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How are you using Staff of Divination with a bow? Or are you using a thrown weapon?
There's a difference between inspiring someone and tracing over their work. AI art crosses that line. Public views on technology is informed by how that technology is used. If stable diffusion, or other tools, is built off stolen artwork and is used to replace human artists, then that damages the reputation of AI art in general.
The training data that some image-generating AI use is stolen ("scraped") from human artists, which is why it's controversial even when it's not used for profit. Other services that use AI, such as Adobe Photoshop, does use proprietary training data, so it doesn't face as much blowback. What you personally are doing is fine IMHO, especially if you acknowledge the tools you use, but generative AI itself is still very controversial for the reasons I mentioned.
Is anyone still using cantrips at L10, much less L17 & L20? Interesting. I've never played a caster past L10, but I generally get way more use out of spell slots than cantrips. I will admit that cantrips are better than using a crossbow or something. Follow-up question: Does losing attribute modifier to damage make a difference at those levels? For electric arc, it's 5d4+5 at L10, 9d4+6 at L17, 10d4+7 at L10.
Is anyone still using cantrips at L10, much less L17 & L20?Depending from your tradition options that are pretty interesting to trigger some weakness and disable regen. Due you not having the "divination touch" and maybe not prepared the damage type spell you need to a specific situation. Cantrips may help in these cases. If all you need from cantrips is triggering weakness and disabling regen, then attribute bonuses don't make a difference.
Rand al'Thor was more effective when using the Power rather than a sword and Gandalf was really just fighter with INT18.
As evidenced by developer tweets, the game is balanced around a hypothetically perfect wizard who always has the right spell prepared for the right situation. It is unrealistic to expect brand new players to possess this kind of system mastery, and casting "wrong" really hurts when you have so few slots. I'm not sure what tweets you're talking about, but it's true that the encounter balance doesn't take attrition into account. So... from a game development standpoint, what are some possible solutions? How would you make a baby wizard feel better? I have a lot of homebrew I use. Here are three that help low-level casters in general. Spell Recovery
Recharge
Spell Attacks
Okay, genuine question re: wizard flexibility. Does this feature ever actually come up in play? I'm being serious here - I don't think I've ever really seen it be an actual thing at the table. Every prepared caster I've ever played and every prepared caster I've ever played alongside used basically the same prepared spell list every day, with very occasional swap outs of one or maybe two spells on extremely specific occasions, like needing a given specific-use spell (stone to flesh, for example) that they had to wait until a new set of preparations to cast - but then they just went right back to what they had before. Even that is less common the more your group invests in scrolls, in my experience. I mean, as a theoretical white-room construct, sure, the loss of the potential spells for your school slot is a nerf, but as a practical matter? I highly doubt it's going to prove to be at my tables, at least. In my experience, no. I reckon it's just an argument to defend the decades-old status quo of Vancian casting.
Int based prepared casting is not what is holding back the wizard. The fact that you even think that's the issue shows you how much Paizo screwed the class and the Int stat. Well, I know INT is bad because the worst classes in 2E are the alchemist, witch, investigator (and possibly wizard now). Trained skills aren't quite as good as high Will saves or the combat-applicable social skills, plus it's easy to get the skills you actually use Trained. Prepared casting (and Vancian casting as well) is bad for reasons that are too long to get into here, which isn't going to be corrected in Player Core 1.
The best Wizard build is currently a high-INT Imperial Sorcerer, and Player Core 1 won't change that. I think paizo would rather have a class rhat was too weak rather than too strong, but I'm surprised to see a nerf to a low-tier class like the wizard after hearing great rhings about the kineticist. I will say what held back the wizard (INT-based, prepared casting), can't really be addressed short of an edition change.
The sorcerer is absolutely not the king of blasting casting. Storm druids and maybe psychics do it better.
I guess what I want to know is what affect would a spell attack bonus item, lets say +1 at 5th level and +2 at 13th, have on the math, and would the increase of success make anyone playing a Martial "feel bad". It would raise the optimization ceiling non-cantrip attack spells, although even that wouldn't make disintegrate better than chain lightening. It would also make cantrip attack spells more accurate, but that woukd be even less significant than the first effect.
