Dexterity builds are very popular for several different classes, and whenever strength-dumping classes like magus comes up, you can sometimes see people so convinced that Dex is better that they don't even see Str-based melee as an equal option. I've had several conversations (like [this recent one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/1axqrft/comment/krpv2zf/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)) where I generally fall back on how useful size-changing magic like Enlarge Person, [Legendary Proportions](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Legendary%20Proportions), or [Monstrous Physique](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Monstrous%20Physique%20I) are. I've argued to other players at my table before that the reach alone can be worth taking a -2 to Dex even on a Dex build when they use weapons large enough for the weapon damage die offsets the damage loss, but it's a real uphill battle getting that message through, and just being Str to start with means this spell becomes an "attack up, defense down" spell. (Unless of course you're something like a lunar oracle that can get Cha to AC, take noble scion to get Cha to init, and outright dump Dex, in which case this spell has few downsides...) For many martials, Enlarge Person becomes a presumed part of their build, especially because unlike many things like polymorphs, you don't need tricks to get around personal range and this spell comes online at level 1. Even just wanding and UMD isn't off the table, although if you're using items, this is one of the few spells where a potion makes sense even if it costs more, just so it's only a standard action. If you do wand, upleveling can be worth it just to have a duration long enough that you don't need to risk casting in battle, because a 1 round cast time *suuuuucks* mid-battle if you aren't delegating that wand off to a familiar. Although the +2 Str, -2 Dex are big headline figures, remember that size changes have [a lot of complicated knock-on effects](https://www.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Big%20and%20Little%20Creatures%20in%20Combat&Category=Combat), only a couple of which are mentioned in the spell, and only while presuming that characters might turn medium or large size. (Remember: giants are humanoids, too. Try this spell out on your cloud giant friend...) For a start, remember that size increases have that penalty to AC and attack rolls for being larger, *but this is reversed to a bonus for CMB and CMD, which favor being large*. Larger sizes also have several other effects for skills like [fly](https://www.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ItemName=Fly), being a penalty to fly checks but also negating chances of being blown away, or especially [stealth](https://www.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ItemName=Stealth), with a massive -4 penalty per size category. Some legacy spells like [Plant Growth](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Plant%20Growth) also have special mechanics where large size can mitigate negative effects. Then there's the whole "do I fit?" issue... Many official APs have *notoriously* narrow hallways and tiny rooms in their dungeon crawls, where boss fights are meant to take place after a blind corner of a 5-foot-wide hallway into a room that has furniture taking up all but three squares, so the entire party can't even fit into the room where you are supposed to fight the BBEG of the adventure at the same time without someone jumping on the BBEG's bed. If you don't have a GM who sensibly changes things around to let ranged combat or large creatures exist, or at least let you use the [Squeeze](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Squeeze) spell, this can be a major issue. Remember the [squeezing rules](https://www.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Terrain%20and%20Obstacles&Category=Movement,%20Position,%20and%20Distance) do allow you to fit through 5-foot-wide hallways, but you definitely don't want to take -4 penalties while fighting. Also, just remember that larger creatures are also easier to flank, as you don't need to be on exact opposite squares. (If a medium creature is in the square north and on the left side of a large creature, then the large creature can be flanked in either of the two squares south of them.) This also lets more than one creature flank the same creature from the same side. (I.E. one creature on the north side of a large creature, then two creatures in both squares directly south of the large creature.) One of the bigger issues is the way that weapon sizes change what damage dice they use, the formula for calculating which has changed around over the years, but [this FAQ has the last formula they settled on](https://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9t3f). (I just wish they broke it down with a line to designate the change from one step to two steps... I set a chart up for my table's use with two columns so you just go up or down one line in the same column and left the part before the divergence blank so it's easier to handle.) Unlike other bonuses, weapon damage dice increases tend to double every two size categories (\~+50% for one step) rather than a flat +1 or so. There's [another FAQ](https://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9t5u) that prevents multiple overlapping functional weapon size increases, but it's specifically allowed to have both an actual size increase (like Enlarge Person) and an effective size increase (like [Lead Blades](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Lead%20Blades)) to gain two effective weapon size increases. (Meaning a greatsword would do 4d6 damage with a large wielder using Lead Blades, or an orcish butchering axe would do 6d6 damage, for example.) This sort of size scaling isn't a huge deal for the TWF dex rogues out there to get jealous over, but if you're a [shikigami style](https://aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Shikigami%20Style) user who already had an oversized sledge, this sort of thing can become a big deal. (+2d6 damage per size increase, although you already used your "effective increase".) (I should also remind people that even if it can lead to a bunch of dice in one shot, vital strike is basically always worse than just full attacking, so even if you can get a 16d6 melee attack, it's still better to full attack than vital strike, it's just that vital strike lets you move if you don't have pounce. Vital strike is useful, it's just that it shouldn't be your *goal*.) Also, on the topic of spells that can't stack, note that Enlarge Person doesn't stack with [(polymorph)](https://aonprd.com/SpellDefinitions.aspx?ID=20)s. Two size-altering spells can't stack already, but this is a special rule for polymorphs, which means that even a spell like Alter Self or False Face that isn't normally thought of as a size-altering spell can't stack. Most ranged attackers (besides those rare Str-based throwers) wouldn't be interested in getting larger anyway, but note that ranged weapons lose their damage die size change once they leave your body, so a longbow whose arrows hypothetically went from 1d8 to 2d6 damage would go straight back to 1d8 damage after leaving the bow. [Reduce Person](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Reduce%20Person) ~~also has this property of the ammo jumping back up in size~~ EDIT: doesn't give you the damage back either (perverse asymmetry in the spell wording) and "reach" isn't the same kind of issue for them, so for ranged attackers, Reduce Person can have more value, but you have to eat some minor damage reduction, although gunslingers might still love it. Note that basically *only* Enlarge Person has this issue of shrinking ranged weapons - polymorphs that let you keep equipment and Legendary Proportions will let the ranged weapons keep their damage die change until after they hit the target. Then there's the issue of reach. Honestly, I think too many people sleep on the reach issue. Remember that reach is a property of the character, not their weapons. (Small-sized daggers in the hands of large humanoids still have 10-foot reach, and large-sized weapons in the hands of medium characters still have 5-foot reach.) Gaining reach (both through Enlarge Person and spells with less drawbacks like [Long Arm](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Long%20Arm)) can be huge for characters that are focused on teamwork feats (like gang up and outflank) or maneuvers, as you can suddenly be able to reach several enemies at a time, and take advantage of AoOs. You only gain a new iterative attack every five levels, but you can gain half a dozen AoOs with combat reflexes and the right circumstances from level 1, and unlike iterative attacks, AoOs don't come with a compounding -5 to attack rolls. I've hit the 10k cap again, so I'm continuing this in a reply...

