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When I first came to Pathfinder Second Edition, I saw the Inventor and though "wow, this sounds cool!" and then saw that there was an armor innovation and though "wow! even cooler!".
Little did I know I had saddled myself with what is the worst class in the game AND a character fantasy that is extremely hard to replicate with any other option.
What someone thinks when they hear "armor inventor" will, naturally, vary from person to person. For me around five years ago, it makes me think of characters like Iron Man, Techmarines from Warhammer 40k, and general concepts like durability and being an absolute wall. Nowadays I'm just disappointed.
The Armor Innovation is inherently held back from that fantasy because, for some reason, Inventor is geared towards damage regardless of innovation. Further, while 8hp isn't the worst, it isn't great either, and having some of the worst save progression in the game, being a MAD class (INT, STR/DEX, CON, WIS) all combines to make Inventor's chassis really bad for not even tanking, just wanting to be durable in general. The only feature that can really help out is Shield Block, but I have a lot of fantasy issues with it that I'll delve into later.
Alright, so the big armor fantasy is really clashing with Inventor's chassis and features, but maybe the Armor Innovation's got enough strong features for this to be workable?
You start with heavy armor AC at least, but I swear, armor's modifications are one of the worst pools of options I've seen in this game.
Initial Modification, your options are one of: a grouping of two elemental resistances, an athletics bonus that becomes equivalent to Furious Bully but is worse than Kineticist's Skill Junctions, a stealth bonus of the same nature, or a +5-foot speed bonus that is +10 in overdrive.
Those elemental resistances aren't doing anything unless you know that you are fighting enemies with those damage types*, or you just take them and hope you get lucky (this is a bit of a theme with Inventor). You can make a grappler build but then you're praying that 1 AC compared to most classes is enough to compensate for your atrocious defensive scores, and there's only one feat, Oil Fire, that specifically interacts with grappling. Since Oil Fire is Oil Fire you pretty much don't get any grappling feats from Inventor.
Breakthrough Modification, after struggling through six levels of not really contributing anything, maybe this will be the game changer? Options are: Antimagic Plating, a solid stealth improvement, a physical resistance modification for each type, increasing the elemental resistance to be your level, the Bulwark and Entrench trait, and a better speed boost.
Antimagic Plating is honestly not bad but it comes too late to save Inventor's terrible saves. Camouflage Pigmentation is fine, I guess? 7th level is when we finally get some physical damage resistance! For one damage type! And there's no flat bonuses like with the elemental ones, even in Overdrive! Is resistance to a single physical damage type really that strong? Champion is getting Expert in armor at that level and Armor Inventor is getting bludgeoning resistance? The elemental resistance increase is alright if you, again, know what you're fighting*.
And somehow, that's not even the most infuriating breakthrough modification to me. That title goes to Heavy Construction. So Inventors with the Armor Innovation are supposed to be good at inventing armor, right? So why then, does it take until 7th level to get the Bulwark trait, which is on a 2nd level item, full plate. Sure you get Entrench, but is someone seriously going to tell me that Entrench takes what is a 2nd level trait all the way up to 7th? This really screws over Power Armor Inventors, Inventors are already incredibly MAD so not being able to dump DEX is really painful. Oh yeah, that's another thing Heavy Construction doesn't do, it doesn't transfer the 1 DEX cap into a 1 increase in the AC bonus, so you're never able to even THINK of getting rid of that 1 DEX investment, so much for being an ARMOR INVENTOR. You have to use an Armored Skirt to do it for you.
Now to explain why there's a '*' after every mention of 'know what you're fighting'. It's retraining! Specifically, Reconfigure, which is Inventor's retraining feature at 3rd. Now while I could go into how this is an abysmal feature in the modern context of Animist existing, I'm instead going to explain how I believe this screws over the armor innovation at 1st and 2nd.
