PF1 didn't have the four saving throws. You can get some real brutal damage and effects when monsters critically fail. That did not exist in PF1.That's not helping the case of spell attack being the victim of a vindictive attack.
Its another way in which save spells got a buff while spell attacks got nerfed.
Given the attack spells I used in PF1, they got a big nerf.
My bread and butter spell attack roll was enervate. That spell was amazing for setting up some kind of save or all done spell.
I occasionally used a scorching ray or its upgraded version. But enervate was my bread and butter spell attack. It was so powerful that it needed to be nerfed. Now it's a save spell that kind of sucks.
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Huh? Well that's news to me. PF1 Blasting was pretty good, it was just not as good as playing a support caster or a save or suck caster; But it wasn't as unplayable as its here (only using cantrips and top level spells). Wait... is this why this situation happened in the first place?
Because the only way you all saw blasting used was with some specific abilities therefore it was useless and so the current situation is better?
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Also its weird hearing "well those spells were bad until you added in class features". Because PF2 is even worse about that given how you absolutely need some features to make certain spells even look remotely playable. Would anyone be using spell attack IF Magus and Eldritch Archer had not come out? Because I doubt anyone would, heck even now Magus just spams cantrips because they gave them only 4 actual spell slots.
It's not that blasting in PF1 is bad until you remember you have a class, it's that blasting is bad unless you go out of your way to combine specific options from a variety of sources in a way that is not intuitive to most players. Seriously, in pf1 if you're level 5 and you're a wizard with 22 INT, you can cast a Fireball for 5d6 damage with a DC 19 save. Looking at the PF1 AP I am currently running, the mooks you're facing at that level have a +5 ref save and 42 HP. They're not particularly suited to tanking a fireball or anything. You'll deal, on average, 11.4 damage to each of them - about a quarter of their HP, for level-2 mooks. At the same level, you could be casting a persistent fireball with +2 damage/dice, +2 to your DC, and a +1 or +2 bonus to your caster level, giving you a spell that would actually be very threatening to the mooks instead of 1/4 of a mook's HP.
In PF2, your 5th level wizard with 18 INT is casting a DC 21 fireball for 6d6 damage. Against level-2 mooks, they'll have between +9 and +12 on their ref save, and 42-59 HP. That goes to 19.4 damage/15.2 damage depending on their save, which means that the range of damage in terms of % of a mooks health is varying from 25.9% to 46.3%, in comparison to the pf1 wizard's 27.1%. Out side of targeting high-REF, high-HP mooks, the base PF2 caster is objectively more powerful than the base PF1 caster. There will always be situations in PF1 where you're fighting a horde of giants with their terrible REF saves or something like that, but this isn't some strange situation where we're just forgetting how good blasting was in pf1. Unless you went out of your way to make it effective, PF2 blasting is a considerable improvement on PF1 blasting.
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PF1 also had touch AC to help with lower to hit of the pure casters. PF2 doesn't have touch AC and spell attack rolls feel more blah as a result.
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PF1 also had touch AC to help with lower to hit of the pure casters. PF2 doesn't have touch AC and spell attack rolls feel more blah as a result.
Mechanically, touch and ranged touch spells in PF1/3.x operated just as alternatives to saving spells against armored or heavily Natural Armored opponents.
That ended up being the situational benefit that justified these spells. They were never really all-rounder spells that were necessarily better or stronger than saves because they went against AC, they just took advantage of a specific situation where they were most viable.
When the PF2 carried these spells and did away with the touch mechanic using dexterity in favor of a strike-like attack rolls using the spellcasting stat against the target's AC, it broke that advantage.
But in the APG, when putting Eldritch Shot operating only with attack spells and in SoM with Spellstrike and Shadow Signet, these spells again have a situational advantage, only this time linked to abilities of classes/archetypes/items.
That's why I believe that it was never the desire of Paizo's designers to make this type of magic really competitive with rescue magic. For me it has always been an alternative since its origin.
