Easl's page

If this was always intended then mid-late game pathfinder as well as early game munchkinism was always intended to melt enemies exceedingly quick provided the right set up. I'm choosing to think that wasn't the case, and if it was, I'm glad the general understanding among us plebs was decidedly NOT that.

It's possible the weakness system was intended but the consequences were not. This could come about if playtesting focused on shorter-run PUGs and games with set characters (like, say, exactly the sort of thing done at Cons), because in those cases the ability for four players to level-up in strategic combination for massive overpower are quite limited. You just wouldn't see the negative consequences of everyone doubling up on fire sources and then the party having some fire-weakness-granting catalyst, because that's not going to happen in a game where four strangers bring uncoordinated characters to the table and they play through a few sessions together. Heck you're probably not even going to see it in many home games, if you have players that care more about their own character concept than putting together the ultimate optimized death squad. But, you have other games (equally legit!) where that optimization does occur and the players like doing it...and it's possible Paizo didn't consider that strongly.

I'm merely hypothesizing, but the point being that the 'many separate instances of damage all trigger the weakness' system could have been planned by Paizo, tested by Paizo, yet because of the way they did their tests, the problems that come with party-scale optimization never surfaced.

Seen more than my share of dev teams that stick to their guns, either in a misguided attempt to save face or out of sheer stubbornness. It's refreshing to see something else for a change.

The change is better than no change.

Yes I have read his posts. All of them. Maybe I am misinterpreting him

You are misinterpreting me.

You spend an action. You roll a hidden roll. If it's DC 20 against Arcana and Crafting and DC 16 against Golem lore (bonus for more specificity), and yet you are untrained in Golem Lore, Trained in Arcana, and Expert in crafting, the GM will compare the roll+bonuses (different in each case) to each DC, and you get the best. If the results would be succeed, fail, crit fail, you do not crit fail AND succeed, nor do you crit fail instead of succeeding, you just succeed.

Note - the above is EXACTLY what some GMs I've played with who use this macro do. Maybe that makes them poor GMs.

That seems to be a table problem. Our GM doesn't do that. For sure, before deciding to use the macro the table should collectively agree on how it's going to work. If that were how the GM was working the macro, then as a player I'd opt instead to just pick a single skill and roll no-macro.

To that GM I would also say - you realize that are interpreting the macro in a way that always leads to untrained RK checks, right? There is always some Lore skill one could make up that would apply to the check (Lore, clay golem!) which nobody has. Does intrepreting the macro to create an "always untrained" situation make any sense?

The trouble is, by saying "Arcana or Crafting" you have pretty-much confirmed it is a Construct,

Our GM trusts us and we are all mature players trying to stay in character and not metagame. We have no issue with the "I want to..." "Okay, roll x or y..." scenario. Sometimes we do that. But it's still nice not to have four players doing "can I..." questions at the same time, and it's nice for the GM not to have to worry about possible unintentional metagaming, and for all of us the macro is just plain faster in most situations anyway.

The one place I'd say it falls down is in edge cases where odd skill use would be relevant. If, say, a player thinks that Thievery should give them some RK check, then you have to do the "can I...because..." conversation, because AIUI the macro only looks at the standard four + lore skills.

Please, though, focus on actually defining the term(s) first. Then give a couple of examples showing the definition and procedure in action.

I will second this approach, but emphasize the value of several examples to show how it works in practice. PF2E has spell effect "add...to damage", it has fundamental and property runes, it has materials, and it has sanctification. If Paizo wants to treat some of these things differently than others, that's fine, but you need to spell it out (the definition) and then show it in action (one or preferably several examples).

Good to hear! Though I am sad that elemental betrayal witch had such a short time in the ranks of the 'strong.' Back to the bottom with you, witch!

The whole controversy seemed like a tempest in a teapot to me. The (now-removed) errata seemed like in would happen in edge cases, requires an uncommonly high degree of coordination between players and foreknowledge of enemies.

The problem is this: other combos require a high degree of tactical coordination, while the un-errata required merely a high degree of build coordination. Much easier to manage over a campaign. Much more dependable when you achieve it. And, IMO, much of a 2-steps-back move for PF2E given that one of it's signature system differences is balanced builds, largely resistant to easter egg building shenanigans, which leads to an emphasis on play choices rather than build choices.

They do. But the Foundry macro in question does NOT follow those rules. If you look at the discussion above, the macro just rolls ALL knowledges and the GM looks at the results. And so many characters will crit fail a lot as they just rolled an untrained skill

The foundry macro does not follow the rules, but you're wrong about the crit fail part. It doesn't take the worst result or all results simultaneously, the point is the GM can then use the best fit lore or skill to the question without the player knowing which one it is. Because again, in real life, I don't access some limited subset of my memory when trying to recall a fact, I access all of it and whichever bit of my background I got the info from, I get it.

So mechanically, if I have Cavern Lore and Nature, and Cavern Lore would be the best fit, we don't get stuck in some kafkaesque conversation where the player goes "I think I'm going to use Nature" and the GM watches the roll and then thinks "ah, if only he'd said cavern lore, he would've made it." That makes no real life sense; if my character knows some things from cavern lore and some things from nature, he knows that combined set of things all the time, for every question. He doesn't just look in his brain at what he learned from nature and ignores what he learned from cavern lore. And the GM shouldn't have to tell or hint to the player which one skill to use because again, your knowledge base in your brain is always the full composite of all your skills.

