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I added a theorycrafting part to the guide where I explain the 2 paradigms you can use to play your casters. It's quite theoretical but for me it's a really important piece of tactical knowledge about casters.
I am throwing on a third option to your limited casting and unlimited casting: lazy casting.
I threw a variety of threats at my party: Trivial Threat, Low Threat, Moderate Threat, Severe Threat, and Extreme Threat. I did not follow a plan about how much the party could handle each day; instead, the threat was determined by the setting. The blaster druid Stormdancer went all out against the dangerous threats and scaled back to cantrips for the threats that the martials could handle alone. She engaged in lazy spellcasting during easy fights.
This might not work for all parties, since scaling back meant more damage to the martials because the foes survived to fight one more round. Our party was very good at patching themselves back to full health after combat with the Medicine skill, so 50% more trivial damage was soon removed.
This paradigm required being able to tell the difference between a Low Threat and a Severe Threat at a glance. In the Ironfang Invasion adventure path, the party fought many identical military units. Counting the familiar units instantly told the threat level without needing any Recall Knowledge checks for identifying creatures. For an unknown threat, the casters would use Recall Knowledge as their first action of the first round. If the threat was still unknown due to failed Recall Knowledge checks, then Stormdancer went all out.
The party liked to push themselves to manage as many encounters as possible during a single day. I often roleplayed their enemy as caught by surprise because the party had arrived so quickly. (If not caught by surprise, the enemy often regrouped into an Extreme Threat--where Stormdancer's ability to devastate large groups also shone.)
I threw a variety of threats at my party: Trivial Threat, Low Threat, Moderate Threat, Severe Threat, and Extreme Threat. I did not follow a plan about how much the party could handle each day; instead, the threat was determined by the setting. The blaster druid Stormdancer went all out against the dangerous threats and scaled back to cantrips for the threats that the martials could handle alone. She engaged in lazy spellcasting during easy fights.
That's limited casting, it's just that they have excellent knowledge of enemy power, and clearly it helps a lot determining how much resources to use.
My experience has always shown the following to be true across all editions:
1. Martials are easier to play. The effects of their abilities are more immediate. Their power increases are fairly linear. Martial magic items are often more appealing and there are more of them. They do the glamorous job of damage, which appeals to the majority of players.
2. Casters are slow burn characters with a steeper power curve starting low and rising the highest. Not quite quadratic in PF2, but definitely not linear. Spells are the caster's magic items. The quality of the spells is what makes the caster so fun. There is a steeper learning curve to mastering casters that many players don't want to engage with. They don't like learning spells and often lack the intellectual capacity to master casting. Casting appeals to those who enjoy mastering spell interactions and rules, so they fully understand how all the things come together to work. They like working outside the box and don't mind affecting the game in ways that they know are extremely powerful that don't necessarily rely on damage numbers.
There are a far smaller number of players that can master casters when damage numbers are straightforward, appealing, and don't require much mental investment.
Always been that way.
Then couple that with coming off the most insane caster power period in the history of RPGs with 3E/PF1 and it's a bit like former caster players having a hangover from the drunk on power effect of the previous editions where high level casters were hands down the kings of the world and the wizard was the king of kings.
Once you get used to PF2 and the new paradigm, you see casters are still top dogs, just not by so much as to break the game. I still don't see any other class crush encounters like casters in PF2. High level casters make most encounters fairly trivial in PF2 whether it's by slowing the target, debuffing them, blasting, or erasing damage. While martials are still just swinging away and taking hits like they did at level 1 with some slight variation. They can't do near as much as casters.
Martials and damage dealing will likely always be the most appealing and easy to master party role attracting the most players. I notice the "casters are weak" crowd have been very quiet since the remaster, so maybe wizards are now in a good place. I never really saw any of the other caster classes as part of that claim as I never saw them posting much on those threads. It was always a wizard problem because they took the biggest fall from PF1 to PF2.
My experience has always shown the following to be true across all editions
I agree with many things. Martials are definitely easier to play. Casters have a stronger progression but they start lower than martials. It's not as big as in previous editions, but it's still a thing.
But I don't agree with that:
There are a far smaller number of players that can master casters when damage numbers are straightforward, appealing, and don't require much mental investment.
It's not damage that is easier, it's martials (Champion and Thaumaturge are as easy to play than Fighter and Barbarian). The easiest caster to play is the full support caster based on buff/debuff/healing. Why? Because it actually affects martials. Blasters, on the other hand, are much harder to play. You can see it with Nieo's intervention and their Wizard moving away from Fireball to True Target and overall the feeling of the community that strongly leans towards support casters (with Bard and Cleric at the top of the caster chart when I find Cleric weak and Bard average).
I'm frankly not sure whether the community would actually want that.
When I compare PF2 to D&D4, I feel that both games are based on extremely similar underlying rules and the main difference is that D&D4 used a Kineticist approach to spellcasting when PF2 didn't. So, I'm not sure people are ready to move away from the long lists of spells. There's really a big difference between Kineticist and Wizard, and Kineticist is definitely not a caster.
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My wizard teammate in Night of the Gray Death has given up causing damage ever since the Level 8 Fireball dealt a total of 40 points of damage to two enemies (20 each). Now, they constantly choose to use TRUE TARGET and other control spells often have no effect.
Starting at level 16 with a caster is definitely a tough experience. At that level, you shouldn't rely on Fireball anymore (Chain Lightning is in general the weapon of choice). Otherwise, I encourage your Wizard player to follow my guide, but by starting at lower level, to learn how to play a blaster in PF2.
Deriven Firelion wrote:
There are a far smaller number of players that can master casters when damage numbers are straightforward, appealing, and don't require much mental investment.
It's not damage that is easier, it's martials (Champion and Thaumaturge are as easy to play than Fighter and Barbarian). The easiest caster to play is the full support caster based on buff/debuff/healing. Why? Because it actually affects martials. Blasters, on the other hand, are much harder to play. You can see it with Nieo's intervention and their Wizard moving away from Fireball to True Target and overall the feeling of the community that strongly leans towards support casters (with Bard and Cleric at the top of the caster chart when I find Cleric weak and Bard average).
Maybe easier to play, but unsatisfying for many. Unnecessary in PF2 as well.
PF2 casters can do it all. There is zero reason to limit yourself to a role or one thing during fights unless you're playing a prepared caster that runs out of slots of a particular spell.
I remember playing highly specialized PF1 casters focusing on a single spell or school of spells. It could be fun if you had the power combo going with metamagic.
But PF2 is built for casters to be wide open. Specializing is completely unnecessary and counterproductive. During the course of an adventuring day with multiple encounters, I do a bit of everything. Blast, debuff, buff, heal, and what not. I even like to carry a fully built weapon and use it as a one action option. I stack all types of abilities on my characters including my casters and use them. I see no point in limiting myself to one mode of play given I have to many options for power.
PF2 casters don't need to specialize in a line of spells. They can use weapons fairly well. They have as many skills as martials. There is no point in acting like being a caster limits you like it did in PF1. So I don't bother to play that way. I use all my options.
That's why I stopped claiming casters were weak damage dealers. They aren't. They can be especially effective using every option available to them. I find PF2 casters generally more fun to play than martials. Martial classes get so repetitious whereas casters get new toys every spell rank on top of using a weapon if they so choose and skills.