Deriven Firelion's page

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Claxon wrote:

I don't think concentrate replaces verbal components.

Auditory specifically mentions needing to be able to speak, while concentrate talks about only mental focus.

But really it doesn't matter to the overall discussion.

*Although there is a problem with the auditory trait that it doesn't sufficiently differentiate between needing to be able to speak, needing the target to hear something, and something that generates sound waves that have an impact regardless of ability to be heard.

Examples, sounds waves causing damage. A spell that exerts control on someone (command), and casting a spell (speaking).

Verbal components used to have the concentrate trait. So when they took all the verbal components off spells, they replaced them with the concentrate trait.

Auditory trait generally means you need to be able to make sound. I can see how you thought that was the replacement for verbal, but very few spells have the auditory trait.

Almost every spell (maybe every one) that used to have a verbal component now has the concentrate trait as a replacement.

I still disagree with your conclusion, but it mostly doesn't matter on how the game is run or played (because the remastered spells are relatively clear with their new traits) so I'm just going to drop it.

I didn't make a conclusion. I'm stating what they did. They replaced the verbal components with the concentrate trait. I'm assuming they did it because the verbal trait had the concentrate trait. They wanted to keep the concentrate trait on all the spells that had the verbal component beforehand to keep the general idea that spells have a concentrate and manipulate component to their casting to maintain internal consistency with abilities that work off the concentrate or manipulate trait. It was one of the first things I noticed when I was looking at how they changed the verbal and somatic components on spells in the remaster.

Other changes:

1. No more school tags.

2. Spell name changes from magic missile to force barrage. Plenty like that.

3. Removal of alignment tags or damage, all replaced with spirt damage and the holy or unholy trait.

4. Positive energy became vitality. Negative became void.

The addition of the concentrate tag in place of a verbal component was like the above changes. They had to replace it with something, so they took the trait that interacted with verbal tag pre-remaster and applied it to all the spells.

I think you can color the concentrate trait with whatever explanation exists now for how a class cast spells. Might be verbal for a bard or maybe an intense concentration for a wizard or sorc or a prayer for a cleric. I imagine that color element is open-ended.

I have no idea. Seems like an arbitrary limitation that I can't find a reason for.

I don't think concentrate replaces verbal components.

Auditory specifically mentions needing to be able to speak, while concentrate talks about only mental focus.

But really it doesn't matter to the overall discussion.

*Although there is a problem with the auditory trait that it doesn't sufficiently differentiate between needing to be able to speak, needing the target to hear something, and something that generates sound waves that have an impact regardless of ability to be heard.

Examples, sounds waves causing damage. A spell that exerts control on someone (command), and casting a spell (speaking).

Verbal components used to have the concentrate trait. So when they took all the verbal components off spells, they replaced them with the concentrate trait.

Auditory trait generally means you need to be able to make sound. I can see how you thought that was the replacement for verbal, but very few spells have the auditory trait.

Almost every spell (maybe every one) that used to have a verbal component now has the concentrate trait as a replacement.

HammerJack wrote:

Claxon wrote:

I've always viewed the idea of the manipulate trait as leaving ones self open (for an attack). When viewed that way, whether it represents material or somatic components, or even just mental focus, it makes sense (to me) that psychic spellcasting would still leave one open to Attacks of Opportunity.

I think that it's definitely a gesture, not just intense concentration for 2 reasons:

1. That matches the description in spellcasting rules and in psychic spellcasting.

2. You *also* have mechanics that constrain movement and add a flat check to Manipulate actions.

Ultimately it doesn't quite matter how we envision it as long as we acknowledge that some spells (most really) have the manipulate trait, and psychic spell casting doesn't do anything to get rid of it. Pyschic spell casting substituted verbal and somatic components, but remaster spells don't have that. They have auditory and manipulate. Which honestly works just fine.

Concentrate and Manipulate. Concentrate replaced verbal and Manipulate replaced Somatic.

Even drawing a weapon is an interact action with the manipulate trait which activates Reactive Strike.

Manipulate is some kind of movement that opens you up to attack.

If I feel like the player would like one, I give it to them as treasure or enough material if they want to make it themselves. Material prices are too expensive in my opinion for what they provide, especially with the rules for material that you can put runes on by power level.

Well level 14 for Mysterious Repertoire instead of level 8 for the old sorcerer. It is befinitely a good point. You have always been more keen on higher level play. But I think you'd be more upset about missing Effortless Concentration.

Sorcerer get divine access as a level 1 feat - Blessed Blood, which is arguably better than a free class ability at level 11.

It is just that the best Oracle abilities are there level 1 cursebound feats. Which anyone can get via a couple of archetype feats.

I don't use Effortless Concentration too much. I have to admit for a divine caster effortless concentration would be nice. They seem to have really limited effortless concentration on divine casters. Witch and sorc divine casters only ones with it I believe. Divine is probably the best list for using Effortless Concentration with some of their buffs and summons.

I really thought Effortless concentration would be a lot more useful. I think I mainly use it on Quandary and Phantom Orchestra for non-divine casters. It is nice for quandary since that is primarily used for killing mooks more easily by getting rid of a mini-boss or boss type creature.

High level characters are so strong that when you get effortless concentration someone inevitably ends up landing crits that end fights fast, so this spell you want to keep up a while ends up feeling "meh."

Agreed that is the biggest problem. The new Oracle suffers from the same problem as the Pyschic - you can poach the best part. I for one prefer a sorcerer - oracle over a straight oracle.

I don't know. I like the oracle. They gave the oracle the old sorcerer get one spell from any list thing and Divine Access. They have a lot of spell power. My oracle picked up synesthesia and some good blasting spells.

I do wish the curses did more interesting things though. They're kind of boring now, but powerful.

If they do a ramp class design, it has to be fast enough and controlled enough by the player where the DM doesn't have to do a lot of work to make it work. Player control over their abilities is very important. The only way the ramp works is if it can be done by the player within the duration of the battle consistently to be a viable play-style.

*Face slamming intensifies*

Okay. So, my question has been answered.
Spell and Class DC are not the same.
Thank you everyone.

Mods, can you lock this thread? We don't need this argument here.

Welcome to the forums.

shroudb wrote:

agree on the fireball (because it's visible as soon as it leaves your person), disagree on the "the direction the pain comes from"

Witch of Miracles, Deiven, shroudb:

That's not how fireball works. The explosion of fire simply appears; there is no "trail back to the caster."

I like the fireball flying from the caster. It looks cool. You do what you want in your games though.

Are there really that many players of wood kineticists bullying their GM into letting them plant forests?

Not that I wouldn't be amused that there were enough players bullying their GMs into letting them plant forests that it required discussion of how to handle it. It would be even funnier if it required Paizo to issue errata because of players "bullying GMS into letting them plant forests."

That's just funny.

Without the Amp Imaginary Weapon is just a very cool and flavorful strong cantrip. It's good, but Gouging Claw will usually outdamage it. It has the benefit of covering a damage type that gouging claw doesn't have (bludgeoning) so it's a very nice addition to have but wouldn't feel "mandatory" the way it does now.

The bludgeoning is nice and the force tag hitting incorporeal creatures past their resistance.

I agree. It isn't mandatory. There is only class that breaks imaginary weapon with one ability.

Deriven Firelion I agree with all the factors you brought up being important to the analysis.

Synthesia might not be the best spell to use for comparing a Wizard to a spontaneous caster because its not available to wizards.
But I know you like slow.
and in many instances youre argument will work for this spell too.
You get slow 1 for 1 round and that is all you need.

But you could do better with a different spell if fort is the highest save.
In your groups I would probably use command instead of slow against a creature with high fort and low will. Tell it to drop and watch your teams martials reactive strike it. and it will have around the same odds of landing a failure as slow would have for success, will also deny at least 1 action but maybe two if the creature gets up and increase damage through party synergy.
Like a troll or troll warleader for example.

