Interesting enough Warpriest is a better Martial than Battle Herald for 60% of the levels (1-4, 7-12 and then 19-20), because have the same chance to hit at those levels, but more spells slots and superior font. If Battle Herald had kept the font then my opinion of it would be better, but right now, it's only meh.
I pretty much agree. I think that a lot of the nature things of ranger could have been skill feats that anyone that wanted a more nature based character could take and let the theme more open for you to hunt anything.
And then also have that now like years later, we have a decent amount of one action and reaction spells that favors the spontaneous casting as they have different times that you want to use that might or not happen during the day (Time Jump my beloved). Didn't need to use jump to go to a roof and be out of reach? Fine I can use True Strike or Interposing earth instead. And then the reactions damn, Brine Dragon Bile, Blood Vendetta, Cloud Dragon Cloak, Shadow Projectile, Wooden Double, we have a lot of good options now and most of them low levels as well.
The main problem are the classes that uses the Arcane list, both Wizards and arcane witch suck. But Arcane Sorcerer? That one is good, really good, both Draconic and Imperial, with the first being better at the earlier levels while imperial crushes the higher ones. But yeah another problem with Wizard... You have to expend hecking gold for more spells that every other prepared gains for free and all the time. I wish they could at least spontaneously cast their schools spells using another prepared spell slot. Like if I was a Civic Wizard I could use the fireball slot to cast Cozy Cabin.
I would rather if instead of going into the bestiary it was a simple template and like illusory creature where it uses the caster stats on the summon. The rank of the spell could define the amount of HP, damage a abilities that it have.
One thing that people usually don't talk is the roller advantage, the person rolling the dice effectively have +1. But generally saves values are lower than AC ones, and attack rolls have to interact with MAP. But what really annoys me in the system are the proficiency gaps at some levels, they could very well made the Expert, Master of casters be lvl 5 and 13 as well.
I would say Investigator, because of their annoying features that annoy GMs but Squiggit was ahead of me. So I will go with this one instead: Wizard. Why are the focus spells and feats so shitty? I don't play with the free archetype and still spend most of the feats on better ones outside of the class. And of all the 4 slots casters they have the most limited 4th slot.
It's still basically the same as before but with the option of a few more ways get panache with a few bravado feats and that panache is basically always on. For consistent damage something like dual finisher with Flying blade is likely the best approach. Against high AC targets however, something like Derring-Do control with a gymnast (trip + grab) with retributive strike is what I would do.
On question of the journey... from level 1-4 and 7-12, a whooping 10 levels and probably the most played levels in the game, warpriest is pretty much ahead and better equipped to take advantage of Cleric feats like Channel Smite, Restorative Strike and Cast Down
The chassis proficiency is fine, the problem is everything else. The font being a rank 1 spell that don't heightned effects just sucks and you don't even have the option reduce the number of actions to cast it until level 20.
The bless of Eternal Blessing does not work with Battle Harbinger feats, the feat calls for battle auras and battle auras are specifically bless and bane (also malediction and benediction if you pick the feat) casted from spells slots or font. And about Warpriest casting and not having time to strike, that is only if you wish to do that, as Cleric and the divine list itself have a bunch of options to strike and even use slots to aid the striking. Channel Smite is a way to expend extra spell slots striking, Restorative Strike is also a fun one, Warding Agression and Blink Charge are spells that strike and Zealous Rush let you Heroism + Stride and Strike right on the first turn. Also Cast Down that let you trip (that the enemy needs to critically succeed to not be prone) + strike.
So Cleric in book, receives a class archetype that changes their spellslots progression to be the same as the Magus and Summoner so they can get proficiency increase of the average martial character, expert at 5 and Master at 13. It also changes their font from Heal/Harm to Bless and Bane with the option to add Benediction and Malediction with a level 4 feat. It gets legendary class DC that can be used in the place of spellcasting for battle auras, but the spellcasting dc by itself caps at expert. The feats resolves mainly about sustaining the battle auras, but have one that gives studious spells like slots of Magus that have a few buff spells and Sure strike, as well another that works like the runes on weapon of champion (pre-remaster). It's a cool archetype, though I don't really like the fact that the font are rank 1 spells without heightened effects outside of counteract their opposites.
