The community's endless crusade againts damage Is often annoying.

[Fabios]

This Isn't meant as an insult to anyone, this Is Simply something i noticed and that i want to talk about.

Obligatory prescriptum: i have Two Active campaigns, in One i play a purely defensively oriented character, in the other i play a Fire/earth/wood kineticist

1- The moral argument:
I see that there's this weird concept that doing damage Is inherently selfish, in my opinion It really Isn't, It's a part of the game to which selfish people tend to gather because it's prone to big Hero moments and therefore It LOOKS selfish to a lot of folks.
The game heavily emphasizes utility alongside damage for a lot of martials characters, the only genuinely purely damage focused character i can think about Is a starlit span magus. Even a barbarian that strikes three times per round (let's take an Extreme case) Is STILL contributing to the team by Simply exhisting in front of people, getting hit, and so on and so forth.
Therefore i think that being unable to discuss dpr and damage building without being labeled as a "selfish noob" Is annoying

2- the technical argument:
"Once you really think about It you realize that damage Isn't important at all" well, i might sound mean for what i'm going to Say, but then you (you as impersonal) Haven't thought about It enough.
Any Given fight Is fundamentally a race between Two cars, damage Is the ONLY thing that makes the cars go forward, everything else (heal, utility) Is setting back the other car.
-ps: technically buffs put a multiplier on how fast the car Is going, so there's that.
Both are equally important! If the car doesn't go forward you'll lose, if the other car goes faster and you don't hold It back you'll lose too!

[Squiggit]

... What are you talking about?

[Fabios]

Squiggit wrote:

... What are you talking about?

About... What i Just Said, that It feels like the community has a crusade againts the concept of doing damage

[ElementalofCuteness]

I think I am in the wrong thread...I never seen damage being considered selfish. It's a core part of game play though?

[Fabios]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

I think I am in the wrong thread...I never seen damage being considered selfish. It's a core part of game play though?

i've unironically seen damage being considered selfish and not an important part of the game, it might be the reddit effect but it's insane how people stop listening the SECOND you say "dpr" even if contextualized

[ElementalofCuteness]

The reddit is a different beast then the Paizo Forums. They are like two vastly different cousins who argue all the time and even then they complained about Cantrips no longer having +KAS and that was a mess but it seems like they honestly go in waves of what to complain about. Not saying the Reddit is bad, it's not, it's rather fun to read threads there.

[Wheldrake]

Sure, damage is important. But DPR comparisons put me to sleep, and my general impression is that DPR discussions don't take into account so many other factors. It's "white room" analysis.

I've been around these forums and other discussion venues for over ten years, since mid-way through the PF1 era, and can't say I've seen "selfish" oriented remarks. Perhaps if you tried to rearticulate what problem you see, more folks could engage with it.

[Fabios]

Wheldrake wrote:

Sure, damage is important. But DPR comparisons put me to sleep, and my general impression is that DPR discussions don't take into account so many other factors. It's "white room" analysis.

i don't that dpr is inherently white room math, it depends. sure, if your dpr accounts for three strikes a turn+reactive strike then it's absolutely whiteroom math, but dpr by itself it's no more than a calculation, the important part is using sensible data.

I've been around these forums and other discussion venues for over ten years, since mid-way through the PF1 era, and can't say I've seen "selfish" oriented remarks. Perhaps if you tried to rearticulate what problem you see, more folks could engage with it.

yeah, maybe i should rearticulate but i can't find a better way to say this than "The discourse around damage has flanderized himself to the point that it presumes that anyone who talks about dpr hasn't ever played in an actual games and accounts only for impossibly good setups"

[NorrKnekten]

Yeah there are ways this could've been articulated better. I personally feel a similar way because people will only compare and focus on their damage in a complete vacuum.

Yes dealing damage is good, Dealing damage is part of how you win combats. We want each character to deal as much as they can. DPR or Damage per Action is generally the way we want to go about this.

But there is absolutely to much of a focus on how each person themselves can do the most damage, Often disregarding teamplay when in reality the DPR of the party goes up way more when people work together an often it doesn't take more than an action to stride into flanking or the good ol assurance + trip.

[pauljathome]

I think just about everybody agrees that damage output is a very large part of the game. For some characters it is the main contribution (and nearly the only contribution) that they make to combat.

But as Norr says party Synergies are also very important. And ACTUAL damage output as it occurs in your campaign is the number that matters, not theory crafted damage numbers.

But, unfortunately, when we're comparing options then theorycrafting is pretty much necessarily a PART of the evaluation. Actual experience also matters but it is much harder to compare experiences at different tables since so many factors differ.

And some options can be pretty much shown to be really good or really bad just by theory crafting. It doesn't, for example, take actual experience to show that the damage numbers attainable by an Exemplar Archetype are higher than those attainable by other archetypes.

