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I have players that spent years in PF1 and previous D&D editions covering bases like dedicated healer and arcane utility caster because healing and spells like haste and fly were so good you couldn't much live without them or you were going to get destroyed by enemies using them.One thing no one liked to play was the dedicated healer.
Well, PF2 got rid of the dedicated healer. My players are so happy.
This is so strange for me to read, given that healer as an archetype was so bad in PF1 (and 3.5 and 5e and even 4e), much worse than in PF2.
Yeah, healing is terrible in 5e until very high level spells like Heal or Mass Heal. But for most play, being a dedicated healer is a bad strategy in 5e. The meta is to only heal once someone goes unconscious which leads to whack a mole gameplay. PF2e circumvents this through the wounded condition, healing actually heals a lot, but also access to healing is abundant. Every tradition except arcane can heal, and everyone can grab medicine.
So just a chime in here because this has happened multiple times in quoted you've said DF.
In pf1 dedicated healer wasn't a thing... You had scrolls Of heal with UMD at higher levels, you had wands of fiendish healing at low levels, and some scrolls of breath of life here and there.
Most groups did not have a dedicated healer at all. You did your healing outside of combat because in combat it was a loss of actions. Controllers were the game in pf1e because incapacitating the ennemy to the point where he could not do anything was a much better way to mitigate damage.
Glitter dust, hold person, grease, icy prison, ray of enfeeblement, color spray, all of these packed much more of a punch.
This isn't even a me thing, it's outlined in multiple guides on strategy, such as the hammer-arm-anvil strategy guide or most class guides, not to mention treantmonk's legendary wizard guide.
Pf2e mellowed control and thus now combat healer is much more valuable, that I'll grant you.
But if your group had dedicated combat healer in pf1 then that does indicate previous bias? Although I know you boosted difficulty so perhaps it wasn't the original meta you were playing but very much your own bottled group?
Just to give an exemple:
Last parties I DM'ed
pirate crew:
Hunter
Magus
Arcanist
Eldritch cultist (negative channeling, learned CLW once in a while )Return of the runelords:
Monk
Ranger
Witch
Warpriest (did heal, but only herself, eventually got the heal spell though)Rise of the runelords:
Psion
Bard
SummonerKingmaker 2:
Gunslinger
Rogue/sorc
Alchemist
Monk
Shaman (could get the life spirit, but didn't)Kingmaker 1:
Monk/sorc/dragon disciple
Diviner
Oracle (was actually a dedicated healer!)
BarbarianOverall inspiré courage or a way to get it was MUCH more valuable to the group as it allowed for nova strats of killing the ennemy before it acted.
I imagine in PF1 that was the way we played as past low level, you really destroyed everything easily running the game as it was written.
I spent hours constructing enemies that ensured a challenge for the PCs with nearly equivalent ability to ensure they felt challenged.
There was no surviving in PF1 in our games without a dedicated healer and an arcane caster.
That was definitely a play-style preference. Our group has been playing since Advanced D&D. The idea of a D&D game that wasn't deadly wasn't going to fly with our group.
The dedicated healer in every PF1 party I have played in or GMed for was the wand of cure light wounds. Even when there was a cleric in the party, they would almost always be there to focus on fighting demons (wrath of the righteous) or undead (Carrion Crown).
Yeah, healing is terrible in 5e until very high level spells like Heal or Mass Heal. But for most play, being a dedicated healer is a bad strategy in 5e. The meta is to only heal once someone goes unconscious which leads to whack a mole gameplay. PF2e circumvents this through the wounded condition, healing actually heals a lot, but also access to healing is abundant. Every tradition except arcane can heal, and everyone can grab medicine.
5E had what we call pop up healing. That bonus action heal was the most efficient heal in that game. It's one of the reasons why we quit that edition. Way too easy of a game. What a cake walk of a game. You have to play very badly or a DM would have to modify monsters up quite a bit to make that game a challenge much like PF1 in later levels.
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That was definitely a play-style preference. Our group has been playing since Advanced D&D. The idea of a D&D game that wasn't deadly wasn't going to fly with our group.
If your play group is such an outlier in playstyle, why do you continue to post about how certain aspects of the game are required or not useful, like needing the flexible healing for primal or not requiring arcane?
You've spent a lot of time on the forums explaining to everyone that your group is truly and honestly "really hardcore min/maxers" which doesn't really jive with having any perspective on how the game is played by other tables. Not to mention, you've mentioned making things easier for players, not harder, which just falls back to... Are you really looking for hard games with min/maxed strategy or did your group latch on to a playstyle that feels really tough, but in actuality requires them to play certain roles to make it function?
If your play group is such an outlier in playstyle, why do you continue to post about how certain aspects of the game are required or not useful, like needing the flexible healing for primal or not requiring arcane?
You've spent a lot of time on the forums explaining to everyone that your group is truly and honestly "really hardcore min/maxers" which doesn't really jive with having any perspective on how the game is played by other tables. Not to mention, you've mentioned making things easier for players, not harder, which just falls back to... Are you really looking for hard games with min/maxed strategy or did your group latch on to a playstyle that feels really tough, but in actuality requires them to play certain roles to make it function?
Why do you keep taking a post out of context? PF1 is a completely different game than PF2.
I'm glad your group and apparently a few others can win every battle against boss monsters not needing heals. That's great. My group hasn't found that possible across several campaigns. Boss monsters in PF2 are as tough as they've been in my memory. About all they lack from the days of Advanced D&D are save or die effects.
I freely admit that my group must be worse than all these other groups at tactical play because we can't consistently win against boss monsters without needing the heal spell. I do not mind admitting at all that PF2 game designers have made PF2 monsters so tough that my group literally needs combat heals to beat them consistently. It personally makes me happy, but I guess my experience is not common.
As far as saying the arcane list isn't required. Neither is a rogue. Neither is a fighter. Neither is any class. PF2 is built so that you don't really require any particular class.
