I'll preface this by saying that I don't think the exemplar is a bad class. It is one of my favorite martial classes as it enables an anime-esque magic martial fantasy that isn't truly enabled by other martials without having to actually be a gish, though I always felt there was something off with the exemplar.
This is more of a flavor concern, but I don’t really understand why this class has the rare trait. I get that Paizo wanted to highlight the Godsrain, and tying a class to it is a great way to do that, but nothing about the class itself feels “rare,” especially when compared to the rest of the system. The whole premise of the exemplar is that they possess a “divine spark” from Gorum that empowers them, but clerics, oracles, divine sorcerers, divine summoners, and divine witches effectively have something similar as well? You don’t have Gorum within you, you carry only a small fragment of him. I’d argue that an angelic sorcerer descended from a solar angel has more divinity in them than an exemplar. Oracles and clerics also receive their power directly from the gods, so whats exactly "rare" about exemplars?
The next issue concerns the class vs. its archetype. I’m not going to talk about how overpowered the dedication is here, but rather on how some ikons seem to function better in the archetype than in the class itself. For example, I don’t see myself taking Bands of Imprisonment, Pelt of the Beast, Skin Hard as Iron, Thousand-League Sandals, or Victor’s Wreath in most exemplar builds because they have strong immanence effects but weak transcendence effects, making them unattractive to shift into. However, this isn't a problem for archetype exemplars. As an archetype exemplar, you don't care about the transcendence because you need to “recharge” your ikon afterwards, but on the other hand, this allows you to choose ikons with good immanence effects ignoring the transcendence instead. An archetype exemplar's victor's wreath ikon is effectively a passive bard's couraegous anthem, and the trascendence its still there if one of your allies happens to fail a save against a nasty spell or effect. For a normal exemplar, Victor’s Wreath’s immanence is still strong, but somewhat unreliable, since it will be toggling on and off almost every other turn, and in most rounds, you’ll likely Shift Immanence rather than transcend with it, as opportunities to use its transcendence are limited and you’ll want to have your spark in a different ikon.
A similar thing happens with weapon ikons; it feels almost mandatory to choose at least one weapon ikon as an exemplar, yet the class allows you to go without one. On top of that, since you have three ikons total, you can end up in situations where you switch between your second and third options, leaving you without your primary damage-boosting class feature for a couple of turns. Overall, I like that the class allows such freedom of choice at character creation, but unlike other similar classes like kineticist or thaumaturge which also have a ton of moving parts and rarely you'll end up screwing yourself with them (more so kineticist than thaumaturge tbh), in the exemplar I think its really easy to end up with an exemplar that underperforms, which I think goes against one of PF2e's principles of "every build works".
I don't see much talk about the exemplar so I thought about making this post to discuss about it. What do you guys think about the exemplar?
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I think the Rare tag is because of the inherent grandiosity of Ikons and especially Epithets.
In some visions of the fantasy genre, every single magic item is precious, and finding or earning each one is a significant moment - meaning some might balk at a starting character coming in with 3 super-special Ikons of their own right out the gate. Similarly, the act of growing a mythical title that will echo throughout history is baked into their progression, and many of their Feats are flavored as godlike acts of bravery or power (even if they aren't exceptionally stronger than anyone mechanically).
You can throw a Fighter or Rogue into almost every campaign pitch and they will work, but an Exemplar will clash with certain tones and settings - much like the other rarity-tagged classes, the Gunslinger and Inventor.
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Yeah, it seems more a thematic tag as it actually is rare in setting than a worrisome-abilities tag. Thus it's freely allowed in PFS, much like firearms & lots of tech are, because PFS plays in a full-blown version of Golarion. But you can't go hire one or expect to know of any, nor except others to understand your PC if they're one, etc.
I'd been developing an Exemplar who then split into two PCs going different directions because of the way Ikons interacted. Which is to say that developing your PC's action routine is of primary importance (which can also be said of Fighter when picking Flourish/Press feats). I can't imagine a situation "leaving you without your primary damage-boosting class feature for a couple of turns" (unless the payoff warranted it of course). I agree, that shouldn't be a thing, yet what's trapping you? I could see one turn if you're out of position too (which I suppose could recur due to an enemy's tactics).
If you use Transcendence on a secondary Ikon, say as your first one or two actions, why not shift it to your weapon to get the damage boost when you Strike? Or do you mean it's the Transcendence effect itself that's the damage boost, in which case shift it back every round w/o using Transcendence on your secondary Ikon or have two weapon Ikons to alternate between (or Swap).
It's not a simple class, yet I don't think it has many trap options. It overtly says you should get a Weapon Ikon. That, a high attack stat, and AC 18 (at 1st) should suffice for even a new player I'd think.
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I think the Rare tag is because of the inherent grandiosity of Ikons and especially Epithets.
Yeah. Which interacts badly with certain personality types of players and can lead to a huge problem of 'main character syndrome'.
It is similar to why Gunslinger and Inventor are Uncommon. Some campaigns and homebrew settings don't want to have that level of technology available. It has nothing to do with mechanical game balance.
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You can throw a Fighter or Rogue into almost every campaign pitch and they will work, but an Exemplar will clash with certain tones and settings - much like the other rarity-tagged classes, the Gunslinger and Inventor.
But would it really? An exemplar is effectively a martial divine sorcerer, in that it receives its power from a divine source, except in this case its martial power rather than spellcasting. All the baggage about gods, epithets, and the like is more of a flavor choice to represent those features, as I think we can agree you don't need to be an exemplar for your character to earn a nickname or title. I get the idea is that the exemplar is grandiose and unique and that's what makes it rare, but I feel there's nothing in the class that justifies that decision. I don't get the people that don't like tech in their fantasy for whatever reason, but at least those classes use tech, so there's a clear reason to ban them if you don't want that in your games. All options that "clash with certain tones and settings" in the exemplar are 100% flavor and, rather than ban the class, would require a simple reflavor. One that's really easy to do because there's a ton of divine classes in the game that are fair game.
