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I'd like to petition the community to change the term "mook" to "weenie".Comparision with AoE and multi-target will always be off, focusing damage is much better than spreading it out.
Like you can take the most optimized Fighter build vs a single fireball in a bunch of weenies and the total damage of the fireball will probably be much more impressive.
Seconded. Extra points if you use Stunning Fiat on the GM’s favorite weenies (apologies to Captain Morgan in the monk thread*). GM fiat can now be matched, and their weenies are no longer safe!
*
Monks can be pretty darn good for group support. Manuevers help ranged characters who can't flank. Stunning Fiat can shave off actions. Whirling Throw might be the best positioning tool in the game. And I can't tell you how many times I've seen a monk grab a teammate in a bad position and run them to safety.
Weirdly, on the psychic I feel like I have the least problems with spell attack rolls. Specifically Distant Grasp and Oscillating Wave. Not because the class is somehow fundamentally better at using them, if anything Unleash's bonus damage triggering on every enemies affected leads to the opposite being the case.
No, it is because you chose this life when you picked this option. For me that makes such a huge difference. By consciously (heh) making that choice right at the start, you can create a build around that fact. Plus, you know, never underestimate having 60ft+ range on your baseline spells.
Which is why, despite me arguing against spell attack rolls in this thread, my next character will most likely be a distant grasp psychic. Life is weird sometimes.
I don't think the Spectral Hand can flank since it is unable to attack people by the rules.1st round let's say it is a 3rd level psychic. Casts spectral hand and shield.
2nd round, you unleash psyche and cast amped imaginary weapon. Your range is 120, you can easily add flanking, you get two attacks and your damage is 3d8+6.
Woe is the psychic.
Is there a thread somewhere else discussing this?
The only thing that changed this was the Staff Nexus Thesis that allowed Wizard to have up to 36 charges in the staff making the Spell Strike practically daily unlimited but this isn't a item and is restricted to full wizard in place of other thesis.
Shadow Signet isn't that game change. It's very effective but many casters still prefer to not use it due it's not a true save (no failure effect) and many times they don't really knows what the opponent weakness (but many times can be easily guessed as you said).
The what now? I am not at all familiar with this, can you tell me more??
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Is there a thread somewhere else discussing this?I don't think the Spectral Hand can flank since it is unable to attack people by the rules.1st round let's say it is a 3rd level psychic. Casts spectral hand and shield.
2nd round, you unleash psyche and cast amped imaginary weapon. Your range is 120, you can easily add flanking, you get two attacks and your damage is 3d8+6.
Woe is the psychic.
Not that I am aware of, but the rules for flanking has conditions the Spectral Hand is unable to fulfill.
Additionally, both you and the ally have to be able to act, you must be wielding melee weapons or be able to make an unarmed attack, you can't be under any effects that prevent you from attacking, and you must both have the enemy within reach.
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No, it is because you chose this life when you picked this option.
I think for charisma subconscious minds they didn't choose the psychic life, the psychic life chose them.
The what now? I am not at all familiar with this, can you tell me more??The only thing that changed this was the Staff Nexus Thesis that allowed Wizard to have up to 36 charges in the staff making the Spell Strike practically daily unlimited but this isn't a item and is restricted to full wizard in place of other thesis.
Shadow Signet isn't that game change. It's very effective but many casters still prefer to not use it due it's not a true save (no failure effect) and many times they don't really knows what the opponent weakness (but many times can be easily guessed as you said).
About what exactly? Staff Nexus Thesis? or the Shadow Signet?
I think for charisma subconscious minds they didn't choose the psychic life, the psychic life chose them.
No, it is because you chose this life when you picked this option.
Fair enough XD
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I hate this whole thing of comparing classes' usefulness in the game based off of DPR.
People have been saying wizards are underpowered. Yet, they can transport their allies across hundreds of miles. Put up a wall of stone. Haste their fighter.
All these things.
DPR isn't everything in a game. I'm super excited to try a psychic. I didn't even one time look at it and compare it to a martial's attack progression.
Is there a thread somewhere else discussing this?I don't think the Spectral Hand can flank since it is unable to attack people by the rules.1st round let's say it is a 3rd level psychic. Casts spectral hand and shield.
2nd round, you unleash psyche and cast amped imaginary weapon. Your range is 120, you can easily add flanking, you get two attacks and your damage is 3d8+6.
Woe is the psychic.
Not that I am aware of, but the rules for flanking has conditions the Spectral Hand is unable to fulfill.
Additionally, both you and the ally have to be able to act, you must be wielding melee weapons or be able to make an unarmed attack, you can't be under any effects that prevent you from attacking, and you must both have the enemy within reach.
While I have never played in a PF2 game where a GM didn't let familiars (and by extension, spectral hands) deliver melee spell attacks with flanking against a foe that met all other conditions of flanking, I acknowledge that the rules from flanking are written to exclude this, and will retract what is a perfectly viable strategy in games where I GM and most of the games I have ever played in. We will put it in the talk to your GM and see how they feel. Have them read a 300 post thread of people mostly complaining about how spell attack roll spells are too difficult to use and no one should ever use them ever, and see if they feel like letting you use melee spell attack roll spells through spell delivery systems designed to let you position where they are cast from (that require resource investment from the player) is going to threaten the balance of the game.
