The reason I don't think quickening apparition is as powerful as it looks at first glance is because it mostly works against your action compression and blasting feats, as well as it chewing through your ability to leverage the versatility of your apparition spell slots. I think it is good, maybe functionally about twice as good...As someone that plays in min-maxed games with min-maxed martials and casters, the animist has a few feats that are somewhat overpowered, mainly the Apparition Quickening and Forest's Heart. Remove or reduce those feats, the animist is on par with every other class with the ability to build a versatile caster much like the druid or cleric.
Then again if those feats are removed, the animist almost becomes subpar. If they decided to errata the Liturgist to do one sustain, they really become average to subpar.
To me the animist seems like a class that was rushed and not tested well. It has some very narrow, overpowered options. But they are so narrow that any other path and you aren't going to be as good as other top tier classes.
If Paizo fixes the feats and one practice that allows overpowered play, the animist goes from a narrow build option with power to average to weak.
I think if they removed the Elf Step exploitation, Forest Heart becomes fine. So mainly Apparition's Quickening is the main culprit for being ovepowered as multiple quickens in a day is really, really powerful.
They kept quicken to one time a day, so I can't help but think they wanted the animist to be slightly more powerful allowing it to quicken up to 3 times a day.
If you reached a boss monster like a dragon, the animist in Channeler's Stance unleashes three quickens over three rounds with as powerful a blasts as they could manage, the damage would be pretty nuts unless the boss was real lucky on saves.
I would think only a level 20 wizard with Spell Combination and Quicken would be able to hit harder because that wizard's first round is pretty nuts.
Quicken is usable by every other caster once a day. They usually wait for a boss or a big encounter when they can really get some bang for the buck using it.
An animist can do that three times per day. So they can unless for one encounter or unleash for two or three. Being able to action compress into one round of double blasting is always going to be very good. For one feat it a no brainer. You take it and learn to use it. It's too good to not take. It's extremely powerful.
Depends. Apparition's Quickening still good to use when you don't know the number of encounters, but still saves it to not use it more than once per encounter.For example, at level 15 when you have 4 apparitions, considering that you don´t care about other apparitions and only want to blast with Steward of Stone and Fire and only wants to use the other apparitions as fuel to Apparition's Quickening.
If a GM sents to you an moderate encounter of this level and sents a moderate Troop (Troop (80 XP): One creature of party level, two creatures of party level – 2) with 2 enemies with around 235 HP and one with 285 HP. With lucky (all creatures failing in their saves) you can cut the enemies HP by half or more casting a Rank 8 Volcanic Eruption
+ Rank 8 Eclipse Burst. Considering that you are not the only one fighting and that your allies can also do a good amount of damage, probably you don't need to use Apparition's Quickening...That is indeed the question. Can you miss the vessel spell, and all the apparition spells it provides, knowing you will have more encounters?
In my experience this is not a trivial sacrifice at all. That's a lot of options in Apparition spells you're chucking in the bin, not just a vessel spell.
I personally would never do that for extra first turn damage in the moderate encounter in your example. It was reserved for panic button situations (ah, unfettered movement, my dear indispensable and often quickened friend).
Animist is very much a feast or famine type class. When you can flex, you can flex HARD. But it is very, very easy to counter your play and take the wind out of your sails. Grabby monsters or swallow whole sucks even more for you than others. Just any enemy with limbs and a decent athletics score. Anything that messes up your mobility actually. Even plain simple difficult terrain just shuts Elf Step+Liturgist down. You will run into things like this a lot. A. Lot.
I am highly skeptical of people who think it's all easy and...
I think it is trivial. If you are a blaster, you only want to keep Steward of Stone and Fire. It's the only major blasting apparition. You can get rid of all the other ones blasting and be just fine. Since this is a blasting thread, you are 100 percent going to build a blasting strategy around Steward of Stone and Fire.
I already looked it over. You will keep that one if you are a blaster. Quicken Apparition to drop three blast spells from that apparition is or mixing them can get very nasty. The spell you use can be from any apparition and not just the apparition you disperse. So there is flexibility enough.
If you're using some martial strategy, then maybe you got a problem. If you're building a heavy blasting animist all the decisions are no brainers and Apparition's Quickening is a monster feat given how good quicken is.
Quicken is great on regular casters. My party with two casters usually picks this up and annihilates at least one encounter per adventuring day wit this feat. If they could do it three times a day, that would be incredible.
Myeah, ok, sure, let's keep it at me being entirely unconvinced that is not exactly what people are claiming.
I mean, you're partially correct, since Deriven just proved me wrong, but ultimately this isn't a thread about convincing you personally, in the same way that this isn't a thread about personally convincing Unicore that the divine list has good blasting spells. In my experience, the Animist was in fact better-equipped than most other casters for avoiding getting grabbed and Escaping grabs, and while I'd be skeptical of anyone claiming that they're pulling that full three-round damage setup every encounter, I never really found myself at any point where it felt like the Animist was lacking in options for any given situation. Not every situation will be perfect for the Animist, but I've never really found myself in a bad situation for my Animist, unlike with other characters.
More likely to succeed to Succeed at Escape is utterly irrelevant, because that means you are actually in the exact situation where you failed to protect yourself from famine. The only question that remains is whether this is an encounter where that matters.
See, this is the kind of statement that makes me genuinely skeptical, because this is not at all true. Successfully Escaping means you can immediately Elf Step to start creating distance, all while triggering your Sustain effects, or cast blessing of defiance if you're anticipating another attempt to grab you. If a monster powerful enough to reliably grab you keeps focusing you this whole time, the action economy is in your favor, as you're wasting a lot of that monster's actions while keeping your engine up with minimal effort, all while your party focuses that monster with you assisting with your sustained effects.
Because when it matters, this is not a roll you can afford to make, let alone risk failing. Heavens forbid you are restrained and you have no other option. I hope this needs no further explanation.
Hold on, why is this a roll you can't possibly afford to make or risk failing? Because even if you spend two actions Escaping, that one action is all you need to Elf Step, or just cast or Sustain a vessel spell as needed. This is more options than even a martial class, particularly as you can keep yourself at only a relative -1/-2 to the Athletics checks of a Strength martial, equalizing with them entirely across several levels. I can't help but feel like the problem here is being greatly overstated for the sake of making an argument.
And you can Quicken an Apparition spell with a divine spell. So you could eclipse burst then drop a quickened fireball. So quicken apparition may not be usable with divine spells, it is usable in conjunction with divine blasting spells.
It is usable with your divine spells as well. The only limit is that the spell must come from your animist class, so you can't quicken an archetype/innate spell with it but your divine prepared spells are compatible.
This isn't specific to Apparition's Quickening, though; Quickened Casting also has this same restriction as well.
And you can Quicken an Apparition spell with a divine spell. So you could eclipse burst then drop a quickened fireball. So quicken apparition may not be usable with divine spells, it is usable in conjunction with divine blasting spells.It is usable with your divine spells as well. The only limit is that the spell must come from your animist class, so you can't quicken an archetype/innate spell with it but your divine prepared spells are compatible.
You are correct. That is even better. So you could drop two eclipse bursts, then work your way down multiple times per day.