If you use Transcendence on a secondary Ikon, say as your first one or two actions, why not shift it to your weapon to get the damage boost when you Strike? Or do you mean it's the Transcendence effect itself that's the damage boost, in which case shift it back every round w/o using Transcendence on your secondary Ikon or have two weapon Ikons to alternate between (or Swap).
If you are shifting your spark between your #2 and #3 ikons, you won't be able to benefit from the immanence of your #1 ikon (your weapon ikon), which means there's situations which can potentially leave you without your class's main damage class feature, which I feel its pretty much unique of the exemplar class, as even other classes like the swashbuckler are built around doing nova damage or the rogue which has a ton of ways to target off-guard targets so its unlikely they won't get to use it. I don't think the weapon ikon's damage is that outrageous to add this many restrictions to it, more so when compared to other similar features from other classes. Even Paizo themselves seem to think this, as they made it really easy to access from the archetype, regardless of what people think about its balance.
In fact, I'd argue Paizo likely thinks each ikon individually isn't that strong for this reason, with the exemplar's strength coming from the fact that you have 3 ikons and can easily switch betweem them, though as I mentioned earlier, I feel there's ikons which are stronger when you don't have to actually juggle multiple of them, thus making them better for archetype exemplars, and weaker when you can't access their immanence at all times, thus making them worse for normal exemplars.
I personally don't think there's anything in the exemplar class itself to make it as complicated to play and build as it currently is, and I feel it would work much better if immanence effects became passive bonuses granted by choosing that ikon, with the choice of where to move your spark only determining which ikon you can transcend each round. This wouldn't be the case for archetype exemplars though, which would still work exactly like they do right now.
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I agree with the others that the rare tag is for thematic reasons: having a legendary demigod in a fantasy party is quite likely to warp the narrative, even if the balance remains fine.
As for the point regarding balance across ikons, I think the issue is simply that some ikons are a fair bit weaker than others. I think it's inevitable that the Exemplar will need a weapon ikon to deal competent Strike damage, and that much is stated in the class's ikon list, but otherwise I think ikons ought to have comparably strong immanences and transcendences: as the OP mentions, it's not just that the archetype can just sit on a single ikon's immanence and not worry about its weaker transcendence, those ikons aren't going to be as popular on the main class as alternatives that can do both well. This I think is something that can be fixed with errata, which ideally ought to also remove the baseline immanence effects of ikons from the multiclass archetype.
Yeah, it's rare because one person being "the chosen one" in a way that is backed up by game mechanics doesn't necessarily work with every story or every party composition. At the very least, before bringing an Exemplar to the table one needs to have these discussions about expectations, and sharing the spotlight, and tone, etc.
Rare things always requiring GM approval ensures that these conversations occur in session 0.
The archetype is a whole can of worms where it's possibly the most powerful level 2 feat in the game for a wide array of builds. It might not be something you want to allow. My plan (that I haven't got around to yet) was to run a game where every character got the archetype for free, as people who randomly got a small amount of godstuff, just to feel it out.
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Yeah, it's rare because one person being "the chosen one" in a way that is backed up by game mechanics doesn't necessarily work with every story or every party composition.
But why is the exemplar a "chosen one" but not clerics, oracles, divine sorcerers, divine summoners, or divine witches (common classes) which are also empowered by divine beings? That's my whole point here.
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PossibleCabbage may have a different take on this, but my own is that those casters who are empowered by one or more divine entities don't necessarily fall into the "chosen one" narrative: if you're a Champion or a Cleric of a deity, you are a chosen one among thousands for that deity alone, in the sense that you serve that deity and have powers to help with that. If you're a divine Sorcerer, you certainly could be the descendant of a god, and that could fit that kind of "chosen one" narrative, but you could also be one of similarly many people who were born under weird circumstances or whose ancestors had dealings with an outsider.
By contrast, the Exemplar's whole thing is that they're so special that their name is already starting to become legend: your ikons and epithets aren't just things that make you powerful, they're an intrinsic part of your story that are each so epic as to define who you are. It's not even that you were chosen, so much that you're already the kind of person people are writing stories about that will be told for generations to come, perhaps forever. Your very existence as an Exemplar already starts to shape the culture of the world around you, and that incurs farther-reaching narrative ramifications than "I'm a priest of Sarenrae" or "I got caught in a storm once and now I can shoot lightning from my hands".
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But an exemplar isn't the "chosen one" of a deity either, its one of the (likely) thousands of people who happened to get a small fragment of Gorum's soul after he died. As I said in my original post, I'd argue that an angelic sorcerer who descends from a strong celestial has more divine in them than an exemplar, and I'd also argue that spellcasting in general can make someone closer to godhood as well, as magic bends the rules of reality.
An exemplar doesn't need Gorum to justify its existence, and if it doesn't need that, it also doesn't need the rare trait. Paizo did it because they wanted to have a poster child class for the Godsrain, but they could have easily just released the exact same class without the rare trait and still explain the class recently got a boost in numbers because of the Godsrain. After all, the exemplar is explicitly built to emulate characters from IRL myths. And you know what? Earth does exist on Pathfinder's universe! So its likely someone like Achilles or Cuchulainn actually existed on Earth at some point and likely were exemplars. No dead god required.
