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If were talking about a spell attack crit rider then we really shouldnt be considering either the bleed or the push.
What I see as the benefit of push on IW is that when it does happen you get either some safety after having taken a chance and moved in to use it. Or you get some more options for a third action now that the thing is 10ft away. Also if an team mate has reactive strike I am going to push them that way so if they do want to come back to me they are going to get hit.
That's the thing. The push from IW is situationaly useful (and actually harmful in others). The bleed from gouging claw is always useful, unless the enemy is inmune.
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That's the thing. The push from IW is situationaly useful (and actually harmful in others). The bleed from gouging claw is always useful, unless the enemy is inmune.If were talking about a spell attack crit rider then we really shouldnt be considering either the bleed or the push.
What I see as the benefit of push on IW is that when it does happen you get either some safety after having taken a chance and moved in to use it. Or you get some more options for a third action now that the thing is 10ft away. Also if an team mate has reactive strike I am going to push them that way so if they do want to come back to me they are going to get hit.
What situation does a 6hp caster not want extra distance at the end of their turn? It just adds to the defensive layering they need to not die.
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If were talking about a spell attack crit rider then we really shouldnt be considering either the bleed or the push.
What I see as the benefit of push on IW is that when it does happen you get either some safety after having taken a chance and moved in to use it. Or you get some more options for a third action now that the thing is 10ft away. Also if an team mate has reactive strike I am going to push them that way so if they do want to come back to me they are going to get hit.
We absolutely should be. The crit rider on Gouging Claw is extra damage. This may not work if the enemy is immune to bleed, but it's usually more of the thing you wanted to do and at worst it does nothing. It's a bonus if it happens and nobody has to try to plan around it.
The push on IW might be useful, or it might actually be detrimental if you just pushed an enemy out of a spot that someone else in your party wanted them to be in. You can't rely on it for defensive or positioning purposes because it usually won't happen. At best it makes you safer, but you already needed a plan to be safe because you can't rely on it. At worst, it actively hinders someone else on your team. And if the enemy has reach (which is way more common than physical resistance), that push doesn't actually make you safer and is effectively useless.
These are in no way equivalent and not considering them happens to work in IW's favor... just like when people were talking about resistances and ignoring both weaknesses and how often that resistance doesn't come up did. Bit of a theme, there.
Anyway, the net result is Gouging Claw gets more damage on a crit, so it's overall damage potential is higher. Since you always want that and don't always want a push you can't do reliably and may not accomplish anything even if it happens, it's a point in Gouging Claw's favor.
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If were talking about a spell attack crit rider then we really shouldnt be considering either the bleed or the push.
What I see as the benefit of push on IW is that when it does happen you get either some safety after having taken a chance and moved in to use it. Or you get some more options for a third action now that the thing is 10ft away. Also if an team mate has reactive strike I am going to push them that way so if they do want to come back to me they are going to get hit.We absolutely should be. The crit rider on Gouging Claw is extra damage. This may not work if the enemy is immune to bleed, but it's usually more of the thing you wanted to do and at worst it does nothing. It's a bonus if it happens and nobody has to try to plan around it.
The push on IW might be useful, or it might actually be detrimental if you just pushed an enemy out of a spot that someone else in your party wanted them to be in. You can't rely on it for defensive or positioning purposes because it usually won't happen. At best it makes you safer, but you already needed a plan to be safe because you can't rely on it. At worst, it actively hinders someone else on your team.
These are in no way equivalent and not considering them happens to work in IW's favor... just like when people were talking about resistances and ignoring both weaknesses and how often that resistance doesn't come up did. Bit of a theme, there.
Anyway, the net result is Gouging Claw gets more damage on a crit, so it's overall damage potential is higher. Since you always want that and don't always want a push you can't do reliably, it's a point in Gouging Claw's favor.
I have to disagree. Most situations are going to be ones where you do want that extra 10ft, its a psychic not a heavy armor martial. With that extra space you now can decide to shield an ally, or move back even further if that would net a two action distance for the enemy. it depends on what you pushed and how aggressive you can be against it. (if you couldn't afford to be in melee range at all against the thing no melee cantrip is worth using)
And if the situation is one where you don't want to move the creature you can choose not to detonate IW.Adding to clarify: I dont disagree with everything you said. I do agree that you can't rely on it. Just the same you can't rely on the bleed. When either happens, great. Push though opens up options, bleed is damage. My point from the beginning is they are aiming at different things but I dont value one over the other universally.
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I don’t think it was ever meant to be. The whole point of psi cantrips is that they’re upgrades to regular cantrips, and amps are better than most other focus spells. While I do think there are issues to poaching amps, spending class feats to have an above-average cantrip I don’t think is unbalanced when you have focus and slot spells.Psi cantrips being better than other cantrips I'll grant you (Although that rapidly loses relevance once you have enough spells to cast multiple ranked spells per combat). But I've never bought the idea that Amped Psi Cantrips are better than Focus spells apart from maybe 4 outliers (Shatter Mind, Guidance, Message, and the old Imaginary weapon). I guess I can see where the reputation came from when bery few classes had access to good focus spells. But that seems to be more a case of them finally nailing down what they want focus spells to be able to do woth psychic, and most focus spells from then on being at roughly psychic's level.
