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Apologies if this post is comes off as completely unfocused.
Some background: Teridax brought up an interesting topic in another thread that I was already had interest in but previously thought it was a bit specific or pointless to ever start a thread about. So I'm starting the thread since there is at least a 2nd person up for the discussion and I didn't want to derail the other thread further. Also, let’s keep any discussion about balance with purely base rules in mind – no variant rules like free archetype or dual classing involved.
To start with, to initiate a better conversation than what I would have with nothing more than an extravagant observation, here is what Teridax’s stated in the original thread:
I think the Thaumaturge is a good point of comparison, because the class is also all about emulating the niches of other classes, except I think the Thaumaturge does this successfully by a) getting close but not quite in crucial ways, b) having fixed implements, meaning they can't rebuild themselves from the ground up each day, and c) having something that is truly unique to themselves while paying an appropriate price for it (namely, Exploit Vulnerability and not having a physical key attribute). If we were to apply this model to the Animist (and still perhaps applied a few tactical nerfs), I think that would justify a framework where the Animist could choose between more but fixed apparitions (which could each let you emulate the better part of another class's niche), or fewer apparitions that you could swap out every day.
Now for my extravagant observation:
The animist and thaumaturge are the PF2 versions of the PF1 medium and occultist, respectively (just pretend the animist isn't also the new shaman). This is significant because not only did I find the occultist and the medium two sides of the same coin, I also find the animist and thaumaturge to also be two sides of the same coin for the same reasons....except they're both almost completely different from their PF1 counterparts.
The "coin" I'm referring to is versatility and the sides are "static versatility" and "dynmatic versatility". What I mean by this is both classes are pinnacles in versatility for their ability to cover many, if not all roles, but they approach this in different ways. The occultist and thaumaturge are capable of being built in a large variety of ways and could almost replicate nearly any other class to some extent. On the other hand, mediums and animists (DEFINITELY animists) are more lacking in build variety but get around this by being able to swap their role focus on a day-to-day (maybe even round-to-round) basis. The occultist and thaumaturge are static. The medium and animist are dynamic. Keep in mind that the reason prepared spellcasters were considered more powerful than spontaneous in PF1 was because they were able to swap around their spells each day for whatever was best suited for a situation. For this reason, all other things being equal, dynamism is better than staticity.
So does this mean the medium was seen as better than the occultist?
In PF1, the more access you had to spellcasting, the stronger you were, generally. The medium was originally mostly a martial with a bit of casting like the ranger or paladin with the option of stretching a bit deeper into spellcasting if they wanted. The occultist on the other hand had such a deep reserve of spells and spell-like abilities that it pushed them about as far toward casting as possible without it being a full caster. So, the medium might have had an edge with dynamism but the occultist blew past with raw power from their spellcasting. Funny thing is, now, the animist (the new medium) is a full spellcaster while the thaumaturge (the new occultist) is, by default, a martial class.
(Quick personal story related to topic: when recreating an occultist I made in PF1, I ended up most comfortable with turning that character into an animist. Meanwhile, when I tried to recreate the iconic medium, Erasmus, for PF2, I ended up happier with a thaumaturge with animist archetype build.)
Now to bring it altogether:
The medium, as a martial at its core, was never considered strong and actually pretty underwhelming compared to how it was advertised. This was more due to limitations of the system it existed in and the page space it required for its full potential - the playtest medium was 11 pages with 18 spirits, the final release was 8 pages with 6 spirits. Ultimately, it pretty much just barely surpassed full martials.
The occultist, as a gishy, 6th level caster was considered by many as perfectly balanced considering full casters dominated the system. However, a rare few players did think the occultist was, in fact, broken due to its ability to eventually cover every role well outside of going “god wizard mode” like full spellcasters could.
With PF2 having much better class balance, the thaumaturge, while popular (at least when it was new) has not been viewed as broken, as far as I am aware, by anyone. Beyond being a hard hitting martial, it can still cover a handful of the player's selection of roles well and can often come up with a solution to any problem given time with their scroll thaumaturgy but their form of spellcasting is lacking in quality and quantity compared to a full spellcaster. It's pretty much the PF1 occultist but trading in its static spellcasting power for spellcasting dynamism and a more martial leaning, similar to the medium, but inside a system where martials actually shine.
The animist, however, has been seen as overpowered by a fair number of people. It’s a fair assessment that I can understand but don’t exactly agree with, mostly because I trust the Pathfinder designers know what they are doing (I acknowledge, it the the appeal to authority fallacy). But it IS a full spellcaster with the chassis of a cleric or druid but with the ability to cover any role, ultimately a huge number or signature spontaneous spells picked from all traditions, strong feats and the ability to swap around all of this on a daily basis. It’s roughly the PF1 medium with the spellcasting of the PF1 occultist existing outside of a system with god wizards.
So with all that, what do you think? Do you believe the animist is balanced within the system it exists in? Or do you just think it’s interesting how these 4 classes relate to one another and how versatility relates to balance in PF2?
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I can only speak from sample builds with the animist. I do not think it is overpowered. Then again I think it is nearly impossible to be overpowered in PF2 due to the way action economy is handled and battle length.
Almost everything in PF2 is balanced around actions. The only major way to break the game or become overpowered is to exceed the action economy throttle that PF2 has in place. There is no way to do this at level 1 to 9 really and only a few ways at levels 10 plus that are highly limited.
I found this out playing dual class games. I tested the rule out thinking dual class would break the game. Dual class games are about as versatile as you can get, but it's mostly irrelevant because action economy prevents a player from leveraging the versatility into any meaningful advantage.
Instead action economy funnels everything into a "What is the best thing I can do right now with my actions?" That choice isn't usually use one of the versatile choices, but one of your proven optimal choices.
Thus versatility in combat where balance is essential is highly limited by action economy.
Where versatility can be fun is in non-combat scenarios where you have to figure out how to bypass an obstacle or challenge and you have time to try different abilities. You can shine brightly if you have a lot of useful abilities in non-combat situations. Some might judge that as "over-powered", but most players in my experience don't care very much if someone is shining during non-combat scenarios. And for players that enjoy the non-combat obstacles and challenges, let them do the thing as it helps the DM a lot when at least someone cares about the parts that don't involve combat. It's not fun as a DM to sit at a table where all your players are waiting for the next combat barely engaged with roleplaying or problem solving.
To sum it up, I don't think either the animist or thaumaturge are overpowered unless players feel some kind of way during non-combat scenarios when highly versatile classes like the animist and thaumaturge can shine having so many tricks in the bag.
For combat purposes, not overpowered at all.
One caveat, the animist Quicken Apparition Spell or whatever it is called is borderline overpowered because it allows double blasting with quicken multiple times per day. Quicken Spell is a very powerful ability which is why it is limited to one time a day. The animist gets it up to 3 to 4 times per day. You can out put some brutal damage with Quicken Spell.
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The animist, however, has been seen as overpowered by a fair number of people.
I'm still not entirely sure what people are saying is overpowered about Animist that is actually causing problems. Most of the threads about it become so hostile that I stop reading them.
From what I can glean, people are pointing to a couple or three focus spells - most of which are compared using whiteroom math rather than actual play scenarios. And the idea that flexibility is giving power instead of just flexibility.
Garden of Healing - the best focus spell healing in the game? If used in combat it will heal allies and enemies indiscriminately. And has a 10 foot emanation range. If used out of combat it becomes one among many options for post-combat healing. While it might be faster than many others, there is diminishing returns on how fast you can heal up. You only need to heal faster than the GM sets the pace of the game at.
Earth's Bile - Damage blasting. I'm not even close to convinced that this is the best magic damage blasting available on any character. It is a good AoE damage that can be moved and has a sustained duration. It is a fairly small AoE though - which is both good and bad. It makes positioning it so that it doesn't damage allies easier. It is hard to catch more than a couple of enemies in it though.
Embodiment of Battle - Now we are a Fighter? But are we really? It costs one action to sustain. Even if that can be combined with movement, that is still an action spent moving rather than doing something like swinging again or Demoralize or Trip or Raise Shield. But most notably, it takes up the status bonus slot. The party's Bard can buff a Fighter with Courageous Anthem, Bless, or Heroism. They can't do that for the Animist using Embodiment of Battle.
So while an Animist with Garden of Healing may be a better post-combat healer than Cleric, they aren't a better in-combat Healer than Cleric is. An Animist with Earth's Bile may be a better damage blaster than Cleric too, but I'm not sure that the Cleric is all that interested in competing on that front. I'm pretty sure that the Gunslinger isn't complaining about the Animist filling either of those two roles.
And ultimately, I still think that the king of versatility and flexibility is Alchemist. You want to blast damage - throw bombs. You want to buff allies - give them elixirs. You want to heal - there are elixirs for that too. You want to front-line for a bit - drink the right mutagen and go for it. Is the area dark - there's an app elixir for that. We need to climb - there's an app elixir for that. And all on one build. The various subtypes focus on one option a bit more than the other options, but all are still available.
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I'm glad this thread got written. I'd like to pick up on this bit in particular:
But it IS a full spellcaster with the chassis of a cleric or druid but with the ability to cover any role, ultimately a huge number or signature spontaneous spells picked from all traditions, strong feats and the ability to swap around all of this on a daily basis.
I think this is one of the obvious ways in which the Animist was given too much relative to other casters: up until the class's release, it was the Druid who was famous for having an exceptionally strong chassis, and so because they're a 8 HP/level, Wisdom-based caster with medium armor proficiency... just like the Animist. While the Druid does have other tangible benefits, mainly by having a somewhat stronger spell list to leverage and good focus spells, the Animist was released post-remaster, after the divine list got massively buffed, and gets a huge number of extra spells to play with, plus extra spell slots, focus spells strong enough to match martial classes in Striking accuracy or out-blast dedicated blaster casters (including Druids), and a whole bunch of benefits from their practice, which in the case of the Liturgist especially offer unmatched action economy for a caster.
Meanwhile, let's look at the Thaumaturge:
So all in all, it's very easy to point to the Thaumaturge's limitations, and their implements are balanced in such a way that they'll never be able to beat another class at their own specialty. Despite these limitations, the class is popular and is widely-reported as really fun to play, a feeling I agree with in my experience. Importantly, the Thaumaturge is generally seen as fairly accessible, whereas the Animist is analysis paralysis personified: they may be really overpowered, but very few people even want to try an Animist in the first place. I suppose that's a balancing mechanism of sorts, but it's a bit disappointing when the class could arguably have a much larger playerbase due to their theme or flexibility, if only they were just a little more accessible. It also means that when someone picks an Animist and knows how to exploit them, they can warp the game around them in a way that feels more reminiscent of 1e casters than anything in 2e. Perhaps for some players that's a feature, though that's a mentality I don't think has any place in modern-day tabletop gaming either.
Also, with respect to this:
It’s a fair assessment that I can understand but don’t exactly agree with, mostly because I trust the Pathfinder designers know what they are doing (I acknowledge, it the the appeal to authority fallacy).
I think it's worth mentioning that the Animist's sole designer left Paizo under less-than-friendly circumstances, held a position of significant power within the company while they were designing (and balancing) the Animist up until they left, and during that time also dropped absolute stinkers such as the Vindicator, the Warrior of Legend, and Mythic rules, among other heavily-criticized releases. This too is a logical fallacy I suppose, as it's poisoning the well, but I think in all cases it's very much worth evaluating work on its own merits, rather than based on who made it.
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I'm one of the few, if not the only, critics of the Animist here since the playtest.
Many people overvalue it because its focus spells are quite powerful and because the liturgist can switch between them relatively easily.
But in practice, it's a mixed caster who divides her slots between common prepared spells from the divine tradition and those from the apparition. Prepared slots don't synergize with almost anything else in the class.
Apparition slots are limited to only one per rank throughout the progression up to level 9, and even after level 10, her two highest spell ranks remain limited to a single apparition spell each.
And despite being a class focused on sustained focus spells, it's one of the few spellcasting classes that doesn't receive Effortless Concentration, and this takes its toll on the character's action economy at high levels. Sustaining a spell without costing actions is one of the most powerful things a high-level spellcaster can do.
