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There is no point talking about martials at all in this thread. The OP was asking specifically about Spell attack roll spells and how they compare to saving throw spells. The answer is, surprising well in specific circumstances that are not all that uncommon.
How much better do they need to be to be comparable to saving throw spells? None better.
Their usefulness is primarily tied to tactical decisions, not character build. Although there are some options for "building" into using spell attack roll spells, they don't really become mandatory or particularly resource heavy. 1 level 10 item. A couple of first level spells, maybe.
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I really would like staves and wands or magic weapons for wizards to boost attack rolls and spells. The classic powerful staff or wand often used like a magic weapon by a caster is a classic fantasy trope. No one has quite captured that in D&D in any edition. Usually they are additional casting or a consumable. I'd much rather have staves and wands operate more like magic weapons for martials but adding to spellcasting power. That would be pretty cool.
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I went ahead and did a math example for just how easy it is to swing the average damage on a spell attack roll spell by comparing a 5th level caster casting a 3rd level Magic missile, Sudden Bolt and Shocking Grasp vs a 7th level monster.
This is an incredibly difficult level jump in game and a place where TPKs are not uncommon. Conventional wisdom often says sudden bolt is the best scaling single target damage spell and it is a save spell, and has an extra 1d12 damage over a third level shocking grasp.
I did my math on paper in front of me but here are my basic numbers in a spoiler. Feel free to double check if you doubt an English Professor doing math.
** spoiler omitted **
With just spending a hero point on a miss, Shocking grasp very nearly catches up to sudden bolt. With Flat-footed and the Hero Point it passes Sudden Bolt and almost catches magic missile. With a single +1 status or circumstance bonus to attack (something sudden bolt cannot benefit from) a third level shocking grasp passes magic missile as the best damage option against this target.
I didn't do all the math for adding in status debuffs to saves and AC because that complicates all the math...
You argument for lowering AC hold some water even though there is also ways to lower enemy saves and shocking grasp in your example still have pretty low damage score if you not using hero points you also not counted persistent damage.
But you lost me here on couple things1You compare ranged spell with melee spell which isn't fair comparison since melee damage by default suppose to surpass ranged damage
2You make hero points part of euquation but since Hero points:
Not always give you better results
Are Gm dependent so you cannot always reliably get them
You need to spend them on other things besides your attack rolls like to save yourself from death and skill checks.
So i dont think they can be seen as thing that caster can always rely on
3You can always miss attack spell on failure and get zero damage so stakes for spell attack is higher.
I used shocking grasp to compare to sudden bolt because of the similar purpose of the spell, single target strike. The range factor is relevant (although spectral hand is a fun way to use spectral hand at range), but the issue is that there is no other single target spell attack roll spell (before polar ray, kind of) that is purely “immediate damage” to compare, and everything else added to the spell takes away from immediate damage. I could have picked a focus spell, but was trying to stay in spell slots. Shocking grasp pretty much is “the” single target damage spell attack roll spell. Since it is touch as well, you can always use one action to reach spell it 30ft without true strike, which leads us to hero points.
I chose hero points instead of true strike for my example because I just wanted to reinforce that characters often (not always) do end up in the situation of having a hero point or two going in to a very difficult encounter. Casters with no spell attack roll spells have minimal recourse for using their hero points offensively, effectively. Some players will always save a hero point for defense/staying alive, but my experience is that players prefer using hero points pro-actively, so “caster having a hero point” is a fairly common occurrence. It is not an every round of combat choice, but in a boss fight, it will be pretty common.
With attack rolls spells, you don’t hero point a hit or better. So you are only using it when you miss. This is why the math on HP use age is different than the math of truestrike. You crit a little less often, but you also don’t use any extra resources at all a fair bit of the time as well.
The most common status debuffed lower AC as well as saves. I didn’t run all the debuff numbers but the the big DPR shift with everything in PF2 is when critical success for the attacker (so crit failure on save spells) shifts to 2 or more rolls on the dice. Against more powerful enemies, this will almost never happen with a saving throw spell unless the enemy has an abysmally low save to target. Flat-footed and a single status or circumstance bonus to attack can get a spell attack roll spell most of the way there, making all the same debuffing that is good for a save spell even better for the spell attack roll spell.
Using hero points or true strike on attacks that have crossed what I call the “crit threshold” in PF2 vastly increases DPR potential. If you are “hacking” or home brewing the system, it is pretty important to look at how things you are adding interact with that point. Many folks dislike that, and want to hack truestrike out, but that point still exists with hero points so it doesn’t go away. Spell attack roll spells are inherently more tactically malleable than saving throw spells, even without true strike, but also have true strike as resource for further boosting.
