Kitusser's page

Perhaps I’m missing something here, but this seems fairly inline with the language in both the Witch and Wizard, with the obvious exception except of their unique mechanics for learning.

Wizard explicitly states it can add spells to their spellbook via Learn a Spell:

Each time you gain a level, you add two arcane spells to your spellbook, of any spell rank for which you have spell slots, chosen from common spells of your tradition or others you gain access to. You can also add spells to your spellbook with the Learn a Spell activity. When you gain spell slots of a new rank, you also add an additional spell from your school's curriculum (unless it's the school of unified magical theory).

Witch says this:

Your familiar can learn new spells independently of your patron. It can learn any spell on your tradition's spell list by physically consuming a written version of that spell over the course of 1 hour. This can be a scroll of that spell, or you can prepare a written version using the Learn a Spell exploration activity. You and your familiar can use the Learn a Spell activity to teach your familiar a spell from another witch's familiar. Both familiars must be present for the entirety of the activity, the spell must be on your spellcasting tradition's spell list, and you must pay the usual cost for that activity, typically in the form of an offering to the other familiar's patron.

It seems odd that you not only don't get the ability to add spells to your Dirge except on level-up, but you also don't get any ability to swap spells from your dirge like spontaneous casters. That's enough to make me think it may be an error that didn't get fixed from the playtest.

The Learn a Spell activity, meanwhile, implies that Necromancer is just fine:

Quote:

A spell you learn is added to your repository of spells, such as a spellbook for a wizard, familiar for a witch, or spell list for a cleric or druid. If you have a spell repertoire, such as a bard, it's not automatically added since you can only know a limited number of spells. Instead, you can select it when you add or swap spells.

A Necromancer's Dirge is certainly a repository of...

It's confusing because the classes that can add additional spells have explicit rules within them that say they do. This and the wording of the Dirge feature seem to be pointing to them not being able to add additional spells.

The cited text seems to refer to two types of prepared casters, but Necromancer technically doesn't fall under either of those categories since it doesn't explicitly have a feature for adding spells.

Something to check with your GM I suppose. I'm personally going to just let them add spells, regardless of what the rules say. I don't think a caster should have such gimped spellcasting.

That's an interesting development; normally characters with a spellbook mechanic can expand the selection of spells they can prepare from via Learn a Spell, but not the Necromancer. This might make the class more consistent overall, but I wonder what the final result has to make up for these limitations.

It seems most of the power is in the feats. I feel it can be pretty good if you select the right stuff, but it's pretty reliant on those feats and I think can be quite mediocre if you don't pick feats well. The base chassis is pretty good at low levels, but Thrall scaling is pretty bad. You basically are reliant on the feats and focus spells for your thralls to be useful. 5D6 damage at level 17 is not worth the action in and of itself.

Not being able to learn additional spells is a pretty annoying limitation, it's got the worst casting in the game basically (2 slots, prepared without being able to learn more spells) if you don't consider spell DC. Locking those thematic spells like Execute behind a bad feat is also really annoying. Not really keen on spending a 10th level feat for 4 non-negotiable spells from other lists. Especially when there are just MUCH better feats on the class.

Your dirge contains your

choice of eight occult cantrips, the 1st-rank spell harm,
and four other 1st-rank occult spells of your choice. You
choose these from the common spells on the occult spell
list or from other occult spells you gain access to. You
can prepare and cast harm as an occult spell.
Each time you gain a level, you add two occult spells
to your dirge, of any spell rank for which you have spell
slots, chosen from common occult spells or others you gain
access to and learn via Learn a Spell (Player Core 230).

Ughhhhhh. No way to learn additional spells on a prepared caster?

Frostbite is the Remastered version of Ray of Frost, which was an eligible spell for Spellstrike, thanks to the attack roll. Now it's a save spell...

It's pretty telling that Paizo literally had to errata Spellstrike in order to add save spells due to how smaller the spell pool became.

So your issue is that they changed a bunch of Spell Attacks to save spells then.

Please excuse me if I had hoped that Spellstrike's efficency would have been mostly dependant on the Magus's attack roll and be more potent via a regular weapon Strike than a spell cast, especially for cantrips.

You keep moving goalposts. This is ridiculous. At first it was about the spellstrike recharging, now it's something else.

*Magus* barely had spells before the recent changes. The fighter also gets two reactive strikes, more crit effects (i.e. rooting), better saves, more action economy flexibility, doesn’t lose anywhere near as much of their DPR if they got slowed or restrained or otherwise subject to delirious effects from enemy action, etc

Magus is on much better footing now that it actually gets a good amount of spells but it suffers considerably in martial power compared to a fighter for it’s getting those. Which is fine, it’s a reasonable trade - it just means magus isn’t some OP damage king, which is what people have claimed in the past.

Definitely wasn't a damage king, but it was above average IMO. Fighter is one of the best classes in the game so I'm not surprised it exceeds the Magus.

When your class is considered as worse as the Inventor, making it "very overpowered" kinda even things out.

Lol what? As bad as the inventor? Magus is above average as long as you know how to build one.

Oh, and Conflux spells are FOCUS spells, NOT at-will Cantrips like the Psychic's Psi Cantrips, while Rapid Recharge is a Lvl 10 feat... without the lvl 16 upgrade that goes from once per day to once per hour.

Them being focus spells doesn't mean that they don't exist.

The downside is being a Magus is that you're in melee, which is a death sentence for ANY spellcaster. Blasting foes at close range is the reward for risking your life in melee.

It really isn't unless you're a clothcaster with low HP. The only real thing that makes the Magus a bit iffy with defence is Reactive Strike.

The fact that you can score a Critical Hit with Frostbite on a Spellstrike, but the target can NEGATE the entire spell on a Critical Succes is outright insulting. It wouldn't be if a Critical Hit from you imparted "one step worse" for the target.

