Classes+ February Vote Options!

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TEAM+ FEBRUARY VOTE OPTIONS

Howdy all! We’re happy to announce the next Classes+ vote is coming! You have one week to figure out your options, make requests in our Discord, and rally your table to vote for your (objectively correct) opinion!

Vote starts February 24th and lasts one week, until March 3rd.

Join the Team+ Discord to take part!

Alchemist

Do it for SCIENCE! The Alchemist explodes into the + world with new items like bottled monstrosities or food, censers or even grafts, with research fields to match them. Maybe you’re looking for an alchemist who warps their own body with strange monstrous abilities, or maybe you’d rather have them create life and work with a weird, hyperflexible familiar. The Vivisectionist archetype would trade in some of the Alchemist’s flexibility  and swaps bombs for blades for a more focused martial role, cutting ‘em down with precise and ghoulish medical acumen!

Animist

O spirits of nature, what else shall thou bring? Animists+ would give even more variety to the spirits the Animist can use, as well as new methods of using them in the first place! Maybe a horror themed Bump In The Night spirit, or a Reliquarian practice that hones spirits through a haunted artifact. We’ll also look at ways to really hone in on the pantheistic approach of worship Animists have to really make them stand out even more!

Bard

Tell tales taller than ever before with new tools like multi-turn performances that ramp up in power until revealing mighty crescendos of power, similar to Incarnate effects. We’re also playing around with an Inspiration system, allowing you to gain new effects when you do a certain amount of damage, heal a certain amount, etc. Not much of a mage nor musician? The quick-moving Dancer class archetype will run circles around your foes, using kicks, flips and weapon flourishes to knock an opponent into place!

Champion

JUSTICE! Make the ultimate knight in shining armor with new causes to pledge yourself to, like the Cause of Technology for those of you who want to keep an eye on Numerian exports, or the Cause of the Sea for ye scallywags and sailors among ye.  Champions+ is playing with the idea of a Quest subsystem, and for alternate power sources for your Champion beyond a deity. One thing we’re looking at is the idea of making Champion something of a focus spell martial, the long sought-after focus caster.  You can expect a whole boatload of divine focus spells for Champions, like the ability to sanctify weapons with a prayer, to withstand hellfire and to leap dozens of feet in the air for a devastating slash into the heart of unholy monstrosities.  And look out for a dex-based Virtuos Bravo class archetype, that trades defence for offence and speeds through the field with sacred grace!

Druid

Uncover the ancient ways! Expect new and updated druid orders to give you a real sense of connection to your order beyond their intial benefits, and maybe even some unique abilties only druids have that will make their class chasis feel as fun as Animist, Psychic or Witch. We’ll be giving battle-forms a touch-up to make mid-combat morphing feel high-risk, high-reward, too! Derry is an Irish folklore expert, and lives and breathes the bones of true druidic culture– you can expect to see druids that shake hands with fey, druids who have unique interactions with lycantrophy, and druids who have terrible, primal pacts with demons, fiends and other monsters from the underworld that they begrudgingly call upon to protect their forests. Perhaps even an Occult Druid CA for those natural shepherds of the supernatural..?

Exemplar

Look out, living legend on the move! Exemplars+ brings you the good stuff: breathtaking supernatural feats of might, more titles to give to yourself like The Cruel, Who Eats The Hunters or Wielder of Artifacts! We’re looking to pump even more references to ancient myth into this class, so keep an eye out for Gilgamesh, Cu Chulainn, or Hercules! What more is there to say– this class is all about giving more, so we’re going to give it more, so you can shine brighter than ever before! You can also expect a class archetype for the more sorcerous examples of exemplars in myth, like Maui, the Morrigan or Anansi the Spider, who used their wits, not their brawn, to win the day!

Fighter

Become a master of combat like no other when you harness combat styles— new fighter subclasses that swap out the fighter’s versatility for singular and flavourful mastery over a weapon group, like swordsmen or archers… who know how to use advanced weapons better than anyone! On top of this, we’re ruminating on something called “weapon schools”– if you want to expand Fighter into more than just a crit machine but truly make it excel as “the master of particular weapons”, this is the place to look! Warrior Origins would give Fighters pseudo-subclasses that give it not more combat abilities, but new roleplaying avenues. Maybe you’re a mercenary, in it for money, and know how to use coin to your advantage. Maybe you’re a reluctant warrior, here because your people need it, and have a way with words. Or maybe you’re a chosen one, with some sacred power from the gods themselves! A lot of people assume Fighters+ would be a meme pick, but I heartily disagree; this would be a book not to make the class stronger, but give it options beyond just critting in combat!

Gunslinger

Take aim and fire! New guns, new ways, and a new Grit system to give your gunslinger near-supernatural skill… empowered by pure, mortal badassery. Slide across the field and unload your gun! Do a quadruple backflip! Walk away from explosions like a true blue BAMF. And if you want wuxia, expect Gunslinger to get a healthy dose of that in the process. BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM! On the flip-side, watch out for a potential Arbalist class archetype, to really hone into the fantasy of the crossbow-wielding adventurer with unique feats, skills and more in a gunslinger with no guns or black powder.

Investigator

Why vote Investigator? Why, it’s elementary, isn’t it? There’s mysteries all around the world! Are these pistols really safe? What lies within these unmapped corners of Golarion? Methodologies that expand beyond just studying crimes, and into academic regions beyond, like with Ballisticians, Cartographers and Bestiarists. Think Lore Warden fighter, flavour wise. Heck, why not a crime lord Moriarty-type methodology? And then, for the Class Archetype, let’s get classy with a gadget-wielding Class archetype, whether you’re using top-secret spy tools like a medieval James Bond or weird Alkenstari tech like fantasy Inspector Gadget!

Kineticist

MASTER THE ELEMENTS!! Rip open a portal to the elemental planes… and beyond! New fusions, battleform impulses, alternate kinetic auras, subversive elements, and potentially even a new element or two..? We could expect to see a Vitality and Void version of the Kineticist (assuming we have the word count for such a feat!), or maybe micro-specializations like Lightning or Cold. And then, beyond it all, the Kinetic Knight, to use your control of the elements like a true warrior clad in armor and in weaponry!

Monk

Turn your body into a lethal weapon! We’re looking at giving monks their own subclasses called monasteries, which tell you where your Monk learned their combat style, and what it does for them. Have a quick-moving adherent of capoeira through the Monastery Of The Sunrise Dance, use unshakeable sambo wrestling at the Monastery of the Steel Heart and practice heavy-punching dambe boxing at the Monastery of the Riverside Fist. Don’t wanna use your body for martial arts? Pick up more types of monk weapons based on real weapons used in real martial arts, such as the nabboot staff used in Egyptian tahtib, or karambit knives from Filipino eskrima. We want to make the monk feel at home anywhere in the world, while also giving a vast array of combat builds that you can customize to make your perfect martial artist.

Psychic

Expand your mind to the worlds just out of sight! New minds for new types of psychic powers, like those that see dead people walk among the living, astral projectors who can travel vast distances and stay completely still… and the Mindblade, for a more martial approach to the fantasy! We’ll be focusing heavily on more traditional types of psychics, like seers, fortune tellers and haunted Victorian children, so expect some new touches of that sort.

Ranger

The hunt is ON! Let’s make the Ranger the thing it was always meant to be: an apex predator. Alternate hunting rules mean the longer you are tracking your prey, the more lethal you’ll become in combat. Don’t wanna be in the wild? The city is an environment in itself, if you want to play a solid bounty-hunter type, who knows the streets like the back of their hand and can push through crowds like it’s nothing. New edges, like an Edge focusing on attacking from the shadows and striking fear into enemy hearts Batman style or an Edge that makes thrown weapons a major threat, new warden spells that work in any environment based around all the elements… And we’re looking at an evolution of the Hunter class from 1e as a Class Archetype, where you create the ULTIMATE animal companion, and gain some minor morphing powers and spell-work to keep yourself in sync with it.

