| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You know ArchSage when you expand your analogy it gets even weirder.
A Fist is dealing as much damage as a Gun, but the gun is limited to 4 shots (with easy restock). But the Fist and the Gun are dealing as much damage as the single use Missile.
Then it gets weirder again because some people want the Missile to deal less damage then Fist or the Gun. All because the Missile is AoE.
and in the next patch we will add the following changes
military aircraft were too powerful their use will be limited to 3 times per day for maximum duration of 1 minute per use
nuclear bombs will have their aoe reduce to 160 ft and their damage will be reduced to prevent unfair instant death, the poison effect of radiation will also get nerfed to non lethal levels
biological weapons and pandemic diseases such as corona-virus are too op so instead of massive death and permanent damage to settlement economy they will make the targets exhausted for 3 rounds
AI controlled drones are breaking the action economy so now they can only work with the supervision of a specialized soldier to a maximum of 3 drones per soldier and the soldier must remain stationary
medicine is too powerful so we have added a feature that allowed Jehovah to cause heart attacks if he feels a players has escaped death too many times
among other changes
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hopefully close that huge damage gap between casters and martials.
That? That right there? That's why I can't take any of your arguments as being in good faith.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Going to chime in with the fact that I switched my players for my AoA game (old group had 2 people that didn’t like the system all too much so they decided not to continue playing, got a new group starting at book 3) which consists of a wizard, fighter and rogue. I gave them an extra level to compensate for the fact that there’s only 3.
The wizard hasn’t contributed much in terms of damage, of course, because the fighter and rogue shred everything they can flank. But what the wizard has done is prevented those two from meeting an unfortunate demise many many times with wall of stone, resilient sphere and other such control spells. The wizard has managed to actually deal a lot of damage with disintegrate against the couple of caster bosses the party has run into, which were difficult for the fighter and rogue to damage, but got blown through easily by a couple of true strike disintegrates due to low fort save.
Of course, the wizard has run into issues regarding their HP and defenses - one time they accidentally boxed in the boss right next to them with wall of stone (departing the boss from his minions but leaving the wizard in melee with the boss), causing him to go down. Another time he didn’t stand far enough away from a couple of krooths, causing him to get crit to dying. A third time, he tried to cast wall of stone against some humanoids and got attack of opportunitied three times (one of which was a
Now mind you, I might be a bit lenient with some spells - I allowed Air Bubble to block an effect that caused blindness because it was flavoured as soot and ash getting into their eyes. I allow wall of stone to be cast indoors all the time when there’s an argument that says the height parameter doesn’t include up to (it’s just 20ft) so you might not even be able to cast it if the ceiling is less than 20ft high. I certainly haven’t been trying to focus fire the wizard unless it would require the same number of actions to attack him as it would another character (I usually make the enemies target the closest character unless they’re a spellcaster, in which case they will target the wizard if they can).
They’re currently level 15 at the last chapter of book 4.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Exocist it really sounds like your game is very lenient which is great for Wizards.
You gave them a bonus level so that means their spells are able to do stuff.
The rules of some spells were made easier to use. And it sounds like overall you have not targeted the caster as much.That bonus level specificially is probably helping them out a lot. Given they are getting spells 1 level sooner than the book expects, and getting a +1 to attack and DC helps a lot to land disintegrate.
I don't see why you find it lenient.
The bonus level is for all the characters, so the Wizard won't shine more than anyone else. And as I play PFS a lot, I see a lot of level differences so I can tell you martials get a lot out of a level difference.Allowing walls of stone inside building seems fine. And most DMs will allow creative use of spells.
So, it looks like a normal play environment.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
...metamagic feats...
The thing I dislike about metamagic feats is that they usually further reduce the average casters 2 actions per round to only "1" single action. Compare this to a Monks Stride, Flurry, Assurance trip or a Rangers Hunt Prey, Hunted Shot, Command Animal Companion 3+ actions per round simply feels bad. Though this is generally true for all casters I feel that is is an area where the Wizard could have shone as a "master of magic", simply by giving him action enhancing class feats, e.g. a feat that lets you use a metamagic feat, cast a 2-action spell and either move or recall knowledge.
Also much of the Wizards "power" is not under direct control of the Wizard, which is a psychological issue, and depending how the campaign rolls can very much influence play and power level experience.
* Do you ever get more than your level up spells? Dependend on GM.
* Do you ever get enough info to actually utilise your possibly vast arsenal of spells? Dependend on GM.
* Do you ever have time to swap spells in between encounters? Dependend on GM.
* Do you ever have enough downtime to create scrolls? Dependend on GM.
* Creature making their saves or not? Dependend on GM (I am not talking about fudging rolls, but about the fact that the GM rolls, not the Wizard).
