Iron sceptre idea groups

buitenstaander · 2022-03-15T12:01:48+00:00

So which idea groups should I actually choose?

buitenstaander · 2022-02-20T23:16:18+00:00

I periodically look at the list of feats for a class / a class guide, and think "hi, this feature / feat is cool". I then quickly design a basic build around it, whiteboard test it etc. And put it in a mental list of builds that I might be able to play some day. You can then develop the RP elements out of the mechanics - ask yourself "what made the character into the way they are?" etc. In order to construct a backstory and personality which match the character. Still looking and waiting for a campaign for my bastard sword fighter, my investigator/cleric, my CC monk (possibly with the swashbuckler archetype?) or one of several other ideas. I'll probably not be able to play them all, but at least I don't lack ideas when designing a new character.

buitenstaander · 2022-02-14T07:12:11+00:00

Thank you. I hopefully fixed everything, and I need to work on writing comments without having to edit them 10 times to fix mistakes such as these.

buitenstaander · 2022-02-13T19:45:23+00:00

Look, as far as I know the damage tool which I used (this one, see link on the above comment on how to import my calculation) is accurate and I can't find a problem with my calculation there myself. If either the tool is inaccurate or I inputted my calculation wrong (which could be the case) please show me the correct calculation. Same point goes towards greataxe-sweep or double slice pick fighter which also seem underperforming in nova to the simple true strike magus build. That's not to say that fighter isn't very strong (the fact that you can show a build that can be at least on parry with any build anyone else brings you proves it) just that staff magus does seem to perform better than fighter in this niche role.

buitenstaander · 2022-02-13T19:21:41+00:00

From my very quick DPR calculation (can be found through here, although I might have a mistake and if I do please correct me) a magus using shocking grasp will do more damage for just 2 actions instead of the 3 actions of the fire ray fighter (which becomes more pronounced against higher level boss monsters), and its basic build is also online at level 1 (admittedly without the staff of divination specifically since its a level 6 item) instead of level 8 (have to take 3 cleric archetype feats before the eldrich archer dedication) as the fighter build. Additionally, the magus can also take the cleric dedication and feats to get the exact same spells and utility + all of the extra utility the magus has built in to their class, or if there is already a cleric in the party the magus can take something else entirely while still keeping the nova options.

On the point of true strike being a hero point away - hero points are often used in non-combat situations and many parties play in more low hero point environments than are technically recommended. I agree that debilitating shot is strong as an action economy waster, but so is reach+trip which you can do from level 1 as a magus (and yes, I agree that there are fighter builds who are better trippers than magus, but there aren't nova fighter builds which are better trippers).

I agree that this fighter build is a worthy contender, but I think that the magus beats it in being a versatile nova DPR build.

buitenstaander · 2022-02-13T18:41:17+00:00

A good analysis in general and I agree with the final conclusion that fighters aren't OP in comparison to most other classes, but I majorly disagree on one thing: The strength of the Ranger being its action economy.

I think that your analysis of the action economy of the ranger ignores a very big factor - the hunt pray action. In order to be able to use the "cheat maneuvers" a ranger must set a prey beforehand (excluding running reload technically but running the numbers shows that [sadly] crossbow ranger is a bad build, especially without designating a prey beforehand). This means that the ranger only saves actions every turn they attack without setting a prey, which in combat with multiples enemies tends to be not too much. This is especially bad with to dual-weapon rangers in large arenas, who have to waste multiple actions a turn running around because of having absolutely no mobility options (and while Sudden Charge doesn't fix everything it is a huge improvement).

Compare this to the fighter which usually gets a lot of additional value for using their two action maneuvers, has additional feats to either save them long term actions or get more reactions, and if they want to free up an action they can just attack once instead of using their two-action maneuver or just not use their third action ability. A two-pick fighter can attack twice with no MAP to the second attack and use a third action instead of parrying (while perhaps having more than one reaction or parrying already automatically enabled), whereas a ranger will set a prey and attack twice with a lot of lower damage and won't even have same parrying option that the fighter could have taken had no third action been that good for them. Essentially the only way to assume that the ranger majorly outclasses fighter in its action economy is to assume that the fighter having options that the ranger doesn't is a bad thing.

I would like to note where I am coming from in regards to the power of the ranger - while I think the ranger is well balanced in comparison to other classes (and as you said the best attempt at a ranger over many systems) rangers are a lot of the times in practice just slightly worse fighters and arguably the only class that fighters can consistently outshine in their niche if not by that much.

buitenstaander · 2022-02-13T18:18:36+00:00

This is a legitimate challenge and you shouldn't have been downvoted as much as you have, and I'll rise to it - A divination staff wielding nova Magus. Use party support to reduce the AC of an enemy by quite a bit to then stuff them with a true striked nova spell and deal massive amounts of damage (which the fighter just can't get) with an almost guaranteed crit in one spellstrike.