And while the conversation mechanic is nice, we personally find this much faster. Particularly in our 4 player game in cases where everone has different skills and lores but they all want to make a check. There's no series of "can I..." questions from players eating up time. We roll, he says Bob learns x. If one person succeeds and the other crit fails, Bob learns x but Alice learns y. Done.

I like how you conveniently omitted the rest of the what I've said in favor of mining that above quote:

Teridax wrote:

So yeah, you make a skill check to apply a penalty to saves, as opposed to off-guard requiring positioning. I'd point out that you only need yourself to do Catfolk Dance as opposed to the minimum of two bodies needed for flanking, but you know what: sure, this effect is rarer and less likely to come up than the off-guard condition. Now, please explain to me why this is more difficult than dumping two spells on the Magus so that they have to burn another two spells using at least three actions with several additional actions and checks also getting involved: are you expecting the monsters in the encounter to just sit tight and patiently wait for your party to power up your Magus?

I didn't respond to that because frankly your scenario is so vague that I can't evaluate it. It's so vague I'm not even sure if you're trying to make a point about lowering AC or lowering a save. But really, we can stop here. I'm not interested in 'I can come up with a specific unique scenario where you're point doesn't hold' trades. It's just rock scissors paper logic.

easl wrote:

Good to know. I don't think we have anywhere to go on this point and Magus spellstrike mechanics. We simply disagree here {NB: on whether slow is broken} as a matter of opinion.

And yet here you are, arguing that making those crit failure effects more reliable is broken or somehow problematic. How do you reconcile that with just agreeing to disagree here?

Because to me 'broken' in this case is not a binary state, it's a matter of degree. A powerful effect like slow and crit slow can be fine when it's difficult to pull off but broken if new mechanics make it substantially easier to pull off. So making (some) spell success and crit effects quantitatively easier can, for me, lead to brokenness.

I think slow is problematic irrespective of the Magus,

Good to know. I don't think we have anywhere to go on this point and Magus spellstrike mechanics. We simply disagree here as a matter of opinion.

I'd point out that you only need yourself to do Catfolk Dance as opposed to the minimum of two bodies needed for flanking, but you know what: sure, this effect is rarer and less likely to come up than the off-guard condition.

Thank you for acknowledging the point. That's pretty much it, really: folding the spell success into the strike success would make it easier to land and crit save spells, and at least part of the reason for that is because AC-lowering mechanics are more common and likely to come up than save-lowering ones.

Claxon wrote:

as a GM I like the secret rolls and the misinformation on critical failures.

As a player I hate this with a fiery passion, as a GM I "only" intensely hate it.

It is very un fun and very bad game design

We enjoy it, if only for the comical value of having a PC claim something truly outrageous and we all get the chance to play along. So our arcane expert RK'd the dragon and found out it's a vegetarian. That's good for at least a half hour of ribbing the player who failed while our characters act out believing it.

The point I am making, one that you are continuing to refuse to acknowledge, is that this accuracy increase only exacerbates what already exists: making an unproblematic spell more reliable is fine, making a problematic spell more reliable is not.

I don't think slow is probelmatic within the current system. I do think it would become problematic if a Magus could lower the save chance by lowering AC.

Do you disagree with this? If so, do you disagree because you think slow is already problematic in the current system, or because you don't think it will become problematic if the Magus is allowed to use the strike as the save? Or some other reason?

I'm sorry, succeeding at a contested roll? Are we counting rolling initiative as a factor now?

We are talking about Catfolk dance. The example you cited as a pre-existing way to lower reflex DC. This is your example. It requires a successful Acrobatics roll against opponents' reflex DC, before Reflex debuff is given. In contrast, off-guard is given just for positioning, no roll needed. So if Magus save spellstrike were able to use the strike as the save, it gets much easier for the Magus to crit a ref save spell. I'm not saying it was impossible to debuff the save before - AFAICT, literally nobody is saying that - but I am saying that it would be much easier with that rules change. In this case, it is much easier to debuff by "my adjacent friend steps" than debuff by "my adjacent friend plays a catfolk, then takes a specific feat, then succeeds at an Acrobatics check against the enemies' Ref DC."

the point I want to make about Spellstrike and save spells is that the "shenanigans" you can have with those spells are shenanigans that already exist and occur regularly, as with slow.

We're going in circles now. Nobody disputes that there exists ways to improve the chance of landing or critting slow (& etc). You're arguing a point nobody disagrees with. The point being made here is that a change to the system to allow Magus to land slow (& etc.) with a successful strike vs. AC or get a spell crit using a strike crit greatly increases the range of abilities, debuffs, etc. a PC can bring to bear to help crit or land the spell. Because there are many more ways and more easily accessed ways to lower AC than to lower Saves.

