Aratrok's page

Those are... very blue and beige. They're a bit of an eyesore.

What happened to the Birdcruncher tribe? I was looking forward to continuing their adventures on the astral plane.

Only including one copy of cure is worrying. My favorite role to play is support, and I like focusing on effectively re-shuffling and recharging cards to get my healing spells into play as frequently as possible, and Grazzle is my favorite character by a huge margin. This seems like a move to reduce that style of play, which would hedge me out of playing.

Quick poll of folks reading this thread...

Which would you prefer...

1. A rage that lasted the whole fight but was not as powerful.
2. A rage that lasted a variable or shorter amount of time but was more powerful.
3. A rage that lasted as long as you wanted it, but was mostly all about dealing more damage and a bigger cost to accuracy or defense

Not scientific... just kinda curious of the pulse of the folks reading this...

4. A rage that's more meaningful and functions as a toggle without a restricted duration.

The worst part about 1e Rage wasn't that it was too interesting or powerful, or that it lasted too long. It was that tracking individual rounds was fiddly and annoying, and you might as well have just removed that aspect and been left with a functionally identical class feature.

What's the in-setting justification for animal companions having altered action economy? I don't think it makes a ton of sense for my animal companion, Clawthrax the Destroyer, dire bear manifested to protect nature, to sit around being a passive observer while his home is assaulted unless I'm prodding him to keep participating.

The playtest rules thoroughly define each category. Trivial basically means if this is the DC and the whole party can try it and only one person needs to succeed, it would be incredibly unlikely that no one succeeds. For instance, even an untrained 1st-level character with 10 in the stat, likely the worst you have, is 50/50 at the level 1 trivial (a trivial task of a level is actually roughly defined as "Something a totally uninvested character of that level would be at about a coin flip to do"). Even if an entire party of four was built that way with no one invested at all, it's still only a 1 in 16 chance they don't have someone make it. Trivial DCs are relevant enough to be on the chart because someone probably will fail it if everybody has to roll it and all who fail experience some interesting result of failure.

That doesn't address the issue or my specific complaints even a little bit. All it does is add more questions. Why is the easiest possible level appropriate task a coin flip for average untrained creatures? This still results in a world where the most basic tasks in a category (climbing a braced rope, asking for directions, preparing a simple meal, noticing tracks in deep mud) are comically difficult for normal people.

This still doesn't help anyone actually figure out what a level 3 rope or level 6 tracks or a level 8 meal are.

Liking the Lvl based DC chart.

I'm in the exact opposite camp. A chart of DCs with specific examples for each skill is a far better. I don't want to have to try and assign arbitrary levels to things like climbing as a GM, and I don't want to have to try and read my GM's mind to figure out how hard they think a free-hanging rope climb is based on their gym class experience or whatever.

The problems with static level based DC charts have been enumerated many times since they were presented in 4e. I'm not looking forward to having those arguments again for more months or years.

For example: I can't tell what Paizo thinks a task being "trivial" means, and it doesn't jive at all with my own personal definition. A 1st level trivial task in this setup is failed by a trained specialist of the same level (+4) 25% of the time, and an average attempt from an untrained character (-2) fails 55% of the time. This is almost certainly going to translate to comedy of errors gameplay at the table, with party members regularly failing the easiest possible tasks the system defines.

Now it just feels like I'm picking a flavor. The fact that they have tailored spell lists strips them of their versatility and customizability. I love the sorcerer because they're a Swiss Army Knife whereas the wizard is a specialized tool (though one that can change every day). Picking a demonic sorcerer sounds like it will probably be just limiting yourself to damaging fire spells and scary stuff. Whatever fits the theme of spooky demon guy.

A demonic sorcerer is working from the entire divine list, just like a draconic sorcerer is working from the entire arcane list (or a PF1 sorcerer is working from the sorcerer/wizard list). You just get bonus spells from your bloodline, as in PF1.

The blog seems to imply you still have no chance to detect traps unless you're actively spending actions searching for them, just like in PF1. Is this true?

Whoa. No spells? Admittedly the spellcasting wasn't a huge part of the Ranger class anyway, but that's quite the change from Rangers since 1st edition AD&D. On the plus side, it boosts the number of non-magical classes out there by one. I have to wonder just what boost does the Animal Companion provide that Rangers don't just end up a Poor Man's Fighter.

