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So what if the vast majority of players played through say the full playtest were happy with the game. You would say that isn't an important detail? What if it came out somehow that the vast majority of negative feedback was from players who have played less than 3 sessions of the game. Wouldn't that mean statistically the game is just fun to play?
You really can't just read through a book and crunch some numbers and get an accurate estimate of how "fun" it is. At least that's my opinion. You can disagree with it but in my 15 yrs of experience, The numbers weren't the main component of our fun. It was the roleplaying and tactical teamwork that made it fun for us. And for my group 2e has improved tactical teamwork in combat for sure.
This is of course not to say that the game can't be tweaked and balanced better. But just running statistics isn't a good indication that you have a grasp on how the system plays.
Dude, every single playtest we get one or more people like you, who want to dismiss actual statistical data by demanding that people have to "jump higher" by having played multiple playtest sessions before being able to comment. It's annoying as hell.
Also, you are punching down a strawman. There are a lot of playtest reports on the forums which came back with negative feelings towards th game.
Not having information tested in the appropriate environment means that you can easily draw inaccurate conclusions from it. For example, the constant assumptions that you'll be fighting only things of your level or above, because CR=APL monsters were rarely ever a threat.
I'm not saying not to test the game in a playtest situation. I am pointing out that posts which rely on statistics are just as valid.
Every playtest man.. there is always this guy with the 400 hours of playtime invested who hates rhetorical arguments and adamantly believes that complete system mastery of dozens of other games and decades of experience pales in comparison to his or her personal subjective experience.
Yep. Every single playtest.
Firing off my cantrips was in no way fun. It was tedious and felt barely effective. That's not heroic or exciting. It doesn't matter if it's balanced if it's not interesting to play. A coin flip for if my spells will actually work or not, with how limited they are, is not fun to play.
<snip>
Balancing that would mean nerfing it, and nobody in the game I was in was excited about making things even more lethal and needing even more full rests (and 1 encounter days) than we were already doing. If anything, they need to crank up the healing options on a couple more classes.
Oh so much agreed!
Hey, Dire Ursus! I'm running this playtest for my group, and we're almost to chapter 3, and we all basically agree with almost all of Magnuskn's posts. Just wondering why we have had such different experience with the game.
Does his opinion have validity now that someone running the playtest sees the same things?
Thanks for the support. :)
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The fact that they combined the heigthened spells, the nerf of spell slots, and the nerf of spells is what makes me think Spellcasters in general are bad now. You have less spell slots - it could be okay by its own. But now, the spells have been nerfed, making a bunch of spells useless at their PF1 level (Mage Armor being +1 to AC only for exemple). And, now you have to heighten your spells to make them usefull : you need a 6th level Mage Armor (if I remember correctly, don't have the Rulebook on me at the time) to get back this +4 to AC, and you have to heighten Phantom Steed to get what it did in PF1, while this is a purely utilitary skill for a Wizard.
Back in PF1, where I play a bunch of spellcasters and semi-spellcasters, what happens as you unlock spell slots when you play an offensive spellcaster is that you end up using your higher spell slots to cast debuffs and blasting spells, and lower level slots to cast utilitary and buff spells (Mage Armor, Heal, Barkskin, Blink...), and some blast spells (which scaled a bit with levels) with enough side effects to be interesting whatever the level, like Magic Missile to be sure to hit your target (an excellent panic button by the way) or Burning Hands to take care of swarms. Even if you ended the day with some spare spell slots, in the end you regularly used a bit of all your spell levels.
Now, in PF2, you only use your higher spells for everything, since you need to heighten your spells for them to be relevant. Even like that, your heightened spells are less effective that normal spells for the same level, so you're better not heightening your spells. And even so, you're better not casting your spells not heightened because your lower level spells are to weak to make a difference. This ends up with using your higher level spell slots, and your low- to mid-level spell slots not being touched (or not mattering if you touched them). In theory, when you use all your higher level spells slots, you still have your other spells slots. In practice, you have to call the adventuring day off, because you can't do anything worthwile. Remember : the adventuring day ends when the spellcasters become useless.
This is a huge hit to spellcasters' usefulness. They wanted to balance spellcasters and martial, but in the end, they did it by making spellcasting useless and nerfing martials, since martials' cool options are now class-gated.
