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Known issue. Get a staff of divination to cast true strike if you want to use spell attacks. Otherwise stick to save-based spells.
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PF2 is a teamwork game. Frighten enemies, reduce their AC by other means, get buffed. Analysing PF2 characters in white room theorycraft and under the PF1 "everybody is fully self-sufficient" paradigm will lead you to a conclusion that casters (not just psyhic) are inferior to martials, actual play which relies on characters collaborating with each other lessens the problem significantly.
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PF2 is a teamwork game. Frighten enemies, reduce their AC by other means, get buffed. Analysing PF2 characters in white room theorycraft and under the PF1 "everybody is fully self-sufficient" paradigm will lead you to a conclusion that casters (not just psyhic) are inferior to martials, actual play which relies on characters collaborating with each other lessens the problem significantly.
I mean yes and no. PF2 is a teamwork driven game and everything looks better in that context but...
Spell attacks are still kind of lame.
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I am once again asking what would be the point of playing a martial if casters could do reliably comparative damage with at-will magical ranged attacks while at the same having all the utility/narrative-altering magic at their disposal. I'm yet to hear a good answer to that, beyond "well idk you can have fun playing a guy in armor with a shield, all I want is just to win the game"
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I am once again asking what would be the point of playing a martial if casters could do reliably comparative damage with at-will magical ranged attacks while at the same having all the utility/narrative-altering magic at their disposal. I'm yet to hear a good answer to that, beyond "well idk you can have fun playing a guy in armor with a shield, all I want is just to win the game"
Did you reply in the wrong thread? I don't see anything on that subject in any of the previous posts.
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That was speaking to the general conversation on casters/martials in PF2, which this thread is another rehash of.
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I slightly agree with Not Tooth Bag.
I will add to the conversation that elemental damage types that attack spells do are more common weaknesses than physical. Also attack spells scale higher than martial attacks so will do more dpr when they hit. So anyone like a Psychic who needs to hit spell attacks to work needs to spend the time to make sure they have the best chance to hit(like targeting mobs>bosses, using skills or other spells to lower ac ect.).
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That was speaking to the general conversation on casters/martials in PF2, which this thread is another rehash of.
I mean, this thread is mostly about spell attacks, which are generally behind the curve for casters anyways. The comparison to martials is only relevant insofar as that it shows why the math is problematic.
Produce Flame with a +1 chance to hit doesn't invalidate anyone. It's not exactly a powerhouse use of actions to begin with. The fact that hacky workarounds like true strike and the shadow signet already exist kind of undermine this whole notion that spell attack balance is a razor's edge away from ruining the whole game. Oftentimes those bonuses can be even better, even.
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I am once again asking what would be the point of playing a martial if casters could do reliably comparative damage with at-will magical ranged attacks while at the same having all the utility/narrative-altering magic at their disposal. I'm yet to hear a good answer to that, beyond "well idk you can have fun playing a guy in armor with a shield, all I want is just to win the game"
I am not seeing a contradiction here. People like to hit, so let them hit. You can always tweak damage so cantrips are guaranteed to be behind martial attacks. The whole discussion about "...but True Strike!" is really just convincing me more and more that it would probably have been better to ditch that abomination (from a balancing perspective) of a spell and to have spell attacks and melee attacks work exactly the same way, using the same items, at least as far as to-hit ratio is concerned.
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The whole discussion about "...but True Strike!" is really just convincing me more and more that it would probably have been better to ditch that abomination (from a balancing perspective) of a spell and to have spell attacks and melee attacks work exactly the same way, using the same items, at least as far as to-hit ratio is concerned.