The fact that they want to make it so difficult to be able to access these focus spells makes me think they are supposed to be more powerful. Psychic was always the "focus point caster", if their focus spells aren't intended to be more powerful, then the class being a two slot caster is highly questionable.
Also pre-remaster focus spells were overall a lot worse. They were made more powerful after the fact, but Psychic's weren't for some reason.
Psychic at the very least gets some very unique focus spells, and a few very powerful ones.
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I guess I'd like to step in to explain myself a bit. Yes, I do think it was nerfed. But I think enough was given back to feel less like a nerf? If that makes sense. You'll see in some of my posts in the other thread that despite my defense, I think there is more that can be done. I feel it's a good direction, but even I'm adding to it homebrew side. If it was just d6 damage but stayed physical, I'd have poo poo'd the nerf too. I think it's an acceptable direction. It's SO CLOSE to being a proper side grade.
Force was enough for me to shrug and say, "Okay, I've been looking for some force options, this is a trade that at least softens it a lot for me." Heck, I've been designing a psychic concept for Starfinder about two months ago, so the class is fresh in my mind.
Here's the thing, there's an order of damages for spells. physical does higher damage than magical damage, Attack roll does higher damage than saving throw, and melee does higher damage than ranged. I saw the math, and my thought was, "They gave it damage in line with melee magical attack cantrips, so they switched it to a magical damage, but they picked force, which is pretty alright. At least it's consistent with the math." But it's lacking, to me, I agree more can be done.
Right now, Imaginary Weapon is a better melee Ignition, which I think is fine. But I for example would like to hedge on your point, Tridus. Psychics are squishy. They don't wanna be in melee. And I learned while drafting them as a Starfinder character, Imaginary Weapon becomes right questionable when facing ranged enemies. I feel it needs a ranged option, doesn't have to be a far-reaching option, if anything, I think 30 feet would be good. Make it do what Ignition does, but force, plus the amp. I feel at least at that point, it can make up for the diminished damage to non-resisting enemies, by being able to reach out while staying safe.
The original damage was in line with the melee only spell, Gouging Claw, but now that it does damage associated with a hybrid...
It's nowhere close to a sidegrade. It's beneficial in <5% of combats and only marginally so, because of the nerf to the damage. The -2 per rank applies every single time IW does damage. It's just a straight up nerf.
Saying it's a better melee Ignition is missing the point when Ignition can go ranged, and IW supposed to be superior to regular cantrips because it's a Psychic cantrip. I wouldn't even necessarily say it's better than melee Ignition, because fire weakness is fairly common.
I don't see why we should make it ranged when it could just be superior in it's niche and be more interesting rather than just an Ignition clone with a different damage type.
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I do agree that you can't rely on it. Just the same you can't rely on the bleed.
It's dishonest to put these two in the same category of unreliability.
I do agree that you can't rely on it. Just the same you can't rely on the bleed.It's dishonest to put these two in the same category of unreliability.
Would you care to spell out why?
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That's the thing. The push from IW is situationaly useful (and actually harmful in others). The bleed from gouging claw is always useful, unless the enemy is inmune.If were talking about a spell attack crit rider then we really shouldnt be considering either the bleed or the push.
What I see as the benefit of push on IW is that when it does happen you get either some safety after having taken a chance and moved in to use it. Or you get some more options for a third action now that the thing is 10ft away. Also if an team mate has reactive strike I am going to push them that way so if they do want to come back to me they are going to get hit.What situation does a 6hp caster not want extra distance at the end of their turn? It just adds to the defensive layering they need to not die.
Bleed does nothing until after the creature gets all three of its actions.
If you end up screwing the positioning of your whole party because you just happened to crit on an attack you shouldn't, on a class that's not designed to be in melee, in a situation where you yourself decided to put yourself in risk (because I doubt a psychic goes to melee expecting to crit with IW every time), is never going to be better than just dealing more damage, regardless of when it happens. Or, you know, use a ranged option that won't backfire on you.
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Bringing this over from the other thread.
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.
I mean, the math was laid out clearly and says otherwise. You're guessing that they don't consider it a nerf, and the facts say it's very clearly a nerf.
Not to mention that appeals to dev authority are not going to fly when the devs can't sort stuff out like "how many spells do Oracles know", to the degree that the official Oracle pregen does it wrong (among all the other issues piling up with recent releases). Plus, you don't know the devs didn't intend to nerf it, so you're guessing at their intention and then trying to use that to claim something that factually isn't true.
Note to mention there are already at least 2 other threads that deal directly with this.
I mean, the sheer audacity of posting in the wrong thread knowingly and then sticking this on the end after someone else had already called it out is really something.
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Since I see some people referencing gouging claw's bleed as a crit rider, I'd like to mention that it is now a baseline effect.
Meaning that gouging claw does more damage to a single target than IW to begin with before resistance/immunities.
