Hell, people complain about Incapicitation spells but low level Incapacitation spells at level 1 (Color Spray, Sleep) are still fight winners against a huge range of potential foes at low level.
Yes they are reasonably good at level 1. It is once you get higher level spells they are irrelevant. That was pretty much always the case with those spells. It is just now it happens to things like Charm Person, and Calm Emotions as well. If you want to use them they have to be in your top slots or forget them. PF2 has seriously devalued this type of magic from lower level slots and its a big change to the game.
The opposite is kind of true. In PF1, a first level charm person had a DC 8 points behind whatever your highest level spell was. This meant it naturally capped out relatively early on, though you could still get lucky with lower level NPCs and the like. It was also only useful against humanoids, which left aasimars, tieflings, and a whole host of other creatures completely immune to it at all levels.
Yes its a good point that DCs have changed. It is a reasonable simplification and it contributes to this problem. Though 8 points of DC is an extreme example.
In PF2, charm in a 1st level slot has the same DC as your highest level spells, it just also has the incapacitate trait. That still means a 20th level wizard has a 35% chance of shutting down a crimson worm with a single level 1 spell slot. That's effectively taking out 1/4 of a standard encounter or 1/6 of a boss fight with a single 1st level spell, at least as far as the caster is concerned. Not a bad use of your 1/day Quicken that needs to be applied to a lower level spell anyways. In the case of the purple worm, it could even turn into gains in the current or next encounter based on how the situation is roleplayed. If it doesn't go off, you've lost very little, and if it does take effect you've made huge gains in the encounter with negligible resource expenditure.
The real cost for a 20th level caster is not low level spell slots. He has enough. He could have quickened a level 7 spell if he had wanted. He probably has access to large number of low levels wands and scrolls anyway.
The cost is the casters limited number of actions, not the resources. Those odds seem reasonable to me.
Personally I'd consider that a terrible use of a Quickened spell. A simple heighted Fear will probably cause the entire combat to be an easy wipe out for the PCs. You also don't have to consider if these are really level 18 crimson worms or level 21 special crimson worms.
Incapacitate doesn't mean the spell doesn't work, it just means the spell effect is improved for the target by one step. Virtually all incapacitate spells have some kind of significant effect on a failure
Significant? Ok the spell still does something. Like not notice it was a charm spell, or only blind till their turn starts (so you can move away). Not particularily major.
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I'll be honest. Letting casters apply spell hit runes to their staff has helped things greatly.
Just a little home brew, being able to get +1/2/3 to them has helped a ton. Then instead of a striking rune I made another for spell saves, increasing the DC if their spells by 1/2/3 respectively. But also they only get to choose one type of save for this rune to keep it in check.
3 levels with that has been great for everyone involved. Keep in mind is being treated same as regular rune equipment. So costs money and can't get +3 until high level.
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That aside, I'm a little concerned with wizard success rates on bosses. Look at those numbers!
Incapacitate sucks, but general boss accuracy looks awful. Don't use will attacks on dragons, I suppose, but even ref was pretty close (or equal). Stand back and buff, I guess, or hide in a resilient sphere until the martials handle it :)
Or if you're a Wizard, use True Strike + Attack Roll spell of your choice.
In fact, Wizards do this better than any other caster.
That aside, I'm a little concerned with wizard success rates on bosses. Look at those numbers!
Incapacitate sucks, but general boss accuracy looks awful. Don't use will attacks on dragons, I suppose, but even ref was pretty close (or equal). Stand back and buff, I guess, or hide in a resilient sphere until the martials handle it :)
Or if you're a Wizard, use True Strike + Attack Roll spell of your choice.
In fact, Wizards do this better than any other caster.
Better for them to just cast true strike on the fighter
Edit: I know you can't do it that way I'm just saying it shows whose actually better at this
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That aside, I'm a little concerned with wizard success rates on bosses. Look at those numbers!
