kripdenn's page

I think there should be room for a variety of impulse and blast feats to build whatever kind of kineticist you want. Single target or multitarget Blasts or impulses without rider conditions that do more damage, blasts or impulses that inflict debuffs, terrain control, healing, etc.

WWHsmackdown wrote:

I'd prefer having the playtest kineticist with numbers bumped slightly up (not too much better than a cantrip) over having a focus power class that's markedly stronger. The playtest mechanics we have are interesting and thematic, they just need a little polish

I still stand by the idea that they should make gathered elements a "two handed" """weapon""" and scale it accordingly both for blasts and impulses, if blasts where d6-d10, and base impulses where rolling d6-d8 or d8-d10 with the same cantrip scaling that would feel a lot meater without derailing into outside what is reasonable to be free, at level 20 that might be 20 more damage on average than a cantrip, but its nowhere close to being a focus or slot spell

-idle thoughts

Or maybe have the option to gather power in one or both hands. Both hands being more powerful and one hand being more versatile.

graystone wrote:

Martialmasters wrote:

Verzen wrote:

Martialmasters wrote:

I hope they become focus spells

I hope nothing in kineticist deals with focus spells. I hate them. When everything has focus spells, it creates lazy design choices.

I don't care that you hate them

I'd still prefer them as it solves pretty much all the issues aside from you yourself not liking them

Yep and as a bonus it has nothing to do with burn and plays nice with other multiclasses/archetypes that also use focus. ;)

It would be a much better fit in the system itself yes.

But then I generally really like focus spells in general.

Either way it would give excuse to up the power of the spell like abilities. And since most people here who seem to argue that at will all day powers are meaningless because you only average x number of rounds an encounter... It only serves to buff your playstyle and table experience.

I see no downsides other than those that wanted both powers as strong as focus spells but also never to run out of gas in a fight m

Focus spells work well because they have been on classes with other things to do besides just focus spells. Kineticist will be an incredibly boring class if they use their focus spells to solve a non-combat encounter, then get into a combat and have fling the same elemental blast over and over again. And having to stop the party all the time to refocus would be a pain.

kripdenn wrote:

KoriCongo wrote:

Unicore wrote:

Where has it been offically decided that the thing people want out of a Kineticist is simplicity in design and purpose? I feel like the PF1 Kineticist was pretty far from simple, and capable of adding on a lot of complexity to what they can do.

Why is it wrong to envision a Kineticist who's connection to the elements makes them a capable battlefield controller and influencer of the world in big scale ways? Rising volcanos out of the ground, or summoning tidal waves isn't how you act like a laser beam to take out one target.

Cause we have a Druid that can already do that...

And the closest we have to the "laser beam" idea is Magus, who still have to interact with spell slots and spells over being over to just blast someone with fire. Why not have an elemental class that can be good at laser beaming? Who else should be that class?

PF1e Kineticist was complex for the sake of complexity. It had a bunch of mechanics and ideas that just led it to being a high skill floor, low skill cap class with no clear focus in design or theming. Too out there to be appealing to people that just want to interact with the elements without understanding spell slots, too little options to be among the full casters in breaking the game.

We also already have classes that do tons of single target damage. They're called the Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Magus, and Gunslinger. We don't have an at-will caster and getting rid of their utility and AOE magic would just be incredibly boring. Slinging blasts all day wasn't even what PF1e kineticists did.

And I don't think the utility and AOE needs to be sacrificed to let them take feats to make more powerful single target blasts or DC save impulses.

If I may ask: what even is the point of an at-will caster in 2e?

With Focus Points, scaling cantrips, and the variety of magical tools....

what do you need to be at-will, that you are willing to take a massive power/utility penalty for?

I'm...

A lot of the impulses, like tidal hands, have better damage, AOE, or other effects than cantrips. Some of the impulses, like flame eruption, are worse than cantrips but those can be buffed.

Unicore wrote:

Where has it been offically decided that the thing people want out of a Kineticist is simplicity in design and purpose? I feel like the PF1 Kineticist was pretty far from simple, and capable of adding on a lot of complexity to what they can do.

Why is it wrong to envision a Kineticist who's connection to the elements makes them a capable battlefield controller and influencer of the world in big scale ways? Rising volcanos out of the ground, or summoning tidal waves isn't how you act like a laser beam to take out one target.

Cause we have a Druid that can already do that...

And the closest we have to the "laser beam" idea is Magus, who still have to interact with spell slots and spells over being over to just blast someone with fire. Why not have an elemental class that can be good at laser beaming? Who else should be that class?

