I would like to hear what you think is easily the worst class to play in any general Campaign, Adventure Path or Custom Homebrew! Which class grinds your gear when ou tried it or perhaps grinds your gear when someone else plays one? Like would you rather they played something more effective?
The new alchemist seems to have problems with sustainability given how we play in my group with very little rest with the new 10 minutes vials. Sometimes we don't stop for 10 minute rests in big battles.
Psychic can have problems too in long battles with amps and few spells.
Both those classes tend to force you to ensure 10 minute rests are included or their performance drops off substantially.
I prefer to make long, drawn out battles to the death with very little rest for major encounters. It's a bit harder to do if you don't work in 10 minute rests for those classes.
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To me its the inventor.
* Overdrive is the worst of both worlds when compared to a thaumaturge's exploit weakness and a barbarian's rage. The damage boost is comparable to that of fury instinct, but with a lower accuracy class, and more or less the same as personal antithesis, but IMO with a worse scaling. The thing is, ignoring the fact that both classes mentioned earlier still have better damage options (in the case of the thaum's it is situational based on if the target has an actual weakness or not, but even against a target without a weakness they still have implement's empowerment + personal antithesis) both of the classes also have utility options paired with them. In the case of barbarians, they can rage as a free action now and receive a boost to their speed, and thaumaturges get to know the weaknesses of their foe as well. Thaumaturge's also get this boost even on a failure, while the inventor deals damage to themseles if they fail. Really Wtf.
* Unstable actions are focus spells but worse too. You are literally one check away from being left without unstable actions for the rest of the encounter every time you use one, which is certainly egregious on class that for whatever reason puts the unstable trait in almost every feat. Even at DC 13 if you are legendary (so from 15th level onwards), you have like a 65% chance to lose all your unstable actions. Oh, and you also take damage if you critically fail one of these checks. Nice.
* Innovations feel souless. The one that "feels" the best is armor innovation since you are actually using an unique armor with weird tweaks made to it, while weapon innovation is a regular weapon with a few extra traits, and consutrct companion is a mecha-animal companion with a few things here and there. It also doesn't help that most of the modifications feel like nothing at all, which is probably something even Paizo knows because they allow you to change the modifications of your innovation daily and, eventually, retrain your whole innovation altogether if you want to. I feel there has to be a ton of better ways to do this better.
* Crafting is meaningless. As I said earlier, the thaumaturge both gets a bigger boost from its features than the inventor and get an RK check as part of their action tax, meanwhile the inventor even with auto-scaling Crafting proficiencies doesn't really use it for anything else besides overdrive. The Crafting skill itself is situational at best, but the inventor (except for Tamper and Helpful Tinkering feats) doesn't really have a reason to use it at all. At least this one can be fixed by priting new feats.
* The feat selection leaves a lot to be desired. A ton of the feats feel like premium Crafting skill feats (I mean this in a flavor sense because its not like they use the Crafting skill at all), then you have the feats with the unstable trait (I already mentioned what I think about them earlier), and Gadget Specialist that feels like feat tax for how good it is. Want to wait to 6th level to take Clockwork Celerity to gain quickened for 1 round and potentially lose all your unstable actions? Why would you do that when a 4th level feat allows you to create two electromoscular stimulators per day who do the same thing but for 1 minute? Yeah you potentially take damage when using these (whats wrong with the inventor and dealing damage to themselves?) but this one doesn't take away your unstable actions and can be used on allies too. Also, how is Dual-Weapon Form a 4th level feat? It should be a 2nd or even 1st level feat, if not an initial modification for the weapon innovation.
And IMO the worst thing about the inventor.
* The flavor is all over the place. The class wants to both be this incredible innovator and a mad scientist at the same time. Between explode, all the stuff that deals damage to yourself, and unstable actions feeling like playing russian roulette, you feel more like someone that stole someone else's innovation and is learning how to use it rather than someone that is actually making a breakthrough discovery. The worst thing is that I know why the class was made like this in the first place; its because its a tech class and some people have a hate bonner for tech in fantasy. This is why the gunslinger has to reload its weapon while the bow user can shot 3 arrows in 6 seconds if they want to, and why the inventor has to be the "haha funny explosion guy" and not a craftsmen like a non-magical D&D artificer.
Ranged combat is the only saving grace of the class.
To me its the inventor.
Ranged combat is the only saving grace of the class.
Excuse me? With that? Most innovations apply ONLY to melee weapons.
