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Let me see if I can focus this a little more. The kineticist is fine for AOE damage. They have lots of useful and good options.
I think the kineticist needs more single target impulses. Even if two actions, impulses that hit a single target for good damage would be an impulse niche that would be highly useful.
Having nearly every decent attack impulse focused on AOE is overkill for AOE.
They put in the game a way to use AOE without hitting your allies called Safe Elements, but they made it cost one action while many of your major impulses are 3 action overflow impulses. So you can't even use Safe Elements with these impulses.
Safe Elements also feels like an action tax to be able to hit targets in smaller or single target fights. So you no longer are able to use a 2 action impulse and a blast to try to land a decent single target hit on a boss. You instead would have to use safe elements to drop a ignite the sun or scorching column in combination.
I think if they add more content for a kineticist, a few single target attack impulses for each element would be really useful to round out the kineticist abilities.
This post wasn't just about comparative damage, but out a lack of tools for the kineticist in smaller fights.
First of all, thanks for your answer, I agree with you on the subject.
I'm kind of worried of some kind of power creep if the kineticist were to get single target impulses, though. If they were to have at least a modicum of interest, they would need to deal more damage than AOE ones (obviously). But at the same time, they're supposed to be weaker than single target spells, since they're an unlimited resource.
So we have very little wiggle room between basically 1d8/spell level (2 action overflow progression) while being weaker than the like of Phantom Pain, Sudden Bolt or Spirit blast.
And being able to one-action hit + two-action cast is a gish metric, and has been severely reined in by Paizo (through bonded casting or reduced martial abilities).
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Let me see if I can focus this a little more. The kineticist is fine for AOE damage. They have lots of useful and good options.
I think the kineticist needs more single target impulses. Even if two actions, impulses that hit a single target for good damage would be an impulse niche that would be highly useful.
But wouldn't that make them too powerful? They're already winning the AoE, utility, control, healing contest when compared to most other martials ( to a greater or lesser extent depending on the respective builds). And even in single opponent combat the fact that they're such a superb switch hitter with access to many different attacks forms makes up for a fair bit of their lower raw output.
As I said earlier, most of my experience with kineticists is at less than L15+. But in the battles that I've seen against single opponents the kineticists main contribution has NOT been damage. It's been control and utility with a soupcon of healing. The damage has been more the cherry on top. But they definitely shine far less bright in single enemy fights.
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I take Opportune Backstab on fighters and barbarians and nearly any martial since even at level 16 Opportune Backstab is great and easy to set up. I also take Gang up on almost all martials to make flanking easy so we don't have to position on each side of a creature.
This is completely a tangent but this surprises me and I'm curious as to your reasoning. Also hoping it will shed a little more light on what happens at your tables.
Unless you're playing Free Archetype there is a pretty substantial cost to getting Gang Up and Opportune Backstab. Even with Free Archetype a character that would normally be using Bulwark needs to invest in Dex.
That cost in both feats and buying Dex is going to be felt more if you're actually playing the character from Level 1 and if you value the out of combat utility which comes with decent Int or Cha.
I take Opportune Backstab on fighters and barbarians and nearly any martial since even at level 16 Opportune Backstab is great and easy to set up. I also take Gang up on almost all martials to make flanking easy so we don't have to position on each side of a creature.
This is completely a tangent but this surprises me and I'm curious as to your reasoning. Also hoping it will shed a little more light on what happens at your tables.
Unless you're playing Free Archetype there is a pretty substantial cost to getting Gang Up and Opportune Backstab. Even with Free Archetype a character that would normally be using Bulwark needs to invest in Dex.
That cost in both feats and buying Dex is going to be felt more if you're actually playing the character from Level 1 and if you value the out of combat utility which comes with decent Int or Cha.
Praise be to multitalented half elves. Though you only really need gang up on one martial in the party since the buff.
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Praise be to multitalented half elves. Though you only really need gang up on one martial in the party since the buff.
I take Opportune Backstab on fighters and barbarians and nearly any martial since even at level 16 Opportune Backstab is great and easy to set up. I also take Gang up on almost all martials to make flanking easy so we don't have to position on each side of a creature.
This is completely a tangent but this surprises me and I'm curious as to your reasoning. Also hoping it will shed a little more light on what happens at your tables.
Unless you're playing Free Archetype there is a pretty substantial cost to getting Gang Up and Opportune Backstab. Even with Free Archetype a character that would normally be using Bulwark needs to invest in Dex.
That cost in both feats and buying Dex is going to be felt more if you're actually playing the character from Level 1 and if you value the out of combat utility which comes with decent Int or Cha.
Fair. But even if you get the dedication that way you're still spending 2 L10+ feats.
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If I were to throw my thoughts into this thread it be Kineticists trade Damage for things other classes can only hope and dream to do. Yeah they deal low damage but when you compare it to a low level campaign where i was a Metal & Wood Kineticist with Timber Sentinel, my DM had a problem whenever I planted a tree, it would make most fights meaningless because we were smart and tactical to deal with the enemies who would ignore the tree. (Aka not trying to hurt the ones next to the tree).
The point is if you try to optimize damage on a Kineticist you are wasting what the class was built for, doing everything, averagely. Yeah you can do a crazy 2+ Kineticist death machine.
Reaction attacks are easy to set up in well built groups. We get them all the time.
The rogue has one of the easiest to activate reactions with Opportune Backstab.
I take Opportune Backstab on fighters and barbarians and nearly any martial since even at level 16 Opportune Backstab is great and easy to set up. I also take Gang up on almost all martials to make flanking easy so we don't have to position on each side of a creature.
So not sure why anyone thinks Reactions are hard to set off. In a coordinated group, reactions are very easy to set up and activate, especially Opportune Backstab which requires an ally to land a melee hit on the same target.
I have had zero problems getting Opportune Backstab to activate in battles. Not sure why anyone would consider it a difficult to use reaction unless they didn't know how to play the game or have much experience.
The rogue Roshan in my campaign has not taken Opportune Backstab, because Roshan is 7th level and Opportune Backstab is an 8th-level feat. She has taken Gang Up.
a hasted rogue attacking multiple times and getting their reaction is the game working as intended and not some special set up.I think you need to change that statement to
A hasted rogue attacking multiple times and getting their reaction is the game working IN ONE OF THE WAYS THAT IT IS intended.
Its very clear from your posts that your table works differently than a great many tables. Some of that difference seems to be that your table does a lot of optimization of both individual characters and of the group as a whole. There seem to be other differences but I haven't been able to figure out what they are.
And that is just fine. You presumably are all having fun and have found balance points that work for your hyper optimizing groups. ...
The player characters in my campaigns have faced combat as difficult as Deriven Firelion's characters have faced. Rather than optimizing for intense damage, they optimized for tactics. They will identify enemy strengths and then switch to a group tactic that nullifies that strength, reducing their opponent to a block of tofu (I like Inkfist's metaphor). Under this strategy, the versatility of a kineticist makes up for their low single-target damage.
For example, a recent battle was against the 8th-level tripkee crime boss Froglegs and her gang. The party was supposed to have this battle at 6th level, but I sent them after the final boss Salathiss early, so they had leveled up to 7th. The party gave themselves the extra challenge of capturing all gang members alive for a fair trial.
Froglegs had "Deny Advantage Froglegs isn't flat-footed to creatures of 8th level or lower that are hidden, undetected, flanking, or using surprise attack." Flanking, including Gang Up, did not work against her. Fortunately, the rogue Roshan was built differently than most rogues. Her player knew that a party of mostly spellcasters would seldom engage in melee to flank, so she had trained, experted, and mastered Athletics. She would typically Trip low-Reflex creatures and Grapple low-Fortitude creatures to render them off-guard to everybody, which was handy for those spellcasters and the archer magus making attacks from a distance. Thus, she Grappled Froglegs. Froglegs was slippery (pun about tripkees intended) and escaped the grapple, but that cost her an Escape action every turn.