Surprised that people didn't mentioned Oracle Archetype, access to cursebound feats like Foretell Harm, and two different sets of focus spells with the Oracle ones and domains for charisma classes.
I think that people are overrating STR, the only thing that it gives over Dex, is a grapple on the devouring dark form, that by the way is incredible action inneficient for a glorified grapple as you have to cast it to gain the form and only on the second turn sustains that you begin to grapple, and the grapple of the forest heart feat. It's fine, if you build around (athletics, heavy armor, probably liturgist), but not something that I would look at most animist builds and take it.
Wizard don't even have anything that makes it really shines as a control... If anything it again favors animist that because is divine have access to Calm spell very early, and later easily pick Wall of Stone and Quandary with apparitions. But yeah I agree with Teridax, animist is really over the top, heck it even gets the armor increase to expert at 11 instead of 13, just to show how special it is and the multiclass don't even let you get a single focus spell. About the Liturgist vs Medium, if the person is not using something like Elf step to step twice and sustain twice, the Medium with 2 main apparition is indeed close action wise, but Liturgist having Circle of spirits as the lvl 1 feat still puts it ahead though.
I am kinda feeling that Liturgist is so good that makes the other subclasses appear bad.
People didn't ask but I will post anyway, as it's an archetype that I was interested in. Vindicator is basically the Ranger that specializes in focus spells. The Hunters Edge is the Vindicator one that gives +1 status bonus to spell attacks and -1 status penalty to saves on the hunted prey against your spells. (Increase to 2 at lvl 17). It also gives the Vindicators Mark focus spell, a 2 actions focus spells that can only be used against your Prey, spell attack do 2d4 spirit damage and for 1 minute after your attacks deal +2 damage against the enemy, you can dismiss the spell on the turn that you hit an enemy with an attack to deal extra 2d6 spirit damage. Scales every 2 spell ranks for 2d4 initial damage, +1 damage to attacks and 2d6 to the dimissal. Lvl 10 have another exclusive focus spell on the Judgment that gives weakness 5 (scales to max 15 at max spell rank) against fortitude save, for 1 minute (or the next strike/spell if the enemy succeed the save).
Is Paralyze 7 even that good? Seems to me that spells like Slow 6 would be much better would it not? It's mostly momentum and number of actions disabled. Per example let's assume a severe encounter of one lvl 15 boss and 2 lvl 11 lackeys against a lvl 13 party. Let's assume that the 2 lackeys fails the save and the boss succeed. Paralyze 7 will take out 6 actions on a single round, as an incapacitation spell the boss would get a crit success. Slow lvl 6 will take out 3 actions on one round, then 2 on the second then another 2 on the third round. So it was necessary 2 extra rounds for slow to surpass the paralyze and have a good chance that a lackey was killed on round 2 or 3. And enemies of the levels that those spells are avaliable usually hurt or have annoying stuff against you even if they are lower level than you, so taking them out an entire round is nice. Against a group of enemies paralyze 7 usually gives a huge amount of frontloaded action denial and because they are a group, likely they are lower level than you, slow 6 is better against smaller groups of enemies of your level and up like a lvl 15 boss and a lvl 13 lackey against the same previous group.