[TriOmegaZero]

DPR is a meaningless statistic, a distraction from what the team should be doing, working together to facilitate dealing damage so that theoretical number becomes a real one.

[pauljathome]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

DPR is a meaningless statistic, a distraction from what the team should be doing,

That is overstating things. DPR has meaning, just nowhere as much meaning as some people think.

But I'm pretty sure that you'd agree that if you had two characters in your party, both of whom stated that their primary combat role was to deal damage to individuals, and one had a DPR of 100 and the other of 10 then the one (DPR 100) was doing their job much better than the other (DPR 10).

[Finoan]

My biggest problem with DPR is that it is a poorly thought out metric that was borrowed from MMORPG games.

Time to Kill (TTK) (how many actions from the entire party does it take to drop this enemy) is a better metric.

My biggest problem with TTK is that it is much harder to calculate than DPR. There are important actions that need to be accounted for that don't do any damage at all, such as Stride, or actions to gain Panache, or actions to debuff an enemy or buff a party member. So instead of dealing with all of that nuance and complexity, people just use whiteroom DPR calculations instead.

[Fabios]

The problem with TTk in my opinion it's that it is completely impossible to calculate accordingly, even paizo failed to do so in my opinion (they can't me look dead in the eyes and say that gunslinger has a great ttk, it's simply untrue).

while DPR is simple but customizable enough that you CAN get something that's good enough, not precise, but good enough

[Greg.Everham]

Wheldrake wrote:

Sure, damage is important. But DPR comparisons put me to sleep, and my general impression is that DPR discussions don't take into account so many other factors. It's "white room" analysis.

I've been around these forums and other discussion venues for over ten years, since mid-way through the PF1 era, and can't say I've seen "selfish" oriented remarks. Perhaps if you tried to rearticulate what problem you see, more folks could engage with it.

One thing that I've really grown to love about this edition, and I say this as a number crunching optimizer in PF1e, is just how little the DPR charts mean a got damn thing. Combat is so fluid and buffing/debuffing is so critical that setting up silly wombo-combos for big damage numbers is almost not worth it. Teamwork, as it turns out, provides better results than a "me me me" character.

To that end, I kinda agree with OP. However, I dunno if I have ever seen a table that viewed a damage dealer as "selfish." They're necessary in a game that relies on setting HP to 0. Personally, I urge players at my tables to have a set up move (a buff, a debuff, something) and a finisher (a big hard hitting ability) in their rotation.

[Red Griffyn]

As a person that does and shares DPR calculations for various things including new content, playtests, validation of homebrew to show it isn't pushing meta, etc. I don't think OPs take on how the community responds is wrong. But I would like to qualify that there is a huge range of 'quality' when it comes to doing DPR calculations that leads to different results. On the spectrum of bad to good I see things like:

A.) assuming I hit or Crit I can do up to a MAX of A DPR at Level 20.
B.) assuming I hit or Crit I can do up to an average of B DPR at Level 20.
C.) on average (considering hit/crits) I can do an average of C DPR at Level 20.
D.) on average (considering hit/crits) I can do an average of D DPR at Levels 1 to Levels 20.
E.) on average (considering crit miss/miss/hit/crits) I can do an average of E DPR at Levels 1 to Levels 20.
F.) E but with some feats/items included.
G.) F but with some range of moderate to high AC/saves, flatfooted, etc.
H.) G but with comparisons to other meta builds to show relative power
I.) H but with multi-round effects built in (DPR across 1-2 rounds for misfires, assuming x action costs for moving, etc.).
J.) I but with full standardized combat sequences (DPR across 4-6 rounds, maybe has an environmental effect, includes multiple monsters, etc.)
K.) J but with Time to Kill brought in to discount 'overkill' damage on damage spikes that skew results.
L.) K but with multiple party members now included.

In my experience, the DND5e community (unless you're in an optimization sub-community) will often use A/B quality analysis. Its frustratingly useless information IMO because I have never played a game where I always hit something or crit so often it should be heavily weighted in my average performance.

In the Pathfinder 2e community I tend to find the baseline for DPR calcs tend to be higher and you often get C to E with some a la carte stuff from higher quality analysis (yes runes but no feats, or yes comparison to other meta but no inclusion of optimization feats especially at L10+). So as a baseline, I think as a community we're already doing better than in other TTRPG spaces.

I think where some of the community response comes from is born from a few issues:

1.) You have people who do higher quality analysis dumping on lower quality analysis without really understanding the purpose of the calculation. It can always 'get better' but is it 'fit for purpose' for proving the point? I set my bar pretty high for analysis I'll consider useful, but I'm generally willing to bite the bullet to do the step-up and show how they've arrived at an incorrect conclusion because of how they set up their analysis. Just in general, not everyone is capable of doing higher quality analysis, so you have to accept that you won't ever get exactly what you want (for free on the internet at least) without some of your own time/investment. Usually I'll reference folks to the community calculator tool which is effectively a math free analysis tool that nearly anyone can use.