I don't know what you mean by "Insulting". That's just the way spellstrike works. It's mean to work with spell attacks. I don't know why that's surprising.

Nothing is gonna convince you here it seems. You've entrenched yourself into a really strict position and wont accept anything even slightly different to your criteria. You won't concede any point when you are almost certainly incorrect on many of the things you are saying. You were like this on the Gunslinger discussion as well.

The one spellstrike recharge action compression sufgested by JiCi that I could get behind adding (assuming we don't find in 2 days that it exists) is on raising a shield. Keeping a spare action to raise shield every round while alao trying to fit in a cascade eventually seems like it would be especially difficult in a Magus's playstyle, regardless whether we were concerned with every-round spellstrikes or not. Considering there is a shield based study, I would expect some support for that, and it doesn't seem egregiously more powerful than striding each recharge, although maybe I'm off on that.

I agree for Sparkling Targe at the very least.

Kitusser wrote:

Why does it specifically not have to cost an action? Why can't it just be easier in other ways like the class already does?

Ok, so we have one new feat that allows Stepping or Stride while recharging. That's good, but not enough. The fact that none of the Studies offer a special way to recharge is a HUGE problem.

To answer your question, recharging doesn't make your situation more advantageous.

If you Step or Stride, you move around.
If you Strike or Cast a Spell, you deal damage.
If you use an item, you try something different, including healing.
If you recharge, you're doing... nothing else.

Dude, Reloading a Firearm can be done in more numerous ways than Recharging Spellstrike, THAT's the current problem right now.

You know how each Gunslinger Way has a special way to Reload, plus extras with feats? The Magus should have gotten similar things years ago.

It doesn't help that Reloading a Firearm has no trait (I checked), versus Recharging Spellstrike, which has the Concentrate trait, being vulnerable if your mind is screwed up.

Reloads do a lot less than recharging spellstrike does in terms of how useful it is.. So it kind of follows that it's easier to reload on the Gunslinger than it is to recharge Spellstrike on the Magus.

Reloading is how many Interact actions you need to reload the weapon. So it is manipulate.

Just because Gunslinger has special reloads (for a weapon type that desperately needs this kind of thing), does not mean Magus needs it for Spellstriking. Spellstriking is balanced with recharge, and what the class gives you to make it easier. Reload weapons are not balanced with just the reload action. They essentially require having special reloads to be balanced.

Recharging does make your situation more advantageous. It lets you Spellstrike.

You're asking to make the class very overpowered. What is the point of having a recharge if you just have a way to basically do it alongside the actions you wanted do do anyway? There are enough ways in the class to offset the downsides of recharging. You have:
- Conflux spells, which are very action efficient.
- A few feats which combine recharge with another action
- A way to do it as a free action once per day with a feat.
- A level 20 feat which makes you permanently quickened.
- 2 slots per level, which can easily help you spellstrike more often.

I think you're forgetting that the recharge is supposed to be a downside.

Wow, is ANY player interested in the runesmith ? I have a feeling nobody ever mentions it. Even now, when we get the biggest glimpse at Impossible Magic with actual feats, pages and runes, nobody's talking about it.

I personally haven't really read the article because a lot of it refers to things I need to remember from the playtest and I just CBA rereading the playtest class. I'd rather just read the full class when it's available.

Tridus wrote:

At that point why don't you just ask for removing the charge on spellstrike entirely? Because that's what you're really saying. And to repeat myself: be careful what you wish for.

I'm asking to remove the charge. I'm asking Paizo to give 10 more ways to recharge instead of "spending one action idling in place recharging".

Yes, I can cast a Conflux spell, but 1) those are Focus spells, and 2) those are limited in usage per encounter.

Quote:

Also I hate to break it to you: Magus is a glass cannon. If you're in melee lighting stuff up with Spellstrike, you're already a target.

Then let me feel confident to use Spellstrike without worrying about recharging.

I'll say it again: a Magus should be able to recharge its Spellstrike faster as it levels up. Right now, a Lvl 1 and a lvl 20 Magus absolutely needs ONE action to recharge Spellstrike after using it.

Rapid Recharge allows you to recharge Spellstrike as a free action... once per day.. without any advanced feat to make it once per hour and then once per minute...

I always see you do this. You make some really strict criteria for what's acceptable, but you don't accept anything else that works towards the underlying premise behind what you want. So you say it's a problem that it's "one action", but don't care that there are multiple things within the class that make recharging easier.

Why does it specifically not have to cost an action? Why can't it just be easier in other ways like the class already does?

You also say you want it to Spellstrike faster as it levels up, but then say that right now, it needs one action from 1-20. The first part of that already exists, so why are you being misleading by asking for it to be faster, when what you really want is something else?

To be honest, if you aren't spellstriking on the vast majority of turns at level 20 it's honestly a skill issue.

Kitusser wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

Since it's mostly more low level slots I don't think the buff is as huge as it might look initially.

But it does make me wonder if there's something we don't know about the Necromancer, because it was already kind of feeling like.

It'll be kind of goofy to see osteo armaments necros flailing around with terrible combat stats while magi get to cast as good as them while also being a highly competent martial.

At low levels, sure. But at higher levels a good player can really take advantage of the extra spellslots.

Yeah I hope we're missing something for the Necromancer. I'm really concerned about how it prepares it's spells. The playtest didn't allow adding new spells like a Wizard or Witch, and there's nothing I've seen that says it can prepare from the whole Occult list. If it doesn't have one of these things then it's gonna really suck at spellcasting. The Magus will unironically have better casting when it comes to spellslots, not Spell DC.

