Tell me stories about your successes with Spell casting

[Unicore]

SO there are a lot of conversations going on about the mechanics and math of casting, and with the remastery I think that these questions will be going on for the next several months. And I imagine some folks may want to start their own thread collecting stories of frustrations with spell casting, but as someone who has a lot of fun playing casters, I want to hear your stories about spells that have broken encounters and been great fun at the table. Mostly this is just for fun, but maybe it can also inspire players to try out spells they haven't used before. I'll go first:

The classics

6th level slow is an encounter breaker against fey (or really any low fort creatures) At 16th level, it is not even really using a serious resource, but fighting 4 fey monsters with their human master looked like it could have been a daunting encounter...until 2 of the fey crit failed, 1 failed, and the master and 1 of the fey succeeded. In the first round that was 7 actions eaten and the two that crit failed could pretty much be ignored until the fight was over.

Wall of stone against 3 mounted fighters in an arena (I was GM here). Having the cavelry have to charge the wall and then move back so they could get their damage bonus again in order to be able to break the hardness wasted a lot of actions. A fight against 3 became a fight against 1 and then a fight against 2, easily managed.

Calm Emotions. AoE incapacitation spells get way too much hate. They absolutely shut encounters down because if you have 3 enemies, then there is a very strong likelihood that even your second highest spell slot is going to be good enough to land the effect. For assaulting a well fortified position, I have seen Calm Emotions break an entire wave of reinforcements and keep a fight very manageable.

Focus spells

Tempest surge against low reflex enemies is a power house. Not only does it do good damage, it has a good chance of debuffing the snot out of the target for a big spell slot spell the next round. The creature already had a bad reflex, now they are really in trouble. This is the best spell in the game for hunting black dragons.

Amped Shield. Holy Handgrenades can this spell soak damage! I have seen a Wizard MC Psychic use it very effectively as their third action on an ally, and I have had success with a tanky Tangible Dream Psychic because it pretty much doubles your HP through the early game. Combine it with long duration defensive spells like false life and you can feint being a very appetizing target for the enemy, especially if you also have a champion in your party. For the Psychic, if they start ignoring you because they are tired of your shield, you are often in a good position for round 2 to unleash psyche and then amp imaginary weapon. It has to be one of the toughest 6HP caster options out there.

Lingering composition on Dirge of doom. In a party built to exploit the frightened condition, this opens up an absolute flood gate of critical hits and damage. It has been pretty ridiculous in my experience.

Darken eyes. It takes a while to build this up, but taking away enemies darkvision is brutally effective. I once got a higher level Demon to crit fail on their save, and blinded, the creature just gave up and left the fight. It worked as well as banishment without using a spell slot.

others

2nd level Ventriloquism. It is an auditory illusion that lasts an hour and lets you change what your voice sounds like. Casting it before doing any kind of infiltration scouting and you can be creating distractions over and over again, often accomplishing everything you had hoped to do with an illusory image, but without having wasted the whole slot after one use. It also does not break invisibility and can be used to make it very difficult to pinpoint your exact location since it requires no actions to make your voice sound like it is coming from somewhere else. It is a fun way to waste enemy actions when you are running low on combat spell slots too.

Hydraulic Push. I was a little goblin cleric, unconscious and dying 2 in the grasp of a starving bear. I was dead for sure, because the thing had all its hit points and our martial had a weapon and shield, so to even try to grab me would have involved dropping the weapon and getting mauled himself. The party sorcerer critically hit the bear with a jet of water, heavily damaging it and pushing it away from my character, saving their life. Before this I had been down on spell attack roll spells, but realizing how effective they can be against solo creatures when you really need them turned me right around on my wrong assumptions about them. Once I realized how much easier it is as a team to debuff AC than any other defense, I realized that you don't even need to have true strikes ready to go to get good use out of the occasional spell attack roll spell slot, especially if your still have any hero points.

Lightning Bolt. The damage on this spell is swingy, but when it swings your way, it blows any other similar level spell out of the water. A crit fail can one shot a creature your level or lower, especially if they don't have great reflex saves. As a GM it is the only time I have killed a PC with massive damage.

[Martialmasters]

Witch casted slow

I rolled a 3

My severe encounter with a brain eater became trivial

[Unicore]

Also, stinking cloud and air bubble is a fantastic combination.

[aobst128]

My 15th level scroll thaum had purchased a scroll of horrid wilting on a whim since they had the spare cash. Next encounter we had 12 huge creatures ambush us. First 3 actions was spent to melt their collective health pool with 12 fortitude saves. High level blasting is fun once you have enough targets.

This was an abnormal encounter though with a party of 8 PCs. The creatures were all -4.

[WWHsmackdown]

This past Monday I was playing my lvl 9 psychic and found myself stuck in a burning warehouse. The Great Zambeni unleashed his psyche (whereupon his outlandish handlebar mustache waved around like eels) and cast a 4th lvl shatter to blow a hole in the roof. Next turn I cast fly and flew out. 3rd turn I rolled a 9 on my stupefy check and telekinetic hauled the other PC (a fighter) that was with me out of the warehouse. Unfortunately the hole in the ceiling I made oxygenated the warehouse fire like a bellows and spread like crazy.....we didn't save the warehouse but Zambeni and his bud got the hell out of Dodge.

[3-Body Problem]

I get the idea here, but I don't care that the bits of casters that do work well work. I care that the many parts that don't work are so poorly implemented and that nobody at Paizo seems to recognize it as an issue.

[Perpdepog]

In the first major encounter of Age of Ashes we had to deal with someone who'd grabbed some innocents and was holding them hostage. It was a severe encounter, I believe, because we had to stop the over-leveled baddie while also not giving him time to kill any of his hostages.