2.) You have people who actively like engaging in rational thinking, but don't have the training/tools to do it well (and are not self aware of that). That is where you get a lot of anecdotes about how this one PC in a campaign was amazing/awful being used as counterpoints to any analysis that is shown (despite it really not being that useful). There are wide ranges of things that change from table to table, game to game, so part of the value of good analysis is to benchmark and compare against the benchmark that is not subject to variability. Short of a well constructed poll about peoples subjective opinions, there isn't a great way to bottle this kind of information up into a useful analysis so it tends to generate a lot of tension between people. I try to just point out that it is anecdotal and try to clearly frame the analysis's purpose (it won't invalidate your experience and your experience may not be typical, so even if you don't get anything out of this analysis others might).

3.) You have have a relatively large subset of people in category #2 who don't like being told they are wrong and will deflect/get defensive. Realistically, people don't always want to talk about things or are open to having their minds changed. Think about how often you've changed your families political beliefs at holiday events. This is where the 'you've never played a real game' nonsense comes out and I think its much more of a human nature deflection technique than an honest attempt at saying you never really play the game.

4.) You have trolls and trolls with bots that revel in the erosion of society. What can you really do here lol. Its up to moderation teams with their own bots/tools to combat this and the quality of those tools/mods will vary wildly between different websites/applications.

5.) Sometimes you as the person who did the analysis just has bad assumptions and doesn't want to redo your work and publish your 10th edit on the reddit post. Again, is it fit for purpose, or are the critiques fair? I've definitely seen some analysis that assumes you spent ~2-4 actions in set-up, hit a below average CR monster with low AC that is flatfooted with a bard +1 to hit, while hasted, using all 4 actions to strike. That is clearly a huge corner case list of assumptions so its important to try and gauge what happens at an 'average' table and get as close to that with your baseline/benchmark to mitigate the 'plot holes' of your analysis.

6.) You have some people that have a philosophical disagreement with DPR as a useful metric. Some people like making sub-optimal PCs and feel threatened (as if you're saying their builds aren't doing enough), some people play at tables where combats are generally easier and don't value it (which is fine), etc. DPR calculations are not the end all be all, so as long as you aren't presenting them as such, I think you've done everything you need to do address these kinds of complaints. You doing analysis tells us 'something' and you have positively contributed. Their dismissal of it tells us nothing.

7.) Analysis posts tend to get long to capture data, analysis, assumptions, conclusions, etc. Most people don't want to read it even if it is presented in a clear/concise manner with pictures. It takes real skill to condense/present information and people often stop reading after they find one thing they don't like (or don't respond to all of the points made, just the 1 or 2 they think they can one-up you one). The best way to combat this is to re-read your posts a few times and try to trim it. Lol...this is not a skill I'm very good at (looks at this post... obviously).

I think the best thing as a community that can be done is to encourage contextually relevant DPR calculations. Someone that does a DPR calc is someone that is engaging with the content/community in a positive manner and should be taught or engaged with in a thoughtful way. For some that might be to improve the quality of the analysis, for others to push them to other kinds of meta-analysis that they find more interesting (or perhaps with a different central metric). As long as you are 'critiquing/engaging' with the analysis and not attacking the person then things go fairly well.

[Lightning Raven]

I'll just say one thing, if you're doing any damage at all, you're doing it wrong.

/s

[Deriven Firelion]

I don't know that DPR is attacked on this forum, but as a person who has been under attack many times for being combat focused, that does happen on these forums. If your group is more combat focused and prefers a combat focused game including min-maxing for combat, then you'll definitely find a vocal group resistant to that type of gaming.

It's not the whole forum or anything, but a vocal minority who don't care for that type of game or viewing game balance and rules through that focus.

[moosher12]

I can sort of see the point.

On the one hand, I don't like it when people sweat about having the biggest numbers.

But on the other hand, I am sympathetic for people who feel they are starkly behind, and don't wanna be ahead, but just more comparible.

It is a fine line between "I wanna do good damage" to "I wanna do all the damage" but I do suppose some folks assume the more extreme outcome.

Biggest example I see is for example Dex to Damage. Dex characters, especially those coming from Pathfinder 1E and D&D 5E, are prone to chafe at the fact there is no dex to damage. And in the case of 1E, that there isn't so much as a way to add dex to damage (with the one exception being a thief rogue, which I frankly feel dex to damage does not even feel that thematic for a thief rogue, on top of making it really hard for players to choose anything aside from thief or ruffian).

[Tridus]

The only time I ever see "selfish" thrown around in terms of builds or CharOp is when its talking about a "selfish build", which just means a build that doesn't bring anything to the table that helps anyone else and is focused on itself.

That's not a value judgement on if thats a bad thing or not, it's just a statement on what the build is doing. Its usually perfectly fine to have one of those in a party, especially if other characters are buffing/debuffing/otherwise creating advantages to be used, because having someone take advantage of that to take foes out is useful.

