Are Alchemist bombs supposed to be the main attack or an attack supplement?

[Unicore]

Dargath wrote:

Well you know my entire plan WAS to be an item dispenser. I wanted to play as a healer that also had buffs, to help increase damage or tankiness or whatever else by handing out the items. I had no intention of trying to make myself more powerful but rather buff the party fighter or Barbarian or whatever to hit harder, be faster, be stronger or whatever.

I also wouldn’t hate buffing the casters but the main idea was the Warcraft 3 Goblin Alchemist of a tiny goblin riding an Ogre and enraging the Ogre to fight harder, and healing spray to heal himself and his allied units (he can be in any army because he’s a neutral hero).

However the idea was to use the elixirs to make people faster, or hit harder, or whatever and to toss heals on people.

For these intentions the Alchemist sounds like that’s how it’s supposed to play???

Then again I wonder if I couldn’t just do the same thing as a Sorcerer who is Dragon or Primal and heal or use buff spells like haste and invisibility and the like.

The goblin alchemist MC’d into a fire Oracle in my party is a pretty big monster of persistent fire damage. They hand out a fair bit of specific situational boosters ant the beginning of the day and then focus on making sure every enemy is on fire in combat. The alchemist in PF2 shines when it fits into the party in very particular ways. Overall, it is probably too finicky a class for PF2s more streamlined design, but I have seen it deployed incredibly effectively by a player brand new to pathfinder, but pretty into complex strategic video games.

[Staffan Johansson]

graystone wrote:

Just be aware that if they have Friendly Toss, they might use you as ammo and toss you 30'. ;)

We call that the Fastball Special.

[Staffan Johansson]

NemoNoName wrote:

Just forget using spells on higher-than-you level enemies, it's a waste.

Nah, you just have to use spells with decent effects on a successful save.

If you're facing a higher-level enemy, you're usually not facing too many opponents. So something like Slow can be amazingly effective, where you're giving up two actions to cast Slow and costing the enemy one. That might not seem like a good trade, but it's fairly likely that the higher-level enemy is alone so it just lost one out of three actions, and probably can't use its coolest special attacks (because it can't move and then use a two-action activity), while your side spent two out of twelve actions. And IF they fail, well, that's the jackpot.

What you definitely shouldn't do is use spells with no effects on a successful save/missed attack. Down that road lies pain. For you, not the enemy.

[Staffan Johansson]

coriolis wrote:

When you compare alchemists to the other classes, they stand in stark contrast in how they're designed: they focus on quantity over quality. In other words, they're really good at creating craploads of low-grade stuff (I'm talking about level 3-4 onwards; before that, you'll need most of your reagents to fill your basic function).

The other niche they have is elixirs. With the removal of the vast majority of classic buff spells, especially those that affect combat, elixirs are now the best way to improve your party's abilities in terms of duration, frequency and raw capabilities, both in and out of combat.

A big problem that's related to this is that after level 4-5 or so, alchemists pretty much don't get anything new. They just get slightly better versions of the things they already have, usually with a longer duration or something like that.

For one of the more egregious example, take the Sea Touch Elixir. As a level 5 item, it gives you a Swim speed of 20 ft for 10 minutes. It's not until level 12 that the alchemist can make an elixir that lets the drinker breathe water. Meanwhile, a caster gets both Water Walk and Water Breathing as level 2 spells, two options that usually give you a more convenient way of handling 90% or more of the problems that Sea Touch Elixir would solve.

Of course, the alchemist can make a LOT of Sea Touch elixirs - probably like 18 or so at 5th level if are prepared and want to go all in. A caster only has 3-4 spell slots available for water breathing/water walking.

I would like to see alchemists get stronger effects at higher levels, and by that I mean actually different effects. A caster goes from Longstrider (speed bonus) to Levitate to Fly/Air Walk (actual flight speed) to various kinds of teleportation. The alchemist goes from speed bonus for a minute to a speed bonus for 10 minutes to a speed bonus for an hour. Yay. It would also be nice if they got offensive effects that debuffs opponents without using bombs or poisons as the medium to do so.

[Cyouni]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

What you definitely shouldn't do is use spells with no effects on a successful save/missed attack. Down that road lies pain. For you, not the enemy.

Acid arrow isn't too bad if you're willing to back it up with true strike or a hero point, and there are other good ones, but by and large yeah.

AoE blasting is also still fine, especially if you can identify their weak save. Hitting the weak save of un-debuffed enemies a level higher still is a greater than 50% fail chance.

[Unicore]

Cyouni wrote:

Staffan Johansson wrote:

What you definitely shouldn't do is use spells with no effects on a successful save/missed attack. Down that road lies pain. For you, not the enemy.

Acid arrow isn't too bad if you're willing to back it up with true strike or a hero point, and there are other good ones, but by and large yeah.

AoE blasting is also still fine, especially if you can identify their weak save. Hitting the weak save of un-debuffed enemies a level higher still is a greater than 50% fail chance.