It's not like the Magus can lower the enemies' Ref save by 2 by having any party member of any ancestry, no feat required and no roll required, step to the opposite side of the enemy. Your catfolk counter example requires a specific ancestry, taking a specific feat, and most importantly succeeding at a contested roll to get the same effect. That requires the same positioning but can't be accessed by parties that didn't take that particular ancestry and feat, and because of the roll is not nearly as dependable. Its just not comparable. As a binary yes/no question, does the ability exist? Yes. As a quantitative question, is it as good? No it's not. And that's the issue. Not whether save-lowering abilities already exist, but whether a spellstrike rules change to using the strike roll as the save roll would make save-lowering much easier.

I don't think Spellstrike needs to do anything in particular with saving throws to be better balanced. I think Spellstrike as-is is balanced for the Magus that we have now.

I agree.

If the Magus were to change to accommodate better use of save spells, I believe using the attack roll instead of a save could even be balanced

I still find myself agreeing with Unicore on that; it may be balanced for instant damage save spells, but opens up the door to a lot of "better than a full caster" tricks for control and other effect spells.

***

I ran a bunch of quick and simple calculations, looking at current system expectations vs. different mods: "forced save reroll on a success," "-X to save" where I tested -2 and -4, and "weakness 5/no weakness". For white room purposes, 50% chance to hit and 50% chance to save, with crits on 1 and 20 as per normal except for the "-x" excursion where the chance to crit fail the save goes higher obviously. L1 with d8 weapon and common 2d4 save cantrip damage vs. same weapon used with gouging claw (GC), and L5 2d8 weapon with firebll vs. GC.

Results: Forced reroll and -2 give about a 10% increase in expected damage, -4 gives 20% (no surprise there), and Weakness gives about half the weakness value, which for these levels is much more significant than 10%. GC is clearly better than a save cantrip when there's no weakness, but not better than a save slot spell like fireball and not better than a save cantrip when there's a weakness 5 to consider.

So the bottom line, I think, is that none of these changes would be OP for basic save instant damage spells...but they aren't necessary either. Save spells in the current system become useful when you have a weakness they can exploit or if you're willing to use a slot spell for big damage. Otherwise, AC spells are better because they avoid the "penalty" to expected damage you get from that second roll. That seems perfectly reasonable to me: "sometimes they are a better choice and sometimes they are not" is, IMO, exactly where they should be.

I did not test 'remove the second roll and use the strike as the spell attack roll' because there's no need: for this scenario all you really need to do is compare the dice pools of the different spells. This variation on the rules would not change cantrip use much because GC is already at the top end of cantrip damage. However with slot spells, you could seriously crank up the damage if save spells worked the same way as AC spells do now, because there are a lot more of them that do high damage. And Magus, frankly, doesn't need that sort of buff-up.

So maybe one possible variant that (1) avoids Unicore's concerns, (2) doesn't give an unneeded damage buff to the class, yet (3) makes the class run smoother would be: use the strike as the spell attack roll for all cantrips??? This would probably smooth out play in most encounters since as a wave caster the Magus doesn't have a lot of slots to throw down. But it would avoid shenanigans that could potentially happen with higher ranked spells.

In Foundry you can use a nice macro, that shows the GM all skills and lores of the character with the rolled result.

I would suggest to apply the roll to the skill with the best success chance.

Yes our group uses foundry and we pretty much all agree that this is the way it should be done, even for tabletop games. The player makes one roll: the GM looks across all their relevant skills, and uses the best result. That is both rules-wise faster and simpler, and realism-wise much more reasonable: when you try and recall something, you use all your knowledge at once, (in game mechanics terms: every lore skill in parallel). You don't access different bits of your knowledge in serial.

Lockout in combat makes much less sense, if you’ve got eyes on the guy what makes you unable to see that he’s not very dexterous and should be fireballed just because you previously recalled that he had some special ability?

IMO RK isn't necessary and it's not metagaming if your character can notice some obvious attribute about the enemy and draw conclusions from it (like: "he's lumbering. Use spells they try to dodge.") RK is for the resistances, weaknesses, etc. that aren't obvious. But if some caster switches from EA to Frostbite because they're facing a fire elemental, no GM should require a RK check to justify that or to access the enemies' cold weakness.

Claxon wrote:

What's worse there's even an argument (that I can't say is wrong) that once you've identified a creature, all subsequent uses of that creature would be "immune" to your ability. Like the first skeleton you identify prevents you from ever using it on a skeleton again. Obviously that's a too bad to be true interpretation, but I can't say it's 100% wrong either.

I think it's 100% wrong. You can't know it's the same type of skeleton before you... identify it. It's a litte bit pretending, but really a very little bit.

I think we have to recognize this as a game conceit gimmie intended to smooth and speed up game play. When the GM doesn't let you roll again, she is essentially giving you the free information that all the enemies are of the same type. If she lets you roll, she is likewise giving you the free information that they are different.

I've always thought of the 'no further roll' rule as representing "you have recalled all you can about this thing at this time", not "the enemy has gained a magical immunity to your ability." Most combats are 12-24 in-game seconds long; it seems perfectly reasonable to say that you can try to recall what you know about a beastie, but after your best try, you aren't going to be able to expand on that until you can sit down and think about it in a less hectic and stressful situation. Perhaps "gains immunity from..." was not the best way Paizo could have gotten that concept across.

