay for keeping your options narrow. However to me it seems like currently the opposite is true, runesmiths that don't take the handicap of few traditions further get rewarded with the Composite Invocation feats, while a mono-tradition runesmith gets nothing in return for their troubles. On the necro side it's more of a simple trouble of too few options and will likely be fixed in the full release but I do want to bring attention to it in case that wasn't the plan.
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Runesmith explicitly has a lot of feats that only work if you inscribe multiple tradition runes.
The Runesmith's runes coming in arcane, divine, occult, and primal traditions is weird, because the crafted runes in the existing rules have no such traditions. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, the traditions of the Runesmith's runes don't matter except for composition feats such as Vital Composition Invocation. That particular feat requires two runes, one divine and one primal.
Maybe the Runesmith is intended to come in four specializations based on spellcasting traditions: Arcane, Divine, Occult, or Primal. Or maybe the specializations would be based on magical essences: Life (Divine and Primal), Matter (Arcane and Primal), Mind (Arcane and Occult), or Spirit (Divine and Occult), which would explain why some feats want pairs of traditions. The specializations could have been left off the playtest because Paizo has not decided on the details.
For example, imagine that at character creation the player has to choose a specialization called Tradition.
Arcane Tradition could say, "You are trained in Arcana. If you are already trained in Arcana, you can train in another skill. You can add arcane or magical runes to your runic repertoire through the Learn a Spell activity with the rank for the DC equal to half the rune's level rounded up. Magical runes learned this way always count as arcane."
Divine Tradition could say, "You are trained in Religion. If you are already trained in Religion, you can train in another skill. You can trace divine or magical runes with a hand that holds a shield."
Occult Tradition could say, "You are trained in Occultism. If you are already trained in Occultism, you can train in another skill. You learn the Rune-Singer feat. Tracing an occult rune with song alone is not subject to and does not count against the once-per-minute limit."
Primal Tradition could say, "You are trained in Nature. If you are already trained in Nature, you can train in another skill. Any primal or magical rune you trace on a creature or on worn armor lasts for 1 minute rather than to the end of your next turn."
Exactly like Kineticist! Should have brought it up as an example in fact.
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One way this could be helped is by adding multiple flavors to the necromancer feats- Deacribing dead weight as a clinging zombie, skeletal prison, or spectral schackle cod help someone feel like they're exclusively focused on one type of undead. And while Pathfinder 2e is generally friendly to reflavoring, actively guiding necromancers on how they can do thay would be helpful.
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Something akin to how kineticists were handled, you mean? I hope that's achievable; that's going to be tougher with the runesmith having no distinct class paths to go down, like the kineticist's elements.
The best specialties come from well-established desires of the players. The kineticist is a happy exception.
For example, consider the pre-Remastered champion's Causes of Paladin, Redeemer, and Liberator (I am less familiar with the Remastered Causes). The D&D 3rd Edition Paladin, copied into PF1, always had a lawful good cause, but the players begged for a paladin-like class that would free slaves, a liberator. Thus, the PF2 champion split into different causes to enable what the players wanted.
The PF2 rogue has some of the most extreme specialties, called Rackets, because they can change the rogue's key ability score. The D&D rogue was intended as a thief, but some players preferred more of a con man. Thus, PF2 offered the rogue with Thief Racket and Scoundrel Racket. I don't know if any player demanded a Ruffian Racket, but many NPC bandits were built as ruffian rogues so the specialty had a niche in Golarion.
Necromancer and Runesmith are entirely new classes, so they lack a history of player desires. I suppose that evil NPC necromancers specialized in animating one type of undead, just to be easy on the GMs rather than forcing them to play a mixture of ghosts, skeletons, and zombies.
I commented above about specializing runesmiths around the four magicial traditions. Actually, I think that that is a false start. Unlike the four elements (expanded into six elements) that were often characteristic of spells and planes and elementals, the runes in PF2 have nothing to do with the magical traditions. Crafting magical items, such as +1 swords, had a spellcasting requirement in PF1, but PF2 broke away from that tradition (pun intended). Tying the runesmith to a magical tradition makes their runes seem less rune-like, and that would be a mistake.
In existing equipment rules, runes are categorized into fundamental versus property runes, and into accessory versus armor versus weapon versus shield runes. None of those seem right for Runesmith specialties, either. The Runesmith specialties need narrative meaning.