Then I cast Command, he crit failed, and wound up being kicked to death by liberated goblins and halflings because I told him to drop.

[roquepo]

My usual group finished our last campaign a month ago, we were level 14.

The final boss was kind of an elite ancient black dragon with phases and extra abilities. The combat lasted for 10 whole rounds with no breaks in between.

I was playing an Imperial Sorcerer with the Captivator archetype (game was FA) and for the whole fight I had an Illusory creature (from the captivator archetype and sustained with the level 14 feat, the spell didn't do much sadly), a wand of Manifold Missiles and a sustain of Control Sand going from round 2 onwards all the time. With the help of a 7th level Haste I had the ability to do all that, move and still cast regularly. I'm fairly sure I was the top damage dealer in that fight by a wide margin, while also contributing to the party overall success with supportive spell casts (There was this time that the dragon casted Reverse Gravity and for the first time in the whole campaign I got to use Feather Fall, which I had since level 3 or 4). It felt so rewarding.

Like, I get were the complains are coming from, more than half of the spells aren't even worth the action cost, but casters in this system can be so, so much fun when you have a minimum idea of what you are doing (Also when you have a Thaum that just gets to know the whole statblock of a creature from time to time).

Edit: Now I remember, the highlight of that fight wasn't even me, but the Witch, that had AoO for some reason and got a Crit disrupt that saved a player from certain death right at the end, we lost our minds there.

[breithauptclan]

Early sections of Age of Ashes. The party has been running through encounters for a while, and I ran out of spell slots. Party was making decisions on where to go next - we were wanting to clear out the last couple of rooms before having to fall back and recover for the day. I looked at my options, and decided that - sure, I can handle another encounter or two with just cantrips and focus abilities.

[Parry]

Some notes from EC:

Vrock crit failing to save basically turned the fit into a curb stomp.

Hydraulic push crit on a prone golem.

For my bronze dragon sorcerer: lightning bolt through 4 xulgaths, next round lightning breath through another 3.

Also, enemy spellcaster bonus: I crit failed on feeblemind from cat lady.

[Ruzza]

I'll admit to not enjoying the premise of the thread, really, mostly because I feel like many stories are going to be "on a crit, this happened," or "when the enemy critically failed, this happened," which doesn't really paint spellcasters as powerful as they are. I'll contribute with a story of mine and hope that no one is going to run in to call "GM fiat."

My players were working on ambushing a party of bandits in the middle of the night - an encounter that, on its face, would be Severe, bordering on Extreme given the numbers of the bandits. The advantage my players had was that each of them had darkvision, while the majority human bandits did not. The thieves were huddled up around a campfire, while many others were posted around the camp as lookouts. After attempting to take out a few outlying watchposts quietly, the jig was quickly up and things looked bad. The bandits all ran to "circle the wagons" around the campfire, Readied actions to fire dozens of arrows into the first target to step into sight. The fighter prepared himself to rush in when the sorcerer asked him to Delay.

With a flourish, the sorcerer fires off a hydraulic push at the campfire, putting it out and allowing the fighter to charge into the group. I still allowed the Readied actions to go off, but that blind firing certainly did the bandits no favors. The group mopped the floor with an incredibly challenging encounter with just a little creative thought from a player.

[Dexter Coffee]

Oh wow, I actually can’t think of any that were all that interesting. Even in the one game I played in with you for a short time. It all just runs together as instances of obscuring mist, walls of stone, and I think I got to summon a dragon once or twice and it cast a slow on a boss. My wizards medic dedication seemed to do more work than his spells. Maybe you remember something cool that I’ve forgotten.

In all my other games as a caster I’ve just been supporting and I can’t think of any particular stand out instances that my wizards have stood out on their own. Maybe that’s what’s been my Wizard problem, I feel I’m contributing but I don’t feel like it’s fun. I can’t point to any time I played and caster and cast a spell and thought “That was awesome!”. I’ve tried doing blasts and it so underwhelming as to be depressing so you play the “right way” and it’s kinda boring.

Though that’s the rub I guess. Spell casting is my favorite way to play so catch-22 i guess. I’ve played other classes and they are fine and all but not my favorite.

No joke you really got me thinking and wracking my brain. I’m sure I’ve succeeded with casting but it’s been so underwhelming as to have made few memorable moments. It just kinda was. Well darn, kinda makes me sad. Or I’m just a real bad spell caster player, a much less than zero chance.

Writing this long thing out I do finally remember one from Extinction Curse and can actually contribute an answer for this post. Using spell immunity to fight of a night hags magic attack, so there’s at least one that was interesting enough success for me to eventually remember :)

[gesalt]

I cast imaginary object. Enemies had their ranged attacks hindered or spent actions to move/seek without me ever once caring about their saves. Success.

I cast hideous laughter. The enemy boss with a low will save passed. It didn't matter because it turned off their reaction. Success.

I cast slow. The enemy had a high fort save but didn't critically pass and lost an action. Success.

I cast wall of flesh. The enemy tore through it but cost an action and MAP. Success.

I cast synesthesia. Once again, I don't care what the enemy's saves are. It passes and suffers a cocktail of potent debuffs. Success.

I cast heal/invis/heroism/[other ally targetting spell]. It has the desired effect. Success

I cast reach mariner's curse because the enemy is mental immune. It passes and becomes debuffed before wasting an action to clear it. Success.

I cast calm emotions on a group of enemies with moderate will saves. 1 of 3 fail. Success.

Many levels later I cast overwhelming presence. I care not for their saves and many lose at least 2 actions. Success.

I true strike imaginary weapon spellstrike an enemy. Great success.

I cast maze. The enemy has no counterplay and instantly loses an action. Great Success.

I cast silence 4th. There's no save and the enemy caster can't escape the pronelock. Great success.

