The-Magic-Sword's page

The thing is, I wouldn't expect a huge buff for Psychic because i don't think the Remaster actually nerfed them-- the extra focus point thing wasn't really a buff, it was a lubricant to allow for the amp playstyle to function at low levels, which was just buying back the power of their missing spell slot as sustain, whereas I think the power is in the actual subclass mechanics and amps. Now granted, I don't think they'd be busted with a third spell slot per level or something, so we'll see.

I don't know about that exact phrasing of causality, BUT we're stoked to combine the games-- I've set up my setting, people are running around toting ceramic magitech laser cannons, and earthenware tablets that can tether to larger Computational Spell Matrixes to access (much more local) infospheres and while some of the ancestries will still be from beyond the planet of our home setting, we're fantasyifying space and finding homes for many of them right alongside the pathfinder ancestries.

Mechanically I've already got a Soldier running around with a Plasma Cannon and a Jetpack who is super cool, but isn't really outcompeting the likes of our rogue and we're prepared to ad lib magical powers or other ranged attacks wherever necessary to compensate for the flight... which we've already delimited for Pathfinder Ancestries using the provided sidebar.

So long as they didn't mess up the core numbers after the playtest, we're golden.

Really interested in this primarily due to a kingmaker character who was following the Draconic Druid 1e inspiration and we can adapt some of this potentially. Any odds of ensuring this stuff will be added as compendium data for roll20/foundry, even as an addon?

The Foundry PF2e system isn't maintained by Paizo but they also add everything pretty much religiously, so you should be good on that front.

Since the Wizard was already pretty good, I can see why they wouldn't want the runelord to be significantly stronger.

Tactical Drongo wrote:

I think the main problem is that the OP thinks of 'Tanks' in mmo turns and not in tabletop terms

being able to get hit by all the enemies in an encounter standing upright, mitigating damage and forcing them to 'waste' their action on the character while the healer pumps lifepoints into them

I'd disagree that there Is any fundamental difference in concept inbetween a mmo tank and a ttrpg tank.

A tank has to do Two things:
-take aggro
-being able to resist damage After taking up aggro.

How would you define a tank otherwise? Cause every glass cannon can take aggro quite easily

Active Defense, like the assorted champion reactions that give resistance to a struck ally or the amped shield for Tangible Dream Psychic, or penalties like taunt on guardian which might be used for the penalty, rather than to get them to hit you, or even intercept which can be more useful than actually getting hit.

A Tank doesn't actually have to take aggro, a tank has to reduce the incoming damage.

Paizoblog wrote:

… You’ll also be able to earn gold by writing reviews of your purchases, by referring your friends to the new store, by following Paizo on social media, by joining the new program, and on your birthday!

Can’t believe no/one else has pointed out that this seems to follow a trajectory that isn’t dissimilar to that of shonky videogames…virtual gold….inducement to social media…payment for review…payment for recruiting etc…

Also practically every restaurant in central city Philadelphia.

Yay, this schedule is actually pretty darn optimal for me, since sunday doesn't have anything and I make time-and-a-half at work that day, lol.

caribet wrote:

still shipping from USA direct to UK at ultra-high shipping rates? :-(

We want gamers worldwide playing Pathfinder and Starfinder and we understand that shipping costs are a barrier to that. To help address this, we are adding DHL International as a shipping option for the new store, but the final shipping cost is based on a lot of factors.

In some other multiverse, Paizo has conquered this with warehouses or partners in the EU and AU. I see that pocket universe, but we're not there yet. We might never get there, but the new store and backend infrastructure will let us think about how we could get there.

(I was trying to find a clever way to end this with There and Back Again, but I failed.)

-Jim

Speaking of, I'm sure current events are complicating things, weren't Paizo's printers in China?

Paizo Plus sounds much better for my 3 subscription-having wallet.

I wouldn't say the best party is 3 martials and a buff oriented caster because it struggles with high exp + high body count encounters unless the caster double duties into blasting, struggles with incorporeal at low level, and is swingier than other compositions-- it also makes the caster into a bit of a vulnerability, since they'll be the only source of in-combat healing.

Largely I think that the game teaches good play, but mainly via necessity-- you want to raise your rate of hit/crits, you want to increase damage, and you want to forestall loss conditions. All of those are more or less enforced whenever you fight a higher level creature.

- You raise your rate of hit/crit via MAP Avoidance, Additional Strikes, Flanking, Frightening, Inspiring Marshal Stance, Targeting Lower Saves, or sustain spell combos, and as you level, feats because its rather frustrating not to hit and most bosses will have the feeling of a tight race toward the end.

- You increase damage through feats, magic items, and the odd spell, you'll also notice saving throw spells and such are highly consistent.

