What does everyone think about characters that might not be that effective at dropping enemies themselves, but do an excellent job of making it easy for their teammates to drop enemies?
What's worked in your parties? How do you like to see the support role filled?
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Bard. Bard. Bard.
What does everyone think about characters that might not be that effective at dropping enemies themselves, but do an excellent job of making it easy for their teammates to drop enemies?
What's worked in your parties? How do you like to see the support role filled?
The Ideal support will buff the group, help the afflicted, and do their best to Mitigate damage as much as possible. They then try to make sure the party is ready for the next fight by topping them off with Cures (Usually in the form of a wand.)
Now I did a sub-par Support for my last one. The party was 6 people so I did not need to contribute to damage. Which is good because I was laying a shelynite who for the most part was a pacifist. She only attacked undead and only justified it as putting the poor souls to rest. She was a Spirit guide Life oracle who mostly channeled the Heaven's spirit. The DM allowed me to use the Unique spell rules for Shelyn and learn the Cleric spells she gives. So I filled my spell's known with Shelyn style spells and really long duration buffs. Magic Vestment, G.M.W, Life Bubble (on of my favs), ext ext. I did get Good Hope through the Unique spell Rules and really enjoyed it. Outside of Combat she was much more a help.
First and Foremost she was a wonderful face. Very high Diplomacy that she could auto pass most Diplomacy checks. She was heavily concerned about Friendship, Love, and Art. By the end of the campaign she had so many friends and NPCs. She also was was designed to be the most helpful person ever. She always did someone's chores to give them freetime that she hoped they would use to better themselves or Others. She would take care of all the Buying/Selling and with Diplomacy could get alittle more for some items. That profit was strictly used for Group things like Resurrections and expendables. No one had to come out of pocket on any of that stuff. She also Crafted Wondrous Items but only if a party member was in good standing with her. one PC did burn one of his own painting thinking it was possessed before she cleared it. Then tried to hide it from her till he thought was a good time to tell her. So he had to repent before she would craft him anything for not sharing with her and letting her do her job concerning art. But she crafted lots of small gifts for everyone like Beads of Newt protection, Animate portraits and fun items they would find useful. She made it clear anything she crafted could not be sold but only gifted, because she does not profit off her art. Lastly her job was that of a healer. And not just physical. She was very concerned over people's emotional well being too. RP wise she required someone to sleep with her and cuddle when she felt they were having a tough time. She believed in a loving and close Friendship aka skinship but was heavily against lust.
So really the Idea of support is really up to the groups needs and how optimized the support should play. I could get away with a sub par build cause 5 others did the killing and fighting. In a smaller group I would have been dead weight not contributing to killing.
so really gauge the group you are playing in.
Is there a specific party make up you are looking to fill in the role of support?
The OP's definition of support looks like it might include debuffers or battlefield controllers, in which case my answer would be a sorcerer or wizard.
If we're looking purely at positive support though my answer would be a cleric, ideally with the evangelist archetype tho' actually I haven't played with one of those last. (I'm not into PFS, and my usual group plays a variety of games, PF being only one of them.)
In case people are wondering, no, I don't have any specific campaign in mind, nor do I want to be talking exclusively about buffers instead of debuffers.
I'm mainly interested in seeing which tactics lead to the best support for the rest of the team. Do buffers beat debuffers? Are there specific conditions under which battlefield control is more or less important?
If there's anything I'm excluding, it's damage or instant-defeat tactics like sleep that take the action out of combat (although damage and sleep can remain important tools in a support character's arsenal).
Basically, I'm thinking about tactics that revolve around not being the person directly responsible for finishing combats, but making sure that the job of finishing is as easy as possible for their party members.
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In a notoriously difficult Pathfinder Society scenario, my non-damaging sorcerer made a very tough fight much easier by dropping two of the four enemies in pits with Create Pit, so the rest of the group only had to fight two at a time.
My point is that battlefield control is probably the most effective way to help your allies win fights, though it's tough to pull off at lower levels. When you have more spells later, you'll be much more effective. So for that type of thing, go sorcerer, wizard, or arcanist.
For pure buffing, go cleric, oracle, or bard. That's pretty self explanatory.
For debuffing as battlefield control, rather than just ending the fights instantly, clerics have some pretty useful spells and domain powers. I have a "bad touch" cleric with the Protean subdomain (Chaos domain). That first level Chaos domain power is as good as a witch's Misfortune, but without the will save, and it affects ANYTHING. The only condition is that you have to touch, which isn't generally a problem. Add in a high wisdom for more uses per day and tougher save DCs on the pure offensive spells, and stuff to boost your concentration checks, and you can make enemies useless until your friends can kill them.
Buffers are superior to debuffers (Excluding save or dies), for one reason - resistance. As Buffer your party is almost always willing, so it almost always succeeds, debuffers require a great deal of optimization to have the same success rates.
The larger the party, the greater the effects of buffs, a +1 to 5 is powerful, and in most DND style rpg's killing first is better than mitigating hits, if they attack you for fewer turns then they by default do less damage, if one hit is mitigated, then they can still deliver a second hit later.
Summoners are notorious because they can provide sheer numbers for absorbing potential hits, choking off paths to restrict enemy movement, and delivering damage on top of that. Typically many weak monsters is better than a few powerful ones because more little allies can absorb far more hits, regardless of enemy damage.
If the party is predominantly melee/archer then buffs are powerful, if they are mostly spellcasters, then reducing saves can be more useful (Thus the save or dies have a chance to work).
