> If your accuracy is lower, you benefit more from an accuracy boost. This is not exactly true. It's unintuitive, but it depends on what you're trying to do. The statement is true in that if you have 10 damage and you're paying 100 gp to pick between +5% accuracy or +2 damage, you'll pick +5% accuracy the lower your current accuracy and the higher your damage is. But there comes a point where you'd rather pick +2 damage at higher accuracies. However, if you are trying to aid one of two allies, the first has 70:20 hit:crit rate and the second has 60:10 hit:crit rate, and both deal 10 damage. Adding a +2 to the first increases hit chance to 80/30 hit crit for a total of +2 damage on average and aiding the second increases hit chance to 70:20 hit:crit for a total of +2 damage. So all other things being equal aiding either is the same. You would rather aid the one with more significant damage or a desirable hit/crit effect (e.g. intimidating strike/crit spec). In the case of Barb vs HTS, since HTS deals more damage you are correct in aiding the HTS. But it isn't because it is less accurate. It's because it deals more damage. I will concede that when picking between a 70:20 hit:crit character and 20:5 hit:crit character to aid, it is psychologically more fun to give the unlikely to hit character some spotlight, even if it is numerically inefficient.
purely damage perspective this analysis may turn out to be true however there are also many spell caster attacks that do a lot of debilitating moves that are usually picked less often because party is averse to using these type of tactics.
27:00 You fool, I am an excellent liar "Its lowest save is either Will or Reflex" The fail eliminated fortitude as a possible lowest save, but you mentioned it tends to be pretty obvious what the best save is
Great Video! "Spread the burden" especially applies to Recall Knowledge in combat, which uses 5 different skills depending on the type of opponent. Few characters are trained in all those skills. The point you did not mention is to pay attentions to turn ordering. If a character is standing in touch range of a caster with a touch range buff spell, do not move away from the caster. It is probably better to Delay and wait for the buff. This applies especially in the first round of combat.
It had never occurred to me that you can make a non-spell attack roll to aid a spell attack. That's mind-blowing and might be my biggest takeaway from this
15:37 In the Aid section, if we are only talking about damage, the Aid is actually better on the Barbarian than on the Caster (I'm only talking pure damage wise). Comparing the expected value: 20% * 44.5 (8.9) vs 15% * 52.5 (7.9). Now, I still wholeheartedly agree with the conclusion of aiding Spellcasters because most of the times we are not comparing Giant Barbarian to Caster just before an accuracy increase. That said, I feel like people usually only Aid the damage effects which are most of the time not the most important one. Aiding actions that do more than just damage is really good. Combat Grab, Briny Bolt or Slam Down are attacks that have really good bonus effects and should be Aided. I'm also surprised there was no mention of the Gunslinger, my favorite Aid dispenser. Fake Out is a really insane value feat and Gunslingers give the best Aid bonus possible! It's also really action effective. Still, really great video! Thanks for giving these to the community.
I'm playing a Scoundrel Rogue right now in a 1-20 campaign (We just hit level 8). Even taking Dex as a key attribute, it's an absolutely nasty debuffer. I think it honestly got one of the biggest stealth buffs in the remaster too. Not only are you feints uniquely potent for you, in that they last until the end of your NEXT turn. But on top of all that, a feint also now gives you a free step. So now, this one key tool not only sets up your damage, not only debuffs the enemy for any future feints or reflex saves, but is also an amazing repositioning tool when you otherwise might step. It's one of the most slept on subclasses in the system in my view (imo tossup for the best alongside ruffian). Pair that with a reach weapon for even more reach and efficacy. They make an incredibly nasty martial debuffer/striker. Really looking forward to the later levels and see how this progresses too, especially with a fire kineticist in the party.
I didn’t even know they buffed Scoundrel with the free Step! Scoundrel may honestly be the strongest of the Rogue subclasses, and it makes me sad that Thief gets overrated over it because of 2-4 points of additional damage. That damage is gonna feel MINUSCULE after level 2!
@@Mathfinder-aaa Oh yeah, it's an incredible buff. The amount of value you get out of a feint is absurd. The conception of thief as the best, I think is overblown. But I will say that in the levels I've played that extra damage WOULD have been very nice (1d6+1d6 sneak attacks have a lot of variance on how good they feel..) I think that will only really diminish over the levels though, as you said. The thief benefit diminishes as you level, where I think the other rackets benefits only get better as you improve in skills. It's a thought process that I think Swingripper first made me reconsider with some of his vids: More damage is not always the most important thing in this system. Now Thief does get some other nice things. Thievery focus allows them to make good use of sly disarm. They also get some really good debilitations at 10 (though this is true of every single rogue subclass, yes scoundrel included.. that's a whole other conversation). But it's similar to what I've noticed around talk with the exemplar dedication. Is the damage boost scaling a bit much? Sure, I can agree with that. But the far more powerful thing to talk about are the Ikon effects. Now I don't think exemplar dedication is a huge issue beyond Victor's Wreath, but it's a similar conversation that's played out. Over-focus on a few points of damage (2 per damage dice is maybe more than a few, but still) versus very powerful effects.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Thief is by far the least interesting racket. I'm glad that it exists, and I know people will pick it because of the SAD focus, but it doesn't get a new way to gain off-guard like the other rackets. Mastermind and Scoundrel are just so flavorful and good at what they do. I haven't looked at avenger, but Thief is just lacking. I think where it does do well is against enemies immune to precision damage like oozes. The extra flat damage helps the Thief remain more DPR capable, where as the other rackets struggle. We don't talk about ET.
@@Mathfinder-aaa In fairness, Thief Rogue's damage does increase again at level 10, when they can get Precise Debilitations and increase their Sneak Attack by 2d6 damage (or trigger Off-Guard, which could be useful for them). So, in the endgame, a Thief with 7 Dex will probably be dealing 12 damage (on average) per hit more than a 2 Strength Scoundrel, which is non-negligible on a class that can fairly trivially get 3 MAPless attacks per round (Opportune Backstab + Preparation). That being said, Scoundrel's unique Debilitations are also pretty darn good. Turning off reactions is amazing against certain enemies! Not to mention, all that extra damage from Thief is worth nothing if you find it difficult to impose Off-Guard. Ultimately, which is better probably depends on a number of factors, including party composition, GM style etc.
Only partway through this, end of the aid your casters section. One major caveat. You should not aid a caster that is a fair way down the initiative list from you. Casters have a lot of versatility, and that means they are more likely to change their actions if unexpected developments come up. If reinforcements appear, the fighter is still swinging - but the caster might drop their Horizon Thunder Sphere plan and instead cast Wall of Stone, wasting your Aid.
"Sharing the Burden" is not just a nice way to free up your caster's actions, it also provides redundancies and thus extra safety. If your only tool against a flying enemy is one scroll of Earthbind and they crit succed the save, you're screwed. If you have a backup bola, you get another shot in the same round of combat instead of running away.
@@chrizzlybear5565 Absolutely! It’s also where supposedly “meta” compositions like 3 Trip + Reactive Strike + Double Slice + Bard fall apart. If *anything* goes wrong, this party composition is completely out of options. Boss wins initiative and throws a Wall to split your party? If the Bard doesn’t have exactly Dimensional Knot + Translocate, ya dead. The battlefield is large and spread out with 8+ foes who all have mobility (including a special speed perhaps) and range? Unless the Bard got to prebuff y’all with Fly, ya dead. Facing a weird foe like a cauthooj who can nullify your Strikes as a Reaction and even make them actively bad for you? If the enemy crit succeeds against the Bard’s Laughing Fit, ya dead. Sharing the burden and not playing in a stupidly linear fashion is how you win fights that AREN’T already stacked in your favour.
Same concept with healing: if you only rely on the cleric/other spellcaster for their heal spells and have no other options (or only the very inefficient "drop weapon, take a potion, stride, feed the potion"), you're screwed if the caster is down or if they're grabbed/deafened/stupefied/in reaction range etc. and struggle to cast their heal.
