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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Low-level Wizards in PF2 - are they still underpowered?
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<blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7786392" data-attributes="member: 16586"><p>In general I think a significant portion of class balance is going to come down to encounter design and how the GM plays the adversaries. If you let melee specialists stand there and whack things ranged classes and rogues are going to have trouble competing. However if the GM utilizes things like Feint, Demoralize, Grapple, Trip, and Shove things get more interesting. </p><p></p><p>Diversity in encounter design helps. Have sneaky kobolds and goblins actually be sneaky. Utilize things like ranged weapons. Go after casters and archers so melee needs help drag them away. Rangers are not nearly as effective when they need to switch targets. An encounter with a couple ghouls with corpses strewn about where the leap away to feast gives ranged classes a time to shine.</p><p></p><p>In general terms melee does the most damage when they can have a high amount of up time. Generally melee is a dangerous place to be which should affect their ability to be optimal. You can see this directly in the abilities of several of the abilities in higher level monsters, but is not necessarily apparent on lower level creatures like the Orc Warrior unless you look more closely at their skills and ranged weapons.</p><p></p><p>As far as I can tell a wizard is never really competitive in single target damage, but they do get fairly potent area damage and have the ability to target monster weaknesses extremely well. Electric Arc is actually pretty nice against lower level enemies. The area on burning hands is a little meager, but can be effective with Widen Spell. A central part of the problem is that because monsters only go down to -1 you are missing part of the range of encounter design where area damage is extremely effective. There are also some pretty potent debuffs and buffs for higher level combats. Magic Weapon will turn that Barbarian into a wrecking crew. I would not scoff at fear. Frightened is an extremely potent condition that effects every interaction with an elite or boss monster.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Campbell, post: 7786392, member: 16586"] In general I think a significant portion of class balance is going to come down to encounter design and how the GM plays the adversaries. If you let melee specialists stand there and whack things ranged classes and rogues are going to have trouble competing. However if the GM utilizes things like Feint, Demoralize, Grapple, Trip, and Shove things get more interesting. Diversity in encounter design helps. Have sneaky kobolds and goblins actually be sneaky. Utilize things like ranged weapons. Go after casters and archers so melee needs help drag them away. Rangers are not nearly as effective when they need to switch targets. An encounter with a couple ghouls with corpses strewn about where the leap away to feast gives ranged classes a time to shine. In general terms melee does the most damage when they can have a high amount of up time. Generally melee is a dangerous place to be which should affect their ability to be optimal. You can see this directly in the abilities of several of the abilities in higher level monsters, but is not necessarily apparent on lower level creatures like the Orc Warrior unless you look more closely at their skills and ranged weapons. As far as I can tell a wizard is never really competitive in single target damage, but they do get fairly potent area damage and have the ability to target monster weaknesses extremely well. Electric Arc is actually pretty nice against lower level enemies. The area on burning hands is a little meager, but can be effective with Widen Spell. A central part of the problem is that because monsters only go down to -1 you are missing part of the range of encounter design where area damage is extremely effective. There are also some pretty potent debuffs and buffs for higher level combats. Magic Weapon will turn that Barbarian into a wrecking crew. I would not scoff at fear. Frightened is an extremely potent condition that effects every interaction with an elite or boss monster. [/QUOTE]
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Low-level Wizards in PF2 - are they still underpowered?
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