A pretty needed nerf though, I'd hope you agree.
I feel like it could have been nerfed by making the steps of the combo harder to pull off, not by making it all but impossible and locking the needed spells behind an ask your GM wall.
If the party spends a session gathering information and materials specific to their target and then casts a load of buffs and teleports in on the guys they've likely spent more time on the battle than they would have if they'd fought that same foes straight up. It's just that the time was spent - and intelligently so - on the preparation instead of the fight.
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Some of nerfs that were made to casters are also good for PCs, like sure your gm is jerk if they keep teleporting assasins next to you and then out, but only reason for anyone to not do that was fair play :p Granted, they still can do it, but when players can't do it it doesn't create feeling of "so when we scry and teleport all the time, why don't enemies also do it?"
Anyway, I don't think its unlikely to get Pathfinder 2e unchained type book at some point, but I also disagree heavily with idea there is "objectively correct spell selection" :P
I also disagree with idea that classes released after core rulebook should be inherently quote and quote "better" than core classes. Summoning also got nerfed but also is still pretty valid way to play.
I do agree with that lot of AP encounter design means you never get to do things like "start encounter from super long distance away" especially since we haven't really had "siege the fortress" style encounter in 2e official material yet.
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More slots really aren't going to fix the issues that casters have when the issues are:
1) There is a list of spells that are objectively correct to take for any given campaign and Paizo balanced the game around your character taking those spells. This makes it so that any suboptimal choice, whatever the reason for making it, punishes you while also using up a limited resource.
You are overselling it. PF2 has multiple good answers. There is not one spell.
2) Paizo intentionally made certain playstyles worse due to issues those styles of play caused in previous editions. Summoning and strong utility that could replace skill checks are two categories of spells that were hit especially hard.
Yep and summoning at least is a problem they should fix. But so far their efforts have been weak.
3) Paizo chose to lean hard into niche protection and one of the niches that is being protected is single target damage. Thus your mage, even pushing all in is going to struggle to significantly out-damage the fighter against enemies of level +1 or greater.
I don't believe this is generally true
4) Many published adventures don't allow casters to play to their strengths often presenting tight setups where the long range of a caster doesn't come into play. The same isn't true for martial characters who can be assured that most encounters will take place in enclosed spaces with little room for a foe to maneuver or fly away.
Yes I think that published adventures are distorted in this way. I often double room sizes in modules.
6) Casters often feel like they're still playing with the old two-action system while martial characters, especially CRB classes, get to use all three actions each turn.
That is on you the player to change. The options are there. Demoralise, Bon Mot, single action spells.
7) Paizo has 'missed' on a couple of classes with Witch (and Wizard to a far lesser extent) being both bland and underpowered. They don't seem keen to circle back on these design flaws so we'll likely be stuck with these classes as they are until we get a new edition.
I don't have a major problem with the Wizard. The Witch is under done. But it is perfectly playable
8) Paizo has a firm power cap that some CRB classes may have broken but that no class published afterward even approaches. So any desire for a class like *blank* but better is unlikely to happen even if *blank* is currently underpowered and/or inadequately supported by the current rules.
Magus and Thaumaturge are right up there. So your statement is wrong.
Some of the others could do with a nudge. But everything is reasonably playable. Yes they have been a bit too cautious with some like Inventor and Investigator. I'd like to see a bit more with Summoner too.
We already have focus spells, cantrips, and the wizard has Spell Substitution - which is quite popular in some quarters. Then there is Well Spring Mage. So while you may want some differences these are sort of here.Some of what you want could be covered by the ability to recover a lower level spell slot on a short rest. Which would be a fair power for a high level caster. Or perhaps a Spell Substitution wizard could subsitute a spell as a single action if it was more than 3 level lower than their best spell slot.
Recovering low level spell slots has a lot of effects.
It's first effect is to reduce attrition, and that's fully covered by Wellspring Mage and slightly covered by Focus Spells (only a handful of classes have Focus Spells that are meant to replace combat spells).A second effect is to compensate the removal of the low level spell slots. This removal is important to reduce the size of the spell list but it also removes the "All casters are buffers/debuffers" as there are no more spell slots for evergreens (which are mostly buff/debuffs). You obviously need a compensating mechanism if you don't want high level casters to use cantrips as much as low level casters (cantrips scale badly, and in my opinion it's a good design choice as high level casters should not rely too much on them).
The third effect, partially covered by Spell Substitution, is to allow Prepared casters to incarnate the "Having the right spell for the job" saying. If you know you'll face Fire Elementals, you no more have to take multiple Cones of Cold, trying to guess the numbers of fights against Fire Elementals. A single spell slot, that you recover fight after fight, will give you a once per fight Cone of Cold.
So, I agree that all these uses are covered by Spell Substition + Wellspring Mage. It's actually a Prepared compatible version of Wellspring Mage that also gives part of the flexibility of Spell Substition (you still can't change any of your spells, you can just recover those you prepared).
All the changes I make in this document are meant to solve the issues people report: Blasters are not working, Summoners are not working, Transmuters who dive into combat in Battle Form are not working, Enchanters are crippled by the Incapacitation tag, the main balancing factor for casters is the length of the adventuring day, Prepared casters need a crystal ball during daily preparation, there's no specialized caster, casters are all buffers/debuffers, high level spells are not impactful enough to justify them being limited and certainly others I forget about. All of that with the smallest alteration of the system to avoid bringing other problems simultaneously.
