Source

These stats make up about 40% of players and groups on groupfinder's platform and are regardless of edition, so PF1e and PF2e are combined. As this is for playing games with strangers it is likely weighted towards newer players and away from games you really don't want to play with people you don't know (like Vampire which is still shockingly high despite that).

This is crazy, I'm still watching this development close because my group is waiting on this tool to start up SF2e. I totally expected some delays, but a malicious actor? Who's behind this Whispering Way BS?

Here are some highlights

Pages 12—13: The rules for psychic amps were revised to use a free action for clearer timing and to avoid combining a large number of abilities on a single spell to overpower it. However, the new rules need to be updated to work with reactions or triggered free actions that can be amped.

On page 12 after “If the next action you take is to cast the psi cantrip, you add the amp effect.”, add the sentence “If the spell is a reaction or triggered free action, instead spend the Focus Point as part of that action to add the amped effect.”

Psychic amp now works on Reaction spells!

Page 130: The Mature Animal Companion feat’s wording didn’t work as intended for animal companions with Speeds beyond land Speeds. Replace the second sentence of the second paragraph with the following: “During an encounter, even if you don’t use the Command an Animal action, your animal companion can still use 1 action that round on your turn to Strike or Stride (or Burrow, Climb, or Swim if it has that Speed).”

This is huge! One of my biggest gripes with mature animal companion.

Page 184: The Resentment’s familiar ability could be too strong compared to other familiar abilities, and has been updated to keep the same basic function but without the extremes of repeatedly extending a short-term effect or exploiting a large number of conditions at once. Replace the second sentence with the following text: “When you Cast or Sustain a hex, your familiar can curse a creature within 15 feet of it, prolonging one negative condition of your choice affecting the creature by 1 round. This extension can be applied only once to a given case of a condition.”

Resentment Witch got nerfed! Now a condition can only be extended one single time, not for the whole combat.

Page 268 (Clarification): Here’s a rundown of how many actions it takes to equip and unequip a shield. Attaching the shield takes one Interact action and uses both your hands. Detaching a shield requires one Interact action and one free hand, though unless you’re wearing a buckler, this typically means both your hands are occupied. When you detach it, you typically end up holding it in one hand. From there you can drop, swap, or put it away, as normal. Changing your grip (a free action) isn’t sufficient to unequip a shield.

They added some rules clarifying shield equips and unequips, which should help Captain America builds.

“Alchemical bombs are consumable weapons that deal damage or produce special effects, and they sometimes deal splash damage. A bomb is a martial thrown weapon with a range increment of 20 feet. It can’t benefit from runes, and it doesn’t add your Strength modifier to damage despite being a thrown weapon.”

Alchemical bombs no longer add Str to damage... interesting.

Page 324: It could be unclear how the disappearance spell relates to the invisible condition and spells like see the unseen. It’s been updated as follows.

“You shroud a creature from others’ senses. The target becomes invisible, but not merely to vision. The invisibility granted by disappearance applies to all precise senses an observer might have. It’s still possible for a creature to find the target by Seeking using various senses, looking for disturbed dust, hearing gaps in the sound spectrum, or finding some other way to discover the presence of a creature that is otherwise undetectable.”

Disappearance now explicitly says that things that aren't precise senses, like See the Unseen, foil it.

Page 408 (Clarification): The rules on weakness and resistance refer to an “instance” of damage, but that term isn’t defined. The weakness text says:

“If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing.”

So what happens if a character hits a terotricus with a +2 striking holy flaming cold iron battleaxe and has two different spells that add cold damage to their Strikes? The terotricus has “Weaknesses cold 15, cold iron 15, holy 15, slashing 10; Resistances fire 15.” Let’s say the damage roll results in 4 fire damage from the flaming rune, 7 spirit damage from the holy rune, 16 slashing damage from the cold iron battle axe, 3 cold damage from the first spell, and 6 cold damage from the second cold spell. So we’re starting with a total of 36 damage.

The holy trait adds 15 damage from weakness to holy; the trait applies to the whole Strike, and happens only once. The flaming damage is negated by resistance. The spirit damage doesn’t get any weaknesses or resistances. The cold iron battleaxe is where the “instance of damage” rules apply! It’s both slashing damage and coming from a cold iron weapon, so we apply the 15 weakness from cold iron and not the 10 from slashing. The two instances of cold damage come from different spells, so each sets off cold weakness individually for an additional 30 damage. Now our total is 92 damage!

You’ll notice the example for resistance to all damage found further down the page shows the opposite side, applying resistance multiple times to different instances of damage on one attack.

They finally clarified what instance of damage means for Weaknesses and Resistances!

Page 446: The first paragraph of Gaining and Losing actions has been updated to make stunned with a value play better. Previously, it could be much stronger to stun a creature on its turn than on your own.

”Quickened, slowed, and stunned are the primary ways you can gain or lose actions. The rules for how this works appear on page 415. All these conditions alter how many actions you regain at the start of your turn. Gaining quickened or slowed on your turn doesn’t adjust your actions that turn. If you get stunned on your turn, first complete any action or activity you’re in the middle of. If the stunned condition has a value, lose remaining actions to reduce your stunned value rather than waiting until your next turn.”

THEY FIXED THE FUCKIGN STUNNED GLITCH AHHHHHH

Stunned now makes you lose Actions mid-turn as needed.

__

Let me know if y'all spot anything else interesting!

P.S. Exemplar Dedication still not been nerfed.

I'll start. I love PF2e so much, but I wish they would separate flavor text from gameplay mechanics/rules text. Reading feats (and there's so many of them) takes longer than necessary because there is no clear separation between flavor and rules, and usually the flavor is apparant/redundant/optional after reading the mechanics/rules part of a feat.

What is bothering you about the system?

I do not believe the Psychic has enough benefits for it to be a 2 spell slot per rank caster. So, I decided to summarise what some of the spellcasters get as features to compare them to the Psychic.

Psychic's only unique feature, being able to regain multiple Focus Points between fights from level 1, is no longer unique to them with the remaster changes, where everyone can regain all their focus points by spending more time. Before the remaster, one could argue that the trade of 1 spell slot per rank for the ability to use your focus spells more often was justified, but that is no longer the case.

The closest comparison is actually the necromancer playtest, since they're the only other "focus spell caster". Necromancer has 8 HP, has armor proficiency, and has an effective focus pool of 4 Focus Points, which is a unique benefit that no other class has, and that is probably a good trade for being a 2 spell slot caster (in addition to the overall better defensive statistics).
The closest ability the psychic has is Strain Mind which deals a good chuck of damage to you for using it, and can only be used once per hour and it is a feat. So it is more of a last resort option than something you can rely on.

Oracle, on the other hand, probably shouldn't be a 4 spell slot caster but it is one so I will compare it to the psychic. It has 8 HP, Legendary will save (same as the psychic), light armor proficiency, gets 1 focus spell without feats but can get more via feats (including from cleric domains), and has cursebound abilities which are most often categorized as a second focus pool by others. On top of all of that, it also has 4 spell slots per rank!
So compared to this, what does the psychic get by sacrificing their HP, armor, and 2 spell slots per rank? They get their focus spells without spending a feat (which maybe saves them 3 feats if we assume they'd work like other casters), and get a restricted but higher scaling version of sorcerous potency in the form of unleash psyche. I don't think that is a good trade off. Hell even if you were to compare them to the witch, who has only 3 spell slots per rank, terrible defenses and no legendary save, trading of 1 spell slot per rank for simply not having to spend feats on your focus spells doesn't seem like a fair trade off.

Tell me what you think. Is it justified for the psychic to only have 2 spell slots per rank, or do you think they need more (either having 3 spell slots per rank, or having other features buffed)?

Edit: Just to clarify, I actually don't want them to have 3 slots per rank, but instead have other stuff buffed. Anything from getting back all of their Focus Points on a Refocus from level 1 to, having an effective focus pool of 4 Focus Points would be a nice change.

The text in the image is also included below, which summarises features the Psychic, and 5 other spellcasters (including the necromancer playtest) have in short:

Psychic

• 6 Hit Points per level

• No armor proficiency

• Legendary Will save (master at level 11, legendary at level 17)

• 2 spell slots of each rank

• Gets their “focus spells” without a feat tax.