Easl wrote:

Black cat curse doesn't trivialize encounters because it is a 1/day ability.

This is a lot of different ways to refuse to pertinently answer an argument...That this feat is so not notable as to not even be acknowledged suggests to me that the ability to increase the reliability of save effects is, in and of itself, not broken.

I thought my answer was pretty direct. Black cat doesn't trivialize encounters because it can't be used in most encounters, because it's a 1/day ability. You can't optimize a regular combat rotation or tactic around it. That's part of why it's not broken.

Arguing that an effect would be overpowered if you buffed it too much is self-evident and can be argued for literally anything

The fact that 'less use restrictions makes abilities more powerful' is a general argument that could be said about a lot of things doesn't make it less valid here: it is still a valid point to make about black cat and Magus save spell spellstrikes. Forcing an enemy to reroll a successful save once per day is a lot less of a game-changer for save spells than being able to do it every spellstrike.

I'm arguing that giving the magus an increased ability to land save spells with spellstrike by giving the opponent some constant penalty to save (like some expanded catfolk dance) or forced reroll of a successful save (like some expanded black cat) would likely be overpowered. That's it.

Easl wrote:

You seem to be ignoring that context.

It is you who are presently attempting to shift the goalposts in a manner similar to Unicore by trying to invent contexts that ultimately fail to change the core meaning of what they've said,

What people have discussed in the last 50 or so comments (before the current back and forth) are ways to make Magus save spell spellstrikes less clunky, by folding success into the strike roll, or penalizing the save when the strike is successful or other modifications. I'm responding to those proposals, and pointing out that most of them would be a big buff up, significantly improving the expected damage (to which I'll now add: on a class that really doesn't need a damage increase).

I'd personally like to get back to that discussion, so let's just sort out your current point really fast: I'm not arguing that current enemy save debuffs in use with current save spell spellstrike rules are overpowered. Never tried to argue that, don't believe that. I strongly suspect Unicore doesn't, didn't, and wouldn't argue that either. We are all with you on that point. We all win that argument, since we all agree lol! Now....do you think save spell spellstrike needs to debuff (or outright bypass) the saving throw in order to be better balanced? Do you see a, say, -4 on saves to be OP, to be meh but welcome, or to be badly needed because there's no good reason to spellstrike with save spells without some sort of buff up like that? Or do you have some opinion in between those example positions?

if being able to apply this to saves would be as broken as some here are making it out to be, then options like Black Cat Curse would be known for trivializing encounters...

Black cat curse doesn't trivialize encounters because it is a 1/day ability. If it was able to be used every encounter or every reaction, yeah I think some GMs would consider that OP. It is also, to repeat, a L13 feat, so it's just never going to come up in a L1-10 campaign.

Unicore invited us to imagine how different the game would be if one could apply a -4 to enemy saves

Yes, in the context of "If the Magus had any kind of mechanic that gave an automatic critical fail on a save spell for a critical hit on a spell strike, it would grossly shift the Magus into the ultimate caster in the game. There are way too many spells where being able to manipulate the odds into 20-25+% chance of crit would just obliterate the odds compared to regular casters..."

You seem to be ignoring that context. Agreed, there are plenty of abilities that already lower saves. There are some conditions that already lower both AC and save chance. But even those don't compare to Unicore's context, because having to make one roll to get both weapon+spell damage is significantly better than having to make separate rolls for each. Folding the save roll into the strike would be a significant upgrade for Magus; the fact that both AC debuffs and save debuffs and even the occasional forced reroll already exist, doesn't change that.

Thank you Easl for reminding me that we are essentially discussing a homebrew suggestion, not a thing very likely to happen in game.

For the record, in my opinion having your catfolk friend use 1a to step and cause off-guard is probably better in most cases than having them use 1a to attempt a -2 to reflex save even in the base game, even when the Magus is spellstriking with a reflex spell. In most cases the magus wants to guarantee the hit first.

Now one can imagine a setup where Magus + catfolk friend are facing an enemy with a such a low AC the Magus is not worried about hitting, and such a high Ref save that it presents a real problem. But it seems weird to think that a magus in that situation would choose to spellstrike with a ref spell. If you're in that situation, you are probably still better off having your catfolk friend induce off-guard to crit hunt, and picking a non-ref spell for your spellstrike.

All in all, looks to me like catfolk dance is really at best niche use in combination with a magus. Its nowhere near equivalent to JiCi's suggestion.

I agree with your later comment that allowing the attack roll to count as the save roll for save spells allows in too much cheese. :)

Those 50/50 numbers aren't true.

A character maxed out at a skill rolling a standard difficulty for their level starts at 65/35 (a +7 rolling against DC 15 at level 1) and slowly climbs, to 95% at level 20 if that investment includes an Item bonus (+38 against DC 40) or 80% if it doesn't (+35 against DC 40).

Recall DCs can be very hard when rarity also comes into play. (It's also important to note that there are a lot more factors in setting RK DCs than people point at in these discussions, and it's a very squishy system, but it's true that hard RK DCs come up a lot, even accounting for all of that). But adding inaccurate numbers on top doesn't help.