But honestly, half this post reads like someone created a problem so they could argue against it because I have no clue what they're talking about. Damage is functionally the goal of attacking, there's no "crusade" against it.

(DPR often gets oversold in terms of its value as an analysis tool and people make a big deal out of small white-room differences that don't actually matter very much in real play, but that's a different thing entirely.)

[Belafon]

Fabios wrote:

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

I think I am in the wrong thread...I never seen damage being considered selfish. It's a core part of game play though?

i've unironically seen damage being considered selfish and not an important part of the game, it might be the reddit effect but it's insane how people stop listening the SECOND you say "dpr" even if contextualized

It's not a "crusade against damage." But you are right that saying "DPR" does usually lead to a response of "don't focus on damage." I'll offer three points.

1) Especially for those who play/organize PFS, there's a desire to see less-than-optimized characters. For a very noble reason: new players who sit at a table with a dominating damage dealer may not feel like the game is for them. This was more of a problem in PFS1, where I saw more than one player decide not to come back after a player with high system mastery (and low social understanding) ended fights in one round before anyone else could act.

2) There are players who come from MMOs and Pathfinder is their first experience with a tabletop RPG. People saying "don't worry about DPS" really are trying to help new players understand that it's easy to succeed without high DPS. And that you can be a much more rounded character.

3) Start your thread with "Theorycrafting:" Many people (including me) are happy to engage in min-maxing and that word signals that you understand your are working in hypotheticals.

[graystone]

For myself, once a thread gets into DPS talk, it's about the time I stop paying attention: People start pulling out charts and graphs and walls of text that go on for dozens of paragraphs. I'm just not interested enough to wade through them when the conclusion is often a point or 2 of damage difference than whatever comparison point there is[and lets not get into what buffs are expected/should be added into the equations].

Now if it's about DPS in a more general sense [you know, someone isn't figuring it out down to the decimal point], then I don't mind.

Fabios wrote:

2- the technical argument:

"Once you really think about It you realize that damage Isn't important at all" well, i might sound mean for what i'm going to Say, but then you (you as impersonal) Haven't thought about It enough.
Any Given fight Is fundamentally a race between Two cars, damage Is the ONLY thing that makes the cars go forward, everything else (heal, utility) Is setting back the other car.
-ps: technically buffs put a multiplier on how fast the car Is going, so there's that.
Both are equally important! If the car doesn't go forward you'll lose, if the other car goes faster and you don't hold It back you'll lose too!

Well, using the car analogy, it's a team of cars vs a team of cars and no individual car has to cross the finish line. Some cars might block other cars, slowing them down. Some might actively boost your car. And some might just let you bypass the entire racetrack altogether.

When you look at it this way, as a team, you can see that JUST thinking about DPS would be bad. For instance, it might help the team more for a 'car' to move into flank even if that drops it's DPS. So it's not so much 'don't think about damage' but 'don't focus on just damage'.

[Ruzza]

Yeah, I think I'm siding with the thread when the topic shifts from "here's a great way to deal damage" to "here is an optimal way to deal damage (and why you shouldn't do X)". It's tough when you run a game, especially in Organized Play, and someone tells another player that they made their character wrong because it's not good enough. The recent thread on Fury Barbarians is a pretty good example of that. I recently had a new player join a group of mine and say "I wanted to play a sorcerer, but I read that spellcasting was bad for damage, so I decided on a fighter instead." It was a little disheartening.

[PossibleCabbage]

The admonition of "don't care so much about DPR" is mostly to remind people that white room calculations are not necessarily all that actual gameplay that might involve a wide array of different game states not represented in white room assumptions.

Like the name of the game, from a GM/designer perspective is "give the PCs a bunch of different puzzles that can't all be solved in the same way" and not every combat puzzle is best solved by "the most efficient combat loop for each character executed independently."

[Farien]

Lightning Raven wrote:

I'll just say one thing, if you're doing any damage at all, you're doing it wrong.

Hah. For once the disability of not being allowed to use Strike means that I am doing something right.

[Finoan]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I don't know that DPR is attacked on this forum, but as a person who has been under attack many times for being combat focused, that does happen on these forums. If your group is more combat focused and prefers a combat focused game including min-maxing for combat, then you'll definitely find a vocal group resistant to that type of gaming.

It's not the whole forum or anything, but a vocal minority who don't care for that type of game or viewing game balance and rules through that focus.

From the other side of the debate, what I find myself arguing against is not 'hey, I personally like combat centered games'.

Usually it is someone coming along saying something like:

'This feat is terrible because it doesn't do much in combat. Why did the developers even write this?'

'This weapon is a bad choice because there is this other weapon that exists and has almost the same traits, but has a bigger damage die size.'