Imagine your party enters the shop of a runesmith to buy some +1 potency runes for your weapons. The apprentice runesmith there (really a new PC joining the party) says, "I would love to leave town and become an adventurer." And you ask, "You could join us on our quest. What is your specialty and how would it help us?'
Looking over the lists of 1st-level runes in the Impossible Playtest, the answers that spring to my mind are: "I am a master of gear. I forge weapons and enhance them with my runes, such as Esvadir, rune of whetstones, and Holtrik, rune of dwarven ramparts. I improve your gear." Or "I offer both runic and alchemical effects. My Atryl, rune of fire, draws fire to enemies. My Pluuna, rune of illumination, lights our way." Or "I think tactically and manipulate the battlefield with runic energies. My Oljinex, rune of coward's bane, ensnares our enemies. My Zohk, rune of homecoming, rescues my friends."
To fill out those tentative concepts, let me invent examples. I'll call the specialties "Fortes." I based each Forte on a crafting feat to emphasize that runesmiths are crafters rather than spellcasters.
Alchemical Forte You gain the Alchemical Crafting skill feat. You start with a standard formula book, which contains the formula for Invocation Bomb in addition to the formulas gained from Alchemical Crafting. Each time you gain a level, you learn the formula for one common alchemical item of your level or lower. During your daily preparations, you can create a number of Invocation Bombs equal to your Intelligence modifier that last until your next daily preparations.
Invocation Bomb Item 1
Uncommon, Alchemical, Bomb, Consumable
Usage held in 1 hand; Bulk L
You may trace a rune on the Innovcation Bomb, even if that rune cannot ordinary go on objects. The rune lasts for one hour instead of until the end of your next turn, after which both the rune and the Invocation Bomb become useless.
Activate [one-action] Strike
On a successful Strike, the rune transfers to the target of the Strike, if applicable, and invokes. If the rune has an energy trait (acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic) the bomb also deals 1d6 damage of that energy type.
Fast Forte You gain the Quick Repair feat. You can etch a rune in 1 minute instead of 10 minutes. If you’re a master in Crafting, it takes 3 actions. If you’re legendary, it takes 1 action.
Gear Forte You gain the Specialty Crafting skill feat. You may take Specialty Crafting as a skill feat multiple times, each time choosing a different specialty. Your etched and traced runes on armor, shields, or weapons of material associated with your Specialty Crafting specialty also gains the bonuses of an armor potency, reinforcing, or weapon potency rune of your level (minimum +1 for weapon potency).
Tactical Forte You may have an ally participate with you in etching a rune. That ally gains the Invocation ability for that rune provided that they are wearing, holding, or touching the rune. At 2nd level, you gain the Communal Crafting feat.
I think its just that this is a playtest and they wanted to (in no particular order): 1) save page space, 2) not overload players with new things, 3) be sure the things they wanted to test were run, 4) save something for the published book.
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They want to avoid you being able to put all your eggs in one basket and outperform the people that didn't.
This has been a running theme of this edition.
This take is opposite enough to the truth that I feel the need to object to it.
The devs absolutely want every specialist to "outperform the people that didn't," but the catch is that the gap between two different yet still "valid" builds must never be so big as to break the table's fun.
A *huge* design challenge with this goal is that even after all this time and design evolution, 95%+ of combat is still resolved by lowering foe HP to 0. And because of that, so much of game balance and "rewarding specialization" is just another form of doing more damage.
Pf2e as system was made with a very, very good understanding of how PCs can become overpowered, and has a lot of sturdy safety nets so that while measurable and significant power bumps are possible, "force multiplier" abilities / effects are almost entirely absent.
Because other ttrpgs can have situations where a moderately experienced power gamer is doing 3x or more combat contribution compared to the "normies," it's totally understandable for pf2 to *feel* like it's "intending" to prevent reward/payoff for specialization.
However, it is crucial to fight that feeling, and to grumblingly acknowledge that while the bonuses are smaller, they are still there, and that they matter.
Just by establishing one core idea, "like cannot stack with like," the pf2 devs have created a game that is incredibly easy to understand, and very stable from a balance PoV. To the point that it can support its crazy Archetyping system without collapsing.
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Once players understand that core "can't stack like with like," that short aphorism clues them into *how* to specialize and gain good reward, and how not to. If their selected class already has a stance, then they know that while seeking out a better stance may be an upgrade, it will likely be a greater improvement to get something else that they presently lack, such as a good flourish or Reaction.