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Just in case the change wasn't known by some, Gouging Claw was buffed to deal bleed damage equal to the number of dice on a hit, so the bleed damage isn't limited to crits anymore. Weakness/Resistance/Immunity notwithstanding, it starts at 2d6+2 (because the persistent bleed will apply at least once) and heightens at 1d6+1, effectively putting it in the d8 range unlike other cantrips.
The other melee cantrip, Ignition, has the flexibility of a ranged usage too, so it's sensible to put the melee-only cantrip in a higher bracket, after all.
(Edit: same thought!)
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Imaginary Weapon is close to the least important possible change to the Psychic as far as I am concerned with, in whether it will still be a fun class to play or not.
The issue that I am concerned with, is one that is probably going to have to involve looking pretty deep into the changes and any potentially new feats of feat changes, is that, pre-remaster, the Psychic was the class that would cast 2 focus points every encounter and sometimes 3. But with every character able to cast focus spells 3 times an encounter, the interesting niche of the psychic has been cut out from under it, and the quick changes to make the class work with remastered spells did nothing to address that.
I don't think the Psychic is supposed to have better focus spells than any other class. I think the ways in which the cantrips are better for the psychic are a very, very minor part of the class as a whole really. What matters is "how is a psychic different from any other caster but just with fewer spells?" and if the answer is "Unleash Psyche" as is, with no boosts or ability to really do more with it in feats, THEN I will say that the remastered Psychic is dud class that needs another pass.
Boosting IW to D10s would not address that underlying issue.
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I am legit curious, though. My approach was a suggestion, and the solution I arrived at, but there are other ways I'm sure. What would you suggest as a buff to Imaginary Weapon as is. Granted, restoring it to its original state is a valid answer. But I'm curious, if it had to be weaker than it's original, if my approach is not a sufficient buff, what would you suggest?What could be done to make up for lowering the damage dice? Or would the damage die be best reserved returning to it's original with physical damage only? What kind of damage dice and damage type should it have? Or what additional effects could be thematic to reinforce its theme and niche?
If the problem is that Imaginary Weapon as it is is underwhelming, what can be done to make it whelming again? (And this is a serious question, I find the spell underwhelming for the reasons I explained, so if I can find a better solution to my idea, I'm wanting it so I can have a more fun home game.)
As others have said, if the damage is going to be lowered, than just have it act as a force version of Ignition. It gains the option to be used as 30 ft range attack, but keeps the same damage die. This keeps it slightly better than a base cantrip but locks it behind an archetype or class so it's not easily poachable. Seems fair to me. Fixes both peoples concerns and gives that variant of psychic some punch. Win win imo
Since I see some people referencing gouging claw's bleed as a crit rider, I'd like to mention that it is now a baseline effect.
Meaning that gouging claw does more damage to a single target than IW to begin with before resistance/immunities.
Thanks for the correction.
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You don't like push effects?
Don't get me wrong, I love me a push effect, especially when I'm a super-squishy cloth caster and an enemy or two are getting far too close for comfort. However, when I need to use that push effect, I want it to be at least decently reliable: if the push effect triggers only on a spell attack crit, it is not reliable at all, so I can't count on it. Thus, in the vast majority of circumstances, I would much rather prefer double damage on both regular and bleed damage on a cantrip that now outdamages imaginary weapon by default.
To labor another point, a few have been trying to tout the switch to force damage as a buff, when in practice the current cantrip has the best of all worlds: there's this fixation on bludgeoning damage as if it were the only damage type the cantrip deals, but IW also can deal slashing damage instead. Not only does this let the cantrip bypass selective resistances and immunities to bludgeoning or slashing damage whenever they occur, this also lets the cantrip trigger a range of weaknesses, such as a zombie's weakness to slashing. Not only that, but because the cantrip has the force trait, it automatically bypasses the usual resistances of incorporeal enemies, making IW extremely difficult to mitigate under most circumstances. Switching the cantrip's damage to just force might perhaps be a benefit against a subset of enemies that resist all physical damage, but strips it of its ability to trigger all of those weaknesses. I therefore consider the damage type switch a nerf as well; at best it comes with severe tradeoffs that I don't believe justify the reduction to the cantrip's damage die.
Finally, I believe that even if psi cantrips truly were substantially stronger than regular cantrips, which is what I would've liked to have seen in this remaster, the dedication would've been perfectly fine including two of them, not just one. As mentioned already, the special benefit of an exceptionally strong cantrip isn't unbalanced when you eventually get so many slot spells and Focus Points that you have less need of some of those cantrips, and being restricted to choosing psi cantrips is a limitation other caster dedications do not impose for their own cantrip selection. Having two more limited but stronger options in my opinion would sit comfortably alongside two weaker but freeform options, and would have allowed the Psychic's MC dedication to continue shining in its own way. Limiting the dedication's benefits to a single psi cantrip, let alone one that may not even be worth picking over a regular cantrip, I think is way too severe a nerf that makes the MC archetype a lot weaker than competing options.
