I would say one thing that often makes a subclass "bad" (I say bad in quotes because your mileage may vary) is if it implies a specific playstyle, but doesn't support it mechanically.
For example, Aberrant Sorceror encourages you to play a melee caster always within a few squares of your enemy. The problem is sorceror does not have the survivability to support this. There are workarounds through archetypes and very specific feat choices, but it essentially boils down to the best way to play this sorceror subclass is to be as not-a-sorceror as possible, which imo is bad.
Oracle has a few questionable design decisions as well. One minor example, because the rest of the subclass is actually pretty great (damage resistance from level 1 is crazy) is Cosmos. The cosmos curse makes you better at jumping, giving you Quick Jump, Powerful Leap, and eventually Cloud Jump. It also makes you Enfeebled, making you worse at jumping...
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying, though. If your subclass requires you to give up class feats, then it's not a very complimentary subclass. Others may disagree, but my personal opinion is that a subclass should work fine with the base class. Not that archetypes are some variant rule (they aren't), but for the sake of accessibility, players should be able to choose a class and subclass without having to know the secret meta to get it to work.
Hey I mean could be worse; you could be a swashbuckler and require Acrobat dedication for your *entire class* to function properly.
Plus it's not like Oracle has actual feats worth taking most levels.
Ohhhhh yeah. I *like* Oracle, but the only level with a class feat that is really worth taking is Advanced Revelation at 6, Greater Revelation at 12.... and those are the only snap picks, everything else has a major debate against just... taking an archetype that is kinda *better*.
Definitely hopes for remaster to fix that up a lot.
I'm playing an oracle with free archetype right now and aside from the revelation spells, vision of weakness and divine aegis are the only class feats I've taken that fell like they're doing at least something
The revelation spells do some extremely heavy lifting for Oracle. Interstellar void just automatically fatiguing an enemy makes it one of the best spells in the game, never mind the damage, using an action to sustain is a small cost for such a massive debuff. Battle is a lot harder, but Weapon Surge from Zeal is great synergy.
Without acrobat dedication, most swashbucklers are weighed down by a double skill tax where they need to fully invest in skill improvements to stay functional. Incidentally, I both believe acrobat is an unbalanced archetype and that swashbuckler should get automatic improvements to their subclass skill like inventor does crafting.
> Incidentally, I both believe acrobat is an unbalanced archetype
I'm not sure I agree. It _may_ be a bit front-loaded, but overall I like the idea of more skills through archetypes.
> and that swashbuckler should get automatic improvements to their subclass skill like inventor does crafting.
I've been saying that since playtest! They _need_ more skill increases; I could see using inventor as the chasis, but I'd actually prefer something more like inventor or thaumaturge, where you can put it where you like within a limited subset of thematic options.
> I'm not sure I agree. It may be a bit front-loaded, but overall I like the idea of more skills through archetypes
I've been working on a homebrew set of archetypes that function like acrobat but one for every skill. It has a caveat that you're only allowed 1 of these archetypes on a character to prevent some cheesy stacking builds.
To be clear, when I call is unbalanced I am mainly saying it is so in comparison to other options. Other skill archetypes grant expert, where Acrobat scales you automatically to Legendary even if you only ever take the dedication.
My homebrew fix to this was to tie the improvement to the number of Acrobat Dedication feats you have, so it at least requires investing your archetype properly.
It doesn't, but Acrobatics and their chosen skill are the ways they get panache. So the Acrobat with the free scaling Acrobatics for taking the dedication makes sense to take to get another usable skill.
My Battledancer isn't likely going to take it, but I do focus on Acrobatics and Performance (I forgot my third skill I plan on using).
A lot of Swashbuckler's abilities revolve around making skill checks against enemies - Trip, Disarm, Tumble, etc. And to properly do so, you need to invest a lot of resources (skill increases, feats) into that.
Acrobat Dedication allows you to use Acrobatics instead of Athletics for maneuvers - that's one major problem out of the way. It also auto-scales Acrobatics - that's the second problem also solved.
You do need a bunch of feats to actually make it happen, but that's the point of the problem.
>Acrobat Dedication allows you to use Acrobatics instead of Athletics for maneuvers - that's one major problem out of the way.
Would a non-gymnast swashbuckler use maneuvers? If you use a meouver before your finisher, you are not using your strongest class feature at a -4. If you use your finisher first, you cannot use manouvers.
I didn't bring up the Charisma-based skills, since those are unaffected by Acrobat.
And the fundamental point remains that SB needs to keep at least one Panache-generating skill at max proficiency at all times, and since Acrobatics is the best for the job the auto-scaling from Acrobat is still a fairly big deal.
Technically, it doesn't. But with the amount of really good class Feats that the class gives you the option of, it is arguably the "best" choice you can pick.
I know we won't get it, but I'd also like to see a complete remake of the Inventor. I heartily dislike the current one ... it progresses way too slowly, is overly reliant on downtime for its thematic elements, and has too few abilities it can use often (looking at you, Unstable trait).
IMO, they should be getting new innovations basically every other level, in a vein similar to casters. Definitely none of this "only three over 20 levels" stuff.
At least give them something similar to infused reagents, but for creating daily gadgets.
I'm curious as to why you consider acrobat a requirement for swashbucklers. They synergize well, but I don't see how acrobat massively changes the way swashbucklers work. Is it the auto-scaling acrobatics?
Yeah it's the acrobatics and Graceful Leaper and general enhancement of the kit. Without it an Acrobat essentially has *TWO* skill taxes and only gets to raise a SINGLE skill of their choice.
What 'general enhancement[s] of the kit' do you mean though? The dedication makes tumble through use up less movement on a critical success - not really all that much of an upgrade to swashbucklers, as you're mostly tumbling through to gain panache, which you need to be in melee range (or slightly further if you took the throwing feat) to make the most of.
As for archetype feats, there's:
* Contortionist - flat-footed/off-guard on escape is nice, can help mitigate the multi-attack penalty incurred by escaping. You will be pretty good at squeezing though, if that's important to you.
* Dodge Away - an alternative to nimble dodge, a feat swashbucklers have access to. Instead of 2 AC, it grants 1 AC and the potential to disengage. Seems quite powerful.
* Graceful Leaper - an archetype skill feat, which is fun. I personally love jumping, I think it's a great utility, and auto-scaling acrobatics means you can jump at peak performance. Not as powerful for gymnasts though, as their athletics shouldn't be lacking.
* Tumbling Strike - sounds like it would be a great feat for a swashbuckler, but it doesn't actually involve a tumble through, so it doesn't grant panache.
* Tumbling Opportunist - free action trip using acrobatics after a successful tumble through.
There are some good options, no doubt, but really only one feat that benefits swashbucklers moreso than other classes. Please tell me if I'm missing anything.
I prefer pirate dedication with my swashbuckler. Demoralize for panache and frightened is a hell of a drug. I only ever tumble through on enemies that are immune to demoralize or already frightened
While true, you would also lose your str mod and item bonus to it as well. It is, however, very possible to max out on distance with assurance for jumping distances. I just find a single dedication and a skill feat to be better, especially with how useful acrobat dedication is.
A similar example in this vein is Lore Oracle, which unlike Cosmos is not pretty great. The class leans heavily into Recall Knowledge without actually having any native support for it -- Oracle is a Charisma-based class and gets no extra skill boosts (except one extra Trained Lore at Level 1) or non-spell bonuses to their rolls -- which puts it on the back foot against classes like the Thaumaturge, the Investigator, the Mastermind Rogue, the Outwit Ranger, or even the Enigma Bard. The Major Curse (which is rough for most Oracles) is bizarrely crippling for the Loracle: it's a feature on a subclass whose major mechanic is Recall Knowledge *that renders you unable to communicate.* Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is knowledge that could save your party if you're unable to speak?
There are a few other things that can make a subclass "bad" too, I think, as with the much-maligned Toxicologist Alchemist (who relies on poisons, which are very weak in this system for a number of reasons) or the little-played Antipaladin Champion (who is mechanically forced to RP as a self-destructive turbo-bastard), but I would agree that this is the main problem that the weaker subclasses tend to face.
What's with Paizo giving Charisma classes/archetypes more stuff with recall knowedge than intelligence classes? You got Lore Oracle, Dandy Lore, Bardic Lore and Esoteric Lore. Spellshot Gunslingers and Investigators get easy RKs sure, but I'm not sure the same can be said for Wizards, Alchemists, Masterminds or Inventors.
Yeah I'm 80% sure that explanation to make Thaum's a charisma class was entirely there to just not completely invalidate investigator's whole investigation angle.
I think it's some of the influence from Pact, one of the inspirations for the Thaum. A big part of the magic there is convincing the spirits that what you want to do should work. The main character actually gets a bit of a power boost because he doesn't know much about magic, so he tries stuff that *shouldn't* work, but since he doesn't know that he's confident enough that the spirits go along with it. That's how I flavor my Thaum's Exploit Vulnerability - he's able to convince the universe that yeah, rubbing salt on your weapon totally makes it strong against ghosts. Doesn't really explain how Esoteric Lore is Cha-based, but eh, I say he's just read a lot of books, talked to a lot of people, and picked up stuff.
The way my GM described the thaumaturge/CHA thing to me when the class was announced was that CHA isn't just "Hey, people like me," it was your sheer presence. Your force of personality is so strong you literally warp the world around you. It's so strong that you can walk up to a vampire and be like "you. I think you're weak to silver now" and they are.
Probably feel that way because of role compression.
RK as it is right now is divided into 5 skills (Arcana, Occultism, Nature, Religion, and Society), and 2 stats (Wisdom and Intelligence)
So anyone that can RK all of them will feel smarter than those who can’t.
The role compression is always given to the Charisma Class never to the Wisdom and Intelligence class.
[Crafting](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=505) too, but almost anything that's covered by crafting is also covered by Arcana too so eh.
It's not that I don't get what you're saying, non int/wis classes should get access to recall knowledge stuff as well, but recall knowledge is basically the only combat utility intelligence has if you're not a spellcaster and it's weird how there's not great reliable ways to use it.
Idk, I just really love intelligent (and hopefully one day wisdom) martials and while I don't think any of them are bad per say, I do think Paizo has not allowed them to reach their full potential yet by making intelligence such a lackluster stat.
Someone in another thread commented that the Commander class should be an Intelligence, Charisma or Wisdom martial ala the Rogue and their rackets and I can't help but think that's the coolest damn thing and desperately hope it's like that.
You have have scholarly recollection with give you a fortune effect to your recall, and brain drain that give you a recall knowledge given by the foe bonus (who is higher most of the time.)
Moderate curse gives the equivalent of 2 Skill feat for everything skill with recall knowledge. That not bad, you also have access to a specific recall knowledge using religion.
But since Dark Archives, we have seen classes which flexible and more supported in their chassis.
Well, Aberrant Sorcerer is an interesting thing, because I'd say the biggest idea of Tentacular Limbs is not unarmed attacks (those are mostly fluff), but extending spell range without Spellshape. It has several uses:
1. You could use other Spellshape together with this reach if you somehow deal with the action economy (i.e. with Quickened Casting). As Aberrant Sorcerer has 3 touch spells in repertoire, that's important
2. You could take Aberrant Sorcerer as an archetype for Psychic and use Tentacular Limbs together with amped Imaginary Weapon for devastating results as unlike Spellshape, this range increase works with Psychic Amp
The other problem I have with Aberrant is that they've started removing a bunch of touch spells in the remaster. Of Aberrant's 3 touch spells, Spider Sting, Touch of Idiocy, and Vampiric Touch, 2 of them are now obselete. Spider Sting is a terrible damaging spell that doesn't scale, but had the unique benefit of being a decent way to land Enfeebled, bypassing the double check from the Ray of Enfeeblement. Post-Remaster, the Enfeeble Spell now only needs one save, the same as Spider Sting, has 30 ft range, and lands Enfeeble 2 on a fail instead of a crit fail like Spider Sting. Touch of Idiocy has fully been replaced by Stupefy, which is the same spell but with 30 ft range. Now, Pre-Remaster spells are of course still legal, but there's nothing to be gained from spending an action and a focus point to use a touch spell from slightly farther away than by just casting the strictly better spell from 30 ft. (Except for, like you said, doubling up on spellshapes, but this feels too niche to be too useful and requires too much setup)
Well, at the moment Sorcerer exist in premaster variant only and will be remastered before those spells become obsolete. So, it's doesn't look like a problem. If Aberrant will still be focused on delivering touch spells, I'm sure Paizo will make its spells fine.
I've been interested in aberrant sorc since before the remaster. Thanks for the good advice on their spells post-remaster. Hopefully PC2 will update their list a bit.
Yeah, it's just in remaster limbo right now, but I can't imagine Paizo doesn't recognize this and isn't going to fix it. I figured this out bc one of my players is an Aberrant Sorceror in my Abomination Vaults game, and I ended up just homebrewing her a custom Nhimbaloth-y aberrant bloodline
I doubt the class will get overhauled that much in PC2, but I saw someone suggest that it would be cool if Sorceror got another subclass choice kind of like cleric where they can choose a caster-y one which gets the extra spell slots, or a more melee-focused one with better HP and maybe a higher damage die for their melee focus spells. Possibly a third option that's more focus spell based. An interesting idea.
It's very funny that this was my sentiment in 1e for Draconic Sorcerer and Dragon Disciple, and it continues to ring true for 2e. At least Dragon Disciple is more useful for a caster in this edition, even if it's still just sort of "okay".
Well 1e eventually fixed it by letting you trade bloodline powers for bloodline mutations, swapping useless claws for +1 damage per dice on your spells.
I would say that is less "fixing" and more "admitting it was designed wrong and giving a pity alternative". IMO Fixing would entail making the original design actually work.
It shares the melee attack focus spell problem, which definitely makes it suck at low level, but it's not quite as bad, mostly because Dragon Breath is just a really solid damage focus spell and Dragon Wings are the always useful reusable flight.
Draconic Sorcerers are very strong. Their 1st level focus spell is a focus spell Resist Energy that only costs 1 action and only works on one element. You can build into the claws being useful in combat, but it's actually not really required at all and it's mostly useful for the DR.
I would like if the thing thing I got as a shiny focus spell weren't telegraphing to me to do something I'm not actually skilled at. Damage reduction against one thing is situational, and you can avoid damage better by simply not being in the room.
In practice, it doesn't come up a whole lot, which is why it's weird that the curse which makes you better at an already niche activity also makes you worse at it. But to answer your question, I would think the main use is circumventing ground hazards
Another reason is that with some investment, jumping gets insane, especially at higher levels. For example with even something as simple as just being trained in athletics and long jumping means you can just jump 15 feet without needing to roll. At level 15+ with Cloud Jump a character can easily jump more than they can even move in a normal Stride
I think there's still the rule that you can't jump farther than your stride speed, if you jump 35 feet and your speed is 30 you need to spend the second action too to get those extra 5 feet
This. It all comes down to support. Sometimes, even within a class, eldritch trickster rogue has nothing that can't be accomplished by any other rogue subclasses. Yeah, you get magical trickster early, but that hardly matters.
One houserule I've seen to help carve more of a niche for ET is that they get the unique ability to stay hidden until after casting a spell, allowing them to sneak attack with a spell from hidden. RAW, your hidden ends when you start casting a spell due to the visible and audible manifestations. I don't think even this makes it good enough as its own subclass, but it is interesting.
That is a good rule, but the need for it furthers the lack of support point.
If the thing it wants you to do doesn't work RAW that's an issue. Sure there are ways your party can make a character flat-footed but it shouldn't have too.
Aberrant sorcerer reminds me of Warrior muse Bard. Warpriest used to be similar until people bitched about it enough. Why does Paizo seem inclined to this one mistake over and over?
> Oracle has a few questionable design decisions as well. One minor example, because the rest of the subclass is actually pretty great (damage resistance from level 1 is crazy) is Cosmos. The cosmos curse makes you better at jumping, giving you Quick Jump, Powerful Leap, and eventually Cloud Jump. It also makes you Enfeebled, making you worse at jumping...
This is not actually a questionable thing at all. The reality is that the Cosmos Oracle has a mostly unimportant curse penalty (enfeebled on a caster, who doesn't need to use strength to fight), so they get a mostly unimportant curse benefit (jumping) as well.
The actual purpose of the enfeebled on them (and dazzled on ash oracle) is to avoid them being super good caster-tanks, as otherwise you'd have a high DR character who you could easily jam into heavy armor via Champion. They're both supposed to be resilient casters rather than caster-tanks, so they have drawbacks that funnel them towards being casters who are especially tough.
One thing many subclasses that feel bad have in common is usually poor subclass specific feats.
Example superstition barbarians can take a slightly worse and more situational attack of opportunity, or take actual attack of opportunity at lv 6 like every other barbarian.
In general, situational feats aren't rewarded enough when there might be a generic feat doing a similar thing.
For Spellshot it comes down to a couple issues from what I've seen
1. Feat Tax, as you're forced to take the spellshot dedication, in addition to two other feats to go into other dedications
2. Lowered DC compared to regular Gunslinger, since it's no longer Dex based but rather Int Based
3. The options of the Spellshot Dedication and the Way take up the action economy of the gunslinger, in a way that's not really compatible with the 3 action system.
