https://rpgbot.net/p2/characters/classes/thaumaturge/ https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43nf5?Thaumaturge-Guide

What is the Thaumaturge?

Maybe Van Helsing? Maybe The Witcher? But probably, Hansel and Gretel.

Thaumaturges have a fundamental problem with how they deal damage. With their Key Ability being Charisma, they basically suffer from a 1-point penalty to their weapon attacks if they sacrifice their third ability score (Constitution) or suffer a 2-point penalty instead to keep their Constitution high.

You'll catch up at level 5 and be on par with other martials until level 10 where you don't catch up until level 15. So you'll be slightly behind at levels 1-4, 10-14, and 20 -- if those levels don't matter to you, then great. Direct ability score damage doesn't exist in PF2e, so having odd scores in stats don't appear to matter.

Being a martial class, you'd normally want to have 18 in Strength or Dexterity, depending on if you're using an Finesse weapon or not. This is how you end up with that 1-point penalty to your attack compared to Rogues, Swashbucklers, Barbarians, etc. and Fighters and Gunslingers have 2-point bonus to their attacks by starting out as Experts with weapons.

The Wand Implement doesn't help here because of the Thaumaturge's slow class DC progression, they aren't an expert in their Class DC (which the Wand Implement uses) until level 9 but become Experts in weapons at level 5.

You'll hear that "every point matters" and while it's good to keep in mind what this means for the Thaumaturge is that you are less likely to hit and less likely to crit than your martial allies. Deadly and Fatal weapons are worse for you

Do player characters have to have 18 in their main stat?

Nope, I started with a 16 in my primary stat and 14 in three secondary stats so I can push them all up to 20 by 20. It's a few points behind when making combat rolls but honestly it's not much of a loss for me.

Backgrounds and Ancestries

Already touched on it above but it's crucial that you find a way to get an extra bonus to Strength or Dexterity through your Ancestry. You won't be able to get both scores to 18 but you can get all three to 16.

Catfolk and Azarteki are great choices; Gnomes and Goblins work but the penalty to Strength makes it harder to wear armor until level 5.

Ability Scores

CHA > STR > CON > DEX > WIS > INT

Class Feats

The Good: The Thaumaturge doesn't have many "must have" feats. The Bad: Their feats are somewhat weak.

Basically, Diverse Lore (1) is the only feats that I'd consider "must haves."

Scroll Thaumaturgy (1), and Talisman Esoterica (2) are great feats to build around, but they fall under your character concept and aren't necessarily important to the Thaumaturge's core design.

Best Free Archetypes

https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/vtyje5/thaumaturge_free_archetype/

Champion / Sorcerer / Psychic

Sentinel (Strength) for heavy armor...

Beastmaster/Cavalier for a mount...

Marshal to compete with the bard

Blessed One for healing

Drow Shootist? Gunslinger? Ranger?

Weapon Improviser?

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43nf5?Thaumaturge-Guide

I think the best wand focused build (where you are trying to use it often) would be Wand/Bell with Drow Shootist archetype to get either a repeating hand crossbow or using "Reloading Trick".

Cursed effigy will lower their saves against your Bell and Wand. Clumsy makes your wand and strikes both hit easier. Electricity wand helps your strikes by making the enemy flat footed.

Both implements and your strikes will have decent range too. Better then the Weapon or Amulet Reactions.

Repeating Handcrossbow is better if you get haste or ony plan to use your wand every other turn. If you want to use it every turn or won't have access to Haste then a regular hand crossbow with "Reloading Trick" is fine.

Wand+Strike or Hasted Wand+Strike+Strike are very good damage turns.

Sentinel is better than Champion after level 10...

Ancestries

Kobold. The normal stat distribution don't always play well for the Thaumaturge but the alternate rules can play nicely for strength-based builds. Fangwire and Tricky Pick are good weapon options on a class that suffers with weapon options. Spellscale gives you a cantrip.

Weapons

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43h7f?Thaumaturge-weapon-options-seem-too-narrow

The Thaumaturge weapon choices are incredibly narrow so it's important to consider other options for combat situations -- ancestries that grant access to spells and cantrips are a good option, so is taking the Wand Implement.

Starknife is probably your best general option for strength builds.

Agile is pretty good since we can reasonably expect to make multiple attacks in a round.

Since Thuamaturge don't have a free hand most of the time, weapon traits like Disarm, Grapple, Shove, Trip, and technically Free-Hand have some extra value.

Ancestry Weapons

Take the Kobold, customize the Ancestry (Alternate Scores) to give you STR+CHA.

I'm normally not one to fish for critical hits but here me out... The Mirror Implement virtually guarantees our target will be flat-footed and this weapon gives us both Backstabber and Fatal d10. The Pick Critical Weapon Specialization grants an additional +2 damage for each hit dice...

Hand Crossbows

This is too much work to be effective in a campaign. It looks pretty good for a level 6-8 character (with free archetypes) but it won't compete with other options because of the heavy feat tax -- we're looking at 3-5 feats just to get caught up to other classes. It virtually locks into the Human Ancestry because of Ammunition Thaumaturgy.

There's two good options to become effective with hand crossbows.

  1. Archer Dedication. This gives you everything you're looking for to make hand crossbows useful. Grab Quick Shot at level 4 and Crossbow Terror at 6; from there, you probably just want to pick up things like Parting Shot, Archer's Aim, and Assisting Shot. The Double/Triple Shot progression doesn't work a normal hand crossbow.