Come back to me when you can slap the Double Barrel, Capacity and/or Repeating traits on any crossbow and firearm :p
For me, it's the Fighter... and boils down to a lack of versatility within a specialization.
In short, the Fighter should be the ONLY martial class that treats weapons from a group with Legendary Proficiency BETTER than other classes, excluding gunslingers with crossbows and firearms.
Imagine the following adjustment with Legendary Proficiency with the Sword group:
- On a Natural 20, you also add the Critical Specialization Effect from the Knife, Spear or Axe group, in addition of the Sword's effect.
- You can take a feat that treats all weapons as if they had the Two-Hand trait, with two-handed weapons increasing damage by one die. This would be similar to the Apocalypse Rider's Jousting Mount feat. I mention the Two-Hand trait, but MORE traits would be welcomed.
- You can take a feat that allows you use TWO Flourishes per round, if you use a weapon with Legendary Proficiency.
- You can use Combat Flexibility to apply feats to weapons in which you have Legendary Proficiency, disregarding requirements/prerequisites.
Y'know, a "Everything you can do, I can do it better" kinda deal...
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Before saying that the Fighter's main feature is the Legendary Proficiency, stop it... The Fighter's class features are Bravery, Reactive Strike and Combat Flexibility; proficiency isn't a "feature".
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Before saying that the Fighter's main feature is the Legendary Proficiency, stop it... The Fighter's class features are Bravery, Reactive Strike and Combat Flexibility; proficiency isn't a "feature".
Actually "Initial Proficiencies" appears just before "Reactive Strike" in the "Class Features" part of the Fighter class' description on AoN.
...Excuse me? With that? Most innovations apply ONLY to melee weapons.
Come back to me when you can slap the Double Barrel, Capacity and/or Repeating traits on any crossbow and firearm :p
The inventor actually has a couple feats that apply to ranged weapons, most notably Megaton Strike which is, to my knowledge, the one way you can do Ranged Viscious Swings. To a lesser extent it also has a decent selection of feats and features that interact with reload weapons; not enough to make it viable on their own mind you, but still worth noting.
It doesn't take away from your point that the weapon inovations has some glaring holes considering it came out in the same book as the traits you listed.
Before saying that the Fighter's main feature is the Legendary Proficiency, stop it... The Fighter's class features are Bravery, Reactive Strike and Combat Flexibility; proficiency isn't a "feature".Actually "Initial Proficiencies" appears just before "Reactive Strike" in the "Class Features" part of the Fighter class' description on AoN.
Let's say that every class obtain Legendary Proficiency or that Proficiency caps at Master for every class...
What does the Fighter have left?
The Barbarian stills has Rage, the Rogue Sneak Attack, spellcasters spells, etc...
The Fighter has Bravery, Reactive Strike and Combat Flexibility, but those are jokes compared to other class features...
What I'd love to see as Combat Flexibility is "Hey, you know these cool tricks you can do with that big axe of yours? Yeah, I can now use them with my big sword! I can use your AXE training with my SWORD, just like I could use your POLEARM training with my SPEAR!".
THAT's Flexibility... It's not just about use multiple weapons, it should be about using the same weapon in multiple ways...
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Investigator. Remaster made it better, but only barely.
It pays a significant tax on its martial prowess ostensibly to be more skill focused, but other skill focused classes don't make that same sacrifice, and the Investigator isn't necessarily pulling way ahead here in the skill department either.
In fact a lot of its skill-enhancing features are oddly terrible. Depending on GM style they either force the GM to do a lot of babysitting and bookkeeping or potentially do nothing at all because a lot of modern GMs will just do things like "try to signpost if the party is wasting their time doing absolutely nothing and stalling the whole game" as a matter of course. For the Investigator that's a feat.
It's also somewhat unique in that it's the only class that just... doesn't function in many common campaign types.
I know some people in other threads have tried to retort with comments about fighters in campaigns with no combat but those aren't really normal for PF2's expectations. The investigator on the other hand falls off in just a bog standard dungeon crawl or wilderness adventure or pretty much anything not tailored to its very specific investigation mechanics, all while still not being particularly exceptional in those niches to begin with.
Some of the classes in this thread are a little undertuned, some of them have boring mechanics that certain posters really dislike, but IMO the investigator is somewhat unique in the way it simply fails on fundamental design at every level.
Inventor might be second, but it's at least kind of functional even if it fails miserably at living up to its own class fantasy and is mostly just a worse barbarian.
