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[Cthulhu]

It wouldn't be so bad if the game by default let you queue buffs or something, or had more consistent buff timers.  There's a mythic feat that helps by setting anything with an hour duration to 24 hours, but still, you've got some buffs that last for hours, some that last for minutes, some that only last for rounds or one minute, so you gotta buff before the fight, buff some stuff (but not others) between fights, and buff some stuff in-fight.  It gives me a new appreciation for 5e which ties most buffs to the concentration mechanic.  You're forced to pick what buffs you want to use, so you can't just stack up a hellish pile of buffs, so the balance has to account for that, so you don't get this nuclear arms race where everything has 400 AC and 12,000 spell resistance and immunity to every element and fifteen attacks per round.

[Persus13]

Yeah, one of my main complaints about Kingmaker was that there wasn't a way to auto cue all your buffs like Bless, Delay Poison, etc. At least Kingmaker made it so you could get kingdom buffs that removed the need for Delay Poison eventually.

[chaoticag]

I've not really been going through a laundry list of buffs here and I've just finished Dresen's liberation. I have the animal enhancements on hand, but since they conflict with head and belt bonuses I'm liable to drop them and they provide a +1 bonus most the time which I can ignore. Protection from alignment conflicts with rings of protection and cloaks of resistance. Seelah can also spend a spell to give everyone her immunity to fear for almost an hour at this point. Delay poison isn't really always on for me since I can't count on everything I fight to have poison. I pop it when something poison vulnerable comes along so I can hit it with stinking cloud or if someone shows as saving against poison in the log. Your millage may vary since I've crafted some lesser restoration potions.

Haste is good, but it's so good I don't mind waiting and seeing to cast it in a fight. Enlarge person is fine, it gives a size bonus but it's not make or break often. I tossed it at Lann early on for the damage. I have greater invisibility because it's invaluable for hitting flat footed creatures. It goes on in the middle of a tough fight and the concealment is a bonus. Prayer also goes on during a fight. Maybe it's because I'm playing turn based here, but it makes more sense to me to cast these in combat than to try and wring out action economy on your casters.

Am I missing anything here?

[Kanil]

I've got like 9? buffs with durations of at least 1 minute/level to put on my main character before any big, tough battle. Not to mention the 1 round/level stuff, but those are things you decide to use rather than just have on in general. I'm also probably missing a few buffs worth having, as well...

That doesn't bother me nearly as much as trying to get Camella to use Protective Luck on my guy every friggin' round though -- I'd love if that could be autocast way more than any buff queue.

[Cthulhu]

I usually cast buffs with a rounds-timer in combat, but even in turn-based some enemies you just don't have time to mess around.  Chorussina, the dragon, any of the optional miniboss characters, etc. you might get one round to buff if they also buff, but once they jump into combat you've gotta be prepped or they're killing somebody immediately.

Magic items can eliminate some buffing but they're limited and may not really obviate the buff.  Animal buff spells are +4 and how many +4 hats/belts do you really have?  Getting that +4 at least on strength/dex for your fighter-types is huge, considering you're fighting dudes with like 30 AC and equally massive attack bonuses. Invisibility, blur, mirror image, etc. are also critical against those types of enemies.  You can do those in combat but you're taking a risk depending on the fight.  Some bullshit archer or slayer type who rolls good initiative is liable to frag one or more of your buff-casters as soon as the fight starts and then you're out of luck. 

Then there's like five different AC increasing buffs which can be obviated by items in some cases but not in others, and you gotta cast all of them on all your dudes if you're being thorough, though just out of pointlessness/laziness I rarely put AC bonuses on my casters because when a monster's got six attacks and hits nenio on 2+ is giving her 6 more AC really going to make a difference?  _{The answer's no, because 2+ is the floor and even with 6 more AC it's still hitting her on 2+ lol}

Really I just fundamentally dislike this dynamic and even diminishing it with items and stuff doesn't change that.  It's all a big waste of time because the game's math accounts for it.  If you eliminated all stat-boosting effects from the game and adjusted the math accordingly the game would play exactly the same.

[chaoticag]

Cat's Grace
Fox's Cunning
Mage Armor
Shield
Mirror Image
Barkskin
Reduce Person
Heroism
Shield of Faith

... Is this a magus?

Cat's grace and Fox's cunning you can get a belt and helmet for. Those bonuses don't stack.

Mage armor is an armor bonus that can last you all day, but bracers of armor give the same non stacking bonus, so unless you have a really good bonus on another kind of bracers, stick with armor of bracers of armor.

