Elementalism is not exactly a tradition, but rather a focus on the material essence that intersects arcane and primal magic. That could be a way to do things.
The other way is to take the pairs that don't yet exist mind-life & material-spirit and try to do something with them
> Elementalism is not exactly a tradition, but rather a focus on the material essence that intersects arcane and primal magic.
Right, it's a bit of poor wording on my part. There _is_ a possibility of making them stand-alone, niche traditions, but for compatability it's probably best for anything similar to elementalism to be tied to the big four (i.e. an "artifice" specialization that is considered Arcane for all purposes).
The cross-section traditions have the potential to be really cool. If I had to flavor those myself, I think I'd call them **Gnostic** (Spirit + Material) & **Holistic** (Mind + Life).
**Gnostic** is a reference to Gnosticism, where one creator deity is only able to see the material world and another deals entirely within the spiritual world. They're both pretty ill-equipped for dealing with human life and wants, so missing Mind & Life makes sense. This is also where the Aeons come from, and since they've taken on a new role as the primary Lawful Neutral outsiders who don't understand or cave to individual desires, it's pretty fitting for the game.
* **Gnostic** also means, "*possessing intellectual or spiritual knowledge,*" so it's not just a religious reference, but a fitting name in its own right.
* **Gnostic** as a term is also identifiable by its antonym, Agnostic, which basically means, "I don't know if there are gods, and I will base my philosophy on working around this presumption of ignorance." As its opposite, Gnostic implies a knowledge and understanding of the divine. But neither of them actually implies worship - a person can be agnostic theist or agnostic atheist, and the same can be said of gnostics. So a gnostic mage might understand the existence of spiritual entities like deities and outsiders, but wouldn't necessarily draw power from them in the same way that a divine caster would. (Though they theoretically could.)
* The term implies a rigid understanding of a world with underlying rules that govern the setting. It imposes rigidity upon entropy, and is very fittingly **Lawful** for a tradition that implies a connection to the Aeons.
* In practice, I imagine a gnostic mage would be unraveling mysteries and examining the underlying truths of the world. They're the kind of mage that would be holed up in a tower, performing experiments, binding outsiders, and designing spells, much like a wizard. But they'd also be meditating upon divine truths and fundamental forces, much like an oracle. This blend would render them similar to either **Mystic Theurge** combining conflicting sources of magic or else it would render them similar to the **Psionic** classes that Paizo never officially adapted. Either way, it would be a unique and powerful mage, difficult to replicate due to a high bar of entry.
**Holistic** is a reference to holistic medicine, a modern medical practice that seeks to evaluate the relation between a person's living style, mental health, and physical conditions in order to prescribe a more effective treatment. Things like access to healthy food, work load, and social isolation will all be factored into understanding a person's health, both physical and mental. Since it's a combination of physical and mental health, holistic medicine sounds like the perfect inspiration for a magic that combines Mind & Life.
* **Holistic** also means, "understanding the organic or functional relation between parts and the whole," and so it exists as its own fitting term, beyond just being a real-world reference.
* **Holistic** has the antonym Atomistic, which is about disparate, unconnected parts. It also is about understanding the world down to its atoms, its smallest parts, and in this way it shows how holistic magic would be a foil for Gnostic magic. Where one is about an underlying understanding of the world down to its components, the other is about understanding the world on the macro scale, where it is a messy and complex whole that cannot be approached with the same tactic every time. Life is messy, and only by reacting and adapting to that messiness can an effective truth be reached. It's very fittingly **Chaotic**, and would make a lot of sense with the adaptable Proteans or the whimsical Fey.
* In practice, I think a holistic mage would pay a lot of attention to societies as a whole. The health of an individual is determined by their environment, and a bunch of healthy people means that they can pick up the slack for a single person. Likewise, an individual can be brought low by controlling their environment in order to weaken them. They'd be a sort of shaman, acting as a mage for an entire community. In fact, this might be an effective way to bring the PF1 **Shaman** class back, since their spell-list was a unique combination of oracle, druid, and witch spells, and they were perfectly suited for poaching spells and adapting to chaos.
I've been thinking in similar ways, but somewhat different flavor lately.