My group has just found that combat heals and the medicine skill are desirable and make the game run smoother and easier. That makes primal and divine casters more valuable as are their main stats like Wisdom which is good for Medicine and Charisma which is good for intimidate and diplomacy. Pretty simple measurable reasons in PF2.
The arcane list is fine. If it were attached to classes that were more fun to build and play, I'd probably see it used more. It's not as valuable as primal or divine due to the lack of what we consider the highly desirable combat healing ability, but the arcane list is very usable. I do have a player that loves the Magus. I may see someone play the arcane list very soon because I know he will give the Magus a good run now that it is out.
Once again, my compliments to you and your groups ability to beat Challenge +2 or more monsters without needing the heal spell. Glad to hear it.
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As a reminder: None of us knows anything about what "most groups" do. We simply do not have the statistical perspective to make claims like that. Consider using "many groups" or "most groups I encounter" instead.
While this is generally true, the 1e no heal meta is very well established across multiple very broad ranging sources.
While it is perhaps not All, or even a majority of groups that ran this way, the theorycrafters and the people who think way too much about this all arrived at the same conclusion independently.
As a reminder: None of us knows anything about what "most groups" do. We simply do not have the statistical perspective to make claims like that. Consider using "many groups" or "most groups I encounter" instead.While this is generally true, the 1e no heal meta is very well established across multiple very broad ranging sources.
While it is perhaps not All, or even a majority of groups that ran this way, the theorycrafters and the people who think way too much about this all arrived at the same conclusion independently.
A healer was completely unnecessary in PF1 if you ran it by the book past the very early levels. By a certain level a solo wizard could beat nearly everything in the game. The party was just along to benefit from hanging out with the wizard once you reached that point.
A healer was completely unnecessary in PF1 if you ran it by the book past the very early levels. By a certain level a solo wizard could beat nearly everything in the game. The party was just along to benefit from hanging out with the wizard once you reached that point.As a reminder: None of us knows anything about what "most groups" do. We simply do not have the statistical perspective to make claims like that. Consider using "many groups" or "most groups I encounter" instead.While this is generally true, the 1e no heal meta is very well established across multiple very broad ranging sources.
While it is perhaps not All, or even a majority of groups that ran this way, the theorycrafters and the people who think way too much about this all arrived at the same conclusion independently.
It isn't that a healer was unnecessary, it was that healing in combat was almost always a detrimental strategy. Outside of a few very dedicated builds (the Life Oracle and the Life Oradin) cure X wound spells simply did not keep up with damage output. The higher the difficulty of the game, the more likely this was to be true. Yd8+caster level was almost never more healing than an enemy could deal in a single hit, so you're much better off using doing things that stopped the enemy from hitting you at all, up to and including killing the enemy quickly.
Clerics were good to have, but that had a lot more to do with status removal out of combat.
PF2 Heal spells heal much more damage than the Cure spells did, so they can actually outpace enemy damage, but that still doesn't make it a mandatory spell.
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Regarding lists
Personally I think Occult is the best list in the game. It has most of the good spells of arcane (lacking only the wall spells of note I think), but also has access to Soothe, Synesthesia, Calm Emotions and a bunch of other good spells.
Arcane is the second strongest list in the game. No access to healing is a bit suck (though you can cheese out some healing if you’re playing in parties with Dhampirs by using summon spells), but they have much better control spells than Primal. IME, blasting is terrible once you get past level 7. Mooks just have too much HP, the resources you have to spend on blasting to have any notable impact on the fight is quite a lot. Control spells are usually just one or two if the enemy gets lucky rolls to reduce the threat of the fight significantly. Straight up removing the strongest enemy with a spell like Resilient Sphere is something Primal can’t do, removing multiple weaker enemies for a couple of turns with a spell like Paralyze (7) or Sleep (4) is also something they’re unable to do. These kinds of action denials and removal of key threats tend to be far more valuable than spreading out a bit of damage among 5 targets.
Primal is 3rd only because Divine and Elemental are worse.
You should never take elemental. It’s just Primal with all the good spells except wall of stone and wall of ice removed.
A healer was completely unnecessary in PF1 if you ran it by the book past the very early levels. By a certain level a solo wizard could beat nearly everything in the game. The party was just along to benefit from hanging out with the wizard once you reached that point.As a reminder: None of us knows anything about what "most groups" do. We simply do not have the statistical perspective to make claims like that. Consider using "many groups" or "most groups I encounter" instead.While this is generally true, the 1e no heal meta is very well established across multiple very broad ranging sources.
While it is perhaps not All, or even a majority of groups that ran this way, the theorycrafters and the people who think way too much about this all arrived at the same conclusion independently.
It isn't that a healer was unnecessary, it was that healing in combat was almost always a detrimental strategy. Outside of a few very dedicated builds (the Life Oracle and the Life Oradin) cure X wound spells simply did not keep up with damage output. The higher the difficulty of the game, the more likely this was to be true. Yd8+caster level was almost never more healing than an enemy could deal in a single hit, so you're much better off using doing things that stopped the enemy from hitting you at all, up to and including killing the enemy quickly.
Clerics were good to have, but that had a lot more to do with status removal out of combat.
PF2 Heal spells heal much more damage than the Cure spells did, so they can actually outpace enemy damage, but that still doesn't make it a mandatory spell.
Later levels PF1 just broke. Players crushed everything without much of an issue. You didn't really need in combat healing unless you didn't have a well played wizard or similar caster.
Regarding lists
Personally I think Occult is the best list in the game. It has most of the good spells of arcane (lacking only the wall spells of note I think), but also has access to Soothe, Synesthesia, Calm Emotions and a bunch of other good spells.
Arcane is the second strongest list in the game. No access to healing is a bit suck (though you can cheese out some healing if you’re playing in parties with Dhampirs by using summon spells), but they have much better control spells than Primal. IME, blasting is terrible once you get past level 7. Mooks just have too much HP, the resources you have to spend on blasting to have any notable impact on the fight is quite a lot. Control spells are usually just one or two if the enemy gets lucky rolls to reduce the threat of the fight significantly. Straight up removing the strongest enemy with a spell like Resilient Sphere is something Primal can’t do, removing multiple weaker enemies for a couple of turns with a spell like Paralyze (7) or Sleep (4) is also something they’re unable to do. These kinds of action denials and removal of key threats tend to be far more valuable than spreading out a bit of damage among 5 targets.
