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Spell attacks are behind spell saves and martial success rates for no good reason.
Potency runes for spell attacks wouldn't suddenly make casters show stealers from Martial characters and they would still lag behind proficiency wise till end game a decent amount of the time. Spells already need ideal conditions to hit marginally better than a martial does with their primary attack roll.
Paizo should bite the bullet and create potency runes.
Alternatively create a spellshape feat that works like true strike but only for spell attacks. It would still take an extra action so its balanced. They should thwn remove true strike from the game. Make it a 4th level feat as wizard feats at that level suck and move on.
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The above posts show that people want bonus to spell attacks for different reasons. It is impossible to deepen one of the reasons without getting bashed by those who want them for another reason.
Not to mention that people do not answer my questions but scorn them.
Lesson learned for me : no value in trying to deepen the topic.
The reason is always the same the lower hit rate that makes them less worth.
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The above posts show that people want bonus to spell attacks for different reasons. It is impossible to deepen one of the reasons without getting bashed by those who want them for another reason.
Not to mention that people do not answer my questions but scorn them.
Lesson learned for me : no value in trying to deepen the topic.
There is zero need to act like this. This whole issue isn’t that deep and there are multiple potential paths to solve it.
Spell Attacks are subpar due to their accuracy and lack of adherence to the 4 degree of success structure of other spells.
There is nothing to deepen because the premise from which you have approached the topic is false. You want to make it a topic about something else but they aren’t commensurate issues.
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The above posts show that people want bonus to spell attacks for different reasons. It is impossible to deepen one of the reasons without getting bashed by those who want them for another reason.
Why do you think people aren't allowed to have multiple reasons for wanting something?
But even that said I'm not sure I agree. The basic reason of 'the math on them sucks' is pretty consistent and most of the other talking points are extensions of that.
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The above posts show that people want bonus to spell attacks for different reasons. It is impossible to deepen one of the reasons without getting bashed by those who want them for another reason.
Not to mention that people do not answer my questions but scorn them.
Lesson learned for me : no value in trying to deepen the topic.
There is zero need to act like this. This whole issue isn’t that deep and there are multiple potential paths to solve it.
Spell Attacks are subpar due to their accuracy and lack of adherence to the 4 degree of success structure of other spells.
There is nothing to deepen because the premise from which you have approached the topic is false. You want to make it a topic about something else but they aren’t commensurate issues.
You might want to reread the posts above that were all about comparing poor casters and OP martials while other people were asking to compare spell attacks and save-based spells.
But whatever.
I hope spell attacks will feel better in Remastered without making the martials feel bad.
That's it.
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I had a big post to sum up my thoughts on this but the forum ate it...
Anyway, my point form thoughts on this after some time away playing entirely too much BG3 are:
1) Paizo needs a team to go back and fix balance issues post-release. Spell balance is a mess and loads of classes, Wizard being especially notable, have obvious must take feats and other levels where you wonder why any of the feats are meant to add to your build.
2) Saves should probably just work like AC. Casters feel bad in part because of how rarely they get to roll dice. Save spells also don't benefit from fortune effects or hero points because they aren't your attack to roll.
3) True strike should be changed and critical effects should be nerfed so we can enjoy proper hit rates with spells that target AC. This overvaluing of crits hurts casters more than the occasional WOW moment helps them.
4) Casters and multi-classing and now archetyping has always felt bad outside of specific builds but PF2 has done very little to address this flaw. Martials get more from poaching spells via archetyping than casters get going the other way.
5) Range is overvalued when Paizo's own scenarios rarely let you use more than 100 ft of it. They heavily nerf ranged damage versus melee and this is probably too heavy-handed.
6) The lack of themed caster support is baffling. The best classes in PF1 were the half-casters and they were all themed. This idea that every class gets all spells and should be a toolbox that holds the best ones is terrible for giving players anything but false choices in the spells they pick.
