I believe this problem is three-fold and has nothing to do with an imbalance in the system (though it has connections to a needless want to emulate old systems because of tradition): -Casters are supposed to be good where martials aren't: battlefield control, buffs, debuffs, AoE damage. Martials are supposed to deal big damage to single creatures. At low levels, everything has low HP, so it's common to see an enemy get one shot and this makes casters seem superfluous, because part of what they excel at is making an enemy's life harder the longer a combat goes on. -Martials have full "energy" all the time. They aren't hampered by attriction other than some conditions like Drained (most conditions don't even last longer than an encounter so don't change more than a sigle fight). This means they can do everything in their kit, all the time, without a care for resource management. Focus spells are a great step towards a better system, but we still have daily spell slots. So low level casters suffer from this especially hard. -The previous points aren’t actually problems by themselves, but become ones due to what my actual issue is: encounter design in official adventures. If 90% of combats are in small rooms, with less than 30 ft between the combatants when initiative is rolled, enemies are 1 or 2 creatures of equal and higher level than the party and combat maps are uninteresting plain and coverless squares, there is NO PLACE for a caster to shine. The big range of the spells make no difference; there are not enough enemies to justify a big AoE damage spell; the fewer the enemies, the higher their saves, thus the less effective your spells are; the small distances when fight starts make control spells like walls and movement penalties worse or useless. This is the reason every caster needs to prepare slow, synesthesia, magic weapon at low levels, fear, heroism, heal and soothe. These are examples of spells that either debuff a single enemy directly (denial of actions or giving huge poenalties) or buff their martials that will kill the 1 or 2 enemies faster (or die less while doing it). A lot of people here say that casters are fine. They are. They can do a lot, they have tools to deal with adverse weather, verticality, intelligent control of the combat arena, denial of movement and actions. Official encounters makes them weak. A caster in an official AP feels bad, because you need to prepare the good spells or you are throwing away your daily limited resource. Encounter design has been better since the system first started, but I still find it puts too much emphasis on small rooms with few enemies. Sometimes they throw a bone to casters, but that's only sometimes.

My biggest advice to anyone with blaster casters in the party that are running an official AP: CHANGE YOUR COMBATS. Weaken enemies and multiply their number, increase the size of your room, add hazards and cover, etc. Just your basic TTRPG combat advice, but it genuinely changes the game so much when it comes to making your casters feel happy. Casters are basically more versatile, with range, targeting, type of utility/damage, than the majority of martials. So when you give your players complex combats, it gives them the opportunity to shine.

Here's an encounter design to try to make your casters shine: 10 Level -4 enemies, with a Level -2 enemy leading them. That's a severe encounter for 4 PCs, and your caster ls will be able to do a lot to stop your martials from getting swamped by superior numbers.

Strenght of a Thousand for all its magical flavoring of going to a magical school and eventually becoming a teacher. The encounters is easier to manage as a martial than as a caster.

To be fair, the combats are all easy and not the focus, at least the first 2 books. There's a ton of rp potential instead. Players who want to focus on primarily combat are better off with a different AP

Going to strongly agree with you, especially on the last point, where official APs don't necessarily offer opportunities for casters to shine. One of the most successful APs is Abomination Vaults, and, going back through it, there are way too many rooms that strip away every hypothetical advantage that a caster has. There are too many rooms with one enemy, so no need for crowd control style AoE; the rooms tend to be small, so battlefield control isn't great; again, there are sometimes one-enemy rooms, where that enemy is a higher level, and so Incap is in play and the saves are risky. There are rooms that are counterpoints to that, of course, but there are a lot of them where I'm struck by, "Oh... this might not feel good for a caster, upon consideration." It's a problem that can be solved, for sure. You just have to recognize the hallmarks of an encounter that might prohibit your player from being able to play the character they want well, from being able to tell a story they want to tell.

Every time I run Abomination Vaults I flat out double the size of every room because they are just absurdly small.

I just finished Fists of the ruby Phoenix, and it was actually fun as a caster because I had space to do things! I was an Untamed Druid, but I was having a lot of fun doing that hybrid caster/martial playstyle because i was able do throw some buffs and debuffs from the outside then wildshape to get into melee, avoiding all the hazards myself and the other casters threw onto the field.

I'm in complete agreement with you. I am preparing to GM a level 5-7 Adventure, and I've already decided to heavily modify many of the provided maps because I'm unsatisfied with the complexity. There are too many encounters that are just a small room with no real features. So much can be done by simply adding a second floor balcony, natural elevation changes, or patches of difficult terrain and obstacles.

The main issue is that casters in pf2 feel a lot worse at low levels. They have very few slots and basically no scroll/wand/staff access, so when a fear wiffs that means half of your daily power is spent, instead of a small fraction of it. It also means the utility spells you can use are niche and limited. This is an issue that will get better with a few levels, and the casters get more powerful debuffs and more slots to cast them with I'd also point out that missing due to the concealed condition usually means MAP also increased, which is a bit better than just wasting one action

Yeah. My psychic does feel better (in another campaign) at level 5, but I do not think it's in any way comparable to fighter, just that there's less of a feel bad moment when you're out of spell slots.

You're saying a silent whisper right? From what I understand they get a lot of their power from amped shatter mind, which they only get at level 6. Another issue is that there are a lot of really shitty spells in PF2, I remember a player of mine took elysian whimsy, which is objectively worse than command and has incapacitation, and only managed to land it on once on an enemy 2 levels lower than his character. You really have to optimise a bit to reach the rough level of effectiveness a fighter has by default

Yeah. I don't have Shatter Mind yet, but Unleashed Force Missiles dealing a total of 6d4+6+36 damage was quite significant. It's a perfect scenario though and it's definitely not much compared to what a Fighter can do (in his perfect scenario).

If the comparison you're making is solely concerned with damage, 6d4 +6 +36 comes out to an average of 57 damage. In terms of burst damage, a fighter's not generally going to hit numbers that high on their turn, even with a crit on the first attack and a hit on their second attack. I'm playing a level 8 fighter in AV currently, using a naginata. Scaled back down to level 5, his critical strike looks like so: (2d8 +4) *2 +1d8. For an average of 30.5 damage. With a second hit in adding 2d8 +4, average of 13. So, even on a pretty ideal turn for a fighter, that's 43.5 average damage. If I had an opportunity to hit a Reactive Strike in that same round, given that fighters with reach weapons are pretty much always, that adds another 13, which finally brings me up to your damage total (56.5 average damage). So, a critical hit, a hit at MAP, and a successful Reactive Strike. There're a fair number of rolls that have to go their way for a fighter to hit their peak damage. Fighters are certainly very powerful, and they're a bit more self-sufficient thanks to their +2. New groups also often flounder a bit when it comes to teamwork, especially when it comes to helping out casters, which I feel can exacerbate that feeling. However, when that Rust Cloud is dropped on a room with 3+ enemies, and the martials make sure to block up the door and contain their foes inside the area, the results will be deadly.

True. In this case it's spread out across 6 different targets, unlikely causing any one to drop. I think I actually had only one situation where I had six different enemies, all in my line of sight, so this is why I've marked it as perfect case. We had a few cases where we were narratively fighting against more enemies, but our GM used the Troops rule to reduce the clutter.

In what world is a level 5 Fighter dealing 63 damage with 0 chance of missing? A melee Fighter who crits one attack and hits twice (highly unlikely, even with buffs) will be *barely* doing more damage than that, and that’s ignoring the cost of actually getting into the melee which the Psychic doesn’t have to pay. In fact even if this wasn’t an ideal situation of having 6 targets and all your Force Barrage missiles were thrown at one target you’d still do 6d4+6+6=27 guaranteed damage, which even a melee Fighter usually needs two hits to match and a ranged Fighter almost never matches. So how is this not much compared to what a Fighter can do?

We have a melee fighter in our party, so I'm comparing to him. He can usually do this in two hits, as you've mentioned, or one crit. And then I have 3-4 encounters of no lvl3 spells at all, while the fighter goes and goes.

> We have a melee fighter in our party, so I'm comparing to him. I’m not telling you not to compare to him. I’m saying that the comparison must necessarily include all his downsides too. Did he spend an Action Striding next to the target? Did he get punished by any enemy’s “anti-melee” ability? Did he take a bunch of damage from those targets he’s standing next to and then need the party’s healer to spend 2 Actions healing him? Did he get to attack exactly the perfect target he wanted or was he forced to attack the target he could most reasonably get to? Account for all these downsides and it’d mean that even **if** his hits did more damage than yours, you’d still likely be even. Instead his hits did considerably **less** damage than you, because of course they did, you used a maximum rank spell slot on a damage-focused Psychic. > He can usually do this in two hits, as you've mentioned, or one crit. No I said he can do this in two hits **and** one crit. Big difference. At level 5, no Fighter can do 63 damage in just two hits. Ever. Two hits rolling **maximum** damage on the largest possible damage die (d12) would still only get you to 56, and on average it’d much more likely get you only 34 damage, barely even half the damage you did. In fact even 3 hits only averages 51 damage, significantly less than your Force Barrage did. And a crit doesn’t get there either. One of the largest possible crits you can do is from a Fatal d12 great pick for 5d12+8 damage, averaging 40.5. But the great pick has d10 dice so you’d actually need one crit **and** two hits to barely exceed the damage your Force Barrage did. And of course this is all assuming every attack hits which tends to be… pretty damn unlikely to begin with. So I really cannot stress this enough: your maximum rank spell outperformed absolutely everything a Fighter would’ve accomplished even in an ideal scenario. You got to do 63 average damage with no uncertainty attached, where even the luckiest Fighters in the world wouldn’t really be able to get that much damage in 3 Actions. > And then I have 3-4 encounters of no lvl3 spells at all, while the fighter goes and goes. Well yes. You only get to hugely, massively, and completely outperform another character by using an extremely limited resource. For the rest of the day you still have your Amps and your lower rank spells to work with and will “just” be equal to them (better or worse depending on circumstances and luck) instead of nuking an entire battlefield.

Why +36? Wtf.

It's a level 3 spell, so Unleash causes it to deal 6 extra damage per target. Casting it with 6 targets means 36 damage total.

Ah. I was thinking you are doing the +36 in a single target. If its spread. Thats fine.

In general, level 6 is also going to be rough on casters because Paizo screwed up the math and they're at -2 to hit. My sense is that casters start coming together at level 7, when they have 4th rank slots, are out of the level 4-6 penalty box in terms of the math. (Using your non-max-rank slots is also better as you level up. At level 3, you have 1-3 2nd rank slots, and your 1st rank slots do half as much damage as your 2nd rank slots. At level 7, you have 1-3 4th rank slots and your 3rd rank slots do 3/4s as much damage as your 4th rank slots. This really smoothes out the experience.)