Why i make this argument? Mainly to just point out other spells besides the mainstay high quality spells have moments they can be a better option only because of high and low save differences.

Sure, they have moments. I find those moments occur more with utility spells to solve odd problems. That's where the wizard can shine, but really any prepared caster with a spell list with some utility. Or focus utility spells like the druid wild shape.

For combat, most of the time a good chain lightning to open the fight softens a lot of targets in multi-target fight.

Some debuff to lower AC, slow, and some magic missiles or vision of death is nice for a single target creature.

Even the change to golems makes reflex save spells that do high damage often more effective against golems. Though it is nice slow works against golems now. Most mental and fort spells useless against golems if doing negative damage or applying a rider.

PF2 is a very different game that past editions. Very fast and furious with debuffs and damage most useful as ending fights as a solo class doesn't do much anymore.

I remember in PF1/3E I would win alone as a wizard. This wasn't very fun to the other PCs, but it was fun for me to be that powerful.

PF2 is very much built for the group to win and not individual casters. A crit save on a slow is the most common "I win" button that ruins encounters.

I will say the arcane list Power Word Kill for an easy 1 action 50 points of damage is pretty nice for a killing blow at high level. I've used that more than a few times and it works real well as long as not immune to death effects.

I just like the idea of the build up to climactic ability then reset.

it feels as epic as the oracles curse concept to me.

I don't want this. It's one of those ideas that seems theoretically interesting, but the way PF2 combat works it would rarely occur because fights rarely last that long. Single targets last even less long. So any "ramp" would have to be very, very fast to have a chance of even doing it once against a prominent target.

I do not like ramp up abilities. Too much movement, too many other PCs doing their stuff, and targets often don't last long with the crit rules whether a spell crit or melee crit from multiple party members launching attacks.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Do some of the damage cantrips not have the attack trait? Might be interesting to be able to do damage as a swash after a finisher with a spell lacking the attack trait.

That is correct. And something I don't really like about how Swashbuckler's Finisher is defined.

Yes, you are allowed to cast Frostbite after a Finisher.

No, you are not allowed to cast Ignition after a Finisher.

I cannot find any logical explanation for why it was designed that way.

You and me both.

I'm running a swashbuckler right now and we just hit level 19. Holy cow, the high level swash is pretty brutal. Once the player picks up Illimitable Finisher or whatever that feat is called, I expect their damage to spike again.

They just got the ability where they can apply Confident and Precise Finisher to every finisher and every Opportune Riposte. That is a pretty strong ability.

Then they can do two finishers with one action the way I read it with Precise Finisher damage even on a miss. That's going to get pretty nutty.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

This argument comes down to the value of RK. I think the reason sorcerers have sorcererous potency is because they are bad at RK checks. The game expects wizards to more consistently be hitting the weakest save and sorcerers to be guessing most of the time.

If this is not the result playing out in game its not the wizards design at fault.

Not really. Intelligence used to give a huge skill advantage in PF1.

Skills are easy to come by at a trained level in PF2. So the focus is on proficiency. Intelligence gives no advantage in proficiency.

At best you can do like some do spending skill feats on additional lore which auto-scales and uses intelligence to give a minor advantage on often unnecessary RK checks that cost an action that use intelligence.

You know how often I used RK in PF1? All the time, nearly every battle. It was a free action, intelligence based, and wizards were the undisputed kings of knowledge skills.

You know how often I use RK in PF2? Almost never. Religion and Nature for some RK skills are wisdom based. Proficiency matters big in this edition. Lore skills are narrow so additional lore might not cover everything. And the more importantly nothing is immune to almost anything anymore, even the immune creatures are obvious like a red dragon immune to fire or devils. So you don't even need to RK any more to figure out how to beat creatures. And it costs 1 action to maybe gain a minor unnecessary advantage while martials just hit it to determine what works against it and 99% of the time hitting it works.

The games expectation as far as I can tell is that if you do not RK you should be hitting higher saves 2/3s of the time on spells you cast.

If sorcerers are hitting a higher save 2/3s of the time because they guessing which spell will hit low save instead of knowing which spell will hit lowest save then it would explain why sorcererous potency is on sorcerer and after the remaster locked away from other classes...

That's not how it works any more. I don't know why some are having a hard time adapting to the changes.

Spell power is no longer determined by just the save. In fact, save is not the even best determinant of spell power:

1. Spell effect as determined by the four saves is the most important way to look at a spell. What happens at each save level. A lower save may not be best if on a success there is no effect against a spell that even if you succeed you take half-damage or some other effect.

2. Power of the spell itself including tags, amount of damage, riders, incap, and such.

3. Number of targets. What is best for multiple targets or single targets.

4. Commonality of high save. In my experience, Fort is usually the highest save on most creatures. Will and Reflex are relatively equal. You're almost always good using a reflex save spell. Not only because it is often the weakest or at least equivalent save, but the spells do half damage on a success which can still be quite substantial for a lot of spells.

5. Weaknesses, resistance, immunities. These are not as important since they add moderate damage that can't be doubled or halved. So as long as you land some damage, you'll activate a weakness. But the weakness is only worth adding if the base spell does enough damage to justify its use over another spell.

Martials are much better at activating weakness damage since they do it every hit.

6. How does spell interact with the group? Even if you RK and determine a weak save, does it matter if you want to use synesthesia or vision of death to give a rider so all your party members will get a bonus to hit?

Synesthesia is still likely to last for one round. It may not take more than one round to do the job.

This idea of attacking weakest save isn't as relevant as with PF1/3E where success or failure was the only consideration.

That's why I said I used RK in nearly every fight in PF1. Lots of creatures had immunity, strong resistances, spell resistance, and the like. You needed to know how to bypass them. Weakest save mattered as there was success or failure. That's it.

In PF2 that is not the case. Success or failure is one of many factors and not the most important one.

Even if you learn a creature has a weak reflex save and strong fort save, it may still be more effective to chain cast slow to defeat it rather than try a reflex or will save against. It depends on the effectiveness of the spell available.

All I know for certain is I rarely use RK. I rarely have a problem not doing so. Most spells work on most things. Very few things are immune to anything. The most common immunities I've run into are fire and mental. If they're immune to mental, most of your mental spells are useless even if that is the weakest save.

So it is often best to rely on Reflex saves or spells lacking the mental tag or doing mental damage unless you know for certain they will do something make them worth using.

PF2 is a very different game than PF1/3E where RK and missing the save was very important and very effective meaning if the save was failed, you pretty much won the encounter. There aren't spells like that any longer.

Tridus wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I'm not sure why "the Wizard is a weaker choice for a magic focused character" is an intolerable situation when "the Fighter is a weaker choice for a sword focused character" has been a fact of life a lot of times in the history of this family of games.

Well there's what everyone else said: PF2 actively tried to fix this and succeeded at it. Fighters are really good. I've literally used "you can play a Fighter and not suck" as a sales pitch for folks to try PF2, and it's the reason one of my Abomination Vaults players is in my game.

But also the main difference is that "Fighters suck" was a fact for so long that people just lived with it. Some players literally had never played the game from a time before that was a truism. It was just the stats quo, and people adapt to the status quo. That doesn't mean it was a good thing, but people just got used to it.

"Wizards suck" has not been the status quo in the "D&D descended TTRPG" family, historically. People are not used to it, and players coming over from 5e or PF1 absolutely do not expect it.

Quote:

The Remaster was less "let's fix all the classes" and more "let's make the best of a bad situation."

