Normal Pathetic Caster's page

This thread in a nutshell
https://imgur.com/a/sTmABWG

The only thing rituals add to the game is page count.

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The questions are: what is a hard 20th level task and should people have to optimize to have a 50% chance of success at it? ...

I am not sure what a 20th level hard DC task may be, but to pull an example from the real world would look like.

Let's use medicine as an example, a hard DC IRL would be heart surgery. A quick internet search yields this:

"99% survived their surgery to leave the hospital. The rate of such survival improved sharply as the study went on, from 85 percent in the early years to 98 percent by its end. Patients also reported a quality of life similar to that of those their age who did not have bypass surgery."

So depending on whether you would count leaving the hospital success or living a few more years, the rate is still 85%+.

So yes, its a bit insane that optimizing to the max possible in a skill only yields a 50-65% chance sucess rate.

My mistake, I ended up only posting 1/2 the question. Lets look at the metamagic Reach Spell,

"You add a Somatic Casting action to the casting of the triggering spell to increase its range by 30 feet. If the spell normally has a range of touch, you instead extend its range to 30 feet, and if the touch spell normally requires an attack roll or a touch attack roll, it now requires a ranged attack roll or a ranged touch attack roll, as appropriate."

I guess what I am asking is that can one add the Reach Spell that already has a somatic casting action such as Magic Weapon? And as a follow up if not, then what is even the point of having metamagic when all the metamagics add a somatic casting action and 95%+ of all spells already have a somatic casting action?

A bit of a dumb question, but there does not seem to be definitive ruling in the playtest material so I will ask here.

Can a spell have duplicate casting actions such as 2 somatic casting actions?

What's wrong with the conditions?

There are WAY to many conditions, 42 of them. Even if one were to cut out all the non-condition conditions from that list (obvious stuff like dead, or friendly and hostile) that still leaves over 30 different ones.

Since one of the design goals was a simpler game, having so many conditions seems counterproductive.

Those are some pretty cool ideas. Only thing I would add is maybe some sort of Anti-mage caster archetype that specializes in counterspelling and dispelling other magics.

I have never known Paizo to perform a blatant money grab before and I'm not sure where the certainty that is what is going on here comes from.

But I agree with most of your other points.

I mean they did sell a hardcover book of playtest rules that was obsoleted in less than a week.

Calvin Starbanger wrote:

Vancian Magic is garbage.

Calvin Starbanger wrote:

I don't want to houserule an entire magic system to make this game work for me, and I can only hope it's not too late for them to overhaul the system entirely.

Just ban Wizards, Clerics, and Druids. Sorcerers cover the bases pretty well. No overhaul needed.

The best part is that you will actually be doing your players a favor as GM banning those classes. I mean as of right now all but one of those classes are dead weight compared to any martial, and the one class that isn't completely dead weight only exists as a channel energy bot so the martials can keep carrying him.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

They have specifically stated that non-Charisma Classes who utilize Powers will get bonuses to their Focus.

What those bonuses are is not yet known, but it is entirely possible that, say, a Druid will wind up with Focus equal to their Wisdom + Charisma + 1 or more from Ancestry + bonuses from Feats.

That would be more points than they have now.

That also may not occur, or not precisely like that, but panicking or dropping the playtest when they have clearly stated that this issue will be addressed seems silly to me.

We are firmly dedicated to making sure characters of non-Cha primary classes that use powers will have the tools they need to enjoy use of their powers. But we also would like to not do this by swapping out Charisma because keeping Charisma around allows for more creative and disparate character choices where you might take Charisma as a secondary stat for your wizard to get even more if you wanted to be Int and Cha like an arcanist, say, instead of the cookie-cutter Int>Dex>=Con>=Wis wizard build in the current playtest, and the sheer creativity is one of the coolest things about the Pathfinder community.

Is this not disingenuous to say you can have CHA as a secondary stat when monster's +to hit is balanced around hitting a full plate fighter 50% of the time. I suppose if monster and NPC stats were made more reasonable at release this won't be an issue, but as of now DEX is needed as a secondary stat. Although I suppose non CHA casters can just make CHA a secondary stat and burn a feat on paladin multiclass to at least not be crit'd on every hit.