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I mean, a lot of creatures are not going to think through "oh this creature just appeared on the battle field, it must be a summoned creature and thus weaker than the rest of the enemy so I should just ignore it" without the GM using a whole lot of meta knowledge. At that point, yes, the GM can ruin the summoner's lunch very easily, but why would you do that unless dealing with a caster who identified the spell and has a reason to act extra intelligently.
If a creature suddenly appeared after some humanoid you're fighting did some fantastical magical casting for his entire round then points at the creature it wants to kill, why would it not know it was summoned?
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I mean, a lot of creatures are not going to think through "oh this creature just appeared on the battle field, it must be a summoned creature and thus weaker than the rest of the enemy so I should just ignore it" without the GM using a whole lot of meta knowledge. At that point, yes, the GM can ruin the summoner's lunch very easily, but why would you do that unless dealing with a caster who identified the spell and has a reason to act extra intelligently.
Even an animal is capable of prioritizing threats to itself. When the summon lands on the field and immediately fails its attack, the enemy isn’t going to suddenly turn its attention to the summon. I would say that is a whole lot of meta for the opponent to suddenly prioritize the new body just because it is there. There are situations it may send attacks at the summon, but they are far more niche. A completely mindless creature may not understand the difference and attack the summon, or if the summon was completely blocking the route to the actual threats it may attack the summon. Outside of those types of scenarios, I have a hard time seeing why any enemy would.
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I mean, a lot of creatures are not going to think through "oh this creature just appeared on the battle field, it must be a summoned creature and thus weaker than the rest of the enemy so I should just ignore it" without the GM using a whole lot of meta knowledge. At that point, yes, the GM can ruin the summoner's lunch very easily, but why would you do that unless dealing with a caster who identified the spell and has a reason to act extra intelligently.
You don't need to go so far. The easiest way to a creature determine what's the most threat is by pain! It's normal that it focus on target that done most damage and this rarelly is the case of summoned creature also if the opponent is intelligent (have some knowledge about magic, specially if it have some proficency in arcana/nature/religion/occult) can also thinks not only can be a summon but also that can be an illusion while not hit by it.
I think you all are going out of your way to be mean to your PCs here. How many people in world even know what a summon spell is or how it works. Do your PCs always just ignore the first creature that misses them in a round? Again, your player just cast an important spell. If the enemy are not casters familiar with this magic, why not play along with the PC instead of against them. If the summon missed, having it get attacked is a decent consolation prize for the player for a topish level spell slot. It makes the casting valuable, especially if the creature summoned is not something that the enemy is super familiar with.
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And once again, we've circled back to the "summon spells are only good if the GM make the opponent dumb" point.
And once again, I have to point out that good spells/ability don't rely on opponent being dumb to work. Wall of flame and other continuous area of effect spells don't rely on the opponent willingly throwing themselves into it to be good. Reactions don't rely on the GM making the opponent do the triggering stuff for no reason just to "give the player" the reactions.
The fact that summon spells rely on the GM playing the foes as dumb when they're out show why summon spells are bad and need some buff.
Personally, I'm going to try a variant of summonning where all summons are "heightenned" to the player level, effectively gaining a stat bonus equivalent to the difference between their original level and the player's. It may seems big presented like that, but in effect it will just "bridge the gap" and make summons more or less equivalent to their "proficiency without level" versions (more or less because with this rules, summons should be a bit more effective against lower level foes than in PWL games, and a bit less effective against higher level foes). Since monster stats increase at a higher rate than 1/level, and since summons are at most 4 or 5 level lower than you, they should still be quite a bit weaker than your martials, but just not complete trash anymore.
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I think you all are going out of your way to be mean to your PCs here. How many people in world even know what a summon spell is or how it works. Do your PCs always just ignore the first creature that misses them in a round? Again, your player just cast an important spell. If the enemy are not casters familiar with this magic, why not play along with the PC instead of against them. If the summon missed, having it get attacked is a decent consolation prize for the player for a topish level spell slot. It makes the casting valuable, especially if the creature summoned is not something that the enemy is super familiar with.
I'm not thinking that we are being mean but verisimilar.
Think in this way. You are being threat by a cop with a gun and a dog what will you consider as more threatening? This is the case of intelligent creatures, similar occur with spellcasters you probably is more concerned with the caster than to some creature that he/she obviously casted because you main concern is with who have the "gun" (spellcasting) that in anytime can do something unexpected maybe way more dangerous.For animals and low int creatures you will just focus in who is doing most damage to you.
