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Please come back to me when you've played a blaster caster from 1-14.
I've literally seen it played in front of me and it's been absolutely fine.
Oh, and it was on staff nexus.
I've seen (more than one) and it was not fine. Now what? God, this position of "anyone who disagrees with me clearly hasn't actually played the game" is so annoying.
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The intended fix for the "I want to throw fire around constantly and this is difficult or unfulfilling to do with existing classes" is probably the Kineticist. The Kineticist is not a caster, but you're not going to run out of the capacity to murk dudes with fire.
Most of the "I don't want to have to deploy the entire toolbox, I just want to be an elemental specialist" stuff feels like the niche the kineticist specifically addresses. The fact that this is a character people want that's not well-served with existing options is probably why the Kineticist returned to the game before other classes.
Now the issue is that this is a concept that appeals a lot to people with less experience with the system, but the Kineticist is probably a complex class with unique subsystems, but I'm excited about Rage of Elements.
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You are "going off on a tangent". The main problem for Blasters isn't a lack of spells neither if it's an attack or a save, it's the limited resources to use them.
OK specially for spell attacks theres the difference of they don't have the half-damage failure effect but the fact that most casters end legendary means that if you don't use anything you basically is a -1 when compared to a master martial with +3 item bonus. This can also be very well compensated with Shadow Signet or True Strike as already was presented. Yet psychologically many casters have a great afraid of failure using a spell attack due the chance of loose their spell slot in a failure. That's the main reason of many of them run away from use of spell slot spell attacks.
"how big are my biggest booms", "how often can I throw my biggest booms" and "what's left once my biggest booms are exhausted" are three different tweakable knobs that can dial the power of a class (or build) up or down.
Having any one of them in a particular position isn't "the main problem". Actually, "the main problem" seems to be "This one particular playstyle is not well-supported, especially for people who are new to the game." That's the sort of thing that would totally not be a problem at all except for the little issue that it's a very popular archetype out in the rest of the world, and it's the sort of thing that a lot of new players are going to want to come in and play as their first PF2 PC. This is a meaningful problem, and worth trying to fix, but it's niche. Trying to fix it by just giving casters more spell slots is only going to break balance worse in other places.
So... what kind of fixes can we put in? Well, for one, Shadow Signet is a thing. That's pretty clearly meant as a smallish fix to direct damage for high-level blaster casters. They can adjust spells i various ways to make them more appealing as well. These *are* the kinds of changes that they can make without giving major buffs to the kind of...
From what I can tell, so far, the answer has been wait and see on Kineticist. I'm fine with this arrangement personally, as I'm playing a Ranger I quite like right this moment.
However I am open minded to trying out a Sorcerer, someone told me to give it a go, so I might as well at some point.
I have a question for Cyouni and the other people that consider blaster caster (or casters in general) fine in PF2e. Do you also think getting the expert spellcasting at level 7 and master at level 15 is fine? Do you think caster would be overpowered if they got expert at level 5 and master at level 13, the same levels (most) martials get their own proficiency boost?
Just to know, because it's one of the most common "fix" I've seen and it seem to me that it's rather widely agreed upons on the community, but I may be mistaken.
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I had my buddy crunch some ranged numbers.
A single casting of flaming sphere + electric arc does comparable damage to the fighter with the short bow for most of the game. (Eventually there's probably a better spell to sub in, but I'm not combing through to find it.) Sudden Bolt and Magic Missile generally out damage the fighter by a significant margin. You can combine those with Flaming Sphere as well for major damage spikes if you really want to nova, or use focus spells like Tempest Surge and Dragon's Breath for a more sustainable spike.
I think if using one slot a combat to keep up with a ranged martial is unacceptable, than the entire concept of slots won't satisfy you. Mind you, this is the blaster's worst case scenario, single target. You can obviously look much better when you start blasting groups.
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I had my buddy crunch some ranged numbers.
A single casting of flaming sphere + electric arc does comparable damage to the fighter with the short bow for most of the game. (Eventually there's probably a better spell to sub in, but I'm not combing through to find it.) Sudden Bolt and Magic Missile generally out damage the fighter by a significant margin. You can combine those with Flaming Sphere as well for major damage spikes if you really want to nova, or use focus spells like Tempest Surge and Dragon's Breath for a more sustainable spike.
I think if using one slot a combat to keep up with a ranged martial is unacceptable, than the entire concept of slots won't satisfy you. Mind you, this is the blaster's worst case scenario, single target. You can obviously look much better when you start blasting groups.
After seeing this I’m feeling quite confident in building a Sorcerer now. I suppose I’m just not exactly sure how. Also I would be starting at level 1 with only common spells (maybe I could pay a boon in PFS for sudden bolt? Idk).
Looks like I’d probably need to be Arcane and have a decent focus spell for damage, take electric arc and uh I would want true strike I guess as a level 1 spell and then… something for damage.
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Good stuff to grab:
Dangerous Sorcery
Elemental Bloodline
Ray of Frost
Electric Arc
Gouging Claw
Produce Flame
That rubble cantrips
Magic Missile (signature)
True Strike
Maaaaybe shocking grasp
Flaming sphere (signature)
Acid Arrow
Lightning Bolt (signature)
Fireball
And then more blasts as you level.
