I lost count of how many enemies my Battlefield Control Wizard neutralized just to have the pure melee Flurry Ranger charge in and give them a second chance.
@@karls1448 I relate so hard! In my last D&D 5.5E session, the Artificer jumped into a chasm after an enemy whom I had pushed off the edge into that chasm and I was just like why 😭
Great analysis! I can say from experience that GMs feel the strengths of ranged PCs more than the players do due to the knowledge gap on the monsters' capabilities. Also, this video works as an essay on why Reach weapons are awesome, at least to an extent.
I like the video, my corollary argument is that every melee martial should have *some* way to contribute from range. Doesn't matter if it's just some bolas, points in dex for a backup crossbow, returning rune, recall knowledge, cantrips from an archetype, etc. Otherwise the double slice fighter is on their knees begging for a cast of Fly while the dragon is burning down the village.
Honestly i wish my party members realize how good you can create a "killbox" by putting an area of difficult terrain, a speed redicion and focus fireing with ranged attacks, expecially against big melee bosses.
@@lucamonticelli267 It takes a lot more patience than many players are used to, but the rewards are beyond measure. Using these sorts of tactics is how you make the difference between Severe/Extreme encounters being a slight/significant chance of TPK and changing that to no/slight chance of TPK.
Ranged character are getting dunked by two big factors in my opinion: 1. You need quite a lot of game knowledge to build an effective ranged character, since you have the “third action problem” and you need to be solving this on the character creation. There is a much bigger gap between a fully optimised ranged character, and something that a newcomer would create 2. Most of the officially published adventures have tiny maps, where monsters are one stride away, so you being ranged just eats up their -10 MAP attack. Using a bigger map, where a longbow range would actually mean something is a huge difference
I love that this whole tactical talk, actually matters a lot in PF2e. And if you play right, coordinated with your companions, and maximizing your abilities, you can get massive advantages, and turn hard to impossible fights into manageable ones, while never outright bullying the enemies. In other optimize heavy systems I feel bad for the monsters, like your are picking on them, they cannot do anything... like the difficulty is a total farse... in PF2e, enemies are always dangerous, and that makes defeating them extra awesome.
@@SheppiTSRodriguez 100% agree. It’s actually one reason why I love casters in PF2E so much more than I did in my 5E play experience. Objectively speaking 5E control-oriented and summon-oriented casters are way stronger than in PF2E. Yet in terms of FEEL I always felt like I was weaker in 5E, because 5E feels like I’m bullying a bunch of weaklings whereas PF2E feels like I’m using insanely cool stuff to beat insanely powerful enemies.
Yea, AV being so popular is a huge reason for people liking melee better. It has a LOT of ranged counters: - Tight corridors and small rooms - Ghost resistances and precision immunity (ghost touch was melee only pre-remaster) - Low level AP (I find that higher level actually lessens the damage difference between melees and ranged thanks to property runes)
Those damned will o' wisps steal your lunch money and stuff you in a locker if you are a spellcaster. My kineticist has no real option to do anything to them directly. What an infuriating monster.
@@johngleeman8347 Will o wisps are such a clear symptom of old school design, and I’m surprised they didn’t get the golem treatment with the Remaster. As a Wizard I found will o wisps tolerable but very annoying, because ultimately spellcasters tend to have so many ways to interact with a battle without ever touching an enemy. I can’t even imagine how frustrating they’d be as a Kineticist!
Great video, even without the math. I feel like I don't often hear the people explain the merits of ranged combat, especially not this well. I'm sure this'll be a video I refer back to in the future.
Definitely sending this one along to players and communities! I like some good musings like this. Was just having a conversation about why giving the Brutal trait to thrown weapons would be really really strong to the point of making ranged weapons a lot less appealing out of specific circumstances. Anyway, great content and glad to see you've been creating so much recently!
@@ryanprice6059 I am glad you liked the musings! I have more planned, including just general musings about the history of class design decisions. If this video is well received, expect more!
And Ranged is awesome, The Order of the Amber die just did a full playthrough of Abomination Vaults (Known for being cramped) with a party of only Gunslingers
@@SheppiTSRodriguez Oh hell yeah that’s so cool! I have long held the belief that, with the right coordination, an all-ranged party can handle cramped spaces too (by kiting into different rooms for example), but I don’t have enough play experience to feel confident of such a claim. Maybe I’ll give them a watch/listen and use their play experience to guide my claims in the future!
Deployable cover is only for early game IMO, shrink item is better at the role - faster deploy, and you don’t need to use the take cover action to get some benefit, you can just drop your shrunken wooden cube or whatever in front of you.