'Why do we even have to pay for skill feats? Why not just get all the skill feats automatically other than the small handful of ones that actually have a purpose in combat?'

So there is also a vocal minority that are resistant to the idea that there is any type of gaming other than combat centered and will view all game balance and rules through that focus.

[Kaspyr2077]

Finoan wrote:

From the other side of the debate, what I find myself arguing against is not 'hey, I personally like combat centered games'.

Usually it is someone coming along saying something like:

'This feat is terrible because it doesn't do much in combat. Why did the developers even write this?'

'This weapon is a bad choice because there is this other weapon that exists and has almost the same traits, but has a bigger damage die size.'

'Why do we even have to pay for skill feats? Why not just get all the skill feats automatically other than the small handful of ones that actually have a purpose in combat?'

So there is also a vocal minority that are resistant to the idea that there is any type of gaming other than combat centered and will view all game balance and rules through that focus.

There are definite portions of the game that are non-combat, and those are can be great fun. I wouldn't want to take that away. I highly enjoy roleplaying and non-combat challenges.

That said, two of the examples you provide are examples of people protesting trap options. If a weapon is very much like another weapon, but demonstrably worse, then it should probably just be modeled using the superior weapon. If there's a class feat that is presented as a viable choice for that level's class feat slot, but almost exclusively relevant outside combat, why is it in that slot? That's where combat feats go. Make it a skill feat.

As much as there are parts of the game that aren't combat, the vast majority of the rules of this game are combat-focused, and it would be an odd game where combat took a backseat to non-combat challenges, in terms of dice rolled. In fact, I would suggest that such a campaign could probably be better run with a system designed specifically for that kind of play.

The game is a game, after all, as much as it includes social and roleplay elements. Examinations of how the game part is most effectively played do get some amount of pushback in the TTRPG community, which is kind of shocking, to me. Chess is a social game too, and winning a chess match isn't as much fun as enjoying your time playing, but no one gets smug about being a mediocre chess player that isn't interested in playing more effectively. That's in a game where the majority of games are done within an hour, have no bearing on how the next game unfolds, and more than half of players end a game with a loss or a draw. TTRPGs are a potentially years-long, progressive, collaborative effort where outcomes affect the next part of the game and losing can end everything, but there's an odd stigma in parts of the community against playing to win.

[Deriven Firelion]

Finoan wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I don't know that DPR is attacked on this forum, but as a person who has been under attack many times for being combat focused, that does happen on these forums. If your group is more combat focused and prefers a combat focused game including min-maxing for combat, then you'll definitely find a vocal group resistant to that type of gaming.

It's not the whole forum or anything, but a vocal minority who don't care for that type of game or viewing game balance and rules through that focus.

From the other side of the debate, what I find myself arguing against is not 'hey, I personally like combat centered games'.

Usually it is someone coming along saying something like:

'This feat is terrible because it doesn't do much in combat. Why did the developers even write this?'

'This weapon is a bad choice because there is this other weapon that exists and has almost the same traits, but has a bigger damage die size.'

'Why do we even have to pay for skill feats? Why not just get all the skill feats automatically other than the small handful of ones that actually have a purpose in combat?'

So there is also a vocal minority that are resistant to the idea that there is any type of gaming other than combat centered and will view all game balance and rules through that focus.

I believe that underpowered options are as bad as overpowered options myself. I offer the information in the hopes that the game is balanced even tighter so someone doesn't have to take an option for roleplay purposes that is vastly inferior.

Just as people hate imbalanced, overpowered options that overshadow everyone, players should dislike underpowered options that if you take them you end up overshadowed even by those taking baseline options.

[RPG-Geek]

Finoan wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I don't know that DPR is attacked on this forum, but as a person who has been under attack many times for being combat focused, that does happen on these forums. If your group is more combat focused and prefers a combat focused game including min-maxing for combat, then you'll definitely find a vocal group resistant to that type of gaming.

It's not the whole forum or anything, but a vocal minority who don't care for that type of game or viewing game balance and rules through that focus.

From the other side of the debate, what I find myself arguing against is not 'hey, I personally like combat centered games'.

Usually it is someone coming along saying something like:

'This feat is terrible because it doesn't do much in combat. Why did the developers even write this?'

'This weapon is a bad choice because there is this other weapon that exists and has almost the same traits, but has a bigger damage die size.'

'Why do we even have to pay for skill feats? Why not just get all the skill feats automatically other than the small handful of ones that actually have a purpose in combat?'

So there is also a vocal minority that are resistant to the idea that there is any type of gaming other than combat centered and will view all game balance and rules through that focus.

The issue is that most tables are far more strict about the rules in combat than they are outside of it and a GM rarely ends in a TPK because you failed a skill check. Thus the balance ends up focused on combat because in the vast majority of cases, it's the only spot where that balance matters.

