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1. Yes, a Free action is a type of action.
2. No, this type of ability doesn't have any exception.
3. Also, those abilities you're asking about are Spellshapes (formerly Metamagic) which also specifically state that two can't apply to the same spell.
Actions with the spellshape trait tweak the properties of your spells. You must use a spellshape action directly before casting the spell you want to alter. If you use any action (including free actions and reactions) other than casting a spell directly after, you waste the benefits of the spellshape action. The benefit is also lost if your turn ends before you cast the spell. Any additional effects added by a spellshape action are part of the spell's effect, not of the spellshape action itself.
4. It would be a huge buff to a class that is already extraordinarily strong, and not a good idea at all.
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No and very badly.
Just picture a Lingering Fortissimo Courageous Anthem. That is a min +2 to attacks and damage for the whole party for at least 3 rounds for the meager cost of 1 Action and 2 Focus points. And you might even, if lucky, get a +3 for 4 rounds for the same cost.
Even Extreme encounters would become mere speed bumps.
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Discounting being a full caster as a minor feature makes for a very skewed assessment. Especially when they are at least level 7. If those spell slots aren't adding significantly to what they contribute in a day, there is some operator error.
Bards are strong because their compositions are a solid additional feature on top of a full caster. It's not the other way around.
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The easiest way to make casters feel more powerful is to chain more encounters together. Spells that last a minute underwhelm when encounters last 3 rounds but feel pretty awesome when they go 12. Also, more targets makes AoE spells a lot more likely to do so some cool stuff.
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The easiest way to make casters feel more powerful is to chain more encounters together. Spells that last a minute underwhelm when encounters last 3 rounds but feel pretty awesome when they go 12. Also, more targets makes AoE spells a lot more likely to do so some cool stuff.IME, that is the easiest way to kill PCs or force them to run away, which is the opposite of making them feel powerful.
Not if they're low/moderate encounters. Also not if they're big packs of enemies because every time you take one out, the incoming damage goes down and the fight gets easier.
In general, more lower tier encounters is what makes PCs feel powerful, because their stuff will work and they will get to crit and shrug stuff off more often. Casters particularly do well in those because Chain Lightning can absolutely crush a pack of weaker enemies in a way that it never can when every encounter is severe.
PCs feel powerful when their stuff is effective and they they can take some hits, and you get both of those things with easier encounters that have multiple enemies in them. You can chain those types of encounters for quite a while pretty safely.
Rules discussion aside, casters do mostly feel like dead weight in a party until they hit that level 7 point. I'd need to be monetarily compensated to play a full caster in this system before that point.
Want some wild advice? Give everyone 5-6 levels and take an afternoon to replace all the monsters with things 5-6 levels higher.
That or start an advice thread specifically for how to get the most out of a caster in the early game where they're a miserable experience.
Look... I'm already somebody who mostly plays martials because casters don't have the "oomph" I want from them, so I get it to some extent.
But, a question or two.
Are there three martials in the party? Bard's +1 doesn't feel great in a party of three, or a party of four with a second full caster.
How many encounters in a day are there? If Medic is outshining the rest of the class in your eyes, you're talking down a dozen spells as "72 seconds of effectiveness" and it's Abomination Vaults, I'm assuming more than three encounters a day.
Is this coming from the Bard's player not feeling effective, or are you trying to make somebody else's character better in your view? (I presume the former, but just making sure.)
- A party-wide +2 to accuracy would be upgrading every martial to a Fighter while keeping their class features. In a lot of groups, I do feel like that could solidly make extreme encounters into speed bumps? It does depend on the number of martials. As for a +1 to the whole party, it puts in work, and I'd consider that pretty comparable to a martial's second attack in most group- a good deal for a third action.
- "72 seconds of effectiveness" is weird for me to hear, because when I do grab spells, I'm trying to avoid spells that are only good for a single round. At this level, Haste, Slow, Fly, and heightened Invisibility are all spells that will last a whole fight. One round of effectiveness is more what I expect out of the low-rank spells, tossing out a Fear or sewing confusion with one of the various illusions.
- Of all the casters, Bard is definitely the one I want to be when I do run out of spells. A party-wide at-will buff is great, and as an added bonus, it means those attack cantrips have a little better accuracy than the other casters would.
If the player himself isn't having fun, sure, swapping over to something like Commander might be a good idea. Martial class weapon proficiency that doesn't run out, concrete actions that are more visible than a bonus, and in-class support for the Medicine skill that seems to already be a focus.