@Lucas-qp4ht even moreso, if you treat your cleric as "the dedicated healer" and take their healing for granted, you may accidentally adjust your play style to it. This can end up in a vicious cycle where you're taking avoidable damage, they have to heal you, and because they're spending their actions on healing you, enemies get more opportunities to deal damage, which then has to be healed again.
Fantastic video mathfinder! You've spent so much time and effort conveying the nuance in playing with and alongside casters and I think it really has helped the community a ton.
Thank you for this video. Like mind, I do have an Outwit Edge Ranger that went Marshal dedication in PFS, and for a while she’s been the character I’ve been very flip floppy on how I can effectively help out others. So this video has been very empowering on what to do, and even highlighted a thing I could do in the future, play a supportive Inventor, but that’ll be later. Your videos are great but this one I find essentially awesome.
One huge thing I think you missed is Delay. If you and another party member are on the initiative track with no enemies between you, you should ALWAYS be thinking about who is most effective going first. Between a martial and a caster, that is very often the caster who may be better able to position an AOE without you running in or may make you better able to focus your attacks because you will now know which enemy took the most damage from the AOE or may even be able to make YOU better by getting that buff spell going before you start swinging your sharpened stick around. Effective use of Delay could probably be its own video, and it is criminally underused at some of my tables. Similarly, telling the caster that if they delay until after you, then you will move out of the way of their AOE or do some other thing to help them can be huge.
You're so right! I've been wondering about why I don't use Trip/Grapple more often, and it's because I'm overemphasizing the attacks of the party martials. Thank you!
Really interesting video. I like that being able to support other characters gives a lot of depth to martials that isn't present in other tactical RPGs. Also, a bit unrelated, but I was wondering if you'd be able to do an overview of the different magic traditions, like you mentioned in the video that primal and arcane casters have more AoE. I think it's one of the most complex parts of spellcasting, having to go through the spell lists in detail to know what each tradition does.
@@jx1200 I am about to start a spell selection series (first video goes up tomorrow, members can already see it!). I may incorporate a video like this as part of that! Should be fairly low effort.
I love that you mention additional lore: I've been dreaming of a geeky rogue or investigator that's all about obscure creature trivia investing a lot of their numerous skill feat slots to accumulate lores on all the most common types of creatures / the most pertinent for the campaign, being awsome at recalling knowledge! Could be a (ranged) mastermind rogue for the recall knowledge off-guard benefit or an investigator for the free action recall knowledge while divising a stratagem, or even a rogue archatyping as an investigator to stack these.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, a great pairing for the AoE spellcaster in your life is a sparkling targe magus (I recommend unburdened iron + fortress shield) They are gonna be a main target for the enemy after their first explosive magus turn, and when they’re surrounded… just blast them with your most powerful AoE. They’re likely to save, as they have the best saves in the game against magic, and then they’ll simply shield block the remaining damage. I do recommend having a competent healer on standby though, just in case… 😂
My pick of the builds for doing this (and incidently my favourite build in the whole game right now) has to got to the literal cheerleader martial that is the the wit swashbuckler. With the all for one feat they can aid any ally within 30 ft on any D20 role using diplomacy (literal shouts of encouragement), they can also use bon mot to help spellcasters bully low will save foes. Not to mention they can do this while being the party face and resident skill monkey. This build was so good it was reliable premaster before aid got buffed and the whole class got an upgrade. To give some hard numbers: Assurance in diplomacy from level 9 onwards can guarantee a crit success on the aid check, +3 every single time. The human ancestry feat "Cooperaitve Nature" is needed to get the build viable from the get go unfortuantly which can limit build options.
Gotta say, really appreciate how much you prove your point by stacking as many things against your argument. Also, after playing a battle wizard whose spell lists are part control and damage, slot damage is great unto itself!
For those who are afraid of Recall Knowledge producing false information: Trip, Grab, or Bon Mot can also backfire, yet I haven't seen anyone be afraid to use them.
@@chrizzlybear5565 You’re right! I didn’t even think about that. The Secret trait just introduces blind spots into some players’ perceptions, and they start treating all information as false.
The difference is you know for sure what the result of a Trip, Grab, or Bon Mot is, and you can potentially Hero Point a crit failure to avoid the backfire. You also know for sure which skill you'll be using for it, and probably know what the likelihood is of getting that backfire in the first place. With Recall Knowledge, you have no way to distinguish a success from a critical failure except to test it out, and even then, did your spell fail because you got wrong information and Will is actually their highest save, or did it fail because they just get lucky and roll really high? And if you the player doesn't know what the creature is, you won't know what skill's required, so hopefully your GM will let you back out without wasting your action if you don't have proficiency in any relevant skills (and god help you if you've got a foundry module that handles RK knowledge checks automatically so that you don't even know what skill you rolled for it). RK knowledge is great if you've got a good idea of what the creature is and solid proficiency in a relevant skill, but in any other circumstance it's just such a crap shoot.
Last time I checked, crit failing a bon mot doesn't somehow increase the enemy's AC and saves by 3 or more points or grant them resistance to damage. And in case that flew over your head, I'm saying that a crit fail on bon mot isn't going to have your caster target the wrong save or use the wrong damage type like a crit fail RK will. Your argument is an utter false equivalence.
@@W1ndupf3rrari true, you can theoretically use Hero Points on saving yourself from your own Trip, but I don't think I'd ever take the risk of tripping someone in a situation where I can't afford to fall prone - they're simply too scarce a resource at ~ 2 HP / session. The likelihood of success is actually easier to gauge for Recall Knowledge than for Trip, since RK uses the level based DC which doesn't vary between creatures like the Ref DC that Trip targets. Of course, you'll need to know which skill you're using, which brings me to my last point: Imo players should always get to know which skill (or other modifier) they have to use to attempt a check (RK or not). I think this is crucial for player agency and consider it adversarial GMing to let players roll without knowing if they're even trained in the required skill. It's a shame that RAW doesn't specify how this is intended to be handled. In case your GM doesn't tell you what skill applies, then I admit RK is only as useful as their pokerface is bad when coming up with incorrect information.
Couple problems with this. Crit failing a Trip or Grab puts you in a bad spot, thus putting your team in a bad spot. You've essentially given the enemy a successful Trip or Grab action of their own for free. Pretty bad. But. You have to consider that if you're Tripping or Grabbing, you've probably maxed out the skills used for it. Something that's much harder to do with RK, since you after have to invest in quite a few Lores, Int, and Wis skills just to cover most enemies. It's easier if your GM's running a themed campaign, but if they're running variety? You're kinda screwed unless you're a Thaum or something. Bot Mot isn't worth much of a mention, I think. It's a -2 to your own will saves. Enemies are usually much less able to exploit this. And even still, you can just attempt the action again to get rid of the debuff. As for a crit failed RK, considering that the rules don't say you see the monsters' rolls, and how suspicious your casters are, you might have gotten info that made your casters dump top slots into a PL+2 that saves on a 2. And if it rolls just right, and if nobody Recall Knowledges again, then it's possible they run on bad information for half the fight. A crit failed Trip and Grab is pretty bad. I say this as a grappler main. But a crit failed RK is much, *much* worse
I think one issue with aiding is that it is a really good way of helping spell attacks, but unless you're a gunslinger or a swashbuckler and take the requisite feat, the aid rules are kind of wishy washy. You're expected to explain how you aid and ask your GM if it's a good enough justification(when the lack of having to have your GM adjudicate is part of the reason a lot of people like pf2e to begin with), the baseline DC becomes very easy as you go up in levels but your GM is allowed to adjust it but doesn't really give them advice on when or how, and in the end if you're master or legendary and crit it's a pretty huge swing so some GMs tend to be relatively frugal with allowing you to aid. By themselves these aren't so bad, but combined it leads to aiding feeling sort of awkward to use in combat as there's a lot of back and forth to use it.
