Argonar_Alfaran's page

The outlandish argument some people make about casters are beyond ridiculous.

"Casters never use their top level slots and just keep using cantrips, so of course they can't keep up"
"Casters never use their 3/6 action spell options"

Maybe in specific bubbles somewhere in the world, but this for sure is not my experience at all.

"Casters just complain because they can't outplay every other class anymore"
"Casters just complain because they are harder to play"

No, that was never the argument. Like not at all.

"Players just are just playing them wrong"
"Casters have the wrong mind set. They should expect the 'success' result instead of a 'fail'"
"GMs just don't know how to balance battles for casters."
"GMs don't give enough information"

Yeah, let's blame the consumer instead of the product. Adhere to 27 if conditions and the game is perfectly fine..... Break one and it's the users fault.

"Caster excell in my group:"
----- "They can cast all day by using scrolls and even more scrolls. Yes of course we are near a town every single day. Nope they don't want any permanents."
----- "Martials are in more danger from enemies, so of course they deal more damage. What? No enemies don't really run beyond martials to reach the casters. Why?"
----- "They pretty much destroy all enemies... Btw. We are running 90 minute sessions and we don't like to track resources beyond sessions, so we just rest...."

I can't even.....

Casters feel bad because even with much more effort put into play by the controlling player and the best planning ahead, they still have far worse hit chances, while also using up limited resources. And with missing spells, those resources are GONE. All the while having super swingy damage results and even when all stars align, they are only allowed to keep up with a martial but never surpass him even for a single round. Could be a great buffer though....

On top of that casters need to use their limited resource to do stuff out of combat that martials just do on their own, because their skill distributions just don't allow them to do it as well. Climbing, jumping, stealth, opening doors, ...

Yes with a limited amount of specific feat, spell and magic item combos, they are able to actually keep up and do some terrifying stuff. If you don't want to play the exact same caster as everybody else, then good luck.

Out of all the casters, Wizards just feel the weakest, because their focus spells suck and unlike most classes, one of their class features (school) is a limiter instead of an extender. Other than that, they have basically nothing that is unique to them.

Funnily enough people seem to underestimate one of the nicest things in the Wizards repertoire, "spell substitution". And when reading the arguments as to why, it seems pretty clear that most just don't play by the intended adventure day rules, while also telling others how to play in the intended way (which is kinda hilarious)

Long story shore, it's the most used feature of my wizards and the only one that makes other players even remotely jealous. It's just that wizards should have more unique stuff like that, especially in feat form.

Why do I keep playing wizards? Because I like the concept of being one, regardless of system. And no a Kineticist is not and never will be a good substitute.

Disguise spell is a niche spell to begin with and you only want to use it, when somebody has means to detect magic in the first places. That skill check to disbelieve is actually not a will save, but the spell tradition, which tends to be better.
So in those niche scenarios where the spell would be useful, you'd rather cast a high rank version of it, so that enemies of your own level don't have a 50% chance to see through that trick. And that's not even accounting for the fact after being able to do so, you'd hardly want to cast this spell below rank 2 anyways.

Most of the things that rank 1 summon can do, Mage hand can do as well and that is a cantrip. As for recon, afaik those -1 Minions can't speak, you tell them what to do and they execute the command. So how would they tell what they saw? And how much recon can a non sentient creature actually do in 1 minute? Low level minions costing actions? They die by an AoE attack or will mostly be ignored, just like I would ignore a fly when fending off 4 rats.

So no, it's not just the School of Battle Magic that has this problem, most of them have it.
Nobody said you can and should only cast top 2 rank slot spells in combat, but when cantrips outdamage the slotted spells, items the game expects the party to have outperform the spells or they have the incapacitation trait, you are obviously not going to use them at low ranks.

Scrolls again are completely irrelevant to this discussion. Every caster has access to them, Universalist gets them, doesn't make those dead school spell slots any less clunky. That limit on the school slot is just BS and needs to go. If Paizo wants to make schools unique, they should do it with feats or some other mechanic that actually adds to the game instead of punishing players for taking that option. Until then, every Wizard should simply forget the Schools exist and make a Universalist instead.

Argonar_Alfaran wrote:

Those "40 spells" are from level 19.

But useless Level 1 spells are dead by Level 5.

Every school has at least three rank 1 curriculum spells via school, plus the standard access to every rank 1 slot spell. Can you describe for me how your level 5 character was forced by the system to prepare a specific "useless" rank 1 curriculum or slot spell?

Sure

School of Ars Grammatica:
By level 5 the party will already have runes, thus "runic nody" and "runic weapon" are useless at that point. "disguise magic" can easily be countered by a heightened cantrip at that level, so it becomes useless as well. That leaves this school with "command", which stays somewhat useful, but is the only option for every wizard of that school and most likely not desirable to prepare every single day.

School of Battle Magic:
"mystic armor" starts to fall off here, because armor runes become available. Sure you can keep it around a little longer (but not too much longer)
"breath fire" and "force barrage" start doing less damage than cantrips here and there is always a better option than a rank 1, one action force barrage. (Meta Magic, Bon Mot, Moving, Focus Spell, ...)

School of Boundry:
"grim tendrils" again start doing less damage than cantrips here and as for the 2 summon spells... -1 creatures for 1 minute at level 5 are a total waste.

School of Civic Wizardry:
"summon construct" has the same problem as the other summon spells. "pummeling rubble" does less damage than cantrips and while "hydraulic push" is about the same or does slightly more, the fact it is a one time use and misses on a fail in addition to doing cantrip damage on a success isn't worth the slot at this point.

School of Mentalism:
"dizzying colors" and "sleep" have the incapacitation trait. They are not even an option at this point. Then again this school at least has the "sure strike" spell. It has the samey character for all members of the school problem, but at least with the spell that everybody wants anyways.

School of Protean Form:
Might be the best one actually. "jump" stays useful, "spider-sting" while not impressive, can at least debuff an enemy and "pest form" might have utility sometimes out of combat.

So yeah, that is one school out of 6, which keeps multiple viable options with another 2 schools leaving at least one usable spell for all corresponding characters. The other 3 on the other hand with nothing but dead options that are equal to or worse to other options and certainly worse 1 or 2 more levels later.

Curriculum spells are added to your spellbook. They work like any other spell. So there is no special deadness about them different from any other spell. Agreed, rank 1 damage dealing spells need to be heightened to be useful at higher levels...but again, this does not make curriculum spells 'deader' than any other spell.

IOW what you are complaining about is the entire level-based spell system, where lower-rank spells are superceded by higher-rank spells as the character gains levels.

Nothing about the remastered Wizard changed that system. It did not make it better...but it in no way made it worse. To go to a system where that wasn't the case (e.g., where a 1st rank spell you gained at level 1 is still part of your standard rotation at level 20, because it autoscales in an impactful way) would be to radically alter the entire game's casting and magic system. That's maybe a 3rd edition move, it is certainly not something I think any player should have reasonably expected from the remaster. At least, IMO.

The problem is that the game forces the player those few spells into low rank slots. There are actually many spells that never lose their usefulness on lower ranks, but they are mostly not those in the school curricula. And there's no reason to enforce that limit on the wizard slots to begin with.

Those "40 spells" are from level 19.
But useless Level 1 spells are dead by Level 5.

And that still doesn't address the fact that Universalists are simply better than those with a dedicated school.
I agree that not every spell needs to be in a school and that some of them might be in more than one.

Again the problem is the limit on the slot and the non existence of feats/focus spells that interact with the school spells, not the limited spell lists themselves. But in combination with the limits, the spell selection justs sucks.