I also wonder if Friday's post will deal with Animal Companions and then next week's post focus on Druids. It would make some sense I suppose....

Spells are a critical part of a 3e or PF Ranger or Paladin's kit. They're what give those classes their adaptability. They're also major reasons why they were my favorite classes, and ditching them in exchange for trapping and a series of feats that consume one resource to activate is extremely disappointing.

If your worried about this issue, your playing with very spiteful DM's. Anathema's, like codes of conduct, shouldn't be a problem for anyone who plays with any semblance of respect for you and your character. Instead it should be broken when you, the player, are fairly challenged and you decide to forfeit the challenge of your choosing. It would be the same to worry that a GM would forcefully change your alignment as a Monk or Druid so you don't qualify for the class; the only reason it would happen is because they didn't want to play fairly at the table to begin with. Just my take on it at least.

It has nothing to do with spiteful DMs. It's an in-world restriction your character is probably aware of, and it shouldn't be difficult for other people to figure it out as well. Exploiting that weakness isn't beyond the pale for a clever opponent, and doesn't compare even a little bit with "forced alignment change" or anything like that, it's a sensible in-world action based on in-world information.

Not a fan of barbarians getting anathema built in by default, I'll say that much. That really feels to me like the kind of thing that should be a strictly RP decision of the player, and not be tied to mechanics. Barbarians aren't paladins, and codes of conduct (even very simple ones) just don't fit with them in my view.

I'd be okay with the idea if the anathema presented as "relatively low impact and designed to create roleplaying hooks" wasn't so crippling- it gives people the ability to force you to agree to a duel (possibly in a remote area or with some other unsafe condition) or lose a chunk of your class features as a free action. If they were optional little prompts like "you like drink a little too much" or they actually hooked into mechanics like Superstition that would be okay, but they can't both be "low impact and designed to create roleplaying hooks" and hand out trivial ways to screw your character or remove a chunk of their abilities. Something has to give in that regard.

Aratrok wrote:

Is Assurance replacing Take 10 or something?

I'd say it's a worse take 10, because it's not "as if you had 10 on you dice", but "as if your TOTAL was 10". But at the same time, at low level, if you had a negative modifier even you were trained because of armor, it would end up better than you average roll, but probably only low level.

I know it's worse. My question is if it's taking the same place, mechanically.

Is Assurance replacing Take 10 or something?

Limiting item crafting by level is frustrating. It's going to warp the setting monstrously if you can't have a lot of items on the market without a large number of high level characters supplying them. The PF1 crafting system has a lot of flaws, but the potential for level 1-5 adepts working in teams and using effective tools to craft just about any item in the game was beneficial for the game and the setting.

The PF1 monster building may not have been perfect, but at least it was parallel to how to build a PC was built, so you had a decent estimate to how they'd match up. In the above example of the so-called "problem" in PF1 with the high-HD fey, maybe you should have developed fey-specific abilities so that you could have a low-HD fey with abilities that scaled high to be the strong iconic abilities for the monster without the other stats based on HD being over the intended goal. In other words, HD was the spine of the monster, and the abilities are the flexible parts that you can scale however you need.

Alternatively, HD could have just been based on the monster's role in combat. There's zero reason for all "Fey" to be built with wizard hit dice other than "3.5 did it, and it didn't work very well there either".

Am I the only one who still isn't sure what Righteous Ally actually is?

It's Divine Bond with a different name.

Count me in with being disappointed that paladins, like clerics, must be tied to a deity now. It seems like a bizarre restriction to drop in suddenly.

You must never willingly commit an evil act, such as murder, torture, or casting an evil spell.

Please don't do this again.

Tempt Fate is just... amazingly horrible. The example critical failures we've seen are crippling and often equivalent to failing versus save or lose/die effects in d20. Critical success is useful but not nearly as critical, like effectively having evasion versus a fireball. The ability would only be good if you could use it offensively, no ally in their right mind is going to be a willing target for that thing.

The fact that a +2 AC bonus has both a 10% chance to block a hit and a 10% chance to negate a critical in an ideal scenario (i.e. your attacker can roll 10 above your AC) is small comfort, and completely misses the point. "Reaction for +2 AC against one attack" is one of many abilities that have been previewed that sound, if not pathetic for the level they come in, boring and unimaginative- which is a bad sign when you'd be expecting Paizo to bring their A game to hype things up.