Incapacitate sucks, but general boss accuracy looks awful. Don't use will attacks on dragons, I suppose, but even ref was pretty close (or equal). Stand back and buff, I guess, or hide in a resilient sphere until the martials handle it :)
Or if you're a Wizard, use True Strike + Attack Roll spell of your choice.
In fact, Wizards do this better than any other caster.
Better for them to just cast true strike on the fighter
Edit: I know you can't do it that way I'm just saying it shows whose actually better at this
You're saying nothing because your scenario can't even happen since True Strike is a self buff so why even bring it up? It doesn't show anything of substance.
Also assumes some non-standard version of True Strike that can be applied to allies to begin with.
That's True Target (7th level spell), if run as intended. Except that run as intended, it buffs you AND the Fighter meaning you still get to take full advantage as well...
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Bosses...According to the game "bosses" start at your level, rather than some higher level than yours.Then I guess we can incapacitate bosses, and it's just fine :)
I expect all arguments about how casters shouldn't be able to 1-shot bosses with incap spells will go away?
Real solo bosses are level +3, as far as I can tell from running AoA.
You are not supposed to incapacitate bosses. That is what it seems like to me. No more ending fights for casters while the martials standing around looking useless.
Not sure why that is hard to accept. PF1 high level casters ended fights quickly and easily in many, many, many battles before they even started. PF2 specifically does not want that to happen.
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Bosses make the save most of the time, so they get a crit success on the incapacitate. Looking at saves for monster of level +3 in bestiary, bosses need the following to succeed, thus critically succeed on incapacitate:
Character Level: Boss (lvl +3) Roll Needed F/R/W
1: 4/8/6
2: 5/9/6
3: 3/10/6
4: 5/10/4
5: 7/4/2
6: 2/6/7
7: 2/5/7
8: 2/7/4
9: 3/4/4
10: 4/5/5
11: 2/4/3
12: 2/5/2
13: 2/4/2
14: 2/2/2
15: 3/5/2
16: 2/4/2
17: 2/4/2
18: 2/2/2
19: neither bestiary has entry for level 22 monster
20: 6/8/5 (bestiary 2 monster)Granted, a lot of those were dragons, and I didn't take spell penetration into account (though it wouldn't matter for some, needed the natural 1).
That aside, I'm a little concerned with wizard success rates on bosses. Look at those numbers!
Incapacitate sucks, but general boss accuracy looks awful. Don't use will attacks on dragons, I suppose, but even ref was pretty close (or equal). Stand back and buff, I guess, or hide in a resilient sphere until the martials handle it :)
Even optimally targeting the best save with cheating knowledge, you have 35% or less, most of the time (usually less), chance of them failing a save. "But regular success still does something." Feh, half damage, or dazzled for a moment. No one likes always being saved against. I think this is one of the reasons casters complain about it not being fun: casters suck on bosses, incap or not. Also, bosses can't even get the critical failure effect on incapacitation, so do they need a 95% chance of no effect at all on them?
Also, getting less accurate, relatively, as you level, doesn't seem like good character progression. Maybe the sample is bad, and dragons are particularly good against casters.
(Dragons were just the first entry most of the time, except for some golems, which were immune. Also, I can't promise that I didn't make a mistake, was counting in my head (assumed apex item at 17, 45 DC at the end). Dragons are a reasonable boss to consider though.)
Can someone who's better at math than me confirm this?
Assuming a boss +3 Ancient Red Dragon, for a 16th level Wizard casting 8th level Sudden Bolt with Spell Penetration and Deadly Sorcery, I show the "Average" expected damage as being multiple times that of the average expected damage of a 16th level Barbarian (d12 weapon, fury instinct) spending two actions to attack against the same target once accuracy is figured in... mostly because the base damage of the Wizard is much higher, and because the Wizard gets an extra 10 die results where he does half damage.
I'm ignoring weaknesses and property damage dice for now, as this just an example - though I acknowledge in a real scenario those do help close the gap.