- Forestalling Loss is obvious, but getting crit by high level creatures will make the utility of champion's reaction, healing, healing boosts, shield block, AC increases, penalties to enemy attack and action denial all intuitively obvious.

From there, it's a matter of using it-- the more often you have to deal with rougher encounters the more chances you have to try different strategies out. Usually what disrupts that process, if anything, is preconception about what constitutes optimal blocking experimentation, or another goal being over-prioritized in such a way that the players need to reconcile it with instrumental play, or the GM should make the encounters easier for the sake of that other goal.

How does the concept of a core rulebook work in the brave new world of Starfinder 2 Electric Skibididoo? Do we use the PF2e player core/etc and plug this book in as an expansion pack to make it spaaaaaaace flavour?

The Starfinder Core coming out this summer includes everything you need to play Starfinder, including all the basic rules, you do not need any Pathfinder books to play Starfinder.

But you can use the Starfinder stuff with your Pathfinder Game, and the reverse because they're compatible, and based off the playtest and some experience, I can tell you that it'll only shift the meta of an existing pathfinder game a bit, if at all.

I would love something along the lines of Secrets of Magic, but with a much bigger emphasis on spells-- specifically I'd like to see more variants on existing spells that fill more existing niches for different themed spell lists.

For example, I love it when I'm reading the Wandering Inn and they bring up "Siege Fireball" or "Blackflame Fireball"

I'd love to see a mixed fire/cold Fireball called Frostfire Ball that's like Divine Immolation, but does the same with fire/cold damage, or uses the lower of the target's reflex/fortitude for the save.

I also wouldn't mind a book that has an enchantment/illusion class that more or less uses the Thrall system but with special mind-affecting illusions instead of undead, now that Wizards don't have to hold up the Enchanter/Illusionist specialist weight-- there's some decent stuff for it in the system now, but I think there's room for a class.

I wouldn't say no to a class archetype for Wildshaping Druids who want to

1. Use an actual Animal for their whole progression, ideally with some mystical flavoring for why these animals are different.
2. Reduce their Spellcasting for better Martial stats.

I could see all this fitting in a new edition of the "Book of Unlimited Magic" if you remove some of the things that were already reprinted from SOM, revise the lore, and possibly treat it as a new print home for Magus/Summoner, kinda how they did Divine Mysteries as a Gods And Magic Remaster+.

So I'm imagining a book with:

- Rewritten lore section to ignore Schools, honestly I'd be tempted to slightly increase the size of the explanation about each tradition, but without fully replacing the page count of the section pertaining to schools, to use it in the rest of the book.
- Magus, Summoner, Mesmerist (PF1e had a class by that name for illusion stuff right?)
- Shifter Class Archetype for Druids replacing the current Elementalist in the Book of Unlimited Magic.
- Synthesist Class Archetype for Summoners replacing the current section on the Runelord Class Archetype.
- Cathartic Magic as is.
- Flexible Prep as is, maybe it needs some feats to further entice players with.
- Geomancer as is.
- Wellspring as is.
- Soulforger as is.
- Ley Lines and True Naming should be replaced with rare archetypes, to streamline their use and make them louder for interested players.
-Pervasive Magic as is? Maybe just cut it for space if it didn't end up taking off as a variant.
- Fill every remaining page with spells, some of which probably need to be from Secrets of Magic, but others could stand to be replaced wholesale.

The real question is what the page count ends up once you start cutting out things more recent than SOM, or content that wasn't super well liked, and what you can do still do with the remaining space if you include a third class in it. I guess pushing it to 320 pages like Divine Mysteries would help. I'd do the theming as a 'full edition' of the Book of Unlimited Magic from canon. I'd be willing to see cuts to the magic item section, but some of it was probably already reprinted in Treasure Vault or something, did staves still need an update? I'm in a rush and can't check.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

The way I see it, Gish Necromancers work in two ways:

1. Standard Caster "If I have a leftover third action I can strike, and feats reward me for that behavior, but the focus of my turn is on something else."

2. Grave Spells that consume Thralls to fuel Grave Spell effects flavored as Death Knight themed melee powers.

That said, I def don't think it should be a huge emphasis unless we have a lot of room to fill up with extra stuff in the book it's in, we have so many gish options in the game right now it's crazy and the animist in particular makes a really good death knight, what with it's Death Grip, Grudge Strike, Apparitions being a form of undead in every way that matters and the whole 'possession for martial skill theming.'

I think the dev is saying they won't be letting go of Legendary Spellcasting in order to beef up Martial Weapon Proficiency (unlike say Warpriest & Magus). With Thralls, their attacks, & Grave Spells being the chassis, I prefer keeping Legendary. But if Paizo's going to entice us with these gish feats, there has to be more synergy & reward. Or, as mentioned, a Necromancer-adjacent Archetype for martials, which IMO would fill the last concept niches.