Seriously, one of the most exciting things the new fighter feat list has is apparently "when one of your attacks at -5 or -10 misses and you're being flanked you can make that attack against someone else that's flanking you", and one of the most exciting new rogue talents is ranged feint but it just works instead of rolling a trivial check and it's only a -2 to AC instead of -Dex. The preview of the skill system showed a decent framework that could be revised and built into something pretty cool, these class previews are embarrassing and mostly serve to reveal an alarmingly stripped down combat system that's been cannibalized for abilities to give specific classes.

Blog wrote:

At 14th level, a fighter can use their shield to protect themself from dragon's breath and fireballs, gaining their shield's bonus to Reflex saves.

Is it me or this sounds like a bit weak sauce for a 14th lvl feature?

At 14th level I'd expect a martial-type character to reflect the fireball back at its caster, plant their shield and create an area the dragon breath just doesn't get to hit at all, blow out the fire like Superman, or absorb the effect with their anti-magic muscles. Something, anything cool enough to fit with what that level is supposed to mean- that they've surpassed mere mortals and are now competing with planar super-beings for stakes like the world. "One of your defenses is slightly better sometimes against certain threats" is woefully inadequate.

I'm confused about what possible fighter-specific hype you could derive from the preview. It sounds identical to the PF 1 fighter (weapon mastery, feat every even level), the only things that seem to have changed are the that weapon and armor mastery are generic features everyone can get (but you get weapon master two levels early), and a bunch of basic mechanics were ripped out of the engine and turned into fighter feats. The feats that don't do that would be totally ordinary and expected in PF1 (where some of them even already exist).

None of this is really any different, and none of it addresses real problems with the fighter, least of all the expiration date on "mundane fight man" as a character concept.

I have but one fear from this... Skill Proficiencies, they're the thing I hate the most about 4e and 5e. Please keep to a skill points system. :(

A lot of the post makes me hopeful, but proficiencies as described are just 5e proficiencies, which are horrible and could drag the whole thing down.

An appropriate item level is probably your level +1, or +2 if you're in a major settlement. That's what it says the game assumes you can buy.

At no point does it then go off and define "appropriate item level" as something different. Stop bringing this up in every thread.

For the record, I don't think the Solarian is irredeemable. It has some problems:

• Low levels are dull due to a lack of useful or interesting class features- all you have to roll with at level 1 is Solar Manifestation (which is worth roughly a +1 to AC if you don't want heavy armor proficiency, since it's inferior to purchasable gear), Stellar Mode (which is a +1 to Reflex or Damage), and a pair of bad revalations you can't use until a fight is nearly over. You get revelations at even levels, but all level 3 musters is a small random non-combat skill bonus that you can't use under time pressure and level 5 is totally dead.
  
• Revelations are generally uninspired. There are only a handful of them that are notable (do something exciting or fun) or powerful. Most of the list is chaff, the stronger revelations tend to be good because they're either passive or enhance something you already wanted to do (like Stellar Rush), and they're very combat focused without a lot of stuff that affects the narrative meaningfully. There are a lot of options like Radiation and Crush that are quite weak even with a really permissive reading of the rules, especially because of the next point:
  
• Stats are split really heavily. You need Strength to be a viable melee threat, Dexterity to not get hit (and be worth your salt if you ever have to pick up a firearm), and Charisma (for Resolve points and the DCs of your weakest revelations- no other revelations are affected). Since Starfinder's point buy rewards specializing in one or two ability scores and punishes spreading your points around, you pretty much just get to pick two of those- and if it weren't for low Resolve points getting characters killed at low levels, you probably wouldn't touch Charisma with a 10 foot pole there.

I'm not in the mood for beating around the bush: those are some really bad problems to have. They don't render the class unplayable, though. Low levels feel terrible, but if you're willing to ditch the futile struggle to keep your save DCs relevant, you can grow up into a reasonable melee character, especially with a few of the decent revelations (like Corona and Stellar Rush). Pick up Enhanced Resistance (Kinetic) and just add fire.

It could have been a lot better, and that's probably what irks me the most about it. Forcing so much of the fluff into the light/gravity dichotomy really narrows what you can do with the class, but "space warrior with mystic powers" would have been a totally defensible chassis to build from- you could use something like that to build anything from overt jedi expies to John Carter-types you stick with passive, quiet powers functioning as unconscious psionics or unnatural luck or something. The biggest problem is the really boring revelations. A lot of the class' content is +1s and conditional +1s for combat. There's very little to inspire characters, and the only one with any real narrative weight is Astrologic Sense. Maybe that will improve with future splat books, but it won't make the other problems go away unless Paizo's more willing to make sweeping changes to classes this time around.

