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I've made an extensive post about this on Reddit, but I think the main issue with casters is that they seem to be balanced around a perfect scenario. The game is so hellbent on making sure a caster played to its maximum (prepping the right spells for the situation, debuffing saves, always targeting the right ones, Recalling Knowledge, exploiting monster weaknesses, knowing when to use blasts vs normal control vs incap spells, etc.) doesn't explode the game, that it makes the experience for anyone not doing all those things feel pretty underwhelming.
IMO the #1 culprit are monster saves. Or rather, how caster DCs scale compared to them. Targeting a low save doesn't feel like a reward, but rather something you have to always do to achieve basic competence. Otherwise the chance of your spells sticking is not great, to say the least. And yeah, "effects on a success", but constantly whiffing things and getting a compensation prize just doesn't feel good.
Meanwhile a martial can just flank, maybe give a debuff or two if it's a boss monster, and perform mighty fine.
It's the way games are balanced nowadays.
In the past, the complexity of an option was rewarded with increased efficiency.Now, complexity is separated from efficiency. More complexity no more means more efficiency. Mostly because the complexity is, most of the time, a lure.
Targeting a low save is not really hard, for example. Most players manage to do it with high accuracy, so why stating that it should be rewarded? It's just like Flanking, it's a basic advice.
If you properly play a caster, you have the same efficiency than if you properly play a martial. If you don't manage to properly play a caster, maybe you'd get more success with a martial. And if you don't manage to properly play a martial, maybe you'd get more success with a caster (very badly played martials are way worse for a party than very badly played casters, in my opinion).
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To the OP, note that an enemy of higher level will be just as painful for martials as it will be for casters (fail to hit often, less crit success to hit, being hit and crit hit more often). Maybe even worse because most attacks do nothing on a failure and frontliners usually take the brunt of the enemy's first assaults.
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I've made an extensive post about this on Reddit, but I think the main issue with casters is that they seem to be balanced around a perfect scenario. The game is so hellbent on making sure a caster played to its maximum (prepping the right spells for the situation, debuffing saves, always targeting the right ones, Recalling Knowledge, exploiting monster weaknesses, knowing when to use blasts vs normal control vs incap spells, etc.) doesn't explode the game, that it makes the experience for anyone not doing all those things feel pretty underwhelming.
IMO the #1 culprit are monster saves. Or rather, how caster DCs scale compared to them. Targeting a low save doesn't feel like a reward, but rather something you have to always do to achieve basic competence. Otherwise the chance of your spells sticking is not great, to say the least. And yeah, "effects on a success", but constantly whiffing things and getting a compensation prize just doesn't feel good.
Meanwhile a martial can just flank, maybe give a debuff or two if it's a boss monster, and perform mighty fine.
It's the way games are balanced nowadays.
In the past, the complexity of an option was rewarded with increased efficiency.
Now, complexity is separated from efficiency. More complexity no more means more efficiency. Mostly because the complexity is, most of the time, a lure.Targeting a low save is not really hard, for example. Most players manage to do it with high accuracy, so why stating that it should be rewarded? It's just like Flanking, it's a basic advice.
If you properly play a caster, you have the same efficiency than if you properly play a martial. If you don't manage to properly play a caster, maybe you'd get more success with a martial. And if you don't manage to properly play a martial, maybe you'd get more success with a caster (very badly played martials are way worse for a party than very badly played casters, in my opinion).
I really disagree with that thought process. That turns the idea of targeting multiple saves from a theoretical advantage of casters that makes spells powerful into a pure downside, its not that they can target weak points and be rewarded for it, its that most enemies are noticeably resistant to roughly 2/3 of offensive spells.
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I really disagree with that thought process. That turns the idea of targeting multiple saves from a theoretical advantage of casters that makes spells powerful into a pure downside, its not that they can target weak points and be rewarded for it, its that most enemies are noticeably resistant to roughly 2/3 of offensive spells.
Is the glass half full or half empty? You are just describing the same thing from 2 different points of view.
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I really disagree with that thought process. That turns the idea of targeting multiple saves from a theoretical advantage of casters that makes spells powerful into a pure downside, its not that they can target weak points and be rewarded for it, its that most enemies are noticeably resistant to roughly 2/3 of offensive spells.Is the glass half full or half empty? You are just describing the same thing from 2 different points of view.
in a game with looser math you would have a point about glass half full half empty, but pf2e has very tight and intentionally set success rates for basically everything. an advantage should put you above the expected success rate but it doesn't, the players are expected to always target the weak saves and their intended accuracy is balanced around doing so when targeting the other two saves your spells are flatly less effective than they are built to be.
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in a game with looser math you would have a point about glass half full half empty, but pf2e has very tight and intentionally set success rates for basically everything. an advantage should put you above the expected success rate but it doesn't, the players are expected to always target the weak saves and their intended accuracy is balanced around doing so when targeting the other two saves your spells are flatly less effective than they are built to be.