Awsome channel, i watched all of your video straight! finally some math! I have a request then, for math i cant really do myself : what is the actuall math behind dazzel condition? is it really 20% miss chance? Intuitivelly i think it depend on the monster you are facing... yes dc 5 flat is 20%, but a 0-5 roll probably would miss too, but a 6: would miss too, if follow by a 16, well you turned a miss into a hit isnt it? reverse is true tho, does prob cancel out?
@@TheIlluvatar619 You could probably evaluate this using a conditional probability analysis! Basically P(hit or crit) x P(Dazzled making it into a miss) is the chance of Dazzled having an impact.
A lot of these downsides are not downsides to melee characters, they are downsides to facing melee enemies. Melee characters have the advantage of accepting the downsides to themselves, so everyone else does not have to. The enemy reactions, special athletics features, auras, stronger melee damage, all exist whether or not you are a melee. It is an advantage of melee that they are better equipped to handle these problems, and that they do so so that those that cannot handle them as well don't have to. When your melee characters stand in melee and obstruct aoe spellcasting like you mentioned, they are obstructing it far less than they would without being there. One or two pcs being amidst the enemies is far less to avoid hitting than the entire party and any companions, familiars, bystanders or npc allies. We recently had a moderate encounter that was very almost a TPK, because it was an ambush with large, 10ft reach reactive strikers that were immediately upon our backline. The melees were fine. Our two casters, and ranged inventor were toast. I actually had multiple spells with which to remove reactions, but whenever I cast them, I was crit. I was not feeling a ranged character advantage there. You can build a ranged focused party to create obstacles and make one stride away from your party equal multiple strides for them, which will be fantastically effective I am sure, but it will not work on all terrain, against all enemies and when you face something like an ambush of reactive strikers or a position you can't retreat from, you are going to be in a very, very bad spot.
@@joshuaanson5939 Overall I agree! Nothing will work on all terrain, against all enemy types, and in all scenarios. That’s what makes tactical games like Pathfinder interesting in the first place! The downsides of melee I listed are much more mitigable when your party can reliably operate at range. You still won’t be immune to them, but you might be able to avoid them for 1-3 turns for maybe 60-75% of encounters and that’s still a lot more than can be said for melee characters!
It's worth noting that you cite a bunch of reasons that your allies are forced to be within 30ft because you're a melee character 17:19, but that's also true for 99% of ranged characters. If the ranged character wants to demoralize, get within 30ft. If the caster wants to throw their cantrips for chip damage, get within 30/60ft. Pathfinder is fundamentally a short-range game, and even if your weapon allows you to shoot from 100ft+ away with no penalty, it's almost always impractical to do so, even *when* it's possible. Would you rather make 3 strikes, or have a smaller gap and Demoralize Strike Strike? Are you really gonna leave your Bon Mot-ing and Dazing caster by themselves at 30ft away just so you can plink arrows from 100ft away? What happens if the enemy lands a lucky crit or two on you with their longbow, and now you're down. Suddenly, the caster that was within 30ft of the enemy is *70ft* away from you. However, since most bursts are shorter than 30ft, ranged martials definitely avoid the "Impeding your caster's AoE spells" problem that melees have. tl;dr While ranged characters can shoot from seemingly impressive distances, PF2 does a great job of forcing everybody to get within striking distance of everyone else. And imo, this is what makes ranged combat balanced: it provides extra utility in target selection, but the TTK for a ranged party will be worse enough that they'll really want at least one, probably two face tanks to trade blows with the melee enemies.
@@TheL0rd0fSpace These are very good points, but it’s worth emphasizing that ranged characters do have the OPTION of foregoing the short range stuff. For example you could just not bother with the Demoralize, and you could just Stride away and Strike twice! After all, it’s entirely possible that the value of forcing an enemy to Stride 2-3 times to get to your is worth more than the -1 from Demoralize. And that’s without getting into class and composition specific options. Fighters have a Feat whose name I forget that lets you reposition while taking a shot. Commanders, Psychics, and Bards can help you reposition during someone else’s turn. You can cast Zephyr Slip to do the same without help. Does that mean ranged characters get to stand 60-120 feet away at all times, ignoring all damage like that BG3 cheese I showed in the beginning? Nope, not all the time. Sometimes it’ll be better to stay a bit closer, sometimes you won’t even have a choice. But by and large, ranged characters will have a wider variety of options they’ll be playing with at any given time, and having even one melee character in the party narrows those options for the whole party unless they coordinate to prevent that.
@@kocakbil 10000%! If no one is good at engaging in melee, your party NEEDS powerful control spells, summon spells, deployable items, and switch hitters to make it work. There’s a reason my optimized kiting party still had one melee character who was responsible for Athletics maneuvers!