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Well, I loathe Necromancer's playtest incarnation on basically every level and so that is the easy one. But it's a playtest, so moving on.
Premaster, Superstition Barbarian. Playing that was a giant middle finger to anyone in the party playing magical support/healer, like a Bard. It was annoying to have one in the group and to have to work around them. The new version is much, much less annoying since now it's "saving your life with Heal makes you Frightened 1 instead of making you either refuse it or leave the group or just let you die."
Anything like that where it's sabotaging someone else in the group to have you along is something I really dislke.
Otherwise it's problematic builds that bother me more than classes itself. Like Inventor isn't a very good class (as enumerated above) but you can make an Inventor that does carry its weight in a party and plays nice with others. If it does that, I've got no problem with someone else playing one, though I'm unlikely to.
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Well, I loathe Necromancer's playtest incarnation on basically every level and so that is the easy one. But it's a playtest, so moving on.
I'm going to reply to you just to say that the playtest Necromancer is probably my favorite class paizo has ever made. Just to get a little positivity into this thread :)
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I would say Investigator, because of their annoying features that annoy GMs but Squiggit was ahead of me. So I will go with this one instead:
Wizard.
Why are the focus spells and feats so s@@$ty? I don't play with the free archetype and still spend most of the feats on better ones outside of the class.
And of all the 4 slots casters they have the most limited 4th slot.
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To Sharkbite: Dang, I started working on a guide to actually playing the remastered witch but I never finished or published it. If you'll forgive it being incomplete I can share it:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y881LdGvXmUWwjxZrMZBC4XwoD8GS3tOPjaz6S2 8zXY/edit?usp=drivesdk
A couple things at a glance: at extremely low levels, cantrips are actually strong enough to carry your DPS on their own. Many weaker enemies can be outright one shorted by 3d4 damage from needle darts, and targeting two enemies with electric arc is always reliable. Telekinetic projectile and other varied options let you interact with weakness and resistance in a way that martials can't necessarily, making you great at handling low level threats like skeletons and zombies. Of course, you still have to adjust your expectations to not be comparable to a raging barbarian since you're not in melee, but as far as ranged damage goes you're perfectly serviceable.
For spell slots, you want to focus on things which either provide continuous value. Or can be impactful at the decisive moment, not necessarily as soon as combat begins.
For continuous value, buffs are obvious picks. But with Cackle you can get more mileage from sustained spells than other casters. Illusory creature is one of the best spells in the game in and out of combat if you're tactical and clever with it, for example. And the Resentment patron makes any negative condition last the entire fight, so Reveling light, Slow, and Synesthesia go from great to broken as you level up.
For the decisive moment, look for when a magic missile can finish off a boss or multiple minions who are about to act. Or when and ally is down or about to drop for a heal or soothe. Or delay your action to just before the boss enemy before sealing them in an Illusory Object whose walls are just out of their reach... You've guaranteed at least one lost action even if they succeed on their disbelive, and maybe more since they'd likely move before interacting with the illusion.
As to the familiar... You have two ways to use it: a scout and a combat platform. Ideally, it would be able to do both, but limited abilities per day mKs that tricky at low levels. (The witch really wants to invest in both focus posts and familiar abilities, so natural ambition for Cackle and free archetype for Psychic or Familiar master are super helpful.)
For scouting, you're at your GM's mercy since familiar actions out of combat and out of your line of sight are so vague in the rules, but if your GM is down for it scouting can be incredibly helpful. Key abilities are speech or touch telepathy to understand instructions, share senses, scent for sniffing out enemies on the other side of a door, and some kind of mobility enhancer, usually flight. Scope out those enemies in your path and then leverage your high intelligence to identify everything you can about them before combat begins. (You might be under a very hard adjustment if you're using scent alone, but Additional Lore can help offset that.) You want familiars who aren't going to raise alarms even if they fail a stealth check, so I like insects and spiders.
As a combat platform, you want to invest in action economy and survivability, and the best path to the latter is mobility. Independent and flight are the best starting options for that. At low levels enemies often lack ranged attacks. Life link is the next best option, followed by the extra HP ability. Phase familiar can help too but I generally find Patron's puppet and using life link for my reaction instead. Extra speed also helps with both mobility and action economy, but flight letting you bypass difficult terrain is often just as good.
If your familiar is often dying to MAP -10 swings, you've got a bigger problem since the familiar uses your AC. Dex investment is important, or spending feats to get proper armor. Mystic armor also helps and is a good "continuous value" choice since it counts for both you and the pet.
