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I do personally find the legendary solar weapon proficiency at level 19 a bit awkward, because being a proficiency rank above others in Strikes is generally a class-defining strength that is applied much sooner, as with the Operative's proficiency track. Giving the Solarian that proficiency bump does make an impact, but it occurs far too late to define the class's strengths, and in my opinion only contributes to the general feeling that the class's core features are basically more jumbled-up versions of the Fighter's from Pathfinder, from the equivalent of Reactive Strike at level 1 to the equivalent of Battlefield Surveyor at level 7. The class in practice ends up playing differently thanks to their AoE feats, but that takes time and feat investment to come about, and anyone who happens to not take those feats can easily find themselves just playing a worse Fighter in space.

Yeah, I greatly wish some of those were available sooner. As is, it feels like it's space-Fighter until level 6 or so, which is a long time!

Striker Operative needs to give a skill other than Athletics. It's not technically broken as written, but it feels broken in spirit.

Operative is the DEX class. Striker is limited to agile/finesse melee weapons (all agile weapons are finesse anyways) and unarmed attacks. You can't start with a +4 in STR, only a +3. And investing in both STR and DEX is really bad for skill proficiencies because there's only one STR skill, etc. And, if all it did was give you trained in a skill you're not going to invest heavily in, it'd be fine.

But Operative also gets 4 free skill feats as they level... for the skill from their specialization, and only that skill. They do not, however, get free skill increases for it, so you need to spend some of your normal skill increases to unlock better skill feats. Honestly? This ability really feels like it was supposed to be skill increases instead of skill feats, because there's a lot of abilities like that in PF2 for classes. Inventor, Swashbuckler, Thaumaturge... And honestly, that would solve the problem here! Free advancement in Athletics would make you good at that even without going heavy on strength.

Honestly, the forced investing into specific skills is kind of bad anyways - did you know there's only 4 skill feats for Computers at all without raising it to Expert? Acrobatics only has 3 (though in party, because for some reason Steady Balance is listing under Athletics, at least on Nethys). So does Stealth. And especially for Stealth sure, you probably focus on it, but still.

So, as I see it... Specialized Skill Set seems like it's supposed to read skill increases and not skill feats. But failing that, Striker either needs the Ruffian treatment (can take STR as KAS) or a different skill (Intimidation, maybe?) Edit: Ahaha. The playtest let them take STR as their KAS even! But honestly... why does Operative's melee subclass push you towards STR instead of DEX?

Honestly, a lot of classes run into the issue of unequal quality of choices. The Rune Witch is so much worse than other options. Thaumaturge's Bell implement is kind of bad (at least without heavy investment). And so on. Exemplar mostly just has a few more duds than normal I think. (And even then there's enough useful ones to have a lot of options)

Xenocrat wrote:

Maybe someday if we get some Tian Xia books, or an international gathering of magic schools.

We already got the international gathering of magic schools book and while it added 3 schools, none of them were from Tien Xia.

Next best chance for that is probably the next time we get an adventure set there.

I think they were being sarcastic.

I know there's a lot of people who will be happy about that "Draconic Kobolds" section.

Battle Harbinger is the doctrine I'm really not sure about, because I really value that pile of emergency heal buttons the other doctrines get to bring. I have to assume they're sticking a heal or two into their slots, which limits their higher rank spells more than Warpriest, and I'm not really sure the auras make up for that (especially when the other doctrines can mimic it with mere rank 1 slots)

Sanguivolent Roots doesn't hit undead well, because as written it only hurts them if it drains the life from anything. Which requires a living target, and it only hits them for half the highest damage a living target took.

I feel like the roots should just skewer everything, and then if they had a living target to drain life from the undead take extra damage. So it's always useful (and also impales constructs) instead of having major enemy types it does nothing against... and then in that edge case of mixed undead and not it gets to do extra damage to the undead.

Dunno if that ends up being too good though, since it already has friend-or-foe built in and such.

I disagree on Sudden Charge presenting an option. There is never a reason not to Sudden Charge unless you can't reach the enemy even with two Strides. At any distance less than that... if you want to attack them you just use it, put yourself next to them, and swing. Sure, you might not have needed two strides of distance. But why take the time figuring that out when you use two actions to reach the enemy and hit them either way?

I have seen players trying to figure out whether they need Sudden Charge to reach an enemy or not, counting out squares. Unless you want to use some other special attack (e.g. Vicious Swing)... just charge. In a lot of fights you don't even need to measure distance either since you can easily get to 60'+ range on it and just choose where you end up because you'll have movement to spare.