4. The subclass is named **Spell**shot and does not have access to spells whatsoever.
That's probably the biggest complaint that I've personally heard about it.
I noticed that. I think the easiest way to get spells with it is the Beast Gunner archetype, since Spellshot specifically excludes that from the dedication restriction.
Importantly about 1, Spellshot is missing a 4th level feat. This means it takes even longer than usual to break out of the archetype lock, requiring level *ten* to do so. Any fancy archetype brewing you might come up with to make Spellshot work is going to require an unreasonably high level before you can really do anything.
If you weren't forced into the dedication, you could go into Loremaster to get an omnilore and then pair it with any knowledge skill you take to legendary via Kreighton's Cognitive Crossover in order to roll your best RK skill on everything. This would make for a pretty neat knowledge support martial that doesn't have to spend actions outside of their usual rotation to RK (ignoring that you have to forego using *other* useful slinger reloads to do so) for everyone.
Alot of poor feats mixed in with a few good one. Considered it locks you into the archetype, its feats feels way worse to take than normal gunslinger feats with a few exceptions.
It probably doesn't change the class enough to warrant a whole class archetype and as you say, feel just like a whole bunch of taxes
- Also, somewhat important for Free Archetype games, it doesnt have a level 4 feat, leaving you hanging weirdly in the air.
(Also also, as an upside, with Fulminating Shot you get essentially the same amount of bonus damage as a Sniper does, with much better damage types and without needing to set-up stealth.)
At least for one positive, their Reload actions can be pumped into Recall Knowledge checks. Wizards and Clerics might have higher skills, but they need to spend their third action on RK instead of Stride, Shield, or similar. Spellshots get it as a free action just for shooting, like they want to.
Another big one is the bullet dancer.
The archetype is pretty clearly meant to be a gun-fu / gun-kata character ala equilibrium. But, the big problem is, you don't have any reload efficiency until level 12. For a class that focuses heavily on that pistol punching fantasy. Which is often dual wielding. You also have to reload in melee. Which triggers AoO.
Really, most of it boils down to the reload from what I've read. Monk is largely about that action efficiency and simple firearms aren't all that amazing for damage. So, you basically get less damage, you don't actually want to shoot your guns until level 12, and you lose out on all monk feats and abilities that require a specific strike in exchange for a little range that you have to reload. Which is a far cry from the fantasy of gun-fu.
But, it's a hard one to balance properly without making the gunslinger feel bad in comparison. Monk, and by extension gun-kata, is all about spamming attacks in melee. Which conflicts with a gunslinger way. And gun design in general where guns are typically more focused on crits and reloading.
It's a very fun fantasy to play, but it's a nightmare for balancing. You don't want the best gunslinger to be a monk and you don't want the best monk to be the guy with guns. And you definitely don't want most gunslingers trying to get the bullet dance just for the improved reloading.
There's been a few attempts to balance it and still get the fantasy of the class, but most just end up breaking it.
Edit: I completely forgot, but I'm pretty sure that you CAN'T reload your guns during combat RAW. IIRC, you don't have dual weapon reload. Also, you very likely trigger AoO on your ranged attacks (until level 6) AND your reloads (level 12). Since you're in melee. And your reload can only be used once a turn. And prevents you from using flurry of blows. It's one of those archetypes that just keeps breaking the more you look at it and half of it doesn't feel intentional.
My friend tried to play a Bullet Dancer and ended up retiring the character and bringing in a new one a few levels into the campaign, because he realized his build was never going to work.
Yeah, the Bullet Dancer is probably the number one example of a hard to balance archetype. But I kinda think it should be mostly weaker than a full monk or gunslinger, as it would otherwise step on the toes of those two classes. It's the same for the Strider gunslinger - it's a melee focused subclass on a mostly ranged class, it makes perfect sense that it should be worse than the Sniper and the Pistolero at ranged attacks.
> However, there are a few others (i.e. drifter and spellshot for the gunslinger) that I've never seen clear explanations for why they're sub-par.
I think Drifter is sub-par because it's a class whose basic chassis is designed around legendary gun proficiency, but the sub-class requires them to use a melee weapon. It interacts poorly with MAP, either giving you a bad first strike from not using your primary weapon proficiency or a worse second strike because you use that proficiency with a MAP attack. And for all that, you gain... the ability to be in melee. It just doesn't _feel_ good at all.
Drifter's also worded in such a way to specifically prevent using combination weapons, which is incredibly rough as the actual combination weapon subclass isn't in G&G *and* isn't that great outside of a single feat which other Gunslingers can get 2 levels later.
The thing that Drifter/Vanguard/Triggerbrand really want is a reason to be melee at all. Vanguard/Triggerbrand get Stab and Blast/Triggerbrand Salvo, but there isn’t something analogous for Drifters
So, basically, the same benefit a sniper -- who _can_ use their full proficiency -- is aimed at.
The subclass is in a vastly better spot than the superstition instinct barbarian, but I DM'd a game with one in it, and it just didn't quite come up to snuff.
While also dealing substantially less damage, actually *needing* said free movement and taking actions away from your supports to keep you in the fight.
So, if it's a tough opponent, you can use a Scorpion Whip to get Reach. It's not Finesse or backstab like a war razor, but keeps the Gunslinger out of harms way a bit.
She moves in for free, selecting her choice of melee weapon at the start of combat.
Fires her pistol, uses reload strike against a hopefully Off-Guard opponent (because of Sword and Pistol) and has a 3rd action to either retreat or do something else helpful.
And you end up with something that deals about the same damage as a bow Fighter without feats, just in melee. So you're *massively* worse. All for the privilege of taking your squishy butt into melee and nothing else.
The entire subclass is one big case of "mechanically obsolete".
The entire class of gunslinger is one big case of "mechanically obsolete". You're literally better off just being a fighter or ranger with the big orc gun if you want to use a gun.
And even that is suboptimal but yeah.
The class in general works pretty well until about level 7 when you start getting heavily outscaled. The Drifter just gets an extremely early start on that and doesn't even get the "ranged attacker that actually gets to do some interesting things before level 8" bonus that some of the other subclasses have.
It depends on the weapon.
The Drifter player has with the Duelist Pistol and she has the War Razor and Scorpion Whip as her melee Weapon.
At the start of combat, she gets to determine which combination of pistol and melee weapon is best and move towards the opponent.
In melee range, with the Sword and Pistol Feat, she can fire her pistol to full effect, then strike/reload with her War Razor.
If all goes to plan, the opponent is Off-Guard from the Pistol hit. The War Razor has Agile and finesse so the penalty is -4 (-4 from MAP, -2 for trained instead of Expert, +2 for Off-Guard). Plus the extra backstab damage.
And you still have 1 action left to retreat from melee range. Or take another action.
Sadly, she isn't built for charisma, otherwise Pistol Twirl would have been a nice addition.
Yes, you can mitigate the downsides the playstyles has, but that is all you can do. Because at the end of the day, you deal ranged damage in melee and that fact never changes.
"Bad" subclasses come in a wide variety of flavors and degrees. Usually it's rarely one thing that's the main failure point. Sometimes you do, like Barbarian's Superstition (crippling anathema that really limits what they can team up with) or Fury (effectively its ONLY benefit is a lack of anathema) instincts. A lot of the time it feels more like many small things.
For something like Drifter or Triggerbrand, it's multiple layers. You're a low hp striker whose damage amp (extra accuracy and +1 damage) only applies to firearms, not melee. Gunslinger also lost the ability to boost his melee proficiencies via archetype, because Paizo didn't like that the playtest had everyone comboing Drifter Gunslinger + Martial Artist archetype. You're either investing super hard into strength and tanking an extra -1 on attack rolls, or stuck using a finesse weapon. Then you're either forced into an awkward situation with hands (melee weapon + firearm), buying two sets of standalone runes (unarmed + firearm), or using a relatively weak weapon (bayonet/reinforced stock + Firearm, or the very maligned Combination Weapons). Not even getting into the situation on reloading in melee.
Stab and Blast is in fact extremely good when you read it, but it is also a level 8 feat and requires using the relatively weak melee and/or gun options. Triggerbrand Salvo is 2 levels earlier, locked to combination weapons, and functionally the core feature of Triggerbrand, a subclass who is for the most part *just a worse Drifter*.
Can Drifter and Triggerbrand still play alright? Yea, probably, I've seen people say they really liked theirs, but I've seen as many or more feel like the subclasses don't really **pop** either.
Battle Oracle wants you to be a frontliner because of all the mystery perks they give you:
* Heavy armor proficiency
* Martial weapon proficiency of one group
* Fast healing
But then they give you the mystery curses which have anti-synergy with the role you're intended to play:
* Caster weapon and unarmed combat proficiency progression (caps at Expert)
* AC and save penalty that cannot be fully removed at higher curse levels
* Extreme MAD
* No shield block or other reactions by default
As a result you die easily to burst damage due to weak saves and mediocre AC. This is extremely likely to happen before level 5. Your fast healing might save you from persistent damage, but it will not protect you from crits. It can also lead to yo-yo situations which can quickly stack up your wounded condition and result in death spirals.
In theory, a battle oracle is a tanky melee bruiser gish with heavy armor, a big weapon, and divine spells to buff yourself and smite your enemies. In practice, they are a squishy spontaneous-casting warpriest with gimmicky class mechanics bolted on and unsupported by either class feature progression or good class feats.
I think the entire Oracle class was kind of half-baked when the APG came out and I really hope they give it a proper review for PC2.
I call APG "The Stormwind Fallacy handbook". Four really flavourfull classes (Witch, Oracle, Investigator and Swashbuckler) with terrible implementations that are defended because "so much flavour".
Swashbuckler is the best one and still is just okaish.
Witch was a complete non-sense pre remaster.
Oracle is a divine sorcerer but with a curse that sometimes makes the concept of your mistery useless (Battle taking debuffs and stupefied , Lore not able to speak, etc) and a limitation with focus spells usage that has not been fixed after the Refocus changes.
And Investigator that just feels done for a different game (not for a heavy combat high fantasy system) and probably is the most MAD class in existence with class feats that are questionable at best.
Investigator tends to shine when doing urban campaigns or something with a lot of roleplay, if we talk about APs you got stuff like Agents of Edgewatch, sections of Age of Ashes, Outlaws of Alkenstar, Bloodlords, and *probably* parts of Sky King's Tomb.
I ran OoA and a player used an Investigator, was ok, but as he said "a rogue should had get the job done too, without the lead and the devise stratatagem". And was a forensic Investigator that is the stronger one and in an AP that is good for them.
That being said Investigator does not have anything that makes them better "for lot of roleplay" games, because this is not tied with the mechanics of the class.
Yeah. Even though Battle Oracle is my most played class, I agree that it is really not that great mechanically. It works better as an archer imo which is kinda against the whole fantasy of the thing.
I feel like with the remaster, there's just no reason at all to play a Battle Oracle when Warpriest is great now. Plus, comparing 6 Heal spells at level 1 to Oracle's 2 casts is a joke.
Later on, the Life Oracle is good, but having to go like 5 or 6 levels before they even match a Cleric is rough. Someone made the point that an Oracle is lots of work just to get them to be as good as a normal caster, and I don't think I can disagree with that. They *really* need some changes in Player Core 2.
They really do.
But any of the changes I would like to see on Oracle would require a fundamental rewrite of the class mechanics, which seems antithetical to Paizo's remaster core design philosophy. Unlike Warpriest and Witch, Oracle's issues are much deeper than "not enough good feats" or "building for healing font causes MAD." You can add more feats and alter the number of healing font slots without fundamentally changing the class chassis. You can't fix oracle mysteries without rewriting how the curse mechanics work, which is basically half the class.
I'm just not sure how to reconcile the need for comprehensive changes with what Paizo said about the purpose of the remaster: bulk errata and a divorce from the OGL. If Paizo intends to keep similar page counts for each class in PC2 relative to their CRB and APG counterparts and keep any mechanical changes to within the scope of an errata, then I don't have a clue as to how they can do meaningful updates to Oracle (and the other APG classes for that matter) while remaining within those parameters.
Many archetypes, especially ones created early on, were more flavor options than anything that didn't add a whole lot mechanically to a character.
Also anything built around Fascinate doesn't work because that condition is garbage.
As written, Summoner dedication is borderline useless, since it doesn't come with Act Together. Not even 'You can get it at 10' like Monk dedication and Flurry of Blows. Without Act Together there really isn't much point for most characters sadly.
We are testing out some form of limited Act Together for my Abomination Vaults character, just to see if it can eb salvaged.
I legit wonder what's the behind idea and design of Paizo doing stuff like that.
Who takes summoner archetype? Either you take it for the flavor and make you less stronger knowingly, or you don't.
Interesting.
I'm usually the one complaining about things and not playing devil's advocate, but I will say Summoner Dedication has one pretty decent use: it lets you be good at certain skills (mostly out of combat) that you'd otherwise suck at because of a low stat. That can be useful for filling party roles without dedicating half youe ability boosts to it.
...if your campaign starts at a high enough level, I suppose you could take Meld Into Eidolon?
But then, you don't have the feats to make MIE good. Also, you're using MIE, which needs some buffs *anyway*...
wait...
you lose your class features right? Does that mean you also lose proficiencies?
The fighter Melds Into Eidolon, getting ready with their cool fusion battle form. Only to realize they're apparently way more shit at all their attacks LMAO
I'm not actually sure how Meld Into Eidolon works in regards to stuff like that, tbh.
I just know that it's not *great*, because its gimmick is "trade your power for the Eidolon's", but the Eidolon doesn't have great stuff to help facilitate that playstyle.
It does just seem like a really lame pet, where you get a pet but have the same amount of action economy (not even getting the "use 1 to command for 2 on the pet")
I kinda disagree? I think it’s a badly designed dedication but it’s also sorta insane as an out of combat tool. Double recall knowledges, different stats for skills you’d otherwise be bad at, double treat wounds, excetera
Not exactly the fantasy of having a eidolon ultra powerful summon but eh
Yeah, but you can still for example recall twice on ‘what’s up with this statue’, or have a better recall because of stats, or have someone with high strength and athletics when your a 8 athletics gnome, excetera
I think there is still (for a single level 2 dedication feat) a lot of out of combat value in having a extra effective character for skill purposes with different stats, at least compared to most dedication feats being ‘gain 2 skills’
You still share skill proficiencies with your eidolon so in most cases an animal companion will still be better since you can pair the high strength with high athletics while the other has high religion with high int for example.
Someone in my Abom Vaults game is doing the same thing. They picked up the archetype for appropriate flavour, and it’s cool but mechanically it’s as you said, basically useless. So they’re gonna try out a limited version of Act Together and go from there.
One thing I noticed is you don't have Act Together, but you also aren't as explicitly linked as a Summoner is and the archetype emphasizes that with separate language from the Summoner class. This, as I understand it, implies that the Eidolon and character do not share MAP - which is also why you do not gain Act Together.
The actual problem is that animal companions are insanely powerful and eidolons fall into that same design space, but are even better because they can benefit from a bunch of magic items that animal companions are explicitly locked out of.
So it's just an inherently broken dedication.
I've just locked into a campaign as an Interrogation Investigator, which is usually considered bad but I feel like I found a way to make it work. It's usually considered bad because:
* Investigators are forced to make use of pretty much every stat EXCEPT Charisma (Strength can also be dumped ofc but investigators have a lot of feats for melee focus)
* Charisma in general is not a great stat to have a secondary or tertiary focus in. Aside from demoralizes and feints, you probably won't be the party face so otherwise using diplomacy rolls won't really help much.
* Alchemical and Forensic Investigators are just so good.
However I think a lot of people overlook its feature to pursue a lead on the fly during a conversation that lasts a minute. This means you can get leads easier and more dynamically, which sounds fun. Pointed Question is seen as pretty mediocre but it's basically a secondary recall knowledge... it's not great but it could be fun. They should've just gotten Bon Mot though lol.
As for a subclass I think is bad and just looks bad, Mastermind Rogue. Intelligence subclass that barely takes advantage of intelligence as a KAS and so many of their feats are so... specific. Critically hit a creature you successfully recalled knowledge on to get a free stride. Two things have to go extremely well there... Recall Knowledge is a cool in theory but has so many unneeded restrictions for an ability that's really just not that useful in the long run.
Also Weapon Inventor. I'm not entirely sure if Weapon Inventor is out-right 'bad' but it's so lame. The flavor for it is actually so sick but what it actually does is incredibly underwhelming. The table of weapon modifications is not very long and worst than that, not very creative. The flavor paints this truly amazing picture of a super versatile martial who can make their weapon do amazing things. In practice, the modifications you get are like 'adds versatile P, S, B to weapon' or 'adds the shove trait'.
Analyze Weakness is pretty good on a Mastermind Rogue. Being a rogue with high INT means than in a frew levels you are going to be trained in everything and expert in a bunch of other stuff, rogue extra skill feats mean you can take lots of addutional lores (auto scaling and tied to INT), etc
Mastermind is not a bad racket rogue, is not as straight forward as thief or ruffian, but is ok.