For the elemental resistance initial modifications, not having Reconfigure at those earlier levels means that, unless the DM/GM tells you what you're fighting, or there's some story reason, you are locked into those modifications UNLESS you get a week to retrain. Modifications that, again, have a good chance of contributing nothing to your performance. Now once you get to 3rd level, you then get to deal with spending 1 day just for the opportunity to make a HIGH DC Crafting check to retrain ONE modification, but that's a big rant for another time.
The last group of modifications, Revolutionary, is still somehow infuriating to me.
Automated Impediments - Equivalent to a 2nd Level Guardian Stance Feat.
Energy Barrier - Using up two modifications for decent elemental resistance is way too little, way too late.
Perfect Fortification - Actually reasonably-leveled equivalent is 2nd Level Guardian Stance Feat.
Physical Protections - This one, this one in particularly is just actually baffling. Guardian gets this at 1st Level. What is a 7th and 15th level class feature for Inventor is at 1st for Guardians. What an utter joke.
While I originally wanted to detail the Armor Innovation's feats, this essay is long enough as is so I'll end it by saying: in my experience with Inventor in general, and specifically with the Armor Innovation, I have learnt that this class is a joke. That is how Paizo has treated it with a Remaster that fixed none of its core issues and failed to bring it up to the same power level as the other classes, and the release of classes like Animist, Exemplar and Runesmith that have eaten heavily into Inventor's niches of retraining (Animist specifically), AOEs on a martial and item modification. This definitely reads extremely harsh but I don't hate Paizo with a passion because one of their classes is a joke, I hate the fact it took me so long to realize that Inventor was a joke.
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I agree with the fundamental criticism: no matter what one wants the Inventor to be, in the end a large part of the class is always going to be a mediocre Barbarian with a bit of AoE mixed in. I had the exact same expectation of the Inventor when I first heard of the class, and very much wanted to be Iron Man flying around in an advanced suit of armor, supporting my team with helpful gadgets and inventing more during the day (in a cave, with a box of scraps!). In practice, though, the class isn't all that big on utility, not that big on gadgets, and not at all big on inventing during the day, as they can't Craft items quicker than anyone else. I unfortunately don't think this is a problem that can be solved with anything short of a larger-scale rework, as a lot of the class's power is put into things that aren't central to the above (like their on-hit damage), but it would be nice to see an Inventor class at some point that properly achieves its fantasy.
I often forget armor inventor exists
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Agree with Teridax. Far from the worst class in the game but the Inventor only really makes sense if you stop thinking of it as an "inventor" and just start thinking of it as a plain ass martial with a slightly customized piece of gear.
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Personally I've been tinkering with some ideas to completely houserule the class, but it's far from complete.
Oh I see what you did there ;P
I like the direction you're suggesting, though, and like the sound of those sorts of adjustments more broadly! I also think it'd be great to have in the vein of something like the Commander, Kineticist, and Runesmith in being a class that gets up to Legendary Class DC and giving them way more tools and goodies that go against saves to help cement that.
I'll be interested to see how the Mechanic shapes up on its full release when Tech Core drops later this year, since that could provide a pretty solid template to work from.
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The inventor is honestly a failure of a class. There's simply no way to play an inventor in a way that feels satisfying or mechanically unique. Its a class that screams "early edition class design" because its clear Paizo didn't fully grasp the things that could be made with the system yet. Like, if you see at the runesmith which just came out, you'll notice they have a similar chassis and progression, but the runesmith is like 3 or 4 tiers above the inventor in almost every department and fulfills its class fantasy in a much more elegant and fun way as well. Out of the few class which I think need a proper remaster, I think inventor is probably the only one that needs to be remade from the ground up because it honestly doesn't have a single saving grace going on for it.
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We recently played Outlaws of Alkenstar and I played an Inventor. After all, if it was going to shine ANYWHERE surely that was the AP, right?
Like everybody else I found it mechanically quite disappointing. Lots of fairly small niggling little flaws and insults (Oh, good, I take fire damage while also failing to get my damage boost off, what fun), any one of which would be fine but the sheer number just got me down. And essentially no cool upside for all the niggling nonsense.