The animist has excellent focus spells, all sustained, and the liturgist's ability to switch between them easily and quickly. But this is far from enough to make the class OP and offset all the class's other limitations.
So I see a lot of people who create a lot of hype around the animist's capabilities, but they rarely stop to consider the limitations it has in doing what it do.
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I'm one of the few, if not the only, critics of the Animist here since the playtest.
Many people overvalue it because its focus spells are quite powerful and because the liturgist can switch between them relatively easily.
But in practice, it's a mixed caster who divides her slots between common prepared spells from the divine tradition and those from the apparition. Prepared slots don't synergize with almost anything else in the class.
Apparition slots are limited to only one per rank throughout the progression up to level 9, and even after level 10, her two highest spell ranks remain limited to a single apparition spell each.
And despite being a class focused on sustained focus spells, it's one of the few spellcasting classes that doesn't receive Effortless Concentration, and this takes its toll on the character's action economy at high levels. Sustaining a spell without costing actions is one of the most powerful things a high-level spellcaster can do.
The animist has excellent focus spells, all sustained, and the liturgist's ability to switch between them easily and quickly. But this is far from enough to make the class OP and offset all the class's other limitations.
So I see a lot of people who create a lot of hype around the animist's capabilities, but they rarely stop to consider the limitations it has in doing what it do.
Some don't consider how painful that sustain action is most levels and how limiting it is with any Practice other than Liturgist. The liturgist makes the sustain action tolerable, but still doesn't make it good.
You have to ask the question: does a class that is only maybe overpowered if you take one practice that great? The class is underpowered and clunky if you take any other practice. How well designed is that?
The difference in power is so great with the animist that if you don't take the Liturgist practice, using vessel spells is an impediment.
So you're either an "over-powered" Liturgist or an underpowered any other practice.
That doesn't look like great design to me. I would even go so far to say the animist needs a Remaster right out the gate to make the other practices usable and competitive with vessel spells so everyone isn't stuck playing a Liturgist to feel like the animist is any good.
When I was looking at the animist, I was interested in the Medium Practice. That practice looked pretty cool. Once I read how the vessel spells work, it became apparent the only viable Practice was Liturgist. Any other practice was going to have serious problems with action economy with the vessel spell sustain.
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When I was looking at the animist, I was interested in the Medium Practice. That practice looked pretty cool. Once I read how the vessel spells work, it became apparent the only viable Practice was Liturgist. Any other practice was going to have serious problems with action economy with the vessel spell sustain.
Its not quite that bad. It is hardly a disaster if on some round or other you don't sustain your vessel spell. Its only 1 action to recast it and you pretty quickly have 3 focus points.
The Liturgist IS definitely best, no argument there. But the other practices are definitely viable. Well, probably not with your groups play style but they're viable for the more usual play styles.
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I meant to put this in the animist OP thread, but it fits well here, the biggest reason I don’t find the Animist OP is because, as flexible as it can be, its number of top slots is pretty low and it can very easily end up one and done for any role it tries to fill other than healer. The martial play style is far worse in practice that it might first seem because the animist has bad saves and it’s self healing and staying in combat are pretty bad. The blasting of the animist is great for one encounter. If you cast top level spell slots 2 times you are pretty much done blasting compared to classes like the sorcerer or wizard. Once you cast your top spontaneous slots the versatility and effectiveness of the class is often lower than a psychic, and you end up in bad shape if you have to stop using one of your sustain focus spells because it is preventing you from casting or healing enemies or hurting allies.
It is also much harder to keep up with using high rank scrolls when you are a class that wants weapons and armor at the same level as martials.
I think this relates to the medium/occultist discussion because, if it has any comparable problem to PF1 classes, it’s that it’s a class that feels built to be a 15 minute adventure day class.
I think there's a fairly interesting double standard at play here: the Animist is said to have few top-rank slots, except they have exactly as many top-rank slots as a Bard, a Druid, and a Witch, and one extra slot for every rank below that starting at level 10. Earth's Bile, despite dealing more than half fireball's damage for half the actions multiple times each encounter at no permanent resource cost, is said to not be a great blasting spell because its AoE is also not the same as fireball's, never mind its single-target damage output and how it had to be reined in during the playtest due to how spammable it was. We're told that the Animist has no synergy with their divine spells, despite the fact that Grasping Spirits Spell, Spiritual Expansion Spell, URL, and Apparition's Quickening all very much synergize with those spells, and offer even more benefits than their equivalents on other caster classes too.
All of which is to say, there's a lot of mantras being repeated around the Animist that are simply not true. If you listened to them, you'd think that the Animist has fewer than two spell slots per rank and can only last for a few encounters before running out of juice, when the opposite is true: the Animist has more spell slots than most casters in Pathfinder, their vessel spells are designed to supplement their resources across an entire encounter, and they have the unique benefit among casters of having a ton of feats that work perfectly fine even if you don't use slot spells at all. Similarly, when people claim that the Animist is constrained by the action cost of Sustaining vessel spells, that too isn't particularly true when the Liturgist lets you move and Sustain a spell on the same action, and Sustaining a spell also automatically triggers the spell's effect in many cases, as with earth's bile. Not only is this by itself better action economy than on any other caster, this gets even nuttier when you take a feat like Elf Step and end up Sustaining two spells in one action, such as store time and embodiment of battle. The Animist doesn't get Effortless Concentration, but that's because they simply don't need it, and get a version that is at minimum comparable seven levels earlier as a core class feature (with the Liturgist), and with the right options even better than the feat by virtue of letting you Sustain even more spells for free.
And again, this too ignores huge portions of what the Animist can do. This doesn't touch upon the fact that the Animist can choose up to four subclasses and swap them out every day, for instance, nor that the Animist can have more spells at their disposal than any other class by virtue of being able to prepare up to 18 divine spells while also having 36 signature spells to choose from: even if you account for the fact that you can't choose these signature spells with the same freedom as your prepared spells, this is still a huge number of different spells to choose from, and a degree of versatility classes like the Witch pay a much heavier price to access in much smaller amounts, including the Sorcerer with Greater Crossblooded Evolution. Nobody mentions the Lore the Animist gets, despite the fact that the large coverage you get means you'll often have at least one or two skills that will be relevant for any situation you're in. For nearly every feature or feat the Animist has, the balancing relative to everything else that exists is just... more. Not "Let's fix issues with other casters" more, so much as "I'm so special" more, to a degree where I'd argue the Animist is even more of a Main Character Syndrome class than even the Exemplar.
And this isn't just a problem on paper; this genuinely does create problems at the table. I have had to go out of my way to brief my Animist players, ask them not to tread on other players' toes, and agree on a small number of house rules and banned feats, because when I haven't done this and the player knows how to optimize, the class genuinely did go off the rails and eclipsed other party members, often multiple party members on the same day. I have never had to do this for the Thaumaturge, even when they chose an implement that resembled another party member's core feature, and in general the last time I've had to step in to this extent was when running D&D 5e. One of the reasons I really like PF2e is because normally, its balance is such that as a GM I don't have to be constantly on the watch for exploits and gross imbalances; the game just works as it should, and everyone gets to have fun. The Animist is an exception to this, because on top of sometimes not feeling very fun to play, the class often lowers everyone else's enjoyment when they rival or beat specialists at their own niche, and so for extremely cheap. I'd personally rather have a class that was less powerful, but more fun to play and play with, than the reverse.
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I played a Thaumaturge and ultimately found that the “fun”…wasn’t. Sure, you can get pretty creative with just how you flavor your offense schtick with the nigh-endless pockets of just-what-will-work, but ultimately it was the same thing over and over.
I’m not really into Lore and skills, so that was wasted on me; and because I chose the Weapon Implement I…never used the Implement - it literally never came up.
Of course this was only from levels 2 to 4, but even still I was amazed at how the “interesting” premise washed out fairly quickly. Maybe I would have had more fun with a more combat-tactical Implement like the Mirror.
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As for the Animist, I have no experience of it, but weirdly it does have some strange overlap with 1e Occultists, particularly the Haunt Collector archetype. I’ve seen one of these *absolutely* make almost an entire party vestigial, covering scouting, traps, combat (with attendant spirit companions) and more. Personally I’ve never really been one for being upset at classes “stepping on other classes’ toes” but when one character is literally stomping on errybody’s feetsies it is kinda rough.
For me, yes, the Animist is waaaaay too complicated for me to even bother with - I don’t play casters and the idea of having/being able to rechoose a loadout every morning wasn’t just option paralysis as option fatigue. It also felt a little gamist to be able to choose “just what might work” from a convenient array of adventure-useful spirits from the “other side”.
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As for Michael Sayre’s design chops, given he wrote a lot of the incredibly well-received Akashic classes for Dreamscarred Press which were all incredibly versatile, and then other fun things like Drop Dead Studios Luchador base class (and special mention: Amora Games’ Battle Lord base class, an early iteration of the PF2e Commander) I feel his system mastery is/was high. I don’t think his exit from Paizo can be linked tangibly to any “quality” issues with his writing/designing, but I do think the Animist was designed to be *incredibly* versatile, and perhaps too much so.
On paper, Teridax’s Animist data looks convincing for at least a label of “high powered” in a way that the Thaumaturge is not, and across more faculties/modes. But Deriven’s central tenet that action economy is the fiery crucible in which great heroes are forged and kept balanced also seems pertinent.
I feel that table variation will be high as expressed by the relative system mastery of the Animist player. Played intelligently, and highly optimised I can see an Animist causing problems/succeeding at many things. Certainly the 1e Haunt Collector Occultist I saw played was highly…successful. At many things. I’m not sure a Thaumaturge will be the same, even played intelligently and highly optimised.
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Apparition's Quickening is definitely an overpowered feat. I can see that feat overshadowing a lot of casters for blasting during a day of adventuring.
Every other caster can quicken one time per day. Apparition's Quickening allows you to quicken up to 3 times per day.
4 apparitions: Use 1
3 apparitions: Use 1
2 apparitions: Use 1
Then you're down to one apparition and you can't use it again. There are some very good apparition blasting spells on the lists.
They also do extra damage on a sustain with Channeler's Stance, but it's limited to vessel and apparition spells. And they don't seem to have many great sustain spells other than earth's bile. Maybe Wrathful Storm at high level. I didn't look super close, but I didn't see many great sustain spells.
I don't see anyway for them to match martials. You could do something like take the Ranger Archetype, get a bow, pick up Hunted Shot, then use a bow with Embodiment of Battle.
The animist steps more on caster toes than martial toes. If you limited the Quicken Apparition feat, I doubt they would be too powerful. But Quicken three times a day is definitely a brutal ability. That one definitely stands out on the feat list as a "this could get out of hand" feat.
Most of the other feats are balanced from what I can see.
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Apologies, I forgot to specify in my OP that when I was talking about balance, I was referring to what Teridax's main concern was, class role balance. I was expecting the focus to be more about a class's capacity to overshadow other classes and what qualifies as acceptable or not. Raw power balance is also fair game I suppose in how it can play into that, especially concerning how action economy is in the system.
Speaking of, action economy is actually a good point when comparing back to PF1. From what I remember, in PF1, you usually just had 1 standard action you could pull off per turn; putting it very simplistically, you either cast a spell or made a attack. By default, you couldn't attack with a weapon and cast a spell. You could usually get a single move action in there as well though. Now, in PF2, you can make a strike and cast a spell in a single turn if you sacrifice your ability to move. Unfortunately, the reality of the system's action economy is much more complex, especially with the animist so I don't think it's practical for me to delve much further into that without rambling into oblivion.
I played a Thaumaturge and ultimately found that the “fun”…wasn’t. Sure, you can get pretty creative with just how you flavor your offense schtick with the nigh-endless pockets of just-what-will-work, but ultimately it was the same thing over and over.
Ever since the animist playtest was released, I've felt the same way. Animist has all but killed thaumaturge for me. With thaumaturge, I loved being a martial that could dabble effectively in a lot of magic while still being a perfectly capable martial. With animist, I can be a full spellcaster and still land strikes just about as well as a thaumaturge and hitting with a strong 2-hander with Grudge Strike, my strike damage is on par (assuming only 1 strike per turn). Then, if you equate apparitions with implements, it's no longer any contest - animist wins out for having access to 100% of their options at all times.