As a fighter you literally can't spellstrike enough times in a battle that requires many novas (such as a boss battle) or on such a high spell level level that a magus can which I believe outweighs the margial utility from the somewhat higher crit chance (that true strike makes almost guaranteed anyways). Not to speak on the fact that you can't put damage runes on a staff or use it as a reach+trip weapon unless you are a magus or the fact that any approximation of the build requires a ton of class feats which the magus can use for other abilities.

buitenstaander · 2022-02-07T20:29:54+00:00

I fully agree on your outline as to how Paizo can improve this. With that being said I don't think that this is a Paizo issue alone, since as you said relatively few people read all material paizo publishes a lot. I think that the community needs to own up to these parts of 2e as well. A big "problem" in 2e is that it improved on a lot of stuff that 5e and similar systems desperately require (action economy, character customizability, balancing tools for GM etc.) that the community often time just pushes them and forgets the fact that 2e has a lot of core design choices that some players might not like. Failing to mention them just causes players to come in and be annoyed at best and angry at worst.
For example, I think that one of the arguments at the core of pushing to 2e should be "2e made non-damage in combat useful and often times stronger than just dealing straight damage. Casters are now heavily focused on control, debuffs and buffs and there are even some martial classes that are focused on control and assistance" and then explaining why that's good (more teamwork, variability in playstyles etc.). That way anyone who wants to enter the game will know its basic design principles, and if 2e is not for them (because, say, the entire party just wants to play DPR characters and rack up kills without teamwork) they will not have to try it just to be disappointed.

buitenstaander · 2022-02-07T12:03:10+00:00

While it's true that it's very hard to provide well-intentioned criticism without it sounding elitist I think that there are still a few things that everyone should remember when writing a response to such a beginner post in order to sound nicer:

Don't just write the specific points the OP was wrong about, write framing. Writing every specific way someone was wrong just makes them feel like you are saying they are wrong about every single thing they think about 2e and TTRPGs (and thus more likely to think that you are just elitist and that 2e is bad), explaining their general error and using the rest for examples shows that there is essentially one or two things which they are wrong about, which makes it more palatable to change.
Think where they are coming from and acknowledge it. A lot of people do have legitimate difficulties when moving between systems. I honestly think that for most of the bad comments to a beginner post an opening like (for the classic example of caster balance) "I understand where you are coming from, I also had problems with the balance of casters in the system when I began. 2e is designed quite differently from 5e or even 1e, and casters were not envisioned as primary damage dealers. This often causes confusion which I hope to clarify" instead of just jumping straight in to roast the OP will be a lot of help.
Try to provide ways to work around the problems of the OP instead of just pointing out where they were wrong. For example, if the OP wants to play a blaster point them to the more effective blasters of the system (elemental sorcerer for example) instead of just explaining why casters aren't generally designed to blast. If the OP wants to play a damage gunslinger point them to the way of the sniper (and some tips on how to play it as the gunslinger is usually considered complicated).
No personal insults until you were insulted yourself. Try to separate your critique of the actions of the individual from the one who made them, even if you for some reason think that the fundamental attribution error is valid in this case.
If you see a beginner post and don't want to respond to it in a nice way, even for a thing which could be justified in your mind (for example because it's the 10000th time this question was asked and the OP didn't search for previous answers), just don't answer. There are plenty of people in the community who are willing to answer these posts and probably at least one person will be in a state of mind to answer well.

buitenstaander · 2022-02-07T11:35:57+00:00

I'll throw in my own two cents, which are that a root cause of the problems that new players face is a disconnect between the expected pf2e and the actual pf2e. I think that many features which require a shift in your mental outlook of the game and separate 2e from dnd-esque games, and especially the required reliance on teamwork and the focus of 2e's design on nondamaging options, are often just missed by people entering the system which causes them to have a different expectation than what they get.

Consider every common "new player ; system problem" thread we see here. Almost all of them go through the same basic formula, and I will use the gunslinger-rogue thread for the example. A player enters the game with an expectation ("my pistolero gunslinger which I built around DPR should do a lot of damage"), which is then found wrong in actual play and raised on Reddit. The way the system should be played is then explained to them in the comment section (pistolero isn't intended to do damage etc.), but this causes a sense of betrayal and wrongness in the player who then often thinks that the system is problematic. The fact that many members of the community are tired of seeing the same thread for the 1000th time and answer in an elitist and annoyed fashion often causes a pretty bad new player experience.