The features the Necromancer gets are pretty good, but I'm not convinced it counterbalances having 2 slots per rank. It gets Thralls, which are good, but the damage can be pretty bad on them and they don't really scale well and really have limited utility outside the attack they can do, being conduits for your focus spells, and flanking/sort of taking up space (but they can be pushed around easily). It has some pretty decent focus spells, but nothing too exceptional so far, considering the low flexibility in targeting and the fact that you will often need to be spending and additional action to cast them. The feats seem quite good, with some exceptions like the level 6 subclass exclusive feats, and the level 10 feat which gives you... 4 extra spells you can prepare from that aren't on the occult list. The Oracle gets 3 for free at level 11, and the Oracle has 4 slots per rank! It only gets 2 free focus spells which like isn't that impressive either? I just hope we're missing stuff from the previews.

...

I'm also holding judgement but just based on what I've seen, I'm definitely concerned. I don't think the Thralls are weak per se, but they seem to scale poorly. I'm waiting to see the full class because there are probably feats that fix this, or maybe a class feature.

Necromancer does get the pseudo-Heroism but it's pretty bad. 2 actions, level 6 feat, and lasts one minute. Pretty hard to make use of unless you get a turn to buff.

Everyone is praising the Magus's new features, but I fail to understand why Paizo still hasn't added a way to recharge Spellstrike at a faster pace.

Say "you shouldn't Spellstrike every round" all you want, but when most of your feats resolve around Spellstrike, it just sucks that you cannot repeatedly use the Magus's core ability.

You'd think that a Magus would be able to recharge Spellstrike faster as they level up.

Seriously, that's ALL you need to balance the class.

It needs feats that let it recharge Spellstrike when...
- scoring a Critical hit
- reloading a firearm or crossbow
- raising its shield
- switching grip for a staff
- Stepping

How hard can it be to add one special way to recharge Spellstrike for each Hybrid Study?

How "broken" would Spellstriking each round would it really be compared to a squishy spellcaster casting every round or a fighter Striking every round? Explain to me this train of thought like I'm 5...

Everyone, take your favorite doll and point me where Paizo would hurt you if Spellstrike was usable every round, come on now, don't be shy.

It literally got a level 4 feat which lets it recharge while stepping or striding up to half it's speed. This is very good.

Since it's mostly more low level slots I don't think the buff is as huge as it might look initially.

But it does make me wonder if there's something we don't know about the Necromancer, because it was already kind of feeling like.

It'll be kind of goofy to see osteo armaments necros flailing around with terrible combat stats while magi get to cast as good as them while also being a highly competent martial.

At low levels, sure. But at higher levels a good player can really take advantage of the extra spellslots.

Yeah I hope we're missing something for the Necromancer. I'm really concerned about how it prepares it's spells. The playtest didn't allow adding new spells like a Wizard or Witch, and there's nothing I've seen that says it can prepare from the whole Occult list. If it doesn't have one of these things then it's gonna really suck at spellcasting. The Magus will unironically have better casting when it comes to spellslots, not Spell DC.

The features the Necromancer gets are pretty good, but I'm not convinced it counterbalances having 2 slots per rank. It gets Thralls, which are good, but the damage can be pretty bad on them and they don't really scale well and really have limited utility outside the attack they can do, being conduits for your focus spells, and flanking/sort of taking up space (but they can be pushed around easily). It has some pretty decent focus spells, but nothing too exceptional so far, considering the low flexibility in targeting and the fact that you will often need to be spending and additional action to cast them. The feats seem quite good, with some exceptions like the level 6 subclass exclusive feats, and the level 10 feat which gives you... 4 extra spells you can prepare from that aren't on the occult list. The Oracle gets 3 for free at level 11, and the Oracle has 4 slots per rank! It only gets 2 free focus spells which like isn't that impressive either? I just hope we're missing stuff from the previews.

I don't really get why they were so hesitant to give Necromancer decent melee stuff when the Magus just gets 2 slots per rank.

Mathfinder is infectious in his excitement, but this Magus does look legit great. They fixed a LOT of pain points.

Also while I think the gun Magus will still have action issues, it's cool that it's at least plausible to build one now. It was a nightmare before.

Major win for the class. I wish I could play Spore War again so I could play one in it because it'd be awesome in that campaign with an archetype to get Moonlight Ray.

The class is definitely in better shape design wise but I'm kind of thinking it's too powerful? The Magus was already a pretty decent class power wise, and it just got quite a lot stronger. Psychic is a joke now, and I have concerns about the Necromancer from what I've seen of the class.

Also the level 4 feat which heavily mitigates one of the biggest downsides of the class is definitely interesting.

Here is perhaps a more clear example of what I am talking about.

The party comes to a door. They approach it relatively quietly and one of the party goes up, inspects the door and sees that it is locked. Someone decides they are going to begin picking the lock right a way. They roll once, an 8 on the dice and fail. The GM says nothing happens. The party gets into a debate about whether to proceed to try to pick the lock, or continue and explore the hall. They make no effort to suggest the party does this debate quietly, and the GM knows that there are some creatures on the other side of the door that are being quiet and attentive, so they might have not noticed one attempt to pick the lock, but with the conversation afterwards they take a couple of rounds to have one person sneak up to the door to try to listen more carefully for a while, one person go and get some allies that will take some rounds (lets decide 8) to get prepared and get to the room, and then, if it still sounds like there are people on the other side of the door, the caster of the group plans on casting bless at the same time someone unlocks and opens the door from the other side (this would constitute round 1, so basically the encounter would begin with the door locked and the party doing whatever they were doing right before). So the GM decides to be kind and say that the party probably has 10 rounds from the end of their conversation about what to do before the enemies will open the door.

To the players, if they don't have someone carefully listening at the door, it might feel like nothing happened as a result of having tried to pick the lock, especially if they decide to leave before the enemies are ready to open the door. Or it might seem that way for the 8 rolls it might take to get the 4 successes necessary to unlock the average lock on the door, only to immediately not feel that way when the door opens right as the reinforcements arrive, because it took 8 rounds to open the door, and the GM decided at the outset that is how long...