In this example situation, magic missile is likely to be the safest choice for most casters to contribute damage output, but it is interesting to see how it is not that difficult to get a spell attack roll spell to out perform magic missile, even in the situation that many players assume that spell attack roll spells are least effective.
Also damage on a success, saving throw spells are overvalued in difficult fights in PF2 (except where that damage triggers weakness), in part because players are under estimating the advantage of being the one to roll the dice, the vast amount of HP higher level creatures tend to have, and the likelihood of creatures getting bonuses to save vs magic/being difficult to debuff bast the crit threshold.
It doesn’t really matter if players don’t realize this. It really only matters this much in very difficult encounters that will continue to be difficult, even if you know the math and try to exploit it. I prefer to have one decently high level acid arrow memorized as a wizard for these situations because it is also very likely to stick the boss with a situation they might have to waste actions dealing with in a round or two, but if you also like casting touch range spells like goblin pox at a distance, spectral hand can be a fun caster toy and shocking grasp against a target in metal armor gets the persistent damage effect as well as the accuracy boost.
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Imo, spell attacks would be fixed if the interacted with the degrees of success system like save spells, where even failure still gives something; functionally turning them into yet another tool for weakness targetting.
Barring that, giving them power that punches above save spells to justify the risk of whiffing your main action of yoyr turn and making it into a high risk, high reward play. We see this in play with Imaginary Weapon already.
Personally, I think with the existance of magus, eldritch archer, etc; the former is better; since I think there's always going to be a want to "hit people with a weapon and a spell at the same time" mechanics no matter what and the latter has potential to break the game
I think treating attack spells like basic saves would also be relatively easy to justify in fiction. It would basically be replacing touch AC. It might be hard to penetrate the scales of a dragon with an arrow but a disintegrate spell mostly just needs to make contact.
Spells that are booth spell attack roll and save spells (like disintegrate) are pretty fiddly to hack. Hitting with spell just modifies the save. I wouldn’t try to adjust the damage on a miss, just make it where a miss means the target treats saves one better (like incapacitation).
Personally, I think the result would still be so disappointing you would want to use any reroll ability you could just to not miss. It might be a very slight DPR boost (more for more basic spell attack roll spells than spells like disintegrate) but not in a very satisfying way for casters (half of something like acid arrow and no persistent damage would be very lack luster). All at the cost of making saving throw targeting spells very bad in comparison. All spell attack roll spells start off with a +1 for ties going to the roller and saves being more difficult to debuff.
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I used shocking grasp to compare to sudden bolt because of the similar purpose of the spell, single target strike. The range factor is relevant (although spectral hand is a fun way to use spectral hand at range), but the issue is that there is no other single target spell attack roll spell (before polar ray, kind of) that is purely “immediate damage” to compare, and everything else added to the spell takes away from immediate damage. I could have picked a focus spell, but was trying to stay in spell slots. Shocking grasp pretty much is “the” single target damage spell attack roll spell. Since it is touch as well, you can always use one action to reach spell it 30ft without true strike, which leads us to hero points.
I chose hero points instead of true strike for my example because I just wanted to reinforce that characters often (not always) do end up in the situation of having a hero point or two going in to a very difficult encounter. Casters with no spell attack roll spells have minimal recourse for using their hero points offensively, effectively. Some players will always save a hero point for defense/staying alive, but my experience is that players prefer using hero points pro-actively, so “caster having a hero point” is a fairly common occurrence. It is not an every round of combat choice, but in a boss fight, it will be pretty common.
With attack rolls spells, you don’t hero point a hit or better. So you are only using it when you miss. This is why the math on HP use age is different than the math of truestrike. You crit a little less often, but you also don’t use any extra resources at all a fair bit of the time as well.
The most common status debuffed lower AC as well as saves. I didn’t run all the debuff numbers but the the big DPR shift with everything in PF2 is when critical success for the attacker (so crit failure on save spells) shifts to 2 or more rolls on the dice. Against more powerful enemies, this will almost never happen with a saving throw spell unless the enemy has an abysmally...
Again that is not fair comparsion in cases above you compare three action spell option(true strike+spell or metamagic+spell) and in both cases you spend addtional resoruces(spell slots or hero points) for that so its pretty obvious that you should get better results than with two spell action but with save spell you action economy is much less rigid and left you with one action that you can also spend on actions that can boost you damage output for saves spells like Demoralize
So part of the issue here is that we don’t have spells in PF2 that are direct comparisons to each other in all ways except spell attack roll vs save. There is always another variable factor to what makes a spell right for a specific situation that will make a more perfect comparison impossible. I tried my best to pick the two closest analogs but if that is going to get labeled unfair (in favor of the spell attack roll spell which is a d12 behind to start with, in addition to being touch range) then I don’t understand what comparison point to try to use for making any claim about spell attack roll spells.