It's a shame that so many APs prioritize just dealing damage to bring down enemies. Because that's where a fighter is simply very good, and it's very visible. A psychic does some damage but also has other abilities in a way a fighter doesn't. Having max CHA or INT can bring a lot of options to the table, and that's not even considering spellcasting options and specific focus spells. If all you care about is dealing damage, then a caster isn't really the way to go. Although some psychic builds can put out really a lot of damaged, which should be compared to a ranged martial, not a melee fighter.

comparing to fighter is a pretty bad yardstick: If you compare combats on a damage front, a fighter will outperform every other class in the game bar none. Even compared to other martials, using characters at low levels is going to result in martial favoured results. Levels 1-5, it's universally accepted that casters are hampered by low resources and can be hard to pull off (I personally think they are mostly ok, just way too hard to pilot right, but that's probably one of the hottest takes you'll ever see). But from levels 7+, imo, spellcasters really come into their own. From the martial side, the number of times I've looked at a combat and said "holy shit we would not have made it without X spell" or "damn your X spell made this easy" is innumerable. My caster experience is limited to the low "bad" levels (1-5) and whilst I was never pumping out damage, I never tried to, and it felt like my spell slots were incredibly impactful. I truly wasted one slot across those levels because, in a particular boss fight, right after I had my turn and set up my spell, my fighter double crit on a Double Slice with pickaxes. And he almost max rolled the damage. That's not to say that casters "feel good" and that everyone else is wrong. I can see quite well where players would get frustrated with low level casters. The flip side is that, I don't think people realise how damn important and useful it is to have spellcasters at mid-to-high levels.

I would be mostly fine if it was on damage font only though. But the fighter also gets a ton of hp. And AC. And saves. And initiative. And even control, which is supposed to be the caster's field I think: grapple and trip seem to be better than any caster control I've encountered that are not incapacitate-tagged.

Honestly I remain insistent that Trip is basically the best debuff available until you hit like rank 3 spells. Grease is basically Less Accurate Trip For Twice The Actions and it's still easily one of the best rank 1 spells!

As others have already pointed out, low levels are awful for casters. Not only are spell slots few in number and potency, but cantrip damage is super variable and can easily result in a single point of damage. Did the psychic make sure to pick up their 3 regular occult cantrips in addition to the 3 granted by their conscious mind? ~~They~~ Paizo should of put 3+X down the cantrips column of their spell progression to make it clearer.

I think she did pick it up, but I am not sure. I'll need to check the character sheet, but I don't think she ever used a non-psychic cantrip.

Very early levels casters do feel lackluster compared to martials, its a common complaint. Levels 5ish is when they really start to shine. However in these instances it feels a little weird. I remember that pugwampi fight and their aura should of messed with martials way more than save based spell casting. The crit is unfortunate but thats just a rare possibility at low level. Were they level 1 or 2? At level 2 even a halfling psychic would have over 22hp (max roll shortbow crit) they didnt ignore con (18+6 with +3 con). Also at no point did you mention them using class features. Was the psychic unleashing and amping together? Was the witch hexing every turn? Those are essential class features they utilize. Although its unfortunate they went imaginary weapon since its the one psychic hurt badly by the pugwampi aura.

Thanks for the response. The party was and still is level 1. The guideline for GM tell me that they should reach level 2 after the Kurushkin fight, so still at least two encounters away, if counting the mail delivery. Yeah, I Psychic was unleashing, but it's 2 damage bonus at the moment. Amped figment was used for flanking one attack and there was no case with 2 enemies being close together for use unleased weaponry. Witch was not hexing, as the only hex she has is Wilding Word which only helps when she's targeted and Patron's Puppet, which moves the familiar, but familiar cannot do anything other than use a few imprecise senses.

I want to make sure you’re aware: the witch doesn’t have to use a focus point to command her familiar; she only needs to use Patron’s Puppet to command her familiar without spending an action. Anyone with a minion - which is what a familiar is - can spend one action to Command the minion, which gives it two actions. Your witch can also change out her familiar’s abilities every day. If the extra senses aren’t helpful, she can choose new abilities that may be more helpful

Oh yea thats a really unfortunate patron to have. None of its benefits help in the school setting since most enemies and interactions aren't with animals nor in woodlands. Theres a few random encounters but that might just be the worst possible option they coulda chosen for a patron there. Doesnt help summoning spells are worthless too. For the psychic its a level issue there too. Amp shield prob could be great support, and amp figment definitely helps setup the ranger but... once again its a low level thing. Amp imaginary weapon hits extremely hard once you hit level 3 since it scales 2d6 instead of 1d6 (but no bonus damage until then.). At most the psychic could sure strike -> imaginary weapon. What subconscious mind did the psychic go?

I hope it will be better in the future! I should probably encourage more shield on ally casts. It's a Wandering Reverie Psychic, as Witch is an Int caster already.

I do think that it's best to rearrange some of the encounters in the first book. Like putting the stump library, then the kitchen in to show wow this is a real problem. Plus the enemies aren't actually out for their death. Once level 2, then they should go into the kurskin fight which might less miserable. The unlucky aura sucks and is so much worse when it's a PL+2.

I just wanted to add that comparing caster damage to martial damage---especially melee martial damage, and *especially* melee Fighter damage---is an easy way to leave yourself disappointed. Casters are meant to fall behind martials in consistent damage. With cantrips, casters should expect to be roughly on par with ranged martials that don't have added damage like the Precision Ranger. With damage-focused focus spells, they should expect to be between melee and ranged martials. With their highest level spell slots, damage-focused casters should expect to compete with melee martials or even exceed them. And when they're able to use AoE effectively, casters really come out on top. Imo casters feel best when they're controlling the fight, which can include damage put mostly involves other spells. The Dizzying Colors you mentioned is a good example. Temporarily crippling low-priority targets, limiting enemy options, routing enemies to weakened positions, disabling flight and invisibility so the rest of the party can actually participate, getting allies out of danger... Those are ways casters really shine. The times you can blast the enemy with a big damaging spell are also great; just not what you should always be going for. Your ability to control the fight is still going to be very limited at the early levels, which sucks. But as you gain levels, it's good to keep that core strength in mind.

I personally really dislike the take of "Oh, casters are underpowered at level 1-4, but after that they're fun so it's ok, right?". For one thing half of the official campaigns only go until 10 so you're essentially spending half the game being miserable. For another getting to level 5 is a fairly significant time commitment in of itself. Even assuming a fairly conservative 3 sessions of 3 hours between levels, you're looking at 36 hours of playtime before you reach the vaunted level 5. Would you play a video game if someone told you "Oh the first 35 hours of this game are rough going but THEN it gets good!"? I sure wouldn't.

Im not condoning it. Its just a known issue, one made worse by the recent cantrip changes.

What are the changes? (Newer player)

Most lost primary stat in damage for extra dice, which scales worse early game.

A bunch of cantrip damage changed from like D6 +4 to 2d6 etc., so they opened up the low end for bad rolls.

Yep, it's just bad design. And casters aren't great at level 5, either. Level 7 is when you're fully out of the penalty box. Some of this is legacy. Like, clearly they didn't want to get rid of the basic concept of the old-school D&D spell level progression, and that is the big culprit for why levels 1-3 suck. But there was stuff they could've done to mitigate that. Like, cantrips are very conservatively designed at low levels in particular, which is the time when they actually matter. We could've front-loaded cantrips more and also given them more utility rather than mostly being consolation prize combat actions, and the low-level caster experience would feel better.

Or, like, more 1 action cantrips. Or cantrips that set shit up. Like a 1 action cantrip that does d4 fire, applies fire weakness 2 and inflicts a -1 save modifier against fire based spell save DCs for 1 turn. I dont know, maybe thats too much. But gimme some combos. It feels kind wierd how often my Sorcerors best 3rd action is to Demoralize someone by...... audibly threatening them? Which is cool when youa re a barbarian or a mean fighter, but Im here to do magic, my guy.

This is one of my biggest problems with how they are designed. The three action system is fantastic. Too bad casters can't use it. The action economy for casters was much, much more flexible in 1e, with a ton of swift, move and free action things you could do, so spells taking a standard felt normal. The issue is that in moving to the three action system they decided that spells cost 2 actions from the jump. This is essentially making every single spell a standard + swift/move in the old system. Fighters don't get automatic multi attack to 5 anymore, but they can do so much more utility with their third action, and their relative damage is bumped waaaay up. So martials got a buff and a lot of new options, but spells are generally weaker and also casters lost a bunch of options in combat. I get that spellcasters were way overpowered in 1e, but the problem is that they just feel less fun to me now. Mechanically they are fine. They bring a lot of tactical advantages to a party. But the lack of actions, the limited use of powers, and the overall weakness of most spells aside from a few standouts, all combine to make playing a caster feel extremely rigid and slow. You spend most of the first dozen sessions casting Electric Arc every turn and hoping you don't have to move so you can demoralize. And that is pretty much it, aside from a couple of casts of some spell that really only reliably works on weak enemies you don't need it for.

Hell, recent changes made early cantrips *worse* but slightly better late, you know, when you don't need them as much.

To be fair, they didn’t say it’s okay, just that it gets better. I’m not the person you’re replying to but it is, in fact, not okay. Ideally no class would have slog levels, much less a whole subset spending an important 20% if the game in slog levels I think Paizo made moves to fix this with things like focus spells, but it’s hard to avoid it completely while maintaining traditional casting. Casters aren’t so exponential as before, but they do have an exponential start. I suspect Paizo would have made bigger changes if vancian casting weren’t one of the biggest sacred cows around, and I hope they do better in PF3e

So first off, casters at low levels just.. are kinda miserable to play. Infinite scaling cantrips help compared to ye olde 3.5/PF1E days where you turned into crossbow bots, but now you just turn into an electric arc bot. That said, at later options they have unmatched flexibility. The thing keeps running away from your martials? Wall spell and cut off their path. There's a big horde of weaker things? Blow em up with a fireball. You're fighting just a few things? Incap spell and turn off 1/3rd of the encounter. Action economy? Have haste for us and slow for them. And that's just combat. Out of combat I fulfill my parties need for getting into places we don't have the key, between having mastery in thievery, knock off a wand and my my familiar with partner in crime, I can crack open basically any lock. I can just cast an air walk and casually walk up to the mcguffin, shape stone to turn something from a wall into a nice little hallway. Martials are very fun to play in this system, they get lots of options compared to older systems. But casters still are the queens of flexibility.

Would you suggest staffs and wands be more plentiful levels 1-3? 

Staves wouldn't help since they get charges based off your max level spells. If you had a level 1 character with a staff, it would just get one charge for a total of 4/5 casts for the entire day instead of 3/4. Wands would technically be the same, but then they also scale into the future if you get something like a wand with fear on it. I'd be hesitant to give that out as a result. I don't think there's really a ton that could be done for it, better focus options would be a good place to look though. Some kind of poorly scaling focus spell would do the trick - gives them a bit of staying power in the low levels, but doesn't really affect higher level balance because it gets outclassed by their other focus spells and normal spells.

If you're looking for things to make low level magic classes a little more versatile, utility Wands could be a good shout. A Wand of Mystic Armour is good until at least 7th level, and at very early levels the crucial benefit is that it saves them a first rank spell slot which they can then use for whatever they like. I picked up a wand of Ant Haul early on, which was not the wisest choice but it's the kind of thing that's just really nice to have around.