A hard per-day limit of between 3 and 8 what? Castings?I agree with this, between cantrips and focus spells the total number of spells in general stops being a problem by level 5, you have more than enough room to never want for more options, with the important exception of spells that demand heightening, such as damage spells, summons, and incapacitation spells all of which have a hard per-day limit of between 3 and 8, that other kinds of spells just don't need to deal with.I hate it... because of heightening...
While it doesn't apply to cantrips and focus spells, it's pretty taxing to use a higher spell solt to heighten a spell now.
I wish there was a way to spend 1 action / 1 heightened level instead, with Concentration checks to avoid losing your casting.
Basically, Paizo needs to offer a way to heighten a spell WITHOUT using a higher spell slot. This can be at a daily frequency, but it needs to be there as an option.
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In play, I see casters using summon spells quite a lot, even at higher levels.
People really like summoning giant skunks and dragons and fey creatures. 3 actions is steep. But flanking for your roguecan be worth a first level slot even at higher levels and most efforts to clear a summon involve spending an action, maybe two. They can still set off traps as well, and pretty easily take up space that requires extra movement to get around. All of this is without making any attacks at all. If the enemy smashes your summon in one attack right after you cast it, congratulations! Your spell was just more useful than a slow spell that was saved against because the creature now also has MAP for the round.
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This is hinging on the GM roleplaying the foes as dumb tho. From my experience, summons AC is low enought that even attack with MAP are likely to crit them, so having the ennemy use it first attacks on the "flanking buddy" instead of using it on the rogue that's actually killing them is weird.
And of course, there's also a bit of missing flavor with this use of summons. Most people that want to play "summoners" (not the class, but rather a caster focussed on using summons and minions) want them to be something more than "debuff totem" that just provide flanking benefits and occupy space. Don't get me wrong, a debuff totem is a neat tool to have, but someone that want his druid to call forth animals to fight for him expect more of them than being debuff totem.
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Using high level slots on summons accomplishes this. The enemy will not clear your top level summoned dragon with a -10 MAP attack. Its breath weapon will do some damage and trigger weaknesses. It will get the bard’s inspire courage bonus and be attacking a flat-footed enemy that means it has a good chance of hitting as well as the caster with lower weapon proficiencies anyway.
It won’t be as good as the martial party members though. That is an important feature, not a bug
In pathfinder 2e, the total number of spell slot is far more limited than in pathfinder 1e. This is in part mitigated by the creation of focus spells, which can be cast at least once by encounter, and the fact that cantrip are automatically heightenned (and thus are kinda usefull during the whole campaign), but it still mean that spellcaster have a much more limited ammount of "daily ressource" to play with.
Given how overpowered casters were in PF1 (and 3.5, and 3.0, and 5e, and...), a nerf was certainly warranted, but this was far from the only one spellcasters received in PF2. Spell utility is now far more constrained to avoid making them simply overshadowing skill check, damaging spells now lag behind martial in accuracy (and their damage, while respectable, are never enought to turn the tide of a level appropriate encounter alone), and incapaciting spells flat out don't work against any creature of a higher level than the party.
So knowing all that, I'd like to know what people think about the amount of spell slot available in PF2. I feel like there's too little of them, and that it further exacerbate the general "feel bad" problem that low level spellcaster have, but I haven't played on this system for that long, so I'd like to know what more experienced people think.
As I've never played one myself, I especially would like to hear what people think about the summonner only having 4 of them at most, and the magus only having 6. Do these class still feel "right" to play? are those slot strictly reserved to "infallible" spells like buff spells or utility spells that require no save nor attack rolls?
The big thing with the Magus and Summoner is that they are way more than just spellcasters; they also have significant martial capabilities as well. The Magus has full martial progression, and has slightly more survivability than a Rogue (especially if they specialize into it), and even sticking to just cantrips, their Spellstrikes are significantly damaging. Starlit Span Magus is one of the strongest ranged damaging builds in the game, and you don't really need to specially build for it. The Summoner has a full Martial progression Eidolon, and can basically manipulate the action economy in ways that even Martials can't do a lot of the time. And honestly, if the players feel like they need more spells? They can multiclass. A Magus with Wizard MCD is a very common path, and the Summoner can multiclass into whatever other class they want as well for more spell slots. In fact, a Magus with Wizard MCD (or a Summoner with some other spellcasting MCD) taking all the Spellcasting feats will get Master Spellcasting proficiency a level faster than if they didn't stick strictly to their main class, and they'll have more than enough lower level spell slots to play around with (Magus in particular).
As for the other spellcasters, it largely depends on your build. A Wizard is designed to have the absolute most spells compared to any other base class (minus maybe the Sorcerer, but strictly speaking for prepared spellcasters, Wizards are the highest), and having played a Wizard to 20th level, the only spellcasting help I needed was from some Ancestry feats (Elves have a lot of spellcasting ancestry feats that were invaluable to my build) and a couple class feats (such as Scroll Savant, letting me have some all-day buff spells and situational spells on-hand without having to burn daily spell preparation slots for it). If I took a Dedication for spellcasting, I'd have almost too many spell slots to know what to do with, and a lot of those spell slots would be too low level to impact a relevant encounter.