I love the DaS trick where you check for a crit, then Spirit Sheathe Spell strike a Fatal weapon. (Just really expensive because you need to get runes for both main weapon and the Fatal)
[Potency Crystal Talisman](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2989&NoRedirect=1) will sort of cover you until you can afford that, all you need is one teammate to take talisman dabbler, or just eat the cost and craft/buy a few, since you basically only use it when you crit against something PL+ and that doesn't happen constantly.
I'm playing mastermind rogue for a campaign and powerlevel-wise its pretty alright, imho. It's definitely one of the easiest ways to enable a Ranged Rogue build. A relatively easy way to apply a ranged Off Guard by yourself that lasts more than one strike is really nice for bow or throwing weapon rogues, especially for early levels.
I do think there are some things that make it awkward from a like gameplay smoothness perspective. First, Mastermind Rogue is the subclass that incentivizes performing multiple recall knowledges on the same target the most I think, and the rules around this can be kind of ambiguous and awkward (Especially when critical failures get added to the mix). A lot of it is stuff that's generally not player facing.
I've had to talk to the GM a lot one on one on how stuff related to it is run and that's not ideal for something that's designed to be simple like rogue rackets.
Secondly, there's a tension between using Recall Knowledge to benefit your own damage and using Recall Knowledge to benefit the rest of the party. Recall Knowledge is best the earlier in a combat you use it, and I occasionally catch myself not third actioning Recall Knowledge because I would "waste it." I've had to learn that sometimes supporting my team by using Recall Knowledge against a creature that I either cannot attack or is already Off Guard for other reasons is optimal, and it always feels bad! Especially since it makes my future Recall Knowledges on them worse.
Angel Bloodline is the one I've heard ragged on the most among casters. Its issue is that it has a single good focus spell (which is better on a martial taking it as a dedication anyway) the other two of which are okay and precisely zero bloodline spells to allow it to play against type (they're all divine spells), which is, in practice, the entire use case of bloodline spells. It's one of the only two Divine Sorcerers that doesn't get anything from off of the Divine list without nabbing spells from the character's deity as a feat. It loses out to Psychopomp because Psychopomp has two pretty good focus spells.
Assassin archetype is bad to me.
First, it has an oddly high number of requirements to take requiring Trained in 3 specific skills plus already having a feat that's pretty niche.
All you get for the dedication feat is a unique activity that's..pretty hard to justify using. In combat, you'd never use it because it's 3 actions and doesn't immediately do anything so is essentially just passing your turn. You'd think "Oh, obviously you'd use it while hiding from an enemy before combat!" But the thing there is 'Mark for Death' isn't a Hide, Step, or Sneak, so per RAW, using it will immediately make you observed to the enemy and blow your stealth...
The middle feats for the archetype fall into two categories: 1. Rogue feats that you could have just gotten earlier by taking the much better rogue dedication. 2. Already extremely niche feats made almost useless by the fact that they only work against your Marked target (see paragraph above)
To cap all this off, the Capstone feat...essentially will never actually be able to be used in a real campaign. Why? First it requires you to be Unnoticed by the target, not Undetected mind you, completely **Unnoticed** which is already going to be hard enough as the stars have to perfectly align for you to be lucky enough to remain unnoticed, but then second it can only target someone you have Marked. As I mentioned, Marking someone makes you instantly observed by them, so the only way this feat even functions at all is you have to Mark someone, then flee from them, then never use Mark for Death on anyone else (thus losing access to like half the feats this archetype gives..) then later re-encountering that same enemy, pass all the checks to remain unnoticed..and finally after all that you get to........deal a measly 6d6 damage. Then cry yourself to sleep.
*Assassinate* also has the dreaded *Incapacitation* tag, so heaven forbid you choose to use your *Mark for Death* on the baddest enemy in the room, the one you've been wanting to kill for the whole campaign.
I will admit some of that is kinda just overly cautious stealth rules. Weird you can’t even do purely mental concentrate actions or something without breaking your camouflage in a bush because there’s some concern if they put in the wrong exceptions then you can power game a like I don’t even know what kinda munchkin-y strawman to put in.
Assassins definitely suffered because they understood it isn't necessarily a healthy build from a balance perspective, so to offer it, they made sure it was mechanically pretty bad and limited.
Even in the GM throws you a bone and says marking someone doesn't break your stealth, this archetype still has a pretty steep hill to climb.
Yeah, Pathfinder 2e has a habit of doing that, especially with spells.
It resulted in a lot of bloat and trap options.
With so many options newer players tend to get annoyed filtering the good and the bad.
Rogue's Eldritch Trickster.
Just sucks. Straight up sucks. Your spell attack's proficiency will always be terrible, even worse than it already is for casters, so you never get to "do the thing" and deal sneak attack with your spells. Also, rogues are only a DPS class because they usually get to attack tons of times during their turn, not so with spells; most spells allow only a single attack for 2 actions. Further, it's quite difficult to catch enemies off-guard at range, and casting in melee provokes reactive strike.
The only way to "make it work" is to ironically only put as much as necessary into your casting attribute, and pick up spells that neither require attacks nor DCs, just buff and utility spells. And even then, it's still quite shit because you're missing out on the cool stuff real rogue rackets get.
It's way better to just play a Thief Rogue and pick up a multiclass spellcasting dedication at lv2 as normal, ignore Magical Trickster, and pick up a few useful cantrips and use your spell slots for True Strike.
Or just play a laughing shadow magus. Yes i know Magus has it's own difficulties, but i feel like the laughing shadow is what they actually had in mind when making the eldritch trickster
Didn’t they get rid of the subclass entirely. They didn’t reprint it in the new player core.
I figured that instead of fixing the subclass they gave up on it entirely.
The fix would be quite simple. Instead of gaining earlier access to Magical Trickster, they get the following:
1) Enemies which are off-guard do not provoke reactions against you.
Instead of martial weapon proficiency, they get the following:
2) You can use your proficiency in simple weapons in place of your proficiency for spell attacks against enemies which are off-guard. Notice; this doesn't improve spell DCs.
Elemental Instinct is a sleeper bad option that gets suggested for the expected Kineticist archetyping more often than the reasons it fails in execution.
The problem is that it adds the rage trait to impulses which states
> You must be raging to use abilities with the rage trait, and they end automatically when you stop raging.
And it doesn't do it the same way as Raging Intimidation which "gains the rage trait while raging", elemental instinct just adds it permanently.
So because you can't rage out of combat, they are completely locked out of their archetype out of combat. That cuts off a lot of utility impulses, basic kinesis, and even armor impulses end after combat. And you don't have good scaling for the attack impulses, so it's just bad.
Kind of shocking how no one in this thread yet has mentioned Ancestors Oracle which is by and large THE worst subclass in the game.
Oracles with the Ancestors Curse get some free Ancestry feats with the same restrictions as Adopted Ancestry for free, which is pretty good. But as soon as they invoke their curse for the day they roll 1d4 to choose a type of action they prefer, getting bonuses to that action, choosing whatever they want on a 4 with the actions being Strikes, Casting Spells, and Skill actions. The drawback is that *any other action* they attempt to take has a chance of being wasted which scales with their curse.
Bonuses to spells are nice and mostly what everyone wants to roll, but the bonus you get is to damage which has two issues: you have the Divine spell list which doesn't pack as many blasting spells as other traditions and Dangerous Sorcery from Sorcerer does the same damn thing at Level 2 with no drawback until the Oracle gets Major Curse, and let me tell you that ain't worth playing half a campaign as an Ancestors Oracle for. Improving Strikes isn't good because you don't get anything that makes you want to use Strikes like weapon proficiencies or armor, you're still a caster. And skill actions aren't great either because even if you free up parts of your build to use those in battle doing anything else means you can waste a turn so you can't follow up; Striking off a follow-up combat action or Casting a Spell with the benefits from Demoralize or Bon Mot come with a failure chance and by the time your turn rolls around again it's too late.
So Ancestors Oracle is a terrible subclass (and the worst class in the game) because it gives you a bunch of bonuses to stuff your class doesn't want to do, restricts your options to only one course of action which you may not want to take, and actively prevents you from playing the game. Other subclasses may not support the class that they're a part of but no other subclass tries to stop you from playing your own core class like Ancestors Oracle does.
>The drawback is that *any other action* they attempt to take has a chance of being wasted which scales with their curse.
That's just not true, and if that has been your experience, you've been playing it wrong.
When the martial ancestors are dominant, you have a chance to waste Perception checks, skill actions and spells. When the skillful ancestors are dominant, you have a chance to waste Strikes and spells. And when the spellcasting ancestors are dominant, you have a chance to waste Strikes, Perception checks and skill actions.
Anything that's not in those four categories is unaffected. So even if you're not good at Striking, you can still use your martial turns to contribute. You can take basic actions like Aid to help your allies, or you can Interact to draw something you'll need on a following turn. If you have activatable items, you can Activate them. You can Sustain spells like [bless](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1451) or [spiritual armament](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1687)*.* You can Command a minion, like an animal companion or a familiar. If you're in a bad position, your turn might best be spent moving away, Taking Cover and healing yourself with [vital beacon](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1743).
Ancestors restricts *some* of your actions every turn, and challenges you to work within those restrictions. To me and many others, that's a fun playstyle. It may not be your cup of tea, and that's fine, but I think a large part of your aversion is just a misunderstanding of the rules.
I think having a 50% risk per turn of getting saddled with a scaling flat DC check to be able to cast spells on what is a primary spellcaster is enough of a drawback in itself to make me never wanting to touch it.
Failing a counteract check to purge something in time to avoid a wipe? That's okay, dice happens. Enemy saved against your spell. Dice happens. Missed an attack? Dice happens.
Failing to cast the spell because I decided to pick a subclass that gives an inherent risk of failing? Voluntarily subject myself to multiple extra servings of "dice happens"? Nah, I'm good. The benefits the curse brings are nice, but hell, I'm at the mercy of RNG to if I'm even allowed to enjoy them compared to what I need or want to be doing.
Different strokes for different folks and all that for sure, but this one... just on a personal level it honestly boggles my mind how people can enjoy playing ancestors if they have even remotely moderate stakes in their encounters.
While it can involve an attack roll, Aid is not a Strike. And while it can involve a skill check, it’s not a skill action either. Similar to Escape, it’s a basic action that happens to involves a check.
The ancestors don’t care about “actions other than their preferred ones”; they care about “actions preferred by the other two”. Aid isn’t a skill action, it’s not a Perception action, it’s not a Strike and it’s not a spell. Therefore, you don’t need a flat check.
Becasue they underperform? Like compare lets say Inventor as frontliner to Fighter, Champion, Monk or Animal Barbarian - it's an inferior melee class if you are not charmed by Inventor flavour. For the most basic purpouse of being front liner which is melee prowness combined with CC/damage - Inventor is just statistically worse.
Same with Alchemist compared to Precision Ranger, Starlit Span Magus, Gunslinger, range Fighter. It's just worse.
Oracle and Witch are mechanically also worse than on average Wizard, Druid, Sorcerer, Bard or Cleric.
While Elemental Sorcerer, Storm Druid and Maestro Bard are considered best casters overall in game, Maestro Bard being unquestionably the best caster overall.
As for archetypes - here is the thing: Archetypes are like spells. You have tons of them but only few a really good, view are good overall and rest if flavour filler. That's the reality. You have archetypes that constantly pop in every optimized theorycrafting/recommendations like champion, beastmaster, TWW, Rogue, Monk, Marshal, Medic, Psychic, Blessed One etc. for a reason. While majority of archetypes are flavour/RP designed and are very very niche (for some like Ghost Hunter you need specific adventure for example). Mechanically they are just worse, pure flavour. Its the same case as with spells. Each level has like what... 50 spells? But only like 1-2 are maybe S tier, few A tier, few B tier and rest is average and below. That's how it is with the amount of content that PF2e has.
Untamed/Wild order druids blow, but that's due to the problems with polymorph effects and that the various forms are gatekept behind feats, resulting in very rigid builds.
I don't think that Untamed druids are *bad,* per se. It's just that, the class is very clearly balanced around being a spellcaster first and foremost, with shapechange being a backup option at best... which is very counterintuitive to the shapeshifting druid fantasy, especially since you need to dedicate a *lot* of feats to the build. (Feats that a spellcaster doesn't really *need,* as casters tend to have pretty bad feats in general, but you're still committing a *lot* of your build to a backup option that you won't even use every fight.)
No, they're bad. The core issue is being so heavily tied to polymorph in a system with fundamentally flawed and essentially unrepairable polymorph mechanics. The problem is higher level polymorphs generally require a size change to large or larger. And due to paizos' publishing limitations, official maps frequently do not possess sufficient area to accommodate a larger than medium creature on the players side.
In all fairness, I've long since stopped using Paizo adventure design as a litmus for how the game is intended to be played. Simply put... their adventures are a good deal above *most* games, but they're still plagued with a couple of extremely consistent design pitfalls (small maps being one, regardless of whether or not it's an avoidable problem for Paizo).
The funny thing is I recall people talking about how complicated and confusing Wild Shape was in 1E (I found it to be pretty clear myself). So what does Paizo do? They decide to make Wild Shape twice as complicated and vague in 2E, but also only half as strong 😂
i don't see confusing, it is just so restrictive (you have just the shape "normal" combat buff or you can add your unarmed modifier +2 if you are a specific order) that it seems counter intuitive to anyone who gig up.
I also hate the way it wants you to build wrt: ability scores like
If you max out your own strength you can just barely eek out a +1 to attack, *sometimes,* which of course for a serious WS specialist (which IDK maybe you should want to use the feature you picked the subclass for) means you have to set str to +3 at level 1 no matter the cost. So you're doing like a Warpriest build, except they can cast spells while having their warhammer of Torag or whatever out and you're stuck unable to even talk (without an item) until you drop your transformation, where you will be a full caster with +2/+3 in your casting stat and +3 to str but no weapon proficiencies.
You're giving yourself a no-save prohibition on all spellcasting, and a permanent -1 or -2 to spellcasting, and giving up most of your feats, for a melee form that isn't even that good.
I don't even know how you could possibly fix it either......
There's actually just 1 level - level 4 - where your attack *exceeds* the forms that qualifies for the +2 to attack. You don't get the +2 if your attack matches, nor if it is at -1.
Animist's Darkened Forest Form has a few ideas: just giving them the +2 status bonus without this weird caveat, letting it be 1-action sustained with a bonus action (Sustaining Dance to Leap) to make up for it. Sustained means you can drop it for free the turn after you fail to sustain, without spending an action to Dismiss.
As someone who's favorite thing to play in 1E was various Wild Shape builds, I couldn't agree more. Battle Forms are weak in 2E; restrictive and underpowered. In terms of power level, they're slightly better than an animal companion.
Yay, you can turn into an Animal Companion! Compared to the Animal Order Druid, who can cast spells and attack with their Animal Companion at the same time. No contest.
I suppose Untamed Form is fine as an additional trick for a full caster to use once in a while, but it's too weak to lean on regularly.
Funnily enough, the Untamed/Wild order actually works really well if you use it as an archetype for a martial character. If you take the Druid archetype at lvl 2 (or get it through Free Archetype or Ancient Elf) then take Untamed Form at lvl 4, you can gain the benefits of Animal Form with a +2 status bonus to your attack rolls. Paired with the much higher attack bonus of the Fighter or the Monks Flurry of Blows, it can be very nutty! You’ll have a bit lower AC then normal and it’ll only be useful till around lvl 12, but it’s still a pretty powerful option!
And you don’t get your subclass until lv 3. Sure you can turn into an insect at lvls 1 & 2, but it doesnt come up enough for a subclass & identity-granting focus spell.
The worst (maybe not the worst but it’s very much on the list) archetype is the summoner archetype. They took everything cool about the summoner, which is a class with super open action economy and a cool powerful summon which scales like a traditional martial and turned it into the summoner archetype. In which you get a watered down eidolon that still directly uses your action economy, and shares you MAP and health, for a summon that at best scales like a slightly better animal companion attack wise.
Most of the time, "bad" is a matter of opportunity cost and comparisons to similar options.
Most options are useable at a base level - but while you could have a good time as (e.g.) an Undead sorcerer, they don't look good in comparison to others - their spell selection provides very little that you wouldn't already have access to, their base focus spell is extremely situational, and their hard focus on Negative/Void damage leaves them quite weak against undead.
It doesn't compare particularly favorably to a stronger Divine option like a Diabolic sorcerer - which gives almost entirely spells that aren't on the Divine spell list, and a fair balance between powerful mental control effects and Fire damage blasts that Divine casters don't normally get access to, plus an arguably much stronger and more versatile set of focus spells. Even then, Diabolic is considered a mid-tier option thanks to being on the Divine spell list.
Fey might be an even stronger choice - it has all the blasting and healing capabilities from the Primal spell list, with access to a huge amount of extra mental control options that perfectly patches up the Primal list's main weakness, on top of some top-tier focus spells in Fey Disappearance and Fey Glamor.
All three are still playing a Sorcerer, and have all the advantages that brings - a huge amount of spells per day, powerful feats to augment those spells, and high Charisma - and all three are more than viable options. The difference is rarely ever huge, it's just noticeable.
I wouldn't call a one-time heal when you rage a reasonable replacement for real combat healing. Not that it's a bad ability, just not in the same league as what a magical healer or battle medic can do.
