AestheticDialectic's page

It's pretty obvious that the designers would not give you access to both flexible casting and spell substitution at the same time unless it incurred the hefty cost the archetype imposed. A hypothetical 3e wizard that is default flexible does not have the option for spell substitution. The class would likely lose it entirely, and likely lose all spell theses. The class starts to want sorcerer style casting options, which further blurs the line

Yeah Mark Seifter mentioned in a Roll for Combat stream that they made spell heighting in such a way that (at least in intent) a spell heighted to a level was roughly on par with spells of that level. How much they accomplished this is spell-to-spell, but what is apparent is that 5e never accomplished this goal. In fact I watch treantmonk sometimes and he had a graph for spell damage and basically fireball is only above the curve of other damage spells, and therefore actually does good damage, specifically at 5th level. Even as soon as 6th level it moves towards just okay, and trying to heighten it into 4th or 5th rank slots is just increasingly not worth it. Only the meteor spell brings caster damage back up into worthwhile

Truthfully I think flexible casting could only exist for an individual class and not simply something you can add onto any class without significant downside, such as fewer slots, and the feat tax may be important too. It's not like the first levels of feats are all that great on casters so what you're giving up is fairly little. Primarily it needs massive class specific design to truly feel balanced as it steps on the toes of both prepared and spontaneous, and it replacing prepared casters, or being an option for any or all prepared casters really make spontaneous feel bad. Reducing the number of prepared spells for flexible down to 1/4, 1/2 or even 3/4s could help in this regard but it would feel similarly bad to what exists now. Balanced sure, but it would be complained about on these forums as much as losing one slot.

I can imagine the Deriven posts talking about how actually sorcerers are better than our hypothetical flexible caster, and they would be if it is 1/4 of a sorcerer's known spells for sure. Only 3/4 is in a zone where better is hard to gauge but with how little value the culture of these forums puts on preparation it would be seen as a complete downgrade. People here want to "set and forget" for the most part. Preparing spells is not what they want to do at all, and flexible casting is just a symbolic gesture to spell preparation that makes it not just spontaneous but which would be played like a spontaneous caster by all the people who hate prepared casting. Many of the complaints are preparation slowing the game down, learning about what is ahead in the adventure slowing the game down, etc etc. For this crowd spontaneous already exists, and this isn't getting into the crowd who thinks spells casters ought to simply pick the talked about "best spells" because "silver bullets nolonger exist" and would also simply set and forget

We end up in a situation where I have to ask what flexible casting offers as an option for any prepared caster. The people asking for it just want a spontaneous caster

I would like to address the thought on flexible prepared spellcasting being a buff. The thing is, yes. It is a buff, but it's a special kind of buff, known as a Quality of Life improvement.

It's not a buff that numerically changes the game, because savvy players can still get the same, and potentially even better results. It's only a buff that closes the distance between a novice player and a veteran player.

Something missing from the analysis is two fold, one is that with spell substitution in many situations flexible casting offers access to all possible spells in a reasonable amount of scenarios which is a definite power buff, and also it allows spontaneous casting upside, without the downside. It is objectively better than spontaneous casting in all regards and steals thunder from the sorcerer

It looks like an improvement over the usual spambot that sometimes posts in these forums.

Instead of posting some random post, the spammer used an LLM to read and answer the thread while adding some spam.

Anyway, in these cases, don't answer; just flag it to moderators to delete the post.

tbf, I responded rather than reported because I wasn't 100% sure, and I didn't check the thread soon enough after to see how or if they'd respond and judge from there

Which is my point, they are optional things you can invest in, but only the wizard gets these abilities for free. They get a specific feat allotment that grants them bonus metamagic or crafting feats, beyond what any other spellcasting class gets.

Yes you *can* spend bonus feats on item creation feats, which you still have to invest skill points into. This doesn't exist whatsoever in 2E and doesn't change the fact sorcerers still both get the ability to create magic items and most importantly to what you originally said, use them

I'm not sure what version of Pathfinder you're playing where Sorcerers are magic crafters, wearing pointy hats, and using staves and wands by default.

Both versions of Pathfinder allow this. First a hat is cosmetic, and notice neither iconic wears a pointy hat. Whether your hat is point is whether you choose to wear that hat. It is superfluous to both classes, and MTG has wizard as creature type but had a long standing rule against pointy hats.

Secondly using wands and staves in all editions of Pathfinder is whether you find it and use it, and all casters with the spells in the wands and staves can use them. They're universal caster tools that have zero, absolutely *zero* class restrictions. Finally crafting is an optional skill, and magical crafting an optional lines of feats in both editions that is not class specific and is useable by every and you don't necessarily need to be intelligence focused to even use it adequately. That is how all of this works in both editions of the game. None of it is wizard specific, none it ever was, and there is nothing in the 1e wizard that gives any benefit to items, and for 2e it's staff nexus and scroll adept, and that is it. Witches even get an equivalent wand ability

Because you edited this in...

Also, you are factually wrong. A sorcerer gets no inherent abilities to craft magic items. It has to spec specifically into it with their general feats. Which is to say, it is as qualified to craft as any other class, because it has to expend feats to buy into it, but it gains no inherent bonus that allows it to craft as a class feature.

Wizards also get no inherent ability to craft items. Even the two things I mentioned, staff nexus, which doesn't craft a staff, and scroll adept, which requires you invest into crafting, do not offer anything specific to a wizard for crafting. Wizards must spend the exact same character building resources to craft as any other character

What separates a wizard from a sorcerer, is what we saw in 1E. What they are as thematic elements, not just mechanical elements. If both wizard and sorcerer were prepared, and if both wizard and sorcerer were spontaneous, this would be true.

In 1E, what seperated the two, was that a wizard was focused on their spells, on crafting, and the like. while the sorcerer was focused on its status as a mutant superhuman imbued with powers of monsters. The wizard did its job flavor wise by focusing on magical aptitude in its purest form. It did the hallmarks, walking around with a familiar, waving around their fancy wand and staff, carrying a big book of spells and yelling abracadabra. What set aside the sorcerer, was the bloodline powers (something that is a bit unfortunate that the flavor of bloodline powers were somewhat diminished in 2E.) The fact was, sorcerers had mutations that accentuated their bloodline more. In 1E, if a sorcerer was a prepared caster, as long as it had the bloodlines, I'd still consider it a sorcerer, even if it was a prepared caster. Even in 2E, it still keeps the spirit of the bespoke abilities in the form of its focus spells, that represent abilities only obtained from the bloodline. Even if a wizard was a spontaneous caster and a sorcerer was a prepared caster, as long as these elements of flavor are in place, a wizard remains a wizard, and a sorcerer remains a sorcerer.