@@agent23n A melee character can pretty much always justify Aiding an Attack roll with their own Attack roll. Iirc that used to explicitly be a rule in the old GMG, idk if the new Core books have it anywhere. As for setting the DC, I have seen GMs either use the static 15, the static 20, and “target DC minus 5” as their references. Even the hardest of these tends to be easy to crit on!
Additional lore in westmarch settings is good for int casters/heavy characters in order to shift stuff related to wisdom skills into int. You can recall knowledge on undead with wisdom religion, or you can use your higher int Lore:undead that autoscales in proficiency.
Thaumaturge hits hit. They got a lot of static damage boost and their 1d8 one handed weapon gets boosted from weapon specialization, implements empowerment, and possible personalized antithesis or mortal weakness gets the damage to barbarian levels. They got 2 issues though. 1 is it requires 1 action (exploit vulnerability) to really get it done and 2 is that it has lower accuracy since its not str or dex key attribute (those in class picks can mitigate and even make it as accurate as an unbuff fighter). A counter point though is it excells in recall knowledge using charisma and demoralizing. All that said, I total agree, get those grapples and trips in for everyone to benefit from off guard. Bon mot or demoralize for some debuffs to saves. :) and recall them knowledges. Excellent points on preserving casters actions
I'm playing a Fighter in one of my campaigns, and it is legitimately difficult to decide whether to stay in melee to do a Combat Grab or threaten a Reactive Strike so I can keep my allies safe, or move away so they (especially the Fire Kineticist) can more easily hit their AoE's. The solution seems to be that whenever I choose the former, I just get included in the AoE. In the end, I took Blind-Fight because of Solar Detonation 😂
While I agree that you should probably Aid most of your caster's attack rolls, there's a case to be made that if your aided attack is more likely to do nothinh than something, you should probably just cast a different spell.
That’s what I talked at the beginning of that section! Attacks are only one of many tools a caster has, you should weigh when to use them. If the enemy has off-guard and you have, perhaps, a status bonus and/or penalty floating around, you (and the martials, to be clear) may already be anywhere between +3 and +8 above the on-paper accuracy already. Make a spell attack roll and ask a friend for Aid. The math after was simply to showcase that even in the worst of situations, it’s very easy to justify aiding the caster.
I will agree that from an optimization perspective subclass and feats may not be a significant investment for some martials. *However*, it can have a significant impact on how well the character build exemplifies the (narrative/rp) character concept. I do not begrudge anyone for choosing concept over optimization. Oh, and yes, derring-do is pronounced -doo, not -doh.
@@Ghost.in.the.Machine well of course it can have a significant impact on the RP! You know what else can have a significant impact though? Telling an Elemental Sorcerer that they should signature Heal to help martials with, or telling a Warpriest Cleric that their plan to use Heroism on themselves + Harming Font is bad, they should use Healing Font + Heroism on their “better” martial allies, or telling a Bard that they “must” use Maestro for Lingering Composition instead of going the Skill monkey Bard route. I fail to understand why we as a community are so comfortable telling casters to pick specific options that clash with their flavour for the sake of optimization, but then don’t like it when martials are given the same treatment in an equally optimized environment.
@@johngleeman8347 Elemental Blast as in Elemental Toss, the Sorcerer cantrip? IMO Elemental Sorcerers using that + a 2-Action spell is some of the best ranged damage available in the game!
15:40 Well, if we take those numbers, 44.5 x 0.2 = 8.9 points of damage per average, and ading a spellcaster would be 52.5 x 0.15 = 7.875, one point less ;-) And you didn't take in consideration weapon specialisation bonuses, which are important. In the "barb with greatsword" scenario, critting would give off-guard status to the target. Which would help spellcaster as well!
I did account for weapon specialization. You can see the math at 8:04 in the red text below, I explicitly accounted for both weapon spec and the Rage increase it provides. As for the 8.9 vs 7.875 thing, I didn’t say that one is the martial favouring way to look at it, but it’s not the only way. If you look at it using the other numbers 40% vs 50% increase in damage, then it goes 17.8 average damage increase versus 26.25 average damage increase.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Sorry, I was imprecise - I mean weapon CRITICAL specialization effects - you mean, off-guard for swords, prone for flails, etc. Usually, spells either give damage or conditions. Weapons give both at the same time they crit.
@ Ah, gotcha. I disagree that spells only give one or the other though? Briny Bolt fits right into the math we’ve done if we want a bit more of a conversation about the virtual impact of conditions.
No one in the history of Pathfinder, has defeated an enemy using average damage. The fact is, if the strike hits, 52 is 13% more than 44. The spec helps, but the spells has riders as well (Persistent damage, Blindness, etc)
I think the part about avoiding caster AoEs was poorly worded. The probabilities of the different outcomes are independent for each target. If you manage to add one enemy into the AoE, you are only adding the effects of the spell to one target. For most spells it doesn't have any effect on the other targets. There's a higher chance that one of the targets will crit fail, but that's only because there's one more target that can crit fail. Ignoring DPR, the advantage of a crit fail is either that the enemy is now low and easy to burst down to weaken the opposing side's action economy or that the enemy is no longer a threat and priority can be shifted to the enemies that didn't crit fail. The same idea applies to strikes, though. If the martial decides to strike instead and crits, the enemy is now low and easy to burst down. To be clear, I agree that you should typically just move out of the AoE, but that's specifically because adding the effects of the spell on one more target is just that good. This is especially true when you consider the fact that the strike would probably have MAP and moving away from the enemy might make it waste actions getting to you. This is, of course, assuming I didn't miss anything.
@lamp_flower nope, that’s the thing, adding one enemy to the AoE ISN’T just like AoEing one single enemy and “adding” its effect. Let’s say you’re a level 7 caster (DC 25) and you AoE two level 6 foes with a +14 to Save. There’s a 69.75% chance that at least one of them will fail, and there’s a 9.75% chance that at least one will crit fail. If you add a third target, there’s now an 83.36% chance that one of them will fail, and a 14.26% chance that one will crit fail. Multinomial distributions are weird. A new target improves the AoE’s value a LOT. Also you’re thinking of damage only, but AoEs often have crit fail effects that can fully take an enemy out of combat.
@@Mathfinder-aaa The "crit fail effects that can fully take an enemy out of combat" are exactly what I was referring to when I mentioned reducing an enemy's threat level to a point where you can shift focus to a different enemy. Damage was just the easiest thing to compare to a strike. My point was that this is all just a natural consequence of rolling dice many times. If we assume that the probability of the martial critting is the same as the probability of the monster crit failing and also assume that the impact of a crit strike and a crit fail save are the same, "strike + 2 enemies in AoE" has the same probability of giving the "good outcome" as "3 enemies in AoE". It doesn't matter how the enemies are subjected to harmful effects. Only the probabilities of the outcomes and the potential impact of said outcomes matter. Ignoring action and slot cost, having 3 enemies in the AoE is the same as having 2 in it and having another character cast the same spell again with only the remaining third enemy in the AoE. There's no change in the probabilities. Only the amount of dice rolled matters, so this works the same way with single-target effects, as long as the total amount of targets does not change. Then, back to why I still agree that it's usually better to just get out of the AoE. Those earlier assumptions about the probability of critting with a strike and the relative impacts of a crit strike and a crit fail save are not likely to be true. If we assume a high AC of 24 for the lvl 6 enemy and a +16 to hit for the martial, the chance of a crit is higher than that of a crit failed save. But if you start your turn next to the enemy, you can get in a MAPless strike even if you move, so it doesn't matter. If you're striking at MAP, the spell is going to be more reliable. The exact numbers are also dependent on other factors, of course. Also, like you said, some crit fail effects are extremely powerful. If the caster spends a high-rank slot, the effects are going to be big. Stepping away to avoid an AoE is generally better than striking one more time. That's not because adding an enemy to an AoE is inherently better than subjecting that enemy to a harmful effect in some other way. It's just because spells are spells and have a power budget that's balanced by the spell slot cost.
