...Why does it feel like this thread has become more about the Magus than the Psychic?
If there's a fruit stand in business selling oranges and someone wants to discuss why that fruit stand is doing so much business, it will naturally lead to a discussion of the clientele when it turns out that there's a huge scurvy problem in the city's population, and the only other vendor selling oranges is charging way too much for smaller pieces of fruit.
I'm not convinced the underlying math at low levels is problematic. I suspect that perception stems far more from the imbalances found in some of the earlier adventure path modules, which are known to have been calibrated poorly as the rules were still being written at the time.
The lack of an HP buffer combined with the most rapid period of numerical scaling in the game objectively make combats against higher level enemies more lethal. You are correct that the early modules are balanced poorly, but part of that is just that the encounter-building guidelines are not functional at low level. A single APL+2 enemy feels more like a severe (or rarely extreme) threat at those levels. APL+3 is a nightmare.
I also, personally, think the encounter-building guidelines have a hard time hitting "engaging, but not lethal" at low levels. My experience is that there's barely any daylight between "snoozefest" and "people are getting crit to the ground frequently" if you follow the encounter builder, especially with the lack of APL-3 or APL-4 enemies to fluff out encounters.
I can vouch for this, I dont really think the math underneath it is problematic but its rather obvious this game is balanced around the usage of resources to decrease encounter difficulty, And it really is levels 1-3 where you absolutely don't have these resources while the math itself remains the tightest where a single point actually makes a whole lotta difference.
It of course makes sense that any of the options, choices, or resources that one would use to have a greater degree of control are unavailable at the earliest levels, both to enforce a sense of progression and to reduce complexity of decision-making for brand new player or for players that prefer to ease into understanding mechanical complexity. Having to consider many different actions from access to feats, or having a supply of situational consumables would not be well-suited to the earliest levels, and would mean an increased overhead in starting out the game.
Since the party doesn't have these things (they either can't at all in the case of feats or generally don't have the resources in the case of items or spells), though, it doesn't make sense that there isn't a greater accounting for this in the balance of the game. That is to say, there is (generally) no particular reason from a narrative storytelling perspective nor from a mechanically satisfying game-feel perspective that combat at the earliest levels should be especially deadly. If anything, this would feel more satisfying in many campaigns if it escalated rather than de-escalated. To achieve this, there should likely be special provisions in encounter building and the underlying logic at low levels or adjustments to expected accuracy and damage from enemies that operate at those level ranges to account for this that just are not present in the current state of the game. There would obviously be ripple effects to these changes (if 4th Level creatures were weakened to a degree that they could be suitable as extreme encounters against parties of brand new characters, this would make them worse as level -2 fodder against 6th Level parties who are practically existing in a different universe from 1st Level characters), so it isn't as simple as just suggesting a blanket change and being done with it.
For experienced players, a solution could simply be to avoid playing at those levels at all...but then this returns to the original topic at hand. There are many different reasons why new players and/or GMs may not want to begin at a level above 1, and even if they were willing to they would need to be exposed to the notion in the first place to even consider it. The game really does a less than ideal job easing in new players.
I do understand where you're coming from based on the substance of my posts, but it would be more accurate to characterize my thesis statement as, "The difference in power between a character making optimal use of the increased ability scores from pureblooded Azlanti vs. the power of any given core race is significantly lower than the difference in power created organically by simply playing the game 'normally' due to circumstances that are generally considered acceptable despite creating far greater disparity."
You could argue that, "No one is asking for this comparison," but I feel like advice under the circumstances is best characterized by further trying to give an impression of the degree of the unfair advantage, which is going to result in subjective interpretation and disagreement, but should also be possible to reach a range of general consensus over given time and debate.
If one envisions two 1st Level characters who are otherwise identical, and then one of them is given a single CL 1 Potion of Cure Light Wounds, there is no debate that one of those characters has an objective advantage over the other, but I doubt many people would spend a great deal of time trying to convince others that this difference will be impactful or meaningful over the course of each character's adventuring career, given that the item will long be forgotten before reaching 3rd Level.
This difference is obviously much more substantial than that; I am not trying to characterize the difference in power between a CRB race and Azlanti as being that minor. I am saying, though, that I think allowing two different players to bring a Barbarian and a Wizard into the same party is already far more egregious mark against intra-party balance than any that will be caused by the existence of one or more Azlanti. There simply is not that much to optimize about the bonuses provided by the Azlanti as hard as one tries.
