orenj

PF2e? Heighten it to Level 2 and cast Illusory Wall of Fire. It generates heat, sound, and light just like a real wall of fire! It just deals 0 damage. Your allies can move through it without giving up the game if their acting is good, and if you give a path through (no matter how lousy,) enemies are more inclined to go where you want them instead disbelieving by risking a pass through. Illusory Aqueous Orb is pretty for more localized area denial.

At lvl 1, Illusory wall of stone is a little less impressive but can be funny if you time it right. Delay until just before an archer or wizard's turn and box them off to force them to spend actions either moving or disbelieving.

Other fake persistent spells can potentially work out, though i think the real tech starts once you're lv 3 and get access to heightened illusory object & Illusory creature.

edit: Since the Remaster, Figment (ghost sound) gained the Subtle trait, meaning you can actually use it to lure things into ambushes without giving away that some gnome is shouting MINIMOSI TRAVISI and glowing around the corner. You can also use it to send coded messages to your entire party; Rats squeaking means danger, bats flapping wings means its clear to move up, etc.

Hehe, I'm reminded of the time I learned Share Spells let me turn my familiar into a bigass tree as I was flying over some hapless creature

nah, you must not've stuck around for the patches. They ruled by the end of PF1e's lifecycle. You could make some pretty awesome fighters with the actual class features they got access to.

The dwarven lockpick (Adamantium hammer) is an adventuring staple for a reason; its fun and empowering to pick locks barbarian style.

There are holy and unholy sanctifications, which pretty much only effect extraplanar beings and those that bargain with them (Clerics, Paladins)

My players had spent months finding the combination for a fortified vault door, and finally return to the cave they orignally found the door. Just as the champion begins entering the combination, the wizard realized the party had since leveled a few times, and disintegrate was in her exploration shortlist of prepared spells

nobody was happy about that in the moment, hehe

Re: oracle

Being a divine spontaneous caster fucks; your entire spell list is Heal if you need it, and literally anything else if you don't. And trading a spell/day and slightly smaller repertoire for some extra durability is generally worth it in my experience.

Also Divine Access means you can pretty much pick whatever spells you want, and more as more gods come out or you and your GM make some more.

I liked the focus spells more back when battle oracles weren't hit with the nerf bat and could literally just be the juggernaut whenever they got cursed

Symbols can work if you're desperate. Like, just depict Malbad Von Sinister with a skull token. Sometimes it might work even better than a visual depiction if you want your PCs to imagine the guy instead

The only things I know about Lancer are this very specific style of memes and that kill six billion demons rules. Is it any good as a game?

I miss prestige classes. Actually no I don't they're implemented in the form of archetypes (Dragon Disciple's actually kinda handy for some builds unlike in 1e), I just miss the idea of prestige classes.