You don't have to, but it can help. Most the time you can pound down an enemy without even knowing what they are.[qoute=“unicore”]
The big paradigm shift with PF2, that spills over everything , not just casting, is that you can’t beat a strong enemy by just trying to play to your party’s strengths. You have to find and exploit their weaknesses. PF1 never required that, and made trying to have the versatility to do so massively weaken your character instead of strength them.
This kind of thinking is where players get frustrated the most though Deriven. They think slow is supposed to be an auto win spell for solo higher level encounters and then cast it against a black dragon who might have a 50% chance of critting, then see the fighter successfully trip the dragon, costing it an action and a reactive strike and wonder why they even bother casting spells, when there is a five point swing between the fort save and reflex. Meanwhile, being able protect the party from acid damage, or create nearly impassible terrain in the sky, preventing it from flying, might nearly trivialize the encounter.
This kind of thinking is where players get frustrated the most though Deriven. They think slow is supposed to be an auto win spell for solo higher level encounters and then cast it against a black dragon who might have a 50% chance of critting, then see the fighter successfully trip the dragon, costing it an action and a reactive strike and wonder why they even bother casting spells, when there is a five point swing between the fort save and reflex. Meanwhile, being able protect the party from acid damage, or create nearly impassible terrain in the sky, preventing it from flying, might nearly trivialize the encounter.
Not really. A slow spell or a synesthesia often wrecks the dragon long enough to destroy it. Synesthesia makes trip and strikes easier. Slow even works on a success and makes it so the dragon can't stand up and dragon flurry or breath weapon if trip is used. You can use slow all day as a spontaneous caster and level 3 slow scrolls are cheap.
I don't find using powerful, impactful, encounter destroying magic frustrating at all. If I want to do damage, I know how to do that as well. I have more fun ending boss encounters with slow, synesthesia, and the like than I do blasting unless we're dealing with mooks where my AoE damage is pretty much untouchable for martials.
And I don't even worry about exploiting weaknesses. We as a group just hammer the enemy efficiently. Trip martial does less damage than a pure damage martial and the trip martial doesn't complain about doing less damage tripping. Not sure why the caster using slow or synesthesia complains about not doing a lot of damage when their spells are obviously making the fight a cakewalk.
If you want to play like a martial as a caster, I've explained how. Load lots of high quality damage spells into your slots and use a weapon or some item to boost you like consumables. If you want to play a highly effective group caster in a well built coordinated group, then use your high value spells like slow and synesthesia and end encounters quick and easy as a coordinated party.
Not sure why that is frustrating for any player. There are different ways to build and I can recommend them all. But this game isn't hard enough to require weakness exploitation. Weakness exploitation is more of a luxury than anything necessary.
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The adult black dragon in this example is level 11. To be a strong encounter, it needs to be level+3, so a level 8 party. Rank 4 spells rules out synesthesia. A slow spell cast by level 8 caster is probably DC 26. The black dragon has fort save of +21 with an extra +1. They save on a 4 and crit on a 14. That is a 35% chance of doing nothing, a 50% chance of stealing one action, and only a 15% of doing more than stealing 1 action.
A trip martial is probably making around +19 trip check vs a DC 28. They succeed on a 9 and so are going to knock prone (minimally giving off guard to the dragon and a -2 to its attacks, likely to be traded in for a reactive strike and a list action) 55% of the time, for 1 action, repeatable every round. That is the kind of scenario that is going to leave many caster players frustrated and wondering how you are calling slow an encounter wrecking ability. The martial can even hero point or try again with the trip attempt if it feels critical in the moment, but if the dragon crit saves (which it will at least a third of the time) the casters’ whole round was probably meaningless. I agree that slow is a good spell, but is a bad spell to cast against a higher level creature with a high fortitude save.
Having 1 of 4 allies contribute nothing in a round against a level +3 encounter can be a very dangerous situation.