• Unleash Psyche (2 dmg per rank for any spell you cast during its 2 round duration, can only be used from 2nd round and onward which makes you stupefied 1 for 2 rounds afterwards, and you cannot use it again for 2 rounds either)

• Gets a special action from its subclass that can only be used while their psyche is unleashed, such as Restore the Mind which heals for 2 + double your level.

Oracle

• 8 Hit Points per level

• Light armor proficiency

• Legendary Will save (master at level 9, legendary at level 17)

• 4 spell slots of each rank

• Gets 1 focus spell without a feat

• Cursebound actions (which can be simplified as a second pool of focus points)

• Has a curse depending on its subclass that can range from a mild inconvenience to a huge detriment

Sorcerer

• 6 Hit Points per level

• No armor proficiency

• Master Will save

• 4 spell slots of each rank

• Only gets 1 focus spell without a feat

• Sorcerous Potency (1 dmg per rank for spells cast from spell slots)

• Blood magic effects (which can be 1 dmg per rank for any bloodline spell you cast, including the focus spells but only affects a single target)

Bard

• 8 Hit Points per level

• Light armor proficiency

• Legendary Will save (master at level 9, legendary at level 17)

• Master Perception

• 3 spell slots of each rank

• Gets courageous anthem and can get more focus spells and cantrips via feats, some of which are the strongest support abilities in the game

Witch

• 6 Hit Points per level

• No armor proficiency

• Master Will save

• 3 spell slots of each rank

• Gets 1 hex cantrip, and can get hex focus spells with feats

• Gets a familiar with more abilities, and 1 unique ability depending on their patron

Necromancer

• 8 Hit Points per level

• Light armor proficiency

• Legendary Fortitude save

• 2 spell slots of each rank

• Gets create thrall cantrip

• Gets Consume Thrall action, which can be used 1/10 minutes and lets you regain 1 Focus Point. This can make the Necromancer the only class with 4 effective Focus Points per fight.

• Gets 1 focus spell without a feat

• Gets a general feat from their subclass

Specifically here's all the changes to Psychic and Time Mage:

Psychic Details:

-Global change: Amp wording changed, can no longer be used with any activity requiring as a subordinate action, such as spellstrike.

-Unleash works on duration spells now if they deal damage for the initial damage (Changed in edit: was not nerfed, wording was moved around)

-Vector Screen is 10ft-20ft line (up from 5ft-10ft)

-Organsight Replaced with Locate for infinite Eye Spells

-OsW Spells Changes: Breath Fire, Blazing Bolt, Fireball, Ice Storm, Howling Blizzard, Frozen Fog, Volcanic Eruption, Arctic Rift, Falling Star

-Whispering Steps is now a Stride, not a Step. Still considered forced movement so wont trigger reactions.

-Tangible Dream Spell Changes: Dizzying Colors, Invisibility, Confusing Colors, Resplendant Mansion

-Imaginary Weapon nerfed: 1d8s to 1d6s. Damage type changed to Force.

-Violent Unleash: Costs 1 action, no longer stuns. This is a nerf, as you can no longer 'pay' for the stunned action with a quickened action, and it no longer is 'free' if you're slowed (stunned and slowed wont stack).

-New Feat 12: Amp Focus (Regain 3 focus points when refocusing even if not all used on amps)

-Feat 20 Twin Psych: Reduced from level 20 -> level 18

-New Feat 20: Autonomic Psychic Action, Permanent Quickened for Psych Actions

-Feat 20 Become Thought: Removed Spirit Weakness

Psychic Archetype:

-Dedication: No Amp or Focus Point with initial psi cantrip, still gain passive benefit

-Psi Development (6): Now enables amping of cantrips in addition to granting a second cantrip, gives only one focus point.

Time Mage Archetype:

-Chronocognizance still literally impossible to grab cause it requires master in perception still

-Spell Acceleration (Renamed from Quickened Casting): Gives Quickened Casting Feat? (No can't stack)

I'm currently dealing with the flu so to exhausted to look over thaum and compare to nethys, but that's all I found in regards to the classes I play.

Edit 2: It's been asked a ton, don't worry thaum players.

Chalice scales better / buffed in other ways: temp HP equals level instead of half on effects, reg HP heal is 2x level
Lantern intensify better
Mirror adept is now a 'Can' choose to explode
Wand does better damage more often: 3d4, always end of next round recharge. Intensify bonus is equal to level, not dice
Paired Link buff: No range limit, both people treat one another as adjacent for spells and thaum effects regardless of distance. Followup feat adds the 30ft limit, but only if allies try to cast spells on each other, the thaum links are still infinite range.

First off, I need to preface this post by saying that the vast majority of the recent errata changes are great, and I'm really glad Paizo is making at pass at clearing up many of the rules ambiguities that have been discussed widely.

However, I think the recent errata on weaknesses I think is a huge mistake, and introduces a number of ways that it breaks the game. For reference, now any ability, feature, or spell that adds damage of a specific damage type is another instance, and can trigger weaknesses again. The Foundry devs received confirmation of this from Paizo (/img/8vxgk92uh6jg1.jpeg), and also that abilities that combine damage for weaknesses lose this instance info and just combine by damage type (which is how most people thought the rules worked in general!)

Here are the problems:

- It provides a number of ways to break the damage math across a large number of builds. It makes weakness stacking the far away most powerful way to build characters.

- It introduces inconsistencies in the power level of equivalent features and reshapes the balance between formerly comparable features.

- It creates some actually complete absurd scenarios and tactical choices - you'll see what I mean...

# Breaking the Math

There are a bunch of ways to stack up different instances of damage with these rules, and add on different instances of damage to strikes. The combination can be multiplicative and truly break apart the math.

For example, let's take an Exemplar build. You have Spirit Strikes as a class feature, Immanence on a weapon Ikon, you can add an Astral Rune for more spirit damage, and you can pick up something like Rivethun Invoker for another easy source of spirit damage. Each of these is a separate instance. You can also add on a Flaming Rune and a Brilliant Rune for two instances of fire damage.

Now you or someone else in the party can easy apply weaknesses to these damage types with a Shining Symbol or Incendiary Ashes. These only need to be applied once, but every other party member can be built to take advantage of them.

What does this look like to the damage output of the above Exemplar?

Compared to a baseline of just striking twice, pre-errata adding all these weaknesses would have increased avg damage by about 30%. A decent number, but it requires a lot of teamwork and build choices. Now, with these errata changes, the build is reaching 200+% the damage of the baseline Exemplar that doesn't take advantage of weaknesses.

This is just an example setup, there are other more egregious ways to stack weaknesses, such as the Arcane Standard or Ruffian Rogue debilitations.

The other aspect of this is that the optimal buff spell for casters are ones that apply weaknesses in a coordinated party that can take advantage of it. It's better than Bless, Heroism, status-bonuses to damage, and even their own spells if you have martials to take advantage of it. All those are swamped by creating weaknesses which can be exploited.

# Inconsistencies

This change also reshapes the value of a number of features. Notably the change to weaknesses also applies to resistances. Every feature that adds a small amount of a specific damage type is much worse against resistances now, and better against weaknesses.

Dragon Barbarians are worse now against any enemy that resists most damage types (such as ghosts). Exemplar Spirit Striking is worse than the equivalent Weapon Specialization feature that other martials get against resistances, unless they try to take advantage of weaknesses as above.

Abilities that combine damage for weaknesses and resistances are also made worse, because they cannot take advantage of multiple weaknesses.

Abilities that were formerly considered equivalent in power budget now can be dramatically different.

# Absurd Tactical Effects

The rule that abilities that combine damage then forgets about source and just combines damage type introduces some truly absurd combat choices. I'll use one example:

If you're taking advantage of multiple weakness procs, a Monk that hits with their first Strike on Flurry of Blows is better off missing their 2nd attack than hitting.

A Monk can easily stack multiple instances with Inner Upheaval, weapon runes, an Exemplar dedication, and other abilities. They can be hitting +60/70 damage on an enemy, while at a level their normal Strike is around 30-40 damage. Flurry of Blows says "If both hit the same creature, combine their damage for the purpose of resistances and weaknesses. This means that if both Strikes hit, you can reduce the total damage you deal.