Rogue

It’s a fact: nobody does it like a rogue. Maybe you’re here for the Arcane Assassin class archetype, which gives your classic rogue options with a bounded-casting twist; short range teleports, hurling mystic knives out of thin air, breaking a lock with a single touch, and delivering spells with your sneak attacks! Or maybe you’d like more of what works– more rackets like the Jester racket, who infiltrates the highest courts with a smile and a hidden vial of poison, or the Charlatan, who swindles the faithful to get what they want. And if too many skill feats are a problem, worry not– we have a system we’re cooking that will trade away these extra skill feats for brand new ways to use your racket’s signature skill, making Thieves the ultimate master of stealing with new Thievery abilities, or Masterminds forever one step ahead of the law with an enhanced focus on Society.

Sorcerer

Your blood holds something ancient in it… now is the time to release it! Think a Giant Bloodline, a Sakhil Bloodline or even alternate existing bloodlines like a corporeal Undead bloodline for vampires and zombies or a Clan bloodline for Imperial bloodlines from less arcane origins. One of the coolest roleplay aspects of sorcerers are physical changes they have from their bloodline– we want to add options for how your body might change, like twisting horns, supernatural beauty, and more physical feats to make you a glass cannon with some short-range power too. Pack this with blood magic rules, and a system similar to burn to push your innate magic to the limit, sorcerers in Sorcerers+ would have impossible new tools to make them unlike any other class in the game!

Swashbuckler

There’s no point doing it if you don’t do it extravagantly, darlings! New styles like the larcenist style for gentleman thieves, the corsair style for swashbucklers with guns, and most importantly… an alternate panache, which grows stronger the more you build it up before releasing in an awesome and dazzling crescendo! Panache 1, Panache 2, Panache 3… and don’t just spend that on Finishers! Let’s expend one panache to launch you on a 20-foot leap, let’s spend two to slide through the trapped corridor at breathtaking speed… all this and more with a new series of feats with a trait that spends Panache the way Bravado feats earn it! And say, wouldn’t you like some magic? The Magician class archetype gets a few spells in exchange for its martial ability, using finishers on its spells instead!

Thaumaturge

Listen again to the tale we have for you today. Along with new implements with ties to the occult cultures of nations around the world and ways to use the most bizarre and supernatural parts of the world of Golarion like pacts, curses and more… we’ll be introducing a WIS-based rules for those who wish to understand the universe rather than to enforce their will on it!

Cera’s Wild Ride #2: IT’S PAYDAY FELLAS

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IT’S PAYDAY FELLAS

Lately, I’ve been thinking about ways you could spice up the general playstyle of PF2E. Y’know how some feats like the entirety of the Medic archetype are godlike, because you almost always have 10 minutes to patch up, while things like Armour Assist fall to the wayside, because there is just no scenario where you have exactly 1-5 minutes to prepare, and not more nor fewer? How there’s almost no point in nonlethal attacks because every combat is to the death unless it makes sense storywise, or how having high carrying capacity doesn’t really matter because most people just handwave it, especially on Foundry where they can just slap loot into the hammerspace of the part sheet?

That’s when I thought: hey, I could do something PAYDAY-esque in PF2E. You know, with waves of enemies, between small breaks that the players could lengthen by trading in hostages. Hell, make the players attack a place, then defend their position while a drill gets through a vault, that’d be cool!

Funnily enough, this idea popped into my head originally unrelated to any of the above: I was trying to simplify looting, and I joked that the loot should be “whatever you can get out of the vault”. The idea was built on that more later, as I was pondering what would cause PCs to get slowed down or discouraged from taking all the loot out.

So, after a bit of a delay of about 5 months, I finally put together a playtest game where I would test all of this, and more.

Parameters

I announced the game in the Team+ Discord, explaining most of the overall details of the game. I allowed the use of SF2 content (I did plan on making this a modern-day bankrobbing game, so having guns around was just helpful), and I additionally allowed almost any 3pp content, but only after reading through it.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter too much. I got four players, and they brought eight characters to the game:

  • Clutch was an Interrogation Investigator Catfolk, who was the primary technician of the crew. He specialised in Crafting, and was the person to get the crew through locked doors, electronic security measures, and the like. He also had the Vehicle Mechanic dedication to spruce up the escape vehicle.
  • Mongrel was a Demon Summoner Dromaar Elf, with his Eidolon “Long silence pierced by flashes of rapturous bloodshed” (not a joke), who proved surprisingly useful in the social stealth aspect of the game.
  • Nail was a Splintered Manifestation Oni Summoner Nephilim Human, with the Eidolons Hammer, Tooth, and Want. Nail and co’s ability to hold down multiple fronts made them a versatile glass cannon.
  • Vanbury was a Bombard Soldier Catfolk, who was really good at decimating groups of enemies. She was also the crew’s designated driver during the car chase scene.

The party was level 3, and I allowed them the Basic Pack from Feats+ (i.e., one extra level 1 class feat, one extra level 2 class feat, and one extra level 1 general feat).

The Preplanning

After they created their characters, I had the players enter something called preplanning. Anyone familiar with PAYDAY 2 knows what I’m talking about—you get a floorplan / blueprint view of the bank, information about various notable rooms or areas, and heist asset opportunities.

For this game, I chose not to use favours—PAYDAY 2’s secondary limit on how many assets you can bring to a heist—and instead gave players an extra 750 credits (silver) beyond what they got from starting at level 3 to spend as they seek fit. The players elected to get a more secure and less exposed entry to the bank in the VIP parking lot, and planned to use the maintenance areas to move about the bank. They also took along both the thermite rig (free, but slow to open the vault) and a drill (expensive, but gets through the vault much quicker), and got themselves some extra cable ties, body bags, and other equipment.

Preplanning also informed players on what enemies they would be facing, but I believe this would only prove useful after the players had more experience in the game, so it wasn’t exploited all that much this game.

The players also had the opportunity to dead drop a few items into predetermined locations in the bank—for some credits, up to 3 Bulk of items would be hidden in there for them to be picked up. This did not get used, but I think this is fine: the players simply chose the more expensive, but more hidden entry, and thus managed to avoid major checkpoints that would necessitate them to hide their equipment in some way.

In addition, I also gave the players one week of downtime. They could use this for any downtime activities, or to do preparation activities for the infiltration. The party sent in a poisoned cake to the guards at the vault, which (unknown to them) they critically failed, which had repercussions later. The players had the opportunity to extend the preparation duration, with each additional week decreasing the loot by 10% (down to 9 extensions for 9 extra week but only 10% of the overall loot), but they didn’t take this opportunity.

The players were made aware that the bank held 10.000 credits worth of valuables in the vault.

Stealth / The Infiltration

For the bank, I handmade a quite large (70×80 squares, or 350×400 feet) map with a bank with 3 floors. The bank itself was about 34×38 squares of “playable” space each floor, or 170×190 feet.

Stealth progressed mostly as normal for the Infiltration subsystem, though I took the Red Mantis Assassination activity from Mark of the Mantis (renamed to Silent Takedown), allowing players to kill most NPCs that could cause trouble for some potential Awareness Point increases.

The players chose to enter the bank from a side entrance, by buying access to the VIP parking, and moving through a maintenance entry from there. Clutch had managed to get the crew into the bank undetected through picking the maintenance door, and after Tooth silently took down a guard, Mongrel snuck up to the second floor in a guard disguise, took out the bank’s manager, and got Clutch in to start hacking her computer to get the managerial authentication to start the timelock.

The timelock was a door that separated the two parts of the bank, the “business” side and the vault area side. The timelock itself took 30 minutes to open, though as they managed to do this while still in Stealth, I merely gave them each an individual obstacle to keep a low profile with the timer ticked down.

A few unfortunate failures with the managerial authentication forced Mongrel to make his way down to the (very busy and very full of NPCs) offices, where he successfully bluffed and intimidated his way through, and managed to get an NPC to pass a two-factor authentication.

This was when things went to hell. The players forgot there were still guards in front of the timelock door, so when it started to open, they immediately took some Awareness Points from the guards becoming suspicions. The timelock door opening was also the trigger of their critically failed cake preparation, gaining them enough Awareness Points to cause combat to break out with a patrol of guards who went and checked out what was going on.

The guards at the vault already expecting their approach, the crew decided to go in guns blazing, finally entering the vault area.

