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Yeah I'm just like, completely lost how your AV run with four martials in the party isn't causing the bard to generate free value just by existing. That's eight attack rolls every round that should be getting buffed! And this is AV, where revealing light is mandatory, force barrage murders one of the hardest for its level encounters in the game and all those single boss extreme encounters are asking for Slow spam. The bard really, really shouldn't have any issues being the biggest contributor. Heck, if the bard is banned from doing anything other than cast anthem and rolling medicine checks it's still the most valuable contributor. If it doesn't feel that way that's a perception issue.
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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
I am 95% certain the big issue the bard player is having is the party wanting to tackle 6+ encounters every day of adventuring. At that pace, the whole campaign will probably last 2 weeks in game time? I think the AP itself makes it pretty clear that the players should be taking more time than that.
Remember that glass said the whole party is struggling with the campaign? It might seem like martials are resourceless, but the reality is that consumables and spells help them almost as much as they help casters, so the whole party writing those out of their playbook is detrimentally affecting the party as a whole. Slowing down the pace and learning more about the threats ahead is going to help everyone avoid wasting actions doing less useful damage types and being prepared and well defended against the kinds of threats they will face, the ones that are currently overwhelming them.
Telling them that might not work very well, no one wants to hear “YOU ARE PLAYING WRONG!” that is why I suggested trying something like letting the caster restore spells more quickly. That way the party learns to value spells, and then you can point out, there is actually no difference between one out and a nights rest in this campaign.
OP, if you and your player are interested in guides for PF2, including Bard ones but also many others, check here
Errenor wrote: It's a cost for being a caster. Every caster pays it and every spell slot spell costs it, so it's irrelevant when you are comparing casters with each other. Again, the cost is less (albeit still too high IMO) for those casters with more slots. And in any case, the original assertion I was arguing against was that the bard class was "already extraordinarily strong" - not strong for a caster. Extraordinarily strong, full stop.
Errenor wrote: Especially when you simultaneously say spell slots are useless for casters, lol. Then they are worthless anyway and shouldn't be mentioned at all. Choose. That is not a contradiction; it is two sides of the same coin. When a class has a super-limited resource, spending that resource should do generally something fairly significant. When it regularly does little that feels bad. When it regularly does literally nothing except waste the slot and the actions, that feels even worse.
If you have more of something, it gets a bit more leeway on being individually imactful.
Errenor wrote: What are you talking about? Even trying to count everything and relaxing criteria, it's not true and most full casters have the same slots. TBF, I only checked the wizard and sorcerer before I made that comment, so lets see. By my count, there are nine full-casting classes in PF2. Of those:
Cleric has Divine Font
Oracle flat-out has four slots per level
Sorcerer flat-out has four slots per level
Wizard has Arcane School Slots and Drain Bonded Item
All the rest are 3 per Rank (except the poor psychic who gets 2), so you are technically half correct - four out of nine is not quite "most". It is however a significant proportion, and includes all the classic/famous classes other than bard EDIT: and druid.
Of course, your counter-assertion was also wrong: Four out of five have 3 (although one of those is animist, which is weird), one has fewer, and four have various amounts more. Definitely not mostly "the same" either.
Unicore wrote: The number of spell slots issue is an arbitrary one that your party is forcing on your bard player. Nobody is forcing anything on anybody. The whole party feels the need to get to the bottom of what is going on before the lighthouse recharges and/or Belcora completes her plan. And while they could maybe slack off a little bit, they are not entirely wrong.
Ryangwy wrote: Yeah I'm just like, completely lost how your AV run with four martials in the party isn't causing the bard to generate free value just by existing. He does generate value, but not "just by existing" and it is pretty much all he does. While the rogue provides twice the buff to attack rolls genuinely "just by existing", and gets to do significant attacks as well.
Unicore wrote: I think the AP itself makes it pretty clear that the players should be taking more time than that. Page number? Because without getting into spoilers, I am pretty sure it says the opposite.
Unicore wrote: Remember that glass said the whole party is struggling with the campaign? Did I say that? I didn't mean to!
