So when you play, do GMs provide no information at all about a monster without recall knowledge?
Out of combat where there aren't any monsters to directly observe I'd usually ask for a roll unless the foes are so common or so far below the party's level that any check wouldn't be worth rolling dice for.
Are the tokens just black squares?
I mean fair enough if that's the kind of game you play but that's not really something you can generalize to most tables.
In combat I'll give a description but it won't always be something as simple as, "You see a half-dozen goblins standing around with weapons drawn." It might be, "A pale white shape tall enough to have to stoop under branches that you couldn't touch by jumping moves through the underbrush with unexpected care."
Does that pale white shape have an above-average reflex save, a feature that allows it to move through plants easily, or is it trying to be stealthy? You won't know unless you start rolling dice or get closer and risk it spotting you.
I also don't tend to use tokens as I prefer theater of the mind play and don't generally play via VTT where having tokens is expected. I draw simple diagrams to clarify positioning as needed and otherwise just describe things to keep the right mood.
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I say that having tokens with unique images for each bestiary entry should not be declared the normal when the game could be played with enemies being represented by almost anything.I certainly know some DMs use a standard non-descript token for enemies even in VTTs.
It's mostly how Paizo's own adventures are set up and designed, so at the very least it's the assumed baseline.
There's nothing inherently wrong with doing things different, but if you're playing with a GM who is particularly hostile about communicating basic information there's only so much of that we can lay at the feet of the game itself. At some point you're going to have to talk to your GM.
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It's mostly how Paizo's own adventures are set up and designed, so at the very least it's the assumed baseline.
There's nothing inherently wrong with doing things different, but if you're playing with a GM who is particularly hostile about communicating basic information there's only so much of that we can lay at the feet of the game itself. At some point you're going to have to talk to your GM.
Even in that case looking at a token that might be lit better or framed in a way that your character cannot see is meta-gaming. Does your character know that yellow-green-skinned being hunched over something at the far end of the cavern is a hag or does the player know because the GM placed a hag token on the map?
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Big slow creatures usually have poor Reflex and high Fort. Small fast creatures usually have high Reflex and low Fort. Innate magic users frequently have high Will. After the first round of melee attacks, your martials will know if the creature has high AC (not meta, just trying to hit).
Which save would you target based on this description?
"A hulking spider-like form sits on a cooled chunk of slag amid clouds of thick choking smoke. Obscured as it is making out details is difficult and it appears to have noticed you."
"A mound of stones and plants, motionless just moments ago, rises to reveal a form akin to the arms, head, and torso of a humanoid only scaled up to the size of a two-story house."
Sure, of course? The entire game is subject to GM, and yes of course you have to have the right skills. Investing in knowledge is part of being a Caster though, just like investing in Athletics, Acrobatics, etc is part of being a martial.
Investing in all the skills needed to make RK checks requires more skill investment than it takes for a martial class to effectively do their job and it's impossible to keep them all equally leveled.
In those cases it may not, but nothing works in every case, these are just suggested options. Once your character fights one or two Devils though, he/she will figure out they are fire-resistant and won't need RK for that, right?
I don't know, was the GM being generous and giving hints like, "Your firey blast doesn't seem to do as much damage as you expected to the monstrous form before you." Or were they being less clear with, "The blast of fire fails to fell the savage form before you though you can see that your attack has hit with some effect."
It doesn't take a hostile GM to make life more or less difficult for a caster without intending to do so. The same can't be said for martial classes.
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As gm I would usually prefer to describe creature's reactions and movements during the battle as well, including how it reacts to being targeted to its weak points regardless of save result :P (like logically creature with poor save that makes lucky crit has different reaction than creature which just critted with its best save)
Anyhoo, I repeat what I said before: Spell attack roll targeting high AC actually has better chance of success than save spell targeting high save. The -3 accuracy compared to fighter does exist yeah, but its still more accurate than'd you think it is relatively. Only thing is that spell attack rolls really should be more debilitating considering they don't have effect if you miss completely and almost always take two actions
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I don't think that's the point. The point that Temperans complains about and I agree is when you begin to see the people deviating from the subject to disqualify the person who is arguing is a signal of lack of arguments about the questioned point.
The truth is that for you to create a good blaster with a caster you need a lot of effort, putting together a complexity of feats, items and strategies to do something that should be normal in the context of the caster which is simply throwing powerful damage spells at opponents without much concern.
I know this seems like just complaining for the sake of complaining, but that's precisely what I base my point on is that creating a pure blaster is either not feasible (especially at low levels) or requires an enormous amount of resources that other focused caster or martial builds don't come close to requiring or you are forced to "corrupt" your character's flavor using weapons or alternative means of play other than simply blowing up the opponent.
This reminds me of the melee magus situation at higher levels when the increase in the number of opponents with reactions activated by manipulate actions (aka AoO) starts to create situations where magus is forbidden to use his main ability under penalty of receiving an attack as punishment. This forces many players to have to play with some kind of meta like having to choose the Starlit Span or doing a combination that I often recommend which is playing as an Elf and putting the Elemental Wrath feat to be able to cast a cantrip that has no somatic components and that it's not even that good (but it's better than being unable to use spellstrike).
