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Resists, immunities and weaknesses Sonic is definitely far less resisted than electric
D8+Trip primary for Weighty Knockdown later, Energy Heart it to sonic. Secondary is set in stone iirc The only reason to go Dex eidolon is to get the ranged evolution feat, though I don’t think its particularly useful even then - you lose out on a lot of eidolon utility going ranged.
If you go champion archetype, can you use champion reaction with your eidolon?I was wondering, what is your favorite or most efficient eidolon in your opinion ? Melee summoner with armour isn't any squishier than their eidolon, so should be fine just standing there without evil champion. If you have evil champion they're just gonna hit your eidolon instead.
If you go champion archetype, can you use champion reaction with your eidolon?I was wondering, what is your favorite or most efficient eidolon in your opinion ? You can use it to protect your eidolon, so if the enemy attacks the eidolon or an ally, you champ reaction, and if they attack you the eidolon uses dutiful retaliation. The eidolon can't use champ reaction.
Bomber damage isn't that bad at a certain point this assumes 2 rounds of persistent doing Sticky Blight Bomb + XXX Alchemist Fire (tbf there really isn't a great additive to put here). You can't perpetual blight in the first place, and while, yes I agree that calculating 2 rounds for persistent isn't exactly indicative of the value of the damage it does (as frontloaded damage is way better than damage after 2 enemy turns - same reason AoE shouldn't be valued as a simple multiplication) saying you only ever get 1 round is also a little unrealistic. Also this Sticky Fire + Any other bomb you can perpetual at that point given persistent is only 1 round is the worst case scenario for the alchemist, spending absolutely zero resources (aside from feats), getting only 1 round of persistent damage, mutagen only active at 11+ and splashing to no other targets (tell your party to buy backfire mantles or do it yourself, my PFS alch has 6 backfire mantles specifically so I don't get people complaining about splash). If you add just a single reagent to make that a Sticky on-level Blight Bomb with a perpetual fire then it suddenly looks a lot closer to the triple shot fighter - and even then that's still a pretty bad scenario for the alchemist.
I had seen it before but I'm only now realizing how busted plum deluge is. It's a 20th Level feat alright. But if you're only using the research field for the extra uses, I'd say stick to bomber. Double poison is cool. I kinda wish you could use 2 of the same poison for a more effective double tap. It's cool but it's ultimately pretty useless, the level-6 limitation combined with the fact that it needs to be poisons you spend reagents on means that it's not good. I'd say it's usually a sidegrade at best, considering it costs twice the amount of uses to get a poison that is only very slightly better. That is, unless you take the text to be as written and not as intended, because You can apply two different injury poisons to the same weapon, though not to a piece of ammunition. The two poisons can be up to six levels lower than your level, and you can't use the poisons made without spending a batch of infused reagents via perpetual infusions. Applying the two poisons requires a separate action to apply each poison. Once completed, you combine the two poisons on the weapon into a double poison with the lower of the two poisons' DCs. This double poison is only virulent if both poisons were virulent, and if the poisons have a different number of stages, the double poison has a number of stages equal to the poison with the lower number of stages. The target takes the effects of both poisons for its current stage "Five" and "Zero" are numbers "up to six" right? 17th+ level toxicologists also have access to perpetual shadow essence that your archers will appreciate. As long as my understanding of using quick alchemy poisons is right. Again, it's kind of unclear, but that's no feasible rules as written way to interpret Chirurgeon and Mutagen perpetuals to work as intended (i.e. they last the full duration once drunk) while still making Toxicologist ones expire at the end of the round when applied. They both use the same action (Activate) to apply them, and are both nonpermanent effects so will expire at the start of next daily prep due to Infused rules.
How to be good bomber: become toxicologist. I guess the double poisons you can make by 20th level are too brutal to pass up lol. It's not that, it's Plum Deluge - that feat is the best Alchemist feat by far, and tox gives you the most uses of Tears of Death burst. The double poison thing sucks. Can you double brew perpetual bombs? I thought it only worked with reagents. It's kinda unclear but alchemist needs help anyway You know your formulas so well that you can concoct two items at once. When using the Quick Alchemy action, instead of spending one batch of infused reagents to create a single item, you can spend up to two batches of infused reagents to make up to two alchemical items as described in that action. These items do not have to be the same. You have learned how to create perpetual alchemical infusions that can provide a near-infinite supply of certain simple items. You gain the ability to create two 1st-level alchemical items using Quick Alchemy without spending a batch of infused reagents. The items you can select depend on your research field and must be in your formula book. I believe the text for this was errata'd to be more clear, in any case Double Brew does use Quick Alchemy, so if you make perpetuals you should be able to substitute the cost.
