EKruze's page

I find that scrolls are MUCH more cost effective than wands for this. A wand costs 10 - 15 times as much as a scroll (depending on level) so you have to cast a spell that many times for it to be cost effective. And THAT ignores the fact that wands are front ended (ie, you have to but the whole wand, but you can buy the scrolls in dribs and drabs)

Many of these are spells that you would choose to cast every day. Alarm is good for every camp. Instant Armor for every rest. Level 2 Longstrider is an 8 hr duration and useful always and Mind of Menace is all-day. Illusory Disguise and Humanoid form can be used regularly in any kind of infiltration setting.

You are correct that for more infrequently used utility spells scrolls are more cost effective. The original poster was specifically looking for wands that would be appreciated in treasure which is what I've tried to provide here.

Most of these do not significantly add to player power but provide neat effects that one a player obtains the wand they'll seek out opportunities to use again and again.

A player isn't likely to buy a pile of Iron Gut scrolls but if they come across such a wand it can become a go-to method of hiding small objects whenever that need arises.

My favorites are utility spells that you may want to cast often but not often enough to justify expending a known spell or spells that maintain their potency beyond the level they're gained.

Level 1 - Alarm, Ant Haul, Animate Rope, Create Water, Illusory Disguise, Pet Cache, Pocket Library, Restyle, Unseen Servant
Level 2 - Longstrider, Animal Messenger, Create Food, Darkness, Humanoid Form, Instant Armor, Iron Gut, Phantom Steed, Shrink, Silence
Level 3 - Bottomless Stomach, Clairaudience, Meld Into Stone, Mind of Menace, Fear

As to Specialty wands Manifold Missiles and Teeming Ghosts are persistently useful.

The Cleric's Emblazon Armaments line of feats also carries the restriction of applying just a single effect. Later feats expand the choices that can be made for this ability but the limit of one remains.

I think your experience is fairly typical, though there are opportunities for your casters to find better effectiveness.

A caster should not expect to completely control an above-level foe due to the difference in magic defenses and the effects of incapacitation. The four degrees of success still allow them to contribute with spells that have effects on a successful save. For the early spell levels Fear, Hideous Laughter and Slow are good candidates.

Spells that cause enemies to lose or waste actions are particularly valuable in these circumstances because the actions of an above-level foe are relatively more important than multiple of your own actions. If your caster spends two or three of their own actions to cause a solo creature to use one of their own actions attacking a weak summon, moving to reposition or just outright taking an action away by preventing reactions or inflicting a slow effect it will be too your greater advantage. A party of four has 12 actions a turn and your spellcast is 1/6 of your resources. A solo boss monster has three actions and losing one is 1/3 of his turn.

Generally damaging spells will be less useful against a bigger foe because you'll likely be dealing less damage and whittling away at a higher number of hit points but Magic Missile deserves special consideration because this damage is automatic. If your caster wants to go for damage a three-action Magic Missile may be more effective than a spell that does half on a save.

My limited experience has been that between the ways they impair foes and buff allies a party goes much further with effective caster support in such fights than a group of all martial characters can achieve.

I'm just against the idea that any person (whether it's a green person, or a pointy-eared person, or a person with a weird thing above their eyebrows a la Star Trek) would have their morality encoded in their DNA.

Anybody who can choose, can choose to be evil, but can also choose to be good. The reasons why they choose to be evil are much more interesting than just insisting that their wickedness is somehow intrinsic.

How would a mouse judge the behavior of a cat? What would a cow think of the behavior of a human? What do humans think of vampires?

You can find any number of examples for which the physiologic needs of one species place them absolutely at odds with the survival of another species. If the preyed-upon species were sentient I don't think its a stretch for them to view their predator as irredeemably evil.

Taking this into fictional terms consider the behavior of the Xenomorphs from Alien. Their lifecycle demands that they inflict a horrible death onto sentient beings in order to reproduce. Why shouldn't such sentient beings look at them as something to destroy?

Or in D&D terms consider the mindflayers: intelligent, communal and absolutely opposed to other sentient life. Depending on the lore you use their reproduction too requires the torturous death of other sentient species. Were it not for their behavior and their psionic abilities they could easily be classified as humanoids. They can be said to have free will because they have a capacity for intelligent, rational and morally-based decision making but the evil behavior of these creatures is truly 'encoded into their DNA' because their physiology demands it.

