Floppy Toast's page

Synthesist Summoner!
You get a minute-long transformation sequence, which empowers you with strange abilities and an ancient being to guide you through using them.
Go Biped, give it the Flight and the Weapon Proficiency evolution to wield the sword that you magicked out of thin air (stored on your Eidolon), or do the usual Ball-o-Tentacles build.
As a plus: you have the best spell list in the game, and can fight better than the group's Fighter.
As a plus: if you don't like something you chose you can change it when you level up, or use the Transmogrify spell to fix it.

Like basically everyone else mentioned, combat is less about "role" and more about "outcomes." I explain it with a mnemonic called "the 3 p's."
-Performance: everything ties back into this. There's an objective to this scene. Someone needs to complete it, whether it is "steal this thingy" or "kill this many orcs" or "open the door." A Performer usually needs a large damage output in some way, as a lot of combats are resolved through combat.
-Positioning: It's the Performer's job to carry out the objective, but it's the Positioner's job to get them there. They're in charge of getting all of the little details of the battle; manipulating the enemies, the lighting, and the buffing/debuffing. This role is frequently overlooked because of its indirect relationship to damage, but played well, can trivialize a lot of encounters.
-Protection: The GM has an infinite supply of monsters, and the Performer and Protector have a definitely-not-infinite supply of HP. It is the job of the Protector to keep them alive (and not blinded/sickened/unconscious/any number of other bad things) long enough for them to do their job. While this sounds like the traditional "healer" role, it is usually tied more to condition removal and other, more proactive methods of avoiding death.

An example:
A group I'm playing with on Saturday (we all built Monks, because Monks are a pretty good meme.)
Tetori Monk with Agile Maneuvers, specialized into grappling.
Monk of the Mantis, specialized into Stunning Fist.
A weird-ass Drunken Master build, specialized into having ridiculous strength and elemental attacks.

Example Encounter 1: Swarmed by Mooks
Positioning: Our high Perception and Movement let us set the battlefield to somewhere with a chokepoint (doorway, narrow pass, etc.).
Protection: The Tetori and Mantis flank the doorway, slowing down the enemy advance with blocking, Sneak Attack OAs, and Grappling to buy the Drunken Master time to "recharge"
Performance: The Drunken Master lets loose through the doorway with his fire breath, and we flurry the survivors.

Example Encounter 2: A single powerful monster
Positioning: The Mantis stuns the enemy, limiting their offensive options and making them easier to hit.
Protection: The Tetori flanks the enemy, and uses the Disarm/Grapple chain, limiting the monster's offensive and escape options.
Performance:The Drunken Master uses Drunken Strength, Flurry, and Ki Strikes to deplete the monster's HP.

If Monks can do it, you can do it too!

What if Paizo embraced the whole idea of "imbalance" instead of shunning it?
It seems like there's already the groundwork for it in the "common, uncommon" ranking system. What if, instead of making access to Uncommon weapons/spells a racial thing, they made it a power level thing.
Kind of like MtG does with the Pauper format. That way, when the GM is making the campaign, they can say something like "commons only," or "everything is allowed" to keep the power level a little tighter.

Obligatory SoP plug:
Spellcasting is already a feat system in Spheres of Power.
What we should really be doing is just dispensing with Vancian Magic, and using something that fits with the rest of the world.

Lyee wrote:

Let's take Burning Hands as an example.

Unless you are suggesting spells be re-written along these lines and the idea of cantrips as an always-available spell option be removed from the game, all you are doing is taking an already powerful character and giving them even more power...

I just on a thread that was 16 pages of "casters are super-nerfed, especially the ones that want to do damage"

I'm not disagreeing with you, casters in PF1 were super powerful, and it makes sense that they'd be powerful here, too.
But as someone who doesn't get to play much (1/month is a long time to wait) I'd just assumed that what this other thread was saying was true.

Is there any evidence, or any anecdotes, of casters doing really ridiculous damage?

Hmm. Now that I'm thinking about it, PF2 could be a fantastic rules system for running Spheres of Power. It has scaling already built into the core class mechanics, and the class feats look a LOT like the sphere talents. Maybe that's the direction the magic should go. It was pretty popular in 1e, and now that Pathfinder is completely breaking away from DnD; we could convert pretty cleanly.
Can someone from Drop Dead confirm that they're doing this?