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In my opinion, spell attack roll spells are an excellent choice in parties with a lot of bonuses to attack. In general, in such parties, casters feel a bit left out as they can't benefit from either Flat Footed condition or status bonuses to attack like Inspire Courage. With spell attack roll spells, it becomes very different.
There are a few outliers that can be used to great effects (I don't list the extremely circumstantial spells like Searing Light):
- Scorching Ray: Definitely the best spell attack roll spell if you have just a little bit of bonuses to hit. Spell attack roll spells are equivalent to save based spells against target 2 levels under your own, so they are better on multi target spells which is exactly what Scorching Ray is. With a proper bonus to hit and as long as you don't target enemies above your level (which shouldn't happen considering that you are targeting many of them) Scorching Ray is strictly better than Fireball (lower level, better "area", more average damage).
- Prismatic Spray: This one does the job fine. With a True Strike, you can really wreak through high level enemies. Unfortunately, it can't really be heightened, so it's level 4 and that's all.
- Focus Spells: Fire Ray, Imaginary Weapon, Amp Telekinetic Projectile. There are tons of excellent spell attack roll Focus spells. They will also increase the length of your adventuring days as most of them are 2-action spells.
But I agree that the outliers are not many. Spell attack roll spells are no specialization you can have.
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The only thing that, imo, breaks the game is electric arc, which has no reason to exist ( it should deal half the damage, given it's split between targets, or getting just one target ).
Currently that cantrip is top pick regardless the tradition ( you are going to get it with any caster, through dedications or ancestry feats ).
I really disagree on that. I've seen countless cantrips being cast, I've never felt that Electric Arc was out of bounds, quite the opposite it's in my opinion the lower bound of what a cantrip should do. On the other hand, the other cantrips have been, for most of them, very disappointing to use or see used. Cantrips don't have the power level they should have.
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Psychic with oscillating wave is kinda good as spell attack spellcaster.
Psychics with Dancing Blade are, until an errata, the best Spell Strikers in the game right now. Largely because Dancing Blade is currently worded so that the striking weapon would benefit from any weapon potency runes on it.
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@superbidy: I've never seen anybody not suggesti EA in any spell casting build, or not using it with 2 or more enemies, as cantrip.If you are saying that with one target people could use a different cantrip, well, ofc. Why not. But that wasn't the point.
I'm not disagreeing on that. I'm disagreeing when you say that EA "breaks the game". I consider that EA should be the baseline for all cantrips, that the other cantrips "break the game" by being not worth the action cost.
For example, a Wizard does the same damage by shooting twice with a bow than with Ray of Frost. I think there's quite a balance issue as Ray of Frost should be more interesting to a Wizard than attacking with a bow (otherwise, what's the point in its existence when you can just grab a weapon and be fine).
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That may be a solution too, but I still think it would be way easier to break down EA rather than giving more single target damage cantrips or alternative aoe/doubletarget cantrips.
Way easier, that's for sure. But the balance of the game will be strongly affected.
I think EA is fine as it is. If you buff it, you have some builds that start to get too good. And if you nerf it you nerf a lot of low to mid efficiency builds (especially all the low level casters who are far from strong).
The current situation is unpleasant as EA is nearly the only valid offensive cantrip. But at least it's balanced.
Nerfing EA would be proof that casters are meant to only be supports because right now that single cantrip is holding up the scattered ashes of blaster casters.
If you buff the other cantrips to the same level as EA there are a whole lot less issues and don't risk outright eliminating a whole playstyle.
I wholeheartedly disagree, I'm fine with my blaster casters.