You're talking about playstyles rather than classes as a whole, Bomber damage isn't that bad at a certain point this assumes 2 rounds of persistent doing Sticky Blight Bomb + XXX Alchemist Fire (tbf there really isn't a great additive to put here). The issue is mostly in feeling with bomber damage rather than the numbers of it once everything is crunched. Build is 1: Quick Bomber, retrain to Far Lobber sometime between 7 and 9 2: DWW Dedication 4: Calculated Splash 6: Dual Thrower 8: Sticky Bomb 10: Expanded Splash 12: Uncanny Bombs 14: Extend Elixir 16: Eternal Elixir 18: Improbable Elixirs 20: Plum Deluge, retrain your subclass to Toxicologist. You kinda need perpetual bombs and double brew to do this consistently though, so you'll be waiting a bit. Bomber as a primary damage dealer early is no bueno. This graph does use Burn It! but it's really not necessary, it doesn't add too much. I also used the most conservative interpretation of Burn It! and sticky bomb (sticky bomb pers damage doesn't double on a crit, Burn It! doesn't apply to splash damage).
I rarely, if ever, use Boost Eidolon. It's just not worth it. I believe in almost all situations it adds less damage on average than a second attack from your eidolon, and striking twice with your eidolon is already not very good. Standard Routines may go If you need to move Tandem Move -> Act Together (Trip, Electric Arc) Don't need to move and you somehow fit in Swashbuckler MC One For All / Demoralise -> Act Together (Trip, Electric Arc) Enemy is already prone; replace the Trip with a Strike or Grapple depending. When you get Weighty Impact and Size feats, and therefore need to move less Strike -> Knockdown may become more useful than Trip. When you get Grasping Limbs you might also spend actions on Grab.
Trip does no damage. You use electric arc doing d4 damage while engaging a trip. Then some other class comes up and does the real damage, often rolls high enough the flat-footed bonus is irrelevant, the creature is killed with minimal effect from your action. If the trip misses, you did even less. Unless you're exclusively playing like level 1-4, a martial isn't oneshotting anything without some good rolls. At some point, even with 2 crits they aren't oneshotting anything. So what Trip does is let them make 2 MAPless attacks (which is better than 1 from you and 1 from them usually) on a flatfooted enemy. Spending 1/3 legendary skills on athletics is whatever really, Acrobatics matters if you get tripped a lot which, while relevant for most melee characters isn't too relevant for the summoner because the thing that is actually is melee doesn't get the skill feat. Stealth is decent, but again, the Eidolon can't stealth very easily (they don't get the skill feats, and getting invis on both yourself and eidolon is far more costly). Intimidation is still good, Diplomacy is still good. In high level play, enemies have lots of things they can do in a fight at range or avoid AoOs on top of just outright taking a player out every round. Outright taking a player out of the fight every round is moreso the problem than the ability to avoid AoO - actually breaking movement rules with the ability to avoid reactions and so on is extremely rare. Martials in general become devalued at higher levels, but at least you still have a caster side.
Unless you have someone constantly casting Roaring Applause, and the enemies constantly fail their saves, you can’t get free reaction triggers out of inflicting flat foot through flanking or most other effects. The real strength of Trip is that, if the opponent stands, they eat attack ops, and if they stay put they’re taking a constant -2 to hit, or you can move away such that they’re in your reach but you aren’t in theirs (enemy dependent) at which point they have no choice but to stand if they want to do anything that fight. Sure there are other ways to knock prone but they’re usually a lot more committal (Improved Knockdown) or a lot more random (Flail/Hammer crit spec).
While you certainly can do this, the opportunity cost of 22 strength is high (putting your apex into strength instead of int), and you’d be extremely squishy, plus you’d be in melee meaning the multitude of reactions screw you. Also without quicken, the econ would be horrible - every round is athletics + cast, need to move and you can’t do one of these. Summoner doesn’t have that issue. Trip+Electric Arc is only 2 actions for them. If they need to move, use tandem move. An eidolon can also have 24 strength while the summoner doesn’t sacrifice the ability to have 24 cha.
Summoner is a utility martial not a damage dealer. You have 4 actions, but your actions are generally worse than other classes: so find things that other classes want to do anyway, that you’re just as good at (e.g. Trip) and suddenly you’re ahead. Wellspring is good if you can get it and your GM runs longer days, Champion archetype is also quite good (pairs decently with Devotion eidolon). If you’re trying to compete with other classes at their thing (e.g. striking against a real martial) you will fall behind. That’s fine, you have 4 actions they have 3. If you start trying to compete with other classes at things you’re just as good at as them, you’ll start seeing the real power of the summoner.
