Why aren't there magic items to boost spell attack rolls?

[Moppy]

What is the spell casting equivalent of striking and potency runes?

[siegfriedliner]

Because the devs don't want spellcaster reliably hitting with their spells attacks

[Blave]

There is non. The whole thing is balanced because casters can target all 4 defenses (AC and all saves) and often do SOMEthing on a successful save, while a martial character does nothing on a miss.

Also, all (serious) casters go up Legendary, while most martials are stuck at Master.

[siegfriedliner]

Blave wrote:

There is non. The whole thing is balanced because casters can target all 4 defenses (AC and all saves) and often do SOMEthing on a successful save, while a martial character does nothing on a miss.

Also, all (serious) casters go up Legendary, while most martials are stuck at Master.

But nothing on a miss with a spell attack

Level 19 woot woot

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Dunno about striking, but I believe the spellcaster's version of potency runes is heightening the spell.

[Temperans]

There have been a lot of debate over it. With some posters finding the idea of adding a +1 to spell attack rolls to be "wanting broken overpowered casters".

[Blave]

siegfriedliner wrote:

Blave wrote:

There is non. The whole thing is balanced because casters can target all 4 defenses (AC and all saves) and often do SOMEthing on a successful save, while a martial character does nothing on a miss.

Also, all (serious) casters go up Legendary, while most martials are stuck at Master.

But nothing on a miss with a spell attack

Level 19 woot woot

Yet usually SIGNIFICANTLY more with a hit, not to mention a crit.

But you know what, I'just stp right there. This has been discussed 20 times already.

I don't know if it's actually balanced by math or not and frankly, I don't care. Casters can do so much more than spell attacks, which are simply the least reliable thing in their arsenal. It's not like you hear fighters complaining that they don't deal enough damage with a dagger. If something is too weak for you to enjoy using it, simply don't use it.

[siegfriedliner]

Blave wrote:

siegfriedliner wrote:

Blave wrote:

There is non. The whole thing is balanced because casters can target all 4 defenses (AC and all saves) and often do SOMEthing on a successful save, while a martial character does nothing on a miss.

Also, all (serious) casters go up Legendary, while most martials are stuck at Master.

But nothing on a miss with a spell attack

Level 19 woot woot

Yet usually SIGNIFICANTLY more with a hit, not to mention a crit.

But you know what, I'just stp right there. This has been discussed 20 times already.

I don't know if it's actually balanced by math or not and frankly, I don't care. Casters can do so much more than spell attacks, which are simply the least reliable thing in their arsenal. It's not like you hear fighters complaining that they don't deal enough damage with a dagger. If something is too weak for you to enjoy using it, simply don't use it.

You can make a dagger build that does OK damage with great accuracy so one of these things is not like another.

[Bluescale]

Blave wrote:

There is non. The whole thing is balanced because casters can target all 4 defenses (AC and all saves) and often do SOMEthing on a successful save, while a martial character does nothing on a miss.

Also, all (serious) casters go up Legendary, while most martials are stuck at Master.

Legendary at Level 19, something probably 95% of caster players will never see...

[thenobledrake]

The answer to "Why aren't there magic items to boost spell attack rolls?" is "Because there don't need to be in order for spells and not-spells to be fairly balanced."

[thenobledrake]

Bluescale wrote:

Legendary at Level 19, something probably 95% of caster players will never see...

Since the official APs now actually include that level, there's solid chances the percentage of players that get to play at that level will be a lot higher now than it used to be.

[gnoams]

Because pf2 was a reactionary development to the popular cry of "casters op" from a certain group of 3.5 era gamers. The devs are also extremely reluctant to add any math boosters to their overly balanced system as once the cat's out of the bag, there's no putting it back. So they need to be very sure something is wrong before they issue a fix like a boost to spell attacks.

If you're running a home game, I recommend to go ahead an give your sorceress player a magic ring that gives +1 to hit. They'll love it, and it will make a difference maybe twice in your game when they actually roll a number where that +1 matters. When the campaign ends, you'll still have no idea whether you fixed something with your spell attack item or not.

[KrispyXIV]

Note also that True Strike exists, meaning that at least half of casters can seriously mitigate their missing accuracy at the cost of a single action, and their lowest level spell slot.

Or by using a Staff of Divination.

...making it actually very easy and cheap for a mid/high level Arcane or Occult caster to "Fix" this issue.

[Salamileg]

I introduced spell attack runes into my own game I run, and I've been playing in games that don't have them. Doesn't really feel like they changed anything.