I have seen acid arrow cause all kinds of problems to higher level monsters. Spell attack roll spells are pretty good for getting those nasty abilities to stick on higher level creatures because you can combine attack bonus buffs, true strike and getting the enemy flat footed pretty easily. I get that some people hate that true strike is so effective that it feels mandatory on spell attack roll spells, but as far as sticking a nasty effect and damage on a higher level enemy, spell attack roll spells are pretty great. Spells that debuff on a successful save are also pretty good, you are just much less likely to get the better results.

[WWHsmackdown]

Unicore wrote:

Cyouni wrote:

Staffan Johansson wrote:

What you definitely shouldn't do is use spells with no effects on a successful save/missed attack. Down that road lies pain. For you, not the enemy.

Acid arrow isn't too bad if you're willing to back it up with true strike or a hero point, and there are other good ones, but by and large yeah.

AoE blasting is also still fine, especially if you can identify their weak save. Hitting the weak save of un-debuffed enemies a level higher still is a greater than 50% fail chance.

I have seen acid arrow cause all kinds of problems to higher level monsters. Spell attack roll spells are pretty good for getting those nasty abilities to stick on higher level creatures because you can combine attack bonus buffs, true strike and getting the enemy flat footed pretty easily. I get that some people hate that true strike is so effective that it feels mandatory on spell attack roll spells, but as far as sticking a nasty effect and damage on a higher level enemy, spell attack roll spells are pretty great. Spells that debuff on a successful save are also pretty good, you are just much less likely to get the better results.

*Spell attack rolls with true strike are are pretty great* By themselves they're fairly unreliable. If a spell requires a spell to reliably hit I don't consider it all that great a spell

[Ravingdork]

Dargath wrote:

Is there anything in the rules that say I as a goblin cannot ride on the shoulders of the party fighter or Barbarian? Haha

The GameMastery Guide STRONGLY discourages allowing PCs to ride humanoid characters, especially other PCs.

[graystone]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

*Spell attack rolls with true strike are are pretty great* By themselves they're fairly unreliable. If a spell requires a spell to reliably hit I don't consider it all that great a spell

I've seen a lot of things justified because of true strike, like magus crit-fishing.... I'm with you on not being excited when the way to make something work ok is to have a staff of divination stuck someplace you'll need surgery to remove it because it doesn't work without one. :(

[Cyouni]

There is a big difference between "doesn't work" and "doesn't work reliably". In the same way that using a scroll of Command won't work reliably, or using an Iron Cube talisman isn't reliable against a higher level enemy.

Would you like me to list off all the other consumable effects in the game that don't work if you don't hit, or have to roll against a higher save?

[Dargath]

Is part of the reason direct attack roll to hit spells are bad is because unlike Martials who get runes of Striking which add a +1 to hit rolls, spellcasters, I guess, have no way to supplement their own attack rolls consistently?

Or are there like +1 staves that add a +1 to hit bonus to spell attack rolls?

[Garulo]

Dargath wrote:

Is part of the reason direct attack roll to hit spells are bad is because unlike Martials who get runes of Striking which add a +1 to hit rolls, spellcasters, I guess, have no way to supplement their own attack rolls consistently?

Or are there like +1 staves that add a +1 to hit bonus to spell attack rolls?

There is no item which adds to your spell attack roll edit> "that I know about"

[Bluescale]

Garulo wrote:

Dargath wrote:

Is part of the reason direct attack roll to hit spells are bad is because unlike Martials who get runes of Striking which add a +1 to hit rolls, spellcasters, I guess, have no way to supplement their own attack rolls consistently?

Or are there like +1 staves that add a +1 to hit bonus to spell attack rolls?

There is no item which adds to your spell attack roll edit> "that I know about"

Which is why, if you are playing a primal/divine sorcerer, you don't want to pick any attack roll spells (at least in the early levels), as the primal/divine traditions do not have the true strike spell. Outside of multiclassing, you need to wait for Crossblood Evolution to get the spell.

[Dargath]

Bluescale wrote:

Garulo wrote:

Dargath wrote:

Is part of the reason direct attack roll to hit spells are bad is because unlike Martials who get runes of Striking which add a +1 to hit rolls, spellcasters, I guess, have no way to supplement their own attack rolls consistently?

Or are there like +1 staves that add a +1 to hit bonus to spell attack rolls?

There is no item which adds to your spell attack roll edit> "that I know about"

Which is why, if you are playing a primal/divine sorcerer, you don't want to pick any attack roll spells (at least in the early levels), as the primal/divine traditions do not have the true strike spell. Outside of multiclassing, you need to wait for Crossblood Evolution to get the spell.

The Oracle also has a Feat that allows them to pilfer from other schools of magic however iirc it’s at level 14 which seems a bit late. Do you think the book with the Magus and Summoner may fix this or is it a feature of the system on purpose and “working as intended”?

[Cyouni]

Spell attack rolls average fine.

The key word there is average.

Thus they don't perform great in a situation where you might roll badly, and true strike is good for smoothing your performance closer to that average.

(PS: Hero points exist for this reason.)