Average Damage of 8th level Sudden Bolt against an Ancient Red Dragon at 16th level -
A.Red - AC 45, Save +32
DC 37 (10+16+6+5) , Damage 73 (10d12+8)
1 - .05*(73*2) = 7.3
2-4 - .15*(73) = 10.95
5-14 - .5*(36.5) = 18.25
36.5 damage average for Wizard
Barbarian numbers
Attack +30 (16+6+5+3), Damage 42.5 (3d12+6+5+12)
Vs. AC 45
1st Attack
15-19 - .20*42.5 = 8.5
20 - .05*85 = 4.25
12.75
2nd Attack
20 - .05*85 = 4.25
Total for 2 Strikes = 17
I'm especially interested in if I've made any critical math mistakes here.
I'll be honest. Letting casters apply spell hit runes to their staff has helped things greatly.
Just a little home brew, being able to get +1/2/3 to them has helped a ton. Then instead of a striking rune I made another for spell saves, increasing the DC if their spells by 1/2/3 respectively. But also they only get to choose one type of save for this rune to keep it in check.
3 levels with that has been great for everyone involved. Keep in mind is being treated same as regular rune equipment. So costs money and can't get +3 until high level.
I'm probably going to do this for attack spells requiring hit rolls.
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Yes its a good point that DCs have changed. It is a reasonable simplification and it contributes to this problem. Though 8 points of DC is an extreme example.
It's the actual differential between 1st and 9th level spells. And ties directly into my next point. I don't think that's extreme at all, it's just a fact, and doesn't even get into how casters face fewer barriers to their spells executing, like spell resistance just being a 5% decrease in the success level of the spell instead something that shuts down spells entirely.
The real cost for a 20th level caster is not low level spell slots. He has enough. He could have quickened a level 7 spell if he had wanted. He probably has access to large number of low levels wands and scrolls anyway.
Not relevant? The caster in question didn't need to cast that 7th level spell, which means they still have it for the next encounter, which means they get to play a dominant role in that encounter as well.
The cost is the casters limited number of actions, not the resources. Those odds seem reasonable to me.
The odds of a wizard completely taking the fangs out of a moderate or severe encounter with a two-action spell from one of their higher level slots and a 1st level quickened spell? I agree. Thank goodness the incapacitate trait is giving the other players a chance to participate.
Personally I'd consider that a terrible use of a Quickened spell. A simple heighted Fear will probably cause the entire combat to be an easy wipe out for the PCs.
I don't think 7 out of 20 pips on the die giving you an 18th level friendly for 1 hour is a terrible use of a Quickened spell. Between that and the 3rd level fear spell you mentioned (which coincidentally had a fair chance of raising the likelihood of that charm spell working to 45-50%), the wizard has pretty much tied up this encounter and opened the door to making the rest of the encounters in the area vastly easier courtesy of their new worm friend. Thank goodness the incapacitate trait means he's not just soloing the dungeon with his new friends while saving literally all of his spells of 5th level and above for when he really needs them.
You also don't have to consider if these are really level 18 crimson worms or level 21 special crimson worms.
Luckily, we're talking about how the game actually works by the rules, particularly encounter design, and we know that in practice a creature that much more powerful than the PCs won't be 1/4 - 1/6 of an encounter at the level range we're talking about without other field effects in play. Bonus points, when we do reach the level 21 special worms, I have a 50/50 chance of having a level 18 worm helping me out and didn't need to spend any of my 8th or 9th level spells in the previous encounter, so I'm locked, loaded, and ready for bear-worm. Heck, I probably still have some of those 3rd level fear spells tucked away so I can chip away at the big worm's offense and defenses too. I probably won't since I'm still fully stocked on high level spells, but I could.
Significant? Ok the spell still does something. Like not notice it was a charm spell, or only blind till their turn starts (so you can move away). Not particularily major.