Another example is, lets switch over to a party using Starfinder rules. Consisting of a cleric and a mystic. A cleric is a prepared caster, and a mystic is a spontaneous caster. Both a mystic and a cleric are priests. Though a mystic has priest as a subclass, it was originally designed to replace the cleric, after all. Thematically, and it's often said withing Starfinder books, mystics are referred to as priests, alongside clerics, especially in 1E where clerics do not exist, a mystic might even be called a cleric.

What we run into here, is a fact that even devs exert, which is that in the end, the mechanics of...

Both sorcerers and wizards can use and create magical items in 1e. Both yell "abracadabra". Remove prepared casting from the wizard, and you remove the Spellbook, the mechanic is precisely to do with prepared spells and does nothing otherwise. What you end up with is wizards depending school get different 1d8 attacks, and sorcerers add +1 to specific damage types. Very minor things such as this. Likewise schools and bloodlines still, in this edition, offer very little to the overall picture of the two classes. Both wear pointy hats, both holds staves and wands, and both yell "abracadabra". The difference in inherent magic versus learned magic is almost entirely expressed on the spontaneous vs prepared divide, the rest is the key attribute

The problem with your perception is that for most people, a change from full preparation to flexible preparation is not a class change distinction. Because when people think wizard, as was said, they think an arcane caster that wears robes and pointy hats, and casts from wands and staves. It might be to you, but it's not an average thought. You're missing the forest for the trees, because you are saying that because a birch is not an oak, a birch forest does not make for a forest. In the end, both are trees, and a group of trees becomes a forest.

If you pull the next person you meet aside and ask them what they think a wizard is, I have doubts their interpretation of wizard will exactly match the Pathfinder one. Because a wizard is a wizard, and is a rather wide term. A wizard is not your specific impression of a wizard.

To say that a Pathfinder wizard, if it had flexible prepared spellcasting, is not a wizard, is to say that a D&D wizard is not a wizard. Do you mean to say that a D&D wizard is not a wizard?

Because we are asking for wizards to stay within the wheelhouse of a wizard. A person who often wears robes and incants magic that they learned from years of dutiful study often from a wand or a staff and probably wears a pointy hat. Those definitions are satisfied whether the mechanics represent specific spell preparation, flexible spell preparation, spontaneous casting, or slotless casting. If we said we wanted a wizard to worship a god, and pray to a deity to gain power, you might have a point. If we said we wanted a wizard to attune with nature and call it to heal the land, you might have a point. But we are not asking for those.

If we're going by traditionalism. A wizard from Pathfinder is not a true wizard either. If a wizard selects a single school of magic to specialize in, they must then select two schools of magic to be bad at. A wizard is not supposed to be able to cast 10th level spells. All wizards are supposed to be able to scribe scrolls. Let's go back a bit to 3.5E. Wizards are supposed to expend their experience points just to craft magic items. Back then, wizards aren't supposed to have a bonded item, because they only had familiars. In Pathfinder 2E, you can play a wizard that can specialize in a school with no penalty to other spells, can cast 10th level magic, can have a bonded item, and both doesn't have to expend experience points to craft magic items, nor even know how to craft a single magic item. This clearly is not a wizard.

If you pull a person aside and ask them what a wizard is, they'll say "idk, dude, why are you asking me stupid questions?" Truly we cannot appeal to popularity for why a thing should be a certain way. Nobody knows or cares what a wizard is unless they're in this hobby. I will absolutely say that the D&D wizard is less of a wizard, but without substantial nerfs the D&D wizard makes the sorcerer look pathetic. Which is currently the case in the game as it exists now. Flexible casting is a massive power increase in isolation, but we have to consider much of the discussion is saying "flexible doesn't go far enough" and that we ought to remove slots altogether. The conversation is not simply "make the wizard flexible." I would actually say that idea was dropped almost immediately after it was mentioned in this thread

But let's look at what actually distinguishes a wizard and a sorcerer without prepared casting. Go with the most extreme of spontaneous. And that is, just the ability score and wizards can't use magic that isn't arcane. Blood magic truly doesn't really add a whole hell of lot, and many of the wizard feats do nothing without preparation. Spell substitution does nothing etc. Spontaneous casting and prepared casting have thematic weight within the system and convey different things in juxtaposition. Without a distinction here what the magic someone uses means less. I'm all for deleting the sorcerer class from the game entirely, I think it rubs against eugenics coded ideas, but I know this won't happen

I also am not arguing for or from traditionalism, but from a design, thematics and aesthetic perspective. I already think casters in 2e are way too homogeneous with very little that distinguishes them. All spell traditions can do everything. They can all buff, blast, debuff, have utility, crowd control etc. the only except is arcane can't heal. The differences are in minor degrees, not in kind. The next edition needs to sharpen the differences to justify multiple spellcasting classes existing, not smooth them all over into a gray blob. My argument is that we ought to keep the wizard feeling the way it does with mechanics that emphasize it's thematics and help distinguish it from other classes. On other threads I have argued a PF3E wizard ought to be designed around spell customization to emphasize it's learned nature, and that sorcerers ought to emphasize spell intensity with higher damage and the like to really sell it's thing. The more distinction between these two the system is capable of expressing, the better

AestheticDialectic wrote:

My issue with this framing here is that when people approach the wizard, using your example, they're going like "man I want to play dante, but I don't like ivory and ebony, I don't like that he does weapon swapping, and I don't like that he is color coded red and has longer hair. He should have shorter hair, be color coded blue and use a katana. I don't want to play Virgil though"

The reason I used Dante is because, if you don't like Ebony and Ivory, instead of playing the gunslinger subclass, play Trickster or Swordmaster, and then, play any of the various other weapons. As I said, if Dante is a class, his styles and weapons are his subclass options. Either way, whether you're a Swordmaster, a Gunslinger, a Royal Guard, whether you're using Ebony and Ivory, you're using Force Edge, whether you're using Agni and Rudra, and whether you're using a motorcycle, the point is, you're still Dante.

For a more direct point, if Royal Guard is specific spell preparation, let flexible spell preparation be Swordmaster.