I cast true target. Fighter banzai.

So long as you make sure you pick meta spells it doesn't particularly matter what the enemy is. You'll get your job done so the fighter can do theirs. Just don't deviate too far from the top percentile of spells.

[roquepo]

Ruzza wrote:

I'll admit to not enjoying the premise of the thread, really, mostly because I feel like many stories are going to be "on a crit, this happened," or "when the enemy critically failed, this happened," which doesn't really paint spellcasters as powerful as they are. I'll contribute with a story of mine and hope that no one is going to run in to call "GM fiat."

My players were working on ambushing a party of bandits in the middle of the night - an encounter that, on its face, would be Severe, bordering on Extreme given the numbers of the bandits. The advantage my players had was that each of them had darkvision, while the majority human bandits did not. The thieves were huddled up around a campfire, while many others were posted around the camp as lookouts. After attempting to take out a few outlying watchposts quietly, the jig was quickly up and things looked bad. The bandits all ran to "circle the wagons" around the campfire, Readied actions to fire dozens of arrows into the first target to step into sight. The fighter prepared himself to rush in when the sorcerer asked him to Delay.

With a flourish, the sorcerer fires off a hydraulic push at the campfire, putting it out and allowing the fighter to charge into the group. I still allowed the Readied actions to go off, but that blind firing certainly did the bandits no favors. The group mopped the floor with an incredibly challenging encounter with just a little creative thought from a player.

I had this exact same situation come up once, but we the GM allowed Spout or Ray of Frost (can't remember which one) to do the trick. There were several campfires out there too, so enemies tried to bait us with ranged attacks from their safe light bubbles. Those kind of encounters are really fun for everyone involved.

[Unicore]

Dexter Coffee wrote:

Oh wow, I actually can’t think of any that were all that interesting. Even in the one game I played in with you for a short time. It all just runs together as instances of obscuring mist, walls of stone, and I think I got to summon a dragon once or twice and it cast a slow on a boss. My wizards medic dedication seemed to do more work than his spells. Maybe you remember something cool that I’ve forgotten.

In all my other games as a caster I’ve just been supporting and I can’t think of any particular stand out instances that my wizards have stood out on their own. Maybe that’s what’s been my Wizard problem, I feel I’m contributing but I don’t feel like it’s fun. I can’t point to any time I played and caster and cast a spell and thought “That was awesome!”. I’ve tried doing blasts and it so underwhelming as to be depressing so you play the “right way” and it’s kinda boring.

Though that’s the rub I guess. Spell casting is my favorite way to play so catch-22 i guess. I’ve played other classes and they are fine and all but not my favorite.

No joke you really got me thinking and wracking my brain. I’m sure I’ve succeeded with casting but it’s been so underwhelming as to have made few memorable moments. It just kinda was. Well darn, kinda makes me sad. Or I’m just a real bad spell caster player, a much less than zero chance.

Writing this long thing out I do finally remember one from Extinction Curse and can actually contribute an answer for this post. Using spell immunity to fight of a night hags magic attack, so there’s at least one that was interesting enough success for me to eventually remember :)

we were pretty nasty with the solid fog in that game. Blind fight and attacks of opportunity made for a nasty combo with it!

[Blave]

Level 12 party attacked by 3 hellknight troops and their level 11-ish commander. Thaumaturge crit succeeds on his battle cry Demoralize against the commander and terrified retreat sends him running. Fire oracle wins initiative. Level 6 fireball > quickened level 4 fireball. One hellknight troop dead, one near death. Commander ran and never returned and the party made short work of the remaining troops.

My bard landed a hideous laughter (regular fail) on some giant fire monster wolf with multiple powerful 2-action activities. Wolf couldn't use any of them effectively because he couldn't get into position and still have e ough actions to actually use those abilities. Fight was still hard vur nowhere near as much as it could have been.

Big tanky tyrant-style miniboss, flanked by his two skeleton minions. My sorcerer moves around and hits all three with a lightning bolt. Minions both dead, tyrant unscathed because of some lightning resistant shield. Martials of the party move in but have a hard time even scratching the enemy because he keeps raising his shield to add to his already significant AC. I cast slow on him, he fails his save so he no longer has actions to spare on defense. He starts uses strong melee attacks instead. I cast glitterdust, he fails again. The dazzled condition negates a VERY nasty crit which would have dropped my ally. Next turn I want to hinder the tyrant even more and cast grease on his weapon. He rolls a crit fail and drops it, making him basically a sitting duck. The last crit fail didn't matter in the end since he was dead before his next turn, but man was I feeling great after that fight!

[tiornys]

Fight against two Basilisks, I summoned a Cave Fisher for ranged Grabs to help keep them away from the party. That went well, but the real MVP that fight was our Sorcerer who popped Haste and Ooze Form and between resistances and temp HP (and lack of vision!) just negated multiple Basilisk turns while dealing quite a bit of damage.

Fight against a higher level spellcaster, I'm able to use amped Message to get our Magus into melee range before her turn. That lets her True Strike into Agonizing Despair Spellstrike that snowballs into victory over the next couple rounds.

[SuperBidi]

Too many situations...

The Water Breathing that allowed us to trivialize a skill challenge in PFS, the numerous Fireballs that wiped fights (at least 2 tough ones that I remember), this Counterspell against the enemy Fireball that just pushed the GM to give up on the fight as the enemies were unable to affect us, the Finger of Death where everyone was kind of "You can't use a spell slot on such enemies" and I was all "Yes I can", the final boss who failed its saves against both my Meteor Swarm and my Quicken Eclipse Burst, the enemies all lined up for my Lightning Bolt, this fight against a Poltergeist where I was 3-action Healing all the way through, this True Striked Searing Light that ended one enemy and the fight, the fight against skeleton troops with Weaknesses to both area and positive damage for the bliss of my Divine Summoner, when I Magic Weaponed the Barbarian Greatsword just for him to succeed at both its attacks in a row, etc...