And while trees are a kind of plant, most plants are not "wood". So I would expect many GMS to say no.

Wood is the name of the element, but it covers plant matter more generally. Look at the breadth of things the impulses create - fruit, brambles, flowers...

I would be really happy if we had a "spell attack-like" action for the wand too. It would ideally require 1 action to use and it would nice to pair with the fling magic action for a nice 2A+1A routine. It would also be really cool for a "wandslinger" feeling which I think is what people wanted the wand to be.

Would also allow the wand to proc weaknesses. Always seemed odd it didn't really interact with that.

Edit: Actually, would that be enough of a buff to the wand if it just got to trigger the weaknesses from Exploit Vulnerability? (Especially as that damage would be added after halving on successful saves)

You get some edge cases with "can a bastard sword be a weapon implement", though that's kind of pointless because Empowerment gives the same damage bonus as two-handing it anyways. But I suppose you could free swap to a 2h grip in that case (I'd allow it anyways)

Whether bows can be a weapon implement is a gray area. They definitely don't work with Empowerment though, which is greatly limiting on them. Shuriken give the same damage output without hitting grey areas because of that (just use a thrower's bandolier), if not the same range. Rotary Bows are also interesting - d8 1h crossbow so it has very good damage at the cost of reload actions.

There's definitely room to buff a few of the weaker implements (bell could use it, for instance). Mirror's Adept tier having friendly fire is awkward for society play, even if the actual damage is negligible (if the implement wasn't already pretty good I'd suggest the shards should trigger Mortal Weakness/Personal Antithesis, but)

"When you Cast or Sustain a hex, your familiar can curse a creature within 15 feet of it, prolonging the duration of any negative conditions affecting it by 1 round."

Mine is a raven. And he floats around willy-nilly cursing everyone (even friends if they piss him off).

Quoth the raven, "Evermore!"?

Nah, the pedantry about assurance not counting as a roll so it just randomly doesn't work with things is dumb. "Roll diplomacy" is just shorthand for "make a diplomacy check". Paizo has page limits and saving space matters.

Even if you're being that pedantic, One For All says you may roll Diplomacy. Assurance says you may take a fixed result instead of rolling diplomacy. I choose to roll diplomacy and then to replace my roll with a fixed result, done.

This is like people arguing that Risky Surgery can't be allowed to work with Assurance because a non-scaling 4.5 extra HP healed is unfair or broken somehow.

Let's be honest, at level 9 a Wit Swashbuckler has, at minimum, a +15 with their master Diplomacy. Add in +4 CHA and they get a critical success 75% of the time already. Assurance is nice, but quickly falls off since in four more levels they have +23 and critically succeed on anything but a natural 1 (and one level later, even a natural 1 is a success)

I view Soldier as kind of an attrition deal - you're dealing consistent damage to multiple enemies every turn while making it harder for them to hurt the party (both by soaking damage and by inflicting Suppressed). It doesn't really have a direct comparison... but Kineticist is probably one of the closer ones.

But mechanically, Operative is closer to Fighter (well, it's Gunslinger in space really, but).

Well, there's only 1 common 2h parry weapon to begin with - the Bo Staff. (Which, to be fair, is a solid weapon), and at level 2 you'd probably be taking the upgrade to your parry AC anyways.

Level 4 has fun toys like Area Armor and Proud Nail. A reach weapon definitely takes Reactive Strike at 6. Or possibly you go the Hampering Strike chain. Group Taunt at 8 solves the action economy issues, or Mighty Bulwark to just say no to reflex saves in general.

Guardian has a lot of solid feat options that don't care about shields, so I don't really see an issue there I guess. Even completely ignoring shields or parry I can easily pick feats I'd be happy with all the way to 20. (Well, the level 14 feats feel lackluster, but that's just generally true, and there's enough lower level stuff to consider anyways)

I've been actually toying with a Grenade Envoy build. Ready Arms! feels like it works best with grenades- the fact that it wants you to constantly switch to a new weapon AND can work with area fire is so convenient!

I would absolutely love to play a supportive Envoy that draws a flash grenade, tosses it, makes your allies concealed to the enemy, and allows your ally to make a free strike- all for two actions. Your third action is free for striking, demoralizing to set up your teammates, etc.

