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Greetings all,
Had a blast checking out the playtest at GenCon but noticed something likely unintended.
Area Fire/Auto-Fire weapons don't care about the proficiency of the user, just the users Class DC. Which means that anyone can pick up a Flamethrower and use it effectively (Which is what Chk Chk did, metal!)
Not sure this is intended as, this would mean over the long term that Witchwarpers and Mystics Area DCs are just as good as Soldier. Seems weird.
Probably needs to use something like a Weapon Attack DC (not currently a thing but would be easy to use).
It uses class DC now Spell DC :D Enjoy! However if you want dumb Kineticist can use Area Fire as well! XD
Greetings all,
Had a blast checking out the playtest at GenCon but noticed something likely unintended.
Area Fire/Auto-Fire weapons don't care about the proficiency of the user, just the users Class DC. Which means that anyone can pick up a Flamethrower and use it effectively (Which is what Chk Chk did, metal!)
Not sure this is intended as, this would mean over the long term that Witchwarpers and Mystics Area DCs are just as good as Soldier. Seems weird.
Probably needs to use something like a Weapon Attack DC (not currently a thing but would be easy to use).
Def playtest it I sort of suspect that gets changed or clarified. It is odd that by default get any proficiency in advanced area weapons but also has no apparent reason to care about the lack which just seems WEEEEIRRRD.
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Probably needs to use something like a Weapon Attack DC (not currently a thing but would be easy to use).
I agree with this, make a DC using your attack roll with the weapon, and give Soldier a feature that lets them use CON instead of DEX for area attack DCs, or something similar to that.
It uses class DC now Spell DC :D Enjoy! However if you want dumb Kineticist can use Area Fire as well! XD
Just for anyone reading this later - I'm pretty sure this is meant to read "it uses not spell DC". Because that would be the correct answer. Though tbf, the Witchwarper (afaik the only caster so far) keeps up with the Soldier in that regard as well.
But then again, no caster has a good reason to use aoe weapons once they actually get proper spells at level 5 (spell rank 3) or so. Same with the Kineticist.
Aoe weapons (except maybe grenades) in general don't seem very useful for anyone other than the Soldier right now, no matter what proficiency you have.
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It uses class DC now Spell DC :D Enjoy! However if you want dumb Kineticist can use Area Fire as well! XDJust for anyone reading this later - I'm pretty sure this is meant to read "it uses not spell DC". Because that would be the correct answer. Though tbf, the Witchwarper (afaik the only caster so far) keeps up with the Soldier in that regard as well.
But then again, no caster has a good reason to use aoe weapons once they actually get proper spells at level 5 (spell rank 3) or so. Same with the Kineticist.
Aoe weapons (except maybe grenades) in general don't seem very useful for anyone other than the Soldier right now, no matter what proficiency you have.
Incorrect, auto fire and area weapons add a weapon's targeting module to the DCs. (Side note, WHY?) So they are just harder to resist than spells now.
Most likely because aoe weapons are not spells, but have to contend with the same brutal defense scaling regardless. And are only able to target a single save to boot.
And I stand by my statement. Most importantly, as I said, with spells you can actually target saves other than Reflex. This typically means a -3 or even something like -6 if you are good or just lucky. So in practice, it is only reflex save spells that are at a disadvantage. For all others, the opposite is the case as long as Reflex isn't the lowest save.
Even then a good rank 3+ spell will do more when the enemy succeeds than an aoe weapon when the enemy fails. At later levels, you won't even need the latest and greatest, because spells just scale so much better.
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Most likely because aoe weapons are not spells, but have to contend with the same brutal defense scaling regardless. And are only able to target a single save to boot.
And I stand by my statement. Most importantly, as I said, with spells you can actually target saves other than Reflex. This typically means a -3 or even something like -6 if you are good or just lucky. So in practice, it is only reflex save spells that are at a disadvantage. For all others, the opposite is the case as long as Reflex isn't the lowest save.
Even then a good rank 3+ spell will do more when the enemy succeeds than an aoe weapon when the enemy fails. At later levels, you won't even need the latest and greatest, because spells just scale so much better.
So a legendary spellcaster gets to 8+level+spellcasting stat for DC
A gunner (who isn't a soldier/Kineticist) gets to 6+3+level+key ability for their DC, so shooting guns is still better than casting spells.
