
Karmagator |

An automatic universal +1/+2 is far, far better than one that costs feats, an action (you still need to command your familiar, as they explicitly need to prepare to help) and only applies to up to two skills. The only advantage this combo has is that it gets to the +2 bonus far faster.
Correction: Familiar and Diverse Lore are both 1st level feats, so the number of necessary feats is usually equal. Oops, forget that part.

Deriven Firelion |
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Squiggit wrote:Lots of hand wringing over the ability to uh- be pretty good at getting selective information about the setting from the GM.
It says some nice things about the game when an ability that by definition can't break anything is what we're fixating on as 'overpowered.'
Diverse Lore on its own is awesome, both from a narrative and mechanical perspective. Without the context of other classes, it doesn't break anything, quite the contrary. It's purely what it does to the niche of other character and INT that's the problem.
I can see Super Bidi's point.
On these boards intelligence and intelligence-based classes are sold as the ultimate users of Recall Knowledge to the benefit of themselves and the party to prove that intelligence is an equally valuable stat. Most of the intel casters are mostly using this option, often with the Additional Lore feat to obtain Recall Knowledge skills based on intel.
Here comes this Tome Thaumaturge that pretty much says, "I'm the best at Recall knowledge and I use Charisma." By the way, I can get more Legendary skills than you intel classes much like a rogue. I'm the most awesome skills to figure things out, while I also build up my Athletics and Acrobatics.
Basically, they are stepping heavy on intel class toes and intelligence is already a stat that could use some feats to make it better.

YuriP |
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Yet I still think that the problem is in normal Int RK not in Thauma's class features.
It's not the Esoteric Lore that's too good but many intelligence skills that's too meh and are too focused in specific RK and that's too restrict.
If I have some complain is that Thaumaturge that is Cha based instead of Int based that indirectly improves its versatility.

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And during all of this you are discounting the fact that this is comparing the Thaum, who needs zero investment in terms of skills to do this, to characters who need to to spend all their skill increases and several skill feats (for Additional Lore) to have the same impact in even a handful of areas. And even then there are plenty of levels where the proficiency for their secondary and/or tertiary skill needs to catch up.
This thaumaturge had to put ability score increases that are counter to the martial chassis (i.e. CHA past 18), give up half its subclass (until L15), take a L1 feat, potentially put their implements into a non-optimized order (to get tome first vs. at 5) and then give up the penultimate L17 subclass implement upgrade to get the best chance they had at recalling knowledge, and give up the Apex item in their attack stat (bad idea) so they could potentially recall knowledge better. Its hardly zero investment.
The caster meanwhile can spend 1 class feat on enhanced familiar and/or use a subclass (i.e., familiar wizard thesis or just wait to L6/12 for witch since their familiar auto gains abilities) or ancestry feat to get a base familiar. They don't give up attribute increases because they were always going to bump INT. They give up some daily resources of their 2 levels lower than highest level slot which gets easier to do as time goes on and are generally obsolete at in combat slots (but even without library lore they are ahead of the thaumaturge at every level). IMO the thaumaturge is investing way more into closing the gap and still failing.
Of course it gets to do this for all recall knowledge (not just arcana, occultism, religion, and nature) which is a versatility type power. The thaumaturge is not beating any one person on the thing they invest into but has a wide set of recall knowledge capabilities (jack of all trades and master of none). It is literally their niche! You guys are complaining that one of the knowledge classes who gained their knowledge from pooring over esoteric books and memorizing written in the margin conspiracy theories from the library can't get to know a little about a lot? A flagship class feature is literally 'making up weaknesses' because you know something that no one else knows (that gibbering mouther's hates the silver when paired with the fermented crud off my socks and good thing I have a vial ready to apply to my weapon). They are literally a knowledge manifest into reality class so comparing them to casters who incidentally have a matching casting stat is like comparing apples to oranges.
But again it is limited to recall knowledge and this has to be stressed so much because everyone keeps hand waiving it. Ask yourself if knowing about something in any way qualifies you to do the thing? If you know about boats does that make you a sailor (clearly no). If you know about art theory does that make you an artist (clearly no). So esoteric lore cannnot replace sailing lore, art lore, or 'insert any lore/knowledge skill' in practical applications (i.e., sailing the boat or whipping up 4-5 gallery pieces so you get an invite to the super secret evil art auction). Hell the thaumaturge is so 'assured' of their knowledge that they often come away with literal false facts about the very thing they are supposed to know. Are you guys metagaming out what the false fact is or playing it properly and exploring the extremely fun situations that arise from following the false facts?
As for the investigator, I think there is a clear niche separation. The thaumaturge is about already knowing a weird esoteric thing that could be useful. The investigator is about finding out something no one knows. That is knowing vs. investigating/learning as the niches they fill. Of course if you're good at investigating/learning you'll also end up knowing a lot so there is crossover but it isn't actually the primary niche of the class. Most of their class features and feats point them in this direction. Even still they have benefits over the thaumaturge, like the caster:
- As you said they can gain circumstance bonuses (so net neutral with the tome implement until L9 when its just +2 vs. the +2 from tome gained at L17). Also typically the things you recall knowledge on are related to your lead but you could always diversify to familiar master for the familiar trick if desired.
- They can take the alchemical sciences methedology and make on level cognitive mutagens which nets them a +1 to +4 item bonus (that gives them typically a +1 item bonus over the caster and thaumaturge).
- They typically have INT as their primary stat that is fully invested into because it doubles as their attack stat in many cases. That puts them at a +0 to +3 ahead of the thamaturge who again is likely capping CHA at 18, 20, and not wasting their APEX item on CHA (but on their primary attack stat of DEX or STR).
- They get twice the skill increases and skill feats as the thaumaturge. which will mitigate, even further the L7/L8 and L15/L16 levels discussed previously for non-primary skill increases.
- They don't have a -2 at all levels from the top skill proficiency level.
Ascalaphus wrote:If you were supposed to be the party's main knowledge person, why was the magus playing a Tome thaum?I was not supposed to be the main RK guy, I was supposed to have 3 skills to Legendary. There's no other class that get such a wide bonus to skills where the rest of the party is supposed to just take the remaining bits. A Tome Thaumaturge can roughly maximize 9 skills (proficiency + stat), that's more than half of them. For someone like me who likes skills, it's a big impact. I know others don't care about skills but I do and as such I'm very much impacted.
And I'd ask you (in general, not in particular) to not put the mistake on "me". I chose nothing but to play a caster in a party with none of them, my choice made a lot of sense, I just did not expect to be pushed aside the skill game.
@Red Gryffin: No, I won't invest feats and spells to compete with another player. If another PC is at the top of a bunch of skills, I'll just choose other ones.
If you won't invest in being the best then someone who does could be better than you. If that wasn't true then the game would be poorly designed and deeply unsatisfying.
Playing a caster does not entitle you to be the defacto INT/WIS recall knowledge master. Its just a low/no hanging fruit that is easy for people to say 'I'll do it' because their casting stat is the same as the skill. You wouldn't expect the barbarian who just has max STR to be as good at athletics as the guy that picked the tripping weapon, dipped into archetypes/class feats to boost their action economy to trip/tripping bonus, etc. If you would, then you aren't appreciating the incredible versatility of the PF2 game design that enables a wide variety character concepts that aren't just TTRPG tropes.
As for max proficiency, the thaumaturge is only getting their base 3+2 from Tome to legendary. They are unlikely to have max stat in any of those skills because again maxing CHA on a thaumaturge comes at a huge penalty to martial capabilities since they need to maximize their attack stat (not CHA) and any diverse lore skills you're trying to count are automatically capped at a master equivalent proficiency (because of the untyped -2 penalty and only RK related uses). That sounds a lot like the baseline` investigator and rogue that get 6 skills to legendary from L15 to L20. The rogue can even do far better by using skill bumping/skill feat heavy archetypes to snag a ton of skills to master way more than they normally get via using their skill bumps every level. Everyone can also sneak 2 more legendary skills in society and acrobatics via the twighlight speaker/acrobat archetypes or many more expert and master skills via the investigator/rogue archetypes. As well anyone can go sleepwalker to roll skills at advantage or take the L5 elf feat to rolls skills with a +2 circumstance bonus by taking twice as long (still useful in combat for many use cases).
On my best rogue free archetype build for Strength of Thousands I was able to get 12 extra skill proficiency bumps from archetypes alone and another 7 proficiency bumps from the academia subsystem used in that AP. By L20 I had 8 skills at legendary, 4 at master, 3 at expert, 1 at trained, and 1 additional int based bump at L20 I couldn't use because every named skill was already better at least trained. Now that twighlight speaker exists I can probably do even better.