You see, this kind of complex solution is something you understand and even accept when the player is trying to make a more exotic build, but when forced against something that should be simple and common for the class it ends up creating some kind of meta.
That's why I always end my answers by saying that in the end it's better to wait for kineticist. Even knowing...
All Temperans and your arguments have been answered. Nothing has been avoided.
I have provided clear examples across multiple classes showing that what is claimed cannot be done, is being done.
The blaster caster is alive and well. Their damage exceeds martials in a lot of situations.
I believe it is completely, completely unfair to allow a caster to do equal single target damage to a boss monster while also doing everything else better. It would just throw us back to PF1 balance where martials became unnecessary.
Nothing has been avoided. The same arguments are being made that have been disproven multiple times.
Complaints about attack roll spells? Math clearly showing a Legendary caster ends with a +35 attack roll versus a martial with a +3 weapon getting a +36 attack roll. The fighter alone gets up to +38 and it is almost universally agreed fighter accuracy is one of the most powerful abilities in the game.
Damaging capacity of casters against multiple targets is far and away better than what a martial can do in the vast majority of situations.
Casters have often superior mobility, utility, and focus abilities.
All of this has been clearly shown.
Yet the arguments keep coming even when the math shows otherwise. How do you do anything but dismiss someone making claims they never bother to prove because they don't play the game, don't understand how it works across levels, and continues to stoke arguments that have been proven wrong?
Not sure what else you can do.
I've gone to great lengths to learn PF2 as I have every edition. I can say the following with complete confidence backed up by data taken during games in a variety of combat circumstances:
1. The blaster caster is alive and well. Doing just fine.
2. Don't play a wizard if you want to be a blaster caster. Wizards are one of the worst casting classes in the game with a handful of high level one trick pony tactics that aren't very good across the most levels in the game.
3. Fighter is the best martial by a good margin. Their superior accuracy the primary reason, but also good saves and defenses.
4. Many casters are higher on the power list than most martials. Druid, bard, cleric, and sorcerer rate higher than rangers, swashbucklers, and are about on par with barbarians and rogues depending on what you want to do.
5. This is based on effectiveness in combat and not out of combat utility that combines damage and effective utility like healing, countering invisibility, countering conditions, and providing effective combat options.
Not sure what else I can provide. I have a bunch of data recorded over many combats and campaigns. Casters are pretty far from weaker than martials. Blasting is highly effective, even better than PF1 out of the box. Casters become very powerful at high level.
The only reason I can surmise these threads keep popping up his the following:
1. Martials appear a great deal more powerful at low level.
2. The wizard is a terrible PF2 class. Even I for all my trying and taking of data have not found the wizard to be competitive. It went from number one in PF1 to competing for last place with the witch in PF2. I don't care how many people have found ways to make the wizard work and have fun with it, compared to a PF1 wizard they are a bottom tier class in PF2 with lousy build options and focus spells. The wizard should be redone.
3. The fighter is one of the best classes in the game and overshadows almost every other class. It's boring feats allowing them to take casting archetypes only further enhance their power allowing them to cherry pick high value, low level spells like true strike, fly, haste and such. The ease of tripping with AoOs makes them a big time class.
Most of the other classes haves some interesting builds that can be fun and powerful. PF2 is very balanced. There is no caster vs. martial imbalance.
There's a wizard versus fighter and most martials imbalance. But most of the other casters are easily competitive or better than most martials.
Hi gang. I'm new here (but an old salt at TTRPGs which I've been DMing and playing since the late '80s). I'm finally getting around to updating my setting from my customized 3.5 to what it already looking like a customized Pathfinder 2.0...
My question, re: caster balance, is it true that casters don't get a class feat at level 1 while all martial classes do? And isn't that part of the balance issue here? It seems to me that even with spells out of the gate, if you have fewer feats than your martial buddies then you're already behind...
Can someone help me understand the balance issue that caused this design choice?
Thanks in advance.
They get first level abilities and it might include a feat.
For example, the druid gets to choose an order. The order gives them a focus spell and usually a feat specific to that order. The sorcerer gets a bloodline. The cleric gets Divine Font and domains. Casters gets something that might provide a feat and at the very least is like a feat or better. Bard gets a muse.
Then they get 4 to 5 cantrips which provide variable abilities. Then a couple of spell slots which often provide some variability.
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Maybe (even better) scaling on cantrips and a wider variety of cantrips is in order.
What is a cantrip was scaled to do 80% of a what a martial's damage output should be at that level? IN particular let's choose the fighter which doesn't get special damage bonuses like other classes and get's accuracy bonuses instead.
If we had cantrips that did every energy type (although some might need to be reduced in damage due to lack of resistances) and did 80% damage of a martial does that allow casters to throw maybe 1 of their highest levels spells and 1 of a level or 2 below. And does that let you feel powerful enough?
Actually, looking at the math, I think we're already there or better aren't we?