  2. Drow Shootist + Eldritch Archer. The Drow Shootist Dedication feat is stronger than the Archer Dedication since Quick Draw is built into the base feat (and Shootist's Draw is better).

There are two problems with the Drow Shootist + Eldritch Archer combination.

Drow Shootist. Using the Human's Natural Ambition Ancestry Feat makes the feat tax for Ammunition Thaumaturgy feel a bit better. This gets you the critical specialization effect for the hand crossbow and a slightly upgraded Quick Draw with Shootist's Draw. Taking Reapeating Hand Crossbow Training at level 4 gives you roughly 5 shots before you need to reload.

Archer. So, Crossbows are a subtype of Bows and the Thaumaturge already has access to the Hand Crossbow (so get critical specialization effects from this dedication). You get access to a pile of Strike actions that will make you feel like an Archer (and this is something the Thaumaturge struggles with as your normal attack progression is Strike + Strike + Strike otherwise). You get access to Quick Shot and Crossbow Terror (Point-Blank Shot is redundant)

Eldritch Archer (level 6). Now you get spell casting!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/kn2ru7/archer_archetype_over_eldritch_archer/

If you can swing it (and this is a lot...)

Armor

Heavy Armor Options

For strength-based characters that didn't bother increasing their dexterity, grab a Breastplate at level 1 then Half Plate after picking up heavy armor proficiency through a dedication, and finally Full Plate at level 5 when you can increase your strength to 18.

If you want to get heavy armor, you'll need to pick up the Champion Dedication or the Sentinel Dedication. The one you choose depends on what you want to do with your character, what level the campaign is, and if you have the ability to retrain. If you need to spend your free archetypes feats every even level, Champion is going to be better since you'll have an option at level 4 (good options all around, really) and a better option at level 8. If you can mix-and-match your archetype feats between two dedications or you pick up the dedication at a later level, the Sentinel dedication starts to get interesting (Armor Specialist is decent for a level 6 feat and Mighty Bulwark is a decent option at level 10). The Sentinel suffers some weapon training issues at level 11, where it becomes as effective as medium armor -- but it will never be worse than medium armor.

How It Works...

The Thaumaturge isn't too taxed on their actions. Their first turn almost always requires Exploit Vulnerability and it isn't until level 9 when you want to be using Intensify Vulnerability.

Remember Feint (Deception) and Demoralize (Intimidation)

Feats like Bon Mot, Evangelize

Archetypes

Min/Max this class with scrolls...

Implements

Pick complementary implements...

Active (Chalice, Mirror, and Wand) / Reactive (Amulet, Bell, Weapon) / Passive (Lantern, Regalia, Tome)

Amulet - A great way to defensively ues your reaction for you (or your allies). The Intensify bonus is a +2 status bonus to AC and saves against the target. Absolutely fantastic for boss encounters. Bell - Powerful effects but they are save or suck... Chalice - Only useful if your party has no healing available to them and with Treat Wounds being accessible, I don't know how that happens. Mirror - The action gives you a clone that you can use to give you (or an ally flanking); this is way more interesting out of combat as you can teleport within 15 feet at will... The action triggers attacks of opportunity. The Mirror synergies with any aura effect you have as the aura should project from both images of you (the same goes for Amulet when an ally needs to be within 15 feet of you). Regalia - By level 7, you can be a master in one of skills (but not all three), bonuses to the attack rolls are fantastic (status though, so you might be competing with the bard). For the Intensify Vulnerability, pretty useful bonus but it's a circumstantial bonus and those are quite common. Tome - The tome gives you free proficiency bonuses in two skills as long as the tome is on you (you don't need to be holding it). Free knowledge checks at the beginning of every round that grants a small circumstance bonus is also pretty nice (it's only your next roll, so think about how you can take advantage of this). Wand - This basically provides a free cantrip for you with pretty good range (60 feet). Intensify increases the damage by 1. Weapon - A poor man's Attack of Opportunity. Intensity gives you a +2 status bonus to attack rolls against the target of your Exploit Vulnerability. This gives your weapon the critical specialization effect (and I'm not sure if you need the weapon out)

The third implement doesn't come online until level 15 and it doesn't get upgraded. You'll have two implements by level 5 and the upgrades are available at 7 and 11... so most campaigns, you'll get your two implements and upgrade one of them once.

There's a world where you take two passive implements and never worry the complexity of swapping your implements for particular actions. RAW, this gets complicated anyways and most of the passive bonuses are good either in combat or out of combat (but not always both). Using Tome with Regalia can give you the +2 bonus by fulfilling the Master requirement in the two skills you didn't skill up while leveling.

For very late game builds (when you have access to Unlimited Esoterica), the Tome's Intensify Vulnerability becomes very strong for Strikes that use 3 actions (think about Spellstrike or Eldritch Shot).

Talisman

https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?Category=15&Subcategory=19

FAQ

Can a Thaumaturge use a bow (or other 1+ weapon)?

No.

What is a simple crossbow?

Most crossbows are considered Simple Weapons, it's a shorthand for future proofing weapons. A Repeating Hand Crossbow is an advanced weapon, so it does not benefit from Crossbow Terror

Can you stack multiple weaknesses?

Kind of. If a creature has multiple weaknesses, Mortal Weakness always adds the highest effect.

More Support

Even more support

Resources