Or, since we're talking about actual game mechanics and not made up and inaccurate generalizations, nearly 50% of the time a level 1 spell makes a level 18 creature your best friend for an hour. And it didn't even prevent you from casting another, higher level spell that affected most or all of the enemies on the field with a debilitating debuff, which in turn didn't even come close to touching your highest level spells.
No, it won't work every time, but when it doesn't work you've also lost almost nothing. Your longevity hasn't even been touched. You can simultaneously apply a huge debuff to enemy damage and a huge buff to party longevity without having touched any of your most powerful resources or consumable options. And this is also happening in the context of you being part of a party; maybe instead of a 3rd level fear spell because you're trying to conserve slots with a big dungeon in front of you, your barbarian buddy softened up the enemies first like you planned with a Terrifying Howl, so you tapped the worm with charm and then dunked on the remaining enemies with a high level spell like meteor swarm shaped to avoid damaging your new friend. Or maybe you just cast charm twice since odds are that one of those is going to give you a new friend.
Not all incapacitate spells are charm, of course, and you're not always going to be in a situation where you can manipulate the numbers or structure the spells just right to pull off a big win. But you're also not limited to incapacitate spells and even most of those can still have a big impact often enough that they're worth having on hand, even in your lowest level slot. So we know it's not true that incapacitate spells are worthless unless you prepare them in your highest level slot, we know that charm is significantly more powerful than PF1's charm person and less likely to be stopped by the various piles of spell resistance, spell immunity, type immunity, and just not being a legitimate target that are all so prevalent in PF1. So incapacitate spells also have at least a few instances where they're just strictly better than their PF1 counterparts. And the more tactically coordinated your party is, the more effective those spells become. The more carefully your party scouts an area and prepares for conflict, the more powerful your wizard becomes and the more successful you'll be in deploying your spells. So just like always, the wizard has a direct correlation between his level of preparation and the power of his spells, but now he doesn't have an 8 point spread between his best and worst spells, and instead of numerous layers of different effects making his spells increasingly situational, he's pretty much just got incapacitation acting as a ceiling on effects so that you don't end up with rocket tag or anticlimactic boss fights.
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One of the issues that I have with incap spells is that an awful lot of spells is now competing for your top 3 to 6 slots. Most damage spells, basically everything that requires a counteract check and of course the discussed incap spells. Depending on your tradition there still are low level spells that will stay solid like forever (True Strike, See invisibility etc.) however up until now (low mid level) I found the old saying of "never underestimate the power of a low level spell" less true in PF2 than in other "DnD editions".
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One of the issues that I have with incap spells is that an awful lot of spells is now competing for your top 3 to 6 slots. Most damage spells, basically everything that requires a counteract check and of course the discussed incap spells. Depending on your tradition there still are low level spells that will stay solid like forever (True Strike, See invisibility etc.) however up until now (low mid level) I found the old saying of "never underestimate the power of a low level spell" less true in PF2 than in other "DnD editions".
No one in my group takes spells like Neutralise Poison,, Remove Paralysis, Remove Fear, or Remove Disease now. They are niche spells now that you would only take if you knew you needed them for a fight. They're mostly worthless now. Too bad. They could have been designed in a more interesting manner to be useful for lower level spell slots.
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No one in my group takes spells like Neutralise Poison,, Remove Paralysis, Remove Fear, or Remove Disease now. They are niche spells now that you would only take if you knew you needed them for a fight. They're mostly worthless now. Too bad. They could have been designed in a more interesting manner to be useful for lower level spell slots.
They should have combined all/most of them into a single Remove Affliction spell so that no matter what affliction the party encounters, you'd be ready to remove it/decrease it's severity, depending upon your roll.
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It's the actual differential between 1st and 9th level spells.
