Gaulin's page

A little off topic but I personally don't think a fire kineticist with weapon infusion is solving the problem of fire immune enemies. A kineticist that can do nothing but elemental blast is like a caster that fights enemies immune to all spells but cantrips. I would say it's more of an issue than precision immunity creatures (unless the creatures have precision immunity and resistance to physical damage on top of that, that's just silly.)

Another paizo live come and gone, no impossible book announcement. Adventures look neat at least.

Something like - if your sneak attack/finisher would deal no precision damage due to an enemy's immunity, you can instead deal 2 additional damage per damage dice of your sneak attack/finisher.

For kineticist, I have wished for this before in the play test, but a generic damage aoe impulse any kineticist could take would really help. You can deal x damage in a cone/burst/line, chosen when you take this feat. The damage can be any damage type your elemental blast could deal, including damage types granted by versatile blasts. If you have the weapon infusion feat, the damage type can also be p/b/s. Reflex/attack roll/fortitude save, chosen when you take the feat.

If there were more feats that let precision heavy classes deal with precision immune foes (not level 18 feats, mind you) or something like a fire kineticist to deal with fire immunity, I think that would be the best option. Players should have the choice to have feats that expand on their versatility, or double down on what they already do well. And no I don't think someone who wants to play a fire kineticist having to expand to a different element to deal with fire immune foes is a good option, as the player likely wants the fire mage fantasy.

Yeah I really dislike it. It comes up more often than I thought it would. The game I'm playing in (an ap) has had many constructs, swarms, undead, ghosts, and oozes. Precisions immunity, mindlessness, and general physical resistance has been a pain for many of the players (we have a gunslinger and a rogue, I'm a kineticist) and it feels pretty s~@%ty for them.

Personally I love the theme of swashbuckler but I hate how coming up against so many of the typical Pathfinder enemies shaves off so much of what a typical swash wants to do. Mental immunity and precision immunity. And not even a (super) late game feat to get around precision immunity. Swash, at least, should have a finisher that deals non precision damage as an option, imo.

One thing I loved about the necromancer and really hope makes it to the final product in some way is osteo armaments. The ability to create sort of disposable weapons with fundamental runes is so extremely cool and something I've been wanting since release. I would also be okay if runesmith got something like it instead; something like being able to cast runic weapon/body heightened to half your level at will on yourself/weapons you hold (the at will part starting at heightened rank 3, since at will runic weapon pre level 4 would be unfair).

But mostly I really just want to hear something about the book. It's been a tough waiting period for me, since I find the current 'story arc' not to my tastes and monster core 2 and all the 'mostly remastered old stuff' books we've been getting not especially exciting. Starfinder also needs more time, more options, for me to get excited about it.

Personally in the camp that attack spells are still very good and have their place, without item bonuses. To give them item bonuses would make them too strong imo.

One thing I'm hoping for in this book, whatever form it comes in, is a remaster of captivator (I don't think it would need much just limit spells to mental/illusion instead of enchantment/illusion). Alongside it, it would be wicked if we got similar archetypes for polymorph/morph, maybe healing, maybe summoning, maybe divination/revelation/scrying... Tons of options.

That is a large part of why I was looking into this build, yes. I very much dislike one roll to hit per round type of builds. The thought that I could, if I was set up with panache and standing beside an enemy, do a finisher into save cantrip for a strong round, sounded good to me. But yeah, sounds like it might be a bad idea.

I've played a Swashbuckler with caster benefits, but I've yet to come across a situstion where I want to cast an offensive cantrip (Being a Red Mantis Assassin, my Swashbuckler got basic casting and cantrips for a single feat, which made it more appealing). But there are plenty of utility/buff spells that are handy to have for yourself.

Damn that's what I was worried about. On paper, finisher into save cantrip looks kind of cool, but if you've never had an opportunity come up where you wanted to do that, well that's pretty telling. Thank you for sharing.

I'm hoping to get some feedback from people who have experience playing a swash. I can't decide if building a swashbuckler and picking up sorcerer dedication and casting feats is a bad idea or not, it feels like an example of when white room math really doesn't work well. And to be clear, I'm hoping to use both offensive magic (mostly cantrips) and utility, not just utility.

