I've seen a lot of folks mentioning how important the plus one to anything is, and I can understand how that is. I'm wondering something else, though.
In the Starfinder game I'm in, I have a vesk mechanic. Short version, Int class with a race that's -2 to Int. She's managing allright (sadly, she's also the party meatshield, which explains issues regarding hit point loss). So it seems viable there.
How viable is it in Pathfinder Two? Can a barbarian survive with a sixteen Strength and, say, beef up her Dexterity? Or even her Charisma to be the charmingest slayer of dozens at the table? Or is it going to be enough of a hindrance to Cause Issues Within the Party?
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Pathfinder 2nd is a game where every +1 does matter, but that is mostly because it's not possible to overwhelm target numbers with huge stacks of bonuses. Having a 16 in a stat only puts you at -1 behind someone with an 18 for half of your levels (you pull even for the other half) so it's workable.
I mean at maximum optimization fighters are +2 to hit over everybody else, but that doesn't mean other martial classes are not viable.
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A 16 is viable if you increase it at every opportunity past 1st level (well, at 5th, 10th, and 15th, there's no point in doing it at 20th). It's -1 behind, but only for half the time (1st-4th, 10th-14th, and 20th level), which matters but isn't crippling.
That said, you should rarely do it if you don't have to. You can easily be good at any secondary stats you like and are much better shuffling points in different secondary stats around than taking points away from your attack stat in the vast majority of cases. A Str 18, Dex 10, Con 12 Fighter is much better than a Str 16, Dex 12, Con 14 one, and has more points to put in Int and Cha than the latter does to boot.
As a Barbarian, all you really need is Str 18, Dex 12, with all the rest of stats being gravy (though Con is the best mechanically of the remaining four). Take points away from everything other than those before taking them away from those.
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If you mean “Key Ability” in the game term sense, then it varies pretty wildly because for some builds the class’s Key Ability isn’t very important. The Catfolk Cleric in the campaign I run has a 10 Wisdom and does just fine because she focuses her spell casting on Heal and buffs. And since she didn’t pump up her Key Ability, it was literally impossible for her to enter play at level 1 with ANY 18.
If you mean “key ability” in the more generic sense of “the ability that actually controls the character’s schtick,” then a high score is pretty important, but an 18 isn’t always necessary. Returning to our Cleric, her 16 starting Charisma (now 18 at 6th level) serves her quite well in her role as party face and gives her a generous divine font. Having recently picked up the Bon Mot skill feat, she even has a debuff option that takes advantage of her Charisma bonus.
That said, I’m sure there are builds for which starting with an 18 in either the Key Ability or key ability is vital.
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That's fair. My above advice primarily applies to maxing out your attack stat. If that's different from your Key Ability, maxing your Key Ability is a lot less important (and how important varies by Class and build).
The other important thing mechanically is maxing out AC, though Dex 12 does that for anyone with Medium Armor Proficiency, and Dex 10 for Heavy. It's a bigger issue for those more lightly armored, who really value Dex on a mechanical level (though Armor Proficiency is available to everyone through the Sentinel Archetype).
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One thing that is true about PF2 that's not true about Starfinder (I think) is that you can make any character of any ancestry start with an 18 in a key ability even if the ancestry starts with a flaw in it.
With the optional flaws system you can have an 18 str gnome barbarian, a 18 cha dwarf bard, an 18 Int Leshy Wizard, etc. if you're willing to pay the price. Since you might stop increasing your secondary stats once they hit 18, and spread the boosts around, this is mostly a temporary penalty.
If you want, above all else, to be good at landing attacks and other offensive abilities, I would highly recommend an 18 in your primary score if at all possible. It will be very useful for your playstyle.
If you want to spread your focus between multiple things at all, it is *absolutely* viable to start with a 16 in your "main" stat.
Almost all my characters start with a 16 in their main stat. Also, if your whole party mostly doesn't go beyond 16, then you'll feel even better about it.
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I just happened to do some damage calcuations for a barbarian and decided to check the numbers.
Assumptions:
- Dragon Instinct. Always raging.
- Dealing full normal damage. No Resistance or Weakness.
- Boosting Strength every 5 levels. Aquire Strength apex item at level 17.
- Attacking the high AC of a monster at the same level (according to creature creation rules).
- NO flanking or other attack boosts. No Buffs of Debuffs.
- D12 weapon, ignoring traits and Weapon Specialization. Level appropriate Weapon Potency and Striking Runes. No property runes.