Yes, also a simple table for single books fixes that kind of problem in basically every Tabletop RPG ever, it's not complicated at all. It even works with games that have many more traits than 8 spell schools, including primary and secondary traits.
For new/overwhelmed players sample builds do exist and tool assist is heavily recommended anyways.

Besides using aon is still more efficient regardless of using the old or new magic schools. Looking up the spell descriptions in a book just takes more time and it's more difficult to compare entries, because they are mostly not next to each other. Yes you have to click on the spell in aon, so what? Tabbed browsing is a thing as well as search filters and the browser search on top.

And as most people wrote, the school spells themselves aren't the main problem.
The limit on the school slot is, and it needs to go. Instead a class mechanic that doesn't make the class worse needs to take it's place. Until then the Universalist will simply be the best school option period. And that is not something a game that takes so much pride in it's so called "balance" should let slide.

People who think the new schools open up any new interesting concepts just had no imagination in the past, because aside from 1 focus spell, everything that is possible now has always been possible in the past. I don't have to await all the new potential spell schools, because I can always make my own. Will the GM allow them is another question though. Which brings us back to the Universalist, who simply can chose whatever spells he wants and doesn't have to pick a specific thesis to fix his problems. Normal staves don't solve any slot problem, because you won't use your first rank slot to power the stave in the first place.

The new schools are just really bad, because they simply don't match the game, which they have been put into and force the players to work around them instead of with them. There's also an added amount of book keeping for no benefit whatsoever.

A very similar concept of magic schools actually appears in another beloved fantasy RPG of mine called "The Dark Eye" and has been implemented there for a very long time now (multiple editions actually, with very different sets of rules). In that game the concept works perfectly fine, but the the whole magic system is also completely different with an MP system and without spell ranks. There is much less scaling in general and even when levels still existed in older editions, LV20 characters weren't even close to being comparable to LV20 DnD/PF Characters.

Over there a caster's proficiency is different with each spell and while you can "max out" any spell you learn, improving school spells is easier and "cheaper". Also spells don't really have power levels, can be modified and stay relevant throughout a character's career. In that game the schools provide fluff that actually improves the game. And even then there's always the option of having had another wizard as a teacher (basically the custom school equivalent) without any mechanical drawbacks whatsoever.

That is why I wrote PF2E should incentivize players to want to keep and use the school spells instead of forcing them to find ways around them. "Yea I went to the School of Battlemagic, but those spells are trash, so I'm blending them away/feeding them to my staff" is not an engaging system, both gameplay wise and from a narrative point.

To be honest, the new schools are garbage, both mechanically and as themes. To the point where the Universalist, who got a slight buff, is now basically always the better option.

Sure people can argue with their GM to allow certain curriculum changes to their schools. Or they could simply take whatever spell they want and role play any school without the slot limits (as in focus on certain spells in game). And if players already have to beg the GM to make their concept work, well they might as well just ask if they might replace the focus spells of Unified Magical Theory with those from another school.

The new school concept could have worked, if each of them had a lot more spells, especially for the lower ranks and instead of limiting the extra slot to those spells, give players a reason to want to cast those spells.
Like a couple of feats that either interact with school spells or give a bonus to for them. How about at Levels 1, 6 and 12, the one on Level 1 is free, the others have to be picked up and the Universalist doesn't have access to them. The school then would specify what those feats do for their school, similar how they specify the focus spells already.

Then a level 2 feat (again not allowed for Universalist) to pick another, additional school and gain it' level 1 feat and access to the corresponding level 6 and 12 feats as well as their lists as "school spells".

As a little compensation I'd give the Universal Magical Theory school the level 1 feat "Spellbook Prodigy" for free. Other than that from my experience being allowed to recast each spell rank once makes up for a missing spell slot, even if it looks worse on paper. Sure overall it's one spell slot less, but the flexibility of getting to choose the second casting on demand instead of preparing in the morning makes up for it. If people disagree on that, Universalists could always have a third available focus spell feat.

Wizards are the only magic wielders that truly understand magic. if they are specialists, there they are better in their field than any other caster and if they are generalists, they have a broader skillset than anybody else. Since they cast magic with a scientific approach, they can interact with and manipulate magic in ways nobody else can (tinkering with the formulas and even negate/reverse them)

By contrast, the other casters either use their spells by intuition (through their connection to nature, their inheritance and similar effect) or have an entity that grants them their powers. They might be able to achieve specific effects (or cast spells) that the wizards can't, because they are limited to their understanding of magic, but they are mostly limited to their area and those specific effects. (It's hard to understand and copy godly interactions after all, as well as accumulate knowledge/tricks from secretive groups like druids or from people that don't understand what they are doing and how they are doing it (aka sorcerers)

As for how that translates to game logic. Wizards should have the broadest possible selection of (not necessarily known) spells and many different ways to interact with those spells (metamagic, artefacts and other items, components, etc). And it should depend on the wizard if he specializes or not. Both the decision on specialization and generalization should be awarded and limited in a certain sense

Other casters should have a smaller/focused set of possible spells, which can and absolutely should include exclusive spells. They also can and should have strong effects with those spells, but with more limited amount of available options.

It is not heavily customized. Why do you people think this?

I changed one major thing turning everyone into sorcerers basically, spontaneous casters.

I did not change the spells, the spell DCs, the four levels of success and failure, or anything else.

I did not change the stats. I did not change the focus spells.

I tested all this stuff prior to making any changes. I played the normal way for a year or more from release. Even then I figured out casters didn't have a problem....

Yes your game is heavily modified and I already named some changes that you have mentioned in recent threads about this topic, which is definitely more than one. People think you made big changes because you did.

Making every caster spontaneous is a huge buff alone. That is not something that affects only the witch and wizard, but also applies to other classes like druid and cleric.

In turn making every spell a signature spell is a huge buff as well.

And the fact that out of combat challenges get handwaved by clever ideas from the players is completely game changing. You literally said a Wizard could invent a matching spell if it was a good idea to solve a roadblock and that travels are no-issues, it's always assumed the group just makes it and the how is just ignored. It's no wonder you see no benefit in the utility of for example the wizard, because every caster has it and actually doesn't need spending resources for it.

I don't know why you bring up all these other things that you haven't changes as nobody claimed you did and those 3 changes above alone are a huge shift in power.

Coming back to low level casters. They most likely won't have the necessary spells with them to utilize to bring forth those white room results. They will spend about a third of their spells out of combat and with multiple combats per day, that leaves a caster about 1 spell per encounter. (or less) About 40% of those spells which will fail.

I don't even know why we are talking about chain lightning for low level casters to begin with. With combats taking an average of 3 to 4 rounds that leaves casters relying on cantrips for 9 - 12 rounds per day.

Most casters don't want to be near the enemy, so I don't know where you would factor weapons in, but that would mean you don't get to move at all... Positioning is a very important part of the game. Not only would that mean many spells would not be able to properly target enemies in the first place, most of the time they would also have lesser cover from allies, reducing the bad hit chances even further.

Martials start getting their first runes by level 2 and have an easy access to flanking bonus. Their hit chance will be 15% better already at that point in time and their crit chance is usually better too. Even assuming one attack per turn only, the martials easily outclass the casters over the day. I don't know what to tell you, it's not even close. First level spells don't do much more damage than normal weapon attacks to begin with and are so swingy that the chance is somewhat high that you might deal less. Every martial attack deals more damage than a cantrip, for one action only instead of two. (and soon that difference will only grow)

Sure in very optimized play where electric arc is the only cantrip ever used and at every turn 2 enemies can and will be targeted and we are only considering the dmg outliers like shocking grasp (and again ignoring the fact that casters mostly don't want to stay near enemies) you might end up with better results. At that point I would ask myself why we aren't eliminating all other spells from the game if they are all considered trash. Casters at early levels aren't "fine" because some min-maxers using the same few options all the time can somewhat keep up with the martials. If anything it shows the game isn't as balanced as everybody claims it is

People who think mana systems are book keeping nightmares should broaden their horizons and start playing games that use those systems. Vancian casting is by far the worst book keeping hell I have ever seen in any system.