This is true. Though I don't think they've made the most of the framework they have. Like, why does the School of Rooted Wisdom not have any of the Maaganbaya themed uncommon/rare spells on it? That's the perfect place for them, and "my years of school study gives me access to spells that Sorcerers need the GM to give them" is a thing the class could stand to lean on far more than it does.

They have done it sometimes (Gates has all kinds of interesting spells on it), but a lot of the schools are just "this is stuff you could have taken anyway if we didn't restrict you."

Wizards have more slots than any other caster except cleric it’s simple math 3 + 1 curriculum spell plus Drain Bonded item they also have what ever slot games their Arcane Thesis gives them. On top of this there...

Did you really just post this? Ever single caster class gets Legendary casting except the magus and summoner.

You gotta be trolling us with this post.

This argument comes down to the value of RK. I think the reason sorcerers have sorcererous potency is because they are bad at RK checks. The game expects wizards to more consistently be hitting the weakest save and sorcerers to be guessing most of the time.

If this is not the result playing out in game its not the wizards design at fault.

Not really. Intelligence used to give a huge skill advantage in PF1.

Skills are easy to come by at a trained level in PF2. So the focus is on proficiency. Intelligence gives no advantage in proficiency.

At best you can do like some do spending skill feats on additional lore which auto-scales and uses intelligence to give a minor advantage on often unnecessary RK checks that cost an action that use intelligence.

You know how often I used RK in PF1? All the time, nearly every battle. It was a free action, intelligence based, and wizards were the undisputed kings of knowledge skills.

You know how often I use RK in PF2? Almost never. Religion and Nature for some RK skills are wisdom based. Proficiency matters big in this edition. Lore skills are narrow so additional lore might not cover everything. And the more importantly nothing is immune to almost anything anymore, even the immune creatures are obvious like a red dragon immune to fire or devils. So you don't even need to RK any more to figure out how to beat creatures. And it costs 1 action to maybe gain a minor unnecessary advantage while martials just hit it to determine what works against it and 99% of the time hitting it works.

Do some of the damage cantrips not have the attack trait? Might be interesting to be able to do damage as a swash after a finisher with a spell lacking the attack trait.

I love how every complaint about the Wizard ignores half the character build in order to justify their complaint. The wizards school is weak when compared to the sorcerer blood line! Well it should be because it’s only half the equation you also have the arcane thesis to consider both those combined is easily equal to a Sorcerer’s bloodline.

“ I wish the designers would admit this and get rid of it. Make the wizard a four slot caster like the sorc. There's not point in keeping them a 3 slot caster with special rules to become 4 slot. Their innate class abilities just don't warrant the 3 slot limit like the witch hexes do.”. This is just stupid Wizards have 4 slots you just have to choose one of your curriculum spell. In fact a Wizard runs more slots that a Sorcerer generally especially if the take the Staff Thesis.

The truth of the matter if you know how to run a Wizard your generally more powerful than a Sorcerer but a Wizard has a much higher learning curve than a Sorcerer. There’s no real thought behind a Sorcerer no learning needed at all it’s casting on easy mode while a Wizard is far more powerful once you learn how.

This is not true. I'm not sure why people keep claiming this.

I know casters as well as you can know them. I've played the wizard as my primary in every edition of D&D they existed. I play more casters than martials by a good margin.

There is this niche that keeps making the claim the wizard is stronger than the sorcerer and they are not. I have about as good a system mastery as exists in PF2, 5E, PF1, 3E, 3.5E, 2nd edition, and 1st edition. I'm an old school player focused primarily on casters.

If you have system mastery in PF2, then the spontaneous casters are better by a good margin.

In PF1 wizards were king by a mile. Best class in the game. Slow start, but spectacularly powerful at high level. If you have system mastery as I did, then you know why they were so much better in PF1/3E.

Just as if you have system mastery in PF2, you know why spontaneous casters are better in PF2. The main reason being because changing out spells is not longer very valuable. There aren't alpha spells any more. There aren't silver bullet spells any more. There is only the casting of the same most powerful spell over and over and over again. And spontaneous casters do that better than prepared casters.

That's how PF2 works. The class features of the spontaneous casters are generally better.

I don't know why you are holding on on to this old paradigm when wizards could find those perfect spells like PF1/3E when such spells no longer exist. There is no immunity to energy spells castable on a whole group anymore. No mobile individual wind walls that ruin archers. No mass hold monsters. No dominate that ends battles. No enervate or energy drain that automatically adds negative levels with no saves. Very few longer duration party buffs. No cheap wands. No ability enhancing spells. There isn't even a mass fly spell anymore.

The new paradigm is simple, straightforward, and narrow. Very few spell slots. Very few mass buff spells.

And in this new paradigm, the wizard is not that great. The spontaneous casters, specifically the sorcerer and bard are much better than they are. They are even more versatile users of magic.

When I hear a person make the claim wizards are better, it clearly shows they haven't even bothered to learn all that sorcerers and spontaneous casters can do. If they did have system mastery and knew sorcs, they would know that 45 spells known and 1 they can change out every day is more than enough to match anything the wizard can come up with.

Basically bake Unleash Psyche in the amping of psi cantrips ?

Like "While your psyche is unleashed your psi cantrip's are amplified, dealing their effect listed in their "unleashed" section."

And the feat amps then are a separate thing, amps being the ability to spend focus points to add an effect to psi-cantrips. Those can be gotten from archetype, while the unleash cannot.

Sure, something like that as long as they make Unleash Psyche last longer.

I am still not sure how they thought 2 rounds was enough for Unleash Psyche. No one in my group has been able to make much use of Unleash Psyche the way it is current constructed. It is one of the most limiting abilities I've ever seen with a terrible, terrible, bad, shouldn't have been done design that makes the caster stupefied after use. It would be the equivalent of making barbarian rage cause a barbarian to get a -2 penalty to their attacks or more after using rage. It's super bad design.

Unleash Psyche lasting 2 rounds then applying the stupefied condition reducing the psychics spell DCs and attack modifiers while requiring them to make a roll to cast was something I'm surprised made it past class testing. How did anyone that ran the class ok this?

The psychic needs as much, if not more work, than the with pre-Remaster witch to make it viable.

I like the Remastered Oracle. I do miss some of the unique powers, but only one or two were any good. In the future, I'd like some more refinement. But the base chassis of the oracle is very good. I'm glad they made the change as the new oracle is much more playable than the old one.

About all I would like in the future is some refinement of the curses and unique oracle powers to make the class feel more like the curses give abilities that fit their theme.

Didn't think they could make the wizard more limited and worse in the Remaster, but somehow they managed it.

I hope they get rid of the school tied to spell slots mechanic and make curriculums provide unique abilities and focus spells. The spell slots tied to curriculum mechanic doesn't translate well to PF2. I wish the designers would admit this and get rid of it. Make the wizard a four slot caster like the sorc. There's not point in keeping them a 3 slot caster with special rules to become 4 slot. Their innate class abilities just don't warrant the 3 slot limit like the witch hexes do.

If they remaster the psychic, they could fix the imaginary weapon problem by building the psychic more like the oracle making the psychic amps work off a different resource than focus points. If they model it in that direction, then they won't have to worry about poaching.

I think the Remastered Oracle curse mechanic is a better way to build a Remastered psychic by giving the psychic a unique resource pool that allows it to do its psychic things more often while also having meaningful focus spells. Psychic limitations of 3 focus points a battle was pretty limiting in groups like I run with where you don't slow down when you start to run a dungeon or encounter area. I think an additional resource pool tied to their psychic abilities would give them more endurance than the limited focus point system they currently run on.

And it would fix the imaginary weapon problem by allowing them to tag it with some psychic ability tag that isn't easy to access for other classes. It would solve a lot of problems with making the psychic a more unique class with less poachable power.