Points against swash/magic dedication:

Swash seems very action starved if doing bravado action -> finisher mostly.

Spell attack/DC's are obviously going to be lower than a caster.

A lot of a swash's power seems to come from their feats, moreso than a lot of martial classes (definitely could be wrong on this one).

Points for swash/magic dedication:

Finisher -> saving throw cantrip, even with lower numbers, seems pretty okay since you can't attack further after a finisher.

Charisma is already an important stat (at least the way I would want to build) and swash has a lot of debuff options to help lower saves and Ac.

Always good to have an always on hand ranged/aoe/energy damage/whatever the player wants to take on hand.

You get a 'free' skill to legendary to make the mandatory magic tradition skill a little less painful.

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Those are the main points, I think. And yeah, I think other classes might do gish a lot better, but that's not really what I want to do for the character. Am I kidding myself or could it actually work well?

I haven't been keeping too close of an eye on this one, but do we know if any of the pc options in this will be common or all rare/uncommon? My guess is the latter but would be nice to have some more common options. I did a search but couldn't find an answer yet.

Simple question, wondering how people interpret the heightening on shard strike; does the heighten effect apply to the possible bleed damage on crit, or just to the initial effect. The heighten effect simply says increase the damage by 1d6 every two levels, and while I usually err on the side of caution and pick the less strong interpretation, I'm curious what the general consensus is, if there is one. In pathbuilder at least, the bleed does not seem to heighten.

This is a topic that annoys me a lot, in a few ways. On the one hand, I'm glad that a generic strike or other common action can't damage armor and or weapons. On the other hand, because of this, item durability/dependence on items is neglected from a character options standpoint. Only not all devs got the memo. I've only played in a couple aps so far, but I've probably encountered a dozen or so monsters that break (or otherwise make items unuseable) armor or weapons, shuln mentioned is this thread being one of them. It feels super lame to not only feel useless, but the adventure grinds to a halt as you have to find a way to fix your items (usually turning tale mid dungeon and going back to town). It's so stupid. That's part of why I have little desire to play martials in this game, sticking to casters/kineticist for the most part.

Edit: special shout to inventor of all classes, who can't make their innovation more robust via special materials.

Options for ALL classes? If they really mean all, that's exciting- I'd love to see what kind of Thaumaturge or Kinetecist or Investigator options would be in a book like this.

I really doubt that is what that means. More likely options that all classes can take.

If they did, I missed it. Personally I'm not marketing genius, but I would think just announcing he product with a bit longer of a wait is preferrable to radio silence and uncertainty. If there is a reason for the delay/paizo being tight lipped, it would be nice to know that reason. But again there could be, and probably is, a reason for what's going on; I'm just antsy.

Gaulin wrote:

We might still get this book next gencon... Hopefully.

I really don't expect it to take that long. The playtest was released Dec. 2024. I expect the book to release Q1 or early Q2. A whole year and a half sounds WAY to long. So far I think books have usually released 13-14 months after playtest, not 18.

I'd love for you to be right, but that seems really close to not have any announcements (or leaks, which seems to be pretty consistent lately with rulebooks, such as the upcoming dragon book or dark archive remastered being spoiled ahead of paizo announcing).

Yeah I think the most optimistic take I have is that paizo is changing from announcing their biggest rulebooks at gencon, to letting gencon be more about the releases that come out gencon week. We might still get this book next gencon... Hopefully. It's just unfortunate that we get a change in announcement scheduling, seemingly the longest play test we have had, and no communication about any of it. Made worse that I find the classes really interesting and am very curious to see the final versions.

It could be the AP I'm playing but it feels like most of the enemies I fight as wood don't bleed. Half of them don't could as living creatures either. Personally I feel that timber sentinel should be nerfed to once per ten minutes, and given a more competitive (and reliable, a good offensive option against more enemies) offensive option.

