Is there any point in taking the Dhampir Fangs, Taste Blood, or Bloodletting Fangs feats as a full caster? Caster unarmed proficiency is way behind the curve, so wouldn't you end up missing on most of your bite attacks?
Why do I want to bite as a wizard? Because... it's a dhampir. It's not the *core* of the character concept, and I don't want to be as good as the martials, but it would be great if the game supported casters vamping out now and then as a semi-useful combat alternative. As it is, those feats and the heritage in general seem to influence you toward playing a martial class if you want to be a dhampir capable of biting to drink blood.
More broadly, feats and heritages like these seem to act as traps for people who like the flavor but don't understand that they won't be realistically usable for their character. Beastkin offers natural weapons and several feats to improve fighting with them, but a beastkin caster won't be able to use those natural weapons even semi-effectively. Someone playing a caster might like to roleplay a wizard who struggles against their lycanthropy, but they'd have to sacrifice actually being semi-useful in combat in order to use their natural weapons and play that part of their character. Maybe they don't even mind being ineffective, as that could be part of the struggle, but it doesn't only affect them; PF2 is a team game and a useless party member is a threat to all of them.
As a comparison, in 5e a dhampir wizard's bite attack is just as accurate as any other attack, provided they boost their Constitution regularly. It won't hold a candle to what the martial classes can do because the wizard doesn't have multiattack and the damage is tiny, but when they do decide to roleplay their character's vampiric nature they'll have a good chance of not looking like a useless idiot. It's frustrating that PF2 makes these kinds of less optimal alternatives so MUCH less accurate for casters. You really are locked into the magical support, debuff, and AOE roles.
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Oof. They're not even finesse. Your in the same camp as the demonic sorcerer that actually wants to use gluttons jaws. Yeah, probably not worth it. In general, full casters should stay away from melee. Especially the 6hp ones. Although, a laughing shadow magus that spellstrikes with vampiric fangs sounds like it would be rad.
2e took care of hybrids and permanent buffs, which is IMO excellent, and a -2 hit wouldn't stop a wizard from hitting -1/0/+1 enemies.
Given the 3 action system, balance was required to come first than flavor.
I suggest you to normally bite low level ones and trustrike + bite against strong enemies, being efficient as a martial with their first attack ( if you started with 16 dex ) or maybe even more.
Apart from hitting, you major issue will be, imo, the lack of HP.
Finally, what about a magus with wizard dedication rather than a wizard?
Maybe it could fulfill the concept aswell.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
It isn't a trap option just because it is better for some classes than others. Also, you really want to use melee attacks as a wizard you can. Snag armor proficiency, boost strength, and prepare spells like True Strike, Mirror Image, and Vampiric Touch. You're only 1 or 2 points behind a regular martial for accuracy.
The important thing though is that you still use your spells. If what you actually want to do is rush the front line and attacks 3 times a turn, you shouldn't have picked a caster. But making a single Strike to supplement a two action spell is a fine enough routine. The fangs specifically won't do in incredible damage but once you start draining life you can inflict drained 1 and gain temporary HP, which is always good on a fragile chassis.
I figure a caster vampire/dhampir would probably opt for biting willing, weak or incapacitated prey anyways, so you could use the bite mainly on weaker opponents and ones your group has managed to hinder (one grappled by the martials or stuck by your spells, for instance). And it can be a nice last-resort attack for when enemies decide to charge you. Even with lower accuracy, you should be able to bite weak or debuffed opponents. So no, it won't be the main thing, as you said, and it won't be the most efficient, but it can still be useful. You'll want to get some Strength for accuracy and might lack some in the early levels, but the stats should allow it fairly well with the boosts at every 5 levels.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Taste blood has a lot of potential for a necromancer/abjurer style caster but it would take a lot of party support and wise tactics to make work.
False life to start combat with some temp HP and not wasting your actions to move in position, but appearing as the weak caster blasting from the outside and then having a way to turn it on an enemy that runs up on you to bite, very potentially drain, and then target with a nasty fort save targeting spell.
If your party is built for it, someone throwing down 3 action harm spells on top of the party will probably help keep you up as well.
You could always flavor vampiric touch as a bite attack as well.
True Strike is your best friend when trying to melee as an wizard. One should also have enough encounters of -1/-2 level to the party, which will make a big difference to the success chance of bite attacks.
I understand your pain here as I have a dragon blood sorcerer whose strength stat I pumped up to make the dragon claws a useable feature. I find that using a cantrip is still the better option except for a few levels. Due to item bonuses with a minimum starting 14 and regular increases in strength or dexterity if using finesse, at character levels 5 and 6 the to-hit math is the same, and at levels 11-14 the to-hit with martial attacks is one point better than spell attacks.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
At higher levels, it's more like 3-5 behind between your lower ability scores and proficiency.
Ravingdork wrote: At higher levels, it's more like 3-5 behind between your lower ability scores and proficiency. At most, it's -3 at level 10 and then from level 13 to 14. It's only -5 compared to fighters. Then it's -2 from 15 then back to -3 at 20, not counting Apex items at 17 anyways.
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Ravingdork wrote: At higher levels, it's more like 3-5 behind between your lower ability scores and proficiency. I was comparing numbers from spell attacks versus martial attacks not to martial characters.
Assume this attribute start for a sorcerer who plans to use unarmed or weapon attacks-
Level 1: 14 12 14 10 10 18. Proficiencies in weapons/unarmed trained, spell attacks also trained. Martial +5, Spell +7
Level 5: 16 14 16 10 10 19. Both proficiencies still at trained. Martial has a +1 item bonus for weapon/unarmed. Martial +11, Spell +11
Level 7: training for spells increases to expert and pulls ahead by 1 point.