- Doing a "full-attack", i.e. Strike > Strike > Strike. No feats, maneuvers or other fancy stuff.
Conclusion:
As DMW already pointed out, there's literally no difference for half of your adventuring career. Levels 5-9 and 15-19 are exactly the same, no matter if you start out with Strength 16 or 18.
For the other half, you're between 25.31% and 15.86% behind in damage if you start with 16 strength. On average, that's 20.84%.
Across all 20 levels, your damage would be 10.42% lower on average.
This is of course as white-room-y as it gets. But I must say I'm surprised that the difference is that big. Dealing about 20% less damage for half of your adventuring career feels like A LOT. Not sure I didn't make a mistake in my calculations somewhere.
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No, that sounds about right, at least in general terms. Previous analyses have indicated that the +2 to hit from Fighter is something like a 40% shift in damage (depending on starting to-hit, of course), so 20% for +1 sounds approximately correct.
Of course, how much that difference matters is gonna vary a lot depending on a variety of factors, but there's a reason I recommended dropping almost any secondary stat before dropping your attack stat.
I had roughly the same numbers than Blave: You're at a loss of 10% efficiency during your whole carreer. Which is enormous, so I discourage putting a 16 in your main attribute (if you plan on using your main attribute, but that's another topic).
If you can start at level 5, then most of the flaw disappears.
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Good to know my calculatons are correct.
But man, that's rough. Even more so for the hybrid classes that simply can't even get an 18 in their attack stat like Warpriest and Alchemist. Low proficiency AND low attack stat really hurts them. The warpriest at least has his buffs but I'm starting to realize why the Alchemist is considered so weak, especially the Mutagenist who can't even count on splash damage to do something on a miss.
My current Warpriest of Sarenrae iteration is doing exactly that. By level 7 I still have no 18's (but four 16's) and thus I will be behind -1 for a full 20 levels. Note that this was done on purpose (first char test build) in order to create a jack-of-all-trades type melee/caster hybrid, however the cold reality is that I have instead created a master-of-none.
Technically at this very level I am only at -1 to hit with my Scimitar in comparision to all non-fighter martials but with pityful damage (2d6+3) so I usually don't bother doing melee at all. Versus our Wizard I am current 3 points behind in spell to-hit and DC's, so I have already announced that I probably will be doing less direct damage than before and change my spell selection accordingly (Fire Ray and Fireball surely helped before hitting the level 7 milestone). In addition to martial prowess and spell power I already failed a lot of skill or counteract checks by exactly 1 which really sucks.
The character will end up with four 20's (one of which boosted to 22) but still will be 6 points behind the fighter (4 proficiency, 2 stat), 4 points behind other martials (2 proficiency, 2 stat) and 3 points behind our Wizard (2 proficiency, 1 stat). Though Warpriest is probably one of the worst candidates to demonstrate the validity of lower attributes because he already is a nearly man by design this is just to show how things might add up.
Note that the character is still fun to play and works reasonably well, mainly because his role in our 5 player group is not to hit things with sticks and spells but to keep the other 4 characters jacked up and going, which he does very well even with reduced stats. Also note that if I was to recreate the character using hindsight 20/20 I would probably max out key attributes (and go cloistered + champion but this is a different topic).
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I'm surprised that the difference is that big. Dealing about 20% less damage for half of your adventuring career feels like A LOT. Not sure I didn't make a mistake in my calculations somewhere.
A +1 bonus is a 5% absolute increase in hit chance, but a greater-than-5% relative increase.
When it increases my hit chance from 50% to 55%, that's an increase in average damage output (from regular hits) of 10%, because 55 is 10% more than 50. So if this is all that's happening, we're doing 10% more damage.
If I would also be making a second attack with a 25% hit chance, and the +1 increases it to 30%, that's an increase in average damage from these secondary attacks of 20%, because 30 is 20% more than 25.
And on the occasions when the +1 increases a third attack from 5% to 10%, that's doubling the average damage output of third attacks.
On top of this, we can throw in an increase in damage output from inflicting more critical hits, and the increase in damage-per-hit for being stronger, and it can easily add up to a +20% total.
However, the more inaccurate you are, the bigger the relative difference is, so a 'no buffs or flanking, always full-attack' strategy is going to exaggerate the effect somewhat.
When it increases my hit chance from 50% to 55%, that's an increase in average damage output (from regular hits) of 10%, because 55 is 10% more than 50. So if this is all that's happening, we're doing 10% more damage.