Yeah I remember when kineticist came out, I wanted to make a pure earth kineticist. Picking out impulses I realized, sadly, that the damage it puts out was not very good, especially when tremor is not very reliable. The disparity between fire/desert winds should not be so big, I feel.

Personally playing a wood/water/wind kineticist and am having a good time, but mostly because as a more support oriented character I always have something I can pivot to (I think timber sentinel should be nerfed so didn't take it, but I still have a lot of ways to contribute).

That being said, there are a few fights where I felt I was forced to pivot to do things I didn't really want to do. There was a boss fight where I wanted to do damage, but the boss had high reflex and evasion, so aside from a stray blast which did almost nothing I was mostly sitting that fight out. And there was nothing I could have taken, really, through three lists of impulses, that would have let me deal decent damage in that scenario.

I feel that all elements should be able to be built to do competitive damage, not just fire or desert wind builds, and have a variety of defenses they can target. Hopefully we will get more impulses down the line.

If I had to hazard a guess, I think they've implemented a new book strategy, which discourages talking about the next big event when the latest big event just started.

War of Immortals kicked off the Godsrain, and battlecry! kicked off the Hellfire Crisis. So these last two class books coincided with major events. The Pathfinder setting has been alluding to Nex's return, so it sounds like the Impossible book is meant to coincide with Nex's return, and likely a war between the nations of Geb and Nex reigniting late next year, but Paizo probably does not want to talk about this event while they barely started going into detail on the Hellfire Crisis.

We've sort of entered a new era last year where there is plot to coincide with these class books, rather than them simply being setting-agnostic add-ons to the system, that might occasionally mention lore. The new class book format makes it harder to talk about the book without talking about next year's plot for Pathfinder.

That's a very interesting theory and I would not be surprised if it was the case. I hugely look forward to new classes and I'm not especially patient, so I'm not sure if I agree with stretching out the wait between play test and release, but in the grand scheme it's not a big deal. I was hoping the impossible classes would be out a year after their play test, so around January, but that window has closed. Then hoping to hear more about it at gencon; that didn't happen either. Hopes dashed again when nothing was mentioned in the mid August keynote. I think I look forward to this stuff too much!

The wait for whatever book the impossible play test classes is in, is a tough one. This has been the first gencon since pf2e launched that we haven't gotten the scoop for the next gencon rulebook. It's also looking like the longest wait between play test and release unless there's a very unexpected surprise around the corner (which there won't be).

I don't want to get too much into speculation or doom and gloom, but does have we heard anything about why this might be happening? Is the rulebook release schedule slowing down, have recent happenings in the states delayed product, or is it turnover? I understand all of those reasons, but it would be nice to get some sort of update on things.

I love the idea of having a separate line of summon spells that work more like a form spell, using a template rather than picking an actual creature. That way the people who prefer the current summon spells can still have them, while those who prefer raw power and less versatility would have their preference.

I also don't think a feat or something that raises the level of creatures you can summon with summon spells by 1 would be too out of line, but probably no more than one level. It should be something a character has to invest in though, I don't think summon spells should just get a blanket buff.

I would love to see another small niche of the arcane list in more contingency spells. Contingency (the actual spell, not the trait) is arcane only, and I always felt like arcane is the prep class - if you know what's coming, you have a spell for that. I think a bunch of arcane exclusive contingency spells would be thematically appropriate and make the list feel a bit more thoughtful.

Also, tangent, but I also feel there needs to be more arcane creatures. Arcane pretty much only has some constructs, every other tradition kind of ate the wizards lunch (especially occult which gets way too much imo).

My hopes for a shifter are to make it similar to the adaptive shifter from 1e. You can morph your body into a bunch of specific animal parts, such as growing quills for ranged attacks, regeneration, different traversal speeds, defenses, etc. There's really no end of inspiration for things like that if you just look at all the crazy stuff animals can do.

Current polymorphing is fine for a backup option but it doesn't hold a candle to an actual martial.