And what is the success rate, then?
You can choose the expected success rate to be the one when you target the weak save or the one when you target a moderate save.As a side note, I strongly feel the success rate is based on targeting the weak save/attacking a Flat-Footed enemy. When you are not in such situations, the game feels extremely dicey.
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If you properly play a caster, you have the same efficiency than if you properly play a martial. If you don't manage to properly play a caster, maybe you'd get more success with a martial. And if you don't manage to properly play a martial, maybe you'd get more success with a caster (very badly played martials are way worse for a party than very badly played casters, in my opinion).
Can you explain what you mean by "properly play"? And "badly played"?
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And it is super weird that caster/martial balance always seems to boil down to people arguing the whole game has too high of difficulty classes, so that “only fighters are viable.”
The difficulty of the game is a variable that GMs can toggle. If players are struggling to adopt maximum efficiency tactics, or just don’t seem interested in doing so…don’t run your combat encounters as requiring it. All this really takes is giving powerful monsters a narrative flaw or desire beyond “murder.” Let monsters be lazy and willing to stop killing for easy rewards. Bullies like being dotted on and feeling respected for their power.
PF1 monsters could never act this way. Half the time the combat would be over if the enemy didn’t win initiative, no opportunity at all to Gloat or puff up chests. Fundamentally, this is a game and parties that want to focus on different aspects of the game can and should talk to their GMs about it.
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Can you explain what you mean by "properly play"? And "badly played"?
If you properly play a caster, you have the same efficiency than if you properly play a martial. If you don't manage to properly play a caster, maybe you'd get more success with a martial. And if you don't manage to properly play a martial, maybe you'd get more success with a caster (very badly played martials are way worse for a party than very badly played casters, in my opinion).
That would be an extremely long discussion, and I'm pretty sure people would not even agree on what is a properly played caster and what is a properly played martial.
The point Dmerceless raised is that, in general, casters are harder to play than martials. So some people will be able to play both types well, and they will have the same efficiency with both types of character. Some people won't be able to play any type well and they will in general be much worse for the party with a martial than with a caster. And those who are in between will in general manage to play martials well but not casters and as such will have a better efficiency with martials than casters.
As the second category is quite rare, if you average everything you'll have the feeling that martials perform better across the player base.
And it is super weird that caster/martial balance always seems to boil down to people arguing the whole game has too high of difficulty classes, so that “only fighters are viable.”
The difficulty of the game is a variable that GMs can toggle. If players are struggling to adopt maximum efficiency tactics, or just don’t seem interested in doing so…don’t run your combat encounters as requiring it. All this really takes is giving powerful monsters a narrative flaw or desire beyond “murder.” Let monsters be lazy and willing to stop killing for easy rewards. Bullies like being dotted on and feeling respected for their power.
PF1 monsters could never act this way. Half the time the combat would be over if the enemy didn’t win initiative, no opportunity at all to Gloat or puff up chests. Fundamentally, this is a game and parties that want to focus on different aspects of the game can and should talk to their GMs about it.
But the whole discussion is about casters and martials. So you'd need to convince your fellow players to downplay their characters if you want to feel as strong as they are. Good luck with that.
I feel like "strong fighter" though only works as best single target striker with a whole lot of support from the party. They are really good at it when they get that support, and that could be why so many people read "best casters" as those designed to set the fighter up to just be a crit machine, but it takes a lot to make that happen. Usually you need a champion, a bard, and another caster and then you have a hammer that can treat everything like a nail.
The funny thing is, PF1 was exactly the same way, except the power martial was the paladin instead of the fighter. The God wizard could trivialize very many encounters with save or over spells, but they could also trivialize even more encounters by buffing up a paladin and then dropping that paladin right next to the most powerful enemy so that they couldn't get away. Yes they can summon and fake a martial ok, or be a summoner and have an ok one at hand, but Paladins in PF1 turned on smite and then ended the boss encounter. They just couldn't really do that with out the help of their casters to get them in position and to know when that fight was coming up.
Very often when I see a two handed melee martial as the team primary striker, it means there is one character doing almost nothing but healing them, or a shield champion spending most of their actions chasing the fighter around and reacting to keep them from dying...and probably using their lay on hands to heal them as well. There is nothing wrong with adopting this strategy. I would put it in the "very effective most of the time" category of game strategies. But it is not the only one there and it is funny how much attention this strategy has gotten as "fighters are always the best damage dealers" when it is still just as dependent on party support as the martial characters were in PF1.
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And it is super weird that caster/martial balance always seems to boil down to people arguing the whole game has too high of difficulty classes, so that “only fighters are viable.”