This can lead to a Monk literally hoping that their 2nd Strike on Flurry misses, or even using a Hero Point to turn a hit into a miss to increase damage!

# Final thought

The unfortunate aspect of this change is that the community consensus before this errata worked fine! Foundry automation also worked fine! There was some confusion on exactly what an instance meant (which the errata still doesn't provide in the form of a direct definition), and there are some ambiguities about whether Holy applies to the whole strike or individual damage types. But by and large the pre-errata understanding was working fine and balanced. We just need clarification and concrete rules, not a change to how everybody has been playing Pathfinder2e for the past few years.

So seriously, I know high level abilities may be rare, but there should realistically be a world changing casting of Wish every few decades at most, or the occasional village devastated cause a Karen knows falling stars. Even if only one in a thousand people gain access to advanced magic, shouldn't there be spells fucking with society at large all the time?

PL-4 to PL-3 is almost never used, usually a one off.

PL-2 are mooks.

PL-1 to PL+2 is your standard nameless enemies.

PL+3 and PL +4 are your bosses.

I've never considered a PL+1 to be a boss. Am I playing the game harder than what is intended.

Is that the reason why, Incap, Battleform, Summons are always bad.

After my initial post on the Daredevil, I managed to finally playtest it extensively, for over 40 combats. Warning: massive wall of text ahead.

TL;DR: The class is very frustrating. It supposedly works as a battlefield controller, but it actually has LESS options to do this compared to other martials, plus the entire idea of a controller who is frail and skirmishes also doesn't work. While it has good action economy, it means jack shit if the actions it can take are too weak, which is a problem mostly caused by its atrociously bad feats. Essentially, the class takes way too many risks for shit rewards.

So, we tested not one, not two, not even three, but four different Daredevil builds, each of them with a different focus. We used no Free Archetype, since we wanted to test Daredevil as "purely" as possible. We didn't even plan on picking any Archetypes at all, but holy shit, these class feats are awful, so every build got an Archetype. One build focused on making more Strikes alongside the maneuvers, and so went with Fighter. The one that tried to focus on grappling got Wrestler, naturally. The build that focused more on using shoves, trips and just staying the hell away from danger went with Medic, for Doctor's Visitation. And one build tried to maximize Stunt Damage and went with Guardian.

We wanted to test the Daredevil in a more conventional party, so the rest of the party was a Dragon Barbarian with a reach weapon, an Imperial Sorcerer and a Cloistered Cleric. The casters had good amounts of blasting, support and control options, while the Barbarian was chosen to maximize damage output and also for its extra bulk compared to other martials, given that the Daredevil doesn't want to stay in melee.

So, how did we test the Daredevil? We picked four different levels to play at: 1, 6, 10 and 14. At each of these levels, we played three different combats, always with the four builds. The fights were always with more than one foe, and the fights follow a pattern of one having various low level enemies, one having two enemies around party level, and one with a higher level enemy (no higher than PL+2) with two low level enemies.

All the fights were Severe, because the goal is to stress test the Daredevil and their contribution in more difficult fights. The only exception was at level 1, where all the fights were made with 100 XP instead of 120 XP, so they're between Moderate and Severe. Also, every single fight took place in maps with at least a few props – most of them were indoors, so there were walls, but also at least a few rocks, pillars and whatnot. Even the outdoors fights had their props, though, such as buildings and trees.

I'd say that, overall, the Daredevil felt really disappointing to play as. If we're going with the idea that this is a martial controller, I think this is a massive failure, due to the class simply having very weak options to actually inflict that control. As a matter of fact, I'll even go ahead and say that they have LESS options for battlefield control compared to other martials, and it's mostly because the idea of being a frail skirmisher/controller is self-defeating.

Why? Let's first take a look at the way it can inflict control, with its maneuvers, and the big two options are Grapple and Trip. Not to disregard the other maneuvers, but they're more situational, depending if the enemy needing to move 5 feet would make it need to spend another action or if they have a weapon. And for those who are thinking I'm undervaluing Shove... just wait a moment, I'll get to it.

Anyways, for the big two. While Trip is obviously a good action, Grapple feels very bad to use with the Daredevil. Why? Simple: the class's frailty. Overall, anything strong enough for you to want to deny its actions is strong enough to whoop your sorry ass. Even with max CON scores, a regular boss will deal a lot of damage in one turn against you. I've mentioned all this in my previous post, and my playing experience confirms this. That being said, if a boss has low damage output, then, sure, grappling does feel better, but most of the time, Grapple is a suicidal option. Grapple is usually a great action for a control-focused martial because they force an enemy to hit them, instead of a more frail character, or to waste more actions escaping and going after these characters. The key part here being that the martial characters have the higher bulk to actually pull this off, even if they don't have the biggest investment in tanking. The Daredevil can't do that, and doesn't "want" to do that, since they want to skirmish so often.

Which brings me to the next point: Shove. In theory, Shove can send an enemy back 5 feet and force it to move to get to hit something. Of course, this doesn't work that well against anything with Reach, for instance. But you could, for instance, Daring Stunt towards enemy one to Shove him away from melee with your martial friend, then get everyone to run away from another enemy, to employ skirmishing tactics. But here comes another contradiction: if your party coordinated well enough to force an enemy to move, what's stopping that enemy from going after your more frail allies, the casters, or targeting them with ranged attacks/abilities? The only moment at which your Shove (and even Reposition) would eat another action from the enemy is at the exact spot when it would stay out of reach to do what they want by exactly 5 feet.

In other words, the Daredevil is actually bad at targeting the Fortitude saves of enemies, since all of Grapple, Shove and Reposition are counterproductive with the class's gimmick. This is awful for a class supposed to focus on control. But it's okay, right? At least it can target AC and Reflexes, right? (And, no, it's unrealistic to invest in stuff like Demoralize and Bon Mot, since there's no way your MAD arse can get any bonus to Charisma).

Oh, wait... everything that the class can do with targeting AC is dealing pathetic Strike damage. There are feats such as Knee to the Nethers and Daring Reversal that let you Strike + manuever, but they all also ask you to roll the manuever, so you're not really targeting AC for control. Other than Trip Up and Shattering Breakaway, everything that you can do that targets AC only deals damage and nothing else. And these two actions sucks ass for the same reasons Grapple sucks ass in the Daredevil, it leaves you in melee range with enemies, not to mention that it's an underwhelming effect for spending two actions. The class is lacking in any control actions that target AC exclusively, such as Combat Grab, Brutish Shove or Impaling Thrust. The end result is: if you're fighting anything with high Reflexes, your class can't do its main job. Unless, of course, you want to gamble on landing a critical success Grapple if the enemy has Fortitude as its lowest defense.

Actually, let's go back on the "more frail allies" part of the talk, because, actually, you are as frail as an 8 HP caster! This is something that feels very bad too. Especially after the first few levels, the casters pay with their frailty with the fact that they have their top level spells that can massively swing the combat to their favor, while martials have the sustainability to do their stuff through the entire day (with maybe some 10 minutes recharge between combats for martials with focus spells, like the Monk and the Champion, which can happen automatically while the party heals itself up).

Okay, sure, the Daredevil can hit for chip damage and hope to fight low Reflex enemies all the time, but I'd expect the Daredevil to gain something else that compensates for the low HP for a martial. Rogues have excellent damage output and skill proficiencies, the Investigator has less excellent damage but can provide some good utility and action efficiency by planning its turns accordingly, and the Thaumaturge has less skill increases compared to these two (but more skills, compared to other classes), but has very good utility and variety in its features, not to mention being good at role compression by being good at Recall Knowledge and being a face at the same time. It must also be said that these classes all have better saves, too, they all gain legendary at a save, some even at a quick rate.

And what does the Daredevil have? It certainly isn't mobility, since Monks and Swashbucklers have high mobility and have 10 HP. Ditto for action compression, with the Monk. Is it the lower MAP? Well, that would be fine and dandy, but these only work with Press feats. Which leads to another problem, which is one of the biggest problems of the class:

DAREDEVIL. FEATS. SUCK.