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Karmagator wrote:Squiggit wrote:Lots of hand wringing over the ability to uh- be pretty good at getting selective information about the setting from the GM.
It says some nice things about the game when an ability that by definition can't break anything is what we're fixating on as 'overpowered.'
Diverse Lore on its own is awesome, both from a narrative and mechanical perspective. Without the context of other classes, it doesn't break anything, quite the contrary. It's purely what it does to the niche of other character and INT that's the problem.
I can see Super Bidi's point.
On these boards intelligence and intelligence-based classes are sold as the ultimate users of Recall Knowledge to the benefit of themselves and the party to prove that intelligence is an equally valuable stat. Most of the intel casters are mostly using this option, often with the Additional Lore feat to obtain Recall Knowledge skills based on intel.
Here comes this Tome Thaumaturge that pretty much says, "I'm the best at Recall knowledge and I use Charisma." By the way, I can get more Legendary skills than you intel classes much like a rogue. I'm the most awesome skills to figure things out, while I also build up my Athletics and Acrobatics.
Basically, they are stepping heavy on intel class toes and intelligence is already a stat that could use some feats to make it better.
Well then these boards should not be falsely conflating the ideas of caster and skill monkey. I think a good chunk of people that advocate that position at the table are the STR/DEX/CON/WIS MAD martials who don't have enough ability score increases to have CHA and or INT at any meaningful bonus and thus need to rely on another class to fill that role in the party. That is fine and as shown above most INT/WIS classes can mop the floor with the thaumaturge in RK rolls with investment in their casting stat 'fiefdom', but they are not the defacto 'I'm good with skills classes'. Those are clearly the rogue, investigator, and thaumaturge who all have different niche manifestations of 'skill monkey'. In the same way that rogue, investigator, and thaumaturge aren't full casters with spell slots and all the world bending things those can do.
Where your casting stat is INT you may also be good at arcana, crafting, occultism, and society with fairly minimal investment. Where your casting stat is WIS, you may also be good at medicine, survival, nature, and religion with minimal investment. Where your casting stat is CHA you may also be good at diplomacy, deception, intimidation, and performance with minimal investment. The only caster with any real claim to skill monkey has historically been the bard but that was also back when it was a 2/3 caster/gish and not full caster. So maybe buff bardic lore (but that class's compositions are pretty powerful and the caster has a clear support niche in PF2e vs. knowledge class so its probably not a great idea).
I mean count me in for beefing up INT skill uses. I'd love a good one action debuff like bon mot/demoralize or a X to Y type feat like in PF1e were society can be built up to be effectively the same as diplomacy or bluff for 90% of uses.
At the end of the day when people say they had a bad experience we should 'believe them' but we shouldn't just say their anecdotal experience nullifies the fundamental system math. If upon further investigation there were a series of cumulative mitigating factors then there isn't really anything wrong, just a series of unfortunate events or deliberate choices that manifested as expected.
In this case Super Bidi said they weren't willing to invest feats, spells, etc. into being better at a skill and they weren't supposed to be the main RK person. So they made other build choices and suddenly weren't beating the people who specialized into being able to do the RK role. That sounds like exactly how it should have gone. Person 1 invests in role X, Person 2 does not and thus Person 1 is better at performing role X. There are still a lot of unknowns that impact the takeaways that are important to understand:
- Were there a series of bad or good rolls in gameplay that might have biased the takeaways unfairly?
- Did they have a good session 0 for the party to discuss what they were building for and what roles people would fill.
- Did their GM afford them moments to shine with skills they did select (particularly arcana/religion/nature/occultism) that weren't just recall knowledge based like chases/skill challenges/rituals/social encounter sub systems for NPC influencing/practical applications/etc. (it doesn't sound like that is yes since they say those come up once in a blue moon).
- Did they set the DCs for things appropriately or just always set Lore DCs as lower?
- Was this only lower levels or higher levels when the thaumaturge falls farther behind.
- Was there a player issue where the thaumaturge kept the spotlight on themselves too much. This is also part of the social etiquette/contract session 0 should establish (i.e., even if you're the best at something you don't have to be the primary on it every time and let others tell the stories they want). Was the GM enforcing this or engaging every player well to prompt them into trying something even if another player might have a better bonus?
So while I respect they had a negative experience, in this particular case, I don't think their specific experience provides convincing evidence of the conclusions they drew (i.e., that diverse lore is overpowered). Even if you collected the same experience they had at a statistically significant number of tables so it wasn't anecdotal, it still wouldn't show that the feature is overpowered, just that the way the community engages with the feature/RK rules/skills in general is not the same way the game designers intended. Perhaps if everyone assumes INT casters should have more RK built in with no investment because thats how every PF2e person wants the game to go, then that is a design change Paizo can make/support to improve player base perceptions/optics (but that isn't the same conclusion as 'diverse lore' is overpowered).

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Quote:An automatic universal +1/+2 is far, far better than one that costs feats, an action (you still need to command your familiar, as they explicitly need to prepare to help) and only applies to up to two skills. The only advantage this combo has is that it gets to the +2 bonus far faster.Correction: Familiar and Diverse Lore are both 1st level feats, so the number of necessary feats is usually equal. Oops, forget that part.
An independent familiar takes away that issue. So with 4 traits you can have second opinion, skilled arcana, skilled occultism, and independent. Now they can always use their one action to ready to aid you and there is no action economy issue.
The L5 elf feat ageless patience can give you a +2 circumstance bonus to ANY skill if you double the time it takes to do it. So for out of combat its easy to do. For in combat it could cost an additional action for most uses but if you're an inventor trying to crit your stance or trying to do a 1 action disable on a trap/hazard then the +2 can easily be worth it.
Which costs 3 actions, meaning it is bad for combat. Where RK checks are most critical. And depends on you being at least level 5 to have the resources to even get the +1. It also doesn't change what skill you have to roll, so unless that is one of your better skills, it doesn't really help you at all.
Missed this critique. The spell duration is 24 hours. So you would always cast it out of combat for use whenever you need it. You get the bonus as part of rolling RK and the only requirement is a free hand. Here is the spell so you can read it: Pocket Library
From everything I've seen, the chance is far from good. Or practically zero for Tome Thaums with Diverse Lore, as they have every reason to stack CHA.
The class barely uses CHA in combat unless you have a DC based implement like the wand. It is KAS 16 martial class that spends its entire career trying to keep its attack stat maximized so it can do the actual thing in combat it is designed to do (i.e., reliable truck loads of static damage). Classes like the inventor, investigator, etc. really incentivizes you to bump your primary class stat because they need successes on their INT based rolls. The thaumaturge only needs a failure on their standard level DC on esoteric lore to allow for a personal antithesis so there isn't a huge pressure there to be as CHA heavy as you might assume.
Lets say you start 18 CHA, and have a 16 in STR or DEX based on how you plan to attack, that means your CON/WIS/STR/INT will be low.
Assuming we dump INT because of diverse lore, that means we still want all 5 other stats for saves, HP, damage modifier, attack modifier, and CHA which you basically don't use on most of the implements. So going full into CHA means you have to give up one or multiple of those things. Personally I build alot of thrown weapon thaumaturges so DEX is maximized (since it is their lagging stat) meaning I can focus on STR/DEX/CON/WIS once CHA is at 18 by L5. Otherwise you could pick a repeating weapon (dex based attack no str modifier) so you give up weapon damage dice and static modifier and do a lot less damage. If you're melee then you have to be okay with a trash dex score which impacts your refelx saves and AC until you can invest enough DEX to match your best armor proficiency. So they aren't just getting this all for free. IMO the most optimized thing is to leave CHA at 18 (maybe 20 if you start at L10+) and put your Apex item into your attack stat. Otherwise you'll be really regretting it in terms of combat ability/DPR capabilities.
Don't get me wrong, its okay to do that if you want. But there is a measurable and big drop in DPR if you do that. Its a valid character choice to be a better skill monkey at the expense of being a better PC in combat, but that is clearly a tradeoff happening that ensures this isn't overpowered.
Conversely casters want 4 attributes of 6 (casting stat, 3 save stats). So they can basically scrape buy pretty well and aren't giving up as big a chunk of their underlying combat capabilities to be good at their two casting stat knowledge skills.