No, what is affected by nerfing EA is mostly the low level experience for most casters as they don't have the spell list to last an entire adventuring day without using cantrips. Once you get to level 7, cantrips tend to fall far behind spells in efficiency and as such they no more count for an important part of your contribution.Then you have a lot of hybrid builds who value EA a lot. The Summoner is a big example. But there are also some Alchemists builds (especially the pure healer Chirurgeon). And the Psychic, especially the Infinite Eye and Tangible Dream ones as they don't have any strong Amped offensive cantrips (Imaginary Weapon is not easy to use for a Psychic). And the Investigator who often switches to EA when DaS gives a low roll. So a lot of builds actually, most of them being on the lower end in terms of efficiency.
Maybe is it actually the proof of the issue: Most of the builds who rely on cantrips for their damage are on the lower end in terms of efficiency. That's why I think cantrips need a buff more than EA a nerf.
Reason why not only I do not expect that they revise every single cantrip to make them even a little closer to EA ( mostly because the "errata" would require a lot of time ), but also hope they won't try to add new powerful cantrips, because what explained in details before.
I think you need quite some guts to say "I was wrong." so I tend to agree with you that cantrips won't be modified.
But I think it's not a lot of work. There are exactly 15 cantrips (excluding EA). Looking at each of them and increasing the damage dice by one or two steps is a very quick and easy fix. As long as you stay away from the Amped versions damage (that are increasing the damage by far more than a single step) you should be fine.And you don't even need to review all of them. Just improving Divine Lance, Produce Flame and Telekinetic Projectile should be enough to give nice alternatives to EA.
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... Ray of Frost should be more interesting to a Wizard than attacking with a bow (otherwise, what's the point in its existence when you can just grab a weapon and be fine).
What's the point? Yer a frickin' Wizard! Using a weapon is just... so... pedestrian!
Making spell attack cantrips good as electric arc would mean making them way more closer to melee strikes *2 ( reason why I'd prefer for EA to be just something a spellcaster "might consider" rather than "Wohoooo EA fiesta!" )
Very very far from it.
Right now, EA deals half the expected damage of a bow Fighter shooting twice. So we have a lot of margin before getting to melee strikes * 2. Increasing Produce Flame damage closer to bow Fighter main attack expected damage would already be a big progress without imbalancing the game (it costs 2 actions and has a low range after all).| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
@superbidy: I've never seen anybody not suggesti EA in any spell casting build, or not using it with 2 or more enemies, as cantrip.If you are saying that with one target people could use a different cantrip, well, ofc. Why not. But that wasn't the point.
I'm not disagreeing on that. I'm disagreeing when you say that EA "breaks the game". I consider that EA should be the baseline for all cantrips, that the other cantrips "break the game" by being not worth the action cost.
For example, a Wizard does more damage by shooting twice with a bow than with Ray of Frost. I think there's quite a balance issue as Ray of Frost should be at least equivalent to attacking with a bow.
That may be a solution too, but I still think it would be way easier to break down EA rather than giving more single target damage cantrips or alternative aoe/doubletarget cantrips.
As for the bow, it's because the wizard invested in dex rather than other stats ( like char and wis, dumping both const and dex).
On the one hand, I call them choices.
Can a wizard exploit/push towards meta by getting a bow?
Sure, and they can also use it with EA.
Giving EA ( as well as any other AoE damaging spell ) the attack trait would solve the issues we have ( casting 1 aoe/multi target spell + 1 strike).
But it's quite a complicated situation.
What's for sure is that EA is broken compared to other cantrips, and the other cantrips are too bad compared to EA ( both statements are true).
I dont think that any wizard can afford to dump dex or con and especially both of them because of his saves and hit point progression.
Nerfing EA would weaker caster offesnive pontential with cantrips that is already pertty low so i dont think that is good idea
As is often the case, range is being completely ignored here. Ray of frost is perfectly fine as it. There are many times where it is the only cantrip that could be cast without a caster spending actions moving towards an enemy. It hits hard enough to not be a complete waste of time, and its critical effect matches very well to a long range sniping spell. Its kiting utility is very important for 6 hp casters.
