I'm finally giving this combination a shot. It seems insanely overpowered. It is far superior to any other archer option in the game with few weaknesses. It seems to match even fighters for damage if not exceeds what they can do.
Today I just hit a Lesser Death for 193 points of damage with an amped imaginary weapon with a natural 20. Sure, it was a natural 20. But even so, it was an absolutely insane critical hit. I was able to do this while the Lesser Death had already used its reaction.
Starlit Span is one of the few classes I've seen that seems a real peg or two above the PF2 power scale. If there is a Tier 1, they are Tier 1+.
Did any of you do anything to rein this option in without banning it? Or do you think PF2 designers will nerf this option at some point?
It's important to consider that Starlit Span is a mid to high level build. At low level archers are rather weak and as such it's not causing much issues despite being quickly much better than the competition.
I personally haven't played yet with a Starlit Span Magus that was both at a high level enough to be really dangerous and properly played to get the maximum out of the class. So I never had to ban it. But if a player of mine wanted to play one on a long duration or high level adventure, I'd certainly have a chat with the group to determine if they're ok with that. For me, it's a session 0 issue mostly.
About a potential nerf, it's been years since I've raised the issue and nothing has been done. So I doubt Paizo will do anything.
It is online by level 6, level 2 if you are willing to retrain out of Ignition at 6. I wouldn't call that late-game.
Yes, it scales particularly well with levels, but it is already strong early on (just not as much as when you can throw several TS every single combat and allies get access to legendary Aid and better buffs and debuffs).
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It is online by level 6, level 2 if you are willing to retrain out of Ignition at 6. I wouldn't call that late-game.
It's not about being online but efficient. Before level 6 it's just fine. It's really when you get Imaginary Weapon that it starts getting out of bounds.
Also, without True Strike, it's not better than a Greatsword Fighter before level 9, roughly. And by level 7 you get Studious Spell that will greatly increase your number of True Strikes (even if before that you can buy scrolls or use your high level slots on True Strike, but you'll still need a few levels for TS to be easily accessible all day long). Staff of Divination is also level 6.
That's why I speak about mid levels as you won't really shine at low level.
It's nothing special in the early levels, but I've played this thing through high levels and it is every bit the monster you'd expect.
For bonus points, after psychic go right into gunslinger. Fake out gives you a great reaction with a gauntlet bow and eagle eye can give you master perception. If you're playing free archetype, cram in psychic, gunslinger, rogue and inventor to get nonsense like dread striker, psi strikes, sneak attack, versatile bludgeoning arrows, master reflex and perception, and other fun goodies.
Just pick up Devise a Stratagem so you know rather or not you are critting to use Spell-strike Imaginary weapon full stop.
It's not about being online but efficient. Before level 6 it's just fine. It's really when you get Imaginary Weapon that it starts getting out of bounds.
Also, without True Strike, it's not better than a Greatsword Fighter before level 9, roughly. And by level 7 you get Studious Spell that will greatly increase your number of True Strikes (even if before that you can buy scrolls or use your high level slots on True Strike, but you'll still need a few levels for TS to be easily accessible all day long). Staff of Divination is also level 6.
That's why I speak about mid levels as you won't really shine at low level.
It is not one of those builds that is weak early on but then picks up. It starts from a very reasonable place and then it never stops improving as you level, which makes it even stronger in my eyes. Just wanted to make that distinction.
Just pick up Devise a Stratagem so you know rather or not you are critting to use Spell-strike Imaginary weapon full stop.
Devise a stratagem is a weird pick sometimes because it clashes with the tried and true TS gameplan. Only worth it IMO when you can use it as a free action and there are multiple enemies so you can switch targets.
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It's a marginal improvement over a d6 focus spells that is cheaper to get - at best, with a crit, you're averaging a +2 damage per spell rank advantage. Nice, but not crazy.
It's melee guys with Spellswipe landing double hits with Imaginary Weapon who are getting the most out of this.
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That's true... for an unamped Imaginary Weapon.
If it's amped, then you're looking at +2d8 scaling per spell rank. That makes a rather large difference.
Starlit can also use Spellswipe with their fists. Not that hard to keep the runes up to date too when you only really care about the +x ones to use that feat.