I’m with Deriven - I don’t want people taking minutes pouring over their potential options every time something happens just to see if they had the perfect answer then. And that’s, in my opinion, what GM behaviour such as “no takebacks” or frequent gotcha moments such as (passed sense motive) “you think (NPC) entirely believes what they are saying” when really they were deliberately using double meaning statements or purposefully omitting certain things. Players will just start bogging down table time with frequent lookups, checks and rechecks. We’re here to play a game and have fun, not spend 2 hours looking at sheets of paper.
I wonder if it’s possible to do that for a PC class. She’s effectively an oracle base that loses the mystery and focus spells for better weapons and a very weak version of hunter’s edge. I don’t forsee it being that strong as exactly that tradeoff, because leveraging both of those feature halves together isn’t that possible, though I do believe paizo overvalues master weapon prof without a damage booster so I don’t see it being likely to be printed as that. If anything, I suspect it will be a wavecaster with a judgement mechanic, if it comes at all. The prevailing thought might already be that ranger with an archetype does it.
Ruby Phoenix starting at level 11 means that a lot of people don’t want to run it (there is still a pervasive idea of starting a low level and building up). I’m running it twice because, personally, as a GM I hate the low level grind - very little ways I can challenge my players because there’s very few ways they can fight back. High levels have some issues as well, many of them in fact, but I’d rather run 15-20 than 1-6. As for the AP itself - it’s an anime fighting tournament. If you and the players go in with that mindset, constantly chew the scenery and ham everything up, you’ll have a fun time. Book 1 is mostly a meat blender though, there is a lot of encounters you have to go through in a short timespan. Book 2 is mostly 1 enc/day, and book 3 is another meat blender.
And if you're playing an inventor, or a magus, or any other medium armour class that needs another stat? You can't really afford to boost that dex along with wis, con, str, and your other stat. So one of those saves is going to be abysmally bad for level 15.
Leather armour isn't fantasy - boiled leather was sometimes used as armour (though it was bad) because it was cheap. Studded leather - yeah that's pure fantasy. The other issue with armour is that it's pretty boring, we have a bunch of different types of armour but most of them are rarely used. They all follow the same formula - adds up to +5, slap a random armour spec on it (which honestly I forget about because its so irrelevant) and that's pretty much it. Only like 3 armours even have another trait. Some other types of armour (which have reduced AC for another benefit) would be nice too, e.g. Ring Mail - Medium Armour +3/+0, Ringed 5/3, Bulwark Ringed trait - This armour is comprised of multiple rings which lessen blows, but repeated offense will open a hole in it. Ringed includes two values. When you take damage, reduce that damage by an amount equal to the first value (double the first value if the armour is +1, triple if it is +2 or quadruple if it is +3). After the armour has reduced damage in this way a number of times equal to the second value, this property no longer functions until you spend a minute reattaching the rings.
Lack of dex to damage for finesse melee weapons makes dex melee completely pointless unless you're forced into it. Unless you want to spend two stats on dealing damage, at which point your defensive stats go down significantly, a bow actually does better damage than a rapier at 10 strength. Reload is criminally undervalued as a negative, and reload weapons need a lot more damage to compensate for the action cost of reload. I suspect this is because of "preloading" - i.e., the fact that you can never pay the action cost of reload by just not reloading it, using quick draw, etc. Perhaps tie a damage boost to using the reload action. Thrown should have the option of using str to hit - it's already pretty bad with many many negatives associated with it relative to an actual ranged weapon (poor range, rune tax, etc.) so I feel giving strength a (bad) ranged option is fine. 10 spell levels is too many. 9 is also too many. We should have 5 or 6 like starfinder. 10 is a balancing nightmare. Too many martials are just damage and very little else. More monks and champions, less fighters please. Key stat should just be a free boost. I really hate the new trend of giving classes a key stat they don't want (Alchemist, Inventor and now Thaumaturge would much rather have Str/Dex than their mental stat). If it's for balance, then it only matters half the time - make it consistently a -1 or don't have it there at all. Proficiency gaps causing strangeness, and pidgeonholing you into certain things. MC casters are basically pidgeonholed into buff spells because casting anything else, outside of particular levels, is going to suck hard. Similar, weapon using casters are going to suck hard at it outside of particular levels. These things already have a penalty associated with them - Casters trying to martial have no damage booster and no survivability booster, on top of their frail chassis. Giving them master proficiency (the accuracy expectation) if they so desire it wouldn't break anything at all. Similarly, giving MC casters legendary proficiency (the accuracy expectation for spells) wouldn't break anything because they're also limited by slot level and number of slots. General feats need a cleanup - what are they even for? Skill feats need a cleanup - they were supposed to be a split for noncombat options to not compete with combat options, yet some skills have extremely good combat options and others have next to nothing. Recall Knowledge needs a cleanup, or to be split into two actions (one for research out of combat, and one for in combat). There should be a generalised pool of class feats anyone can take so the same feat doesn't need to be reprinted across multiple classes. Archetypes being used as class feat expansion in place of printing more class feats sucks - archetypes were designed to be restrictive - you can't pick up a second archetype until level 8 and can't get your first feat from that archetype until level 10. Having to wait that long to build something a little off theme just feels too punishing. Mooks at higher levels have too much HP.