It actually feels a little disingenuous, that comparison is in a sense the best case for using an incapacitation spell against an over leveled target. A problem with incapacitation is the abruptness of it, if every level higher the target was than twice the spell level gave a +2/1/X bonus to their save you would still have to use higher level slots, but the effect would be less frustrating. Having to know the exact level of the target to prevent a 1 level difference giving an effective +10 is very frustrating.
The old system didn't have that problem, each spell level was a gradual +1.
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No one in my group takes spells like Neutralise Poison,, Remove Paralysis, Remove Fear, or Remove Disease now. They are niche spells now that you would only take if you knew you needed them for a fight. They're mostly worthless now. Too bad. They could have been designed in a more interesting manner to be useful for lower level spell slots.
That is exactly the thing. In older editions situational spells pretty much worked because you could easily cast them from you lower slots. Now those spells are still situational, however you have to use higher slots in order to have any chance of achieving the desired effect.
For example - and unless there have been in-game clues that affect spell selection - my level 6 Warpriest of Sarenrae would rather memorize Fireball, Heroism and Fear (heightened to 3rd) than Calm Emotion (heightened to 3rd), Dispel Magic (heightened to 3rd) and Neutralize Poison. The problem is not that the later 3 are bad spells, quite the contrary, they can win battles and save lives, but they are all situational and quite unreliable.
It is clear the Paizo's aim was to solve conflict in battle (as opposed to before battle as in earlier editions), and I am mostly ok with this, however by doing so they severly dropped the hammer on situational spells, a category that in my book also includes incap spells.
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Well I agree with you incapacitate spells are for the most part awful trap options they are optional so you can ignore them completely and still have access to more spells than you will ever use.
This is true. I just object to another group of spells being assigned to the dustbin of history. It is a loss to the game.
I don't want to be forced into a couple of good spells per level. I want to use all of the design space.
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It's odd that people say incap spells are awful trap options. My party have made really good use of incap spells, with colour spray in particular standing out as a very solid spell.
Upgrading the degree of success by 1 is definitely annoying, but hardly makes the spell an 'awful trap'; I don't think I've seen anything in PF2 that qualifies as an awful trap full stop. Incap is basically the same for debuff spells as increasing monster HP is for damage spells - why does no-one complain about increasing monster HP making 1st level damage spells into 'awful traps'?
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None of the posts decrying incapacitation have done anything to convince me the people making them either just want to play encounter-ending casters or make no effort to work with their party or use other spells to improve their chances of success. I know this game making strategy matter is a big change, but just because you're failing at that doesn't make it a bad game or a bad rule.
My players like incapacitation because it clearly marks these spells as "big" - use them well, and you swing things heavily in your favor. Which is what their purpose is.
It's odd that people say incap spells are awful trap options. My party have made really good use of incap spells, with colour spray in particular standing out as a very solid spell.
Upgrading the degree of success by 1 is definitely annoying, but hardly makes the spell an 'awful trap'; I don't think I've seen anything in PF2 that qualifies as an awful trap full stop. Incap is basically the same for debuff spells as increasing monster HP is for damage spells - why does no-one complain about increasing monster HP making 1st level damage spells into 'awful traps'?
They have.
In fact is very easy to build caster with trap spells or multicassing into trap builds in 2e.
And incapacitation and low level damage spells at higher levels are great examples.
Can someone who's better at math than me confirm this?The numbers look generally correct, but the barbarian numbers are a little off.
If the barbarian hits on a 15 ~ 19, then there are 5 possible numbers to hit on (15, 16, 17, 18, 19) so it should be .25, not .20
The correct total barbarian damage over the course of two hits including MAP would thus be 19.125That said, the barbarian should probably have three property weapon runes. Fury instinct is also regarded as probably the weakest instinct. Probably an acid dragon instinct is a better baseline.
There are a lot of ways to increase accuracy and reduce AC, but there are very few ways of increasing spell DC or decreasing saves, so the Dragon's AC should probably be lower, which should benefit the Barbarian.