Control and Assault

The crew dispatched the vault area guards relatively quickly, suffering one down from Nail and their splintered manifestations overextending, but otherwise getting through the fight with only some HP lost. As the HP losses were building up, they decided that it’s time to get the drill dropped in, and started collecting hostages.

They exchanged enough hostages to buy 10 minutes worth of time, enough to (fail to) patch themselves up with Treat Wounds, and move the hostages deeper into the bank. After some planning, they decided they’d funnel the incoming cops through the timelock door to the vault.

When it came time for the assault, the crew got really (un)lucky, rolling the same type of enemy three times almost in a row (this had about a 0.075% chance of happening), but they could luckily output enough area damage to handle them.

To represent the swarm of cops from PAYDAY 2, I unceremonously stole a troop rework idea Clutch’s player came up with, with some small reworks of my own—christened to “squadrons”, these enemies used the Troop Movement and Form Up rules, but instead of a mass of tokens representing inordinate amounts of enemies, each token represented a single individual of the squadron. The HP of the overall squadron was calculated using creature HP for that level per the building creatures rules, but was divvied up between each token evenly—for example, if the squadron’s overall HP should be 80, and it had 4 tokens, then that meant each token had 20 HP.
Additionally, tokens were affected by conditions and effects separately, unless said condition or effect affected their movement or attack modifier, in which case it was ignored for that purpose unless half or more of the squadron was affected. This meant that you could individually off-guard a member of the squadron, but they’d only be taking the speed and attack roll penalties from being suppressed if half or more was affected at the same time.
For attacking, they used a different rule than troops: they rolled once for an attack roll, then attacked everyone within reach or first range increment. However, the squadron must select a “primary target” when it does this, and this primary target is the only one they can critically hit—for everyone else, should they crit, their result will be downgraded to a normal hit.
Squadrons effectively acted as fodder for the PCs to nonlethally take down, and make hostages out of.

I mentioned that the crew “rolled for” an enemy during assault: this is to be understood literally.
For assaults, I devised a system. Every assault was made up of waves of enemies, starting at 4, then increasing by 2 every assault. The assault spawned enemies every 2 rounds during the assault. For the spawning algorithm, I decided upon an XP amount (equivalent to a moderate encounter for the party, 80 XP), then rolled from a table to determine what spawns, using the Creature XP and Role table to determine the “cost” of each enemy. I kept doing this until I spent as much XP as I could from this 80 XP. If I couldn’t spend it all, I would carry at most 20 XP over to the next wave.
This resulted in situations, where a more powerful enemy spawned alone, because I didn’t have enough lower level enemies to fill out the remaining XP, or couldn’t roll them.

I was pleased to see that while the party took quite a bit of damage, they didn’t immediately keel over from being overwhelmed. This is roughly what I was expecting, and what I wanted.

Cleanup

After a short discussion about the session with the assault, I decided to give every ranged, reload 1 or above weapon (and every weapon with the repeating trait) an additional die of damage. This die was akin to the one given by Vicious Swing; it does not count as weapon damage die, thus does not increase stuff like Gravity Weapon. I did not give this benefit to enemies—their damage is already set by the Creature Building rules.

This had an immediate positive effect. I was expecting this to tip the scales of balance towards ranged attacks over melee, but melee’s consistency with its guaranteed Strength-to-damage still saw use. The general feedback from players was that it made ranged weapons not suck ass to use, which I’ll take.

The crew gathered up enough hostages to able to skip any further assaults, and made it out with all the money in the bank. Though they chose an escape option that allowed them good chances to escape, we decided to skip rolling for that, and tried out the car chase.

Car Chase

The car chase rules were the vehicle chase rules lifted straight from Starfinder 1. I mapped most pilot actions as 1 action activities, but Engage and Speed up, I made 2 actions. I removed Double Manoeuvre—that was just given by the 3 action system of PF2. I instead gave every pilot action except Ram and Slow Down a unique “piloting manoeuvre” trait that applied a MAP-esque penalty to multiple piloting actions in the same turn. This came up twice altogether, and then I promptly forgot about actually applying it. Going back though, it wouldn’t have changed any of the results.

What we found was that none of the Starfinder 2E weapons actually had enough range to comfortably hit enemies or vehicles that they weren’t directly engaged with. With the exception of a comically lucky Strike-Strike-Strike turn from Mongrel who completely erased a cop car from the face of this good Earth with his Laser Rifle, most PC turns were spent either aiding or getting skipped, while most enemy turns were spent on the Piloting Actions trying to get close to the PCs.

Vanbury’s player (correctly) foresaw their 15 ft. Scattergun being of less-than-zero use in a car chase, so they took to driving. The bonus from Clutch’s Vehicle Mechanic signature vehicle came in, well, clutch at several points, being the deciding factor in several Piloting checks being successful.

Normally, creatures in a vehicle chase benefit from a bonus to their Piloting checks and attack rolls against vehicles and creatures that they’re ahead of. I created an effect to represent this in Foundry (mapping it to a +2 circumstance bonus), but thanks to the general scuffedness of the weapon ranges, I also completely forgot about this.

Conclusions

  • Giving players info ahead of time about the “dungeon”, and options on how to enter and leave, should be done more. I had the players plan their heist for a good half an hour to an hour during Session 0 after character building. It was honestly very fun to see them plan their moves out. Additionally, I originally wanted to not reveal how long it takes to open a vault with any of the vault cracking options, but I decided to do so on a whim—after seeing player reactions, I do believe it’s best to keep this info in the open.
    Additionally, giving about 2-3 “big” decisions, like how to enter and how to leave, seems to be the perfect amount of choices to not cause a choice paralysis. In both cases, one of the decisions already implied going loud, further limiting the players’ choice for their own benefit.
  • Slash SF2 ammo prices in 1/10. Holy fucking shit, the economy’s in shambles. I expected my players to be considering ammo, sure, but not this much. PF2 ammo genuinely has a ratio of 1 cp to 1 ammo, usually, but SF2 went with 1 sp to 1 ammo. At low levels, this is terrible and makes PCs barely be able to afford anything fun.
  • Make it more abundantly clear that the Stealth entry is gamified. Surprisingly, despite both Pathfinder 2E and PAYDAY 2 being actually quite lenient with NPC detection, every player thought about the infiltration as if a single failure could blow their cover. I used Mark of the Mantis as a base, and that adventure has you doing this kind of infiltration, down to sneaking, fighting, etc., in 3×3 rooms.
    Though I mentioned that the locations and the things happening in Stealth are not exact, they’re more abstracted, the players were still less brazen than I expected them to be. This resulted in half the party sitting in a safer part of the bank, while the other half handled the entry to the vault.
  • Fill the map with guards with the assumption that the players will somehow trigger ALL encounters at the same time. This is honestly a skill issue on my part, but I definitely added too many guards to the bank. There were some 16 guards in the bank—half of that would have been more than enough.
  • Ranged meta woes. I was admittedly quite surprised at how… nonexistent the “ranged meta” of Starfinder weaponry is. We found both the range and the damage of the weapons too low for our liking. I mentioned how we solved the damage for the game, but I’ve entertained the thought of doubling the range of all non-thrown weapons after we looked through some of the SF2 weapons—to wit, an IRL gyrojet pistol’s rocket only speeds up to max speed at about 30 ft., while the in-game version has a range increment of 20 ft., and the autotarget rifle’s range was genuinely halved between editions.
  • Hostage negotiation be its on phase, allow for trading hostages with resources. This was more of a suggestion by the players, but I ended up liking it. For now, I just had players be able to trade for hostages any time during Control. But by codifying it in its own phase, I can make it more clear what’s going on, and force players to think ahead some. The “trade hostages for resources” was another suggestion that I really liked, as I do want to bleed players dry of their hostages (as it’s extra time), and if they wanna spend them on ammo / heist assets, so be it.
  • AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! I NEEEEEEEEEEEEED A TWO-ACTION HEAL!! Though I got what I wanted with the game in regards to how wounded the PCs got, the players felt it mandatory to bring (and cast) Heal. I don’t really want anyone to healbot unless that’s what they want to do, so if I next run a game like this, I’ll probably use the Stamina variant.
  • Waves should be slightly less random. The general “randomly generated waves” idea is good, but it can lead to assaults being frontloaded, sputtering out at the end, or both. Current ideas are either:
    • Make first and last wave of the assault severe instead of moderate,
    • Generate waves, instead of individual enemies,
    • Use a “deck” of waves, shuffling them at assault start, then drawing from them during the assault (a similar logic to what Tetris uses with its tetromino generation).