I'm thinking of the final boss in Return to Castle Wolfenstein for those familiar. That warrior's undead weren't that threatening or durable, but they harassed and needed to be accounted for.

Yeah I think if they do it, it should rely on their spell infrastructure, like consuming a thrall to swing an oversized death magic scythe that only exists in the context of your grave spell and is channeled through a weapon you're holding.

Especially if there's action econ to follow up with a little hit from a thrall, I think it would also suit what you're talking about.

We're due to get a 'summon undead soldiers' archetype in Battlecry that sounded like it was intended for Martials, so that might already be taken care of.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

... we have so many gish options in the game right now it's crazy and the animist in particular makes a really good death knight, what with it's Death Grip, Grudge Strike, Apparitions being a form of undead in every way that matters and the whole 'possession for martial skill theming.'

Don't mean to get too off topic but what is this death grip you are referring to?

Sorry that was unclear, I was referring to Grasping Spirits which always reminds me of an iconic Death Knight Spell from World of Warcraft, where shadowy claws come out and pull an enemy to you, called Death Grip.

The way I see it, Gish Necromancers work in two ways:

1. Standard Caster "If I have a leftover third action I can strike, and feats reward me for that behavior, but the focus of my turn is on something else."

2. Grave Spells that consume Thralls to fuel Grave Spell effects flavored as Death Knight themed melee powers.

That said, I def don't think it should be a huge emphasis unless we have a lot of room to fill up with extra stuff in the book it's in, we have so many gish options in the game right now it's crazy and the animist in particular makes a really good death knight, what with it's Death Grip, Grudge Strike, Apparitions being a form of undead in every way that matters and the whole 'possession for martial skill theming.'

NPC CORE, p19 wrote:

Business Savvy When making monetary deals, the loan shark gets a +8 circumstance bonus to Deception checks, Diplomacy checks, and their Perception DC.

I've never seen a +8 bonus anywhere before. Is this a typo, or should we expect more of this in the future?

Thats probably a mechanic that makes the loan shark better-than-level at its one thing its supposed to be functionally higher level at.

Got tired of waiting. My walls remain incompletely decorated in framed paizo puzzle art.

So I had to take matters into my own hands

Very cool

My watch has ended!

Huzzah!

Has anyone's Watch ended?

Not yet, and no one on reddit either, as of time of writing.

Here's hoping!

First! This is so exciting! The playtest soldier in our group has been a lot of fun to watch.

One thing this reminds me of is how much I love the Mythic Destinies also functioning as Archetypes, even sans the full mythic powerset, it really adds a lot to the game to have level 12 archetypes themed this way and with some cool abilities.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Blave wrote:

The PDF is now available for people who have the pre-master pdf. At least it showed up in my downloads. Be aware that it's not marked as "remaster". Look for a Guns and Gears copy that was last updated on December 4th.

Hmm, I have a non-updated one dated to December 3rd 2024.

Have you downloaded it to check the contents? The name of the book didn't change for me in my downloads, but the content is different when I open and read the PDF.

I had confirmed it to be the old version at time of posting, but happily it appears to be fixed/caught up now with the correct file.

The PDF is now available for people who have the pre-master pdf. At least it showed up in my downloads. Be aware that it's not marked as "remaster". Look for a Guns and Gears copy that was last updated on December 4th.

Hmm, I have a non-updated one dated to December 3rd 2024.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

I find it interesting that Pathfinder's essentially following its predecessor's path of not making giants themselves a playable ancestry (Starfinder 1e being a unique exception), but a giant-lite one with weird skin: goliaths have their lithoderms (bony lumps on the skin that when combined with their gray and black skin tones gave them a literally craggy appearance, something that was disappointingly neglected as the editions rolled on to make them more conventionally attractive <_<) and now jotunborn will have their "weavings" with silk literally embroidered into their skin.

I think its that Giants are generally designed in such a way as to emphasize natural power (like other monsters) rather than the ancestry-interchangeable class stuff. E.g. the storm giants are all storm power themed, but a player one could do virtually anything powers-wise, and ancestry feats aren't given a high enough power budget to dominate a build that way generally.

I wouldn't expect us to ever get the Huge giants as playable. Even Large to Tiny is kinda pushing playability.