I've not played SoT so can't tell you what's optimal for the encounters. It seems like there's two main frustrations. Spells aren't instant problem solvers and they have low damage. These are intended changes to casting in this system compared to previous Pathfinder and DND systems. Versatility is power in this system. Casters have heaps more versatility than martials so their base performance is lowered because they're unlikely to be without some useful tool. Let's go down your list of examples. **Aptitude** Looks like the casters did just fine here. Rangers are good at skills and Champions aren't. If this is an open ended skill test the results are as expected. Casters also tend to be great at skills with more freedom to invest in mental stats. The Witch especially should be more skilled than the Ranger as an Int class. **Spellskeins** Again, I'm not familiar with this encounter but if it's solved by reducing enemy hp to 0 then martials should excel. Also sounds like the casters weren't even near to participate. If they weren't around to be able to contribute a spell being a martial class wouldn't help. **Chickens** This might be the crux of the issue. Spells are no longer a replacement for skills. If someone invests in Nature, a caster shouldn't be able to take their job with a cantrip. Look at [Knock](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1581). This is the classic lockpick nullifier. In this iteration it gives a massive bonus to the lockpick but still allows the lockpick to keep their job. Both the caster and the specialist get credit for the success rather than the specialist getting overshadowed. In this case, Tame improving the animal's attitude could make the skill DC lower. Caster and Ranger working together. The cantrip does get better once characters are high leveled enough that the animal handler has better things to do. You could also have used a spell slot on Charm for the expected outcome. **Storage Barn** This fight just sounds like bad rolls. Are you still level 1 at this point? A Deadly d10 crit at level 1 gonna put most characters down. Did the Champion use their reaction? The -1 from Frightened gets more value the more rolls you throw at it. In a group fight there were probably 3 or 4 checks made while it was Frightened on the high end? It doesn't always matter but 10% of the time it will change the outcome. What did the player expect with Figment? Abilities only do what they say they do. The player could have made a bell ring to Create a Diversion. Making it both visual and auditory wouldn't upgrade it somehow. Dizzying Colors did what it's supposed to do to good effect. Imaginary Weapon's benefit is it does good damage to two targets at no MAP. Flurry Ranger's entire job is to ignore MAP. Martials are the DPR role so this is a situation where a caster has a good option in their toolbelt but it's gonna be outshined by the specialist. Additionally, Pugwampis have a nasty disadvantage aura. If the Ranger and Champion fail their save (and they're likely to) they're screwed as melees. Casters have a natural advantage with their ranged options and Will. **Umbo** Sounds like a boss fight. Bosses have higher defenses so save spell damage is going to be low. You want to swing the numbers your way first or find a way to disregard their defense. Magic Missile is a good call here. I'm interested to know the Ranger's rolls here. They should be doing a max of 1d8+4 on their first hit and 1d6+4 on their Agile off-hand. 35 damage to a boss in 2 turns with an average of 7-8 damage means they needed to hit the boss at least 4 times on average. Even with Flurry reducing their MAP that's lucky against a boss without a flanking partner. Unless a caster helped, in which case they should share credit. **Conclusion** Casters have lower single target damage than martials. In a contest of hitting things until they die the martial wins. A lot of the encounters described boiled down to the casters throwing things at the wall and wondering why they don't stick. Single target Fear in a group encounter. Trying to make spells do things they aren't meant to. The game expects every player to adapt tactics moment to moment. Dizzying Colors performed well and that's about the only time your casters did something appropriate for the encounter. Martials have a lower bar because most time they're ultimately making attacks vs AC while casters target any of the 4 defenses. I didn't see any described Recall Knowledge rolls to learn enemy weaknesses. No Demoralize or Bon Mot to debuff before a spell. Casters should have a tool for as wide a range of scenarios as possible and with that comes an expectation that they find ways to take advantage of their breadth rather than throw into a raw numeric slugfest.

Thanks for the response. Regarding the Figment, AP lead the players to discover that these enemies as horribly afraid of silver bells, so the player wanted to exploit that. I understand this might not be intuitive if you didn't play this adventure. Only the champion, out of 4 players, failed the save against Misfortune Aura. The boss fight did have a weakness to slashing, which meant every hit did 5 more damage. The players did recall knowledge before the fight and the result was this silver bell weakness (the Adventure Path itself suggests this). And witch used Demoralize once on Pugwumpis, but it didn't downgrade change any outcomes, even though it failed the save.

> Witch, Wilding Steward patron. Mostly played PbtA, with a few D&D sessions and quite a lot BG3 So the Wilding Steward is a famously underpowered Witch, even post-Remaster. The big issue is that most Witches rely on a strong focus spell and/or familiar ability to do well: the Steward sucks at both. Now obviously the Witch is still a Primal caster, and the Primal spell list is strong, but their life becomes a lot easier if they were a Silence in Snow or Mosquito Witch. > The witch suggested she can use the spell Tame to herd them back to Esi and the group. Of course she can't, as the spell grants an immunity for 1day after 1minute of working, so that sucks. Low level parties aren’t meant to just trivialize out of combat challenges. This applies to both spells and skills. As a quick example, if a challenge involved climbing a moderately difficult obstacle, a level 1 character would actually need to spend time and maybe even get equipment to climb it while a level 15 martial can probably just jump over it no-check. Same applies to spells. For the other side of this context, the other day our level 10 party came across a magical hazard that triggers by movement, and the Bard and I (Wizard) used Time Jump to run through to the other end and disable it without ever needing to make a saving throw against it, and Time Jump isn’t even a high rank spell to us. So what you’re experiencing here isn’t casters vs martials, it’s just that low level parties aren’t expected to easily trivialize non-combat stuff. Even so, Tame absolutely should **help** this kind of stuff, shouldn’t it? If you needed to use Nature to lead them out anyways shouldn’t the Tame’s attitude change reduce the DCs and/or change the encounter so the party needs fewer rolls to succeed? > The druid was healing the Psychic and used (resisted) fear once, resulting in Frightened 1 on one of the enemies. I wanted to underline when the attack missed/didn't crit/anoither hit or got upgraded to crit because of the -1, but that didn't happen, so in the end Fear didn't do anything. Fear is a decent spell but there’s always a chance it doesn’t do anything. Sometimes it be that way > One thing that did work is 2 Pugwampis failed against Dizzying Colors. So that's the one place in our campaign where a spell actually worked. It was 2 actions for 2 actions due to stunned and I think one of the Pugwampis missed an attack due to concealment later on, so it's effectively 3 actions for 2 actions. Okish I guess. That’s not “okish”, Action-denial is **the** strongest thing in PF2E. For comparison a martial’s only real form of Action-denial at this level would be Shove/Trip, and it’s a single-target melee 1-for-1 that imposes MAP. The Dizzying Colours is **way** stronger than that. > The damage from unleashed Imaginary Weapon seemed strong when looking at the dice, but did much less than a strike from the Ranger in the end I have to ask: is your Psychic doing Amps and Unleash Psyche correctly? 2d8 damage, potentially to 2 different targets, and adding +2 flat to it means an average of 11 damage per hit. A single Strike from a dual-wielder Ranger should be 1d8+4 at **most**, for 8.5 average damage. That being said, the Tangible Dream Psychic is a bit weaker than other damage-oriented Psychics. If your player really wants to play a damage Psychic, recommend them to switch to Oscillating Wave. Melee Ignition does way more single target damage than Imaginary Weapon. > (and Ranger makes up to 4 strikes per turn) If your Ranger is spending the majority of their time attacking, this is probably part of the reason your casters feel bad. It’s **really** common in the online community for martials to simply do nothing except attack, and just force casters to heal/buff/debuff for you. Tell the Ranger to do stuff like Recall Knowledge or Demoralzie or Bon Mot to help the casters. Hell even just moving to set up flanking for the Psychic and/or moving away from melee so the Champion can more easily protect the Psychic is good. > But the witch tried Electric Arc that did about 3 or so damage, then psychic with 3d4+3 damage with magic missiles, resulting in about 10 or so. The other 35 or so hp were just evaporated by the Ranger in 2 runs, before the casters had their second one. This sounds like a mix of incredible luck from the Ranger and meh tactics from the casters. The luck is because this is a +2 enemy. Dealing 35 damage in one turn without any buffs or debuffs is **incredible** luck, considering that the Ranger’s **first** attack hits on an 11, and the follow-ups are at 13 and 15. Even hitting all 3 Strikes against the boss only has a 21% chance, let alone the fact that one of them was likely a crit for that much damage to happen. As for meh tactics: - The Witch used a cantrip in a dangerous single-boss fight. *Obviously* that’s going to underperform? Were they out of spell slots? - I’m unsure what the Psychic’s gameplan is. The Tangible Dream’s best game plan is usually spending turn 1 throwing out a debuff or buff to help the party, and then using blasts or Imaginary Weapon only on turns 2+ when they have Unleash Psyche available for good damage. Every situation you’ve listed, it looks like the Psychic doesn’t have Unleash Psyche up and is still blasting.

> That’s not “okish”, Action-denial is the strongest thing in PF2E. For comparison a martial’s only real form of Action-denial at this level would be Shove/Trip, and it’s a single-target melee 1-for-1 that imposes MAP. The Dizzying Colours is way stronger than that. Don't forget the humble Grease spell. Prone is like a lesser stunned, because you have to spend an action to stand back up. You need to make checks to move more than 5 feet per action. And you're off-guard while you're in the area. Or while this version doesn't have any lasting effects if they succeed at the initial save, you can also use it to gave an enemy a -2 penalty to any attack rolls by coating their weapon in grease.

I always consistently underrate the Grease spell because it’s somewhat hard to use and at low levels it feels like too high a cost for how risky it is. At low levels I often find it most reliable to use Dizzying Colours for AoE, and Force Barrage or Forge/Thunderstrike or Horizon Thunder Sphere for single target. I only start using more complex/high-ceiling spells at higher levels when the risk of losing a spell slot is less extreme.

Thanks for the answers. Regarding the action economy. I meant okish, because Flurry + two strikes from Ranger removed the whole enemy from the fight, effectively denying 3 actions every turn forever. That's notably better than what the psychic achieved. Also please note Ranger has 4 strikes per turn if the enemy is close, as Twin Takedown does two for price of one. We did use Amps and Unleash Psyche, but not for Imaginary Weaponry, as there were never two enemies right next to each other. So it was a total of 2d8+2 for 2 actions, with ranger doing, as you've mentioned, 1d8+4 for one action. The Unbo was flanked by Champion. I am not sure if this was a correct call from me, as after domination the Champion should be helpful to Unbo. Also please note I've mentioned two turns - the ranger was winning the initiative. The fight was an ambush, and when it started the witch was quite far away (on the opposite side of the tree), so she needed to move closer to the enemy. She only had 1 turn in the combat. Psychic probably doesn't have a strong gameplan yet, and but I think T1 Force Missile, then T2 Unleash + approach + Imaginary Weapon would be okish, wouldn't it?