So here is a question that I think might be valuable to examine where the problem is. We know that a Magus taking a Psychic Dedication to get Amped Imaginary Weapon is seen as problematic, as it breaks expected thresholds that seem to be intended.

Here is the question, would a Psychic who takes the Magus Dedication be similarly 'broken'? Since it seemed like the problem was spamming amp cantrip spellstrikes, it wouldn't seem to be because of the effective limitation of using the spellstrike, and needing a minute to be able to do it again.

Imaginary Weapon does do significant damage, even as a cantrip, but it does physical damage so may be more likely to be affected by resistance. It seems like the bigger issue is the significant damage boost per rank in heightening from the Amp.

So is there any other AMP spells that are problematic for magus from Psychic dedication? If not, would it literally be easier to say in the Psychic weapon Amp description that it is not compatible with any spell shape which combines it with another strike/attack. That would make it become ineligible for the a spell to be used in its Amped form for either the Magus or the Arcane Archer. Would that really solve the problem? Or are there other Amp spells that are likewise problematic?

I kind of hate to make Amps be a spellshape and have them be incompatible with any spellshape, because I could imagine justification for allowing a reach, widen, or conceal spellshapes for to work if they get the ability, and cutting off all such options may be over-reacting.

No, a psychic taking magus is not broken because they max out at Expert weapons and can do on spellstrike per minute. I did this and let's say it wasn't nearly as good as the magus taking psychic.

Magus is the king of using attack cantrips for damage. That's their niche.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I haven't had to fix too much in PF2. But I do have a handful of house rules that fix some abilities. We did the same fix with Nimble Dodge as Ectar.

The character Roshan, who uses Assurance, also learned Nimble Dodge. I posted in our Discord group asking whether we should use Ectar's houserule. She replied, "We've already been doing it that way."

Roshan's player is my elder daughter and has played in my Pathfinder games since I began gamemastering in 2011, until she moved to Seattle. She rejoined my Pathfinder games when we went online in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I guess I lost track of my houserule decisions over the 6 years since we began playing Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

We were already doing it too. Just seemed the right way to to run it. Then someone on the forums pointed out that was the wrong way to run it, so I wrote it fit the way we were already running it.

It just seems like a more worthwhile ability if the player has an idea of when it will work given all the competing reactions. It doesn't feel great to use your reaction and have it fail to help at all.

I usually fix the items as I GM/DM the most. I mostly focus on fixing things that players want to use after seeing how it works in play.

I haven't had to fix too much in PF2. But I do have a handful of house rules that fix some abilities. We did the same fix with Nimble Dodge as Ectar.

Problem is imaginary weapon is perfectly fine for the psychic. It is perfectly fine for every other class. The only class it breaks is the magus or maybe Eldritch Archer. The only real fix it needs is to close the ability to use it with spellstrike.

Apart from the awesome theme, what does metal give you ?

I'm still torn myself between fire/earth and fire/wood.

In both cases, most of my damage will come from my fire aura and fire impulses, so the secondary element is more for defense and utility.

Fire/earth gives me:
- Armor in earth, so if I compare with wood armor, I get +1 AC, bulwark and DR 3 slashing
- Maybe lava leap, though I'm not a big fan
- Spike Skin
- Rattle the earth

Fire/wood gives me:
- Fresh Produce or dash of herbs for downtime reduction and emergencies
- Timber sentinel in a pinch
- Wooden Palissade as a nice wall
- I'm also a big fan of sanguivolent roots, especially in small areas

So basically earth/fire is more tanky and gets earthquake while wood/fire has some healing and utility.

It's mostly for the theme. I know I talk about optimization, but sometimes I make characters for the fun of it. Once you reach our level of experience, you can make almost anything work fairly well, especially in PF2.

One of the best abilities for metal is at higher level where you can pick up Ferrous Form at will. Acts like body armor and powerful resistance for a lot of stuff, but at the expense of not being healed.

You can also pick up metal and electricity immunity along with fire and cold from the fire line. So you end up at level 17 with immunity to fire, cold, electricity, and metal. That's a lot of AOE spells that can do nothing to you. Then toss on Ferrous Form and you become immune to void and positive along with poison and other conditions.

So at high level when I metal up the skeleton, he'll have a lot of hit points with physical damage resistance and immunity to a bunch of commonly used direct damage spells and attacks.

Monk can be frontliner with a shield. I like to take Champion Archetype on monk to make a frontline monk as well.

Can you take a rare background like Amnesiac? That might help you get one more ability increase and a kind DM will allow you to spend it where you need it.

I'm doing a fire and metal kineticist with an oracle of fire build as well in a Blood Lords campaign. He's a skeleton. It's my Ghost Rider build. It's not purely optimal, but it is sure fun.

The incendiary aura with Thermal Nimbus is brutal. Massive passive damage to anything that burns.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Give me an example of a battle where this is useful past level 14. During the actual battle that doesn't interfere with your other party members hammering the creature.

This is all theoretical. Give me an application for wall of stone in a battle with creatures past level 14 and the higher level game I play with.

For me a wall of force or a wall is mostly used to divide a group during the battle once we draw them to a location where we can split them due to limitations on the room size or some other terrain factor. The creature we use it against must be strong enough when striking that forcing them into a piecemeal situation is necessary.

If we can just nuke hammer a group of mooks, then we do that without using the wall. A chain lightning at high level with double damage on a fail once you've reached Master casting or higher with an Apex item is going to nuke hammer really hard. Then your martials are going to focus on clean up duty taking out the weakest targets fast.

If you have a high AC martial like a champion or monk or a control martial, they are going to control the targets as they rush. Their AC will be sufficiently high that the enemy will miss a great deal.

What you do not want to do is impede your other party members from doing their schtick. High level PCs like barbs or fighters or other casters are going to want to hammer the entire group, so they don't want the group impeded from the AOE damage hammer.

So if you want to slow the enemy's action economy, you use a mass slow as this impedes actions while not impeding your PCs from hitting them with AOE.

If you impede line of sight for the enemy, you do so for your own party as well.

I'm wondering why in these examples, there seems to be no regard for the power of your other party members and what they're doing. So what are they doing when you are shaping these walls and using wall of stone at high level? Is the wall even necessary? Is it really doing anything or slowing the other PCs from

...

I should be more concise. I write these posts in a 30 seconds to a minute. I type very fast. Sometimes I should edit better.

If you stop selling stuff that isn't as good as you're making it out to be, I wouldn't even respond to these posts. It's as though someone disagrees, then has to oversell their point. I made it clear wall of stone is useful within that 9 to 13 range due to damage scaling that makes the wall still fairly viable in that range. Suddenly the wall of stone discussion had a few selling it like it's the greatest wall ever and a "GOAT" spell.

I don't know how to explain to people that are selling me something I've already tested. High level monsters hit like trucks. Walls of Stone are nothing to them, not even high level mooks. The way hardness and hit points work against aggregate damage means they barely survive a few attacks against high level enemies.

I have 8 or more level 17 to 20 characters. Mainly I play casters. I know the high level spell game very well. Only caster classes I haven't played to level 17 plus is the wizard, witch, and animist (I have one slotted to run up soon). Sorc, cleric, druid, bard, oracle, kineticist, magus, summoner I've played to level 17 plus and ran many casters to that level or higher.

Same as Teridax way overselling the animist.

I don't see how saying wall of stone is good in the 9 to 13 range is a problem for some that want it to be good in the 14 to 20 range for some reason. You have higher level spells and better options at those levels.

I'll leave it there. I do tend to get too OCD on debates if I don't cut myself off.

Teridax wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Give me an example of a battle where this is useful past level 14. During the actual battle that doesn't interfere with your other party members hammering the creature.

