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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.
But they're not; you are. You are looking at a set of changes that by all rights are haphazard, ill-conceived, and poorly-executed, and extrapolating conclusions from them that are not supported by other game elements. I am telling you that by the standards Paizo themselves have set with gouging claw and fire ray, the old imaginary weapon was fine on the Psychic, and its new version is weaker than alternatives.
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.
You might be doing that, but I am taking look at the breadth of spells that are already in the game, and pointing you to specific examples that disprove your point. I have yet to see you cite any concrete examples, let alone any developer confirmation of the intent you are imputing them. Although it can certainly be possible to extrapolate design and balance standards without a developer explicitly listing those standards themselves, the criticism I and others have been making of your claims is that they are unsupported by in-game evidence, they are simply conjecture. I am inviting you to consider the alternative hypothesis that the developers simply bungled this particular update, and rushed their way through with no regards for the Psychic's current state, their place in the game, or the deeper expectations players had for the class's remaster.
...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
How much damage is it when used with psyche unleashed?
To multiple targets at full MAP? (presuming you used it at a time where you dont die)Against enemies where force isnt pulling weight and against ones where it is bypassing resistance?
What else could they be doing?
Is the layout of the page really that important? If something gets pushed onto another page, can't they just shrink an image to make the text fit?
What I suspect has happened (pure speculation) is that the devs working on the remastered Psychic saw the focus spell buffs as "Quality of Life" changes and not actual buffs, so in their minds the Psychic's focus spells are still above the curve significantly.
Same thing goes for the better refocusing, maybe they thought people were already running it this way, and people were happy with the psychic, so it was fine.
The fact they make it harder to poach the Psychic's focus spells backs this up, and perhaps they thought that since IW was above the curve for Psychic Amps, it must be nerfed to be in line with the "already strong" Amps.
All the small hits to the class eventually made it fall far behind, and perhaps the devs didn't notice the damage.
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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.But they're not; you are. You are looking at a set of changes that by all rights are haphazard, ill-conceived, and poorly-executed, and extrapolating conclusions from them that are not supported by other game elements. I am telling you that by the standards Paizo themselves have set with gouging claw and fire ray, the old imaginary weapon was fine on the Psychic, and its new version is weaker than alternatives.
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.You might be doing that, but I am taking look at the breadth of spells that are already in the game, and pointing you to specific examples that disprove your point. I have yet to see you cite any concrete examples, let alone any developer confirmation of the intent you are imputing them. Although it can certainly be possible to extrapolate design and balance standards without a developer explicitly listing those standards themselves, the criticism I and others have been making of your claims is that they are unsupported by in-game evidence, they are simply conjecture. I am inviting you to consider the alternative hypothesis that the developers simply bungled this particular update, and rushed their way through with no regards for the Psychic's current state, their place in the game, or the deeper expectations players had for the class's remaster.
Fire ray cant benefit from psyche unleashed, has many creatures resistant to fire. Only targets one enemy. but gets good range and a good ground effect. It occupies a different space than damaging two targets at the same attack bonus, push crit rider, gains 2xspell rank to damage from psyche unleashed. has to be used in melee. Can be amped differently if damage isnt the main goal that round.
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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.
No offense, but at this point I want to believe you are trolling lol.
I said this in the other thread but I'll say it again; If Paizo were the omniscient gods people seem to think they are when they mention stuff like "Paizo knows better" and "Paizo sets the standard" then why errata exists? Why did the classes that received changes in the remaster received them if Paizo "knows better"? Wouldn't Paizo have made those initially and not in the remaster if they truly knew better? Why do we have playtests for new classes if Paizo alredy knows what's the best for the system?
The Paizo employees are people, and like people, they make mistakes. The changes made to the psychic in this book were a mistake and that's fine. This book clearly wasn't something Paizo was taking their time to properly tune but rather something they just wanted to be done with and finally focus on new content while leaving the remaster era behind. Let's not pretend PF2e is a perfectly tuned system where everything is equally as good. Yeah, its better than PF1e and other systems, but the system isn't perfect. I love Paizo and their books but I'll speak up if I think something they made wasn't of the standards I expect from them.
Paizo definitely wouldn't nerf the class itself unless they actually thought it was too powerful.
