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Other than say a longspear for reach Dragon Claws are, to me, better than every simple weapon. I'd say the same for Glutton's Jaw.
That seems to be all they're meant to do. They have cool flavour, and they're probably better than your other weapon choices. I don't see these as being meant to replace spellcasting in a full caster's build.
I don’t think anyone has ever asked for them to be replacements to spellcasting. They should be something you can fall back on though if you’ve run out of slots and the action is still going on.
The reason people upthread where discussing “Traps” is because there are many other cool and flavourful options out there and don’t depreciate in effectiveness so hard.
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My dragon sorcerer was once swooped up in the jaws of a jungle drake, and was being flown away from the party, so I cast dragon claws and gouged its eyes out.
It was a wonderful roleplaying experience that could never have happened if certain optimizers had their way with the rules.
I have a similar experience as a GM (actually very similar, Jungle Drake and all). I think the melee attack focus spells could use a little love before they become a good bread-and-butter ability.
The player is aware of the issues surrounding using attacks like Dragon Claws on a dragon sorcerer. They know it is a glass cannon tactic, and one that is unreliable on high-AC enemies. In play, it winds up being decent. In a few fights, with some lucky rolls, it has had really strong results. In most fights it's on the weak side of fine. The damage feels respectable, the accuracy is low but not unplayable (yet), it functions and feels fun but swingy. I think it'd be pretty cool if it were a reliable attack instead, and am considering ways I can buff them later in the campaign when the character falls further behind in accuracy.
[an interesting table comparing martial and polymorph attack accuracy]Jesus christ, what more do people want?! I'm not being sarcastic at all. This seems completely reasonable from a game design stand point. That the a caster can, ever in any way, get even remotely close to a dedicated martial in terms of "I smack it" should be plenty.
Only things I want from the polymorph spells that they do not have are buffing up the lower-level forms at higher level and more forms available. I'd like a level 10 battle form spell to be a buff no matter what form you take. I'm totally fine with bear form being weaker than kaiju form, but I think you can do that while keeping the bear form useful. I think that is manageable, but might adjust the tone of the game.
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I second this. Releasing a dev kit sounds like it would only serve to give the people with an axe to grind something to chop at. I don't see anything constructive coming from it. And this is coming from someone critical of both casters and magic.I feel like a dev kit is just likely to continue to piss people off who already disagree with the design goals.
And casters get tons of flexibility in the form of spells. There's about to be a new book with 200ish of them. Just because someone decided not to use it doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that the game is broken.
It also strikes me as a poor business decision to give away trade secrets. Pathfinder is already pretty liberal with letting people utilize their content for free. I'm not sure they need to make it easier for third party publishers to compete with the books that come with new classes, which I imagine are pretty big money makers.
Plus, dev kits probably get changed over time, right?
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Dragon claws are functional for a sorcerer. They won’t keep up with your highest level spell slots, and become secondary attack options relatively quickly. But they still work and are useful for sorcerers in the mid game at least. Sorcerer focus powers and witch abilities don’t need to be every combat, every action activities to be functional.No. Enough of this nonsense.
Functionality is not limited to “it turns on when I press on”. That’s an incredibly reductive view of the term that is not how it was being used in that context.
Do you expect the focus spell on a caster to suddenly make them completely equivalent to a martial or something?
Because that seems like a pattern in the way you keep responding to things.
It’s not good and quickly looses it’s ability to keep up with AC scaling in any meaningful way. It’s the function, that of an attack, is severely devalued when it can’t be used.
It doesn’t have to be near par of a martial but it’s scaling isn’t good enough to make a serious option for higher level play.
There is a gulf of expectation that exists between “utterly useless” and “As good as the best possible fighter”. Wanting a class option to be closer to the former than the latter is not unreasonable.
Not want a class option to depreciate in effectiveness is not unreason either.
These conversations keep going into this weird zero-sum place, where considerations and moderation get ground out in hyperbole.
A shortsword is probably the best finesse martial weapon aside from a rapier. At level 17, it does 3d6+Str+6 thanks to greater weapon specialization, averaging 16.5+Str.
A +2 greater striking handwraps is a level 12 item, and gives you 3d4+3d6+Str+2 as damage. Given equal property runes, the sorcerer will average 20+Str on a swing compared to the shortsword's 16.5 on a martial. When we hit major striking, that equalizes out assuming the sorcerer hasn't picked up major striking themselves.