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I feel like the rarity ends up being kind of a weird self fulfilling prophecy that doesn't need to exist. It's rare because it's "Grandiose" but it's not really any more grandiose than anything else that exists in the game in any intrinsic way.
If the class wasn't rare we could just say "It's basically a divine sorcerer but martial instead of spellcaster" and that pretty much encapsulates its thematic presence perfectly and nobody would care.
Instead we kind of get this self reinforcing loop where people psych themselves up over the class' themes and flavor that ... doesn't need to happen. It's like we're ad hoc coming up with reasons to justify the rare tag almost retroactively. It's rare so it must be special becomes it's special so it must be rare but really what we're talking about is some dude who can slightly upgrade their weapon with divine power on par with literally everyone else in their power bracket, lmao.
There's no actual sauce here.
In some visions of the fantasy genre, every single magic item is precious
Yeah but not in Pathfinder.
But why is the exemplar a "chosen one" but not clerics, oracles, divine sorcerers, divine summoners, or divine witches (common classes) which are also empowered by divine beings? That's my whole point here.
The irony here is that a champion or cleric actually is chosen. Like they're explicitly directly blessed by an explicit divine force.
The iconic exemplar got splashed with some weird goop that gave him powers which is honestly like pretty damn mundane.
Your very existence as an Exemplar already starts to shape the culture of the world around you, and that incurs farther-reaching narrative ramifications than "I'm a priest of Sarenrae" or "I got caught in a storm once and now I can shoot lightning from my hands".
"Got caught in a storm and now has magic powers" is literally how the iconic exemplar became an exemplar. And that's like- the end of it.
"Your very existence starts to shape the culture of the world" is just being a PC in a high powered fantasy game. Fighters do that too.
This is what I mean by no sauce. There's so much "what if we just describe the normal narrative of an AP but pretend it's a special toxic trait of this one class" that doesn't actually link to anything.
Exemplars aren't even particularly good at warping the narrative like a wizard or cleric can with the right spells.
But an exemplar isn't the "chosen one" of a deity either, its one of the (likely) thousands of people who happened to get a small fragment of Gorum's soul after he died.
Note that PossibleCabbage only brought up "the chosen one" as a trope; the notion that the Exemplar is chosen by a deity is your own addition, one that nobody else is arguing. War of Immortals goes at great length to detail the impact of the Godsrain, and the number of Exemplars to have come out of it is in fact rare.
An exemplar doesn't need Gorum to justify its existence, and if it doesn't need that, it also doesn't need the rare trait. Paizo did it because they wanted to have a poster child class for the Godsrain, but they could have easily just released the exact same class without the rare trait and still explain the class recently got a boost in numbers because of the Godsrain. After all, the exemplar is explicitly built to emulate characters from IRL myths. And you know what? Earth does exist on Pathfinder's universe! So its likely someone like Achilles or Cuchulainn actually existed on Earth at some point and likely were exemplars. No dead god required.
I certainly agree that Exemplars needn't be exclusive products of the Godsrain, and that was definitely Paizo trying to tie the class into their proprietary IP, but the potential Exemplars you cite are similarly rare, and not necessarily the best team players either. Achilles is surrounded by other more distant descendants of Greek gods, yet even in a story as complex as the Illiad, his very presence warps the narrative around himself for much of the epic. Similarly, Cú Chulainn is a dominant figure of the Ulster Cycle who exists more as a force of nature that Conchobar can barely keep under control for the most part. While there are certainly examples of stories where a legendary figure can still fit as part of a more grounded ensemble cast, as with Sun Wukong in Journey to the West, that's a delicate narrative balance that not every GM might be able to deal with, nor want to.
"Got caught in a storm and now has magic powers" is literally how the iconic exemplar became an exemplar. And that's like- the end of it.
Nahoa fought a demon owl in an impossible battle and transcended his own mortality by seizing his divine spark while traveling across worlds. I'm not sure we read the same backstory.
"Your very existence starts to shape the culture of the world" is just being a PC in a high powered fantasy game. Fighters do that too.
Sure, at high level if the GM allows it. We're talking about a class that already starts to do this at level 1.
This is what I mean by no sauce. There's so much "what if we just describe the normal narrative of an AP but pretend it's a special toxic trait of this one class" that doesn't actually link to anything.
Exemplars aren't even particularly good at warping the narrative like a wizard or cleric can with the right spells.
I feel there's a lot of deliberate downplaying going on where the class's key thematic elements are being intentionally ignored. Like yes, if you ignore the fact that the class is very much presented as a demigod with weapons and abilities that transcend those of mere mortals, and whose fancy titles are literally a class feature, then sure, that entirely different class you have in your mind might be bland and inoffensive enough to pass. That's not what the Exemplar is, though, and not every adventuring party in Pathfinder needs to accommodate a potential god in the making. If we can accept that it's okay to not have every adventuring party running around with guns, robots, and katana, then I don't see why this wouldn't be okay too.
Ikon 1/Weapon Ikon isn't working because I shifted energy from Ikon 2 to Ikon 3...is a player choice, not an aspect of the class denying your PC its damage bonus. You chose that. There's zero reason you couldn't have your damage bonus every round, unless you reckoned the other Ikon helped more...which is great, your PC has distinct, competitive options!
And some of these Immanence abilities are quite strong. I prefer that to watering them down so they can function simultaneously (or having fewer, gasp).
The competitive options, timing which Immanence to have active and which Transcendence ability to have chambered make the class more interesting, and likely helped the class's power budget.
Unsure how Paizo feels about the Archetype, but PFS deems it imbalanced. You can only take it on one PC ever, so it has to mean something other than being the best 1-feat dip for PCs w/o an Archetype (or w/ at 9th level for human-kin). Heck, I'd likely take it w/ every Monk who'd oddly be Elven most of the time.
