On the effectiveness of Bombs


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion

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Got to thinking about this due to a discussion Sanityfaerie and SuperBidi got into over in the Thrower's Bandolier thread.

Now, my 10th level (almost 11th) Bomber is one of my favourite characters of all time. I find he's been great to play and has been quite effective in my experience.

Now, I don't care much for Citricking's tool. It doesn't suit my view of the game. I'm not about to keep track of every hit, miss, and crit.

I don't mind missing. Everybody misses, even Fighters. I do my best to get the best odds I can and then I roll the dice. If they don't go my way, there's always next time.

Similarly, I don't put a lot of emphasis on Critical Hits. They're a lot of fun when they happen, but they don't happen enough to count on (unless you're a Fighter or Gunslinger.)

What I care about are the results of hitting something, which I do with a fair bit of regularity despite being on my fourth "-1" level (of eight.)

And the thing is... Every other Ranged Striker is starting to throw a lot more dice than I do when they hit.

So I started looking at some numbers. I considered looking at everyone at 11th level, but I figured 12th would be better as Greater Striking runes would be available.

I picked a few Classes and routines. And I looked at what they could do on a minor lucky streak. Three rounds, three successful Strikes.

So, Inventor using a shortbow Weapon Innovation, Overdrive and Megaton Strike: 8d6+6 per Strike; average damage 34, total 102. Same Inventor in Critical Overdrive: 111 damage on average.

Alchemical Sciences Investigator using a Shortbow and Insight Coffee: 5d6+3d8+2 per Strike, average damage 33 pts, total 99.

Precision Edge Crossbow Ace Ranger: 3d10+2d6+2d8+2. 34 average, 102 total.

Thief Rogue with a Shortbow: Sneak Attack on every round, Precise Debilitations on Rounds 2&3 for extra damage: 8d6+2 + 2*(10d6+2) : 104 total.

And then there's my Bomber. Rolling at most 3 dice when I use a Greater Bomb. 2 dice when using a Perpetual Moderate. Sheesh.

Thing is... Persistent damage is a funny beast. Now, I'd normally start off with a Sticky Moderate Acid Flask. If the GM were really lucky with the flat checks I would probably go with two Sticky Moderate Acid Flasks and then go with a Greater Alchemist's Fire because we're getting late into the fight. Moderate Sticky Acid Flask: 1 Acid + 7 Acid Splash + (2d6 + 7) Persistent Acid = 22 pts average. Greater Alchemist's Fire 3d8 Fire + 8 Fire Splash + 3 Persistent Fire = 24 pts. Grand total: 68 pts.

But then we start getting into what-if territory. Suppose the GM failed the flat check on the 2nd Acid Flask. That's another 14 pts on average. 82 now.

How about failing the first check? Well, I'd swap to a Sticky Moderate Alchemist's Fire for Round Two. 2d8 Fire + 7 Fire Splash + 9 Persistent Fire. Average 25 pts. So now our total is 22 Round One + (25+14) Round Two + 24 Round Three = 85 pts.

Moving on... What if GM failed a second check, for the Sticky Alchemist's Fire? The Sticky Moderate does 6 more Persistent then the Greater, so we're up to 91 pts. If the second failed check was Acid, 99 instead.

Fail all three checks and the average damage from the three Bombs would be 105 pts. Which is pretty much in the same ballpark as the others.

That surprised me a bit. And believe me, I know it's unreliable. Still, I've seen GMs fail flat checks a lot... My record is 7 times in a row on a Lesser Acid Flask when my guy was Level 2. (8d6+2 Acid from one Bomb at L2. Loved it.) I just didn't think that a Bomber could get close like that. No Splash on extra targets, no Weakness... Just Persistent Damage, which has its own issues but at least it works on most things.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I've played with a fair bit of bomb throwers, some alchemists, or MC alchemists, or other archetype for bombs, and the times where they come in clutch are the situations where everyone else has been coming up short.

I can't count the number of difficult boss fights where most folks are hitting once if they are lucky, and then the bomber is consistently landing weakness triggering damage and/or debuffing the target in a way that lets the party squeak out a win.

I am sure there are number crunchers who could prove that just another fighter doing maximum damage is going to make a lot of those tough encounters less challenging, and maybe that is true more often than it is not, but it is pretty essential every party, and every player really, have ways of doing some pretty different types of damage, and bombs are amazing for covering some pretty interesting and otherwise challenging base damage types.

I have also played the Maul fighter, for whom every enemy really is a nail and it feels amazing 80+ percent of the time, but when the target resists 10 physical damage, or you feel compelled to keep a ghost touch rune on your primary weapon because you really have no back up plan to "smash," or you don't have a ghost touch rune and your attacks get cut in half damage wise, you can end up feeling like a fish out of water in some important fights.

I am curious how many other martial character players find themselves picking up some clutch damage type bombs when they become cheap enough, because brute forcing your way through incorporeal undead, or a golem that resists your physical damage type has gone very badly for you?


Unicore wrote:

I've played with a fair bit of bomb throwers, some alchemists, or MC alchemists, or other archetype for bombs, and the times where they come in clutch are the situations where everyone else has been coming up short.

I can't count the number of difficult boss fights where most folks are hitting once if they are lucky, and then the bomber is consistently landing weakness triggering damage and/or debuffing the target in a way that lets the party squeak out a win.

