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The point of having some activities cost two actions is to make "you cannot do this twice in a round" elegant.
So I don't see how "casting a spell leaves you with one action left to do whatever" is against the philosophy.
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It sounds like having 1 to 3 action abilities directly plays into those strengths?
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It sounds like you don't understand what you mean by "design philosophy"
Maybe if you took some time to explain why you feel activities with varying action costs go against the goal of having choices and flexibility?
Keep in mind, having things take varying fractions of your action economy allows the designers to balance things against each other, and lets players choose how they want their character to play, as well as giving interesting tradeoffs.
If everything were one action, for example, it would be far easier to say "this action is mathematically the best" which would result in very stale, boring gameplay.
If everything were one action, for example, it would be far easier to say "this action is mathematically the best" which would result in very stale, boring gameplay.
This is one reason why even though they're really strong I don't much enjoy playing bards.
One action skills are something that need to be really carefully concerned, because they can very easily turn into ways to 'solve' action economy issues, which is a much bigger concern for PF2's overall design philosophy imo. There's been a lot of effort put into making optimal play choices circumstantial rather than ubiquitous and really strong one action filler abilities can be the bane of that.
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This has the same, but opposite energy as people who think anything less than a 3 action magic missile is an awful use of the spell
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To gain benefit from power attack, you have to attack with a big weapon and attack once before using power attack, you can't have the flexibility to choose to attack again after using power attack.The point of having some activities cost two actions is to make "you cannot do this twice in a round" elegant.
So I don't see how "casting a spell leaves you with one action left to do whatever" is against the philosophy.
This is not a true statement.
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The way I see Pathfinder 2 with its basic 3 action economy is that its philosophy is that combat for characters is meant to have choices/flexibility
Agreed.
yet it has multiple features that go against that philosophy-
It's inevitable that any really big project will have some details that go against the grain of the broader philosophy. But let's look at your examples in detail.
feats such as power attack
So I'd say Power Attack is actually working pretty well, because it's an ability that you want to sometimes use, sometimes not use.
If you're fighting a boss with high AC and you only feel confident about hitting on your first attack, or if a party member is giving you some kind of bonus that only applies to the first attack you make, the PA on the first attack is great.
It's also a solution for enemies with big damage reduction, where one big hit works better than multiple smaller hits that all get damage reduction applied.
You can also use it against enemies with so-so AC on your second attack, because the odds of it hitting are reasonable but a third attack would have poor odds. So why not discard the opportunity for a low-odds third attack and just boost the gain on your second attack?
So there are plenty of cases where PA can work well, although it isn't always the best choice. Against a really low AC enemy, just hitting three times is better. If you have to move to get to an enemy, there's a breakeven point beyond which two attacks is better than one PA.
And of course the obvious one: you might have other feats that also work on attacks, like Knowndown or Lunge, so sometimes you're not using Power Attack because you're using something else.
All of this is feeding nicely into what IMO is one of 2E's key design philosophy elements: No single trick is always the best. The game really pushes you to look at each situation and choose what's best for that situation, rather than robotically spamming one trick over and over again.
point blank that only gain if you commit to attacking (or lock one round in doing a stance) for three or two rounds.
Point Blank Shot makes you decide "am I going to spend a lot of this combat firing a bow, or am I quickly gonna move on to something else". Just because you took the feat doesn't mean you have to use it in every combat. It's also an issue of balancing. Melee characters need to spend some actions moving before they can damage enemies. Archers don't - but they're doing less damage, unless they spend some actions activating point blank shot.
Also spell slots go against that philosophy that commits to using three actions or you "waste" a slot.
Let's talk the two most famous variable-action spells, Magic Missile and Heal.
Heal(1) could be used on yourself to top up while still having two actions to cast a normal spell. This is great if you're trying to not get distracted by dying due to breath weapons or fireballs, while still getting to do your main job. A rare alternate usage is to use it on adjacent undead, especially those Weak to positive energy. If you absolutely had to you could use three of them in a round which would be pretty strong.