PF1e Kineticist was complex for the sake of complexity. It had a bunch of mechanics and ideas that just led it to being a high skill floor, low skill cap class with no clear focus in design or theming. Too out there to be appealing to people that just want to interact with the elements without understanding spell slots, too little options to be among the full casters in breaking the game.

We also already have classes that do tons of single target damage. They're called the Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Magus, and Gunslinger. We don't have an at-will caster and getting rid of their utility and AOE magic would just be incredibly boring. Slinging blasts all day wasn't even what PF1e kineticists did.

kripdenn wrote:

dmerceless wrote:

Unicore wrote:

What I think is really getting to people that are frustrated with the blasty-ness of the Kineticist is that the gonzo damage boosters that they get to their blast attacks only trigger when there are 3 or more enemies to attack in a combat. That is the situation where their damage with blasts gets much better than even fighters.

I think you're forgetting a very important principle of d20 games, or heck, any game with HP and that doesn't have a death spiral mechanic: HP only does something when it goes to 0. Doing 20 damage to 3 targets is absolutely not the same value as doing 60 damage to 1 target. Yes, there's an edge case or two where splitting damage can be good, but simply summing up the damage you're doing to multiple targets in a 1-1 ratio and saying "haha, you're outdamaging a Fighter" is just... wrong. While you're tickling 4 different people, the Fighter already took an enemy out of the fight, which means less actions taken and less damage done by the other side.

I'm not saying AoE is worthless, but for multitargeting to be good, you need to do a lot better than "I do 130% of the damage I would normally do, but it's split between 3 targets".

You're forgetting that an AOE can take out multiple targets while setting up other targets to be killable by another party member. If there are many small enemies or if a larger enemy was left with just a little bit of health or if you did enough damage to the boss to let the fighter kill it next, then that does a lot to help the fight.

Yes, in corner cases made just so this looks good, where you somehow know the enemy's HP, it will look good. In general play, according to many people's experiences, it's not common or good.

Pretty much any DM should tell you if an enemy looks unscathed, hurt, hurt badly, or near death. Bringing an enemy within kill range, finishing off a weakened enemy, and killing off minions are not corner cases. Those things happen all the time in any strategy game. That's an unbelievable thing to say.

I think it would be a good idea. Another thing that's felt awkward with dual or universal gate is how difficult it is to switch between elements to use certain abilities like air cushion or starting kinetic auras.

Unicore wrote:

What I think is really getting to people that are frustrated with the blasty-ness of the Kineticist is that the gonzo damage boosters that they get to their blast attacks only trigger when there are 3 or more enemies to attack in a combat. That is the situation where their damage with blasts gets much better than even fighters.

I think you're forgetting a very important principle of d20 games, or heck, any game with HP and that doesn't have a death spiral mechanic: HP only does something when it goes to 0. Doing 20 damage to 3 targets is absolutely not the same value as doing 60 damage to 1 target. Yes, there's an edge case or two where splitting damage can be good, but simply summing up the damage you're doing to multiple targets in a 1-1 ratio and saying "haha, you're outdamaging a Fighter" is just... wrong. While you're tickling 4 different people, the Fighter already took an enemy out of the fight, which means less actions taken and less damage done by the other side.

I'm not saying AoE is worthless, but for multitargeting to be good, you need to do a lot better than "I do 130% of the damage I would normally do, but it's split between 3 targets".

You're forgetting that an AOE can take out multiple targets while setting up other targets to be killable by another party member. If there are many small enemies or if a larger enemy was left with just a little bit of health or if you did enough damage to the boss to let the fighter kill it next, then that does a lot to help the fight.

Sounds like a lot of dead kineticists and even worse action economy.

Allowing some way for dual gate to dual wield melee blasts or elemental weapons would be cool. Or something like dedicated gate to get 2-handed weapons.

I agree the value of at will aoe isn't great

Wich is why they should just be optional focus spells you can pick up with feats. You can even remove the overflow tag. And it fixes action economy issues. You have stronger AOE. And you don't unbalance the game.

You could probably still buff blast's as well.

Having 1-3 abilities to use per combat besides elemental blast will not be fun especially if you run into another combat before you can refocus.

If it's anything like PF1e burn or being drained for the rest of the day then I think it's a bad idea. If it's more similar to psychics amping then I might be alright with it.

I'm glad at least that the forums can finally come together and agree that casters can do good damage.

That aside I think some single target impulse feats that do more damage than the multitarget ones would be good and would help when fighting higher level creatures.

It seems like the biggest problem, damage-wise, is the inconsistency between other impulses and other elements like what Ryuujin-sama pointed out. Fire not being particularly strong and some impulses being terribly scaled aside, the good damage abilities seem pretty powerful compared to other martial classes.