I did that once and am not even an alchemist. I just happened to keep a couple bottles of Alchemist's Fire that we found earlier instead of selling them. Worked really well against all the flammable plants that were resistant to the bludgeoning damage that most everyone else was using.


ghost touch oil are cheap level 4 consumable and there are a aeon stone give permanent version at mid level

not much of a problem

same with align oil energy mutagen

melee martial have low chance to meet a energy damage weakness or they can not exploit somehow


25speedforseaweedleshy wrote:
melee martial have low chance to meet a energy damage weakness or they can not exploit somehow

At low level. But at mid to high level, with Elemental and Holy Runes, you meet quite the number of weaknesses, too.

Overall, for the Bomber Alchemist, their efficiency is low before level 3, from level 3 to 9, and also at 11, they are quite efficient, and the rest of the time their first attack is closer to a secondary martial attack. Level 10 is specifically a drop in efficiency, hence why you feel it. Level 11 will be the last level where you feel you contribute meaningfully through your Bombs, and level 13 the main drop.

Even if, with the new Skunk Bomb, you'll have something else to do than damage.

ottdmk wrote:
Now, I don't care much for Citricking's tool. It doesn't suit my view of the game.

You are calculating damage in this discussion, why do you reject the tool that is giving you the best calculation, taking everything into account?


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

An aspect of persistent damage that often appears understated is “when is this effective?” I feel like I see people throwing out numbers like “we can only expect it to trigger 1x (or 2x)on average.” Whether this is true, or even close to estimable in average encounters, it is only a useful number in calculating a base level DPR that is not concerned with encounter difficulty or length.

The reality I often see in very challenging encounters is that many TPKs happen when a party commits to going full aggro against an enemy they cannot quickly beat. The fighter/melee martial spends all their actions moving in and attacking as much as possible in the first round, leaving themselves open to a full round of retaliation/debuffing. They probably have not figured out anything about the enemies capabilities until they discover them by provoking them. They get massively damaged, swallowed, poisoned, paralyzed, confused, controlled or otherwise put in a very bad position. The rest of the party spends many actions trying to help, or trying to ineffectually attack the foe, and by the enemies 2nd round someone is likely unconscious and another is in a position where most of their actions have to go to not dying. These are the situations where the GM either has to invent a reason for the enemy not to finish the fight, the party cuts its losses, usually losing a player, or the fight ends in a TPK.

On going persistent damage has been a massive contributor to parties not dying in these types of encounters in my experience. If the persistent damage is triggering a weakness, the GM has a very good reason to have an otherwise strong enemy retreat, at least temporarily, and possibly for a significant amount of time if it can’t heal itself. The same happens when several different damage types of persistent damage are triggered. Winning but dying is not really winning for most greedy, self-serving evil creatures. Persistent damage can easily be a leveraged asset in difficult encounters beyond “fastest path to most damage.” Bombs are one relatively effective way to get lots of different persistent damage types going in PF2 and that can be very effective in challenging encounters that don’t conform to average damage expectations across all encounters.


The alchemist stays relevant only because it has the chance to maybe if the GM is nice facing an enemy with a weakness that whatever splash damage or residual persistent damage would solve.

But by that logic literally all other classes have ways to do the exact same thing better by just spending a few pieces of gold.

This is why the general consensus is that the alchemist is a vending machine for other players. Their "usefulness" is not that the class is good, its that every once in a blue moon they might have a useful alchemical item.

This is even more true considering there are now the spellguns dealing 4 times more damage than a default bomb. So alchemist is literally paying feats to just catch up and still falls behind.


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Temperans wrote:
But by that logic literally all other classes have ways to do the exact same thing better by just spending a few pieces of gold.

And a lot of feats. I don't think there are many Fighters who want to invest in Alchemist Dedication for Quick Bomber. So, that logic is flawed. The Alchemist is its own thing and not an item dispenser (unless you consider that throwing bombs is "dispensing them").


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SuperBidi wrote:
You are calculating damage in this discussion, why do you reject the tool that is giving you the best calculation, taking everything into account?

I'll tell you why I reject it - or, rather, why I don't give it the same degree of respect that you do. It doesn't tell you anything about "what if?". It just boils it all down to one number, and acts like that one number is the only thing that matters. It's a white-room, tofu-block tool.

If you run the numbers manually, you can start to see some implications fall out - "does less damage unless you can get N targets into the splash", or "does somewhat more damage overall, but the base damage is pretty similar. It's just that the crit damage is hugely different." Damage is a bit mediocre for the first shot, but the second and third are surprisingly competitive." Stuff like that. That lets you figure out how it fits into the strategy. If being competitive requires you to fit two enemies into the splash area, how likely is that, really? If we can increase it from a 10 foot radius to a 15 foot radius, would that make it more likely? If the first shot of the round is worth doing, but the second really isn't, then that's going to have an impact on what your overall strategy is, and whether or not that strategy makes sense.

There's the bit about "What kind of enemies is this likely to be good or bad against?" It's really not good at that. "swarmed by level -2" and "tough fight against a single elite" are going to look very different in some ways, and different builds and attack types are going to be different levels of useful.