That so called "problem" with casters saving up their resources to only cast the most powerful spells or spam low level spells also doesn't really exist. To a certain extent those things can be done with Spell Blending and Staff Nexus already in PF2e and I'm sure those players exist somewhere. But what will happen most of the time is that peoples start relying on mid tier spells a lot (especially on later levels), because mana is still a valuable resource and you don't want to run out of it when needed the most. Still it doesn't make any sense going to bed with 80% of your mana pool remaining, if it does get refilled.

What actually happens is that casters get more flexible and don't have to keep track of slots of different levels, which even spontaneous casters have to do in vancian like systems. It also adds the possibility of items and effects around regaining limited mana during the day to the game, like mana potions.

That being said, those games are out there, they play vastly different from DnD/Pathfinder and while I definitely recommend people checking them out, changing the magic system is not realistic for a remaster and I don't know if it should be desired for a 3E. Because vancian style casting (and spontaneous variants) are clearly liked by people and playing around with the limits of the system can be part of the fun too.

Coming back to the topic of low level casters, Casters simply don't have more money lying around than martials. I don't know which white room scenario that is coming from.

First all there are casters, who still need to upgrade their weapons to benefit from their kit. Universalist wizard for example, who's focus spell is pretty much useless otherwise. Druids too, who, if done right, can have better stats with Handwraps than their naturals stats in their transformations and in a system, where "every +1 matters", that is a heavy, but necessary investment. Clerics and other divine casters will often rely on weapons and then there's the fact that staves have runes built in and thus the caster will pay for them anyways.

Second, there are so many items, even at low level, which the game pretty much expects a caster to have, likes Spell hearts, Wands, Staves and then items that boost their main skill, increase the number of spell slots or interact with consumables, so that you will constantly be low on money. That is on top of the additional costs for learning new spells of course. Obviously there are items besides the weapons that martials will want too, but from my experience they will have plenty of money left to also invest into fluff items, while casters simply won't.

So proposing casters to solve their problems with money is neither an option nor fair. The main problem with low level casters is their poor hit chance combined with their very limited resources. Bad hit chances stay relevant for the whole game, but feel extremely bad at early levels. That is especially true for attack spells, but applies to save spells as well as the success effects are often hardly worth the effort.

That is why the easiest improvement would be to give them their guaranteed moment to shine once per day, then lagging behind won't feel as bad. It is what people have been suggesting a lot anyways with for example true strike or the gm being responsible to basically tell the casters outright what encounters they will face and what their weak points will be. But the game shouldn't rely on mandatory "options" nor the beneficial interpretation of unclear rules, it should be built into the system with no room left for interpretations.

Hero Points are not a valid argument for Spell Attacks being okay.
First of all they don't work the way it has been implied. They are not an auto success and certainly not worth spending on an estimated 60% hit rate. The moment a Hero Point needs to be spent is the moment the attack has missed in the first places. So the decision is not to buff an average hit rate by a certain number of percent. It is a retry with the same success rate as the first try with even the option of a critical failure.

Speaking of critical failures, they often have terrible side effects ind PF2e and since there is always a 5% chance for players to have a critical failure (let's be real here, the numbers are never high enough that a 1 is just a normal failure), players are encouraged to negate critical failures with Hero Points (both in and out of combat). That is in addition to needing one as a fail save if s%*~ goes wrong, it's not very likely that players will have Hero Points to spare to begin with. And especially not for casually using them on bad success rates. Sure if the situation is right, but that is not the normal case.

The math is better with True Strike as you actually use the better result this time around. But there's a big difference. One has to decide before making the roll and it can't be combined with Hero Points as well. What about the amount of times, where True Strike was used, when the attack would have hit anyways, making the extra action and the spent resource a waste and also resulting in the resource not being available when it is actually needed. Even worse are the times where the attack misses despite using true strike, then all 3 actions and 2 resources suddenly become a waste.

That is on top of giving up the option to use a 3 action spell, metamagic, a spell catalyst, movement or an interaction to retrieve an item (scroll, wand, ...). How often is a caster expected to cast attack spells per day? Between 12 to 16 times, a good amount of which will miss (including top level spells). Casters are already behind martials in proficiency for most levels and Monster ACs are balanced around martial stats. So what exactly is the problem with an effective +2 to +4 bonus on very few attacks, which use multiple resources and on top prevents the user from all other actions?

I'm sure there are some white room scenarios with 10 ifs and buts as preconditions, but we all know those never happen at the table. And even if it was true and both True Strike and Shadow Signet were mandatory options that needed to be picked in order for the game's math on Attack Spells to work, then those options would either need heavy reworks or need to be removed from the game.

TBH if casters are that much worse than martials, I definitely do not see how boosting their spell attacks will be enough to put them on an equal footing, given all the things you have listed in the martials' favor.

It won't, but it is a start. And most important, it will ease the pain on missing with limited resources. And just as I previously said, it is increasing the amount of viable options. Because right now Save Spells are outright better than Attack Spells.

Martials desperately need special treatment either from their allies or the GM to survive 4 or more encounters in a short period of time.

Not really, unless we are talking multiple fights back to back without any sort of rest and that still will affect caster more than martials.

They are all dependent upon the same couple set of runes.

The ones given out with auto progression and that are needed to open up the Rune Slots in the first place? Everybody needs those. And even then, specific magic items do exist as alternatives.

Their damage can pretty terrible unless they pick up a two-handed weapon (which can really eat into their action economy if they want to do more than just swing their weapon), pick up a monk stance (which again eats actions) or use two weapons and get a special feat, which can eat a lot of actions and be even more restrictive about what else you can do other than attack. Or are a rogue with an off-guard enemy. between this and the rune issue, I would say martials are pretty restricted in what they spend their wealth on and what what feats they can get to significantly focus on doing more damage, with most of those feat options seriously eating into their action economy. In fact, I would argue that very many martials end up suffering massively from bad action economy. Rangers, Inventors, Investigators, Swashbucklers probably have it the worst from what I have seen, but I've even seen Rogues and Barbarians spend rounds on decent-sized battle maps doing nothing but run around with move actions. Small battlefields being another GM conceit almost required to play a smashmouth melee martial without having to invest heavily in movement options, not just for you, but for your whole party if you don't want to end up unconscious and rounds away from any ally support.

Even that so called "terrible" damage is better than damage that doesn't hit at all most of the time. I don't see where martials are more limited with their wealth, if anything they are less limited, because there are less must haves. Sure, there are the runes, but let's not pretend that casters don't need any of those and for the weapon runes, they will pay for them indirectly regardless (Staves have them built in). Same for feats, maybe not all of them are equally good, but the ratio is way better than with the pickable caster feats.

The difference with the action economy is, they have the options. The caster meanwhile will most of the time use all 3 actions for casting the spell (and by using the third action for said spell with the likes of metamagic, a 3-action spell, material/object interaction....). Movement is a problem for casters as well, many spells have short ranges, enemies won't position them in ideal formations and of course the party will get in the way.