The biggest issue with the swipe is that it is 3 actions. Maybe if you start off combat with a haste you can get one off later in the combat, assuming there are multiple enemies standing close together, but the whole feat chain feels more like wishful thinking than a tactic you can reliably plan around.

It's better if you have a weapon with reach and a good amount of speed. You can start combats with shield, arcane cascade, and then move into position. Then if there are any adjacent enemies within your reach on the 2nd turn you can spell swipe.

Cyder wrote:

I would love SF to be updated to PF2e style mechanics. It would save me a lot of work homebrewing and converting SF to the PF2e rule concepts. I just struggle so much to enjoy the now outdated mechanics in SF compared to PF2e.

Solarian is a great concept and it will take me a while to convert it to PF2e base but I think it is doable.

I also feel ship combat could be greatly improved if updated to PF2 concepts which are much more mobile to begin with.

Regarding supporting 2 systems for SF, this is kind of true but long term they would only have to be supporting, errata-ing 1 ruleset for PF2 and SF(2) if they made the update and things could eventually be fully portable between both systems, its the same game but in different eras so to speak.

There's a pretty good solarian homebrew on the Conversion subforum. Could use some rebalancing, but the ideas are sound.

Do you have a link for that solarian homebrew? I tried searching for it myself but couldn't find it.

I'd hope spellstrike won't require a focus point otherwise the magus will always have to decide between using spellstrike or any other focus spell they get now or in future books.

If you went with a divine witch with the cauldron feat and medicine skills, you'd be stacked on different ways to heal the party.

I think it is a discussion that needs to happen regardless of the point in play testing. Since the beginning many have voiced the opinion that the magus seems to be somewhat disjointed like a really bad dual class rather than a single class that blends the facets of martial and arcane together. Moving the primary stat to Int has many benefits and combined with the martial proficiency helps to present a blend and not a martial class with some arcane tricks bolted on. Give a magus a melee strike option that lets them use the martial proficiency with Int stat to discharge a striking spell and you end up with a martial who excels at what he should be doing (using his core class feature) and is still passable at normal attacks. Do the same for the spell attack roll on a discharge (note still two rolls) and you end up with a caster who is good (but not better than a full caster) at using his core class feature and passable to less than passable in hard casting spells. This gives you a blend of martial and arcane that works better together and makes it seem like a whole class.

Making them able to use int for their attack is not going to fix anything. All this would do is give a +1 to the spell attack or save DC and make it more attractive for them to apex int. A +1 or +2 to spells is not going to make the difference with their bad accuracy.

zergtitan wrote:

Magus: Needs full spellcasting(i.e. retaining spell slots, but not gaining 10th level spells or legendary spellcasting) and needs spellstrike to instead add a free strike action to the spell casting and tie the effect of the spell attack to the effect of the weapon attack.

...This is less of a suggestion and more of a wishlist - and not a particularly realistic one at that.

Full spellcasting plus incredibly good action economy on spellstrike PLUS two hits from a single attack roll?

Would you like the Magus to not get above Expert in weapons OR spells? Because that's about the only way that's happening.

There's no reason why they can't have a functional action economy like the other martials and some lower level spell slots. Striking spell is only going to be significantly powerful with higher level slots which are already limited to 4 per day.

If the striking spell feature is changed to work more like eldritch shot, then I think the class really doesn't need spell slots anymore and would be better built around having spell attack roll focus powers and access to cantrips only. There are just too few spell slot spells that meaningfully interact with the structure of the eldritch shot mechanic for it to be strong blend of features, especially as the odds of getting higher level, really powerful spell attack roll spells is pretty slim (they will kill your Party when cast by NPCs, and you won't be able to do anything about it).

Why not have it work with spell slots and a focus spell? I don't see why it needs to be an either/or situation where they can only have spell slots or only have focus spells, but not both.

I'd probably homebrew them as things currently stand.

For the magus, I'd let them retain at least 1 spell slot for each level of their lower level spells. Striking spell I'd change to not trigger attacks of opportunity, spell attacks have the same degree of success as the strike, spell saves have opposite degree of success as the strike and no effect on a failed strike, and the player can choose to either gain the effects of their synthesis or choose to do a one action ability as part of casting the spell for striking spell. (And change the syntheses to reflect these changes.) For me, this would go a long way to fixing the magus and the only thing left to tweak is some of their feats and magus potency.

Not sure what I'd do with the summoner but I feel like some of their abilities are too weak at the moment.

It probably falls under a specific over general ruling.

Intoxicated Illithid wrote:

I love quite a bit of your changes, but out of curiosity, why the changes to Chilling Darkness?

