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I can't believe you are screwing the magic users AGAIN.
They can only cast 3 spells of any level per day?
Do you expect fights to only last 1-2 rounds?
Do you think an adventuring party will only have 1 fight on an adventuring day?
Let me tell you, that is not how things happen.
Example: Last week my group is playing Crimson Throne.
We are in the Labyrinth.
First we run into a Dark Sphinx (with SR and DR). That took several rounds.
Later we ran into a Rakshasa Monk (who had an insane SR score and DR), her Upasunda Asura minion (with SR and DR) and the 2 Asura Adhukaits (also with SR and DR) that were summoned.
That battle took over 15 rounds.
Our main fighter was killed, our spell-casters were empty, our cleric was empty.
We only killed the Upasunda and 1 of the Adhukaits, the other disappeared when the summoning ran out.
We barely injured the Rakshasa.
The only thing that kept it from being a TPK was a wand of dimension door our rogue had that allowed us to escape.
And you are proposing giving players less spells?????
You are saying to us it is pointless to be a spell-caster.
They are only good for sitting to the side while the battle is going on.
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Cantrips and Spell Points bruh.
Use your Resonance.
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Strong, reliable cantrips and fewer spells per level are solutions to both ends of the full caster problem in PF1.
Specifically - you just didn't have much in the way of relevant magic to bring to bear at low levels, and you had way too much relevant magic at high levels.
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The scaling cantrips look pretty good to me. The spell point powers much less so thus far.
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Fewer spells still hurts. Let me compare a cantrip with a non-cantrip for a moment:
(Note: AOE size is approximate and used only to indicate a rough idea of how many targets could be hit with a single casting in typical circumstances. Small: 1, moderate: 2-4, large: 4-6, huge: 8+)
Cantrip, Ray of Frost (2 actions):
(1) 1d8 damage
(3) 1d8+INT damage
(5) 2d8+INT damage
1st, Burning Hands (2 actions):
(1) 2d6 (small aoe)
(2) 4d6 (small aoe)
1st, Magic Missile (1 or 2 actions):
(1) 1d4+1 (per action)
2nd, Acid Arrow (2 actions):
(2) 1d8+INT + 1d6 ongoing*
(4) 2d8+INT + 2d6 ongoing*
3rd, Fireball (2 actions):
(3) 6d6 (moderate aoe at long range)
(4) 8d6 (moderate aoe at long range)
5th, Cone of Cold (2 or 3 actions)
(5) 11d6 (moderate aoe)
(6) 13d6 (moderate aoe)
- 3 actions increase the aoe to "huge"
6th, Disintegrate (2 actions)
(6) 12d10
(7) 14d10
As the spell levels rise, the cantrip becomes less and less action-efficient. Sure, a 5th level Ray of Frost is 2 times as good as it was at 1st level, but a 5th level prepared spell is FIVE times as good as a prepared first level spell even against a single target! Adding in the AOE benefits, that 5th level spell can easily be 40(!!) times as effective as a comparable first level spell.
Notice that all preped spells gain 2 dice per spell level of Heighten whereas our trusty cantrip gains...1 die per two spell levels. That's 1/4 the advancement for unlimited usage (and it caps out at 5th level).
*Oh, and that ongoing damage from Acid Arrow? That's huge. Absolutely HUGE. You hit someone with Acid Arrow and they're dead. Just walk away and let them burn to death. You literally don't need to do anything.
Why? you ask. Well, becasue getting rid of the persistent damage effect requires a flat 20 DC check. That's right folks, roll a nat20 after each application of the damage. That's not "twice as good" as Burning Hands (2nd level spell vs. 1st) that's easily thirty times as good.
While affected by persistent damage, at
the end of your turn you take the specified amount and
type of damage, after which you can attempt a DC 20
flat check to remove the persistent damage.
Making a Medicine check (DC 15, req: healer's tools) in order to reduce that flat 20 check to a flat 15. Oh boy!
You or an ally can spend actions to help you recover
from persistent damage, such as casting healing spells or
using Medicine to Administer First Aid against bleeding,
dousing a flame, or washing off acid; successfully doing
so reduces the DC of that condition’s flat check to 15
and usually lets you immediately attempt an extra flat
check to end that persistent damage.
Sure, cantrips in PF1 aren't as strong as they are in PF2, but the cost comes at a cost of severely reducing those more powerful options to 3-5 per day.