It also doesn't leave you any space to question your own assumptions... because it doesn't give any indicator which of your assumptions might be worth questioning. You just make your guesses, and then you get a number out the other end, and that number feels authoritative. That's not to say that you can't bake all of this stuff into the tool, but it takes a lot more effort and results in messy, messy graphs that are hard to parse, and so it's not particularly appealing.

I see Citricking's tool as a potentially useful jumping-off point to get first-order approximations, but not all that helpful for final analysis.


SuperBidi wrote:
Temperans wrote:
But by that logic literally all other classes have ways to do the exact same thing better by just spending a few pieces of gold.
And a lot of feats. I don't think there are many Fighters who want to invest in Alchemist Dedication for Quick Bomber. So, that logic is flawed. The Alchemist is its own thing and not an item dispenser (unless you consider that throwing bombs is "dispensing them").

Yeah, but energy mutagen is common now (or will be, shortly). Why bother with bombs and quick bomber when you can dose yourself once (potentially as a prebuff) and be done with it.


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SuperBidi wrote:
I don't think there are many Fighters who want to invest in Alchemist Dedication for Quick Bomber.

They wouldn't: they'd pick up Quickdraw [6 archetypes have it].


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Sanityfaerie wrote:
"does less damage unless you can get N targets into the splash"

It's easy to cover: Add splash damage multiple times, you can even add a multiplier (like 0.5) if you want to consider that damage on secondary targets is less important than damage on the primary one. It's just a few clicks.

Sanityfaerie wrote:
"does somewhat more damage overall, but the base damage is pretty similar. It's just that the crit damage is hugely different."

Well, that is quite obvious when you read the weapon. But if you really want you can also separate both damage values.

Sanityfaerie wrote:
Damage is a bit mediocre for the first shot, but the second and third are surprisingly competitive.

Super easy, just look at secondary and tertiary attacks damage.

Sanityfaerie wrote:
If being competitive requires you to fit two enemies into the splash area, how likely is that, really?

No tool will ever answer this question. That's when you need experience.

Sanityfaerie wrote:
"What kind of enemies is this likely to be good or bad against?"

You can play with enemy numbers, too.

Sanityfaerie wrote:
"swarmed by level -2" and "tough fight against a single elite" are going to look very different in some ways

That's the simplest one, just change the enemy level.

Sanityfaerie wrote:
It also doesn't leave you any space to question your own assumptions... because it doesn't give any indicator which of your assumptions might be worth questioning.

In the blink of an eye you can compare tons of different graphs and how they react. It's definitely a tool to question your own assumptions. Without it, it's tedious calculation after tedious calculations to get a partial idea.

Sanityfaerie wrote:
That's not to say that you can't bake all of this stuff into the tool, but it takes a lot more effort

Lot's of effort compared to manual computation?

I really think you should learn to use it. I've been able to determine expected damage from Alchemist's poisons on multiple rounds from level 1 to 20 and compare the reagent cost per damage to Bomb's with this tool, and it took me roughly half an hour when with pen and paper it would have taken a day. And it's extremely easy to use actually: you get your first numbers in less than 10 minutes.

And more importantly: It's way more accurate than anything you'll manage to calculate on your own. That's my main gripe on your numbers: You have to remove a lot of variables because taking them into account takes you too much time. They don't tell me anything because they are too crude.

If you want a small explanation on how to make your Bomb calculations, don't hesitate. I can give you a quick tour. But I can assure you it's super handy and it doesn't impair data analysis like you tend to assume.

Dark Archive

Lots of unnecessary shade being thrown at the community damage tool. Most of the arguments seem to be 'I don't like the white room analysis'. But the tool can provide non-white room analysis if you're willing to make the effort. For example establish a baseline combat sequence:

Turn 1: move + 2 actions to do w/e (modify to move 2 actions for melee)
Turn 2: 3 free actions, enemy 1 dies.
Turn 3: move to enemy 2, 2 actions for w/e.
Turn 4: 3 free actions, enemy 2 dies.
Turn 5: move to enemy 3, 2 actions for w/e.
Turn 6: 3 free actions, enemy 2 dies.

Then you figure out what your DPR is based on optimum actions at different levels for your class/build.

What this does is provide a consistent level set way to discuss the potential power of different builds. I don't really care if you can have a successful run as an alchemist if on average its going to suck playing one. The point of the tool is to remove the anecdotal from discussion and provide a consistent statistical analysis that is necessary to understand if the build is achieving your goals.

You can even go a step further by taking builds for a typical martial or meta builds and derive your support DPR if you're consistently dropping frightened 1 or 2 and calculate DPR for a typical party composition.

There is nothing wrong with the tool, just the way you're applying it. It takes more effort to do more complicated analysis and I wish I could export my DPR data points to google sheet, but I also have contributed 0 hours of development time to what is otherwise an amazing tool.

Like OP just states DPR for various builds but its not clear if it incorporated different attack bonuses, if its low/med/high AC, etc. So the analysis is basically useless as a discussion point.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Sanityfaerie wrote:
It doesn't tell you anything about "what if?". It just boils it all down to one number, and acts like that one number is the only thing that matters.

It doesn't 'act like' anything though. You put in the information you want and it gives you data based on that input. It has no anthropomorphic qualities from which it can tell you how to use that data.

The 'what-if' is a matter of changing the input appropriately, based on your other considerations. Changing damage values, adjusting the AC of the monster, trying different attack routines, all of the scenarios you present are just a matter of tweaking input.