Like a 20th level fighter is probably doing like 4d10+14, you could argue for 1d6 fire and 1d6 cold from runes. That's 43 damage total. Whereas your cantrips should be doing like 10d4+6 for 31 damage. If you exclude runes you're over 80%, if you include runes you're at about 72%. And that's for a melee martial, you get to do that damage at range. And you get to legendary in spell attack rolls, like the fighter get's legendary in their weapon proficiency. And you get to use your casting stat to add to it, like a melee fighter will use their dex.
Mathematically, cantrips are hitting close to what a fighter can do. Unless I'm missing something. Am I missing something?
After thinking about it in this light I'm way less inclined to think casters need any sort of benefit.
Wait, I just realized you don't have an item bonus to attack rolls, so you're like 3 points behind. So what if we let spell attack rolls have a held item that grant a scaling bonus to attack rolls?
Your math is wrong.
Fighter is doing ~43 on a single action.
A cantrip is doing ~31 on two actions.
That is ((31/2)-43)/43 *100 = ~63.95% less damage.Not only that, but the crit chance is considerably lower due to lacking the +3 item bonus. Which massively swings the damage in favor of the fighter.
The only...
The fighter is not baseline and is the highest single target damage class in the game by design due to their accuracy. The fighter's niche is high single target damage. Take that away from them and they are practically nothing.
Baseline is a master proficiency martial.
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Big slow creatures usually have poor Reflex and high Fort. Small fast creatures usually have high Reflex and low Fort. Innate magic users frequently have high Will. After the first round of melee attacks, your martials will know if the creature has high AC (not meta, just trying to hit).Which save would you target based on this description?
We already played this game. Experienced players can determine the lowest save of a monster from its picture with 70% accuracy. They extremely rarely miss the lowest save for the highest save (less than 5% of the cases). Determining a creature's save from its picture is not hard. Now, if the GM voluntarily wants to blur things, it's a GM issue. Most GMs I play with love to describe their monsters and show their pictures.
It's also interesting to note that some creatures have under average saves, giving the Shadow Signet a bonus higher than a +2. This is something that extremely rarely happens with AC (70% of the creatures have High AC, and the rest mostly have either Extreme AC or Moderate AC, Moderate AC being just 1 point under High AC). Creatures with at least 2 less points of AC compared to High AC are the rarity and in general Oozes and Zombies.Last but not least: Nothing forces you to cast a spell. If you have absolutely no clue what save the creature has, just cast something else. Save-based spells like Electric Arc are also a nice way to check a creature's lowest save before going for a Spell Attack Roll spell.
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Who gave that answer, and what was the question?I so desperately wish that class turns out fine. The playtest didn't leave me with much hope, and the "we don't want to focus on that" answer they gave is less than reasuring.
I am literally waiting for it to see if I even keep looking at this forum.
The post playtest summary. The question being "can you make kineticist more focused on blasting?"
I paraphrased on my previous post, but it is what I got from the post.
That's drawing a bit too wide of a net - the question was specifically about making the kineticist into a single-target DPR-focused class:
There was plenty of disagreement among playtesters about whether the class should be primarily a single-target damage dealer or be built around more varied effects. Much of this had to do with whether the player believed the Elemental Blast or the other impulses were the core mechanic of the class. Going all-in on single-target blasts can lead to extremely stagnant, repetitive play, so we aren’t planning to make that the sole focus. However, we will be exploring what room we have for boosting single-target damage as an option for those who want it, without making that the only role the class can fill.
The same blog also showed that the intent was for different elements to be more or less focused on blasting - Fire is meant to be the best-in-class for blasting, and Earth and Metal second best. What this means about their single-target DPR we don't know, but you from the blog, the intent definitely seems to be that you can make a kineticist focused on blasting - play fire/earth/metal.
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All Temperans and your arguments have been answered. Nothing has been avoided.
I have provided clear examples across multiple classes showing that what is claimed cannot be done, is being done.
The blaster caster is alive and well. Their damage exceeds martials in a lot of situations.
I believe it is completely, completely unfair to allow a caster to do equal single target damage to a boss monster while also doing everything else better. It would just throw us back to PF1 balance where martials became unnecessary.
Nothing has been avoided. The same arguments are being made that have been disproven multiple times.
Complaints about attack roll spells? Math clearly showing a Legendary caster ends with a +35 attack roll versus a martial with a +3 weapon getting a +36 attack roll. The fighter alone gets up to +38 and it is almost universally agreed fighter accuracy is one of the most powerful abilities in the game.
Damaging capacity of casters against multiple targets is far and away better than what a martial can do in the vast majority of situations.
Casters have often superior mobility, utility, and focus abilities.
All of this has been clearly shown.
Yet the arguments keep coming even when the math shows otherwise. How do you do anything but dismiss someone making claims they never bother to prove because they don't play the game, don't understand how it works across levels, and continues to stoke arguments that have been proven wrong?
Not sure what else you can do.
I've gone to great lengths to learn PF2 as I have every edition. I can say the following with complete confidence backed up by data taken during games in a variety of combat circumstances:
1. The blaster caster is alive and well. Doing just fine.
2. Don't play a wizard if you want to be a blaster caster. Wizards are one of the worst casting classes in the game with a handful of high level one trick pony tactics that aren't very good across the most levels in the game.
3. Fighter is the best martial by a good margin. Their superior accuracy the primary reason, but also good saves and defenses.