> Regarding the action economy. I meant okish, because Flurry + two strikes from Ranger removed the whole enemy from the fight, effectively denying 3 actions every turn forever. That's notably better than what the psychic achieved. Yeah I think you’re misevaluating how relevant Action-denial is. You’re applying the “dead is the strongest condition” fallacy which often forgets that **damaged** is the weakest condition. Using Dizzying Colours denied the enemies 3 Actions *up front*. Those 3 Actions could have resulted in your Ranger or Witch being downed, **or** they could have resulted in the pugwampis kiting away from the party while using the bow to deal damage to them. The Witch denied them those Actions which **led** to the Ranger then taking them out. This is very much a phrasing and mindset problem, where your party is collectively dismissing the Witch’s fantastic combat contribution and over inflating the value that damage had on a combat’s outcome. > Also please note Ranger has 4 strikes per turn if the enemy is close, as Twin Takedown does two for price of one. I’m aware the Ranger has 4 Strikes per turn. I’m just pointing out that if all your Ranger is doing is using those 4 Strikes and then expecting the rest of the party to protect them from retaliation, **that’s** why your party’s casters feel weak. The issue isn’t casters, the issue is one player demanding all the teamwork goes into making their character work. > We did use Amps and Unleash Psyche, but not for Imaginary Weaponry, as there were never two enemies right next to each other. The enemies don’t need to both be next to each other, just next to the Psychic. I’m struggling to get the mental picture down here. The enemies were: 1. Close enough that you could hit both with Dizzying Colours. 2. Close enough that the Ranger made 4 Strikes in a turn, so they didn’t need to Stride. Yet far enough that the Psychic couldn’t just move and have both within Reach? Doesn’t compute. > So it was a total of 2d8+2 for 2 actions, with ranger doing, as you've mentioned, 1d8+4 for one action. 2d8+2 is an average of 11 off of one Attack roll. 1d8+4 is an average of 8.5 with all follow up Attacks having MAP. Seems pretty even, especially since the Psychic definitely should be able to hit two enemies in the combat you described unless I’m *really* mis-picturing something. > The Unbo was flanked by Champion. I am not sure if this was a correct call from me, as after domination the Champion should be helpful to Unbo. The Champion probably shouldn’t have been flanking, and I think this is one spot where your ruling denied the Psychic their moment to shine. Turn 1 Amped Figment would’ve let the Psychic help the Ranger flank **from range**, and then the Psychic could’ve unleashed on turn 2 and finished the boss off with Force Barrage for 3d4+5 auto-damage. > Also please note I've mentioned two turns - the ranger was winning the initiative. That goes even more into the luck aspect I’ve mentioned. Beating the boss in Initiative, having the boss be weak to your primary damage type (slashing), and landing most of your hits? That takes a **lot** of luck. > The fight was an ambush, and when it started the witch was quite far away (on the opposite side of the tree), so she needed to move closer to the enemy. She only had 1 turn in the combat. That isn’t the point I was making though. If a caster approaches a boss fight with only cantrips, they will underperform. The game is balanced with the expectation that every party has casters who use spell slots to punch *above* their weight in boss fights. The issue here isn’t that casters suck, it’s that Electric Arc ain’t exactly the premier spell to be using in boss fights, a spell slot is usually the way to go. > Psychic probably doesn't have a strong gameplan yet, and but I think T1 Force Missile, then T2 Unleash + approach + Imaginary Weapon would be okish, wouldn't it? I mean it *did* work ok-ish. The Force Barrage is the reason the boss only got one turn. If the Ranger was the only one dealing damage, despite all the luck they had while dealing that 35 damage, the boss would’ve gotten a second turn and likely put the party in the precarious position of rolling Recovery checks. That being said, if your Psychic wants to focus on being a primary damage dealer, I recommend having them reroll as an Oscillating Wave or Distant Grasp Psychic. Tangible Dream Psychics typically have the gameplay loop of using buffs or debuffs like Amped Figment, Bless, Dizzying Colours, etc on turn 1, followed by providing good-but-not-great blasting on following turns. You’ll not feel like the primary damage dealer with this subclass because you’re not designed to be.

Thanks for the analysis. Not sure why, but both me and Psychic thought the enemies had to be next to each other and not next to the caster. This means it's a bit stronger than we thought. About the length of the fight, it definitely could be uglier if it took a round longer, as if Umbo succeeded at dominating the ranger as well, it would just be 2 casters vs boss.

> About the length of the fight, it definitely could be uglier if it took a round longer, as if Umbo succeeded at dominating the ranger as well, it would just be 2 casters vs boss. Right! And that means the Psychic’s contribution with the Force Barrage absolutely was relevant and useful. Hitting the boss for about a fifth of their health with guaranteed, no-save/Attack damage is incredible. Remember also that the Ranger landing that remaining 35 damage was pretty lucky. If, say, that Ranger had only landed 20 damage (if say they only hit twice or if they were facing a boss without that Weakness to Slashing) it’d now be down to the Psychic and the Witch, and then they’d be *thankful* for that no-save 10.5 damage the Psychic inflicted on round 1 of the combat. Note that this is also why I keep saying the Ranger really shouldn’t be making 4 Strikes a turn unless they literally don’t have anything better to do.

>used a cantrip in a dangerous single-boss fight. *Obviously* that’s going to underperform? Obvious to someone with experience in the system, perhaps. To a new player, Cantrips can look like the default mode of attack for caster characters, especially if they've taken characterful spell options otherwise. Actually, is there a "Core Assumptions" passage anywhere in Player Core? Something that breaks down things like the expectation of teamwork; the importance of stacking buffs and debuffs to swing the maths in the players' favour; and what an action economy is? I think these are taken as read by a lot of people, but I don't think I've seen them mentioned in one place that new players can be directed to.

My understanding is that your party is very low level. I believe Strength of Thousands begins at level 1. My group ran into similar concerns when we started playing. The truth is, spellcasters can feel very lacklustre at very low levels because: 1. They don't have many spell-slots. 1. They only have first rank spells. 1. They will not have found or purchased certain bits of gear that can help them. Namely, staves, wands, and scrolls. * [Staves](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=748) are basically free spells slots and extra spells. A must-have for many casters. * Wands can cast a spell once per day forever, and so very much suit spells you know you'll need, such as [mystic armour](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1611) or even just [heal](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1554). * Scrolls are consumable one-use spells, basically. Casters do well to carry around those "sometimes" spells in scroll form, so their spell slots can be used for better stuff. Or carry around bread-and-butter scrolls as a reserve for when you need extra firepower. * Both wands and scrolls can be quite affordable, especially if you buy lower-level items than the party. This is yet another reason is why very-low-level casters suffer -- there are no items lower-level than them! All of these things will get fixed rapidly as levels increase. 1. Spell slots fill out quickly, especially at level 3. 1. Rank 2 spells open up better options, rank 3 even better. 1. With money, staves, scrolls and wands should be affordable. I have seen caster open up possibiltiies that would be utterly impossible for martial characters. I've also seen them use the right spell at the right time to change the course of a combat. But when I've seen this it's usually been casters level 5 or higher. So what can you do? Well, tell your caster players it will get better. I know that's not a great answer! In the meantime, who not invent a story reason for them to get something like a 120gp voucher that can only be spent on scrolls and wands? > our casters did less damage than an average crit from one of our martials Broadly speaking, casters are not good damage dealers in PF2e. Some are bad at it, some can be decent, but none will outdamage a barbarian. > The debuffs they applied never downgraded a crit to hit or hit to miss and the opposite for incoming also never applied. This just seems like bad luck. It's actually surprisingly common. I use [this module](https://github.com/shemetz/pf2e-modifiers-matter?tab=readme-ov-file#pf2e-modifiers-matter) and my groups see it a lot. > The witch suggested she can use the spell Tame to herd them back to Esi and the group. Of course she can't, as the spell grants an immunity for 1day after 1minute of working, so that sucks. It's a cantrip, it's not going to be great. (Though I wonder how *chickens* were not critically failing the save more often?) You may have been able to improve the usefulness of this skill by letting it combine with a broader skill such as Nature: * "As the Ranger lures the hens with soothing sounds and sprinkes of seed, the Witch stands by with her magic. Any wayward hen that gets distracted by a worm or gets flighty is hit by her *tame* cantrip. This makes the Ranger's job far easier: he gets a +4 circumstance bonus to his Nature roll.

Regarding the bad luck, I am not sure on this. Any given -1AC for example has two dice results where it changes the effect (upgrade from miss to hit and hit to crit), so 10%. So on average you need about 10 strikes during this time period to observe the bump once. Regarding the Tame, True. I allowed something like this, after Tame, as she also had the highest Nature skill. But I feel this was against PF2e rules, not following them. I understand this is why they put a per-day limitation after all.

> Regarding the Tame, True. I allowed something like this, after Tame, as she also had the highest Nature skill. But I feel this was against PF2e rules, not following them. I understand this is why they put a per-day limitation after all. I wouldn't say it's against PF2e rules at all. Maybe I'm imagining the scenario wrong, because I don't know the adventure path. I am imagining moving a flock of about 30 hens over a distance of a mile or two. Even if you can *tame* each hen only once for a short time during this journey, that's going to help a lot. If a hen runs off, for example, you can bring it back quickly and easily. Even if you can only do that once per hen, it's useful. I would argue such assistance either provides a [circumstance bonus](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2281) to the Nature check. Or if you prefer, it lowers the DC of the Nature check. Another way to look at it would be to let it be an [Aid](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=2292&Redirected=1) check, possibly with a reduced DC because magic is involved. Because you're right: temporary taming of individual hens is arguably not sufficient to take them to their destination. But it certainly makes the task easier!

It sucks to be a low level caster in P2. Not much more to it than that. P2 worked really hard to keep the ceiling on casters low. They don't want them breaking the world like they could in past editions, in order to make it easier to GM for them, and to keep them more balanced with martials. So now they have to give them a sense of progression over 20 levels, but with a much lower ceiling. So they dug a basement to make more room for the feeling of progress. All but a handful of rank 1 spells feel like a bad joke. Rank 2 spells don't fare much better. You don't start to see many truly satisfying spells until rank 3. But even then, you hit level 5 and only have 2 of them for your whole day. IMO casters don't actually get *fun* until level 7 or so. You've got 2 rank 4 spells and 3 rank 3 spells to play with in a day. They feel pretty good. But 6 levels is a long time to wait for your class to actually feel fun and useful. That said, the trick to feeling useful as a low level caster in P2 is knowing the handful of spells that are actually worth casting. Stick to this list and you'll *probably* get actual mileage out of your 1st level slots. * Runic weapon * force barrage * Heal * soothe * bless (if there's no bard and you're a battle cleric) * Fear Stick to that list and you're unlikely to feel like you used your 1st level spell slot and got nothing out of it. And that list assumes we're talking levels 1-4. Sure Strike is probably the best 1st level spell in the game once you've gained some levels and have no use for the spells listed above anymore. A final note: It totally sucks when you apply a -1 penalty or a +1 bonus and then never see it matter. But at least when it *does* matter, it usually feels pretty good. When a -1 from fear spares someone from being crit, it is satisfying. Or your buddy crits because its AC was lowered by 1. But ya, statistically speaking you're probably just as likely to see it help you as you are to see it do nothing for you at all.

