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Recalling knowledge, succeeding. And finding nothing useful should not be possible. The very definition of a successful recalling of knowledge is that you learn something useful. Even if the GM finds nothing mechanical (which really shouldn’t be possible either), helping the players figure out what the creature is trying to do in the encounter and what will stop it should be the information you (as GM) are striving to feed to your players. If, as a GM, none of your encounters have meaning for for the NPCs beyond “they want to fight and win, the party can stop them by fighting better,” you are setting yourself up for a pretty disappointing campaign.
Yeah, if you're the GM and your players are telling you they aren't finding Recall Knowledge useful, that's a failing on your part. Well, and on Recall Knowledge rules being confusing, but getting useful information is literally written into the success condition of the action.
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Recalling knowledge, succeeding. And finding nothing useful should not be possible. The very definition of a successful recalling of knowledge is that you learn something useful. Even if the GM finds nothing mechanical (which really shouldn’t be possible either), helping the players figure out what the creature is trying to do in the encounter and what will stop it should be the information you (as GM) are striving to feed to your players. If, as a GM, none of your encounters have meaning for for the NPCs beyond “they want to fight and win, the party can stop them by fighting better,” you are setting yourself up for a pretty disappointing campaign.
This happens specially in lower levels where many monsters don't have some big weak point or a great special ability to try to avoid. For example wolves, this first creature that players faces in Plaguestone adventure, is prety obvious that their highest save is reflex, also the difference between other 2 saves is only 1 point, and Pack Attack isn't so much relevant info when you already being flanked by 2 wolves and already have all the interest to kill one of them.
With all this information the spellcasters still prefer to EA+Strike than try a Daze because the save different isn't enough to worth and you probably don't want to use one of your fewest spellslot against a wolf.
In the end I don't blame them to judge that the information doesn't worth enought.
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In contemplating this overnight, I think I am liking this change more. Not that I disliked it entirely in the first place.
The current state of damage cantrips is pretty flat. There are a handful of d4+mod damage cantrips that you choose between either because of the energy type that they do, the limited choice you have on your tradition, or because of the one little difference that they have.
Electric Arc being one big standout because it does double damage overall since it can target two enemies.
Telekinetic Projectile being the other one since it does d6+mod instead.
Then there is:
Spout that has the edge of being an area effect.
Produce Flame that can be used in melee or at range.
Gouging Claw that also does d6+mod but only at melee range.
Ray of Frost if you want to cast from way in the distance.
Phase Bolt that ignores 2 points of the enemy's circumstance bonus.
Scatter Scree that could potentially target two enemies, is an area effect, and leaves a bit of difficult terrain behind.
Divine Lance that can't be used on half of the enemies that you face.
And Disrupt Undead that can't be used on most of the enemies that you face unless your campaign has a particular theme to it.
But for all of these damage cantrips, they are mostly just damage. How often do you remember that Ray of Frost could potentially impose a speed penalty? Or that Produce Flame might add persistent fire damage?
What percentage of the time would your choice of damage cantrip actually make a beneficial difference in the outcome of a combat? What is the percentage if we omit the scenario where an enemy has a weakness to the damage type?
Now consider: If we had a new version of Ray of Frost that was on the 2d4, heightened +1d4 scale, but added a one-round clumsy 1 on a successful attack roll and clumsy 1, -10 speeds on a critical - would that be a trade that you are interested in?
In general, would you be willing to trade the minimum damage of these cantrips for additional effects that land on a successful attack roll or regular fail on a save, and more depth of options in choice of cantrips?
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Its a potentially a big conversation, but it seems like there is little stomach to actual have it vs just having a certain class of spell just suck more than others.
I found a post by Michael Sayre the other day, wherein he talk about the role of Shadow Signet. In it he had a statement which I think defines this whole issue
Michael Sayre wrote:
So the shadow signet essentially serves two purposes-
1) Help guide people into understanding how to play a spellcaster
2) Provide some additional support for spell attack spells if a player wants to focus on them more than the base engine of the game assumes they will.