As for the Animist, I have no experience of it, but weirdly it does have some strange overlap with 1e Occultists, particularly the Haunt Collector archetype. I’ve seen one of these *absolutely* make almost an entire party vestigial, covering scouting, traps, combat (with attendant spirit companions) and more. Personally I’ve never really been one for being upset at classes “stepping on other classes’ toes” but when one character is literally stomping on errybody’s feetsies it is kinda rough.
Ha! Haunt collector is a perfect reference for this topic. Pretty much occultist with medium archetype. Also, one of the few ways to compensate for the glaring annoyance that was the useless conjuration resonant power.
Coincidentally, the occultist that I converted to an animist was a psychodermist that was originally built to also get around that conjuration implement annoyance. Theoretically giving a class like the occultist access to every spell in the game (limited to 6th level - but actual summon spells included) plus monster abilities was probably about as good as you could get before getting into full caster territory in that system. The medium could have done the same but they just didn't have the resources and couldn't really be a "strong" martial and spellcaster at once with how their spirit mechanic worked....except maybe a spirit dancer. I went through SO many PF2 iterations until animist existed. Mechanically, now I just manifest the powers of slain monsters through my apparitions instead of implements and I mix in druid and wild mimic archetypes to further replicate monster abilities.
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I think there's a fairly interesting double standard at play here: the Animist is said to have few top-rank slots, except they have exactly as many top-rank slots as a Bard, a Druid, and a Witch, and one extra slot for every rank below that starting at level 10. Earth's Bile, despite dealing more than half fireball's damage for half the actions multiple times each encounter at no permanent resource cost, is said to not be a great blasting spell because its AoE is also not the same as fireball's, never mind its single-target damage output and how it had to be reined in during the playtest due to how spammable it was. We're told that the Animist has no synergy with their divine spells, despite the fact that Grasping Spirits Spell, Spiritual Expansion Spell, URL, and Apparition's Quickening all very much synergize with those spells, and offer even more benefits than their equivalents on other caster classes too.
All of which is to say, there's a lot of mantras being repeated around the Animist that are simply not true. If you listened to them, you'd think that the Animist has fewer than two spell slots per rank and can only last for a few encounters before running out of juice, when the opposite is true: the Animist has more spell slots than most casters in Pathfinder, their vessel spells are designed to supplement their resources across an entire encounter, and they have the unique benefit among casters of having a ton of feats that work perfectly fine even if you don't use slot spells at all. Similarly, when people claim that the Animist is constrained by the action cost of Sustaining vessel spells, that too isn't particularly true when the Liturgist lets you move and Sustain a spell on the same action, and Sustaining a spell also automatically triggers the spell's...
The feats listed by Teridax are variations of other casters spellshape feats.
As pointed by Deriven Firelion the only one feat that looks stronger and works with all your spell source is Apparition's Quickening that allows to cast up to 3 quickened spells per day at cost of your apparitions. What is pretty powerful if now was for the problem bellow.
The issue that all these things have it is the action economy of the animists. The class creates a positive pressure to cast and sustain a one-action vessel spell the prevents many of these things to synergize or work effectivelly.
As animist you probably want to cast your Vessel Spell soon as possible but now you have an action compromised every turn that will prevent you basically to use any of 1-action spellshape because you simply don't have enough action to cast a 2-action spell anymore.
Even your Bespell Strikes Apparition's Enhancement or the super strong Apparition's Quickening that are free-actions loses most of its action economy efficiency. Your Strikes now does an extra 1d6 damage in the round when you cast your Vessel Spell but after this while you still sustain it you don't have actions to cast and Strike anymore unless you are also Quickened but Haste also is not a divine or in an apparition spell. You can cast a 2-action spell with just 1-action using your Apparition's Quickening but if you are sustaining/casted a Vessel Spell so what you will do with your remaining action? Strike or Stride with Apparition's Enhancement but at cost of one of your apparitions? Switch apparition to get access to other apparitions spells but at cost of one of your apparitions?
Teridax pointed that you can have up 36 signature spells to choose every day but in practice I point again that all these spell options are limited during half your progression to chose and cast one per rank per day and that is it after level 9 this improves but your TOP 2 apparition spell slots still limited to 1 per day each. They are basically the wizard's schools more flexible, but with your top 2 spell ranks always limited to have one less slot each and no Drain Bounded Item.
I'm not saying that the class is bad, but it's not OP like it looks like at first glance. The class have many other limits to prevent it to be used overpower fully that it's there to prevent it to becomes too much strong.
Apologies, I forgot to specify in my OP that when I was talking about balance, I was referring to what Teridax's main concern was, class role balance. I was expecting the focus to be more about a class's capacity to overshadow other classes and what qualifies as acceptable or not. Raw power balance is also fair game I suppose in how it can play into that, especially concerning how action economy is in the system.
Please try to exemplify the cases where the class is overshadowing others.
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I think you can have a conversation about the animist as martial and support caster being quite powerful, although the weapon stuff in practice still feels like a bit of a trap because the class is not very survivable, but the animist cannot be an effective blaster more than once a day and that is a pretty heavy limit for a caster. The bard and witch also are not good blasters so fitting in with them feels about right for where the class should be. The Druid is one that will get some debate, but I don’t think they are good blasters for more than one encounter a day either unless you are playing a free archetype game to help pad their spell slots. At low levels a focus spell option can feel powerful for blasting, but the Druids is 2 actions and single target. That is just not how you contribute heavy hitting damage at higher levels, which I say from experience. NPC Druids willing to destroy cities and destroy everything are great single encounter blasty villains, but as PCs the sorcerer and the Wizard are the only top tier blasters. The Oracle is still higher on the list than the animist as well.
Even during the playtest, I too was worried at first about the blastiness of the animist, but without another Earth’s Bile like vessel spell the “could be a very powerful blaster” doesn’t materialize. The divine list got better for blasting, but isn’t top tier without access to something like deity bonus spells, especially for prepared slots, many top slots probably going to heal.
The new apparitions almost broke things, but the snake one isn’t offensive without drawing agro first, which generally makes for a bad blaster, especially as a grabbed animist is basically a dead animist and both their fort and their reflex (the way PCs tend to end up grabbed, prone or immobilized) are so bad with no success boosters.
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Please try to exemplify the cases where the class is overshadowing others.
I'm not arguing whether or not it does. I'm just raising the discussion as it blends in with the topic of another class that also covers multiple roles.
However, the class does broadly cover the roles of other classes such as:
- Martial combat, commonly using a combination of embodiment of battle and Grudge Strike
- Utility in exploration and downtime by utilizing spells from both Crafter in the Vault and Imposter in Hidden Places to replicate common thief tropes.
- Variety of caster roles. As a divine caster and with a few other options, the animist is more than a competent healer, especially when opting into medicine as a wisdom-based class. They also have a huge variety of blasting and control spells. I've also seen many druid players state that darkened forest form is arguably a better untamed form
The only role they don't really excel at (at least not in an obvious way) is defending or tanking but they do have some tools at their disposal for such activities.
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OK let's check.
Embodiment of Battle is a very good Vessel Spell that improves your weapons proficiency to martial and gives a status bonus to attacks similar to many spells that gives status bonus to attacks also gives RS but also do a -2 penalty to your Spell DC basically forcing you to play as support.
IMO it's a very powerful vessel spell, but that competes with martial muse bard with Courageous Anthem + Fortissimo Composition that not only helps the caster but the hole party.
The main point about Embodiment of Battle is that you still can cast while you get a good “martial” hit-rate but costs you your spell DC.
Grudge Strike is a pretty powerful “Power Attack” that also gives a +2 circunstance bonus what's pretty powerful but also it is the only Strike that you can give during your turn if your are using a Embodiment of Battle but lacks from most damage that martial would get.
Puting these in numbers:
Magus attack bonus (without level):
LvL 1-4: 4 (Str/Dex) + 2 (trained proficiency) = 6
LvL 5-9: 4 (Str/Dex) + 4 (expert proficiency) = 8
LvL 10-12: 5 (Str/Dex) + 4 (expert proficiency) = 9
LvL 13-16: 5 (Str/Dex) + 6 (master proficiency) = 11
LvL 17-19: 6 (Str/Dex) + 6 (master proficiency) = 12
LvL 20: 7 (Str/Dex) + 6 (master proficiency) = 13
Animist with Embodiment of Battle + Grudge Strike:
LvL 1-4: 3 (Str/Dex) + 2 (trained proficiency) + 1 (status bonus from Embodiment of Battle) = 6
LvL 5: 4 (Str/Dex) + 2 (trained proficiency) + 1 (status bonus from Embodiment of Battle) = 7
LvL 6: 4 (Str/Dex) + 2 (trained proficiency) + 1 (status bonus from Embodiment of Battle) +2 (circumstance bonus from Grudge Strike) = 9
LvL 7-10: 4 (Str/Dex) + 2 (trained proficiency) + 2 (status bonus from Embodiment of Battle) +2 (circumstance bonus from Grudge Strike) = 10
LvL 11-12:4 (Str/Dex) + 4 (expert proficiency) + 2 (status bonus from Embodiment of Battle) +2 (circumstance bonus from Grudge Strike) = 12
LvL 13-14: 4 (Str/Dex) + 4 (expert proficiency) + 3 (status bonus from Embodiment of Battle) +2 (circumstance bonus from Grudge Strike) = 13
LvL 15-20: 4 (Str/Dex) + 5 (expert proficiency) + 3 (status bonus from Embodiment of Battle) +2 (circumstance bonus from Grudge Strike) = 14
Magus damage using SpellStrike (ignoring the weapon damage) with d6 cantrip:
LvL 1-2: 4 (Str) + 7 (2d6) = 11
LvL 3-4: 4 (Str) + 10,5 (3d6) = 14,5
LvL 5-6: 4 (Str) + 14 (4d6) = 18
LvL 7-8: 4 (Str) + 17,5 (5d6) + 2 (Weapon Specialization) = 23,5
LvL 9: 4 (Str) + 21 (6d6) + 2 (Weapon Specialization) = 27
LvL 10: 5 (Str) + 24,5 (7d6) + 2 (Weapon Specialization) = 31,5
LvL 11-12: 5 (Str) + 28 (8d6) + 2 (Weapon Specialization) = 35
LvL 13-14: 5 (Str) + 31,5 (9d6) + 3 (Weapon Specialization) = 39,5
LvL 15-16: 5 (Str) + 35 (10d6) + 6 (Greater Weapon Specialization) = 46
LvL 17-18: 6 (Str) + 38,5 (11d6) + 6 (Greater Weapon Specialization) = 50,5
LvL 19: 6 (Str) + 42 (12d6) + 6 (Greater Weapon Specialization) = 54
LvL 20: 7 (Str) + 42 (12d6) + 6 (Greater Weapon Specialization) = 55
Animist damage using Grudge Strike (ignoring the weapon damage):
LvL 1-4: 3 (Str) = 3 (maybe double if you hit a second Strike with MAP)
LvL 5: 4 (Str) = 4 (maybe double if you hit a second Strike with MAP)
LvL 6-12: 4 (Str) + 7 (2d6 - Grudge Strike) = 11
LvL 13-14: 4 (Str) + 7 (2d6 - Grudge Strike) + 2 (Weapon Specialization) = 13
LvL 15-20: 5 (Str) + 7 (2d6 - Grudge Strike) + 2 (Weapon Specialization) = 14
Magus Spell DC/Bonus (without level and 10 base):
1-4: 3 (int) +2 (trained proficiency) = 5
5-8: 4 (int) +2 (trained proficiency) = 6
9-14: 4 (int) +4 (expert proficiency) = 8
15-16: 5 (int) +4 (expert proficiency) = 9
17-20: 5 (int) +6 (master proficiency) = 11
Animist Spell DC/Bonus (without level and 10 base) using Embodiment of Battle:
1-6: 4 (wis) +2 (trained proficiency) -2 (Embodiment of Battle) = 4
7-9: 4 (wis) +4 (expert proficiency) -2 (Embodiment of Battle) = 6
10-14: 5 (wis) +4 (expert proficiency) -2 (Embodiment of Battle) = 7
15-16: 5 (wis) +6 (master proficiency) -2 (Embodiment of Battle) = 9
17-18: 6 (wis) +6 (master proficiency) -2 (Embodiment of Battle) = 10
19: 6 (wis) +8 (legendary proficiency) -2 (Embodiment of Battle) = 12
19: 7 (wis) +8 (legendary proficiency) -2 (Embodiment of Battle) = 13
...
