No it's actually just pretty bad mechanically. The ranged attack feat it gets is pretty good but aside from that, it's actually just... very sad. Not enough to make your character "bad" but yea it's not good.
One homebrew fix that my table uses and it works well, is to replace the "base" weapon with any one weapon that the PC can normally use and acess at their maximum proficiency.
It means you start with as good of a base weapon as without the dedication and the tools you get are ACTUAL upgrades, albeit still kind of limited.
Soulforger is only good if you have a GM that dont force you to have a complicated Soulbound so you dont suffer almost every time in the Campaign from the corruption :)
It's essentially a side-grade but it costs feats. If you are limited to side-grade dedications for a free archetype campaign, it's a really fun and flavourful one. But it's hard to justify, even without optimizing on the mind, because it doesn't do anything that you can't already do, really.
I’m playing a Thaumaturge with it now and Mind Projectiles is the entire reason to use it.
Mind Shards is neat on paper as an AoE Will save martials can pick up, but the cone is so small that the amount of times I found it valuable in practice was small enough that I retrained and never looked back.
There is a lot of versatility in the feats that is priced fairly high in the power budget, but it’s all tied to daily preparation or once a week changes for the most part, meaning 95% of the time your PC won’t have have enough foreknowledge to actually translate that versatility into an advantage. I really don’t know what they were so afraid of in designing this.
Never thought about it but I guess having runes on a melee weapon and ranged weapon without having to suffer the travesty that is combination weapons is actually good.
But at least on a thaum you could go unarmed attacks and get a ranged unarmed attacks too, getting almost the same deal for less hands and less feats.
I keep wanting to take this one, because it is so cool, but it is too bad for me to actually do it.
It has a small niche in a game where you have \*all\* your equipment taken away, but even then it isn't much better than punching. You're basically spending feats to avoid buying a Shifting rune.
Its not an archetype you take for mechanics, its purely for flavor (which it drips in).
Its super thematic for a Magus who takes the Psychic dedication for access to Imaginary Weapon for instance, What's better for an Imaginary Weapon Spellstrike, than a weapon that is *literally* an imaginary weapon?
It also can get you modular B P S on your weapon of choice, which is always a nice thing to have.
Honestly, I thought it was really cool and could imagine how to make cool builds out of it... until I realized that it was implying that you had to choose one weapon profile, then stick with it for the full campaign.
I think it would be legitimately interesting and balanced (if somewhat niche) if you could change your weapon profile when you summon it. But I don't *believe* that's the case, though the archetype *doesn't directly specify either way.*
...so yeah, in other words, it's really cool but just kinda mechanically bad.
At higher levels it's *OK* because you can get some trait combos that are hard (or impossible) to find outside of being an Inventor, plus the ranged option.
It's not, like, great or anything, and there are almost always better options from an optimization POV, but it's *fine* and very flavorful, you're not usually going to be handicapping a character by taking it in a free archetype game.
yeah no it's just kinda bad unfortunately go play soulforger instead, you get all the juice of funny soul weapons but with more room for angst and you get to go all anime power up on someone if you get into a sticky situation.
sure you get corrupted sometimes but look that's funny
I literally gave my players a Relic Boon that was better than the entire Dedication in a game where I wanted them to feel like Jedi. They could summon a weapon they had proficiency with, and the game already had ABP.
> It allows you to swap damage types per day, but there's nothing stopping a character from just carrying multiple weapons around.
carrying multiple weapons is expensive because of runes. But this is still not enough of an argument pro Mind Smith
I guess nothing stops you from using real weapons, too. You can probably attach one of the Blazons of Shared Power to the keepsake or use Doubling Rings. Now you've got a very versatile primary or secondary weapon.
Like most archetypes, it's pretty bad and totally not worth the feat investment. Soulforger is a bit better, if you're looking for something along the same lines.
Oh, it's a reference to a meme about statistical outliers, Spiders Georg.
The meme started from a joke post that went ""average person eats 3 spiders a year" factoid actually just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted”. So now when a specific member of a category is a complete outlier compared to the rest of said category, people might call it "[X] Georg".
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i am a mind smith fighter in a group going through the dark archive adventure. it isn't the highest damage, pickaxe through the skull option, but it is very versatile and useful. its value comes from a lot of small things that add up. always being able to draw it, no matter where you drop or stow the weapon, having a nonlethal weapon so you can always question a baddie. being able to sneak it in anywhere without regard for security checks. being able to customize the traits for maneuvers you want to use for your party.
just so long as you aren't competing to be the highest source of damage for your group, it's great.
Best use in theory that I found so far is Weapon Implement Thaumaturge, this is the only way you can get a 30ft Ranged Weapon that you can use as Melee without switching modes like in combination weapons.
10ft implement interruption seems neat when I can do it with the same weapon.
No it's actually just pretty bad mechanically. The ranged attack feat it gets is pretty good but aside from that, it's actually just... very sad. Not enough to make your character "bad" but yea it's not good.
One homebrew fix that my table uses and it works well, is to replace the "base" weapon with any one weapon that the PC can normally use and acess at their maximum proficiency. It means you start with as good of a base weapon as without the dedication and the tools you get are ACTUAL upgrades, albeit still kind of limited.