    I’m currently leaning towards the last one.

How To: Installing Pathbuilder2e Custom Packs

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Each Team+ book comes with a “Virtual Tabletop Info” sidebar near the table of contents. There, you will find both Foundry and Pathbuilder2e links, or if they are not published, a Coming Soon! stand-in.

These addons are available with the PDF, but are released after its initial publication. They are added through an update, announced over on Discord or through Pathfinder Infinite. If you are waiting for a VTT version of your pack, check back on either portal frequently for updates!

A screen of the 4th page inside the PDF of a Team+ book indicating the URL to visit to download the Custom Pack for pathbuilder

 

Once added to the PDF, you will find the needed URLs under the appropriate headers. Click on the link under the Pathbuilder 2e header to be redirected to where the file can be downloaded from. For this example, we will be importing the remastered version of Clerics+, but any pathbuilder JSON will have the same steps.

Web page with a link that says "Get the JSON import file" in the center of the page, which is arrowed for download purposes.

Click on the link labeled “Get the JSON Import file” and follow the normal steps for your browser or device for downloading files. You will need to know where this file has been downloaded to in order to import it into Pathbuilder. Browsers tend to default to downloading to your Downloads folder, though some will instead default to bringing up a download popup window to allow you to select your own download destination. Mobile devices usually have a download folder as well, but the exact location can vary by operating system and specific model, so if you don’t know where that folder is located, a quick Google search should help you find that folder.

Pathbuilder Importing

The exact process by which you import differs based on if you are using the web version or the mobile version. As of writing this, Pathbuilder is, to the best of my knowledge, not on iOS yet, so I don’t know how the process may or may not work differently from Android.

 

Please note that importing JSONs requires a paid version of Pathbuilder 2e, and that you need a separate payment to upgrade the mobile app and the web version.

Android Importing

1) Click on the “App Options” button.

A screenshot of the pathbuilder2e screen with an arrow motioning to select "App Options" in the two buttons below Pathbuilder2e.

2) This will open a window with a number of available buttons. Click on the “Custom Packs” button.

A screenshot of the pathbuilder2e app screen highlighting the "Custom Packs" button

3) At the top of the “Custom Packs” window is an “Import Custom Pack” button. Click on that.

A screenshot of the pathbuilder2e app that motions to the Import Custom Packs button.

4) This should bring you to your downloads folder. If it doesn’t, or if you downloaded your JSON into a different folder, navigate to the folder that holds your JSON. Select that file, and you should see a window like the one below. Click on “CONTINUE” to import. This leaves you at the “Custom Packs” window. Import more files if you want to, and then close the opened windows by clicking the “Finished” button at their bottoms.

A screebshot of the continue screen after importing the custom pack that displays the contents inside the pack.

Web Importing

1) Click on the “Menu” button in the top left of the window.

A picture of the website version of pathbuilder2e with the indication to click the upper left corner "Menu" option

2) Once in the menu, click on the “Custom Pack” button.

 

3) This opens a new overlay window that contains every type of custom content supported by Pathbuilder. Once you have one or more files imported, you can use the headers at the top to navigate through all the different kinds of content you have imported. This is also the interface through which custom content and their importing JSONs are created, though that’s outside of the scope of this article.

To import an already created file, click on the “Import Custom Pack” button on the bottom of the overlay window.

4) Your browser should have opened a file upload popup window. This is the one from Firefox, though all browsers should have similar looking windows. Navigate to where you downloaded the JSON file to, and select that file. Press “Open” or hit enter on your keyboard to begin the process of importing the file to Pathbuilder.

5) Once the file has been uploaded, which should happen functionally instantaneously, you will have a second overlay window open. Pathbuilder has read the file, but has not yet added everything in case you imported the wrong file, made some other mistake, changed your mind, or otherwise wanted to cancel the import before it finishes. The window shows the name of the custom pack you are importing (which can be and often is different from the name of the file on your device) and how much of what kind of content the JSON holds. Hit the “Accept” button at the bottom to continue adding the custom pack.

A screebshot of the continue screen after importing the custom pack that displays the contents inside the pack.

6) Everything from the custom pack has been added, but not everything loads properly when added in the middle of using Pathbuilder this way. To ensure everything shows up and works properly, you need to refresh your window. Thankfully, Pathbuilder knows this and prompts you to refresh the page to complete the custom pack installation. Click “Accept” to refresh

A screen that says Alert! Custom pack successfully imported. You must refresh the page to complete the changes. Reload now? with the option to Accept or Cancel

And that’s it! Repeat this process with different files if you want to import multiple custom packs. If you get a newer version of a custom pack that you want to import, just re-import it. There’s no need to go through the process of removing the custom pack first. Pathbuilder is built in such a way that it knows whether two feats are actually the same feat or different feats with the same name, though exactly how it does so is outside of the scope of this article. If a feat is a version of one you have already imported, the new version will overwrite the old one, allowing you to incorporate errata (or theoretically go back to an older version) easily.

November 2024: Core+ vote is live! Content Creators and Authors follow the survey inside to get added to our collaborators list!

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November 2024: Core+ Vote

 

The vote starts on Sunday, November 10th.

The vote ends on Sunday, November 17th.

It will be a ranked choice poll, held in the Team+ Discord Server.

The winning book will be released in August 2025.

 

NOTHING HERE IS FINAL. These are all pitches, and none have been tested yet, and they will undergo very strenuous testing before they’re published. You have the Team+ promise that everything we release will be finely, finely balanced.

 

ANCESTRIES+ 

Expansions to a selection of ancestries, as voted by you if it wins. Expect dozens of new ancestry feats and potentially a few ancestry-based archetypes based on a particular ancestry’s culture, like an archetype for orc warcasters or tengu sailors. 

  • A huge variety of perspectives, with each ancestry being written by a different author– everyone who writes an ancestry will be someone who loves that ancestry to pieces. You want more goloma content? We’ll find a writer expressly interested in playing more goloma. We’ll also set aside portions of the vote to make sure some popular ancestries get some love, and some really obscure ones get some too. 
  • Also featuring new versatile heritage, like mighty giantkin, whimsical siofra (touched by the first world) and expansions to the mixed heritage rules, with additional lore and rules to make common ones stand out. Let’s hear more about half-dwarves! What’s up with goblinspawn? Can we hear a little about the culture surrounding a leshyseed? Each will have “common” names like the above, and fantasy names derived from old languages, like “nori” for half-dwarves derived from the mythological poem, Vǫluspá.
  • The Dwimmer ancestry! A brand new ancestry for a spell that was given life. Maybe you were an illusion spell that somehow stuck around; maybe you were originally a fire spell to keep a pot boiling, but you’ve grown sapience and decided to leave your stove behind (or take it with you). Maybe you’re the lightning bolt that blasted through the twisted heart of an evil lich, and his magic congealed you, and now you’ve got a form of your own. They can look like anything from a strangely shiny person to an adorable, tiny personification of a spell to a being that’s vaguely humanoid but is obviously a magical effect. A team+ first!

ADVENTURES+

An expansion to a number of Pathfinder Adventure Paths, as voted on by you if it wins. Advice on how Extinction Curse could be a grand tour of Kortos that keeps circusing it up throughout, revising Edgewatch to include Kobold Unions, statblocks for the other 31 teams of Ruby Phoenix and more.Additionally, Adventures+ will include a spoiler-free player book with new archetypes, new spells, new player options and backgrounds that directly link paths with particular plot-relevant NPCs that hook players directly into the story.