Also, think your math is way off, amped IW is a 6-20 average damage gain on hit over its competition.
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With a 2d6 per level Focus Spell Starlit Span was already causing issues. It was by far the best archer and was competing with melee martials. With the release of the Psychic and Imaginary Weapon it's just more obvious but the issue is the same.
Spellswipe + Imaginary Weapon is hard to pull out unlike Starlit Span which is rather easy to play. So I consider the impact to be lower.
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While I don't disagree that Starlit Span is clearly overtuned, especially with Imaginary Weapon, it's worth noting that that 193 damage is essentially three actions (also while Deriven forgot to mention his level, some napkin math suggest it's a high rolled crit too). Obscene amount of damage, but slightly less impressive than it looks at first blush.
As for things you can do to reign it in... it's really difficult, because the problematic part of Starlit Span is just how the build functions in general. Ranged spellstrike bypasses the biggest downsides of both ranged combat (comparatively low damage per hit) and the normal magus (positioning vs three action spellstrikes).
I've seen it suggested that starlit span should require you to be in cascade to spellstrike, but that doesn't reduce the damage so much as just require a setup round.
You could apply some starlit-specific nerf, like a damage penalty or requiring extra actions to force them to have off rounds, but that feels kludgy and hard to balance.
A little more scorched earth, but I've seen some people suggest that the Magus shouldn't be able to spellstrike with focus spells, because it's in general such a notable power boost for them in general.
If he fought it as a boss, say character level 13 vs level 16 monster, that's a 14d8 base with 28d8 crit.
28d8 (IW) + 6d6 (shortbow) + 2d10 (deadly) + 4d6 (damage runes) for an average of 172. So a bit above average, but 172 isn't exactly chump change either. At level 15 we add an extra 4d8 (18) which is 190. Significantly less of a high damage roll in that case.
I was assuming level 12 for a boss (since it was the only enemy he mentioned) but yeah you're right. Like I said it's a lot of damage regardless.
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It's not about being online but efficient. Before level 6 it's just fine. It's really when you get Imaginary Weapon that it starts getting out of bounds.
Also, without True Strike, it's not better than a Greatsword Fighter before level 9, roughly. And by level 7 you get Studious Spell that will greatly increase your number of True Strikes (even if before that you can buy scrolls or use your high level slots on True Strike, but you'll still need a few levels for TS to be easily accessible all day long). Staff of Divination is also level 6.
That's why I speak about mid levels as you won't really shine at low level.
How are you using Staff of Divination with a bow? Or are you using a thrown weapon?
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How are you using Staff of Divination with a bow? Or are you using a thrown weapon?
It's for the first True Strike of every fight: True Strike, drop the Staff, Spellstrike with the bow.
It works more obviously with Scrolls but at a potentially higher cost over your career.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
As for things you can do to reign it in... it's really difficult, because the problematic part of Starlit Span is just how the build functions in general. Ranged spellstrike bypasses the biggest downsides of both ranged combat (comparatively low damage per hit) and the normal magus (positioning vs three action spellstrikes).
It also bypasses the downsides of melee-range attack spells... which suggests one possible nerf as just "In order to spellstrike, the enemy has to be within range of both the strike and the spell."
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While I don't disagree that Starlit Span is clearly overtuned, especially with Imaginary Weapon, it's worth noting that that 193 damage is essentially three actions (also while Deriven forgot to mention his level, some napkin math suggest it's a high rolled crit too). Obscene amount of damage, but slightly less impressive than it looks at first blush.
As for things you can do to reign it in... it's really difficult, because the problematic part of Starlit Span is just how the build functions in general. Ranged spellstrike bypasses the biggest downsides of both ranged combat (comparatively low damage per hit) and the normal magus (positioning vs three action spellstrikes).
I've seen it suggested that starlit span should require you to be in cascade to spellstrike, but that doesn't reduce the damage so much as just require a setup round.
You could apply some starlit-specific nerf, like a damage penalty or requiring extra actions to force them to have off rounds, but that feels kludgy and hard to balance.
A little more scorched earth, but I've seen some people suggest that the Magus shouldn't be able to spellstrike with focus spells, because it's in general such a notable power boost for them in general.