All that said, even though shifter is probably my next most wanted class, it does seem like one paizo is reluctant to make. Both shifter and evolutionist (not exactly the same thing but some similar themes) came at the end of their respective editions' ends, and neither were very well received as far as I can tell. I think they're wicked, evolutionist is still my favorite starfinder class. My guess is that everyone has their own vision of how their ideal 'monster' should get to work and are disappointed when they can't build the exact thing they were hoping for.

There really are a few class archetypes a summoner could have. I would love to see a martial/caster reversal with the eidolon being the caster and PC being the martial. I would love to see an option that has multiple eidolon you could pick between, one at a time (pseudo pokemon kinda). Synthesist summoner for sure. And honestly just more feats in general to customize the eidolon.

Gaulin wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Gaulin wrote:

At 20 a fire kineticist with ignite the sun, kinetic pinnacle, effortless impulse, thermal nimbus, furnace form, aura junction and impulse junction, flying flame, and weapon infusion can do a bananas amount of damage. There's a bit of setup there for sure, but assuming you can prebuff with furnace form (which I don't think is too big of an ask), turn one thermal nimbus, ignite the sun, two blasts, then next turn free concentrate on sun, flying flame, two blasts, it's a lot of damage for using no real resources. Maybe if more of that came in at earlier levels it would help with the damage curve, but adding much more damage to that might be a little much.

Personally I think other elements could use a buff. Fire out damages them by a lot, especially at 20. Maybe earth could benefit from desert winds (for single gate earth kineticists), for a start, even though with no non overflow damage impulses it wouldn't be that big of a boon (roiling mudslide doesn't count cause the damage is poopy, more of a crowd control impulse)

Why do you list this stuff like the other PCs in the group are standing around waiting for the fire kineticist to do this?

You have to and I mean have to look at this in comparison to what other party members are doing. It doesn't matter if the fire kineticist can get this great thing going when the monsters are already dead because the other PCs are doing similar amounts of damage far faster with less set up.

And yeah, the part about other elements I agree with. Fire is the best at damage with layered damage. Even they are not fast enough with the set up to get going like a caster or martial and the other elements are even worse.

We're focused on fire, but fire is the only element that is even close to competitive for damage. Every other element is far worse.

I don't think it's very fair to say that a turn of set up is too much to ask for. Especially when the first turn isn't a wasted one

...

Eclipse burst + phantom orchestra is 128.5 damage on average, and took a turn to set up. The single strike, idk how much damage that would do, some variation there, but a casters to hit with strikes isn't that great (elemental blast at level 20 has a higher hit chance than most martials by one as you know). As for the ignite the sun damaging allies, yeah it would do a bit of damage, but remember they all get an extra d6 of fire damage to their attacks and they have +20 fire resistance from thermal nimbus and no fire weakness. So they might take ten damage, but the enemy will take a lot more.

Gaulin wrote:

At 20 a fire kineticist with ignite the sun, kinetic pinnacle, effortless impulse, thermal nimbus, furnace form, aura junction and impulse junction, flying flame, and weapon infusion can do a bananas amount of damage. There's a bit of setup there for sure, but assuming you can prebuff with furnace form (which I don't think is too big of an ask), turn one thermal nimbus, ignite the sun, two blasts, then next turn free concentrate on sun, flying flame, two blasts, it's a lot of damage for using no real resources. Maybe if more of that came in at earlier levels it would help with the damage curve, but adding much more damage to that might be a little much.

Personally I think other elements could use a buff. Fire out damages them by a lot, especially at 20. Maybe earth could benefit from desert winds (for single gate earth kineticists), for a start, even though with no non overflow damage impulses it wouldn't be that big of a boon (roiling mudslide doesn't count cause the damage is poopy, more of a crowd control impulse)

Why do you list this stuff like the other PCs in the group are standing around waiting for the fire kineticist to do this?

You have to and I mean have to look at this in comparison to what other party members are doing. It doesn't matter if the fire kineticist can get this great thing going when the monsters are already dead because the other PCs are doing similar amounts of damage far faster with less set up.

And yeah, the part about other elements I agree with. Fire is the best at damage with layered damage. Even they are not fast enough with the set up to get going like a caster or martial and the other elements are even worse.

