Hey, I'm that friend who created the file. For what it's worth, I think that the best time to use Sure Strike is when you have multiple buffs/debuffs already in place. For example, say that you originally need a 11 to hit, which is exactly a 50% chance of success, demoralizing the enemy for frightened 1 and flanking would lower the required roll to an 8. If you use Sure Strike at that point, then the probability of getting a failure or worse drops from 35% to just 12.3%, so, you make sure that you make the most of your advantage, even though the expected increase in damage would have been higher if you didn't have any AC debuffs on the target. If you used Sure Strike when you needed an 11 to hit, then it would only halve the probability of getting a failure or worse, instead of bringing the probability to 1/3 of its non-Sure Strike value.
I would consider allowing Sure Strike to get past concealment/hidden without the fortune effect without a 10m downtime. In all of this talk of improving chances to hit (it also is a fortune effect so you can still use hero points if you have them), we might be overlooking a powerful utility of the spell in groups that might not have ways to counter some forms of concealment and being hidden. Especially at early levels.
I think a big reason why this change is controversial is because attack roll spells were already perceived as weaker than saving throw spells, even before the sure strike nerf. I expect the consequence of the nerf will be more diversity in level 1 spells at high levels, but fewer people building around spell attacks - which was already a niche thing to build around (outside of Magus).
Honestly with Sure Strike now nerfed, I think it could be balanced to allow potency runes on a staff to apply to attack spells or something. When Sure Strike was spammable, if you added that bonus on a Divination staff that just mean you had 10 hero points a day at minimum on your attack spells just from that. You could use one per round with an attack spell, for almost a whole day worth of encounters. But now... this could work without being broken, I think. Will check with that calculator !
Sure strike's nerf makes sense when I realize it's a 1st level spell slot that scales raw damage potential far into the lategame, that's too efficient. I wanna make a joke like, "if you wanna play a Blandy McBlandface numbers machine fighter is *right there*" but my gamer brain does understand what kind of damage to the balance can be done. Imagine if you have a familiar with opposable thumbs and the Independent ability constantly handing you fresh wands of a 1st level spell you could buy at Costco volumes during the lategame.
I've seen people complaining that this exact setup they were using with their starlit span magus was suddenly unplayable and their character was now worthless lol
@@McFatson Well you could with Sigil ! :D Though to be fair there was a lot of ways for Magus to get a lot of spellstrike ammo in 1e, you had more spell slots (and pearl of powers to get more) and some spells got you multiple spellstrikes (Chill touch ? or frigid touch? i don't remember which one gave you 1 attack per caster level, so after a while you just had 10 attacks with 1d6 damage that inflicted enfeeble)
@@KalaamNozalys ahhh right I forgot about the arcane mark shenanigans hahaha. Yeah back then Magus effectively had two builds. Shocking Grasp nukes and Chill Touch to stack debuffs. I played the later of the two, and I could stack like 5 debuffs in one round.
@@McFatson I liked using Frigid Touch with the metamagic freeze to entangle ennemies with it, that was nice. But given we were playing Iron Gods...Shocking Grasp was kind of needed, though elemental spell Chill Touch for extra debuffing lightning damage on my whole full attack was also very nice. Loved Flamboyant Arcana too, opposed attack roll to parry an orc with a giant chainsaw and follow up with a spellstrike as a riposte was so fucking rad
Mixed feelings. On one hand, nerfing Sure Strike is rough because spell attack rolls are already hard to call viable. Doing nothing on a miss while spending half the level range down 3-4 points versus martials is pretty brutal. Yes, you can buff a caster's attack roll with everything you can give a martial, but the overall trend on the game's design has been away from spell attacks anyway, and this just supports that. Sure Strike was a staple because it was a crutch for iconic spells like Disintegrate. Removing reuse of it will increase play variability only in that specific builds that liked gambling for the lucky 20 won't be used anymore. On the other hand, caster accuracy was terrible and making it once per 10 minutes can be encouraging for team set up to deploy in niche scenarios. Disintegrate versus a powerful undead ghost that the whole party helps set up can be cinematic. Problem? Enemy hp scales hard enough an enemy won't die from one use. Want to do it again? Sure Strike is gone now. In short, it finishes the move away from spell attacks they wanted ever since Paizo realized they goofed spell attack roll math but don't want to admit it.
It makes sense. Fortune effects are less common in PF2e and this spell was basically must-have for any melee/spell attack caster - which limited varability of characters (to the point it could make characters without it unwanted in PFS parties). Now it's something to save for attacks that are really important to land, but it's not meta.
It's a ~50% increase in the expected value of the damage of any one attack action that follows after Sure Strike, provided that the difference between the attack roll bonus and the target AC is 10. The math is basically the damage dice multiplied by the probabilities of getting a critical success and a success.
Hey, I'm that friend who created the file.
For what it's worth, I think that the best time to use Sure Strike is when you have multiple buffs/debuffs already in place. For example, say that you originally need a 11 to hit, which is exactly a 50% chance of success, demoralizing the enemy for frightened 1 and flanking would lower the required roll to an 8. If you use Sure Strike at that point, then the probability of getting a failure or worse drops from 35% to just 12.3%, so, you make sure that you make the most of your advantage, even though the expected increase in damage would have been higher if you didn't have any AC debuffs on the target. If you used Sure Strike when you needed an 11 to hit, then it would only halve the probability of getting a failure or worse, instead of bringing the probability to 1/3 of its non-Sure Strike value.
