All About Spells

Tangent101 wrote:

If you look through the comments when this discussion arose, you will find multiple people talking about how this is a problem. You haven't noticed it or you have people who eventually overcome it and you "don't see it as a problem."

How many just quit?

Over the term "level"?

I'd assume some number around or equal to zero.

No, over confusing terminology and complexity and you know that is what I'm talking about.

There are people who never overcome that confusion. Some, like my friend's ex-wife, play only because their friends or family are playing. She always played a Fighter back in the days of AD&D where there were no Feats and she was the epitome of the hack-and-slash player who didn't show much interest in roleplaying and just wanted a nice simple character to play.

That the term hack-and-slash player even exists shows this is not a rare occurrence. They avoid playing Wizards and Clerics and even Rogues because they don't want to deal with confusing concepts like caster and spell and character levels and which means what. They want to roll a die, hit something, and kill it.

Quote:

How many felt the game was too complex

For this vague of a question? Probably some. But there's always been a plethora of "simple" games that don't maintain any tradition, and they never seem to have everyone swarm to them. But even 5ed, which is reasonably simplified and assuredly has a much reduced scope to anything in the 3.X / d20 line, and is unusually successful as far as tabletop RPGs go, doesn't throw out tradition unless it is getting something for its effort.

You WOULD be getting something out of the effort. You would be getting improved comprehension because you don't have new players trying to figure out why their 2nd level Wizard doesn't automatically get 2nd level spells because they're both levels and it makes sense they would get them now.

Of course, we could just go with 20 spell levels. That would fix everything up quite easily. It would also make result in a lot of folk complaining about how low level spells quickly become useless and why don't they just keep things like it always was and most of these spells are derivative and pointless. And personally, I think 10 spell tiers is sufficient.

They're changing race to ancestry. Tradition isn't nearly as important as you're thinking it is. And altering confusing terminology is not a bad thing.

Let me ask you this: why is it a bad thing to change Spell Level to another term?

So here's a question, as I level my cleric and take heightened versions of heal, if I spend all three of my actions to burst will it always be my Wisdom modifier or will that have a multiplier as well? Because if not, it drastically reduces my interest at higher levels to burst Heal.

Example:My 3rd level Cleric in first edition has an 18 Wisdom. By these rules my burst heal would still only heal 4 damage and deal 4 damage to undead.

Something that could fix this would be to add a heightened multiplier to your appropriate modifier (2x Wis modifier for the above example) this would keep bursting viable at higher levels. Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere when talking about Heal.

It says on the text that you get +1d8 per spell level. Starting at 0. Level 2 Burst would be 1d8+ WIS, level 3 2d8... And so on. While single target grows at double rate.

Biggest problem I saw with "different senses of level" I had in PF1 was with the Kineticist, since wild talents were organized by analogy to spell level (even though they aren't like spells) rather than "the character level you could take them at." Whole bunch of people had misconceptions about it.

Character level versus spell level is something that I haven't seem people with an issue with since the character table explicitly spells out how many spells of each level you get corresponding to character level. I might get a "Did Gary Gygax not own a thesaurus" but people aren't thinking they can cast fireball at 3rd level, in my experience.

One could rename "spell level" if they really wanted, but I genuinely dislike the sound of "2nd circle spell."

But the Druid gets access to neither Cone of Cold or Fireball by default

The rest of your post made some pretty good points, but are you sure about this one? ;)

Friendly Rogue wrote:

But the Druid gets access to neither Cone of Cold or Fireball by default

The rest of your post made some pretty good points, but are you sure about this one? ;)

I mean this in the sense that they only get access to these through the elemental domains. I'm actually playing as a druid right now with the fire domain and is taking exclusively fire-related spells, so unless I'm mistaken, a lot of the Wizard/Sorcerer blasting spells are only available via domains - not all of them, but a lot of the iconic ones

Wait, I think I get what you mean now.

Maybe druids are Vital+Material? It would fit with the druid aesthetic, I think. Life force, and instinct, and animals, and rocks, and trees, and fire.

Friendly Rogue wrote:

But the Druid gets access to neither Cone of Cold or Fireball by default

The rest of your post made some pretty good points, but are you sure about this one? ;)

This lends further credence to the Four Essences spell lists theory! Wizards are Material/Mental and Druids are Material/Vital. Cone of Cold and Fireball are on the Material spell list, so Druids and Wizards will both get access to them!!

I really like this setup in general. My only concern: where do the really Druid-y spells like Goodberry and Shillelagh live? If they're Vital, then Clerics get them; if they're Material, then Wizards get them. If that winds up being the case it'll take an adjustment on the players' part, but I suppose it's something I could get used to. Of course, there's always other possible solutions; for instance, the really Druid-y spells could become spell point powers.

Maybe druids are Vital+Material? It would fit with the druid aesthetic, I think. Life force, and instinct, and animals, and rocks, and trees, and fire.

That's the route I expect, if the system is based on a combination of essences.