This is just another instance of how problems in the rules were created : the devs had a bunch of good ideas in theory, but mixed them badly and tryed to do to much with them in practice :
- Heightening is cool. It's like PF1 occult spellcasting : you learn one spell, you learn all of its variants. So you learn Heal, and BAM ! You have all versions of Heal. But Heightening should have stayed for spells which truly needed it. Heightening on blast spells, healing and some specific buffs is okay. Heightening on Phantom Steed and Mage Armor is useless. And the current Heightening doesn't work with the lower number of spell slots.
- Spontaneous heightening is the worse. It totally contradicts the main interest of Heightening : that you only have to learn the spell at its first level, and you're done. Sorcerers have to learn every level of the heightened spell they want to use : why ?
- 4 degrees of success on spells is a very cool thing. It allows spells to still do things even on a successful save roll, and could allow them to do incredible things on a critical failure. But now most of the spells are not that great even on a failure, and require the ennemy to make a critical failure to do what they used to do. And combined with the new monsters' stats, you can't even dream of the monsters making critical failures when you only have 50% to make them fail their saves.
- Lower number of spell slots is okay, I guess. It eases play, it's easier now to know when you get new spell levels. Not really my jam, but I can go with it. But mixed with nerfed spells and heigtening, you really feel like going from being a marathonian to an old senile man with arthritis.
Really, I liked Heightening and degrees of success when they were announced. I still want to like them. But the announcement of Spontaneous Heightening was a cold shower to me. And now that I have the whole Rulebook, I can't like them anymore.
I really want to highlight this post since it came dead last on the last page of the thread but deserves to be read by more people. It's excellent. Although I disagree on heightening for blasting spells being balanced, it's contributing to making their opportunity cost way too high for what they do under the 50% chance paradigma.
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I really want to highlight this post since it came dead last on the last page of the thread but deserves to be read by more people. It's excellent. Although I disagree on heightening for blasting spells being balanced, it's contributing to making their opportunity cost way too high for what they do under the 50% chance paradigma.
Thank you for the highlight ! :3
I agree with your disagreement. I don't really like heightening blasting spells myself, but after debating about it with one of my players, I think it's acceptable. I prefer them scaling with levels, sure, but I can accept my Fireball heightening like a Heal spell. At least I have other spells at the same level as most of my heightened spells that can do blasting as efficiently. I can't say the same about buffs, debuffs and utilitary spells which tend to have pretty specific effects.
And I don't think the current Heightening on blast spells is balanced either.
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It would make matters much easier for new GM's if the teleport spell made reference to some of its own countermeasures, and they had sufficiently broad distribution that it would be easy for a GM to use them.
I strongly support this. Detection spells can't pass many barriers, the same kind of limitation would add a lot of balance to teleport spells.
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[Thank you for the highlight ! :3
I won't go into a spiel about senpai/kohei, because it would be wildly inappropiate. :p
I agree with your disagreement. I don't really like heightening blasting spells myself, but after debating about it with one of my players, I think it's acceptable. I prefer them scaling with levels, sure, but I can accept my Fireball heightening like a Heal spell. At least I have other spells at the same level as most of my heightened spells that can do blasting as efficiently. I can't say the same about buffs, debuffs and utilitary spells which tend to have pretty specific effects.
And I don't think the current Heightening on blast spells is balanced either.
Well, as I laid out before, I think with no way to increase the damage or DC of blasting spells and with the huge opportunity cost of needing to cast Fireball as an eight level spell to have a chance to do anything close to decent damage at 15th level and the 50% success/failure chance on everything... the benefits are just not there anymore. The developers need to do something to make blasting more attractive again.
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Everyone needs magic armor. The same way everyone needs magical weapons (even casters need spell dueling wand/golves)
I'm not too keen on mandatory items like that (to keep up), every wizard is walking around with the same bracelets.
And everyone needing magic armor is a bad thing. Magical items should be the exception, and exceptional, not the norm.
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To me as a player, the biggest disincentive for teleporting to the end is that you tend to miss out on important parts of the adventure.
You miss out on clues, loot, background story, possible new allies and NPC friends, scenery and mileus. You miss out on putting down the BBEG's lieutenants and prospective successors on the way. You simply miss out on having a lot of fun.
Yet at the same time sometimes you just need to go from place A to place B. Not every travel in a campaign needs to be a Lords of the Ring style epic marching montage through the mountains. In fact, many a journey in a lot of adventure paths has no clues, loot or background story at all, just random monster encounters which, to me at least, cost me time I could spend advancing the actual story. Hence, spells like Teleport.