Does Psychic still get 2 Focus Points per Refocus? It's possible the devs aren't considering the style of play where everyone just spams Treat Wounds and Refocus out of combat to top everyone off before heading into the next fight. In situations where you only get 10 minutes between fights, being able to gain 2 Focus Points in 10 minutes could be a lifesaver.
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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.
No offense, but at this point I want to believe you are trolling lol.
I said this in the other thread but I'll say it again; If Paizo were the omniscient gods people seem to think they are when they mention stuff like "Paizo knows better" and "Paizo sets the standard" then why errata exists? Why did the classes that received changes in the remaster received them if Paizo "knows better"? Wouldn't Paizo have made those initially and not in the remaster if they truly knew better? Why do we have playtests for new classes if Paizo alredy knows what's the best for the system?
The Paizo employees are people, and like people, they make mistakes. The changes made to the psychic in this book were a mistake and that's fine. This book clearly wasn't something Paizo was taking their time to properly tune but rather something they just wanted to be done with and finally focus on new content while leaving the remaster era behind. Let's not pretend PF2e is a perfectly tuned system where everything is equally as good. Yeah, its better than PF1e and other systems, but the system isn't perfect. I love Paizo and their books but I'll speak up if I think something they made wasn't of the standards I expect from them.
no i assure you I am not trolling. But to call my comments as claiming dev godhood is hyperboli. I never said they can't make mistakes, I have always tempered my statements because its not unreasonable to think they understand the game they are developing. Its clear they redesigned IW do do do something different than it did before. Its also clear its a downgrade in raw damage from before.
Does that mean its hopelessly useless like it sounds people are saying? No i dont think so. It now can shove 2xspellrank extra damage through almost unresistable damage type to two targets at no MAP.Some people are claiming the sky is falling and it just isnt. The ceiling is just lower.
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Is the layout of the page really that important? If something gets pushed onto another page, can't they just shrink an image to make the text fit?
I mean, to you and me it probably is the least of our concerns, but it seems like it's really important to whoever's in charge at Paizo for the page layout to stay exactly the same on these remastered books. I honestly have no idea why it's such a top priority, but that's the constraint that's been imposed on every remastered expansion book so far. I'm really not a fan of this constraint either, as I think it's really gotten in the way of properly updating many game elements, including classes like the Gunslinger and Inventor who could've both done with full reworks, but it looks like them's the breaks.
Fire ray cant benefit from psyche unleashed, has many creatures resistant to fire. Only targets one enemy. but gets good range and a good ground effect. It occupies a different space than damaging two targets at the same attack bonus, push crit rider, gains 2xspell rank to damage from psyche unleashed. has to be used in melee. Can be amped differently if damage isnt the main goal that round.
It is a damaging attack spell that deals now as much direct damage as imaginary weapon, reliably either deals additional damage on top or forces creatures to move, is far safer to use, triggers weaknesses to fire, disables regeneration and other effects that are disabled by fire, such as a troll's regeneration, and is far more easily accessible. Although the two spells are not identical, this is not an apples to oranges comparison; the domain spell on the class that doesn't at all specialize in focus casting is better than the pseudo-focus spell on the class who's meant to be all about attrition-free spellcasting. Even if we want to concede that it's unclear which of the two spells is better, which was already the case prior to the nerf, that is already a bad sign when one option is supposed to be distinctly more powerful than the other. I would go as far as to say that IW, along with pretty much every other psi cantrip, could have used a significant buff, not a nerf.
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no i assure you I am not trolling. But to call my comments as claiming dev godhood is hyperboli. I never said they can't make mistakes, I have always tempered my statements because its not unreasonable to think they understand the game they are developing. Its clear they redesigned IW do do do something different than it did before. Its also clear its a downgrade in raw damage from before.what does it do different apart from just being straight up weaker?
what did they give it in return of the straight up nerfs?
because to me it looks 100% exactly the same "design space" wise and just 20% weaker "power wise".
well maybe consider what having a way to apply force damage with unleash psyche adds to an occult spellcaster.
What situations does that open up for them over physical damage types?
well maybe consider what having a way to apply force damage with unleash psyche adds to an occult spellcaster.