Also, don't sleep on specific familiars. Spell slime and shadow both can take more damage. Several grant fortune effects or extra damage. Pipe fox is really cool in more social campaigns. Fairie dragon's breath is overpowered with Resentment.
But the most important thing... Remember that your familiar dying is ok. It comes back to life and PCs don't. You don't want it to take unnecessary damage-- put it on the opposite side of enemies so it doesn't get caught with the party in breath weapons. But if your enemy goes out of its way to attack your familiar, you just denied it actions it could have used to attack your allies. The familiar is valuable but not nearly as valuable as keeping a full PC in the fight.
Unfortunately, this approach is both tactically complex and counter to how people often like to roleplay their pets, so it isn't great for new players. Does your wife actually want the familiar to be a focal point of her character? Or does she just want a class named witch? The witch is a pretty flavor packed class, so I totally get the appeal. But if she's not trying to be a cackling cauldron stirrer with a mysterious patron, she could always be a different caster and call it a witch.
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I got two:
Magus, because I'm struggling to master its specific action economy, but it's the only way to play the kind of gish character I wanted without dipping into third-party options (Technically I want a divine gish but none of the divine classes fit the character, so I'm just playing a Magus with an Oracle free archetype stapled on to it)
Druid, because the plant-based order has a mandatory familiar, and you can't adjust it to be an object the way other familiar-having classes can.
I have to second Druid, not because of of the familiar but rather because of the feat options leaving very little in terms of actual options,
With so many feats locked behind an order requirement or being situational i've found that Druids are very predictable when it comes to selected feats.
Its not a bad class, and the roleplay aspect of it is great but.. I just wished there was more variety and non-order locked feats.
Untamed Order Druids that want to play primarily as a martial character can have a pretty bad time, to be fair. The class doesn't really keep up on that front and there's nothing the player can do about it.
If you use it as an option in the right situation it works fine, but someone who wants to play an older style "being in forms is my thing and I want to do it all the time" type will struggle. I saw it happen in a game I ran. The outcome just doesn't live up to the fantasy. (We'd need a class archetype that shifts more of the class power in that direction and away from magic to probably actually get what that player was looking for.)
The Superstition Barbarian in no way hinders the rest of the party. If anything, having one is freeing to the rest of the party. Bard wants to cast Courageous Anthem... then do it. I just don't benefit from it. The rest of the party does, and it doesn't hurt you in the slightest.You're a healing Cleric, and you're mad that I don't want your healing. Well... why? Do you literally feel so useless that healing me is the only thing you can do on your turn? You have nothing else productive to contribute? I'm not sabotaging you; I'm freeing up your turn to do literally any other thing that you might want. I mean, seriously, would you accuse me of "sabotaging" you if the enemies missed me and I didn't take damage? In what world does not needing you to heal me equate to me screwing you over?
It's an opinion thread, so it's just my opinion. It certainly doesn't stop anybody else from playing one.
But yeah, it does hinder me: if one of the things I want to do is keep the team alive, you go down, and your anathema is this:
Willingly accepting the effects of magic spells (including from scrolls, wands, and the like), even from your allies, is anathema to your instinct. You can still drink potions and invest and activate most magic items you find, though items that cast spells are subject to the same restrictions as all other spells. If an ally insists on using magic on you despite your unwillingness, and you have no reason to believe they will stop, continuing to travel with that ally of your own free will counts as willingly accepting their spells (as do similar circumstances) and thus is also anathema to your instinct.
Then it's gonna be a problem since according to that you're supposed to demand that I not heal you even if it means you risk dying, and if I refuse you should leave the group. I don't find that a very enjoyable situation since letting you die and pissing you off so the game is telling you to leave are both crappy options.
It's pretty clear they knew it was a problem given the giant PFS caveat that effectively says "you can ignore your anathema so that scenarios can work". That's a pretty big red flag for how antisocial this can get that they had to just say "ignore the rules so you can actually do this without causing problems for everyone."
And that's just one scenario. Cases like "we're going to try to sneak in so I'll use Shared Invisibility" are also a problem since with the premaster version... nope. Hope you're good at Stealth since you're doing it another way and making it harder for the whole group. There's quite a lot of this type of situation.
So that's why I don't like it. If it works for you, great. But the remaster version made it far more workable in general so it's not that big an issue anymore.
To me its the inventor.
Ranged combat is the only saving grace of the class.