Heal(2) is arguably the most powerful version because it's so much healing. And the range on it is very nice too.
Heal (3) is not used very often - sometimes the whole party needs healing at once but the amount just isn't wonderful. May be better to boost one tank with a 2-action heal who'll keep enemies busy for a round. The main use I see for this is hurting crowds of undead mooks.
So the thing is, each number of actions has legitimate uses. Not all of them happen equally often but it's definitely flexible. And I don't buy the idea of "wasting" here. If I use a 2-action heal to keep the Fighter in the field then that's well-spent. If I use 1-action heal to keep myself going so I still have two actions left to cast a Fireball and take out some mooks, that's also not wasted.
Let's loot at Magic Missile. Yeah, usually you want to use the 3-action version. I don't see the 2-action version used that much, but the 1-action version does get used. In a LOT of games, you tend to get some clues from the GM about how much health enemies have left. Some people play with visible health bars in roll20, often the GM will just say something like "the fireball hurts him badly but he's JUST still alive". At which point, you can use a 1-action magic missile that'll probably finish him. Are you "wasting" the spell? If that kills the enemy before they get another chance to hit you, I don't think that's a waste.
So this is coming back to my earlier point about design philosophy. 2E doesn't want you to pull the same trick all the time. Most of the time 2-action Heal and 3-action Magic Missile are best. But sometimes there's this opportunity to get really good value from the other ways to use them.
My biggest gripe with the economy is that you can't perform an activity that takes more than 3 actions in combat. I wish they would have put in abilities that are really strong but take several rounds worth of actions to charge up, e.g. you have to spend 6 actions over any number of rounds to activate it. So you could spend 1 action a round for 6 rounds, 3 per round for 2 rounds, or whatever other combination. Would have given a lot of flexibility, especially if you did that with spells.
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My biggest gripe with the economy is that you can't perform an activity that takes more than 3 actions in combat. I wish they would have put in abilities that are really strong but take several rounds worth of actions to charge up, e.g. you have to spend 6 actions over any number of rounds to activate it. So you could spend 1 action a round for 6 rounds, 3 per round for 2 rounds, or whatever other combination. Would have given a lot of flexibility, especially if you did that with spells.
You could still write abilities like that - arguably Bless is a prototype. You can grow the area of effect every round.
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You could still write abilities like that - arguably Bless is a prototype. You can grow the area of effect every round.
This is actually one of the very few things my group has changed via house rules. I mostly love all the new systems. But bless as written is not a spell anyone in our group would ever use. We just use it like PF1. Cast it once, targets in a 50 ft burst, give them their +1 and move on. Otherwise, not a single player in my group would ever even prepare this spell.
I think the reason to avoid having things in combat that need to be spread over multiple rounds is to avoid memory issues. Some tables can handle that well, but if you need to know if your 12 action activity finishes this round or next, it's easy enough to lose count.
To gain benefit from power attack, you have to attack with a big weapon and attack once before using power attack, you can't have the flexibility to choose to attack again after using power attack.I think the issue is that you give too much importance to a feat like power attack.
Even at lvl 1, a fighter better performs by attacking twice then by using power attack.
Power attack is an attack meant to give higher damage on a single blow:
- you will be expending 1 feat
- you will be trading 2 actions to just perform 1 attack
- you will gain MAP x2 ( unless you decide to invest into "furious focus" once you hit the right level )The advantages are that you will be able to deal with stuff like "resistances" only once, dealing more damage when required.
As you can see it's perfectly balanced.
You might also go for it all the rounds, hoping for a critical strike, but the average damage per round would be lower if compared to attacking twice per round.
Anyway, this is a perfect example of trade in terms of attacks and character customization.
ps: note also that you might find yourself sacrificing something else if you always rely on 2 actions attacks.