Primal is 3rd only because Divine and Elemental are worse.
You should never take elemental. It’s just Primal with all the good spells except wall of stone and wall of ice removed.
Blasting is high value use of resources. This is a pretty odd stance tactically speaking.
A paralyze or sleep spell on a successful save don't do much. Even on a failed save, it doesn't do a whole lot to end the fight other than give martials a few extra rounds of hitting them.
A chain lightning can be cast from 500 feet away. You can soften up quite a few mooks using chain lightning. This combined with archery is one of the reasons I found it surprising that archery was viewed with such disdain. A well built archer with a ranged damage caster can have mooks dead before they even close or you can set up kill zones where you are virtually untouchable by mooks or they just run into a martial like a barbarian or fighter who finishes them off like nearly chopped down trees landing the final blow.
In all the campaigns we have played, ranged damage casting power is immense for clearing down mooks. Spells like Paralyze and sleep not so much because if you succeed at the save the resource fills literally wasted. With paralyze they get a save every round and such spells do not work against creatures immune to mental like oozes or some mindless undead and can't exploit weaknesses.
Blasting mooks never feels like wasted resource use as it usually leads to substantial damage leading to a quicker kill speed and reduces actions used to attack by doing the damage at a sufficient range or allowing for an advantageous range set up.
That's kind of irrelevant to this discussion of list power though. For blasting Arcane is one of the best blasting spell lists. You can attack every save and every weakness except alignment damage. Phantasmal calamity is probably one of the best blasting spells in the game which both arcane and occult have.
I'm kind of surprised you haven't seen a druid in action using blasting and a sustained AoE damage spell. If this game had a damage meter, it would blowing by all the martials as the mooks melt like paper in a trashfire.
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I’ve seen a wizard in action using blasting spells. Two of them in fact, from 9-17. They both switched off blasting by the end (17-20) because it was so ineffective despite hitting multiple opponents. Yes, the wizard would outdamage the fighter or rogue hitting 5 opponents. But was any of that damage meaningful? In fact, very little of the damage they dealt was actually meaningful. Making it faster to clean up the last three level-2 enemies, who together only represent slightly above a low threat, is not meaningful contribution. A sleep or paralyze or calm emotions may do nothing on a passed save, but on a failure they reduce the xp of the enemy side substantially. A single calm emotions can turn a severe encounter (or above) into a moderate or less on average by hitting 4 dudes. A paralyze or sleep can do likewise for 2 rounds, while also significantly debuffing the dudes hit if you are so inclined to kill them while they’re down.
That’s what I mean by meaningful contribution. Past level 7, blasting doesn’t reduce the threat of the fight at all. In my experience it doesn’t actually have any payoff at all until about round 3, if you cast it in round 1, and by then the fight’s outcome is mostly decided.
By contrast, spells that can immediately remove certain key threats from the fight on round 1 have turned severe or extreme encounters into cakewalks.
The problem is that while it's true, blasting also works great in encounters with a higher level boss + slightly lower level "mooks", because it actually does something to the boss. While yes, a solid paralyze can take out a chunk of the enemies for a round (and maybe even some of them for 4 rounds), the boss is, more likely than not, completely unaffected.
Meanwhile, even if they save, a blast will still push the boss a bit closer to defeat. While that won't do anything immediately, I've had quite a few fights where that extra damage finished off strong enemies a turn or two earlier than they would have otherwise dropped.
I’ve seen a wizard in action using blasting spells. Two of them in fact, from 9-17. They both switched off blasting by the end (17-20) because it was so ineffective despite hitting multiple opponents. Yes, the wizard would outdamage the fighter or rogue hitting 5 opponents. But was any of that damage meaningful? In fact, very little of the damage they dealt was actually meaningful. Making it faster to clean up the last three level-2 enemies, who together only represent slightly above a low threat, is not meaningful contribution. A sleep or paralyze or calm emotions may do nothing on a passed save, but on a failure they reduce the xp of the enemy side substantially. A single calm emotions can turn a severe encounter (or above) into a moderate or less on average by hitting 4 dudes. A paralyze or sleep can do likewise for 2 rounds, while also significantly debuffing the dudes hit if you are so inclined to kill them while they’re down.
That’s what I mean by meaningful contribution. Past level 7, blasting doesn’t reduce the threat of the fight at all. In my experience it doesn’t actually have any payoff at all until about round 3, if you cast it in round 1, and by then the fight’s outcome is mostly decided.
By contrast, spells that can immediately remove certain key threats from the fight on round 1 have turned severe or extreme encounters into cakewalks.
Depends on how you set up I imagine. Same reason people view archery poorly. If you don't set up for it, then it will look terrible. Paralyze has a 30 foot range. That's very close. Maybe 60 feet with reach. We tend to set up to soften targets with ranged damage, then engage with chokepoints which don't allow the enemy to bring their full numbers to bear.
So ranged attacking works extremely well for us. It wouldn't work very well for a group that likes to engage in martial attacks close up. It is likely the reason why you value reaction attacks far more than I do.
Our set up is usually scout ahead, determine the enemy location and number, draw them in with a big ranged hit into a chokepoint, then focus the damage and healing on the front along the lines and initial targets.
If outside, we might engage from very long range.
We've found action effectiveness reduction comes in a variety of ways, the most reliable is making the enemy use actions to move.
1. You have slow, calm emotions, sleep, paralyze and stun which usually requires a save and a spell resource. These can be useful, but middling reliability.
2. Obfuscating magic like invisibility which reduces the number of useful actions. This becomes less useful at higher level as more creatures have the ability to bypass it.