Turning to goblins it gets a bit tricky. This is in part because goblins have taken on many forms and we need to be clear about what sort of goblins we're talking about and in another part because goblins have in the past been a channel for expressing harmful stereotypes about real world human beings.

If goblins are compelled by some instinct of their biology to eat human babies, burn villages and kill for sport I think it's wholly reasonable for a human, dwarf, elf or otherwise to view them as absolutely evil and to kill them on sight. In this expression killing a goblin child is no different destroying any other deadly predator before it can grow to harm innocents.

If these behaviors are instead cultural in character, not dictates of biology but learned behaviors that goblins may be predisposed to develop but which with education and guidance can be steered away from them it's a wholly different matter.

One of the troubles we face is that goblins have been both of these in different times of the hobby's existence. In some settings goblins need to feed on human babies and sacrifice to dark gods is literally hardwired into their brains and is part of their reproductive cycle. In others they are wild, goofy and fire-loving but capable of a peaceful coexistence with other species.

Maybe for game purposes these latter traits are a necessary element to separate personhood from monsters. Neither one is inherently more interesting. I think there's room for creatures of more nuanced morality and for creatures that can only be described as monsters. For the purposes of D&D settings in general I think we've slowly moved from a time where goblins were monsters to one where they're people. Given the tangled history of goblinoid features being tied to antisemitic tropes this is probably a good thing and for the purposes of Golarion an irreversible one but I don't believe it's impossible to view 'evil' behavior as being hardwired into a species.

Near as I can tell the Rage trait is relevant in two scenarios: enabling concentrate traited actions in the manner of Raging Intimidation or allowing an action to be activated with the Mighty Rage free action trigger.

Passive abilities made active with raging don't really interact with either of those scenarios, which is probably why it's absent from them. It may cause some confusion but I think the confusion would be greater if the trait were present on Raging Athlete as some would wonder if the modified actions High Jump, Long Jump and Leap take on the Rage trait and then could be activated with reduced action cost by Mighty Rage.

I totally agree that battleforms, picked up judiciously, work fine mathematically. I totally disagree that the weird, arbitrary, restrictive thematics of those options are something to just be content with. I can't think of a good mechanical reason to keep Animal Form from scaling, and the possible thematic reasons step on some perfectly reasonable fantasies to no benefit that I can see.

I don't think it's unreasonable for forms to have more level scaling for battle form spells. There are two mechanical effects of that change to consider though.

First is an effective buff to lower level Druid Form feats. The second is a buff to spontaneous casters who could then get with one signature spell scaling benefits through all levels.

A clunky way to circumvent that effect would be to create a series of higher level animal form spells to scale into higher levels, and likewise to create another Dragon Form spell that fits into the levels different from the original.

Whether it would be necessary to circumvent this buff at all is another matter.

But here you are saying I want casters to be better than martials when I have never said anything of the sorts.

...

And g#~ d+# a Sorcerer should be better at using Dragon Claws than a martial

Thank you for making my point so clearly.

You are not asking for "RP concepts" as you insisted earlier in this thread. If you have an RP concept that requires you to be able to sprout dragon claws and fight like a Barbarian the game supports that in a martial character dedicating into a Dragon Claw build.

Instead, you are asking to be better than the Barbarian at utilizing those dragon claws while getting full spellcasting benefits along the way. There is no way to enable this and maintain a balanced game.

And exactly. People want to transform into things for RP reasons. But they actively can't because the spells just don't have the stats for it.

I am sorry that people want to use their abilities more than once during a roleplay scenario that rarely happens. I did not think wanting more use of such a cool ability would hinder your usage.

To be more than just RP.

We've shown that if you want to build a caster that utilizes forms to engage in melee combat that the battleform numbers support it. If you want to build a character that highly optimizes features like Dragon Claws or Glutton's Jaws that you can dip in with a martial character and make an effective build around these features using martial combat progression. If you decide to be a full caster with one of these features that there are opportunities to bring them into action in cool and useful ways without any investment.

Could form spells have a little more coverage in terms of heightening levels? Maybe. Could the transmuter wizards do with a little more support? Yeah I think so.

But at present the system effectively supports the concepts of caster-primary-shifter, shift-augmented-martial and caster-with-shifting. Furthermore, we're about to get another 200 spells to further expand on caster abilities.

