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There's ballpark ~100 non unique creatures weak to slashing or bludgeoning. I can't get an exact number because I can't get the filter to behave how I want it. Probably doing something wrong. Comparatively, there are exactly 2 weak to force, and they're from the same AP. So in terms of exploting weaknesses, this change is a massive loss.
There are ~288 non-unique resistant to both bludgeoning and slashing from what I can tell on AoN (usually in the form of physical resistance), but that's out of ~2840 non-unique creatures.
So for the vast majority of the bestiary, force damage doesn't help you. That makes the raw damage loss not worth the trade unless you're playing a campaign where those are appearing far more often than usual.
If you literally only have one damage type, force is a good one. But that's not how casters actually work: caster gameplay is focused on exploiting weaknesses and getting around resistances. Making IW weaker in the general, primary use case to make it stronger in a case that a caster would have just used some other tool for anyway is not actually helpful. It's a net loss because the spell is weaker when it was being used.
It's a bad trade. And the way you're focusing only on the subset of data that shows what you want is a classic example of lies, damn lies, and statistics. Because just talking about how its better for resistances while ignoring how its worse for weaknesses and doesn't actually do anything in the vast majority of cases is disingenuous.
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All this assumes an equal distribution of creatures in adventures. Which, nice as it would be to get a more balanced distribution of creatures, isn't exactly how it's done.There's ballpark ~100 non unique creatures weak to slashing or bludgeoning. I can't get an exact number because I can't get the filter to behave how I want it. Probably doing something wrong. Comparatively, there are exactly 2 weak to force, and they're from the same AP. So in terms of exploting weaknesses, this change is a massive loss.
There are ~288 non-unique resistant to both bludgeoning and slashing from what I can tell on AoN (usually in the form of physical resistance), but that's out of ~2840 non-unique creatures.
Are you claiming that bludgeoning resistance is overrepresented across all Paizo-published encounters? If so, what is the distribution of such creatures among those encounters?
Also, why aren't we assuming that our caster is switching to another option against resistant foes while using IW against foes where it hits for neutral or better damage? If you have a d6-based cantrip that you can amp against resistant foes and IW for everything else, this change is always a nerf regardless of what the distribution of enemies may be.
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We're going around in circles because despite this being a new book with two enw classes we don't have enough information to determine anythign past the Playteast of Necromancer & Runesmith. The problem is that we just had a new Remastered dropped which ended up killing a build while nerfing other casters, so when that is a thing we are all a but on edge that Magus, the thing they decided to nerf with the AMP Cantrip changes will not get an additional nerf in the new book.
Paizo has a habit of over-reaching their nerfs or not trying to balance the weaker classes enough. Look at Wizard and Alchemist, they didn't get improvements just side-grades and argubly wizard got nerfed with a more limiting 4th slot which Sorcerer laughs at...
Every caster must be balanced towards Sorcerer, if yor not a Bound Caster.
While on the upside, ?Necromancer who has only 2 slots per rank like Psychic is one of the more powerful casters in the game. Create Thrall is easily one of the most overpowered and yet underpowered Focus Cantrip in the Playtest.
How can it be both OP & UP?
Create Thrall Cantrip
Overpowered
- One Action Cantrip
- Creates a wall the enemy has to go through or around
- If the enemy targets it it suffers MAP
- You can only Tumble Through one target at a time per action, staggering them in a hall way can be a huge pain for enemies.
- Can stop your allies from getting flanked
- What is the RK DC for Thralls? Can you waste enemy acts as they RK thralls...
- Can cast this three times in one turn
Underpowered
- It's a weak damage option if enemies ignores it
- It feels bad when the GM doesn't play with your thralls.
- AOEs destroy your thralls so fast.
- Too many thralls gets in everyone's way, turning the above into a disadvantage.
- You need Thralls to use your Focus Points which feels terrible, because they aren't any stronger then normal Focus Spells.
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In my experience GMing, most of the time the books give you groups of the same enemy. So, many of the times you encounter a creature with resistance, the other creature to target usually has the same resistances.
And in my experience GMing, that also means they're going to group creatures that don't have resistance. Which is most of them. You can literally go entire chapters in an AP encountering zero things with both slashing and bludgeoning resistance, since the creatures that have that are mostly ghosts & constructs.
So sure, you'll have a fight where it matters. Then you'll have 8 fights where it doesn't. This is still not a winning trade, especially when other spells already exist to deal with those minority cases.
