CForCartosin's page

With the latest releases, I believe it's become more and more apparent that Paizo's general philosophy with post-core content is to undershoot things. By undershooting, I mean aiming the balance point of new content at or slightly below the mildest options in the CRB. And well, it makes sense. Power creep is a problem that has plagued games forever, and an option that's too good is a lot more disruptive than an option that's too bad. These arguments have been thrown around many times, and honestly, they're not wrong.

But... I still think that has lead to an overall unsatisfying arrangement. What inspired me to make this post was some recent discussion about the APG errata and general disappointment with Witches not getting any changes despite their "meh" status. This is a feeling that has been bugging in the back of my mind for a lot longer than that, though.

It just seems like new content is so conservative in regards to power level that it's almost always worse than what already exists. New classes have worse base stats, more downsides and have to jump through more hoops in return for some gimmicky abilities. New archetypes are often way too costly for what they do, and sometimes straight up make your character worse (looking at you, Elementalist and Vampire). The few exceptions tend to be on the smaller scale and almost feel like happy little accidents, like a single spell or item in a whole book.

At first it made sense to me, but over time it's slowly making me less and less excited about new content. Of course I'm not asking for every new class to be a Bard and every new feat to be Divine Reflexes, but can't we do a little better than now?

Agreed. This is probably my biggest complaint with the PF2 system. Lots of new options just seem way too weak to be worth using, despite the cool flavor of them.

So I do think that at least a spell attack boost item would be really good for casters who do like the attack spells, True Strike is not the fix for attack spells it should be a bonus.
However the main point of this is to boost up that AOE blasting is super strong in 2E. I'm playing a fighter currently, and the sorcerer in my party is the main damage dealer even though I do try to keep up.
In our recent big arc ending fight, we were fighting a huge group (20ish) of frost giants and with one 7th level Chain Lightning she dealt over 1,000 damage with a large number of them crit failing their save.
She has also been making my character look like a wimp for the past few arc, carrying us through several fights.
Also, just a little funny anecdote about how powerful Magic Missile really is. We just had a a test with an ancient super-strong monk who was built as a level 20 character, while we were only level 14. Out goal was to just take him down to half HP, but with the sorcerer getting out of range with lots of climbing and flight (goblin climbing shenanigans) and just the absolute spamming of 3-action magic missiles we were able to bring him down to about 20 hp. Granted we did get two free turns of the enemy not reacting, but I still found it impressive.

I'm sorry but I just don't see this way of the magus being appealing to many people. You have to have a very specific set up with treasure and spells and having a chance to prebuff and have everything just right to make it really work. This setup requires a specific staff, the ability to prebuff, the enemies to be within your stride distance on the first turn, and then rolling decently (true strike definitely helps with this part). Otherwise this whole thing will require 1 to 2 round of setup at the beginning of a combat, in a game where most combats I've had last about 5 or so rounds, or you could just roll unlucky and waste all that setup for nothing. And even if everything goes really right with you critting with the martial attack and that causing your spell attack to crit, which is about an 11% chance. You're still relying on the white dragon can still only fail their fort save against your spell DC because they succeed on a natural 1, they have to roll a 10 or lower to fail. So the damage you are getting is only going to be 120 damage. And that's with every roll going perfectly and a whole turn used for it. For all that work, any average fighter is going to be doing the same damage as you did with all that setup and PERFECT luck on all your rolls in about 2 rounds with average rolls and zero setup needed.

I really feel that both of these classes would benefit from a faster spellcasting progression, so they'd get expert at 9th level and master at 17th.
I'm not as sure about the 4 slot casting, I think maybe the idea of giving them 1 slot of every lower level slot seems nice.
And I think Striking Spell should at least allow you to take your martial attack roll for attack roll spells, and hopefully give some kind of bonus to save spells DC.

It would be powerful, but I don't think it would break anything.

I'd still have save-based spells require a saving throw, though. They'd still have the 'on a crit, their degree of success is worse' clause, but that's an important safety valve. There's a LOT of really dangerous save based spells where failing (and your proposal would render a hit an auto-fail) is crippling.

Just having a lot of burst damage isn't *that* busted.

Thanks for the reply, and I can definitely see where you are coming from with the save still needing to be done. Maybe in the end they will make the spellcasting proficiency progression for Magus just a little faster to help those save spells more consistent. Something like expert at 9th and master at 17th to match Alchemist class DC.

I had this thought at a gas station so it may be good or may be bad. I think the magus's striking spell should all be based off of their martial attack roll. You would have to take away the thing about not losing the spell if you miss with your martial strike.
So for using attack roll spell with striking spell I would just transfer the success degree of the martial strike to the degree of success of the spell attack roll. So a fail or crit fail on the martial roll means nothing happens, but a success equals a success at the spell attack and so on with the crit.
For save spells with striking spells I would still only have a single martial attack roll, but inverse the degree of success for the save. So a crit fail on the martial attack equals a crit success, a fail equals a success, success equals a fail, and crit success on the martial attack equals a crit fail on the save.
Any comments?