They've had some tough fights, but they won them in the end and there has only been one character death (the bard players' previous character, funnily enough). All I said was that they were not ROFLstomping Extreme encounters.
BTW, when I said this....
glass wrote: They fought a banshee, and it rolled well on its damage, and they rolled poorly on their saves. Without a Reaction available for counter performance, half of them would have gone down immediately and the rest (left with greatly depleted hp and fighting the banshee and a bunch of minions without the party's heaviest hitters) would not have been far behind. ...I was talking complete nonsense.
There was an encounter where everybody failed of crit failed against a nasty auditary effect, and counter performance turned them all into a critical successes and saved the party a whole world of hurt. But I cannot remember with what, exactly.
It definitely was not with a banshee, which at level level 17 would presumably have TPKed the party whether they had counter performance available or not. (There was a nasty fight with a banshee recently in a different campaign - I must have conflated the two in my mind.)
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Like I said then glass, try letting the bard recharge spells after 1 hour of rest and see how that feels for everyone.
As far as the light house getting recharged, that can get disrupted like 2 levels down from where it starts and takes a week. 2 or 3 levels a week is definitely a fair pace that the AP supports. The entire Otari guide would be a waste of space if the party was expected to spend 2 weeks clearing a dungeon with no down time. The mystery is compelling but the dangers are not on a tight clock.
glass wrote: Errenor wrote: It's a cost for being a caster. Every caster pays it and every spell slot spell costs it, so it's irrelevant when you are comparing casters with each other. Again, the cost is less (albeit still too high IMO) for those casters with more slots. And in any case, the original assrtion I was arguing against was that the bard class was "already extraordinarily strong" - not strong for a caster. Extraordinarily strong, full stop. Bard's free and always accessible buffing and debuffing is that strong. When it's on top of normal casting (and not a stump like Psychic's) and other features like survivability the assertion looks very credible.
glass wrote: All the rest are 3 per Rank (except the poor psychic who gets 2), so you are technically half correct - four out of nine is not quite "most". It is however a significant proportion, and includes all the classic/famous classes other than bard.
Of course, your counter-assertion was also wrong: Four out of five have 3 (although one of those is animist, which is weird), one has fewer, and four have various amounts more. Definitely not mostly "the same".
Ehm, I forgot that Oracle now has 4. But didn't count Psychic at all though it's legendary so should count. So, it's 5 to 4 or to a bard 4 the same or lower and 4 higher, so not 'most other full casters have significantly more spell slots'.
'Significantly' could also be debated, both when counting only 2 top ranks and all ranks (when there's not much difference at some point of the game and both feel as 'enough' and 'more than you can spend in a day').
And Wizard's school slots are so bad most of the time especially you shouldn't count them as normal 4th slots. If they exist, Bonded slot is a single one.
glass wrote: They've had some tough fights, but they won them in the end and there has only been one character death (the bard players' previous character, funnily enough). All I said was that they were not ROFLstomping Extreme encounters. OK, so I'm guessing you have five players but aren't scaling encounters up, in which case it's very easy for one players to feel like they're twiddling their thumbs. And the bard player might be the least good, added to the passive nature of optimal bard play and the poor archetype combo, plus doing 6+ encounters in one day which would make any class with limited slots feel worse than intended (the general rule of thumb is you have a highest level slot for every encounter that needs one, which at the level range you're at means 3 moderate+ encounters per day).
glass wrote: He does generate value, but not "just by existing" and it is pretty much all he does. While the rogue provides twice the buff to attack rolls genuinely "just by existing", and gets to do significant attacks as well. Off-guard is the single easiest debuff to generate - every melee character generates it just by existing, and there are strong tools like trip/grapple that inflict off-guard while doing other things you want, so Gang Up is less valuable than it looks because it overlaps with so many other things you might want to do (and presumably aren't doing because the feat exists). In your party, though, nobody can give a status bonus to attacks, so it's far more valuable. Of course, it seems your party is playing well under the optimisation ceiling and thus you and they may not realise it.
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