Spells... miss miss miss...

[Crow]

This is horribly flawed and makes making a caster completely obsolete at least early on... Furthermore prices on scrolls & grenades makes making a class based on those items a very foolish choice due to the addition of the miss chance...

even if every talent compliments it...

[fateweaving]

You should invest in dexterity man...

[Crow]

Originally posted by fateweaving:

You should invest in dexterity man...

But is that not just for ranged classes ? To my experience dexterity has ALWAYS been a stat rogues & ranged classes invests in and never has it been meant for casters...

heck its not even marked as a favored stat for casters... Even the caster followers you find later on have very low dexterity.

A. Poor design.

B. Lacking clarification. descriptions in the game are very muddy and could easily be improved.

[Kamuel]

most/some attack spells count as range attack or throw attacks. tooltip informs about it
(but in most cases at the end of it, so you have to scroll down in the infobox)

[Crow]

So basicly its poor design...

[MightyMickey88]

Pathfinder is a very complex game system. Unfortunately for those unfamiliar with it building a character can be rough. The game would really benefit from a tutorial video explaining each of the classes for new players. But this isn't just a game you can start up and play. You should understand how a class works and have a build plan ready. I would suggest searching the forums for builds, spending time going over all the feats, or watching youtube videos of how to build X character in Pathinder. Then look at the feat list in Kingmaker to see what Table top feats translated over (most of the important build related ones did). But this is not a bug or poor game design. Dex being a secondary stat for casters has been standard since D&D's origins (and Pathfinder is heavily based on 3rd Edition D&D)

[fateweaving]

As MightyMickey88 said, this is D&D system, pathfinder is just an improved copy of D&D 3.5. If you go play pen&paper, it will work exactly the same.

Think about it like this:

You spellcaster needs to aim his spell and hit, similar to picking up a rock and throwing it. What is important is your ability to hit the target, if you suck at throwing rocks you will also suck at throwing the spell, you won't hit a thing. Your character needs to develop their sense of aim, thus dexterity.

Plus you get points for your armor class (AC) which is like dodging and mitigating damage at the same time. Depending from were your ac points are coming from, it's a mix of both.

[Kamuel]

You can start up and play, but then you cant expect to play it on normal difficulty (and even there are later on some points where you have temporaly the difficulty for some fights, if you builds are only medium or bad or if you dont play that activly with buffing yourself and debuffing/cc enemies)

and ps: there is a reason why classes like wizards have passives for knowledge with range weapons or dex weapons like daggers.

[Memmo]

Originally posted by Crow:

This is horribly flawed and makes making a caster completely obsolete at least early on... Furthermore prices on scrolls & grenades makes making a class based on those items a very foolish choice due to the addition of the miss chance...

even if every talent compliments it...

You have spells which require an attack roll. You also have spells which don't require an attack roll.

Melee touch = STR
Ranged touch = DEX
Save spells = casting stat

Shooting into melee, whether with bows or spells, as long as it's a ranged attack, also incurs a -4 penalty without Precise Shot feat.

And that is how Pathfinder works. I understand the system, so I don"t have any problems with it. I recognize the in-game manual could try to explain things a bit better, but come on, use your head.

Besides, the strength of casters has always been in battlefield control. Do you want to shoot one Magic Missile for 1d4+1 damage, or Enlarge Amiri for a minute and upgrade her damage to 3d6? (All her extra damage can be attributed to you).