This is a weird conversation, there are so many good moments as a caster I hardly see how I could remember all of them. The whole "casters are bad" discussion is a preposterous one, many players are having successes with their casters (I must admit, from my point of view, the main issue with casters is between the chair and the character sheet, but I won't gain sympathy if I say it out loud, uups!).

[siegfriedliner]

What I would like to know for those with a lot of good stories is how much of a percentage of their time playing do the good stories represent especially compared to the percentage of time your spells fizzled (high saves and immunities) and you struggled to be effective at all (wrong spell for the job, out of spells due to a long day etc).

[SuperBidi]

siegfriedliner wrote:

What I would like to know for those with a lot of good stories is how much of a percentage of their time playing do the good stories represent especially compared to the percentage of time your spells fizzled (high saves and immunities) and you struggled to be effective at all (wrong spell for the job, out of spells due to a long day etc).

Being out of spells is a rarity. If I except low levels (where cantrips are my bread and butter spells), I only got out of spells after near TPKs (because in that case I cast spells as if there was no tomorrow as there's a chance there won't be one). And in general, the whole party wants a long rest in that case so it doesn't last for long.

I don't remember struggling to be effective much with a caster. The only such experience I have is when I was struggling with Aqueous Orb and finally decided to remove it from my spell list. Also a few issues with coordination, when martials run far away from you and then scream for healing, but they quickly learn that I don't care healing them if they don't care staying close. Also, all my casters have Electric Arc, and it's extremely rare to end up in a situation where enemies are immune to it.

For spell fizzling, I can't tell you. I don't make stats on that, no more than I make stats on my martials hitting or not. But most spells have an effect on a successful save, so casters always contribute at least a bit, when I've seen countless martials not hitting even once during a fight.

I have an Angelic Sorcerer that I play for PFS and in Night of the Grey Death, so I played it for most levels with a gap at levels 11-15.
I have a Tempest Oracle and a Summoner both level 7.
And a Psychic that I play along the Dark Archive files (so it covers mostly mid levels).

I had a lot of fun with both my Sorcerer and Summoner that I consider extremely competitive. I got more issues with my Oracle, but it's partly because I want to give it a Water theme and Water spells are not as good as I thought (especially Aqueous Orb which ended up as a big dissapointment). I don't find the Psychic (as a class) to be extremely strong, it has internal issues. But it's not really related to being a caster but to be Stupefied after 2 rounds.

I mostly don't understand the fuzz around martials. Casters have their issues but martials, too. Depending on fights you'll be a big or a small contributor, the game is one of dice and luck is the biggest factor. I've personally never found martials to be that strong. I've seen some very optimized builds, these ones get ahead a bit during combats (obviously). But they often lack out of combat abilities or are strong only in a very limited range of situations (mostly when they can trade blows at melee range) so they end up not really impressive considering the amount of babysitting they need.

[gesalt]

siegfriedliner wrote:

What I would like to know for those with a lot of good stories is how much of a percentage of their time playing do the good stories represent especially compared to the percentage of time your spells fizzled (high saves and immunities) and you struggled to be effective at all (wrong spell for the job, out of spells due to a long day etc).

It's pretty rare that you fizzle out. Illusory object is eventually available on a cheap staff. Many good spells never need to be heightened or are good at base and when heightened and the best spells either do great on a successful save (the most common outcome even against a high save solo boss) or don't interact with enemy defenses to begin with.

It's not a particularly interesting or exciting gameplay loop, but it is effective which is much more important considering the caster baseline is the absolutely mind numbing electric arc+[other] spam

[QuidEst]

I'm usually a martial, but our party ranger had recently dipped her toes into Sorcerer multiclass for hag theming. Not the best DCs, but even a successful save against Warrior's Regret still puts in some work against the kinds of enemies we face. We had a fight against some devils, and one crit-failed their save against the spell. The fight itself was a brutal one with bleed that couldn't be removed, so afterwards, the GM treated us to a cutscene of the humiliated devil that had not only failed its contracted duty, but also shown up with magically-enforced empathy that it couldn't remove without 24 hours of atonement, something absolutely unthinkable for a devil. We got to watch it get chewed out and demoted. Same spell also took out a boss with high physical resistances, so its become a centerpiece for the character.

[Unicore]

It is a little GM dependent, but aqueous orb can a decent defense spell if you are in an environment where you can keep it between you and the enemy, as long as the enemy doesn’t have good ranged non acid, non fire energy attacks or piercing attacks. But using the orb as a giant ball of mobile cover/defense support isn’t intuitive from the spell description and the DC 10 swim check is a bit confusing to run in combat. I had fun combining an aqueous orb and a tangling creeper spell 1 time. It basically split up a fight against two fairly difficult humanoid attackers and burned about 4 total actions over the course of a 3 round encounter. Not really great returns, but it was fun and memorable.

[Ruzza]

siegfriedliner wrote:

What I would like to know for those with a lot of good stories is how much of a percentage of their time playing do the good stories represent especially compared to the percentage of time your spells fizzled (high saves and immunities) and you struggled to be effective at all (wrong spell for the job, out of spells due to a long day etc).

I played in a PFS game where a number of us crit failed our Recall Knowledge checks and were told that the enemies we would be facing in the day to come would be weak to electricity. My evoker loaded up on shocking grasp and electric arc and was excited to find that... everything in the adventure was either immune or resistant.

My wizard proceeded to MVP his way through the game just with Force Bolt, Warp Stepping into opportune flanking positions, the occasional Gale Blast, and tons and tons of Recall Knowledge. To say nothing of skill checks outside of combat.