You mean, the spellcaster whose tradition already has the best access to force spells in the game? The spellcaster with access to force barrage from level 1, along with spells like inner radiance torrent or repelling pulse at higher ranks?
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no i assure you I am not trolling. But to call my comments as claiming dev godhood is hyperboli. I never said they can't make mistakes, I have always tempered my statements because its not unreasonable to think they understand the game they are developing. Its clear they redesigned IW do do do something different than it did before. Its also clear its a downgrade in raw damage from before.what does it do different apart from just being straight up weaker?
what did they give it in return of the straight up nerfs?
because to me it looks 100% exactly the same "design space" wise and just 20% weaker "power wise".
well maybe consider what having a way to apply force damage with unleash psyche adds to an occult spellcaster.
What situations does that open up for them over physical damage types?consider how little enemies exist that have resistance to all physical that is NOT bypassed by Force (since old one still dealt full damage to those).
Now, take that handful of enemies from the entire monster collection, and you still need:
two of them in the same battle
almost adjecent to one another
none of them having a reaction to murder you when you try to cast right next to themSo, is this one or two battles in the entire AP collection (if there are even that many...) the entire "design space" of the new IW that makes it worth being 20% less effective in the rest 99.9999% of the fights?
Well it doesn't matter how many enemies exist in the monster core with those resistances, it depends on how many exist in your game or sometimes more importantly the ones that do exist is having force damage doing something for your character the rest of the party is struggling with or has to be knowledgeable about and prepare for. Are you able to use your GP on different things because of your force damage.
Also you can amp it for inertial barrier or something else too if you have them. Maybe damage isnt what you need that round the most? There is flexibility in it while still against a single target delivering 2xrank extra damage to a single target.
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Well it doesn't matter how many enemies exist in the monster core with those resistances, it depends on how many exist in your game
So Paizo should balance options based on how useful they could be in one game where the GM essentially caters to that option being the most optimal thing rather than how useful it will be overall?
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A couple of thoughts about understanding "the design space":
1. You can't use rank 3 focus spells (like dragon breath and pulverizing cascade) to compare to rank 1 focus spells. PF2 is not a game where characters should be using the same spells from level 1 to level 20. This includes spell slots and focus spells. If your class is not giving you better uses of your actions every 5 or so levels, then there is a problem with a class. I'll come back to Astral Rain in point 3.
2. I do think that it is a mistake to make IW do force damage and not change over all of the "force spells that don't do force damage" in dark archive. I think I agree now that the damage dropped because Paizo intended to nerf the D8 for the sake of their read on game balance across the board, not because of the move to force damage. Giving it force damage might have been seen as a slight improvement to give something back to it, but I don't think the developers were thinking, "this keeps things the same power level." I kind of wonder if almost no one was using any of the others before, because, as a psychic player, Astral Rain felt disappointing to use any time my character's psyche was unleashed or when I was stupefied, so pretty much anytime except the very first round of combat if I didn't need to do other things first. I think things with the force trait should work on incoporeal creatures and creatures that do not resist force damage but do physical damage, but I am not convinced the wording of the Incoporeal trait makes that possible. "Force damage" is not the same thing as "damage from a source with the force trait." I really don't like that there are things like force damage or fire damage in PF2, and would much prefer "energy damage" with tags to determine what kind, and the same applied to physical damage, (with traits like bludgeoning, slashing, piercing) for avoiding these kinds of confusions but it is too late for that.
3. Astral Rain's damage is lower than Imaginary weapon, or most instant damage focus spells, for sure, but with unleash psyche working with sustain spells and the damage happening to any creature that enters the area before the start of your turn, Astral Rain got a substantial glow up with these changes and should be what tangible dream psychics are excited about using as soon as they can get it. I mean, if a creature moves out of the area on its turn, and a martial can move it back in on theirs, it is going to be at relatively high level before a standard strike is going to out damage just shoving an enemy back into the area. one action sustain to move it also makes for a great 3rd action for the Intangible Dream Psychic.
This could very well be an example of what I was talking about earlier about how the buffs to the Psychic class are not necessarily going to be super obvious without being able to do a deep dive into the class. I would trade IW's D8s for D6s in a heart beat to get Unleash Psyche to work with Astral Rain and sustain spells that get to move around...and I am a caster that generally thinks sustain spells are a waste of time to cast. But unlike vessel spells, a TD psychic could have 2 active Astral Rains in the same encounter.