And to be clear, even the core system safeguards of pf2 are not "enough" to keep PCs balanced much of the time. It's still waaay too easy for PCs to be outright doing 2x or more combat contribution than their normie mono-class party members. And yes, this does hurt fun.
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As much as people may deride pf2 for not letting players find that one feat pairing that multiplies their damage, players also understand that the well known "OP combos" are a real problem to game fun. It's that inherent contradiction of wanting to be OP powerful yourself, but not wanting your choices to be restricted to meme builds to achieve that power. Nor is it fun for someone to mindfully *not* pick a meta build, only for a party member to play that exact build.
Because, yeah, pf2 has some "force multiplier" combos. While like cannot stack with like, the dissimilar and niche desires of one class can perfectly align with the "reward" of an Archetype dip, creating builds that are over-represented & overly powered to the point of harming fun.
Magus can use attack spells *better* than casters (which is the core design "oops" that's responsible), but it has a small limit of p day spells to "balance" that? Well, then Archetype Psychic to get an above the norm attack spell and recharging focus point.
As a real martial/caster hybrid, Magus can genuinely work with and combo nicely with more archetypes than most others. But because the power gain is so *much higher* if they take Psychic, it dominates the decision space and hurts everything else.
No one wants to play next to the boring meta cannon that will genuinely outperform most other PCs like that. And the "fun" of playing such a meme-whispered PC fades quickly. Once an infohazard like Magus + Psychic is known, the temptation/ what-if will always be there. It's not a big harm, but knowing that you (or a party member) *could* have taken the "meta" pick, or that you *did* take the meta pick, they both do real chip damage to your fun.
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Combos like Magus Psychic are both the proof that pf2 absolutely *does* reward specialization, while also serving as the case-in-point as to why it's so critical to the system fun integrity that each PC build choice provides only a steady but low power bump, and must not result in "force multiplier" combos, like offering the spellstrike specialist the perfect feat to gain more and stronger spellstrikes.
A major element of specialization is the risk of being useless outside of the ideal context. An ice blaster is frequently not helpful against things immune to cold, etc. What often happens is that specialists end up with a bunch of crutch abilities or reskins that make them function more like non-specialized characters. It's not armor, it's ice armor! Etc. It's a great way to eat up page space, to be sure.
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The Psychic Archetype isn't the problem with Magus. The problem is more general than that- It doesn't seem like spellstriking with focus spells was considered during the Psychic's design. Before Dark Archive, maguses were poaching Domain spells and achieving similar results with the same number of feats (Although the extra focus point is a big help)
*It is, however, a problem of its own given that it allows you to poach one of three of the four best focus spells from the class with a feat, and those four focus spells are most of what the psychic has to stand out from other casters.
The Psychic Archetype isn't the problem with Magus. The problem is more general than that- It doesn't seem like spellstriking with focus spells was considered during the Psychic's design. Before Dark Archive, maguses were poaching Domain spells and achieving similar results with the same number of feats (Although the extra focus point is a big help)
*It is, however, a problem of its own given that it allows you to poach one of three of the four best focus spells from the class with a feat, and those four focus spells are most of what the psychic has to stand out from other casters.
Domain spells do require +1 more feats to poach over Psychic though, but IMO the real design issue is that Magus can use attack spells better than casters, which is a not-OK thing for a hybrid to be capable of; they are supposed to be a little worse at each of their 2 halves. And it's especially not OK to be better at the subset of "spells that do damage" when combat is still all about reducing HP to 0.
When a spell is balanced for that Cleric/Psychic, etc, and it's outright better when used by Magus' martial accuracy, that is a big problem even before considerations like FP recharging making the "low daily spells" balance point have 0 effect.
One of the key balance safeties of the pf2 system is that when you take stuff via archetyping, it's always an inferior copy in some way. Whether that means a lower spell DC than a native caster, a 1d4 cooldown on Flurry o Blows, etc. Getting something via Archetype of the same power for the same cost as it would be for that Cleric is a small problem, but having that "get" being *more* powerful when obtained by the non-Cleric, *that* is a big "uh oh" that shouldn't happen.
Thanks to their core ability, Magi just accidentally slipped into having *more* spell damage potential than the frail 6hp caster specialists, while still having a complete martial chassis.
The one possible apples-to-oranges loss that could have been there to balance things, that Magus S-Striking in melee only, is of course, rendered moot because of Starlit Span. Instead of being a last bit of balance, Star Span Magi can literally cast such attack spells even further than the specialist classes where the spells come from, lol.