Technically, you can't have more than 50% hit chance. Or rather: Any additional hit chance above that would add to your crit chance instead. So it's even more damage.
But yeah, I'm aware of how the numbers work. I just never before looked at them so closely before. And as I said, my calculations were completely white room, nothing close to being realistic in actual play. But actual play varies WAY too much to do any calculations, so white room is the only feasible methid to compare a baseline.
Technically, you can't have more than 50% hit chance.
I was considering 'critical hit' to be a subset of 'hit', but I can see your reasoning.
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The general takeaway I get from this is 'ouch for a few levels, then you're even, then alternate'. Although having two sixteens does mean that fifth level boost brings you to two eighteens..if that's important for your build somehow.
But otherwise I'm getting a major ouch vibe. I'll admit, it is a little disheartening to think of. Especially when I think about trying to build an alchemist.
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The general takeaway I get from this is 'ouch for a few levels, then you're even, then alternate'. Although having two sixteens does mean that fifth level boost brings you to two eighteens..if that's important for your build somehow.
But otherwise I'm getting a major ouch vibe. I'll admit, it is a little disheartening to think of. Especially when I think about trying to build an alchemist.
It's pretty painful if it's your main schtick, yeah.
And yes, this is one of the factors in Alchemists having notable issues, though they do have a few ways to get higher bonuses than other people to compensate (most obviously, Quicksilver Mutagen compensates for the low stat on attacks...though not for their lower Proficiency at some levels) and get to have effects on a miss if they use bombs.
All that said, having one 18 isn't the burden it is in some other systems (including Starfinder). That's less than half the Ability points you get to distribute at 1st level, allowing for you to be quite good at 'off stat' things as well.
I just happened to do some damage calcuations for a barbarian and decided to check the numbers.
Assumptions:
...
- Doing a "full-attack", i.e. Strike > Strike > Strike. No feats, maneuvers or other fancy stuff.
I'm curious what happens if you instead run the numbers with a more typical routine of strike > strike > something else. Or even a '2-action strike' >> something else (something like swipe or maybe power attack).
First of all, I had an error in my calculations. The damage gap is even a bit larger. Going from 18 Str to 16 Strength will reduce the damage by 11.81% on average across all levels. For the levels that matter (i.e. those with different Strength values) the average damage loss is 23.63%. Greatest loss happens at levels 1-3 with 27.87%.
I'm curious what happens if you instead run the numbers with a more typical routine of strike > strike > something else. Or even a '2-action strike' >> something else (something like swipe or maybe power attack).
For Strike > Strike, the numbers are 9.99% across all levels, 19.97% on levels that matter and the peak is 24.37% at levels 1-3.
For a single Strike, it's -10.06%, 20.13% and 25.31% respectively.
I'd expect things like Power Attack to produce similar results, but I'm not really able to check every ability out there. I'm not a programmer or anything, just a guy with a spreadsheet. And I'm not even very good at it.
Technically, you can.When it increases my hit chance from 50% to 55%Technically, you can't have more than 50% hit chance.
Matter of perspective. Can you have more than 50% chance to hurt your enemy on an attack? Absolutely. But for this type of damage comparison, there's three possible outcomes for an attack: Miss, Hit and Crit. Each has it's own implications for the resulting damage and any hit chance above 50% is automatically converted to a crit under the PF2 rules. So 60% chance to hit translates to 50% chance to hit and 10% chance to crit.
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A 16 is viable if you increase it at every opportunity past 1st level (well, at 5th, 10th, and 15th, there's no point in doing it at 20th). It's -1 behind, but only for half the time (1st-4th, 10th-14th, and 20th level), which matters but isn't crippling.
Just make sure that at 15th you know where you're putting your 4 boosts at 20th so you don't end up wasting one because you can't boost the same stat twice or end up with two odd values. A 16 in a primary stat can end up doing this if you aren't paying attention.
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A 16 is viable if you increase it at every opportunity past 1st level (well, at 5th, 10th, and 15th, there's no point in doing it at 20th). It's -1 behind, but only for half the time (1st-4th, 10th-14th, and 20th level), which matters but isn't crippling.Just make sure that at 15th you know where you're putting your 4 boosts at 20th so you don't end up wasting one because you can't boost the same stat twice or end up with two odd values. A 16 in a primary stat can end up doing this if you aren't paying attention.
You can easily wind up in this situation with a starting 18 as well, if you divide your other stats in certain ways. It's still excellent advice, mind you, but not actually specific to having a 16 in your attack stat.