Trying to actively use IW in every encounter or multiple times an encounter is really difficult for psychics and is a bad idea. Using it when 2 enemies come up to you and think they have you in a good spot, especially if one or two of them can get flanked by your turn, is a pretty excellent use of actions though, and then you can either use your third action to shield yourself (if there is only one enemy left that is going to attack you, or if you have allies providing other kinds of damage mitigation where the party wants a squishy looking target) or move yourself to a much better place where 2 enemies won't be wailing on you in melee next turn. IW is good in that niche but that is not a niche you can make happen 3 times an encounter with any regularity, especially compared to an Astral Rain that benefits from Unleash.
4. The Burst damage psychic has never been the Tangible Dream Psychic, it has always been the Oscilating wave psychic, and it sounds like those are pretty unchanged. That makes it seem pretty clear to me that it wasn't really the D8 that was a problem with IW, it was the heightening at 2d8 which is the "too much of an outlier for any focus spell" and also, the reason why, with all the great other damaging options that psychic focus spells could get, Magi were never interested in any option other than IW, even though they didn't benefit at all from multiple targets. Like the fact that no Magi I ever saw or heard about when OW for Ignition and the ability to amp it to a D12+1 splash damage in melee (or 7.5 average damage per rank, .5 ahead of any 2d6 heightening focus spell), made it pretty clear to me that Imaginary Weapon was an outlier within the class and within the game as a whole. Amped IW should not be a better single target damage spell than amped Ignition.
Is the layout of the page really that important? If something gets pushed onto another page, can't they just shrink an image to make the text fit?
They're not putting that kind of work into these. It's effectively an errata update and that means no page count or layout changes.
It's how all these "update an existing book" one have gone, though this one has gotten a lot more blowback than usual.
Paizo definitely wouldn't nerf the class itself unless they actually thought it was too powerful.
Does Psychic still get 2 Focus Points per Refocus? It's possible the devs aren't considering the style of play where everyone just spams Treat Wounds and Refocus out of combat to top everyone off before heading into the next fight. In situations where you only get 10 minutes between fights, being able to gain 2 Focus Points in 10 minutes could be a lifesaver.
Paizo writes the APs and PFS scenarios, and those typically give lots of rest points specifically because hard fights expect the PCs to be at full health. When a fight doesn't expect that, the book tends to explicitly call it out in some way. So they're the ones setting the standard, and the standard they set is that it's generally not that hard to get back to full between encounters.
Even when you only do get 10 minutes, it's one extra focus point. That's one round of stuff extra vs some other caster, who will have at least 50% more spell slots (and possibly 100% more) to use instead. This is not a trade that actually works in Psychic's favour given how much less they have to lean on other than focus points.
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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.
That's the same Paizo that nerfed Monk Archetype flurry of blows right before coming out with both Spirit Warrior and Exemplar Dedication, right? And the same Paizo that still can't tell us what Oracle's spell repertoire is (or make an iconic that follows the remaster rules properly)? The same Paizo that forgot Kineticist exists in Mythic?
Look, it's pretty clear that Paizo staff are overworked and product quality has suffered for it. I sympathize with that, and it's probably why errata got shelved. It's an easy thing to deprioritize when you're already overworked on the relentless "release new stuff constantly" treadmill they have going.
But the net result of the compounding number of basic errors and "one author doesn't know what another author is doing" swings in balance between releases is that appeals "well Paizo did it so it must be right" ain't gonna fly. Paizo has been making a LOT of mistakes in these releases and they absolutely can get it wrong.
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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.
What are you talking about. IW on magus *may* have been overtuned, but IW not used with spellstrike, on psychic? The Melee spell on the d6 hitdie caster? Overtuned? You're joking right? It was never that good to begin with!
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A couple of thoughts about understanding "the design space":
1. You can't use rank 3 focus spells (like dragon breath and pulverizing cascade) to compare to rank 1 focus spells...
4. ...Amped IW should not be a better single target damage spell than amped Ignition.