Getting two foes flat footed is a tactical challenge anyway (both attacks have to come from the same starting point), but you can still feint one of them with your third action on that turn, which is a good thing for an intangible dream psychic to be good at anyway. You can also make this same attack with your second focus point on the third round, so you have done quite a bit of nova damage from pretty far away. The scaling on the damage for imaginary weapon very quickly exceeds what a martial can hope for and getting 2 attacks with no MAP even an accuracy point or 3 behind a martial's first attack is very good for that amount of damage.
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I hate this whole thing of comparing classes' usefulness in the game based off of DPR.
People have been saying wizards are underpowered. Yet, they can transport their allies across hundreds of miles. Put up a wall of stone. Haste their fighter.
All these things.
DPR isn't everything in a game. I'm super excited to try a psychic. I didn't even one time look at it and compare it to a martial's attack progression.
I think talking about DPR (or damage potential in general) is a conversation that is important. 2e is a system that is often quite combat-heavy. However, it is not the holy grail or anything. Even just overall combat effectiveness in general is more important and forgetting out-of-combat stuff is never a good idea.
And the good thing about the psychic is that you don't have to care about certain aspects of the caster life if you don't want to. Want to do some damage, but don't like attack rolls? Silent Whisper. You don't care about damage at all, but instead want to support? Tangible Dream or Infinite Eye. It's pretty much a choose your own adventure type of deal ^^
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I hate this whole thing of comparing classes' usefulness in the game based off of DPR.
People have been saying wizards are underpowered. Yet, they can transport their allies across hundreds of miles. Put up a wall of stone. Haste their fighter.
All these things.
DPR isn't everything in a game. I'm super excited to try a psychic. I didn't even one time look at it and compare it to a martial's attack progression.
When the whole point of damage spells is damage, DPR is indeed the entire point of them. That they're generally bad at it is why caster worth is more often measured by their ability to control, buff and debuff.
Some do think Shatter Mind spamming psychics might do enough damage in a big enough AoE to be a true blaster caster that can compete with martials, but I haven't seen it in play (campaign or combat test) to have a real opinion on it.
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When the whole point of damage spells is damage, DPR is indeed the entire point of them. That they're generally bad at it is why caster worth is more often measured by their ability to control, buff and debuff.
Over and over again, in actual play, I find that casters ability to do specific damage types against enemies that have resistances against physical damage types or weaknesses against specific damage types to be a very large factor in the difficulty of defeating enemies.
Monsters with resistance to physical damage become increasingly common in this game, and in almost every party, it seems like most of the martials are carrying some kind of Hammer for the crit effect and the bludgeoning damage type, but even then, I have seen parties torn apart by incorporeal enemies, or when a level 14 creature has resistance all physical equal to their level.
I think this is a big part of why the Thaumaturge has so many players so excited. It does not take long in actual play to realize that trying to just overwhelm powerful resistances is very difficult.
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We will put it in the talk to your GM and see how they feel. Have them read a 300 post thread of people mostly complaining about how spell attack roll spells are too difficult to use and no one should ever use them ever, and see if they feel like letting you use melee spell attack roll spells through spell delivery systems designed to let you position where they are cast from (that require resource investment from the player) is going to threaten the balance of the game.
I'm really not sure where this is coming from, I apologize if I came off as too negative, my intention was simply to post the rules where I saw a mistake.
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When the whole point of damage spells is damage, DPR is indeed the entire point of them. That they're generally bad at it is why caster worth is more often measured by their ability to control, buff and debuff.Over and over again, in actual play, I find that casters ability to do specific damage types against enemies that have resistances against physical damage types or weaknesses against specific damage types to be a very large factor in the difficulty of defeating enemies.
Monsters with resistance to physical damage become increasingly common in this game, and in almost every party, it seems like most of the martials are carrying some kind of Hammer for the crit effect and the bludgeoning damage type, but even then, I have seen parties torn apart by incorporeal enemies, or when a level 14 creature has resistance all physical equal to their level.
I think this is a big part of why the Thaumaturge has so many players so excited. It does not take long in actual play to realize that trying to just overwhelm powerful resistances is very difficult.
I'm not sure what to tell you. If you don't have ghost touch (rune, blade ally, backup weapon, ghostly weapon spell, ghostbane fulu, etc), silversheen, cold iron weapons/ammo and whatever else you need to beat resistances by level 10-11 you/your party might just be bad at the game. Doubly so if you have any sort of foreknowledge or pre-combat prep time. This isn't exactly a new problem or one unique to pf2e.
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I'm really not sure where this is coming from, I apologize if I came off as too negative, my intention was simply to post the rules where I saw a mistake.
We will put it in the talk to your GM and see how they feel. Have them read a 300 post thread of people mostly complaining about how spell attack roll spells are too difficult to use and no one should ever use them ever, and see if they feel like letting you use melee spell attack roll spells through spell delivery systems designed to let you position where they are cast from (that require resource investment from the player) is going to threaten the balance of the game.
