Arcanist Class Build Guide - Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous

in this video i'm going to be taking a look at the arcanist class from pathfinder wrath of the righteous this is a new class that was added with the wrath of the righteous game this was not in king maker and i'm going to be doing this video a little bit differently than the cavalier video simply because uh my voice has been a little screwed up i don't know if you've noticed in the last couple videos and in the interest of getting you these videos quicker i'll probably be continuing on a similar format arcanist is an arcane spellcasting class meaning they use intelligence for their modifier and they have a similar spell list to that of the wizard and sorcerer however something very interesting about the arcanist class is that they have to prepare their spells like a wizard however they are a spontaneous caster like a sorcerer so the way this works is that you're actually going to prepare a couple types of spells or whatever spells you want to prepare and then you can cast however many versions of those spells that you prepare so you're not going to be able to prepare all of the spells that you know but the ones that you do have prepared you can cast any number of times so it works kind of like a mixture of wizard and sorcerer in that way besides this the main feature that arcanists have are what are called arcane exploits they have what's called an arcane reservoir which is essentially a resource pool that they pull from in order to use arcana exploits arcane exploits work much the way that spells do they are not classified as spells but some of them deal damage to enemies at range while others make it so you can teleport across the battlefield or buff your armor or have a harder spell dc etc arcanists can also use a point from their arcane reservoir in order to improve the difficulty class of a spell by one or to increase their caster level by one for a spell so for a spell that doesn't use difficulty class like a range touch attack what's interesting about arcane exploits is that these are directly affected by the arcanus charisma modifier meaning the more charisma you have not only the more arcane exploits you'll be able to use before you need to rest but also the more effective they will be now in the grand scheme of things your charisma modifier as an arcanist isn't going to add that much damage to your arcane exploits the ones that deal damage anyways so you don't really need to worry about charisma if you're just going for like a pure damage perspective however they will increase the number of casts you can get and that is much more conducive to dealing damage because the more times you can cast them the more damage you're gonna deal another really important thing to understand about some of these arcane exploits specifically the ones that deal damage is that every two levels they're going to gain 1d6 damage so at the 19th level a lot of the arcane exploits are going to deal 10d6 damage so if you pick up some arcane exploits that deal relatively good damage at the beginning of the game but then you multi-class off into something else you're going to stop gaining those damage increases to your arcane exploits and they're going to fall off as you move further into the game which means that arcanists have a very difficult time multi-classing unless the class just dips into arkanis to pick up something like potent magic or dimensional slide as these don't really need charisma and you can still use them a few times in between rests to good effect without having high charisma or without the need to continue leveling up as arcanus because it doesn't impact how much better these get this means depending on how you set up your arcanist you're going to need intelligence for their spells you're going to need charisma for their arcane exploits and you're going to need dexterity for their ranged touch attacks because most arcane exploits are at least the ones that deal damage most of them are range touch attacks that are going to use dexterity for their accuracy okay moving along to the archetypes of arkanis the first one is brown fur transmuter essentially what this archetype does is it sacrifices some arcane exploits to be able to buff certain transmutation spells specifically the ones that boost stats it's going to make them boost more stats than would be normal and it's also going to allow you to use these spells on other characters that you wouldn't normally be able to do so if you're somebody who really likes to buff their stats using transmutation spells then this would be a good choice for you the eldritch font archetype does a couple of things firstly with font of power it actually increases the number of spells you can cast one of each spell level that you know you can have one more spell slot but it's gonna reduce the amount you can slot for each level by one so what that means is you're going to get an additional cast at each level but you're not going to be able to cast as many spells so keep that in mind and decide whether that trade-off is good for you or not additionally they gain the eldritch surge ability which allows them to buff the difficulty class or boost their arcanas level by two when using an arcane exploit so more damage essentially a few times a day this gets stronger and stronger throughout the game allowing them to re-roll on a race spell or an arcane exploit and use the higher of both values or to make somebody who's making a saving throw against one of their spells reroll and use the lower of the two values also at level 20 they can replenish their spells and part of their arcane reservoir in exchange for sacrifice and magical supremacy magical supremacy allows you to use points from your arcane reservoir to cast spells if you're out of spell slots an interesting feature that i forgot to mention about the arcanist is that they can actually sacrifice spell slots to use arcane reservoir arcane exploits well once you hit level 20 you can then do the opposite and use arcane reservoir points to cast spells but in the case of the eldritch font they're actually sacrificing this in order to replenish their spells the nature major archetype simply changes the arcanist spell list for that of the druid so if you like druid spells and you're familiar with druid spells and you know what that spell list has you can take this and play like an arcanist with druid spells the phantasmal mage can only be played as a gnome race so if you want to be one then you'll have to be a gnome essentially what this archetype does is it exchanges the ability to improve the caster level or difficulty last of a spell with your arcane reservoir instead of this it allows you to