Let's Play Pathfinder 2E - Part 2 - Magic cantrips, multi-classing and focus spells!

I continue looking deeper into Pathfinder 2.0 - I enjoy digging into tomes of rules and looking for exploits....apparently I am the target audience for this new set!

One thing is becoming remarkably clear as I build out a party of level 5 characters on my quest to understand these rules - Pathfinder 2.0 was written knowingly to allow what happened to Pathfinder First edition - the production of dozens of official and hundreds of third-party add-on books with classes, 'realms', feats, mechanics, and other content. Its a beautiful thing to have decades of content to sift through, and I imagine myself doing it in 20 years. But for now, we only have what the Pathfinder 2E rulebook has to offer us....

Ancestry Feats get a bit sparce at higher level

My second character to present to you is a Gnomish Sorceress - and this is a very strong build, you can take this build and with slight adjustment and selecting your own spell list, you could have a very powerful sorcerer of any tradition!

Magical Traditions

In Pathfinder 2nd Edition, which I have been calling 2.0, there are four magical traditions, each with their own spell list that slightly overlaps with the others. The traditions (with their associated knowledge skill in parenthesis) are Arcane(Arcana), Divine(Religion), Occult(Occultism) and Primal(Nature).

Gnomes have a bit of a magical touch anyway, but generally its Primal, or Nature magic - gnomes are most related to Fey creatures. What allows us flexibility here is the Goblin Heritage: Wellspring Gnome.

Cantrips

This is going to give us an at-will innate cantrip. It's important to stop here and talk about Cantrips. In the old Pathfinder, cantrips suck. They are zero level spells and they are pretty much just as useful in combat. These are the 'magical effects' that roleplaying is made from.

An example:

LE Cleric is escorting a snobby noble aspect of some majorly annoying devil. Anytime any danger comes anywhere near, he demands to be buffed. Cleric, not wanting to be wasteful with his spell slots, happily continues to cast Virtue, a zero level spell that grants 1 temporary HP.

This is no longer true in Pathfinder 2.0. Now most cantrips scale to some degree, and several cantrips scale perfectly, and actually automatically become spells of the highest level the character can cast. This is a big difference, and had me confused for a long while going through the book, wondering why there were so many sucky cantrip powers scattered throughout this book. Turns out, in Pathfinder 2.0, a fighter with a single cantrip can make that cantrip felt similar to a wizard of the same level.

So our Gnome's go-to spell will be electric arc, which damages up to 2 creatures at range, scales every spell level, and can be cast at will. Our 1st level ancestry feat will give us another, and they will all be from the arcane spell list.

Arcane was reverse-engineered a bit by working through the Sorcerer class, which we will look at a little further down.

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For the second cantrip I chose Message, more of a communication utility spell, one that has a 500ft range by level 5. For her background I have chosen Charlatan, although I would want to be a bit more nuanced on the back story. However it looks, our Gnome gets important boosts to Charisma and Dexterity, as well as gaining training in Deception, Underworld Lore and the Charming Liar Skill feat.

Sorcelling

The classic Wizard vs Sorcerer difference since DnD has always been prepared spells vs. spontanteous casting. While the wizard is someone who studies and learns magic from a book, sorcerers have magic in their blood. Based on the source of magic that exists in their blood, the type of magic that a sorcerer casts is dependant on the bloodline chosen.

Bloodline

Whether it comes from Demons or Angels, Elemental forces or even Aberrations, the magical forces in a sorcerer's blood allow training in two skills, access to a certain magical tradition, and give certain bonus spells. Our Gnome Sorceress has Dragons in her background:

What this means for our Goblin Sorcerer is that she will be chosing spells from the wizard's spell list: Arcane. Along with the useful skill of Intimidation, the bonus spells are solid - at 5th level she will be able to cast some of the best utility spells in the game: haste (which now gives a fourth action per round), resist energy and true strike (which now yields the better of 2 d20).

A new feature of spellcasting in this new edition comes into play here: Focus Spells. The Bloodline spells listed in the image above are not arcane spells, but focus spells, drawing from a focus pool. This interesting feature has replaced things like 'lay on hands' for the paladin, and ki pool for Monk. This is a typical 'once per encounter' type power. Here is Dragon Claws, our Gnome's only focus spell at level 5:

This gives our sorceress a pretty wicked unarmed strike with electrical aftermath! Anytime she uses this focus power, or casts any of the bonus spells given, the Blood Magic effect from the Draconic Heritage activates, and she or one ally glows with +1 AC for a round.