[25speedforseaweedleshy]

how to do better dps healing support and debuff

what else would player be wasting thousand of hour trying to figure out

[ElementalofCuteness]

"Wasting", you don't waste time trying to figure this stuff out you invest time to try to optimize. Simply by saying it is wasting time you're saying many thins now are wasting time. Perhaps we should not look to optimize and just5 play classes as they are, Fighters with double slice and 2 weapons, Barbarian with big stick, so forth. No thought just build.

People aren't crusading about damage they just crusade about anything in general really.

[Dragonchess Player]

Belafon wrote:

Fabios wrote:

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

I think I am in the wrong thread...I never seen damage being considered selfish. It's a core part of game play though?

i've unironically seen damage being considered selfish and not an important part of the game, it might be the reddit effect but it's insane how people stop listening the SECOND you say "dpr" even if contextualized

It's not a "crusade against damage." But you are right that saying "DPR" does usually lead to a response of "don't focus on damage."

I would just like to add nuance to this, that should be emphasized with PF2.

The response is usually not "don't focus on damage," but "don't focus only on damage." The PF2 paradigm with MAP and the three action turn usually makes using one of the three actions to move, add a bonus to another character, or impose a penalty/status effect on an enemy more effective than trying to maximize your character's damage for the round. PF2 is set up so the entire party is supposed to contribute in every round of every fight; the DPR for the party as a whole relative to the DPR from the opponent(s) is more important than the DPR of any single character.

[exequiel759]

Finoan wrote:

Why do we even have to pay for skill feats? Why not just get all the skill feats automatically other than the small handful of ones that actually have a purpose in combat?'

I removed skill feats a long time ago and I don't play in combat-centered tables. I did it because I (and my players) find that is a chore to having to sift through countless feats to pick up the less situational one. Its not about being an "optimizer", its about wasting less time when advancing my character. If everybody already knows which are the best skill feats for each skill, and if it can be easily assumed in 99,9% of scenarios people are going to have those, then it doesn't matter much if players end up having both those and the ones that nobody takes like Read Lips if they meet their prerequisites.

The only skill feats that can theoretically trivialize an encounter (a combat or social encounter, it can apply to both) are Medicine skill feats. If it wasn't that every table has at least one player that specializes into Medicine anyways then this would probably matter, but its just so happens that Medicine has the most good feats out of any skill in the system so people usually default to it because they don't know what to do with their skill feats.

[Agonarchy]

There are myriad scenarios in which raw damage potential does not provide the best chance of success, and building only for damage can result in being unable to attain certain goals. Even in generic combat, a team of spellcasters who focus on damage are a headache when you need a non-lethal outcome, a melee death machine can be a joke at range, etc. Parties that don't delve into skills aren't much use in skill challenges,and you end up seeing GM May I to make every social encounter and investigation somehow run on Athletics or else that sort of play is abandoned, often leading to complaints about sameyness.

This all creates a lot of anxiety around these topics.

[Deriven Firelion]

Agonarchy wrote:

There are myriad scenarios in which raw damage potential does not provide the best chance of success, and building only for damage can result in being unable to attain certain goals. Even in generic combat, a team of spellcasters who focus on damage are a headache when you need a non-lethal outcome, a melee death machine can be a joke at range, etc. Parties that don't delve into skills aren't much use in skill challenges,and you end up seeing GM May I to make every social encounter and investigation somehow run on Athletics or else that sort of play is abandoned, often leading to complaints about sameyness.

This all creates a lot of anxiety around these topics.

You do not have to give up combat power to have the necessary social and non-combat skills, spells, and abilities to solve non-combat encounters. Non-combat encounters often don't involve the entire party in equal measure and can lead to the table focusing on the player who invests in non-combat skills and social encounters creating an over focus on that player.

Combat is the main element of the game that involves everyone because everyone has combat abilities that are supposed to be somewhat balanced, but not everyone can build for every non-combat skill or ability or spell. Thus if you spend too much time in non-combat scenarios, you are often going to leave players out of many encounters twiddling their thumbs.

In PF2 given the specialization and reliance on skill checks with stats like charisma being necessary, that can be a lot of classes left out of non-combat scenarios.

In old school D&D this wasn't as much of an issue because you could role-play and interact without needing a skill feat or skill check for every interaction. So you could build role-playing encounters for all. But since 3rd edition and especially in PF2, you really need to have the proper skills and skill feats and spells to progress many non-combat encounters and given the low number of skill ups and specific stat spreads for classes, only some classes will have the character building resources to be good at non-combat encounters such as a party or negotiation.

For some reason on these forums, these discussions tend to make it seem like every class can build these amazing non-combat characters even if their a barbarian or fighter with limited character building resources for these specializations. Even if they try, a rogue or investigator with many skill increases will be better or a charisma caster with a high charisma and spells or a wizard who can change their spells out and a high intelligence.