I haven't played the other spellcasting classes, but what a lot of the fewer spell slot classes lack in slots, make up for in powerful focus spells and other features. Having seen these in actual, play, Storm Druids are some of the most powerful and versatile spellcasters in the game, with an amazing focus spell and having some of the best freedom for archetype feat choices, and Sorcerers have the most Spontaneous spellcasting slots as well, and depending on bloodlines, have some of the best Focus Spells in the game. And Bards? You can literally ignore most of their spellcasting and they are still one of the most powerful classes in the game. Giving them the full Occult spell list to pick from? Yeah, no contest, Bards will trump any spellcaster in the game with just Inspire Courage alone; they're that good. Healing Fonts? Dragon Breath? Pfff, those don't even do anything compared to what Inspire Courage does for a party. Give the Bard access to the best spell list in the game, and next thing you know, they make all content an absolute joke.
After checking the creature stat, it seems even worse than I remembered. Summon spells at high level only let you summon creatures that are 4 levels bellow you (on odd level, every even level it's 5 level bellow you instead). Interesting thing I discovered while checking around, but the AC of a creature at one level is actually roughtly equivalent to the attack bonus of one 4 level above.
For exemple, for the summon dragon spell, a level 9 young blue dragon have 28 AC and an attack bonus of +21. 4 level bellow is the flame drake, with 22 AC (meaning that the young blue dragon can only ever fail a strike with no MAP on a natural 1), and 4 level above is the adult blue dragon, with 34 AC and an attack bonus of +27 (the exact same, it only fail on a natural 1). That is only one "on level" monster (in odd level, in even levels, "on level monsters" are 5 level higher than the summon). I checked for a bunch of creatures, and the trend seems to hold, some creatures have higher or lower than average AC or attack bonus, but as a whole they tend to stay in line with this, creatures tend to have around 7 point of AC above their attack bonus, and both of these stat increase by seven points every 4 levels.
This makes summons as much of a threat against foes as a -4 level monster is against the PC. With it's very low resistance (comparatively with the thing it's facing), the summon is likely to critically fail any AOE caused by your opponent. It may even be a liability in some fights (using the blue dragon stat block, the draconic momentum ability allow it to use the summon as a way to recover and use it's breath weapon every turn). These incredibly low stat, coupled with their pretty high cost (remember that they cost you an entire turn, one spell slot and then one more action per turn as long as you want to keep them) kill their utility as "battle buddies", because their stats are so low bellow you than these actions would be better served acting yourself.
Thus, their usefullness come only from this "strategic placing" (as debuff totem), as well as the strategic use of their unique abilities. However, this use run into the last problem of summonned creatures : the fact that you don't actually control them. The summonning rule indicate that "it generally attack your foes to the best of it's ability" and that "If you can communicate with it, you can attempt to command it, but the GM determines the degree to which it follows your commands".
Since it act right after you in the innitiative turn, and since the GM is the one who control them (and may decide that the summon can't understand or refuse to follow your command), you can't actually know if he's stand where you want it to stand, or attack the foe you want it to attack. If most of them are indeed sentient as the rule imply, they might simply refuse to be used as trap fodder (and tricking or forcing them into it would definitively be a pretty evil act).
If you want to make it work, there certainly are pretty easy homebrew. Playing in a "proficiency without level" game help summonners because 4 (or more) level worth of difference isn't as huge stat-wise, and thus make them more impactfull. Playing with a comprehensive GM that make it so your summon somehow understand exactly what you want them to do even tho they only just appear (or who just allow you to control them) also help a lot, and is pretty much mandatory if you want to use them strategically. There's probably other possible fixes, like making the available summon scale with player level rather than spell level (to make up for those even level were summonning suddently become less effective), but those are homebrewed solution, not intended one.
Dragons are bad enemies to summon against. They are fast, they have AoO, they have no real attribute/save weakness, they are often casters and they area attacks. They are the game’s quintessential solo villain.
If your point is to prove that you don’t want to bring Simmons to every fight, you are correct. But even conjurer’s have other options than just summoning, and the reason why pure dragon fighting campaigns are rare is because they are such a difficult enemy. You should not have to build a character focused on fighting dragons, just a character capable of being part of team that can fight a dragon.
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I feel like you missed all of my points by focussing on my exemple. The fact that creatures of a certain level have an attack bonus equivalent to the AC of a creature 4 level bellow isn't dragon only, pretty much all creatures are like that. Randomly checking monster stat of a certain level here, a level 7 aboleth have 23 AC, same as a level 7 elephant, while a level 7 greater bargheist have 25, there's some variance, but they're still pretty close. Now, a level 11 butha have +24 attack bonus, same as a goliath spider or an Hamathula, and a harmona stand at +23. I checked for multiple levels, random creature only, and the trend was always here, except for a few outlier (who tend to be dramatically worse in their AC/attack because they have some side gimmick).
