I don't care about summoner or magus. I just want to know if the other classes are getting new feats, new spells, or new options. Has anyone heard anything related to those?Feats? Not many, we know of a seldom few, but not too many
It has a lot for everyone, even martials, although not too much, that's G&G's department.- WHOLE BUNCHA NEW SPELLS! Over 100 spells for all 4 spell lists: cantrips, focus spells, level 1-9s, 10s, whole enchilada!
- New options in the form of items and archetypes, as well as new TYPES of magic, like runic and emotional magic. Items that grow with you(?) like Relics except less high power. New items you can burn when casting a spell to give it extra effects (like a DoT on fireball).
This flexible casting I keep hearing about - wouldn't this easily replace the wizard's spell substitution arcane thesis?
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This flexible casting I keep hearing about - wouldn't this easily replace the wizard's spell substitution arcane thesis?I don't care about summoner or magus. I just want to know if the other classes are getting new feats, new spells, or new options. Has anyone heard anything related to those?Feats? Not many, we know of a seldom few, but not too many
It has a lot for everyone, even martials, although not too much, that's G&G's department.- WHOLE BUNCHA NEW SPELLS! Over 100 spells for all 4 spell lists: cantrips, focus spells, level 1-9s, 10s, whole enchilada!
- New options in the form of items and archetypes, as well as new TYPES of magic, like runic and emotional magic. Items that grow with you(?) like Relics except less high power. New items you can burn when casting a spell to give it extra effects (like a DoT on fireball).
Not really, because Spell Substitution lets you keep all your spellslots in a day, whereas Flexible Casting gives you 1 less spell slot per spell level, and makes you a spontaneous caster a la 5E Wizard. So you make a tradeoff of pure flexibility in exchange for a smaller gas tank. Spell Substitution will still have it's place, but it could probably use some love in light of this :P
An item that gives +1 to spell attacks or +1 to spell DCs. Do we...
Know nothing one way or the other?
Know they're in the book?
Know they're not in the book?
I don't care about summoner or magus. I just want to know if the other classes are getting new feats, new spells, or new options. Has anyone heard anything related to those?WHOLE BUNCHA NEW SPELLS! Over 100 spells for all 4 spell lists: cantrips, focus spells, level 1-9s, 10s, whole enchilada!
Not that it will help some classes, since many spellcasters are restricted to choosing their spells from the Core Rulebook.
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An item that gives +1 to spell attacks or +1 to spell DCs. Do we...
Know nothing one way or the other?
Know they're in the book?
Know they're not in the book?
I'm almost entirely sure there are none coming and Paizo doesn't plan to make any as they don't feel such things fit with the math or balance of the game.
Side note, especially in regards to spell DCs, I do agree with them there.
Also, super easy to homebrew if you want to!
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Not that it will help some classes, since many spellcasters are restricted to choosing their spells from the Core Rulebook.I don't care about summoner or magus. I just want to know if the other classes are getting new feats, new spells, or new options. Has anyone heard anything related to those?WHOLE BUNCHA NEW SPELLS! Over 100 spells for all 4 spell lists: cantrips, focus spells, level 1-9s, 10s, whole enchilada!
That definitely is a downside to playing PFS.
That definitely is a downside to playing PFS.Not that it will help some classes, since many spellcasters are restricted to choosing their spells from the Core Rulebook.I don't care about summoner or magus. I just want to know if the other classes are getting new feats, new spells, or new options. Has anyone heard anything related to those?WHOLE BUNCHA NEW SPELLS! Over 100 spells for all 4 spell lists: cantrips, focus spells, level 1-9s, 10s, whole enchilada!
I mean, you could find the spells during a PFS adventure etc. As long as they aren't forbidden etc
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I don't care about summoner or magus. I just want to know if the other classes are getting new feats, new spells, or new options. Has anyone heard anything related to those?
The only class-specific options in this book are the new Elementalism options for Monks (new stances) and Druids (new Circles), and the Runelord class archetype exclusive to Wizards. Every other option is either regular or class archetypes for multiple classes, or GM-facing options for their worlds.
Also, there's, like, 200+ new spells, so that affects all spellcasters too.
Option 3. It has been confirmed they are not in the book.An item that gives +1 to spell attacks or +1 to spell DCs. Do we...
Know nothing one way or the other?
Know they're in the book?
Know they're not in the book?
And they've said such a thing won't exist in a future supplement book. Such a decision would need to be errata'd into the Core Rulebook, and right now they aren't wanting to go that direction.