Requiring a setup round every fight is a pretty good way to reduce damage when many fights last only a few rounds.
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No, Heighten +2d8 is only 2 damage per spell rank ahead of Heighten +2d6 damage on average, and there's a lot of focus spells that are effectively 2d6/rank like that.That's true... for an unamped Imaginary Weapon.
If it's amped, then you're looking at +2d8 scaling per spell rank. That makes a rather large difference.
The bonus here is three-fold. Getting IW clears our archetype letting us select another, provides a 3rd focus point and is a damage improvement over d6 spells.
Level 14 Starlit Span Magus with a Longbow, Archer Archetype, and Point Blank Stance. +2 greater striking longbow with no runes surprisingly, though I did have a fire rune active when I fired this shot using Runic Impression.
I have Scroll Striker, so he has plentiful True Strikes. Every time I get downtime, I make a bunch of True Strike scrolls and attach them to the bow. One True Strike per combat most the time at least.
I did pick up crafting and quick attachment feat. Since attaching scrolls works like a Talisman, DM allows scrolls to be attached quickly with the Rapid Affixture feat. Not sure if this is RAW or RAI, but it is what we allow.
The Magus is baseline a very well designed, efficient class. The ability to poach the best attack cantrip in the game makes it better.
Level 14 Starlit Span Magus with a Longbow, Archer Archetype, and Point Blank Stance. +2 greater striking longbow with no runes surprisingly, though I did have a fire rune active when I fired this shot using Runic Impression.
I have Scroll Striker, so he has plentiful True Strikes. Every time I get downtime, I make a bunch of True Strike scrolls and attach them to the bow. One True Strike per combat most the time at least.
I did pick up crafting and quick attachment feat. Since attaching scrolls works like a Talisman, DM allows scrolls to be attached quickly with the Rapid Affixture feat. Not sure if this is RAW or RAI, but it is what we allow.
The Magus is baseline a very well designed, efficient class. The ability to poach the best attack cantrip in the game makes it better.
not sure that is how striker scroll work
wouldn't shift spellstriker staff into a thrown weapon work better
I did try a Tamchal Chakram. I felt it would be ideal to gain strength to damage using a thrown weapon.
It's real hard to beat the 100 foot range on a longbow for the variety of situations you deal with in a game. It works great with force fang as well.
You don't think Striker Scroll's working like a Talisman for attachment would work with Rapid Affixture? I could not find any clear rules backing one way or the other.
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As Riddlyn said, Striker's scroll lets you use that scroll as your spell of choice for the Spellstrike without the need to hold it. What you are doing is easily replicable though.
For your TS you can use a staff (cast, then drop for the first turn of combat) or scrolls and a Retrieval Belt (or a retrieval prism).
I see, yes. The scroll attached is only for Spellstriking. Good thing I started using this again as I had forgotten how it worked as I originally used it with Shocking Grasp before I picked up imaginary weapon.
I wanted to start using Striker's Scroll again for AoE spells now that I can make 3rd and 4th level AoE spells moderately cheaply and easily.
Can you use Rapid Affixture to attach the scroll? That is what I was wondering. I can attach them rapidly with Affix a talisman and and Rapid Affixture?
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Can you use Rapid Affixture to attach the scroll? That is what I was wondering. I can attach them rapidly with Affix a talisman and and Rapid Affixture?
That you can do, yes. Striker's Scroll notes that it uses Affix a Talisman, and Rapid Affixture reduces the time of Affix a Talisman.
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Cool.
I just started using striker's scroll again after a several level break. Not sure why I mixed it up to use true strike scrolls. Now it reminded me of my original plan after using striker's scroll for shocking grasp early on. I want to build up some AoE scrolls as I don't need anything beside imaginary weapon for single target. I took Expansive Spellstrike to increase my ability to use AoE spells with Spellstrike which is great with Starlit Span.
You feel like Hawkeye with Starlit Span. Very fun build.
People are arguing spell swipe + starlit Span, but spell swipe is explicitly only unsable in melee
People are arguing spell swipe + starlit Span, but spell swipe is explicitly only unsable in melee
Literally nobody here is doing that
As for the problem, Starlit Span is pretty overpowered no matter how you play it. Not excessively so, there are several other real monsters out there, but absolutely in the top of top tier. I'm anticipating an eventual nerf, but wouldn't do anything hasty in case they just leave it as-is after all.