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I kinda don't feel like taking part in spell attack conversations better since nobody analyses the interesting weird parts of math(I'm still fascinated by how its easier to hit high ac with spell attack than have high save fail vs dc) and just keeps commenting that it feels bad at highest level they have 15% smaller chance to hit than fighters do.
Like thing is that if spell attacks hit, they can do damage of about two or three non crit strikes, but main thing that makes them unsatisfying isn't them being inaccurate for relatively small gain, its that they do nothing on miss and if they aren't cantrips, you just lost resource. Martials don't have limited resources on their special things.
Like just saying, you don't actually need to change spell attack math much if non critical hit miss actually did something anyway.
I kinda don't feel like taking part in spell attack conversations better since nobody analyses the interesting weird parts of math(I'm still fascinated by how its easier to hit high ac with spell attack than have high save fail vs dc) and just keeps commenting that it feels bad at highest level they have 15% smaller chance to hit than fighters do.
Like thing is that if spell attacks hit, they can do damage of about two or three non crit strikes, but main thing that makes them unsatisfying isn't them being inaccurate for relatively small gain, its that they do nothing on miss and if they aren't cantrips, you just lost resource. Martials don't have limited resources on their special things.
Like just saying, you don't actually need to change spell attack math much if non critical hit miss actually did something anyway.
The issue here isn't just that they do nothing and cost a resource on a miss but that you can always have better odds of landing a failed save if you manage to target the weakest save with an appropriate spell. So it's fighting against your learned system mastery without offering sufficient reward for doing so.
Please try to not reduce the discussion to Casters vs Martials because this isn't the thread problem. It's like The Rules Lawyer says "in a fight of Martials vs Casters who wins is the dragon!".
The main focus here is about the Spell Attacks that are subpar outside the usage as SpellStrikes and similar. It's a self contained caster problem where until we know cannot be simply solved just using a True Strike and this is specially problematic for cantrips in lower levels where the number of options that casters have are pretty low, specially for casters focused in spell slots like wizards.
Yuri, you are the one bringing in a short bow to this conversation.
Sometimes, trying to overcome saving throw spells as a caster is exceedingly difficult. Especially higher level ones. Sometimes the whole party is debuffing AC and party buffing attack rolls and you have a boss whose AC is functionally 4 or 5 points lower. Not using a powerful spell in those situations because your third action is going to be a bow attack is a choice you can make, but it is not a necessary one and getting good with a bow requires investment from the caster. A spell attack roll spell and a top slot 3rd action missile can very easily be better caster damage than a save spell and a bow attack.
No I bring the shortbow to casters I didn't put a full martial class in the discussion. I mentioned the shortbow because it's more simple to understand that casters can use weapons and many times that's more efficient the try to compensate an attack spell with a True Strike. But if you think that's too much just remember that all casters can use other simple weapons, including druids and warpriests having good armors and shields and bards and oracles having access to martial weapons.
I didn't want to turn the discussion into another useless martial vs caster discussion. I'm trying to focus into spell attack efficiency over saves here only.
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Please try to not reduce the discussion to Casters vs Martials because this isn't the thread problem. It's like The Rules Lawyer says "in a fight of Martials vs Casters who wins is the dragon!".
The main focus here is about the Spell Attacks that are subpar outside the usage as SpellStrikes and similar. It's a self contained caster problem where until we know cannot be simply solved just using a True Strike and this is specially problematic for cantrips in lower levels where the number of options that casters have are pretty low, specially for casters focused in spell slots like wizards.
Yuri, you are the one bringing in a short bow to this conversation.
Sometimes, trying to overcome saving throw spells as a caster is exceedingly difficult. Especially higher level ones. Sometimes the whole party is debuffing AC and party buffing attack rolls and you have a boss whose AC is functionally 4 or 5 points lower. Not using a powerful spell in those situations because your third action is going to be a bow attack is a choice you can make, but it is not a necessary one and getting good with a bow requires investment from the caster. A spell attack roll spell and a top slot 3rd action missile can very easily be better caster damage than a save spell and a bow attack.
