The-Magic-Sword's page

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.

That's an interesting choice... I'm definitely not complaining, especially since it is technically something that can be used with PF2e.

Also... just realized I got hit with the autocorrect hammer in my previous post. The Vlaka are the 'goodest boys' not the 'goddess boys' in my estimation.

Oh yeah, totally my reaction to this announcement was to up a Starfinder Subscription starting with this, I am much excite, just meme-ing.

April 2025, so before the Core Book... can we technically say these are the first Starfinder 2e ancestries?

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

It buffed them, since it means you roll the main check with mythic proficiency--- which makes something like Imprison way better.

It is only a buff if your table is (or will be) using Mythic rules. It is otherwise not feasible for any other table because the old rituals don't exist now.

Given the plot coupon nature of Imprisonment, and the fact that it's already uncommon, I kinda think this is small potatoes as obstacles go? If someone raises to the GM that they want access to imprisonment, and the GM agrees they like the idea, I can see the GM giving them access to this one mythic option. That's even assuming the GM minds them using the CRB version that wasn't mythic when it's pointed out to them, and agrees it counts as invalidating the CRB version in the first place-- as opposed to only counting if the Mythic Rules are actually in play.

I'm more interested in the better math for when you *can* use it, rather than the shift from needing GM's Permission to use it to needing GM's Permission to use it.

It buffed them, since it means you roll the main check with mythic proficiency--- which makes something like Imprison way better.

I think Explosion of Power deserves a mention, being able to add up to a max rank fireball's worth of damage around you in a turn on top of your regular blasting.

D'oh, that is incredible, should have looked at the new blood magics more carefully, its def going in.

Quote:

I thought the breakdown of die faces against a +3 moderate save was carrying this load since it does discuss how things change as you adjust the target-defense. Perhaps I could add more about how it intersects with enemy HP? As for Demoralize vs. Elemental Toss, I would need a simulator on the order of World of Warcraft's Mr. Robot to work that one out and I can eyeball that the math looks way different in different parties, and with different numbers of allies, never-mind AC vs. Will.

I'd rather settle for encouraging the player to do either as a good third action.

No math in this game requires a particularly fancy simulator; it can be done in a basic excel spreadsheet without too much issue. For the most part, it's fine to just use the average damage of each save outcome, then just do an appropriately weighted average of all save outcomes. This will be slightly inaccurate (because we'll ignore that damage can only come in whole number values, and we're not going to bother accounting for overkill), but it's in the ballpark, gives us something to compare against, and is far better than nothing.

E.G., if a monster somehow has a 5/45/45/5 split on outcomes against 3rd rank fireball, which does an average of 21 damage on a failed save, then

5% of the time, the monster will take no damage. 45% of the time, it'll take half (10.5 damage). 45% of the time, it'll take full damage (21). 5% of the time, it'll take double.

(0*.05)+(10.5*.45)+(21*.45)+(42*.05)

comes out to 16.275 average damage.

If we want to know the difference between demoralize>fireball and a raw fireball...

Let's just assume 5/45/45/5 saves on demoralize for example's sake. So 5% of the time, the monster will have -2 to their fireball save, 45% -1, and 50% no change. At this point, you'd start nesting outcomes, so it gets very ugly without using spreadsheets. But I believe it's something like......

That last line of your post is the concern, if I'm telling someone "hey for your damage, elemental toss is better" but it turns out to raise TTK on the boss overall for like a major subset of party configurations, that's not advice I'm interested in giving. Especially since it's not how I think about the game when I'm optimizing and engaging my build sense because I wouldn't be willing to leave that DPR increase on the table for the sake of personal DPR.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I update slowly, but I'll take it into account.

The baseball thing-- I can do another pass on simplifying or explaining the references, but I have to admit my favorite optimization guides always had fun conceits like this, so it's def staying, and I know liking baseball isn't that important to grokking the guide due to some test readings I've done: people who don't know baseball are generally still picking up on the concepts as explained here, they just tend to look at the baseball references and say "huh I don't know baseball and have a preliminary expectation that it'll confuse me" but if you ask them to guess what's meant by something, they get it.