One really nice thing with the bards main "bard" type stuff being cantrips they can do their normal group buffing enemy debuffing stuff all day long without having to worry about rounds of performance per day. They pay for it with lower overall amount of spells per day which seems a reasonable trade off.
Also with the cantrips auto heightening in general casters have some solid go to backup powers they can use whenever they want.
The spell point stuff for bards is mostly utility stuff to make their spell cantrips even more cantripy so good synergy to boost up something thats already good.
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Blasting type cantrips seem to be a pretty good "auto attack" type spell. Not as good as an actual spell of the appropriate level but way better than you are going to be doing with mundane weapons.
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Also with the cantrips auto heightening in general casters have some solid go to backup powers they can use whenever they want.
They're not solid. Look at the numbers in my post above yours. Cantrips gain damage at 1/4 the rate of slotted damage spells and cap out at 5th level effectiveness. 2d8+INT can't even come close to comparing with 12d10. Sure, you could use the cantrip 100 times instead of the 5th level spell once, but generally speaking a 5th level spell once is enough.
Cantrips can't even be used twice in the same turn (unlike comparable damage melee and ranged fighters; cough Longsword 1d8+STR cough) due to the way the action economy works. Add onto that melee fighter's Stance, Open, and Push keywords the fighter actually gets more interesting while wizards and sorcerers got less.
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To be frankly, I kinda hate this "cantrip as an viable attack" in any game it appears.
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Well looking at level 5 that ray of frost cantrip is basically better than the damage a +1 crossbow. Their cantrips seem good enough that there would seem to be little reason for a wizard or sorc to bother using a weapon unless they found a really good one.
It also is a ranged touch attack so it would generally have an easier time hitting than a normal weapon would on top of that. So it is not as good as their full spells which is as it should be but they are more than good enough that if a spell caster does not want to mess around with actual weapons it looks like that is viable.
Also I was mostly looking at the bard list a lot of their cantrips are 1 action to use. So you can do your bard motivation stuff AND cast a spell or move and attack or attack twice. The new way they are doing cantrips is a big improvement for bards overall and while they seem like they get a few less spells per day per spell level they make up for it by getting full spell casting progression so gain access to their higher level spells faster and access to higher level spells than they do in PF1.
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To be frankly, I kinda hate this "cantrip as an viable attack" in any game it appears.
It works, if and only if, the damage and ability to deal full damage isn't hindered aggressively (the problem with cantrips before was that their save DCs were trash and their damage was also trash, now the DC isn't trash, but the damage still is).
I.e. make Ray of Frost scale faster, scale longer, but remain single-target. Then make all other damage spells deal twice the damage (single target), half or less but persistent (single target), or AOE.
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One other thing to note is cantrips like ray of frost can crit now and due to going after touch ac are even more likely to do so than a physical weapon. So the damage seems at least reasonable. Also the auto heightening cantrips for the utility cantrips are pretty interesting now. Some stuff like the fun ones like mage glyph at high enough heightening are permanent now. Even at pretty low level you can have fun making your symbol that lasts months.
Also the auto heightening makes the cantrip utility have a good enough DC to be worth casting.
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Cantrips are endless. And they scale up with level. This is a good thing.
One other thing to note is cantrips like ray of frost can crit now and due to going after touch ac are even more likely to do so than a physical weapon.
They could crit before.
A ray of freezing air and ice projects from your pointing finger. You must succeed on a ranged touch attack with the ray to deal damage to a target. The ray deals 1d3 points of cold damage.
Spells and Critical Hits: A spell that requires an attack roll can score a critical hit. A spell attack that requires no attack roll cannot score a critical hit. If a spell causes ability damage or drain (see Special Abilities), the damage or drain is doubled on a critical hit.
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One other thing to note is cantrips like ray of frost can crit now and due to going after touch ac are even more likely to do so than a physical weapon.They could crit before.
A ray of freezing air and ice projects from your pointing finger. You must succeed on a ranged touch attack with the ray to deal damage to a target. The ray deals 1d3 points of cold damage.Spells and Critical Hits: A spell that requires an attack roll can score a critical hit. A spell attack that requires no attack roll cannot score a critical hit. If a spell causes ability damage or drain (see Special Abilities), the damage or drain is doubled on a critical hit.