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I have a question for Cyouni and the other people that consider blaster caster (or casters in general) fine in PF2e. Do you also think getting the expert spellcasting at level 7 and master at level 15 is fine? Do you think caster would be overpowered if they got expert at level 5 and master at level 13, the same levels (most) martials get their own proficiency boost?
Just to know, because it's one of the most common "fix" I've seen and it seem to me that it's rather widely agreed upons on the community, but I may be mistaken.
Martial accuracy increases are more or less lined up with armor potency runes increasing AC; caster accuracy increases are more or less lined up with resistance runes increasing saves. This naturally leaves spell attacks even more hosed than they otherwise would be, but the difference isn't as arbitrary as it may seem at first glance.
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Having any one of them in a particular position isn't "the main problem". Actually, "the main problem" seems to be "This one particular playstyle is not well-supported, especially for people who are new to the game." That's the sort of thing that would totally not be a problem at all except for the little issue that it's a very popular archetype out in the rest of the world, and it's the sort of thing that a lot of new players are going to want to come in and play as their first PF2 PC. This is a meaningful problem, and worth trying to fix, but it's niche. Trying to fix it by just giving casters more spell slots is only going to break balance worse in other places.
I disagree about "more spell slots is only going to break balance worse in other places". This "break balance" situation already happen in many hexploration adventures without break the game.
AoA Book 2:Even I had already heard here in the forum many people just criticizing the adventures with many encounters in a day precisely because of putting too much pressure on the caster.
Once again I also deposit my hopes in Kineticist to allow such experience could work for every one in each different scenarios. Not only in this specific one.
Let’s pretend for a moment that spell attack runes and true strike were exactly the same in their effect on attack math (they most definitely are not). Runes get really really expensive. Spell attack rolls make up maybe 20% of spells a caster might frequently cast. It is a huge waste of resources to make casters got that route rather than giving them a first level spell they can use to land those spells when they want to cast them.
Casting cantrips in clutch fights against a powerful single target is a bad idea unless you are targeting a serious weakness or have nothing else to do. In fact, if you are a caster, and it is a fight that feels like a boss fight and you have nothing to do, there is a good chance the whole party is in a bad spot and could use a tactical retreat to reprepare not just spells, but consumables and other tricks to make the fight easier. The difference between a TPK and a blow out easy encounter is very often who wastes the most actions in the first round basically doing nothing and who has better luck.
Wanting casters to get anywhere near martials damage out put at higher levels just casting cantrips is bad game balance.
Heaven forbid there be a slight cost at 3 different levels across caster's career while they still don't buy striking runes or property runes.
I'm not seeing the issue
I have a question for Cyouni and the other people that consider blaster caster (or casters in general) fine in PF2e. Do you also think getting the expert spellcasting at level 7 and master at level 15 is fine? Do you think caster would be overpowered if they got expert at level 5 and master at level 13, the same levels (most) martials get their own proficiency boost?
Just to know, because it's one of the most common "fix" I've seen and it seem to me that it's rather widely agreed upons on the community, but I may be mistaken.
Is this mainly derived from Reddit?
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I've seen (more than one) and it was not fine. Now what?Please come back to me when you've played a blaster caster from 1-14.
I've literally seen it played in front of me and it's been absolutely fine.
Oh, and it was on staff nexus.
In an ideal world people who HAVE seen the issue have a full and open discussion with the people who HAVE NOT seen the issue. Both sides discuss the factors that made it an issue/made it not an issue and hopefully some conclusions can be arrived at as to WHY it was sometimes an issue (different rules interpretations, house rules, Free Archetype, different player skill, different GM skill, different GM style being some of the more common reasons).
Of course, this is the internet so it is FAR more likely that people will just hurl insults at each other and denigrate the other persons experiences.
For me, the bottom line for Martial/Caster balance is "it seems to be a major issue for a very small number of people, a reasonably mild issue for some people and not an issue for other people. It seems to MOSTLY (but not entirely) be due to the players expectations combined with a significant dollop of Player skill. Personally, I don't find it an issue and think the balance is just about right for the most part"
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I have a thought.
Could it be that part of the issue is that for casters, the pain points aren't where the problems are?
Like, problems generate pain points. If you're not struggling with something, then there's no problem, right? Thing is, if you're a martial, then your pain points are generally directly attached to your problem, and you can look fairly directly from there to try to find solutions. If you're a swashbuckler who's having issues with getting panache, or a rogue who can't manage to reliably secure flat-footed, or a ranger who keeps having to spend way too many actions on hunting prey over and over again, you know what your problem is, and you can look at your available feats, and try to mess with your tactics and whatnot and fix it.
If you're a caster who's not doing the funky caster dance right, though, it doesn't feel like the issue is "I'm not running Recall Knowledge to find out what their weak saves are and carefully curating my spells list to have appropriate responses to a vriety of vulnerabilities." It doesn't feel like "I dismissed the idea of minor debuffs on the boss having any real value and so discarded a spell out of hand as being basically useless for my purposes, when it would have been really useful here." It doesn't feel like "When I hit level 10, I failed to pick up this one arbitrary accessory out of Secrets of Magic that would have made these five specific spells work much better." or "I'm not putting in enough prep of the right sorts to make the enemy as vulnerable as possible before I drop a bomb on them." It mostly just feels like some combination of "I'm constantly weaker than the martials and it sucks" and "I always run out of top-level spell slots too quickly and it sucks."
