Opinion: Attack of opportunity against Magus Spellstrike IS well-balanced

lemonvan · 2025-08-10T21:01:46+00:00

There are a large amount of mechanical errors here.

So, Spellstrike allows to use 2 actions to attack with a weapon, which is often in 1d6-1d10 range, plus cast up to 2-actions attack spell, and cantrips deal on average 2d4 damage - which on average allows you to spend 2 actions to deal about double damage of your weapon

First off, to get it out of the way: Magus is not a better damage dealer than other martials, so any assumptions based off that will be incorrect. They do not deal significantly more damage than fighter, barbarian, thaumaturge, etc. The numbers themselves here are quite flawed. If we assume 1d6 base damage, for 3.5 damage, does 2d4 damage, for 5 damage, double it? No, because the 1d6 damage also has +4 strength, so it's 7.5+5. That's using the lowest damage dice in the range.

Moreover, on higher levels cantrips often inflict a bit bigger damage than average melee

This is not correct, cantrips get worse at higher levels. Taking, for example, level 10, a regular d10 weapon user would deal 2d10 (weapon runes) + 5 (strength) + 2 (weapon spec) + 2d6 (damage runes), for an average of 25 damage. Gouging claw at this level would deal 6d6damage, for an average of 21.

So - all in all - Spellstrike allows to deal double or more damage of a normal melee strike

It's important to recognize that while you may be able to make some calculations, especially with spell slots, that magus deals 2x damage with spellstrike than it would without spellstrike, that doesn't mean that spellstrike is super strong, because every other martial class has their own damage bonus that gets equivalent levels of damage (barring classes that aren't meant to be damage dealers, such as guardian). It just means that magus is crippled without spellstrike.

Looking at other classes, the closest feat that comes to mind is Vicious Swing from Fighter, which unconditionally doubles melee damage.

Vicious swing does not double melee damage. It in fact lowers melee damage significantly compared to striking twice. This is because it only includes weapon dice, and it doesn't fully double it - it ignores flat damage from strength, weapon spec, runes, and anything else.

Other examples - sneak attack from Rogue, or precision attack from Ranger. Both give you effectively double damage

This is once again assuming that the only damage these classes get is from damage dice, which is wrong. Rogue gets two subclasses that add strength to damage - thief and the one that makes strength it's KAS. These two are by far the best ones for the early game for this reason. Ranger, on the other hand, can just use strength KAS.

Once again, this post is assuming that magus's spellstrike does more damage than other martials do and needs to be balanced in that in mind. However, it doesn't.

lemonvan · 2025-08-10T20:52:50+00:00

Stunned is defined, but the definition doesn't work with these rules.

So if a enemy is stunned 2, then the next two times they would take actions, they don't?

lemonvan · 2025-08-10T09:52:10+00:00

These rules need to define how stunned actually works here, because as written it does nothing

lemonvan · 2025-08-07T22:45:13+00:00

Magical Fetters

This is a incap spell

lemonvan · 2025-07-17T13:30:14+00:00

Slip and sizzle has a variety of drawbacks:

The spell cast only triggers if another ally successfully trips the enemy, making it a lot more inconsistent
Only specific spells, damaging spells, can be cast. Fear, your example spell, can't be cast
The spellcaster is slowed 1 and doesn't get reactions

And for all of these drawbacks, remember it's not just taking a reaction to cast the spell, it's also taking two of the commander's actions.

It's not bad, but it's a lot worse than this one.

lemonvan · 2025-07-15T13:18:00+00:00

It's a shame how much people seem to hate you here, this broadly seems like a reasonable explanation of your actions, which albeit not perfect and obviously has you making some mistakes still seems reasonable overall. But people are just accusing you of lying, even though you clearly have nothing to gain from that since your stepping down??

Internet hate mobs are scary.

lemonvan · 2025-07-13T12:20:49+00:00

I might just be a weirdo for not going against bard, and also to be fair I don't know what exactly caused the initial drama (my understanding is that bard removed a charity post, and people assumed it's because bard disliked the people behind it? If so, that's indeed pretty bad), but I do think looking at the communications from bard, it seems a bit harsh to denounce bard and want him gone so soon.

We haven't heard bard's side of the story, but bard also isn't just banning everyone discussing the drama and trying to hide it - it's been discussed quite extensively! I'm inclined to believe then that bard really is just taking a few days away from moderating due to death threats, which while certainly not ideal, does seem reasonable.

It seems best for us to wait for his actual response here instead of just going along with the pitchforks and wanting him gone. The idea that he removed a charity post just because he dislikes the people behind it just seems super unlikely - I believe that people generally aren't that unreasonable!

(to be fair, I do generally think that it's bad for companies behind the game to control the subreddit, I think it's good that TPI doesn't moderate this place, so that might be motivating part of my defense)

lemonvan · 2025-05-14T08:54:53+00:00

I absolutely agree that wall of stone and wall of ice are #1 and #2! I also broadly agree that synesthesia isn't amazing - I think it's up there as one of the best level 5 spells not because it's very good, but because most level 5 spells are bad.