The difficulty of the game is a variable that GMs can toggle. If players are struggling to adopt maximum efficiency tactics, or just don’t seem interested in doing so…don’t run your combat encounters as requiring it. All this really takes is giving powerful monsters a narrative flaw or desire beyond “murder.” Let monsters be lazy and willing to stop killing for easy rewards. Bullies like being dotted on and feeling respected for their power.
PF1 monsters could never act this way. Half the time the combat would be over if the enemy didn’t win initiative, no opportunity at all to Gloat or puff up chests. Fundamentally, this is a game and parties that want to focus on different aspects of the game can and should talk to their GMs about it.
While I do think the default difficulty of PF2 is too high, in general, this is not exactly about that. The main issue I have is that difficulty disproportionately affects casters, because of something I personally like to call Points of Failure.
Points of Failure are basically moments in your gameplay where things can go wrong. Decisions that you have to make, and that punish you for making the wrong one. Martials can position themselves poorly, use their action inefficiently, and... maybe choose a bad weapon? And that's almost all the Points of Failure they have, outside specific monsters that counter them.
Casters, on the other hand, have sooo many more. For staters, martials (mostly) only target AC, so the game balances their accuracy around targeting AC, obviously. Casters have 3 saves they can target, plus AC, but the game always assume you're targetting the lowest one when balancing accuracy, so that's already something that can go wrong every single time you cast an offensive spell. Then you have picking the correct spells for your prep/repertoite, paying attention to gameplay-altering traits like Incapacitation, knowing which enemies are immune or resistant to each spell, exploiting weaknesses when available to make your blasts do more decent damage, managing spell slots and Focus, blah blah blah.
Since the game seems to always assume every class is being played perfectly, and casters have so many more places where things can go wrong, a game that is challenging but fun for a martial player can feel like a slog that makes them useless for anyone but the "top" caster players.
And this is where I disagree with SuperBidi a bit. Yes, making high complexity classes have a much bigger power ceiling is what caused 3.5 casters and such. It is not a good idea. But doing the complete opposite also causes issues. If you take an entire genre of characters that cover a very big flavor niche (casting magic at people), make them super complex, and then assume everyone will be playing at their maximum potential all the time... what happens to the average person who just likes to play mages? It's not like there's a simple caster class, after all. We're not all Treantmonk, for Cayden's sake.
And it's kinda funny that Bidi mentioned "that's why games are balanced nowadays", because video games being balanced for the top 0.000001% of Pro Players and making changes that feel unfun for everyone else is a big talking point in the gaming community right now. It goes both ways, really.
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The whole argument boils down to: -insert strawmanning here-
Ah yes, the "people disagree with me I am going to strawman hard and misrepresent their points with silly caricatures so I am totally the only reasonable side" approach to a discussion.
A mature, sensible and well reasoned way to engage in public discourse for sure.
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I'm not sure what you had in mind, but I'd probably decide on what XP budget I wanted. For a boss level encounter I'd probably set it as either an 80 or 120 XP budget. I might go with 120 XP with one creature of party level, and one creature of party level+1. This technically leaves a bit in the XP budget. So what do you do? Well spend it on terrain, traps, or other effects. If you build actual hidden traps they would need to be factored into the XP budget differently, but if you build it more like obvious terrain that needs to be avoided or bad things happen then I think you don't. Add it some walls or other stuff that your bad guys have ways of dealing with that can hamper the party if they don't. Now you have an interesting encounter that is just about the enemies you're trying to hit.If like to see some more boss options that aren't just level based. Solo monster or dual monster encounters tend to happen a lot as they are just easier and faster to run. I'm after other options than just a few extra levels.Everyone else has covered it pretty well but I will chime in just to say that if a PF2 GM is constantly throwing encounters at the party that features creatures that are ABOVE the level of the party then they are almost certainly just a sadist who is trying to rack up kills against player characters instead of running a "fair" game, one who has a fixation on only using "boss fight" encounters, or is someone operating on assumptions created from playing other RPG systems that don't have a well balanced Party vs. Creature Level dynamic and is doing so thinking that's the only way to even come close to challenging a group.
What about a boss that isn't the primary threat that spawns a number of CR-3 minions each turn while generally having tough defenses? Or an abductor-type enemy that removes a single PC early and has to be fought a man down while the captured PC makes skill checks to get free before a lesser threat starts munching on them? It's easy enough to make bosses that aren't just big dudes standing in an area waiting for the players to arrive.
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The largest issue is that magic doesn't feel very magical these days. It's very locked down and rigidly ruled upon with very little grey area of the kind that older versions of D&D and even Pathfinder 1e had. There simply isn't as much room for being clever because being clever could lead to imbalance and we simply cannot have that in our modern system.
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I think the main issue with casters is that they seem to be balanced around a perfect scenario.
Personally, I think the main issue (at least for much of Paizo published material) is that Paizo frequently breaks their own rules on monster design.