  • Extra bosses, enemies and quests, based on adventure paths but useable in any game. You might get anything from an additional final boss oft-requested for Gatewalkers with ways to tackle at different levels, you might go hand-to-hand with an avatar of a dread god in a campaign where its cultists are prominent like Abomination Vaults or Edgewatch, or hell, you might just find certain brand-new plot hooks based on a particular AP but useable in homebrew too. Battle against a clockwork castle and its mad king as you cut out a quest you didn’t love from Outlaws of Alkenstar, or pick up a side quest in Strength of Thousands where you must save your fellow students from a malevolent trickster spirit they accidentally unleashed. Plug and play for home games will be heavily emphasized!
  • Class options, class options, class options! We’ll ensure each AP gets a selection of class options so the whole party could feasibly take some. For example, Season of Ghosts might include a shrine maiden cleric, a ghostly seer psychic, a traveling sage animist or an insolent youth rogue. Each of these also comes with a mini-plot hook that ties into the AP itself, but can be used in any games at home. If you’re playing a dungeon crawl game, you’ll surely appreciate having a torchlighter fighter from Abomination Vaults or a treasure hunter ranger from Sky King’s Tomb. Each AP becomes more than just an AP, but a thematic goodybag of extra class options for all your class needs.

ARCHETYPES+ VOLUME II

A continuation of Archetypes+, expanding on dozens more archetypes and adding brand new ones just as its predecessor did. Focused on giving new and shiny options to under-loved archetypes, as voted on by you if it wins!

  • Archetypes, archetypes, archetypes! Just a tonne of expanded archetypes to continue our job to expand all archetypes to level all the way to level 20 with Free Archetype rules. While the options will be voted on by you, Fam+, you might reasonably expect to see options like Wrestler or Mauler. We’ll even give you the option to add a “super vote” to a particular archetype, saying you, personally, really really REALLY want this one, giving it a chance to win even if it got low votes otherwise.
  • Brand new archetypes like the Student archetype, for pages of great knights or understudies of great wizards, allowing you to have a unique relationship with another PC and get great bonuses from them. Other pitches for ideas include a dragon slayer, or a dancer.
  • MORE! MYTHIC! DESTINIES! Play high goddamn level archetypes that allow you to shape the world, like the Biblophage, a guardian of forbidden knowledge who writes books with knowledge so rare they melt the minds of the less learned, or Trickster, for bringing unlimited, silly chaos to rain down on your– flamingos?! Where did these flamingos come from? Trickster, did you just turn all your enemies into flamingos?
  • We’ll aim to nearly double the existing amount of Mythic Destinies to give even more customization to your games with mythic rules (and, of course, to reward high level play in general). We may look at expanding the existing mythic destinies too!

DUNGEONS+

Expand your dungeons with a tonne of new rules. New traps, new haunts, new monsters and new rules like expanded exploration rules or patrolling monsters. Also including the biggest new feature, the Dungeoneer class, a dweller of the underground who knows how to explore the depths greater than any other hero. The first Team+ original class.

  • Tony’s pitch for the class was that “Dungeoneer will be a class focused on battle field manipulation and engagement, mitigating downsides of the environment or enemies, and essentially spending rounds setting up a “dominion” for them to engage with. Almost like an inverse Commander, but instead of interacting with tactics, you’re interacting with area control and manipulation.”. Expect a juicy multiclass archetype a la Investigator that gets some (but not all!) of Dungeoneer’s sweet goodies.
  • Expanded alternatives to classic dungeon crawls, like hexploration rule expansions (what is a hexploration but a really, really big dungeon crawl on the surface?) or depthcrawling, a variant dungeon rule where there’s no map and the walls are always shifting. Outcomes are procedurally generated and you never, ever know what’s around the corner. We’ll even include rules with how to replace existing dungeon crawls with depthcrawls if you need a break, including ways to find plot important rooms before you leave the dungeon successfully.
  • When we say new monsters, people ask if we mean new individual monsters for existing creature types, new creature types in general, or templates. We respond with “¿Por qué no los tres?” Dungeons+ will include all of these options, and keep it vanilla+. Expect things that fit into the world of Golarion seamlessly– weird, but in the right way. Scary, but in a familiar manner. Absolutely awesome to fight against, regardless of your campaign.

HORROR+

Expand the paths of the undead ancestries in Book of the Dead and bring a tonne of new ones in. Expect variant vampires, expanded zombies, and new faces like dullahans, siabrae or graveknights.

  • Now including extra rules for non-undead options, like expanded fleshwarps, new options for the werewolf or living vessel archetype, lots of fun necromancy, and a new mortic ancestry for all your half-dead needs. 
  • GM facing rules like more scary monsters that’ll fit horror games specifically, like Star-Things that grimly assimilate and impersonate friendly NPCs to mount up the paranoia, or Statues-That-Sprint, statues that do terrifying damage, but won’t… so long as you keep looking at them.
  • Ways to really expand your horror adventures, like new haunts, phantasms (minor haunts meant to frighten and chip away at PCs rather than present combat, as presented in Malevolence), a stress system (free of ableist tropes but still good at portraying the creeping terror overcoming your pcs), and of course…
  • Horror Mode, a terrifying subsystem that gradually increases the chances of critical failure the longer you stay in it, and each critical failure bringing more bone-chilling problems to your doorstep. Inspired by Monte Cook’s Magnus Archives TTRPG and balanced to not derail combat. Scare your PCs in a way that most TTRPGs just can’t. Slowly turn up the pressure and make escape more and more impossible. Use terrifying creatures not just for combat that’ll wipe them out,  they can’t hope to overcome in battle alone. Nat 2s begin to count as Nat 1s, and if you roll either, Horror Mode’s counter increases. Then, Nat 3s count as Nat 1s too. Then Nat 4s. Will you get out of the situation before doom swallows you whole?!

KINGDOMS+

A book all about home bases, whether it’s a castle you live in or the nation you rule. Rules for growing towns like Otari or Sandpoint as you continue to adventure there, events that can happen in your home or your nation, and everything from kingdom building to house building.

  • Alternate kingdom building rules, of course– but also, more granular variants, in case you want to focus on building a town, building a home, or even just building a room that you stay in. Varies in scale from colossal politics between countries that you rule in a Civ V-like titan you then get to explore to much smaller, cosier experience where you get a nice bonus for mounting the head of that dragon you killed on the wall.
  • Social systems! More drinking rules, rules for dancing, festivals and mini-games!
  • Want to run your own store? Kingdoms+ provides, and gives you ways to run whole campaigns around having a store and needing to go out adventuring to resupply it. We’re out of the special beans that we use to run our medieval coffee shop… we have to venture into the drakelands and hope the dragon doesn’t catch us!
  • It’s not like you guys want dating simulator rules to chart out relationships with multiple NPCs, and get rewards based on the NPC type and the nature of your relationship (like a rivalry with a shopkeeper, a friendship with a dragon, or a love affair with a widower!)… b-baka… 

MAGIC+

A tonne of variant rules for magic, including alternatives to vanician casting, variant summoning rules and action-variant spells, like powered down fireballs for one action or powered up fireballs for three actions. Also, expect some new spells, magic items and similar treats.

  • A mysterious celebrity writer(!) on the book, creating a “non-Vancian system for casters to use existing spells all day long balanced by encounter tempo rather than daily resources”. Trust us when we say, this would be in the hands of a pro as far as creating this option goes. It’d also be able to be slotted into existing monsters and NPCs hassle-free, so no pressure on the GM to remake the game like you might with rules like Proficiency Without Level or True Names.
  • Action variant spells are confirmed to be guidelines for all spells, not a handpicked few, so you don’t have to worry about the big shiny spells getting all the love while your underused iconic spell is left in the dust.
  • Variant chassis for individual classes based on their spellcasting; a wizard’s spellcasting rules might be different to a sorcerer’s, an oracle’s to a cleric, a bard to a witch. Ways to make each spellcasting class feel totally unique in the way the even access the spells at their holding, varying the feel of each class dramatically.
  • In the words of Tony… “And you think kill vancian is all we’d do? Magic shall be bore down to its core and reconstructed in the image of ➕️”. Expect us to have dozens of more ideas and variants to squish and remake magic into something that fits your table, whether you’re looking for kineticist-like blasters or spheres of power style tracking sheets. 

 

Vote Now!

How To: Installing a Foundry Module

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Each Team+ book comes with a “Virtual Tabletop Info” sidebar near the table of contents. There, you will find both Foundry and Pathbuilder2e links, or if they are not published, a Coming Soon! stand-in.

