Easl's page

If we are storming the gates this day, I will go full battle load out, same as the blendy dom wizard, but that is only about 10-20% of days. Days where I won’t likely face 4+ collapsing encounters in one massive fight, I only prep 2 or 3 hyper focused combat spells and often spread out the rest of my slots amongst a whole bunch of different types of spells based upon. The campaign and immediate adventure goals.

I think that's a key point though. Different games have different mixes of combat and noncombat scenes, and AFAICT the people most unhappy with prepared casting and the wizard in general are the ones that like to play in high frequency combat games. Or at least, they like to prepare for combat, and therefore the ability to swap out spell load in the morning is far far less useful to them than the ability to cast that second fireball when the situation calls for it. I mean it makes perfect sense: if you expect and intend to use all your slots for the same 3-5 combat spells, all day every day, prepared casting provides no benefit. It's just plain worse than spontaneous casting in that case. I think Deriven has actually alluded to this - IIRC, in his campaigns he views spells as for combat and his casters rely solely on skills to get by noncombat encounters.

If they had something they could do that felt generally impactful to make up for that lost attack I'd feel they were okay.

I am surprised you don't think several of the Ways reloads are 'generally impactful.' Swing a sword and reload? There's your 4 attacks/2 rounds. Intimidate and reload? Our non-gunslingers regularly intimidate, it's fine if the gunslinger does it. Take cover and reload? Again, in our group taking cover is a regular use of 3rd action. It would not be considered a waste at all.

Step, reconfigure and reload is a bit niche. As is shove and reload. And RK + reload suffers if you're only facing one type of enemy. But the others seem fine if you have a character concept that aligns with the action. Running Reload is still of course really important, but taking cover, intimidating, and attacking are pretty regular combat actions.

That would be the only/main criticism I'd have; it is difficult to mix and match character concepts with the different ways, as they somewhat silo you into a specific build or style of play. The pistolero is pretty much siloed into a Cha build, for example. But mechanically, three of the ways + running reload offer 'impactful' (IMO) things to do while reloading.

Still, you feel what you feel. I get it.

I think a GM limiting common items of a level under the resources of the town does qualify as a GM homebrewing a world hostile to the play of casters and especially ones that want to learn new spells to add to their spell book.

We enjoy our sessions. Consider it like Deriven's group focusing on severe and higher difficulty combat encounters - it's a decision to play the game on a harder mode.

Though we may be outliers, I think my general point still stands; an explicit 1/day or 2/day inherent class ability or feat ability is more dependable than consumable items, and I think many or most players, even in 'everything available' games will feel that way too.

Does your GM do the same with runes? Or skill boosting items?

I should preface with; this is a 1-10 level campaign. Fundamental runes drop a lot. Property runes, not so much. Skill boosting magical items would be like scrolls; we would have to request them be put in the pool of 'what the town provides', and only 1-2 of that pool would be available at any given time. Skill boosting nonmagical things (like advanced toolkits) are available if they are common.

I am not complaining. The point of ttrpgs to me is to get together with my friends and play, it is not about minmaxing. However, it is a counterargument to your point about using consumable resources with the wizard; that is simply not something players can count on during character concept development, because their availability will be widely table (and level, and campaign) dependent.

To me, gunslinger using firearms feels pretty awful (though one using crossbows can be good). A gunslinger shouldn't be overwhelmingly better than other ranged classes, but it shouldn't substantially feel worse either.

The problem is that 'feel' is not something Paizo can control. The comparison of pistol to bow I did above is an example. The pistol has substantial benefits over the bow in performance...with the cost of reload. Some players may love the ability to switch damage types (particularly in an undead-heavy campaign) and the huge crits that lethal gives, and think it's worth the reload. Or maybe they want to dual wield, something you can't do with a bow. Other players may feel like you and say those benefits just aren't worth the cost of going from 4 shots/2 turns to 3 shots/2 turns. Paizo shouldn't be catering solely to one or the other, Paizo should be publishing equipment that has different pros and cons but is otherwise fairly balanced. They messed up the balance with things like the air repeater, but (IMO) they got it right with at least some of the firearms. I really don't see an issue with Running Reload; using an action to move is something pretty much all PCs do at least once or twice in all combats, and the rules on MAP are such that a third attack in a turn would not be much more than a crit hunt anyway. But, I ultimately agree, everyone's mileage may vary.

But limited use resources are always going to enable more powerful play as long as they exist in the game. That is the whole point of their existence. And players that do like being able to do more of their most powerful options are always going to be resistant to players wanting to remove those options because you are nerfing their playstyle by removing them.

There's two big differences between a 1/day or 2/day power and keeping 1 or 2 scrolls on hand. The GM decides how much money you receive. And the GM decides what's available in the shop. So the power is much more dependable and much less table-dependent than the scroll. I think that's where the objections to scrolls and other similar limited use items come in; relying on them to boost your play is essentially relying on the GM to accede to your requests to boost your play, rather than relying on a game rule. So it's going to vary a lot more by table.

My GM, for example, is pretty stingy with what's in town. The local town will have one or two scrolls total, and he will determine what they are semi-randomly (taking into account player requests, but then randomly deciding which 1-2 of from that pool are stocked). Our party cannot load up on scrolls, even if we wanted to.

If the original is loaded, the copy should be too, similar to the wording on Talismans.

The question then is, once you shoot the copy, is any further copy still loaded ?

Well if you treat ammunition like a talisman, then no. Shadow sheath says explicitly that using a limited use ability (like a talisman or 'activations with a frequency limit') uses up the original's usages of the same. If reload weapon ammunition is considered like that, it means you could pull, fire, drop a copy once, and then you'd have to reload the original. And in that case you might as well not take shadow sheath and just go full pirate, carrying a bunch of loaded guns.

The Raven Black wrote:

If you can get your GM to agree that firing a copy does not require you to reload the next one, you can use Shadow Sheath with a Dagger Pistol.