I couldn't agree more: every time I see "...but True Strike!" as a reason something underperforms I want to scream. Instead of the Variant Rule Automatic Bonus Progression I wish they'd have done a No True Strike Variant Rule. ;)
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I am once again asking what would be the point of playing a martial if casters could do reliably comparative damage with at-will magical ranged attacks while at the same having all the utility/narrative-altering magic at their disposal. I'm yet to hear a good answer to that, beyond "well idk you can have fun playing a guy in armor with a shield, all I want is just to win the game"I am not seeing a contradiction here. People like to hit, so let them hit. You can always tweak damage so cantrips are guaranteed to be behind martial attacks. The whole discussion about "...but True Strike!" is really just convincing me more and more that it would probably have been better to ditch that abomination (from a balancing perspective) of a spell and to have spell attacks and melee attacks work exactly the same way, using the same items, at least as far as to-hit ratio is concerned.
You're aware that part of the power of cantrips is that they do typed damage beyond P/B/S, meaning that you can hit vulnerabilities? If you tweak casters to hit more often but do less damage with electric arc, you're automatically making them much more powerful against anything with vulnerability to electricity, and at the same time shrinking your design space, because suddenly a hypothetical ability to inflict vulnerabilities must take into the account that casters can exploit that far easier than martials possibly could.
Not to mention that instead of having the caster fandom kvetch about not hitting as often, you'd have them moan that cantrips are doing 1d3 or 1d4 damage per level and it's silly low compared to what you can do with a bow.
True Strike is working as intended. If you're expecting your caster to be a damage dealer just behind martials AND can alter the game with your utility magic at the same time, you're expecting too much.
And it's always the same bunch of people (Temperans will be here in 5 minutes, he's just adjusting his makeup) going on about the same thing for the last 3 years.
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Telekinetic projectile, gouging claw, ray of frost etc. are not incredibly situational. Electric arc is, if anything, TOO good for a cantrip. Not in the OP territory, but a bit overboard if you ask me.
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I think a mark of how spell attacks are much worse than spell saves shows a lot in how often they let people cheat spell attacks.
Magus gets to use their weapon bonuses for spell attacks, eldritch archer gets to use weapon bonuses for spell attacks but they would never ever be allowed to use that for Save DC spells because they're much better than spell attacks.
I'm not a huge fan of how single target Fireball does more damage than Shocking Grasp and spell attacks are not given anything to compensate for that they do nothing on a failure in my opinion.
Too be clear, I don't think spellcasters in general are bad but I think the spell attacks basically have no place at all in your repertoire unless you can "cheat" them to your advantage.
I also think True Strike warps the game a lot when it comes to these (and one of the ways to "cheat" spell attacks imo), True Strike boosts damage on spell attacks by about 50% (and even more sometimes) which is pretty nuts all things considered for a first level spell slot that you can easily use a staff or scrolls for.
True Strike is so powerful that a Magus would do better to True Strike + Spellstrike with a cantrip than with Shocking Grasp in their highest level spell slot. Of course you can combine these and that is where their power truly shines for me.
The psychic class as an example will always have a Staff of Divination on themselves if they use the amped spell attacks or you're just leaving an insane amount of damage on the table.
So I think I rather have much more consistency in spell attacks (maybe just let them do glancing hits like save dc spells) at the cost of having all of them being insanely warped around True Strike which just buffs them to an astronomical degree.
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If you're expecting your caster to be a damage dealer just behind martials AND can alter the game with your utility magic at the same time, you're expecting too much.
It all comes down to this.
The question being, why? God caster delusions or game design requirement, you decide. I mean, the game more or less assumes that eveybody participates in and contributes to combat. So in order to contribute for any non-pure-support caster this means "be a damage dealer just behind martials". And cantrips are a meaningful way to do so, at least they are far better than to resort to such wizardly things like throwing darts once you ran out of spells, just like we did in the "good old days". The only question now is how far behind is acceptable for class balance and how to achieve it. Mathematically speaking there is no major difference in between how effective damage is achieved. Keeping hit rates low but potential damage up will yield the same result as keeping hit rates high but appropriately reducing any potential damage as long as your sample size is sufficiently large. However from a psychological point of view the difference in between the two solutions is huge and likely the main driver behind such discussions.
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But it isn't a real problem to a spellcaster using magic as solution to their magical limitations. In fact thematically makes sense that this is the best chosen solution for spellcasters.