roquepo |

Jumping in a bit late, but I think all things that were actually overpowered are already errata'ed (or fixed with remaster or other following books) or at least marked for errata/aknowledged as out-of-line options.
Errata'ed stuff: Gnome Flickmace, Heaven's Thunder, Sixth Pillar master proficiency, Hammer crit spec, Bone Croupier.
Marked for Errata: Pin to the Spot, Inner Radiance Torrent (some argue it is not even OP to begin with).
May be missing one or two in that list, but actually overpowered things get fixed in time. There is still stuff that even though it works in the confines the game system sets, they are a peg above other options. Some in a way it kind of invalidates other options and thus should probably be looked at (this is where I'd put Starlit, Diverse Lore and maybe Resentment Witch. Not game breaking, but sort of problematic still in a different way).
I also think someone here mentioned some feats from LO: Firebrands. I think those need just a second pass if anything else, more wonky than overpowered in most cases.

The-Magic-Sword |
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I'm not super stressed about Imaginary Weapon Starlit Span, it takes up your archetype and in base game your class feats until you exit psychic at level 8 (which is fine, you do get slots out of that multiclass), and while its a fair amount of damage its consuming a focus point to do it, which could have just been force fang-- which is less damage, but doesn't make your turn a waste if your attack roll doesn't pay off, since you're not using the focus point on a conflux, or if you are, you'll burn your points real quick and not be able to do another one the following round.

AestheticDialectic |
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First few level of magus feats kind of suck, and there is no other archetype worth taking that is anywhere as good as psychic on the magus. So I don't see how this could ever play into cost benefit analysis, "sacrificing" those feats for better ones is a net gain, not wasting feats on less useful archetypes is a net gain. Using your focus points to hit like a truck instead of hitting very weakly but with no miss chance is still a net gain. Really don't see a downside here at all. I could maybe see an argument for using feats to get a dromaeosaur animal companion to mount for 50ft of free movement, that's about the only thing anywhere close to as good

Deriven Firelion |
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First few level of magus feats kind of suck, and there is no other archetype worth taking that is anywhere as good as psychic on the magus. So I don't see how this could ever play into cost benefit analysis, "sacrificing" those feats for better ones is a net gain, not wasting feats on less useful archetypes is a net gain. Using your focus points to hit like a truck instead of hitting very weakly but with no miss chance is still a net gain. Really don't see a downside here at all. I could maybe see an argument for using feats to get a dromaeosaur animal companion to mount for 50ft of free movement, that's about the only thing anywhere close to as good
This is true. Two feats to substantially boost your damage is easy to find on a magus.
And a lot of folks use Free Archetype which makes this combination even easier.

Ryangwy |
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Karmagator wrote:From everything I've seen, the chance is far from good. Or practically zero for Tome Thaums with Diverse Lore, as they have every reason to stack CHA.The class barely uses CHA in combat unless you have a DC based implement like the wand. It is KAS 16 martial...
How... how are you not maxing Cha on a Thaum? Your damage booster is tied to a Cha roll! And why the heck are you upping both Str and Dex on a class that gets both medium armour and a big flat bonus damage?
Like I'm not entirely sure if Diverse Lore breaks the RK game but your argument hinges on the class whose damage bonus is tied to making their Cha based RK roll not upping Cha which is quite absurd
gesalt |
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How... how are you not maxing Cha on a Thaum? Your damage booster is tied to a Cha roll! And why the heck are you upping both Str and Dex on a class that gets both medium armour and a big flat bonus damage?
Like I'm not entirely sure if Diverse Lore breaks the RK game but your argument hinges on the class whose damage bonus is tied to making their Cha based RK roll not upping Cha which is quite absurd
It's not entirely far-fetched to start something like 16/10/14/10/14/12 to maximize saves with plate armor and bank on just landing fails to activate your steroid. Not that I think it's especially intelligent to do so given all the non-combat benefits to recalling knowledge on literally anything off a single skill or the increased crit fail rate against +3 and +4 creatures.

Karmagator |

Ryangwy wrote:It's not entirely far-fetched to start something like 16/10/14/10/14/12 to maximize saves with plate armor and bank on just landing fails to activate your steroid. Not that I think it's especially intelligent to do so given all the non-combat benefits to recalling knowledge on literally anything off a single skill or the increased crit fail rate against +3 and +4 creatures.How... how are you not maxing Cha on a Thaum? Your damage booster is tied to a Cha roll! And why the heck are you upping both Str and Dex on a class that gets both medium armour and a big flat bonus damage?
Like I'm not entirely sure if Diverse Lore breaks the RK game but your argument hinges on the class whose damage bonus is tied to making their Cha based RK roll not upping Cha which is quite absurd
For me it would be more about getting at least a success and later on a fairly reliable crit success, because that will benefit the entire team, not just yourself. Purely for your own benefit, success and failure on Exploit Vulnerability are mostly the same thing, so on that front only going up to +4 CHA wouldn't be the worst.
And ofc, when I would play the Thaumaturge, I would 100% be the team face. So I would need mass amounts of CHA anyway.

