Been looking at the new GM's guide and the full monster creation rules. There's tables for all sorts of monster statistics at every level, going from LOW to EXTREME, with "High" often being the numbers for an optimized PC at this task (max STR fighter to-hit, Paladin AC, etc).
For the most part, this is pretty consistent across the board until you get to Spell Attack Rolls and DCs. The spell DC "High" column matches up well with what a Wizard would be doing (DC 17 at level 1, for example). The "Spell Attack" columns, however, have this same level 1 creature with a +9 mod to their spell attacks! As far as I know, a caster's Spell attack is 10 less than their spell DC no matter what (since there's no item/status/circumstance bonuses for them I think), but for monsters the difference is 8.
So why do they have a consistent +2 to spell attacks from what should be possible? This puts primary casters, such as Wizards, closer to the "Moderate" column than "High" in this aspect. Enemy AC keeps up pretty consistently with PCs so I don't see any reason why they get +10% chance to hit with any attack spells. Makes me jealous since those spells are super unreliable when cast by PCs.
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Monster creation guidelines seem designed to keep attack rolls competitive with the player AC and although the tiers are mislabeled, the spell attack guidelines (roughly) seem to map to the regular attack guidelines (albeit with extreme being high, high being moderate and moderate being low).
This makes sense, because both types of attack target AC, so their numbers being similar make sense.
PC magic users having lower than expected spell attacks thanks to the lack of item bonuses seem like the outlier here.
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I usually don't feel bad when my players dodge some nasty spell from a monster (everyone is excited), but I sure as hell get disappointed when the party mage never lands their 40% success rate spell attack. It's pretty unfair how unreliable these spells are for not even being stronger than basic saving throw ones.
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Partly it's because monsters often have every bonus possible.
Not to everything, as in it might have a Fighter's attack, yet a Fighter/MCD Barb's damage rather than a pure Barb's damage. Or it might have all the damage possible to a Barb (perhaps w/ Rogue MCD Sneak Attack!), but a non-Fighter martial's attack bonus.
With spell attacks, I think Paizo's tweaking things a bit, adding in bonuses like one might get from Bards or Heroism. Those are bonuses that take teamwork, though could arguably be said to be within the boundaries of possibility for the levels involved. And they're always on.
So one can assume monsters, even casters, come prepackaged as if part of an elite, orchestrated team.
Which means designers must be careful when setting up further combos, like having them actually have a Bard, Heroism, magic items, etc. granting bonuses not explicitly labeled in the original stats, but still (invisibly) present in the math.
ETA:
And as ChibiNyan mentioned, there's an unfortunate lag for PCs casting attacks spells. Like the saves, one has to target AC when it's weak, which is uncommon. Weapons have a distinct advantage here, though I suppose also cost Bulk & use up hands, which come to think of it, might matter. Maybe spell-attack spells are built to be as effective as a "free hand" weapon?
Well the good news if that is true is it is harder to prebuff your bosses and harder to justify taking a turn to cast a buff spell when you already hit like a truck and could knock a PC right the heck out with said turn.
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The above posts would make sense if this also applied to Strike rolls, which doesn't. Monster attack rolls are generally pretty high but rarely exceed a fully "optimized" Fighter. Like every other creature and PCs, they may use flanking, buffs and debuffs to improve their odds so they don't need some artificial increase to "catch up" with PC tactics. It is an even playing field.
Is is worth nothing that the Spell Attack Roll columns are identical to the Strike ones, which gives spellcasting monsters the same odds of hitting as their melee brethren. But for saving throws, it seems that having PC-equal DCs is "acceptable".
Sure would be nice to have Fighter-tier proficiency on spell attacks, but it doesn't seem like this will ever exist for PCs, helpful as it would be for anemic classes like Wizard.
I just wish there were spell attack roll boosting items. Maybe they lag a couple levels behind potency runes, maybe they don't. I still with they were in the game.
Easy to house rule in if you want them, still wish they were in the base game.
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Because Paizo realises spells don't work well with comparably low attack rolls?
Interesting enough creatures at lvl 20 have lower DC and lower spell attack rolls than PC would have at that lvl, with DC 42 (The same DC than a Warpriest that started with 18 Wis but without apex item) and attack roll 34, that is one point less than full casting stat caster.