This is wizard propaganda. As a fighter I have the lowest accuracy AND the highest accuracy because I’m wasting I mean spending my third action on a -10 attack roll. I also have the highest damage because as a spellcaster you should be cheerleading me, not doing damage. Checkmate.
I'm pretty sure Aberration Lore is too broad a category by the given standards for Lore. It's possible some specific background or other source might grant it, but those are exceptions. Something like Fleshwarp Lore would be about the appropriate breadth for a Lore, which is somewhat useful in AV but not enough to overshadow Occult.
Definitely not. Undead Lore is a pretty commonly given out Lore. That covers like a quarter of the enemies in this game. Aberration Lore is definitely fine
I'll probably make a more detailed comment about my feelings on this later, but god I am sick to fucking *death* of Demoralize. It really feels like 99% of support options are just fucking Demoralize and the last 1% is split between Bon Mot and Dirty Trick.
Funnily enough, I'd argue you didn't look at DPR when it comes to Aid, you used DPR to illustrate the actual point which I'd describe as relative precent value increase :D DPR still stinks, nice try though! /j
You mention using Aid to buff a caster being equally easy .... how? Most martials don't have the arcane / occult / religion skill, so what are the rolling to do so, and with what justification? And yes, this also means casters aiding martials is hard; hence you have martials aiding martials.
@@sebwiers1 Why do you think you need Arcane / Occult / Religion to Aid a Spell Attack roll? The only guidance on aiding attacks (with no specification on whether they’re weapon or spell) is the following (page 27 of GM Core): “Similarly, a character usually needs to be next to their ally or a foe to Aid the ally in attacking the foe.” Almost any GM will let you Aid an Attack roll with your own Attack roll.
@@Mathfinder-aaa I thought that because I'm a new player and not always putting all the rules together. That's partly why I watch your videos! It didn't click that spell attacks were attacks that could be aided like any other, so I just assumed you needed to use the same / related skill like you would for other aid. I think I'm the only one who has even tried aid in my games. At early levels that's probably OK that people are not using it but I can see how once we pick up expert / master proficiency, it would be a big deal. I actually talked the GM into letting me use Athletics to aid an attack, as long as I am in position to and equipped to do so.
@ ah I getcha! I realize now that my tone was quite confrontational but I was genuinely asking what made you think that! I figured maybe you read a rule that I missed and/or one of us was misinterpreting something. If Aid is rarely used at your table and you’re a new player, the confusion is entirely understandable. Make sure to talk to your GM about these things, and keep focusing on teamwork!
@@Mathfinder-aaa No problem. We were both asking genuine questions and the tone looks rough because who does that on the internet, let alone on youtube??
All these actions (even the ones that are built into the martials) that you have suggested are really applicable to any team mate, not just only the casters. Yes, IF the casters in the party are using their highest spell slots, the effectiveness outstrip what the martials are able to do. But the point really about why (perhaps as you put it, is cultural, but I do not think so) it is better for casters to use those slots buff is once you do it, the martial can do use your buff and be at a higher effectiveness level likely all encounter long. Instead of comparing a single barbarian strike to a multi-action spell, it would be more appropriate to compare the multi-turn (and thus multi-action) impact of a similarly leveled buff spell on that aided barbarian to the aided blast spell.
@@ckpoon5871 I addressed the “not just casters” thing multiple times throughout the video. 1. Not all these Actions are universally equally good. Aid, Recall Knowledge, and Efficiency-boosting are uniquely better on casters than they are on martials. 2. I fail to see why it’s a problem for things like Demoralize to be good for martials and casters both. Yes, sometimes when you help a caster you’ll always help the martials… so what? The jump from that to “it is better for casters to use those slots to buff” is even less sensible. There’s nothing going into that except… a vocal minority of the community that keeps saying it is true without providing anything resembling evidence. I have provided *loads* of math and play experience showing both that casters are effective and powerful in non-buff roles *and* easy to help in these roles. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
@@Mathfinder-aaa 1) Aid, Recall Knowledge, etc are as useful to martials as casters, whether such actions are better for casters than martials are a matter of circumstance and is up for debate. 2) So you are simply helping your party, whether or not the party members are martials or casters is irrelevant. It doesn't mean that it is better for the party that the martials cheerlead for the casters. It has been my play experience that when the party caster/s use their slots to buff/debuff, we get through encounters faster and use up less resources than if the caster/s do otherwise. Perhaps those other people claiming that it is true is simply stating an observation. What you have provided are certain scenarios and examples where it is better for the party to lend their actions to allow the caster to succeed in their use of a limited resource instead of a martial using a renewable resource. I think what we should be asking is "How us the party as a whole better served by the expenditure of a spell slot and a certain number of actions?" And comparing like for like.
@@ckpoon5871 Pretending casters being better boosted by Aid, Recall Knowledge, and Action boosts doesn’t count because… reasons, I guess… isn’t helping your case at all. These are uniquely better for casters, just like how things like Heroism, Clumsy, Heal, etc tend to be better at supporting martials (with Heal being better for frontliners specifically). “it doesn’t meant that it is better for the party that the martials cheerleader for the casters.” It means everyone should cheerlead for everyone. Martials for casters, casters for martials. This shouldn’t be an uncontroversial statement.
"It means everyone should cheerlead for everyone. Martials for casters, casters for martials. This shouldn’t be an uncontroversial statement." So everyone should cheerlead for everyone shouldn't be an uncontroversial statement? Do you think everyone cheerleading everyone should be controversial? Why? If you do think that everyone should act like a team and help each other, then casters ARE your cheerleaders (which goes against the very title of not 1 but 2 of your videos), with the caveat that they are not ONLY just your cheerleaders. (Your last statement caught my immediate attention, so I skipped over the first part of your reply and replied to that first) Casters being boosted by martials ARE better than casters not being boosted, but they are NOT necessarily better than martials being boosted by casters.
@ I meant to say it shouldn’t be controversial. Also regarding your last paragraph, you have provided literally nothing to substantiate your claim. Casters with support perform just as well as martials with support do, just in different ways.
Just a few notes, the giant barbarian with power attack will be a more similar comparison. But at that point you do need add in class bonus as well. But with sorcerer potency, it's basically the same damage. With higher accuracy for the barbarian. But as you said, most martials are not doing that level of damage. Damage maximize in one hit being better to boost...I literally was saying you should be doing this with magus and channel smite warpriests with organsight and you literally threatened to ban me over saying that is optimal. Recall knowledge for almost every martial I have seen is just a bad idea with very low int and wis. Barring thaumitergists of course. Magus can make good rolls... If they have the actions to...which is never. Rogues and investigators are not martials, they are skill monkeys.
I "threatened" to hide your comments because you kept trying to start beef with other creators in my comments section, not because of your views on what's optimal. As for Rogues and Investigators apparently not being martials you can... continue to believe that, but you will find that pretty much 99% of the community will find that a laughably pedantic distinction.
Wait why do rogues and investigators not count?! Just because they are more skill-forward does not diminish the fact that they do damage with weapons *primarily*, thus are good enough to be martials. Also, dumping wisdom is a bad idea for any character, because you do not want a bad will save, nor do you want bad perception.
@oiman5733 magus primarily does damage with spells...are they a spellcaster? If you don't want to have a third skill monkey category, fine, they are martials.
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> If your accuracy is lower, you benefit more from an accuracy boost.
This is not exactly true. It's unintuitive, but it depends on what you're trying to do. The statement is true in that if you have 10 damage and you're paying 100 gp to pick between +5% accuracy or +2 damage, you'll pick +5% accuracy the lower your current accuracy and the higher your damage is. But there comes a point where you'd rather pick +2 damage at higher accuracies.
However, if you are trying to aid one of two allies, the first has 70:20 hit:crit rate and the second has 60:10 hit:crit rate, and both deal 10 damage. Adding a +2 to the first increases hit chance to 80/30 hit crit for a total of +2 damage on average and aiding the second increases hit chance to 70:20 hit:crit for a total of +2 damage. So all other things being equal aiding either is the same. You would rather aid the one with more significant damage or a desirable hit/crit effect (e.g. intimidating strike/crit spec). In the case of Barb vs HTS, since HTS deals more damage you are correct in aiding the HTS. But it isn't because it is less accurate. It's because it deals more damage.