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Red Griffyn wrote:Karmagator wrote:From everything I've seen, the chance is far from good. Or practically zero for Tome Thaums with Diverse Lore, as they have every reason to stack CHA.The class barely uses CHA in combat unless you have a DC based implement like the wand. It is KAS 16 martial...How... how are you not maxing Cha on a Thaum? Your damage booster is tied to a Cha roll! And why the heck are you upping both Str and Dex on a class that gets both medium armour and a big flat bonus damage?
Like I'm not entirely sure if Diverse Lore breaks the RK game but your argument hinges on the class whose damage bonus is tied to making their Cha based RK roll not upping Cha which is quite absurd
The key difference between the thaumaturge and other classes is they only really need to fail at a standard level DC check vs. succeed at a standard level DC check. That alleviates a lot of the pressure to bump the roll stat vs. things like the inventor's overdrive, bard's lingering composition, etc.
To utilize exploit vulnerability to get a personal antithesis which is 2+half level (so 3 to 12 damage) you only need to roll a failure or better an at level DC check. If you start with a 16 CHA and stop at 18 and ensure you have your item bonuses you can only do worse than a fail on a literal 1 on the dice at all levels. So really we're talking about the combat differences between personal antithesis and mortal weakness. The % of fail or better for both CHA 16 to 18 and CHA 18 to 24 are shown in this spreadsheet I made up.
Bestiaries 1/2/3 have a total of 1072 monsters. Of those monsters only 33% have weaknesses at all (this doesn't exclude double counted monsters with multiple weaknesses so that % is lower). 11.85% of that the total 33% has weakness 1-5 so almost immediately the personal antithesis is higher/obsoletes it. You really are talking about a marginal DPR increase on about 21.2% of all creatures you might face. The improvement between CHA 16 to 18 vs. 18 to 24 is capped at 5% from levels 1 to 15 (at which point your personal antithesis is at weakness 9-10. So we can really discount a further 12.22% of monsters with weakness 5 to 10. That leaves us with about 9% of monsters in the bestiary 1/2/3 with weakness 10-20 in the level range of 15 to 20 where we see any significant improvement (10 or 15% increase to success rate or better) from pumping CHA. Meanwhile we've wasted at least 3 attribute boosts (L5, L10, L15) and the Apex item (L17). The -1 to hit from the apex item alone will drop your DPR by ~15% and all but erase any benefit you could get from applying mortal weakness. But 3 stat boosts is a significant loss to give you marginal damage boosts on 9% of the monsters for the last 5-6 levels of the game.
Compare that to the reliability of these damage boosters:
- Implement Empowerment (two damage dice size increase or +2 to +8)
- Regalia Implement (boosted at 7 to give a +2 to +4 status bonus damage boost)
- Exploit Vulnerability (specifically personal antithesis for +3 to +12 on all but a esoteric roll of 1)
- STR modifier on thrown weapons (which is full instead of non-existent like most ranged weapons or half like propulsive). The boomerang has a 60ft range so its just a flat out better composite short bow.
- Use of Divine Disharmony to make enemies flatfooted at range (later swaped for demoralize + dread striker on the rogue MC throwers).
As for why you'd up DEX and STR. You HAVE to bump one of them as your attack stat from 16 to 22 or risk having your DPR plummet. I would advocate you up DEX because it is tied to a saving throw and it is literally your worst saving throw due to the delayed progression the class has (Its one of the best reasons to MC rogue so you can get evasiveness at L12 to boost it to master before the L17 general feat canny acumen kicks in). It is also tied to way more skills that skill monkeys want to maximize. IMO using DEX as your attack stat has significant benefits over STR. In a white room DPR calc you may have lower DPR, but because you can switch hit you can avoid 1-3 actions a combat moving into place. That translates to 1-3 MAP-5 strikes or the loss of exploit vulnerability on certain enemies which is a massive DPR loss. I haven't specifically run the numbers but intuitively my gut says that over a typical 5 to 6 round combat the DEX switch hitter thaumaturge will be ahead vs. STR on DPR while also having better saves/skill stats.
Conversely if you use STR as your attack stat your action economy becomes super tight if you have to exploit vulnerability, move, and strike. It also means your reflex save lags behind significantly opening you up to lots of failures and crit failures on predominantly damage effects on a D8 class chassis. You'll be stuck with a lagging CON due to starting 18 CHA, 16 STR (i.e., it is maximally a 14 CON, which means a 10 WIS and 10 DEX so 2 bad saves and under max AC until L5). You get a +1 to +2 damage over the thrown weapon build in the L10+ region of the game, but again 1-3 attacks or exploit vulnerabilities completely overshadows that gain.
All the above is why I keep saying boosting CHA to 24 is not very optimized. Its bad for your damage output and bad for your defensive capabilities. Feel free to maximize your skill monkey aspects (I often do this in my real games and love being a skill monkey), but the talking point that a thaumaturge is not trading anything at all to maximize diverse lore outcomes is not accurate.

Karmagator |

Btw, how are you getting a +1 item bonus to Esoteric Lore checks at level 3? Cognitive Mutagen destroys your offense so is a complete no-go and is also still not very affordable at that stage. Cinnamon Seers are level 4 and several times more expensive. The next time you get an item bonus is level 8 with the Brooch of Inspiration and that thing is uncommon.

Ryangwy |
The key difference between the thaumaturge and other classes is they only really need to fail at a standard level DC check vs. succeed at a standard level DC check. That alleviates a lot of the pressure to bump the roll stat vs. things like the inventor's overdrive, bard's lingering composition, etc.To utilize exploit vulnerability to get a personal antithesis which is 2+half level (so 3 to 12 damage) you only need to roll a failure or better an at level DC check. If you start with a 16 CHA and stop at 18 and ensure you have your item bonuses you can only do worse than a fail on a literal 1 on the dice at all levels. So really we're talking about the combat differences between personal antithesis and mortal weakness. The % of fail or better for both CHA 16 to 18 and CHA 18 to 24 are shown in this spreadsheet I made up.
Bestiaries 1/2/3 have a total of 1072 monsters. Of those monsters only 33% have weaknesses at all (this doesn't exclude double counted monsters with multiple weaknesses so that % is lower). 11.85% of that the total 33% has weakness 1-5 so almost immediately the personal antithesis is higher/obsoletes it. You really are...
Like OK sure but you're still hinging an argument that if you deliberately not upping the key attribute of the Thaumturge then diverse lore is not that good. Which. Like, you can do that, and I'm sure someone has made a 10 Int wizard that's actually good somewhere (force bolts/barrages, probably) but "diverse lore is only broken if you make Cha your highest stat" isn't exactly an amazing argument for a Cha main class.
(I'm not saying that diverse lore is broken, I'm saying that the modal Thaum starts at 18 Cha and ups Cha at every opportunity, except maybe the apex item, and evaluating diverse lore on a Thaum that starts at 16 and goes to 18 and stays there is very inaccurate as to how it plays out in practice.)
Teridax |

Let's look at the math for Diverse Lore, compared to another universal Lore skill like Loremaster Lore:
So at early levels, a Thaumaturge get slightly earlier access to a universal Lore skill with a lesser or equal modifier, only getting ahead of an Int-based class from level 7. Even so, the net result is effectively a +2 to Recall Knowledge checks on what is explicitly laid out to be Recall Knowledge: The Class, which I think is reasonable. The Thaumaturge can therefore Recall Knowledge even better than any Int class overall, which I think underlines some problems with Intelligence and the Lore skill, but I wouldn't call the Diverse Lore feat itself overpowered, as it caters to what is already one of the class's defining strengths and, more subtly, provides an almost exclusively out-of-encounter benefit unlike other universal Lore skills, as Esoteric Lore already covers all monsters.
If I had to choose a mechanic I found the most overpowered in PF2e, it would be Pin to the Spot. Restraining a target with no save on a hit I think is nuts, even for a two-action activity, and from what I understand even the developers called this feat out as being too good. Were I to tweak the feat, I'd impose an Athletics check on a hit and improve the degree of success by one step, perhaps even two steps on a critical hit.

WWHsmackdown |
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First few level of magus feats kind of suck, and there is no other archetype worth taking that is anywhere as good as psychic on the magus. So I don't see how this could ever play into cost benefit analysis, "sacrificing" those feats for better ones is a net gain, not wasting feats on less useful archetypes is a net gain. Using your focus points to hit like a truck instead of hitting very weakly but with no miss chance is still a net gain. Really don't see a downside here at all. I could maybe see an argument for using feats to get a dromaeosaur animal companion to mount for 50ft of free movement, that's about the only thing anywhere close to as good
Wizard or witch are a better choice (imo obviously). More utility slots are better than squeezing out more damage. You're already a murderer, so expand your utility to shore up your deficiencies. Full psychic investment will give you half as many slots as full wiz/witch investment. Not worth it for me

YuriP |

The problem of Wiz/Witch archetype for magus is that they don't get good focus spells and even giving more versatility to the class they aren't so useful for the magus main feature (spellstrike) like attack focus spells are.
The point is that you don't depend from your spellcasting bonus to use SpellStrike just from your normal martial proficiency. So this creates a situation where focus spells are superb for them.