About these two points, for the first, i agree, the fair comparison would be Amped IW VS Flurry of Claws and non-Amped IW vs Gouging Claw, which IW is just worse in both regards in almost all cases.
And about the second, one thing very important is that Ignition has reach, and anything with reach should always deal less damage than things without reach, so i disagree heavily with your reasoning.
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.That's the same Paizo that nerfed Monk Archetype flurry of blows right before coming out with both Spirit Warrior and Exemplar Dedication, right? And the same Paizo that still can't tell us what Oracle's spell repertoire is (or make an iconic that follows the remaster rules properly)? The same Paizo that forgot Kineticist exists in Mythic?
Look, it's pretty clear that Paizo staff are overworked and product quality has suffered for it. I sympathize with that, and it's probably why errata got shelved. It's an easy thing to deprioritize when you're already overworked on the relentless "release new stuff constantly" treadmill they have going.
But the net result of the compounding number of basic errors and "one author doesn't know what another author is doing" swings in balance between releases is that appeals "well Paizo did it so it must be right" ain't gonna fly. Paizo has been making a LOT of mistakes in these releases and they absolutely can get it wrong.
You are right with oracle. That is them literally sitting on the fence.
A couple of thoughts about understanding "the design space":
1. You can't use rank 3 focus spells (like dragon breath and pulverizing cascade) to compare to rank 1 focus spells...
4. ...Amped IW should not be a better single target damage spell than amped Ignition.
About these two points, for the first, i agree, the fair comparison would be Amped IW VS Flurry of Claws and non-Amped IW vs Gouging Claw, which IW is just worse in both regards in almost all cases.
And about the second, one thing very important is that Ignition has reach, and anything with reach should always deal less damage than things without reach, so i disagree heavily with your reasoning.
That also assumes that standard psy cantrips were meant to be equal to unique ones.
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Well it doesn't matter how many enemies exist in the monster core with those resistances, it depends on how many exist in your gameSo Paizo should balance options based on how useful they could be in one game where the GM essentially caters to that option being the most optimal thing rather than how useful it will be overall?
The issue at hand here is that there is no "overall".
The number of creatures in the roster the game presents that have X feature has no guaranteed and measurable relationship to the number of those creatures that will be encountered in any given campaign.
In order to measure "overall" accurately we'd have to assume every group will have their campaigns line up as having done all of the same things over the same period of time. That's not how things work.
The overall spread of monsters in the game is the closest thing we have to an assumption we can follow. Most games are going to be following this spread to a certain degree, with bias for or against some enemy types.
The alternative is treating each option in the game like it is constantly in a favourable scenario, which is more unrealistic and absurd.
Looking at things overall is certainly not perfect, but it's likely the closest you're going to get to an accurate picture.
Reducing the damage of IW and changing the damage type to force because in some rare campaigns (like <0.1%) of campaigns, that will actually be an equal or better change for the spell is just as absurd as increasing IW to a d10 and changing the damage type to fire because in some campaigns, this will be equivalent damage or a net loss due to enemies with fire resistance being highly prevalent.
You can literally justify any change as "balanced" this way.
...no i assure you I am not trolling. But to call my comments as claiming dev godhood is hyperboli. I never said they can't make mistakes, I have always tempered my statements because its not unreasonable to think they understand the game they are developing. Its clear they redesigned IW do do do something different than it did before. Its also clear its a downgrade in raw damage from before.what does it do different apart from just being straight up weaker?
what did they give it in return of the straight up nerfs?
because to me it looks 100% exactly the same "design space" wise and just 20% weaker "power wise".
well maybe consider what having a way to apply force damage with unleash psyche adds to an occult spellcaster.
What situations does that open up for them over physical damage types?consider how little enemies exist that have resistance to all physical that is NOT bypassed by Force (since old one still dealt full damage to those).
Now, take that handful of enemies from the entire monster collection, and you still need:
two of them in the same battle
almost adjecent to one another
none of them having a reaction to murder you when you try to cast right next to themSo, is this one or two battles in the entire AP collection (if there are even that many...) the entire "design space" of the new IW that makes it worth being 20% less effective in the rest 99.9999% of the fights?