That might be better on a Gunslinger with the Exemplar Archetype though.

You do realize that the dagger pistol is a pistol, with a dagger mounted underneath and not a pistol that shoots daggers, right? it shoots regular ammunition.

The dagger pistol has both a 'melee' and a 'ranged' entry, and the 'melee' entry lists it as being in the Knife group. You can load weapons from the Knife group into the shadow sheath. The melee entry even has a thrown ranged 10' for the melee entry, so you can throw the entire knife pistol, too.

A player really wanting to combine exemplar with guns could certainly ask their GM if they can load it in, with the idea of "pull, fire, drop" instead of "pull and throw". Seems kinda hinky to me and I'm pretty sure my GM would likely say no.

Like imagine you had bow stats, but could call it a firearm.

Simple enough to reskin the shortbow. Though it would make Air Repeaters completely irrelevant. Maybe you get around that by saying Alkenstar has come up with a breakthrough, the all new Air Repeater Carbine!

RAW, a dueling pistol seems somewhat balanced against it. Same range. Better handedness, Fatal is better than Deadly, and better damage type (piercing or bludgeoning vs. piercing only). In exchange, Reload 1. Seems pretty balanced.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are talking about when you say a flexible caster. What do you mean by that?

AFAICT, the proponents of this idea are talking about the flexible spellcaster archetype, minus the reduction in slots and cantrips. Since different people are suggesting different things, I'll ignore for the moment the call to give the Wizard more slots. Here's how it goes:

Bob is a L5 Wizard. Based on leveling rules, this mean Bob has, in his spellbook, 7 R1 spells (5 from level 1, 2 from level 2) plus 6 spells of R1-3 depending on what ranks of spells he selected to learn when he leveled to 3, 4, and 5. Plus school spells. Plus focus spells.

Bob also has 3 R1 slots, 3 R2 slots, and 2 R3 slots. For the day, Bob prepares any 8 spells he knows. He can then cast all of them spontaneously, and all of them signature. The school spell slot remains dedicated to the school spell at the stated rank; the archetype does not change special features like that. Nor does it change how focus spells or cantrips work.

Since Bob's a wizard, let's say though adventuring he has added 8 additional R3 spells to his spellbook. Bob could, in theory, prepare 8 R3 spells for the day. This would be unwise, however, since there is no downcasting mechanic and so Bob would effectively lose the use of his R1 and R2 slots (Spell Blending becomes the thesis of choice for PCs who want to fill their daily prep list with high ranked spells. Or, you get a staff and use your lower ranked slots to cast staff spells).

To Deriven's "no", I would say that I can see it mattering a lot more in story-driven games than in combat-driven games. The wizard's ability to learn more spells means they can eventually have a much wider repertoire than the sorc. But this will not matter much if every scene you play is a combat. For combat, spell blending Bob probably just needs fireball, lightning bolt, haste and slow. Maybe force barrage for the defense-heavy targets. Repeat cast them at R3 every chance he gets, using his spell blended 5 R3 slots plus school etc.. No other spell really matters. It's only when Bob's party has to spend the next 3 days in town that the ability to prepare spells like charm instead of fireball are going to matter. Bob can swap those in for a given day, while the combat-ready Sorc is stuck with his combat-ready repertoire. If the sorc also gets flexible, then he can slowly substitute in a utility spell or two as he levels up and gets better combat spells. But it's not going to have the breadth of Bob's spellbook. Will the sorc player feel counterfeited? Well, flexible is definitely a *bigger* boost to Bob than it is to the sorc, because now the sorc's spell selection is basically "like a wizard, but with no spellbook". However, sorcs still have really good feats, so maybe it still feels balanced.

Where things really go out of whack is with Charlie the Cleric. Making him flexible with no other change means that Level 5 Charlie can daily prepare 8 of any R1, 2 or 3 spells on the Divine list. Charlie is like a wizard who got to add every common spell to his spell book, for free. Same with Dan the Druid. So Arcane sorcs may feel like they are in a good place vis a vis balance against the wizard, but primal and divine sorcs are probably very unhappy at this point.

Also swapping out a rank 3 force barrage for a rank 1 force barrage is only a 3.5 point DPR reduction keeping the wizard well ahead and maintaining a 120ft range.

I will concede that if you want burst and 120ft range, runesmith ain't gonna do it. Its feats give both melee and ranged options, but like most martial classes, it's much more melee focused than ranged. And yep for AoE it doesn't have much support. En- diacritic 1/10 min and Words Fly Free 1/day isn't much.

I am not trying to hate on the rune smith for everyone, I am just pointing out it doesn’t stand up to caster for single target burst damage, AoE damage, or anything except maybe out of combat healing. What it does is lack attrition in exchange for a loss of flexibility and it’s class chassis is fairly weak for a martial

Fair. I think a strike+trace, trace, invoke is going to look like a pretty decent repeatable burst when you pull it off though. At least at the odd levels when you gain the dice bumps.

This may be just me, but I also find it interesting and somewhat unique that the class can use 'save' effects (giving half damage on a successful save) but swap out the Magical trait. Useful for some old school monsters with high AC and immunity to most magic...I'm looking at you, AV...

Wouldn’t a 5th level bursting wizard targeting a single target cast Thunderstrike at rank 3 for 3d12 electricity damage+3d4 thunder damage vs Reflex at 120ft, plus a one action Force barrage for 2d4+2 force with no save, also at 120ft?

You're right, that does do more. Average raw damage of 34 vs 27 ignoring save chance, or 27 vs. 21 if you figure 75% damage from the save sources (100% damage half the time + 50% damage the other half). Rune-singing is once/10 minutes so that's somewhat more useful than the caster blowing both their R3 slots in one round. but the tattoo move trick is 1/day, so that's comparable.

(Sidenote: no 5th level Wizard is going to expend a R3 slot on a one action force barrage. But I think you meant Force Bolt? Which would make a lot more sense.)