Also, people really should be able to pick a character option at level 1, or at least not get saddled with two pre-chosen revelations that just suck.

I know how the point but works in Starfinder.

And uh, no, Starfinder encrouages spreading points around, especially with how the stat increases at every 5 levels work. Dumping all your points into one thing at the. Grinning just leaves you a glass cannon.

You get a marginal benefit of a net +1 to a secondary or tertiary ability score over the course of your entire career if you don't buy an 18 at level 1. That's it. You don't even get any benefit at all until level 5.

A point buy system that made higher ability scores more expensive per-point than lower ability scores would encourage spreading your points around. Point-for-point costs encourages specialization, since it costs just as much to get another +1 on your most important score as it does to add +1 to something less important.

When I say Core stat I mean the game definition of Core stat, which for a Solarion is Charisma.

Boosting your strength up that high severely impeded your other stats, if you were building them as a tank you probably should have invested in CON/DEX rather than dumping it all into STR.

And Resolve does plenty of things. It lets you regain all your stamina outside of a fight, and you can use it to regain consciousness and get back into the fight.

You're thinking of key ability score. And you're also thinking of a version of point buy that didn't make it into Starfinder- reducing Strength by 2 or 4 just means 2 or 4 more points in other ability scores, while putting you further away from being able to do your main job effectively. Starfinder punishes you for spreading your points around, forcing you to make pretty harsh decisions if you have the misfortune of being a MAD class like Solarian.

Colette Brunel wrote:

I knew what I was signing up for as a 1st-level solarian, however.

That you intentionally built in a subpar manner in order to justify your "one true build" assumption. I don't really know how viable this data can be when you intentionally dump their core stat and then claim their class abilities are useless since you dumped the stat they go off of and also had no Resolve.

Strength is a melee solarian's core stat. It determines the magnitude of their primary contribution to the party. Charisma is used to increase the DC of some of their weaker and more replaceable options, and gives them extra Resolve if they don't multiclass.

I'm pretty sure doing less damage and having more resolve wouldn't have made them drop enemies before teammates started going down. The extra resolve points wouldn't have even done anything.

I'm assuming the black,hole stuff is an area effect type deal? If so, it's possible,to,drop those so they target bad guy and miss your companions. It does require some co ordinated movement for the players to ensure they're engaging the baddy and still allow you a clean area to drop your area effect so it just catches Mr Bad in the zone.

Unsure how experienced you are in this type of game sorry. It just sounds like the way you were discussing it, you weren't using area effect on single opponents.

Black Hole and Supernova can only be used every 3 rounds in a fight, and you have to pick which one you want to use 3 rounds before it becomes available. Black Hole lets you force enemies within 20 feet to save versus being pulled 10 feet closer as a standard action- it's basically a waste of your turn almost always. Supernova lets you deal 1d6 + 1d6/level Fire damage to all creatures (including allies) within 10 feet of you as a standard action, Reflex for half- it's a mediocre AoE that's difficult to hit multiple targets with, and the save is pretty easy to make. It's also very rarely worth activating.

Serums do not specify that they affect crew actions, so they don't. Even if they did, their benefit is an Insight bonus that doesn't stack with Skill Focus. Expertise and Operative's Edge don't apply either.

Having them apply would probably be a bad solution. You'd be setting up difficulties so that only Envoys and Operatives have any hope of being relevant in mid to high level starship combat, when the whole point of having different crew roles was to get everyone involved.

Someone on Reddit recommended that the DCs could be fixed by being changed like so, with the CRB DCs on the left and the changes on the right.

10+2*tier -> 10+1.5*tier
15+2*tier -> 15+1.5*tier
20+2*tier -> 20+1.5*tier
10+3*tier -> 25+1.5*tier

These make way more sense and allows non-ultra-specialized skill monkeys to hit most of the DCs and completely remove the impossible DCs entirely once you factor in a decent on-board computer.

EDIT: Here's some maths that shows what the changes do: Original maths vs altered maths.

That's helpful in making the checks at least possible at high tiers. Unfortunately doesn't help with the problem of putting players on a number treadmill where they never get better at tasks or learn to perform new, harder ones.

