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With cantrips now usable constantly, daze is a bit overpowered at low levels. At high DCs, stopping certain creatures from taking actions is disproportionately powerful. Solo encounters can be completely negated without ever spending a spell slot. The same with neutralizing ranged combatants.
The effects will fade after a few levels as save bonuses start reducing the chance of success below 50%, but until then that is rather overwhelming for an at will ability. Compare it to something like hold person, which also effectively negates a creature's action. Sure you only cast hold person once and it works until the creature saves, but it is a 2nd or 3rd level spell with limited uses.
I have not seen this effect with any of the other spells that have direct combat effects (flare, acid splash, ray of frost, disrupt undead, touch of fatigue). Except for flare these are touch spells, and three are ranged and could piggyback with sneak attack. An arcane trickster sneak attack-acid splashing endlessly might not be that good.
Note: My current PFRPG campaign features a sorcerer using daze. The rogue plans to go arcane trickster, so I may very well see the other in due course, though not likely until the final book is out.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I don't have any particularly strong feelings on this issue, but to play devil's advocate, it doesn't seem that bad to me. Instead of doing damage or using a higher level spell, the arcane caster will need to sacrifice his actions for a chance of making an opponent lose his actions. To me, spells become problematic when there's no thought involved in the process - e.g., 3.0 haste, which was almost always the first thing you cast in every single combat because it didn't even cost an action to do. In this case, I can't see the arcane caster always choosing daze over other actions.
Then again, I haven't playtested it, so I defer to the voice of experience on those choices. It's probably a fair argument that if an arcane caster only has cantrips available and has a target that can be affected by daze, they should almost certainly choose daze. At low levels, they are trading a low amount of damage with a relatively low probability of success for the loss of an action with a relatively low probability of success. Having the opponent lose an action is definitely the smarter choice, and I'd be hard pressed to come up with a situation where the small amount of damage would be preferable (okay, the arcane trickster would be a good example because they could increase the damage through sneak attack).
Anyway, it seems to me that even though daze is the best choice out of the cantrips, it's not better than other options that are typically available to an arcane caster (particularly non-cantrip spells). The same holds true for the arcane trickster with the damage cantrips - there's typically going to be a non-cantrip spell available which can be used to deliver the sneak attack damage.
One other point is that, IIRC, daze doesn't make the target helpless like hold person, so you can't perform a CDG on them and they don't drop their weapon. I want to say daze doesn't even make them flat-footed, but I could be making that up entirely.
Sam, you might want to peek at this thread. Daze is in fact the biggest problem, but a few others could use work.
I'm not worried about the Arcane Trickster Sneak Attacking with Acid Splash/Ray of Frost: That trickster could just as easily have a Evoker's energy ray or similar power.
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Sam, you might want to peek at this thread. Daze is in fact the biggest problem, but a few others could use work.
I'm not worried about the Arcane Trickster Sneak Attacking with Acid Splash/Ray of Frost: That trickster could just as easily have a Evoker's energy ray or similar power.
I wondered if anyone else noticed it. I have not been reading every thread, but wanted to toss that in there.
I keep forgetting about the new specialist powers, but that would seem to be a potential problem with them as well.
Sam, you might want to peek at this thread. Daze is in fact the biggest problem, but a few others could use work.
I'm not worried about the Arcane Trickster Sneak Attacking with Acid Splash/Ray of Frost: That trickster could just as easily have a Evoker's energy ray or similar power.
I wondered if anyone else noticed it. I have not been reading every thread, but wanted to toss that in there.
I keep forgetting about the new specialist powers, but that would seem to be a potential problem with them as well.
I don't consider it a problem, but yes, in both my games it is the at will school/bloodline/domain powers that are getting the heavy use, not cantrips. Acid Dart, Hand of the Apprentice, Copy Cat, & Charming Touch have all dominated use, even when better options were available.
It kinda seems like spells are the new potions - horde them until you *really* need them :)
I posted this in the other thread, but it was rather late in the discussion and I don't want it to get missed, because it fixes a rather lot of the problem cantrips at once. It also acknowledges that cantrips are still spells, even if they don't act like it 99% of the time:
I just thought of something rather elegant.
0-level spells are still exactly that. Spells. However, it is a special ability of the spellcasting classes that lets them cast them at-will as spell-like abilities.
So I propose the following: Set the caster level for those spell-like abilities to be 1, regardless of the actual caster level of the character. This fixes most of the scaling-with-level issues (not things like daze, though.) This would actually be shorter than the current text: 'at caster level 1st' instead of 'Cantrips are treated like any other spell cast by the wizard in terms of duration and other variables based on level.'
This is better because it allows higher-level casters to do more impressive things if they wish by preparing the spell in a higher level slot. So, for instance, if a High Priest wants to be able to cast Purify Food and Drink over a whole banquet at once for a ceremony, he can, by using a first level spell slot, modified by his high caster level, rather than being forced to bless a plate at a time like a 1st level cleric would.
Also, another suggestions, not from me, to fix mending's cure minor wounds type problems:
Another option to fix Mending as a reasonable 0-level:
Has no effect unless it would fix the target item to full hit points.it'll take dings out of your longsword and re-join cut rope, but it won't fix that axe that's been snapped in two.