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...with the exception that they could probably use a bonus on the spell attack rolls similar to what weapon users gets, just to make those spells a bit more reliable.I think that particular point brings up the important different between fair, and equal.
Giving spell attacks a bonus like weapon attacks get from potency runes would certainly be more equal on the attack roll portion of the "how does stuff work?" equation - but it would also need to make the overall outcome more fair in order for it to be an actual improvement to game balance.
...which, maybe it is, but maybe it isn't. I haven't checked the math myself, or seen comparative numbers that I am sure used solid assumptions in their calculations.
Certainly, if Casters had equal accuracy through item bonuses they'd actually be at an immediate advantage (Arcane and Occult inherently, Divine and Primal with a single feat invested) due to the availability of True Strike and its use from a Staff of Divination.
There are some limitations on True Strike, but the benefits are accessible and immense.
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...with the exception that they could probably use a bonus on the spell attack rolls similar to what weapon users gets, just to make those spells a bit more reliable.I think that particular point brings up the important different between fair, and equal.
Giving spell attacks a bonus like weapon attacks get from potency runes would certainly be more equal on the attack roll portion of the "how does stuff work?" equation - but it would also need to make the overall outcome more fair in order for it to be an actual improvement to game balance.
...which, maybe it is, but maybe it isn't. I haven't checked the math myself, or seen comparative numbers that I am sure used solid assumptions in their calculations.
Certainly, if Casters had equal accuracy through item bonuses they'd actually be at an immediate advantage (Arcane and Occult inherently, Divine and Primal with a single feat invested) due to the availability of True Strike and its use from a Staff of Divination.
There are some limitations on True Strike, but the benefits are accessible and immense.
If the reason that casters can't have additional accuracy is because of true strike it sounds like true strike should have either had it's bonus further reduced or been removed completely.
Personally I don't think casters should have to buff themselves with true strike just to ensure they have a reasonable chance to land their spells that require attack rolls.
Edit: To clarify maybe instead of rolling twice and taking the better True Strike should just give a +5 to the roll.
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Generally, I feel like single-target attack spells (other than cantrips) tend to have extra stuff on them, plus the big dice. Risk/reward.
Want to reduce the risk? Use the spell that does that (true strike)
@Ubertron X, I really appreciate how you have been continuing to post about your play experience and how it is grown. It sounds like you have started to find a place where your character is performing up to your expectations for it, and that is awesome.
I cannot reiterate your point enough about changing your targeting routine and not rushing your big spells until you get some kind of advantage, or it is exactly the right spell for the situation. Like Fireball if you get the drop on bunched up opponents is often going to be worth it and show stopping, while casting that same spell at the bottom of the initiative order probably isn't, unless the enemy bunches up in a strong defensive position, even when your save DC might be below expected.
@Unicore
Thank you for your kind words dear sir or lady!
And while it is true that I have come to terms with many meta aspects of PF2E it would be a lie to say that I am confident with all of them. Most notibly would be the new action economy, which does not allow a move, raise shield and cast-a-standard-spell routine, respectively makes caster gameplay very static once you add a metamagic feat to your spell, or the delayed proficiency increase for casters, which hit our wizard and me pretty hard during levels 5 and 6.
Also it sure helped that the basic "to protect and to serve" Cleric gameplay was expected and accepted from the very beginning (we alotted roles before we started making characters), so I for sure won't complain that I am now relegated to buffing and supporting, when the whole character idea and concept was based on buffing and supporting in the first place. However I have to admit that I was genuinely and positively surprised by my offensive potential once I had unlocked a couple of non-core spells and abilities and were playing to their strength.
Note that due to the fact that being a Warpriest and just having reached level 7 my spellcasting will continuosly fall behind and I have thus already announced to my group that I will probably be less offensive in the near future and that our Wizard now has to take over the heavy lifting when it comes to AoE and debuffing which he is ok with).
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If the reason that casters can't have additional accuracy is because of true strike it sounds like true strike should have either had it's bonus further reduced or been removed completely.
Personally I don't think casters should have to buff themselves with true strike just to ensure they have a reasonable chance to land their spells that require attack rolls.
Edit: To clarify maybe instead of rolling twice and taking the better True Strike should just give a +5 to the roll.
I don't think true strike is "the reason" casters can't have additional accuracy - I think it's a compounding factor.