I made a change to Chill Touch (It now only requires a Fort save, not an attack roll + a Fort save. I felt 2 ways to avoid the spell, a missed attack and a successful save, was too much for a regular damage touch range cantrip), but I don't see any change I made to the Chilling Darkness spell just below it on that page in the CRB.

Chill touch doesn't require an attack roll. You automatically touch a target with a spell when it has a range of touch unless the spell specifically states otherwise.

GM OfAnything wrote:

I understand how someone could skim and miss it, but I don't see how anyone reading the text of the ability would conclude the spell attack doesn't add to MAP. You are making both a Strike and a spell attack in the same round.

Mainly due to the logic of balance assumption. Save spells were arguably better before. But with this somewhat obvious realization they are better always outside of true strike maybe.

Yeah, I believe a creature would need a ridiculously high save for spell attacks to be better than spell saves when using striking spell. The interesting thing about spell attacks also applying MAP with striking spell is that power attack is a better feat for magi than other classes.

If bards are better it's probably because they have focus cantrips as powerful as inspire courage. Otherwise, I think bards and sorcerers are roughly equal and serve different play styles.

kripdenn wrote:

Unicore wrote:

So while collapsing the strike down to one roll would make it a more powerful feature, especially on spell attack roll spells, it maintains the feature as a massive crit fishing element focused on getting as many boosts to your weapon attack accuracy as possible (the whole, wait a round, true strike gambit remains exactly the same and will actually result in higher and more damaging highs from crits with the weapon), but only with a very small sub-set of spells, while just making your saving throw spells be about as effective as a full caster, only against a single target.

Saving throws can have the opposite degree of success as the strike so that a successful strike means the enemy fails the save and a critically successful strike means they crit fail the save. And if true strike is a problem, just apply the fortune trait.

I think that would be way too powerful. Saves are usually better than AC (depending what you target) so that could be way too strong with some spells.

Part of the power of save spells is the half damage on a success. My suggestion wouldn't have that and would also only target an enemy's AC. This way a magus could choose to use a save spell with striking spell on a creature with lower AC but higher saves. Or they could choose to use save spells as normal if they think it will be better than using it with striking spell.

So while collapsing the strike down to one roll would make it a more powerful feature, especially on spell attack roll spells, it maintains the feature as a massive crit fishing element focused on getting as many boosts to your weapon attack accuracy as possible (the whole, wait a round, true strike gambit remains exactly the same and will actually result in higher and more damaging highs from crits with the weapon), but only with a very small sub-set of spells, while just making your saving throw spells be about as effective as a full caster, only against a single target.

Saving throws can have the opposite degree of success as the strike so that a successful strike means the enemy fails the save and a critically successful strike means they crit fail the save. And if true strike is a problem, just apply the fortune trait.

I also kept wondering how the class would do in lower levels (1, 2) during which these tools were not readly available

Lower levels are where the difference between your strike and spell attack modifier is the lowest at the very least. It all goes downhill as you level especially after level 12 where 2 levels have a difference of 4 and the rest are either a difference of 5 or 6 (if apexing STR and not INT).

You are not relying on them. Your are just acknowledging that they are going to happen more frequently for you than they are for other casters, especially if you take advantage of good tactics in play. That is an interesting and different dynamic without just clearly being better, and it makes having access to spells that do interesting things on crits more interesting. Which is why the "want" from this is more spells that interact interestingly with whatever striking spell mechanic they end up adopting.

But you are relying on critting because striking spell offers no advantage to you over just casting a spell save unless you crit. In fact, it's probably better to just use a multi-target spell save because then you can affect more enemies.

So it's interesting if you like being disappointed over 75% of the time. Because keep in mind, that 15% base crit chance is unlikely on an at level enemy let alone higher level ones. Against an enemy 2 levels higher than you, that chance to crit on either a strike or a true strike on the next round is going to drop to 9.875% while the chance to miss four strikes in a row goes up to 17.8%. Making striking spell only worth it on lower level enemies is the exact opposite way a class should be designed.

Kalaam wrote:

But most non-damage spells are save based, which doesn't really benefit much from striking spell as it is.

This has not been my experience in play. The odds of getting a crit on 1 of 2 attacks (over 2 rounds) with no penalty have been significantly higher than the odds of missing with all attacks.

Even if you assume a high base crit rate of 15% and true striking the next round, the chance of getting a crit with 1 of 2 strikes across rounds is about 24.7%, which is not great. This is of course not possible on higher level enemies. Having to rely on crits is just not great in general.