While I get that you are bringing EVERY point into account before weighting them, there is some stuff that should have been shot down the moment it was brought down like "By being in the front line, you force the casters to mind their AoE spells" said no caster ever! They made their choices and so have I! Hope you've been keeping your saves up, boye! Another point against this is that, without the front line there to offer a, well a front line, then there is nothing stopping the enemies being right on my castery face. The main purpose of Melee is to block the enemy and to punish those that make it through. Them being in the way is a trade-off that's well taken into account and taken care of. "Forcing the healer to stand 30ft from the frontline" Eh. Most of my spells have that range anyway. I was going to go right behind the Fighter and cast Rank 3 Fear anyway. Again, without the melee frontliners, I don't have to worry about standing 30ft from the enemy because the enemy will be standing 0ft away from me. I know that in the math and design show these trade offs of math, opportunity, strategy and so on and they are so beautiful. But the practical side shows that ranged martials have 2 main roles. Busted optimized STR+DEX with some Eldritch Archer or some other extra trickery to throw on to BOMB enemies out of the initiative order or leave them for easy pickings of the melee martials. The other one is a mix between utility, like applying Rogue Debilitations or some other form of trickery to exploit vulnerabilities, deliver poisons, finish off weakened enemies or apply pressure on casters. Very precise and deliberate applications of their skillset that I'd group under the same banner of general utility. They can't deny areas, impede enemy advance or use reactions to punish movement without putting themselves at massive risk. I agree with your points overall, I just believe that by adding a few "test turns" to show how each point would work in practice, you'd possibly arrive at different conclusions. The diversity of options the ranged character has and limitations the melee one puts on themselves and the party become less meaningful distinctions when the flexibility cannot sustain itself and the limitations give the rest of the party breathing room.
@@weckar Switch hitters are great! I am currently playing a Flurry Ranger who uses gada + tekko-kaggi for melee combat, and then uses Quick Draw to use darts whenever he needs to stay at range. It’s incredibly versatile and flexible, and I imagine a Kineticist could be even more of that.
@@sebwiers1 Sometimes it’s not that simple! For example in the specific scenario where this popped up, the Barbarian goes before a miniboss, the Cleric goes after that miniboss, and then there are two minions after the Cleric but before the Barbarian. The Barbarian didn’t know how hard they would get crit before the boss went, and once the boss went the Cleric can’t Delay to wait for the Barbarian to fall back because the minions might drop the Barbarian! The specifics of an encounter or terrain composition or Initiative ordering can drastically limit the number of options available to the party. On top of that, this specific Cleric in my example doesn’t just use Heal to help allies, she also uses Delay Consequence to strategically prevent them from losing a turn while still staying aggressive. Setting even all that aside though, I kinda get into this in a later point in the same slide: if you want to give your allies better tactical flexibility (for example, by falling back) you worsen your own Action efficiency. Either way, someone in your party will play an Action efficiency price, either you or your ally!
The best condition you can inflict on an enemy is dead. ACTUAL optimized builds should be made with as many ways to make something have that condition as possible in as many situations as possible. For instance, my laughing shadow magus has psychic and eldritch archer archetypes so I can do I crit and something that is my level or less gets removed from the map levels of damage, In either range or melee. Now for that to apply to tougher enemies, I have to use melee. I don't have to worry about the downsides of melee if the boss I'm fighting is dead when I crit on a 13+. And if I only hit on a 3+, the other damage dealer in the group can finish the job. Like you said, options are good. But I disagree with the look to your party. Yes, it is hard to fill all roles with some character concepts and classes, but you can have some healing with spell casting archetype, battle medicine and such. Dipping into a class that has spell casting in anything not arcane and getting a scroll of healing as a back up in case things goes WAY south. Battle medicine and keeping medicine ranked up. Toss in some feats or archetype for even more healing and it can be better than a heal spell. EVERY martial should have a viable ranged AND melee options. Viable does not mean have an unenchanted crossbow with 10 dex at level 9.
@@ColdNapalm42 the best condition you can inflict on an enemy is dead, but the worst condition you can inflict on them is “damaged”! Outside of the lowest levels (1-4 ish) you can’t count on dropping enemies in one or two rounds flat consistently. The best optimized parties are designed to be able to eliminate randomness and even combats before the enemy is actually close to 0 HP.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Ah...see but you can. Because aid. Aid at higher levels adds +3 to +4 basically automatically to one roll. If you stack that aid with a +3 status bonus from a maestro bard or high level heroism, -2 for off guard, -2 for sickened or frightened 2 or better yet a -3 from clumsy 3 on synestia on an attack roll that has say, a channel smite or a spell strike with organ sight running...even at high levels, crits remove things from the map. Even bosses that are your level +4. And 2 normal hits removes bosses...and normal hits basically are 5% miss chance with that. It gets easier actually the higher level you are. After level 3, when runic weapon stops becoming the I win button until level 7 where you unlock the +3 aid bonus honestly is the hardest levels. 4-6. Unless you have a fighter who gets that at level 5. In which case, it's JUST level 4. This makes even extreme encounters cakewalks. Obviously there are time when you don't do this...like slime bosses. And for terrain or casters causing problems. But this solves a LOT of encounters.
