The Disappointment of Haste

[Ravingdork]

mrspaghetti wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

My battle oracle loves haste!

True strike
Bespell weapon
Strike
True strike
Bespell weapon
Strike

Makes for a pretty amazing round for damage, especially when you consider the higher chances for critical hits.

Bespell Weapon is only usable once per turn, though it lasts until the end of your turn, so technically it's

True Strike
Bespell Weapon
Strike
True Strike
Strike

:D

[The Gleeful Grognard]

Samurai wrote:

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

As long as ONE action they took was a strike or stride action they don't have to designate anything.

Power attack demoralize stride is valid for instance.

What if they want to Power attack, Demoralize, and Raise their shield because they are already in a good position? Does the Power attack count as a Strike (the feat actually says "make a strike")? Or does it need to be a separate, non-embellished, ordinary, single action strike? That is the kind of argument I want to avoid. And I could just say full MAP applies to your 4th action, but then it seems more weighted to helping spellcasters (especially ones that use a saving throw-based attack that doesn't have any MAP effects.) The martial character gets a 4th attack at up to a -15 on the attack roll, (almost definitely a crit fail) or a caster type could cast a 2 action spell, move, and then make an attack with no MAP penalty because it's his first attack of the round

Your issue is you aren't reading haste correctly.

"It gains the quickened condition and can use the extra action each round only for Strike and Stride actions."

A power attack gives you a strike, but it is not a strike action or a stride action. Both are clearly defined in the rules as their separate things.

So, if someone uses haste they either make a strike action, or a stride action as an extra action. Super easy to track, no need to ask "what action was your haste action".

Again, you gain one extra action. That action can only be used with a strike or stride action (both listed page 471 of the crb)

Also the fourth attack is always at maximum MAP, so -10, not sure where you got -15 from. pg. 446 of the CRB and in the index.

[ofMars]

Yeah, all this talk about how it's not useful to casters forget about being able to move AND apply metamagic to their spells, or move and 3-action magic missile, or move and 3-action heal. Pf2 is a very mobile game, which is why a lot of the number crunching theorycrafting often seems stuck on what looks like weak when just adding up damage for any given perceived nerf

[The DM of]

The more actions you and your allies have in a round and the less your opponents have is the fundamental dynamic for advantage in PF2.

[Krugus]

Wonder why the didn't just allow the Haste spell to give a separate action that allows the character to use any ability that uses a single action (that does not involve spell casting or metamagic) then you could the haste action to draw a weapon, stride or strike or a host of other mundane 1 action skills/abilities with out it interacting with 2 or 3 action abilities.

[Qaianna]

Samurai wrote:

Malk_Content wrote:

There us no arguement to have. Activities that contain actions are not the same as those actions. You must take either the Stride or Strike action. No need to make it at all complicated.

It just doesn't make much sense. You are much faster than normal, so you have time to power attack and then make a regular attack and move 30 feet, but not enough time to raise your shield and drink your potion?

It's not time, it's coordination. You're moving faster than normal. Try drinking. Now try drinking fast -- and this especially refers to getting the drink open and bringing it to your lips. Assuming you don't bash it into your teeth or splash it all over yourself.

Which means all the monsters are laughing at you with your healing potion staining your tabard or tunic. Or as you bang your shield into your forehead because your arm's moving faster than normal.

All of the other actions involve some sort of coordination or complexity, whereas Stride is just 'go as far as you can in an action' and Strike is 'attack normally'. And as a famous engineer once said, 'the fancier they do up the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.'

[thenobledrake]

Krugus wrote:

Wonder why the didn't just allow the Haste spell to give a separate action that allows the character to use any ability that uses a single action (that does not involve spell casting or metamagic) then you could the haste action to draw a weapon, stride or strike or a host of other mundane 1 action skills/abilities with out it interacting with 2 or 3 action abilities.

I wonder why when you are implying there shouldn't be limitations as to what you can do with the action granted by haste you pick out some (not insignificant) limitations for it just the same.

As for why haste works the way it works, I have a very likely answer: a nod to legacy.

In it's original form the spell increased movement speed, attack rate, and defense. So the current form does as much of that as it can within the design paradigm of the new edition - which doesn't include defense because the math has been heavily tightened, and is not as pronounced of an effect as it once was (literally doubling speed and number of attacks) because the power level of spells has been down-tuned overall. Thus you get an extra action, and it can boost your speed or attack rate.

[Samurai]

I want to thank everyone for the replies. You've convinced me to change the house rule, especially Krugus' comment. It now reads as follows:

Haste (pg 343): Your gain 1 additional Basic action per round (see pg 470), such as a Strike, Stride, Step, Drop Prone, Escape, Interact, Stand, Seek, Crawl, Raise a Shield, etc. Your normal MAP for the round applies to any actions you take.

[FlashRebel]

My theory is this was made explicitly to avoid breaking the game by making the extra action usable for anything: an older edition of D&D (I think it's 3rd) has a version of haste that gives an extra standard action per round of combat, and it pretty much breaks the game by allowing everyone to make full attacks after moving and spellcasters to cast twice per round (and magic has always been considered overly powerful in general in this edition).

Having an extra Stride/Strike per round is already a big deal no matter what class your character is, and not having a multiple attack penalty on the extra Strike would make the spell way too good.

[HumbleGamer]

Haste is imo perfectly fine.