Ooh, that's a nice trick.

Soldier, naturally, works well with grenades because the whole class is kind of built around area fire (and auto-fire). It's debatable whether you get a Primary Target strike with a grenade, but if your GM allows it that's pretty strong. Even without that, Bombard has nice benefits like Suppressed even on success (compared to Failure for other soldiers) and excluding allies from the explosion.

Your MAP increases, but the save DC is not affected. Soldier gets to cheat a lot at MAP really, when you look at things like Primary Target and the various "full auto even more" abilities they have.

Yeah. Not being able to use special attacks with mythic force just feels wrong. And then for spells you can't use metamagic (because mythic spells are themselves a metamagic basically) and you have to spend an extra action entirely (which... oof, since that's a lot more expensive than a mythic strike is, blocks 3-action spells, and also causes grief for kineticists under the common "fix" of using mythic spells for impulses, since it wrecks their economy to not have the action to channel after a 2-action overflow, etc)

It almost feels like it would be better if it was just a free action, trigger: you make a strike/cast a spell/impulse/etc, and you spend the point to use mythic proficiency.

Exemplar, Horn of Plenty.

This technically isn't anything broken. But I think that the transcend should allow you to still use the item on yourself, in order to move your spark while consuming a potion/elixir with the action compression.

The issue that comes up here is that while it saves an action with it's immanence effect, because you then need to spend an action to transfer your spark to something else afterwards you don't actually benefit from the immanence unless you're going to use it multiple times in a round (i.e. two+ items on self, self+transcend, etc). (At least, without an ikon feat granting it additional Transcend options)

Of course, it allows you to spend two actions to consume two items and give the effects of one to an ally and such still, but it feels like a minor trap that you have to invest further or use multiple items in a turn to actually gain benefit from the immanence at all?

Feels like Nantambu is the obvious answer. From what little I played of Strength of Thousands, it seemed like the best possible version of a progressive college town. Small enough to have a strong sense of community and decent social safety net, fairly cosmopolitan from the students coming from all over. Maagambya is also a distinctly altruistic organization that does not reach for violence first and actively supports Nantambu. Not to mention the school's founder and patron is still kicking around with enough juice to curb the worst urges of Baba Yaga and the cleverness to know how to do so without overt threats.

I'd be willing to overcome my aversion to temperatures above 60 degrees to live there.

Yeah, having Old Mage Jatembe keeping a quiet eye on the place is a big plus. But the Magaambya alone is a major draw, both appealing to me as a nerd and for the practical answer of all the spellcasters to solve problems.

Your eidolon's spell DC explicitly copies your own, so if they do pick up spells (Fey eidolons say hi) they're not bad at them.

Trip.H wrote:

Holy crap, the arrogant irony of that statement is an invigorating slap to the face, that's for sure.

It wasn't irony. But I agree it wasn't nice.

Unfortunately, if we can't agree on a basic concept such as the relationship between the size of your HP pool and the number of attacks you can take before dropping, the conversation is doomed to fail.

The number of attacks it takes to kill you looks more like a step function of your HP than a line. That's the issue with trying to say 10% HP = 10% more attacks. You never go down part of an attack, after all, so there's more fuzzy thresholds depending on what's hitting you where your survivability jumps a lot, then it goes up very slowly, etc.

I would say they invert the relationship of an animal companion. A Druid is primarily contributing to combat via their spell slots, with the companion providing support/supplemental damage. A Summoner is primarily contributing via their eidolon's strikes, with the summoner's magic providing support/supplemental damage.

Summoners are a martial class dressed up as spellcasters. (Their spells are absolutely relevant, you just need to ration them out. But opening a fight with a Fireball before switching to strikes to clean up, or throwing a heightened Heroism on the eidolon before it charges in can be very effective)

Centaur Weapon Familiarity should allow them to use the Jousting trait, even though they're technically not mounted. Feels odd that it grants proficiency in the Lance but they can't actually benefit from the weapon's main gimmick as written.

Did they fix Dual-Form Weapon? Two actions to change modes is brutal, especially when combination weapons exist and are one action to change.

Also, as printed, you can never put runes on the second form. "Any runes on your weapon innovation don't affect the second weapon configuration." Except, being a single item it can only have one set of runes anyways, so... ooops? (Also another place it compares unfavorable to combination weapons, which get to share one set of runes for both modes. Alternatively, bayonets/stocks take separate runes... but are wielded simultaneously and need zero actions to change modes, so...)