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A thing that has not been posted about ehreis the extreme fragility of concentration. Basically, every attack will do more damage than your hit points. Even when you double the limit, most attacks will break your concentration. It has to, or the damage would simply be insignificant.
Some of the nerfs have compounding effectsThe heightened spells are a good example here. Replacing level scaling with heightening creates contention for higher-level spell slots, and because all spell slots have been cut roughly in half. That makes the higher slots less available. And because spell effects don't scale, you have an abundance of lower level slots that are increasingly underpowered as you level up.
In PF1, one of the reasons to Heighten a spell was to have the save DC keep up. That is no longer the case. Many save-or-suck spells don't need to be heightened to work in PF2, as the save DC is no longer related to spell level.
About having to heighten to do significant damage - in PF1 you had to put a lot of character resources into blasting to make it significant. Especially single-target damage. Blasting felt like a minor contribution unless you were really specialized in it. Even then, blaster seemed worse than buffer/debuffer or control in almost every situation. So this is is not something new in PF2 - but it IS taken to greater extremes. Too far IMO. A bad option has been made even worse.
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Second, please re-read uncommon and rare spells, the actual wording is “you can’t choose an uncommon or rare spell unless your class OR the GM gives you access to it.” That is an OR not an AND, so if I want an Uncommon or a Rare spell I pick those spells for my free spells.
My reading of this is that if a class feature such as a bloodline gives you access to a spell, you get it even if it is not common. This does not mean you can learn an uncommon spell as you level up. If it were so, sorcerers could ignore spell rarity - they get ALL their spells from class features.
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Sorry if I make many posts in a row. I kept my reply windows open and unposted to see if anyone else had made a reply to each issue.
To sum up my own reaction to PF2, especially as it relates to spells, it has lost its sense of wonder.
* No longer can a druid frolic with dolphins, as the change only lasts a minute.
* No longer can you transform the party into a pack of wolves and run the distance (admittedly, that was a too-high-level effect to be practical in PF1)
* Scrying and divination feel like surveillance cameras more than mystic visions.
* Message can't keep the other players involved as one player is off on some specialized caper.
* No longer can an unusual monster in a scenario be explained away as being charmed, since it has such a short duration.
* No longer can floating disc be used as an arbalest-platform.
I am very happy that some spells that were broken have been nerfed; hideous laughter, glitterdust and web being the worst offenders. I am surprised that mirror image has not been hit by the nerfbat yet.
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The fact that they combined the heigthened spells, the nerf of spell slots, and the nerf of spells is what makes me think Spellcasters in general are bad now. You have less spell slots - it could be okay by its own. But now, the spells have been nerfed, making a bunch of spells useless at their PF1 level (Mage Armor being +1 to AC only for exemple). And, now you have to heighten your spells to make them usefull : you need a 6th level Mage Armor (if I remember correctly, don't have the Rulebook on me at the time) to get back this +4 to AC, and you have to heighten Phantom Steed to get what it did in PF1, while this is a purely utilitary skill for a Wizard.
Your argument would have been a lot stronger if you had either left out the Mage Armor or done a more complete analysis.
In PF1, Mage Armor gave the same AC bonus as a chain shirt (+4) but started with a duration that may require more than one casting.
In PF2, Mage Armor lasts all day but starts at about the protection level of leather armor. As you heighten it, it keeps pace with about where leather armor would be assuming you upgrade it. Heightened to 2nd level it would be on par with the Chain Shirt or magical Leather. Heightened to 3rd level it would be about where magical Chain Shirt would be. It continues to increase the protection and always has an excellent duration.
In both versions the Mage Armor has features that makes it better than armor: no weight, no Dex cap, etc.
You need to evaluate the bonus against the new values that armor gives. It is complicated since most armor gives a lesser protection against TAC and then you have the enchantments that give the save bonus.
Note I am not saying there aren’t problems here, only that comparing directly against the bonus given by PF1 can be misleading because equipment scaling has changed as well.
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But really, this is all down to the main thrust of PF2, which is: Keep everyone in line to make everything easier to control.
This has a name. It is called balance.
I am not certain at all whether you, Malkov, are for or against it, but I will say that the people against it are almost always the ones benefitted by the imbalance.