With a seven-member party and a Chime-Ringer runesmith NPC who returned for this police arrest, the party can deal damage to a single target by massively outnumbering them. Their weakness is that individually they are squishy, so nerfing the single foe's counterattacks helps keep them healthy. Different tactics for different parties.
I was also amused earlier in the encounters to see Roshan get critical successes in Grappling an ordinary gang member. The other party members quicky slapped handcuffs and leg manacles on the restrained perpetrator to capture them without beating them unconscious. I had to add more Chime-Ringer police NPCs just to guard the captured gang members who were still awake. Watching unexpected clever solutions is why I gamemaster.
The issue with having a martial being buffed multiple times/ or enemies being debuffed multiple times before anyone else acts is while it is *a* solution to encounter, it's often not *the* best solution to encounters. For every time 'buff the VIP' works, there is often one where a sixth rank 'slow' or a 'chain lightning', or even something like a 'banishment' offers more impact or will speed up encounters faster than spending multiple turns buffing one party member.
What I learned from this thread is that a rogue is easier to buff than a kineticist. That is a significant advantage in a party that uses teamwork.
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I am on the camp of the rogue vs kineticist damage comparison isn't super fair. I understand why you're making the post, and not denying your actual play experience, but it's hard to imagine a rogue hitting a strong enemy 4 to 5 times every round. It's also not the fairest comparison because using your damage numbers, I doubt theres a martial out there that comes very close to it.
That being said, I do think it is crappy that the game doesn't have options to support kineticist more, unless I'm missing some good options. Some spells that buffed kineticist damage (in some way shape or form) would be very welcome. Directly buffing kineticist damage so that it can compete with one of the strongest classes in the game that has the support of their team behind them is a little power creepy.
The whole premise is questionable, kinda like asking "why doesn't this screwdriver hammer nails as well as the hammer?"
The question becomes a lot more reasonable when we find out just how common nails are though. Adventure design has lots of bosses, minibosses, med threat solos, duos, and trios that don't quite line up perfectly and not that many 4+ enemies all clumped together fights (and even those tend to be better caster showcases than kineticist ones).
To me it's the argument itself that's questionable. The idea that a whole category of very common fight should just be something the Kineticist struggles to be relevant in is... weird? I'm not sure how that makes the game better.
Naturally the argument is that martials are bad at AoE, which is usually true, but the ability to quickly pop individual enemies in larger fights is significantly more valuable than the kineticist's ability to do negligible damage in smaller fights, so I think even there the balance is a bit skewed. It hasn't been that uncommon for me as a GM to see a kineticist land an AoE on three targets (ostensibly a good moment for them) only for the Barbarian to wade up and overkill 1-2 enemies with enough damage that the kineticist's contribution never mattered (admittedly this is mostly at low levels and parts of this thread are talking about high levels).
... I think the utility argument is a bit peculiar too. While some kineticists have great utility, the OP's example involved a pyrokineticist and a rogue. The pyrokinetic has very mediocre utility and is inherently kind of bad at skills and is doing nothing but damage if they're blast spamming for single target. The rogue excels in skills and at levels 9+ is applying debilitations on top of doing their excellent damage automatically.
IDK how we look at that example and say the kineticist has too much utility.
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Yeah, reading over this thread, it seems like the bigger issue isn't that kinnies are lacking in single target damage (it's a little on the stingy side but still a fair tradeoff for everything else they can do), but that they're much harder to support.
You can build an entire party around a rogue, thanks to how much of the rogue's kit is centered around exploiting advantages created by teammates. So, in a party that works together well--providing buffs, debuffs, positioning, et cetera--the rogue goes off like a hydrogen bomb.
Kinnies just kinda... operate about the same... regardless of how much the party invests in them. Which makes sense as they're designed to be the self-sufficient, fit-anywhere, go-all-day class, but it hurts them in hyper-optimized parties. You don't need area control and multi-target blasts if you have a wizard. You don't need perpetual healing if you have a cleric. You don't need defense if you have a champion or guardian. Kinnies pay to have access to all these things at once by giving up single-target damage and skill progression--two things rogues really excel at--but that access just isn't needed in a gang of dedicated specialists.
Add to that, kinnies benefit less from party buffs and such because impulse blasts don't count as strikes for some reason (which is easily fixable via houserule, but a lot of people prefer to run RAW for one reason or another). Plus they don't really have any abilities that ping off of receiving support (save for the usual "get them to clump up and lower their saves" stuff that every caster appreciates). So instead of the rogue's massive spikes in efficacy (which become baseline in an especially coordinated party), kinnies just run at a consistent, reliable pace that ramps up nicely when there are multiple opponents on the field, but that's it.
So like... is the kineticist bad? On the contrary, I'd say it's excellent: it's consistently been the star performer in my home game and PFS sessions. But these are, notably, not hyper-optimized environments: my close friends and local society members are just playing what looks cool. Thus, a class that can easily take on multiple roles without asking for much from the party in return does a great job. My wife's hyper-mobile AoE machine fire/air kinnie will probably fall off if the allied druid and monk ever figure out how to coordinate, and that one wood kineticist who keeps showing up at my FLGS on Friday nights absolutely rocks unless he's asked to share space with more dedicated defenders and healers.
Meanwhile, in these more casual environments, rogues have kind of... sucked? They're too weak defensively to handle the frontline by themselves, they absolutely need a measure of team support and coordination to keep their spiky damage consistent, and while the skills are nice, most casual/PFS environments have multiple ways around a problem, so you're rarely screwed for lacking coverage. So this absolute monster of a class in the hands of an expert turns out to be kind of "meh" for casuals and beginners.
So like... I don't think Deriven Firelion is wrong to notice kinnies underperforming in his personal games. They're designed to flexibly fit into any party and sustainably provide whatever their chosen elements are good at. However, they don't spike. That means an optimized party--one that bends the game into making those spikes happen as often as possible--has little need for them.
Is this lack of spikiness a design failure? I don't know! I kind of like having classes that are so accessible and immediately impactful for new players, and I love my jacks-of-all-trades that can help hold unbalanced parties together and open up more options for everyone else. Seeing kineticists drop off as coordinated players gain system mastery is a bummer, but every class's success is dependent on having the right play environment (see: 90% of optimized martial builds becoming exercises in misery as soon as you take away caster support and give a bird a gun).
As for the original question posed by this thread, I think single-target options could probably be better, but considering everything else a kineticist can do, it might be too much of a boost. Doing something equally well as a dedicated specialist while also doing a billion other things is how you make that specialist obsolete. I also agree with others in that OP's analysis is a bit skewed--he's comparing a whole party's worth of teamwork to the output of one character--but considering how difficult kinnies are to actually support, I'm willing to forgive this oversight.
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Kins get plenty of benefit from off-guard and standard bonuses while being able to control the battlefield in absurd ways with little risk. They can create all kinds of control combos and bottlenecks and solve problems in ways that are hard to match. They don't turn into rocket tag but who needs to when you can just seal the enemy in with a barrier and blast them through a murder hole. They can be a *slow* class, but they can turn the battlefield into a tomb.
You probably shouldn't count Furnace Form if you're not gonna count Haste, they have the same upfront action investment and duration. Though Furnace Form damage would also increase quite a bit if you're getting hit back by the target for even more guaranteed weakness procs.
The whole calculation of adding just the damage values together is kind of misleading anyhow as these damages all have various different odds of applying (some happen always, some on anything but a crit success, some using a Basic save, some with an attack roll). They'd need their own multipliers.But yeah, all in all I'd say Deriven gives a decent synopsis of the classes' general peaks and valleys there. One more thing to mention would be that you are bad at skills, which hurts unless the challenge in question just happens to be solvable with the Base Kinesis of your respective element(s).
I don't count furnace form because it slows down how fast you get into the fight.