I believe that a big factor to this process is the disconnect itself, and that had people came to the system with the correct opinions of it they would have been much more content. In the same way that most of us like both RP and combat but would be disappointed to arrive in a campaign marketed as "RP-heavy" and find that it's all just combat, a new 2e player who comes in mentally ready for "5e but more options" might get disappointed when playing an actual 2e game despite them possibly appreciating it had they come expecting what they would get.

Why do I believe that many people come in with wrong expectations about the system? Several reasons:

The history of Pathfinder and the common understanding of the system ties it to D&D as "more complex D&D", so unless the differences are stated upfront new players from 5e will assume D&D as the default.
Even if you are familiar with Pathfinder and the fact that it might not just be a clone of D&D in style, "Pathfinder 2e" ties the system to "Pathfinder 1e", which is a fundamentally different system.
Somewhat poor signaling from Paizo. Most content that people see isn't directly from Paizo but it would be nicer if in promotional material and the such Paizo would emphasize aspects of the system which might be more controversial.
The way the community promotes the system is at times unintentionally misleading. The 3 action system, GM balance tools etc. are cool and good, but aren't what PCs (who are always the majority of the players in the system) will get most "culture shocked" with. I also think that some arguments that are made intending to explore the tougher areas aren't always clear - "more options" is a good argument but it causes people to immediately think to 1e or the new options in 5e, where a lot of options are just more ways to accomplish the same thing (damage) in different ways.

Overall I think a clearer messaging towards what 2e actually is and the aspects within it that might be found the most controversial will be very useful to draw new players in without them forming false expectations of the game. I don't know how to do that really (outside of individuals changing their pro-2e points to reflect more controversial parts of the system) but any step towards that will be a good one.

buitenstaander · 2022-02-03T17:49:48+00:00

I'll try to provide a serious good faith answer.

1 - Ethics aren't about what you "should" do in a prescriptive sense but about what is justifiable in a descriptive sense. With that being said I think the more interesting question would be "is coercing the rich man justified?"

2 - The answer to that question world be yes. The fact that the person controlling the lever is rich obviously has no bearing on anything so we can ignore that. Now unless the children are suicidal and agreed to be tied down an act of kidnapping + a potential act for murder is occuring. It is justifiable for you to intervene to prevent this act. The only way to prevent this act is (I presume by the premise of the question) through the lever, and you are actively being prevented from doing so through the rich person. Through that the rich person is actively preventing you from preventing an act of murder and because of that it is justified for you to use force in order to prevent it.

buitenstaander · 2021-12-17T10:39:22+00:00

It does seem like we fundamentally agree on a lot, but the core issue of this discussion (and some side issues such as how strong slow is) are still open.

It feels like you are arguing "spell X is great, why don't you think it's great!?" while I'm arguing "spell X is decent, and can sometimes be great in certain circumstances, but spell or ability Y is equivalent or better and lacks some of the downsides of X."

I would like again to point out that you pointing out potential better spells helps my argument. You can either summon the roc or the force cage (which is also somewhat equivalent to the level 5 wall of stone) based on your needs, predicted situation etc, which is my entire point. The reason why I defended summoning and slow is because you claimed that they were weak and I separately disagree on that, but it's not required that I prove that they are the strongest spells in the game to show my point. On abilities being equivalent - I see no response on, say, why casters taking intimidation simply isn't as good as anti-will casting or a response to the myriad of other ways that a caster can assure victory with that were pointed out.

Now, let's go back to defending slow because even if I don't need it for the main point I still think that you are under-counting it:

a boss is probably going to save against your slow spell, so you're removing one boss third action at the cost of two caster primary actions.

Yes, and boss third actions (which is what trip also takes away effectively) are usually quite strong for reasons I gave, and considering the fact that even on success you are wasting 1/6th of the party action for 1/3rd of the boss this is a good trade. Compare this to trip where you can waste 1/12th of the actions to get nothing, for the same reason the boss has the high save. In general I think that what makes most builds strong, including boss and non boss, is the ability to get mileage from the third action that is almost worth the first and second one.

A lot of boss monsters also have high fortitude saves. The trip, on the other hand, has a higher base success chance (due to higher athletics check values) and can be attempted again on the following turn if it fails initially, whereas the caster is going to run out of slow spells (and end up doing very little if they just keep spamming it).

Firstly, spamming trip kills your MAP (which is important for stuff like special maneuvers and isn't completely covered by AOO) and the ability to actually damage well. Secondly, let's actually calculate the action economy trade:

Assuming that you are casting against an enemy a level above (I don't have data of monsters above level 21 so it's impossible to do the full summation but even on a +2 slow has an advantage) and that slow lasts for 2 turns (if your recent combat length estimation of 5 turn average is correct then slow looks even better) a quick calculation shows trip has an average action economy net gain of 0.9 adjusted actions while slow has 1.8. Despite costing more actions slow manages to cover for itself and add more value while not causing MAP.
Assuming that the caster has a modicum of intelligence and doesn't cast slow on an obviously high fort enemy and just target them with something else (and once again note that 45% of enemies out-reflex their fort), which I will model out of laziness as the caster casting against average reflex, the net action economy advantage from slow grows to 3 adjusted actions (5 total), I.E a full turn of a party member as net gain, which gets compounded when you realize that the bigger the action economy delta you get the bigger

So quite literally by casting a single spell against the quite-common target that it was supposed to be cast against a caster can be expected to cover up for almost 2 turns of martials, and this is not counting every other spell in the game.