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The problem of Wiz/Witch archetype for magus is that they don't get good focus spells and even giving more versatility to the class they aren't so useful for the magus main feature (spellstrike) like attack focus spells are.
The point is that you don't depend from your spellcasting bonus to use SpellStrike just from your normal martial proficiency. So this creates a situation where focus spells are superb for them.
Restricting Spellstrike to not-Focus spells would be enough then.

YuriP |
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I still don't think that the Focus spells are the problem. But how easier is the turret strategy the Starlit Span get.
While the melee magus needs to use action to get closer and have the risk os get a reaction due the manipulate trait of most spells. Starlit Span circumvent the main magus problems and restrictions just making SpellStrikes from their initial position entering in turret mode from a distance.
Due the SpellStrike works in same way no matter if you are doing a melee or ranged strike the ranged one is the most benefited from spells that get their range increased and receive the entire item bonus from bows.
That's why I defend that Starlit Span SpellStrike should be limited by lower distance between weapon and spell. This would prevent ranged magus to use the strongest touch attack spells (Imaginary Weapon and Gouging Claw are touch spells, Ignite would be reduced to d4 when you use it at range) and makes it way more competitive with other magus and archers options.

Karmagator |

I still don't think that the Focus spells are the problem. But how easier is the turret strategy the Starlit Span get.
While the melee magus needs to use action to get closer and have the risk os get a reaction due the manipulate trait of most spells. Starlit Span circumvent the main magus problems and restrictions just making SpellStrikes from their initial position entering in turret mode from a distance.Due the SpellStrike works in same way no matter if you are doing a melee or ranged strike the ranged one is the most benefited from spells that get their range increased and receive the entire item bonus from bows.
That's why I defend that Starlit Span SpellStrike should be limited by lower distance between weapon and spell. This would prevent ranged magus to use the strongest touch attack spells (Imaginary Weapon and Gouging Claw are touch spells, Ignite would be reduced to d4 when you use it at range) and makes it way more competitive with other magus and archers options.
This. Damage focus spells provide a cool second use for your focus point, allowing you to decide between fast recharge + utility and more burst damage when you want it, which otherwise requires spell slots you really don't have. And the "normal" focus spells provide only a moderate damage increase over cantrips, making them unproblematic. Really, they feel like they are supposed to be part of the Magus class and make it much more fun.
A real improvement, besides reining in Starlit Span, would be to make Magus feats worth taking in the first place. Then everyone wouldn't be so quick to jump at archetypes the second they can.

AestheticDialectic |
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When you have cantrips and slotted spells to spellstrike with and still be a top tier damage dealer I don't really see a need for focus spells to spellstrike with as well. Within the chassis itself focus spells aren't used for spellstriking they are a way to recharge spellstrike that is fun and thematic for the class. Limiting spellstrike to cantrips and ranked spells, as well as finding another way to make starlit span not so much better than other archers and easier than a melee magus would be a good start

Karmagator |
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When you have cantrips and slotted spells to spellstrike with and still be a top tier damage dealer I don't really see a need for focus spells to spellstrike with as well. Within the chassis itself focus spells aren't used for spellstriking they are a way to recharge spellstrike that is fun and thematic for the class. Limiting spellstrike to cantrips and ranked spells, as well as finding another way to make starlit span not so much better than other archers and easier than a melee magus would be a good start
Again, nerfing every Magus because Starlit Span is too good is madness.
The problem is that Spellstriking with slot spells is often simply not viable, as you don't have enough to do it with any kind of frequency. And even if you do use it several times, that's all your good slots for the day, heavily restricting what is supposed to be versatile. That's also why the feats that rely on this are not worth the cost - you simply don't use them often enough to matter and for those couple of uses per day, they are not impactful enough.
And if you just use cantrips, you have a very limited selection with a set ceiling, no good way to up the ante. It's alright, but not exactly interesting or exciting after a few times.
Focus spell Spellstrikes are the perfect solution to that problem and actually allow you to do interesting stuff with your spell slots.

Dubious Scholar |
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Yeah, having a damaging focus spell for spellstrike is nice because it's auto-heightening nova damage, you only need one good option for it really, etc. Then your actual spell slots get used on buff/debuff effects that affect an entire fight.
It's all fairly reasonable for the melee magus builds, since they can't turn 1 True Strike Spellstrike a nova shot at a boss to delete them - heck, True Strike+Spellstrike is something they can't do at all without starting their turn in reach of an enemy.
Although for the melee types, they may find it more valuable to use focus points on conflux spells to reload Spellstrike while doing damage, since they need to spend actions moving, etc. and Gouging Claw is already a significant boost to attacks. (Still outscaled by focus spells but with the action economy needs of melee I think conflux spells are more competitive for your focus points).

gesalt |
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It should be noted that gouging claw+force fang is competitive with IW. It generally doesn't scale as well with buffs and debuffs, but is very close in effectiveness all the way through +4 extreme AC creatures (assuming they aren't immune to bleed anyway). If you take away both from SS you may as well not even play one.