Until then, if it causes problems for a table or the Magus player themselves, I think the best way to deal with it is to just not pick IW. Or in extreme cases, maybe don't even take a damage focus spell at all. Starlit Span is still great when "just" using cantrips or one of the more reasonable focus spells.
But if nobody else at the table sees a problem with it, there is no need to do anything.
As Riddlyn said, Striker's scroll lets you use that scroll as your spell of choice for the Spellstrike without the need to hold it. What you are doing is easily replicable though.
For your TS you can use a staff (cast, then drop for the first turn of combat) or scrolls and a Retrieval Belt (or a retrieval prism).
The staff seems a touch excessive. If you're only doing it one cast per fight, then you can just walk into battle with scroll in hand and use that... thus freeing the hand. Retrieval prisms are potentially useful if you wind up in a fight without scroll in hand. Not sure what this "retrieval belt" thing is, though.
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The staff seems a touch excessive. If you're only doing it one cast per fight, then you can just walk into battle with scroll in hand and use that... thus freeing the hand. Retrieval prisms are potentially useful if you wind up in a fight without scroll in hand. Not sure what this "retrieval belt" thing is, though.As Riddlyn said, Striker's scroll lets you use that scroll as your spell of choice for the Spellstrike without the need to hold it. What you are doing is easily replicable though.
For your TS you can use a staff (cast, then drop for the first turn of combat) or scrolls and a Retrieval Belt (or a retrieval prism).
. Since you only need the lowest level version, it is quite affordable. In the long run it will save you quite a bit of money (4 gp per combat) and it also gives you access to extra versatility in the form of more spells. Think the average player will do more than 60 combats between level 9-ish and level 20, that's more than enough to break even.
If the game is not going to the high levels, then yes, it is not a good move.
Now I think of it, is there a Staff of Divination equivalent in PC1? Needing to go to spellstriker staff would make this quite worse, since you don't get the extra utility spells and it is considerably more expensive.
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Divination equivalent in PC1? Needing to go to spellstriker staff would make this quite worse, since you don't get the extra utility spells and it is considerably more expensive.
It's uncommon now, but it's there.
I'm finally giving this combination a shot. It seems insanely overpowered. It is far superior to any other archer option in the game with few weaknesses. It seems to match even fighters for damage if not exceeds what they can do.
Today I just hit a Lesser Death for 193 points of damage with an amped imaginary weapon with a natural 20. Sure, it was a natural 20. But even so, it was an absolutely insane critical hit. I was able to do this while the Lesser Death had already used its reaction.
Starlit Span is one of the few classes I've seen that seems a real peg or two above the PF2 power scale. If there is a Tier 1, they are Tier 1+.
Did any of you do anything to rein this option in without banning it? Or do you think PF2 designers will nerf this option at some point?
It's hard to say if they will nerf it, since the only real reason this even happened was because you didn't have to deal with the repercussions of the reaction; guaranteed, if the Lesser Death used its reaction on your attack (I don't know what else it would have used its reaction on, maybe a heal), it would have been disrupted, and you would have done absolutely nothing on your turn. Going from 193 to 0 is an extremely feelsbad moment.
Magus is an extremely feast/famine class, probably even moreso than a Swashbuckler. If you don't have to worry about being disrupted via reactions, it's extremely potent, even if built suboptimally. If the constant threat of AoOs (especially against boss-type enemies) is present, they're almost better off just making basic strikes, which cuts out the lion's share of their damage, and if you're Starlit Span, making basic strikes will still trigger most reactions.
Needless to say, you got lucky, and the allies took away the #1 thing that would have nullified your entire character for that turn. I wouldn't call that being overpowered at all, since that could have very easily turned into a nothingburger turn if the Lesser Death either had not used his reaction prior, or decided to save his reaction specifically for you (which, depending on which spell was cast, and the circumstances, would have probably been the better call).
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The staff seems a touch excessive. If you're only doing it one cast per fight, then you can just walk into battle with scroll in hand and use that... thus freeing the hand. Retrieval prisms are potentially useful if you wind up in a fight without scroll in hand. Not sure what this "retrieval belt" thing is, though.As Riddlyn said, Striker's scroll lets you use that scroll as your spell of choice for the Spellstrike without the need to hold it. What you are doing is easily replicable though.