I will concede that when picking between a 70:20 hit:crit character and 20:5 hit:crit character to aid, it is psychologically more fun to give the unlikely to hit character some spotlight, even if it is numerically inefficient.
purely damage perspective this analysis may turn out to be true however there are also many spell caster attacks that do a lot of debilitating moves that are usually picked less often because party is averse to using these type of tactics.
27:00
You fool, I am an excellent liar
"Its lowest save is either Will or Reflex"
The fail eliminated fortitude as a possible lowest save, but you mentioned it tends to be pretty obvious what the best save is
Idk chief, that slugish zombie hulk seems pretty quick on it's feet, gotta be reflex as highest right?
Great Video!
"Spread the burden" especially applies to Recall Knowledge in combat, which uses 5 different skills depending on the type of opponent. Few characters are trained in all those skills.
The point you did not mention is to pay attentions to turn ordering. If a character is standing in touch range of a caster with a touch range buff spell, do not move away from the caster. It is probably better to Delay and wait for the buff. This applies especially in the first round of combat.
It had never occurred to me that you can make a non-spell attack roll to aid a spell attack. That's mind-blowing and might be my biggest takeaway from this
15:37 In the Aid section, if we are only talking about damage, the Aid is actually better on the Barbarian than on the Caster (I'm only talking pure damage wise). Comparing the expected value: 20% * 44.5 (8.9) vs 15% * 52.5 (7.9). Now, I still wholeheartedly agree with the conclusion of aiding Spellcasters because most of the times we are not comparing Giant Barbarian to Caster just before an accuracy increase.
That said, I feel like people usually only Aid the damage effects which are most of the time not the most important one. Aiding actions that do more than just damage is really good. Combat Grab, Briny Bolt or Slam Down are attacks that have really good bonus effects and should be Aided.
I'm also surprised there was no mention of the Gunslinger, my favorite Aid dispenser. Fake Out is a really insane value feat and Gunslingers give the best Aid bonus possible! It's also really action effective.
Still, really great video! Thanks for giving these to the community.
I'm playing a Scoundrel Rogue right now in a 1-20 campaign (We just hit level 8). Even taking Dex as a key attribute, it's an absolutely nasty debuffer. I think it honestly got one of the biggest stealth buffs in the remaster too. Not only are you feints uniquely potent for you, in that they last until the end of your NEXT turn. But on top of all that, a feint also now gives you a free step. So now, this one key tool not only sets up your damage, not only debuffs the enemy for any future feints or reflex saves, but is also an amazing repositioning tool when you otherwise might step.
It's one of the most slept on subclasses in the system in my view (imo tossup for the best alongside ruffian).
Pair that with a reach weapon for even more reach and efficacy. They make an incredibly nasty martial debuffer/striker. Really looking forward to the later levels and see how this progresses too, especially with a fire kineticist in the party.
I didn’t even know they buffed Scoundrel with the free Step!
Scoundrel may honestly be the strongest of the Rogue subclasses, and it makes me sad that Thief gets overrated over it because of 2-4 points of additional damage. That damage is gonna feel MINUSCULE after level 2!
@@Mathfinder-aaa Oh yeah, it's an incredible buff. The amount of value you get out of a feint is absurd.
The conception of thief as the best, I think is overblown. But I will say that in the levels I've played that extra damage WOULD have been very nice (1d6+1d6 sneak attacks have a lot of variance on how good they feel..) I think that will only really diminish over the levels though, as you said. The thief benefit diminishes as you level, where I think the other rackets benefits only get better as you improve in skills.
It's a thought process that I think Swingripper first made me reconsider with some of his vids: More damage is not always the most important thing in this system. Now Thief does get some other nice things. Thievery focus allows them to make good use of sly disarm. They also get some really good debilitations at 10 (though this is true of every single rogue subclass, yes scoundrel included.. that's a whole other conversation).
But it's similar to what I've noticed around talk with the exemplar dedication. Is the damage boost scaling a bit much? Sure, I can agree with that. But the far more powerful thing to talk about are the Ikon effects. Now I don't think exemplar dedication is a huge issue beyond Victor's Wreath, but it's a similar conversation that's played out. Over-focus on a few points of damage (2 per damage dice is maybe more than a few, but still) versus very powerful effects.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Thief is by far the least interesting racket. I'm glad that it exists, and I know people will pick it because of the SAD focus, but it doesn't get a new way to gain off-guard like the other rackets. Mastermind and Scoundrel are just so flavorful and good at what they do. I haven't looked at avenger, but Thief is just lacking. I think where it does do well is against enemies immune to precision damage like oozes. The extra flat damage helps the Thief remain more DPR capable, where as the other rackets struggle.
We don't talk about ET.
@@Mathfinder-aaa In fairness, Thief Rogue's damage does increase again at level 10, when they can get Precise Debilitations and increase their Sneak Attack by 2d6 damage (or trigger Off-Guard, which could be useful for them).
So, in the endgame, a Thief with 7 Dex will probably be dealing 12 damage (on average) per hit more than a 2 Strength Scoundrel, which is non-negligible on a class that can fairly trivially get 3 MAPless attacks per round (Opportune Backstab + Preparation).
That being said, Scoundrel's unique Debilitations are also pretty darn good. Turning off reactions is amazing against certain enemies! Not to mention, all that extra damage from Thief is worth nothing if you find it difficult to impose Off-Guard.
Ultimately, which is better probably depends on a number of factors, including party composition, GM style etc.
24:31 Damn, a -720 untyped penalty to saves is insane :^)
@@tyrusdalet You did it, you found the math.
Only partway through this, end of the aid your casters section.
One major caveat. You should not aid a caster that is a fair way down the initiative list from you.
Casters have a lot of versatility, and that means they are more likely to change their actions if unexpected developments come up. If reinforcements appear, the fighter is still swinging - but the caster might drop their Horizon Thunder Sphere plan and instead cast Wall of Stone, wasting your Aid.
@@sirgog very good point! Initiative ordering matters a **lot** for spellcasters.
Always communicate tactics with your party.
"Sharing the Burden" is not just a nice way to free up your caster's actions, it also provides redundancies and thus extra safety. If your only tool against a flying enemy is one scroll of Earthbind and they crit succed the save, you're screwed. If you have a backup bola, you get another shot in the same round of combat instead of running away.
@@chrizzlybear5565 Absolutely! It’s also where supposedly “meta” compositions like 3 Trip + Reactive Strike + Double Slice + Bard fall apart. If *anything* goes wrong, this party composition is completely out of options.
Boss wins initiative and throws a Wall to split your party? If the Bard doesn’t have exactly Dimensional Knot + Translocate, ya dead.
The battlefield is large and spread out with 8+ foes who all have mobility (including a special speed perhaps) and range? Unless the Bard got to prebuff y’all with Fly, ya dead.
Facing a weird foe like a cauthooj who can nullify your Strikes as a Reaction and even make them actively bad for you? If the enemy crit succeeds against the Bard’s Laughing Fit, ya dead.
Sharing the burden and not playing in a stupidly linear fashion is how you win fights that AREN’T already stacked in your favour.
Same concept with healing: if you only rely on the cleric/other spellcaster for their heal spells and have no other options (or only the very inefficient "drop weapon, take a potion, stride, feed the potion"), you're screwed if the caster is down or if they're grabbed/deafened/stupefied/in reaction range etc. and struggle to cast their heal.
@Lucas-qp4ht even moreso, if you treat your cleric as "the dedicated healer" and take their healing for granted, you may accidentally adjust your play style to it. This can end up in a vicious cycle where you're taking avoidable damage, they have to heal you, and because they're spending their actions on healing you, enemies get more opportunities to deal damage, which then has to be healed again.