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While there are certainly examples of stories where a legendary figure can still fit as part of a more grounded ensemble cast, as with Sun Wukong in Journey to the West, that's a delicate narrative balance that not every GM might be able to deal with, nor want to.
But if a GM doesn't want to do that they can just... not? Because the exemplar isn't that anyways. Like a GM can certainly decide to give a unique ability to influence the narrative, but that's a specific choice being made by the people at the table and has nothing to do with the class... which is basically just an okay utility martial mechanically and a martial analog to a divine sorcerer in terms of flavor and origin.
The whole notion that there's an either-or choice between 'delicately balancing' the exemplar's narrative weight or banning it is nonsense because the exemplar only has as much of that as the GM decides to give them, same as literally every other character.
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But if a GM doesn't want to do that they can just... not?
Gee, if only the game had some kind of system to enshrine in the rules what gets included in the game only at the GM's discretion? I'm sure those elements would be considered more rare than others.
Because the exemplar isn't that anyways. Like a GM can certainly decide to give a unique ability to influence the narrative, but that's a specific choice being made by the people at the table and has nothing to do with the class... which is basically just an okay utility martial mechanically and a martial analog to a divine sorcerer in terms of flavor and origin.
The whole notion that there's an either-or choice between 'delicately balancing' the exemplar's narrative weight or banning it is nonsense because the exemplar only has as much of that as the GM decides to give them, same as literally every other character.
The class as presented in War of Immortals has an entire sidebar telling the GM to ask what epithets their Exemplar player wants and changing their story accordingly so that the class's epithet reflects their actions through play. No other class gets this. Reading the short form on AoN might not immediately convey this impression, but the class is quite plainly presented as one whose mere presence is what starts creating legends around them. You can choose to not do any of this if you want, but that is part of the default package.
I also feel it's rather silly to conflate the class's mechanical balance with rarity here, and generally, it seems some people here are clinging to the repeatedly disproven notion that "rare" means "overpowered". It doesn't. In fact, a lot of rare game elements are crap, like true names, and mythic destiny feats are generally worse than most non-mythic feats you could get at the same level. If the Exemplar were as game-breakingly powerful as the heroes of myth they're inspired from, then what they'd need isn't the rare tag, but a severe balance pass.
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I certainly agree that Exemplars needn't be exclusive products of the Godsrain, and that was definitely Paizo trying to tie the class into their proprietary IP, but the potential Exemplars you cite are similarly rare, and not necessarily the best team players either. Achilles is surrounded by other more distant descendants of Greek gods, yet even in a story as complex as the Illiad, his very presence warps the narrative around himself for much of the epic. Similarly, Cú Chulainn is a dominant figure of the Ulster Cycle who exists more as a force of nature that Conchobar can barely keep under control for the most part. While there are certainly examples of stories where a legendary figure can still fit as part of a more grounded ensemble cast, as with Sun Wukong in Journey to the West, that's a delicate narrative balance that not every GM might be able to deal with, nor want to.
I'm not really against the idea of the exemplar "warping the narrative" as, like Squiggit, its something arguably every character in a high fantasy TTRPG does. Its not like I expect the exemplar to be a one-man army like most myth heroes usually are either, but what I'm trying to say is that there's narrative dissonance between what the class tells you it is and what the class really is, because if you put all the lore about the Godsrain to the side, the exemplar can still exist as a martial divine sorcerer.
Ikon 1/Weapon Ikon isn't working because I shifted energy from Ikon 2 to Ikon 3...is a player choice, not an aspect of the class denying your PC its damage bonus. You chose that. There's zero reason you couldn't have your damage bonus every round, unless you reckoned the other Ikon helped more...which is great, your PC has distinct, competitive options!
That's like saying the barbarian shouldn't be able to benefit from rage only every other turn, or a thaumaturge's from implement's empowerment, or the fighter or gunslinger from their higher proficiency bonus, or that a monk shouldn't be able to FoB, etc. Do you know what other feature has a very similar design to this? The psychic's Unleash Psyche, which is a feature most people agree is weirdly restrictive for no apparent reason.
And some of these Immanence abilities are quite strong. I prefer that to watering them down so they can function simultaneously (or having fewer, gasp).
The only immanence that would be a bit too OP if it became a passive benefit would be fetching bangle's, as an ability that could potentially disrupt the movement of multiple enemies without an action cost would too much, but besides that, I don't see a single other immanence being a problem. Bands of Imprisonment, Pelt of the Beast, and Skin Hard as Iron have defensive benefits that aren't much different from those other classes or even ancestries have access to. Scar of the Survivor gives you a general feat and a +1 to Fortitude (again, I could easily see this as an ancestry feat), Thousand-League Sandals is equivalent to a monk's incredible movement or a swashbuckler's vivacious speed, Eye-Catching Spot is effectively a lessened constant bane spell, Victor's Wreath (which archetype exemplars already use as if it was a passive benefit, as I pointed out earlier) is a constant bless spell, and Mirrored Aegis is a constant benediction spell. Finally, all the weapon ikons are mostly a bonus to damage, one that IMO shouldn't be part of the ikon in the first place, so as long as they didn't stack with each other, I honestly don't see the problem here.
Like, if you wanted to take Eye Catching Spot, Mirrored Aegis, and Victor's Wreath to play a passive buffs bot I don't see the problem. You'll be missing the offensive capabilities of the weapon ikons, and the utlity cappabilities of others like like Horn of Plenty. I'd argue an air/earth kineticist with the Desert Wind and Safe Elements feats, as well as the air aura junction and earth aura junction gets much better defensive benefits to their allies than this exemplar ikon combo would.