Most familiars were originally animals, though the ritual of becoming a familiar makes them something more. Who knows if this even means the familiar will have an obvious tell that it isn’t a “real” animal of its type. Anyway, saying that ordinary cat/dogs/whatever don’t need stealth checks effectively makes Pest Form subsume the entire role of the Stealth skill out of combat. What familiars can and can’t do with stealth isn’t super relevant for the games I tend to run - mostly dungeon environments, the monsters don’t really care if its an ordinary cat or a familiar, it looks like a snack all the same. I’m willing to bet that higher level guards might have some form of magic sense in the form of an ability to cast Detect Magic or elsewise - does a familiar ping magical?
Agree they probably shot themselves in the foot with regard to making the repeating hand crossbow advanced at only 1d6 dice size with 60 range, there’s no “room” in between the Air Repeater/LAR and the Repeating Hand Crossbow for a martial repeating weapon. I think Capacity was probably intended to be the martial version of repeating but was changed last minute
Where does it say this?What do you mean accepting an item doesn't take any actions? It says on the table that taking an item from another creature is an interact action, which is 1 action.And drawing an item is an action. So drawing a scroll and taking a scroll from a familiar is the same action cost unless you are using valet. Even using valet spending an action to hand you an item to use is really no different than drawing it and using it. The only action economy advantage may be getting the item in hand to set up for next round, so a mild action economy advantage every other round with valet.Giving an item is also an action so the familiar can use its 1 action to give you an item, accepting items does not take any actions. https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=194 Pass an Item to or Take an Item from a willing creature is listed as a single Interact, with the provision that they might need to change their grip or drop something if both hands are occupied.
Beginner box does have a few different rules There’s a couple of feats that don’t appear in the core rules at all Focus spells work completely different (they’re slotted spells you reprepare with 10 mins, rather than their own resource) At least a couple of spells work differently (dispel magic has no counteract check iirc, flaming sphere does half damage on successful save).
Can you actually hand something to the wizard as a free action? I always figured taking an item from a creature is an interact action. So if you run the familiar the way apparently this Paizo designer wants it run with independent and valet, it would take one action to draw, one action for you to take... I’ve yet to see anyone rule that passing an item which you have in your hands to another creature isn’t an interact, though I can also see that taking an item from another creature is an interact (and creatures can’t hand out items normally). Here’s the RAW on interact You use your hand or hands to manipulate an object or the terrain. You can grab an unattended or stored object, open a door, or produce some similar effect. You might have to attempt a skill check to determine if your Interact action was successful. No absolute certainty on if taking an item from or giving an item to a willing creature is a base Interact. Valet gives the familiar a special action of “Interact to draw an item the master is wearing and place it into the master’s hands”.
On Familiars: Yes, Independent+Valet doesn’t work, but independent+manual dexterity still does. You can have your familiar start with 2 scrolls in hand and hand one off to you with its independent action. Not as good as independent+valet as you have to predefine what scrolls it has out, and after it has handed you two, it needs two rounds to draw + hand over another for free, but still useful for the prospective scroll user. The wizard’s strength is the number of top level spells it can have with specialisation and blending. They get 6/5/2 whereas a sorcerer is looking at 4/4/4 unless they are divine or primal, in which case they can get 5/4/4 but the 5th slot is limited to a specific spell. The wizard’s focus spells are mostly bad, some of the level 8 ones are ok and a couple of the level 1 ones are usable, but they’re supplementary (something you do in addition to casting a spell), not a spell replacement like sorc/druid/cleric ones often are. So, the wizard has weak feats and supplementary focus powers - they live and die by the strength of their levelled spells. When the levelled spells are good (character level 7+), the wizard is good. When they are weak (character level 1-6) the wizard feels weak, and when they are OP (15+) the wizard can feel OP. That’s basically all there is to my stance on wizards - overall, they can feel strong for a majority of the levels if you play to their strengths, but they’re about as vanilla as you can go on a caster. Very few of their feats are useful, and of the ones that are they aren’t really exciting. Rogue Archetype is usually my go to, filling out the 2 and 4 slots with light armor prof (very good early) and mobility or nimble dodge.