Fantastic video mathfinder!
You've spent so much time and effort conveying the nuance in playing with and alongside casters and I think it really has helped the community a ton.
Substantively and ludologically as always, pleasure to listen to.
Liking now, watching later!
Thank you for this video. Like mind, I do have an Outwit Edge Ranger that went Marshal dedication in PFS, and for a while she’s been the character I’ve been very flip floppy on how I can effectively help out others. So this video has been very empowering on what to do, and even highlighted a thing I could do in the future, play a supportive Inventor, but that’ll be later. Your videos are great but this one I find essentially awesome.
One huge thing I think you missed is Delay. If you and another party member are on the initiative track with no enemies between you, you should ALWAYS be thinking about who is most effective going first. Between a martial and a caster, that is very often the caster who may be better able to position an AOE without you running in or may make you better able to focus your attacks because you will now know which enemy took the most damage from the AOE or may even be able to make YOU better by getting that buff spell going before you start swinging your sharpened stick around. Effective use of Delay could probably be its own video, and it is criminally underused at some of my tables. Similarly, telling the caster that if they delay until after you, then you will move out of the way of their AOE or do some other thing to help them can be huge.
You're so right! I've been wondering about why I don't use Trip/Grapple more often, and it's because I'm overemphasizing the attacks of the party martials. Thank you!
Really interesting video. I like that being able to support other characters gives a lot of depth to martials that isn't present in other tactical RPGs.
Also, a bit unrelated, but I was wondering if you'd be able to do an overview of the different magic traditions, like you mentioned in the video that primal and arcane casters have more AoE. I think it's one of the most complex parts of spellcasting, having to go through the spell lists in detail to know what each tradition does.
@@jx1200 I am about to start a spell selection series (first video goes up tomorrow, members can already see it!). I may incorporate a video like this as part of that! Should be fairly low effort.
I love that you mention additional lore: I've been dreaming of a geeky rogue or investigator that's all about obscure creature trivia investing a lot of their numerous skill feat slots to accumulate lores on all the most common types of creatures / the most pertinent for the campaign, being awsome at recalling knowledge!
Could be a (ranged) mastermind rogue for the recall knowledge off-guard benefit or an investigator for the free action recall knowledge while divising a stratagem, or even a rogue archatyping as an investigator to stack these.
I'm currently playing in a party that has a mastermind rogue who picks up additional lore for all of their skill feats. It's scarily effective.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, a great pairing for the AoE spellcaster in your life is a sparkling targe magus (I recommend unburdened iron + fortress shield)
They are gonna be a main target for the enemy after their first explosive magus turn, and when they’re surrounded… just blast them with your most powerful AoE. They’re likely to save, as they have the best saves in the game against magic, and then they’ll simply shield block the remaining damage.
I do recommend having a competent healer on standby though, just in case… 😂
My pick of the builds for doing this (and incidently my favourite build in the whole game right now) has to got to the literal cheerleader martial that is the the wit swashbuckler. With the all for one feat they can aid any ally within 30 ft on any D20 role using diplomacy (literal shouts of encouragement), they can also use bon mot to help spellcasters bully low will save foes. Not to mention they can do this while being the party face and resident skill monkey. This build was so good it was reliable premaster before aid got buffed and the whole class got an upgrade. To give some hard numbers: Assurance in diplomacy from level 9 onwards can guarantee a crit success on the aid check, +3 every single time. The human ancestry feat "Cooperaitve Nature" is needed to get the build viable from the get go unfortuantly which can limit build options.
Gotta say, really appreciate how much you prove your point by stacking as many things against your argument.
Also, after playing a battle wizard whose spell lists are part control and damage, slot damage is great unto itself!
I've learned a lot and rediscovered a lot about presentation and constructing arguments and discussions by watching your videos!
Great video, thanks!
Positioning makes or breaks a team. Knowing when to move, where to move, how to move is great litmus test for a player.
For those who are afraid of Recall Knowledge producing false information: Trip, Grab, or Bon Mot can also backfire, yet I haven't seen anyone be afraid to use them.
@@chrizzlybear5565 You’re right! I didn’t even think about that. The Secret trait just introduces blind spots into some players’ perceptions, and they start treating all information as false.
The difference is you know for sure what the result of a Trip, Grab, or Bon Mot is, and you can potentially Hero Point a crit failure to avoid the backfire. You also know for sure which skill you'll be using for it, and probably know what the likelihood is of getting that backfire in the first place. With Recall Knowledge, you have no way to distinguish a success from a critical failure except to test it out, and even then, did your spell fail because you got wrong information and Will is actually their highest save, or did it fail because they just get lucky and roll really high? And if you the player doesn't know what the creature is, you won't know what skill's required, so hopefully your GM will let you back out without wasting your action if you don't have proficiency in any relevant skills (and god help you if you've got a foundry module that handles RK knowledge checks automatically so that you don't even know what skill you rolled for it). RK knowledge is great if you've got a good idea of what the creature is and solid proficiency in a relevant skill, but in any other circumstance it's just such a crap shoot.
Last time I checked, crit failing a bon mot doesn't somehow increase the enemy's AC and saves by 3 or more points or grant them resistance to damage.
And in case that flew over your head, I'm saying that a crit fail on bon mot isn't going to have your caster target the wrong save or use the wrong damage type like a crit fail RK will. Your argument is an utter false equivalence.
@@W1ndupf3rrari true, you can theoretically use Hero Points on saving yourself from your own Trip, but I don't think I'd ever take the risk of tripping someone in a situation where I can't afford to fall prone - they're simply too scarce a resource at ~ 2 HP / session.
The likelihood of success is actually easier to gauge for Recall Knowledge than for Trip, since RK uses the level based DC which doesn't vary between creatures like the Ref DC that Trip targets. Of course, you'll need to know which skill you're using, which brings me to my last point:
Imo players should always get to know which skill (or other modifier) they have to use to attempt a check (RK or not). I think this is crucial for player agency and consider it adversarial GMing to let players roll without knowing if they're even trained in the required skill. It's a shame that RAW doesn't specify how this is intended to be handled. In case your GM doesn't tell you what skill applies, then I admit RK is only as useful as their pokerface is bad when coming up with incorrect information.
Couple problems with this. Crit failing a Trip or Grab puts you in a bad spot, thus putting your team in a bad spot. You've essentially given the enemy a successful Trip or Grab action of their own for free. Pretty bad.
But. You have to consider that if you're Tripping or Grabbing, you've probably maxed out the skills used for it. Something that's much harder to do with RK, since you after have to invest in quite a few Lores, Int, and Wis skills just to cover most enemies. It's easier if your GM's running a themed campaign, but if they're running variety? You're kinda screwed unless you're a Thaum or something.
Bot Mot isn't worth much of a mention, I think. It's a -2 to your own will saves. Enemies are usually much less able to exploit this. And even still, you can just attempt the action again to get rid of the debuff.
As for a crit failed RK, considering that the rules don't say you see the monsters' rolls, and how suspicious your casters are, you might have gotten info that made your casters dump top slots into a PL+2 that saves on a 2. And if it rolls just right, and if nobody Recall Knowledges again, then it's possible they run on bad information for half the fight.
A crit failed Trip and Grab is pretty bad. I say this as a grappler main. But a crit failed RK is much, *much* worse
I think one issue with aiding is that it is a really good way of helping spell attacks, but unless you're a gunslinger or a swashbuckler and take the requisite feat, the aid rules are kind of wishy washy. You're expected to explain how you aid and ask your GM if it's a good enough justification(when the lack of having to have your GM adjudicate is part of the reason a lot of people like pf2e to begin with), the baseline DC becomes very easy as you go up in levels but your GM is allowed to adjust it but doesn't really give them advice on when or how, and in the end if you're master or legendary and crit it's a pretty huge swing so some GMs tend to be relatively frugal with allowing you to aid. By themselves these aren't so bad, but combined it leads to aiding feeling sort of awkward to use in combat as there's a lot of back and forth to use it.