In my comparison, if that is allowed to stand, a single +1 at level 2 would do nothing to bring shocking grasp closer to sudden bolt by itself, but with flat footed and a status bonus to attack we’ve hit 1 modifier shy of the crit threshold. A single -1 status penalty to the enemy or circumstance bonus to attack gets shocking grasp to 10 percent crit chance. I don’t have the sheet of paper I did my math on, but looking at the numbers I posted above, shocking grasp would still be worse than sudden bolt except in cases where you use a hero point or truestrike and would still require flat-footed and a status bonus to surpass magic missile.
So basically, it is not really helping anyone except the tactical min/mixer use spell attack roll spells, giving them a way to jump the crit threshold faster, but that being something that doesn’t radically shift the DPR until you throw a reroll option in the mix, which makes the spell attack roll spell runaway up the damage chart.
Lets run a thought experiment!
Lets say we added Spell Potency runes at 2nd and then 10th.
+1 at 2nd
+2 at 10th.Spell Potency runes only apply on Spells which require a spell attack roll and don't have a duration.
What happens?
You will hit more and crit more like they does with weapons. But will keep the "everything or nothing" aspect of spell attacks.
So if you cast a Shocking Grasp and miss you will be frustrated do the lost of a spellslot for nothing in the same way.
For cantrips the things feels a little better. You can use Telekinetic Projectile with a higher chance to hit making you more competitive to martials yet a little behind because you need 2-actions.
In most situations you probably will still prefer to use EA or similar save cantrips instead, because it has a half-effect if not hit and can affect 2 targets at same time.
IMO what you are missing is the Touch attacks from PF1 that ignores all non-dex AC and makes spell attacks super effective and we won't have nothing similar to this in PF2.
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Lets run a thought experiment!
Lets say we added Spell Potency runes at 2nd and then 10th.
+1 at 2nd
+2 at 10th.Spell Potency runes only apply on Spells which require a spell attack roll and don't have a duration.
What happens?
Overall, not much. You won't imbalance the game by providing a bonus to a small number of spells.
I even think people will continue to complain about spell attack roll spells, as the issue is not with the spell attack rolls, but with their effects (you'd need to give far more than a +2 to hit for Produce Flame to compete with Electric Arc, but that's the same for Daze or Chill Touch).
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In my comparison, if that is allowed to stand, a single +1 at level 2 would do nothing to bring shocking grasp closer to sudden bolt by itself, but with flat footed and a status bonus to attack we’ve hit 1 modifier shy of the crit threshold. A single -1 status penalty to the enemy or circumstance bonus to attack gets shocking grasp to 10 percent crit chance. I don’t have the sheet of paper I did my math on, but looking at the numbers I posted above, shocking grasp would still be worse than sudden bolt except in cases where you use a hero point or truestrike and would still require flat-footed and a status bonus to surpass magic missile.
I don't understand why you keep bringing these strike-agnostic things up.
Yes an enemy being flat-footed will help. Yes them having a status penalty will help. Yes using True Strike or burning a hero point (sometimes, these two are nowhere near the same!) will help.
But they are all materially irrelevant because they help regardless of the kind of strike you are trying to do and apply benefits equally to melee, ranged and spell attack rolls.
They are all additional, on-top-of, additives to your rolls.
When you take an "all things being equal" approach, as in, we assume everyone is utilising these options to the best of ability, and assuming optimal use, we still find that spell attack rolls are behind and have no payoff or reward to justify being behind.
Repeatedly discussing these things from an asymmetrical use standpoint just muddies the discussion.
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Overall, not much. You won't imbalance the game by providing a bonus to a small number of spells.
I even think people will continue to complain about spell attack roll spells, as the issue is not with the spell attack rolls, but with their effects (you'd need to give far more than a +2 to hit for Produce Flame to compete with Electric Arc, but that's the same for Daze or Chill Touch).
You will hit more and crit more like they does with weapons. But will keep the "everything or nothing" aspect of spell attacks.So if you cast a Shocking Grasp and miss you will be frustrated do the lost of a spellslot for nothing in the same way.
For cantrips the things feels a little better. You can use Telekinetic Projectile with a higher chance to hit making you more competitive to martials yet a little behind because you need 2-actions.