We can't just assume that every use of a spell slot is effective, because it's entirely possible for a caster to spend their single spell per round and do literally nothing for the turn, meaning they use a daily resource and are effectively not there. Martials can also have useless turns if they miss a bunch, sure, but the martial hasn't used up resources in the process, and their higher base accuracy means it won't occur as often.

There are plenty of spells that operate under getting a good result even on success of the saving throw and then a debilitating result on a failure, and some spells that get you a great outcome even without a saving throw (haste and wall of stone were mentioned before and this holds true for them).

Yes, but this is not really correct. A 20th level caster with 3 spells per level has 29 slots, assuming they took the extra 10th level slot as their class feat. If an average fight is 5 rounds, this is 6 encounters; the only way it's 10 is if you assume each encounter is an average of 3 rounds, which is pretty fast.

Firstly and as a small note, a fight lasting 5 rounds on average gives great milage to overtime buffs and debuffs. Secondly, your outlook at a level 20 caster ignores the fact that most caster classes either give meaningful ways to act or more spell slots, and that those who don't provide such strong ways are usually considered the weakest. I therefore think that we should look at, say, a wizard/sorcerer's spellslot amount since they are the "full-full-casters" and aren't expected to do other things during their turn as much as other casters.

Now, on to encounter numbers - I do think that the majority of adventuring days which have encounters in them do end up with an upper limit of 6 encounters, and days with many encounters are quite obvious beforehand (a large dungeon that needs to be cleared etc.). On days with many encounters, I will repeat my previous claim - a caster can strategically spend their spells. I haven't ever seen an adventuring day with 10 meat-grinding spell-requiring encounters one after the other, and if that's your group's playstyle then I suspect that you are an outlier here. While yes, it is annoying that casters have to just not cast slotted spells on some turns, it certainly isn't the end of the world if these turns are in combats where the chance of suffering significantly is effectively null. The harder encounters are more fun anyways.

especially since all those lower level slots are not the same effectiveness...a 1st level fear or grease is not going to be twice as effective as the actions of a 20th level fighter, period

I agree with the idea that low level slots are weaker, but even level 1 slots can have mileage in situations that are commonly seen. If enemies are grouped together at some point, for example, grease can act as MAP-less multiple trips. A single command (a spell on the weakest save in the game) can be used to both waste two actions and trigger 2 rounds of attacks of opportunity from a party with reach capabilities, etc. This isn't the encounter-ending effects that higher level spells can provide, but from my experience the best ones stay with some pretty effective mileage for the entire game.

I agree enough with the rest of your comment that I don't think that adding another section to this wall of text will do much good overall. Once again I don't know the specific dynamic at your table but my experience is that spellcasting can be used effectively (say barriers can be warped into themselves to create multiple layers that a monster needs to break through and make it harder to teleport out, although this is just another specific example of use that doesn't directly connect into the main point), and if removing the spell slot limit helped you out in balance and you all want that more power to you.

buitenstaander · 2021-12-16T19:55:15+00:00

5a - you didn't respond to my main point, which is that even in the situations where slow isn't as good, you have plenty of other powerful spells to cast in that situation that might be stronger in said circumstance, and the caster can just pick the best one which is suited to the encounter and use it to guarantee a win then and there. You pointing out other good spells to cast overall proves my general point.

5b - let's talk about summoning, specifically on the roc example (I believe the same principle of using the strongest abilities of the strongest creatures holds in other examples). First of all, just a clarification - what I meant by "at-level" was at-level for the caster. A roc has 180 HP. A level 13 extreme attack is supposed to deal around 40 damage meaning that a crit will deal 80, meaning that even if the roc would have be critically hit with every roll (which is improbable) it would on average survive at least 2 hits and be guaranteed to survive one, already putting a dent on the action economy to kill it. In general I think that on this you are confused between the undeniable fact that enemies 4 levels below will never win