If the situation as-is happens to be that attack roll spells have competitive damage expectations to Strike-based options, that means true strike is already a significant booster - and would mean that if accuracy were increased it'd not only make the base spells more potent (possibly more potent than would be fair), but would also make true strike even more potent.
And making true strike a +5 instead of a re-roll is... not something I'd advise given how PF2 crits are figured. For example: if rolling a natural 19 or better would get you a critical, you've got a 10% chance normally, and a 19% chance with a second roll to choose from, but if you just had a +5 instead your crit chance would go up to 35%. Which means an effect that "almost doubles" crit chance now "almost quadruples" crit chance.
Spells would have to be sorely lacking at current for that kind of boost to be warranted.
The +5 was merely as stab in the dark.
Doing a little research a reroll is roughly equivalent to about 3.3 pts, so making true strike worth either +3 or +4 would be more accurate. But consider that the average chance to critical on a spell roll is going to be not great to start with. A caster is going to be up to 3 points behind a martial on their attack roll, and I don't remember the statistical chance for martials for crits, but I remember it's not terribly high. So if we're talking about a 15% chance becoming a 35% chance, as a GM I wouldn't be terribly worried.
The math on truestrike/advantage really does not line up well with thinking of it as a +x, especially in a game with 4 degrees of success. Most spell attack rolls don't have a difference between critical failure and failure, but they do for the most part have pretty big differences between success and critical success. When you need a 11 on the die to succeed, with true strike you have a 25% chance of failure, a 65ish percent of success, and almost a 10% crit chance. That is better than a +4, if the goal is not wasting your action.
When things get tough, and you need a 13 or higher, like against a tough boss, True strike turns a 70% failure (or worse rate) into a 49% failure or worse rate, with still nearly a 10% chance of getting a critical hit. so this is where it is close to a +4.
True strike is much more interesting than a flat bonus to attack and is better for the game than big bonuses. It is the most elegant part of 5e that they realized this and worked it into the game at such a broad level as advantage.
Half of the spell lists (divine and primal) don't naturally have true strike, so what then?
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And while it is true that I have come to terms with many meta aspects of PF2E it would be a lie to say that I am confident with all of them. Most notibly would be the new action economy, which does not allow a move, raise shield and cast-a-standard-spell routine, respectively makes caster gameplay very static once you add a metamagic feat to your spell, or the delayed proficiency increase for casters, which hit our wizard and me pretty hard during levels 5 and 6.
I think there's design space where this could be addressed in the future. I think Casters having a 'reverse action economy growth' is a much more severe QOL issue than accuracy or Save DC's. While Martials are getting extra Reactions, casters are getting new metamagic options for complicating their action economy.
Haste already partially 'solves' this particular issue, so there's room for feats or spells that may provide other options for Quickening in more limited circumstances, at a lower cost, or with alternative benefits.
Imagine a Cleric spell that allowed you to be Quickened for Raise a Shield, for example, possibly reinforcing the shield's hardness or granting it temporary hitpoints as well.
Or something like 'Mobile Metamagic' that allowed you to combine applying a Metamagic feat with a Step or Stride.
These wouldn't mess with the combat math at all, but might make life generally more friendly toward casters.
Magic items that provided limited quickening once per day (can only use the extra action for metamagic, perhaps) would also be welcome.
Half of the spell lists (divine and primal) don't naturally have true strike, so what then?
I think there's a lot of design space for true strike-like effects that enhance your spells in various ways, both as additional options for the arcane and occult list, and as ways to cover the divine and primal list as well.
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I wonder if there are not a lot of casters running around, refusing to have any incapacitation spells memorized in their highest level slots that are finding themselves feeling useless in fights against 2 or 3 equal level opposition.
I get why. At low levels, it is not uncommon to fight 2 enemies that are higher level than your incapacitation spells can effect, or 1 enemy that is higher level alongside 3 or 4 equal level, so you assume that would stay true at higher levels, but it really doesn't. Then you see everyone on these boards say incapacitation spells are useless.
But if you look at the encounter that Ubertron_X, the 11th level black dragons, if you make it a sever encounter (so 3 equal level enemies), and put it in a challenging environment, that is a really challenging encounter for a party of martial characters, especially if they lack good ranged options, it could easily end up as a TPK. If the casters don't take support spells to help the martials get to the dragons, they might very well be useless.