Also because I'm not a 'proper-baseball' fan myself, the game is cool but I don't follow it, the concept of small ball when I learned about it was just a very cool metaphor, that makes the guide a lot of fun to read for my target audience, and it's always been in the air here where I lived.

Some specific stuff, in no particular order:

There is a lot of discussion about magic missile, but you don't mention the number one thing! Bonuses to damage are 'per target' so if you spread out the missiles you get the damage bonus against each target (this is confirmed by Logan Bonner here). Said magic missile sorcerer at L8 can cast a L5/3 action magic missile for 6 missiles to 6 targets for 1d4+7 to each. Its like turning the spell into a weird mini AOE that can be great for clearing out some cannon fodder after someone softened them up with a fireball.

I actually thought this was intuitive and only explained how to get the damage bonus on the same target because that's a rule that effectively needs to be bypassed, and I figured it was more implicit when someone read that section, I can def write a bit more on it though.

A blaster guide without going through any math (pick TTK, DPR, etc.) isn't providing enough supporting information for the claims in it. People need some concrete examples and bench marking to know what good blasting looks like otherwise there is no frame of reference to understand how something like demoralize + fireball stands vs. elemental toss + fireball. I think other guides, like a class guide can get away without it because there are many qualitative feats or action compression feats that aren't as easy to assess. But blasting has very defined outputs that can be compared.

I thought the breakdown of die faces against a +3 moderate save was carrying this load since it does discuss how things change as you adjust the target-defense. Perhaps I could add more about how it intersects with enemy HP? As for Demoralize vs. Elemental Toss, I would need a simulator on the order of World of Warcraft's Mr. Robot to work that one out and I can eyeball that the math looks way different in different parties, and with different numbers of allies, never-mind AC vs. Will.

I'd rather settle for encouraging the player to do either as a good third action.

On important thing about damage is that 1 point of damage at round 1 is not equivalent to 1 point of damage at round 2. Unless you face a single enemy you should aim at quickly reducing the number of enemies. Considering the short average length of fights (it's variable depending on level but it's roughly 3-4 rounds), 1 point of damage at round 1 is much closer to 2 points of damage at round 2, 4 at round 3 and 8 at round 4. As such Sustain spells are only useful for bosses. Same goes for Persistent damage: unless you face a boss, you can consider that one point of Persistent damage is equivalent to 1 point of direct damage.

So, I did address this, partially in the Big Innings/AOE section which explains why I'm focused on single target damage for the rest of the guide. But also, I think it's a little different-- damage is damage until the boss is actually dead and the rest doesn't matter until it constitutes overkill and even then you don't have fine tune enough control over when a fight ends for it to generally be sensible to hold back on resources in late rounds unless you're like, party-first in initiative. Using sustain spells in non-boss encounters is good for a different reasons; namely, it's a resource saver, you pop them and then don't spend any more spell slots for the rest of the fight.

Sorcerous Potency is not the same name as dangerous sorcery. RAW the sorcerer got a buff by freeing up a L2+ feat slot, but other classes can still grab it. Things are only 'replaced' if they have the same name, which these don't (perhaps there is a FAQ/remaster conversion guide where this was clarified as the intent, but I haven't seen one yet).

Hmm, don't know why I wrote that, nice catch.

Even though it's a blasting guide, IMO the lack of mention for spells like Floating Flame, Illusory Creature, Spirit Weapon, Rouse Skeletons, etc, is a small blind spot. Due to slots being a serious resource, and due to sustain being a 1A that's compatible with 2A casts, the role of sustain spells deserved a mention, even if it's to say "sorry, but they are too hard to keep active, and don't do enough to justify slotting them in the first place."

I could have SWORN it was in the pitch count section as a strategy for saving spell slots.

Also curious what you think of cantrip plinking.

"Don't."