And for why the essence route is probably more attractive than garnishing the old system with essence flavour is... an organic feeling. By removing most of the arbitrary " druid gets spell x because they're druid, and wizards don't because they're not druids". The spells available in the system began to feel like they're part of a world and now you don't have to know that fireball is only available to classes that learn fireball and those witb out it don't have it, even if the have stuff like elemental form and produce flame
E.

So does that mean that bards get mental/vital?

CLARIFY FROM THE START IF SPELLS AND ABILITIES HAVE SOME FORM OF MANIFESTATION AND IF IT IS VISIBLE, AUDIBLE OR PERCEIVED IN SOME OTHER WAY

Sorry for shouting that, but I think it is important. It change the balance about having access to mind affecting magic.

Personally I am in favor of easily perceptible manifestations that point to the spellcaster, with costly (in term of actions, prerequisites or chance of success) abilities that allow a caster to remove the manifestation, or to make it appear to generate from a different location.

- * - * -

I suppose that now all spellcasters work like the arcanist for spell know/prepared?

- * - * -

Please, be careful with the spell point and related abilities. Having people that go nova in the first two encounters and then ask the party to rest for the whole day is something I (and most if not all of my friends) really dislike.

I have no idea what you mean. The three spell components are self-explanatory: Verbal, Somatic, and Material.

Verbal= speech
Somatic= hand movements
Material= use of material

If you take actions to remove verbal and somatic from a spell that includes all 3, the caster still has to use a material component, which means handling it in some fashion. Likely to be seen unless they've got a good sleight of hand, etc. or nobody is paying attention.

So does that mean that bards get mental/vital?

That would be my guess.

My only concern: where do the really Druid-y spells like Goodberry and Shillelagh live?

Could "this spells is specific to this class" be something we can do with spell points or other class features instead of spell slots?

Being able to cast Goodberry [4+level/4] times per day without spending spell slots would make me more excited about Goodberry, especially if you can make "Betterberry" with the expenditure of more spell points.

As someone else put it, could you eliminate Spell Resistance? It's a throwback to AD&D days with the Illithid and the Drow, two monsters who were fairly rare and truly horrifying because the powerful wizard's spells would just splash off of them without effect. But now you have Critical Success and Critical Failures for saving throws.

If you want to emulate the effect of Spell Resistance, use Saves. Have one easily-found line with the saves stating "This enemy cannot suffer a Critical Failure for Saving Throws." All at once you have foes who are resistant to spells but you don't have an added hoop to go through and try to remember if this monster has spell resistance or not.

You could even go one further and state that a Resistant Creature shifts their Save up one category (Critical Failures become Failures, Failures become Successes, and Successes become Critical Successes) but that also risks getting confusing. Eliminating critical failures alone for Resistant creatures would emulate the "this thing shrugs off magic" without making them overpowered.

This is a great idea.

In 1e I've sometimes played with giving monsters more specific immunities (where no roll has to be made). But I like playing with the new crit system. I think either immunity to crit fail and/or bumping up result by one tier would work-- I don't think it'd be too unintuitive.

I really like this setup in general. My only concern: where do the really Druid-y spells like Goodberry and Shillelagh live? If they're Vital, then Clerics get them; if they're Material, then Wizards get them. If that winds up being the case it'll take an adjustment on the players' part, but I suppose it's something I could get used to. Of course, there's always other possible solutions; for instance, the really Druid-y spells could become spell point powers.

One thing that hasn't been considered is a spell could have a dual tag to make it Druid-specific. For example, Goodberry could be Vital AND Material (it heals, but using material objects). We don't know how these interact, and have only been assuming a spell will have a single one of these tags, rather than multiple indicating you need access to *all* the essences.

Granted, this may go against the "4 spell lists" thing... so we'll have to see, but it certainly is a possibility.

Mark Seifter wrote:

There are definitely those at Paizo who agree with this, since everything else that is done by level is on that 0-20+ scale. On the other hand, certain deeply entrenched terminology being changed has a risk of dramatically changing the feel of the game

You mean like races to ancestries? ;)

Actually, exactly like that as a matter of fact. There's a limit to how many of those things we can change before we go all Ship of Theseus on the terminology, and as designers, we have to pick the most important ones to change and then sort of guess where the line is. But we don't have all the answers, and we don't presume to have them. Hardly any two people will agree on that exact line or what terminology is most important (including at Paizo), but a playtest and public feedback will help dramatically in that regard!

Bardic Dave wrote:

My only concern: where do the really Druid-y spells like Goodberry and Shillelagh live?

Could "this spells is specific to this class" be something we can do with spell points or other class features instead of spell slots?

Yes, I think this is a good idea. If you read the whole post you quoted, you'll see I actually suggested this as a possibility toward the bottom. :)

One thing that hasn't been considered is a spell could have a dual tag to make it Druid-specific. For example, Goodberry could be Vital AND Material (it heals, but using material objects). We don't know how these interact, and have only been assuming a spell will have a single one of these tags, rather than multiple indicating you need access to *all* the essences.

Granted, this may go against the "4 spell lists" thing... so we'll have to see, but it certainly is a possibility.

Hey, this is a really cool idea!

