The Red Necromancer's page

Haven't actually used it yet. Years ago I stole the idea from a podcast to set all my games in alternate history earths with familiar features to force myself to learn interesting things about history. I can twist it as I need it but it helps a lot to have a world that is literally THE world, except the parts I don't want to use or do want to change.

I don't think the design team particularly cares what those of us who think the wizard is too weak think. They say most people are satisfied with it, and that being the case, they really shouldn't care what we think - design is a statistical game, and you can't please all the people all the time. It's annoying and gets on my nerves, but I just need to remember that I'm a stubborn, cranky, systems oriented weirdo and most people really don't care one way or the other. Take a deep breath. Namaste and all that crap.

Honestly, if one isn't enjoying the rules, one should change them. The game is balanced but fairly robust and difficult to unbalance with amateur adjustment, for the most part. It's even rule zero of the system. It's fantasy, so I suggest we not let ourselves be hemmed in by process unless it's for the sake of story.

For my table I'll just continue using the little nudges to the system I've come up with to make it feel better for me and my players, and I'll keep sharing those tweaks as I come up with them. More ways to play the game is better, as evidenced by all the alternate rules we get in official books.

If you're grinding your gears on this over PFS stuff, sorry my dude. You've been overruled. Maybe try a different class and try to forget the wizard exists. If that doesn't do it for you, don't play PFS. Get a table that agrees with you, and make it play the way YOU want it to.

Easl wrote:

Angwa wrote:

PF2e is otherwise pretty tuned up mathematically but with spell attacks they dropped the ball.

It's unclear to me whether they dropped the ball vs were aware but thought it was not a big issue.

I say that because Kineticist has a similar unevenness, ranging from +1 to -2 against moderate AC depending on level. Given that they just designed it after much playtesting, that that unevenness includes "with item bonus", and they were fully aware of these complaints relating to caster and attack spells when this all happened, it's difficult to see the unevenness as an oversight. Maybe not designed, but at least not a high priority.

Then again, the system makes it difficult to create a constant match. Opponent AC progresses +2, +1, +2, +1, etc. Attack proficiencies are gained at different levels for casters and martials, and bonuses to attributes are at +5 levels but cost double after +5. All of that combined is not going to work out to match perfectly.

I think we can take the release of the shadow signet as an indication it was not intentional though - or if it was intentional, they realized later that they had ganked it a little too much.

The Kineticist is basically slightly behind martial progression, but makes up for it with vastly uncommon utility, and overshadows them in class DCs.

But saying Shadow Signet should be an excuse for spell attack rolls to be bad further demonstrates that these should have simply been saving throw effects from the beginning, instead of making a purposefully bad option that requires 10 levels and a specific magic item to "fix."

I am fine with spells never making attack rolls, honestly. Turn them all into save-based effects, and if spellcasters want attack rolls, pick up a weapon or start punching/kicking. If that is what it takes to remove the bad option that is spell attacks from the game, do it.

PROVIDED Recall Knowledge is actually fixed RAW, I'd actually be down for this. It's easier than balancing homebrew directly against martials.

The Red Necromancer wrote:

Temperans wrote:

If it only affects a spell attack roll then it does not matter what the Shadow Signet does.

It definitely should not be metamagic as that blacks a lot of stuff and is part of why Shadow Signet isn't as good as people make it out to be.

With respect, unless I'm mistaken, you're mistaken. Shadow Signet reads:

Archives of Nethys wrote:

If your next action is to Cast a Spell that requires a spell attack roll against Armor Class, choose Fortitude DC or Reflex DC. You make your spell attack roll against that defense instead of AC. If the spell has multiple targets, the choice of DC applies to all of them.

Meaning, by my reading, that if you could stack the two, you could first apply my custom Spell Attack rune, then apply the Shadow Signet to target the lower of the DC's. This would pretty easily turn into a much more flexible (and therefore powerful) boost than I was intending, which was why I applied the metamagic tag to the action in the first place.

I'm open to correction on my reading though, if you can point me to a source?

Fix the quote. Also I'll admit that when I wrote that comment I forgot you rolled not the enemy, that ring is confusing and I don't use it on principle (dislike the theme and way it was done).

The way you solve the stack is making it a bonus vs AC. That allows you to not apply it when targeting saves.

Fair play on your solution, though I'll have to work on the wording. What on which quote did you want me to fix? Still new here and don't know the etiquette.

If it only affects a spell attack roll then it does not matter what the Shadow Signet does.

It definitely should not be metamagic as that blacks a lot of stuff and is part of why Shadow Signet isn't as good as people make it out to be.

With respect, unless I'm mistaken, you're mistaken. Shadow Signet reads:

If your next action is to Cast a Spell that requires a spell attack roll against Armor Class, choose Fortitude DC or Reflex DC. You make your spell attack roll against that defense instead of AC. If the spell has multiple targets, the choice of DC applies to all of them.

Meaning, by my reading, that if you could stack the two, you could first apply my custom Spell Attack rune, then apply the Shadow Signet to target the lower of the DC's. This would pretty easily turn into a much more flexible (and therefore powerful) boost than I was intending, which was why I applied the metamagic tag to the action in the first place.

I'm open to correction on my reading though, if you can point me to a source?

Just want to jump in to highlight that metamagic can't be used with psychic amps. Any hotfix item should be aware of that, unlike Shadow Signet.

