Strill's page

I think the main thing is that the class was set up to allow for more variety in the spell effects you're putting out by allowing more spells, but folks on this forum are more interested in dealing damage. Nothing wrong with that, but I do think some of that is primed by both the P1 magus and by eldritch archer. The playtest magus is a way to try broadening that formula a bit, but hits the action economy wall.

I'm really struggling to understand why you thought people would cast anything other than attack spells with Spell Strike. If you cast a save spell with Spell Strike, you're running the risk of losing your spell, and in exchange you get no benefit except some piddly little extra 1/20 chance of a crit.

If you're casting a save spell, what incentive is there to spell strike when you could just cast the spell directly for immediate benefit, with no need to worry about moving into melee or striking? And if there's no incentive to spell strike, why are you even playing a magus, and not a Wizard? That incentive to use Spell Strike only exists with attack spells, and so the Magus playtesters are using attack spells.

Strill wrote:

Kalaam wrote:

Dude, the game isn't just about powergaming. Power Attack may not be optimal (though you can likely create builds or setups around it, and when you have little chances landing more than 1 hit it's valuable) and so what ? Should we remove all other Hunter Edges other than Flurry ?

Should we remove everything that isn't "the best" ?

You should definitely remove stuff that actively penalizes you, like Striking Spell + cantrip.

This is not what I was talking about.

Striking Spell as it is needs rework because it's both sub-optimal(both mechanically and number-wise), and doesn't feel good to play.

What I meant is that it's non-sensical to ask for stuff like Power Attack to be removed from the game because it's not the strongest action you can take.

That's not what I said. Power attack being worse than Double Slice is fine. Power attack being worse than (Strike, Strike) is unacceptable, because it's deceitful for the game designer to present it as something beneficial. If your DM gives you Power attack for free, then once you get your first Striking Rune, you are better off never using it because it can only harm you. It's the same as how Striking Spell + Cantrip is worse than Strike, Strike, Strike.

Feats and abilities that are worse than the default should be errata'd out of the game.

Dude, the game isn't just about powergaming. Power Attack may not be optimal (though you can likely create builds or setups around it, and when you have little chances landing more than 1 hit it's valuable) and so what ? Should we remove all other Hunter Edges other than Flurry ?

Should we remove everything that isn't "the best" ?

You should definitely remove stuff that actively penalizes you, like Striking Spell + cantrip.

The ability to cast burst-targeted spells on yourself without hitting yourself.

In play, I don't feel like my magus has completely wasted an entire turn when I do miss on a single attack roll, instead it makes me want to double down on thinking tactically next turn to maximize my bonuses and make my next attack as accurate as possible. This is an interesting and fun consequence of having the striking spell mechanic not be an all or nothing activity like eldritch shot.

Then you're being irrational. Look at the actual numbers, not meaningless things like how something makes you "Feel". Even if you had unlimited spell slots, Striking Spell would still be way behind the damage of other martials. Missing just makes it even worse.

Magus has spell tome, abosrb spell, and other stuff similar to the defensive generic stuff you listed for the champion.

Nothing on par with an extra action per turn.

That was exactly my point.

Being a martial class ( Magus is some sort of a hybrid given the spell slots ) doesn't necessarily mean you are granted to have combat maneuvers.

Champions may have few combat maneuvers, but they still get some really powerful martial feats. Divine Reflexes, Quick Shield Block, and Shield of Reckoning provide action economy. The blade ally feats provide offense. The shield ally feats provide survivability. Not to mention the fact that the Champion's reaction is just plain stronger than other reactions, having by far the most common trigger, the strongest effect, and some ridiculous upgrades. Allowing all nearby allies to make a reaction attack whenever you use your Champion's Reaction is really good.

If you look at the core classes, you notice a clear distinction in the kind of feats Martials and Casters get. Martials get feats that give more actions than they cost, eliminate MAP, or straight-up give you extra actions per round. In other words, Martials get feats which directly improve their power. Casters, however, tend to almost exclusively get feats that provide more utility, often by providing more spell slots, or focus spells, but these don't actually change how much damage a caster can deal in a round. Very rarely do casters get extra raw power or action economy. The few exceptions here are Quickened Spell, which is limited to once per day, and Effortless Concentration.