So if we compare a “martial” animist with a magus that both does one Strike per turn you may compete in terms of hit rate, but you become far from have the same DPR and this becomes way worse as the class levels up. I also put the Spell DC comparison in terms of curiosity and the magus as hybrid class only loses when the animist reaches legendary proficiency at lvl 19.
I used magus to make the comparision limited to 1 Strike per round but in practice any martial class will be far better than any animist due they better attack, defensive, saves, hp, extra damage and additional Strikes.
...
I won't make comparison about utility in exploration and downtime against the skill monkeys because it will be far from fair. The animist not even have a chance against a rogue nor an investigator in terms of skill feats.
I also won't compare animist with other casters because they also can't compete with sorcerers in terms of DPR, nor clerics em terms of healing, nor bards in terms o support and so on.
What animist have is versatile to change its own role to cover or help the party. But it will never outshine other classes.
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I played a Thaumaturge and ultimately found that the “fun”…wasn’t. Sure, you can get pretty creative with just how you flavor your offense schtick with the nigh-endless pockets of just-what-will-work, but ultimately it was the same thing over and over.
I’m not really into Lore and skills, so that was wasted on me; and because I chose the Weapon Implement I…never used the Implement - it literally never came up.
Of course this was only from levels 2 to 4, but even still I was amazed at how the “interesting” premise washed out fairly quickly. Maybe I would have had more fun with a more combat-tactical Implement like the Mirror.
The second implement definitely opens things up more, but it sounds like you just picked a class that wasn't suited to you. If you're "not into Lore", picking the class whose whole thing is "I know stuff about everything" is an odd choice.
Weapon implement really just gives you a better reactive strike that only works on your exploit target, but it's odd that it never came up. I guess it's possible if you exploit target never does manipulate/concentrate/move actions. I know when I played a Weapon/Tome Thaumaturge in Shadows at Sundown, I did a lot of tripping which made it trigger quite a bit (and the ranged rogue in the party was really happy).
I find weapon implement is much better as a second implement. The other implements are better at giving you an identity, and the monsters that the weapon implement is best against don't show up until higher levels.
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Can you give some concrete examples of feats you've had to ban that allowed your animist to eclipse multiple party members, or house rules that were necessary to prevent it?
Gladly, yes! Here's my list of house rules and bans:
Also curious what you feel is unfun about playing the class.
I'll be very happy to break this down too:
In short: the Animist from my experience is annoying to play with and harrowing to GM for, because they can genuinely damage the collective play experience at the table, but they're also not a very popular class: they're inaccessible to many players who'd otherwise want to try a character with their theme, the class is almost expressly designed against any kind of permanent and meaningful build decision, and because you can play virtually any Animist on the same character, the class in my opinion has little replay value. Beyond just how grossly unbalanced the class is, I also think they could stand to be made more accessible and more rewarding to build, so that those who like the class's theme would be more likely to play them.
On paper, Teridax’s Animist data looks convincing for at least a label of “high powered” in a way that the Thaumaturge is not, and across more faculties/modes. But Deriven’s central tenet that action economy is the fiery crucible in which great heroes are forged and kept balanced also seems pertinent.
I think it's worth mentioning that this point on action economy is bogus, and in fact the reverse is true: the Animist has exceptionally good action economy among casters, and speaking of fiery crucibles, the best proof of this is earth's bile: the only reason the spell has a Sustain action is so that you can keep casting that single-action mini-fireball each round for the same Focus Point cost. You're not obligated to keep Sustaining the spell if it's not convenient for you, and unlike most casters who have to get more Focus Points via feats, the Animist grows to a full focus pool through their class features alone. The icing on the cake here is Dancing Invocation, which lets you move and Sustain at the same time, and by that token lets you Sustain twice and move on the same action with Elf Step: this, among other things, means your gish Animist will have very little trouble getting into position, Sustaining their spells, and Striking twice on the same turn.
As pointed by Deriven Firelion the only one feat that looks stronger and works with all your spell source is Apparition's Quickening that allows to cast up to 3 quickened spells per day at cost of your apparitions. What is pretty powerful if now was for the problem bellow.
Literally all of these are the same feat as other spellcasters, but better. All of these feats work with your prepared divine spells as well as your apparition spells, so the point about the Animist having no synergy with their divine spells is quite obviously false.
Teridax pointed that you can have up 36 signature spells to choose every day but in practice I point again that all these spell options are limited during half your progression to chose and cast one per rank per day and that is it after level 9 this improves but your TOP 2 apparition spell slots still limited to 1 per day each.
This is also false. At 1st level, you get 2 spells to choose from, which is already better than the Wizard being forced to prepare one spell into their fourth slot, but then at 3rd level, you get 4 spells to choose from for your 2nd-rank slot, all of which will auto-heighten to that rank. This increases to 6 at 5th level, jumps to 12 at 7th level with your third apparition (which also backfills your lower-rank slots with more spells to choose from), then 15 at 9th level, 18 at 11th level, 21 at 13th level, jumps to 32 at 15th level (with the same backfill occurring there), and then 36 at 17th level. From 10th-level onwards, you also get a bunch of additional spell slots to use for your apparition spells, which means more opportunities to use powerful crowd control and utility spells like lifewood cage, laughing fit, acid grip, and quandary, among many other powerful spells. Your top-rank apparition spell output may be somewhat limited... which is why it's a good thing you're also a divine full caster with a full set of prepared spells. Again, I make mention of this in my very first post here: we need to stop treating the Animist as if the only spells they can cast are their apparition spells. They also get a ton of divine spells to prepare and cast, and that is hugely powerful in and of itself.
I think you can have a conversation about the animist as martial and support caster being quite powerful, although the weapon stuff in practice still feels like a bit of a trap because the class is not very survivable, but the animist cannot be an effective blaster more than once a day and that is a pretty heavy limit for a caster.
This I think is an instance of the exact same mistake. The divine list itself contains some incredibly powerful blast spells, such as spirit blast, and earth's bile is an evergreen spell that you can use as many times as you need in the day to supplement your damage. That alone would be very strong, but it just so happens that the Animist also gets tremendous force multipliers like Channeler's Stance, Apparition's Quickening, and Cardinal Guardians at higher levels that let even lower-rank spells punch way above their weight.
So if we compare a “martial” animist with a magus that both does one Strike per turn you may compete in terms of hit rate, but you become far from have the same DPR and this becomes way worse as the class levels up.
I wouldn't call that a terribly honest comparison, given that Grudge Strike itself is a trap feat and Spellstrike is the biggest source of burst damage in the game. You also appear to have added an extra d6 to the cantrip's damage to inflate the numbers, and discounted embodiment of battle's own status bonus to damage to deflate the Animist's numbers. If we do this comparison properly and have the Animist simply Strike twice, the Magus deals only 41.5 comparative extra damage (38.5 from the cantrip, 3 from their Strength mod and greater weapon specialization surpassing the Animist's 5 + 2 + 3 from their Strength, weapon specialization, and status bonus), while that additional Strike with a properly runed weapon could deal as much as 46.5 damage on a hit.
I won't make comparison about utility in exploration and downtime against the skill monkeys because it will be far from fair. The animist not even have a chance against a rogue nor an investigator in terms of skill feats.
I would, because the Animist need only pick a Crafter in the Vault to go from untrained to legendary in Crafting and Thievery, while also receiving a full set of tools to disable traps and Craft out in the wild during the adventuring day. Forget about Scouting, because Medium's Awareness gives your Wisdom key attribute character a +4 status bonus to checks to Seek and to initiative rolls. What's more, if you don't feel like that feat will be useful to you on a day, you can just swap it out, as it's a wandering feat.
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I posted a thread about how an animist can outdps most classes (except a sorcerer using explosion of power) against multitargets. Its DPS is solid, thanks to:
- Earth's Bile being the only 1-action AOE in the game AND sustainable
- Liturgist being able to sustain it while moving at lvl 9+
- The divine list being heavily buffed by the remaster, to the point where it's subjectively one of the best for blasting (and objectively not the worst anymore).
- Medium's Awareness giving him the best initiative in the game.
- Apparition's Quickening giving him the best quicken in the game.
Added to that, they get a better-than-average caster chassis with medium armor, d8hp, WIS casting and lots of goodies, plus great flexibility through changing feats, spells or lores.
Still, this alone doesn't make the animist broken. In order to see whether it's too much, we need to compare it to some other casters.
1) The sorcerer is for me the best caster in PF2E. It lacks the strong chassis of the animist, but his abilities certainly make up for it. I know it's subjective, but its great focus spells, spontaneous 4-slots, unpoachable extra damage/heal on every spell, pick-any-tradition-you-want approach and awesome feats make it a prime pick in almost every case. Thus I, personally, consider it stronger than the animist by virtue of having more flexibility in what spells they can take, more slots, more sustained damage and basically more options. Arcane evolution, for instance, gives as much or even more flexibility than apparitions ever could, since you can choose what spell to add instead of needing to pick a list. So if the animist is broken, then so is the sorcerer.
2) The (caster) oracle has been heavily buffed (mechanically) in the remaster. We've talked about it in another post, and I know some builds were gutted by it (hello battle, hello life), but right now an oracle has almost the same chassis (light armor instead of medium is about the same if you don't plan on taking heavy armor later). He is limited to the divine list but has right from the box 4 spontaneous slots per level, blowing the animist out of the water. But wait, with foretell harm he'll deal more damage (at least once). With gifted power he now has 5 slots from his highest rank (especially useful for flame, for instance). With (free) divine access he can have spells from other traditions - and mostly choose them. With Mysterious Repertoire, he has one more from any tradition - and totally choose it). With divine effusion you now have 6 slots for your top level spells and 5 from your top - 1 (while the animist is still stuck to 3 and 3).
3) The bard is an awesome caster as well. He's locked into occult, but it's a pretty impressive list nowadays - everybody knows it's got the best debuff in the game, but also great buffs/debuffs (for instance, the animist has no way to access slow or haste, which are amongst the best spells in PF2e) and even great blasting. He's got three spontaneous slots to the animist's 2 prepared + 1 spontaneous (+ 1 later at lower levels), which to me is leaning towards the bard. He's got great cantrips that are incredibly powerful and, if maestro, can be sustained easily for free. He has once again the same chassis as the animist except for that mostly useless medium armor. His feats are great as well, and most people in the forum agree that he's pretty solid.
So yeah, Animist is great. But at the risk of comparing apple to oranges, I don't think he's stronger than a sorcerer, an oracle or a bard.
Is he better than a cleric ? It's debatable, since the cleric still has from 4 to 6 more top slots to heal, so it depends what you want to do.
Is he better than a witch, a druid or a wizard ? Probably (apart from a few broken builds) but it's not a very hard bar to clear.
So IMHO the animist is a strong class, solidly in the middle of the caster pack, but nowhere near the top, and nowhere near busted.
As for using embodiment of battle and grudge strike, I would advise anyone thinking it's even a token martial to play it and reconsider.
One more thing: I think it's worth bringing up a gaming concept that I believe carries particular relevance to the Animist, and that concept is hubris.
To be more specific: hubris is sometimes a term used in board and card games where there are such strong incentives to perform a certain action that certain players will do the action even when it's suboptimal. This can happen in games like Terraforming Mars, where some options are so much more powerful than alternatives that their biggest weakness becomes the player overcommitting to that strategy and leaving themselves wide open to counterplay. The reason I believe it carries relevance in an Animist discussion is because I think this exact kind of flaw clouds certain instances of judgment: people see Sustain spells and think they must Sustain every turn, when in practice you can just not Sustain a spell and wind up just fine when you need to use that action on something else, particularly as you end up with the spare Focus Points to cast a vessel spell again. Similarly, people seem to over-focus on the Animist's feats and features that synergize with apparition spells and imagine that you must do nothing except cast apparition spells, to the neglect of your 2 divine prepared spells per spell rank and even your vessel spells. It's not that the Animist is compelled to spend an action Sustaining each turn or has fewer than two spell slots per rank, so much that the Animist gets so much power out of those mechanics that certain people miss how the Animist can do so much more than that as well. On paper, you'd think that the Animist is basically perma-slowed 2 and can only cast a handful of spells before they run out of juice, when in practice the Animist has enormous amounts of agency and above-average spell reserves that let them stay relevant for much longer than many other casters, to say nothing of their vessel spells.