But the biggest problem was that I just didn't feel at all like an inventor pulling cool stuff out of my hat. I felt like a substandard martial with a slightly better animal companion.
The starfinder playtest mechanic is a fairly decent replacement for the inventor although backporting parts of it to pathfinder might be slightly difficult (it kinda assumes grenades and laser rifles :-)).
No good armor subclass for the mechanic but definitely a good weapons and companion subclass. The Iron Man fantasy is already covered by the basic armor+upgrades that anybody can buy in starfinder and the Soldier has the "Cool armor dude" play space taken
If you haven't looked at it I'd advise you to take a peek and see if it fits your fantasy (and look at the soldier for your armor fantasy although guardian kinda fits that niche now as well)
I definitely hope that any rewrite of the inventor starts with the mechanic and NOT with the current inventor.
Far from the worst class in the game
I'd actually rate it as the worst: every build seems to be better done with another class. I'm curious which classes you think perform worse?
I wonder if we'll get an Unchained/Enhanced rework towards the end of the edition that'll finally bring the poor inventor up to snuff. I've tried a couple at-home buffs that seem to work okay (roll Overdrive on initiative, be less punishing with Unstable, etc), but while they help make the class feel less annoying, they don't make it cool. I don't have the design chops to cool-ify the various innovations; I'm barely qualified to do patch jobs.
"Joke" class is correct: doing nutty stuff with your gear and then randomly exploding is funny. But Starfinder 2e is also funny, and most of the time it's able to pull off its silly-billy mechanics without cutting into player efficacy. I'm 100% expecting to see a lot of people just port over and reflavor mechanics once they're out this fall, at least until the Pathfinder team finally gets it together. Given how limited funds and manpower are, though, I don't think we're going to see a rework for quite some time, if ever.
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I've seen at least 2 surveys of customer satisfaction and the inventor came last in both
This darling dinosaur of a forum doesn't allow emoji reactions, so instead I invite you to imagine me spamming skulls and cry-laughing faces. RIP, inventor. We all know you tried, but boy does it feel like you didn't.
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I agree with the fundamental criticism: no matter what one wants the Inventor to be, in the end a large part of the class is always going to be a mediocre Barbarian with a bit of AoE mixed in. I had the exact same expectation of the Inventor when I first heard of the class, and very much wanted to be Iron Man flying around in an advanced suit of armor, supporting my team with helpful gadgets and inventing more during the day (in a cave, with a box of scraps!). In practice, though, the class isn't all that big on utility, not that big on gadgets, and not at all big on inventing during the day, as they can't Craft items quicker than anyone else. I unfortunately don't think this is a problem that can be solved with anything short of a larger-scale rework, as a lot of the class's power is put into things that aren't central to the above (like their on-hit damage), but it would be nice to see an Inventor class at some point that properly achieves its fantasy.
Inventor inherently being geared towards damage, whether through additional Strike damage with Overdrive or AoE damage with Explode was a big misstep. It makes every Inventor serve a very similar role because they're always specialized into damage regardless of innovation.
It's my belief that, on top of this shaky foundation, the innovations not named 'Construct' being incredibly underwhelming only compounds Inventor's issues. Armor's heavy level AC isn't even a protected niche given any INT build can take the Inventor dedication for the same bonus.
Far from the worst class in the game
I wouldn't say it's 'far' from the worst class in the game but there probably are classes (maybe Psychic?) and class archetypes (Bloodrager?) that are worse off.
I think it's very much down there in terms of mechanical strength (7th level for Bulwark and both your 7th and 15th level features for a 1st level Guardian feature tends to do that) and actual fun.Another thing Inventor fails at is not only the expected class fantasy, but also the fantasy it lays out in its flavour text.
You don't set out to achieve anything as banal as simply winning a fight; you seek to collect valuable data that can be used to improve your creations!
What, improving my innovation only at 7th and 15th? There's only 9 modification feats (for comparison; Animist, which was released nearly 3 years after Inventor, has 12 wandering feats) and most of them ironically belong to the Armor Innovation.