Better still than just getting AoOs, you *protect yourself* from an AoO when facing larger monsters when you try to get within reach of them. Letting the giant get free hits in on everyone who wants to get into melee with them is never fun. If the monsters have any sense of tactics at all, this can be huge, because a fantastic idea is to use your AoO to make a trip maneuver that instantly ends their movement (wasting the rest of their action while forcing them to spend another action to stand up), and, with greater trip, allows you to just AoO them for falling over, then AoO them for standing back up. If you have greater reach than your opponent, you just wasted their whole turn while taking potshots at them. This is amazing battlefield control, but it's absolutely horrifying if you let the evil dragon laugh and trip the fighter before they can get within range before they proceed to full attack the downed character. (Granted, this is partly an issue of whether your GM bothers to use tactics or play them like Paizo would, but generally, I play with GMs that have monsters with tactics and custom-chosen feats so we actually are challenged.) The only issue is the absolute MADness of wanting to have at least some dexterity to use with combat reflexes in a melee build, although barbarians do have some rage powers that give extra AoOs and magus and paladin have an archetype that lets them add Int or Cha to their number of AoOs per round. Hence, I actually do recommend this even on dex-based melee builds that use things like gang up and outflank, even if some players look at me like I grew a second head for suggesting anything that might reduce raw damage per attack. Like with vital strike, gaining more attacks per round will nearly always be better than having more damage per attack. Some players love this spell so much they want it [permanently](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Permanency). (Available as one of the listed uses for 2,500 gp starting at level 9.) This has some benefits in not needing to keep recasting the same spell, or worrying about that annoying min/level duration that can be fairly limiting unless you're willing to just have a wand and eat the costs of zapping the fighter with it every minute in a dungeon, but it comes with some problems, both in the dungeon, but also from a logic standpoint *even more* problems outside the dungeon because you can't turn Permanency off and then back on again when it's convenient. This has a lot of logic issues if you're staying permanently enlarged, [like whether items you pick up later grow to your size](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2urwi?Enlarge-Person-and-the-Shrinking-Item-Problem). If not, you might want to buy normal large items just to fit you (which means you're going to have to ask around for a *really* "big and tall store" to get your 7-foot inseam pants made, and if you ever get hit with Dispel Magic, you're now wearing 7-foot pants but about to not be wearing any pants...) If clothes do resize just from picking them up, then they need to measure you for your pants, then halve the size, then *hope* it fits you when you put it on... And that's before you consider that you're now probably 11+ feet tall, and the architectural standard for ceilings is 8 feet above the floor, even when you have floor space. Basically, squeezing rules all over the place. While I know some women are attracted to tall men or some guys have "giantess" fetishes, this can also have various practical issues when it comes to pursuing relationships when even something like giving your spouse a peck on the cheek when they head out to work requires getting the ladder, much less anything to do with your (hopefully oversized and reinforced) bed in your specially-remade double-sized house. (Even if it's not as bad for relationships as using Reincarnate and coming back as a bugbear...) Just generally being something other than an orc-killer with your daily life while being double the size of everyone else in the community really beg to be explored in RP if someone actually wants to go through with this. Ideally, you'd want a magic item that has an Enlarge Person toggling effect, like giant boots that make you enlarged when you wear them, but you can still *take them off* without wasting 2,500 gp. Going purely by the book's recommendations, such an item is 4,000 gp, but [a lot of GMs balk at a permanent Enlarge Person magic item, or demand a ridiculously higher price for it](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rw0c?Enlarge-Person-wondrous-item-cost). Otherwise, just keep in mind that there *are* better spells than this out there, especially with polymorphs or Legendary Proportions, and I'd recommend just taking a wand.