[ExOichoThrow]

I definitely think potency runes should apply to spell attacks. A simple fix is to be able to put the runes on spell focuses for example a cleric having a rune on their holy book/symbol

[Deriven Firelion]

Besides disintegrate which also gives a save, there aren't too many attack spells that would be overly powerful if they critical hit with spell item attack rolls.

[Ruzza]

This is absolutely a baseless conclusion for me to draw up, but I feel like we'll see something along the lines of a +1 spell attack roll item in Secrets of Magic. I personally haven't tried it in my home games, but I don't see it being a problem balance-wise.

Bonus to DCs? That's a while 'nother story.

[Deadmanwalking]

Potency Runes are pretty much covered by Heightening. IMO, attack bonus is not.

thenobledrake wrote:

The answer to "Why aren't there magic items to boost spell attack rolls?" is "Because there don't need to be in order for spells and not-spells to be fairly balanced."

I mean, this is true, but it's the wrong comparison to make. The reason spells are balanced with mundane attacks is largely spells using Saves and the fact that they have effects even on a successful Save. Save spells are just vastly better than attack roll spells at the moment, not limiting casters as compared to martials so much as limiting their specific options.

Additionally, monster spell attacks are higher than PC spell attacks in a way that no other aspect of monster stuff is than PC stuff of equivalent level, indicting Paizo is aware of this issue with the math.

So, IMO, there should absolutely be an item granting +1 to +3 to spell attacks as you rise in level. It wouldn't make spellcasters actually better, just more versatile in what spells are good. I would be utterly unsurprised to see such an item in Secrets of Magic, and have already House Ruled to add one in the meantime.

[thenobledrake]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

The reason spells are balanced with mundane attacks is largely spells using Saves and the fact that they have effects even on a successful Save.

...and that the spells which call for attack rolls (other than cantrips, at least) tend to have more significant effects than save-based spells of similar level.

ray of enfeeblement for example applying a significant debuff for a long duration and not having an incapacitation trait to make it need to be heightened in order to have full potential against higher-level enemies, or black tentacles which combines damage over time with debuff/action wasting for your enemies.

[quote-"Deadmanwalking"]It wouldn't make spellcasters actually better...

If that were true, there'd be no point in adding it. There is no such thing as "more versatile" that isn't also "better."

[Zapp]

siegfriedliner wrote:

Because the devs don't want spellcaster reliably hitting with their spells attacks

Since spell attacks deal no damage on a miss but "save attacks" deal half damage on a "miss" (=failed save), bot does not do noticeably more damage to compensate, we have dumped spell attacks and not looked back once.

Why these devs decided to make one type of spell clearly inferior I'll never know...

[Zapp]

Blave wrote:

There is non. The whole thing is balanced because casters can target all 4 defenses (AC and all saves) and often do SOMEthing on a successful save, while a martial character does nothing on a miss.

Also, all (serious) casters go up Legendary, while most martials are stuck at Master.

Nothing about this explains, justifies or excuses the mediocre spell attack spells of the game.

The argument "Option A must be bad because Options B, C and D give flexibility and therefore power" does not mean casters sometimes use option A (spell attacks against AC) to balance out their presumed awesomeness with options B, C and D (targeting Fort, Ref and Will saves).

It merely means option A sucks and that casters simply never use it.

[Zapp]

thenobledrake wrote:

The answer to "Why aren't there magic items to boost spell attack rolls?" is "Because there don't need to be in order for spells and not-spells to be fairly balanced."

Why do you keep ignoring the actual complaint in your efforts to defend the game?

The complaint here is not "spells are too weak" or anything else where a response of "spells and not-spells to be fairly balanced" is relevant.

The complaint here is that spell attacks are too weak.

What do you say to that, Noble?

(Nothing would be my guess, since any ruleset has its weaknesses, but you never acknowledge them. You always minimize them or dismiss any concerns. Speaking of which - my second guess would be "it's not important that caster have effective spell attacks" but maybe you'll surprise me by actually owning up the weak support for spell attacks in PF2?)

[Zapp]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Save spells are just vastly better than attack roll spells at the moment

Yep.

And there has not been any communication from Paizo as to why.

[Zapp]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I mean, this is true, but it's the wrong comparison to make.

Of course.

Ask yourself: why does Noble want to steer the discussion away from the actual complaint fielded?

[The Raven Black]

thenobledrake wrote:

There is no such thing as "more versatile" that isn't also "better."

Depends on what "better" means. PF2 is specifically designed so that more versatile does not make you overpowered. Which is a very good thing IMO.