I don't think the tool is necessarily the end-all either, but it seems a bit uncharitable, maybe even downright misleading, to suggest the tool is somehow deceiving you because you didn't feel like adjusting your inputs to try for different scenarios.


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Red Griffyn wrote:
Lots of unnecessary shade being thrown at the community damage tool. Most of the arguments seem to be 'I don't like the white room analysis'.

I think that white room analysis is fine, and a useful tool, and not sufficient all by itself. Taken in a vacuum, though? I don't like white room analysis. It's really easy to make a few reasonable-seeming assumptions and wind up with white room analysis that has precision that's much higher than its accuracy, and that's the sort of thing that generates false certainty.

SuperBidi wrote:

And more importantly: It's way more accurate than anything you'll manage to calculate on your own. That's my main gripe on your numbers: You have to remove a lot of variables because taking them into account takes you too much time. They don't tell me anything because they are too crude.

If you want a small explanation on how to make your Bomb calculations, don't hesitate. I can give you a quick tour. But I can assure you it's super handy and it doesn't impair data analysis like you tend to assume.

I'll be honest here. Most of this is in a reaction to how you personally use it, or at least how I've seen you use it. I've seen you show up with numbers from the tool that you were completely confident in, and I've done my little manual analysis thing, and I've had you realize that you missed something important. On the flip side, I've done my little manual analysis thing, and I've seen you respond by showing up with a three-line graph with essentially none of its assumptions made obvious, saying "Look! I have a graph. You're wrong." My manual stuff, crude and kludgy and time-consuming as it is, at least declares its assumptions and simplifications every step of the way. It allows the others in the conversation to follow it and call me out when my logic is wrong. It allows those numbers to be discussed, and, yeah, it has the opportunity for deeper analysis baked right in.

Now, I'm not saying that manual analysis is the be-all and end-all. I mean, it's nontrivial effort, and I only do one level at a time. It's pretty clear that the tool brings a lot to the table that I can't usefully compare with... but it doesn't bring anything like the same level of transparency, and, from the way I've seen it used literally every time I've seen it used by anyone, it has tended to lead to people looking for bottom-line numbers so that they can say "This class/build does X% more damage in battle than that class/build.", possibly after arguing over which base assumptions should be made first.

From this, I conclude that that is the usage pattern that the tool encourages. Perhaps I am wrong, but that's what fits the data that I personally have seen. I attempted to use the tool at one point, and found the interface sufficiently impenetrable for the purposes that I wanted to put it to that I stopped bothering. I don't actually want to learn it. There are lots of other people out there who are happy to come post about the numbers they pulled out of the thing, and that's plenty for me to start from.

Dark Archive

Sanityfaerie wrote:
Red Griffyn wrote:
Lots of unnecessary shade being thrown at the community damage tool. Most of the arguments seem to be 'I don't like the white room analysis'.

I think that white room analysis is fine, and a useful tool, and not sufficient all by itself. Taken in a vacuum, though? I don't like white room analysis. It's really easy to make a few reasonable-seeming assumptions and wind up with white room analysis that has precision that's much higher than its accuracy, and that's the sort of thing that generates false certainty.

The whole point to my post is that the analysis is as simple or detailed as desired. You could:

- Establish a optimum 3 free action turn white room analysis
- Establish a optimum 2 free action turn white room analysis
- Establish a optimum 1 free action turn white room analysis
- Combine those in limitless combinations of happening on Rounds 1 to X based on how long your fight is and how often you have to move or change enemies or reapply esoteric lore/stances/etc.

I'm the first one to jump in against folks looking at 1 round psychic magus true strike staff of divination dropped to the floor builds and talk about it in more realistic scenarios across 5-6 round combats. You obviously you can't consider everything but if you can establish the best DPR you can get out of 1, 2, or 3 action sequences you can in at a high level cover off what might happen given projected changes to the proposed action sequence (i.e., build X loses a 3rd strike DPR but build Y loses a 2nd strike DPR so given change A/B/C it takes 3 rounds to normalize or whatever). It also quells the fervor around nova damage and brings it into the realm of sustained damage analysis.


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Sanityfaerie wrote:
I've had you realize that you missed something important

No. I don't know why you continue to bring that in, but it never happened.

Sanityfaerie wrote:
It allows those numbers to be discussed, and, yeah, it has the opportunity for deeper analysis baked right in.

Again no. What makes you think your calculations are easier to use than my graphs? I had tons of conversations about assumptions around Citricking's tool's graphs, I've even had JSONs exchange to see what the other was putting and check possible mistakes. If you were using the tool, you'd be able to reproduce my graphs, to comment on differences, to add more assumptions.

So, we are both criticizing the other for their tool. The issue with your tool is that you'll never answer the questions we are asking ourselves. The question was "Do property runes on Bombs imbalance the game?". How much time would it take you to answer with your way of doing it? Weeks easily, at least weeks to answer in a way that would satisfy both of us. With Citricking's tool, we could have the solution in a couple of hours. So, I'm sorry but I don't want the conversation to take that long.

If you could just learn the tool, we'd speak the same language. And automated calculation is definitely far more optimized than pen and paper math, I really think you are the one who should move with the flow.