But you're right, even most of the Large giants can't really fit within the power budget of an Ancestry. You really can't fill the fantasy of being a Frost Giant or a Fire Giant without an appropriate damage immunity, and that doesn't really fly for balanced play. The Construct and Undead options get away with just having better defenses against the stuff they should be immune to, but that might just not work in this case. (My old 3.5 Monster Manual, which has PC stats for a lot of monsters, only includes them Hill and Stone Giants, and even those both have a +4 level adjustments, which is some arcane crap I don't feel like trying to explain, but it means it's hard to make those work as PCs)
Up to now I figured at best we'd get some kind of Half-Giant Heritage, with Lineage Feats related to specific Giant varieties, but opening the possibility of the offspring of a Storm Giant and...

That said, we do already have versatile heritages that would match up for some of the giants-- for example a Stormsoul Sylph Jotunborn, or an Ifrit Jotunborn, a Rimesoul Undine Jotunborn, and so forth. So that's actually in pretty good shape already.

I find it interesting that Pathfinder's essentially following its predecessor's path of not making giants themselves a playable ancestry (Starfinder 1e being a unique exception), but a giant-lite one with weird skin: goliaths have their lithoderms (bony lumps on the skin that when combined with their gray and black skin tones gave them a literally craggy appearance, something that was disappointingly neglected as the editions rolled on to make them more conventionally attractive <_<) and now jotunborn will have their "weavings" with silk literally embroidered into their skin.

I think its that Giants are generally designed in such a way as to emphasize natural power (like other monsters) rather than the ancestry-interchangeable class stuff. E.g. the storm giants are all storm power themed, but a player one could do virtually anything powers-wise, and ancestry feats aren't given a high enough power budget to dominate a build that way generally.

I wonder if those are our iconics, an orc commander and a jotunblooded guardian.

Yup, they're on the cover.

Also Commanders will be able to do cool things with Troops now, which also feature in what appears to be some kind of massed combat 'thing' I suspect it's similar to siege weapons-- they've been setup to function in normal combat encounters, but if you want to have armies clash, you use a bunch of troops and presumably have them duke it out on a battlemap.

That's still a little bit of conjecture, but it appears to be the picture they're painting.

Yo, looks like we have the cover, and Jotunborn looks sick.

I was actually thinking about this recently because I was considering what connection if any I wanted to draw between Vesk, Lizardfolk, and Nagaji in my homerbrew setting.

Well damn, now I wish I'd mentioned it in the open response portion of the survey--

But the way I would do it is to include one or a couple of Grave Spells that summon undead mages, but they work like Force Barrage, volleying out blasts of magic, and the more actions and higher level you are the more individual blasts are in the volley.

I think giving them actual casting would be kludgy, then again, I don't like casting on the core Necromancer and almost think it should be traded away for more grave spells and such-- I'd almost be tempted to say they should remove the core spellcasting and give you feats for undead servants that chill with you and provide multiclass spellcasting progression casting service at your direction.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

I think racial weapons are fine as is, I only have two quibbles with them:

1. I wouldn't mind a little more guidance on how access is expected to be run, right now it feels a little coy on what circumstances players are expected to need or not need the feat for uncommon weapons, which is probably intentional-- it doesn't want to actually stop you if you'd be in a place you can logically just buy one or pick it up, but does want to speed bump players into reflecting on having one.

The challenge there is that rarity is doing multiple different things at once, and access is hard to be consistent about because of that.

1. Sometimes it's there so that a GM has cover if they don't want a thing in their game. Firearms scream this. Players have no RAW way around this in a home game except "the GM says you can", so this one is empowering GMs.

2. Sometimes it's there because the thing is just unusual or infrequent in Golarian and it's reflecting that. This is more common with archetypes (Starlit Sentinel is rare because literally 12 of them exist in Golarian) and backgrounds than with base weapons, but Beast Guns fit here. Again, players generally have no way around this except "the GM says you can", so this one is also empowering GMs.

3. Ancestry weapons fall into a different spot because in theory they're uncommon because they're supposed to be hard to find outside a given ancestry, but the game RAW gives players multiple easy ways to get access to them like general or ancestry feats. So this one isn't nearly as much in the GMs hands because actually having these not available requires banning or ignoring the common feats that give access. (This is also true of Cleric Domain Spells, where uncommon doesn't mean the same thing as it does elsewhere in the book and really just means "you need to be able to take the Cleric feat that lets you take this".)

And when you think about it, how much sense does it really make? If Flickmaces are great weapons (and they are), it...

It sort of makes sense in the sense that all of these have a similar gate-- your GM lets you have one, or the system explicitly says you can have one. So normally how access here would work is that GM permission is required for things like Starlit Sentinel or Guns either way, but not strictly required for uncommon ancestry weapons because of the feat which lets you circumvent the idea you would need permission. So its mostly fine that they're the way they are for different purposes because the lack of an access feat means the GM is just choosing if it's present or not, it doesn't matter why its marked that way because its always for a flavor reason-- whether Starlit Sentinels even exist or are just unusual, or whether guns exist but are too uncommon to show up, the distinction is immaterial, because either way the GM is just deciding if that thing will appear in that game.