Baring those outliers, monster have an AC equivalent to the attack bonus of a monster 4 level above. It's just how monsters stats work in PF2, it's the reason why facing a level +2 monster is a significant challenge, and a +4 have the "potential TPK expect player death" attached to it. A summon fighting an "on level" monster isn't just weak, it's negligible quantity. Even more if you're on an even level and you now have 5 level of difference from your summon.
And beside, it doesn't change the fact that RAW you don't control your summon and they can do whatever they want. If you intend to use them strategically, for them to stand on certain tile to block the way or provide flank, to attack or inflict specific debuff on certain ennemies, you better hope your GM is very nice (or rather, you better hope you're playing an houseruled version where the summoner get to control it's summon, which isn't RAW).
Using high level slots on summons accomplishes this. The enemy will not clear your top level summoned dragon with a -10 MAP attack. Its breath weapon will do some damage and trigger weaknesses. It will get the bard’s inspire courage bonus and be attacking a flat-footed enemy that means it has a good chance of hitting as well as the caster with lower weapon proficiencies anyway.
It won’t be as good as the martial party members though. That is an important feature, not a bug
The AoE abilities make summonings at higher level wasteful.
I do see summons at lower level as the level and power gap is not as wide. At high level a max level summon is so useless in its ability to harm the enemy that you don't bother to use it. Flanking is easy to get at high level. You don't need a summoned creature to do it.
They made summoned creatures a non-threat due to the level based math of PF2. The enemy can basically ignore them. It's a massive waste of a slot.
Low to mid level summons are not bad.
Using high level slots on summons accomplishes this. The enemy will not clear your top level summoned dragon with a -10 MAP attack. Its breath weapon will do some damage and trigger weaknesses. It will get the bard’s inspire courage bonus and be attacking a flat-footed enemy that means it has a good chance of hitting as well as the caster with lower weapon proficiencies anyway.
It won’t be as good as the martial party members though. That is an important feature, not a bug
The AoE abilities make summonings at higher level wasteful.
I do see summons at lower level as the level and power gap is not as wide. At high level a max level summon is so useless in its ability to harm the enemy that you don't bother to use it. Flanking is easy to get at high level. You don't need a summoned creature to do it.
They made summoned creatures a non-threat due to the level based math of PF2. The enemy can basically ignore them. It's a massive waste of a slot.
Low to mid level summons are not bad.
This is something on I can actually agree with Deriven Firelion. Unless it is via Primal Evolution for the free once-a-day use at one’s highest slot, I have found them to be pretty useless post spell level 4. When you get them for free, at least then they can be used to check the corridor for traps…
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I feel like you missed all of my points by focussing on my exemple.
I think you missed the point of the counterargument.
You picked as your example the worst possible matchup - a battle between the player characters and a higher level solo-boss (one with abilities that target groups of people or really nice reactions when the PCs try to attack them). And then your claim is that 'since it doesn't work in this scenario, then it doesn't work at all'.
No, you shouldn't bring out a summoned creature in a boss fight.
Summoned creatures are for distracting the 4 or 6 lower level henchman of the enemy you are fighting.
Or for pulling out a creature with a nice special ability to use.
And beside, it doesn't change the fact that RAW you don't control your summon and they can do whatever they want. If you intend to use them strategically, for them to stand on certain tile to block the way or provide flank, to attack or inflict specific debuff on certain ennemies, you better hope your GM is very nice (or rather, you better hope you're playing an houseruled version where the summoner get to control it's summon, which isn't RAW).
Wait, what?
Summoned creatures have the Minion trait. So you command them as part of the Sustain action. They obey commands just like an Animal Companion.
This is something on I can actually agree with Deriven Firelion. Unless it is via Primal Evolution for the free once-a-day use at one’s highest slot, I have found them to be pretty useless post spell level 4. When you get them for free, at least then they can be used to check the corridor for traps…Using high level slots on summons accomplishes this. The enemy will not clear your top level summoned dragon with a -10 MAP attack. Its breath weapon will do some damage and trigger weaknesses. It will get the bard’s inspire courage bonus and be attacking a flat-footed enemy that means it has a good chance of hitting as well as the caster with lower weapon proficiencies anyway.
It won’t be as good as the martial party members though. That is an important feature, not a bug
The AoE abilities make summonings at higher level wasteful.
I do see summons at lower level as the level and power gap is not as wide. At high level a max level summon is so useless in its ability to harm the enemy that you don't bother to use it. Flanking is easy to get at high level. You don't need a summoned creature to do it.
They made summoned creatures a non-threat due to the level based math of PF2. The enemy can basically ignore them. It's a massive waste of a slot.
Low to mid level summons are not bad.
But why wouldn't you just use a basic lower level slot and save your higher level spell slots/focus points on other things? Or any other junk-tier consumable?
But why wouldn't you just use a basic lower level slot and save your higher level spell slots/focus points on other things? Or any other junk-tier consumable?
This is something on I can actually agree with Deriven Firelion. Unless it is via Primal Evolution for the free once-a-day use at one’s highest slot, I have found them to be pretty useless post spell level 4. When you get them for free, at least then they can be used to check the corridor for traps…
One could just fine, but then the casting wouldn’t be free. Really, the free slot was the point to making it not be a total waste at higher levels. If one plays a primal sorcerer and wants access at level 16 to Greater Vital Evolution, a great feat, then one must take Primal Evolution as a prerequisite.