I think this would be an example of a dynamic situation with severe time pressure where having multiple rolls would not be a waste of time necessarily, and the consequences of failure are more than just taking extra time, due to the time pressure.

I'm personally fine with the Luminary being a martial, as that helps distinguish it from the Bard, I just think they need a lot more meat on their bones. Giving them things to do besides move the spotlight around could be a start, and their spotlight effects could stand to be a lot stronger too. If the class isn't meant to have good Strikes, that's fine, but there needs to be something else to compensate: the Commander gets a whole folio of tactics to play with, for instance, and the Kineticist gets their impulses, and in both cases any one of the varied options those classes have seems to beat almost the Luminary's entire kit by a country mile.

I personally would wish for it to be something closer to the Kineticist in that it's a unique design not limited by the general martial and caster frameworks. I'm not interested in there being any capital S Spells on this class though. I'd rather it be a "martial" with barely any martial support, and most of the focus on the unique abilities.

The point being ignored here is that players don’t know if a check is going to matter or not until the GM makes that clear. If every time they roll, no matter what, something bad happens on a failure, the game has changed and players tactics will too. I think there is a range of player responses to that, some good, some bad. And probably most dependent on the situation. Sometimes it feel like people in this thread think the consequences of failure need to be immediately felt by the players and their characters in order for a dice roll to matter. I think that can be unnecessarily burdensome to the GM and to everyone’s enjoyment of the game. As a player, if you assume every roll matters and trust your GM to reveal how eventually in things that happen at the table, I think you can have a lot more fun than if you pressure the GM to reveal wether the roll mattered or not immediately.

Now, that said:

I agree that there are many times it is unnecessary to make your players roll as a GM. Like if the dungeon has basically been cleared of enemies and there is no time constraints, you might not even make your party go back to every single room they passed up and just say “with the remaining 4 hours of the day, you sweep the dungeon and find xyz.” That is totally fine and can save a lot of game time. You want your players to have enough treasure to move on and the remaining challenges might be so trivial and unimportant to the story they don’t feel necessary. Maybe you are using milestone leveling and don’t need to worry about it, or maybe you are using xp and you bundle that xp into a story award along with the loot. Alternatively, some GMs don’t want to give anything away and the players enjoy hearing all the room descriptions and figuring out for themselves the dungeon ecology. Then it’s a couple more hours of prepared play time. It is all about learning your table and what makes playing the game fun. None of these are the wrong way to play, so, as a GM, you don’t actually need to make every roll matter in a...

Sure but in these scenarios you can keep it to one roll, having a failure say cause to the lock to open, but someone that you aren't aware of notices. Another idea is to be open but vague with the consequences, say that they get the lock open but they think they could've tripped some type of detection in the lock, or they swear they feel like someone saw them. It may be a little meta, but that's fine.

I don't know that I care too much for the idea that PCs can just fail their way to victory.

That's not failure. That's coddling. That's not an adventure with trials. That's watching a movie until you get to the end.

I do agree that something should be done about those time wasting failed just to repeat situations. Unless there's a time constraint of some kind, they're just not interesting.

You don't understand what failing forward means. Progressing the plot does not mean it's in favour of the players, and success at a cost quite literally means there is a cost for your success. It's not coddling, it's avoiding boring time wasting that the mechanics of the game causes.

There's this idea of not asking for a check if the only consequence is that you need to try again, or take some minor consequence that doesn't really matter. The take 20 or take 10 rule basically just codifies this in the rules. There's no reason to roll to pick a lock if the only consequence is that you just try again. There's no reason to get people to roll to climb something if the only real consequence is that they fall in the worst case and take like 10 damage (which they could likely just heal with no issue). Not to mention how boring these binary challenges are.

Kitusser wrote:

Why are you hyperfixated on the Rogue example which was a minor part of my point?

I made a post about a play experience where I saw a non-gunslinger use a gun very effectively. You responded to tell me that that would only be the case at low level, but my player ran that character from 8 to 13 when the campaign ended, and it stayed very effective with massive critical hits that would one shot lower level enemies and significantly change the game against bosses when they happened.

My point was to say, hey, I’ve seen guns used effectively by nonslingers, because I have (also an investigator).

No I said that enemies are only getting one shot by crits at low levels. The rest of my comment was to the larger point behind what you were saying.

Again, one crit is only changing the flow of a boss fight at like low levels.

Plus you're making assumptions that aren't true, like the Rogue getting their Sneak Attack every round (which is highly unlikely with a hiding playstyle, particularly at low levels), and assuming a bow focused Rogue wouldn't build their character differently.

But like, Rogue is kind of not a good ranged weapon user. Spending 3 actions every round to get one sneak attack hit is bad damage.

Without an off guard target, the rogue’s 2nd shot with a bow is -7 compared to the hiding sniper rogue. That is a pretty huge cliff to fall off of as far as additional damage, especially as your second shot loses sneak attack damage.

I'm obviously comparing bows to guns holistically, not just on the Rogue, but aren't you making assumptions that just aren't accurate? The Rogue at this point is not gonna be able to consistently hide from the enemy it wants to be hidden from. The Rogue is a bad ranged character until you get some very specific feats. Though if I were to be playing one, it would be in a party that can easily grant me off guard, or I would pick the Mastermind subclass.

Why are you hyperfixated on the Rogue example which was a minor part of my point?

I have seen a rogue with running reload make a very effective sniper. Shoot, hide, reload and sneak. They were a touch less good at getting cries, but the sneak attack damage helped make the regular hits painful and when they did crit it was spectacular, just not as frequent.

Only one attack per turn but the sneaking away at the end made it a very frequent multiple action sink for my npcs and even if one did spot the rogue and point him out, there was usually someone off guard to shoot.