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Summoned minions by default are weaker than PCs and other creatures. They only get up to 2 actions and no reactions. Making them also -4 to -5 PC level is just overkill in nerfing.
The power level of martials is more than just a basic attack. Extra reactions and extra actions are a big part of it.
We don't mind. Summons with the combat values of martials -2 levels. Or even caster -2 levels. Mostly that is -3 to hit. But Level -4 is -6 to hit. It is beyond a joke. and truely pathetic.
This is not about competing with martials. It's about being relevant at all.
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Summons are not meant to be very threatening to a boss on their own
Use them for flanking, distraction, pick ones that have good abilities and not just strikes (there is a reason skunk is considered good and it isn't for it's strikes)
That is what Paizo have given us.
It doesn't cover the narrative space well. Some summons are supposed to combat effective.
Summons are not meant to be very threatening to a boss on their own
Use them for flanking, distraction, pick ones that have good abilities and not just strikes (there is a reason skunk is considered good and it isn't for it's strikes)
That is what Paizo have given us.
It doesn't cover the narrative space well. Some summons are supposed to combat effective.
The developers also had the opportunity to change this in a major way with the secrets of magic book. What did they do? They specifically created a new kind of spell, incarnate spells, that are specifically combat focused versions of summon spells that front load the power into the first two rounds, but also can't be canceled just by being attacked. They are high level, so they are the not utility versions of summon spells.
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The developers also had the opportunity to change this in a major way with the secrets of magic book. What did they do? They specifically created a new kind of spell, incarnate spells, that are specifically combat focused versions of summon spells that front load the power into the first two rounds, but also can't be canceled just by being attacked. They are high level, so they are the not utility versions of summon spells.
But incarnate spells aren't summon spells. Even if fluff wise they're described as "invoking a big creature for a fleeting moment", this is just not represented at all in gameplay. They can't be targeted by anything, can't act except for one movement actions, anyone can traverse their squares without any issue... They simply don't feed the "summon a creature" fantasy.
Actually, the "prototype" of incarnate spells wouldn't be any summonning spells, but the spell flamming sphere. Here you have a continuous damaging effect that supposedly stay on the field, but who is only have an effect during your turn, being for all intent and purpose incorporeal in the rest of the round. It can also move as you wish before activating itself for the turn, just like incarnate spells do. That's what incarnate spells are, a buffed and slightly tweaked version of flaming sphere.
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The developers also had the opportunity to change this in a major way with the secrets of magic book. What did they do? They specifically created a new kind of spell, incarnate spells, that are specifically combat focused versions of summon spells that front load the power into the first two rounds, but also can't be canceled just by being attacked. They are high level, so they are the not utility versions of summon spells.Summons are not meant to be very threatening to a boss on their own
Use them for flanking, distraction, pick ones that have good abilities and not just strikes (there is a reason skunk is considered good and it isn't for it's strikes)
That is what Paizo have given us.
It doesn't cover the narrative space well. Some summons are supposed to combat effective.
I honestly don't know what the designers wanted when they created Incarnated spells but in practice they are basically a skinned 2-step "evocation" (I call this to make easiest the effect but there some other effects than damage depending from the spell) spell that occupy some space and can be moved for 1 turn before make the second effect and depart.
IMO is just a nerfed "normal" spell. Maybe in some situational incarnate spells in some specific cases may be useful like Summon Irii but usually not even compensate the spellslot + 3-action cost.
For example for comparison side-by-side:
In comparison due burst nature you don't require a free space to put the spell like incarnated need. Also in Summon Draconic Legion the opponents have one entire round to try to hide and prevent the depart effect (they literally can hide and sneak to a new position trying to avoid being notice by players and difficult the players to know the new location to move the incarnated spell or if the opponent is a spellcaster that can try to cast dispel to try to counteract it).
So the incarnated spell is more unpredictable and cost more actions than an "normal" spell alternative can do and don't act like a real summoned creature in any way to basically do the same thing. The only real advantage in this example is that Summon Draconic Legion allow the caster to chose the energy type.
IMO it's more useful for the flavor than for any mechanical reason.
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I can't see why people would use the Inkarnate Spells. Most are not that great. The visual descriptions sound great, but the effects are underwhelming compared to other spells.