The Wizard probably has more flexibility over element choice, so should probably be casting Cone of Cold or Eclipse Burst. At the very least, Sudden Bolt should not be a baseline spell because it's Uncommon. A 7th level 3-action Deadly Sorcery'd magic missile for 49 average damage is also an acceptable baseline.
The Barbarian should probably be hasted because at level 16, 7th level haste is already online.
Also the Barbarian getting a reaction to attack the dragon is a possibility - kind of context and build dependent but Attack of Opportunity, Vengeful Strike, and rogue-multiclass for opportune backstab are all possibilities.
Thanks for the analysis.
I chose Sudden Bolt because its a new spell, is uncommon only because of its source (there's no narrative or balance reason to deny it as a gm), and may represent an evolving baseline for single target spell blasts.
My main goal when looking at it was to illustrate that simply making a chart of success and failure rate for spells vs higher level targets is lacking a critical element - what those saves represent.
Even with a huge success rate by the target against their spells, a Wizard is still doing competitive damage to a Martial character straight on through it. There was a LOT of margin for more damage by the martial in my comparison.
While Saves arent quite as easy to debuff as it is to buff attacks, Frightenex via Scare to Death can be pretty easy to fit into a 3 action offensive spell routine.
While it "sucks" that a Level +3 boss makes "most" of their saves, everyone is struggling in this situation - even martial characters. Except that a Wizard suffers less from a 20% "success" rate by far than a Martial foes from a 30% success rate...
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No one in my group takes spells like Neutralise Poison,, Remove Paralysis, Remove Fear, or Remove Disease now. They are niche spells now that you would only take if you knew you needed them for a fight. They're mostly worthless now. Too bad. They could have been designed in a more interesting manner to be useful for lower level spell slots.That is exactly the thing. In older editions situational spells pretty much worked because you could easily cast them from you lower slots. Now those spells are still situational, however you have to use higher slots in order to have any chance of achieving the desired effect.
For example - and unless there have been in-game clues that affect spell selection - my level 6 Warpriest of Sarenrae would rather memorize Fireball, Heroism and Fear (heightened to 3rd) than Calm Emotion (heightened to 3rd), Dispel Magic (heightened to 3rd) and Neutralize Poison. The problem is not that the later 3 are bad spells, quite the contrary, they can win battles and save lives, but they are all situational and quite unreliable.
It is clear the Paizo's aim was to solve conflict in battle (as opposed to before battle as in earlier editions), and I am mostly ok with this, however by doing so they severly dropped the hammer on situational spells, a category that in my book also includes incap spells.
Yeah, I dont think my Cleric is ever going to be without at least one Calm Emotions in a top level slot. Its just too powerful against anything that doesn't get the incapacitation protection, and its still reasonable against things that do.
Similarly to like, Color Spray.
Would I reccomend going all in on Incapacitation spells? No. Going "all in on any single trick isn't as potent in 2E.
But I think Incap spells are a solid and powerful piece of your toolbox.
Side Note: I saw way too many hazards and obstacles GMing AoA which were easily and safely dealt with via Dispel Magic to not also want at least one maxed copy of THAT spell at top level too. Though that's best on a Wizard, who can bonded item it for a second copy in a pinch...
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Sudden bolt is a good example to look at because it represents how the developers will listen to our concerns and respond to them. It does exactly what the people concerned about a lack of single target blasting options were looking for.
The people complaining about incapacitation should try to really think about what they want their highest level spell slot to be able to do, as debuff, and the odds of it happening against a higher level opponent and if they can articulate those things clearly, it is very likely the devs will look at that and determine whether or not it fits within the balance parameters of the game.
BIG HINT: getting a 80-90% chance of at least stunning 1 a much higher level foe has clearly been deemed off limits (at least at 3rd level spells or lower), while slowing them 1 has not. The balance parameters of PF2 are incredibly transparent, and most easy to adjust by GMs by adjusting the level of opposition the party will face.