use certain metamagic feats on illusion spells only to increase the effectiveness of evolution spells so if you want to play a caster that really specializes in illusion spells and can use arcane exploits then this would be a good choice the unleaded arcanist similarly to the nature mage just simply swaps the spell list of the class so instead of playing uh with the arcana spells you're going to use the witch spell list for this class so if you're familiar with the witch spells then this would be a good choice for you if you don't know which what which spells are then i would suggest maybe not playing this and you're also going to gain a familiar like witches do which gives you a passive bonus so you can look through the list of familiars and choose one of those the white major archetype is essentially like a healing archetype of the arcanist class it allows you to use a point from your arcane reservoir and sacrifice a spell slot in order to cast any cleric spell with cure in the name of the same level so if you're gonna cast like cure wounds for instance you can use an arcane reservoir point sacrifice a spell slot and then transform that spell slot into a cure spell for that turn this is actually really really handy because if you don't have a healer in the group or you could just use more heals this allows you to heal when you need to heal and then not heal and use you know attack spells or control spells or arcane exploits when you need those as well so it gives you more versatility in what you can do in exchange for this you're going to lose some arcanist exploits so if you don't mind losing some exploits for a little bit more healing versatility then this is a good choice as far as feats go for this class the main thing you need to remember is that um a lot of the arcanist exploits are range touch attacks so anything that affects ranged attacks is going to affect those like point-blank shot or precise shot so you're going to want to make sure you take those sort of feats in order to make sure that you are not suffering from any attack penalties when using those spells a couple of really good arcane exploits are potent magic this allows you to when you normally use the point from your arcane pool to buffer spells dc or raise your caster level by one instead of doing it by one level or one dc it's gonna do it by two so this is just a passive arcane exploit that basically makes that ability more effective and that's good right from the beginning of the game dimensional slide is also really good this allows you to use one point from your arcane reservoir to basically move across the battlefield and be able to cast in the same turn it uses your move action so if you let's say you're surrounded by enemies and you don't want to take a bunch of attacks of opportunity teleport across the map use your spell bob drunkle and you're good to go this spell in my opinion is also very good for uh any sort of melee build um it might actually be worth dipping into our canister a couple levels if you're making some sort of like magus character or eldritch knight character you know that way you can pick up the teleport even if you can only use it four or five times before you rest get into situations where you could teleport into a group of enemies and then aoe them down maybe you don't have enough movement points etc it's not a bad idea in that sense either armored mask is also very very good if you have the mage armor spell up this will give you an additional five armor class the deflection at level 18 of our canist so between your mage armor uh armored mask and your dexterity bonus should have a very very good armor value the damage dealing arcane exploits are acid jet flamaark ice missile lightning lance and sonic blast and these can actually be upgraded later on when you get greater exploits to like a more powerful version you can use the regular version or the upgraded version it's not like it supersedes it or anything like that but additionally flamark is the only one that isn't a ranged touch attack so all the other four are going to use dexterity for their attacks while flamark will not what's really good about range touch attacks is they have less armor to deal with they go through some armor types that are not considered uh they can also sneak attack so let's say for instance maybe you took a few levels of arcanist and then a whole bunch of a class that had sneak attack you could actually begin combat by attacking with this i'm not saying that's better than other classes but you can sneak attack with these if you want a great example of how you might do this is taking the prestige class arcane trickster this would allow you to still gain spells from the arcanist class but your arcane exploits would stop happening and they would stop getting stronger however if that damage from arcane exploits is simply being replaced by sneak attack it's one way to go if you want to be able to sneak attack effectively and still not lose damage on some of your arcane exploits at least at the beginning of combat and in situations where you can use sneak attack something i want to mention as well is that uh arcane exploits are not classified as spells so they do not suffer from arcane spell failure this means that if you you know took a level of fighter or something in order to gain some armor proficiency uh or who knows multi-classed with something else in order to gain some armor efficiency and some other feats um you can still use your arcane exploits without having to worry about them failing well that's it for the arcanist class guide if you guys have questions more about the arcanist class please let me know in the comments below i'm going to try and get some more of these class guides out more quickly i don't know why it's been taking me so long to get through these my voice has been a little bit uh and that hasn't been helping but i'm gonna try and crank these out as fast as i can before we get into diablo 2 and new world we're going to keep putting out path runner guides during those games as well so don't think those are going to stop [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Fextralife

Views: 64,451

Keywords: pathfinder guide, wrath of the righteous classes guide, wotr guide, wotr build, wotr arcanist guide, wotr arcanist build, arcanist class guide, pathfinder arcanist guide, pathfinder arcanist build, ultimate arcanist guide, pathfinder wotr ultimate class guide, wotr class guide, complete guide to arcanist, best arcanist archtype, pathfinder wrath of the righteous, arcanist complete guide, arcanist build guide, best arcanist build, arcanist explained, wrath of the righteous

Id: 5XlSt2bhzsY

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021