If I think about characters who would gain the most benefit from being Azlanti, using the racial bonus to its utmost, in general my mind goes to certain Monk setups, frontline Clerics and Druids, and frontline Shamans (or Spirit Guide Oracles) that want to make use of their Charisma-based (Wisdom-based) features (especially Lore as a Wandering Spirit). Certainly, Cleric, Druid, Shaman, and Spirit Guide Oracle are not classes/archetypes in need of any help, though assuming the option is one that it offered to players across the board, Azlanti will still provide the greatest comparative benefit to a martial over a caster (even though most casters would still be quite happy to take the option), since martials are almost invariably dependent on finding ways to nurture a greater spread of higher ability scores (the same logic and circumstances under which it can be shown that reducing Point Buy has a lower impact on most full casters than the impact on most martials).
A strong, well-built character already has a mechanism for obtaining a racial boost to the ability scores that they care the most about simply by selecting the race that will boost those ability scores. By extending that logic, you could compare it to the value of a mechanic that already exists; spending gold to buy belts and headbands. Everyone will prioritize their single most important physical and/or mental ability score first (obviously). Eventually, with enormous amounts of gold available in middle and high levels, players may go about seeking out belts and headbands that also apply to their less relevant ability scores (especially with boosting saving throws in mind), but many times these will still get neglected even when both the gold and the item(s) are present and available simply because they're comparatively a very inefficient way to spend wealth until very late. If it was so desirable to obtain these increases to less used ability scores, I would expect Belts and Headbands of Physical/Mental Perfection to be far more popular pieces of equipment than what experience shows me people value them at. You can literally see the degree and comparative value/urgency players place on upgrading secondary ability scores through this same lens.
Compared to the next best racial option for a particular build, Azlanti sacrifice all other racial abilities for a +2 racial ability score bonus to the four or five less valued ability scores (from the creating player's perspective). This is definitely still desirable from a power optimization standpoint, but it isn't going to split the game apart mechanically. It really depends on how important maintaining intra-party parity is to the GM and to the table in the first place...but if it was really that important, I would say that a table that cares deeply should be examining many other assumptions of the game first, and would likely possess the analysis skills required to draw their own subjective conclusions. At that point, it would be far easier to choose a different game system altogether that actually values parity.
They're just different degrees of overpowered. (Ab)use and knowledge of Pathfinder 1e mechanics is a continuum. The ability score bonuses to Azlanti will, in many cases, allow the creation of more effective characters, especially in scenarios where players either aren't aware of certain optimization methods, or aren't using them.
Allowing a player to create a pureblood Azlanti character over a core race will be much less impactful than allowing or not allowing things that are already much more prevalent and accepted at a wide variety of tables, like allowing vs. not allowing Stinking Cloud, Teleport, Phantasmal Web, Grease, Emergency Force Sphere, and any number of other "modest" powerful spells and abilities that don't completely deconstruct the world like a painter Wizard, but are far more significant than a character gaining an extra hit point per level and being 5% more likely to make their saving throws and most skill checks.
When any of us play a wizard do you try to set up your daily casting based on the same spell set up you would expect to cast as a sorcerer?
Just to jump ahead so you know where my head is at, I am thinking this is kind of why anyone who looks at the sorcerer would just say its flat out better. I mean it is flat out stronger at damage per spell, has many rider effects on casting certain spells. It is stronger when casting the same thing.
In Deriven's case he feels hes found the best spells and doesnt need more than the 30 or so spells throughout a 1-20 play through.
I can see why that would get boring quick too with no special class features to change things up from just casting those 30 or so spells.
And really all the schools play almost exactly the same. Focus spells are not strong enough to differentiate playstyle. Curriculum seems to be a thing people are just trying to avoid and compensate for rather than lean into anyway from this threads comments. There is no interaction between curriculum chosen and thesis chosen. The more spells different wizards collect the more the similar they become.
So really if a wizard is weak aside from focus spells and a limited 4th slot it comes down to spells. Ive said it before. If spell diversity is not actually powerful then spells then are the problem with the wizard who essentially branches out to casting more of a variety of them then anyone else and whose best class feature is one extra cast per day.