Much of this could of cause also be said about martials, e.g. when the GM does not let you find magic weapons or provides sufficient time for healing in between encounters, however (at least my) experience shows that striking runes do come in more natural than additional spells (and even more so when we talk about uncommon or rare ones).
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
...multiple attacks is the standard for martials.In some campaigns.
Martials have lots of action economy feats too, which casters are lacking.It's nice of martials to have something that casters lack, on account of all the things casters have that martials lack.
You still seem to be missing the "dice making you feel bad is a player trait, not a class trait" aspect of the discussion though.
You seem to be missing that rolling multiple times a round increases your chance of success versus living and dying on one saving throw or attack roll. I love how some of you tout things like True Strike as this amazing spell for casters, when martials basically get the equivalent of true strike every round as in multiple chances to succeed. When that is brought up, you try to downplay it.
Sorry, you can try to spin this the way you want, but doing substantially less damage and being substantially less effective than other classes and not doing much is not fun for many people.
If Paizo doesn't much want to listen, well that is up to them. I'll keep collecting my data and post how poorly the wizard and sorcerer is performing. I wish more people would collect real game play data showing the problems with the wizard and sorcerer with their poor focus spell options, boring specializations, and not particularly interesting or outstanding class kit. That would help provide a more convincing argument.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sorry, you can try to spin this the way you want, but doing substantially less damage and being substantially less effective than other classes and not doing much is not fun for many people.
Yeah, I agree. My Sorcerer being in general top damage dealer of his parties (in PFS, so the party changes a lot) makes me wonder why people play martials. Doing less damage and being less effective must not be fun for them...
Going to chime in with the fact that I switched my players for my AoA game (old group had 2 people that didn’t like the system all too much so they decided not to continue playing, got a new group starting at book 3) which consists of a wizard, fighter and rogue. I gave them an extra level to compensate for the fact that there’s only 3.
The wizard hasn’t contributed much in terms of damage, of course, because the fighter and rogue shred everything they can flank. But what the wizard has done is prevented those two from meeting an unfortunate demise many many times with wall of stone, resilient sphere and other such control spells. The wizard has managed to actually deal a lot of damage with disintegrate against the couple of caster bosses the party has run into, which were difficult for the fighter and rogue to damage, but got blown through easily by a couple of true strike disintegrates due to low fort save.
Of course, the wizard has run into issues regarding their HP and defenses - one time they accidentally boxed in the boss right next to them with wall of stone (departing the boss from his minions but leaving the wizard in melee with the boss), causing him to go down. Another time he didn’t stand far enough away from a couple of krooths, causing him to get crit to dying. A third time, he tried to cast wall of stone against some humanoids and got attack of opportunitied three times (one of which was a
Now mind you, I might be a bit lenient with some spells - I allowed Air Bubble to block an effect that caused blindness because it was flavoured as soot and ash getting into their eyes. I allow wall of stone to be cast indoors all the time when there’s an argument that says the height parameter doesn’t include up to (it’s just 20ft) so you might not even be able to cast it if the ceiling is less than 20ft high. I certainly haven’t been trying to focus fire the wizard unless it would require the same number of actions to attack him as it would another character (I usually make the enemies...
High level casters have a better time of things, so that makes sense.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
You seem to be missing that rolling multiple times a round increases your chance of success versus living and dying on one saving throw or attack roll. I love how some of you tout things like True Strike as this amazing spell for casters, when martials basically get the equivalent of true strike every round as in multiple chances to succeed. When that is brought up, you try to downplay it....multiple attacks is the standard for martials.In some campaigns.
Martials have lots of action economy feats too, which casters are lacking.It's nice of martials to have something that casters lack, on account of all the things casters have that martials lack.
You still seem to be missing the "dice making you feel bad is a player trait, not a class trait" aspect of the discussion though.
When you take a -5 in doing so, that is not anywhere near true strike - average damage for the second attack is approximately half that of the first. The closest martial equivalent is the Perfect Strike ki spell, and even that "only" decreases the chance to miss, without increasing the chance to crit.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Exocist it really sounds like your game is very lenient which is great for Wizards.
You gave them a bonus level so that means their spells are able to do stuff.
The rules of some spells were made easier to use. And it sounds like overall you have not targeted the caster as much.That bonus level specificially is probably helping them out a lot. Given they are getting spells 1 level sooner than the book expects, and getting a +1 to attack and DC helps a lot to land disintegrate.
If a game where spells don't function (wall of stone being able to be less than 20 feet high is not "made easier to use") and all enemies immediately try and murder the casters even if it's inefficient for them is considered the standard, I can see why you all think casters are horrible.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hopefully close that huge damage gap between casters and martials.That? That right there? That's why I can't take any of your arguments as being in good faith.
Not sure why. It isn't like I came to my conclusions by guessing or using theory-craft.