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If I'm part of the PF2 design team, I would put as a design goal that when you use a top level slot to summmon a creature it should be an effective combatant against a CR+2 monster that you would fight at the level you can summon it. If it is not, I would consider that a design fail.
By effective I mean hit at least once a round and do damage roughly equivalent to a sustain spell of a similar level over the course of the spell duration. Summon spells accomplish this at lower level, but fall too far behind at later levels, probably around 11 to 13th level the level gap becomes too wide to be a very effective use of a max level slot unless you're summoning them for some other reason.
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Summoned creatures have the Minion trait. So you command them as part of the Sustain action. They obey commands just like an Animal Companion.
Reread the summonned rules. It's very clear about how summons act :
"It generally attacks your enemies to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with it, you can attempt to command it, but the GM determines the degree to which it follows your commands."
If you can't communicate with it (like, if it's an animal and you don't have an active speak with animal spell, or if it's an outsider who don't speak common and you don't have it's relevant language), you can't control it, and it will "generally attacks your enemies to the best of it's ability". If you can communicate with it, then it's still up to the GM on wether or not they actually obey you.
You don't get to command the summon the way you do animal companion or familiar, the GM is the one who "play them". It's how they were too in PF1, I think it's to prevent the summonner from using summons as a way to "farm spells" by summonning other spellcaster or creature with spell like ability and then controlling them perfectly, except that now that the summons are 4 (or 5) level bellow you at best (and now that they eat away at your actions and a summon only create "one more" action for your group), It's pretty unnecessary.
Also, I think you misread me. I'm not talking about a "higher level solo boss" here in my exemples, but about any "on level" monsters. Creatures that have the exact same level as the players, and once again those creature will tend to have a base attack bonus equal to your summon AC. Your highest possible level of summon being 4 (or 5 on even level) bellow you mean that any "on level" monster is 4 level above the summon. The "minions" you say the summon will be good against? unless they're 4 (or 5) level bellow your party, they will be a significant challenge for your summon. And those are "fodder" meant to slow your party down and distract it, not actually challenge it. Any CR +1 or +2 is 5 or 6 level above, something which in PF2 is clearly indicated as a "TPK" if it were the player characters.
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Summoned creatures are practically a waste of a high level slot, and it only gets worse as you progress. The feeling I have is that Paizo even tried to compensate for this in SoM with spells with the Incarnate trait, but honestly, they missed the problem of summons (in practice, Incarnate spells work mechanically as a 2-step evocation spell rather than actually working as a summoned creature).
Today the only real practical and efficient use of summon a creature is to summon "bards" (summoning satyrs, chorals or lillends).
For me it's something that needs some degree of homebrew to become useful. Whether using a pseudo-official solution like Proficiency without Level (however, it's a very "use a bazooka to kill a fly" solution, since you're changing the entire system to solve just one problem), or creating your own rules in your table, with, for example, matching the level of the summoned creatures to the conjured one (just changing the calculation of their proficiency level, in order to emulate the Proficiency without Level), or changing the summoning spells themselves (such as changing to instead summon a creature 4-5 levels lower, summon one only 2 levels lower than twice the spell's level).
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If I'm part of the PF2 design team, I would put as a design goal that when you use a top level slot to summmon a creature it should be an effective combatant against a CR+2 monster that you would fight at the level you can summon it. If it is not, I would consider that a design fail.
By effective I mean hit at least once a round and do damage roughly equivalent to a sustain spell of a similar level over the course of the spell duration. Summon spells accomplish this at lower level, but fall too far behind at later levels, probably around 11 to 13th level the level gap becomes too wide to be a very effective use of a max level slot unless you're summoning them for some other reason.
The problems with summons from earlier editions was the number of summons you can get. It slowed the game, and it was too strong. The action system basically fixes this pretty well till Effortless Concentration or the Cackle feat which would let you get a second out. That should be enough of a limit.
Obviously a summons can't be as effective as a martial character. But if they were capable of a basic weapon attack at the attack number of their caster they would still be relevant. Then cap their hitpoints at maybe half what a caster are - so they go down in one or two hits. Anything much less than that and they are irrelevant in combat. The level system guarrantees that.
Yes it is a balance act between being a little effective but not irrelevant.
If it is too much then change summoning so it is one action to sustain the spell, and then another sustain action to direct the summoned creature to act. That obviously would be for a slightly better summons as it is taking most of the casters actions.
Please retire the default summon which is hunt through the bestiary for the right minster to summon approach to the spell. It is just too much effort for most players, and most GMs would rather they didn't look.
But if you leave that style of summoning where it is now, 90% of players will never use it except to check for traps. So maybe you don't have to remove it.
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This is hinging on the GM roleplaying the foes as dumb tho. From my experience, summons AC is low enought that even attack with MAP are likely to crit them, so having the ennemy use it first attacks on the "flanking buddy" instead of using it on the rogue that's actually killing them is weird.
And of course, there's also a bit of missing flavor with this use of summons. Most people that want to play "summoners" (not the class, but rather a caster focussed on using summons and minions) want them to be something more than "debuff totem" that just provide flanking benefits and occupy space. Don't get me wrong, a debuff totem is a neat tool to have, but someone that want his druid to call forth animals to fight for him expect more of them than being debuff totem.