While I cannot check other adventure paths, (Mostly because I I'd prefer to actually read them, before skimming their monsters), I can at least check Kingmaker (I technically could also add Guilt of the Grave World, which had a few, but that's beside the point) Going through the overworld in Kingmaker, I did count over 10 instances of resistance, of which some of those cases were repeatable. But that was skimming only half of a 642 page book.
Granted, there
I would like you to consider another use though.
What about unleashing psyche so you can use a 1 action defensive benefit from your subconcious mind. Use a defensive amp like inertial barrier for DR. Now being in melee is easier to handle and ally assistance can actually keep you alive instead of being instakilled the first round you enter it. You still do non amped damage to a single target +2xspellrank thrown in as force.And if the next turn looks like a favorable one to amp for full damage instead then do it. You can assess round by round on how defensive you need to be vs how aggressive you can afford to be.
I wonder if the devs are reading this thread right now and saying "Oh sh*t" and hurriedly writing a Day 1 errata.
I would like you to consider another use though.
What about unleashing psyche so you can use a 1 action defensive benefit from your subconcious mind. Use a defensive amp like inertial barrier for DR. Now being in melee is easier to handle and ally assistance can actually keep you alive instead of being instakilled the first round you enter it. You still do non amped damage to a single target +2xspellrank thrown in as force.
And if the next turn looks like a favorable one to amp for full damage instead then do it. You can assess round by round on how defensive you need to be vs how aggressive you can afford to be.you could do ALL oif that with old IW.
The only difference was that you would do more damage.
p.s. with only 2 rounds of Unleash, it's not like you really have the option to "assess round by round". If you do what you're saying while unleashed, you literally have a single round to "asses if you want to do full damage or nah" and then you have to bail and deal with missing 1/4th of your spells to Stupefy for the rest of the encounter...
Well when would you decide to go into melee in the first place?
Either the teamwork synergy has aligned and you want to get your attacks in(unleash move in and go with damage amp). or maybe melee came to you.When melee came to you, and now you probably took one strike already. You either got team support and can stay in melee with defensive buffs or you cant at all and need to get out of there anyway. If it were me I wont use unleash unless I am getting something from it offensively or defensively or both.
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...with the old one, it was much easier to find "just two enemies close to each other that do not have reactions" compared to "two enemies close to each other that do not have reactions, and are also resisting physical while not being incorporeal...
They also gotta have enough resistance for the change to be worth it, since if something has 10 physical resistance, but old IW would have dealt 10 extra damage over the current IW just bypassing it, would mean that the total damage is the same, and so, not worth the change.
I would like you to consider another use though.
What about unleashing psyche so you can use a 1 action defensive benefit from your subconcious mind. Use a defensive amp like inertial barrier for DR. Now being in melee is easier to handle and ally assistance can actually keep you alive instead of being instakilled the first round you enter it. You still do non amped damage to a single target +2xspellrank thrown in as force.
And if the next turn looks like a favorable one to amp for full damage instead then do it. You can assess round by round on how defensive you need to be vs how aggressive you can afford to be.you could do ALL oif that with old IW.
The only difference was that you would do more damage.
p.s. with only 2 rounds of Unleash, it's not like you really have the option to "assess round by round". If you do what you're saying while unleashed, you literally have a single round to "asses if you want to do full damage or nah" and then you have to bail and deal with missing 1/4th of your spells to Stupefy for the rest of the encounter...
Well when would you decide to go into melee in the first place?
Either the teamwork synergy has aligned and you want to get your attacks in(unleash move in and go with damage amp). or maybe melee came to you.
When melee came to you, and now you probably took one strike already. You either got team support and can stay in melee with defensive buffs or you cant at all and need to get out of there anyway. If it were me I wont use unleash unless I am getting something from it offensively or defensively or both.
and once again:
how does that change compared to the old IW apart from simply now just doing less damage?
aka less reward for the same exact risk.
as for the "when" you decide to go close, you most certainly do NOT Unleash just to do an unamped IW (or amped with a non damaging amp). You Unleash when you want to unload damage because the only thing...
I think you misunderstood what I have said form the begining.