You're missing the forest for the trees. I'm using the examples of the mechanics and aesthetic trappings of Dante and Wizards. Essentially people ask for wizards as a class to change entirely mechanically from what they are. Using Dante as an example I listed things that compose how he works mechanically distinctly from Nero, V, and Virgil (in DMC at least). The mechanical core of Dante compared to the rest is weapon swapping. It's not quite as central as prepared casting is for d20 wizards, but in both cases these are integral parts of what the character and the class are, and how those reflect the fantasy they bring. People want to play a wizard but hate everything about wizards. That's the issue, poking at where the DMC metaphore doesn't line up 1-to-1 with a wizard is just not having a conversation with the core point

One of the reasons I disagree with the whole "you need attrition or else your abilities can't be effective" take is that past a certain point, certain spells do become effectively resourceless: a 18th-level Sorcerer can cast sixteen 6th-rank slow spells or twelve 7th-rank haste spells, which is more than you'd need for combat, yet plentiful access to those spells at that level doesn't break them. Spells generally don't break the moment you get more spell slots to cast them than you'd need in the day, so the notion that they do doesn't strike me as rooted in evidence. The one instance where a spell does get problematic when used at-will is because, in my opinion, it is far too strong at that level range to be an at-will ability: if Timber Sentinel were a 4th-level impulse that let you cast protector tree at-will at max rank-1, the impulse in my opinion would be entirely unproblematic because it would follow the same balance as other impulses, and even casting it at max rank later on would be fine once spells become generally stronger.

I do think that lower rank slots should effectively become costless/resourceless given how scrolls allow for virtually infinite usage. Implementing this into a vancian system, prepared or spontaneous, is difficult at least in terms of words and page count considerations

I would personally like to see the sorcerer and the system adopt something akin to this strain based spell point system for 3.5 but designed as encounter based. Essentially each spell you cast builds up strain to your limit (additive instead of subtractive spell points), and then after combat you gonna chill to lower that stress. Then feats can let you go over your limit at the cost of your health, which would be thematic. They both would spend feats for spells, because they're meant to be limited on variety, but abundant in intensity of spells

I didn't catch my typo here which is supposed to be psychic, not system

AestheticDialectic wrote:

I think a damage oriented caster like the sorcerer should be slotless and the wizard, a control oriented caster, use spellslots, but designing the same spells for both systems is the issue, as they have different needs and goals

I am not sure why. Specifically, I am not sure why a combat buff/debuff spells like haste or slow should be cast lest often than, say, a fireball.

I do think that some design thought has to be given to spells used in other scenes; infinite cast basically means 'always on' for them. So the system would basically need some way to distinguish 'costs resources and effort in the scene' from 'start the scene with it on.'

One thing's for sure, if the sorc went slotless, I would think it would need to get rid of all of it's signature spells. It's already the best caster in most ways; making it infinite recastable should be balanced by a far more limited number of 'what you can cast.'

I would personally like to see the sorcerer and the system adopt something akin to this strain based spell point system for 3.5 but designed as encounter based. Essentially each spell you cast builds up strain to your limit (additive instead of subtractive spell points), and then after combat you gonna chill to lower that stress. Then feats can let you go over your limit at the cost of your health, which would be thematic. They both would spend feats for spells, because they're meant to be limited on variety, but abundant in intensity of spells

Yeah, that would be problematic. Diversify a game's systems too much and it just becomes confusing and intimidating for players. The one benefit of the prepared casting as it is, is it works the same for all prepared casters. If you're comfortable playing a wizard, you'll have little friction changing to cleric. And the basic rules of prepared to spontaneous are similar enough that wizard to sorcerer is a jump, but a relatively small jump. Sorcerer to Wizard is also not exactly hard to teach the basics of either. (Like chess, it's easy to teach and learn the basics, but not everyone learns how to play it well). But wizard to kineticist is another story.

So a prospective slotless sorcerer and a slotted wizard are certainly a valid choice, you run into the problem where a wizard player is intimidated to switch to sorcerer, and vice versa, likely to a larger degree than our prepared and spontaneous castings are, because despite the differences, they are similar enough that a player going from one class to the other can make a reasonable guess based on what they have already played. But the same player may have radically different assumptions of what the Kineticist does before they even read the class. (I'm sure some of you all might remember your greener days of playing TTRPGs, where you're reading a class for the first time, and it is initially stumping you, and you are like, 'alright, let me take a moment to actually digest what is going on here' It's a common occurance going from one system to the next, but it's probably a sensation you want to minimize when happening within the same system.)

To Teridax's credit, not to say that slotless spellcasting across the board is necessarily a bad idea. It could work, but it would require a majority of classes to adhere to it to be successfully implemented in a given game for the sake of player coherence.

And one thing that I think is still a popular sentiment for both D&D and Pathfinder, is while some of us do not like the old school prepared spellcasting,...

Well, the kineticist, and the runesmith, are both already slotless casters. Teridax and I had discussed an idea he had for spells being given to classes via feats, the issue is spells that can be used slotless and ones used in slots don't have the same "power budget" for lack of a better term. Slotless casting works in the system very well, but the classes have bespoke abilities, only a few of which have you cast a literal actual spell, such as the one that gives you protector tree

I don't think this is true at all, a huge number of Kineticist impulses use basic saves, and even a skill check against the class's DC wasn't enough to prevent Winter Sleet from being an overpowered impulse. Although spell slots do leave room to use a limited number of above-curve abilities in the day, it is entirely possible for abilities to be at-will and powerful, as well as work along the game's four degrees of success. I certainly agree that protector tree is irritating when spammed, but the fundamental problem is that the spell is not terribly interactive, and that by itself ought to be addressed. This doesn't make spell slots a balancing knob so much as a crutch limiting badly-balanced or designed spells from seeing too much play in the same session, and even that's not prevented outliers from being overused long before the Kineticist.

I should have made clear that I did not have damage spells in mind as they, in my opinion, have an opposite problem of having very little design space within a spell slot systems and are better "at-will". In fact I was listening to Mark Seifter on roll for combat once talk about designing burning hands and how for the limited resource despite doing even more damage than in 1e, probably still shoots below what it should be. I think a damage oriented caster like the sorcerer should be slotless and the wizard, a control oriented caster, use spellslots, but designing the same spells for both systems is the issue, as they have different needs and goals

One way to think of it is, when you're playing Devil May Cry, your class is Dante. Royal Guard is something you can spec into. It's your subclass. But ultimately, lore wise, you're still Dante even if you don't. But if you tell me I have to play Virgil instead of Dante, then I'll be left saying, Yeah, but I want to be Dante." And that's the sort of mood that appears when you tell your player, "Play a Sorcerer instead," when they want to play a Wizard, or "Play an Oracle instead," when they want to play a Cleric.