There might be feats or items that support attack spells without them being specifically tied to magus. At least, I hope there are, since attack spells tend to be fairly lackluster as a result of not having a miss effect.
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If you think a +1 to spell attack rolls makes spell attack roll spells work perfectly, and that they are complete garbage without them, then you are probably not actually caring about the actual math of spell attack roll spells, but the optics of attack rolls and how they get boosted in PF2. Talk to your table about that, because a +1 isn’t going to change the math enough for your experience of spell casting in PF2 to radically shift.
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If you think a +1 to spell attack rolls makes spell attack roll spells work perfectly, and that they are complete garbage without them, then you are probably not actually caring about the actual math of spell attack roll spells, but the optics of attack rolls and how they get boosted in PF2. Talk to your table about that, because a +1 isn’t going to change the math enough for your experience of spell casting in PF2 to radically shift.Can you give a concise explanation of the math, because the larger action cost, the lower accuracy and the limited resources are a big hurdle. The goal I have and I've seen around here are accuracy for attack spells being similar to weapon attack rolls.
I cant think of any math that will fix the problem that this part of the game isn't fun.
Personally, I have had a lot of fun with wizards having a spell attack or two in my back pocket for targeting enemies with low ACs and for combining with truestrike against bosses, but they are definitely not every round spells in my experience. I think this is a good thing. My primary point was, whether you see the value of having one or two on reserve or not, their value does not hinge on getting item bonuses.
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Enemy flatfooted, status bonus, Aid, giving enemy status penalty, it have a few ways.
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Personally, I have had a lot of fun with wizards having a spell attack or two in my back pocket for targeting enemies with low ACs and for combining with truestrike against bosses, but they are definitely not every round spells in my experience. I think this is a good thing. My primary point was, whether you see the value of having one or two on reserve or not, their value does not hinge on getting item bonuses.If you think a +1 to spell attack rolls makes spell attack roll spells work perfectly, and that they are complete garbage without them, then you are probably not actually caring about the actual math of spell attack roll spells, but the optics of attack rolls and how they get boosted in PF2. Talk to your table about that, because a +1 isn’t going to change the math enough for your experience of spell casting in PF2 to radically shift.Can you give a concise explanation of the math, because the larger action cost, the lower accuracy and the limited resources are a big hurdle. The goal I have and I've seen around here are accuracy for attack spells being similar to weapon attack rolls.
I cant think of any math that will fix the problem that this part of the game isn't fun.
Awesome, I'm sincerely glad you're having fun with your wizard. I'm playing a fire elemental sorcerer and not mirroring your experience. I mostly use single target attack spells and don't have true strike. Is this style of play just out in the cold.
Also I'd very much like to see the explanation of the math for how these spells are functional without true strike.
They work really well against low AC targets, the issue is depending exclusively on them. You lose out on the biggest advantage of magic which is picking the right spell for the situation you are encountering. You can't really look at the math generally because spells work by fact of creatures having variation in resistances, weaknesses and defenses.
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Spell attack roll spells target 1 of 4 defenses. Saving throw spells target the other 3 defenses. Most bosses have higher ACs than players and it is not often the best defense to target, especially with spells that do nothing on 2 out of 4 success tiers. Against bosses that are oozes, for example, spell attack roll spells are destroyers.
I am saying comparing spell attack roll spells to all saving throw spells is not a great comparison because it is like choosing to use only 25% of your optional resources.
EDIT: A will save only caster is going to have a lot of similar problems.
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I'm playing a fire elemental sorcerer and not mirroring your experience. I mostly use single target attack spells and don't have true strike. Is this style of play just out in the cold.
Just want to look in on this, but how? At a quick glance, an elemental sorcerer can literally only access 9 spell attack roll spells. The only fire ones there are Elemental Toss, a level 1 focus, and Produce Flame, a cantrip. Basically all the remaining spells are very low level.
Are you just leaning very heavily on those two? Because if you are, I suppose I can see why you're feeling frustrated and ineffective...
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I think I am trying to say that if you are playing a caster, and you are not having fun doing so, then you might want to consider why and think about what you can change as a player to have more fun, before saying "this system doesn't support a blaster caster."
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I'm playing a fire elemental sorcerer and not mirroring your experience. I mostly use single target attack spells and don't have true strike. Is this style of play just out in the cold.Just want to look in on this, but how? At a quick glance, an elemental sorcerer can literally only access 9 spell attack roll spells. The only fire ones there are Elemental Toss, a level 1 focus, and Produce Flame, a cantrip. Basically all the remaining spells are very low level.
