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So... party optimization. When you go to seriously optimize a character in PF2, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that party op is the path to true power in this system... but we don't actually talk about it all that much. So this is a thread to encourage people to talk about it.
The premise is that you've got a party full of people who are generally fairly char-op capable, and they've all decided to try to work this party optimization thing to maximize their collective power. So... what should they be bearing in mind? What needs to be covered, and by how much? What combos can be usefully arranged? What combos could be usefully arranged if they knew certain facts about the upcoming campaign in advance?
We're really looking for two tiers, here. The first is the base necessities - what kinds of configurations are even viable? The second is digging a bit more into the synergies - what combos can you pull off to leverage the power that you have effectively while staying inside of those base necessities?
Additionally, if some bit of optimization or other is particular to a given level range (because it takes a while to get going, because it doesn't scale, or both) them mention that.
/************/
So... one thing to start with, and I'd like to ask for insight on this one in particular. The combo of forced movement and hazardous terrain is a really obvious one (if it's one of the kinds of forced movement that can actually push enemies into such things). Being able to control where the enemy is going to be has further synergies with area-effect attacks of all kinds (clustering the enemy up) and various debilitating zones (get more use out of powerful debilitating effects).
My issue is that the Kineticist is just entirely too shiny to me personally... and casters in general aren't. I look at this stuff, and to my eyes, it looks like it has "kineticist" written on every single part. At the same time, the all-kineticist party can have... issues. There are real issues with skill challenges, if nothing else. So... what are some good ways to lean into this particular combo-space without using more than, say, one kineticist?
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Let me start with a zinger. The secret to team optimization is having fun.
Building a good team from scratch is beyond the capabilities of most human beings. Sure, the GM could hold a Session Zero in which the players plan their characters together, but designing four PCs has too many variables to take into account in a few hours of planning together. My players start with a well-rounded party and then grow the teamwork by playing the game. Thus, 1st level is rather rough, but that difficulty is traditional.
Growing teamwork in an existing party requires paying attention to the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of the other party members. If a party member is boring, such as a high-attack-bonus fighter who stands still for three Strikes per turn (that third Strike is usually a bad tactic, too), then the other players will pay less attention. Playing fun and interesting characters whom the other players enjoy watching in action leads most quickly to developing good teamwork.
By paying attention to how another player plays their character, a player learns what forms of teamwork will suit that other player. With that foreknowledge they can work together enthusiastically.
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Here is an example of unexpected optimal teamwork. The Ironfang Invasion adventure path begins with the mostly-hobgoblin Ironfang Legion conquering the Nirmathi village of Phaendar. The party members are among the refugees who escaped the invasion and as the campaign progresses they learn to fight back against the invasion. At 16th level in the beginning of the 6th module, Vault of the Onyx Citadel, they would return to Phaendar and fight the high-level Ironfang Legion soldiers and troop units there.
My players decided to do it at 12th level. They could not bear their former neighbors laboring in slavery under the iron boot of the Ironfang Legion. They planned a prison-camp jailbreak as a heist, but the heist did not go perfectly and they ended fighting some of those high-level Ironfang Legion soldiers. I wrote up an account at The Summoner: How do you like it now that it's live? Comment #88, when the topic drifted to versatility rather than the summoner class.
The party had spent a week using a Dig-Widget to dig an escape tunnel into the slave compound (the ranger had scouted the exact distances invisibility with her Cloak of Elvenkind) and were loading the rescued villagers into boats to float down the Marideth River to safety. Thus, most of the party was along the river to protect the boats from Ironfang archers. The monk was at the slave compound protecting the villagers who were queued up to enter the tunnel. And he ended up in combat with Commander Scabvistin.
The module describes Scabvistin as CR 15 male middle-aged bugbear rogue (knife master) 14. He wields a pair of +2 keen punching daggers with Double Slice and Disarming Strike feats. I converted him to PF2 as a creature 15 with Catfall, Combat Climb, Group Coercion, and Group Impression skill feat, 3d6 Sneak Attack, Surprise Attack, Deny Advantage, Evasion, Double Debilitation, Twin Quick Draw, Twin Feint, Reactive Pursuit, Lunge, and most importantly, AC 36 and a pair of +2 greater striking tri-blade katars:
Melee [One-Action] +2 greater striking tri-blade katar +29 (Disarm, Fatal d8, Monk, Simple) Damage 3d4+9 piercing Critical Specialization Knife: The target takes 1d6+2 persistent bleed damage.
Ranged [One-Action] +2 striking composite shortbow +29 (deadly d10), Damage 2d6+6 piercing Critical Specialization Bow: If the target of the critical hit is adjacent to a surface, it gets stuck to that surface by the missile.
Ranged [One-Action] starknife +29 (Agile, Deadly d6, Finesse, Thrown 20 ft., Versatile S) Damage 1d4+8 piercing
Scabvistin closed in on the catfolk monk Ren, who had been fighting a 9th-level hobgoblin troop unit to keep it out of the slave compound. The gnome druid Stormdancer saw this from the sky, because she was riding her roc animal companion and aiding both Ren's battle and the river battle with extended Ray of Frost. At the river, the elf ranger Zinfandel, gnome rogue Binny, leshy sorcerer Honey, and halfling rogue/sorcerer Sam were taking down the strongest opponents. The player of the champion was absent, so we declared that the champion was farther downriver.
Each PC had an individual style. Monk Ren was a fast-moving melee combatant. He was not in serious danger from Scabvistin, because he could run away, but that would require abandoning the remaining villagers. Druid Stormdancer preferred to rain death from high in the skies, which gave range penalties to enemy arrowshot and also gave her an overview of the battlefield. Ranger Zinfandel had been been designed to switch between melee and ranged combat, but with the monk and champion handling most melee, he was mostly a multiple-shot archer. Rogue Binny was an archer, but her style was to shoot from hiding to gain sneak attack. More lately, Precise Debilitation made her foes off-guard without her having to hide. Sorcerer Honey was the party's healer. In combat, she prefered to take potshots with cantrips until an opportunity for a flavorful battlefield control spell presented itself. At the moment she was in dragon form flying up and down the river, so she was not casting any spells. She was giving Binny a lift across the river. Sam would remain at the river to finish up, so his magical trickster style is irrelevant to the battle against Scabvistin.
When Stormdancer alerted the party of Ren's danger, Honey flew over with Binny still on her back in immediate aid. Due to the riding-intelligent-creatures rules, she and Binny had only two actions per turn, so Honey could not use her breath weapon immediately, but Binny got a shot from hiding on Honey's back that made Scabvistin off-guard until the end of her next turn. Zinfandel Strode into sight. Due to her longbow's range, she could attack from 100 feet away, so she did not have to move far. Since Scabvistin had a -2 pentalty to AC from off-guard from Binny's Precise Debilitation, Zinfandel's shots hit 40% more often, success on natural rolls of 16 to 20 rather than 18 to 20. Likewise, Stormdancer's Rays of Frost from the sky also hit more often.
Ren, on the other hand, had moved away from Scabvistin to fight the troop unit again.
Scabvistin, on the other hand, had a dilemma. Honey had landed, so that she use her two-action dragon breath. But if he dropped his shortbow, Strode twice to reach her, and attacked her with his Twin Quick Draw, he would get in only one Strike without sneak attack. Then Honey would fly 55 feet away so that he would have to Stride twice again. Sticking to the bow was more effective, but it did not take advantage of his feats and special abilities.
In theory, 15th-level Scabvistin versus 12th-level Honey, Binny, Zinfandel, and Stormdancer was a Severe-Threat encounter for the party members. And the party had already depleted their resources in three previous encountes around Phaendar, so this should have been tough. In practice, Scabvistin wielded his backup weapon with feat support, so he was more like a 14th-level opponent, a Moderate-Threat encounter that did not need those depleted resources. Scabvistin died before Honey's breath weapon recharged.
Let me enumerate the instances of teamwork.
1) Stormdancer was observing the spread-out team in the air to alert them to Ren's danger.
2) The party rushed to Ren's aid.
3) Honey in dragon form gave Binny a ride so that she could both travel and hide.
4) Binny's Precise Debilitation made Scabvistin off-guard, increasing the success rate of Zinfandel and Stormdancer.
5) Scabvistin could not efficiently close in on Binny to kill her with his melee feats, because Honey could easily move both herself and Binny.
The party had not planned to split up, but they knew that they could rely on each other even when separated. They could have left Ren to run away rather than departing their current almost-finished battle. But the team protected its members and they knew that Ren would not abandon his mission to protect villagers. Honey did not have to offer Binny a ride, but Honey had the mobility that Binny needed, so they had already teamed up. Precise Debilitation rogue feat was designed by Paizo developers as good for teamwork. And Binny knew that staying on Honey's back was her protection against Scabvistin.
I don't see how a group of players could have planned to use this combination of abilities. It worked out naturally because they thought like a team and knew how they could help each other.
So... one thing to start with, and I'd like to ask for insight on this one in particular. The combo of forced movement and hazardous terrain is a really obvious one (if it's one of the kinds of forced movement that can actually push enemies into such things). Being able to control where the enemy is going to be has further synergies with area-effect attacks of all kinds (clustering the enemy up) and various debilitating zones (get more use out of powerful debilitating effects).
My issue is that the Kineticist is just entirely too shiny to me personally... and casters in general aren't. I look at this stuff, and to my eyes, it looks like it has "kineticist" written on every single part. At the same time, the all-kineticist party can have... issues. There are real issues with skill challenges, if nothing else. So... what are some good ways to lean into this particular combo-space without using more than, say, one kineticist?
Sorry for not starting with this, but my two posts above had been intended for my own optimization thread. I decided to join yours instead.
Spike Stones to create hazardous terrain had been one of Honey's battlefield control spells. But the party never combined it with forced movement. Instead, the spikes directed enemy movement so that the enemy stayed away from Binny's hiding spot (the weakness of her sniper tactics is their failure against an adjacent opponent) and let the melee members of the party encounter the enemy as a stream rather than all at once.
I have seen kineticists in action. The leshy kineticist Monet in my extension of Fistful of Flowers gained earth as a third element at 5th level. She once prevented three bandits from rushing out of a house and attacking 2nd-level NPC allies by simply conjuring a block of stone to block the doorway. An earth kineticist has control over terrain, which is good for battlefield control. The key is integrating that control into teamwork, whether through forced movement, funnel opponents, or messing up the opponent's plans.
In my experience with teamwork, I imagine an earth kineticst who loves to shape terrain. This means that the other PCs can expect terrain favorable to them and unfavorable to their opponents. They gain new feats, such as options for forced movement, that exploit this. Further details depend on these imaginary teammates.
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@Mathmuse: I feel like the conversation has gone like this:
- Me: Everyone agrees that party optimization is strong in PF2, but it seems like individual optimization is all we ever talk about. That feels dumb. We should actually talk about party optimization, discuss it amongst ourselves, and gain a better theoretical understanding of some of the options out there and pertinent concerns, so that we have a better toolset when it comes time to assemble and run actual parties.
- You: That's totally not how my party does things. They grow this all organically over the course of play and show amazing teamwork. It's awesome and I love them. Trying to theorycraft this stuff ahead of time will never be as awesome as that. It is therefore pointless and futile, and you shouldn't bother trying.
Is that the message you meant to send? If it was, then I don't really feel that it was helpful. If it was not, then could you please clarify?
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Party optimization is fairly wide open in PF2. It generally requires having a variety of tools spread across the party and strategizing around class strengths while limiting weaknesses.
A list of some things that are good to have in a party:
1. Healing: In PF2 you need to have the medic for bookkeeping, but also a combat healer to deal with those times when you're getting wrecked. The heal spell is incredibly powerful and a huge PC advantage over most of the monsters you fight.
2. Control Martial: This mostly focuses on trip for me. I know some think grapple can be good. Trip is the ultimate combat maneuver for dealing with practically everything. Trip hammers fliers out of the air. Trip makes it so casters can't move and cast. It makes things easier to hit for everyone. It makes the tripped target stand up or take a penalty to hit everyone. It wastes an action to stand up or right yourself as a flier or whatever mover. It activates reaction attacks based on movement.
Good trip martials:
A. Fighter: They can get Smash Down line of feats and have best reactive strike capability.
B. Barbarian: You take Mauler and pick up Smash Down line of feats. They also have a Brutal Bully I think it's called for a +2 circumstance bonus for attack combat maneuvers while raging which makes them pretty good at combat maneuvers. They only get one reactive strike ever though.