So while I think you've got a valid point that a ranged runsemith burst build isn't comparable to a caster's burst, the melee build doesn't look too bad IMO in your comparison. Adding in 2d6+4 (average 5) weapon damage from the engraving strike, I will take "I do expected 26 every round they stand next to me and if I hit" as a much better 'burst' than "I do expected 27 one round per day, and use both my top slots doing it."

To me, the main issue with the summoner is the misleading conceptual impression it gives off. Many people approach the summoner expecting the eidolon to be a far better martial combatant than it actually is, and the summoner to be a much worse spellcaster than they truly are—which ends up leaving many players frustrated.

That's weird. The eidolon has the same proficiency progression as your standard martial, typically does 1d8+str to start with, and the summoner need only rune-up a dagger and hold it in one hand to give the eidolon the benefits of a runed weapon. So it's exactly as good as a standard 1-H weapon martial base damage, just without the feat tricks (but you can get those too, like reactive strike). The summoner casting a damaging save cantrip (such as EA) with act together, for 2 actions total, should be doing decent damage. Throw in a second strike by the eidolon for your third action...that can be a very good round. With a medium level +1 striking weapon, that's, what, 4d8+2*str+4d4 to main target and 4d4 to a second?

Perhaps this is the same expectation management problem as with the wizard; if players expect they've found the OP class of their dreams, yeah they're going to be unhappy when it turns out to do damage in line with most other classes and builds. It's a well balanced class, but it's not going to win the 'best dpr evah' award.

I really wanted to like the runesmith. I do like the mechanics of runes, enough so that a full magic system built out of them would be cool or even a collection of spells or feats and spells that weaved together would be cool, but the unlimited resource nature of the class necessitates too weak of runes and too many limits about what you can do with them and especially how many you can have. It is a buzz kill for me that you don’t get limited use burst options for really making them pop.

There are burst builds, but they are not as effective long-term as steady builds. Here's a L5 example: take rune singer, runic tattoo, and transpose etching. Tattoo fire (you heard me) on yourself. On R1 of a combat, you can rune sing a damage rune (frost for control or thunder for damage) onto a ranged enemy for 1a, then transpose your tattooed fire rune onto them for 1a, then invoke both (1a), at 30' range, for 6d8 damage (if thunder used) right out of the gate. That's good burst; it's better single target damage than the caster using their max rank 3 spell is going to get. The problem is, that's your full bag of tricks; if you want to stay ranged after that, your rune applications are going to be slow. So you'll have to close with the enemy to be effective (or just be content with, say, +1 striking shortbow damage). Over 3-4 rounds, a ranged build using pattern flight and remote detonation is going to average a higher dpr.

But, if you value the first round burst over sustained dpr, it's there. Melee builds, it's there too; Engraving Strike, Trace Rune, Invoke Rune should work most of the time for 6d8 plus weapon damage (plus etched whetstone bleed damage!). It's not very defensive...that rotation is technically sustainable round to round, but you're slugging it out toe to toe with the monster without a shield, so a knock out or monster move can easily reduce your dpr. But, if someone's looking to max out their burst damage, they can...and glass cannons are typically what you're going to find for those builds anyway, so the runsmith 'burster' being a glass cannon isn't really much of a detraction.

Guns are extremely deficient because as a fantasy game, if you made them overwhelmingly better like they are in RL, that would reduce player variations. So they were given Lethal (a great trait representing them being able to kill with one shot) in exchange for reload (a bad trait), with one class being able to basically wipe out the reload.

I am totes fine with other classes not being able to take full advantage of firearms. That's what the Gunslinger is for.

For me, the runesmith, the necromancer, the magus remaster, and the summoner are all busts that I want to play an animist for almost entirely narrative reasons,

Oh no! Well there's not much to oppose narrative reasons, but I have to say I am having great fun with my summoner, and I have had great fun running sims with runesmiths. Both classes offer switch-hitting options, which i guess is my play preference. The wizard also appeals to me both for the daily switch and the reasonable slots. The 4th slot being a school spell doesn't bother me overmuch. Bothers me far less than the tempo problem.

* a vote that does not seem to match any of the data that Paizo has collected and it even deriven is saying the wizard is C tier, than that means the class is about where most classes should expect to be.

It's really a problem at higher levels, I think. Level 1-5 or even 1-10, it is not hard to be an effective prepared caster. At those levels too, the ability to shift from one elemental damage to another from day to day is quite useful because the spontaneous casters can't have every element covered. Also at those levels, the number of signature spells isn't so high, so the wizard can easily have more options of what to daily select than the sorcerer has options of what to cast from highest slot.

None of the wizard feats feel or standout as great until level 20. Their arcane bond is just a very weak spontaneous casting usable once per day if anything but a universalist. No damage boosting thesis or curriculums. Terribly boring focus spells that don't even modify spells well.

Even the fortify summon focus spell cost 1 action when the designers knew summons cost 3 actions to cast and get to move and take actions in the same round.

Yeah, there are probably a lot of "feat boosts" we can think of that would make them feel more like the 'master of magic', without having to change anything about slots or prepared. To riff on your comments above, having a class feature early on (is level 1 too early?) where the wizard can add in a 1a metamagic effect for no action would be really nice. It would make the wiz feel like a master of metamagic, and would make feats that increase range or AoE really nice. Like a wizard's "signature move" is to metamagic their spell each time. Make Fortify Summoning a metamagic feat (with the action compression listed above) so "we summon stronger critters than other casters" is a common wizard thing to do.

There's lots of opportunities to feat-glow-up the wizard. Given how well many other prepared casters work, I don't think prepared caster is the main issue here. It's the mismatch between player expectation for the 'wizard concept' and how it actually compares to other casters in play.
(Though full disclosure, I'm not one who is terribly upset with it as it is. This is, to me, a small fish to fry not the biggest one.)