This is the situation that is really giving casters a bad wrap. Casters are expected to carry martial characters in any situation where mobility or the environment is going to be an issue, but doing so isn't considered "fun" by the players. I get why, the alchemist is frustrating for the same reason: Every contribution they have to give feels better when it is given to a different character than when used by the alchemist. But the party without that support is going to get themselves killed sooner than later, i.e 3 equal level dragons in the open are going to murder a party of martial characters.
Encounters in PF2 are more challenging than PF1, because a whole lot more is riding on party tactics. Traditional tactics of "mob the monster and try to hit it as much as possible as quickly as possible" can seriously backfire against solo higher level monsters. The easiest way to make that strategy kinda work is to have 2 casters dedicated to keeping the 2 martial characters alive and buffed as...
The experience with equal level monsters for my group is just to let the martials take them out. With a bard, flanking, and a mild debuff, equal level monsters are going to die fast to martial crits and hits. So no point in spending heavy spells.
The three dragons in the listed scenario die quickly with no need to use incapacitation spells. Just let your archer light them up. Cast a fly on a martial, let them rip them apart.
Then spend medicine during downtime to heal up if you need to. Maybe use one divine font if someone gets unlucky. No real need to use some high level incapacitation spell against equal level fights, when the martials at that level are critting for 50 to 60 plus points along with regular hits.
Just let a martial spend one action to intimidate for a round lowering AC by 1. Have the bard use Inspire Courage. Then let the martials crush them. High level spell slot saved for BBEG.
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Dragons have a fly speed of 120ft. I don't see a lot of parties with archers, and having 3 dragons fighting against a party that has one archer and a melee martial lucky to get 1 action to attack with a round is a recipe for disaster.
Again, sharing recognition of achievement around the table is going to help your games out. Highlighting a "That attack is a critical hit because of the bless spell" or a "That positive energy damage from Disrupting Weapons is really doing a number on these guys" can really provide a sense of accomplishment to characters who are supporting in that capacity.This is important. Whenever our Bard's songs help us finish an enemy or avoid a dangerous attack, we hype her all to hell.
It's nice that you do that, but bards know how badass they are just as do clerics. When you're pumping everyone's damage, attack rolls, saves, AC, and giving them physical resistance to damage every round, they know it. Just as they know when you get back a 100 hit points. Cleric and bard can be boring, but they are very powerful with unique and useful abilities.
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Dragons have a fly speed of 120ft. I don't see a lot of parties with archers, and having 3 dragons fighting against a party that has one archer and a melee martial lucky to get 1 action to attack with a round is a recipe for disaster.
Are you seeing these dragons outside or in a huge area with the party just standing around waiting? Why would they do that? If the dragons are outside or in a large area, why would they position themselves for an AOE spell like calm emotions or any AoE spell?
This is why I have so many problems with these analysis. In the analysis the martial is in bad circumstances, but the creatures are somehow setting themselves up for perfect Aoe hits and spells. I don't get it.
Spells have shorter ranges than bows a lot of the time. Calm Emotions is a 10 foot burst which would require large 10 foot dragons to be super tightly spaced to hit them all, something they are unlikely to do in a wide open space to move 120 feet. I don't see why an environment detrimental to martials is not also detrimental to casters by providing too much space to allow AoE attacks given the movement.
Why wouldn't a dragon in that space fly in, smash the caster with lower AC, hit points, and saves, then fly off? They can kill the caster faster than the martial and get to 120 feet, remain spaced out, and not allow AoE hits taking the weaker caster damage from AoE spells used on single targets.
I have been disadvantaged more as a caster with bad spacing than as a martial. Whether it's the enemies spread out in a way I can only hit a few. The martials spread among the enemy in a way where I would hit them too. Small area of effect or short range on a spell. Or the worst, just a lucky save roll or an unlucky attack roll when using a finite resource like a high level spell. That is the worst feeling.
When a martial misses, they get a little miffed but never have to worry about the resource being gone. They just swing next around with the same force and power as the previous round. When a caster misses with a high level spell slot, he just spent one of 3 or 4 chances he has per day to launch a great attack.
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My suggestion for calm emotions was for if you could catch the dragons before they had time to get going, but even if you can only hit one out of three, it is a spell well cast. Until a caster hits the dragons with AoE attacks, they wouldn't necessarily expect it. This is a case where using a 6th level fireball and doing 25-30% of the dragon's total HP in one hit, or potentially taking 1 or 2 of them out of the fight until you have dealt with the others.