Are you just leaning very heavily on those two? Because if you are, I suppose I can see why you're feeling frustrated and ineffective...
Most of my other spells are utility, but even with all the spells being different if you miss, you miss. I can't see how variety in names would change how fun it is.
It does seem like everyone is just saying "that's playing casters worng, badwrongfun"
That's not what I'm saying at all.
Fire spells are almost all reflex saving throws. I'm just wondering why you lit on what are functionally the two weakest fire spells--other than just that they're the most renewable resources--as your staples? Or at least why if you're leaning hard on two spells, why you picked the two offensive options that are almost exactly the same? They do very similar damage, same range, same element, both spell attack rolls...
I'd never tell someone they're playing wrong but I do wonder why you've placed such a hard limit on how your character can interact in combat. Having options, targeting different saves, interacting with enemies or your allies or the battlefield in different ways? That's kind of the built-in core gameplay of spellcasters. Cutting out almost all of that is of course your choice but I'm just not sure why you would then talk about how gameplay feels limited when it was your decision.
My ultimate point was that people freak out about spell attack rolls being behind. But there are hardly any of them!
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I don’t think it’s unfair to say that it is currently not something the game supports to get spell attack rolls to be equal to weapon attack rolls. You can get close, but not quite.
And I don’t think you’re going to until a class like the Kineticist, something designed around making ranged spell attack rolls as their main attack, comes into the game. Whether the class or archetype will actually make spell attack rolls or special unarmed strikes is of course not something we can know.
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I think I am trying to say that if you are playing a caster, and you are not having fun doing so, then you might want to consider why and think about what you can change as a player to have more fun, before saying "this system doesn't support a blaster caster."Right you're saying I'm playing the game wrong, and that's why I'm not having fun. What I'm saying is that's a single play style and shouldn't be the only one supported by the game.
I am not sure what the single playstyle I am saying you have to play to say that the game is designed around using different spells against different enemies, not the same spell against every enemy. Even having 2 or 3 thematic spells that target different saves is very possible in PF2.
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Overspecialization is possible in PF2, it is just never going to be superior to using the right tool, whether you are a fighter, or a caster. It was a very intentional design decision to make building to do only one thing always less of a good idea than it was in 3.x versions of the game.
If using spell attack roll spells is what you want to do as a caster, then you can be a lot more successful doing so if you can pick up truestrike. That is the big math cheat on spell attack rolls and sorcerers have many ways of picking up spells that are not on your list. Playing only spell attack rolls is going against the basic class design of the sorcerer though so you have to be a little creative to make that work.
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Also, the "only will save" caster is going to have a lot of problems in PF2. There are very few will save spells that will work at all against mindless creatures. You are in even worse shape than the spell attack caster when you come up across an enemy strong against your one shtick.
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Until they make an item that’s basically “Big ol’ Battery of True Strikes” that independent from Staves, which allows a bunch of additional True Strikes per day, I refuse to accept it as the “go to” solution.
Spending two spells per attack simply isn’t sustainable.
Allowing potency runes on attack trait spells is utterly fine with the games math. This has been documented many times on this forum alone. Unless there is a real compensator in SoM, I don’t agree with Paizo that the math works out in this specific instance.
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I am saying comparing spell attack roll spells to all saving throw spells is not a great comparison because it is like choosing to use only 25% of your optional resources.
EDIT: A will save only caster is going to have a lot of similar problems.
This isn't entirely accurate. Save-based spells tend to have benefits on a failure, which means even when making the 'wrong' choice, you're looking at a relatively high chance of the spell performing in some capacity. Attack-based spells don't. That's a pretty notable downside that can't be glossed over (not quite on topic, but AC targeting spells also increment MAP, an additional downside that they have to deal with).
AC is also generally more standardized. Certain categories of monster have particularly low AC, but for the most part it stays on a particular track much more tightly than saves, which have a lot more fluctuation between low and high values from monster to monster.
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I think this is a bit of a derail at this point, and it has been discussed to death, but the bottom line is that the developers have made it clear that item bonuses to spell attack rolls are not something that are going to be coming to the game anytime soon for reasons that they have made clear and have been restated here.
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“They said no” is 100% the answer to the question.
But there is no point trying to dress it up. Attack spells are in an awful place as they are overall poorly designed and lack realistic support to make them work. Just because the devs are sticking to the guns on their design choices doesn’t make this any less true. There just isn’t any debate worth having.
