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Exactly what the title sounds like. The item description for holy water describes it as a simple weapon. Can you stock some in a thrower's bandolier? I already assume that, as a consumables, it's not coming back after being expended. I guess this can also be the, "Can I apply runes, talismans, poisons, etc to holy water" question as well.
Treerazor's not all that tough though? He has a giant easily exploited weakness, he's not fast enough to threaten anything that wants to kite him with more than 1 action per round, his spell list sucks, he only has the most basic reactive strike and doesn't even disrupt on a success, only one reaction at all. Most you need to worry about is his 2 action sicken 3. As for haste being better on fighter than magus, that goes for any martial and magus really. Magus might scale very well with math de/buffs to amp up it's crit rate, but they scale very poorly with quicken, except for melee movement and their level 20 feat to recharge for free. Now, if spellstrike were a single action metamagic-like thing you could use that turned your next strike into a spellstrike, it'd be much better, as you could use the quicken to make the strike, and then have an action open for other things. Unfortunately, not scaling as well with such a common buff (potion patch + quickness potion if not the haste spell), is just something else for the class to deal with.
Conclusion: Spellstriking with cantrip won't require recharge This accomplishes...what? The demo above uses a focus spell and still falls behind. Cantrip spellstrike itself doesn't do enough damage to compete without force fang's free damage to follow up. That's also why any other recharge mechanisms wouldn't matter anyway.
I can't think of a more surefire way to render the entire class worthless than forced downtime turns. Wait what kinda stray is this. Are you on the design team that did the psychic remaster or something? Well after you make the magus worthless with forced downtime you then need to make sure fighter doesn't become better magus.
It's more that the best archetypes tend to hit multiple niches, instead of being limited to one. Champ fixes MADness, AC, sustain and reaction problems in one tidy package instead of needing two or three more focused archetypes like sentinel and blessed one. Take something like thaumaturge. D8, MAD, medium armor, mediocre reaction choices. Champ resolves all of this while leaving you free to pick whichever implements you want. An upgrade in every way over the base chassis. Gunslinger provides a ranged reaction, some damage and maybe fixes perception on ranged builds. Take something like bow monk. Inner upheaval x3 is cool, but let's add 2x 2d4+2 (scaling to 3d4+3 or 4d4 with ooze) persistent + splash damage with munitions crafter, gauntlet bow fake out to aid allies and boost perception to master at 12. Bonus points if you keep archetyping and do the 9-10 rogue-sneak attack to keep stacking damage. In this way you make up for not having your modifier to damage and missing out on stuff like energy mutagen. Better than anything monk can manage on its own. The magus is no different from a thaumaturge or monk. It's base chassis is deficient in several areas and it archetypes to fix them. Would it be great if it didn't need to? Sure, but that's never going to be the case. You'd need to give them a spammable attack focus spell so they don't need to archetype for damage, give them plate so they don't archetype for AC, give them a good ranged reaction so they don't archetype for that, and so on and so forth. Even then, unless every level has a great class feat to take, they're still going to archetype eventually just to add even more on top.
Gang, OP's asking for help w/ precision damage immunity, not for a cheat code for the AP's Weaknesses, a.k.a. spoilers. It's not really a spoiler when the AP's whole premise is walking into treerazer's spooky demon forest. And since you can't beat immunity, you may as well exploit every other opening the AP advertises.
Yes but the question here is "why are people always recommending this?" Same reason it's so easy to recommend champ archetype on a melee character. It is, in many cases, a direct upgrade and better than whatever your class chassis or feats would give you. Same reason a lot of archetypes are recommended, they provide the class something it lacks that improves it over the things the class offers natively. Champ with its armor, focus spell(s) and good reaction. Gunslinger to shore up ranged damage with free ammo and a good ranged reaction. Basically anything on casters because so many of their class feats are terrible. Any of the archetypes that boost saves or perception. There's not a class in this game (aside from maybe kineticist) that isn't better off with an archetype or two. Just so happens that magus hits every checkbox. Archetyping provides better armor, better focus spells, save boost, good reactions, etc, etc, etc.
