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Right now, it seems like casters need to have high dexterity to have any kind of effective ranged options and that seems weird to me. Looking through the cantrips, the only save-based direct damage options are disrupt undead (which is highly situational of course) and electric arc (which is quite good but it is odd that it is the only option).
I am fine with attack-roll-based cantrips doing more damage since it gives casters better reasons for investing in attack stats (though why they would ever invest in strength rather than dex is beyond me), but I feel like a casting-stat focused caster should have a few more options when they are not burning spell slots. For that matter, I feel like Warrior/Casters should be able to dump their dex a little bit and actually let their casting be a reliable ranged option rather than having to choose dex as their second best stat like nearly every other build in the game.
Disagree.
Casters needed dex for AC and ranged attacks in the last edition, and they need it in this one too.
If you want ranged attacks, you have to make the attack roll.
There are some attack options that don't have attack rolls, but those tend to be AoE attacks. By and large, single target attack spells target touch AC. This is true for both editions.
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Disagree.
Casters needed dex for AC and ranged attacks in the last edition, and they need it in this one too.
If you want ranged attacks, you have to make the attack roll.
There are some attack options that don't have attack rolls, but those tend to be AoE attacks. By and large, single target attack spells target touch AC. This is true for both editions.
"That is the way it has always been," seems like a silly argument to me.
Why is that a good thing, though? Why should one statistic have the entire hegemony of ranged combat and defenses?
It makes builds too boring and uniform. You will essentially always have dexterity as your first or second priority.
Also if we are going to talk about comparing between editions, touch attacks in 1e were way less tight in that you could have really high level enemies with really low touch AC so your low Dex wizard might still find a use for their various ray attacks; they would just need to limit themselves to well armored enemies that resembled the broad sides of barns. In 2e however, the difference between touch AC and regular AC is limited to being around 5 points or so at most so now casters with low dex might as well throw all "attacking" spells in the trash.
In some ways, I like that, even. It means that a cleric that pumps dex really hard will have a different suite of combat options than the one that pumps strength and con but leaves dex at their armor cap. Still, I feel like casters that do drop dex should have at least some menu of weaker outside options.
1st off cantrips take the place of weapon attacks for casters that don’t feel like investing heavily into a weapon so they should probably work similarly ie. an attack roll, 2. While TACs aren’t as low as they used to be the BABs aren’t as disparate either. Plus the caster can get the new spell duelist items that close the gap for spells that require an attack roll anyway. I’m not trying to completely discredit you post, there may be something worth working on here but I’m just posing a reason I saw right off the bat for why so many spells have an attack roll now.
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1st off cantrips take the place of weapon attacks for casters that don’t feel like investing heavily into a weapon so they should probably work similarly ie. an attack roll, 2. While TACs aren’t as low as they used to be the BABs aren’t as disparate either. Plus the caster can get the new spell duelist items that close the gap for spells that require an attack roll anyway. I’m not trying to completely discredit you post, there may be something worth working on here but I’m just posing a reason I saw right off the bat for why so many spells have an attack roll now.
Spell duelist items merely give the caster the item bonuses that they need to hit at all rather than "closing the gap".
That said, I kind of buy the argument that cantrips should maybe act like weapons if their purpose is only to replace weapon attacks for casters. That is certainly a balance concern. That said, I think you could allow "attack" cantrips to be the superior option and still have "save cantrips" be an option for casters that want to ignore traditional attack stats.
The ordering would just need to be something like this for damage efficacy:
Save Cantrips < Attack Cantrips w/ appropriate items < Weapon Attacks w/ appropriate items
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As much as I'd like to disagree, I've found myself building characters with access to electric arc precisely for this reason. Your character probably has access to human ancestry for the extra first level feat so they can grab an armor granting archetype at second level without skipping class feats entirely, so you may as well grab a electric arc with the other human ancestry feat.
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Well it's 2 out of 6 cantrips (8 if you count chill touch and tanglefoot), so it's a pretty big percentage of the cantrips. I'm sure with splat books there will come more cantrips so maybe damage ones that doesn't require attacks. In general when you are throwing something or using a ray it does seem like it should be a ranged touch attack to me.
However I do think tanglefoot should be a reflex save instead, but it's not that important to me one way or the other.
Why wouldn't you count chill touch? Also, one of those two only work on a single enemy type and can't really be relied on.
That said, it may be true that this is problem that will go away as splat books come out, but I worry that the designers will try to limit that design space unduly.
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Because the first post discussed ranged options, which Chill Touch isn't. Well attack with weapon and cantrip power (that isn't affected by MAP) will always be pretty strong as a backup plan, so to some extend it might be fair to limit this.
Why wouldn't you count chill touch? Also, one of those two only work on a single enemy type and can't really be relied on.That said, it may be true that this is problem that will go away as splat books come out, but I worry that the designers will try to limit that design space unduly.
That is fair. I was not considering some of the context of my original post.
One way to limit it would be have most new save cantrips require 3 actions. That would remove most instances of such cantrips interacting with iterative attacks being a problem; it also opens up design space for making more powerful save cantrips that don't invalidate the efficacy of more action-efficient attack-based cantrips.
Because the first post discussed ranged options, which Chill Touch isn't. Well attack with weapon and cantrip power (that isn't affected by MAP) will always be pretty strong as a backup plan, so to some extend it might be fair to limit this.
Why wouldn't you count chill touch? Also, one of those two only work on a single enemy type and can't really be relied on.That said, it may be true that this is problem that will go away as splat books come out, but I worry that the designers will try to limit that design space unduly.
Last I checked spell attacks that require a roll are both subject to and contribute to MAP, as they hold the "attack" type flag in their descriptors.
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Note that spells that have an attack roll, but do not have the attack trait still affect and are affected by MAP (eg. Using Heal on undead)