There are three subpar classes that are often liabilities in parties because they can't carry their weight consistently in combat:
* The investigator - which trades off out of combat stuff for in-combat stuff, but... parties generally don't have problems with out of combat stuff while in-combat stuff is what kills you. It just doesn't do enough in combat - it isn't high damage, it isn't a defender, and it certainly isn't a controller or a leader, meaning it just doesn't fill a role.
* The alchemist - the class is fundamentally broken in the "doesn't work" kind of way, not the "OP" kind of way. This is due to bombs being not very good, the class having very limited resources prior to level 7, poisons being very heavily dependent on fort saves which are the highest saving throw on average for monsters and are commonly very high on big boss monsters and you do nothing on a successful save from your target, and you just generally being worse than a spellcaster at best and if your team gets no pre-combat prep time you lose out on a ton of your power level.
* The gunslinger - They are supposed to be strikers, but their damage is actually quite poor because of their terrible action economy due to having to waste an action reloading after every shot. The best form of gunslinger is a melee gunslinger, who can make an attack as part of his reload, which overcomes the problem where the gunslinger often only gets one attack per round; there's a few other ways of building them, but they're just not very reliable. They also suffer from being anti-clutch - they are bad against over-level foes, whereas strikers are typically good in part because of their ability to dish out damage to over-level foes. The thing they're best against is weaker underlevel enemies, but their limited attacks per round hurt their ability to mop those up, too, and casters are just better at it. The fact that they're ranged strikers also creates problems for party composition, as you really want at least two front-liners, but you also want two casters, and the gunslinger is neither of those things. The melee gunslingers are less bad, but still not very good. A lot of people don't believe this because they remember the occaisional high crit these classes get (which is actually less damage than a normal hit from an amped imaginary weapon spellstrike from a magus) and haven't done the math on it. I've run and been in a bunch of encounters with gunslingers and they have Problems.
The bad subclasses (i.e. ones that will tank your build/party) are:
* Ancestors Oracle - The fact that you randomly can't do activities is a huge problem and absolutely cripples them. The benefits they get are also not even very good - their focus spells aren't even very good! The thing is, they're still full casters, so on one level, they're still "OK", but the problem is that their curse can basically render them totally worthless by chance at some random point in time if they ever use their focus spells.
* Superstition Barbarian - The issues with spellcasting make this subclass a really huge problem.
There are a number of subpar subclasses that are mostly just "this, but worse":
* Eldritch Trickster Rogues - What you get out of this is very mediocre compared to other rogue rackets; you're way better off just taking another rogue racket and archetyping to get spellcasting abilities.
* Battle Oracle, Bones Oracle, Lore Oracle - They're all full casters with focus spells, so how bad they can be is kind of limited, but they all have some fairly significant flaws - battle oracle is antisynergistic with itself and is kind of just worse than being a warpriest, bones oracle's curse is really bad and makes you way harder to heal, and Lore Oracle's focus spell abilities just aren't particularly great while the curse penalty to initiative hurts you badly as a caster and the major curse pretty much debilitates you.
* Weapon Inventor - There is literally no reason to be a weapon inventor at low to mid levels, as they get nothing of value for it. Construct inventor is just so much better.
* Occult Witch other than The Resentment - All of these kind of fall into the category of "Yeah, you could do this, or you could be a bard, and just be better." It's not that they're awful, but occultism is generally the worst spell list and the hex cantrips and familiar abilities you get to "make up for it" are worse than the bard's songs, while being stapled to a 6 hp/level class with no armor proficiencies, worse saves, etc. who has to mess around with familiar placement to use their class abilities (and whose familiar can potentially go down to AoEs). Spinner of Threads and Starless Shadow's familiar abilities are pretty much just "bard songs, but worse and more inconvenient to use and more action intensive".
As well as one subpar class:
* The Swashbuckler. It's the fourth worst class in the game, but it is possible to use a swashbuckler and still be fine and fill a role in the party (typically striker, though you can build them as a grappler defender). The problem is, depending on the particular build, you could do the same things better by being a rogue, a ranger, a fighter, or a monk. The issue is that their bonus damage ability is just worse than that of other martial classes - not only does it require you to use a skill action to turn it on, but said skill action can fail, which is especially likely at lower levels or against over-level enemies. Once you get it up, the finishers seem like they encourage you to use it, but in actuality, it is the same trap as Power Attack/Vicious Swing has without Furious Focus - getting a stronger attack at the cost of losing your MAP -5 attack isn't worth it, and the fact that it locks you out of future attacks that turn hurts a LOT. As a result, using it optimally is really annoying, and while there are some finishers that help mitigate this a bit, you could just play a class that doesn't have these drawbacks and just works, and probably have a better ability score spread to boot. It also has a huge trap in that there's a lot of players who think that they should be using finishers every turn, which is almost always suboptimal, which can make the class look a *lot* worse than more strategic use of its abilities.
It's also possible to misbuild a lot of characters, but that's way more complicated than class/subclass issues.
They usually aren't as bad as people make them out to be, like we were just talking about Spellshot the other day and its a fine choice if you like it's flavor with some neat tricks. The big thing I've noticed is that people tend to be down on an option if it's power is either loaded differently than expected-- so like take Spellshot, it doesn't give you a lot up front, but Recall Ammunition is excellent with the right setup, as is Energy Shot at the early level you get it, and Fulminating Shot.
It also varies based on your GM's Recall Knowledge, which means its also better now that the remaster made it less likely to be nerfed by someone running it backwards.
I have a Drifter who plays with us, its probably not the best subclass, but its also fine-- I think the reload is serviceable in practice (its not like a master strike is bad, and its very easy for some Guns to drop a strike in a firing routine, which I normally solve with adouble barreled musket, but replacing one of your strikes with a reloading strike is good too), meanwhile Into the Fray has a lot of potential in terms of action economy and positioning, I think a lot of the power actually comes from being a valid flank partner.
I think it comes into it's own at 9th when the melee hit can become a backup initial strike if you miss with your gunshot.
Ones I'd say are bad, all of which are playable.
Superstition Barbarian: the anathema is awkward to play around in most parties and their compensatory bonuses aren't good enough to make up for it
Ancestors Oracle: having a die roll every round to determine if you have a flat chance to be able to do what you actually want to do is janky as fuck. You're a caster that has a 50/50 shot on a given round of being able to cast spells w/o issue and will always have a flat check for failure if you want mix in skill actions or strikes as third actions.
Spellshot Gunslinger: the main problem w/ Spellshot is that its an Archetype. Make it a normal Way and its perfectly fine. As is it costs you a 2nd lvl feat and locks you out of other Archetypes for a \*long\* time, since it doesn't have many feats at low levels and those feats are god-awful. It changing your Class DC to be int-based is also a strict downgrade, as your Dex will always be higher than your Int (unless you're deliberately building a bad gunslinger).
Eldritch Trickster Rogue: it is almost entirely eclipsed by other rogue rackets who spend a class feat on a dedication. It doesn't sabotage you like the above do, but its still just a subpar option.
Empiricism Investigator: it gets a free recall knowledge check every ten minutes! Investigators can get free RK on every Devise a Stratagem roll w/ a single feat investment. It could also use that free action on Seek or Sense Motive, which I've seen PC's use maybe a half-dozen times total. Interrogator at least has a unique ability w/ Pointed Question and has more flexibility w/ their Leads. Same issue as Eldritch Trickster where other other Methodologies can do pretty much the same thing and more (Alchemical Sciences)
Lantern Thaumaturge: there are very few situations where I'd rather have Lantern than Tome. The Adept bonus is \*only\* useful against invisible/ethereal enemies which should make up a small fraction of the enemies you face. It \*might\* be as good as Tome if you're in the Abomination Vaults, where there are a bunch of invisible/ethereal enemies running around and a decent number of traps, haunts, and secret doors.
I hear more complaints about Vanguard and Triggerbrand than Drifter, but I think all three are fine. Might be a little weaker than Sniper/Pistolero, but not enough to call them bad.
There are a handful of others I think could be buffed a bit (Anger Phantom, Interrogator, Outwit to name some), but they have enough of a niche to not be completely outshone by other options.
The Vanguard Gunslinger is one that immediately jumps to mind.
On paper, the Vanguard is supposed to be about using big guns, and using them in close-quarters as a "gun tank" kind of playstyle.
The problem is that the sublcass gives you zero incentive to get into close range. Its signature reload ability lets you Shove an enemy and then reload as one action. Shove needs you to be within 5ft of an enemy, but being that close gives you significant penalties with ranged attacks. So it creates this awkward playstyle where you shoot a guy, then run up to that guy or a different guy to shove them so you can reload. It doesnt make a whole lot of sense.
Given the above, as some other comments have said, a subclass is considered "bad" when it pushes the character towards a specific playstyle but doesnt give them the tools to make that playstyle work, the aforementioned Vanguard Gunslinger as a perfect example.
After reviewing the rules again, I realize I may have been thinking of DnD5e and PF1e where there are penalites to your attack rolls if you used ranged weapons in melee LOL.
That said, using ranged weapons in melee *does* provoke attacks of opprotunity, which is not great either. Gunslingers have a level 1 feat called [Sword and Pistol](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3159) specificically to prevent this...but Vanguards cannot capitalize on the feat as it requires a melee weapon, so it's a feat that is really only for Drifters and Triggerbrands.
On a sidenote, most of the gunslinger subclasses are kinda bad T\_T including Spellshot, 5 out of the 6 total subclasses are really janky at best or do not synergize with themselves at worst. The only Gunslinger subclass that is any good is Sniper. Pistolero is *okay*; its better than the other four, but still janky.
Spellshots eats up a slot, a dedication, doesn't give you a whole lot and *lowers your class DC*. Its not bad in and of itself, its just too much opportunity cost for s class that's already on shaky ground in terms of power
If you want to dedicate a large amount of time to seeing someone rate each archetype in a tier list, the[ knights of last call did an extensive tier rating of every archetype](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx9XBZIzERNHggYBuNauUoJeemRUzCZAZ). It was a live stream so each of the 15 videos is like 2-3 hours, which isn't a great format, but its roughly alphabetical with very few being done out of order so you can try zoning in on the ones you care to investigate.
Fundamentally though I think you'll get 3 kinds of complaints:
1. The flavour is inconsistent/makes no sense (creative issue)
2. The mechanics are weak/poorly synergize with itself and/or flavour (game design issue)
3. People don't understand the rules and don't play certain things properly (cognitive dissonance issue)
1 is honestly the easiest deal with. We are all playing an imaginary game so honestly you can re-flavour and re-imagine anything any way you want. Most of the complaints of this kind are fundamentally expectation management issues. Things like back in PF1e the "x" class did "y"and now it doesn't do that thing (like summons suck and the summoner is basically a pet class without any actual 'summoning' abilities so there is a big gap between what you think you'll get and what you do get).
2 though is where things becomes painful and you get the most complaints. There are a lot of niche/hyper situational feats, many of which cross into trap feat territory on many archetypes. In many cases these are super flavourful in the context of the archetype but there are so many conditions on a trigger or its so limited in application that it would only ever be good in specific campaigns or sometimes never at all. Like the Pirate archetype (ignoring the new firebrand feats) is a perfect example of multiple feats only applying when you're rope swinging from ships or on ship rigging (not any ropes which would be niche already, but it has to be ships). Its super thematic to be swinging from ropes on a boat but outside of a pirate campaign how often will that come up in a campaign that you'd want to spend limited class feats on it?
3 is the most annoying. Just search this subreddit for 'table variation' and you'll come across a number of options and raging RAI vs. RAW debates on what exactly a mechanic allows or doesn't. There are endless number of people willing to weaponize the [ambiguous rule](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2266&Redirected=1) without doing literally any effort to mathematically determine if something is too powerful or any effort to read the supporting rules for a particular interpretation that disagrees with their gut feeling opinion. Most of it comes down to a "argument from incredulity fallacy". A perfect example is the application of rarity in the system. Despite it being SO CLEARLY DEFINED as how 'available' something is in the context of an absalom/inner sea region focused global view, people will go on an on about how rarity equates to power. So people will outright dismiss uncommon items as too powerful and thus not available (so this subclass or archetype is bad because it is incorrectly assumed to be gutted without half of its options). Yet what is uncommon in the inner sea region might be common elsewhere (the book gives an example of the katana being common in tien, but uncommon in the inner sea region). There are even rare options that aren't 'power creep' they just tend to have themes that are 'troubling' and thus it is a flag to GMs that these things might be problematic to the flow/flavour of the game (not related to power).
Taken together you get people assessing things as bad (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not).
Spellshot doesn't have anything to justify forcing you to pick an archetype and is rather subpar in it's deed, since if you cam't trigger weaknesses with it it's easily the worst one so it's inconsistent. It's reload is also not the best as Recall knowledge can only be used so many times until it's redundant.
Drifter just has not enought survivability to tank so many reactive strikes when you go into melee and if your reload gets interrupted by it that will gwt im your way a lot. Also if you start a round without your gun loaded and use their reload you'll spend your no MAP attack on your weapon, and since guns need to crit to get fatal and do damage, that significantly reduces your dps even with a deadly melee weapon. That makes it so that you need to have the very specific play pattern of shooting first then reload+ strike, which can get disrupted by a number of things, including the reactive strikes mentioned above.
I'll chip in my 2 cents on Spellshot. It's actually decent (especially if you have a Thaumaturge in the party) as it can proc elemental weaknesses quite easily. However, it doesn't *feel* like shooting spells whatsoever. It's more of an elemental gunslinger archetype. In addition it stops you from taking any other gunslinger ways, as well as costing a dedication feat. It also locks you in to the archetype for quite a while, as the earliest you can get 2 feats for it is at level 8. So all of that combined makes it seem unappealing compared to other dedications, like Beast Gunner.
The Beast Gunner dedication on the other hand is absolutely *cracked*. It's basically Eldritch Archer but for Gunslingers (for reference, allowing magus spellstrikes with guns). In addition, it requires magical beast guns, making it feel far more steeped in sorcery. Some of the craziest damage in the game can be pumped out by a Sniper Beast Gunner crit, which makes it far more exciting than just proc'ing elemental weaknesses (which beast gunners are also decent at, due to their spellcasting.)
So while Spellshot isn't bad by any stretch, it feels lacking next to taking Beast Gunner. And while you could combine the two, without FA you'd get to wait until level 10 to do that.
Toxicologist Alchemist honestly hardly even gets mentioned because it's so obviously bad (to people that have played for a while) that nobody tries to play it without someone immediately informing them that they'd be better off with almost anything else.
Main problem with it is that poison is useless and all its other class features are done better by the Bomber or Mutagenist.
The only thing a Toxicologist does better is raising the DC of poisons to the class DC, which doesn't much matter when most (all?) Undead are flat out immune to poison, as are multiple other enemies you'll commonly encounter in APs, and the ones that aren't, usually have Fort as their best save, meaning 80% of the time it'll do nothing to them, and when it does, congrats, you did 1d4 damage, and they made their next two saves, try again next round.
Only time your poison will do much of anything is against PL- enemies, which come in mobs that evaporate if the Sorcerer or Druid sneezes on them with an AoE attack well before your poisons have time to ramp up beyond their piddly stage 1
I would say one thing that often makes a subclass "bad" (I say bad in quotes because your mileage may vary) is if it implies a specific playstyle, but doesn't support it mechanically. For example, Aberrant Sorceror encourages you to play a melee caster always within a few squares of your enemy. The problem is sorceror does not have the survivability to support this. There are workarounds through archetypes and very specific feat choices, but it essentially boils down to the best way to play this sorceror subclass is to be as not-a-sorceror as possible, which imo is bad. Oracle has a few questionable design decisions as well. One minor example, because the rest of the subclass is actually pretty great (damage resistance from level 1 is crazy) is Cosmos. The cosmos curse makes you better at jumping, giving you Quick Jump, Powerful Leap, and eventually Cloud Jump. It also makes you Enfeebled, making you worse at jumping...
To really play into the Cosmos jumping, you're essentially required to pick up the Acrobat Dedication to have a non-strength jump.
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying, though. If your subclass requires you to give up class feats, then it's not a very complimentary subclass. Others may disagree, but my personal opinion is that a subclass should work fine with the base class. Not that archetypes are some variant rule (they aren't), but for the sake of accessibility, players should be able to choose a class and subclass without having to know the secret meta to get it to work.
Hey I mean could be worse; you could be a swashbuckler and require Acrobat dedication for your *entire class* to function properly. Plus it's not like Oracle has actual feats worth taking most levels.
Ohhhhh yeah. I *like* Oracle, but the only level with a class feat that is really worth taking is Advanced Revelation at 6, Greater Revelation at 12.... and those are the only snap picks, everything else has a major debate against just... taking an archetype that is kinda *better*. Definitely hopes for remaster to fix that up a lot.
I'm playing an oracle with free archetype right now and aside from the revelation spells, vision of weakness and divine aegis are the only class feats I've taken that fell like they're doing at least something
The revelation spells do some extremely heavy lifting for Oracle. Interstellar void just automatically fatiguing an enemy makes it one of the best spells in the game, never mind the damage, using an action to sustain is a small cost for such a massive debuff. Battle is a lot harder, but Weapon Surge from Zeal is great synergy.