I still think it is a big mistake to say that all spell attack roll spells hinge on Truestrike. Hero points exist and are the much better "advantage" resource for pairing with spell attack roll spells, especially since you could spend that last action on a force bolt/heightened magic missile and usually exceed what any martial can do in a single 3 action round of attacks. No, hero points are not what makes attack spells viable, true strike is. Most players will get one or two hero points per session, and most players will preserve them to avoid a critical failure or character death. Also, burning a spell slot on a one-action heightened magic missile is a waste of high-level spell slots. If spellcasters want to deal decent damage against single targets (which the game discourages IMO), then they need true strike, either by preparing it multiple times in their lower-ranked spell slots or by using a staff of divination.
Just spitballin' here 'cos I'm not as mathematically adept as you all: What would the effect be if "True Strike" had heightened effects, such as +4 True strike can be cast as a reaction. +8 True Strike lasts until the end of your turn. I think the magus would benefit most of all classes, since they get high-rank slots natively and they benefit from action-economy enhancers. If I were playing a caster, though, then I still wouldn't use the spell because I already need to burn highest-rank slots if I want to make attack spells worthwhile. A L5 true strike or a L9 version would worsen that dynamic. Especially since so many casters are not action-starved. OTOH, it fixes the issue is too accessible to martials and best used by casters as staff spam, the way L1 true strike is. Being higher-level means that it would be less likely to be too powerful (synesthesia it is not). I'd say it's weaker than it is strong. True target should be your point of comparison for higher-rank true strike homebrew spells.
...and while you're assembling that in-depth analysis, be sure to include some consideration of the costs involved as well... where the caster just needs to blow a few lowest-level spell slots or maybe some charges from a staff and the martial has to throw around... Wait, earlier you had a L8 spellcaster using horizon thunder sphere to do 9d6 damage - that's heightened to spell level 4. For a L8 spellcaster, that's the highest-level spell slot they have. How is that only "a few lowest-level spell slots?"
The raw quantity of damage you're dealing with isn't the only factor involved Then why did you ignore everything but damage from your calculation? You didn't account for how easy it is for martials to get flanking or for weapon potency bonuses. Action economy is very important in 2E, but you were comparing a 3-action turn (true strike + horizon thunder sphere) against a 2-action true strike + Strike. Resource depletion is a part of 2E as well, but you also assumed that a spellcaster will have that used their highest-level spell slots for that one spell. You forgot critical specializations, etc. That's the problem with white-room theorycrafting such as yours - it makes unfounded assumptions (usually in service of DPR, a clunky and inaccurate measure of utility). Your point that casters can spend two actions to deal 10% more damage than a martial that spends just one (only 3 or 4 times per day, tho), doesn't mean anything. My observation that true strike on a martial is better than true strike on a caster wasn't a challenge for you to build a PC that just spends their turn doing just that.
Item bonuses to spell attack rolls will barely make a noticeable difference in the feel of throwing out spells against non-debuffed, higher level enemies -- it will still be a bad idea. But where the item bonuses will make a big impact, is when the creature is debuffed, and suddenly a creature making a save on a 5, is being hit by an attack roll spell on a 9, and that swings the damage wildly in the spell attack roll's favor. This why my preferred solution to attack spells being bad is for them to do half-damage on a miss. It uses the same four degrees of success mechanic as save DC spells, and raises the baseline effectiveness floor without benefiting optimization too much.
It's true, a martial will have more opportunities to throw the spell than a caster will. Has that been a problem in your games? My pount was that true strike is better on a martial than a caster, which is my two cents in a thread criticising the true strike spell. I didn't account for accuracy because it's a complicated mess, and highly dependent on exactly which enemies (and thus which AC) you're up against. Also, a well-run caster is going to be throwing vs-AC spells (and thus, potentially, True Striking) against enemies that have relatively low AC compared to their pertinent saves, while a martial is going vs-AC (and possibly True Striking) regardless, thus throwing off the numbers further. I also didn't include anything to adjust for the nullification of circumstance penalties or flat checks from concealment/hidden. If you're trying to math things, you gotta stop somewhere. I get that the game math is hard, especially with so many variables, but saying a single Strike from a barbarian deals less median damage than a caster's highest-level spell has nothing to do with true strike, which is about accuracy. You didn't stop somewhere as much as did not even start & then claim the math proved you right.