If you look at the Magus's feats, you can clearly see that the devs are working under the caster paradigm when designing these feats. Where a Fighter gets Agile Grace, lowering their MAP with agile weapons across the board, or Paragon's Guard, letting them use Raise a Shield for free every round, the Magus gets the equivalent of Quickened Spell, letting them use Striking Spell for one less action, once per day.

I really think the devs should be working under the Martial paradigm for the Magus. Give us a level 12 feat that lets the Magus cast Shield or Raise a Tome once per round for free. Give us a combat maneuver to reduce the target's saving throws, like the Swashbuckler's Bon Mot. Give us a cool reaction attack feat like every single other Martial class gets. Give us something new on par with all the cool stuff other Martial classes get.

Y'all are assuming:

Fights are always going to start before you can buff/plan

Of course. Why would you roll initiative if the fight hasn't started yet?

Don't really know what to say if you consider buffing "wasting" your turn.

Why is that hard to understand? The first rounds of combat are the most impactful. Taking an enemy out of the fight in the first round means that your party isn't getting hit by that enemy for each successive round like they otherwise would've. If you instead spend your turn buffing, you're not accomplishing anything useful until that buff comes into play. If the combat ends without your buffs being used, they were a waste.

For example, imagine you cast Haste on yourself, and then take two more turns before the fight ends. Haste was a waste there because you spent two actions on the first and most important turn, to get an action on the second and third turns, where those actions are less impactful. You gained no net actions, and instead traded actions now for actions later, which is bad if you could've been dealing damage during the first turn instead.

If you cast Haste, the fight must last for at least three more turns before you come out ahead on actions. Even then that's a questionable metric, because one action spent to finish off the final enemy at 1 HP is a lot less likely to turn the tide of a fight than one action spent at the start of the fight to take out an enemy early on before they can hurt your party.

I agree. It seems like Magus as currently written has a feast or famine playstyle of very large highs and abysmal lows, even more than Swashbuckler. I don't personally think it's a fun design, and it can be overall unhealthy for the game by encouraging stacking everything on one character for exponential returns.

That's not true. The Magus's "feast" turns, on average, do not exceed the damage which a Flurry Ranger puts out every single round. In other words, it's all famine.

The "math says magus is terrible" stuff floating around the boards is debatable and dependent upon certain assumptions that can be shifted in game play relatively easily.

In play I have found it true that it is a mistake to assume that you will always be able to striking spell and attack every round, and choosing to do so with a spell slot spell when the situation is unfavorable to you is going to lead to frustration, but full casters are often in the same boat math wise.

What I have experienced (with three separate magi in playtest situations) is that it is pretty easy with tactical play to "break" the math in the Magi's favor and make it so that they score crits with their weapon attacks about 20-25% of the time. I make way less attack rolls than I have with any other martial, and it plays much more like a chess match of trying to lure the enemy into where I want them to be at the start of my turn, but it is a great "thinkers" martial class. Right up there with the investigator.

Lining it up so that you can true strike with a weapon attack is way too much work for too little benefit for an every round activity, but when you cast your highest level attack roll spell into a weapon and still have it charged at the start of your turn, having a true strike option (from staff, or extra spell slot) is much better than expecting it to land from swinging twice.

As fun as crits are generally with PF2, I have had the most fun I have ever had with any class landing those double crits with weapon and spell with the magus. It has happened at least once every session (but only once with a spell slot spell). I don't know how much more "better" you can make the magus without creating a broken class.

I do think that the Caster MC path looks really appealing on paper but leads to less fun in play, because getting cool attack feats from your dedication is a lot more fun than just getting more spells. The spells that are the most fun to cast with your striking spell set up are your highest 2 level spell slots...

And where are you getting the actions necessary to cast, attack, and cast True Strike? Just so you know, the guy who calculated Magus damage also did a chart showing the damage you can do if you have an extra action each round, which you spend to cast True Strike. If you use True Strike, a cantrip, and Striking Spell, your damage matches a flurry ranger. If you cast True Strike, and then use Striking Spell with one of your highest-level spell slots, your damage is 30% higher than the flurry ranger for that turn.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MF6VgiV4wUue4SXE2611hP4kjlcVl_Aj69YKTCA wtZc/edit

An extra action, a 1st-level spell slot, and one of your few high-level spell slots for damage 30% above par is certainly better than the terrible damage the Magus does now, but I think the Magus should also get a bit better at-will damage, if they have to jump through so many hoops to get any burst damage at all.