Lol, Not Astral and Holy? Thinking about it, yeah. Astral and holy. Just make sure you bring plenty of fire mutagens to stock in your shifting spider collar. At your level, you should be able to afford plenty of the moderate ones, but if you're strapped for cash a giant stack of lesser mutagens will serve just as well to set the forest monsters on fire. Oh right. If you have an alchemist (or archetype) in the party, see if they can get the cold iron blanch recipe. If not, maybe pack a few cold iron ingots.
I am playing a Rogue currently. I am sure I will be encountering creatures with immunity to precision damage, what should I do? I am a Thief Racket. First, cry deeply. After that, just make sure you're doing basic melee damage boosting. I think you mentioned you were doing spore war right? Make sure your weapon runes are flaming and holy and you'll mostly be fine.
(Also STR gets you shockingly little return on investment with higher level forms because you only get anything if you can get your attack bonus higher than the form's bonus, and its actually impossible to do that at a lot of levels. Giving Druid a +2 bonus that it almost never actually qualifies for is one of the stranger design choices here.) From what I remember, str investment only gets you level 4 with animal form and levels 10 and 12 with plant form.
I'm going to propose Arcane Cascade increasing cantrip damage again, since that would give spellstriking with cantrips past the first round a big boost - if we increase it to be on-par with Fire Ray that makes the intended spellstrike gameplan of 'slotted spell - cantrip - cantrip if battle lasts that long' more attractive than triple focus spells The end result of this is archetyping for a free action focus spell to enable immediate arcane cascade and begin spellstriking. Witch's cackle is the best one to access assuming you'll be allowed to cast it for no effect. Otherwise, you'll archetype cleric for oathkeeper's insignia off the duty domain. Ends up as a straight buff as you get both focus spell damage and still get to recharge twice with force fang.
The collar holds one mutagen. Energy mutagen picks damage type on creation. I wish you luck on getting that to line up and not waste more actions than one. That's right. And in any environment where you can expect to fight the same or similar enemies you swap for the rest of the day. Ditto having any advance knowledge. Mutagens are cheap enough that you can carry multiples of every type without issue, though more realistically you'll be carrying mostly cold and fire since elec and acid weaknesses are extremely rare. A quick Nethys search says there are 11 with acid weakness, 48 with electric, 94 cold and 214 fire. You can see why there might not be much of an issue hitting elemental weaknesses with just a flaming weapon and a cold or electric mutagen. Given how many times it has been shown that the Magus's DPR is nowhere near the top, I'm not sure this statement can be made out of honest ignorance by someone following this conversation. If you have findings to support this claim, I'd be interested in seeing them. Oh, it's feasable enough for magus to hit top DPR. They scale so well with math de/buffs after all. A magus firing off focus spellstrikes with all the math behind them is a menace that has the highest average damage output in the game the last I did the math. That's the caveat though, you need to have a party that's capable of providing those math adjustments. Inspire/bless, dirge/fear, off guard and aid. To make the magus shine you need to be able to apply these readily and often. On its own and without party support, it's still good, but nowhere what it can look like with so much of a math swing to setup crits. Fortunately, it's easy to get low resource or resourceless math adjustments and then pay in more for synesthesia, heroism, true strike/target, etc, etc to get very high crit rates. This is regardless of enemy level or even extreme vs high AC. Damage is a solved issue for the magus. The only thing they need to work on is action economy and there are several solutions you can build or buy into for that if it isn't being solved by an ally.
And so we're back to arguing that they should be a sub-par martial with awful action economy that's weaker than a featless, itemless fighter outside of 4 spells a day. It's not like magus has good feats. You take what? 2 or 3 magus feats level 1-20? You spend the rest of the time in archetypes. Access to casting items is a joke because everyone under the sun takes trick magic item anyway. Or, you know, have the caster in the party activate it. Assuming you don't grab a casting archetype for fun, of course. Weakness exploitation is a joke. It doesn't come up often enough to matter, is usually triggered just as easily by runes or energy mutagen when it does and just got nerfed by the second errata change. That, and all the methods of inflicting manually still exist. Notice how little that came up before? It's because it generally wasn't worth the effort.