The thing is, to get a weapon as good as telekinetic projectile, many casters are spending at least a feat, if not some extra attributes, and the accuracy becomes an issue after level 7. For the cost of 1 class feat, most casters can add the psychic dedication and pick up the ability to amp a cantrip.
Produce flame is the spell attack roll cantrip that I really see players struggle to use effectively, although it probably has the best critical effect of all the cantrips and is incredibly effective for rogues. I have an eldritch scoundrel in the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix campaign I am running and 6d4 persistent is a very big problem for level 11 and 12 creatures to have to worry about. It is probably ok for some cantrips (like spells generally) to have incredibly specific niches that make that spell unappealing to most casters.
Playing a caster and assuming that electric arc is the only spell you will ever cast for 5 + levels of play is playing very suboptimally. The number of encounters where effectively using electric arc is impractical to other cantrips is significant. Not moving, keeping yourself out of harms way, or in position to cast other important spells on other party members are valuable considerations that often favor other cantrips.
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Unfortunately, neither gunslinger nor bow fighter ( but also the ranger ) are the standard comparison.
It's definitely the base for a martial ranged combatant.
I don't think there's any expectation for cantrips to be behind weapons. The classic dichotomy between martials and casters is that martials are less fragile but casters are more versatile. Having casters able to deal martial damage with cantrips won't break the game balance.
But anyway that's not at all the current situation, far from it. Right now, spellcasters are dealing roughly half of martial damage with cantrips. There's room for improvement without stepping on martial's toes.
And casters are definitely ranged combatant, comparing them to non ranged combatant using a ranged weapon wouldn't mean anything.
Playing a caster and assuming that electric arc is the only spell you will ever cast for 5 + levels of play is playing very suboptimally. The number of encounters where effectively using electric arc is impractical to other cantrips is significant. Not moving, keeping yourself out of harms way, or in position to cast other important spells on other party members are valuable considerations that often favor other cantrips.
Not really. I think I can count the number of times I've cast an offensive cantrip besides Electric Arc. If I need to cast a Ray of Frost then Delay is certainly a superior move.
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Looking back from 2019 to today, facts are that:
- EA has always been King
- Nothing has been done to fix other cantrips ( or lower EA power )
- Every single spellcaster goes for EAWhich means that nerfing EA would prevent a EA 2.0 ( a new better cantrip, that would make EA tier B because new cantrips Tier A or S ), not fixing a thing, but just swapping the meta from EA to EA 2.0.
And that's it.
We got stuck with a S tier cantrip and several B/C tier ones for years, and the chances to get a new broken spell, that would simply take the current EA spot, rather than getting every single B/C tier cantrip modified to be a solid alternative, are kinda 100 to 1.
Reason why not only I do not expect that they revise every single cantrip to make them even a little closer to EA ( mostly because the "errata" would require a lot of time ), but also hope they won't try to add new powerful cantrips, because what explained in details before.
They did release more cantrips. They weren't a great success. Scatter Scree is the closest but it is still under EA.
They really should try a couple more. I would like to see a fire based saving throw cantrip at least. As much for flavour as anything else.
The other thing they did was release Spellhearts. With the Jolt Coil every caster can now have EA. That is great from a balance point of view , but it is terrible for interest in the game or flavour.
A truely terrible choice for that to be available. I despise a system where everything degenerates down to the one optimal spell.
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If it's good enough for Gandalf...... Ray of Frost should be more interesting to a Wizard than attacking with a bow (otherwise, what's the point in its existence when you can just grab a weapon and be fine).What's the point? Yer a frickin' Wizard! Using a weapon is just... so... pedestrian!
Bah! A second rate hack!! =P
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Looking back from 2019 to today, facts are that:
- EA has always been King
- Nothing has been done to fix other cantrips ( or lower EA power )
- Every single spellcaster goes for EAWhich means that nerfing EA would prevent a EA 2.0 ( a new better cantrip, that would make EA tier B because new cantrips Tier A or S ), not fixing a thing, but just swapping the meta from EA to EA 2.0.