Critting is way easier now than it used to be. Instead of having to hit on a 20 and then confirm it you can just beat the target number by 10 or get a 20. Given this goes vs touch defense which is usually at least a few points less than normal AC that gives you that much better chance to crit with it.
I made a 10th lvl sorcerer for a high lvl campaign, and while I love him so far, the amount of slots you get in pf1 would be utterly ridiculous with the inclusion of scaling cantrips and powers. At that point, you eventually get around 6-8 slots per slot lvl, possibly even moreso
I must be missing something then if you are getting 6-8 per slot but I am a slow reader and also "working" today. Can you post your character?
In PF1. Not here.
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Though PF2 sorcerers/wizards get 4 slots (with their bonus slot, except univeralists), can take multiclass feats for one more slot up to 8th level, arcane or divine breadth for an additional slot of levels 1-6.
So that's 6 slots for 1st to 6 level spells, 5 slots for 7 & 8th.
So far no spellcaster has enough class feats to go all the way with two multiclass dedications. Though a druid could get part-way there with a second class, and get 1st-6th level spell slots in either wizard or cleric in addition to 2 1st-6th and 1 7th & 8th in the other. But they don't get bonus spells like a sorcerer does.
Fighters and some of the other martials can get both cleric and wizard dedications and have two sets of 2 1st-6th and 1 7 & 8th level spells, but it requires all their class feats after 1st level.
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Um, am I missing something?
Sure, the spell casters have less spells than in PF1.
But not cripplingly so,
At, say, level 7 they have 3,3,3,2
As opposed to the (base) 4 3 2 1 in PF1
Sure, in PF1 stat boosts would make that
5 4 3 2
11 vs 14 is hardly the end of the world.
Especially when combined with better cantrips to handle the "well, this battle really isn't worth a good spell but I'm bored and want to be able to do SOMETHING" issue (I see lots of spell casters in PF1 basically wasting spells because they want to do SOMETHING even though the battle is already won)
Spell casters have been reduced in power from PF1 (that is a clear and explicit design goal) but to say that they "are now useless" is hyperbole of an extreme nature
In PF1e, 6 is max amount of spellslots any slot level spontaneous casters can get before the charisma bonus kicks in. With the cha bonuses from a good cha stat, it starts with an extra spell slot per slot level. With an exceptionally high one, like one that's boosted by a headband item, it can end up being 2 extra slots on the low level slots (ie, your lvl 1-2 spells). Granted my highest spell slot, which is 5th lvl, is still 4 slots, but that's still a lot.
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What, 10th-level reality warpers, useless? Am I hearing things or what?
The old musings on how "Greed has no limits" was true after all...
Give non(or lesser)-spellcasters more skill ranks AND better/unique noncombat stuff; THEN this topic's title becomes valid at all...
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I guess I'm in a minority but I would have preferred the reverse of what we got here. Spell-casters can cast a crap ton of spells per day but none are actually majorly powerful. Anyway, I haven't gotten to the spells chapter yet so take my post with a grain of salt.
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In PF1e, 6 is max amount of spellslots any slot level spontaneous casters can get before the charisma bonus kicks in. With the cha bonuses from a good cha stat, it starts with an extra spell slot per slot level. With an exceptionally high one, like one that's boosted by a headband item, it can end up being 2 extra slots on the low level slots (ie, your lvl 1-2 spells). Granted my highest spell slot, which is 5th lvl, is still 4 slots, but that's still a lot.
This. I just loaded up my current PF1 character and I have a 20 CHA (at level 6), so I do indeed have 2 bonus first level spells. If I'd had a sorcerer and was 10th level, I'd have 8, 7, 7, 6, 4 (32 spells total).
In PF2 it's 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 (15 total).
32 vs. 15 is a BIG difference.
Wizard with INT instead of CHA:
PF1: 6, 5, 4, 4, 3 (22)
PF2: 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 (15)
Which highlights another loss on the sorcerer side of things: They no longer get more spells per day (but limited selection) compared to Wizards.
I guess I'm in a minority but I would have preferred the reverse of what we got here. Spell-casters can cast a crap ton of spells per day but none are actually majorly powerful. Anyway, I haven't gotten to the spells chapter yet so take my post with a grain of salt.
Yeah, same here.