Witches make fantastic debuffers for fellow spellcasters.
Bards are one of the best for large group melees as their performances can stack with many buffs, thus they can enact them mid combat, clerics are fantastic as well, they merely require longer preparation.
Alchemists are a strange mix, they can hand out buffs, thus everyone gives up a standard to self buff, but in one turn buffs can be completed and the alchemist can focus on damage (His buffing already completed).
I'm enjoying the brown fur transmuter arcanist. Adding +2 to the stat bonus of your buffing spells is very nice. And I can't wait to start throwing out all of those fun polymorph spells for my teammates.
But the option bouncing around my headspace lately is the skald. Vanilla skald is really fun, but your party may benefit more from the spell warrior archetype, depending on how many casters your party has.
In a wide-open space battlefield control has a hard time. With closer or more interesting terrain they are more useful than buffers IME. Sure, haste is generally better than slow, but there are more asymmetric comparisons out there like the create pit mentioned above, or glitterdust, or rimed frost fall, or spells which create fog - seeing thru fog is generally harder than creating it.
@Glorf: obviously M / m is more generally useful then! The lower case has a pair of arches to support the weight and the upper case is still adequate and easier to fit into a larger frame than the A.
In case people are wondering, no, I don't have any specific campaign in mind, nor do I want to be talking exclusively about buffers instead of debuffers.
I'm mainly interested in seeing which tactics lead to the best support for the rest of the team. Do buffers beat debuffers? Are there specific conditions under which battlefield control is more or less important?
If there's anything I'm excluding, it's damage or instant-defeat tactics like sleep that take the action out of combat (although damage and sleep can remain important tools in a support character's arsenal).
Basically, I'm thinking about tactics that revolve around not being the person directly responsible for finishing combats, but making sure that the job of finishing is as easy as possible for their party members.
Mesmerists work really well for single target debuff. You can cast Ill Omen with your standard action, you can put a -2/-3 Will save penalty on any one target (maybe the same as your Ill Omen), you can do limited buffs with tricks (Psychic Anthology makes this more flexible/scalable with feat/archetype investment), and you can add damage/debuffs to your stare target in addition to the Will save penalty.
They combo incredibly well with a buddy full caster to provide the finisher, but you can also make your stare target take more damage/do less damage vs. melee buddies.
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... Sure, haste is generally better than slow..
To expand on this it comes down to the total number of actions gained or lost in a combat. If your in a 4 person group with 2 martials against a group of enemies with 8 people who look like fighters, slow becomes better. If you happen to have a persistent rod, slow is even better yet. The options to haste 4 people or auto dispel haste on more than 4 people is a time when slow comes out ahead again.
Build options
I will throw my hat in for a evangelist cleric (bardish cleric archetype) or a shaman with the lore wandering spirit. Most spirits function well as a primary spirit. Life will allow you to heal a little more, heavens control better, fire blast, but using the wandering spirit for lore and garbing arcane enlightenment with wander hex will give you an amazing spell list.
For this second build it is a little hard to play, but you can cast arcane spells as divine spells. You will add a lot of versatility to your group. Hexes are very powerful and allow you to save spells until they are absolutely needed. If you play a human of half human you can pick up cleric spells to further expand your abilities.
Bard is the only way to go. Give him flagbearer and a banner of ancient kings then let him spend his rounds buffing and healing to his hearts content. You can give him a bow or scimitar if you want to go that route though
I like bards for this too. Adding a one level dip in cavalier (especially daring champion or standard bearer) adds some combat ability and also opens the possibility of going into the battle herald PrC later, if you decide that some extra melee is needed more than more magic.
Can anyone think of a support role task that a cleric or an oracle can't do?
Can anyone think of a support role task that a cleric or an oracle can't do?
Not really
The Evangelist Cleric is pretty much T1 god mode of Support.
I would rate Shaman higher than the Oracle. But all 3 are pretty much undisputed champions once Level 6+ spells come online.
Debuffs when they work have more impact than buffs. Slow does far more negative than haste does positive for a fight.
Buffs are consistent, they help you do things better, but are very few that drastically alter a fight, haste is one that fairly significantly alters the fight. Most buffs usually will just make the outcome happen faster without really altering what the outcome would be.
Healing in combat is usually for emergencies or needs to be action efficient to be worth considering.
Control is altering the playing field. Things such as creating fog, pits, summons and walls. They don't do much than decide where the fight is happening and how fast people can get to the fight, but that can be a huge factor for how the fight goes. fighting two huge elementals is rough, fighting one and then another isn't as scary.
so the biggest impact obviously debuffs and control AKA the anvil role
But the buffs and support keeps the damage flowing, otherwise it's a race and a debuff or unlucky crit can stop the parties damage output, AKA the arm role
After the setup by the anvil and buffing from the arm then the damage happens, AKA the hammer role
Just want to toss this out - the Madness domain power Visions of Madness is probably the most versatile (and potent) buff/debuff in the game. Played an insane Evangelist Dwarf (The end is near!) who used it constantly to devastating effect, coupled with Performance: Mutter Darkly... favorite trick at higher levels was to follow it up with Planeshift as an attack.
The "best" support really depends on the make up of your party. If you don't know the make up, a Witch or Bard probably tops the list.
However, one of my all time favorite support characters was a chained monk with Ki Mystic and Sensei archtype. We had a lot of melee types and a barbarian with a horrible AC. I took the Archon style feats, and some Qinggong powers (that I could use on the rest of the party due to Sensei).