No I bring the shortbow to casters I didn't put a full martial class in the discussion. I mentioned the shortbow because it's more simple to understand that casters can use weapons and many times that's more efficient the try to compensate an attack spell with a True Strike. But if you think that's too much just remember that all casters can use other simple weapons, including druids and warpriests having good armors and shields and bards and oracles having access to martial weapons.
I didn't want to turn the discussion into another useless martial vs caster discussion. I'm trying to focus into spell attack efficiency over saves here only.
IIRC there was a quote or link in another similar thread (maybe the Remastered wizard thread) where Mark Seifter explained that no attack-boosting item for casters was a deliberate choice so that players of casters would explore all the possibilities provided by spells (especially the save-based ones) rather than just focus on spell attacks to the detriment of the rest simply because the attack-boosting item would be there.
1) Paizo needs a team to go back and fix balance issues post-release. Spell balance is a mess and loads of classes, Wizard being especially notable, have obvious must take feats and other levels where you wonder why any of the feats are meant to add to your build.
The remaster project is partially this. I thing that the changes in how often the errata is release was also focused in this (but this errata political change probably was affected by the remaster project. I just expect that they back their focus in erratas after remaster release).
2) Saves should probably just work like AC. Casters feel bad in part because of how rarely they get to roll dice. Save spells also don't benefit from fortune effects or hero points because they aren't your attack to roll.
I disagree that "Saves should probably just work like AC". It's still fun see the others rolling their saves as the same way its fun to you rolling it. But I agree that fortune effects could be used in saves too. (including I use this as house-rule for hero points in my tables. I allow my players to force the others to re-roll save checks that comes from the player adding misfortune to it.
3) True strike should be changed and critical effects should be nerfed so we can enjoy proper hit rates with spells that target AC. This overvaluing of crits hurts casters more than the occasional WOW moment helps them.
I disagree completely here. The current critical system is very fun and intuitive. It's greater evolution from what we have in PF1 or 5e.
IMO True Strike don't need to be changed. Just be stoped to be treated like a patch because it isn't a patch.4) Casters and multi-classing and now archetyping has always felt bad outside of specific builds but PF2 has done very little to address this flaw. Martials get more from poaching spells via archetyping than casters get going the other way.
Currently the Michael Sayre posted a change the will improve the casters MC options a lot.
IMO it still laking good non-mc archetypes for casters but the MC ones are pretty good.5) Range is overvalued when Paizo's own scenarios rarely let you use more than 100 ft of it. They heavily nerf ranged damage versus melee and this is probably too heavy-handed.
I partially agree here.
Yes the range is really overvalued because its rare to have a situation with maps that have space to distance diferences in weapons and spells to be significative. But I don't think that the ranged attack in general needs to be improved because even with shorter distances the risks that melee characters take are far greater. My only complains about ranged attacks are that attack spells usually subpar outside the usage with SpellStrike like abilities but you can easily compensate this using save ones and the reload weapons that are subpar when compared to bows and thrown weapons but this is was already discussed in another topic.6) The lack of themed caster support is baffling. The best classes in PF1 were the half-casters and they were all themed. This idea that every class gets all spells and should be a toolbox that holds the best ones is terrible for giving players anything but false choices in the spells they pick.
I agree but we saw an interview with Mark Seifter a former member of rule books design team explaining that the removal of the schools opened the space to more thematic classes that's no more under the hood of wizard schools like for example a dedicated necromancer class.
Maybe we get some new interesting themed casters in a near future.
IIRC there was a quote or link in another similar thread (maybe the Remastered wizard thread) where Mark Seifter explained that no attack-boosting item for casters was a deliberate choice so that players of casters would explore all the possibilities provided by spells (especially the save-based ones) rather than just focus on spell attacks to the detriment of the rest simply because the attack-boosting item would be there.