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Please try to exemplify the cases where the class is overshadowing others.I'm not arguing whether or not it does. I'm just raising the discussion as it blends in with the topic of another class that also covers multiple roles.
However, the class does broadly cover the roles of other classes such as:
- Martial combat, commonly using a combination of embodiment of battle and Grudge Strike
- Utility in exploration and downtime by utilizing spells from both Crafter in the Vault and Imposter in Hidden Places to replicate common thief tropes.
- Variety of caster roles. As a divine caster and with a few other options, the animist is more than a competent healer, especially when opting into medicine as a wisdom-based class. They also have a huge variety of blasting and control spells. I've also seen many druid players state that darkened forest form is arguably a better untamed form
The only role they don't really excel at (at least not in an obvious way) is defending or tanking but they do have some tools at their disposal for such activities.
A well built rogue is not going to feel threatened by an animist for trapfinding and such.
I like that the animist can fill this role if you don't have a rogue in the group. I have had a rogue in the group in nearly every adventure I've run from the time I started PF2. Whereas in PF1 I maybe saw one or two rogues played.
The rogue went from no one wants to play this to one of the most powerful classes in PF2. The animist cannot touch what the rogue brings to a party, not even close. Rogues are rogues. If you have a well built rogue in your party, they are a dream to have.
Animist can't touch what they bard does.
Animist can't touch the fighter or barbarian.
The only way you're seeing an animist step on any martial toes is if you're in some badly built party that isn't playing many of the top tier classes.
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I posted a thread about how an animist can outdps most classes (except a sorcerer using explosion of power) against multitargets. Its DPS is solid, thanks to:
- Earth's Bile being the only 1-action AOE in the game AND sustainable
- Liturgist being able to sustain it while moving at lvl 9+
- The divine list being heavily buffed by the remaster, to the point where it's subjectively one of the best for blasting (and objectively not the worst anymore).
- Medium's Awareness giving him the best initiative in the game.
- Apparition's Quickening giving him the best quicken in the game.Added to that, they get a better-than-average caster chassis with medium armor, d8hp, WIS casting and lots of goodies, plus great flexibility through changing feats, spells or lores.
Still, this alone doesn't make the animist broken. In order to see whether it's too much, we need to compare it to some other casters.
1) The sorcerer is for me the best caster in PF2E. It lacks the strong chassis of the animist, but his abilities certainly make up for it. I know it's subjective, but its great focus spells, spontaneous 4-slots, unpoachable extra damage/heal on every spell, pick-any-tradition-you-want approach and awesome feats make it a prime pick in almost every case. Thus I, personally, consider it stronger than the animist by virtue of having more flexibility in what spells they can take, more slots, more sustained damage and basically more options. Arcane evolution, for instance, gives as much or even more flexibility than apparitions ever could, since you can choose what spell to add instead of needing to pick a list. So if the animist is broken, then so is the sorcerer.
2) The (caster) oracle has been heavily buffed (mechanically) in the remaster. We've talked about it in another post, and I know some builds were gutted by it (hello battle, hello life), but right now an oracle has almost the same chassis (light armor instead of medium is about the same if you don't plan on taking heavy armor later)
. He is limited to...
After reviewing the oracle and testing some builds, I think Blue Frog is accurate. The animist is a strong class, mainly for blasting with some utility worked much like a druid or cleric or bard.
It has it's own niche with versatility.
It's nowhere near as good as the druid for battle forms. Can't touch the bard for buffing.
It is a very good blaster that can do some other stuff.
When I asked players who had played an Animist if they'd play another, their answer was consistently that they felt like they'd basically played every possible Animist build on the same character already. I got this feeling as well after my own experience.
I can see this being true. Since the animist Practices other than Liturgist are not viable, you basically have to play a Liturgist to be competive.
Teridax is asserting the animist is over-powered, but using his examples this only applies to the Liturgist. the other practices could be argued are clunky and underpowered.
So you have this animist class with a single practice that makes things work well then changeable apparitions that let's you try them all at some point if you feel like it, thus no unique feel to the class.
I tried to spec out a Medium. I wanted to make a melee combatant medium. But the sustain vessel spell and then moving meant there would be a lot of rounds where I took only one attack. Two if I can stand in place because I must sustain.
I would need haste to do more. The divine list doesn't have haste. Neither do the apparitions. They were real careful about not giving the animist haste or slow. So you would have to come up with another means to obtain haste.
The sustain vessel spell on the medium is a real action economy hindrance. This makes the Liturgist the only practice that kind of works well for blasting.
It's a very one-note class with the versatility an illusion given you can only have one active primary apparition at a time. You have to pick up a feat to change the primary apparition.
I can see this being true. Since the animist Practices other than Liturgist are not viable, you basically have to play a Liturgist to be competive.
Teridax is asserting the animist is over-powered, but using his examples this only applies to the Liturgist. the other practices could be argued are clunky and underpowered.
This is a fallacious argument on a number of levels:
It's a very one-note class with the versatility an illusion given you can only have one active primary apparition at a time. You have to pick up a feat to change the primary apparition.
Although I can agree somewhat more with the assessment that the class doesn't always feel amazing to play, this isn't fully true: you can change primary apparitions by Refocusing, and Circle of Spirits, the feat you get to switch apparitions in combat, is a 1st-level feat, making it very accessible. The fact that it's a feat given for free by the Liturgist is one more point in favor of the subclass.
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Can you give some concrete examples of feats you've had to ban that allowed your animist to eclipse multiple party members, or house rules that were necessary to prevent it?Gladly, yes! Here's my list of house rules and bans:
I ruled that Channeler's Stance's status bonus to damage doesn't apply to persistent damage, though unlike the Sorcerer's sorcerous potency it still applies to subsequent instances of damage when you Sustain a spell. This is something I've seen other GMs apply already, though often it's interpreted as RAW when the actual RAW is that status bonuses to damage and other damage-specific mechanics benefit all damage, including persistent damage, unless specified otherwise.
I changed the Liturgist's Dancing Invocation at 9th level to offer a new single action that lets you both Leap, Step, or Tumble Through and Sustain an apparition or vessel spell. This nipped exploits around multiple instances of such movement in the bud.
When an Animist ended up out-blasting a Psychic, I pulled the player to the side, agreed with them to ban Channeler's Stance and generally avoid the Steward of Stone and Fire apparition, and let them retrain accordingly.
When that same Animist ended up inflicting more Reactive Strikes than a Fighter with embodiment of battle and store time (which at the time was also supplemented with more action compression from Dancing Invocation and Elf Step), I similarly asked them to avoid that specific combo, though I didn't disallow the Witness to Ancient Battles or the Echo of Lost Moments individually.
I had a one-shot where a high-level Animist kept wreaking utter carnage in encounters with Forest's Heart and its incredible range, which of course multiplied the embodiment of battle and store time combo, to a degree that outshone martial classes. While I haven't explicitly banned that feat, I'm very cautious around it. Also curious what you feel is unfun about...
When an Animist ended up out-blasting a Psychic, I pulled the player to the side, agreed with them to ban Channeler's Stance and generally avoid the Steward of Stone and Fire apparition, and let them retrain accordingly.
Psychics are terrible blasters.
When that same Animist ended up inflicting more Reactive Strikes than a Fighter with embodiment of battle and store time (which at the time was also supplemented with more action compression from Dancing Invocation and Elf Step), I similarly asked them to avoid that specific combo, though I didn't disallow the Witness to Ancient Battles or the Echo of Lost Moments individually.
Let me see if I can see how you're doing this.
Start with primary apparition with one of those vessel spells. Cast it, sustain it, then switch apparition using Circle of Spirits. Cast the other vessel spell. Then you are double sustaining each round, which I imagine can be done with Elf Step as Blue Frog pointed out.
Then you are swinging once or twice.
Now at the level you can do this, you aren't going to be outdoing a fighter since they get double reactive strikes at level 10 and a better chance to hit.
So how exactly are they getting more reactive strikes than a fighter? Unless this player is doing this at lower level prior to the level 9 ability.
How are that many Reactive strikes going off? Explain the set up of how they are doing more than the fighter who gets double Reactive Strike at level 10, is strength focused, and has better proficiency and better armor and hit points?
I can guarantee they won't keep with the fighter as they get higher level.
This sounds like theory crafting and not something you can do easily in game.
I had a one-shot where a high-level Animist kept wreaking utter carnage in encounters with Forest's Heart and its incredible range, which of course multiplied the embodiment of battle and store time combo, to a degree that outshone martial classes. While I haven't explicitly banned that feat, I'm very cautious around it.
You must have some severely weakly built martials if this is wreaking havoc in encounters. I read Forest's Heart. That ability wouldn't even keep up with martials in the groups I run in.
I want to see real play with this combo getting set up and working in action. I really do. A double sustain vessel spell with a 4d8 attack wouldn't even rate worth seeing even at 30 foot range in a group with a fighter or barb or rogue.
You're stating this like it is competitive DPS wise against a fighter, rogue, or barbarian built by a player with equal system mastery.
Explain what those rounds look like and what you were fighting as well as the builds of the fighter. Banning something because a weakly built fighter can't keep up is a bad idea.
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I can see this being true. Since the animist Practices other than Liturgist are not viable, you basically have to play a Liturgist to be competive.
Teridax is asserting the animist is over-powered, but using his examples this only applies to the Liturgist. the other practices could be argued are clunky and underpowered.
This is a fallacious argument on a number of levels:
The Liturgist is an Animist practice available to all. If the Liturgist is overpowered, then the Animist is overpowered.
Just because the Liturgist is overpowered does not automatically mean that the other practices are underpowered: although they're generally much less powerful, the fact remains that the Animist as a core class is extremely powerful even without a practice at all, and many of the issues pointed out relate to the core class and not just the interaction of certain mechanics with the Liturgist. It's a very one-note class with the versatility an illusion given you can only have one active primary apparition at a time. You have to pick up a feat to change the primary apparition.Although I can agree somewhat more with the assessment that the class doesn't always feel amazing to play, this isn't fully true: you can change primary apparitions by Refocusing, and Circle of Spirits, the feat you get to switch apparitions in combat, is a 1st-level feat, making it very accessible. The fact that it's a feat given for free by the Liturgist is one more point in favor of the subclass.
Why do you keep using these bombastic statements? Your table sounds more like you have one player that is good at building characters, then a bunch of players who build characters poorly.
Your animist wouldn't even come close to outperforming a fighter in our group...or a barb...or a rogue, especially at high level.
The animist does look like a pretty nutty dual class though. I don't know if I would allow animist in a dual class game. Monk with Forest's Heart and Embodiment of Battle would be brutal. Fighter or rogue with Embodiment of Battle.
If Teridax were playing with an animist with a player with system mastery in a dual class game, now that would be pretty insane.
It might be the one caster class I will have to ban from dual class games same as I don't allow martial stacking in dual class games. Cleric is borderline, new cleric even more borderline on power in a dual class game.
Animist might be on that ban list for any dual class games I run. I'll warn everyone to be careful not to allow this one to dual class.
...Can you give some concrete examples of feats you've had to ban that allowed your animist to eclipse multiple party members, or house rules that were necessary to prevent it?Gladly, yes! Here's my list of house rules and bans:
I ruled that Channeler's Stance's status bonus to damage doesn't apply to persistent damage, though unlike the Sorcerer's sorcerous potency it still applies to subsequent instances of damage when you Sustain a spell. This is something I've seen other GMs apply already, though often it's interpreted as RAW when the actual RAW is that status bonuses to damage and other damage-specific mechanics benefit all damage, including persistent damage, unless specified otherwise.