4. Many casters are higher on the power list than most martials. Druid, bard, cleric, and sorcerer rate higher than rangers, swashbucklers, and are about on par with barbarians and rogues depending on what you want to do.
5. This is based on effectiveness in combat and not out of combat utility that combines damage and effective utility like healing, countering invisibility, countering conditions, and providing effective combat options.
Not sure what else I can provide. I have a bunch of data recorded over many combats and campaigns. Casters are pretty far from weaker than martials. Blasting is highly effective, even better than PF1 out of the box. Casters become very powerful at high level.
The only reason I can surmise these threads keep popping up his the following:
1. Martials appear a great deal more powerful at low level.
2. The wizard is a terrible PF2 class. Even I for all my trying and taking of data have not found the wizard to be competitive. It went from number one in PF1 to competing for last place with the witch in PF2. I don't care how many people have found ways to make the wizard work and have fun with it, compared to a PF1 wizard they are a bottom tier class in PF2 with lousy build options and focus spells. The wizard should be redone.
3. The fighter is one of the best classes in the game and overshadows almost every other class. It's boring feats allowing them to take casting archetypes only further enhance their power allowing them to cherry pick high value, low level spells like true strike, fly, haste and such. The ease of tripping with AoOs makes them a big time class.
Most of the other classes haves some interesting builds that can be fun and powerful. PF2 is very balanced. There is no caster vs. martial imbalance.
There's a wizard versus fighter and most martials imbalance. But most of the other casters are easily competitive or better than most martials.
Okay, if the "The blaster caster is alive and well", then there are no problems. It means that we can make a pure blaster taking a caster (not neither a wizard) of any level specializing it in evocation spells and going out using magic of whole shift, no problem, right!? That will work right!?
Can you better understand my arguments by arguing that making a blast-focused caster isn't it viable?
The best blaster options with casters are currently:
- The psychic that works by 3 rounds and then becomes a paper weight (but at least it works from level 1).
- The Elemenal/Dragon bloodline sorcerer who at 18th level, after taking Bloodline Wellspring can cast 3 blasts with focus magic and then hope that the battle does not last too much or have to go through many battles that day not to run it risk of ends up being reduced to 3 rounds as the psychic as well.
My complaint is not a level of power of blaster, but the fact that it is not sustainable.
Personally, my favorite blaster so far as a Spell Blending Wizard with Magic Missile, but dangerous sorcery is probably enough to make the sorcerer better at it provided the adventuring day isn't excruciatingly long (and still not by that much, mind you.)
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My complaint is not a level of power of blaster, but the fact that it is not sustainable.
You're not going to get to cast your best spell every round. That's just not going to happen.
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My complaint is not a level of power of blaster, but the fact that it is not sustainable.You're not going to get to cast your best spell every round. That's just not going to happen.
Not casting it every round is fine, I think that what people meant when they say it's "not sustainable", is that they can't be effective in every encounter, not every round. Heightenned cantrips and focus spells were supposed to fix the old "caster efficiency depend on how long a day last", but it doesn't work that way for blaster in PF2. Once you're out of available damaging spell and have to rely on your cantrip/focus, you become actively mediocre (while you are "okay but not broken" when you can still cast your spells).
Even martial have "good rounds" and "bad rounds" (independently of good or bad rolls), depending on wether they're in position, their sneak attack is active, their prey is hunted, etc. That casters are posed to become less effective the longer a battle goes on isn't a problem (or at least I didn't see people complain about that). The problem raised is that their limited "per day" spells mean that they don't have good and bad rounds, they have good and bad encounters, decided by wether or not they still have access to their daily ressources or wether they are all exhausted.
It's once again especially noticeable at low level. At level one, once you spent your two spell slot, you're done, and you become a level 0 character in a level 1 group for the rest of the day.
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So one thing, I think the dynamic of adventuring day length is something that doesn't get talked about much, my impression is that shorter adventuring days have been increasingly the norm for years now(there are a lot of discussions about how onerous and unrealistic the 5e adventuring day is, and how a lot of encounters per day can halt the progression of the story) so you generally can cast your best spells nearly every round and be pretty good, depending a bit on what class you're playing.
I'd estimate most groups do 2-4 (difficult) fights per adventuring day, 3–5 rounds each. In that context, a sorcerer who can cast 7–8 spells in their top two spell levels before factoring in any other resources is in a good spot, since some of those rounds are bound to be cleanup and not warrant a slot, and before even factoring in lower level spells that scale automatically (like Fear) or damage spells against lower level targets not needing the higher level slot to make a meaningful impact on healthbars.
I think that the 7-8 max level(s) spells of a sorcerer are enought, but that doesn't really adress 3 slot class (or rather, it doesn't adress the witch who have only three slot but nothing really going on beside spellcasting, druids, cleric and oracle seems fine), nor does that adress the absolute drought that are the first few levels.
I wonder if it would have been better if you began with a "clump" of 1st level slot that afterward drain toward the higher level and then stabilise into the normal spell progression. Something like starting at four 1st level slot, which increase to 6 on level two, who then become four 1st level and two 2nd level on level three, until you reach level 4 or 5 where you are now "set" and have the normal progression from then on.