If your GM insists on playing all monsters as intelligent tacticians, they are meta gaming.
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It's not even "intelligent tacticians" level, attacking the creature that is actively harming you rather than the annoying fly is just the most natural course of action, even for the dumbest monster around.
Actually, from what unicore was arguing, I'd say that summon spell require the GM to metagame in your favor in order to be effective : They have to make the summon stay were you need them and do exactly what you need them to do (instead of doing what they want while attacking the ennemies to the best of their ability, as summon are supposed to do rule wise), and they have to make the opponent dumb and waste important attack/limited ressource on the summon, just to make the spell worth the slot, full turn, and the possible sustains you spent on it.
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It's a bit rare to even monsters not play as intelligent tacticians. Even animals like wolves and lions use tactical in their way to hunt. Also as Scarablob said even the most dumbest monster usually focus into the most dangerous opponent and tends to ignore those less risky. Only in some rare cases like in while hunting they will focus in the weaks and more safest opponent to kill, take and run but for self-defense or territory protection the most animal will face the most stronger one.
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It really depends on the creatures
A group of wolves will flank and also potentially target what they think is the weakest target (likely if sick or small)
But they won't know to try to stop the casting of spells
A mindless enemy should also be played as such and not know when to back off or regroup unless Commanded.
Some of the biggest issues I've seen at tables is when the animal intelligence beasts are orchestrating advanced tactics outside of his they'd behave normally.
Surprise surprise! GMs have a huge amount of power and responsibility in PF2 to make sure everyone is having fun. Yep, GMs can ruin the lunch of a conjurer. They can also ruin the lunch of any player. Your player is choosing to memorize summon spells. They want to summon stuff. Do you want to make them have a terrible experience for doing so? Or do you want it to be clear that player choices can meaningfully impact an encounter? The only thing you have to do as a GM to make summons worthwhile is have enemies attack them. If they do, and they crit and one shot that creature, the spell was likely worth it. It is even easier to make that point than when you have a player that desperately wants to play a thematic blaster in a theme that is particularly not well suited to the campaign you designed.
I think one thing that might frustrate some players about traditional summon spells is that they are inherently tool box spells. They shine brightest when there is a flaw in the enemy that can be exploited by damage type, movement, spell from a list you don’t normally have, etc. because of that flexibility, summoning for raw combat awesomeness is something that had to get dialed back because memorizing one spell and letting it have incredibly flexible utility is already eating up a lot of the power budget. There is a reason why shadow blast will never be able to target the weakest save (only hopefully not an extreme one)
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Surprise surprise! GMs have a huge amount of power and responsibility in PF2 to make sure everyone is having fun. Yep, GMs can ruin the lunch of a conjurer. They can also ruin the lunch of any player. Your player is choosing to memorize summon spells. They want to summon stuff. Do you want to make them have a terrible experience for doing so? Or do you want it to be clear that player choices can meaningfully impact an encounter? The only thing you have to do as a GM to make summons worthwhile is have enemies attack them. If they do, and they crit and one shot that creature, the spell was likely worth it. It is even easier to make that point than when you have a player that desperately wants to play a thematic blaster in a theme that is particularly not well suited to the campaign you designed.
A spell that is only good if your GM make the opponent act stupidly when you cast it isn't good. Anything can be made good if your GM decide to be suddently very accomodating and make every foe you meet weak to it. But your GM don't need to make your foes literally walk into your wall of fire to make it rewarding. They don't need to make the ennemy "stride in a loop" to trigger your fighter AoO to make it rewarding. But like you said, you need to have your GM helping you to make summonning spells worth it.
I'm talking about rules as they are here. From everything you have told me, I understand why summon spells seems good in your games : because you're playing an houseruled version where summon spells are made stronger. Where the GM play your foes dumb when they're cast. Where you get greater control over your summon than you're supposed to have RAW. But your table isn't "pathfinder 2e", it's a modified version of pathfinder 2e. One where summons are made better.
And sure, it's easy to fix, I never argued against that. Proficiency without level, getting control of the summons, simple solutions that help the spell tremendously. But they're still fixes, houserules, and while your GM may allow it, another may not.
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The only thing you have to do as a GM to make summons worthwhile is have enemies attack them.
I partial agree, though they are still too weak. But just like the problems with Recall Knowledge that you can work around with reasonable interpretations - the base game should work and not have to be forced to work.
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Obviously a summons can't be as effective as a martial character. But if they were capable of a basic weapon attack at the attack number of their caster they would still be relevant. Then cap their hitpoints at maybe half what a caster are - so they go down in one or two hits. Anything much less than that and they are irrelevant in combat. The level system guarrantees that.
Notably Illusory Creature is basically just this, with the added Schrodinger's Wizard benefit of being able to hit any weakness as long as you're creative enough. Summons suffer from having to pull from the bestiary, it's gonna be hard to make them neither too good or not good enough as long as that is true.
I don’t understand how “be a reasonable GM and don’t completely ignore summons with out very good reason” is not a pretty standard interpretation of the job of a GM.
