RPGBOT.Podcast

Today we're building Barbarians, the D&D class for anyone who looked at tactical combat and thought, This needs fewer tactics and significantly more upper body strength. We've got Rage, Reckless Attack, enormous hit points, questionable wardrobe choices, and an ongoing debate over whether a shield is sensible equipment or an admission that you lack confidence in your own face. By level four, Ash has become a flying fairy giant with a pike, Tyler is weaponizing irritation, and Randall has embraced the ancient Barbarian tradition of solving probability with violence. Grab your protein shake, yell something incomprehensible, and roll initiative.
SHOW NOTES
In this episode of the RPGBOT.Podcast, we finally tackle the 2014 D&D 5e Barbarian from levels 1 through 4, and things immediately become louder, sweatier, and considerably less concerned with personal safety.
We start with the fundamentals: Strength, Constitution, that glorious d12 Hit Die, armor choices, and why Unarmored Defense looks much better on paper than it usually works in practice. Then we get into Rage, the feature that turns getting punched in the face from a problem into something approaching a class strategy. We also talk about managing those limited early Rage uses and why running into every fight screaming may be thematically correct but mechanically questionable.
At level 2, Reckless Attack gives Barbarians one of their defining tactical choices: advantage for you, advantage for everyone trying to murder you. Fortunately, Barbarians have a lot of hit points and remarkably little respect for consequences. Danger Sense adds some much-needed protection against Dexterity saves, because apparently surviving fireballs through sheer gym-bro intuition is a legitimate class feature.
Level 3 brings Primal Knowledge and, more importantly, subclasses. We run through the Barbarian options, separating the powerful from the interesting and occasionally discovering that those are not the same thing. Ancestral Guardian is an effective defender but can feel repetitive, Wild Magic brings some desperately needed unpredictability, and Path of the Giant lets Ash fulfill the perfectly reasonable fantasy of playing a tiny fairy who gets angry, becomes enormous, and starts stabbing things from fifteen feet away.
By level 4, the builds are taking shape. Tyler leans into Ancestral Guardian with a whip, shield, and Slasher to become an incredibly annoying battlefield defender. Randall grabs Great Weapon Master and combines it with Reckless Attack because accuracy penalties matter considerably less when you've already decided to roll everything with advantage. Ash takes Strike of the Giants, picks up a pike, and continues transforming his fairy into a flying problem with an increasingly ridiculous reach.
It's everything you need to get a 2014 Barbarian through tier one: Rage management, big weapons, bigger hit points, questionable decisions, and enough tactical depth to prove that smash actually has several different settings.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Strength and Constitution are the Barbarian's priorities. Dexterity helps, but investing heavily in it just to improve Unarmored Defense is usually difficult to justify.
Medium armor is often better than it feels. The shirtless Barbarian fantasy is great, but half plate can save you a lot of ability-score investment.
Rage is your core resource, especially at low levels when you only have a few uses. Don't waste it on fights that don't need it.
Rage doesn't have to mean screaming fury. It can be cold focus, a physical transformation, magical power, or whatever fits the character.
Reckless Attack is the Barbarian bargain: you get advantage on Strength-based attacks, but enemies get advantage against you. Fortunately, getting hit is already part of the job description.
Danger Sense helps compensate for one of the Barbarian's defensive weaknesses by giving advantage on many Dexterity saves.
Barbarians have limited utility outside combat, so backgrounds, racial abilities, and creative roleplaying can do a lot to make the character feel more rounded.
Subclass power and subclass fun are not necessarily the same thing. Ancestral Guardian is strong but mechanically repetitive, while options like Wild Magic and Giant bring more toys to the table.
Great Weapon Master pairs beautifully with Reckless Attack because advantage helps offset the feat's attack penalty.
By level 4, the Barbarian already knows exactly what it wants to be: difficult to kill, extremely dangerous, and preferably standing much too close to whoever made the mistake of starting this fight.
Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.
Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.
Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.
Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.
Meet the Hosts
Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.
How to Find Us:
In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net
Tyler Kamstra
BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET
Ash Ely
Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
BlueSky: @GravenAshes
YouTube: @ashravenmedia
https://ashelydm.com/
https://ashelydm.com/
Randall James
BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
Amateurjack.com
Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)
Producer Dan
@Lzr_illuminati

We're back with Pathfinder Wizards, and somehow giving Tyler ten more levels of spellcasting has not improved the situation. Ash has evolved from sneaky magical assassin into a nearly undetectable menace who can freeze time and ruin your life before you know he was there. Randall has discovered that there is apparently no such thing as enough bonded-item spell slots. And Tyler's angry robot can now scream at you until you die, drop meteors on your friends, and disintegrate whatever is left. At this point, these aren't adventurers. They're reasons cities have evacuation plans.