[Rushniyamat]

Blave wrote:

Also, all (serious) casters go up Legendary, while most martials are stuck at Master.

They gain legendary prof, but this is an illusion: since spell attacks don't get Potency Runes, they are actually equal to master martial bonus -1 (and only at level 19-20). The bigest problem of spell attacks is how they scale : as noted in the last sentence, the finale bonus is quite alright, but because spell attacks scale with spell DC, spellcasters gain their rank increase to attacks two levels only after martials.

My solution is to add to the game a level 2 item which gives +1 to spell attacks, seperate spell attack progression from spell DC and make it similar to master martials attack progression (to 5th and 13th, but without changing the legendary prof level). This way spell attack would be equal to these of master martial and the gaps between them would be only at few levels and usually quite minor.

[Deadmanwalking]

thenobledrake wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

The reason spells are balanced with mundane attacks is largely spells using Saves and the fact that they have effects even on a successful Save.

...and that the spells which call for attack rolls (other than cantrips, at least) tend to have more significant effects than save-based spells of similar level.

Sure, but not to nearly a great enough degree. People have done DPR analyses on those of these spells which do damage, and the attack roll ones just flatly aren't as good as the ones with a Save. When one set of spells is flatly inferior to another that has the same costs to acquire without a real compensatory advantage, something is wrong.

thenobledrake wrote:

ray of enfeeblement for example applying a significant debuff for a long duration and not having an incapacitation trait to make it need to be heightened in order to have full potential against higher-level enemies, or black tentacles which combines damage over time with debuff/action wasting for your enemies.

Ray of Enfeeblement has an okay effect, but I'm not sure I'd pick it over Fear even if it also auto-hit, never mind just got a modest to-hit bonus. Sure it lasts longer, but Fear effects more of the things the target does (including Saves and AC) and targets Will rather than Fortitude.

Black Tentacles meanwhile, sort of cheats to be a 'good attack roll spell', since if it ever hits anyone (and it is an area effect), it then becomes a Save Spell, since it uses your Save DC to prevent people escaping.

thenobledrake wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

It wouldn't make spellcasters actually better...

If that were true, there'd be no point in adding it. There is no such thing as "more versatile" that isn't also "better."

Sure, it technically makes them slightly more versatile and thus also very slightly better. But it's a very minor improvement.

Zapp wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Save spells are just vastly better than attack roll spells at the moment

Yep.

And there has not been any communication from Paizo as to why.

That's because them commenting on something like this is a terrible idea for them that can lead nowhere good. I mean, if they disagree, then obviously that will upset people, so no percentage for them there.

But let's say they agree and say so. What happens then?

Either they're gonna do something to fix it, in which case the only change saying so before they do it makes is that some people will have unreasonable expectations of what that change is gonna be and be upset when it's different.

Or, they agree but can't make the change right now, for whatever reason, in which case people will be expecting it every book and get increasingly upset with each one it's not in, again pissing a lot of people off to no good effect.

So it sucks that Paizo can't state their agreement on things about the system they see as problems just like we do, and hearing them agree would be nice and validating, but it would not have good results for them either personally or as a company in many cases, and we shouldn't expect it of them or read anything into it beyond them not wanting to risk the kind of backlash I talk about above.

[Moppy]

Zapp wrote:

Why do you keep ignoring the actual complaint in your efforts to defend the game?

The complaint here is not "spells are too weak" or anything else where a response of "spells and not-spells to be fairly balanced" is relevant.

The complaint here is that spell attacks are too weak.

As the author of the original post and presumably the "original complaint" I don't remember complaining and I didn't say spell attacks were to weak.

I'm creating a bunch of homebrew stuff and searching for obvious gaps in current content and this huge gap was obvious to me. So I'm asking why it exists just in case there is some reason I shouldn't fill it.

[Deadmanwalking]

Moppy wrote:

I'm creating a bunch of homebrew stuff and searching for obvious gaps in current content and this huge gap was obvious to me. So I'm asking why it exists just in case there is some reason I shouldn't fill it.

As near as I can tell, there is no such reason. Go for it.

On the other hand, I would not do the same for Save DCs under any circumstances.

[Ascalaphus]

Moppy wrote:

I'm creating a bunch of homebrew stuff and searching for obvious gaps in current content and this huge gap was obvious to me. So I'm asking why it exists just in case there is some reason I shouldn't fill it.