I have tracked damage on an excel spread sheet across multiple campaigns and tried or witness in play nearly every class including the sorcerer and wizard.
There are some general ideas that I have found to be true tracking damage data and in general play:
1. Low level casters do not do much damage. They do half to a third of the damage as martials even with occasional burst hits on a lucky bad save or a good AoE opportunity with a few bad saves. Even with these occasional hits, they usually end battles doing half to a third of martial damage.
2. No class relies on a single die roll more than wizards and sorcerers. Even other caster classes have other things they can do when a spell fails, so they don't feel so useless. But a wizard and sorcerer do not usually have much unless they do some kind of multiclassing.
3. Somewhere around lvl 9 to 11 caster effectiveness accelerates. Casters can really start doing some crazy things including damage and get some nice defenses to combine with it. More importantly they can substantially shift battles.
Bards, clerics, and druids are still better at doing this, but even wizards and sorcerers get better because spell options are better.
4. Wizards and sorcerers still have the most boring and least effective focus spells and class options. There isn't a lot to look forward to compared to other classes. It's kind of sad.
When your druid is getting invoke disaster that allows them to use one action along with effortless concentration to do a 10d6 lightning bolt once per turn while casting another spell or doing something else, the wizard gets some pretty lame options that amount to another spell slot or some spell flexibility. They already have both in spades. On top of this the druid will also have a specialized animal companion to send around.
I'm hoping the changes I made close the low level damage gap and allow the wizard to deploy all those extra slots in a more useful manner that makes them feel wizardly.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Otherwise, as I've played more my Sorcerer since my first answer (and I think Sorcerer play experience is similar to Wizard play experience) here are the moments where I've been very happy to play him (PFS plays with 5-6 players parties most of the time):
- Fight against a bunch of swarms. The martials were serving as baits, then moving out of the swarms for me to launch a Fireball. 2 rounds fight, I did 70% of party damage.
- Fight against a bunch of plants. Round 1 the Rogue was already down. The Wizard and I were fireballing the plants while the martials were praying. The 2 of us did most of the damage, martials were just soaking hits.
- Fight against Poltergeists (tough one, some party failed it). I was casting 3 action Heals in the middle of the fight and despite being completely out leveled by everyone I've been a cornerstone of the combat.
- Fight against a giant flying insect (tough one, many parties failed it). The thing was moving at 120ft per round and was not there to kill us but just to get an item and run away. He spent only one round at melee range. He was vulnerable to fire... I only did one third of the damage because our Alchemist got a pretty impressive round when the monster fell on us.
- A whole adventure with 5 encounters and only 40 minutes of break. So Medecine was not enough to keep everyone on foot. Being an Angelic Sorcerer helped a lot.
- A scroll of Water Breathing allowing us to auto-succeed a bunch of skill checks and giving us the top reward at the quest.
- A monster that I one shotted with a True Striked Searing Light.
This list only contains the situations where I've really shined. My Sorcerer is not even level 7, so most of these moments happened in the last 5 PFS adventures. And many of these moments were not specific to my Sorcerer, any Wizard would have been able to handle them as much as I did.
Overall, I like to play my Sorcerer. And he's neither weak nor boring.
| 12 people marked this as a favorite. |
The fact that everyone seems to be all over the place on the matter makes me think that maybe the wizard, and the game as a whole, is actually rather well-balanced.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
There is a massive flaw in trying to visualize the classes in the game world of Golarion in terms of "wizards use magic and martials do not." Magic is a fundamental aspect of the world and intrinsic to every class, with the current exception possibly of the alchemist...but even then the alchemist would probably rather also be utilizing magic.
Martial characters without any magic items would fall so far behind wizard spell casting that it really would be the difference between an army using spears and an army using guns. It is a false dichotomy to try to envision spell casting as magic and not item usage. Every class is dependent upon magic in PF2, the question is how they use it.
Fundamentally, if what your expectation for the class of wizard is:
They should be easily be better than everyone else when they cast their highest level spells.
Then you are certainly disappointed with PF2.
Everything in PF2 revolves around dice rolls and the more powerful a spell can be, the more dependent upon dice rolls it becomes. This was an intentional design decision and is feature for many players. It may not feel that way to every player, but it wasn't an accident or side consequence of other choices. PF2 is a game where the dice mater and trivializing dice rolls requires far more work than in any past version of D&D.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
...metamagic feats...The thing I dislike about metamagic feats is that they usually further reduce the average casters 2 actions per round to only "1" single action. Compare this to a Monks Stride, Flurry, Assurance trip or a Rangers Hunt Prey, Hunted Shot, Command Animal Companion 3+ actions per round simply feels bad. Though this is generally true for all casters I feel that is is an area where the Wizard could have shone as a "master of magic", simply by giving him action enhancing class feats, e.g. a feat that lets you use a metamagic feat, cast a 2-action spell and either move or recall knowledge.