"Needs to be Magical all day, on as many turns as possible, I should Striking Spell every turn" + "Needs to be worse at Magic than full casters" + "Needs to still be balanced" + "Needs to be a full Martial

But that doesn't require their spell slots being removed. They can have focus cantrips and focus spells and still have spell slots.

kripdenn wrote:

On another class I wouldn't be opposed to this, but I don't think it fits a magus at all. I'd rather see the magus get more spellcasting, as part of my hope for the class was to get a comparable number of spells quicker than a multiclassing martial and be better in combat than full casters.

Won't happen from what I've seen.

I don't know about that. I personally think the Paizo designers have been pretty good at listening to feedback from the past playtests and there have been many complaints about the lack of magic and lack of damage of the magus. So I think the class changes are going to push more in the direction that I was expecting (at least I hope).

On another class I wouldn't be opposed to this, but I don't think it fits a magus at all. I'd rather see the magus get more spellcasting, as part of my hope for the class was to get a comparable number of spells quicker than a multiclassing martial and be better in combat than full casters.

This is where you are actually wrong though. It is not "requires buffs to be decent." Buffs are what takes the magus damage output above other martial classes. It is not a linear comparison. That is the nature of a mechanic that ties a lot of potential damage output to critical hits with the first weapon attack. Circumstance bonuses (like from aid) also tend to only boost 1 roll, so the magus gets a massive boost in a party willing to take the extra step as a team to do the one big hit.

The crit effect of striking spell is not as good as you think it is (largely due to the fact you need to make 2 rolls just to get the spell damage). I have literally made a thread graphing the damage at each level. With flanking, striking spell manages to keep pace with a bare-bones flurry ranger without the backstabber trait until they get impossible flurry. The magus has to spend their highest spell slot, a true strike, and five actions to outpace three actions of the ranger's (before the ranger gets impossible flurry and catches up). But the gap in damage will drop when the ranger optimizes, puts elemental runes on their weapon, and picks up dogslicers. Or the ranger could just spend five actions also and immediately make up the difference.

Having to get what is effectively a +2 or more to their attack modifier, spend 2 limited resources, and five actions to out pace three actions of a regular martial isn't effective.

Draco18s wrote:

The "mods" in this analogy is "getting the cleric to cast Heroism on you while the rogue flanks."

Hate to spoil this for you, but other players are a part of this game and the experience of playing a magus.

greystone wrote:

If you just spend 2 spells and 5 or 6 actions you too can do the damage other martials can do in 1 round! But you might crit with 4 strike attempts and make it sort of seem close to worth it! I know I'm not chasing that dragon. :P

If you are playing a party of all martials, it might be tough. But then, you're probably picking up the slack as the caster in the group, and adjusting your playstyle to accommodate that.

One solid buff for a challenging combat is not too much to ask. You can achieve that with your own slots, purchased items, or friendly party members.

Why buff the magus when they could just buff the rogue in that example? The rogue is probably already out damaging the magus, and the rogue will do even better with heroism. This is the problem with the magus having to rely on buffs just to be decent, it would just be better to buff a different martial class anyways.

Quote:

Because all of your spells can't hit unless your melee attack hits. Its an automatic "nothing" if your melee hits, it does not matter if the spell does half effect on save if the spell NEVER GOES OFF.

You have a better chance of gritting on one of your Strikes than missing all of them over 2 rounds. Magus can target all three saves with cantrips. Pick the enemies weakest and go to town.

Missing a lot isn't a benefit. And even when you eventually hit with the strike, you have to land the spell, and then you're still dealing less damage than the martials or even the casters. If the justification for a core class ability is "eventually you'll hit with it" then it's not a good class ability.

1) Fix striking spell so that it doesn't rely on a crit fishing mechanic, does decent damage, improve the action economy, and doesn't trigger attacks of opportunity. This would make them effective at single target damage and debuffs using spells. I think this can be accomplished by giving it the fortune trait, letting spell attacks have the same degree of success as the strike and giving the enemy a penalty for saving throw spells, and by letting player choose to either gain their synthesis benefit when using striking spell or use another single action ability as part of casting the spell.

2) Give them more spell slots. I don't think there's any reason to not give them 2 per spell level but even one slot for lower level spells instead of zero would be better.

3) I would like to see more unique abilities available to them that could be in the form of stances, focus cantrips, or feats like letting them shoot out a blade beam or something akin to spell combat from PF1.

kripdenn wrote:

But none of what you suggested helps them though. Like, what actions is the magus that you are suggesting supposed to do in combat?

Casting spells? If they got more slots of lower levels it would help their DPR considerably.

You know, the thing that does damage, applies effects, triggers Comet Spell, Energized Strikes, Bespell Strikes, Bespell Persistence, and more utility spells in your budget (like Haste) to do more of all of those things.

You apply a level 1 Fear spell to your Striking Spell, succeed, and now the enemy has a -2 to their AC and Saves. Guess what that translates to? More DPR. Even at level 7, Fear now helps them hit for a wallop on turn two with their highest slot spells.