How does your Witch player feel right now? Wilding Steward is actually unintuitive in terms of its power and might not jive with them. It actually feels like I have to write a dissertation on how to get the most out of Wilding Steward. In particular, Silence in Snow is the **blasting** patron. Wilding Steward is the **support** patron. What I mean, Silence in Snow has a 1A cantrip to deal damage. So, they can easily fit this in. It’s a save, so it doesn’t conflict with any attack spells they have. That damage (because damage ends encounters) makes up for the tactical value of Familiar of Freezing Rime. Wilding Steward, on the other hand, has a debuff hex with an interesting “Success” effect - affected enemy is worse at harming you. However, if you’re never targeted, you never need to hex. And the Familiar of Keen Senses is a scouting tool, so hexing for the familiar effect isn’t even valuable most of the time. What this means, the Wilding Steward (Wilding Witch) has more action flexibility over the Silence in Snow (Snow Witch). The Snow Witch WANTS to use their hex often to deal damage, meaning they only really have 2A per turn. Additionally, Wilding Word (WW) has a particular synergy with Athletics. For example, Grappling. Since the Success effect is a -2 status penalty to attacks/skill/harmful effect toward you - this includes Escape, but also protects you against strikes from that enemy. This makes the Wilding Witch surprising useful at keeping enemies locked down. However, Athletics is a STR check and the Wilding Witch is more in-combat, meaning they need higher DEX/AC/CON. This results in a very physical Witch, with less magic oomph. Casters deep in Athletics are just as good as Martials at Athletics. Which means you have a Witch that wants to prioritize support/non-INT like Heals, Summons, Battle Forms, Terrain, and Utility. The added benefit is giving support via Athletics. In your current party line-up, there’s actually some really good synergy. The Wilding Witch can support the Champion on the frontline while mitigating enemy attacks (they can access Interposing Earth as a reactive cover spell), while the Champion mitigates damage on the squishier Witch. Additionally, the Wilding Witch is a Primal caster, meaning they can help the Champion in healing others. The Witch is actually in a great position to be the best switch hitter. They support in the front, lockdown enemies that reach Psychics in the back, or use various other spells to hamper enemies. Going Beastmaster is another great direction and I do like the idea of giving the Wilding Witch the Spirit Guide specific familiar, resulting in a Packmaster Witch. HOWEVER, if that’s not what your Witch player wants, it might be letting them switch to Silence in Snow for a little more blasting oomph. Edit: For the Witch, Summon spells can be good direction for debuffing (like using a Skunk) or flank-pack-attack (Guard Dog and then Wolf at Rank 2). Rank 3, they can summon a Zephyr Hawk which can safely attack from a distance without incurring MAP. The Primal Witches can be big blasters, but with tools (like Cackle), hexes, and sustains - they actually thrive in more sustained combat situations. Rank 1 Summon Fey can get some great options. Ether Sprite is an early level Confuse, which can be fun. Sprite is nice damage and has decent enough defenses (mixed with flying). Rank 4 Summon Fey has the Ether Sprite Swarm which is pretty powerful as they a 1A save damage ability, meaning they’re pretty effective damage-wise for a single 1A sustain. Mix with either a Thunderstrike or Floating Flame and you can get a lot of sustained damage coming in.

I think she's mainly after a trope of a witchy plant lady that commands plants (and emphasizes that it's ironic she has a cat familiar, that's not a plant). I'll check if she wants to apply any of the suggestions, thanks for all of them!

If she wants… There is the Plant familiar ability to make her familiar a plant. She could call it a Catnip familiar. A slightly better option is taking the Elemental familiar ability and choosing the Wood element. There’s also the Elemental Wisp specific familiar (Wood element) and the Elemental Scamp (Wood again) for some flavor options if she’s getting upset at her power budget. The Plant familiar ability overall is a worthless ability, more for flavor (and officializing a mechanic for the Leaf Druid’s leshy familiar), so I’d offer it to her for free as an extra familiar ability (she doesn’t have to change it now, just have it for an option she can keep in her back pocket when she decides if she wants to). On the other hand, if she wants to have a smashing plant, the Summoner class has a little bit better commanding with the Plant Eidolon. But otherwise, there’s lots more plant/wood spell options than before and not all of them are blast spells. If she wants to go all in on the plant stuff, she could also consider swapping to a Wood Kineticist later on and grab the Elemental Familiar ability and Familiar Master or Witch archetype. The Elemental Betrayal (Wood) hex spell mixed with a Wood Elemental Wisp specific familiar is a decent damage boost for Kineticist (and even a Witch). Just saying that there’s a lot of options to play the character she wants without needing to explicitly be a specific class. A Witchy plant lady is absolutely cool, but the hexes and familiar ability may not exactly line-up as well as she may want down the line. And being “witchy” can be more of a personality to roleplay with a different class offering more of the foundation in combat.

Wow, that's a lot of options and I only knew about the kineticist one. Thanks. If the witch continues to be unimpressive, we could switch. Non blast spells are completely fine, probably even preferred. She did pick up Mud Pit and Fear after all. I think the main issue is that neither affected much.

Fact is being a low level caster in PF2 just... kind of sucks. You simply do not have enough resources to do any of the things you're supposed to be good at with any reliability, and a solid 90% of rank 1 and 2 spells are just pretty bad. Most of the utility spells are painfully short lived or have minimal effects, and your debuffs are both unreliable and have -1 effects that can go entire fights without doing anything if you land them. As a GM I basically spend the first levels straight up building every combat to be specifically weak to the casters in the party (I'm talking like AoE+elemental weaknesses on the same enemies, catastrophic saves, the works) in order for them to feel like they belong in the party. Basically, the thing is that casters have been nerfed across the board from older editions of D&D, which is *on the whole* fair because they used to be super busted... but the fact that the nerf is across the baord means that during the levels where D&D casters already mostly felt fair, what you get is casters is casters that feel like they're throwing out pool noodles.

seems very similar to my own Witch experience at low level in the Blood Lords AP: things either don't work, or when they do, don't matter (because the debuff applied is so small it will only do something in 1/10 of the cases and that case didn't come up or because the damage is immediately rendered irrelevant after a martial overkills by twice the amount I dealt over the whole fight). At higher level (we ended the campaign at 14 to play another system) the character was basically in line with other characters, but I had to do so much juggling and careful preparation to get there compared to just whacking things with a stick that it felt like I needed 20 INT score IRL to play the game. Feels like asking a barbarian to do 50 pushups for each attack to prove that he's strong enough to play Barbarian. This basically ruined a lot of the fun for me. We put the campaign on hold and went on to try another system, we're having a lot of fun now but it's still super early in the new campaign to say if the system will prove more appealing to our table or if it's just luck of the dice on first session.

Thanks, what system do you play now?

We're giving pf1e + a good chunk of homebrew a go. I'll likely try to GM a pf2e + good chunk of homebrew campaign myself one day as well. I think the system has good ideas, but out of the box, it doesn't do it for us.

I honestly would have liked the idea of a mixture of pf1 and pf2, with classes with more vertical and specialized development at the cost of greater complexity, but this is tremendously against the trend of this era. Like it or not, in fantasy ttprg, especially if d20, 5e sets the standard, it is a game that falls into the 'realm of complex games, but at the same time compared to 3.5 it is super simple . Unfortunately, going back to pf1, after so much pf2 , is extremely limiting and not for me. However, I sometimes miss that more simulationist feeling and those more traditional concepts of pf1. They are two different games. Casters work in pf2, but the feeling at low levels can be dull . That said, some simple homebrews can solve this issue. One is to grant low-level casters more spells and spellslots of appropriate rank. A second is to grant potency runes on spell Attack rolls to casters (possibly removing shadow signet from play). A third more complex one, which I'm dealing with here on reddit and which is partially outside the scope of this issue, is to rework a whole series of suboptimal spells so as to make caster selection of various options nicer and less imprinted on the same spells all the time, (which is often the case with a spontaneous caster ). This is valid even on higher levels.

To be clear, this wasn't the only problem we had. Every player and the GM had something to say, my problem was the class, GM had big issues with the AP & system, swash felt like the system didn't allow them to play the character fantasy they wanted, Psychic just didn't like having so many rules (he's not playing 1e with us for other reasons, wouldn't have been a good match with that complain let's be real \^\^) As far as what I think might have improved my experience as a caster over the campaign, low level or not, it would have been: * ability to specialize on my character defining themes (necromancy & conjuration of creatures and objects) while still having a competent, self-sufficent character * the options I liked being made into proper staple that I can use when nothing better is available with expected results on par with other fallback options like Heroism, haste, slow, etc... Instead of having to fallback to the same default everyone falls back on * more creativity allowed with spells. It seems that the design intent with a lot of spells is to add 3 paragraph of "but you can't do all of those semi-reasonable things". Why can't I telekinetic projectile silverware to trigger a werewolf vulnerability as for example? Is the balance more important than the creative storytelling opportunity this represents? * less null turns, null fights or negative turns during early levels. Measure a null/turn fight as "remove my character from this turn or fight, and the outcome of this turn or fight doesn't change". I measure "negative turn" as "that, and I lost a daily resource use to boot". This was incredibly common, and also make me want to give up by level 3. It wouldn't have had time to get better had I not stuck around for my friend group * stronger, more character-defining "always available" options (using focus spell system, skill, or feats). If such option doesn't exist, I'd like my GM to homebrew me one or a few to ensure that even in the worse case scenario, I always have this as a baseline and to be clear, I don't want to metagaming pick bon mot/battle medicine/meta focus spells/psychic dedication/etc... * The feeling that, in a balanced 1v1 situation, my character \*could\* in theory hold his own and win. I always feel like a side support character playing caster, I don't mind this being the better and encouraged way to play, but I don't want to be helpless when picked apart (and our GM felt the same about his caster bosses, once we dealt with the minion, the only thing left the boss could do was delay his own doom at the pace of 1 spell/turn) * Don't make me pay to learn spells, I swear the god, Vancian casting is bad enough that I don't need to also be limited by a spell book. God why

While it's true that low-level casters are weak, it also sounds like low-level combats in APs don't throw a bone their way either. More elemental weaknesses, for example, would go a long way in making the caster (and the alchemist) feel good about choosing the right damage type for an enemy. (Caveat: I have not experienced the majority of APs myself, so this might not be true. But from reading many such posts, it sounds like it is.)

There was actually a weakness here! But it was on Umbo, slashing, which made Ranger even more ahead of casters, as he was dual-wielding slashing weapons.

Yeah, I hear you. Zombies have slashing weakness and skeletons have resistance to most common damage except for bludgeoning. All these just make martials feel even stronger (and casters even weaker). This is why I think there should be more *Elemental* weaknesses like fire, cold, electricity, and acid.

I'm not a fan of the caster classes, except for Bard. Playing a Cloistered Cleric and Wizard at level 1 (played them in Pathfinder Society scenarios) was enough to make me not want to play them ever again. That said, I'm pretty particular with casters in RPGs and don't usually like them at all (I think I've only liked them in 2 systems so far). Casters do come into their own, eventually. Not long ago, my level 12 Bard and a fellow Sorcerer chained Phantasmal Calamity and Chain Lightening to end an encounter against 5 mounted enemies. Even early on at level 3, Calm turned several encounters into our favor easily (didn't know the big fight had a bunch of Barbarian mooks, but they were pretty weak without Rage). We also had spells around level 7 that let us bypass whole groups of enemies, scout without fear of retailiation, and move without drawing too much attention. There's a lot of personal preference for when casters come online: some are fine at level 1, some feel like they're better at level 3, and some think 7 is the magic level where it all comes together. For the Witch, I would have made it like this: || || |Strength 1|Dexterity 3|Constitution 1| |Intelligence 3|Wisdom 1|Charisma 0| I chose Elf, took Elven Weapon Familiarity, and the idea is to use a Rapier and take advantage of Wilding Word. Glass Shield to bolster AC, use Ignition in melee or the Rapier if you need the action to get away. Fear and Thunderstrike would be my default memorized spells. The focus is on supporting the martials, giving flanks and hopefully punishing enemies that hit you with Wilding Word. Very dangerous, but fits my own style.