I really want to like that feat, but it's so bad as printed currently.

The traditions are canonically an artificial construct to begin with. They're how the people of Golarion have categorized magic. But the lines aren't really there, and especially skilled casters are perfectly capable of casting "occult" magic as a primal caster or vice versa (it's even one of the paths of study at the Magaambya, on account of Old Mage Jatembe's teachings)

Yeah, the issue here is that if the power balance is so tilted to runes for damage that striking is unappealing, then it's hard to call this a martial class.

I'd still want to see some numbers at other levels due to breakpoints on strike damage etc, but I don't expect the conclusion to change much that it's not worth using Engraving Strike.

Engraving Strike is strictly better than Strike, essentially. But if you can't ever make it worth using Engraving Strike over runes for damage (outside of high saves/low AC cases)... that does seem to be an issue. At least if this is supposed to be a martial class (and it does seem to be at least using that chassis).

Although part of the issue is probably that Runesmith doesn't really have any class feature to boost their strike damage output the way almost all other martials do (Fighter/Gunslinger being "bonus accuracy" is still a damage booster, but Champion is more optional in getting a boost in exchange for their incredible defenses). Whetstone or Impact runes are a boost, but a minor one comparatively... and go on allies just as well (or better, considering accuracy etc). The difference from Champion though... is that they're getting access to the very damaging rune invocations instead. But with the failure chance of a strike, the math isn't working out for Engraving Strike, and you definitely have little reason to Strike if the upgraded version isn't useful.

We really need a pass on abilities that try to reference property runes as a way to buff weapons. Champion's Blade Ally is the most common one people will run into there, but the most egregious is probably Kineticist's Kindle Inner Flames impulse. It heightens from +2 damage per strike to "add Flaming to each strike", which for anyone with maxed property runes on their weapons is a straight downgrade without a rules interpretation that it can over the normal cap. (There's also Conductive Sphere at the same level that tries to add Shock runes, there's the Conductive Weapon spell...)

Proficiency would be kind of eating reaper's weapon familiarity's lunch, would be odd imo having two ways to do the same thing in class like that.

Yeah, that's a fair point. Probably could use a pass over all the various martial leaning feats to make them play nice together in that case.

Inner Radiance Torrent was originally Limited, now that it's been nerfed, does it change from Limited to Standard?

Potentially, though that's a separate team making a pass now that the errata is live I think?

Drained can be a very handy condition to inflict especially at higher levels, but Life tap is very awkward for a low level necromancer's main combat trick. I like having a srained inflicting focus spell on the necromancer, but I think it needs to be higher level so it has a bit more power budget for other things, while the Spirit Monger needs a bit more immediate damage or healing for what might be their only non-cantrip attack at level 1.

Yeah, a higher level spell might pull this off, but as an initial effect it just feels like it doesn't offer enough in any direction to warrant using it - you rarely care about all three effects (debuffing and healing especially tend to be opposed, as debuffs want to go out early while heals hopefully don't). Right now, I'm looking at this as something I'll never really want to cast at early levels over a dedicated damage cantrip or heal spell... and then I'll grab Necrotic Bomb at 2 for offense instead.

I feel like Bone Spear might really benefit from being a reflex save because of the MAP interactions.

Necromancer should start with 2 focus points I believe, because the FP rules don't make a distinction for focus cantrips. It's a mistake in the playtest document to say that they start with 1.

Hmm. It occurs to me you can Ready Invoke, which could be used creatively in many situations.

Force Barrage, Runic Weapon, Soothe, etc. etc.

With 2 slots and being a prepared caster I am not going to try and be creative in my spell choices.

The Mastery of Life and Death class feature means you deal Vitality damage to your thralls with effects that do Void damage, with no option not to do so, doesn't it?

Yeah, it's seriously lacking for actual options to use in the playtest. I'm sure the final book will have more runes to work with, but this feels like an oversight.

Necromancer does seem to have a couple feats to support weapon use. The conjure bone weapon, explode thralls to add void damage to attacks, etc.

The spirit type having a level 12 feat to gain ghost resists when you detonate thralls is interesting for that too. Resisting most damage is very nice.