I can't speak on AestheticDialectic's behalf, but I'll point out two problems I'm seeing with this sentence: the first is that the whole point of wall spells is generally that your party won't be hammering some of the creatures. As you yourself mention, wall spells are great because they let you split up groups of enemies, isolating some of them and forcing them to waste actions breaking the wall while your party focuses on whoever's left exposed. They're strong for pretty much the same reason quandary is strong: you effectively apply the effect you want immediately, no rolling needed, and any actions the enemy spends on dealing with the spell after that is a win. The second, much simpler problem is that if hammering the monsters through raw damage, especially just a single nuke spell, is all your party needs to do to win encounters, then chances are the encounters you're facing aren't challenging enough for utility or backup options to really matter. Nothing wrong with easy encounters, but it does change the nature of a discussion around strategic options, not that wall spells are necessarily the most topical subject in a thread about the Animist.

It’s literally just defeat in detail, this s@#! is in the art of war. Strike the enemy while their forces are divided and all of your strength obliterates part of theirs, and then go on to the next part. Old as dirt. Don’t understand why Devarin doesn’t appreciate that.

PF2 is not The Art of War. It has its own optimal way to do things and damage scaling.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I wouldn't matter if you did that anyway. Look at that. It's made with the assumption that the enemy wouldn't just break down a wall at a time until getting to the last one, then busting it down once they are all ready to engage. Then your party has to what? Go into the wall maze to get to the enemy?

If you did that, why couldn't an enemy just wait for you on the other side using your wall against you if you tried to set it up in that complicated a fashion? If you tried to cast it on a group in movement, they would have to position perfectly for you to bend the wall in that fashion?

If you cast it in advance, it just creates cover points where the enemy can bust it slowly while your buffs tick down and your party can't do much unless they go into the maze.

It's not good use of a wall anyway unless the DM just keeps making the enemy run forward through the wall coming out piecemeal like its a hallway. High level enemies as far as I'm concerned would just bust it down piecemeal until they got to the last wall, Then prep behind it to bust the last wall then attack as a group or pull back into their room and wait for you if you need to advance anyway.

That's the plan with wall of stone. Not a great plan in a group game.

You can use all kind of different configurations under different circumstances with different effects for different reasons. It can be shaped in any way possible within the grid. You can make a perfect 5x5 box with an enemy in it you just can't intersect 10x10 for instance through an enemy or object. What you do here is shape it so they have to break more than one layer forcing 2-3 actions at minimum and putting it in such a way some enemies are out. You force one or more which are more of an issue to deal with the wall while you deal with others just as you would with wall of force, but in this case you can mold it to the place you are in and create more layers to get more wasted actions. Likewise teleportation with wall of force is trivial, one layer...

Give me an example of a battle where this is useful past level 14. During the actual battle that doesn't interfere with your other party members hammering the creature.

This is all theoretical. Give me an application for wall of stone in a battle with creatures past level 14 and the higher level game I play with.

For me a wall of force or a wall is mostly used to divide a group during the battle once we draw them to a location where we can split them due to limitations on the room size or some other terrain factor. The creature we use it against must be strong enough when striking that forcing them into a piecemeal situation is necessary.

If we can just nuke hammer a group of mooks, then we do that without using the wall. A chain lightning at high level with double damage on a fail once you've reached Master casting or higher with an Apex item is going to nuke hammer really hard. Then your martials are going to focus on clean up duty taking out the weakest targets fast.

If you have a high AC martial like a champion or monk or a control martial, they are going to control the targets as they rush. Their AC will be sufficiently high that the enemy will miss a great deal.

What you do not want to do is impede your other party members from doing their schtick. High level PCs like barbs or fighters or other casters are going to want to hammer the entire group, so they don't want the group impeded from the AOE damage hammer.

So if you want to slow the enemy's action economy, you use a mass slow as this impedes actions while not impeding your PCs from hitting them with AOE.

If you impede line of sight for the enemy, you do so for your own party as well.

I'm wondering why in these examples, there seems to be no regard for the power of your other party members and what they're doing. So what are they doing when you are shaping these walls and using wall of stone at high level? Is the wall even necessary? Is it really doing anything or slowing the other PCs from killing the creature or dropping AOE?

At high level, we usually have a fast moving martial like a monk or another martial with a racial and general feat to improve movement with an item to improve movement, then they fly up and trip the target out of the air with high athletics. If there are multiple fliers, we blast them down. If we're high enough level, we're using Falling Sky to bring them down in a coordinated fashion.

I'm trying to understand what you are fighting at high level where this tactic is useful. What the rest of your group is doing. Why you are setting this up and what's strong enough to force this set up.

My group does use walls, but generally only if required and the wall needs to be strong enough to prevent the enemy from breaking it quickly. It's not a great action user. It's better to drop a high level slow on a group to keep the action economy across multiple rounds, not put some monster in a position to break walls down while impeding your party.

You're theory crafting right now. Show me the fight that you're using this on. I'll see how we would handle it. Right now, all this stuff you're theorizing about at the high levels is not what we do. We don't want enemies taking time busting walls. We want them grouped and able to receive the nuke/AOE hammer.

Our defense are already strong with level 4 invis pre-cast. At very high level, we walk around with hidden mind active countering detection. We don't need walls as the nuke hammer at high levels decimates mook groups real, real fast.

Set the scene. Show me what you're fighting to use this tactic past level 14 or 15.

ScooterScoots wrote:

Of course it’s possible to layer, you just do something like this:

https://imgur.com/a/9saOdMb

Where red is dungeon walls and purple is the wall of stone. You can also do it without the dungeon walls but not as many layers, and not as well spaced such that the enemy has to step inbetween breaking wall segments.

(Apologies for the terrible art, did this on my phone)

I meant in a one square hallway being able to layer without gaps, I don't think it is possible

I wouldn't matter if you did that anyway. Look at that. It's made with the assumption that the enemy wouldn't just break down a wall at a time until getting to the last one, then busting it down once they are all ready to engage. Then your party has to what? Go into the wall maze to get to the enemy?

If you did that, why couldn't an enemy just wait for you on the other side using your wall against you if you tried to set it up in that complicated a fashion? If you tried to cast it on a group in movement, they would have to position perfectly for you to bend the wall in that fashion?

If you cast it in advance, it just creates cover points where the enemy can bust it slowly while your buffs tick down and your party can't do much unless they go into the maze.

It's not good use of a wall anyway unless the DM just keeps making the enemy run forward through the wall coming out piecemeal like its a hallway. High level enemies as far as I'm concerned would just bust it down piecemeal until they got to the last wall, Then prep behind it to bust the last wall then attack as a group or pull back into their room and wait for you if you need to advance anyway.

That's the plan with wall of stone. Not a great plan in a group game.

You're going to have to build the culture of a given area of the world or creatures on a case by case basis in PF2.

AestheticDialectic wrote:

Sir, it's 120 feet of shapeable 10 foot sections. That's up to 12 sections enemies would have to break to get through. It doesn't matter if it can be broken in one hit. Wall of force is always one shape and the whole thing breaks when its HP is drained. You don't have to look at Wall of Stone only in such a linear fashion. It has endless possibilities of arrangements for sectioning off enemies and wasting actions, not to mention the difficult terrain. If an enemy waits for you to break it, don't cave in the stalemate. Force them to act, use the time to position yourself and do what you would do when you throw a dude into a quandary

But the game isn't only combat either, you can do so many things with wall of stone that you cannot do with wall of force. You can't even make a dome like 5e. It certainly is more sturdy, but outside of holding ghosts it's hard to find such a limited design as useful

And wall of stone works better than force for fliers because you can angle it. That's all. It depends a little on interpretation but raw seems to allow you to connect two angled walls to trap smaller flying enemies maybe. I just didn't know why they thought wall of force did anything to fliers

Actually it's shapeable on a per 5ft basis ("placing each 5 feet of the wall"). For some reason the damage is tracked in 10ft panels though. But anyways, my point exactly: You control how the wall is shaped, curving it around enemies and layering it as you wish.