They go Haste on turn one, use Bespell Weapon (bonus damage on strikes) for two strikes on turn one and then an even stronger turn two.

Sorry but "none of what I suggested helps DPR" just isn't true.

Do you realize how little damage those feats do for their action cost?

What do you think is the benefit of striking spell with fear? You have a worse DC than a wizard because your int modifier is less and you get master spell progression. You can increase the degree of success for fear if you crit with the strike (typically a 5-10% chance) but your chance to even land the fear goes down because now you have to hit with the strike and land the fear spell. And you're forgetting that the frightened condition goes down after the enemy's turn so that -2 is really a -1 for the "wallop".
So just recapping, for 6 actions you get a strike and a strike with striking spell (which doesn't deal as much damage as a fighter) on an enemy with -1 AC and saves. The fighter on the other hand could pick up intimidating strike to frighten them on a successful strike, strike again at -1AC, and then do the same thing the next turn for 4 strikes worth of damage.
This isn't a benefit, it's an action tax every combat encounter.

Yes they can haste themselves (so can a multiclassing martial for more benefit than the magus) but if you're having to haste every combat, and true strike every striking spell, and spend you're highest spell slot on striking spell just to compare to the fighter, then the class isn't even helping the party.

I've suggested something similar.

Give the basic Striking Spell a free step action or something, and then add more options for the various synthesis. Things like a sword+board style getting a free raise shield action, or a ranged synthesis getting a free reload or draw weapon, or such. Add some more special abilities like Spell Parry or Raise a Tome as options via feats rather than synthesis.

What you end up with is a short list of things you can do while casting a spell, and the ability to decide which to use based on the situation.

Yeah I think letting them choose from a variety of actions to do while casting the spell would go a long way to help make them feel more fluid and versatile in combat.

Aside: I think people are massively misinterpreting my opinion. If you read what I am actually saying could work instead, you'd see its a net buff to DPR if the Magus got more spells. I'm not talking about making them do less damage, I'm talking about making them cast more spells in order to realize that damage (and for the Magus that don't want to use spells for damage, more utility).

It's like people think I want to destroy my favorite class.

But none of what you suggested helps them though. Like, what actions is the magus that you are suggesting supposed to do in combat? They're a worse blaster, a worse buffer, a worse debuffer, a worse melee striker, not a tank, and not a healer. That leaves them as a burden with no role that isn't completely outshined by the rest of the party. A glass cannon can do a lot of damage, and that seems to be what the current class design is building for, but the magus just doesn't have enough damage per actions spent to justify it. With some tweaks they could get there but swapping weapon specialization out or making them even more defenseless isn't going to help.

More lower level spells also does nothing to boost their power except letting them haste and true strike more (which is the only way they deal damage comparable to other classes with striking spell). The way striking spell currently works, this is all any magus is ever going to do if they want to have some functioning role in combat. And it would just be a worse version of the fighter MCD with wizard doing true strikes and haste with their superior combat abilities.

they have utility, battlefield control, save or suck, weakness flexible damage, with martial prowess.

Saying they need to have the same DPR concerns as a Fighter is crazy to me.

If a Magus wants DPR they should have to build for it as a choice of spells and Feats, and as I pointed out on the expectation of one strike per round with striking spell or combo casting with a weapon, you’re missing minimal damage with Weapon Specialization or Greater Weapon Specialization If the Magus can cast more spells due to their Feat support. Right now they do decent damage over two rounds, it’s the lackluster feel of the mechanic that is the issue.

If you want something that casts spells with the DPR of a Fighter, that exists, it’s called a Fighter with an MCD Caster.

The goal of the Magus isn’t to be Fighter + Magic it’s to be somewhere between a Wizard and Fighter, and I’m sure no one here would claim the Wizards only build path is DPR (or even the optimal one necessarily).

They have four spells; that's not utility. They can do battlefield control, worse than a regular caster because of int not being their primary attribute and not being a legendary caster. Their save spells also suffer from this. And targeting weaknesses is also not unique to them. What you just described is the worst of both worlds. They aren't as good at casting as a regular spellcaster and they aren't as good at single target damage as a martial.

Why is having similar dpr to a martial crazy? The ranger and barbarian can have that but not a literal glasscanon? Being a high single target damaging class seems to be the best niche they can fit with their limited resources, lack of support abilities, and squishy nature.

They don't do decent damage. I literally have a thread graphing their damage and the only way they can compare to the other martials in a single round of damage is by true striking every single striking spell they do. And they can't true strike, striking spell, and strike in a single round without hasting so it's just terrible.