But in the case of the ancestry feat, you're choosing if the feat is necessary, and then in a position where, when play starts, the physical object just exists in the world, so conceivably if your party is traveling around, they can maybe just go find one-- not a huge problem if they're chilling in a human backwater with no gnomes or major trading hubs anywhere... but awfully weird if they buddy-buddy the elves and still can't grab an elven curve blade, but if you can get one so easily it leaves the GM questioning the need for the feat.

For me this isn't, per se, an issue, because I was happy to eventually open it up for our pirate game and declare them common, since the whole point of the area of the setting is that it's basically the center of trade in the world, and the feat still has a point for builds trying to make martial weapons simple or advanced weapons martial, so like, whatever cool. I'm happy with my decision and have no regrets.

But then I'm left questioning the identical uncommon tag on focus spells, because what the hell would it even mean to make a focus spell common-- maybe nothing? you usually get them from specific features and feats, so maybe it was predicated off the idea that they were being marked as something you would need a [b]thing[/i] to get in the same way some uncommon options are.

This is fairly darn small potatoes overall, the advanced weapon training thing is a more earnest concern.

I think racial weapons are fine as is, I only have two quibbles with them:

1. I wouldn't mind a little more guidance on how access is expected to be run, right now it feels a little coy on what circumstances players are expected to need or not need the feat for uncommon weapons, which is probably intentional-- it doesn't want to actually stop you if you'd be in a place you can logically just buy one or pick it up, but does want to speed bump players into reflecting on having one.

2. Advanced Weapon Training, that level 6 fighter feat, should have the trait for every, or at least a bunch of, Martial Classes. It compares very well with Reactive Strike variants at level 6 (for some Advanced Weapons anyway) but its weird that only fighters even have the option to pay a feat to get them.

I wouldn't really agree with the community's impression of the Gunslinger in the first place-- it does a lot of damage, is disproportionately good against bosses for the same reason the Fighter is so valuable and any reasonable strategy for playing around reload trivializes it, including the universal Risky Reload.

Some subclasses are better than others (I'd always take a Spellshot or a Triggerbrand over a Drifter, for instance, and Snipers and Pistolero's are both neat) but the bare class is good to begin with, especially since it has some stand out feats like Fake Out.

Vnguard is an odd duck, I actually kind of like it, but I want to tinker more with it, besides the defensive benefits i think one of the biggest advantages is popping Phalanx breaker to create action drag for enemy targets right before their turn comes up.

One reason I think that the class is perceived to under-perform, is that people generally conceal the drag on melee DPR that comes from having to move around a larger battlefield.

More generally, I think that any real under-performance needs to be demonstrated very clearly to be believed, otherwise we just end up with vibes dictating everything because people heard secondhand that something sucks, but the receipts were never really there.

You know people are still under working under the assumption that Spellshot changes your key stat and thereby lowers your accuracy?

I don't think they all need to be classes, per se, but I would absolutely take a Barrier Mage Archetype for dedicated abjuration.

As I have other obligations to tend to today, I asked the internet to summarize this near-900 post thread for me in the hopes that I might be able to jump in later. This is what it kicked back:

** spoiler omitted **...

I think the AI mostly cribbed the OP and reworded it because everything mentioned here was mentioned there, it's not off for a lot of the discussion, but there's def some stuff missing, like our discussion about DPR from a couple of pages ago I noticed because I was a part of it.

Coming back to it a bit later.

I roughly color coded the lines:
Red are the results on a strike hit.
Green are on a strike crit
Yellow on a strike miss

Circles for successful saves
Losanges for failed
Triangles for Crit Failed
Square for crit success

Blue are with a shocking grasp and Purple with a cantrip (telekynetic projectile)

Overall save spells will deal more damage than a hit Shocking Grasp when the target fails after you land a crit, or crit fails their save (even if the strike missed) past level 7. But will almost always be way lower than a critical attack spell. Only catching up and exceeding by a few points at level 18+ when doing a crit strike AND crit fail save (though in the graph the formula doesn't stop at 9th spell rank so it should actually remain at 18th level damage for both, so equal, unless we use focus spells that require saves).

Compared to a cantrip, if you hit and they succeed on the save you would have done more damage with a cantrip, but ofc it's an all or nothing vs a "at least you'll do some damage". Any time the save is a success it'll do less damage than a cantrip would have, unless the strike itself was a miss essentially.