Unfortunately, Automatic Knowledge is still really bad in spite of that.

Thanks for doing the math. Good to know. The lesson I'd draw from this would be 'GMs, don't make it a hard DC unless you only want top experts to regularly succeed'.

Adjacency is no trouble for a class like an Animist, Druid, or Warpriest, let alone the many martial characters who can use this to support their caster allies,

The adjanceny requirement for catfolk dance, used to lower Ref save in a Homebrew game where the attack roll for Spellstrike counts as the save, renders it lower value because 'magus and catfolk friend' can create an automatic -2 AC by off-guard. Thus for melee Maguses, if you have a catfolk friend adjacent to your target enemy, having them use that 1 action to step to the opposite side of the enemy is vastly superior to having them use that 1 action for catfolk dance. In this homebrew world where lowering AC = lowering save, the step gives the same bonus as catfolk dance would, but (1) without requiring an ancestry feat, (2) without requiring a roll against the enemies' DC to create the buff, and (3) affects all three saves, rather than just one. This is why, in my opinion, catfolk dance does not represent an already existing form of the sort of ability JiCi suggested or that Unicore discussed in their "just imagine" comment.

and again, if rerolling a save with misfortune really was the "I win" button people in this thread were making it out to be...

Rerolls, like advantage in D&D, increase overall chance of success by about 25% when your +x and check number equal out. It's a personal preference whether you think thats "huge waves" or not, personally yes I think it would be a game changer if that option was as regularly available as it is in D&D.

This I think is also not a problem isolated to Automatic Knowledge: RK in general is fairly difficult and expensive to achieve consistently against monsters in combat, despite being pretty important to the effectiveness...

I think it's a problem of DCs in general. Just my opinion, but the standard level DC should not be set to give a 50/50 chance of success assuming a PC has maxed out their attribute and raised their proficiency every chance they had. That is the best possible character proficiency, it should represent 'best in the field' not 'expected before you can succeed.' To let many different characters play this minigame and have a decent chance of success, RK DC (and other DCs for other challenges) should be set more like that maximum-5; i.e. representing 50/50 chance for someone who put a couple points into an attribute and is one proficiency bump behind maximum. Which represents above average ability at some lore or skill, but not 'best possible in the world for my level.'

Unicore wrote:

Just imagine how different the game would work already if allies could aid a caster to apply a -1 to -4 to enemy saves. No imagine being able to combine that with spending a hero point to make them roll twice.

You can do this already as a Catfolk: Catfolk Dance at level 1 is one of the few ways to apply a circumstance penalty to saves, and Black Cat Curse lets you reroll an enemy's save and make them use the worse result. Though rare, these kinds of effects have existed in Pathfinder for years, and the fact that some of us don't realize that they even exist suggests to me that they don't really break spells as much as is being conjectured.

I disagree. Dance requires adjacent and is only against reflex, while curse is 1/day and you can't get it until L13. Neither represents the sort of omni-buff opportunity that JiCi suggested, because there are so many ways characters of any class or ancestry can lower enemy AC.

But I'm not sure it's worth arguing about, since AFAIK Paizo has no intention of upgrading the way Spellstrike with save spells work. Heck being able to use them at all was added as a basic class feature only last year - before that, it required a feat. We're very much discussing the pros and cons of one poster's hypothetical change here, nothing more.

I think it could be useful on a Gnome with Gnome Obsession directed towards a Campaign-related lore, since that ancestry feat already gives you both an auto-scaling lore and assurance...and presumably if you pick a lore like or the same as one suggested in a player's guide for your AP, it will regularly come into play.

Isn't the Kineticist Fire Junction weakness specific to their own impulses? Not a huge party-wide boost.

Yes, but the kin can throw three or more different "spells" at a target in a single round, and that means that if there is any other source of fire weakness, they can proc that many times per round.

So lets say you're level 6. You can have Thermal Nimbus and Living Bonfire up. On your turn:
For 0a Nimbus 3+weakness
For 2a, Blazing wave for 5d8+weakness
For 1a, Channel elements + free blast for 2d6+weakness + 1d6bonfire+weakness

So you've triggered the weakness 4 times, ending with your gate open.

But what if your enemy doesn't have a fire weakness? Well your party has other options. Your friendly L6 Elemental Betrayal Witch can hex an enemy for 3 fire weakness no save allowed, and sustain it for the whole battle. Before the errata, Elemental Betrayal wasn't that good. Now, there are some really intriguing support possibilities where the party stacks up on one damage type and the witch throws the weakness for it.

Unicore wrote:

What has resistance to nonlethal and not immunity?

Spiny Loadstone spellheart. Doesn't even take an investment slot. I accidentally re-discovered how stupid the Imm,Weak,Res rules were because I wanted Needle Darts on my Ruby Phoenix Summoner.

And surprise, there's magic that makes all damage from both teams nonlethal.

I told the GM I was waving that resistance and pretending it wasn't there.

Spiny Lodestone doesn't make damage nonlethal. And I'm surprised you would want it on a Summoner, since needle darts MAPs with Eidolon attack. Save spells are much better for Summoners.