Alternatively, rather than asking for the whole game to be errata'd for you, you might have more success asking for an AP that is intentionally ratio'd around facing equal level opposition or lower, with more total enemies. So basically a no or much fewer solo monster AP and then see how well that is received. If it is popular, then they would probably make another.
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It's odd that people say incap spells are awful trap options. My party have made really good use of incap spells, with colour spray in particular standing out as a very solid spell.
Upgrading the degree of success by 1 is definitely annoying, but hardly makes the spell an 'awful trap'; I don't think I've seen anything in PF2 that qualifies as an awful trap full stop. Incap is basically the same for debuff spells as increasing monster HP is for damage spells - why does no-one complain about increasing monster HP making 1st level damage spells into 'awful traps'?
Because they have to make their whining look legitmate so they use "trap" and "poor design" in place of "my opinion" to make it seem more factual.
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Alternatively, rather than asking for the whole game to be errata'd for you, you might have more success asking for an AP that is intentionally ratio'd around facing equal level opposition or lower, with more total enemies. So basically a no or much fewer solo monster AP and then see how well that is received. If it is popular, then they would probably make another.
Extinction curse volume 1 already had a higher number of equal or lower foes in its encounters (or rather, less spikes) when compared to AoA 1 and Plaguestone.
I haven't had the chance to read the rest of the AP yet as EC is on pause during the virus.Be interested to see how Agents of Edgewatch goes about it.
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Sudden bolt is a good example to look at because it represents how the developers will listen to our concerns and respond to them. It does exactly what the people concerned about a lack of single target blasting options were looking for.
The people complaining about incapacitation should try to really think about what they want their highest level spell slot to be able to do, as debuff, and the odds of it happening against a higher level opponent and if they can articulate those things clearly, it is very likely the devs will look at that and determine whether or not it fits within the balance parameters of the game.
BIG HINT: getting a 80-90% chance of at least stunning 1 a much higher level foe has clearly been deemed off limits (at least at 3rd level spells or lower), while slowing them 1 has not. The balance parameters of PF2 are incredibly transparent, and most easy to adjust by GMs by adjusting the level of opposition the party will face.
Alternatively, rather than asking for the whole game to be errata'd for you, you might have more success asking for an AP that is intentionally ratio'd around facing equal level opposition or lower, with more total enemies. So basically a no or much fewer solo monster AP and then see how well that is received. If it is popular, then they would probably make another.
Stun 1 is not the reason that's an incapacitation spell though. I think I better fix would have been to give a smaller bonus than the effective +10 and made it so higher level creatures convert critical fails to fails (or even convert fails to successes to), the lack of even effects on a success makes them pretty much completely unusable against higher level foes (instead of just not the best idea, which is how they should be).
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When I look at incapacitation spells, and I see the "Success" metric (not even the Failure, which is technically always at least a 5% chance) would do to a boss I laugh at "incapacitation spells are traps".
Blindness, a level 3 spell, has the following effects:
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target is blinded until its next turn begins.
Failure The target is blinded for 1 minute.
Critical Failure The target is blinded permanently.
At the level you acquire the spell, 5, a CL 7 qualifies (so you can already use this against a CL6 without worry of incapacitation).
Are we really saying that being blinded until their next turn begins isn't valuable?
Sure, if you cast it right before their turn, then yeah, horrible idea. Right after their turn? +2 to all attacks for FF, 50% failures of all enemy reactions, automatically fail seek actions based on sight, and even if you have backup senses, you take a -4.
Blindness condition states:
You can’t see. All normal terrain is difficult terrain to you. You can’t detect anything using vision. You automatically critically fail Perception checks that require you to be able to see, and if vision is your only precise sense, you take a –4 status penalty to Perception checks. You are immune to visual effects. Blinded overrides dazzled.
So all of your allies are hidden (provided they have no other precise senses), all of their movement is halved effectively and they cannot take the step action, and effectively because everyone is permanently hidden they are flat-footed to all attacks and have a 50% chance to miss any attacking reactions (provided the reaction trigger doesn't require sight of the target).