The main problem IMO is that the currently solutions "locks" the caster choices. OK Staff of Divination allow to improve the attack spells hit rate but and if don't I want to use a staff? Or if do I want to use another staff that don't have true strike? There's basically no option. You fall in a "must have" situation that many people don't like.
Same can be said to Shadow Signet. It's allows to choose the most weak defenses of your target but its counts as metamagic restricting the player to use it with other metamagic spells or similar restricted spell variations like amps (I current don't understand why amp still cannot be used with metamagics once they now always uses focus points).
All solution are like "if you want to improve your spell attack hit-rate you have to sacrifice something" while when we compare to Strikes (including Spellstrike) almost every weapon gives +1/+2/+3 by default not matter what this magic weapon do. There's no sacrifice behind of them you basically will receive a +1 in your attacks over the time when you are founding/buying your weapons.
This is one of many strange overexagerated restriction that PF2 does to spellcasters.
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One other thing:
At the top of the ivory tower I know that True Strike is very powerful and will get items like Staff of Divination, independent familiars carrying scrolls in their hands, maybe gloves of storing, pick up Shadow Signet because I keep track of new releases, and be very effective.
I just think the game is in a better place the more accessible the baseline is and reduce the jank you require to be effective.
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OKay, there is a lot of straight BS in this thread, lets put it to rest.
1) True Strike is not exclusive to casters, anyone can get access to it several times a day.
2) The chassis differences between martials and casters are much greater than ability to hit. Casters generally also have worse HP, worse saves on-level, armor generally tops at expert, worse action economy, etc. They pay for their utility already.
3) Martials can also do things outside of swinging to hit. Every martial class has access to abilites which allow them to do all sorts of things. Combat maneuvers also exist and are much better for martials than casters, so lets stop pretending like martials only hit AC.
4) Range is not exclusive to casters, nor is melee range exclusive to martials. Bow damage builds can be some of the highest in the game, and its not like Gunslingers don't exist.
But, and most importantly, none of that is actually relevant, or else it would be present in all caster damage options, not just spell attack rolls.
If you think fireball is fine, but acid arrow would be OP if it actually hit someone, you aren't grasping the issue.
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The question being, why?If you're expecting your caster to be a damage dealer just behind martials AND can alter the game with your utility magic at the same time, you're expecting too much.
It all comes down to this.
Because white room theorycraft can give you your to hit % and damage curves but it will never tell you how powerful, in terms of practical gameplay, is your ability to teleport, dispel magic, conjure cozy huts, summon stuff, shadow walk, create walls etc. etc.
If what rocks your life is the ability to see big numbers of damage, score frags and take names, but you ignore all the other crazy stuff casters can do, you'll have a problem with PF2. Heck, you likely had a "why casters can't be good blasters without a really weird combo of racial traits, feats and items" problem in PF1, not noticing that the fact that you could be a good blaster on the top of Persistent Spell SoSs nonsense was absolutely out of any reasonable line.
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Because white room theorycraft can give you your to hit % and damage curves but it will never tell you how powerful, in terms of practical gameplay, is your ability to teleport, dispel magic, conjure cozy huts, summon stuff, shadow walk, create walls etc. etc.
Do non-casters in your games just stand around aimlessly until its there turn to roll attack again?
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I feel like this is a very telling line. I get the sense that you have an emotional investment in this that won't be swayed by argument.
the caster fandom kvetch
Says the guy who walked into the thread stating that there's "a lot of BS that I will now put to rest" :D
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Psychic dependency on spell attack roll spells is being blown out of proportion.
Occult cantrips are less spell attack roll oriented than any other tradition of magic.
The oscillating wave conscious mind is spell attack roll heavy. Amped Produce flame does gross amounts of damage in melee and would be ridiculous to make as accurate as melee weapons...which can mostly be done with adding true strike. It is the barbarian option of the psychic builds and is an outlier, not a baseline. Also, all higher level spells you get are saving throw spells, often targeting reflex, which the occult tradition is generally lacking.