For example, you might find yourself striding towards an enemy, then deciding whether to strike twice, to go for a power attack, to intimidate and then strike once, to trip and then strike, and so on.
Power attack works very well as your second attack with high dice weapons if you plan to spend all the round attacking.
Let's say we are a 1st level figher with a Maul that hits on its first strike with an 8 (vs 17 AC).
1d12+4->10'5 avg damage on a strike, double on a crit.
2d12+4->17 avg damage on a PA, double on a crit.
First strike we have a 15% crit chance, second and third a 5% chance.
3 strikes
10'5*0'5 + 21*0'15 = 8'4 avg damage on the 1st strike
10'5*0'35 + 21*0'05 = 4'725 avg damage on the 2nd strike
10'5*0'10 + 21*0`05 = 2'1 avg damage on the 3rd strike
Total damage on average: 15'225
1 strike and 1 power attack
10'5*0'5 + 21*0'15 = 8'4 avg damage on the 1st strike
17*0'35 + 34*0´05 = 7'65 avg damage on the PA
Total damage on average: 16'05
This is what the other guy was refering to.
The math gets better for strike -> PA as the AC gets higher.
Putting that aside, I don't see it as an issue, spending all your turn attacking is usually a not so great strat, so you still will be mixing things up. If there weren't 2 action activities the system would be too samey.
In this exact example, you do more damage as the AC goes higher, but as the AC goes higher also does the enemy threat level. The more dangerous an enemy is, the worse it is to stand next to it, so this paradigma becomes a risk/reward management problem. Honestly I think it is genious and shows how good the math and the design behind 2E is.
The math on that tends to change around as Striking runes of various grades, Furious Focus, Weapon Specialization, damaging property runes and the scaling dice of PA itself come into play. Looking at PA vs normal strikes at level 1 only doesn't give a great picture and there are plenty of points when its best uses are overcoming resistance/hardness and benefitting from bonuses to a single attack (like True Strike or Aid).
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The math on that tends to change around as Striking runes of various grades, Furious Focus, Weapon Specialization, damaging property runes and the scaling dice of PA itself come into play. Looking at PA vs normal strikes at level 1 only doesn't give a great picture and there are plenty of points when its best uses are overcoming resistance/hardness and benefitting from bonuses to a single attack (like True Strike or Aid).
I'm not willing to do an all level analysis between 3 strikes vs strike and PA just to explain a user what other user meant when they said something.
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the problem is that there weren't more spells like Heal that are properly integrating into the system. and that with the overall nerfing of spells, Paizo should have exercised GM fiat and realized that it's players were just mistaken for wanting to keep the vancian magic system.
I assume metamagic where suppose to be that "third option" but for the most part they are terrible and underwhelming.
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the problem is that there weren't more spells like Heal that are properly integrating into the system. and that with the overall nerfing of spells, Paizo should have exercised GM fiat and realized that it's players were just mistaken for wanting to keep the vancian magic system.
I assume metamagic where suppose to be that "third option" but for the most part they are terrible and underwhelming.
That's certainly... a take. I disagree with it completely but there's no denying that that is an opinion a person could have.
1. They were obviously not completely sure how to handle variable action spells. Heal, Bless, and Magic Missile are cited as Good, Terrible, and Mixed. I'm glad they didn't go whole hog and throw us a ton of untested variable action spells that we'd be saddled with forever. More will come now that there's more experience with them.
2. Vancian casting is my favorite, and for good reason. People who were strongly against it didn't win the popularity contest and need to stop pretending they know best and everyone else is wrong.
3. Metamagic is incredibly useful, to the point where I wish casters got some without feat expenditure.
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I really don't get how people have trouble with APs.
I will be honest: My table has played through all of Agents of Edgewatch and had only a SINGLE player death. We came CLOSE, but battle medicine, aoe heals, breath of life, smart choices, good teamwork, etc all really matter. We got halfway through AoA before the pandemic hit and we took a break from our in-person campaign without a single death.