YuriP is right. The reduced effect due to having dual effects makes them not worth using. When you're getting hit by bosses critting you a ton at high level, you don't need a low powered heal. If you gotta take something out, you want the biggest damage you can hit with. Then the AoE portion has to be useful in the most situations or you're trying to plot the AoE on the grid not to hit your allies while maximizing the hit on your foes.
Not worth a spell slot for most that I've read. I really wanted to like Incarnate spells as the concept seemed cool.
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The developers also had the opportunity to change this in a major way with the secrets of magic book. What did they do? They specifically created a new kind of spell, incarnate spells, that are specifically combat focused versions of summon spells that front load the power into the first two rounds, but also can't be canceled just by being attacked. They are high level, so they are the not utility versions of summon spells.But incarnate spells aren't summon spells. Even if fluff wise they're described as "invoking a big creature for a fleeting moment", this is just not represented at all in gameplay. They can't be targeted by anything, can't act except for one movement actions, anyone can traverse their squares without any issue... They simply don't feed the "summon a creature" fantasy.
Actually, the "prototype" of incarnate spells wouldn't be any summonning spells, but the spell flamming sphere. Here you have a continuous damaging effect that supposedly stay on the field, but who is only have an effect during your turn, being for all intent and purpose incorporeal in the rest of the round. It can also move as you wish before activating itself for the turn, just like incarnate spells do. That's what incarnate spells are, a buffed and slightly tweaked version of flaming sphere.
That would be kind of cool. Sustainable incarnate spells that act as persistent damage summon type of spells. Get rid of the clunky creature summon and you summon some incarnate version of a creature for some specific purpose like damage or healing that you can sustain. I think I would like that or maybe it has dual sustainable effects like some kind of creature.
An angel incarnate spell would let you sustain and fire a holy ray or sustain and cast a single target heal type effect. That would be much cooler if it scaled well.
Tempest of Shades is actually very good. Some of the Rare ones like Summon Kaiju and Summon Ancient Fleshforged are almost broken strong.
The rest is meh.
As I said in my previous post, looking at the math for summons I was surprised at how bad they actually are. I hadn't really looked before, because I was never a huge fan of summons. In PF1 they were broken (too good) for classes that could summon many or long lasting summons because they had the same attack and damage as a (non-optimized) martial. If someone focused on it strongly, you could increase it even further. It was definitely too good. In PF2, they're also broken but in the opposite direction. They are bad, at least for making strikes. Special abilities can add utility and maybe some special attacks can remain useful, but it doesn't fit the narrative space I expected after I looked into it.
Even looking at creatures some levels higher, the attack rolls still seem a bit low, but at least they're not "only succeed on a nat 20" bad.
I do think there needs to be some adjustments. Summons shouldn't approach martial levels of attack bonus and accuracy, but they shouldn't need to roll a 20 to hit either.
I think the sweet spot would be somewhere around 1 to 2 points lower in potential attack bonus that a barbarian, ranger, or champion.
As I said in my previous post, looking at the math for summons I was surprised at how bad they actually are. I hadn't really looked before, because I was never a huge fan of summons. In PF1 they were broken (too good) for classes that could summon many or long lasting summons because they had the same attack and damage as a (non-optimized) martial. If someone focused on it strongly, you could increase it even further. It was definitely too good. In PF2, they're also broken but in the opposite direction. They are bad, at least for making strikes. Special abilities can add utility and maybe some special attacks can remain useful, but it doesn't fit the narrative space I expected after I looked into it.
Even looking at creatures some levels higher, the attack rolls still seem a bit low, but at least they're not "only succeed on a nat 20" bad.
I do think there needs to be some adjustments. Summons shouldn't approach martial levels of attack bonus and accuracy, but they shouldn't need to roll a 20 to hit either.
I think the sweet spot would be somewhere around 1 to 2 points lower in potential attack bonus that a barbarian, ranger, or champion.
Playing a proficiency without level game, or "heightenning" your summon to your level end up with these results. As a rule of thumbs, creatures stat tend to increase by 7 or 6 every 4 level. So increasing the stats of your summon (who is 4 or 5 level bellow you) by an amount equivalent to the level difference still give them around -2 or -3 compared to a martial or on level threat. Still bellow, but they have a fighting chance now, instead of taking a crit for every hit and only hitting one out of five time themselves.
Playing a proficiency without level game, or "heightening" your summon to your level end up with these results.
When you say "heightening" to your level do you mean that if you use summon animal, and you are a 10th level character who could cast the spell as a 5th level version, that you should be able to select animals from the Level 10 options, like the mammoth and tyrannosaurus.