Lots of people seem to be assuming that spells can only belong to one spell list. Has this been explicitly stated?

Lots of people seem to be assuming that spells can only belong to one spell list. Has this been explicitly stated?

Another good point. For instance, Animate Dead could appear on both the Material and Spiritual lists.

tivadar27 wrote:

One thing that hasn't been considered is a spell could have a dual tag to make it Druid-specific. For example, Goodberry could be Vital AND Material (it heals, but using material objects). We don't know how these interact, and have only been assuming a spell will have a single one of these tags, rather than multiple indicating you need access to *all* the essences.

Granted, this may go against the "4 spell lists" thing... so we'll have to see, but it certainly is a possibility.

Hey, this is a really cool idea!

*Bows* I'm also curious as to how this interacts with multiclassing (you'll see me say that word a lot...). I'm not going to postulate on multi-essence spells, but even for single essence, I'm sort of assuming there will be a single spell progression chart (one multiclass table as they said) and your access to schools will increase based on all your classes.

I wonder if we will have to differentiate between a spell being "Material OR Spiritual" and a spell being "Material AND Spiritual" so that only a class doing both of those things can cast it.

If we can handle a bunch of different senses of "level" we can handle simple logical connectives right?

I wonder if we will have to differentiate between a spell being "Material OR Spiritual" and a spell being "Material AND Spiritual" so that only a class doing both of those things can cast it.

If we can handle a bunch of different senses of "level" we can handle simple logical connectives right?

Nods, this was what I was driving at, though I do wonder if it makes things too complicated. For example, Tags [Material, Spiritual] [Vital] should mean something like you need Material AND Spiritual, OR Vital by itself to cast the spell.

Here's a bit of a extreme "looney theory" about spell essences...what if spells are grouped into essences and tier levels within those essences? Perhaps wizards start out Expert in Material spells but druids only start Trained, and spells have both an essence category and a minimum tier? And then as class feats caster classes can up their tier level with a specific essence or possibly even add one at Trained they lacked before? This would mean as a caster advances they learn more spells, but they'd have to choose between getting "harder" spells, or branching out, or possibly taking neat tricks to do that don't expand their lists.

so since u only talked about hightening spells.

what about other metamagic? is it still a thing?

It's different from heightened and fits best in another blog.

As to individual spells, we'll reveal more over time. Since you mentioned pattern spells, they no longer have a Hit Dice limit or the like, which is an extremely good thing for all the patterns except color spray (seriously, I never prepared them in PF1 but they are cool in PF2), since most of them had limits that were quite low. But of course we said in the other blog that we were going to cut down on save or lose (especially at 1st level spells), so color spray serves more of a debuff role most of the time. On the other hand, it does so handsomely for a 1st-level spell, so your foes in the cone should expect to at least suffer a round of miss chances unless they are very lucky. Grease is pretty much grease, though in total it's probably going to be easier to trip most targets with it and harder to take away a weapon-using PC/NPC's only weapon and essentially auto-win.

Here's a bit of a extreme "looney theory" about spell essences...what if spells are grouped into essences and tier levels within those essences? Perhaps wizards start out Expert in Material spells but druids only start Trained, and spells have both an essence category and a minimum tier? And then as class feats caster classes can up their tier level with a specific essence or possibly even add one at Trained they lacked before? This would mean as a caster advances they learn more spells, but they'd have to choose between getting "harder" spells, or branching out, or possibly taking neat tricks to do that don't expand their lists.

So that's a clever idea, and would make grouping easier. Though I will say I don't think they'll used the proficiency system here, as that only has 5 Tiers and there are 10 levels (tiers?) of spells... Seems like overextending a bit.

Still, something like Spiritual, Vital: 5, Material: 4, would make sense, though it's hard to parse (but extremely fun to think about!) if we have both AND and OR conjunctions...

EDIT: It also jives with the awkward "Spell 5" wording in the previewed contents. Why have the essences next to the level unless the level can be influenced by that? (Okay, maybe that's just "because")

Here's a bit of a extreme "looney theory" about spell essences...what if spells are grouped into essences and tier levels within those essences? Perhaps wizards start out Expert in Material spells but druids only start Trained, and spells have both an essence category and a minimum tier? And then as class feats caster classes can up their tier level with a specific essence or possibly even add one at Trained they lacked before? This would mean as a caster advances they learn more spells, but they'd have to choose between getting "harder" spells, or branching out, or possibly taking neat tricks to do that don't expand their lists.

That's how MERP (Middle-Earth Roleplaying) did it. It wasn't a bad system at all.

Has it been stated anywhere that a spell with multiple components and thus multiple actions require those actions to be continuous?

As in, can a wizard spend 1 action on the verbal, then move, then spend the last action on the somatic?

Here's a bit of a extreme "looney theory" about spell essences...what if spells are grouped into essences and tier levels within those essences? Perhaps wizards start out Expert in Material spells but druids only start Trained, and spells have both an essence category and a minimum tier? And then as class feats caster classes can up their tier level with a specific essence or possibly even add one at Trained they lacked before? This would mean as a caster advances they learn more spells, but they'd have to choose between getting "harder" spells, or branching out, or possibly taking neat tricks to do that don't expand their lists.