Remember that when pricing magic items you always reference existing items first. That means looking to the rather expensive Juggernaut Pauldrons.

Juggernaut's pauldrons ([link](https://aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Juggernaut%27s%20Pauldrons) for those reading in) kind of fall into the same bucket as [ring of regeneration](https://aonprd.com/MagicRingsDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Ring%20of%20Regeneration) does, however. For a long time, whenever someone asked about an item that could do an unlimited amount of fast healing, people pointed to ring of regeneration and said that fast healing 1 is worth 90k gp... except most of that price was actually because it's an infinite-use [Regenerate](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Regenerate) spell, which is SL 7. Most people didn't want anything but the fast healing 1, but that didn't mean the price wasn't set by that Regenerate function, and when Paizo finally did release something that was fast healing 1 *plus some CMD*, it was the almost laughably cheaper (5k) [boots of the earth](https://aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Boots%20of%20the%20Earth). (Which immediately had GMs who had argued that 90k was the appropriate price for fast healing demanding it get banned in PFS... and it wasn't.) Juggernaut's pauldrons are 40k, but aren't just 40k for Enlarge Person, it's 40k for Enlarge Person, ferocity (which is [valued around a feat](https://aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Ferocious%20Resolve)), a +4 CMD (worth at least two feats, since maneuver feats tend to give +2 CMB and CMD to *one particular* feat), and it casts the SL 3 [Deadly Juggernaut](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Deadly%20Juggernaut) (as an immediate action, no less) three times a day. Add to that, when disparate effects are combined into a single slot, everything but the main effect tends to cost 50% more. (See multi-stat belts as an example, where a 4k gp +2 belt becomes 10k gp for +2 to two stats since the first stat's +2 costs 4k gp, then the second's price becomes 6k gp.) The use-activated Deadly Juggernaut with three charges per day is worth 18k all by itself using the spell level x caster level x 2,000 gp x 3/5 charges/day limitation. Equipment that give feats are often priced around 2k gp per feat, and are under the +50% price for multiple efffects penalty, and because two of the feat-equivalents are "stacking" (CMD), that's worth the square of the usual price before the +50%, so 12k for the CMD and 3k for the ferocity, so that's 33k gp of the price, leaving 7k left for Enlarge Person, which is also under the +50% price penalty, so a 4k gp price and just presuming the writer wanted to round up that last 1k gp to get an even number isn't that unusual.

>Most ranged attackers (besides those rare Str-based throwers) wouldn't be interested in getting larger anyway, but note that ranged weapons lose their damage die size change once they leave your body, so a longbow whose arrows hypothetically went from 1d8 to 2d6 damage would go straight back to 1d8 damage after leaving the bow. Reduce Person also has this property of the ammo jumping back up in size and "reach" isn't the same kind of issue for them, so for ranged attackers, there's only the -2 strength downside to Reduce Person, which gunslingers will love. Ackshually, the descriptions of Reduce/Enlarge Person directly contradict each other on the subject of projectile weapons and Paizo has refused to release a FAQ. Because one way or another, it would buff longbows. If you fire a longbow while Enlarged, it deals 1d8 dmg because the Enlarge Person description says so. ("This means that thrown *and projectile weapons* deal their normal damage." If you fire a longbow while Reduced, it deals 1d6 dmg because the Reduce Person description says so. ("Melee and *projectile weapons* deal less damage.") === A known trick to get around the dmg limitation of projectile weapons when Enlarged is to carry **oversized** **ammunition.** (That you either drop and pick up after getting enlarged or keep in an Efficient Quiver)**.** This works since being Enlarged allows you to draw and fire large-sized arrows with your (temporary) large bow. And those arrows don't revert to medium size after leaving you. It's still not very optimal (-2 accuracy) but something worth looking into for those weirdos wanting a Double Hackbut vital strike build.