There's a couple of reasons, as far as I can see;

Casters attack 4 different numbers (AC, saves) while martials focus much more of their attacks on just one (AC). I'm not entirely sold on this reason myself, because while the saving throws for monsters vary quite a bit, AC is almost always on the mid to high side. A spell attack almost never gets to be better than targeting either the middle or worst save of the monster.

Because like all DCs, save DC is tied to the "active" version of the stat Unless you add special language, anything that raises a check also raises the corresponding DC. Of course, you can do this if you want to, you just have to write clearly.

Because when they hit, spell attack spells hit harder than save spells I'm not sure this is even the case. There aren't that many spell attacks to begin with. It might hold true for Searing Light though, especially when used against the primary audience of fiends and undead.

Because this is sort of forbidden ground There are some game design elements that are basically "forbidden" - like being able to get a class' unique selling point through multiclass dedications. There is pretty much nothing that currently lets you raise your proficiency in something (weapons, armor, saves) beyond the highest value you already have for another thing in that category. For example, the Sentinel dedication can give you auto-scaling proficiency in armor, but it doesn't scale any faster than the type of armor your class is normally proficient with.

Because there are more ways to boost your attack to-hit than there are to boost the save DCs of spells Most things that lower saves against your spells will also lower AC against your spell attacks (like sickened and frightened and clumsy). But spell attacks benefit from buffs like Heroism, Bless and Inspire Courage. Also, if an enemy is flat-footed to ranged attacks, you can exploit that too. My cleric for example has a rogue dedication and uses Intimidate and Dread Striker to drop enemy AC by 3 in total against his spell attacks.

It's much easier to reroll your spell attack, than to force an enemy to reroll a save. True Strike and the use of Hero Points are the obvious ways. My cleric can use his staff of divination to cast True Strike five times per day. And I don't really have much to do with my level 1 spells so I can use those too. 8 times True Strike per day is a lot!

It's basically the last two things that I find the best reason why boosting spell attacks isn't really necessary. As someone who actually plays and enjoys a spellcaster, I find the problems not nearly as bad in practice as people sketch them out on paper.

[Temperans]

I do think True Strike is too strong and skewing the data.

[Megistone]

When comparing attack rolls vs saves, let's remember that attacking has an advantage: meeting the target number exactly is a hit.
If you have a +10 proficiency (and thus save DC 20) and you are attacking an enemy with a +10 to saves and 20 AC (so, equivalent defenses), the results are:
With a save-targeting spell: 5% critical save (20), 50% save (10-19), 45% fail (2-9), 5% critical fail (1).
With an attack roll spell: 5% critical hit (20), 50% hit (10-19), 45% miss (2-9), 5% critical miss (1).

It's a 5% difference, not much but it's like having a +1 bonus baked in.

[Unicore]

Temperans wrote:

I do think True Strike is too strong and skewing the data.

Whether you think it is too strong or just right, "True strike" is most of the answer to why spell attack rolls don't get the extra benefit of item bonuses. Stacked together, more bonuses and true strike increase critical hit chances by quite a bit. Add in the fact that flanking is one of the easiest +2 bonuses to get in the game and it is not difficult to shift accuracy by 3 to 4 points on attack rolls when you are really trying to make them hit. That can raise crit chances to 40% or more with true strike.

Having item bonuses to spells be limited to homebrew material, or at least an uncommon or rare feature that has to be given out by the GM is probably the best way to go to see if your players really need the item bonus, because they are struggling to utilize tactical bonuses in play or not. But really you can accomplish the same thing by encouraging your casters to think of creative actions they might take setting up their spells to earn a +1 to +3 circumstance bonus instead of having an item bonus that you can't really take away without making your players hate you.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Blave wrote:

There is non. The whole thing is balanced because casters can target all 4 defenses (AC and all saves) and often do SOMEthing on a successful save, while a martial character does nothing on a miss.

Also, all (serious) casters go up Legendary, while most martials are stuck at Master.

Legendary only applies for Spell DCs. All Class DCs (which are separate from Spell DCs) cap at Master. (The fact there isn't a level 20 feat for Legendary Class Feat DCs is ridiculous IMO.)

That being said, spell attack rolls still require successes period to work, and do nothing on a failure, which is what the question is being asked.

"Just use a saving throw spell" is like telling a Rogue to use a bomb against a swarm enemy. It's not exactly palatable or even congruent, considering Rogues aren't proficient with bombs.