AFAIK ever since the "Great HP Inflation of 3E" blaster spellcasters were never the same as before (in a bad way, of course). Well, every archetype which relies on reasonably high damage (so no 3E and beyond abominations like those "dungeoncrasher" thingies), TBH... Blasting before 3e was pretty good, your average enemy in AD&D 2e had extremely low HP (to be fair, everything did), so a blast spell was likely to kill or severely injure whatever you threw it at, even if they passed the save, whereas Save or Suck/Die spells would definitely kill them but if they passed the save it often did nothing. For instance, at the end of Temple of Elemental Evil, we would be routinely fighting giants - the scariest threat we had run into at this point in time. The wizard, at this point, could have been about level 8 (they were multiclassed Wizard 7//Cleric 7) and I, as a Fighter/Thief/Bard had 10th level druid casting. A frost giant has 14HD+1d4 health, or on average about 65 hitpoints. These were threats you were meant to run away from at this point, because they did 2d8+9 damage when our average HP was something like 25. A 3rd level fireball or lightning bolt would have done 8d6 (28) on the wizard, or 10d6 (35) on myself, taking out half of a frost giant on a failed save. With a good rebound on the lightning bolt, you could kill a whole set of frost giants with a single lightning bolt. Most enemies we fought were far less tough than that though - often rooms full of cultists which would have one or two hit dice (4-9 HP) and would die even if they passed the save. Even the boss level cultists rarely went above 20-30 HP. I think the toughest thing we fought (in terms of health) that wasn't a boss before making it to nearly the end of the temple was an ogre, which only has 4+1 hitpoints, or an average of 19 - definitely within instant death range of a blast spell. 3e inflated all HP by a factor of 4-6x, but kept the damage the same, so blasts have been pretty terrible relative to save or suck/dies ever since.
Depends on level, depends on adventuring day length. I’d say they’re a little weak 1-6, fine 7-14 and pretty broken (owing to the strength of high level buff/debuff spells) at 15+. Their chassis could use some work though - why are sorcerers, wizards and witches so terrible at Will saves? Having equal will to a fighter or ranger for 75% of the game…
Eroding bullets cast a faint green glow, and smell like the sickly sweet organic gases that rise from corpses. Handling an eroding bullet without gloves deals 1 point of acid damage and leaves the putrid scent coated on your fingers. Upon Striking an enemy, the glass casing inside the bullet bursts, releasing a splattering of bubbling green acid that coats the target. The target takes 2d6 persistent acid damage in addition to the damage normally dealt by the attack. I assume this is supposed to say upon Hitting an enemy, or upon successfully striking an enemy, or is it intended to function on a miss?
Please quote the exact line where that is shown, without it being an extrapolation made for the sake of "realism".Yet it repeatedly shows up in APs - AoA, ExC, Edgewatch, Ruby Phoenix B1 (B2 is 1 enc/day, B3 haven't read through yet). Of course, you can just allow your players to rest and break the narrative flow if you want, but my experience has been that the players aren’t sure that they can rest either. And if they can rest once without penalty, even under “pressure” are they ever sure what to believe. I can list out what is happening is ExC - resting in that AP is made really hard because there is always “pressure” going on, so letting the players rest is more a case of the GM breaking the given narrative to allow the players to get their resources back. Is it more fun? Probably, but also I can’t imagine that they would have written it in such a way unless they intended you to do it all in one shot (otherwise they would have put designated safe zones like in ExC B1C4).
... You’d be using wild shape for combat pretty often then? IME needing to use slots that high level for blasting tends to run you flat, especially in APs with like 10enc/day. Was another problem my wizard player ran into - launching off two chain lightnings because the first one didn’t have great effect, even with a few Fs, is a lot of resource to spend on one encounter when there’s 9 other ones to go. I’ll concede that blasting may be more useful if you have 4 or less encounters in a day and can afford to be spending high level spells at that rate.