I'm in agreement with Deriven on this point. I simply do not believe that there is a wide enough variability in spells for the ability of the Wizard to prepare situation-specific spells to actually matter in a meaningful way. This relates back to the point that has been brought up many times about "silver bullet" spells being weak or essentially not existing (in the way they do in other systems) within PF2e. Slow is a reliable sledgehammer that never gets old and even works with reasonable efficacy against the types of targets who should be the worst possible target choices for it. Its existence pushes out so many potential competing debuff options that any minor benefit they could provide is rendered barely worth the effort. Even though the Wizard has the freedom to prepare these more specific options, even with advance scouting knowledge it is unlikely that their grasp of the situation is so extensive and their knowledge so ironclad that it is worth committing to an option that does not really provide much additional power.
If there were, for example, a spell called "Mangle Aboleth" and it was a non-incapacitation spell that had no effect if it didn't target an aboleth but provided significantly more powerful effects compared to other spells of its level in both damage and debuffs, that would certainly allow one to make a reasonable argument that a Wizard could, unequivocally, have a distinct advantage over Sorcerers in some situations (such as knowing they will need to fight many aboleths the following day). No Sorcerer would ever take this spell, but a Wizard could gleefully add it to their ever-growing spellbook and prepare multiple uses of it when it's useful. If enough spells like this existed, the Wizard could then operate in a situation where they could genuinely use their foreknowledge to a meaningful advantage. The problem is that spells that work this way really just don't exist any more. I'm not making the argument that they should be brought back, but I am saying that this is a design change that explicitly weakens prepared casting, especially a prepared caster that doesn't even gain access to every spell on their list for free.
Phrased a different way, to return to your example from much earlier about preparing for a hag in a swamp versus an ogre in the mountains, the issue is that having that degree of information still does not provide enough knowledge to make meaningfully different decisions when preparing for combat. Since the generic logic remains the same, the Sorcerer is always better off in this situation. If you knew every single enemy you were going to be fighting against, and had reliable information on their saving throws, and you knew that there was no chance that the enemies you were going to be fighting would change or prepare differently, you would have enough information to potentially eliminate all spells targeting a specific saving throw if you're sure that won't show up as an optimal target...but you still might prep Slow anyway even if you're sure nothing has a low Fort save just because it's that useful.
If there is a way in which a Wizard maintains some significant benefit over an Arcane Sorcerer, it's in taking on the job of maintaining utilities and infrastructure in a country over many years. As the savvy Sorcerer player would point out, though, the Sorcerer can certainly retrain their spells known to deal with this situation as well. They would be worse off if they were suddenly caught in an ambush or assassination attempt with their spells less optimized for combat, though...but the Wizard probably wouldn't be any better off, since they're not likely to have advance warning about such an attack either.
In Pathfinder 1e, when people were discussing martial-caster disparity, it was common for knowledgeable players to say things like, "Mundane combat isn't the main issue. Of course martials are great at taking attacks and dealing damage. (Though you often need casters to deal with specialist invisible/flying/arrow-repelling enemies.) It's everything else that's the real problem. Out of combat, a Fighter is no better than a commoner, while casters can solve every problem with flight, scrying, teleportation, divining the future, mind control, protection from energy, neutralising poison, raising the dead, triggering traps with summoned monsters, breathing underwater, dispelling magic, creating walls, turning invisible, turning into animals, etc."
I don't see many people saying things like that any more. Do people find these issues largely go away with PF2 (due to fewer overpowered spells, modern adventure design, etc.), or does PF2's combat balance make combat ability feel more important in comparison?
It's a combination of many different factors, though the crux of it is that they combine to eliminate that disparity.
The first is that access to these features is possible in a way that simply did not exist in PF1e. There's a Human Ancestry feat that grants access to Fly. Any martial can sacrifice 4 class feats and dip their toes into a caster archetype to gain essential utility if they need to. Imagine the implications if a PF1e Fighter could have done this, how much it would have closed the buff and utility gap! Half-Elves can take an Ancestry feat for Haste...if you decide it's even worth taking — and that's the second part of this.