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I guess I'm in a minority but I would have preferred the reverse of what we got here. Spell-casters can cast a crap ton of spells per day but none are actually majorly powerful. Anyway, I haven't gotten to the spells chapter yet so take my post with a grain of salt.
cantrips sort of kind of fill that role. They automatically scale so they're still SOMEWHAT useful at higher levels
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cantrips sort of kind of fill that role. They automatically scale so they're still SOMEWHAT useful at higher levels
They scale badly.
Which would you rather have, a +2 longsword or Ray of Frost at 9th level?
How about a +4 [Greater Flaming] longsword or Ray of Frost at 16th?
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cantrips sort of kind of fill that role. They automatically scale so they're still SOMEWHAT useful at higher levelsThey scale badly.
Which would you rather have, a +2 longsword or Ray of Frost at 9th level?
How about a +4 [Greater Flaming] longsword or Ray of Frost at 16th?
Um, since I'm a Wizard and don't have armor proficiency or decent hit points I'll take the Ray of Frost, thank you! They're supposed to scale well enough that you don't feel obligated to bring along a weapon, but not well enough that they're better than the martial characters at DPR.
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I guess I'm in a minority but I would have preferred the reverse of what we got here. Spell-casters can cast a crap ton of spells per day but none are actually majorly powerful. Anyway, I haven't gotten to the spells chapter yet so take my post with a grain of salt.
My first impression is, like with PF1, the 'nerfing' of spells is very situational. Some are distinctly worse, others aren't. Some are looking crazy nuts on a critical fail, and a lot still have some effect or at least 1 round of effect on a successful save. That changes things a lot.
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cantrips sort of kind of fill that role. They automatically scale so they're still SOMEWHAT useful at higher levelsThey scale badly.
Which would you rather have, a +2 longsword or Ray of Frost at 9th level?
How about a +4 [Greater Flaming] longsword or Ray of Frost at 16th?
So to be clear, what you want is for casters to DPS as well as a martial for free, while also having high burst and utility.
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Um, since I'm a Wizard and don't have armor proficiency or decent hit points I'll take the Ray of Frost, thank you! They're supposed to scale well enough that you don't feel obligated to bring along a weapon, but not well enough that they're better than the martial characters at DPR.
Armor proficiency is fixable (its one feat, take heavy armor).
And fighters already have a better action economy. Their 5d8 +4 longsword takes 1 action to attack with (out of 3). Your 2d8 ray of frost takes 2 actions.
Even if they always miss their second and third attacks (HA!), they're still doing more than double your damage (and pushing people around or doing other special effects as a result of their feats).
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And then ypu cast Chain Lightning and deal 6d12 to as manay creatures as you damn well feel like. Casters deal low damage consistently and high damage periodically, while martials deal moderate damage consistently.
You can't have everything.
to as manay creatures as you damn well feel like
1) Three times per day
2) Critical success on a reflex save ends the chainAny time you're spending a spell slot, you're ending the fight in a round. Any time you're not you're on the bench.
Um, since I'm a Wizard and don't have armor proficiency or decent hit points I'll take the Ray of Frost, thank you! They're supposed to scale well enough that you don't feel obligated to bring along a weapon, but not well enough that they're better than the martial characters at DPR.Armor proficiency is fixable (its one feat, take heavy armor).
And fighters already have a better action economy. Their 5d8 +4 longsword takes 1 action to attack with (out of 3). Your 2d8 ray of frost takes 2 actions.
Even if they always miss their second and third attacks (HA!), they're still doing more than double your damage (and pushing people around or doing other special effects as a result of their feats).
Umm, they're supposed to do that. They're the martials, it's their job. And yes, you can get your heavy armor if you want to dip fighter, but that comes at a cost and you still have crap for hit points.
Or spend general feats.
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So to be clear, what you want is for casters to DPS as well as a martial for free, while also having high burst and utility.cantrips sort of kind of fill that role. They automatically scale so they're still SOMEWHAT useful at higher levelsThey scale badly.
Which would you rather have, a +2 longsword or Ray of Frost at 9th level?
How about a +4 [Greater Flaming] longsword or Ray of Frost at 16th?
Agreed, maybe Cantrips can do a bit more damage or work with more class features, but I don't mind them being weaker than weapon attacks.
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Agreed, maybe Cantrips can do a bit more damage or work with more class features, but I don't mind them being weaker than weapon attacks.
Pretty much this.
