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Buffs are better spent in tough fights where the delay of damaging action for the buff spell is worth the higher chance of landing damage and negating damage from the enemies. It's a "turn the tide" spell so it's better served for situations where that's necessary
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Buffing an ally is usually a higher reward activity that trying to buff yourself in PF2, but a lot depends upon how your enemy engages your party, and there are a lot of decent buffing options that can benefit a group.
Non-spell buffing/debuffing on the other hand is very frequently worth the action to set it up
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Pre-buffing can be pretty clutch, but you need decent scouting to pull that off.
Haste is super good on gishes, and can be useful on specific martial builds.
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Tactics > buffs
Buffs are good force multipliers, but unlike in previous iterations, you need a substantial force to multiply. Which is to say buffs cannot make up for innate abilities, namely Proficiencies. A full caster can barely bridge the gap to become a mediocre martial, and then only for a limited time, while the actual martials can excel with less investment and for all day (and w/ much better defense too).
There are fewer bonus types in PF2, and they still don't stack, so while it's easy to slap on an offensive buff or two, number/types will quickly start overlapping so it's often better to look for other buffs, like Haste. Or look at defensive ones since reducing damage is far easier in PF2 than adding damage, i.e. look at Heal to heal vs. damaging an undead.
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Playing as a team is incredibly effect in PF2. The most I think I have seen in this style of RPG. The +\- 10 crit system combined with so many of the best riders triggering on crits makes playing into getting the highest accuracy player the best chance to crit generally the fastest path to victory.
Everyone can do damage and contribute differently in many fights, but there are some fights where it is hard enough for the most accurate members in the party to hit, that not giving them the bonuses can mean no one crits on anything but a 20.
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I have been playing a Magus and have found that in at least my experience (which is rather limited compared to most of the people on this forum to be fair) self-buffing has been immensely useful, but something you need to be very smart about.
Most buffs do not last more than a minute, so in most fights you will have time to cast like one impactful buff in the first round. The important thing is having good scouting and planning so that your party can create situations where, for example, you KNOW that the boss is in the next room and you are clear to go fight them. Then you can quickly cast a bunch of things on yourself and really go at it. I feel the Magus is especially well suited to self-buffing, as it has the martial proficiencies needed to actually fight in direct combat while being enough of a caster that they can use buff spells that specifically target themselves that a normal caster could not grant to an ally. (I actually feel self-buffing is an underappreciated and very significant aspect of how the Magus is supposed to function but I don't post very often so won't go on about it)
you can also get some buffs from non spell sources like the soulforger archetype.
But for example, self buffing can let you go into a bossfight with a huge movement speed increase (which is alot more useful than one might think), Haste, mirror-image, off-brand heroism (from soulforger), and two different sources of extra damage for my weapon from spells (flame wisp and call the lightning).
a fellow caster buffing me could have supplied most of that, but doing it for myself frees them up to either buff other party members or cast other spells, removing a wee bit of "tax" from their turns.
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I'm not sure how many GMs will let you cast multiple 1 minute spells in front of a door to a room full of enemies. Casting is fairly loud, and then you need to start tracking rounds for each spell.
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Mantle of the Magma Heart and Mantle of the Frozen Heart are two interesting self only buffs that are not Battle Forms. I'm not sure how great they are in practice, but some of the effects seem like they could be really solid on an unarmed character in particular.
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I'm not sure how many GMs will let you cast multiple 1 minute spells in front of a door to a room full of enemies. Casting is fairly loud, and then you need to start tracking rounds for each spell.
This is an area of GM interpretation that varies widely and has a significant impact on game balance.
There are plenty of GMs that don't allow you to precast spells before combat.
But some allow you to cast one or two spells before combat. But only if you are attacking and controlling the initiation of the encounter.
It is quite a difference in terms of buffing, and saving actions in combat.
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I think it's the main crux of buffing in PF2. Buffing is conditional. I've played Bards in the previous editions and every fight was starting with the exact same sequence of buffs. That nearly no more happen. Before very high level and spells like True Target and Haste 7, you'll buff depending on the circumstances. Mainly:
- Precombat buffs when it's possible.
- First round buffs when the enemies are far away or when you lack a better choice.
- Targeted buffs, like Resist Energy against a dragon or Haste on the Paladin when you face hit and runners.
- The few mid game long duration buffs (Circle of Protection, Spell Immunity, Status, See Invisibility, Tongues, etc...).
But outside Focus Spells and Focus Cantrips, you shouldn't use buffs very often.
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Buffs are good, but not like 1e where you buff party full of buffs that lasts for hours in total for every single encounter, its more of "You do it during combat when you figure out 'oh s!%+ that enemy is actually tough'". Like haste is nice and all, but best usage of it isn't really "hitting four times", its having more ability to do use two actions for attacking and two actions for mobility. The duration of 1 minute or 10 minutes ensures that buffs are mostly only for when you actually need them.
Either way, fighter with bard multiclass doing self buffing? Yeah it works. That mirror image to avoid hits I've seen them perform is pretty decent before moving to melee.
(sidenote: Alchemist is support class, even bomb alchemist is support class, you don't shred enemy hp with splash damage to kill them but to soften them up for other party members to kill faster or because your teammates don't happen to have correct damage types to get past golem's resistance.)