These addons are available with the PDF, but are released after its initial publication. They are added through an update, announced over on Discord or through Pathfinder Infinite. If you are waiting for a VTT version of your pack, check back on either portal frequently for updates!

Once added to the PDF, you will find the needed URLs under the appropriate headers. Use right click over the link and copy the link address.

Foundry VTT

Open your Foundry executable or inside your browser. You will most likely open on the Admin screen where you can manage your worlds and modules. This is where you will be installing the Team+ Foundry VTT module.

Press Install Module in the middle of the screen (Step 1 on the image to the right). Paste the previously copied URL from the PDF into the Manifest URL portion at the bottom of the Install Module window (Step 2), and press Install (Step 3).

If everything goes right, you will have the module installed in no time. If you face any issues, you can ask over for assistance at the Team+ Discord server.

The Forge

The Forge has an additional layer of complexity due to its Bazaar feature. In order to install a Team+ module there, you must navigate to its Bazaar tab (Step 1 on the images below) and Marketplace page (Step 2), and find the Toolbox on the left. It includes a button aptly named “Install from Manifest” (Step 3) where after clicking it, you can paste the copied URL. The check whether to install from the Bazaar is irrelevant, simply press Install Module and you are good to go.

November 2024: Core+ Vote

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November 2024: Core+ Vote

The vote starts on Sunday, November 10th.

The vote ends on Sunday, November 17th.

It will be a ranked choice poll, held in the Team+ Discord Server.

The winning book will be released in August 2025.

 

ANCESTRIES+ 

Expansions to a selection of ancestries, as voted by you if it wins. Expect dozens of new ancestry feats and potentially a few ancestry-based archetypes based on a particular ancestry’s culture, like an archetype for orc warcasters or tengu sailors. 

ADVENTURES+

An expansion to a number of Pathfinder Adventure Paths, as voted on by you if it wins. Advice on how Extinction Curse could be a grand tour of Kortos that keeps circusing it up throughout, revising Edgewatch to include Kobold Unions, statblocks for the other 31 teams of Ruby Phoenix and more.Additionally, Adventures+ will include a spoiler-free player book with new archetypes, new spells, new player options and backgrounds that directly link paths with particular plot-relevant NPCs that hook players directly into the story.

ARCHETYPES+ VOLUME II

A continuation of Archetypes+, expanding on dozens more archetypes and adding brand new ones just as its predecessor did. Focused on giving new and shiny options to under-loved archetypes, as voted on by you if it wins!

DUNGEONS+

Expand your dungeons with a tonne of new rules. New traps, new haunts, new monsters and new rules like expanded exploration rules or patrolling monsters. Also including the biggest new feature, the Dungeoneer class, a dweller of the underground who knows how to explore the depths greater than any other hero with a focus on teamwork, exploration, and braving the perils with a confidence. The first Team+ original class.

KINGDOMS+

A book all about home bases, whether it’s a castle you live in or the nation you rule. Rules for growing towns like Otari or Sandpoint as you continue to adventure there, events that can happen in your home or your nation, and everything from kingdom building to house building.

MAGIC+

A tonne of variant rules for magic, including alternatives to vanician casting, variant summoning rules and action-variant spells, like powered down fireballs for one action or powered up fireballs for three actions. Also, expect some new spells, magic items and similar treats.

UNDEAD+

Expand the paths of the undead ancestries in Book of the Dead and bring a tonne of new ones in. Expect variant vampires, expanded zombies, and new faces like dullahans, siabrae or graveknights.

RAnthony Rants: Flexible Casting (lite) wouldn’t break the Wizard!

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Flexible Casting-lite won’t break the Wizard

Raise the floor, not the roof!

First let’s identify what “Flexible Casting” is and why it’s a major improvement to some characters.

Mainly, it allows prepared casters to be, well, more flexible. The most obvious benefit of flexible casting being that you can choose a wide selection of spells without having to dictate exact spell slots.

That absolutely adds flexibility that is useful.

But the position I hold is that the power ceiling for a flexible caster with the same number of slots as a normal prepared caster is the same. If a prepared caster prepares the right spell for the right slot, they have equal value to a flexible casters slots. A slots value itself isn’t determined by the type of caster, but the spell and moment in which it’s spent. 

 

We must however remember the larger benefit of the Flexible Caster archetype:

“Once you gain 2nd-level spells, you can heighten any spell in your spell collection to any level you can cast, similar to a spontaneous spellcaster’s signature spells. The only restriction is that you must select at least one 1st-level spell for your collection each time you prepare, ensuring that you can use all your spell slots each day.”

 

This aspect of flexible casting is extremely good. Being able to heighten any spell in your spell collection at any time means that you essentially have a growing pool of spell options of your top ranked spell each time you gain a new level of spells, topping out at 18 total spells potentially choosable at 20th level.

To be clear, in the case of “Flexible Casting would not grant much additional power”, it is with the absence of the above behavior.

Thus we must create a new definition for what is being discussed when we’re talking about disparity between flexible casting and normal prepared casting to argue “Giving a more flexible default casting setup to prepared casters would not increase power ceilings and general power levels”, especially and mostly with respect to Wizard (and possibly Witch, but less so for Cleric and Druid*).

 

New definition:

“When you prepare spells during your daily preparations, you must choose a spell for each slot at every rank you can cast. You choose an appropriate spell from the list of spells you know for each rank when choosing these spells, and can choose a spell to be prepared in a higher rank than its initial rank. You can cast any of the spells you chose for that rank of spells with the spell slots of that same rank.”

Example:

A 1st-level wizard would choose 2 spells and then would gain the spell of their selected curriculum. The wizard would have 2 spell slots that they could use to cast any of the three spells they have prepared, and 1 spell slot which they must still use to cast the spell of their curriculum (as normal for the rules curriculum spells). The wizard knows fear, command, grease, illusory object, and summon construct, and then two from their curriculum from the school of mentalism, choosing sleep and sure strike.

The wizard must then choose 2 spells normally, fear and command, and 1 spell from the curriculum, choosing sure strike. The wizard can now spend 2 of their normal spell slots to cast any of these three spells, and they can use their curriculum slot to cast sure strike (as normal).

If the wizard were to be 5th level and they wanted to cast fear as a 3rd-rank spell, they would need to prepare fear as a 3rd-rank spell to cast the spell with 3rd-rank spell slots, and if they wanted to cast fear as a 1st-rank spell and a 3rd-rank spell, they would need to prepare fear in both of the respective ranks to be able to cast those spells with that slot.

 

There is probably a more concise way to write the above, but I am trying to merely define a premise.

 

Assuming you understand the premise here, now you have evaluated how much more powerful the above is over the current prepared wizard.

It is inarguable that the absolute maximum efficacy that a prepared wizard can have, this option will always be closer to the ceiling. That is undeniable, and is a case to say that in some ways this raises the power budget of the wizard. For that reason, it is fair to say this would be a buff.

However, with that said, it’s about who the buff is for and whether the consequences of the buff actually create more diverse play and raise the skill floor (the lowest skill needed to play the class effectively), but it does not move the power ceiling (the maximum power that either mechanic is capable of).

I would argue that granting the above flexible casting to a wizard is a good idea. I believe that because the current structure heavily punishes “choosing wrong” on spell selection.

The definition of “choosing wrong” is to pick a spell that cannot be effectively used during your day.

 

While one could argue, yeah isn’t that the point? You’re supposed to think about how to wisely choose your spells so they are effective during the day.

Absolutely.

 

However, the issue is that there are some spells that are so effective at every level of play that preparing them absolutely ensures that the spell slot will get value during an encounter, because they have what I will call “guaranteed value”. 

Essentially a spell, no matter the outcome in most cases, that will 9/10 be an absolutely great pick during an adventuring day. You do still have to set up your own opportunities to use it, but that’s ultimately what every character wants to do during the day. Some spells do not require you to find the right enemy, be in the right circumstances, or to even be lucky. Some spells are just really good because of what they provide in an encounter as an absolute baseline, and for that reason, “you can’t choose wrong” becomes a reality.

These are spells like fear, heal, slow, synesthesia, enlarge with the right ally, summon fey for a Satyr, heroism, wall of stone, wall of force, wall of thorns, wall of text, okay, okay, you get it.