When children complain that something is "unfair" what they often mean is that it is not unfair in their favor. I think the folks at Paizo understand this and are accounting for it.
Here's the key to understanding why perfect balance is unnecessary: everyone will benefit from the imbalance you mentioned if all classes have cool and fun imbalanced options to begin with.
At the moment, you can roll just about any class, martial or spellcaster, and you probably won't feel very unique in your gameplay with either of them.
The issue we are trying to address is that martial characters are going to be mildly disappointed that they don't feel as heroic as they had hoped while spellcasters will be much worse, questioning why they even went with the class they chose to begin with.
You seem to act as though the specific spellcasting classes at hand being completely underpowered is OK, presumably because they are arcane spellcasters to begin with.
You think the game in its current state is balanced?
Channel Energy is quite OP at the moment. No reason to go Divine Sorcerer, in my opinion. You want to be a healer, you have to be a Cleric.
Fighters win the action economy and other threads on these forums have proven that even Barbarians, supposedly kings of melee damage because they have less defense, pale in comparison.
The game is not balanced and it probably shouldn't be 100% so.
I don't usually play as a Cleric but you won't see me argue for Channel Energy to be nerfed.
It's a cool ability that allows Clerics to contribute to the party, feel relevant and appreciated.
What I'm asking is for arcane spellcasters to also be given some tools that will make them feel unique and relevant too.
At the moment, I do feel unique in a very bad way.
I'm the single one character that has the less defense, the less offense, questionable utility and poor ability to contribute meaningfully to the adventure.
Granted, most of the party is made of martial characters but still...
I understand from this thread that a lot of people supposedly hated arcane spellcasters in 1.0 because they were, apparently, too OP.
If the idea of the game being balanced is that arcane spellcasters should be nerfed to the ground while some other classes are barely touched (and sometimes even improved) well...
I'd say we're not too far from the kid from your example that wants everybody else to start running with a 2 pounds sack of rice AND give them a headstart because otherwise, they wouldn't stand a chance to win the race.
Giving the kid a headstart alone (a buff) would have been fair.
Nerfing their opponents as well by having them run while carrying a sack of rice on their shoulders was uncalled for and ruins balance.
It does create imbalance in favor of the kid that used to always lose though.
But it does not succeed at making everybody feel that they had an equal chance to have fun in the first place.
The kid might have asked for a fair chance to win, but what they got instead was imbalance in their favor, which shouldn't be the aim here.
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In PF2, Mage Armor lasts all day but starts at about the protection level of leather armor. As you heighten it, it keeps pace with about where leather armor would be assuming you upgrade it. Heightened to 2nd level it would be on par with the Chain Shirt or magical Leather. Heightened to 3rd level it would be about where magical Chain Shirt would be. It continues to increase the protection and always has an excellent duration.
Nah, it never increases from the protection level of basic nonmagic leather.
Unless you mean Mage Armor++ Heightened Supreme Ultra version, but that's using a higher level spell slot and needs to be treated as a different spell, compared to powerhouse higher level defensive spells like Greater Invis, Flight, Displacement, Globe of Invulnerability, etc.
You can't compare using a level 1 spell in Pf1 to using your highest level spell in PF2, just because it 'can be hightened and is initially a level 1 spell'.
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I am surprised that mirror image has not been hit by the nerfbat yet.
It has: you can't heighten it and you don't get more images the higher level you are.
It used to be 1d4 images plus 1 every 3 caster levels, for a maximum of 8 images.Now it's just 3 images always. :)
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The fact that they combined the heigthened spells, the nerf of spell slots, and the nerf of spells is what makes me think Spellcasters in general are bad now. You have less spell slots - it could be okay by its own. But now, the spells have been nerfed, making a bunch of spells useless at their PF1 level (Mage Armor being +1 to AC only for exemple). And, now you have to heighten your spells to make them usefull : you need a 6th level Mage Armor (if I remember correctly, don't have the Rulebook on me at the time) to get back this +4 to AC, and you have to heighten Phantom Steed to get what it did in PF1, while this is a purely utilitary skill for a Wizard.Your argument would have been a lot stronger if you had either left out the Mage Armor or done a more complete analysis.
In PF1, Mage Armor gave the same AC bonus as a chain shirt (+4) but started with a duration that may require more than one casting.