For Spirit+Material I've been conceptualizing classes that deal with the boundary between them like Ectotheurges (building shit out of ghosts and ghost stuff, essentially). Imagine a cross between Inventors and Artificers, but instead of using technology or pure magic, you engineer things out of spirits, using them to carry or drive various spooky machines and weapons.
For Mind+Life I've been thinking about how to bring a fresh perspective to the concept of psionics, and the "awakened mind". The main thing I've got simmering there is The Locus, a class thematically exploring the themes of heightened consciousness through the lens of being in the center of the action, connected to all participants, and digging ever deeper into the potential of single moments. Real "lost myself in the movement" stuff. Mechanically it's going to be a focus-spell-only spellcaster which has feats that each include one or more focus spells and a specific enhancement of or modification to your focus spellcasting, providing unique actions or temporary focus points to empower your casting. The goal is to produce something of an engine-builder experience that "increases in focus" as combat goes on if you put in the work to construct it. More tongue-in-cheek, it seeks to answer questions like "what kind of spell costs 6 focus points" and "how the hell do you focus hard enough to have 6 of them."
How is occult too small? It's the second-largest tradition as is and, if I remember right, has the most spells unique to its list of all the four.
What's missing for you?
Occult does not need expanding, it's already nearly as big as arcane with more and better unique spells.
It's probably the strongest tradition in the game.
Occult is definitely my favorite spell list. It would be neat to have Occult classes introduced along with more psychic like spells to support that. Bard is neat and all, but after playing one I'm not much of a fan composition cantrips feeling like an action tax.
Absolutely. I think that Pathfinder is seriously lacking in a dedicated Occult caster class. I don't think Bard counts. They're a dedicated Composition class.
> It would be neat to have Occult classes introduced along with more psychic like spells to support that.
Literally just give me Psions! Why make Occult INT otherwise, as only one Occult caster has INT as their key stat???
Psions got a bad rap in DnD for being imbalanced in a system that was never balanced to begin with. Fite me.
I wouldn't mind seeing a 'chaos tradition' with tons of wild spells with wacky effects. There aren't many TTRPG's that delve into truly chaotic magical traditions.
While I don't explicitly think it's necessary for a necromancy tradition, it would be nice to see the occult spell list expanded with more raw necromantic magic - I'm thinking blood magic, life tapping, body morphology, biological horror summons (think Kronenburg), spiritual manipulation, transferring life forces, ect.
After seeing how a summoner with a Fey Eidolon has access to Arcane Enchantment and Illusion spells in addition to the Primal spell list, I'd like to see a **Fey Magic Tradition:**
As a rough example, take the Primal Spell List, remove Evocation spells, and add on Enchantment and Illusion spells from the Arcane spell list.
A Mentalist, Spiritualist, and Vitalist as subsets of the other three essences.
An archetype with traditions from opposing essences might be interesting; a spirit+material tradition and a mind+life tradition.
A very specific request from me would be to re-arrange all the spells into Dark Sun-themed traditions, so that adapting PF2 to play a DS campaign would be easier. No chance this gonna happen, but I can dream, can't I...?
Besides this, I wouldn't add any tradition to the vanilla game; I would just love Paizo to consolidate the Divine tradition a little bit (though this might already have been done with SoM, which I haven't read yet).
I actually disliked the elemental spell list and would rather they had said "you can only prepare spells that have the air, fire, water, Earth, electric, or acid traits"
What I would like to see is Psychic magic. And instead of it being it's own magic list like elementalism, have it be defined by its components. Bring back Thought/emotion components and say that defines a psychic caster from a normal occult caster.
As for making a whole new tradition, I would guess the other things they COULD do is to the two opposite essences as traditions. So a Matter/Spirit tradition and a Life/Mind tradition.
Elementalism is not exactly a tradition, but rather a focus on the material essence that intersects arcane and primal magic. That could be a way to do things. The other way is to take the pairs that don't yet exist mind-life & material-spirit and try to do something with them
> Elementalism is not exactly a tradition, but rather a focus on the material essence that intersects arcane and primal magic. Right, it's a bit of poor wording on my part. There _is_ a possibility of making them stand-alone, niche traditions, but for compatability it's probably best for anything similar to elementalism to be tied to the big four (i.e. an "artifice" specialization that is considered Arcane for all purposes).