In most situations you probably will still prefer to use EA or similar save cantrips instead, because it has a half-effect if not hit and can affect 2 targets at same time.IMO what you are missing is the Touch attacks from PF1 that ignores all non-dex AC and makes spell attacks super effective and we won't have nothing similar to this in PF2.
Cool!
Lets establish this as a base floor then.
If up to +2 Spell Potency runes help, but don't overpower, and aid but don't fix the general problem with spell attacks, then what else can be done to improve them?
Would adding a +3 Rune at 16th help?
Would adding a flat-check to retain the spell on a miss (but not critical miss) help?
Would adding damaging additive runes help?
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IMO, most spell attacks could have 1-action less than saves. Because they suffer from MAP, don't have half-effect and usually are single target. Including this is what makes Fiery Body so good, because it's allow a caster to do 1-action Produce Flame attacks.
Receiving item bonus could make them more competitive to Strikes but isn't that essential. IMO Shadow Signet does well this work. Instead if SS wasn't prevent metamagic it would be enough to balance the hit rate without make casters to use the same mechanics of martials.
But once again I complete agree with SB the main problem is that we have some same level spells imbalance. EA is a good example in cantrips side of how good a cantrip can be at same time Daze is in the opposite side and both are lvl 1 cantrips.
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If up to +2 Spell Potency runes help, but don't overpower, and aid but don't fix the general problem with spell attacks, then what else can be done to improve them?
Review all offensive cantrips entirely but Electric Arc. Electric Arc should be the basic level of efficiency for cantrips and not the ceiling.
So you can increase most cantrips damage dice by 2, going for d8 and d10 for single target damage cantrips.Then, you'll be able to address the legion of spells that are just plain bad. When you have Flame Strike with a higher level, smaller area and less damage than Fireball, you know there's a lot of work in there, too.
And once the game is completely rebalanced, you can expect a lot of (other) complaints. But at least you'd not need to create potency runes for spell attack rolls which are useless overall as the problem you think there is isn't there.
The two issues are not mutually exclusive and in fact are highly linked.
I quote myself earlier:
They (quite) fixed that with the Shadow Signet.
For example, I made these graphs.
I used Produce Flame as a base, with Shadow Signet for the spell attack rolls. The orange graph uses a save, the blue one a spell attack roll, the green uses a spell attack roll with a +2 to attack (One for All, Inspire Heroics, there are easy ways to get bonuses to an attack roll when it's nearly impossible to increase a DC).
And that's without considering how True Strike and Hero Points can strongly affect the balance between both types.
So, if you give a +2 to hit to spell attack rolls they become strictly better than save-based spells (for the same effect, obviously).
With a +1, it is more balanced, as spell attack roll spells without bonus are slightly worse than save based spell but getting a +1 to attack is quite trivial.So we are really arguing on very small changes. I can see a +1 to hit, as I think it'll be more balanced overall. But going above that will just switch the imbalance the other way around.
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We repeatedly demonstrated in this thread that, without any changes at all, there are already situations where the expected DPR of blasting spells that use a spell attack roll spell exceed the DPR of save spells. These situations are not even that uncommon or resource intensive, AND constitute the situation where people complain the most about the efficacy of spell casters: against difficult solo enemies.
If that is the case that spell attack roll spells (even one’s that look like they should be worse on paper than an equal level save spell, like the comparison between a sudden bolt and shocking grasp) can exceed the DPR of save spells with minor tactical choices that martials make all the time, what is actually gained by trying to further boost these spells?
if the issue is “feels bad to miss,” why do so many players choose to cast any single target damage spells that are not just magic missile?
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if the issue is “feels bad to miss,” why do so many players choose to cast any single target damage spells that are not just magic missile?Because they don't have anything else (at the time or at all)? Because the enemy has weakness to this particular effect? Because the enemy is resistant of immune to available save spells? Because people just want some variety and hope for the best? Because people hope to get enemy sufficiently debuffed for the spell to actually hit?
Exactly! The fun of PF2 is the tactical decision making and trying to match the best possible action to the variable situation of the encounter.
Spell attack roll spells DPR in a difficult encounter can be more than doubled with fairly basic choices made by the player/party. Often this can mean that the initial DPR is so low that very little damage boost doubles it, but in this case we went from less than half as effective as magic missile to more effective than magic missile with a +1 bonus and flat-foot. At the point where something can relatively easily go from worst option to best option in an encounter with tactical choices that only work for that type of spell, I think we can say that those spells are relatively well balanced with each other. If the issue is spells themselves not feeling useful in those kinds of encounters, than boosting only one type of spell to make it the most obvious best option in that situation could work, if it didn't spill over already into making that type of spell better than every other spell in every situation, which is definitely what happens with spell attack roll spells once difficulty numbers spill over the crit threshold, because saving throw spells have nothing that exponentially effects the likelihood of criticals by nature of who gets to roll to determine the effect and the options that play with that agency in game, as well as the fact that there are many ways to boost attacks in the game and no ways to boost saving throw DCs.
