Hello, all.
I'm GMing for a group of 4 and we're all new to PF2e. I'm looking to run the beginner box with premade characters but they're all excited to make and play their own characters after that.
So far, three players have expressed major interest in one specific class - Gunslinger, Barbarian and Rogue. The fourth player is happy to play a caster to round out the group, but has no idea which as of yet, so I thought I'd come here and ask you all for input in regards to what the caster classes can contribute to this group.
You have lots of damage output there (3 strikers) but little defence or versatility. So cleric or bard would be the best. A storm druid would be OK too if the 4th player wanted to be able to blast as well.
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If you're asking from a perspective of what will be the most generally useful to the rest of the party and generally flexible in terms of what they can do then the answer to this question will always be Bard, every single time. From a "quality/tier" perspective there are exactly two Classes that rise above the rest for the niche they fit into, Fighters are the cream of the crop S tier Martial Class and Bard is the best and brightest of Spellcasters all things considered.
They have the easiest-to-understand format for Spellcasting with Spontaneous Spells + Focus Spells + Signature Spells, the best Spell Tradition, the best Buffs, the best Debuffs, adequate Skill functionality, and just generally make everything the rest of the party does BETTER for the minor cost of 1 Action every one to two Rounds depending on their build choices. They can pick up a few OKAY heals (and like anyone else in the party grab the awesome Medicine Skill Healing functions easily), can do limited blasting, and can usually even talk their way out of problems and encounters that the Gun, Barb, and Rogue will almost never be able to hack even if they wanted to play a Charismatic flavored version of their PC.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you're asking from a perspective of what will be the most generally useful to the rest of the party and generally flexible in terms of what they can do then the answer to this question will always be Bard, every single time. From a "quality/tier" perspective there are exactly two Classes that rise above the rest for the niche they fit into, Fighters are the cream of the crop S tier Martial Class and Bard is the best and brightest of Spellcasters all things considered.
They have the easiest-to-understand format for Spellcasting with Spontaneous Spells + Focus Spells + Signature Spells, the best Spell Tradition, the best Buffs, the best Debuffs, adequate Skill functionality, and just generally make everything the rest of the party does BETTER for the minor cost of 1 Action every one to two Rounds depending on their build choices. They can pick up a few OKAY heals (and like anyone else in the party grab the awesome Medicine Skill Healing functions easily), can do limited blasting, and can usually even talk their way out of problems and encounters that the Gun, Barb, and Rogue will almost never be able to hack even if they wanted to play a Charismatic flavored version of their PC.
My intent is not so much to push the player towards the best option as it is to have a generalized idea of what all the casters can contribute so I can help him make his options more easily digestible and easier to understand, if that makes sense. Your description of Bards is very helpful for that!
First, in order to understand the spellcasters, you need to understand the traditions.
Divine is known for healing, buffs, some debuffs, and condition removal. It struggles to do damage, but that is changing with the remaster. It will do spirit damage and vitality and void damage.
Primal is known for energy damage, self-buffs, and simple healing.
Arcane is known for a bit of everything except healing.
Occult is also known for a bit of everything. Including simple healing.
I'm sure that there are people who will have more detailed information for those than I do. And different opinions on it.
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Bard was covered pretty well. Inspire Courage and some of the other 1-action composition cantrips are really powerful for their cost. Occult caster only.
Cleric is out-of-the-box the best in-combat healer. Mostly because of their Divine Font Heal spell slots. Divine caster only.
Druid has a lot of different ways that they can be built. Wild order gets Wild Shape and can polymorph into a battle form that can handle melee combat pretty well. Animal order gets an animal companion who can do their melee combat for them - though only briefly. The others are more pure spellcasters, but the elemental orders make some of the better blaster casters available because of their damage oriented focus spells. Leaf order instead gets a rather good healing focus spell. Often you can use Order Explorer and have enough class feats to run with two orders. Though Wild Shape will prevent casting spells while you use it. Primal order only.
Oracle is one of the more complicated classes to play. Divine caster only. I'm not sure that I would recommend it for new players. The choice of Mystery and Curse can make a big difference in how the character plays.
Psychic is the new best focus spell blaster in the game so far. Occult tradition only. They do have fewer spell slots to cast from.
Sorcerer is our first caster that gets to choose their tradition. Divine Sorcerer can make a bid at being as good of an in-combat healer as Cleric (as well as oracle, but for new players, go with sorcerer). Sorcerer's perk is that they get more spell slot casting than nearly any other class. They can also get some decent focus spells to cast as well.
Witch. Wait a month and see what it looks like then. Witch also gets to pick their tradition. Current version of Witch is also not recommended for new players.