I'm really not seeing the issue. Yes, you'll be -2 to hit from the martial, assuming you're focusing on Dex for the claws (and AC). But again, that's why they're martials and you have 9th level spells.
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The fighter is not really better at using polymorph than a transmutation wizard though. A fighter might have 2 castings of a high enough level polymorph spell to be worth using, but can be ok with much lower level polymorph spells as well as far as decent attack values and enough HP, although they will get very little of the utility and special attacks of the higher level polymorph spells.
Meanwhile the transmuter might have 4 or 5 top 2 levels worth of polymorph spells (including spells of a whole spell level higher) and be taking on forms like Fiery Form which allow them to actually cast spells as well.
The mistake is think that proficiency matters more than additional spell slots and ways to set up the battlefield so that your transformation spell can really allow you to shine.
The focus spells like nails and claws and jaws are a little different, but they can be supplemented with spells very effectively as well. Also, remember that dragon claws is equally useful as a resistance spell so it is a focus spell with both an offensive and defensive application. Gluttonous Jaws also pairs pretty decently with spells like vampiric touch after an enemy rushes up to attack you, allowing you to regain a ton of HP and do pretty decent damage at the same time.
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Think about that. A Fighter is better than a Transmutation Wizard at using polymorph.
But here you are saying I want casters to be better than martials when I have never said anything of the sorts. Not once did I say casters should be better at melee or weapons. Not once did I say casters should be better at ranged weapons. Not once did I say casters should be better at AC. But g@~ d&* a caster who focuses on transmutation should be better than a martial at using transmutation spells. And g*! d!@ a Sorcerer should be better at using Dragon Claws than a martial.
If a 4th-dan martial artist in whatever discipline you choose and a person who's never been in a fight are both transformed into bears, who should be better at fighting as a bear?
The way to make a sorcerer better at using Dragon Claws than a martial is to give focus spells and cantrips bad multiclass scaling. You want to be the one to use that in play?
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I do think it would have been nice had dragon claws (and similar add-melee-to-caster spells) allowed for a spell attack roll (if higher) rather than a traditional melee attack roll.
I think the trade-offs of (1) limited resources, (2) having an activation time, and (3) far lower damage than most martials, already makes up for the power increase that this would add.
I mean, let's face it, even if I had an attack roll comparable to a fighter's late game (and for less than half of my career up to that point), the damage just still doesn't even come close (not even to non-fighter martials).
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Dragon claws are functional for a sorcerer. They won’t keep up with your highest level spell slots, and become secondary attack options relatively quickly. But they still work and are useful for sorcerers in the mid game at least. Sorcerer focus powers and witch abilities don’t need to be every combat, every action activities to be functional.
There's no reason that needs to be true though.
You could rewrite the spell to provide a to hit bonus, that scales up as you level up (well actually you get higher level spells slot, and focus spells auto-heighten).
As dragon claws as an example don't prevent spell casting, it can't be as good as a battle form spell, which puts you on roughly equal terms as a non-fighter melee. In my mind this would put you at 3/4 points behind in attack bonus compared to melee. Keep in mind the sorcerer probably doesn't have maxed strength (or dexterity in the case of finesse weapons). So not only is their lagging proficiency a problem, but they don't have ability scores to support it, and probably not weapon runes to apply to it either.
I'm not saying that it needs to be an obvious go to ability all the time. But it would be nice if there were something to encourage it being used. Currently it's a 1d4 damage with 1d6 energy temporary ability. The energy damage scales up, but pretty much at the same rate that melee characters could get striking runes or (multiple) energy runes. There is some benefit to it being all one energy type.
Ultimately a sorcerer who would like to use this but isn't trying to devote their character to be a melee character (because they're not crazy) is quickly going to realize that it's not worth the spell slot or focus point to cast this spell just to miss your attacks.
Which isn't to say you'll miss all the attacks, but you're going to be much worse off than a melee character. Especially at high levels.
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I do think it would have been nice had dragon claws (and similar add-melee-to-caster spells) allowed for a spell attack roll (if higher) rather than a traditional melee attack roll.
I think the trade-offs of (1) limited resources, (2) having an activation time, and (3) far lower damage than most martials, already makes up for the power increase that this would add.
I mean, let's face it, even if I had an attack roll comparable to a fighter's late game (and for less than half of my career up to that point), the damage just still doesn't even come close (not even to non-fighter martials).