In similar exeriences GMing, my books have allocated many creatures with resistances. I'd hardly call it a rarity at this point. If I'd have had to issue markedly less such creatures, I'd ackowledge you have a point. Could be unlucky adventure path selection, but I somehow get a lot that have resistances. And when the math is allocated, both work equally, or the original would work slightly worse.
It's not even the majority case in Abomination Vaults, which is a pretty ghost heavy AP. In something like Extinction Curse or Fists of the Ruby Phoenix, you can literally go an entire book without it ever coming up.
When we're talking 1/10th of the bestiary, it's by definition not common.
I also wouldn't call the proportion small. You like to say small proportion, but a lot of monsters do have resistance. When an entire popular genre of game can result in encountering such resistances commonly, I would not call that rare. Uncommon at the rarest.
You were the one who was just talking about other people don't understand statistics, and now you're going to use semantics to try and claim that 10% of the bestiary isn't small?
Being worse against 90% of creatures (and a LOT worse against 3% of creatures due to missing weaknesses) to be better against 10% of creatures is not a good trade.
I've read ALL of Bestiary 1, 2, and 3, and Monster Core 1, and am halfway through both Monster Core 2 and Alien Core, I can tell you, resistance comes up a lot. It comes up frequently in adventures unless the adventure is mostly humanoids. It just comes up.
Citation Needed. I gave you mine, after all.
I recently finished running book 3 of SoT, so I scanned it again. Number of encounters where creatures have both bludgeoning and slashing resistance and thus this IW change would help? 2, out of 36 encounters: a Screaming Sulfur (incorporeal), and a Karumzek Swarm. In the case of the swarm, the bludgeoning resist is only 5 and the party is level 11 when they encounter it, so rank 6 Imaginary Weapon. At rank 6, IW has lost more than 5 average damage due to the reduced die size, so this is actually a net loss even if you don't amp it, and a big damage loss if you do.
So by my count, the IW change in that entire AP book is a net gain in ~3% of the counters and a net loss in ~97% of the encounters.
This is a bad trade.
To answer your question about why -2 does not matter to me? It's because mathematically, it does not matter. I read damage by average, because I know the average is what's reliable. I don't see a -2 per rank. Because that lost +2 is at the extreme end of the bell curve, and is unlikely to come up anyway. I just see a -1. It's like being a wizard and getting fireball and thinking "I can potentially do 36 damage! When most of the time you're gonna be hovering around 21 damage, and a frustrating amount of the time it'll actually be 10. I have a hard time taking grievances of, "I lost an average of 11 damage per turn while fighting a creature with over 300 HP and I'm still doing an average of 38 damage consistently. Oh no, I lost a whole 4% of relative damage!"
The average damage loss at level 11 is 7, not 2. When the spell was doing an average of 32 damage, that's a 21% damage loss.
Go find any martial, tell them we're nerfing their damage by 21%, and see how they react. I'll wait. This is not an irrelevant amount of damage, it's actually pretty substantial.
What I can say is this. If it bothers you that much, just do what I do and homebrew it back. I've reverted some things. Revert it back to 2d8 + 1d8/rank P/S instead of 2d6 + 1d6/rank force. One thing is for sure, you cannot have both the 2d8 and the Force. One or the other. I'd personally rather have the force damage.
"Don't discuss this rule change on the rules form because you can just house rule it away" is certainly a take. You're welcome to like it if you want, but the math doesn't lie on this being a big damage loss overall and you don't get to dismiss people that don't like it because they can house rule it away.
Especially since in PFS they can't do that.
All this assumes an equal distribution of creatures in adventures. Which, nice as it would be to get a more balanced distribution of creatures, isn't exactly how it's done.There's ballpark ~100 non unique creatures weak to slashing or bludgeoning. I can't get an exact number because I can't get the filter to behave how I want it. Probably doing something wrong. Comparatively, there are exactly 2 weak to force, and they're from the same AP. So in terms of exploting weaknesses, this change is a massive loss.
There are ~288 non-unique resistant to both bludgeoning and slashing from what I can tell on AoN (usually in the form of physical resistance), but that's out of ~2840 non-unique creatures.
This doesn't make the point you think it does, as shown by my analysis on SoT book 3 above.
Book 4 has one chapter with more than one, but that chapter is the outlier for the entire AP. Books 1 & 2 are not physical resist heavy either.
I've had a player begging me to let them invent a weapon with force damage, and when I offered them to just put a ghosttouch rune on a gun, they complained that it didn't overcome the other resistances because it wasn't force. All because they used to have a wand of magic missile in 1E.