We're focused on fire, but fire is the only element that is even close to competitive for damage. Every other element is far worse.

I don't think it's very fair to say that a turn of set up is too much to ask for. Especially when the first turn isn't a wasted one - thermal nimbus is free because of final gate, ignite the sun does 7d8, and you can get in a blast or two depending on how far you have to move (you said yourself in your Games typically enemies come to you I think?). So even on that 'wasted' turn you're doing 20(thermal nimbus)+41.5(avg ignite the sun with weakness)+(39.5 X2)(two blasts boosted by ignite the sun, furnace form and weakness)= an average of 140.5. Thats assuming you don't have to get within 30ft, but even if you have to move it's still 100dmg on your setup turn. I think, especially with your style of play of scouting and such, you could have furnace form activated pre combat (honestly maybe even ignite the sun too).

So future products are possibly being talked about on August 15th? A lot of those panels sound wonderful but I don't really have the schedule to watch all of them hoping for sneak peaks, so for me the one hour synopsis was great. As far as products coming out next week, I'm already sold on battlecry and sf2e!

At 20 a fire kineticist with ignite the sun, kinetic pinnacle, effortless impulse, thermal nimbus, furnace form, aura junction and impulse junction, flying flame, and weapon infusion can do a bananas amount of damage. There's a bit of setup there for sure, but assuming you can prebuff with furnace form (which I don't think is too big of an ask), turn one thermal nimbus, ignite the sun, two blasts, then next turn free concentrate on sun, flying flame, two blasts, it's a lot of damage for using no real resources. Maybe if more of that came in at earlier levels it would help with the damage curve, but adding much more damage to that might be a little much.

Personally I think other elements could use a buff. Fire out damages them by a lot, especially at 20. Maybe earth could benefit from desert winds (for single gate earth kineticists), for a start, even though with no non overflow damage impulses it wouldn't be that big of a boon (roiling mudslide doesn't count cause the damage is poopy, more of a crowd control impulse)

I really hope we get a keynote like usual. I love the big reveals, more info on the impossible playtest final book is mostly what I wish for. Runesmith especially is an awesome concept.

More ways of inflicting misfortune on saves, circumstance penalties on saves, and maybe even buffs to class/spell DC as player options would be cool. They all exist in very limited ways (circumstance penalties only exist to reflex saves in regards to damage afaik) but I would love to see them more prevalent.

Earlier impulses that benefit from free action concentration would also be cool. Ignite the sun is great but very high level. Some form of damage by way of reaction would also be nice - volcanic escape is very cool but mostly as a defensive tool. Also, this thread is mostly about damage and talking about kineticist and the fire element, and I think other elements really should have options to be closer in damage potential. Not by much, but closer.

I am on the camp of the rogue vs kineticist damage comparison isn't super fair. I understand why you're making the post, and not denying your actual play experience, but it's hard to imagine a rogue hitting a strong enemy 4 to 5 times every round. It's also not the fairest comparison because using your damage numbers, I doubt theres a martial out there that comes very close to it.

That being said, I do think it is crappy that the game doesn't have options to support kineticist more, unless I'm missing some good options. Some spells that buffed kineticist damage (in some way shape or form) would be very welcome. Directly buffing kineticist damage so that it can compete with one of the strongest classes in the game that has the support of their team behind them is a little power creepy.

I feel a rogue should out do a kineticist in single target damage. But even then, a kineticist isn't that far behind, and given all their extra cool stuff a kineticist can do, I feel that for the most part kineticist is in a good place. It might not be as flashy, but when looking at dpr, half damage on a successful save goes a long way.

More support for kineticist via interacting with the rest of the system though, that could use some work. I'm not on team 'blasts should work like strikes' but more save penalties/DC bonuses, more teamplay potential with kineticist and other classes would be great, or more itemization.

Not that expanding classes that have weak or limiting options isn't a good thing, but in my opinion more character concepts are the main thing new options should be striving towards. Of course making every thing fun and balanced should also be a main goal, so making new options for weaker classes would also be nice.