Also, this isn't a fair way to compare things as Martials can definitely affect all 4 types as well. Will Saves? Intimidate or Feint. Reflex Saves? Tumble Through or Trip. Fortitude Saves? Shove, Grab, Disarm. Yes, Spellcasters can do this stuff too, but they are generally not very great at it compared to them, except maybe Intimidate or Feint (which is Charisma-based, so even then only some spellcasters work with this).

They aren't all damaging, but with other abilities (like Attacks of Opportunity), or extreme bonuses/rolls (disarmed enemy is much weaker than an enemy armed with a very strong weapon), they can be, or be extremely debilitating in other ways, without relying on spells, meaning they can be done all day, too.

[Blave]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Legendary only applies for Spell DCs.

No it doesn't. Take the Wizard's Legendary Spellcasting feature as an example:

Quote:

Your proficiency ranks for arcane spell attack rolls and spell DCs increase to legendary.

All other Spellcasting classes have the same language.

I'm not going into the rest of your post since - as I already said - I don't really feel like discussing this topic any further.

[Themetricsystem]

I think the MAIN reason for this is because nearly EVERY Spell that uses Spell Attack will consistently deal more damage at the level it is granted at/heightened to than an equivalent level Weapon Strike (or even something like a Power Attack) will deal on success, not to mention bonus rider effects on a Critical Hit that is baked into many/most of these Spells that have no such peer with most Weapon Strikes outside of the Weapon Group Crit Specialization effect which is universally weaker than the Critical Hit effects from said Spell Attacks.

That said, I think there probably is room for allowing some Feats that are situational or key off using Focus Points and limited use Consumables to grant an Item Bonus to Spell Attacks but the prospect of adding +1/+2/+3 to all such Spell Attacks a Spellcaster uses is just way too powerful and we would end up in a situation where Spellcasters end up being more reliably accurate with Spell Attacks than an equal level Fighter with their Primary Weapon which is a huge no-no given that the Spells are always going to be more potent than the Weapon Strikes when they do land.

[TheGoofyGE3K]

Probably becauae it uses the same bonus to hit as the DC for the save, and most spells have an effect if they fail. (And do way more than an attack on a hit) An item to help casters blast would be nice, but then they become a required buy.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Blave wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Legendary only applies for Spell DCs.

No it doesn't. Take the Wizard's Legendary Spellcasting feature as an example:

Quote:

Your proficiency ranks for arcane spell attack rolls and spell DCs increase to legendary.

All other Spellcasting classes have the same language.

I'm not going into the rest of your post since - as I already said - I don't really feel like discussing this topic any further.

Obviously, but my point was that Spell DCs and Class DCs are different.

[mrspaghetti]

Ascalaphus wrote:

Moppy wrote:

I'm creating a bunch of homebrew stuff and searching for obvious gaps in current content and this huge gap was obvious to me. So I'm asking why it exists just in case there is some reason I shouldn't fill it.

There's a couple of reasons, as far as I can see;

Casters attack 4 different numbers (AC, saves) while martials focus much more of their attacks on just one (AC). I'm not entirely sold on this reason myself, because while the saving throws for monsters vary quite a bit, AC is almost always on the mid to high side. A spell attack almost never gets to be better than targeting either the middle or worst save of the monster.

Because like all DCs, save DC is tied to the "active" version of the stat Unless you add special language, anything that raises a check also raises the corresponding DC. Of course, you can do this if you want to, you just have to write clearly.

Because when they hit, spell attack spells hit harder than save spells I'm not sure this is even the case. There aren't that many spell attacks to begin with. It might hold true for Searing Light though, especially when used against the primary audience of fiends and undead.

Because this is sort of forbidden ground There are some game design elements that are basically "forbidden" - like being able to get a class' unique selling point through multiclass dedications. There is pretty much nothing that currently lets you raise your proficiency in something (weapons, armor, saves) beyond the highest value you already have for another thing in that category. For example, the Sentinel dedication can give you auto-scaling proficiency in armor, but it doesn't scale any faster than the type of armor your class is normally proficient with.

Because there are more ways to boost your attack to-hit than there are to boost the save DCs of spells Most things that lower saves against your spells will also lower AC against your spell attacks (like sickened and frightened and clumsy). But...

There are conditions that affect AC without affecting at least some saves, including Clumsy, Flat-footed and Unconscious. So there are circumstances when AC will be better to target than whatever save you have spells for at the moment.

[thenobledrake]

Zapp wrote:

Why do you keep ignoring the actual complaint in your efforts to defend the game?

Why do you keep vilifying opinions that don't agree with yours? I'm not "defending the game" just because I happen to think spells - which includes spell attacks, by the way - are currently fairly balanced.