A fighter multiclassing is behind in spell levels, behind in spell accuracy, behind in gaining spell slots, and has to take 5 feats just to get decent amounts of spells and slots. A magus could, if changed a bit, fit this role better with interesting feats synergizing their might and magic and options to deal a lot of damage with limited resources.

There have been a number of threads so far proposing ideas for how to fix striking spell's action economy. While I liked some aspects of the ideas I've read, they also changed striking spell in ways I didn't like.

I don't remember seeing anyone post this idea before but my proposed change is to let the player either choose to gain the benefits of their synthesis as part of casting the spell or choose to use a single action ability as part of casting the spell. For example, the player could use striking spell and cast a two action spell and gain the temporary hit points from sustaining steel, or they could choose to strike as part of casting the spell instead of gaining the temporary hp. This would also mean they could choose to stride, step, spell parry, recall knowledge, or use any other one action ability.

Sliding synthesis would need to be changed to give another benefit (like giving spell parry) but I don't think that would be too much of an issue.

After playing with the Magus for a bit, I've been thinking about what I like and what I don't like.

The first big issue was that it felt like I had very few options if I decided to use striking spell. It was hard to get in actions like recall knowledge or defensive options while also keeping pressure on the enemy with attacks. The second issue I had was the synthesis benefits not feeling useful when you got to certain points of combat. Sliding would lose benefit once I was in a good position and sustaining steel didn't feel useful if I was far away and nothing would reach me. And a third issue was how squishy the sliding magus felt which was magnified by how difficult it was to use spell parry and striking spell together.

Some of the things I did like were how I could buff a strike for next round if I wasn't able to reach an enemy in one round. And I liked the feeling of being able to cast a spell into a weapon while also moving around the battle field.

I think this change could help these issues by allowing more choices of either defensive, offensive, or tactical options being used in conjunction with striking spell.

Martialmasters wrote:

Correct. Though given the lore of the Magus. Vs say, investigator. Dpr is a large and valid concern imo. It's on par with saying fighter shouldn't be held up to the notion of doing damage.

You think a Magus should have equivalent concerns for damage as a Fighter? Why?

What else is the class being designed for? They're squishy and only get medium armor without armor specialization so they aren't tanks. They only ever have 4 spells so they aren't made to provide combat and out of combat utility with spells. They aren't built around being skillful like rogues or investigators. They aren't a support class like a healer or bard. And, currently, they aren't even built for dealing damage, but it seems like the intent is to do single target novas. Are they not supposed to have a useful niche in the game?

I'll give some of my thoughts on what feats are under powered and what needs improvement.

1st level: I like Arcane Fists but I don't think it will be picked often since the magus doesn't get a first level feat. I think there should be a unarmed magus synthesis that gets this feat for free and gets another benefit.
Raise a Tome is just broken now. It doesn't work with sliding magus unless you also use a feat to get Arcane Fists which will be at 4th level. And there's no reason that the bonus to recall knowledge has to be limited to a specific subject. A +1 or +2 to recall knowledge checks if you raise a tome isn't going to severely break anything.

4th level: Spell parry doesn't work well with the magus action economy and it doesn't give enough benefit. It's really most useful when you striking spell and have an action leftover where you can't strike. And the benefit doesn't even outweigh just using the shield cantrip because shield can also block damage. I think it should be a +2 to AC and saving throws and I think I have a way to help fix the action economy. If the magus had the option to use one of their one action feats in place of their synthesis benefit, I think it would help them. So a sliding magus could slide while striking spell one turn and then on another turn could choose to use spell parry with striking spell instead of sliding.
Bespell strikes doesn't seem that worth it compared to what other martial classes get as feats. Adding 1d6 if you cast a 4 per day resource while a fighter can get exacting strike at lvl 1 seems not worth it. Especially when it only lasts for the round you cast the spell. Bespelled Persistence has a similar problem.
Steady spellcasting is a band-aid for the obvious problem of the Magus having no way to deal with attacks of opportunity. I think striking spell should just be immune to that.

6th level: Martial casters is also just a band-aid fix for the magus not having enough spell slots. I think just giving them 2 slots per level would be better.

8th level: Standby Spell is similar to martial caster, and Runic Impression seems almost worthless to anyone who spends their gold maxing out their weapon runes.

10th level: Cascading ray has a problem when using spell attacks with striking spell. At -10 MAP, cascading ray is almost always going to miss. At -5 MAP it still has problems missing but at least you can target low level enemies to either finish them off or get some extra damage. And having something to do with your reaction is nice.
I think Portal Slide should be full speed. I don't think it would be game breaking and only having 10ft to teleport for most characters is too limiting.