Casters have very good ways to exploit flanking, bard boosts and all the other attack roll centric game play. You have to get pretty high level before heightened Shocking grasp damage (with a hero point to catch a bad roll) followed up by a top slot magic missile or force bolt as a third action will not out perform martial single target damage. Yeah, that is their nova burst and it is not going to happen all that often (thank goodness casters can't just bury martial damage with cantrips and focus spells...oh no, we've forgotten the psychic!). But it does happen (I've seen it), and it can do so without casters having to rely on anything from the GM that the martial character does not.

Oh no, the martial can't keep up with the caster's best few actions of the day. With Hero Points that is, which are even more limited than the other resources and are also needed to evade death? Sure that works once.... If the caster starts his turn right next to an enemy (which is very unlikely) and intends to end the turn right next to the enemy (even more unlikely). Even if it would, after a maximum of 2 rounds your most valuable resources are gone. Hopefully the battle is over by then and there aren't any more fights planned for today. Oh there's 3 more? Too bad.

I think a very large amount of this woe-to-caster mentality really does center on the "Martials can do this all day and casters can't." That is an argument that is fundamentally about GM pacing and not game design. If you don't believe me about this, read the Encounter design sections of the GMG , especially looking at the dynamic encounters sections on page 48. Martials counting on full HP at the start of every encounter without using consumables is a massive GM conceit

No the mentality of the martials is casters aren't allowed to outshine them for even 1 or 2 rounds per day, even when they are less potent for the rest of the day. That was not the problem of old PF and D&D though. The problem was, that casters were shutting down all challenges by themselves and the game already has multiple ways to make sure that doesn't happen anymore.

Not exactly sure what you wanted to tell me with the dynamic encounter paragraph, but the party is expected to have all resources at the start of a battle (resources meaning HP and Focus Points, not spell slots)

Let's agree to very much disagree. My caster PCs feel quite different from my martial ones in how they play and what they bring to the table. But I have never felt them being far behind the martials, nor inadequate in any way.

But then, I'm not expecting my casters to do a martial's job, nor the other way around. I would sure be disappointed in both cases.

No the double standard is that for some reason a caster is meant to be barely on par with a martial for his/her 2-4 best actions per day only and then completely suck in comparison for the rest of the day.

But then again, I'm not expecting my casters to be buff bots, martial's sidekicks and all play the same.

Martials have better accuracy, which is even better with flanking.
can tank more damage and have better saves.
have better action economy
can do their best actions over and over
don't have to be especially prepared to "work"
aren't all relying on the same few items or feats
have access to many of the so called "benefits of casters" with very cheap feat investment
don't need special treatment from the GM

Buffing the accuracy of Attack Spells won't disturb the balance at all, it will give casters more viable options. Because those spells are simply worse than Save Spells right now, unless used under very specific (certain few) circumstances.

Then what do you give to Martials to rebalance the scales ?

Absolutely nothing, they are already way ahead. This is rebalancing the scales

To be fair, Spell Substitution has it's uses. Just not in the way it is often presented. The real strength of spell substitution is not that you can change spells to affect weaknesses on the fly. The main benefit is that you can prepare all (or most) slots as combat spells and switch them out for utility spells, when the need arises. Because you almost always have 10 minutes to spare out of combat, but never in combat (or before combat).

That is especially useful on early levels, where slots are rare any you only want to prepare spells like Jump, Spider-Climb, Charm, Mending, Air Bubble, Lock, Invisibility and so on, when you actually need them and not on the slim chance that you might need them. That is also true for the later spell ranks with things like fly or Dimension Door. So basically the spells you'd normally buy as scrolls, so effectively it's a money saver.

But it's definitely not the Silver Bullet provider.

Spell Sub is soooo dependent on how you play the character, and, yes, the GM to a certain extent. If all you fight are giants with no weaknesses and no resistances, yeah....

Oh, and as for the low-level thing? Yeah, everyone sucks at low level. And can get splattered by someone sneezing on them to boot.

It's also a problem when the party gets surprised by the enemies or has an encounter, when they don't expect one, both of which do happen quite frequently, no matter what you do.

The problem is that most subclass features do something for you for the whole game or are at least front loaded so you get something early. So having 2 of the good options doing absolutely nothing for you is a problem. So no, it's not the same for everybody.

To be clear, my PFS wizard archetypes into magic warrior because I love the flavor of the character, not because there were no feats I wanted to take as a wizard. I have played an Abjurer, an illusionist, a Conjurer, a necromancer and a evoker. I have used meta magic, spell blending, and spell substitution theses. I have played 2 free archetype wizards and the rest with no variant rules. The PFS wizard is the only one not to take level 2 and 4 wizard class feats. It is strongly misleading to insist that there is only one way to build a fun and effective wizard.

I think that “capstone feats” are way over done in AP back matter. Too many classes have levels with only 2 or 3 feat options, including the wizard. At the same time, some levels of wizard are stacked with good options and retraining and double dipping at other levels is pretty common across classes. Too many good options can also become a problem if it leads into extreme overspecialization and not covering basic things the class needs to do. Even so, I think the “wizards have no good feats” complaint gains traction because level 2 and 4 are light on good options, but those are really the levels where players create character identity, so getting better options there is a good goal.

Edit:
Also the success and utility of a good wizard is always going to be determined by the campaign parameters. This is true of almost every class. You change the build based upon the theme and the tone of the campaign. Saying classes or class options are universally bad because they have niches is really not that productive. A giant barbarian in Abomination Vaults is not a great build choice. A spirit barbarian in that campaign is much better. That is not the typical analysis of those instincts in a general sense but it is true in a pretty tight dungeon crawl with a lot of spookiness to it.

Good for you, that you can find enjoyment with the class. As you can see quite a few people would disagree and have a different opinion. I also like to play suboptimal characters sometimes. It only really works when the whole table does it though and the game is adjusted for it. You could even play characters with voluntary flaws and still make it work somehow. That doesn't change that there's a certain imbalance with the wizard.

The problems are not LV2 and LV4, because first Level feats are okay enough to take them at those levels and then there's always the generic Cantrip Expansion. (Though the others at LV2 are either bad or super specialized and LV4 completely sucks)

- At LV8 there's not really a choice, take Advanced School Spell or Bond Conservation (depending on a choice you already made on LV1) Don't even look at the others.
- At LV10 it's apparently Scroll Savant, as that feat keeps plopping up as a shutdown argument as to why the wizard is "fine as it is".
- At LV12 with Clever Counterspell that investment in Counterspell from 10 Levels ago now isn't total garbage anymore. Hopefully you had fun with a dead feat for 50% of the character's life span. If you didn't take that feat back then, simply take Forcible Energy now.
- At LV14 if you took Bond Conservation as a Universalist, there is Superior Bond. If you went all in on Counterspell, there's Reflect Spell. If you have neither... Well the others suck, just take Superior Bond
- At LV16 there is Effortless Concentration. This feels like a tax.
- But yeah levels 18 and 20 (more 20 than 18) have some interesting feats... you know, when the game is basically over.

That leaves us with the LV6 feats. So please don't pretend like there's always couple of good options available, because there aren't.
Could I make a wizard that takes none of the mentioned feats? Yes
Would I feel completely outshined by any other full caster in my game? Well since other casters seem to outshine optimal wizards already, Double yes.

That's fair, actually. Though good luck persuading your GM that you can upgrade a wand of fireball into a wand of cone of cold . Still, I take your point about selling them. It's a good one.

Shouldn't be too hard considering you have to recast the spell anyways, even if it's just the higher version of the same spell. In the worst case scenario, where the GM won't allow it and there's no shop around, you can disassemble it

In practice, ragging on one class just because some options are garbage is like complaining that sorcerers suck because you're playing a demonic one that runs around using...