3. Movement manipulation actions. Knockdowns are not bad. Slowing them down is not bad. Knockbacks are not bad.
But one of the best ways to deal with enemies is hit them at range and force them to use move actions to close the distance while you hit them for damage. It makes them use non-damaging move actions or spell actions like D-door to close the distance, while you stack a bunch of damage on them prior to engagement.
Now I better understand why you like using reaction attacks if you're engaging within that 30 to 60 foot range with no chokepoints. Chokepoints have been a staple of our tactical play across all editions of D&D because they allow you to focus so much power in that small area.
It might also be why I value reflex saves so highly since using a chokepoint in a dungeon or similar structure causes closer grouping. It's also why we value ranged attacking and don't see reaction attacks as quite as valuable as you do. Draw them in, concentrate all the firepower at the point of attack while using AoE to whittle anything behind them down. When you can set this up well, works like a charm.
The main problems we face with this strategy is against something like fiends or earth gliders. For that we highly value banish in a high level slot.
There is a lot of tactical interplay depending on what you're fighting. I imagine every strategy is not one size fits all.
As far as the storm druid, they are able to cast the highest level AoE spell hit nearly every fight along with their big AOE chain lightning. It helps when every fight you have a sustainable storm up adding to your damage every fight. You can also use a second sustain spell while blasting with Effortless Concentration. It's very nasty if you go nova.
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Not sure how you're getting people back on their feet with potions and combat medicine with PF2 boss monsters able to so easily rip through hit points even of better defended martials, much less rip through caster hit points. But experiences seem to differ. I sure wish I could see what some of you are doing at your table to ameliorate 35% plus crit rates with boss monsters with extreme ACs and AOE attacks that can take half your hit points in one round. Just seems very odd to me.
2 things about this question:
- Getting someone back on feet asks for a single hit point. Battle Medicine, Fast Healing (Ichtyosis Mutagen, Witch Focus Spell) are less action costly and as such more efficient than Heal to get someone up.- Outside some very specific classes (Monk comes to mind) putting someone back on feet is a bad strategy, one that cripples parties and increases overall damage taken. First, most enemies wont attack downed PCs if they have a live PC to chew. On the other hand, monsters love to put back down the guy who just got raised, with Wounded/Dying value now getting a pretty big concern. And someone raised is on the ground with no weapon, what do you expect from them?
If your only goal is to win the fight, getting PCs back on feet is a bad strategy unless it happens during the very first round and you have a high expectation that the character will survive for a few rounds with just this healing. Otherwise, attacking is pretty much equivalent in terms of overall efficiency.
Not sure how you're getting people back on their feet with potions and combat medicine with PF2 boss monsters able to so easily rip through hit points even of better defended martials, much less rip through caster hit points. But experiences seem to differ. I sure wish I could see what some of you are doing at your table to ameliorate 35% plus crit rates with boss monsters with extreme ACs and AOE attacks that can take half your hit points in one round. Just seems very odd to me.2 things about this question:
- Getting someone back on feet asks for a single hit point. Battle Medicine, Fast Healing (Ichtyosis Mutagen, Witch Focus Spell) are less action costly and as such more efficient than Heal to get someone up.
- Outside some very specific classes (Monk comes to mind) putting someone back on feet is a bad strategy, one that cripples parties and increases overall damage taken. First, most enemies wont attack downed PCs if they have a live PC to chew. On the other hand, monsters love to put back down the guy who just got raised, with Wounded/Dying value now getting a pretty big concern. And someone raised is on the ground with no weapon, what do you expect from them?If your only goal is to win the fight, getting PCs back on feet is a bad strategy unless it happens during the very first round and you have a high expectation that the character will survive for a few rounds with just this healing. Otherwise, attacking is pretty much equivalent in terms of overall efficiency.
In 5E we used this type of healing due to no penalty for popping up and down. In PF2 the dying and wounded condition make allowing someone to fall a risky endeavor. Better to just prevent it or get them back up with a big boost of hit points.
In a 4 person party if the monster is strong enough to bring one person down, they're going to chew through the rest of the party like falling dominoes. If you have a six person or more party, I can see allowing someone to stay on the ground if the DM has made no adjustments to beef up the creature to challenge a 6 person party.
In a 4 person party when one of the main martials drops, the next one is going to follow them quickly then you have a last martial and likely some kind of caster standing in the way of a ruthless boss monster that is going to chew them down faster than the previous martials.
When I tell you that we heal when needed, I mean the party is going to die if we don't heal. It's not all the time combat healing every battle. It's maybe 3 out of 40 plus fights which is roughly 8 to 10 percent of fights, but in those 8 to 10 percent of fights the healing is needed because we cannot afford to lose the damage or damage mitigation for even a single round.
If you're playing in larger parties than 4 or maybe 5, I can see viewing healing differently if the DM spends no effort to modify to challenge a larger party. Then you can afford to lose up to 3 players without losing damage dealing power because the creature was designed with 4 players in mind.
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Depends on how you set up I imagine. Same reason people view archery poorly. If you don't set up for it, then it will look terrible. Paralyze has a 30 foot range. That's very close. Maybe 60 feet with reach. We tend to set up to soften targets with ranged damage, then engage with chokepoints which don't allow the enemy to bring their full numbers to bear.
So ranged attacking works extremely well for us. It wouldn't work very well for a group that likes to engage in martial attacks close up. It is likely the reason why you value reaction attacks far more than I do.
Possibly, but in all the APs and home games I've played I think I can count on 2 fingers the number of times a combat has started more than 100ft away. Most start within 30 or 60 feet. Reason being that most enemies don't have ranged capabilities, so if the GM decides to let us engage at long range there's no reason to even roll dice. Everyone has a bow out, and provided they're at least trained, all the enemies will be dead or severely injured far before they ever reach you. Resourcelessly as well.
Plus, lots of people like to play melee characters, so if you engage every combat at that range, that kind of leaves the GM 2 options - both of which will feel kind of terrible for the melee players.