If you gave them a 21% damage nerf along with it like IW got, they'd lose interest real fast. Getting force for free or a property rune slot would be absolutely worth it. Getting it at a loss of 21% of your damage output is most definitely not. Get Ghost Touch and a couple Alloy Orbs and you can bypass the overwhelming majority cases of resistences that force would actually help with.
Sample of one, I know, but some players hold a lot of value to the consistency of force, even with the lower damage. A force cantrip is something I simply thought impossible.
And yet post-nerf we don't see people spamming Inner Radiance Torrent despite it being one of the only sources of force damage on the Divine list. Likewise people tend to use Force Barrage when "this can't miss" really matters, and use something with higher damage output if the problem is just needing to bypass a resistence.
Your player is an outlier being shaped by PF1 experience, which is a different system with totally different damage interactions.
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While on the upside, ?Necromancer who has only 2 slots per rank like Psychic is one of the more powerful casters in the game. Create Thrall is easily one of the most overpowered and yet underpowered Focus Cantrip in the Playtest.
How can it be both OP & UP?
Create Thrall Cantrip
Overpowered
- One Action Cantrip
- Creates a wall the enemy has to go through or around
- If the enemy targets it it suffers MAP
- You can only Tumble Through one target at a time per action, staggering them in a hall way can be a huge pain for enemies.
- Can stop your allies from getting flanked
- What is the RK DC for Thralls? Can you waste enemy acts as they RK thralls...
- Can cast this three times in one turnUnderpowered
- It's a weak damage option if enemies ignores it
- It feels bad when the GM doesn't play with your thralls.
- AOEs destroy your thralls so fast.
- Too many thralls gets in everyone's way, turning the above into a disadvantage.
- You need Thralls to use your Focus Points which feels terrible, because they aren't any stronger then normal Focus Spells.
Well you summarized perfectly one of the many things I hate about the Necromancer design. It's very, very swingy.
Put a fight in a tight area and the thralls can effectively choke off movement by blocking the available space. Given how claustrophic many Paizo maps are, I really dread this as a GM. They can also get in the way of other players, but one would hope the Necro player would leave the Fighter room. But that doesn't seem very much fun for the GM who has these constant walls that don't let them interact with the game in the same way.
Put a fight in the air and suddenly the Thralls aren't doing much of anything. Recurring smart enemies are probably going to realize this pretty quickly and so either the GM has to play dumb or the Necromancer is going to get hard countered.
If I had to fix the wall-of-thrall problem, I'd either make them difficult terrain or enemy-only difficult terrain. It simplifies things a bit and reduces the GM headache to a manageable level, and actually blocking passage would require a three-thrall wall rather than the tumble-through two.
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Because the conversation about imaginary weapon has come up and won’t leave the thread discussing the possible magic book, it really seems like the issue being expressed here is that magus players feel like the issue is that the class is somehow bad if it doesn’t have a 2d8 scaling damage focus spell. It is really not psychic players complaining about this.
I suspect that there was a deliberate intention not to have a 2d8 focus spell that basically breaks the starlit span magus into having one true build. With imaginary weapon at 2d6, minimally there are multiple build paths to have a 2d6 (or equivalent) focus spell, and if amps can’t be used with spell strike anymore then the entire discussion of imaginary weapon is very off topic to the new book.
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The whole argument of higher damage and physical vs lower damage and force is mostly going to be player preference. Personally I prefer more reliable damage even if it is a bit lower. Just went through monster core and there are 37 monsters that resist all physical damage and don't resist force. There are a lot of creatures in that book but that's a good chunk. Those who like it are allowed to like it, those upset by the change are allowed to be upset. But I think it's not something that can be said with certainly which is a better option.
Because the conversation about imaginary weapon has come up and won’t leave the thread discussing the possible magic book, it really seems like the issue being expressed here is that magus players feel like the issue is that the class is somehow bad if it doesn’t have a 2d8 scaling damage focus spell.
It started here, so people replied to it here. That's how forum conversations go.
It is really not psychic players complaining about this.
Based on the reddit threads... yeah, no. Magus can just go pick up some other focus spell to Spellstrike, especially with the change to block spellstrike from amping it. The only real issue to Magus there is if this book changes Spellstrike so that no focus spells can be used, and that would hit the class really hard.
It's the amp change that hits Magus. The rest of it is a Psychic nerf and psychic players are not thrilled about it.