Wizard competes with Sorcerer for the number of spell slot spells that they can cast in a day. But like sorcerer, they will eventually run out of them and will have to stop throwing out spell slot spells. They don't get many good focus spells to fall back on, so it is cantrips only after they finally exhaust their slot casting.
There are two hybrid casters: Magus and Summoner. They have a different spell slot progression than the other 'full' casters do. Instead, Magus gets weapon and armor progression the same as other martial classes, and Summoner gets an Eidolon to do their martial fighting for them.
Honorable mention to Kineticist. Though they don't actually cast spells, they probably should be categorized as a spellcaster. At least loosely. The Impulses that they use are still magical and follow a lot of the same rules as spells do. If you want to be a magic based character that throws out an endless supply of magical effects, this is the class you want. You do pick your effects from feats rather than from any spell list though, so your options will be chosen at character build and will be much more limited than those picked from an entire tradition list.
Hello, all.
I'm GMing for a group of 4 and we're all new to PF2e. I'm looking to run the beginner box with premade characters but they're all excited to make and play their own characters after that.
So far, three players have expressed major interest in one specific class - Gunslinger, Barbarian and Rogue. The fourth player is happy to play a caster to round out the group, but has no idea which as of yet, so I thought I'd come here and ask you all for input in regards to what the caster classes can contribute to this group.
First of all you need to choose what the role you want to do and what you don't.
That said and considering that you can accept any role and based in your party composition my recommendation is to take any non-arcane spellcaster.
The reason behing this is that your party doesn't have a real tanker nor healer:
So in my experience this means that your allies would be more subject to take damage from atks and more criticals than a party that have a heavy armored champion/fighter/monk* with a shield. So your party probably will get some pressure for healing.
*Monks aren't heavy armored but its AC is high enough to compete with heavy armored characters specially if the monk is using a shield too.
So considering that you want to be a caster and that your party probably will need a healers my suggestion is to get a divine/primal/occult caster to provide some healing for the party. What exactly class you could get will depend from what type of gameplay stile that you want to play too:
Need 1 caster in that group. I'll give the same answer I gave to possibly this same question or at least one very similar over on reddit:
Go for something like I did. Fire/Water kineticist, and if it's a free archetype game pick an archetype at level 2 that gives an additional heal (champion, blessed one, even bard for the healing hymn as I did).
Fire will mean you have solid DPS.
Water Kineticist has 2 very strong heals. If your game has only 1-2 combats per day cleric will be stronger, but after that water kineticist outpaces it.
Battle Medicine can add in a third heal and comes from skill feats - which you won't need for much else so again, go for it. Getting medicine beyond just flat medicine and battler (and maybe assurance) is less useful as the water heals cover endless out of combat healing. You'll want the disease and poison related feats only if the campaign is likely to have a lot of that, as they don't even really help that much with these checks unless it's coming up a lot or there is a lot of downtime.
If the game lacks free archetype do NOT pick up any dedication feats as Kineticist needs every class feat it can get. Just get Battle Medicine.
A stronger healer is found in water/wood, and the strongest in water/wood that adds air later. But these are support at the expense of DPS.
For a first game with three martials, I'd probably go cleric. Cleric has a lot of heals and allows for an easier learning curve. Heal is a very powerful spell and can erase a lot of damage to keep your party going in a bad situation.
Clerics are good medics as well. You'll find that combat heals with a good medicine skill are the way to keep going in PF2.
Once they learn how PF2 works, then plenty of options for the combat healer will open up. I'd go straight cleric to start and make sure you can survive to learn the game.
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I think a bard would contribute the most to the group - at least if one of the martials, e.g. the rogue, could cover medicine to heal out of combat (and not dump wisdom). Although blessed dedication or hymn of healing could cover that as well, if needed.
Inspire Courage is really strong with this group, and soothe will cover in-combat healing needs.
I am currently playing as a maestro/enigma bard as the only caster in Alkenstar, been very successful so far.
Honestly you don't need a dedicated healer as a class anymore as long as at least one person in your group is going Legendary Medicine, so you don't "need" a cleric. They're nice to have, don't get me wrong, but you don't need one.
I'm currently playing a level 8 gunslinger and this is my first character going full Medicine skill, and Battle Medicine is hands down one of the best feats in the game. My party doesn't have a healer, we have a Champion (ToC instead of LoH), Rogue, and myself, and so far we've had no issues with healing. We've used a grand total of 12 healing potions this entire campaign.
As far as what caster you should play, any caster would fit well in a group like that, but I'm going to agree with Dr. Frank Funkelstein, a Bard would be amazing simply for the inspire courage bonus.