C. Monk: Flurry of Maneuvers with Reflective Ripple Stance and a high movement rate makes them good at taking fliers out of the air. It's harder for non-monks to do because Sudden Charge is only a Strike at the end of the double move and Smash Down takes two actions like Sudden Charge. So it's harder for a non-monk to move fast enough or far enough to take out a flier, especially if caught without a movement buff.
Monk's have great action economy even while using combat maneuvers. Reflective Ripple Stance has the Trip trait built into their strikes and a +1 circumstance bonus on tripping as part of the style. So you can get your full item bonus on trips using your unarmed strikes along with the +1 circumstance bonus.
3. Ranged Martial. I like having a ranged martial in the group. Helps deal with fliers and allows you to do damage vertically so if martials are AC or what not are all up front in a 10 foot wide hallway, you can still attack. If you have too many melee martials and are utilizing terrain to limit the ability to enemies to attack you from all directions, then a ranged martial allows vertical attacking from back with a longer range.
Starlit Span is the best ranged hammer. They are the highest ranged damage dealer with versatile abilities due to spell access. They can do AOE or straight ranged damage.
Fighter/Ranger Archer: These two are about the same. Archer can often do more damage due to precision or volume of attacks. Fighter has a really nifty shot called Debilitating Shot. It's a no save slow 1 on a hit. This is a powerful boss killer ability. A fighter keeping the boss slowed at range for no save regardless of level is an insanely powerful ability.
4. Caster: Preferably a caster that does AOE damage, control, utility all in one. One or two of these is good, especially if you can combine with combat healing.
I find primal casters are extremely good in the healer slot. They have a lot of blast spells combined with the necessary healing and condition removal spells.
Occult casters are good too though Soothe is a weak heal. Not much energy blasting, but buff and debuff is strong and usually comes with fairly strong class abilities.
Divine casters received quite an upgrade with spirit damage affecting lot more targets.
Arcane is usually lowest on the list because they don't have healing so they can't fill that function. They are missing the best debuff in the same. They lack heroism which is one of the best buffs in the game. They are mainly combat and control casters. They are still very viable, but you have to fill the healer niche with another class and most of the classes the arcane list are attached to are slow build and won't provide much until higher level when spellcasting becomes much better. So it's like you're carrying the arcane caster along for the first five levels or so.
It's best when your caster slot can be filled with a caster that covers as many bases as possible which allows the rest of your group to be more flexible in class and build choice. I prefer a caster with healing ability as the main caster slot.
I prefer spontaneous over prepared casters. You will find in most encounters you want the same spell over and over again. Spontaneous have a far easier time chain casting a high value spell over and over again whereas a prepared caster is stuck once they blow off a spell with maybe an extra use from Arcane Bond if a wizard unless they load up multiple copies of a single spell. Loading up the same copy of a spell in multiple slots pretty much clearly removes the advantage a prepared caster is supposed to have of being able to have a varied spell slot for dealing with various problems. It makes spontaneous casters far more flexible and varied as they can have a different spell in each repertoire slot and cast it using a spell slot as needed. It makes the spontaneous caster more versatile and effective in actual gameplay.
5. Skills: You want a spread of skills across a group. Social skills, physical skills, and whatever other skills the group might need.
Social skills are why I prefer a charisma caster over an intelligence caster. Social skills can be used in combat and out of combat to great effect whether Diplomacy, Deception, or Intimidation.
In general when you're doing ability boosts as a caster, your focus is on casting stat, dex, con, and wisdom. So having a more valuable casting stat like Charisma with more bang for the buck social skills you can use to get information, coerce, negotiate, deceive, or any variety of social skills you might use in a variety of adventures, it's makes for a more focused and optimal character.
Intelligence-based skills like Crafting and creature knowledge skills can be helpful, but in general they are not as useful and don't have as generally useful skill feats. They are more useful specifically for those classes that benefit them rather than generally useful for a variety of social situations you might encounter in an adventure.
The caster discussion over, it's still nice to have a rogue or investigator in the group to maximized skills. Thievery for dealing with traps, locks, and such is very useful. Thieves and Investigators with up to six Legendary skills can make for a very nice class for dealing with a variety of situations.
Stealth, Thievery, Acrobatics are all good skills to build up making Dex classes optimal for a party.
Stealth is a scout skill. A maxed out stealth built up with feats makes scouting far easier and less reliant on casting slots or focus abilities.
Not much else to say here other than a Rogue is the optimal class for skills and scouting. If you can have a rogue in the group, you're gonna be happy. They are one of the most powerful classes in the game in every aspect of the game.
6. Perception: Rogue, Ranger, and Investigator all get Legendary Perception. Legendary Perception is great to have.
You can make a Ranger sort of rogue-lite by taking Rogue archetype and building up their skills using Skill Mastery if you want to play the ranger as your main trapfinding and stealthy martial.
I'll stop there for now.
Lots of useful insight there Deriven!
We might want to take a step back and define our optimization goals. I like the goal of being able to handle the widest array of challenges with the most reliability, since that aligns with PF1 tier definitions.
One thing I've found very effective in a wide array of groups is a Bard with a bow. Heals, debuffs, modest ranged damage, courageous anthem... it's hard to see this not being a staple of group optimization theorycraft.
Also, anyone who thinks group optimization is pointless because you can't achieve an optimized group in reality... remember if you can map the existing party members to an approximately similar optimal group configuration you can then know what to make yourself. You can also provide guidance to your group as you level together if they feel like they're struggling.
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@Mathmuse: I feel like the conversation has gone like this:
- Me: Everyone agrees that party optimization is strong in PF2, but it seems like individual optimization is all we ever talk about. That feels dumb. We should actually talk about party optimization, discuss it amongst ourselves, and gain a better theoretical understanding of some of the options out there and pertinent concerns, so that we have a better toolset when it comes time to assemble and run actual parties.
- You: That's totally not how my party does things. They grow this all organically over the course of play and show amazing teamwork. It's awesome and I love them. Trying to theorycraft this stuff ahead of time will never be as awesome as that. It is therefore pointless and futile, and you shouldn't bother trying.
Is that the message you meant to send? If it was, then I don't really feel that it was helpful. If it was not, then could you please clarify?
That is close to what I have been saying, except for the part about pointlessness. Instead of pointlessness I have a secret frustration. I have been trying to understand and formalize party optimization, because I am a research mathematicians and study the mathematics of games as a retirement hobby. However, I married a sweet, adorable tactical mastermind, and we raised two daughters who began playing Dungeons & Dragons before the younger daughter could read. I don't understand how they pull off all the teamwork. It seems effortless and the other players do it, too. I do know that 3 out of 4 newbie players learned expert teamwork just by playing along side the experienced players. As for that 4th hopeless player, the party learned how to predict his actions and incorporate those actions into their teamwork.
My observation is that teamwork is a mindset that creates a team playstyle built around the individual characters. Different builds team up in different ways. Then the players optimize those characters for the playstyle.
The rogue sniper Binny is an interesting case study. Her player was a newbie, a high-school student from my church who I invited to our game (after checking with her mother first). Binny became a sniper because that was a safe combat style. Staying out of reach of combat and hiding at the end of every turn is very defensive. That style did not take advantage of her rogue's Thief Racket; therefore, it was suboptimal. And the party supported that style by keeping opponents away from Binny, so that she could keep sniping. With just a little party support Binny pulled her weight in combat. The adjustment was minor, because the ranger and druid also had good ranged attacks, so the party loved to ambush from cover.
Binny's player herself invested heavily in Stealth skill increases and Stealth feats to become the best hidden sniper possible. She also took Quiet Allies to let the party travel stealthily along with her. The running gag whenever Binny's player was absent was, "Where's Binny? I guess she is hiding somewhere nearby." Prisoners of the Blight intended for the party to fight an ancient black dragon to obtain a magic ring. Nope, the rest of the party distracted the dragon with gifts while Binny sneaked in, unlocked the trapped strongbox, and stole the ring. The dragon did not notice afterwards, since it rarely used the ring. Serving as our expert burglar was a crowning moment of awesome for Binny and we loved it.
At 10th level Binny learned Precise Debilitations. Suddenly, her sneak attack became a way for everyone in the party to catch an opponent off-guard. She was contributing back to the team in combat much, much more than the team had to adjust to keep Binny viable.
The ways that PCs can work together for more results than separate efforts are synergies. These synergies, such as Precise Debilitations, are tools for teamwork. The Paizo developers have put a lot of synergies into the game. But teamwork is not simply applying synergies. To apply the synergies optimally, the players don't simply cooperate. They have to want to cooperate, they have to train (grab the right feats) to cooperate, they have to celebrate their cooperation. Among my players that comes across as, "That was fun. Let's do it again in another encounter."
I asked my wife. She said that some people will prefer a more theory-driven style of setting up their teamwork and that is just fine. She says to run with the style that the players have. If you like crunch, then go ahead and preplan your teamwork feats. Building story around the players is her main point. It equips a personal toolbox of teamwork options. She prefer narrative to crunch, which give me trouble describing her techniques as crunch.
She gave me an example from a PF1 Tyrant's Grasp campaign that she plays online without me. Her witch Anya once put on an animated cursed wig that my wife thought was amusing, so she gave Anya the Prehensile Hair hex, despite more optimized hexes being available. But in the last game session Anya saved another player from a grapple by a nasty ooze with her prehensile hair, so the hair was a good choice for teamwork.
I tend to offer optimization advice for building for a variety of situations. No need to get too specific as there are too many different ways to build that close to equally effective and too many variables with enemies and situations that might require different tactics.
I think one of the core teamwork options are getting -2 status and circumstance penalties on enemies. Slam down and Threatening approach with dread rune tend to cover that.
Then add bless or inspire courage.
+5 is a huge swing for taking out enemies, no matter what they are.
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So... party optimization.
Optimization to what?
Let's take a simple example to illustrate my question: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Bard. A very solid party that should easily get you from level 1 to 20... through a few TPKs. Because as solid as this party is the Fighter is the weak spot: 2 natural 1s at a debilitating save and the party is ready for another TPK.
In general, if you want to obliterate encounters you need a strong routine, similar to your forced movement + hazardous combo. But that won't save you from TPKs because TPKs happen when a grain of sand force you out of your comfort zone and the party doesn't manage to adapt. Versatility is what will save you from TPKs: casters are the kings at avoiding TPKs (and having experienced it, you can literally carry a party through a potential TPK with a caster, something martials can't do without luck).
So there are 2 different approaches to party optimization: Optimizing synergies to get a strong routine and optimizing complementarity to get through the maximum number of challenges. It looks like you focus on the first one, I tend to focus on the second one (I don't care of killing enemies fast but I do care when the party get TPKed). On that I tend to agree with Deriven's approach (even if I'd certainly prefer other compositions).
But if I want to be objective, the "best party composition" would certainly be a very versatile party with also a strong routine.
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If you're talking about optimisation that requires the full party to cooperate, rather than just everyone making decent characters with minimal overlap and an eye to teamwork, the main thing that springs out to me is weakness infliction. The easiest is, I think, Fire damage, though that also is easiest accessed through spell attacks, the weakest attack type.
Okay. Could you talk about that a moment? I'm not really aware of much in the way of weakness infliction. What tools are available for it?
So... party optimization.Optimization to what?
Let's take a simple example to illustrate my question: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Bard. A very solid party that should easily get you from level 1 to 20... through a few TPKs. Because as solid as this party is the Fighter is the weak spot: 2 natural 1s at a debilitating save and the party is ready for another TPK.
In general, if you want to obliterate encounters you need a strong routine, similar to your forced movement + hazardous combo. But that won't save you from TPKs because TPKs happen when a grain of sand force you out of your comfort zone and the party doesn't manage to adapt. Versatility is what will save you from TPKs: casters are the kings at avoiding TPKs (and having experienced it, you can literally carry a party through a potential TPK with a caster, something martials can't do without luck).
So there are 2 different approaches to party optimization: Optimizing synergies to get a strong routine and optimizing complementarity to get through the maximum number of challenges. It looks like you focus on the first one, I tend to focus on the second one (I don't care of killing enemies fast but I do care when the party get TPKed). On that I tend to agree with Deriven's approach (even if I'd certainly prefer other compositions).
But if I want to be objective, the "best party composition" would certainly be a very versatile party with also a strong routine.