I only jumped in because someone was claiming "statistics" while cherry picking their stats to create a false picture about what the impact actually is.
If I had to fix the wall-of-thrall problem, I'd either make them difficult terrain or enemy-only difficult terrain. It simplifies things a bit and reduces the GM headache to a manageable level, and actually blocking passage would require a three-thrall wall rather than the tumble-through two.
That would be better, for sure, especially if they don't block stopping there. Because that's part of the problem in a cramped space: once you can create multiple thralls you can effectively block movement entirely on small maps simply by occupying every space in the room... and Paizo puts out a LOT of maps with small rooms that encounters take place in.
The thralls should just not take up space and not hinder movement. Given that they don't actually do anything on their own and are no threat when walking past them, they shouldn't be usable to choke off so much space.
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The thralls should just not take up space and not hinder movement.I feel as though this might negatively impact class fantasy for Necromancer players. They were already complaining that thralls were "totems" instead of undead because they couldn't move (despite moving being a trap option when you could instead summon them to where you want to move them.)
Goodness gracious minionmancers are hard to balance.
Was the class fantasy really conjuring stationary meatbags that function as walls and otherwise do nothing on their own, though? Like, I think that ship has already sailed. That's another one of my issues with it: you could just call the thralls "shrubs" and change the class to Primal and it basically works exactly the same.
So I kind of feel like that ship has already sailed in terms of that part of the class fantasy. Whatever gets made now has to result in a functional game, and "clog the room with so many tokens that nothing can move unless the GM starts busting out aoe/hazardous terrain to clear the board" isn't great.
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By necessity it had to be a bad deal. Went from an overtuned option to something more in line with design expectations for a cantrip and and amped version.
I think if we are going to make comparisons I would think of it this way. If IW stayed with its former damage types but at the d6s(which was going to happen) it would not have been a comparable option in non amped form to gouging claw which has a bleed rider on crit and can be any physical damage type.
Now that its force the spell has a place that occupies a different space than either ignition or gouging claw.
A psychic could have imaginary weapon, gouging claw, ignition, and shield for example. With that they have physical options, fire, or now force in melee.
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All this assumes an equal distribution of creatures in adventures. Which, nice as it would be to get a more balanced distribution of creatures, isn't exactly how it's done.There's ballpark ~100 non unique creatures weak to slashing or bludgeoning. I can't get an exact number because I can't get the filter to behave how I want it. Probably doing something wrong. Comparatively, there are exactly 2 weak to force, and they're from the same AP. So in terms of exploting weaknesses, this change is a massive loss.
There are ~288 non-unique resistant to both bludgeoning and slashing from what I can tell on AoN (usually in the form of physical resistance), but that's out of ~2840 non-unique creatures.
What you are doing is a assuming a disproportionate amount of enemies resistant to slashing and bludgeoning in every campaign. Which is worse than just assuming the average. You can't balance a spell based on the fact it's going to be really good in one campaign where the enemies are weak against it, you need to balance it holistically.
Yes some campaigns can overrepresent these enemies, but generally this means undead which means bludgeoning and slashing weaknesses and also, other campaigns can make other damage types shine so it's kind of a moot point. Even so, it's still not so common as to actually be a buff in those campaigns. You would need some number like 40% of enemies to break even based on a rough guess.
Tridus points out that casters aren't about having one damage type, they're about responding to different issues with different spells. So buffing the damage type doesn't really matter because you could've just used another spell, or targeted another enemy. Losing damage on the other hand, affects every single cast of the spell, even in the niche it's good for.
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By necessity it had to be a bad deal. Went from an overtuned option to something more in line with design expectations for a cantrip and and amped version.
I think if we are going to make comparisons I would think of it this way. If IW stayed with its former damage types but at the d6s(which was going to happen) it would not have been a comparable option in non amped form to gouging claw which has a bleed rider on crit and can be any physical damage type.
Now that its force the spell has a place that occupies a different space than either ignition or gouging claw.A psychic could have imaginary weapon, gouging claw, ignition, and shield for example. With that they have physical options, fire, or now force in melee.
I disagree it was overtuned. It's designed for the psychic, which is a 6hp no armour prof class, and it's a melee cantrip/focus spell, on the class that is supposed to have better cantrips/focus spells.
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Because the conversation about imaginary weapon has come up and won’t leave the thread discussing the possible magic book, it really seems like the issue being expressed here is that magus players feel like the issue is that the class is somehow bad if it doesn’t have a 2d8 scaling damage focus spell. It is really not psychic players complaining about this.