That said, you can go ahead allow stacking up multiple focus spell spellshapes on Bard compositions to give out mega-buffs. We may not think it's balanced in general, but it's your group, and plenty of things that would be a problem for Paizo to have as universal rules will work fine for an individual group. You don't have to worry about some hypothetical group of two Barbarians, a Fighter, and the Bard. (You may get better results posting in Advice asking about the group-specific problem, rather than Rules Questions trying to use rules to make the Bard class stronger.)
Rules discussion aside, casters do mostly feel like dead weight in a party until they hit that level 7 point. I'd need to be monetarily compensated to play a full caster in this system before that point.
Want some wild advice? Give everyone 5-6 levels and take an afternoon to replace all the monsters with things 5-6 levels higher.
That or start an advice thread specifically for how to get the most out of a caster in the early game where they're a miserable experience.
Medicine was mentioned as being at Master, so this already is level 7 at least. From the "72 seconds" comment, I'm assuming that it's level 8 specifically.
The easiest way to make casters feel more powerful is to chain more encounters together. Spells that last a minute underwhelm when encounters last 3 rounds but feel pretty awesome when they go 12. Also, more targets makes AoE spells a lot more likely to do so some cool stuff.IME, that is the easiest way to kill PCs or force them to run away, which is the opposite of making them feel powerful.
It sounds like your party wants to tackle the dungeons of the abomination vaults by going one room to one room, fighting encounters that last 2 to 3 rounds, with 10+ minutes between every encounter. With no potential threat of creatures running to go get help, they are going to be able to do that with almost every encounter in the campaign and of course that is going to make medic an incredible dedication and spell casters feel worse. I am guessing that there are mostly martials in the rest of the party? Do they usually squeeze 6 to 10 encounters into a day? I am guessing that they probably don’t even carry many healing potions or other immediate healing resource? That tends to make an encounter going 8 rounds feel extra lethal, because in-encounter healing is probably just for emergencies when someone takes a particularly bad critical hit or gets knocked out. They are probably approaching every single encounter the same way.
If they are playing this way and everyone likes it, great! But we already know that at least one player doesn’t seem to be loving this pace, and that is why you as GM are trying to find mechanical ways to boost spell casting. I promise you that medic doesn’t feel all that powerful of an archetype when an entire floor of a dungeon is likely to mobilize and hunt the party down if the party tries to take 10 minutes after stirring up the nest and causing a ruckus that draws attention to itself, like a big battle breaking out in the middle of a quiet, studious library, where a bard is singing the whole time. How the GM lets players pace their adventuring has a massive impact on what styles of play are effective and not.
Because one of my tables is a 3 PC party in Str o Thousands, so "oops, no martials," I've learned that pf2 plays veeeery differently if you do not optimize for max DPS.
A huge amount of the "tier list" as to what options to value changes dramatically when combats last for a longer period of time.
Pf2's defensive options are genuinely potent enough to allow that to be viable, though some bit of cheese may be involved.
In general though, I do want to caution against the +1 Bless style buffs.
Those can be great, but you need to really know the math and make an informed decision. If a +1 both makes it 1 easier to hit & 1 easier to +10 crit, that's a 10% chance to change the outcome. If you roll a 10% chance 6 times, that's a 47% chance to happen once. And after 7 times, it's a 52% chance.
To translate that a bit more, if the party benefits from a +1 on 7 different rolls, they have a 48% chance of it being completely useless, and a 52% chance of it improving the outcome of one single roll.
That's still useful, but imo the community zeitgeist waaaay over-values such buffs. There are very few combats where spending turn 1 to cast a buff like that is a good idea.
Those +1 buffs are genuinely great when the opportunity cost is different; when it's a prebuff like Heroism, or via that 1A filler from a Bard.
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The party are: Thaumaturge, fighter, rogue, ranger. And the bard of course.
This party should be casually ripping through severe encounters so their builds and play patterns must be super questionable if they're having the kind of trouble you're saying they do.
Though since the bard apparently thinks trading 2 for 1 with slow or similar effects is bad, I guess that goes without saying.
Glass, I GM’d AV for 2 groups but only one that went past level 3 of the dungeon, but only because of life/time requirements, not parties giving up. Pretty much every faction of the dungeon I played as a unit that would try to get the help of their immediate allies. My party of Barbarian, Cleric, Rogue and Wizard had a couple of near TPKs, but never wiped, even with 2 casters and some times 3 or 4 encounters smashed together.