Almost all the really tough fights I've seen involve a brand new monster which just breaks Paizos own guidelines. Everything will be moderate or higher with at least one ability that is extreme (or above extreme). Or there will be significant environmental effects that aren't factored into the XP budget
Or sometimes more than 1 encounter will occur together or in very rapid succession.
And there is always my favourite factor. The ability to gain relevant information varies MASSIVELY by GM which can have a huge effect on character (especially caster) effectiveness.
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The largest issue is that magic doesn't feel very magical these days. It's very locked down and rigidly ruled upon with very little grey area of the kind that older versions of D&D and even Pathfinder 1e had. There simply isn't as much room for being clever because being clever could lead to imbalance and we simply cannot have that in our modern system.
No, that isn't at all correct.
Sure, spells are well defined (as are swords, skills, magic items, etc).
But there are LOTS and LOTS of grey areas (not at all sure that is a good thing). I've seen "discussions" on what is meant by something just about every session I've played or GMed.
But much more importantly there is still huge room for being clever. I EXPECT to be surprised by my players on a fairly regular basis.
Now there isn't much room for a "creative" interpretation of a spell to totally shut down an encounter any longer. To me, that is a good thing. I've seen far too many "creative" players use their "interpretation" of a spell (especially an illusion spell) to achieve ridiculous results over the years.
And there is always my favourite factor. The ability to gain relevant information varies MASSIVELY by GM which can have a huge effect on character (especially caster) effectiveness.
This is also super-important for investigators. Whether or not they're following an applicable lead when they step into battle is a big deal for them.
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Casters, on the other hand, have sooo many more.
I think people are overstating this.
Sure, a caster who somehow or other figures out exactly which spells to cast WILL be significantly more effective SOME of the time.
But there are a considerable number of encounters where your opponents have no resistances, no weaknesses, and their saves are all reasonably close. In those encounters the difference between the optimal caster and the suboptimal caster is likely fairly small.
And almost all characters will recognize many of the resistances/weaknesses (don't throw fire at the fire elemental, for example).
There most definitely is a difference between a well played caster and a poorly played caster. But it usually isn't THAT significant unless the caster is VERY poorly played.
Heck, in Age of Ashes i ran a druid (one of a party of 4) through about 12 levels who tried to constantly just spam electric arc except when the other players almost forced him to use other spells. He was obviously significantly less powerful than he should have been but we was still contributing to the encounters and I had to do very little to keep things from escalating to constant TPKs.
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But there are LOTS and LOTS of grey areas (not at all sure that is a good thing). I've seen "discussions" on what is meant by something just about every session I've played or GMed.
Yeah, there are grey areas [IMO, not a good thing] you drive a truck through like:
The ability to gain relevant information varies MASSIVELY by GM which can have a huge effect on character (especially caster) effectiveness.
Recall is one of the worst grey areas, especially for characters that need it like Mastermind Rogues, Investigator or casters in general, especially once you factor in things like rarity and such.
Myself, I'd like to see a reduction in gray areas, not an increase of them like Slacker 2.0 suggested, though I'm all for clever use of abilities and spells.
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No, that isn't at all correct.
Sure, spells are well defined (as are swords, skills, magic items, etc).
But there are LOTS and LOTS of grey areas (not at all sure that is a good thing). I've seen "discussions" on what is meant by something just about every session I've played or GMed.
If spells are well-defined and you keep having "discussions" it sounds like you play with people who are either willfully bad at reading rules text or who just genuinely suck at reading the rules.
But much more importantly there is still huge room for being clever. I EXPECT to be surprised by my players on a fairly regular basis.
It seems like what you would call clever is something I might call, using a spell properly.
Now there isn't much room for a "creative" interpretation of a spell to totally shut down an encounter any longer. To me, that is a good thing. I've seen far too many "creative" players use their "interpretation" of a spell (especially an illusion spell) to achieve ridiculous results over the years.
If you didn't want [instert bad thing] to happen to you BBEG you shouldn't have stood him next to [insert abusable situation]. Plus you often didn't need to be very creative if you just built well.
Recall is one of the worst grey areas, especially for characters that need it like Mastermind Rogues, Investigator or casters in general, especially once you factor in things like rarity and such.
Myself, I'd like to see a reduction in gray areas, not an increase of them like Slacker 2.0 suggested, though I'm all for cleaver use of abilities and spells.
There are good grey areas and frustrating grey areas. Recall Knowledge is poor because it's both important and poorly defined. A spell-like Wish has fun grey areas when used for things beyond simply mimicking a lower-level spell.
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Smurf, by smurf!
This conversation is clearly smurfing downsmurf. It's getting really very unsmurfy, and I think that everysmurf here would be better off if we all just take a moment to pause, and relax, and smurf.
I'm specifically not smurfing out anysmurf in particular. That is so not the smurfing point.
You realize that is textbook victim blaming. It is not the GMs fault if the system can be easily exploited.