14th level: School Shroud is interesting but being able to choose your benefit might be better. But...
Hasted Assault is nearly mandatory with how the magus is. A one action haste is just too good.

16th level: If Dispelling strike works with cantrips (which I think it would as written) then I think it's pretty good and a good example of feats that make the magus the character that combines magic and martial abilities. If not, then I don't think it's that good with only getting 4 spell slots.

The vast majority of martial characters have at least one action every other round that goes into their combat effectiveness.

The Barbarian has to rage, and then not get knocked out, or else becomes a shade of their former selves and can't use the vast majority of their feats. Seriously, a barbarian that has been knocked out one time in a combat is pretty much reduced to a level far beneath a fighter in effectiveness. Their glassiness cannot be understated.

The monk must enter a stance, and is then usually limited to a very narrow set of attacks, unless they spend another action to change it.

The ranger has to have a hunted target or else their edge and many of their feats don't work.

The rogue needs to be attacking a flat-footed foe or otherwise enable their sneak attack.

The swashbuckler needs panache, and has to earn it with actions that require rolls.

The investigator spends an action to devise a stratagem and if that roll is bad, the action was largely wasted.

Alchemist bombers can have pretty big nova rounds, but then are spent pretty fast. Other alchemists have to use a lot of their daily resources to be adequate at combat, maybe a couple of times a day.

The fighter doesn't really have any of these issues because they are the fighter. It is their entire class focus and they skate by entirely with a little more accuracy than a magus and better defensive abilities.

Okay, so just taking what you've said, most martials need to spend one action every few rounds to do their main thing.

The barbarian rages for a minute with just one action. They have to worry about getting downed but that's why they have huge HP. The ranger hunts a target indefinitely with either one action or a free action and just has to spend one action to change targets. Swashbuckler's can spend an action to get panache. The rogue can get sneak attack just by flanking or by using one of their numerous feats to get it. The investigator usually has to spend an action a round but they also know if their strike will fail and can choose other actions. And the alchemist isn't really a martial and is probably on the weaker side of the games power balance anyways.

Now what can the magus do? The magus has to spend two actions every time they want to striking spell and use up a 4 per day limited resource to do meaningful damage. On top of that, they can completely lose the striking spell if they fail to strike or hit with the strike but miss with the spell. And as things currently stand, using striking spell with a spell attack does slightly less average damage than these other martials while using it with a saving spell does just about the same average damage. And the magus feats don't improve this action economy until hasted assault at 14th level, nor do they give a significant damage increase except for situational feats like spell swipe.

In every scenario, this is way more negatives for the magus than positives.

In a game where the rogue can stride, tumble behind, attack with sneak attack, and then nimble dodge as a reaction, the magus having to use 4 actions just to move and striking spell (3 if they have sliding) is a pretty terrible way to work in the 3 action economy. And even at the point where the magus finally uses those 4 actions to hit the enemy and somehow rolls well enough to get their spell off, they are doing less damage than a typical fighter, ranger, or barbarian. The only way to make up this damage is spending another action casting true strike, and now even the sliding magus is spending 5 actions (since you can't use true strike the round before the strike) to hit once with their 4 per day limited resource. Having to spend almost 2 rounds worth of actions just to get a single attack that does slightly better damage than other martials can do in a single round is not good design.

-2 spell slots per spell level.

-A focus spell, focus cantrips, or stances that work with striking spell (maybe a one action focus spell or cantrip).

-Raise a tome either needs to work with a one-handed magus or a sword and board magus synthesis.

-Master spell proficiency earlier.

-I like the idea of cascading ray but it's useless at full MAP and not that useful at -5 MAP.

-Either rework sustaining steel to be closer in power to sliding or let all melee magi slide.

-Magus potency and runic impression seem pretty weak to me and need to be reworked.

-I think portal slide should be full speed.

Just for my own clarification. The part of the graph I am referring to that's with the spell using your melee attacks to hit bonus? Or the attack being all rolled into one attack.

It's rolled into one attack roll. So if you hit with the strike, you hit with the spell. If you Crit with the strike, you crit with the spell.

Of your graphs. The same striking spell option looks the best where use of cantrip with spell strike is sightly ahead of striking 3 times (as it should be).

With keeping it largely on line with the ranger.

Then it gets a little out of whack with the true strike being thrown in (I can tell this spell is going to be a balance problem that holds design space back for years to come).

I WANT that graph to be our reality, to the point that if it's not where we end up I'll just ignore paizos option and use this as home brew. I'll give it the fortune trait if I have to. In reality though, I'd probably just remove true strike from our games.

Yeah I'm more inclined to same striking spell option with the fortune trait. Not sure how using spell saves with striking spell should be treated though.