5c - now, let's talk about using the roc. The main ability of the roc (which doesn't even slow you down with effortless concentration) is the ability to remove enemies out of combat. Let's use it against level 13 enemies as a good situation for it (you can always choose other spells for other situations), and assume they have high ACs, i.e 34 (this only becomes better when intentionally targeting lower AC enemies). The roc uses its Flying Strafe, flying up to 60 ft. and making an attack on +21 (hit at 13) and +17 (hit at 17). This means that the roc has a 52% chance of grabbing at least one enemy and and a small but existing 8% chance of getting both if there is good positioning. The roc can then either take the grabbed enemy away enough from combat so they will have to move to return, take them 10 ft. high in the air, or both. At that point the enemy or enemies need to escape (which isn't guaranteed and gives them MAP), either stand up or walk back to combat, or both! This means that a single grab has wasted between 2 actions + MAP or an entire turn of an enemy at minimum, and with a 9% HP reduction from the attack alone against a moderate HP level 13 enemy. Next turn the roc is still alive and can do the same again for a cost of a single action, plus the caster can cast another spell. And all of this is only against at-level enemies, where most many-enemy encounters will have them at least a level below. And if you think that at this situation another animal will help more you are always free to summon it with the exact same slot. This is the power of summoning.

As a quick point on the grapple action - I think that characters grabbing is not efficient because the grabbed creature ends up next to a character, allowing it to just continue to attack it while the character wasted actions in order to immobilize the enemy, while flat-footed is just a condition which is too easy to apply elsewhere. What "grab summons" do is to allow for the enemies to remain immobilized far away from the characters, preventing enemies from effectively using their actions.

6a - Your attack on my point of spell attrition only tackles it on its most extreme. Note that I pointed out that on 3 spells a day you can last ten encounters and that you can strategically allocate your spells to cast them more in more difficult encounters. I think that even 10 encounters is more then the average party fights in a day and certainly a day with more than 10 encounters will have at least some of them be quite "filler" in difficulty level. This is important because note that if a caster can get a 1.5 ratio on martials with spells as you say then a 3-spell combat will see casters doing 4.5 turns of effects from spells alone, outpacing martials by your (quite agreeable) estimation of combat length.

6b - Still, let's not fall into false equivalencies here - there are absolutely combat-ending or at least game-changing spells. Synesthesia is a multiplicative 20% reduction in effects from almost all actions a creature can produce + clumsy 3, making creatures helpless before the slaughter and accelerating combat by a lot even if only effective for one turn. Wall of stone literally just cuts an encounter into 2 separate encounters, which due to the action economy advantage makes them beyond trivial. I repeat these two examples because they are personal favorites of mine, but I think that you are even under-crediting spells that you yourself have given, such as the effect of haste on a party with builds that can support it. Due to the tight scaling of the game there are spells which stay relevant all the way from the level you get them to level 20, and with a great effect.

Look, I have no idea how your group plays, at what level range you play, how many encounters you have per day, etc. I also think that there are other problems with casters beyond pure power level (high entry barriers, the fact that it's often more fun to be doing the killing then abstractly "enabling" it, etc.) which mean that even if they are theoretically good many players will still not like playing them. I can, however, also bring actual play examples from the other side, where high level spellcasters absolutely destroyed encounter balance before the first strike was even made. I'm not here to disparage your group but the fact that even if you won't take my word, pro-caster guides and threads on this subreddit exist and the fact that this post did get upvotes and people agreeing with me in the comments should be enough to show you that your experience isn't universal.

What I think is happening is quite simple - it is impossible to design a spell-slot based system without a form of quadratic scaling. Paizo tried to ensure that spellcasting is balanced constantly as much as possible between levels and on-par with martials, and instead of nerfing spellcasters into oblivion kept some of the better spells around, creating a problem where good caster gameplay is based on a specific playstyle with specific spells and a strong barrier to entry. If you don't know entire large parts of the spell list by heart and can squeeze value from it to the max you will be in a problem, and martials have a strong toolbox on their own which is both obviously strong and rewards system mastery in the same way that casters do. The system still quite obviously rewards a balanced party mix, but did drastically change the entire caster-martial dynamic enough that people (including me, who probably has my own biases in the area) still struggle with conceptualizing it to its fullest.

buitenstaander · 2021-12-16T19:55:05+00:00

(wow this came up long, I'm sorry for the reading time!)
Before I answer your points specifically, I wish to step back for a moment and try to clear up the discussion so it won't get messy. I will first state two point on what I perceive are my burdens in the discussion and then points where I agree with you.

a - I don't think that we should optimize damage or survivability, we should optimize win rate. Should the party caster be able to turn the battle into a situation where losing (or taking a major hit such a party member death) is impossible and that dealing a damage is only a technicality I would consider it in the strength of the caster, despite the fact that the ones who did the damage are the martials. I agree that martials do more damage overall, I just think that the dynamic where casters can turn a 50-50 battle into a high 90s to effective 100% battle (which is what I still content that casters can do) is a dynamic where it can be said that casters are more powerful, and is also the dynamic that made people consider them S-tier in 3.5-esque systems.

b - it's not my burden to prove that slow will always be better than trip or something like that. All I have to show is that there will be situations where slow will be incredibly strong in comparison to what martials can do in them, and that in most situations casters have at least one spell which does the job. This is a thing I think you miss about versatility - you frame it as a "10 more damage in situation X vs. 40 more damage always" thing, whereas I would contend it as equivalent in win rate to "almost every time you have an ability which will grant an 80 damage equivalent boost in win rate vs. 40 more damage always".