So a legendary spellcaster gets to 8+level+spellcasting stat for DC
A gunner (who isn't a soldier/Kineticist) gets to 6+3+level+key ability for their DC, so shooting guns is still better than casting spells.
I understand the math. What are you arguing exactly?
That casting a spell on a caster is worse than random dude shooting an aoe weapon? That isn't true, see my previous answer. Especially at the point where you actually get tracking +3, the two aren't even in the same postcode. People are even overwhelmingly dunking on the Soldier for its weakness and that class is even better than said gunner.
Or is it that an aoe weapon is more reliable than trying archetype spellcasting on enemies? The latter has always been terrible, no change there.
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So, I'm just going to break down your argument point by point.
Most likely because aoe weapons are not spells, but have to contend with the same brutal defense scaling regardless. And are only able to target a single save to boot.
So they are not spells, they have to contend with the same 'brutal defense scaling' regardless. As I pointed out, a solarion or envoy with a gun has a higher DC than a spellcaster under this system, further dunking on spellcasters.
And I stand by my statement. Most importantly, as I said, with spells you can actually target saves other than Reflex. This typically means a -3 or even something like -6 if you are good or just lucky. So in practice, it is only reflex save spells that are at a disadvantage. For all others, the opposite is the case as long as Reflex isn't the lowest save.
I've always hated this arguement. Not all traditions have good spells against all saves, even if they did, not every SPELLCASTER will have good spells against every save memorized/as a spell they know. AND EVEN IF THEY DID, it's not like you automatically know the saves of each enemy. Quick, a demon who is built like a freight train is moving impossibly fast towards you and seems completely implacable. Your cleric friend hasn't gone yet so they can't recall knowledge. Which save do you choose?
Even then a good rank 3+ spell will do more when the enemy succeeds than an aoe weapon when the enemy fails. At later levels, you won't even need the latest and greatest, because spells just scale so much better.
And to counter that, you can fire off area effect attacks all day long as long as you have some cheap batteries, which cost nothing at higher levels. Meanwhile your witchwarper will have, what, 3 or 4 high level spells? Some of which may be reserved for utility instead of fireballs?
You can hate the argument, but that is how the system is designed. All traditions target at least two saves. Any caster - who wants to interact with enemies - that doesn't take advantage of that is doing so to his own detriment. Not building for versatility is punished - which the aoe weapon people are really feeling right now.
Guessing saves without RK is hardly difficult, even without extensive metagame knowledge. Even if you just hit the moderate save and that save isn't reflex, the enemy has effectively -3 to their save, making a caster more potent than anyone but a class with legendary class DC.
And yeah, so you only have 3 or 4 of those spells at 5th level. But each of those is effectively two turns worth of impact for the aoe weapon user. At 7th, you get another 3 (then 4) that are even better. Meanwhile, the 3rd rank ones hold up just as well as before and do so until 12th level at least. At 9th you get another set that is even better than the 4th rank ones. Here we are talking easily the entire impact the aoe weapon will have over a full 3-4 round combat packed into a single spell. This gets mixed up a bit once the aoe weapon finally scales again at level 12, but I think you get the point. Spells scale every two levels and not linearly.
Past a certain point - probably level 7 - it doesn't matter that the aoe weapons guy can do that all day, each turn of a caster has so much more impact and that can be sustained for a long time.
Saying that the caster might also want to have some utility spells as well isn't a good arguement when you compare it to a gunner who can't do anything else either.
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You can hate the argument, but that is how the system is designed. All traditions target at least two saves. Any caster - who wants to interact with enemies - that doesn't take advantage of that is doing so to his own detriment. Not building for versatility is punished - which the aoe weapon people are really feeling right now.
Guessing saves without RK is hardly difficult, even without extensive metagame knowledge. Even if you just hit the moderate save and that save isn't reflex, the enemy has effectively -3 to their save, making a caster more potent than anyone but a class with legendary class DC.
(Snip)
So, I said I hate that argument . . . give you the reasons I don't like it (can't always tell someone's highest save, not every caster has good save spells, some caster might want to have some utility spells), and your response is . . . I'm wrong? Like, I mean, I'm okay with being wrong, I often am, but there's no real meat to your argument here. Just saying "You're wrong, I can build a caster that exactly proves my point," doesn't mean EVERY caster will ALWAYS prove your point.