So that idea that everyone can be good at combat and good at non-combat encounters isn't at all how the game is built as well as the idea that a party, rather than individual, can have the necessary non-combat resources to handle most non-combat encounters without letting the game overly focus on non-combat encounters to the boredom of players playing classes not built for it.

So as a DM, I tend to focus more on combat because it keeps everyone involved while also including enough non-combat puzzles so players who have built for non-combat encounters also get to shine in those scenarios.

It's a balancing act and the overall resources are spread across a party without the expectation every class must somehow build to be good at non-combat encounters even if their class resources are not setup for it.

[Agonarchy]

The focus on combat reducing the non-combat viability is indeed one of the anxieties. Pathfinder does at least try to have a large enough variety of sorts that some will hit right, but inflexible characters struggle with them and tend to get repetitive in how they impact anything. Incidentally, this is part of why I love kineticists - you can solve a lot of weird problems with Extended Kinesis. Very full backpacks help, too - I keep finding new uses for a pair of False Manacles, and a net is quite versatile.

In PFS, I have, on multiple occasions, been the only member of the party with a ranged attack, though often I use a bola or a net because otherwise it's going to be a very useless round for everyone else. Now this is very correctable with gear alone, and does not interfere with damage Char Op, but it comes from tunnel vision often associated with that damage focus. Moreover, a small portion of players get fixated on that perfect damage round that will justify their build and spend combat after combat frustrated at having failed to hit that high.

These are all people problems rather than craft problems, but they do create experiences at many tables which leave a bad impression, and occasionally lead to very aggressive discussions when someone wants to rules lawyer a loophole using awkward logic.

[Tunu40]

On both Reddit/this forum/YouTube, I’ve never seen a “crusade against damage”. (There’s literally a recent thread here on why Animist blasting is amazing.)

If anything, the only “anti-damage” advice (which is hardly that) is just arguing NOT to use 3rd action for another Strike (at -10 MAP) and rather use it for something else. Which IS smart and IS meant to focus on improving your damage (because a downed PC does no damage).

There’s direct damage and indirect damage, and there are LOT’S of a ways to do indirect damage. Even Mark (Seifter) and Linda on Arcane Mark have gone into this topic on game design and what makes better game design. PF2e is setup so that putting some effort into teamwork with a single action can offer more damage than lazily Striking another time rather than setting up a Flank (which…would’ve helped you too).

But most combat encounters cannot end without doing damage. So, arguing the community is against damage…is the weirdest argument I’ve heard.

[SuperBidi]

I understand the feeling. It's not really a crusade against damage but a crusade against damage from certain classes/builds.
Like if you complain that your Cleric doesn't do enough damage or if you speak about damage optimization on a Bard, people will react negatively.

So it's not really that damage in and by itself is disregarded but that people have an extreme view of party coordination pushing damage aside any time a character is supposed to be party focused and not damage focused.

I personally think that party coordination is overvalued in general (not just on this forum). A lot of players will value far more an ability that helps the party compared to an ability that just deals damage even when both abilites have the same actual impact on combat.

[Claxon]

Fabios wrote:

...it might be the reddit effect...

I used to use Reddit a lot, but the quality had gone down over time and when they killed off third party apps I quit using it altogether.

I suggest you avoid Reddit for Pathfinder (and D&D) related things.

[arcady]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

The reddit is a different beast then the Paizo Forums. They are like two vastly different cousins who argue all the time

As someone who posts on the reddit a lot, they also almost never agree with themselves.

You can post the same thing on a Tuesday or Wednesday and get 100 upvotes in minutes or a 100 downvotes just as fast depending on who's on coffee-break.

[arcady]

To the OPs thought.

You might be able to get a community consensus around the idea that:

Damage isn't everything. A greater chance of "Success" takes multiple factors.

The 'stop focusing on damage' seems to come as a 'snipe' at people coming in from other tRPGs where there are not as many options to do things other than damage.

It is less people saying:
'damage is not important'

and more people saying:
'look at the wider picture in Pathfinder 2E, because you're going to win a lot easier is your team does multiple things; some of which are not straightforward damage.'

[ElementalofCuteness]

arcady wrote:

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

The reddit is a different beast then the Paizo Forums. They are like two vastly different cousins who argue all the time

As someone who posts on the reddit a lot, they also almost never agree with themselves.

You can post the same thing on a Tuesday or Wednesday and get 100 upvotes in minutes or a 100 downvotes just as fast depending on who's on coffee-break.

Feels like those people on Tuesday aren't the same ones on Wednesday, it's so weird and as someone who tried posting on the Reddit, it gets suepr confusing!

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

The way I look at it is that if I have a character who is a spell caster or a kineticist, that means that I can potentially have multiple tools, each specialized for different situations.

YOU ALWAYS WANT AT LEAST ONE RELIABLE DAMAGE TOOL.

Doing damage in combat is almost always useful and is often fun. That's why there are so many blaster casters out there.