Many of the things previously valued are simply not available or not available in a meaningfully powerful or reliable form to anyone. Flight is still extremely important, but for most of a character's career, long-term versions of it simply don't exist whether you're a caster or not, which goes a long way toward closing the gap between the benefit of gaining it from, say, a consumable/magic item, or being able to cast it yourself. Across the board, the utility of relying on consumables is comparatively higher, since caster level scaling isn't a factor, either. If a PF1e character did make use of a consumable to replicate utility, it would still be inferior to what the caster could produce — that's generally not so here. Effects that are still powerful often have harsher limits placed upon them, and are in effect simply "not allowed" to break the game in ways they used to. Invisibility is great, but it will never work against a major opponent it isn't "supposed" to work against, because they will always have access to the appropriate level of See the Unseen to counter it. This is obviously also true of every single Incapacitate effect (which also includes most forms of mind control).
Teleport is Uncommon by default. I don't really see it getting banned/prohibited, but it still can't be assumed available in any game by default. In games where it is allowed, it is still absurdly powerful; incomparably so. And yet, Teleport is a spell level higher than it previously was, takes 100x as long to cast (making it impossible to use as a "get out of jail free" card), and travels 11% of its previous maximum distance at the time you gained access to it in PF1e two levels earlier.
Not all traps can be dealt with via summoned monsters due to an altered approach to trap design. Even if they can, the decreased value of summon spells across the board makes them undesirable to use for that purpose since they're immensely less flexible.
Read Omens, the PF2e counterpart to the spell Divination, is Uncommon just like Teleport. Commune is an Uncommon ritual that replaces both Commune and Contact Other Plane. If permitted, it is now capable of failure (in contrast to PF1e Commune) and allows fewer questions.
It isn't that anything/everything in utility is bad, but the truly noteworthy outliers have been hammered down almost universally. For those that have not, access is now immensely easier. The entire landscape is different.
He started off as a Goblin Gunslinger. I was never planning to take more than 5 levels in Gunslinger from the beginning, but I honestly didn't know where the character or build were going at the time the campaign started. I had taken the Called trait and worked with the GM to be clear that I didn't necessarily want it to represent a divine voice, just that he heard something that caused him to occasionally get distracted right before he would catastrophically miss a crucial shot.
The GM ended up playing it straight, though, which led into four levels of Warpriest, which was probably optimal. At that point, he was already well ahead of most of the party's power curve, and had (due to events within the campaign) just gained the ability to read via divine intervention, so he took to reading voraciously and I wanted to represent that mechanically with two classes that used books as part of their class features, so I picked up the first level of Wizard and Alchemist. He more or less became a holy crusader at that point, so instead of continuing Warpriest, I started down Paladin because I wanted his divine abilities to have a tighter restriction on them than they did previously, and represent a closer bond. He had absolutely terrible Charisma, though, so I went Tortured Crusader. I put a second level into Grenadier because I wanted his alchemical abilities to have a bit more mechanical representation and I wanted the second level archetype features, then the rest into Paladin.
I suppose, since it's a viewpoint I haven't seen anyone else specifically express yet here, I'd also point out (as a GM who actively encourages players to simply play whatever they want and not worry about gaps in composition, and am willing to deal with the consequences of that) that PF2e is not a game that caters well to player B's positions or desires. In essence, while players have learned much better what exactly works and doesn't, PF2e was created with a "meta" in mind from the very beginning by the creators of the game. While it (theoretically) gives limitless freedom while coloring within these lines, there are fundamental assumptions about the system and play within it that groups are expected to abide by. The fact that the math of the game was tightened to a high degree also means that there are specific factors that are generally assumed to be true in establishing difficulty and making the game work.
Getting fundamental runes off-curve will cause the encounter-building rules to not operate properly, breaking one of the features that many people find highly-desirable about the system.
Not maximizing Key Ability Score (in the vast majority of cases) will be a significant mistake that will affect difficulty.
Not having a source of consistent healing to use between encounters (not necessarily in-combat healing) will generally be a bigger problem than a lot of other gaps, which is why any character can fill this role with Medicine.
To a lesser extent, being a skill generalist (taking many skills up to Trained instead of focusing on advancing three skills to Expert, Master, and Legendary that don't overlap with other party members) will make things harder.