The distant grasp gets a fort targeting area of effect cantrip alongside telekinetic projectile, it is not spell attack dependent.
Unbounded step gets phase bolt, a spell attack roll cantrip that deliberately gets an accuracy bypass built into it.
All of these builds can add daze and chill touch to not target AC, and phase bolt to get advantages against cover that other classes cant.
The solution to "the spell attack" problem has always been flexibility and variety. "Casters get choices" is why making it easy to specialize in one specific cantrip and never cast anything else is something that the game generally tries to avoid.
"But what about electric arc.." is the more common "what about" I hear and it reminds me of the bows situation. Players love having at least one easy option that is easy to visualize a successful and efficient path with. PF2 provides this with classes, with weapons, with skills, and with spells. Electric Arc is the short bow of spells, just like Fighter is the short bow of classes, just like athletics, medicine and intimidation are the short bows of skills. Just like truestrike is the short bow of spell attack roll fixes.
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Do non-casters in your games just stand around aimlessly until its there turn to roll attack again?
Because white room theorycraft can give you your to hit % and damage curves but it will never tell you how powerful, in terms of practical gameplay, is your ability to teleport, dispel magic, conjure cozy huts, summon stuff, shadow walk, create walls etc. etc.
Something tells me you're emotionally invested in the argument if you're going this route.
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Says the guy who walked into the thread stating that there's "a lot of BS that I will now put to rest" :DI feel like this is a very telling line. I get the sense that you have an emotional investment in this that won't be swayed by argument.
the caster fandom kvetch
Well yeah, there was a lot of half-truths and hidden assumptions that were being used to paint an invalid picture of the situation. Calling out hypocrisy doesn't make one themselves a hypocrite.
If you are going to talk about builds of casters where you employ specific spells, items and feats to get your desired result, but only use a vanilla caricature of a martial, you aren't speaking objectively.
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Something tells me you're emotionally invested in the argument if you're going this route.Do non-casters in your games just stand around aimlessly until its there turn to roll attack again?
Because white room theorycraft can give you your to hit % and damage curves but it will never tell you how powerful, in terms of practical gameplay, is your ability to teleport, dispel magic, conjure cozy huts, summon stuff, shadow walk, create walls etc. etc.
Ah, the "No U" line of argument when you get called out.
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The solution to "the spell attack" problem has always been flexibility and variety. "Casters get choices" is why making it easy to specialize in one specific cantrip and never cast anything else is something that the game generally tries to avoid.
Doesn't this carry with it the implication that spell attack rolls are a designed underclass of spell, which requires investment to use effectively?
How, for example, would a newer player be expected to know these things and plan accordingly? It just seems like a bad design philosophy for some things to only work effectively once you have a certain level of game knowledge.
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The question being, why?If you're expecting your caster to be a damage dealer just behind martials AND can alter the game with your utility magic at the same time, you're expecting too much.
It all comes down to this.
Because white room theorycraft can give you your to hit % and damage curves but it will never tell you how powerful, in terms of practical gameplay, is your ability to teleport, dispel magic, conjure cozy huts, summon stuff, shadow walk, create walls etc. etc.
If what rocks your life is the ability to see big numbers of damage, score frags and take names, but you ignore all the other crazy stuff casters can do, you'll have a problem with PF2. Heck, you likely had a "why casters can't be good blasters without a really weird combo of racial traits, feats and items" problem in PF1, not noticing that the fact that you could be a good blaster on the top of Persistent Spell SoSs nonsense was absolutely out of any reasonable line.