All of that? Really? The one thing Fighters have over other martials is +2 accuracy. With one weapon group. No rage or totems, no Sneak Attack, no Inspiration or Panache. And no spells of course.

They get a lot more than that.

They get about the equivalent of two general feats from Shield Block and Battlefield Surveyor, whose initiative boost is on-par with Incredible Initiative.

They also get two bonus class feats that they can swap out each day, as well as Attack of Opportunity, which is also worth a class feat.

Finally, they get armor expertise, as well as access to some extremely powerful feats at level 10, such as Agile Grace, Debilitating Shot, Disarming Twist, and Combat Reflexes. Each of these is on-par with the best core class features of other classes. Agile Grace puts you on-par with a Flurry Ranger, Debilitating Shot and Disarming Twist give your party a devastating action economy advantage against bosses, and Combat Reflexes is pure extra action economy.

Strill wrote:

What do hit & run tactics accomplish?

Do you never play with monks? A monk can spend one action to enter melee, one action to hit you twice (possibly inflicting slow or stunned or prone), and then one action to get so far away from you that you would take 2 or more actions to reach them.

In a 1-player game, that works fine, but if you have a party of four players, it doesn't matter how far away the monk is, it matters how far the closest party member is. The whole party has to be two strides away for that tactic to waste two of the opponents' actions instead of one.

Well, frightened takes an action to inflict and "gang up" doesn't function with hit and run tactics from your melee buddies.

What do hit & run tactics accomplish? They make the enemy spend one action to move towards your team? And in exchange you're sacrificing two actions from each of your melee characters, plus some more actions from your ranged characters whenever they end up too close? So with two melee characters, that's a sacrifice of four actions per round minimum, maybe 5 or 6 actions if some ranged are out of position, and in exchange you eliminate one action of the enemy's? And that only works if the enemy doesn't have Attack of Opportunity or a ranged attack? That's a poor trade on your team's part. Can you not think of any other way of eliminating the enemy's actions?

As far as Frightened is concerned, it can be inflicted by a caster, whose third action is worth less than a a martial character's. Frightened depends on team composition, but it's one of multiple options for Rogues to get free flat-footed, which is my point. Between all the different ways, Rogues don't have to worry about flat-footed.

"After You" makes gaining Panache literally free.

After You is garbage. If your initiative modifier is equal to the enemies', then Sacrificing initiative is equivalent to sacrificing half a turn's worth of actions on average, or more actions if your initiative was better than the enemies'. That's not worth gaining panache.

Strill wrote:

Ventnor wrote:

Question: how is Survey Wildlife different than Impressive Performance, or Natural Medicine, or Acrobatic Performer, or any other Skill Feat that lets you substitute one skill for another in a specific circumstance?

The difference is that it's unclear what the baseline version of Survey Wildlife is without the feat. For contrast, Natural Medicine uses the Treat Wounds action, whose rules are explicitly written out in the book.

You seem to be assuming that Survey Wildlife lets you substitute one skill for another, but I don't see where there's any indication of that.

… in the actual feat.

As others have mentioned here, Survey Wildlife says you make one Survival check, followed by a Recall Knowledge check. There's nothing that says the Recall Knowledge check is Survival too.

Question: how is Survey Wildlife different than Impressive Performance, or Natural Medicine, or Acrobatic Performer, or any other Skill Feat that lets you substitute one skill for another in a specific circumstance?

The difference is that it's unclear what the baseline version of Survey Wildlife is without the feat. For contrast, Natural Medicine uses the Treat Wounds action, whose rules are explicitly written out in the book.

You seem to be assuming that Survey Wildlife lets you substitute one skill for another, but I don't see where there's any indication of that.

hyphz wrote:

That's exactly the thing, though. A feat is not just a handy way of providing rules for a particular activity. If they want to do that, that's cool, they can do that, and PF2e even gives a nice way to do it - a standard action.

A feat implies that a PC must take it and give up something else in order to do it, and that those PCs who don't take it can't do it. (It's by no means a Pathfinder unique problem. Even some of those indie games "with GM resolution" make this mistake.)