None of these factors are absolutely required, and you can break every rule I listed and still have fun, but it will require either increasingly favorable variance, an acceptance of a very deadly game, or additional work on the part of the GM to account for the "soft rules" being broken. I just think that from the ground up, PF2e is not designed with a philosophy or mentality that support the kind of experience player B seems to be describing as desirable. Still, I could be misreading the situation. There are different "degrees" of following or adhering to a meta, and I'm not privy to the exact details of the discussion; just trying to throw out a set of thoughts that may have been a blind spot.
Category Newly Risen God
Areas of Concern Storytelling, Lovers who abandon all others, Acquisition of wealth and affluence
Edicts Be true to your own desires even when doing so harms others, become an inspiration and a muse to those you favor, manipulate people other than your lover to your advantage
Anathema Betray or cheat on your lover, perform a deliberate beneficial act for those you dislike without receiving adequate compensation, tell a tale or story for a purpose other than to share its beauty
Sanctification Can be Unholy
Domains Passion, Confidence, Trickery, Wealth
Alternate Domains Family (effects only work on yourself or your lover), Freedom (effects only work on yourself or your lover)
Cleric Spells 1st: Mindlink, 5th: Illusory Scene, 8th: Dream Council Divine Ability Intelligence or Charisma
Divine Font Heal or Harm
Divine Skill Performance
Favored Weapon Pick
Aside from what Cyouni said, I can confirm that most of what you heard/were told is accurate, but specifically the part about how the adventure concludes is not. While the Heroes of Undarin was created with the intent of killing the party, it explicitly does not require the entire party to die, and even has an adventure conclusion text box written to be read aloud if there's at least one surviving party member. The likelihood of this occurring would be incredibly low, though.
It wouldn't have made for a very good test if it assumed the conclusion. While the adventure was heavily stacked to wipe the party, the whole point of the mass testing was to see how much force would push the party beyond the breaking point (both the minimum, and on average) with a large enough group of testers to get back meaningful results. Therefore, it also needed to handle the test case that Paizo had vastly underestimated what a party could handle, and that they would need to tune things up in the future if large amounts of people reported success.
When I think about the answer to the question, "What are the best arcane spells?" the first thing that occurs to me is that establishing meaningful criteria is going to be paramount to make any sense of the ensuing list. Most of the most powerful spells are in the upper levels if not 100% consisting of 9th-level spells, but in terms of practical use-cases, if all the good spells were 9th-level, no one would think that arcane magic was particularly good. With that said, I feel like a proper evaluation of what makes arcane power meaningful needs to take into account the value of a spell not simply at 17th or 20th character level, but the value of the spell for the entire time a character is in use. If a spell is so strong that it is still valuable even at 20th character level, so much the better, but it is even more important if it was a game-changer at 5th character level, 6th character level, etc.
As such, the resulting list I present is skewed heavily toward the spells that come online early and stay strong for the caster's entire career. I have also excluded a couple of Bard/Skald spells that would have made the list, but felt out-of-place ranked among a primarily Wizard set.
Honorable Mention: Color Spray
While it doesn't quite make the cut for my pick of the top ten arcane spells in all of Pathfinder, Color Spray is a very worthy contender. Capable of wiping out encounters on its own at Level 1 or Level 2, even at Level 20 a Wizard could still ostensibly find a use for this gem. With DCs scaled high enough, an AoE stun on a failed save is still a great use for a standard action against weaker opponents when conserving resources. Of course, the flaws with Color Spray are readily apparent -- short range, and the inability to affect creatures immune to mind-affecting effects. These are major issues, but the spell is so good at such a wide level range that it nearly makes the cut despite those problems.
Honorable Mention: Wall of Stone
Wall of Stone isn't the most durable wall an arcane caster can create, but its ability to take on literally any shape is what makes this spell such a force to be reckoned with. Such a wide variety of problems can be solved with the sudden creation of a permanent chunk of stone in the shape of the caster's choosing that it's hard to find weaknesses here; the biggest problem with Wall of Stone is that it's a 5th-level spell, but it's just so versatile that it barely makes the cut despite that and continues to be useful for the rest of any Wizard's career that chooses to prepare it.