A lot of people keep saying that the Magus doesn't do enough damage when spellstriking with a cantrip. Can someone please help me with something. Let's take a 4th level Fighter and a 4th level Magus and give them both a bastard sword with a potency and striking rune. Across 3 rounds have the fighter use vicious swing on round 1 and 3 and the Magus spellstrike on 1 and 3 with gouging claw. And each can swing twice on round 2. How does the math on that actually look. Avg AC for 4th. Assuming no buffs or debuffs and you mean swing + vicious swing vs gouging claw + force fang? Adjusted for accuracy, see below. Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
If you cut out force fang and the strike before the vicious swing: Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
An easy example to see why vicious swing is inferior to just attacking twice unless the enemy has resistance. Also easy to see why cantrip magus spellstriking every round is only barely able to stay close to featless Fighter.
Gang up with a reach weapon is very, very, very good.So good that it's worth giving up sneak attack? There's only, like, two common weapons that rogues are proficient with and that qualify for sneak attack. Fortunately the good uncommon ones like the bladed scarf have trivial access conditions that anyone in the party can fulfill for you if you don't fulfill them yourself. Also dancer's spear is both common and a great weapon for rogues
I play a Starlit Span Magus in SoT, and it was quite mediocre before i got Imaginary Weapon online. No, I've used starlit span live and it delivered in spades. Big hits with IW, aid every turn with fake out, 16 base int letting me use AoE damage and disables, blah, blah, blah. Getting disrupted usually wasn't much of a problem either. Enemy getting into melee with you usually costs enemies more than it does you, slow just has you spend a round on an archetype or magus spell or bola shot (if you aren't already hasted to ignore it). Turns out illusory object is never bad and archetype silence 4 is also pretty good to punish whichever caster just slowed you. Even getting swallowed isn't the end of the world since you can activate a potency crystal on the gauntlet part of your gauntlet bow and try to punch your way out with a spell that can trigger rupture. Give it a try sometime. It can really carry its weight both in and out of combat without much trouble. I am going to miss archetype illusory object though. I don't think divine has anything so useful it can slot in the lower slots.
My read is that this is just another shove chassis you can pair with a berms kineticist for extra payoff on your shoves and props to use/slam enemies into.
It was fun to think about while it lasted.
It's impressive how you both manage to miss the point that you could have an infinite number of spell attacks to choose from and you'd only ever pick 2 (the best and the one to use when the best doesn't work) and then follow it up with "it's OK for this class to only function 4 times per day."
So yes, the white room scenario of "starts next to an opponent in melee." Very uncommon, I've never seen it happen myself.It's a LOT easier with a Commander: They can give them an extra reaction to use to move to a foe so they start next to them and still has all their normal reactions. it's quite easy to move it out of the white room. I'm sorry, I really should have put a /s or something to indicate the scathing sarcasm. I'm well aware that this isn't remotely hard to achieve, one way or another.
Mathematically, a d12 fighter attacking 4 times with quicken, certain x3 has an average damage output of ~100 at level 15+ against an on level opponent. That's assuming your team is so phenomenally incompetent that there are no buffs or debuffs, including off guard. The moment you add any, your average damage reaches 100+ at earlier levels, and scales higher, obviously. So yes, the white room scenario of "starts next to an opponent in melee." Very uncommon, I've never seen it happen myself.
As far as I remember from pre-master calculations, a cantrip only magus needs to spellstrike every round just to keep up with regular martials. Remaster focus spellstriking helped alleviate this for melee magi and without it they'll go back to being fundamentally inferior to good martials outside of the 4 spells they get per day. Ranged can still work since they can just turret gouging claw and force fang every round. But, with damage reliant on bleed and force fang not getting doubled on crits, their ceiling is much lower and anything bleed immune tanks their output below other ranged characters.
I honestly don't see the issue. You were already counting all the effects so you know which dice to add to your damage roll, how much harder can it be to count the number of relevant effects and add a flat value that many times? Especially if the party is the one applying the weakness, you can math all that out way ahead of time.