This is really intended as a "get the ball rolling" discussion to at least get us talking about this stuff, so... both, really. Like just out of the stuff you've written here...
- You say that you generally agree with Deriven's approach, though you prefer different compositions for it. Okay. What other compositions do you prefer? Why do you prefer them?- You say you like optimizing for complementarity. Cool! So... suppose someone wants to make sure that their party is well-optimized for complementarity. What does that actually mean? What sorts of things should the be paying attention to? What should they make absolutely certain to do? What should they avoid? How does expected campaign adjust this? (In particular, PFS vs AP seems like an important split.)
- "a very versatile party with also a strong routine": Yes. That does sound like something worth pursuing... and, in particular, a routine that is both strong and at least a little flexible itself. So... what kind of "strong and at least a little flexible" routines can we fit into a party without significantly damaging its versatility?
I'm sure that none of these are simple things. There's bound to be lots of potential compositions that can work well, optimizing for complementarity looks shallow at first glance, but feels like it's deeper than it looks (if that makes any sense), and there's bound to be lots of ways to fit strong, moderately flexible routines into a versatile party... but we're at least trying to get the conversation going, yeah?
After a day of thought, I have outlined a formula for organically growing an optimized team.
1) Create a well-rounded party of charqacters fun to roleplay. Well-rounded means covering all the bases that
Deriven Firelion described in comment #6. Lightly covered is good enough. For example, a dedicated healer cleric is not necessary; instead, a druid willing to prepare two Heal spells or a rogue with Battle Medicine will suffice at 1st level.
2) The GM gives them a roleplaying incentive to bond as a team. The classic "hired at a tavern by a mysterious stranger" is sadly weak and forces the players to invent their own reasons to bond. The Paizo adventure paths offer a lot of good beginnings. In Rise of the Runelords the characters start as strangers at a festival and form a party to defend themselves and other festival-goers from a goblin raid. In Ironfang Invasion the party is thrown together as refugees from an invasion.
3) Each PC displays their personal styles of combat and problem-solving. Perhaps the earth kineticist loves shifting the landscape with Stepping Stones and Tremor, so he becomes the master of battlefield control and area effects. Perhaps the cleric prefers Bless and Fear over Heal and wants to buff the party and debuff the enemy. Roleplay the personality of the character to make their style clear to all other players.
4) At 2nd level, the PCs select new feats and spells that fit and synergize with the playstyle of the other characters. Maybe the fighter gives up his greatsword to take up a Bec de Corbin for reach to stay out of the kineticist's Tremors and for shove to push foes together for the tremor. "I'll set them up like bowling pins and you'll knock them down."
5) For further refinement of teamwork, the players learn when to be the point of the spear, dealing glorious damage, and when to be the shaft of the spear, supporting someone else who has the right ability for the situation. In my games, the players learned to read the tactics of their opponents and then switch their tactics to nullify the opponent's best tactics, like my description above of melee-master Commander Scabvistin forced to attack at range. Switching tactics meant that often a different PC than usual became the point of the spear, such as the sniper Binny taking over from the monk Ren.
For a four player party I feel like Paizo has done a good job of making sure you never have everything you'd want no matter how you build. That said, it seems like Fighter, Champion, Starlit Span Magus, and Bard would cover most of what you'd want.
Taking that party up an member I think a Druid would add the most. Going to 6 I'd add a Rogue.
Your base party has a pair of frontliners who can work together to maximize their reactions. While the backliners can focus on ranged damage and utility with their spells. Champion and Bard cover healing. There is enough skill coverage to tackle pretty much anything to a good enough level.
The Druid in a 5 man party would take a lot of healing pressure away from the rest of the party while bringing AoE damage, the ability to be a third man up on the frontline, and of course utility from being a caster.
The Rogue brings Legendary perception, covers skills well, and is a dedicated 3rd man in on the frontline.
I think there are other builds that can work, but this feels like it spreads out to cover just about everything a party actually needs.
I tend to agree that Champion + Bard are the current cornerstones of an optimized party. I'm hoping the final form of Guardian/Commander can help diversify that.
You typically want a damage focused specialist as the front-line companion of the champion -- but basically any martial/magus/warpriest/etc can probably slot in without too much difference. As stated upthread, you probably want them able to trip or grapple, but also able to be one of the main hammers for the party.
The fourth is probably going to be dictated a bit by the sub-class/build choices of the other three. What skills are you missing as a party? Is the Bard going to know Soothe or not; has someone gone battle medicine? A ranged martial, a divine/primal caster, an investigator/rogue all feel like they could be the fourth piece very easily.
So... party optimization.Optimization to what?
Ah, that was a vital question when I worked as an applied mathematician creating optimized algorithms. We had an intensive interview with our customers to determine their true needs.
My campaigns were Paizo adventure paths. The players' goal was to successfully finish the adventure path, dealing with the troubles and solving the problems along the way. More recently, I ran two Free RPG Day mini-campaigns, one based off of A Fistful of FLowers and the other based off of Skitter Shot. They lacked the overarching plot of the adventure paths, but my players treated them as unified adventures. The Flowers campaign gained the goal of protecting the PCs' neighbors, whether the neighbors were leshies, gnome druids, or friendly halfling villagers. The Starfinder Skitter campaign gained a goal of rescuing people in trouble with the tools of the Nakonechkin Salvage Company. Why kill the repentant pirates of the stranded Nova Warlock starship when they could be hired as new employees instead?
They optimized to achieve those goals. Rise of the Runelords was troubled by a cult who worshiped a runelord, so the party became investigators uncovering the cult (not the usual approach to that adventure path). Jade Regent was about restoring the lost heir to the throne of Minkai, so the party became travelers and folk heroes. Iron Gods deal with three machine intelligences, so the party became masters of technology. Ironfang Invasion was about an invading army, so the party learned to fight armies and defend towns. In the Flowers campaign the party became good at showing up where needed. In the Skitter campaign the party became good at securing a chaotic situation. Strength of Thousands is about the Magaambya School of Magic, and at 2nd level the PCs are students better at classwork than at combat.
I suspect when most players talk of optimized parties, they want parties that are masters at winning combat. But even a dozen years ago with the Rise of the Runelords party, my PCs often scouted a situation to save their resources by skipping unnecessary fights. Is good scouting before a hostile encounter a skill for an optimized party? It depends on the goal.
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Okay... but @Mathmuse... that's not helpful. At least, it's not helpful all by itself. Sure, I love the requirements to design to implementation to testing cycle as much as anyone, and the requirements gathering phase is critical... but when you are dealing with players who are not magically intuitive geniuses about this sort of thing, then saying "you should totally pick a goal" doesn't go but so far as far as translating into character builds is concerned.
I mean... "so they became travelers and folk heroes". So... what exactly is involved at being good at "travelers and folk heroes"? It sounds like this is a lot more about roleplaying than about CharOp. There's nothing wrong with roleplaying. It's great, and I'd love to have more of it in my life, but when you bring it as an argument to an explicitly CharOp thread, it sounds like you're just going for a more diplomatic form of the traditional "CharOp sucks and you should stop doing it and probably feel bad that you did it in the first place." If that's really the argument you're trying to push, could you possibly make a different thread for it? Please?
Then, too, a lot of this stuff you're talking about is really very GM-dependent. It works for your party because you, as GM, allow it to work. Different GMs allow these sorts of things to different degrees.
I've played a bunch of different games in a bunch of different systems and *most* of the time the GMs have not been as willing to flex with the party as you seem to be talking about here. Finding out how far your GM is willing to work with you on various things and how to fit into that and make the result fun for everyone is an interesting topic, but one that, I think, is rather outside of the scope of this discussion. Again, it could use its own thread.
...and so once you get back down to the things that we mostly *do* have in common... yes. A lot of it tends to be "winning combat". The combat has a lot of hard rules. The combat is laid out pretty clearly. Getting good at combat is going to eat character build resources in a way that a lot of this other stuff won't. There's still a fair bit of GM variation, from tactics and monster preference and so forth, but there's enough commonality to at least have the discussion.
...and, really, the whole point of CharOp is "How should I spend my character build resources?" If you're talking about goals that don't require much in the way of character build resources, then CharOp isn't what you're discussing. If the things you're talking about *do* require significant character build resources, then by all means, please, hold forth on how to best spend build resources in order to be "masters of technology", as a party.
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Something to remember. PF2 classes are so well designed that you can choose any one and find a way to synergize with a group. Any class can do combat maneuvers. Any class has abilities to synergize with group play.
This means you don't have to optimize with any classes or builds in mind, you can build whatever you want and synergize for an action like trip or making sure to have a few high quality spells.
That's why I did not list any classes as absolutes for optimization, just actions and abilities you want in the group because the actions and abilities can come from almost any class. Who does what is up to the group.
Main thing is don't limit players from making what they want. Instead build around the player's choices ensuring someone in the group has the action or abilities you want to make things work well.
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Something to remember. PF2 classes are so well designed that you can choose any one and find a way to synergize with a group. Any class can do combat maneuvers. Any class has abilities to synergize with group play.
This means you don't have to optimize with any classes or builds in mind, you can build whatever you want and synergize for an action like trip or making sure to have a few high quality spells.
That's why I did not list any classes as absolutes for optimization, just actions and abilities you want in the group because the actions and abilities can come from almost any class. Who does what is up to the group.
Main thing is don't limit players from making what they want. Instead build around the player's choices ensuring someone in the group has the action or abilities you want to make things work well.
Okay, sure... to a point. At the same time, I've totally seen people down in advice talking about how their groups were struggling, and desperately needed an X (or two, or three) and how they personally didn't want to play a dedicated X, but no one else was at interested in doing so either.
"Someone capable of standing on the front lines and not dying" was pretty common as an "X", but "healer" came up from time to time as well.
...and no, I'm not trying to "limit" anyone. I'm coming from the other direction. What if everyone wants to work together to build something awesome? What if they're willing to be reasonably flexible in their builds as long as they can make that happen? It seems like this should be the sort of thing that one could know and theorycraft about, at least to some extent.
Like, where I'm coming from? I love being part of a well-oiled machine. I know you're not always going to get that, but I really enjoy watching a plan come together and knowing that I was a useful and important part of making it happen. I love it when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I want to understand more about how to make that happen in PF2, and help other people understand it better too... and yes, in this thread, I'd like to explore how to do that within the context of cooperative character optimization.
...and yeah, I'd like to push it past the level that anyone can do trivially. I know that we can do better than that.
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Something to remember. PF2 classes are so well designed that you can choose any one and find a way to synergize with a group. Any class can do combat maneuvers. Any class has abilities to synergize with group play.
This means you don't have to optimize with any classes or builds in mind, you can build whatever you want and synergize for an action like trip or making sure to have a few high quality spells.
That's why I did not list any classes as absolutes for optimization, just actions and abilities you want in the group because the actions and abilities can come from almost any class. Who does what is up to the group.
Main thing is don't limit players from making what they want. Instead build around the player's choices ensuring someone in the group has the action or abilities you want to make things work well.
Okay, sure... to a point. At the same time, I've totally seen people down in advice talking about how their groups were struggling, and desperately needed an X (or two, or three) and how they personally didn't want to play a dedicated X, but no one else was at interested in doing so either.
"Someone capable of standing on the front lines and not dying" was pretty common as an "X", but "healer" came up from time to time as well.
...and no, I'm not trying to "limit" anyone. I'm coming from the other direction. What if everyone wants to work together to build something awesome? What if they're willing to be reasonably flexible in their builds as long as they can make that happen? It seems like this should be the sort of thing that one could know and theorycraft about, at least to some extent.
Like, where I'm coming from? I love being part of a well-oiled machine. I know you're not always going to get that, but I really enjoy watching a plan come together and knowing that I was a useful and important part of making it happen. I love it when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I want to understand more about how to...
I'd have to see what level they were. Low level almost no one can stand up to big hits. Higher level almost any 10 hit point martial can stand up to hits. Maybe some kind of 10 hit point martial should be part of a group.
I don't think you need any specific type as they all offer different advantages, but a 10 hit point martial with a 14 or better Con would be desirable in a group. 8 hit point martials with slow AC progression have a rough time filling any type of tank role.
But a champion, fighter, monk, barb, or ranger can play a tank type role with adequate combat healing as you level. A champion trades off some damage for better defense, while other classes kill faster or offer something else as part of the overall package.