Looking at the numbers, that does seem like it might be around the right spot, and as a house rule I might consider it. Although I might use the Level - 1 options at first and see how I feel about that and if it still feels a little weak I might bump it up again.
Of course this assume you're casting the spell at highest spell level possible. So the actual effect might be that you can choose creatures at level (-1) of character level that the spell slot level becomes available.
So a 5th level summoning spell would give you access to level 9 creatures.
And a 4th level spell would give you access to level 7 or 8.
I suppose because there are 2 character levels in which a spell level is your highest, you need to have some way to account for it. So maybe once you have access to the next higher spell level, you can use a lower level spell slot at the higher character level. So a 10th level character could use a 4th level spell slot and get 8th level animals.
There's probably a lot that could be cleaned up with wording here, but I think this framework as a house rule for fixing summoning spells could go a long way without invalidating martial character.
Playing a proficiency without level game, or "heightening" your summon to your level end up with these results.When you say "heightening" to your level do you mean that if you use summon animal, and you are a 10th level character who could cast the spell as a 5th level version, that you should be able to select animals from the Level 10 options, like the mammoth and tyrannosaurus.
Actually, no, what I mean is that at 10th level, you'd still only be able to pull 5th level creatures... but they'd have a "+5" to all of their proficiency reliant stats (AC, attack bonus, resistances, skills, but not HP or damage), as if their level was increased to level 10.
Straight up summonning an equivalent level monster would be busted, as a monster of a CR equal to the party is often the equal of a player, if not stronger than them. By "heightenning" lower level monster tho, it help them stay relevant, but keep them somewhat bellow, as monster statistic increase as an higher rate than "1 per level". For exemple, both AC and attack bonus increase by around 7 point in 4 level. So heightenning a monster 4 level bellow make it so that it's still 3 point behind. Being 3 points behind is a bit bad, but still far more workable than a whole 7 points of difference, and being behind would balance out the big selections of different creature you summon, and the overall non combat utility they might bring.
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There is a reasonable middle ground that could be achieved. Summoning at-level monsters is clearly too much, but I think if it was always a level-2 creature like it is for 1st and 2nd level Summon spells, that would have been reasonable. Instead, it downscales all the way to level-4 creatures for Heightened (4th) and higher. That is too much on the sucky side.
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To be honest I just don't like the idea of players needing to do the math.
I'd rather adjust access of what animals they can summon, then have them adjusting stats.
Looking at what a 5th level animal with a +5 to stats looks like, vs higher level creatures it looks like they'd be close to level 8 animals. They would have higher health and damage, but doing a rough comparison it seems feasible.
I don't want summons to infringe too much on martial characters, but at the same time they're in a really weak place right now.
However, I guess your way is more conservative and even less likely to encroach too much on martial characters. I just really hate players having to do the math rather than read a bestiary entry.
Edit: What's awful, however is that the 5th level animal you summon has an attack value of around a level + trained proficiency + 2/3. Where actual martial characters are rocking level + expert + 4/5 ( primary ability) +1/2 potency rune. So your average martial is going to be rocking say a 21 to hit, while your summon is rocking a 15. That's 6 points of difference, a whole 30% lower, when martials are already at like 60% chance to hit.
The more I think on this, the more I think for a spell of the highest level you can cast, the creature summoned should be 2 levels below.
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However, I guess your way is more conservative and even less likely to encroach too much on martial characters. I just really hate players having to do the math rather than read a bestiary entry.
Rather than comparing it to martial characters, I compared it to other creatures instead. The point wasn't only to make summons better overall, but to make the "gap" between level far less impactfull.
Right now, people summon unmodified monster 4 level beneath them on odd level, and 5 level beneath them on even ones, and this only if they always use the highest available spell slot. It mean that summon spells are forced to be heightenned, and thus to always occupy the highest possible slot (because 4 level is bad enought, but 6 level is not worth casting at all). it also mean that every even level severely nerf summon spells, because a summon spell cast on level 12 have the exact same potency as one cast on level 11, with no increase what so ever, meaning your summon just fell one level further behind you.
So while it is more math (even if it's as simple as adding the level difference as a modifier on every roll and DC), I prefer this version because simply adding "+2" to every summon level accros the board (summon a level 5 monster on level 7 instead of level 9, a level 11 on level 13, etc) because it actually "slide" with you, like your spell DC.