Essentially, "the correct way to play a spell caster is not to use Spell Attacks, because we assume you will use more save based spells as you learn the system better."
There is no correct way to play a spell caster. There are multiple good ways to play one.
If there was then the game wouldn't really be worth playing. It just wouldn't be mechanically interesting enough.That spell attack rolls aren't the primary weapon of most casters is clear in that there just aren't enough spell attacks.
Old_Man_Robot, I think it's worth a criticism here that this quote needs to be better contextualized.
That was Michael's response in a situation where people were advocating that the Attenuators would be the Kineticist's equivalent of the Shadow Signet.
In this Michael argued that no, that the idea of the Shadow Signet is to provide a middle ground to allow spellcasting players to exploit the idea that they can benefit from the weaknesses of monsters and that in practice the Shadow Signet is not even mandatory because supposedly if you have good magical versatility you can meet this demand by choosing spells that exploit different weaknesses.
The important points he points out to me here is that attack spells are not the focus of spellcasters, something quite obvious to anyone who has played with one and that he sees versatility as the main tool of spellcasters and that it would be exploiting it where casters would benefit [and supposedly even out with kineticist and non-casters].
I personally don't agree with this view and I think they overvalue this aspect that in my experience as a GM and player, especially at low levels, it's not that useful.
And they know that, but I don't think they've taken it well until now. The fact that many players don't think that reducing spellcasters to a magical toolbox that tries to have the right tool for the right job is something interesting and fun, the truth is that many players would like what a spellcaster was actually capable of of commanding reality to its bell pleasure after much study and/or effort in impressive, devastating and even trivializing ways over worldly difficulties.
And the most curious part of all this is that the one who ends up proposing to meet this demand is precisely the kineticist, who is presented as the one who dominates one or more elements so that they mold themselves to his will in an impressive, devastating and even trivializing and this is indeed reflected in Impulses.
In other words, as long as designers keep this mentality that spellcasters are mere boxes of magical tools that are there to help solve problems and exploit weaknesses, we will continue to have all these complaints about nerfs and questionable efficiency of magical classes in the game.
I agree that the tool box caster design shouldn't be required to be a reasonably effective caster.
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Well I am confused by trying to claim wolves are the first enemy you face in fall of plaguestone because
the stat block shared is not the stat block of either the mangy wolves or the caustic wolf. There is definitely pertinent information to learn about both sets of wolves and problems that they are going to pose to the party in fall of plaguestone, but assuming that electric arc is you best course of action when facing multiple foes, even when the reflex save of the main enemy is +3 higher than your Save DC and is thus pretty likely to critically succeed and do nothing (it will save on a 7 and critically succeed on a 17, or 20% of the time). The mangy wolves might be worth electric arcing, but you still only have a 5% chance of any of them critically failing, while daze has a 20% chance of getting a critical failure from the wolves. Flanking with a new spell like ingition, on the other hand only requires a 6 to hit, with a 16 being a crit (so a 25% chance), and has a 41% chance of one shotting a wolf even on a regular hit, and that is only with flanking, not intimidating it first, which would also be very likely to succeed if you knew they had terrible will saves.
Players do have strange meta-assumptions about the value of different actions that guide them to play certain classes certain ways. That is fine if they are having fun playing them that way, but when they are not having fun playing them that way, the table has to decide whether it is better to bend the game rules to fit the expectations of the play style or to start thinking about whether the party wants to change how they are playing. The GM can very easily help do either.
The point of talking about recall knowledge at all in a thread about whether cantrips are getting nerfed by losing attribute modifiers to damage rolls is that one poster was suggesting that none of this matters because players should just not ever think they are supposed to use spell attack roll spells in the first place, so none of the cantrips that use spell attack rolls matter anyway. Then an example was put forward by another player of how electric arc would just be the best cantrip to use in the first encounter of fall of plaguestone, and that should be obvious whether you recall knowledge or not. But it is also not actually true, as electric arc is very unlikely to finish any enemy that it targets while the new ignition cantrip, without modifiers, is pretty likely to be able to one shot an enemy if the player is aware of the abilities of the enemy.