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All of that just furthers the notion that magic sucks.No, it doesn't.
It shows that PF2 magic is different and you have to learn the high value spells like you have to do every edition. Magic has a learning curve. It's not for people who want to make a character and play using the same spells they used in PF1.
Most people who play casters have never been the people wanting the straight forward character. Martials are there for those who want to hit something and do damage.
Magic users are classes for those that want to learn the best way to do something using a wide variety of tools. Each edition has been this way. In PF1 you learned the high value spells and when to use them. Same as 3.0. Same as 1st and 2nd edition D&D.
PF2 has just changed what spells are great and the way you use them. Some will take the time to learn and find out magic is still the most powerful thing in the game. Some will play a martial and hit things.
For what it's worth, I'm glad you can enjoy 2e in the way you do, but you're honestly making my point for me.
In 1e, I didn't have to opt for "high value spells." I could make a spellcaster and with perhaps a little bit of reskinning/flavor, stick to a handful of spells that match my character's theme/aesthetic/motif (be it fire, music, crystals, thorns, farting, yelling really loud, etc. and what-have-you) and be a contributing member of the party from an adventure's outset to its conclusion. And most importantly, I could have fun doing it.
In 2e, there are a few dozen spell that are worth casting. And if those specific spells don't mesh with the motif of the character you want to play? Well, I'd say "have fun," but...
I have to say, I find almost the opposite to be true - there are going to be some terrible options in any system that has a spell list with hundreds of spells, but I think you might not be realising that your familiarity with PF1 is allowing you to pick freely between the options that are worthwhile, and ignoring the rest. When I was regularly GMing PFS for PF1, I regularly had people coming in with absolutely terrible spell choices that rendered their characters non-functional; a sorcerer whose spells were Animate Rope and Alarm as their 1st level spells because they really fit the character, and if I'd let them stick with that they literally would've had nothing to contribute with at all was the standout. There are standout spells in PF1, and then spells that are effective, and then there is a vast gulf of spells that you have to try really, really hard to optimize into something functional. I had a player come in who had heard you could conceal your casting and really wanted to use offensive magic that was concealed, with the idea to have Burning Disarm as their main spell (and I think vanish as the backup), which again is just far too niche to justify taking. The bad spells outnumbered the good spells pretty dramatically in PF1, but if you've got a good mental catalogue of the spells not even worth considering, it can stop feeling that way (especially with how big the lists are). In comparison, people talk a big talk about only a dozen spells being functional in PF2, but casters at my table have had a lot of good experiences going for specific, thematically-appropriate spell selections and only then thinking about how to use them. As always, there are some bad spells, but my experience is that PF2's casters are more forgiving here (especially with useful cantrips and focus spells), barring absurd optimization on otherwise-bad spells in PF1 at least.
Well, I'll chime in to say that brokenness brings choice.
If casters are broken, like in PF1, it's easy to choose subpar options and still make something out of them. On the other hand, when casters are balanced, subpar options are... subpar.
So it's normal that in PF2 the concept of "standout spell" becomes much more important than in PF1.
Overall, the options that are criticized in PF2 tend to combine 2 elements:
- A significant drop in brokenness from PF1 (options that were weak in PF1 are nearly never criticized even if weak in PF2, like the Ranger).
- A gameplay shift.
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Outside of PFS, which has tuned down encounter difficulty, it is only your table (GM and other players) that are setting the games expectations for how “optimal” a character needs to be.
In PF1, a GM had to do 10 times as much work to dial up encounter difficulty as a PF2 GM would have to do to dial down the difficulty of encounters in APs. There are threads and threads and threads of advice and answers to questions about ways to give players advantages, ways to modify encounters, and ways to play monsters as narratively arrogant or clueless and not as party destroying murder machines, any one of which can help dial in players experience to their expectations. A PF1 GM playing creatures and NPCs to be murder machines could destroy parties with ease, and adventure writers had to be careful not to let NPCs be built to win encounters before they began.