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A squishy caster should not be using a melee cantrip of any kind. They best be thinking of a way to escape before they deal any amount of damage unless they can confirm a killing blow. Since no armor and 6HP is putting you in a situation which is not fun, sure ever caster can decide to 2 feat dip into Earth Kineticist for Clad in Earth Impulse (Which I sadly have done several times for the AC boost alone....) because it beats being a squishy mage with no armor even if you suffer 15ft of moment instead of the classic 25ft.
But reducing IW to D6s is like saying it doesn't get to be special since Gouging claw is also d6, sure it deals 2xrank past rank 1, which is odd. Funky math sometimes but there we go, it is just a melee option on a non-melee caster and is a huge risk, that's all.
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D6 Force vs D8 B/S is a slight downgrade in the white room "I know nothing about what my character will face" exercise, but real APs are rarely that. When picking class and subclass, the player is likely to have at least some information on the value of force type damage in the campaign. It's an interesting switch, very useful in some cases but not so much in others. As for home campaigns, well the GM knows what you picked as they design the stories and encounters, so whether it's d8 b/s or d6 force, you will likely see encounters where it's a bad fit because the GM wanted it that way plus other encounters where it shines because the GM wanted that to happen instead.
No, it's a straight downgrade. It' a ~20% damage reduction in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Even when it's an improvement, it's not an improvement by nearly the same degree since the gain is "resistance bypassed - damage loss". In my SoT book 3 example, it was an average loss of 7 damage per attack (21%) in 34/36 encounters, an average gain of 3 damage in 1/36 encounters, and a small net loss in 1/36 (~2 damage). That also happens to be a real AP book that I just finished running, not white room.
There is no world where that is anything except a nerf. Even if the AP was 50% resistant creatures (which would be WAY above normal even in a ghost heavy AP) it's STILL a net loss because you're losing twice as much as you're gaining.
That resistance would need to be absolutely ubitquous to make this an even trade, and we'd have to ignore weakness on top of it. I'm not aware of any AP that meets that criteria. Even Abomination Vaults (which has a lot of ghosts given its theme) doesn't come close.
Force damage is massively overvalued by the community for some reason that I have to assume is vibes and the idea of it working on everything, but the reality is that trading raw damage for it like this is a bad trade in the actual APs Paizo is putting out.
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I'm just going to go ahead and restate that old IW didn't have a problem with ghosts and other incorporeal monsters either because the Force tag gets through their resistance even if the damage type is different.
And we shouldn't forget either that d6 Force also loses to d8 if the enemy has something like hardness to mitigate force damage.
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It’s not that I think you’re wrong, but incorporeal usually gives immunity to damage types except force damage. The force tag doesn’t make a physical damage type force damage, at least not anywhere I have read. It seems like the only place I see damaging effects with the force tag is DA. Maybe this change is something that is getting applied across the board to the force spells in DA because the game isn’t supposed to have bludgeoning force damage (or slashing or piercing).
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Ok let me give you a scenario I know happens(maybe not to you, but I have seen it).
Your party is facing a creature. You don't know what it is, no one RKed to bother finding out. You just know how the GM described it to you.
Its medium sized crab like thing but deformed looking.
If you attacked this thing with gouging claw and chose piercing you would have hit resistance 10.
So now you know. Ok you try it again but with slashing but again resistance.
meanwhile if you were tangible dream and had IW you didn't play that game you just did your full damage. In fact you pretty much never have to RK to know if your damage will go through.
Force does not play RK. and not playing RK is a damage increase where it matters.
Creature was a Gongorinnian this time. Next time it could be a demon or a any number of undead and for some reason we are talking about how few creatures have resist physical or resist both piercing and slashing when these kinds of creatures are exceptionally common in a lot of campaigns.
And yes the ghost or construct are less common in terms of quantity that show up but they usually are there, people and APs do like throwing them in. And those are the fights you either are prepared for or struggle with. IW is always prepared cause it dont play RK.
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It’s not that I think you’re wrong, but incorporeal usually gives immunity to damage types except force damage. The force tag doesn’t make a physical damage type force damage, at least not anywhere I have read. It seems like the only place I see damaging effects with the force tag is DA. Maybe this change is something that is getting applied across the board to the force spells in DA because the game isn’t supposed to have bludgeoning force damage (or slashing or piercing).
There are plenty of creatures that have weaknesses and resistances to tags rather than damage types. For example, living inferno and the water tag.
Unless there's a rule somewhere that states that "if a tag shares a name with a damage type, ignore the tag for weakness/ resistance/ etc" I don't see why the tag would suddenly not matter here.
As a bonus, the other tangible dream spell is still B/P with the force tag in the remastered book. I guess they thought nerfing it to d2 force was too much even for them. Or maybe they didn't even look at it since I doubt consistency was a concern for them.
I am curious is etheric shards still does piercing damage with the force tag as well?
I am curious is etheric shards still does piercing damage with the force tag as well?
d4 piercing with the tag in the remaster book, yes
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In that case it does look like imaginary weapon was singularly targeted. I guess that means that 2d8 heightening on a focus spell was decided to be too much.
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In that case it does look like imaginary weapon was singularly targeted. I guess that means that 2d8 heightening on a focus spell was decided to be too much.