The thing about enemies having someone run to go get help is that it actually lessens the difficulty of the immediate encounter and can give some lighter rounds where the party can prepare and take the “useless” actions like recalling knowledge, taking cover, moving the furniture around to create more favorable terrain, casting longer lasting battle field control spells, etc to really give themselves an advantage for when the next wave arrives. If enemies are coming from different rooms too, than the encounters don’t fight like one mega extreme encounter, but they can still get the benefit of 10 turn buffs that they might lose 3 of taking the encounters separately. This includes spells and consumables etc. it really is just a different style of play, not a better or worse.
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The Bard PC is not optimized at all. This likely explains why they do not feel good doing Bard things.
Their Performance should be maximized always, so that they have an easier time succeeding, and even crit succeeding, at Lingering Composition and Fortissimo.
They should take Multifarious Muse for Warrior Muse and Martial Performance.
They then use a bow with +1 Rune (and higher later on) and use True Strike and Sure Strike to ensure they make the Fortissimo last 2 rounds.
And they should buy Orchestral Brooch by the boatload to ensure the crit success on Fortissimo.
If they still feel inadequate, let them be Adopted by Halflings and get Halfling Luck as well as Helpful Halfling at level 9. And multiclass in Swashbuckler to grab One for All with maxed Diplomacy + Assurance.
True they will not heal as much, but with such boosts to the Martials, there should be much less need of healing.
Consumables at level are a serious gold commitment. It sounds like the party is level 8, so the Orchestral Brooch is going to be expensive to buy at level 8. In fact, using one per encounter in a party of 4 would be using all of the expected treasure a character would be expected to get in a moderate encounter. By level 10 though, it is only half and that brooch stays good for the rest of the game.
I point this out because "what are good consumables to use at what levels?" is a PF2 minigame that can swing party efficacy quite a lot. It is totally fine for players not to want to play it, but as a GM it is a good idea to seed the idea of useful consumables to the party as loot when you see your party struggling occasionally, and/or tune down the encounters by dropping some weak templates on some of the foes you can see them really struggling with if they are just not going to use anything and sell it all afterwards.
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The party are: Thaumaturge, fighter, rogue, ranger. And the bard of course.This party should be casually ripping through severe encounters so their builds and play patterns must be super questionable if they're having the kind of trouble you're saying they do.They obviously have the relevant proficiencies as those things are kinda fixed. They have maxed out attacks stats, and a semi-permanent effective +3 beyond their own scores between the bard and the rogue. But the enemies' numbers are just so much higher.
I am sure there are things they could do to eek out another point or two, but I am not aware of anything which is reliable and affordable.
Though since the bard apparently thinks trading 2 for 1 with slow or similar effects is bad, I guess that goes without saying.I mean, I agree with him. Although it is more like trading two actions (and a R3 spell slot) for half an action on avearage, since any enemy you could meaningfully use it on will Crit Succeed at least half the time. That's not just a bad trade, it's horrible.
Sometimes it's not the system's fault. Sometimes it's just a skill issue and understanding that they're bad at something or doing something wrong is a good first step to improving.
Just having the baseline stats and proficiencies given by the system doesn't mean much. Already you mentioned they're doing the harmonize cantrip thing. Guess what? That's a fairly ineffective play pattern. The whole thing is a trap.
They'd be better off doing things like throwing a lingering anthem or dirge to free up their actions, a swashbuckler archetype for 'one for all' for a spammable reaction, a staff of illusion for 4+ free illusory objects per day, save the slow (or confusion to target will or containment for reflex since they have 4th rank spells) for bosses or otherwise force an action loss with an illusion, use calm on groups of mooks to try and remove one or two from combat via the fail effect, etc, etc, etc. As long as you don't target a high save, even a +4 boss is only going to have a crit save chance of ~35% and illusions force an action to see through them even before any saves are made.
Idk what the rest of the party is doing but it goes for them too. If any of them are using a bow, did they make sure to grab gunslinger archetype for fake out with a gauntlet bow? Do the melee have mutagen collars and a stock of cheap d4 energy mutagens? I know groups that, with that party configuration, would have three champion archetypes there on the front line to punish attacks and add sustain through damage reduction and lay on hands. If the bard moved to dirge, did anyone pick up bless or bard archetype for lingering inspire or some other status bonus source?