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I'm not sure how many GMs will let you cast multiple 1 minute spells in front of a door to a room full of enemies. Casting is fairly loud, and then you need to start tracking rounds for each spell.
This is an area of GM interpretation that varies widely and has a significant impact on game balance.
There are plenty of GMs that don't allow you to precast spells before combat.
But some allow you to cast one or two spells before combat. But only if you are attacking and controlling the initiation of the encounter.
It is quite a difference in terms of buffing, and saving actions in combat.
Yeah, and the CRB suggests limiting pre-buffing with short duration spells to one round of it, essentially.
I will say, quantity of buffs aside I agree with Sage's point. Scouting and Intel is super important for buff application. That's why I think the witch's power is so dependant on how your GM interprets the rules gaps around familiar scouting. Yesterday we used a familiar to scout out an entire enemy encampment. It got eaten at one point, but with no real consequences. We used that intelligence to take out about 400 XP worth of enemies in one go without taking a single point of damage. We trapped the minions while we isolated the boss, buffed up, and took her down.
It seems like one complexity here is, "what do people mean by buffing?"
Are we talking specifically about abilities that give numeric bonuses to yourself? Are we talking about any spell that targets yourself and not the enemy as a "buff?"
I feel like a whole guide could be written about common mistakes people make about misusing spells to accomplish goals that were already accomplished (like the risk of using mirror image at a point in the combat when the enemy might have already decided that they will not be attacking you any way), or in providing buffs that no one in the party is ready to exploit, (or the whole party will rush into melee range with a more powerful foe to exploit a small aura of bless, only to have one or more party members drop before getting to make any attacks with it).
But that is a problem regardless of who is buffing who, even if it contributes to the problem.
Silent spell is a very good feat to pick up for any character that is wanting to cast spells before a combat. If you are out of sight lines, the enemy will have no means of detecting your spell casting any differently than just detecting you regularly so you can pre-buff as much as want, except that you eat into your time with the bonuses you get from it. But with a spell like bless, getting it off outside the room and letting it stew for a 2 or 3 rounds while casting other spells can actually be a good thing and an action saver in combat. Of course that will mean MCing into Wizard and spending a level 8 feat on something many players rate as a "situational" feat, so many players won't do it. Especially since level 8 feats seem to often be the ones that really break the game open for many classes.
Fighters would obviously rather prebuff with spells rather than spend their precious actions in combat casting spells on themselves, while many casters might do more damage in a round casting a buff spell on the fighter who is already in position than they would trying to blast an enemy that has decent saves and not a great AC.
And that really is why the answer is complicated:
PF2 encounters resists having standard operating procedures that outperform tactical awareness and situational advantages. Meeting an enemy against their strength (especially a higher level enemy) is a fast path towards a TPK.
Silent spell is a ... Of course that will mean MCing into Wizard and spending3 class feats on multiclassing! And one of them 8+ lvl. And another just as useless prerequisite.
I will never get over the thing that they gave this feat only to wizards :(
I mean they need to get SOMETHING unique. :P Bards also have a similar option.
I should probably clarify that the example I gave where I had a ton of buffs on my character from pre-casting was a very specific situation, pretty much the goldilocks scenario for self buffing, where we knew the boss was there, that we would be jumping in to fight it with no pre-fight talking or shenanigans, and that stealth did not matter. I should have been more clear about that.
Most of the time you will not have something like that, and will not be able to pre-cast, but casting a self buff on your first turn is still powerful and useful, and weird combat situations can give you opportunities to cast more. I do still think self buffing is super worth it though, even if you are only considering just one or two spells in early combat, at least for magus.
There are a small number of spells that last longer, 2nd level longstrider lasts 8 hours, and that extra 10 movement can be very useful.
This has become a bit of a ramble, oops.
Silent spell is a ... Of course that will mean MCing into Wizard and spending3 class feats on multiclassing! And one of them 8+ lvl. And another just as useless prerequisite.
I will never get over the thing that they gave this feat only to wizards :(
I mean conceal spell alone should let you attempt to cast spells from the other side of a door without drawing attention to yourself, you will just probably have to roll a deception check and a stealth check to avoid the attention. If there is a solid door on the otherside though, the GM would hopefully give you a sizable circumstance bonus, especially if the potential listener is otherwise preoccupied. Without that feat though, you really can't even try to cast a spell without drawing attention to yourself.
I do think the decision to limit effective secret casting to wizards (with Bards having a version that can work for them hiding their spells within the general context of them grabbing the spotlight with a performance) was an intended niche. Magic is supposed to be showy and attention grabbing in Golarion unless someone is really dedicated to making it otherwise. Perhaps some archetypes in a spies or intrigue book will open up such options further in the future.
I mean they need to get SOMETHING unique. :P Bards also have a similar option.They could've given more interesting things to schools. Even dnd5e (!) managed to do this, more or less.
And bardic version is very likely not silent, doesn't give immunity to Silence and free casting underwater. So not really comparable.
True, but it also only requires one skill check and uses your key ability score and god skill. So a bard is much more likely to succeed on the check. (A second feat reduces it one check, but it still isn't for as central a skill.)