Now I better understand why you like using reaction attacks if you're engaging within that 30 to 60 foot range with no chokepoints. Chokepoints have been a staple of our tactical play across all editions of D&D because they allow you to focus so much power in that small area.It might also be why I value reflex saves so highly since using a chokepoint in a dungeon or similar structure causes closer grouping. It's also why we value ranged attacking and don't see reaction attacks as quite as valuable as you do. Draw them in, concentrate all the firepower at the point of attack while using AoE to whittle anything behind them down. When you can set this up well, works like a charm.
The main problems we face with this strategy is against something like fiends or earth gliders. For that we highly value banish in a high level slot.
There is a lot of tactical interplay depending on what you're fighting. I imagine every strategy is not one size fits all.
As far as the storm druid, they are able to cast the highest level AoE spell hit nearly every fight along with their big AOE chain lightning. It helps when every fight you have a sustainable storm up adding to your damage every fight. You can also use a second sustain spell while blasting with Effortless Concentration. It's very nasty if you go nova.
Chokepoints are kind of mixed - if I'm in a dungeon there tends to be chokepoints - though I do tend to end up fighting with a lot of terrain moreso than tight corridors, which kind of reduces the value of range as there is always plenty of cover to hide behind.
If you can see and engage the enemy from 500ft away consistently, I still wouldn't prepare a blast spell past level 7 unless the enemy also had the ability to hit me at that range. I'd just have the entire party with longbow training peppering them and running away.
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The problem is that while it's true, blasting also works great in encounters with a higher level boss + slightly lower level "mooks", because it actually does something to the boss. While yes, a solid paralyze can take out a chunk of the enemies for a round (and maybe even some of them for 4 rounds), the boss is, more likely than not, completely unaffected.
Meanwhile, even if they save, a blast will still push the boss a bit closer to defeat. While that won't do anything immediately, I've had quite a few fights where that extra damage finished off strong enemies a turn or two earlier than they would have otherwise dropped.
Hmm in my experience the opposite is the case. The blast often does middling damage to the boss, and middling damage to the mooks as well. The actual threat of the encounter has not changed at all, aside from the potential for the boss to require one less strike to take down.
Whereas if you're looking at something like a level+2 boss with 4 level-2 mooks, and you paralyze or calm the mooks, it's now dropped to a severe or moderate threat and the actual chance of the party losing has therefore decreased signficantly.
This only gets more true the higher level you get, where level+ enemies just become less scary because number manipulation is easier and their damage isn't that good anymore. Lots of level- enemies are the real threats at high levels, and preventing a bunch of them from acting at all helps a lot.
Not to forget that a lot of high level spells also debuff severly, such as Weird and Wail of the Banshee.
Always trying to blast with the same spell is pretty much as bad an idea in PF2 as a cleric only memorizing heal spells. Encounters in PF2 are too tactically driven for almost any character to try to do the same thing every round of every encounter.
The arcane list is valuable because it makes it very easy to “have a spell for that” for almost any situation, especially if you fold in scrolls. When you only get 3 spells of any level, it becomes difficult to have a variety of top level debuff and blast spells memorized, much less the cool new buff spells you just got access to with the newest level of spells. I have seen a lot of druids relegated to/expected to be memorizing 2 top level (or top 2 level) heal spells and that usually means they are blasting with 1 or 2 spell slots for the day, and otherwise using their focus spell every encounter. Storm druids have a powerful one, but it is reflex driven and stuck at one damage type. Not a bad damage type, but one that will sometimes be ineffective. Wild shape is more flexible, but also more limiting to what your caster can do. Animal and plant are much more reactionary with their focus spells. I am not saying any of these druids are bad, but “taking advantage of the flexibility of casting spells” is not something druids do all that well, despite being prepared casters.
Clerics can kinda run into the same boat, although party composition and expectations can go a long way in relieving “healbot duty” or other pigeonholing of roles.
We’ve been having a lot of fun with a 3 person party of fighter, ranger and wizard, even going up against level +2 enemies fighting alongside several nooks. We end a lot of fights with one of us on the ground and less than 10 hp between us, but all of us action steal and debuff as well as hit hard and provide situational bonuses to each other. We rarely win fights in the same way twice and everyone is having fun. Someone is certain to die eventually, but we’ve had characters die with 2 and even 3 dedicated healers as well.
When I tell you that we heal when needed, I mean the party is going to die if we don't heal. It's not all the time combat healing every battle. It's maybe 3 out of 40 plus fights which is roughly 8 to 10 percent of fights, but in those 8 to 10 percent of fights the healing is needed because we cannot afford to lose the damage or damage mitigation for even a single round.
In such situations, I've found Heal to be worse than some other forms of healing. If you're gonna die, it means you need to get the hell out of here. Heal costs at least 2 actions and as such is very static. Heal is often synonymous with losing your healer.
Medic's visitation is by far the best heal when you need to run away, unfortunately it's level 4 so a bit late (as we're speaking low level). Battle Medicine can be fine if the downed character is next to someone with it (the advantage of Battle Medicine is that everybody can get it, so you have more chance to have someone next to the downed character). Potions are nice because everyone can have one but they cost 2 actions. The Witch fast healing Focus Spell is also awesome as it will raise the character rounds after rounds.Among all the fights my groups had to run away, the healers were not saving as much as the medics (I even had a case where there was both a Medic and a Cleric and the Cleric ran away while the Medic saved the day).
Overall, I've found that Heal is never used to run away but to stand your ground. In that case, it's partly irrelevant: If you are still strong enough to end the fight, you're certainly not that close to a TPK/character death.
Don't misunderstand me, I also find Heal to be super strong (and a bit overtuned in my opinion). But not to the point of being so strong that a party without it will experience significantly more deaths.
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It isn't that a healer was unnecessary [In PF1], it was that healing in combat was almost always a detrimental strategy.
Once the heal spell comes online healing in combat becomes a much more viable strategy. Still not really optimal but at least it was quite viable.
And very useful to have one or 2 heal spells in your pocket for the occassional crisis where they were needed (eg, you're surprised and bad guy then wins intiative). Or, of course, better still a mass heal.