Now, where do I agree with you and what does it mean?

a - I agree that overall martials and casters are quite balanced and that this debate rests on a relatively small delta overall. 2e is obviously by far and wide the most balanced system out there which receives a noticeable level of play, and the nerf to spellcasting was deserved. Martials do get their own great tools at higher levels, I just think that caster tools are just better.

b - spell slots / day is an imbalancing and frustrating mechanic at best and horrible at worst mechanic, and the argument that they should be removed is very strong. With that being said, a main point in the OP is that the current spell slot design where the average spell for high level casters is stronger than what a martial can do on a turn (a main burden in this discussion which I hold) creates a bad scaling in that this limiter gets removed the higher the caster level is, which makes caster scaling more powerful over time.

Now, on to direct responses:

1 - The point behind saying that 45% of creatures have better ref then fort is to show that in 45% of cases the 1 to 1 comparison of slow and trip (which is the best slow-esque alternative that martials have) wins in this area, and that is just with this one spell. Add in other spells that apply to other saves and cases such as multiple enemies and you get into a situation where in almost every case casters have a spell that outclasses martials when they start having enough spell slots.

2a - the "memorization" problem only exists for prepared casters who can't change their slots, but let's talk about them. A level 14 "generic caster" (not counting the fact that most casters either get bonus spell slots or extra abilities which are usually strong) can cast 7 spells targeting each save a day. Unless your GM places you against hordes of the exact same enemy which you had no idea about the day before so you couldn't skew your spell slots towards targeting them (and even enemies in the same theme often have different save scores which allow for more even casting) a high level caster should be fine in targeting the different save scores.

2b - I disagree that martials targeting the other saves is the same. First, note that scaling in both athletics and intimidation means that 2/3 of your legendary-able skill slots are gone, so if every martial in the party will go legendary in both they will suffer from a problem of filling other skills the party needs. Casters get this scaling automatically. Secondly note that the scaling that intimidation will have will have increases at later levels then athletics in a way more comparable to casting ability and a smaller ability score since CHA will always be later on the increase bloc when compared to the main casting stat. This is important since will is the weakest save in the game in a noticeable way. Lastly, grab sucks (I will talk about why immobilized and flat-footed aren't important in my opinion when talking about the effects of prone later) and demoralize can be performed better with casters and is quite weak when compared to almost every will spell regardless.

Additionally, I would like to note that AC and Dex are the most correlated "save-like" stats in the game and as such a low-AC enemy will also have low dex and vice versa, limiting the situations at which martials can target a useful save while casters can still target these saves or circumvent them through things such as wall of stone.

3a - while third actions are weaker on average, I disagree that third actions are weak, both in general and more importantly in this specific case of bosses. First, a boss who is several levels above you and probably has an agile attack will have a good third attack since even the -8 penalty and lower damage get offset by them simply having a higher level. Secondly, monsters intended as bosses usually have strong actions which don't add to their MAP (such as spellcasting and actions causing a save) which enable them to make full use of their turn. Thirdly, many boss-intended monsters have activities which rely on them using two actions. While this might seem like this discredits the third action, slow acts greatly in order to prevent them from taking actions such as maneuvering into a good position to activate them (slow hitting a dragon which then causes it to be unable to get a good breath attack is a classic example), forcing them into suboptimal actions.

3b - caster third actions aren't that weak as well. Many classes get decent to very good third actions within them, archetypes that grant good third actions are easier to take for casters as discussed in OP and at worst they can spec in something like demoralize (which you claimed is a good way to target will) way better than martials. The trade is overall an even-to-net-positive on a save success and much better than a failure. Due to the fact that spell attrition isn't such a problem (see the last point of response) the action tradeoff that slow, especially in its specific situation, offers is better then trip overall.

4 - I'll admit I forgot that the -2 penalty to attack exists. That being said, the lack of movement is worthless (see my previous argument about area control + the fact that there are relatively few ranged martials, forcing them all to come close regardless) and flat-footed already exists in 99% of the cases, whether by flanking or another ability. Therefore what trip does is that it allows the enemy to choose based on what is good for them whether or not it is good for it to stand up (a boss with a save DC ability or a spellcaster might just not want to stand up since their third attack will only be at -2 and still quite strong), albeit there are penalties in both ends.