While this is certainly what a Magus could hypothetically get if they max their Intelligence at every turn, the Magus is a class that will, in all but two cases, depend on four attributes before even factoring Int. Getting that +3 in Int would mean sacrificing the defenses of a 8 HP/level class that, under all but one set of circumstances, has to get into melee range to do their thing. Although Magus players will sacrifice some of those stats for the +2 needed to dip into a multiclass archetype, leaving the gap at -2 to begin with, I've rarely seen players aim for a +5 to Int unless they were a Starlit Span. Yeah, it was always risky to try on a melee magus, but that's what making meaningful build decisions is all about. They at least could go cha for psychic and later champion dedication. I imagine most melee magi will go straight cha now for champion archetype for their fire ray access and reaction. Still doable on starlit span though. Halfling gets you all the stats you need to start with +4 dex, +3 int and +2 wis for smooth level progression. Can even use the helpful halfling feats to boost archetype fake outs to +4.
What's funny is that magus doesn't really have a problem with their spell DC even now. Compared to a full caster the gap looks like this:
Until the very end when it goes bad, your DC is fine for throwing AoEs at groups of mooks or getting the success effect on a useful debuff. Even having three levels where they're equal to full casters feels like an insult to full casters. Anecdotally, I absolutely have done this. Chain lightning, AoE slow and confusion, shadow siphon counteracts, etc, etc. It works just fine.
One: The thing is that it takes almost no build cost. Spirit's build cost is measured entirely in gp for shining symbols and setting your runes to astral and holy. Fire's build cost is running witch or ash oracle plus setting two of your three damage runes to fire and brilliant. It's not like you weren't already running energy mutagens and such on melee martials, though those are now fire too instead of some other damage type. Two: always. That's the power of inflicting weakness instead of just waiting for it to come up. Witch applies fire trait weakness at level 1. Ash oracle applies universal fire weakness at 6+. Wizard can apply any energy weakness at 12+. Spirit weakness is on an item you can buy multiples of at 9+. This isn't a "what if" that only applies once in awhile. This is a purpose built damage engine that acts as a core party strategy. And when it runs into immunity, you just do the usual de/buff and swing because it doesn't actually stop you from taking all the usual good options anyway.
The same thing that requires barbarian's dragon rage to explicitly state that it adds the damage trait that matches the damage type. That's just how it goes.
Well that's unfortunate. Hm. Not sure EBs worth it if it's limited to only the base fire rune. Draconic barrage doesn't have the fire trait either. Dragon barbarian rage gains the trait. Presumably a weapon siphon would still work since the base bomb the damage comes from has the trait but that's debatable. What other sources do we have? Seal fate is pitiful. That one oracle spell which can be poached at level 12 and scales really nice. A few other spells with pitiful weakness amounts or that require failed saves. Oracle stocks in the rise it seems. Blazing Armory now grants double weakness procs now, for the whole team, at higher levels. This is a pretty neat tech, but too slot intensive I think.
On the other hand, wizard finally has a real niche. At level 12 they have forcible energy to apply weakness to any energy type.
Much like NPCs with counterspell or subtle spell vs parties that love silence, GMs will add kip up the more often you frustrate them with trip spam.
Elemental betrayal and shining symbol are almost identical in weakness until the level 17 upgrade. At 9 when shining symbols become available, EB provides weakness 4 vs symbol's weakness 5 and they even out at 13. It's my honest opinion that, given how much earlier EB is available, you can build completely around fire damage and symbol can be skipped until 17 when the weakness hits 10. At that point you just run both to trigger weakness 10 and weakness 6 multiple times per attack. Just need to find some time to test it.
I wouldn't ever say casters were masters of hitting weaknesses, or at least they're not so much better at it than martials that I'd make a distinction between the two. They don't really do physical damage and weaknesses to electric, acid, etc are rare enough that martials can hit the most common weaknesses often enough with mutagens and runes anyway. They're also not really hitting weakness to weapon material outside of needle darts, an attack roll cantrip, while the most common material weakness, silver, is trivial thanks to silver salve. Does feel a little bad I guess that they fall even further behind with exploiting this new damage source, but casters were never great at sustained damage through the day anyway.