Those dragons can play nasty hit and run on your party if you don't have ways to block line of sight, take away flying, moving the fight, or taking away their action advantage so they have to choose whether to attack or move. Martials are pretty terrible at all of those things.
Expecting casters ONLY to provide support for martial characters, and assuming that martial characters will solve every encounter is a terrible, terrible mistake to make as a party.
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Been playing on Roll20 since August 2019, just hit level 13. We have 6 players, some PCs have died along the way. Our casters are a Cleric, a Sorcerer, and a Bard.
The cleric absolutely hates his class. He complains a lot about how boring it is, and can't wait to play a martial, specifically a rogue.
The Bard and the Sorcerer are ok, they like having utility (think see invis or fly) and the group buffing. But they too feel a bit bored at times.
Overall the consensus in my group is that casters are behind the curve / not fun to play, when compared to martials, specifically Rogues, although the fighter and the monk are having fun too. No one plans on playing a caster for their next character. Thankfully we get 2 more martial classes in the APG!
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Been playing on Roll20 since August 2019, just hit level 13. We have 6 players, some PCs have died along the way. Our casters are a Cleric, a Sorcerer, and a Bard.
The cleric absolutely hates his class. He complains a lot about how boring it is, and can't wait to play a martial, specifically a rogue.
The Bard and the Sorcerer are ok, they like having utility (think see invis or fly) and the group buffing. But they too feel a bit bored at times.
Overall the consensus in my group is that casters are behind the curve / not fun to play, when compared to martials, specifically Rogues, although the fighter and the monk are having fun too. No one plans on playing a caster for their next character. Thankfully we get 2 more martial classes in the APG!
Honest question, why hasn't your cleric changed their class if they dislike it so much? I had a fellow player who really wasn't feeling fighter so the GM let her respec into monk, keeping her the same character narratively.
Honest question, why hasn't your cleric changed their class if they dislike it so much? I had a fellow player who really wasn't feeling fighter so the GM let her respec into monk, keeping her the same character narratively.Been playing on Roll20 since August 2019, just hit level 13. We have 6 players, some PCs have died along the way. Our casters are a Cleric, a Sorcerer, and a Bard.
The cleric absolutely hates his class. He complains a lot about how boring it is, and can't wait to play a martial, specifically a rogue.
The Bard and the Sorcerer are ok, they like having utility (think see invis or fly) and the group buffing. But they too feel a bit bored at times.
Overall the consensus in my group is that casters are behind the curve / not fun to play, when compared to martials, specifically Rogues, although the fighter and the monk are having fun too. No one plans on playing a caster for their next character. Thankfully we get 2 more martial classes in the APG!
Dunno. I will have to ask.
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Experience with spellcasters in general has been quite varied in my groups, so it's hard to say. I got a couple of complaints about action economy and stuff failing too often, but some players are also pretty satisfied with how their character plays out. Everyone who tried to play a Blaster so far left thoroughly frustrated, though.
I'm probably setting myself up for disappointment, but I hope there are some cantrips or metamagics in the apg that really change the way casters play. Electric arc being far and away the best cantrip has been discussed to death, and the devs do pay attention to discussions. A feat that gives a circumstance bonus to attack rolls for cantrips (not DCs) would work, a metamagic that makes attack roll cantrips attack enemies in an area, a cantrip you could sustain (something immobile like the 5e bonfire cantrip if I'm remembering right), stuff like that. Changes like those would be easy to implement, be game changers, and give casters cool things to use their feats on. There are a lot of boring feats for casters right now, if you ask me.
So what I am gathering from a number of people here... spellcasters are "behind the curve".
So we should obviously play entire parities of martials with no class access to spells right ;).
So what I am gathering from a number of people here... spellcasters are "behind the curve".
So we should obviously play entire parities of martials with no class access to spells right ;).
I don't recommend this ;) Its always spellcasters saving parties from calamity...
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Experience with spellcasters in general has been quite varied in my groups, so it's hard to say. I got a couple of complaints about action economy and stuff failing too often, but some players are also pretty satisfied with how their character plays out. Everyone who tried to play a Blaster so far left thoroughly frustrated, though.
