Every class I want is represented in game. A lot of my favorites are bit more scuffed than I would've liked, but they're there. new classes like Runesmith and Exemplar are what gets me excited for 2e now. I dunno, maybe a Rivethun class, a Prophet of Kalistrade class, and an Esoteric Knight? Mining the lore and old prestige classes for new ways of play appeals.
this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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Personally, I'm really not a fan of when Pathfinder hard codes in its lore into the mechanics, so classes like those would not be welcome to me. I don't play in their world and it's not nearly generic enough for me to be comfortable using in my own world without either altering some mechanics or altering my world. In the CRB, dwarven clan daggers spring to mind as something I wish wasn't a core assumption of the dwarf ancestry. (Though at least it's little more than a ribbon unless you first choose to take a feat related to it.)
I'm reminded of when D&D added gravity- and time-mages based on the lore of that famous live stream group. Newer classes are easy enough to ignore, thankfully, so it's not a huge deal to add and I don't exactly resent them being there for people who do like it. But they were such dumb concepts in my mind it was annoying to see development effort spent on them rather than something more usable.
My answer, and one that occurred to me because of comments by @[email protected] in this thread is the warlock.
In my view, the key aspects of the warlock are:
- It must have a patron which controls its access to magic
- Its magic must be of a sort that, to an outsider, could easily be confused for a wizard or sorcerer
- Nevertheless, the mechanics of its magic must feel very different to play from a wizard or sorcerer
D&D 5th edition does this well with its spell slots being short rest based and always at maximum level, but far more limited in number than typical slot casters. It casts many of the same spells as a wizard rather than having an entirely different system like Pathfinder's Kineticist or (presumably) runesmith, but by preparing and casting in completely different degrees to the wizard. Whether Pathfinder did it "slotless".
The Witch is probably the "best" option for a warlock-like experience so far, and the description of the witch as having a patron is probably the biggest reason I think we'll never actually get a warlock. But the witch does a very poor job of feeling like a warlock. I don't want a pet, or to cast spells through a familiar. The actual spell progression is too vanilla. And way too many of the feats are too explicitly "witchy", like cackle, cauldron, living hair, and eldritch nails.
Im curious why your conception of a warlock must be able to be confused with a wizard or sorcerer from an outside perspective. That has never been an aspect of warlocks in 5e that I valued, or something I particularly wanted to emphasize.
To me, a warlock character could be made using any number of classes present in pf2, including the aforementioned sorcerer, wizard and witch, but also the psychic or oracle. The fantasy of having a patron is not something that must be expressed mechanically IMO, because it ultimately boils down to "you have a connection with this powerful NPC and you need to consider their wants/needs/demands or else there may be consequenses"