I'm sorry I'm having trouble here, but what are you really looking for? I ask this because it's starting to sound like you want to have a character that keeps up in every way with martial characters in their niche while maintaining full spellcasting progression too. That's not an RP concept, it's power creep. I think we have a lot of flexibility right now in making shifter characters and part of the reason for this is that the system is built with limits and tradeoffs that give each build their own area in which to shine.

Given that statement from Mark, I think then marital classes getting as many spells as they do, with the bonus they do, should actually be considered way overpowered.

I've seen you make this argument frequently and I really struggle to see it in practice. I cannot honestly say that I've ever seen a caster overshadowed or driven from their niche by a multiclass dedication. There was some talk for a time about Shifting Staves of Divination and related shenanigans but that has been clarified and errata'd. Beyond this I do not see multiclass spellcaster dedications dominating build discussion topics, as one would expect of this was really a problem.

Is there a particular use case that you see as being overpowered? At what levels do you find it to be so?

What if i don't want elemental form?
Might come to surprise, but RP element is important in RPG game. I'v talked about it earlier, if ppl who want to roleplay in dragon form also suffer, especially when will try to use it on lvl 18-20. But lets say a druid who want to keep using bear(animal) form on high levels will suffer so much more.

The reply I originally made was to your post making a specifically mechanical argument with numbers that were just unsound. It was not an RP argument. Why are you moving the goalposts?

If it is essential to your RP that your Druid, Wizard or Sorcerer be able to transform into a dragon in combat at level 13 you will find your options limited and underperforming. Since this is so important to your character vision, consider flavoring your 7th level Elemental Form transformation as that of an elemental dragon. I think you'll find many tables accommodating to this non-mechanical reflavoring and the math will continue to work effectively.

They were talking about Dragonform which does give you 22 attack until you heighten it to 8th, which is level 15.

At level 15 a martial gets, d20+15+6+6+3+misc bonus, which is...

So we're going to compare spells outside of their intended levels and use that as a basis of comparison?

At level 11 forms can be cast as 6th level spells and provide a +22 to hit.

At level 13 Dragon Form can no longer be Heightened to you max spell level but either of Elemental Form or Dinosaur Form can be and you have a difference of just 1 point.

At level 15 your numbers are wrong again. Apex items are level 17 and characters should not be expected to have them at this level. Weapon Potency (+3) runes are still one level away but it may be reasonable to consider a character with one. A martial's attack bonus at that level is thus 15(level)+5(stat)+6(master)+3=29. Comparable with the +28 granted by forms of this level.

Let's take a look.
Dragonform, level-6 spell, which you can pick on been level 11 arcane or primal spellcaster. It provides you with attack bonus of +22.
Now what martial classes can do on the same level. Pretty much all of them will have master proficiency with their weapon on that level. And they should have at least 18 in their primary stats (str or dex), more importantly, unlike for user's of battleforms, they CAN apply item bonuses to their attacks. AT level-11 they pretty much should have +2 weapons. So, 11+4+6+2=23. Now lets look what we will have on level 14. just one level before we will be able to get heightened version of dragon form. As dragon form user you still normally get +22 to attack. If you try to use your own as a sorcerer, you will get at most +20, druid wildshape, using his special status bonus can get it to +24.
while martial classes, even with +2 weapons (even though there are chance for that to acquire +3 weapon at this level) will get - 14+6+4+2=26, That's already a very sizable gap.

Your numbers are way off.

Non-Fighter martials don't get Master attacks until level 13. Endeavoring to maintain their accuracy stat they should have a 20 in their relevant attack stat At level 10.

At level 11 the expected martial attack bonus is therefore 11+5(stat)+4(expert)+2(item)=22, matching Dragon Form.

At level 13 when mastery comes online Elemental Form heightens to level 7 granting a +25 attack modifier, just behind a martial's expected +26 bonus.

Weapon Potency (+3) runes are a level 16 item and should not be available for level 11 or 13 characters.

As your can see battleforms are carefully balanced to enable their users to participate effectively in melee combat while remaining less effective in that role than dedicated martial characters.

Spell penetration and conceal spell aren't precisely amazing and can both be accessed through multiclassing.

A quick survey of CR 15 creatures on AON shows that 11 out of 23 have some form of status bonus to saves. Filtering to CR 21-24 creatures 7 out of 12 have such a bonus. Some of these are specific to certain types of effects but even so Spell Penetration provides a functional +1 to spell DC almost half the time against higher level monsters. This is a bonus that stacks with other forms of save-lowering conditions and costs a single level 6 feat for Wizards.