It is very difficult to talk about just one aspect of spell casting in PF2 because the math of the game interconnects a lot of different factors. People unhappy with one element very frequently try to pile on their issues with other elements of the game in the least flattering light, but when those elements are looked at together from the perspective of "how could this work" the situation is rarely as dire as it is painted out to be. The difference of opinion here is largely where the base line should be. Are players acting tactically? or should no tactics be assumed in the base line math? The thing about PF2 math is that it can be changed so much by tactics that the top end of tactical spell casting in PF2 is not that far off of the top end of tactical spell casting in PF1. It is lower, but not by so much that slight nudges to the floor won't push the ceiling right back to a place where casters can just do everything.
Why was this change (loss of attribute to damage) to cantrips made? is a fair question.Trying to answer it for ourselves as speculating players without all the pieces in place is an exercise in frustration. It is also one that could easily have some missing piece that is going to solve the problem for a lot of players and we just don't know it yet.
Even something as subtle as "creatures are going to be given approximately 2 or 3 more points of weaknesses in the remastery and thus the ability to do the right damage type is going to already boost the right cantrip past the old cantrips anyway," would more than cover the difference.
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Recalling knowledge, succeeding. And finding nothing useful should not be possible. The very definition of a successful recalling of knowledge is that you learn something useful. Even if the GM finds nothing mechanical (which really shouldn’t be possible either), helping the players figure out what the creature is trying to do in the encounter and what will stop it should be the information you (as GM) are striving to feed to your players. If, as a GM, none of your encounters have meaning for for the NPCs beyond “they want to fight and win, the party can stop them by fighting better,” you are setting yourself up for a pretty disappointing campaign.Yeah, if you're the GM and your players are telling you they aren't finding Recall Knowledge useful, that's a failing on your part. Well, and on Recall Knowledge rules being confusing, but getting useful information is literally written into the success condition of the action.Not at all trying to argue with anyone here (and apologies if I'm going off-tangent for the thread!) but I will say recall knowledge is very "mileage will vary" from table to table. Some GMs think that it should just give you what's listed for examples - for instance, "this demon is vulnerable to cold iron and very charming" (succubus) several rounds after the party has hit her with a cold iron ax and the barbarian's been dominated. It's not intuitively obvious that recall knowledge should give you NEW information that you don't already know from fighting the monster , and I think that's the problem people are identifying here.
So cantrip (and spell) versatility can be sort of irrelevant if you GM will not tell you "so its lowest defense is Fortitude, and don't even try to target Will". I've never had a GM nice enough to tell me those sorts of things IC or OOC.
Exactly. The thing that PF2 needs to do better is help GMs release the flow of information that makes the interesting and robust challenges of PF2 encounters more dynamic and exciting. Not give players ways to further ignore those elements by overspecializing into routines that become static and boring. That is why recalling knowledge needs more to it for sure, which we have been told will be a part of the remastery. But Ignition is a better spell than produce flame because it's niche (the ability to benefit from flanking in melee) is boosted, but its utility as a cantrip that can also be used at range when fire damage is the best damage type to be doing is still present. The cost of dialing this spell in was a loss of a point of damage when the spell is being used in its least tactical application. That is very intelligent design to me.
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I used wolf as example because I only remember that was wolves I had forget they are a different kind of wolf yet the utility of RK still questionable once their main ability is a passive from their attacks I just remembered that was an info that doesn't made any significative difference in their actions.
About Daze, no one that isn't a psychic consider that thing useful even if their chance to critic is higher also I don't say numbers in RK just what is better or worse or that I think can be relevant to the players and I remember that they critically fail the caustic wolf RK check due it's Unique trait I just said that was a normal wolf without the fleas.