I still think it would be best to put all the casters with the same type of spontaneous casting like 5E, then focus on great class features and feats. PF2 balanced all casters with Legendary proficiency at the same progression. Now give them all the same casting ability. Then make the caster features great as you don't have to worry about power budgets of prepared versus spontaneous. All that creative energy can be put into really, really fun class features and feats.

That would make it easy to go back to the 'classic' sorc vs. wizard differentiation; the wizard gets more spells readied, the sorc gets far fewer but a damage bonus. All the current rigamarole about preparing spells in higher slots and signature spells just isn't a point of comparison any more.

Side note: you've also played an Animist, which is prepared (sorta). And IIRC you think that's pretty balanced/flexible (though not huge damage).

With all that in mind, second side note: given your informal rating of every single prepared caster played as 'fine' except the wizard, I would argue you may wish to rethink whether there is any issue at all with prepared casting, or whether the issue you have is wizard class design instead. Because it seems to me prepared casting is working fine for you...for 5 out of 6 classes tried.

At least it's a very good example of why you can't use LLMs to answer rules questions, because the LLM is clearly pulling from the older books since that's what it's got more data for.

You can, but you can't be lazy about your prompt engineering. LLMs are not magic, they can't read human minds, and they have exactly the same garbage in -> garbage out response to lazy human instruction writing that older programs have. He probably just cut and pasted the OP into it and hit go.

The 10-minute immunity is mainly there to prevent synesthesia or slow spamming. However, if you want to spam the spell, you can still do so by spending spell slots. I suppose the wording could be tweaked to make the target immune to the...

A much smaller tweak that would do that would be to say first cast of any spell (per 10 minutes?) is a freebie. So casters that rotate their casts during combat can go for pretty much ever, but if you want to spam that same top rank spell over and over again, you're going to run out of that rank's slots in one combat and not have it for the rest of the day. Utility spells like Translate would be essentially infinite though...you might have to make some spells 'slot only' to keep them balanced.

That's why I consider Prepared lovers should be the ones choosing if Prepared needs to stay, not Prepared haters. If Prepared lovers say that Prepared need to stay or that moving to Flexible would not affect their pleasure then I'd listen to them (I'm no Prepared lover). The same way I'd like people to listen to me when they want to break my toys.

When you have so many classes, it's fine to have classes that only appeal to a niche population. It's actually even good as it allows you to satisfy a broader number of players.

Some of this comes back to the class title, "Wizard." It's an incredibly popular character concept, and I think more than any other class title or concept players want the wizard to match their concept of the wizard. They are invested in the word itself. I bet if PF3 kept the class exactly the same, but called it something else and had the lore say "all of these classes are, to some extent or other, called wizards", half if not more of the objections would drop away.

When the wizard class can't blast infinitely, they don't want to be told 'play a kineticist and call yourself a wizard', they want Paizo to change the wizard class to be able to blast infinitely. Because they want that official title attached to their favorite build.

***

In any event, going to a more flexible pick-what-you-cast system for either the wizard alone or other PF casters too, to me, is way down on on my list of things to deal with. Number one is the tempo problem: slot-using characters want to rest while no-limited-resource characters want to go, causing players at the same table to want very different encounter tempos. Paizo should be thinking about *that* when they rejigger casting, not "hmmm...to spontaneous or to prepare"

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

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

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

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

I think most of the rest of what you said is valid, but if signature spells get to count as additional spells learned (not just what you can cast today with your slots), the wizard has a lot more than 11 spells they can put in their top rank spells each day, because all of their spells are automatically heightened.

I disagree. The wizard can load many spells into 3 slots, including upcasted spells of lower ranks...but it's always only three spells at most they can use from those slots. Three choices. At high level, the sorcerer has 10-11 choices of what to cast from their 3 slots.

I'd bet money the majority could not care less one way or the other and will play by the rules.

That would be me, sort of. I do care what a magic system looks like, but if they officially changed it in some future edition, I would play by the rules. First, that just causes a lot less friction at the table (avoiding 'you let Bob get his homebrew but you didn't let me do mine' situations). Second, because I like exploring different rules systems and if a game comes up with some different magic system, I want to explore the dimensions and implications of that magic system on the game world. I am not wedded to any mechanic so much that I would insist on importing some other-system's magic system into a different game.

The latter logic also applies to vancian in current PF2E: I would not want to change it, because I like to understand and explore how the PF2E magic system affects PF2E play and choices. If some other players at other tables want to import the D&D system? More power to them. You do you.

I also agree with Teridax that there are a lot of well balanced prepared casters in the game (I would add Druid to his list). It seems almost exclusively a wizard issue, and possibly one that really only comes about because in a head-to-head comparison of high level wiz with high level sorc, the prepared caster's supposed 'greater flexibility' isn't there because the sorcerer's signature spells are giving them essentially 1, 2, 3 etc. extra spell choices of what to cast at each rank. If it were "you get 3, spontaneous" vs. "you learn six, prepare three" the wiz might start looking like the more knowledgeable caster she is supposed to be. But right now it's "you get 11, spontaneous" vs. "you learn four, prepare 3." Which is less flexible whichever way you count it.

Regarding your first point, I love the idea of a class of magic that isn't relegated to traditional casting classes. But to your point, I would likely make the rituals depend on the same skills that are associated with the magic traditions, and possibly all the rituals to be accessed directly from standard caster feats rather than needing an archetype.

Yeah it's just a preference thing, or world-building thing. If you imagine Golarion as being a place where literally every person from the farmer to the baker uses 'small' magics, then rituals for non-combat magics that are not tied to a class makes a lot of sense. Of course the merchant has Comprehend Languages, she uses it every time she leads a caravan to a foreign nation. OTOH if you imagine Golarion as a place where specialists go to schools to learn how to master a rare set of skills, it makes more sense to tie them to one or more classes. The wizard with comprehend languages wows the nonwizards when she seems to be able to understand any text. Neither way is right or wrong, they're just different visions of magic in the fantasy.