I started from the position that the new version is a downgrade from the original. That force damage changes its lane. And that the the change made IW damage more comparable to other options rather than higher.If you saw my earlier posts I said maybe they over corrected but that I also saw forcedamage as opening a lane for them. And that part I stand by. Constructs? bypassed. Undead? dont need to worry about what type. Devils? no problem. Adamantine dragon? ah damn not going near that thing. But you get the point.
Enmeis are immune to mental effects and resist physical? and your known spells are full of them? you still can contribute.
In my games I use devils and constructs and undead of many kinds and APs use them alot too. In fact when they are used they typically are the PL+ fights, they often have adds that can be hit by the amped version along with them. So i am not sure why we are looking at the full scope of creatures and saying physical resistance is rare when the frequency of their use pretty common or at least impactful when encountered.
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I started from the position that the new version is a downgrade from the original. That force damage changes its lane. And that the the change made IW damage more comparable to other options rather than higher.
If you saw my earlier posts I said maybe they over corrected but that I also saw forcedamage as opening a lane for them. And that part I stand by. Constructs? bypassed. Undead? dont need to worry about what type. Devils? no problem. Adamantine dragon? ah damn not going near that thing. But you get the point.
Enmeis are immune to mental effects and resist physical? and your known spells are full of them? you still can contribute.
Constructs Hardness are still not bypassed by force damage. And, more importantly, Teridax and Tridus (and even i) already explained that's still not worth. So, just requoting them...
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.
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I wonder if the devs are reading this thread right now and saying "Oh sh*t" and hurriedly writing a Day 1 errata.
... I don't know if I should laugh or cry at that. But given the lack of errata in general, I wouldn't bet on it.
I think you misunderstood what I have said form the begining.
I started from the position that the new version is a downgrade from the original. That force damage changes its lane. And that the the change made IW damage more comparable to other options rather than higher.
If you saw my earlier posts I said maybe they over corrected but that I also saw forcedamage as opening a lane for them. And that part I stand by. Constructs? bypassed. Undead? dont need to worry about what type. Devils? no problem. Adamantine dragon? ah damn not going near that thing. But you get the point.
Enmeis are immune to mental effects and resist physical? and your known spells are full of them? you still can contribute.
In my games I use devils and constructs and undead of many kinds and APs use them alot too. In fact when they are used they typically are the PL+ fights, they often have adds that can be hit by the amped version along with them. So i am not sure why we are looking at the full scope of creatures and saying physical resistance is rare when the frequency of their use pretty common or at least impactful when encountered.because the whole point of IW was the risk vs reward.
you give the squishiest character in the game a melee option that requires him to be adjacent to TWO enemies and use an action that provoke Reactions and may be interupted as well by said reactions.
The reward was the higher damage.
now there is no reward, plain and simple.
giving a ribbon ability that triggers on a tiny subsection of creatures does not justify the risk any longer.
you still provoke from all enemies, not only the physical resistant ones.
you still need to be in the middle of the fray of all enemies.
but tyou are only rewarded a tiny fraction of the time.
OK lets take your claim that the old version's purpose was risk vs reward.
Clearly now that isn't its role right?
Its doing something different its mitigating situations where damage could be lost rather than pushing higher numbers and its keeping all the risk of the old version. (That is true of the design we have even if you don't think those situations happen often)
That is a lane change. Your point is basically that its a car with the ability to enter the carpool lane but the freeway barely ever has one.
I do not agree with that as a universal statement(the carpool not being there).
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OK lets take your claim that the old version's purpose was risk vs reward.
Clearly now that isn't its role right?
Its doing something different its mitigating situations where damage could be lost rather than pushing higher numbers and its keeping all the risk of the old version. (That is true of the design we have even if you don't think those situations happen often)
That is a lane change. Your point is basically that its a car with the ability to enter the carpool lane but the freeway barely ever has one.
I do not agree with that as a universal statement(the carpool not being there).
It's literally doing less damage when amped now even when the resistance is in play. aka: It's worse at the thing you're claiming it was lane changed to do than it was before it was changed. So it's only actually better at this thing if a squishy caster class wanders into melee against two of a specific creature type and then chooses not to use their class ability to do more damage.
That means this argument makes no sense whatsoever even if it was true, and we've provided multiple examples to show that it's false. Some hypothetical scenario isn't convincing against actual published adventures demonstrating it's false.