There's been plenty of analysis on how a Fighter's +2 gives a substantial edge against higher level foes as compared to other martials. This is a smaller bonus and only active half of the time but functioning in the four degree of success world of saving throw effects. That's pretty amazing and I think you're underselling it. This doesn't have a whole lot of effect at the exact level you get it but I'd argue it's almost mandatory for a Wizard in a level 10-20 campaign and I've often considered dropping the three feat investment on other caster classes just to take it as a level 12 feat.

Marshall is going to take a good portion of your actions. Animal Barbarian with level 9 Human Multitalented into Monk will open up Flurry of Blows at level 10.

With this you'll be able to spend a two action To Battle to enable your allies a Quickened Strike and still be able to attack twice on your own by Flurrying your Animal Rage strike.

I don't want to add power to a wizard in order to overshadow all the other classes. I want to make it so that a wizard isn't a liability to the party the moment they run out of spells unless the party decides to rest. The party wizard should not be the primary determining factor on when it's time to rest - especially in this edition where the emphasis is on long term adventuring for almost every other class with short 10 minute breaks.

a fight against the boss has 4 turns (let's assume) as almost all spells spend two actions, it doesn't matter much if I have 4 or 300 slots. I will launch 4 spells.

I find it hilarious that we have one poster arguing that the Wizard's advantage in raw casting power is bad because the slots will run out and another complaining that it's bad because there's no way to use that many slots.

KrispyXIV wrote:

They are classes defined by their spellcasting, and it is their best and defining feature.

What does that mean? What's the value of that? Why do you think this is true? Why are Wizards more defined by their spellcasting than Druids or Bards?

Because Wizards are the BEST at it.

On even levels a specialist Wizard gets to cast from their top level slots five times (3 + School + Bond), rising to six with Spell Blending. Druids add Bards get only three and Sorcerers eek out four. When it comes to using Summons or applying spells with an Incapacitate tag these extra slots matter and are a class defining advantage.

In addition to this Spell Penetration becomes a virtual +1 to casting proficiency for the purpose of overcoming saving throws. This is an ability that no other class can duplicate.

Yes when building a character. I agree.

But not when discussing what a class is good at. A wizard doesn't overly excel at recall knowledge. A wizard lorekeeper does. Heck you could go a x lorekeeper is better at recall knowledge checks. You'd still be objectively accurate.

So you are missing the point of the discussion if you think it's still applicable.

If your only solution to wizard is don't...

This is such an unserious approach to the discussion. The Loremaster archetype takes the same investment (level 2 class feat) as it takes a Polymath, Maestro or Warrior muse Bard to obtain the equivalent effect. It should absolutely be part of the discussion.

A Wizard is uniquely suited to recall knowledge because a plurality of non-Lore recall skills (Arcana, Occultism, Crafting, Society) and all Lores are Intelligence based. Even skipping the Loremaster archetype a Wizard remains competitive with an Enigma Bard investing in Untrained Improvisation alone.

If a Wizard chooses to invest just a little they can certainly become one of the best classes at general Recall Knowledge abilities.

Wizard is not unique, and the extra spell or two don't really make that much of a difference. They certainly don't make the flavour of the class.

Depending on the build Wizards get 1-2 more selectable spells of their max level that any other class. This difference is even greater at highest levels.

Spell Penetration is comparable to being half a proficiency level higher than all other casters once status-based spell resistance becomes a thing.

They get the best form of counterspell.

Conceal/Silent spell Metamagic uniquely allows an undetected caster to cast without revealing themselves.

My play hasn't included Universalist Wizards yet but Bond Conservation appears to allow a Wizard the potential to cast virtually nonstop by cascading bonds.

These are no small things and each one of them are full of Wizardy flavor.

Given that both the witch and oracle have this wording in a newer printed book (along with sorc & bard) it seems clear to me that the intent is for this to apply to all casters and that extra 10ths can't be gained by any method aside from the 20th feat is the intent.

I take this as evidence of just the opposite. Given the fact that this wording is absent only from the two classes that carry bonus slots as part of their design seems to indicate that this was intentional.

This verbage was left out because Arcane School, Drain Bonded Item and Divine Font exist.