@@agent23n A melee character can pretty much always justify Aiding an Attack roll with their own Attack roll. Iirc that used to explicitly be a rule in the old GMG, idk if the new Core books have it anywhere.
As for setting the DC, I have seen GMs either use the static 15, the static 20, and “target DC minus 5” as their references. Even the hardest of these tends to be easy to crit on!
Additional lore in westmarch settings is good for int casters/heavy characters in order to shift stuff related to wisdom skills into int.
You can recall knowledge on undead with wisdom religion, or you can use your higher int Lore:undead that autoscales in proficiency.
Thaumaturge hits hit. They got a lot of static damage boost and their 1d8 one handed weapon gets boosted from weapon specialization, implements empowerment, and possible personalized antithesis or mortal weakness gets the damage to barbarian levels. They got 2 issues though. 1 is it requires 1 action (exploit vulnerability) to really get it done and 2 is that it has lower accuracy since its not str or dex key attribute (those in class picks can mitigate and even make it as accurate as an unbuff fighter). A counter point though is it excells in recall knowledge using charisma and demoralizing. All that said, I total agree, get those grapples and trips in for everyone to benefit from off guard. Bon mot or demoralize for some debuffs to saves. :) and recall them knowledges.
Excellent points on preserving casters actions
I'm playing a Fighter in one of my campaigns, and it is legitimately difficult to decide whether to stay in melee to do a Combat Grab or threaten a Reactive Strike so I can keep my allies safe, or move away so they (especially the Fire Kineticist) can more easily hit their AoE's. The solution seems to be that whenever I choose the former, I just get included in the AoE. In the end, I took Blind-Fight because of Solar Detonation 😂
Recall knowledge also great for combat maneuver focused martials.
While I agree that you should probably Aid most of your caster's attack rolls, there's a case to be made that if your aided attack is more likely to do nothinh than something, you should probably just cast a different spell.
That’s what I talked at the beginning of that section! Attacks are only one of many tools a caster has, you should weigh when to use them. If the enemy has off-guard and you have, perhaps, a status bonus and/or penalty floating around, you (and the martials, to be clear) may already be anywhere between +3 and +8 above the on-paper accuracy already. Make a spell attack roll and ask a friend for Aid.
The math after was simply to showcase that even in the worst of situations, it’s very easy to justify aiding the caster.
I will agree that from an optimization perspective subclass and feats may not be a significant investment for some martials.
*However*, it can have a significant impact on how well the character build exemplifies the (narrative/rp) character concept. I do not begrudge anyone for choosing concept over optimization.
Oh, and yes, derring-do is pronounced -doo, not -doh.
@@Ghost.in.the.Machine well of course it can have a significant impact on the RP!
You know what else can have a significant impact though? Telling an Elemental Sorcerer that they should signature Heal to help martials with, or telling a Warpriest Cleric that their plan to use Heroism on themselves + Harming Font is bad, they should use Healing Font + Heroism on their “better” martial allies, or telling a Bard that they “must” use Maestro for Lingering Composition instead of going the Skill monkey Bard route.
I fail to understand why we as a community are so comfortable telling casters to pick specific options that clash with their flavour for the sake of optimization, but then don’t like it when martials are given the same treatment in an equally optimized environment.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Ah yes. That is all *also* bad.
I do the aiding in my party, because Elemental Blast's damage is trash! XD
@@johngleeman8347 Elemental Blast as in Elemental Toss, the Sorcerer cantrip? IMO Elemental Sorcerers using that + a 2-Action spell is some of the best ranged damage available in the game!
Yooo 1h long video, this gonna be good!
I love all Mathfinder videos!
15:40 Well, if we take those numbers, 44.5 x 0.2 = 8.9 points of damage per average, and ading a spellcaster would be 52.5 x 0.15 = 7.875, one point less ;-) And you didn't take in consideration weapon specialisation bonuses, which are important. In the "barb with greatsword" scenario, critting would give off-guard status to the target. Which would help spellcaster as well!
I did account for weapon specialization. You can see the math at 8:04 in the red text below, I explicitly accounted for both weapon spec and the Rage increase it provides.
As for the 8.9 vs 7.875 thing, I didn’t say that one is the martial favouring way to look at it, but it’s not the only way. If you look at it using the other numbers 40% vs 50% increase in damage, then it goes 17.8 average damage increase versus 26.25 average damage increase.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Sorry, I was imprecise - I mean weapon CRITICAL specialization effects - you mean, off-guard for swords, prone for flails, etc. Usually, spells either give damage or conditions. Weapons give both at the same time they crit.
@ Ah, gotcha.
I disagree that spells only give one or the other though? Briny Bolt fits right into the math we’ve done if we want a bit more of a conversation about the virtual impact of conditions.
No one in the history of Pathfinder, has defeated an enemy using average damage. The fact is, if the strike hits, 52 is 13% more than 44. The spec helps, but the spells has riders as well (Persistent damage, Blindness, etc)
I think the part about avoiding caster AoEs was poorly worded. The probabilities of the different outcomes are independent for each target. If you manage to add one enemy into the AoE, you are only adding the effects of the spell to one target. For most spells it doesn't have any effect on the other targets. There's a higher chance that one of the targets will crit fail, but that's only because there's one more target that can crit fail. Ignoring DPR, the advantage of a crit fail is either that the enemy is now low and easy to burst down to weaken the opposing side's action economy or that the enemy is no longer a threat and priority can be shifted to the enemies that didn't crit fail. The same idea applies to strikes, though. If the martial decides to strike instead and crits, the enemy is now low and easy to burst down.
To be clear, I agree that you should typically just move out of the AoE, but that's specifically because adding the effects of the spell on one more target is just that good. This is especially true when you consider the fact that the strike would probably have MAP and moving away from the enemy might make it waste actions getting to you.
This is, of course, assuming I didn't miss anything.
@lamp_flower nope, that’s the thing, adding one enemy to the AoE ISN’T just like AoEing one single enemy and “adding” its effect.
Let’s say you’re a level 7 caster (DC 25) and you AoE two level 6 foes with a +14 to Save. There’s a 69.75% chance that at least one of them will fail, and there’s a 9.75% chance that at least one will crit fail.
If you add a third target, there’s now an 83.36% chance that one of them will fail, and a 14.26% chance that one will crit fail.
Multinomial distributions are weird. A new target improves the AoE’s value a LOT.
Also you’re thinking of damage only, but AoEs often have crit fail effects that can fully take an enemy out of combat.
@@Mathfinder-aaa The "crit fail effects that can fully take an enemy out of combat" are exactly what I was referring to when I mentioned reducing an enemy's threat level to a point where you can shift focus to a different enemy. Damage was just the easiest thing to compare to a strike.
My point was that this is all just a natural consequence of rolling dice many times. If we assume that the probability of the martial critting is the same as the probability of the monster crit failing and also assume that the impact of a crit strike and a crit fail save are the same, "strike + 2 enemies in AoE" has the same probability of giving the "good outcome" as "3 enemies in AoE". It doesn't matter how the enemies are subjected to harmful effects. Only the probabilities of the outcomes and the potential impact of said outcomes matter. Ignoring action and slot cost, having 3 enemies in the AoE is the same as having 2 in it and having another character cast the same spell again with only the remaining third enemy in the AoE. There's no change in the probabilities. Only the amount of dice rolled matters, so this works the same way with single-target effects, as long as the total amount of targets does not change.
Then, back to why I still agree that it's usually better to just get out of the AoE. Those earlier assumptions about the probability of critting with a strike and the relative impacts of a crit strike and a crit fail save are not likely to be true. If we assume a high AC of 24 for the lvl 6 enemy and a +16 to hit for the martial, the chance of a crit is higher than that of a crit failed save. But if you start your turn next to the enemy, you can get in a MAPless strike even if you move, so it doesn't matter. If you're striking at MAP, the spell is going to be more reliable. The exact numbers are also dependent on other factors, of course. Also, like you said, some crit fail effects are extremely powerful. If the caster spends a high-rank slot, the effects are going to be big.