In PF2, Mage Armor lasts all day but starts at about the protection level of leather armor. As you heighten it, it keeps pace with about where leather armor would be assuming you upgrade it. Heightened to 2nd level it would be on par with the Chain Shirt or magical Leather. Heightened to 3rd level it would be about where magical Chain Shirt would be. It continues to increase the protection and always has an excellent duration.
In both versions the Mage Armor has features that makes it better than armor: no weight, no Dex cap, etc.
You need to evaluate the bonus against the new values that armor gives. It is complicated since most armor gives a lesser protection against TAC and then you have the enchantments that give the save bonus.
Note I am not saying there aren’t problems here, only that comparing directly against the bonus given by PF1 can be misleading because equipment scaling has changed as well.
I completely forgot to talk about spell duration. Okay, here I go :
Spell duration is bad in PF2.
Okay, Mage Armor level 1 is 1 day long in PF2. But generally, at my table, we say that a generic adventuring day is 8 to 9 hours long : you sleep 8 hours minimum (you add 1 hour per character for making shifts to make sure nobody attacks you in your sleep, so +4 hours for a typical party), everyone spends 1 hour to prepare their spells, which leaves you with 11 hours (roughly). You have to spend time equiping yourself, break camp, then set up camp at night and spend time healing and tending to your wounds. So at level 8~9, your Mage Armor is long enough to be usefull all day long. At lower levels, you cast your Mage Armor when you start taking serious hits or near the end of the dungeon (at around level 4-5 I stop casting Mage Armor multiple time and just wait for the correct moment). Those low levels will go fast if you do a campaign thanks to how exp scales in PF1, and, as one of my friends told me, "the real fun starts at level 10."
Even like that, this calculation doesn't count the fact that you will stop the adventuring day when your spellcasters will run out of spells. Which tend to take less than 8 hours.
And still, at least at mid-level and high-level you still used that 1st level spell slot to cast your Mage Armor in PF1. If you take the 11 hours day, counting out everything other than spell preparation and sleeping for a 4 PCs party, you would hit the same duration in PF1 and PF2, but you would spend a 4th or 6th level spell slot.
Still, you had a good point : it's true that Mage Armor can be an outlier since its duration is a whole day. But most of PF2's other buffs have been reduced to 1 minutes, even when heightened, which is really bad compared to PF1 durations.
Edit : a good exemple of a spell for which the duration is bad is Mirror Image which Starfox and dnoisette are currently talking about. It was minute/level in PF1, it is now a minute top.
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A thing that has not been posted about ehreis the extreme fragility of concentration. Basically, every attack will do more damage than your hit points. Even when you double the limit, most attacks will break your concentration. It has to, or the damage would simply be insignificant.
You know, when most people say "there are too many problems to list", it's hyperbole. But when I read the above, I realized, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that one." Because there are too many problems to list. :(
Also, what you wrote there. This falls under compounding effects, too: The reduced ranges puts casters closer to the fray, dropping AoO's from most classes means more battlefield maneuverability, and the 3 action/reaction system allows for a double-move and a strike. All this combines to make casters extremely vulnerable.
But since their spells suck, maybe no one will bother. :)
I am surprised that mirror image has not been hit by the nerfbat yet.It has: you can't heighten it and you don't get more images the higher level you are.
It used to be 1d4 images plus 1 every 3 caster levels, for a maximum of 8 images.
Now it's just 3 images always. :)
I do agree its weaker than in PF1. I was referring to the miss chance. How creating more than 1 image can make it harder to hit than if you were invisible eludes me. Closing your eyes before attacking actually improves your chance of hitting vs. mirror image. Its in my mind an overpowered effect, that makes other defenses seem lackluster.
But this is a minor question, lets not blow it out of proportion. I answered mainly to show my rationale. Having one overpowered effect does not make arcane casters a good option.
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A thing that has not been posted about ehreis the extreme fragility of concentration. Basically, every attack will do more damage than your hit points. Even when you double the limit, most attacks will break your concentration. It has to, or the damage would simply be insignificant.
In order to break concentration the damage has to hit during your concentration action.
If you take damage from a reaction triggered by any of your spellcasting actions while Casting a Spell or the Concentrate on a Spell action, your spell may be disrupted.
The only ways to accomplish that so far are (1) an attack of opportunity by a fighter or monster with the Disruptive feat/ability or (2) a readied action (at a cost of two actions plus one reaction to make a single one action attack) that is set with a trigger of your PC taking the Concentrate on a Spell action.