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Btw, how are you getting a +1 item bonus to Esoteric Lore checks at level 3? Cognitive Mutagen destroys your offense so is a complete no-go and is also still not very affordable at that stage. Cinnamon Seers are level 4 and several times more expensive. The next time you get an item bonus is level 8 with the Brooch of Inspiration and that thing is uncommon.
I'm going with ancestral geometry tattoo which should be L2. Its very thematic as well that you have some crazy set of ancestors telling you about the legacy of cookie conspiracy things they found out that would help you.
At L11 and L20 you can get a +2 and +3 respectively from Wardrobe Stone. For my PC it'd be part of my regalia (signet ring or w/e so I'll be holding it). This also likely has a typo and was intended to give a +1 lore bonus for the L3 version and is available for ACP purchase despite being uncommon for PFS.
YMMV for items but at no point in the math presented does the item bonus change the outcome of only crit failing on a 1. The brooch of inspiration also doesn't work on your esoteric lore checks exploit vulnerability since that isn't a 'recall knowledge check'.
As for uncommon, that really isn't an issue if you use the rarity rules as written and intended. I get that lots of people hate this 'hot take', but the rules for rarity do not in any way intend to limit people getting access to an item if it is common or uncomon. Uncommon items are just harder to find but still assumed that you can find it with enough focused effort (maybe a side mission, or downtime find, etc.). So maybe give them to the thaumaturge a level late if you, as a GM, feel the need to punish your players for w/e reason.
Like OK sure but you're still hinging an argument that if you deliberately not upping the key attribute of the Thaumturge then diverse lore is not that good. Which. Like, you can do that, and I'm sure someone has made a 10 Int wizard that's actually good somewhere (force bolts/barrages, probably) but "diverse lore is only broken if you make Cha your highest stat" isn't exactly an amazing argument for a Cha main class.
(I'm not saying that diverse lore is broken, I'm saying that the modal Thaum starts at 18 Cha and ups Cha at every opportunity, except maybe the apex item, and evaluating diverse lore on a Thaum that starts at 16 and goes to 18 and stays there is very inaccurate as to how it plays out in practice.)
I feel like you didn't read my posts? I did a test of a INT caster and investigator against 3 thaumaturges (one was CHA 16 to 18, one was CHA 18 to 20, and one was CHA 18 to 24). In all cases the INT caster and investigator was ahead of them on the skills they invested in. No 'hinges' needed and the outcome of all cases tested was that the thaumaturge diverse lore feature was not overpowered.
The point I'm making is the difference between the CHA 16 to 18 and CHA 18 to 24 versions is minimal at best AND comes at a huge detractor to the class' martial capabilities. Being a martial that hits things is literally this classes combat contribution so if you want to heavily invest in maximizing your esoteric lore checks you will do so with a real cost. One that I'm positing, with evidence, is not equitable or worth it. This point is being made to respond to people saying there is no 'downside' to maximizing CHA. That is just plainly not true and if I were to help people build their thaumaturges I'd recommend they don't maximize their CHA and leave it at 18 so they can keep 3 more ability stat boosts to saves/AC/HP/Damage and be a better overall PC.
Thus the model CHA is not as you describe and I would never build one that way. That is the logic everyone uses on the boards because for most classes they tie into their key stat more heavily and its a no-brainer as to why you wouldn't invest all in at every level. But for the Thaumaturge it isn't their attack stat, casting stat, and it mathematically is nearly irrelevant (except if you have a DC based implement). Its one of the few examples in PF2e where not boosting your key stat is more optimal and advisable (as substantiated by the math just presented that it really doesn't 'get you enough to justify the loss elsewhere in class performance). You don't have to agree with my conclusions but I'd say you're argument hinges on universalism logic (i.e., you always boost class stat) and ignores the nuance of the game where the 'universal truth' is actually not true. I know for me that I would rate 3 ability boosts higher than a marginal boost in DPR from L15-L20 for 9% of monsters.
In some cases those ability boosts are necessary to MC by L2 because you need a 14 in a particular stat. For example, MC into champion requires a 14 STR and 14 CHA, so if I want a returning rune thrown weapon build I have to drop CHA to 16 so I can have 16 DEX to hit, 16 CHA, 14 STR, and 12 CON and 12 WIS (if I can find a INT dump ancestry). Otherwise the 'real opportunity cost' is being locked out of potential options until L5 and delaying the build for way too many levels. For most thaumaturge players the opportunity cost is only crap AC/Saves.
Let's look at the math for Diverse Lore, compared to another universal Lore skill like Loremaster Lore:
My math above is concerning whether the thaumaturge is eating the lunch of people investing in arcana, occultism, religion, or nature. The answer is resoundingly no. If you want to with minimal investment you can as a WIS or INT based caster trounce the thaumaturge in the things you want to be good at. I have said that they of course can apply it to many more things (wide versatility power vs vertical progression power). In essence they aren't 'eating anyone's lunch' when it comes to what they 'want' to be best at and are a 'jack of all trades'.
If we compare who is the best of 'jack of all trades' builds then it is the thaumaturge hands down. There are many examples of universal lores out there (bard, loremaster, various skill archetypes, etc.). Thaumaturge is ahead of them all. But that is because the progression of +2 to +4 at L15 is janky on the other universal lore features. I think Paizo saw a niche design space and basically gave the thaumaturge an effective +2 at L3, +4 at L7, and +6 at L15. That is actually a good thing. They made it a big chunk of their class power and then ensured that other classes can't eat the thaumaturge's lunch. You could give bardic lore a better progression, but bards already have top notch support, full spell progression/slots, and honestly don't need the help? You could boost the skill archetype progression like loremaster but then you're allowing some completely unknown PC to compete with the thaumaturge at its 'thing'.A CHA heavy skill monkey with limited power x to y (CHA to INT/WIS but only recall knowledge) is a great niche that was not fulfilled in any of the classes/archetypes to date. It just seems like a lot of people have a big misconception about its power (mathematically) and in real application (i.e., recall knowledge is only one thing you do with lores/arcana/occultism/nature/religion but it is treated like it is literally the ONLY thing that those things are used for).

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It should be noted that gouging claw+force fang is competitive with IW. It generally doesn't scale as well with buffs and debuffs, but is very close in effectiveness all the way through +4 extreme AC creatures (assuming they aren't immune to bleed anyway). If you take away both from SS you may as well not even play one.
Agreed. Surprising conclusion of the DPR calculations I ran recently in another thread and also requires the magus to not have the spare action to use true strike on an amped IW. That's why I think if there was a 1D4/1D6 scaling version of IW that also recharged your spell strike as a L2 or L4 feat in the magus class you'd literally never hear about people MC for focus spells ever again. They'd still be great to MC into for extra spell slots, so you'd be back to witch/wizard type recommendations. It'd be great for build diversity in the general game meta.

The-Magic-Sword |
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I think the average DPR of not missing with force fang alongside a diff cantrip is being underestimated, imaginary weapon spellstrike into a cold recharge loses a lot of efficacy when it misses, and that's especially a consideration against higher level targets you most want to chip at.

Captain Morgan |
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With Trip against huge creatures or bigger it really shouldn't work. They should put some amount of realism into the effect. If you want to trip a huge giant you need to work at it with either multiple rounds of working on those legs or multiple characters or by doing some kinda clever ATAT tether thing.
I disagree. Tripping a huge creature is no more ridiculous than inflicting meaningful damage with a short sword that would be too small for the monster to use as a tooth pick. Or even just punching it to death as a monk. If you can harm a creature in melee, I don't get why applying a little leverage to it is a bridge too far.

Dragonchess Player |

Re: Bard with Bardic Lore
IMO, a decent route is elf with starting Dex, Int, and Cha at 16 (doable with a background that has either Dex or Int as one of its "X or Y" choices ability boost); bump Int up just one more time at either 5th or 10th while using almost all the rest of the boosts on Dex/Con/Wis/Cha (Wis is probably the one that can spare the missing boost the most). Also leverage the Ancestral Longevity, Expert Longevity, and Universal Longevity ancestry feats, plus the Assured Knowledge, Know-It-All, and Enigma's Knowledge class feats.
The character can still focus on just Acrobatics (to master for Kip Up), Diplomacy (Bon Mot early), Occultism, and possibly Perform (I'm not sure if it really needs to be improved beyond expert) with the skill increases while still hitting a lot of recall knowledge checks and not dropping too far behind on weapon (finesse or ranged) or spell attack maximums.

Dragonchess Player |

For magi, I agree that they seem to work best with an archetype. Usually a multiclass archetype to add spell slots or provide other benefits (such as Laughing Shadow magus into rogue for Sneak Attacker combined with Distracting Spellstrike).

Deriven Firelion |
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I think the average DPR of not missing with force fang alongside a diff cantrip is being underestimated, imaginary weapon spellstrike into a cold recharge loses a lot of efficacy when it misses, and that's especially a consideration against higher level targets you most want to chip at.
I often use Force Fang with imaginary weapon in many fights. Sometimes you want to hit and add that damage against very tough, high AC creatures. Force Fang is nice if you want to recharge, move to set up in a new position, and still fire a regular arrow.
Folks seem to be acting like Imaginary Weapon has to be used every round to compete for damage. It doesn't. It's still the best option for every strategy of the magus.
It's a flat out better attack cantrip in nearly every way for every strategy used by the magus whether they have to move or not or are using an amp or a force fang or a true strike.
It's never bad unless you can activate a weakness with another cantrip. It's the best option 90 percent plus of the time no matter what you are doing.