I saw some people talking about new Fighter feats. Did any other classes get additional feats, outside of class archetypes?

Yes, the Avenger Class Archetype section has a little section stapled onto the end that provides two spear feats for the Rogue Ranger AND Fighter.

Isn't mythic resilience really problematic? A mythic creature can get all three of them at level 13.

Imagine this. You're a party of level 11 PCs and you're a caster. You're going up against a mythic creature that is PL+2 with all three mythic resilient saves. A level 13 creature's low save is a +20, and as a level 11 caster you likely have a spell DC of 30 at this point. This pretty much means that the only way that the creature can fail a saving throw with their **WEAKEST SAVE** is for them to roll a 1. You would have to spend a mythic point to get your spell DC to 36 for a chance for them to fail their weak save and even then that chance is only 30%. Keep in mind that this is only a PL+2 creature and you're targeting their low save.

Mythic resilience just seems to f+%% over casters big time and makes being a mythic caster at high level seem awful. Please tell me I'm reading something wrong here.

At that point, you've got a signpost encounter for the martials and buff spells to shine given that it spent it's whole mythic budget that way, but if you must blast it down with magic, you're still working with your success effects, or perhaps humorously for the way these discussions normally go, Spell Attacks which aren't subject to Resilience.

Heh, this book is sick and im already looking at how to integrate it into my game. For one thing, im thinking of following the recommendation to open up the destinies as normal high level archetypes sans mythic point feats. But I'm also looking at possibly using mythic spell scrolls that count as spending a mythic point when the scroll is consumed, and possibly looting the 1-10 mythic feats section to turn them into high level gear things with bespoke recharge rates to produce a free archetype compatible half-mythic.

My head is spinning woth possibilities, but its a great book, the destinies and class archetypes are in particular well executed (whoever wrote prophesized monarch in particular deserves a hand) and a lot of players are going to be thrilled with even nonmythic wildspell. Warrior of Legend is especially cool too and I got my specific wish for greatsword avengers (but also, the dual woeld polearm support for rogues/ rangers/fighters!?)

Ive barely looked at the classes so far! Even with my excitement for the animist.

Any regular Archetype ? (Not Class or Multiclass or Mythic)

No, but the book suggests that PCs are welcome to treat the epic destinies as normal high level archetypes in nonmythic games, and tells you to ignore or remove the feats that require you to use mythic points for their effects (each seems to have been given enough non-mythic-point-feat-options to facilitate that.)

It looks balanced enough to actually do that to me.

WHY DOES WORK HAVE TO BE QUIET TODAY, LOCALIZED ENTIRELY IN THIS PUBLIC LIBRARY.

It's making my "I could technically get it at any time" brainrot so much worse ^_^

Yeah, seems like the best of both worlds then, now to see if our existing Free Archetype game is too cluttered to throw Mythic into the game somehow as I get my sub copy, hopefully on the sooner side of the sipping window. I'm so excited.

I'm assuming that there's going to be a mythic template that you can apply to monsters in order to make them an appropriate challenge for a mythic party of the appropriate level, but you should avoid applying this template to monsters you plan to send against normal PCs.

Like I'm going to be sad if I can't have a mythic bear or a mythic housecat.

Mythic Lava Otters

Summoner Class Archetype that increases your number of Eidolon Bodies and lets you launch volleys of magic blasts from them, with a flurry playstyle. They'd still share your health pool and actions and share MAP, but I'd want it to have a focus spell that replaces Boost Eidolon and lets them launch their volley with reduced MAP but action intensively. I'm thinking that it'd split your eidolon into 3 to 6 total bodies, possibly scaling up at higher levels.

Here's the Discussion Thread for my newly updated Blaster Caster Guide!

I was requested to make a discussion thread for my guide to blasting on the next revision, so here it is.

I am so excited for WOI

I'd be tempted to say they need a horizontally wider array of tags that tell you *why* something is uncommon, rather than just that it is, at a glance. Like, to highlight the difference between

"Uncommon in-case you were trying to do a murder mystery it would break"
"Uncommon because we meant for this to be a GM reward"
"Uncommon because its out of place for what we consider the basic fantasy setting"
"Uncommon because its only common to a specific group of people/culture and therefore that context should be present when it's used by default."

