My issues with magic items

[Deriven Firelion]

Unicore wrote:

So the fighter has to wait for silence to be cast, then rush so far away from the rest of the party that any healing or support is 2 turns away?

I mean, it can work, but it can backfire too, especially if the caster is huge or bigger.

I can see this tactic working continuously in standardly run games that start with "I enter the room and roll initiative" with a DM that doesn't spend much time prepping modules or adjusting encounters.

I've read a lot of Paizo modules. They leave a lot of their caster mobs in bad situations with bad spell lists and poor tactics that will leave them dead quick. If a DM follows the encounters as written or doesn't modify, then it will be a cakewalk for players using intelligent tactics.

I understand why this is done. Paizo module designers have to keep things pretty simple, don't know what the party will be composed or the experience level of the players, and have to work with pre-designed maps and using an experience point/encounter budget.

That's where the DM comes in. Analyze the set up, think about what the players can and will do, then adjust to make the encounter challenging and interesting.

If someone is playing strictly PFS games or with inexperienced GMs, then I can see a tactically smart player crushing almost everything.

[gesalt]

Unicore wrote:

So the fighter has to wait for silence to be cast, then rush so far away from the rest of the party that any healing or support is 2 turns away?

I mean, it can work, but it can backfire too, especially if the caster is huge or bigger.

Wait for silence to be cast sure. Rush away from the party not at all. Drakehearts are 12gp apiece and can be popped as a prebuff and expended immediately for final surge. Or you buy one of the fancy mutagen collars in TV and only spend 4gp per dose. Might even pay itself off by the end of the campaign. Casters cast and advance 80-100feet and then the fighter jumps ahead of them.

[breithauptclan]

gesalt wrote:

Unicore wrote:

So the fighter has to wait for silence to be cast, then rush so far away from the rest of the party that any healing or support is 2 turns away?

I mean, it can work, but it can backfire too, especially if the caster is huge or bigger.

Wait for silence to be cast sure. Rush away from the party not at all. Drakehearts are 12gp apiece and can be popped as a prebuff and expended immediately for final surge. Or you buy one of the fancy mutagen collars in TV and only spend 4gp per dose. Might even pay itself off by the end of the campaign. Casters cast and advance 80-100feet and then the fighter jumps ahead of them.

Well, now you are adding a lot of complexity to the tactic. Now you have to have these potions, preknowledge that you are going to encounter a high level spellcaster, willingness and ability to burn all of those consumables, and have a lot of teamwork and player buy-in for the one tactic.

It isn't the simple "Oh, the party's caster has 4th level Silence available. That's all we need to make all boss spellcasters irrelevant now" type of attitude you were listing a few posts ago.

[gesalt]

breithauptclan wrote:

Well, now you are adding a lot of complexity to the tactic. Now you have to have these potions, preknowledge that you are going to encounter a high level spellcaster, willingness and ability to burn all of those consumables, and have a lot of teamwork and player buy-in for the one tactic.

It isn't the simple "Oh, the party's caster has 4th level Silence available. That's all we need to make all boss spellcasters irrelevant now" type of attitude you were listing a few posts ago.

I don't feel like any of this is particularly complex? Speed tuning is something you should be doing anyway as is prebuffing. All TV has done is make it easier and cheaper in the long run.

Playing a strong pre-built party is the first step to being able to tackle difficult challenges in this system with any degree of reliability after all. That means teamwork and player buy-in are assumed. Isn't that half the point of this system?

[Unicore]

Just to be clear, this plan involves the fighter delaying, waiting for the caster to cast silence and move 80ish feet by having already prebuffed a drake heart mutagen that they are going to expend in the first round (losing the ac bonus), then the fighter moves 120+ ft in the first round (potentially leaving the caster still 40 or more feet behind to potentially stop the enemy caster before they can even try to cast a spell. Which will also likely mean that the caster doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity, and assumes the caster doesn't go before either character and just casts invisibility and moves.

[gesalt]

Unicore wrote:

Just to be clear, this plan involves the fighter delaying, waiting for the caster to cast silence and move 80ish feet by having already prebuffed a drake heart mutagen that they are going to expend in the first round (losing the ac bonus), then the fighter moves 120+ ft in the first round (potentially leaving the caster still 40 or more feet behind to potentially stop the enemy caster before they can even try to cast a spell. Which will also likely mean that the caster doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity, and assumes the caster doesn't go before either character and just casts invisibility and moves.

Bards don't lose the AC bonus and we didn't care about it in the first place. Not compared to the ability to close the gap. The caster has a base speed of 40 as well (25base +5fleet +10longstrider) so being 40 feet away from the Fighter is no issue. If we go before the boss, great. If not, nobody expects to go before the boss anyway. They get one round to knock the party so far on the back foot that they can't handle casting a spell on an ally and running at the enemy.

Aside from that, does the rest matter? If the boss can't cast who cares if it didn't provoke an AoO until it tries to move? If it went first and cast invis, just cast see invis or glitterdust or faerie fire or drink a cat's eye elixer. Now we're back to square 1. Invis, like incorporeal, is trivial to deal with.

And remember, this is just two party members we're talking about. Caster A and martial A. You've probably got at least two others who can do the exact same thing for redundancy, provide glitterdust, feed potions, whatever. There's a million ways to pull this off or increase the odds of pulling it off depending on your party comp.

[Squiggit]

Feel like that's a really easy way for the fighter to end up swarmed by enemies and dropped on the first round.

[graystone]

Squiggit wrote:

Feel like that's a really easy way for the fighter to end up swarmed by enemies and dropped on the first round.