That’s the point though, and probably the reason more of these aren’t just new skill activities available to anyone with the required proficiency. Making them feats minimizes the number of new rules at any one table while allowing everyone not at that table to just wing it. Until someone actually takes the feat, any non PFS tables can just ignore its existence.

Of course, the problem with that is that with PFS, all of the rules do exist, but PFS is probably the most likely place to find that mechanistic playstyle Zapp talks about, due to the need for everyone to be on the same page. It probably is just best in that context to assume that anything not codified by an existing skill activity or feat is done at a high difficulty level until officially made an option.

It doesn't minimize the number of new rules at any one table at all, and it makes it much HARDER to wing it! Every feat is adding a new implicit skill action, because you should logically be able to accomplish something similar to the feat, even without it. Except because that skill action isn't codified, you have to figure out how to wing it without invalidating the feat, and that's much harder to do than just winging it on your own.

If you're not skilled enough to reverse-engineer the feat and figure out what the normal skill action should be, then your only options are either ban the skill action, or ban the feat.

Strill wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

I think it's great how someone can read what a feat does and say something like "So narrow, why is this here?" as if all the rest of the feats aren't just as narrow.

Because they aren't all narrow. Some of them are extremely common. Intimidating Prowess is pretty much a bonus to every intimidation check. Battle Cry gives you a free action once per combat. Glad-Hand comes into play every time you meet a new character. Cat Fall takes long falls that are typically a rare occurrence, and allows you to make them into a standard combat tactic. Quick Recovery applies after every fight. Assurance can come into play every single round if you build your character around it. Trick Magic Item can amount to a passive +10 speed if you use it to purchase a Wand of Longstrider (lv2).

An encounter that isn't hindered by using Intimidation? "narrow."

Combat? "narrow."

And on through the rest of all existing feats - they only apply in particular circumstances, and there is no singular correct campaign formula that dictates how parts this, how many parts that, and so on are included in the recipe. So "this feat only applies in certain circumstances" is not something that is more true of one feat than another, which means stating it as a negative against one feat, but not against all feats is logically inconsistent.

I'm sorry you have such an antagonistic GM.

Zapp wrote:

You're supposed to say no unless the player can prove he's allowed to do something.

I do not recall seeing this rule codified in any Paizo product and I strongly disagree with it.

It is codified implicitly. Imagine you're a new GM, and you have a player whose character concept is a wilderness tracker. He says "I'm an experienced tracker, so I want my character to use his Survival skill to check for dangerous animals." You say "sure, roll survival". He rolls a success, and you tell him there are dire wolves nearby.

After the game, another player comes in and tells you "Hey, I took the Survey Wildlife feat, but that other guy didn't. If he can find out what animals are nearby with just Survival, then what does my feat do?"

What do you tell him? That his feat does nothing? That the other player will have to take Survey Wildlife? Do you tell him that Survey Wildlife's benefit is that you can make the check in 10 minutes, and not some other arbitrary timescale? If so, what is the alternative timescale? 15 minutes? 30 minutes? an hour? a day? Since you're running under narrative time, and not a strict clock, when will the ability to make that check faster come into play, and how will it be beneficial? If you say that you need Survey Wildlife to make the check at all, then does the other player who didn't know about Survey Wildlife get a chance to rebuild his character since he didn't realize that he needed one particular feat in order for his character concept to work within the rules?

Furthermore, how do you address the fact that your original ruling is mechanically more powerful than Survey Wildlife? You only asked for a Survival check, but Survey Wildlife requires two checks, one survival check, and then a recall knowledge check on top of that. Obviously Survey Wildlife, which cost a feat, has to be better than the alternative, so does that mean that you have to make the checks harder for anyone who doesn't have it?

The simple solution to all of these questions is that the designers did not intend for you to be able to survey wildlife at all without the use of a feat, and in order to run the rules as written, you were supposed to tell your player "no, you can't figure out what dangerous animals are nearby, because it's not listed as a possible action in the Survival section of the book."

If you instead choose to GM without telling the players "no" all the time, then every feat like Survey Wildlife which gets added, is another annoyance and complication to your GM style. Most likely, you just tell the players not to take it, and that it is off the table.

Look, if you're trying to maximize Shield Block, you're literally never going to get to a point where any shield can compete with Sturdy. (Excepting like, the unbreakable one, maybe.)