You can be indefinately in furnace form, no reason to wait for combat to get into it.
It's a permanent buff since you can sustain it as a free action early on, and later on it's just 2 actions/minute to keep it up.
It's like spending actions in combat for the rogue to draw his weapons, no reason he hasn't his weapons out in combat.
You can probably pre-buff that one like the other form spells.
Kins get plenty of benefit from off-guard and standard bonuses while being able to control the battlefield in absurd ways with little risk. They can create all kinds of control combos and bottlenecks and solve problems in ways that are hard to match. They don't turn into rocket tag but who needs to when you can just seal the enemy in with a barrier and blast them through a murder hole. They can be a *slow* class, but they can turn the battlefield into a tomb.
Kineticists operate in groups. People always think only of what the kineticist can do and now what the group is doing. How does the kineticist work within the four person group?
Setting up a barrier is not at all easy. I've found the barrier impulses some of the worst in the game. 3 action overflow impulses that require a sustain. Very difficult to use before level 12. Even after level 15 anything less than a wall of force is a minor inconvenience ripped apart in a round or bypassed.
What is the kineticist doing in a group situation? That is what you must look at. This idea the kineticist is setting up some barrier firing from murder holes while the rest of the group stand around waiting for them to do that is not at all what is happening.
Ok. I can accept the argument that a rogue is not the best comparison since the rogue is the best martial, and arguably the best class in PF2.
What class should kineticist compare to?
Magus. But without the spike damage potential of a crit with a spell slot Spellstrike. That isn't the baseline expectation of Magus, so don't cherry pick that ideal scenario for comparison.
Both are martial/caster hybrids. Magus does it by actually using weapons and spells. Kineticist does it by having spells that behave somewhat like weapons.
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I take Opportune Backstab on fighters and barbarians and nearly any martial since even at level 16 Opportune Backstab is great and easy to set up. I also take Gang up on almost all martials to make flanking easy so we don't have to position on each side of a creature.
This is completely a tangent but this surprises me and I'm curious as to your reasoning. Also hoping it will shed a little more light on what happens at your tables.
Unless you're playing Free Archetype there is a pretty substantial cost to getting Gang Up and Opportune Backstab. Even with Free Archetype a character that would normally be using Bulwark needs to invest in Dex.
That cost in both feats and buying Dex is going to be felt more if you're actually playing the character from Level 1 and if you value the out of combat utility which comes with decent Int or Cha.
I take opportune backstab because it nearly guarantees a reaction attack per round when combined with Reactive Strike. Gang Up guarantees flexible flanking so we can create group flanking easier.
With fighters it's even better because they get two reactions at level 10. So you use one to Reactive Strike hit and one to Opportune Backstab hit since it is so easy to activate with another martial landing a melee strike.
I find opportune backstab and gang up to be superior feats on nearly every martial class over what they can take as innate class feats. Gang up and Opportune Backstab are two of the best martial feats in the game. I take them because their in game value exceeds the value of available options with rare exception.
I even take them on my monk at level 12 and 16.
They are passive. They have one of the easiest triggers for a reaction attack. They work with any weapon. At first I thought Opportune Backstab would only work with rogue weapons. I read it closely and went, "Anyone can use Opportune Backstab with any weapon."
Then it comes down to asking yourself at level 12 and 16, are there any better feats I can take than Gang Up and Opportune Backstab at these levels?
As far as our table, we try to hit as hard and fast as possible focus firing targets to take them off the board reducing the action advantage of the opponent if multiples.
If a single target, use trip, slow, and anything that provides you an action advantage.
Much of our tactical play is based on obtaining action advantages that usually involve damage per action over the enemy. The more offensive actions you can use over an enemy including reactions including reducing the number of actions an enemy can use for offense, the easier it is for your group to win.
The faster you can deploy your attack and damage routine, the faster will eat opposing hit point pools. So classes with faster damage will do more than characters with slow damage routines because hit point pools are a limited resource. Thus the faster you can eat the limited resource, the more damage you have done.
It's one of the reason why I agree with posters like Superbidi that nuke first as heavy as possible because that is when the hit point pie is at its largest. So you can cut off a huge piece of several pies with a big nuke. Then the martials with more precise damage can attack the most reduced pie getting rid of it.
And to bring it back to the original question, passive abilities like Gang Up and Opportune Backstab make everything else you do as a melee martial better by improving your chances of success and allowing you to take full advantage of your reaction off multiple triggers.
Ok. I can accept the argument that a rogue is not the best comparison since the rogue is the best martial, and arguably the best class in PF2.
What class should kineticist compare to?
Magus. But without the spike damage potential of a crit with a spell slot Spellstrike. That isn't the baseline expectation of Magus, so don't cherry pick that ideal scenario for comparison.
Both are martial/caster hybrids. Magus does it by actually using weapons and spells. Kineticist does it by having spells that behave somewhat like weapons.
Magus if a comparison has better single target options than the kineticist, but more limited AOE options with spells. That isn't a bad comparison.
If they are sort of a GISH, then adding a few single target options would still be good for the kineticist.
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I take opportune backstab because it nearly guarantees a reaction attack per round when combined with Reactive Strike. Gang Up guarantees flexible flanking so we can create group flanking easier.
Sorry, I was unclear in what I was asking.
I certainly get how valuable Opportune Backstab is. If I was starting a game at or near L16 I'd very likely take it too. In the Prey for Death game I was in I think every martial (including the Warpriest) had it. I would only rarely bother to take Gang Up, flanks are generally pretty easy to get anyway especially by L12.
But there is a fairly large cost if you're starting the game at L1 and NOT using Free Archetype. You have to have a decent Dex or play a 1/2 Elf. You have to spend at least 3 class feats (or a L9 ancestry feat and two L10+ class feats). All for something that doesn't come on line and doesn't give you a benefit until L16.
While that Dex of +2 is pretty cheap at L16 its costly at lower levels. And 1/2 Elves are rarely seen as the optimizers dream ancestry.
So I guess my question is : Do all of these martials that nearly always take Opportune Backstab start at L1 or do they all start much closer to L16?
I take opportune backstab because it nearly guarantees a reaction attack per round when combined with Reactive Strike. Gang Up guarantees flexible flanking so we can create group flanking easier.
Sorry, I was unclear in what I was asking.
I certainly get how valuable Opportune Backstab is. If I was starting a game at or near L16 I'd very likely take it too. In the Prey for Death game I was in I think every martial (including the Warpriest) had it. I would only rarely bother to take Gang Up, flanks are generally pretty easy to get anyway especially by L12.
But there is a fairly large cost if you're starting the game at L1 and NOT using Free Archetype. You have to have a decent Dex or play a 1/2 Elf. You have to spend at least 3 class feats (or a L9 ancestry feat and two L10+ class feats). All for something that doesn't come on line and doesn't give you a benefit until L16.
While that Dex of +2 is pretty cheap at L16 its costly at lower levels. And 1/2 Elves are rarely seen as the optimizers dream ancestry.
So I guess my question is : Do all of these martials that nearly always take Opportune Backstab start at L1 or do they all start much closer to L16?
We rarely play less than level 12 to 15, so we usually start early always setting up for the higher levels.
Level 2 rogue archetype. Free Surprise attack, a couple of skills, and a skill feat.
Level 4 Mobility.
Level 12 Gang up: Though this isn't as necessary any more since one gang up person gives it to everyone. So we will probably stop taking this one as often after the Remaster.
Level 16: Opportune Backstab.
That's how we usually do it starting early. We all really like the Rogue Archetype. It's the best class archetype in the game, useful to everyone.
We even take it on casters to pick up skill increases later on. Makes it easier to build up knowledge skills for rituals and such.
Not many classes have enough interesting or useful class feats to make taking a class feat better than dipping into the rogue. We see the rogue as the best built class in the game whether the class itself or the archetype. They have such great feats to pick from for martials or casters.