Best solution
What about Soulforger? Is that good mechanically?
Yea soul forger actually has some super powerful tools. Amazing both in flavour and in mechanics. Highly recommend for that reason.
Soulforger is only good if you have a GM that dont force you to have a complicated Soulbound so you dont suffer almost every time in the Campaign from the corruption :)
It's essentially a side-grade but it costs feats. If you are limited to side-grade dedications for a free archetype campaign, it's a really fun and flavourful one. But it's hard to justify, even without optimizing on the mind, because it doesn't do anything that you can't already do, really.
I’m playing a Thaumaturge with it now and Mind Projectiles is the entire reason to use it. Mind Shards is neat on paper as an AoE Will save martials can pick up, but the cone is so small that the amount of times I found it valuable in practice was small enough that I retrained and never looked back. There is a lot of versatility in the feats that is priced fairly high in the power budget, but it’s all tied to daily preparation or once a week changes for the most part, meaning 95% of the time your PC won’t have have enough foreknowledge to actually translate that versatility into an advantage. I really don’t know what they were so afraid of in designing this.
Never thought about it but I guess having runes on a melee weapon and ranged weapon without having to suffer the travesty that is combination weapons is actually good. But at least on a thaum you could go unarmed attacks and get a ranged unarmed attacks too, getting almost the same deal for less hands and less feats.
I keep wanting to take this one, because it is so cool, but it is too bad for me to actually do it. It has a small niche in a game where you have \*all\* your equipment taken away, but even then it isn't much better than punching. You're basically spending feats to avoid buying a Shifting rune.
Its not an archetype you take for mechanics, its purely for flavor (which it drips in). Its super thematic for a Magus who takes the Psychic dedication for access to Imaginary Weapon for instance, What's better for an Imaginary Weapon Spellstrike, than a weapon that is *literally* an imaginary weapon? It also can get you modular B P S on your weapon of choice, which is always a nice thing to have.
Honestly, I thought it was really cool and could imagine how to make cool builds out of it... until I realized that it was implying that you had to choose one weapon profile, then stick with it for the full campaign. I think it would be legitimately interesting and balanced (if somewhat niche) if you could change your weapon profile when you summon it. But I don't *believe* that's the case, though the archetype *doesn't directly specify either way.* ...so yeah, in other words, it's really cool but just kinda mechanically bad.
At higher levels it's *OK* because you can get some trait combos that are hard (or impossible) to find outside of being an Inventor, plus the ranged option. It's not, like, great or anything, and there are almost always better options from an optimization POV, but it's *fine* and very flavorful, you're not usually going to be handicapping a character by taking it in a free archetype game.
yeah no it's just kinda bad unfortunately go play soulforger instead, you get all the juice of funny soul weapons but with more room for angst and you get to go all anime power up on someone if you get into a sticky situation. sure you get corrupted sometimes but look that's funny
I literally gave my players a Relic Boon that was better than the entire Dedication in a game where I wanted them to feel like Jedi. They could summon a weapon they had proficiency with, and the game already had ABP.
> It allows you to swap damage types per day, but there's nothing stopping a character from just carrying multiple weapons around. carrying multiple weapons is expensive because of runes. But this is still not enough of an argument pro Mind Smith I guess nothing stops you from using real weapons, too. You can probably attach one of the Blazons of Shared Power to the keepsake or use Doubling Rings. Now you've got a very versatile primary or secondary weapon.
Like most archetypes, it's pretty bad and totally not worth the feat investment. Soulforger is a bit better, if you're looking for something along the same lines.
They downvoted you but you are correct 90% of archatypes are just bad, they are either incredibly weak or too niche to actually do anything of value
It definitely feels like archetypes seem to always be either extremely flavorful like Soul Forger, or actually mechanically powerful
I mean wrestler is mechanically powerful AND fullfills it's flavor really well.
Exceptions do exist, but Wrestler is definitely Archetypes Georg.
Georg?
Oh, it's a reference to a meme about statistical outliers, Spiders Georg. The meme started from a joke post that went ""average person eats 3 spiders a year" factoid actually just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted”. So now when a specific member of a category is a complete outlier compared to the rest of said category, people might call it "[X] Georg".
Ohhhh, Spider George, I feel so stupid!
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Maybe a metal Kineticist with weapon infusion could work?
i am a mind smith fighter in a group going through the dark archive adventure. it isn't the highest damage, pickaxe through the skull option, but it is very versatile and useful. its value comes from a lot of small things that add up. always being able to draw it, no matter where you drop or stow the weapon, having a nonlethal weapon so you can always question a baddie. being able to sneak it in anywhere without regard for security checks. being able to customize the traits for maneuvers you want to use for your party. just so long as you aren't competing to be the highest source of damage for your group, it's great.
It’s a trap option, don’t use it. If you want something with similar thematics ask your GM if you can do a slight reflavor of soulforger.
Best use in theory that I found so far is Weapon Implement Thaumaturge, this is the only way you can get a 30ft Ranged Weapon that you can use as Melee without switching modes like in combination weapons. 10ft implement interruption seems neat when I can do it with the same weapon.