So that's what I say to that. Now put your straw men and implied insults away, please.

Of course, as is evident by others' statements such as these two

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Sure, but not to nearly a great enough degree. ... Ray of Enfeeblement has an okay effect, but I'm not sure I'd pick it over Fear even if it also auto-hit, never mind just got a modest to-hit bonus.

people are free to disagree that what attack-based spells have going for them is appealing effects. But that's because more than one opinion is possible, go figure.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

People have done DPR analyses on those of these spells which do damage, and the attack roll ones just flatly aren't as good as the ones with a Save.

It can be tricky to compare the non-damage parts of spells and value them against damage, and even the base assumptions used to determine the DPR can be things which would be seeing significant enough variation table-to-table, but I'd be interested to see how one of those break downs matches up to my own table parameters. Generally though, I've been having a hard time finding what looks like even a solid comparison point to try and measure just the one variable (save vs. attack) with actual spells rather than hypothetical ones.

I think because I've got spare time right now, and this conversation has piqued my interest, I might just dive into a hypothetical comparison by taking a spell that currently operates on an attack roll and changing it to a saving throw to see what happens.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Black Tentacles meanwhile, sort of cheats to be a 'good attack roll spell', since if it ever hits anyone (and it is an area effect), it then becomes a Save Spell, since it uses your Save DC to prevent people escaping.

The same could be said of a few more of the spells in the game that involve attack rolls because they also bring saving throws into the mix (specifically tanglefoot, but also ray of enfeeblement and disintegrate since those are attack+save spells).

Deadmanwalking wrote:

But it's a very minor improvement.

Improvement is improvement, though.

[Deadmanwalking]

Megistone wrote:

When comparing attack rolls vs saves, let's remember that attacking has an advantage: meeting the target number exactly is a hit.

If you have a +10 proficiency (and thus save DC 20) and you are attacking an enemy with a +10 to saves and 20 AC (so, equivalent defenses), the results are:
With a save-targeting spell: 5% critical save (20), 50% save (10-19), 45% fail (2-9), 5% critical fail (1).
With an attack roll spell: 5% critical hit (20), 50% hit (10-19), 45% miss (2-9), 5% critical miss (1).

It's a 5% difference, not much but it's like having a +1 bonus baked in.

This would be true if AC and Saves scaled the same. They don't.

Standard AC at, say, 10th level is 30 (High AC is by far the most common). Standard Saves at that level are +22 for a High Save, +19 for a Moderate one, +16 for a Low one, and avoiding hitting High Saves is really easy (guessing a monster's High Save is usually as simple as looking at it).

So, since the Saves you're hitting are 1 to 4 points lower than the AC 'bonus' would be, this advantage basically doesn't exist at many levels (most of the higher levels included).

Unicore wrote:

Temperans wrote:

I do think True Strike is too strong and skewing the data.

Whether you think it is too strong or just right, "True strike" is most of the answer to why spell attack rolls don't get the extra benefit of item bonuses. Stacked together, more bonuses and true strike increase critical hit chances by quite a bit. Add in the fact that flanking is one of the easiest +2 bonuses to get in the game and it is not difficult to shift accuracy by 3 to 4 points on attack rolls when you are really trying to make them hit. That can raise crit chances to 40% or more with true strike.

Having item bonuses to spells be limited to homebrew material, or at least an uncommon or rare feature that has to be given out by the GM is probably the best way to go to see if your players really need the item bonus, because they are struggling to utilize tactical bonuses in play or not. But really you can accomplish the same thing by encouraging your casters to think of creative actions they might take setting up their spells to earn a +1 to +3 circumstance bonus instead of having an item bonus that you can't really take away without making your players hate you.

I'm not convinced by this argument at all, really. True Strike is amazing, but I'm not convinced that casting it on your attack roll spell is enough better than using other one action activities to enhance a Save spell to make up for the much lower starting efficacy of using an attack roll spell in the first place.

EDIT: Removed a factual error I made. My bad, there.

[HammerJack]

Quote:

I'm not convinced by this argument at all, really. True Strike is amazing, but I'm not convinced that casting it on your attack roll spell is any better than casting a Save spell and then casting True Strike on your martial buddy.

How, exactly, are you casting True Strike on your martial buddy? I don't know of any ability that lets you cast spells that only affect yourself on your allies in 2E.

[Deadmanwalking]

thenobledrake wrote:

people are free to disagree that what attack-based spells have going for them is appealing effects. But that's because more than one opinion is possible, go figure.