It seems like the deciding balance factor is to not let summons be better martial characters than the caster themselves is. 2d8+5 damage is good melee damage for a 9th level caster (the damage of the fire drake). The +14 to attack is a +3 attribute modifier and the trained proficiency of that caster, again pretty reasonable. There is no rune bonus, but again, this is one spell slot, not a heavily invested item.
At higher levels, univested casters stay about 4 levels behind martials. I get not liking that deliberate check point, but again, you get a pretty big selection of creatures to choose from for tool box application. The new special summons in secret of magic specifically are the damage dealing summons that don’t have tons of extra utility on them. There is a good chance, if you dislike summoning in PF2, you fundamentally disagree with the developers about the value of utility application, especially utility that has its decision point at casting the spell, not memorizing it.
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I don’t understand how “be a reasonable GM and don’t completely ignore summons with out very good reason” is not a pretty standard interpretation of the job of a GM.
It seems like the deciding balance factor is to not let summons be better martial characters than the caster themselves is. 2d8+5 damage is good melee damage for a 9th level caster (the damage of the fire drake). The +14 to attack is a +3 attribute modifier and the trained proficiency of that caster, again pretty reasonable. There is no rune bonus, but again, this is one spell slot, not a heavily invested item.
At higher levels, univested casters stay about 4 levels behind martials. I get not liking that deliberate check point, but again, you get a pretty big selection of creatures to choose from for tool box application. The new special summons in secret of magic specifically are the damage dealing summons that don’t have tons of extra utility on them. There is a good chance, if you dislike summoning in PF2, you fundamentally disagree with the developers about the value of utility application, especially utility that has its decision point at casting the spell, not memorizing it.
Depends on the intelligence of the creatures. I look at it as a kind of evolution. A powerful creature that has survived a long time knows when to ignore a threat to focus on stronger threats. If a spell or PC is not a threat, it will focus on the threat. And it will try to rip it apart with all that it has.
And beside, it doesn't change the fact that RAW you don't control your summon and they can do whatever they want. If you intend to use them strategically, for them to stand on certain tile to block the way or provide flank, to attack or inflict specific debuff on certain ennemies, you better hope your GM is very nice (or rather, you better hope you're playing an houseruled version where the summoner get to control it's summon, which isn't RAW).Wait, what?
Summoned creatures have the Minion trait. So you command them as part of the Sustain action. They obey commands just like an Animal Companion.
I think Scarablob is referring to this part of the description of the minion trait: If you can communicate with it, you can attempt to command it, but the GM determines the degree to which it follows your commands. I also think he may have been unfortunate in his experience of GMs. :-)
There's also this, for summoned creatures: It generally attacks your enemies to the best of its ability. Since that's what you usually want it to do, I don't think a reasonable GM is going to interfere with that. He might throw a wrench in your plans if you want the summons to do something else though.
Obviously a summons can't be as effective as a martial character. But if they were capable of a basic weapon attack at the attack number of their caster they would still be relevant. Then cap their hitpoints at maybe half what a caster are - so they go down in one or two hits. Anything much less than that and they are irrelevant in combat. The level system guarrantees that.Notably Illusory Creature is basically just this, with the added Schrodinger's Wizard benefit of being able to hit any weakness as long as you're creative enough. Summons suffer from having to pull from the bestiary, it's gonna be hard to make them neither too good or not good enough as long as that is true.
Damage wise Illusory Creature is a bit light as half of it comes back. It also only has 1 hitpoint, and all the special effects are wrong. It is a bit too vulnerable. But yes it is pretty good. Give it 5 hp per spell level and rebadge it with conjuration and not mental or illusions and we are most of the way there. Note that it is only 2 actions to cast which might be too good for a summons....
I can only give a PFS perspective concerning Magus:
I feel my spellslots are enough actually. Realistically i only need my highest and second highest for spellstriking, anything below is probably worse than a cantrip.
Sure magus doesnt get lower level spell slots, but through endless grimoire, studious spells, ring of wizardry and maybe an archetype you get all the lower level spell slots you need for filling them with true strikes.That said PFS feels like a clear perfect scenario for magus. You can guesstimate how many encounters there are gonna be and you definately know when the boss encounter is coming. Therefor its easier to save your higher level slots for that and use the lower ones and cantrips for the encounters before. If they had more highest level spellslots they would probably be broken.
I've been told by multiple people, online and off, that rings of wizardry are not typically available in PFS. Something about them not appearing on some curated list.
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If I'm part of the PF2 design team, I would put as a design goal that when you use a top level slot to summmon a creature it should be an effective combatant against a CR+2 monster that you would fight at the level you can summon it. If it is not, I would consider that a design fail.
I would never play a martial again under such an unbalanced setup.
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Yeah, summons should never be as useful as "an entire character a different player is using" full stop, no matter how many resources you devote to it.
I would sooner completely remove summoning from the game than allow it to replace martials.
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Effective combatant doesn't mean as good as an entire character. But being able to land a consistent hit on a Boss+2 monster isn't too much to ask for for your highest level spell slot for a 1 minute duration spell likely to be used for 3 to 5 rounds per casting if that.