Basically, martials get the next best thing to a RPG quest log to tell them what the next step is to fix each of their problems, and the failures in play that aren't signposted quite as well ("find something else to do with your -10 MAP third action, dummy") are usually straightforward enough that there's a good chance that the other folks at your table will clue you in even if you're being a bit stubborn about it. Casters... don't get that, which means that on top of them being higher complexity and requiring more skill, it's actually harder to develop that skill during play.
I'm sure that's not all of what's going on, but I suspect that it's part of it.
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I have a thought.
Could it be that part of the issue is that for casters, the pain points aren't where the problems are?
Like, problems generate pain points. If you're not struggling with something, then there's no problem, right? Thing is, if you're a martial, then your pain points are generally directly attached to your problem, and you can look fairly directly from there to try to find solutions. If you're a swashbuckler who's having issues with getting panache, or a rogue who can't manage to reliably secure flat-footed, or a ranger who keeps having to spend way too many actions on hunting prey over and over again, you know what your problem is, and you can look at your available feats, and try to mess with your tactics and whatnot and fix it.
If you're a caster who's not doing the funky caster dance right, though, it doesn't feel like the issue is "I'm not running Recall Knowledge to find out what their weak saves are and carefully curating my spells list to have appropriate responses to a vriety of vulnerabilities." It doesn't feel like "I dismissed the idea of minor debuffs on the boss having any real value and so discarded a spell out of hand as being basically useless for my purposes, when it would have been really useful here." It doesn't feel like "When I hit level 10, I failed to pick up this one arbitrary accessory out of Secrets of Magic that would have made these five specific spells work much better." or "I'm not putting in enough prep of the right sorts to make the enemy as vulnerable as possible before I drop a bomb on them." It mostly just feels like some combination of "I'm constantly weaker than the martials and it sucks" and "I always run out of top-level spell slots too quickly and it sucks."
Basically, martials get the next best thing to a RPG quest log to tell them what the next step is to fix each of their problems, and the failures in play that aren't signposted quite as well ("find something else to do with your -10 MAP third action, dummy") are...
I think this and people being salty that they can't build their spell list the way the want to focus on thematic spells as opposed to taking a variety of things to respond to various situations probably covers about 80% of the issues people have.
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I think this and people being salty that they can't build their spell list the way the want to focus on thematic spells as opposed to taking a variety of things to respond to various situations probably covers about 80% of the issues people have.
more or less, casters who play like god casters, in prior editions combing books for good spells, memorizing the bestiary and only targeting the enemy's weakness numbers, using battlefield control and debuffs to reduce complex problems to cakewalks, those casters who tore pf1e and 3.5 apart have been brought down to acceptably powerful, they are still good, game-changing even, but they are balanced enough. the issue is that when you bring "making use of every possible advantage" down to average, you toss casual play into the dirt, the guy who builds a sorcerer skims the spell list for spells that sound neat and just wants to cast some neat spells and go on an adventure with their buddies on an adventure and find their spells don't seem to stick and they run out too quickly.
then they come online and ask about it and are bombarded with, "you need to only target weak saves" "make sure your dm is using the right house rules so that rk gives you the info you need" "make sure you buy wands and staves or you will just run out of spells in the later game" "completely ignore crit fail effects on spells and focus on the success effect most of the time" "don't use spell attacks without set up they won't work" which is... mostly good advice but its a ton of information that the game just does not tell you, that is allegedly mandatory to play a caster "right" a huge amount of mental overhead that martials just don't have to deal with, and accomplishing nothing but making this worse some amount of people will simply be responding with "your wrong, your lying, you just want to be op" which isn't helping anyone
It is a bit bad for the "elemental focussed" druids who are stuck not having true strike unless they dabble into multiclass shenanigans. From what I've seen, most single target elemental spell require spell attack, and people playing these kind of druid want to play them as blaster focus, but can't really unless they jump throught a large amount of hoops (that may not be that flavorfull for their character) in order to make those attack work. All for a rather underwhelming end build because blaster caster aren't really supported in this edition.
Likewise for sorcerers of the elemental bloodline, from what I've seen it's one taken by people who want to play a blaster, but they need true strike to make a lot of their spell fonctional.
As a player of three high level druids, I don't even use attack spells. They aren't that interesting or worthwhile. Attack spells attack AC which is usually the highest defense the creature has. Even martials don't reliably hit monsters with high AC.
Attack spells aren't that good. Maybe if they come out with some great attack roll spells, I'll change my mind. Attack roll spells are usually single target, don't do much damage, and aren't worth it.
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I often use Multitalented to pick up sorcerer with an ancestry feat as a human, then grab dangerous sorcery and basic spellcasting. Boom. true strike if I need it.Worth noting that primal casters don't have true strike.There are ways....I'm always baffled with this (and similar) argument. So, that's the only true way to play casters, then? And therefore anyone else who doesn't do this and can't take True Strike (and plays as a dwarf!! Without Adopted Ancestry (Human)! An outrage!) just plays wrong and must not be taken into account? 'No True Strikers' just don't exist. Problem solved.
Yeah, and also anyone who didn't take Electric Arc, of course.