Maybe even if that's a Special entry on the item.

Ooh, good point. I'll have to look into that. I've never had the pleasure of playing or GMing for a Psychic so it wasn't top of mind. I'll have to look into how to rebalance the rune for that - off hand I'm thinking that you can activate an Amp and the Rune as part of the same Metamagic activity, but I'd need to do some testing and look at rules interactions. The Metamagic trait was more intended to prevent combination with the Shadow Signet as that would change the power level substantially, IMHO.

Yes. Fundamental Runes, as currrently implemented, don't affect spellcasting. If we (if Paizo) add a rune type that affects spellcasting, it would imo be a good idea not to call it a potency rune.

Agreed. I went with "Spell Attack" but honestly it's just a placeholder until I nail down the mechanics I want to use. Do you have any thoughts on what such a rune should be called? I'm partial to "Spellworking" but that might be overly clunky.

I previously posted, I think 150 or so posts ago. I have more data for the interested on my proposed solution.

My initial fix was to add in +1/+2 spell attack runes at 5/13. This rune has a 1 action tax to activate and the activation has the metamagic trait.

The activation also pushed up the critical threshhold of the attack by the same amount as the bonus (IE; if you activated a +1 spell attack rune and would normally hit on a 15, your attack would be at +1 and you would critically hit on 26 instead of 25)

This was an attempt to balance out magical critical hits, which seem especially powerful overall, while still improving the feel and mitigating the pain points of casters. No change was made to saves as overall, with more generous and well defined RK checks as expected in the remaster, they perform mostly adequately. Again, my goal is not to boost overall actual power as casters do perform within the parameters of the other classes, but rather to enhance the feel of the casters to make the mechanical aspects more palatable.

After some experimentation, I have made the following adjustments to that system:

The rune functions adequately to change the feel of at least Sorcerers and Bards, without wildly changing their damage output or behavior. My players are much happier with this.

I also elected to create a commonly available weapon, the spellcaster's ring, in three flavors - Int, Wis, and Cha, all of which can make a 1d4 attack in electrical, cold, fire, sonic, or force damage. Each ring uses its associated casting stat as the base for attack rolls with it, and if it has a spell attack rune on it, it treats that spell attack rune as a potency rune and can have striking runes added. The ring has a 30 foot range and has the free hand trait.

Effectively, the ring is just a weak single action cantrip comparable to a returning throwing dagger - literally half of an electric arc with an attack roll rather than a save. However, again, the feel improves for casters when they gain the option to participate in damage dealing in a magical *feeling* way.

I view this as progress. I'll continue updating as I get more chances to do balance testing. Best of luck to everyone!

Avoid penalizing characters who have damage cantrips from innate spells or multiclassing twice.

Characters who got damaging cantrips from multiclassing or as innate spells from ancestry feats or the like often have a lower attribute modifier than a dedicated spellcaster and were dealing with both a lower chance of success and lower damage if they hit. This is a smaller issue, but often led to players being unhappy with their character options.

Not to be the guy who brings up the most contentious conversation on this entire board, but... I'm gonna be that guy.

I'm not sure this makes sense? Just from a ludonarrative perspective, unless the implication is spells don't benefit from having a more skillful person performing them, except in terms of accuracy, which I guess may be the look of the system post remaster. It just feels kind of funky.

I guess it's not any different than a bow, but then, (queue most common complaint) bows benefit from accuracy runes, so... spells are worse (by which I mean less reliable and less impacted by the user's skill) to specialize in than melee, thrown and ranged for purposes of combat, as a design choice?

I mean, I'm waiting to see, but I'm reaaaaaaaal skeptical this is gonna feel good for primary casters, particularly wizard and witch. Just throwing my meaningless two cents into the void.

Sorry for the thread necro from a new guy here, but I came up with a solution that might interest people. It works at my table, but all my math is 10 years rusty so I don't have anything to "prove" it balances things out, I just have the feels of the caster who was unsatisfied at my table.

It took some talking but I figured out that my player was frustrated specifically because he was missing frequently rather than because he wasn't doing massive damage. My brain had a bit of an aha moment when I figured that out, so I figured I'd post the idea to the internet so people can toss it around and test it for balance. Maybe it can help some other people.

My solution was to add in a specific Spell Accuracy rune, in +1/+2/+3 flavors like the fundamental accuracy runes we all know. The rune functioned by giving my wizard player a Metamagic activity: For one action, he could add the item bonus to his next Spell Attack roll that turn (No DC's), but in exchange it would also push up the critical threshold for that attack by the same amount. For example, if he had an enemy with an AC of 25, and his base spell attack was 15, he could activate the rune to push his spell attack up by 1 to 16, but he would also push the critical threshold up from 35 to 36. Same die roll gets a critical, but he gets to hit more reliably in exchange for an action.

My player really seems to enjoy this; he hits more and feels like he can reliably do damage, but he isn't out there getting critical hits on scorching ray every turn. He also reports to me that it makes his wizard feel very wizard-y when he uses it - he can either choose to cast quickly or take a moment to focus himself and do it right, while critical hits are still an unexpectedly powerful attack.

Anyway, I flattered myself and thought it was an elegant solution, but I may just be full of it. Regardless, I figured I'd put it out there as a balance option and see what the community thought.