Life Tap seems a little weak. Thematically, it's cool. But for an equal level enemy... well, creatures tend to have 15-20 HP per level, so on a failure you're dealing 10-15% of their health in damage and healing an ally by about 10%. It doesn't do a lot of healing or damage, so I worry that it's not going to feel very impactful a lot of the time. I'd straight up just double the healing on it probably? (I figure as is, a level 2 target is worth 4 HP healed... if they fail the save. Lay on Hands gives back 6 for a third of the actions spent, plus a significant AC bonus. The comparison is of course worse at odd levels due to the way the two scale, but it caps at 40 HP versus 60 HP at 20.) Double healing makes it give 4-12 HP in the same situation (I suppose this might actually be a bit too much? Maybe it should heal a constant amount as long as the enemy took damage, similar to the Paradox of Opposites witch, since it's easier to adjust that way)

TheSageOfHours wrote:

Pretty sure the runesmith is an idea one of the devs mentioned awhile back in the forums, i would look to find who it was but i need to go to bed like right now.

But whoever it was, I remember!! I have been waiting for this idea to come to fruition since that forum post! So excited!!

Also i am so happy we are getting a full necromancer, my best friend loves necromancer and this seems to be exactly what he wants, so excited!!!

I don’t know about any devs mentioning that, but I know that I was theorizing about eventually getting a Necromancer class back in July, 2023 and even speculated on getting Necromancer and a Runecaster/Runethane/Rune”X” -class and/or options back when Secrets of Magic was coming out. So, I am very happy this is finally happening.

I find myself hoping that we can maybe get a Remastered Magus and Summoner in this “Impossible” book, too. I also wonder if the book will be called something like “Tome of Impossible Arts”, “Grimoire Impossible”, or “Secrets of the Impossible Kingdoms”…

Come on synthesist summoner.

SuperBidi wrote:

Easl wrote:

For a 1-10 game, 1-7 is most of the play space.

If you play a character which is good at level 1-4, okish at level 5-6 and bad at level 7-10, the only thing you'll remember is that it was a big pile of crap. Having your character getting worse and worse at what it does every level it takes is not a good feeling.

Easl wrote:

Both may be better overall choices, but nobody wanting a divine gish is going to take Magus, and nobody wanting to spam 4+ aura spells per game day is going to get that from Summoner until at least level 6.

What makes a "divine gish"? If the only difference is the tradition of your 4 slots then that's not much of a difference (especially when you see people stating that the Battle Harbinger should grab Arcane spells like True Strike or Haste). Just play a Staff Magus, grab Fervor Witch Dedication and a Staff with Bless/Bane (level 6 for a Staff of Providence, but your GM may be nice and allow you to use a variation on the Entertainer's Lute or Bagpipes of Turmoil that would be an actual Staff).

As for the Summoner, it casts lots of auras much earlier than level 6. At level 4 you already have 4 slots, and that's without buying any Wand. You should play like a Battle Harbinger much earlier.

In a level 1-10 game, a Summoner or a Magus will be more effective than a Battle Harbinger at being a Battle Harbinger. The Battle Harbinger is only a valid choice if you never make it to level 7 (the moment where it really crumbles to pieces compared to actual classes).

Wait if they wanted surestrike and haste wouldn't they pick a deity that adds it to thier spell list?

Like Ragathiel. Actually not a bad option. Surestrike and haste are added to your divine list and you get a d12 weapon as favored.

Ragathiel also allows Harm on your Font. A Warpriest of Ragathiel is going to do an excellent impression of a Magus without needing any multiclassing at all starting at level 6.

A Magus that traded Arcane for Divine and then I dunno, got the aura spell font in place of Studious Spells? Yeah, they'd be significantly better than Battle Harbinger.

As you said - there's very little reason to not just run Warpriest instead. Yes, Warpriest is behind martials on accuracy at many levels... but they outclass Harbinger by miles in how many support spells they can bring (heck, Warpriest is basically equal to Cloistered at the support role). They win out in damage output too because they have a lot more slots to prepare Harm in for Smites too (especially if they get Harm in their font). With the right god (or some Human feats) they can start loading their low level slots with Sure Strike too, and oops you've made a Magus.

With general rules for Object Familiars in Divine Mysteries, I noticed that the Construct familiar ability in PC2 gives it immunity to healing, but doesn't actually say it can be repaired via Crafting or anything.

I have absolutely had encounters where I just started firing off spells while prone on the player side, as long as they're not attack rolls prone doesn't impact it at all.

Synthesist Summoner?