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Lets run a thought experiment!
Lets say we added Spell Potency runes at 2nd and then 10th.
+1 at 2nd
+2 at 10th.Spell Potency runes only apply on Spells which require a spell attack roll and don't have a duration.
What happens?
Continuing the Shocking Grasp vs Sudden Bolt comparison, as it's as close to a straightforward damage-comparison set of spells as we'll get, I'm looking at the damage at 10th level with the +2 potency runes applied, fighting a level+2 enemy:
Shocking Grasp: 6d12, +21 to hit, level 12 enemy's high AC of 33. This gives 17.6 damage.
Sudden Bolt: 7d12 damage, DC 29, level 12 enemy's +25 save (high) or +22 save (moderate). This gives 22.8/29.6 average damage, depending on if you're targeting a high or moderate save respectively.
Without further tactical changing, the +2 spell potency rune still won't make the classic spell attack damaging spell more impactful than the saving throw equivalent (ignoring the metal armour, which is hard to calculate). However, tactical impacts here:
Minor tactical changes: Flat-footed: 21.5 damage vs 22.8/29.6 damage; a fairly simply condition to impose catches it up with picking the wrong save.
Standard tactical changes: Flat-footed and +1 to hit (say from targeting someone using armour): 23.4 vs 22.8/29.6 damage; if it weren't expending a spell slot, this would be my expectation for a reasonable level of buffs, and it has only just pulled ahead of targeting the wrong save.
Incredible tactical changes: Flat-footed, +2 circumstance to hit (Aid), +2 status bonus to hit (inspire heroics), clumsy 3 (synesthesia), frightened 2 (to make it a little more fair for the save-based spell): 35.1 damage for shocking grasp vs 27.3/34.1 for sudden bolt. It does pull ahead in just about the perfect possible situation for the spell, but only barely in comparison to the relatively minor tactical complexity of getting a -2 status penalty on the save for the spell.
In addition to this, there's no reason to use shadow signet ring if you've got even minor tactical changes in most cases - flat-footed doesn't apply to your saving throw DCs, and even high AC with the -2 penalty is a lower value than the moderate DC at this level. As Unicore showed in previous posts, what really makes the difference here is the ability to reroll the attack roll - that would take something like the standard tactical change to be comparable to targeting the moderate save, and would put the incredible tactical changes well ahead of any of the saving throw spells.
In my opinion, this line of analysis showing the impact of the tactical changes just reinforces how powerful True Strike and similar effects are on one-big-hit sorts of attack rolls. If their impact is preventing caster's one-big-attack-roll spells from being balanced, I'd rather change reroll effects, personally.
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While I have no doubt that a fake out boosted spell attack against a flat footed target is great and probably outperforms equal level save spells, it does leave some questions.
Like, would casting synesthesia improve expected party damage over blasting (even before its other benefits)? Or, why are we using fake out with the blaster instead of the fighter that will also inflict prone and dazzle/blind on a crit or the magus that is loading two attacks worth of damage on a single roll (and is probably also inflicting dazzle/blind on crit)? After all, ally support is great, but you need to make a case for supporting the blaster over others in the first place and for the blaster to be blasting instead of supporting.
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In my opinion, this line of analysis showing the impact of the tactical changes just reinforces how powerful True Strike and similar effects are on one-big-hit sorts of attack rolls. If their impact is preventing caster's one-big-attack-roll spells from being balanced, I'd rather change reroll effects, personally.
It is true that the average damage of a two action spell is higher than a single action strike, and so the value of a re-roll effect is higher for the more action-intensive damage source.
However True Strike is incredibly ubiquitous. Its no more a caster tool than anyone a martial one.
Over the years I would put the put the number of True Strikes i've seen cast by a martial vs a caster class, I would put it somewhere would a 80/20% split in the martials favour.
But once again, strike-agnostic "tactical decisions", including True Strike, should not be factors in how Spell Attacks are balanced or designed, because they are open to all strikes.
Good play should be taken against good play, not good play vs bad play.
However True Strike is incredibly ubiquitous. Its no more a caster tool than anyone a martial one.
It's a caster and Magus tool. It's useless to martials as it very hardly increases their damage.
Before comparing good play to good play, you need to know what good play is. And ubiquity (or wisdom of the crowd) don't always define good play.
