Also, I don't think fortitude saves are quite as universally strong as they used to be. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I feel like there are a lot of monsters with weaker ones. Although many are undead, which harm isn't great for.
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Also, I don't think fortitude saves are quite as universally strong as they used to be. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I feel like there are a lot of monsters with weaker ones. Although many are undead, which harm isn't great for.
As you level, the most common high save goes from reflex to fortitude. At level 5+, if you guessed fortitude was the best save of any random monster you come across, you'd be correct between 40-60% of the time depending on your exact level.
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Spread sheets have been done on this and all of them have shown Fortitude saves being the most frequent high save of a creature. Reflex saves are in the middle and Will saves are least in frequency of being the strong save.
I've tried to build a Harm blaster since the release of PF2, but it's really with Secrets of Magic that I've been able to make one.
I'm personally not fond of Aobst's build as I find Harm's main strength to be the triple 1-action Harm, aka the nova!
I've personally gone the Oracle route. Tempest Oracle and Sorcerer Dedication (for Dangerous Sorcery and Spectral Hand). When I want to go Harm nova, I cast Spectral Hand and then Tempest Touch (it's a Focus one-action Harm, roughly) and I can then chain with Harm.
Anyway, Harm is nice at high level. At low level, I find it too expensive for what it does. But once you get to level 9+, using low level Harms is not really expensive and it still does quite some damage. It's a good third action (if your Hand is out already).
Spread sheets have been done on this and all of them have shown Fortitude saves being the most frequent high save of a creature. Reflex saves are in the middle and Will saves are least in frequency of being the strong save.
That's not exactly that. Will is the best save to target at low level, Reflex the best at high level, and Fortitude is never good. Fortitude is definitely the worst save to target, but it doesn't mean that the difference is big. As much as I agree that specializing too much on Harm is not a good idea, having it in one's arsenal is strong. That's why I don't like the Cleric build and prefer more versatile builds with Harm being just a component of them.
Triple Harm plus Harming Hands and Dangerous Sorcery is extremely strong damage wise, but it is also super risky and hard to pull of. Probably fun, but not something I would try to play in a long term campaign.
I personally resonate more with what aobst128 posted early. Cast Down is really good if your party goes heavy on AoO and the like.
My take on the harm blaster is that you treat your 3 harm nova as your secret defensive weapon, not the proactive strategy you try to do as often as possible. By that, I mean you make sure you have good combos of other spells to present yourself more like a back line caster, and then turn the 3 harm spell nova round on your enemy only after they try to close to you to shut down your other casting.
I think you can accomplish this well with a cleric by focusing on casting buff spells, debuff spells, or get blasting options from focus spells, archetypes and bonus spells from a deity.
I recommend this route because if you start casting harm spells right away, your enemy will probably expect it and not let you set up a power house nova. I guess if your whole party heals from negative energy you can play it with lots of 3 action area bursts, but it is hard to make that worth it if you are not also healing your allies. I don’t find a lot of tables where everyone wants to go negative healing though.
My take on the harm blaster is that you treat your 3 harm nova as your secret defensive weapon, not the proactive strategy you try to do as often as possible. By that, I mean you make sure you have good combos of other spells to present yourself more like a back line caster, and then turn the 3 harm spell nova round on your enemy only after they try to close to you to shut down your other casting
I also see it as the only way of using the strat, but it is still risky. You better kill the thing with those 3 casts or you are in for a bad time if you have already been injured and you spent a whole turn doing damage at melee. IF you have something like the Air domain reaction I could see this working really well, tho.
My take on the harm blaster is that you treat your 3 harm nova as your secret defensive weapon, not the proactive strategy you try to do as often as possible. By that, I mean you make sure you have good combos of other spells to present yourself more like a back line caster, and then turn the 3 harm spell nova round on your enemy only after they try to close to you to shut down your other castingI also see it as the only way of using the strat, but it is still risky. You better kill the thing with those 3 casts or you are in for a bad time if you have already been injured and you spent a whole turn doing damage at melee. IF you have something like the Air domain reaction I could see this working really well, tho.
I was thinking something similar. It is extremely likely that by ending your turn next to an enemy that you will be giving up as many or more hit points than you took from said enemy. A very dangerous proposition.
Spread sheets have been done on this and all of them have shown Fortitude saves being the most frequent high save of a creature. Reflex saves are in the middle and Will saves are least in frequency of being the strong save.
To analyse that sort of data in a way that makes it useful we would need:
- level ranges (not just level of the creature but also what level differential the party is likely to fight it at)- creature family spreads (if a campaign doesn't contain dinosaurs, giants, constructs or undead, or has them in very small numbers, this will skew the result for instance)
- Frequency chance of each creature either in groups or in world building
And even then it would just hit rough whiteroom estimation accuracy. Although maybe useful for pfs play?
Now, something in favour of saying fort is a strong save and it being a worthwhile evaluation is that drained is harder to apply than clumsy or stupefied.
It is like the AoO being rare concept, absolutely true if you give every enemy the same weight in analysis. But depending on the campaign it could be fairly common thanks to humanoid martial types frequently having it and being fought in numbers.
To analyse that sort of data in a way that makes it useful we would need:
...and I'll add to that:
- Role. What does this enemy do on the battlefield? If they like sitting in the back and shooting you and/or buffing their friends... well, you're not likely to be deep-striking with the cleric. If they're a front-liner who does terrible, terrible things in melee to anyone who gets close, then you probably don't ever want to have a round where you're hitting them with three harms/heals. On the flip side, if they're the ones who'd be inclined to deep-strike, you may find yourself in base-to-base contact regardless of your own initial intentions... unless they have more reach than you do.
...and, of course, it matters whether they're vulnerable to positive or negative energies as well.
My wife is running a cleric in an undead/fiend heavy homebrew game, and she sometimes uses the defensive approach to heal blasting with a twist; instead of shooting 3 heals, she'll shoot a blast like inner radiance torrent followed by a heal.
Not as much damage, but it keeps her font well stocked and gives a lot of endurance throughout the day since it drains less spells. Typically, she utilizes this defensively, prefering to hang in the midline, and blasts enemies that ebter melee with her, rather than her closing in on the enemy. It's pretty good; and I suspect she'd be going down more often if she rushed ahead to make it her main thing.