As a GM it's your job to know what your party can and cannot do. If you don't account for your party you're a bad GM and the encounter falling flat is 100% on you. A system cannot prevent a GM failing to understand their players and building badly because of it.
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Smurf, by smurf!
This conversation is clearly smurfing downsmurf. It's getting really very unsmurfy, and I think that everysmurf here would be better off if we all just take a moment to pause, and relax, and smurf.
I'm specifically not smurfing out anysmurf in particular. That is so not the smurfing point.
Only one way to deal with this... *cast Summon Gargamel and Azrael*
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You realize that is textbook victim blaming. It is not the GMs fault if the system can be easily exploited.As a GM it's your job to know what your party can and cannot do. If you don't account for your party you're a bad GM and the encounter falling flat is 100% on you. A system cannot prevent a GM failing to understand their players and building badly because of it.
Must be nice to be a totally omniscient GM who knows every ability all the characters have AND the uses the players will put said abilities to. And even the effects random chance will have on things.
Actually, thinking about it a tad more, I think it would be quite boring.
Fortunately I'm nowhere close to omniscient and so am often surprised by player and character actions. Or by the dice.
I think I'll just about manage to live with the fact that you think that I'm a bad GM.
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While I do think the default difficulty of PF2 is too high, in general, this is not exactly about that. The main issue I have is that difficulty disproportionately affects casters, because of something I personally like to call Points of Failure.
Your points are clear and thought out, I just disagree with your conclusions.
Casters have always been more difficult to play well. If you don't know the system play something simple like a Fighter or Barbarian till you get the hang of it. Some classses are more complex, pick and play what you want. None of the casters are simple because you have to know at least a few spells. Almost everyone knows this. It is in the newbie guides.
I don't want to play the game on dumb mode. I want a game that is a bit of a challenge.
Yes historically. Just taking a blaster caster has been eaiser in older editions. But I don't think it is that hard to do reasonably in PF2.
If your first experience of the game is a mid level blaster wizard then you are going to make a few mistakes. That is expected. You'll get better fast. GMs understand this. Players understand this.
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The difficulty of the game is a variable that GMs can toggle. If players are struggling to adopt maximum efficiency tactics, or just don’t seem interested in doing so…don’t run your combat encounters as requiring it.
This is a bit misrepresentative of the complaint, I think.
For one, it's conflating difficulty (as a game) and difficulty (in terms of mathematical probability) as being one in the same, when they clearly aren't. I only have a 50/50 chance of winning a coin flip, but that does not make it a particularly difficult game to play. Making it two or three coin flips makes my odds go way down, but again does not appreciably add any difficult to the game itself.
Which is the problem. A player can enjoy difficult games that require tactical mastery, but not enjoy the way certain aspects of PF2's variance are tuned. Simply no longer using bosses reduces both, when the issue at stake is simply one or the other.
Treating the two as equivalent in these discussions ends up just coming across as talking down to people who don't like some aspects of the math.
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The difficulty of the game is a variable that GMs can toggle. If players are struggling to adopt maximum efficiency tactics, or just don’t seem interested in doing so…don’t run your combat encounters as requiring it.This is a bit misrepresentative of the complaint, I think.
For one, it's conflating difficulty (as a game) and difficulty (in terms of mathematical probability) as being one in the same, when they clearly aren't. I only have a 50/50 chance of winning a coin flip, but that does not make it a particularly difficult game to play. Making it two or three coin flips makes my odds go way down, but again does not appreciably add any difficult to the game itself.
Which is the problem. A player can enjoy difficult games that require tactical mastery, but not enjoy the way certain aspects of PF2's variance are tuned. Simply no longer using bosses reduces both, when the issue at stake is simply one or the other.
Treating the two as equivalent in these discussions ends up just coming across as talking down to people who don't like some aspects of the math.
Yes there are problematic mechanics that hurt some classes. If your class needs to make a roll for panache, or to activate your overdrive, or to recall knowkedge to trigger most of your powers - then you look at envy at the Rogue who can just organise a few feat choices to have Sneak Attack be automatic. Theorectically it is balanced off against other factors.....
But casters have more options than just attacking a bosses numbers. They do have spells that are no save at all. They do have spells that have one round of effect even on a successful save - which is pretty damn good in the context of a 4 round fight. Both these are reliable against bosses.
Casters have more than one string in their bow. Play them well.
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Casters have more than one string in their bow. Play them well.
I agree with you, but I also think that's another part of the problem.
When someone comes to a game with a fighter or a barbarian, there's a very strong pull toward merely good enough. Is your main stat high enough? Can you properly use your equipment? If the answer is yes to both you're more or less good to go. Major pitfalls are, well, major, like having terrible AC or a bad attack stat. Maybe the occasional really bad feat or path choice, but even the worst ones are generally still kind of workable.