@@ColdNapalm42 I find that this tendency of crits just downing bosses easily doesn’t last past level 9 ish. At that point HP starts out scaling damage significantly, even crits. A level 10 Giant Barbarian crits for barely a quarter of a level 13 boss’s health bar! The other issue is that spike damage on its own can’t be counted on to win combats. Arcane Mark actually made a really good series of videos on this and made a very insightful comment on Reddit relating to this logic: a high variance strategy (like relying on spike damage) USUALLY benefits players by ending combats faster because most combats (Trivial/Low/Moderate) are designed to be easily winnable. So you might go dozens upon dozens of encounters without ever noticing that the variance is even there, but that variance can really punish you in corner cases like Severe encounters, Extreme encounters, or harder-than-Extreme encounters. A lower variance strategy may take a turn longer to win the easier combats but will have a near zero failure rate against the harder ones!
@@Mathfinder-aaa How is I hit a boss that is level +4 on a 3 (average AC) a high variance tactic?!? And i said you consolidate damage into a single attack...that isn't a giant instinct barbarian. I do not consider them ideal damage dealers. I considered them fairly a dead weight build honestly with not being able to use concentrate actions while raging. A level 10 magus will be doing 2d12+9+10d8+6d6 damage + any runes. Average damage is 88. Highest level 14 critter HP is 365 from what I found but most are under 300 HP. Normal hit is a quarter health on highest...that hits on a 2 (vs the critter's 34AC). Crit on average damage does about half vs highest. And there is another damage dealer in the party as well that does the similar. With some damage added on because the setup is best done with fighter hitting and giving status effect before doing one of the aid. One hit and one crit with fighter doing some damage and yeah, it's a one round and done. Once again, against something your level +4...which is considered as bad as the system is designed for. It's even more low variance of a win condition when you look at things your level +2 that are what shows up as bosses in APs and adventurers. Seriously, the fact that none of the channels with people talking about optimizing combat in PF2E has yet to figure this out is astounding. The fact that you all seem to actively FIGHT it is mind boggling. Yes, without all the setup I mentioned, and JUST using the magus alone, it would be a high variance tactic...but that is NOT what I said to do.
@@ColdNapalm42 It sounds like a high variance strategy to me because you've got all these buffs and debuffs you need to setup to remove the variance of the attack, and those buffs/debuffs have their own reliability problems. Like Mathfinder showed in another video about AoE spells (talking about chain lightning), requiring lots of successes, even at high probabilities, can result in a substantial chance of failure. Like, the fighter is supposed to do some damage AND aid the Magus on a single turn? Shouldn't one of those actions have a MAP? I guess you could make it easier by debuffing the boss before the fighter takes their turn, but that's one more star that has to line up.
I think this is a bit of pointless discussion. Having a purely ranged party is not possible, "The Monster knows what they're doing" applies here. The scenario where everyone has ranged and crowd control options and keep kiting enemies (like the BG3 clip at the beggining) simply doesn't exist in a game with a real GM. The monster are going to hit someone, there's no way to avoid it.
@@Loeher Recognizing the upsides and downsides of various roles within a party is never a pointless conversation! A purely ranged party is just as possible as a purely melee one: they can be made functional with lots of coordination and careful decision-making, but they’ll have glaring weaknesses that a balanced party won’t. Extremes of anything are impractical, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth analyzing.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Sorry, but making a purely ranged party is simply not viable, trying to do so will inevitable lead to your ranged optimized characters staring down a monster. No amount of coordination will change this unless your DM's encounters consist exclusively of melee monsters in a corridor. A purely melee party will suffer a lot when facing flying enemies, and may end up having no options against them other than running away, but a purely ranged party is just a TPK waiting to happen. That's why I said it was a bit pointless, the individual character counterpoints are good, and it's good for melee characters to be aware of the athletics and positioning constraints, but discussing the advantages of a purely ranged party is IMO the pointless part, because such a party will inevitably die if their GM plays the enemies with any semblance of intelligence.
@@Loeher While I fully disagree that the all-melee party is any more viable than the all-ranged party, ultimately that’s besides the point. You’re arguing that it’s pointless to have a discussion about tactics, upsides, and downsides, because an all-ranged party sucks? How does that make any sense at all? An all-ranged party sucks therefore there are no upsides to being at range, and nothing worth talking about there? We both know that’s not true!