that was largely the problem my group had with blasting. For reference, here’s what I rate as the good spells on the primal list > lvl 1 - mud pit, summon animal, summon plant/fungus depending on ruling, heal, lose the path > lv 2 - summon fey, summon animal, summon plant/fungus, worm's repast, dispel magic, glitterdust > lv 3 - fear, summon animal, pillar of water, fireball (decent at lv 5-7), slow > lv 4 - vital bacon, coral eruption (large monster cheese) summon fey, control water (highly dependent on rulings) > level 5 - there's wall of stone, and wall of ice if wall of stone is banned > level 6 - summon animal, tangling creepers (to combo with coral) > level 7 - summon animal, mask of terror, control sand > level 8 - mask of terror, deluge > level 9 - meteor swarm (for good single target damage), upheaval Primal buffs - Haste 3 is terrible and I’ll flat out say that. Takes too long to recoup value. Haste 7 is good. - Longstrider I put on a wand - I’m yet to be convinced by Protector Tree. It doesn’t have object immunities and allies have to stay adjacent to it. It says 10hp/level, but that’s more like 5HP/level seeing as the tree can easily be crit, or just hit on a high MAP attack. Precastable Healing is good and all but the restrictions on this one are a bit too tough. - Stoneskin is pretty bad for the level of slot it requires. If I knew an encounter was coming ahead of time and that I wouldn’t have many encounters that day, I might cast it for action efficiency. The level 6 version might be ok when you have level 8 or 9 spells. - Companion spells require your companion to actually hit. I’ll keep my free 50ft stride thanks. - Organsight has too many points of failure for me. You’re obviously going to max medicine so that’s a non issue, but it takes two turns to pay off, requires you pass recall knowledge checks (so at max you get three uses before you can’t pass the check anymore - and woe be you if you fail one due to rarity or whatever), and then requires you deal piercing or slashing with a strike or spell after. Also it’s self only and single target. No thanks. - Elemental Gift is fly but better. It’s reasonable. I usually use items rather than spells for flight, though. And battleforms are also pretty terrible out of a slot. Wild Shape can be ok (well… highly dependent on rulings) because it’s a focus spell, but I’m not spending a max slot for those benefits. Also most of the spells you listed are arcane as well (except the healing ones), which also has much better buffs (invisibility/disappearance) and debuffs.
... Even with crit failed saves, enemies at higher levels have such a ridiculous amount of HP that you’d need a crit failed save followed by 2 hits or a crit to kill a mook. It’s utterly silly how much HP enemies have at that point. For instance, at level 13, your blasting spell does 13d6 usually (gonna discount Chain Lightning because of restrictions and because I hate the RNG on it) - or about 45.5 damage. A crit fail would do 91 damage - if they even crit fail, it’s honestly not that common even on -2s - a fighter hits for, at best, 3d12+2d6+9 (35.5) damage. The level 9 monster has 155 hp on average. This only gets worse as you level from there, from needing a crit to a crit and a hit and eventually 2 crits (or more) from the fighter to finish the thing. Those are pretty low probability odds. Or alternately, if they crit failed against Fear - a level 3 spell that I don’t even need to upcast - they’d be out of the fight for 2 rounds (one fleeing, one returning) and would have no threat in the encounter during that time. If they crit failed against Slow 6, they’d be basically out of the encounter (slowed 2 makes it trivially easy to avoid their attacks).
Same AP except one of my players was a blaster wizard - likely using, or at least trying to use - the same spells the Druid would be using. It would be pointless to count up the damage numbers on spells like Chain Lightning or Eclipse Burst because the problem was the relevancy of the damage dealt rather than the number. As is standard with damage, no point of damage actually matters against the last one, so dealing 50 damage to 5 dudes is pointless until you start hitting dudes 2-5, and even then it’s only got a point when you actually deal the necessary quantity of damage to kill them. Before that, the spell essentially was a waste of a turn - and that was largely the problem my group had with blasting. You cast a spell and it doesn’t actually reduce the threat of the enemies until you spend enough turns to actually kill off one or two, which is usually on the second or third round. Especially when you get to higher levels and everything has metric tons of HP. Most of the value of blasting is concentrated in the back half of the combat, when the outcome is already decided and you’re just cleaning up the few weak mooks that remain. The day the wizard switched from casting Chain Lightning and Eclipse Burst to casting Slow 6 and Paralyze 7 was the day that the party no longer felt much threat in combat - well, when he remembered to cast those spells at least. He still tried to do damage with slotted spells occasionally and it would always come back to that problem - using blasting spells did nothing until later. Now, granted, I never started combat more than 120 feet away. It would be pointless to see my players start 600 feet away and roll out volleys of longbow shots at smaller penalties while the enemies have to get closer. If they could infinitely kite the enemies (such as what happened to some monsters in book 3) by running and gunning, I’d just call the encounter at the end of round 1 - there’s no reason to continue the fight, and no reason to expend resources blasting.
I do think you underrate the druid. I think they are very potent. Druid is sturdy, sure, but primal is the worst list. “Decent” buffing and debuffing - it has like 2-3 notable buff/debuff spells and they mostly inflict frighten. It has very little by the way of either of these. It’s worse than arcane on the battlefield control front - practically all of its control spells are shared with arcane. But arcane has extras. Hitting elemental weakness with slotted spells is a scam past low levels anyway - your martials do it better and more consistently than you. I don’t particularly care to use a 5th level slot and deal 10d6+10 damage instead of 10d6. I don’t particularly care to use a 5th level slot to do 10d6 damage in the first place - because, as I stated before, blasting is something that only generates value by turn 2-3 at the earliest. I’d prefer to cast Wall of Stone or Wall of Ice. Primal does have some neat tricks - hazardous terrain (Coral Eruption/Wildfire/etc.) and forced movement against huge or gargantuan creatures can represent a lot of damage… however you don’t get any decent forced movement spells until SL6 with Tangling Creepers - at which point you’re spending a 4th and a 6th on this combo.