You'd have to maybe distill those into tags, but its admittedly kind of messy because up front it wasn't applied evenly to begin with. Like, Bags of Holding are common, even though I'd expect them to be uncommon for campaigns that want transporting things to be harder.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

One thing I have sort of realized is that in addition to the lore reasons a dragon or something might want to simply swat at different targets all the time, double tapping a PC is generally a more effective strategy for killing PCs, but isn't a hugely helpful strategy for winning the fight, since it generally costs actions you could have spent trying to down someone else, and focusing the damage on one person makes healing *easier* for team PC, due to the relative efficacy of like, two-action heal/soothe and the way that it simplifies the choice of whether that person should use a shield.

It can work, but the death spiral has to outpace Team PC's remaining damage output, which is a pretty big burden on the boss's action economy.

That's true if the party doesn't have a healer. If the party DOES have a healer, then taking someone out of the fight permanently is actually taking them out of the fight. Dropping them will be undone once the healer gets a turn. In a 4v1 battle, one PC undoing the enemy turn with their actions is a win on action economy, while denying that is better for the enemy.

Of course, killing a PC at the first chance by hitting them while down is exceedingly unfun for healer PCs, as you are actively negating their character's ability by not giving them a chance to use it. This will in turn cause players to not want to play that, and its already not a super popular role. It'll also probably make your players rather salty with you.

In that situation, not attacking the downed player is a pulled punch... but attacking the downed player is hostile to another player's ability to shine, which is not fun for either player (as one of them doesn't get to do their cool thing and another one doesn't get to do anything).

Sometimes we just accept that enemies will behave in certain suboptimal ways because if the table mindset is "this is social time with friends and also a game", having fun together is the primary goal of the session....

I've seen first hand that generally the challenge is in spreading out healing-- focusing one person generally makes healing easier on Team Pc, you have to get the healer to make hard choices.

So to respond to Trip.H ; I agree it's lame as a player to see the GM pull punches just like that.

But what I've enjoyed a lot is when the GM would like to pull punches, for example by having a monster switch targets a bit, and the players put effort into giving the GM the excuse.

The monster crits Bob for a ton of damage and nasty poison and sickened and prone. Well, it could stay and finish Bob but Alice is throwing some big spells at the monster and leaving a charge lane open to lure it in her direction. At that point the GM has a lot more "cover" to pull punches on Bob a bit without breaking the illusion.

One thing I have sort of realized is that in addition to the lore reasons a dragon or something might want to simply swat at different targets all the time, double tapping a PC is generally a more effective strategy for killing PCs, but isn't a hugely helpful strategy for winning the fight, since it generally costs actions you could have spent trying to down someone else, and focusing the damage on one person makes healing *easier* for team PC, due to the relative efficacy of like, two-action heal/soothe and the way that it simplifies the choice of whether that person should use a shield.

It can work, but the death spiral has to outpace Team PC's remaining damage output, which is a pretty big burden on the boss's action economy.

Quote:

becomes easier

Can become easier. The only consistently available option is Breath of Life which doesn't work on death effects.

That's between you and your buddies.

Continuing my previous thoughts - I got pulled away for IRL stuff.

Pathfinder2e:

It isn't necessarily an ideal set of game rules for this topic. There are things like Power Word Kill that can kill a character just from a couple of bad dice rolls without much warning (maybe Recall Knowledge to know that it is a spell that the enemy knows - which only helps if you have on hand some way of countering it), or recourse (other than raising the character later).

However, I think that PF2 is pretty good at it.

There are things like Hero Points and Heroic Recovery. Which RAW may not prevent character death, but is an easy houserule hook to say that you can use it to prevent character death entirely from that encounter as long as the character stays unconscious for the remainder of the fight. There is still the possibility of TPK, but barring that, the rest of the characters can use their normal recovery means to patch up their critically injured but not dead allies.