Also, I think something is wrong with your math here. A level 7 monster tend to have around 24 AC/+17 attack bonus (so 28/+21 when increased to level 11), while a level 11 monster tend to have around 31 AC/+25 attack bonus. I checked for the 5 to 9 and 11 to 15 range with the same trend. When heightenned that way, summoned monster tend to lag around 3 point bellow a creature of same level, and only a few points bellow a martial (but it doesn't encroach into martial space because they are still a bit behind, and also get less actions and no reactions).
EDIT :
Another way of doing it while not sacrificing the even level would be to scale summon spells with player level instead of spell level somehow. SAying that "you summon a creature that is at most two (or one maybe?) level bellow you" could work, but then it run into the opposite problem of "always top spot". Since most summon spells are low level spells that heighten all accross the board, allowing to your strongest options from the lowest spell slot would mean that you could "stack" the low level slot with summons spells, which would always stay just as potent. I don't see an obvious fix for that problem, but there's probably a way to deal with it.
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As I said in my previous post, looking at the math for summons I was surprised at how bad they actually are. I hadn't really looked before, because I was never a huge fan of summons. In PF1 they were broken (too good) for classes that could summon many or long lasting summons because they had the same attack and damage as a (non-optimized) martial. If someone focused on it strongly, you could increase it even further. It was definitely too good. In PF2, they're also broken but in the opposite direction. They are bad, at least for making strikes. Special abilities can add utility and maybe some special attacks can remain useful, but it doesn't fit the narrative space I expected after I looked into it.
Even looking at creatures some levels higher, the attack rolls still seem a bit low, but at least they're not "only succeed on a nat 20" bad.
I do think there needs to be some adjustments. Summons shouldn't approach martial levels of attack bonus and accuracy, but they shouldn't need to roll a 20 to hit either.
I think the sweet spot would be somewhere around 1 to 2 points lower in potential attack bonus that a barbarian, ranger, or champion.
what if we took a page out of illusionary creature, and had summons attack with the summoners spell attack bonus? that would make them sub-par compared to martials but not abysmal throughout progression
That would be nice but relegate them rather firmly in the "beatstick" category, since their ability would still stay for the most part quite subpar. Altho if we go this way, we could make their ability DC equal your spell DC. They're still have only two actions and a reaction, still have quite low HP and an AC/resistance so low anything directed their way is likely to crit, but it would boost their offensive abilities quite nicely. No math needed either, since you'd simply lift your Spell DC/attack bonus straight from your own sheet.
First of all, incarnate spells are conjuration spells that summon a creature or creatures. The creature is not a minion though and will only do the thing that the spell is designed to do. They are more like planar ally with very specific terms of service than they are like evocation spells.
The problem these "solutions" to summons isn't really what the attack roll modifier of the creature ends up being. The issue is unlimited damage type tagged on to just one spell. Flexibility always has a cost in PF2. There is a reason why illusory creature gets a d4 damage and creatures can make a will save to see through the illusion and get reduced damage. One spell that lets you target all damage types has to have a cost because weakness targeting greatly improves damage performance in PF2.
Spells that you learn at level 1 and can just know "this will pretty much cover every type of damage you will ever need to do" are punching way over their weight. I understand that in practice it can be difficult to line up a good creature level with the type of damage you want to do, but if any of the creatures abilities do half damage on miss or successful save, and target AoE, they are very good creatures to summon when fighting a creature (or especially creatures) with a weakness. That is a powerful niche for these spells already that tends to come with a lot of draw backs on other spells that have similar flexibility.
Draconic Legion pays this price. It lets you try out 2 different damage types on the first round of a combat to hit a weakness. A level 19 monster very possibly could have a 20 point weakness. Meteor swarm is never going to do cold damage or acid damage or electricity damage, and especially not to a flexible area of effect. Shadow blast lets the creature pick their stronger of 2 saves.
Summons are this flexibility. They are limited by it. Weakness come up very often in PF2, as do resistances. Memorize 1 spell and always be ready to exploit either has a cost.
Also look at the limits of the wish spell, which similarly gives access to lots of other spells. Being able to cast spells outside of your magical tradition is 6 character levels behind.
I think it might be cool to give summoners (and maybe conjurers) a feat or class ability that allows them to summon something 1 level higher than currently available.
For example: Using a level 3 summon animal spell, such a summoner could summon a level 3 animal, whereas everyone else can only summon a level 2 animal.
Just for fun:
Meteor swarm is never going to do cold damage...