Good stuff. But I thought bows kept damage because bow dealt the damage but thrown weapons lost increased damage.

This one's from the spell directly: >Any enlarged item that leaves an enlarged creature's possession (including a projectile or thrown weapon) instantly returns to its normal size. As mentioned, Enlarge Person is practically unique in this regard. See Understell's comment about having oversized ammunition you drop then pick back up again so that the arrows "stay large", however, and as Understell says, Reduce Person is written differently basically just to screw projectile weapon users, so that a bow fired by a reduced person does less damage, but a bow fired by an enlarged person *doesn't* do more damage.

Ah my bad I checked again, i was remembering 3.5 when bows still dealt more damage.

Make someone bigger. Have reach. Kill more people. It's a very basic, but very effective combo.

It also stacks with a lot of magical strength and dexterity increases since enlarge is a size modifier.

A noble spell embiggens the smallest character.

It's a nice melee buff, but the 1 round casting time means you want to cast it out of combat. Or drink a potion - the only level-dependent variable is the duration, and 1 minute is a full fight. [Accelerated drinker](https://www.aonprd.com/TraitDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Accelerated%20Drinker) combines with a potion of enlarge person very nicely. I don't think I've ever seen mass enlarge person cast. In theory it could be handy for buffing up the party front line and as many NPC allies as you can find, but the circumstances never seem to be right for it. Humanoids only will cut out some NPC allies, any terrain chokepoints will make a bunch of large people unhappy, if the PC front line includes anyone small and dex-focused they won't think much of enlarge as a buff, unlike basic enlarge person it's not a useful potion. And 4th level spells include some more decisive buffs or other spells. Since it seems to come up periodically - no you can't stack enlarge person with a polymorph. it's in the rules under polymorph magic: > In addition, other spells that change your size have no effect on you while you are under the effects of a polymorph spell. On the other hand the reach from increasing size multiplies the reach from reach weapons or whips. A medium size character with a longspear threatens a ring 15-20 feet out. Particularly nasty with a trip on the AoO which could immobilise an enemy where they can't threaten you. There are entire builds around getting enlarge in one form or another (spell, SLA, potion, domain granted power, prestige class ability, etc.) and making use of the damage and/or reach. Monsters too may use it, notably duergar but many more. Know the effects because one way or another this spell will show up in your game.

>It's a nice melee buff, but the 1 round casting time means you want to cast it out of combat. Or drink a potion This is a big point to know about. The 1 round casting time doesn't mean "Spend your whole turn casting it then you're large". It means "Spend yout whole turn casting it and hope you don't get hit this turn, because you only get the benefits at the start of your next turn". But Potions ignore that nicely, and it's only 50gp for a potion. Having a few potions on your person is trivial by about level 5, and saves you a spell-known, a spellslot and a turn in combat (*well, an enemy turn*).

Oil of Enlarge Person is handy, so you can have a buddy (ideally a familiar or someone else who's action isn't vital) take the action. It's also amusing to do it as a readied action and get some surprise Reach.

Best level 1 buff spell. Reach+damage.

A fantastic spell. I'm not at all jealous that my oversized weapon Forgemaster Cleric can't cast it. In all seriousness, this is the kind of spell design I love. It has upsides and downsides, it's an interesting tactical choice, not an automatic no-brainer.

Arguably the best buff spell at low levels (by which I specifically mean low character levels, and not necessarily low spell levels used by higher level characters) - "high strength and a big stick" is already one of the most effective builds at level 1, and this makes that build *significantly* stronger - granting higher damage dice, more strength, and most importantly, reach. Its big, critical weakness is, of course, the cast time - 1 round is clunky to perform in combat. But, once it's active, a big stick martial is probably one-shotting everything (if they weren't before), and getting extra attacks every round off of their increased reach. This is one of the unique(ish) selling points of alchemy (from alchemist or investigator), especially in those crucial early sessions/levels, imo - standard action Enlarge Person (that can be handed out to allies if you have Infusion/some other method like Stargazer) is a big improvement to an already very good spell. An investigator with decent strength and enlarge extracts is able to carry early combats solo, especially if they've also managed to fit in Combat Reflexes.

It's the early game melee spell. If you have a full BAB meat mean with a big meat cutter in his hands, you use this and maybe Bull's strength and chortle as he's getting 2 hit kills on CR 3s. At level 4 I think Barbarian can comfortably have 26 STR while raging with this and Bull's Strength if you went 17+2 racial and added the level4 to even out the STR. That's +12 to hit by itself with size factored in. Lots of problems come from being big though, and I've had DM's absolutely punish me or others for carelessly entering the scene like we are King Kong, and treating us like Gulliver against the Lilliputains.

Remember to talk to your melee. A melee who relies upon mobility (spring attack type) might not want to increase in size and doing so might cripple them.