This also remembers me how terrible are RK vs bosses due their rarity tags.
In the end without an investigator or a thaumaturge is very tricky to RK to hope to get useful info to choose what are your best spells to use and still have to hope that you have prepared it.
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In general, would you be willing to trade the minimum damage of these cantrips for additional effects that land on a successful attack roll or regular fail on a save, and more depth of options in choice of cantrips?Yeah, and what is the point of asking when we already know that Ignition is still only damage on hit and Tangle vine is still a very short range spell attack with niche uses?
Did you notice that this entire thread is 100% speculation of changes that we really haven't seen?
Yes. Ignition is leaning even more heavily into melee primary and ranged secondary than Produce Flame does. And it is also pure damage still.
But do you seriously think that the game developers don't realize that removing the ability bonus damage and adding an additional 1d4 damage is a reduction of both average and minimum damage? Do you think that they are doing this just because they don't like spellcasters? That they think that cantrips need a nerf?
Or do you suppose that they are making this change as a way to reallocate the power budget of cantrips? Either to give more power to other sections of a spellcaster's class options, or to give more power to other aspects of cantrips.
Yes, I saw Ignition and Tangle Vine. You know what else I saw? Figment. Which unlike Ghost Sound it can also produce visual images, and more importantly, it explicitly allows making a Create a Diversion attempt as part of the action cost of the spell, and with a bonus to the check.
Yes, this entire thread is speculation. No need to only speculate that the sky is falling though.
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Recalling knowledge, succeeding. And finding nothing useful should not be possible. The very definition of a successful recalling of knowledge is that you learn something useful. Even if the GM finds nothing mechanical (which really shouldn’t be possible either), helping the players figure out what the creature is trying to do in the encounter and what will stop it should be the information you (as GM) are striving to feed to your players. If, as a GM, none of your encounters have meaning for for the NPCs beyond “they want to fight and win, the party can stop them by fighting better,” you are setting yourself up for a pretty disappointing campaign.Yeah, if you're the GM and your players are telling you they aren't finding Recall Knowledge useful, that's a failing on your part. Well, and on Recall Knowledge rules being confusing, but getting useful information is literally written into the success condition of the action.Not at all trying to argue with anyone here (and apologies if I'm going off-tangent for the thread!) but I will say recall knowledge is very "mileage will vary" from table to table. Some GMs think that it should just give you what's listed for examples - for instance, "this demon is vulnerable to cold iron and very charming" (succubus) several rounds after the party has hit her with a cold iron ax and the barbarian's been dominated. It's not intuitively obvious that recall knowledge should give you NEW information that you don't already know from fighting the monster , and I think that's the problem people are identifying here.
So cantrip (and spell) versatility can be sort of irrelevant if you GM will not tell you "so its lowest defense is Fortitude, and don't even try to target Will". I've never had a GM nice enough to tell me those sorts of things IC or OOC.
Yeah, I agree there's massive table variation and it is a problem. I agree with Michael Sayre-- useful means actionable, and the rules support that. The problem is it's one very particular word you need to look closely at, and there's a whole multi-paragraph section on identifying creatures which muddles the issue. It also doesn't help that people got used to a very particular way of running Recall Knowledge in PF1 that doesn't jive with PF2 rules, particularly given RK now costs an action and can feed you wrong information.
But if a massive chunk of the consumer base is not running the rules by RAW, then there's a failure in the way it was written to make that point clear. Which is why I hope we do get the expectations cleared up.
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Daze is good for its long range and for solo bosses with bad will saves. I am curious what will happen with the damage on the equivalent remastered spell, because 4 flat damage really isn't terrible compared to 2d4. A rework of what recall knowledge gives you should also think about the rarity tags. I agree.
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I agree with 2d4 cantrips Daze becomes more competitive I just don't like how this was achieved.