Spells are usually worded like "Strikes deal an additional 2d6 fire damage"

So if that additional damage is inside the strike, but is a separate instance that pops weakness, you can stack weakness dmg like crazy.

Yes, reviewing, you are right. The example specifically says "...and has two different spells that add cold damage to their Strikes?" (my bold). So enchanting-type magic that says "add +1d6 [trait] damage" is treated as a separate instance from the strike's [trait] damage.

No my dude. If each source of "additional damage" inside of a Strike is a separate instance, and the whole Strike carries the holy trait, then every separate instance would proc the holy weakness.

I'll have to go back and look but that wasn't my impression from the errata example. There was a strike with a whole bunch of traits, and two spells hitting simultaneously. The strike was all one instance, with the two spells each being separate instances.

I think Paizo forgot that players can add weaknesses to foes, which uh, yeah, that's as cracked as it sounds.

Elemental Betrayal Witch is the new Resentment Witch. :) "You guys load up on one type of elemental damage. Doesn't matter what type, you can pick. I will make sure it triggers."

And did this just make Fire Kin max damage build a whole lot better? Any impulse (spell 1) + Thermal nimbus (spell 2) + living Bonfire (spell 3)...

MadamReshi wrote:

Instances of damage clarified!

What suprises me is that apparently any additional damage to strikes from spells and other effects trigger individually.

Magus wants to load up on Flaming rune and Ignition for those fire-weak enemies. :)

The changes to staff nexus wizard also now makes it officially add to other staves. That's nice. So as you go along getting better items, there's essentially no cost to moving your staff nexus abilities into the new item.

Not sure I agree on tandem movement. It IS a great feat, but playing through a low-level game, it felt to me like a proper level-up at L4. Like I was getting something not necessary, but very in theme and very boosty. So I think it's fine to leave it as an option. YMMV.

Fully agree on Meld Into Eidolon. Right now it trades away your action compression and spellcasting ability to have one less target on the field - it's a sort of "unmanifest summoner". But at 3a you can't even use the one less target thing tactically. They need to give the melded form access to the Summoner's spells, Cha, and spellcasting DC, if not wholly then in some limited form.

hope paizo put magus and summoner in new book is because they really put some effort into fixing them

the feat pool problem of both class are significant

Must disagree on Summoner. They have a bunch of good feats, probably at least one at each feat gain. And the feats support basically all three combat styles - ranged, casting, melee. This is not PF1E; feats aren't meant to stack up on one thing, they're far more often meant to give more options. The summoner's do.

IMO if they tweak summoner, then what I'd like to see is one or more of the following:
1. More eidolons. This one's not necessary, just fun.
2. Different focus spells that go beyond "buff your eidolon". Those are boring and also rarely worth an action in low-level play.
3. Some sort of plus up to the Archetype, for the non-Summoner PCs
4. Maybe a feat or focus spell that makes summoning spells worth it? Maybe buffs a summoned critters' AC and attack by 1/4 level or something? Because, y'know, summoner.

Take another set of classes, sorcerer and wizard, and you'll find that the one with the same kind of casting to the Psychic, the sorcerer, is more highly thought of because of the class features. To be honest, I've seen more people value a spontaneous casting than prepared overall.

I sort of agree and sort of don't. Yes, the sorcerer's class features make it most people's preferred choice. However, that's in part because one of those class features vastly expands the flexibility of spontaneous casting. That feature is getting 1 signature spell per rank. This basically "counterfeits" the benefit of Vancian magic (i.e. breadth of spells to select from via spellbook) because it means the Sorc has not 4 max rank spells to select from, but 12 rank 9, 11 rank 8, 10 rank 7, etc... Without that feature expanding tbe breadth of spontaneous spell selection so much it basically wipes out the value of a spellbook, I think it would be quite a different ball game.

Spontaneous has a clear and obvious advantage over Prepared in the case where repetoire >= spells known for that rank. Who wouldn't pick "decide what you want to cast when you cast it" over "decide at the start of the day what you want to cast"? Prepared becomes a legit choice when spells known per rank >> repetoire - i.e., when the decision you make at the start of the day gives you more choices than "decide when you cast" gives you. In PF2E, at high levels, the former is the case and in fact repertoire can easily achieve >> spells known for the higher ranks.

Does it have to be alchemical? Seems like wands would be a perfect fit since you want to apply this effect 1/day and have it last for about 8 hrs or until next daily preparation. Wizards are INT, so magical crafting DCs should be achievable. Here are some wand ideas from the Arcane list (i.e. that a Wizard can access):

R1 Alarm - wakes the PCs up in time to save the horse. Or you could get almost the same effect mundanely if you just bought a guard dog. Either of these options is probably the most efficient solution if you have more than one horse you need to protect, since the wand ideas below are "one per animal" solutions, while a dog or alarm spell protects everything in the camp.

R1 Sanctuary - Mentioned by others; the predator must save to attack

R1 Pet Cache - Only works if the horse is a companion, but if so, this is all you need.

R2 Marvelous Mount - instead of using a regular horse and trying to protect it, just summon a magical one for the day. Might need 2 wands of this if you want a mount for 16 hours/day.

