Bard looking to increase his spell DC or reliably land

[Atalius]

Hi all, I'm trying to figure out some ways to boost my spell DC or increase my chances of a spell landing on the enemy.

[Xenocrat]

Max Charisma, debuff, that’s all you can do.

Demoralize use of intimidate skill or Dirge of Doom are your best debuffs, Touch of Idiocy at higher levels to try a low level spell to set up w high level spell.

[Unicore]

Boosting Spell DC is almost entirely about attributes and proficiency, not feats.

Landing spells in PF2 is much more about tactics and strategy than it is about character build. Learning about your enemies weaknesses will probably be the easiest way to make sure your spells are effective as that difference can easily swing 4 points in any direction, just as it is pretty important to make sure you are not casting spells that let your enemy shift successes up to critical saves or critical failures up to failures. Casting spells that only hit hard on failed saves or critically failed saves is best done after your party has gone to lengths to debuff the relevant save as much as possible.

[Blave]

- Max and boost your Charisma.

- Debuff enemies with Demoraize/Dirge of Doom. Also get Goblin Song if possible.

- Make sure to heighten your Incapacitation spells and don't use them on bosses.

- Try to target the enemy's weakest save. Don't use Fort Save spells on brutish enemies, don't target the will save of casters and don't throw reflex saves at nimble enemies.

- Accept that most spells still have an effect even if the enemy succeeds on the save and that this effect (while usually nothing to write home about) is still something you've accomplished.

- Use your third action to still do something effective even if the enemy succeeds on his save.

[pauljathome]

Unicore wrote:

Learning about your enemies weaknesses

How?

One of the main issues that I'm currently having with PF2 is that Information on your enemies seems very hard to get.

Even after investing in knowledge skills AND taking actions to gain knowledge all you get is the pittance the GM decides to tell you. No questioning any more. And a success yields ONE bit of information.

In a home game the GM might allow opportunities to research stuff but in PFS (and most games I've been in) this is very rare. Usually the first chance you have is when initiative is rolled.

The rules seem to actively encourage GMs to be very stingy on information and many GMs seem to embrace that.

And thats at low levels where monster s only have 1 or 2 abilities. I shudder to think what will happen at high levels when monsters have literally dozens.

[HammerJack]

To be fair, asking question about what, specifically, you wanted to know about a monster in 1E was always just a common houserule, not something laid out in the rules.

There is also textual support for different knowledge skills to learn different things about a creature. The example used is golems, but it could just as easily be an undead tiger and using nature for things you should know about it as a tiger or religion for learning about its undead abilities.

[Edge93]

Yeah, like, I've looked at the PF1 Knowledge checking and it really isn't much different at all. It's a matter of how your GM handles knowledge, just as it was then.

Even then, there's a lot of common sense involved in guessing bad saves

[thenobledrake]

pauljathome wrote:

Unicore wrote:

Learning about your enemies weaknesses

How?

Familiarize yourself with the game content as a player.

Yes, I know there are going to be people that react to that with "players shouldn't read the bestiary" or other similar comments that decry knowing the game itself as "metagaming" - but that's illogical and unhelpful ways of thinking about the game. For one, because so much of it implies that you have to choose to either be a player or be a GM, because if you dare choose to be both you have done all manner of things a player "should never do."

For two because a lot of things that a character would know having grown up in the world they live in, studied the subjects they've studied, and lived the life of an adventurer as they have are easily communicated to the player by having a general knowledge of the game stats of various creatures - and often completely glossed over by GMs because there just isn't the time needed to cover everything a character does or does not know during session time.

Plus, there are usually visual cues that a character should be seeing - even when the GM isn't being so descriptive as to constantly mention all the minute details of them - that indicate qualities of the creatures seen, making the determination of which save(s) are more or less likely to resist a spell and whether AC would be a better or worse choice to target. You don't need to Recall Knowledge because it's not some detail you are attempting to remember, it's information that is presently directly before you.

[Ascalaphus]

pauljathome wrote:

How?

One of the main issues that I'm currently having with PF2 is that Information on your enemies seems very hard to get.

Even after investing in knowledge skills AND taking actions to gain knowledge all you get is the pittance the GM decides to tell you. No questioning any more. And a success yields ONE bit of information.to think what will happen at high levels when monsters have literally dozens.

Asking questions in PF1 was a custom, not a rule. All the PF1 CRB says is that the GM shall furnish the players with bits of useful information.

People adopted the question method as the most straightforward way of indicating to the GM what kinds of things would be really useful information to them. But that was never a rule. Often the GM choosing some of the bits themselves would get the players better information because there are some questions you wouldn't think to ask.

[pauljathome]

For those who may be interested, I split out my issues with knowledge checks into its own thread

I apologize for partly derailing this one. If you want to comment on knowledge checks in PF2 that is probably a good place to go

[Claxon]

Yeah, there was never a mechanism to learn a creatures weak save, except for having a generous GM.

PF1 didn't let you ask questions.

Now, creature type used to be a fair indicator of what saves were good and which were bad. But I don't think that's necessarily true anymore.

[Deadmanwalking]

Creature type isn't, but usually just the creature's description will tell you. Big slow looking things tend towards low Reflex, skinny weak looking things tend towards low Fortitude, and stupid or impulsive things usually have low Will.

In all cases there are exceptions (notably stubborn creatures with high Will even though they're dumb, for example), but really, logic will usually tell you which of a creature's Saves are highest or lowest.