Also much of the Wizards "power" is not under direct control of the Wizard, which is a psychological issue, and depending how the campaign rolls can very much influence play and power level experience.
* Do you ever get more than your level up spells? Dependend on GM.
* Do you ever get enough info to actually utilise your possibly vast arsenal of spells? Dependend on GM.
* Do you ever have time to swap spells in between encounters? Dependend on GM.
* Do you ever have enough downtime to create scrolls? Dependend on GM.
* Creature making their saves or not? Dependend on GM (I am not talking about fudging rolls, but about the fact that the GM rolls, not the Wizard).Much of this could of cause also be said about martials, e.g. when the GM does not let you find magic weapons or provides sufficient time for healing in between encounters, however (at least my) experience shows that striking runes do come in more natural than additional spells (and even more so when we talk about uncommon or rare ones).
Ubertron X, as is usual, you have a very strong grasp of the problem at this point. Effective spell usage is going to be incredibly dependent upon the relationship between player and GM. Yes it is definitely something that maters for every player and the rules are only ever going to be able to cary a game so far in setting up balanced and fair expectations for how that happens with spells.
One of my biggest issues with PF1 wizard casting (in retrospect) is that high level arcane magic ran into problems not with being unable to "fail forward" but being unable to "succeed forward" in terms of narrative adventure flow and having fun. Spell casting allowed primary prepared casters like wizards, clerics and druids to put together plans that were super focused on trivializing all challenging aspects of an encounter. With no real sense that the plan might fail, success wasn't really an accomplishment in PF1, it was a baseline minimum assumption. In response, GMs had to ramp up the difficulty of encounters to make it feel like a game and not just the wizard (or cleric or druid) telling a story about how awesome they are, and because the magic was so effective at encounter ending, when enemies used it intelligently, then it was lights out for whoever acted second. Rocket tag.
PF2 does take the rockets out of the game. I totally get how that feels deflating for people who like excessively blowing things up. But Rocket tag is a bad mechanic for a collaborative activity. I bet you could make an interesting video game though where you focused on making mechanics that allowed magic to be the vastly superior way of solving problems and could develop spells that would completely break a traditional physics engine. I bet computers are up to the task of making that fun now.
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The fact that everyone seems to be all over the place on the matter makes me think that maybe the wizard, and the game as a whole, is actually rather well-balanced.
Eh, I thinks that's pretty spurious.
While it seems that the threads about Wizards tend to pick up all the other miscellaneous issues that people have with PF2 casting in general, it still remains that no other class is talked about in the same way as the Wizard.
The most common emergent trend seems that there is an identity issue somewhere in the Wizard that makes it not feel as distinct as other classes.
That's not necessarily a balance issue in itself, a power-neutral but interesting class ability added to the Wizard would probably go along way to help.
That said, I also disagree with the notion that just because people can't agree on a universal fix doesn't mean something isn't broken. Just means people don't agree (See pretty much every internet discussion about politics or economics).
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
What is it with you people and focus on PF1? Nobody here asked for that. Nobody here is asking for return of that kind of games. That's all in your heads.
We want flavour in Wizard class. It's you that keeps bringing up this "rocket tag", "save or die" stuff.
We are asking to interact with the 3 action economy and the skill rolls, to in fact reduce the single-roll effect a lot of spells fall into.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
You seem to be missing that rolling multiple times a round increases your chance of success versus living and dying on one saving throw or attack roll. I love how some of you tout things like True Strike as this amazing spell for casters, when martials basically get the equivalent of true strike every round as in multiple chances to succeed. When that is brought up, you try to downplay it.
I assume they're doing it to avoid humiliating you by pointing out how incomparable a special, limited double chance at One Big Thing is to doing a thing twice (at a falling chance of success) that is already balanced against the assumption that you're going to do it twice in most circumstances.
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why bring up rocket tag? Because I was responding to a post literally asking for the wizard spell to be a missile in terms of its effect on the battlefield, and how that is a proven bad idea.
You want wizards to interact with the 3 action economy. They do. There are 1 action, 2 action and 3 action spells. Metamagic allows for changing what a spell does by adding an action to its casting instead of making it take up an even more precious resource in terms of higher level spells. 8 out of 9 1st level wizard focus spells can be cast with one action. Recall knowledge is an important action that wizards should be very good at with at least 2 skills (arcana, occultism or society).
NemoNoName, you say you want the wizards to be able to interact with the 3 action economy, but what I see mostly being posted about wizards interacting with the 3 action economy is that their single action options are not powerful enough or character defining enough, especially compared to other casters.