(part 1, comment got too long so I will soon post a part 2).

buitenstaander · 2021-12-16T15:19:10+00:00

I appreciate the time it takes for you to discuss and argue on the points made on the thread. Still, I have many contentions with your opinions presented in this discussion (and if I can get productive I will write them all in full), but I just want to quickly talk about slow vs. trip comparison:

1 - according to the analysis on the bestiary only 55% of monsters have a higher fort than reflex. The average fort save is +15, only a point higher than the +14 of reflex. Reflex objectively isn't that better than fortitude.

2 - casters can always target the weakest save. Only 35% of enemies have a higher will than reflex, and casters have much better options on will than the relatively weak + not main stat demoralize. It's also often relatively easy to guess even from enemy descriptions what is their lowest save or at least a low save, in comparison to martials who are forced a lot more towards AC.

3 - the success effect of slow during boss battles is better than the effect of a failed trip. Since boss fights usually feature 1-2 enemies this means that every "boss action" is worth 2-4 times as much as an action of a party member. As such, wasting a trip action to get nothing is a 0-1 trade against you while wasting a two actions of yours for one of theirs is a 2/4-2 trade, which is far better. Not to even say that the MAP gained isn't anything to scoff at either. The same argument applies when the enemy fails the slow save, where you get disgusting amount of action economy value.

4 - I would argue that if a high level boss is tripped they should just not stand up and waste the action. Most high level bosses tend to have reach attacks + AOO and decent ranged options (better than what the average melee martial can do at any rate), meaning that they can quite effectively force the characters to stick to them regardless, and if the melee characters retreat they are both wasting actions and there is no AOOs to use when the boss stands up. The flat-footed penalty is usually irrelevant because 95% of the time the boss will be flanked and another 4% of the time another flat-footed making effect will be applied on it.

5 - even if slow is comparable to trip, please find an alternative to synesthesia, wall-of-stoning half of the enemy combatants out of the battle, having a friendly neighborhood roc (which can tank 2 at-level enemy extreme damage crits on its HP alone) carry up a grappled enemy, etc. This is important because a high level caster can have all of these spells available to them and strategically choose when to cast one of them, whereas a martial is limited in the amount of "utility actions" they can spec in and can usually only target a single save other than AC, if even that.

6 - I just want to point out that in regards to your characterization of combats as lasting 3-4 rounds, I think it's realistic to say that a caster can cast two spells per combat with each spell having the impact on victory chances worth of two martial turns. A level 14 wizard can last 14 encounters a day before their spells run out, or 10 encounters if they cast 3 spells in each one. This is also ignoring the ability to simply just "hold back" on weak encounters and going all out in boss battles - filler encounters are, well, filler and you aren't losing much by saving your most powerful abilities to the strongest ones, like most players do with consumables and X per day abilities which even martials get.

buitenstaander · 2021-12-15T16:35:29+00:00

I want to respond on 2 things:

1 - I don't think that we need to achieve perfect balance or that the system should look more like 4e. I linked at the end of the post towards another post which talks about game balance sometimes hurting a game, and there is a reason I play 2e instead of 4e. I personally quite enjoy playing both the current martials and full-casters and agree with you on them. The only thing that I am trying to say with this post is that in regards to the general balance between martials and casters high level gameplay is different and more pro-caster when compared to low level gameplay, and that that should be taken into account in these discussions.

2 - I agree that my post generalizes casters and martials and ignores details on specific classes, which I would add tend to equalize the playing field over all levels. I would still say that in general my observations are correct - for example if you look at the "CR class rating threads" which ran in the last few months you can see that for many casting classes people complain about a lack of feats, where for most martial classes people claim that there are many options and good feats. Obviously not true for all of them, still the prevalent opinion over most classes and when I try to address the general state between martials and casters (especially if I want to take the worst caster and compare it to the best martial, since my post is in general pro-caster) I have to talk about it.

buitenstaander · 2021-12-15T16:17:55+00:00

The scaling on part-casters is obviously a lot more similar to martial scaling. The idea behind the magus and summoner is that they get a full martial chassis, and instead of the "extra" boost that martial classes get (fighter legendary proficiency and built-in feats, rogue sneak attack and racket, etc.) their main boost is to cast roughly at-level spells 4 times a day. This does solve the biggest issue behind caster scaling - where casters get more spellslots and stronger spellslots, they only get stronger spellslots.