There's a huge difference between there being only one good option and there being one bad option. Outright bad options shouldn't exist in the first place, but balancing is hard and it can happen. There could even be one or two levels with more bad options. But if there's always the best option at each level, then that is the problem. And it's somewhat ridiculous when sometimes people respond with stuff like "I don't think it's too bad, at least I can use archetype feats now". Almost making it sound like it was a feature instead of a bug.

Has anyone else ever played with a wizard who...

The problem is, there aren't 2 or 3 good options available most of the time, otherwise we wouldn't have this discussion. That is more true for feats than for arcane thesis, but even then, the thesis are not balanced.

Spell Substitution is only good if the GM makes it good. Otherwise it's very meh. If the game has to be built around the ability for it to be good, it is not a good ability.

Meta Magic is the worst of the thesis, because you can just take those feats on your own, especially when the LV2 and LV4 feats are bad options. Since it never grants any feat above LV10 and even those on very high levels, this thesis needs an overhaul the most.

Spell Blending and Staff Nexus are extremely bad (outright useless) at early levels and become good at later levels. You just have to hope the campaign will be long enough so you actually get to see the payoff.

That leaves us with Improved Familiar Attunement, which is fine, if you want to play the minion wizard.

Pointing out X is not a problem because Y exists doesn't solve anything, because you can't take all those options at the same time and they forces the playstyles into one corner, when the other options aren't good-

My argument for why this style of play best suits wizards is because it fits the lore and flavor of the wizard first and foremost. Starting every combat with a scroll of slow in hand is a good idea for most casters, true, at least until that hand will be holding a staff that can fulfill a similar purpose until it is spent. They also are an INT class so they really should be capable of crafting the scrolls themselves relatively easily.

Why should the wizard be at a disadvantage just because "it fits the lore and flavor". Which other class has to take penalties because of other reasons than game mechanics and balance? The answer is none. Also not everybody will share this opinion that every wizard shall be a scroll wizard. Every player should imagine their own wizard and playing multiple shouldn't result in playing the same character all the time.

Make some feats to support that style of play and maybe a thesis. But don't make it a justification for weaknesses. Btw. starting combat with a scroll in hand means the party is always ambushing the enemy, which is not how most encounters will come up.

Crafting scrolls needs downtime and tools. You always need to provide half of the cost as materials (good luck finding those in the wild) and it takes several days to create them. You create them in batches of 4, which means for the same amount of money, you get 300% less diversity into your daily spell repertoire. Also as the crafter of the group, you will often be busy creating other items for the party. And then again there's the point about not every wizard should need to be a crafter.

There are not great staves for wizards, largely because of the way the staves were built around schools that had iconic spells that wizards couldn't even cast. Hopefully the wizard remastery and magic item rework will help make school staves way more useable by wizards, because I fully acknowledge that some players just don't want to use scrolls at all.

There are quite a few options, not all of them are based around the schools. And then there are custom staves.

The wizard still has the most spell slots, so having feats that work well with spell slots is fine, because you mostly use scrolls to provide yourself extra castings and to keep your spell slots free to cast the spells that you want to cast the most often. Scrolls are the answer to all spell casting, but an answer to "but having the silver bullet spell ready when you need it is impossible!" You don't have to have the silver bullet memorized. Even 2 actions to have exactly the right spell to solve a problem is not that big of a deal.

Wizards have the most slots along with Sorcerers. And since you don't need to know a spell to cast it (it only has to be on the spell list), Sorcerers actually benefit more from scrolls than wizards, because now they can broaden their limited spell repertoire. Also casters with less slots would have the highest benefit of increasing the number of spells cast per day. For a 3-slot caster, one scroll is a 33% improvement, whereas for a wizard that is a 25% improvement. (20% for the highest available slot)

In general scrolls are useful for tool spells and emergency spells. Not for silver bullets, because they are stuck on their level, while you and your enemies advance. Since Silver bullets aren't highly effective anyways, taking 2 actions to draw one is too much of a cost. A cost that is better invested into casting 2 spells of "normal effectiveness".

So no, I don't see wizards benefiting from scrolls more, they actually benefit less. It would be a different story, if wizards had feats that supported made casting better or gave them ways to manipulate spells in ways, no other class can. Something that also would fit the lore and flavor of the class and would actually make a strong point for casting more spells via consumables. This is something that has been asked for in the this and the other wizard thread, an improvement to their chassis and feats that gave them unique benefits for casting spells.

Also, you can use most metamagic feats with scrolls. Yes, sometimes the action cost is a big deal, but it seems a pretty small cost compared to sitting around blasting with cantrips over and over again...

In theory yes, but in reality no, unless you can just stand there for 2 whole rounds without moving and using any defensive actions at all. (one of those 2 rounds you are doing nothing btw.)

If you are casting cantrips (without being forced to), you are most likely trying to save slots. If you try to save slots, surely you aren't going to waste consumables. You use up your renewable resource first and only then the one that costs money second.

There's one very important detail hidden here btw. People don't complain that they are losing fights, because they fall back to cantrips. They say that the class feels weak compared to others and that they don't feel the contribution. Yes not activating a scroll on a fight and then (almost) losing because of it is bad. Activating a scroll on a fight that will be won anyways just so the wizard can feel better is even worse.

1 extra spell slot of the highest rank probably is exceedingly generous for ABP. Generally when I play a wizard, I spend 25 to 50% of my wealth on scrolls. The only permanent items I really need are armor runes and skill boosting items. Rarely do the skill boosting items require immediate investment. When I get a big chunk of gold, I look for a permanent item that I want my character to have that I can afford, and then I spend everything else on scrolls. I never feel like my characters are behind on wealth. In reality, at higher levels, this probably more closely amounts to the same thing as the 1 extra spell slot of the top-rank slot -1, cascading down everyday. I think that will much more closely line up with your numbers. The added flexibility of having them as spell slots instead of scrolls is a boost, but I will usually have at least one (often quite a few more) of every single level -3 or level-4 spell that my wizard knows, which will often be almost all of the common ones and most of the uncommon ones too. By level 10 level 1 and level 2 spell slots really should feel pretty much unlimited if you want your wizard to be a tool box caster.

A bag of holding is a very cheap way of holding a bunch of scrolls in reserve. The exact rules on wearing scrolls is not well defined. I have never had a problem with GMs letting me have about 2 bulk of scrolls worn if I am not wearing any toolkit. That is 20 scrolls, which you can readjust after an encounter. 20 extra spells at an action away, and 200+ 2 actions away feels pretty fair and reasonable. The trick here is that playing a wizard does require a lot more preparation from the player than most other casters. That is something that seems intentional to me, but also something that could probably be better communicated. The flavor and lore text of the wizard is certainly getting changed, so we will probably have to wait to see how effectively that text represents the actual mechanics of the class.

Like I said, such a character can be fun and as you can see, it also requires a certain grade of lose interpretations and freedom granted by the GM. Such a character is missing out on a lot of unique and fun permanent items though, it shouldn't be the required or be the norm to make the class playable.

A Witch, Sorcerer or even Druid can basically do all of that in addition to the specialized stuff of their own class. Better yet, even a dedication or trick magic item are enough so that higher level martial classes can cheaply cast most of the low level scrolls, especially the utility ones, if they are all meant to come from scrolls.

Why is any of that an argument for the wizard being fine, as it currently is designed? Many of the wizards feats are actually meta magic feats, they don't work well with scrolls. The same goes for the arcane thesis "Improved Familiar Attunement" that also doesn't work well with scrolls, if have to pull them from your inventory (regardless of one or two actions are required). So not only is there not a great synergy, it actually feels more like punishment.

Right about now, I feel like the PF 1e wizard makes a dramatic entrance waving his big bushy beard and entirely ridiculous heap of spell slots. Really. It was worse before. Especially since you could buy magic items like scrolls and wands on top of those slots, too.