I would consider allowing Sure Strike to get past concealment/hidden without the fortune effect without a 10m downtime. In all of this talk of improving chances to hit (it also is a fortune effect so you can still use hero points if you have them), we might be overlooking a powerful utility of the spell in groups that might not have ways to counter some forms of concealment and being hidden. Especially at early levels.
I think a big reason why this change is controversial is because attack roll spells were already perceived as weaker than saving throw spells, even before the sure strike nerf.
I expect the consequence of the nerf will be more diversity in level 1 spells at high levels, but fewer people building around spell attacks - which was already a niche thing to build around (outside of Magus).
Honestly with Sure Strike now nerfed, I think it could be balanced to allow potency runes on a staff to apply to attack spells or something.
When Sure Strike was spammable, if you added that bonus on a Divination staff that just mean you had 10 hero points a day at minimum on your attack spells just from that. You could use one per round with an attack spell, for almost a whole day worth of encounters.
But now... this could work without being broken, I think. Will check with that calculator !
Sure strike's nerf makes sense when I realize it's a 1st level spell slot that scales raw damage potential far into the lategame, that's too efficient.
I wanna make a joke like, "if you wanna play a Blandy McBlandface numbers machine fighter is *right there*" but my gamer brain does understand what kind of damage to the balance can be done. Imagine if you have a familiar with opposable thumbs and the Independent ability constantly handing you fresh wands of a 1st level spell you could buy at Costco volumes during the lategame.
I've seen people complaining that this exact setup they were using with their starlit span magus was suddenly unplayable and their character was now worthless lol
Lmao. They don't know how good they have it. In 1e you couldn't even spellstrike with cantrips.
@@McFatson Well you could with Sigil ! :D
Though to be fair there was a lot of ways for Magus to get a lot of spellstrike ammo in 1e, you had more spell slots (and pearl of powers to get more) and some spells got you multiple spellstrikes (Chill touch ? or frigid touch? i don't remember which one gave you 1 attack per caster level, so after a while you just had 10 attacks with 1d6 damage that inflicted enfeeble)
@@KalaamNozalys ahhh right I forgot about the arcane mark shenanigans hahaha.
Yeah back then Magus effectively had two builds. Shocking Grasp nukes and Chill Touch to stack debuffs. I played the later of the two, and I could stack like 5 debuffs in one round.
@@McFatson I liked using Frigid Touch with the metamagic freeze to entangle ennemies with it, that was nice.
But given we were playing Iron Gods...Shocking Grasp was kind of needed, though elemental spell Chill Touch for extra debuffing lightning damage on my whole full attack was also very nice.
Loved Flamboyant Arcana too, opposed attack roll to parry an orc with a giant chainsaw and follow up with a spellstrike as a riposte was so fucking rad
2:24 this is the important thing to take away: if you don't like the new ruling, just don't use it
Mixed feelings.
On one hand, nerfing Sure Strike is rough because spell attack rolls are already hard to call viable. Doing nothing on a miss while spending half the level range down 3-4 points versus martials is pretty brutal. Yes, you can buff a caster's attack roll with everything you can give a martial, but the overall trend on the game's design has been away from spell attacks anyway, and this just supports that. Sure Strike was a staple because it was a crutch for iconic spells like Disintegrate. Removing reuse of it will increase play variability only in that specific builds that liked gambling for the lucky 20 won't be used anymore.
On the other hand, caster accuracy was terrible and making it once per 10 minutes can be encouraging for team set up to deploy in niche scenarios. Disintegrate versus a powerful undead ghost that the whole party helps set up can be cinematic. Problem? Enemy hp scales hard enough an enemy won't die from one use. Want to do it again? Sure Strike is gone now.
In short, it finishes the move away from spell attacks they wanted ever since Paizo realized they goofed spell attack roll math but don't want to admit it.
Can you make a video talking about how avoid notice works, specifically with regards to starting an encounter?
@@cha0sunity Thank you for the video idea! I’ll keep it in mind!
@@cha0sunity i might just make one on all exploration activities!
It makes sense. Fortune effects are less common in PF2e and this spell was basically must-have for any melee/spell attack caster - which limited varability of characters (to the point it could make characters without it unwanted in PFS parties).
Now it's something to save for attacks that are really important to land, but it's not meta.
Magus gets harder and harder to play remastered RAR only.
Bah, coming here with all this math and witch-science.
Has anyone asked Baba Yaga her thoughts on this change?
So, a 1st level spell slot increases the damage by 50%?
It's a ~50% increase in the expected value of the damage of any one attack action that follows after Sure Strike, provided that the difference between the attack roll bonus and the target AC is 10. The math is basically the damage dice multiplied by the probabilities of getting a critical success and a success.
@doof-j4k expected value is the only value that matters.
Surprised it wasn't nerfed only for male characters. lol
No, didn't need 2 minutes to explain it to you either. Thanks for attending this ted talk.