Which other mandatory tactics did I forget? (All of them naturally must be taken by all characters at the same time.)Has it ever been any different in past versions of D&D or PF1? Not that I can recall. You picked a certain race with high value stats to start, built those stats as high as possible, then took the high value spells in your slots, and played the way every powerful wizard played. Always been that way.
Wasn't PF2 supposed to solve all this? It seems we have just traded one problem for another. If I want to play caster I have a very very narrow space in which to be creative.
Honestly, in PF1 and 3.5 I don't remember the space being this narrow for either cast nor martial.I have been told again and again that PF2 has solved the martial-caster imbalance. But has it really? I am not saying PF2 isn't a great game - there's a lot to like actually. But personally the caster design seems.....off.
That's exactly why I told you PF2 doesn't require you to do any of what I recommended or you can do it in different ways. PF2 has many different ways to do the same thing.
Dwarves can end up with a maxed out intelligence or charisma unlike older editions.
You can use a class feat to take an archetype and then get dangerous sorcery if you fill like playing a dwarf druid and picking up true strike.
So you didn't trade anything for a new problem. You're not exploring the same system much to know how to do the same things using different paths. PF2 has the most paths for doing what you want to do of any edition yet.
You can make any type of character in this edition and not feel like you screwed yourself. You are reading my suggestion thinking it is the only method, when it was just how I do it.
You can:
1. Use a class feat for an archetype feat to obtain true strike from two different spell lists.
2. Use an ancestry feat.
3. Use trick magic item and pick up a staff or wand or scroll.
4. Ancestry feat human or adopted ancestry human to obtain multitalented at level 9 if you want to wait that long.
5. Use a hero point which let's you reroll a failed a attack roll.
6. Get intimidate, demoralize the foe, then attack.
7. Trip them as a caster because you too can get legendary athletics and build your strength up if you feel like it and then blast them flat-footed while they're on the ground.
There a ton of ways to build characters in PF2. If you're not exploring all the options to build a character, then that's not Paizo's fault at all.
To be entirely fair, PF1 wasn't narrow for caster because caster would still work perfectly fine if they decided to forego 90% of their available spells and cast the same flavorfull bunch again and again. They'd be less than optimal to be sure, but less than optimal was still really good compared to martial, once they were past level 5 or so.
I think it's what made that edition feel so great to play for so many people despite the glaring caster/martial unbalance, most people just weren't playing optimal caster, but flavorfull ones, unknowingly taking sort of "self nerfs" that actually made caster seems balanced compared to martial, because optimal caster were just so far above all.
PF2 have fixed the level of optimal casters, but it seems to have done so at the cost of those flavorfull ones. I think most people who play caster actually want to play a specialized caster, not one that can cast every spells under the sun, which is why this debate come up again and again, as new player picking an enchanter wizard want to cast enchantment spells 90% of the time, which just don't work in PF2. An enchanter wizard here is just 10% more focussed on enchantment than in other school, and must diversify to be as effective as a martial.
I played a ton of casters in PF1. They did specialize through feats, usually on single spells that you could build into encounter destroying combinations. I built a cleric with a plus 10 level holy word spell. Completely annihilated almost anything evil we fought. I built a nuker that could double cast delayed blast fireball while altering it's energy composition as needed twice a round stacked with damage bonuses multiple times per day. Built a healer that could quicken a regular heal spell with a level 6 slot.
So many books had come out allowing super powerful caster and martial builds that broke the game and made it completely trivial and nearly impossible to DM without tremendous work and system knowledge.
No interest in going back to that myself. If you aren't satisfied by the current power level of the game, then I doubt PF2 will ever satisfy you. PF1 wasn't balanced for martials or casters at all.
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The equivalent of saying advanced weapons aren't mostly useless for their cost, you can just ignore they exist.It's not mandatory because using attack roll spells isn't. You could forget about their existence entirely and do just as well, in my estimation.
The thread literally just went through a discussion of how true strike is required to make spell attack work. To the point people are told to actively dip just to get access to it. How is that not mandatory?There are multiple ways to play the game. You can't do everything in the one character. Spell attack rolls are just one way to play a caster, and probably not even the best.
Occullt and Arcane casters always have True Strike on their list. Divine casters can pick it up from a dozen different deities. Sorcerer have ways of choosing spells from any list. It is really only some primal casters who might be tempted to pick it up via an ancestry feat like this. But there are other perfectly good spells they could get this way like Befuddle or Magic Missile. True Strike is a key to just one tactic.
Here are some others...
If I want to play a caster who wants to do any kind of blasting. I am forced to use true strike regardless of how I want my character to play. That is the definition of mandatory.The fact I can play debuffer/utility mage and do blasting does not make me a blaster.
Specially not when all the debuff/utlity spells just work, and I have to bend over backwards just to not lose one of the 4 top level spells.
And no, being forced to play spell blending or whatever is not a fixed. That is a stop gap bandaid solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place.
If you actually played PF2, then you would know blaster casters don't waste their time with attack roll spells.
Primary people taking true strike are martials taking caster multiclass archetypes or the Magus. True strike helps them more as casters have other spells for blasting.