You might often look for opportunities to acquire patronage to fund some of your more expensive or unorthodox experiments. After all, the materials needed to assemble your inventions don't pay for themselves!
Same class where the only Charisma-related abilities are on the Construct Innovation, good luck actually investing in Charisma at all, and none of the Inventor's abilities require gold or even materials at all!
You study the design and construction of the environments you explore ardently, making note of clever traps, ingenious mechanisms, or especially keen architecture you come across for later.
Inventor's got some of the worst Perception progression in the game, if not the worst.
This is probably extremely nitpicky but come on, Inventor can't even do what it advertises!
Given how limited funds and manpower are, though, I don't think we're going to see a rework for quite some time, if ever.
Honestly if Guns & Gears actually fixed Inventor I probably would've bought it out of sheer gratitude. But given the debacle with losing a lot of products I wouldn't blame Paizo for not doing a full rework.
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whereas the inventor gets to be exactly on par with every other damage martial on a success)
Overdrive isn't even equivalent to other damage martials the higher level you are. Critical Overdrive is an 8 damage bonus at 15th level (assuming full INT investment except for an Apex item) while Fury's considered one of the lower damage instincts with 13 damage at 15th level. Inventor needs Offensive Boost at 9th (1d6 which is an average of 3.5 additional damage) to still be inferior to the lowest damage instincts (Animal and Spirit both do 12 at 15th) by doing 11.5 additional damage at 15th. If you don't get Critical Overdrive? You're only dealing 8.5 damage on average.
Sure, you can use agile or ranged weapons, which a barbarian can't unless they take Raging Thrower, but that just ends up making builds that either aren't agile or ranged worse off because they get a lower damage bonus with no benefit.
A few months ago I made a thread in the homebrew section. The only thing I would probably change about it is to remove the Crafting check to overdrive to make it like a barbarian's rage. This is a small fix though, the inventor would need way more than this to be fixed.
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A few months ago I made a thread in the homebrew section. The only thing I would probably change about it is to remove the Crafting check to overdrive to make it like a barbarian's rage. This is a small fix though, the inventor would need way more than this to be fixed.
For me that change would have gone a reasonable way to making my happy (I was playing a construct inventor at levels 1-10 so my mechanical suckage was much, much less than other inventors). It would have removed a major source of "Why the XXXX am I playing this class again?" moments.
That combined with SOMETHING that fulfilled the "tinkering all the time" fantasy and I might have been ok (at low levels, constructs scale badly at higher levels like all companions do). Even something that allowed me WHILE IN COMBAT to change up my companion a bit. Make its attacks bludgeoning or do fire damage or the like.
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Honestly, the Inventor should have been able to add 1 innovation per 3 levels... and one of them, for the Armor, should have been "getting one size larger".
Inventor needs a complete redesign.
I'm just going to leave this here. Captain Morgan's Treatise on the Inventor
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Inventor needs a complete redesign.I'm just going to leave this here. Captain Morgan's Treatise on the Inventor
Link seems broken
A few months ago I made a thread in the homebrew section. The only thing I would probably change about it is to remove the Crafting check to overdrive to make it like a barbarian's rage. This is a small fix though, the inventor would need way more than this to be fixed.
That's not enough dude!
How come it "never becomes easier" for an Inventor to Overdrive?
Expert, Master and Legendary in Crafting should also allow you to treat the class DC "some levels lower than your own".
Same with the Instable trait. Right now, it's a flat DC 15 check that ONLY goes lower if you have Legendary in Crafting... to DC 13...
This should be...
- DC 13 if Expert
- DC 11 if Master
- DC 9 if Legendary
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Personally, the problem for me is that the Inventor fails to meet the...Inventor fantasy in any appreciable manner.
While I agree that the Armor Inventor probably needs some serious tweaks, I think claiming that you can't fulfill the fantasy or have fun is a bit of a stretch.