We pretty much always build up the Core 4 stats with casters focusing on main casting stat, Dex, Con, Wis. So the dex requirement of 14 is pretty easy to get.
We also play a lot of humans, so grabbing multitalented can open it up later if someone doesn't pump the dex early.
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We rarely play less than level 12 to 15, so we usually start early always setting up for the higher levels.
Thanks for the answer. That explains a lot.
Characters and groups that started at level 1 and play all the way through to the higher levels are often considerably different than ones that start at the higher levels.
And the difference between normal/optimized/very optimized characters, groups and players increases as level goes up.
The simple fact that most of your play is level 12+ is one of the reason that your experience seems to differ as much from other peoples as it does.
In case its unclear, I'm NOT in any way at all trying to cast shade on your games. High level optimized play is fun. But its a different experience than many have.
We rarely play less than level 12 to 15, so we usually start early always setting up for the higher levels.
Thanks for the answer. That explains a lot.
Characters and groups that started at level 1 and play all the way through to the higher levels are often considerably different than ones that start at the higher level
Yeah. I 100% agree that 'gang up' and 'opertune backstab' are stronger than most class feats, but if you start at level 1 and arent playing with either dual classing or Free Archetype rules you have to make an exceptionally good case for blowing so many class feats on dedications that arent going to pay off for a solid 100+ encounters.
We rarely play less than level 12 to 15, so we usually start early always setting up for the higher levels.
Thanks for the answer. That explains a lot.
Characters and groups that started at level 1 and play all the way through to the higher levels are often considerably different than ones that start at the higher levels.
And the difference between normal/optimized/very optimized characters, groups and players increases as level goes up.
The simple fact that most of your play is level 12+ is one of the reason that your experience seems to differ as much from other peoples as it does.
In case its unclear, I'm NOT in any way at all trying to cast shade on your games. High level optimized play is fun. But its a different experience than many have.
I'm never quite sure what other's experiences are. It sounds like way more players play to higher level in PF2.
Main difference between my group and really mostly myself is not many spend time looking at the numbers and play as I do.
I DM more than I play. I have a tendency to notice if my players are not choosing something due to it being ineffective or weak. I prefer most classes be fungible for particular roles.
I don't like to see a class underperform compared to other classes in combat as that leads to an unsatisfying play experience. It makes it so players ignore a particular class when it becomes obvious the class is weak and won't be able to outperform some other class doing the same role.
I think people think I post these threads or on these threads from the perspective of a player. I am posting more from the perspective of a DM wanting my players to be able to choose any option and have it perform in a fairly competitive manner across levels.
When I see some area of weak performance for a class at a certain level range that is causing severe underperformance compared to another class in extremely common situations in adventure design, I feel I have to say something.
In the case of kineticist, I see problematic class design when it comes to single target fights or fights with few targets where precision is required. Certain mechanics that seem to have been created to allow the use of AOE strikes with allies in range do not work with Overflow mechanics. The vast majority of kineticist AOE blasts at higher level are overflow. So you remove the kineticists best attacks from use by making Overflow not work well with the ability known as Safe Elements that allows you to turn an AOE impulse into a usable single target impulse.
It's little design choices like this that make me scratch my head. The designers created a feat like Safe Elements to make AOE impulses work in a crowded combat with allies, then create an Overflow impulse system with 3 action impulses that don't work with Safe Elements. It seems in cases like this there wasn't a good deal of thought put into how these two game design choices would cancel each other out leading to a weaker, less effective class.
I think eventually they notice and make a fix as they did with a few classes in the Remaster.
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Chiming in to support this - I recall Deriven having similar issues with the Summoner, another self-contained class.
Yes! I remember that thread as well! And I kind of had the opposite experience, where I was consistently getting good results with "bad" classes because I was choosing to plug compositional holes in unbalanced parties rather than try to leverage some kind of high-power meta build. Back in 2020, my chirurgeon alchemist--the "worst" the CRB had to offer according to discussions at the time--was MVP of our Age of Ashes run. And I'm not a particularly good player or anything; I just saw that we needed a guy who could cover elemental damage, skills, and healing. Playing something more "optimal" would have left one of those roles unattended or forced my friends (all first-time players) to abandon their lovingly crafted characters.
The summoner I GM for (in the same party as my wife's fire/air kineticist) is similarly doing really well. This is another group where everyone was pretty inexperienced and just made cool OCs, without much thought of what the rest of the party was doing besides avoiding doubling up on classes. Add to that, it's a large group with spotty per-person attendance, so of the six total players, a random assortment of three to five of them shows up on any given week. Having dedicated roles within the party wouldn't work for them, as any individual piece of the puzzle is likely to go missing at some point. This has resulted in all of them converging on independent, sustainable, flexible builds, each with a splash of support that can cover for absentee characters without being essential to party functioning overall.
SNIPPED: Description of rockstar gunslinger party.
Your gunslinger-centric party sounds like how the game is "supposed" to be played, according to meta discussions. It looks very similar to what whiteroom experts would recommend, but as you described it's very sensitive to being knocked off-rhythm. Honestly, that's something that surprises me about Deriven's combat breakdowns: there aren't many instances of his group ever experiencing that sort of thing. I know Inkfist accused Deriven's GM of softballing combats, but I don't think there's any shortage of Extreme+ encounters in his games. Rather, I think it's a case of player skill outstripping the GM. Challenging high-level players isn't as rough as in PF2's sister games (3.5, 5e, Starfinder 1e, etc), but it is tricky, especially if you hand the players a bunch of extra tools (Dual Class) without spoiling yourself as well. This isn't to say Deriven's GM sucks, just that they likely have some predictable habits that a gang of hardcore optimizers can easily play around: I've noticed Deriven talking a lot about how solo boss encounters are the only ones that matter to the story, for example. He and his buddies have perfectly adapted to that environment, just like my players have adapted to their chaotic availability and my own idiosyncrasies (like oversharing on RK checks, lol).
That said, I believe that the kineticist has something to offer boss-killing parties. Up until the commander, air kineticist was the only at-will way of moving allies out of turn, meaning they can deliver your hasted melee rogue or flurry ranger right to the target so they don't even need to move. That seems an important role! This is all theory, since I'm an eternal GM, but I'm curious if that works.
Ah yes, the thread topic! Wood/water/earth kinnies have a ton of forced movement/area lockdown abilities as well, and most elements have some kind of defensive buff for either themselves or the whole party. Even fire has some supportive options (such as Kindle Inner Flames) to enhance party mobility and damage. The fire aura can also specifically be specced to just do damage with no saving throw attached, and while it isn't a lot, that kind of reliability is important when attacking something with approximately six million AC.
That said, fire kinnies are still at their best when they get to move around and attack multiple targets. So, they're going to suffer a bit against solo bosses, which sucks for Deriven because that's what he seems to value the most. Although--sidebar!--wondering about why my wife's fire/air guy never struggled made me realize that I vary rarely run solo bosses, as I'm almost always running with a larger group, so solo encounters are really hard to make fun and challenging without invoking field hazards or being genuinely unfair.
Rambly post is rambly. Apologies for the yapping. Going to bed now.
QUICK EDIT: Deriven has since stated that he DMs more than he plays. In which case, it's probably his habits that players are noticing and responding to. In which case, now that he's noticed a problem with the class, I recommend he take the next step: Mix up encounter design a bit. Try more targets in less cramped maps. Experiment. Use your game knowledge to bend and push specific creature abilities. Whip out, like, way too many troops with some attached leaders for extra sauce. Go nuts.
(I lied about going to bed right away. Heading there now. Nobody post anything else interesting until 7am US Central.)
I think you're overthinking this - plenty of players who play AoE classes firmly believe that 'some of my allies might take damage, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to take', especially if they can blunt that with resistance.