Excuse me? With that? Most innovations apply ONLY to melee weapons.
Come back to me when you can slap the Double Barrel, Capacity and/or Repeating traits on any crossbow and firearm :p
Overdrive applies to ranged weapons and so does Megaton Strike, which I believe are probably the best damage steroids ranged characters have available (except for the obvious imaginary weapon starlit span magus). That's it. You need FA to have access to ranged actions, but your damage is probably the highest for ranged.
Overdrive applies to ranged weapons and so does Megaton Strike, which I believe are probably the best damage steroids ranged characters have available (except for the obvious imaginary weapon starlit span magus). That's it. You need FA to have access to ranged actions, but your damage is probably the highest for ranged.To me its the inventor.
Ranged combat is the only saving grace of the class.
Excuse me? With that? Most innovations apply ONLY to melee weapons.
Come back to me when you can slap the Double Barrel, Capacity and/or Repeating traits on any crossbow and firearm :p
Yeah the flat bonus on all attacks really shines with a shortbow. And much less with reload weapons, which sucks thematically.
But the innovations are so low impact you might as well go construct instead, which IMO is far and away the best option.
Investigators have a similar problem where their damage bonus applies equally to all weapons so you might as well do it at ranged. Playing a melee investigator is just straight up worse unless you do some really specific things with a strength build. That class really feels built for a different game.
I mean, if you take complex simplicity and advanced rangefinder modifications with a heavy crossbow weapon innovation and dip into gunslinger to take Crossbow Crackshot, you could be dealing something like 2d12+12 or 2d12+14 at 7th level if you crit your overdrive which is actually kind of good even if you have to reload. Since you are already dipping in gunslinger, you can also take Running Reload and your way's reloads down the line too.
If you really want to maximize this build, you could also dip into ranger for gravity weapon, which I don't think would be that hard since the inventor is kinda lacking in the feat department as I said earlier. Add some property runes and offensive boost and the damage is going to be actually really good.
I have to second Druid, not because of of the familiar but rather because of the feat options leaving very little in terms of actual options,
With so many feats locked behind an order requirement or being situational i've found that Druids are very predictable when it comes to selected feats.
Its not a bad class, and the roleplay aspect of it is great but.. I just wished there was more variety and non-order locked feats.
Untamed Order Druids that want to play primarily as a martial character can have a pretty bad time, to be fair. The class doesn't really keep up on that front and there's nothing the player can do about it.
If you use it as an option in the right situation it works fine, but someone who wants to play an older style "being in forms is my thing and I want to do it all the time" type will struggle. I saw it happen in a game I ran. The outcome just doesn't live up to the fantasy. (We'd need a class archetype that shifts more of the class power in that direction and away from magic to probably actually get what that player was looking for.)
My experience has been the opposite. Untamed Order is the only druid that feels like it has a cohesive subclass that works qall the time and provides meaningful unique benefit.
The other druids aren't necessarily terrible, but they really lack in any ort of meaningful identity outside having a decent chassis. It's not perfect, but at least Untamed does something reasonably unique and reasonably effective.
Then there are my Hex's, which trigger abilities off of my familiar, but my familiar is required to be within 15 feet of the enemy, so it just constantly dies. For something that is required to be right there inside of the danger zone, they certainly don't have the ability to survive like the beast pets or the eidolon. In my brain I rationalize it like the beast pets are martial classes, and the witch familiar is more like a wizard: squishy but capable of casting awesome spells. But tactically, a spellcaster isn't required to be within 15 feet of their enemies for their core ability to work. The familiar is perpetually always dead, often killed on a MAP-10 casual swing that wipes them out in a single hit.
Why are enemies swinging at unconscious 0HP familiars with the dying condition enough to get it down to dying 4 and actually kill them?
Why is MAP -10 easily/frequently hitting your AC? Why didn’t you take Tough and Lifelink to boost its HP and self soak the final hits that would take it to 0HP? (And Life Boost yourself as compensation.)
Overdrive applies to ranged weapons and so does Megaton Strike, which I believe are probably the best damage steroids ranged characters have available (except for the obvious imaginary weapon starlit span magus). That's it. You need FA to have access to ranged actions, but your damage is probably the highest for ranged.To me its the inventor.
Ranged combat is the only saving grace of the class.
Excuse me? With that? Most innovations apply ONLY to melee weapons.
Come back to me when you can slap the Double Barrel, Capacity and/or Repeating traits on any crossbow and firearm :p
The idea of innovations is to enhance an existing weapon though.