I just want to bring up that literally anyone who was badmouthing the envoy has a bit of bad news. It seems like the envoy provides a quite substantial difference to their ally's success. Since an envoy can simultaneously apply flat-footed (-2 enemy AC), Improved Get 'Em (+2 morale bonus to attack rolls), and attack in the same round, their own attack will probably succeed and so will everybody else.

Basically, if you want to really overwhelm your enemies, you need an Envoy. Maybe with some debuff grenades too.

Last I checked, your team needs to have like 5 or 6 attackers each turn before it's more efficient to have an Envoy than another gun, and they're almost never going to be relevant if one of those guns was already an Operative.

Maybe there were some details I missed, but it seems unlikely.

Maybe I missed it, but is there some reason why your crew can't aid you, with each crew member adding +2 the the check?

At that point, you're easily able to make these checks with a large enough crew, you just have to pay for your crew members and keep their morale in check (Is that even a thing in this game?).

Aid another isn't allowed in starship combat. There's the encourage action for the captain, but you can only have one captain.

PCs are also not allowed to build ships of Huge size or larger (and purchasing ships or ship parts is not allowed either) without the GM's permission. There are no mechanics for hiring a crew, the rules heavily imply ("these usually require large crews and thus are normally reserved for NPC ships") you aren't allowed to, and only sample NPC ships have mechanics for non-lead crew, custom built ships and PC ships have no rules for how many crewmen are necessary or what they do.

Do note this line from "Actions" on page 322:

Class features and items affect crew actions only if specifically noted in the class feature or item.

These checks are a little harder than you expect. Expertise and Operative's Edge in particular are no help in starship combat.

Luke Spencer wrote:

I feel like this whole thing is basically like asking 'what happened to Golarion?' or 'What happened to Aroden?' because we'll probably never know, so worrying about it is pretty pointless.

I hope not, but I can understand if they decide to confine the answer to the Gap :(

They confirmed this in the AMA.

we will most likely (almost certainly never) reveal what happened to Golarion. It's one of the core mysteries of the setting, and it also keeps anything official in Pathfinder or Starfinder from affecting the history of the other.

The rules (some of which describe how the setting works) say what they say. Claiming it's "common sense" that you're right doesn't really help. Neither does a tortured interpretation of what "or" means.

Hell, if we're going by "common sense", the future batteries in Pathfinder worked this way already- they were totally interchangeable between a laser rifle and a flashlight- so it's a hard sell that with mostly the same text and developers involved it's suddenly different now.

Not sure how minute it is, but it seems to have been overlooked quite a lot: full actions (including full attacking, which you still want to do as much as possible) eat your swift action as well, now. It is impossible to draw a weapon and full attack with it, even with Quick Draw (which now uses a swift action).

Seems like a symptom of the design choice to have each weapon at every level be a unique game object with its own properties, instead of attaching scaling to item level by type or character or something.

There would be dramatically more room for weapons that are outliers or that do special stuff, and you wouldn't have the massive gaps in weapon options that currently exist. The only major benefit of the current paradigm seems to be that you can sell more pages of weapons, at the expense of better gameplay.

If you're willing to play in a group that allows this sort of thing, why even play with money to begin with? Just have infinite credits.

I don't think that's the point. It's obviously not something that's going to see practical use, at least not with any frequency. But it does point out a bizarre flaw with the rules that ought to be fixed.

Aside from just needing to have conversations about it with some players (which sucks), it also makes no sense in-world, since it enables characters to buy batteries for a fraction of their price. If maintaining a sci-fi setting where tracking individual fractions of a charged battery and paying for them is critical to your enjoyment (as Starfinder is built), that needs to go- probably by lowering prices and having items come uncharged, or increasing the cost of items by the price of their associated battery.

I picture myself as not dwelling on the power mechanic very much. Heck I barely deal with money at all in any game.

Book keeping and finance in the game is boring.

The game is going to fight you at every step on that. There are abilities that use batteries and charges, and a lot of tech is heavily restricted in usability by charge usage.

Paizo is very intent on getting you on the heavy book-keeping ride this time around. If you were hoping for a game that's simpler or requires less number tracking than Pathfinder, Starfinder isn't it.

Aratrok wrote:

Trying to mathematically determine whether certain options are worth it for offense or defense is going to be really hard until the Alien Archive comes out and we have hard numbers for opposition to gauge things against. Actually gauging whether a character is worth their salt in combat or even what combat numbers mean in the setting is pretty close to impossible. A lot of the text in the book might as well be gibberish until then.