It would be far less elegant, but anything other than the "only two spell per day" of level one would be nice. I never seen this feeling good for any caster, be it in PF2, 1 or 5e.
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I think that the 7-8 max level(s) spells of a sorcerer are enought, but that doesn't really adress 3 slot class (or rather, it doesn't adress the witch who have only three slot but nothing really going on beside spellcasting, druids, cleric and oracle seems fine), nor does that adress the absolute drought that are the first few levels.
The witch's problem is that it is designed similarly to the bard, where it's lack of spells is made up for by strong spammable class cantrips, except most of the hex cantrips are not very good, not very spammable, or both. Swap phase familiar with cackle and make every hex cantrip as good as stoke the heart and the witch is fine.
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The witch just kind of lacks an identity. It's PF2's "generic spellcaster" class, with a bottom of the barrel focus spell (maybe a couple cleric ones are worse idk), some mediocre-at-best cantrips and no real core mechanic to propel it forward like other casters tend to have.
It's less a systemic problem and more that just it seems like Paizo wasn't sure what to do with the Witch, and as a result it's kind of the worst of all worlds where it has the core kit of a 4-slot caster but doesn't actually have 4 slots, but also their hex cantrips are underbaked and they don't get a variety of them like bards do.
It makes some sense, the Witch was hastily redesigned after the playtest and most of the things that made the PF1 witch compelling don't really exist in PF2, so the result is something very confused and fairly weak.
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The Witch has some strong things it can do (mine is actually an Invoker, so she has even fewer slots than usual!) Like Life Boost, Elemental Betrayal, Malicious Shadow and so forth, but I think it suffers a bit from needing the system mastery to pick your lessons. I kinda wish it had four slots to go along with its hexes instead of hex cantrips since it feels like most of the power is in the actual focus point options.
Saving throw spells have really good odds of having an effect even on higher level targets, those success effects do a massive amount for your averages, and you still have an equal or better chance of getting the actual fail effect, even before any kind of frightened or whatever.
Together its like a 75% chance of doing something to the moderate save of a +3 with a 15% positive adjustment across categories if you happen to target its low save, thats nothing to sneer at.
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I kinda wish it had four slots to go along with its hexes instead of hex cantrips since it feels like most of the power is in the actual focus point options.
That's how it worked in the playtest. People wanted cool at-will magical abilities to differentiate it more from the Wizard.
Maybe if people had known what we'd get instead they would have voted differently, though.
I kinda wish it had four slots to go along with its hexes instead of hex cantrips since it feels like most of the power is in the actual focus point options.That's how it worked in the playtest. People wanted cool at-will magical abilities to differentiate it more from the Wizard.
Maybe if people had known what we'd get instead they would have voted differently, though.
I was there and was in favor of the four spell slot pick a list model to make it directly paralell the sorcerer, personally I think its fine, but that it was bogged down by the desire to make it too similar to the pf1e witch which required the focus on hexes.
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I thought four slots and focus spells worked well, but I don't think it would have necessarily been bad to make it more hex-focused like the PF1 witch too, shame we didn't get that either.
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Okay, if the "The blaster caster is alive and well", then there are no problems. It means that we can make a pure blaster taking a caster (not neither a wizard) of any level specializing it in evocation spells and going out using magic of whole shift, no problem, right!? That will work right!?
Can you better understand my arguments by arguing that making a blast-focused caster isn't it viable?
The best blaster options with casters are currently:
- The psychic that works by 3 rounds and then becomes a paper weight (but at least it works from level 1).
- The Elemenal/Dragon bloodline sorcerer who at 18th level, after taking Bloodline Wellspring can cast 3 blasts with focus magic and then hope that the battle does not last too much or have to go through many battles that day not to run it risk of ends up being reduced to 3 rounds as the psychic as well.My complaint is not a level of power of blaster, but the fact that it is not sustainable.
That is your argument, not Temperans who is just agreeing with generic, easily disproved arguments.
Your narrow blasting focus I guess isn't sustainable. I've been able to make sustainable blasters who easily top the damage metrics across multiple battles during an adventuring day. I'm really not sure why you haven't been able to.
I usually drop one or two AoE spells a battle playing a blaster and I'm already topping the damage list.
Against a boss it's less reliable, but I've also dropped Tempest Surge or had a boss critically fail a save and easily blown up the boss with a tempest surge or sudden bolt.
I've had plenty of battles where I had a wand of manifold missiles going, blasted a chain lightening or spirit blast, and used a sustain spell like invoke spirits doing tons of damage.
You seem to want be top damage dealer every fight even though no class does this in my experience. When I'm playing a druid or damage dealer sorcerer, the damage metrics usually go up and down according to luck of the die roll.
If the martials get a lucky crit, they do a ton of damage. If the caster gets some lucky crit fails, they do a ton of damage. No one consistently does the most damage other than the fighter from what I've seen.
My point with you is you want a single specific thing that you can't seem to pull off even though others of us have pulled it off.