Out of the 10 initial innovations, 4 can be applied on a ranged weapon and 1 of those is exclusive.
Out of the 7 breakthrough innovations, 3 can be applied to ranged weapons, 2 of those are exclusive and 1 applies to thrown weapons, which could be melee weapons.
Out of the 8 revolutionary innovations, 7 can be applied to ranged weapons and 1 is exclusive to ranged weapons. However, Enhanced Damage doesn't stack with Complex Simplicity.
What's more to add is that you cannot add more innovations with feats. It's always "2 initial, 1 breakthrough, 1 revolutionary".
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I'm weirdly enjoying the diversity of responses in this thread. The lack of consensus implies that there's no obvious "worst" class, and that's a good sign. Doesn't mean that every class is great/well-designed, nor does it mean that the criticisms here aren't valid (the inventor does actively sabotage itself and witches are notoriously difficult to play), but I like that the game's varied and balanced enough that no class is a universal waste of time.
As for me (and excluding any playtest classes), I think the worst one is the magus. Not because it's my least favorite or ineffective anything, but because it's such a disappointment trap, especially for new players. From the outside, it looks simple and flashy--you channel spells through your weapon to hit really hard--but there are a ton of hidden costs and caveats that make it difficult to use in practice. Gaining momentum is a constant struggle, and the slightest inconvenience is enough to throw you off your rhythm. Action- and slot-wise, your biggest and meatiest spellstrikes are costly to set up, and they feel so bad when they miss. It's like orgasm denial: the class.
Of course, there is a way to maximize your damage potential and get off a spellstrike nearly every turn, but it's literally the most boring way to play the class: you become a stationary turret that repeats the exact same action rotation every turn. So your choices are to either be constantly frustrated, or go with the "meta" option and effectively opt out of actually playing the game. Absolute poison for beginners, although I could personally probably manage to have an okay time with one myself if I tried.
I'd go for magus as well. I played one through AoE and he was very powerful but incredibly boring to play.
There have been countless thread about it, but the whole arcane cascade and conflux spell thingy is in dire need of a revamp. When the most (someone would say only) efficient way to play your class is to multiclass, there's a design problem right there.
As for other contenders:
- Wizard is by no means a weak class, but remaster greatly upped other casters and let it in the dirt.
- Inventor is mechanically boring.
- Investigator needs a very special kind of GM and story to really shine.
- Psychic... is weird. It's the only class I couldn't make an efficient build with.
- Alchemist bomber is fine. Non-bombers are not fine.
- Gunslinger had a whole topic about its lack of identity these last few days.
- Druid shapeshifter is really hard to play. The two-action tax at the beginning of a fight is brutal, and you pretty much need to get a dedication (for AOO) if you want to exploit your reach. It's supposed to be flexible through all the shapes it gets, but in practice it's not flexible at all since once you're in a shape you cannot cast, you cannot battle medicine, you cannot use items like scrolls or potions, and so you're like a subpar fighter who can only fight and cannot do anything else but strike.
From a personal perspective, I don't like the following classes:
1. Bard: I don't see its power working as consistently as they do. It has a locked in playstyle. I keep seeing a rock singer or dancer doing it all the time while in battle. I don't know what the fantasy of this class is based on in books, history, or myth.
2. Gunslinger: No guns in my fantasy. Don't like it.
3. Alchemist: I don't see the optimization path. I know some exist as some have pointed out, but it seems to be some single path that is like making a Mr. Hyde beast type of character. The class is too limited and feels not great.
4. Inventor: No interest. Robots and weird inventions in my magic fantasy I don't enjoy.
5. Witch: It's better than it was, but I still think familiars don't offer much or play well in PF2. Hexes are too weak to be interesting for combat for me. I find the class builds uninteresting and weak.
6. Psychic: Too weak a class. Cantrips are too varied in power. Feats are weak, even though conceptually cool. You will feel very underpowered playing this class up. I don't enjoy classes that scale well because for some reason the feats and powers weren't scaled to be equal in power to other classes.
7. Wizard: It doesn't feel like a wizard any longer. Weakest 6hp caster in the game other than the psychic after the Witch Remaster. Weaker than every 8hp caster. Bottom tier 6hp caster that can fill the fewest roles in a group as a caster. Sad state of affairs for the wizard class.
Borderline don't care for the Thaumaturge. Seems too complicated for what you get. I keep trying to spec one out, but find it too weird and unfocused a class that requires too much effort to make for too little return on the investment.