"Mom! All my classmates got better grades than mine!
OK son, I will transfer you to a school where all your friends will get grades close to yours".
I've been known to prepare Daze for urban campaigns where I am worried about killing low level people by accident or trying to take prisoners for interrogation. I've actually gotten an ok amount of usage from it.
Granted, I only bother with Divine and Occult casters who are super strapped for alternatives or my Strength of Thousands caster who has approximately one million cantrips to prepare, but there's at least a use case.
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Class DC (using Key Modifier) + Damage Bonus (using Key Modifier) = double importance
Class DC (using Key Modifier) + Damage Bonus (not using Key Modifier) = single importance
...
I think I am okay with the change, as now you can justify a 16, 14, or even 12 in a casting stat and not take a hit to early damage.
=)
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I am imagining that the damage might drop to a D4 on Daze, but that the spell gets a useful fail debuff (dazzle, frightened 1, maybe stupified 1 for a turn?) as well as keeping stun and double damage on a crit.
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I think that's a very uncharitable reading of Sayre's post. They're saying that the expectation for casters in the system is that they're trying to target weak defences, he's not saying anything about not using spell attacks. When he says 'focus on [spell attacks] more than the base engine of the game assumed they will', that means that there is the expectation that these spells are appropriate in some situations, but the Shadow Signet ring expands those situations. That's very explicitly the opposite of your takeaway of 'never use spell attacks'.
Spellcasters are balanced around having a variety of defences to target, and trying to selectively target those - I don't think that's a surprise to people who are focusing heavily on the impacts of these changes. There are valid questions about that balancing, with table variation making it harder to know the defence to target (hopefully the Remaster's new Recall Knowledge helps there), and with this expectation not being fully communicated to all players/not being as easy to live up to for all classes. I think it's one of the hidden advantages of the Arcane list - the rest of the lists mostly struggle to easily target all defences. But if you view spell attack rolls as something that you use when the situation is appropriate, they do work well - AC can be debuffed more heavily than saving throws, and it can very easily end up the appropriate defence to target. That's what Sayre is saying there - Shadow Signet teaches you to think about enemy weaknesses, and to try and target your spells specifically for those weaknesses.
As an educational tool, I would say it comes about 8 levels too late to be of a real value. But I take the general point.
The problem is, remains, and has been since day one, that the system does not treat Spell Attacks like other spells.
If it was just matter of learning your enemies weaknesses and picking the right tool for the job, we wouldn't have this structural divorce between the two spell types.
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The problem is, remains, and has been since day one, that the system does not treat Spell Attacks like other spells.
Well, that could be 'fixed' by giving the Basic Save rules the treatment of Flaming Sphere.
Critical failure: double damage
Failure: full damage
Success: no damage
Critical success: no damage
Better?
As a bonus, now all spells match the results of Strike too.
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Are people really that shocked by this change?
They are heavily leaning into encouraging Spellcasters to use Focus Spells more and Cantrips less, this will have that impact. It pushes PCs away from boring consistent Cantrip Spam into having to spend resources on things they chose to invest Class Feats on (or a dedicated Class Path) that defines what their personal specialty is.
Cantrips after level 2 should be the option of last resort with the exception of enemies that are magic immune in which case you can always TRY to use a crossbow or just simply cry instead. This is all by design and the game balance thus far has shown that it is often a better option to use a Cantrip than an actual Spell Slot or Focus point.
That aside, it does still very much surprise me that they ARE operating under a "nerf positive" assumption but there is still no sign that Bard is getting knocked down a peg.
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The problem is, remains, and has been since day one, that the system does not treat Spell Attacks like other spells.Well, that could be 'fixed' by giving the Basic Save rules the treatment of Flaming Sphere.
Critical failure: double damage
Failure: full damage
Success: no damage
Critical success: no damageBetter?
As a bonus, now all spells match the results of Strike too.