The Oscillating Wave Psychic:
Removing Energy: The ability gains the cold trait, any damage it deals is cold damage, and any resistance it grants is to fire damage. It loses any traits matching damage types it no longer deals. Fiery body grants ray of frost instead of produce flame when cast this way.
Never say never! :P
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unicore, that sort of thinking is honestly my problem with how casters have been handled as a whole, the trepidation that some theoretical optimizer going through every bestiary memorizing every single possible benefit that any summon could have, and pulling out the optimal monster with the correct damage type for the ideal benefit, and balancing spell casting around that situation just sort of hobbles the mechanics as a whole given that, in my experience people just summon stuff that sounds cool, they don't care about optimizing or finding ideal options they just want to summon big monsters
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There does seem to have been a big effort to lower the power ceiling of casters, with the unfortunate knock on effect being that they’ve lowered the floor in quite a few cases.
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No one is as strong as before, casters or martials. PF2 is a game where you look like superhero, but you are definitely part of a superhero team versus a group of solo heroes who happen to be together.
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No one is as strong as before, casters or martials. PF2 is a game where you look like superhero, but you are definitely part of a superhero team versus a group of solo heroes who happen to be together.
I disagree, since Fighters and Rogues are significantly more powerful in this edition compared to the previous one.
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No one is as strong as before, casters or martials. PF2 is a game where you look like superhero, but you are definitely part of a superhero team versus a group of solo heroes who happen to be together.I disagree, since Fighters and Rogues are significantly more powerful in this edition compared to the previous one.
I was thinking that Fighters, Rogues, and Monks got a considerable boost in this edition, but then I considered it might just be relative to the new baseline. Like the 2e Fighter is very strong in 2e, but is probably not as good at specific things as 1e fighter builds could be at those things.
I think generally builds who focused on "stack the numbers high enough" in PF1 were more powerful relative than comparable PF2 characters, but generally less functional.
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Yeah have to agree with Deriven and Cabbage here. In a relative sense Fighters and Rogues are much more coherent and interesting packages... but full attacking a boss monster and instantly killing them from full HP was just a thing you did in PF1 and pretty much anathema to PF2. My not very well optimized fighter in the last PF1 game I ever played could kill nearly any level appropriate enemy in a single turn from hundreds of feet away while flying and invisible and that's before the party spellcaster put any buffs on them. The same character ported into PF2 can do none of those things and is weaker in almost every way, and that's good.
So it's clearly wrong to say they're objectively more powerful without any qualifiers.
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PF1 rogues were down right terrible. I never saw any player take only levels in Rogue. Fighters could be super specialized killing machines as long as they had help moving into position, but paladins were almost always better for bringing down boss monsters. Rangers could be very good as well, but I guess one of the things about paladins and rangers is they weren’t pure martials? Since they got casting.
Paladins really were the only martial I never saw multiclass, although some still did.
Casters on the other hand we’re always punished for multi classing.
In PF1, no one was effectively using spells offensively and not leveling up their casting class at every opportunity. Using low level slots on damaging spells was also playing very suboptimally. They were mostly just your clean up fodder spell slots which cantrips do a better job of covering in PF2
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No one is as strong as before, casters or martials. PF2 is a game where you look like superhero, but you are definitely part of a superhero team versus a group of solo heroes who happen to be together.I disagree, since Fighters and Rogues are significantly more powerful in this edition compared to the previous one.
The rogue could get a very high AC in PF1, did up to 10d6 every attack, and had access to a lot of power feats like Dex-based power attack, more powerful magical weapons, and ability boosting devices.
I don't know if you've played any rogues in this edition, but they die real easy in PF2 and no one needs a martial in range to act as flanker more than a rogue. If the enemy focuses on a rogue, dead meat.
You do realize in PF2 the rogue has slow AC progression, low Fort save, and 8 hit points a level on top of it being hard to focus on boosting Con while being good with skills? Rogue in PF2 can be a sheet of paper.
Not sure what you did with fighters in PF1, but two-hander fighters did brutal damage in PF1. Their crits could one shot high level creatures. The biggest weaknesses of fighters was in their Will saves. They suffered every Will save effect and it sucked horrible as Will save spells were save or be neutralised spells ln PF1. Fighter damage was always a amazing. Two-hander fighters, two-weapon, and bow fighters did even more comparative damage in PF1.
Fighter is a power class in PF1, no doubt. But they even they get ripped apart by bosses. You can't build AC and hit points high enough to shrug off boss attacks. They still very much need caster help to stay alive. And they are not the most mobile class either.