Edit: Not to mention it would also increase the exemplar's customization, because even when the class can technically take whatever ikon they want right now, in practice there's ikons that don't synergise like at all with each other and at least one of those is going to be a weapon ikon, while another one is going to be a defensive one. I could totally see support exemplars being a thing if the immanence of some ikons became passive, but I can't really say that happening right now.
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I also feel it's rather silly to conflate the class's mechanical balance with rarity here, and generally, it seems some people here are clinging to the repeatedly disproven notion that "rare" means "overpowered". It doesn't. In fact, a lot of rare game elements are crap, like true names, and mythic destiny feats are generally worse than most non-mythic feats you could get at the same level. If the Exemplar were as game-breakingly powerful as the heroes of myth they're inspired from, then what they'd need isn't the rare tag, but a severe balance pass.
I don't think Squiggit is arguing about mechanical balance here, but rather how rarity traits are an unnecesary tool because a GM can choose what options to restrict or not on their own without them, and the fact that Paizo uses them to represent how rare something is on Golarion only exists to confuse people because most people will see an "uncommon" or "rare" trait and immediately assume something must be wrong with it, like being more powerful than other options of its level or that the GM should take it into account for whatever reason. This isn't the case though, and in fact, as you point out, most things with rarity traits are usually really bad, so it creates a dissonance where new GMs assume these should be restricted for some reason, but they don't know the reason why they should be.
It would be much simpler if the concept of rarity traits existed as a variant rule, and rather than having "uncommon" and "rare" we just had the "rare" trait to mean "This is a feat, feature, item, or effect that requires GM discretion" rather than something you see seemingly at random added all throughout the system.
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Gee, if only the game had some kind of system to enshrine in the rules what gets included in the game only at the GM's discretion?
But we're not talking about rules elements. We're talking about the baggage you're bringing to the table. No subsystem can deal with that.
I also feel it's rather silly to conflate the class's mechanical balance with rarity here
Agreed in general, but when you talk about a class having undue narrative weight, how much that weight actually exists in practice has to be part of the conversation.
And it's just factually true the exemplar has exactly as much narrative weight as the GM is willing to give it, which can be said of sorcerers and paladins and fighters and rogues too.
The phrasing being used by some posters here suggests that it's somehow impossible to have an exemplar in a party without them fundamentally altering the narrative of the game and that's just... not true. Nothing about the class demands that. You can play an exemplar the same way you'd play a champion or rogue and nothing bad happens, nothing breaks, nothing gets contradicted. This whole dilemma is invented. so it's important to point out that the issues being described here literally only exist if the GM wants them to, irrespective of whether or not anyone is playing an exemplar.
The Rare and Uncommon tags really only have as much weight as we give them, outside of official society play, and here really relate more to setting expectations than anything. Like, the Gunslinger and Inventor are Uncommon, to my eye, just because maybe your homebrew setting doesn't have this kind of steampunk/renaissance technology level where those would be a thing, and you should ask your GM first if that's the case or you're both comfortable with you being the world's first Gunslinger Percy CriticalRole style.
Now, that's theoretically true of a lot of classes. It's probably not plausible to say there are no masters of weaponry or sneak-attacking thieves unless your setting is really weird. But you could absolutely build a world where the Gods are very distant and maybe dead, so Clerics and Champions are Rare here if they exist at all. But that's not the standard expectation.
Like it or not, there is a baseline standard for what sort of fantasy world these games are assumed to be set in, building off the last century of sword and sorcery stories and the last 50 years of TTRPG settings. Everyone is free to use or diverge from that baseline on a whole mess of axes, but within that baseline there are almost certainly priests and knights who channel power from their gods, maybe cackling machinists with one-of-a-kind steam powered combat automata, and probably not many semi-divine designated heroes whose names, titles, and impliments will go be carried on through history and into myth, save for like, one or two guys who are probably the protagonists.
Golarion exists as a baseline for you to use or diverge from as you see fit, meant to be diverse enough in cultural and genre trappings that whatever sort of game you want to play you can probably find something to either use or draw inspiration from, but it is a baseling and it has its own expectation and limitations.
I'm not really against the idea of the exemplar "warping the narrative" as, like Squiggit, its something arguably every character in a high fantasy TTRPG does. Its not like I expect the exemplar to be a one-man army like most myth heroes usually are either, but what I'm trying to say is that there's narrative dissonance between what the class tells you it is and what the class really is, because if you put all the lore about the Godsrain to the side, the exemplar can still exist as a martial divine sorcerer.
That's not particularly true, though, for the reasons already mentioned above. Even high-level adventurers don't need campaigns to be rewritten around them and their personal story, which is why narrative-warping concepts like "prophesized monarch of a nation" or "deity in the making" are reserved for mythic destinies. The Exemplar, by contrast, incurs that kind of distortion, particularly if a GM is trying to accommodate their epithets organically. This is also why the "martial Sorcerer" thing doesn't fly: a Sorcerer can certainly be born with powers, but that doesn't mean they automatically tread the domain of legends, no more than someone born near a nuclear power plant in the modern day will become an immortal folk hero just because they glow slightly green.
I don't think Squiggit is arguing about mechanical balance here
Yes, they are:
Exemplars aren't even particularly good at warping the narrative like a wizard or cleric can with the right spells.
And here too:
Like a GM can certainly decide to give a unique ability to influence the narrative, but that's a specific choice being made by the people at the table and has nothing to do with the class... which is basically just an okay utility martial mechanically
They also flat-out admit to it here:
Agreed in general, but when you talk about a class having undue narrative weight, how much that weight actually exists in practice has to be part of the conversation.