I had only a single death on my three playthroughs of Plaguestone, and none in the Beginner Box/Troubles or Slithering.
Maybe, and I mean this in the most respectable way possible, you need to get better at playing/running Pathfinder 2e.
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1. They were obviously not completely sure how to handle variable action spells. Heal, Bless, and Magic Missile are cited as Good, Terrible, and Mixed. I'm glad they didn't go whole hog and throw us a ton of untested variable action spells that we'd be saddled with forever. More will come now that there's more experience with them.
Agree, these things take serious battle-testing to find out which ones are nice in the long run.
Personally I don't rate Bless as terrible - not great, but if you compare to Inspire Courage, not having to renew every round is a big deal. You also pay a big deal for it. Maybe if you could anchor the Bless to a frontliner instead of the caster it'd be just perfect.
I do hope we're going to see more variable action and one action spells in the future. They've shown they can be interesting.
These spells do seem to be tricky to evaluate for (white room) optimizers. In practice of course people use magic missile as a 3-action spell most of the time, but the few times when you use it as a 1-action spell to finish off an enemy teetering on 1 HP, that's glorious. I think it's fine for these spells to have a "default" use with the other uses being unusual but impactful when they happen. Just like Heal(2) is the default but sometimes Heal(3) can crush a whole room of skeletons and zombies that were about to swarm the party.
2. Vancian casting is my favorite, and for good reason. People who were strongly against it didn't win the popularity contest and need to stop pretending they know best and everyone else is wrong.
I don't hate it, but sorcerers and bards in 2E are a doing fine, I'd say spontaneous casting really got a lift. So it's not as if you're really that forced into Vancian casting if you don't like it.
3. Metamagic is incredibly useful, to the point where I wish casters got some without feat expenditure.
I think Reach is a great example of a "sometimes" trick that's very nice to have in your toolbox. Being able to decide at runtime whether you're using metamagic really makes it much more fun.
the problem is that there weren't more spells like Heal that are properly integrating into the system. and that with the overall nerfing of spells, Paizo should have exercised GM fiat and realized that it's players were just mistaken for wanting to keep the vancian magic system.
I assume metamagic where suppose to be that "third option" but for the most part they are terrible and underwhelming.
That's certainly... a take. I disagree with it completely but there's no denying that that is an opinion a person could have.
1. They were obviously not completely sure how to handle variable action spells. Heal, Bless, and Magic Missile are cited as Good, Terrible, and Mixed. I'm glad they didn't go whole hog and throw us a ton of untested variable action spells that we'd be saddled with forever. More will come now that there's more experience with them.
2. Vancian casting is my favorite, and for good reason. People who were strongly against it didn't win the popularity contest and need to stop pretending they know best and everyone else is wrong.
3. Metamagic is incredibly useful, to the point where I wish casters got some without feat expenditure.
I'm not the biggest fan of Vancian casting, but I fully understand why it's the standard that Paizo went with. More flexible magic tends to end up with a series of uninteresting, nearly indistinguishable spells, or if you use a spell point system a caster just focusing on one or two power spells rather than diversifying their spells each day.
I do like the inclusion of Focus magic, and feel like it goes a long way towards salving those that aren't interested in spell slots.
My biggest gripe with the economy is that you can't perform an activity that takes more than 3 actions in combat. I wish they would have put in abilities that are really strong but take several rounds worth of actions to charge up, e.g. you have to spend 6 actions over any number of rounds to activate it. So you could spend 1 action a round for 6 rounds, 3 per round for 2 rounds, or whatever other combination. Would have given a lot of flexibility, especially if you did that with spells.
I would like a mechanic that lets you gain an additional action for a consequence. The Inventor had something close with Clockwork, but it doesn't catch what I am looking for. As someone who like Mech RPGs, I feel there is nothing more satistfying than overcharging your mech to perform a badass maneuver.