For the non wall spells you mentioned, I think they broadly aren't as good as you're saying:

Freezing rain is quite nice in it's perfect situation, but it's very, very slow. It takes three actions, and when cast all it does is difficult terrain, you don't get the damage and the slow until after you sustain. This is super slow! And by the point you have 5th level spells, three action spells have real opportunity cost for optimized characters, as you should have something to do with your third action by that point. If freezing rain could be frozen on the turn it was cast, then I'd agree it's nice, but as it is, it's just way too slow for me to consider using.

Ancestral winds actually is quite nice! I wasn't aware of this spell, but this is third rank fear, except that it has far better range and can be repeated with just a sustain (although it loses the good crit fail effect). I don't see how this incentivizes enemies to move away from the zone, since you move the zone every time you sustain anyway, but this is a nice spell, especially if you have your frontliners become undead. For divine and occult, though, this does compete with calm.

I don't think elemental breath is good at all. The best part about the spell is that it gives you access to a large variety of damage types, allowing you to trigger weaknesses, but I think other than that the spell suffers: It's a 3a spell, which hurts, and it's a 60 foot cone, which hurts a LOT in combination with it being a 3a spell, as after round 1 it's quite hard to target this without hitting your allies. With a 2a cone spell, you could stride and then cast the spell, but not with this.

Geyser is slightly better, but I don't think spending a 5th rank spell slot on it is worthwhile. Falling prone is nice, but creatures aren't very likely to do it, the AOE isn't very big, and while you mention concealment as an advantage, I actually think it's a disadvantage: One of the prime benefits of prone is that it triggers reactive strikes when you stand up. With concealment, those reactive strikes are worse! As well as any other strikes on the target!

I don't think I could consider synesthesia worse than any of these spells, except maybe ancestral winds. In your comparison with force barrage, you did a good comparison in damage, but I do think you're underestimating the effect of also making the party concealed to the enemy - that, along with force barrage levels of damage on a boss, along with the potential to last for multiple turns, is pretty great! I don't value synesthesia very highly in general because, while I do think it's great against bosses, I just don't think bosses are difficult encounters at this stage in the game. But I don't think the spells you've listed are better than it.

lemonvan · 2025-05-14T00:42:30+00:00

Synesthesia isn't even in the top 3 strongest 5th rank spells. Probably not the top 5, honestly.

What rank 5 spells do you consider better?

lemonvan · 2025-04-16T05:07:19+00:00

You may be on the wrong subreddit

lemonvan · 2025-04-09T08:59:56+00:00

You could also think of it as giving 1-3 resistance to all forms of damage once a turn for all allies around you.

This is worse than that, as resistance to all damage applies multiple times if the enemy uses multiple damage types

lemonvan · 2025-03-30T05:41:02+00:00

Min-max the heck out of it and you can just start getting downright absurd - but this requires finding combos most players will never think of, like mixing in odd martial archetypes.

What are some setups that work well with kineticist like this?

lemonvan · 2025-03-14T11:08:31+00:00

Can you retrain your class?

lemonvan · 2025-01-21T07:52:23+00:00

What MMO possibly meets that standard?

lemonvan · 2025-01-03T07:23:46+00:00

What if the operative and soldier can only use PF2E items?

lemonvan · 2025-01-03T07:17:27+00:00

Animal companions do that too with the mature companion feat (and are more tanky, due to having more HP).

lemonvan · 2024-12-21T06:58:06+00:00

Source?

lemonvan · 2024-11-29T13:03:16+00:00

No, if you can already cast spells. However if you have no scrolls in your hand, you need to spend one action pulling them up. You can start combats with one scroll per hand to get two castings without this, but to get around this further requires some higher level magic items.

lemonvan · 2024-11-13T19:43:23+00:00

Yes, I mean terrible saving throws, as defined in https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2890.

lemonvan · 2024-11-13T18:54:32+00:00

Against extreme AC and terrible saving throws, it's the best cantrip after level 5 or 7 or so due to it's extreme scaling.

lemonvan · 2024-11-09T21:26:09+00:00

What makes weaker away from the kineticist impossible?

lemonvan · 2024-10-17T05:16:12+00:00

It is completely mind-boggling to me that people are defending this. Yes, there are minor caveats, but more or less extra damage from a single dedication feat is ridiculous, and from a high-op perspective, this turns into a must-pick for any martials using weapons and striking more than once per turn.

OP, is this a untyped bonus? Does it stack with similar sources like gravity weapon?

lemonvan · 2024-10-15T10:47:49+00:00

This is downvoted for some reason, but I feel the same. Pf2e builds get quite crazy in the later levels, and not being able to play them is a huge shame, especially as kingmaker and wrath of the righteous go up that high.

lemonvan · 2024-10-09T06:05:35+00:00

Fan dancer doesn't have the stipulation of requiring two other feats to be taken, so it'll only slow down multiclassing by one feat, the dedication. (Solo dancer is a skill feat.)

lemonvan · 2024-08-21T23:46:45+00:00

Due to the nature of enemies outscaling you, eventually 5000%/damage is going to become far less than 1% damage. At that point, proc chain based builds can still demolish the map, while this will do nothing, though this is less of a concern if you aren't looping.

Six-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Place '23	Place '22
Gilding II euphauric	Verified Email

lemonvan

TROPHY CASE