PFS is a different game - I primarily base my expectations around approximately 4 encounters per day (which seem to be the suggested number as per adventure building guidelines). Divine has gotten some good spells since the CRB - especially in SoM, and choice of deity can add some more good spells to the cleric list. The primary strength of the cleric, however, is the fact that it makes everyone far less likely to lose combat - even at higher levels. There’s less of a decision of “how much do I want to use” - the primary cause of TPKs aside from level 1-3 jank, ime, is players greeding too hard for resource saving. PFS, though, Life Oracle is probably better - your resources aren’t getting stretched enough to make full use of those bonus slots + your main slots. Cleric focus spells are a bit of a mixed bag, but they do have some good ones. Without mentioning the Abomination domain, here’s some good PFS legal ones - Lament, Eject Soul, Asterism, Stasis, Draconic Barrage (Admittedly only gets good later), Enduring Might, Hyperfocus (admittedly requires a few ranged characters), Ephemeral Hazards. And yes, the Divine list has gotten better with SoM - I now rate Primal as the worst list (and ignore the existence of elementalist entirely). Divine has strong control spells and buffs, primal… lacks those. 1 - Heal, Magic Weapon, Air Bubble, Lock 2 - Dispel, Calm Emotions 3 - Roaring Applause, Fear 4 - Freedom of Movement, Vampiric Maiden can be ok but it’s specific, upcast calm emotions here 5 - Summon Celestial, Command, Breath of Life 6 - Heroism, Summon Celestial, Roaring Applause 7 - Nothing really good at this level 8 - Divine Aura 9 - Banishment, Summon Fiend, Overwhelming Presence
PFS is a different game - I primarily base my expectations around approximately 4 encounters per day (which seem to be the suggested number as per adventure building guidelines). Divine has gotten some good spells since the CRB - especially in SoM, and choice of deity can add some more good spells to the cleric list. The primary strength of the cleric, however, is the fact that it makes everyone far less likely to lose combat - even at higher levels. There’s less of a decision of “how much do I want to use” - the primary cause of TPKs aside from level 1-3 jank, ime, is players greeding too hard for resource saving. PFS, though, Life Oracle is probably better - your resources aren’t getting stretched enough to make full use of those bonus slots + your main slots.
People don’t run with item restrictions on purchasing because there’s so many essential items. If your players are level 12, they need their +2 greater striking weapon, +2 resilient armour, perception and skill items by the math. That is a ton of high level common items… but also you can’t really deny them access to those items without screwing up the math. Any settlement which stocks those items (in sufficient quantities to supply the whole party) is likely going to stock a bunch of much lower level consumables…
I mean, monks were often called one of the worst classes (if not the worst, depending on who you ask) in PF1 and the PF2 monk is... I mean not bad but mostly just kind of there. Summoner - Action economy, in two words. The summoner has four actions relative to the three of everyone else (with some restrictions). If you take actions that other people already want to take (such as Trip) with your eidolon or yourself, you are ahead. With 10 hp a level, even if the main summoner gets hit you won't really go down easily. I do think there is some jank to Summoner - notably the sharing MAP means that you must take Spout, Electric Arc or Scatter Scree to keep up your damage. Fortunately, Scree is just a level 3 item away, but it's probably better to grab electric arc from your ancestry. Standardly I might do Act Together (Trip + Electric Arc) - becomes better once you get Eidolon's Opportunity (and the rest of your martials get AoO). Druid is... it's okay. Mostly what holds it back, in my view, is the Primal list. In the games I've run and played (mostly modules and APs) blasting has always been a highly inefficient use of slots, in lower encounter/day games it might be fine but even then I'm really not a fan of blasting. It takes too long to generate value - you can count up the damage and say it's a lot, but not much of the damage is actually meaningful. That's most of the problem I have with blasting past level 5-7 or so - on the turn you cast it, it usually doesn't have an impact, it takes 2-3 turns to start "killing" enemies any faster. I much prefer control spells where I can start reducing the threat of the enemy side on the same round I cast it, and I've found these types of spells lead to encounters being far easier most of the time. On the contrast, I've found that blasting usually doesn't lead to an easier encounter once you've cast a blast spell.
...How are casters doing this when their saves are worse than martials? You have a higher chance of a martial acting before an enemy than a caster doing the same. Without evasion, if you get spammed by AoEs, pass or fail as a caster you will die. But that's only if you get spammed. Failing (or crit failing) a single fort save at that level can lead to far more disastrous results. An enemy you fight at level 14 in Ruby Phoenix can make you do a DC7 flat check for all of your spells for a whole minute if you fail a fort save. The Grim Reaper can straight up kill you if you fail the save (which has disadvantage) after it crits. There are quite a number of stunning, blinding and paralyzing effects that hit fort, in addition to damage. Reflex is just damage usually, the worst common thing that targets Reflex is Swallow/Engulf, which you hopefully had freedom of movement for.