I think Sayre really hit it out of the park with PF2 gun design. Their cries are heavy enough to one shot a lot of lower level enemies and significantly change an encounter against a boss, without being easy enough to make happen that they just make everything else terrible. If you think of regular hits not as actually hitting a target in a significant body part but near misses and light grazes, the fantasy and the mechanics work pretty well.

Their crits are high enough to one shot lower level enemies at low levels. Past like level 5 this will not really happen. Low level scaling is not very good in this game.

Bow crits aren't exactly bad either, particularly with their crit spec.

But anyway, you are saying a weapon/class is good because it can crit every 3 turns maybe and change the outcome of a fight. Thing is, a regular archer can do the same thing of "significantly change a boss encounter), just with much better consistency. This is a pure DPR thing, you can just use math to determine the better damage. I'm sure somebody has done the math here and I'm fairly certain bows just come out ahead. Don't try the white room thing either, bows are much more adaptable to circumstances than guns are.

The cost of reload is not worth the extra damage you get on a crit. A bow crit really isn't that far behind a reload weapon crit (2d6+1d10+2) [14.5] vs 3d12 [19.5]). The difference is significant, but it's not so crazy that it's overcoming losing at least one action in a turn. This difference becomes less and less pronounced as you get higher level. Crit fishing builds have always been a bit of a trap option in most RPGs.

For your Rogue example, the rogue is taking defensive actions and reloading at the cost of their damage. They simply aren't going to be as big of a threat as other people at the table. Smart enemies aren't gonna be scared of the rogue spending 2 actions to make their one attack do good damage.

I have had very different experience with ranged weapons and reload weapons than others it appears.

In my experience, good range weapons have dominated encounters, but required the whole party to play to using range and not getting in each other’s way or moving fights out of the kill zone the ranged characters were trying to establish. Gunslinger crits have consistently been the most impressive hits we have seen, but maybe only because no one has played a ranged magus for more than a one off.

I mean if you build your entire party around it then it is a lot better. But then you're missing out on like half the classes and the many many benefits of having melee characters. A party with melee characters is stronger than one without in my opinion. It doesn't have much to do with ranged damage being good, and it's more about "All of us can hit you while you can't hit us."

The damage is still paltry, and spellcasters could more or less match the damage, or be only slightly behind. There are a couple ranged builds that are really strong, but it's only a couple.

Now most parties have a mix of ranged and melee, and the ranged martials just always feel bad compared to the melee in these games. Particularly at low levels.

Honestly, ranged weapons as a whole suffer a bit, especially at early levels. Reload weapons are just taking a hit on top of that because it's never been properly budgeted. Every reload weapon could get a die size increase, and they'd still be generally weaker I think.

Agreed. I genuinely think that ranged weapons are underpowered in this system. The benefits of range just aren't enough to compensate for the low damage.

Spellcasters can match ranged martial damage with focus spells and max slot blasting. Which genuinely sucks for them.

Balance for everyone's fun. If Firearms were on par with RL weapons, they would become the most common weapons, as shown by the RL world. No thanks.

Are we really acting like guns are somehow balanced in this game?

I don't think the gunslinger is bad. I think it's on the lower end of martial power, but it's still far better than other classes like the inventor or the investigator. What's really bad about gunslingers isn't the class itself, but the design behind firearms. TTRPGs seem to have a hate boner for ranged weapons that aren't bows because "huh, bows are a fantasy staple" or whatever.

All the ranged weapons that weren't slings that exist in PF2e ended up overshadowing bows in real life at some point in history, and while applying that directly to a game would be bad since all player options are supposed to be equal or at least somewhat equal against each other, I don't know why we instead live in a world where every single ranged option feels like a trap except in very specific circumstances and builds.

Sadly, I don't see Paizo making a rework of a whole weapon type at this stage of PF2e, less so when the perfect chance to have done that already happened...twice (the remaster and G&G:R; arguably Starfinder 2e too). We can only hope Pathfinder 3e does a better job with ranged weapons than every other edition before it.

Yeah it's not bad but most of the class budget goes into offsetting the downsides of a bad weapon type than anything else. It's a little funny that there are classes somehow worse than the Gunslinger despite this.

This spell is an AOE dazzle with an anti-invisibility addon, not the other way around. This spell is quite good even against enemies that can't turn invisible, against invisible enemies it's amazing.

I don't see how this spell wouldn't affect everyone inside.

snip

I just suppose I don't really understand what you consider to be competent enough as a martial. A Warpriest is basically equal or a little behind in accuracy compared to a typical martial until level 13. At low to mid tier of games it's perfectly competent at martialling with it's base kit, and has some nice feats to complement that playstyle.

I can agree that at higher levels it doesn't really seem better than a Cloistered Cleric, but for low to mid I think it's comparable, probably a little weaker.

I don't think the Warpriest is supposed to be like a replacement for playing a martial, just with a caster flavour. It's primarily still a caster, and is able to supplement that competently with martial prowess.

I personally don't really see a Fighter with a caster dedication to really be that much of a caster.

With the Alchemist thing, when I say in the dumps I generally just mean a class that is basically unplayably bad. The Alchemist is bad, but it's not so bad that you can't be a useful member to the team, unless you build it poorly. I think there is a level where hard to build counts against the class. Though I also think it's also reasonable to say that if built competently, the class is at least comparable to the other classes in the game and consider that as less of a point against the class.

Still, I really hope the class gets some errata to help it or something, but it just doesn't seem very likely.

Kitusser wrote:

Nothing remotely capable? They get the bare minimum, and they have 3 slots per level + your font. With spells you're as accurate or better than the average martial most of the time. Plus the Warpriest feats are pretty damn good.

If Warpriest is not remotely capable of martialing, then the Alchemist is in the dumps. Like it's insane to me that the Warpriest gets expert at the same level as the Alchemist.