Also . . . let me make sure I get this argument right. The soldier can only target reflex saves . . . and that's bad because enemies have high reflex saves. Also, you should target their weakest, or even middling save, which will be lower. So . . . by your own admission, it's okay to target reflex saves, because there is only a roughly 1 in 3 chance that the enemy will have reflex as their highest save. So 66% of the chance it'll do well? And the soldier doing well 66% of the time is . . . bad? Like, have you never had a fight where your spellcaster didn't have the right spells to fight the monster? Doing fine 66% of the time is a good thing.
Also, as for figuring out the highest save, look at this creature:
Lightly armored, maybe cloth, possibly a spellcaster of some kind. High save is probably will if spellcaster, or reflex because of the light armor right? Nope, Fortitude.
Or this guy:
Big rocky crystal guy right? High save has gotta be fortitude right? Nope, Will.
Or this guy:
Dude is literally running on air with wings, and he has some, light armor, but there's a lot of exposed parts right, probably reflex is his high save right? Nope, that's actually his worst save.
Yeah, telling an enemy's save at first glance is not always easy. I could keep going, but I was literally just panning down the Archiaves of nethys list and looking for monsters with pictures to show you.
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Also, as for figuring out the highest save, look at this creature:
Lightly armored, maybe cloth, possibly a spellcaster of some kind. High save is probably will...
Actually I think your examples are more obvious than you think. My initial assumption looking at the rainbow crystal guy is that the lowest save was probably fort. I think that one is quite telegraphed with the visual language, he looks spell resistant but shatterable. The snake guy makes sense too, poison targets fort, dude is a snake and therefore resistant to poison. The last guy I'll say I wouldn't have a good guess, but my guess would have been fort or will being highest just because he's swole af and all celestial-like
Your argument about saves feels a bit... out of date? Like you're arguing as if this is 2019 when the game just dropped. Spells simply have effects that dwarf area weapons by several orders of magnitude, and it's quite easy to have spells that target each save in each tradition, especially post-remaster, and spellcasters just get a whole hell of a lot of spells. Sure only the top 2-3 ranks of spells are good for damage, but that damage is so much higher than an area weapon. Being able to spam area weapons is kind of, idk, pathetic in comparison? I wouldn't waste my actions on it without incentive such as in the soldier chassis
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@Vampbyday - maybe this gets my argument across better:
I never said that targeting the moderate save is good, because it isn't.
Saves pretty much exactly map to the AC one category higher. So a moderate save is the equivalent of high AC. Something that is the highest that martials are typically expected to go up against. Targeting the moderate save is not "doing well", it is the bare minimum if you want to be effective at all.
That is the core problem of why casters in this system are often perceived as weak and not unreasonably so.
Aoe weapons face this same problem, but even worse, because the built-in "workaround" for casters isn't open to them.
Even if it wasn't currently so that 69% of SF2 creatures have reflex as their highest save. Even if it was the perfect "1/3 high, 1/3 moderate, 1/3 low" distribution. Then that would mean you are impotent against fully 1/3 of enemies, struggle against another 1/3 and are only good (or even great) against the last 1/3.
Imagine playing a Rogue or Swashbuckler, but instead of the occasional ghost or ooze ruining your day, it's a full third of all monsters you could theoretically go up against. And another third is resistant to precision damage as well. That is the current state of aoe weapons.
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The issue OP brings up has been brought up literally over a year ago, and for some reason it hasn't been at all addressed in that entire time. A few people tried to dismiss the problem on the assumption that it'd work out fine, but now that we've entered full-on playtesting, it is clear that it is not working out fine, and interactions around area and automatic weapons are extremely wonky. They need to depend on weapon proficiency somehow in order for people to not just jump automatically to advanced weapons and ignore the rest, and I feel both types of weapons ought to be made generally more functional and usable as well.
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Yeah, I just don't see a future for the current design. Both the proficiency issue and the save issue.
I've lost track, but was the alternative of "attack roll, but use class DC-10" brought up yet? We know regular attack rolls are not an option, but that would get us the desired result without the messy side effects. Doesn't solve the proficiency issue, but that would be a start.