My issue with this framing here is that when people approach the wizard, using your example, they're going like "man I want to play dante, but I don't like ivory and ebony, I don't like that he does weapon swapping, and I don't like that he is color coded red and has longer hair. He should have shorter hair, be color coded blue and use a katana. I don't want to play Virgil though"

The person most guilty of saying effectively this is Deriven who homebrews all casters to be spontaneous and all spells to be signature spells, but it's a theme generally. People like the name wizard, and it kind of begins and ends there. I will say that I do think clerics being prepared isn't necessary to their class fantasy like it is for the wizard, and if Paizo feels druids are "a kind of wizard" and prepared makes sense for them, sure. I would argue that bards should have been prepared, and intelligence based, but people aren't ready for this and it's not the space for it

Unicore wrote:

I think the issue is that trying to make all available to every class adds a lot of complexity for a system that is really designed around classes being fairly straightforward

Which system are we discussing? Because that’s certainly not Pathfinder, the game that strives to offer a wealth of character options and currently runs the gamut of spontaneous, prepared, and even hybrid spellcasting alongside slotless magic across dozens of classes. I do personally think making spellcasting slotless by default would make for a simpler baseline than what we have now, but I really don’t think we should be trying to alienate players needlessly in the name of dumbing down a series of systems prized for their crunch.

We can't make slotless the baseline. Take a look at the difference in design between spells and kineticist impulses. At will abilities do not have the same distribution across the four degree of success as spells from slots. You see far fewer abilities that still affect enemies on successful saves. Spell slots are a power gating knob the designers have that allows spells to have more punch than if they're at will like the kineticist. It's why protector tree is a problem when made at will, it was designed as a consumable daily resource. Slotless spells would *necessarily* have to be weaker than slotted ones

DnD 5 is a game for getting new players on board. It is my understanding it lacks complexity that many players look for when they are not beginners anymore.

And that is when PF2 becomes enticing.

I agree that PF2, and especially prepared casting and foremost the Wizard, can use improvement.

But I definitely do not think aiming PF2, or PF3 for that matter, only at new players is the way to go.

No way PF2+ can beat DnD5+ at its own game.

The problem with 5e is that it isn't lacking in complexity, it just makes you think it is. It's complex while being poorly designed. It is at the exact level of complexity as PF2E but in different areas. This comes into full focus when you see the bizarre synergies optimizers creates. PF2E in stark contrast just does the math for you so that just about any build is mathematically viable

Explaining that prepared casters in 5E are better than spontaneous casters in 5E while we're talking about how we like 5E prepared casting I don't think is the insult you think it is. Because frankly, 5E prepared spellcasting is good.

If there is one front in which 5E is not poorly designed, it's prepared spell preparation. I HATE 5E, but I recognize that if a clock is right anywhere, it's there. It's accessible. Any player can configure it out with minimal time. It keeps games moving forward.

But hey, if you want proof. Here's a challenge for you. Next time you get a new player. Encourage them to play a prepared spellcaster in any Pathfinder or Starfinder 1st or 2nd edition game. Whatever the case, it has to be their first game. Then, ask them for feedback afterwards.

Obstinate love for legacy rules is fine, people are free to have tastes. But D&D is not popular purely because it's a big name. If that was the case, 3.5E would have been just as big if not bigger than 5E. And 4E would have certainly been much bigger than it was. D&D5E is popular, because it's easy to teach, and it's easy to learn. Which makes it successful on the market. You could get your grandmother playing 5E (assuming they are not morally opposed to it). Does it have bad and lazy expansions? Yeah, definitely. But a bad expansion does not mean the core experiences do not do the job they set out to do. And it's to get a large amount of people roleplaying.

You are missing the design consideration I am talking about. Prepared casting in 5e furthers the divide that PF2E finally narrowed. PF2E actually made spontaneous casting worthwhile, 5e removed a lot of distinction between the two and also removed a knob the designers can turn in balancing and designing classes. As it exists now in PF2E there is a better balance between prepared and spontaneous and three whole kinds of casting can be used for casters, prepared, flexible and spontaneous. 5e only has flexible and spontaneous as design knobs.

Some people in this thread are asking for casting resources to be removed entirely as well. Functioning similarly to the kineticist. Spellcasters even now struggle to have identity in part because spell traditions are extremely homogeneous. Making all casters resourceless is the most homogeneous, but removing vancian casting simply because it's not for everyone and making it all flexible casting removes more differences between prepared and spontaneous leading to fewer distinctions between classes.

This gets into another way you just aren't engaging with what is actually being argued by me or anyone else who would like to see prepared casting persist into the next edition, which is that we are not arguing for the removal of anything, nor arguing for closing off design space for classes to use other designs and approaches to spellcasting. Already in this very game no one has to play a prepared caster, alternatives exist. However if you remove prepared casting from 3E, then people who want access to prepared casting do actually lose something. You must understand that I am arguing for different classes to interact with magical abilities and spells differently and that some classes retain vancian casting as part of their niche, class identity, and unique form of power and power considerations.

On 5E, yes it is popular despite its core function and mechanics. We can directly see the popularity develop from popularization in new forms of entertainment such as "actual plays" and cultural juggernauts like Critical Role, as well as being getting what is effectively free advertising from being included in Stranger Things, which is massively successful. This combined with pre-existing name recognition and cultral shifts towards "nerdy" things becoming popular. The last part being especially important as to why 3.5 never blew up. It came out when it was still socially unacceptable to be into this sort of thing. You cannot remove any of this form its context, just as you can't remove PF2E being the second most popular TTRPG to search for on google (the phrasing PF2E specifically as "pathfinder" brings up cars) from the context of the OGL Crisis

***And Edit** to engage with the new player thing more directly, rather than implicitly. New players can use non-prepared casters in this edition already circumventing that need, but we also have a game design issue where new players and players inexperienced with various systems or mechanics only come to understand and like certain gameplay systems well after prolonged engage with those systems, and that this is routinely missed in a lot of testing and games designers have to account for this discrepancy. Prepared casting is one such system which only shows what makes it appealing after a lot of work is put into engaging with it. It's an acquired taste, and not one for everyone, sure. This is why I think keeping sorcerers and perhaps converting the cleric to spontaneous are both good moves to offer casting options for the people who fall into the various categories that don't vibe with vancian casting, while also preserving it on a single class or category of classes for those daring to try and those who like it. Which is precisely the thematic and mechanical realm of the wizard

My bet would be most don't care and just play the game as it is. Maybe a few old timers either play an older edition with Vancian casting as some people still play pre-3E versions of D&D or house rule prepared Vancian casting back.