Another cool idea. I like it, but I think it occupies too similar a conceptual space to spell levels. You could have both concepts exist simultaneously, but then you end up with multiple different spells of the same level requiring different levels of proficiency, which definitely has the potential to get confusing for some people. If Paizo had gone more radical and eliminated spell levels as we conventionally know them, this would have been a good way to do it.

I'm not saying that it's just a garnish to the magic classes, but I really don't think that it's going to be so big of a thing that it will replace the way spell lists work. The way I'm interpreting it is that the material+mental and spiritual+vital essences are just ways of clearly distinguishing how arcane magic operates versus how divine magic operates, which would lead to some general distinctions as to what spells the classes get access to - in example, more destructive evocation spells would be very material and more exclusive to arcane casters, while hardcore healing spells that involve the restoration of limbs and life are deep rooted into vitality, putting it in the divine camp. If the essences were to become extremely concrete mechanics as opposed to general design/lore guidelines, I feel that the distinctions between the casting classes would become too rigid and interfere with intersectionality between spell lists.

Beyond this, it could also reflect HOW spells are cast. Wizards draw from mental, so they have to study, and hence rely upon prepared casting. We know that cleric is getting some major changes, which may impact the oracle. What if spiritual casters were all spontaneous?

I mean there are lots of way to interpret this bit of information...

Now that conjuration has lost healing spells and some direct damage spells, I wonder what it will get in return.

Now that conjuration has lost healing spells and some direct damage spells, I wonder what it will get in return.

Not sure it needs anything! Teleportation, planes hopping, summoning, and instantaneous conjuring of walls and such seems pretty potent all on its own!

I REALLY like a lot of this. Love the actions. Love how some things replace material components, like a divine focus. Love bumping uber spells like wish to 10th. Love core-ifying rituals.

I think I have to get used to the idea of heightened cantrips, because I have players who looove to stretch what cantrips can be capable of already, but I think I will love it in the end, as I can only expect you've paid attention to balance here and we can do that also in the playtest.

The only thing of what we now know for sure that gives me pause for thought is the idea of some abilities requiring a pool of spell points to cast (and it sounds like it works for these subsystems only, not "normal" spellcasting). And that's only because I always feel a bit iffy about tracking expenditure pools (there's a lot of classes I don't play because I don't feel like tracking grit/panache/ki/etc.). BUUUUUT it may well be it is a subsystem that suits and I want to see how it works in the playtest. I'm worried about it, but only a little, and am very willing to be swayed to "it's gonna be fine."

Dare I Hope? Dare I ask? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PAIZO do this...
I wish above and beyond anything--like be willing to give blood or burn my books or at least mail Paizo a nice big tin of cookies--to be assured that every single spell could be printed legibly (if in small text) onto a single 3x5 index card. I might be willing to compromise to go up to a 4x6 card. (And of course having official spell cards would also be goshdarned lovely.)

And that all of that text includes EVERYTHING you need to know to cast the spell (not like, say, acid fog which is a brief description, but refers you to solid fog which in turn refers you to fog cloud which means you have to look up three different spells to figure out the effects of one.)

Pathfinder, as an offshoot of D&D, inherited a weirdly frustratingly and often overly complicated spell system with a lot of ifs, ands, or buts that makes tracking some spell...

A lot of different and good points here. Here's some responses with bullet points. Breaking out pieces of quotes to respond would just make the post look big and confusing.

*We're not particularly constraining spells to a certain size, but our goal is to make them simpler to understand while preserving (or sometimes increasing) functionality. If that allows them to fit on memory aids like you say, so much the better! That said, some spells are going to reference other spells, much fewer thanks to heightening, but some. For instance, it's not really fair to say that cloudkill is merely a heightened version of obscuring mist; it's its own spell with some crossover mechanics.

*If you play classes like cleric (which admittedly you might not), you still have to keep track of "I have 10 uses of bit of luck, 2 uses of tugging strands, 1 use of deflection aura, and 14 rounds of aura of protection" for instance. (incidentally, for those reading along, who can tell me all the specs of my example PF1 cleric based on only this information?)

*You might have to send us cookies. Paizo's address is on the contact us page ;)

Lots of people seem to be assuming that spells can only belong to one spell list. Has this been explicitly stated?

It has not, and furthermore we don't actually know what the spell lists will be. Folks are taking some speculation extracted from the blog post and running with it, scissors in hand. :)

Fumarole wrote:

Lots of people seem to be assuming that spells can only belong to one spell list. Has this been explicitly stated?

It has not, and furthermore we don't actually know what the spell lists will be. Folks are taking some speculation extracted from the blog post and running with it, scissors in hand. :)

Im up for anything and everything is permitted. But please don't take my scissors, it's fun to run with them.

EDIT: It also jives with the awkward "Spell 5" wording in the previewed contents.