Edit: Of course, by the time you GET to level 11 and the heal spell becomes an option campaigns differ HUGELY in how they are trying to keep the game still playable as it rapidly breaks all around you. Just about every group has some mixture of house rules, formal and informal agreements to keep the power creep in check and to keep martials and spell casters even vaguely in the same ball park power wise. Sufficiently so that just about any statement about mid to high level play has to be taken with the massive caveat "At some (or many) tables".
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When I tell you that we heal when needed, I mean the party is going to die if we don't heal. It's not all the time combat healing every battle. It's maybe 3 out of 40 plus fights which is roughly 8 to 10 percent of fights, but in those 8 to 10 percent of fights the healing is needed because we cannot afford to lose the damage or damage mitigation for even a single round.In such situations, I've found Heal to be worse than some other forms of healing. If you're gonna die, it means you need to get the hell out of here.
Running isn't always an option. One or more of the PCs are down, grabbed, etc. The enemy holds the only exit point. The world is going to end if you don't win NOW. etc.
I'm kinda in the middle ground. I'm playing a cleric in one campaign (Abomination Vaults) and a druid in another (Extinction Curse). Same group of 5 players with a different player being the GM.
My cleric's primary role in the group is healer (he is a medic as well as using the heal spell). He also does other stuff, of course, but that is his primary role. We've run into quite a few situations where running away wasn't an option (not without abandoning at least 1 character) and his healing has (mostly) been enough to let us win some fights where we'd have PREFERRED to just run away.
In Extinction Curse I'm playing a druid (just reached 15th level). There just about every character has SOME healing ability. My druid probably has the most healing (he always has his second highest spell as a heal spell and a couple of lower levelled ones, and is a medic for battle medicine) but healing isn't his primary thing. He is a JOAT, blasting, utility spells, wild shape all used as the situation warrants. He fairly rarely uses his heal spell but it has saved our bacon a couple of times (usually when I desperately needed to get somebody up from range with enough hit points so they could take at least 1 hit).
But I'm with Deriven. Sometimes in combat healing IS the best use of 1 or 2 actions and the build resources. Often it isn't.
It isn't that a healer was unnecessary [In PF1], it was that healing in combat was almost always a detrimental strategy.Once the heal spell comes online healing in combat becomes a much more viable strategy. Still not really optimal but at least it was quite viable.
And very useful to have one or 2 heal spells in your pocket for the occassional crisis where they were needed (eg, you're surprised and bad guy then wins intiative). Or, of course, better still a mass heal.
Edit: Of course, by the time you GET to level 11 and the heal spell becomes an option campaigns differ HUGELY in how they are trying to keep the game still playable as it rapidly breaks all around you. Just about every group has some mixture of house rules, formal and informal agreements to keep the power creep in check and to keep martials and spell casters even vaguely in the same ball park power wise. Sufficiently so that just about any statement about mid to high level play has to be taken with the massive caveat "At some (or many) tables".
Agreed all around, but Devirin was talking about very early levels.
Completely agree that healing downed allies in the hope that they contribute to the fight is a bad tactic (doing the bare minimum so they don't die is not though, this is still a role playing game and unless you are playing a douche I think most people would try to save their comrades).
Healing so another ally can take 1 more hit is okay, but instead of that, I would prefer to focus on contributing to the progress of the fight and remove the need of in-combat healing in the first place. On average one wall spell will do 10 times more than any heal spell of the same level.
I think this specially applies to the early levels, if you are likely to be downed in 1 hit, there is no reason to put you in your feet so you go down again.
Depends on how you set up I imagine. Same reason people view archery poorly. If you don't set up for it, then it will look terrible. Paralyze has a 30 foot range. That's very close. Maybe 60 feet with reach. We tend to set up to soften targets with ranged damage, then engage with chokepoints which don't allow the enemy to bring their full numbers to bear.
So ranged attacking works extremely well for us. It wouldn't work very well for a group that likes to engage in martial attacks close up. It is likely the reason why you value reaction attacks far more than I do.
Possibly, but in all the APs and home games I've played I think I can count on 2 fingers the number of times a combat has started more than 100ft away. Most start within 30 or 60 feet. Reason being that most enemies don't have ranged capabilities, so if the GM decides to let us engage at long range there's no reason to even roll dice. Everyone has a bow out, and provided they're at least trained, all the enemies will be dead or severely injured far before they ever reach you. Resourcelessly as well.
Plus, lots of people like to play melee characters, so if you engage every combat at that range, that kind of leaves the GM 2 options - both of which will feel kind of terrible for the melee players.
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Now I better understand why you like using reaction attacks if you're engaging within that 30 to 60 foot range with no chokepoints. Chokepoints have been a staple of our tactical play across all editions of D&D because they allow you to focus so much power in that small area.It might also be why I value reflex saves so highly since using a chokepoint in a dungeon or similar structure causes closer grouping. It's also why we value ranged attacking and don't see reaction attacks as quite as valuable as you do. Draw them in, concentrate all the firepower at the point of attack while using AoE to whittle anything behind them down. When you can set this up well, works
The Extinction Curse AP is well set up for druid blasting across levels with lots of outdoor combats that can be set up at longer range.
Chokepoints are a way to control action economy against groups. I've used them across editions of D&D and PF1. They are better than spells if the monster has no means to bypass them because it's a no resource method where the DM just has to say, "The monster can't do anything with its actions other than maybe curse at you." They work just as well in PF2 as an action economy controller using terrain.
I imagine it's like how you build parties to take advantage of reaction attacks. We build parties to take advantage of choke points valuing archery and ranged attacking.
I like blasting in PF2. Nothing feels worse than a save against a spell used in a high level slot that does nothing. Blasting almost always does something and often a lot of damage across multiple targets. I imagine that's why synesthesia is so popular because even one round of that spell makes you feel like you did something great as the martial attackers tee off. I've thought of trying calm emotions more than a few times, but I just hate using incap slots in the highest level slot for a spell that might completely fail and feel terrible.