If you're specializing in shields, you're specializing in shield block, because that's what the shield feats do. It's not reasonable to turn around and tell players that they now have no options for shield choice. That's bait and switch.

That's literally the design concept of the Sturdy Shield, to be the best at Shield Block. Thus, if you want the shield to have any other abilities, it must be worse at Shield Block, because that's how design works.

That's literally the design concept of the potency rune - to be the most accurate. Thus, if you want the weapon to have any other abilities, it must be less accurate, because that's how design works.

That last paragraph is how magic weapons worked in Pathfinder 1e. Now that we're in Pathfinder 2e, we've given +1 bonuses their own dedicated slots, and the game is better for it. We should apply that same game design principle to shields.

People are looking at increased Shield Stats to maintain the effectiveness of a General 1 feat like that's a given... it really shouldn't be.

Nonsense. It's to maintain the effectiveness of that feat, and all of these other feats which rely on Shield Block, and which make shields worth using.

Aggressive Block
Reflexive Shield
Shield Warden
Quick Shield Block
Improved Reflexive Shield
Divine Ally (Shield)
Shield of Reckoning
Shield of Grace
Shield Paragon
Emblazon Armament (Shield)

I guess I don't quite understand the problem or issue.

I mean of course anyone using a shield to block will want the highest hardness shield they can get at their level.

I think the only problem here is that the shields that exist at item levels in between the study shield upgrades remain at a lower hardness and thus are less useful to someone looking primarily to get mileage out of blocking.

No matter what you do, there's pretty much always going to be an optimum shield at each character level for those looking primarily for it's ability to block. In this case the hardness and hp of the sturdy line of shields is such that the family remains the best purchase for shield blockers.

The problem is that anyone who specializes in shields, is specializing in shield block, because that's what all the class feats do. That means that if you want to use any of the other shields that aren't suitable for shield block, you're s@%@-out-of-luck.

That is called a bait-and-switch, and it pisses people off. Hence this thread.

The problem is that anyone who specializes in shields is specializing in shield block, because that's what all the class feats are for. That means that characters who go all in on shields have to use boring sturdy shields, while people who just grabbed a shield because they had nothing better to use get all the cool shields.

Group Impression: Actively makes the game worse. If three people are in a room meeting for the first time, why can my character only speak and make an impression on one at a time in a minute? Can both people not hear me speaking?

It's still useful even if you throw out the rules for how much time it takes to make a diplomacy check. It lets you make one roll against the whole group, rather than rolling against each target individually. That single roll means you succeed against everyone, or fail against everyone. It also lets you apply single-use buffs like Guidance, against the whole group.

To OP: Feint is for if you don't have that many flanking opportunities. Frightened stacks with flat-footed, and is the option you use when the target is already flat-footed.

Normally you would choose Scoundrel because it gives +2 Charisma, and you want your character to have a lot of charisma-based skills. In your case, that didn't apply because you used a non-standard stat generation method.

Strill wrote:

ChibiNyan wrote:

I'm running Class Feats every single level and it has made basically no difference in power level yet. Action economy and the very careful wording of these feats prevents them from being used in powerful combinations.

What do you do about Fighters who invest heavily in action economy feats, or passive feats? Stuff like these:

Sudden Charge
Quick Reversal
Aggressive Block
Reflexive Shield
Shielded Stride
Quick Shield Block
Combat Reflexes
Paragon's Guard
Fearsome Brute
Flinging Shove
Spring Attack
Agile Grace

Can I ask you:

Which of these feats can be used at the same time?

(If all you can do each round is select between many cool and powerful action sequences and feat usages, that's not nearly as much of a power-up than if you can stack the benefits of "too many" feats together, in one and the same round.)

Most of them can indeed be used at the same time. The following feats are passive, or give you extra actions:

For the ones that can't be used at the same time:
* Sudden Charge gives you two strides and an attack for two actions
* Spring Attack gives you a stride or step and an attack for one action
* Quick Reversal gives you two strikes for one action

So in other words, you can benefit from all the passive feats each round, plus two out of three of the non-passive feats.

If you're using Dual Class, there's also plenty of feats in Rogue that you could stack onto this list, like Feats that make your target flat-footed in additional circumstances, a Feat to demoralize on a free action, and feats to apply extra conditions with each hit, on top of whichever ones you were already applying.