If you ask those I play with you'll find out I'm about as committed to hating martial-caster disparity as almost anyone else, but I really think you're projecting arguments that aren't being made onto this topic. The issue here is specifically spell attack rolls - unless you're using True Strike, they're clearly weaker than saving throw spells. You can see that by the fact that published monsters using spell attack rolls are consistently a few points higher in their spell attack than their DC. Trying to say that attack rolls are as weak as they are because otherwise caster damage would be comparable to martials on top of their other spell effects is missing the fact that the ceiling for caster damage is defined by saving throw spells, not spell attack ones. Almost all the teamwork describes earlier in the thread can still help spells reliant on saving throws, and they consistently deal more damage than spell attack rolls do - even, in many cases, against single targets. Comparing 3rd level evocation spells, magnetic acceleration does the same amount of damage as fireball, but does no damage on a miss. There are also spell attack rolls like Ray of Enfeeblement that have nothing to do with directly damaging enemies.
The fact of the matter is, you can boost spell attack rolls pretty substantially without meaningfully increasing the maximum effectiveness of casters - we know this because the Shadow Signet ring is a pretty substantial boost to spell attack rolls, and you're still not outperforming saving throw spells with it. One could fix the discrepancy with spell attack rolls without changing the martial-caster balance in a meaningful way.
EDIT: Unicore made a good point above that I forgot to mention - if you're keeping spell attack rolls in your back pocket and bursting them out when an enemies AC is particularly bad, they're a very effective part of your repertoire. The issue arises when you're trying to use spell attack rolls as your main offence - similar to the way it'd come up if you only used fort/ref/will targeting spells as your offence, but with the added complication of losing the spell entirely on a miss. The issue can be mitigated significantly, it just might require your spellcaster to be a little more generalist, which can be an issue with some concepts or mechanics.
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The solution to "the spell attack" problem has always been flexibility and variety. "Casters get choices" is why making it easy to specialize in one specific cantrip and never cast anything else is something that the game generally tries to avoid.
"But what about electric arc.." is the more common "what about" I hear and it reminds me of the bows situation. Players love having at least one easy option that is easy to visualize a successful and efficient path with. PF2 provides this with classes, with weapons, with skills, and with spells. Electric Arc is the short bow of spells, just like Fighter is the short bow of classes, just like athletics, medicine and intimidation are the short bows of skills. Just like truestrike is the short bow of spell attack roll fixes.
If the answer to "spell attacks are bad" is to "don't use spell attacks and use your other spells instead" I can't say I disagree from a pragmatic perspective of how to use my spells but I don't think this makes people who want to use them happier.
The big problem about flexibility and diversity is that spell attacks basically get none of it, they only target AC which is always amongst the highest defenses because it is balanced for the martials and spell attacks rarely do anything else than damage. It would be incredible rare for it to ever come a situation where Shocking Grasp is better than just throwing your saving throw spell at the enemy because it is just superior without ways to cheat it with True Strike or Shadow Signet.
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Spell attack roll spells can be very effective in PF2 when used selectively. Acid Arrow is a wonderful spell to use against higher level boss monsters because it creates an on-going damage situation that requires them to either waste actions or take constant damage. Many bosses have spell resistances and such high saves that getting them to fail a save is much, much harder than landing an attack roll with even just a hero point and a debuff or a buff to attack rolls (which again is much easier to achieve than a buff to saving throw spells).
That the caster advantage is diversity and not specialization in PF2 is not a subtle build decision, but it is different enough from past games that many players don't see it. It could use better sign posting maybe for players of other games, but the fact that you don't modify spells as much as learn new ones and heightened spells are generally worse than new spells at higher levels are all sign posts of this as well. GMs should help players realize this in session 0 and it is just not as big of a problem as it gets made to be on the boards.
That said, the one place this gets tricky is that cantrips, being endlessly spammable, tend to put their highest damage dice and crit riders are spell attack rolls, so it can be the case that, at very low levels casters are over exposed to the problem of spell selection that is spell attack roll dependent, at the point in their character career where the fixes for its lack of accuracy are least available.
It is an unfortunate part of the learning curve, but theory crafting around it tends to jump instantly to 20th level comparisons where cantrips are the least likely spells to be cast in combats of significance anyway.
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Many bosses have spell resistances and such high saves that getting them to fail a save is much, much harder than landing an attack roll with even just a hero point and a debuff or a buff to attack rolls (which again is much easier to achieve than a buff to saving throw spells).