SHOW NOTES
We're finishing our Pathfinder 2e Wizard builds, taking Ash, Randall, and Tyler from level 11 all the way to level 20.
At these levels, the Wizard starts showing exactly where its power lives. New class features are few and far between, defenses remain deeply Wizard-shaped, and some of the high-level feat choices are surprisingly thin. But the spells? The spells get ridiculous.
Ash continues turning his Red Mantis Sprite into the world's most irritating magical assassin. Phantasmal Calamity wrecks minds, Redirect Teleportation makes escaping him considerably harder, Duplicate Foe lets him turn your own face against you, and his growing collection of invisibility and stealth abilities eventually makes finding him a campaign objective all by itself. By the time he picks up Disappearance and Legendary Sneak, the plan has basically become: you don't see Ash unless Ash has made a tactical error.
Tyler's Rune Lord continues leaning into wrath, explosions, and increasingly hostile interpretations of spellcasting. Blinding Fury makes enemies literally too angry to perceive things properly, Falling Stars brings the expected amount of meteor-related destruction, and Scare to Death gives his angry robot the possibility of simply yelling at someone until they fall over dead. Naturally, Tyler immediately starts figuring out how to combine that with Sure Strike and Disintegrate because apparently death by terror wasn't conclusive enough.
Randall keeps feeding the Universalist Wizard's bonded-item engine. Superior Bond and Reprepare Spell give him even more ways to keep spells flowing, because the answer to "When do you have enough spellcasting?" is apparently "What kind of quitter asks that question?"
Along the way, we hit some of the Wizard's best high-level toys. Contingency lets you prepare for problems before they happen. Time Beacon lets you rewind a terrible turn and try again. Metallic Meteorite Glyph introduces the exciting tactical concept of repeatedly hitting someone with space rocks. Effortless Concentration frees up actions for sustained spells. Infinite Possibilities gives prepared casters a valuable wildcard when the perfect spell wasn't prepared that morning.
Then we reach 10th-rank spells and restraint leaves the building.
Ash stops time with Freeze Time and starts planning elaborate traps while everyone else stands around unknowingly waiting for reality to resume. Randall grabs Cataclysm because sometimes the correct number of damage types is all of them. Tyler considers Manifestation, giving him access to nearly any spell he could suddenly decide he needs.
There is also an extended disagreement about line of effect after Ash discovers that Phantasmagoria cannot simply murder everyone inside a building without worrying about pesky things like walls. Apparently Pathfinder has rules specifically designed to keep Wizard war crimes within reasonable geographic boundaries. Ash takes the news well.
By level 20, everyone somehow lands on Spell Shape Mastery, turning many of their favorite spell-shaping tricks into free actions. Ash becomes harder to identify, read, locate, or meaningfully interact with. Randall takes Lore specifically about Ash's Sprite, immediately putting himself on Ash's hit list. Tyler takes Too Angry to Die, because there was really no other possible ending for the angry robot.
Twenty levels later, the Wizard remains exactly what it promised to be: fragile, complicated, occasionally frustrating, and capable of solving problems with a spell list large enough to qualify as infrastructure.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
High-level Wizards are still defined more by their spells than their class features.
The Wizard's defensive and weapon progression remains painfully slow, so positioning and magical defenses continue to matter.
High-level spellcasting is where the class really comes alive, with options like Contingency, Time Beacon, Phantasmal Calamity, Falling Stars, Disappearance, and a frankly unreasonable number of meteor-related solutions.
Ash's Red Mantis build becomes an extremely capable infiltrator and assassin built around stealth, deception, illusions, invisibility, and making other people look responsible.
Tyler's Rune Lord doubles down on damage, persistent effects, intimidation, and the general philosophy that being angry enough should eventually become a damage type.
Randall's Universalist shows how powerful Drain Bonded Item can become when you keep investing in ways to recover and recycle spells.
Reprepare Spell trades downtime for reusable low-rank utility, while Infinite Possibilities sacrifices some raw spell-slot power for tremendous flexibility.
Effortless Concentration is an easy standout for Wizards who rely on sustained spells.
Scare to Death on an angry Rune Lord is exactly as stupid and wonderful as it sounds.
10th-rank spells are deliberately limited, but Freeze Time, Cataclysm, Manifestation, and the other options make that single slot feel appropriately enormous.
Spell Shape Mastery is a fantastic capstone if your build has invested heavily in spell-shaping feats.
Free Archetype opens even more directions, including Rogue or Captivator for Ash's assassin, additional spellcasting options for Randall, and apparently more explosions for Tyler.