I suppose there still is the "but single target!" fragment of a downside, ugh.
No, you can't get Imaginary weapon with one feat- Getting the unique cantrip for your discipline requires the 6th level feat. I guess you can get a cantrip from another discipline instead, but in practice you only hear about people going for the big payoff.
I'm going to disagree about the magus being better at hitting with spell attacks in general being a problem, too. That's basically the Magus's only niche, and without a focus spell to Spellstrike with you have very few leveled spells with which to do it. After that you're using cantrips, and regilar spellcasters should only be using attack cantrips in low risk clean up situations by the time you reach level 5 or ao
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Ah dang, I got that Psychic dedication mixed up, it's Shield first then IW 2nd, you're right.
I'm going to disagree about the magus being better at hitting with spell attacks in general being a problem, too.
Think about how careful the system is about attack and spell accuracy. A single class' defining feature is having higher Strike accuracy.
Pure casters give up a huge amount of chassis features, armor, 6hp p level, etc, in exchange for having the best spell accuracy / DC.
And look at the few ways those casters can improve their spells by +1. Witch needs 2 feats and a melee hit to get +1 for only their Hexes. Wiz has Knowledge is Power for +1 if they succeed at an RK. Entire feats that require successful 3rd actions for single +1s.
If a caster could spend 1A to charge their attack spell, and it only granted them the same accuracy buff as Magi has, they would take that feat in an instant.
A hybrid class with martial strikes, hp, and defenses, that can cast a subset of spells with more accuracy than the best caster is an "invalid design concept" because no matter how else you try to balance it, you've already made that core OP as hell. Focus spells, scrolls, staves, etc all exist.
Magus is not problematic is because of their special class action compression, nor because they are a real martial hybrid.
Magus is "problematic" because even with lagging spell prof, even with dumping their casting stat and being at a -4 or -5 vs a pure caster, those attack spells will be cast with a bonus compared to the PC that has specialized into casting spells.
You outright cannot perform game balance with multiple "specialists" getting different power levels from the same thing. Any attack spell balanced for Magus will under-perform for a real caster.
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Magus' "only niche" is the only thing that matters. All buffs/debuffs are guesstimations as to how they will effect the damage race. You only cast Bless if you think it'll result in more total damage for your team than a direct damage spell.
Dealing damage is the opposite of a niche.
And you only need 1 or 2 Spellstrikes to win the damage race. Magi can easily get 1 focus attack spell, Force Fang, and have enough FP to ignore their base conflux spell entirely if they want.
Hybrids, generalists, etc, are never supposed to be king at a niche, let alone the "niche" of dealing absurd damage.
The magus is an interesting example of "the specialization issue" for PF2.
Being best at spell attack roll spells, while spell slot spell attack roll spells are essentially being phased out of the game, or at least single target striking spell attack roll spells are being phased out, leaves focus spells as the only place to go to get spell attack roll spells. Imaginary weapon is a powerful focus spell, but the truth is that starlit span magus only benefits so much from Imaginary Weapon as a focus spell because the hybrid study's conflux spell is not very good and it can afford (mostly) to stand still and burn an action every round recharging spell strike. Still, the damage dropped off if the player felt like they could only use their focus point spell with sure strike, and thus only used spell strike once every other round with the starlit magus (before the balance errata change to sure strike).
Every other magus can easily out damage a similar version of itself that uses imaginary weapon instead of conflux spells (including force fang), and by using powerful single target spell attack roll spells instead of focus spells (like shocking grasp). With scroll striker, it is not difficult for a magus to spell strike powerfully 2 times an encounter for at least 4 encounters a day without using/wasting focus points for spell striking spells.
Note: Imaginary Weapon's ability to target 2 creatures can be powerfully exploited by melee magus that build specifically into it, but it realistically becomes a once an encounter (if that) trick, and again, if there were just any decent spell attack roll spell slot spells that were properly weighted to do better than imaginary weapon (which should fit in the game without breaking it), then the issue wouldn't be the psychic archetype either.
Magus being better than other casters with spell strike spells is not that big of a deal when saving throw spells are the vastly more powerful blasting option. Other casters that use them selectively to target a weak defense can still be incredibly effective with them and not feel like they are worse characters than the magus, because they can do so much else. But spell attack roll spells being so heavily confined to focus spells creates a lot of weirdness around them and how to use them effectively.