I've played two fighters, both of them 2-hander fighters as that is the highest damage fighter in the game. Two-weapon fighters are not nearly as good in PF2 as they were in PF1. You are stuck doing the same Dual weapon strike 2 action feat over and over and over again. You often spend that third action moving or you miss one of your attacks and can't get a rend or something. Flurry ranger is better at 2 weapon fighting than the fighter. The fighter is also not the best archer unless you take Eldritch Archer to pair with a spell cantrip and it still misses on occasion too.
The best fighter is a 2-hander fighter. You could make more versatile fighters with weapons in PF1 than PF2. I made plenty of effective 2-weapon and archer fighters in PF1. Harder to do in PF2 unless you want to be real locked in and limited.
did up to 10d6 every attack
well a PF2 rogue at level 20 can do 4 weapon dice, 3 additional damage dice from runes, 4 sneak dice, 2 Precise Debilitations dice. I mean I'm up to 13 so far and I haven't tried very hard. Also it can fairly easily set up 3 attacks per round with no MAP penalty. Also because a Rogue will always have flat footed opponents after a while, where as a Fighter will have that maybe half the time, the accuracy difference is not as much as you might think.
they die real easy in PF2 and no one needs a martial in range to act as flanker more than a rogue. If the enemy focuses on a rogue, dead meat.
Of course a melee rogue wants a flank buddy. Its a team game. No they don't hold the line by themselves - they wouldn't even try.
Yes if you play a character badly it will go badly.You clearly haven't seen a Rogue work well. Do your parties not cooperate at all? A Rogue is an A tier character in PF2.
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I think you're underrating how powerful the PF1 fighter could be... if you had a PhD in Pathfinder. Advanced Weapon Training was a game changer, particularly when one realized you could use Martial Flexibility (acquired through a Brawler dip or the Barroom Brawler feat) to grab the Advanced Weapon Training feat, to grab the Item Mastery Advanced Weapon Training to be able to cast things like Fly, Dimension Door, Dispel Magic, and Burning Hands keying off Con and BAB.)
With Fighter's Reflexes and Armed Bravery you essentially had three good saves too.
The thing that PF1 had backasswards was that the Fighter was absolutely the class that required the most system mastery to play well, because "human fighter" is like the default character in a game like this.
The PF2 fighter is just functional (strong even) without 19 different Player's Companions.
PF1 rogues were down right terrible. I never saw any player take only levels in Rogue. Fighters could be super specialized killing machines as long as they had help moving into position, but paladins were almost always better for bringing down boss monsters. Rangers could be very good as well, but I guess one of the things about paladins and rangers is they weren’t pure martials? Since they got casting.
Paladins really were the only martial I never saw multiclass, although some still did.
Casters on the other hand we’re always punished for multi classing.
In PF1, no one was effectively using spells offensively and not leveling up their casting class at every opportunity. Using low level slots on damaging spells was also playing very suboptimally. They were mostly just your clean up fodder spell slots which cantrips do a better job of covering in PF2
I multiclassed a lot of paladins. 3 to 4 levels of paladin were real nice combined with another class like a monk or fighter.
did up to 10d6 every attackwell a PF2 rogue at level 20 can do 4 weapon dice, 3 additional damage dice from runes, 4 sneak dice, 2 Precise Debilitations dice. I mean I'm up to 13 so far and I haven't tried very hard. Also it can fairly easily set up 3 attacks per round with no MAP penalty. Also because a Rogue will always have flat footed opponents after a while, where as a Fighter will have that maybe half the time, the accuracy difference is not as much as you might think.
they die real easy in PF2 and no one needs a martial in range to act as flanker more than a rogue. If the enemy focuses on a rogue, dead meat.Of course a melee rogue wants a flank buddy. Its a team game. No they don't hold the line by themselves - they wouldn't even try.
Yes if you play a character badly it will go badly.You clearly haven't seen a Rogue work well. Do your parties not cooperate at all? A Rogue is an A tier character in PF2.
The 10d6 was base sneak attack. Add in all the magic weapons and such, it was much, much higher. Then a two-weapon rogue hasted could get a lot of extra attacks. You were looking at 4 to 6 attacks a round each with the plus 10d6 damage and all other multipliers. Rogue could rip things apart pretty well in PF1. Biggest problem with the rogue was the two weak saves Fort and Will. Weak Fort and Will meant something in PF1 with energy drain and hold spells working like they did. Nightmare to miss those saves in PF1.