Pathfinder's line-of-effect rules are all that stand between civilization and unrestricted Wizard war crimes.
Most importantly, Tyler got twenty full levels of Wizard and still wanted more.
Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.
Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.
Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.
Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.
Meet the Hosts
Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.
How to Find Us:
In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net
Tyler Kamstra
BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET
Ash Ely
Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
BlueSky: @GravenAshes
YouTube: @ashravenmedia
https://ashelydm.com/
https://ashelydm.com/
Randall James
BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
Amateurjack.com
Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)
Producer Dan
@Lzr_illuminati

Tyler loves wizards. We know this because he told us. Repeatedly. For ninety minutes. So naturally, we gave him an entire episode to explain why the best solution to every problem is a spellbook, an alarming number of prepared spells, and occasionally sucking magical energy out of your left shoe. Meanwhile, Ash builds a tiny invisible assassin, Randall discovers that wizardry can apparently involve throwing a greatsword at someone from several hundred feet away, and everyone learns the most important rule of Pathfinder spellcasting: Fireball is a tool, not a personality. Tyler disagrees.
SHOW NOTES
It is finally time for Tyler's Roman Empire: Wizards.
In Part 1 of our Pathfinder 2e Wizard build, we take the class from levels 1 through 10 and dig into what makes the PF2e Wizard different from its D&D 5e counterpart. Wizards are still the spellbook-carrying nerds we know and love, but their real power comes from choosing, preparing, and using the right spells rather than simply solving every encounter with Fireball.
We break down Arcane Bond, including the extremely important revelation that your bonded item can technically be your left shoe, then walk through the Arcane Theses and the different ways they reshape how a Wizard manages spells. Spell Blending offers big high-rank spell slots, Spell Substitution gives prepared casters some much-needed flexibility, Experimental Spell Shaping opens up spell modification options, and Improved Familiar Attunement lets you drain magical power from your adorable animal companion without technically hurting it. Probably.
Then we build three very different Wizards. Ash creates a sneaky Red Mantis spellcaster built around stealth, spying, invisibility, and framing innocent people for magical crimes. Randall embraces the School of Unified Magical Theory and somehow turns his scholarly Wizard into a man who hurls increasingly large weapons at enemies. Tyler goes full Rune Lord of Wrath because apparently simply playing a Wizard was not Wizard enough.
As the builds advance, the differences become even clearer. Ash gains tools like Split Slot and Shroud of the Mantis to become an increasingly slippery magical infiltrator. Randall discovers the ridiculous potential of Bond Conservation and starts chaining recovered spells together while continuing to throw weapons at people. Tyler adds persistent fire, bleeding, spell shaping, extra spell slots earned by waking up angry, and increasingly elaborate ways to make one enemy have the worst day imaginable.
By level 10, we have three Wizards who share a spell list and almost nothing else. We also discover that Ash is apparently building according to the defensive philosophy of being somewhere else when the damage happens, which leads to perhaps the purest Wizard philosophy of the episode: here for a good time, not a long time.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
A Pathfinder 2e Wizard is defined primarily by their spells. What you learn, prepare, and cast matters far more than simply collecting class feats.
PF2e Wizards are powerful, but they do not have the enormous caster-versus-martial power gap familiar to many D&D 5e players.
Fireball is good. Fireball is not the answer to every question. Tyler remains emotionally unconvinced.
Arcane Bond effectively gives you another use of a prepared spell, and your bonded item can be almost anything you own, including, unfortunately, a shoe.
Arcane Thesis dramatically changes how your Wizard handles spellcasting. Spell Substitution is especially forgiving if you are new to prepared spellcasting, while Spell Blending can be extremely powerful but more complicated.
Arcane Schools provide curriculum spells, additional curriculum spell slots, and focus spells, while the School of Unified Magical Theory trades the curriculum for much greater flexibility with Drain Bonded Item.
Wizard class feats can sometimes feel underwhelming because so much of the class's power budget lives in its spells, making Wizard an appealing class for archetype options.
Ash proves that Wizards can make surprisingly effective stealth and infiltration characters.
Randall proves that being a Wizard does not technically prevent you from solving problems by throwing a greatsword at them.
Tyler proves that Rune Lord Wrath can turn waking up angry into an actual character resource.
By level 10, the three builds demonstrate just how differently Wizards can play despite all starting from the same enormous Arcane spell list.
Most importantly, Tyler loves Wizards. We know, buddy. We know.
Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.
Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.
Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.
Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.
Meet the Hosts
Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.