Flicks water at the cat
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Rubs water off head with paw
We could take it even farther too. Make spells cost one action and give all of them, including save-based spells, the Attack trait. Put back in the ability modifier to the damage. Readjust the damage scaling.
We could completely remove the martial/caster disparity entirely.
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Maybe are they also removing Strength to damage...
That would strongly rebalance the game.
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Just based on my own group, I can say that cantrips still are used at level 12.
The "cantrips are not meant to be used past earliest levels" argument really does not fly for me.
I also find it rather weird since, for Magus, with its very limited spells, cantrip spellstrike is apparently seen as a solid base line.
Yes, Magus gets better action economy and better to hit bonus, but it seems weird to argue that saving throw cantrip + attack on a caster is completely non viable.
Same for Eldritch archer, which has even less high level spell slots.
Why the effort on here to wrangle some sort of justification for caster damage nerf?
The complaint about cantrips was pretty much always "other cantrips do not compare to electric arc and acid splash, daze, etc. are aprticularly weak".
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Maybe are they also removing Strength to damage...
That would strongly rebalance the game.
Now you're thinking. Maybe remove Weapon Potency and Striking runes too and have extra dice of damage based on character level.
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Farien. Quit it.
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Now you're thinking. Maybe remove Weapon Potency and Striking runes too and have extra dice of damage based on character level.Maybe are they also removing Strength to damage...
That would strongly rebalance the game.
That's ABP and they won't make the basic rule out of it.
But removing Strength to damage and creating a static bonus to damage for weapons and cantrips (or damaging spells in general) of 4 points at level 1, 7 points with Weapon Spe and 12 points with Greater Spe would help a lot of classes (Swashbuckler, Investigator), slightly nerf Fighter and rebalance Finesse builds to finaly compete with Strength based builds.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Finesse builds compete fine
No they don't.
Also Strength fuels AC more than Dex and Reflex also (but less than Dex). Dex is very far from a god stat.
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The thing about Finesse Builds is that being down 1-4 damage matters at low levels, but really doesn't matter at high levels at all.
Like at 10th level your monk or swashbuckler having 10 Str is really only going to matter if they have to make an athletics check or carry a lot of stuff. At 1st level, you will notice.
The thing about Finesse Builds is that being down 1-4 damage matters at low levels, but really doesn't matter at high levels at all.
Like at 10th level your monk or swashbuckler having 10 Str is really only going to matter if they have to make an athletics check or carry a lot of stuff. At 1st level, you will notice.
And why exactly are you choosing Monk and Swashbuckler as your examples of finesse build?
How about running the comparison with Champion or Ranger. Are they going to notice the difference in damage at level 10 between going STR or DEX with finesse?
Remember, the entire point of discussing the difference here is because SuperBidi mentioned removing STR bonus to Strike. How would a Champion or Ranger player react to that?
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The thing about Finesse Builds is that being down 1-4 damage matters at low levels, but really doesn't matter at high levels at all.
Like at 10th level your monk or swashbuckler having 10 Str is really only going to matter if they have to make an athletics check or carry a lot of stuff. At 1st level, you will notice.
It's not entirely true. It matters less at high level, but still matters a lot (it goes from nearly doubling your damage to 20% extra damage and is roughly 25% extra damage at level 10).
Remember, the entire point of discussing the difference here is because SuperBidi mentioned removing STR bonus to Strike. How would a Champion or Ranger player react to that?
To be precise, I've spoken of replacing all bonuses to damage by a fixed bonus akin to Weapon Specialization, roughly equivalent to the stat you should have at that level. So it shouldn't impact Strength based builds.
Better than monks probably, rangers and champions have options to get extra damage on hit outside of boosting strength (precision and blade ally to get free flaming respectively) that monk doesn't really get a lot of.
And those options are exclusive to Rangers or Champions who use DEX?
I'm pretty sure you are bringing in other extraneous things into the comparison. Don't compare STR Champion with no other benefits to DEX Champion with Blade Ally granting Flaming Rune. That isn't a valid comparison to what I am asking about.
