Im looking for suggestions for building a character specialized in maximizing other character's damage output. What classes / archetypes / spells are particularly good at this?
When it comes to helping characters deal damage, it's important to think about buffing and debuffing: circumstance and status bonuses/penalties.
The bard obviously comes to mind with Inspire Courage, but also as a Charisma caster. At level 1, even minor spells like Magic Weapon can give a massive boost to your ally, while spells like Fear and Command can get you frightened or prone quite easily.
Skill use becomes important as a Demoralize can give a -1 or -2 status penalty to the opponent. A dash of Strength on your character can also get you into the Athletics department to Trip opponents, especially if you carry a whip around to do so from range. Of course you shouldn't neglect the Aid action, though using it at lower levels can be a bit of a crapshoot.
Finally, speaking of Aid, there's the Bellflower Tiller dedication which gives you access to some lovely feats, most important of which is likely Practiced Guidance and Tiller's Aid which will make sure you're constantly giving the critical success bonus from Aid while also freeing up your own action economy.
A turn where you use your Inspire Courage (+1 status), Demoralize (-1 status), and Trip (-2 circumstance) an enemy will so dramatically swing things in your favor. Your party members' chance to hit (and crit!) increases by 20%! That's to say nothing of the spellcasting tricks you can pull off at higher levels.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I would like to note that playing support only works as a primary role when you have enough other PCs to support. In a four person party, this is iffy depending on what roles they've chosen.
Granting a +1 attack bonus to an ally (or AC/Save penalty to your enemy) gives you about +16% more effectiveness (vs. normal foes). That can add up very fast on a large team w/ plenty of martials via Inspire Courage, or fall short of what you could have contributed directly yourself if on a small team.
Of course, best of all would be building a PC who can swap between support and offense, just in case your partners are taken out or out of position.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
A bard can easily run (lingering) Dirge of Doom, Circle of protection, Bless/marshall stance at the same time, stand near/behind the martials (with good AC and HP) for max effectiveness of those spells, and use reactions that can help defense (swash guardians deflection) and offense (swash One for All) and have a casting of any spell somewhere in between (like Synesthesia). There isn't much that comes close. After lvl 9, where this is all possible, you'd have a +2 on defense (DoD, CoP), +4 to attack (bless, Syn) and a +3 for one attacker extra (aid), preferablly for something like a rogue with a deadly weapon for lots of dice in a crit. I don't think anything comes close.
Fervor Witch gets Stoke the Heart which does much more damage increase than Inspire Courage does. Starts at +2 and goes up to +6 at character 19th level. It only applies to one character per instance that you have running though and you can only cast it on a new ally once per turn. But it doesn't have a range restriction once it has been applied.
Also Elemental Betrayal will increase everyone's elemental damage against an enemy. Again, has to be sustained each round, so there are some trade-offs there.
Add Alchemist Dedication to hand out Energy Mutagen to let everyone have the appropriate energy damage types.
So at level 5 you are adding 1d4(energy mutagen) + 3(Elemental Betrayal) + 3(Stoke the Heart) damage to every melee attack from at least one character. Put that on a flurry ranger...
And that is just the class. Then there is the Divine spell list - which is also really good at buffing and debuffing. It doesn't get Synesthesia though. Does get Bless, Heroism, Magic Weapon, Disrupting Weapons, Seal Fate ...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Fervor Witch gets Stoke the Heart which does much more damage increase than Inspire Courage does.
I'm not sure about 'much more.' Just graphed this modeling a champion with a greatsword and it looks like this this. StH is the red line. With a longsword it looks like this instead.
The two are nearly identical throughout most of the game, except IC can hit multiple targets.
An often overlooked supporter is a precision ranger with shared prey.
The upgraded version of the investigator's Shared Stratagem is also very powerful, though it does come online even later.
Both classes are also good damage dealers on their own.
If you want pure support (which I would totally not recommend personally), your best bet is probably bard with Marshal Dedication for Inpiring stance + Dirge of Doom. At the highest levels you can even add Inspire Defense on top of those two, giving you 3 powerful auras that are easy on the action economy (at least with Lingering and Eyernal compoaition), leaving plenty of actions for using debuff spells and the like.
Swashbuckler Dedication with One for All is strong addition to that. You need Diplomacy for marshal anyway and One for All turns that into a powerful Aid at range.