The first ability is very rare, the second tactic is inefficient and unlikely to be attempted unless you're facing knowledgeable enemies who think it's worth to get rid of a spell. For example, this would be a defensible tactic if you're facing a tough summoned creature (LOL) and you think hitting the caster once to disrupt it is easier than attacking the summoned creature directly.
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bit of Playtest data from my game I'm running. We are on chapter 2 so 4th level characters. Our Draconic Sorcerer who took the Fighter Dedication feat and Magical Striker Sorcerer feat is dealing the most damage of the party. He chose a wand of true strike as one of his 2nd level items. He's wearing Expert Full Plate and has a 16 str, and 18 charisma. His mvp spell has been mirror image so far. Really really good spell and saved his ass a few times. Also true strike is greatly useful. One action, and allows him to activate Magical Striker on his claws. Another thing to note is that "Powers" count as spells. So Magical Striker activates when he first activates his claws as well. He has a bit of an hp problem with Sorcerers only gaining 6 per level and his con is especially high, but he has been using false life at the start of every day to get an extra 10 to basically make up for the hp loss from not being a martial character.
In order to break concentration the damage has to hit during your concentration action.
...
the second tactic is inefficient and unlikely to be attempted unless you're facing knowledgeable enemies who think it's worth to get rid of a spell. For example, this would be a defensible tactic if you're facing a tough summoned creature (LOL) and you think hitting the caster once to disrupt it is easier than attacking the summoned creature directly.
The last tactic is, quite frankly, obvious. Considering how easy it is to break that concentration action, and that summoned creatures shift the action economy around, it's more than worth the effort to hit the spell caster.
Concentration is also more of a thing in PF2. There are 328 spells and 36 of them have a duration of concentration, including a couple of classic buff, debuff and battlefield control spells.
Bane
Bless
Calm Emotions
Divine Aura
Drop Dead
Duplicate Foe
Enthrall
Ethereal Jaunt
Field of Life
Flaming Sphere
Gate
Hideous Laughter
Hypnotic Pattern
Illusory Creature
Implosion
Locate
Maze
Mislead
Possession
Project Image
Prying Eye
Retrocognition
Revival
Scintillating Pattern
Scrying
Spiritual Guardian
Spiritual Weapon
Storm of Vengeance
Summon Monster
Summon Nature's Ally
Telekinetic Haul
Unfathomable Song
Unseen Servant
Veil
Vibrant Pattern
Note that this ~10% figure is true for powers, too.
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That was the binary issues of the God wizard builds. They either destroyed an adventure (and I mean 100% destroy) or they were made useless by specific countermeasures against their characters, which sucked.
...
The general power level of specific things can be fixed. But god forbid we turn back to the terrible days of max 12 level characters because the game was plainly broken after that.
I have yet to see anyone claim that casters should not be toned down. If there is someone saying that, then they are on the fringe.
The argument being made in this thread is that massive nerfs to multiple areas are being applied to the class all at once. I'd accept a lot of these as-is, and some spells (e.g. Haste) were in need of tuning. But, all of these nerfs all at the same time is a bit much.
plus, all this investigation stuff you're talking about was obsolete with discern location and find the path and etc
you had to tailor make challenges that were made specifically against the divination methods of the party to even have an adventure.
The #1 problem there is and always has been that Teleport and Greater Teleport let you go somewhere that you'd never been before. Fixing this is not rocket science, and it doesn't require beating every spell into submission.
Edited to add: Passwall was actually a bigger offender in "skip to the end" syndrome. Notice how it's not in the Playtest, and no one is arguing about that?
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bit of Playtest data from my game I'm running. We are on chapter 2 so 4th level characters. Our Draconic Sorcerer who took the Fighter Dedication feat and Magical Striker Sorcerer feat is dealing the most damage of the party. He chose a wand of true strike as one of his 2nd level items. He's wearing Expert Full Plate and has a 16 str, and 18 charisma. His mvp spell has been mirror image so far. Really really good spell and saved his ass a few times. Also true strike is greatly useful. One action, and allows him to activate Magical Striker on his claws. Another thing to note is that "Powers" count as spells. So Magical Striker activates when he first activates his claws as well. He has a bit of an hp problem with Sorcerers only gaining 6 per level and his con is especially high, but he has been using false life at the start of every day to get an extra 10 to basically make up for the hp loss from not being a martial character.