It's like you want this blast that does maximum damage all the time better than everyone else which no class has. But I've seen stuff like a critical hit with a produce flame which does 60 points of damage with 8d4 persistent fire damage followed up with some sudden bolt or similar spell for 40 or 50 more, then another magic missile with a 5th level slot for another 30 points. So you're three rounds in and doing 150 points of the bosses 300 hit points, while the martial has missed a few attacks or landed a regular hit on this first hit or failed his save against the creatures aura or special attacks and is swallowed up.
If there are multiple creatures, the AoE damage casters are almost all at the top of the damage metrics.
But you want something that does what no other class does and I don't get it. I hope for your sake the kineticist does this.
It makes me wonder if you have even bothered to check your numbers to see if you're really behind the damage curve or you just think you are. I track numbers in Excel Spread sheets and I'm seeing damage casters doing quite well at high level with highest damage varying accordingly to luck and circumstance.
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Remember that is melee vs ranged. If you compare ranged vs ranged a single cantrip is about on-par with two shortbow shots from a fighter.
Yeah, one of the most important things that PF2 did is recognize that "you are adjacent to danger" is a cost (that's where you're likely to get hit), and it should be counterbalanced by rewarding you with things like "more damage than you could do from safety."
We can see some of the stresses of this though from how the Magus is supposed to be the "I do magic within range of danger" with how the ranged one stands out.
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I have been wracking my brain trying to understand what people mean when they say "blaster", because it has been inconsistent. So I figured, maybe answering some questions can actually make clear what you want when you say "blaster".
I encourage you to answer each of these questions without considering the answers you gave to the others (except 2-4).
1) Is your "blasting" AoE or single target?
2) Is your "blasting" attack roll based or save based?
3) If save, which one?
4) If attack roll, what proficiency progression? Martial? Fighter? Spellcaster?
5) What range are you expecting?
6) Does your "blasting" provoke AoO's?
7) How often are you expecting to be able to do your "blasting" thing?
8) How much damage should this "blasting" do?
9) How many actions is the "blasting" going to cost?
10) What kind of weapon proficiency does this "blaster" have?
11) How many HP per level?
12) What are its defensive proficiencies?
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Yeah, one of the most important things that PF2 did is recognize that "you are adjacent to danger" is a cost (that's where you're likely to get hit), and it should be counterbalanced by rewarding you with things like "more damage than you could do from safety."
We can see some of the stresses of this though from how the Magus is supposed to be the "I do magic within range of danger" with how the ranged one stands out.
Arguably dex-based melee too, which tends to not have that damage advantage over range and ends up being not a great idea unless your class is built to incentivize it.
There's also a weird level curve effect to this dichotomy where certain bonuses don't scale as well which makes damage gaps stand out a lot more at certain level brackets. Where a greatsword fighter can deal double or triple the damage of their ranged counterparts at level 1 but as strength unscales and weapon-agnostic damage bonuses grow more prevalent the gap becomes comparatively tiny at high levels.
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For me you are still missing the point here.
What you're basically doing is focusing on the fact that you can do 1 or 2 pinpoint blasts per encounter (assuming they're focus spells and not spell slot, which would change that to somewhere around 4-6x per day per day instead of per encounter) and that they do incredible damage, greater than most of the damage that martials are capable of doing (but still at the average damage of a barbarian) and that is why it is very good, but also you are excluding rest of the time of combat or worse of the day in the case of spell slots.
From what you've described so far (not just the last post), you're basically describing the game efficiency of an all-rounder caster and not a blaster.
A blaster is what we had for example in the case of kineticist's playtest, where he could blast the entire turn without worrying, as basically a martial artist normally does with ranged or melee weapons and this is clearly unfeasible to do with the a caster.
So when I talk about a blaster and usually when novice players complain about the caster's damage efficiency, this is precisely where they are getting it. The fact that you can't make a blast specialist the same way you can make a debuff or heal caster specialist.
This is actually a characteristic change from PF1 to PF2. While in PF1 making a blast specialist spellcaster was perfectly feasible, because in addition to having several high-level spell slots, you could use your lower-level spell slots to attack quite efficiently, because even with a lower DC you could compensate for this with magic missiles or with ranged touch spells, whereas in PF1 debuffering was much more difficult because due to the DC being calculated based on the spell's level, you had to reserve your best spell slots for them, in addition to having hoping to have a good die roll, because unlike PF2 they had no effect if the target resisted.
That's why this paradigm shift in practice killed dedicated blaster casters, making blasting just a tool or "special attack" that a spellcaster can use when the situation is very favorable to use it, and that this "special attack" doesn't even reach be an exclusiveness of spellcasters, because even martials like the monk and the barbarian (the Ki Blast, Dragon's Rage Breath/Dragon Transformation's Brath respectively) and Eidolons (Dragon Eidolon's Breath Weapon and Eidolon's Wrath) have similar "special attacks" that are equally strong.
Remember that is melee vs ranged. If you compare ranged vs ranged a single cantrip is about on-par with two shortbow shots from a fighter.Yeah, one of the most important things that PF2 did is recognize that "you are adjacent to danger" is a cost (that's where you're likely to get hit), and it should be counterbalanced by rewarding you with things like "more damage than you could do from safety."
We can see some of the stresses of this though from how the Magus is supposed to be the "I do magic within range of danger" with how the ranged one stands out.