Red Griffyn wrote:
Sanityfaerie wrote:
Red Griffyn wrote:
Lots of unnecessary shade being thrown at the community damage tool. Most of the arguments seem to be 'I don't like the white room analysis'.

I think that white room analysis is fine, and a useful tool, and not sufficient all by itself. Taken in a vacuum, though? I don't like white room analysis. It's really easy to make a few reasonable-seeming assumptions and wind up with white room analysis that has precision that's much higher than its accuracy, and that's the sort of thing that generates false certainty.

The whole point to my post is that the analysis is as simple or detailed as desired. You could:

- Establish a optimum 3 free action turn white room analysis
- Establish a optimum 2 free action turn white room analysis
- Establish a optimum 1 free action turn white room analysis
- Combine those in limitless combinations of happening on Rounds 1 to X based on how long your fight is and how often you have to move or change enemies or reapply esoteric lore/stances/etc.

I'm the first one to jump in against folks looking at 1 round psychic magus true strike staff of divination dropped to the floor builds and talk about it in more realistic scenarios across 5-6 round combats. You obviously you can't consider everything but if you can establish the best DPR you can get out of 1, 2, or 3 action sequences you can in at a high level cover off what might happen given projected changes to the proposed action sequence (i.e., build X loses a 3rd strike DPR but build Y loses a 2nd strike DPR so given change A/B/C it takes 3 rounds to normalize or whatever). It also quells the fervor around nova damage and brings it into the realm of sustained damage analysis.

Okay. Sure... but even that is just going with a somewhat more complicated white room. Like, yeah, it's a definite step up, but the tool is fundamentally an assumptions-first methodology. You lay out what you're going to test against, you test against it, and then you have numbers. You pretty much inherently aren't going to raise any questions that you didn't know to ask up front, and you aren't going to draw any implications on anything that you didn't start out trying to analyze in the first place.

The tool is inherently one that simplifies and streamlines. You can fight that, to a degree, and there's value that you can gain by doing so, but that is its nature. That's the thing that makes it useful in the first place.


Sanityfaerie wrote:
Okay. Sure... but even that is just going with a somewhat more complicated white room.

There are only so many options we can use to make baseline assumptions about a given class. When talking about bombs and their damage, those will generally boil down to looking at actions used, the target's AC, the number of targets, and any weaknesses/resistances among those targets. You could run numbers beyond those but they wouldn't be useful for general case balancing as is usually what we're going for an a public forum.


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I've played too many rounds of combat where I didn't have the opportunity to do my character's optimal combat routine to base my feat choices and other build options on what the optimal combat routine is. It feels like picking spells based on their crit-fail effects.


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I've never really seen bombs be all that effective in-play. They're worth more as raw gold for other items (including other consumables) than as consumables.


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I keep several bombs on my ranger. They have come in super handy on occasion, applying persistent damage or other effects to boost the party.

Dark Archive

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Sanityfaerie wrote:


Okay. Sure... but even that is just going with a somewhat more complicated white room. Like, yeah, it's a definite step up, but the tool is fundamentally an assumptions-first methodology. You lay out what you're going to test...

How is that any different from manually calculating? At least with the community tool there is less likelihood of an accidental math error.

The tool is a tool. Obviously you have to know how to use the tool to achieve a result. Like any tool it can be used by a novice, an amateur, and expert, etc. and you'll only get out of it what you put in. Part of the discourse when you use a tool like this should be documenting your baseline assumptions and being open to improvements or tweaks. Simply stating things as essentially unquestionable knowledge is obviously counter to a positive community engagement.

What the tool does is let people who don't want to learn how to or don't know how to do the math enter the discussion. It decreases the barrier to entry and standardizes the discussion. There are a lot of players who have anecdotal intuitive knowledge based on their game experience and this tool allows those people to engage in those explorations of the system/math/outcomes. Before tools like there were large parts of the community who were gate guardianed from having these discussions or vilified/ridiculed for suggesting that maybe X was better than the Y ("Go do the math!").

Most people in hobbies like this don't want to learn probability/statistics just to stare at excel sheets of numbers (especially other people's numbers to provide critiques). They want a clean GUI that supplies a standard output that is easy to read and draw conclusions from. The tool achieves that without being needlessly time consuming or complicated.


Sanityfaerie wrote:
Okay. Sure... but even that is just going with a somewhat more complicated white room.

Sorry to quote you twice but how does your math do anything that the calculator couldn't do? What does the by-hand touch add to the process?


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Slacker 2.0 wrote:
Sorry to quote you twice but how does your math do anything that the calculator couldn't do? What does the by-hand touch add to the process?

Understanding of how those result numbers came to be. Sanityfaerie already said that. You don't have to agree that doing it manually is better than having a tool do it, but I'm not understanding the criticism of liking the manual process of determining the answer in order to get a better understanding of what goes into that result.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
breithauptclan wrote:
Slacker 2.0 wrote:
Sorry to quote you twice but how does your math do anything that the calculator couldn't do? What does the by-hand touch add to the process?
Understanding of how those result numbers came to be. Sanityfaerie already said that. You don't have to agree that doing it manually is better than having a tool do it, but I'm not understanding the criticism of liking the manual process of determining the answer in order to get a better understanding of what goes into that result.

Nothing wrong with liking the manual process. It can be very useful for understanding how the numbers worse, or even fun if you're into that thing.