We could go on forever with this kind of thing, but I do hope I've made my point. You need more than just your base stats and class chassis proficiencies to actually perform well.
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The Bard PC is not optimized at all. This likely explains why they do not feel good doing Bard things.I am not sure how you are determining that....
Their Performance should be maximized always, so that they have an easier time succeeding, and even crit succeeding, at Lingering Composition and Fortissimo.I am pretty sure his Performance is maximised, and he did regularly succeed (and crit sometimes) on Lingering Composition. He uses it less often these days, perhaps because it is incompatible with the two-Compositions thing.
The Bard is Master in Medicine. They cannot be also Master in Performance at level 8.
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Note that as far as hyperbole is concerned, a +2 in attacks for martials makes them hit like level+2 characters. An Extreme encounter becomes merely Moderate for a level+2 party. And Low for a Level+3 party.
So, maybe not a speedbump, but you're going from a potential TPK to an encounter with "a veneer of difficulty".
Sounds like this is not one of those those times - trap options are definitely "the system's fault".
Ok yes, that one is the system's fault, but things like the bard being the party medicine slave or failing to recognize that 1 of the boss's actions is worth more than two of theirs are not.
Free up actions to do what? The only other useful actions he gets from the bard class are his spells, and those are situationally useful at best.
One for all (swashbuckler archetype) and the handful of spells in the system that don't suck like illusions, the good buffs, any spell that has a strong "success effect" for single target, AoE incapacitate spells that will remove a mook or two on failure. Most turns will quickly devolve to good spell, one for all, reaction aid. Understanding what constitutes a good spell is another one of those player skill things.
Also, having a "spammable reaction" would conflict with counter performance, which (while situational) is one really useful when it applies, and has saved the party's bacon a few times.
And all those turns it's not getting used is a wasted reaction. Wasting action economy is bad.
Exactly, and you shouldn't. A class should be able to do its job without having to do a deep dive into archetypes. That is precisely the problem I have been complaining about!
They can do their jobs without archetypes. They do their job better with archetypes. You also need to not build or play your class badly. In the bard's case it means recognizing that most enemies will pass their saves and only mooks have a reasonable failure rate and picking and casting spells accordingly.
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-more non-bard stuff-Like The Raven Black's, even if he took all this advice it would be those things making him powerful, not the bard class.
Just nitpicking on this, at least for my Bard's build (actual PFS one BTW).
Maxing Performance and using Orchestral Brooch to ensure a crit success are basic Bard tricks.
Using Multifarious Muse to grab Martial Performance to increase Fortissimo's duration is completely using Bard things.
Wanting then to ensure your Strike actually hits by using a +1 bow and Sure Strike or True Strike or a Hero Point if need be is most logical and all those are Bard tools.
I recommended the One for All trick only if the Bard player was still dissatisfied. But it stills play very highly to a Bard's strengths by giving them an always useful reaction and adding benefits for max Diplomacy beyond Bon Mot.
The fact that it belongs to another class' base chassis does not make it somehow improper to use on a Bard. A Bard with any archetype is still a Bard.
All that said, I reiterate my opinion that if your players do not want to change their current ways, which is obviously completely fine, then being able to use Lingering Composition and Fortissimo together, while not RAW, just might be the best way to go.
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Gang Up requires specific positioning/tactics and specific weapons for max benefits. In white room comparisons, its impact is far less than Fortissimo. It seems that your party optimized around its use, which is great, but not a given that would apply to any group.
Whereas Fortissimo will always bring those benefits, as well as additional damage that Gang Up does not bring.
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Gang Up requires specific positioning/tactics and specific weapons for max benefits. In white room comparisons, its impact is far less than Fortissimo. It seems that your party optimized around its use, which is great, but not a given that would apply to any group.It requires melee characters to be in melee range. Hardly an unusual situation.
I meant the Reach weapon that the Rogue is using.
Note also that :
- the bonus to attack from Fortissimo will apply whatever the positions. If there are 2 melees taking place, it is unlikely that the Rogue will be in Reach of both groups of enemies.
- the bonus to damage from Fortissimo applies also to all spells, not only attack ones.
- critting the skill feat, not impossible with a maxed Performance including item and status bonuses within easy reach of a Bard, brings a +1 to attacks over Gang Up's benefit.