I mean, I don't know. My characters are certainly more than the sum of their spell damage and even in the worst situations, it isn't really that difficult to be effective without your "top tier" spellcasting.

[breithauptclan]

Ruzza wrote:

I'll admit to not enjoying the premise of the thread, really, mostly because I feel like many stories are going to be "on a crit, this happened," or "when the enemy critically failed, this happened,"

That isn't actually the premise of the thread itself, but it is what people are going to trend towards. Because crits are cool and fun to tell about. And crits on spells can have more interesting effects than crits with weapons.

siegfriedliner wrote:

What I would like to know for those with a lot of good stories is how much of a percentage of their time playing do the good stories represent especially compared to the percentage of time your spells fizzled (high saves and immunities) and you struggled to be effective at all (wrong spell for the job, out of spells due to a long day etc).

I did speak to this a bit earlier. One of the things I like in this edition of the game is that spellcasters are not completely dependent on having spell slots available in order to be effective.

I have found that struggling to be effective is not just a spellcaster problem. I don't feel like my Fervor Witch has any more problems with that than our party's Barbarian or Gunslinger. We haven't encountered anything that is immune to Strike of any damage type, but we also haven't found anything that is immune to Mental damage either. I have had Bless fizzle because no one wanted to stay put long enough for it to do anything. But I have also 1-shot an enemy with Phantom Pain.

With the collection of mystical and mundane abilities that my Fervor Witch has collected I have always felt like I had something useful to spend actions on.

Boosting damage of allies with Stoke the Heart and (at earlier levels) Magic Weapon.
Kiting enemies with Rogue Dedication, Nimble Dodge, and Mobility (enemies can end up spending a lot of actions chasing my Witch around).
Keeping allies alive with Heal and more recently with Delay Consequence.
Tripping enemies with a whip.
Throwing Holy Water at a Vrock.
Pulling a longbow and firing Blessed, Stoked arrows at an enemy that was dragging one of our party members away at high speed.
Melting enemies brains with Phantom Pain.

I punched a skeleton in the face once. It had survived at 1 HP for about two rounds as the Barbarian kept missing attack rolls. I had my bow in hand, but knew it was resistant to the damage. I had a flask of Alchemist's Fire on my belt, but there was a downed ally adjacent to the skeleton that I didn't want to hit with splash damage. I didn't have any damage dealing cantrips or spell slot spells available. I can only imagine the sense of confusion it felt as a longbow wielding spellcaster walks up to it and punches it to death.

[Cyder]

I have experienced a few of these feels good moments in the dozens of campaigns I have run in pf2e. But in general its lucky to be 1 moment in a campaign where the dice crit in the casters favour or I had specifically tailored an encounter and provided a ton of clues for the wizard as to what environmental hazards would be a huge factor after the party was too far away from a town to just by cheap consumables for their utility to feel good.

Short of lucky dice or GM contrived situations I can't think of any there were as consistent as the maul fighter for combat or the charisma/dex skills rogue for non combat situations got most of the time.

Good gameplay, preparing with consumables and lucky dice are available to all classes, just some classes have an easier time for less work than others and a much more consistently good ezperience.

[pixierose]

Blessing of defiance works wonders, it rewards players who pay attention to the combat state of the game, especially if gms do a good job of narrating the combat. I've seen it turn bad rolls into success, and successes into crits. Since it comes late in the game it works really well too because it works well with the degree of success boosters get later on.

I've seen well placed grease and gusts of winds stop enemies in their tracks.

My water elemental sorcerer used quench in a fight against a magma dragon, doing decent damage to the dragon and assuring the party didn't have to worry about persistent fire damage.

Casting enlarge and creating a wall of martial that basically prevented the backline from being hurt.

Wall of Virtue providing light and harming a bunch of undead during a brutal ambush in a swamp.

Chain lightning decimating foes.

I consistently have positive experiences with spells, and see positive experiences from my players when I dm.

[Perpdepog]

I've had a weird amount of success bullying golems as a caster. Because of some feat choices and gear I had a summoner with something like fourteen cantrips, several of which were different damage types, so the couple times we fought golems and the party's weapons bounced off them I got to push the golem's face into the dirt with whatever cantrip was their weakness.

The combat I remember most vividly had us fighting a clay golem and it wrecking us until we passed an RK check and remembered it was vulnerable to water and cold. Then we lured it pretty far away to get it into a pool of water and the martials ran around it in a circle keeping its focus while I pelted it with Ray of Frost and it died.

[Crouza]

I was playing a life oracle and we were fighting a Gelugon. My oracle was more of a combat one who multiclassed into Champion and liked to be in the thick of things. My oracle helped to carry that fight when the Gelugon crit our barbarian for over half their HP, and I not only reduced that damage with life link, but did level 4 2 action heal and just reversed the entire crit. Then next round shot it with Divine Lance for 50 good damage because I got a lucky 20 on the roll, then did a lay on hands to just heal up the summoner whose eidolon was getting beat up.

It's a ton of fun. Life Oracle made me fall in love with playing a healer in a ttrpg. Because doing 4d12+36 in heals to someone makes healing feel a lot funner than in any other systems where its like "I'm the guy who brings people up from 0" guy.

[Unicore]

Both heal and harm are fantastic spells. I had a cleri who would memorize a lot of both and when enemies rushed them in melee the nova round of 3 one action harm spells was pretty awesome.

[The Raven Black]

Last night, in the boss fight, I unleashed a True Strike + Searing Light against a mummy who had cover from me. It went down quickly under the Monk's fists not long after.

In the same fight, our priest of Razmir used a 3-action Heal that brought welcome hit points back to almost all PCs and hurt our undead foes.

