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I mean I have always felt that "targeting the weakest save" as a strength of casters was always a bit of a fallacy. Targeting the weakest save is a borderline requirement, not a privilege. The average on level monster has a weak save that passes the save 45% of the time, a mid save that will beat the check 55-60% of the time (still functional for spells with good success effects, eg slow, but pretty poor odds for anything that relies on a failure) and one wall high save that passes the check 75-80% of the time with a 25-30% chance of getting a crit.
There are exceptions of course; oozes tend to have have truly abysmal reflexes, and humanoids tend to have saves that are all closer to mid, rather than having standout high and low saves but for 80% of enemies those base rates are within 5% of correct.
Given that is the case unless you exclusively employ strong success impact spells, targeting low saves is required to have any sort of success. You are not rewarded for exploiting a weakness, you are punished if you go for anything else.
For comparison martial accuracy vs ac on an on level target averages around 60% and reaching 70% via off-guard is not usually a tall ask. So the comparative lackluster success rate of 55% for "targeting the weakpoint" feels a bit disingenuous.
For what it's worth my personal fix for my home game is giving all "normal monsters" two low saves and one high instead of low mid high. They still need to look out for those brick wall high saves but any given foe can be reliably hit by 2/3 of the casters kit instead of 1/3, without bolstering the classes power ceiling
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Why make a Wizard thread out of a general caster topic ?
Also IME weak saves are just that for monsters/NPCs : a weaker defence that makes much tactical sense to target.
The example you give above is a GM problem. Not a problem with the rules, the casters, the Wizard.
On a successful RK check, the GM must give you information that gives a real advantage to the party.
They should have told you about both the weak save AND the immunity.
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For comparison martial accuracy vs ac on an on level target averages around 60% and reaching 70% via off-guard is not usually a tall ask.
I personally feel there are also fallacies around martials. First, martials don't hit 60% of the time, they hit 60% of the time with their first attack. Once you take the second attack into account, it goes down to 47.5% (to be precise) which is not that high anymore.
Also, martials have a lot of situations where they can't apply their damage properly. Physical resistance is rather common and even if it's not a resistance to all physical damage but a targeted one you can end up unable to circumvent it (especially Fighters who tend to use a single type of weapon). High AC also happens regularly when low AC is rare and extremely low AC often comes with critical immunity, which partially compensates it. There are also "class specific resistances", like Precision immunity that is screwing Rogues, Swashbuckler and Investigators.
Melee combat often bears a lot of risks, with auras and reactions screwing characters. And obviously, you need to get to melee range as most melee martials are much worse when they use ranged attacks.
When there are discussions about martials vs casters, martials are often buffed (as you do by pointing out how off-guard gives them 10% extra chances to hit) but never debuffed (despite being more often debuffed and more impacted by debuffs as they don't have an effect on failure). My experience is that martials are sometimes screwed, too. And as such the "ideal martial" is as comparable to the "ideal caster" than the average martial is to the average caster.
For comparison martial accuracy vs ac on an on level target averages around 60% and reaching 70% via off-guard is not usually a tall ask.I personally feel there are also fallacies around martials. First, martials don't hit 60% of the time, they hit 60% of the time with their first attack. Once you take the second attack into account, it goes down to 47.5% (to be precise) which is not that high anymore.
Also, martials have a lot of situations where they can't apply their damage properly. Physical resistance is rather common and even if it's not a resistance to all physical damage but a targeted one you can end up unable to circumvent it (especially Fighters who tend to use a single type of weapon). High AC also happens regularly when low AC is rare and extremely low AC often comes with critical immunity, which partially compensates it. There are also "class specific resistances", like Precision immunity that is screwing Rogues, Swashbuckler and Investigators.
Melee combat often bears a lot of risks, with auras and reactions screwing characters. And obviously, you need to get to melee range as most melee martials are much worse when they use ranged attacks.
When there are discussions about martials vs casters, martials are often buffed (as you do by pointing out how off-guard gives them 10% extra chances to hit) but never debuffed (despite being more often debuffed and more impacted by debuffs as they don't have an effect on failure). My experience is that martials are sometimes screwed, too. And as such the "ideal martial" is as comparable to the "ideal caster" than the average martial is to the average caster.