I mean, monks were often called one of the worst classes (if not the worst, depending on who you ask) in PF1 and the PF2 monk is... I mean not bad but mostly just kind of there. PF2e monk is actually quite good if you play into its advantage - action economy. The fact that it only ever needs to spend 1 action dealing damage means you have always have 2 actions spare for other stuff - mobility, defense, utility. Some of the Ki Powers are actually quite good this time around as well. I rate monk as an A tier class, it's very good when played well. Playing it well can be difficult though - Summoner is a little more obvious on what "good play" looks like and operates in the same axis. My class rating looks like S - Bard, Champion, Cleric A - Fighter, Monk, Summoner, Wizard, Sorcerer (Arcane/Occult) B - Ranger, Barbarian, Oracle (Life/Battle/Cosmos), Sorcerer (Primal/Divine), Witch (Arcane/Occult), Druid, Rogue, Swashbuckler C - Oracle (All Other), Witch (Primal/Divine), Gunslinger, Inventor, Magus, Investigator (with archetypes) D - Investigator (No archetypes), Alchemist
Champions get faster armour, though admittedly it’s a bit janky. They get expert at 7, master at 13 (when most others get expert) and legendary at 17 (before most others get master). Ranger, Fighter and now Magus/Summoner getting expert armor at 11 instead of 13 is kind of a weird case. Monks definitely get faster armour - expert at 1, master at 13, legendary at 17. Why don’t fighters have to spend actions turning on their damage booster like everyone else is a valid complaint - other classes should be rewarded more when their damage booster is active. For some reason they only equal fighter under optimal conditions for their booster and are worse elsewise. But, IMO, martials needing 2 actions to do damage is a bit sucky - things feel much more freeing when you only need to commit 1a to damage and can use the 2a however you feel. 2a to deal damage, especially as a melee, feels very locked action wise.
Fighter isn’t even one of the top 3 classes - I rate it number 4. People overrate the ability to deal damage as a deciding outcome in fights. Fighter can somewhat spec for utility with AoO flickmace for some control and champion reaction for some defense, but for most parties I’d say a Bard, Champion or Cleric (my top 3 classes in that order) are more likely to result in them feeling encounters are “easier” than a fighter.
How are casters doing this when their saves are worse than martials? You have a higher chance of a martial acting before an enemy than a caster doing the same. Yes but if the martial acts first, they smack up the monster for about 25% of its HP (on a good day) and then get hit with the CC that prevents them from acting. When the caster acts first they get to use their CC before the enemy does. The CC isn’t always an AoE that hits the whole party (although it can be in the case of something like a Kamenhul), but usually a single target F You with something like Consume Knowledge. In this case, if you have multiple casters yes - one will be disabled and be unable to act - but the rest can pick up the slack. At level 20, caster saves really aren’t meaningfully lower than martial saves. Casters will be looking at M/E/M with Canny Acumen. Martials will be looking at probably M/M/M or that but with a legendary. Reflex is the least important save at 20 anyway (although you can get nuked by enemies spamming AoEs and evasion is useful there). Initiative should be the same - legendary stealth with legendary sneak (something I recommend having - combos well with disappearance) lets you roll +38 to init with incredible init - equal to what a legendary perception martial would be doing with incredible init (although dex based ones with legendary sneak will be at +40).
By making the enemy unable to act before they make you unable to act. Something like a Banishment 9 or Prismatic Sphere or Confusion 8 or Paralyze 7 that just straight up stops them playing the game. And the reason caster development is delayed is because enemy saves scale slower than enemy AC - and caster accuracy is primarily balanced around saves. You could split it to give their spell attack accuracy earlier.
Ye, only problem with doing independent + flier is that it consumes both abilities to keep it out of harm’s way of anything but specifically targetted ranged/melee attacks (which if they’re wasting on your familiar is good for you). That means the familiar isn’t doing much else. Instead, leave it at home. Spell Battery and Familiar Focus don’t require the familiar actually be on your person, so leaving it at home is the safest location to protect against AoE. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be on your person to select abilities for the day - see ya Catticus Finch, Bilbo is going on a multi-year adventure. That’s still decent value for a 1st feat - effectively Desperate Prayer + an extra slot. Otherwise, use Independent+Manual Dexterity for the 2 (+1/2 per round thereafter) free item draws per combat, and accept the AoE risk of losing the first level feat for a week if repeated AoE cones your way.
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