Isn't the 'order of operations' problem a bit white room? You're talking about 1 vs 2 focus points on a L10 non-caster (because you need 4 progressions in one archetype before getting the second). How often is a martial/cleric/psychic actually going to be played.

I think the more impactful problem is that the martial/psychic build now has to wait until L6 to amp, which is a big change for low level campaigns. We actually have one of those (no not a IW magus), and he loves amping once per battle. Not sure what the GM plans but if he asks my advice, I'm going to suggest continuing to use the premaster rules since thats the way the PC was built.

Low-level Wizard probably won't archetype into it either any more, where before it was a good combo. Low-level Witch and Cleric may not care since they have easy access to FPs. Higher level campaigns may see no effect since you can plan out your PC in a way to maximize FPs before session 1 even starts.

Quote:

Psi Development provides the amp for the psi cantrip you get from Psi Dedication in addition to its own psi cantrip, and gives you a focus pool of 1 Focus Point if you don't have one already. This means that if you already have a focus pool, you don't gain a Focus Point.

This just doesn't make sense to me and flies in the face of how focus spells work in the remaster. Once you can amp it, a psi cantrip is functionally a focus spell.

I don't have the remastered rules so bear with me, but this means the archetype dedication gives you trained in occult, in spell casting, and 1 cantrip which can be cast as a normal cantrip. Then the L4 archetype feat gives you the focus point to amp it for additional effect. Is that right?

It kinda makes sense from a progression point of view. Though IMO the dedication should probably have come with a second cantrip if there's no additional benefit. 1+familiar makes sense for witch, 1+FP made sense for old psychic, but 1+nada is not consistent with the 2 cantrip standard for most of the other caster archetypes.

Player Core p. 406: you cannot increase weapon damage dice size more than once.

However "specific beats general" so there may be specific feat, class power, weapon etc descriptions that override this.

Didn't pick up Battlecry!, but liked War of Immortals and looking forward to Impossible Magic. Haven't heard much about the latest APs, last thing I heard there was how Season of Ghosts got great reviews. So nope, I don't see a decrease.

In my experience, most ttrpg systems last about 8-10 years before their users just want a change. Which could be anything from a slightly revised edition to some entirely new system coming to the fore. That has nothing to do with quality, more human nature. PF2E seems to have bought itself renewed shelf-life with the remaster and a very solid, continuous line of APs. However the product line *will* eventually end, and when it does, it probably won't be due to loss of quality so much as changing user base tastes.

Can spells appearance be changed just for flavor or to fit a theme and are there feats that could actually change the type of damage something does? Iceball instead of Fireball? A fireball of balefire that does void damage?

Flavor - that's a table/GM decision.

Traits - no, and arguably for good reason. Weaknesses, resistances, and immunities are unevenly distributed across damage types, so the ability to change damage type would allow players to "tune in" their spells to the most rare resistances or most common weaknesses for a given campaign. Personally, I like 'build-a-bear' magic systems when they occur in other games. But they tend to be balanced out by greater resource use (i.e. mana points or what have you). Combining the ability to change type on the fly with a classic class-and-level-and-slot system where by 10th level you have something like 30 spells/day you can cast is a recipe for massively overpowered casters.

That isn’t to say I think it shouldn’t do anything on a crit, but just doubling with those damage dice puts this focus spell in better than/equal to a spell slot spell territory.

Another classic crit feature that doesn't double the damage would be to add some sort of persistent effect or damage. Easy to imagine "+1 pt/rank persistent bleed on a crit" for a focus spell evoking two big dragon claws.

Also IIRC there was no ability like corpse explosion and that's as iconic Diablo Necromancer as it gets going back to D2 (though I haven't looked lately so I could be wrong).

Bone burst, 6th level feat.

IMO they did get a lot of the 'special effects' of the class fantasy in on different feats and spells...except for the minion master part. Unfortunately, since minion master is like THE thing some big majority of players were looking to get out of it, that's a pretty big miss (be it unintentional or intentional for balance reasons).

They could easily have gone with a couple feats to buff summon undead spells (i.e. circumstance bonuses to hit etc.) and maybe a 'mass summon' spell on a more classic caster chassis, then thrown in things like bone spear as focus spells. I'm not sure why we needed an entirely new bespoke class mechanic.

Shadow signet also doesn't make it a basic save, Its still an attack roll but against another defence than AC so rules as written you dont get to double it unless the attack already does it without signet.

You and Unicore are right! I missed that.

Still, 1d8+1d4 scaling +1 rank, for R1 focus spell is quite good. At least until the R3 and R5 focus spells come online. So I'm not sure Flurry needs a crit double to make it worth casting.

No it's not. What happens on a critical hit for a Strike is defined. Spell Attacks are not Strikes. Spell Attack's definition says nothing about what happens on a critical success.

Not disagreeing. But maybe worth pointing out that a lot of go-to damage spells will be 'basic save', and those do have generalized crit effects (PC, p404). So many of the most commonly used combat spells don't need to spell out a crit effect in their spell description, just like feats or abilities that give strikes don't have to spell it out. Flurry of Claws just happens to not be one of them.

Though I guess you could pick up a shadow signet if you really wanted to get that x2 on a crit for your Flurry of Claws.

To be honest I don't know what the best solution is.