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Glass, your recounting of this bards efforts to cast spells offensively runs very counter to my own experiences with PF2 and many others as well.
There are just way too many encounters in AV that would be absolutely wrecked by heightened calm, confusion, visions of death, laughing fit, or slow, not to mention how clutch spells like sense spirits are in the campaign and then they should also have force barrage at ranks 1 and 3 as there are a lot of creatures hard to hit and damage that that spell totally bypasses.
The party trying to squeeze 6+ fights into a day is working massively against your caster as that is essentially twice the general expectation, but in a fight against a lot of enemies throwing down one calm, then being ready to throw another if you are unhappy with the results on the first should halve the difficult of an encounter. Seriously, drawing 3 encounters to get her into AV sized halls and then calming 6+ creatures is absolutely brutally game changing.
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Glass, your recounting of this bards efforts to cast spells offensively runs very counter to my own experiences with PF2 and many others as well.
There are just way too many encounters in AV that would be absolutely wrecked by heightened calm, confusion, visions of death, laughing fit, or slow, not to mention how clutch spells like sense spirits are in the campaign and then they should also have force barrage at ranks 1 and 3 as there are a lot of creatures hard to hit and damage that that spell totally bypasses.
The party trying to squeeze 6+ fights into a day is working massively against your caster as that is essentially twice the general expectation, but in a fight against a lot of enemies throwing down one calm, then being ready to throw another if you are unhappy with the results on the first should halve the difficult of an encounter. Seriously, drawing 3 encounters to get her into AV sized halls and then calming 6+ creatures is absolutely brutally game changing.
Rank 3 Fear is great too :-)
In tha case the solution might be to house rule that the party can spend an hour resting to recharge all spell slots and just see if that makes the bard player more comfortable ripping through their spells.
This is a massively OP house rule long run but the party is towards the end of the campaign anyway
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- critting the skill feat, not impossible with a maxed Performance including item and status bonuses within easy reach of a Bard, brings a +1 to attacks over Gang Up's benefit.This OTOH is not true - the net bonus that fortissimo provides caps out at +2 with a crit. That it tells you the full bonus rather than the increase does not change the fact fortissimo increases a bonus you already have by a maximum of +2.
I do not get it. Do you mean that you are comparing Fortissimo to Courageous Anthem + Gang Up ?
If so, then Fortissimo + Gang Up would be even better.
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No. I am comparing fortissmo's actual net effect with Gang Up. When it says your final bonus is +3 on a crit, only 2 of that is coming from fortissimo itself. You already had +1 from courageous anthem without using fortissimo.I do not get it. Do you mean that you are comparing Fortissimo to Courageous Anthem + Gang Up ?
- critting the skill feat, not impossible with a maxed Performance including item and status bonuses within easy reach of a Bard, brings a +1 to attacks over Gang Up's benefit.This OTOH is not true - the net bonus that fortissimo provides caps out at +2 with a crit. That it tells you the full bonus rather than the increase does not change the fact fortissimo increases a bonus you already have by a maximum of +2.
Gang Up is making flanking easier and more consistent- but it's a bonus you could already move people into place to get without it. That's why folks are valuing Fortissimo's +2 higher, because you can flank along with it.
So why are you not giving me examples of those "good spells" so I can mention them to my player, rather than going on about the incompatible archetypes he should have?
I have neither the time nor the inclination to write my own version of Gortle's spell guide (which would be 99% identical anyway). If the bard player doesn't want to go through their spell list themselves they can use that, though they should be wary that his guide doesn't mark uncommon and rare spells, last I checked anyway.
If you're having 6-8 encounters per day, that's fine. They only need to cast one or two ranked spells per encounter and can spend the rest of the time cantripping.
email stuff
Seems like you don't quite understand that pf2e casters exist primarily to buff martials, apply 1 turn debuffs to bigger enemies and occasionally sweep up chaff. Those underwhelming success effects are what the entire viability of casters rests upon in this system and are why so few spells are worth knowing.
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Gang Up requires specific positioning/tactics and specific weapons for max benefits. In white room comparisons, its impact is far less than Fortissimo. It seems that your party optimized around its use, which is great, but not a given that would apply to any group.
Whereas Fortissimo will always bring those benefits, as well as additional damage that Gang Up does not bring.