I would personally love to see some more blanket ways of altering classes. A class archetype that could apply to all full casters that 'gishifies' them would be wicked, giving them an HP bump, raising weapon and armor proficiencies, lowering spell proficiencies and giving bounded casting would be cool to me.

Class archetypes like captivator (plz remake soon) but for other subtypes of magic would be awesome.

Some form of (adaptive) shifter would be very cool.

That's the sort of stuff I'd like, other than just, more kineticist options

I'm not for less player options in general to avoid bloat or what have you, no. If there was a trade such as one class and a spattering of other player options to make up for it, then that would be great, yeah.

Personally there are classes and concepts I'm still hoping get put in the game, so slowing content would lessen my chances for getting said options. But I do love a lot of existing options and would love to see them expanded, and I feel that there are a lot of concepts that don't need a whole new class, just tweaking of existing ones (class archetypes).

Ah I see. Thank you for sharing.

Are there any content creators that get the book early to do previews? I'm chomping at the bit here!

I still feel(and Hope) that Impossible will be an early 2026 release. Just based on how previous playtests corresponded to the release of the book.

And at GenCon they've always announced a new book with a playtest after the con.

This is my hope too but I'm not sure how realistic it is. It's been a while since we've had a year with two books with new classes, and I'd be surprised if production started ramping up at this point in 2e's career. More likely the opposite, really, with starfinder in the mix now too.

I'm curious about a lot of the stuff said in this thread, but I'm mostly wondering about the release date. If it is next year's gencon release, it's going to be a really long time until our next play test classes come out which is a bit of a bummer.

All right, cut me a little slack. I said a little validation, and your paraphrase is not very fair.

At any point in the game theres a threshold a caster could realistically meet trough the party's actions, where using an attack spell over a corresponding save-spell is the objectively correct decision

Vs

These spells aren't worth casting unless you stack a significant amount of modifiers then they maybe become a decent idea sometimes

I mean come on. I know you're the resident 'pop into threads to make people feel foolish' person, but I don't think that's necessary here.

Thank you for sharing that. While I'm still in the minority on the topic it's nice to have a little validation

Considering how quite alot of the sentiment of Attack VS Saves is "never use attack-roll spells"

Can't say I think saves really need more ways to increase their effectiveness, I feel like saves typically having effect on failure is what makes up for them not being as easily buffed/penalized, and that has also been given as one of the balancing points given for Shadow Signet, Capable of targeting more defences, But it costs an action and you give up penalties such as offguard.

Michael Sayre on Class Design and Balance wrote:

if a character has the potential to do anything and a goal of your game is balance, it must be assumed that the character will do all those things they're capable of. Since a wizard very much can have a spell for every situation that targets every possible defense, the game has to assume they do, otherwise you cannot meet the goal of balance.

was said in regards to their response to balance issues in older systems. Notably the 1e Arcanist and Wizard.

If you give circumstance bonuses and penalties to DCs then the game would've likely needed to be adjusted to account for it, If we want to meet the same design goals.

I was thinking about that quote while making this thread, even though it was talking more about the power level of wizards. But if we assume that balance is to be done with the most optimized party, doesn't that push attack rolls to be that much better with all the support that's been mentioned in this thread?

That quote is also talking about arcane casters who have much easier access to spells that target any save. Primal has barely any fortitude (they have some but they're not very reliable damage types for the most part) or will (that deal damage). Kineticists can be out of luck depending on what element is chosen if you're fighting a bunch of high reflex enemies, etc.

All that said, I did and do enjoy the characters I've played (elemental sorc and kineticist mostly so far) that rely mostly on reflex saves. But in those times I couldn't reliably target reflex saves, the options I picked allowed me to pivot to a support role. So yes, I do very much realize that just by having so many tools in your toolbox, your character is likely never to feel useless; but it does feel bad to feel forced to have to pivot.

I dunno I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill. I'm just the type that likes a more reliable method of attacking, and attack rolls are just that, while saves are a lot more hit or miss.