I'm pretty sure streamlining was one of the design goals of the second edition. Just because things were worse in the past, doesn't mean it has to go into that direction again.

It is probably not something I would do for a one shot high level adventure, no. It would be too much book keeping for most players to jump in past level 5 or 6 and have to remember that many spell slots on a new character, but if you started from first level, it is only ever 1 more spell per rank, and you learn your spells and what each one can do.

As far as affordability, even at level 20, all the extra spell slots as scrolls would cost 10,112 if you used all of them. Every encounter your character should be getting 12,250 gp of treasure. Even if your GM was incredibly cruel and only giving you treasure that you had to sell at half value, you could afford this number of scrolls every day that you have at least 2 encounters.

And the real truth is, you are almost never going to have a day where you cast close to this many spells, but with scrolls alone, it is very easy for a wizard to have this many spells that they can cast in a day where they really need more of them and they want to feel like they are never going to run out. Like, a rank 6 scroll costs 300 gp. A level 20 wizard should never enter any encounter where firing off a rank 6 slow, chain lightning or feeblemind spell is beyond their reach for the day (yes a rank 6 chain lightning spell is not a great choice for a level 20 wizard, but it is better than a rank 10 electric arc so it felt like a decent rank 6 reflex targeting example, especially with its 500ft range and ability to target any number of creatures). So the wizard could pass on the 1 extra rank 9 spell to grab 10 more rank 6 spells if they noticed that their GM was really tending to throw longer days at them.

And this really is about the level of versatility that using scrolls consistently adds to the wizard and lets them pretty much have every single 1st level, 2nd level and 3rd level spell they know available to them with the cost of 1 action. There is absolutely no reason for a wiard to unprepared to cover any common out of combat spell/situational spell that is 3 or more...

Even a player that started at level 1 isn't going to prepare 82 spells per day quickly out of a list of a couple 100. Especially not if he should adjust for the dangers ahead. With scrolls, wands and staves it's different, because those spells are fixed, you only track the charges.

Also it's not only about LV20 but for each level getting there. The math looks actually way better on LV20 than it should (you know the end of the game, where people don't spend too much time), because there are no LV10 scrolls to be added in the math. Let's use LV 18 and suddenly you are supposed to make those 12,250 with only 5200 per encounter, most of which are suggested to be items and consumable, so let's halve that and voila that's only 2600 now. If you spend all treasure on every level just on consumables, you aren't going to have any permanent items at all. No armor, no armor runes, no relics, no apex item, no staves, etc. and that's not even including gold for fluff items or "retirement money".

That and you can't replace those scrolls once you leave town until get back to it, that is of course if you started from a settlement with level 9 scrolls to begin with. And once a scroll is used, it's gone, whether it was useful or not. Additionally a scroll only has one spell, while each slot can fill any spell from the book. So to have a similar experience as a wizard with the above mentioned amount of slots, you'd need at least 4 to 5 times the scrolls and simply use only a fraction of them each day, because that is what a wizard could prepare in theory.

Also keep in mind that a wizard can't have that many scrolls at hand and most likely has to retrieve those "silver bullets" from the backpack, which takes 2 actions instead of the 1 action that is often brought up in discussions. 2 actions per scroll! Now are there workarounds for that particular problem? Yes. Can a consumable focused character like that be fun? Yes. Is it the solution to the problem? Not if every wizard has to play like that.

Does this affect all casters the same? No, because spontaneous don't have this problem and other prepared casters all have something else besides casting spells. The wizards don't. Do wizards get more money to encourage that playstyle? No. Yes wizards are supposed to be intelligent and prepared. Wasting all of their money on expansive consumables that you might not even need is not intelligent, it's stupid. (again we aren't talking some of their money, ALL of it)

Rituals in 5E are Super Cantrips with a slower cast time.
Rituals in PF2E are Ceremonies with multiple people involved.

The game could have both, there's no point in arguing about the name or which one is better or why they are/aren't the same.

Being able to cast utility spells without a slot would be nice. There's no need to copy DND in that regard since PF2e already has a game mechanic that could be used for this: Focus points.
Since they also recharge in 10 minutes and can also be cast outside combat, Paizo would just need a trait for spells to be castable as a focus spell and Feats or Class Features to cast those spells as focus spells.

Maybe a better terminology needs to be found to not mix those spells up with actual focus spells, but I'm sure it can be done.

Every Wizard I know picked a LV1 feat on LV4, which partly has to do with the fact that casters don't normally get one at LV1 and there's actually multiple you might want. While this is not inherently bad, it's sadly not the only level to feature bad feats.

Some of them could be changed in a small way to make them feel way better though.

Spell Ablation on LV2. Why would I want resistance against the damage type that I have dealt? It would still be kinda bad for a wizard if it gave resistance to all energy types, but not AS bad.

Bespell Weapon on LV4 would be acceptable if the target weapon could be of a comrade in range and not just the wizards. Similar to Vivi buffing Steiner's swords in FFIX. Make the ally range somewhat close so it's not the default best option at all times.

Split Slot on LV6: Instead of giving the player simply an additional choice, how about the wizard can cast both spells.
The limit could be both spells in the slot need to share a trait and it can't be the same spell. The slot is only used up (and thus open for Drain Bonded Item) once both spells have been cast.

Spell Penetration on LV6 feels actually really bad in practice. While on paper that sounds nice, (unless playing VTT) you constantly have to remind the GM to consider this bonus, without knowing if it actually takes effect here and it still is "only" a -1 at best.
Why can't this instead add the INT modifier to all Attack Spells?

Quickened Casting on LV10 is a real offender with it's "once per day" restriction. It should be at least once per combat and thus have a cooldown of 1 or 10 minutes.

There are some other real stinkers
Like "Second Chance Spell" on LV18, which has like 5 conditions that need to happen in order to grant a single reuse of an enchantment spell on the next turn.

I disagree with some takes on what will reflects and that wizards shouldn't have legendary in it.

Will is not really a representation to show if a person can be tempted or not, otherwise bad individuals with high will would hardly exist. It rather shows if a person can be manipulated against their will. There's a huge difference between "Be my servant and I'll grant you power" vs "Do as I command, because my magic says so". This is further supported by effects like Color Spray having a will save, which means will represents not only the mind, but a manipulation of all senses (other than pain, which is fortitude) as well.

In popular media there's two kinds of characters that display strong will
Main Protagonists and Wizards. The former because they often have plot armor and need to show how awesome they are, but those don't exist in TTRPGs. The latter because "those simple tricks won't work on me". If said character is not a wizard but another caster instead, that's most likely because wizards don't exist in that universe and the archetype in it's whole representation is already an amalgamation of Wizard and <insert other class>

I don't see why Sorcerers should have a higher will than wizards. Their powers are intuitive and they can manifest certain effects because they are in their blood. They are basically all X-Men. They come in all shapes and forms, they can be simple minded or strong willed.

Bards, who are already legendary, I have a very hard time finding any logical explanation for them to have a high will. Then again that class has never made much sense to me and seems like a relic from the past. I can see that for a Captain America type of character, but that is not really the typical bard for me.

Clerics and Druids already have a very high will due to their main attribute being wisdom. But that is as far as it should go, their resistance comes from their conviction and their conviction comes from their tradition.

Now Wizards need to understand everything they learn. So as the supposed knowledge guys, they need something that represents the "I know what this is, this isn't gonna work" factor. You can still play a booksmart scaredy cat by completely dumping wisdom, but there should still be a notable difference between the clueless Fighter and the clueless Wizard. And eventually every Wizard should come to a point where he is not manipulated easily.