Safe Elements is an optional feat, after all. Why taking that instead of a healing impulse that you pinky swear you'll use?
Other players don't like to get hit. They tell other players not to hit them with AOE. That is why chain lightning is such a popular spell with I would imagine many groups that don't want to hit their allies. With critical saves and 100 plus damage being done, players don't care for having AOE dropped on them.
Healing impulses are weak. The healing kineticist is not considered an option when other powerful heal options are far more effective. My players only like highly effective options. They ditch or avoid suboptimal options. I've even had players test options to see if they can get them to work and retrain off them when they perform poorly.
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Safe element's main shtick is allowing you to permanently exclude either allies or opponents from your aura.
It's very useful for offensive-minded auras like ravel of thorns, steam knight or drifting pollen.
The fact that it also allows your AOEs to avoid opponents is more like a nice bonus - the waste of an action really hurts.
Chiming in to support this - I recall Deriven having similar issues with the Summoner, another self-contained class.Yes! I remember that thread as well! And I kind of had the opposite experience, where I was consistently getting good results with "bad" classes because I was choosing to plug compositional holes in unbalanced parties rather than try to leverage some kind of high-power meta build. Back in 2020, my chirurgeon alchemist--the "worst" the CRB had to offer according to discussions at the time--was MVP of our Age of Ashes run. And I'm not a particularly good player or anything; I just saw that we needed a guy who could cover elemental damage, skills, and healing. Playing something more "optimal" would have left one of those roles unattended or forced my friends (all first-time players) to abandon their lovingly crafted characters.
The summoner I GM for (in the same party as my wife's fire/air kineticist) is similarly doing really well. This is another group where everyone was pretty inexperienced and just made cool OCs, without much thought of what the rest of the party was doing besides avoiding doubling up on classes. Add to that, it's a large group with spotty per-person attendance, so of the six total players, a random assortment of three to five of them shows up on any given week. Having dedicated roles within the party wouldn't work for them, as any individual piece of the puzzle is likely to go missing at some point. This has resulted in all of them converging on independent, sustainable, flexible builds, each with a splash of support that can cover for absentee characters without being essential to party functioning overall.
SNIPPED: Description of rockstar gunslinger party.Your gunslinger-centric party sounds like how the game is "supposed" to be played, according to meta discussions. It looks very similar to what whiteroom experts would recommend, but as you described it's very sensitive to being knocked off-rhythm....
A few things here, which I'm surprised some folks don't see that I experience as a DM:
1. If classes are not designed to do relatively equal damage or effectiveness, it's much harder to design encounters to challenge the stronger class and the weaker class at the same time. Which is why the unequal damage is a problem.
If the fighter is rushing the boss, crashing slam the boss to the ground for damage and prone. Crits for a 80 to 100 plus. Then getting a reaction or two hit for another 40 to 50 or more.
Then the alchemist throws a weak ass bomb 3d8 plus 8 a few times or something similar.
Then Mr. Kineticst drops his 10d8 fire snake and 4d6 blast.
Mr. sorcerer unloads a 8d12+6 chain lightning and a bow shot.
You're going to notice the difference in numbers and effectiveness.
Stronger characters perform well regardless of if you build to counter the group. The relative strength will still show through making encounters equally difficult to design.
The stronger fighter doesn't suddenly make the kintecist look strong because you designed a harder encounter unless you specifically build the encounter to make the fighter look weak and the kineticist look strong. I'm not sure how often you can do that before you just anger the fighter player and make them feel targeted.
2. The Summoner Never said this class was bad. I said it was middling. Sort of a middle tier class that had some useful functionality . It isn't specialized, but can be built do a variety of different functions. It's damage would not be sustainably high, but should be ok and allow for other functions if you build for them.
Deriven has since stated that he DMs more than he plays. In which case, it's probably his habits that players are noticing and responding to. In which case, now that he's noticed a problem with the class, I recommend he take the next step: Mix up encounter design a bit. Try more targets in less cramped maps. Experiment. Use your game knowledge to bend and push specific creature abilities. Whip out, like, way too many troops with some attached leaders for extra sauce. Go nuts.
This isn't the problem. I know encounter design extremely well. I have been DMing for 40 years with never an empty table. Should be apparent as I'm still playing 40 years later with a full table. I make an entertaining and challenging game.
If a class is weak, it's not going to suddenly be strong because of a one or two encounters you designed to make them look good. Classes have to stand out on all their own.
That's why class inequality is a concern to me as a DM as this gap in class effectiveness makes encounter design harder as a weaker class will always be a weaker class just as a stronger class will always be a stronger class.
None of this has anything to do with encounter design other than you can occasionally make a weak class shine if you specifically design to do so, but after you've done that a few times or even 10 percent of the time, they will still have problems the other 90 percent of the encounters.
I know most people don't care if they are performing competitively numerically. It doesn't concern them and they don't even bother to check.
Most encounters are pretty softball design. I've gamed at a lot of tables over the years and it's pretty rare you find someone that runs a hard game with players that are competitively pushing the numbers.
In MMORPGs you had forums specifically dedicated to min-maxing. I don't know if such forums or discussions exist for PF2. I know min-max discussions were common in PF1. But since min-maxing is less of a thing in PF2 and pretty narrowband, I imagine not many do it.
If anyone has a forum you can go to where people discuss the numbers and how to maximize them for PF2, let me know. That's more of what I'm looking for: mechanical discussions where the players are pushing the numbers and know when a class is performing weakly because they check the numbers in play.
Other players don't like to get hit. They tell other players not to hit them with AOE. That is why chain lightning is such a popular spell with I would imagine many groups that don't want to hit their allies. With critical saves and 100 plus damage being done, players don't care for having AOE dropped on them.Healing impulses are weak. The healing kineticist is not considered an option when other powerful heal options are far more effective. My players only like highly effective options. They ditch or avoid suboptimal options. I've even had players test options to see if they can get them to work and retrain off them when they perform poorly.
Players are far more likely to get the success to crit success ability than monsters, so you may be surprised how harmless a fort-based AOE is when your frontline is a barbarian and fighter. If your players don't know how to appreciate that, drop some monsters with that same gimmick on them.
Re: healing, my group gets their 1 hour break between fights, so truly the only hit point that matters is the last. After the cleric went power-mad with AoEs, I think lay on hands ended up being the primary source of healing in most fights, so the kineticist does Just Fine in that setting.
As I stated in other threads, we finish entire areas in the time a heroism lasts. No rests, no time to bind wounds, no regain focus points.
10 minutes...non-stop...waste everything in the area.
So that is a group specific problem for us as we don't get an hour of downtime to recover from AOE damage. We gotta go, go, go.
If we played with tons of time between fights, game would get way too easy and boring.
I quit 5E because it was way too easy when adding feats and magic items on top of the move and attack allowance which made kiting too easy and favorable to PCs.
So that's not an option. We can't add damage to our group when we don't spend much downtime to heal it. We use up 2 action heals and power through.
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In MMORPGs you had forums specifically dedicated to min-maxing. I don't know if such forums or discussions exist for PF2. I know min-max discussions were common in PF1. But since min-maxing is less of a thing in PF2 and pretty narrowband, I imagine not many do it.
We're kind of hijacking the topic but it's an interesting discussion.
I find that the problem with always min-maxing is:
1) We tend to always play the same classes
2) We tend to always use the same actions.
Yes, it's great when we all delay so that the bard can dirge of doom into synesthesia, the furious bully barbarian trips on the now -4 reflex save, the sorcerer uses ancient memories into slow and the two-weapon archetype fighter mows the one-action -5 AC boss down with dual pickaxes while everybody is waiting for him to stand up so he can get AOO'd to hell.
But it gets annoying fast for the sorcerer to spam slow, the barbarian would sometimes like to actually deal damage instead of tripping, the bard can feel like a bot and the fighter uses double slice brainlessly. It's not a very hard routine to master, and like in MMOs you just go through your opener into your rotation.