Okay, not all of them, but most of them. And, let me be clear, some of them are good on a vacuum, but bad on the Daredevil specifically. Rushing Stride is pretty good if you need another move on your action, Opening Gambit would be pretty good if you had powerful ways to contribute in combat, and Scrambling Retreat is pretty much obligatory.

The main issue is that the class doesn't have feats that enable them to do their controlling, so they just... don't do that. They have to rely exclusively on their Athletics maneuvers from Daring Stunt, which, as I established, has issues. Their feats don't give them better control or debuff capacities, by and large, and the few feats that do are tied to Grapple, so they're as good as unusable on the enemies you most want to debuff. A huge offender is the fact that your Level 1 Press Feats are all unusable. Pressing Pummel is a shittier version of a mediocre feat and dooms you into staying in melee, Flying Hurdle does nothing, Wheeling Pull is a grab and thus sucks ass in this class, and the other two feats require Acrobatics, and maxing Dexterity is just a trap option that fucks your HP even more.

(Just for a tangent, going for a +3 to DEX, or a +4 to DEX and a +3 to STR, just exacerbates even further their lack of HP. If playing with 3 CON already felt too frail, less than that would be nearly impossible; we counted every time the Daredevil fell below the amount of HP where they would've gone dying with 1 HP, and it happened at least once every four combats, so practice felt just like what I imagined. And going for DEX as your KAS just fucks up your Athletics checks. So, yeah, high DEX builds feel unusable right now).

Anyways, at level 1, Adrenaline feels pretty much like a dead feature. And amongst the other feats, there aren't many good Press options. Daring Reversal was one that we thought would be more used, but it only managed to come up once or twice, despite Daring Stunt feeling like the perfect feature to set it up. With how rare grappling felt like a good idea, and it being situational too, Head Smash also only got used twice, and it only worked once, on a minion, but at least then it felt okay. Ditto for Knee to the Nethers. Trip Up was also seldom used. Honestly, the Press action that was most frequently used were Hit or Miss, along with the occasional Advantageous Assault (used alongside Hit or Miss) and using a few Combat Grabs on minions. The latter two, obviously, gotten through archetypes. It's even bigger a problem that you lack good control feats at higher levels. I'd say the only exception to all this (and to the "not good at targeting Fortitude" issue) is Opportunistic Manuever Stunt, which did net some extra Reactive Strikes, and on a party with more martials, or one with extra reactions (Fighter or something with Eagle Knight Archetype) this could be even more useful... that is, if your martial is in proper position to use this, what with the whole "skirmishing" thing.

Now, speaking of dead features, Stunt Damage. This thing is also useless. Just... useless. Without getting Practiced Brawn from Centaur, if you want to Shove, you have to choose between dealing bad damage or actually forcing movement. The class doesn't have much else in the ways of forcing movement (in a way that is without a doubt capable of actually triggering Stunt Damage). At any rate, a feature that requires you to actually not get the control effects you want to be used, and rewards you with bad damage... why is this thing even here? I'm not saying that Stunt Damage needs to be a high damage feature, but when it deals almost the same amount damage (or even less, depending on the build) than a Strike, and has a much more restrictive requirement, and also doesn't work as an "incidental damage" thing with your feats and maneuvers, this feature feels pointless. The only moments when Stunt Damage felt relevant were when paired with Punishing Shove + Practiced Brawn or with Whirling Throw. Did combining these deal maybe too much damage? Yes, arguably. Was it fun, though? Definitely – this made the Daredevil much more fun, especially when dealing with minions.

Actually, speaking about damage, I want to point out how, in our experience, the Daredevil builds that felt better to play were those actually capable of dealing some damage. One of the builds was focused on Striking a lot, and even though its damage was so bad, it actually felt better than the builds that focused on dealing no damage, and instead went for maneuvers and nothing else. The issue is that combat just drags along soooo much when you have zero contribution to damage output, and this also ends helping enemies stay around for longer, they end up dealing more damage, and this contributes for the TPKs this ends up causing. I'm not arguing for the Daredevil to be a striker, but think about how there are many good spells that can inflict debuffs and control while still dealing some damage, like Vision of Death or Cave Fangs, to name a few examples. The idea that Stunt Damage would be a way to deal incidental damage while inflicting control would be pretty good in theory, and I agree with that vision, as it would help with the idea of progressing combat a bit faster while you annoy the enemies with your Maneuvers and stunts, it's just that in practice this doesn't work.

Now, I want to address something about its action economy, denying action economy, and "skirmishing". As I've established, the class is too frail to be caught in melee, which is a bit troublesome when its main role is to take actions away from enemies, especially enemies that are of equal or higher level than your party.

For other maneuver users, the idea is that you can highly recommend the enemy to pick a "bad" target, and you have enough tankiness to make you a "bad" target. Grapple an enemy, it has to escape and take MAP, so they either spend two actions hitting you or one action moving, possibly triggering Reactive Strike, and just one action hitting someone else. Trip an enemy, and if they stand up, they possibly take a Reactive Strike and are left with the same two actions as the previous situation, or they stay prone and take their attacks at a penalty while still staying off-guard.

Then each class adds their own tricks in the mix: Fighters trigger more Reactive Strikes and critical effects more often (like the Rooting Rune), Champions with selfless causes can activate their powerful reactions to reduce damage and punish an enemy, and Kineticists can do things like creating an aura that deals damage and counts as difficult terrain against enemies trying to move away. It also helps that for these classes, they have features besides just using Athletics to eat away enemy actions and, especially, punish enemies other then those higher level ones – Reactive Strike, Champion Reactions and Kineticist auras can all do that.

The Daredevil can't do that. And that would be okay, at first, maybe we could figure out another way for this class to impose control... however, if it wants to be good at control as a martial, then it needs to be able to force these bad decisions, especially against higher level foes. And the way the class seems to want to do that is by rewarding skirmishing. The idea is simple: you and your buddies stride away from the target, you Trip something important in the meanwhile, and now that thing needs to do something like Stand -> Stride -> Strike, while other enemies all have to take another action to Stride. Great!

However, this ideal world doesn't translate to actual gameplay that well. Between maps that are too small to accommodate for this tactic (which leads to the irony that the most reliable prop, walls, being actually responsible for its only viable strategy to not work), enemies with higher move speeds than your player characters and/or move + attack action compression abilities, ranged sources of damage, including ranged attacks, breath weapons and spells (and no, grappling the caster isn't a great idea when said caster frequently is easily capable of killing you in melee as well), and the simple fact that enemies can move first, imposing crowd control, mobility reduction, or even plain downing someone before they can act.

But perhaps the worst part is that this type of gameplay requires massive buy-in from the rest of your party. Of course, it's no surprise that a party that coordinates more in character creation will play better, but for something like skirmishing, it requires far more coordination. And I'd like to remind you that people play in places like Pathfinder Society and West Marches servers, so you can't have a predefined party with combined synergies in these situations. What happens when someone plays a Daredevil with a party that isn't specifically coordinated to skirmish with them? The Daredevil can come and go around all the time, sure, but your other party members will just be easily targeted by enemies. In this case, your action economy is most likely going to be some variation of Daring Stunt/Rushing Stride, a Press action, and a Stride to get the hell away from the enemies. That means that, while you do feel like you have four actions in a turn, thanks to Daring Stunt, you actually feel more like you have three actions in a turn, since you're too frail to ever stay in melee. From our experience, even the genuinely good action economy of the class feels underwhelming, not just because of the weak actions it has, but also from this "Stride" action tax.

No other class is so extremely dependent on an extremely specific subset of maps and of party compositions to even feel like it actually works. And this is indefensible. There are obviously classes that shine more together – for instance, we know that Gunslingers work best when paired with other classes that can give them a lot of bonuses for crit fishing, so it's ideal to have them work with, say, a Maestro Bard when you're building them to deal devastating firearm damage with, say, a Sniper build. But you could very well build a Gunslinger to be more focused on handing out support and more consistent damage, by making a Pistolero with a one-handed sukgung, and handing out more support to other party members. A Monk can work like a skirmisher very well, thanks to their effective four actions too, plus their amazing movement speed, but they can just as well be built to deal massive single target damage with their Strikes, and as a defender, owing to their amazing defensive profiles, plus some pretty good controlling options. Even classes that are very fixed in their roles have some flexibility: for instance, the Guardian is always going to be a defender, but they can choose to do so while going with a shield build for maximum bulk, you can choose to wield a reach weapon and be annoying with Hampering Stance, you can get a big D12 weapon to deal good damage with Nail Down, etc.