God forbid the Creature rolls a 1, in which case it is completely dead unless it has another form of vision (10 rounds of 50% miss chances is flee or die territory).
The fact that there is even a 5% chance to end a fight against a CL 7 as a level 5 PC at all is powerful.
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Looking at incapacitation spells, the really simple fix to make them at least usable is just don't convert successes to critical successes.
That way the incapacitation trait still does what it was meant to do, prevent incapacitation of bosses, but the spells are still usable because they still have some effect on a success.
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But I think Incap spells are a solid and powerful piece of your toolbox.
They are, even with the build in level limit.
Speaking of which I guess my (and others?) biggest issue is a psychological one which centers around the meta-ness of incap spells, as most people simply hate to be ineffective and/or waste their turns.
Which means that the mental drawback is not the level limit per se but that you more often than not simply don't know if you will be able to cast for full effect. I guess incap spells would be much more prominent in a computer game where every single enemy has a level tag above his head.
And in contrast to e.g. saves (big lumbering hulk = try Ref or Will) I think it is not especially easy to gauge the exact level of your opponents.
It's odd that people say incap spells are awful trap options. My party have made really good use of incap spells, with colour spray in particular standing out as a very solid spell.
Upgrading the degree of success by 1 is definitely annoying, but hardly makes the spell an 'awful trap'; I don't think I've seen anything in PF2 that qualifies as an awful trap full stop. Incap is basically the same for debuff spells as increasing monster HP is for damage spells - why does no-one complain about increasing monster HP making 1st level damage spells into 'awful traps'?
My first post in this thread did raise the problem with direct damage early on. Did you read it? Yeah I dont think level 1 direct damage spells are a great option. But at least they do what they say. Without having to worry about the level of your opponent. So I don't think they are a trap.
Color spray is one of the better spells as it does have a modest 1 round effect on a normal success. Thats very good for an incapacitation spell.
I'm happy that your play experience is different. My opinion is based on my own experience. Good luck with yours.
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I don't think 7 out of 20 pips on the die giving you an 18th level friendly for 1 hour is a terrible use of a Quickened spell.Since you say this several times in a single post:
This all depends on your own level.
If you yourself are level 17 or lower, then this would be super awesome. You just managed to use your level 9 slot to gain an ally more powerful than any one of your friends!
Clearly you didn't read the post. It's a level 1 slot. A level 1 slot (maybe a level 1 and a level 3 depending on tactical deployment) for an up to 50% chance of getting a level 18 buddy. Which I chose specifically to establish that the idea you always have to use your highest level slots for incapacitate effects isn't correct. Even with a 10th level spell slot in play, there's perfectly legitimate uses for a level 1 incapacitate spell in by-the-book encounters.
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So for your third level spell what you effectively achieve is making an enemy flat-footed and stopping them making reactions that really on sight for a fragment of a round
Fragment? If the Wizard/whoever delays until after the enemy acts, it is the entirety of a round.
And you're belittling the value significantly by deliberately using this type of framing:
There are also spells that are lower level that disrupt reactions so having your allies flank whilst the enemy can't react achieves the same effect with a lower level spell.
This FF is not exclusive to flanking. It applies to Spell Attack Rolls at a range, Bows, non-flanked enemies (environment does not always allow flanking), flying enemies, etc.
If you want to act like every creature can be flanked by simply trouncing up and flanking, then maybe don't use Blindness on that creature.
This is exactly the problem of PF1/3.5. SoS spells required absolutely NO forethought. It was point, shoot, enemy go ded ded.
To the comment on Fear:
Makimg all enemies (well 5 of them) in the encounter scared 2 for the same third level slot is a far better use of resources.
Show me where that spell basically autowins the fight on a CF? Because this spell 100% does end that creature.
Higher risk, much higher reward.