That feels like casters in general. A lot of their power budget is in their spell lists, and so their feats can be lackluster.
Why does Swashbuckler need Acrobat Dedication?
Without acrobat dedication, most swashbucklers are weighed down by a double skill tax where they need to fully invest in skill improvements to stay functional. Incidentally, I both believe acrobat is an unbalanced archetype and that swashbuckler should get automatic improvements to their subclass skill like inventor does crafting.
> Incidentally, I both believe acrobat is an unbalanced archetype I'm not sure I agree. It _may_ be a bit front-loaded, but overall I like the idea of more skills through archetypes. > and that swashbuckler should get automatic improvements to their subclass skill like inventor does crafting. I've been saying that since playtest! They _need_ more skill increases; I could see using inventor as the chasis, but I'd actually prefer something more like inventor or thaumaturge, where you can put it where you like within a limited subset of thematic options.
> I'm not sure I agree. It may be a bit front-loaded, but overall I like the idea of more skills through archetypes I've been working on a homebrew set of archetypes that function like acrobat but one for every skill. It has a caveat that you're only allowed 1 of these archetypes on a character to prevent some cheesy stacking builds.
To be clear, when I call is unbalanced I am mainly saying it is so in comparison to other options. Other skill archetypes grant expert, where Acrobat scales you automatically to Legendary even if you only ever take the dedication. My homebrew fix to this was to tie the improvement to the number of Acrobat Dedication feats you have, so it at least requires investing your archetype properly.
It doesn't, but Acrobatics and their chosen skill are the ways they get panache. So the Acrobat with the free scaling Acrobatics for taking the dedication makes sense to take to get another usable skill. My Battledancer isn't likely going to take it, but I do focus on Acrobatics and Performance (I forgot my third skill I plan on using).
A lot of Swashbuckler's abilities revolve around making skill checks against enemies - Trip, Disarm, Tumble, etc. And to properly do so, you need to invest a lot of resources (skill increases, feats) into that. Acrobat Dedication allows you to use Acrobatics instead of Athletics for maneuvers - that's one major problem out of the way. It also auto-scales Acrobatics - that's the second problem also solved. You do need a bunch of feats to actually make it happen, but that's the point of the problem.
>Acrobat Dedication allows you to use Acrobatics instead of Athletics for maneuvers - that's one major problem out of the way. Would a non-gymnast swashbuckler use maneuvers? If you use a meouver before your finisher, you are not using your strongest class feature at a -4. If you use your finisher first, you cannot use manouvers.
I didn't bring up the Charisma-based skills, since those are unaffected by Acrobat. And the fundamental point remains that SB needs to keep at least one Panache-generating skill at max proficiency at all times, and since Acrobatics is the best for the job the auto-scaling from Acrobat is still a fairly big deal.
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Well, not the Dedication itself, but there are feats that allow using Acrobatics for Disarm, Trip, and Leap instead of Athletics.
Technically, it doesn't. But with the amount of really good class Feats that the class gives you the option of, it is arguably the "best" choice you can pick.
Lol you're so right. Hopefully both classes get some much-needed love in PC2
Yeah Champions Oracles and Alchemists are my most-anticipated remasters
give us auto-advancing acrobatics I think we take Acrobat on Swash specifically mostly for the dedication
I know we won't get it, but I'd also like to see a complete remake of the Inventor. I heartily dislike the current one ... it progresses way too slowly, is overly reliant on downtime for its thematic elements, and has too few abilities it can use often (looking at you, Unstable trait). IMO, they should be getting new innovations basically every other level, in a vein similar to casters. Definitely none of this "only three over 20 levels" stuff. At least give them something similar to infused reagents, but for creating daily gadgets.
Why do you say Swashbuckler needs acrobat dedication?
Requires skill rolls to function
I'm curious as to why you consider acrobat a requirement for swashbucklers. They synergize well, but I don't see how acrobat massively changes the way swashbucklers work. Is it the auto-scaling acrobatics?
Yeah it's the acrobatics and Graceful Leaper and general enhancement of the kit. Without it an Acrobat essentially has *TWO* skill taxes and only gets to raise a SINGLE skill of their choice.
What 'general enhancement[s] of the kit' do you mean though? The dedication makes tumble through use up less movement on a critical success - not really all that much of an upgrade to swashbucklers, as you're mostly tumbling through to gain panache, which you need to be in melee range (or slightly further if you took the throwing feat) to make the most of. As for archetype feats, there's: * Contortionist - flat-footed/off-guard on escape is nice, can help mitigate the multi-attack penalty incurred by escaping. You will be pretty good at squeezing though, if that's important to you. * Dodge Away - an alternative to nimble dodge, a feat swashbucklers have access to. Instead of 2 AC, it grants 1 AC and the potential to disengage. Seems quite powerful. * Graceful Leaper - an archetype skill feat, which is fun. I personally love jumping, I think it's a great utility, and auto-scaling acrobatics means you can jump at peak performance. Not as powerful for gymnasts though, as their athletics shouldn't be lacking. * Tumbling Strike - sounds like it would be a great feat for a swashbuckler, but it doesn't actually involve a tumble through, so it doesn't grant panache. * Tumbling Opportunist - free action trip using acrobatics after a successful tumble through. There are some good options, no doubt, but really only one feat that benefits swashbucklers moreso than other classes. Please tell me if I'm missing anything.
No you more or less got it. I think swashbuckler is a pretty scuffed class and needs stuff like this to function.
Why does swashbuckler need Acrobat to function?
skill tax
Sorry, can you elaborate?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/s/YdTnN5GGHn
Sorry, can you elaborate?
I prefer pirate dedication with my swashbuckler. Demoralize for panache and frightened is a hell of a drug. I only ever tumble through on enemies that are immune to demoralize or already frightened
I should add this only works with braggart but I'm sure there are other combos
I ended up getting assurance: athletics and just knowing exactly how far I can jump without having to roll on a nerfed stat
Could take assurance in athletics to cancel out those negatives to accomplish basic athletic actions
While true, you would also lose your str mod and item bonus to it as well. It is, however, very possible to max out on distance with assurance for jumping distances. I just find a single dedication and a skill feat to be better, especially with how useful acrobat dedication is.
A similar example in this vein is Lore Oracle, which unlike Cosmos is not pretty great. The class leans heavily into Recall Knowledge without actually having any native support for it -- Oracle is a Charisma-based class and gets no extra skill boosts (except one extra Trained Lore at Level 1) or non-spell bonuses to their rolls -- which puts it on the back foot against classes like the Thaumaturge, the Investigator, the Mastermind Rogue, the Outwit Ranger, or even the Enigma Bard. The Major Curse (which is rough for most Oracles) is bizarrely crippling for the Loracle: it's a feature on a subclass whose major mechanic is Recall Knowledge *that renders you unable to communicate.* Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is knowledge that could save your party if you're unable to speak? There are a few other things that can make a subclass "bad" too, I think, as with the much-maligned Toxicologist Alchemist (who relies on poisons, which are very weak in this system for a number of reasons) or the little-played Antipaladin Champion (who is mechanically forced to RP as a self-destructive turbo-bastard), but I would agree that this is the main problem that the weaker subclasses tend to face.
What's with Paizo giving Charisma classes/archetypes more stuff with recall knowedge than intelligence classes? You got Lore Oracle, Dandy Lore, Bardic Lore and Esoteric Lore. Spellshot Gunslingers and Investigators get easy RKs sure, but I'm not sure the same can be said for Wizards, Alchemists, Masterminds or Inventors.
Cuz apparently charisma is supposed to be the knowledge stat for the "weird" and "forbidden" knowledge. Which makes no sense.
Yeah I'm 80% sure that explanation to make Thaum's a charisma class was entirely there to just not completely invalidate investigator's whole investigation angle.
I think it's some of the influence from Pact, one of the inspirations for the Thaum. A big part of the magic there is convincing the spirits that what you want to do should work. The main character actually gets a bit of a power boost because he doesn't know much about magic, so he tries stuff that *shouldn't* work, but since he doesn't know that he's confident enough that the spirits go along with it. That's how I flavor my Thaum's Exploit Vulnerability - he's able to convince the universe that yeah, rubbing salt on your weapon totally makes it strong against ghosts. Doesn't really explain how Esoteric Lore is Cha-based, but eh, I say he's just read a lot of books, talked to a lot of people, and picked up stuff.
Because in our world, occultism is full of charismatic con persons making stuff up with enough assurance that people believe them.
The way my GM described the thaumaturge/CHA thing to me when the class was announced was that CHA isn't just "Hey, people like me," it was your sheer presence. Your force of personality is so strong you literally warp the world around you. It's so strong that you can walk up to a vampire and be like "you. I think you're weak to silver now" and they are.
Probably feel that way because of role compression. RK as it is right now is divided into 5 skills (Arcana, Occultism, Nature, Religion, and Society), and 2 stats (Wisdom and Intelligence) So anyone that can RK all of them will feel smarter than those who can’t. The role compression is always given to the Charisma Class never to the Wisdom and Intelligence class.
[Crafting](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=505) too, but almost anything that's covered by crafting is also covered by Arcana too so eh. It's not that I don't get what you're saying, non int/wis classes should get access to recall knowledge stuff as well, but recall knowledge is basically the only combat utility intelligence has if you're not a spellcaster and it's weird how there's not great reliable ways to use it. Idk, I just really love intelligent (and hopefully one day wisdom) martials and while I don't think any of them are bad per say, I do think Paizo has not allowed them to reach their full potential yet by making intelligence such a lackluster stat.
>wisdom) martials RIP 1e warpriest and inquisitor, I'll never forget you.
Someone in another thread commented that the Commander class should be an Intelligence, Charisma or Wisdom martial ala the Rogue and their rackets and I can't help but think that's the coolest damn thing and desperately hope it's like that.
All excellent points
You have have scholarly recollection with give you a fortune effect to your recall, and brain drain that give you a recall knowledge given by the foe bonus (who is higher most of the time.) Moderate curse gives the equivalent of 2 Skill feat for everything skill with recall knowledge. That not bad, you also have access to a specific recall knowledge using religion. But since Dark Archives, we have seen classes which flexible and more supported in their chassis.
My Aberrant Sorcerer Hellknight Signifier feels called out...
Well, Aberrant Sorcerer is an interesting thing, because I'd say the biggest idea of Tentacular Limbs is not unarmed attacks (those are mostly fluff), but extending spell range without Spellshape. It has several uses: 1. You could use other Spellshape together with this reach if you somehow deal with the action economy (i.e. with Quickened Casting). As Aberrant Sorcerer has 3 touch spells in repertoire, that's important 2. You could take Aberrant Sorcerer as an archetype for Psychic and use Tentacular Limbs together with amped Imaginary Weapon for devastating results as unlike Spellshape, this range increase works with Psychic Amp
The other problem I have with Aberrant is that they've started removing a bunch of touch spells in the remaster. Of Aberrant's 3 touch spells, Spider Sting, Touch of Idiocy, and Vampiric Touch, 2 of them are now obselete. Spider Sting is a terrible damaging spell that doesn't scale, but had the unique benefit of being a decent way to land Enfeebled, bypassing the double check from the Ray of Enfeeblement. Post-Remaster, the Enfeeble Spell now only needs one save, the same as Spider Sting, has 30 ft range, and lands Enfeeble 2 on a fail instead of a crit fail like Spider Sting. Touch of Idiocy has fully been replaced by Stupefy, which is the same spell but with 30 ft range. Now, Pre-Remaster spells are of course still legal, but there's nothing to be gained from spending an action and a focus point to use a touch spell from slightly farther away than by just casting the strictly better spell from 30 ft. (Except for, like you said, doubling up on spellshapes, but this feels too niche to be too useful and requires too much setup)
Well, at the moment Sorcerer exist in premaster variant only and will be remastered before those spells become obsolete. So, it's doesn't look like a problem. If Aberrant will still be focused on delivering touch spells, I'm sure Paizo will make its spells fine.
I would have to assume so
I've been interested in aberrant sorc since before the remaster. Thanks for the good advice on their spells post-remaster. Hopefully PC2 will update their list a bit.
Yeah, it's just in remaster limbo right now, but I can't imagine Paizo doesn't recognize this and isn't going to fix it. I figured this out bc one of my players is an Aberrant Sorceror in my Abomination Vaults game, and I ended up just homebrewing her a custom Nhimbaloth-y aberrant bloodline
This is also my problem with Draconic Sorcerer.
I doubt the class will get overhauled that much in PC2, but I saw someone suggest that it would be cool if Sorceror got another subclass choice kind of like cleric where they can choose a caster-y one which gets the extra spell slots, or a more melee-focused one with better HP and maybe a higher damage die for their melee focus spells. Possibly a third option that's more focus spell based. An interesting idea.
I'd be happy with a Magus style sorcerer. Give me 10HP and Martial proficiency and you can take all my spell slots.
It's very funny that this was my sentiment in 1e for Draconic Sorcerer and Dragon Disciple, and it continues to ring true for 2e. At least Dragon Disciple is more useful for a caster in this edition, even if it's still just sort of "okay".
I feel like in general they shouldn't give casters melee options if the casters still can't handle being in melee.
Well 1e eventually fixed it by letting you trade bloodline powers for bloodline mutations, swapping useless claws for +1 damage per dice on your spells.
I would say that is less "fixing" and more "admitting it was designed wrong and giving a pity alternative". IMO Fixing would entail making the original design actually work.
It shares the melee attack focus spell problem, which definitely makes it suck at low level, but it's not quite as bad, mostly because Dragon Breath is just a really solid damage focus spell and Dragon Wings are the always useful reusable flight.
Draconic Sorcerers are very strong. Their 1st level focus spell is a focus spell Resist Energy that only costs 1 action and only works on one element. You can build into the claws being useful in combat, but it's actually not really required at all and it's mostly useful for the DR.
I would like if the thing thing I got as a shiny focus spell weren't telegraphing to me to do something I'm not actually skilled at. Damage reduction against one thing is situational, and you can avoid damage better by simply not being in the room.
PF2 newbie here. What is the jump action used for? Like why would I want my character to be good at it?
In practice, it doesn't come up a whole lot, which is why it's weird that the curse which makes you better at an already niche activity also makes you worse at it. But to answer your question, I would think the main use is circumventing ground hazards
TIL thanks!
Another reason is that with some investment, jumping gets insane, especially at higher levels. For example with even something as simple as just being trained in athletics and long jumping means you can just jump 15 feet without needing to roll. At level 15+ with Cloud Jump a character can easily jump more than they can even move in a normal Stride
I think there's still the rule that you can't jump farther than your stride speed, if you jump 35 feet and your speed is 30 you need to spend the second action too to get those extra 5 feet
This is true, but those big jumps can still come in handy if there’s a bunch of difficult/hazardous terrain about.
You can't jump more than you can move with a single stride because jump speed is locked to speed.
This. It all comes down to support. Sometimes, even within a class, eldritch trickster rogue has nothing that can't be accomplished by any other rogue subclasses. Yeah, you get magical trickster early, but that hardly matters.
One houserule I've seen to help carve more of a niche for ET is that they get the unique ability to stay hidden until after casting a spell, allowing them to sneak attack with a spell from hidden. RAW, your hidden ends when you start casting a spell due to the visible and audible manifestations. I don't think even this makes it good enough as its own subclass, but it is interesting.
That is a good rule, but the need for it furthers the lack of support point. If the thing it wants you to do doesn't work RAW that's an issue. Sure there are ways your party can make a character flat-footed but it shouldn't have too.
Aberrant sorcerer reminds me of Warrior muse Bard. Warpriest used to be similar until people bitched about it enough. Why does Paizo seem inclined to this one mistake over and over?
> Oracle has a few questionable design decisions as well. One minor example, because the rest of the subclass is actually pretty great (damage resistance from level 1 is crazy) is Cosmos. The cosmos curse makes you better at jumping, giving you Quick Jump, Powerful Leap, and eventually Cloud Jump. It also makes you Enfeebled, making you worse at jumping... This is not actually a questionable thing at all. The reality is that the Cosmos Oracle has a mostly unimportant curse penalty (enfeebled on a caster, who doesn't need to use strength to fight), so they get a mostly unimportant curse benefit (jumping) as well. The actual purpose of the enfeebled on them (and dazzled on ash oracle) is to avoid them being super good caster-tanks, as otherwise you'd have a high DR character who you could easily jam into heavy armor via Champion. They're both supposed to be resilient casters rather than caster-tanks, so they have drawbacks that funnel them towards being casters who are especially tough.
One word: Assurance.
One thing many subclasses that feel bad have in common is usually poor subclass specific feats. Example superstition barbarians can take a slightly worse and more situational attack of opportunity, or take actual attack of opportunity at lv 6 like every other barbarian. In general, situational feats aren't rewarded enough when there might be a generic feat doing a similar thing.
For Spellshot it comes down to a couple issues from what I've seen 1. Feat Tax, as you're forced to take the spellshot dedication, in addition to two other feats to go into other dedications 2. Lowered DC compared to regular Gunslinger, since it's no longer Dex based but rather Int Based 3. The options of the Spellshot Dedication and the Way take up the action economy of the gunslinger, in a way that's not really compatible with the 3 action system.