Deriven Firelion |

Bluemagetim wrote:With Trip against huge creatures or bigger it really shouldn't work. They should put some amount of realism into the effect. If you want to trip a huge giant you need to work at it with either multiple rounds of working on those legs or multiple characters or by doing some kinda clever ATAT tether thing.I disagree. Tripping a huge creature is no more ridiculous than inflicting meaningful damage with a short sword that would be too small for the monster to use as a tooth pick. Or even just punching it to death as a monk. If you can harm a creature in melee, I don't get why applying a little leverage to it is a bridge too far.
Tripping looks ridiculous as an every round strategy, but it looks particularly ridiculous against large or bigger creatures.
This is a completely personal style point of view based on the "If you saw this in a book or movie used like it is in the game."
I think Trip needs to be reduced to a disarm type of situation. It might weaken control martials, but it would sure look better in my mind's eye.
I have used trip on a bunch of martials. It's so good that I feel like I'm screwing myself not using it. I can't help but take something if the feel is "You are a complete idiot if you don't take this option." Trip is in that category if playing a monk, fighter, or barbarian.
Rogue or ranger I don't take trip. Rogue don't need it to do damage. Rangers are better as either precision archers or two-weapon flurry melees with a pet. You could build a 2-hander trip precision ranger and probably be pretty good, but I've never done it. I stopped playing rangers as I don't like the Hunt Prey action tax at higher level. They need to get rid of that for the ranger to be on par with other martials past level 11 or so.

The-Magic-Sword |

The-Magic-Sword wrote:I think the average DPR of not missing with force fang alongside a diff cantrip is being underestimated, imaginary weapon spellstrike into a cold recharge loses a lot of efficacy when it misses, and that's especially a consideration against higher level targets you most want to chip at.I often use Force Fang with imaginary weapon in many fights. Sometimes you want to hit and add that damage against very tough, high AC creatures. Force Fang is nice if you want to recharge, move to set up in a new position, and still fire a regular arrow.
Folks seem to be acting like Imaginary Weapon has to be used every round to compete for damage. It doesn't. It's still the best option for every strategy of the magus.
It's a flat out better attack cantrip in nearly every way for every strategy used by the magus whether they have to move or not or are using an amp or a force fang or a true strike.
It's never bad unless you can activate a weakness with another cantrip. It's the best option 90 percent plus of the time no matter what you are doing.
So you're spending two focus points in one round, then going lower resources for the rest of the fight? I mean yeah that's a good strategy, but I'm not sure if it pulls ahead of force fang every turn for three turns-- at least some of the time it falls behind because you only have one or two chances for the big IW spellstrike to land (depending on how you ration the hypothetical remaining point), so if it misses the next one that might hit is smaller because no point-- though, for something like an extra point from gnome font, it certainly picks up to just do both.

gesalt |

So you're spending two focus points in one round, then going lower resources for the rest of the fight? I mean yeah that's a good strategy, but I'm not sure if it pulls ahead of force fang every turn for three turns-- at least some of the time it falls behind because you only have one or two chances for the big IW spellstrike to land (depending on how you ration the hypothetical remaining point), so if it misses the next one that might hit is smaller because no point-- though, for something like an extra point from gnome font, it certainly picks up to just do both.
I imagine that if I actually ran the numbers the highest damage 3 round rotation would be true strike+gouging claw (to set bleed ticks) into force fang IW into recharge IW.
The problem with gouging claw is that it is entirely reliant on the bleed to keep up with IW which allows more than a few enemies to blank it entirely through resistance or bleed immunity. Resist all will also double dip on resisting force fang. As an alternative in case of nerfs, it's acceptable but it comes with caveats.
People who are sick enough to go IW SS Magus are also broken enough that they'll use Hero Points to ensure that particular combo doesn't miss and further improve the chance of it critically hitting and instantly killing anything less than PL+2
That's what they're there for right?

Bluemagetim |

Bluemagetim wrote:With Trip against huge creatures or bigger it really shouldn't work. They should put some amount of realism into the effect. If you want to trip a huge giant you need to work at it with either multiple rounds of working on those legs or multiple characters or by doing some kinda clever ATAT tether thing.I disagree. Tripping a huge creature is no more ridiculous than inflicting meaningful damage with a short sword that would be too small for the monster to use as a tooth pick. Or even just punching it to death as a monk. If you can harm a creature in melee, I don't get why applying a little leverage to it is a bridge too far.
It is kinda much more ridiculous actually. Imagine a Corgi, tiny creature. Thats two size categories smaller than a human. Same difference between a human and the Corgi as a Human to a huge giant.
It is more ridiculous to get pulled to the ground by a Corgi than it would be to get bitten by one and end up bleeding. Enough bites without stopping this hypothetically vicious Corgi can bleed that human out. That is possible. The corgi actually overpowering the human/ leveraging weight and balance to bring that human to the ground is much more ridiculous than getting bitten to death by one. As strange as this example is in the first place it works lol.

Pronate11 |
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Captain Morgan wrote:Bluemagetim wrote:With Trip against huge creatures or bigger it really shouldn't work. They should put some amount of realism into the effect. If you want to trip a huge giant you need to work at it with either multiple rounds of working on those legs or multiple characters or by doing some kinda clever ATAT tether thing.I disagree. Tripping a huge creature is no more ridiculous than inflicting meaningful damage with a short sword that would be too small for the monster to use as a tooth pick. Or even just punching it to death as a monk. If you can harm a creature in melee, I don't get why applying a little leverage to it is a bridge too far.It is kinda much more ridiculous actually. Imagine a Corgi, tiny creature. Thats two size categories smaller than a human. Same difference between a human and the Corgi as a Human to a huge giant.
It is more ridiculous to get pulled to the ground by a Corgi than it would be to get bitten by one and end up bleeding. Enough bites without stopping this hypothetically vicious Corgi can bleed that human out. That is possible. The corgi actually overpowering the human/ leveraging weight and balance to bring that human to the ground is much more ridiculous than getting bitten to death by one. As strange as this example is in the first place it works lol.
I have been tripped by my cat far more times than it has killed me. I have been tripped by my shoe before. I don't think the shoe could kill me.

PossibleCabbage |
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I don't see why big things should be immune to tripping. Like the AT-AT walkers in Empire are tall, and they also fall down when you tie up their legs.
It's perhaps weird that there's no difference between trying to tip something top-heavy like a giant and something with a much lower center of gravity like a brontosaurus, but I don't think that level of granularity is really beneficial to the game (as we saw in PF1 with the "legs" modifier to tripping). Ultimately "how difficult this thing is to trip" is just a function of how high you set the reflex DC of the monster- it should be possible for a big thing to be very easily knocked over, for example.
Like I've seen a 5'4" woman get tackled by a housecat.

Bluemagetim |

Right like I pointed out initially. Clever things like the ATAT example, taking advantage of terrain, or just taking more effort wearing down a leg or working as a team makes perfect sense.
Monk sweeping the leg of a giant and it goes down kinda really looks weird, that's why I felt the Corgi example brings it into perspective.
The mechanics of the action and the how much more difficult it would make the fight are separate concerns to how much it gives a sense that its implausible.

shroudb |
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Right like I pointed out initially. Clever things like the ATAT example, taking advantage of terrain, or just taking more effort wearing down a leg or working as a team makes perfect sense.
Monk sweeping the leg of a giant and it goes down kinda really looks weird, that's why I felt the Corgi example brings it into perspective.The mechanics of the action and the how much more difficult it would make the fight are separate concerns to how much it gives a sense that its implausible.
isn't it simpler to think that someone with expert-master-legendary proficiency and a sky-high proficeincy bonus due to his level (compared to the average commoner) actually DOES utilizes the terrain, the features, and techniques rather than simply rely on "leg swipe" that he was doing at level 1 to actually trip those high level, huge, monsters?
the fact that all this is abreviated into a single roll doesn't necessarily means there are no actual tactics used to accomplish that feat.