Shield is good. It's good enough to cast in a fight if you can manage.

Mirror image also good? I think? I barely use it and stick with displacement or greater invisibility.

Bark skin keeps on par with natural armor amulets. Same bonus so they don't stack. That being said it's tens of minutes per level so it will last the adventuring day (you can get about ten encounters an hour ish, minus time spent on skill checks)

Reduce person good, but by this point you are approaching the dex bonus limit if you are wearing armor

Heroism is good, just keep in mind it's a morale bonus and won't stack with other bonuses like some bard performances.

Shield of faith doesn't stack with rings of protection and so is obsolete once you have a +2 ring.

Hopefully you now have only 4 buffs to apply.

[Kanil]

Yes, it's a sword saint magus.

Cat's Grace and Fox's Cunning require +4 items to obsolete, I have not come across any of those at this point in the game, so they're not obsolete for me yet.

Same thing with Mage Armor. Also my current bracers give +1 luck bonus to AC, so I'd either have to find a new source of that or get some +5 bracers to obsolete this buff.

Shield is good, yes.

Doesn't Mirror Image stack with Displacement? Anyway, mirror image is 1 minute/level, displacement just 1 round/level, so I've got mirror image on just in general and save displacement for especially challenging fights.

Reduce person is great, +2 AC and attack for -1 damage.

Heroism, well I don't have a bard so this is my source of morale bonuses at the moment.

Barkskin and Shield of Faith get better with caster levels, so finding rings and amulets to obsolete these is tricky but possible.

With my current equipment, I've still pretty much got 9 buffs. I could get down to 4 with better equipment, but I'd have to get it first.

Admittedly my character is rather designed around buffing the hell out of everything, but it's not like all my other party members are perfectly fine with no buffs. Even if I had a different main character, there'd still be a lot of buffing going on. Still bothers me a lot less than Protective Luck though.

[chaoticag]

I'll probably try and make a buff casting guide a little later. As for protective luck, later on you can get cackle. Cast protective luck, then cackle, then cast evil eye, then cackle. Bind it to a hot key and you can press it over and over each turn to keep yourself buffed and your enemy debuffed, and you keep your standard action. No idea about the game but the FAQ for pathfinder clarifies you can keep applying different debuffs on the same creature using evil eye, and cackle adds one extra round to the duration, but they should be dead soon I hope

Yes, it's a sword saint magus.

I can't believe I forgot to add this but always cast touch of fatigue on your sword

[Cthulhu]

I've actually never used cackle, most enemies don't live long enough and most enemies worth spending a round using evil eye on will save against it anyway

[chaoticag]

Cackle still applies when you save against it, that's why it combos with evil eye, which just takes a move action and extends the duration by a round.

[Hanzoku]

any system that is reliant on pre-fight buffing to win just seems like... poor design.

Sort of disagree with you there, at least for harder fights. You absolutely should be able to faceroll the mooks with hours/day buffs (I tend to precast all the 10min/level and hour/level buffs at the start of a dungeon), but you don't get to complain if you go in on a boss and get trounced with half your spell slots full of buffs that you didn't bother to cast.

That said, I would kill for a non-mod way to create a list of spells to cast and on who that you can drag on a quickbar slot and click to get the buff routines out of the way.

[chaoticag]

It's very... Pathfinder encounter design. It makes sense in the context of pathfinder to the pathfinder enjoyer, but pathfinder both 1e and 2e and d&d 5e all have their own idiosyncrasies. Resolving outcomes by a flat d20 has been such a big issue that Baldur's gate 3 defaults to an alternative resolution method that's more consistent.

One quality of life feature I would kill for though is percent chance to hit/save/spell penetrate over enemies. I can calculate these by hand but I don't want to feel I have to.

[scriver]

I played BG3 from it's EA release and one of my main wishes for it has been that they stop with the awful percentile descriptions and instead tell me what dice number I need to hit for a more RPG feel.

Failing on a 95% chance of success feels much worse than rolling a one on a die to me.

[ndkid]

I played BG3 from it's EA release and one of my main wishes for it has been that they stop with the awful percentile descriptions and instead tell me what dice number I need to hit for a more RPG feel.

Failing on a 95% chance of success feels much worse than rolling a one on a die to me.

By "more RPG feel", do you mean, "more d20" feel? Because there are some great percentile-based RPGs out there (Chaosium's old Call of Cthulhu, for example), so I don't think of percentile as being antagonistic to "RPG feel".

[scriver]

Percentile rpgs also use dice.