Though, I might go one step further toward the ritual discussion like was talked about earlier, and just make all non-combat magic into rituals that anyone could use.

Not sure I like the 'anyone could use' idea, I like keeping wizards as the most-knowledgable-about-magic guys. Though maybe you can keep the wizard near the top of the heap by having rituals always use Int? Or get really crazy and say that the wizard can ritual cast any spell in their spellbook (see below for timing).

How would you manage it so that players can have fly to get from one city to another, but don't have it in combat unless they cast the spell or use another resource?

Whether you call it a ritual or a spell, the easiest way I can think of to "non-combatify" the utility slots is to say that spells in these slots take 1 minute to cast. So put any spell you want in the slot, fly, fireball, whatever. But it'll take you 10 rounds to cast it. That is trivial for exploration mode and most puzzle-solving scenes, but essentially eliminates the slot's value for combat. Heck you could probably go as low as 18 seconds (i.e. 3 rounds) and nobody's going to be using that slot in a combat.

it would be cool if at least some classes, had the ability to sacrifice spell slots to merge into high level spell slots (the exact math would have to be carefully considered) and also to split higher level spell slots into lower level slots.

The upgrading is already covered by Wizard Spell Blending.

Rather than a slot downgrading ability, I think better value for the prep caster could be had by separating damage/combat spells into a separate bucket from utility spells, and adding some utility-only slots. That way players wouldn't feel so pressured to make all their daily slot choices about combat, and the non-combat slots would help TTRPG wizards mirror the 'I have a spell for that' feel of literature wizards. I doubt it would overbalance the wizard by giving them two extra non-combat slots per rank...the big question would be, how to define 'non-combat.' :) As there is plenty of gray area/dual use type spells.

What I mean is, you probably don't want to replace Vancian because of familiarity and because you haven't the seen the replacement yet.

I doubt many people need to see the replacement to have an informed opinion, because there are tons of other ttrpg systems that do magic differently, and many players have or do play more than one system. But I think there is something traditional about a d20 class and level system using bespoke spell lists and limited slots. If Paizo is going after D&D lovers, it makes sense to have a D&D like magic system. Doesn't mean you can't change it, but it does mean that if a player disagrees with you about Vancian being bad, it's probably not out of ignorance but their experience playing a bunch of different systems and coming back to an old school one like this out of preference. Or maybe they likeg this magic system for this rules set, where a different system works fine for a different rules set.

Way back in the day, i had an absolutely amazing time playing a caster in GURPS using their alternative rune casting system. Loved it. But does it fit Pathfinder? No not at all. it's all problem solving, no blasting.

Vancian doesn't mirror fantasy books or stories or movies.

The concept of 'casting a spell burns it out of your brain' doesn't mirror much in fantasy, but the wizard consulting books to cast some unusual spell they either don't have memorized or need to construct on the spot certainly does. The concept of a spell using up ingredients so that you only get one cast per prepared set of ingredients is reasonably common I think too.

So I think the basic sorcerer vs wizard contrast is nice and something they could keep, in some tweaked form. This caster knows x, that's all they know, but they do it very well and as much as they like. This other caster knows x...and can also theory out y and z when needed. But maybe not as fluidly or intuitively as the one trick pony, because once the spell is cast, they have to get another raven claw/hang another spell/charge up their battery/etc etc before they can do that magic again. It's not really the mechanics of vancian casting that is at odds with stories, it's the backstory of "the reason I can't cast it again is because I've forgotten it" that is at odds. Substitute in "the reason i can't cast it is because I'm out of newt extract" and it mirrors some stories just fine. Do you want to play an x-man with an at-will power blast but just that, or do you want to play an early books Dresden who can do any number of things, but has to go into his lab and mix up pastes and stuff that he then uses during the day in order to do those things?

PF3e has to commit to one side. Not the half-daily / half-encounter thing it currently does.

Interestingly, both trends are going strong in fantasy games. encounter-based (or rapid-resource-based) is how the vast majority of real time video games work. While 5.5 went the other way and gave practically every character build option some sort of few times per day buff.

I think there may be creative ways to mix and match. First, you could offer those options as sub-classes, so that the core classes allow for both types of builds. Let it be the players' choice whether their wizard blasts twice per day awesomely or nth times per day a little less awesomely. Another way to mix would be to give non-casters some cool reason to rest. Don't know what that is, but there's got to be something out there.

Looking at kineticist and focus spell abilities look like, unlimited/encounter-based casters would be dreadfully less powerful and capable of bringing in the big guns/support when the encounters get difficult.

Yes, in 'infinite casting' systems the magical blasts generally have to be on par with what dude-with-gun or dude-with-sword can do. You could still balance it by having most-powerful daily abilities, ok-powerful hourly or 1/combat abilities, and average any-time abilities....but then your martials should have them too. It makes magic more of a special effect on how you attack rather than a qualitatitevly different attack.

though you could still make magic better at some things - e.g. aoe, or physical resistant enemies. So even if blasts do about as much as a sword does, good game design can still make it so that the blasty shines in some scenes and the swordy shines in others.

One interesting concept is the building momentum idea; i.e. instead of starting with your big boom available some limited amount of uses, you start with no uses of your big boom and gain the power/mana/whatever to use it by doing class, concept, or encounter-related activities. That fits the idea of minor encounters leading up to a big boss encounter much better than 'big boom 1/day'.

The fact that a wizard player has to make 28 choices every single day at 20th level is IMO proof that something needs to change.

Eh, a subsystem not working at 20th level isn't super compelling to me. Levels 5-15 are more the sweet spot for the game, and for that I have to say our druid *player* has both a lot of fun and gets good in-game utility out of using the seven days between sessions to plan what he wants to take.

I don't think people want flexibility when playing casters; I think they want alternative ways to solve problems.