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I think this and people being salty that they can't build their spell list the way the want to focus on thematic spells as opposed to taking a variety of things to respond to various situations probably covers about 80% of the issues people have.more or less, casters who play like god casters, in prior editions combing books for good spells, memorizing the bestiary and only targeting the enemy's weakness numbers, using battlefield control and debuffs to reduce complex problems to cakewalks, those casters who tore pf1e and 3.5 apart have been brought down to acceptably powerful, they are still good, game-changing even, but they are balanced enough. the issue is that when you bring "making use of every possible advantage" down to average, you toss casual play into the dirt, the guy who builds a sorcerer skims the spell list for spells that sound neat and just wants to cast some neat spells and go on an adventure with their buddies on an adventure and find their spells don't seem to stick and they run out too quickly.
then they come online and ask about it and are bombarded with, "you need to only target weak saves" "make sure your dm is using the right house rules so that rk gives you the info you need" "make sure you buy wands and staves or you will just run out of spells in the later game" "completely ignore crit fail effects on spells and focus on the success effect most of the time" "don't use spell attacks without set up they won't work" which is... mostly good advice but its a ton of information that the game just does not tell you, that is allegedly mandatory to play a caster "right" a huge amount of mental overhead that martials just don't have to deal with, and accomplishing nothing but making this worse some amount of people will simply be responding with "your wrong, your lying, you just want to be op" which isn't helping anyone
I have not found any of the above mandatory.
What I have found is players of wizards come over to PF2 to find out the wizard sucks now.
Druid is great.
Cleric is still very good.
Sorcerer has a lot of solid build options.
Bard is great.
If you come over to PF2 after playing a PF1 wizard, it is like you got kicked in the stomach, tossed to the ground, and spit on by the Paizo game designers who seemed to been given an order to nerf the PF2 wizard into the ground to the point where there isn't a chance of them being imbalanced.
That was my initial feeling coming over from PF1 and trying a wizard as my first class since I played so many PF1 wizards. The wizard class is a loved class by optimizers and geeks across every edition of D&D. You took the pain of the low level wizard in PF1 and D&D to have the power at high level. You sucked for a lot of levels or had rare moments when one of your first or second level spells did good. Then you hit 5th level and those 3rd level spells started to get nice and it was a good ride up from about 5th on.
Now as a wizard you are one of the worst classes in the game. Terrible focus spells that don't even interact well with the way you would play. Locked in spell slots when bards and sorcerers are getting signature spells and more slots with far better focus spells and innate abilities.
That's what these threads are mainly about in my opinion. Former wizard players from PF1 coming over to PF2 and finding out the wizard is one of the worst classes in PF2. Every single one of my former wizard players that loved the PF1 and previous editions of D&D wizard hates the PF2 wizard. They won't touch the wizard with a 10 foot pole. Most ruined class in PF2 from PF1 is the wizard. Over-nerfed and ruined beyond what was needed.
That's why you will notice I have no tried to play a wizard again in PF2 after a couple of tries. One other player tried a few wizards as well because he too has always loved the wizard class. He gave up trying as well. PF2 did an utterly terrible job on the wizard. It's too bad too since it's been one of the favorite classes of D&D for almost every edition including PF1 and 3E.
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If you actually played PF2, then you would know blaster casters don't waste their time with attack roll spells.
Primary people taking true strike are martials taking caster multiclass archetypes or the Magus. True strike helps them more as casters have other spells for blasting.
Okay. You need to dial it down a little. You're taking your own, extensive but very particular experience, and, on the basis of that, telling people that they haven't played and don't know what they're talking about.
Worse yet, you're making assertions about how people who are not like you play, and making accusations based on your utter certainty on this thing.
Like, I don't know what the reality of this stuff is on the ground from my own experience, but even I know that's wrong.
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Okay. You need to dial it down a little. You're taking your own, extensive but very particular experience, and, on the basis of that, telling people that they haven't played and don't know what they're talking about.
Worse yet, you're making assertions about how people who are not like you play, and making accusations based on your utter certainty on this thing.
Like, I don't know what the reality of this stuff is on the ground from my own experience, but even I know that's wrong.
What are the good attack roll spells?
I have tested this stuff. I bought a shadow signet ring and tried to use attack roll spells. There aren't many good ones.
When I see something brought up about attack roll spells when they aren't in high use, I have to mention it in these discussions. It's not like PF1. True Strike in PF1 was an easily quickened spell that gave a +20 to hit usable with spells like disintegrate, scorching ray, polar ray when it does 20dice of damage, enervate, energy drain, the more powerful version of scorching ray that bounced around. True Strike with attack roll spells in PF1 was quite an amazing combination as enervate even at level 4 was a very nice debuff to land.
Enervate is a save roll spell. Scorching ray requires heightening for reduced damage. Polar ray is ok, but there are better spells. Disintegrate is maybe your best option if you build for mega-disintegrate.
So I found it primarily useful for attack roll cantrips with the shadow signet ring or a decent attack roll focus spell like fire ray or elemental toss.
The true strike and attack roll combo isn't as good in PF2 as it was in PF1.
What casters get at level 5 (level 3 spells) is the tier of really game changing spells. Fireball/lightning bolt, slow, haste, heroism, invisibility sphere: this has a long tradition in D&D of being the difference maker in terms of what spells can do now. The gap between level 2 spells and level 3 spells is bigger than the gap between level 3 and level 4.