There's a little ambiguity about if you can retain your Staff Nexus features when you pick up a new staff or not. You can certainly craft starter staff into another staff, so say your DM let's you transfer your Staff Nexus features into the staff you found or you use Craft to upgrade your original staff into an Animal Staff:

When you make your daily preparations the Animal Staff will automatically gain charges equal to this highest level spell you can cast. If you're still level 1 it would be a little weird for you to have a Level 4 item Animal Staff but you would get 1 free charge just from the staff. When you reach level 3 on your Wizard and unlock level 2 spells the number of free charges you prepare into the staff will increase to 2.

At the time of preparation you may also expend one of you spell slots to gain additional charges in the staff equal to the slot level. If you're a level 1 Wizard you have only 1st level slots to expend and that will be 1 charge.

At first level if you expend one of your spell slots your staff now contains:
Cantrip: Ray of Frost, Know Direction
1st level: Summon Animal, Magic Fang, Magic Missile
Charges: 2

You can use these charges to cast any of the spells in your staff that exist on your spell list. Magic Fang isn't Arcane but you can spend your two charges to cast Magic Missile twice, Summon Animal twice or to cast one of each of these spells.

When you reach level 3 on your Wizard you'll automatically get 2 charges in the staff with your daily preparation for free (free charges grow with your spell slots). You may then choose to expend a 1st level slot for one additional charge or a 2nd level slot for two additional charges. This means on any given day you might have anywhere from 2 to 4 charges, which can be spent casting any of the staff's spells in a spontaneous-like manner.

The value of Staff Nexus in this case is that it allows you to put one extra 1st level spell into any staff you find (though rules still require some clarification). You should note that the first level spell you choose does not heighten as you level. For this reason it may be advisable to choose a spell that retains its utility throughout your character's growth. At level 11 the ability to cast 1st level Magic Missile spells with your staff charges may not be very useful. The ability to cast Fear or True Strike many times per day may be better for you.

Given the current state of the rules, and after some rereading, I think the second interpretation (that is, that the bonus is kept up indefinitely) is the "correct" one per RAW, but like you said, I'm unsure if it's intended.

I should point out though that at 12th level, if you're still using a bog-standard Tower Shield...sure, take the extra +2 AC. There's no way to upgrade it (besides Darkwood, which is incredibly questionable for the price), no magical Tower Shields have been printed (that I know of, I don't own every module). You can't use it to block (it will get obliterated instantly), you can't slap any nifty effects on it (because shield runes aren't a thing)...so yeah, if your player wants to run around with a Tower Shield, why not. It's not gonna break anything, I don't think.

I think you're correct. If the activation of the Tower Shield were a standard Take Cover action it would be providing +4 Reflex Saves and Stealth checks as well which are not mentioned at all in the Tower Shield entry.

On Tower Shields, the Core Rulebook says:

"When you have a tower shield raised, you can use the
Take Cover action (page 471) to increase the circumstance
bonus to AC to +4. This lasts until the shield is no longer
raised."

The Take Cover Action States:

"This lasts until you move from your current space, use an attack action, become unconscious, or end this effect as a free action."

If you use Paragon's Guard, your shield will always be Raised. However, I think you'd lose the Cover bonus if you do any of the things listed under Take Cover.

But I'll admit I'm not sure if "This lasts until the shield is no longer raised" overrules the other considerations. I could see it going either way.

It would seem that if the Tower Shield is only enabling a character to use the Take Cover action then the +4 bonus would be lost any time an attack is made, be it during your turn or even making an Attack of Opportunity, whether Paragon's Guard is active or not.

If instead it's a specialized use of Take Cover that increases the Tower Shield's AC bonus without that limitation, then a strict reading of the rule would keep it up indefinitely with Paragon's Guard.

I wonder which reading is intended. One seems to really diminish the utility of the Tower Shield and the other seems far stronger than was probably meant to be.

With a tower shield raised you can get a greater cover bonus of +4 with a Take Cover action. This is supposed to last "until the shield is no longer raised."

How does this interact with Paragon's Guard stance? Entering this stance keeps a shield raised all of combat. It would seem that this should allow the +4 Greater Cover bonus to last for the duration of combat but this feels a little weird.

Is it necessary to repeat the Take Cover action once a round or is this really as good as it would seem?

EKruze wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

...

not sure where this idea that fighters can only do single target damage is coming from,. I feel people still think this is P1E. Martials now have the tools to be very versatile in and out combat.

Respectfully, and at the risk of getting off the topic of the thread, I think it's a fair statement. Not don't get me wrong, I LOVE the 2E Fighter. It's focused and very powerful in its role.