Strike activities are usually divided in two categories, the normal amount of actions but ignore MAP for one of them (like Double Slice) and the other that reduces the number of actions by one (Like Flurry of Blows). Spellstrike interesting enough, breaks that norm and do both in a way at the cost of having to recharge, if you just use an action to recharge it becomes something like a double slice, if uses a conflux spell you even go plus on the action economy. An 1 action spellstrike, would need so many limitations that would not be fun to use (like being an unique action with Flourish trait plus the -5), or be absolutely broken, like allowing Expansive Spellstrike with it and now it have access to 1 actions Fireballs and other save spells, even if Magus have a lower DC it having access to all day Quickened spell would not feel good for the other Spellcasters). And for reactive strike... putting manipulate trait on melee options is such a bad move, Thaumaturge have that problem as well and it sucks. While I find easier to make arcane cascade a free action (currently I homebrew that), the suggestions of keeping the action but making it more useful with it recharging the spellstrike, or making that you don't provoke while on cascade, or even just be having the spellstrike charged you are on Cascade are all cool, I might implement one or another in the place of how I currently do.
Druid is a way more vanilla caster than Wizard, but we don't really see complaints about it very much. Why is that? Outside of the better chassis (8hp, medium armor) the druid has way better feats and focus spells to fall back even if you mess the entire spell preparation. The feats also have better flavor...
Depends of the level, because I would not be spending gold on a weapon as a full caster when striking runes are a thing unless I am using it regurlary, those runes are expensive, and I would already be expending on staves, scrolls and in the case of wizard also learning spells.
In theory future options could help the Wizard... In practice, Pathfinder 2 is 5 years old and Wizard was in the very first book of the game, so my expectations are basically nonexistent.
Like Blave wrote, the combination of bad feats, super limited curriculum slots, bad focus spells and questionable thesis is what break wizards legs. Class archetypes could fix that, but I don't like it mandatory options to fix a class, it limits character building, with that the lvl 2 feat is used and also locked out of another archetype until lvl 8 assuming that only picked feats from that class archetype.
I like deadly encounters personally, when I GM I do say from the start that character death is on the table. I will play the enemies as I think they would do, like zombies just attacking the closest thing of them while trained mercenaries would be targeting healers and using more advanced tactics. Last character death... last month, against drug smugglers that the boss had a trained red wyvern, the Barbarian critically failed the fireball breath and took some more blows as it was the only one in the front. But I am aware that most others tables GMs avoid players deaths at all costs.
Increase the level of the players, 1 level higher than the reccomended might be enough to not need to rebalance the encounters.
Depends of the party, level and experience of the players and place. Most of the time will be as many as it takes to be full. With more experienced players and higher level they might go to the buff rush. Cast Heroism and other 10 minutes buffs and try to chain 2-3 encounters to take advantage of it.
New druid orders come, here at least 3-4 new feats on theme. New Magus studies? Here 2 new feats. Schools right now are basically only a limiter for the 4th slot, I would rather just scrap schools and let the Wizard just choose their flavor of below average focus spells that they have. And about asking GM about changing schools from curriculum? Any class could do that. Like a Imperial Sorcerer asking the GM if they can switch the Force Barrage sorcerous gift for Sure Strike, or an flame oracle asking for Floating Flame instead of Blazing Bolt and so on.
Because the schools do nothing outside limiting the spell choices of the 4th slot and giving a weak focus spell. Also does not help that it don't have school feats that plays on theme. I will compare to the current prepared casters, cleric and druid as Mathmuse mentioned that might be a better way to do it. Druid orders only gives a feat and a focus spell as they can pick other orders, but Storm per example as it's the more spellcasting one, have a flavorful feat, a strong focus spell and if you want, it have more feats ahead on theme, also helps how easy it's to increase the focus pool on druid feats alone so they can use even more Tempest Surge. Cloistered Clerics we could say that the deity is the subclass, giving you the type of font, being able to pick 1 out of 4 focus spells on domains and also spells outside of the divine list that clerics of other deities likely don't have access and like the Druid, the feats ahead also support it, either by picking more domains from that deity or making the font that they grant better of having new effects.