For your TS you can use a staff (cast, then drop for the first turn of combat) or scrolls and a Retrieval Belt (or a retrieval prism).
. Since you only need the lowest level version, it is quite affordable. In the long run it will save you quite a bit of money (4 gp per combat) and it also gives you access to extra versatility in the form of more spells. Think the average player will do more than 60 combats between level 9-ish and level 20, that's more than enough to break even.
If the game is not going to the high levels, then yes, it is not a good move.
Now I think of it, is there a Staff of Divination equivalent in PC1? Needing to go to spellstriker staff would make this quite worse, since you don't get the extra utility spells and it is considerably more expensive.
There's a degree of time preference your'e ignoring here. Sure, if you do 60 combats that's more than enough to break even... but you're paying for the staff up front, while you're paying for the scrolls as you go, and the gold isn't worth nearly as much at the end as it is at the beginning.
Also, a strategy that involves "and I drop my staff on the ground" as the thing you do first thing in every fight assumes that you'll never have to withdraw, never find yourself in a fight where dropping the staff would cause it to fall into something awful and be lost entirely, never find yourself in a fight where someone might dash up and grab it and run... basically, it works fine for white room, but there's a lot of situations where that's going to result in a lost staff. So you might have 60 fights... but are you going to have 60 fights where you can use this strategy safely?
To be clear here, I'm not saying that "get a staff" is a bad plan. It's not. At some point as a magus you almost certainly should get some sort of staff. I'm saying "use your staff for True Strike at the start of each fight and then drop it one the ground" is perhaps not the best plan, when you could just use scrolls instead.
The staff seems a touch excessive. If you're only doing it one cast per fight, then you can just walk into battle with scroll in hand and use that... thus freeing the hand. Retrieval prisms are potentially useful if you wind up in a fight without scroll in hand. Not sure what this "retrieval belt" thing is, though.As Riddlyn said, Striker's scroll lets you use that scroll as your spell of choice for the Spellstrike without the need to hold it. What you are doing is easily replicable though.
For your TS you can use a staff (cast, then drop for the first turn of combat) or scrolls and a Retrieval Belt (or a retrieval prism).
. Since you only need the lowest level version, it is quite affordable. In the long run it will save you quite a bit of money (4 gp per combat) and it also gives you access to extra versatility in the form of more spells. Think the average player will do more than 60 combats between level 9-ish and level 20, that's more than enough to break even.
If the game is not going to the high levels, then yes, it is not a good move.
Now I think of it, is there a Staff of Divination equivalent in PC1? Needing to go to spellstriker staff would make this quite worse, since you don't get the extra utility spells and it is considerably more expensive.
There's a degree of time preference your'e ignoring here. Sure, if you do 60 combats that's more than enough to break even... but you're paying for the staff up front, while you're paying for the scrolls as you go, and the gold isn't worth nearly as much at the end as it is at the beginning.
Also, a strategy that involves "and I drop my staff on the ground" as the thing you do first thing in every fight assumes that you'll never have to withdraw, never find yourself in a fight where dropping the staff would cause it to fall into something awful and be lost entirely, never find yourself in a fight where someone might dash up and grab it and run......
First of all, don't call a strat several people in these forums, me included, have pulled off in actual play "white room". That's a cheap way to dismiss an argument around here and a bad habit lots of people in these forums have.
Not saying that paying upfront is actually a good thing, just that you eventually break even so getting those other extra spells in the staff is more or less "free" when you can afford the item.
As for dropping the staff being an issue, we are talking about starlit here. A ranged martial. Chances are really low that enemies will go closer to you instead of the squishy caster once they break through the frontline, and even when that happens and you need to retreat, most of the time you can expend that action to retrieve your staff anyway since you don't need to move much if at all in most fights from personal experience. And even when you leave it behind, nothing stops you from coming back in most situations. Your hypothetical situation is the cornercase to end all cornercases IMO. And even then, as long as you don't lose it permanently (which is honestly something I think most GMs won't ever do) very early on, why should you care? The staff becames very cheap relatively early in your career.