Ehh. Not for nothing, but -3 to saves via ancestral memories/bon mot/synesthesia, with -5 to reflex and a 1/day reroll that doesn't force the lower number and can't be used on a critical success isn't very good compared to attack roll modifications that can hit double digits with advantage tacked on for fun multiple times per encounter (true target lacks the lockout sure strike has). It's nice that they exist, and I wish we'd get some bonuses to spell DCs, but you're not getting anywhere near what you can do to AC in terms of hit and crit rate. But this whole thing is about spellstriking with save spells right? Why not just go with:
Takes all the guesswork out of it. No second roll for attack spells, no second roll for save spells. You never need to worry about CF effects and you barely risk losing the spell, same as risking a nat 20 on enemy save. Might need a note about incapacitation applying afterward, but that's easy enough.
What I'm getting here is that not a lot of GMs use the athletics skill that so many monsters have to put PCs on the floor for debuffing and reaction triggering purposes. If that's the case then a free action to end a debuff you aren't getting hit with will obviously look niche.
Eh. Exemplar seems like the kind of thing I'd take with multitalented and otherwise ignore/delay. +4ish per attack from 4-11 is cool and all, but you get more damage just by increasing the likelihood of getting more reaction attacks off.
That's just fear talking. Casters have an hp pool and a reaction they should be putting to use. If they aren't going to be spamming something like one for all, they may as well get in and attract hits to trigger champ reactions or trigger their own. If they're in close they also have the option to use their 3rd action on LoH for additional healing to go with their mitigation.
Yeah, agile grace fighter is looking pretty good. Strike, two weapon flurry at 14, strike, quicken strike is 5 vs flurry ranger's 7 but with all the other benefits of being a fighter and much more flexible action economy. Plus the usual reaction attack stuff. Weakness stacking is thankfully easy. Elemental betrayal starts at 2 and hits 4 when shining symbol first becomes available so it's not particularly beneficial to switch to shining symbol until 17+ when the weakness spikes to 10 vs EB's 6. It's easy enough to get fire procs too. Two runes, mutagen (melee), siphon (melee), ammo (ranged, also sets persistent), draconic barrage to start. I don't think we need to worry about magus, they haven't stopped being strong and this is just in time for fire ray to be the new meta pick anyway. Bonus points since we can layer EB on top of shining symbol. Ammo, mutagen, siphon and a fire rune don't stop triggering fire weakness after all and the barrage makes an easy transition to spirit anyway. I suppose this is where we wonder how combined damage works. I assume it's all sources with the same name and from both weapons physical damage merge together.
If only exemplar and its archetype weren't rare and unavailable so often. It's why I almost never recommend anything that's uncommon without an access clause either. If it's not common more often than not it may as well not exist.Exemplar archetype is but one of the damage sources in the shining symbol stack. If you can’t get it you’re down 5-10 damage a strike, still a busted combo. Oh, I'm well aware. Especially when you have a whole party built to activate and exploit this new damage source.
It's not so much that rarity and power are linked so much as it happens that there are some good and some broken options locked behind rarity. There are plenty of useless uncommon and rare options too.
If only exemplar and its archetype weren't rare and unavailable so often. It's why I almost never recommend anything that's uncommon without an access clause either. If it's not common more often than not it may as well not exist.
If we're just looking for number of procs, you end on flurry ranger attacking 7 times with impossible flurry+quicken. In the magic world where everything hits you trigger weakness at least 21 times, probably more with all the other ways to add rider damage.
I guess there's no more ending turns if a boss drops out of maze/quandry into a conveniently placed stunning snare. That's fair.
Say it with me: it's not a pf2e patch without a caster nerf Nice to finally have damage instances clarified though.