I think that letting this old secret of spell levels Cary through to 2e, and using that to justify holding off on the spell boost was probably the logic in decision making, even if many players, and especially new players won’t see it right away. The advantage is keeping most of the traditional level spells at their traditional level. Notice level 5 spells are a bigger gap again over level 4 too.
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What are the good attack roll spells?
I have tested this stuff. I bought a shadow signet ring and tried to use attack roll spells. There aren't many good ones.
When I see something brought up about attack roll spells when they aren't in high use, I have to mention it in these discussions.
First, I don't know. As far as wider implications of actual contents of spell lists are concerned, I'm functionally illiterate. That's not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is that you've got a bunch of different things conflated in your head, and you're talking about them like they're all the same thing. They're not.
1 - You haven't been able get vs-AC spells to work for you, and you don't know of anyone in your immediate group who has. You tried, and you couldn't make it happen. You perceive vs-AC spells as generally terrible and not worth using. You assert this thing, and I believe you. We'll accept that this is true.
2 - vs-AC spells are generally terrible and not worth using in the games that you personally play, and among the groups that you play with. I'm willing to give you enough credit for competence to generally assume that this is also true. It's not guaranteed - its possible that there are strategies that would make it work that you did not uncover, but you seem to be pretty good at what you do, so sure. I'll accept that.
3 - vs-AC spells are just generally terrible overall, regardless of context (for primary casters). Primary casters shouldn't bother using them ever, or almost ever. This seems... more tenuous. You do live in something of a bubble, as these things go. The games you play and the groups you play with are a somewhat extreme case, and that does sometimes throw off your understanding of how things work out in the rest of the world. Still, I've seem similar thoughts from others, and this is the sort of thing that white-room analysis is generally fairly good at picking up. Let's call this plausible and/or provisionally true.
4 - "If you actually played PF2, then you would know blaster casters don't waste their time with attack roll spells." This one is just straight false on multiple levels, and based on a few different unfortunate mental leaps. It assumes that not only are those spells bad for all blaster casters, but that all of the people who want to be blaster casters will know that they're bad for blaster casters, and will avoid them. It assumes that this is such a universally known and followed rule that the only way to not be aware of this is to not have played the game. Like, seriously, you know better than that. After all, you tried to make a blaster caster that used vs-AC spells. You said so yourself. The idea that there are others out there, still trying? That shouldn't be but so strange to you, right?
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What casters get at level 5 (level 3 spells) is the tier of really game changing spells. Fireball/lightning bolt, slow, haste, heroism, invisibility sphere: this has a long tradition in D&D of being the difference maker in terms of what spells can do now. The gap between level 2 spells and level 3 spells is bigger than the gap between level 3 and level 4.
I think that letting this old secret of spell levels Cary through to 2e, and using that to justify holding off on the spell boost was probably the logic in decision making, even if many players, and especially new players won’t see it right away. The advantage is keeping most of the traditional level spells at their traditional level. Notice level 5 spells are a bigger gap again over level 4 too.
I understand the reasoning behind it - it makes sense in theory. In practice, though, I think the base success rates for casters are already bad enough that having monsters get two save bumps before you get your proficiency bump feels really bad. They get a +2 jump from 3 to 4, another from 5 to 6, and you're still there with your +1/level, 22 spell DC when monsters of your level have +14 to a Moderate save (not even High).
What are the good attack roll spells?
I have tested this stuff. I bought a shadow signet ring and tried to use attack roll spells. There aren't many good ones.
When I see something brought up about attack roll spells when they aren't in high use, I have to mention it in these discussions.
First, I don't know. As far as wider implications of actual contents of spell lists are concerned, I'm functionally illiterate. That's not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is that you've got a bunch of different things conflated in your head, and you're talking about them like they're all the same thing. They're not.
1 - You haven't been able get vs-AC spells to work for you, and you don't know of anyone in your immediate group who has. You tried, and you couldn't make it happen. You perceive vs-AC spells as generally terrible and not worth using. You assert this thing, and I believe you. We'll accept that this is true.
2 - vs-AC spells are generally terrible and not worth using in the games that you personally play, and among the groups that you play with. I'm willing to give you enough credit for competence to generally assume that this is also true. It's not guaranteed - its possible that there are strategies that would make it work that you did not uncover, but you seem to be pretty good at what you do, so sure. I'll accept that.
3 - vs-AC spells are just generally terrible overall, regardless of context (for primary casters). Primary casters shouldn't bother using them ever, or almost ever. This seems... more tenuous. You do live in something of a bubble, as these things go. The games you play and the groups you play with are a somewhat extreme case, and that does sometimes throw off your understanding of how things work out in the rest of the world. Still, I've seem similar thoughts from others, and this is the sort of thing that white-room analysis is generally fairly good at picking up. Let's call this...
If I were to clean up the generic statement, I would say that there are an insufficient number of quality attack roll spells to justify complaining about attack roll spell hit rolls as a problem with creating a blaster caster.
The only attack roll spells that are interesting in my experience are the following:
1. Psychic Oscillating Wave using produce flame and ray of frost. This is a recent addition. Those two cantrips are your bread and butter, so it is important that they hit.
2. Wizard building towards mega-disintegrate which we've seen the math on and is quite nasty.
3. Casters that use a lot of cantrips or have a quality focus spell using an attack roll. This is more a personal choice situation. The shadow signet ring helped my cantrips hit more when I remembered to use it.