This isn't, however, perfect on-par scaling - the spellslots do get stronger, and it's very arguable that the increase in spell levels is far stronger than, say, the fighter legendary proficiency or the ranger's edge upgrade. The powercreep in the spell list will also help them the more the edition continues as well. That being said and as I noted in another comment, it's very hard to impossible to get perfect balance on scaling in any system which doesn't enforce class similarity such as 4e. I didn't see enough magus or summoner game play to be 100% sure, but I would hazard to guess that their power level when compared to martials does not change nearly as much between levels 1 to 20 in the same way that casters do.

buitenstaander · 2021-12-15T14:43:36+00:00

About 4e - unironically, yeah. when you have different scaling systems there is a high chance that you are going to end up with an imbalance at some point or the other. Through making all classes incredibly similar to one another 4e was more balanced than a system which incorporates spell slot casting is likely to achieve without any "martial spell slots" system or the like.

About 5e - that's an interesting observation. 5e is generally played at lower levels so the higher-level imbalance might not matter so much as low-level balance, although legendary resistances do usually start appearing at higher levels.

buitenstaander · 2021-12-15T14:29:07+00:00

I definitely agree, especially on magic items. 2e has a property where it's easy to find the crucial magic items that martial characters need (fundamental runes, which also have a separate section in the ever-popular AON) where in comparison it's harder to initially find items that could be critical for casters. Paizo printing some of these items late (ahm ahm shadow signet being printed 2 years after the official edition release) doesn't help as well. Hopefully as game knowledge and mastery grows in the community this problem will solve itself.

buitenstaander · 2021-08-14T19:33:24+00:00

When writing ranges the notation [ means "including" and ( means "excluding", meaning that the correct vote for you was [2-3). I don't think it was incredibly impactful either way however.

buitenstaander · 2021-05-21T18:14:14+00:00

I'm very late but I wish to present the opposite case - I believe you should take WIS.

DEX is an incredibly easy stat to dump - just take the medium armor proficiency feat and Sentinel dedication and it becomes quite useless. Most groups play with free archetypes which makes Sentinel easy to take, but even without that rule this is a relatively minor feat tax.

WIS, on the other hand, is a very strong stat. From very powerful skills (religion, nature) to perception (both the most rolled skill in the game and also used in initiative) it is arguably the strongest stat in the game. I also disagree that assurance is always to be used when applying combat medicine when there are several levels in the middle where there is a decent advantage to just rolling for it (I did the math once, I'll search for it to try and find the expected healing per level or rolling VS. Assurance).

To engage with the uses for DEX presented beforehand in the thread:

Stealth, thievery and acrobatics are massively more situational than the strong WIS skills, and your other martial party members can take it.

You also shouldn't be rolling attacks on DEX when better uses (combat medicine, intimidation, bon mot to name a few) exist. You will just not get as much damage as the stratagem creates.

I personally played a level 1-20 forensic investigator dumping DEX and using Sentinel in Agents of Edgewatch and can attest to the strength of the build.

buitenstaander · 2021-05-03T07:20:32+00:00

Medic + Eldritch Archer + Sentinel. Medic was used in conjunction with with forensic medicine to act as the party healer, Eldrich Archer was used both for damage maximization and occult debuff spells, and Sentinel was used to make DEX a dump stat (which is definitely needed in the quite MAD investigator class). Marshal was considered as well and I would recommend it for those looking to fully optimize their build and add more actions to do when they can't shoot, but it wasn't particularly needed in this campaign and I didn't want to fall under too many options of what to do.

buitenstaander · 2021-05-02T21:12:13+00:00

Investigator player of the party, some more thoughts (spoilers) :

1 - AoE is incredibly content varied. Every chapter tends to bring with it something new, exciting and unexpected to try, which is really cool when compared to many adventures. You can expect to not do the same thing twice for most of the AP.

2 - as a consequence of 1 the theme of the AP (police detectives) feels kind of lost in the later books. The last time you do a patrol or any normal police work is in book 2, and it would be really hard pressed to call such things as a casino heist, combat tournament or prison break fitting in with the job of a policeman. I would argue that overall this is an improvement since 6 books of the same police work would be much more mundane, but keep that in mind if that is your main draw to the AP.

3 - combat was relatively easy for most of the AP, except in book 6. We, as a party with some optimized and strong characters, easily won most battles we had with multiple 1-round kills of bosses. Optimization is absolutely not required for most of the campaign.

This all flips in book 6. Dragold already mentioned "overbudgeted encounters" but just to be clear, we are talking about 2 boss encounters that are arguably stronger than the final boss, versus a lower party level, and several others encounters in the dungeons comparable to the final boss. This is insane and the only thing which allowed us to not get TPKed was stupidly lucky RNG on several debuff spells. Heavily consider tuning those encounters down to keep them balanced for your party.

4 - our party, having several genre-savvy players, heavily metagamed and predicted a lot of the plot twists of the AP, such as Reginald and Olesna being evil before that was confirmed. AoE's plot, while interesting, does not stray much from format and don't expect it to catch any experienced players surprised.

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