My objection is with the way Sanityfaerie has tried to reframe end user decisions about what data to enter as instead an act of deception on the part of citricking, which veers away from merely talking about preferences in methodology.

Saying "doing the math by hand helps me think about parts of the equation I might not have otherwise" is fine, reasonable, and even a good point others may want to take into consideration. Trying to generalize that, and anthropomorphizing a calculator as a hostile force is not.


breithauptclan wrote:
Slacker 2.0 wrote:
Sorry to quote you twice but how does your math do anything that the calculator couldn't do? What does the by-hand touch add to the process?
Understanding of how those result numbers came to be. Sanityfaerie already said that. You don't have to agree that doing it manually is better than having a tool do it, but I'm not understanding the criticism of liking the manual process of determining the answer in order to get a better understanding of what goes into that result.

What's to understand though? Math is math and the output numbers will tell you exactly what was being tested given the constrained nature of PF2s combat and underlying systems. Given how easy-to-use math tools are you can even run what you suspect was being tested and see if your numbers come out the same.

The argument here is as absurd as if somebody said they prefer graphing calculus by hand because MathLab just isn't as fun to use.


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This is literally the same argument that was had in every other version of DnD.

One side is using DPR to state how gameplay style A is better than B because look at what the calculator says. Another side is saying that's wrong because its missing X, Y, and Z. A third side is saying both are wrong because of the way the math, averages, and human perception works. While the last group is complaining that everyone is wrong because the only way to play is doing pure RP with little to no combat.


Temperans wrote:
One side is using DPR to state how gameplay style A is better than B because look at what the calculator says. Another side is saying that's wrong because its missing X, Y, and Z.

This is part of the process for anything stat related. You have the calculations, that are true by definition as its math. And then you have the interpretation of the calculations, the part that covers thousands of books.

I've often seen the term "white-room theory" used in a derogatory way. But the alternative to "white-room theory" is either personal experience (which is personal so its hard to convince anyone unless there are a lot of people voicing the same experience) or widespread stats which is impossible as no one is collecting them.

Also, math is not "white-room theory". When math says that an attack on an at level monster does 18 points of damage on average, this is true. It's what you do with the math which is "white-room theory". We are all trying to make a valid model of what we experience, of our characters gameplay.

And ultimately, a lot of things can't be put into the math. A recent example that opposed me to Sanityfaerie: You can't add splash or range into the math. First, because you'd need to know the occurrence of such situations, but also because you alter your gameplay because these things exist: I throw my bombs from closer than I shoot my Shortbow. And determining the impact of being closer is just impossible because the impact is not a damage one (and as such a calculable one) but a defensive one (as the enemies are also closer to me).

All these discussions are just there for people to make their own idea, and math is just an argument like any other.


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Slacker 2.0 wrote:
breithauptclan wrote:
Slacker 2.0 wrote:
Sorry to quote you twice but how does your math do anything that the calculator couldn't do? What does the by-hand touch add to the process?
Understanding of how those result numbers came to be. Sanityfaerie already said that. You don't have to agree that doing it manually is better than having a tool do it, but I'm not understanding the criticism of liking the manual process of determining the answer in order to get a better understanding of what goes into that result.

What's to understand though? Math is math and the output numbers will tell you exactly what was being tested given the constrained nature of PF2s combat and underlying systems. Given how easy-to-use math tools are you can even run what you suspect was being tested and see if your numbers come out the same.

The argument here is as absurd as if somebody said they prefer graphing calculus by hand because MathLab just isn't as fun to use.

Second account here so quick? What happened to the first one, have you lost access to it or something? :)


Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:
Second account here so quick? What happened to the first one, have you lost access to it or something? :)

I made it on a throwaway email and accidentally saved my username into the password manager, so I logged out and couldn't get back in.


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There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

And when I use 'whiteroom theorycrafting' as a derogatory, it is because people are not accounting for the practical needs of actual gameplay. They are instead basing their analysis on an ideal turn - which rarely, if ever, actually happens.


breithauptclan wrote:

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

And when I use 'whiteroom theorycrafting' as a derogatory, it is because people are not accounting for the practical needs of actual gameplay. They are instead basing their analysis on an ideal turn - which rarely, if ever, actually happens.

Speaking of this, that is exactly what this thread is about isn't it?

Alchemical items are bad, but if you assume that the bombs are triggering weakness they look a lot better than they actually are. Thus the one time that alchemist ends up being actually useful stays because of how rare that event is.

You can see similar stuff with caster threads. In those the usual advice is to grab the same set of spells: Fear, slow, etc because they have a good failure effect. But as soon as something like fireball gets talked about they bring out how its a good spell because you can potentially hit a bunch of trivial creatures, despite how rare (and boring) that is.


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Temperans wrote:
But as soon as something like fireball gets talked about they bring out how its a good spell because you can potentially hit a bunch of trivial creatures, despite how rare (and boring) that is.

Or how difficult it is to find said group of enemies that don't have your melee optimized allies in close proximity.

Yeah, there is definitely a lot more to analysis than just damage numbers.