Onkonk, I meant no hostility towards you. I was probably just frustrated that the rules do so clearly exclude this option that I think many tables chose not to use.
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When the whole point of damage spells is damage, DPR is indeed the entire point of them. That they're generally bad at it is why caster worth is more often measured by their ability to control, buff and debuff.Over and over again, in actual play, I find that casters ability to do specific damage types against enemies that have resistances against physical damage types or weaknesses against specific damage types to be a very large factor in the difficulty of defeating enemies.
Monsters with resistance to physical damage become increasingly common in this game, and in almost every party, it seems like most of the martials are carrying some kind of Hammer for the crit effect and the bludgeoning damage type, but even then, I have seen parties torn apart by incorporeal enemies, or when a level 14 creature has resistance all physical equal to their level.
I think this is a big part of why the Thaumaturge has so many players so excited. It does not take long in actual play to realize that trying to just overwhelm powerful resistances is very difficult.
I don't really think that the main advantage of a spellcaster is really the damage type in PF2.
Some traditions like Occult and Divine is considerably less flexible in damage types than others like Primal and specially Arcane, even Arcane and Primal don't do alignment damage to exploit alignment weakness. Many parties (including the one that I'm GMing) have only one kind of spellcaster (occult in my case) and many DPR focused players put 3 elemental property runes what diminish considerably the chance to not hit a weakness.
I hate this whole thing of comparing classes' usefulness in the game based off of DPR.
People have been saying wizards are underpowered. Yet, they can transport their allies across hundreds of miles. Put up a wall of stone. Haste their fighter.
All these things.
DPR isn't everything in a game. I'm super excited to try a psychic. I didn't even one time look at it and compare it to a martial's attack progression.When the whole point of damage spells is damage, DPR is indeed the entire point of them. That they're generally bad at it is why caster worth is more often measured by their ability to control, buff and debuff.
Some do think Shatter Mind spamming psychics might do enough damage in a big enough AoE to be a true blaster caster that can compete with martials, but I haven't seen it in play (campaign or combat test) to have a real opinion on it.
Where is the line. That's what I want to know. Attack spell isn't good enough. Then save spells aren't good enough.
You can't just say, well, their mathematical average is the same now so it's balanced. No it's not. What about range, spell level entry, secondary effects.
Comparable damage is not the only metric to weigh.
Electric arc is great. Until there is only a single Target. It also only does double damage on a critical while produce flame gets persistent damage.
I haven't seen anyone designate that line.
Nor even what making them comparable looks like. And how that interacts with the rest of the games systems.
I hate this whole thing of comparing classes' usefulness in the game based off of DPR.
People have been saying wizards are underpowered. Yet, they can transport their allies across hundreds of miles. Put up a wall of stone. Haste their fighter.
All these things.
DPR isn't everything in a game. I'm super excited to try a psychic. I didn't even one time look at it and compare it to a martial's attack progression.
A DPR calculation typically has so many assumptions and qualifications baked into it that the resulting comparison is pointless. You do need to take a much broader look at a class. I don't mind people doing the analysis though.
When the whole point of damage spells is damage, DPR is indeed the entire point of them. That they're generally bad at it is why caster worth is more often measured by their ability to control, buff and debuff.Over and over again, in actual play, I find that casters ability to do specific damage types against enemies that have resistances against physical damage types or weaknesses against specific damage types to be a very large factor in the difficulty of defeating enemies.
Monsters with resistance to physical damage become increasingly common in this game, and in almost every party, it seems like most of the martials are carrying some kind of Hammer for the crit effect and the bludgeoning damage type, but even then, I have seen parties torn apart by incorporeal enemies, or when a level 14 creature has resistance all physical equal to their level.
I think this is a big part of why the Thaumaturge has so many players so excited. It does not take long in actual play to realize that trying to just overwhelm powerful resistances is very difficult.
I've found that sustainable spells combined with direct damage or some other form of damage up to and including using a weapon equals the DPR of a martial and often exceeds over the course of a battle.
I no longer have a problem with martial damage. Casters do tons of damage while at the same time having a far more dramatic effect on fight outcomes.
DPR is not a problem for casters.
Where is the line. That's what I want to know. Attack spell isn't good enough. Then save spells aren't good enough.
You can't just say, well, their mathematical average is the same now so it's balanced. No it's not. What about range, spell level entry, secondary effects.
Comparable damage is not the only metric to weigh.
Electric arc is great. Until there is only a single Target. It also only does double damage on a critical while produce flame gets persistent damage.
I haven't seen anyone designate that line.
Nor even what making them comparable looks like. And how that interacts with the rest of the games systems.
The way I see it usually framed is pretty simple. Can casters, if the martials go down, close out combat and do so if they've already expended some resources? Generally, the answer to this is no. If the martials go down, casters find it very difficult to bring to bear the kind of numbers needed to clear the encounter, especially if they've used any of their top slots.