With a whip or guisarme and some strength and athletics you can also Trip with decent success. You could even pick up AoO from Marshal to deal some damage when the target gets up.
If you want pure support (which I would totally not recommend personally), your best bet is probably bard with Marshal Dedication for Inpiring stance + Dirge of Doom. At the highest levels you can even add Inspire Defense on top of those two, giving you 3 powerful auras that are easy on the action economy (at least with Lingering and Eyernal compoaition), leaving plenty of actions for using debuff spells and the like.
Why not? Bard Marshall seems like the perfect support character, though I guess it does leave you lacking in terms of having much else to do...though you're still a caster so you always have that to fall back on besides your buffing abilities.
Though, the value of the buffer does heavily depend on party size and composition. Ideally (I think) you want a party with at least 3 martially inclined characters for you to buff. Someone could probably do the math to estimate the break point but my gut feelings is that if you only have two martial characters that you would get more value from adding a 3rd martial character over adding a buffer for those two.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you want pure support (which I would totally not recommend personally), your best bet is probably bard with Marshal Dedication for Inpiring stance + Dirge of Doom. At the highest levels you can even add Inspire Defense on top of those two, giving you 3 powerful auras that are easy on the action economy (at least with Lingering and Eyernal compoaition), leaving plenty of actions for using debuff spells and the like.Why not? Bard Marshall seems like the perfect support character, though I guess it does leave you lacking in terms of having much else to do...though you're still a caster so you always have that to fall back on besides your buffing abilities.
Though, the value of the buffer does heavily depend on party size and composition. Ideally (I think) you want a party with at least 3 martially inclined characters for you to buff. Someone could probably do the math to estimate the break point but my gut feelings is that if you only have two martial characters that you would get more value from adding a 3rd martial character over adding a buffer for those two.
With PF2 critical system, if you manage to stack bonuses, you very quickly increase damage. For example, a +5 to hit is nearly equivalent to double damage. And if you add Inspire Heroics and Synesthesia, you get +5 to hit. So you can add a buffer Bard with only a single martial and not be useless.
Another thing is that casters also benefit from buffs. Bonuses to hit can be used with spell attack rolls, and penalties, like the one from Synesthesia, benefit your save-based spells.On top of that, a buffer can buff and do something else at the same time. Inspire Courage is one action, the remaining actions can be used for spells.
But... The issue of buffers is that the party becomes weaker in terms of defense. If you put the buffed character down, the buffer becomes unable to buff and it may be really bad for the party.
But you can put a buffer as strong as a Bard in a 4-man party whatever you have next to you (well, as long as you have at least one martial to hold the frontline). For weaker buffers (every other buffers), you may need a party which is more in line with your buffing abilities.
Anyway, to answer the OP, the best buffer is the Bard, and it's overpowered. So, if you compare anything to a Bard, anything will look really weak.
Hobgoblin Death Metal Bully -
Bon Mot will make it easier to demoralize your targets, but also easier for your casters to successfully deliver will save spells.
When you have a frightened target, try to hit it with your whip once per round to keep frightened from ticking down. It's even better if you've demoralized the target and you have agonizing rebuke.
If you can manage to trip regurlarly, the combination with frightened alone will significanty benefit overall party DPS. Frightened gives status penalties and Flat-Footed is a circumstance penalty, so they stack.
Then, Bard away!!!
Fervor Witch gets Stoke the Heart which does much more damage increase than Inspire Courage does.I'm not sure about 'much more.' Just graphed this modeling a champion with a greatsword and it looks like this this. StH is the red line. With a longsword it looks like this instead.
The two are nearly identical throughout most of the game, except IC can hit multiple targets.
I don't want to go too far into a holy war between StH and IC. They are both good. But there are tradeoffs between the two. Which one is better depends on the rest of the party composition.
I'm not sure what exactly you are using to get the data you did for your charts. So I constructed a spreadsheet to calculate things myself. I can't think of a good way of posting it for all to see though.
Assumptions:
* character has +4 str bonus at level 1, increases to +5 at level 10, +6 at level 20.
* character needs the same roll on the die in order to hit (treadmill style).
* weapon dice increases according to the ABP Devastating Attacks progression.
Design:
* number needed to roll can be changed.
* average damage from the weapon dice can be changed. Approximating the value as half the die size. So a d4 weapon has an expected damage of 2 per die. A d12 weapon has an expected damage of 6 per die.