Also, after a few games, you get tired of playing top tier classes and maybe you'd like to try a bomber, that's fun too. Or a druid (I know you like them, but our group finds them underpowered). Or a warpriest. Or, hey, even an investigator although it's probably at the bottom of the barrel currently.
I'm a huge sorcerer fan, I believe that they're basically the best at everything magical. Best arcane caster ? Sorcerer. Best primal caster ? Sorcerer. Best occult caster ? Sorcerer (bard is great for different reasons). Best divine caster ? Sorcerer.
But when you play sorcerer in three different campaigns, even with different bloodlines and traditions, you start to feel a bit bored and you choose other classes, even though they're mechanically weaker.
I don't know, maybe I'm jaded because like you I've been playing a long time, but if someone asks me to join a new game these days, I'll probably pick a new class (like guardian or commander) or a class I don't know that well (like swashbuckler), although they're not top tier.
And there's something fun about overcoming challenges with a team including a champion of Caiden Callean, a tiger style monk, a wizened old witch and an outwit ranger. Feels like you deserve your victory more somehow.
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I really think you should open each similar post with a brief summary of your situation for context.
I'm not sure you can really expect an applicable answer when, I believe most groups don't use dual classing or exclusively play at level 12+.
Also, I'm with Blue_frog on optimization. Sure it might be fun to mow down an entire dungeon floor in under an hour but that's gotta get old playing the same classes over and over and experiencing little to no challenge.
With 40 years of experience, I would expect you to know how these games work and find it both unnecessary (due to experience) and inappropriate (due to your group playing in a highly atypical manner) to ask these questions without giving that context as a preface. You just come off as the opposite without that context. And yes, I think you should do so on every such post because not everyone is going to remember or even be aware of the first explanation.
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And there's something fun about overcoming challenges with a team including a champion of Caiden Callean, a tiger style monk, a wizened old witch and an outwit ranger. Feels like you deserve your victory more somehow.
This is pretty much where I am at. I enjoy casual games, I enjoy more mini maxed games both as a player and GM. I enjoy low, mid and high level games as long as the game supports it. I'm also a jaded old fart with a bit over 45 years of experience.
The only games I tend to find problematic are the ones where not all of the players and GM are on the same page. Both as GM and player I want everybody to be contributing to the success of the group more or less equally (ideally with different characters shining as MVP from time to time).
One thing I really really like about PF2 is that it does an amazingly good job of helping the GM balance things while allowing for an amazing variety of play styles, character builds, etc. Definitely not perfect but much better than any other version of D&D.
I think that I'd have a lot of fun in Derivens game. But I also have a lot of fun at most PFS tables trying to make the current assortment of mismatched misfits work.
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If classes are not designed to do relatively equal damage or effectiveness, it's much harder to design encounters to challenge the stronger class and the weaker class at the same time. Which is why the unequal damage is a problem.
Okay. Two problems here. First, it's not just hard to design an encounter to challenge two different classes equally--it's impossible! So stop trying! Let players take turns in the spotlight. So long as you're not consistently bullying the same character over and over (by over-prioritizing single-target damage, for example), you'll be fine.
(Sidebar: That 90/10 number you gave me is super uncomfortable. That's how often you deviate from your preferred encounter style? Ten percent of the time? Bruh.)
Second, you have created a skewed play environment by teaching your players that single-target damage is the only metric that matters. Judging each other's performances by who has the biggest numbers is a habit that a lot of GMs try to train players out of. The problems you're running into now are a result of not nipping that in the bud. That isn't to say that it's badwrongfun to run how you run, just that you've reinforced certain behaviors through your GM style that impact how players approach the game. And this isn't unique to you: every long-term play group is a freak little ecosystem that evolves habits and idiosyncrasies that don't translate to other tables.
For example, I tend to pump up encounter difficulty by forcing players to split their attention. It's something I have to do, because my regular play group is large enough that they can overwhelm me with sheer action economy. In fights where I don't split them up, they brutalize enemies one by one while shrugging off most AoEs thanks to sky-high reflex saves on one half of the team and strong elemental resistances on the other. This habit of mine--combined with the fact that it's common to be down a different player every time thanks to scheduling issues--has prompted my players to prioritize independence, flexibility, and high mobility (as mentioned previously).
Of course, now that I've skewed the play experience for so long, this party is now bad at the kind of force multiplication that your party absolutely crushes. So if I switched to fewer, harder, concentrated targets as you do, they wouldn't have the tools to blend through them like an "optimized" party does. This means that I ironically have to be really careful when I put together a boss fight (the thing I pivoted away from because they were getting way too easy), as the tools they'd need to succeed as easily as your party does have atrophied in the face of unique selection pressures--they've all evolved into generalists! The two characters who'd thrive during boss battles due to their spiky, easy-to-support nature--the rogue and magus--both changed classes!
Stronger characters perform well regardless of if you build to counter the group. The relative strength will still show through making encounters equally difficult to design.
Do you know how easy it is to make a rogue look like a chump? Precision immunity. All-around vision. Focused fire from multiple, distant targets. That last one in particular is nasty, as although rogues have incredible saving throws towards the endgame, they have so-so AC and limited reactions. Counteract their buffs if you want to get cheeky.
You're experienced enough with the system now that you can start getting experimental with victory conditions and monster/map design. The fact that your players have a locked-in routine that always succeeds is proof that you hit the natural limits of the default system, and it's time to mix things up.
Now, since you're Dual Classing, your players have likely shored up their weaker defenses, in which case you've broken the game (congrats) and will probably need to compensate with an inflated encounter budget. More guys on the field means more chances to break through those universally good saves, more difficulty for single-target aficionados, and more chances for those classes you specifically dunked on to shine. Try the split attention trick I (unfortunately) overused. It works so well that it eventually turned my boss-crushers into boss-crushees (oops).
I know encounter design extremely well. I have been DMing for 40 years with never an empty table. Should be apparent as I'm still playing 40 years later with a full table. I make an entertaining and challenging game.
40 years is plenty of time for your own habits to become invisible to you. I played under a guy who was similarly seasoned once. I thought it was really weird that I was the only one acting in character at his table at first, but it turned out the dude just didn't roleplay. My attempts to actually interact with NPCs like they were people tripped him up, and any out-of-combat creative problem solving I tried was met with confusion and hesitation because he straight up didn't know how to improvise. This was a veteran, paid GM with a ton of accolades. His regular players loved him! He'd been running at conventions since before I was born! And yet he just... had this huge gap in his skills because he never really needed them: he only ever ran pre-written adventures with a focus on sticking to RAW and not deviating from the material. Those conventions where he honed his GMing style prioritized speed, consistency, and sticking to the script; otherwise he risked not getting through the modules on time. It took me some time to adapt to his table's expectations and not feel like something was missing. Again, freak little ecosystems: this guy was a great GM according to his regulars, but to me--someone who'd mostly played casual homebrew up to that point--he felt weird.
So, you're weird, Deri. I'm weird. Everybody's GMing style is real freakin' weird when compared to their peers. You can keep the same group of players perfectly happy for decades and still have outsiders treat you like an alien. Like, I'd be bored out of my mind at a table that expected me to create and stick to an MMO-like routine, and you'd probably find my encounters annoyingly overdesigned and gimmicky.
If anyone has a forum you can go to where people discuss the numbers and how to maximize them for PF2, let me know.
Okay, so great news actually--those discussions exist! Reddit loves that stuff (so long as you ignore the handful of people who will accuse you of badwrongfun for trying to minmax). YouTubers SwingRipper and Mathfinder are also really analysis-heavy, and SwingRipper has his own Discord community that discusses character builds and party optimization. I'm sure there are tons more, but you're definitely not alone in wanting to squeeze every ounce of mathematical efficiency out of your party.