Sure, but your contention seemed to be that they were objectively better and this justified their odds of hitting being vastly lower. That's not something I'm convinced you have real supporting evidence on.

thenobledrake wrote:

It can be tricky to compare the non-damage parts of spells and value them against damage, and even the base assumptions used to determine the DPR can be things which would be seeing significant enough variation table-to-table, but I'd be interested to see how one of those break downs matches up to my own table parameters. Generally though, I've been having a hard time finding what looks like even a solid comparison point to try and measure just the one variable (save vs. attack) with actual spells rather than hypothetical ones.

I mean, you can just compare damage on damaging spells. That runs into the issue that there are relatively few single target damage spells with Saves, but they do exist...and even comparing single target attack roll spells to area Save spells the Save spells often come out pretty far ahead.

thenobledrake wrote:

I think because I've got spare time right now, and this conversation has piqued my interest, I might just dive into a hypothetical comparison by taking a spell that currently operates on an attack roll and changing it to a saving throw to see what happens.

I have no idea how exactly you'd change that to make it work.

thenobledrake wrote:

The same could be said of a few more of the spells in the game that involve attack rolls because they also bring saving throws into the mix (specifically tanglefoot, but also ray of enfeeblement and disintegrate since those are attack+save spells).

Given that these are all single target it's a disadvantage rather than an advantage, since the spell needs to get through two layered defenses to have an effect.

The chance, absent True Strike, of an on-level foe actually failing a Save vs. Disintegrate is something less than 25%. It's roughly 50% the target crit fails or you miss entirely, 25% they succeed, 22.5% they fail, 2.5% they critically fail. Even with True Strike there's about a 25% chance that the spell does absolutely nothing (though the crit chance goes up a decent amount...it's still less than 10% with current to-hit numbers, though).

Chain Lightning, at the same level, in contrast, has about a 10% chance they crit succeed, a 50% chance for them to succeed, a 35% chance they fail, and a 5% chance they crit fail. That's so much better it's silly. So even with True Strike in the mix, the odds of failing outright on Disintegrate are so much higher it's not even funny.

Comparing those damages, with even two foes Chain Lightning vastly outdamages Disintegrate + True Strike. Without True Strike it outdamages Disintegrate on a single foe. That's a bad spot for a single target spell to be in vs. an area effect.

thenobledrake wrote:

Improvement is improvement, though.

Well yes, but how much of an improvement is a big difference. This doesn't improve many individual casters at all, and mostly improves only the most suboptimal options currently.

[Deadmanwalking]

HammerJack wrote:

Quote:

I'm not convinced by this argument at all, really. True Strike is amazing, but I'm not convinced that casting it on your attack roll spell is any better than casting a Save spell and then casting True Strike on your martial buddy.

How, exactly, are you casting True Strike on your martial buddy? I don't know of any ability that lets you cast spells that only affect yourself on your allies in 2E.

I was completely spacing that it was self only, my bad.

I'm still deeply unconvinced that True Strike alone somehow makes otherwise mathematically bad spells good. It helps with the math a fair bit...but not nearly enough in isolation.

And I'm pretty sure if you use, say, Bon Mot or Demoralize and a Save Spell you'll still do a lot better than the True Strike + Attack roll spell combo. The bonus is smaller, but the base level of efficacy of the the Save Spell is such a higher baseline.

[thenobledrake]

I've just run off and done a very preliminary test of what difference just an attack roll vs. AC compared to a saving throw can look like.

test details:

I compared produce flame cast by a 1st-level character with an 18 in their spellcasting ability against an orc warrior, plague zombie, and hunting spider.

Those 3 targets were chosen because they seem like typical low-level moderate threats that a campaign may have, making them practical, and they have differing dynamics between their save and AC values with the orc having 18 AC and +7 Reflex, the spider having 17 AC and +9 Reflex, and the zombie having 13 AC and +3 Reflex

For the purpose of calculating the average damage value of the persistent fire damage, I illustrate the maximum potential it adds by calculating out the chance that the damage will continue at the DC 15 flat check without actions to mitigate it - because even though the orc will probably think to put itself out, the other two might not. Thus the average damage of the persistent portion is 3.239174917 times the value of the die's average.

Further, I am testing against a hypothetical case of the spell having a saving throw, but not the extra benefit of that save being a basic save.

Against a standard produce flame the DPR values came out to 3.9799 orc, 8.5245 zombie, and 4.3049 spider.
Against a non-basic reflex save version the DPR values came out to 3.6549 orc, 7.1446 zombie, and 3.0049 spider.