I've gotten so much mileage out of this thing. You can take an extreme+ horde of monsters and make them trickle in like a wave encounter. Who gives a s+@$ if they hide behind the wall, that just means we have more time to kill their buddies. Any and all chokepoints can be controlled and if there aren't any on the map you can make your own and park a martial right in the only entrance.

As for wall of force and fliers, that's just cause wall of force can be off the ground and wall of stone can't. The angle thing doesn't...

I haven't needed wall of stone past the levels I stated. Not sure what mooks you're fighting that somehow get slowed down by your wall of stone maze. That wouldn't work very well for our games.

We kill mooks very, very fast. We don't want them coming through slowly because we draw large groups of mooks in at high level and nuke them to nothing. If they're spread out behind a wall of stone, then they aren't well grouped for the nuke hammer.

If you're playing some level 9 to 13 range game, then wall of stone is useful. For higher level games past level 13 where you can start dropping chain lightnings and eclipse bursts, you don't want to some wall interfering with the nuke hammer.

Thus we don't need wall of stone to do what you're doing. We either use the actual dungeon walls in a dungeon or structure to narrow the battle and if outside, we long range nuke hammer groups. We use the distance they have to cover to get to as action problems, then whatever survives the nuke hammer we clean up.

If you have fun creating little stone wall mazes to slow down groups that you can't nuke or cut down, then have at it. We do not find it necessary.

1. Do you like the current animist class overall?

Not sure. It's a very messy class with very narrow builds. As a power gamer, I don't like that any practice but Liturgist feels bad and makes the class feel weak.

The sustain on vessel spells, the core feature of the class, is problematic without Liturgist. It makes the animist weak and practically unplayable in the type of games I play where we do care how we perform compared to other classes. I would prefer all the practices be competitive options.

They need to fix the sustain of the vessel spell so that Liturgist is not the only viable path for playable vessel spells.

2. Do you think it is too powerful?

I think Apparition's Quickening is too powerful for blaster builds. Quicken up to 3 times per day at max level is really strong.

Maybe Forest's Heart, but at 16th level everyone is getting powerful. The best part of Forest Heart is the 30 foot reach and how it interacts when I take Rogue Archetype and Gang Up giving everyone off-guard within 30 feet as a passive ability while I still cast spells. But you can't use Channeler's Stance when using Forest's Heart, so a bit of a tradeoff.

I think the Liturgist sustain makes the class playable. Without the Liturgist sustain, the class is bad and underperforming. That one practice is necessary to make the animist playable, not overpowered. If you take Medium or any other practice, the animist goes from "That looks too strong" to this class is pathetic and action starved having to sustain its vessel spell, move, and try to do something else.

3. Do you think it is too complicated? It isn't for me. I think it is too clunky for my tastes and the ability to change apparitions makes it feel to flexible to feel like a class that you can make different unique builds with. You play one animist, you can access every apparition. So you don't feel any sense of attachment to a spirit. You're just the guy who changes the same spirits as every single other animist in existence.

There is no unique animist that is aligned with some powerful spirit that defines their relationship to the spirit world. Every single animist in the game whether a PC or NPC can all access the same group of spirits with some preparation.

I would have preferred a more unique feeling animist. When you align with the battle spirits, you stand out as a battle animist focused on spirits of war. But that is not how it works. You can switch it up with some prep and be battle guy one day or one battle, then fire blaster, then water spirit guy, and so on all on the same character like every other animist in existence.

The animist is probably the least unique class in the game. If you want to play a powerful animist, you just take Liturgist and then whatever the best apparitions are for a given task. Then repeat it over and over again with almost no growth or unique build options.

It's a messy class with some good ideas that could use another pass or two to make it feel like a unique, interesting class with multiple playable builds.

To some degree as a personality type forums likes these attract and mostly retain people who have a tendency towards tunnel vision, and probably most especially people who try very hard to compensate for such rigid tendencies which can make them negativistic to seeing this trait in others. I would definitely say this problem exists across the board on both sides of the argument. I think if I tested most users on these forums with a block design test they would mostly score at or above their intelligence-sans personality, which typically indicates this kind of details oriented way of doing things that can have black and white thinking, tunnel vision and obliviousness. It does have the upside of a better understanding of part-whole relationships and deductive reasoning skills, as well as a better ability to quickly pick up mechanical procedural skills. This test is also used in autism evaluations but being good at it doesn't mean you have autism

This is kind of an aside, but I do think we should have patience for this behavior because it's likely to be very common here as I think a game like this and this social format will attract more of this kind of person

At the end of the day one thing I agree with Unicore about is that I don't think there is a hell of a lot they can do to fix these issues. She may disagree with me about the class being the strongest, but the degree is not like one might expect in a different game where the performance is so above and beyond it breaks the fundamentals and is impossible to balance around. The animist mostly is an issue for me because I think it sets a bad precedent going forward and also exacerbates some of what I don't like about the design of the spell lists as they exist presently. Unfortunately this is just endemic of the system and can't be changed until a new addition. "It is what it is". They can also be functionally a resourceless caster but that's not necessarily bad...

I think that time will validate and vindicate my stance as more people have more time...

What do you mean? The Remaster made the divine list a top list or at least near the top. It was almost immediately noted when the alignment damage was shifted to spirit. It became much better for general blasting.

I personally think the lists are pretty comparable myself. My main disagreement was many people claiming the Arcane list was the best list by virtue of number of spells. That's a bad way to judge a spell list in this new era of highly limited spell slots. If you have healing covered, then arcane list can work well enough. I prefer the other lists because I can build combat healing into a character next to blasting and other offensive spells.

Divine list still lacks slow, one of the best spells in PF2. Which to me makes primal still slightly better. But really that's very slightly as you can acquire slow in other ways like a cleric from a deity or an oracle from the ability to choose a spell from another list.

Cleric, animist, and oracle all lack Effortless concentration. That makes them slightly weaker as even with Elf Step, sustaining as a free action at the start of your turn is more action efficient than Elf Step and can keep you farther from the battle.

ScooterScoots wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Fights are fast. Everyone in the group has more powerful abilities at higher level. Not sure why you're wasting 3 actions to cast wall of stone when you have other things to do with higher level slots in the short battles.

If things are too weak, then you won't need wall of stone to deal with them. If things are strong, then wall of force is better.

You want to keep things as simple and focused as possible using your best tools at the best time.

Wall of Stone was great at lower level. Now wall of force works better. Use your fifth level slots for a howling blizzard or fireball in an easy fight to do some damage with lower level slots while saving the higher level slots for the hard fights.

I think I would much rather have a wall of stone prepped than a fireball that’s multiple ranks removed from my highest level slots. That’s a terrible use of blasting, if a fight was so easy an under-heightened *fireball* made a significant impact, I could probably have just not used a slot and if I still had to I’d do much better with a rank five command or rank six slow. Or a wall of stone that’s sapping multiple actions. And, importantly, all those preps are still good if I need the slots for something difficult. Under-heightened fireball is not going to help me in a serious fight.

As for wall of force vs wall of stone, I love me a good wall of force but for pure action denial wall of stone wins that easily. They’re going to have to bust through multiple layers, and they can’t walk around it. Really you should prep both, wall of force is great for fliers and as a wall you can put any angle (sometimes relevant), but for grounded enemies wall of stone is the all time GOAT of wall spells.

I don't see what wall of force does that wall of stone doesn't when it comes to fliers. I think the fact you can angle and shape wall of stone makes it the clear winner. Wall of force is always a straight line which is a massive downside

All this does is show me that some people just don't play this game at a very high level. Wall of Stone gets wasted by the mooks I play against.