One of the questions that's been in my mind since that very first field test is: "who are these AoE guns for?" Now that the core 6 classes have released in the playtest, I think it is all the more worth asking that question, because I really don't think they work on most classes:
So really, the Soldier is realistically the only class who's going to be using AoE guns at all. This to me suggests that implementing AoE attacks as weapons independent of classes was a mistake, and the real perk of the Soldier should be that they ought to be able to make AoE attacks with weapons. With this in mind, I'd suggest the following:
Not 100% sure if this is the right way to go, but it would certainly be more functional than the state of affairs we have now. My one regret if the above were implemented is that it'd take away a couple of the few new traits that made guns more distinct in Starfinder, but that I think also means guns in Starfinder just need to be a lot more distinct in general.
I mean, I wouldn't go that far. I like the area and automatic trait a lot (in principle). They open up a cool new design space to explore. And if that isn't Starfinder's jam, I don't know what is XD
I only have a problem with them targeting a single save, which makes them fundamentally not worth it, and that they don't interact with proficiency. If those two issues were fixed, then even if it was mostly Soldiers who used them, then that would be fine by me.
Especially grenades could be very useful to non-casters, certain grenades are actually good for casters as well. Smoke grenades are awesome even now. Bombs have never felt good to me in the slightest.
As for regular aoe weapons? I'm pretty sure, especially with proper support (preferably in-class, but archetype would do), that at least some other martials will want to have certain ones. Maybe only as a backup "in case of aoe", but I can see some people choosing automatic weapons as their primary as well (once they get buffed a little). If the SF2 economy isn't as severely limiting as the PF2 one (or you use ABP like my group 100% will), then I could see this opening up even more.
I'm not cool with only making them cool for the Soldier. Not to mention that that would make them even more of a headache, as you would now have to write two whole "systems" for all of those, one for the Soldier and one for everyone else.
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Make grenades work like Pathfinder bombs (they are, effectively, just reskinned Pathfinder bombs for the most part), and have them use their own DC. Classes like the Witchwarper and Soldier could then have the benefit of using their spell DC or class DC respectively instead of the item's DC, whether as a feat (e.g. Spellsurge Ammo), or as a class feature.
I much prefer how grenades work in SF1e you target a map grid intersection trying to hit AC5 and saves only cut damage in half. I also don't see any rules in the playtest for where a grenade lands if you miss. In the playtest book I'm not even sure what I'm throwing a grenade at or what to roll to hit.
I'm not cool with only making them cool for the Soldier. Not to mention that that would make them even more of a headache, as you would now have to write two whole "systems" for all of those, one for the Soldier and one for everyone else.
I mean, I don't think it'd be more complicated to do this, given that the second "system" would just be a mechanic self-contained to the Soldier and balanced around the one class who'd be good at using those guns, but I can agree that there may be an opportunity to use the new mechanics to improve Pathfinder, rather than standardize AoE to Pathfinder's less-than-stellar fixed item DCs. How about this instead:
So with this, Area Fire would be a much more generally usable action that would respect weapon proficiency a bit better, work well with casters as well as the Soldier, and avoid outliers like Pathfinder's Commander making excessively good use of it.
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Especially grenades could be very useful to non-casters, certain grenades are actually good for casters as well. Smoke grenades are awesome even now. Bombs have never felt good to me in the slightest.
At least in SF1e I play a mystic healer that uses grenades and it's been a great combination, I don't think I could have pulled that off using PF2e bombs. I'm still trying to figure out how grenades work in the playtest.
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@Vampbyday - maybe this gets my argument across better:
I never said that targeting the moderate save is good, because it isn't.
Saves pretty much exactly map to the AC one category higher. So a moderate save is the equivalent of high AC. Something that is the highest that martials are typically expected to go up against. Targeting the moderate save is not "doing well", it is the bare minimum if you want to be effective at all.
That is the core problem of why casters in this system are often perceived as weak and not unreasonably so.
Aoe weapons face this same problem, but even worse, because the built-in "workaround" for casters isn't open to them.
Even if it wasn't currently so that 69% of SF2 creatures have reflex as their highest save. Even if it was the perfect "1/3 high, 1/3 moderate, 1/3 low" distribution. Then that would mean you are impotent against fully 1/3 of enemies, struggle against another 1/3 and are only good (or even great) against the last 1/3.