Could you give a little more information on your blaster PCs? I played using a lot of blasting spells (low and medium-high levels), and I had no problem keeping up with martials in terms of damage output. My biggest problem as a wizard at higher levels was surviving because of low defenses (AC/Fort/Will/Reflex) that do not get a single one at master until level 17. If it weren't for those low defenses, I would have had a much better time, as I would have survived longer during fights to cast high damage, debuffs, and/or battlefield control spells.
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I think a lot of people's complaints about casters right now is that everyone wants to play a big damage martial and expect someone else to play a cleric and a bard so that they can stay on their feet and roll the attack dice over and over again. But I think if you give yourself time to grow into the caster role, and try out different tactics until you start to find some that work, you can have a lot of fun playing any caster in the game. It probably is a lot harder in PFS and other situations where you don't play with the same players long enough to develop a team mentality.
I have no doubt that an all martial party is viable, especially if you count alchemist as martial (which could go either way given that they don't use magic, but their functionality is more like a caster than not).
What I was trying to say earlier was that if casters are "behind the curve" then an all martial party would not just be viable - it would be demonstrably superior to a party that included casters.
That, and you wouldn't be having martials picking up spellcasting even in archetype form (as a rule).
It is quite GM dependent though, if a GM is only ever putting combat scenarios that benefit "hitting it in the face" strategies then that is what will be prevalent.
In the same way that a campaign with primarily small rooms won't benefit ranged characters and one with immediately hostile and fight to the death foes will be a detriment to more socially focused characters.
If control spells, AoE spells, defensive spells, curative spells, anti magic spells, damage type weaknesses or physical resistances don't come up... Then that is less of a system flaw imo. Not that a GM should balance against the martials either, just that it is up to a good GM to make sure that there is some level of variance.
For blasters casters I wouldn't be surprised if we see archetypes and magical items being used to lower their flexibility to enable the extra damage in the future.
My suggestion for calm emotions was for if you could catch the dragons before they had time to get going, but even if you can only hit one out of three, it is a spell well cast. Until a caster hits the dragons with AoE attacks, they wouldn't necessarily expect it. This is a case where using a 6th level fireball and doing 25-30% of the dragon's total HP in one hit, or potentially taking 1 or 2 of them out of the fight until you have dealt with the others.
Those dragons can play nasty hit and run on your party if you don't have ways to block line of sight, take away flying, moving the fight, or taking away their action advantage so they have to choose whether to attack or move. Martials are pretty terrible at all of those things.
Expecting casters ONLY to provide support for martial characters, and assuming that martial characters will solve every encounter is a terrible, terrible mistake to make as a party.
Why would they be together at any point in time? Are they stuck in the same cave? Are they being ridden in formation? What is making them form together in a 10 foot burst space that allows a caster to hit them in a way that a martial cannot while moving 120 feet? The only way the dragon is moving 120 feet around is outside or in a huge cave. In either of those, there is no reason to believe they would be spaced for that type of attack.
Yeah, caster actions are pretty limited. Someone somewhere mentioned an idea of 2-action spells being 1-action flourish instead (quicken could remove the flourish from one of the spells).
Letting casters do more things, whether it's moving, using shields, commanding pets, sustaining, would go a long way, I think. I'm not sure if that would break for something like 3 flaming spheres, but it's not really an easy fix for the current system anyways, as it would require a big overhaul.
As it is, though, if a caster can't use two actions for a spell in a round, they aren't really contributing. Sure, a fighter might want to use power attack, but they could interact, move, and strike, all while contributing. Not so much for the caster.
I think it was brought up two wizard complaint posts ago, but casters don't have much interaction in the three action system. They really kind of get two actions, or one, if they're using metamagic (reach can be very useful, since the ranges are so short now on some spells).
I think in the recent Q&A, there was a question about more variable action spells, and it was hinted that there wouldn't really be many? Not that they get used much anyways. MM is almost always cast as 3, and heal as 2 or 3.
I do like the idea of flourish though...
I was thinking of incorporating Quicken Casting as a flourish as well for cantrips. Leaving it as is for higher level spells.
Honest question, why hasn't your cleric changed their class if they dislike it so much? I had a fellow player who really wasn't feeling fighter so the GM let her respec into monk, keeping her the same character narratively.While I can't answer for him, I'll say that cleric healing is so useful, it almost feels mandatory. I just started playing in a game with no cleric, and I'm thinking it's going to be rough. I'm playing a druid, but I told them from the start, I won't be taking heals as my top slots (except for 1st level spells, early on), and that I'd play a cleric if they wanted me to, but they said to stick with my druid.