"Yes but" could do a lot of work here, including your time element. A failed roll is not 'can't do that' but instead Yes But it will take you an hour (in cases where time is important). Yes but you make a lot of noise. Yes but since you didn't change his attitude to friendly, it'll cost you a bribe. Yes but you fell a couple times so you succeed with damage.

I also think lowering the DC (to represent teamwork or just in general for group tasks) is a valid move. I feel like PF2E can sometimes set the DC so that a player who optimizes a skill to the best possible extent needs to roll a 10+ to succeed. But for most in-game tasks it probably shouldn't be the case that the "PC who is the absolute best possible proficiency they can be at their level" has only a 50/50 chance of success. That sort of character should be regularly succeeding in their area of expertise, and it's the PCs who maybe only have +1 or +2 in an attribute (which is still above average!) and are one proficiency step behind maximum that should be closer to 50/50. So I kinda feel that that 'Maximum +5' is maybe a better typical DC than Maximum +10.

Complex skill actions do really well with VP systems, and it prevents one character for doing all the interacting with the challenge. Gabbing a generalized rule of Critical success =2 points, success 1, failure 0, and Crit Fail -1, actually avoids the complexity of how spells interact with 4 tiers of success.

VPs also avoid the high probability of failure - for even well skilled characters - that comes with the requirement to succeed on multiple sequential rolls.

But it can still be annoying, and personally as a player I find it somewhat frustrating in social interactions to have to keep inventing new things for my character to say to justify the next roll and then another and another etc. Last session our GM and I decided that it was a pointless waste of session time for me to keep rolling rolling rolling until I either reached the VP threshold or crit failed out, so I just spent a relevant resource and we moved on. Single roll with bonuses for preparation, resources, etc. and a "yes, but" outcome for a regular failure seem to me to often be the better choice.

I think there's an interesting idea in tying Spellstrike's recharge to MAP actions, so long as it's the only way to consistently recharge Spellstrike: if hitting with a Strike naturally recharged Spellstrike and you could then pick feats to recharge with Athletics maneuvers, Dirty Trick, and other attack actions, but nothing too reusable without MAP, then you'd enforce the on-and-off-turn rotation on the Magus.

That could get extremely frustrating, if the player rolls badly and thus never gets to recharge. I prefer linking it to choices rather than successful dice rolls, personally. But if they opened up recharge to 'cast any 2a spell' and 'when you go into AC, you recharge your spellstrike' rather than limiting it to conflux spells, that would give the class some additional flexibility for what to do in the off rounds. At least then you could cast and move.

the magus is a gish, a spellblade, they should have more than one way of fulfilling that fantasy.

The class does massive damage with spellstrike. This presents two design problems for your idea: first, you could give the class other options and few people would actually use them, because spellstrike is so much better than any other option you have (this is already the problem with Arcane Cascade. +2 of a new damage type to all strikes is quite good and on another class people would love it. But on magus few people use it because why bother with that if you can use that action to recharge spellstrike instead). Or, alternatively, you could give them other options that are equally good...in which case the class would be outdistancing other classes in damage more than it already is. This is not an underpowered class; giving it additional powerful tricks really shouldn't be necessary to make it fun.

If you want to play a more traditional gish where you cast a spell and lay down a strike every turn, and have the flexibility to alter that rotation to be either more magic or more martial on any given turn, there is already a class that does that: summoner.

Some of this varies by level. I would probably never take Kin in a L1-10 game but 11-20 it's easy to design in a bunch of pretty good support options.

So a question/challenge to the community - what other class archetypes vary in value greatly between 1-10 and 11-20?

Obviously the theme of an adventure is going to affect the mix of adversaries compared with monster books.

And it's going to affect the sort of PC a player chooses! Even if you're dead set on psychic, your choice of conscious mind may be influenced by the AP chosen. I might love the new IW's force type if the GM says we're playing Season of Ghosts, the same way I'm not going to pick Oscillating Wave's amped Frostbite if the GM says were playing Quest for the Frozen Flame.

D6 Force vs D8 B/S is a slight downgrade in the white room "I know nothing about what my character will face" exercise, but real APs are rarely that. When picking class and subclass, the player is likely to have at least some information on the value of force type damage in the campaign. It's an interesting switch, very useful in some cases but not so much in others. As for home campaigns, well the GM knows what you picked as they design the stories and encounters, so whether it's d8 b/s or d6 force, you will likely see encounters where it's a bad fit because the GM wanted it that way plus other encounters where it shines because the GM wanted that to happen instead.

As others have said, if the damage is going to be lowered, than just have it act as a force version of Ignition.

Personally, no thanks. I value the two-target much more than the ranged, or Gouging Claw's bleed. While my casters tend to stand back and so it doesn't necessarily fit my play style, I am glad it is there as an option because there are already plenty of ranged single target amp cantrip options for the psychic.

Yeah, this is a 'normal English' problem. Signal all squadmates; each can Step as a reaction. doesn't really communicate if the step is 'must to get the benefit' or a 'may, but you get the benefit regardless'. Though upon rereading I am getting more positive about Unicore's reading. 'Can' in plain English is closer to 'may' than 'must.'