Also, I've shown with graphs that a +2 to spell attack rolls would make spell attack roll spells strictly better than save-based spells. That's quite an issue considering it's your basic "fix" that should then come with other fixes.
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It's a caster and Magus tool. It's useless to martials as it very hardly increases their damage.
Sorry, but this is a maddening amount of circular logic.
Its only more effective for casters because casters are worse at hitting things. This entire thread is about the disparity of casters ability to hit things.
Even your own tool showed the value of true strike going down when bonuses to hit were added to spell attack rolls.
But, putting that aside for a moment, in the 4 years of play I've had with this system - in my own experience across multiple groups and places - Martials use True Strike more often than casters.
You can call it useless because it doesn't increase their damage much on an attack averages, but we don't play averages, we play roll by roll. Martials making the thing they do best better is a good use of their resources when they want to guarantee and outcome.
Before comparing good play to good play, you need to know what good play is. And ubiquity (or wisdom of the crowd) don't always define good play.
We have no need for pedantry or nit-picking here.
Unicorn wants to keep dragging the discussion to a balance of "tactical decisions", which is, to me, an utter distraction from the issue.
Unless there is some unique advantage or bonus that can't be achieved elsewhere, the "good play" I was referring to is just taking the stance of "just assume everyone is the best thing they possibly can, maximising every bonus and applying ever debuff".
I say this, so that when we ask "why do spell attack still under perform", we don't have to keep re-treading the but-are-they-flanking-thou comments.
Removing all re-roll mechanics for spell attack roll spells, at this point is impossible. Pretending like simply getting rid of true strike fixes the problem, and now we can try to boost the accuracy of spell attack rolls to be anywhere close to comparable to save targeting spells (even trying to factor in other tactical decision points) is ignoring how much you just turn hero points into the most valuable commodity that players have access to, and you will be encouraging a meta-play style of casters hoarding hero points to use with spell attack roll spells, because it will far-and-away be the whole game's win button (especially after boost spell attack roll spells to compete with saving throw spells without this option).
A caster with a hero point should not become an unparalleled tactical nuke.
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In other words,
There are pretty deep design decision points about the value of being the one rolling the die that are baked into PF2 chassis. Removing Hero points from the game would be a terrible decision because Hero Points are the safety net of a system with very tight math. One of the absolutely easiest ways for GMs to help struggling players is just get more liberal with handing out hero points.
If your goal is to really change the balance points between save spells and spell attack roll spells, but keep them in line with each other, you probably remove the attack roll from attack roll spells and just have them trigger basic reflex saves. Then you can hack and mod the spells to your heart content, because they don't interact with any of the "advantage goes to the die roller" mechanics any more, and you can achive more structural parody between spells without factoring in the complexity of tactical options open to "attacks.'
Personally, I think this would tactically flatten the game, and probably ruin the magus class. I am personally not in love with the post play-test magus class anyway, so I don't care that much about it, but I think you would get resistance to this happening in the form of an Errata. True strike could then be left in the game, because it would just exist around edge case martial attacks.
Sorry, but this is a maddening amount of circular logic.
Backed up by math.
You have completely put aside the concept of opportunity cost that reduces the efficiency of True Strike on martials to a mere 5% extra damage.I've also provided graphs showing that a +2 to spell attack rolls imbalances the game in the other way, argument that you haven't even tried to disprove.
Sorry, but I don't find you're engaging in good faith.
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Sorry, but this is a maddening amount of circular logic.Backed up by math.
You have completely put aside the concept of opportunity cost that reduces the efficiency of True Strike on martials to a mere 5% extra damage.I've also provided graphs showing that a +2 to spell attack rolls imbalances the game in the other way, argument that you haven't even tried to disprove.
Sorry, but I don't find you're engaging in good faith.
Aren't spell attack should prvoide better result on succes because you get nothing on failure
Aren't spell attack should prvoide better result on succes because you get nothing on failureSorry, but this is a maddening amount of circular logic.Backed up by math.
You have completely put aside the concept of opportunity cost that reduces the efficiency of True Strike on martials to a mere 5% extra damage.I've also provided graphs showing that a +2 to spell attack rolls imbalances the game in the other way, argument that you haven't even tried to disprove.
Sorry, but I don't find you're engaging in good faith.
And that is my point. Isn’t it fascinating that a spell attack roll spell that does objectively less damage than a saving throw spell in direct damage value comparisons without a target (shocking grasp cs sudden bolt) can be tactically manipulated to do more damage than the saving throw spell all with options that are unavailable to saving throw spells?