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Having both an Alchemist and a blaster Sorcerer, I can say that Fireball works way better than Bombs :D


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I think assuming the point of bombs or fireballs is always do the most damage possible to a single target is setting yourself up to think everything in the game is bad, unless it is the one thing that does the most damage possible to a single target. Power budgets for items and spells get spent in different ways. A lot of it is on stuff other than maximizing single target damage. Debating whether those additional things do what they are supposed to is fine, debating how useful those other things is is fine. But only evaluating the fire ball spell by how much damage it can do to one target is not acknowledging that that is not the reason to pick the spell.

Do bombs need to be the most effective way to do single target damage? I think (hope) all of us would say no. The alchemist isn’t sold as the ultimate single target striker, so those are not the expectations brought on by game itself…

And yet, something I have noticed over and over again in PF2 is that the ability to really select your damage type on an attack that does damage on a miss, do persistent damage and stay out of melee range are three incredibly useful assets for a very particular kind of encounter, where monsters are brutally effective in close combat and have strong resistances to most physical damage. From low level to high level these encounters tend to wreck parties, but seem to be mostly manageable to parties that have brought the right kind of bombs to the encounter. That is anecdotal evidence, sure, but being on these forums and hearing people consistently talking about how difficult those exact kind of encounters are, while simultaneously disparaging classes items and spells that would flip the difficulty setting on those encounters is interesting and important data to discuss as well.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Also fireball has a range of 500 ft. That might feel like over kill to a dungeon crawling party, but it’s obvious warfare applications give it a very obvious, thoroughly justified niche that maintain its iconic position as a spell of mass destruction.


Unicore wrote:
Also fireball has a range of 500 ft. That might feel like over kill to a dungeon crawling party, but it’s obvious warfare applications give it a very obvious, thoroughly justified niche that maintain its iconic position as a spell of mass destruction.

Honestly, Fireballs are fine, there's no need to look for niche applications when they shine in most fights. My feeling is that those who criticize them never played with a proper blaster.


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And my point was immediatly validated.

I never said fireball was a bad spell, and the immediate assumption was that I must be speaking about it being bad because of the low single target damage. Single target spells are what are bad for single target damage, since they always get compared against how good a fireball.

Also yeah people will have trouble with high physical resistance when the most popular and effective classes for 70%-80% of the game are the martials. Which very easily could just get various "oil of X damage" and not need bombs.


Temperans wrote:
I never said fireball was a bad spell

You literally said: "they bring out how its a good spell because you can potentially hit a bunch of trivial creatures, despite how rare (and boring) that is."

So, that's definitely a negative comment on Fireball.


SuperBidi wrote:
Temperans wrote:
I never said fireball was a bad spell

You literally said: "they bring out how its a good spell because you can potentially hit a bunch of trivial creatures, despite how rare (and boring) that is."

So, that's definitely a negative comment on Fireball.

Its really not a negative comment. Sure you can read it as negative, but its not.

Although I will admit it is a bit deceitful since I omitted how good I think the spell actually is. But my point is that when talking about damage people look at what the best possible situation is, regardless of how rare/good that situation is.


Temperans wrote:

Its really not a negative comment. Sure you can read it as negative, but its not.

Although I will admit it is a bit deceitful since I omitted how good I think the spell actually is. But my point is that when talking about damage people look at what the best possible situation is, regardless of how rare/good that situation is.

I now understand you more.

It's really a question of build, in fact. If we speak of a Bomber, who uses Bombs and only Bombs then one can legitimately criticize this kind of arguments. But if we speak of a more balanced Alchemist, who uses a lot of different actions depending on the situation, then it becomes much more of a reality as it's another situation it can exploit (among all the other situations its other combat actions exploit).

It's the opportunist gameplay, in opposition to the routine gameplay.
Routine characters have a routine they use nearly every fight. Their efficiency is at most equivalent to this routine as the best case scenario is them using the routine.
Opportunist characters also have a routine but it's more of a backup plan when there's no situation to exploit. So their efficiency is at least equivalent to their routine.
And comparing both kind of builds is extremely hard.


SuperBidi wrote:
Temperans wrote:

Its really not a negative comment. Sure you can read it as negative, but its not.

Although I will admit it is a bit deceitful since I omitted how good I think the spell actually is. But my point is that when talking about damage people look at what the best possible situation is, regardless of how rare/good that situation is.

I now understand you more.

It's really a question of build, in fact. If we speak of a Bomber, who uses Bombs and only Bombs then one can legitimately criticize this kind of arguments. But if we speak of a more balanced Alchemist, who uses a lot of different actions depending on the situation, then it becomes much more of a reality as it's another situation it can exploit (among all the other situations its other combat actions exploit).

It's the opportunist gameplay, in opposition to the routine gameplay.
Routine characters have a routine they use nearly every fight. Their efficiency is at most equivalent to this routine as the best case scenario is them using the routine.
Opportunist characters also have a routine but it's more of a backup plan when there's no situation to exploit. So their efficiency is at least equivalent to their routine.
And comparing both kind of builds is extremely hard.

Glad you understand me more.

Just to make sure so that its not lost, I tend to think that specializing should be rewarded somewhat for their dedication because otherwise there would only be generalists.

In that context, both the specialist and generalist are only as good as their best routine. But the generalist still has something to fall back on. PF2 alchemist are still the worst because they aren't even good generalists, they are a good 5th character.


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There are a lot of things in TV that can help the alchemist.

While each individual one is not enough, the whole collection may prove to actually help alchemist secure a place alongside the other classes.