Gaulin wrote:

Dragonchess Player wrote:

Gaulin wrote:

What about more ways of buffing or debuffing saves? I don't feel that targeting a monster weakest save makes up for not being able to get any bonuses to spell/class DC and few penalties. I don't think spell/class DC's should get as many buff/debuff options, maybe half as many as opposed to no bonuses and only status penalties. Or is that also not something the community feels?

"Buffing or debuffing saves" is part of the whole "use your third action or special abilities/attacks to add bonuses to allies or impose conditions on enemies" paradigm of PF2. Intimidation to demoralize (frightened; 'The frightened condition always includes a value. You take a status penalty equal to this value to all your checks and DCs.'), the Bon Mot feat (-2 or -3 to Perception checks or Will saves on a success or critical success); some abilities or attacks can impose clumsy (Reflex saves), drained (Fortitude saves), or stupefied (Will saves).

What PF2 does not have is a lot of ways to add a bunch of different long-term bonuses on PCs and/or stack a bunch of different penalties on enemies so that the PCs can just "mash the 'I win' button" and be a one-trick pony that overpowers enemies with a single tactic every time.

Right, but everything you listed in regards to impose conditions are all status penalties. It seems like a long list until you realize that basically the max you can get is a -3, whereas attack rolls can get up to a 16 point under swing and have easier access to rerolling to boot.

And thats a problem, because?

There are circumstance penalties to save within the game, But they are purposefully locked behind access barriers. Distracting Feint just of the top of my head.

The entire balancing point about gaining half-effect on a successful save is because it's harder to manipulate. So should a save be just as easy to 'buff' as an attack roll while also having half-effect on what constitutes an...

Whether it's a problem or not is subjective, and the whole point of this thread. It does seem like I am in the minority, but personally I don't feel like half effects on a failure is enough to compensate for the potential and reliability of attack rolls.

Also, yes distracting feint does give a -2 circumstance penalty to reflex saves, as does catfolk dance. But I'm pretty sure those are the only two. Let's not sit here and pretend that is anywhere close to as many options that off guard has, and even then it's only to reflex saves, to say nothing about the other two saves.

Gaulin wrote:

What about more ways of buffing or debuffing saves? I don't feel that targeting a monster weakest save makes up for not being able to get any bonuses to spell/class DC and few penalties. I don't think spell/class DC's should get as many buff/debuff options, maybe half as many as opposed to no bonuses and only status penalties. Or is that also not something the community feels?

"Buffing or debuffing saves" is part of the whole "use your third action or special abilities/attacks to add bonuses to allies or impose conditions on enemies" paradigm of PF2. Intimidation to demoralize (frightened; 'The frightened condition always includes a value. You take a status penalty equal to this value to all your checks and DCs.'), the Bon Mot feat (-2 or -3 to Perception checks or Will saves on a success or critical success); some abilities or attacks can impose clumsy (Reflex saves), drained (Fortitude saves), or stupefied (Will saves).

What PF2 does not have is a lot of ways to add a bunch of different long-term bonuses on PCs and/or stack a bunch of different penalties on enemies so that the PCs can just "mash the 'I win' button" and be a one-trick pony that overpowers enemies with a single tactic every time.

Right, but everything you listed in regards to impose conditions are all status penalties. It seems like a long list until you realize that basically the max you can get is a -3, whereas attack rolls can get up to a 16 point under swing and have easier access to rerolling to boot.

What about more ways of buffing or debuffing saves? I don't feel that targeting a monster weakest save makes up for not being able to get any bonuses to spell/class DC and few penalties. I don't think spell/class DC's should get as many buff/debuff options, maybe half as many as opposed to no bonuses and only status penalties. Or is that also not something the community feels?

Some good points being made already. Recall knowledge to figure out a weakness or low save can definitely be a big help, of course. I'm making the assumption that parties figure out an enemies lowest save or weakness, and yeah in some cases being able to target that low save can make a huge difference. Maybe it's that I'm much more of a fan of consistency which attack rolls are, but I guess that's one of the things I'm trying to say; the stars don't seem to align often enough for spells/abilities that target saves. A PC has to be fighting something that has low saves, and you have to have the right ability to target that save. And even then the creature might be a construct or an ooze or a swarm or undead, etc with immunity to the effect you're dropping. Also I don't think resistances really factor into this, physical vs special or what have you, that's a whole other thing and both attack rolls and saves can be either anyway.