They get the bare minimum, which I consider unacceptable. What makes martials good at being martials are the extra class features and feats that help support things. Armor and weapon proficiency are just the most basic pieces.

These are two separate claims. It can't be hitting the minimum and also be considered "not remotely capable".

The warpriest is a less capable caster than the cloistered cleric, but isn't enough better at martial pursuits to make it actually worth it IMO.

Any more capable as a martial and it's gonna be way too powerful.

Ignoring the levels at which you get access, I think fighter with cleric dedication hits the power level that I would personally want in terms of martial capability with spell casting utility.

You are undervaluing the power of the additional slot and having higher rank slots + the divine font.

You also don't even get a spellslot until level 4 on the fighter/cleric, and you wont get a focus spell either.

It seems what you're actually asking for is a pure martial with some casting capability. That's not what a warpriest is.

And yes, I (and many others) consider the Alchemist to be in the dumps. It's not a martial character.

The class is perfectly playable, a bit hard to build but not "in the dumps" bad. I don't consider it to be good outside a bomber, and some really specific stuff, but this is undervaluing the class.

Also "not a martial", what is a martial then? It's certainly got the best attack scaling for a non martial.

Warpriest gets basically nothing that makes them even remotely capable in martial combat though. Sure, they get access to better armor and weapon options than a base cleric, which isn't much. There are a few feats that can help would be martial combatants, but nothing compared to actual martial classes.

Prior to the battle harbinger, I would have told someone to play a fighter and take the cleric dedication or be a Champion. Depending on whether they wanted a tankier or more offensive character with divine power.

The battle harbinger isn't the best martial, I will agree. But it does bring stuff to the table that a Warpriest doesn't.

If I wanted moderately martial character, I would absolutely be disappointed with the warpriest doctrine.

Edit: I will say, I haven't had a chance to play Battle harbinger (and probably wont, but I'm just never inclined to play a cleric).

I guess, depending on what exactly you want I might suggest Fighter with cleric dedication.

Nothing remotely capable? They get the bare minimum, and they have 3 slots per level + your font. With spells you're as accurate or better than the average martial most of the time. Plus the Warpriest feats are pretty damn good.

If Warpriest is not remotely capable of martialing, then the Alchemist is in the dumps. Like it's insane to me that the Warpriest gets expert at the same level as the Alchemist.

pauljathome wrote:

Failed my will save so I am compelled to point out that a well built druid is most certainly NOT kind of a bad class.

I can certainly agree with you at early levels, where the Druid has focus spells on par with slot spells, while also having the defenses of a Warpriest and an incredibly versatile spell list. At levels 15+, though, the Druid's defenses are effectively the same as any other caster's, their focus spells are far behind most slot spells, and the primal list doesn't have that many spells that feel "broken" in the same way other high-rank spells of other traditions. Untamed form requires a huge amount of feat investment to offer benefits that become increasingly distant from the martial classes it tries to emulate, and without this feat investment the focus spell becomes dead weight. There is, in my opinion, room for buffs here.

I wouldn't call it bad though.

The only classes I'd call bad at this point are like Investigator, non-bomber Alchemists, Inventors and probably Psychics.

Kitusser wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Unfortunately, what you describe above is the basis for the infamous 15-minutes adventuring day that PF2 tries very strongly to avoid.

Does PF2e really try to avoid this strongly though? I thought that a strong draw of the encounter balance is that it's not dependant on an adventuring day to function, it assumes full resources.

Full Hit Points, not necessarily full resources.

No the guidelines are pretty explicitly for full resources.

Moderate : "Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and face a harder challenge without resting."

Severe : "Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open."

Extreme : "An extreme-threat encounter might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all-out, for the climactic encounter at the end of an entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using advanced tactics and teamwork."

It talks about how often a party can continue these encounters, but an Extreme encounter is still extreme if you're at full resources.

Unfortunately, what you describe above is the basis for the infamous 15-minutes adventuring day that PF2 tries very strongly to avoid.

Does PF2e really try to avoid this strongly though? I thought that a strong draw of the encounter balance is that it's not dependant on an adventuring day to function, it assumes full resources.

gesalt wrote:

I do appreciate how quickly we went from "focus spellstriking is broken" to "you're being unfair to the magus, surely it can do better than this."

“Magus doesn’t beat fighter damage even if it gets focus spell spellstrike every round, already turned on arcane cascade, and gets two free map-10 strikes cause it’s somehow recharging for free”

“Uhhh, that’s not being fair to magus, magus is better than that”

?????????

Actually yeah you two are right, I seriously don't even understand what's going on here anymore.

Why no Quietus Strikes and Draconic Barrage on the Magus ?

Honestly your example feels so strongly slanted in favor of the Fighter (and thus of your opinion) that it is actually counterproductive.

Adding the disdain of your chosen words towards those who do not agree with you, ie "whining", this certainly does not help your case IMO.

It's literally 1 damage with quietus strikes, and I'm assuming no Draconic Barrage because they have Fire Ray instead? Plus, Arcane Cascade is on so how are they fitting this into the previous turn's buff round?

I don't think Fire Ray is gonna be dealing less than Draconic Barrage here. Even if it had both, the damage is not going to be much closer, the fighter is still gonna win by a significant amount.

Sounds like you either got quite lucky rolls or were over-determined to win by having a strong party. Doesn't mean that the fights that are hard for that party won't be long.

Not entirely sure but:

I don't think it's worth us derailing this any further by arguing more when it's clear we're never going to agree ScooterScoots. The tables we play at must be completely different, because in my groups if a frontlining Fighter spent the entire first turn of any combat, especially a boss fight, not positioning themselves between the enemies and the squishies and just buffing themselves repeatedly, that would probably result in 2 or 3 of the other players having to waste a bunch of actions and resources running away and getting annoyed about it.

I don't know if I like you just saying it's a playstyle difference when it seems you are factually wrong on some matters that were pretty important to Scooter's analysis.