This seems reasonable
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This seems reasonableI do think it would have been nice had dragon claws (and similar add-melee-to-caster spells) allowed for a spell attack roll (if higher) rather than a traditional melee attack roll.
I think the trade-offs of (1) limited resources, (2) having an activation time, and (3) far lower damage than most martials, already makes up for the power increase that this would add.
I mean, let's face it, even if I had an attack roll comparable to a fighter's late game (and for less than half of my career up to that point), the damage just still doesn't even come close (not even to non-fighter martials).
I was running numbers in herolab, and thinking heavily about this and I agree that I think the best solution is for those kinds of spells to allow spell attack rolls instead of regular melee rolls.
I did a comparison at level 5, and someone who was reasonably focusing on their combat focus spell (like Dragon claws) was only going to be 2/3 points behind. But the gap will grow as they level up. And what about people who don't build with such a ability in mind, but when it's given to them decide later they would like to use it. At 1st level it might not be too bad, but it's going to get ugly later.
If you want to be a magical brawler the real answer is to just wait for magus to come out.
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You want casters to be as good as martials at something that they, by design, aren't supposed to be.
No, I want a sorcerer to be good at using the focus spell Paizo gave them, or a witch to be good at using one of their witch class feats. A storm druid can throw down a tempest surge every fight and be happy. A wild druid can spend all combat in wildshape and contribute effectively. An elemental sorcerer can chuck some extra damage out every fight. And so on and so forth. Suggesting that a demonic sorcerer should be able to feel just as good about their class feature isn't the hideously cruel and abusive overreach you're pretending it is.
Few of the posters here are suggesting casters should be "just as good as martials" either. Remember, a wizard with the so-overpowered-it-needs-emergency-errata level 16 sixth pillar feat does less than half the expected damage of a similarly equipped ranger or fighter or barbarian (with no feat investment on the latter's part).
Calling that "just as good" is extremely misleading.
... It's also a little telling that everyone immediately zero'd in on the substantively more powerful Dragon's Claws over Glutton's Jaws or Eldritch Nails here.
I guess it's a little harder to talk about how every martial ever is completely invalidated when the sorcerer supposedly doing it has like 14 AC and 15 HP and is swinging more or less a longsword that costs a focus point.
Some small points to bring up for this thread - dragon claws also gives a good amount of resistance to a type, only costs an action, and as a sorcerer gives you an ac buff because of their bloodline ability. There are also a lot, a lot of worse focus spells out there even with the spell as is.
Especially in later levels, layering spells as defenses and offenses (softening up enemies with fear, casting heroism on self, etc) also help offset the squishiness of sorcs. Not saying it makes them as good in melee as an actual martial, just that it closes the gap some.
Remember, a wizard with the so-overpowered-it-needs-emergency-errata level 16 sixth pillar feat
Whats the sixth pillar?
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Dragon claws are functional for a sorcerer. They won’t keep up with your highest level spell slots, and become secondary attack options relatively quickly. But they still work and are useful for sorcerers in the mid game at least. Sorcerer focus powers and witch abilities don’t need to be every combat, every action activities to be functional.No. Enough of this nonsense.
Functionality is not limited to “it turns on when I press on”. That’s an incredibly reductive view of the term that is not how it was being used in that context.
Do you expect the focus spell on a caster to suddenly make them completely equivalent to a martial or something?
Because that seems like a pattern in the way you keep responding to things.
It’s not good and quickly looses it’s ability to keep up with AC scaling in any meaningful way. It’s the function, that of an attack, is severely devalued when it can’t be used.
It doesn’t have to be near par of a martial but it’s scaling isn’t good enough to make a serious option for higher level play.
There is a gulf of expectation that exists between “utterly useless” and “As good as the best possible fighter”. Wanting a class option to be closer to the former than the latter is not unreasonable.
Not want a class option to depreciate in effectiveness is not unreason either.
These conversations keep going into this weird zero-sum place, where considerations and moderation get ground out in hyperbole.
Yes Dragon Claws are flavourul and fun . They have a good role play use.
Its just that in terms of being an effective mainstream tactic - the answer is no they are not. The oppourtunity cost of all the better things you could do with your focus point or your actions, means that anyone primarily concerned about effectiveness will never take them unless they are required to by the system - or because they want something else in the whole Draconic Sorcerer package
They aren't much different to a magic dagger with a few runes. Which a sorcerer will likely have anyway. Yes it is a bit more damage than normal if you put on some good hand wraps.