I'm not saying they aren't out there, but I can't recall the last time I saw a creature over 10th with saves higher than its AC. You're right that sometimes they have bonuses that can push them near or over, but those generally effect spell attack rolls as well.
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Bonuses to saves vs magic don't affect spell attack roll spells though.
And I will give you that having lots of spell attack roll spells at higher level is not a great idea, but higher level spells tend to target saves instead of AC anyway, so the game naturally leads you away from trying to use acid arrow as your "big whammy spell" by the time you are fighting level 10 monsters.
You still occasionally fight oozes and other low AC monsters at higher level and all the crit effect stuff from your spell attack roll spells can be fantastic to have in your tool box when you do cross a low AC monster.
What are the options for ditching the utility to up your damage?If you're expecting your caster to be a damage dealer just behind martials AND can alter the game with your utility magic at the same time, you're expecting too much.
It all comes down to this.
You memorize higher level spells that do damage, instead of higher level spells that increase the party's utility.
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Spell attack roll spells can be very effective in PF2 when used selectively. Acid Arrow is a wonderful spell to use against higher level boss monsters because it creates an on-going damage situation that requires them to either waste actions or take constant damage. Many bosses have spell resistances and such high saves that getting them to fail a save is much, much harder than landing an attack roll with even just a hero point and a debuff or a buff to attack rolls (which again is much easier to achieve than a buff to saving throw spells).
Acid Arrow is a good example of this, let's take an enemy that is 2 levels higher than us, that has lower AC than usual (moderate), also is flat-footed, you got Inspire Courage on you and they also live for 4 rounds. Acid Arrow in this circumstance will still do less or equal damage than just throwing a fireball at them. So when the stars aligned you got a neutral choice between the spell attack and the fireball.
Rerolls does change this dynamic (such as the earlier mentioned True Strike) but I don't want spells to be balanced around hero points, spend a hero point on your acid arrow and then you didn't have it to save you from death is not ideal.
I'd love it if spell attacks was mostly just another tool you could use, Magic Missile is a good example of such a tool, but it seems now that basically the only practical use case is to abuse them with cheats like True Strike, Spellstrike and similar.
OKay, there is a lot of straight BS in this thread, lets put it to rest.
1) True Strike is not exclusive to casters, anyone can get access to it several times a day.
Yep its useful for maneuvers like Spell Strike or Power Attack. Casters tend to be able to scale a bit higher but its not exclusive
2) The chassis differences between martials and casters are much greater than ability to hit. Casters generally also have worse HP, worse saves on-level, armor generally tops at expert, worse action economy, etc. They pay for their utility already.
Yep its a lot. Add limited daily abilities to your list.
3) Martials can also do things outside of swinging to hit. Every martial class has access to abilites which allow them to do all sorts of things. Combat maneuvers also exist and are much better for martials than casters, so lets stop pretending like martials only hit AC.4) Range is not exclusive to casters, nor is melee range exclusive to martials. Bow damage builds can be some of the highest in the game, and its not like Gunslingers don't exist.
Agreed x2
But, and most importantly, none of that is actually relevant, or else it would be present in all caster damage options, not just spell attack rolls.
Are you saying this as there doesn't seem to be a quantitative difference in terms of damage between the spells with attack rolls as opposed to spells with saving throws.?
If you think fireball is fine, but acid arrow would be OP if it actually hit someone, you aren't grasping the issue.
Not sure what you are really getting at here. Are you saying its a nova damage versus damage every round, or accuracy versus versatility, or the game is not as well balanced as you'd like, or they are just different roles and are better at different things, or what?
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Comparing a level 2 spell to a level 3 spell isn't really a fair comparison. to look at the spell fireball and acid arrow in comparison you have to heighten both to level 4, which you will already have better options for your level 4 spell slot than either of these spells, because that is how spell slots work in PF2.