Besides that yes wizards need a strong will to even finish their studies.

Wizard's whole shtick is to cast spells, they should be better at it than all other casters, who can cast spells and do some other magical things on top. Wizards whole chassis should be built around their spells.

First:
Let's improve the apparent goal of the "prepared for everything" play style that is intended and encouraged by Paizo themselves.
Make sure that the prepared silver bullet actually hits, when it counts.
Give every Wizard the following Class Feature on Level 1:

"just as planned":
Reaction
Trigger: A leveled attack spell missed an opponent (failure, not crit failure) or a leveled saving spell was successfully saved against (not critically)
You knew your opponent would react this way and are perfectly prepared for this situation. You adjust the triggering spell in the last second to counter your target's defense. Improve the degree of success by one in your favor for one target only. (Turning a failure into a success for attack spells or a success into a failure for saving spells). Now your enemies are aware of your shenanigans, so this trick won't work again. (Can't be used for 10 minutes)

Second:
Schools should not be limiting, but rewarding.
Get rid of the limit on the fourth spell slot, instead reward the wizard for casting spells from their school. They should actually want to cast those spells instead being forced to use them. For the school of mentalism this could be something like "Whenever you cast a school spell, choose a target within 30 feet, it is off-guard until the end of your next turn".

Third:
Focus Spells need to be useful and compliment the playstyle of the school, not feel like a cheap after thought. Their power needs to be somewhere between cantrip and leveled spells.

Fourth:
Make the Arcane Thesis count more.

For example: Metamagical Experimentation gives one first level feat and an additional daily metamagic of half the player's level? I'm sorry what?

Change the new Spellshape theory so that at higher levels Wizards can combine two spellshapes (make a feat for that)
Game Breaking? No it's still 3 actions. But it makes the wizard feel like he can do something nobody else can. Maybe even add an exclusive spellshape or two on higher levels. Like making area effects cross shaped or something.

Now I'm sure adding multiple buffs at the same time is a balancing act and those things need to be balanced with buffs for other schools, focus spells and arcane thesis, but I'm sure it can be done- This is the direction I'd want them to go.

When people complain about generic problems about casters, defenders always use very specific arguments to counter those problems. Not as examples where the solution can be used in dozens of different ways, but with certain spells, items and playstyles, which also oftentimes have to be combined to work.

1) If a very small selection of spells like Electric Arc, True Strike and Magic Weapon are the reason that casters can't be buffed, then those spells need to either be removed, be reworked to be less of an abusable problem or applied to the whole caster system as a general buff. The same thing applies to Shadow Signet, which hasn't come up here this often, because we are talking about low levels, but is brought up in discussions very often.

2) If buying and using consumables for certain classes was a requirement and not for others, then there's something wrong with the system, because they weaken the long term power level of said classes, especially in such a tight system like PF2e. They should be additional options not requirements and their benefits should have the same impact on all classes. Characters who spend all their early gold only on consumables will feel this at later levels, character who spend only a little bit of their gold on consumables won't have a drastically different game experience, but instead a very situational benefit once or twice.

3) Consumables don't even remove the problem of early level casters. The complaint is not that they have limited resources (and yes they are limited). The complaints are that the experience using those resources often feels too weak vs. non expendable resource actions from other classes (those silver bullets are simply not as powerful as they are intended) and that once they are gone, the remaining alternatives now get debuffed. 1 or 2 extra spells during the level (not per day) isn't going to change that at all and people who claim it does, use combinations of point 1) to counterargue. If limited resource are too weak, having slightly more of said limited (and failable) resource isn't gonna change anything.

4) Consumables require extra actions during the combat (even more when they are in the backpack), which very quickly can result in turns, where nothing is actually done besides moving and getting them. With the average amount of turns per battles at low levels of 3-4, losing out on a turn feels even worse than casting a cantrip or even attacking with a weapon. The proposed solution of starting with it in the hand already doesn't always work. First of all that requires an ambush, which is not the usual way to trigger a fight. And secondly many casters need their free hand for things like material component spells or dual wielding their staff for Hand of the Apprentice (otherwise the focus spell is extremely nerfed). So unless somebody wants to argue that the consumable should be used before focus spells and other natural abilities, this is not a solution at all.

5) Casters don't need less gold than other classes. This has been brought up a lot and really bugs me. Where is this argument even coming from? Sure casters might not need weapons with runes (might, because there are exceptions). But their weapons are staves, which ARE their magical weapons, often already include runes (and thus their prices) and in the whole career the caster might want/need more than one. They also need armor with runes, wands and half a dozen other magic items on top. In contrast martials are good to go with pretty much just their weapon and armor. I've never seen a table where the martials are in more need of gold than casters and even the wish lists for magic items are usually a lot bigger for the casters than for the martials.
This in combination with the fact that the caster is very often the crafter of the group often times leaves them with less resources than everybody else who's using that offtime to generate income. So casters spending all their early gold on consumables is another hit they will feel, once magic items become available. That and Runes being an integral part of the game has been given so much attention, pretty much all GMs make sure that the party receives them, martials hardly have to go out of their way to gain access to them.

6) If the GM has to play in a certain way so that certain classes don't have a huge disadvantage, then there is a huge problem with the system. Especially when there's no mention of those facts and they are implied at best and kept super vague at worst. If Casters only work out if and only if they are perfectly prepared and that in turn is only possible if the GM gives them all the hints of the upcoming daily challenges and mechanics, like Recall Knowledge provide certain information (which again is not specified), then this is telling people they are playing the game wrong.
And even worse, the people that are affected have no control over this as the GM is the one who makes those decisions. This also no only completely removes certain playstyles from the game, but is totally unfair, because it again only affects prepared casters and no other class. Being well prepared for the situation should feel like a reward (for all players) and not be the bare minimum requirement. Being severely punished by not achieving perfect preparation due to some miscalculation of a player. (Especially if some bad hidden die roles can be responsible for that, aka. Recall Knowledge)

7) Versatility is an often brought up argument and while of course that versatility needs to be counter balanced by something, that balance has already been achieved by limiting the resources of the casters by both A) number of available spell slots and then B) either needing those spells prepared or having a not so versatile repertoire of available spells to begin with. This versatility also is in stark contrast with points 1) and 5), where it is expected of a caster to always do a perfect play with a small number powerful options, which in turn dictates the spells he will need to prepare each day and leaves 0 versatility for the player. A lot of the spells are apparently useless, because every time they get brought up, defenders will quickly point out they should have picked options X and Y instead. One should wonder why those spells exist in the first place if it is not intended for players to pick them up.

8) Versatility should be an option, not a requirement. If people want to make specialist casters and dedicate spells, feats and gold to it, they should not be completely punished for doing so. Especially if the game system supports them to make those decisions, and it really isn't like you have to go out of your way to try and make a themed character on paper. So why is it that those characters seem to suck on intention? Because that is often the answer of both the community and Paizo themselves, you should have made/played the caster in a different way.

So to sum this up.
Casters are in a good place if they lean on certain playstyles, take specific spells and feats, buy and use consumables, always prepare and play in the perfect way, the GM interprets the rules in a certain way and never get screwed by the dice. While martials can play however they like, take whatever they like, use consumables or chose to ignore them, don't have to plan ahead, aren't depending on GMs interpretation of rules that are relevant for them and always can try again next turn if they fail at anything. Sounds completely fair.

Now to come full circle with my first post. Casters don't need more damage and they don't need to outdamage martials. What they need is reliability.
Cantrips getting more swingy is one way casters lose that reliability. Imo. it's perfectly fine that casters deal overall less damage with them than martials with their attacks every round. Outliers like Electric Arc definitely need to be rebalanced and toned down. Debuffing the overall damage of all cantrips is not the end of the world, but leaves a sour taste. Especially if this has already opened another can of must have cantrips to circumvent the problem...