I feel like it really only needs a class archetype of some sort to work. Let you use your focus spells while merged and at least self-targeting spells from slots, and you're done. Maybe a free action for the boost/defend eidolon, or get Extend Boost for free, to handle the action economy issues of not getting Act Together to squeeze that in?

I really want to make a character who summons a giant robot construct eidolon or something.

Titan Breaker helps against hardness, but it's only really going to apply to very low rolls or very high hardness, at most. Since only the spirit damage goes through hardness, it effectively means you deal a minimum of 2/die when hitting something with hardness.

But compare that to other ikons where you still deal bonus damage... and then probably get the same final result anyways once hardness comes off (if you deal 6 bludgeoning and 3 spirit against 5 hardness, you get 4 final damage either way)

Which isn't to say the extra damage die isn't going to help break through things, it's just that I dunno if it's significantly better than other classes.

The troublesome out of combat ikon is Victor's Wreath, with the "make new saves every round until the condition goes away". Being able to make it worse is a downside, but a lot of (most?) conditions are safe to keep crit fishing against. Compare that to Paragon Chalice... which is a level 17 ability for Thaumaturge and can only attempt one check per condition per day. (Although it can't make things worse and comes with significant HP recovery, it's still the difference between a powerful capstone ability and something you can take at level 2 on a dedication)

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

As far as out of combat healing, the gam expects you to be near full hit points when you go into your next fight so the Scar isn't actually that bad. On the other side what the Wreath doesn't tell you if depending on the initial effect if your allies crit fail or fail a disease or poison check it get's accelerated.

It's out of line with most other out of combat healing, which occurs in 10 minute chunks, costs resources, or has cooldowns. It's a heightened 1-action heal on yourself every round (transcend it and it's forced somewhere else, shift immanence to put it back, repeat again next round). Healing at this speed typically costs focus points or spell slots, but just... doesn't for the exemplar.

There are situations in APs where you only have a single 10 minute increment (if that) between waves of enemies, and an exemplar would be able to get themselves back to full without spending any resources from any HP value. I can't think of anyone else that can do that.

It feels like too many of these abilities were created without thinking about someone using them out of combat, really. Like, think about how barrow's edge transcendence interacts with someone striking the floor, by RAW, or with the dreaded bag of rats. It's bad.

There's so many trivial ways to heal up out of combat as is. Forensic Investigators, Kineticists, basically no resource cost ways to turbo-heal the party in 10m. Unless the next fight is happening sooner than 10m, a well-prepared party is going into it at full HP. (And a fight that's happening almost immediately favors the burst healing of Kineticist or focus spells anyways)

shroudb wrote:

Huh?

Since when?

I didn't want to enter long description on that...

Roughly, blasting asks for a 2-action spell. Then you have one action left for... either Earth's Bile or Channeler's Stance. You won't be able to use them simultaneously. So it's no "combo", it's just not working.

Stances only need the action once though, not every turn?

He's not wrong in regards to grapple being only a chance to make spells fail. In 2e, I feel like a lot of the value is in the Off-Guard and Immobilized conditions it inflicts. Once someone grabs the caster, they can't get out of melee range and have their (probably lower) AC reduced, making it easy for the party to gang up on them and clobber them.

Having a spell whiff is gravy, the value's in having the important target rendered vulnerable. And yeah, hitting a critical success (which, I should note, can end up being much better than 5% when you invest in Athletics maneuvers on targets with poor fortitude saves. And casters are usually bad at those!)

Another use case for grapple unique to Monk is that one of their higher level stances at 8 has the Reach and Grapple traits, and gives +2 to grab enemies. Grappling an enemy from 10' away can render them entirely unable to attack if they don't have reach. (Well, strictly speaking, you're allowed to attack whatever's holding you still - but limiting them to attacking the monk with their higher AC is pretty good still)

Dubious Scholar wrote:

It's not wrong, exactly...

but Earth's Bile should probably be reworked to be Heightened+1 somehow. Focus spells for damage should never be Heightened+2.

It’s +2 because of the single action sustain and moveable AOE on top of wanting two damage types/dies.

The amped Daze laughs at this assertion.

Well, no - it's pretty much just the two damage types. If it was pure fire damage it would have definitely been +1.

But it makes the spell's power fluctuate a lot based on your level - it's much better at levels 5-6 than 7-8 because it's not keeping up with enemy HP the way it would if it was +1. And because focus spells are locked in a way normal spells aren't you can't just swap to a different blasting spell for the off levels the way you can for something like Force Barrage.