And that assumes you can even figure out they are a caster beforehand: after all, in PF2, full casters can wear heavy armor and non-armored doesn't mean you're a caster.

[Squiggit]

graystone wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

Feel like that's a really easy way for the fighter to end up swarmed by enemies and dropped on the first round.

And that assumes you can even figure out they are a caster beforehand: after all, in PF2, full casters can wear heavy armor and non-armored doesn't mean you're a caster.

Not to mention that NPC caster can have barbarian quality damage and fighter quality accuracy on their weapon attacks anyways too. Had more than a few encounters in APs run into trouble when the melee corner the ostensibly squishy caster and then the caster crits for triple digit strike damage.

[Karmagator]

"Caster bosses stop existing at level 7". I'm sorry, but that statement is just plain wrong.

There are a lot a GM can do to counter such tactics. And any competent enemy would do so. If a normal party understands that dangling an unprotected caster in front of a bunch of dudes with big sticks is a bad idea, why would the rest of the world be ignorant? If you want casters, bosses or not, to be scary, they definitely can be. Well past level 7. If anything, casters get much better at higher levels due to obviously better spells and abilities. Speaking from more experience than I'd like, at level 17, a level 21 lich with Masterful Quickened Casting, Effortless Concentration and a decent spell list (including such fun things as maze and time stop) is a menace.

So, on the encounter-building side, give the caster a distraction or three. Sole caster enemies are extremely swingy due to their extreme spell DC or involve pseudo-casters like the pit fiend. Can be fun, but having one or two lesser enemies to keep the party occupied is generally a much better idea. They don't need to do a lot of damage, but should be able to take a hit and ideally have some control abilities. To silence a caster, you have to get to them in the first place. Bonus points if you can split the party's attention by threatening the backline. PC's aren't the only ones who would think of that, after all. Then there's traps and other environmental factors to round out the obstacle course. Plenty of options all around.

Then there is the pure mechanics of the caster themselves. If you hate your players or think they will enjoy the challenge, you can resort to cheese like flying 60ft above the party and raining death onto their heads, casting 4th-level invisibility/disappearance[i], just [i]maze-ing the first fighter-looking dude or feeblemind the caster. For a more moderate method, casters should have feat-like abilities like Quickened Casting, Silent Spell (to counter silence cheese), other metamagic and stuff like Effortless Concentration at higher levels. Psychic enemies completely ignore silence as well. Control spells like roaring applause are also a thing that will severely hamper a party's ability to murk your precious demigod in a bathing robe.

So yeah, I don't think that theory holds much water.

[Fumarole]

Not to mention that counterspell exists.

[Unicore]

I think we are getting too far away from the original point here. It is perfectly fine to not like the fearsome rune because "it only does anything on a crit." But if you are a fighter and try it out, especially on a flail or hammer, you will quickly find yourself a very competent battlefield controller. It has been incredibly effective in play and easily worth the missing damage, as a maul hits real hard anyway. Against casters it has been lights out with regularity and doesn't require any set up from anyone else. But it is also incredibly effective against non-casting enemies because fighters crit a lot. Someone else might demoralize an enemy for a round, but once the debuffing kicks in, then you crit even more often and it keeps getting reset. A prone target with frightened 2 just lost 4 levels against the whole party. It really does kick into a crit frenzy.

[Karmagator]

Unicore wrote:

I think we are getting too far away from the original point here. It is perfectly fine to not like the fearsome rune because "it only does anything on a crit." But if you are a fighter and try it out, especially on a flail or hammer, you will quickly find yourself a very competent battlefield controller. It has been incredibly effective in play and easily worth the missing damage, as a maul hits real hard anyway. Against casters it has been lights out with regularity and doesn't require any set up from anyone else. But it is also incredibly effective against non-casting enemies because fighters crit a lot. Someone else might demoralize an enemy for a round, but once the debuffing kicks in, then you crit even more often and it keeps getting reset. A prone target with frightened 2 just lost 4 levels against the whole party. It really does kick into a crit frenzy.

There is also a little rogue feat called Dread Striker that you can spec into. Speaking from experience - on a champion, though - that's when things get real bad for the baddies. There are other frightened-based feats as well, but that's really the one.

All in all, the fearsome rune is pretty good, especially if you build for it. Hard to do that for crushing, though that thing is good as well, ofc.

[Ouatcheur]

Claxon wrote:

To be honest, I think it's intentional.

There are some effects, that if you can use them once per combat are going to really change the game.

Goz Mask for example. If you introduce a mechanic that allows you to refocus it after 10 minutes then you can pretty much count on having it 90%+ of combats. Which means now your whole party buys 1 and use Obscuring Mist. The flat 25% chance to miss by the enemy that the whole party ignores would completely change the game dynamic.

In short, there isn't an easy way to introduce the kind of change you want.

I think the best thing to do is simply to allow for higher level, more expensive versions of certain items to have more uses per day. But we don't have guidance on how to adjust the pricing for such things.

If an item doesn't have the invested trait, you could simply buy multiples of them. But the invested trait will stop you from switching between multiple Goz mask.

I'd do both: item is pricier and allows more total uses per day, with the caveat that each time you use it, it becomes inactive and you can't use an of the remaining daily charges until you spend 10 minutes on that specific item to refocus.

Greater Goz Mask: price x 10, 2 charges
Major Goz Mask: price x 10 , 3 charges

But that also opens the door to having everything else wands allowed to be several uses per day, too. Suddenly it takes 2 hours of refocusing after every fight lol.