And even in the normal strikes the high table have a lot of lvls that the monsters have +1 and +2 ahead of the optimised fighter as well.
The above posts would make sense if this also applied to Strike rolls, which doesn't. Monster attack rolls are generally pretty high but rarely exceed a fully "optimized" Fighter. Like every other creature and PCs, they may use flanking, buffs and debuffs to improve their odds so they don't need some artificial increase to "catch up" with PC tactics. It is an even playing field.
Is is worth nothing that the Spell Attack Roll columns are identical to the Strike ones, which gives spellcasting monsters the same odds of hitting as their melee brethren. But for saving throws, it seems that having PC-equal DCs is "acceptable".
Sure would be nice to have Fighter-tier proficiency on spell attacks, but it doesn't seem like this will ever exist for PCs, helpful as it would be for anemic classes like Wizard.
I'd have to recheck, but I recall determining that at the highest levels, these Strike attack bonuses do seem to arise as if the monsters had a Heroism spell.
Plus you get Fighters using one Weapon Group at that max, while monsters might mix and match ranged, melee, unarmed, and so forth at the same proficiency level.Monsters have a lot more breadth to their power, and it is reflected in their spell attack rolls too. I do not know why such a bonus is restricted for PCs, but maybe we just need better teamwork?
Maybe there's an X factor we're missing that would make such default bonuses too strong in the hands of PCs, like Dangerous Sorcery or Overwhelming Energy.
The yet-unseen Magus might be able to get the "Fighter level" bonus with their spell attack rolls. I think that'd be an excellent niche for them, though it couldn't be purely through proficiency because that raises all the spells.
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I'd have to recheck, but I recall determining that at the highest levels, these Strike attack bonuses do seem to arise as if the monsters had a Heroism spell.
Plus you get Fighters using one Weapon Group at that max, while monsters might mix and match ranged, melee, unarmed, and so forth at the same proficiency level.
Monsters have a lot more breadth to their power, and it is reflected in their spell attack rolls too. I do not know why such a bonus is restricted for PCs, but maybe we just need better teamwork?
Maybe there's an X factor we're missing that would make such default bonuses too strong in the hands of PCs, like Dangerous Sorcery or Overwhelming Energy.The yet-unseen Magus might be able to get the "Fighter level" bonus with their spell attack rolls. I think that'd be an excellent niche for them, though it couldn't be purely through proficiency because that raises all the spells.
I took this into account too, after a few levels the PCs have a lot of feats and stuff that could help overcome the math deficiencies (nothing can overcome +1s fully though), so I figured high level monsters would just get some +1s to compensante.
It does kinda happen? Indirectly? It tells you to use more "extreme" column enemies after level 15 for example. But if you're just following the "high" column for example, it increases almost fully linearly from 1-20. The monster has this +2 to spell attacks starting from level 1 and it carries all the way to around level 20. Same thing for most other statistics.
Low level characters in general have a tougher time because they don't have many feats to compensate. I noticed this when I saw the Level 4 NPC called "Burglar". This guy has higher stats than any level 4 PC Rogue could possibly achieve: higher ability scores, higher to-hit, higher HP... And even has like 2 Rogue class feats + all the class features.
This would be acceptable at like lvl 8+ when the Rogue has a lot of combat tricks, but all they have over the Burglar is like 3 SKILL + 1 Ancestry feats that may have 0 combat application.
Another example is the NPC "Acolyte of Nethys" that is supposed to represent a Level 1 Cloistered Cleric: Spell DC 17, Spell Attack +9 and has the Domain Initiate feat and extra Heal spells from CHA. Identical to a level 1 PC Cloisted Cleric except it has +2 to spell attacks in exchange for skill feat + ancestry feat. I'll take the +2 any day.
In Summary, I think that during the levels PCs have less class feats, monsters should not have that much higher statistics than them. This spell attack thing is just the most noticeable case since it begins from level 1.
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I don't see this as an issue, nor do I think the rules/bonuses for PCs should be identical to those of monsters of any variety. I know the discussion is about "high" spell attack for monsters, I know nobody here is saying they have to be identical, I'm not ascribing bad faith or whatever to anyone.