Now every class gets their mix of Ancestry and Skill feats allowing them to do things in Exploration and general Role Playing modes as they choose to specialize but there is nothing in the Fighter features or feats that build on options outside of combat.

Barring a few particular features a Fighter can build into one isn't getting much more than two or three attacks in a turn. I think the DPR calculations are very clear that three targets is about the breaking point where a leveled AoE spell outpaces a Fighter's DPR. Sure they can do other things in combat such as Trip, Shove, Attack of Opportunity, Demoralize and Seek but I don't think it's a stretch to say that single target focused damage is their 'thing.'

If Wizards are given a spell that lets them compete with a Fighter in that main thing, in addition to having all the diverse utility they bring in other ways, it would absolutely devalue the role Martials play.

One issue I think I see with so much of this discussion is that so often we end up comparing one feature of the Wizard class with the best comparable feature of any other Spellcasting class. Of course the Wizard is going to come up short when compared to a mish mash of the best of every other class. It may be useful then to compare the Wizard to each other class individually.

*Wizard vs Druid*

The Primal list is perfectly comparable with the Arcane list when it comes to blasting. With a few notable exceptions such as Magic Missile the damaging side of the spell lists are the same. When it comes to focus and non-magic class abilities the Druid is miles ahead and they can also heal and prepare from their whole list. There do exist some real gaps in Primal list, however. Notably the Primal list lacks in teleportation, selected utility such as Invisibility and debilitation/control. The Wizard also has the advantage of having 33% more spell slots at every level and can go so far as bringing double the number of max level spells to bear if combining school focus, bond and spell blending. The Druid is an excellent magical blaster with better initiative and the ability to supplement their spellcasting with focus powers. Play a Wizard if you don't want to give up control magic, want to focus entirely on casting and if you want more utility.

*Wizard vs Cleric*

The obvious difference here is that it Arcane vs Divine Spellcasting. Clerics have the advantage of being able to prepare off of their entire list but the list itself is really quite limited. Compared the the Arcane list Divine casting lacks AoE damage, debuffing, travel, significant areas of general utility. Clerics get the best in combat healing option around and a great spread of effect removal spells but outside of these particular strengths there are a great many things their list just doesn't do. A Cleric will have the advantage when it comes to initiative and fall way behind in available skills. Play a Wizard if you prefer to do a broad range of things very well with magic and if you want to excel at Lores.

*Wizard vs Bard*

The Bard is awesome. They're really about Compositions first with Spellcasting on the side. A Wizard is not going to be able to out-support a Bard that dedicates themselves to helping the rest of the party. There are still ways that a Wizard just beats a Bard on. The Occult spell list is comparable the Arcane list for debuffs and general utility but there's a major gap when it comes to damaging enemies. A Bard cannot effectively target Reflex and struggles to hit Fortitude. The utility of the Occult list is also somewhat hampered by the limitations of the Bard Repertoire. Three spells per level with only one signature prevents Bards from utilizing all of the utility their list holds. Like the Druid we also see the Wizards having 33% more spells in general with the possibility of taking on double of the most valuable max level spells. Play a Wizard if you want all of the Spellcasting utility with the freedom to blast as well.

*Wizard vs Arcane Sorcerer*

This is probably the class most similar to the Wizard in features. Both classes can expect to have four spells per level and they draw from the same list. In terms of Repertoire my experience has been that four spells is far better than three and knowing four spells of each level can get the Sorcerer almost everything they would want from any given spell level. Because of the larger Repertoire I think Sorcerers are probably going to be better than Wizards at actually utilizing all of their slots in a day. Both classes are all about casting: A Spell Substitution Wizard can probably utilize their spell slots with close to the efficiency of a Sorcerer by rebalancing between encounters and potentially gets one extra max level spell. A Spell Blending Wizard gets two more max level spells but risks wastage if he prepared poorly. Play a Wizard if you're sold on the Arcane spell list and either excel at the spell preparation minigame or want to be the absolute best at casting the strongest spells of the very highest level.

Considering all of this, what are some roles that the Wizard does better than their peers? I think their biggest strengths are summoning, controlling and general utility. I haven't seen Bond Conservation in action to really speak intelligently on it but that may be another niche for a Wizard that really wants to cast all the spells.