In the layout we expect for the playtest CRB, we've standardized the way that the statblocks look for things like feats, spells, etc so that if you learn how to read one of them, you know how to read them all (they have different entries in them, of course, but the way you can find the information is extremely parallel). A book like this one where everything is in its own chapter probably is fine without telling you that something is a spell, but if you have a player companion type book where a feat is right after a spell that's right after a magic item, it'll be useful to see what sort of rules element something is at a glance by having that information prominent.

Quadratic W wrote:

The biggest concern would be that with the way higher power spells have an easier time overcoming lower level spells, the gap between full-casters and everyone else might grow a bit more. As well, if a Fighter or Rogue gain access to a cantrip in 5e, that cantrip grows in power as they do. But because those classes generally don't gain caster levels, it seems like those classes would be stuck with a 1st-level version of cantrips for the whole shebang.

Am I correct? It appears the caster level has no bearing on the power of the spell, technically (meaning spells have no caster level adjustment, or they don't go by caster level). For instance, it appears a higher spell level light spell will defeat a lower level darkness spell, even if that darkness caster is way higher caster level than the lower caster level light spell! I'm not sure I like this at all: no inherent caster level modifiers at all? A level 20 wizard casting a level 1 darkness spell can be defeated by a level 4 wizard using a level 2 light spell?

A level 20 wizard can cast that darkness spell as a level 3 spell instead. Caster level has a bearing the sense that it gives access to those higher-level spell slots, which empower the spell.

Mark Seifter wrote:

I mean, half of 85 is 42, and 1/3 of 85 is 28 (both in Pathfinder parlance where we round down to nearest whole number); we are talking about an average of 35, which is halfway between those two numbers; 5/12 just doesn't have the same cachet as almost half.

I mean, aren't we really getting around 17ish temp HP, though? The blog says half of the damage dealt. So only on a really lucky roll/bad save. Or am I just reading this all wrong?

Also, I'm interested to see more spells, since 10d6 seems pretty light for a 6th level spell. I'm assuming that's to account for the temp HP, currently.

After giving it some thought, I realized all my questions are answered in the blog post. Chock one up for reading it wrong. Rushing through the post too quick on break at work...

On a reread, I caught the relevant points:
1) You mention that Cone of Cold has nothing to fear, so I was right in thinking straight damage spells will get more dice.

2) You mention that all you have to get is one target crit failing to get that 50% temp HP boost...

So yeah, sorry Mark.

Shadrayl of the Mountain wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

I mean, half of 85 is 42, and 1/3 of 85 is 28 (both in Pathfinder parlance where we round down to nearest whole number); we are talking about an average of 35, which is halfway between those two numbers; 5/12 just doesn't have the same cachet as almost half.

I mean, aren't we really getting around 17ish temp HP, though? The blog says half of the damage dealt. So only on a really lucky roll/bad save. Or am I just reading this all wrong?

Also, I'm interested to see more spells, since 10d6 seems pretty light for a 6th level spell. I'm assuming that's to account for the temp HP, currently.

After giving it some thought, I realized all my questions are answered in the blog post. Chock one up for reading it wrong. Rushing through the post too quick on break at work...

On a reread, I caught the relevant points:
1) You mention that Cone of Cold has nothing to fear, so I was right in thinking straight damage spells will get more dice.

2) You mention that all you have to get is one target crit failing to get that 50% temp HP boost...

So yeah, sorry Mark.

No worries, Shadrayl! And yeah, if you cast this into a room full of a bunch of mooks (who aren't all barbarians or something), chances are somebody's going to critically fail. If not, well, you can be a horrible person to a hireling if you want to be creatively evil like some have suggested in the comments ;)

It would be cool to have example names that in world wizard schools use for spell levels. Circles, secrets, rune,....

A lot of different and good points here. Here's some responses with bullet points. Breaking out pieces of quotes to respond would just make the post look big and confusing.

*We're not particularly constraining spells to a certain size, but our goal is to make them simpler to understand while preserving (or sometimes increasing) functionality. If that allows them to fit on memory aids like you say, so much the better! That said, some spells are going to reference other spells, much fewer thanks to heightening, but some. For instance, it's not really fair to say that cloudkill is merely a heightened version of obscuring mist; it's its own spell with some crossover mechanics.

*If you play classes like cleric (which admittedly you might not), you still have to keep track of "I have 10 uses of bit of luck, 2 uses of tugging strands, 1 use of deflection aura, and 14 rounds of aura of protection" for instance. (incidentally, for those reading alon, who can tell me all the specs of my example PF1 cleric based on only this information?)

*You might have to send us cookies. Paizo's address is on the contact us page ;)

Simplifying is good! I'll take it.

Well, I might be exaggerating a a little on the counting thing, I do track bardic rounds of performance an awful lot lately. If the spell points actually simplifies tracking existing abilities/effects, that may well work fine for me. I just don't want a lot more to track on TOP of the kind of stuff you list (protection domain, luck domain/fate subdomain), or have weird recovery circumstances to remember.

I will ready the chocolate chips and dried cherries and watch carefully. :)

Mark Seifter wrote:

A lot of different and good points here. Here's some responses with bullet points. Breaking out pieces of quotes to respond would just make the post look big and confusing.