No one is arguing that saving throw spells don’t have much higher floors than spell attack roll spells, but that the game itself as a lot of subtle but intrinsic ways to give pretty incredible boosts to spell attack roll spells already.
Aren't spell attack should prvoide better result on succes because you get nothing on failureSorry, but this is a maddening amount of circular logic.Backed up by math.
You have completely put aside the concept of opportunity cost that reduces the efficiency of True Strike on martials to a mere 5% extra damage.I've also provided graphs showing that a +2 to spell attack rolls imbalances the game in the other way, argument that you haven't even tried to disprove.
Sorry, but I don't find you're engaging in good faith.
But they have higher chances to hit. That's the whole thing: Either you go for high risk high gain or low risk no loss.
Quick example to explain: Let's say you have 17 spell DC, +7 spell attack roll and the enemy has +7 to his save, 17 save DC.
If you cast a spell attack roll spell, you hit on a 10 => 55% chance of success.
If the enemy rolls a save against your spell, it fails on a 9 or less => 45% chance of failure.
So spell attack rolls have 10% extra chance of success compared to saves.
Then, you can add the fact that circumstance and status bonuses to attack rolls exist but not circumstance and status bonuses to save DC (or at least they are super rare).
And then you add True Strike on top of it.
Overall, spell attack rolls by themselves are fine and don't need a change. You can take any spell in the game, switch a save by a save attack roll or a spell attack roll by a save and the spell is exactly as good as it was (just not in the same circumstances). The issue is that the spells using spell attack rolls are bad. It's the spells that need modifications, not spell attack rolls.
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I think treating attack spells like basic saves would also be relatively easy to justify in fiction. It would basically be replacing touch AC. It might be hard to penetrate the scales of a dragon with an arrow but a disintegrate spell mostly just needs to make contact.
I did this in my home game for my Cleric player. This particular player does not have high system mastery. The party is Level 6 right now and her Warpriest needs to roll a 15 or so on the die to hit an enemy's AC with a spell attack. Next level the other spellcasters will be getting spellcasting proficiency increases, but the Warpriest is not (which is a separate issue), so I gave her an item that lets her do half damage on a missed spell attack roll to make her character feel a little less bad.
I don't want to go around lecturing my players on "building their character incorrectly" or telling them what spells to pick. It's not fun to be told you're playing the game wrong. The point of PF2e was to make poor build decisions like this much less debilitating. It doesn't particularly matter to me if the skill ceiling for spells with attack rolls achieves parity, the skill floor clearly does not.
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However True Strike is incredibly ubiquitous. Its no more a caster tool than anyone a martial one.
It's a caster and Magus tool. It's useless to martials as it very hardly increases their damage.
Before comparing good play to good play, you need to know what good play is. And ubiquity (or wisdom of the crowd) don't always define good play.
Warpriest or Cleric wouldn't use True Strike? I remember you strictly saying that True Strike + Searing Light ended quite a few encounters before they even began, which shouldn't normally be possible except for certain Cleric builds, and I've been in two parties now where there were Warpriests who build with the concept of True Strike + Channel Smite.
Also, with how often people state that Magi should just run around with toilet paper rolls of True Strike scrolls (since Magi are basically Martials with spellcasting sprinkled in), saying that it's useless to martials, when Magus is a martial class, undermines your own point. The only issue with True Strike is its opt-in and opportunity cost(s). For Magi, there's basically no opportunity or opt-in cost, it's basically built into their kit to assume they can and will do so. For Fighters, Barbarians, et. al., it requires feats and monetary investments, and can conflict with apparent action economy.
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But they have higher chances to hit. That's the whole thing: Either you go for high risk high gain or low risk no loss.
Quick example to explain: Let's say you have 17 spell DC, +7 spell attack roll and the enemy has +7 to his save, 17 save DC.
If you cast a spell attack roll spell, you hit on a 10 => 55% chance of success.
If the enemy rolls a save against your spell, it fails on a 9 or less => 45% chance of failure.
So spell attack rolls have 10% extra chance of success compared to saves.Then, you can add the fact that circumstance and status bonuses to attack rolls exist but not circumstance and status bonuses to save DC (or at least they are super rare).
And then you add True Strike on top of it.Overall, spell attack rolls by themselves are fine and don't need a change. You can take any spell in the game, switch a save by a save attack roll or a spell attack roll by a save and the spell is exactly as good as it was (just not in the same circumstances). The issue is that the spells using spell attack rolls are bad. It's the spells that need modifications, not spell attack rolls.
Unfortunately maths are never this simple. One has to account for feels and expectations as well. Relevant example remains relevant.