10th: Invisibility
This one is more GM-dependent. I've seen tables where this spell is practically useless, but unless one is living in a world where people with permanent See Invisibility or True Seeing are commonplace, this spell splits scenarios wide open. A large part of the power of Invisibility is that it comes online at 2nd-level. Obviously, this spell has very little combat value by the end of one's career in an adventuring party, but the problems that this spell solves, it utterly obliterates.
9th: Mirror Image
Another 2nd-level spell foiled by True Seeing, Mirror Image is the biggest crux behind a Wizard's ability to mock non-magical attempts to protect one from harm. Why bother with AC when you can conveniently ignore it and not get hit anyway? It doesn't help that the types of opponents one most wants to be protected from with Mirror Image are exactly the ones that are least likely to possess the hard counter to it. If "clever" counterplay to your strategy is forcing your opponent to deliberately close their eyes and spend an extra feat to still come up short-handed, one could call your defense strategy overwhelmingly successful.
8th: Dispel Magic
Detractors from this spell are quick to point out that it does indeed have a very real chance of failure, but no other single spell can come close to being able to solve as many problems as Dispel Magic. While it does require an investment of feats, you can greatly improve your odds of success by spending two feats -- considering most of the worst problems you would ever want to solve can be solved with Dispel Magic, it feels like an easy investment to me. Even without, you still have a decent chance of success as long as you're not fighting casters 5+ levels higher. In that sense, it continues to become more useful as you level up, as it's simply more likely that anything you want to dispel will have been created by a weaker caster.
7th: Haste
Pound for pound, there is no better statistical buff in the game relative to the resource expended to obtain it. The raw damage contribution of Haste in a party with multiple martials is insane. The fact that it can also reduce damage with higher AC and Reflex saves is fantastic, as well as enabling tactical options that would otherwise have been impossible with the increased movement makes it peerless as a numerical buff.
6th: Stinking Cloud
Like Color Spray, there are enemies immune to poison, and Stinking Cloud isn't effective against them. Thankfully, there are fewer opponents immune to poison than there are opponents immune to mind-affecting, and Stinking Cloud's benefits over the lower-leveled crowd control don't stop there. While the vision effect can be a hindrance when used poorly, the capability of disrupting a fight and splitting an enemy party is astounding. A single casting of this spell can end entire encounters for all intents and purposes.
5th: Silent Image
Convey thoughts to creatures that don't even have a language. Remove any doubt as to whether or not you're talking about the same figure in a brown cloak. Make a wall. Show nothing but empty space where others wait in ambush. Silent Image isn't as powerful as Minor Image or Major Image (or other spells down that spell line), but that's because it's the weakest of the bunch and can already solve innumerable problems. The benefits of the spell are indeed foiled by True Seeing, but its versatility extends far beyond the limits of Invisibility or Color Spray.
4th: Fly
Haste may be the strongest numerical buff when compared to the resources expended to gain it, but the ability to move in three dimensions instead of two is greater still, making this the most valuable arcane buff spell by my reckoning. Ignore terrain. Take unexpected entrances. Make a mockery of any opponent without a ranged attack as strong as their melee option. This spell absolutely devastates any situation not specifically set up to take it into account.
3rd: Emergency Force Sphere
Why counter an enemy spell when you can break line of effect as an immediate action? Emergency Force Sphere casually beats any 9th-level spell that actually needs to be targeted or maintain line of effect to its target by the time of resolution. It also does an excellent job averting raw physical harm for a brief period of time, but the spell's benefits shine far greater against supernatural forces than they do against melee weaponry (which can actually break the sphere in fairly short order as martials scale in power). This spell has been banned at a majority of tables I've played at, and I think the games have been better for it...
2nd: Blood Money
...But the number of times I've seen Emergency Force Sphere banned can't hold a candle to my pick for the second spot, Blood Money. Destroy economies. Attain limitless power. This is a signature spell of a specific figure for a reason, and any situation where a caster is allowed a reasonable amount of time to use it will quickly grow out of control.
1st: Teleport
Yet strangely, in first place is a spell I rarely see banned. I don't ban it. Yet people are certainly aware of its power to disrupt campaigns. Launch a surprise attack on the enemy leader. Escape with your companions. Stop two catastrophic events on opposite sides of a continent (or start them!). It may not become available until 5th-level spells, but Teleport is without peer in the ability to change and influence the events of a world. As such, I can only place it at the top of the list.