How to Find Us:
In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net
Tyler Kamstra
BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET
Ash Ely
Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
BlueSky: @GravenAshes
YouTube: @ashravenmedia
https://ashelydm.com/
https://ashelydm.com/
Randall James
BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
Amateurjack.com
Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)
Producer Dan
@Lzr_illuminati

Nature is healing. Unfortunately, nature has chosen violence. We're taking the Druid from level 5 all the way to 20, which means summoning packs of velociraptors, turning into dinosaurs, raising fungal zombies, weaponizing potted plants, becoming an angry celestial nature wizard, and eventually gaining the power to erase armies with natural disasters. But none of that matters because we discovered the true pinnacle of Druid magic: summoning cows sixty feet above our enemies and letting gravity finish the spell. Welcome to high-level Druid optimization, where Mother Nature loves you, but she has absolutely had enough of your crap.
Show Notes
We return to our 2014 D&D 5e Druid builds and take Tyler's Circle of Spores, Randall's Circle of the Moon, and Ash's Circle of Stars from level 5 all the way to 20.
Third-level spells immediately send us down the Conjure Animals rabbit hole, where velociraptors look terrifying until someone suggests cows. From there, the entirely reasonable discussion of battlefield control becomes the Twister Gambit: summon livestock above your enemy and allow physics to contribute to the encounter.
As the levels climb, the Druids only become more ridiculous. Randall gets increasingly dangerous Wild Shape options and eventually Elemental Wild Shape. Tyler builds an expanding fungal entourage while becoming increasingly difficult to kill. Meanwhile, Rain Shadow graduates from peaceful celestial hippie to terrifying flying star mage with an alarming willingness to unleash the wrath of nature.
We dig through the Druid spell list, separating great options from traps, discussing Polymorph, Wall of Fire, summoning, battlefield control, Draconic Transformation, Foresight, Shapechange, and the point where spells like Earthquake and Tsunami stop feeling like combat abilities and start feeling like natural-disaster plot devices.
By level 18, Beast Spells lets Druids cast while Wild Shaped, and level 20's Archdruid removes the practical limit on Wild Shape altogether. The result is a class that starts by talking to squirrels and ends as a nearly unkillable force of nature capable of turning into monsters, casting world-altering magic, and presumably still dropping cows on people whenever the situation demands it.
Key Takeaways
Conjure Animals remains enormously powerful, especially when quantity, Pack Tactics, battlefield control, and questionable applications of gravity get involved.
The Twister Gambit proves that cows are not merely livestock. They are ammunition.
Druids excel at battlefield control, with spells like Plant Growth capable of making movement extremely difficult under the right circumstances.
Circle of the Moon keeps improving its Wild Shape options, eventually gaining Elemental Wild Shape and much stronger beast forms.
Circle of Spores develops into a durable melee caster surrounded by fungal undead and eventually gains excellent defensive abilities.
Circle of Stars becomes increasingly flexible as its Starry Forms improve, allowing Ash's Rain Shadow to become the terrifying celestial nature prophet she was always destined to be.
Higher-level Druid magic increasingly shifts from winning encounters to reshaping entire situations with spells like Earthquake and Tsunami.
Beast Spells dramatically changes Wild Shape by allowing Druids to cast while transformed.
Foresight and Shapechange provide outstanding ninth-level options and make already-powerful Druids even harder to deal with.
Archdruid's unlimited Wild Shape makes the level 20 Druid extraordinarily difficult to kill, especially for Circle of the Moon.
The Druid's greatest strength is versatility. It can summon, heal, control the battlefield, transform, deal damage, support allies, infiltrate, and eventually become a walking ecological catastrophe.
Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.
Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.
Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.
Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.
Meet the Hosts
Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.
How to Find Us:
In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net
Tyler Kamstra
BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET
Ash Ely
Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
BlueSky: @GravenAshes
YouTube: @ashravenmedia
https://ashelydm.com/
https://ashelydm.com/
Randall James
BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
Amateurjack.com
Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)
Producer Dan
@Lzr_illuminati

Last time on Impossible Magic, we discovered that the Magus can finally move, the Summoner can finally summon, and Pathfinder's three-action economy is apparently more of a polite recommendation. Now we're back for Part 2, where Paizo hands Ash an infinite supply of disposable corpses, gives Tyler a class built entirely around weaponized graffiti, drops roughly six hundred spells on his to-do list, and introduces magic so impossible that you're legally allowed to cast it exactly once. Welcome back. Somehow, things have gotten worse for the GM.
Show Notes
We survived Part 1, so naturally it's time to make things significantly more complicated.