 

So let’s discuss three different arcane casters with the “4 slot” setup. 

The Example

 

We have Cici the Sorcerer who has chosen the Imperial bloodline, she chooses to learn fear, sure strike, and then her bloodline spell is force barrage. She knows each of these spells are great and she can choose to cast any of them at a whim. 

We have Walton the Wizard who has chosen the school of mentalism and is using the traditionally prepared wizard setup. Walton decides he doesn’t want to risk “choosing wrong”, so he also prepares the curriculum spell of sure strike then force barrage, and fear in the remaining 2 slots. Walton knows that it is highly likely that he will get to use each of these spells in a meaningful moment at some point during the day. Walton knows other spells, but doesn’t want to risk preparing them without certainty he will encounter something of relevance, so he does not prepare them unless he succeeds at Recall Knowledge checks or otherwise gains information that would change his mind during preparation. He also knows that the maximum value he can gain from his selections he is likely to get, and because of that, he will have reached the “power ceiling” for his day. Bonded item also has maximum choice value because of his selection.

Lastly, we have Dex the flex wizard, who is also of the school of mentalism who decides to choose fear, illusory object, and their curriculum spell of sure strike. They decide to pick these three options because they feel comfortable having a fall back of force barrage and sure strike in the event that illusory object does not find a valuable use during the day. This allows them to lean into more narrative minded selections without the worry of “wasting” spell slots on spells that can be situational, or entirely narrative drive.

But let’s say Dex decides they want to beat the other casters in efficacy, so they instead maximize their daily value by picking the exact same spells as Cici and Walton, because after all, why not have the absolute perfect perfect spell at any given moment among the best spells for that level? So Dex picks force barrage, fear, and sure strike as well.

The question now becomes “Will Dex have a more efficient/powerful day than Walton just because Dex has a higher versatility to choose the right spell in the moment that is presented?”

And the answer to that is maybe, but also probably not.

Why? Because Walton prepared 3 spells that are all but guaranteed to get value during the adventuring day. In the event that a scenario isn’t presented to Walton where he would cast a spell in his favor, one cannot necessarily assume that his opportunity would have been any better with the other options Walton chose at his rank, because those spells were just as likely to have the exact same “guaranteed value” at the rank Walton chose as his first spell.

Similarly, Dex doesn’t inherently even know which spell is going to be the right spell for the encounter when all three of their spells could be a great choice in a given situation. Dex could also have imperfect knowledge of which spell is the correct spell in the situation presented. Even if we assume that Dex has Recalled Knowledge on the enemy to have their best save or worse save, they have already prepared spells that are always so useful. In order to “beat” Walton’s efficacy, Dex would need to not only choose the right spell for the exact right moment based on the selection Dex made with regard to Walton, they would need to have an opportunity where a spent slot was the right slot to have in that moment (without needing Drain Bonded Item). 

But even if that scenario were to arise, is it fair to assume that Dex’s spell that was cast was more effective than Walton’s spell slot? If Walton is using his spells effectively, then Walton probably is going to get value from the spell they prepared as well, and likely achieve a similar or exact efficacy as Dex did with their spell, because they are both casting “guaranteed value” spells.

In fact, due to circumstances and potentially miscalculated combat moments, Dex’s options may also be their undoing if they so choose to cast a spell that would not be perfect simply because they have the ability to produce some efficacy in that moment and they believe their adventuring day may end soon (such as casting fear an additional time when an enemy succeeds instead of changing to cantrips or a focus spell). Later Dex could be surprised by an unexpected encounter, and in spending an additional cast earlier due to perceived “efficacy” they left themselves unprepared for later.

Essentially Dex will be given more opportunities to choose right. But because of their spell access in each moment, they may also have more opportunities to choose “less right”, and more than likely they will simply end up making a choice of equal value, because Dex chose spells that always have efficacy and so did Walton.

Cici however just enjoys her day knowing that her choices are her choices and she’s probably gonna have a good time. She can even look forward to heightening spells spontaneously later, which will be a treat the other two spellcasters won’t get to enjoy. She maintains a similar power as both of the other characters simply by casting the best spell she has available at a time that suits her. If spells become less valuable later, she can replace them with spells she does want at those ranks as she levels.

Essentially, these gaps between “ceilings” end up being small. Dex is picking the best rank spells and Walton is picking the same. And in both scenarios, we have rather boring selections. Neither character can attempt to engage in any other aspect of play that isn’t combat related, because they have only prepared combat spells, knowing that the efficacy they will produce is inarguable, while spells that function in narrative may not even come up.

We also demonstrate how “reaching the power ceiling” requires a high system mastery to know what the best spells of each rank are, when to prepare them, etc. This high system mastery makes it difficult for new players to achieve the ceiling.

Now let’s try this comparison again, but this time Dex decides they aren’t getting that much more value by having 3 combat “guaranteed value” spells in a day than if they ran simply one or two of these spells and packing the very handy “illusory object” for a fun character moment that might happen later. Now on Dex’s adventuring day, they have not lost any actual efficacy, even if the scenario with the illusory object never materializes, because they can always rely on one of the other two spells, which have guaranteed efficacy, to be used for the slot in case illusory object never becomes more than a figment of the imagination. 

Conclusion

When you present prepared casters with the option to prepare a group of spells that slots consume on a per rank basis, you don’t actually increase their power ceiling, but you raise their power floor. The power ceiling is easily achievable by any prepared spellcaster by simply picking spells that are “too good to not have value”, but the power floor for those that wish to explore other options on the spell list is raised significantly.

What would the ramifications of such a change be?

 

  1. For starters, prepared casters actually develop into a very important niche that no other caster can without fear of becoming weaker: preparing narratively focused spells. This is something prepared casters do anyways, but usually at much higher levels through scrolls and lower level slots.
  2. Secondly, it narrows the gap between prepared spellcasting and spontaneous spellcasting. There is one edge that each of these two forms of casting have over each other in the setup. Spontaneous spellcasters still have “Spontaneous Heightening” which is incredibly strong on its own. This is a major advantage over any prepared caster, because choosing to prepare a spell in a higher slot is still a much more cumbersome choice. The edge that prepared casters have is of course breadth of spells known. The breadth gives them wider potential to make riskier choices to know while a sorcerer has to choose spells that at least would have some relevance in their adventuring career, even if occasionally a more niche choice. This versatility is on par with the versatility of the slot expenditure from Spontaneous Heightening.
  3. Lastly, the main achievement is new players and players with moderate system mastery can simply choose a few “old reliable” options while keeping a wide array of other options within their grasp during actual play. Allowing the selection of other spells that aren’t “guaranteed value” and less punishing play for “choosing wrong”. This raises the skill floor, power floor, and does not move the power ceiling of the class, since the power ceiling is relatively easy to approach with “guaranteed value” spell selections. This is also good for experienced players, because now experienced players are encouraged to engage with lesser used or niche spells by proxy. This by extension means they will look for “maximum value” in their other selections as much as they would have for their “guaranteed value” selections, and thus make for more interesting moments at the table through spells that would normally never make it into daily preparation.

That’s my case for how it could improve the game to give Wizard this form of flexible casting(lite). It pushes Wizard and Sorcerer further apart into their respective niches while leaving each more than capable of handling an adventuring day. Sorcerer’s have spontaneous heightening, and Wizards have the ability to pull out some interesting pocket picks that could change a whole moment.

Spell diversity goes up, which means play becomes more diverse, which helps combat stagnation, boredom, and keeps things fresh.

 

 

*Cleric or Druid “know” every spell of a rank, so for these two classes, I do not think the above casting is necessary as much as it would be appropriate for Wizard (and potentially Witch). With that said, it is much easier on new players and develops the same changes in behaviors as the above examples.

 

PaizoCon 2024 Bundle and Classes+ vote!

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ROOOOAR!

Team+’s MAY OF MADNESS continues! We’re here to hit you with a double whammy! First off, Pathfinder Infinite is having massive sales right now, with up to 40% off our books! And you know what we said?

20% ISN’T ENOUGH! Say hello to Bundle+ Paizocon ’24, which sells EVERY Team+ book so far for $50– and then even greater discounts if you already own any of our books! Plus, it comes with an exclusive poster for you to download, and maybe print off, to hell with it, I can’t control you!