Imagine playing a Rogue or Swashbuckler, but instead of the occasional ghost or ooze ruining your day, it's a full third of all monsters you could theoretically go up against. And another third is resistant to precision damage as well. That is the current state of aoe weapons.
Just so we are clear, you are saying that blaster casters are completely useless (impotent) against 69% of all enemies in the game? Because Fireball/lighting bolt/cone of cold (etc) also goes against reflex saves and doesn't get the bonuses of targeting module to DCs? Good to know. Dunno how my two primal casters who spam fireball in the season of ghosts game I am currently running are doing so well then. Man, doing 1/2 damage to the entire enemy party unless they beat the DC+10 must mean no damage at all.
Couple of things. Yes, soldiers are weak against one strong enemy. I agree there could be more there. But also, when fighting say, 5 lower level enemies, they clean up. That's where they are good. Where, I might add, a fighter does poorly because they have to move in between each one and attack them one at a time.
Also, and I just got done talking to someone else about this you seem to be falling into the trap of saying 'my character has to be 100% effective 100% of the time, or they are useless." If my swashbuckler (I have one) finds themselves in a situation where they aren't as useful, they do other things. Provide flanking. Demoralize. Make attacks even though my damage is reduced by 4. Use Leading dance to get enemies away from the squishy casters.
Also, if attacking someone three times (save, primary target, follow up third attack at -5 with a ) is bad, then . . . I mean, I don't know what to say. That's pretty good in my book. Is it going to be able to beat, say, the fighter? No. But then the fighter can's spray a cone 40 ft long, 40 ft wide, and still follow up with two attacks every round. (Machine Gun). That's why the two are different classes.
Yeah, if you want to talk about maybe boosting the efficacy, that's fine, have that discussion. But doing guaranteed (well, unless they crit save which, even on high saves, is likely only to occur on a die roll of, like 16+) damage every round with no daily resource cost at a range of up to 40 feet if you are an action hero isn't a bad starting point in my book.
Just so we are clear, you are saying that blaster casters are completely useless (impotent) against 69% of all enemies in the game? Because Fireball/lighting bolt/cone of cold (etc) also goes against reflex saves and doesn't get the bonuses of targeting module to DCs? Good to know. Dunno how my two primal casters who spam fireball in the season of ghosts game I am currently running are doing so well then. Man, doing 1/2 damage to the entire enemy party unless they beat the DC+10 must mean no damage at all.
What I actually said was that you are impotent against 1/3, not 69%. You are just not going to perform very well against the second third, but you are not useless. It is also much, much worse for aoe weapons, since they do only a fraction of what a spell does.
But to certain extent, yeah that is how it is. Unless you are constantly lucky, rolling against high and moderate saves all the time is extremely inefficient and makes everything far, far harder than it has to be. I haven't played Season of Ghosts so I have no idea what the save distribution looks like. So they might be doing alright (and roll pretty well it looks like), but if they would target the weaker save then they would be vastly more effective.
And if they face an actually difficult encounter or stop rolling well, that's how you lose your margin of error.
You are likely doing less than half of what you should be doing, so that is hardly a hot take.
Couple of things. Yes, soldiers are weak against one strong enemy. I agree there could be more there. But also, when fighting say, 5 lower level enemies, they clean up. That's where they are good. Where, I might add, a fighter does poorly because they have to move in between each one and attack them one at a time.
The problems already start at level -1 enemies and, if they have a high Reflex save, easily extend to level -2 or even -3. You can only put so many of even those in an encounter before everything becomes a severe encounter.
And what you are talking about is the Soldier, a class that is fully designed around these weapons, not the weapons themselves. PF2 firearms are pretty bad, but the Gunslinger makes them kinda work. That doesn't make firearms good, though.
Also, and I just got done talking to someone else about this you seem to be falling into the trap of saying 'my character has to be 100% effective 100% of the time, or they are useless." If my swashbuckler (I have one) finds themselves in a situation where they aren't as useful, they do other things. Provide flanking. Demoralize. Make attacks even though my damage is reduced by 4. Use Leading dance to get enemies away from the squishy casters.