Both the community of players and the game itself often take steps to accomodate here, because punishing someone for not having the right tools can kinda suck. APs tend to have combats take place in confined spaces and either avoid untargetable enemies or provide alternative solutions, to sidestep issues that a slightly suboptimal build might otherwise face. Our barbarian has never had to worry about using the wrong damage type, because the penalties for doing so haven't been significant, nor has she struggled against flying enemies outside her reach, because the published adventures have avoided using those without providing some sort of alternative for her. Pathfinder is designed to care for her, to see to her needs, to make sure she is always having the most fun possible.
But for the caster (admittedly not just the caster, the alchemist too, and there are echoes of this in the power gaps certain investigator or magus builds suffer from too, or even from the few lingering precision immune enemies that seem to exist only to make swashbucklers feel bad about not being fighters), we take almost the opposite approach.
If someone approaches the community or a game with the idea of playing a caster built around a tight core theme, their flaws are almost immediately identified. It is easy to point out someone playing these classes in an objectively incorrect fashion.
Failing to utilize your toolkit in a sufficiently broad way is a punishable offense. You prepared too many fireballs, so here are high reflex enemies that will avoid most of them. That you like casting fireball is irrelevant, or worse than irrelevant, a character flaw.
Or maybe the game won't even give you the chance one of them might roll low and simply throw an enemy at you that is simply immune to your spells because having a combat you can't participate in because you prepared the wrong spell is quite the exciting challenge, isn't it? Rather than care and attention to playability, this version of Pathfinder is a stern old teacher with a wooden switch, eager to beat correct values into you encounter by encounter.
Of course, as it's been said, once you've been corrected by the system, your experience will be much better, because played correctly these classes are rather good. YMMV on whether that's a good moral lesson in the long term though.
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Must be nice to be a totally omniscient GM who knows every ability all the characters have
You have their character sheets so...
AND the uses the players will put said abilities to.
It's usually pretty obvious what players' builds are supposed to do. There are only so many spells and abilities that can "ruin" an encounter and usually players get pretty excited about adding new spells so the GM will likely hear about the new combo pretty quickly before it shows up at the table.
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And you are then dismissing everyone that doesn't want to use those spells as playing wrong for wanting to use an option that was given....
Casters have a toolbox. Put the hammer back and bring out the hacksaw.
Yes I'm going to penalize you for using the wrong tool. That is part and parcel of playing a toolbox character - which most casters are.I don't want to play in a kindergarten socialist utopia where everyone gets the same result and thinking and effort are not rewarded.
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I'm in my first PF2E game and I'm playing a Witch which is generally seen as the 'off-meta D-tier pick'. According to the people who make YouTube tier lists it could be worse, but not by much. ;)
I'm still just having a lot of fun with a wide range of tools and options I can pick from.
I have great utility both in battle and out.
The only martial that could compete on that score is rogue as they basically get the entire skill list as trained or better, plus have some solid combat abilities - BUT need to focus there whereas I can change how I fight if I need to.
The more I play this and look over options for other classes, the more I am feeling the game favors casters, not martials. If all you do is run medieval battle simulations then the game might favor fighter over everything else. But if you start to vary things up, and if your players are ever allowed to not be in combat - then it feels like every martial other than rogue starts to fall behind. And that's if you leave combat. If you vary it up while staying in combat - then at least your alchemist likely has a few dozen different kinds of bombs and potions - but the rest of them have one or two types of attacks and a very consistent set of action choices. The caster though, can usually pull everything BUT a rabbit out of their hat (and some few might even have a rabbit in there).
If your entire analysis of the game boils down to 'he rolled 5d6 and I only rolled 4d6' then OK. But maybe my 4d6 hit a 20-foot wide area while I'm still cackling to sustain a curse on that boss over there.
That said when I look over the martials I do see fun options in them. But as someone who usually plays "melee DPS" in games, I'm being pleasantly surprised playing a Swiss army knife.
I don't think players who actually explore the options their characters have will be disappointed by any class in the game except maybe investigator - which is either 'S-tier' or 'F-tier' depending 100% on what your GM lets you define as a lead to pursue.
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And you are then dismissing everyone that doesn't want to use those spells as playing wrong for wanting to use an option that was given....Casters have a toolbox. Put the hammer back and bring out the hacksaw.
Yes I'm going to penalize you for using the wrong tool. That is part and parcel of playing a toolbox character - which most casters are.I don't want to play in a kindergarten socialist utopia where everyone gets the same result and thinking and effort are not rewarded.
It feels like the paste-eating Barbarian is getting universal basic income while the Wizard is slaving away at a 9 - 5 and getting paid less for it. So I don't think your point has any validity to it.
It feels like the paste-eating Barbarian is getting universal basic income while the Wizard is slaving away at a 9 - 5 and getting paid less for it. So I don't think your point has any validity to it.And you are then dismissing everyone that doesn't want to use those spells as playing wrong for wanting to use an option that was given....Casters have a toolbox. Put the hammer back and bring out the hacksaw.