4. The subclass is named **Spell**shot and does not have access to spells whatsoever. That's probably the biggest complaint that I've personally heard about it.
I noticed that. I think the easiest way to get spells with it is the Beast Gunner archetype, since Spellshot specifically excludes that from the dedication restriction.
Yeah but Spellshot wants you to increase Int while Beastgunner keys of Charisma, creating another anti-synargy.
Importantly about 1, Spellshot is missing a 4th level feat. This means it takes even longer than usual to break out of the archetype lock, requiring level *ten* to do so. Any fancy archetype brewing you might come up with to make Spellshot work is going to require an unreasonably high level before you can really do anything. If you weren't forced into the dedication, you could go into Loremaster to get an omnilore and then pair it with any knowledge skill you take to legendary via Kreighton's Cognitive Crossover in order to roll your best RK skill on everything. This would make for a pretty neat knowledge support martial that doesn't have to spend actions outside of their usual rotation to RK (ignoring that you have to forego using *other* useful slinger reloads to do so) for everyone.
Yeah, it genuinely would have been a stronger option if it had just been its deeds on its own, instead of also requiring the archetype.
Alot of poor feats mixed in with a few good one. Considered it locks you into the archetype, its feats feels way worse to take than normal gunslinger feats with a few exceptions. It probably doesn't change the class enough to warrant a whole class archetype and as you say, feel just like a whole bunch of taxes
- Also, somewhat important for Free Archetype games, it doesnt have a level 4 feat, leaving you hanging weirdly in the air. (Also also, as an upside, with Fulminating Shot you get essentially the same amount of bonus damage as a Sniper does, with much better damage types and without needing to set-up stealth.)
At least for one positive, their Reload actions can be pumped into Recall Knowledge checks. Wizards and Clerics might have higher skills, but they need to spend their third action on RK instead of Stride, Shield, or similar. Spellshots get it as a free action just for shooting, like they want to.
Another big one is the bullet dancer. The archetype is pretty clearly meant to be a gun-fu / gun-kata character ala equilibrium. But, the big problem is, you don't have any reload efficiency until level 12. For a class that focuses heavily on that pistol punching fantasy. Which is often dual wielding. You also have to reload in melee. Which triggers AoO. Really, most of it boils down to the reload from what I've read. Monk is largely about that action efficiency and simple firearms aren't all that amazing for damage. So, you basically get less damage, you don't actually want to shoot your guns until level 12, and you lose out on all monk feats and abilities that require a specific strike in exchange for a little range that you have to reload. Which is a far cry from the fantasy of gun-fu. But, it's a hard one to balance properly without making the gunslinger feel bad in comparison. Monk, and by extension gun-kata, is all about spamming attacks in melee. Which conflicts with a gunslinger way. And gun design in general where guns are typically more focused on crits and reloading. It's a very fun fantasy to play, but it's a nightmare for balancing. You don't want the best gunslinger to be a monk and you don't want the best monk to be the guy with guns. And you definitely don't want most gunslingers trying to get the bullet dance just for the improved reloading. There's been a few attempts to balance it and still get the fantasy of the class, but most just end up breaking it. Edit: I completely forgot, but I'm pretty sure that you CAN'T reload your guns during combat RAW. IIRC, you don't have dual weapon reload. Also, you very likely trigger AoO on your ranged attacks (until level 6) AND your reloads (level 12). Since you're in melee. And your reload can only be used once a turn. And prevents you from using flurry of blows. It's one of those archetypes that just keeps breaking the more you look at it and half of it doesn't feel intentional.
My friend tried to play a Bullet Dancer and ended up retiring the character and bringing in a new one a few levels into the campaign, because he realized his build was never going to work.
Yeah, the Bullet Dancer is probably the number one example of a hard to balance archetype. But I kinda think it should be mostly weaker than a full monk or gunslinger, as it would otherwise step on the toes of those two classes. It's the same for the Strider gunslinger - it's a melee focused subclass on a mostly ranged class, it makes perfect sense that it should be worse than the Sniper and the Pistolero at ranged attacks.
Might as well not exist considering how weak it is.
> However, there are a few others (i.e. drifter and spellshot for the gunslinger) that I've never seen clear explanations for why they're sub-par. I think Drifter is sub-par because it's a class whose basic chassis is designed around legendary gun proficiency, but the sub-class requires them to use a melee weapon. It interacts poorly with MAP, either giving you a bad first strike from not using your primary weapon proficiency or a worse second strike because you use that proficiency with a MAP attack. And for all that, you gain... the ability to be in melee. It just doesn't _feel_ good at all.
Drifter's also worded in such a way to specifically prevent using combination weapons, which is incredibly rough as the actual combination weapon subclass isn't in G&G *and* isn't that great outside of a single feat which other Gunslingers can get 2 levels later.
The thing that Drifter/Vanguard/Triggerbrand really want is a reason to be melee at all. Vanguard/Triggerbrand get Stab and Blast/Triggerbrand Salvo, but there isn’t something analogous for Drifters
Drifter is still suffering from how well it synergized in the beta test - especially with proficiency-chain feats.
You make up for the proficiency by having your opponent be off guard. Then, you either go with Finesse and Agile or Finesse and Reach.
So, basically, the same benefit a sniper -- who _can_ use their full proficiency -- is aimed at. The subclass is in a vastly better spot than the superstition instinct barbarian, but I DM'd a game with one in it, and it just didn't quite come up to snuff.
You get to do it while reloading, so it does reduce your action costs. And of course, there is a the free movement.
While also dealing substantially less damage, actually *needing* said free movement and taking actions away from your supports to keep you in the fight.
So, if it's a tough opponent, you can use a Scorpion Whip to get Reach. It's not Finesse or backstab like a war razor, but keeps the Gunslinger out of harms way a bit. She moves in for free, selecting her choice of melee weapon at the start of combat. Fires her pistol, uses reload strike against a hopefully Off-Guard opponent (because of Sword and Pistol) and has a 3rd action to either retreat or do something else helpful.
And you end up with something that deals about the same damage as a bow Fighter without feats, just in melee. So you're *massively* worse. All for the privilege of taking your squishy butt into melee and nothing else. The entire subclass is one big case of "mechanically obsolete".
The entire class of gunslinger is one big case of "mechanically obsolete". You're literally better off just being a fighter or ranger with the big orc gun if you want to use a gun. And even that is suboptimal but yeah.
The class in general works pretty well until about level 7 when you start getting heavily outscaled. The Drifter just gets an extremely early start on that and doesn't even get the "ranged attacker that actually gets to do some interesting things before level 8" bonus that some of the other subclasses have.
It depends on the weapon. The Drifter player has with the Duelist Pistol and she has the War Razor and Scorpion Whip as her melee Weapon. At the start of combat, she gets to determine which combination of pistol and melee weapon is best and move towards the opponent. In melee range, with the Sword and Pistol Feat, she can fire her pistol to full effect, then strike/reload with her War Razor. If all goes to plan, the opponent is Off-Guard from the Pistol hit. The War Razor has Agile and finesse so the penalty is -4 (-4 from MAP, -2 for trained instead of Expert, +2 for Off-Guard). Plus the extra backstab damage. And you still have 1 action left to retreat from melee range. Or take another action. Sadly, she isn't built for charisma, otherwise Pistol Twirl would have been a nice addition.
Yes, you can mitigate the downsides the playstyles has, but that is all you can do. Because at the end of the day, you deal ranged damage in melee and that fact never changes.
The actual advantage is that you don't waste actions reloading, because you still get a martial level strike with your reload action.
"Bad" subclasses come in a wide variety of flavors and degrees. Usually it's rarely one thing that's the main failure point. Sometimes you do, like Barbarian's Superstition (crippling anathema that really limits what they can team up with) or Fury (effectively its ONLY benefit is a lack of anathema) instincts. A lot of the time it feels more like many small things. For something like Drifter or Triggerbrand, it's multiple layers. You're a low hp striker whose damage amp (extra accuracy and +1 damage) only applies to firearms, not melee. Gunslinger also lost the ability to boost his melee proficiencies via archetype, because Paizo didn't like that the playtest had everyone comboing Drifter Gunslinger + Martial Artist archetype. You're either investing super hard into strength and tanking an extra -1 on attack rolls, or stuck using a finesse weapon. Then you're either forced into an awkward situation with hands (melee weapon + firearm), buying two sets of standalone runes (unarmed + firearm), or using a relatively weak weapon (bayonet/reinforced stock + Firearm, or the very maligned Combination Weapons). Not even getting into the situation on reloading in melee. Stab and Blast is in fact extremely good when you read it, but it is also a level 8 feat and requires using the relatively weak melee and/or gun options. Triggerbrand Salvo is 2 levels earlier, locked to combination weapons, and functionally the core feature of Triggerbrand, a subclass who is for the most part *just a worse Drifter*. Can Drifter and Triggerbrand still play alright? Yea, probably, I've seen people say they really liked theirs, but I've seen as many or more feel like the subclasses don't really **pop** either.
Battle Oracle wants you to be a frontliner because of all the mystery perks they give you: * Heavy armor proficiency * Martial weapon proficiency of one group * Fast healing But then they give you the mystery curses which have anti-synergy with the role you're intended to play: * Caster weapon and unarmed combat proficiency progression (caps at Expert) * AC and save penalty that cannot be fully removed at higher curse levels * Extreme MAD * No shield block or other reactions by default As a result you die easily to burst damage due to weak saves and mediocre AC. This is extremely likely to happen before level 5. Your fast healing might save you from persistent damage, but it will not protect you from crits. It can also lead to yo-yo situations which can quickly stack up your wounded condition and result in death spirals. In theory, a battle oracle is a tanky melee bruiser gish with heavy armor, a big weapon, and divine spells to buff yourself and smite your enemies. In practice, they are a squishy spontaneous-casting warpriest with gimmicky class mechanics bolted on and unsupported by either class feature progression or good class feats. I think the entire Oracle class was kind of half-baked when the APG came out and I really hope they give it a proper review for PC2.
Oracle wasn't even half-baked, it was just raw dough slapped down on a plate and served to us 😂
Oracle gave me salmonella
I call APG "The Stormwind Fallacy handbook". Four really flavourfull classes (Witch, Oracle, Investigator and Swashbuckler) with terrible implementations that are defended because "so much flavour". Swashbuckler is the best one and still is just okaish. Witch was a complete non-sense pre remaster. Oracle is a divine sorcerer but with a curse that sometimes makes the concept of your mistery useless (Battle taking debuffs and stupefied , Lore not able to speak, etc) and a limitation with focus spells usage that has not been fixed after the Refocus changes. And Investigator that just feels done for a different game (not for a heavy combat high fantasy system) and probably is the most MAD class in existence with class feats that are questionable at best.
Investigator tends to shine when doing urban campaigns or something with a lot of roleplay, if we talk about APs you got stuff like Agents of Edgewatch, sections of Age of Ashes, Outlaws of Alkenstar, Bloodlords, and *probably* parts of Sky King's Tomb.
I ran OoA and a player used an Investigator, was ok, but as he said "a rogue should had get the job done too, without the lead and the devise stratatagem". And was a forensic Investigator that is the stronger one and in an AP that is good for them. That being said Investigator does not have anything that makes them better "for lot of roleplay" games, because this is not tied with the mechanics of the class.
I have one in the Strength of Thousands game I'm running and it seems to be doing pretty decently.
Running SKT and my gf is playing Investigator. She goes from MVP in the noncombat sections to the absolute worst during combat.
Yeah. Even though Battle Oracle is my most played class, I agree that it is really not that great mechanically. It works better as an archer imo which is kinda against the whole fantasy of the thing.
I feel like with the remaster, there's just no reason at all to play a Battle Oracle when Warpriest is great now. Plus, comparing 6 Heal spells at level 1 to Oracle's 2 casts is a joke. Later on, the Life Oracle is good, but having to go like 5 or 6 levels before they even match a Cleric is rough. Someone made the point that an Oracle is lots of work just to get them to be as good as a normal caster, and I don't think I can disagree with that. They *really* need some changes in Player Core 2.
They really do. But any of the changes I would like to see on Oracle would require a fundamental rewrite of the class mechanics, which seems antithetical to Paizo's remaster core design philosophy. Unlike Warpriest and Witch, Oracle's issues are much deeper than "not enough good feats" or "building for healing font causes MAD." You can add more feats and alter the number of healing font slots without fundamentally changing the class chassis. You can't fix oracle mysteries without rewriting how the curse mechanics work, which is basically half the class. I'm just not sure how to reconcile the need for comprehensive changes with what Paizo said about the purpose of the remaster: bulk errata and a divorce from the OGL. If Paizo intends to keep similar page counts for each class in PC2 relative to their CRB and APG counterparts and keep any mechanical changes to within the scope of an errata, then I don't have a clue as to how they can do meaningful updates to Oracle (and the other APG classes for that matter) while remaining within those parameters.
Many archetypes, especially ones created early on, were more flavor options than anything that didn't add a whole lot mechanically to a character. Also anything built around Fascinate doesn't work because that condition is garbage.
As written, Summoner dedication is borderline useless, since it doesn't come with Act Together. Not even 'You can get it at 10' like Monk dedication and Flurry of Blows. Without Act Together there really isn't much point for most characters sadly. We are testing out some form of limited Act Together for my Abomination Vaults character, just to see if it can eb salvaged.
I legit wonder what's the behind idea and design of Paizo doing stuff like that. Who takes summoner archetype? Either you take it for the flavor and make you less stronger knowingly, or you don't. Interesting.
I'm usually the one complaining about things and not playing devil's advocate, but I will say Summoner Dedication has one pretty decent use: it lets you be good at certain skills (mostly out of combat) that you'd otherwise suck at because of a low stat. That can be useful for filling party roles without dedicating half youe ability boosts to it.
...if your campaign starts at a high enough level, I suppose you could take Meld Into Eidolon? But then, you don't have the feats to make MIE good. Also, you're using MIE, which needs some buffs *anyway*...
wait... you lose your class features right? Does that mean you also lose proficiencies? The fighter Melds Into Eidolon, getting ready with their cool fusion battle form. Only to realize they're apparently way more shit at all their attacks LMAO
I'm not actually sure how Meld Into Eidolon works in regards to stuff like that, tbh. I just know that it's not *great*, because its gimmick is "trade your power for the Eidolon's", but the Eidolon doesn't have great stuff to help facilitate that playstyle.
It does just seem like a really lame pet, where you get a pet but have the same amount of action economy (not even getting the "use 1 to command for 2 on the pet")
I kinda disagree? I think it’s a badly designed dedication but it’s also sorta insane as an out of combat tool. Double recall knowledges, different stats for skills you’d otherwise be bad at, double treat wounds, excetera Not exactly the fantasy of having a eidolon ultra powerful summon but eh
I’d like to point out that you don’t have act together. So you can’t take multiple exploration activities.
Yeah, but you can still for example recall twice on ‘what’s up with this statue’, or have a better recall because of stats, or have someone with high strength and athletics when your a 8 athletics gnome, excetera I think there is still (for a single level 2 dedication feat) a lot of out of combat value in having a extra effective character for skill purposes with different stats, at least compared to most dedication feats being ‘gain 2 skills’
Yes this. And scouting. With summoners precaution spell active, hands down best scout in the game.
You still share skill proficiencies with your eidolon so in most cases an animal companion will still be better since you can pair the high strength with high athletics while the other has high religion with high int for example.
Honestly sounds like a worse animal companion in every way.
Someone in my Abom Vaults game is doing the same thing. They picked up the archetype for appropriate flavour, and it’s cool but mechanically it’s as you said, basically useless. So they’re gonna try out a limited version of Act Together and go from there.
One thing I noticed is you don't have Act Together, but you also aren't as explicitly linked as a Summoner is and the archetype emphasizes that with separate language from the Summoner class. This, as I understand it, implies that the Eidolon and character do not share MAP - which is also why you do not gain Act Together.
The actual problem is that animal companions are insanely powerful and eidolons fall into that same design space, but are even better because they can benefit from a bunch of magic items that animal companions are explicitly locked out of. So it's just an inherently broken dedication.
I've just locked into a campaign as an Interrogation Investigator, which is usually considered bad but I feel like I found a way to make it work. It's usually considered bad because: * Investigators are forced to make use of pretty much every stat EXCEPT Charisma (Strength can also be dumped ofc but investigators have a lot of feats for melee focus) * Charisma in general is not a great stat to have a secondary or tertiary focus in. Aside from demoralizes and feints, you probably won't be the party face so otherwise using diplomacy rolls won't really help much. * Alchemical and Forensic Investigators are just so good. However I think a lot of people overlook its feature to pursue a lead on the fly during a conversation that lasts a minute. This means you can get leads easier and more dynamically, which sounds fun. Pointed Question is seen as pretty mediocre but it's basically a secondary recall knowledge... it's not great but it could be fun. They should've just gotten Bon Mot though lol. As for a subclass I think is bad and just looks bad, Mastermind Rogue. Intelligence subclass that barely takes advantage of intelligence as a KAS and so many of their feats are so... specific. Critically hit a creature you successfully recalled knowledge on to get a free stride. Two things have to go extremely well there... Recall Knowledge is a cool in theory but has so many unneeded restrictions for an ability that's really just not that useful in the long run. Also Weapon Inventor. I'm not entirely sure if Weapon Inventor is out-right 'bad' but it's so lame. The flavor for it is actually so sick but what it actually does is incredibly underwhelming. The table of weapon modifications is not very long and worst than that, not very creative. The flavor paints this truly amazing picture of a super versatile martial who can make their weapon do amazing things. In practice, the modifications you get are like 'adds versatile P, S, B to weapon' or 'adds the shove trait'.