Let's take a handful of creatures:

A Goblin Warrior, a Grizzly Bear, and an Ogre Warrior.

Quick, without thinking too much or looking it up, what do you think their Save hierarchy is?

Spoiler:

The Goblin Warrior has high Ref, middling Fort, low Will. The Grizzly has high Fort, middling Will, low Ref. The Ogre Warrior has high Fort, low Ref, and even lower Will.

Were you mostly right on those? Or at least able to rule out the high Save? If so, you can do this well enough in most cases. And none of that is metagaming, since those are easily perceptible in-universe things.

[Atalius]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Creature type isn't, but usually just the creature's description will tell you. Big slow looking things tend towards low Reflex, skinny weak looking things tend towards low Fortitude, and stupid or impulsive things usually have low Will.

In all cases there are exceptions (notably stubborn creatures with high Will even though they're dumb, for example), but really, logic will usually tell you which of a creature's Saves are highest or lowest.

Let's take a handful of creatures:

A Goblin Warrior, a Grizzly Bear, and an Ogre Warrior.

Quick, without thinking too much or looking it up, what do you think their Save hierarchy is?

** spoiler omitted **

Were you mostly right on those? Or at least able to rule out the high Save? If so, you can do this well enough in most cases. And none of that is metagaming, since those are easily perceptible in-universe things.

Well said.

[Claxon]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Creature type isn't, but usually just the creature's description will tell you. Big slow looking things tend towards low Reflex, skinny weak looking things tend towards low Fortitude, and stupid or impulsive things usually have low Will.

In all cases there are exceptions (notably stubborn creatures with high Will even though they're dumb, for example), but really, logic will usually tell you which of a creature's Saves are highest or lowest.

Let's take a handful of creatures:

A Goblin Warrior, a Grizzly Bear, and an Ogre Warrior.

Quick, without thinking too much or looking it up, what do you think their Save hierarchy is?

** spoiler omitted **

Were you mostly right on those? Or at least able to rule out the high Save? If so, you can do this well enough in most cases. And none of that is metagaming, since those are easily perceptible in-universe things.

I couldn't guess the weak saves, but was able to guess the high save.

[Deadmanwalking]

Claxon wrote:

I couldn't guess the weak saves, but was able to guess the high save.

In all cases the second highest Save was no more than two higher than the lowest, and their secondary Saves never got above a 50% success rate (nor do they for most other creatures).

Targeting relatively low Saves based on the creature's appearance isn't a sure thing, but it's at least as reliable as guessing based on creature type in PF1.

[thenobledrake]

Claxon wrote:

I couldn't guess the weak saves, but was able to guess the high save.

That's all it takes to be able to target a "weakness" with your spells... assuming, of course, you've got spells that target a variety of saves to choose from in the first place.

[Claxon]

thenobledrake wrote:

Claxon wrote:

I couldn't guess the weak saves, but was able to guess the high save.

That's all it takes to be able to target a "weakness" with your spells... assuming, of course, you've got spells that target a variety of saves to choose from in the first place.

Looking at various spell lists there appears to be a least a decent amount of diversity in terms of saves targeted.

Or at least, I was looking at the Occult spell list and found several will and fort save spells that looked like they could be worthwhile. I've been peeking into the "best spells per level thread" trying to get some general recommendations and craft a spell list while keeping save types in mind.

[thenobledrake]

There are decent options in all the spell lists, yes, a player just needs to actually make those choices rather than load up on one sort of thing.

I'm not saying it's common, but I've seen players go over-board chasing a particular concept like "blaster" or "manipulator" or the like and end up severely hindering the character in the process.

[shroudb]

Claxon wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

Claxon wrote:

I couldn't guess the weak saves, but was able to guess the high save.

That's all it takes to be able to target a "weakness" with your spells... assuming, of course, you've got spells that target a variety of saves to choose from in the first place.

Looking at various spell lists there appears to be a least a decent amount of diversity in terms of saves targeted.

Or at least, I was looking at the Occult spell list and found several will and fort save spells that looked like they could be worthwhile. I've been peeking into the "best spells per level thread" trying to get some general recommendations and craft a spell list while keeping save types in mind.

occult has a severe lack of Reflex saves though.

it kinda makes sense given the nature of the spells though, and even then it still has few (even if they seemed kinda meh to me)

from a quick look in the bestiary, it's usually safe to assume Will is the low save either way. If you exlude caster types, the trend is fort>ref>will

[Claxon]

shroudb wrote:

Claxon wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

Claxon wrote:

I couldn't guess the weak saves, but was able to guess the high save.

That's all it takes to be able to target a "weakness" with your spells... assuming, of course, you've got spells that target a variety of saves to choose from in the first place.

Looking at various spell lists there appears to be a least a decent amount of diversity in terms of saves targeted.

Or at least, I was looking at the Occult spell list and found several will and fort save spells that looked like they could be worthwhile. I've been peeking into the "best spells per level thread" trying to get some general recommendations and craft a spell list while keeping save types in mind.

occult has a severe lack of Reflex saves though.

it kinda makes sense given the nature of the spells though, and even then it still has few (even if they seemed kinda meh to me)

from a quick look in the bestiary, it's usually safe to assume Will is the low save either way. If you exlude caster types, the trend is fort>ref>will

I also noticed the occult list didn't seem to have many reflex save spells, which also made sense to me given the nature. They do have several fort and will, and it does seem like monsters tend to have only 1 good save, and the other two will be close. So I think it works out okay.

You may not be able to target their absolute weakest save, but you probably have something to target not their strong save.