I am rather curious: why do people in this thread compare the wizard to the spontaneous casters sorcerer and bard? The wizard has more in common with the other primary prepared casters cleric, druid, and witch. The Sorcerer is simple, as both are cloth casters of 6hp and 4 slots and Sorcerer also having access to the Arcane list. The bard I don't know, probably because they are able to recall knowledge on everything on a single skill, and people feel that as a schoolar wizard should probably be able to do some of that.
Wizard does not even have a high Recall Knowledge chance on most of the things, as it's is divided on like 6 skills (Arcane, Society, Crafting, Nature, Religion and Occultism) and don't have extra skill increases for them, and going into an archetype like loremaster means being stuck on the shitty wizard focus spells instead of just picking something like Psychic. In combat at some point Haste + Tap into Blood is not a bad turn for sorcerer, and because charisma is a good stat skill wise when that is not a good option Sorcerer will usually have intimidation/Bon Mot + spell as well.
Wizard is good, you only need perfect information of the day ahead or a GM that have pity of you, so you can be be almost as effective as a Sorcerer. We just have to ignore that Sorcerer have a better casting stat,features, feats and focus spells.
The lack of caster archetypes is something that really piss me off, more archetypes like Shadowcaster would be really welcome, that gives focus spells, let you have spells from different lists and some abililies. It would help every caster, but specially wizard as your feats are bad anyway so you pick better ones lol. Like Elementalist could have been a regular archetype that grants a Focus spell of that element and have a feat that add some spells from that element to your repertoire/spell book and so on. At least we are getting a domain one, so have a few options there. I hope that is not locked into like Wisdom casting stat.
But anyway, we are getting out of topic talking about a better class than Wizard. True, I didn't think that way. Specially when looking at Imperial that is using knowledge of their death ancestors to power up their spells or just undermining enemy spells, heck, Arcane Countermeasures do sounds like something that wizard should have been able to do but using their own studies.
Giving the Wizard a 5th slot and doing nothing else wouldn’t fix any of the problems with the class.Okay how about a 6th slot. Are those slots still limited to curriculum? No thanks But seriously, I still like the thing of just letting you expend a prepared slot to cast a curriculum spell, like if I have Haste prepared, I can expend it to cast fireball if I am in the battle school. At least that would make wizard unique in some way.
Can also steal Oracle Foretell Harm for +2 damage per spell rank and increase that damage to +5 damage per spell rank when stacked with everything else on spell slots, and +4 on focus spells. Just pick a curse like Cosmos that gives Enfeebled.
I usually like to have a Quandary for oh shit moments at that level, as it usually gives a round for a breather.
Because of how spontaneous works is actually easier to have spells dedicated for niche uses to be honest. Let's pick the 3rd rank of spells of a weaker arcane bloodline, like let's say Gennie. That locks in Enthrall, then put Shared Invisibility because the party stealth options, Safe Passage and lastly Slow for a generic good spell. Even if you don't use the niche spells above you can expend all the 3rd rank slots on slow and any signature spell from the ranks under it. And mind you, this is the weakest Arcane Bloodline right now, but the focus spells are still more usable than most the Wizard ones.
The sorcerer being able to cast the same amount of spells as the wizard, but also having better features, focus spells and feats really makes wizards looks anemic. And if Oracle turns out to indeed change to 4 slots... that have 8hp/lvl, better saves proficiency and also cursebound stuff that are basically focus spells that uses another resource... I will laugh to not cry.
The main thing is that the prepared casting is kinda all the Wizard currently have as the other prepared casters have either good features or good focus spells that takes off the weight of spell selection. Witch was horrible before, but the familiar passives gave a huge power boost and your focus stuff are all better than the Wizard ones. Druid have amazing focus spells, letting you basically use them for combat and leave your spell slots for anything else. And Cleric while just as dependent of spell slots as the Wizard, it have a ton of top slots with heal spells and better feats. Focus spells are mixed, some domains have amazing ones, while others... exist. If Wizard had better features or feats it would not be so controversial, like instead of the limited 4th slot make it just like the others, and the Wizard can just expend a prepared slot to cast a spell of their curriculum. As for scrolls, I usually don't comment about them because every caster can use it, as do staves and so on, the same way that I usually would not pick stuff like Seen the Unseen on Sorcerer (campaign dependent, if it's like a ghost campaign then it's another story) and just have a scroll or two for that and after expending buy another when possible, I would do the same playing Wizard, not prepare it and just have the scroll in the back pocket.