As for me, I find that stuff interesting in theory, but stifling in practice. Like Blue_frog alluded to, a solved game is a boring one. Hence why I tend to rely on lateral rather than vertical difficulty for encounter design and avoid meta builds myself.
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More ways of inflicting misfortune on saves, circumstance penalties on saves, and maybe even buffs to class/spell DC as player options would be cool. They all exist in very limited ways (circumstance penalties only exist to reflex saves in regards to damage afaik) but I would love to see them more prevalent.
Earlier impulses that benefit from free action concentration would also be cool. Ignite the sun is great but very high level. Some form of damage by way of reaction would also be nice - volcanic escape is very cool but mostly as a defensive tool. Also, this thread is mostly about damage and talking about kineticist and the fire element, and I think other elements really should have options to be closer in damage potential. Not by much, but closer.
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It needs more work and options, but nothing Paizo can't fix...
Adaptability for mutliple elements
You guys talk about AoEs, but those areas are often locked behind specific elements. If you have multiple elements, you "should" be able to mix and match, such as dealing Fire damage with Aerial Boomerang.
Strike and Spell
As the big one, there should be a feat that treats blasts as Strikes and AoE Impulses as Spells.
More elements
Void and Aether are missing from P1E. One more "element" I'd like them to add is Light, because there's no impulse replicating illusion-based spells and effects. That was also no talents in P1E.
Feat expansions
Weapon Infusion could use advanced feats with more traits, while Versatile Blasts could use advanced feats with more damage types.
Okay, so great news actually--those discussions exist! Reddit loves that stuff (so long as you ignore the handful of people who will accuse you of badwrongfun for trying to minmax).
I would not recommend the PF2e subreddit for talking optimization. The warning you placed in brackets is far closer to the norm than the exception. I browse the community there frequently and they treat most hardcore optimization talk with hostility, especially if it comes from a poster like Deriven, or any of the other regulars here who post like him.
If you took this very post and put it there, it will get downvoted to the point of being hidden almost instantly.
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I think optimizers just need to state that their intent is optimization instead of not saying so and starting with a tone implying that their case is a matter of fact for all parties. I hate when a functional build or even entire class in this system is considered "bad" without the context of "it's going to be left in the dust of a fully optimized party" and instead suggesting a build/class is just inherently bad by default when it isn't.
Okay, so great news actually--those discussions exist! Reddit loves that stuff (so long as you ignore the handful of people who will accuse you of badwrongfun for trying to minmax).I would not recommend the PF2e subreddit for talking optimization. The warning you placed in brackets is far closer to the norm than the exception. I browse the community there frequently and they treat most hardcore optimization talk with hostility, especially if it comes from a poster like Deriven, or any of the other regulars here who post like him.
If you took this very post and put it there, it will get downvoted to the point of being hidden almost instantly.
To be honest, I wouldn't recommend reddit for discussions at all unless you narrow it to something small like a new feat, errata change, or archetype. Even if your approach when making a post is genuine its very likely that someone downvotes it just for the sake of it and if people see a post that has 0 upvotes they are likely to downvote it too without reading it and at that point the post is pretty much dead. Due to how the forums here work a discussion can last for days which allow for people to say all they want about the topic, and since there aren't upvotes/downvotes here, the opinion of someone doesn't disappear even if nobody agrees with it.
In MMORPGs you had forums specifically dedicated to min-maxing. I don't know if such forums or discussions exist for PF2. I know min-max discussions were common in PF1. But since min-maxing is less of a thing in PF2 and pretty narrowband, I imagine not many do it.We're kind of hijacking the topic but it's an interesting discussion.
I find that the problem with always min-maxing is:
1) We tend to always play the same classes
2) We tend to always use the same actions.Yes, it's great when we all delay so that the bard can dirge of doom into synesthesia, the furious bully barbarian trips on the now -4 reflex save, the sorcerer uses ancient memories into slow and the two-weapon archetype fighter mows the one-action -5 AC boss down with dual pickaxes while everybody is waiting for him to stand up so he can get AOO'd to hell.
But it gets annoying fast for the sorcerer to spam slow, the barbarian would sometimes like to actually deal damage instead of tripping, the bard can feel like a bot and the fighter uses double slice brainlessly. It's not a very hard routine to master, and like in MMOs you just go through your opener into your rotation.
Also, after a few games, you get tired of playing top tier classes and maybe you'd like to try a bomber, that's fun too. Or a druid (I know you like them, but our group finds them underpowered). Or a warpriest. Or, hey, even an investigator although it's probably at the bottom of the barrel currently.
I'm a huge sorcerer fan, I believe that they're basically the best at everything magical. Best arcane caster ? Sorcerer. Best primal caster ? Sorcerer. Best occult caster ? Sorcerer (bard is great for different reasons). Best divine caster ? Sorcerer.
But when you play sorcerer in three different campaigns, even with different bloodlines and traditions, you start to feel a bit bored and you choose other classes, even though they're mechanically weaker.
I don't know, maybe I'm jaded because like you I've been playing a...
Yes. This is what happens. It's how we like to play. It's irritating to use inferior options, which is why I would prefer Paizo make more equivalent options for variation than having these tiered systems of power where one thing is substantially and noticeably better than something else leading to avoidance by players that want to play in an optimal way.
Given the way they constructed the game, it seems like it would be easier to do in PF2.
Do you know a forum for PF2 that discusses the numbers in PF2?
I mean, basically you don't play a game where the kineticist at-willness will ever come up, so their damage will always be poorer than a non-focus spellcaster for you. That's... well, can't do anything about that. My habit is that the moment battle ends, I mash the +10min button - can't search or investigate in less than 10 min, RAW, so unless the players don't want any loot they sit down, and once that happens they just go all the way. So focus points and infinite use abilities come up a lot more.
Think a party that never searches is the exception, not the norm. My players finally did that right at the end of Extinction Curse, on account of being 20th level and finally using the ablative armour plating (and also the cleric realising that 20th level herbalist dedication has all the drugs) and so they (rightly) assumed nothing they could pilfer was worth more than keeping the 3 9th rank heroism up, but that's not standard.
It depends on AP design. We mostly use APs with modifications. There are only so many fights in a day. Maybe a few of them will be really tough.
Monsters vary in design with a handful having really strong and dangerous abilities. A lot have fairly easy to deal with abilities or abilities that won't even be useful in common fights.
If an AP has a lot of hex crawling, that's going to be super easy most of the time. They have a lot of disconnected encounters that don't use up much resources to defeat them.
That's why we like the challenge of setting a timer on an big, connected area with multiple monsters, ramping the numbers by an amount that fits in the area, and putting on elite templates, then seeing how far we can go.
I don't know what things were like for you over the years, but when I played at tables when I was younger I would get super bored with most DMs. They didn't run very hard games. Most players played as self-contained units basing their actions on what they can do rather than what the party can do. They played slow and this really drives me nuts. I really start to get agitated if the DM runs the game slow or other players make what should be simple decisions slow.
I would say this did probably impact the final group that formed. We're all players that want the game to flow fast, furious, and once the action starts we want it to keep on going fast and furious until we are either forced to retreat or everything is crushed.
So that's down to personal preference. I can't go back to a slow, uncoordinated game where the DM just puts tokens on the map and says, "Roll initiative" where everyone makes decisions in isolation. That type of game doesn't appeal to me anymore.
If anyone has a forum you can go to where people discuss the numbers and how to maximize them for PF2, let me know. That's more of what I'm looking for: mechanical discussions where the players are pushing the numbers and know when a class is performing weakly because they check the numbers in play.I think a 'min-max for coordinates group combat' thread is a good idea, because clearly there's part of the player base that wants to do exactly that. But classes which don't min-max for specific combat roles as well as others IMO don't necessarily have a design flaw and they don't necessarily need to be updated or fixed, because min-maxed for a specific combat role is probably not the sole goal Paizo goes for in class, archetype, feat, etc. design.
