Spell Casting really sucks

[jfoytek]

So the further into this game I play the more and more evident its becoming that having Ember or Nenio in my group is just a waisted slot... And I really like Ember and want her in my core group for the RP aspect, she is an enjoyable character....

But at this point she is a non effective archer that sometimes hits something for minimal damage... If I use her as a caster which I have made her be, she has Mythic casting abilitys to overcome spell immunity and resistance she has spell penetration etc she specialized in Evocation and she specializes in Fire and most of the time when her epic fire ability's are cast at something I see the words Target Resisted??? What.... in the early game she was useful for crowd control as she put stuff to sleep and kept the fight manageable now sleep is pointless everything has the will power to resist it.... She is basically an emergency healer at this point....

And Nenio who I have all the mythic ability's the same as Ember but for Cold instead of fire and his spell just get resisted too... fighting a dragon when he should shine he missed or was resisted every single time the only person on my team who could actually hurt the damn dragon was Me myself and I with my Angel ability.... Everyone else just kinda stood around and tried to stay alive lol.....

Lann has been my bread and butter DPS but I am noticing that he is tappering off now and myself a Paladin and the other Paladin we are picking up.... And also Camelia is picking up, basically any Melee damage character I have is picking up steam and becoming more usefull and my spell casters they have remained useless even more so now that their skills like spell just don't work on anything....

I am about to totally ditch the spell casters all together....

[jlawleraz]

It is interesting how differently the game plays for different people. Both Nenio and Ember are great offensive spellcasters for me, dealing a lot of damage. And Ember is also a great archer for me, using a crossbow - I change which one she has when I get better ones from enemies.

[Flip]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย jlawleraz:

It is interesting how differently the game plays for different people. Both Nenio and Ember are great offensive spellcasters for me, dealing a lot of damage. And Ember is also a great archer for me, using a crossbow - I change which one she has when I get better ones from enemies.

How did you manage this since she has an inbuilt -4 to hit with weapons?

[jlawleraz]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Flip:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย jlawleraz:

It is interesting how differently the game plays for different people. Both Nenio and Ember are great offensive spellcasters for me, dealing a lot of damage. And Ember is also a great archer for me, using a crossbow - I change which one she has when I get better ones from enemies.

How did you manage this since she has an inbuilt -4 to hit with weapons?

Used items and level up to increase her dexterity, used magic crossbows - it balanced it out

[jfoytek]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Draken:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Doktor Barber:

With how much fire resistance most demons have, default fireball is a joke lol.

Literally on the first mythical level you can choose a mythical ability that lets you ignore the damage reduction and immunity for one element.
If you want to burn demon with fireballs, you can.

I have that ability but it doesnt seem to work... As everything still says its resisting?!?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2606638319
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2606638312
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2606638307

[peterebbesen]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย jfoytek:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Draken:

Literally on the first mythical level you can choose a mythical ability that lets you ignore the damage reduction and immunity for one element.
If you want to burn demon with fireballs, you can.

I have that ability but it doesnt seem to work... As everything still says its resisting?!?

Spell resistance, completely different thing. Demons and other nasty creatures have it. It gives them a chance to avoid ANY hostile spell cast at them..

The mythic Ascendant Element ignores elemental resistances and immunity, which is essential in WOTL for blaster spellcasters to not have your damage reduced or worse ignored - but it still requires you to beat spell resistance first if the enemy has it.

To beat spell resistance, you need spell penetration. It is a roll of caster level + penetration modifiers from feats/items/race/class + 1d20 vs target's SR.

So invest in spell penetration feats (normal, greater, and mythic) and start equipping spell penetration items when you find them, and you'll have an easier time against enemies with spell resistance..

[Flip]

Regarding spell casting there are a few things to be aware of

Spell Resistance: Defense vs all magic. Successful saving throw negates spell. Need Spell Penetration feats to beat this (See Peterebbesens post above)

Immunity: An immunity to certain type of damage, such as fire. The way around this is to use another element or get the Mythic Ascendant Element feat, that will bypass damage immunities (but not spell resistance).

Resistance: Typically a elemental resistance. Example fire 10 means that it will reduce the amount of fire damage by 10. It's the elemental version of damage resistance. Mythic Ascendant Element Feat will bypass the elemental resistance of a chosen element.

Spell Difficulty Class (DC): Many spells damage or effects are tied to difficulty class. Both the attack and defender roll to determine if this is successfull. The result of a successful / failed save can be seen in the spell description. This roll happens after spell resistance roll. You can improve your spell DC by focusing on via feats (i.e focus on magic Evocation) or by focusing on elemental damage (Focus on element feat) these raise the DC of the spell group or element group by 1 and also by your primary casting stat (Charisma for Sorc, Int for Mages, Wisdom for druids etc)

Touch Armor Class (AC): Many spells require the caster to make a ranged Touch attack in order hit. Touch AC is typically much lower than regular armor class. Dexterity and + attack modifiers can help. Also taking the Feats Point Blank Shot and Precise shot will help improve your ability to hit targets and I strongly recommend these are the first feats any offensive spell caster takes. You need to be able to hit the target first of all.