I've been playing as an Armor Inventor in a homebrew campaign for about 25 sessions spanning from levels 4 to 9 so far. I am having a lot of fun being the character pulling out whacky contraptions that defy the setting's magic logic.
I definitely went into the campaign expecting more of the "ah I have a solution for this" level of toolbox build. But because of our party's composition, my combat loop generally focuses more on DPS and less on utility. Not that I can't do utility, just that we already have a lot of utility and very little actual damage.
My favorite part of the build is getting to use Blast Boots to launch myself across the entire battlefield to help lock down key enemies like a caster or boss. Bastard Sword lets me be flexible between DPR and lock-down with grappling.
I'm definitely aided by the fact that our team has a Guardian, so while I have good survivability compared to most of the party, the Guardian can make it so I can actually survive for a lot longer. And he likes that I can repair his shield super fast.
Also helps that my DM has given us ample down-time for me to invent my gadgets. And more than once I've been able to cobble together some kind of steam-punk macguffin to help us with some plot issue.
While I agree that the Armor Inventor probably needs some serious tweaks, I think claiming that you can't fulfill the fantasy or have fun is a bit of a stretch.
I've been playing as an Armor Inventor in a homebrew campaign for about 25 sessions spanning from levels 4 to 9 so far. I am having a lot of fun being the character pulling out whacky contraptions that defy the setting's magic logic.
I definitely went into the campaign expecting more of the "ah I have a solution for this" level of toolbox build. But because of our party's composition, my combat loop generally focuses more on DPS and less on utility. Not that I can't do utility, just that we already have a lot of utility and very little actual damage.
My favorite part of the build is getting to use Blast Boots to launch myself across the entire battlefield to help lock down key enemies like a caster or boss. Bastard Sword lets me be flexible between DPR and lock-down with grappling.
I'm definitely aided by the fact that our team has a Guardian, so while I have good survivability compared to most of the party, the Guardian can make it so I can actually survive for a lot longer. And he likes that I can repair his shield super fast.
Also helps that my DM has given us ample down-time for me to invent my gadgets. And more than once I've been able to cobble together some kind of steam-punk macguffin to help us with some plot issue.
Is there something you did with this class that couldn't have been done with another class? That's the problem of the inventor. Its doesn't have anything unique going on for it and it fails to achieve it class fantasy. The alchemist has a much better "every tool in the box" approach and now the runesmith arguably does the Crafting side much better just from the fact they get auto-crits on rune crafting.
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Is there something you did with this class that couldn't have been done with another class? That's the problem of the inventor. Its doesn't have anything unique going on for it and it fails to achieve it class fantasy. The alchemist has a much better "every tool in the box" approach and now the runesmith arguably does the Crafting side much better just from the fact they get auto-crits on rune crafting.
Well, first the Runesmith didn't exist when I was creating this character haha. Sure, any one thing I'm doing I could be doing better with another class. But I don't think I could get this exact combination of high single-target damage, medium AOE damage, high mobility, medium-well survivability, and in-combat debuff versatility all with Int/Strength as my core ability/skills.
Again, to be clear, I don't disagree that the chassis has issues. Unstable stuff just feels bad compared to focus spells usually. And I wish the gadget table was a little more filled out. But that isn't preventing me from being useful and having fun at the table.
I don't think it's a stretch to say it's one of if not the worst class in the game. But even then, it's still totally serviceable as a vehicle to run a character on.
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I don't think it's a stretch to say it's one of if not the worst class in the game. But even then, it's still totally serviceable as a vehicle to run a character on.
That is pretty close to my conclusion after playing a companion inventor through Outlaws of Alkenstar. It was serviceable, just inferior to everything filling a simile niche. Lots of little annoyances with little payback for those annoyances.