IMO, someone said 'we need to stop magus from picking imaginary weapon all the time', and when presented with multiple options, they just picked every single one even though any one of them would have done it. It's a classic 'nuke it from orbit' approach. Remove magus from the discussion and I doubt "2d8 heightening on a focus spell" that's restricted to melee would have been an issue.
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One sin often attributed to Paizo is overvaluing flexiblility in class design and attributing too much power to it. That may be what's going on with how they view the Psychic.
Are Psychic amps generally stronger than the strongest options available to other (non-Wizard) casters? You can argue it. What you can't argue is that the Psychic gets 3-5 "focus" spell options without investing a feat, 6 "feat" options if they do invest a feat, while other casters (generally? I don't remember all the remaster changes) only get one free focus spell and have to invest one feat at a time to match the number of menu choices that a Psychic gets.
Now actual use per combat/day of effective focus spells or amps is much closer post remaster with minimal feat investment by other classes. But the versatility without investment is there, and Paizo cares about that stuff.
I am curious is etheric shards still does piercing damage with the force tag as well?
In that case it does look like imaginary weapon was singularly targeted. I guess that means that 2d8 heightening on a focus spell was decided to be too much.
Astral Rain is another example of physical damage type with force trait in the psychic toolbox. I don't think that one changed, either.
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Are Psychic amps generally stronger than the strongest options available to other (non-Wizard) casters? You can argue it. What you can't argue is that the Psychic gets 3-5 "focus" spell options without investing a feat, 6 "feat" options if they do invest a feat, while other casters (generally? I don't remember all the remaster changes) only get one free focus spell and have to invest one feat at a time to match the number of menu choices that a Psychic gets.
Now actual use per combat/day of effective focus spells or amps is much closer post remaster with minimal feat investment by other classes. But the versatility without investment is there, and Paizo cares about that stuff.
Counterpoint: the Psychic pays for this in actual versatility by having a much more restricted selection of cantrips and spells than any other full caster. You only get a totally freeform choice of 3 cantrips, as opposed to the 5 of most other casters, and as a 2-slot caster, your repertoire is also more limited. Furthermore, the Animist gets up to 4 different focus spells for free that they can freely swap out each day, on top of numerous other benefits. While one can argue that the Animist is a special case, as they are rather generously tuned in my opinion, I think the net result here is that the Psychic is less versatile than other casters, not more. In fact, I'd argue the whole point of the Psychic's design is that they trade off the versatility and slot spell output of a typical spellcaster in exchange for a fixed subset of powerful spells that they can cast with no attrition constraints.
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As an aside, I think we can also dig a little deeper into the benefits of force versus bludgeoning or slashing damage on imaginary weapon: in my opinion, it's not enough that force can bypass certain resistances; those resistances need to be high enough that bypassing them constitutes a net increase in damage. I'd push on this and say that the net increase in damage needs to be rather high in order to justify a damage reduction in virtually all other circumstances, but let's be generous and just stick to any net increase. Because the damage die downgrade represents a drop in 1 damage per damage die, this means that all else held equal, amping imaginary weapon and dealing damage on a hit is as if you were hitting resistance equal to 2 per rank of the spell. Thus, the resistance on a monster needs to be higher than that for there to be a net increase, ignoring how it would need to be unrealistically high for a crit to deal more damage than pre-remaster. To grossly simplify, this translates to the monster needing resistance at least equal to its level for the bypass to be worth it. The question is: when a monster resists bludgeoning and slashing damage but not force, are the resistances high enough to constitute a net increase?
From what I'm seeing, the answer is: only rarely. Looking at devils, who famously resist non-silver physical damage, out of the 22 listed devils on AoN, only six make the cut, none of whom are higher than level 10. I've had trouble finding many other creatures that fit the bill, and those that do tend to be outliers known for being uniquely resistant to physical damage, like the adamantine dragon. Even then, the archdragon's resistances don't increase, so your 10th-rank pre-nerf imaginary weapon would, at worst, deal as much average damage as it will post-remaster. This I think makes sense, because physical resistances tend to be distinctly weaker than energy resistances so as to avoid hard-countering martial classes. Thus, even when the current cantrip does hit resistance that force damage would bypass, it still deals more damage on average in the majority of circumstances.
Amped IW wasn't even particularly strong on psychic itself past early levels. It's horrifically dangerous to use. And the damage nerf is a direct nerf to IW's safety: it is much less likely to finish off enemies at early levels.
I haven't seen anyone mention, but did they at least increase their spell slot count if they reduced the focus spell damage...?
It’s not that I think you’re wrong, but incorporeal usually gives immunity to damage types except force damage. The force tag doesn’t make a physical damage type force damage, at least not anywhere I have read. It seems like the only place I see damaging effects with the force tag is DA. Maybe this change is something that is getting applied across the board to the force spells in DA because the game isn’t supposed to have bludgeoning force damage (or slashing or piercing).There are plenty of creatures that have weaknesses and resistances to tags rather than damage types. For example, living inferno and the water tag.
Unless there's a rule somewhere that states that "if a tag shares a name with a damage type, ignore the tag for weakness/ resistance/ etc" I don't see why the tag would suddenly not matter here.