That is probably true, although the spells cast through spell slots really are supposed to be the defining element of a wizard. Their one action options and feats should be centered around casting spells out of spell slots. Some of the options we have gotten for that (augmented summoning, form control, Physical boost), are underwhelming and difficult to use effectively. The transmuter really got slammed on that front. Some are incredible (silent spell, bond conservation, forcible energy, diviner's sight). I think it makes a lot of sense to ask for more like that, especially in places where the presented options have fallen flat.
The single roll effect: I assume by this, you mean that wizards are usually getting off 1 big effect a turn, so rather than getting to make 3 or 4 attack rolls in a turn, the wizards effectiveness often boils down to a single roll per turn?
There are a couple of mitigating factors that can make that significantly less true:
1. Area of Effect spells can often hit 3 or 4 enemies at a time, making for multiple die rolls with a single spell.
2. Casters get to really exploit the 4 tiers of success in far more interesting ways than martials. There are a lot of spells that do different and useful things for casters on 3 out of 4 possible outcomes. Martials are almost always limited to 2, and the only difference between the two in the early game is more damage, and even at higher levels, many weapon groups don't do much more than extra damage either. But this is also true of some spells.
3. Interestingly enough, I think polymorph spells often are about giving a caster more single action options to do in combat, but wizards don't get great ones until pretty high level. Wizards need an interesting 2nd level Battle form spell. Especially if there is supposed to be any pretense that they can even use the feat the form control (which they probably shouldn't anyway, because it is a massively under performing option). Animal form seems explicitly out (although adding it is a fair homebrew option), but adding something there on the arcane list would be an important step in helping transmuters and give casters an option for getting to do more dice rolling.
Otherwise, I think you are correct that spell casting really is about setting up that one spell to do the best it possibly can. That is what metamagic should be about, and what wizard feats that interact with spell casting should be as well. (EDIT) I just don't think that is a bad thing. It creates more of a clear and interesting difference between martials and casters.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
There are 1-action options for Wizards.
Thanks to the APG, Animal Companions are no more limited to Druids and Rangers.
The Archer Dedication is also excellent to just get the Bow Proficiency (something that was heavily missing outside Ancestry feats).
And, in my opinion, Magic Missile has always been the basic third action for a Wizard. It's true that I focus my casters on dealing damage, so I can hardly imagine a Wizard without Dangerous Sorcery. But with Dangerous Sorcery, 1-action Magic Missile is a massive damage dealer even when you use a lower level Missile.
For example, a 3rd level MM with Dangerous Sorcery deals 2d4 + 5 on one target or 2d4 + 8 on 2 targets (10/13 average damage) when a level 10 Greatsword Dragon Barbarian second attack deals 14 average damage against a same level enemy and a third attack 5.25 average damage. And a 3rd level spell at level 10 is no big resource use.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
the more of this i read, the more the disagreement seems to be between people who think
“While wizards may have a relatively low power level and support gaps at low level, they are fine/good later on. And while aome specialties are really lacking, others are fine.”Vs people who say
“While wizards may be fine/good at higher levels, they have a low power level and lack supporting content at low levels. Also, while some specialties are fine, some are really lacking.”Which doesnt really make me feel like people are truly “all over the place”. More like ‘wizards are half full’ vs ‘wizards are half empty’
There sure is some truth in this, also because if I take a peek at another thread that is more or less labelled "when do campaigns end" it is very clear that there is a huge impact if you only ever play 1 to 10 (or 12) or until level 20. And even minor flaws of a class that only manages to peak 9+ will be very evident for all those who never experience high level play, even if those are deliberate inherent flaws.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Outside of something like a top-end spellcaster, most boss monsters will require attacks. They use AoE effects to soften up the party members, and then maybe a couple rounds of high-level spells, but often switch to statball melee against the weakest targets after that. This is especially true for monsters with weak Reflex saves. A thulgant, for instance fundamentally needs to make melee strikes. It can incapacitate or do minor damage at range, but it isn't quickly finishing off a 170-230 HP opponent with phantom pain. Same thing for breath weapons. Sure, they hurt. But they don't kill, not by themselves. An adult magma dragon's 67.5 damage breath weapon even with a critically failed save isn't likely to be lethal, for instance. But following it up with Fly, Draconic Fury might be.
I should also mention that force cage is invisible. Unless said foe makes a Recall Knowledge check, they shouldn't know what they are dealing with until they make contact with the walls of the cage. Even then, they won't know the dimensions and would probably need to Seek to find that information. They know the square of the part of the cage they contacted but not its precise location, which is best described as the hidden condition. They might Seek, easily beating the non-existent stealth DC of the wall and finding out that the cage surrounds them, but that still wastes actions.
Isn't it relatively trivial for creatures to simply break the force cage in an attack or two?
