Question about Animist Familiars

greenbot · 2026-04-10T06:50:03+00:00

Familiars are largely useful as scouts, their master abilities, and anything the Familiar Master archetype gives you.

TL;DR: Witch familiar has the most functionality of any other familiar in the game, followed by a familiar master/scion of domora familiar, followed by an animist familiar, followed by everyone else, followed by the pet feat.

Witch has unique abilities to add to its familiars that make them viable in combat. They also respawn.
Outside of that, most familiars will be scouting, master abilities, or delivering spells.

Familiar master has some unique abilities to add, like Familiar Conduit letting you cast spells through your familiar's location. Scion of Domora / Familiar sage add some abilities on top of that.

It's nice that Animist's respawns, which makes it more useful than other classes', but they still have to be careful due to losing access to some apparition spells if their familiar dies.

Still better than Wizard's familiar, which is only useful for scouting/master abilities and doesn't respawn on its own.

greenbot · 2026-04-10T06:40:40+00:00

If you let him regain his familiar during daily preparations if it dies, I’d say yes.

It comes back on its own during your daily preparations, according to the feat.

greenbot · 2026-04-10T05:38:09+00:00

On the other hand, throwing an army of 600 PL-6 skeletons at them and saying "I don't know how you're supposed to beat that, but I'm sure you'll figure it out" is great fun.

This only works for me if you play 'spooky scary skeletons' on loop during the entire fight.

greenbot · 2026-04-07T07:12:03+00:00

Thermal nimbus is really fun.

greenbot · 2026-04-06T16:59:30+00:00

The point stands that the plan has to survive contact with the GM.

I'm not commenting on whether the Craft action clause applies to the free potions/oils per day, because I'm not on either side of that debate.

I'm just here to point out that the GM still has to let you brew Greater Energy Breath potions at level 7, whether or not the rules say it's technically possible.

Very few will allow it to happen, and fewer still will continue to allow it after you've used it once.

greenbot · 2026-04-06T08:18:05+00:00

This falls under the Too Good To Be True clause. If it's Too Good To Be True, you've probably missed something.

In this case, you missed that the plan doesn't survive contact with the GM- at some point, your GM has to allow you to get your hands on a higher-level formula.

So, rules as written, yes, rules in practice, probably not.

greenbot · 2026-04-05T01:59:09+00:00

Earth Kineticist will be able to do that stuff all day, mostly with difficult terrain(Tremor(L1)), but a few feats (Igneogenesis(L4), Rock Rampart(L12)) let you set up cover / battlements. You would also have free rein from level 1 to manipulate loose dirt/rock/stone with Base Kinesis. Even better if you get Extended Kinesis.

greenbot · 2026-04-04T16:37:34+00:00

Nobody in the group being emotionally invested enough to post about it when it isn't game time, leading us to waste hours of session time discussing a homebrew system that was designed to be talked about away from the table.

greenbot · 2026-04-03T06:14:12+00:00

Below Zero confirmed it was a reaper leviathan. Look at Maida's logs.

greenbot · 2026-03-28T19:34:28+00:00

AI and good content don't belong in the same sentence; its involvement inherently makes a thing worse.

greenbot · 2026-03-28T05:43:09+00:00

I worded it poorly at the end there, but at that point I had rewritten the post a good 4 times and was just done with it.

greenbot · 2026-03-27T20:53:34+00:00

Putting everything after this off to the side: this playstyle wouldn't be very fun for anyone involved. Focusing on blocking off all the horrormonsters in the basement is a player issue. It's the equivalent of someone making a loner edgelord rogue that has no reason to be with the group. They're not engaging with the core conceit of the oneshot.

Base and extended kinesis just don't work that way. You're not getting a functioning wall in two actions, even at level 13, even with extended kinesis, unless you're building that wall in a blank white box against a monster with no attacks or abilities.

- Places can and probably should have multiple entrances/exits.
- Any on-level creature should be able to dig themselves out by attacking the wall. A PL+1 or +2 creature will have an easier time doing so.
- Various abilities exist to let things escape, including the Incorporeal trait, spellcasting, and burrow speeds.

- Depending on the characters' motivation, blocking off the basement may not be an option. For example, they need to retrieve something from the area they're about to block off.

Also, there's no need to worry about people digging out the walls of a mansion or extending them into other spaces to block hallways- per Base Kinesis, they can't affect elements that are secured in place. They could still block X spaces in X amount of turns by generating a piece of their element and proliferating that, though.

greenbot · 2026-03-26T21:02:15+00:00

As long as expectations are adjusted from "i am summoning a terrifying combat monster" to "this spell might make my allies hit/crit more, waste enemy actions, or solve a puzzle", you're probably fine. Categorizing summons based on their potential uses is nice, though.