Psychic gets a pair of 30 or 60ft cones (unless it has already gotten forum errata) doing Xd10+Y+mod ally-friendly blasts, with another Xd10+mod 1/day (3rd focus point) and another Xd10+mod 1/hour (strain mind). That's pretty decent firepower all things considered, before even looking at spell slots.
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I've found that sustainable spells combined with direct damage or some other form of damage up to and including using a weapon equals the DPR of a martial and often exceeds over the course of a battle.
I no longer have a problem with martial damage. Casters do tons of damage while at the same time having a far more dramatic effect on fight outcomes.
DPR is not a problem for casters.
Sustainable damage spells usually are considerably weaker than other offensive spells and usually requires an extra turn casting them. So in the 1º round you will being casting a sustainable spell that in the better situation will do just a little damage and will requires a constant cost in your actions, something that could be very problematic in situations that requires the caster to move or to defend itself.
Due the encounters low duration (usually endures 3-4 rounds) and the necessity to use a top level spell. Cast a sustainable spell many times is worse than just cast an AoE attack to damage many enemies, this even includes the Electric Arc.
This make the most sustainable spells can be superseeded by another actions with a better economy efficiency. For exemple, from level 1-6 while a caster isn't expert in it's spellcasting DC usually is way more effective and economic just use a bow in conjunction to 2-action save spells this allows a spellcaster to have a good DPR using it's 3º action to do an attack without suffer MAP with same bonus that it has to it's spells DC/hit. Another specially useful for cha based characters is demoralize their opponents with the 3º action in mostly encounters will have enough opponents to demoralize every turn. Or since level 13 a spellcaster with access to Fiery Body can cast it and begin to use it's 3º action to cast a 1-action Produce Flame to complete another save spell.
IMO the only situations that really makes the sustained spells to worth is when you take Effortless concentration or can Cackle.
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like most people I do so by avoiding taking spells with attack rolls. My belief is that giving casters access to permanent item bonuses to spell attacks would improve the balance between spells with attack rolls and spells with saving throws while not seriously affecting the balance between casters and martial characters.
Yes that conclusion has been reached several times so far in this thread.
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I'm not sure that is true for Psychic (admittedly this is all theorycrafting). The Psychic class is a mess. It reads like a blaster class with unleash psyche but struggles to support that because of a serious reduction in spells per day compared to other casters, access to the occult list which is very limited on spells that work with unleash, and a reliance on spell attack rolls.
You probably is overrating the spellslots. Have more spellslots is way more useful outside encounters or to heal and for utilities and in more rare cases to debuff (but to debuff a player have to pay attention to it's action economy and AoE in order to see if it will be really effective). But for offensive purpose the spellslots are basically 2-5 per day abilities that requires your top level spellslot if you want that your spell can be effective, specially for incapacitant spells.
So IMO the trade of some spellslots in order to gain better cantrips, amps, more focus points with full refocus and unleash is a good trade. Psychic still have enough spellslot to cover mostly situations that requires more flexibility at same time it have a better offensive capacity. The only problem is the amp restriction to Shadow Signet but the item still can be useful for situations where the psychic cant amp and is suffering stupefied penalty.
I've found that sustainable spells combined with direct damage or some other form of damage up to and including using a weapon equals the DPR of a martial and often exceeds over the course of a battle.
I no longer have a problem with martial damage. Casters do tons of damage while at the same time having a far more dramatic effect on fight outcomes.
DPR is not a problem for casters.
Sustainable damage spells usually are considerably weaker than other offensive spells and usually requires an extra turn casting them. So in the 1º round you will being casting a sustainable spell that in the better situation will do just a little damage and will requires a constant cost in your actions, something that could be very problematic in situations that requires the caster to move or to defend itself.
Due the encounters low duration (usually endures 3-4 rounds) and the necessity to use a top level spell. Cast a sustainable spell many times is worse than just cast an AoE attack to damage many enemies, this even includes the Electric Arc.
This make the most sustainable spells can be superseeded by another actions with a better economy efficiency. For exemple, from level 1-6 while a caster isn't expert in it's spellcasting DC usually is way more effective and economic just use a bow in conjunction to 2-action save spells this allows a spellcaster to have a good DPR using it's 3º action to do an attack without suffer MAP with same bonus that it has to it's spells DC/hit. Another specially useful for cha based characters is demoralize their opponents with the 3º action in mostly encounters will have enough opponents to demoralize every turn. Or since level 13 a spellcaster with access to Fiery Body can cast it and begin to use it's 3º action to cast a 1-action Produce Flame to complete another save spell.
IMO the only situations that really makes the sustained spells to worth is when you take Effortless concentration or can Cackle.
Exactly. Effortless concentration at high levels makes sustainable spells very nice and effective.
The real problem here is most people don't play to high level. They play in that 1 to 10 range. In that 1 to 10 range casters seem weaker than martials. When you get into the upper levels where you get things like Effortless Concentration, synesthesia or other debuffs or buffs are easy to cast with lower level slots, low level scrolls and casting items are cheap allowing to cast such spells endlessly, and you can hit enemies with AoE spells with damage and effects and your casting ability is master or higher, martials don't seem that tough. In fact, they start to look boring and like the old martials where they just swing weapons.