And that's it.
We got stuck with a S tier cantrip and several B/C tier ones for years, and the chances to get a new broken spell, that would simply take the current EA spot, rather than getting every single B/C tier cantrip modified to be a solid alternative, are kinda 100 to 1.
Reason why not only I do not expect that they revise every single cantrip to make them even a little closer to EA ( mostly because the "errata" would require a lot of time ), but also hope they won't try to add new powerful cantrips, because what explained in details before.
They did release more cantrips. They weren't a great success. Scatter Scree is the closest but it is still under EA.
They really should try a couple more. I would like to see a fire based saving throw cantrip at least. As much for flavour as anything else.
The other thing they did was release Spellhearts. With the Jolt Coil every caster can now have EA. That is great from a balance point of view , but it is terrible for interest in the game or flavour.
A truely terrible choice for that to be available. I despise a system where everything degenerates down to the one optimal spell.
Its worse than that. It takes up space that could be used for more interesting things and prevents new ideas from getting created, while not actually solving anything.
All while it falls for the same trap as talismans. Not to mention that to use Spellhearts you have to be using a weapon, which goes againt what most casters want to be doing.
Spellhearts can be affixed to armors.
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If 4x the range of every other cantrip adds no extra value to your analysis of cantrips, your analysis parameters are way too narrow.
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If 4x the range of every other cantrip adds no extra value to your analysis of cantrips, your analysis parameters are way too narrow.
I don't hesitate to Delay if I can't contribute meaningfully. If my only possible contribution is Ray of Frost, and unless I face an enemy with a cold weakness, I prefer to delay instead of wasting table time.
You have never encountered a creature that was perfectly comfortable attacking you from 35+ feet away? I can understand having desired courses of action and a willingness to delay to see if they can happen but 30 is incredibly close range to set as the boundary or your planning.
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Assuming the enemy was more than just moderate or weaker fodder, isn't that what full spells are for? Cantrips are primarily for when you're phoning it in or the fight's already effectively over.
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I dont think that any wizard can afford to dump dex or con and especially both of them because of his saves and hit point progression.
Nerfing EA would weaker caster offesnive pontential with cantrips that is already pertty low so i dont think that is good ideaThat's a meta approach, and I respect/accept it ( if I were to create a character from just a mechanical point of wiew I'd do the same ).
But there are people who like to invest into WIS/CHAR despide CON/DEX ( or maybe just dumping one of the latter ).
Saying "they can't afford" is somehow expecting that every single spellcaster would end up not being true ).
As much as I would like for spellcasters to not forcibly improve save-based stats, the issue is that the game always assumes that you do, because the expected DCs of enemies scales based on the assumption that you are boosting that attribute at every interval you reasonably can. In short, the game's boosts operate under the ideal that you have only one primary attribute, and that you will always boost your save-based attributes as well; at best, if your primary attribute just so happens to be one of the save-based attributes, then you can have an opportunity to boost something else, but often times those secondary options are pre-determined by some other feature you possess from your class (such as Font for Clerics, for example). And this issue isn't particularly a spellcaster issue, but I can say that it's the case more often than not for spellcasters, since only Wisdom-based spellcasting is one of the few mental attributes that are keyed to saves, and there is only the Cleric and Druid that fall under this paradigm currently.
If such a character never boosted their saves, they have a significantly higher chance of (critically) failing every Save-based effect that comes their way compared to one that doesn't, and that results in character/party deaths as a result. If such a character never boosts their ancillary attributes to be more effective at non-role options, then the investment they make there is pointless. And if such a character decided to go "halfsies" on their boosts, then they have to live with levels of reduced effectiveness in some areas over others (due to the awkwardness of alternating boosts), as well as feeling like their boosts didn't really do anything worthwhile since they aren't really excelling in any one option. Having played up to 20th level and seeing some of the weird options that players have built, it's glaringly noticeable when somebody doesn't increase a proficiency or attribute to its highest value.