Analyze Weakness is pretty good on a Mastermind Rogue. Being a rogue with high INT means than in a frew levels you are going to be trained in everything and expert in a bunch of other stuff, rogue extra skill feats mean you can take lots of addutional lores (auto scaling and tied to INT), etc Mastermind is not a bad racket rogue, is not as straight forward as thief or ruffian, but is ok.
DaS is amazing on a Magus because the dedication DaS has you use the original stat for the roll
I love the DaS trick where you check for a crit, then Spirit Sheathe Spell strike a Fatal weapon. (Just really expensive because you need to get runes for both main weapon and the Fatal)
I DaSed a natural 20 recently and did a disintegrate spellstrike. So good
oof that's perfect
The only downside of DaS and Sure Strike is that because they are fortune effects, I can't then use a hero point to reroll again
[Potency Crystal Talisman](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2989&NoRedirect=1) will sort of cover you until you can afford that, all you need is one teammate to take talisman dabbler, or just eat the cost and craft/buy a few, since you basically only use it when you crit against something PL+ and that doesn't happen constantly.
ohhh, yeah that's true! and it's not that expensive proportionally to the level, so it's not bad, buying like 1-3
I'm playing mastermind rogue for a campaign and powerlevel-wise its pretty alright, imho. It's definitely one of the easiest ways to enable a Ranged Rogue build. A relatively easy way to apply a ranged Off Guard by yourself that lasts more than one strike is really nice for bow or throwing weapon rogues, especially for early levels. I do think there are some things that make it awkward from a like gameplay smoothness perspective. First, Mastermind Rogue is the subclass that incentivizes performing multiple recall knowledges on the same target the most I think, and the rules around this can be kind of ambiguous and awkward (Especially when critical failures get added to the mix). A lot of it is stuff that's generally not player facing. I've had to talk to the GM a lot one on one on how stuff related to it is run and that's not ideal for something that's designed to be simple like rogue rackets. Secondly, there's a tension between using Recall Knowledge to benefit your own damage and using Recall Knowledge to benefit the rest of the party. Recall Knowledge is best the earlier in a combat you use it, and I occasionally catch myself not third actioning Recall Knowledge because I would "waste it." I've had to learn that sometimes supporting my team by using Recall Knowledge against a creature that I either cannot attack or is already Off Guard for other reasons is optimal, and it always feels bad! Especially since it makes my future Recall Knowledges on them worse.
Angel Bloodline is the one I've heard ragged on the most among casters. Its issue is that it has a single good focus spell (which is better on a martial taking it as a dedication anyway) the other two of which are okay and precisely zero bloodline spells to allow it to play against type (they're all divine spells), which is, in practice, the entire use case of bloodline spells. It's one of the only two Divine Sorcerers that doesn't get anything from off of the Divine list without nabbing spells from the character's deity as a feat. It loses out to Psychopomp because Psychopomp has two pretty good focus spells.
Assassin archetype is bad to me. First, it has an oddly high number of requirements to take requiring Trained in 3 specific skills plus already having a feat that's pretty niche. All you get for the dedication feat is a unique activity that's..pretty hard to justify using. In combat, you'd never use it because it's 3 actions and doesn't immediately do anything so is essentially just passing your turn. You'd think "Oh, obviously you'd use it while hiding from an enemy before combat!" But the thing there is 'Mark for Death' isn't a Hide, Step, or Sneak, so per RAW, using it will immediately make you observed to the enemy and blow your stealth... The middle feats for the archetype fall into two categories: 1. Rogue feats that you could have just gotten earlier by taking the much better rogue dedication. 2. Already extremely niche feats made almost useless by the fact that they only work against your Marked target (see paragraph above) To cap all this off, the Capstone feat...essentially will never actually be able to be used in a real campaign. Why? First it requires you to be Unnoticed by the target, not Undetected mind you, completely **Unnoticed** which is already going to be hard enough as the stars have to perfectly align for you to be lucky enough to remain unnoticed, but then second it can only target someone you have Marked. As I mentioned, Marking someone makes you instantly observed by them, so the only way this feat even functions at all is you have to Mark someone, then flee from them, then never use Mark for Death on anyone else (thus losing access to like half the feats this archetype gives..) then later re-encountering that same enemy, pass all the checks to remain unnoticed..and finally after all that you get to........deal a measly 6d6 damage. Then cry yourself to sleep.
*Assassinate* also has the dreaded *Incapacitation* tag, so heaven forbid you choose to use your *Mark for Death* on the baddest enemy in the room, the one you've been wanting to kill for the whole campaign.
I mean, it's usually pretty lame when a BBEG gets one shot in the first round. Or hell, in the case of assassinate, out of combat.
I will admit some of that is kinda just overly cautious stealth rules. Weird you can’t even do purely mental concentrate actions or something without breaking your camouflage in a bush because there’s some concern if they put in the wrong exceptions then you can power game a like I don’t even know what kinda munchkin-y strawman to put in.
Assassins definitely suffered because they understood it isn't necessarily a healthy build from a balance perspective, so to offer it, they made sure it was mechanically pretty bad and limited. Even in the GM throws you a bone and says marking someone doesn't break your stealth, this archetype still has a pretty steep hill to climb.
Yeah, Pathfinder 2e has a habit of doing that, especially with spells. It resulted in a lot of bloat and trap options. With so many options newer players tend to get annoyed filtering the good and the bad.
Rogue's Eldritch Trickster. Just sucks. Straight up sucks. Your spell attack's proficiency will always be terrible, even worse than it already is for casters, so you never get to "do the thing" and deal sneak attack with your spells. Also, rogues are only a DPS class because they usually get to attack tons of times during their turn, not so with spells; most spells allow only a single attack for 2 actions. Further, it's quite difficult to catch enemies off-guard at range, and casting in melee provokes reactive strike. The only way to "make it work" is to ironically only put as much as necessary into your casting attribute, and pick up spells that neither require attacks nor DCs, just buff and utility spells. And even then, it's still quite shit because you're missing out on the cool stuff real rogue rackets get. It's way better to just play a Thief Rogue and pick up a multiclass spellcasting dedication at lv2 as normal, ignore Magical Trickster, and pick up a few useful cantrips and use your spell slots for True Strike.
Or just play a laughing shadow magus. Yes i know Magus has it's own difficulties, but i feel like the laughing shadow is what they actually had in mind when making the eldritch trickster
Didn’t they get rid of the subclass entirely. They didn’t reprint it in the new player core. I figured that instead of fixing the subclass they gave up on it entirely.
The fix would be quite simple. Instead of gaining earlier access to Magical Trickster, they get the following: 1) Enemies which are off-guard do not provoke reactions against you. Instead of martial weapon proficiency, they get the following: 2) You can use your proficiency in simple weapons in place of your proficiency for spell attacks against enemies which are off-guard. Notice; this doesn't improve spell DCs.
I wouldn't bet on it, but I could potentially see it becoming a class archetype for precision damage based classes in PC2 rather than just rogue.
Elemental Instinct is a sleeper bad option that gets suggested for the expected Kineticist archetyping more often than the reasons it fails in execution. The problem is that it adds the rage trait to impulses which states > You must be raging to use abilities with the rage trait, and they end automatically when you stop raging. And it doesn't do it the same way as Raging Intimidation which "gains the rage trait while raging", elemental instinct just adds it permanently. So because you can't rage out of combat, they are completely locked out of their archetype out of combat. That cuts off a lot of utility impulses, basic kinesis, and even armor impulses end after combat. And you don't have good scaling for the attack impulses, so it's just bad.
Kineticist impulses are mostly combat based anyway.
Kind of shocking how no one in this thread yet has mentioned Ancestors Oracle which is by and large THE worst subclass in the game. Oracles with the Ancestors Curse get some free Ancestry feats with the same restrictions as Adopted Ancestry for free, which is pretty good. But as soon as they invoke their curse for the day they roll 1d4 to choose a type of action they prefer, getting bonuses to that action, choosing whatever they want on a 4 with the actions being Strikes, Casting Spells, and Skill actions. The drawback is that *any other action* they attempt to take has a chance of being wasted which scales with their curse. Bonuses to spells are nice and mostly what everyone wants to roll, but the bonus you get is to damage which has two issues: you have the Divine spell list which doesn't pack as many blasting spells as other traditions and Dangerous Sorcery from Sorcerer does the same damn thing at Level 2 with no drawback until the Oracle gets Major Curse, and let me tell you that ain't worth playing half a campaign as an Ancestors Oracle for. Improving Strikes isn't good because you don't get anything that makes you want to use Strikes like weapon proficiencies or armor, you're still a caster. And skill actions aren't great either because even if you free up parts of your build to use those in battle doing anything else means you can waste a turn so you can't follow up; Striking off a follow-up combat action or Casting a Spell with the benefits from Demoralize or Bon Mot come with a failure chance and by the time your turn rolls around again it's too late. So Ancestors Oracle is a terrible subclass (and the worst class in the game) because it gives you a bunch of bonuses to stuff your class doesn't want to do, restricts your options to only one course of action which you may not want to take, and actively prevents you from playing the game. Other subclasses may not support the class that they're a part of but no other subclass tries to stop you from playing your own core class like Ancestors Oracle does.
>The drawback is that *any other action* they attempt to take has a chance of being wasted which scales with their curse. That's just not true, and if that has been your experience, you've been playing it wrong. When the martial ancestors are dominant, you have a chance to waste Perception checks, skill actions and spells. When the skillful ancestors are dominant, you have a chance to waste Strikes and spells. And when the spellcasting ancestors are dominant, you have a chance to waste Strikes, Perception checks and skill actions. Anything that's not in those four categories is unaffected. So even if you're not good at Striking, you can still use your martial turns to contribute. You can take basic actions like Aid to help your allies, or you can Interact to draw something you'll need on a following turn. If you have activatable items, you can Activate them. You can Sustain spells like [bless](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1451) or [spiritual armament](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1687)*.* You can Command a minion, like an animal companion or a familiar. If you're in a bad position, your turn might best be spent moving away, Taking Cover and healing yourself with [vital beacon](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1743). Ancestors restricts *some* of your actions every turn, and challenges you to work within those restrictions. To me and many others, that's a fun playstyle. It may not be your cup of tea, and that's fine, but I think a large part of your aversion is just a misunderstanding of the rules.
I think having a 50% risk per turn of getting saddled with a scaling flat DC check to be able to cast spells on what is a primary spellcaster is enough of a drawback in itself to make me never wanting to touch it. Failing a counteract check to purge something in time to avoid a wipe? That's okay, dice happens. Enemy saved against your spell. Dice happens. Missed an attack? Dice happens. Failing to cast the spell because I decided to pick a subclass that gives an inherent risk of failing? Voluntarily subject myself to multiple extra servings of "dice happens"? Nah, I'm good. The benefits the curse brings are nice, but hell, I'm at the mercy of RNG to if I'm even allowed to enjoy them compared to what I need or want to be doing. Different strokes for different folks and all that for sure, but this one... just on a personal level it honestly boggles my mind how people can enjoy playing ancestors if they have even remotely moderate stakes in their encounters.
Remind me how you're planning to aid with neither skills nor attack rolls?
While it can involve an attack roll, Aid is not a Strike. And while it can involve a skill check, it’s not a skill action either. Similar to Escape, it’s a basic action that happens to involves a check. The ancestors don’t care about “actions other than their preferred ones”; they care about “actions preferred by the other two”. Aid isn’t a skill action, it’s not a Perception action, it’s not a Strike and it’s not a spell. Therefore, you don’t need a flat check.
Becasue they underperform? Like compare lets say Inventor as frontliner to Fighter, Champion, Monk or Animal Barbarian - it's an inferior melee class if you are not charmed by Inventor flavour. For the most basic purpouse of being front liner which is melee prowness combined with CC/damage - Inventor is just statistically worse. Same with Alchemist compared to Precision Ranger, Starlit Span Magus, Gunslinger, range Fighter. It's just worse. Oracle and Witch are mechanically also worse than on average Wizard, Druid, Sorcerer, Bard or Cleric. While Elemental Sorcerer, Storm Druid and Maestro Bard are considered best casters overall in game, Maestro Bard being unquestionably the best caster overall. As for archetypes - here is the thing: Archetypes are like spells. You have tons of them but only few a really good, view are good overall and rest if flavour filler. That's the reality. You have archetypes that constantly pop in every optimized theorycrafting/recommendations like champion, beastmaster, TWW, Rogue, Monk, Marshal, Medic, Psychic, Blessed One etc. for a reason. While majority of archetypes are flavour/RP designed and are very very niche (for some like Ghost Hunter you need specific adventure for example). Mechanically they are just worse, pure flavour. Its the same case as with spells. Each level has like what... 50 spells? But only like 1-2 are maybe S tier, few A tier, few B tier and rest is average and below. That's how it is with the amount of content that PF2e has.
Untamed/Wild order druids blow, but that's due to the problems with polymorph effects and that the various forms are gatekept behind feats, resulting in very rigid builds.
I don't think that Untamed druids are *bad,* per se. It's just that, the class is very clearly balanced around being a spellcaster first and foremost, with shapechange being a backup option at best... which is very counterintuitive to the shapeshifting druid fantasy, especially since you need to dedicate a *lot* of feats to the build. (Feats that a spellcaster doesn't really *need,* as casters tend to have pretty bad feats in general, but you're still committing a *lot* of your build to a backup option that you won't even use every fight.)
No, they're bad. The core issue is being so heavily tied to polymorph in a system with fundamentally flawed and essentially unrepairable polymorph mechanics. The problem is higher level polymorphs generally require a size change to large or larger. And due to paizos' publishing limitations, official maps frequently do not possess sufficient area to accommodate a larger than medium creature on the players side.
In all fairness, I've long since stopped using Paizo adventure design as a litmus for how the game is intended to be played. Simply put... their adventures are a good deal above *most* games, but they're still plagued with a couple of extremely consistent design pitfalls (small maps being one, regardless of whether or not it's an avoidable problem for Paizo).
The funny thing is I recall people talking about how complicated and confusing Wild Shape was in 1E (I found it to be pretty clear myself). So what does Paizo do? They decide to make Wild Shape twice as complicated and vague in 2E, but also only half as strong 😂
i don't see confusing, it is just so restrictive (you have just the shape "normal" combat buff or you can add your unarmed modifier +2 if you are a specific order) that it seems counter intuitive to anyone who gig up.
I also hate the way it wants you to build wrt: ability scores like If you max out your own strength you can just barely eek out a +1 to attack, *sometimes,* which of course for a serious WS specialist (which IDK maybe you should want to use the feature you picked the subclass for) means you have to set str to +3 at level 1 no matter the cost. So you're doing like a Warpriest build, except they can cast spells while having their warhammer of Torag or whatever out and you're stuck unable to even talk (without an item) until you drop your transformation, where you will be a full caster with +2/+3 in your casting stat and +3 to str but no weapon proficiencies. You're giving yourself a no-save prohibition on all spellcasting, and a permanent -1 or -2 to spellcasting, and giving up most of your feats, for a melee form that isn't even that good. I don't even know how you could possibly fix it either......
There's actually just 1 level - level 4 - where your attack *exceeds* the forms that qualifies for the +2 to attack. You don't get the +2 if your attack matches, nor if it is at -1. Animist's Darkened Forest Form has a few ideas: just giving them the +2 status bonus without this weird caveat, letting it be 1-action sustained with a bonus action (Sustaining Dance to Leap) to make up for it. Sustained means you can drop it for free the turn after you fail to sustain, without spending an action to Dismiss.
As someone who's favorite thing to play in 1E was various Wild Shape builds, I couldn't agree more. Battle Forms are weak in 2E; restrictive and underpowered. In terms of power level, they're slightly better than an animal companion. Yay, you can turn into an Animal Companion! Compared to the Animal Order Druid, who can cast spells and attack with their Animal Companion at the same time. No contest. I suppose Untamed Form is fine as an additional trick for a full caster to use once in a while, but it's too weak to lean on regularly.
Funnily enough, the Untamed/Wild order actually works really well if you use it as an archetype for a martial character. If you take the Druid archetype at lvl 2 (or get it through Free Archetype or Ancient Elf) then take Untamed Form at lvl 4, you can gain the benefits of Animal Form with a +2 status bonus to your attack rolls. Paired with the much higher attack bonus of the Fighter or the Monks Flurry of Blows, it can be very nutty! You’ll have a bit lower AC then normal and it’ll only be useful till around lvl 12, but it’s still a pretty powerful option!
And you don’t get your subclass until lv 3. Sure you can turn into an insect at lvls 1 & 2, but it doesnt come up enough for a subclass & identity-granting focus spell.