You only need 1 scroll per encounter if you also use one spell slot. I was suggest using spell slots and scrolls.
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The availability of non-slot casting is *why* giving a hybrid / generalist a better performance & effective DC than the magic specialist is such a bad idea/ design problem.
Magus's Spellstrike bypasses every normal non-specialist "restraint," while still having a chassis that gets the most important bit of "real-caster" power.
While scrolls are great, and absolutely can fill one's lower R spell needs, using on-level scrolls as a normal thing is not really viable due to the gp cost. Which is why Magus getting top R slots is such a big deal.
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Normally, archetyping into spellcasting means that your DC will always lag, you get 1 spell per R, and you are 2 full Rs lower than a proper spellcaster.
It's a well known detail that using spells like buffs, which don't need a DC, are great for Arch-casters, precisely because they perform identically when compared to a real-caster.
While Arch-casters can get a lot of value from this, because they lack top R slots, that utility/buff power still lags 4 levels behind a real-caster.
At the level where an Arch-caster can help the party via casting Bless, the real-caster is already casting Haste.
As such, even when DC doesn't matter, arch-casters both get serious perks which reward the build investment of dipping into casting, without being a serious balance concern.
And Arch-casters still get to use DC spells to good effect. An effective -2 at most levels, or -0 at others, will certainly lag behind real-casters, but thanks to degrees of success, save spells are still very frequently a good use of their limited magics.
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But Magus works differently.
Magus the martial-caster not only has the huge luxury of getting to match the real-caster in terms of this top R slot power, but they also get to bypass spell DC for the most straightforward "do damage" spells in the system. And to top all that off, this isn't getting them up to a -0 when compared to a real-caster. IMO, that =0 would have been a lot of reward for the Magus, but the real "oops" is the fact that Magus is outright +X over real-casters.
"A caster who specializes in a specific type of magic, at the cost of their spell slots" is a completely valid concept. If there was a "Corruptor" class that gave up power in some spell area to instead get a better DC on their Fort spells, that would be valid. Note that they would need to be genuinely weaker than the real-caster bar of Wiz, Witch, and Sorc in some respect to get this.
We are seeing a similar power trade with the Necromancer. But even Necro does *not* use vertical power superiority in a specialization as a feature; the Necro has no way to out-perform other "real-caster" classes in some DC / save way, nor does it get a full martial chassis.
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Magus as a real hybrid, using a martial chassis and having spellcasting baked-in is a valid and appealing concept.
That said: outright superior performance in a subset of magic is not a design concept that's ever been significantly tapped by Paizo for new "real-caster" classes, and such vertical / numbers supremacy is absolutely not appropriate for a hybrid class to posses.
If you were to take Magus' +X bonus over spellcasters, and turn that into a 1A metamagic ability to up their DC for their next spell cast, that new "Boost" action would get a huge amount of use by real-casters. And that 1A tax example represents the worst-case of Spellstriking, and without the value of the Strike.
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"Perfect game balance" is obviously impossible to achieve. It's one of those "forever goals" that you keep making incremental improvements toward. But it is super important to remind oneself of the important foundational principles when thinking about how to make changes, else they may not be in the correct direction. I have honestly been rather surprised at how few people seem to be aware of / mention how Magus is already fundamentally "oopsed" into the wrong side of the balance equation, and remembering Magus' system-unique supremacy/ OP foundation is rather critical context for making future changes the class and system.
The devs have to work with what's there. I don't have any expectation that Magus is going to get its numerical supremacy removed nor reduced. Sure Strike was already a balance problem outside Magus, and I don't think that nerf was conceived to specifically hit the class.
However, it's been a little unsettling to see how many people not only claim that they will openly be disregarding the Sure Strike change, but how the discussion of it squarely frames it as an undeserved Magus nerf, and how bitterly oppositional they are to the idea of nerfing a class.
I just hope all the Magus stan-ing does not skew the underlying reality of the class' unprecedented power, or else Paizo might catch that meme and release a Hybrid Study even more balance-straining that Starlit Span.
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The "too long, didn't read" summary:
With 0 feats, Magus has the all the reward of fully specializing into attack spells to a degree of power level beyond what the most invested pure caster can possibly achieve.
While also being a full martial.
When discussing concepts and possible designs around more specific specialization, it's important to remember that the Magus is an example of what *not* to do.