Ravingdork |
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My halfling once grappled a really big dragon with a nat 20 on his roll.
I described it as jumping onto the snout as it tried to bite me, reaching up and grabbing two fisfulls of the dragon's nose hairs, then swinging down from those to hook my feet under its jaw so it couldn't open his mouth to breathe fire for all the intense pain I was giving him. (Ever rip out even a single nose hair? It's smarts!)
Speaking generally, if you can't readily describe how something fantastic can occur, then maybe games of imagination are not a good fit for you.

Deriven Firelion |

Deriven Firelion wrote:So you're spending two focus points in one round, then going lower resources for the rest of the fight? I mean yeah that's a good strategy, but I'm not sure if it pulls ahead of force fang every turn for three turns-- at least some of the time it falls behind because you only have one or two chances for the big IW spellstrike to land (depending on how you ration the hypothetical remaining point), so if it misses the next one that might hit is smaller because no point-- though, for something like an extra point from gnome font, it certainly picks up to just do both.The-Magic-Sword wrote:I think the average DPR of not missing with force fang alongside a diff cantrip is being underestimated, imaginary weapon spellstrike into a cold recharge loses a lot of efficacy when it misses, and that's especially a consideration against higher level targets you most want to chip at.I often use Force Fang with imaginary weapon in many fights. Sometimes you want to hit and add that damage against very tough, high AC creatures. Force Fang is nice if you want to recharge, move to set up in a new position, and still fire a regular arrow.
Folks seem to be acting like Imaginary Weapon has to be used every round to compete for damage. It doesn't. It's still the best option for every strategy of the magus.
It's a flat out better attack cantrip in nearly every way for every strategy used by the magus whether they have to move or not or are using an amp or a force fang or a true strike.
It's never bad unless you can activate a weakness with another cantrip. It's the best option 90 percent plus of the time no matter what you are doing.
There is a reason I don't use white room math or strategy in these discussions: real play usually goes differently than the white room material.
You don't play this game alone. You're in a group. The other group members are doing things like damage or debuffing or controlling. So you're using your abilities in relation to theirs.
So I don't find the need to amp my shots all the time. I'm not trying to do blow through damage on a half-dead target. As a group we tend to focus fire until something is dead to take its actions and threat off the board.
I keep hearing these damage measurements in terms of a white room set up. That's not how things play. In play, the Magus plays just fine as a Master level martial archer, main difference being is they ramp up damage well beyond any archer in the game 2 or 3 times a fight and do this as long as they find time to rest to get the focus points back.
Really, Imaginary weapon by itself starts to do far more damage than a second bow shot fairly early. It seems outside the normal parameters that Paizo had set for archery. Not saying gouging claw isn't bad as well, but Imaginary Weapon is innately better and can be amp on top its normal high damage. The force tag on top of it really makes it hammer when a gouging claw is cut by the resistance of incorporeal creatures and the bleed is also useless against them. Whereas the Force tag makes imaginary weapon useful against almost everything.

Deriven Firelion |

Bluemagetim wrote:I have been tripped by my cat far more times than it has killed me. I have been tripped by my shoe before. I don't think the shoe could kill me.Captain Morgan wrote:Bluemagetim wrote:With Trip against huge creatures or bigger it really shouldn't work. They should put some amount of realism into the effect. If you want to trip a huge giant you need to work at it with either multiple rounds of working on those legs or multiple characters or by doing some kinda clever ATAT tether thing.I disagree. Tripping a huge creature is no more ridiculous than inflicting meaningful damage with a short sword that would be too small for the monster to use as a tooth pick. Or even just punching it to death as a monk. If you can harm a creature in melee, I don't get why applying a little leverage to it is a bridge too far.It is kinda much more ridiculous actually. Imagine a Corgi, tiny creature. Thats two size categories smaller than a human. Same difference between a human and the Corgi as a Human to a huge giant.
It is more ridiculous to get pulled to the ground by a Corgi than it would be to get bitten by one and end up bleeding. Enough bites without stopping this hypothetically vicious Corgi can bleed that human out. That is possible. The corgi actually overpowering the human/ leveraging weight and balance to bring that human to the ground is much more ridiculous than getting bitten to death by one. As strange as this example is in the first place it works lol.
It would be super funny if your cat was wandering around purposefully tripping you and then smacking you in the head when you stood up, but I don't always want to play my fantasy game as a comedy.

Deriven Firelion |

I don't see why big things should be immune to tripping. Like the AT-AT walkers in Empire are tall, and they also fall down when you tie up their legs.
It's perhaps weird that there's no difference between trying to tip something top-heavy like a giant and something with a much lower center of gravity like a brontosaurus, but I don't think that level of granularity is really beneficial to the game (as we saw in PF1 with the "legs" modifier to tripping). Ultimately "how difficult this thing is to trip" is just a function of how high you set the reflex DC of the monster- it should be possible for a big thing to be very easily knocked over, for example.
Like I've seen a 5'4" woman get tackled by a housecat.
It took a tremendous amount of work to trip a walker. If trip worked like that, I'd be fine with it. But Trip in PF2 is an action for anything within 2 size categories larger once you obtain Titan Wrestler.
I'm still not sure if knockdown by creatures has a size limit or something like Wolf Drag has a size limit. Does anyone know if Wolf Drag has a size limit? Or can you Wolf Drag a gargantuan or colossal creature?

Deriven Firelion |
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My halfling once grappled a really big dragon with a nat 20 on his roll.
I described it as jumping onto the snout as it tried to bite me, reaching up and grabbing two fisfulls of the dragon's nose hairs, then swinging down from those to hook my feet under its jaw so it couldn't open his mouth to breathe fire for all the intense pain I was giving him. (Ever rip out even a single nose hair? It's smarts!)
Speaking generally, if you can't readily describe how something fantastic can occur, then maybe games of imagination are not a good fit for you.
That's not my problem. Occasional fantastic descriptions are fine.
But in PF2 your halfling is tripping dragons or grabbing nose hairs fight after fight after fight to the point it doesn't appear so fantastic any more. It's commonplace.
It's flip on the TV or read the book and Lancelot has tripped his 10,000 dragon on its back and whacked it a few times as it stands up. Look he did it again on page 2 and page 10 and page 20 and page 30.
How can something be fantastic if it is commonplace and easy to accomplish to the point it's probably as commonly taught a maneuver in every fighting school as holding a sword and parrying?

PossibleCabbage |
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Monk sweeping the leg of a giant and it goes down kinda really looks weird, that's why I felt the Corgi example brings it into perspective.
It's the onus on the player to narrate how the implausible thing a character is mechanically entitled to do works. It doesn't have to be a straight "I hold my foot out and they trip over it" since indeed most martial arts trips are about using the momentum of your opponent against them.
Selectrive realism is potentially a serious problem in a game like this when people don't bat their eyes at implausible things like "I cast fireball" or "I can retrieve an arrow, knock it, draw, aim, and fire three times in six seconds" but are bothered by things like "crossbows fire half as fast as bows, that's too fast" or "you can jump real high."
Like Titan Wrestler, at legendary athletics being able to trip things much, much bigger than you isn't really weirder than "Cat fall at legendary acrobatics lets you survive falls from orbit" or "legendary medic lets you cure blindness" or "scare to death with legendary intimidation lets you do what the feat is called" or "legendary thief lets you steal the pants someone is wearing". Doing things which are absolutely unrealistic, but cool, is the province of what "legendary" means. You're level 15 by the time you get legendary skills, so you're already in Heracles/Gilgamesh territory.
Like it's easy enough to justify tripping big things with a "vulcan nerve pinch"/"pressure point to disrupt chakras" thing, it doesn't necessarily need to be super cinematic.