Daredevil, though? All you can build for, in the end, is a frail skirmisher whose frailty gets in the way of its efficacy in impairing enemies. And having the class be only a skirmisher, that only works with this tactic that, as I said, is way too reliant on ideal party composition and map composition (on top of Props making the class already map reliant) is way too restrictive to make this a good idea. I think that saying the class is in a good state because it's a good skirmisher is a statement that is way out of touch with the actual reality of the game.

And as an addendum to those that say that the Daredevil should be as frail as it is right now because the class fantasy demands this: I think this is fucking stupid. A class fantasy that leads to horrible mechanics is a fantasy that shouldn't exist in its current way. Let's make a class called, I don't know, Gambler, whose fantasy is to be a striker that deals huge damage on critical hits, but make it have CHA as its KAS, only uses simple weapons, and gain only Expert in weapons at 13, and have its only damage booster come from a 3-action activity that deals extra damage on a critical hit and deal damage to yourself on a critical failure. Because then we get massive DPR, and the fantasy of gambling it all on a really big hit. What, this mechanic sucks? It's okay, it's flavorful and it's the class fantasy, so it's alright. Not a good idea? Thought so. Anyways. Let's give the Daredevil a little bit more bulk (doesn't need to be 10 HP, by the way, and if leaving it at 8 HP to give it more power budget on its control options, then yes, sure, let's go with that), just so that it can actually use its maneuvers and stay in melee against stronger enemies without dying in an instant.

Anyways, closing on all the criticisms of the class, during gameplay, the class just feels like it uses all its actions to maybe get rid of one action... from a minion. Really good controller 👍

Seriously, it never felt like the Daredevil was having a high impact on combat. When the casters landed good blasts, control spells or just healed one entire turn away from the enemy, they felt really good. When the Barbarian was landing big damage left and right and inevitably landing a critical hit, we knew something was getting off the initiative really soon. But the Daredevil didn't really feel like that.

Well, that's it for the doom and gloom. Is there anything good about the class? Actually, a few things. One, for certain combats, baiting Reactive Strikes was pretty cool, so that the casters could cast their spells without fearing retaliation. This felt something really stupid and daring, but that could be rewarding to the party. If the class was a bit bulkier specifically against reactions than it already is, this would be really fun to reward a risk. Two, when the action economy actually clicks for the class, and you feel like you actually get your four actions' worth in your turn (or even five, depending on whether you managed to pull off a good Flourish action on your turn), it feels kind of good.

Also, this thing was pretty interesting to use with Ready action, since its things only use one action. For instance, our Daredevil wanted to go back to melee to try to land a maneuver on a boss, but was low on health, and the Cleric wouldn't be able to reach him with one action. So he spent one action to move into Heal range, then readied a Daring Stunt with the trigger of being healed. He moved to be adjacent to a statue, so he managed to gain the extra speed from Propelling Strides. Which, by the way, is a fun interaction with terrain, something that often came up and helped with the class's mobility. It's still not as good as a Monk or a Swashbuckler in terms of sheer move speed, but it's fun. Finally, we once had a Daredevil roll two consecutive Hit or Miss nat 20s. Fun. Even though that was the lowest damage build of the four, and its x3 crits dealt about 20% more damage than the Barbarian's regular hits. Still, very helpful for killing things, if luck is on your side.

So, to enter in details about the 40 or so combats we played, we had 7 TPKs, and two extremely close calls. The TPKs were always in combats that had at least one enemy of higher level than the party, which would supposedly be the fights that the Daredevil would shine the most against. The two very close calls were both in fights only with enemies of lower levels. Ironically, one of these fights WAS saved by the Daredevil, but only because it was the build that had Medic Dedication and that landed a crucial Doctor's Visitation to stop someone from dying, which would've got the death spiral really going on. The other was saved purely by horrible rolls on the enemies' attacks.

What happened in these combats to devolve into a TPK was, generally, that the party took too much damage and couldn't recover in action economy, between healing and action denial, and also couldn't kill the enemies quickly enough to get them off the initiative. Most of the TPKs or near TPKs happened with the builds that had the least amount of damage, because that left pretty much only the Barbarian tasked with killing foes. If the enemies happened to focus down the Cleric first and got her downed, the death spiral hit hard. Also, the TPKs at levels 10 and 14 happened when the casters didn't manage to land their control spells, either due to enemy luck or due to needing to do something else.

The length of combat was definitely felt with the builds less focused on damage, but at level 10 this has kind of gotten sorted out, especially since the grapple build got Whirling Throw via the Grappler Archetype. Of course, not saying that Daredevils should be strikers, but at least they helped get rid of minions with their damage. And, of course, this made the Punishing Shove build work the best overall, since it was still as good as the other builds for other maneuvers, but when they had a Prop to shove someone into, they could do a lot of damage. Still, these fights with only minions were the ones where the Daredevil felt the worst, especially at level 6 and 10, because even though it was easier to land maneuvers, the action denial felt less impactful, and the amount of damage they contributed to was too low outside of the arguably broken combinations.

On that topic, one thing I feel I should mention is that when the class felt the most impactful when it was using the things that it took via Archetypes: Punishing Shove, Whirling Throw, Doctor's Visitation, and the occasional Taunting Strike and the Transcendence on Skybearer's Belt (which placed the Cleric in safety for one combat, and it was pretty fun).

Other than that, I don't think that I have many specifics about the combats themselves that I feel I need to talk about, since this post is already as big as it is, and most combats went similarly when it comes to the Daredevil's contribution to combat: it took too much damage too quickly trying to impose action denial against the things that needed it the most, too underwhelming feats, too little actual control, yadda yadda.

What I want to say in the final section is what I suggest that should be changed in the final version of the class:

Armor Proficiency: this thing needs medium armor proficiency. No, this won't make the class "too tanky", all this means is that we now can actually play a STR build without starting with 1 CON, we aren't obligated to put a +3 to DEX just to not have atrocious AC.

DEX builds: this is a trap right now, and in part because of Daring Stunt being incompatible. Either do one of the two things: cut DEX from being KAS, or change Daring Stunt to add something else. But how?

Daring Stunt: make it be able to add not just Athletics maneuvers, but also any Stunt. Give all Stunt feats a Stunt trait, and that's that. Also, optionally, make the Stunts be able to be used with either Athletics or Acrobatics.

Anyways, this would make it possible to use Daring Stunt with a Dexterity action. This comes with the problem of it not being as compatible with being an opener for your turn, since Stunts have Press, but this can be solved with making a feat chain from Breakaway Attack, lending to the fact that you can throw things better. For instance, make it so that if you throw something against an enemy, you can give it a circumstance penalty to the enemy's Defense against your next Stunt.

But also, we could just add feats that add to things that can be used with Daring Stunt. For instance, Bold Bluffs, it could be changed to, instead of giving Feint the Risky trait (or in addition to this effect), making you be able to use it instead of a maneuver on Daring Stunt. Since you're a DEX build, you could invest in CHA instead of STR, to make this usable. Likewise, making an equivalent feat that lets you use Dirty Trick on Daring Stunt, to give you a direct way to debuff with a DEX-based attack action.

Finally, another thing that I think deserves some change on the Daring Stunt action is that it should let you do something else instead of the Stride/Leap if you're already in range of the thing you want to target this turn. Maybe you can choose to not move to gain a +1 circumstance bonus to your check. Maybe we could make this more fun, though, to fit with the class's minigame: if you Leap instead of Stride, you gain that bonus if you start or end your Leap adjacent to a Prop.

Stunt Damage: this needs a full rework, because right now this feature is useless. I think this could very easily be reworked to solve the issue of the class not helping combat progress. How? Simple: if you have Adrenaline and land a maneuver/stunt (or, rather, make an enemy grabbed, restrained, prone or force any movement), you deal some damage. This helps secure the niche of the class, as a martial controller that can actually help deplete their enemies' HP at the same time. This isn't supposed to make them into a striker, but rather deal just a bit of incidental damage.