Also, if an enemy tries to steal it and run away, well... you have a bow.
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Also the other spells on the Staff of Divination are extremely interesting, it's definitely a staple for a Magus.
Also the other spells on the Staff of Divination are extremely interesting, it's definitely a staple for a Magus.
Oh, absolutely. it has become one of my favourite items and I tend to grab myself one whenever I end up playing almost any caster.
First of all, don't call a strat several people in these forums, me included, have pulled off in actual play "white room". That's a cheap way to dismiss an argument around here and a bad habit lots of people in these forums have.
Okay. That's fair. I'll instead say that it's campaign-dependent. There are a lot of campaigns out there where "The ground beneath you is stable and straightforward" and "the party can generally be expected to hold the field at the end of every combat encounter" are going to be consistently true, and for those it's not an issue. If you're in a campaign that's going to mess with those assumptions, though, it can start to be a problem.
Past that... there's admittedly not all that much of a difference.
Once you get up a few levels, the money issue isn't really a thing for either of the two strategies. If the thing that you want is "at the start of each fight I cast True Strike and then my hand is empty" I think that there's some advantage to be had in casting True Strike with a scroll and letting other concerns dictate which staff you're going to use (and possibly saving those charges for higher-level spells and utility powers even if you *are* using a Staff of Divination), but I acknowledge that the advantage is pretty marginal one way or the other.
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Well with the staff no longer accessible without gm fiat, it's likely future magi will be using scrolls anyway. Or a set of 3-4 rank 1 wands maybe?
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Well with the staff no longer accessible without gm fiat, it's likely future magi will be using scrolls anyway. Or a set of 3-4 rank 1 wands maybe?
The wands are going to be similar expense to the staff while not producing any meaningful upside. If you're looking at a campaign with a lot of one-encounter days, then a single wand is potentially competitive, but it doesn't look great over the long haul if you have to buy a number of them up front.
I'm coming to the realization that in general, buying scrolls (especially low-level scrolls) is actually very competitive financially with other ways of getting the same things, given standard wealth by encounter curves. I don't necessarily like that conclusion. The idea of powering things off of consumables makes me itch... but the math is pretty clear.
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I am glad to see more and more people coming around on scrolls. They are really a very cheap way to do a lot of casting. In non-free-archetype games, they can be significantly better than dropping precious feats for MC spell slots. The biggest draw back of scrolls is that they don’t work well with 2 handed builds. The starlit’s ability to rely on a 1+ handed weapon is a surprisingly big deal.
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I've come to the same math conclusion, that scrolls are very good. The remaster also includes a lot more useful talismans, including cheap low level ones.
I'm also thinking that in a way, staves feel a little bit easier just in cognitive load. PF1 had a bad habit of having these really long lists of must-have equipment. PF2 feels a bit more condensed, until you start trying to think what kind of scrolls of what spells heightened to what level you want to pack.
4 rank 1 wands is 10gp more than the base staff. Use each wand once per day for 60 days and you've paid them off. Useless for shorter campaigns or those particularly light on combat but comparable to the staff since I strongly doubt you'll be pumping out 5+ true strikes from it per day all that often.
Weaponless casters have ~53500 gp free to spend over 20 levels (40k weapon, 13.5k ish in damage runes). You can very conceivably use this spare change to fuel a scroll based playstyle to augment your slots. All told, you can purchase about 4 of each rank of scroll before you run out of money. 10 of each if you totally ignore rank 10 scrolls and their silly 8k cost. Of course you can't actually get them as your top rank most of the time just because of income scaling, but most of the best spells don't need heightening either. Just need to worry about action economy.
I'm finally giving this combination a shot. It seems insanely overpowered. It is far superior to any other archer option in the game with few weaknesses. It seems to match even fighters for damage if not exceeds what they can do.
Today I just hit a Lesser Death for 193 points of damage with an amped imaginary weapon with a natural 20. Sure, it was a natural 20. But even so, it was an absolutely insane critical hit. I was able to do this while the Lesser Death had already used its reaction.
Starlit Span is one of the few classes I've seen that seems a real peg or two above the PF2 power scale. If there is a Tier 1, they are Tier 1+.