[Ediwir]

Watery Soup wrote:

If, off the top of your head, you can't remember everything that you can make (pop quiz - what elixir boosts your Fort saves?), it's going to be less fun.

Chuggernaut?

Get it? 'cause you just keep chugging them. Haha. I'm hilarious.

But more seriously, this is an actual point, you need to know what you can make, just like a wizard needs to know what spells they can learn BEFORE writing down "magic missile, fireball, electric arc".

Having a quick look at an alchemy guide can help.

[Dargath]

Do you think that the Secrets of Magic book might have something like spellcasting staves that you can add potency runes to in order to keep up with martials in the attack spell category? Or does Paizo intentionally want to keep attack magic spells down comparatively forever with no recourse to improve?

[Lightning Raven]

Dargath wrote:

Do you think that the Secrets of Magic book might have something like spellcasting staves that you can add potency runes to in order to keep up with martials in the attack spell category? Or does Paizo intentionally want to keep attack magic spells down comparatively forever with no recourse to improve?

I don't think the lack of spell accuracy upgrades was an oversight, the spellcasters work with the assumption that they can target different weaknesses from the monsters. I would be please if they added a +X to hit item for spellcasters, it seems like they need it to make attack roll spells more attractive. While I think some people overblown the "lack" of accuracy from spell attack rolls, I do agree that a little bit of help would be neat.

This kinds of items would be the perfect chance to bring back Rods. Imagine them acting like weapons for martial characters, with fundamental runes and lots of cool property runes. They could be a game changer for spellcasters.

[shroudb]

let's keep in mind that even though they do scale slower, spell attack goes up to legendary as oppossed to martial attack that only fighter goes up to legendary.

so, at end game, even with +3 potency rune on the majority of martials, they are only 1 behind in the attack due to their proficiency.

i believe it's more probable to see a class/archetype like an arcanist with metamagics that give a satus bonus to spell attacks rather than see a generic item that gives it to all (always imo)

[WWHsmackdown]

shroudb wrote:

let's keep in mind that even though they do scale slower, spell attack goes up to legendary as oppossed to martial attack that only fighter goes up to legendary.

so, at end game, even with +3 potency rune on the majority of martials, they are only 1 behind in the attack due to their proficiency.

i believe it's more probable to see a class/archetype like an arcanist with metamagics that give a satus bonus to spell attacks rather than see a generic item that gives it to all (always imo)

That legendary proficiency comes so late in the game I rarely factor it into the discussion. Meanwhile for the vast majority of play martials have advantages in both proficiency and weapon runes.

[Staffan Johansson]

Dargath wrote:

Is part of the reason direct attack roll to hit spells are bad is because unlike Martials who get runes of Striking which add a +1 to hit rolls, spellcasters, I guess, have no way to supplement their own attack rolls consistently?

That, and occasionally lower proficiency (at levels 5, 6, 13, and 14).

Another problem is that spell attacks are, literally, hit-or-miss. For the sake of argument, let's say I'm 4th level, and I have spell attack +10, spell DC 20, and I'm fighting something with Reflex save +9 and AC 21 (so 50% either way). If I'm using a spell attack, I have a 45% chance of hitting and a 5% chance of critting (usually, but not always, for double damage), so my "average" effect is 55%. If I instead use a spell with a basic save, they have 5% chance to critfail for double damage, 45% to fail for full damage, 45% to succeed for half damage, and 5% to crit for no damage. That's ~75% of full effect on average. So in order to average out to the same, a spell attack needs to be about 50% better than a basic save.

But that's only the first level of problems. The second is expectations. Spell attacks tend to be, by their very nature, single-target spells. Your natural intuition would be to use strong single-target spells against single dangerous opponents, and AOE spells (which usually use saves) against crowds. But single strong opponents are usually higher level, which means they have better AC and defenses. So that 50% chance to hit? That's likely to be more like 35% against a "boss". Of course, the same goes more or less for their save, but with a save there's at least about a 50% chance for a reduced effect on a successful save.

As others have mentioned, this is somewhat mitigated by the True Strike spell, which lets you roll twice. But that's only available to arcane and occult casters, not divine or primal.

And I'm sure the devs have done the math that says that these average values are about where they're supposed to be. The problem there is that you generally don't stay long enough at any one level to get a good sense of the "average". For the most part, you will likely level up after 1-3 days of active adventuring. So if you're a sorcerer who will level up from level 3 to 4 after two days of adventuring, and then from 4 to 5 after two more, that's a maximum of 14 Acid Arrows, assuming that's all you'll be casting with your 2nd level spells (which it probably isn't). And as anyone who has played Settlers of Catan and has seen number 11 rolled twice in a row while no-one ever manages to roll a 5 can tell you, 14 rolls is nowhere near enough to guarantee overall average results.

[Dargath]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

Dargath wrote:

Is part of the reason direct attack roll to hit spells are bad is because unlike Martials who get runes of Striking which add a +1 to hit rolls, spellcasters, I guess, have no way to supplement their own attack rolls consistently?