I suspect that there was a deliberate intention not to have a 2d8 focus spell that basically breaks the starlit span magus into having one true build. With imaginary weapon at 2d6, minimally there are multiple build paths to have a 2d6 (or equivalent) focus spell, and if amps can’t be used with spell strike anymore then the entire discussion of imaginary weapon is very off topic to the new book.
I straight up do not care about Magus here. I have issue with this from the Psychic's perspective. It's annoying for people to assume intentions to try and discredit my arguments.
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I disagree it was overtuned. It's designed for the psychic, which is a 6hp no armour prof class, and it's a melee cantrip/focus spell, on the class that is supposed to have better cantrips/focus spells.By necessity it had to be a bad deal. Went from an overtuned option to something more in line with design expectations for a cantrip and and amped version.
I think if we are going to make comparisons I would think of it this way. If IW stayed with its former damage types but at the d6s(which was going to happen) it would not have been a comparable option in non amped form to gouging claw which has a bleed rider on crit and can be any physical damage type.
Now that its force the spell has a place that occupies a different space than either ignition or gouging claw.A psychic could have imaginary weapon, gouging claw, ignition, and shield for example. With that they have physical options, fire, or now force in melee.
That could have been true if the spell was a class feature no one else could take. Instead it was modular, any class could have it so it had to be balanced against every other thing any class could have.
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Guys there is a thread for discussing that balance change, move it there please.
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That could have been true if the spell was a class feature no one else could take. Instead it was modular, any class could have it so it had to be balanced against every other thing any class could have.
They nerfed the archetype for this exact reason. There's no point nerfing the actual spell as well as the archetype if this is the reasoning.
Also nerfing something for the main class because other classes can poach it is always something I'm going to frown upon.
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Devs, who are the people who best know their own game, reduce the die size when they change a physical damage to force.
It is not nerfing the spell.
Note to mention there are already at least 2 other threads that deal directly with this. No need to keep on polluting this one
It's funny when people say not to pollute a thread in the same comment that they do just that.
If you're going to say it's not a nerf, engage with the arguments made by people saying it is instead of just appealing to the authority of the developers. It's been pretty clearly demonstrated how the change is a net negative overall, so I don't know how else it can be interpreted other than a nerf.
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Devs, who are the people who best know their own game, reduce the die size when they change a physical damage to force.
It is not nerfing the spell.
Note to mention there are already at least 2 other threads that deal directly with this. No need to keep on polluting this one
"The devs know better" isn't as solid as an argument as you probably think it is, because if the devs were the omniscient gods this statement seems to imply they are then we wouldn't need errata, or the buffs and nerfs that happened in the remaster wouldn't be needed either because the devs would have made those initially and not after the fact. The devs aren't perfect and much less with its clear this book wasn't a priority of them and they just remastered it to have all their content under ORC.
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The thralls should just not take up space and not hinder movement.I feel as though this might negatively impact class fantasy for Necromancer players. They were already complaining that thralls were "totems" instead of undead because they couldn't move (despite moving being a trap option when you could instead summon them to where you want to move them.)
Goodness gracious minionmancers are hard to balance.
Was the class fantasy really conjuring stationary meatbags that function as walls and otherwise do nothing on their own, though? Like, I think that ship has already sailed. That's another one of my issues with it: you could just call the thralls "shrubs" and change the class to Primal and it basically works exactly the same.
So I kind of feel like that ship has already sailed in terms of that part of the class fantasy. Whatever gets made now has to result in a functional game, and "clog the room with so many tokens that nothing can move unless the GM starts busting out aoe/hazardous terrain to clear the board" isn't great.
I'm in the same boat, I adore minion master and necromancer flavor. The play test was just a lot of thematic fan service with rather terrible mechanics IMO. I hope they can pull another Guardian pivot to make it fun.
The game in general is balanced/biased against minions though, so I have my doubts. I've played a summoning Summoner, a Reanimator Magus and a Beastmaster Ranger and I feel minions are rather one action extra damage and HP on the field at low levels that don't scale up to be capable or effective at high level bar some very select choices.We can only hope that being a class mechanic that can't be pilfered means they don't have to be so heavy handed in limiting it. So long as the MCA isn't borked somehow.
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I'm in the same boat, I adore minion master and necromancer flavor. The play test was just a lot of thematic fan service with rather terrible mechanics IMO. I hope they can pull another Guardian pivot to make it fun.