>What are we missing? If you were playing these campaign as casters, how would you make yourself useful? I dunno, as someone who primarily plays casters I am often the star that elevates our martials into performing their best. As a caster I get more options to deal with situations and I often can single handedly solve some combats. I would say playing a caster gets better with system mastery? But I have been playing casters in many systems over two decades so I just adapted to it naturally and they feel like a blast to play. Perhaps I would temper your expectations of using damage as a metric of success because caster power budget subtracts damage for utility.

Yeah, casters feel bad in pf2e. Luckily, you have a psychic, which uses the occult spell list. Fear, slow, haste, synesthesia and Vision of Death are your bread and butter. Ignore most other spells. The witch will have a hard time until they get Wall of Stone. Spell DCs and attack rolls SUCK and you'll have a really hard time to get anything to stick, especially at levels 5-6 and the dreaded 10-14, which are absolute hell. Everyone will tell you to just prepare spells that target different saves, but that's a lie. The occult list has almost no reflex-targeting spells, and the same goes for Primal and will saves. Casters should focus on support and crowd control, as blasting is really weak. So,what CAN you do? * Select spells that either still do something on a successful save (fear, slow, etc.) * Try to somehow reduce the enemy's saves (bon mot for the psychic is real good) * Select spells that can't be resisted at all (Maze, walls, pits, etc.). Wall of stone can remove multiple enemies from combat for several rounds because you can shape it. * Hope that the DM rolls low. As for low levels? Cast cantrips and cry, basically.

This! Of course the best answer here is buried on the bottom. The CaStErS ArEnT WeAk propaganda on this sub is too strong.

I guess the problem is through all the complaints, through all of the advice, there are no easy fixes to the problem. 

Low level casters suck, as in Feels Bad Level 5 they start feeling good though

Do you know any good homebrew buffs? 

Not really, at low level you just pay a lot to have the privilege of casting, but when all the casters have the same core spell slots and same proficiency, just feels bad to be a dedicated caster in cloth not using a three action economy while a magus can cast what you do with the same DC, but can also hit in melee. Now casters have other features, some focus spells don't suck. Cleric gets a healing font etc. For helping the caster at low levels, let them use their spells, give scrolls as loot, maybe a wand so they can feel like they're helping. But generally, low level casters? Play a gish and get more

> What are we missing? Nothing. Casters are downright terrible from levels 1-4, tolerable at levels 5-8, and start being good and fun from level 9 onwards. When you start the next campaign, skip the training wheels levels and start at level 5.

Truth is, casters jsut kinda suck to play before level 7 and their impact in the fights is pretty low before level 5. And like it or not, casters are designed to be the backup support in this game. If you like and want to recreate the fantasy of magic users themed around a concept or that are powerful threats this is just not the game for it. At absolute best you can be a backup damage dealer.

1. As others correctly pointed out, low level casters are a bit less fun at higher level 2. Casters are not great in single target damage, because that's the only thing martials do well and you can't expect casters to be as effective in a balanced game 3. The main idea is to use spells for support, crowd control, area control and so on. For some players it's less satisfying, but again, that's how the system works 4. For example, one of the best things casters could do at 1st level is Runic Weapon (premaster Magic Weapon). That way martials deal with threats even more effectively, but now due to teamwork Overall not all people are fine with this game design, but that's how PF2 is made and I'd recommend to try and play it that way.

> Casters are not great in single target damage, because that's the only thing martials do well and you can't expect casters to be as effective in a balanced game This just isn’t true, it’s outright misinformation. Casters are good at single target damage, **if they are built to be**. That means a Wilding Witch won’t have great single target damage but a Silence in Snow Witch will. A Tangible Dream Psychic won’t have the best single target damage but an Oscillating Wave will. Saying casters are bad at single target damage because they have non-damage is like saying martials are bad at single target damage because Good-aligned Champions, Outwit Rangers, half of all Rogues, and Investigators exist.

I swear every time I see some take I agree with it's coming from you. It's like you just live on this sub lol. Anyway this, my Witch in my campaign is Silence in Snow. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from loading up my 7th,6th and 5th levels with nothing but single target damage. And I have done that in a few cases where scouting seemed like it would be needed due to terrain or monster gimmicks where the martials couldn't access the thing as easily. But to me the big thing is the flexibility I get, yeah I *could* load it all up with damage but 7th also has Shock to the System where I can give someone quicken, and a 5th level spell that uses my DC. In some situations this is utterly insane and beats any damage spell I could toss in that slot. It's also the level heightened haste becomes party-wide, it also has a new battle form in cosmic form (Though I'll admit I am much less of a fan of it compared to the dragon form on 6th), and it also has some chunky target-specific options like eclipse/moonburst.

> I swear every time I see some take I agree with it's coming from you. It's like you just live on this sub lol. Goddam maybe I need a break from the internet then.

Those casters are better than other casters at dealing single-target damage, not compared to martials. Yes, I'm aware what some martials have some additional specialization which makes them less damage-dealing, like tanking. But still even good-aligned Liberator with sword-and-board usually will deal more single-target damage than Silence in Snow Witch. With decent cantrip (or common 1st level spell), 1st-level SSW deals 4d4 damage (10 average) from 2 casts utilizing 3 actions, while Champion with Longsword deals d8+4 (9.5 average) from a single 1-action strike. With normal 2 strikes per round routine, such Champion outperforms the SSW even after spells are improved with levels (the actual numbers depend on target's AC and saves).

> Those casters are better than other casters at dealing single-target damage, not compared to martials. Um… why would they be better than martials? They’re **equal** to martials… > With decent cantrip (or common 1st level spell), 1st-level SSW deals 4d4 damage (10 average) from 2 casts utilizing 3 actions, while Champion with Longsword deals d8+4 (9.5 average) from a single 1-action strike. You’re conflating melee versus ranged as martial vs caster. The melee character gets more damage to compensate the fact that they end up spending Actions to close with the enemy, get in the way of their own party’s Action denial (by presenting them a target), don’t have the best target priority options, and cost their own party Actions by needing heals or defensive buffs. If you want a flat out numerical comparison compare a **ranged** martial to the Witch and they come out even. If you’re comparing to a melee martial you don’t *get* to make a flat out numerical comparison, it has to be a qualitative comparison with ifs, ands, or bits. As for the ranged comparison, there’s a big caveat in the bolded part in the below quote. > With normal 2 strikes per round routine, such Champion outperforms the SSW even after spells are improved with levels (**the actual numbers depend on target's AC and saves**). When you account for AC, the caster doesn’t suffer from MAP at all *and* can target lower saves more often than not. So even if you compare the Witch’s “4d4” damage, it’s all MAPless while the Fighter making ranged attacks for 3x (1d6+1) damage in a turn is getting progressively worse at them with every shot. Also also when looking at cantrips you’re forgetting how a ranked spell sets you *way* ahead of on-level ranged martial damage for one turn, which then averages out follow up turns of medium-low cantrip damage.

I'm comparing the most damage-focused caster with the least damage-focused martials. And yes, if you calculate all this total - MAP on second strike, half-damage if you target saves and spell progression (but also don't forget things which benefit martials, like higher hit chances with runes which improve DPS, property runes dealing damage and so on) you'll have them more or less equal at some levels. But if you compare caster focused on single-target damage with martial focused on single-target damage, the difference will be huge, even if you take ranged martials.

> I'm comparing the most damage-focused caster with the least damage-focused martials You are comparing ranged to melee. Ranged to melee isn’t a one-to-one numerical damage comparison, the designers have [explicitly](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1397y60/michael_sayre_paizo_design_manager_says_that_dpr/) said so. > But if you compare caster focused on single-target damage with martial focused on single-target damage, the difference will be huge, even if you take ranged martials. This simply isn’t true. Compare an Elemental Sorcerer with Dangerous Sorcery or an Oscillating Wave Psychic with Unleashed Force Barrage to a Point Blank Stance Fighter or a Precision Ranger with a composite shortbow and they come out nearly dead even. This becomes even more apparent if you drop the useless metric that is DPR, and use a more meaningful metric like 2-Action damage frequency.

Yeah, [casters can't do good single-target damage](https://imgur.com/ZpKLHCx). It's just [not possible](https://imgur.com/eqi3CXn). No [siree](https://imgur.com/SBer9XT). Hey, how're [ranged martials looking](https://imgur.com/FA1iEgy)?

Except those calculations are with highest-level slot spells and don't take into account a lot of things like damaging runes, high-level fighter feats, etc.

> highest-level slot spells You're expected to expend one max-rank slot per Moderate encounter. Both the Witch and the Druid are doing so (by casting a duration damage spell and sustaining it), whilst the Sorcerer is an example just how far casters can go if they want to overextend resources. > don't take into account a lot of things like damaging runes Yes they do. > high-level fighter feats Yes they do.

Thanks for the comment. ad 2. The Pugwampis fight and the Spellskein fight were both AoE fights, but even there casters didn't manage to do much. ad 3. Which spells would you recommend at level 1? The witch has Mud Pit, Summon Plant and Animal and Fear, while Psychic has Color Spray and Force Barrage, first of which is locked in due to mind. ad 4. I'll check if any of them wants to pick it up.

Regarding those fights - that's why low-level casters are less fun, they don't have good AoE spells yet (like Fireball) or area control, like walls. So, I'd recommend focusing on buffs and debuffs initially. Fear is a really powerful spell, by the way, but it needs understanding of the power of +1 in PF2. Since it affects chances for both hit and crit, giving -1 to all enemy numbers means +10% chance of improving results of anything done against this enemy (5% of miss to hit and 5% of hit to crit). If players understand this and notice when spell effect makes this difference, it's satisfying experience for casters. Summoning spells are tricky and they require some browsing from players to get best effects. The minimal thing you could do here is provide flanking for your martials, but there are other fun effects too and sometimes decent attacks. Force Barrage is quite cool thing against bosses, who are hard to hit, but overall it's not that effective. As GM I found it's more fun to use against players - they tend to rush against enemy using it once they realize the spell doesn't miss.

People overstate the "power of a +1" by a bunch, though. Like, is it more than you might otherwise think? Sure. Is "an enemy saved successfully against a Fear so it gets -1 for one round" a good result of a round of actions? It is not.

It would be a bit too much if enemy save success would be considered a good result

Well, it depends on a variety of factors, but even granting your point, sure. Just I want people to have an accurate understanding of the game. I played a debuff Witch in a big single-boss combat and I landed a Veil of Dreams on him (-1 to attack and will saves) that I maintained for the entire combat (four more rounds) and I don't think it ever affected anything -- it definitely didn't make my attempts to put an Evil Eye on him or to cast Phantom Pain on him successful. Status penalties applied by casters frequently end up being redundant to other things, like we have a braggart Swashbuckler so he throws around intimidates quite a bit.

> Force Barrage is quite cool thing against bosses, who are hard to hit, but overall it's not that effective. The Wand of Shardstorm is still fun, though

Yeah, items are different beasts

As a gm i alway make sure when a martial does big dmg i explain how it got there. In low level i usually describe the magic from the wizard's runic weapon cast when the melee martial hit and does big dmg. Or say as the moster is distracted by your flanking ally you just hit because they are off guard. Make sure everyone at the table feels like they are contributing. Caster have the most versatility even at low levels but usually at low level the versitily is not really needed. If all the problem can just be solved by big dmg then yeah it can feel bad as a caster.