There are a lot of ways to measure optimization in this game, since it is balanced and varied. Personally when I build a single character I don't try too hard to max DPS or other stat (if it's a damage focused character then obviously make sure you can do decent damage, but not really in a way that's as focused as pf1e or anything), I have a small checklist of things that have been problems and try to hit as many of those as I can. This is more of a party optimization thread but I think a similar approach can be taken here.
But I feel like, if one were to dig into the heart of the matter, the single strongest way to optimize is numbers. If a group was to coordinate to get the optimal party for stacking buffs and debuffs, they're going to wreck in a lot of fights. Look for the highest proficiency bonuses, item bonuses, status bonuses, and circumstance bonuses, and do the same with penalties.
A bard with heroism, synesthesia, who aids as often as they can. That's a ten point swing from one character.
Fighter flanking an enemy, ideally with a shield for a circumstance bonus. Raise athletics to inflict prone or disarm for extra circumstance penalties to hit.
Alchemist with a butt load of formula for mutagen to get that extra item bonus and feats to debilitate enemies with bombs (can inflict status penalties to hit, off guard, etc).
Last slot is has some wiggle room. Good choices would be warpriest (can do a lot of status buffs/debuffs to take some of that load off of bard, be a melee partner for the fighter, heal, and other things), champion (to optimize in a more defensive manner, also off heal), or a miriad of other things. Would probably want another character who can be in melee and ideally heal, but there's no huge standouts for this particular exercise in getting big numeric swings.
Best to suggest building blocks for great teams. Then players can see if they can fit those into their group.
Battle medicine with Godless healing and Medic archetype makes for effective in combat healer if you don't have a caster. Best for groups that spread the damage around.
Put that on a grapple/trip monk (Wolf stance or Clinging shadows) who can disrupt enemies and has the speed to get to allies who need healing.
Add in someone with reach Reactive strike to punish anyone chasing the monk. Alternately maybe use a swashbuckler who has a good chance of making it through enemies and allies to get into position to heal.
Okay... but @Mathmuse... that's not helpful. At least, it's not helpful all by itself. Sure, I love the requirements to design to implementation to testing cycle as much as anyone, and the requirements gathering phase is critical... but when you are dealing with players who are not magically intuitive geniuses about this sort of thing, then saying "you should totally pick a goal" doesn't go but so far as far as translating into character builds is concerned.
I mean... "so they became travelers and folk heroes". So... what exactly is involved at being good at "travelers and folk heroes"? It sounds like this is a lot more about roleplaying than about CharOp. There's nothing wrong with roleplaying. It's great, and I'd love to have more of it in my life, but when you bring it as an argument to an explicitly CharOp thread, it sounds like you're just going for a more diplomatic form of the traditional "CharOp sucks and you should stop doing it and probably feel bad that you did it in the first place." If that's really the argument you're trying to push, could you possibly make a different thread for it? Please?
Then, too, a lot of this stuff you're talking about is really very GM-dependent. It works for your party because you, as GM, allow it to work. Different GMs allow these sorts of things to different degrees.
I've played a bunch of different games in a bunch of different systems and *most* of the time the GMs have not been as willing to flex with the party as you seem to be talking about here. Finding out how far your GM is willing to work with you on various things and how to fit into that and make the result fun for everyone is an interesting topic, but one that, I think, is rather outside of the scope of this discussion. Again, it could use its own thread.
I chronicled my Jade Regent campaign (Amaya of Westcrown), so I have already written how the PCs in that campaign became folk heroes. And yes, I had to perform a major flex as a GM.
Then, metaphorically, the players pried up the rails of the railroad plot in the module and beat them into plowshares. They realized that they did not have to lead a rebellion against the corrupt oni-controlled government. Minkai was so devoted to tradition that the only things necessary were to prove that Emperor Higashiyama was dead and that Amaya and Ameiko were true heirs of Amatatsu. The Minkaians would accept them with open arms as the only legitimate rulers.
I could not argue with that logic. The plot in Tide of Honor was no longer relevant, but the module was still good source material for the party's new goal. The party shunned opportunities to take out corrupt soldiers or officials, unless those people were oni in disguise. That eliminated many sources of treasure, so the party remained poor. Instead they defeated marauding bands of oni and solved mysteries in order to become popular, trusted heroes. News of their victory in the Ruby Phoenix tournament reached Minkai, giving them status to hobnob with high officials. However, one of Amaya and Ameiko had to remain safe in Seinaru Heikiko during each mission, depending on which one's skills were less useful. That was convenient for me, one fewer NPC to play. Amaya's Sending spells kept everyone in touch.
The party consisted of a female human ninja Ebony Blossom, female kitsune enchanter sorceror Nuriko, male human-drow blackblade magus Arc, male human two-handed-weapon fighter Jao, male human samurai Lu, and a few NPCs such as the female human oracle Amaya, female human bard Ameiko, and female human barbarian Yuki. This was a PF1 campaign, despite being a good example of optimized teamwork, and the two-handed-weapon fighter Jao was highly optimized to be instant death. The party learned to not fight oni directly; instead, they channeled them toward Jao and made sure that none escaped. But Jao's player did not care about social interactions, mystery solving, or travel arrangements, so he waited silently through those. I made sure Jao could fight at least one challenging oni per game session to keep the player happy.
In contrast, Ebony Blossom's combat abilities did not keep up with the challenges. By Tide of Honer she was barely noticeable in combat. Since Jao fought like three warriros, Ebony Blossom did not need to contribute directly in combat. Instead, she was the scout who forewarned everyone about the challenges ahead, spotted the oni marauders for Jao to massacre, and let the party skip unnecessary fights that would bore Jao. Thus, she was valuable.
The "folk hero" part was social. Sure, Jao killing oni war bands that threatened villages improved the party's reputation as heroes, but their goal was to win the hearts of the people of Minkai. The players worked so that when the party announced to the nation that Amaya was the lost heir, their response would be, "We love Amaya. Long may she rule!" rather than "We don't want a foreigner on the throne!" Merely killing oni (besides the ones secretly behind the corrupt regency) would not put Amaya on the throne. Lu, Nuriko, Amaya, and Ameiko were the social force in the party, which was slightly annoying to me since two were NPCs. I hate running conversations between two NPCs.
...and so once you get back down to the things that we mostly *do* have in common... yes. A lot of it tends to be "winning combat". The combat has a lot of hard rules. The combat is laid out pretty clearly. Getting good at combat is going to eat character build resources in a way that a lot of this other stuff won't. There's still a fair bit of GM variation, from tactics and monster preference and so forth, but there's enough commonality to at least have the discussion.
...and, really, the whole point of CharOp is "How should I spend my character build resources?" If you're talking about goals that don't require much in the way of character build resources, then CharOp isn't what you're discussing. If the things you're talking about *do* require significant character build resources, then by all means, please, hold forth on how to best spend build resources in order to be "masters of technology", as a party.
The Ironfang Invasion party is a clearer example of how optimizing for a goal also optimizes for combat. And it is a nice contrast to Riddlyn's remark, "I always aim for party optimization, I'm rarely there when the game starts and I can't stand redundancy so I don't like playing a character that's too close to another. So I try to find what's missing from the party." In Session Zero of Ironfang Invasion I warned the players that their characters would be run out of the village of Phaendar in Trail of the Hunted and spend most of the module hiding in the Fangwood Forest from Ironfang patrols. So they chose character classes good at hiding in a forest: a ranger, a druid, and two rogues.
To avoid spoilers, in one case in Trail of the Hunted they went too far east and were off the map. I hastily invented the fishing village of Polebridge and set up an Ironfang roadblock there. The Ironfang Legion did not want news of their invasion to reach the cities immediately, so they were capturing travelers. The Hobgoblin Soldiers, Hobgoblin Archers, and a few non-hobgoblin commanders were twice as powerful as an Extreme-Threat encounter, because I wanted to party to rescue some humans and then turn back. After rescuing the humans, they decided to ambush a few soldiers guarding the fringe of the village at a parting shot.
The party was essentially Robin Hood's Merry Men in Sherwood Forest, especially since Paizo modeled the nation of Nirmathas after the legend of Sherwood Forest. They could shoot from the forest, disappear into the forest, and stealthily surround and ambush any soldier foolish enough to follow them into the forest. This party was optimized for forest ambushes.
By this time the game had recruited a 5th player, who played a goblin liberator champion. So the first ambush against 4 Hobgoblin Soldiers was (4/5 size adjustment)(4 soldiers)(15xp/solider) = 48 xp, a Trivial Threat. The next was 6 Hobgoblin Soldiers, 72 xp for a Moderate Threat. But that drew them out of the forest and into hiding behind empty buildings. That still gave them cover, but it let me surround them with a bigger group of Hobgoblin Soldiers and Archers for an Extreme Threat. They did not run. Instead, they holed up in an empty tavern where the druid and sniper rogue where shooting from the upstairs windows and the other three were preventing soldiers from entering by the two doors. The Robin Hood ambushes had converted into an Old West shootout--and the party was still good at that.
The sniper rogue Binny ducked down below the window sill every turn to Hide and the druid Stormdancer hugged the window frame to Take Cover while the Hobgoblin Archers shooting back at them had no such defenses. And the 4th-level archers sent the 1st-level soldiers to storm the doors, so the party members had an easy time fending them off. They did have to struggle when I made a 5th-level spriggan captain to fight them, but the rogue/sorcerer Sam had a flank from the ranger.
After that Extreme-Threat battle, the party was exhausted. The ranger had dropped unconscious at the end, saved by Binny leaving her hiding spot and shooting from the porch roof to finish off the last Hobgoblin Archer. The remaining five surviving hobgoblin soldiers ran away once the party retreated to the forest for healing--and the party later tracked them down and killed them before their slow wagon reached another Ironfang outpost.
In conclusion, the party did not have random enemies. They knew their enemies, the Ironfang Legion, and they were built for their environment, the Fangwood Forest. They optimized for that, and even if they had a different enemy, such as an Owlbear in the forest, or a different environment, such as familiar Hobgoblin Soldiers in a village, enough of their optimization still applied to give them an advantage. On the other hand, if neither applied, such as fey korreds in a castle, they switched their tactics . They used deception and stealth against the korreds to avoid combat: this was the game session right before our summoner playtest, Cirieo Thessaddin, Summoner.
In the 4th module, Siege of Stone they left the Fangwood Forest for the Darklands and fought Lovecraftian gugs in underground rooms rather than hobgoblin armies in the forest. But the gugs' main combat advantages are their reach and attack of opportunity, and the party had developed tactics against the Ironfang soldiers' attacks of opportunity (I mean reactive strike), so they ended up prepared for the gugs, too. I chronicled that as an example in So in 2E, is it normal to just feel... really weak? comment #89 and some later comments.
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Something to remember. PF2 classes are so well designed that you can choose any one and find a way to synergize with a group. Any class can do combat maneuvers. Any class has abilities to synergize with group play.
This means you don't have to optimize with any classes or builds in mind, you can build whatever you want and synergize for an action like trip or making sure to have a few high quality spells.
That's why I did not list any classes as absolutes for optimization, just actions and abilities you want in the group because the actions and abilities can come from almost any class.
Yes you should be optimising capabilities not classes.
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"Building blocks" is probably a good start. IME, I will also add "don't put all of your eggs in one basket." Unlike PF1 (and 3.x before that), PF2 seriously rewards groups that can use multiple "optimized" combos/tactics instead of focusing on a single one "cranked up to 11."
Mathmuse's example is great in that respect. The "most optimal" combo/tactic in PF2 seems to be the one that avoids the opponent's strengths instead of trying to "beat" them at their own game. Because of the tight math and enemies seemingly being (at least slightly) more "optimized" than a PC (from a DPR/toughness standpoint), going toe-to-toe with a melee bruiser (for example) makes things more difficult for the party to succeed even if one of the PCs is "built" for melee.
One thing that PF2 is really good at is the decoupling (mostly) of class to party function/role. Yes, a cleric is still the best "healer" (almost entirely because of Divine Font) but there are several other options that can be almost as effective; especially with archetypes.
My advice for party optimization is to have some discussions between the players to talk about what they want to do and brainstorm two or three ways they can work together to accomplish each one.