As a bonus, the other tangible dream spell is still B/P with the force tag in the remastered book. I guess they thought nerfing it to d2 force was too much even for them. Or maybe they didn't even look at it since I doubt consistency was a concern for them.
I know that traits works for immunity and weaknesses, but with the exception of fire, which gets complicated because it is a common damage type, I am not seeing creatures with resistance to water or Earth, like even elementals that are pure water don’t get resistance or immunity to water. The implementation of traits and damage types is inconsistent and a bit haphazard in PF2. If a creature had weakness to force than the force trait would trigger that, for sure. But resist all, or physical, would still apply to bludgeoning damage. Even in the incorporeal trait it specifies “force damage” which feels different than the trait. Water weaknesses trigger from things with the trait even when they don’t do damage. Immunity with traits is a little more confusing but definitely can include just traits, but resistances (except x) seem to be about damage types, not traits. It feels like fixing force as a damage type would have made sense as change. That definitely didn’t happen here though.
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Ok let me give you a scenario I know happens(maybe not to you, but I have seen it).
Your party is facing a creature. You don't know what it is, no one RKed to bother finding out. You just know how the GM described it to you.
Its medium sized crab like thing but deformed looking.If you attacked this thing with gouging claw and chose piercing you would have hit resistance 10.
So now you know. Ok you try it again but with slashing but again resistance.meanwhile if you were tangible dream and had IW you didn't play that game you just did your full damage. In fact you pretty much never have to RK to know if your damage will go through.
Force does not play RK. and not playing RK is a damage increase where it matters.
Creature was a Gongorinnian this time. Next time it could be a demon or a any number of undead and for some reason we are talking about how few creatures have resist physical or resist both piercing and slashing when these kinds of creatures are exceptionally common in a lot of campaigns.
And yes the ghost or construct are less common in terms of quantity that show up but they usually are there, people and APs do like throwing them in. And those are the fights you either are prepared for or struggle with. IW is always prepared cause it dont play RK.
Old Imaginary Weapon would deal, considering a 9th level psychic, ~10 points of extra damage, compared to the remaster version that would ignore its resistance cuz force, we then would end up with the exactly same amount of damage, making both the "same" deal in this situation.
BUT remastered one almost always, and many have already explained you this already, loses in every other scenario, compared to the old one.
And now, in my personal opinion, resistance matters most if you deal multiple damage low ticks, not when you deal one damage big swing (which is exactly what old IW was), sincerely.
Amped IW wasn't even particularly strong on psychic itself past early levels. It's horrifically dangerous to use. And the damage nerf is a direct nerf to IW's safety: it is much less likely to finish off enemies at early levels.
I haven't seen anyone mention, but did they at least increase their spell slot count if they reduced the focus spell damage...?
No, sadly.
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It’s not that I think you’re wrong, but incorporeal usually gives immunity to damage types except force damage. The force tag doesn’t make a physical damage type force damage, at least not anywhere I have read. It seems like the only place I see damaging effects with the force tag is DA. Maybe this change is something that is getting applied across the board to the force spells in DA because the game isn’t supposed to have bludgeoning force damage (or slashing or piercing).
Incorporeal does not give immunity to damage in PF2. You might be thinking of PF1. Almost nothing is immune to physical damage in PF2 precisely because of how awful that felt in PF1 when you show up to a fight and then go "oh I guess I'm not actually in this" as a martial.
Incorporeal gives resistance to damage outside of a few types, of which force is one. It does give double resist to nonmagical attacks, which doesn't usually impact martials by time they're showing up (unless they can't use their primary weapon) and Alchemists that don't have a Ghost Charge available because Alchemy is not magical, so if you're down to Versatile Vials you're gonna have a bad time against ghosts.
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As an aside, I think we can also dig a little deeper into the benefits of force versus bludgeoning or slashing damage on imaginary weapon: in my opinion, it's not enough that force can bypass certain resistances; those resistances need to be high enough that bypassing them constitutes a net increase in damage. I'd push on this and say that the net increase in damage needs to be rather high in order to justify a damage reduction in virtually all other circumstances, but let's be generous and just stick to any net increase. Because the damage die downgrade represents a drop in 1 damage per damage die, this means that all else held equal, amping imaginary weapon and dealing damage on a hit is as if you were hitting resistance equal to 2 per rank of the spell. Thus, the resistance on a monster needs to be higher than that for there to be a net increase, ignoring how it would need to be unrealistically high for a crit to deal more damage than pre-remaster. To grossly simplify, this translates to the monster needing resistance at least equal to its level for the bypass to be worth it. The question is: when a monster resists bludgeoning and slashing damage but not force, are the resistances high enough to constitute a net increase?
This is a great point that I totally ignored that makes the comparison even worse. In my earlier example, there was one encounter in SoT book 3 where the IW change helped because it has resist 10 (and another where it didn't help because the resist was only 5). But as soon as you amp IW, the change costs you more than 10 damage and now you're actually negative again.
Gods, the more I look at this the worse it gets.