It’s actually a pretty strong endorsement of the system that what is probably the worst class in the game is serviceable
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Is there something you did with this class that couldn't have been done with another class? That's the problem of the inventor. Its doesn't have anything unique going on for it and it fails to achieve it class fantasy. The alchemist has a much better "every tool in the box" approach and now the runesmith arguably does the Crafting side much better just from the fact they get auto-crits on rune crafting.Well, first the Runesmith didn't exist when I was creating this character haha. Sure, any one thing I'm doing I could be doing better with another class. But I don't think I could get this exact combination of high single-target damage, medium AOE damage, high mobility, medium-well survivability, and in-combat debuff versatility all with Int/Strength as my core ability/skills.
Again, to be clear, I don't disagree that the chassis has issues. Unstable stuff just feels bad compared to focus spells usually. And I wish the gadget table was a little more filled out. But that isn't preventing me from being useful and having fun at the table.
I don't think it's a stretch to say it's one of if not the worst class in the game. But even then, it's still totally serviceable as a vehicle to run a character on.
I mean, half of the things you mention here a barbarian has them and much more (higher single target damage, higher movement speed, and the second best survivability in the game only behind the guardian. It also has Sudden Charge at 1st and Sudden Leap at 8th to replicate what blast boots do and for free, and based on your instinct it can also have some AoE like Elemental Explosion, Dragon's Rage Breath, and, to a lesser extent, Swipe).
I'm not trying to force you to say "I repent from playing an inventor! I'm so sorry!" but I honestly don't see a reason to play an inventor at all. Everything in the class is dysfunctional and you can effectively build a very similar character but much more effective with a barbarian and taking skill increases into Crafting.
It’s actually a pretty strong endorsement of the system that what is probably the worst class in the game is serviceable
Yeah, this is something that really hits home how good the class balance in PF2 is.
Those of us who remember the 3.5 days and tier lists ranging from "these classes break the game and can be the best at everything" all the way to "these classes are not good at the thing they're supposed to be good at and are bad at everything else" (I'm excluding the "this class literally doesn't function" case) probably always chuckle a bit at PF2 class tier lists.
Not because there's anything wrong with class tier lists. I find them fun! But simply because the "tiers" in PF2 are so much narrower than in the past.
The game designers have generally done a really good job on this. Even the two worst classes are fully playable and can bring something useful to the party.
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While I agree that the Armor Inventor probably needs some serious tweaks, I think claiming that you can't fulfill the fantasy or have fun is a bit of a stretch.
You have a good GM with time - that's great. A good player could role play an inventor while actually just playing marbles.
Obviously what other posters mean is that the Armor Inventor features are insignificant and weak. They don't allow the character to be or feel innovative. All Paizo have really provided are some flavourful labels.
That is a fail by Paizo.
Worse they have heard the complaints, revisited the class and done essentially nothing.
I think we differ in what fantasy we expected. Your expectation was a wacky gadgeteer, which is what Inventor's overall fantasy should be. Meanwhile, I read 'armor innovation' andWhile I agree that the Armor Inventor probably needs some serious tweaks, I think claiming that you can't fulfill the fantasy or have fun is a bit of a stretch.
I've been playing as an Armor Inventor in a homebrew campaign for about 25 sessions spanning from levels 4 to 9 so far. I am having a lot of fun being the character pulling out whacky contraptions that defy the setting's magic logic.
I definitely went into the campaign expecting more of the "ah I have a solution for this" level of toolbox build. But because of our party's composition, my combat loop generally focuses more on DPS and less on utility. Not that I can't do utility, just that we already have a lot of utility and very little actual damage.
My favorite part of the build is getting to use Blast Boots to launch myself across the entire battlefield to help lock down key enemies like a caster or boss. Bastard Sword lets me be flexible between DPR and lock-down with grappling.
I'm definitely aided by the fact that our team has a Guardian, so while I have good survivability compared to most of the party, the Guardian can make it so I can actually survive for a lot longer. And he likes that I can repair his shield super fast.
Also helps that my DM has given us ample down-time for me to invent my gadgets. And more than once I've been able to cobble together some kind of steam-punk macguffin to help us with some plot issue.
Your innovation is a cutting-edge suit of medium armor with a variety of attached gizmos and devices.