A Thulgant does an average of 37 damage, it will take one or two attacks to get free (plus an action to seek). Still decent against a high level foe, though it has to actually fail the save against the spell first (~40-50% chance of that happening, depending on when you're facing it ,and this is a creature whose worst save is reflex) then costs a sustain to keep up. It could cast a few of its spells from safety before breaking out as well. Surely a 5th level Synesthesia is a better option against enemies like this (not from a Wizard obviously)? And regular Incapacitation 7th level spells would surely be better at dealing with lower level foes.
Getting multiple lower level creatures in it kind of sucks as well though because most of them will also break it in one or two attacks, and then they can all get out that way. Plenty of level 12 creatures (a level below when you gain access to Force Cage) do an average of 30+ damage, meaning they can break the cage in a single round by seeking and then striking twice (or attacking three times and winning 2/3 coin flips).
This spell doesn't seem that great for 7th level, maybe I'm missing something?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There are 1-action options for Wizards.
Thanks to the APG, Animal Companions are no more limited to Druids and Rangers.
The Archer Dedication is also excellent to just get the Bow Proficiency (something that was heavily missing outside Ancestry feats).And, in my opinion, Magic Missile has always been the basic third action for a Wizard. It's true that I focus my casters on dealing damage, so I can hardly imagine a Wizard without Dangerous Sorcery. But with Dangerous Sorcery, 1-action Magic Missile is a massive damage dealer even when you use a lower level Missile.
For example, a 3rd level MM with Dangerous Sorcery deals 2d4 + 5 on one target or 2d4 + 8 on 2 targets (10/13 average damage) when a level 10 Greatsword Dragon Barbarian second attack deals 14 average damage against a same level enemy and a third attack 5.25 average damage. And a 3rd level spell at level 10 is no big resource use.
Especially in PFS play, casters really do get to go nova with consistent regularity. People write off the damage potential of lower level spells but I think you are spot on about how ones like magic missile, make good third action choices for damage focused casters because they fill a need for you: using your third action to do damage. This is another excellent example of how the arcane spell list can really be manipulated and combed through to give a caster a lot of options. "What should I do with my third action every turn?" is something that every character can benefit from thinking about. Even martials are probably better off MCing into an arcane casting class and sitting on a bunch of magic missiles for shooting with their third actions that they are just attacking again, especially if they use weapons that are not agile. Of course there are also a lot of great non spell options for both martials and casters to do with that third action, it just all depends upon what you build your character to be good at.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
As for creative use of spells. Any time the GM applies a liberal use to the spell it makes that spell better. This is simply because the way the spells are written RAW are super limitting, and anything to make them flexible just gives them a free upgrade.
Its become clear to me based on discussion on the forums that a lot of GMs read a lot of restrictions into spells and mechanics which aren't actually written, resulting in a great number of spells (especially illusions, still) being less useful than they are written.
Possibly due to historical spell functions or personal opinions that some things "should" work a certain way, when they likely don't work that way expressly to make them powerful.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
You seem to be missing that rolling multiple times a round increases your chance of success versus living and dying on one saving throw or attack roll.No, actually. I'm focusing on how it's a player trait to get bummed out if your dice don't succeed - which means if the player that's really bummed out when their caster doesn't get the best result out of an enemy's save is also likely to still be bummed out if they are playing a martial and they fail any of the rolls they make on their turn. Because if "aw man, that guy saved so my spell only had partial effect" bums a person out, why wouldn't "aw man, I missed that second attack so I only had partial effect this turn"?
I for one love knowing that damage spells have a significantly higher effective accuracy, due to dealing damage on the majority of save outcomes, with only minimal chance for total failure if I targeted the right save.
The tradeoff for that reliability has to come from somewhere, and I'd rather that be my "full damage chance" than my damage dice.
I think the Failed Save/Successful attack label matters a lot to some others though...
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I play a Sorcerer, but I think both classes are similar on this part of the discussion.
One of the biggests problem that Wizards have are ineffective spells. Whether ir Incapacitation or just middling DC. Not to mention that getting spells 1 level faster has a really big effect on what a Wizard can do.
Not my experience. What I see sometimes is players casting one single lonely spell and feeling bad because the monster makes the save. But that's on the player. PF1 casting is over, now you have to cast a lot.
The thread has talked a lot about it and one of the key aspects that people agree on is that Wizards are better vs low level creatures. Having an extra level over what the campaign expects thus means the Wizard is better able to make use of their spells.
It's the exact opposite. Due to the 4 levels of success applied to spells and not to attacks, casters do fine when they are out leveled. I've played quite a few times while being the lowest level character and I've been able to shine and do things. In the same circumstances, a martial would have just watched everyone fighting the monsters. I've once faced a monster that a fully optimized Fighter would have hit on a 14 (16 for other martials), and as it was flying flanking was impossible. Being a caster, I was able to still do something by buffing/healing my comrades, thing that a martial can't do.
You seem to miss how being higher level than the opposition greatly improves a martial. Both in survivability, damage and utility (as crit specialization happens a lot when you face lower level enemies).