"old timers" I'm almost assuredly younger than you. People adapting to a change, or thinking a change would be better doesn't mean it always is. Again, evolution of combat in RuneScape happened for precisely the reasons stated in this thread to abandon vancian casting. To modernize, because it's weird and clunky, doesn't "fit with modern standards of gaming" and so on, and plenty of RuneScape 3 players claim the combat in that game is better. Now, many years later, Oldschool RuneScape is more popular than the mainline game. The old system of combat was better for the game and it's not exclusively nostalgia either.

Likewise, I have no nostalgia for vancian casting, and it's not even my favorite system, not the only one I would like. However an attitude that it simply must go for the reasons presented in the thread are not particularly compelling, and some classes using it, while others don't, is great for diversity and texture in player characters. In 3e I would most prefer only the wizard class retain vancian casting, and any classes that are derivative of the wizard or represent kinds of wizards, such as the necromancer and the magus. I would absolutely agree that vancian casting doesn't fit the cleric, for example. And your points about 5e are not compelling. To my mind 5e as a system is quite bad. Not middling, not "okay" but actively bad. Poorly designed on all fronts. No niche protection, little variety, poor spell design, and particular to this discussion, spontaneous casters are just far and away significantly worse than prepared by a large margin. You have claimed this is untrue, and it is entirely unconvincing with all my experience and examination of optimization in the system and the optimization communities. It's fairly unanimous that despite the interesting features, warlocks and sorcerers just don't hold a candle to wizards at the height of play, and the difference between prepared and spontaneous in that system is almost nothing. This gives designers one less knob to turn

SuperBidi wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

There’s a different (uncommon, at least) magic item to take brain scans

I can see the point of this kind of items: helping with "build tests" without having to perform a complete retraining if it isn't interesting. So, any rarity tag is fine for me: if a player starts abusing it the GM can easily revoke the item without feeling bad about it.

The issue is when it becomes common, as the GM may wonder if it's not intended by the game designers, and as such not revoke the access even if a player abuses it.

I absolutely dispose these kind of items because a variant “be kind” rule for the GM that either just lets retraining happen faster, or having it worked into a boon the players can get from having NPC allies puts this power in the GMs hands instead of financially charging players for it AND taking away downtime as a GM allocated resource.

I can agree that having these items be uncommon or rare would at least put the power they give back in the GMs hands but this feels dangerously close to “an item to gain extra XP or Wealth.

All of this reminds me of how some Commander groups allow people to mulligan as much as they want, or have some mulligan rule where you get to mulligan until you have some number of lands, which gets players into bad deck building habits where they don't have enough lands. Typically players do something insane like 33, 36 or if they're spicy 38, when the baseline number of lands a 99 card deck should have is 43. You tell players this and they think it's insane, not just a large number but it sounds suboptimal to them because their play experience is with incredible leniency that allows them to play with "all gas no brakes." Spontaneous is designed and balanced around the spells you choose being relatively fixed, and circumventing that runs into issues of stepping on the toes of prepared casters. This is also why I don't think spontaneous casters should have more slots than prepared, the opposite actually. Each slot represents multiple spells, so each has a higher potential moment-to-moment, where prepared casters it's always the one singular spell. I don't know what the designers are thinking doing the opposite here, but it feels more like a 3.x hold over than anything and ought to be reconsidered

AestheticDialectic wrote:

I mean, we are ignoring that the system as it is designed right now works. Paizo doesn't have to pick a side, PF2E proves it. A dislike of vancian magic is simply imposing personal preference onto the rest of the game. It's short sighted

Back in PF1e we had like 40+ skills and most people seemingly didn't have a problem with it (I certainly did and I was very vocal about it), yet PF2e reduced the list to 17 and I'm pretty sure nobody wants to go back to having a list of bizillion skills now.

What I mean is, you probably don't want to replace Vancian because of familiarity and because you haven't the seen the replacement yet. If tomorrow Paizo releases the playtest for the next edition and it includes a replacement for Vancian (assuming its good), it's likely you and others could change their opinion about replacing it.

People have made these kinds of arguments for many things, and many times it has been wrong. I'll bring up RuneScape again because it's a great example of how weird, clunky and strange mechanics are sometimes better than streamlined ones. Here we have the direct comparison, Olschool RuneScape (a fork of the game from a 2007 build), and the contemporary version of the original game colloquially called RuneScape 3. Much of the modernization of the game removed the perceived barriers and resulted in a poorer game. Explaining this would take 9+ hours (as per two fantastic explanations by Marstead) but needless to say no. We have other games that use other systems, and other magic systems are fine. We only have, what, two games that use vancian magic? PF2E and 5e? I'm sure some other odd game out there exists, but with a single digit number of games using it, losing it to be more like other games would be sad. This is like evolution of combat that marked the transition into "RS3" where modernizing the game from simple clicking and auto combat to a hot bar with abilities killed a lot of the magic of the game upending entire portions of deprecating whole swaths of content

The weird s+~# of vancian magic doesn't need to be everywhere, and not all games should have the almost idle game combat of Oldschool RuneScape, but we ought to keep our weird s~++. Like teridax said, a class designed around flexible casting is interesting, classes working like the kineticist is interesting, but homogenizing all classes under one system sucks and would cause things to lose a lot of texture and for no reason at all

Simply calling this "familiarity" is a thought terminating cliche that ignores that other games exist and we can compare them, and it ignores that you don't have to pick and choose between all classes beyond resource based, or none of them being resource based. No such decision needs to be made

I mean, we are ignoring that the system as it is designed right now works. Paizo doesn't have to pick a side, PF2E proves it. A dislike of vancian magic is simply imposing personal preference onto the rest of the game. It's short sighted

I'd personally overhaul spellcasting entirely for PF3e, but if that doesn't happen, then yes, I'd like arcanist-style casting (flexible preparation) to become the norm going forward. That said, it kinda saddens me to see so many people here pushing back against what I see as an obvious area for improvement. IMO, vancian casting and all its iterations feel like a vestigial system that feels totally out of place in this day and age.

