dreamersglass's page

dreamersglass wrote:

Not everyone just wants to blast things with fireball all day.

Then don't? Control is literally the superior playstyle.

It was in 1e. It's absolutely not in 2e. Blaster casters have substantially more impact on combat that control does now.

Taking 1 action still allows them to take 2 attacks. And your probability of a Boss failing is about 25%, which means it's not worth it to spend your highest slot.

The control spells in 1E were better because they were broken. You're just not going to get that in 2E, any more than you will get comparable boss obliteration to a ragelancepounce barbarian.

You could have made Slow either target one creature and take away 2 actions or you could have it target multiple but only taking away 1. Either would have lessened the power of the spell while still preserving it's usefulness. Doing both makes an entire play style defunct. Not everyone just wants to blast things with fireball all day.

Yes, slow is one of the better control spells in 2e because all the 2e controls spells are incredibly bad. That doesn't mean anything. I showed in my post how the control spells were substantially better in 1e, and I could replicate that with every other control spell in the game.

Using up a spell slot and your turn to just take 1 action when succeeding when many enemies do not have a good third action is absolutely terrible. Since Slow only targets one enemy AND enemies at or above level have better saves, it likely will do nothing and you wasted your turn (versus 1e where if you hit multiple enemies around the big bad, you had a chance of hurting him and probably at least 1 minion failed their save as back up).

Using a high level spell slot AND your action every turn on A. Orb to Sustain to potentially take *at best* 1 action from 1 enemy but also doing often nothing is also a really crappy way to spend your combat. You could easily have to spend 2 actions to move the Orb enough to get to a single enemy (because they can Stride 20-30 feet) so you can't cast anything else and then they succeed their save and you've actually had worse action economy than doing nothing. Versus 1e where with 30 feet of movement you could reliably get around a map and hit maybe even more than one creature, and it didn't infringe on your standard action at all.

These spells aren't good.

I'm a little disappointed by Paizo's continual focus on blaster casters and their lack of acknowledgement that they've absolutely destroyed control casters in 2e. All control spells in 2e have been reduced to the point of irrelevancy because what was their success level in 1e has been moved to critical success in 2e. This is a huge problem when compounded by spellcaster progression lagging behind save progression for on level enemies and being substantially behind higher level enemies.

Slow (1e) - targets multiple creatures, staggers them so they can only take 1 standard action, and provides a penalty to attack and defense

Slow (2e) - targets 1 creature, save failure removes 1 action, which is irrelevant to enemies because a third attack will always miss and monsters don't usually have a good third action

Aqueous Orb (1e) - cannot get free without successful Reflex save, deals damage while in sphere and provides penalty that makes Reflex saves harder; can move 30 feet, so can reasonably get to an enemy in a turn

Aqueous Orb (2e) - can get free with a trivial check (any strength based creature will have at least a +9 to Athletics at level 5), imposes no penalty to make getting out harder, deals zero damage, can only move 10 feet per sustain so would take enough actions that you can't cast anything else in order to get to another enemy

I could go on and on.

I have a question as a new player. The two oracle archetypes dual-cursed and spirit guide share no overlapping class features, but they both effect class skills.

Dual-cursed says:

Class Skills: A dual-cursed oracle gains no additional class skills from her mystery.

Spirit Guide says:

Class Skills: A spirit guide gains all Knowledge skills as class skills. This replaces the bonus class skills gained from the oracle's mystery.

Can they be played together?