If mechanics weren't part of the discussion, they didn't need to be brought into discussion. Clearly, there is a conflation here between mechanical balance and theming.
but rather how rarity traits are an unnecesary tool because a GM can choose what options to restrict or not on their own without them, and the fact that Paizo uses them to represent how rare something is on Golarion only exists to confuse people because most people will see an "uncommon" or "rare" trait and immediately assume something must be wrong with it, like being more powerful than other options of its level or that the GM should take it into account for whatever reason. This isn't the case though, and in fact, as you point out, most things with rarity traits are usually really bad, so it creates a dissonance where new GMs assume these should be restricted for some reason, but they don't know the reason why they should be.
Just because you personally fail to see the value in rarity traits does not mean everyone else has to as well. Rarity clearly does have a purpose, and it helps save the GM the kind of headache that comes from those options being freely available in other games and requiring either a lot of accommodation or a personal ban list. While I can agree that rarity tries to do a few too many things at once in Pathfinder, it undeniably fulfils a useful function in auto-banning things that could otherwise make GMing much more complicated, like coming up with a true name for every creature, and making those opt-in rather than opt-out by default. Again, not every fantasy adventure has to accommodate guns and robots and walking demigods, and rarity empowers the GM to keep those out of the stories they want to tell without having to constantly be on guard for stuff a player might include on their character. I'd argue it's also empowering for the players too, who can feel safe to include any common option without having to ask the GM for permission first, and then talk about rarer options when marked.
But we're not talking about rules elements. We're talking about the baggage you're bringing to the table. No subsystem can deal with that.
We are quite literally talking about a rules element that helps tag and separate the kind of baggage being brought to the table. Rather than have every individual GM argue "no, I'm not including firearms in my fantasy campaign because that's not part of the setting I want to have," we can instead slap a tag onto that stuff that signals "hey, this stuff might not be appropriate for every fantasy campaign, so talk to your GM first about it."
Agreed in general, but when you talk about a class having undue narrative weight, how much that weight actually exists in practice has to be part of the conversation.
Correct, and narrative weight is fundamentally separate from the mechanical weight that is factored into Pathfinder's balance. This is why you can play a minor deity in a mythic game and have abilities tailored for your godhood that are weaker than regular class feats of the same level.
And it's just factually true the exemplar has exactly as much narrative weight as the GM is willing to give it, which can be said of sorcerers and paladins and fighters and rogues too.
By that same token, a person who leaves the windows wide open in their house during a snowstorm has to deal with exactly as much snow in their house the following morning as they're willing to not shovel out. That doesn't make closing the windows the less practical option. Similarly, a GM with an Exemplar in the party has to work against the thematics baked into the class, which is not only likely to still incur additional work, but is also likely to disappoint the player if not communicated properly, especially if their epithets end up coming from nowhere.
narrative of the game and that's just... not true. Nothing about the class demands that. You can play an exemplar the same way you'd play a champion or rogue and nothing bad happens, nothing breaks, nothing gets contradicted. This whole dilemma is invented. so it's important to point out that the issues being described here literally only exist if the GM wants them to, irrespective of whether or not anyone is playing an exemplar.
I feel like you've been around long enough to know what the Oberoni fallacy is, and why you're committing it here: yes, I agree with you that the Exemplar can be reflavored to just be a character with funky superpowers, and the GM certainly can ignore that sidebar and all the other elements of the Exemplar's theming that can have them warp the narrative around them. However, just because the problem can be fixed doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist, and claiming that these issues are "invented" when there is literally an entire paragraph of text explaining how the GM should try rewriting their adventure around this class strikes me as pointlessly contrarian at best.
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That's not particularly true, though, for the reasons already mentioned above. Even high-level adventurers don't need campaigns to be rewritten around them and their personal story, which is why narrative-warping concepts like "prophesized monarch of a nation" or "deity in the making" are reserved for mythic destinies.
Neither does the exemplar though, and I'll use your own words here:
I agree with you that the Exemplar can be reflavored to just be a character with funky superpowers, and the GM certainly can ignore that sidebar and all the other elements of the Exemplar's theming that can have them warp the narrative around them.
Everything "grandiose" about the exemplar is flavor text and suggestions, and, for example, epithets don't really mean more than, say, a barbarian's instinct in how the people in the world react to the character. Yes, an exemplar with the "radiant" and "peerless under heaven" epithets could be known as someone with brilliant charisma and unparallaled frightening martial skill, but so could every martial with a high modifier on Diplomacy and also receive a nickname or title for it.
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"If you ignore the flavor, the flavor-based Rarity tag stops making sense" is where the argument seems to have landed, and I'm just not sure how productive that reasoning is.
Castilliano wrote:
Ikon 1/Weapon Ikon isn't working because I shifted energy from Ikon 2 to Ikon 3...is a player choice, not an aspect of the class denying your PC its damage bonus. You chose that. There's zero reason you couldn't have your damage bonus every round, unless you reckoned the other Ikon helped more...which is great, your PC has distinct, competitive options!
E-759
That's like saying the barbarian shouldn't be able to benefit from rage only every other turn, or a thaumaturge's from implement's empowerment, or the fighter or gunslinger from their higher proficiency bonus, or that a monk shouldn't be able to FoB, etc. Do you know what other feature has a very similar design to this? The psychic's Unleash Psyche, which is a feature most people agree is weirdly restrictive for no apparent reason.
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Except I said the opposite, that there's zero reason your Exemplar, as written, couldn't apply their damage bonus every round.