I changed the Liturgist's Dancing Invocation at 9th level to offer a new single action that lets you both Leap, Step, or Tumble Through and Sustain an apparition or vessel spell. This nipped exploits around multiple instances of such movement in the bud.
When an Animist ended up out-blasting a Psychic, I pulled the player to the side, agreed with them to ban Channeler's Stance and generally avoid the Steward of Stone and Fire apparition, and let them retrain accordingly.
When that same Animist ended up inflicting more Reactive Strikes than a Fighter with embodiment of battle and store time (which at the time was also supplemented with more action compression from Dancing Invocation and Elf Step), I similarly asked them to avoid that specific combo, though I didn't disallow the Witness to Ancient Battles or the Echo of Lost Moments individually.
I had a one-shot where a high-level Animist kept wreaking utter carnage in encounters with Forest's Heart and its incredible range, which of course multiplied the embodiment of battle and store time combo, to a degree that outshone martial classes. While I haven't explicitly banned that feat, I'm very cautious around it. Also curious what you
I agree.
The combination of Embodiment of Battle + Store Time + Forest's Heart looks fun. Basically locks your capacity to cast (because you are sustaining 2 spells) and can do up to 5 (str) + 4d8 + 3d6 (property runes) + 2 (Weapon Specialization) = 35,5 (avg) up to 3 MAPless Strikes (1 normal + 2 from Reactions) with 30ft reach what's pretty good for a lvl 16 character.
But I don't see this being way stronger than a Giant Barbarian using a 1d10 Reach Weapon getting a 20ft reach (Giant's Stature + Titan's Stature + Giant's Lunge) doing 5 (str) + 4d12 + 3d6 (property runes) + 6 (Greater Weapon Specialization) + 18 (rage) = 65,5 (avg) up to 2 MAPless Strikes (1 normal + 1 from Reaction) and still have 2 more actions free to attack more or make any other cool/useful thing.
So even having less MAPless Strikes the Barbarian damage is way higher. Deals better with enemies' physical resistances and have a way stronger defensive chassis.
IMO it's still in the logic of the Animist could do multiple roles with a very high versatility, but it isn't stronger than a dedicated class.
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Psychics are terrible blasters.
Psychics are built to blast, see Unleash Psyche and many of their amps. They may have fallen somewhat behind in other respects in the remaster, but their blasting remains powerful.
Cast it, sustain it, then switch apparition using Circle of Spirits.
Why would you need to Sustain the spell on the turn when you cast it?
Now at the level you can do this, you aren't going to be outdoing a fighter since they get double reactive strikes at level 10 and a better chance to hit.
This isn't quite accurate on a couple of levels either:
In this particular case, my Fighter picked Disruptive Stance at 10th level: they weren't trying to beat an Animist on extra Reactive Strikes, and I don't think committing a feat just to match a caster at their own martial specialty would really have felt better for them. In fact, I suspect it would've felt even worse.
This sounds like theory crafting and not something you can do easily in game.
Deriven, your entire rebuttal is pure theorycrafting. Your attempt to invalidate my recount of play experience involves claiming that the Fighter would have absolutely gotten this 10th-level feat for the specific purpose of addressing this problem, when in practice they didn't and did not want to pick a feat just to keep up with the full caster on that one specific bit of martial power. Not only that, but you also get the basic sequence of actions wrong. I have pointed this out numerous times in our past conversations around this topic, but you visibly haven't played an Animist and it shows.
You must have some severely weakly built martials if this is wreaking havoc in encounters. I read Forest's Heart. That ability wouldn't even keep up with martials in the groups I run in.
You might want to read the feat again, then, because a 30-foot melee reach is something that is extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, to obtain on other martials. In fact, just a d8 unarmed stance is a rare find on any class that's not the Monk, and that is an extremely high damage die for the benefits it gives you. If I truly have to explain to you why a 30-foot reach is strong on a class that can use that reach to make Grapples and Reactives Strikes, let alone multiple of those a turn, then I'd say much of this discussion would be lost on you.
Why do you keep using these bombastic statements? Your table sounds more like you have one player that is good at building characters, then a bunch of players who build characters poorly.
I don't think you're really in a position to lecture others on bombast, Deriven, but also I don't think "bombastic" is really the word here. Your claims are factually wrong, and what's worse is that these are facts that were already given to you in the past. Circle of Spirits is a 1st-level feat given for free on the best subclass, so it is trivially easy to switch apparitions mid-encounter. As pointed out above already, my party builds fine, it's just that the Animist can and did all too easily break balance, because they're an overpowered class that lends itself extremely easy to exploits and is practically built to eat the lunch of others. As also pointed out, this is not an isolated incident: different instances happened at different tables; the one common denominator was the Animist.
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Psychics are built to blast, see Unleash Psyche and many of their amps. They may have fallen somewhat behind in other respects in the remaster, but their blasting remains powerful.
Their best blasting spell is mental. Unleash Psyche looks better on paper than in play. It's clunky as hell with limited range. Shatter Mind is one of their best blasting focus spells. It' maxes at 10d10 when amped at level 19. Regular casters are dropping chain lightning for 8d12 at level 11 and other powerful spells.
Then stupefied for 2 rounds which can cause their casting to fail.
Psychics were bad at blasting before the Remaster. Unleash Psyche is a trap option. About the best of the psychic is to Archetype into it, grab imaginary weapon a magus.
In this particular case, my Fighter picked Disruptive Stance at 10th level: they weren't trying to beat an Animist on extra Reactive Strikes, and I don't think committing a feat just to match a caster at their own martial specialty would really have felt better for them. In fact, I suspect it would've felt even worse.
No. It would not have if the player knew how to build a fighter. Even if the animist was looking good at level 9 to 10, the fighter starts to lap them at level 10 if they build off Reactive Strike either using the Crashing Slam line and building up to Opportune Riposte or picking up Champion's Reaction. Fighters are made to do huge damage off Reactive Strike.
Deriven, your entire rebuttal is pure theorycrafting. Your attempt to invalidate my recount of play experience involves claiming that the Fighter would have absolutely gotten this 10th-level feat for the specific purpose of addressing this problem, when in practice they didn't and did not want to pick a feat just to keep up with the full caster on that one specific bit of martial power. Not only that, but you also get the basic sequence of actions wrong. I have pointed this out numerous times in our past conversations around this topic, but you visibly haven't played an Animist and it shows.
I want you to show me how this is all set up in a round. Talk me through the rounds of at least the fighter and the animist setting up for these fights where they're getting overshadowed.
I can guarantee you...100 percent guarantee...if you went into our campaigns with an animist even with the claims you are making working, you would get lapped for damage and effectiveness. Absolute damage made to look weak and sad.
Things like Sneak Attack, debilitations, d12 weapons, rage, quality reactions, and other such martial abilities boost their damage much higher.
ou might want to read the feat again, then, because a 30-foot melee reach is something that is extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, to obtain on other martials. In fact, just a d8 unarmed stance is a rare find on any class that's not the Monk, and that is an extremely high damage die for the benefits it gives you. If I truly have to explain to you why a 30-foot reach is strong on a class that can use that reach to make Grapples and Reactives Strikes, let alone multiple of those a turn, then I'd say much of this discussion would be lost on you.
I can see the 30 foot reach being real nice. It's not going to let you outdamage martials, but I can see some leverage abilities, especially if i archetype into rogue and pick up Gang Up to provide flanking for everyone within 30 feet of me. That is pretty nice even at level 16.
30 foot reach that acts as an unarmed strike. You can't get it until level 16. You can still build around that.
As pointed out above already, my party builds fine, it's just that the Animist can and did all too easily break balance, because they're an overpowered class that lends itself extremely easy to exploits and is practically built to eat the lunch of others. As also pointed out, this is not an isolated incident: different instances happened at different tables; the one common denominator was the Animist.
I don't believe your party builds fine if your animist is outdamaging your martials and you think a psychic is a great blaster. Sorry. I'm a for real a optimizer, not a theorycrafter in a group where one player seems to know how to build and your other player is taking Disruptive Stance at level 10 when they should be taking Tactical Reflexes every day of the year including the extra day in a Leap Year. It's a no brainer feat.
Forest Heart is level 16. By level 16 your fighter should have Tactical Reflexes, the Crashing Slam line of feats, and Legendary proficiency in a big 2-handed weapon with fatal or deadly smashing hard with a Rogue Archetype and Opportune Backstab to key off any other attacks including your animist 30 foot unarmed reach.
You're claiming this level 16 animist ability is overshadowing a well built level 16 fighter and your party is built fine? I have seen level 16 fighter, barbs, and rogues absolutely wreck encounters with ease. Double Debilitations for the rogue which the animist has nothing to match. Fighters with double reactions hammering stuff to the ground controlling. Barbs smashing stuff down, ripping through DR, and doing Whirlwind Strike.
Dual class Forest Heart with whirlwind strike. That sounds super harsh. Level 16, but possible.
I played a Thaumaturge and ultimately found that the “fun”…wasn’t. Sure, you can get pretty creative with just how you flavor your offense schtick with the nigh-endless pockets of just-what-will-work, but ultimately it was the same thing over and over.
I’m not really into Lore and skills, so that was wasted on me; and because I chose the Weapon Implement I…never used the Implement - it literally never came up.
Of course this was only from levels 2 to 4, but even still I was amazed at how the “interesting” premise washed out fairly quickly. Maybe I would have had more fun with a more combat-tactical Implement like the Mirror.
The second implement definitely opens things up more, but it sounds like you just picked a class that wasn't suited to you. If you're "not into Lore", picking the class whose whole thing is "I know stuff about everything" is an odd choice.
Weapon implement really just gives you a better reactive strike that only works on your exploit target, but it's odd that it never came up. I guess it's possible if you exploit target never does manipulate/concentrate/move actions. I know when I played a Weapon/Tome Thaumaturge in Shadows at Sundown, I did a lot of tripping which made it trigger quite a bit (and the ranged rogue in the party was really happy).
I chose the Thaumaturge because it looked interesting tactically and narratively, and looked like it might be good to wrap a monster-hunting 1e Inquisitor-adjacent around. And with Exploit Weakness and RK-hijinks it mostly worked, and Implement’s Empowerment was a welcome addition. There was a bard in the party much more interested in Lore/skills, so that worked great. So it wasn’t an odd choice in the slightest. But it didn’t really prove that interesting. Then again, I can play a 2e Fighter and not find that boring (except that the feats bore me) so I shouldn’t complain that the Thaumaturge, with all the bells, whistles and endless incunabula is “boring”. It isn’t - it just wasn’t as “fun” as I’d hoped.
As for the Weapon Implement, I think it was just that the enemies *didn’t* move that much, nor try manipulation or concentrate *when* I was adjacent.
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Their best blasting spell is mental. Unleash Psyche looks better on paper than in play. It's clunky as hell with limited range. Shatter Mind is one of their best blasting focus spells. It' maxes at 10d10 when amped at level 19. Regular casters are dropping chain lightning for 8d12 at level 11 and other powerful spells.
Virtually no part of this is true:
So while yes, the Psychic isn't perfect and the self-stupefy from Unleash Psyche sucks, the class is quite clearly capable of blasting, and so without even needing to dip into their spell slots either. Getting out-blasted when in blast mode should ring some alarm bells.
No. It would not have if the player knew how to build a fighter. Even if the animist was looking good at level 9 to 10, the fighter starts to lap them at level 10 if they build off Reactive Strike either using the Crashing Slam line and building up to Opportune Riposte or picking up Champion's Reaction. Fighters are made to do huge damage off Reactive Strike.
Deriven, remember how you accused me of theorycrafting? Because that is exactly what you're doing here. I gave you an example of a player getting beaten at their own specialty, and rather than accept the facts or even attempt to empathize with them, your first line of response is to try to dismiss my example and degrade that person's understanding of the game by claiming that they should have built a whole feat line just to compete with one of their own players. Not only is that a pretty sad attitude, it's not even one demonstrative of good game understanding either: Disruptive Stance is an extremely good feat, one the Animist can't replicate with their class features either, so if you believe it was a bad choice, even against spellcasters, then I don't think my Fighter is the one who doesn't know how to build their character here.
I want you to show me how this is all set up in a round. Talk me through the rounds of at least the fighter and the animist setting up for these fights where they're getting overshadowed.