But monsters are a narrative tool and a challenge, not the DM's characters. They don't have to be built fairly compared to what the PCs can build. They don't have to all be the same as a standard stat block in the book or follow the exact guidelines in the GMG. They aren't immutable, they're a tool. Unless you're talking about PFS, but this seems like a GMG discussion about monster building.
If it feels right, go with it. If it doesn't, don't. If +2 over what a PC caster can do feels too high, don't do that.
Maybe Mark can pop in and start talking about mathematics and such :) Hopefully it isn't a mistake that needs an errata.
... But monsters are a narrative tool and a challenge, ...
This is my sense of it for me. And I would bet that while we are zooming into one particular bonus that it has more to do with zooming out seeing the big picture.
Also, I would say, let's see how it is in actual play. Does getting a +10% on spell attacks make the overall experience of the challenge different.
Additionally, I would consider the narrative understanding of these mechanical pieces differently. The "spell attack" is meant to be simply a mechanical underpinning for some narrative characteristic. That would be my guess.
For me I think the issue is less the raw numbers and more that there's some gap I don't quite understand between the "spells must be less accurate" logic applied to spells cast by PCs and the "attacks should stay competitive with defenses" logic applied to monsters.
People are right that monsters are different and don't need to follow the same rules, but they're still interacting with similar systems and doing it in the same way, so it feels like there's kind of a logical disconnect here.
Or, to put it another way, the progression for spell attack rolls suck and it seems like the developers were aware of that when creating monster creation guidelines by making their spell attack scaling map more closely to regular attack bonuses.
It is the nerf Magic for PCs that came with PF2 that is responsible here. While I understand I disagree with the concept, so I added a Power runes for increase DC by 1-3 like the strikings ones, and I added potency for spell attack rolls on staff, wands, focus and the like, just like the weapon runes.
Way more satisfying for now.
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This does matter! An monster's level is used to calculate their challenge. Imagine a scenario where it comes down to a 1 v 1 battle with some enemy. If the enemy is the same level as you, it should in theory be a deadly 50/50 encounter. In practice, this is probably a losing fight since the monsters are stronger than you in every way until you have many class feats and supplemental items, which isn't gonna happen at low levels.
I suppose it's balanced around a party of 4, then..
So the monster can hit when it uses a 2 action ability. Simply put, a monster gets less chances to get it right than a PC. AC in general is going to be better than Saves, and monster creation guidelines reflect this.
That doesn't actually make sense. PCs are going to fight dozens if not hundreds of monsters over the course of the game.
And unless encounter design is trending back to 'dogpile on the boss monster' style of D&D4, there are going to be more monsters on the field than PCs at any given time, at least at the start of the fight.Monsters with better numbers makes it unreasonably hard for PCs to win, when they should have an edge. They're the ones expected to win almost every fight, after all, while it doesn't matter if any individual monster (or pack of monsters) survives.
The monsters just need to put up enough resistance to make it feel worthwhile- if the monster numbers are consistently higher, that leads to 'near TPK' too often to be reasonable. More monsters is the better solution to 'enough resistance' than 'every monster is just better'
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But this isn't all monsters. This is monsters with "high" stats in the GMG monster building guide, which is a tier above moderate and two tiers above low. Only extreme have higher stats.
Encounter design right now seems to be that level or level +1 is a good fight. Level +2 is quite nasty. Level +3 is a huge fight. High stats should be a good challenge, or help you turn an at-level monster into an at-level +1 monster.
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This does matter! An monster's level is used to calculate their challenge. Imagine a scenario where it comes down to a 1 v 1 battle with some enemy. If the enemy is the same level as you, it should in theory be a deadly 50/50 encounter. In practice, this is probably a losing fight since the monsters are stronger than you in every way until you have many class feats and supplemental items, which isn't gonna happen at low levels.
I suppose it's balanced around a party of 4, then..
Uh...this is false. Let's examine a PC Barbarian (Dragon Totem) vs. a level 1 creature.
The Barbarian will have +6 Perception, +7 to hit for 1d12+8 damage, AC 17 (all while Raging), +7/+5/+6 Saves, and 24 HP (+3 Temp) assuming relatively optimal stats.