[Neiviv]

Ember is my MVP after MC i took the bracers for lightning spells + salamender so i got most of evocation spells.
Ascendend element lightning so all my spells that were turned to lighnting damage ignore res etc.
1lvl double cross sorcerer, blue dragon and the other one electricty which gives a total of +2 damage / die on electricity.
At lvl 15 on hard my ember is around DC 30 on any spells + bolster spells and she does 15d6 + 45 mostly on chain lightnings on a group fight its like 700-900 damage / round..
Then fortune is an insane buff same with protective luck on tough boss fights. With mythic you can turn a second school to have bonus of feats you gave to a first one so enchantment & evo DC spell pen & greter pen + mythic pen.
Its not enough ? Hex healing and major healing ! Heroism ! Death Ward ! My problem with Ember is that she doesnt have Sirroco, period.

[Saloran]

Favorable magic and 20 cha made my generic shocking grasp magus viable and bursty as always, no metamagic sucks but w/e dimensional blade lets me target touch AC. This and kingmaker just aren't games for people new to pathfinder, they're more for pathfinder enthusiasts.

[Trash Panda]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Morgian:

Pathfinder (as does D&D) leans heavily on melee and archery damage, while the casters got nerfed more and more every edition. As a result you need to know and use all the tricks to make a caster effective.
In this game casters are heavily handicapped because the majority of the enemies have very high spell resistance and monstrous saves. To call a reflex save of +22 a weakness, because the other two are at +31 is missing the point that your DC is only 19.

So what to do? First you can rely on buffs, since they are not resisted and always work. Second you can look to damage spells, since Ascendant Element makes them viable, and they do at least half damage. Ranged touch spells that don't allow saves are far better, especially when modded. The next option is to use spells that are unaffected by spell resistance and saves, which means conjurations. Being a summoner is it's own specialty and I have never tried. Your big problem is spell resistance. By taking spell penetration and it's greater brother you get +4 to the roll, and with the mythic feat you add your mythic rank to it - at that point you can get spells somewhat reliably to the target.

Raising the DC is difficult, but there are ways. There are the spell focus, gr. spell focus and mythic spell focus feats for that, plus the mythic ability to apply all those bonuses to a second school of magic. The sage sorcerer gets +2 to any single school, some races have a racial bonus to a school, and there are items to be found that raise the DCs of specific types of spells. I have gloves that add +2 to enchantments, another item that does the same (not sure if it's a dagger), and elves can get another +1 by the mythic heritage feat. That adds +11 to my DC - where an unprepared sorcerer has a DC of 18, I have 29.
In what to specialise, what items to give to whom, and so on, is a science by itself. You can certainly find info about it on the web, but this might give you an idea what you can do to improve your casters.

Even if you do all that, casters are weak against bosses, who are immune to all the nice debuffs. But they are great at clearing out the minions, which are often as big a danger as the boss.

....what ...no...♥♥♥♥ NO. In DnD Casters are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ KINGS when it comes to damage like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ KINGS. Pathfinder especially the video games just has a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amount of modifiers that makes things so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ complicated. DND breaks it all down into Modifiers + proficeny + advantage/disadvantage on a d20 roll. That is like SIMPLE compared to oh hey high ground + uneven terrain + uneven footting + archery master + weapon mastery + haste + AND ON AND ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ON AND YOU STILL ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MISS or damage is ignored or spell resistance. Pathfinder is 4e DND and no one liked 4e.

[jsaving]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Trash Panda:

Pathfinder is 4e DND and no one liked 4e.

That could not be more wrong, Paizo created Pathfinder BECAUSE no one liked 4e.

[Trash Panda]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย jsaving:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Trash Panda:

Pathfinder is 4e DND and no one liked 4e.

That could not be more wrong, Paizo created Pathfinder BECAUSE no one liked 4e.

Yes but they kept ALL of the things from fourth (or atleast most) that made fourth bad. Rotations like you do in MMO's? Check. ♥♥♥♥ loads of modifiers causing every attack to be math sequences against math sequences? Check. Doing anything flavor based and stepping outside your class for roleplay purposes only causes you to be a hindrance? Check. I can go on and on.

[peterebbesen]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Trash Panda:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย jsaving:

That could not be more wrong, Paizo created Pathfinder BECAUSE no one liked 4e.

Yes but they kept ALL of the things from fourth (or atleast most) that made fourth bad. Rotations like you do in MMO's? Check. ♥♥♥♥ loads of modifiers causing every attack to be math sequences against math sequences? Check. Doing anything flavor based and stepping outside your class for roleplay purposes only causes you to be a hindrance? Check. I can go on and on.