That doesn't mean we're short on problems to point out before then, unfortunately. Like carrying capacity scaling linearly (so that your endgame power armor suit can only lift about 290 pounds), most of the class options being both mechanically ineffective and extremely bland, stealth still being broken in the same ways it is in D&D, and and traps still being totally undetectable if you don't specifically stop and spend actions to find them.

Could you elaborate on "Mechanically ineffective and extremely bland"?

Sure. Most class options fall into one of two categories:

There are other options that are the more traditional filler that's just obviously bad (conditional Resist 5 to a single energy type), but that goes without saying. There are shockingly few talents that give you something new and awesome you can do, and far too many that shuffle around fiddly little +1s and +2s of different (but usually insight) types, especially to skills. That's the biggest sin of the classes right now- most of your options are just boring and forgettable, even most of the ones that are good. Ironically it seems like the Space Fighter Soldier and Space Rogue Operative have the most interesting abilities attached to them that aren't spells, including abilities that let you do stuff like move while full attacking, get stacking bonuses to damage while surrounded, create free grenades for every fight, shrug off mental attacks and pretend you were affected, the cloaking field from the Operative preview, and throwing out holo-clones as distractions.

If you WANT to build NPCs by taking the PC version of a race and slapping class levels on it, nothing stops you.

Except no, as it's been said before, you can't. You wouldn't have something that belongs on Team Monster, you'd have something that belongs on Team Player. We've already been told about how the math for each side is supposed to be significantly different now, instead of both sides playing with the same rules as they do in d20.

Cuttlefist wrote:

I was familiar with that explanation, and while it is definitely an explanation it's not really a satisfying one for me. Why is it technology interferes with your life force? What is the level of technology that does not interfere? Is a peg leg or similar replacement for a missing limb sufficient to diminish your essence? It raises more questions for me than it answers, still feels like a "because we need it to work this way" reason.

I always thought of it as the spiritual/astral version of transplant rejection. In universe, an astral form is a real thing. Everybody has one. Merely losing a body part doesn't damage your astral form, nor does wearing things like prosthetic. Which means that phantom limb syndrome in Shadowrun it more literal than it is in reality. Your body is missing an arm, but your soul isn't.

Once you try to implant something into your body on the level of cyberware (and bioware too), then it starts interfering with your astral form. So from what I understand, your soul is trying to attach itself to a new part of you and failing. This static chokes off your ability to connect with magic.

This can be mitigated though. High grade gear is less intrusive on an astral level. So technology doesn't interfere with magic unless you try and implant it, but even then the more advanced the technology is the less it interferes. The analogy could be extended to how your body would react to a kidney from a poor donor vs a kidney from a close relative vs a kidney vat grown from your own cells.

That's a good breakdown of essence loss. It's worth pointing out that it's not just cyberware that causes essence loss- bioware implants do as well. The thematic stab is that transhumanism literally makes you less of a metahuman. It works pretty well.

The thing that bugs me most is the AP books being released every other month. That's insane. Paizo is effectively asking people to put their campaigns on pause and wait in-between books, or hold off on playing it at all until most of it is out already.

I don't entirely understand the purpose of having "math fix" feats instead of just setting up offense to have good numbers in the first place. What's the positive, there? As far as I can tell all it does is mean characters that make attack rolls or force saving throws regularly have fewer feats than characters that don't.

The ranting again... *sigh*

Criticism and concern are just as valid as gushing- perhaps more so, since they indicate problem areas to address or improve later.

It's cool to like things and get excited about the future. That's great! It makes people happy, and it tells the developers that what they're doing is well received. But it's also important to talk about what seems bad, or what could be improved.

Is Staggered actually a threat at all in SF, when full-round actions are so much less useful?

Staggered is still a threat. Full attacking, for instance, is still a big deal and you're going to want to full attack more than not. Escaping melee to cast a spell is a little tougher, since 5-foot steps take a move action now. Some spells are more effective if cast as a full-round action.

Inflicting it on a single target with Save Negates as a standard action is... questionable. You're effectively trading your standard action for the chance to kill someone's move action. Their move action has to be significantly more valuable than your standard action to be worth that trade. Considering that targets with more valuable actions are also going to have higher saves (and thus, a higher chance of just ignoring your Crush), that trade is probably never going to be worth it.