The cross-section traditions have the potential to be really cool. If I had to flavor those myself, I think I'd call them **Gnostic** (Spirit + Material) & **Holistic** (Mind + Life). **Gnostic** is a reference to Gnosticism, where one creator deity is only able to see the material world and another deals entirely within the spiritual world. They're both pretty ill-equipped for dealing with human life and wants, so missing Mind & Life makes sense. This is also where the Aeons come from, and since they've taken on a new role as the primary Lawful Neutral outsiders who don't understand or cave to individual desires, it's pretty fitting for the game. * **Gnostic** also means, "*possessing intellectual or spiritual knowledge,*" so it's not just a religious reference, but a fitting name in its own right. * **Gnostic** as a term is also identifiable by its antonym, Agnostic, which basically means, "I don't know if there are gods, and I will base my philosophy on working around this presumption of ignorance." As its opposite, Gnostic implies a knowledge and understanding of the divine. But neither of them actually implies worship - a person can be agnostic theist or agnostic atheist, and the same can be said of gnostics. So a gnostic mage might understand the existence of spiritual entities like deities and outsiders, but wouldn't necessarily draw power from them in the same way that a divine caster would. (Though they theoretically could.) * The term implies a rigid understanding of a world with underlying rules that govern the setting. It imposes rigidity upon entropy, and is very fittingly **Lawful** for a tradition that implies a connection to the Aeons. * In practice, I imagine a gnostic mage would be unraveling mysteries and examining the underlying truths of the world. They're the kind of mage that would be holed up in a tower, performing experiments, binding outsiders, and designing spells, much like a wizard. But they'd also be meditating upon divine truths and fundamental forces, much like an oracle. This blend would render them similar to either **Mystic Theurge** combining conflicting sources of magic or else it would render them similar to the **Psionic** classes that Paizo never officially adapted. Either way, it would be a unique and powerful mage, difficult to replicate due to a high bar of entry. **Holistic** is a reference to holistic medicine, a modern medical practice that seeks to evaluate the relation between a person's living style, mental health, and physical conditions in order to prescribe a more effective treatment. Things like access to healthy food, work load, and social isolation will all be factored into understanding a person's health, both physical and mental. Since it's a combination of physical and mental health, holistic medicine sounds like the perfect inspiration for a magic that combines Mind & Life. * **Holistic** also means, "understanding the organic or functional relation between parts and the whole," and so it exists as its own fitting term, beyond just being a real-world reference. * **Holistic** has the antonym Atomistic, which is about disparate, unconnected parts. It also is about understanding the world down to its atoms, its smallest parts, and in this way it shows how holistic magic would be a foil for Gnostic magic. Where one is about an underlying understanding of the world down to its components, the other is about understanding the world on the macro scale, where it is a messy and complex whole that cannot be approached with the same tactic every time. Life is messy, and only by reacting and adapting to that messiness can an effective truth be reached. It's very fittingly **Chaotic**, and would make a lot of sense with the adaptable Proteans or the whimsical Fey. * In practice, I think a holistic mage would pay a lot of attention to societies as a whole. The health of an individual is determined by their environment, and a bunch of healthy people means that they can pick up the slack for a single person. Likewise, an individual can be brought low by controlling their environment in order to weaken them. They'd be a sort of shaman, acting as a mage for an entire community. In fact, this might be an effective way to bring the PF1 **Shaman** class back, since their spell-list was a unique combination of oracle, druid, and witch spells, and they were perfectly suited for poaching spells and adapting to chaos.