I'm sure there is no single thing all players want out of the magic system; different players want all sorts of different things. Personally I love the 'pick 5 of 20 possible spells, tomorrow you can pic differently' concept. But I'm sure lots of others don't, I get that.

Instead to me, main issue I see with the current system (and what is really highlighted when there's a kineticist in the group) is that the whole the slot system creates this weird party disjointedness where it makes complete story and session sense for some PCs to want to keep adventuring, while it makes complete story and session sense for other PCs to want to take a rest. The classes would have a more consistent tempo of play if every class had some important, limited daily resource...or a la kineticist, none of them did.

I'm not sure Vancian casting can disappear without infuriating a big portion of the player base.

Yeah I think this is more the sticking point. There are a huge number of wildly different ways different TTRPGs approach magic...but most of those games do not approach anywhere near the popularity of "d20, class and level, spell slots" set of games. So it's not a question of could Paizo revise their casting system, it's a question of whether it would be as popular a game if they did.

Yeah, this is absolutely my group. Rarely do you get information ahead of time to allow for actionable changes to prepared spells, and also around 3 combats in a day seems like just what happens, unless there is some specific reason needed to keep going (which is relatively rare).

And I guess I should clarify, I don't mean that spontaneous and prepared don't feel different, they do. It's just to me, prepared casting feels like ****.

I think this is at least partly a function of the type of game you're playing; i.e. the no prep info type game. Yes obviously a spontaneous repertoire is much better than a spellbook if your characters have no information on which to make spell changes.

I guess that was my point. Prepared (or spontaneous) doesn't make a caster unique when there are other casters with the same casting tradition and method of spell "use" (prepared vs spontaneous).

I think the witch feels different from the wizard; familiar, familiar ability and hexes are things many witches will use practically every encounter. But I do agree with your general 'what if' thought exercise - i.e. Paizo could, if it wanted, unify casting mechanics and instead use class features, feats, or more differentiated spell lists to make the casting classes feel different (though I wouldn't bet on that last one; I thought Paizo was actively trying to get away from that)

This seems like a not so optimally designed encounter: two large creatures, with a 10' doorway leading into a 10' corridor, neither has a ranged attack, neither is designed to tumble through, and they are not smart enough to retreat or close the door in the PC's faces and force the PCs to come into their room to engage.

I agree with Ascalaphus that if PCs are able to use good chokepoint tactics, the benefit they get from it should just be part of the play...though in this case, 'good chokepoint tactics' seems almost inevitable.

One possible suggestion: most animals don't rush out on the attack unless they feel threatened, and they don't stay in a fight until dead. Have them run away, out of line of sight and/or to a more defensible spot - either initially or once they realize that things look bad for them. Make the PCs come to them.

AestheticDialectic wrote:

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

Do you really feel that the difference between prepared and spontaneous casters gives much of a distinction between classes?

It absolutely can, IMO. We have one caster that very effectively changes out their spell load every day based on what we know we're going to face - but once selected, they can't upcast anything. We have another caster who regularly upcasts repertoire spells based on need (e.g. the martial just took a giant crit, time to use top slot for a heal). And neither of them feel like our kineticist, because they both must play the resource management game (we regularly do more than 3 encounters per day) while the kin just uses max power/most appropriate impulse every round, without much thought.

Now, if you're in a game where you don't get prep info and you stick to 2-3 combats per day, the two casters might prep similar load outs all the time and might feel like the kineticist in that all three just use what they want, when they want, without thinking much about slot resources. So it's going to vary by game. But yes, all three can feel very different.

You noted that the Animist is very spellcasting-oriented, which is true, and it's important to note that the Necromancer is also a spellcaster first and a melee combatant second.

If you're looking for a gish that's more of a true hybrid between caster and martial, then the only options the game offers in that respect are the Battle Harbinger (which I really don't recommend), the Magus, and the Summoner

Yeah Summoner and Magus martial attack proficiencies keep up with the standard martial advancement (7th and 13th), but their casting falls a bit behind full caster proficiency (9th and 17th instead of 7th, 15th, 19th). So in that respect they are 'martial first, caster second' emphasis rather than 'caster first, martial second' that you see in pretty much every other gish build. That's good for the game; it means the gish concept can be approached either way. Though I expect some players will still chafe because they'd prefer to mix and match martial-first or caster-first with a wider variety of classes.

What level is your game?

There are many, many choices L1-4. Things narrow down 5-12 and by 13 there's practically no builds that punch like a pure martial while also casting like a full caster...(IMO)

Of the two classes you've mentioned, my completely unplayed guess is the Animist's focus spell forms may be stronger than Reaper Necro around L9, when the elemental form spells come on line??? Maybe???

Dr. Frank Funkelstein wrote:

I think your guide is exaggerating a lot:

"Crafting is very interesting if you have downtime" - i disagree there, crafting allows you to continue shopping if you don't have access to a high enough settlement, that's basically it. Oh, and repair shields.

That's very campaign dependent, actually. It's really nice in PFS, there are other environments where it's useless.

I agree. My main campaign, few on-level magic items are for sale. Crafting takes the party from "pick A, B, C, or nothing" to "just about anything you want."

Dr. Frank Funkelstein wrote:

The class fantasy, as in really inventing stuff, is only covered by Gadget specialist - which should not be a feat tax and maaaybe a little bit more generous with its limits, even though you can pay the feat tax two more times to get more.

I think it's the biggest issue. But for me it's an issue with PF2 in general.

Actually I'd say it's just a difficult archetype for RPGs. If your inventions can be used by others, you just become supply guy which is often no fun. That cool sword? Yeah you shouldn't use it, it makes more sense for you to give it to the fighter to use. But if they can only be used by you, then they just feel like another power/spell type thing with some techno dressing. Alchemist does a pretty good job and maybe that can be a template (i.e. some things are obvious giveaways, but there's some middle items that anyone can use but you're more effective with them, and then finally some items only you can use). But unlike novels where the author can control the extent of inventions, in TTRPGs the rules have to do that and the consequence is that PC inventors probably can't achieve both the freedom and balanced impact that novel inventors naturally achieve through plot management.