In that case it does look like imaginary weapon was singularly targeted. I guess that means that 2d8 heightening on a focus spell was decided to be too much.IMO, someone said 'we need to stop magus from picking imaginary weapon all the time', and when presented with multiple options, they just picked every single one even though any one of them would have done it. It's a classic 'nuke it from orbit' approach. Remove magus from the discussion and I doubt "2d8 heightening on a focus spell" that's restricted to melee would have been an issue.
Ain't that the truth.
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Thats is because Imaginary weapon was overtuned at d8s. It was a downgrade for system consistency.
Try that same analysis with contemporary focus spells for the ampted version of IW as it is now rather than comparing it to the d8 version we know was overtuned to the point magus players saw it as a holy grail of focus spells.
Compare it to what else they could have now. Did they overcorrect? Possibly. Does it have a lane of its own? I think so.
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Is it really supposed to work like a spellshape free action? I think if they meant to do that, they would actually name the free action and give it an action stat block, like with Unleash Psyche or the wizard's Drain Bonded Item action.
Maybe the free action to amp the psi cantrip is actually meant to be triggered by casting the psi cantrip itself, rather than a triggerless free action immediately followed by the psi cantrip. And the "next action" is referring to a second psi cantrip you cast right after the first, thus allowing two psi cantrips to get the amp effect from 1 Focus Point.
Then again, that would also warrant writing out a full stat block for the free action itself.
The fact that this new free action that the psychic is expected to use doesn't even have a defined stat block suggests to me that the PDFs that were inadvertently sent out aren't actually the final draft, and the devs are still trying to figure out how to remaster Psychic.
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Thats is because Imaginary weapon was overtuned at d8s. It was a downgrade for system consistency.
Try that same analysis with contemporary focus spells for the ampted version of IW as it is now rather than comparing it to the d8 version we know was overtuned to the point magus players saw it as a holy grail of focus spells.Compare it to what else they could have now. Did they overcorrect? Possibly. Does it have a lane of its own? I think so.
Whitering Grasp was always there, same for Winter Bolt for example. And, Ingition amp, on the same book (and on the same class), did and does exactly almost the same job as old IW, which also is able to deal cold damage if necessary as a psychic. It was a "holy grail" cuz it didn't lock you into a Deity (which is against the roleplay of many) and did the same type of damage as their weapon 99% of the time (compared to Ignition).
And compared to now, it's even worse, it's an overcorrection and i don't think it even has a lane of it's own, cuz Flurry of Claws exists (and works with Shadow Signet), and all the mentioned before didn't change a bit (not including the ones that also got remastered, such as Fire Ray).
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Thats is because Imaginary weapon was overtuned at d8s. It was a downgrade for system consistency.
Try that same analysis with contemporary focus spells for the ampted version of IW as it is now rather than comparing it to the d8 version we know was overtuned to the point magus players saw it as a holy grail of focus spells.
We've come a long way from "its not a nerf", at least. :) But "Psychic got nerfed because Magus in the Psychic update that didn't really help Psychic that much" is going to be a hard sell.
Anyway... if we're just talking focus spells, Pulverizing Cascade lets Druids do similar damage as the amp in an AoE from fairly long range. That's a sturdier class with more spell slots that doesn't have to be in melee.
And that's kind of the problem. IW was really good on a class that needed that. Now it doesn't have it, but what else is going on to make Psychic keep up? Other casters largely got better in the remaster and Psychic has simply been left behind. IW stands out as a nerf to a high damage ability they had because they didn't get buffs elsewhere to really bring them in line.
Compare it to what else they could have now. Did they overcorrect? Possibly. Does it have a lane of its own? I think so.
I'm really not sure what it is, now, given Psychic probably doesn't want to be in melee with multiple targets, which is really the only case where IW is better than just casting some other cantrip now.
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The fact that this new free action that the psychic is expected to use doesn't even have a defined stat block suggests to me that the PDFs that were inadvertently sent out aren't actually the final draft, and the devs are still trying to figure out how to remaster Psychic.
The physical remaster book is supposed to be in stores Feb 4. It was printed and shipped long ago. There is no chance they're still trying to figure it out now.
The more likely answer is they wanted to change it but had to fit it into the current layout, so they just did what they could quickly and moved on. It's been pretty clear for a while that they're overworked.
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Thats is because Imaginary weapon was overtuned at d8s. It was a downgrade for system consistency.
Try that same analysis with contemporary focus spells for the ampted version of IW as it is now rather than comparing it to the d8 version we know was overtuned to the point magus players saw it as a holy grail of focus spells.
Okay, so by that standard, we should nerf gouging claw, which deals as much damage as imaginary weapon pre-nerf. Similarly, we should nerf fire ray, which was not far off from an amped imaginary weapon pre-nerf, and now deals as much damage while also having 60 feet of range and its bonus rider of creating burning ground, the latter of which occurs even on a non-critical miss. The argument that a d8 of damage is too much for a cantrip that is meant to be among the best in the game has, by my view, strictly no basis in fact.