I don't, because I don't feel like there's a need to. I don't orchestrate or force story elements nor to I overtly set things up to be explicitly dramatic in presentation or telling. I don't do campaigns with a "final boss" or a "big bad evil guy," because it isn't up to me to determine who the party will view as an ally, an antagonist, or just an element of the world that's acceptable to exist and carry on.
I focus on scenarios instead, and make sure that people are bringing in characters who will have a stake in said situation. It's important to me that the characters will want to engage in some way with the ongoing events, and I have a responsibility as a GM to let them know what types of events they'll be encountering and caution some concepts/backstories while encouraging others. But once that stage of creation is done, I believe in letting things unfold as they will.
Certainly, my campaigns have "villainous" people in them from time to time, but I simply play them as they are, with their own motivations and reasons for acting (whether those are normal and understandable or alien/borderline incomprehensible due to literally being inhuman monstrosities with unrelatable thoughts). Again, it's up to the party to decide if these entities are an acceptable part of the world or not (and also determine how they'll approach dealing with them regardless of how they feel).
I like the organic storytelling approach. Without a BBEG though, how do you get to a climax within your campaigns? I can see letting the BBEG develop based upon whom the PC's fixate on, but don't you still need someone/thing to provide the antagonist, the conflict, for your party?
Again, this is ultimately up to the party to determine. I focus on playing the characters and situations as they are. The party will create their own "monsters," so to speak, based on the situation. This does require more care, thought, and planning into the situation so that there will be an enticing scenario no matter who the party decides to air or who the party decides to fight, though it's something I've certainly gotten better at over time doing so.
Example of a scenario:
Rediscovery of an ancient trans-continental teleportation system has led to a series of swift conquests by the nation that discovered it. Much of humanity has now been violently (but successfully) united under a single banner, with talk in the air of turning the eye of conquest toward the lands controlled by longer-lived races. With the potential for an even more catastrophic war on the horizon between humanity and a united front of elves and dwarves, the campaign begins with the party being members of a mercenary company with members of mixed heritage whose leader is torn on whose side to take in the current situation.
From here, the party can truly decide to do as they like. They could wait for a conclusion to be reached and stay with the company. They could disband and strike off on their own (before or after a verdict) and form their own smaller company. They could influence the outcome of the decision in favor of the one they prefer. They could seek out a way to overthrow the current leader and make the entire company their own. They could try to play both sides against the middle as spies, working against both factions intermittently and hoping not to get caught. They could opt to investigate each more closely, trying to establish relationships with leaders on either side before they commit to a decision.
Regardless of what path they choose, the conflict is going to escalate. In the face of potential disaster, both major factions in the war will begin to make sacrifices in the name of loss. These decisions are different, and will surely have different weight to different people. One might accept the decisions of a particular general as a necessary evil in times of war, but find another choice inexcusable. Both sides have hard-willed leaders at the top who will not back down. One of these could be the final encounter...but they don't need to be.
Maybe the party actually assassinates the leader of the human forces, hoping to end the war of aggression by bringing in the more mild-mannered prince as the new king. This works! However, the prince has different plans in mind for the portal network that, once discovered, lead to fears that it might destabilize the entire plane in the vicinity of the continent -- this actually leads to the war shifting to one of aggression from the elves! The party would then need to decide to aid the elves, or decide that humanity doesn't deserve this fate -- the prince's desires are born out of a hope to improve many lives, and the elves can't prove they won't work; just that he could fail.
Every single action the party takes leads to its natural consequences. As they grow stronger, they will be capable of leaving a greater footprint on the world, and dealing with larger threats. This will also very likely lead to others looking to them with hopes, and having those burdens placed on their shoulders. Whether they choose to bear them or shrug them off is up to the party, but conflict will naturally escalate in a well-built scenario. What the final confrontation will be is impossible for me to say at the outset of a campaign I'm running, though I could certainly give four or five solid guesses. I might have an idea of who the party will face based on their ideals, or where the battle might take place based on what I know about ongoing events, but nothing is writ in stone. The outcome ultimately leads to the intersection of three factors:
-The final escalation of all the ongoing events
-The party's personal ideals and beliefs; what they will give their all to fight for (since this is what they use to establish who their real enemies are)
-The consequences and fallout of previous major events and decisions (their final opponent can't already be dead, of course, and others who might have stood in their way might opt for a different course based on past actions)
I don't, because I don't feel like there's a need to. I don't orchestrate or force story elements nor to I overtly set things up to be explicitly dramatic in presentation or telling. I don't do campaigns with a "final boss" or a "big bad evil guy," because it isn't up to me to determine who the party will view as an ally, an antagonist, or just an element of the world that's acceptable to exist and carry on.