That, and occasionally lower proficiency (at levels 5, 6, 13, and 14).

Another problem is that spell attacks are, literally, hit-or-miss. For the sake of argument, let's say I'm 4th level, and I have spell attack +10, spell DC 20, and I'm fighting something with Reflex save +9 and AC 21 (so 50% either way). If I'm using a spell attack, I have a 45% chance of hitting and a 5% chance of critting (usually, but not always, for double damage), so my "average" effect is 55%. If I instead use a spell with a basic save, they have 5% chance to critfail for double damage, 45% to fail for full damage, 45% to succeed for half damage, and 5% to crit for no damage. That's ~75% of full effect on average. So in order to average out to the same, a spell attack needs to be about 50% better than a basic save.

But that's only the first level of problems. The second is expectations. Spell attacks tend to be, by their very nature, single-target spells. Your natural intuition would be to use strong single-target spells against single dangerous opponents, and AOE spells (which usually use saves) against crowds. But single strong opponents are usually higher level, which means they have better AC and defenses. So that 50% chance to hit? That's likely to be more like 35% against a "boss". Of course, the same goes more or less for their save, but with a save there's at least about a 50% chance for a reduced effect on a successful save.

As others have mentioned, this is somewhat mitigated by the True Strike spell, which lets you roll twice. But that's only available to arcane and occult casters, not divine or primal.

And I'm sure the devs have done the math that says that these average values are about where they're supposed to be. The problem there is that you...

This is a very good explanation. I found that the Oracle at level 4 can get a feat called visions of darkness which is a focus spell that grants a +2 bonus to the next spell attack. Then at level 14 with divine mysteries or some such feat you can pilfer ONE spell from a different tradition (aka True Strike). Between these two things and especially using both in tandem (granted at higher levels) could direct attack spells actually work for an Oracle at least once? One big shot at the boss I suppose and then you’d have to recharge... or spam vision of weakness and blow out your curse I guess lol.

[Ediwir]

Dargath wrote:

Do you think that the Secrets of Magic book might have something like spellcasting staves that you can add potency runes to in order to keep up with martials in the attack spell category? Or does Paizo intentionally want to keep attack magic spells down comparatively forever with no recourse to improve?

Quoting the designers, "if we felt those bonuses were necessary, we would have had them in the CRB rather than in a side book".

You're much more likely to see item bonus to spell attack as an errata to the CRB than any other expansion, and even then it's extremely unlikely.

[Dargath]

Ediwir wrote:

Dargath wrote:

Do you think that the Secrets of Magic book might have something like spellcasting staves that you can add potency runes to in order to keep up with martials in the attack spell category? Or does Paizo intentionally want to keep attack magic spells down comparatively forever with no recourse to improve?

Quoting the designers, "if we felt those bonuses were necessary, we would have had them in the CRB rather than in a side book".

You're much more likely to see item bonus to spell attack as an errata to the CRB than any other expansion, and even then it's extremely unlikely.

Well then I suppose that is the one, and I do mean ONE, thing that 5e has over Pathfinder 2e. Mages that can actually be played reliably as damage dealers.

[Ediwir]

Dargath wrote:

Ediwir wrote:

Dargath wrote:

Do you think that the Secrets of Magic book might have something like spellcasting staves that you can add potency runes to in order to keep up with martials in the attack spell category? Or does Paizo intentionally want to keep attack magic spells down comparatively forever with no recourse to improve?

Quoting the designers, "if we felt those bonuses were necessary, we would have had them in the CRB rather than in a side book".

You're much more likely to see item bonus to spell attack as an errata to the CRB than any other expansion, and even then it's extremely unlikely.

Well then I suppose that is the one, and I do mean ONE, thing that 5e has over Pathfinder 2e. Mages that can actually be played reliably as damage dealers.

Less that and more "Mages that can be played as damage dealers more effectively than Martials", imo.

That's not necessarily a good thing.

[Cyouni]

Dargath wrote:

Ediwir wrote:

Dargath wrote:

Do you think that the Secrets of Magic book might have something like spellcasting staves that you can add potency runes to in order to keep up with martials in the attack spell category? Or does Paizo intentionally want to keep attack magic spells down comparatively forever with no recourse to improve?

Quoting the designers, "if we felt those bonuses were necessary, we would have had them in the CRB rather than in a side book".

You're much more likely to see item bonus to spell attack as an errata to the CRB than any other expansion, and even then it's extremely unlikely.

Well then I suppose that is the one, and I do mean ONE, thing that 5e has over Pathfinder 2e. Mages that can actually be played reliably as damage dealers.

Mages can be played reliably as damage dealers.

Are they going to be consistently making you wonder "why do martials ever exist" like 5e and PF1?

No.

[Dargath]

Cyouni wrote:

Dargath wrote:

Ediwir wrote:

Dargath wrote:

Do you think that the Secrets of Magic book might have something like spellcasting staves that you can add potency runes to in order to keep up with martials in the attack spell category? Or does Paizo intentionally want to keep attack magic spells down comparatively forever with no recourse to improve?