I do like spells like phantasmal calamity though. Damage with an additional effect is so much better than one or the other. Phantasmal killer I like too. More spells designed with both would make casters feel a whole lot better.
When I tell you that we heal when needed, I mean the party is going to die if we don't heal. It's not all the time combat healing every battle. It's maybe 3 out of 40 plus fights which is roughly 8 to 10 percent of fights, but in those 8 to 10 percent of fights the healing is needed because we cannot afford to lose the damage or damage mitigation for even a single round.In such situations, I've found Heal to be worse than some other forms of healing. If you're gonna die, it means you need to get the hell out of here. Heal costs at least 2 actions and as such is very static. Heal is often synonymous with losing your healer.
Medic's visitation is by far the best heal when you need to run away, unfortunately it's level 4 so a bit late (as we're speaking low level). Battle Medicine can be fine if the downed character is next to someone with it (the advantage of Battle Medicine is that everybody can get it, so you have more chance to have someone next to the downed character). Potions are nice because everyone can have one but they cost 2 actions. The Witch fast healing Focus Spell is also awesome as it will raise the character rounds after rounds.
Among all the fights my groups had to run away, the healers were not saving as much as the medics (I even had a case where there was both a Medic and a Cleric and the Cleric ran away while the Medic saved the day).Overall, I've found that Heal is never used to run away but to stand your ground. In that case, it's partly irrelevant: If you are still strong enough to end the fight, you're certainly not that close to a TPK/character death.
Don't misunderstand me, I also find Heal to be super strong (and a bit overtuned in my opinion). But not to the point of being so strong that a party without it will experience significantly more deaths.
Unless I see data across several groups, my experience is heal has prevented deaths often.
Off the top of my head in recent fights where heal prevented deaths:
Voidglutton healing prevented a wipe. Nasty encounter.
River Drake required some healing due to environment.
Destrachan had surprisingly strong individual and AOE attacks for our level.
At this point I'll accept that experiences differ. For my particular group having a heal spell is essential for the surprisingly tough fights that seem to show up in PF2. I'd say it's used about 8 to 10% of our fights with Medicine covering the rest.
So far the most popular casters are primal and divine casters, usually a druid or primal sorcerer or a divine witch. The main reason they are liked is because they can heal that 8 or 10% of fights, then the other 90% do something else highly useful like blast, buff, debuff, condition remove, or the like.
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Agreed all around, but Devirin was talking about very early levels.
It isn't that a healer was unnecessary [In PF1], it was that healing in combat was almost always a detrimental strategy.Once the heal spell comes online healing in combat becomes a much more viable strategy. Still not really optimal but at least it was quite viable.
And very useful to have one or 2 heal spells in your pocket for the occassional crisis where they were needed (eg, you're surprised and bad guy then wins intiative). Or, of course, better still a mass heal.
Edit: Of course, by the time you GET to level 11 and the heal spell becomes an option campaigns differ HUGELY in how they are trying to keep the game still playable as it rapidly breaks all around you. Just about every group has some mixture of house rules, formal and informal agreements to keep the power creep in check and to keep martials and spell casters even vaguely in the same ball park power wise. Sufficiently so that just about any statement about mid to high level play has to be taken with the massive caveat "At some (or many) tables".
Heal spell is good. I had a life oracle with all the little perks that let them quicken their heal while casting a group heal if needed. But by the time we quit PF1, I had so many house rules and spent so much time prepping enemies to make them challenging that any discussion of PF1 using the actual rules would be a moot point.
PF1 by the rules with my players didn't work. They just min-maxed their characters to the point the game was unplayable. Dragons were dead in 1 round or debilitated from spells. It just got ridiculous.
I used to design enemies specifically to have a cool fight with martials. One of those knock down and drag out brawls that look great in fantasy movies, then the caster would come along and go, "Look, a martial, I'm going to take him out in 1 round with a such and such spell." Then the martial had no one to fight and the caster (usually wizard) moved on to the next target. High level wizards really didn't need anyone else to play the game in PF1. Which is probably why Paizo took a bat the size of the Empire State Building to them in PF2 compared to what they were in PF1.
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Off the top of my head in recent fights where heal prevented.
As a side note, I don't see Heal easily saving a party against the VoidGlutton. Quite the opposite, if you insist on fighting it you may end up with a TPK, especially if you're level 4. And Magic Missile is the easiest solution to dispatch the VoidGlutton. So, a case where having an Arcane caster can save the day.
The drake is easy to escape as I hardly see it pursuing you inside the dungeon. You just have to leave the water, which can require a few checks, but that's all. The only dangerous case is if you come from the upper floor.
The Destrachan is easy to escape if you come from the stairs as it's too large to fit in and it's the main entrance to its room as the other one means you have fought the Behemoth first.
In my opinion, your vision of Heal comes from the fact that your parties have it. If they didn't, they'd find alternate solutions in most cases.
Running isn't always an option.
And Heal isn't always a solution. From Deriven's word, Heal saves a character every 10 to 12 fights at low level. Sorry, but that's not my experience. Heal is definitely strong, but I don't see groups without an access to Heal piling the corpses of their dead comrades.
Off the top of my head in recent fights where heal prevented.** spoiler omitted **
In my opinion, your vision of Heal comes from the fact that your parties have it. If they didn't, they'd find alternate solutions in most cases.
Running isn't always an option.And Heal isn't always a solution. From Deriven's word, Heal saves a character every 10 to 12 fights at low level. Sorry, but that's not my experience. Heal is definitely strong, but I don't see groups without an access to Heal piling the corpses of their dead comrades.
I think if you were to do an experiment of groups using heal versus groups not using heal you would find a statistically significant difference in success and survivability, but as I know that is unlikely to happen I imagine we'll disagree over the power of heal when PF2 is run per the standard rules in the game with an average competent GM running Challenge+2 or higher monsters against a group of 4 (maybe 5) PCs. To put it simply, I think you would stack a lot more corpses in groups not using heal.