That seems to be part of the balance equation as it was in in PF1. Casters pay a price to be stronger at higher level. Martials maintain a consistent power across all their levels. The gap is much, much narrower than PF1, but casters are still the power in the high level game.
I still recall in Age of Ashes fighting a dragon in very unfavorable circumstances. Bard turned that dragon fight into a trivial fight. Hasted the entire party. Hit the dragon with synesthesia followed by true target while using lingering song to sustain his buff song. It was a round of brutality that pretty much ended the fight. This was after the arcane caster buffed with a bunch of fly spells so they could get to the dragon. Casters were why they were able to win the fight.
Even in Agents of Edgewatch there were fights the martials would have been all done if not for the casters keeping them up and keeping enemies in kitten mode.
With my druid in Extinction Curse, she regularly outdamaged the martials and brutalized enemies. Her mobility was unmatched in dragon form. She had long range AoE spells. And a bow. Combined she did a lot of damage over the course of the fight without having to spend many actions to move.
My barbarian did good damage too. But he had to close to fight even with Sudden Charge. He had to have targets set up right to hit them or use Whirlwind attack. He had to take damage because he didn't have much ranged ability. He certainly couldn't heal as needed or haste or adjust his tactics as effectively as a caster. Martial tactics are very limited.
I don't think giving casters a better spell attack roll would harm anything. But at the same time casters don't need any more. They are still very much the power in the high level PF2 game.
I’m no expert at this game however I am fairly certain that martials can get energy damage such as fire, electric, cold etc via runes too as well as special material weapons like cold steel. However I do realize casters get this out the gate while martials must wait a bit.
Indeed some martials like Gunslinger and Thaumaturge are quite good at it. Alchemist I guess counts as a caster.
Martials actually have better access to special materials. Its very hard to get silver or cold iron on a spell.It is generally easier for casters to swap damage types though. Martials don't tend to have a bag of different weapons to try. The economics of the game system affects that.
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Being legendary in spell attacks will offset the accuracy issue so maybe item bonus would be overkill but only at 19th level.
I honestly feel that making all full casters get to legendary by default was one of the fundamental design misteps in PF2. Especially at the fxed level strucutre which has been appiled across the board. Its a far less dynamic way to do things than really needed to exist, and is more than likely a big driver in several of the problems mentioned in this thread.
If we a few casters that get to legendary, most stick to master, but have more flavoured, mechanical and situtational ways to get where they needed to go, it would have been a massive boon for design potential.
Just to toss out an example, say Sorcerers only went natively to Master Spellcasting, but had a way to impact on enemies saves at some sort of cost, it would have allowed them room to be a better blaster-caster type, with more dynamic balancing.
They are a trap for new players in that they are noticably inferior, and as a mechanism they fall a bit short of normal PF2 balance standards. On the scale of d20 systems its not terrible. But it should be better. A few +1 or +2 items would make the situation better. Which is glaring because Paizo have deliberately left them out. Paizo obviously disagreed and haven't reevaluated their position.
Depending on the level you get access to them, a +2 would maybe really be all that was needed to bring things more in line. Perhaps +1 at 5th and +2 at 11th. Something like that. Help nudge the characters a long when their under performance is really starting to show.
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Isn’t the fact that a +2 alone is enough to usually bring a spell attack roll spell on level with a saving throw spell, and only spell attack roll spells can benefit from a flat footed enemy, a pretty strong indicator that the issue was known and built into the math?
...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
I actually play this game, and I can tell you that parties where everybody is running around with a frost weapon, a fire weapon, a ghost touch weapon, acid weapon and a good weapon, in general, don't exist. People have one good magic weapon that maybe has one elemental damage run and that's it. Maybe one person in the party has a ghost touch weapon - maybe. Apart from once in the blue moon powergamers, most folks are just happy with whatever magic weapon the DM hands out or they buy it in general magic mart.
This is what makes casters, in practice, much more versatile - they usually have 3-4 damage types in their repertoire at mid levels, and it doesn't take much system mastery to be aware of that. I saw recently somebody put together a character with six energy damage types out of cantrips alone - it was extreme, but it shows you
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Isn’t the fact that a +2 alone is enough to usually bring a spell attack roll spell on level with a saving throw spell, and only spell attack roll spells can benefit from a flat footed enemy, a pretty strong indicator that the issue was known and built into the math?
Surely this point flows the other way?
I'm taking the stance that these universal tactical advantages are baked into the overall game math, including with martial scaling. Being flat foot is univerally accessable, but isn't enough in and of itself to overcome the disparity, because the gap still exists when taken against the general scaling.
In an "all things being equal" sense, SAR's are still behind.
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I actually play this game, and I can tell you that parties where everybody is running around with a frost weapon, a fire weapon, a ghost touch weapon, acid weapon and a good weapon, in general, don't exist. People have one good magic weapon that maybe has one elemental damage run and that's it. Maybe one person in the party has a ghost touch weapon - maybe. Apart from once in the blue moon powergamers, most folks are just happy with whatever magic weapon the DM hands out or they buy it in general magic mart.