Quoting the designers, "if we felt those bonuses were necessary, we would have had them in the CRB rather than in a side book".

You're much more likely to see item bonus to spell attack as an errata to the CRB than any other expansion, and even then it's extremely unlikely.

Well then I suppose that is the one, and I do mean ONE, thing that 5e has over Pathfinder 2e. Mages that can actually be played reliably as damage dealers.

Mages can be played reliably as damage dealers.

Are they going to be consistently making you wonder "why do martials ever exist" like 5e and PF1?

No.

Okay awesome. For what its worth in the best world I think mages and martials ought to be dead even for damage dealing, I hated Pathfinder 1e for CoDZilla and refused to play it and I enjoy that in 5e comparatively they're much weaker as well. I suppose that's why 4e and Pathfinder 2e are my favorite TTRPGs ever. It just sounded like the pendulum had swung so far in the opposite direction that attempting to play a Blaster style Mage was an exercise in total futility, but it actually sounds like they're maybe less accurate but equal to Martials.

That said I've decided for the Pathfinder Society to do a Flames Mystery Oracle Goblin and use fire spells for offense and fill the rest of my known spells as support and healing spells. Literally Heal, Heroism, Bless, Protection, things like that on top of the fire spells granted through various means. One of them being able to take the Domain Gods spells and choosing Sarenrae can get you some cool spells.

Combined at higher level with pushing your curse and focus spells and you can just lay waste with fire damage (plus racial feat Burn it! <3) and then focus on healing and supporting allies. Big AOE heals and such.

[WWHsmackdown]

That is a bit of a shame though bc that means while martials require party coordination mages require party coordination and proper knowledge of enemy saves to make effective use of limited spell slots. Without adding accuracy runes for mages down the line it just seems like the system asks for way more from casters to reach a close but not quite equitable footing with martials

[Ediwir]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

That is a bit of a shame though bc that means while martials require party coordination mages require party coordination and proper knowledge of enemy saves to make effective use of limited spell slots. Without adding accuracy runes for mages down the line it just seems like the system asks for way more from casters to reach a close but not quite equitable footing with martials

As a caster, I'm ok with it. I have a lot of variety, versatility and utility, but if the game demands a bit extra effort for me to make the best of it... well, I guess that's sort of a tradeoff.

[WWHsmackdown]

Ediwir wrote:

WWHsmackdown wrote:

That is a bit of a shame though bc that means while martials require party coordination mages require party coordination and proper knowledge of enemy saves to make effective use of limited spell slots. Without adding accuracy runes for mages down the line it just seems like the system asks for way more from casters to reach a close but not quite equitable footing with martials

As a caster, I'm ok with it. I have a lot of variety, versatility and utility, but if the game demands a bit extra effort for me to make the best of it... well, I guess that's sort of a tradeoff.

Yea but that also means casters might also all wanna be treated as "advanced" classes compared to martials. Without system mastery (from the party as well as the caster in question) the caster player has a good chance of being frustrated and underperforming. At least that's how it use to play out at my table. Not a universal experience for all tables in the slightest, I know, but I have a creeping suspicion that differences in play effectiveness are no where near as drastic for martials

[Unicore]

Ironically, a wizard who takes a fair bit of spell attack roll blasting spells to pair with true strike, combined with some magic missiles and some generic ref targeting AoE spells is about all the variety you really need to be quite devastating as a blaster. You get a lot more mileage out of targeting weaknesses with spells of damage types that do damage on successful save than worrying to much about always targeting the weakest save. You just want to really avoid targeting the highest save, as that can tend to give 25% more chance of crit success.

Even at relatively low levels the blasting wizard and blasting sorcerer are very good. Much better as damage dealers than an alchemist, although slightly less flexible in filling other party roles.

[Dargath]

Unicore wrote:

Ironically, a wizard who takes a fair bit of spell attack roll blasting spells to pair with true strike, combined with some magic missiles and some generic ref targeting AoE spells is about all the variety you really need to be quite devastating as a blaster. You get a lot more mileage out of targeting weaknesses with spells of damage types that do damage on successful save than worrying to much about always targeting the weakest save. You just want to really avoid targeting the highest save, as that can tend to give 25% more chance of crit success.

Even at relatively low levels the blasting wizard and blasting sorcerer are very good. Much better as damage dealers than an alchemist, although slightly less flexible in filling other party roles.

I was looking at the Sorcerer as well and for all intents and purposes I can do the same build I was going to do on the Oracle. With Diabolic Bloodline you get a lot of fire based spells already, and with the Blessed Blood feat you can pick Saraenrae and get Burning Hands, Fireball and Wall of Fire. Between Flaming Sphere and Produce Flame and even Divine’s Own Flame Strike that’s about the best of it.

You even get cross blooded evolution to pinch True Strike much earlier than an Oracle can grab it (level 14). So now I’m really torn which class to play. I can straight up be a support/healer through Divine as well because you still get Bless/Heroism/Heal/Restoration etc

[NemoNoName]

Cyouni wrote:

Mages can be played reliably as damage dealers.