I've played with a lot of GMs over the years that run the game differently than I do. It's led to much easier play. I tend to get bored in such games as tactical combat play is my favorite aspect of these games, but everyone's preference differs. I know a lot of groups enjoy the role-play aspect or skill puzzles or the like. A GM who runs such a group will run a very different type of game than I do and in such games I can imagine heal feeling less necessary. This is especially true if you play with younger people who don't like the wargame aspect of RPGs. You can play these games with a lot of different goals in mind modifying encounters accordingly.
Well, I'm sure we beat this horse about as dead as we can. I enjoyed the discussion even if others didn't. I find RPG game discussions of this nature interesting. I know different tables play different ways. RPGs aren't particularly hard to play a lot of different ways and have fun even if the base game rules value certain abilities mechanically over others. PF2 is about the most customizable and varied RPG I've yet played in the D&D niche even with the numbers being as tight as they are.
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I think if you were to do an experiment of groups using heal versus groups not using heal you would find a statistically significant difference in success and survivability, but as I know that is unlikely to happen I imagine we'll disagree over the power of heal when PF2 is run per the standard rules in the game with an average competent GM running Challenge+2 or higher monsters against a group of 4 (maybe 5) PCs. To put it simply, I think you would stack a lot more corpses in groups not using heal.
That would not be a valid experiment.
You completely forget that the game is not one dimensional. For example, if your groups with Heal have less deaths but more TPKs? If they more often fail missions, secondary objectives but have less issues during combat? If beginners tend to always play with a Cleric but experienced players know how to build other types of parties?
Also, you speak of playing it hard, but what "hard"? For example, your way of playing the VoidGlutton is clearly too nasty to my taste. But on the other side, I don't hesitate to add encounters on top of another. I manage monsters perception extremely closely and roughly once per floor my players are getting a double, triple and even quadruple encounter at once.
Who's the one playing the harshest way? None of us, it's just that the challenges are different. In your case, Heal is major, in my case, scouting is a necessity.
And playing it hard doesn't make your return of experience more true. Because the chances of death are not linearily spread accross difficulties. Maybe someone playing in even a harsher difficulty than you will tell you that Heal is less important than whatever other spell because when you stress the game even more you meet other patterns asking for other ways of fighting.
On top of that, you seem to have a very specific way of building parties. One caster and 3 martials. It seems obvious that your group has found one very specific and efficient strategy. But it doesn't mean there isn't another way of building parties with the same efficiency that puts more stress on another aspect of the game. Exocist's "full reaction party" proves it.
Your experience, as interesting and complex as it is, stays a single one. You can't generalize it.
So, I clearly play my monsters dumber than yours, allowing my players to more easily escape. I also find that it's nasty to prevent their escape when they rarely do that against monsters. On the other hand, it happened more than once that my players triggered a big ball of s**t with a monster escaping and raising an alarm. As such, they are used to run away when things get out of control. Mobile healing (Doctor's Visitation being the top) has saved lives. Static healing like Heal tend to be unusable when you need to get the hell out of here.
That's my experience in correlation with my GMing style.
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I have to say, the 3 martial approach is also quite effective in our AoA group. That's a lot of focus fire and control (AoO, Stand Still, Gang Up/Debilitate/Opportune Backstab) that can be brought to bear.
Thats also probably a lot of easy to obtain flanking opportunities as well as inherent ruggedness, as martials usually are among the more sturdy classes.
And especially flanking is the one thing that can easily increase overall accuracy and which is often left out when talking about martial vs caster accuracy. And yes, your party also can grab, trip or Bon Mot in order to not only help your martials, however any of this requires at least some kind of investment, even if it is just a free hand, and usually also at least some kind of successful check, which in itself might prove quite difficult, especially versus level +2/3/4 opponents.
We started our AoA campaign with 4 players and with a Fighter and a switch hitting Ranger as our martials. At that time things were really rough for the Fighter, who still managed to do most of his job due to the inherent to hit bonus. However things changed drastically when we upped to 5 players and the Fighter got a Barbarian as back-up, especially in dungeons, where the Ranger also usually switches to melee. Flanking galore everywhere and much easier fights, even with adjusted XP budget and usually more enemies and/or tougher enemies.
Completely agree that healing downed allies in the hope that they contribute to the fight is a bad tactic (doing the bare minimum so they don't die is not though, this is still a role playing game and unless you are playing a douche I think most people would try to save their comrades).
Healing so another ally can take 1 more hit is okay, but instead of that, I would prefer to focus on contributing to the progress of the fight and remove the need of in-combat healing in the first place. On average one wall spell will do 10 times more than any heal spell of the same level.
I think this specially applies to the early levels, if you are likely to be downed in 1 hit, there is no reason to put you in your feet so you go down again.
Probably depends on edition. In PF1? For sure. In PF2? I find my Medic Cleric pretty surprisingly routinely in severe PFS encounters is bringing multiple martials back up from down in a single turn (Doctors Visition Battle Medicine one, two action heal another), and that's enough HP that each can typically take a hit and stay up afterward. Turning my 3 actions into 6 party actions is IMO way more effective at getting a severe encounter down than most of what the frankly pretty weak Divine spell list can throw at it. It doesn't seem like enemies should be downing multiple people in a single turn, but a couple of crits from them can really wreck someone's day and this happens far more than I'd expect it to. Maybe it's less of an issue in an AP where we're all the same level.
My experience has a DM is that unless I throw lots of AoE mook encounters at them, blasters feel weak. My 8 year old son plays a greatsword fighter (which isn't even an optimal fighter) and can outdamage any blaster on a single enemy encounter easily, and it's not close. But casters doing other types of magic can really hinder enemies or help the party a lot, and while some people just don't like the more support caster playstyle, it's really effective in this system.
If you really want to play a blaster, you need to have ways to target weak saves or teammates doing things like Demoralize to lower saves so you can land your spells. Because those boss type enemies are probably not failing their good saves very often. (A lot of players also don't use Recall Knowledge enough to find enemy weaknesses, when it's very rewarding to do that in PF2.)