Players are not separate from the game's system. Math is not semantically or value-neutral in these kinds of cases. Also I find this example is kind of a straw-man. What are the comparable probabilities for a fighter of comparable level? That is the crux and point of this whole argument.
I was very nearly about to go back and do the math on the 5th level PC vs 7th level monster, looking at the fighter's DPR in comparison, when I remembered, that this is not the crux or point of this whole conversation. If spells generally feel underperforming, then boosting spell attack rolls is not a fix for casters. Probably just some very small static damage boost is all that would be necessary, something that most casters can already manage, so again, the entire conversation has to shift and take into account what damage boosting options are available, and it is a very different conversation to this one, which is "How [to] fix spell attack [roll spells]."
Which again is very much a matter of perspective.
Are you a GM with players butting their heads up against using spell attack roll spells and feeling useless? Are you a player trying to figure out how to get the most punch out of your spell slots generally (hint, don't give up on spell attack roll spells)? Are you a game designer that just doesn't like where magic sits in PF2 and you want to hack the game to make magic work differently, with a particular interest in the idea of spell attack roll spells vs saving throw spells?
As far as "fixing" the "feels bad" of spell attack roll spells in PF2 for some players, I recommend starting off by encouraging those players to step back and try to sympathize with the game design and game design choices to figure out when and how the options in the existing work before starting to fiddle dials, and especially encourage massive reworking/errata around those dials, without understanding what larger impact those dials have on the game. Then if you all at your table want to make house rules to change the system, totally awesome! Everyone will know that adding item bonuses to spell attack rolls at your table is fine as long as no one becomes obsessed with min/maxing those spells and taking advantage of other game rules that make them better. I don't have a problem with this on a small scale. I have different tables that use different house rules because all the players have talked about the issues that bug them and the issues that don't and we can agree to certain changes (Use secret rolls or not, and how not to when you have players that hate die rolls happening without them rolling and seeing the result, for example). I don't believe those rule changes make the base game fundamentally better, but they make it work better for my table.
Adding item bonuses to spell attack roll spells feels very much like the kind of thing that PF1 had a lot of, where, in isolation, this bonus or item or whatever didn't seem to make that big of an impact until you had a character build around it, while other characters didn't understand the impact that would have on the game. I think there was a very wise reason why the shadow signet ring comes into the game at 10th level and is rooted in tactical decision making instead of flat always on bonuses. Spell casting in PF2 is designed to require that tactical analysis to only ever situationally out perform direct martial combat.
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Also, I've shown with graphs that a +2 to spell attack rolls would make spell attack roll spells strictly better than save-based spells. That's quite an issue considering it's your basic "fix" that should then come with other fixes.
Better but less reliable sounds like a decent trade off, tbh. Certainly moreso than just being worse.
and you will be encouraging a meta-play style of casters hoarding hero points to use with spell attack roll spells
Players spending hero points for big plays is the point of the system though, so I'm not sure this is a problem.
And the status quo of hoarding your hero points only for saves because you don't roll checks when you do magic doesn't necessarily seem better.
Squiggit,
I was talking about what would happen if you remove true strike. I have no issue with casters using hero points on spell attack roll spells, and encourage people to rethink their assumptions about spell attack rolls based upon occasionally using hero points with them instead of thinking it always has to be a 1 to 1 ratio of true strike spells memorized to spell attack roll spells.
What I think would be bad, is for there to be no other way for casters to get a reroll for spell attack rolls than to have hero points on hand, because it would make a GM controlled resource the only way to reliably get the most benefit out spell attack roll spells. Especially because the proposed trade off here is boosting the accuracy or damage of these spells to match much closer to saving throw targeting spells without factoring in the massive boost that will happen when the reroll does enter the picture. It just returns "super powered super nova" to the caster in a secret and largely inaccessible way. If people just want to generally boost casters, do it at the base, not at the fringe.
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But the fringe is the problem. Baseline changes don't make a specific type of underperforming spell better.
"Sometimes people use hero points for big results" is a feature, not a bug. When our Fighter does it with an eldritch shot or our Inventor uses it on an unstable megaton strike, sometimes it ends up being really high impact when it turns a miss into a hit or a crit, but that's just how hero points work.
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I'd still prefer the solution to be making staves and wands weapons for casters that impact their casting.
For years this visual of carrying around a staff or wand to occasionally cast a spell while it doesn't do much else makes staves and wands visually uninteresting in magical combat. Whereas in books and movies wands and staves are often used to power magic and are shown to be powerful tools enhancing spellcasting. I'd love to see that route taken to make spell attacks better.
99 posts and a solution ain't one. :P