Fighters have gone from "I hit it *roll dice*" to "I'm going to raise my shield, move in, and brutish shove!" Next round "Step, power attack!" Next round "Power attack, brutal shove!"Whereas wizards and sorcerers have gone from being judicious about spells (but still functional, due to class features like bloodline powers that gave you an upgraded cantrip) to "alpha strike" or "I hit it *roll dice*"
Also with the cantrips auto heightening in general casters have some solid go to backup powers they can use whenever they want.They're not solid. Look at the numbers in my post above yours. Cantrips gain damage at 1/4 the rate of slotted damage spells and cap out at 5th level effectiveness. 2d8+INT can't even come close to comparing with 12d10. Sure, you could use the cantrip 100 times instead of the 5th level spell once, but generally speaking a 5th level spell once is enough.
Cantrips can't even be used twice in the same turn (unlike comparable damage melee and ranged fighters; cough Longsword 1d8+STR cough) due to the way the action economy works. Add onto that melee fighter's Stance, Open, and Push keywords the fighter actually gets more interesting while wizards and sorcerers got less.
Where are you getting "cap out at 5th level effectiveness" from? I'm looking at Ray of Frost right now and it has heightening info for levels 7 and 9 (3d8+Casting Stat and 4d8+Casting Stat respectively). Same for Electric Arc, Acid Splash, and Telekinetic Projectile (substituting their dice as appropriate.) Heck, Telekinetic Projectile is like hitting a foe with a somewhat-below-level Greatclub from 30 feet away, that seems pretty legit for a fallback to me.
This. I just loaded up my current PF1 character and I have a 20 CHA (at level 6), so I do indeed have 2 bonus first level spells. If I'd had a sorcerer and was 10th level, I'd have 8, 7, 7, 6, 4 (32 spells total).
In PF2 it's 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 (15 total).
32 vs. 15 is a BIG difference.
It's not always 3, 3, 3, 3, 3.
Sorcerers get 3+1, 3+1, 3+1, 3+1, 3+1. They get one slot at each level from bloodline.
Clerics don't get any bonus spells, but do get channel energy so they don't need to prepare (or burn spells for) healing. So they can use the spells they do have for more interesting things.
Bards don't get any bonus spells, but they get composition cantrips and they were only 6th level casters before.
Wizards also get 3+1, 3+1, 3+1, 3+1, 3+1 if they specialize, or they get to recall a spell of each level (which works out to the same thing) if they don't.
Druids are the only ones that seem to lack something extra, although that could be buried in their Order and feats where I haven't seen it yet.
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20 vs 32 is still a significant difference, but it's not as bad as it seems at first.
Druids are the only ones that seem to lack something extra, although that could be buried in their Order and feats where I haven't seen it yet.
Druids build pretty large spell point pools, wild shape pools or possibly both. Since powers scale automatically, this can get a little crazy.
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With how some view Cantrip damage, I have to wonder if they even looked at the Alchemist's bombs?
So a spellcaster can get Acid Splash which scales from 1d4 Acid damage, 1 splash damage and on a crit 1 persistent damage to 4d4+Spellcasting Modifier Acid Damage, 1 splash damage and on a crit 5 persistent damage. This takes 2 actions yes, but is also at will with no cost.
While the Alchemist's Acid Flask costs 1 Resonance to create 1 as an Action with Quick Alchemy, to then throw as another action, or spend 1 Resonance earlier in the day to create 2 flasks that need to be drawn later on. That does 1d4 persistent Acid damage, and 1 splash Acid damage. Scaling to 6d4 persistent Acid damage, and 1 splash Acid damage, at the highest levels. Yes that is more dice, but the Spellcasting modifier is likely going to be better than the rolled amount on those last two d4s. And of course unlike Cantrips the Acid Flask is not unlimited.
Of course Electric Arc kind of puts them both to shame as it starts at 1d6 Electricity damage to one or two targets and scales to 4d6+Spellcasting modifier Electricity damage to one or two targets.
All of this doesn't take into account the Spellcaster's spells which would bring them even further beyond the Alchemist.
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I wonder if it is possible to completely gut out this spell system and replace it. It doesn't have to be 1e spell system just something different then this (maybe take a second look at spheres of power). It's seems like a hard sell since the design team seems to be proud of this system, but it's kind of a blah system.
Also, I may be the only one but I liked hybrid (4th spell level) casters, why was paladin and rangers spells removed, or did I miss something.