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Effective combatant doesn't mean as good as an entire character. But being able to land a consistent hit on a Boss+2 monster isn't too much to ask for for your highest level spell slot for a 1 minute duration spell likely to be used for 3 to 5 rounds per casting if that.
Depends on how you define "consistent hit".
Even fighters have difficulty hitting a CR+2 enemy "consistently".
Are you asking for your summon to have fighter levels of accuracy? Or better?
If so, then you can just forget about it. That's would be completely unbalanced.
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Effective combatant doesn't mean as good as an entire character. But being able to land a consistent hit on a Boss+2 monster isn't too much to ask for for your highest level spell slot for a 1 minute duration spell likely to be used for 3 to 5 rounds per casting if that.Depends on how you define "consistent hit".
Even fighters have difficulty hitting a CR+2 enemy "consistently".
Are you asking for your summon to have fighter levels of accuracy? Or better?
If so, then you can just forget about it. That's would be completely unbalanced.
As of right now, max heightenning summons are 4 (or 5) level bellow the caster (except for the first few levels, were they are only a couple level behind, which is the moment they're at their most usefull).
Checking random creatures, those at level 5 have an attack bonus around 15. Those at level 9 have an AC around 28, meaning that a summon attacking an "on level" monster (meaning, an opponent that have the same level as the player) have 1/4 chance of hitting on the first attack, and quite literally only hit on a natural 20 for their second attack. Looking at the rest of the "range" (7 to 11, 9 to 13, etc), the trend confirm itself : a creature of a level attacking another one 4 level above have around 1/4 to 1/3 or touching for the first attack, and only hit on a 20 (or sometime 18-19 if the opponent have low AC for it's level) for the second.
What happen if you're at an even level, where your summon is 5 level bellow you? Well, of course then the gap increase, and you can expect one out of 5 attack of your max level summon to hit. This mean that statistically, even accounting for a flank granting +2, you can expect one successfull attack of your summonned creature every three to four round of summonning. That is 6 actions (casting + sustainning) and a spell slot used for one hit to touch on average. And this is only for fighting monster of your level. if you face a level +1 or even +2 monster? that's 5 or 6 level above your summon. In fact, a +2 level monster on even level have an AC so high it's likely to be 20 above your summon attack bonus, meaning it will touch only on a natural 20, always.
Summons don't need to have the attack bonus of a fighter, or even of a normal martial to be better balanced than this. Remember that every summon demand a huge investment from the caster : a full round to cast it, a max level spell slot to spend (because anything less than max level will be even more pitifull), one action to sustain every round thereafter. All for putting a body on the ground that have 1/4 chance of hitting and 1/2 chance of taking a critical hit when fighting monsters of your exact level, a body that only have 2 action per round and who doesn't necessarly obey you.
And furthermore, the other giant problem of summon is that right now, summon spells are the most gutted by the fact that heightenning is solely based on spell level instead of your level. An offensive spell from your highest slot on level 11 will deal as much damage as the same offensive spell at max heightenning on level 12, but at least your "to hit" chance increased to account for foes with bigger resistance/AC. Your summon stay the exact same tho, and is now one further level behind. It's not even that it's powerfull on odd level, it's still bad then, it's just awfull on even ones.
There's an ocean between summons as they are now and "summons being as good as fighters".
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Effective combatant doesn't mean as good as an entire character. But being able to land a consistent hit on a Boss+2 monster isn't too much to ask for for your highest level spell slot for a 1 minute duration spell likely to be used for 3 to 5 rounds per casting if that.Depends on how you define "consistent hit".
Even fighters have difficulty hitting a CR+2 enemy "consistently".
Are you asking for your summon to have fighter levels of accuracy? Or better?
If so, then you can just forget about it. That's would be completely unbalanced.
Following up to this, I looked up CR 12 creatures, which primarily seem to have an AC ranging from 31-33 with like 2 or 3 exceptions.
A 10th level fighter would expect to have a +23 to hit with their primary weapon group. So they're going to hit on a 8-10, for a 50% to 60% hit rate. Other martials will be at the 10 to 12 range, for a 40% to 50%. Anything more than this start to be completely unfair to martial characters. And in my mind it's even arguable if it's fair to let summons hit this range since striking is a big part of how martials interact with the game. However, martial classes do get feats and generally more options than summons have, so maybe it's okay to let them be at the same to hit as non-fighter martials. But anything more than that is a clear no.
Edit: However looking at summons available to a 10th level character, it looks like they seem to have to hit values in the teens...so like 10 below fighters.
So....I can see why their is frustration. Summons look terrible against boss monsters. like only hit on roughly a 20 terrible.
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Effective combatant doesn't mean as good as an entire character. But being able to land a consistent hit on a Boss+2 monster isn't too much to ask
And what, exactly, do you think that a martial class character does?
I think Scarablob is referring to this part of the description of the minion trait: If you can communicate with it, you can attempt to command it, but the GM determines the degree to which it follows your commands. I also think he may have been unfortunate in his experience of GMs. :-)Wait, what?
Summoned creatures have the Minion trait. So you command them as part of the Sustain action. They obey commands just like an Animal Companion.
Yeah, I have never had any of my GMs say that an Animal Companion can only do a limited number of tricks that they have been taught either. Even though the character and minion companion also don't share a language in that scenario.