Though in that example I've used a 2d6/rank save spell, maybe some other like Thunderstrike would actually scale better ? But I think 1d12+1d4/rank averages out barely above 2d6/rank.

Actually, just tested it. It does do quite a lot more, overtaking a crit shocking grasp (if you crit the strike and they crit fail their save) at level 6. It does go pretty high but the likelyhood is very very small.
Outside of it a critical strike with an attack spell will always deal way more damage.
With a save success on a hit it'll slightly outdamage a cantrip, but not by much. But it'll always be "better".
On a failed saved and a successful strike it'll outdamage shocking grasp.
But a critical on a save success will barely be above a hit shocking grasp for example.

In a way it's also quite swingy.
On a hit at worst you'll do a normal...

This is some very useful information, well done, I'll report back if I figure a good way to calculate likelhood and weight the damage based on it.

I usually eyeball the impact of likelihood ("you have a 35% chsnce of doing A and a 40% chance of doing B and only a 20% chance of C!") Against an example target number from the GM Core table of the correct level and a conservatively high difficulty (e g. A moderate save rather a low one.)

You would normally do it by figuring out what percent-of-d20-faces the result occurs on (I make little tables and count the 5% increments), then you multiply the average damage of that outcome by that percent expressed as a decimal. Then you just get the average of the weighted outcome totals to get the average of the spel, unless I've horribly missed something.

The pain in the butt (to me) is that there's two d20s involved which means counting and likelihood is extra pain and there's more total outcomes and the crit fail strike exemption means ots asymmetrical.

As for your conclusions-- yeah, I think you're right in the sense of how the damage works out, I suspect the saves are good in practice based off what you said, specifically by virtue of a low number of total rolls normally performed by a Magus-- more rolling is insurance that you'll trend towards the average, which is nice against bosses.

I'd be tempted to take an intelligence apex on the basis that strikes are easy to buff, and use save spellstrikes in a party that has flanking and a reliable procedure for inflicting frightened for maximum effect, pumping both numbers and treating it as a steadier way to kill a boss.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

This thread is pretty interesting and relevant.

Particularly this chart here.

The chart actually gives us a comparison between the Gouging Claw Spellstrike + Force Fang (Red), and the assorted Psychic Dedication use cases (brown and pink and purple), against a level +2. The Psychic use cases (brown and pink, specifically) are better, but by a relatively small amount of damage (note the scaling of the Y axis) and brown requires two focus points in one round, presumably falling back down on round two. That's a lot of feats for fairly small practical increase on renewable resource spellstriking.

Notably, the chart does not compare to a spell slot expenditure, since OP wasn't interested in that, but Spell Slot + Force Fang should be noticeably higher than the Red line since real spells are stronger than cantrips, if you have normal encounters (4 or less) per day, and keep your focus points for Force Fang, that's probably the optimal way to play the Magus.

It doesn't need to compare to spell slot expenditure since amped IW is (iirc) equal to or better than expending a spellslot in terms of raw damage. The main usecase for slotted spellstrike with amped IW available is for inflicting statuses (briny bolt for blinded) or taking advantage of the class feats that require it.

I would be wary of two things about this chart:

1) It compares a 3A set on magus to a 2A set on fighter, and so underrepresents the damage of a more optimized 3A routine. This could be just Strike>exacting strike>certain strike, or maybe it could be something like a 2A routine with glimpse weakness from psychic archetype as your third action; I'm not as familar with fighter optimization details as I'd like to be.

2) Higher ACs are more favorable to force fang, since it automatically hits, and this is against level+2 and the chart states AC is high. The lower the enemy AC, the more amped IW spellstrike will pull ahead as your critrate increases.

I was mostly using it for the internal Magus comparison here, but I figured the fighter would be a bit better than it seemed.

While I don't disagree that Force Fang is more useful against bosses, I see that as a feature not a bug-- and +2 is already a compromise on the AC, my parties see +3 and +4 creatures often enough to be more interested in the cases where Force Fang likely pulls further ahead.

As for IW, 2d8 is a pretty tough scaling to beat so I see why you're saying it's as good/better as a slotted spell (and at most levels it is, I want to see how the saves actually compare now though), but the action drag is nasty, and in it's best use case, targets that aren't higher level, I'm even more incentivized to use a save spell, possibly an expansive spellstrike so something like lightning bolt lances through more than one guy, since there's exp left in the encounter budget.

In other words if an encounter is few monster but high budget I'm leaning towards force fang for the insurance to help pop the boss, if an encounter is many monster low budget we'll clean it up without stressing it, if an encounter is many monsters and high budget, I probably want to AOE... possibly even if I'm not spellstriking in the first place, though spellstrike is still ideal.