Level 11: 18 16 18 10 10 20. Proficiencies in weapons/unarmed is now expert as well. Assume a +2 item bonus now for weapon/unarmed. Martial +21, Spell +20.
This difference continues until level 15 when spell proficiency becomes master, at which point they tie again until the APEX item comes in to boost the spell casting stat further. By level 20, spell attacks are far superior in the bonus. Martial +32, Spell +35.
dinwenel wrote: when they do decide to roleplay their character's vampiric nature they'll have a good chance of not looking like a useless idiot. It's frustrating that PF2 makes these kinds of less optimal alternatives so MUCH less accurate for casters. You really are locked into the magical support, debuff, and AOE roles. From my perspective there's way more roleplaying potential in being a 10 Strength wizard who needs to carefully choose weaker victims, substantially weaken targets, and/or prepare with spells before feeding.
I think that's far more interesting than 5e's pump 1-2 ability scores and then use them for every single thing you do from swinging a sword to casting a spell to social interactions.
That's why there are different games I suppose.
Thanks for the advice, everyone. It sounds like if I did take the "bite feats" I would need to be careful to use buffs, debuffs, and to target weaker enemies for a bite. I'm not sure it's worth spending a bunch of ancestry feats on when, yeah, I could just flavor Vampiric Touch as a bite on the occasion I want to roleplay that, but I'll think it over.
HumbleGamer wrote: 2e took care of hybrids and permanent buffs, which is IMO excellent, and a -2 hit wouldn't stop a wizard from hitting -1/0/+1 enemies.
Given the 3 action system, balance was required to come first than flavor.
I get that, it's just backwards from the design approach I would have taken. Poor accuracy is a major issue because it feels so disappointing for a player to miss and do nothing all the time. Obviously spellcasters shouldn't be on par with martials with weapons. But to me, it makes more sense to keep accuracy of all classes within a range that gives regular success, and then to boost the *level* of martials' success above that baseline with feats that grant streamlined action economy, increased damage, and nonmagical buffs/debuffs - all of which casters would never be able to access. Instead, PF2 puts a hard limit on caster weapon accuracy but allows them to get martial feats via Dedications.
It's, "You can have these special martial abilities, but most of the time you'll fail when using them and accomplish nothing," vs. "You can't do fancy battle maneuvers or crazy damage, but at least you can probably hit if you try to." The PF2 designers went with the less fun choice imo.
Raze Le'Roof wrote: From my perspective there's way more roleplaying potential in being a 10 Strength wizard who needs to carefully choose weaker victims, substantially weaken targets, and/or prepare with spells before feeding.
I think that's far more interesting than 5e's pump 1-2 ability scores and then use them for every single thing you do from swinging a sword to casting a spell to social interactions.
That's why there are different games I suppose.
I actually agree that it could be more roleplay potential, it just doesn't seem like the game has breathing room to go through so much effort to do something that's not particularly effective in the end. At least not during combat. It would be kind of a selfish tactic to use when you could do something that is better for the party, and from what I've seen combat goes badly in PF2 when you don't work as a team.
Keep in mind another good option is to focus on your athletics skill. One can get their athletics to master rank by level 7 (same proficiency score as a fighter with their main weapon). With a decent strength score combined with some item bonuses from gear, one can grapple, trip, and shove just fine against most enemies. Once you have the grapple initiated, the target becomes flat-footed and easier to bite. The drawback is that it applies towards MAPs, but the bite can still be used with True Strike to help offset that. Also as a side benefit, having a good athletics score will help with the feeling of vampiric strength by being able to get physical with enemies with good success chance.
Not unless you're going to build up strength if it is not a finesse weapon. You could take the fangs as a roleplay feature if you don't have anything better to take. Not like ancestry feats are giving you a lot where you can't take one or two purely for roleplay reasons.
Is there any reason to bite?
...mostly anger management issues.
In general combat? Probably not. Random commoners on the street? F&@+ing go for it.
Lucerious wrote: Keep in mind another good option is to focus on your athletics skill. One can get their athletics to master rank by level 7 (same proficiency score as a fighter with their main weapon). With a decent strength score combined with some item bonuses from gear, one can grapple, trip, and shove just fine against most enemies. Once you have the grapple initiated, the target becomes flat-footed and easier to bite. The drawback is that it applies towards MAPs, but the bite can still be used with True Strike to help offset that. Also as a side benefit, having a good athletics score will help with the feeling of vampiric strength by being able to get physical with enemies with good success chance. I did have that as part of the build and prioritized Strength. After learning some more though, it's hard to see why a caster would use Athletics to get flat-footed instead of just casting 4th-level Invisibility to make everyone flat-footed to them *and* increase their survivability in melee. I think it's still worth investing in for the "vampiric strength" element, but it might end up being something I only use when I need to immobilize an enemy or have run out of spells.
It's a double edge tactic to go with invisibility all the time, on a character who prioritized either STR and INT ( resulting in low saves, low hp, low AC ).
If the character goes down because of aoe, it would require a 11+ flat check in order to be healed. It's something I wouldn't risk.
A boss Dragon's Breath could put you down on a failure or a critical failure, for example.
I went down a couple of times with my invisible DEX magus, with better HP pool, AC and saves than a wizard, and risked to die once.
It was hard for the healer to help me.
And the more the game proceeds, the more the AoE ( and sometimes, AoO ).
I don't quite understand whether you want to just bite sometimes or want to do a bite build. Moving + Bite would suck ( vampire pun intended ) 2 out of your 3 actions, not allowing you to cast during your round.
This would lower your character damage, resulting in a huge party penalty.
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