*We're not particularly constraining spells to a certain size, but our goal is to make them simpler to understand while preserving (or sometimes increasing) functionality. If that allows them to fit on memory aids like you say, so much the better! That said, some spells are going to reference other spells, much fewer thanks to heightening, but some. For instance, it's not really fair to say that cloudkill is merely a heightened version of obscuring mist; it's its own spell with some crossover mechanics.

*If you play classes like cleric (which admittedly you might not), you still have to keep track of "I have 10 uses of bit of luck, 2 uses of tugging strands, 1 use of deflection aura, and 14 rounds of aura of protection" for instance. (incidentally, for those reading alon, who can tell me all the specs of my example PF1 cleric based on only this information?)

*You might have to send us cookies. Paizo's address is on the contact us page ;)

Simplifying is good! I'll take it.

Well, I might be exaggerating a a little on the counting thing, I do track bardic rounds of performance an awful lot lately. If the spell points actually simplifies tracking existing abilities/effects, that may well work fine for me. I just don't want a lot more to track on TOP of the kind of stuff you list (protection domain, luck domain/fate subdomain), or have weird recovery circumstances to remember.

I will ready the chocolate chips and dried cherries and watch carefully. :)

I don't think I'm giving away more than I did in the blog by saying, the Spell Points would be instead of tracking "10 uses of bit of luck, 2 uses of tugging strands, 1 use of deflection aura, and 14 rounds of aura of protection." You'd just have Spell Points and use them to cast those four spells.

If you play classes like cleric (which admittedly you might not), you still have to keep track of "I have 10 uses of bit of luck, 2 uses of tugging strands, 1 use of deflection aura, and 14 rounds of aura of protection" for instance. (incidentally, for those reading alon, who can tell me all the specs of my example PF1 cleric based on only this information?)

Tugging Strands is the power of the Fate Subdomain, and 2 uses indicates a level between 14 and 19 inclusive:

Tugging Strands (Su): At 8th level, you can force a creature within line of sight to reroll any one roll that it has just made before the result of the roll is revealed. The result of the reroll must be taken, even if it is worse than the original roll. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level, and one additional time per day for every 6 levels beyond 8th.

Bit of Luck is by default 3+Wis, so ten uses would seem to imply Wis 24, but some FCB like the elven one increase this number.

Deflection aura is from the defence subdomain of protection (fixed at 1/day), and the time on aura of protection locks the level as 14.

The first deity listed that provides both these subdomains is the Empyreal Lord Chadali

So here's a question that I haven't seen addressed yet (it may have been and I missed it): How will multi-classed spellcasters work with spell points?

Multiclassing a fighter and a ranger always worked before because BAB stacked. Multiclassing a fighter and sorcerer didn't work well because you were less effective as a fighter and a sorcerer, but eldritch knight made it work enough. Multiclassing bard and sorcerer pretty much made you bad at both.

Is the spell points idea more or less to help make that work a little better, where you can use you spell points from bard to power some sorcerer ability?

While I am at it, how about casting spells with another class's spell slot? Any possibility of that in the core book?

Mark Seifter wrote:

If you play classes like cleric (which admittedly you might not), you still have to keep track of "I have 10 uses of bit of luck, 2 uses of tugging strands, 1 use of deflection aura, and 14 rounds of aura of protection" for instance. (incidentally, for those reading alon, who can tell me all the specs of my example PF1 cleric based on only this information?)

Tugging Strands is the power of the Fate Subdomain, and 2 uses indicates a level between 14 and 19 inclusive:

Fate subdomian wrote:

Tugging Strands (Su): At 8th level, you can force a creature within line of sight to reroll any one roll that it has just made before the result of the roll is revealed. The result of the reroll must be taken, even if it is worse than the original roll. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level, and one additional time per day for every 6 levels beyond 8th.

Bit of Luck is by default 3+Wis, so ten uses would seem to imply Wis 24, but some FCB like the elven one increase this number.

Deflection aura is from the defence subdomain of protection (fixed at 1/day), and the time on aura of protection locks the level as 14.

The first deity listed that provides both these subdomains is the Empyreal Lord Chadali

All accurate possibilities, and indeed, a 14th level 24 Wisdom (or lower Wisdom elf) cleric of Chadali could have those uses, but Occam's Razor wars with obscurity in terms of which deity who has those subdomains is most likely.

Joe M. wrote:

I don't think we know for sure how the "essences" and spell lists will interact.

True, but if it works well for the job I have no doubt that the team will pull that wonderful GM trick of "You totally figured it out, bravo!" *erase old idea, write in new one*

OK, I knew couldn't be the only one who has done that. I say co-opt as many of their ideas as possible and run with them. Just congratulate them for figuring it out so they know it was your idea all along

Obscure citations wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

If you play classes like cleric (which admittedly you might not), you still have to keep track of "I have 10 uses of bit of luck, 2 uses of tugging strands, 1 use of deflection aura, and 14 rounds of aura of protection" for instance. (incidentally, for those reading alon, who can tell me all the specs of my example PF1 cleric based on only this information?)