And PF2 is pretty good at signposting the difficulty of a battle. The wording of the Combat Threat ratings and Choosing Creatures table descriptions could be a bit clearer that they are serious that when you pick an extreme difficulty (for either the encounter as a whole, or for a particular creature in the combat), the risk of character death is pretty high.

I do feel obliged to point out that most of the actual death effects and PWK and whatnot come online as bringing characters back from the dead becomes easier.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Which to be clear, means you can right now, rip a Starfinder Laser gun out of the 2e playtest rulebook, and let your Pathfinder 2e characters use them.

Granted, unless the GM gives you access to a means of recharging the Laser gun's power cells... you'll have to make ever shot count.

I was assuming that a GM adding these things to the game is pricing in tge availability of batteries, lol.

Which to be clear, means you can right now, rip a Starfinder Laser gun out of the 2e playtest rulebook, and let your Pathfinder 2e characters use them.

A character like that is always going to have a lower Armor Class than they actually need to be a proper frontliner, though. You're deliberately nerfing yourself with no benefit, since you could just wear light armor and still get no speed penalty. A -1 or -2 net to AC is pretty punishing, and just because you can play it doesn't mean it's supported.

Wait, light armor, or no armor?

Because my interpretation here is that we're talking about maxing the dex cap of a light armor.

exequiel759 wrote:

Oh, what a bummer.

I still don't lose hope for exemplars having a way to boost their unarmored AC since Nahoa likely still neds a way to protect himself (mechanically)!

The character with a big weapon but light armor is such a common and iconic fictional archetype it still kind of boggles me that Paizo has yet to provide any support for it.

They have, haven't they? A Fighter/Ranger/Barbarian/etc. with primary strength and secondary dexterity can just do it for higher reflex, they can dodge penalty to their speed and really maximize their carry weight.

Terrified to see sneak attack on big weapons

Now to wait patiently for all the cool archetypes…

I'm really hoping that they made Sneak Attack with weapons you wouldn't normally be able to use sneak attack with dependent on Hunt Prey, so that we can have Bastard Sword Avenger Rogues, as opposed to say, just blocking out those kinds of weapons.

The biggest thing for my group is that it suits our setting better, so it's a weird little bit of pressure off my creative shoulders, and it smoothed things out in favor of world-building I was already doing to make things more about creation and destruction as forces to replace good and evil, and the fact that in the end I didn't have much use for the law/chaos axis.

Perhaps more importantly, spirit damage-- the implications are still sort of trickling in, but its just a much stronger concept than previous iterations of alignment damage, and keys into the meta much better-- you still have very specialized spells that only effect certain targets, but the generic spirit damage, and the ability to make it holy or unholy via sanctification feels way better.

It makes most builds that previously would have used alignment damage, makes them way less niche to the types of enemy they face. My favorite example of this is Its a very strong spell, and it'll largely pierce resistance/immunity to fire, which is a strong conceptual archetype for like, holy and unholy flame attacks in media.

The Champion is similarly way less curtailed in their actual play, partially because of the shift toward neutral causes, but also because they rely more heavily on god selection for their morality-- it becomes very easy to to tilt things to accommodate your desired play-style by interpreting the base cause edicts/anathema in light of the deity ones, what they value, what they object to.

I'm really looking forward to this particular book, a lot of stories feature very 'person' oriented antagonists.

Working on my Tanuki Ranger, uses a bandolier of dueling pistols for at least the first few levels, followed by a Tripod Barricade Buster (courtesy of a house ruled level 6 advanced weapon feat) but the real piece-de-resistance is that it's heavily based on Unexpected Sharpshooter-- launching Precision Gravity Weapon Accidental Shots, having a jacked Deception, with all the fixings and eventually following it up with Dandy Dedication.

The hard part is that the Tanuki have too many amazing feats-- I'm straight torn between each thing I can do.

My Watch Has Ended, Go In Peace