victusfate's page

And a Magus does get Master Proficiency in martial weapons and medium armour while still being a full caster. That is huge. So having some action economy woes is a small price to pay in comparison.

I would take issue with Magus being a full caster, druid yes, cleric yes, Magus absolutely not. 3 slots per level including 10th level spell access and legendary casting makes a "full caster". And there are Wizards and Sorcerers who have even greater slot access.

I only got to play a level 8 Magus for one test session but I felt constrained heavily by action use, and leaned on haste and first round full buffs to basically function (2-H weapon, MC wiz, Martial Caster,Staff of Divination + potency, striking & shifting runes)

Striking spell could mimic Eldritch shot without any major issues when it comes to accuracy and resolving spell effects (single hit roll). Now truestrike is no longer combinable with striking spell. Or it could remain as separate actions so truestrike, striking spell, strike are possible with haste again with a single attack roll. The issue isn't how bad striking spell is (it is weak in its current form compared to abilities like Eldritch Shot & Channel Smite), but how few spell strikes per day a single class Magus will be capable of. They'll miss with most of their spell slot striking spells per day vs at or higher level enemies, which is problematic.

For reference

Eldritch Shot:
"Activate Three Actions Eldritch Shot; Requirements You are wielding a bow; Effect You Cast a Spell that takes 1 or 2 actions to cast and requires a spell attack roll. The effects of the spell do not occur immediately but are imbued into the bow you're wielding. Make a Strike with that bow. Your spell flies with the ammunition, using your attack roll result to determine the effects of both the Strike and the spell. This counts as two attacks for your multiple attack penalty, but you don't apply the penalty until after you've completed both attacks."

Channel Smite:
"Channel Smite Two Actions, Feat 4
Traits Cleric,Divine,Necromancy
Source Core Rulebook pg. 122 1.1
Cost Expend a harm or heal spell.
Prerequisites harmful font or healing font
You siphon the destructive energies of positive or negative energy through a melee attack and into your foe. Make a melee Strike and add the spell’s damage to the Strike’s damage. This is negative damage if you expended a harm spell or positive damage if you expended a heal spell. The spell is expended with no effect if your Strike fails or hits a creature that isn’t damaged by that energy type (such as if you hit a non-undead creature with a heal spell)."

Got to playtest with both character types in our party last night (2 summoners, 2 magi, 1 cleric) through 3 interesting encounters. I'd like to see a mechanic for summoners to get a font or focus spell for summoning, and I think they'd be great. We'll need something similar for Magus spellstrike (more slots somehow).

For Magus the intense action tax (haste helps but costs up front when available), and the misfortune effect (2 chances to fail for limited slots) that most hampers that class. Look forward to seeing Striking Spell/Spellstrike! mimic Eldritch Archer or Channel Smite with a single attack roll to determine spell effect.

At this point, when going all in against a powerful enemy, it is extremely likely that you are working with at least a +2 status bonus to attacks, and against a solo monster, the whole party should be down to help make sure you get flanking. You also might be dealing with a frightened condition, from dealing with a dragon, so we will wash out any potential debuff your party will have worked out.

You ended up including the +2 status bonus in your strike and spell success stats. Looks like an error?

Appreciate your choice of items, a staff of divination with shifting is really helpful for the truestrikes. In my playtest yesterday (level 8) I used one.

I was able to prebuff with haste in 1 encounter, but I don't think having a round to buff is the default in Pathfinder 2e. With 1 min buff durations and in combat action costs, I think we need to assume our first round as a Magus is all buffs (haste + magus potency), which didn't feel great in our playtest.

I posted a little more detail from our playtest here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/iqnmn3/magus_summoner_playte st_results/

Speaking of gish,it appears that martial base class + spell caster dedications are the way to go. Spell casters can almost sorta not suck in melee with form spells but those preclude further sword and sorcery.

Looking forward to Eldritch Knight type of archetypes for primary casters (to bring them a little closer to martials without stepping on toes)

I was considering a fighter archetype druid to optimize the wild order +2 vs a pure druid.

Looking at Animal Form (the earliest form shift spell for combat):
A wild order druid at 3rd level they can use Wild Shape order (p401 CRB) spell heightened (2nd) to mimic animal forms. The default animal form modifiers are +9 to attack, +1 damage. A Wild Order druid could use their focus spell to shape shift and have an attack bonus of 10 -> break down trained bonus of 5(level + 2 for trained) + 3 (max strength mod) + 2 wild order spell option.

A fighter multiclass archetype druid could gain the same animal form by level 3 when the Wild Order focus spell allows animal form. Here their attack modifier max would be 13. The breakdown 7(level + 4 for expert) + 4 (max strength mod) + 2 wild order spell option. It's clearly advantageous for a wild order druid to be an archetype in this early case.

But it limits the maximum forms attainable (half level through Advanced Wilding and Druid Archetype). Consider higher level druid form feats: form control, thousand faces, insect shape, ferocious shape, soaring shape, capping out at plant shape by 20. Also druid spells will be limited to archetype advancement.

Any clarification if Shillelagh works with Great Club (easy enough to get proficiency). The spell explicitly describes any non-magical club or staff. I could see it being more potent in that case so maybe not?

That sorcerer is spending feats on fighter dedication to make a competent character. It's great that it's possible to create an effective character but it's not ideal that viable angelic sorcerer builds are tied to multiclassing and that sorcerers have so few class feats to begin with.

I'm leaning towards a thorough revamp of class feat allocations (like 11 / class, and each class having great choices for each feat)

See http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2vaxp?Suggestion-All-classes-get-10-class-feats

Agree with this thread wholeheartedly. As it stands, having fewer feat choices for certain classes makes them feel less fun

Would love to see sorc bloodlines become optional feats and greater feat access. As they stand sorcerers have fairly weak bloodline powers that they can't customize.

Archetype dedication feats are all consuming for a sorcerer and are still worth considering to support their lackluster bloodlines (fighter dedication to armor non arcane casters, cleric or wizard dedication to complement limited spell access)

As a druid levels, their earlier form feats become low/no utility as they transform into only their latest and greatest form or the highest level heighten of a lower form.

In practice this makes it advantageous for druids to retrain out of lower level form feats and pick up something useful instead, but this can't be done due to prerequisite requirements.

At level 8-10+ animal form is strictly weaker than dinosaur form
At level 14+ most forms are weaker than dragon (animal, insect, aerial, elemental, dinosaur)

At level 15+ the wild order druid is better off not being a wild order druid and casting monstrosity form

One last note, constitution is a more appropriate attribute for form change uses per day vs strength which is ignored while form changed.

The idea:

1) move more class feats into the general feat bucket so that many more character concepts can come to life
2) make nearly all class abilities into class feats, even spell access
3) combine class and general feat allocations so that all classes have an equivalent feat total

This would approximate a better middle road between point buy game systems and class only systems. It would also work much better with multiclass archetypes which are currently only viable for high class feat classes (fighter+)

Specialists do get 1 spell of their highest level beyond universalists (they can use their focus once). This is a pretty compelling feature.

I had a different balancing suggestion for a fun RoR adventure path that I couldn't always attend.
My idea is that Eli (our gm) would offer up an extra 100% of the treasure, just for my visiting character. That should balance the encounters due to the challenge of making more spellcraft and magic identification rolls

Hey maybe there will be new sacred summons so my CG worshipper of Azathoth (CN) can standard action summons something beyond a chaos beast (which isn't normally allowed except for AP 64)