A Goblin Commando has +5 Perception, +8 to hit for 1d8+3 damage, AC 17, +7/+8/+5 Saves, and 18 HP. And those stats are around average for level 1 creatures (they're all between Moderate and High by the GMG guidelines, except Will Save and Perception, which are Low).
Those stats heavily favor the Barbarian in a straight fight. Like, a lot.
Fighters, Monks, and Rangers do equally well IMO, and Rogues only do less well because they lack an easy source of Sneak Attack (and even then, they wind up pretty on par doing 1d6+4).
Casters have more problems unsupported (at least at very low levels) vs. martially inclined enemies, admittedly, but that's a martial/caster disparity, not a PC/NPC one.
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In terms of the actual thread topic, I think this disparity in monster spell attacks specifically is odd, and perhaps an indication that an item to add to Spell Attack Rolls (but not Save DCs) is warranted, but monster design in general does not make them superior to PCs.
This does matter! An monster's level is used to calculate their challenge. Imagine a scenario where it comes down to a 1 v 1 battle with some enemy. If the enemy is the same level as you, it should in theory be a deadly 50/50 encounter. In practice, this is probably a losing fight since the monsters are stronger than you in every way until you have many class feats and supplemental items, which isn't gonna happen at low levels.
I suppose it's balanced around a party of 4, then..
Uh...this is false. Let's examine a PC Barbarian (Dragon Totem) vs. a level 1 creature.
The Barbarian will have +6 Perception, +7 to hit for 1d12+8 damage, AC 17 (all while Raging), +7/+5/+6 Saves, and 24 HP (+3 Temp) assuming relatively optimal stats.
A Goblin Commando has +5 Perception, +8 to hit for 1d8+3 damage, AC 17, +7/+8/+5 Saves, and 18 HP. And those stats are around average for level 1 creatures (they're all between Moderate and High by the GMG guidelines, except Will Save and Perception, which are Low).
Those stats heavily favor the Barbarian in a straight fight. Like, a lot.
Fighters, Monks, and Rangers do equally well IMO, and Rogues only do less well because they lack an easy source of Sneak Attack (and even then, they wind up pretty on par doing 1d6+4).
Casters have more problems unsupported (at least at very low levels) vs. martially inclined enemies, admittedly, but that's a martial/caster disparity, not a PC/NPC one.
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In terms of the actual thread topic, I think this disparity in monster spell attacks specifically is odd, and perhaps an indication that an item to add to Spell Attack Rolls (but not Save DCs) is warranted, but monster design in general does not make them superior to PCs.
It was probably one of those things that doesn't make sense of paper, but then in playtesting monster spellcasters just weren't getting enough hits in with their spells.
Most spells are 2 action activities, while melee strikes are single actions, so a spell attack roll is higher stakes, but on the player side that is mitigated somewhat by the monsters usually being weaker than the players, and by players having creative ways to make it easier to hit things (I feel like one of the base assumptions of this edition is that players will often (when they don't need to move) use their 1st action on using a skill debuff or similar effect on the enemy before casting a spell or striking twice, such as demoralize or feint or grapple or trip)
Spellcaster monsters are not at all on the same level of power than spellcaster PCs. Unlike PCs, they have their full spell list they can use in one fight.
On the other hand, as soon as you reach level 6, PCs tend to have more sources of AoOs than monsters. Which is strongly reducing casters' efficiency.
In my opinion, comparing one to one is invalid. There are far more variables than that.
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This does matter! An monster's level is used to calculate their challenge. Imagine a scenario where it comes down to a 1 v 1 battle with some enemy. If the enemy is the same level as you, it should in theory be a deadly 50/50 encounter. In practice, this is probably a losing fight since the monsters are stronger than you in every way until you have many class feats and supplemental items, which isn't gonna happen at low levels.
I suppose it's balanced around a party of 4, then..
Looking at the encounter design guidelines at page 489, Table 10-2 says a same-level monster is 40XP. Then, looking at Table 10-1 we see that for a single-player party, that would be an "Extreme" encounter, the most dangerous type in the book. As it says "this makes them too challenging for most uses". So it's supposed to feel unreasonably hard.