To regain a focus point a character must spend 10 minutes contemplating or washing dishes or doing their own thing (a sorcerer recharges in 10 minutes regardless of what she's doing!) but our Gnome will get an ancestry bonus feat at 5th level, making sure she can always get another minute of dragon manicure if things get too close for comfort.

Sorcerer's gain a number of neat feats that allow you to customize the type of spellcaster you want. Our gnome sorceress is going to focus on hiding and reach, even casting touch spells at a distance with Reach Spell. To me, counterspell is too finicky, and widen spell has no golden spot - whereas with Reach Spell the touch to 30ft is just the type of exploit I like to look for. Our gnome will take full advantage of this with Shocking Grasp as her level 1 Signature Spell. This is quite the combo.

To round out our utility, at 4th level we will opt into an incredibly useful feat: Arcane Evolution. With this feat we gain a spellbook, the ability to add spells from adventuring to it, and the ability to 'rotate' one spell from the spellbook into known spells at a time. During adventuring, this will make our Gnome very handy, as it will allow her to rotate into her repetoire context-specific magic; think underwater breathing for a water delve.

With this Arcane exploit set up, I went looking for a multiclass feat for level two. Inside of this book, we have only two options: adding an additional magical tradition such as divine, primal or occult, or go Rogue. The other 2nd level melee multi-class feats do basically diddly squat until the second feat, which allows access to a single feat from that other class.

Archetypes: The future of Multi Class

The melee archetypes are little more than training in a skill or two. Cross training as a champion yields armor proficiency up to heavy and training in two skills. I originally thought a nice feat in Monk would get me a bonus to Armor Class, but no - The first Monk feat is practically worthless to our Sorceress yielding us only training in a single skill!

Please take another feat at level 6 to learn a powerful defensive reaction!

The champion is not much better. And I will spoil you the reading of the entire archetype section, Rogue is the only viable melee multiclass with a single feat invested. Spell casting multiclasses will see their use, with a 4 feat progression that unlocks spell levels up to 9, although only 1 casting per day per spell level.

So let's look at the rogue archetype feat, which at level 2 will give our Gnome Sorceress a skill feat, training in two skills plus light armor, and the Rogue's Surprise Attack class feature which, while not a game changer, will actually come into play with our hide-focused character likely to get frequent bonuses during the first round of combat.

Skills and Spells

Here's a look at the skills, skill feats and spells I have chosen for our very wizardrous, sneaky Gnome Sorceress by level 5.

Trained in Deception, Underworld Lore, Arcana, Intimidation, Stealth, Thievery and Unarmored Defense.

Skill Feats: Charming Liar (Diplomacy with Deception), Lie to Me (Detect Lies), Hobnobber (Gather Information Quickly), Quiet Allies (sneak with friends).

Skill Advancements: Expert in Stealth, Arcana

At third level I've opted for the general feat Fleet, which increases her speed by 5 to 30 ft per round.

Magical Repetoire

Apart from one additional (likely utility) spell per day pulled from her Spellbook, our Gnome Sorcerous will be limited by the selections made here, although seemingly with pretty ample options for retraining. This powerful Gnome Sorceress build will depend on the spells at her disposal. I have chosen the following:

Cantrips:
Electric Arc
Message
Shield (Bloodline)
LIGHT
Telekenetic Projectile
Ray of Frost
Produce Flame

Level 1:
True Strike (Bloodline)
Command
Shocking Grasp (signature)
Ray of Enfeeblement

Level 2:
Resist Energy (Bloodline)
Enlarge
Web
Acid Arrow (signature)

Level 3:
Haste (Bloodline)
Lightning Bolt (signature)
Invisibility Sphere

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I am going to enjoy writing the back story for this character! I will have 4 more characters for you all rolling out over the next few months, these look like they will be principle NPC's in a Patherfinder 2E adventure module I am working on!

My art bounty offer for the first character still stands, and is expanded to this character. I have teamed up with @steemitasclub and they are going to help me host this art contest and nominate the winners and all serious and humorous participants with SBI!

Please submit your art of Draconic Gnome Electric Sorceress with Spellbook below!