They do have an energy resistance that comes built in. That is nice but you are not going to need that all the time either.
I still see it as a bad idea for a caster to be trying to melee. Remember this is a 6HP per level caster with poor attack values. I'd want to have something like the Blink Spell up and be burning a lot of True Strikes to give it a go. For sure some people will like it. Still seems like a bad plan. I see this as a once a day option for a 6HP caster with a death wish. I'd have been a lot happier with some form of Dragoon Scale here instead.
Stay at range an putting everything into Magic Missile is going to get you more damage output.
I'd almost always make sure I had a better focus spell option like say the breath weapon, which means I can't rely on this power being available due to resource constraints, which means I'd need a magic dagger anyway. So in practise I find this power to always be a plan B.
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Few of the posters here are suggesting casters should be "just as good as martials" either. Remember, a wizard with the so-overpowered-it-needs-emergency-errata level 16 sixth pillar feat does less than half the expected damage of a similarly equipped ranger or fighter or barbarian (with no feat investment on the latter's part).
Calling that "just as good" is extremely misleading.
And with master proficiency, how are they compared to a monk? You know, the primary unarmed class that has no inherent damage boosters aside from stances (and flurry, that can also be picked up through Monk archetype)? What about a Wizard/Monk that's picked up Mountain Stance and Flurry, and now has Master unarmed proficiency, and 8th level spells? A Glutton's Jaw Sorcerer/Monk now has master weapon proficiency, can Flurry, and gets temp HP on a hit (making up for their weaker defenses). Oh, and look! Unarmed attacks only go up to d10 at max - with one particular style, at that - so they're not actually that far behind on damage.
I hope you weren't comparing to an Outwit ranger, either.
And not to mention the interaction with Wild Shaping druids, that suddenly just got an extra proficiency bonus to every wild shape attack, making 6th Pillar ridiculously optimal for them to an insane level.
The form spells out you roughly at the level of a martial.
Yes but they have their limitations like no spell casting...unlike dragon claws.
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I would expect Dragon Claws, Gluttons Jaws (which is worse than Dragon Claws) to be a choice as effective as using a cantrip and its not.
Given Bloodline powers are a major class feature of sorcerers and sets their flavour I expect their focus spells - especially the first one to be an indication of playstyle flavour.
Right now it falls short. No one is asking for sorcs to be better than martials at their schtick and Glutton's Jaws right now is an almost total waste of an ability. Even if Sorcs could do similar damage to martials in melee they poor baseline hp, AC and defences still make them worse at martials. Sure they could burn additional spells to bring up their defences but then I see that working as intended. If a sorc through spending multiple actions and a few limited spell slot resources can for a short time match what a martial can do all day then I don't see a really problem.
Right now many bloodline powers and focus spells are so niche and so limited its a trap to use them. Cleric focus powers similar, I imagine some domains are almost never taken (it would be great to have stats). But that is another issue.
My thoughts regarding the initial discussion and conversation:
Transformation spells at the highest level shouldn't be quite as good as martial but should be close.
All transformation spells should scale better into higher levels with the higher level options adding more versatility (otherwise why bother to learn higher level abilities).
Transmuter 1st level focus spell probably should have been something that buffed them when they were transmuted rather than the weird not super useable one they have now.
Martials should never be more effective when transmuted than a caster - same as a caster using a weapon is never more effective than a martial.
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And with master proficiency, how are they compared to a monk?
Slightly better (because monks do noticeably less raw DPR than other martials), but still noticeably behind... while also being a lot squishier in all respects... after spending basically all of their class resources up to that point on this one thing and being compared to a monk who's only spent one.
Yeah, pretty mediocre overall.
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I'm not the only one that finds it wrong that monk multiclass is looking like a better archetype for dragon claw sorc than dragon disciple, am I?
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The barbarians with 12 HP and good armor dies in a couple of hits. The casters dies in half as many at best.I haven't found that to be particularly common... but yes, I can see how facing creatures sitting at the high end of what the game says is possible to deal with at high regularity could skew the perspective of what is likely to happen if your "frail" character steps into melee range.
I mean, have you seen Paizo APs? My table's been running through Agents of Edgewatch and big boss fights have been a pretty regular occurrence. Hell it's not unusual for us to have two big boss fights in a single day.
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Few of the posters here are suggesting casters should be "just as good as martials" either. Remember, a wizard with the so-overpowered-it-needs-emergency-errata level 16 sixth pillar feat does less than half the expected damage of a similarly equipped ranger or fighter or barbarian (with no feat investment on the latter's part).