1) it is not mandatory.

2) the bonus is good both in terms of damage and extra movement.

Given the 3 action system, it is an extra way ( which can be added to feats ) for a better action management.

People, or mostly pp, probably sticks with the old haste ( from p1 or d&d ), and instead of trying to figure out why it is this way right now, they can only find the spell not powerful as it should be, given their experience in old and different systems.

[theservantsllcleanitup]

thenobledrake wrote:

the current form does as much of that as it can within the design paradigm of the new edition - which doesn't include defense because the math has been heavily tightened

This isn't necessarily true. Strike, Strike, Stride, Raise Shield. The "bonus action" was one of the first three, but if the one you would forgo if you had only three actions was Raise Shield, then bam: Haste just improved your defense.

[thenobledrake]

Yes, it can indirectly improve defense... especially if you use the extra action to stride outside of the range of your opponent's attacks.

But that doesn't make what I said earlier untrue.

[Vidmaster7]

Does haste stack with class abilities that do similar effects?

[Rysky]

Pretty sure they do?

[Vidmaster7]

So a hesitant yes. Eh good enough for me.

[Rysky]

Ah, so yes and no (mostly no)

Quickened wrote:

You gain 1 additional action at the start of your turn each round. Many effects that make you quickened specify the types of actions you can use with this additional action. If you become quickened from multiple sources, you can use the extra action you’ve been granted for any single action allowed by any of the effects that made you quickened. Because quickened has its effect at the start of your turn, you don’t immediately gain actions if you become quickened during your turn.

I think in the Playtest you could have degrees of Quickened x but can't recall for sure.

[Vidmaster7]

Ah so the wallace and gromit meme. Yes well actually no.

[Rysky]

Ye

[The Gleeful Grognard]

theservantsllcleanitup wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

the current form does as much of that as it can within the design paradigm of the new edition - which doesn't include defense because the math has been heavily tightened

This isn't necessarily true. Strike, Strike, Stride, Raise Shield. The "bonus action" was one of the first three, but if the one you would forgo if you had only three actions was Raise Shield, then bam: Haste just improved your defense.

More than this, haste is almost required to make the most out of a tower shield.

Stride, Strike, Raise Shield, Take Cover

or

Strike, Strike, Raise Shield, Take Cover

[theservantsllcleanitup]

thenobledrake wrote:

Yes, it can indirectly improve defense... especially if you use the extra action to stride outside of the range of your opponent's attacks.

But that doesn't make what I said earlier untrue.

It is directly improving your defense in this case... if a strike or stride on your turn was a given, then the bonus action from haste is effectively whatever you want, because the other three actions are fungible. Without haste, you would lose the defensive action. It is categorically giving you a direct boost to your defenses.

Look at it this way. What percentage of all your turns contain a stride or strike? I would say even for a less strikey class it's probably higher than 50%. In that case, at least 50% of the time the bonus action is whatever you want it to be.

[The Ronyon]

Great discussion.
I have not yet gotten to chose, much less use Haste, but now I know what to expect.
I would choose it over Fireball, but I dislike blasting anyway.

[Tremaine]

Aservan wrote:

Standing there and swinging repeatedly for the fences was a boring part of all 3.x D&D. It wasn't interesting then and it isn't now. All subsequent editions: 4e, 5e, and P2e have done away with this sort of tedium.

Now you have to think about how make your hits count.

As long as one of the actions you want to use is a stride or a strike, then Haste has value. Stride in particular is now very valuable. Remember Attacks of Opportunity are rare. Very few monsters or characters have them.

Haste makes the kiting spellcaster a real thing. If the opponent must spend two actions to catch the caster, then their options for hurting the caster are reduced. Move more to make that breath weapon miss.

in your opinion. I liked getting to go blender mode at later levels, setting it up was a fun challenge, with the payoff being reducing something to goo, making lots of attacks was fun, especially when you could be fairly sure a decent ratio would hit.

[Qaianna]

Tremaine wrote:

Aservan wrote:

Standing there and swinging repeatedly for the fences was a boring part of all 3.x D&D. It wasn't interesting then and it isn't now. All subsequent editions: 4e, 5e, and P2e have done away with this sort of tedium.

Now you have to think about how make your hits count.

As long as one of the actions you want to use is a stride or a strike, then Haste has value. Stride in particular is now very valuable. Remember Attacks of Opportunity are rare. Very few monsters or characters have them.

Haste makes the kiting spellcaster a real thing. If the opponent must spend two actions to catch the caster, then their options for hurting the caster are reduced. Move more to make that breath weapon miss.

in your opinion. I liked getting to go blender mode at later levels, setting it up was a fun challenge, with the payoff being reducing something to goo, making lots of attacks was fun, especially when you could be fairly sure a decent ratio would hit.

Haste is STILL good then.

'Friend, have you ever found yourself in this situation? You're a high level warrior, deadly with sword, axe, and hammer ... and you're twenty feet from a foe you want to lavish all of your martial arts on. Formerly, to cross that span you could only take one swing, even with haste magic ... but now, with Haste 2.0, you can stride those twenty feet and still have at that foe! Whether three separate Strikes, or fancy manoeuvres that normally take a full turn in and of themselves, the versatility is limited only by your imagination and the battlefield!

'Haste 2.0. In stores now!'

'Remember: Haste 2.0.