Well at a minimum it's got the property rune Animated, and some sort of home brew Vampiric property rune that converts enemy HP taken into slow-burn Str and Con boosts (instead of Temp HP). There's also a good argument for giving it Fearsome.

So you're talking L13 Greater Striking at least, in order to get two property runes where one of them is Animated. For Fearsome added in, L19 Major striking.

If you wanted to stay absolutely RAW, L13 greater striking, Fearsome and Animated property runes, magus class, and use the Vampiric Feast spell in your spellstrike. That doesn't capture Elric's reliance on the sword for strength and stamina, but it's pretty close to the overall effect.

For Elric, I generally think a Fetchling Inexorable Iron Magus would fit quite well.

I'd phrase it slightly different from the suggestions above, as:
Tank
Heal
Control/buff/debuff
Skill/utility

But I think the nice thing about PF2E is that most classes and builds do more than one. Heal is a good example: slap decent Wis and Medicine feats on a PC, any class can be an okay healer. Most classes have debuffs and control powers. In fact it helps to have each PC try and do two of those roles, so that based on positioning and tactical options, the same PC isn't stuck always doing one thing. And while rogue and investigator lead in the skills department, the tight math of the system means your Face will likely not be the same person as your RKer and may not be the same person as your trap finder, etc. I don't list 'damage dealing' as separate since pretty much all classes are designed to have that as a component.

I cannot believe some are making Forcible Energy seem under-rated or good. It is not.

Why?

1. Is the spell you can launch to match the majority of energy property runes in your party even going to do the most damage? Are you going to cast a lvl 6 fireball to stick 5 energy weakness on one target doing 12d6 damage for an average of 42 instead of a level 6 chain lightning for 8d12 damage for an average of 52?

A full caster has to expect the party will want to go go go until all her top two ranks of spells are depleted (at least). And the Wizard is a prepared caster, so you know exactly what spells you're going to cast during a day. Thus the only thing you need to do to make this feat useful is to match it up to any one (or two, or three) of your high rank energy spells, and then you wait until the best time to cast it. No, it's not always going to be something you'll be able to use on the first round of the first combat of the day, that would be highly coincidental. But you will probably get at least 1-3 uses out of it every day. Combat one? Have some electricity weakness to with my Chain. Combat two, I'm outta Chain lighting but i have a R5 fireball, so have some Fire weakness. Etc.

More generally, one might postulate that at the beginning of an AP or other long campaign, at least, the players should get say 30 days (more?) of downtime to make or do whatever. I suspect that happens rarely, if at all. (I'd expect at least a week or two of downtime at several points during a campaign even if there's none at the beginning). Comments?

Easy enough for a GM to give as much downtime as they want in a home game. AV also allows downtime pretty freely. No reason to set a limit like 30 days; if the players want to explore their downtime activities, I would generally let them.

I think the major issue is resources; since jobs don't pay anywhere near enough to afford magic items and PF2E crafting is just "a way to buy things that aren't in the store", you're going to run out of GP to make your-level items pretty quickly if you don't go adventuring.

A couple of other things to keep in mind for this Animist vs Kineticist comparison

The kineticist’s damage drops massively in the presence of fire resistance which is both fairly common and easily available if the bad guys are preparing against specifically the PCs.

Well...sorta.

Pretty much every element can reach that 45-55 damage impulse (with some sort of terrain, buff, or debuff effect) + 5d6/5d8 EB. And many of them can achieve that with lower level impulses. So a full fire build kineticist with a couple impulses in other elements could easily switch to another element and still end up doing the same or more as they could fighting uphill against a huge fire resistance.

It's not massive top-rank spell damage. To really make most effective use of the kin, you need to leverage those terrain, buff, etc. effects that impulses almost always contain and not just "I stand and blast". But I don't think immunity to a single element will ever really render a high level kin weak. Now, that Golem antimagic and "Immune to all spells" critters in the premaster system...yeah, they make it really hard. Protector Tree seems almost mandatory in those cases.

There are a couple of ways to do 1 action ranged tracing already, either via familiar, singer, or transpose, that's why i don't think it's as much of an action compression compared to Detonate or the melee Strike, both of which allow for a double trace+invoke+strike on the same round.

I'd say (for Runesmith, levels 2-5) there's probably no ranged build that does action compression as well as a melee build. But when you compare ranged build to ranged build, I'd rank it like this:

Familiar build is 1st if they don't go after your familiar. It is 3rd if they do. This is not a witch familiar; if they kill it, your concept is gone for a week. And they should kill it if it's laying down two runes per round. Maybe a good build to pair with a Champion and a Cleric?

Pattern flight is 1st against a familiar-klling enemy, 2nd against a 'plot friendly' enemy. This build gives you at least 1 action worth of compression on every round. It gives you 2 free actions on a round you can land Pattern Flight then Remote Detonation; that's 2 Strikes, a 2 action trace, and a 1 action detonation for 3 actions. Unlike the pet build, this delivery can't be "killed" and unlike the Singer build, you can do it round after round.

Singer build is 2nd against a familiar-killing enemy, 3rd otherwise. While it has spectacular action compression on round 1, after that it basically has no action compression at all. Technically, this isn't better than the Pet build in combat. But this build recovers it's Singer compression in 10 minutes and it's Tattoo in 1 day. That's versus a busted familiar build recovering it's action compression in 7 days.