Yeah, custom mixed heritage, not adopted ancestry.

That doesn't have the physiological restriction, IIRC?

You pretend that this feat is some general feat. It is not. It's a feat for a fully (magical-) mechanical ancestry with a very specific lore. So, yes, it's very definite that this eye is because of their magical-mechanical nature. It's just as true as you can't get any of elven adaptability feats (if they exist) or some feats which depend on elven life span through Adopted ancestry.

Besides, I didn't include the text "as determined by the GM" for nothing. I, as a GM, desided so, there's nothing to argue about.

By this logic, literally every single feat from the automaton can't be used for the purposes of adopted ancestry. This analysis needs to be done on a feat by feat basis, based on what the feat says in it's text.

But like, to be real. The mechanised nature is so much easier to replicate in another ancestry. Magical prosthetics already exist in the game, this is basically a sidestep from that, even less so because the feat doesn't actually specify anything mechanical in it.

Also wasn't this originally about custom mixed heritage anyway?

Fighter MC Magus will cast Sure Strike and crit both the Strike and the attack spell.

Even just once per combat is quite enough for this to be OP.

So, just kill the possibility of a crit for the MC.

They are 10% more likely to crit, maybe, sure this gets wonky with sure strike, but not enough to be problematic. You need to spend a full turn to achieve this. If the monster doesn't end their turn next to the fighter, then this combo can't even happen.

If the Fighter is quickened, then it's a lot easier, but the Magus can also be quickened, and they benefit from it way more than the Fighter does over the whole combat.

I'm just not that concerned about this once per fight I suppose.

Kitusser wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Spellstrike is plenty good as is.

It should directly be a once every 2 rounds thing to nerf Starlit Span back to the other Studies' level. And put the range of spellstrike to the lowest between the Strike and the spell too.

Also nerf the MC Dedication's Spellstrike to be unable to crit succeed on the attack roll.

To be honest I don't like this. Nerfing all the melee Magi because of the ranged one being too good leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Also the entire point of Starlit Span is to spellstrike from afar, nerfing it so it conforms to the spell's range seems like it's going against the point of the subclass. I don't think the range is the issue as much as the spellstriking every round.

The issue is that the design of the Magus is very clearly meant to Spellstrike once every two rounds (see: conflux spells, arcane cascade) so either we take out the design of almost every element of the Magus except for Spellstrike and kill it or we find some way to make people suck it up and space out their Spellstrikes - I would prefer buffing conflux spell attacks and arcane cascade to make an off turn almost as good but either way.

Starlit Span is also the only hybrid study to have the special clause that it works even if the range of the spell is lower so cutting that is just reverting to norm. They don't need it, clearly.

(MC Spellstrike is fine unless battles only last 2 rounds for some reason in which case it's a your table problem)

How does that logically follow? The starlit span is the only magus that has that special clause because it's the only magus that can spellstrike with ranged attacks.

Magus isn't "meant to" spellstrike every other round. The limitations of the game and class make it so you often are spellstriking every other round, but there are methods to get around that which are obviously intended, and sometimes the circumstances just allow you to do it (like when you don't need to move to get in reach of enemies). Making it so it has a one round cooldown removes all of the tactics and teamwork that would allow it to happen. No more hasting your magus, or shoving an enemy into their reach.

The Raven Black wrote:

Also nerf the MC Dedication's Spellstrike to be unable to crit succeed on the attack roll.

Wait what kinda stray is this. Are you on the design team that did the psychic remaster or something?

Lmao, I didn't even see this part.

Kitusser wrote:

ScooterScoots wrote:

Automaton mixed ancestry makes plenty of sense. You were i.e. a human soul shoved into an automaton body. That’s literally the lore behind their creation. Makes sense that would sometimes result in the soul retaining some aspects of the ancestry it was before.

And there are plenty of adopted ancestry feats that make sense, why couldn’t a poppet have an integrated armament? Why couldn’t an elf sorcerer have an arcane eye?

Yeah, it could also just have been a partial transformation to begin with. I don't think the lore contradicts this, and it would make sense within the universe.

Yeap, in this character's case it was a kobold who was born with a failing heart. A sibling who was a clockwork surgeon of some sort operated on them and gave them an artificial clockwork heart. And has been operating on them to give them numerous clockwork augmentations, until they were old enough to operate on themselves. They are not a soul in a soul cage driving a chassis, they are a kobold with various built-in clockwork augmentations that are a part of them. As I said, a cyborg. They would fit neither the definition of an android (a biomechanical life form run on nanomachines), or an automaton (a human soul in a soul cage piloting a chassis). There is no ancestry that really supports the fantasy directly. So the answer was the obvious, "Reflavor the closest thing." And we ran with the Automaton for it, as it had the closest overlap with what clockworks were capable of. And the reason it was a kobold with an automaton heritage and not an automaton with a kobold heritage is that neither of us felt that the kobold should have the construct benefits, as they were still alive. Just the feats to represent the augmentations.

In PF1E terms, they would have been a half-construct.

Perfectly reasonable. I don't see why this would even be an issue for anyone.

The Total Package wrote:

Thanks! I really like this! Then what do you recommend for 12-20 feats?

You're welcome, glad you like it! As for higher level Feats, shroudb and I are of similar mind.

Alchemist Feats:

• 12th Level: Uncanny Bombs. Shortbow Range, cover mitigation and auto-success on concealed (for throwing Bombs, at least.) Get rid of those Alchemist Goggles; why bother for just a little Splash on a miss?

• 14th: Dip back for Extend Elixir. 2 hour Quicksilver? Yes please!

• 16th: I lean more towards Advanced Efficient Alchemy (not Expanded, Efficient, oops), because there's no room in my build for Combine Elixirs but shroudb is right: Eternal Elixir is the stronger choice even so. (Eternal + Combine is really, really strong.)