I play with some younger groups who make terrible build choices in PF2, it is trivially easy, on the fly to adjust encounters to provide fun challenges for them that don’t lead to immense frustration. I also play with some very tactically minded groups that I throw 200 to 300 xp at regularly in a single encounter. The balance is what makes all of this so much easier to do and to predict as a GM. I would never move to a system that lost that as it is the best thing ever to happen to RPGs. 4e tried and failed to accomplish it. Creatures were boring and characters felt too similar. PF2 really addressed both of those risks well with their math balance. It is tight math and needs some fine tuning for individual groups, but it doesn’t take long to figure out how to do that, and requires so little work to do so that I strongly recommend frustrated players talk to their GMs about different options for variant rules and why encounters are not fun and see how quickly and easily that can change by doing things like using more lower level monsters.
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The adult black dragon in this example is level 11. To be a strong encounter, it needs to be level+3, so a level 8 party. Rank 4 spells rules out synesthesia. A slow spell cast by level 8 caster is probably DC 26. The black dragon has fort save of +21 with an extra +1. They save on a 4 and crit on a 14. That is a 35% chance of doing nothing, a 50% chance of stealing one action, and only a 15% of doing more than stealing 1 action.
A trip martial is probably making around +19 trip check vs a DC 28. They succeed on a 9 and so are going to knock prone (minimally giving off guard to the dragon and a -2 to its attacks, likely to be traded in for a reactive strike and a list action) 55% of the time, for 1 action, repeatable every round. That is the kind of scenario that is going to leave many caster players frustrated and wondering how you are calling slow an encounter wrecking ability. The martial can even hero point or try again with the trip attempt if it feels critical in the moment, but if the dragon crit saves (which it will at least a third of the time) the casters’ whole round was probably meaningless. I agree that slow is a good spell, but is a bad spell to cast against a higher level creature with a high fortitude save.
Having 1 of 4 allies contribute nothing in a round against a level +3 encounter can be a very dangerous situation.
I take issue with several aspects of this comparison:
So effectively, what the above post underlines is that when you target a PL+3 monster's strongest save, you're still more likely than not to apply one of the strongest debuffs in the game, have a slim chance to single-handedly take the monster out of the fight almost completely, can do so more safely and overall still more reliably than a skill check targeting the monster's weakest save, and so using one out of the literal dozen spells you'll have at your disposal at that level, not counting cantrips, in contrast to a martial class's more limited selection... and this is apparently a bad thing? What even is the standard we're operating on here? What would a caster need in a hypothetical 3e to feel good to you?
The big paradigm shift with PF2, that spills over everything , not just casting, is that you can’t beat a strong enemy by just trying to play to your party’s strengths. You have to find and exploit their weaknesses. PF1 never required that, and made trying to have the versatility to do so massively weaken your character instead of strength them.
That hasn't been my experience. Generally, debuffing enemies and buffing allies creates enough of a numbers advantage that targeting specific weaknesses is rarely necessary (though doing so can certainly save resources and speed things along).
That hasn't been my experience. Generally, debuffing enemies and buffing allies creates enough of a numbers advantage that targeting specific weaknesses is rarely necessary (though doing so can certainly save resources and speed things along).
If by debuffing enemies and buffing allies you mean focusing on martials, then AC is extremely balanced across monsters, so it's rarely a strong point or a weakness. Which make martial-focusing parties quite stable.
That hasn't been my experience. Generally, debuffing enemies and buffing allies creates enough of a numbers advantage that targeting specific weaknesses is rarely necessary (though doing so can certainly save resources and speed things along).If by debuffing enemies and buffing allies you mean focusing on martials, then AC is extremely balanced across monsters, so it's rarely a strong point or a weakness. Which make martial-focusing parties quite stable.
I also mean things like using Demoralize or Bon Mot prior to hitting a save.
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Why is this thread still alive?