This gave me an expectation of durability, which although an Armor Inventor is more durable than other Inventors, that bar is incredibly, incredibly low. Its features are simply too weak and underwhelming to sell the advanced armor fantasy to me.
I think claiming that you can't fulfill the fantasy or have fun is a bit of a stretch.
When did I claim it is impossible to have fun with the armor innovation? Fun is subjective, I know I can't be the arbiter of what is fun to who and what isn't. Now what I can claim is that you're decently likely on average to not have fun with Inventor compared to other classes, as someone else pointed out it came dead last in a satisfaction poll.
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The armor inventor especially suffers kind of hard from its design and system dynamics.
The class is pretty mediocre overall but at least adding traits to a weapon or commanding a companion can provide proactive benefits that feel meaningful (even if they're not super amazing either), but armor really suffers from just like... not giving you a lot of novel stuff. You're slightly tougher but also there's restrictions on that toughness because PF2 is really careful about handing out defenses and there's so little the innovation enables.
... You really have to wonder what happened when Paizo was writing GnG it's such an underbaked book.
Based on comments by the Inventor's designer, the focus of the class was dealing lots of damage split across different sources, which to me suggests making the class good at defense was never necessarily the primary concern. My own conjecture is that as one of PF2e's first few expansions after APG (which itself was heavily flawed), GnG still followed this philosophy of extremely conservative design and balance, where new classes were treated mostly as variants of CRB classes and were made sure not to overshadow those older classes in the process. Were the Inventor released today, they likely would have far more creative innovations, a legendary class DC, and the ability to Craft during the adventuring day, but at the time they innovated mainly by being the first martial class to have some measure of meaningful resourceless AoE at early levels, which is obviously no longer a novelty these days.
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Thanks for that link. I disagree with Mark (the inventor definitely feels worse in comparison after the remaster but it feels pretty bad on its own terms even before the remaster :-() but I appreciate seeing his thoughts.
But I don't think that it was EVER a solid martial class when you consider the combination of its parts. Yeah, it does some respectable AoE damage but even at the time it was created you could do almost as well just taking something like a druid dedication.
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There's definitely a level of old school conservatism, but GnG to me feels noticeably worse than the books immediately before or after it almost across the board. The Inventor is a mess but the premaster Gunslinger was kind of a disaster too.
... Even by premaster standards stuff like Overdrive makes no sense. It was the first time we had an unreliable damage gimmick and yet it was also designed to be noticeably worse than most of its competitors at the same time. Rolling dice to get half into to damage was never not a joke.
Like, I think the biggest effect the Remaster had on the Inventor is that a lot of the other conspicuously bad classes (like the Swashbuckler or Alchemist and even the Gunslinger and Investigator to some extent) got genuinely meaningful improvements while the Inventor's updates didn't do as much to improve the core issues.
... Mark's suggestion of just nerfing all spellcasters in order to make Explode look better is kind of wild tbh.
Yeah, I don’t agree either with the narrative that the Inventor was peachy before the remaster, and while I understand that the changes to focus spellcasting caused some waves, I also believe the changes were a net improvement overall. Clearly, there is a different design philosophy at play here that helps explain both the class’s design and some of the system’s limitations that the remaster did away with. I get the impression there was a focus on mechanics that either didn’t register as appropriate for an inventor class (e.g. Overdrive, possibly out of a need to give a martial class single-target damage), or just didn’t feel fun to use, i.e. unstable actions and Overdrive potentially backfiring and hurting you, and stuff that could’ve been more appropriate for the class didn’t get the same budget.
D6 times level is a little more damage than d12 times half level, so I’d say Explode’s damage is decent, it’s more that Megavolt’s range makes it easier to land, plus less likely to damage allies (it also hits immunity and resistance less frequently). Part of the problem I think is that the Inventor being spread across so many different abilities (except invent) makes their individual components more difficult to appreciate, especially as they don’t always work well together.