I have to second Druid, not because of of the familiar but rather because of the feat options leaving very little in terms of actual options,
With so many feats locked behind an order requirement or being situational i've found that Druids are very predictable when it comes to selected feats.
Its not a bad class, and the roleplay aspect of it is great but.. I just wished there was more variety and non-order locked feats.
Untamed Order Druids that want to play primarily as a martial character can have a pretty bad time, to be fair. The class doesn't really keep up on that front and there's nothing the player can do about it.
If you use it as an option in the right situation it works fine, but someone who wants to play an older style "being in forms is my thing and I want to do it all the time" type will struggle. I saw it happen in a game I ran. The outcome just doesn't live up to the fantasy. (We'd need a class archetype that shifts more of the class power in that direction and away from magic to probably actually get what that player was looking for.)
My experience has been the opposite. Untamed Order is the only druid that feels like it has a cohesive subclass that works qall the time and provides meaningful unique benefit.
The other druids aren't necessarily terrible, but they really lack in any ort of meaningful identity outside having a decent chassis. It's not perfect, but at least Untamed does something reasonably unique and reasonably effective.
Oh I agree it definitely has a cohesive subclass and provides a benefit. The problem is that at high level it's just... not very good at what it wants to do. You basically lose your first turn just becoming combat capable and get locked out of your spells while doing so. In high level play, you're also a C-tier martial.
That was the experience in one of my Ruby Phoenix games with a player that really tried to make it work, and just fell behind as they got higher and higher level. They could do a LOT of things and the versatility was great, but when it came time to "I want to take the enemy out in melee?" It's pretty meh.
I get why that is balance wise and it makes sense, but if what you really want is a shapeshifter that plays like a martial character, it doesn't deliver a great experience.
From a personal perspective, I don't like the following classes:
1. Bard: I don't see its power working as consistently as they do. It has a locked in playstyle. I keep seeing a rock singer or dancer doing it all the time while in battle. I don't know what the fantasy of this class is based on in books, history, or myth.
Borderline don't care for the Thaumaturge. Seems too complicated for what you get. I keep trying to spec one out, but find it too weird and unfocused a class that requires too much effort to make for too little return on the investment.
I find these two interesting because they're two of the most popular classes in my games them showing up frequently by different players. So it's neat how things diverge like this!
At this point the fantasy of Bard is "D&D Bard". I don't know how it originated fantasy wise, but it's evolved into its own trope at this point.
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1. Bard: I don't see its power working as consistently as they do. It has a locked in playstyle. I keep seeing a rock singer or dancer doing it all the time while in battle. I don't know what the fantasy of this class is based on in books, history, or myth.
The most classic tale of bards that I know of is the Finnish Kalevala, written down from an oral tradition in the 18th century so I cannot really pin down its age. The heroes cast spells by singing prayers to their gods.
England has tales of Thomas the Rhymer, a 13th-century minstrel who became blessed and cursed by the Queen of Elfland. He could not cast spells; instead, he could prophesize.
The American author Manly Wade Wellman (May 21, 1903 – April 5, 1986) wrote a series of popular stories about Silver John, a wandering singer who could battle supernatural menaces by playing music on his guitar strung with silver wire. Silver John might be closer to a PF2 thaumaturge than a bard.
Bard started in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition as a prestige class. A character had to be part fighter, thief (rogue), and druid to qualify for bard. The bard's magic was a continuation of their druidic magic, but they had an ability to attempt to charm people with song. Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition changed bard into a variant rogue with some wizard spells. So a bard with magic bard songs is mostly a D&D creation loosely based on a few folktales.
My wife is a musician and she loves to play bards. She likes teamwork and bards are built to enhance the team. And the mixture of martial abilities and spellcasting abilities and rogue-like skills in the D&D and PF1 bards gave her a variety of options in combat. PF2 broke tradition in making a bard a primary spellcaster. The 8 hp per level, martial weapon training, and light armor training means that a high-Dexterity PF2 bard could wield a finesse weapon in combat, but my wife's current bard Jinx Fuun attacks with cantrips.
Instrumental bards can play like the Scottish bagpipe players who waded ashore at Normandy under fire.
1. Bard: I don't see its power working as consistently as they do. It has a locked in playstyle. I keep seeing a rock singer or dancer doing it all the time while in battle. I don't know what the fantasy of this class is based on in books, history, or myth.The most classic tale of bards that I know of is the Finnish Kalevala, written down from an oral tradition in the 18th century so I cannot really pin down its age. The heroes cast spells by singing prayers to their gods.
