Say I cast Fear on an enemy I act first, he acts immediately after me then my allies act. How long does the (let's assume) Fear 2 last? Does it tick down on my turn or the enemy's turn? Would the enemy become Frightened 1 as soon as his turn starts on that first turn?
Frightened
You’re gripped by fear and struggle to control your nerves. The frightened condition always includes a value. You take a status penalty equal to this value to all your checks and DCs. Unless specified otherwise, at the end of each of your turns, the value of your frightened condition decreases by 1.
Say I cast Fear on an enemy I act first, he acts immediately after me then my allies act. How long does the (let's assume) Fear 2 last? Does it tick down on my turn or the enemy's turn? Would the enemy become Frightened 1 as soon as his turn starts on that first turn?
Let's read the Frightened condition:
You’re gripped by fear and struggle to control your nerves. The frightened condition always includes a value. You take a status penalty equal to this value to all your checks and DCs. Unless specified otherwise, at the end of each of your turns, the value of your frightened condition decreases by 1.
So they spend their turn Frightened 2. At the end of their turn, it ticks down to Frightened 1 for them.
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Ouch, so actually it may be better for me to wait until the enemy acts, then I could slap on the debuff on my enemy. Is that a standard play? I thought it's always better to act first?
Not necessarily. Acting first has more defensive benefit, and acting after has more offensive benefit, in this case.
Ouch, so actually it may be better for me to wait until the enemy acts, then I could slap on the debuff on my enemy. Is that a standard play? I thought it's always better to act first?
No, it's better to ask everyone to delay after you. You are the bard (if I follow your posts), as such you are a buffer/debuffer. You should always be the first to go to give bonuses to everyone and orient the party tactics.
And if there are multiple monsters, you can target one that is not just after you in initiative.
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The better time to give an enemy a debuff is completely dictated by the debuff's effect and impact on the enemy.
Taking Frightened as an example. It gives the enemy a -x penalty to all its checks and DCs. This means his offensive capabilities will be reduced (attack rolls, spells/abilities DCs, combat maneuvers), and his defensive capabilities will also be reduced (AC, saves, some skill DCs?).
If your intention is to reduce a combat-focused enemy's efficacy in harming your friends, you will want to act first and give this enemy the penalties as soon as possible. On the other hand, if you wish to weaken one of its saves so a friend can more safely target it with another spell/ability, you will want to act soon after the enemy to maximize its exposure to your friend's turns.
In both scenarios, it is utterly important to have a high Initiative score! By acting first, you can Delay and insert yourself in the exact place in the initiative list so your spells are most impactful. The above explanation and choices only works if you can CHOOSE when you act, otherwise you'll be forced to make different choices:
-If your enemy already acted and harmed your friends, instead of debuffing it you might have to heal one of your friends, or raise their defenses instead;
-If you acted after your friend had cast his spell and the enemy avoided it, you might have to resort to a different spell, since weakening its defenses to the already cast spell is pointless.
How would it be better? The monster spends the same number of its actions with a penalty - that the initiative placement for this round happens to not give your party all a shot at the monster with a -2 instead of a -1 is not worth you not getting to take your turn before the monster for the rest of however long the encounter lasts.
You could easily be trading everyone getting a little better benefit right now for the monster getting 1 more turn than it would if you had gone before it on the last round of the encounter.
Edit to add: you could also go "I delay" on your first turn planning on debuffing your enemy after its turn for maximum debuff benefit, and then the monster takes its turn and messes up that plan in any of the number of ways it could (moving out of range, incapacitating you in some way, or taking some action that changes what your priority is being the big ones).
That depends a lot on the monster and its starting position. Sometimes waiting for a monster to come to the party is beneficial. Other times, the monster has better things to do than walk into the meatgrinder and that's a terrible idea.
Depending on how tough the monster is and how the dice fall, you could also end up with the monster accomplishing less, due to extra damage taken or significant saves being failed.
The real mistake here is trying to say "Tactic X is always better than Tactic Y."
Do conditions with numbers stack?
For example, could I Demoralize to give Frightened 1 and then follow that up with Fear with gives Frightened 2, for a combined total of Frightened 3?
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Do conditions with numbers stack?
For example, could I Demoralize to give Frightened 1 and then follow that up with Fear with gives Frightened 2, for a combined total of Frightened 3?
No they don't. No single condition or effect stack unless the ability specifically says otherwise.
In your example, the Frightened 2 effect will replace the Frightened 1.
AC is a DC, so yes, it would be better to delay until after the enemy's turn to give your allies time to attack it with -2 to AC.
Alternatively, you may decide that it’s better to weaken it right away, and make its attack rolls and spell DCs poor on its first turn. Particularly if it has some sort of “nova” ability it can use on its first turn. A spell caster, or maybe a dragon breathing fire while all the PCs are still huddled together, that sort of thing.
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AC is a DC, so yes, it would be better to delay until after the enemy's turn to give your allies time to attack it with -2 to AC.
As pointed out before, it depends on what you want to achieve. As I, HammerJack and First World Bard have pointed out, different tactics are used in different situations.
You need to think about the enemy's weaknesses and strengths. If you can hit it easily with your attacks and abilities, but it has powerful offense, it would be better to lower its offense before it can act... on the other hand, if it is some sort of a tank, you use it later to make sure all your friends can get the most of its moment of vulnerability.
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Regardless of which tactic is better, personally I find it kind of weird that the efficacy of a debuff can vary so wildly based on how far apart you and your opponent are on the initiative chart.
A large part of that is due to how long debuffs last now compared to PF1. It used to be essentially all of combat, 1 round, or not affected in PF1.
Now, it's typically like 2 or 3 rounds or less depending on if they successfully saved. Debuffs really have to be orchestrated so the whole party can take advantage of them, else you're not getting much efficacy out of them.
The other big point of variation, if you're trying to use these debuffs on round 1 is going to be in how much you know about the initiative order. Some tables basically make it open knowledge immediately, at others you don't find out how fast monsters will act until they act.
Timing is certainly an issue you need to think about when using a debuff. I think there's a certain amount of footsies that happens in PF2.
Any sort of AOE ability on either side of the combat encourages the other side to spread out, so you should likely take your turn as soon as you can if you need to spread out and suspect an AOE. Further, it would be a good idea to apply frightened to the enemies you suspect to use an AOE in round one before they go.
If your side is going to spend their actions outside of melee range better, then it's a good idea to delay until just after the enemy to apply frightened since that will force them to commit first and allow you to get the most use out of frightened with 1 full friendly turn and 1 full enemy turn getting the debuff. I find this is often the case with PCs applying buffs and enemies having mostly offensive and reactive abilities.
I have a very particular tactic that I play around as a bard in my party. I stack Dirge just after the enemy initiative and Inspire Courage + Telekinetic Maneuver or Synesthesia to make it so that my Primal Sorcerer ally has an optimal window to use their Acid Arrow with the best chance to hit. Swinging the number by 6 before my allies Nova is the tactic we've developed that lets us deal with boss enemies best.
Would a debuff like Synesthesia that lasts the round, would that expire on the casters turn?
For the Success effect, which has 1 round duration or the Failure effect which has 1 minute duration, yes.
The Stunned condition inflicted on a critical failure would still decrease by the normal rules of the Stunned condition.
Would a debuff like Synesthesia that lasts the round, would that expire on the casters turn?
Yes, the Synesthesia would end at the start of the caster next turn.