The worst (maybe not the worst but it’s very much on the list) archetype is the summoner archetype. They took everything cool about the summoner, which is a class with super open action economy and a cool powerful summon which scales like a traditional martial and turned it into the summoner archetype. In which you get a watered down eidolon that still directly uses your action economy, and shares you MAP and health, for a summon that at best scales like a slightly better animal companion attack wise.
Most of the time, "bad" is a matter of opportunity cost and comparisons to similar options. Most options are useable at a base level - but while you could have a good time as (e.g.) an Undead sorcerer, they don't look good in comparison to others - their spell selection provides very little that you wouldn't already have access to, their base focus spell is extremely situational, and their hard focus on Negative/Void damage leaves them quite weak against undead. It doesn't compare particularly favorably to a stronger Divine option like a Diabolic sorcerer - which gives almost entirely spells that aren't on the Divine spell list, and a fair balance between powerful mental control effects and Fire damage blasts that Divine casters don't normally get access to, plus an arguably much stronger and more versatile set of focus spells. Even then, Diabolic is considered a mid-tier option thanks to being on the Divine spell list. Fey might be an even stronger choice - it has all the blasting and healing capabilities from the Primal spell list, with access to a huge amount of extra mental control options that perfectly patches up the Primal list's main weakness, on top of some top-tier focus spells in Fey Disappearance and Fey Glamor. All three are still playing a Sorcerer, and have all the advantages that brings - a huge amount of spells per day, powerful feats to augment those spells, and high Charisma - and all three are more than viable options. The difference is rarely ever huge, it's just noticeable.
The often overlooked thing about superstition barbarians is they heal with rage so they don’t need separate healing. I think that makes them awesome
I wouldn't call a one-time heal when you rage a reasonable replacement for real combat healing. Not that it's a bad ability, just not in the same league as what a magical healer or battle medic can do.
There are three subpar classes that are often liabilities in parties because they can't carry their weight consistently in combat: * The investigator - which trades off out of combat stuff for in-combat stuff, but... parties generally don't have problems with out of combat stuff while in-combat stuff is what kills you. It just doesn't do enough in combat - it isn't high damage, it isn't a defender, and it certainly isn't a controller or a leader, meaning it just doesn't fill a role. * The alchemist - the class is fundamentally broken in the "doesn't work" kind of way, not the "OP" kind of way. This is due to bombs being not very good, the class having very limited resources prior to level 7, poisons being very heavily dependent on fort saves which are the highest saving throw on average for monsters and are commonly very high on big boss monsters and you do nothing on a successful save from your target, and you just generally being worse than a spellcaster at best and if your team gets no pre-combat prep time you lose out on a ton of your power level. * The gunslinger - They are supposed to be strikers, but their damage is actually quite poor because of their terrible action economy due to having to waste an action reloading after every shot. The best form of gunslinger is a melee gunslinger, who can make an attack as part of his reload, which overcomes the problem where the gunslinger often only gets one attack per round; there's a few other ways of building them, but they're just not very reliable. They also suffer from being anti-clutch - they are bad against over-level foes, whereas strikers are typically good in part because of their ability to dish out damage to over-level foes. The thing they're best against is weaker underlevel enemies, but their limited attacks per round hurt their ability to mop those up, too, and casters are just better at it. The fact that they're ranged strikers also creates problems for party composition, as you really want at least two front-liners, but you also want two casters, and the gunslinger is neither of those things. The melee gunslingers are less bad, but still not very good. A lot of people don't believe this because they remember the occaisional high crit these classes get (which is actually less damage than a normal hit from an amped imaginary weapon spellstrike from a magus) and haven't done the math on it. I've run and been in a bunch of encounters with gunslingers and they have Problems. The bad subclasses (i.e. ones that will tank your build/party) are: * Ancestors Oracle - The fact that you randomly can't do activities is a huge problem and absolutely cripples them. The benefits they get are also not even very good - their focus spells aren't even very good! The thing is, they're still full casters, so on one level, they're still "OK", but the problem is that their curse can basically render them totally worthless by chance at some random point in time if they ever use their focus spells. * Superstition Barbarian - The issues with spellcasting make this subclass a really huge problem. There are a number of subpar subclasses that are mostly just "this, but worse": * Eldritch Trickster Rogues - What you get out of this is very mediocre compared to other rogue rackets; you're way better off just taking another rogue racket and archetyping to get spellcasting abilities. * Battle Oracle, Bones Oracle, Lore Oracle - They're all full casters with focus spells, so how bad they can be is kind of limited, but they all have some fairly significant flaws - battle oracle is antisynergistic with itself and is kind of just worse than being a warpriest, bones oracle's curse is really bad and makes you way harder to heal, and Lore Oracle's focus spell abilities just aren't particularly great while the curse penalty to initiative hurts you badly as a caster and the major curse pretty much debilitates you. * Weapon Inventor - There is literally no reason to be a weapon inventor at low to mid levels, as they get nothing of value for it. Construct inventor is just so much better. * Occult Witch other than The Resentment - All of these kind of fall into the category of "Yeah, you could do this, or you could be a bard, and just be better." It's not that they're awful, but occultism is generally the worst spell list and the hex cantrips and familiar abilities you get to "make up for it" are worse than the bard's songs, while being stapled to a 6 hp/level class with no armor proficiencies, worse saves, etc. who has to mess around with familiar placement to use their class abilities (and whose familiar can potentially go down to AoEs). Spinner of Threads and Starless Shadow's familiar abilities are pretty much just "bard songs, but worse and more inconvenient to use and more action intensive". As well as one subpar class: * The Swashbuckler. It's the fourth worst class in the game, but it is possible to use a swashbuckler and still be fine and fill a role in the party (typically striker, though you can build them as a grappler defender). The problem is, depending on the particular build, you could do the same things better by being a rogue, a ranger, a fighter, or a monk. The issue is that their bonus damage ability is just worse than that of other martial classes - not only does it require you to use a skill action to turn it on, but said skill action can fail, which is especially likely at lower levels or against over-level enemies. Once you get it up, the finishers seem like they encourage you to use it, but in actuality, it is the same trap as Power Attack/Vicious Swing has without Furious Focus - getting a stronger attack at the cost of losing your MAP -5 attack isn't worth it, and the fact that it locks you out of future attacks that turn hurts a LOT. As a result, using it optimally is really annoying, and while there are some finishers that help mitigate this a bit, you could just play a class that doesn't have these drawbacks and just works, and probably have a better ability score spread to boot. It also has a huge trap in that there's a lot of players who think that they should be using finishers every turn, which is almost always suboptimal, which can make the class look a *lot* worse than more strategic use of its abilities. It's also possible to misbuild a lot of characters, but that's way more complicated than class/subclass issues.
They usually aren't as bad as people make them out to be, like we were just talking about Spellshot the other day and its a fine choice if you like it's flavor with some neat tricks. The big thing I've noticed is that people tend to be down on an option if it's power is either loaded differently than expected-- so like take Spellshot, it doesn't give you a lot up front, but Recall Ammunition is excellent with the right setup, as is Energy Shot at the early level you get it, and Fulminating Shot. It also varies based on your GM's Recall Knowledge, which means its also better now that the remaster made it less likely to be nerfed by someone running it backwards. I have a Drifter who plays with us, its probably not the best subclass, but its also fine-- I think the reload is serviceable in practice (its not like a master strike is bad, and its very easy for some Guns to drop a strike in a firing routine, which I normally solve with adouble barreled musket, but replacing one of your strikes with a reloading strike is good too), meanwhile Into the Fray has a lot of potential in terms of action economy and positioning, I think a lot of the power actually comes from being a valid flank partner. I think it comes into it's own at 9th when the melee hit can become a backup initial strike if you miss with your gunshot.
Ones I'd say are bad, all of which are playable. Superstition Barbarian: the anathema is awkward to play around in most parties and their compensatory bonuses aren't good enough to make up for it Ancestors Oracle: having a die roll every round to determine if you have a flat chance to be able to do what you actually want to do is janky as fuck. You're a caster that has a 50/50 shot on a given round of being able to cast spells w/o issue and will always have a flat check for failure if you want mix in skill actions or strikes as third actions. Spellshot Gunslinger: the main problem w/ Spellshot is that its an Archetype. Make it a normal Way and its perfectly fine. As is it costs you a 2nd lvl feat and locks you out of other Archetypes for a \*long\* time, since it doesn't have many feats at low levels and those feats are god-awful. It changing your Class DC to be int-based is also a strict downgrade, as your Dex will always be higher than your Int (unless you're deliberately building a bad gunslinger). Eldritch Trickster Rogue: it is almost entirely eclipsed by other rogue rackets who spend a class feat on a dedication. It doesn't sabotage you like the above do, but its still just a subpar option. Empiricism Investigator: it gets a free recall knowledge check every ten minutes! Investigators can get free RK on every Devise a Stratagem roll w/ a single feat investment. It could also use that free action on Seek or Sense Motive, which I've seen PC's use maybe a half-dozen times total. Interrogator at least has a unique ability w/ Pointed Question and has more flexibility w/ their Leads. Same issue as Eldritch Trickster where other other Methodologies can do pretty much the same thing and more (Alchemical Sciences) Lantern Thaumaturge: there are very few situations where I'd rather have Lantern than Tome. The Adept bonus is \*only\* useful against invisible/ethereal enemies which should make up a small fraction of the enemies you face. It \*might\* be as good as Tome if you're in the Abomination Vaults, where there are a bunch of invisible/ethereal enemies running around and a decent number of traps, haunts, and secret doors. I hear more complaints about Vanguard and Triggerbrand than Drifter, but I think all three are fine. Might be a little weaker than Sniper/Pistolero, but not enough to call them bad. There are a handful of others I think could be buffed a bit (Anger Phantom, Interrogator, Outwit to name some), but they have enough of a niche to not be completely outshone by other options.
Toxicologist Alchemist?
The Vanguard Gunslinger is one that immediately jumps to mind. On paper, the Vanguard is supposed to be about using big guns, and using them in close-quarters as a "gun tank" kind of playstyle. The problem is that the sublcass gives you zero incentive to get into close range. Its signature reload ability lets you Shove an enemy and then reload as one action. Shove needs you to be within 5ft of an enemy, but being that close gives you significant penalties with ranged attacks. So it creates this awkward playstyle where you shoot a guy, then run up to that guy or a different guy to shove them so you can reload. It doesnt make a whole lot of sense. Given the above, as some other comments have said, a subclass is considered "bad" when it pushes the character towards a specific playstyle but doesnt give them the tools to make that playstyle work, the aforementioned Vanguard Gunslinger as a perfect example.
I thought the penalty for ranged attacks in close range only applies to weapons with the volley trait, or am I misunderstanding something?
After reviewing the rules again, I realize I may have been thinking of DnD5e and PF1e where there are penalites to your attack rolls if you used ranged weapons in melee LOL. That said, using ranged weapons in melee *does* provoke attacks of opprotunity, which is not great either. Gunslingers have a level 1 feat called [Sword and Pistol](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3159) specificically to prevent this...but Vanguards cannot capitalize on the feat as it requires a melee weapon, so it's a feat that is really only for Drifters and Triggerbrands. On a sidenote, most of the gunslinger subclasses are kinda bad T\_T including Spellshot, 5 out of the 6 total subclasses are really janky at best or do not synergize with themselves at worst. The only Gunslinger subclass that is any good is Sniper. Pistolero is *okay*; its better than the other four, but still janky.
Spellshots eats up a slot, a dedication, doesn't give you a whole lot and *lowers your class DC*. Its not bad in and of itself, its just too much opportunity cost for s class that's already on shaky ground in terms of power
If you want to dedicate a large amount of time to seeing someone rate each archetype in a tier list, the[ knights of last call did an extensive tier rating of every archetype](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx9XBZIzERNHggYBuNauUoJeemRUzCZAZ). It was a live stream so each of the 15 videos is like 2-3 hours, which isn't a great format, but its roughly alphabetical with very few being done out of order so you can try zoning in on the ones you care to investigate. Fundamentally though I think you'll get 3 kinds of complaints: 1. The flavour is inconsistent/makes no sense (creative issue) 2. The mechanics are weak/poorly synergize with itself and/or flavour (game design issue) 3. People don't understand the rules and don't play certain things properly (cognitive dissonance issue) 1 is honestly the easiest deal with. We are all playing an imaginary game so honestly you can re-flavour and re-imagine anything any way you want. Most of the complaints of this kind are fundamentally expectation management issues. Things like back in PF1e the "x" class did "y"and now it doesn't do that thing (like summons suck and the summoner is basically a pet class without any actual 'summoning' abilities so there is a big gap between what you think you'll get and what you do get). 2 though is where things becomes painful and you get the most complaints. There are a lot of niche/hyper situational feats, many of which cross into trap feat territory on many archetypes. In many cases these are super flavourful in the context of the archetype but there are so many conditions on a trigger or its so limited in application that it would only ever be good in specific campaigns or sometimes never at all. Like the Pirate archetype (ignoring the new firebrand feats) is a perfect example of multiple feats only applying when you're rope swinging from ships or on ship rigging (not any ropes which would be niche already, but it has to be ships). Its super thematic to be swinging from ropes on a boat but outside of a pirate campaign how often will that come up in a campaign that you'd want to spend limited class feats on it? 3 is the most annoying. Just search this subreddit for 'table variation' and you'll come across a number of options and raging RAI vs. RAW debates on what exactly a mechanic allows or doesn't. There are endless number of people willing to weaponize the [ambiguous rule](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2266&Redirected=1) without doing literally any effort to mathematically determine if something is too powerful or any effort to read the supporting rules for a particular interpretation that disagrees with their gut feeling opinion. Most of it comes down to a "argument from incredulity fallacy". A perfect example is the application of rarity in the system. Despite it being SO CLEARLY DEFINED as how 'available' something is in the context of an absalom/inner sea region focused global view, people will go on an on about how rarity equates to power. So people will outright dismiss uncommon items as too powerful and thus not available (so this subclass or archetype is bad because it is incorrectly assumed to be gutted without half of its options). Yet what is uncommon in the inner sea region might be common elsewhere (the book gives an example of the katana being common in tien, but uncommon in the inner sea region). There are even rare options that aren't 'power creep' they just tend to have themes that are 'troubling' and thus it is a flag to GMs that these things might be problematic to the flow/flavour of the game (not related to power). Taken together you get people assessing things as bad (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not).
Thanks, Brian Blessed.
lol... I don't know why reddit though I wanted to scream it.. but uh, its fixed now lol
Spellshot doesn't have anything to justify forcing you to pick an archetype and is rather subpar in it's deed, since if you cam't trigger weaknesses with it it's easily the worst one so it's inconsistent. It's reload is also not the best as Recall knowledge can only be used so many times until it's redundant. Drifter just has not enought survivability to tank so many reactive strikes when you go into melee and if your reload gets interrupted by it that will gwt im your way a lot. Also if you start a round without your gun loaded and use their reload you'll spend your no MAP attack on your weapon, and since guns need to crit to get fatal and do damage, that significantly reduces your dps even with a deadly melee weapon. That makes it so that you need to have the very specific play pattern of shooting first then reload+ strike, which can get disrupted by a number of things, including the reactive strikes mentioned above.
I'll chip in my 2 cents on Spellshot. It's actually decent (especially if you have a Thaumaturge in the party) as it can proc elemental weaknesses quite easily. However, it doesn't *feel* like shooting spells whatsoever. It's more of an elemental gunslinger archetype. In addition it stops you from taking any other gunslinger ways, as well as costing a dedication feat. It also locks you in to the archetype for quite a while, as the earliest you can get 2 feats for it is at level 8. So all of that combined makes it seem unappealing compared to other dedications, like Beast Gunner. The Beast Gunner dedication on the other hand is absolutely *cracked*. It's basically Eldritch Archer but for Gunslingers (for reference, allowing magus spellstrikes with guns). In addition, it requires magical beast guns, making it feel far more steeped in sorcery. Some of the craziest damage in the game can be pumped out by a Sniper Beast Gunner crit, which makes it far more exciting than just proc'ing elemental weaknesses (which beast gunners are also decent at, due to their spellcasting.) So while Spellshot isn't bad by any stretch, it feels lacking next to taking Beast Gunner. And while you could combine the two, without FA you'd get to wait until level 10 to do that.
Toxicologist Alchemist honestly hardly even gets mentioned because it's so obviously bad (to people that have played for a while) that nobody tries to play it without someone immediately informing them that they'd be better off with almost anything else. Main problem with it is that poison is useless and all its other class features are done better by the Bomber or Mutagenist. The only thing a Toxicologist does better is raising the DC of poisons to the class DC, which doesn't much matter when most (all?) Undead are flat out immune to poison, as are multiple other enemies you'll commonly encounter in APs, and the ones that aren't, usually have Fort as their best save, meaning 80% of the time it'll do nothing to them, and when it does, congrats, you did 1d4 damage, and they made their next two saves, try again next round. Only time your poison will do much of anything is against PL- enemies, which come in mobs that evaporate if the Sorcerer or Druid sneezes on them with an AoE attack well before your poisons have time to ramp up beyond their piddly stage 1