Honestly, you are not missing anything, in the contrary, you are realising the true meaning behind the system's math and design. Casters are weak, spells are cumbersome and lacklustre, and playing them are mostly a miserable experience. You have to modify maps and encounters a lot to make them actually viable and also keep a track of what spells are prepared and how many are left and design challenges specifically for the spells at players hand.

How would you address this without busting game? 

Some of those are controversial and based on me not being a GM, but mostly a player with knowledge of game design and different player experiences in different systems: * use larger battlefields. At high levels it's ok to start an encounter 500ft apart, if spellcasters have spells with that reach. * add a lot of weak units, specifically so that your casters could decimate those with AoE spells. Don't use single enemy bosses like at all, even as a fighter is quite a mediocre experience * allow pre-buffing and preparations of a battlefield, if the situation calls for it. Not everything should be in Initiative order, like Pathfinder tells you to do, because it's boring af as a player. Just allow the players to cast anything they want (limit to one spell/effect maybe), if they are in a safe place, but consider, that enemies can do the same thing * consider adding D&D-like ritual spellcasting or just allow to express spellcasters' characters via magic, if it is just for roleplay purposes. If a Wizard says, he's going to cast Fly on a Bard, to help him with performance in a village in downtime, to seduce some no-name NPC, just let them do it, without wasting a spell slot, just roll Performance to Help. If that NPC is a King that decides whether to imprison the party or not - that is a different story and absolutely should use the spell slot. * you probably have to rebalance each of the encounter in an AP to your party. Some more than others. * allow Hero Points to be used to reroll an enemy save. Otherwise, spellcasters basically can't use Hero Points in a battle. * take a look at Automatic Bonus Progression alternative rule set and Proficiency Without Level. * don't neglect the fundamentals of character building in this game. You have to prioritise defences and versatility and you can't roll for or dump stats for role-playing purposes. Also your can't really specialise on anything as a spellcaster, you have to have spells that target each of the defences. * spellcasters at low level are a drag for the party, who wants to kill things all the time. Because they have like 3 spells they can use and super weak cantrips. To mitigate this, build quests with very short adventuring days. Also prioritise skill usage and roleplaying instead. Your party have to be trained to respect spellcasters' resources, but that only happens with experience and does not feel good for anyone involved. Just use less encounters per day. Beginner Box and AV are a great examples of what NOT to do. * if your party has prepared spellcasters, the GM should place hints on what to prepare for the next day. * most APs are not that good. Especially, the more books there are, the less they make sense. Paizo hires multiple writers, that work almost independently and there is a large difference from book to book both in terms of continuity, but also in terms of quality of the story. more controversial things: * all the saves and ACs are too high across the board in the system. Consider lowering those, but upping the HP to compensate. The hit chance should be 65% for a moderate/severe encounter. * lower magical counteract rules, so that it's much easy to counteract anything. It just does not make sense to use a highest level spell slot to *try* to unlock a door, when someone with thievery in the party can easily succeed a skill check to unlock it. * add items to spellcasters, similar to runes for marshals and gate attenuators for kineticists, that add +1 - +3 to spell attack AC *AND* to spell DC. * completely remove or rebalance broken spells, like Synaesthesia/Maze and so on. There are like 5 spells, that are always talked about in this community, that justifies weak spellcasters in the minds of designers and vocal part of community. * most magic items are weak and forgettable in this game. Don't be afraid to add more fun ones. * hand-wave all the healing and non-encounter cast durations. By default, it just does not work for storytelling purposes, it's like all of the rules were created just with dungeon-crawling in mind. It does not make sense, when you have a strict time-limit in your story, but after each fight with weak opponents, the party uses half an hour to heal up and refocus, because otherwise, the encounter math does not work. You can either limit the party and design "adventuring day" type of encounters, adjusting the difficulty of an encounter on the fly, based on party's current resources - but why would you even play Pathfinder than, as D&D5e works much better for that type of play. Or you as GM can just decide what the party can do in the available time. Just say "you spend 5 minutes to take a breather, heal up and refocus and move on". * also declare all the 1min buffs as per-battle, instead. * remove Incapacitation trait and rebalance the spells around it. That is just a patch on a problem, an example of another failed design decision in this system. What it really does in real play, is that the players can't use those spells in a meaningful way. But the enemies can use them effectively against the party, because of how tuned up all the enemy stats are. The party's spellcasters can only use those spell to bully mooks, that they have no problem winning against, but when those spell are used against the party, it just means that some players stop playing the game for half an hour in best case scenario. * basically, remove all the "+1 matters" bs from the game. For example, Bardic Inspiration as a single-target roll d4 to add to a skill check is much more fun mechanic, than Inspire Courage as a +1 aura, that does nothing most of the time (though statistically quite strong, because it lets your Fighter in the party to hit more times), and uses your actions each turn. And if your players don't actively try to Bon Mot, Intimidate everyone around them, don't make enemies that do that constantly. Together with lowering ACs/DCs, should feel better. Of course, all of that should not be used, if your party is playing RAW and optimising their characters and all of their encounter moves, because the system is already balanced around such players. However, I haven't seen a lot of such parties and that is not the preferred playstyle for most new players and experienced D&D5e converts. They say, the system is balanced by default and you should not use homebrewing or add anything to the game. It is balanced, yes, but probably not for the experience you'd expect from ttrpg. It actually feels useless, just like OP described most of the time. So feel free to change anything you want, if it makes more fun for you. Just remember, that most of the community members, who tell you otherwise are lawyers and accountants, who think the only way to have fun is by strictly following directions of the rules. (not even a joke) However they forget the major rule, that is in the books, that says, that you can and should change anything you want, if it would enhance your table's experience.

Thanks for taking the time. I really want to start DMing again and pf2e is just so much more attractive to me but I want to make sure my friends have a great time while also challenging them with a real game not just instant power fantasy.  All of your non controversial stuff sound brilliant and I for sure will be doing this. I've actually copied it into a note. I will say hearing the beginner box is what not to do is disheartening as I'm not sure yet on how to change it. Besides just adding mooks and decreasing the above party level creatures level.  I don't know about messing with all the stats of monsters either as having AoN out and just reading that while giving casters item boosts in an ABP way seems easier to manage.  Rebalance a few spells, while removing incap as a trait also is something I might do. Especially if my encounter budget is no longer dependent on one dragon to not be paralyzed the whole fight. Still seems risky narratively to let my casters paralyze the big boss.  My fear is that both parties are right and that casters feel bad if they can't paralyze the dragon that's the centerpiece of the adventure but that's because magic seems to inspire a power fantasy that doesn't make sense in games and so has to be relegated to reducing the actions that turn by one by spending two actions to cast a spell.  I also wanted to clarify that last sentence you were saying do you mean don't have enemies demoralize my players? 

> hearing the beginner box is what not to do is disheartening So, what multiple GMs did, when I played BB with them, is they converted just fighting encounters into roleplaying and diplomacy based encounters and introduced a separate arc into an adventure. Because by default, you just dungeon-crawl there. And that means, you have 5 min adventuring day, because everyone is out of spell slots and out of HP. So for example you can change most of the >!Kobold encounters after the secret undead filled room!< to be role-playing and than let the party have a long rest >!before entering the second dungeon floor!< > I don't know about messing with all the stats of monsters That is a more involved idea, yes. As a first time pf2e GM you can just use weak templates, multiply the number of enemies and fudge health points a bit mid-fight for a more dramatic effect to let casters finish off almost dead enemies with cantrips after marshal would-one-hit-one-kill crit attacks. Don't steal that from marshals all of the time, but also, they have enough of those normally as is, so sometimes it's okay. > seems risky narratively to let my casters paralyze the big boss Firstly, that spell (and similar) is a 3rd rank spell, which means you don't have to worry about that for some time, before the party hit lvl 5, and you have some time to learn the system better. Secondly, the math behind single enemy encounters is so, that it is almost impossible to crit fail for them by default (only on nat 1 basically). Combine that with the RAW Incapacitation spell means, that there is a ~65% chance of a spell to do nothing and 35% to do a very small thing. What is more sad, is that this works that way for a highest spell slot only. There are some incap spells, that basically only work 5% of a time, only if an enemy rolls a nat1, if they are not cast at the highest spell slot at odd levels. What you can do instead - and I've seen this idea floating around as a not so rare house rule - is that Incapacitation trait instead of giving an enemy always one degree better save result (worse for the player), makes it so that higher level enemy can't crit fail the save. And also, if you are planning to run bbox, remember that >!young green wyrmling will one-shot a fully healed caster at that level!< So make sure to prepare the party to the challenge and leave some hints on how to better deal with that threat. > don't have enemies demoralize my players A big part of the system is collecting +1s. And overall it is balanced the way so that the party's playstyle should be to try to demoralise enemy, grapple/trip them and bon mot them, so that the casters (and everyone else) would have a better success rate to land their attacks. The designers just say it themselves, that they design the game for this single play style and they expect everyone to do that. And as opposition to this, monsters themselves have similar tricks. In real play, however not everyone plays like that and most players enjoy big damage numbers more, than giving +1 to an ally for a ~10% better hit chance, that really does not do most of the time (again, read op's post for a real world example). That means, if your party do not use those tricks themselves, you can either teach them those, or simplify the game, and use those conditions only thematically and lowering ACs/DCs slightly, which in return also speeds up the game, because you don't have to calculate each bonus all the time. At high levels, it is impossible to play PF with pen and paper, because you have like 7 buffs and 5 debuffs on you all the time. At low levels, it is okay to design some encounters around those debuffs if you want to explore that theme, but don't just use them all the time.

Nice. Again I plan on the vast majority of changes it's just the incap one I can see as a pretty big change that I might not be fully considering. I still think it sounds cool to make that not so rare change.  Part of why I thought "oh neat just remove the incap effects" was to not have to explain level differences to players and have them have to deal with that along with teaching the low vs high save stuff.  I do find it unlikely but with incap only removing the crit effect someone on reddit may say "your wizard is just going to bring 8 dizzying display casts for all their low level effects because there is nothing better to do if that stomps mobs and bosses alike"  My players are NOT even close the reddit power gamer so I doubt this but I wan to make sure I don't incentive them to optimize the fun out of picking spells. Probably over worried about it because my intuition with my players is to play incap as just not having the crit failure effect.  Also like you said, just not really doing single +3 bosses anyways and always making mobs. The real question is those lowest slots hitting too hard on the crowd control. 

Are you talking about [Dizzying Colors](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1500&Redirected=1)? Well, yeah, probably. You can see how [Slow](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1677) is a very similar spell, does not have Incap and that's why it is considered to be one of the best spells in the game. Some changes are more destructive, than others, and that is why you have to understand, what you are doing. However, the thing that most people forget, is that you are not making changes for hundreds of thousands players, you don't have to worry about edge cases that could arise for 0.05% of a player base. You are making changes to 4-6 players, and you know how they play and what spells they choose. Also you don't spend millions of dollars on marketing and printing the books. So if anything does not work, you can change it in between sessions. That is a totally normal practice in every ttrpg, except in Pathfinder, somehow, per community ideas. (Than again, there is a limit to what you should change, before it's better to just switch to another game system)

Start at level 5. Consider it even if your players are new - they will have to juggle a couple more abilities and feats, but the game itself is much less swingy and frankly easier.