Yeah, agreed. I loathe the playtest Necromancer. The playstyle is brittle and has a bunch of situations where it's extremely frustrating to deal with, and then a bunch more situations where it doesn't work very well. Thematically, it's a conjuror in a necromancer skin. I really do not look forward to a player showing up to my table with one, though hopefully there are sigificant changes by release. Guardian definitely did get a lot better.
The game in general is balanced/biased against minions though, so I have my doubts. I've played a summoning Summoner, a Reanimator Magus and a Beastmaster Ranger and I feel minions are rather one action extra damage and HP on the field at low levels that don't scale up to be capable or effective at high level bar some very select choices.
Some things in PF2 are built the way they are as a response to a problem in PF1. This is one of those, as characters that could summon a lot of stuff or otherwise put a lot of bodies on the field were a problem in PF1. Their turns would take forever and they could flood the field and be really strong. PF2 puts effort into reining that in. With years of experience now, we can probably say that at high level they reined it in too hard.
We can only hope that being a class mechanic that can't be pilfered means they don't have to be so heavy handed in limiting it. So long as the MCA isn't borked somehow.
That's going to be a hard archetype to balance, because it's got a lot of potential to be either a pre-nerf Psychic where it's extremely good, or a Summoner where it's so limited that it's awful.
For the class itself, mostly I want it to feel like the thralls are actually doing something other than being walls & ammunmition. Because that's really what they are right now.
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paizo if you make spellstrike recharge on actions determined by subclass (raise a shield, stride, etc) and let the focus spells be spells that magus is intended to spellstrike with (1d6 + 1d6 precision if off-guard per rank for laughing shadow for example) my life will be yours
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paizo if you make spellstrike recharge on actions determined by subclass (raise a shield, stride, etc) and let the focus spells be spells that magus is intended to spellstrike with (1d6 + 1d6 precision if off-guard per rank for laughing shadow for example) my life will be yours
Making spellstrike recharge on shield raise would single handily redeem the sparkling targe subclass and make it competitive with just being a shield fighter. God I hope they do this - without killing focus spell spellstrike, because then you’re back to the “worse than just being a fighter” issue, unless they give some other offensive buff (spellstrike font when?)
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I'm in the same boat, I adore minion master and necromancer flavor. The play test was just a lot of thematic fan service with rather terrible mechanics IMO. I hope they can pull another Guardian pivot to make it fun.Yeah, agreed. I loathe the playtest Necromancer. The playstyle is brittle and has a bunch of situations where it's extremely frustrating to deal with, and then a bunch more situations where it doesn't work very well. Thematically, it's a conjuror in a necromancer skin. I really do not look forward to a player showing up to my table with one, though hopefully there are sigificant changes by release. Guardian definitely did get a lot better.
The game in general is balanced/biased against minions though, so I have my doubts. I've played a summoning Summoner, a Reanimator Magus and a Beastmaster Ranger and I feel minions are rather one action extra damage and HP on the field at low levels that don't scale up to be capable or effective at high level bar some very select choices.Some things in PF2 are built the way they are as a response to a problem in PF1. This is one of those, as characters that could summon a lot of stuff or otherwise put a lot of bodies on the field were a problem in PF1. Their turns would take forever and they could flood the field and be really strong. PF2 puts effort into reining that in. With years of experience now, we can probably say that at high level they reined it in too hard.
We can only hope that being a class mechanic that can't be pilfered means they don't have to be so heavy handed in limiting it. So long as the MCA isn't borked somehow.That's going to be a hard archetype to balance, because it's got a lot of potential to be either a pre-nerf Psychic where it's extremely good, or a Summoner where it's so limited that it's awful.
For the class itself, mostly I want it to feel like the thralls are actually doing something other than being walls & ammunmition. Because that's really...
My wish list for necromancer is simple: Rename the class to something else instead of having a “necromancer” that can’t even summon an army of skeletons. If your “necromancer” can’t summon an army of skeletons to shoot at people, it doesn’t deserve the name and is not what people meant when they clamored for a necromancer class.
It’s not a necromancer, it’s something else, and stop pretending you’re fulfilling the “necromancer” class fantasy and make the mechanics you have fulfill a different flavoring. Save the necromancer name for a new class that, idk, gets to raise troop units or something. Maybe could be a bounded caster like summoner.
paizo if you make spellstrike recharge on actions determined by subclass (raise a shield, stride, etc) and let the focus spells be spells that magus is intended to spellstrike with (1d6 + 1d6 precision if off-guard per rank for laughing shadow for example) my life will be yours
This would be perfect ngl.