I don't think I've ever seen a party like that in the last 15 years of playing TTRPG's. There has been the odd player, but never once a whole party. Both as a game runner and a player.
I'm not just talking about D20 systems either.
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I consider spell attacks spells part of a casters play, and whether you want to use them or not is up to the player. My 14th lvl bard has only one spell attack spell (biting words) but it is a signature spell. She has a shadow signet and a staff of divination (useful both in combat and out of combat). Which spell and levels to use depends totally on the situation and using biting words certainly has its uses. It helps that you get 3 attacks with one 7th level spell, with the second and third attack using only one action (bard are king of one action actions).
In short: part of the game, use it or not, but it has it's uses, with or without true strike (although it helps of course).
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I consider spell attacks spells part of a casters play, and whether you want to use them or not is up to the player. My 14th lvl bard has only one spell attack spell (biting words) but it is a signature spell. She has a shadow signet and a staff of divination (useful both in combat and out of combat). Which spell and levels to use depends totally on the situation and using biting words certainly has its uses. It helps that you get 3 attacks with one 7th level spell, with the second and third attack using only one action (bard are king of one action actions).
In short: part of the game, use it or not, but it has it's uses, with or without true strike (although it helps of course).
Well those are all part of the problem being discussed here.
In order to make them work, you not only have to jump through some hoops, but everyone has to jump through the same hoops in order to do it. Whats more, these aren't things that can be picked up for free or at any level. Shadow Signet didn't even exist for the first several years of the gameline, so its not like it was part of the fundamental game design.
Additional if part of the solution is "well just don't use them", that's not actually a solution, thats a just a strategy for coping with the problem.
Its still all coming down to the same issues with the design of the spells themselves.
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Isn’t the fact that a +2 alone is enough to usually bring a spell attack roll spell on level with a saving throw spell, and only spell attack roll spells can benefit from a flat footed enemy, a pretty strong indicator that the issue was known and built into the math?Surely this point flows the other way?
I'm taking the stance that these universal tactical advantages are baked into the overall game math, including with martial scaling. Being flat foot is univerally accessable, but isn't enough in and of itself to overcome the disparity, because the gap still exists when taken against the general scaling.
In an "all things being equal" sense, SAR's are still behind.
So you are separating the issue from spell attack rolls vs saving throws, and saying the root of the issue is casters using spell attack rolls vs Martials using weapons/unarmed attacks? I will try to look at the math closer on examples like shocking grasp, especially as it heightens.
However, I am not sure I believe casters need to be compared to martials for the metric of single target damage in order for spell attack roll spells with powerful critical effects to be situationally better spells than saving throw spells, which feels like the right balance point.
It is much much more difficult to get the desired critical effect out of a saving throw spell than a spell attack roll spell in PF2. Usually saving throw spells over come this by AoE and forcing many enemies to make rolls. Single target saving throw spells against enemies with strong saves are often very disappointing spells for casters (I see it often in play, the sigh of, “well, do the succeed at their saved? Or critically succeed?”)
Whereas the game offers many paths forward on changing the math in favor of attack rolls, once an enemy has been debuffed with a frightened 1, there is usually very little more that can be done by casters except maybe slow the enemy 1 for one round with a 3rd level spell, provide some kind of buff to allies (like concealment, cover, difficult terrain enough to rob an action, or bonuses), or try to hit an enemy with a damage type that will be effective against a weakness or resistance even if it is saved.
This is where spell attack roll spells have more going for them, because it is often possible to bump the numbers up past the point where you can get a crit again on a 19, and being the person rolling the dice means you have reroll options that significantly change the odds of success.
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You're kidding right? Anytime after say 5th level spell slots are king. There is a reason why Sorcerer, Wizard and Cleric are considered strong classes and it is because they all get bonus spell slots. To compete with those classes you need strong cantrip and/or focus powers. Bard is a good example of that where it trades 1 less spell a level compared to a sorcerer for very strong AOE buff/debuffs.
Compare a Bard with a Infinite Eye Psychic. Now this is a little unfair because Bard is considered one of the strongest if not strongest class in the game but they both do a similar thing in buffing the party. Inspire Courage versus Glimpse Weakness plus...
No, I'm not kidding. I agree that there are spell that uses slot there are very good and efficient. But in game (specially in APs) that you know that you will face almost a dozen encounters without rest any caster knows that's unsustainable to use your best spellslots every time you face a non-trivial opponents. You will runout of your best spells in the second encounter even with a Wizard. So a caster need to be constantly analyzing if he/she will can use their best spells or if will save then to use latter against a possible more dangerous situation/opponent and due heightening and incapacitant restrictions the lower level spellslots is more useful as buff/debuffs and tools making most casters to stick in cantrips most time. That's why classes like psychic, magus, summoner, bard, druids, oracle and bloodline offensive focused sorcerers shines, they can use alternatives to spellslots that are almost so good instead and saves their spellslots to more specifically useful situations.