I mean, the investigator is an obvious counter-example to those sorts of assumptions, right? It makes it very clear that Paizo does not design every class to be min-maxed for combat or a specific combat role. Non-combat archetypes such as Dandy are another clue that the game system as a whole is not trying to makes sure every choice can lead to an 'equally good at combat' character or that the system is attempting to slot every single character into being best at some specific tactical role in combat.
One consequence of having broader design goals is that not everything works equally well for high level 'we do combat simulator and that's all we do' games. Some class, archetype, feat, skill etc. choices are going to naturally fall by the wayside if that's your group's focus. But as I said, that's not a flaw in the system (...IMO...), because the system is designed to serve a wider player base.
The investigator is min-maxed for investigation. I have a player that enjoys this and has played a few investigators for the sole reason of knowing almost everything that is going on.
They did improve the investigator in the Remaster making it so the subject of its investigation is more wide open and within the DMs purview.
Is it min-maxed for damage? Nope. Damage is pretty weak. If you want to know what's going on nearly all the time and the DM wants a class to deliver easy info dumps to, investigator empiricism is really good at it. It really makes information delivery as a DM very easy.
Devise a Stratagem isn't the worst ability I've seen if you build around it.
If classes are not designed to do relatively equal damage or effectiveness, it's much harder to design encounters to challenge the stronger class and the weaker class at the same time. Which is why the unequal damage is a problem.Okay. Two problems here. First, it's not just hard to design an encounter to challenge two different classes equally--it's impossible! So stop trying! Let players take turns in the spotlight. So long as you're not consistently bullying the same character over and over (by over-prioritizing single-target damage, for example), you'll be fine.
(Sidebar: That 90/10 number you gave me is super uncomfortable. That's how often you deviate from your preferred encounter style? Ten percent of the time? Bruh.)
Second, you have created a skewed play environment by teaching your players that single-target damage is the only metric that matters. Judging each other's performances by who has the biggest numbers is a habit that a lot of GMs try to train players out of. The problems you're running into now are a result of not nipping that in the bud. That isn't to say that it's badwrongfun to run how you run, just that you've reinforced certain behaviors through your GM style that impact how players approach the game. And this isn't unique to you: every long-term play group is a freak little ecosystem that evolves habits and idiosyncrasies that don't translate to other tables.
For example, I tend to pump up encounter difficulty by forcing players to split their attention. It's something I have to do, because my regular play group is large enough that they can overwhelm me with sheer action economy. In fights where I don't split them up, they brutalize enemies one by one while shrugging off most AoEs thanks to sky-high reflex saves on one half of the team and strong elemental resistances on the other. This habit of mine--combined with the fact that it's common to be down a different player every time thanks to scheduling...
I already know all this stuff. You're literally telling me a bunch of stuff I already know and use.
What you don't seem to accept is you can only use this stuff so often before it feels like you're targeting a player. As in you might as well have told the rogue you plan to make everything immune to precision rather than letting them make a rogue.
I do not do that to players in entire campaigns where I go "Surprise. You shouldn't have made a rogue. I made everything immune to precision damage. Haha. You're loss."
It would be like letting someone make a fire kineticist, then making everything immune to fire to make the rogue or another class shine. If I do it all the time, why did I even let a player make a fire kineticist?
You just don't do that.
You occasionally set up fights to counter a specific ability so others can shine. You don't do this fight after fight after fight.
As far as spotlight, if one character is stronger than the other innately they will take the spotlight all the time. Which is what they do which is why players that notice this quit playing the weak classes. That's the best option. Just don't play a class that needs a DM to set things up for them to be in the spotlight, just play a class that the spot light shines on all the time.
I've been playing this game for so long that all the stuff you written is what I already do. It doesn't matter if the classes are already substantially tiered in their base design to create the problem I'm bringing up in the base game.
I as a DM should not have to spend my time modifying adventures where I have to first figure out a class is weak, figure out why, then specifically design encounters so that class doesn't feel weak while I don't have to do this for other classes that are well designed to perform out of the box.
Second, you have created a skewed play environment by teaching your players that single-target damage is the only metric that matters. Judging each other's performances by who has the biggest numbers is a habit that a lot of GMs try to train players out of. The problems you're running into now are a result of not nipping that in the bud. That isn't to say that it's badwrongfun to run how you run, just that you've reinforced certain behaviors through your GM style that impact how players approach the game. And this isn't unique to you: every long-term play group is a freak little ecosystem that evolves habits and idiosyncrasies that don't translate to other tables.
No, I did not do this. You are creating a reality I in no way believe.
The single target problem is specific to the kineticist.
That is why this thread covers the kineticist. The kineticist is mostly fine at AOE against groups, though casters are better while not as lacking at single target at the higher levels.
I haven't reinforced anything. You aren't comprehending what is being discussed which is the kineticist is not great at single target damage when that is called for. Whereas other AOE hammers like most casters can switch to single target damage with a varied spell loadout.
The at will capabilities kineticist don't come up as often when the often recommended number of fights per day is 3 to 6 or something like that. So as casters get more of a spell loadout and magic items, they can often maintain high AOE damage and high single target damage without worrying about running out of resources past the low levels.
This makes kineticist at will abilities less valuable as the game progresses where you have well built martials annihilating single target damage and casters able to outdo the kineticist at AOE while also dropping single target hammer spells or debuffs far superior to the kineticist.
Puts the kineticist in this place where they aren't great at either AOE or single target compared to other classes.
40 years is plenty of time for your own habits to become invisible to you. I played under a guy who was similarly seasoned once. I thought it was really weird that I was the only one acting in character at his table at first, but it turned out the dude just didn't roleplay. My attempts to actually interact with NPCs like they were people tripped him up, and any out-of-combat creative problem solving I tried was met with confusion and hesitation because he straight up didn't know how to improvise. This was a veteran, paid GM with a ton of accolades. His regular players loved him! He'd been running at conventions since before I was born! And yet he just... had this huge gap in his skills because he never really needed them: he only ever ran pre-written adventures with a focus on sticking to RAW and not deviating from the material. Those conventions where he honed his GMing style prioritized speed, consistency, and sticking to the script; otherwise he risked not getting through the modules on time. It took me some time to adapt to his table's expectations and not feel like something was missing. Again, freak little ecosystems: this guy was a great GM according to his regulars, but to me--someone who'd mostly played casual homebrew up to that point--he felt weird.
We all know table preference is personal.
I run a game where combat challenge and roleplay are important, equally important. But they are separate aspects of the game.
I'm never going back to a casual table again. I like prepared players that run fast and coordinated and can slip in and out of character when appropriate. Combat is combat. I want combat fast, furious, and coordinated so we can get a lot done. Then RP when it fits. If I had a player that wanted to stay in character that would be fine so long as when in character, they are like a professional that knows how to fight well and coordinated.
Okay, so great news actually--those discussions exist! Reddit loves that stuff (so long as you ignore the handful of people who will accuse you of badwrongfun for trying to minmax). YouTubers SwingRipper and Mathfinder are also really analysis-heavy, and SwingRipper has his own Discord community that discusses character builds and party optimization. I'm sure there are tons more, but you're definitely not alone in wanting to squeeze every ounce of mathematical efficiency out of your party.
As for me, I find that stuff interesting in theory, but stifling in practice. Like Blue_frog alluded to, a solved game is a boring one. Hence why I tend to rely on lateral rather than vertical difficulty for encounter design and avoid meta builds myself.
I cannot play a game in an inefficient manner. That doesn't appeal to me. It grates on me when someone does inefficient actions. Sometimes other players do get annoyed when I tell them their action choice was poor. I can't help it. If they push back, I leave them to it. They usually start to see over time the poor action choice and change it even if they push back initially.
So Reddit? I will look around there. See if there is anything interesting. Thanks.