What would those be outside of raise a shield ? Any other relevant action would likely require a check (feint, disarm, trip, hide, recall knowledge, jump...)
But I aggree having the option to use combat actions to recharge spellstrike, with a chance to fail but no ressource cost, would be nice.
When you need certainty and extra action compression: use conflux spells.
When you want to have a specific benefit and save ressources on a calculated gamble, roll the skill check.
What would those be outside of raise a shield ? Any other relevant action would likely require a check (feint, disarm, trip, hide, recall knowledge, jump...)
But I aggree having the option to use combat actions to recharge spellstrike, with a chance to fail but no ressource cost, would be nice.
When you need certainty and extra action compression: use conflux spells.
When you want to have a specific benefit and save ressources on a calculated gamble, roll the skill check.
There would be an issue with having recharge actions that are attacks as they would run into MAP. this would mean that they would either have a harder time regaining spellstrike or hitting with spellstrike [depending on order] vs a subclass that had a non-attack recharge action. That's lead to some subclasses using the charging action every time, like a sparkling targe raising shields, and some almost never doing it to avoid MAP.
You don't have to spellstrike every single turn though.
And yeah that's the issue either there would be repeat or some stuff that are MAPless, but tbh we already have Starlit Span so is it really that much of an issue ? Make it work once per ennemy anyway.
You don't have to spellstrike every single turn though.
Sure, but you want to be able to do it when you want to and it limits what you do on off turns. What affects your spellstrike MAP also affects your normal strikes too. IMO, it's going to feel bad if some classes have to deal with MAP issues and some don't; people already gravitate to Starlit Span because it doesn't have negatives that the melee versions do [range, avoiding provoking, ect].
And yeah that's the issue either there would be repeat or some stuff that are MAPless, but tbh we already have Starlit Span so is it really that much of an issue ? Make it work once per ennemy anyway.
Well then you have things you CAN spam, since they don't target an enemy [and don't affect MAP], like Raise Shield and things you can't, like disarm... You have to get the recharge actions all in the same category, or you'll just make 'must have' subclasses and 'don't take' subclasses.
Then yeah raise a shield shouldn't be one, Shove could be instead.
Having off turn options that can recharge spellstrike while you set up your next turn, or assist allies (trip, shove, disarm, hide, feint) is one among other tools.
Right now I'm playing with Spirit Warrior on my laughing shadow magus and it's honestly so good to be able to keep spellstrike for when I need it and not my only way to deal worthwhile damage.
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But if raise a shield isn’t one sparkling targe is still afflicted with a terminal case of action economy inferiority.
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You don't have to spellstrike every single turn though.
But that's what people want when playing a magus. The class is designed for the player to want to recharge spellstrike as fast as possible and then spellstrike as soon as they have 2 actions to spare. If you put a magus player in a situation where they could do any 1A action that recharges their spellstrike but that has MAP + spellstrike or recharge spellstrike as 1A + spellstrike I'm sure most would likely pick the second one.
The whole "You don't have to spellstrike every turn" is a silly design decision that Paizo went with that IMO is a bit dumb. Like, if someone wants to play a bard I think they likely want to inspire courage every turn. The same with a swashbuckler and precise finishers, an alchemist and quick alchemy, and investigator and devise a stratagem, etc. If it at least had support for a non-spellstrike playstyle I would get it, but a magus without spellstrike is a vanilla martial with 4 spell slots lol.
Startlit span is so popular because its the magus that can spellstrike every turn. That's it.
If they are really that afraid of the magus using spellstrike every turn then, rather than make a unique bespoke action to recharge spellstrike, take every subclass conflux spell and make them into subclass-specific actions. All of them (AFAIK) already include a Strike so that would solve the "problem".
But if raise a shield isn’t one sparkling targe is still afflicted with a terminal case of action economy inferiority.
IMO, something like this would be better off being a class feat as you're aren't going to find the same kind of actions for the other subclasses. I could see something similar for the Starlight Span for reload/thrown weapons: if you could reload/draw and recharge your spellstrike at the same time, that'd open up a lot more weapons for them.
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But if raise a shield isn’t one sparkling targe is still afflicted with a terminal case of action economy inferiority.IMO, something like this would be better off being a class feat as you're aren't going to find the same kind of actions for the other subclasses. I could see something similar for the Starlight Span for reload/thrown weapons: if you could reload/draw and recharge your spellstrike at the same time, that'd open up a lot more weapons for them.