Rotations like in MMOs? No.

♥♥♥♥ loads of modifiers causing every attack to be math sequences against math sequences? Check.

Doing anything flavor based and stepping outside your class for roleplay purposes only causes you to be a hindrance? Check (at least for CRPGs - it you are playing with a GM that values roleplaying in TT and doesn't treat the RPG as a combat simulator, it is a different issue.)

that's D&D 3.5 in a nutshell.

Pathfinder has a huge flexibility in building characters compared to 4e and no defined roles - it is why it is incredibly easy to build an ineffective character in Pathfinder.

[MightyMickey88]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Trash Panda:

Yes but they kept ALL of the things from fourth (or atleast most) that made fourth bad. Rotations like you do in MMO's? Check. ♥♥♥♥ loads of modifiers causing every attack to be math sequences against math sequences? Check. Doing anything flavor based and stepping outside your class for roleplay purposes only causes you to be a hindrance? Check. I can go on and on.

Pathfinder is very, very different from 4e. I take it you didn’t play 3e/3.5e which is what they did explicitly “copy”. They simplified some stuff while adding a bunch more customization options which essentially boiled down to more static modifiers / penalties if you were going for optimization. The ttrp became a “trap customization” game where it was marketed as lots of customization but really 90-95% of the options out there would put you at a severe penalty from the others.

4e had very little customization and due the nature of restrictive encounter / daily powers locked classes into types based on how the devs felt they should be (ie rangers were always either ranged or twf in the core rule book). It was a big step backwards in game design.

The issue with pathfinder (and its not something Owlcat can completely ignore) is the huge variation between an optimized build and a “normal” build due to number bloat. Where Owlcat has gone astray is having a core difficulty that isn’t close to the actual rules and they artificially inflate monster stats like a novice DM without realizing how that affects balance. I don’t care if people on here who don’t play the ttrpg think core would make the game “too easy”. People who play pathfinder should expect a core rules to be the actual rules.

Also, from a design perspective they could’ve very easily followed encounter guidelines to create varied, interesting, and challenging encounters. But instead it seems they took the easy route and just said let’s increase things by an arbitrary number and see if it works. They seem to have built in encounter generation since the monster count can be varied. So they could’ve had the generate set a CR based off the party level + difficulty. Then it randomly determines what monsters to fit that CR based off an available list of monsters to that area. On higher difficulties it could pick higher base CR monsters / throw on templates like fiendish.

[Trash Panda]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย MightyMickey88:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Trash Panda:

Yes but they kept ALL of the things from fourth (or atleast most) that made fourth bad. Rotations like you do in MMO's? Check. ♥♥♥♥ loads of modifiers causing every attack to be math sequences against math sequences? Check. Doing anything flavor based and stepping outside your class for roleplay purposes only causes you to be a hindrance? Check. I can go on and on.

Pathfinder is very, very different from 4e. I take it you didn’t play 3e/3.5e which is what they did explicitly “copy”. They simplified some stuff while adding a bunch more customization options which essentially boiled down to more static modifiers / penalties if you were going for optimization. The ttrp became a “trap customization” game where it was marketed as lots of customization but really 90-95% of the options out there would put you at a severe penalty from the others.

4e had very little customization and due the nature of restrictive encounter / daily powers locked classes into types based on how the devs felt they should be (ie rangers were always either ranged or twf in the core rule book). It was a big step backwards in game design.

The issue with pathfinder (and its not something Owlcat can completely ignore) is the huge variation between an optimized build and a “normal” build due to number bloat. Where Owlcat has gone astray is having a core difficulty that isn’t close to the actual rules and they artificially inflate monster stats like a novice DM without realizing how that affects balance. I don’t care if people on here who don’t play the ttrpg think core would make the game “too easy”. People who play pathfinder should expect a core rules to be the actual rules.

Also, from a design perspective they could’ve very easily followed encounter guidelines to create varied, interesting, and challenging encounters. But instead it seems they took the easy route and just said let’s increase things by an arbitrary number and see if it works. They seem to have built in encounter generation since the monster count can be varied. So they could’ve had the generate set a CR based off the party level + difficulty. Then it randomly determines what monsters to fit that CR based off an available list of monsters to that area. On higher difficulties it could pick higher base CR monsters / throw on templates like fiendish.

Yes but the game DOES have set rotations to be effective. EVERY Ranger will repeat the same 3 steps from 1-20 with little variation - every - single - one. That is if you want to hit or do damage or help...at all. Druids will all do the same thing aside from the transformation druids will will all by end game just turn into a t-rex and repeat the same 3 things rotation after rotation after rotation. And if you step outside that rotation SO MANY PENALTIES its just so bad.