Of course, this isn't white room. It's Abomination Vaults (aka: Abomination Closets). There are no lack of encounters in there where flanking via position is actually difficult because the rooms are small and getting that position can be tricky or outright impossible. Gang Up makes that a total non-factor. It's an incredibly strong feat in an AP like this (and I'm still baffled by its remaster buff).
I am mostly discounting his spell slots, because even if they were individually impressive (and they frequently aren't) its such a tiny proportion of the adventuring day that it does not move the needle. By far that character's greatest contribution to the party comes from his Medicine at Master and Medic Archetype - nothing to do with the bard class.
If the Bard is a Medic, that explains some. Medic is great, but it needs actions. Fortissimo is going to suffer in this case comparatively simply because you can't Fortissimo a Song/use Battle Medicine/cast a 2 action spell all in one turn.
Lingering Composition is going to shoot up in value here simply because so long as that's up, having a song up while using Battle Medicine and a 2 action spell suddenly works. Given this situation, ditching Fortissimo makes sense. The opportunity cost to use it for this character is a lot higher than for a "standard" Bard, and Lingering Composition is going to give them better value.
I can make a couple of suggestions:
- Dirge of Doom. They like both anthems, and against anything not Fear immune this does a good chunk of both at the same time. If people in your party aren't putting up Frightened already it's a great debuff since it impacts everything the enemy does. Plus the small maps of AV and the Bard being a medic work in its favour since the range will be less of a factor. (If someone is reliably putting Frigtened up then it's not as good.)
As a bonus, it also lowers enemy saves which means things like Slow are more likely to land.
- Doctor's Visitation. I don't know if they have Medic archetype, but it sounds like they do. I didn't see this mentioned, but it's a hugely powerful feat for a Medic player. Move/BA/Cast in one turn is a much better turn than not being able to do that.
- Don't focus on damage. While there are ways to do some damage (Electric Arc is going to be their best bet via Jolt Coil in terms of cantrips since it avoids all the cover the martials will be providing), they're never going to keep up with the martials in this party. That's just not how PF2 works for casters in general, let alone for a class like Bard that doesn't excel at it even by caster standards. If they want to do direct damage, they'd be better off on another class.
- They may want Cleanse Affliction as a signature spell. When it comes up, it's extremely helpful.
- They've been kind of going through the worst levels for caster effectiveness. Things ramp up now. When they get to level 9, Synesthesia is one of the strongest debuffs in the game. It swings fights.
The number of spell slots issue is an arbitrary one that your party is forcing on your bard player. There is absolutely nothing but player choice preventing your group from having the bard player go HAM with their spell slots and then resting after 2 or 3 encounters, with their spell slots bard casting a top rank and top rank-1 slot every single encounter.
Also, a rank 3 scroll only costs 30gp for characters that should be making about 100 each moderate encounter at this point. Having a handful of slow spells on scrolls at this point is cheap and an easy way to feel more comfortable using a couple every adventuring day to essentially double your rank 3 spell slots. Rank 2 scrolls are 12 gp. Otari is only about an hour away from the dungeon that the whole campaign is in. The bard could easily be using scrolls of spirit sense every time the party opens a door for the rest of the campaign.
This is why I encourage you to consider doing something like letting the bard character regain all spell slots with one hour of interrupted rest. Baseline PF2 can actually play that way most of the time (especially abomination vaults) but the rest of the players are kind of forcing scarcity on your bard player’s spell slots and that is preventing them from casting enough to see dividends on what can happen when you hit powerful creatures with 2 slows an encounter or a rank 3 fear spell every time there are 3 or more creatures that can be targeted. As a player, I promise that things like boss caster enemies critically failing against slow actually do happen fairly often, and feels amazing when they do, but it won’t happen if you only try it once or twice trying to conserve spell slots.
Which also brings us around to something that I haven’t seen you talk about your bard player engage with but monsters don’t critically succeed 50% of the time against spell casters unless the casters are targeting the wrong saves or targeting creatures with immunities against the spells you are often casting. Being able to figure out how to not target high saves (and eventually low ones) is absolutely critical to enjoying the experience of playing a caster. This doesn’t have to be the caster’s responsibility alone, and can be a great way for other players to shoulder some of the burden that your bard player’s spell slots has taken on by being the party healer. If the rogue can spare an action an encounter or two recalling knowledge, and the party can start trying to figure out what challenges are ahead before stumbling into them, it will make casting the right spells 30-50% easier.