Such a thing would make me consider a magus over a spellshot gunslinger. Only consider though. +2 accuracy is crazy
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But if raise a shield isn’t one sparkling targe is still afflicted with a terminal case of action economy inferiority.IMO, something like this would be better off being a class feat as you're aren't going to find the same kind of actions for the other subclasses. I could see something similar for the Starlight Span for reload/thrown weapons: if you could reload/draw and recharge your spellstrike at the same time, that'd open up a lot more weapons for them.
If it’s a feat you have to take to make the subclass functional it should just be part of the subclass
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Will it be possible to make more Frontline Necromancer? I'm looking to make one much like the Diablo 4 Necromancer.
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Startlit span is so popular because its the magus that can spellstrike every turn. That's it.
Only if you use a bow... You cannot do so with a crossbow or firearm...
Feats that allow to recharge spellstrike with any other action would be beneficial.
I'd take "Getting a Critical Hit" as a way to recharge a spellstrike.
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Startlit span is so popular because its the magus that can spellstrike every turn. That's it.Only if you use a bow... You cannot do so with a crossbow or firearm...
Feats that allow to recharge spellstrike with any other action would be beneficial.
I'd take "Getting a Critical Hit" as a way to recharge a spellstrike.
Starlit Span also happen to be the subclass I hear people getting tired of playing and shelving the character the most often, 'cause it's too repetitive.
Also yeah "Critical Conflux" as a 10th level feat or something where, once per 10 minute, you can recharge Spellstrike on a critical hit from weapon or spell attack. That'd be dope.
But overall, no Magus shouldn't spellstrike all the time. They need more things to do other than that. Spellstrike is their big selling point but the magus is a gish, a spellblade, they should have more than one way of fulfilling that fantasy.
Barbarian don't JUST have rage, they have several abilities that fulfill the "big super powered fighter" fantasy, be it grabbing rocks to throw at people, slamming grappled target on the ground, tossing allies around etc.
Fighters are more than just "+2 to attack". They have tons of ways to be a weapon master in their feat selection. You could just Vicious Swing all the time or attack 3 times in a turn, but that'd be boring.
Will it be possible to make more Frontline Necromancer? I'm looking to make one much like the Diablo 4 Necromancer.
You can give it some armor via archetypes and it did have a thing to swing a weapon around, but they said they're not interested in making it a proper gish. So while you can do it, being a frontline type isn't really its thing.
Also the thralls don't act like Diablo 4 minions at all in that they don't move and don't act indepedently to fight things. You can conjure them and then sacrifice them to use a focus spell, so it can feel like that kind of Necromancer.
Otherwise? Not really.
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If it’s a feat you have to take to make the subclass functional it should just be part of the subclassBut if raise a shield isn’t one sparkling targe is still afflicted with a terminal case of action economy inferiority.IMO, something like this would be better off being a class feat as you're aren't going to find the same kind of actions for the other subclasses. I could see something similar for the Starlight Span for reload/thrown weapons: if you could reload/draw and recharge your spellstrike at the same time, that'd open up a lot more weapons for them.
Their conflux spell raises their shield and makes a melee strike. In addition they can take Emergency Targe to raise their shield when hit with a melee attack or fail a save vs a spell. This means by 6th level, they could use Shielding Strike 3 times [taking Force Fang and Cascade Countermeasure for 2 extra focus] and still have Emergency Targe as a reaction. Seems plenty functional; it can be a bit rough until you get all your ducks in a row but it's hardly the only subclass/niche to suffer from that.
So IMO, it falls into the nice to have category, hence the suggestion for it to be a feat. That's an easier ask than getting a new recharge action for every subclass [that's reasonably balanced to each other] and somehow finding room for that in the existing class footprint in the book which is nigh impossible.
I think there's an interesting idea in tying Spellstrike's recharge to MAP actions, so long as it's the only way to consistently recharge Spellstrike: if hitting with a Strike naturally recharged Spellstrike and you could then pick feats to recharge with Athletics maneuvers, Dirty Trick, and other attack actions, but nothing too reusable without MAP, then you'd enforce the on-and-off-turn rotation on the Magus. This, in turn, could allow conflux spells to be made stronger, and would leave room for other Strike feats that would have reason to exist alongside Spellstrike. If there were still to be evergreen, MAP-independent actions that recharged Spellstrike, however, players would still gravitate towards those and your engine would break down.