There are always situations for any character where they aren't prepared for this situation. That is fine if it happens occasionally, but not all the damn time. Give 1/3 of your enemies extreme AC and 1/3 high AC and maybe turn attack rolls into basic attack rolls. Then ask your martials how they like that. I can guarantee you that Swashbuckler will change his mind immediately.
And concerning the "attack three times thing":
Most of the time, people won't be attacking three times. Not even the Soldier will. I wouldn't assume that players will spend their third action on a regular Strike when Striding might be necessary and Take Cover is on the table. And area weapons can't in the first place.
A regular aoe weapon user using either activity is in effect a single action Strike for two actions. Usually. That is assuming you catch two targets in your aoe, which is a reasonable assumption. As is both enemies succeeding, especially given that most people don't have a very good class DC.
The Soldier also gets Suppressive Fire (if you are lucky and/or a Bombard) and Primary Target. The latter is the only reason the Soldier isn't in exactly the same boat, but it still isn't impressive.
I can't find the quote right now, but I recall seeing a quote from one of the Paizo staff where they gave a specific reasoning behind this:
The intent is to differentiate characters who are good with heavy weaponry (i.e. area fire and automatic fire) from characters who are good at precise shooting (i.e. high accuracy ranged Strike attacks). If they determined the effectiveness of area attacks based on weapon proficiency, then the Operative would end up better than everyone at making area attacks and autofire, which is not the intended design.
In practical terms, I do think this design choice causes other problems. The decision to use class DC for the area and autofire attacks means that a substantial portion of "martial" classes from PF2 are oddly bad at using area weapons, whilst other classes such as the Alchemist and Commander are actually very good with them, but don't have the hands or actions free to commit to a two-action attack.
I don't really know what to suggest as a fix, other than making an entirely new category of proficiency specifically for autofire and area attacks ... but again, this would prevent the existing classes from having the ability to use these weapons, so would arguably not produce meaningful change.
Yeah it's basically just so Operative doesn't end up the best with them at this point.
Which is, mind you, a good thing. The Operative is already the best class with a knife, with a sniper rifle, with pistols, with regular rifles, etc. It does not need to also be the best with artillery and machine guns.
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Yeah it's basically just so Operative doesn't end up the best with them at this point.Which is, mind you, a good thing. The Operative is already the best class with a knife, with a sniper rifle, with pistols, with regular rifles, etc. It does not need to also be the best with artillery and machine guns.
There’s more to being good at something than simply having the right numbers for it (though conversely without good numbers it’s impossible to be good at something). Soldier will still be far better at Area Firing due to Primary Target + feat support, and Operative still probably won’t use area weapons because basically none of their stuff actually works with it.
The same reason Witchwarpers don’t use Area stuff despite having the same DC as soldiers for every level except the last 2 - they just aren’t very effective compared to the other stuff they could be doing.
Granted that might be because in the current state of Area weapons, only soldiers use them with any level of efficacy required for a class to contribute in combat. Everyone else is basically casting a worse cantrip.
On some level it feels kind of weird to give fighters and operatives "best with weapons" as a class feature and then say you're worried about them being best with weapons.
It also seems like kind of a theoretical problem. You're looking at 3 targets before area weapons become clearly superior, which just isn't going to be common enough to heavily justify the investment most of the time. So even if operatives were the best at using these weapons, Area would still be unappealing for them and Automatic would still be a very niche trait.
I think one of the fundamental problems here is that AoE weapons aren’t really weapons, they’re just different things that the devs decided to call weapons and shoehorned into the weapons list, while having those things draw from an entirely different stat bucket.
Normally, weapons are what you use to deal single-target damage, so being legendary in weapon proficiency means you’re a single-target damage specialist. AoE guns, however, suck at single-target damage and deal AoE damage instead, which puts them in an awkward position: in theory, this is meant to give martial classes access to some at-will AoE through weapons, but because being actually good at that would violate 2e’s niche protection, AoE can’t be allowed to draw on the same stats that make martials good at single-target damage. Instead, they then have to draw from some entirely different stat, which leaves them in the current situation where they just generally suck on most classes and have really awkward math and mechanical interactions. I don’t see this ever changing under the current implementation in a manner that’d avoid feeling unsatisfactory, breaking the game’s niche protection, or even both.