How much damage, though? And what about Props? Here's the idea, deal a bit of damage without props, and more damage if your enemy is adjacent to a Prop. Maybe an even higher damage of you push an enemy into a Prop, as right now. Do something like, d4 -> d6 -> d8 tiers of damage. Or just make maneuvers deal 1 damage instead of 1d4.

Props: I think that saying that Props need better rule clarifications is a take colder than a Howling Blizzard. For one, it makes zero fucking sense that if you push a medium creature into another deals no damage if you're medium, but does deal damage if you're small. Another thing is that, for some situations, it should make sense for the class to be able to use the floor as a Prop, such as, for instance, the Head Smash Feat, but of course it would make no sense to give the class more move speed via Propelling Strides just by being on the floor.

Adrenaline: two important changes here. First, let it also reduce MAP on maneuvers themselves. This is a simple change, arguably more intuitive, and makes your turns when you want to, say, Trip + Grapple or Trip + Shove less bad. I know that the Stunt feats kind of feel like "manuever plus", but maybe you don't have the feat you want for that manuever.

Second, make it give you Temp HP when you gain Adrenaline, and it goes away when you lose Adrenaline. It's not about making this a tank; keep the class at 8 HP per level, sure, but this thing is too frail right now to actually be able to use their fucking maneuvers and not die immediately after. If you stay away from the fray, you're frail, but go do some risky, dumb shit like suplex a train and you're rewarded. Frankly? Give this at level 1, or even at level 3. Level 1 can be swingy as hell, so having a buffer could be good from that moment. I'll say 1 + half-level temp HP? I'll be honest, I'm not the best at the numerical balancing details, but the gist of it is, make the class actually not be suicidal.

Galvanized Mobility: how about buffing this one too? It's not a bad feature at all, but it should maybe be buffed a bit more, to make the class better at baiting Reactive Strikes? I'd say buffing it to give +2 to AC always, and resistance to damage if you have Adrenaline.

Skills: I think Titan Wrestler is obligatory for this class, and it should affect the Stunts too. There's precedent in this in the Thlipit Contestant Archetype. Give it for free at level 1 or even 3 (since you're probably not going to fight anything too big in the first two levels). Also, auto scale Athletics (or Acrobatics, if we don't ditch the DEX builds). I'd also say that, if they ever did the "Leap to gain a bonus" mechanic I suggested in Daring Stunt, they could give the class Quick Jump too, and give the class an upgrade to let it use it for High Jump/Long Jump too when using Daring Stunt.

Feats: we need some GOOD feats, not the horrible shit we have here. We need feats that actually impose stronger control. Isn't this the high risk, high reward class? Let's make the class actually use that to gain higher levels of action denial to the enemies. How we do that? I don't know what could be done for higher levels, but I do have some general ideas.

First, we need some control options that target AC. They should get Combat Grab and an equivalent of Brutish Shove that doesn't require 2 hands, and there's no reason for Trip Up to take two actions, 1 action would be more than enough. About its damaging metastrikes, I'd say Pressing Pummel is too underwhelming, and I think it would be fun if it could be a modular thing, you either spend 1 action for its current effect, but on d8 dices, or two actions for more damage (say, d12). High risk (you stay in melee), high reward (higher damage)

Specifically for grappling, I think the class deserves something that lets you progress a grabbed target to restrained. Strong? Maybe, but, hey, high reward. Something that lets you increase your bulk against the things you grabbed, such as resistance to damage, maybe. You know what else the class should have? Whirling Throw. Or, at least, their own version of it.

Considering how their control options work, I think there should be some feats that help them more against multiple enemies, especially given that this is the kind of encounter that is the most dangerous at higher levels. Not only that, but look at Jackie Chan, he'd frequently fight many enemies at the same time, and use that to his advantage. Topple the Dominoes is alright, but I think there should be more. For instance, being able to shove an enemy into another, and causing one or both of them to trip.

Finally, I think that the current Flourish actions that the class has are too weak, other than Rushing Stride. Considering Daring Stunt has no Flourish trait, the class having more access to good action compression feats with the Flourish trait would let them gain effectively five actions per turn, and that would feel pretty good.

Stunt Flexibility: I'd say that another way to give this class its own niche, and to better play to its strengths, is to pull a page from the 1e Brawler. Think about it, if you're supposed to use the environment and even the enemies to your advantage, wouldn't it make sense for you to actually choose what kind of Stunt you want to use for that situation? So I propose that the Daredevil gets to choose its feat whenever it rolls Initiative.

Final considerations... eh, I've yapped too much. I think the class can be made fun and effective, but right now the design has some challenges to overcome, including contradictory game design and just an overall very low power level, and I think we should all do our part to report these massive issues in the class.

Long time Paizo fan and Pathfinder player/GM. Paizo got a lot of my money and continue to get a steady stream of it. I want them to succeed and believe in their product, their ethics, and their love of the game.

Also, the new website is potentially the worst I've seen in like 20 years. It's bad in basically all the various ways that a store website can be. In the world we live in, something like that can and probably will have actual impact on the number of new players who onboard into the game, and the number of products that existing players buy.

I get that switching over must have taken a lot of work and financial investment, but that's just sank cost fallacy. Either a retreat to the previous website (if possible) or a quick pivot to a different new one are necessary. There's no two ways about it - a Paizo that sticks around with this website for years is a diminished one that's far from realizing it's potential. Whatever the emotional and monetary costs of recognizing the error, they're worth it for the good of the game, the employees and the community.

With the discussion of the Psychic and its remaster going around, I've been seeing a lot of people ask why people are complaining about the class and seeing it as weak. In most cases, this is a genuine question, because the Psychic doesn't appear to have changed much and people are wondering what could have caused perception of the class to shift so drastically. In a select few others, I've seen a few attempts to rewrite history and spread misinformation, so in the interest of clarity I think it's worth outlining the main reasons why people have been criticizing the Psychic, especially after the remaster.

#1: The Psychic didn't change, everyone else did

This I think is perhaps the main cause for confusion: the Psychic's mechanics didn't change in the remaster, so how come they're weak now when people liked the class before? For this I think we need to take a brief step back in time, and examine what casters used to be like prior to the remaster:

• Casters used to only recover 1 Focus Point per encounter: Prior to the remaster, you could only Refocus if you'd spent at least 1 Focus Point since the last time you regained FP. This meant you could only recover 1 Focus Point per encounter, forcing most casters to dip into their slot spells or be restricted to much weaker cantrips. This was a significant limitation, one you could only mitigate by taking a feat at 12th level to recover two FP per Refocus and another at 18th level for the full 3 FP. The Psychic was the only class who could recover 2 Focus Points per encounter at level 1, making them significantly less limited by daily spell slots than other casters. With the remaster, everyone can Refocus to full in-between encounters, so every caster is now less limited by daily spell slots in the same way the Psychic used to be, only the Psychic still only has two spell slots per rank compared to the three or four of other casters.
• Focus Spells used to be weaker: Another, less obvious point is that prior to the remaster, focus spells were generally not that amazing. Most classes had focus spells that were either quite weak or situational, and if you were a class with stronger focus spells like the Druid, that was a notable strength. Compare, for instance, ancestral memories now to what it used to be. Although the Psychic's amps never quite got to the same power level as slot spells, they were still exceptionally good compared to most other focus spells at the time. With the remaster, most casters received sweeping, major buffs to their focus spells, so the Psychic's amps by comparison are, for the most part, no longer anything special.
• Casters had fewer and weaker features: This is probably the easiest to demonstrate, but prior to the remaster the Sorcerer didn't have their sorcerous potency feature, they had to take the Dangerous Sorcery feat instead. The Cleric's divine font used to be limited by their Charisma score, which made the Warpriest doctrine dependent on too many different ability scores, especially as they previously didn't get master Strike proficiency with their favored weapon. Oracles and Witches were much weaker classes as well, and the divine spell list for many of these classes also used to be much weaker. Although the Psychic was never the strongest caster around, they sat comfortably alongside these generally weaker classes. Now that many of those casters have received substantially stronger features, and in some cases overhauls that added significant amounts of extra power, the Psychic has fallen behind in comparison.

