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Premise
Whilst looking to make the character sheets for some NPC's, I looked at the damaging cantrips and discovered clear winners and losers.
So as not to get into the "Cantrips vs Martials" debate, I am going to restate this is about relative power of cantrips to each other.
I 'll address Disrupt Undead first, as it's niche and does the highest dmg dice, which seems about right.
Telekenetic Projectile also does the highest, but attack AC and requires ammo, so I see no issue here (except that weirdness of D8 at 3rd LVL)
Both Ray of Frost and Electric Arc are by far the best cantrips, in single target and multitarget respectively.
Acid Splash is tragic.
Chill Touch (which I am not going to bother addressing the undead side) is not worth the risk compared to Ray of Frost having the same damage from 60ft, and Produce flame just doesn't compete.
I have 2.5 solutions, Buffs, Nerfs, Nerfs with Minor Buffs.
Option 1: Buffs
Make TP D10 at all LVLs, because honestly I suspect that's a typo
Increase Chill Touch D8 -> D10 making it worth considering.
Produce Flame, Increase the LVL 1 base dmg from D4 -> D6, Increase the persistent dmg on crit from LVL3 and above from D4 -> D6.
Acid Splash, Double the persistent dmg on crit from 1/2/3/4/5 to 2/4/6/8/10, and make the splash damage scale like the old persistent damage, 1/2/3/4/5. Now if this is allowed to operate like an Alchemical Bomb, unless you crit fail to hit your target, you are doing damage. This would balance out the low dmg with almost certain dmg.
Option 2: Nerfs
Short and Sweet, drop both Ray of Frost and Electric Arc a dmg die.
Option 3: Nerfs with Minor Buffs
The Nerfs with the TP Buff, and the Acid Splash buff without the doubling of the persistent dmg.
Summary
I much prefer options 1 and 3, depending on issue of balance within the larger ruleset, but the simplicity of option 2 is undeniably attractive as solution.
I may post some kind of number graph or something later, depending on interest, but I've spend long enough on this project as is :P
Parduss wrote: Produce Flame Produce Flame is an odd one in that it is the only melee touch attack cantrip. Optional ranged touch too.
I'm not really sure how significant that is. I suppose it does mean you can attack using your STR modifier instead of DEX, but its an unusual caster that that is STR is higher than DEX and they will have a better weapon to use.
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Gortle wrote:
Produce Flame is an odd one in that it is the only melee touch attack cantrip. Optional ranged touch too.
Umm Chill Touch, it is melee touch only, but I have no clue where you are going with this.
The real issue with Produce Flame is that you crit with it, you bring your dmg slightly above the normal dmg of Ray of Frost, which means you'd have been better off just getting that crit on Ray of Frost.
Now if you want to take up 2 cantrips slots you can Produce Flame, crit and then start using Ray of Frost, but honestly combat should not take long enough for that to be a worthwhile strategy.
Basically Arcane and Primal Casters should never use any other dmg cantrips but Ray of Frost and/or Electric Arc until your GM starts throwing immunities at you.
Parduss wrote: Acid Splash is tragic. For some reason Acid Splash doesn't have the Attack tag and doesn't refer to the Strike action, so it isn't subject to MAP and doesn't affect MAP.
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I think the only real reason for Produce Flame is so that they have all the 'major' damage types (Acid, Cold, Fire, Electric, Positive, Negative, and Physical) in Cantrips. After all, exploiting Weaknesses is supposedly a thing casters are supposed to be good at. And then they tried to give each damage type a niche: Acid gets AoE and DoT, Cold gets Range, Fire gets flexibility (melee and range) and potential DoT, Electric is save-based and multi-target, Positive gets great damage but situational (as Positive tends to be), Negative is Melee and debuffs undead, and Physical has great damage but targets normal AC. This allows thematic casters focusing in one damage type to feel different from a caster focusing on a different type, and also allows someone with multiple damage cantrips to have a more interesting decision than "what damage type is it weak against, if any." Now whether they met that last goal or not is debatable, but I believe that was the goal at least.
As for the different damage die, I think that's supposed to be an allowance for ongoing damage effects. That said, Produce Flame probably should start at the 1d6 that it heightens into (and honestly, that may be as much a typo as Telekinetic Projectile, wouldn't surprise me in the least,) since its DoT only applies on the ever-rare crit.