Not exactly.
Not only can Magus cause large amounts of long distance damage. But also Eldritch Archer and even Rogues and the researcher can give a large amount of damage to the distance competitively with the melee due to the huge efficiency of the arcs in the game.
In practice I know that D12 weapons are extremely powerful and are exclusively Melee, which would justify that being closely means greater risk and greater reward, but a D8 + Deadly D10 arc kind of making this difference not that big.
Imo if you want unchecked unlimited blasting you are looking at a damage decrease.
So kineticist or something like it
Taking the spells part you basically described the kineticist kkkkk
To you
Because the kineticist as presented in playtest don't have spells in strict sense but spell like abilities (impulses).
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Okay I'll bite, this is what I personally expected from a blaster...
I appreciate you taking the time.
A few things caught my eye.
2)"Both should be viable"
For attack rolls, I assume the answer to 4 is clarifying. But, how would one analyze DC viability?
4) Attack numbers should be about the same, got it. What do you mean by specialist wizard? All wizards? Just Evocation specialist?
6) Is there anything other than a return of concentration checks to address this?
5/8) If the higher level spells are supposed to be better than lower level spells, and 1st level spells are supposed to be better than cantrips, then do we just remove the scaling of cantrips? Also, as it relates to 5, should there be a cap on the damage a spell can do per level?
9) Should all spells have a 1-3 action possibility? Also, if this correlates with 8, should DC spells suffer from an equivalent MAP?
Those are my clarifying questions, if you are willing.
To be honest, aside from a few differences, it sounds like your desire for spellcasting is to be nearly the same as PF1. Is that accurate?
4) Attack numbers should be about the same, got it. What do you mean by specialist wizard? All wizards? Just Evocation specialist?
I think the idea here is to have wizard specialised in a school get the fighter proficiency progression for that school only. And meanwhile, probably having something like bounded caster progression for the other schools, while universalist wizard have normal progression for all schools.
It's an idea I've seen float around to make the school choice feel more impactfull for the wizard, and the wizard more "special" as a class.
4) Attack numbers should be about the same, got it. What do you mean by specialist wizard? All wizards? Just Evocation specialist?I think the idea here is to have wizard specialised in a school get the fighter proficiency progression for that school only. And meanwhile, probably having something like bounded caster progression for the other schools, while universalist wizard have normal progression for all schools.
It's an idea I've seen float around to make the school choice feel more impactfull for the wizard, and the wizard more "special" as a class.
I kind of miss the choose a school and gain better DC/Attack, but lose access to another school as a cost.
Likewise, I think it would have been pretty cool. With how "tight" the numbers are in PF2, even a "+1 in your school, -1 in the others" would go a long way pushing you to stick to your specialty. Arguably, a "+2/-2" would make is so people won't even bother slotting spell attack/spell DC of different schools.
It would also reward universalist more by opposition. Either you pick a school and are now "locked" to this school for all spells that require a roll, but in exchange you're the best spellcaster there is for that one school. Or you get a wizard that can freely mix spells from every school, but who is "on par" with other spellcasters with all of their spells now.
Right now, a school wizard isn't really the best at it's school, it just get to cast slightly more spells of that school per day than (most) other spellcasters. And a universalist can cast slightly more spell per day of any school, but one less spell overall than a school wizard.
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Complaints about attack roll spells? Math clearly showing a Legendary caster ends with a +35 attack roll versus a martial with a +3 weapon getting a +36 attack roll. The fighter alone gets up to +38 and it is almost universally agreed fighter accuracy is one of the most powerful abilities in the game.
Sorry but this is such a big "technically the truth". Yeah, casters end at +35 while martials end up at +36. You just forgot to mention that casters only get Legendary at level nineteen, while staying equal or behind martials for the other 18 levels. They don't get Legendary progression, they get a progression 2 levels slower than baseline martial proficiency with a random Legendary bump tacked on at almost max level and no item bonuses throughout.
If you go down by just two levels on your comparison, to 18, a caster has spell DC 40 / +30 to hit while a martial has +33, and it gets even worse than that at levels where martial proficiency is ahead.
...For me you are still missing the point here.
What you're basically doing is focusing on the fact that you can do 1 or 2 pinpoint blasts per encounter (assuming they're focus spells and not spell slot, which would change that to somewhere around 4-6x per day per day instead of per encounter) and that they do incredible damage, greater than most of the damage that martials are capable of doing (but still at the average damage of a barbarian) and that is why it is very good, but also you are excluding rest of the time of combat or worse of the day in the case of spell slots.
From what you've described so far (not just the last post), you're basically describing the game efficiency of an all-rounder caster and not a blaster.
A blaster is what we had for example in the case of kineticist's playtest, where he could blast the entire turn without worrying, as basically a martial artist normally does with ranged or melee weapons and this is clearly unfeasible to do with the a caster.
So when I talk about a blaster and usually when novice players complain about the caster's damage efficiency, this is precisely where they are getting it. The fact that you can't make a blast specialist the same way you can make a debuff or heal caster specialist.