Watching the cleric in the game I run undo two crits with one heal spell, and just keep going because of fonts and slots, it just seems vital to the group. But it does seem pretty boring. Ours is a war priest, but so many things have DR/Hardness, that he just does a trivial amount compared to the fighter, when he tries to attack. War Priests should get weapon mastery (they don't get legendary casting, after all).
Druid even taking heals as top spells still feels very powerful. Druid class is pretty good. At least Storm and Animal druid Order Explorer. Shapechanging looks bad, but maybe it can be build up. From what I understand Handwraps of Mighty Fists work for unarmed attacks when shapechanged as a druid at least the item bonus to hit, not the extra dice.
So what I am gathering from a number of people here... spellcasters are "behind the curve".
So we should obviously play entire parities of martials with no class access to spells right ;).
I think support casters like the cleric and bard are fine. They can fill in the majority of support spells like fly, haste, energy resistance, and the like while buffing or healing. So you can play entire parties of martials with one bard and/or cleric and be completely fine. You won't miss much without a sorcerer, wizard, or druid, though the druid is at least fun. So far has been able to bring enough damage to the table to match a low level martial. Though I hear that slows down as the animal companion falls farther behind.
I don't recommend this ;) Its always spellcasters saving parties from calamity...So what I am gathering from a number of people here... spellcasters are "behind the curve".
So we should obviously play entire parities of martials with no class access to spells right ;).
The cleric sure does save many people from calamity. The bard can do quite a bit too. I have to admit that when we have trouble, both of those classes have been able to way step up to turn the tide of the battle.
Cleric healing is pretty insane.
A bard using Inspire Heroics with Inspire courage and then casting a damage or effect spell can be pretty nuts for a round.
I think a lot of people's complaints about casters right now is that everyone wants to play a big damage martial and expect someone else to play a cleric and a bard so that they can stay on their feet and roll the attack dice over and over again. But I think if you give yourself time to grow into the caster role, and try out different tactics until you start to find some that work, you can have a lot of fun playing any caster in the game. It probably is a lot harder in PFS and other situations where you don't play with the same players long enough to develop a team mentality.
This may be true. They really did do an amazing job making martials not only strong damage wise, but interesting to play. You're no longer the guy who just runs up and hits crap. You can do some wild stuff like controlling a battlefield tripping, breathing dragon breath that really hurts, shielding your allies from breath weapons and AoE attacks, shoving back giants to drive them away from the casters, and martials have a lot more they can do than before and much earlier on.
It's pretty fun to play martials right now. I give a lot of credit to the design team improving the martial experience. Every martial seems fun at this point with interesting offensive, defensive, and support options. The fighter might be the most one-trick pony of the martials, but even he has some interesting builds to do other things.
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So we should obviously play entire parities of martials with no class access to spells right ;).
That's a really, really bad argument. Being "behind the curve" does not automatically mean some of the spells aren't useful, or that one caster in a party of martials isn't useful for some of their abilities.
This is not a binary choice.
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While an all martial party probably is doable I don't think it is overly effective. One simple reason is that not everything in an RPG is combat and overcoming mundane tasks using utility spells is really neat.
In our current AP we knew that we had to cross a large body of water the next day and my Warpriest single-handedly solved the situation by memorizing Water Walk a whole 5 times (which at this time were all my 2nd and 3rd level slots).
Could we have build a raft or just swim over? Certainly, however it would have taken a lot longer and probably would also have involved greater risks.
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Druid even taking heals as top spells still feels very powerful. Druid class is pretty good. At least Storm and Animal druid Order Explorer. Shapechanging looks bad, but maybe it can be build up. From what I understand Handwraps of Mighty Fists work for unarmed attacks when shapechanged as a druid at least the item bonus to hit, not the extra dice.
Why do you say shapechanging is bad? It looks like the best one, you have a focus spell to turn you into a martial character (in fact better at level 3 and 4, as well as 11 and 12) on demand which means you can prepare more support and utility spells, falling back on your focus spell to deal damage against single targets. There’s also the interaction with Mountain Stance which makes you equal to or better than a heavy armour champion with their shield raised at nearly all levels. A build of:
Storm Order (for second focus point) Ancient Elf (Voluntary flaw INT + Cha or INT twice so you can get +Dex, Wis, Str) then
(1): Monk Dedication from ancient elf
2: Order Explorer (Wild)
4: Basic Kata (Mountain Stance)
6: Form control
8: Soaring Shape
10: Monk’s Flurry
12: Dragon Shape
14: Primal Focus
16: Monstrosity Shape
18: Perfect Form Control
20: True Shapeshifter
Looks like it would work well.