Alchemist in general is weak because the items he (currently) makes are a tad weaker than an equal level item.

So, as long as strong options keep getting printed, eventually he will reach that spot.

It is effectively powercreep, but necessary powercreep as long as the old consumables aren't reworked to a better state.

As an example, the skunk bomb (since we are talking about bombs) is highly appreciated. Is it too strong?
No. It's just fine as a class tool, other options in the past were just too weak.

Similarly, if they print a d10, or d12, physical bomb, I won't have any issues with it either. It'll be the "fix" for an alchemist that wants to go direct damage.


breithauptclan wrote:

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

And when I use 'whiteroom theorycrafting' as a derogatory, it is because people are not accounting for the practical needs of actual gameplay. They are instead basing their analysis on an ideal turn - which rarely, if ever, actually happens.

Given that the usual "ideal" turn only asks for two actions spent on offense, it really isn't much of a stretch. Strike twice, trip+strike, knockdown, etc, etc. Frankly, I'm wondering what you're doing that you can't manage to get two offensive actions in regularly.

The only situation that gets kind of difficult is magus shenanigans, but having an enemy be within 60ft at start of turn is hardly a difficult ask either. Even if you discount the staff silliness, you have at least 2 true strikes off of archetype casting at 6, 4 casts at 7 with studious spells and 5 casts at 8 with another archetype slot. This isn't exactly a difficult move to pull off.

Even if you can't get your ideal stuff all the time, it's good to know what the ideal is because you can, in fact, hit it most of the time.

Unicore wrote:
And yet, something I have noticed over and over again in PF2 is that the ability to really select your damage type on an attack that does damage on a miss, do persistent damage and stay out of melee range are three incredibly useful assets for a very particular kind of encounter, where monsters are brutally effective in close combat and have strong resistances to most physical damage. From low level to high level these encounters tend to wreck parties, but seem to be mostly manageable to parties that have brought the right kind of bombs to the encounter. That is anecdotal evidence, sure, but being on these forums and hearing people consistently talking about how difficult those exact kind of encounters are, while simultaneously disparaging classes items and spells that would flip the difficulty setting on those encounters is interesting and important data to discuss as well.

I feel like this is just you/your party. And every time, it's something ghost touch related and every time, it's brought up how absolutely trivial that is to bypass given all the non-rune sources of ghost touch that exist.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I think the issue that people find with specialists in PF2 is that their characters will be very good much of the time at doing what they want to do, when they can do it. They might even be so good at it that they write off encounters that could have been much more difficult for characters that can't. But they will still run into encounters where trying to play into their specialized strength are going to get them and the whole party killed, because the balance point of specialization always tips in the favor of the side who's strength is facing the opposition's weakness, not the side who has better mastery over their own strength.

Temprans it sounds like you would prefer if generalists are only as good as their best routine, but in PF2 generalists are as good as the weakest weakness of their oposition, which is often very very weak, while a specialist is only as strong as the enemies weakness that faces their specialized strength, which, when facing a higher level enemy in particular, can easily exceed the specialists strength.

I much prefer this balance point myself because it means there can be no autopilot through encounters without getting the whole party killed, but I do see players getting frustrated when they spend a lot of time coming up with very elaborate routines that don't get to trigger that often because the player has to decide things like doing their own thing, or spending 2 or even 3 actions to get the healer back up off the ground with barely any HP, because that is the best/only healing option their player has available.


gesalt wrote:
Given that the usual "ideal" turn only asks for two actions spent on offense, it really isn't much of a stretch. Strike twice, trip+strike, knockdown, etc, etc. Frankly, I'm wondering what you're doing that you can't manage to get two offensive actions in regularly.

My go-to example of what I mean for that is the people who value Flurry Ranger so much higher than Precision Ranger because it does so much more damage when you hit with 4 attacks in a round.

Sure, Flurry is good. But do a more realistic comparison. Compare two actions from Flurry (three attacks, two of them being with an agile weapon with likely only two of them connecting), with two actions from Precision (two attacks with a 2-hand weapon with likely only one of them connecting).


Temperans wrote:
In that context, both the specialist and generalist are only as good as their best routine.

I haven't used the words specialist and generalist. You can be a specialist and an opportunist, a generalist and a routine character. There's not a direct link between both concepts.

As such, your sentence is true but only if you are speaking of routine characters. Opportunists are at least as good as their routine.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
gesalt wrote:
I feel like this is just you/your party. And every time, it's something ghost touch related and every time, it's brought up how absolutely trivial that is to bypass given all the non-rune sources of ghost touch that exist.

I think it is constructs, Oozes, Fiends and undead pretty commonly, although certain elementals do it a lot too, which ends up being a lot of encounters that can prove difficult with resistance and trying to power your way through them with brute force.

It happened last night in a newish campaign with level 1 characters against Lemure Devils. The party rushed forward towards the 3 lemures, The rogue got surrounded and dropped in the first round. The rest of the fight was the party getting knocked down and trying to get back up again and then just a chase encounter to see if the party could escape. Lemures are a level 0 creature with a movement 20. They could have been pretty easily kited or trapped in a bottle neck, but the impetus to surround a target over take an early defensive position and be prepared to throw some ranged attacks/feel out the enemies strengths and weaknesses very nearly ended in a TPK...again. I think there are many tables that struggle to learn that lesson.

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