Level 1 items are mostly mundane. Stuff like Splint Mail, Half-Plate, and the Aldori Dueling sword.

Divine Magic focuses on spells that enable you to solve problems, but don't solve problems on their own. It can provide for necessities, release restraints, clear curses, and heal wounds, or blind your enemies, but you have to be the one to go out and kill the monster, not the magic.

The few spells that do solve your problems for you, tend to also be weaker than similar spells from other lists, like how Flame Strike has a much smaller radius than Fireball, has a higher level requirement, and does less damage than an equivalent-level fireball.

You substitute the material; as in full on replace the old stats with the ones of the Precious Material. So we found rules for that.

You still haven't explained how to account for the fact that Specific magic shields often have higher stats than their corresponding precious material shield. We therefore don't know what to do with those bonus stats. Do they add onto the stats for the new material? Do you ignore them? There's nothing to tell you one way or another.

I don't think that Erastil having wealth as a domain is that difficult to imagine, honestly. He's a god who supports hardworking, salt of the earth folks. Their wealth is a plentiful harvest and fertile land, full pantries, abundant game to hunt, rivers that never run dry, children to carry things over to the next generation, etc. He represents the cornucopia, horn of plenty.

Erastil's about old-school practical wealth; he'd probably view gold as inherently worthless because you can't eat it, you can't plant it, you can't hunt with it. It might be given worth, and is certainly supported by Abadar, but Erastil looks to a more holistic type of plenty. wealth doesn't have to be emperors in gold-trimmed robes. Nor is Erastil a god of primitives. Even in a world like Golarion the vast majority of a given landmass will be farms and rural villages, not cities.

It's a pretty prevalent religious archetype throughout human history, really.

You just proved why the Wealth Domain is wrong for Erastil. The Wealth domain's spells are not about prosperity, they're about coins and money.

Is there are reason you went with human instead of elf for bows? Instead of using your human ancestry feat for 1/2 weapon training, you could instead use your elven ancestry feat to get Elven Weapon Familiarity for shortbows (and more) from level 1. It also gives you access to Elven Weapon Elegance at 5. Not to mention elves get their ancestry bonuses to Int and Dex natively.

Nope, just the first thing I thought of. You're right, Elf does work better.

People have been complaining about caster weapon attacks being too weak to bother with, and I think that's an idea that constrains your thinking if you don't challenge it. Sure, casters aren't as synergistic with weapons as other classes, but that doesn't mean they don't make a difference.

I've had my eye on Hunted Shot as a good 3rd action for caster Gishes, so I decided to spec out a Bow Wizard build, and see how it comes out overall versus a Bow Fighter. tl;dr, it comes out very well.

The key feature of this build is the Ranger dedication + Hunted Shot. The game plan is cast a saving-throw spell such as Electric Arc for two actions, and throw out a Hunted Shot on the strongest enemy with your third action in order to maximize action economy.

The Bow Wizard gets shortbow proficiency from taking the Weapon Proficiency Feat twice. Once from Versatile Heritage, and then again from the General Training Human ancestry feat. Later at level 12 he'll retrain in order to take a Fighter Dedication and get Diverse Weapon Expert for Expert proficiency.

For comparison, I also mapped out the DPR of a Multishot Fighter, who goes down the Double Shot->Triple Shot->Multishot Stance feat line.

Assumptions:
* Bow Wizard starts out with 18 INT and 16 DEX, and raises both at every opportunity.
* Bow Wizard is aiming for a +3 Greater Striking, Flaming, Corrosive, Frost shortbow. He obtains each rune as soon as he reaches its level.
* Bow Fighter is aiming for the same runes, but he wants a longbow.
* Both characters are targeting equal-level enemies of median AC, and targeting the Median save. This means the Wizard will perform better than shown here if they target a weak save. Monster stats used.
* Persistent damage hits for 1 round
* Non-damaging critical effects are ignored
* Enemies are not flat-footed.

Here's the damage you can expect at-will
Here's the damage you can expect, using your strongest blast spells

-------------------------------------------------

In terms of at-will damage, the Fighter and Wizard are neck-and-neck most levels if you count the damage to both Electric Arc targets. Against just one target though, the Wizard definitely falls behind.