IF you are targeting low-level enemies. Equal or higher level you need to go through hoops (targeting the worst save, trying to debuff) to just have a 50-50 chance of landing a spell.

Cyouni wrote:

Are they going to be consistently making you wonder "why do martials ever exist" like 5e and PF1?

No.

No, this edition is making me wonder why most spellcasters even exist.

Or at least, non-NPC spellcasters. A party can easily do with a single support spellcaster and all non-spellcaster classes.

[Lightning Raven]

NemoNoName wrote:

Cyouni wrote:

Mages can be played reliably as damage dealers.

IF you are targeting low-level enemies. Equal or higher level you need to go through hoops (targeting the worst save, trying to debuff) to just have a 50-50 chance of landing a spell.

Just like literally every other class. I forgot how many times I lined up every advantage I could get for my monk and still missed both attacks against higher leveled enemies. It happens to every single class, not just spellcasters. The only different that while casters are spending renewable resources like spellslots, martial characters are getting whacked in the face by the enemy. Everyone needs to do the same stuff you're trying to say it's exclusive to spellcaster. Seems very cherry-picky too me.

Spellcasters may not be able to abuse the shoddy math of the previous editions to make so that the enemies, even stronger ones, have low chance of succeeding and single-handedly ending encounters while your party members just play second fiddle to your protagonist God Wizard, but they can significantly impact the battle, like everyone else and they still get a ton of useful spells to outside of combat like before.

Blasting in this edition is far stronger than previous edition simply because of the degrees of success AND all spellcasters have a reliable source of damage to draw from with cantrips.

Our Wizard wasn't even particular the best player around and forgot to use some of his features once in a while, but his Necromancy wizard had several clutch moment and after the first few levels I started calling a tank Wizard just because of the amount of self-healing he could do (School Focus spell and Vampiric Touch is an amazing combo and won us a fight).

Do not mistake a balanced class with a useless ones. Casters have always been way off the mark, specially at high levels(sometimes not even that much, just check out the infamous Painter Wizard build, if that doesn't make you see there were huge problems with the previous system, I don't know what would), just because now they had their early levels and consistency improved at the cost of high risk high reward spells (that weren't even high risk in the first place since you could break the system and remove all the risk) that ended boss encounters your GM spent hours designing only to end it with a single failure.

[NemoNoName]

Lightning Raven wrote:

Just like literally every other class. I forgot how many times I lined up every advantage I could get for my monk and still missed both attacks against higher leveled enemies. It happens to every single class, not just spellcasters. The only different that while casters are spending renewable resources like spellslots, martial characters are getting whacked in the face by the enemy. Everyone needs to do the same stuff you're trying to say it's exclusive to spellcaster. Seems very cherry-picky too me.

Casters are spending limited (if renewable) resources while martials are going at it all day. HP are no longer the limit like they were previously, it's easy to replenish them. Spell slots are gone in combat or two.

Not to mention that there is Fighter in the mix who excels at stronger enemies, plus martials get repeated strikes every round (even if some at penalty) and reliable and repeatable ways to debuff an enemy.
All of that ignoring all the bonus abilities they can get via class abilities to provide them with even more flexibility.

Lightning Raven wrote:

Spellcasters may not be able to abuse the shoddy math of the previous editions to make so that the enemies, even stronger ones, have low chance of succeeding and single-handedly ending encounters while your party members just play second fiddle to your protagonist God Wizard,

... Yeah, this only deserves answers better left unwritten.

Please try to abandon your focus on previous editions and look at this edition, with a critical eye for balance.

Lightning Raven wrote:

but they can significantly impact the battle, like everyone else and they still get a ton of useful spells to outside of combat like before.

With the improvements to skill feats and nerfs to spells, I am not seeing any advantage in this at all.

Lightning Raven wrote:

Blasting in this edition is far stronger than previous edition simply because of the degrees of success AND all spellcasters have a reliable source of damage to draw from with cantrips.

You must be fighting only low level enemies. Blasting is weak against higher level enemies, often doing less damage than a "normal" martials attack.

Lightning Raven wrote:

Our Wizard wasn't even particular the best player around and forgot to use some of his features once in a while, but his Necromancy wizard had several clutch moment and after the first few levels I started calling a tank Wizard just because of the amount of self-healing he could do (School Focus spell and Vampiric Touch is an amazing combo and won us a fight).

That's temporary HP and you must be fighting very weak enemies to get much out of it. I've been using it on my Hellknight Full Plate Wizard and while it's useful, it's really not that noteable.

Lightning Raven wrote:

Do not mistake a balanced class with a useless ones.

I'm not. Wizards are not completely useless, just weak compared to other classes, especially martials.

I know a lot of people are enjoying seeing the Wizards struggle after years of Wizards being OP, but that's really not good for health of the game.

Even Paizo admits themselves that spellcasting is too weak, as it's artificially buffed on NPC spellcasters (they have a fairly consistent +2 over equal level PCs).

Personally, I'd have preferred a significantly different casting system that is more interactive on casters part, but we're stuck with what we have.