Yeah i've been tempted by beastmaster or cavalier as well lol. Free move every round would be kind of insane.

And those are great analysis, thanks. Force Fang is definitely overlooked.

It kind of overlook that aspect that the spell slots are incenticized for use on big nova and are a limiting factor (since 4 a day and all, which aligns with expected amount of moderate encounters worth 1 each) but the cheese of IW does give you a renewable ressource (even more with remaster letting you refocus several times) and gives the sacrosanct flexibility of arcane tradition to your slots if you so desire. You can have all the buffs you'd like here (Draw the Lightning, Runic weapon for relevant levels, or other utility).

But damage isn't really my main area of concern in my suggestions, i'm more concerned about flow and variety of options built in.

Because part of me is also *tired* of hearing "take psychic" "every magus is a psychic" whenever people try to discuss the class' balance or something, it ALWAYS gets shoved in your face.

Edit: Also here is some charts I did during playtest at the time : comparing flurry range and barbarian to essentially what current magus is

and one I made recently with the proposition of having arcane cascade apply as penalty to the save on successful hits on spellstrikes compared to a pure caster (and as a magus maxing out intelligence).
Would be curious to have your opinion, i'm going to test it myself next time I get to play. Figured if too strong a simpler -1 on hit -3 on crit would be better

My primary thought is that we need to see the damage numbers rather than just the relative accuracy-- the action compression on Spellstrike has the possibility to be great with saves, but a big part of the benefit for saves is the success effects, and the fact that Save Spellstrike is two rolls rather than one-- so you get what are effectively a bunch more degrees of success by multipling the compatible states.

A. Strike Success, Save Fail
B. Crit Success, Crit Fail
C. Strike Crit, Save Fail
D. Strike Crit, Save Success....

There's quite a few, and we have to express the whole setup mathematically without the Strike Crit Fails but Spell does something outcomes, calc them with the reduced odds of Magus prof relative to a normal caster (presuming secondary stat int?) against moderate and low saves, on different relative creature levels, then make sure to add the damage of Force Fang (as the control group conflux spell for recharge purposes) and compare it to a similar spell attack 3 action routine, and ideally another class's 3 action routine.

Nevermind using something like Befuddle in place of a damage spellstrike, which seems like it would be good but very weird feeling (too bad the save can't go first, maybe very flavorful for a certain kind of magical anime swordsman.

The calcs seem painful to do.

Indeed it's been discussed at length.

Design wise, Magus is supposed to nova with spell slots, this is why so many feats grant additional bonuses when casting spells from slots:
You have so few of them, so making each do as many things as possible that'll support your playstyle is important (tacking a line aoe to your ranged single target nova, giving your nova insane reach, your slots providing a small amount of heal to stay in the fight, benefiting from a one round version of a powerful buff spells while casting another one etc)

Some of those feats are weaker than others, or not very practical and might need rework.
But that's the design intent. And it's not a bad one, I think, just needs to be pushed harder by making it more appealing.

Because the issue, to my pov, is the community shift to completely ignore the intended design and just use focus spells from cleric or psychic to nova as much as they can, disreguarding the utility of conflux spells 'cause why bother navigating the action economy if you can nova the encounter every time with your infinite renewable 2d8 per level (on two targets if you have spellswipe) focus spell ?

This thread is pretty interesting and relevant.

Particularly this chart here.

The chart actually gives us a comparison between the Gouging Claw Spellstrike + Force Fang (Red), and the assorted Psychic Dedication use cases (brown and pink and purple), against a level +2. The Psychic use cases (brown and pink, specifically) are better, but by a relatively small amount of damage (note the scaling of the Y axis) and brown requires two focus points in one round, presumably falling back down on round two. That's a lot of feats for fairly small practical increase on renewable resource spellstriking.

Notably, the chart does not compare to a spell slot expenditure, since OP wasn't interested in that, but Spell Slot + Force Fang should be noticeably higher than the Red line since real spells are stronger than cantrips, if you have normal encounters (4 or less) per day, and keep your focus points for Force Fang, that's probably the optimal way to play the Magus.

So I think that Paizo probably isn't worried about multi-class Magus, because it's benefits are almost only perception-- the mouse still gets a little more of the cheese from doing it, so to speak, so it's not a trap per se, and Psychic/Cleric can still give you the spellcaster benefit feats so it's not entirely one note, but the cheese arguably isn't worth it (I'd personally prefer to take Beastmaster to solve my action economy issues, and sometimes tack on a little more damage, for instance, or build in some other kind of utility via the likes of Loremaster or Archaelogist or something if I'm taking Int anyway) in a big picture sense.