This is all true, my reference point with martials is more to demonstrate how a the chance that a creature fails its weakest save (55%) does not really register as a strength/advantage when a martials first attack has roughly an equivalent/slightly superior success rate. My napkin math is not advanced enough to produce numbers I am confident of for more situational analysis, but anecdotally i have found that the options a team has to assist a martial struggling in a fight are more numerous and generally more reliable than those a team can employ to aid a struggling caster. Also I only brought up off guard because I have a rogue in my party and thus far off guard is almost always in play through flanking and it is something that properly feels like "having an advantage".
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For comparison martial accuracy vs ac on an on level target averages around 60% and reaching 70% via off-guard is not usually a tall ask.I personally feel there are also fallacies around martials. First, martials don't hit 60% of the time, they hit 60% of the time with their first attack. Once you take the second attack into account, it goes down to 47.5% (to be precise) which is not that high anymore.
Also, martials have a lot of situations where they can't apply their damage properly. Physical resistance is rather common and even if it's not a resistance to all physical damage but a targeted one you can end up unable to circumvent it (especially Fighters who tend to use a single type of weapon). High AC also happens regularly when low AC is rare and extremely low AC often comes with critical immunity, which partially compensates it. There are also "class specific resistances", like Precision immunity that is screwing Rogues, Swashbuckler and Investigators.
Melee combat often bears a lot of risks, with auras and reactions screwing characters. And obviously, you need to get to melee range as most melee martials are much worse when they use ranged attacks.
When there are discussions about martials vs casters, martials are often buffed (as you do by pointing out how off-guard gives them 10% extra chances to hit) but never debuffed (despite being more often debuffed and more impacted by debuffs as they don't have an effect on failure). My experience is that martials are sometimes screwed, too. And as such the "ideal martial" is as comparable to the "ideal caster" than the average martial is to the average caster.
I'd like to add martials tend to get knocked out more and have a harder time recovering. They are likely going to lose both an action standing and an action grabbing their weapon, entering a stance, or deactivating rage. If a caster gets knocked out and there's no present enemy with AoO you can just avoid attack spells and cast from your back.
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This is all true, my reference point with martials is more to demonstrate how a the chance that a creature fails its weakest save (55%) does not really register as a strength/advantage when a martials first attack has roughly an equivalent/slightly superior success rate.
Even if I fully agree with that, I think it's a side effect of save-based attacks vs AC-based attacks. One important thing math wise is that a passive ability (when you ask for a save) has 10% less chance to succeed than an active ability (when you roll against a DC). But it's compensated, at least in PF2, with most passive abilities having an effect on failure and success.
So, stating that martials fail less often is both true and false. They succeed at their attacks more often but they do nothing on a failure when casters nearly always do something even if they more rarely do the big effect.
Maybe this design is just plain wrong. Maybe most people prefer high risk high gain abilities than always average abilities. It's hard to know.
I personally prefer low risk low gain and as such have a natural preference for casters. I really dislike when most of my moments are due to sheer luck. I prefer to shine through preparation and tactics. So most of my characters, even the more martial oriented ones, tend to have high chances to hit through a high number of targets/attacks/rolls and reduced MAP/effects on failure.
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This whole thing is spiraling off topic, the question at hand is weather "targeting any defence" is actually a major benefit as it is often framed as. Getting into the minutia of all the other aspects of the martial caster 'discussion' will just turn this into a copy of the two or so dozen threads that have gone over that topic broadly
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I believe targeting every defense is a benefit depending on what you're using. When I hit something with a high end AoE against a group of weak reflex save group of creatures, the damage is immense. It's so high it's going to win you the damage contest for that fight handily against all martials. I've seen this consistently from casters over lots of fights.
The caster often shifts over to control and debuffing for single target boss fights relying on the four levels of spells for effectiveness often relying on spells that have an effect even if the monster succeeds on a saving throw. Slow, synesthesia, phantasmal killer are more your go to spells for boss killing. The mix in some damage here and there. Sometimes you win that race if the boss say critically fails a save against something like a tempest surge or sudden bolt. Then you stack a ton of damage on top of the control and debuffing.
If a boss does have a weak defense, you can exploit it for damage or effects much better than a martial who is always going at AC, which is usually set fairly high.
In my experience, AC and Fort are usually roughly the same. The weak saves I most often exploit are Reflex and Will. Once you see one of those is weak, you can better plan your spell strategy against that creature.