This is actually a characteristic change from PF1 to PF2. While in PF1 making a blast specialist spellcaster was perfectly feasible, because in addition to having several high-level spell slots, you could use your lower-level spell slots to attack quite efficiently, because even with a lower DC you could compensate for this with magic missiles or with ranged touch spells, whereas in PF1 debuffering was much more difficult because due to the DC being calculated based on the spell's level, you had to reserve your best spell slots for them, in addition to having hoping to have a good die roll, because unlike PF2 they had no effect if the target resisted.
That's why this paradigm shift in practice killed dedicated blaster...
I don't believe novice casters are talking about this at all.
I don't know why you're trying to sell me on something that did not exist in previous versions of the game for years. You could not make a dedicated blaster in PF1 or earlier versions of D&D. The Kineticist had not been added when I played last and this type of blaster did not exist, so how could they be complaining about it?
You are asking for something that did not exist in previous versions of the game until the Kineticist and warlock were added which was very recent in D&D history.
You keep bringing up damage when I have already informed you that I can sustain blasting damage through a combination of cantrips, sustain spells, and occasional spell slot blasts throughout an adventuring day.
What exactly do you think an electric arc or a produce flame look like? Or a sustained invoke spirits? They look like blasting.
I don't know if you are a young player or relatively new, but there is no point being missed. There is just you claiming something can't be done that is done by many of us all the time: using spells that look like blasts to sustain high damage, as high or higher than martials across adventuring days.
The majority of what I see posted on these forums has nothing to do with blasting. It is players that played a PF1 wizard and came over to PF2 to find out the PF2 wizard is a bottom tier terrible class. That is what I see.
That is probably one of the biggest paradigm shifts from PF1 to PF2 is the terribleness of the wizard. The wizard was very powerful in PF1, God Tier in PF1. The PF2 wizard is now sitting on the lowest tier available challenging for the award for one of the weakest classes in PF2 from the point of view of an optimizer.
That is what is painful for so many people transitioning from PF1 to PF2 who used to play wizards.
This blasting specialization is a relatively new addition and something you in particular are focused on.
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Complaints about attack roll spells? Math clearly showing a Legendary caster ends with a +35 attack roll versus a martial with a +3 weapon getting a +36 attack roll. The fighter alone gets up to +38 and it is almost universally agreed fighter accuracy is one of the most powerful abilities in the game.Sorry but this is such a big "technically the truth". Yeah, casters end at +35 while martials end up at +36. You just forgot to mention that casters only get Legendary at level nineteen, while staying equal or behind martials for the other 18 levels. They don't get Legendary progression, they get a progression 2 levels slower than baseline martial proficiency with a random Legendary bump tacked on at almost max level and no item bonuses throughout.
If you go down by just two levels on your comparison, to 18, a caster has spell DC 40 / +30 to hit while a martial has +33, and it gets even worse than that at levels where martial proficiency is ahead.
And martials won't get a +3 potency rune until level 16. They won't get Master proficiency until level 15. And they use attack rolls to do damage, whereas you have the option to attack varying saves often weaker than AC.
So it is not a big "technically the truth" as the entire argument is focusing on one part of the game: attack rolls. When casters can do a lot more than focus on attack rolls. They also have spells that have four success layers with different effects which can be anything from the standard double damage to absolutely brutal effects like a critical fail on a slow spell for Slow 2 for 1 minute.
These threads seem to be started by players that miss PF1 casting power and like to focus on niche areas martials are better: single target damage.
I don't see anyone on here going?
How come my martial can't cast a wall of force?
How come my martial can't unleash an eclipse burst as good as a caster?
How come I can't cast a heal as often as a cleric?
When I see these threads, I see a group of players that were used to having it all in PF1: damage, control, summons, movement, defenses, and nearly everything. Now they come to PF2 and they miss all that power casters had in PF1. So they keep making these threads focusing specifically on areas where martials are better: single target damage using attack rolls as some kind of criticism while avoiding all the other stuff casters can do that martials can't begin to touch.
Everyone in these debates have shown the following:
1. Casters do immense damage, especially in AoE situations.
2. They do blast well whether blasting with cantrips, using sustain spells, or a slot for a blast now and again not even including magic items which boost casting power.
3. Casters are of varying power and quality, some equally if not more powerful than martials.
Yet the argument always seems to focus on attack roll spells as some indicator of effectiveness when attack roll spells aren't even the best thing casters can do and it's one of the things that martials happen to be better at for most levels because all they can attack is AC and never higher than Master Class DC or Spell DC to do otherwise.
Suffice it to say after having played PF2 for as long as I have now, it's so easy to disprove the arguments in these debates because they aren't true.
There is no Caster vs. Martial disparity. It doesn't exist. Wizards suck now, Paizo doesn't seem to want to change this making the wizard into the fighter version of a caster probably because of the God Wizard that existed for so long in PF1. Most of the other casters are very good and rate above many of the martials.
Be nice if these threads were more accurate. If the people complaining just said, "I'm tired of watching the fighter be so great while I look weak as a caster, especially a wizard."
Paizo decided to make the fighter the top tier class in PF2. And decided to turn the wizard into a kind of boring chump. Not much we can do about it now until Paizo decides to do otherwise.