Casters are not good against lower level creatures, they are good against many creatures. So, unless you artificially change the characters' level, it means lower level monsters, too. But if you face a whole bunch of high level creatures, you still want a Wizard to blast them.
As for creative use of spells. Any time the GM applies a liberal use to the spell it makes that spell better. This is simply because the way the spells are written RAW are super limitting, and anything to make them flexible just gives them a free upgrade.
Most GM I know allow creative uses of spells, actions and skills. Forbidding a player to do something logical because it's not written in the rules is hardly improving the quality of the game (fireballing chairs is logical). Now, some are way too creative. I'm on the side who considers that an object is something you can put into your inventory and as such Illusory Object can't build walls and crazy things like that. There is creativity and there is abuse. Allowing Air Bubble to protect against a gaz is far from abuse. And even if you consider it shouldn't be allowed, it won't change the player experience much.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Btw you know what I just realized, but should have realized much sooner?
AoE damage spells technically always had 3 tiers of success with no critical effects: Evasion effects ment no damage, most AoE had half damage on success, and a fail always just was full damage. So the 4 tiers of success are nothing new when it comes to damage spells.
However, they are very new to debuff spells. As few had that, ex: Evil Eye Hex.
That means the new thing for all spells having the potential for no effect and a ~5% chance of actually getting a crit.
*******************
Why didnt I notice sooner?
I dont know that its fair to consider a rare class feature a core item for that sort of comparison. For the vast majority of targets in previous editions, damage spells only had two tiers of success.
And critical failed saves for double damage are a huge change for damage spells - more targets means more dice rolls, which does mean more criticals.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My comment is that dealing half damage and some effects on a successful save is not new. And that receiving no damage on a successful reflex save was a relatively common class feature. (There were a lot of ways to get evasion)
More specifically the fact that it never crossed my mind. In all these months of debating, and reading both systems.
But in PF1, AoE damage dealing spells were quite weak unless you were playing specific builds. It was way easier to abuse save or suck spells. So, the feeling of having 4 tiers of success (well, actually 3 as there were no crit failures) was rare. In general, the feeling was closer to save or end of the fight.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The circular arguments xD - Its like no one is reading anything.
"Huge damage Gap" come on
I think no one is going to change their mind - The guys who think the wizard is ok will continue to play the class and be happy with it. And the guys who think is bad, will continue to think is bad forever (because most of the "problems" are designed with that intent)
Is not like Paizo is going to say, Ok, we admit, we hated the wizard and the nerfs were part of a massive and self-destructive vendetta, we are sorry for ruining your class, here is a patch, that fixes everything! Now you can deal more damage than the fighter, now your DC can be upgraded until your enemies almost never save...
Yeah, that is never going to happen, not even a more serious version of that.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
As an avid wizard player this entire thread is just an exercise in frustration and really makes me wish this forum had an ignore button.
Problems I've run into as a wizard:
Lack of interesting feats, and lack of feats to that add to build concepts if you don't play to the expected style the feats support. Wizard has so many open class feats that multiclassing has been a feature of every build I've either theory crafted or played.
A lack of interesting ways to interact with the three action economy. While single action spells do exist, they are fairly small in number and frequently highly situational making them difficult to justify preparing and most of the focus spells a wizard gets don't have significant impact on the fight. (Contrasted with other casters, particularly Bards, this just feels...lacking.)
As a prepared caster reaction spells are interesting but even more difficult to justify preparing since you're already trying to predict the saves (or AC) of the monsters you'll fight, puzzles you'll need to solve, and emergencies you'll have to respond to and with APG they added some pretty cool spells darn it.
With highly limited number of spells per day the player is playing a game different from other players (even casters) that determines how effective they want to be during each fight. Either you're using fairly abysmal focus spells and mediocre cantrips (particularly in contrast to other classes), or you're throwing spell slots.
The success ladders can feel terrible when you're throwing out spells and the enemies are suffering effects that, in some cases, can be duplicated with either a skill check or cantrip from another class. Is it better than having no effect? Yes. Is it *good*? Rarely, especially when you watch another player duplicate your spell with a class feature that isn't limited in number of daily uses.
Bards. Seriously, have the people arguing that the Wizard is fine looked at Bards? Depending on the build a Bard can eventually gain access to all four schools of magic and before that they still have the ability to switch spells known, which spells are signature spells, and generally just collect spells like they're some sort of occult wizard and they still retain potential access to their amazing cantrips. If wizards had similar interesting and robust options within their class I'd be ecstatic.
Things I believe would help fix the problems I've encountered:
Items that can help math fix spell attacks. I'd like to see something like staves that can help with a specific school's DC's but I recognize that might be a tad outlandish. Spell attacks really need some help though.
Feats (for the Wizard, not cross class options) that are interesting and effective for multiple wizard options.