Not the same experience as hitting the monsters again and again, but definitely good moments well appreciated by the whole crew.

[Deriven Firelion]

Like Superbidi there are too many times the caster makes the fight super easy.

I can remember the first PF2 campaign where I finally realized casters were brutal when my bard cast a phantasmal calamity on a room full of mooks and turned the fight into an absolute cakewalk while doing gobs of damage.

Other than that, I remember the many times spamming slow on a boss or hitting something with phantasmal killer or synesthesia making boss fights a joke. The martials did the damage, but the spells made the boss a creampuff.

My druid has been the most fun. The many times nuking things with fireball or chain lighting, while firing a bow and doing tons of damage to match a martial easily over the course of fights. The few times crit fails on tempest surge on a boss doing crazy damage with a rider and then hitting it with a bow shot. Turning into a dragon and blasting stuff with the breath weapon then going melee martial to rip up the battlefield.

The only caster I've played that sucks is the wizard. The only other caster I've seen that looks like it sucked was any witch except the Fervor witch used as a healer and support caster.

Sorcerer, druid, bard, and cleric are all solid classes.

I'm even starting to begrudgingly like the summoner because its action economy allows for some real interesting play. A summoner can use Act Together to get one action to draw a scroll, use a 2 action spell, and still have the eidolon move or attack once. So a summoner can use casting magic items better than any other class surprisingly. The summoner has the best action economy in the game. The only frustrating part is it is the action economy isn't great for doing summoner things. It's great for combining with lots of other things.

So Superbidi, I admit you were right. The summoner has some amazing action economy. It makes for a very interesting character if you can figure out cool ways to use the action economy.

I'm playing a dual class harrow sorcerer/psychopomp summoner that is the primary healer of the group. That character is doing an absolute bang up job in that role with amazing action economy. The summoner is almost overpowered in a dual class game.

[BretI]

I think my favorite encounter so far was a set up where an enemy arcane spellcaster was above everyone on the flat roof of a building overlooking the battle. There was a staircase along the side of the building. They had nasty minions arranged to make it difficult to get to and ascend the stairs to him. The idea was that the NPC caster would rain down spells on us as we struggled to get to them through their protective line.

This was at 6th level, so no fly spell yet.

My wizard cast Aqueous Orb and the enemy mage failed their Reflex save. It was a regular failure. Since they couldn’t breathe water, they weren’t casting spells or giving new orders to the minions.

I don’t think the enemy mage was trained in Athletics to swim.

The next round I was able to push the enemy NPC mage off the edge of the roof down to where the fighters were eager to melee them. So much for the defensive line arranged to prevent us going up the stairs.

A combinations of a spell with good range (60’) that targeted a weak save and being able to force movement made the battle much easier than it would have otherwise been. It was able to turn terrain that was in the enemies favor into an advantage for us.

——

My second favorite was a case where someone else in the group cast Hideous Laughter on the big bad. The big bad succeeded in their save, but that was enough to prevent reactions. No longer were they using an Attack of Opportunity with their reach against our melee people. Still a hard fight, but much more doable with the boss no longer able to take reactions.

[The Raven Black]

Forgot the spell attack that the priest of Razmir successfully landed on an opponent that was flat-footed, with my Inspire Courage boosting the roll.

Teamwork of martials and casters is really the key to success in PF2.

[Lightning Raven]

Age of Ashes book 3, 11th level Wizard.

4 Stone Giants appear, he casts Chain Lightning as first in initiative. 350+ damage on only four targets, which kills 3 enemies and the last one is severely hurt. Easy encounter.

[aobst128]

Crouza wrote:

I was playing a life oracle and we were fighting a Gelugon. My oracle was more of a combat one who multiclassed into Champion and liked to be in the thick of things. My oracle helped to carry that fight when the Gelugon crit our barbarian for over half their HP, and I not only reduced that damage with life link, but did level 4 2 action heal and just reversed the entire crit. Then next round shot it with Divine Lance for 50 good damage because I got a lucky 20 on the roll, then did a lay on hands to just heal up the summoner whose eidolon was getting beat up.

It's a ton of fun. Life Oracle made me fall in love with playing a healer in a ttrpg. Because doing 4d12+36 in heals to someone makes healing feel a lot funner than in any other systems where its like "I'm the guy who brings people up from 0" guy.

Oracle casting is fun. The curse allows for a lot of flavor. Life oracles in particular might cause the target of their heals to rapidly grow their hair or other such consequences of uncontrollable life energy. At the deep end of the curse, your heals might even get gory as you replenish too much blood and it spurts out of open wounds lol.

[steelhead]

Lots of great experience and ideas here! I really appreciate the OP’s idea to show spell casters some love.

[The-Magic-Sword]

Magic Missile was keeping me competitive for highest damage against bosses up through the fifth level heighten, that spell is incredible and as a spell blending evoker wizard, I could do my strongest version of it five times without resting, and then was prepped with saving throws in my second-highest slots, and utility in my lower level slots, along with force bolt. Every turn of mine that came up, was another tick down on their health no matter what level they were.

In fact, let me share this with you, debuting online for the first time (and please excuse my flair for anime):

Small Ball Archmage, Secret Technique #1: Hurricane Triple Play:

I can single action cast three magic missiles in a single turn using different slots, each affected separately by the Dangerous Sorcery bonus, and use Dragon Throat Scales in tandem with a Witch's Elemental Betrayal Hex for stupid high deterministic damage on an all-or-nothing target, the general rules on catalysts even let me pull out three different scales in the same turn to do it, it lets me triple tap both the additional damage and the dangerous sorcery bonus.

It burns through the slots like nobody's business and even costs you three consumable magic items of 7th level of course, but if you know what you're doing and use the right resource management strategies, the damage is stupid good because of the way both the additional damage and the dangerous sorcery scale, and the fact that it's completely deterministic.