On top of that, a greater beast awaits in its lair.

IT’S TIME TO START CAMPAIGNING FOR OUR NEXT CLASSES+ BOOK! Gentlefriends, on May 24th, the next Classes+ vote will begin. I have here a list of candidates; these classes give some ideas as to what we’re planning with them, and what you can expect from our next Classes+ vote. Start MEMEING! Start telling FRIENDS!

Rally your tables, bring them here to the server! Make the discord your BATTLEGROUND! FIGHTERS+ MUST BECOME REAL!

Remember, on May 25th, Safe Haven: A Weird West Tale launches! On top of that, we’ll have some brand new Patreon news that’s sure to tickle your green thumbs on the 24th, too. That’s it! Let the bloodfest BEGIN!

Start Voting Here

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The Making of the Eldritch Artist Archetype

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Howdy y’all! It’s Lonesomechunk here (or otherwise known as Conner Berkheiser on Pathfinder Infinite) I figured I’d go over the creation of one of my favorite pieces of Infinite content that I’ve worked on: the Eldritch Artist Archetype.

 

The Ideas Phase

Archetypes+ began writing sometime last summer and It was my first project with Team+. Tony informed us of the plans for the project as well as ideas for it, such as what archetypes we wanted to focus on improving (like the pirate or assassin), however, we were also informed that we would get to create at least one brand new archetype as well! As exciting as this was, it was also somewhat daunting; “should I convert a beloved 1e prestige class to 2e? should I create something silly? something cool?”  I couldn’t decide, at least not for a little while. I discussed it with my co-writers and bounced ideas around, maybe I could do a magical girl archetype, or maybe I could do something inspired by the Revenant class from Guild Wars 2, but both didn’t really click (and considering the Starlit Sentinel and Animist would be announced months later, I’m glad I didn’t go for my initial ideas!). Ultimately, I let it simmer in the back of my mind for a good while as I got to work on other parts of the project.

Around this time I was playing Bravely Default II on the switch, as someone who loves RPGs, they sometimes make their way into my writing, inspiring me with ideas that might not be currently well-supported in the game. JRPGs in particular tend to have more “niche” or “odd” classes sometimes, especially Final Fantasy games and their spin-offs, you’d be hard pressed to find a western rpg with classes like “Patissier” or “Gambler”. This is for good reason of course, especially in a game like Pathfinder 2e where classes tend to be somewhat broad in concept, at least broad enough to encompass a whole 20 levels worth of content, usually complete with subclasses and such. Some of these more specific job concepts therefore would make for good archetypes, seeing as they can be easily applied to existing classes and don’t necessarily need to sacrifice their more “niche” appeal to do so. All of this is to say, when I obtained the Pictomancer job in Bravely Default II, something clicked, and I knew I found my archetype. As an artist myself, it seemed so obvious and so perfect, Pathfinder 2e didn’t have anything like it, and I already had plenty of ideas for what I wanted to do with it.

Folie the Pictomancer from Bravely Default II

The Creation Phase

So when it comes to creating an archetype or any kind of subclass, what I tend to do first is think about what kinds of things inspired it, what kinds of examples could I draw on to help inspire this idea? What cool moments did I want to help enable and is there some kind of theme that can tie it all together? At this time, the Eldritch Artist wasn’t fully formed, but I did have a strong inkling of what I wanted to do with it. In Bravely Default II the Pictomancer was more of a debuff focused class with the painting aesthetic, and while that certainly could have been route to take with the Eldritch Artist, I felt that in the context of a game like PF2e, I could get a lot more creative with it! I thought about characters like Sai from Naruto, summoning animals in combat from his Ink paintings or how the Pictomancer in Bravely Default II had a strong color theme to their abilities, leading to the idea of creation and visual effects. Due to the existence of spells like Dizzying Colors (at the time called Color Spray) as well as various illusory effects that mess with one’s vision, I knew that combining magic and art would let me tap into some unique elements that we currently didn’t have much of in the game. While Bards are great buffers and debuffers themselves, they’re also specifically occult and focused on music and auditory art forms, not visual, so I wanted Eldritch Artist to stand apart from it by going a different route.

Now that I had a stronger idea for what concepts & themes that I was going to focus the Eldritch Artist on, now came the part where I roughed out ideas, creating bullet points & simple descriptions for various feats, stuff like “being better against illusions (optical illusion theme)” or “summoning creatures from art”. From there I did my research and looked into different parts of PF2e where similar effects may already exist to gauge the rough power level of my ideas and where I could place them. I saw Psychic had the Thoughtform Summoning, which allowed them to modify their summons in a unique way, and I also saw how archetypes like Hallowed Necromancer or Dragon Disciple allowed you to nab spells that might not be on your list normally, which would be extremely fitting for things like Prismatic Spells or other spells with the Visual trait. I also thought about the Colorful Coatings from Treasure Vault, wonderfully fun items that didn’t scale super well but had a lot of potential in something like Eldritch Artist, once again calling back to the theme of color. My own real life experiences as an art student also made naming the feats and coming up with concepts tons of fun, I’m particularly proud of feats like Color Thaumaturgy, being a play on the word Color Theory or how fun Paranormal Pigments is to say (I’m a big fan of alliteration in my naming conventions). I also just knew that I had to include something to allow for the creation of one’s personal artistic demiplane, there was even module written early in Pathfinder 1e called Gallery of Evil that included a part where you went inside a painting to fight some monsters, sick!

An Eldritch Artist Wizard I made for a Playtest in a Magic the Gathering themed One-Shot

The Refinement Phase

Luckily when it came to the Eldritch Artist, the refinement phase was fairly smooth sailing. By the time I had written out most of the feats and abilities I turned it over to Tony for feedback and was given some really great suggestions that helped to guide it to its finished state. Most of it stayed pretty much the same but even those small tweaks really helped to give stuff like the Dedication and feats like Conjuring Canvas some real juice, defining them more clearly and making them more unique from similar effects. Unfortunately, now also came the time for the dreaded naming phase, what the hell was I gonna name this thing? It might seem a little odd to hear but I struggle with names and I didn’t actually land on the name Eldritch Artist for a while. I thought of just stealing Pictomancer but that name feels so rooted in Final Fantasy I wasn’t sure it would be okay, and It was mechanically distinct enough that I didn’t want direct comparisons. Maybe something else thats like a play on those words? I’ve always heard that “-mancy” was technically incorrect since that word technically refers to a style of divination while “-thurge” is technically more accurate (Pyrothurge being more linguistically fitting than Pyromancer despite many using the latter term quite often to mean the former). What about Ikonomancer? Ikonothurge? Maybe that’s too out there? Maybe Arcane Artist? It has the alliteration but this isn’t meant to be Arcane specific, ultimately what I landed on was Eldritch Artist, somewhat based on Eldrtich Archer. To be quite honest, looking back I kind of wish I stuck with Ikonothurge as unfamiliar of a term as it might be, Eldritch Artist feels almost a tad bit plain. Ultimately though I still elected to include the term in the flavor text, referring to the synthesis of magic and art as “Ikonothurgy”.

Closing Thoughts

Being involved in the creation of Archetypes+ was a ton of fun and an incredible learning experience, I got to really push myself to write more than I thought I was capable and really stretched my design muscles to do things I wasn’t fully comfortable with at the time (such as creating high level feats). Eldritch Artist in many ways is probably one of the things I’m most proud of, I have a lot of fondness for it as something that is uniquely mine and inspired by me being both an artist and JRPG nerd. Even If I can look back and see a number of things I would like to change (and a number of things that might require changes due to the Remaster), I nonetheless still hold it near to my heart. If you ever create a PC using the Eldritch Artist archetype please let me know! I’d love to hear all about them! Until next time!

 

 

Pathfinder Lore Nerd, Gay Illustrator, Lover of Cats and a bunch more! If you’re part of the Team+ Discord, chances are you’ll see me around, I’m @Lonesomechunk! I also made the “Golarion Unleashed” product line on Pathfinder Infinite and have contributed to projects like Player Core 1 Expanded,  Archetypes+ &  Feats+!
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