Tugging Strands is the power of the Fate Subdomain, and 2 uses indicates a level between 14 and 19 inclusive:

Fate subdomian wrote:

Tugging Strands (Su): At 8th level, you can force a creature within line of sight to reroll any one roll that it has just made before the result of the roll is revealed. The result of the reroll must be taken, even if it is worse than the original roll. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level, and one additional time per day for every 6 levels beyond 8th.

Bit of Luck is by default 3+Wis, so ten uses would seem to imply Wis 24, but some FCB like the elven one increase this number.

Deflection aura is from the defence subdomain of protection (fixed at 1/day), and the time on aura of protection locks the level as 14.

The first deity listed that provides both these subdomains is the Empyreal Lord Chadali

All accurate possibilities, and indeed, a 14th level 24 Wisdom (or lower Wisdom elf) cleric of Chadali could have those uses, but Occam's Razor wars with obscurity in terms of which deity who has those subdomains is most likely.

*nods*

But what if i'm a chaotic sorcerer?

Chaos isn't all or nothing! You can be a caster of the 3rd Chaos.

Obscure citations wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

If you play classes like cleric (which admittedly you might not), you still have to keep track of "I have 10 uses of bit of luck, 2 uses of tugging strands, 1 use of deflection aura, and 14 rounds of aura of protection" for instance. (incidentally, for those reading alon, who can tell me all the specs of my example PF1 cleric based on only this information?)

Tugging Strands is the power of the Fate Subdomain, and 2 uses indicates a level between 14 and 19 inclusive:

Fate subdomian wrote:

Tugging Strands (Su): At 8th level, you can force a creature within line of sight to reroll any one roll that it has just made before the result of the roll is revealed. The result of the reroll must be taken, even if it is worse than the original roll. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level, and one additional time per day for every 6 levels beyond 8th.

Bit of Luck is by default 3+Wis, so ten uses would seem to imply Wis 24, but some FCB like the elven one increase this number.

Deflection aura is from the defence subdomain of protection (fixed at 1/day), and the time on aura of protection locks the level as 14.

The first deity listed that provides both these subdomains is the Empyreal Lord Chadali

All accurate possibilities, and indeed, a 14th level 24 Wisdom (or lower Wisdom elf) cleric of Chadali could have those uses, but Occam's Razor wars with obscurity in terms of which deity who has those subdomains is most likely.

Shelyn being a much more likely case for the deity.

Mark Seifter wrote:

Obscure citations wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

If you play classes like cleric (which admittedly you might not), you still have to keep track of "I have 10 uses of bit of luck, 2 uses of tugging strands, 1 use of deflection aura, and 14 rounds of aura of protection" for instance. (incidentally, for those reading alon, who can tell me all the specs of my example PF1 cleric based on only this information?)

Tugging Strands is the power of the Fate Subdomain, and 2 uses indicates a level between 14 and 19 inclusive:

Fate subdomian wrote:

Tugging Strands (Su): At 8th level, you can force a creature within line of sight to reroll any one roll that it has just made before the result of the roll is revealed. The result of the reroll must be taken, even if it is worse than the original roll. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level, and one additional time per day for every 6 levels beyond 8th.

Bit of Luck is by default 3+Wis, so ten uses would seem to imply Wis 24, but some FCB like the elven one increase this number.

Deflection aura is from the defence subdomain of protection (fixed at 1/day), and the time on aura of protection locks the level as 14.

The first deity listed that provides both these subdomains is the Empyreal Lord Chadali

All accurate possibilities, and indeed, a 14th level 24 Wisdom (or lower Wisdom elf) cleric of Chadali could have those uses, but Occam's Razor wars with obscurity in terms of which deity who has those subdomains is most likely.

*nods*

Correct! (as is Emeric Tusan) This is me, at 14th level, assuming I don't get a better headband of inspired wisdom anyway.

What does this mean, ( dying value can't exceed 3) in the Regeneration Spell block:

"While it has regeneration, the target can't die from damage and its dying value can't exceed 3."

Getting rid of expensive components for spells cast during combat is a solid idea; I often don't make my spellcasters buy these components and track them because they don't use them often enough. I do, however, make them "pay" the cost upon casting, rather than have them keep materials in their pockets. For instance, rather than making them have a gem, if they just have enough money to pay for the gem at the time of casting, I assume they have that component. The paperwork on this just isn't fun. Hopefully 2e will incorporate a system where it's still difficult to cast those powerful spells without some sort of resource cost- in gold or spell points.

Material, Mental, Spiritual, and Vital: I hope we can easily deduce which spells go into which category. Will it be possible that one spell may be in more than one category, if indeed there are such things in the first place? It's been a bit unclear.

As far as scale-able spells, this is very D&D 5e. Which is fine if it works. I played 5e with a Sorcerer a few times and was happy with my ability to actually have an impact at 1st level, then having better spell power at subsequent levels. The playtest will bear this out, me thinks.

I find, though, that in practice "you have minimal magical resources at low levels and not a lot else you can do" mostly just discourages people from playing Wizards and Sorcerers.