If you cast it with, let's say-- the fifth level heighten and an equal level Witch supporting you to make the gold cost practical, each dart will do 3d4+12 resulting in a full turn of 9d4+36, or a full turn guaranteed average of 58.5-- which is more than a fifth of an opposing +4 adult cloud dragon's HP, deterministically, and higher than making it fail a Cone of Cold with Dangerous Sorcery.

There might even be stronger variations for it, depending on what damage you can squeeze onto those darts.

[SuperBidi]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

So Superbidi, I admit you were right. The summoner has some amazing action economy. It makes for a very interesting character if you can figure out cool ways to use the action economy.

If you could have seen my smile. I really love the Summoner but it's a tough class to master (and I was confident you'd manage to get it right).

Also, I find that funny, and interesting, that we end up in the same place. We both love blaster casters and we both like the Summoner for its crazy versatility. All of that despite the numerous criticisms these builds get.

For the Wizard, there's a blaster build that gets to unseen levels of damage that I need to test but I don't want to play it in PFS as it's the easy mode. I hope the remaster won't change the Evoker Focus Spells (especially the level 4 one) so I can test it one day (fingers crossed).

[Arachnofiend]

Not me but a party member wizard, Magic Missile has been extremely clutch in a number of fights in Abomination Vaults. Some fights just had creatures who's AC was too high for my barbarian to hit consistently so the vast majority of the damage was done by auto-hit missiles.

As a note, my Barbarian is a Barbarians+ Bloodrager, so a half-caster like the Magus. Having spells to hit weaknesses has been a life saver many times (flame wisp was pretty excellent against the wood golem).

[Perpdepog]

aobst128 wrote:

Crouza wrote:

I was playing a life oracle and we were fighting a Gelugon. My oracle was more of a combat one who multiclassed into Champion and liked to be in the thick of things. My oracle helped to carry that fight when the Gelugon crit our barbarian for over half their HP, and I not only reduced that damage with life link, but did level 4 2 action heal and just reversed the entire crit. Then next round shot it with Divine Lance for 50 good damage because I got a lucky 20 on the roll, then did a lay on hands to just heal up the summoner whose eidolon was getting beat up.

It's a ton of fun. Life Oracle made me fall in love with playing a healer in a ttrpg. Because doing 4d12+36 in heals to someone makes healing feel a lot funner than in any other systems where its like "I'm the guy who brings people up from 0" guy.

Oracle casting is fun. The curse allows for a lot of flavor. Life oracles in particular might cause the target of their heals to rapidly grow their hair or other such consequences of uncontrollable life energy. At the deep end of the curse, your heals might even get gory as you replenish too much blood and it spurts out of open wounds lol.

I was playing the summoner in Crouza's story there, and we did have fun playing that aspect of their oracle up. Her epithet was "Scar-Taker" because Crouza's oracle was an orc whose constant leaking of vital energy would cause all the battle-scars of her clanmates to fade over time, which was why she was an adventurer with non-orcs who wouldn't find that problematic.

[Crouza]

aobst128 wrote:

Crouza wrote:

I was playing a life oracle and we were fighting a Gelugon. My oracle was more of a combat one who multiclassed into Champion and liked to be in the thick of things. My oracle helped to carry that fight when the Gelugon crit our barbarian for over half their HP, and I not only reduced that damage with life link, but did level 4 2 action heal and just reversed the entire crit. Then next round shot it with Divine Lance for 50 good damage because I got a lucky 20 on the roll, then did a lay on hands to just heal up the summoner whose eidolon was getting beat up.

It's a ton of fun. Life Oracle made me fall in love with playing a healer in a ttrpg. Because doing 4d12+36 in heals to someone makes healing feel a lot funner than in any other systems where its like "I'm the guy who brings people up from 0" guy.

Oracle casting is fun. The curse allows for a lot of flavor. Life oracles in particular might cause the target of their heals to rapidly grow their hair or other such consequences of uncontrollable life energy. At the deep end of the curse, your heals might even get gory as you replenish too much blood and it spurts out of open wounds lol.

My oracle was an orc and they were banished from their tribe because their overflowing energy caused the tribes scars to start fading and disappearing. Her curse also manifested in cracks of glowing golden energy breaking out of her body like kintsugi lines, before fading and healing when the curse subsided. This earned her the last name of Scartaker, and ended up being a huge character arc of her going from resenting her powers to embracing them to keep her friends safe.

One of my favorite characters. I also ended up taking up Sarenrae's domain so I had some nice fire spells to aid in clearing out enemies. Heightened Fireball and Heightened Searing Light were some of my favorite go-to spells.

[HolyFlamingo!]

I think my favorite kind of "casters be winning" stories are the ones where the party discovers an incredibly stupid strategy and leans into it. Case in point: it recently occured to the druid that 1) the monk and druid have god-tier reflex saves, and 2) melee characters have a habit of lining up in alternating enemy/PC order as everyone tries to flank everyone else. So she's just started throwing Lightning Bolts right at her allies, because a little light fragging is worth melting half the encounter.

The monk and rogue have found this development incredibly funny, and now actively seek to get themselves zapped. This is for sure gonna backfire on them at some point, but until then they're having a great time.

This same party has also realized how nasty Haste can be on the summoner and magus, so they generally push to enable the gishes instead of the forementioned monk and rogue. Meanwhile, the summoner has ended multiple encounters with Phantasmal Killer, and the magus has come to appreciate Sudden Bolt as his go-to for when it's not worth getting into melee.

The summoner also decided to take Bind Undead as a joke, and had a great time stealing a rival necromancer's minions. I let him upgrade one of them (a zombie owlbear) into a permanent minion as a reward, because I honestly didn't expect him to get so much mileage out of a silly gimmick.