Yea...it is what it is. At least the magus will have the niche of being effective with attack roll spells without true strike.
As a reddit user said a few days ago, the problem with attack roll spells is not that the math is wrong, but that the mayority of attack roll spells we have now suck. Have you seen the new Scorching Ray? And from the current available spells, have you tried Illusory Creature, for example?
We need better spells, not better math.
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Attack rolls spells kind of tend to have pretty high damage when they do hit tho', do they not ?
I feel like hydraulic push deals a lot of damage for its level.
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No sadly.
Disintegrate looks like it does, but the Fort save more or less cancels out the difference. Shocking grasp is high damage, but requires melee. Acid arrow is more or less on par, but needs to land early, etc.
They really are designed to either target AC when it's lower, or be oomphed with true strike. Which is okay for disintegrate, because 1st level slots are not a big resource by then, but attack roll cantrips are big victims.
Also there's a deliberate lull in spellcasting proficiency at 5th-6th level, because 3rd level spells are basically awesome. But attack rolls spells do nothing on fail/miss, so really suffer at that level, as well as there not being any good attack spells at 3rd level. And I always feel like people's impressions of spellcasters are formed at levels 3-6 as they learn the system, and see their proficiency lag without understanding the context. Especially if they use spells that happen to be less good at certain levels, and especially if they just want to do ONE-THING(tm) repeatedly.
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As a reddit user said a few days ago, the problem with attack roll spells is not that the math is wrong, but that the mayority of attack roll spells we have now suck. Have you seen the new Scorching Ray? And from the current available spells, have you tried Illusory Creature, for example?
We need better spells, not better math.
I don’t really see it. Unless those new spells have:
A) Failure conditions
B) Built in bonuses
C) Re-slot themselves on a miss
D) Some new alleviating mechanic altogether
Then it’s going to be the same issue over again. For multiple levels, normally during the “core” levels of a lot of games, you will be statically unlikely to hit, and because of their design, worse than getting nothing for a miss, you’ve blown a limited resource to do so.
Attack spells just aren’t good options these days.
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Scorching Ray pops off a seperate ray per action, so it has 1-3 chances to hit, if you use the 2 action version thats two rays, And the MAP is confirmed not to apply until after so you're firing off two attack rolls for the price of one slot at your full bonus. The damage also scales up if you take that third action and lets you fire off a third ray.
Though, I'm not sure we know if you can focus the rays on a single target, either way the spell is fantastic. It also creates its own partial success mechanic (since the rays have induvidual attack rolls.)
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Scorching Ray pops off a seperate ray per action, so it has 1-3 chances to hit, if you use the 2 action version thats two rays, And the MAP is confirmed not to apply until after so you're firing off two attack rolls for the price of one slot at your full bonus. The damage also scales up if you take that third action and lets you fire off a third ray.
Though, I'm not sure we know if you can focus the rays on a single target, either way the spell is fantastic. It also creates its own partial success mechanic (since the rays have induvidual attack rolls.)
It does seem like quite a neat way to ensure more consistency in your attack roll spell without going away from the baseline assumption that attack spells don't have an effect on a failure. I definitely understand the concern for attack roll spells, and if you're trying to make them a key aspect of your build, there are definitely enemies that will completely mess you up. But if you have an attack roll spell able to be used in a fight, there's a lot of creatures where it's at least equal to the moderate save, and definitely a non-zero chunk of creatures where it's somewhere between the low and moderate save. Outside of oozes and similar creatures, I don't think it's very often below the lowest save. It's also significantly more simple to lower their AC than their save. I think it all comes together to leave spell attack rolls a useful option in a caster's arsenal, but current casters won't be on par with martials at repeated attack rolls as they key schtick. I don't think that's an issue with current caster design - it will be nice to see that sort of more at-will, consistent caster pop up, assuredly as the kineticist, in the future.
Scorching Ray pops off a seperate ray per action, so it has 1-3 chances to hit, if you use the 2 action version thats two rays, And the MAP is confirmed not to apply until after so you're firing off two attack rolls for the price of one slot at your full bonus. The damage also scales up if you take that third action and lets you fire off a third ray.
Though, I'm not sure we know if you can focus the rays on a single target, either way the spell is fantastic. It also creates its own partial success mechanic (since the rays have induvidual attack rolls.)
I think it was said that each ray must target a different creature. So to me it is a good area blast that avoids your allies (and will be amazing on Magus with feats allowing to target multiple targets with spellstrike)