I remember this post too.
That's why I still defend that reduce many attack spells to one-action (using a spellshape(metamagic), item or a buff spell like a lesser version of Fiery Body/Ferrous Form) could be a more interesting and fun solution than just give some attack bonus to them. Yet we can get something like Attenuators or just change the Shadow Signet to be automatic (automatically target the worse between AC, Reflex and Fortitude instead of you have to try to guess or recover using some homebrew/MC specific RK check that give that info) too.
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With a baby on the way and a shiny playtest in my hands, I am just not going to spend my time showing you all the math the developers already know about how much easier it is to take advantage of tactics to hurt solo boss creatures with spell attack roll spells rather than just trying to target them with saving throw spells and do half damage.
We've done it on these boards before and you can go find it.
House ruling hero points to affect enemy saving throw spells is a massive, massive boost to their effectiveness and would incredibly bias how much more effective saving throw spells are than attack roll spells. Far more than interpreting spectral hand as allowing the caster to flank with the hand.
I can only imagine that casters playing with that house rule would really feel like spell attack roll spells are a waste of time.
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If it’s so easy to compensate for and unnecessary to support, I assume you ban all weapon potency runes in your games Unicore?
If in this hypothetical situation Martials also had easy access to powerful attack options that targeted Fortitude/Reflex/Will, their attacks naturally did more damage than they currently do, and most of their damaging options took 2 actions instead of 1...then yes I probably would rather see a martial item like the shadow signet ring than item bonuses just to their attack roll abilities.
AC is the easiest defense to debuff, but all characters sometimes need to make attacks vs enemies that are not debuffed at all. Martials don't really have any other options, so they either have to spend actions debuffing themselves, or just trying to power through with laws of averages to eventually get hits. Usually the best plan for martials is a combination of the two.
Casters can just try to figure out what the lowest save is and target that. If having a different tactical meta for casters than martials doesn't enrich the game for you then there really is no point in having martial characters play differently from casters at all.
One thing it should be considered is action economy, and how multi-attack penalizes the chance to hit.
It’s clear that martial has more chance for the 1st hit, but for high AC the remaining the chance drops a lot.
A caster can try a saving throw one plus an attack with no penalty, and maybe that was taken into account when the whole was made.
But, this usually requires some special configs, like Quicken casting or mixing 1 with 2 action spells.
Then, if looking for some balance in that way, we should check for difference. Putting the Fighter aside, as the only one getting legendary proficiency, but the other martials getting degrees earlier than casters, we could assume like near 2 points of difference in proficiency, another 2 (average) for Potency items, for a total of 3-4 points of difference. Martials also have ways to reduce the multi-attack penalty, like dual-wielding or quick shoot.
Probably would need a time and playtest to check if combining all the above it is balanced for everyone if the magic has no Potency option available on items.
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What they did with the Kineticist seems like a good plan for casters. Make an item that tops out at +2 item bonus would probably resolve the issue.
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Maybe allowing to use an extra action to grant (i.e.) +2 to attack. It does not overlap with True Strike as it uses too that action, and grants some way to make more worth to use the Attack spell instead the Saving one if you can afford it.
I think the somatic component “free hand” means not having it constrained, but you can hold items while casting. Then if we go for the material component, some classes bypass it (like Sorcerer) mostly and if we have the combo class using material component + spell requiring material component, probably was intended as way to force you to not wear some equipment (at least one “real” free hand). I can think about the Wizard without the feat to bypass material or the Witch.
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You don't need a free hand to cast without material components (and many classes can convert them to somatic) also in remaster looks like that the non-cost material component will be removed at all.
spells attacks are currently the equivalent of a back weapon or side arm. it's not supposed to be as good as your make thing.
making them better would mean casters no longer had any lesser magic options.
It would be ok, if they were only allowed to use those kinds of spells. which is sort of the point of kineticist.
otherwise in my opinion it would reduce every martial to just being a meat shield, and just completely render moot any of the low ac martial classes.