Like in the last 5 years I've gotten Witches, Oracles, Clerics, Druids, Shamans, Inquisitors, Bards, Magi, Occultists, Spiritualists, Investigators, Alchemists, Mesmerists, and Warpriests and but precisely zero Wizards or Sorcerers from my players. It's just not fun having to "suck it up" for a while in order to be able to do cool stuff.

This has been my experience as well. None of my long-time players have ever played a wizard. New players never play a wizard or sorcerer. The power curve is the problem; new players don't know how to remain active or choose spells, while older players know the wait is worth it and know the spells.

Summon Monster was intentionally not updated, as it'd just keep getting more versatile. That said, I'd certainly like to see it have better coverage for different alignments/outsider types, and it sounds like they're interested in that too.

What's the opinion on Starfinder summoning, wherein any creature type can be chosen and aspects/templates are applied to that creature rather than summon by a list of creatures?

I like the idea of being able to summon a demon at low levels just for flavor, even if said demon didn't have the normal abilities of a demon of a certain CR.

I couldn't help but notice that Vampiric Exsanguination doesn't list a save type. Does that mean that save types will be specifically linked to certain types of effects, like Death spells will always use Fortitude saves, or is it just not finished yet.

There surely is a save, right, since it lists critical effects, except for the touch attack?

FedoraFerret wrote:

I'm not too big on this particular spell list idea. It feels kind of clunky to me. Maybe I'd change my mind on seeing it in practice.

I'd argue that having individual spell lists for each caster is far more clunky, though.

Agreed. Get rid of those dumb class spell lists.

I'm not too fond of the word «Spell Points» being used for non-spell abilities, especially if they encompass the powers of martial classes. Maybe «Power Points» would be better.

Yes, it doesn't make sense to use the term "spell points" for use on things that aren't normally-cast spells. This will confuse people.

I like very much what's previewed here.

Makeitstop wrote:

Now if psionics could just officially be part of the rules ecosystem alongside this, I'd be quite happy indeed.

I'd be fine with Paizo incorporating psychic magic early into PF2E, but based on past statements from Paizo design peeps, I don't think I'd like how they'd change psionics. I much prefer Dreamscarred's psionics over anything Vancian. I like fiddly bits and power points too much.

Correct; the devs have stated Psionics will not be in the playtest and thus not in core; they'll be leaving that for later or 3rd party people. They've said it's a bit too much science fantasy.

I'm finding the wording of Vampiric Exsanguination very unclear.

Vampiric Exsanguination wrote:

You deal 10d6 negative damage to all living creatures in the area. As long as at least one creature in the area takes damage, you also gain half that many temporary Hit Points

I think the intent is that you gain temporary HP equal to 1/2 of your damage roll if any creature takes damage. But the way this is written, you could interpret it as you gain temporary HP equal to 1/2 of the TOTAL damage done to all creatures in the area.

Another clarification: if a creature in the area critically fails its save and takes double damage, does that affect the amount of temporary HP you gain?

Well, by inference and logic it would seem that of course the caster would get only half the ROLLED total damage, not half the total damage to all creatures. That being said, if the crit fail increases the rolled damage, then that damage goes into the total to be split in half for temp hp.

I've been looking forward to blogs that actually address what I see as the principal issues with the current Pathfinder game, the caster/martial power discrepancy...

Sigh. That's because the power discrepancy is only perceived by martial users and doesn't exist. Only an intra-class power curve exists, which actually punishes casters at early levels. 2e seems to round that out.

If mundane material components aren't listed anymore for spells requiring them, that's some old-timey flavor I'm going to miss.

Me, too, but in practicality, I nor my players pay any attention to these things anymore; likewise, I've never played in any PFS game (and I play a lot esp. at GenCon) where material components were talked about- as long as you've got the requisite spell component pouch, they're forgotten unless it's a major-cost spell.

We already see that problem in PF1 with "Blockbuster Wizards" (and Sorcerers) who at level 7 can drop 123 damage fireballs in play by combining things that were probably never intended to be combined with free metamagic, rods, and trait/feat/item shenanigans.

By limiting it to level 9, it stops some yahoo in the future from finding some oddball combination that jacks the spell up to effective level 13.

"Well, by combining this, this, and this, my wizard adds +6 levels to a spell of the (insert school here). So my level 7 spell is treated as though it were a level 13 spell. So, by the rules you regen 30 HP per...

The spellcasting system does not look horrible at first glance. A big improvement over some of the other previews in my opinion.

That said: Vampiric Exsanguination

This spell just begs to have the wizard throw his own low-level minion into the AoE. Something all but guaranteed to critically fail on anything but a natural 20.

And this is a bad thing because...

Tarik Blackhands wrote:

...

Is it normal for you to meet higher level casters? In every fight? You're acting like the spells can't be used because there is an evil wizard 10 levels higher than you waiting around every corner just itching to mess up your spell.

Um, well, there are quite a few encounters wherein the BBEG is a higher level spell caster. Plus, it only take ONE spell level higher to counteract, not 10.