Yes I'm going to penalize you for using the wrong tool. That is part and parcel of playing a toolbox character - which most casters are.I don't want to play in a kindergarten socialist utopia where everyone gets the same result and thinking and effort are not rewarded.
Sorry but I'm not seeing the problem. Maybe it is just the skill level of my players. Casters and martials have different roles. They are all valuable. You can keep measuring casters by the yardstick that martials use and complain they don't stack up - but it is just not reasonable thing to do.
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So... Sifting through the detritus trying to find something useful in this conversation, I am seeing:
Spellcasters are more complex than many martial classes, but are not more powerful - and may be worse at the dealing damage part of the game unless a particular set of circumstances all arise.
So, for those who feel that way, what do you propose to do to remedy that?
Some things that I would not be happy to see would be:
Increase the damage dealing capabilities of damaging spells. (If those circumstances do arise, then spellcasters would be able to do dramatically more damage than martial characters and then the meta of the game would be to try and ensure that those circumstances are more common)
Simplifying spellcasters by taking away the abilities and options that they have so that the few options that they do have can be made more reliable and comparable to martial Strike actions. (Though I suspect that this is what people are wanting with Kineticist - I would not be opposed to a new not-quite-spellcasting class that does this)
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So, first, I'm going to admit outright that I don't know how casters play from personal experience. The idea of having that much of my core capability tied up on daily resources makes me twitch.
That said, I'm seeing a few different kind of voices here.
- I'm seeing people who talk about how they are casters, or play next to casters, and said casters are pretty awesome.
- I'm seeing a solid group of peopel talkign abotu how casters are totally playable and work, and referencing the general consensus ont eh matter.
Responses of the first two varieties? That covered every post on the first page other than the very last one and a few posts from the OP. Every single one of them.
Then we got @dmerciless bringing a somewhat more pessimistic view, but reasonable. We had some of what seemed like reasonable responses... and then @temperans said his piece, the quality of discussion went fairly rapidly downhill from there, and how it seems like it's a smallish number of people arguing that casters are unacceptably awful and being horribly discriminated against and rejecting all counterarguments.
So I gotta ask... for those of you out there actively arguing that casters are terrible... how much have you played them? Have you played them? Were you really struggling badly as compared to your martial teammates? Is this from personal experience, or is it based on white-room analysis and/or comparison with the casters of PF1?
Again, I don't have those answers myself. I've never played a caster. I might some day play a summoner, because eidolons with tons of evolution feats are awesome, but if I do, I'm going to be emphasizing the part that's not the caster part. I'm just looking at the discussion and thinking that it's shaped kind fo weird, and wondering if your unhappiness here is derived from experience with the system.
Casters have always been the toolbox sorts of characters in every edition- cone of cold has always been a better spell to cast at a fire elemental than fireball and recognizing this is not especially challenging. PF2 reflects this in two ways- you can choose which defense to target, and you can choose what type of damage you do (remember weaknesses are much more common than resistance in this edition). It doesn't even require metagaming to know that a Hill Giant's Fort save is much better than Will or Reflex, since that's what the Recall Knowledge action does.
Like in terms of "mental overhead" for casters I would say that knowing all of your spells and how they work is a greater onus on the player than "figuring out when to use which one" and "knowing what your spells do" has always been part of playing a caster.
If you're in the market for "good ol' rock, nothing beats rock" the Kineticist is coming later this year.
in a game with looser math you would have a point about glass half full half empty, but pf2e has very tight and intentionally set success rates for basically everything. an advantage should put you above the expected success rate but it doesn't, the players are expected to always target the weak saves and their intended accuracy is balanced around doing so when targeting the other two saves your spells are flatly less effective than they are built to be.I really disagree with that thought process. That turns the idea of targeting multiple saves from a theoretical advantage of casters that makes spells powerful into a pure downside, its not that they can target weak points and be rewarded for it, its that most enemies are noticeably resistant to roughly 2/3 of offensive spells.Is the glass half full or half empty? You are just describing the same thing from 2 different points of view.
You still have not stated what spells you're using or what your expected outcome is. You are complaining absent any examples of what you are attempting to do.
Why is this important?
If your desire is a game where you cast say a "paralyze" spell to end an encounter, then you're asking for something PF2 is never going to give you. They specifically do not want casters ending encounters with single spells any longer. It is by design and it isn't going to change. They want such events to be so incredibly rare that they almost never happen.
If your casting a spell like Slow or phantasmal killer to debuff a creature for a round or more, then that is the expected use of spells and outcome so that the encounter is not ended but the caster has still had a useful impact on the combat.
It is the design of the game that a caster will not be able to win or end combats alone save in some extremely lucky circumstance of such rarity that it does not feel worth trying, so you will stick to spells that have a material impact on success within a group dynamic.