Some a couple of examples:
1) If there is a rogue (or MC archetype rogue), another character can lean into Intimidation to Demoralize (barbarians are often a good choice) or use some other method to impose the Frightened condition (fighter with Intimidating Strike) to set up Dread Striker;
2) A high Cha character with Bon Mot to help set up a caster using mind-affecting spells; this is probably one of the few choices that can work without a partner (a Cha-based caster uses an action on Bon Mot and then casts a 2-action spell).
I chronicled my Jade Regent campaign (Amaya of Westcrown), so I have already written how the PCs in that...Okay... but @Mathmuse... that's not helpful. At least, it's not helpful all by itself. Sure, I love the requirements to design to implementation to testing cycle as much as anyone, and the requirements gathering phase is critical... but when you are dealing with players who are not magically intuitive geniuses about this sort of thing, then saying "you should totally pick a goal" doesn't go but so far as far as translating into character builds is concerned.
I mean... "so they became travelers and folk heroes". So... what exactly is involved at being good at "travelers and folk heroes"? It sounds like this is a lot more about roleplaying than about CharOp. There's nothing wrong with roleplaying. It's great, and I'd love to have more of it in my life, but when you bring it as an argument to an explicitly CharOp thread, it sounds like you're just going for a more diplomatic form of the traditional "CharOp sucks and you should stop doing it and probably feel bad that you did it in the first place." If that's really the argument you're trying to push, could you possibly make a different thread for it? Please?
Then, too, a lot of this stuff you're talking about is really very GM-dependent. It works for your party because you, as GM, allow it to work. Different GMs allow these sorts of things to different degrees.
I've played a bunch of different games in a bunch of different systems and *most* of the time the GMs have not been as willing to flex with the party as you seem to be talking about here. Finding out how far your GM is willing to work with you on various things and how to fit into that and make the result fun for everyone is an interesting topic, but one that, I think, is rather outside of the scope of this discussion. Again, it could use its own thread.
I wonder how your group would do in a campaign with a DM actively trying to challenge or kill them without regard for story. Pure mechanically driven tactical chess with no allowance for story adjustments based on DM fiat. What can your characters do versus what can my enemies do that is rule crunch without regard for creative allowances. Is your group built for that type of play?
Your stories are great. Sounds like you have fun. And the group works together with a DM allowing creative use of the environment. My group plays differently. It's pretty much a rules driven, crunch versus crunch tactical fight with the DM using the monsters to maximal advantage and the players using everything at their disposal to win within the rules with the DM not allowing much in terms of creative use of the environment. No rigged traps. No RP allowances. It's your group's power versus the monster's power.
I wonder how your group would do in a campaign with a DM actively trying to challenge or kill them without regard for story.
In my wife's very first Dungeons & Dragons game in 1978, run by her older brother, the party was eaten by lions on their way to the first dungeon.
She also recounted a Call of Chthulu one-shot in which the party almost died except that her actress character pulled out a bottle of smelling salts to wake up the unconscious strong guy. She had packed it because smelling salts seemed appropriate for an actress in the early 20th century.
In her current online PF1 Tyrant's Grasp game, the GM Tom is more brutal than I am. Anya's teammate Crow almost died to an ooze in the last game session. The party had to be creative to rescue him, with Anya grabbing Crow with her prehensile hair and Wicker casting Dimension Door on herself, Anya, and Crow to pull all three away from the ooze. Teamwork.
Both my wife and another player in earshot say that they would not play a roleplaying game in which the GM had no regard for story. They play to create story.
As for challenging them, in Valley of the Brain Collectors the party ran non-stop through the Dominion Hive alien base. I am pretty sure that that zone was supposed to take two adventuring days. The party chose that speed for the extra challenge. The skald in the party had Greater Skald's Vigor which let her raging song slowly heal the party, so they did not have to stop to heal. They just ran from room to room trying to catch the enemy by surprise. Surprise didn't work, because the enemy had sensors in every room.
I rewrite Paizo adventure paths to increase the challenge, partly due to oversized parties but also due to their teamwork skills. I view a gauntlet of five Moderate-Threat encounters as routine. My players do not desire an easy path in a campaign. They want a good story of overcoming serious challenges. Teamwork makes a better story.
The four of us in my household regularly play boardgames, which have much less story than roleplaying games and no GM flexibility in the rules. Despite four players my wife wins half the time. She is a dedicated gamer girl with mad skills.
I wonder how your group would do in a campaign with a DM actively trying to challenge or kill them without regard for story.In my wife's very first Dungeons & Dragons game in 1978, run by her older brother, the party was eaten by lions on their way to the first dungeon.
She also recounted a Call of Chthulu one-shot in which the party almost died except that her actress character pulled out a bottle of smelling salts to wake up the unconscious strong guy. She had packed it because smelling salts seemed appropriate for an actress in the early 20th century.
In her current online PF1 Tyrant's Grasp game, the GM Tom is more brutal than I am. Anya's teammate Crow almost died to an ooze in the last game session. The party had to be creative to rescue him, with Anya grabbing Crow with her prehensile hair and Wicker casting Dimension Door on herself, Anya, and Crow to pull all three away from the ooze. Teamwork.
Both my wife and another player in earshot say that they would not play a roleplaying game in which the GM had no regard for story. They play to create story.
As for challenging them, in Valley of the Brain Collectors the party ran non-stop through the Dominion Hive alien base. I am pretty sure that that zone was supposed to take two adventuring days. The party chose that speed for the extra challenge. The skald in the party had Greater Skald's Vigor which let her raging song slowly heal the party, so they did not have to stop to heal. They just ran from room to room trying to catch the enemy by surprise. Surprise didn't work, because the enemy had sensors in every room.
I rewrite Paizo adventure paths to increase the challenge, partly due to oversized parties but also due to their teamwork skills. I view a gauntlet of five Moderate-Threat encounters as routine. My players do not desire an easy path in a campaign. They want a good story of overcoming serious challenges. Teamwork makes a better story.
The four of us in my household regularly play...
So she knows the crunch part as well as enjoying the story.
I in particular love the crunch. Nothing is more fun than playing against a GM trying to win in a challenging system without anything remotely resembling GM fiat. A GM that understands the crunch well enough to play the crunch versus crunch tactical game without cheating on rolls or using GM fiat to create advantages or disadvantages to artificially create challenge. Not that you never want to see a GM create some interesting challenge, but most of the time I like a straight up crunch versus crunch challenge by a GM that understands how to play the tactical game.
I found a better way to illustrate what I'm talking about Mathmuse.
You often talk about your groups using this nebulous idea of teamwork. This is why when I read your posts, I don't get what you're talking about. It doesn't seem like you quite get teamwork in the optimization sense.
What does your group do with say the following:
1. A caster using invisibility and mind blank use a reach spell to cast AoE Slow on your group.
Is your group built to resist an AoE slow with everyone having as high of fort saves as possible? You fail that save against an opposing caster with support and you are going to be at a huge disadvantage against them.
2. What does your group do when the meladaemons show up, there is four of them as part of a war group of six human cultists and all four of the meladaemons decide to hammer your soft target healer or archer?
3. What do you do when the double casters drop a eclipse bursts on your group to set you up for a hammer by a group of dread wraiths?
Basically, is your group built to take hammer blows from equivalent enemies using high value tactics and spells to hammer your group to death?
Your wife sounds like she knows crunch and would build to resist high DC enemies in combined groups using good tactics. But what about your entire group?
What are specific examples of you the DM playing a hammer group of enemies with casting and powerful attack capabilities that your group had to fight and did they have built up saves to counter the combined spell and damage hammer from said groups?
That is how my groups play. Superior tactics by enemies as well as the PCs. Built up saves. All ability boosts go into high value stats. Saves and item bonuses for saves are built up.
Enemies focus fire soft targets ignoring hard targets or moving away from them.
It sounds like you're playing a low level game against immobile enemies without powerful abilities testing the abilities of your PCs.
Where are the stories where you're group versus group with the hammer coming down with relative parity in abilities with powerful casters on both sides in combined groups using high value spells and tactics where you had better have maxed out stats and saves or you're probably going to have some serious failed saves. And enemies going after the healer hard as soon as they determine who that is.
That's what I look at when I consider teamwork and optimization. You are prepared to deal with hard combat, not just one player, but the entire group is built for it. If they don't all play well or aren't all built for it, the weak characters die a lot.
I have one guy in my group was fairly new and it took him a bit to get up to speed on tactics and abilities. He ended up face planted a lot until he learned to build and play characters better. If he did not learn to max their character as much as possible, they would have continued to drop.
By this time, I have the group trained to build this way because they know failing to do so is likely going to lead to a lot of death. This includes tactics like taking over or funneling enemies, but also building up to make saves, take hits, max individual AC, and use optimal spells and tactics because they will get hit and hit hard and they have to be able to take it and respond.
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Mathmuse's example is great in that respect. The "most optimal" combo/tactic in PF2 seems to be the one that avoids the opponent's strengths instead of trying to "beat" them at their own game. Because of the tight math and enemies seemingly being (at least slightly) more "optimized" than a PC (from a DPR/toughness standpoint), going toe-to-toe with a melee bruiser (for example) makes things more difficult for the party to succeed even if one of the PCs is "built" for melee.
I want to amplify this loudly, because it is my favorite thing aboout PF2, and because it is the thing that is most challenging about PF2 for people coming from other systems. It is also difficult, because PF2 is a pretty mechanically complex system and, at this point in its life cycle, there are more pieces to it for character building than the vast majority of players will ever interact with (spells, items, special feats from more than 50 different APs and other sources), so there are many players for whom this design intention, "don't fight an enemy's strength," isn't going to be as obvious as it is to some of us.
To talk about any run of any campaign or adventure without "GM fiat" is pretending like the player experience of PF2 can exist separately from hundreds of choices that GMs make in everything from deciding what adventure to play/whether to homebrew, what material to allow, what variant/house rules to apply, and especially what tone and pace the narrative of the story is going to take. There is no authentic/pure PF2 experience that can serve as a baseline for how difficult or tailored encounters are supposed to be to the party that is experiencing them.
SO even though I fully agree that PF2 as a system shines the brightest when the players and the GM recognize the intersection of the narrative and the mechanics of the adventure they are currently on as being essential to everyone having the most fun possible, there are definitely other ways to play the game that are fun for many different kinds of groups. The only real mistake is assuming that our own preferred method is the one true intended way to experience the game, and that others are doing it wrong if they are having fun playing a style, tone or pace of game that doesn't match our own.
My biggest issue with Foundry VTT, for example, is that automations that become default or most popular start to be read as intended default ways to play the game, and that complicates things like how feats that interrupt the standard sequence of automated events run. Other tools doing things like making uncommon and AP restricted material default to available to players has also affected player expectations in my experience, with tons of options that are clearly supposed to be limited or restricted becoming playground options for builds for campaigns that make no sense for those options to be default available, and then the GM has a hard time taking those options off the table because the players already built up some level 1 to 20 vision of a character using these options that suddenly gets ruined because a certain archetype really doesn't fit the story, or is something the GM was going to use as a narrative element to grant access, but it wasn't going to come up right at the level the player was initially going to chose it, so the GM is left feeling like a villain if they tell the player that will be able to retrain into it later.
Some of the digital tools that players are using to engage in the action figure building of "super-optimized Barbie and Ken characters" are infringing upon the first steps of campaign building. I honestly think that either future PF2 GM-centered books or a next generation of game is going to need to come on stronger about the collective team building nature of building characters for a strong, long lasting campaign. Player agency is important, but when that agency is happening hundreds of hours before the player joins the campaign, and then the player is entrenched in ideas that don't fit the other players (including the GM) vision of the campaign, you can still end up with weird, overly-specialized characters that don't fit well in a game, which was a huge problem in PF1.
It is not nearly as bad in PF2, and I think the biggest component of that is keeping the power ceiling highest at baseline core options (why the fighter should be the top martial for example). One mistake in that regard is that I think the Wizard probably should not have been a Core 1 class (even though it is my favorite class and I think the execution of it in PF2 is amazing), and the sorcerer probably should have been.
The "folk hero" part was social. Sure, Jao killing oni war bands that threatened villages improved the party's reputation as heroes, but their goal was to win the hearts of the people of Minkai. The players worked so that when the party announced to the nation that Amaya was the lost heir, their response would be, "We love Amaya. Long may she rule!" rather than "We don't want a foreigner on the throne!" Merely killing oni (besides the ones secretly behind the corrupt regency) would not put Amaya on the throne. Lu, Nuriko, Amaya, and Ameiko were the social force in the party, which was slightly annoying to me since two were NPCs. I hate running conversations between two NPCs.