Summoning and Controlling builds are greedy for max level slot, Summoning because of the level scaling and Controlling because of the Incapacitate trait. By having up to six max level slots per day a Wizard can afford to one of these spells in every combat. Other classes that want to achieve these things will have to step down into lower level spells before the adventuring day is through.

As for General Utility the Arcane list really has everything except for realized
Healing, removal of certain conditions and some select buffs. Any other magic is under it's umbrella and it's an awful lot. A Spell Substitution Wizard combines the excellent 4 spells per level with this huge list to do it all. They may not do any one thing better than another class might, but any other spellcasting class is going to lack in some needful area whereas a Wizard really gets to do it all.

Xenocrat wrote:

The Wizard is the PF2 version of the Medium - meh until level 19+, when all the bonus 10th level spells and the 20th level feats vault it ahead.

I'm not waiting until 19th level. I'm going to wait for more books to come out and hope they make a wizard/sorcerer type focused on magic damage that doesn't require more than one target. I don't feel like playing a martial buff bot. I'll leave that to those that enjoy that style of play or make a bard when I want to buff the party.

If your goal is to play a Wizard or Sorcerer that is competitive with Martial classes at single target damage I think you may need to adjust your expectations a little. Single target damage is only thing Fighters and Barbarians really do. They can specialize a little to pick up some combat control or mobility but fundamentally their one niche is dealing large amounts of damage to one enemy at a time.

If future spells allow Wizards to deal similar single target damage while still having all of the utility, buffing, control and general flexibility they currently possess it will really invalidate those other classes in play.

Spellcasting is flexible and very potent when used with a party in the current state of the game. Wizards have the particular feature of bringing to bear more spells of the highest levels than any other class and have tools to further accentuate that advantage in the form of Spell Blending or to take on more flexibility in Spell Substitution. Both theses are excellent in actual play. I think both Metamagic and Familiar specializations could use a little work but by all signs it appears we're getting some of that in the APG.

Thank you for trying to keep the thread on topic Nefreet. There are indeed many threads which seem to go both ways on the topic of shields as weapons.

It seems plain that they can be used as weapons when attacking which qualifies them for use with feats such as Double Slice. I think the pertinent questions here are:

1) Does a Shield count as a weapon when not attacking, such as to fulfill the requirements of Twin Parry? - So far the consensus seems to be yes.

2) Is it necessary to fulfill the requirements of Twin Parry in order to use the reaction granted by Improved Twin Riposte?

As to the second question that seems a little harder. Improved Twin Riposte states that it removes the requirement that a Fighter be benefiting from Twin Parry in order to activate Twin Riposte with the extra granted reaction. Removing the requirement from Twin Riposte the feat is left with only the Trigger (a foe critically fails an attack) and the Effect (allowing a strike). This would seem contrary to the intended reading of the feats but I can see nothing that specifically contradicts this.

If the answer to question 2 is yes then the same argument might be applied to Improved Dueling Riposte potentially allowing a S&B Fighter or even 2-Hand Fighter to use two extra reaction Ripostes in a turn if multiple attacks against them critically fail (by spending six feats on both the Dueling Parry and Twin Parry lines).

What do you think?

A shield is not a weapon, and a shield bash, while it has stats on the weapon table, is also not actually a weapon (pee the description of shield bash). So you would need the boss or spikes.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=217

This would seem to suggest that a shield can be used as a weapon independent of shield spike or boss.

As to that even being necessary I wonder if it's the case. The trigger for Twin Riposte is that an enemy critically fail an attack and the requirement is that the Fighter be benefiting from Twin Parry. Improved Twin Riposte removes that requirement. Reading exactly as written could you say that it's not even necessary to wield two weapons to activate Improved Twin Riposte? Perhaps it could even be activated by a two-hand fighter?

For the Fighter the Dueling and Two Weapon Fighting styles have have a Riposte feat allowing a strike to be made against a foe that critically fails an attack roll. In addition to this there exists 'Improved Twin Riposte' which grants an additional reaction to make a Twin Riposte and which can be used even if the Fighter is not benefiting from Twin Party, the first of the three-feat chain it comes from.

Could a Sword & Board Fighter take all three feats in this chain to enable Riposting with Shield in hand? They would meet the criteria of wielding a weapon in each hand so long as they use a Shield Spike and while Twin Party would be a little bit wasted as a feat for the Fighter who will be relying on raise a shield instead of the parry action the wording of Improve Twin Riposte would seem to allow this.

Am I overlooking something in my reading or should this work?