Calling that "just as good" is extremely misleading.
And with master proficiency, how are they compared to a monk? You know, the primary unarmed class that has no inherent damage boosters aside from stances (and flurry, that can also be picked up through Monk archetype)? What about a Wizard/Monk that's picked up Mountain Stance and Flurry, and now has Master unarmed proficiency, and 8th level spells? A Glutton's Jaw Sorcerer/Monk now has master weapon proficiency, can Flurry, and gets temp HP on a hit (making up for their weaker defenses). Oh, and look! Unarmed attacks only go up to d10 at max - with one particular style, at that - so they're not actually that far behind on damage.
I hope you weren't comparing to an Outwit ranger, either.
And not to mention the interaction with Wild Shaping druids, that suddenly just got an extra proficiency bonus to every wild shape attack, making 6th Pillar ridiculously optimal for them to an insane level.
Oh look a feat for Monk dedication, a feat for flurry of blows, a feat for Monk resiliency, a feat for advanced kata, a feat for the 6th pillar dedication, and a feat to get that master to unarmed. Maybe also a feat for Perfection's Path to shore up either Fort or Reflex. How many feats is that again? Oh right, 6 feats, 7 if you want 2 saves at master (but only one with the success upgrade).
How many feats does it take for a Monk mc Sorcerer to get all important stuff from sorcerer? Hmm lets see, 6 feats (including basic bloodline spell). And oh look what the monk gets: Better saves, more mobility, can bypass resistance, more HP, more AC, more damage and plenty of feats...
You know that monk MCing in loses a spell proficiency level, 2-3 spell levels and three slots of the top two levels on top of that, right? A level 17 monk with all that still casts like half a level 11 sorcerer.
Meanwhile the sorcerer is punching as though they were a level 17 monk with -1 to-hit half the time and -3 damage. (As a side note, I'm not particularly fond of Monk Resiliency or Monk Moves, just because of how you can get similar effects from general feats. Toughness is approximately equivalent to Resiliency, for example, even with a 6-feat investment.)
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The fact is that it takes a caster almost all their resources just to try and keep up 3 times a day. Only for the martials to spend 5 feats and have all the uses of utility and buff spells they will ever want.
This makes it really, really obvious you've never played a caster or seen one in play.
First off, a sorcerer of a given level has 8-9 slots before they drop down to a multiclasser's 1 slot, all of which are plenty effective in combat. Let's just put aside all the high-damage focus spells for the moment like, for example, Dragon Breath. This scales 1d6 less than Fireball at any given level, so it's like having a narrower-range Fireball of a slot 1 level than your highest, in every combat. We haven't even mentioned efficient use of lower-level slots that don't require scaling, like the most obvious slow and fear.
And then they can easily pair those top-level slots with things like Flurry with master proficiency, at -1 to hit (maybe), -3 to damage vs a monk, every single turn. Taking something like Monastic Archer Stance is just the icing on the cake, letting you do that all at range.
This is just an easy sample of how that contributes to straight-up power creep.
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My argument is that master prof is overrated as a game warping feature by then. At level 16, the sorcerer has so much better to do with their 3rd action than punch or hit someone with their claws. They could instead MC into swashbuckler and give a martial +4 to an attack roll guaranteed. Or use demoralise, or scare to death, or bon mot, or….
Monk has far more durability (still) than the sorc, amounting to +4 AC, better saves, 4 more HP a level and (IMO) much better focus spells. Going master unarmed so you can hit people a bit better in melee (when something like 30% of monsters at that level have AoO) is still an actively bad option for a sorcerer. I’m of the opinion to just let someone scale their unarmed to hit a bit better if they really want to do it - the alternative is they just do something better instead and feel a bit sad that their gimmick no longer functions as well.
Unicore’s point about interactions with battleforms is valid though. Perhaps if there was a way to not make it work with battleforms, or just houserule forbid it for wild order druids in the mean time. Changing Wild Shape from +2 status bonus to just giving +1 proficiency tier, while a bit janky, would also solve this problem (and perhaps a secondary problem of wild druids being unbuffable by most common buffs).
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If you want to be a magical brawler the real answer is to just wait for magus to come out.
Or play a druid right now. Perhaps reflavoring it if the GM allows
Or a martial with a caster dedication.
I'm firmly of the opinion that both of those are fine right now and should form the power level benchmarks of any new options going forward