I think graystone is right: whoever was in charge of this nerf likely saw all the Magus discussions, and decided to take this bazooka approach to balance where they turned off amp Spellstrikes (while also accidentally turning off reaction amps), which would've been enough to kill that combo, but then also nuked the MC archetype from orbit, and then overnerfed IW for good measure. The cantrip was never strong on the Psychic, an exceptionally squishy caster who would never normally put themselves within melee range of an opponent, let alone two. The Psychic was never going around doing too much damage, despite being designed to blast with certain subclasses, so I see no reason to nerf a cantrip they already synergized with poorly. I could have perhaps stomached the nerf better if the cantrip were given range or some other form of safety, but as of now there are options that deal equal or better damage without putting the class in nearly as much risk.
Is it really supposed to work like a spellshape free action? I think if they meant to do that, they would actually name the free action and give it an action stat block, like with Unleash Psyche or the wizard's Drain Bonded Item action.
My guess is that the developers were forced to keep the overall page layout the same as before the remaster, so they couldn't write in a new stat block. I do agree, however, that making amping a free action triggered when you cast a psi cantrip would have avoided the non-interaction with reaction psi cantrips. It would have kept the IW combo on the Magus, all else held equal, but on top of believing that the issue could be fixed by taking amps out of the MC archetype (without driving it into the ground in the process), I think that's a fair price to pay to avoid borking the class the mechanic is actually made for.
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Would you care to spell out why?I do agree that you can't rely on it. Just the same you can't rely on the bleed.It's dishonest to put these two in the same category of unreliability.
Because every single time the bleed does damage it is useful, whereas every single time the push pushes, it is not going to be useful, sometimes even detrimental.
The bleed can never be detrimental, it can be not useful, but that's because the enemy dies before the bleed does anything, or the enemy is resistant/immune. These situations aren't that common though, you usually get at least one instance of bleed damage.
Also, the push is dependant on other circumstances while the bleed really isn't.
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Thats is because Imaginary weapon was overtuned at d8s. It was a downgrade for system consistency.
Try that same analysis with contemporary focus spells for the ampted version of IW as it is now rather than comparing it to the d8 version we know was overtuned to the point magus players saw it as a holy grail of focus spells.Okay, so by that standard, we should nerf gouging claw, which deals as much damage as imaginary weapon pre-nerf. Similarly, we should nerf fire ray, which was not far off from an amped imaginary weapon pre-nerf, and now deals as much damage while also having 60 feet of range and its bonus rider of creating burning ground, the latter of which occurs even on a non-critical miss. The argument that a d8 of damage is too much for a cantrip that is meant to be among the best in the game has, by my view, strictly no basis in fact.
I think graystone is right: whoever was in charge of this nerf likely saw all the Magus discussions, and decided to take this bazooka approach to balance where they turned off amp Spellstrikes (while also accidentally turning off reaction amps), which would've been enough to kill that combo, but then also nuked the MC archetype from orbit, and then overnerfed IW for good measure. The cantrip was never strong on the Psychic, an exceptionally squishy caster who would never normally put themselves within melee range of an opponent, let alone two. The Psychic was never going around doing too much damage, despite being designed to blast with certain subclasses, so I see no reason to nerf a cantrip they already synergized with poorly. I could have perhaps stomached the nerf better if the cantrip were given range or some other form of safety, but as of now there are options that deal equal or better damage without putting the class in nearly as much risk.
Is it really supposed to work like a spellshape free action? I think if they meant to do that, they would actually name the...
We are not setting the standard. Paizo is. To me it looks like they deemed gouging claw just fine and a d8 imaginary weapon not only not fine but overlaping in design space.
I mean we are sitting here anecdotally comparing two or three spells and they have a complete map of their spell terrain looking for where this spell is going to fit in the system.
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I am legit curious, though. My approach was a suggestion, and the solution I arrived at, but there are other ways I'm sure. What would you suggest as a buff to Imaginary Weapon as is. Granted, restoring it to its original state is a valid answer. But I'm curious, if it had to be weaker than it's original, if my approach is not a sufficient buff, what would you suggest
If it had to be weaker, I don't think your change is bad. I would personally want to lean into the dream aspect of the subclass, and make the damage type variable to simulate them pulling out various "attacks" from their dreams. You could even make it say only melee for the base version, and either for the Amp.
Imaginary Weapon is close to the least important possible change to the Psychic as far as I am concerned with, in whether it will still be a fun class to play or not.
While overall it doesn't impact the class that much, it highly impacts Tangible Dream Psychics. The issue here is that the class is receiving unnecessary nerfs when the class has fallen behind after the remaster.
I don't think the Psychic is supposed to have better focus spells than any other class.
I don't see how not. The Amps were clearly quite good for focus spells pre-remaster, and now they aren't as impressive because focus spells were buffed across the board. They nerf the dedication to restrict the ability to take these focus spells as well, which to me shows they think they are more powerful.
If the Psychic is not supposed to have better focus spells, then what exactly is the class supposed to be good for? It can cast focus spells more or less as frequently as everyone else, it has less spellslots, a bad chassis, and impotent/infrequent class/subclass features.
What is it supposed to be good for?