But if your GM/adventure limits the encounters to maximum 2-3 per in game day, the situations is completely different.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
You're kidding right? Anytime after say 5th level spell slots are king. There is a reason why Sorcerer, Wizard and Cleric are considered strong classes and it is because they all get bonus spell slots. To compete with those classes you need strong cantrip and/or focus powers. Bard is a good example of that where it trades 1 less spell a level compared to a sorcerer for very strong AOE buff/debuffs.
Compare a Bard with a Infinite Eye Psychic. Now this is a little unfair because Bard is considered one of the strongest if not strongest class in the game but they both do a similar thing in buffing the party. Inspire Courage versus Glimpse Weakness plus...
No, I'm not kidding. I agree that there are spell that uses slot there are very good and efficient. But in game (specially in APs) that you know that you will face almost a dozen encounters without rest any caster knows that's unsustainable to use your best spellslots every time you face a non-trivial opponents. You will runout of your best spells in the second encounter even with a Wizard. So a caster need to be constantly analyzing if he/she will can use their best spells or if will save then to use latter against a possible more dangerous situation/opponent and due heightening and incapacitant restrictions the lower level spellslots is more useful as buff/debuffs and tools making most casters to stick in cantrips most time. That's why classes like psychic, magus, summoner, bard, druids, oracle and bloodline offensive focused sorcerers shines, they can use alternatives to spellslots that are almost so good instead and saves their spellslots to more specifically useful situations.
But if your GM/adventure limits the encounters to maximum 2-3 per in game day, the situations is completely different.
Early AP design has been bad about having too much artificial pressure on PCs to have to do things quickly, because they think the enemy is right on the cusp of doing the terrible thing, and then having too high of level opposition thrown in the pathway between the objective requiring immediate resolution, and the starting point of the dungeon. There are just too many encounters in PF2, especially at lower levels, where a single string of good rolls from an on level enemy or higher immediately turn an encounter into something a party can require hours to bounce back from. Lots of these enemies do have "tricks" that could have been used to make the encounter much easier, but you cannot count on your party finding them all.
The thing is, all martial parties that don't prepare well get into just as much trouble as casters do. There just seems to be a prevailing wisdom that it is ok for the game to require 1 player to specialize in the medicine skill and skill feats to maintain the shortest path of getting martials healed up and ready to fight again, as a necessary component of the game to learn for all players, but not that casters rely on spells to take advantage of the tactical situation in a given encounter, and that requires the party having means of getting information about those tactical situations before rushing into encounters.
In practice, I think tables do learn all of these things together pretty organically most of the time, but too little of the guides about classes focus on synergizing with the other characters at the table and understanding each others strengths and weaknesses, and instead just focus on "this is often the most useful thing to do, so prepare to do it all the time."
And you do see this problem popping up with martials too, where they all show up with hammers and bows or javelins as their back up weapon, because those are often useful weapons against the vast majority of enemies, or you have a fire oracle in the party and everyone has picked up flame runes, and then party has over specialized and gets walloped by an enemy resistant to bludgeoning and piercing or fire.
About what exactly? Staff Nexus Thesis? or the Shadow Signet?The what now? I am not at all familiar with this, can you tell me more??The only thing that changed this was the Staff Nexus Thesis that allowed Wizard to have up to 36 charges in the staff making the Spell Strike practically daily unlimited but this isn't a item and is restricted to full wizard in place of other thesis.
Shadow Signet isn't that game change. It's very effective but many casters still prefer to not use it due it's not a true save (no failure effect) and many times they don't really knows what the opponent weakness (but many times can be easily guessed as you said).
How people are squeezing 36 castings of true strike out of their staff
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Isn’t the fact that a +2 alone is enough to usually bring a spell attack roll spell on level with a saving throw spell, and only spell attack roll spells can benefit from a flat footed enemy, a pretty strong indicator that the issue was known and built into the math?
The thing is that for martials flat footed can be achieved quite naturally, more often and more reliably, simply by flanking. No free hands, no weapon qualities, no checks that can and will fail. If you want flat footed for others (ranged) your party will have to build for it. When I started with PF2 we could not reliable inflict flat footed apart from flanking in a party of 5. Can you do it? Yes you can, however it requires just another extra set-up for spell attack spells, that melee attacks or saving throw spells simply do not require.
Apart from that I have always stated that the hit is the important issue here, not the raw damage, which could easily even be turned down a notch. However I admit that their own design choices are probably limiting what the designers can do. In my opinion too much emphasis and value was assigned to at least some of the critical hit effects of spell attack spells, so if accuracy would be improved this also would need to be looked at. For example the slow effect on a Ray of Frost critical is nice to have, but I'd rather have a +1 to hit in the first place. Why worry about effects that are only likely to happen 5% of the time, and if they do happen are nonetheless often irrelevant (enemy is dead, a ranger attacker that doesnt move much, battle is already in the clean-up stages etc).
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How people are squeezing 36 castings of true strike out of their staff
1. Craft your makeshift staff into a normal staff.
2. At 17th level invest the staff as normal. This gets you 9 charges for free.
3. With your staff nexus abilities, invest three of your 9th level spells in the staff.
You now have 36 charges.
At 20th level you can get 39 charges if you blow two 10th level slots and one 9th.