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Thing is, I've never heard a single person complain that they can't "trivialize encounters" with magic in 2E. What I keep hearing, which also matches my experience playing casters, is that spells mostly miss or get saved/critically saved against by their targets.
Wanting to be successful at least half the time isn't the same thing as wanting to "trivialize encounters". That's the problem with magic in 2E in a nutshell: it very rarely works, at least against competent opponents.
That's something that needs to be addressed in any next edition, however many years in the future that is. Paizo might be losing out on alot of players based on the number of ppl I've seen give up on this game after trying to play casters and getting frustrated.
It has been mentioned already but I think it is really important to note that a save spell usually as zero effect on an opponent only when they critically succeed.
In any other case, even with a successful save, the spell does work on the opponent.
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I think it's plausible that people would be more content if the four things that could happen when someone rolls to save on a spell were named: "Failure, Partial Success, Success, Critical Success" rather than what they are now.
Since PF2 is intended to be a game where die rolls matter, so you're never supposed to be guaranteed to get what you want if there are any rolls involved.
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I think it's plausible that people would be more content if the four things that could happen when someone rolls to save on a spell were named: "Failure, Partial Success, Success, Critical Success" rather than what they are now.
Since PF2 is intended to be a game where die rolls matter, so you're never supposed to be guaranteed to get what you want if there are any rolls involved.
The names are a bit misleading, true. It comes from having a single list of degrees that apply to every check.
The adult black dragon in this example is level 11. To be a strong encounter, it needs to be level+3, so a level 8 party. Rank 4 spells rules out synesthesia. A slow spell cast by level 8 caster is probably DC 26. The black dragon has fort save of +21 with an extra +1. They save on a 4 and crit on a 14. That is a 35% chance of doing nothing, a 50% chance of stealing one action, and only a 15% of doing more than stealing 1 action.
A trip martial is probably making around +19 trip check vs a DC 28. They succeed on a 9 and so are going to knock prone (minimally giving off guard to the dragon and a -2 to its attacks, likely to be traded in for a reactive strike and a list action) 55% of the time, for 1 action, repeatable every round. That is the kind of scenario that is going to leave many caster players frustrated and wondering how you are calling slow an encounter wrecking ability. The martial can even hero point or try again with the trip attempt if it feels critical in the moment, but if the dragon crit saves (which it will at least a third of the time) the casters’ whole round was probably meaningless. I agree that slow is a good spell, but is a bad spell to cast against a higher level creature with a high fortitude save.
Having 1 of 4 allies contribute nothing in a round against a level +3 encounter can be a very dangerous situation.
Black dragon's have no weaknesses to exploit other than the standard dragon low reflex save. You're going to expend a level 4 slot for an acid 10 resist for two people, possibly four if you double it up. Is this better than say blasting it with a phantasmal killer or a lightning bolt do heavier damage to accelerate the combat? I'm not sure.
Slow is 30 foot range or 60 foot with reach. You won't use it until engaged.
Your trip martial depending on build at about level 8 should be +20 trip with an item bonus. You can buff them with heroism for a +21, but that is likely unnecessary. Better to focus on debuffing the dragon with a phantasmal killer or something similar to set up the trip hammer.
The battlefield is very important in this scenario as the dragon mobility advantage is dependent on the room they have to move.
The main spell you want to have heavy use of in scenario is like heal as you want to spread so you can't get encompassed by the breath weapon and will have to heal through the heavy damage.
If you are in an open battlefield where it can move, hit, move hit, then it will be difficult for your slower martials to engage or trip it. A dragon engaging in melee from the ground when it can just harry you to death at range if the battlefield is wide enough is why you should always bring a skilled archer and prep some long range blast spells that you may have to use heavily.
I would have to see the scenario to see how I handle it. My casters carry a wide variety of spells they can use spontaneously as I prefer spontaneous casters who can use the same spell over and over. I tend to spread the spells for different functions.
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