So if the only variable changed is a saving throw vs. an attack roll, the attack roll actually seems to be an improvement.

Of course, we don't have such clean comparison points among the actual spell list because there are pretty much always more differences (like basic saves, which are more of a boost than an attack roll) and many of those other differences are often very nebulous in their value (i.e. how much damage is longer range worth? is persistent damage a better rider than [insert a condition here]?) - which is how we get people that are very concerned with options being tightly balanced but feeling like just DPR (the easy to measure part) can tell us which spells are "better."

Sometimes which such misguided surety that they feel they can make a declaration of which spell is "outright better" between different options like hydraulic push, burning hands, and fear.

[Deadmanwalking]

I don't think adding a Save with zero damage on a successful save is a particularly useful exercise. That's not how spells actually work in practice.

When people, including me, talk about Save spells being better they're talking primarily about those using a Save which has effects even on a successful Save...which is basically all of them.

[PossibleCabbage]

I think the basic question is "how often should a spell caster crit/succeed/fail/critfail" on a spell? Since PF2 is unlike PF1 in that you cannot build any character to auto-succeed on even the one thing they're best at (even fighters miss like 30% of the time with their best attack).

There's probably a bit of a culture shock in coming from a game in which you can stack numbers sky high.

[Rushniyamat]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

The same could be said of a few more of the spells in the game that involve attack rolls because they also bring saving throws into the mix (specifically tanglefoot, but also ray of enfeeblement and disintegrate since those are attack+save spells).

Given that these are all single target it's a disadvantage rather than an advantage, since the spell needs to get through two...

Actually, the text of Disintegrate doesn't note that you need to hit: "You fire a green ray at your target. Make a spell attack. You deal 12d10 damage, and the target must attempt a basic Fortitude save. On critical hit, treat the save result as one degree worse" (CRB page 330).

The attack trait added to the spell in the errata doesn't change it too because it only says you need to roll against an AC.

Edit: Ray of Enfeeblement's text do note that you have to succeed in order to cause the target to save. I am not sure which of these spells need an erreta (but I hope Ray of Enfeeblement does) ;).

[thenobledrake]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

<snipped for space comparison of disintegrate and chain lightning>

You have highlighted what I meant when I said that estimations often don't work because of the person's choice of how to evaluate non-damage factors of spells and of what parameters to set for the test. In this case it's putting a low value on disintegrate's ability to make a creature dead when it might not be otherwise - since being "reduced to fine powder" is a more specific rule than regeneration, for example.

And not that it makes a general case that disintegrate is better than chain lightning, the particulars of a target actually matter. For example, say you are facing a veteran reclaimer NPC from the Lost Omens Character Guide. Throwing chain lightning at it as an 11th-level caster has (unless I messed up my math) 18.2 average damage, while a disintegrate spell without true strike has 81.015.

While I will conceed that the conditions in which disintegrate is a better choice than chain lightning are heavily affected by campaign style particulars, I can't conceed that "it's only better in certain situations, and those situations don't happen to come up much in my particular campaigns" is a valid reason to improve the spell - spells being situationally better than each other, rather than always perfectly balanced regardless of the campaign particulars, is the game working as intended.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I don't think adding a Save with zero damage on a successful save is a particularly useful exercise. That's not how spells actually work in practice.

I already said as much when I mentioned how difficult it is to test the impact of the single variable that is save vs. attack roll - since the spells in the game are always multiple variables different from each other such as difference in range, damage type, non-damage effects, and even just the fact that most saves are 4-result saves rather than 3-result saves.

But just like I've shown that a 3-result save is less powerful than a 3-result attack roll, we can know that a hypothetical 4-result spell attack roll (half damage on a miss) would be more potent than the current best-there-is 4-result save option, and from that gain perspective that it isn't "attack rolls < saving throws" it's attack rolls < saving throws + 'fail' effects.

Rushniyamat wrote:

The attack trait added to the spell in the errata doesn't change it too because it only says you need to roll against an AC.

It's important not to let reminder-text that doesn't necessarily show up on every check trick you into thinking checks that don't have the reminder are explict exceptions to the general rules. The "you have to get the AC or higher or nothing happens" part of an attack roll (which is a type of check against a type of DC) is in the general rules for resolving checks (specifically Step 3 of the process, found on page 445 of the book).

Neither disintigrate nor ray of enfeeblment need errata as they both are clear in how they function, despite that one includes a reminder that the other doesn't on how the rules generally work.