We play with a real mean DM. That DM sees a soft target like a rogue, they focus fire the rogue, all attacks on the rogue until down. The rogue also has to hang back until another martial engages.
What we play is a very vicious game. Monsters operate as tactically as PCs. They focus fire weak targets, which makes it so if casters get too close to the battle they get ganged upon. There is no mercy shown. If the monsters have an opportunity to kill you, they kill you. If they see you getting healed and standing up, when they drop you they keep hitting you so you don't stand up again from healing.
Rogue can be a quality class, but they can also be ripped apart very easily. In our games they get dropped a lot because they are a dangerous soft target that makes it easy to focus fire down.
Likely this experience occurs because of the type of DM and game we play. It is one of the downsides of the rogue is they are a soft target easy for enemies to tear apart and drop.
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Wasn’t the old adage
Fail a reflex save, you’re hurt
Fail a fort save, you’re dead
Fail a will save, you kill your party
That aside, if the argument is “they’re not good because my DM always focus fires anyone that plays one” then that seems like a table issue not a class design issue.
The game isn’t designed assuming every encounter is piloted like an experienced tactically minded adventuring party, with meta knowledge, because most encounters and most monsters aren’t that.
Also the whole “x class does a lot of damage in pf1” debate seems moot. Like half the classes in the game could do a pointlessly high amount of damage if you invested in it,
Most of the time it wasn’t actually a good idea to full tilt optimising damage because when you overkill something by 50-100 hit points you don’t get a special prize, but you probably spent class features and feats doing that extra damage that are essentially wasted.
How powerful a class is should be considered within the parameters of the system.
A pf2 rogue can’t reliably blend above CR enemies, and a pf1 rogue could, therefore the pf2 rogue is weak is an odd argument. Because nothing in pf2 reliably blends above Cr enemies and almost everything in PF1 could reliably blend above CR enemies.
We’re not playing on the same football pitch here.
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How did your PF1 rogue ever hit anything? 3/4 BAB advancement on a martial was terrible and pretty much ruled out taking feat chains that dropped your accuracy. I saw several level 4 rogues/X everything else, but sneak attack damage dice were just not worth not hitting.
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The rogue could get a very high AC in PF1, did up to 10d6 every attack, and had access to a lot of power feats like Dex-based power attack, more powerful magical weapons, and ability boosting devices.No one is as strong as before, casters or martials. PF2 is a game where you look like superhero, but you are definitely part of a superhero team versus a group of solo heroes who happen to be together.I disagree, since Fighters and Rogues are significantly more powerful in this edition compared to the previous one.
I played several rogues in pf1, as I enjoyed making a bad class functional, but it's wild to me that you're missing out by far the biggest issue with the class when trying to talk it up as effective: it was a 3/4 BAB class that had no innate attack boosters. Debilitating Injury would let you lower their AC once you'd hit, but you really had to go out of your way on rogues to consistently get that accuracy there, especially in comparison to other classes. In addition to that, moving into a flank was more costly in PF1 than in PF2, given everyone had an AoO, so sneak attack was something you needed to make your whole build around triggering. Normally that meant either something like the Moonlight Stalker Feint, the Circling Mongoose line, or the Shatter Defences line - none of which are always effective, and all of which require effort that other PF1 classes didn't need to do. You could build functional rogues - I enjoyed doing so! - but they were undoubtedly a weak class. You've got an easy direct comparison to an Inquisitor there - the Inquisitor has almost as many skills as a rogue, has bonuses in useful skills unlike a rogue (who only got a disable device boost, and so was pretty mediocre at other skills in comparison to better skill-focused classes), has 6th-level casting to get a huge amount of utility, can drop bane to get +2 to hit on top of +2d6 (and later +4d6) damage on all their attacks, plus easy access to heroism from their spells, plus attack boosters from their judgements, and then if they wanted to they could easily get sneak attack from an archetype! Just a clearly more effective class for a similar sort of niche in terms of damage capabilities and utility.
I'll stop there as this is a PF2 forum :)
A pf2 rogue can’t reliably blend above CR enemies, and a pf1 rogue could, therefore the pf2 rogue is weak is an odd argument.
I mean that wasn't the argument. The argument was that PF2 has generally toned down the power level of the game (for the better) for pretty much everyone, and that saying that certain classes are strictly better in PF2 clearly isn't true because of the idiosyncrasies of PF1 jank.