I white-roomed and did a bunch of AI simulated combats for three L5 ranged runesmith builds:
1. "Nuke Early". Uses Rune-Singer, Runic Tattoo (Atryl), and Transpose Etching to put 2 runes on target and detonate them both in Rd 1. Later rounds are move, weapon, or cast runes but you're stuck at 2a per ranged rune.
2. "Pet Delivery". Uses Glyph Familiar, Enhance Familiar to just keep putting 1a runes on foes at range.
3. "Ranged Bower." Uses Pattern Flight + Remote Detonation.

#3 consistently out-performed the other two. Nuke Early does what it says, but doesn't have a good ability to stay out of melee range while doing it's later round thing. Melee attackers just run up to it and take it apart in later rounds. Pet Delivery...well, let's just say the AI has absolutely no hesitation about attacking the familiar. Consequently it goes down in round 1 or 2, and then this build stops working.

Another lesson learned is that Lyskel is better (for ranged builds) than the higher damage runes. When you're trying to stay out of range, the loss of enemy move (-5 move and then difficult terrain, combined with clumsy) is very much worth the loss of damage.

Now, these were 1-on-1 white room fights. So it's worth thinking about how party dynamics may change things.

Nuke Early: In a party where early take-down (or at least softening-up) is valued, the Nuke Early build might be the one your melee martials prefer, even if you end up with less dpr over many rounds (I used L4 threats, combats often went 4-6 rounds). Also, Words Fly Free is just 1 level away and has even bigger burst damage promise. I like this build. Detonating 2 runes in round 1, at range, feels great. I was hoping it would do better. But 1-on-1 where you're trying to kite, it doesn't work well.

Pet Delivery: In a party where the melee martials pose bigger threats than your familiar (so the enemy doesn't attack the familiar), or where your GM has social hesitation about killing your familiar, this could be the most effective of three. So this one is heavily dependent on table/group dynamics. Maybe it's awesome. Or maybe you have a very unfun session as you watch your GM constantly targeting your familiar. Personally, I wouldn't pick it. I don't like putting the GM in the tough bind of "if you play the enemy smart, you'll ruin my fun."

Pattern flight build: with a front line between you and the enemy, you can swap out Lyskel for a higher damage rune. Or maybe not: Lyskel + Ranshu gives the enemy a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't choice.

A bog standard animist casting L10 fireball is doing 20d6+10 = 80 points with that same basic save and over a larger area. Lets assume they're down to L7 spells and the animist is still doing 56 points of damage.

All Shall End In flames does 15d8 = 85.5 average, and that's without all the combo tricks with aura etc. With those tricks, it's going to do more. As a 3 action overflow the Kin can only do it once/two rounds, so they wouldn't have the burst damage capability of a full caster throwing max rank after max rank with some 1a other damaging activity. But it compares, and the kin can do that every combat, all day long, without any rest. (Note though that All Shall End is a bit of an exception; most Kin impulses max out at about 45-55 ave damage with some control or terrain effect, which would be supplemented by a 1a something like 'reopen gate and blast' for another 5d6 or 5d8. So using a 2a impulse + blast is averaging something like 67.5-77.5) So that's "like a caster".

For "like a martial", I'd go with an Air/Earth build, using Desert Wind with air blasts and boomerang (!!). At L17 the 1a blast is doing 5d6+12 at (short) range and 5d6+12+Str in melee. The ranged damage is just shy of a 2h fully runed 1a strike of 3d12+5+2d6 (29.5 vs 31.5 average). The melee blast, for a PC wanting to go melee, will likely be just higher (i.e. a +3). If you can single target something in your aura with boomerang and just cycle it (throw a new one while pulling back the old one, each round), you're doing 10d4+12 x2, and you get half on a made save. While it uses 3 actions, most martials are going to only strike twice a round due to MAP and this compares okay with, say, a 55% hit chance followed by a 30$ hit chance. Heck even multitargeting you'll do 10d4+6, which is still in the same range. Give your Kin Armor In Earth, Weapon Infusion, and Two Element Infusion to bump that air blast up to d8, and you've got yourself a decent 'like a martial'.

And yep, a L18 kin can do both. They can have 3 elements, the desert wind attack, and All Shall End for when it's time for that massive AoE. Can you burst AoE as good as a full caster? Nope. Do you have the big library of feat tricks and class bonuses a full martial can add to their base damage strike? Nope. But with a good kin build you should be able to do okay, especially in that second and third fight of the day, and yep you can gish pretty well. Except for monsters that are immune to spells...

So if the Animist wants to point out they can easily overtop the Kin in rounds 1-2 of the first fight of the day, I'm okay with that. At pretty much all levels, that's only going to be 2 of 9-18 or so encounter rounds that day the PCs have to live through. As an example, in my current low level campaign (L5 right now), there have been *a lot* of rounds where the casters are down to cantrips (either using their slots for other purposes, holding onto them, or just out of them) and the kin is still throwing out blazing wave with safe elements. 5d8 aoe with no friendly fire, vs. EA's 4d4 to 2 targets. The Kin is easily pulling it's weight in many, many of the day's encounter rounds.

And it’s really easy in a game like Pathfinder to fall into a trap of thinking that the combat rules govern everything, because they are about 90% of the rules the game has.

Agreed. Combat has a lot of rules because nobody wants the GM to hand out arbitrary character deaths. Not even the GM. In a different ttrpg about court intrigue where a misspeak could end in execution, there would be just as many rules governing social encounters. This doesn't mean combat (in this game) or intrigue (in the hyothetical other) must comprise most of the scenes or most of the story, it just means that any ttrpg should have clear and detailed rules for scenes in which character death is a strongly possible outcome.

As an example, let's say I do have Invert Harm. If I hit a living ally with Harm, I simply choose to heal them with Harm. Harm is then no longer trying to damage them because I didn't choose that effect. No void to vitality flipping needed. Is that the biggest cope or what?

Anyway, thank you both for indulging my lunacy.

Yes with Mastery Of... I would choose one energy per target, with vitality not healing living things. Necromancers that select the level 2 feat Invert still choose one energy per target, but now choosing vitality for living targets heals them.