But I love having other tools. With your fire / earth / wood kineticist, I would also want:

* Some reliable healing - like wood's produce option
* Some damage reduction, whether its armor for me, or walls that the party can hide behind
* Some utility, like those steps that earth kineticists can set up for other players so that the whole party can climb
* Some area damage for swarms.

Blasting is awesome. But it is nice having the other tools available for when you need them.

And if you have a reliable party, you can have some funky teamwork. When my wood kineticist creates a hail of splinters, my friend Bret casts feral shades -- which lowers enemy's fort saves if they are already bleeding.

TL/DR: Damage is great, but damage plus a few utility options is AWESOME.

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

Wegrata -

Perhaps you misread my post?

I am all about enjoying your own thing and respecting it. The only thing that I said was mandatory was having at least one reliable damage tool. Was that the problem with my post? If so, I will stand by it. I don't care what class you are playing. Even the bardiest of bards needs to be able to do some damage with one of their tools, if only for self-protection. A single damaging cantrip will serve this purpose.

Everything else in my post was 'I love having other tools' or 'I would also want' (which is the same as saying 'in my opinion, it's best to have other tools' but a little less wordy.)

Have a lovely day, whatever your characters choose to do.

Hmm

[Shanwolf]

I think one thing DPR as a focus can generate is a feeling that if you're not at X DPR level then you're messing up/ playing it wrong etc, and I believe that's not the overall experience PF2e is trying to generate for players.

Look, there are games where DPR/DPS/etc matters a *LOT* but I think the damage to the social aspect (especially in places like society play) far outweighs the benefit of a focus on DPR/DPS as a community.

the funny thing is? You *can* do both in this space. Easily. but you have to be aware that folks are going to tell you DPR doesn't matter because if it does? things like "Optimal build paths" begin to matter, and that's not the vibe PF2e is going for.

I can understand the frustration, and the vibe of the community means a lot, and if the vibe is rejecting DPR/DPS as a metric for tracking class balance, etc? There might be a reason for that.

[SuperBidi]

Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:

YOU ALWAYS WANT AT LEAST ONE RELIABLE DAMAGE TOOL.

I'd even insist on that: Reliable and efficient. For example, I don't consider cantrips to be efficient past the first levels.

Far too often, because of circumstances, I've seen a character forced into damage dealing when it was not their primary role. And those who were not able to deal reliable and efficient damage really crippled the party. TPKs (and character deaths) don't happen when the Paladin tanks, the Bard buffs, the Fighter hacks and the Cleric heals. TPKs happen because something goes wrong. And if the Fighter can't somehow hack and the only answer of the Paladin, Bard and Cleric is "Damage is not my role." then the TPK will be on the table.

Party coordination is important and extremely efficient but when crap hits the fan it's the first thing that goes down.

[Tridus]

SuperBidi wrote:

Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:

YOU ALWAYS WANT AT LEAST ONE RELIABLE DAMAGE TOOL.

I'd even insist on that: Reliable and efficient. For example, I don't consider cantrips to be efficient past the first levels.

Far too often, because of circumstances, I've seen a character forced into damage dealing when it was not their primary role. And those who were not able to deal reliable and efficient damage really crippled the party. TPKs (and character deaths) don't happen when the Paladin tanks, the Bard buffs, the Fighter hacks and the Cleric heals. TPKs happen because something goes wrong. And if the Fighter can't somehow hack and the only answer of the Paladin, Bard and Cleric is "Damage is not my role." then the TPK will be on the table.

Party coordination is important and extremely efficient but when crap hits the fan it's the first thing that goes down.

Definitely true, but also in a broader sense: if the Cleric is dying and no one has any ability to help them, death is on the table. Someone having Soothe/Lay on Hands/An Elixir of Life available in a pinch lets someone else do "the Cleric's role" long enough to save them.

Having multiple people able to do something is a good thing in general in PF2. They won't be as good at it as a specialist, but they don't need to be: more people able to contribute when it comes up is a big help.

That applies to most things, rather than just damage. Damage is one that it's useful for everyone to be able to do, but having two people able to do anything is better than having only one person that can do it since you have a backup.

[SuperBidi]

Tridus wrote:

Definitely true, but also in a broader sense

I definitely agree for healing. Actually, 2 secondary healers are better than a primary healer as their combined healing output is vastly superior when you need a healing spike.

But there are other domains where twice doesn't help as diminishing returns are too steep. Buffs and debuffs for example: There's no point in having 2 characters able to cast Bless or Inspire Courage, both bonuses won't stack and even if they're nice to have these buffs are not as high priority as damage and healing.
Same goes with skills. Having 2 average trapsmiths may actually end up with no ability to disarm a trap (if they don't have maxed out proficiency) when a single focused trapsmiths should be able to deal with all traps all alone. 2 out of combat medics are also rather useless as you can't double Treat Wound a character. Etc...

So, I'd say there's no strict rule.