Better than monks probably, rangers and champions have options to get extra damage on hit outside of boosting strength (precision and blade ally to get free flaming respectively) that monk doesn't really get a lot of.And those options are exclusive to Rangers or Champions who use DEX?
I'm pretty sure you are bringing in other extraneous things into the comparison. Don't compare STR Champion with no other benefits to DEX Champion with Blade Ally granting Flaming Rune. That isn't a valid comparison to what I am asking about.
Those options make the bonus from strength less impactful, a monk whose only source of bonus damage is ki strike, a focus spell, is gonna be hurt more by the loss of strength to damage than a precision ranger who's got a scaling d6 getting added to it since it's a larger proportion of their damage
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I just got my pdf copy of RoE. Haven't had much time to peruse as I've been on my lunch break, but judging by the couple of cantrips I've seen here so far, I'd say we casters have some good things to look forward to. So I am not as concerned about casters in the remaster as I was previously, especially with respect to the removal of stat bonuses to cantrip damage.
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I've seen first hand the difference between a player who leans into the caster's strengths vs just throwing fire spells.
Witch vs druid
Levels 1-10
The witch, at every turn, was the MVP of nearly every moderate or higher threat encounter.
The druid, occasionally, had good power moments, but just as many bad ones.
The issue is, people want what the druid player is doing to be the way a caster plays
But, despite comments about willingly losing versatility for it to function, I am very doubtful that people will agree with how much they will lose.
In the end, I disagree that the versatility is over valued by paizo
It's under valued by many players though
Edit: this didn't even begin to touch the ooc power the witch had that the druid gave up on in favor of more fire spells
This doesn't sound like a very well played druid.
When I played my druid, at early levels I relied on a mix of bow shot often with electric arc even single target mixed in with Tempest Surge[i]. [i]Tempest Surge has a great rider for helping the party.
As I gained more spells, I mixed those in along with my usual routine.
I also picked up order explorer and had an AC, so I could further mix in bow shots or AC attacks or a mix of them with cantrips, spells, and Tempest surge.
Then I retrained into wild shape later one.
If the druid is not the MVP in your game, they are not utilizing all their abilities or building very well. It's not all about damage.
Every caster cannot play like a druid. A druid can do so much. I would heal as needed. I would summon sometimes to create headaches. Blast. Debuff with a fear or tempest surge or entangle. I could blast damage or martial damage with a weapon or wild shape. I built up their strength and athletics so they could grapple and trip because the druid can focus every ability boost on the four high value stats.
Druid and witch are not even comparable in abilities if you are building optimally and it's not close. You would have to build and play a druid very badly for a witch to be the MVP unless the only thing you were looking at is the occult witch casting synesthesia and slow every battle which every occult caster can do. And slow a druid can cast.
So what innate abilities of the witch were making them operate so great in your campaign? What abilities that they get from the class chassis?
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I can't believe there's a thread this long about how some (one?) cantrip(s) in the preview document have been changed from having 1d4 + caster stat to 2d4 damage; which would be a difference of 1.5 points of damage on average for a caster with a starting modifier of 4 and ~0.5 if you didn't start with a maxed casting stat.
But to be fair, I guess the thread's length isn't because of that.
Is there a particular reason for this?Unification and standardization of spell damage, without randomly sprinkling in extra modifiers on a spell-by-spell basis could be a (very good) reason.
Also the game would punish players less for not min-maxing caster stats.
One of the designers stated they removed stat damage from all spells.
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Since the Magus is not one of the classes in the remastered player cores (magus, summoner, gunslinger, inventor, thaumaturge, psychic and I guess Kineticist are out) then "making it so more of cantrip damage comes from the spell itself, rather than your casting mod" is one of the only opportunities they had to buff the magus in the remaster.
The Wizard you can address with better feats, features, and focus spells in the actual book.