But even in this comparison, there is no way to really boost the accuracy of fireball beyond a -2 debuff to enemy saves, which is more of a debuff than you can usually manage. Against even a moderate Reflex save that is 2 level higher, so level 9, let's give this hypothetical monster a +18 to reflex save debuffed by 2 to +16. A level 7 caster is probably at a spell of DC 25 (7 for level +4 for expert casting prof + 4 for attribute +10). +16 vs DC 25 means Crit Fail on a 1, Fail on an 8, Succeed up to an 18, and Critically succeed on a 19 or 20.
If the same enemy has been debuffed for a -2, and you can get flat footed, that enemy is essentially at a 24 AC vs your +15 Spell attack roll bonus. giving us a base line of Miss and critical miss on an 8 or lower (the results are the same here so the difference between them is irrelevant), hit on a 9 to 18, and Critically hit on a 19 or 20.
Level 4 fireball: 8d6 = 28 average damage. 5% of the time you do 56 average damage, 35% of the time you do 28 average damage, 50% of the time you do 14 damage, and 10% of the time you do 0 damage. = 2.8+9.8+7 = an average damage of 19.6 points of damage for casting a fireball vs a level +2 solo enemy.
Level 4 Acid Arrow: 5d8 +2d6 persistent= 22 average base damage +7 persistent. 10%(51)+50%(29)+40%(0) = 19.6 average damage on the first round. The numbers are exactly the same, except that the acid arrow has persistent damage going.
This is without factoring in either true strike or a hero point, which can only benefit Acid arrow and both effect the math slightly differently and are hard to exactly replicate, but generally with either the crit chance will jump to around 19% and the hit rate will be about 65% at this accuracy mark, so %19(51)+65%(29)= about 28.54 average damage on the first round.
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That said, the one place this gets tricky is that cantrips, being endlessly spammable, tend to put their highest damage dice and crit riders are spell attack rolls, so it can be the case that, at very low levels casters are over exposed to the problem of spell selection that is spell attack roll dependent, at the point in their character career where the fixes for its lack of accuracy are least available.
Case(s) in point: Me!
* Choses Cleric, Warpriest of Sarenrae (yeah, my fault)
* Choses to start with WIS 16 only (my fault too)
* Uses Divine Lance a lot, to a point where my own party relabels the spell to 'Divine Miss'
* Picks up 'Fire Ray' as a domain spell, because he thinks it is a cool spell
* Starts to use said spell only when enemy AC is already known and hit chances are 50% or better which, while doing so is yielding mostly positive results, isn't very often, especially as Fireball is available as an alternative too
* Changes mindset to: "If you can't beat them, join them!" and by level 9 finally picks up Electric Arc as well as True Strike via Human ancestry feats, in order to better being able to dish out divine justice in style
And while the above is of course purely anecdotal a couple of points remain. First, not all spell lists and/or ancestry combinations have access to TS, though many have. Second, it takes some play experience to realize when to use spell attack spells (if at all), respectively that those probably need an enhancer/enabler. Third, it took some (planned) character revamp (i.e. I ditched Multitalented: MC Champion) in order to adjust to the meta.
Two things:
1: Electric arc can easily be added to a psychics arsenal through their ancestry magic class feat and ancestry powers (humans, tengu, etc. ). I'm looking at a tengu psychic build level 3 right now, and I got to say that the ability to shred out 2d4+8 damage on two targets as an int occult caster with the right DC has me excited!
2: spell attack rolls are tricky and a subject of many debates *gestures at thread*. I agree with the Dev's ultimate decision of not putting item bonuses, that being said as a Gm I have tentatively added consumable items that give item bonuses to spell attack rolls, as well as permanent items that add item bonuses to spell attack rolls but only ones with certain trait.
Ex: Souldrinker is a sacrificial +1 striking cunning dagger that allows you to gain death knell when you use it to kill an ennemy. It also gives a +1 item bonus to spell attack rolls with spells that have the evil trait. It is a level 8 item.
In my understanding of the scaling , if you do add item bonuses to spell attack rolls it should NOT be on par with potency runes. +1 at levels 8 and 16 would be my take.