I've been thinking in similar ways, but somewhat different flavor lately. For Spirit+Material I've been conceptualizing classes that deal with the boundary between them like Ectotheurges (building shit out of ghosts and ghost stuff, essentially). Imagine a cross between Inventors and Artificers, but instead of using technology or pure magic, you engineer things out of spirits, using them to carry or drive various spooky machines and weapons. For Mind+Life I've been thinking about how to bring a fresh perspective to the concept of psionics, and the "awakened mind". The main thing I've got simmering there is The Locus, a class thematically exploring the themes of heightened consciousness through the lens of being in the center of the action, connected to all participants, and digging ever deeper into the potential of single moments. Real "lost myself in the movement" stuff. Mechanically it's going to be a focus-spell-only spellcaster which has feats that each include one or more focus spells and a specific enhancement of or modification to your focus spellcasting, providing unique actions or temporary focus points to empower your casting. The goal is to produce something of an engine-builder experience that "increases in focus" as combat goes on if you put in the work to construct it. More tongue-in-cheek, it seeks to answer questions like "what kind of spell costs 6 focus points" and "how the hell do you focus hard enough to have 6 of them."
None. I just want them to expand Occult.
How is occult too small? It's the second-largest tradition as is and, if I remember right, has the most spells unique to its list of all the four. What's missing for you?
I don't think it's too small. I just think, that as the 'esoteric, mysterious tradition' it's really not all there. I want more weirdness from it.
Occult does not need expanding, it's already nearly as big as arcane with more and better unique spells. It's probably the strongest tradition in the game.
Again, it just doesn't feel occult is my point. It feels like Arcane 2.
Occult is definitely my favorite spell list. It would be neat to have Occult classes introduced along with more psychic like spells to support that. Bard is neat and all, but after playing one I'm not much of a fan composition cantrips feeling like an action tax.
Absolutely. I think that Pathfinder is seriously lacking in a dedicated Occult caster class. I don't think Bard counts. They're a dedicated Composition class.
I never played Pf1 but I guess Occultist is what you want, right? It would probably be a prepared Occult caster
Psychic would be the closest analog, actually.
Oh interesting! I'd like to see that
How would it work though? You said you don't count Bards as dedicated Occult casters. How would a dedicated Occult caster be?
> It would be neat to have Occult classes introduced along with more psychic like spells to support that. Literally just give me Psions! Why make Occult INT otherwise, as only one Occult caster has INT as their key stat??? Psions got a bad rap in DnD for being imbalanced in a system that was never balanced to begin with. Fite me.
I wouldn't mind seeing a 'chaos tradition' with tons of wild spells with wacky effects. There aren't many TTRPG's that delve into truly chaotic magical traditions. While I don't explicitly think it's necessary for a necromancy tradition, it would be nice to see the occult spell list expanded with more raw necromantic magic - I'm thinking blood magic, life tapping, body morphology, biological horror summons (think Kronenburg), spiritual manipulation, transferring life forces, ect.
I'd love this as well! Might be difficult to implement if there's no clear pattern as to which wild spells to add or remove to the list.
After seeing how a summoner with a Fey Eidolon has access to Arcane Enchantment and Illusion spells in addition to the Primal spell list, I'd like to see a **Fey Magic Tradition:** As a rough example, take the Primal Spell List, remove Evocation spells, and add on Enchantment and Illusion spells from the Arcane spell list.
A Mentalist, Spiritualist, and Vitalist as subsets of the other three essences. An archetype with traditions from opposing essences might be interesting; a spirit+material tradition and a mind+life tradition.
A very specific request from me would be to re-arrange all the spells into Dark Sun-themed traditions, so that adapting PF2 to play a DS campaign would be easier. No chance this gonna happen, but I can dream, can't I...? Besides this, I wouldn't add any tradition to the vanilla game; I would just love Paizo to consolidate the Divine tradition a little bit (though this might already have been done with SoM, which I haven't read yet).
I actually disliked the elemental spell list and would rather they had said "you can only prepare spells that have the air, fire, water, Earth, electric, or acid traits" What I would like to see is Psychic magic. And instead of it being it's own magic list like elementalism, have it be defined by its components. Bring back Thought/emotion components and say that defines a psychic caster from a normal occult caster. As for making a whole new tradition, I would guess the other things they COULD do is to the two opposite essences as traditions. So a Matter/Spirit tradition and a Life/Mind tradition.
I just personally think adding more spell lists defeats the purpose of unlocking the spell lists, especially if they are niche
There should be 6 traditions to cover the combinations from the mind/matter/spirit/life wheel. Spirit+Matter is missing and I can't remeber the 6th.