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I strongly reccomend (vigorously) an 18 in an accuracy primary stat to any of my players who does not fully understand the ramifications of starting with less.
There are some characters that can get by with less, but in PF2E I consider those to be more "advanced" builds that should be undertaken with a good understanding of how the system works.
I had a new player insist on running an Alchemist, and the inability to start with 18 Dex combined with their subpar proficiency is a recipe for a bad play experience.
I think having an 18 in your Key stat is most important for non-fighter martials, followed by single target focused casters. Barbarians in particular get so few bonuses to attack and so many bonuses to damage that the accuracy loss is felt very sharply.
For almost every other character, an 18 is nice, but it is not critical. For other casters, Spells that target saves usually do decent things on a success and being 1 point behind for levels 1 to 4, and 10 to 14 and again at 20 are not that big a deal when you are usually targeting multiple enemies at once, or buffing/doing battlefield control.
The question to ask yourself is how often you plan on using different options in combat. The more accurate you can be with the things you do the most often the better, but if you only attack once a round, or even less, then sacrificing other ability scores to boost your attack stat can be detrimental to your fun. That said, white room theorizing won't necessarily help you know what your decision tree in combat will look like, and it can be easy to outsmart yourself, if you undervalue your attack stat. Like even if you plan on using intimidation a lot in battle, there will be a lot of rounds where there will be no one new to use it on and your barbarian is not going to get enough feat and skill support to be combat competent with more than one skill. So having a 16 STR so you can have a 16 CHA as a barbarian is going to make for a lot of frustrating rounds.
For Champions though, you could give yourself enough options that key off of Charisma to actually make a pretty decent character with a 16 STR and 16 CHA.
You can easily wind up in this situation with a starting 18 as well, if you divide your other stats in certain ways. It's still excellent advice, mind you, but not actually specific to having a 16 in your attack stat.
Yes, but not on your primary started-at-18 stat, but on one of your secondary stats. For an 18 you always bump it. For 16 you have to decide when you're not going to bump it, and you can't wait until 20th for all of your 16s. At least one of your 16-start stats HAS to be skipped at 15th (or earlier) in order to avoid the level-20 problem.
(Starting at 14 doesn't have the issue either, its ONLY stats that start at 16. And if you're trying to dual-primary-two-16s, you can't always bump both).
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Being unable to get 18 strength for a strength swashbuckler completely ruined the build that sounded like a blast.
I think that Key Abilitiy Scores are way too rigid. Like cleric has the divine font scale with charisma but you can't start with an 18 in charisma or an attack stat. While you can work around a low wis score for cleric spellcasting.
A Gymnast Swashbuckler can get by with just a high strength score.
I was thinking about the OP's Barbarian, and perhaps a way to patch accuracy would be to build it as a Fighter and then heavily Multiclass into Barbarian.
Bonus damage will be coming on a little late and will be lower than if the main class was Barbarian, but the extra proficiency will net a +1 accuracy over straight Barbarian with 18 STR, even with 16 STR.
Of course that's only a (potential) solution for martial characters, and casters don't really have that option.
My personal feeling is that an 18 should be considered default, and if you're going to accept a 16, you need to be asking yourself whether the payoff will be worth it. Support casters can get away with it pretty easily as offensive magic isn't their main thing. Characters like Bards or Warpriests that have innate accuracy fixers can boost the party while bringing themselves up to par (but of course miss out on the fun of overclocking their accuracy them self).
Strikers should probably stick to an 18 - your job is to deal damage, and you can't do that unless you hit in the first place. -5% chance to hit and -5% chance to crit is not insignificant, even if it's only across half of the character's career.
Tanks, I would also advise 18. In a game without codified monster aggro rules, you want to be as dangerous as possible to attract the most enemies you can, and that means hitting and critting at least as much a the squishies.
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every single +1/-1 matters.
you can survive with a 16 in your primary stat, yes during certain level stretches you will be objectively worse. But it will be in a way that you may not notice since having an 18 starting stat you can still roll low.
its up to you if you are ok with that.
me? never am. I roll low enough as it is, i don't need any help in that regard.
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16 is also more viable for certain casters than martials, because "choosing spells that are not based on hitting or DCs" (ike buffs) is a valid tactic. You'll be worse off if monsters (like rakshasas) start trying to counter your stuff, but other than that you're fine.
Like a Warpriest can start with a 12 Wis, and their 16 Str/Dex will be more of problem for them.
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