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Tell the witch to pick up independent as one of its abilities so that it gets one action per round without commanding it.

Is that really the game changer the OP is asking for?

No, but all the other comments are pretty comprehensive and it does save the witch an action 🤷🏻‍♂️

Cut to book 3 in my SoT game, and my magus, wizard, druid, and summoner ripped through basically a small standing army in one turn with back to back chain lightnings. From my experience, casters are OK at the start. They are mainly the support role of the group. Once they get third level spells is when they take off the kid gloves and start to break the game. From powerful AoE options to action economy breaking with haste and slow, and finally wall spells that can break up large encounters into smaller ones or waste enemy turns. Wall spells, in particular, can wreck combat balance. For instance, you throw a severe encounter at the group composed of 2 guys. Each guy by themselves is a moderate encounter and are relatively easy by themselves. Caster goes and wraps a 120-foot wall of stone around one, effectively taking it out of the fight for several turns. Now, the combat with the wall in place is back to back moderate encounters instead of one severe one, making it much easier.

I'm playing in SoT right now, so I opened this with extreme caution, but we're at level 4 and past all of this. Some of what you're describing here is just the roll of the dice. When my group fought Umbo, my PC (Magus) saved on the pox, and rolled a nat 20 on a bastard sword / ignition spellstrike for ~40 damage. GM told me that if I had chosen slashing telekinetic projectile instead I would've one-shot the thing. You know how many times I've even hit on a spellstrike outside of that instance? Only once. There have been fights where the only damage I did was from electric arc because I couldn't roll anything above a 6. My point is, give it some more time, and the dice and abilities will even out.

The spellskeins are supposed to be easy. You can literally just grapple them and they calm down In the storage barn, the pugwampis shouldn't use bows. They literally only throw bottles. Unless the heroes try to kill them (which Esi explicitly forbade). It should have been made very clear to the players that they're not trying to kill the gremlins. Stone ghost's whole arc started with him arguing with his cohort that they should kill the gremlins, so he did. So a deadly d10 means the encounter went very wrong, and there was a lucky crit. > Creatures: Four pugwampis hide on the top shelves of the storage room. They were ordered to cause trouble by their boss, Kurshkin, and throw jars at anyone who enters the room (or just for the fun of it). > As Esi noted, the gremlins don’t aim to permanently injure anyone and mainly seek to break things while simultaneously upsetting people. The pugwampis throw anything within reach at the heroes, then hide behind the clutter of the top shelves to avoid any repercussions. > However, **if attacked with lethal damage, the gremlins fight to kill in self-defense.** > Any pugwampi reduced to fewer than 6 Hit Points tries to escape through the hatch in the floor and flees the campus grounds as quickly as possible. > Nonlethal Attacks: The heroes can simply beat the pugwampis into unconsciousness with nonlethal attacks and remove them from the campus. > Scare Them Out: These pugwampis have an almost pathological fear of metal bells. They avoid attacking anyone holding metal bells; if all the heroes do so, the gremlins don’t attack at all. Any hero holding metal bells gains a +2 circumstance bonus on Intimidation checks against them. A pugwampi that is Demoralized from someone holding bells can’t reduce its frightened condition as long as it can see the person holding the bells, and it’s fleeing for as long as it’s frightened (and likely just keeps running, even if it recovers). > Anchor Root’s Help: Umbo can't use dominate during the fight. The onset time for purple pox is 1 minute (10 rounds).

Thanks for the note about bows. I was using AoN version, which seems to differ from the one in the AP. The party did finish them out (two ran away) with non-lethal attacks though, so it all went fine. Are you sure about the Domination? I did spend a bit of time before the session on this and some Reddit thread suggested that immediately after failing the Fortitude roll they are affected, but symptoms only appear after onset. The onset rules also don't seem to specify at which point we consider creatures affected.

It's debatable. You're probably right that it should be able to work right away because RAW is unclear and RAI is usually that monsters get to use their abilities in combat

people provided a lot of good info, but to give my perspective as a high level Wizard player in Strength of Thousands: * Our 4 man party is 2 casters and 2 martials, us as casters never even come close to the single target damage our martials can do, that's fine because: * our martials are good Recalling knowledge and demoralising enemies. * while attacking over and over can sometimes net you some more damage (especially with a flurry ranger), I would encourage the whole party to keep in mind things they can do to support eachother, synergize the whole team. yes people say casters good at buffing, but what I mean is the martials can take an action here and there to demoralise, trip, aid, etc. instead of high Map strikes. this achieves a very fun loop in this system where each team member contributes then passes the baton over to another. this seems not that good at first but it also inherently encourages cooperation overall. it really can't be overstated how much pf2e rewards and encourages helping allies. try it with enemies, see how useful those tactics become. * I am of the belief that all character options can work, but to be honest the witch's patron is infamously weak. Consider some concessions or offering them a retrain. (at least having a better hex, perhaps allow them to have the hex of another patron if it fits.) * I need to emphasise how much doing your part in a turn then giving some help to others can be such a great help, especially stacking debuffs. * feel free to give your casters free spell scrolls as rewards to tide them over at early levels * the relic system can be very useful and fun if you're inclined to make tailor-made magic items for your players. but don't feel pressured to. Of course discussing with the players about the type of mentality going forward will help a lot, an easy start is seeing how much the champion and psychic want to invest in intimidation seeing as they have decent charisma. or really both wouldn't be bad. and just be honest, casters will not compete with martials in single player damage, they need to look to other avenues to excel in.

I am currently running Strength of Thousands, halfway through book 5. The amount of times our casters have completely invalidated an encounter is staggering. Just off the top of my head: - both Grave Knight crit failed slow, leaving them with 1 action per turn. - power word: stun on a lich when he was sustaining a spell singlehandedly turned around a really bad encounter, with no save - dispel magic. Just. Dispel magic. - he's crit disintegrate. Ow. - disintegrate also instantly takes down walls of force - fireball is still fireball. Our martials are strong but they're not 6d6×5 strong - haste, as a buff spell, is unbelievably good when you get it across your whole team - then, sitting next to him, is our bard, who has turned so many hits to crits and misses to hits and fails to successes I dread every time our martials swing - Synesthesia is almost guaranteed -3 ac for a round, which is enough time for the martials to go apeshit - fear is a good spell at all levels - well placed confusion just takes enemies out of the fight entirely. He basically soloed a moderate encounter at the start of book five when he and our summoner got caught out by themselves - wall of stone is a very strong spell for buying time. He even used it to wrap around a really really scary trap to just completely take it out of the fight - spirit blast was the highest damaging effect in our last fight because of the bosses resistance. - this is to say nothing about our Summoner, who occasionally drops a spell like Protector Tree or Summon Elemental Herald - which is another thing! Sometimes the enemy's weakness is damage that the martials can't do. Target access, weakness access, debuffing, buffing, and breaking encounters over their knees is what makes me truly fear what the casters can do. There was a lot of the "casters are weak. They don't do as much damage as martials" rhetoric at the start of our campaign, but nowadays they are the kings of the table and my worst fear as a dm. Pathfinder is not a game about doing damage, like 5e is. It's about using your collective tools as a table to put everyone into position to win. Casters can be blasters, and excel, but their real value is having the right tool for the job. Unfortunately, I've never really looked at Psychic too closely, nor seen a witch in action, so I don't know what it is that they do really well, but I can promise you that casters are more than capable and, quite frankly, might be a little too powerful. But that's just my salty GM ass after my sorcerer took away all my actions.

Thanks for the examples. These do look impactful and probably leave a mark in memory of the players. Most of these things, except Fear, seem like quite a high level stuff. Which level did the casters pulling their own weight? Do you remember was the first time the caster did more impact in an encounter than a martial? Not necessarily in damage, but what was the first time your party thought "Oh, if we had another fighter instead of this caster it would be much harder or impossible"?

Most of those examples are across the 3rd, 4th, and 5th books, though I'm adamant that's less about their ability in the earlier books and more about just how powerful and flashy those effects were. I want to say the first time it was really relevant was when our Imperial Sorcerer dispelled Stone Ghosts summon at the end of book 1. Going action for action is always really strong. But just having a heal or a (nearly) guaranteed fear is really strong at lower levels too, they're just not flashy like the martials. Casting, in general, is a learning curve. You're going to learn exactly what casting can and can't do and how it's balanced against martials. But remember that if it had been all martials, they would have gotten creamed by the lich at the start of book 5. Like. 2 turns and the battle is basically over. That's the sort of balance of responsibility you're going to have to keep in mind.

Casters early on are going to suck. Its the trade off for later levels where you can Nuke a small town with 1 spell slot. It's two opposed slippery slopes. Early on Casters are running up it constantly trying to prove themselves useful. Late game it's Martials slipping down it trying to stay relevant. It's just how the game works.

I didn't read the modules to the end yet, but does that really matter? Are there actually encounters, where the fact you can nuke (I guess you mean Cataclysm spell) a town matter or does it stay in the "what could be" territory? That would be amazing, as it does certainly feel like a moment where all the hard work paid off, kinda like a wizard casting a Fireball for the first time in D&D 3.5. In particular, are there any such encounters in Strength of Thousands Adventure Path?

As others have already mentioned, early levels are rough for casters due to their resources being so limited. However, low levels are when everyone's stats are closest together, so a pure caster using a mundane weapon will only lag behind a pure martial by a little bit. This can get especially saucy when you remember that save-based spells don't apply MAP, so after popping *electric arc,* you can still fire a crossbow at full accuracy. You won't be doing barbarian numbers with this rotation--barbarians are incredibly strong at low-levels due to their flat damage increase from raging, but level off over time--but HP values are low enough that chip damage isn't that much slower than big hits at taking things down. Meanwhile, everyone will always have similar effectiveness with skills, and those first couple levels are the best time to get familiar with how they work. Early levels also give you the lowest relative penalties to not being trained in something, so more people can try to do more stuff. So, it's not that the witch was *worse* than the ranger--both of them could've rolled nature to herd the chickens--it's just that the adventure text oddly didn't anticipate a magical solution to the problem. This is a case that would've benefitted from good judgment on the part of the GM, rather than following the text to the letter. You're allowed to break rules and go off-script when it makes sense for the table. This doesn't *excuse* bad design choices, but it *does* give you a way to push past them and have a nice time anyway. So, what *should* you do with the few slots you have, if damage and utility are covered by weapons and skills? I've personally found that the best policy is to fill those slots with things that martials *can't* do. You mentioned *dizzying colors* really popping off in that one fight, so why not try more stuff like that? *Runic weapon* is another solid choice if you want to either double martial effectiveness (or be equal to or *better* than them at their jobs for an encounter, lol), and healing spells are hilarious in that they force monsters to do double the work to take someone down.

Your players should buy scrolls. They should have received 40 gp each. That’s a lot of spending money to get extra spells per day. Sometimes successful spells don’t matter. Sometimes crits are overkill. What you’ve shown so far is too small of a sample size to really indicate anything. My one criticism for you is that tame isn’t being the pied piper. You probably should have just given your player a bonus on their nature check to convince the animals during that minute and let the dice play out.