If the Wizard decides to use a max-level blast though, they can easily exceed the Fighter in single-target damage, at least for that round.

Now of course, if you wanted to be using only weapon attacks, that's just not going to be very effective. I think one possible compromise within the current system, in order for casters to feel more weapon themed without upending how everything is structured, is to add weapon-themed saving-throw cantrips. I'd imagine something like a cantrip version of Weapon Storm, where the spell's damage is based on your weapon's damage. This lets you incorporate your weapon into your fighting style, without it feeling like you're just a wannabe Fighter.

Personally, I think the build overall looks pretty viable. It's a shame that there are next to no spells that augment a bow-user offensively. The only ones I can see are Magic Weapon, Bless, Heroism, and Haste.

--------------------------------------------------

Human Wizard 4

Str 10
Dex 16
Con 12
Int 18
Wis 12
Cha 10

General Feats: (Weapon Proficiency) x2
Ancestry feats: General Training
Class feats: Ranger Dedication, Hunted Shot
Arcane Thesis: Spell Blending

Armor: Explorer's Clothing

Weapons: +1 Striking Shortbow

Cantrips: Electric Arc, Chill Touch

After looking at different builds I sort of came to the conclusion - that an effective melee based on a mage doesn't really exist in this game. At max level, a caster will be at best -5 to hit vs a fighter. Stack on that you are -4HP per level, it makes being in melee dangerous.

One could say that with heroism, he would be -2 to hit vs a fighter, but really why should you waste casting it on yourself when casting it on the fighter has so much more effect.

The only spells that close the gap are transformation spells - they can get a caster close to a fighter, but then you can't cast spells while transformed.

that's not to say you can't get a useful character, just that in all probability you are better off casting than attacking.

Why are you comparing casters to fighters, when getting +2 to hit is the fighter's special exclusive ability? Does that mean that Barbarians and Rogues and Rangers and Monks are all crap because they're at -2 to hit vs a fighter?

I just don't understand what you're expecting. If there are powerful buff spells in the game, you'll say they're better off used on the fighter, so you can't use them on yourself. If there aren't powerful buff spells, you'll say that all the gish spells were removed. What situation could there possibly be that would satisfy you? One where casters have special caster-only buff spells? Oh wait, that's literally what transformation spells are for. What are you looking for?

And because you can't cast spells all day long, your magic-augmented fighting power must exceed that of an optimized "plain" fighter. Quite considerably, I might add. (The idea, of course, is to choose short bursts of ahead-of-curve power and then... end the day, avoiding the drawback).

But I don't see any way to use magic in this way in Pathfinder 2. The game is far too locked down for that. What you would want to see are spells that increase your melee attack bonus, your melee damage and your armor class. Above and beyond what the base class chassi gives you!

Decisive, game-changing spells such as Shield, granting you a whopping +5 AC bonus for one round, that form the basis of Eldritch Knights in 5th Edition. Maybe Offensive Prescience for old psychic warriors. (It's been too long since...

What's stopping you from buffing up as a caster? You have spells like Bless, Heroism, Fire Shield, or Enlarge for damage. What about Barkskin, Stoneskin, Blur, Blink, and Resist Energy for defense? And of course you can't pretend that Haste doesn't boost your damage. Why does it have to be +Atk and +AC that are all that matters?

I think you're underestimating the buffs that are already in the game. I personally think it's telling that Enlarge At-will costs Barbarians a class feat, and is restricted to one Instinct, but you can easily get a use of it with just a 2nd-level spell.

Strill wrote:

Of course it needs to be a power gain. If you go gish, your abilities are limited to spell slots. If you go straight fighter, your abilities are unlimited. That limitation should offer greater peak power in exchange.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. A fighter doesn't have unlimited abilities as compared to a gish. They can't fly, hurl fireballs, or haste themselves. Adding in a spellcasting counterpart confers to them those abilities that, like all spellcasters, have spell slots. You're adding versatility without increasing overall power.

Though it could, and should, be argued that more versatility is a form of power.

I mean limited in terms of how many times they can use it. A Fighter's abilities can be used all day. Spells cannot. If you're getting your abilities from spells, they should be more powerful than similar at-will abilities to compensate for the fact that they cost spell slots.