Most of the time you use wall of force to divide groups. You use it strategically. You want it to last against the damage the enemy is doing, which is why it is better.

Walls aren't very useful against fliers anyway if there is room for them to fly around it. So not sure you think of wall of stone works better.

Teleporters bypass walls easily as well.

There are certain strategic requirements of use of walls. They are not used casually or in a vacuum. They are used strategically, mostly to divide battlefields to piecemeal a strong group of creatures.

You don't want them to interfere with your group's actions or to be used strategically by the enemy like thinking they will just keep coming and use their actions to bash the wall down when they can very easily let your group do it if you cut yourself off from them by putting it up too soon or in a place that they can use to their advantage.

I don't waste my time on wall of stone past around level 13 like I stated. If you want to spend your time thinking wall of stone is great because you can't find a better use for your actions or higher level spell slots, have at it.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Fights are fast. Everyone in the group has more powerful abilities at higher level. Not sure why you're wasting 3 actions to cast wall of stone when you have other things to do with higher level slots in the short battles.

If things are too weak, then you won't need wall of stone to deal with them. If things are strong, then wall of force is better.

You want to keep things as simple and focused as possible using your best tools at the best time.

Wall of Stone was great at lower level. Now wall of force works better. Use your fifth level slots for a howling blizzard or fireball in an easy fight to do some damage with lower level slots while saving the higher level slots for the hard fights.

I think I would much rather have a wall of stone prepped than a fireball that’s multiple ranks removed from my highest level slots. That’s a terrible use of blasting, if a fight was so easy an under-heightened *fireball* made a significant impact, I could probably have just not used a slot and if I still had to I’d do much better with a rank five command or rank six slow. Or a wall of stone that’s sapping multiple actions. And, importantly, all those preps are still good if I need the slots for something difficult. Under-heightened fireball is not going to help me in a serious fight.

As for wall of force vs wall of stone, I love me a good wall of force but for pure action denial wall of stone wins that easily. They’re going to have to bust through multiple layers, and they can’t walk around it. Really you should prep both, wall of force is great for fliers and as a wall you can put any angle (sometimes relevant), but for grounded enemies wall of stone is the all time GOAT of wall spells.

No one in my group slots wall of stone past the levels I stated. The fifth level direct damage spell is something we would use in a fight just to toss a spell we didn't need due to boredom. The wall of stone would do nothing.

You have so many slots at high level, there is zero need to waste time on a wall of stone. Just use a slow spell on single target and AOE slow on groups for action denial. It works much better and doesn't interfere with your party's actions.

You gotta sell this idea that isn't necessary about wall of stone for some reason. No idea why. We don't use it. We don't need it. It isn't anywhere near a "GOAT" spell for action denial. It's just a wall that gets too weak at higher level.

Walls are used for specific strategic purposes to divide battles if the group is too large. That's it. Action denial is done with slow spells and trips or something similar roaring applause.

Is it just me, or does this thread largely feel like the same points have been getting repeated for like 4 pages?

No. You're right. That's where nearly every thread leads that is any length.

If the animist is over-powered or whatever people want to claim, it will show up at tables. For me, it isn't. I think the class is fine, but not particularly interesting. It's a class they tried to put too much into it and made it an unfocused class with a messy play-style.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

AestheticDialectic wrote:

This misses the forest for the trees a bit. The Bard I would argue hasn't been exceptional for some time now. While yes familiars can be vulnerable this in actual play can be worked around and sometimes done so through the very means that makes this good depending on what you're up against. Maintaining any debuff on any enemy simply because they didn't critically succeed a save is so backbreaking that the fiddly aspect is well and truly worth it, especially when that debilitation shuts down the ability to do the kinds of attacks you listed

Not sure what you mean by this. Lingering Song is still effective. The True Target combined with Synesthesia is still brutal.

I'm not sure why you value the condition extending of the witch familiar ability so highly given if a synesthesia or other debuff hits, it lasts for a minute, no extending required.

I can see the value if the extending is required, but I don't see the value if the spell lands.

Bard is still very, very strong. Their ability to group buff and combine songs that automatically work is nice.

Quote:

I don't get the impression that Deriven and his play group value area denial and other forms of battlefield control outside of direct forms like Quandary that 'just work', or at least I got this impression when Wall of Stone was categorized as utility by him some time back during a debate about wizards. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way they construct their groups, and what the encounters they run are like, don't require or don't engender play that makes this sort of tactic necessary/optimal

We do like walls against groups, mostly wall of force at high level. At lower level a wall of stone can work too. It depends on the damage cut off for bashing the hardness.

Wall of stone in the 9 to 13 range is effective. Once the monsters reach the next damage increase.

I'm sure you seen the way monsters increase damage and spells increase in

...

Fights are fast. Everyone in the group has more powerful abilities at higher level. Not sure why you're wasting 3 actions to cast wall of stone when you have other things to do with higher level slots in the short battles.

If things are too weak, then you won't need wall of stone to deal with them. If things are strong, then wall of force is better.

You want to keep things as simple and focused as possible using your best tools at the best time.

Wall of Stone was great at lower level. Now wall of force works better. Use your fifth level slots for a howling blizzard or fireball in an easy fight to do some damage with lower level slots while saving the higher level slots for the hard fights.

Personally, I think only Apparition's Quickening could use a look as that does exceed what every other caster can do. To give one caster three quickens per day versus one for every other caster seems imbalanced.

Sustain spells aren't that good no matter how many people on this thread claim they are. I play a lot of high level casters. There are way better spells than the ones people are posting to use for the double sustain that do direct damage or have other effects. They post these spells like we're all supposed to go, "Oooohhh, so strong." Yet I'd rather use Eclipse Burst and cast a Phantom Orchestra to sustain, one of the few spells worth a cast and sustain action.

I'd much rather have a real martial than a pretend martial that needs a spell for regular hits and doesn't have any feats that really let them do more powerful martial abilities. And that has to elf step all the time to keep their schtick going when we might need someone that will Sudden Charge or fly after some enemy in the air that is moving very fast.

The animist isn't breaking my games even when power gamers make them. All the stuff Teridax posts is nothing that would work very well in our games. All of it completely ignores distance when engagement starts and everything else well built martials and casters can do as well as general battle movements and anything the enemy can do.

Even yesterday we were fighting a creature with a 20 foot reach whip that could grapple easily and move targets around the battlefield with the whip. It had a powerful fire aura. And some crazy mobility and AOE spells it could drop at range. Against such an enemy, I'd love to see the Elf Step strategy while this creature is moving 80 feet plus a round with dimension door all the time.

And it was immune to fire. So fire wasn't going to work so great against it. How diverse are the animists damage spells? Not so diverse from what I've seen.

Teridax wrote:

I'll also bring up how this is one example of spells at the Animist's disposal that target Reflex saves: as we all know, being able to target all three saves is quite a big plus, and this is something the Animist can do far more easily than any other divine caster thanks to their apparition and vessel spells. The divine list naturally targets Fortitude and Will quite well, but isn't quite so good with Reflex saves for the most part. Having access to many more Reflex save spells rounds this out nicely, and once more adds to the class's adaptability. By contrast, one of the Elemental Sorcerer's weaknesses that doesn't get brought up much in these discussions is that they're overly reliant on Reflex saves for blasting, and struggle quite significantly against enemies strong in those saves. Thus, whether the Animist is blasting or debuffing, they can adapt their spells to an enemy's saves far better than most other classes.

The fact the animist can so easy cross-list is a big deal, yeah. My Animist player complained about the lack of Reflex targeting spells, then I just pointed them at the vessel they forgot existed. Done. Which caster can just do that?