4. Casters using searing light on undead or fiends. Searing light scales well against fiends and undead. Not so much normally.
There are probably a few other situations, but those are the ones I experienced the most. I know my bard used telekinetic projectile quite a bit after already buffing the party to add some damage in many non-threatening fights to add a little damage. He was a bard, not a damage casters so I did not expect to do good damage on top of all the other bard abilities.
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* if you want to play a theme, like "Fire Blaster", then you will get completely shafted in about 1/4 of your combats due to resistances/immunities... but you should expect that right? choosing to self-nerf has consequences.
The maximum occurance of resistance and immunities is about 15% for any one type. Someone counted them up recently. Likewise with incidence of Attack of Opportunity. So unless you are encountering a strongly themed set of monsters the actual numbers are 1 in 6.
You need a plan B, but I wouldn't be afraid of playing a strongly themed caster.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"What do I do when fire isn't an option" is a basic question you have to address as the guy who uses fire. This isn't really different from what the fighter with a big 2h weapon faces when they can't reach the monster (because it's flying for example).
The Kineticist might need built in tools for this, but the built in option for casters is "you can choose different spells."
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You need a plan B, but I wouldn't be afraid of playing a strongly themed caster.
I mostly agree but I do have one major caveat.
Some campaigns have a HUGE tendency to face some kind of enemy. If you're in such a campaign then some themes will REALLY rock and others REALLY suck.
Don't go with saves vs Fort when playing a PF2 conversion of GiantSlayer, DO go in with lots of anti undead spells when playing Mummy's Mask :-) :-).
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Yep. That GM is sabotaging his own game. Most GMs will give you a warning on the campaign theme.
If your GM lets you play a fire only caster and you face only enemies that are fire based and therefore immune or resistant, without saying anything, your GM is kind of a dick.
I mean, the main culprit for "Fire immune monsters" are Devils, and it's entirely possible your GM has prepared a story where the PCs fight a whole bunch of devils. If you're really firmly committed to "I'm the fire guy" it's not totally reasonable to expect the GM to completely rewrite what they've prepared to accommodate you.
Like most things, it's incumbent on the player and the GM to work together in these sorts of situations to make sure that your character is fun to play but also doesn't clash with the basic premise of the campaign. This is pretty much always doable if both parties approach this in a collaborative, good faith way (our Blood Lords party has a Paladin in it, but they emphatically did not take Shining Oath) but either party is capable of blowing it up if they're intransigent.
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"What do I do when fire isn't an option" is a basic question you have to address as the guy who uses fire. This isn't really different from what the fighter with a big 2h weapon faces when they can't reach the monster (because it's flying for example).
In theory, yeah.
But in practice module and AP design tends to go out of its way to make sure that isn't a significant problem for martials, to a much greater extent than it seems to consider the same issues for magic users.
And when we do see modules or adventures that hamstring martial characters in a certain way, they tend to be heavily criticized for that, and there's a lot less dunking on players for playing 'incorrectly' when those products are scrutinized.
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If your GM lets you play a fire only caster and you face only enemies that are fire based and therefore immune or resistant, without saying anything, your GM is kind of a dick.I mean, the main culprit for "Fire immune monsters" are Devils, and it's entirely possible your GM has prepared a story where the PCs fight a whole bunch of devils. If you're really firmly committed to "I'm the fire guy" it's not totally reasonable to expect the GM to completely rewrite what they've prepared to accommodate you.
Like most things, it's incumbent on the player and the GM to work together in these sorts of situations to make sure that your character is fun to play but also doesn't clash with the basic premise of the campaign. This is pretty much always doable if both parties approach this in a collaborative, good faith way (our Blood Lords party has a Paladin in it, but they emphatically did not take Shining Oath) but either party is capable of blowing it up if they're intransigent.
GM kinda just has to tell the player not to play that kind of character if that's the campaign they're running. I told my players not to bring any Rogues when I ran the Slithering (heavily modified to be even more ooze-oriented than it was originally).
I understand the reasoning behind it - it makes sense in theory. In practice, though, I think the base success rates for casters are already bad enough that having monsters get two save bumps before you get your proficiency bump feels really bad. They get a +2 jump from 3 to 4, another from 5 to 6, and you're still there with your +1/level, 22 spell DC when monsters of your level have +14 to a Moderate save (not even High).What casters get at level 5 (level 3 spells) is the tier of really game changing spells. Fireball/lightning bolt, slow, haste, heroism, invisibility sphere: this has a long tradition in D&D of being the difference maker in terms of what spells can do now. The gap between level 2 spells and level 3 spells is bigger than the gap between level 3 and level 4.
I think that letting this old secret of spell levels Cary through to 2e, and using that to justify holding off on the spell boost was probably the logic in decision making, even if many players, and especially new players won’t see it right away. The advantage is keeping most of the traditional level spells at their traditional level. Notice level 5 spells are a bigger gap again over level 4 too.
It is only really bad at levels 4 and 5 when going uphill against a monster that is 2 or more levels higher. The martials really have to pull weight here, and even then these are tough encounters. They have resulted in a lot of character deaths. Adventure writers would do well to cap out the boss of book 1 of APs, or the boss of the first 2 chapters of book 2 at a level +1 creature with tough minions to get to severe or even extreme, rather than a solo creature at that level. This would also help give casters the opportunity to get to play with their AoE toys that are just coming on line.