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I would greatly prefer buffing the weak ones. Once my players thought about how cantrips take two actions, they quickly changed what they use. Now they only use Ray of frost, the electric one, and short bows. They have stopped using cantrips nearly so often (except the electric one) once they noticed that they can just shoot a short bow and cast a spell on the same turn. RIP acid splash, produce flame, and sometimes Ray of frost.
Shinigami02 wrote: ...all the 'major' damage types... I see the point of that mechanically, and narratively, but when you have clearly superior/inferior choices then mechanics start gutting the narrative choices.
Shinigami02 wrote: ...give each damage type a niche... Which is exactly what I have tried to strengthen, Ray of Frost and Electric Arc stay the DPR superior choices, but in certain scenarios the others pull ahead.
Shinigami02 wrote: ...Fire gets flexibility (melee and range)... With AoO being Fighter/Pally only, that has become much less of a concern, because the caster should be moving away to reduce incoming damage.
Shinigami02 wrote: ...allowance for ongoing damage effects... I also compensated for that, because the dmg die still isn't the same in the buff option, and the persisent dmg does not get +mod (which is also why I left the LVL 1 crit at the lower die, because nobody gets +mod there), and in the nerf versions, the crits are still lower dmg.
WhiteMagus2000 wrote: I would greatly prefer buffing the weak ones. I'd love to see someone else testing my ideas. *nudge* *nudge*
I think the shortbow thing is a legitimate tactic to use that extra action if you have no reason to move or use reach spell.
Yeah Electric Arc is the superior choice for just dmg, but even when fighting multiple enemies, often it's better to kill a single target faster to decrease incoming dmg.
I literally made my own custom mob that has stronger chances to hit, more dmg, more AC/TAC, and gains extra abilities the more of them there are, just to teach to focus fire a bit more, because I want to throw stronger s&$% at them, but I don't want them screwing around and then thinking the encounter was unfair.
Gaterie wrote: Parduss wrote: Acid Splash is tragic. For some reason Acid Splash doesn't have the Attack tag and doesn't refer to the Strike action, so it isn't subject to MAP and doesn't affect MAP.
Heal doesn't either, but Paizo has clarified that any time you need to make an attack roll, that's MAP.
Draco18s wrote: Heal doesn't either, but Paizo has clarified that any time you need to make an attack roll, that's MAP. Honestly, if one of my players wants to burn their spell slots using Heal/Harm to attack in melee range, the -4/-8 applying to their attacks isn't really the issue, it's that they've just burned 3 spell slots for what generally you can do with a melee weapon at lower levels or just casting one spell of the equivalent level.
At random, I just picked level 5 spells as an example, so you can do 5d8+5 (30) dmg to 3 targets, for 3 lvl 5 slots, or with Flame Strike, you can do 8D6 (32) dmg for 1 slot and 2 actions, even if you hit one enemy in that 10ft radius, you still have an extra action, and it doesn't require melee range, and you could likely hit more than 3.
Gaterie wrote: Parduss wrote: Acid Splash is tragic. For some reason Acid Splash doesn't have the Attack tag and doesn't refer to the Strike action, so it isn't subject to MAP and doesn't affect MAP.
Sure, let's all just rely on Crossbows instead. 2 Actions that can be split across rounds, 120ft range, and I'll just take Shield as my cantrip instead.
Parduss wrote: they've just burned 3 spell slots for what generally you can do with a melee weapon at lower levels or just casting one spell of the equivalent level. Cleric.
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs429hz?Bad-Touch-Cleric#1
Coincidentally, the first reply is Mark saying that MAP applies, even though Heal does not have the Attack trait.
Draco18s wrote: Coincidentally, the first reply is Mark saying that MAP applies, even though Heal does not have the Attack trait. Oh I'd expect that to be the official ruling, but I am just saying that even if you went RAW, it's not OP, not in the slightest.
I mean, probably not, but think about it from the other side:
Cleric makes 2 melee strikes then casts Harm at no multiattack penalty.
Its only one spell slot, but they basically got a big bang for an otherwise useless 3rd action.
Missed the real debate which would of been cantrips vrs catnip. Inquiring minds want to know!
Just a note, Disrupt Undead is worthless. First you have to hit and then the target gets a save.
thorin001 wrote: Just a note, Disrupt Undead is worthless. First you have to hit and then the target gets a save. Disrupt undead has no attack roll.
As above. Disrupt Undead is excellent if you have undead, as it's almost certain to do at least half damage. Fort tends to be the weakest save of undead too.
In PF1 DU required an attack roll, which may be where the assumption here comes from.
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