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Isn’t the fact that a +2 alone is enough to usually bring a spell attack roll spell on level with a saving throw spell, and only spell attack roll spells can benefit from a flat footed enemy, a pretty strong indicator that the issue was known and built into the math?The thing is that for martials flat footed can be achieved quite naturally, more often and more reliably, simply by flanking. No free hands, no weapon qualities, no checks that can and will fail. If you want flat footed for others (ranged) your party will have to build for it.
Apart from that I have always stated that the hit is the important issue here, not the raw damage, which could easily even be turned down a notch. However I admit that their own design choices are probably limiting what the designers can do. In my opinion too much emphasis and value was assigned to at least some of the critical hit effects of spell attack spells, so if accuracy would be improved this also would need to be looked at. For example the slow effect on a Ray of Frost critical is nice to have, but I'd rather have a +1 to hit in the first place. Why worry about effects that are only likely to happen 5% of the time, and if they do happen are nonetheless often irrelevant (enemy is dead, a ranger attacker that doesnt move much, battle is already in the clean-up stages etc).
The larger issue here though is that it is too late to redesign every spell with an attack roll to balance around higher general accuracy. Adding accuracy to spell attack rolls would be with them the way they are, or not at all. The compromise position was, "add an item that lets you spend an action to target a different defense." This very deliberately and intentionally shows that casting is supposed to(as in it is the intention of the game to make it) hinge around knowing your enemy and gambling around making choices, not be a flat and obvious way to do the most optimal thing.
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"add an item that lets you spend an action to target a different defense."
Shadow Signet is a free action though.
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The larger issue here though is that it is too late to redesign every spell with an attack roll to balance around higher general accuracy. Adding accuracy to spell attack rolls would be with them the way they are, or not at all. The compromise position was, "add an item that lets you spend an action to target a different defense." This very deliberately and intentionally shows that casting is supposed to(as in it is the intention of the game to make it) hinge around knowing your enemy and gambling around making choices, not be a flat and obvious way to do the most optimal thing.
Not when those different defenses are often lower than AC giving you that net +1 or +2 anyway (if not more in some cases). When the end result of using the item is almost indistinguishable from just having a flat item bonus, why not just give the flat bonus to begin with. That it comes at level 10 seems pretty on curve for math expectations too.
Also, if you need foreknowledge or extra gambling to make your class or abilities work, they don't work. Good options are both reliable and broadly applicable.
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The larger issue here though is that it is too late to redesign every spell with an attack roll to balance around higher general accuracy. Adding accuracy to spell attack rolls would be with them the way they are, or not at all. The compromise position was, "add an item that lets you spend an action to target a different defense." This very deliberately and intentionally shows that casting is supposed to(as in it is the intention of the game to make it) hinge around knowing your enemy and gambling around making choices, not be a flat and obvious way to do the most optimal thing.Not when those different defenses are often lower than AC giving you that net +1 or +2 anyway (if not more in some cases).
That's if you know your enemy or guess correctly. A flat item bonus removes the dynamism of spellcaster combat revolving around understanding foes.
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The larger issue here though is that it is too late to redesign every spell with an attack roll to balance around higher general accuracy. Adding accuracy to spell attack rolls would be with them the way they are, or not at all. The compromise position was, "add an item that lets you spend an action to target a different defense." This very deliberately and intentionally shows that casting is supposed to(as in it is the intention of the game to make it) hinge around knowing your enemy and gambling around making choices, not be a flat and obvious way to do the most optimal thing.Not when those different defenses are often lower than AC giving you that net +1 or +2 anyway (if not more in some cases). When the end result of using the item is almost indistinguishable from just having a flat item bonus, why not just give the flat bonus to begin with. That it comes at level 10 seems pretty on curve for math expectations too.
Also, if you need foreknowledge or extra gambling to make your class or abilities work, they don't work. Good options are both reliable and broadly applicable.
Why didn't they make Shadow Signet something that can give potency runes to your spell attacks then ?
It would have been much simpler, right ?
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I had forgot the shadow signet was a free action. I use spell attack roles infrequently enough that a dedicated item for them has felt unnecessary. I use them primarily as cantrips against lower level enemies and as one or two ringer spells against tougher solo bosses. It would be a useful item against lower level enemies, but against higher level enemies, especially rare or unique ones, the odds of being wrong about the save often feel to high. Maybe by level 15 or 16 the cost will be so trivial that I will consider it again though (currently, my highest casters are both level 11).
@gesalt, do you not feel like the developers were pretty clear and intentional in designing the shadow signet instead of an across the board accuracy wand? It is not me the player saying “I think the game should be designed this way.” It is me the player saying, clearly it is intentionally designed this way, why?”
Oh, because spell attack roll spells interact with fundamental design elements of the game differently than saving throws, get the inherent +1 benefit that goes to the roller over the defender with equal numbers, are much easier to boost, typically, by nature of being spells have more powerful and interesting critical effects and damage types than normal attacks, and have access to multiple, different reroll mechanics. All of those are factors getting frequently ignored in these conversations about spell attacks on message boards, but that I see with my own eyes happening in play very frequently.