People said this about combat in RuneScape and many of it's other esoteric and unintuitive systems, and yet the version of the game that is most beloved is OSRS which as a design philosophy keeps it's eccentricities. Vancian is weird, archaic and awkward, it's also beautiful in it's own way and most importantly feels *magical*. There is something truly arcane about the fact that casting a spell makes you forget it. It's forbidden knowledge you can only temporarily understand. That's special, and not all games ought to have it, and not all classes, but at least one class ought to keep it

I don't think homogenizing casting classes even further than they already are solves any problems whatsoever, and simply introduces more. It's already the case that there is barely a difference between spellcasting traditions

But also my classification of magic:

Learned Magic: Wizard, Witch, Necromancer, Magus, Druid, Bard

Granted Magic: Cleric, Animist, Oracle, Summoner(?)

Innate Magic: Sorcerer, Psychic, Kineticist (it counts)

Witch is on the borderline of whether the magic is granted or learned. I interpret it as the patron teaches the magic, but it is very much learned as a wizard might learn magic. Granted Magic in general is the most dubious category, but essentially a cleric engage in evocation/invocation. It calls upon powers greater than it for it's magic. So it is the prime example. The oracle is a conduit for something else's magic. This is why I consider witches learned not granted, Oracle already is the thematic ground for being a vessel for someone else's magic

Summoner, idk if the magic is innate or granted but I lean on granted based on above descriptions

Less useful classifications:

One Syllable: Bard, Witch
Two Syllables: Cleric, Druid, Magus, Psychic, Wizard
Three Syllables: Animist, Oracle, Sorcerer, Summoner
Four Syllables: Necromancer

Common Rarity: Animist, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Magus, Necromancer, Oracle, Psychic, Sorcerer, Summoner, Witch, Wizard
Uncommon Rarity:
Rare Rarity:
Unique Rarity:

Agent Noun: Summoner
Looks Like an Agent Noun but I Don't Know if That Covers "Someone Who Does Or Practices a Thing" or is Strictly for "Someone Who (Verbs)": Animist, Necromancer, Sorcerer
Not an Agent Noun: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Magus, Oracle, Psychic, Witch, Wizard

Hate to break it to you, but wizard is "guy who wisdoms", literally speaking. It is an agent noun

When a wizard and a Fighter love each other very much, a special thing can happen and they make an unholy pact with Lamashtu to unleash a special kind of monster into the world.

This is what me and my wife call it too

Unicore wrote:

The 4th slot being limited to school spells isn’t a power decrease. Opening it up might make some players happier, but it won’t make wizards more powerful. If you like your school, you have great spells to cast in your meaningful school slots. Your suggestions make the wizard weaker to remove some friction points that don’t affect the actual baseline power of the class.

Please explain to me what a 20th level school of battle wizard is supposed to be putting in their rank 1-5 school slots. Are they supposed to prep 5 earthbinds? Underleveled magic missile? Are they getting as much from those 4th rank resist energies as Ars Gramatica is getting from it’s school spell commands?

It's a bad example because anyone choosing that curriculum is choosing spellblending. It still ought to be better, but you're gonna choose the thesis that fits the blasting school

I personally think curriculums are what prevent the whole class from becoming even more generic: for sure, the Wizard's arcane thesis is what lets them toy with magic and is in my opinion the more interesting feature, but because their thesis is generally about covering arcane magic in the broadest sense, what remains is still a very overgeneralized class as you point out. Even just a slight nudge towards a subset of spells I think can be enough to make different Wizard characters feel more meaningfully different from one another while still being versatile, much like how certain subclasses on other casters can help distinguish them despite boiling down to a couple of low-level feats and maybe an extra spell.

It's also for this reason that I think a curriculum-based Spell Substitution could work out quite well as a core feature: the perk of the OGL schools, for all their vague and poorly fleshed-out themes, was that because there were so many spells in each school, the Wizard was incentivized to favor learning spells in their school over others to prepare more into their fourth slot, which meant they often ended up with more spells of that school prepared overall. Having a way to reprepare spells that favored your curriculum could similarly have those spells come out more often, and thus have Wizards of different schools distinguish themselves while still remaining really versatile.

I personally just think the wizard should be generic. It's like vladof SMGs in borderlands 4, or Jakob's sniper rifles. You need something that is simply just *the thing* to make the others stand out in how they deviate from the generic option. I remember that some people in 1e, especially early one when the Advanced Player's Guide dropped, talked about how the witch was "like the wizard but with more flavor." That's awfully reductive, especially in hindsight, but deviating from a baseline is often what gives something an identity, but you actually need a baseline. To me that's one of the roles form a design perspective that the wizard ought to fill, and it kind of does. I understand this is wildly unpopular but I think it's important to a wholistic view of the game

I actually really want to double down on this because I feel it's kind of evident that the caster that is supposed to specialize in one kind of magic based on subclass choice is the sorcerer and not the wizard. The designers/devs at Paizo tried to build this into both because of the tradition of wizard schools, but bloodlines, spontaneous casting and the limited number of spells know favors a specialization approach, where prepared casting, learning spells and the actual mechanics of more spellshapes, arcane bond, spell substitution etc all favor a generalist approach.

In this way wizards really do, mechanically as a function of how they actually work mechanically and not anyone's ideas of how they should be, function as the "fight of casters". So much so that I actually would not be opposed to no subclass and build that customization of how they do their spell f**kery into feats. Giving them a level 1 feat, giving them an additional feat later etc. The problem with curriculums is not power, but that it is a mechanical component of the class incongruous with the rest of the class

It's also the fighter of casters in another way where we can say sorcerers are like barbarians and clerics like champions. Wizards are balanced, sorcerers are offensive and cleric are defensive

I don't think the curriculum was the right move at all. I don't think spell schools were the right move premaster. Not for this game as it has actually developed, as opposed to what anyone envisions it to be

I would say that an entire ream of a class's power being contingent on the GM agreeing to a larger list than what's presented, and the list being at all good to begin with, highlights just how much those limitations can hamper the class. I don't think it's the only factor behind their present unpopularity, and part of it is simply that they didn't get drastically stronger at a point when nearly every other caster did in the remaster, but I do think that their spell curriculum, while thematically brilliant, did the class no favors mechanically compared to their OGL schools, which were the opposite.

I actually think the curriculum is thematically very very boring. Curriculums imply specialization on a class who's entire deal is the lack of specialization. This is why the thesis is more interesting than the curriculum. I want to know what about magic this wizard understand on it's fundamental level that lets it bend the rules, not whether they like language, explosions or construction. It makes "spell engineer"/"magical physicist" into "guy who went to college." Not only is this uninteresting but it also is in mechanical conflict as a curriculum sells a fantasy of befitting a whole class which cannot be supported by a class chassis already designed around a big broad understanding of magic fundamentals, rather than the specifics of certain traditions of magic. Which the old schools going away and Necromancer becoming a class demonstrates

Unicore wrote:

The 4th slot being limited to school spells isn’t a power decrease. Opening it up might make some players happier, but it won’t make wizards more powerful.