I can guarantee you...100 percent guarantee...if you went into our campaigns with an animist even with the claims you are making working, you would get lapped for damage and effectiveness. Absolute damage made to look weak and sad.
Things like Sneak Attack, debilitations, d12 weapons, rage, quality reactions, and other such martial abilities boost their damage much higher.
Okay, what details you would like to know? Because the setup was pretty simple: the Animist had a Witness to Ancient Battles as their primary apparition, an Echo of Lost Time as another of their apparitions, and used a guisarme instead of taking a staff for this combat. They were very comfortable getting in the front line, and there were enough enemies around to trigger their Reactive Strikes. The Fighter did not have Sneak Attack, debilitations, or Rage, and like I said above, wasn't specifically building to compete with their own teammate, because that's not what smart or cooperatively-minded people do. My Animist from what I understand didn't specifically want to compete with the Fighter so much as try out that combo, and unfortunately it resulted in them specifically beating the Fighter in Reactive Strike output at no feat commitment, and so with an attack mod on-par with a regular martial as well. This is not the kind of thing that should be happening to begin with.
I can see the 30 foot reach being real nice. It's not going to let you outdamage martials, but I can see some leverage abilities, especially if i archetype into rogue and pick up Gang Up to provide flanking for everyone within 30 feet of me. That is pretty nice even at level 16.
I think at this point it's worth gently reminding you that there are more things to this game than damage. For sure, the d8 unarmed stance won't deal more raw damage than a d12 weapon, but its 30-foot reach means you can Grapple from much farther away, and can Reactive Strike anything in a 30-foot radius: if this lets you make more Strikes, which it will, then that does translate to more damage. Beyond that, however, the stance provides incredible amounts of area control, and lets you lock down the battlefield in a way martial characters generally can't, at least not with just one feat.
30 foot reach that acts as an unarmed strike. You can't get it until level 16. You can still build around that.
May I just ask: why is it so important for you to build against your teammates here? Is this cooperative game a competition to you? Because it isn't to me, nor is it to any of the players I play with. I have never seen a player build specifically to beat another player at their character's specialty, and when overlaps happen the agreed-upon solution is to avoid each others' niches, as happened when I pulled the Animist player to the side and worked out what they ought to avoid to not tread on other party members' toes. The fundamental problem here is unfortunately that the Animist is very good at treading on other classes' toes even by accident, and again, this brings us back to the Thaumaturge, who despite their implements never outshines the original class at their thing. Note as well how their Weapon Implement is balanced, and how its limitations explicitly prevent you from beating a Fighter at their own Reactive Strikes.
I don't believe your party builds fine if your animist is outdamaging your martials and you think a psychic is a great blaster. Sorry. I'm a for real a optimizer, not a theorycrafter in a group where one player seems to know how to build and your other player is taking Disruptive Stance at level 10 when they should be taking Tactical Reflexes every day of the year including the extra day in a Leap Year. It's a no brainer feat.
But you are, Deriven, you are a theorycrafter. That's all you do on these forums, and it's pretty obvious to me that you don't spend all that much time playing, let alone optimizing in play, when you've patently refused to share details of your play experience when asked, frequently get basic rules wrong like when you misunderstood how Tumble Through worked, and apply optimization criteria that are painfully white-roomy and tunnel-vision on singular metrics like damage or out-competing your own teammates. Not only is your approach to builds fundamentally misaligned with how Pathfinder works, as it is competitive and individual-focused rather than cooperative, it's also frequently just straight-up misinformed, such as here when you don't really seem to understand how the Psychic can blast. Similarly, it doesn't seem like you have had any practical experience with Disruptive Stance and its potential to, well, disrupt, or even with the Fighter at that level range if you honestly believe they only have one viable feat at any given level.
It is worth mentioning, by the way, that I never claimed the Animist was outdamaging martial classes here: I simply pointed out that the Animist was making more Reactive Strikes than the Fighter, a true statement that can be clearly evidenced by both classes' mechanics, and that that was enough for them to overshadow the class. If the Animist was straight-up beating martial classes at their own game, then that'd be even worse, but it doesn't have to be that extreme for it to be a problem, particularly when every other gish in the game is much more tightly-controlled and more specialized to boot.
You're claiming this level 16 animist ability is overshadowing a well built level 16 fighter and your party is built fine? I have seen level 16 fighter, barbs, and rogues absolutely wreck encounters with ease.
But you haven't seen what an Animist can do at that level from practical experience, and something tells me you're not even telling the truth regarding these martial classes either. And again, to be clear: these martial classes can very much wreck face at those levels, it's just that that comes with choosing a specialized class and committing a lot of class feats. I don't think that's a strength that should be rivaled by a feat and a focus spell on a full caster, particularly when that combination can in fact beat these classes at battlefield control through its reach. You've implicitly admitted that this is a desirable strength for martials with your dual-classing statement, so even you seem to realize here that there are more things to martial power than damage.
Dual class Forest Heart with whirlwind strike. That sounds super harsh. Level 16, but possible.
Ah yes, "just dual class," the totally normal thing real-life people do just like that midway through their actual Pathfinder games. Totally not theorycrafting here, no sirree.
I'm going to play this thing. I know how to optimize. I'll see what this animist class looks like built in an optimal fashion surrounded by optimally built classes. Then I'll see what I think of its power level.
I built this thing. A 13th level animist Liturgist.
This class is pretty far from overpowered. It feels very unfinished and unpolished.
Animist feats taken:
1. Circle of Spirits from Liturgist Practice.
2. Medium's Awareness
3. Apparition's Quickening
These are the no brainer optimal feats.
A discussion of the feats:
1. Embodiment of Balance worth taking if you are the main healer. Otherwise, not necessary.
2. Grasping Spirits Spell: Once per 10 minutes on a Reach Spell that can maybe pull a creature closer if they fail their fortitude save is not so great. Reach Spell is one of the most potent caster spellshape feats. When you want to use it, you don't want to use it once per 10 minutes or pull something closer to you.
3. Channeler's Stance: Great option for blasting. I did not take because I have a different plan.
4. Apparition Stabilization: I never take this feat on other casters. But this is a slightly better version that eventually allows a much better chance to avoid spell disruption from Reactive Strikes. Still probably wouldn't take it, but if you're in a campaign where this was common this is a much better feat. All feats like this, especially the magus should be upgraded like this feat. I may steal this idea and make it an innate magus ability.
5. Grudge Strike: I have no idea why this is being touted as any good. It's 2 actions for a slightly better chance to hit and a tiny bit of extra damage. Nothing I would take. I can find better things to do with level 6 feats. Medium's Awareness is much, much better than this feat even on a martial build.
6. Apparition's Reflection: A powerful feat with a cost. I guess balanced maybe for a blaster caster looking for more sustain. The confused condition won't allow you to concentrate on a vessel spell next round, so you'd have to be a Liturgist that had to move before attacking to survive the confusion next round. Workable for blaster sustain.
7. Whisper of Warning: Reaction. Once per 10 minutes. Reroll a hit against you, but not a critical hit. Why would I even take this? The only thing you want to avoid in this game is critical hits. If this worked against critical hit, it would be a feat maybe worth taking.
Since I took so few of the animist feats, I archetyped into rogue like I like to do. I picked up Gang up with my level 12 feat. I think I'll pick up Forest's Heart and use that 30 foot reach for crazy gang up reach and an extra physical attack.
Forest Heart does look like a good feat.
Still working on which apparition I'm going to have as primary.
On a side note, one thing I noted that I should have noted before: Tumble Through absolutely essential towards operating while flying. A non-Liturgist animist flying reduces themselves to one action per round. Sustain 1 action and fly one action. If the Liturgist did not have Tumble Through on the list of actions it can take to sustain, it would not be able to operate while flying.
Flying is incredibly important at high level for combat. Lots of fights can turn three dimensional with creatures flying and used ranged attacks and reach. The Liturgist has to use Tumble Through as their one action to fly and use a battleform spell or fly while engaged in melee.
Action economy on non-Liturgist is terrible. Even if I made a Medium Animist for martial type fight, I would likely have to stick with a bow or ranged attack as fliers would be really hard to fight.
Wisdom as a main stat is nice.
Even with the free sustain, Animist is weak to something like Disruptive Stance or anything that can disrupt concentrate for those sustains for vessel spells.
I do not see the class as overpowered except for Apparition Quickening. It does have some unique feats and tactics to build around.
Forest's Heart is a stance, so Channeler's Stance would not work in the build I'm going for.
I'll update as progress more.
… Deriven, you clearly still haven’t played the class. In the three hours since you said you would, all you’ve done is just rattle off feats independently of each other and given surface-level assessments of how they seem to you on paper, with no supporting experience. This is, as I recall, not the first time you’ve tried to fake credentials in this way, and in fact not even the first time you’ve done so for the Animist. All of this effort spent arguing could have been spent actually trying out an Animist in an adventure.
I also don’t think it’s really worth trying the store time + embodiment of battle combo before level 9, but it’s worth noting that the setup by nature is very effective for what the combo aims for, which is letting you Reactive Strike a lot. Even if you could move and Strike on your first turn, it would likely still be more prudent to have enemies move to you, which is not uncommon for a melee character’s first turn in combat.
As for Channeler’s Stance, you have plenty of ways around this —putting aside how earth’s bile will often be a valid first-turn play if you need to spend an action moving, you also can get Apparition’s Quickening and Cycle of Souls at higher levels to get started immediately. Along with Cardinal Guardians, that’s a lot of force multipliers that make even lower-rank spells quite powerful. Even single-dipping while using divine spells to blast is extremely strong, simply because of that single-action damage. It’s why the vessel spell was spammed to death in the playtest before the restriction on multiple casts and Sustains had to be applied (it was, in fact, the main reason).
I’ll also say that the investment is, by and large, fairly generic. Many Animist feats are fairly situational or mediocre, which makes the really strong ones stand out all the more, and several of those feats have the wandering trait, meaning you can retrain them daily. This I think is what contributes to the Animist not feeling all that thrilling to play, because nothing you choose about your character ever really lasts. Even your attributes become a solved game, because most apparitions that depend on a particular attribute rely on Strength, and the one apparition that scales off of Int doesn’t require it terribly much either. I’m personally quite a fan of the FOMO that happens when having to choose between equally interesting competing options, and that’s just not something I ever really got with the Animist.
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The trick to good blasting is the ability to spam as high of level slot spell that you can, that doesn't require you to move, at least 2 or 3 times per encounter
Sorcerers and wizards can usually manage this for 3 to 4 encounters a day if they build to use scrolls for some of the round 2 or 3 casting.
I will warn people that having your hands full as a caster is very dangerous if you are going to be within 10-15ft of any cliffs, or are in a dungeon that might have drop floor-type traps, because your fort save and reflex save is probably bad, and having to critically succeed at grab a ledge is not easy. I know this from personal experience, and it can pretty much take you out of a fight.
The divine spell list got better at blasting, but it is not good at it.
Spirit blast targets fortitude and has a 30 ft range against 1 target for a rank 6 spell. The damage is good, and it is a great situational blast spell against enemies weak against spirit damage (or resistant to almost everything else) and enemies with low fort saves, but against a lot of melee brutes your damage output with it is terrible and you are way too close for comfort for blasting. This spell is competing against Chain Lightning after all for a spell slot.
Your AoE options tend to be very, very good against Undead and outsiders, and not great against anything else. You pretty much end up having to rely on several memorizing of shadow blast at your highest or second highest rank spell if you want to be able to do any of the weakness targeting that makes blasting stand out, and that spell is rough because it never targets a weakest save, and often a highest. The nova casting 1 action harm spells from top slots is pretty powerful, but still limited to fort saves and the animist just does not have the spell slots to do any serious blasting for any duration.
Channeler's stance is just not as good in play as people think it is. Once per day you might channeler's stance and then cast a top slot apparition spell slot spell on round 1 for very good damage, than shift over to earth's bile on round 2 and trying to blast with divine prepared slots, but otherwise it is something you probably don't turn on until you don't intend to cast any more spell slot spells and are just going to be be spamming focus spells.