I think part of it is because a spellcaster will usually have much lower AC than a melee creature. The average martial at level 1 will have a to hit of +7 at level 1 (a fighter at +9). GMG says use low AC for spellcasters. Low AC for a level 1 creature is 13. Meaning most martial are critting on a 14 or better and a fighter on a 12. To compensate for the spellcaster going down quick, you pump up it's attacks to make it more deadly during a shorter encounter.
Monsters are balanced exclusively towards combat, PCs are not. In particular, caster PCs pay for their versatility by having worse numbers in combat. They might come up with an exclusively blaster that isn't behind the curve as far as in combat numbers are concerned, but that doesn't exist in the game as is.
I, as a player playing a bard, am extremely happy with how my caster plays. Between my character's wand of manifold missiles and spells that target weak saves, he contributes directly to offense well enough. Of course, no one can match the support capacity of my Bard.
My party is certainly more than the sum of it's parts. The balancing of monsters is based around them standing alone. If you do build a highly synergistic set of monsters, you should probably count that as a higher difficulty fight than the book suggests.
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Even on the martial side monsters usually have the advantage as well, a lot of their exclusive actions have better action economy than PCs, even on abilities that are literally taken from a class feat that are 2 action for the class, for the monster is only 1 action and then we have stuff like improved grab and knockdown that is a free action after a strike and don't give a save that is present on most creatures after lvl 9.
Yeah, plenty of martial-focused monsters have action economy tricks that are above and beyond what PCs can get. After testing out some monster design for some homebrew games, I found it was easier to design spellcasting monsters because you just put their numbers up. Martial monsters, on the other hand, require you to think about abilities in which allow them to make the most of their three actions.
Wand of auto hit spell, save spells, and the best caster in this edition who is an AoE buffer.
How is that relevant to Spell attack being overall weaker for casters when its shown that martial monsters have comparable stats to martial characters? Remember not every class is the Bard.
I think player spell attacks are baseline bad. That doesn't mean casters aren't balanced as a whole; no caster is defined by making spell attacks.
It's fine if enemies are good at spell attacks. Enemies with spell attacks are usually going to be defined by them since Monster stat blocks are so narrow, so they need to be good at them to be balanced.
While at first glance it might look like a contradiction for monsters to have good spell attack rolls and players not to, I don't think it is.
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I think this is a situation where something that doesn't pass the eye test does pass the in-play test. My in-play experience is that the higher bonuses a monster has give it staying power in battle but don't reach the point where they are overwhelming to PCs (barring a streak of very unlucky rolls).
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I don't really have the answer. So I'm gonna make one up.
PCs typically do battle in groups. Monsters may do battle in groups, or in pairs, or by themselves.
AoE attacks will be more effective the larger the enemy group is. A spell like Fireball can perform amazingly against half a dozen monsters, then be underwhelming against one monster, both using the same encounter budget.
Spells are designed around this variability, being overall balanced across different scenarios.
But monsters rarely face solo PCs. Monsters almost always face PC parties, which is a stronger use case for AoE spells than single target.
AoE spells often operate through saves. Single target spells favour attack rolls. To compensate for monster attack roll spells seldom facing a single target, or even a "boss" amongst mooks, the attack roll bonus gets buffed.
This post sponsored by unproven speculation.
This is the most compelling argument I've seen so far, though still not 100% with it. Solo monsters are usually +1 or +2 levels over the party so they shouldn't have much of an issue hitting anyways without these "free" boosts.
Maybe they just realized that Spells that require a spell attack roll suck. Seriously, we don't have a big selection but there's legends like Snowball and Polar Ray competing for worst offensive spells in the game. Then the often overhyped Disintegrate that probably does less damage than those 50% of the time. I find these spells are just worse than save spells because they don't fully interact with the 4 degrees system of PF2. One of the main reasons Casters still function decently is being able to get some sort of effect even on a succesful save, which these spells don't allow and they don't have a power boost to account for this downside. Not to mention they are also, by design, single target spells, so you want to save them for vs "strong" enemies, except you never hit them. You're targeting their full AC, which is benchmarked for a Martial using the best equipment available (and has equal or better proficiency than you until like lv19)
Maybe it just expects every caster to use True Strike before one of these spells, spending a low level slot and an action?
Guess what I'm saying is that the reason enemies get a +2 could also be used to justify the PCs getting a +2. Don't think anyone is gonna say "Oof, that would make these weaksauce spells too OP".