• 18th: Improbable Elixirs all the way. Fly when you need it? Advanced Alchemy Haste? Survive forever on Ration Tonics? Yeah, great Feat.

• 20th: If Core Rulebook is allowed in your campaign, yeah, Perfect Mutagen is fantastic. If not, Mega Bomb is very thematic, and very useful in the right circumstances. While Alchemical Revivication is really cool, I'm not really into a Capstone that may never get used.

As for the Free Archetype stuff: My only really "gotta Take" is Dual Onslaught from Dual Weapon Warrior at 14th. If you miss with both Dual Thrower Bombs... no you didn't! Choose which one actually hit. (Hint: go for the Create Consumable Bomb if you threw one. :) )

Dual Blitz isn't really worth it, IMHO, As you need to use Quick Alchemy to load up your hands, it isn't an action saver Feat. You can just Stride, Quick Bomber, Quick Bomber in any order instead. And for a number of reasons Flensing Strike just doesn't work with Bombs.

I am a fan of Master Spotter (Investigator Archetype 12th) as Alchemists don't get Master Perception without Canny Acumen, later. Also, Skill Mastery (Investigator Archetype...

Free Archetype can be nice for something like Witch Archetype, giving you a strong familiar for action economy, and spellcasting which certainly can't hurt. Also the Cauldron feat!

Also as an alternative to the extend line, the debilitating bomb line is also nice.

My son is playing one and it kind of depends in our experience:

- If the enemy has a weakness you can hit (and bombers can hit a LOT of weaknesses), you're going to be fine. You can easily get good persistent damage and since you can hit that weakness on a miss via splash, you can regularly trigger it multiple times a round.
- If enemies are set up in a way where you can get them with splash, this can also start to add up. It's not caster AoE damage, but it's not nothing.
- It's generally not great against single target encounters without a weakness, but you can use things like Skunk Bomb/Dread Ampoule/Bottled Lightning (and the Debilitating Bomb feat chain) to put up conditions while doing some damage, which is nice.
- If you run out of Ghost Charges or VVs in a fight against incorporeal enemies, it sucks hard because all your quick vials are nonmagical and thus double resistance applies.

In a more general sense:
- Quick Bomber is a must take feat and it makes you extremely mobile. My son's character has Medic Dedication/Doctors Visitation and it's pretty easy for him to heal someone and still make multiple attacks.
- You're still an alchemist, so you can bust out other types of alchemy as needed like numbing tonics/soothing tonics, mutagens, and buff elixirs for the situation. This is very much a "get a big recipie book and make stuff for your party for maximum benefit" class. It can be really clutch when facing things like high level diseases, because the major antiplague is a big gain over your regular equipment and lasts all day.

If your goal is to do pure maximum DPS, it's not really a good class. But it can deliver decent damage while also being able to pull out all kinds of useful items that would cost a LOT of gold to stock, and there's definitely value there.

I haven't run the math but at level 11-20 with all the right feats (Quick Bomber, Sticky Bombs, Expanded Splash) the damage seems fairly good between the high persistent and high splash. High Splash means you're doing 10+ damage on a miss, which must do a lot for damage, even on 3rd action attacks.

Automaton mixed ancestry makes plenty of sense. You were i.e. a human soul shoved into an automaton body. That’s literally the lore behind their creation. Makes sense that would sometimes result in the soul retaining some aspects of the ancestry it was before.

And there are plenty of adopted ancestry feats that make sense, why couldn’t a poppet have an integrated armament? Why couldn’t an elf sorcerer have an arcane eye?

Yeah, it could also just have been a partial transformation to begin with. I don't think the lore contradicts this, and it would make sense within the universe.

Spellstrike is plenty good as is.

It should directly be a once every 2 rounds thing to nerf Starlit Span back to the other Studies' level. And put the range of spellstrike to the lowest between the Strike and the spell too.

Also nerf the MC Dedication's Spellstrike to be unable to crit succeed on the attack roll.

To be honest I don't like this. Nerfing all the melee Magi because of the ranged one being too good leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Also the entire point of Starlit Span is to spellstrike from afar, nerfing it so it conforms to the spell's range seems like it's going against the point of the subclass. I don't think the range is the issue as much as the spellstriking every round.

Using foreknowledge to gain an advantage is all well and gold, but if the threat is actually impossible without foreknowledge, then it probably needs more time in the oven.

On posts like this I always see people defend the design as long as there is one potential way to counter it through an item or spell. I feel like this logic just leads to there being basically no ability that could be problematic as long as there exists one solution in the rules.

SuperParkourio wrote:

Using foreknowledge to gain an advantage is all well and gold, but if the threat is actually impossible without foreknowledge, then it probably needs more time in the oven.

Well then, really any creature that can burrow and take other creatures with them probably needs "more time in the oven".

As do creatures that can pick someone up while flying (if they have a fast movement speed) because they could pick them up, fly up high, and drop them. Potentially before the opponent can do much. Although there are a lot of common solutions to reducing/negating fall damage so this one isn't as bad. But if you don't know you need it in advance, you could be pretty screwed.

Depends on the level of threat but if it's in instakill territory then yes.

Does this checkbox counterplay actually add anything interesting to these fights? Like it's either you have the counterplay or you don't, and if you don't you die. If you don't have the system knowledge you might not even know how to get that counterplay, so it turns into searching Archives of Nethys for an item or spell that helps you beat the monster. It's just not that interesting.

The counterplay is having some vital earth pellets (they’re cheap, 30gp each, should always have them on you by this level)

This will absolutely murder any party that doesn’t habitually carry vital earth though. Brutal game knowledge check.

To be fair, I don't think these knowledge checks are particularly interesting or healthy for the game.

You can basically justify any ability against the players as long as there is one item, feature, or spell in the game that lets you counter it.