[Lightning Raven]

NemoNoName wrote:

Lightning Raven wrote:

Just like literally every other class. I forgot how many times I lined up every advantage I could get for my monk and still missed both attacks against higher leveled enemies. It happens to every single class, not just spellcasters. The only different that while casters are spending renewable resources like spellslots, martial characters are getting whacked in the face by the enemy. Everyone needs to do the same stuff you're trying to say it's exclusive to spellcaster. Seems very cherry-picky too me.

Casters are spending limited (if renewable) resources while martials are going at it all day. HP are no longer the limit like they were previously, it's easy to replenish them. Spell slots are gone in combat or two.

Not to mention that there is Fighter in the mix who excels at stronger enemies, plus martials get repeated strikes every round (even if some at penalty) and reliable and repeatable ways to debuff an enemy.
All of that ignoring all the bonus abilities they can get via class abilities to provide them with even more flexibility.

Lightning Raven wrote:

Spellcasters may not be able to abuse the shoddy math of the previous editions to make so that the enemies, even stronger ones, have low chance of succeeding and single-handedly ending encounters while your party members just play second fiddle to your protagonist God Wizard,

... Yeah, this only deserves answers better left unwritten.

Please try to abandon your focus on previous editions and look at this edition, with a critical eye for balance.

Lightning Raven wrote:

but they can significantly impact the battle, like everyone else and they still get a ton of useful spells to outside of combat like before.

With the improvements to skill feats and nerfs to spells, I am not seeing any advantage in this at all.

Lightning Raven wrote:

Blasting in this edition is far stronger than previous edition simply because of the degrees of success AND all spellcasters have a reliable source of

...

My arguments are based on the months my group player Age of Ashes. We got into really tough scraps and we managed to win all of them and the only class lagging behind was the Alchemist. The Wizard was doing fine and at one point it even hit the most amount of damage in a single round in our table, ever. 383 dmg against Party Level-1 enemies, just 4 of them.

Also, you are, very much like Paizo, putting a lot of weight into "going all day" effects of abilities, when in play, things that have limited but high impact is what matter the most, and to our experience, the Wizard didn't leave anything to desire in battle and, I might add, the player didn't even made much effort in playing the class as effectively as possible.

Trying to make "counterarguments" by assuming how the encounters were designed to justify your claims is beyond meaningless. As I've said before, we were playing Age of Ashes and I would even go as far as to say that we were playing it on a harder difficulty than normal because our GM (supported by other players) had the ideal of house rule "Villain Point", which meant our Nat 1 became Hero Points for the GM. Imagine how may critical hits the bosses landed in those fights. We also had an alchemist, which is a big handicap. Yet, the Wizard's resources was not a problem to our party. In fact, we stopped more because the Alchemist ran out of resources than our trigger happy wizard.

The spellcasters problem isn't in their perceived strength, it is in the lack of interesting feats and features. They severely lack fun and mechanically interesting options. Some spellcasting archetypes offer fun stuff, like the Magaambyan attendant Archetype, but the base classes need more interesting feats as soon as possible and I'll be completely disappointed if they don't get good stuff on the Secrets of Magic book.

Regardless, if it were up to me, we wouldn't even be dealing with the archaic vancian system anyway. So many interesting magic systems were invented since then that could inspire a new and overhauled system, but people wanted the old stuff, so I just accept and make the best of it.

[YuriP]

Lightning Raven wrote:

The spellcasters problem isn't in their perceived strength, it is in the lack of interesting feats and features. They severely lack fun and mechanically interesting options. Some spellcasting archetypes offer fun stuff, like the Magaambyan attendant Archetype, but the base classes need more interesting feats as soon as possible and I'll be completely disappointed if they don't get good stuff on the Secrets of Magic book.

But this is not already compensated by the fact they can cast many types of magic?

I always think that the main diference of combatant feats being more "interesting" than casters is because the casters already have their magic as more powerful and versatile component.

[Lightning Raven]

YuriP wrote:

Lightning Raven wrote:

The spellcasters problem isn't in their perceived strength, it is in the lack of interesting feats and features. They severely lack fun and mechanically interesting options. Some spellcasting archetypes offer fun stuff, like the Magaambyan attendant Archetype, but the base classes need more interesting feats as soon as possible and I'll be completely disappointed if they don't get good stuff on the Secrets of Magic book.

But this is not already compensated by the fact they can cast many types of magic?

I always think that the main diference of combatant feats being more "interesting" than casters is because the casters already have their magic as more powerful and versatile component.

No. It is very much not. Because all casters can cast every thing with no restriction most of the time (of course I'm talking casters of the same tradition), making the idea of a "Caster" being really variable because of the amount of spells, but when you take into account various casters on the same Tradition, that's where the feat and feature difference should come in.

In my mind, we should have more feats tailored to each of the spellcasting class that enhance their casting differently from each other, kinda like how a fighter and other martial classes will enhance the weapon of choice for the players.