This is one of the most absurd claims I've seen on this thread. Not only is the limitation a power decrease, the decrease is significant. The Wizard suffered significantly from their remaster precisely because their fourth spell slot per rank became a lot more limited. Allowing them to prepare as many spells in those slots as the rest would make them significantly more likely to have spells better-suited for a greater range of circumstances.

I really don't think it is that absurd. It's more of a perceived power decrease than an actual one. Even ignoring the fact it's intended for you and the GM to hash out a list, really what happens is many curriculums are less appealing if their list isn't fantastic. Ofc, I have said I want that slot unrestricted, and I can pretend along with everyone else it makes the wizard bad

Getting TEMU versions of the Ranger (Slayer) and Rogue (Daredevil) doesn't seem like a good idea either, versus expanding the classes even more.

well first, the Daredevil is another swashbuckler. Second, Ranger is TEMU Slayer. It's a significantly cooler execution of the idea

Haha! I can use my chemistry knowledge.

Poison for metals is because having an excess of any metal is really toxic. Pathfinder also gives a lot of emphasis to mercury in its description of the plane of metal, which is probably your most iconic poisonous metal.

Poisonous earth is probably radiation, but also did you know the bacteria behind botulism comes from the soil? The toxin itself is REALLY deadly, it'll kill you in around two days, and it takes so little to do so.

And then yeah poison from wood is just poisonous plants. No fun fact there.

Metal doesn't get poison. It is piercing and slashing by default, and electricity with versatile blasts

The original rule for preparing empty slots midday was more restrictive than spell substitution anyways. It takes a *minimum* of 15 minutes instead of 10, which isn't a huge deal but it is longer and it can only prepare spells into empty slots, not exchange any already prepared slots. Requiring you to leave slots open means you run into a problem where if you don't get that down town or it is interrupted you are SoL. It's also worth mentioning that spell substitution fits into the downtime between combat activities dynamic of PF2E better, rather than the whole blitz a dungeon in a short number of minutes approach PF1E had due to buffs and the like

I also remember in one of the treantmonk guides for the PF1E wizard he even addressed this possibility with preparation, saying it was nice but unnecessary, so it's very interesting to me that people actually cared to utilize it, because I never felt it was worth the hassle

I'm not so sure versatile blasts is the most solid place to look for the "typical" elemental associations in this edition since it's explicity unusual manifestations: it also assigns cold to both fire and air, electricity to metal and, notably, acid to water, which means acid would still have an elemental association if you were using this as your guide. I would say the actual base elemental blasts of kineticist are more likely to be typical, which are:

Air: electricity or slashing
Earth: bludgeoning or piercing
Fire: fire
Metal: piercing or slashing
Water: bludgeoning or cold
Wood: bludgeoning or vitality

People were talking about elemental damage types. The reason they typically do bludgeoning, slashing, piercing etc is because you're usually throwing the literal physical thing at people. Air and fire get cold because air has chill wings and fire has heat manipulation. Lightning really isn't much about air at all, and fits metal significantly better given it conducts electricity. Water gets acid because water already corrodes with rust, erodes, and acid is a liquid and many acids are in water

And what's the difference between adding spells to a spellbook or adding them to your mind? Like I said, even currently the difference between a spellbook or the character's mind is mostly a flavor a thing, except the later guarantees the caster isn't going to be screwed by an antagonistic GM.

I'm also not arguing for the removal of spellbooks entirely. I think it can be cool if they get a mechanical reason to exist other than to hold spells. I could also totally see wizards still recording their spells into spellbooks that you can use as a GM as lot to give to your players. My problem is that I find really weird that exactly 2 casters and a half need to actually keep their spells stored into a physical thing that can be easily destroyed, lost, or stolen.

But I'm also coming from the perspective of someone that isn't a caster player and that never liked playing them because I never liked vancian casting either. I would personally overhaul spellcasting in its entirety before even touching the wizard at all. The problems I have with casters go much more deeper than the wizard class.

Adding them "to your .ind" is thematically ridiculous, isn't it?

More over, I specifically like the thematics and the physicality of recording spells into your own personalized Spellbook, and it existing as a physical object in the game world that needs to be considered and accounted for rather than abstracted away. I don't find it interesting to use it as a "spell focus" or anything else like that. It's specifically interesting to me as a place to record spells because such things are took esoteric and strange to keep on the mind permanently

Gisher wrote:

QuidEst wrote:

Gisher wrote:

On the topic of Rune traditions, does anyone else find it strange that Thullax, Rune of Corrosion is Arcane rather than Primal?

The other offensive damaging runes may be primal, but they also have elemental connections, unlike acid. Seems like a fair enough distinction to put it under arcane instead.

I thought acid was associated with Earth just like cold is associated with Water and electricity is associated with Air.

In PF1, yeah. Not in PF2.

Yeah, Kineticist versatile blasts swapped earth to poison. Wood is also poison for whatever reason

We can have cool spellbook-themed abilities while also not requiring the spellbook to hold the spells you know as a wizard. We could even switch the spellbook to mediun in which you storage your spells to the medium you use to support your casting like a focus. I earlier said most modern media don't have mages storing their spells into physical objects, but it is indeed common to see them requiring a wand or similar to cast spells.

There's more than enough room for both concepts to exist. After all, the spellbook is honestly more flavor that can be easily adapted to fit the character nowadays.

Part of the fun of a spellbook is adding new spells to it

I been thinking a bit about this, but isn't the concept of the spellbook also kinda outdated? Most mages in fiction (and certainly in modern fiction) have their spells memorized and don't require a physical medium to store them. Even within PF2e its kinda weird because AFAIK the only classes which store their spells into something that physically exists are the wizard, the magus, and the witch (and I'd argue the later cheats a bit in this area).

In earlier editions, where the "GM vs. players" mentality was more of a thing, I believe spellbooks were a way for GMs to take away a player's spells. No GM anybody would want to play with nowadays would actually steal or destroy a character's spellbook because that's a sizeable amount of what that player does with their character and that would honestly be fcked up. Its also really weird that most casters (excepts these three) effectively have access to their whole spell list at 0 GP cost.

This isn't a major problem, but I think its one that should also be discussed if its worth keeping for a future edition.