So, like I said, none of this had anything to do with CharOp. Heck - two of the four characters executing on this strategy weren't even PCs.
You come onto a thread that's explicitly about CharOp - about trying to get the ball rolling and figure out what can be found - to brag about how awesome your party is and all of the great things you did together because you were roleplaying and had great tactics while casting aspersions on the idea that baseline CharOp theory might ever be worth pursuing.
Well, at least you got to enjoy bragging, right?
Like, I get it. You have a wife and kids who you are incredibly proud of, and you've run a bunch of games that you're proud of having run, and you want to talk about it and get validation from others that this is totally awesome, and that by extension you and your family are totally awesome... but it's off-topic, and kind of rude.
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So one of the things that I'm picking up here is that you probably don't want to put too much effort into combos that take more than two party members unless they involve stuff like generally affordable magical items that can be handed out to most everyone at relatively affordable costs. Basically, individual combos are brittle enough that you don't want to put all of your eggs in one biscuit. Instead, we're better off looking for efficient ways to boost one another one-on-one.
There might also be a place for overall party themes. Like, you could go with a theme of forced movement and hazardous terrain, where everyone tries to have decent access to one or both. You've got one character who's gone deep into snarecrafter, you've got a kineticist, you've got a sorceror who likes thing like firewall, you get someone playing a centaur with their shove-boosting feat - whatever. Basically, you set things up so that the party is generally good at laying down hazardous terrain, and when it is laid down, they're generally good at pushing people into it. Having it as an overall theme rather than a focused tactical plan means that it's more flexible to the situation. Now, you still can't take it too far, because you may find yourself in a situation of "hazardous terrain doesn't work", and you need to be able to function effectively even without your schtick, but it's a lot less brittle when built as a general concept that then gets specialized to the situation than when it's a dance with specific moves.
One of the other party themes that shows up pretty obviously is tight clustering. You've got the Champion thing of being able to provide some really useful support to allies within 3. You've got the Marshal thing of highly efficient buffing auras and dependent powers that are short-range. You've got kineticist auras that do similar things... and so forth. There's a number of ways that you can efficiently boost all of your allies that happen to be very close, and it looks like Commander will be bringing in more. It's tricky, though, as it means that area-effect powers are actually really problematic, and it can make it harder to manage the tactical maneuverability or deep-strike the enemy's back ranks or whatever. I suspect that it's the sort of thing where trying to dial in on your tight clustering advantages too hard could actually hurt you pretty badly. Has anyone had any experience with a party that tried to make use of this past the "two people who generally hang out close to one another and help each other" level? Were the drawbacks manageable?
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Has anyone had any experience with a party that tried to make use of this past the "two people who generally hang out close to one another and help each other" level? Were the drawbacks manageable?
I am currently getting to play in a Curse of the Crimson Throne conversion to PF2. Our party is a toxicologist Alchemist, a Water/Wood Kineticist, an Air/Fire Kineticist, and a Ars Grammatica Wizard. We are playing in a Free archetype and ancestry paragon campaign. (Those two variant rules are a little much for me, but the other players like to have complicated versatile heritages and such, so I don't mind playing with them, even if I am getting tired of free archetype and "more feats" variant rules). We are level 6.
Our tactics involve staying pretty close together. Between my wizard's Protective Wards and the Wood Kineticist's Timber sentinel, We have a very tanky party, even though we don't have a true martial in the party.
The Alchemist and the Kineticist all have very good saves, so it is really only my wizard who is at great risk from AoE effects and save targeting effects, but it is pretty worth it for the amount of AoE and persistent damage effects we get out very early in a combat, so if a combat drags on for many rounds, it is usually to our benefit. We almost never end up fighting solo creatures as even where they are present in the campaign, we tend to either bypass them, or end up dragging them into an encounter with a bunch of other creatures at the same time.
I am currently getting to play in a Curse of the Crimson Throne conversion to PF2. Our party is a toxicologist Alchemist, a Water/Wood Kineticist, an Air/Fire Kineticist, and a Ars Grammatica Wizard. We are playing in a Free archetype and ancestry paragon campaign. (Those two variant rules are a little much for me, but the other players like to have complicated versatile heritages and such, so I don't mind playing with them, even if I am getting tired of free archetype and "more feats" variant rules). We are level 6.
Our tactics involve staying pretty close together. Between my wizard's Protective Wards and the Wood Kineticist's Timber sentinel, We have a very tanky party, even though we don't have a true martial in the party.
The Alchemist and the Kineticist all have very good saves, so it is really only my wizard who is at great risk from AoE effects and save targeting effects, but it is pretty worth it for the amount of AoE and persistent damage effects we get out very early in a combat, so if a combat drags on for many rounds, it is usually to our benefit. We almost never end up fighting solo creatures as even where they are present in the campaign, we tend to either bypass them, or end up dragging them into an encounter with a bunch of other creatures at the same time.
Huh... and it also looks like your entire party is comfortable with fighting at range... which suggests that you're not burning actions trying to close with the enemy (instead making them burn actions trying to close with you) and you don't have to worry as much about the way that moving into position can break up the cluster. Sounds like that might be part of what makes it work for you.
I'm a little surprised about the toxicologist, though. It seems like a game where they were the only one with a weapon would be one of the least useful times to play a toxicologist.
The player has wanted to be a toxicologist for a long time and the campaign has a lot of humanoid enemies, so it is one of the first times it felt possible. The character throws bombs a lot and has the feats to support that, but lethargy poison with the class DC has been pretty good too.
It has been fun playing with such a non-traditional party, and getting backfire mantel cloaks is pretty essential, but it has been very effective.
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I found a better way to illustrate what I'm talking about Mathmuse.
You often talk about your groups using this nebulous idea of teamwork. This is why when I read your posts, I don't get what you're talking about. It doesn't seem like you quite get teamwork in the optimization sense.
What does your group do with say the following:
Okay, this seems like a reasonable way to illustrate teamwork.
But I have pointed out that teamwork varies from team to team, so I have to chose a party. My Flower campaign ended at 5th level, so I don't know how they would handle 11th-level challenges. My Strength of Thousands party has only reached 2nd level. So I will use my Ironfang Invasion party: rogue Binny, sorcerer Honey, monk Ren, rogue/sorcerer Sam, druid Stormdancer, champion Tikti, and ranger Zinfandel.
1. A caster using invisibility and mind blank use a reach spell to cast AoE Slow on your group.
Is your group built to resist an AoE slow with everyone having as high of fort saves as possible? You fail that save against an opposing caster with support and you are going to be at a huge disadvantage against them.
The 6th-level mass-target Slow requires an 11th-level caster, but Mind Blank/Hidden Mind is 8th level, so the caster is 15th level. He would use the 4th-level Invisibility that does not end upon a hostile action. Let me put the 7-member party at 11th level, so that a single 13th-level caster would be 91-xp Moderate-Threat challenge. The Encounter Budget math of PF2 breaks down badly if the level difference is more than 4.
The Ironfang Legion had very few spellcasters, so the party is not deliberately built to resist Area of Effect spells. 11th-level characters are going to be at a disadvantage in saves against a 15th-level caster, regardless of their efforts. But the champion and the monk are expert in Fortitude, so let's assume that one succeeded. A random coin flip gives the success to the champion Tikti. But her velociraptor animal companion Liklik is Slowed.
The druid Stormdancer was also not Slowed. She typically flew in the sky atop her roc animal companion and would have been more than 60 feet from the spellcaster. Did Deriven Firelion assume that the party would be grouped up for convenient targeting? Ironfang Invasion was an outdoor campaign at 9th level, so the party had room to spread out.
The rest of the party will be Slowed 1 for a minute. My wife's character Sam is the tricky one, so for my convenience he critically failed for Slowed 2.
No-one can see the spellcaster, but since he cast a spell the party members know his square unless he Sneaked as his third action. Gee, we have some GM fiat here: would he Sneak or not? Let's make this combat more difficult. The spellcaster routinely Sneaks to a different square after casting a spell. But Deriven Firelion said that he used Reach Spell spellshaping this turn, so he does not have an action left to Sneak.
Besides, when Stormdancer throws a 5th-level fireball on his square, the spellcaster could have sneaked only 10 feet so he still faces 10d6 damage with a basic Reflex save. Since this is a Stealthy spellcaster, we can assume high Dexterity making up for a weak Reflex save, so half damage would be 17 fire damage. This 15th-level bad guy probably has 210 hp, so that is only 8% of his hit points. The next spell the spellcaster casts would reveal that his location was inside the fireball, encouraging the party.
Next let's get into the teamwork. Honey typically began combat by casting Haste on the monk Ren. This still seems like a good idea. Ren could then easily run up to the spellcaster's square and attempt a Flurry of Blows on the invisible target. He probably would hit once. This would confirm the spellcaster's location, so the ranger Zinfandel would shoot at that location. Since she would not need to move, she gets two Strikes.
In contrast, rogue/sorcerer Sam is Slowed 2 and the sniper rogue Binny prefers to shoot from hiding, so their first turn would consist of getting out of the tight grouping. The champion Tikti would Stride twice to follow Ren, to protect him with her Liberation Step reaction and get closer to their target.
My method of dealing with a surprise opening move--the Slow spell--before initiative is rolled is to give the opening character a regular turn. So the spellcaster has a turn, too. Um, I don't know the spellcaster's class or spell selection. I gave him 210 hp because that is the recommendation of Table 2–7: Hit Points in the Building Creatures section of the [b]Gamemastery Guide.[/url] But that is a lot of hit points for a class that gains only 6 hp per level. Should I make the spellcaster a bard for 8 hp per level instead? I am having to invent a lot of details to play out this scenario--more GM decisions. Let's assume the spellcaster has occult spells.
Say that the occult spellcaster has 7th-level Prismatic Spray prepared. It would be a good followup to a Slow, with the party still mostly grouped. But the monk Ren is too close. The 30-foot cone of Prismatic Spray on him would miss the rest of the party. I suspect that the spellcaster's single-target spells are down at 6th level. He casts Dominate on Ren.
Ren saves. Monks have excellent Will saves. And the player would spend a hero point if he failed the Will save. And if he did not save, Honey would try to Dispel the Dominate. She could cast Dispel Magic at 6th level so she would need only a success.
The problem with the spellcaster's tactics is that if he focuses on defense, then the party is taking little damage. If he focuses on offense, the Slow is not enough to protect him because Honey is casting Haste and the party has a lot of ranged attacks. Only a few tricks such as Dominate are both offense and defense. If I add evil minions to the scenario, then I would have to assume that the party was higher level. At 13th level Honey would have 7th-level mass-target Haste available.
Due to Stormdancer avoiding the Slow and her AoE spells ignoring invisibility, the large number of ranged attacks in the party, and Honey compensating for the Slow with Haste, I think the party would prevail. The teamwork would be Tikti and Honey supporting Ren in beating up the spellcaster.
Also AoE spells with Fortitude saves are infrequent. Why would a group build to resist them? That feels like a waste of feats except under a specific campaign where they were common.
2. What does your group do when the meladaemons show up, there is four of them as part of a war group of six human cultists and all four of the meladaemons decide to hammer your soft target healer or archer?
What soft targets? Everyone in the Ironfang Invasion campaign invested in high Dexterity for better Stealth and that gave everyone good AC. The champion did not wear armor because her Dexterity was so high. At 19th level I had an avatar of a minor god try to hammer on the leshy sorcerer Honey. She cast Regnerate on herself.
Melademons are creature 11. Let's assume the six cultists are 10th level. Since that would be 10 against 7, we need the party to be higher level, such as 12th level. That would be a 137xp Severe-Threat challenge. Since the party is practiced at fighting groups, let's leave it at that level.
The melademons remind me of the Nuckelavee they fought at 9th level. The nuckelavee has working with some 8th-level Ironfang Engineers, so it had allies, too. My notes say that they identified the nuckelavee quickly, since many were experts in Nature, and tried to avoid melee combat with it because its melee attacks afflicted mortasheen disease. Nevertheless, the nuckelavee's speed made avoidance difficuly, like the melademons would with their Dimension Door/Translocate, so 2 party members caught mortasheen and the party had to take a day curing it.