@ Ubertron_X, I agree that divine casters probably have it the worst for getting pushed towards spell attack roll spells, although the heal and harm spell do make for the best nova casting damage option. Kind of strangely, this mostly just makes NPC clerics way, way more dangerous than just about any other caster without having nearly the same benefit for PCs.
But, as you point out, the game can help clerics figure out how to succeed with spells overtime, but the "trappy-ness" of it is probably worse for clerics than for any other casters, including psychics.
@Unicore
I now see in my program that I embarrassedly forgot to tick the "persistent damage" box for half the Acid Arrow damage, I apologize.
(though Magic Missile will still remain the king for single target bosses =^) )
@Unicore
I now see in my program that I embarrassedly forgot to tick the "persistent damage" box for half the Acid Arrow damage, I apologize.
(though Magic Missile will still remain the king for single target bosses =^) )
Magic missile heightens on odd levels not even, so you can have both options available to you as an arcane caster. The thing about the persistent acid damage is that it can change what a boss monster does on their turn once they have taken enough damage. It is variable, so just ignoring it can be incredibly dangerous and many intelligent enemies should be aware of that
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This again?
This is not a flaw in the system. But a point of balance. Casters are not meant to be on the level of dedicated damaging martials.
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What it comes down to for me is that, without playing an attack-roll dedicated class like magus, spells that call for an attack roll almost always feel like they are at best second rate. I don't care about true strike shenanigans, when I see a spell that is less likely to work and even then is at best (they usually aren't) as effective as the at least 3 or 4 alternatives that require a save, I will not pick that spell. Easy as that. It just feels really, really bad.
Anything that is supposed to be an equal option yet requires additional resources of any kind to be competitive in a normal situation is in my eyes a mistake.
As far as the whole caster vs martial dynamic goes - I'm speaking as someone who so far has almost exclusively played damage-focused martials (fighter, gunslinger, tyrant champion) and I really wouldn't complain at all if casters got even just a spell attack roll potency item. We are using exactly such an item in our game. It's fine.
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This again?
This is not a flaw in the system. But a point of balance. Casters are not meant to be on the level of dedicated damaging martials.
I'm getting pretty sick of this strawman. People that are complaining specifically about attack roll spells just want them to be on par with save spells. If save spells do less damage than martials, then logically people who want attack roll spells to do equivalent damage to save spells want them to do less damage than martials.
The fact that they're "balanced" by clunky things like True Strike and Shadow Signet is part of the problem by the way.
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What it comes down to for me is that, without playing an attack-roll dedicated class like magus, spells that call for an attack roll almost always feel like they are at best second rate. I don't care about true strike shenanigans, when I see a spell that is less likely to work and even then is at best (they usually aren't) as effective as the at least 3 or 4 alternatives that require a save, I will not pick that spell. Easy as that. It just feels really, really bad.
Anything that is supposed to be an equal option yet requires additional resources of any kind to be competitive in a normal situation is in my eyes a mistake.
As far as the whole caster vs martial dynamic goes - I'm speaking as someone who so far has almost exclusively played damage-focused martials (fighter, gunslinger, tyrant champion) and I really wouldn't complain at all if casters got even just a spell attack roll potency item. We are using exactly such an item in our game. It's fine.
My acid arrow example above does not require true strike to be better than fireball, it only requires flat footed to be better than fireball vs a boss monster. Any kind of status bonuses to attack shift acid arrow even further. AND hero points exist in the game pretty much for the all important nova attack vs the boss (martial or caster). They cannot effect saving throw spells.
The thing is “average” monsters don’t exist. They all have strengths and weaknesses. Casters niche is having the tools to exploit that.
But as we see over and over again on these threads, some players are just looking for the option that is almost always going to be the easiest/obvious best action to perform when nothing else is known about the situation or enemy. PF2 does a very good job of making sure that option will never come close to matching the action that exploits the situation’s strengths and weaknesses.