As far as mathing out attack rolls vs saves, I am very aware of those level ranges where casters lag behind. I played an elemental sorcerer all the way to 20 and I did feel it. But I maintain that between getting the enemy off guard (which there are so many ways to do, not just flanking obvs), hero points, aid, true strike, and other penalties and buffs, even those dead levels are better spent using attack rolls sometimes. My most reliable spells by endgame would crit very often due to being attack rolls.

As far as my third point, while golems were the worst offender for sure (and wisps), there are a lot of creatures immune to most will saves, poisons, void, and vitality. And while thats a big no doy, those tend to be the traits of a good chunk of the rare few spells that target will and fortitude. So that construct that has a super low fortitude as a 'weakness' doesn't really have much of a weakness.

And yeah I think one of the most rewarding parts of 2e is the teamwork part. Handing out buffs or tripping or whatever is a great time, and I think it can be a bummer when it benefits attack rolls so much more than things that target saves. That being said, in this thread I am mostly talking about blasting, and bringing up debuff spells is a pretty good point. If a PC could get the same massive numerical swing with saving throws abilities that attack rolls can, it might be too easy to land a crit fail on some of the more devastating spells like slow.

I don't have a good track record for making topics like this but I'm going to give it a shot. Something that has been nagging at me for a while now is the lack of support for effects that target saving throws. I'm wondering if I'm in the minority as I see more people complaining about how bad caster attack spells are, whereas I feel they are more reliable than saves some of the time.

The good parts about saving throws are that you might be able to target a creatures worst save, and sometimes that can be significant. That, and some smaller effects on an enemy saving.

The bad parts about saving throws are, imo, more numerous.

Firstly is access to saves that can target all saving throws; casters like druids have a couple options but not much. Some kineticists are poo out of luck if they come up against a high reflex enemy.

Second and probably my biggest gripe is the lack of bonuses and penalties. Attack rolls have easyish access in most cases to item bonuses (not so much for casters, but they do get shadow signet which is a whole other thing), status bonuses, and circumstance bonuses (aid mostly). Likewise, penalties to AC via status and circumstance are also easy to come by. Hell, attack rolls have things like sure strike and hero points. The only thing that saves have is status penalties, and extremely rarely circumstance (I think maybe only catfolk dance). So while an attack rolls can have massive numerical swings with things like heroism, flanking, aid, fury cocktail, frightened and a hero point, saves have status penalties and that's about it.

Thirdly is that creatures themselves often play around with established rules saves are loosely built around. Some have overtuned saves straight up. Others have straight up bonuses vs magic, or immunities to things like fear or mental and a low will save which is nearly every will save. Some enemies might have evasion or similar ability too.

That's the end of my rant, but mostly I'm curious as to what others think. Is targeting a weaker save as an option and half effects on an enemy saving enough to balance out saving throw effects? Should the game implement more support for saving throw effects like sf2e's get em?

Not getting my hopes up for big changes but it's always fun to speculate. Some possible changes I would love;

- Less friendly fire feats. Many of the amps and feats like violent unleash, dark personas presence, psi catastrophe, etc are all not too crazy strong, and need you to be up in the business of enemies. Hitting your allies too makes them too hard to use to justify taking, imo.

- Damage cantrips deal more damage baseline. Some cantrips like tk rend deal 5d6 damage at level 20. Like really? I know it can be amped, but even amped and psyche unleashed it doesn't do more damage than most other AOE damage focus spells, which are typically 16 to 18d6 damage at 20. Also seems to defeat the purpose of unleash psyche boosting damage to psychic cantrips when the special psychic cantrips the class gets are weaker to compensate for it (that's conjecture but it's how it looks to me).

- some form of effortless concentration. I know it only comes in late game, but it's such a huge feat that most every other caster gets. It really lets other casters dunk on psychic, damage wise, if the right spell is picked to sustain.