Stormdancer loved to kill large groups of enemies with Chain Lightning. At 12th level, she would have only two Chain Lighnings prepared, so those two spells and a few Fireballs would only soften up the opponents. The melee party members, Ren and Tikti, would have to mop up the cultists, because the melademons would be Translocating to avoid them. But unless the melademons ran away, that would still put them in range of the two archers Binny and Zinfandel. And Binny would be hiding, so they would not find her.
Maybe the champion would chase the melademons, because she could ride on her velociraptor for good speed and she had gained an ability to deal good damage which she never got to use against the Ironfang Legion.
The party specialized in fighting armies. A mob of cultists and demons would be another army to them.
3. What do you do when the double casters drop a eclipse bursts on your group to set you up for a hammer by a group of dread wraiths?
Basically, is your group built to take hammer blows from equivalent enemies using high value tactics and spells to hammer your group to death?
The enemies are a pair of 13th-level casters and let's say six 9th-level Dread Wraiths. If my 7-member party were also 13th level, then that would be a 80xp Moderate-Threat encounter. Stormdancer loved Eclipse Burst once she could cast 7th-level spells, so I am going to leave the party at 13th level to let her throw an Eclipse Burst right back at them.
As for the pair of enemy Eclipse Bursts, at 13th level two rogues and the ranger had Evasion/Evasive Reflexes/Natural Reflexes.
The Dread Wraiths have a +21 to hit with spectral hand with Drain Life requiring a DC 28 Fortitude. I don't have records of the party's exact ACs and Fortitude saves at 13th level, but the AC would be around 10 + 17 expert proficiency + 4 Dex + 3 item = 34 AC, and the Fortitude save would be around 17 expert proficiency + 3 Fort +1 item = +21 Fort. The Dread Wraiths would need to roll 13 or higher to hit, only a 40% chance. And they would have lost 34 of their 130 hp to Stormdancer's Eclipse Burst. They are low-level minions in this fight.
Once again like in Scenario 1 I don't know anything about the spellcasters beyond their opening spells. But we have three party members with Evasive Reflexes that are probably undamaged, so that makes 3 against 2. The other 4 party members can mop up the damaged Dread Wraiths.
Your wife sounds like she knows crunch and would build to resist high DC enemies in combined groups using good tactics. But what about your entire group?
A varied group will have varied abilities. Some will be set up to counterattack against any random encounter, regardless of the crunch.
And my wife laughed at the statement that she knows crunch. Yes, she knows crunch, but she hates it for roleplaying. She just builds her characters so that they make sense for the story. Thus, Sam had Blind-Fight to use against the invisible spellcaster in Scenario 1, if he had not critically failed the roll against the Slow spell, because he had to fight darkvision hobgoblins at night.
It sounds like you're playing a low level game against immobile enemies without powerful abilities testing the abilities of your PCs.
Not at all. I throw more Severe-Threat and Extreme-Threat challenges at them than the Pathfinder guidelines recommend. My enemies are not immobile. Deriven Firelion's Scenario 1 had me wondering why the spellcaster forced himself to stand still by using Metamagic/Spellshaping when he needed to sneak away to take full advantage of his invisibility.
I don't often give details about my party's opponents, since that would be excessively wordy, but take a look at the thread Balancing a Seventeenth-Level Medusa. I also decribe several battles in the playtest threads Cirieo Thassaddin, Summoner, Arkus, playtest inventor, Collin, playtest kineticist, and Playtesting in A Fistful of Flowers with 7 Leshies. I explain my encounter philosophy in Encounter Balance: The Math and the Monsters.
Just bringing it up as an example of optimization for what? What kinds of scenes and encounters does the campaign consist of and in what ratio.
im sure Unicore has more to say on infiltrations but ill give it a try here.
Optimize Infiltration with:
Quite Allies skill feat
follow the expert skill feat
Stealth
Thievery
Survival
Perception
high movement speed or unique movement types
spells that improve movement
flight/levitate/teleporting
Spells with the subtle trait
Spells that disguise or distract
Athletics and acrobatics each can contribute in some situations
RK will have a role here as well if knowing something about how sewer systems operate and are typically planned could help define an alternative route as an example. Knowledge and scouting is very important since just winging it tends to land parties in combat (not good if the expectation is you cant effort to get caught or if the foes are too powerful to face head on.)
Also parties can be split up more often with these scenes and may need to be good at different aspects of the infiltration as individuals.
High AC and damage, hit buffs and ac debuffs are all less emphasized.
If you are infiltrating it might be because its a place you cant afford to get caught and face head on so things that optimize a character in combat get less mileage in an infiltration.
Similar in a chase scene but probably more emphasis on movement abilities, athletics, and acrobatics. Damage can help to break through things here at least but if you can leap over an obstacle its probably better.
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The "folk hero" part was social. Sure, Jao killing oni war bands that threatened villages improved the party's reputation as heroes, but their goal was to win the hearts of the people of Minkai. The players worked so that when the party announced to the nation that Amaya was the lost heir, their response would be, "We love Amaya. Long may she rule!" rather than "We don't want a foreigner on the throne!" Merely killing oni (besides the ones secretly behind the corrupt regency) would not put Amaya on the throne. Lu, Nuriko, Amaya, and Ameiko were the social force in the party, which was slightly annoying to me since two were NPCs. I hate running conversations between two NPCs.So, like I said, none of this had anything to do with CharOp. Heck - two of the four characters executing on this strategy weren't even PCs.
You come onto a thread that's explicitly about CharOp - about trying to get the ball rolling and figure out what can be found - to brag about how awesome your party is and all of the great things you did together because you were roleplaying and had great tactics while casting aspersions on the idea that baseline CharOp theory might ever be worth pursuing.
Well, at least you got to enjoy bragging, right?
I apologize. I thought that this thread was about TeamOp rather than CharOp, optimizing the team to be able to handle tough challenges. Recruiting NPC allies is a form of TeamOp.
Baseline CharOp theory for team optimization means building a character with a good collection of synergistic abilities for teamwork, such as a bard's Inspire Courage/Courageous Anthem ability and a Champion's Champion Reaction ability. But that is only the initial step in optimizing team tactics.
I'll shut up now.
The 6th-level mass-target Slow requires an 11th-level caster, but Mind Blank/Hidden Mind is 8th level, so the caster is 15th level. He would use the 4th-level Invisibility that does not end upon a hostile action. Let me put the 7-member party at 11th level, so that a single 13th-level caster would be 91-xp Moderate-Threat challenge. The Encounter Budget math of PF2 breaks down badly if the level difference is more than 4.
The caster is hammering you as part of a war group. He is the initial smack before the rest of the group of stealthy rogue types brings the hammer. He is there to open the hammer on your group to set up the rest of his guys.
What soft targets? Everyone in the Ironfang Invasion campaign invested in high Dexterity for better Stealth and that gave everyone good AC. The champion did not wear armor because her Dexterity was so high. At 19th level I had an avatar of a minor god try to hammer on the leshy sorcerer Honey. She cast Regnerate on herself.
Building up dex for stealth and reflex saves is great, but I mean across the board. Con built up. Everyone has toughness. All item bonuses for saves built up. Everyone is built up to be a hard target for AC, saves, and hit points.
The enemies are a pair of 13th-level casters and let's say six 9th-level Dread Wraiths. If my 7-member party were also 13th level, then that would be a 80xp Moderate-Threat encounter. Stormdancer loved Eclipse Burst once she could cast 7th-level spells, so I am going to leave the party at 13th level to let her throw an Eclipse Burst right back at them.
This was a set up against a five person party at 11th level. We don't really use the threat rules. I tend to know what the party does and doesn't do well and their numbers, so I set things up to challenge what they are rather than use a threat system that misses too many variables.
A varied group will have varied abilities. Some will be set up to counterattack against any random encounter, regardless of the crunch.
Team and character optimization is very much about both the DM and the players understanding how the crunch works.
For a given group, the DM must know what the group can handle. For a player, they must know the DMing style they are going against and when they have to max the build or face a lot of TPKs.
So my advice is very much about how to team build along with character optimization options for the team build to maximize overall group capabilities from a numerical perspective. As in you know you're going to get hit and hit hard and the GM is playing the enemies as though they are trying very hard to kill you with sound tactics using every advantage and you have to do the same back from the very point you build your character.
There will be no accounting for the threat system in the game. If the GM wants to build a challenging encounter (the majority will not be this), then it will be tailored to your party's specifications regardless of the threat or xp amount to specifically force you into a situation where you must play very well as well as be built very well. Any weakly built characters likely won't survive the campaign.
It feels as though it is a different style of teamwork. I imagine both styles can be helpful in this thread. I'm going to focus on crunch as that is what I build for and how I play. I know others might enjoy a more story-focused sort of teamwork that you use with a large 7 person group using the threat rules and xp budgets.
We use milestone leveling and I haven't used threat rules maybe ever. I learn what my party can handle and design challenging encounters that make them go, "We may die here" because that's what I find fun. I like pushing them to the point of being out of spells, dropped a few times or even a few laid out, thinking they're going to die feeling like they were in an epic battle that almost ended them.
Thus I view team optimization as necessary for dealing with these death encounters I like to dream up as I plan them around the PCs tactics and numbers without regard for encounter budgets or threat levels.
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I'm going to add some ideas for role optimization.
Healers: PF2 is a game that doesn't require a dedicated healer other than a healer with the proper feats to top off hit points during periods between fights. What does this mean for group optimization? You don't need to build a cleric dedicated healer or any class for that matter.
In my experience, it is more optimal to have two casters that can heal combined with other useful spells and abilities. Then if healer number one goes down, you still have healer number two to get them back up and keep the group standing.
1. Value of Casting Stat: The most valuable casting stat is Wisdom followed by Charisma followed by Intelligence.
Wisdom is great because it provides boosts to Perception, Will saves, Medicine Skill, Religion, Nature, Survival, and is all around a great stat that provides a boost to several valuable areas of the game.
Charisma is the next most valuable casting stat is provides a strong bonus to a variety of very useful skills including Diplomacy, Intimidation, and Deception. Social skills are highly useful for social interactions which come up often in adventures. It also allows you to multiclass with other quality caster classes like the bard, sorc, champion, psychic, or any charisma caster that allows you to poach some nice abilities.
Intelligence is the least valuable casting stat. It does allow you obtain more languages and skills, but skill acquisition is so easy with backgrounds and ancestry feats that you rarely need more skills coupled with the fact that you can only ever boost three skills to legendary regardless of intelligence. It boosts skills like Arcana, Occultism, and Crafting. The first two can be good for creature identification or skill checks involving the skills in question. Intelligence is attached to crafting as well, but PF2 crafting doesn't provide much of an advantage as it did in PF1 and requires a similar massive time investment that could just as easily be spent Earning Income with a higher value skill. You can use Lore skills to expand creature ID abilities, but creature identification isn't a super useful ability if you're already an optimized party.
2. Spontaneous versus Prepared: My experience is spontaneous is far superior to prepared. Prepared can be more fun for players in a campaign that has downtime where they can use spells that are more roleplay oriented when you have plenty of time to switch up slots.
For combat, a spontaneous caster has more of what I call on-demand versatility being able to choose form 3 to 5 spells to use with their 3 to 4 slots per level. This expands to higher level slots with signature spells which allows them to choose a few high value spells to heighten at will which is often far more valuable than slotting a variety of spells to use in different situations.
If you have to slot a bunch of high value spells in multiple slots like slotting 2 of your three slots with the slow spell so you only have 2 slows and a fireball to choose from with one use of Arcane bond for a wizard or nothing for a witch, then it makes your theoretical versatility nonexistent. You just end up filling slots with the same spell which reduces your on-demand versatility.
3. Spell lists: I prefer spell lists that combine some healing ability with everything else. This allows you to have combat healing power with other valuable spells.
What lists do I find most valuable?
Primal and Occult: I think if you have a primal and occult caster in the group, you are pretty much covered for everything. I think these lists are fairly equal with Primal having better healing and blasting and occult have a better buffing, debuffing, and illusion and force magic like wall of force.
Divine: Divine has strong healing and buffing with some versatile summons. It is better at blasting now with spirit damage hitting more targets. It lacks slow, haste, and some powerful debuff and blast spells.
Arcane: Arcane has no healing. It is good at blasting, illusions, utility. It has some powerful higher level 1 action word spells. This is the most limited list which limits group builds as a single arcane caster can't back up heal or do much else other than utility and offensive magic. If you only want a control and blast caster, arcane is fine. But if you only have a slot or two for casting, you'll still have to have a healer caster as arcane alone would have a hard time carrying the caster load alone.