And you went on to downplay a bunch of Immanence effects by comparing them to popular spells therefore we should allow multiple ones to stack? Constantly, without using slots or actions? Not following that logic. Plus it'd mess with Transcendence timing; if all Ikons are active and hence available, that'd cut into the Exemplar's power budget. It's already a competitive class, isn't it?
Wait a moment...are you expecting some kind of change to occur? Or is this more to justify your own homebrew?
Neither does the exemplar though, and I'll use your own words here:
If the words of mine that you have to use are that the Exemplar can be reflavored to not do the thing it has an entire sidebar expressly dedicated to doing, then it stands to reason that the Exemplar does do the thing, it's just up to the GM to go out of their way to work around that. Keftiu summarizes the issue with your rationale pretty succinctly, and as I point out above, just because a problem has a solution doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.
Yet another wrench that I'm surprised has not been thrown yet, is that the rarity tag DOES equate to power. And it's just silly to claim otherwise.
Maybe I'm way more exposed to that due to playing Alchemist, but rare, and even uncommon items are usually above the power curve. Rarity being tied to power does change in intensity when talking about different categories of [thing], though. For items/equipment, it's hard to even begin to dispute that rarity = power.
Even a maximizer like me won't touch Prey Mutagen because it's so stupid overpowered.
For feats it is way more of a mixed bag; some rare AP feats are way below the power curve, but plenty of others are far above. Same goes for archetypes.
And yeah, the first rare class archetype being considered overpowered from the moment it made its debut is tangled in this mess.
The rarity tag system has good intentions, but we've got to take it as it is, and not as they pitched it to the community. When I see the [rare] tag, I'm expecting it to be clearly one chunk above the power curve. That may mean "above the curve" at doing a niche task that's useless in real combat, but that power bump is a rather safe bet.
Just click on an AP source in AoN and check what new stuff is common, uncommon, and rare.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Sources.aspx?ID=75
After picking Amb Vlts book 2, yeah, the notion that rarity --> power is just unavoidable.
Even something seemingly as humble as the Ichthyosis Mutagen deserves that rare tag. It's the only alch item in the system that outright grants auto-success to bleed checks. And that niche is full of competition; why would anyone use a searing suture to grant a 1 time extra recovery check if that mutagen is an option?
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And yeah, Exemplar should never have gotten the rare tag, and if there's ever an opportunity, it would benefit the system for that existing rare tag to be removed.
Rarity --> power is too deeply ingrained, and no class is supposed to be overpowered out of the gate (though the class itself is not at all overpowered).
Imo, that tag is doing way more harm than good.
Yet another wrench that I'm surprised has not been thrown yet, is that the rarity tag DOES equate to power. And it's just silly to claim otherwise.
No, that's rarity = no testing. Prey Mutagen shares the level 1 rare alchemical consumable tier with... Addiction Suppressant, Elsie's Excellent Bottled Vim and Redpitch Bomb. It's just way easier to not notice all the crap options for items. It does mean they're more likely to break fundamental system principles.
But Firebrands exist.
Rare backgrounds are also a bit stronger than normal backgroumds, but those are still the exception to the rule rather than the norm.
Anyways, more reasons to show how little benefit rarity traits have.
FWIW, I think the Exemplar MC Dedication feat will share the fate of the Psychic Dedication.
I'm curious how we nerf it, since the basic use case for a lot of characters is "I spend one action empowering my weapon at the start of combat and now it does bonus damage." It mostly stands out since there isn't another level 2 feat available that is "+2-8 damage on your strikes."
I guess you could maybe do the Heaven's Thunder nerf so you need to spend an action every turn for the bonus damage?
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FWIW, I think the Exemplar MC Dedication feat will share the fate of the Psychic Dedication.I'm curious how we nerf it, since the basic use case for a lot of characters is "I spend one action empowering my weapon at the start of combat and now it does bonus damage." It mostly stands out since there isn't another level 2 feat available that is "+2-8 damage on your strikes."
I guess you could maybe do the Heaven's Thunder nerf so you need to spend an action every turn for the bonus damage?
Maybe keep the Transcendence action in the Dedication itself, but the Ikon does gain its Immanence benefit only through a later feat.
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I just want to chime in that I find the rarity tags very handy as a GM, and Exemplar being Rare makes perfect sense. If I told a new player to go to AoN and go ham, they might bring an Exemplar and read into it with the expectation that they're going to be significantly grander than the "kill 6 basement rats" quest I'm intending to throw at them. I can easily recommend they only look into common stuff, and if they're interested in uncommon or rare they have to talk to me.
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"If you ignore the flavor, the flavor-based Rarity tag stops making sense" is where the argument seems to have landed, and I'm just not sure how productive that reasoning is.
I must be missing something. It seems very productive to me.
I have zero interest in the theme of the Exemplar. And have posted before about scrubbing the entirety of the “flavor” from the class, and how I see classes as chassis with which to do anything with. So to me, if the flavor is gone, then the flavor-based rarity tag does…stop making sense.
I wish I had enough time and interest to rewrite every Exemplar ability to strip the flavor away, and then see if I would still play one. I think the mechanical concept is kinda cool, but am still a bit hazy about the shifting of…things…and transcending etc. To he honest, quite apart from being turned off by the flavor of both the Animist and the Exemplar, I found both of them over-complicated, though to be fair, the Animist was never going to be my jam as I don’t really like spells/casters.
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Ultimately the exemplar is a victim of paizo deciding to make their flashy flavor text have a mechanical effect (the rare tag) instead of leaving it as they usually do, where it tries to hype up an otherwise mechanically mediocre or worthless player option.