From what I remember of the way the math for the class works from when people calced it out back in the day, by itself cantrip spellstriking puts you under the fighter baseline, while spell slot spellstriking puts you over it by about 30%, obviously implying that one of the supported play loops was to nova with Spellstrike as a sometimes food so that it equals out in the wash, Sure Strike from the Studious Spells still helps with that, and you still have your hero points too.

I don't recall if that factored in the expected value of a conflux or not, but the IW shouldn't be too much higher since it produces action drag to account for in the math (I like to use Force Fang as the baseline for this in calculations as what you're giving up to use imaginary weapon.)

Right now people have been eyeballing save spellstrike to be on par before debuffs to enemy AC/saves have been factored in, but obviously AC is easier to debuff, while I think NADs are likelier to be lower from the get especially if we find the right spells to target diff saves. Thunderstrike and Sudden Bolt can target Reflex, Befuddle isn't damage but it's super strong and can target Will, among some other candidates for that.

If you do a spell slot spellstrike once per encounter, and you have 4 spell slots, you can do this for 4 encounters which is (apparently, based off polls over on the subreddit) the most number of encounters most of the playerbase will do with the next highest demographic doing fewer-- without touching your studious spells, staff, scrolls, wands or whatever which probably line up for utility in this instance.

There's other builds as well, like self-buff + cantrip spellstrike so you have some other options for spell slots, to be viable in terms of playstyle-- Blazing Armory and Runic Weapon at relevant levels for instance, with Blazing Armory notably getting your whole party Flaming (a level 8 rune) at level 7 if they want it.

Of course that's damage, another way to use the slots would be to bait out Reactive Strike with cantrip spellstrikes and use Wooden Double to eat the nasty MAPless reaction hits for the party or just in general when attacked to tank for bosses, I kinda dig that for the IW build honestly, leaving out of combat casting to a staff and so forth.

From there you get into more esoteric builds.

Personally I'm of the opinion that save-based spellstrike is going to yield higher averages than expected, but I think the build is going to rely heavily on force fang recharges to help pump numbers because the subclass confluxes are hit and miss-- Laughing Shadow can do without for example but its particular about the order you act in to make sure MAP is on the normal strike until dimensional disappearance comes online and that can get weird when you're really looking to reposition via the teleport.

I like the success effects, the action compression and throwing rolls at different defenses.

Hmm, I wonder how much weapons will be buffed, hopefully it isn't too outlandish an increase that they dumpster the likes of the longbow for the same role (martial weapon and so forth), just to use that as a benchmark.

I'm going to get my bet on the books here, and predict that it's the Starship Playtest for Starfinder, and that they'll be demoing at Unplugged, I don't have any direct reason to think so beyond the fact that announcement being in this blog post suggests it could be related to convention things and that Starfinder's official release (and therefore the date the core book has to go to the printers) is inching closer, and the class playtest has been going for quite a while now.

WELL I WAS WRONG, BUT IM PLENTY HAPPY WITH IT

I'm going to get my bet on the books here, and predict that it's the Starship Playtest for Starfinder, and that they'll be demoing at Unplugged, I don't have any direct reason to think so beyond the fact that announcement being in this blog post suggests it could be related to convention things and that Starfinder's official release (and therefore the date the core book has to go to the printers) is inching closer, and the class playtest has been going for quite a while now.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Interestingly, it makes them stronger, since rolling with Mythic Proficiency makes the math much more favorable for the PC. Imprisonment in particular is probably far better for it's intended use case.

Also somewhat ironically given the explanation that these should be special things that only the greatest can do... the primary caster only has to be Trained in the skill now.

So we've gone from "only the greatest masters of Arcana/Religion/Occultism/Religion can even attempt this" to "a Mythic Fighter who picked up a skill because a class granted skill was already trained by their background can attempt this and have exactly the same proficiency modifier as someone who is legendary at that skill."

For a reasonable chance at success, your secondary casters are really going to want as much proficiency as they can get, but it's utterly irrelevant to the primary caster now (and with the extra +2 it got easier than it was in premaster).

That is... a thing.

Well, sort of, you still want the high level ability modifier (ideally primary, with your apex) for the skill and an item boost.

Interestingly, it makes them stronger, since rolling with Mythic Proficiency makes the math much more favorable for the PC. Imprisonment in particular is probably far better for it's intended use case.

When they eventually look at doing a Pathfinder 3e, I'd straight up be in support of them deleting attack roll spells as a concept and expressing existing ones as saves (or inverting saves into defenses to mirror AC, the load bearing part is the damage on a miss.) Not because of Spellstrike or Sure Strike, just in general.

I'm going again this year! It'll be nice seeing Paizo there.

The announcement is tantalizing, since we already got an Impossible Lands Lost Omens, so I'm curious what it actually is.