This is working as intended.
Until I see you provide examples of what you're doing, it's hard to imagine what you're contention point is.
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Sorry but I'm not seeing the problem. Maybe it is just the skill level of my players. Casters and martials have different roles. They are all valuable. You can keep measuring casters by the yardstick that martials use and complain they don't stack up - but it is just not reasonable thing to do.
"I don't want to play in a kindergarten socialist utopia where everyone gets the same result and thinking and effort are not rewarded."
Well, martial classes are easy and generally outperform casters until high levels. A well-played caster is capped to be no more effective than an easy-to-play class. So the class that works harder gets no reward for their skilled play.
This seems counter to your statement above.
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Spellcasters are more complex than many martial classes, but are not more powerful - and may be worse at the dealing damage part of the game unless a particular set of circumstances all arise.
Even this really isn't true. Its closest to true when talking about a single target, under most circumstances a caster does not have as much sustainable single target damage output as a martial (although they can often peak higher)
But once you have multiple targets? Then a fireball or a chain lightning spell can do a HUGE amount of total damage. Sure, its spread across multiple opponents and so no one enemy goes down but past the very early stages of the game the martial isn't putting their enemy down in one round either. Its not quite true to say "damage is damage" but its close.
Its not remotely rare for a bard to be "dealing" the most damage in a group if you count the bonus damage he causes everybody else to do as the bards damage.
But mostly its a team game and "who does best" is a pretty silly argument. Once a group is synergizing well and is more than the sum of its parts then it doesn't matter who is dealing 'more' damage, what matters is how effective the group as a whole is
So... Sifting through the detritus trying to find something useful in this conversation, I am seeing:
Spellcasters are more complex than many martial classes, but are not more powerful - and may be worse at the dealing damage part of the game unless a particular set of circumstances all arise.
So, for those who feel that way, what do you propose to do to remedy that?
Some things that I would not be happy to see would be:
Increase the damage dealing capabilities of damaging spells. (If those circumstances do arise, then spellcasters would be able to do dramatically more damage than martial characters and then the meta of the game would be to try and ensure that those circumstances are more common)
Simplifying spellcasters by taking away the abilities and options that they have so that the few options that they do have can be made more reliable and comparable to martial Strike actions. (Though I suspect that this is what people are wanting with Kineticist - I would not be opposed to a new non-spellcasting class that does this)
Remove True Strike from the game and give casters better single-target damage which also helps out the Magus.
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And it is super weird that caster/martial balance always seems to boil down to people arguing the whole game has too high of difficulty classes, so that “only fighters are viable.”
The difficulty of the game is a variable that GMs can toggle. If players are struggling to adopt maximum efficiency tactics, or just don’t seem interested in doing so…don’t run your combat encounters as requiring it. All this really takes is giving powerful monsters a narrative flaw or desire beyond “murder.” Let monsters be lazy and willing to stop killing for easy rewards. Bullies like being dotted on and feeling respected for their power.
PF1 monsters could never act this way. Half the time the combat would be over if the enemy didn’t win initiative, no opportunity at all to Gloat or puff up chests. Fundamentally, this is a game and parties that want to focus on different aspects of the game can and should talk to their GMs about it.
While I do think the default difficulty of PF2 is too high, in general, this is not exactly about that. The main issue I have is that difficulty disproportionately affects casters, because of something I personally like to call Points of Failure.
Points of Failure are basically moments in your gameplay where things can go wrong. Decisions that you have to make, and that punish you for making the wrong one. Martials can position themselves poorly, use their action inefficiently, and... maybe choose a bad weapon? And that's almost all the Points of Failure they have, outside specific monsters that counter them.
Casters, on the other hand, have sooo many more. For staters, martials (mostly) only target AC, so the game balances their accuracy around targeting AC, obviously. Casters have 3 saves they can target, plus AC, but the game always assume you're targetting the lowest one when balancing accuracy, so that's already something that can go wrong every single time you cast an offensive spell. Then you have picking the correct spells for your...
Another complaint with no examples given.
Multiple examples of how to be effective as a caster in PF2 have been given, none have been answered by your side of the argument.
No numbers given.
No examples.
Just this nebulous idea of "Hey, my caster doesn't feel very effective but I haven't given any examples of this lack of effectiveness or used any comparative numbers." It's just a nebulous complaint with no math or real play examples to back it up.
Do you have any real play examples of what you're talking about? Any real numbers? Across multiple levels showing experience?
Because a lot of us with a lot of PF2 experience across multiple levels are telling you that casters are effective and they are, very effective as in game changingly effective to the point where martial characters will die without the casters there.
Yet this being ignored for you to push your narrative absent any examples given? Explain to us with experience playing lots of casters that are as effective if not far more effective than the martials playing PF2 what you are doing that makes you so ineffective?