A shame, but worth stating and restating to any gm wary of it that they can strip out every last piece of background flavor the class has and nothing of value will have been lost.
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Anyways, more reasons to show how little benefit rarity traits have.Ehh... doesn't it show that the rarity tags are, in fact, of use? 'Player insists on X even though the GM doesn't want' is a long recurring issue in D&Dlikes for power, setting and campaign structure reason, and keeping all the 'pls check' stuff at uncommon and above (for three different definitions of 'pls check') is being useful. Sure, more mature playgroups can discuss among themselves without it anyway, but every GM starts as a sprout.
I'd say the only current problem with rarity tags are the wizard schools that are common tag but that allow access to uncommon tag spells when several of those spells are tagged such for good reasons. Everything else is, by nature, fine, because rarity above common is GM decides anyway and is anything really lost if a GM doesn't let you play a gunslinger/inventor/exemplar?
Not really, because it shows some people at Paizo thinks rarity traits are about balance, while some other think is for setting reasons, but most people and specially newcommers assume it must be for balance reasons which leads to people banning options thinking there must be something overpowered about them that isn't the case. Even on the case it only happened because of setting reasons, I don't see why something like a katana should have the uncommon trait when it could be that in your setting it isn't uncommon at all. It even isn't uncommon in Golarion as a whole, just in the Inner Sea Region, so rarity traits don't even do a good job in the setting they were used for.
I also said earlier the idea of rarity traits as a variant rule to have a "legal" way to ban options in your table (as if GMs needed a variant rule to do that, but it seems like it does due to how some people seem to be against the removal of rarity traits) is perfectly fine, but I think the GMs should adress it, not Paizo.
I think the Rare tag is because of the inherent grandiosity of Ikons and especially Epithets.
Its rare because in the entire setting history there are only really three plausible situations where you could become an Exemplar and one of them involves a murdered god where as the other two are Shrodigner's cat gods. Technically three murdered gods but somehow in two of those cases they Shrodinger's catted themselves which is kind of a hilarious thing.
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I continue to remain somewhat baffled there wasn't any official sidebar in WoI (unless I managed to miss it somehow) for "hey, we know this flavor is crazy over the top, but if you don't want to worry about godlings in the lore, you could easily scale down exemplar to instead be [insert list of reinterpretations, like mystical warrior or martial oracle, here] and drop the rarity tag down/entirely", especially when Paizo already chopped off all the personal divine domain stuff and shunted it off into the godling mythic destiny. Frankly, not carving the nascent godling fluff and fully siloing it into that mythic destiny feels like a really weird choice, but I say that purely from the perspective of someone who is primarily mechanics focused that really likes the general flow of Exemplar (albeit maybe not some of the fine details of it).
I think the reason that they didn't want to completely silo off the Exemplar for flavor is that they had plans for developments in the setting spurred on by "people end up with a divine spark from the Godsrain" and we didn't want for all of those people to need to be mythic, they're just the spark that sets off the conflagration which upsets the status quo.
Like it's canonically why the Horselords are uprising in Nidal, and that's been a static situation since Earthfall.
So the Exemplar is very much a part of the stories Paizo wants to tell going forward, it just might not be a part of the stories you want to tell going forward.
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It is also (mostly ?) Rare so that GMs can feel comfortable not allowing it at the table, even if they play in the canon setting.
But that's true for every class, not just the exemplar. Why is the exemplar the exception here?
It is also (mostly ?) Rare so that GMs can feel comfortable not allowing it at the table, even if they play in the canon setting.But that's true for every class, not just the exemplar. Why is the exemplar the exception here?
I think because the only way to become an Exemplar (on Golarion at least) is to get splashed by some godstuff by random chance. Asserting that about your character is something that the GM is going to need to sign off on.
It's not like the Gunslinger being uncommon because maybe there aren't guns in the corner of the setting a game is taking place in, but there's no practical limit to the number of people on Golarion who can get their hands on guns and get good with them.
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It is also (mostly ?) Rare so that GMs can feel comfortable not allowing it at the table, even if they play in the canon setting.But that's true for every class, not just the exemplar. Why is the exemplar the exception here?I think because the only way to become an Exemplar (on Golarion at least) is to get splashed by some godstuff by random chance. Asserting that about your character is something that the GM is going to need to sign off on.
It's not like the Gunslinger being uncommon because maybe there aren't guns in the corner of the setting a game is taking place in, but there's no practical limit to the number of people on Golarion who can get their hands on guns and get good with them.
And yet again we enter a loop about how all that makes the exemplar rare is essentially flavor text when in practice the exemplar is a martial divine sorcerer, and that itself leads to another loop about rarity traits and how they ultimately fail to achieve what they are supposed to do.
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It would be kind of strange for a rule whose main purpose is to empower new and inexperienced GMs to be cordoned off to a variant rule that they have to actively push on the players! The point is precisely so that GMs who don't know how to do all these things have textual support to do them!
I used the term "variant" rule incorrectly. I meant something like a rule that's part of the core ruleset but its optional to use, like rolling for stats or the generic ancestry boosts. But anyways, I feel the notion of banning a class is a variant or homebrew rule at least in concept because I doubt it would be a good bussiness model for Paizo to release a class with huge tag saying "You shouldn't be playing this class".
Oh, wait. That already happened. Or at least it happened for the people that are confused by rarity traits and think they are about balance.
Add a section about rarity traits in the GM Core or whatever to game-fy a rule about how those are supposed to be used as a tool for the GM to ban certain options that wouldn't be appropiate for the campaign, but don't add those traits to seemingly random stuff in every book and for seemingly different reasons every time because it leads to people getting confused and eventually ignore them altogether.