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I read through this entire thread and made it to this last page without seeing this guide; I was so ready to plug this into the argument. It is a great read even without a strong knowledge of baseball. You did a paper worthy of your title, Arch Magister.
That said, blaster casters work in this game even at low levels. I am currently playing in a group of four as a rogue. The GM has Fantasy Grounds, which allows him to pull the data out of the chat logs. The sorcerer, in each game after the first, has consistently been doing almost double my damage. And he does this from twenty or more feet behind me, while I am running into the thick of melee. And the healing focused oracle was barely behind me from casting a single damaging spell in the last session. I should note that the sorcerer only ever blasts or dragon claws. This is his binary, and I am flabberghasted that all the damage I thought I was doing was purely because I was just kill stealing from my spellcasters.
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Spells attack aren't funnily enough even that bad math wise, the main problem with them is that its spending resource for spell that has "you hit and do something or you miss and waste spell" in system where every save spell has four different options where even enemy's success does something small.
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I love how Deriven is going "Yeah Spell Attack are terrible and no caster worth their salt would use them". While my entire complaint is partly that those spells should have and should get support so that they do actually work.
Also wow the amount of people that jumped on "do you even play the game". Way to ivory tower a conversation that has been going on for 10+ pages. See to me that just tells me you have no way to counter the fact that casters wanting to play blasters are inherently screwed by the system and just getting them to work is an exercise in fighting against the system.
If anyone wants to know if I have played I have already answered, hunt it down if you even care. It sounds more like you are trying to strawman anyways.
I really hope that you have gotten into at least one game in the 3.5 years that PF2e has been out and you have been arguing (in the academic sense) on these forums. I am really interested in how your analysis of the game measures up to experience playing over the course of a single game to six or more months playing. My first experience with a spellcaster was not enjoyable, and I thought it was because of weak saves, but then I realized that in order to get my charisma high enough to multiclass my wizard into sorcerer, I dumped wisdom and constitution. I also learned that I have the habit of playing casters like martials because I do not actually like playing caster characters in games (Skyrim, Oblivion, Shadowrun, 5e, 3.5, PF1e, etc.). I like the thrill of getting into melee. However, I have found ways when playing magus to make blasting work (for when I need something optimal and spellstrike isn't available because of range or something else), including attack spells, which usually involves a set up of some kind.
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It is only really bad at levels 4 and 5 when going uphill against a monster that is 2 or more levels higher. The martials really have to pull weight here, and even then these are tough encounters. They have resulted in a lot of character deaths. Adventure writers would do well to cap out the boss of book 1 of APs, or the boss of the first 2 chapters of book 2 at a level +1 creature with tough minions to get to severe or even extreme, rather than a solo creature at that level. This would also help give casters the opportunity to get to play with their AoE toys that are just coming on line.
In my experience, level 6 suffer quite a bit too, as every "on level" (or even lower level) monster assume you have a bigger "to hit" for your attack spell, and any +1 or more monster assume you have a bigger DC too. But even if it doesn't, wouldn't having that "really bad" experience for two whole level justify getting the proficiency increase early? Unless that increase would result in overshadowing martials, I feel like letting caster suffer for those level because "it get better eventually" isn't really an enviable solution.
What are the good attack roll spells?Okay. You need to dial it down a little. You're taking your own, extensive but very particular experience, and, on the basis of that, telling people that they haven't played and don't know what they're talking about.
Worse yet, you're making assertions about how people who are not like you play, and making accusations based on your utter certainty on this thing.
Like, I don't know what the reality of this stuff is on the ground from my own experience, but even I know that's wrong.
Searing Light is as important to a blaster than Slow to a debuffer. It's the one true spell that will solve the biggest issue for casters: fu**ing Fiends with their crazy saves. 10% of the enemies have a massive resistance to save based-spells while having a massive weakness to Searing Light.
Spell attack roll spells are not many, as such there are not many gems in there. But that's the case for absolutely any spell niche in this game. Still, I know why I took an Ancestry feat to grab True Strike on my Sorcerer. Searing Light has proven being one of my top 5 spells already.
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I love how Deriven is going "Yeah Spell Attack are terrible and no caster worth their salt would use them". While my entire complaint is partly that those spells should have and should get support so that they do actually work.
Also wow the amount of people that jumped on "do you even play the game". Way to ivory tower a conversation that has been going on for 10+ pages. See to me that just tells me you have no way to counter the fact that casters wanting to play blasters are inherently screwed by the system and just getting them to work is an exercise in fighting against the system.
If anyone wants to know if I have played I have already answered, hunt it down if you even care. It sounds more like you are trying to strawman anyways.
It's not a straw man when the person making the arguments has no experience and cannot speak accurately on the game.
Basically, you are stoking arguments just to do it with no idea if your arguments are accurate or applicable.
I'm telling you they aren't and I know why and how.
I told you what attack roll spells work and what classes use them the most as there aren't that many attack roll spells.
The best user of attack roll spells is the Magus because they use them in conjunction with their weapon. Other than that, there aren't that many worth using.
If they make more and make them worth using, then it might be an issue. But they don't at the moment. You would know if this you spent much time playing the game rather than just stoking false arguments just to do it.