My boyfriend is playing the exact same version of this build, while I am the DM.
I agree that it works, it's fun, effective, and lets Sorcerers shine in combat encounters.Here's the issue though: this character is not a spellcaster, it's a gish.
My boyfriend is happy with it because his favorite class in 1.0 is the Magus.
In short, he enjoys playing as a Sorcerer because it makes him feel like he is playing a Magus.
Does nothing really seem wrong here?
If the only way to optimize a Fighter character were to play as an archer, you can be sure people would throw up their hands and ask: "Where is my traditional Fighter, you know, the guy with a big sword and heavy armor who doesn't care for sniping their opponents because he's smashing them to bits?"
Just take a look at people complaining that archer Rangers aren't supported right now. They're disappointed because many go Ranger to match the Legolas fantasy, not the Paizo fantasy of dwarfen Ranger with a crossbow.
I want a true spellcaster and I don't want to be forced into melee combat, picking up armor and weapon, in order to not be a liability for the party.
I know that I can make a spellcaster work this way, just as I know that I can make a blaster effective if I mix in some melee combat elements with it.
Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning/Fireball/Cone of Cold do not require an attack roll, will trigger Magical Striker, and will let you Strike after casting at no penalty.
Because you are a Sorcerer, you can decide which to use on the fly, depending on your opponent's resistances, immunities and weaknesses (thus, you don't even really need metamagic to overcome resistances).
The overall damage of elemental spells and melee strikes combined is really good, though it remains limited by your number of spell slots per day.
In short, you're a Magus, that fires big BOOM several times a day but must decide when is the best time to do that.
I am strongly convinced that there is room for a true spellcaster character that does not contribute with raw damage but rather strategic thinking and battlefield control, without being OP.
The way to achieve that is for devs to decide what they would rather nerf (spell slots, spell themselves or spell DCs) without hammering on all of it at the same time.
Because they should have just rolled Wizard and Sorcerer under the new Magus class and call it a day if the only way to contribute effectively is going to reside in building a magical fighter.
Edited to add: Passwall was actually a bigger offender in "skip to the end" syndrome. Notice how it's not in the Playtest, and no one is arguing about that?
[Narrator's Voice] "It was in the Playtest."
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[Narrator's Voice] "It was in the Playtest."
Edited to add: Passwall was actually a bigger offender in "skip to the end" syndrome. Notice how it's not in the Playtest, and no one is arguing about that?
I am getting old. :(
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going someplace unknown, seeing what you're facing, teleporting away, loading the exact correct spells to counter whatever you saw, and teleport back the next day, was just as common of a terrible issue.
So, why exactly is this a problem? Let's look at it this way: party fights their way in to get a look at the Big Bad, which means they've been fighting their way in and risking their lives. They learn some things about Big Bad once they get close enough, and teleport out to safety before Big Bad and its minions can find them. Next, they spend some think time, planning for an assault based on the Big Bad's capabilities and weaknesses, and come back the next day or whenever to make the attack.
Now, myself, I call that "strategy". And the play session is a mixture of role-play, combat, and OOC discussion as the players put their heads together to find the best way to attack Big Bad as a team. I mean, to me, that sounds like a pretty good game session. But you're calling it badwrongfun.
Why do you want to keep the players in mortal peril the entire time? Why make them go through the drudgery of walking all the way out of the Big Bad's Lair followed by the drudgery of going back in? Most players I know don't call that fun. We call it tedium.
Paizo seems to agree that this is potentially badwrongfun, since they put Teleport and the extra-dimensional camping spells on the Uncommon list. I guess the only official way to have fun is to break in to the dungeon or keep or castle every day after you hit your 3-encounter/day limit?
Now, if you're the kind of GM that doesn't want this encounter to be that easy, then don't make it that easy. Maybe the Big Bad went for lunch and isn't where the players think it is when they return. Oops! Maybe the Big Bad has mooks that weren't around yesterday, or that the PC's just didn't see because they only went in so far. Maybe the Big Bad has been looking for them, too, and uses magic to locate their camp site. And so on. All these answers are better than "Teleport sucks now".
As it is, many people, including me, like magic being both impressive and useful in their FANTASY rpg. If Paizo goes forward with anything approaching the current level of "nerfing", I expect a drop off in Pathfinder players, approaching what happened between 3.0/3.5 and 4th edition. Which means Paizo is out of business, just like WOTC got taken over (and then released 5th edition - which PF2 is going to have to compete with...).