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makes their individual components more difficult to appreciate, especially as they don’t always work well together.
They do worse than "not work well together". Almost all the interesting features are unstable so you can pretty much do only one of them per fight (not even one each, one TOTAL).
With focus spells a very common situation is that you have one focus spell that you very often cast and other focus spells which have as their primary purpose just providing you additional focus points. But they often have some niche value so you DO cast them from time to time.
With the inventor you only get to cast one unstable thing a fight (pretty much. Sometimes you get lucky but you can only plan on the one). This makes it massively unattractive to even bother buying the unstable abilities once you have explode and megavolt.
According to the net one common house rule was to allow every unstable activity to ONLY disable itself on use. So, you can explode AND megavolt AND jump once each per fight. People who tried this said it was pretty balanced and effective.
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Based on comments by the Inventor's designer, the focus of the class was dealing lots of damage split across different sources, which to me suggests making the class good at defense was never necessarily the primary concern. My own conjecture is that as one of PF2e's first few expansions after APG (which itself was heavily flawed), GnG still followed this philosophy of extremely conservative design and balance, where new classes were treated mostly as variants of CRB classes and were made sure not to overshadow those older classes in the process. Were the Inventor released today, they likely would have far more creative innovations, a legendary class DC, and the ability to Craft during the adventuring day, but at the time they innovated mainly by being the first martial class to have some measure of meaningful resourceless AoE at early levels, which is obviously no longer a novelty these days.
I agree that Inventor is really conservative in its design.
Really, it doesn't really do that much inventing as part of its base class features; You can only pick three modifications, there's only nine modification feats. Most of Inventor's feats, like megavolt, read to me as the Inventor learning how to use their innovation to do something. Then there's others like megaton strike that mention activating explosives and gizmos but just, don't have the modification trait.I disagree with Seifter's notion that the 'original' Inventor was a solid class. Some of, if not arguably the worst proficiencies of any martial in return for Explode, which is a once per combat close-range AOE that competes with every other Unstable action. Overdrive, which is an inconsistent, generally worse version of rage once you get past around 5th that also requires INT investment, and Offensive Boost which is 1d6, fine I guess.
Also, I've seen Overdrive vs Rage being defended because Overdrive can apply to ranged attacks. I disagree with that reasoning because it means melee builds suffer just because the class can potentially boost ranged attacks. Why should a melee build be punished for the existence of ranged builds?
Also, I've seen Overdrive vs Rage being defended because Overdrive can apply to ranged attacks. I disagree with that reasoning because it means melee builds suffer just because the class can potentially boost ranged attacks. Why should a melee build be punished for the existence of ranged builds?
Raging Thrower allows a barbarian to use rage bonuses in ranged combat. Boomerang allows for 60' range.
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Also, I've seen Overdrive vs Rage being defended because Overdrive can apply to ranged attacks. I disagree with that reasoning because it means melee builds suffer just because the class can potentially boost ranged attacks. Why should a melee build be punished for the existence of ranged builds?Raging Thrower allows a barbarian to use rage bonuses in ranged combat. Boomerang allows for 60' range.
Rangers get both a better boost than inventors AND their animal companion. Probably the best comparison to my companion inventor who was also an archer. Even pre-remaster the ranger was just better in almost every respect.
I think just about every martial with a ranged option does better than the ranged inventor.
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Also, I've seen Overdrive vs Rage being defended because Overdrive can apply to ranged attacks. I disagree with that reasoning because it means melee builds suffer just because the class can potentially boost ranged attacks. Why should a melee build be punished for the existence of ranged builds?Raging Thrower allows a barbarian to use rage bonuses in ranged combat. Boomerang allows for 60' range.Rangers get both a better boost than inventors AND their animal companion. Probably the best comparison to my companion inventor who was also an archer. Even pre-remaster the ranger was just better in almost every respect.
I think just about every martial with a ranged option does better than the ranged inventor.
'Inventing the impossible' is apparently a synonym for 'doing what at least one other class can but way worse'.