Did any of you do anything to rein this option in without banning it? Or do you think PF2 designers will nerf this option at some point?
It's hard to say if they will nerf it, since the only real reason this even happened was because you didn't have to deal with the repercussions of the reaction; guaranteed, if the Lesser Death used its reaction on your attack (I don't know what else it would have used its reaction on, maybe a heal), it would have been disrupted, and you would have done absolutely nothing on your turn. Going from 193 to 0 is an extremely feelsbad moment.
Magus is an extremely feast/famine class, probably even moreso than a Swashbuckler. If you don't have to worry about being disrupted via reactions, it's extremely potent, even if built suboptimally. If the constant threat of AoOs (especially against boss-type enemies) is present, they're almost better off just making basic strikes, which cuts out the lion's share of their damage, and if you're Starlit Span, making basic strikes will still trigger most reactions.
Needless to say, you got lucky, and the allies took away the #1 thing that would have nullified your entire character for that turn. I wouldn't call that being overpowered at all, since that could have very easily turned into a nothingburger turn if the Lesser Death either had not used his reaction...
The Lesser Death could have disrupted it. I did get lucky on that one.
It's the sheer damage that surprised me. It was obviously a super lucky hit. A nat 20 is what I needed for a crit and to not have its reaction used on me. But the damage with the nat 20 was pretty nutty.
I haven't seen another class replicate this. The highest crits I had seen before this were Eldritch Archer which uses a similar mechanic and a giant instinct barbarian or a power attack fighter. They did not reach that level. I've seen stronger aggregate damage crits from an AOE caster in total damage, but not for a single target.
I know you don't put much stock in the white room graphs, but this is a quick mockup of a full de/buff stack (scaling as numbers improve ofc) against a +4 opponent. Even assumes the barb has true strike on their first attack from some nameless fortune effect or true target. Helps put it in perspective a bit though.
4 rank 1 wands is 10gp more than the base staff. Use each wand once per day for 60 days and you've paid them off. Useless for shorter campaigns or those particularly light on combat but comparable to the staff since I strongly doubt you'll be pumping out 5+ true strikes from it per day all that often.
Yeah... but part of the draw of the staff is that you *can* be doing other things with it.
Let's look at the raw math of just wand vs scroll. We're going a bit white room on this at first.
Let's assume a campaign that's pure dungeon crawl, with a GM who loves monsters and has no interest in including any non-monster source of exp. Further, said GM is a bit OCD, and always throws the party against moderate encounters, with a medium advancement speed straight out of the core rulebook (1000 exp per level). Each encounter is going to be 80 exp, and the party should expect to face 12.5 of them per level, hitting exactly 3 per day. Ehhh... that makes the OCD twitch a bit too much. They'll cap every level off with a single severe encounter. Each level will cover 12 encounters, and 4 adventuring days. Much better.
Now, a level 1 scroll is going to run you 4gp. A standard level 1 wand is going to run you 60. So the wand hits break-even after 15 adventuring days of use... or, under the above scheme, slightly less than the time it takes to gain 4 levels.
"Treasure for new characters" WBL jumps up pretty quickly at the beginning, but settles down to something pretty close to doubling (or a bit more) every couple of levels starting at about level 7 and up... and you're unlikely to want to throw around the 180 that you'd need for three wands before that regardless.
So... by the time you're hitting break-even, your available money has nearly quadrupled. Somewhere in there, that 12 gp per day spent on scrolls became a fair bit less significant.
...and now we get back to the white-room aspect, because it is pertinent. Wands are on a strict per-day schedule. Scrolls are a "use them when you use them" thing... which means that if you have a variable number of encounters per day, the scrolls will meet that need much more flexibly. If you have the same number per day, but the difficulty varies, then you can opt to not use the scrolls some of the time and save money when the challenge is low. Now, if you're only facing one or two encounters per day, then wands benefit from that in fairly direct and obvious ways, but if you're consistently facing more than three they get worse... an if there are any sources of exp that are not combat, that'll speed up that race to irrelevance.
Essentially, the problem with saving money by using wands is that the gain you get out of it only matters if the price of the scrolls you save is still relevant once you've used it enough times to actually be saving money. Chasing that, you're giving up both flexibility and early money - money at a time when we know it matters.