Math tradeoffs:
* Stoke the Heart is better when the ally already has a good chance to hit. Inspire Courage - with its bonus to hit - catches up when dealing with MAP penalties on attacks or hard-to-hit boss enemies.
* With both spells, improvement is more noticeable with lower weapon damage. So boosting a combatant with a d10 weapon is going to be less percentage increase than boosting a combatant using a d6 weapon. Inspire Courage does get less of a percentage decrease in effectiveness with larger die weapons (again because of the bonus to hit).
* Generally Stoke the Heart does still have a bit more damage boosting than Inspire Courage does, but it isn't as much as I was expecting. That +1 bonus to hit will, by itself, add quite a bit of expected damage too.
Tactics tradeoffs:
* Inspire Courage can affect multiple people - even the entire party - as long as they are generally grouped up around the Bard. Good for groups that have a Champion they group around, or generally have a lot of melee combatants that like to gang up on a single target.
* Stoke the Heart can only affect one target - though you can get up to three instances of it running. Once it is cast, it has no range restriction to sustain. Good for groups that have ranged attackers and skirmishers that don't like to group up around an enemy.
Other thoughts:
* Why not both. Put both a Bard and a Fervor Witch in a party with a Champion, Giant instinct Barbarian, and Flurry Ranger with a bow. Bard can boost the Champion and Barbarian. Witch takes care of in-combat healing and boosting the Ranger.
* There are other spells - most notably Bless - that can add the +1 circumstance bonus to hit that Inspire Courage adds. You won't be able to use them constantly though.
* There isn't anything for Bard that adds +6 status bonus to damage.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Though with 60 foot radius, the party doesn't need to group up very much. A lot of battles, especially ones in dungeons, will have the entire battlefield inside the IC range.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
There's not much comparison between Inspire Courage and Stoke the Heart, considering that Inspire Courage affects the party when Stoke the Heart affects only one character.
The only moment Stoke the Heart shines (a bit), is on casters (as they don't care about the bonus to hit) and if there are other sources of status bonus to hit (Wild Shape Druid, for example).
I'd say it's very neat on high accuracy low damage classes that rely on Crits a lot.
Looking at you Mr fighter....
You can also do blitz strategy where you cast heroism on one or two key martials in a low martial party and then just Stoke the heart.
At level 11 and plus that's overall Much better than basic inspiré courage.
Also could have a witch marshall (the devil's general!) With inspiring aura and Stoke the heart for overall better math. Slap in intimidate skills on that and it's solid as heck.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
But same can be done for Bard. From what I posted before:
A bard can easily run (lingering) Dirge of Doom, Circle of protection, Bless AND Dread marshal stance at the same time, stand near/behind the martials (with good AC and HP) for max effectiveness of those spells, and use reactions that can help defense (swash guardians deflection) and offense (swash One for All) and have a casting of any spell somewhere in between (like Synesthesia). There isn't much that comes close. After lvl 9, where this is all possible, you'd have a +2 on defense (DoD, CoP), +4 to attack (bless, Syn) and a +3 for one attacker extra (aid), preferablly for something like a rogue with a deadly weapon for lots of dice in a crit. I don't think anything comes close.
The only thing I changed in above text is the bolded part, where I specifically mention the dread marshal stance for added status damage.
If you want to go Inspire courage, you also need to consider Inspire Heroics for a +2/+3 on att and dam. But I like the Lingering Dirge better, for action economy.
When you're considering inspire heroic though its very niche..
You can either blitz up to 3 rounds of it in one encounter, having 2 to 3 bonus to everyone, and that's good don't get me wrong, but most fights last 5-6 rounds (depending on difficulty).
If you're in a dungeon setting, you're rarely going to want to use inspire heroics more than once per encounter in order to save your focus spell points.
The witch cantrip is up everyday all day, you can eventually even have several up at the same time.
I honestly forgot I made this post so I haven't been checking it. Just finished reading all the replies.
Does a bard have any decent ways of expanding their spell selection into other sources like sorcerers or divine casters can? (Without archetypes)
Aside from aid, what are the best ways to grant decently high circumstance bonuses to attack (or damage for that matter)?
What specifically are you interested in on other spell lists?
Because to my knowledge no, you don't really get the options to steal from other lists, but the occult list is pretty darn good so I don't think you need it.