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spells attacks are currently the equivalent of a back weapon or side arm. it's not supposed to be as good as your make thing.
making them better would mean casters no longer had any lesser magic options.
It would be ok, if they were only allowed to use those kinds of spells. which is sort of the point of kineticist.
otherwise in my opinion it would reduce every martial to just being a meat shield, and just completely render moot any of the low ac martial classes.
That's a lot to put on a staggered +2 bonus.
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making them better would mean casters no longer had any lesser magic options.
Lesser magic options is what cantrips, focus spells, and lower level slots are for.
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Lesser magic options is what cantrips, focus spells, and lower-level slots are for.
making them better would mean casters no longer had any lesser magic options.
that's not really true, there are quite a few focus spells that are extremely powerful.
Lower-level spells slots are not really a lesser option. Slow, Haste, true strike, invisibly, mirror image, Heroism etc, there are tons of spells options that are amazing with "lower" spell slots.
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Lesser magic options is what cantrips, focus spells, and lower-level slots are for.
making them better would mean casters no longer had any lesser magic options.that's not really true, there are quite a few focus spells that are extremely powerful.
Lower-level spells slots are not really a lesser option. Slow, Haste, true strike, invisibly, mirror image, Heroism etc, there are tons of spells options that are amazing with "lower" spell slots.
Notice how you only mentioned buff spells with the sole exception of Slow which has a specially good effect on success but not incapacitate.
Damaage effects and incapacitation effects in low spell level slots are out right unusable.
seriously, what would even be the point of playing a martials if low level spells slots could do comparable damage of a martial plus buff, and heal and slow.
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I'd think the easiest thing is to allow potency runes on the wizard's bonded item. Familiars will need something probably that is similar.
Cool bonus if the wizard adds a potency rune to a weapon bonded item that means its not just flavor or some wierd build.
I feel the more fun enchanted things the better. It feels more fantasy tropey if I can add a potency rune to that bauble or scepter that powers up my spells as a wizard instead of each thing having to be its own item.
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6th level spell shape (metamagic) feat that for 1 action you get +2 to your next spell attack before the end of that round useable only on spells at least 1 or 2 ranks below your maximum.
Fixes the problem nicely, its a feat that comes online when it starts being relevant (the gap between 5 and 7), remains relevant all game, balanced in that you can't use your maximum damage potential spells with it for those worried about the off chance of an extreme damage spike.
6th level spell shape (metamagic) feat that for 1 action you get +2 to your next spell attack before the end of that round useable only on spells at least 1 or 2 ranks below your maximum.
Fixes the problem nicely, its a feat that comes online when it starts being relevant (the gap between 5 and 7), remains relevant all game, balanced in that you can't use your maximum damage potential spells with it for those worried about the off chance of an extreme damage spike.
True strike is better than this and it's trivial to get so many that you'll never run out.
Yes I believe it was a mistake for this spell to either..
Exist at all
Or
Not be on every classes spell list
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6th level spell shape (metamagic) feat that for 1 action you get +2 to your next spell attack before the end of that round useable only on spells at least 1 or 2 ranks below your maximum.
Fixes the problem nicely, its a feat that comes online when it starts being relevant (the gap between 5 and 7), remains relevant all game, balanced in that you can't use your maximum damage potential spells with it for those worried about the off chance of an extreme damage spike.
True strike is better than this and it's trivial to get so many that you'll never run out.
Yes I believe it was a mistake for this spell to either..
Exist at all
Or
Not be on every classes spell list
I wonder if that last point was for matters of balance, of Tradition's identity or something else.
6th level spell shape (metamagic) feat that for 1 action you get +2 to your next spell attack before the end of that round useable only on spells at least 1 or 2 ranks below your maximum.