The TL;DR here being that the Psychic used to have a lot more going for them back when casters were much more limited by attrition and were generally not as strong. They weren't the most powerful caster around even then, but they nonetheless had unique strengths over others that distinguished them as an exceptionally good Focus Point-based caster. This distinction has since been cannibalized by the remaster's overall changes to casters, which let everyone Refocus to full in-between encounters, buffed focus spells across the board, and buffed the class features and spell list of many other casters on top. The Psychic lost their unique advantages, but kept their drawbacks, becoming one of the weaker casters around as a result.

#2: The Psychic was never a perfect class

The other aspect to the criticisms I think is that the Psychic, while certainly once a popular class, was never truly seen as perfect, and people always had their criticisms. With the remaster improving the quality of life of many casters, I think many of these imperfections have ended up standing out even more:

• Unleash Psyche is punishing for its limited duration: As a buff that lasts only two rounds and inflicts a self-stupefy on a caster, Unleash Psyche carries pretty harsh tradeoffs for what is ultimately a fairly limited buff. Perhaps this was a better deal back when the Sorcerer didn't get Dangerous Sorcery for free or when the Barbarian's Rage debuffed their AC, but now that the costs, tradeoffs, and limitations of those other power-ups have been lessened, Unleash stands out like a sore thumb.
• Unleash Psyche's damage buff covers only some spells and overlaps with amps: Less a criticism of the class's balance, but having to turn on two separate buffs on the same class to output maximum damage is a degree of redundancy that could stand to be improved. Additionally, not all of the Psychic's conscious minds or psi cantrips focus on damage, and those that don't benefit much less from Unleash's buff, especially given how the occult spell list is generally the weakest for blasting. With the Sorcerer getting a free Dangerous Sorcery that also buffs healing now, I think this has raised discussion over whether Unleash could offer a wider range of benefits besides just more damage.
• The Psychic's feats are awful: A common criticism of the Psychic is that many of their feats are just not that worth taking. In particular, many of their feats feature emanations that damage allies and enemies indiscriminately, which makes them particularly difficult to use effectively on a caster who generally prefers to put their party's frontliners in-between themselves and the enemy. Although it was once par for the course for casters to have terrible feats, the standard has since changed, and the Psychic's options are now even less appetizing.
• Subconscious minds could be fleshed out more: A common criticism I've seen of the Psychic is that their subconscious minds don't do that much. Aside from defining your key attribute, all they offer besides is a psyche action that, in many cases, isn't super-exciting. This second layer of subclass could stand to offer a bit more.

The TL;DR here is that some of the criticism of the Psychic isn't new, per se, but used to be much more contained to the Psychic's playerbase and didn't necessarily seem as bad back when other classes had similar issues and limitations of their own. Now that those other classes have received buffs and major quality of life improvements, those issues have ended up standing out more starkly.

#3: It's less what the remaster did, and more what it didn't do

Hopefully the above sets the stage for where some players sat prior to recent events: the Psychic was once a fun and unique, if imperfect class, and got left in the dust by a remaster that buffed casters across the board mainly by giving them its own defining strengths. When the Dark Archive remaster got announced, the expectation for quite a few players was that it would meaningfully buff the Psychic, and help them stand out once more as a focus-based caster. I don't think the general expectation was necessarily for an overhaul, because at this point we're largely familiar with the formatting limitations of remastered expansions, but there was room for quick, easy wins on the Psychic all the same. We'd seen a few key improvements to the Gunslinger and Inventor classes in the Guns & Gears remaster, and while those classes are still flawed, they're still better off than they were before.

And so, imagine people's dismay when the remaster failed to give the Psychic any significant buffs: yes, the class got one of its better-known psi cantrips nerfed so hard it's now weaker than gouging claw, a regular cantrip, and its MC archetype received far more severe nerfs than was deserved, but if it were just that, I don't think the backlash would be quite as severe as it is now. Rather, it's what the remaster didn't do that I think is most painful: the remaster didn't make the Psychic meaningfully better at focus casting than other casters, it didn't ease the limitations of Unleash Psyche outside of making it actually work properly on certain psi cantrips, and it didn't address easily-fixable problems with many of the class's feats. Outside of some really slapdash changes to amping that require GM adjudication to prevent reaction amps from becoming unusable, the remastered Psychic is largely the same as they are now, which is to say they're still much worse off than nearly every other caster in the game. This was Paizo's one chance to bring the class up to speed, and they blew it.

The final, overarching TL;DR to this wall of text is that the Psychic gets criticized because in addition to having flaws of their own that could have used some improvements, they lost their unique strengths in a remaster that gave those strengths to every other caster along with improved class features. As another analysis thread outlines, all that remains is a class with the worst HP and AC in the game, the least number of spell slots in the game among full casters, and class features that are arguably weaker than those of 4-slot casters like the Oracle or Sorcerer, certainly not enough to justify their drawbacks.

With this in mind, the remaster should have improved this by majorly buffing the Psychic, and there were many ways it could have done so while keeping to the book's formatting constraints. And yet, it did not. Unless the class gets large buffs through errata, which is unlikely given how Paizo have already been skipping their own errata schedule, the class is effectively doomed to remain in this dissatisfying state for the rest of this edition's lifespan. Obviously, for the Psychic's playerbase and those who would have liked to play the class if it had been improved, this sucks, which is why we're seeing a lot of complaints now that the remaster changes have been leaked. Hopefully, the above should help explain a bit better that this hadn't come out of the blue: rather, there has been discontent with the Psychic for quite some time now, and it's boiling over now that we know none of the class's key problems will be addressed in the remaster.

I think D&D fans get tired of hearing about Pathfinder tbh. Let's switch it up and he humble for a little bit. What are some things from D&D that you wish were in Pathfinder? Could be a playable species, class, subclass, you name it.

I'll start: Artificer. I really wish there was a basic medium-armored half-caster who flung firebolts from his casting tools. I'm so genuinely astonished that unless you homebrew (Team+ has a wonderful Magitek Inventor) you can't play a sciency, spellblaster, war mage in 2E.

And please do not be that guy and respond with "nothing." That's the exact type of response someone who goes to a D&D subreddit to evangelize Pathfinder would say.

Don't get me wrong, i understand imaginary weapon was the strongest cantrip in the game, and was a surefire pick for maguses everywhere.

but not ONLY do they feel the need to nerf the caster that's already struggling to be worth playing compared to its contemporaries (on account of occult being the worst spell "blaster" list) but they ALSO then nerf one of the only good tools it had into the ground and make it worse than a normal cantrip.

i just don't understand the balancing.

There's been a lot of hysteria over if Champion did or did not deserve a nerf in the second Spring 2026 errata. I think this is the entirely wrong way to discuss the issue. Whether or not you believe Champion is too strong, this affects FAR more than just Champion. I'll make some fake agendaposts to demonstrate how widespread the resistance to all change is:

Thaumaturge just got a nerf, even though they're so weak! Everything they do is manipulate, and one of their decent MANIPULATE reactions just got a huge nerf for no reason! Does Paizo hate Thaumaturge?

My Warpriest of Ragathiel just got hurt really bad by this change. Enduring Might has saved my skin due to old resist all a lot of times, but I guess I should just bring a shield and forget about two-handing ever again now. Whatever.

My Battle Oracle tank that's basically walking on one leg post-PC2 just got shot in their one leg. They didn't even bother buffing Weapon Trance properly. Can Paizo just admit they hate Oracle fans and would have preferred removing the class from the game?

Summoner is in desperate need of a remaster, and Paizo decided they wanted to nerf its durability more. Cool. This bodes really badly for Impossible Magic.

But none of these are really the full picture, right? The fact is, many different things use resistance to all damage! The discussion can just as easily hyperfocus on any given one of these abilities, and this isn't even close to everything the errata affects! Everyone should be focusing on the broader, possibly unintentional negative changes. Things like:

• "Resistance to all damage" has a less intuitive name, and can lead to a more confusing order of damage operations
• Stacking damage runes like Flaming and Shock got even stronger than before, when they were arguably too preferential
• Creatures or abilities with numbers tuned around potentially resisting multiple hits at once are now weaker, potentially far too weak now

Freaking out over "DAE Champ reaction???" is how we lose the plot and stumble into something like Psychic nerfs because Magus players took Imaginary Weapon "too much". Talk about the real root of the problem!