We start with the Necromancer, Ash's immediate new obsession and perhaps Pathfinder's most enthusiastic endorsement of reusable corpses. Necromancers summon disposable thralls, sacrifice them to power Grave Spells, choose between the martial Reaper and thrall-heavy Puppeteer Fatal Methods, and customize their undead aesthetic through Blood, Bone, Flesh, or Spirit Grim Fascinations. Blood immediately attracts Ash's attention because apparently the correct amount of bleeding is all of it.
The class also gets Mastery of Life and Death, allowing it to play surprisingly flexible games with vitality and void damage. Between healing from dead thralls, creating seas of grasping limbs, exploding minions, summoning enormous undead monstrosities, and eventually dropping a living graveyard onto the battlefield, the Necromancer delivers exactly the sort of wholesome family entertainment we expected.
Then we meet the Runesmith, Pathfinder's newest experiment in making someone at the table track even more things. Runesmiths etch persistent runes onto equipment, trace temporary runes onto creatures, modify them with diacritic runes, and invoke them for additional effects. The result is a flexible new magic system with tons of room for clever combinations, action compression, buffs, debuffs, and the inevitable player who arrives with a spreadsheet explaining why drawing twelve symbols on the barbarian causes reality to explode. Or, as Tyler puts it, weaponized graffiti.
From there, we explore the new Wizard schools, including enchantment-adjacent magic, divination, dimensional manipulation, and what can only reasonably be described as Minecraft Wizard. Automatons also get new options, including more durability and, most importantly, laser eyes.
Then we arrive at approximately six hundred new and updated spells, which Tyler receives with the calm enthusiasm of a man watching years disappear from his life. Standouts include Bone Shield, Murder of Crows, Bone Moth's Kiss, Heartbolt, Living Thunderbolt, and the deeply important Fishing Spot, which creates an extraplanar fishing hole because sometimes saving the world can wait until after you catch a Scholar Salmon.
Finally, we reach the actual Impossible Spells. These aren't conventional character options so much as campaign-level magical plot devices. They can set enormous areas on fire, erase entire periods of history, leave permanent supernatural consequences, and can generally be cast only once by a character. So despite the book's title, Impossible Magic is apparently possible. Once.
We wrap up with strange rituals, spell catalysts, armor and weapon runes, grimoires, spellhearts, staves, magic tattoos, and enough other magical equipment to keep optimizers occupied until Paizo releases another book and starts the process all over again.
The final verdict is overwhelmingly positive. The Necromancer is flavorful and mechanically exciting, the Runesmith introduces a genuinely different approach to magic, the spells are unusually creative, and even the archetypes and magic items feel packed with ideas worth playing.
Key Takeaways
Necromancer is built around disposable thralls that can attack, block space, fuel Grave Spells, and be sacrificed for increasingly ridiculous effects.
Reaper supports a more martial Necromancer while Puppeteer leans harder into controlling and sacrificing thralls.
Blood, Bone, Flesh, and Spirit Grim Fascinations dramatically change the flavor and utility of your thralls.
Blood looks especially strong, including ways to bypass bleed immunity and regain HP when thralls die.
Mastery of Life and Death gives Necromancers unusual flexibility with vitality and void effects.
Runesmith introduces an entirely new magical playstyle built around etching, tracing, modifying, and invoking runes.
Diacritic runes modify other runes, opening the door to increasingly elaborate combinations.
Runesmith has enormous potential for optimization, especially as players discover new ways to exploit its action compression.
The new Wizard schools offer some much-needed alternatives, including dimensional and terrain-manipulation themes.
Automatons get additional defensive options and, critically, laser eyes.
Impossible Magic includes roughly six hundred new and updated spells, ranging from genuinely useful combat magic to wonderfully bizarre options like Fishing Spot.
Bone Moth's Kiss begins with a cute little moth and ends with your bones gradually becoming a medical emergency.
Living Thunderbolt lets you become lightning, fly through creatures, and damage them as you pass through their spaces.
Impossible Spells are primarily GM-controlled plot devices rather than normal spell selections.
A character can generally use Impossible Magic only once, after which their soul is permanently marked against doing it again.
The book also includes new rituals, grimoires, spellhearts, staves, catalysts, armor and weapon runes, tattoos, and other magical equipment.
The overall reaction is extremely positive. Necromancer gets most of the immediate hype, but Runesmith may be the sleeper hit once players start discovering what the rune system can really do.
Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.
Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.
Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.
Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.
Meet the Hosts
Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.
How to Find Us:
In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net
Tyler Kamstra
BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET
Ash Ely
Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
BlueSky: @GravenAshes
YouTube: @ashravenmedia
https://ashelydm.com/
https://ashelydm.com/
Randall James
BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
Amateurjack.com
Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)
Producer Dan
@Lzr_illuminati