A rework of cantrips and/or focus spells that give Wizards options similar to Druids and Bards (less familiar with Cleric) so that all up spell slots don't need to be used to gain the same effect.
The circular arguments xD - Its like no one is reading anything.
"Huge damage Gap" come onI think no one is going to change their mind - The guys who think the wizard is ok will continue to play the class and be happy with it. And the guys who think is bad, will continue to think is bad forever (because most of the "problems" are designed with that intent)
Is not like Paizo is going to say, Ok, we admit, we hated the wizard and the nerfs were part of a massive and self-destructive vendetta, we are sorry for ruining your class, here is a patch, that fixes everything! Now you can deal more damage than the fighter, now your DC can be upgraded until your enemies almost never save...
Yeah, that is never going to happen, not even a more serious version of that.
hyperbole is a tired internet trope
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Bards. Seriously, have the people arguing that the Wizard is fine looked at Bards?
Bards are at the current top end of the balance scale, and bordering on OP.
The only reason I say bordering on is because they are a support class, and are OP by way of allowing other players to shine. Its hard to argue to nerf that - but my experience says that having a bard in your party is worth more than an extra non bard character.
We absolutely do not want any additional classes as powerful as Bards are. They are not the benchmark for a balanced class.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Bards. Seriously, have the people arguing that the Wizard is fine looked at Bards?
Bards are at the current top end of the balance scale, and bordering on OP.
The only reason I say bordering on is because they are a support class, and are OP by way of allowing other players to shine. Its hard to argue to nerf that - but my experience says that having a bard in your party is worth more than an extra non bard character.
We absolutely do not want any additional classes as powerful as Bards are. They are not the benchmark for a balanced class.
i disagree, bards are the most balanced caster atm, and should be where the power curve lays for casters, not wizards.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
i disagree, bards are the most balanced caster atm, and should be where the power curve lays for casters, not wizards.
Bards. Seriously, have the people arguing that the Wizard is fine looked at Bards?
Bards are at the current top end of the balance scale, and bordering on OP.
The only reason I say bordering on is because they are a support class, and are OP by way of allowing other players to shine. Its hard to argue to nerf that - but my experience says that having a bard in your party is worth more than an extra non bard character.
We absolutely do not want any additional classes as powerful as Bards are. They are not the benchmark for a balanced class.
Ah, so back to the days of a single caster trivializing content is it?
Because that's the essential effect of having a bard in the party - with one turn, they can apply a virtual 2-3 level shift to a target, something which tends to take other classes way more effort to pull off... if they can at all.
And the bard does it for the whole party.
No thank you.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Bards. Seriously, have the people arguing that the Wizard is fine looked at Bards?
Bards are at the current top end of the balance scale, and bordering on OP.
The only reason I say bordering on is because they are a support class, and are OP by way of allowing other players to shine. Its hard to argue to nerf that - but my experience says that having a bard in your party is worth more than an extra non bard character.
We absolutely do not want any additional classes as powerful as Bards are. They are not the benchmark for a balanced class.
My Bard does both? I rebuilt my initial Wizard (Evoker) into a Wizard(Evoker)MC Bard, and finally just a pure Bard for Age of Ashes. I spend a fair amount of time just using the support cantrips to good effect but when we really need something done I start dropping some pretty nasty spells. The occult list is really powerful and the APG just added some really nice spells that I intend to either retrain into or add at the appropriate level.
I really feel like other classes can do similar, Bard just worked best for my 5 man party, but Wizards lack a good, repeatable, combat option that other classes seem to have.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
i disagree, bards are the most balanced caster atm, and should be where the power curve lays for casters, not wizards.
Bards. Seriously, have the people arguing that the Wizard is fine looked at Bards?
Bards are at the current top end of the balance scale, and bordering on OP.
The only reason I say bordering on is because they are a support class, and are OP by way of allowing other players to shine. Its hard to argue to nerf that - but my experience says that having a bard in your party is worth more than an extra non bard character.
We absolutely do not want any additional classes as powerful as Bards are. They are not the benchmark for a balanced class.
Ah, so back to the days of a single caster trivializing content is it?
Because that's the essential effect of having a bard in the party - with one turn, they can apply a virtual 2-3 level shift to a target, something which tends to take other classes way more effort to pull off... if they can at all.
And the bard does it for the whole party.
No thank you.
i disagree that it would result in single caster trivializing content.
i am talking about their flexible use of their actions between spells and 1 action class specific cantrips, along with unique flavorful sub choice at creation that influences how you play through out the span of your character as opposed to what wizards get that just adjust your micromanagement activities.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Of course a bard is going to shine even brighter in larger parties. My PFS bard is always appreciated even if I only get to do something interesting one round or two per day, because there are usually 6 players at the table. Whole party buffs get a lot better the bigger the party.