Hasbro bought out WotC nearly 20 years ago. What influence Hasbro had on 4th Edition is unclear.
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I am very happy that some spells that were broken have been nerfed; hideous laughter, glitterdust and web being the worst offenders. I am surprised that mirror image has not been hit by the nerfbat yet.
It has. Your images are fixed at three and it has a one-minute duration. There's more, but those are the two nerfs which stand out.
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The general power level of specific things can be fixed. But god forbid we turn back to the terrible days of max 12 level characters because the game was plainly broken after that.
I always wonder if people who post stuff like that actually have ever played beyond level 12 or just had GM's who wouldn't reign in the resident powergamer of the group. Given that I've GM'ed about ten campaigns to their end (three homebrewn to level 20, the rest Paizo AP's to level 16-18), I know that such statements as yours are hyperbole.
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If you call legitimate high level tactics "cheese" yes that's insulting. If you cannot fathom that someone loves using teleport for back-and-forthing with opposition, using all the divinations in the book just to be on the right track because there are no clues, using advanced minionmancy (simulacrums, undead, planar bindings...) because you're being invaded by armies, and using clones, time stops, true resurrections and trap the souls because the game is that deadly, then you just don't get high level play. If you feel that way, don't play it. Nobody is forcing you to use teleport or other high level spells. And no, I haven't seen any high level rogues or fighter (except in my martial campaign that went to about 13th) 'cause in current (PF1) system they're crap and they don't play the same game high level casters play.
Does that mean high level caster just should not exist? Or that I can play a low-mid level campaign with fighter and rogue and play mid-high level with full casters or vice versa knowing it's just important to not mix those two and get good results.
Are these issues that are worth fixing? Maybe, IDK, all I know I cannot play my high level game in PF2 as it stands.
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Thankfully, the majority of people dislike those kind of shenanigans
Citation needed. Also, as to "god wizards", what pad300 said. They are mostly a problem in theory.
And that kinda is what I've felt when reading so many passages in the playtest rulebook. It seems that the developers tried to avoid having these kind of discussions happen anymore on the messageboards for PF2E, so everything which was mildly controversial was nerfed from all sides.
So, why exactly is this a problem? Let's look at it this way: party fights their way in to get a look at the Big Bad, which means they've been fighting their way in and risking their lives. They learn some things about Big Bad once they get close enough, and teleport out to safety before Big Bad and its minions can find them. Next, they spend some think time, planning for an assault based on the Big Bad's capabilities and weaknesses, and come back the next day or whenever to make the attack.
Now, myself, I call that "strategy". And the play session is a mixture of role-play, combat, and OOC discussion as the players put their heads together to find the best way to attack Big Bad as a team. I mean, to me, that sounds like a pretty good game session. But you're calling it badwrongfun.
Why do you want to keep the players in mortal peril the entire time? Why make them go through the drudgery of walking all the way out of the Big Bad's Lair followed by the drudgery of going back in? Most players I know don't call that fun. We call it tedium.
Paizo seems to agree that this is potentially badwrongfun, since they put Teleport and the extra-dimensional camping spells on the Uncommon list. I guess the only official way to have fun is to break in to the dungeon or keep or castle every day after you hit your 3-encounter/day limit?
Now, if you're the kind of GM that doesn't want this encounter to be that easy, then don't make it that easy. Maybe the Big Bad went for lunch and isn't where the players think it is when they return. Oops! Maybe the Big Bad has mooks that weren't around yesterday, or that the PC's just didn't see because they only went in so far. Maybe the Big Bad has been looking for them, too, and uses magic to locate their camp site. And so on. All these...
A giant "Yes!" to all of this.
I can't help but notice the irony in this statement, as it implies the other poster's statement is unqualified because he/she hasn't played the game at a higher level. This is the same sort of gatekeeping that you were against in another thread, no?
EDIT: Wait, it wasn't in another thread, it's in this very same thread, same page even. Wouldn't you say it's a bit hypocritical to accuse someone else of gatekeeping then turning around and doing the same thing?
The premise is different in the first place. Saying "you can't make meaningful contributions to the playtest discussion if you've done statistical analysis instead of actual playtesting" is not the same as "have you even played high-level games?", since the first question puts actual two informed opinions (just different kinds of information) against each other, while the second calls into question if the indicated person has any actual real information at all.