Stepping away to avoid an AoE is generally better than striking one more time. That's not because adding an enemy to an AoE is inherently better than subjecting that enemy to a harmful effect in some other way. It's just because spells are spells and have a power budget that's balanced by the spell slot cost.
This is wizard propaganda. As a fighter I have the lowest accuracy AND the highest accuracy because I’m wasting I mean spending my third action on a -10 attack roll. I also have the highest damage because as a spellcaster you should be cheerleading me, not doing damage. Checkmate.
I'm pretty sure Aberration Lore is too broad a category by the given standards for Lore. It's possible some specific background or other source might grant it, but those are exceptions. Something like Fleshwarp Lore would be about the appropriate breadth for a Lore, which is somewhat useful in AV but not enough to overshadow Occult.
Definitely not. Undead Lore is a pretty commonly given out Lore. That covers like a quarter of the enemies in this game. Aberration Lore is definitely fine
It's Derring-"due"
Aid is very good. (But as a caster, i need to ask my martials to do this.)
I'll probably make a more detailed comment about my feelings on this later, but god I am sick to fucking *death* of Demoralize. It really feels like 99% of support options are just fucking Demoralize and the last 1% is split between Bon Mot and Dirty Trick.
I keep allies out of my AoE by telling them that I'm maximizing DPS and them being there does the opposite of going against that goal.
Funnily enough, I'd argue you didn't look at DPR when it comes to Aid, you used DPR to illustrate the actual point which I'd describe as relative precent value increase :D
DPR still stinks, nice try though! /j
You mention using Aid to buff a caster being equally easy .... how? Most martials don't have the arcane / occult / religion skill, so what are the rolling to do so, and with what justification? And yes, this also means casters aiding martials is hard; hence you have martials aiding martials.
@@sebwiers1 Why do you think you need Arcane / Occult / Religion to Aid a Spell Attack roll?
The only guidance on aiding attacks (with no specification on whether they’re weapon or spell) is the following (page 27 of GM Core): “Similarly, a character usually needs to be next to their ally or a foe to Aid the ally in attacking the foe.”
Almost any GM will let you Aid an Attack roll with your own Attack roll.
@@Mathfinder-aaa I thought that because I'm a new player and not always putting all the rules together. That's partly why I watch your videos!
It didn't click that spell attacks were attacks that could be aided like any other, so I just assumed you needed to use the same / related skill like you would for other aid.
I think I'm the only one who has even tried aid in my games. At early levels that's probably OK that people are not using it but I can see how once we pick up expert / master proficiency, it would be a big deal. I actually talked the GM into letting me use Athletics to aid an attack, as long as I am in position to and equipped to do so.
@ ah I getcha!
I realize now that my tone was quite confrontational but I was genuinely asking what made you think that! I figured maybe you read a rule that I missed and/or one of us was misinterpreting something.
If Aid is rarely used at your table and you’re a new player, the confusion is entirely understandable. Make sure to talk to your GM about these things, and keep focusing on teamwork!
@@Mathfinder-aaa No problem. We were both asking genuine questions and the tone looks rough because who does that on the internet, let alone on youtube??
All these actions (even the ones that are built into the martials) that you have suggested are really applicable to any team mate, not just only the casters.
Yes, IF the casters in the party are using their highest spell slots, the effectiveness outstrip what the martials are able to do.
But the point really about why (perhaps as you put it, is cultural, but I do not think so) it is better for casters to use those slots buff is once you do it, the martial can do use your buff and be at a higher effectiveness level likely all encounter long.
Instead of comparing a single barbarian strike to a multi-action spell, it would be more appropriate to compare the multi-turn (and thus multi-action) impact of a similarly leveled buff spell on that aided barbarian to the aided blast spell.
@@ckpoon5871 I addressed the “not just casters” thing multiple times throughout the video.
1. Not all these Actions are universally equally good. Aid, Recall Knowledge, and Efficiency-boosting are uniquely better on casters than they are on martials.
2. I fail to see why it’s a problem for things like Demoralize to be good for martials and casters both. Yes, sometimes when you help a caster you’ll always help the martials… so what?
The jump from that to “it is better for casters to use those slots to buff” is even less sensible. There’s nothing going into that except… a vocal minority of the community that keeps saying it is true without providing anything resembling evidence. I have provided *loads* of math and play experience showing both that casters are effective and powerful in non-buff roles *and* easy to help in these roles. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
@@Mathfinder-aaa 1) Aid, Recall Knowledge, etc are as useful to martials as casters, whether such actions are better for casters than martials are a matter of circumstance and is up for debate.
2) So you are simply helping your party, whether or not the party members are martials or casters is irrelevant. It doesn't mean that it is better for the party that the martials cheerlead for the casters.
It has been my play experience that when the party caster/s use their slots to buff/debuff, we get through encounters faster and use up less resources than if the caster/s do otherwise. Perhaps those other people claiming that it is true is simply stating an observation.
What you have provided are certain scenarios and examples where it is better for the party to lend their actions to allow the caster to succeed in their use of a limited resource instead of a martial using a renewable resource.
I think what we should be asking is "How us the party as a whole better served by the expenditure of a spell slot and a certain number of actions?" And comparing like for like.
@@ckpoon5871 Pretending casters being better boosted by Aid, Recall Knowledge, and Action boosts doesn’t count because… reasons, I guess… isn’t helping your case at all. These are uniquely better for casters, just like how things like Heroism, Clumsy, Heal, etc tend to be better at supporting martials (with Heal being better for frontliners specifically).
“it doesn’t meant that it is better for the party that the martials cheerleader for the casters.”
It means everyone should cheerlead for everyone. Martials for casters, casters for martials. This shouldn’t be an uncontroversial statement.
"It means everyone should cheerlead for everyone. Martials for casters, casters for martials. This shouldn’t be an uncontroversial statement."
So everyone should cheerlead for everyone shouldn't be an uncontroversial statement? Do you think everyone cheerleading everyone should be controversial? Why?
If you do think that everyone should act like a team and help each other, then casters ARE your cheerleaders (which goes against the very title of not 1 but 2 of your videos), with the caveat that they are not ONLY just your cheerleaders.
(Your last statement caught my immediate attention, so I skipped over the first part of your reply and replied to that first) Casters being boosted by martials ARE better than casters not being boosted, but they are NOT necessarily better than martials being boosted by casters.
@ I meant to say it shouldn’t be controversial.
Also regarding your last paragraph, you have provided literally nothing to substantiate your claim. Casters with support perform just as well as martials with support do, just in different ways.
Just a few notes, the giant barbarian with power attack will be a more similar comparison. But at that point you do need add in class bonus as well. But with sorcerer potency, it's basically the same damage. With higher accuracy for the barbarian. But as you said, most martials are not doing that level of damage.
Damage maximize in one hit being better to boost...I literally was saying you should be doing this with magus and channel smite warpriests with organsight and you literally threatened to ban me over saying that is optimal.
Recall knowledge for almost every martial I have seen is just a bad idea with very low int and wis. Barring thaumitergists of course. Magus can make good rolls...
If they have the actions to...which is never. Rogues and investigators are not martials, they are skill monkeys.
I "threatened" to hide your comments because you kept trying to start beef with other creators in my comments section, not because of your views on what's optimal.
As for Rogues and Investigators apparently not being martials you can... continue to believe that, but you will find that pretty much 99% of the community will find that a laughably pedantic distinction.
Wait why do rogues and investigators not count?! Just because they are more skill-forward does not diminish the fact that they do damage with weapons *primarily*, thus are good enough to be martials.
Also, dumping wisdom is a bad idea for any character, because you do not want a bad will save, nor do you want bad perception.
@oiman5733 magus primarily does damage with spells...are they a spellcaster? If you don't want to have a third skill monkey category, fine, they are martials.