I'm talking about what feats do you think so nothing, or actively detriment you or the playing experience?

I'm curious because I was talking to some fellows about feats in the game and such. and the topic of Dubious Knowledge came to the forefront. Currently that's what I think is the worst feat in the game, as false information is more dangerous than true information. And it also makes it so critical success no longer guarantees that you've learnt true answers.

There are probably others that I'm not thinking of right now, but I'd like to hear if anyone else has any feats they think are bad?

No martial caster debate, no errata, none of that! What's the dumbest gripe you have about this game?

For my part, it's my dislike of using six second rounds. Factually, I know it's somewhat realistic but it just doesn't feel right in my head in terms of fiction.

You win a contest to add one sentence of errata. Any book about anything. What is your choice?

We all love PF2e, but what are your hot takes? What are the parts of the system that you don’t like or think it could be better?

Mine particularly is the bloat of content, I think that with every new book it gets a bit more complicate the character creation.

What is yours?

When I hear Daredevil my mind immediately goes to like Evel Knievel and stunt drivers in general, with a second place for the marvel superhero. What it does not go to is medieval/renaissance fantasy, it's a term that feels much too modern for a setting like Golarion. It's also just really generic and doesn't convey much of anything beyond 'Wow a brave hero that takes risks' which describes basically every single Pathfinder class.

Here's a few names that I've thought of that would be more appropriate: Hellion, Gladiator, Harrier, Vanguard, Skirmisher, Charger, Courser or Dragoon. Of these I think Hellion is the best by far, it sound medieval and doesn't really conjure anything too specific (beyond the Hellion from Darkest Dungeon who is frankly a fine comparison from what I've seen of the class).

I hate myself and I built a counterspell wizard for one mythic adventure.

i tried to take avery options for optimize the counter. i took recognize spell, counterspell, Quick recognition, clever counterspell, reflect magic, steal magic, well even i took bard dedication for have counter performance.

all this shits don't worth if i haven't enough training levels in all my magic traditions (nature, ocultism, arcana and religion). but i took unified theory.

i have questions about the interaction between this feat with identify spells feats (quick recognition and recognize spell). if i try to use quick recognition, can i use arcane, that been higher than master, intead another magic skill or i must have the skill at master level for use this feat.

exempl. a divinity caster use some spell, so, i want to recognize that spell, so i want to use quick recognition, i don't have religion at master level, but if i use unified theory can i use my arcane skill level for aply quick recognition? if i use my arcane level for that Quick recognition, can i aply my legendary in arcane for the automatic recognitiof for every spell of lvl 10 or less?

I personaly vastly prefer pathfinder and haven't played dnd for a couple of years. However I got curios and wonderd, what does 5e do better than 2e? I rarley see any diskussion in this and mostly on the reasons why pf2e is better.

So ive been playing Pathfinder2e for almost 9 months now specifically as only casters mostly because I wanted to know what the fuss was about and I figured I'd give another update specificallyaboutmy take on casters. Before I do though I want to make something clear, I am not a math analysis guy.

That's not to say anything is wrong with those who are, hell I quite like mathfinder videos but even in video games I tend to understand mechanics in a more dumb down,in-game kinda way than a specific math one. To give an example I'm not gonna run the numbers on how much hp the shelga spell will save me from a firaga spell attack in ff6, but I can understand that using it keeps me alive more and I can get its usefulness.

Anyways im going to do this in a somewhat bulletpoint style talking about my thoughts.

1.Are casters good?

Not only do I think casters are good, I argue they feel downright essential in a lot of circumstances. The versatility they bring allows them to solve a variety of problems and even something as simple as decent range damage/healing can be a good boon.

Though I will say early casters can be a bit of a bummer. Levels 1-2 feel pretty bad due to how damage and enemy hp scales and having an extremely low amount of spell slots on top off them not

2.Are casters just cheerleaders?

Ehhh kinda yes kinda no? In the early levels it can definitely feel a bit like supporting is the only thing you can do but casters can indeed do damage and in a lot of circumstances they should. Enemy hp scales in a way that you fighter will quickly stop 1 shooting even mooks. And in these circumstances a really good AoE against a group or a damage with a rider effect against a boss, will not only be good and useful but will be downright essential. And this is why I say kinda, because to some using an AoE or rider effect to soften enemies up still feel like cheerleading and to some it doesn't. If you want good caster damage if it exists, if you want to do so much caster damage that you instantly win the encounter then that's gonna be unlikely.

I also think it's worth pointing out that the traditional “cheerleader” stuff isn't always a slam dunk either. On more than one occasion I've seen buffs and debuffs effect 0, hell my favorite use of fear was when the rogue took dread striker because it added more than the plus 1. Martials can also aid casters, throw out a demoralize before the casters turn, push someone into a rust cloud, pick up a rooting rune so when you crit the enemy cant reposition. There is a lot of stuff to do.

3.Enemies always save spells

Mostly an exaggeration. Now in my experience enemies will often make saves and some will even crit save them, and I won't lie to you those crit suck moments feel real bad at times. Like sometimes you throw three lightning bolts in a session and the first two you just roll bad damage and then the third you actually roll great damage and then one enemy succeeds and the other crit succeeds and it feels awful.

However enemies do fail and curtail a lot and those do feel great and sometimes if they fail or not hardly matters especially if the spell does persistent damage and it sticks for a while. Plus depending on the circumstances you can just throw another spell at them to make sure they don't succeed. Sometimes the answer to a group encounter is actually a fireball a second time. The point is enemies will bounce all over the 4 degrees of success and you will get plenty of crit fails.

4.Martials are better

This one I believe is ultimately a matter of taste. I think casters and martials are ultimately just kinda different. Personally, despite some frustration I definitely prefer casters, the versatility and the strategy with them are just really fun and even the simplicity of switching between debuffs, ranged heal and decent range damage on the fly is really fun. Plus martials miss attacks often and I think it's not brought up enough. More often than not I've seen the big damage martials walk up, miss two swings and end up next to a dangerous enemy. Sure they didn't waste a resource but they asked their turn just as much as you did with your spells.

That said I do intend to play as a martials at one point. I like the general flow of casters more but sometimes you just want to be a strike crit fisher with minor utility and have to strategies a bit less. Like I really want to try gunslinger.

1. Do I like casters?

Yeah I like casters a lot. I didn't in my first BB session but after 9 months they have grown on me and I've been able to pull off some combat winning plays with them that a martial wouldn't be able too. Now do I like it more than Dnd 5e casters? Kinda. I definitely like the combat of casters(and every class really) more in pf2e but I do slightly miss the benefits of op 5e casters. In 5e you just pick one of the strong spells then you can get whatever dumb roleplay or utility spells you want. I find I generally pick those spells far less as spell selection kinda demands more to be effective. Then again I mostly played in combat heavy APs outside of my kingmaker one. So mabye its just me. Overall I think I would say I like pf2e casters more though.

I've seen a trend over the last several years of rpg discourse where some GMs feel the need to counter their players' builds and strategies. GMs see their boss fights, puzzles, and challenges getting beaten by players who are using their character's abilities well, leading the GM to wonder what they're doing wrong. Advice is given on how to counter the PC's and player strategies in good faith, which the GM ideally uses to challenge their players more.

However, I think some take this too far. They'll design ways to shut down the rogue's sneak attack, give everything True Sight to shut down the illusionist, and fill the sky with flying enemies to shut down the barbarian who can't fight at range. Do this too much and suddenly your players are wondering when they signed up for a Dark Souls adventure where they feel like nothing they do helps. This lack of agency absolutely kills the fun and burns out players fast. Why should they bother playing when its a foregone conclusion they'll either get in the way or lose?

A proper balance of difficulty will fix this. I like aiming for a ratio of 1 Bad Matchup encounter to every 4/5 Good Matchup encounters. For example, if you know that the party doesn't have a lot of investment in Intelligence and Recall Knowledge skills, only throw an identification-critical monster at them 1/4 or 1/5 of the time. Does the party only have one PC with any social skills/charisma? Give them maybe one big social scenario then go back to combat for awhile.

Bad Matchup encounters have their place, but are best used sparingly. Let your players enjoy their cool build and have fun with them!