4. Class Choices: Using the above information, what classes do well as the group caster/healer?
Druid: The druid is an extremely good class in PF2. It is a wisdom based caster using the primal list. It starts with good armor options. Shield Block as a free feat allowing use of shields. Can focus all ability increases on Str, Dex, Con, and Wis. Great feat selection with lots of versatility. If you want to play a powerful casters that can do a bit of almost everything, the druid is a great choice.
Sorcerer: The most versatile spontaneous caster. Charisma based caster. Can be built with any list. Great feats allowing a lot of casting flexibility. I've made a lot of different sorcerers and make great group casters. You can build them a lot of different ways.
Bards: Well designed class. Great at buffing and debuffing. Occult list. Very locked in play style. Powerful, but I find them boring. It's hard for me to picture them in play singing or dancing or orating. Not my cup of tea, but definitely powerful.
Cleric: Powerful, simple class using the divine list. Wisdom based caster. Improved in the Remaster. Very potent class with variation due to deity choice.
Psychic: Charisma or Intel caster. Nice to be able to pick your casting stat. Occult list with mind spells associated with choice of mind. Only two slots, but powerful cantrips. Generally good as a damage dealing caster.
Witch: Intel based caster with list variation. Feats are much better than they were. I've mostly seen healer witches and they were pretty good. The divine list witch with the damage boosting cantrip is helpful. Other witch types were not great, but maybe better in the remaster.
Oracle: Charisma divine caster. Some interesting build options. Might want to avoid until it is Remastered as its focus point mechanics are obsolete and problematic now due to the curse.
Wizard: Intel based arcane caster. Very limited group role as a blaster and utility caster. Curriculums are weak. Feats aren't great. Has the best level 20 feats in the game, but takes a while to get there. Slow out of the gate as they rely on casting more than any other class with few cool or powerful innate class abilities like nearly every class. Prepared caster. Lowest performing caster in my experience, but still a viable caster.
What type of caster you choose sets up how you build out the party in terms of what spells and class abilities you have access to within the group.
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Another finicky bit that is interestingly useful: having a free hand. In particular, alchemists like it when their allies have free hands, and wood kineticists get access to fresh produce which is a nice little healing power that's only really functional on allies that have free hands. How useful that is...?
- Alchemists, Kineticists, and all primary casters can have a free hand for much of the fight pretty cheaply. Summoners count here.
- Monks, swashbucklers, bow specialists, and some rogues can have a free hand without giving up too much.
- There are builds for barbarian and fighter that leave a hand (or both hands) free for maneuvers. Animal barbs generally don't have a problem with it, and there are some niche builds focused around natural weapons that are okay with it.
For everyone else, it's either costly or nonviable. That's... a lot of your front line, and any ranged builds that like firearms or crossbows. You *could* dial back to one-handed and empty palm, but it would cost you.
So, basically, it's entirely possible to put together a party where pretty much everyone has a free hand most of the time, and if you have an alchemist and that can be worth it, especially if you also have a Wood Kineticist. It's very much the sort of thing that calls for party optimization, though. If you just slap Fresh Produce on a level 1 kineticist and walk into session 1 without having discussed it, there's a nontrivial chance that the only people you can use it on are going to be the people who aren't getting hit..
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Let me start with a zinger. The secret to team optimization is having fun.
Building a good team from scratch is beyond the capabilities of most human beings. Sure, the GM could hold a Session Zero in which the players plan their characters together, but designing four PCs has too many variables to take into account in a few hours of planning together.
People do it hundreds of thousands of times per day around the world when playing team comp video games and even physical sports.
WoW / FFXIV: We need a tank, healer, and 2-3 DPS. Go.
Elder Scrolls Online: Mostly the above, but tank is also a buff-bot, and people pick abilities to stack specific buffs.
Guild Wars 2: We need a Healer and 4 DPS. 1 of you runs this buff, one runs that buff, Healer is also tank. And everyone needs a CC/Forced Movement ability.
American Football: We need a QB, some people to run around, some people to stop people from running around.
- Team comps are NOT that hard.
What are my goals? How many people do I have? Split the goals up by the number of people. Everybody pick one package and make your character. Everyone also take some synergy abilities.
PF2E:
Out of combat healing.
In combat healing (can be relegated to potions in a lower challenge game).
Social skills (cover this in at least 1-2 PCs)
Survival for any non-urban or 'not near town' game.
The magical understand skill - at least one of Nature, Occult, Arcana, Religion. Ideally 2+ across the group not on the same character.
Everyone pick one of:
Main defender - front liner, damage soak / mitigation.
Flanker
Ranged
- Note how that's 3 items but you'll usually have 4 people. So one of these can get picked twice.
Go through the above until everything's sorted and nothing's left out.
It's not that hard.
It can get more complex if you start looking at it from a specific bonuses angle like you would in Guild Wars or Elder Scrolls:
Now you add in:
- Forced movement / Restricted movement
- Deception / Demoralization / AC reducing abilities
- Attack roll buffing / enemy save reduction
- Damage mitigation (usually lacking but note it if it's not)
Figure out if you're covering this in melee, ranged, or both, and then who's got what. And in a 4-person comp it's likely one PC is covering more than one of these and some are covering none of them.
Adjust the above if you want to theme the party for some specific angle (like the 'party of free handers', or for a specific adventure (in this one we're all fighting undead, in that one we're all undead).
People often spend their session 0 angling for their own moment of attention and wanting to talk about some wild backstory about their mom's boyfriend's second cousin's lost pet dragon that no one is going to care about until and unless it comes up in play. Instead spend it building a team comp.
If you're just NOT a 'develop in play' sort and need a backstory ahead of time then try to keep it simple and remember team comp comes first. Your backstory should just be "how did I get from being a commoner to here in the adventure as someone who actively wants to be a team player in a dangerous situation?" And if you don't have "wants to be a team player" in there, delete the character and start over because this ain't a solo game.
I somehow missed your answer.
This is really intended as a "get the ball rolling" discussion to at least get us talking about this stuff, so... both, really. Like just out of the stuff you've written here...
Ok, fine. Let's get this ball rolling.
- You say you like optimizing for complementarity. Cool! So... suppose someone wants to make sure that their party is well-optimized for complementarity. What does that actually mean? What sorts of things should the be paying attention to? What should they make absolutely certain to do? What should they avoid? How does expected campaign adjust this? (In particular, PFS vs AP seems like an important split.)
Complementarity in a party is very easy to achieve: Bring a bit of everything, be sure that every domain is covered properly. It's the point of most sessions 0 and it works fine as is. Once you have enough of everything (enough frontline, enough skills covered properly, enough magic, etc...) then your party should work fine. In a party of 4 covering everything is easy, but it still means avoiding to double down (or triple down or quadruple down) on the same classes and roles.
That's all and it's rather obvious, most players have an innate mastery of this part. Roughly, the only thing to make sure is to bring enough of everything and avoid bringing too much of some things. For example, having 2 secondary healers is in my opinion the best form of healing: enough but not too much. Proceed similarly with every part of the game and that should be fine. Deriven's post covered that part well.- "a very versatile party with also a strong routine": Yes. That does sound like something worth pursuing... and, in particular, a routine that is both strong and at least a little flexible itself. So... what kind of "strong and at least a little flexible" routines can we fit into a party without significantly damaging its versatility?
I haven't said "flexible". The routine isn't meant to be flexible, it's just a way to deal with classic encounters so you don't take risks of character death/TPK with basic encounters (they are the most common ones).
Examples of such routines:
- Trip: One character (preferrably a caster) who trips enemies, all the martials with Reflexive Strike.
- Fog: One character casts a fog/mist spell while the whole party is somehow immune to fog/mist (Blind Fight, Storm Druid, etc...).
- AoE: At high level, it's easy to combine AoEs to an insane level. Inventor, Kineticist for the frontline, casters for the backline and you should obliterate simple encounters in less than 2 rounds.
- Fear: There are many abilities that works around the Frightened condition, the main one being Dread Striker. Having a party who Frightens a lot and benefit from it works wonder.
- Ranged combat: I strongly feels that a party who operates effectively at range with abilities to keep range (Speed, control and such) can be deadly for a lot of encounters.
But overall, I think the premises of this discussion can't really be achieved. PF2 is not a game of combo. That's why I've seen very few combos (both inside a build and between characters). For me, the best party is not based on any specific build, but based on players with high tactical acumen. The party optimization will account for less than 10% of your success as a group.
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I would approach this a bit differently. I'm going to start by assuming that some of the players already have some things they definitely want to play. Maybe one of them really wants to play a dwarf, and the other one absolutely wants to play a dragon summoner.
You could say "but the absolute total party composition uses ancestries X and classes Y, Z, Q and P!" but that's just going to rub people wrong. They've already had their heart set on something else.
Also, you can white room optimize a party for an average selection of enemies, but then you start playing an actual campaign and that campaign's selection of common enemies isn't the same as the general Pathfinder average. So you're not as optimized as you could be - there's a party specialized in this particular AP that's even more optimized.
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I think it's better to think in terms of how a group of players can adapt to each other and the campaign (and GM). What makes a group good at adapting? How can they go from a the party they start the campaign with and the bits of the campaign they've seen so far, and work together better every level?
* Explaining how your class works to the others. The other players need to know how the area of your champion's reaction works so they can keep themselves and enemies in it, for example.
* Take an interest in the other PCs and see if your class has something to offer them. The fighter might decide that with a rogue in the party, it's extra interesting to take feats that make enemies off-guard.
* Analyze each others' weaknesses, too. If the melee fighter was unable to help out against the flying enemies, maybe the casters need to pick up some spells to get them in the air for next time?
* Review combats afterwards, to see which tactics worked and which ones didn't. Maybe Reach Metamagic seemed a great idea at first, but it turned out the next round the enemy was still out of reach, so the wizard would have been better off spending the action to just move closer instead? But that's only safe if the fighter had stood a square more to the right so that enemies can't move past him without getting hit in the face?
* Have the patience to come up with tactics. For example, one player might have Mage Hand as a cantrip and could be opening up doors from a distance, triggering traps without being at risk and so forth. But only if the other players are willing to hear them out.
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In summary: I think the key is not abstract optimization beforehand, but lots of communication and adaptation during the campaign.
Retrain stuff if you have to, if it turns out that an ability falls flat with this party or that something else would be more helpful.
Druid: The druid is an extremely good class in PF2. It is a wisdom based caster using the primal list. It starts with good armor options. Shield Block as a free feat allowing use of shields. Can focus all ability increases on Str, Dex, Con, and Wis. Great feat selection with lots of versatility. If you want to play a powerful casters that can do a bit of almost everything, the druid is a great choice.
I'm curious, why max out Strength?
I'm assuming it's for Tripping,or maybe for heavy armor?| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Druid: The druid is an extremely good class in PF2. It is a wisdom based caster using the primal list. It starts with good armor options. Shield Block as a free feat allowing use of shields. Can focus all ability increases on Str, Dex, Con, and Wis. Great feat selection with lots of versatility. If you want to play a powerful casters that can do a bit of almost everything, the druid is a great choice.I'm curious, why max out Strength?
I'm assuming it's for Tripping,or maybe for heavy armor?
Some of the shapechange feats require higher strength to take them. So if you want to build a shapechanger, you have to build up strength.
And if going for that melee combat druid, strength is helpful for athletics and weapon use.
If you're going pure caster, you can do some other stat like Charisma or whatever you want to do for RP reasons.
Strength is primarily for the druid that is combining Untamed Shift with some other circle like Storm or Earth.
Druid can build as a pure blaster caster and be fine. You could even throw some ability boosts into intel and build up crafting, make lots of scrolls for blasting or other spells you like. Druid has versatile build options while still being very effective.
Leveraging Animal Empathy,Maxing DCs for Psychic/Bard Dedication spellcasting and 3 combat relevant skills keying off it made me think Charisma as the 4th maxed out stat for Druids.
This leads to a crunchy question.
How close to maximum does a stat need to be for the skills keyed to it to stay relevant?
Will Lore skills ever be worth using if you dump Int?
Will Trip be a viable third action if Strength stays at 14(for medium armor)?
Will Demoralize,Bon Mot,or Feint be worth doing if Chsrisma isnt being maxed out?