While true, I appreciate that the Spellbook is a physical object in the game world, and so much so any necromancer I play is going to have a spellbook rather than a "dirge"

I hate when I miss drama :(

Where spontaneous casters break from this pattern is that all the above have a framework for preparing any given spell they could learn. Spontaneous casters still have to learn how to cast spells, but they they have a talent for feeling out how the magic goes. Instead of developing a mental model into which they can slot spells, they train specific patterns of spell until manipulating magic in this specific way is second nature to them. Perhaps to state the obvious, they forego the need to prepare spells because they hard code every spell they know one by one at the cost that they can't fit any more.

Only quoting this small portion, but I'm responding to the overall idea. I think that a sorcerer doesn't "learn magic" because I think they train it like a fighter trains with weapons. A fighter learns how to use a sword, learns footwork, techniques etc. Similarly I think what a sorcerer does is more like practicing drills and going to the gym, but for magic

If you're asking for this in general, I stand by you, but if I'm to interpret this as you asking me to fulfill this request maybe you have misunderstood what I was saying because I cannot imagine that asking someone to create mechanics they explicitly do not have any interest in will do the request justice.

It's both. I don't know how to judge what sort of thing you have in mind without knowing what the shape of that is. It's partly skepticism and partly curiosity. Prepared casting creates a specific kind of intelligence based magical fantasy that works, but if you propose an alternative with spontaneous casting, I want to see what this actually looks like. How do you square that circle. We have other intelligence based fantasies, investigator, commander, runesmiths and psychic all come to mind, but I don't think any of these feel like a wizard as we understand them. They're all really cool, but they're different intelligence-based fantasies

I'm also skeptical of our insistence on wizards being "the studious one" to the exclusion of others. I'm not sure Clerics aren't studying. This came into sharp relief for me playing Mortal Shell 2 where the closest thing to a wizard is the monk/prophet Smert who is based in Eastern Orthodox monks. Who are dudes who look like wizards, and a lot of esoteric (as opposed to exoteric in the strict meaning of these terms) beliefs are not unlike what a wizard may do, but it's focused in the divine, divine revelation and so on. Understanding God's creation. To my mind a cloistered cleric is studying magic if they're a prepared caster. If they're simply invoking the divine, then maybe they should be charisma and spontaneous. Likewise as I've said, bards in lore study their magic. It's not represented very well mechanically but they really ought to be intelligence based, and it's kind of contradictory to what they are to force them into being charisma based IMO (but I also feel oracles and sorcerers also are not particularly charismatic fantasies in many cases!) I'm on a whole tangent now though

5E's wizard design did not make spontaneous casters less appealing because the class designers focused on robust, interesting class features for each caster class. With every class a spontaneous caster, they had no choice but to make the class features good to differentiate the classes.

It's well known within 5e optimization that the wizard is, and continues to be even after buffs to classes like the sorcerer, the strongest class, and it's simply true that spontaneous casting has less going for it when wizards are spontaneous and prepared. A wizard just simply gets every benefit of spontaneous casting while simultaneously being able to swap day-to-day. As much as I see the benefits of flexible casting on wizards, we finally for the first time in this edition have good spontaneous casters and they feel unique from prepared. I mentioned a few years ago that I'm only okay with going flexible casting for wizards *if* spontaneous casters move to a kineticist or similar system so that the two still are mechanically different to sell that thematic difference. Otherwise prepared casters are simply better and always better. Which remains the case in 5e/5.5e

She can't, and we know because she tried it in the past and told me.

You can. That's great.

Since I never said anything about anyone other than the one person I know it's true for, I don't see how that changes anything about what I said.

What I am saying is utilizing someone's disability to push an argument here is uncool, and my perspective is one I am presenting as a counter narrative to the idea that having this disabilities means this class should change to flexible/spontaneous prepared. One thing you fail to mention is what this system does to spontaneous casting in 5e where is makes the sorcerer and other spontaneous casters a lot less appealing

It's also not looking at the whole discussion because these points were already mentioned

One of my players has ADD and is a mom in her 40s. She really can't play a class like Wizard. Any prepared caster is a challenge due to the constant analysis required for changing spell lists and having the right number of given spells available. But then Wizard adds a second layer of book keeping with the spell book and lacks something like Divine Font or Untamed Form as fallback options.

I have severe, let me put a lot of emphasis on this, SEVERE ADHD. I can both handle, and like the complexity of the wizard, and I find this notion insulting, with or without adderall. It's precisely because it challenges me in the areas of my disability that I like it

Improve the class' focus spells and make all the Thesis into wizard-exclusive feats, one of which the wizard gets for free at 1st-level.

Imo, remove focus spells in favor of something else that interacts with slotted spells for the power budget. My craziest idea that is probably too good is being able to recharge rank -1 or -2 spells with a focus point and an action.

I'm tempted by the idea of an arcane thesis or whatever where you cannot prepare spells to your regular slots during daily preparation (you still get your ciruculum spells), but whnever you Recall Knowledge successfully or otherwise learn something about an enemy or obstacle as a 1min downtime action (this means that in combat it's always an action tax), you can prepare up to two spells. This is fluffed ala Prescient Planner

It's probably worse than spell sub if you're any good at the game and the GM signals decently but if those aren't the case you always have the right spell at any moment. Doesn't help with the power issue but helps with flexibility and showing knowledge.

Instead of this, people have added a prescient planner style feat for prepared casting as homebrew before. Where you can take an unexpended slot, and for no actions say "psyche!" I actually prepared this spell. I think it's once a day or once an hour, but it is one way to massage prepared casting for folks looking for it

I wouldn't say no to class options which allow you to spec into the fantasy of being prepared for anything by out-of-character going through the rulebooks to actually prepare for any sort of eventuality... But I do think making it core to the wizard means keeping the fantasy of playing the studious spellcaster restricted to players who actually like bookkeeping, which is not something I think needs to be done even as somebody who has been known to relish in a well-made excel spreadsheet. "You must be this good at analysis to play" is not a warning I'd celebrate, especially when the end result of that is just copying builds you found online to be effective--this is not Magic: the Gathering, and there's no committee working on the balance of these options either at Paizo or at our table.

Give me a tangible mechanical basis for fulfilling that fantasy. I've seen a few things such as people focusing on recall knowledge and this is fine, except that it makes the wizard feel like a magical assassin more than a wizard as we understand it. Yes it is intelligence based, but it's largely recalling knowledge about monsters and how to kill them, which really isn't much to do with being studious about magic

Yeah! Buddy system worked!

Now to build new PFS characters with dad (D6Veteran) this weekend :D