Improving the focus point system is another way to achieve that reliability and I think it's a good sign that this is going to happen. But if this is their counter balance, Wizards are in dire need of better focus spells, because overall theirs are really bad.

But what is totally missing is that reliability on casting spells from spell slots. Those fail way to easy when not used in the absolute perfect situation and even in the perfect situation have quite a high chance to fail still. Those abilities on fails (save successes) seem to be the solution for this problem, but their effects hardly matter (especially against strong enemies), many spells don't have them and some need to be cast with 3 actions to add them. Casters need some mechanic to make all their preparation count at least in some reliable way and currently they don't have that. I think some once per combat ability is missing for this.

Then there's the incapacitation trait that makes matters even worse. And while I can see that it is important that low level spells don't trivialize late game encounters, I feel like casting it from the highest available spell slot level should normally affect enemies, which the party can realistically encounter and casting it from the second highest should still normally affect enemies of the party's level. Those high level enemies have high saves to begin with (at least a +4 compared to the players) and against equal level a success of the spell still isn't guaranteed at all. Then there's the fact that those spells become half as effective on even levels compared to odd levels and there's nothing players can do about it. I feel like getting a circumstance penalty of 2 per spell slot level below the highest available should be enough of a debuff. As they are right now, Incapacitation spells are often a waste at LV1 and a complete joke at LV2.

Well it is a different story if the main purpose if to expand the spell list, which of course should be one of the main goals of every wizard. But it sounded like the consumable itself was the big game changer.

The thing is about learning spells is, there's other ways to do it that are cheaper, but it depends a little bit on the GM on how he handles that.

People can teach you spells either as a reward or as part of Rollplay interactions with NPCs. (Trading spells, engaging in bets, ...)
You can find another wizards book, which contains a couple of spells that you don't know yet.
You can learn them from another party member, bigger parties tend to have at least a second caster.

So it is not like you have to buy every spell you want to own as a scroll (though as I said, they are nice for learning spells, especially those that you normally don't have access to)

The same arguments could be made for consumables and martials though. "Do you like hitting stuff. Well then bring potency crystals!" Yet nobody expects them to use consumables of any kind to stay relevant. Every time martials feel outclassed by casters, instead of nerfing the latter the former could easily mitgate that problem by buying and burning through consumables of different kinds. Why is nobody telling them to do that? Because it would be a bad game design, but that same logic works the other way around as well.

Scrolls and Spell Slots have some pretty big differences, because for one you decide the spell when you buy it and for the other when you prepare it.
One is available every day and the other has to be replaced somehow.

I'm not saying don't use consumables at all, in fact I like them (even though they are way too expansive). I've also given them to players in the past (but all of them and not just the casters)

But why are they an argument on whether or not casters feel too weak at early levels? As I have written before, my main problem as a wizard is not a lack of resources or that cantrips are/will be too weak. It is the fact that there is a fairly high chance my limited resources won't work. Even with perfect preparation.
That effect gets doubled on an even more limited resource and the feeling of failure quadrupled.

That effect could be negated if we were mostly fighting enemies that are weaker than the party. But if that was all we were ever fighting, what is the point in all the planning ahead? This also directly contradicts the description of the wizard that says: "You save your most powerful magic to incapacitate threatening foes and use your cantrips when only weaker foes remain". And right now that's not working out at all.

I have seen similar problems with other casters, but the difference is that their class gives them at least something else they can rely on, while wizards get nothing. And one or 2 additional scrolls isn't gonna fix that. (They are very nice for learning new spells though)

I'm actually starting to get curious which spells people bring along as scrolls on LV1 that apparently change the game experience of early levels. I hope it's not always the same one or two that I'm already guessing. Because if it is, then the game would be better off removing those spells from the game if all they do is being mandatory and basically hold back all casters that don't use them.

As somebody that is currently playing a wizard at low levels (currently LV3) the problem isn't actually low damage. Sure the debuff to the cantrips will be noticeable, but at the end of the day they'll still be okay to use. I still think adding the modifier to all damage spells (even at the cost of removing one spell dmg die) instead of removing it from cantrips would have been better, but I can see that it would be more work to do that and it's not game breaking for me.

What really sucks though is that even if I play the game in the somewhat expected way (but without being a buffbot), very often it doesn't work out and when that happens, it is very, very frustrating. (I'm not talking about DMG only spells here. Examples include Color Spray and Gust of Wind) What I mean by this is, I went all in on the guy that is prepared for everything.

- I went with Universalist, so I never have to bring a spell twice and can simply use drain bonded item on the most effective ones per level as needed.
- I took Spell Substitution, so I can start the day with combat spells and switch them out for situational spells as needed.
- I can target all saves and even could do so at level 1
- My highest stats are Int and Wis and I am trained in all relevant talents for Recall Knowledge. Which in turn means yes my HP are low and my AC is even lower.
- I even took Canny Acumen to raise my Perception even further (as to avoid being surprised as much as possible and having a high chance to start combat early)

All this leads to me having many situations, where I either know what I will face soon or find out during combat and can take the perfect action. And then.... the spell misses or the enemy saves or even critically saves because of a combination of things: A somewhat bad (or high save) roll and because the enemies are higher than the party (mostly somewhere around 2 levels, which honestly are those enemies, where the planning should pay off the best, not when fighting weak guys)

Now my resources are gone and the plan didn't work. And while yes martials can miss too, first of all their odds of actually hitting are higher (with runes starting at LV2 and having access to flanking bonus) and second, they'll just try again next round. Doing the math after the fight, I find out I actually had somewhat of a 50/50 chance to actually pull it of, mostly even a little less. So with the best tactics that only increases to somewhere around 60/40, and that is a real bummer.

What does work though is using magic missile. Sure it does a little less damage, but it always hits and thus actually does more damage. Which in turn means I'd be better off preparing that spell in every slot and never learn any other combat spell. That isn't very interesting for me as a character though, because I want to play the guy that analyzes the situation perfectly and has a counter strategy available.

And yes I know true strike and similar rerolling abilities exist, they can (and will) fail too, but now you have wasted 2 resources instead of one, which at early levels is a disaster. It's okay this can still happen, but what is not okay is failing the whole encounter, because your best options are gone already and feeling useless as a result.

Also having spells that are mandatory just feels wrong. It's bad enough that a single magic item is apparently seen as required for blaster characters by devs (Shadow Signet). What if my GM doesn't want to give it to me? Or I don't want to have it with every single caster character?

What I think would help me and other prepared casters the most is, if we had an ability that would make all this preparation pay off in a guaranteed way, even once per combat would be enough. Maybe something like: "Caught by surprise": Transform a fail into a success (or success into fail for saves) Doesn't work on crit fails and crit successes. Maybe after a successful Recall Knowledge or similar out of combat knowledge preparation and make all enemies immune to it afterwards for one minute or so. Or maybe it's a reaction focus spell.

Even better would be debuffing all spells and in return increasing the odds of actually succeeding in casting them. But I can see that would be far too much work and would result in a PF3 instead of PF2.1 and thus isn't feasible.

Other than all of that that, I feel like all enemies and especially low level monsters need more weaknesses, even small numbered ones. Recently we fought some water elementals and I was shocked to find out that they were neither weak to lightning nor cold damage (or had resistance against fire). I have access to most damage types at all times, but it's hardly ever relevant. This is also one of the reasons, why Electric Arc often seems to be the best alternative to all other cantrips.