The smooth flow of gunslinger reloads into gun Strikes is something bow builds don't do naturally, though. And if you do so anyway, you're giving up a die size and more for the privilege of occasionally being able to make a third shot at MAP -10. I'm not really sure where the comparison point is. I could not care less about reload weapons on a bow build outside of a gauntlet bow to facilitate archetype fake outs. And no, I'm not giving up a die size for a -10 attack. I'm giving up a die size for better access to self buffs (items, point blank stance, misc spells, monk inner upheaval, etc), conditions (bola shot item, debilitating shot feat, etc), better resilience against the slow and stun conditions, and any other use you can imagine for open actions and a free hand. Occasionally you can attack at -10 if you have nothing better to do which is still more than you can say for the gunslinger. As-is, there's basically no mechanical reason to play a gunslinger over a good archer build and the fault lies almost entirely with reload as a mechanic.That is patently false. By all means, elaborate. ---Monk DC scales at the same rate as magus. As long as you start at +3 in your casting stat you can actually use save DC spells/abilities with decent reliability up to around level 15 before things fall apart. Better on ranged builds where you can dump str to 0 and delay con in favor of wis/cha. Not something I'd personally recommend, but definitely doable. Still wouldn't use spell attacks though.
You can complain about a bad/mediocre class even when worse classes exist. As-is, there's basically no mechanical reason to play a gunslinger over a good archer build and the fault lies almost entirely with reload as a mechanic.
But this is basically untrue of almost every martial class except the Ranger? Most classes get their iconic action compression upfront or at least early on (like Risky Reload for the Gunslinger) and later levels are more about giving increasingly splashy riders for action compression the class already gets or 1/battle free actions (which, again, risky reload). I want to know what 16 level feat you think is equivalent to making Reload as a free action (presumably not as a flourish, because again, Risky Reload is right there) Shield feats provide extra reactions or a stance that remove/reduce the action taxes to raise and block with shields. Some classes have access to more bonus reactions. Stance builds get auto stance at higher levels. Casters get effortless concentration. Things like that. Not that you should be attacking 3 times, but I'd sure love to use that Reload action for anything else archers can use. Ammo like bola shot, meta strikes, spells, misc items. When haste comes into the picture it looks even worse. Risky reload, reload, quicken strike, [other] is worse than strike, quicken strike, [other], [other]. Much more potential value in double open actions, especially without the threat of risky reload failing and using up that open action.
Potency? 100%. Eventually you just target reflex 99% of the time backed by the usual math de/buffs. And before anyone starts saying anything about why are attack spells undervalued, it's because you get fewer attacks out of them per de/buff (action econ) compared to martials. You end up doing far less damage unless you expend spell slots which works great until you run out after 3-6 attacks. And if you're casting attack spells you aren't casting the de/buffs required to make them worthwhile in the first place. Edit: at least until late game where you start seeing more enemies without low saves. You might want to consider selling out of it at that point and buying back into regular potency
Psychic has exactly one maybe worthwhile build. Shatter mind spam. Casting amp shatter mind 3+ times per fight for xd10 AoEs plus the occasional amp message and gathered lore Aid. It's a miniscule niche predicated on a damage type that isn't the most reliable, but it exists. Not that I'll ever play it outside of a one shot or something. I did say the niche was miniscule
Psychic has exactly one maybe worthwhile build. Shatter mind spam. Casting amp shatter mind 3+ times per fight for xd10 AoEs plus the occasional amp message and gathered lore Aid. It's a miniscule niche predicated on a damage type that isn't the most reliable, but it exists. Not that I'll ever play it outside of a one shot or something.
Is the change to unleash psyche just making the wording for it match something like potent sorcery, and that it only effects the initial "blast" damage of the spell? Or does the wording stay mostly the same but no longer exclude spells with durations? To quote the book: When you cast a damaging spell using your psychic spellcasting, you gain a status bonus to its damage equal to double the spell’s rank. This applies only to the initial damage the spell deals when cast, and an individual creature takes this damage only once per spell, even if the spell would damage that creature multiple times.
It's easy for any non-int caster really. Speed is a non-issue with all the ways to boost it and the check penalty doesn't apply to anything you were going to invest in.
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