One of the problems with Wizards, at least how I see it, was how deflated their Arcane Schools were in the transition, they gained the thesis, but this change didn't add meaningful flavor. The lack of feat support for their chosen paths in the beginning is also a waste of potential. I would trade all the cross-class caster feats in CRB for class-unique feats in a heartbeat. All those generic metamagic feats could've been added later or even implemented differently in later books (so instead of, hopefully, getting the fun stuff on Secrets of Magic, we would be getting stuff that could be commonly used by any tradition or class as an expansion of magic itself).

[HumbleGamer]

Lightning Raven wrote:

YuriP wrote:

But this is not already compensated by the fact they can cast many types of magic?

I always think that the main diference of combatant feats being more "interesting" than casters is because the casters already have their magic as more powerful and versatile component.

No. It is very much not. Because all casters can cast every thing with no restriction most of the time (of course I'm talking casters of the same tradition), making the idea of a "Caster" being really variable because of the amount of spells, but when you take into account various casters on the same Tradition, that's where the feat and feature difference should come in.

In my mind, we should have more feats tailored to each of the spellcasting class that enhance their casting differently from each other, kinda like how a fighter and other martial classes will enhance the weapon of choice for the players.

One of the problems with Wizards, at least how I see it, was how deflated their Arcane Schools were in the transition, they gained the thesis, but this change didn't add meaningful flavor. The lack of feat support for their chosen paths in the beginning is also a waste of potential. I would trade all the cross-class caster feats in CRB for class-unique feats in a heartbeat. All those generic metamagic feats could've been added later or even implemented differently in later books (so instead of, hopefully, getting the fun stuff on Secrets of Magic, we would be getting stuff that could be commonly used by any tradition or class as an expansion of magic itself).

I don't exactly agree though I can see your point.

Spellcasters have versatility in terms of spells, but they have them as a limited resource per day or, talking about AP, for map/chapter.

This might be converted into something like 5/6 fights per day.
Assuming 4/5 rounds per combat encounter, and considering cantrips part of their rotation as well as focus spells, a spellcaster might be able to cast at least 10/12 spells to be able to withstand the whole day/chapter/map. So, depends the caster, by lvl 4/5 you should be ok.

Now, while its true that metamagic, as well as many caster feats which should enhance their spells, might not be gamechanging, it has to be noted that it's the same for the majority of all classes.

A few examples:

Champion

Quote:

lvl 1 - nothing to enhances its melee strikes

lvl 2 - nothing to enhances its melee strikes
lvl 4 - nothing to enhances its melee strikes
lvl 6 - Attack of Opportunity
lvl 8 - nothing to enhances its melee strikes
lvl 10 - nothing to enhances its melee strikes
lvl 12 - Blade of justice ( if you are with the tennets of good )

Ranger

Quote:

lvl 1 - Twin Takedown or hunted shot

lvl 2 - Hunter Aim ( this might be interesting if you go with a bow, but mostly you'd stick with a dedication )
lvl 4 - nothing to enhances its melee strikes
lvl 6 - Skirmish Strike ( flourish, so you won't take it since you will already be using your flourish double attack )
lvl 8 - Deadly Aim ( Ranged power attack. Might seem good against low level targets, but given how critical hits work in this 2e, it's always better not to have a malus on hit ).
lvl 10 - Penetrating Shot ( Really? Note also that we are lvl 10 and no alternatives to either twin takedown and hunted shot ).
lvl 12 - Blade of justice ( if you are with the tennets of good )

Monk

Quote:

Tied to its stance attack. There are a bunch of stances which also allow you to make different attacks, but that would come mid game, and not necessarily worth it.

Flurry of blows will be always your only attack because it's the best one in the game.

Rogue

Quote:

Twin Feint spammer, or eventually taking double slice from a dedication

And so on.

A fighter CAN (though in terms of efficiency nothing beats double slice ) indeed make a good use of all of its feats, since it really has plenty of feats which can be used depends the situation ( it's really a wonderful class, and the only one real combatant which can decide not to spam the same attack, even if double slice is probably gamebreaking ).

Attacks apart, out of the 3 actions there might be a +2 ac, movement to get closed, a deception/intimidate check or commanding a companion, but all of this stuff might also be done by a caster, which would still maintain its versatility in terms of possibilities ( different spells, cantrips, etc... ).

Just to underline that casters are not really in a bad spot when it comes to versatility.

They are tied to a poor action management and if you plan to take them as a dedication ( an offensive one. not supporting/healing ) you will deal almost no damage unless your stat is the main one as the dedciation's ( like an alchemist with wizard dedication, for example ). Finally, Haste in this version is really limited ( really strong spell, but limited ), and this affects every class.

[Dargath]

Well for what it is worth this past Saturday (yesterday) I had my first Pathfinder Society game as a Divine Sorcerer and I took Bless and Heal in my spell repertoire. Between Forbidding Ward, Guidance, Diabolic Edict, Bless, Heal and the healing potion they gave us I felt extremely useful. I actually almost didn't have time to cast Produce Flame very much, I had my hands full keeping people from dying lol.