What do you mean? Every caster can do this. Some do it better than others. The arcane list is very good at targeting all three saves. Every list targets at least two with a splattering of the third.

The four saving throw effects is often more important than the save for effectiveness. So rating what spell to use depends on more than just the defense against it.

This misses the forest for the trees a bit. The Bard I would argue hasn't been exceptional for some time now. While yes familiars can be vulnerable this in actual play can be worked around and sometimes done so through the very means that makes this good depending on what you're up against. Maintaining any debuff on any enemy simply because they didn't critically succeed a save is so backbreaking that the fiddly aspect is well and truly worth it, especially when that debilitation shuts down the ability to do the kinds of attacks you listed

Not sure what you mean by this. Lingering Song is still effective. The True Target combined with Synesthesia is still brutal.

I'm not sure why you value the condition extending of the witch familiar ability so highly given if a synesthesia or other debuff hits, it lasts for a minute, no extending required.

I can see the value if the extending is required, but I don't see the value if the spell lands.

Bard is still very, very strong. Their ability to group buff and combine songs that automatically work is nice.

I don't get the impression that Deriven and his play group value area denial and other forms of battlefield control outside of direct forms like Quandary that 'just work', or at least I got this impression when Wall of Stone was categorized as utility by him some time back during a debate about wizards. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way they construct their groups, and what the encounters they run are like, don't require or don't engender play that makes this sort of tactic necessary/optimal

We do like walls against groups, mostly wall of force at high level. At lower level a wall of stone can work too. It depends on the damage cut off for bashing the hardness.

Wall of stone in the 9 to 13 range is effective. Once the monsters reach the next damage increase.

I'm sure you seen the way monsters increase damage and spells increase in effectiveness. Which wall to use depends on damage and effectiveness scaling.

A wall of stone is only good for so long before they can be bashed down too easily by high level monsters. Against monsters that they are built to be effective against, they work. We use wall of stone in the 9 to 13 range. Then move up to wall of force as it scales for the higher level monsters to not be able to bash it down so easily.

I did some more looking at Hungry Depths. The radius is not bad, but it's a 3 action cast spell. With a 9th level slot, it does 5d8 and 5d4 cold. I imagine Teridax is using Apparition's Quickening to cast a 3 action spell in the same round he is casting Earth's Bile.

A level 9 chain lightening does 11d12 damage.

A level 9 eclipse burst 10d10 and 10d4 damage with a possible blind.

So for he Hungry depths to match the direct damage it must be sustained for 2 rounds. Not bad, but also not always necessary. It must be a big enough area to hit everyone with the initial 5 foot burst.

So this whole set up will depend on the spread of the enemies.

Any caster can do this set up with Effortless Concentration at that level. Still not sure why someone would want to spend a level 9 slot on that when you can do the damage for 2 actions and not be forced into a sustain spell.

I imagine there may be a situation where Hungry Depths might be good. I don't take this spell. I generally have better uses for level 9 slots.

So the exchange for Hungry Depths versus a direct damage is 2 rounds of sustain within the given area within the 10 foot move in a line it can do on the sustain with a 3 action cast which would normally require Apparition's Quickening to use with Earth's Bile.

Which once again comes back to what I'm talking about. You used a bunch of resources to set up a sustain spell that may or may not be useful in the given situation.

It may have just been better to use the level 9 slot to hit the group or boss with direct damage up front and then move on other spells with more flexibility capabilities.

Just looked at Hungry depths. Not very good for a group fight. Now I know why I don't know it very well. I would not use it as it leads to problems for group set up and movement. Not something I would cast as it would interfere with how the group operates. Need very tight area to use a sustain damage spell against groups.

Sure thing:

Turn 1: Cycle of Souls -> Channeler's Stance -> earth's bile -> Apparition's Quickening -> 9th-rank hungry depths.
Turn 2: Elf Step (Sustaining earth's bile and hungry depths) -> 8th-rank invoke spirits from your apparition slots.
Turn 3: Elf Step (Sustaining two vessel/apparition spells) -> Maneuvering Spell (Sustaining the third spell) -> execute.

Check the damage of this against a comparable well built martial or caster at that level.

You will find this isn't very impressive.

In my groups, by round three everything is usually nearly dead. This combination would be viewed as weak compared to direct damage spells or casting a group slow[/b] or debuff to set up the martials for a harder hammer.

This is an example of what I was talking about where a player like Teridax to impress new, inexperienced players tries something like this to make the new players go, "Oooh, how did you do that" whereas experienced players would have already softened the targets at range with longer range AOE spells than [i]earth's bile, not being having weak save casters Elf Stepping within 30 feet of the big nasty with auras and gazes and AOE abilities themselves hammering the party, and taking down the enemy faster and more efficiently than this combo which Teridax seems to think just works with no opposition, moved into perfect position with no rounds spend closing the distance to get within 30 feet of the target, and no one else in the party built very well or doing anything to hit them from farther away while his animist moves into 30 foot range and somehow executes all of this by round 3.

Not how my groups work. Just getting into position to start all of this would take some time, but Teridax ignores things like movement, target changing, enemy abilities that can hammer you within 30 feet, or enemy mobility or movement that can outrun their abilities.

All of which get used in fights I'm in.

He's just making up this ideal series of actions that looks great on paper, but would take more to set up in play, especially with other group members doing activities from farther away to open the battle.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I'm a power gamer that plays with mostly power gamers. I'm telling you from that perspective that it doesn't look very broken to me except Apparition Quickening which you still have to plan for. That is the one feat that is a bit broken as Quickening multiple times per day is pretty strong.

I mostly just want to clarify that I think it is the best class in the game, not that it is broken, or overpowered as one might think of it. I think it is problematic design, but it won't necessarily ruin people's games if you have a socially conscious player at the helm. I think the resentment witch for example is both the best debuffer and the best occult caster in the game atm, and I while don't think an animist is *quite on that level* I do think it makes a convincing doppelganger but is simultaneously able to pivot out of that easily and do someone else's schtick to similar degree of competency.

You talk about how some of the heights of power come from picking things like elf step, but this is the kind of thing that really makes this bothersome. Regardless of whether people purposefully play suboptimally or not, that potential exists

Edit for some clarity and spelling errors

I can't say as I agree. I think the animist is a narrow power class with some very specific paths for performance, otherwise it underperforms.

I think the bard is still the best occult caster. I think the resentment witch is good, but their familar has to get too close to the battle. At the levels I play a lot at, familiars are going to have trouble making their saves to survive all that AOE stuff from high level enemies with gazes, auras, and the like.

There is reason I harp on distance. The high level stuff has so much nasty passive stuff that hammers groups or AOE attack or blasting capabilities. Then there is also the crazy mobility of higher level creatures. It's rough on things on animal companions, familiars, or soft target casters that get too close.

If you take away a feat like Apparition's Quickening away, they really lose a lot of their luster.

PF2 is a very fast game. I do not find sustain spells to be very powerful compared to an equivalent direct damage spell. It is played in a group setting where you have other well built characters bringing the hammer further increasing the speed a battle ends, which makes sustain spells even less useful.

I don't think worrying about Elf Step is worthwhile. You should be more concerned with Apparition Quickening than Elf Step with Liturgist. You are experienced enough to know that a good direct damage spell is often far, far more useful than a sustain damage spell.

You should be looking at two things with the animist:

1. How well do they deliver direct damage and how often.

2. How fast can they bring to bear martial damage and how good are their saves to stand up to gazes, auras, and the like.

This is the kind of stuff that matters as you level up. It's not just can I do this thing with a reasonable level of competence. It's how fast can can I bring to bear my power in terms of ease of set up and sustain and switching targets.

Having specced and tested the animist, it's ability to do so is not as good as being sold. That's why the animist is not dominating or breaking PF2.