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As for the whole cantrips thing, it can go one of two ways.
Either we buff other cantrips to match Electric Arc damage (i.e. turning all single target effects into double dice plus double modifier), leaving their specialty things exclusive to them (such as the two targets, extended range, and persistent damage effects), or we nerf Electric Arc damage to split its total between the two targeted enemies (same would go for other multi-target effects, like Scatter Scree and Spout). Honestly, the latter is more conservative (and therefore better) than the former, and IMO, the former is just plain power creep and goes over the toes of martials for no reason.
Starting at 1st level, a Shortbow in the hands of a non-optimized martial (relative to Bows, anyway,) is only going to be doing 1D6 per hit, meaning if such a character lands two strikes (because striking at -10 is a dumb, unlikely to work tactic, and there are probably other things to be done with a third action), it's a mere 2D6. Not exactly impressive since the same character with a melee weapon can do anywhere from 2D8+8 to 2D12+8 with those same actions (averages 17 and 21, respectively).
Meanwhile, a spellcaster throwing, say, Electric Arc at two enemies, is doing 1D4+4 twice. Yes, enemies can (crit) save against the spell, but the Shortbow strikes can miss as well, which is effectively a much higher critical save chance compared to spell mechanics. And if we resort to attack roll cantrips, then all this does is let you follow the same pass/fail mechanics that Strikes follow, and you're cutting your 1D4+4 down to only occurring once, not twice.
Conservatively speaking, the average of 2D6 on a martial compared to 2D4+8 (split between two targets) on a spellcaster is absurd, with the former being a mere 7 to the latter's 13 (even if it's split between two targets, it still counts towards DPR), being, surprise surprise, almost double the Bow martial's DPR output. Even if we changed it to 1D4+4 from another damage-based cantrip, it's an average of 6.5 damage, which is basically right there with being a non-optimized bow martial striking and hitting for two actions.
The math skews later when potency/property runes become available, Composite Bows get introduced, proficiency scaling changes, and so on, but looking at the baseline here at 1st level, the level most commonly played in the game, it seems more that Electric Arc is the outlier cantrip, doing as much damage as a non-specialized melee martial, than it is that Cantrips in general need a buff to their damage, assuming that a non-optimized martial with a Shortbow is the standard to be compared to.
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Honestly, the latter is more conservative (and therefore better)
That's ironically a pretty bold statement.
Honestly, the latter is more conservative (and therefore better)That's ironically a pretty bold statement.
Not really ironic, given that Electric Arc:
-does literally twice the damage of most every other cantrip when used in an appropriate situation
-has more consistent damage than attack roll-based cantrips
-is unlikely to be resisted compared to other common damage types
And the biggest driving factor behind the conservative approach being better is that it has far less overarching impact to the other spell effects. Paizo can just go into Electric Arc, put in a "roll damage once and split damage between both targets" sentence, and boom, it's an easy fix that puts Electric Arc on par with the other cantrips in terms of damage output, with its benefit being that you can precisely target enemies without risking friendly fire, and being able to affect multiple targets.
Whereas the other approach requires going to every other cantrip and changing the listed damage/scaling, which can adjust balance significantly in unintended ways (such as making cantrips do significantly more damage than bow strikes, especially in the early levels).
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One problem with that assessment is that it's only looking at the number of cantrips and not relevance.
If (completely made up numbers but if the anecdotes here are to be believed it might not be unreasonable) a hundred people are using electric arc, but only a dozen are using spout or gale blast each, then altering electric arc does have a large balancing effect than altering those other spells. "It's just one spell" is willfully disregarding the current realities of how people play the game.
... More importantly it's begging the question, the whole line of thought is predicated on taking "electric arc is overpowered" for granted, when no one has really demonstrated that it's a significant balance issue on its own, only that it's better than some other options (options that many people consider underpowered in the first place) in certain scenarios.