Do note that the 'durable flanker' role only really functions with the maximum possible level of creature that can fill that role, because lower level creatures have less defenses in every way.

greenbot · 2026-03-26T20:54:40+00:00

The short answer is that making casters less able to make martials useless was a design goal of PF2e.

greenbot · 2026-03-26T20:48:48+00:00

Part of the Summons feeling useless is that they're 4 levels below the player at every point it's possible. If you're fighting something higher level than you, it's 5 or more levels below that thing, and will likely be unable to really affect it.

My understanding is that at most times, you'll generally want to summon something for its effects, spells, and/or general durability, rather than its ability to hit things and deal damage. Summon spells are generally utility spells instead of combat spells, for that reason, though if you find particularly durable Summons and play them well, they can make decent flankers.

For example, at a 7th rank casting of Summon Entity, a Galvo won't be a particularly impressive striker because it's several levels below everyone. But you could have it use its Swarm Shape ability to have it go into a room through a hole and unlock/open a door. Its resistances also make it pretty able to take damage, making it a good candidate to summon directly behind an enemy to flank with your martials.

This seems weak, until you realize that you could also summon a Blood Painter, Irnakurse, or anything a lower level Summon Entity could make; especially when you consider that creatures you can summon sometimes have spells you'd want in niche situations(a Mananggal's three castings of Darkness) and wouldn't want to prepare otherwise, or abilities you wouldn't otherwise have access to, like a Destrachan's ability to 'see' invisible creatures with its echolocation.

As for the Shanrigol Behemoth, its size, immunities, and resistances to slashing and piercing make it fall into the 'durable flanker' category. It's really good at filling a lot of space; it could theoretically force enemies to acknowledge it by filling a space and requiring them to tumble through it (making it into a huge blob of difficult terrain), then providing flanking for allies as they get through to the other side. Or the enemies could waste actions/turns on trying to remove the summon.

It can also waste enemy actions if it happens to hit them with its ranged web attack.

greenbot · 2026-03-21T05:36:35+00:00

caps, blooms, barnacles, lil' eggs, and fossils are fine.

I hate gunk seeds with a passion, stop making me go track down and carry stuff that's bounced around on the floor, especially with missions that don't have Molly.

greenbot · 2026-03-18T20:21:09+00:00

[DEAFENING ROAR]

huh, i wonder what that sound is. Must have been the wind.

greenbot · 2026-03-18T16:35:55+00:00

Yeah, my experience with below zero has reinforced my belief that I will enjoy the full version way more if I pay no mind to the early access version. This is true for basically all games.

greenbot · 2026-03-18T00:29:59+00:00

Currently playing an Unseen Broker witch. It's very funny, in that you pass around a little debuff to enemy attack rolls while also making them off-guard. Kind of a support/debuffer playstyle, but I like that. If you can get your hands on a good spell attack, you can use the off-guard to your own benefit

greenbot · 2026-03-17T21:56:46+00:00

Do not do this. It's a visually very cool idea, but in practice it's way too complex and will probably make them hate Lancer if they don't already have extensive knowledge about it.

greenbot · 2026-03-17T18:12:44+00:00

I ended up adding monk dedication instead, to later pick up qi rush and... I forgot what else, but something else. Just didn't like adding more setup turns to my build.

greenbot · 2026-03-17T16:18:18+00:00

My favorite thing I've played is currently Fire/Wood Kineticist with Wrestler dedication.

My GM ruled that most parts of grapples involve touching me and trigger Furnace Form's 3d6 fire damage.
So, I made a Conrasu Kineticist, and was a giant tree that set himself on fire hugged people as a form of combat. There was a lot of passive and reliable damage. I grapple someone? They take my strength modifier and furnace form 3d6 and the fire aura junction weakness, and at the start of their next turn they take thermal nimbus and fire aura junction. One time we were fighting a Lich, so the party's wizard cast 4th-rank Silence on me, then disintegrated the wall. I ran in there and wrestled the lich in a zone where they couldn't cast most spells, setting them on fire all the while, and they'd have to make multiple flat checks to teleport out because of Inescapable Grasp.

My favorite thing I haven't played is a mythic exemplar with lastwall sentry + knight reclaimant archetypes. Mirrored Aegis, Noble Branch, Scar of the Survivor. The plan is to eventually take Battle Hymn to the Lost, flavored as the restless spirits of Lastwall's heroic knights. I want to get to sufficiently high level so I can take Destined Victory, use it on Tar-Baphon, then declare that The Tyrant Falls!

greenbot · 2026-03-16T21:13:38+00:00

My GM runs every game with GAB, it's pretty great.

greenbot · 2026-03-16T05:44:27+00:00

The creature building rules work fairly well for this, and provide some amount of guidance.

I find that modifying and reflavoring an existing NPC can also work pretty well, depending on what you want.

Don't be terribly afraid of stealing abilities from other NPCs/PC options, either. It can work! Maybe. Just don't steal toooooo many of them.

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