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So we should obviously play entire parities of martials with no class access to spells right ;).That's a really, really bad argument. Being "behind the curve" does not automatically mean some of the spells aren't useful, or that one caster in a party of martials isn't useful for some of their abilities.
This is not a binary choice.
No, really? I am surprised you would say that my completely facetious argument was in bad faith :P.
There are heaps of useful spells though, not just one or two especially as the game is more than just combat encounters and combat encounters are determined by more than just walking up to something and rolling initiative.
Lock does no damage but can change the battle landscape for instance ;)
In my experience so far a party with two casters two martials (at least one martial specifically being built for damage) is going to have the easiest time in play. I felt like being a bit flippant because of the extremes that keep being discussed in this thread.
There’s also the interaction with Mountain Stance which makes you equal to or better than a heavy armour champion with their shield raised at nearly all levels.
You can't attack if you're in Animal Form and use a Monk Stance. So, yes, you have great AC but you can't do anything at all but moving.
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Think rotuine for that is Leap(forces you out of stance), Flurry, Enter stance and repeat.
I see. It costs you 2 actions per round to maintain it, so it's not ideal. I also expect a few DMs to have an issue with such combat behavior.
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Think rotuine for that is Leap(forces you out of stance), Flurry, Enter stance and repeat.
Yeah I suggest grabbing Quick Jump so you can actually move a decent distance, Leap doesn't get you very far.
I see. It costs you 2 actions per round to maintain it, so it's not ideal. I also expect a few DMs to have an issue with such combat behavior.
Doubtful, it locks 2 actions per round, so getting slowed or tripped means you can't attack. Plenty of counters.
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Think rotuine for that is Leap(forces you out of stance), Flurry, Enter stance and repeat.I see. It costs you 2 actions per round to maintain it, so it's not ideal. I also expect a few DMs to have an issue with such combat behavior.
What objections do you have against animal form, leap and flurry? :P
Think rotuine for that is Leap(forces you out of stance), Flurry, Enter stance and repeat.Yeah I suggest grabbing Quick Jump so you can actually move a decent distance, Leap doesn't get you very far.
I see. It costs you 2 actions per round to maintain it, so it's not ideal. I also expect a few DMs to have an issue with such combat behavior.Doubtful, it locks 2 actions per round, so getting slowed or tripped means you can't attack. Plenty of counters.
I mean, per RAW, it works and it's not overpowered. But it's weird for a combat behavior. Jumping to leave a stance to be able to attack to stance again afterwards... I can see some DM complaining that Stances and Combat Forms are not meant to be combined.
I have a feeling that will be in the errata which will hopefully come out soon. It does seem like something that's not intended. I've seen the build come up a few times though, maybe it's too late to change as it will ruin peoples characters.
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I'm trying soooo very hard as a sorcerer to stay positive, but I'm level 5 in PFS and it's getting incredibly difficult to stay positive. I can literally feel that I'm getting weaker. Enemies are becoming hit-point bags that are best overcome with a fighter's crits, or a rogue's or barbarian's consistency. My puny little fireball, though good in fights with a bunch of little things, finds itself almost completely ineffective against anything of a higher level than me.
Why is it that fighters get to fight well, but it feels like spellcasters don't get to spell well? I feel like I've got to be missing something. I don't want to play debuff. I don't want to play support. I want to be a blaster, and I'm feeling more and more like that position has been removed from the game in any way that can outclass the martials...
It's not that I want to "Be the best". It's that I honestly feel, in comparison, that casters are now at the lower end of the spectrum. I just want to be halfway decent. My GM worries every time the fighter's turn comes around. Never worries for mine.
Trutfully pound for pound blasting is way better in pathfinder 2E vs 1e.
1. if you look through the monster manual you will find that creatures with elemental immunities are quite rare.
2. almost all monsters have a weak save that is significantly lower that thier best save
3. i would say most blast spells esp the AOE's were outright buffed from 1E.
the Key to being a good blaster in P2E is making sure you are targeting the creatures weakest save.