England has tales of Thomas the Rhymer, a 13th-century minstrel who became blessed and cursed by the Queen of Elfland. He could not cast spells; instead, he could prophesize.
The American author Manly Wade Wellman (May 21, 1903 – April 5, 1986) wrote a series of popular stories about Silver John, a wandering singer who could battle supernatural menaces by playing music on his guitar strung with silver wire. Silver John might be closer to a PF2 thaumaturge than a bard.
Bard started in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition as a prestige class. A character had to be part fighter, thief (rogue), and druid to qualify for bard. The bard's magic was a continuation of their druidic magic, but they had an ability to attempt to charm people with song. Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition changed bard into a variant rogue with some wizard spells. So a bard with magic bard songs is mostly a D&D creation loosely based on a few folktales.
My wife is a musician and she loves to play bards. She likes teamwork and bards are built to enhance the team. And the mixture of martial abilities and spellcasting abilities and rogue-like skills in the D&D and PF1 bards gave her a variety of options in combat. PF2...
Yep. I recall the bard from way back when in I think the DM's guide along with psionics. I think the assassin stared out that way too.
The current iteration from 3E/PF1 to PF2 and the 5E version seem to have added power to add power. The compositions allow them to sing and cast spells as well. They really put a lot on the chassis now. It's hard to see how it all works within a group in a variety of ways.
I know bards in Medieval times. Good to hear there are hero bards. But this strange playstyle of performing while using a weapon or casting a spell looks really strange to me in play as I try to imagine it or see it in play. It looks really strange.
I'd rather they did the bard more like Everquest did it where all their power was performance. Damage, buffing, movement, and song twisting. It feels strange when it's spells mixed with martial ability mixed with powerful compositions. They could have gotten rid of the spells and made it more like a kineticist but with song. I hope they do something like that in the next iteration.
Basically, the bard would feel a lot more bard-like if it were purely about some kind of performance and less a hodgepodge of abilities that make for a powerful but unfocused character concept.
Now that they made a Kineticist in PF2, I think that would be a good design space for the bard. A pure performative class that can do lots of crazy stuff with song or dance or oratory or some mix rather than tacking on level 9 spells to them with powerful buffing abilities and decent martial power and armor. It seems like an unfocused, overpowered combination.
I'm personally not a fan of the Gunslinger. Not because of guns in fantasy, but because I don't like their playstyle. They tend to fish for crits, and when they happen, they're awesome, but overall I see them as lacklustre damage dealers. They get some cool moves, but their playstyle just doesn't excite me.
Also, I just dislike Thaums. Random damage increases and Esoteric Lore feel like cheating the system. Again, the things the implements do seem really cool, and I'm always looking to see how to use one, but in the end I'm always turned off by their base chassis.
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I don't really have a worst class. The inventor is a lot better than it used to be but it's role is better filled by other classes like say a draconic barbarian.
For sure there are classes that aren't suitable to certain games. But that is a flavour decision and not really a problem with class.
What bugs me are the subclasses that are useless because they are comparatively bad at what they should be good at - like the fury barbarian or the batle oracle.
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Basically, the bard would feel a lot more bard-like if it were purely about some kind of performance and less a hodgepodge of abilities that make for a powerful but unfocused character concept.
I personally like the bard being the spellcasting jack-of-all-trades as opposed to rogue being the martial side of that coin. Bards being full spellcasters in recent editions (5e being the other) does make them feel a bit too busy but I still dig it.
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Untamed Order Druids that want to play primarily as a martial character can have a pretty bad time, to be fair. The class doesn't really keep up on that front and there's nothing the player can do about it.
If you use it as an option in the right situation it works fine, but someone who wants to play an older style "being in forms is my thing and I want to do it all the time" type will struggle. I saw it happen in a game I ran. The outcome just doesn't live up to the fantasy. (We'd need a class archetype that shifts more of the class power in that direction and away from magic to probably actually get what that player was looking for.)
Being primarily a shifter with some spell support works pretty well up to about the low teens.
But you’re totally right that
1) even at lower levels you have to mix shifting and spells, even if it’s primarily utility spells
2) the shifting gets less and less useful the further past L12 you get. Still stays part of your toolkit but you use it less and less often
Even a shifting focused Druid HAS to keep their wisdom at or very near maximum which means less con and makes you a bit fragile in the front lines