Fixes the problem nicely, its a feat that comes online when it starts being relevant (the gap between 5 and 7), remains relevant all game, balanced in that you can't use your maximum damage potential spells with it for those worried about the off chance of an extreme damage spike.
True strike is better than this and it's trivial to get so many that you'll never run out.
Yes I believe it was a mistake for this spell to either..
Exist at all
Or
Not be on every classes spell list
I'm currently running a 5e game and it has been noted how bad True Strike is in that system. We spitballed some ideas and our table concluded that if it's ever worth using it will become a meta must-have so we decided to keep it so bad it isn't worth trying to use. Some concepts are just too toxic to be worth balancing.
seriously, what would even be the point of playing a martials if low level spells slots could do comparable damage of a martial plus buff, and heal and slow.Lesser magic options is what cantrips, focus spells, and lower-level slots are for.
making them better would mean casters no longer had any lesser magic options.that's not really true, there are quite a few focus spells that are extremely powerful.
Lower-level spells slots are not really a lesser option. Slow, Haste, true strike, invisibly, mirror image, Heroism etc, there are tons of spells options that are amazing with "lower" spell slots.
Notice how you only mentioned buff spells with the sole exception of Slow which has a specially good effect on success but not incapacitate.
Damaage effects and incapacitation effects in low spell level slots are out right unusable.
Oh, so much this. They did a fabulous job in eliminating the unfair free damage scaling (per "caster level") for lower level slots that used to exist in PF1...
I previously posted, I think 150 or so posts ago. I have more data for the interested on my proposed solution.
My initial fix was to add in +1/+2 spell attack runes at 5/13. This rune has a 1 action tax to activate and the activation has the metamagic trait.
The activation also pushed up the critical threshhold of the attack by the same amount as the bonus (IE; if you activated a +1 spell attack rune and would normally hit on a 15, your attack would be at +1 and you would critically hit on 26 instead of 25)
This was an attempt to balance out magical critical hits, which seem especially powerful overall, while still improving the feel and mitigating the pain points of casters. No change was made to saves as overall, with more generous and well defined RK checks as expected in the remaster, they perform mostly adequately. Again, my goal is not to boost overall actual power as casters do perform within the parameters of the other classes, but rather to enhance the feel of the casters to make the mechanical aspects more palatable.
After some experimentation, I have made the following adjustments to that system:
The rune functions adequately to change the feel of at least Sorcerers and Bards, without wildly changing their damage output or behavior. My players are much happier with this.
I also elected to create a commonly available weapon, the spellcaster's ring, in three flavors - Int, Wis, and Cha, all of which can make a 1d4 attack in electrical, cold, fire, sonic, or force damage. Each ring uses its associated casting stat as the base for attack rolls with it, and if it has a spell attack rune on it, it treats that spell attack rune as a potency rune and can have striking runes added. The ring has a 30 foot range and has the free hand trait.
Effectively, the ring is just a weak single action cantrip comparable to a returning throwing dagger - literally half of an electric arc with an attack roll rather than a save. However, again, the feel improves for casters when they gain the option to participate in damage dealing in a magical *feeling* way.
I view this as progress. I'll continue updating as I get more chances to do balance testing. Best of luck to everyone!
Staves can have fundamental (potency and striking) runes.
Staves can have fundamental (potency and striking) runes.
Thats if tou want to hit someone with a strike right?
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Yes. Fundamental Runes, as currrently implemented, don't affect spellcasting. If we (if Paizo) add a rune type that affects spellcasting, it would imo be a good idea not to call it a potency rune.
Yes. Fundamental Runes, as currrently implemented, don't affect spellcasting. If we (if Paizo) add a rune type that affects spellcasting, it would imo be a good idea not to call it a potency rune.
Good point.
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Why though?
Why not just design spell damage and accuracy from the beginning to be at the level you would want them to be?
I mean the thing about weapon runes is they only apply to one weapon. “Here is an item that works on all spells” might as well just be built into the spells to begin with. What interesting choice would this enable?