As for me, I know witches are somewhat snubbed in the community, but Evil Eye and Cackle mesh together really well. It's fun being able to pick a guy and just subtract a level from them for the duration of the encounter, and still have actions left over to do other stuff. Also, the fact that a witch's familiar comes back at the start of the day means that Final Sacrifice basically becomes a one-off free heightened Fireball.

Resilient Sphere is also fantastic for just wasting a ton of actions if you're lucky. I stuck it on a "boss" (who was a mere one level above the party) and got them to waste nearly an entire round trying to break the magus out of his magical hamster ball.

[The Raven Black]

Just realized that, with the disappearance of alignment, Final Sacrifice might enjoy a big popularity boost.

[Calliope5431]

I'll contribute. We did a runthrough of modules 5 and 6 of extinction curse. The poor concordant guards with their big pack tactics fell to pieces whenever the bard or bard-multiclass-monk threw a dirge of doom...automatic frightened halved their damage output...and they were always stabbing each other anyway because the wizard and bard both opened every fight with 8th level confusion ...

And then there was the end fight against Sarvel Ever-Hunger. Wizard opened up with a disjunction against his armor, got a crit success, completely destroyed it (DC was only 32 to counteract, we later learned!) dropped his AC by 8 points. He was dead by the middle of round 2, with his allies confused and with no actions (quickened 8th level confusions and 6th level slows) and murdering each other. Boss fight? Nah.

I also recall a hilarious boss fight against the Manifestation of Dahak in Age of Ashes. The harm cleric threw a cast down 10th level harm at him...while he was flying above the acidic lava pit...which burned through immunity to fire and acid...he was dead almost immediately thereafter. Our DM told us afterwards he SUCCEEDED on the saving throw, but still took damage, so, prone and thus fell.

[Ravingdork]

Great thread, Unicore!

I've been playing an ancient elf champion in Agents of Edgewatch (a campaign in which you play law enforcement officers) for a couple years now. Though champions are not generally considered a traditional spellcasters, I took Sorcerer Dedication and Basic Sorcerer Spellcasting early on. I'm now 15-level and I cannot recount all the times I've got tremendous use out of my three low-rank spells and two cantrips.

The ability of spellcasters to manipulate the narrative reality of the world in their favor is SO powerful (even in 2nd Edition where they are widely acknowledged to have been rebalanced) that I simply cannot understand people who decry spellcasters as being weak. They might be weaker than previous editions, sure, but they are not weak by any stretch of the imagination!

At 1st level my champion had bullhorn (for managing crowds and announcing ourselves as law enforcement) and message (for more discreet communication among fellow officers).

At 4th-level I picked up fleet step for pursuing and tackling fleeing suspects (so far none have ever escaped). It's also good for escaping when I'm in over my head. I've got a LOT of mileage out of just these three spells.

At 6th-level I also picked up invisibility. This one spell has allowed me to infiltrate venues and sneak up on or eaves drop on criminal suspects time and time again, often allowing the party to gather valuable intel we otherwise never would have had a chance to get. I've even been able to steal and conceal valuable pieces of evidence right under the criminal gangs' noses with this spell! Like fleet step, invisibility is also invaluable for escaping a scene should our plans go sideways.

At 8th-level I picked up my final spell (by choice), the 3rd rank illusory disguise. Though it may not seem like it, this proved to be our ultimate control spell. With it, we would go into a criminal stronghold where I would take on the appearance of a specific mid-level gang lieutenant, then either boss around the low level thugs (ordering them to go home early for the day, to stash the evidence in a safe place known to us before a pending raid, or some other directive beneficial to us) or lure higher level thugs into prepared areas from which we could more readily spring our trap upon them. ("Boss! We've captured a nosy busybody. We have him tied up in the basement ripe and ready to spill the beans to ya'.") We even got access to a dangerous guardian monster once (what would have been an otherwise extremely difficult encounter for us), and ended up turning it against its masters in this way.

It was totally crazy. We picked off whole dungeons a few controlled enemies at a time this way, learned all sorts of valuable information long before we should have, and generally just owned the criminal street gangs with a single low level spell and some good Deception rolls.

With just two feats and some specific skills, I've infiltrated criminal gangs; laid down tons of misinformation to confuse and misdirect otherwise organized crime; posed as a witness we were trying to protect, leading those who would do him harm on a wild goose chase far away from their real target; protected my own identity when enacting our cloak and dagger schemes; repurposed enemy resources to aid our own endeavors; and generally run (hilariously fun) circles around the adventure path's expectations.

I am now 15th-level with 18 Charisma, Mastery in Deception, Ageless Patience, a ring of lies, and a demilich eye gem (with mind blank). It is now unbelievably easy to get away with all the above, and more!

And that's only with a handful of lower level spells, a bit of clever thinking, and a couple supporting abilities.

I can scarcely even imagine what a full spellcaster would be capable of in the hands of a similarly creative player. With this thread I suppose I won't have to for much longer though. Thanks, Unicore. XD

[Parry]

The Raven Black wrote:

Just realized that, with the disappearance of alignment, Final Sacrifice might enjoy a big popularity boost.

As long as you never take the edict "don't be a dick."

My curse witch has an atntagonistc relationship with his familiar, so i am looking forward to using it.

[punkzilla]

In our Extinction Curse campaign, we came into a fight waaay early in one of the books (we were underlevelled for the fight). My witch basically negated the threat of one of the enemies by casting Resist Fire on our two front liners.

The opening session of our Kingmaker Campaign, my summoner cast command on an enemy, who failed. He had to spend his first action next round fleeing, which triggered a reactive strike form our fighter, and killed him.