You forgot to account for accuracy, somehow. Also, casters run out of top-rank spells before they run out of castings of true strike. That's 3/day, max? Martials can have 6.
A martial's Strike generally does more damage and only costs one action, so it benefits more from true strike. True strike + Strike takes 2 actions, but true strike + takes an entire turn. True strike is a 1st-rank spell fhat doesn't require any spell DCs, so martials can pick it up fairly easily. True strike cast by a martial, especially one that has a powerful attack, is much deadlier than the same spell cast by a spellcaster.
What I dislike about true strike is that martials benefit from casting it more than spellcasters do, which is an odd position for a spell. Another issue is that true strike isn't available to all casters While attack spells need a rework, I really don't like adding item bonuses to spell attqck rolls.
I think so, or else it's just redundant language from Player Core 1 reminding people how Attributes work. or is kineticist the only class that gets this therefore having +4 modifiers over everyone else. I doubt it.
We're playing AV and are getting close to level 5, and I was wondering, do you think it's worth putting one of the ability boosts into my key ability score if we'll probably max out at level 10 or 11? I could boost it at 5 and again at 10 to have a +5 for just one (or maybe two) levels, or I could boost a different stat at 5 and have an extra +1 in that score for five or six levels. I would say yes and increase that score to 19 at L5. You'll want that extra +1 at the end of adventure more than you want a +1 to the fourth-most important Ability Score.
That said... what about the Alignment tips did folks find most useful, beyond us suggesting which of the 9 alignments are best to play? Does the rest of the Player's Guide do the job as a whole helping to guide a cohesively themed party that'll fit well into the campaign (as I suspect it might)? The most useful part about alignment tips was setting expectations. In Agents of Edgewatch, the campaign benefits from clearly establishing that the PCs are not meant to be brutal or bitter police officers. The Blood Lords player's guide is correct when it says that neutral or LN PCs work well in the campaign (although I can't for the life of me imagine an LG PC for that campaign). Hell's Vengeance deserves special mention for walking readers through playing an evil PC without disrupting the group. That said, it seems that the alignment advice for every Adventure Path can be boiled down to "The PCs should be motivated to follow the plot, accept quests from NPCs, and players should not use alignment as an excuse to be disruptive (no evil PCs without GM & player buy-in) In the future, I recommend focusing on what sort of motivations, goals, or attitude a PC should have (which the Player's Guides do to some extent). Each adventure path could have some point of disagreement that player could have (tradition vs. modernity, war vs. peace, free will vs. destiny, patriotism vs. self-advancement, etc.)
Like all of it, with the possible exception of saves->defense. To me a "defense" really seems like something the attacker would try to beat (like AC). Obviously the math works out the same either way, so not a huge deal. I wonder if 'Reflex DCs' will be replaced by 'Reflex Defense', and a 'Reflex saving throw' will be replaced by 'Reflex check'.
Were they interested in removing alignment even before the OGL fiasco? When did they say that?
Since I suggested the changes of your first paragraph, here's how I would explain gaining panache on a failure: "I Meant to Do That"
I played a swashbuckler from levels 1-20 in Age of Ashes. It's a fun and flavorable class, but it suffers at low levels. I would change it so that finishers didn't need to be your final attack in your turn, and instead just make it so finishers could only be used once per turn. Finishers aren't quite good enough to justify only getting a single attack. Swashbuckler should have scaling proficiency to Acrobatics, like what inventors have with Crafting or thaumaturges have with Esoteric Lore. Currnetly the Acrobat Dedication allows this, but it's too good to not take, so it might as well be a core feature. I would also grant panache if you fail, but not critically fail, the appropriate skill check. That way swashbuckler would be effective against foes that are higher level than they are.
I recommend allowing people to just choose what they want, with the understanding that if things get out of hand (you hit any pitfalls or combat is trivialized) then you may ask them to stop. You could also limit your players to a single archetype. I limit PCs to a single archetype to start with, chosen from a pre-approved list of archetypes selected for matching the themes of the campaign. I also tie some of them to Backgrounds.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Virginia—Richmond 1,089 posts (1,092 including aliases). 4 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 34 Organized Play characters. 1 alias. 