I have played a Psychic and have GMed a Psychic. They are not good blasters. Imaginary weapon is not a good offensive spell for the psychic, because you pretty much have to put yourself next to two enemies to get much out of amping it, and unless you finish them off, you are in big trouble the next round. Imaginary weapon is much better as a reactionary defense to getting surrounded by enemies and then running with your third action.
Oscilating wave psychic is the best blaster psychic, but it is a bit complicated to put into play, especially with your energy type switching back and forth, which makes it difficult to exploit weaknesses consistently.
The psychic is a good class for support and versatile play styles that want to do several different things, but it is not good for specialized blasting. I didn't even put it on my blasting tier, but I would put it down at cleric level or below as a blaster. Any caster that is trying to blast without spamming top spell slots is not going to be in the top two tiers of blasters.
Blasting is ultimately about dealing damage, and the Animist gets an evergreen, single-action damage spell, a whole bunch of force multipliers, and access to excellent blasting via both their apparitions and the divine list at higher levels. The notion that divine is bad for blasting dates back from before the remaster, and is since outdated: the low-rank options may still not be great, but you get plenty of choice at higher levels, and some genuinely top-tier options that are unlikely to hit resistances or immunities.
For similar reasons, the Psychic is also a potent blaster, as they have the damage output for it and don’t need to spend spell slots either (it’s why they have so few to begin with); the so-called need to be near 2 enemies is part of that same gameplay hubris mentioned above. The Psychic does suffer from a few problems, including the self-stupefy on Unleash Psyche, but they were a good blaster pre-remaster and can still blast well now.
I’ll also say that more generally, the idea that you can only blast with top-rank slots is a myth largely perpetuated by theorycrafters on internet forums. If you’re fighting low-level enemies, top-rank slots can be overkill, and you will often do better with options that have better action economy or large areas of effect, both of which the Animist happens to have in spades. For any given situation, the Animist generally has at least one option available, which is one of the reasons they’re strong in ways that aren’t necessarily immediately noticeable on paper. I wouldn’t try to do use all of those options at once, as you’ll be stretched too thin and will be unlikely to have all the actions you’d need to do everything you’d want, but it is very easy to switch to essentially a different class even in the middle of combat.
I am will drop talking about the blasting here, cause it feels like it is getting off topic, and try to make a new thread later today to reexamine blasting after the remaster and the publishing of new classes/books/spells.
I’ll also say that the investment is, by and large, fairly generic. Many Animist feats are fairly situational or mediocre, which makes the really strong ones stand out all the more, and several of those feats have the wandering trait, meaning you can retrain them daily. This I think is what contributes to the Animist not feeling all that thrilling to play, because nothing you choose about your character ever really lasts. Even your attributes become a solved game, because most apparitions that depend on a particular attribute rely on Strength, and the one apparition that scales off of Int doesn’t require it terribly much either. I’m personally quite a fan of the FOMO that happens when having to choose between equally interesting competing options, and that’s just not something I ever really got with the Animist.I do truly enjoy having a class which is a good generalist hybrid, but Animist class feats and the imbalance between the Practices are really the weak point of the class.
There is definitely room for feats which lock in certain Apparitions permanently for those who'd like a more personal and deeper connection to a particular spirit. I definitely would have preferred that as a way to create sublasses instead of the Practices if I were to go full homebrew rebuild.
Instead of nerfing, I would actually give the old playtest dancer feat, for free, to all Animists at lvl 1 and let Liturgist keep their lvl 9 feature as an upgrade to this. The better version really doesn't break anything at lvl 9 and is definitely more fun to play (which REALLY should not be level-gated), and makes the other practices just as viable.
But I have opinions about what I consider other unfun action taxes like Hunter's Mark and Recharge Spellstrike as well, so YMMV and all.
I agree with pretty much all of this, yes. Although I do think the Animist's changes should include some nerfs, I don't think it should be about the nerfs either, if that makes sense.
I've mentioned this a little as well in the separate thread that talks about nerfing the Animist, but in my opinion power level isn't actually a very convincing reason to change a class in and of itself: not only is the subject of an entire class being overpowered often contentious and prone to controversy (as can be seen in this thread and half a dozen others), the fact is that we have classes that are are extremely powerful, like the Bard, yet also really fun to have around, because their power contributes to everyone else's enjoyment. As much as I believe the Bard is fine as-is despite their power, the Animist I think needs changes because their current design I think isn't necessarily conducive to the most fun for anyone.
As mentioned above, the class is unpopular, and from what I'm seen I'm far from the only one who's had to put guard rails in place to stop the Animist from overlapping too hard with other classes, a problem the Thaumaturge doesn't really have despite a similar design. It's not just that the class gets to eat the lunch of other classes too easily at little to no build commitment, the class offers very little besides this at the moment, while also having very little in the way of meaningful feat selection or meaningful build choices at all. I definitely would like the Animist to not threaten the niche of other classes like they do now, but I think it's just as important for them to feel more accessible and able to make truly character-defining build choices. One may even help the other, since having to choose between, say, more permanent apparitions or fewer daily apparitions would give the Animist more opportunity to properly specialize, and feel good at their chosen specialties.
I agree with this in principle, but that will only give you a passing grade as a blaster.
What makes the 4 slot spontaneous casters great blasters is that, beyond more juice in the tank, they will often have just the right blaster spell, and lets face it, also have access to additional 1 action damage, and probably with a greater range than 30 feet. Also, Divine is okay now, but Primal and Arcane are still better for blasting. Add extra damage features such as blood magic and the like, and you become best in class.
I don't think strong 1-action damage on a caster is really that much of a universal. The Sorcerer does get some bloodline spells that do this, and those bloodlines are usually the ones that are really good at blasting, but the Wizard doesn't really get this in good amounts despite access to force bolt and force barrage, the Druid doesn't really do any of this either, the Cleric isn't really geared for blasting given that harm is a weak damage spell, the Bard obviously doesn't really blast, the Witch's hex cantrips aren't exactly blasting options... really, as far as blasting is concerned, the Psychic is still up there, even if the Sorcerer definitely got a major power-up with the remaster.
I'll also challenge the notion that primal and arcane are better for blasting, because primal and arcane damage spells are among the ones most likely to be resisted or hit immunities. Spirit damage, by contrast, very rarely does, so your blasting is extremely reliable, and if you play with sanctification you can punch above your weight by triggering holy or unholy weaknesses. Primal and arcane do very much offer excellent blasting, and their offerings are still much more attractive at earlier levels, but at higher levels the divine list gets a lot of powerful blasts.
And Psychic really needs a Remaster. Sorceror really ate its lunch.
I definitely agree the Psychic needs a remaster. I think it's less about the Sorcerer, though, and more that a lot of the Psychic's strengths are things every other caster now gets for free: being able to Refocus more than one Focus Point was one of the class's defining strengths pre-remaster, for instance, and is what allowed their amps to truly shine as powerful resourceless spells. Now that everyone can Refocus to full, the Psychic is no longer special, and their amps have become even easier for other classes to poach to full effect. It's also not just the Sorcerer, but pretty much every class with a power-up that got their restrictions removed, including even the Barbarian, so the Psychic being left with a self-stupefy after 2 rounds doesn't feel great. In my opinion, the class doesn't really need more powerful blast spells, but they could certainly benefit from a starting pool of 3 Focus Points, a full restore on Refocus at level 1, an updated Unleash Psyche that no longer self-stupefies, and a rework to their multiclass dedication that no longer offers amps.
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I feel there's a lot of theorycrafting, white room maths and a fair bit of schrödinger's animist going on from both sides, so let's root it all in actual play, from what I've seen and done.
1) Most, if not all groups, get a +1 status bonus to attack almost from the get-go.
It's the best cost-benefit you can hope for, and I've never played in a group where someone didn't take care of it one way or another. Either there's a bard or bard dedication with courageous anthem, or a marshall with inspiring marshall stance, or lacking that a caster using bless, or even guidance in a pinch. But by level 4, even with no FA, most groups have this sorted out.
This means that embodiment of battle already loses a bit of steam by "only" getting a +1 bonus over the others at levels 7 and a +2 at level 13. It's great, don't get me wrong, but not as much as you might think.
If you're comparing the animist using embodiment of battle to a martial when there's some kind of anthem going on (so, like, always), then the animist is always lagging behind, sometimes severely. Grudging strike helps somewhat with accuracy but takes two actions, and doesn't deal that much damage. Especially since...
2) The animist can hardly do everything at once.
Sure, the animist is flexible, but his attributes and stuff aren't. Assuming you start with 16 STR and 18 WIS, you'll have to make a choice for your apex item around level 17. Sure, it's pretty late in the game, but that's also where Forest's Heart starts to see some use. If you choose STR, you're a bit behind martials and you gimp your DC. If you choose WIS, you end up with -2 accuracy at level 20 (assuming the martial didn't get an heroism going as well, in which case you're down -4, and -6 against a fighter).
And what about your stuff ? Casters usually don't spend much money on weapons (or at least not as much as a martial), but you will have to. You can change your apparitions and feats at level 16 when you get forest's heart but that means you spend the first 15 levels using some other kind of weapon that you upgraded - meaning no staff, less scrolls, less items... Forest's heart doesn't need striking runes but you probably used one so far and it certainly cut into your budget, and you'll need the other runes for your handwraps.
So, IF you gimp your spellcasting (embodiment of battle + STR apex means a whopping -3 to your DC) and spend as much money as a martial on your weapons, you might be able to do some piddly damage. Who cares if you get two AOOs when they tickle monsters ? As for your manoeuvers, you're 1 point behind from STR half of the time, and you don't get any special trick like barbarian's Furious Bully, fighter's crashing slam or swashbuckler's derring-do that makes them dance circles around you.
3) Your action economy sucks big time.
Battle starts and you roll initiative. Since you have a big bonus to it, let's say you win. Your first round will be move + embodiment of battle + going into Forest stance, go you.
Compare that to any martial who can usually already attack twice and that's a gap you'll take a long time to clear.
Compare that to any caster who can turn the tide of the fight with a flick of the wrist and you're feeling more sad by the minute.
4) If you really want to melee, don't use embodiment of battle.
That's what we found out in our games. Embodiment of battle is kind of a trap, when compared to other options.
Don't use this vessel spell at all.
Attack of opportunity and proficiencies can easily be poached through multiclassing, especially in a FA game.
If you want to melee without Embodiment, you'll lose 1 or 2 points of accuracy BUT your DC will be top tier and you'll be able to use a much more useful vessel spell (with the mandatory spiritual expansion). Against mooks ? Nymph's grace is akin to instant win. Against higher level opponents ? Discomfiting whispers makes your team tanky as hell. Against boss ? Trickster's Mirror is incredible as long as he doesn't use AOEs. And of course, you still have the option of hitting + blasting with earth's bile, dealing way more damage than embodiment of battle.
And if you really want to go full melee, just use Darkened forest form in a pinch, it will hard carry you up to level 15.
For a quick and dirty comparison, a lvl 7 animist (where embodiment goes to +2) using embodiment of battle can swing a +1 guisarme for +16, dealing 2d10+6 damage.
A level 7 animist using darkened forest hits for +16 (+17 if there's any kind of status bonus) as well, dealing 2d8+9 (10 with anthem) and same reach.
To be fair, the first one could cast while the second one cannot, but since their action economy is so tight, it's hardly likely to matter. So the second one is ahead both in accuracy and damage.
A lvl 13 animist using embodiment of battle (where it goes to +3) is at his peak and will have a +2 greater striking guisarme, hitting at +26 for 3d10+9 .
A lvl 13 animist using darkened forest will hit at +25 (+26 with any status buff) for 4d10+11 and better reach.
Again, the first animist had to pour his money into a fully upgraded weapon, and even at his peak, he's still worse than the second one who doesn't even need to invest in STR if he doesn't feel like it.
Later in the game, the second animist will lag behind since darkened forest doesn't upgrade anymore, but at this point your magic should be at its peak anyway - and you'll be more dangerous as a forest's heart user if you take Nymph's grace/discomfiting whispers/earth's bile/whatever than embodiment of battle.
TLDR: Kids, embodiment of battle sucks. Don't do this at home. The only reason people think it's good is that it's much better than the pile of garbage Battle Oracle got.