Schrodinger wizards, in practice most of those specific spells ends unused, after years GMing this game, people do remember when they that right spell, but forget all the other times that it ended unused during most adventure days and I had to custom made encounters just for the player to use it so they would not feel bad preparing it.
An action + reaction for 1d6/spell rank? It's fine to be honest, specially considering that Casters don't have innate ways to increase reaction count and over the years we now have reaction spells that compete with it, like Brine Dragon Bile, Blood Vendetta, Wooden Double and so on. Also it takes two feats, three if you want to not be in the frontline with Anoint Ally.
Yeah, while strong, don't need to be nerfed, Bard can give bonus to all allies without resource cost and then expending resource can increase that bonus to +2/+3. Also have Dirge of Doom, that is automatic frightened and that ones is status penalty on EVERYTHING. And if you are a big optmizer then at some point you basically spam Heroism scrolls as it becomes cheap moneywise for +1/+2.
Well... I was kinda fine before, but after seeing how Sorcerer is turning out, the Wizard being the way that it is is not even acceptable anymore. Sorcerer Spoiler: Like Sorcerer having Dangerous Sorcery by default, the bad focus spells changed (Dragon instead of dragon claw now have a ranged spell attack that hit two creatures and Imperial for 1 action gets +1/2/3 spell attack or the enemy -1/2/3 on their save) and then all the blood magic feats that gives bonus to your spells, including one that do d6 damage per rank spell of the spell that triggered around you (with reflex save though).
It's pretty much the strongest non-core class,
Optimization wise you only need the Attack of Opportunity and the Weighty Impact leaving you pretty free to pick anything else with the other 8 feat slots.
They are cool, not my type of flavor though and I have a few problems with them. Thaumaturge I have problems with the hand economy, specially with the passive ones and the balance between implements is not really something to write home about, exist Tome that gives great skill flexibility the intensify of it is great and you don't even have to hold it for the best part of it... then lantern exist in the other axis, basically the Rogue lvl 1 feat, could at least make the light of it only be visible to you or something like that so at least you could do some unique shenanigans. Psychic is mainly the "unamped" form of the spells with like 3 exceptions, as they are not good without the focus point.
What elemental stuff you think that the class should have? We have sending creatures into the air with flinging updraft, surf around the field with water dance, create a stone construct and have a jet move on fire, so what other unconventional or non-direct damage impulses you would like? A few of mine: - A fire reaction to put a barrier of fire around you, kinda like the water one but fire, hurting the attacker. - Still on fire reaction, a smoke reaction making you concealed or hidden from the triggering attack. - A hole earth impulse, where the heck are my holes or fissures?
They will definitely need some more incentive for going mono element with that spread. Dedicated gates could have like a die size higher in their blasts, so Water/Earth d10, Fire d8 and Air d6, kinda like a Barbarian with like giant Instinct, but instead of clumsy you are being limited to a single element.
It ends up being. Air, horrible blast but actually good impulses, the flinging updraft and fly impulses are great. Earth, good blast but meh early impulses, the best thing here is the overpowered 2 action wall of stone. Fire, decent blast, also meh early impulses, horrid ignition is pretty great however. Water, good blast, decent impulses and really good auras, get control as early as lvl 6 with wall of water (very easy to put in a way that an enemy have to stride + swim + stride to reach to you), the lvl 18 moon impulse have an amazing name but it does suck though.
If a summoner keeps their big ass Eidolon out to avoid the 3 actions to manifest it, I can't see why not you can't have your arm on fire.
Book of the Dead was divine based and a big book.
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