I focus on scenarios instead, and make sure that people are bringing in characters who will have a stake in said situation. It's important to me that the characters will want to engage in some way with the ongoing events, and I have a responsibility as a GM to let them know what types of events they'll be encountering and caution some concepts/backstories while encouraging others. But once that stage of creation is done, I believe in letting things unfold as they will.
Certainly, my campaigns have "villainous" people in them from time to time, but I simply play them as they are, with their own motivations and reasons for acting (whether those are normal and understandable or alien/borderline incomprehensible due to literally being inhuman monstrosities with unrelatable thoughts). Again, it's up to the party to decide if these entities are an acceptable part of the world or not (and also determine how they'll approach dealing with them regardless of how they feel).
The only people I've seen dabble in it tend to be at the intersection of "extremely knowledgeable about all system rules and mechanics" and "...but I still want to focus on making a concept come to life even if the mechanics involved end up fairly bad."
You know, I'd have expected the opposite - new(ish) players who haven't gotten out of the "I have this character idea that I absolutely must do without even the slightest deviation in flavor or classes" phase. You know, the type of player to use weird multiclassing to grab a tiny thing you could've gotten with a trait, and uses prestige classes (especially Eldritch Knight and Dragon Disciple), and usually only uses CRB classes (because of the class names - "I want my character to be good at fighting, so I must have Fighter levels!").
I'd expect players with ample system mastery to be able to find option for virtually every character concept that don't leave ASF chance.
I think a lot of this has to do with player mentality, table norms, and assumptions. I do think there is some truth to the notion that newer players can come into the hobby somewhat "starry-eyed," not feeling bound by expectations that veterans of years or decades take as incontrovertible truth, but I think that's just one type of player. The aspects of the game that appeal to someone on a fundamental level generally aren't going to change. Someone who wants to play tabletop because they're excited to engage in roleplay and considers mechanics a secondary appeal may gradually get better with their mechanics over time, but it would take an event beyond the game (as in, a personal change) to push them into a position where they would start prioritizing mechanics. On the opposite side of that same coin, I would say the vast majority of new Pathfinder players I've encountered have enough mechanical care and gumption to take one glance at ASF, see that it represents a chance at not actually using their standard action, and immediately conclude that it's a mechanic for suckers. They could just as easily have rewritten the rules to say, "Any of these things that give any percent chance of arcane spell failure cause 100% of all arcane spells to fail" in the eyes of these players, because any arcane caster they play will always maintain a 0% ASF chance forever -- which is also norm for most people. And that brings me to my second point:
Most groups and tables assume you'll just stick with an ASF of 0%. Even if you're more roleplay-focused, you do still need to make a number of mechanical choices. I find that rather than making the awful multiclass builds that are stereotypically attributed to these players, they're perfectly happy to request the advice of one or more of a group's rule or build experts to create a character that will function well with the types of abilities they want them to possess, and then devote their own brainpower to worrying about the character's story, past, and development. They generally have no issue with someone explaining to them, "You'll actually get more of what you're looking for if you splash a level of a different class than you had in mind and change one of your archetypes instead of those two Fighter levels." Naturally, groups that don't have or encourage this kind of cooperative dynamic may be more likely to have players who flounder if mechanics aren't their thing. It can also depend on the pride and mentality of the individual.
On a less broad level and speaking from my personal experience, I've played at a lot of different tables with wildly different groups of people. I've played at no-nonsense tables that demand high optimization every step of the way...but I've also played at tables with TWF characters getting STR to damage with 10 STR and no damage add-ons like Sneak Attack. I've seen a Magus who used Spell Combat as their full-round action about 10% of the time it was the best choice. When I'm at a table with these kinds of groups, I am going to pace my character's strength to a degree appropriate to what the table finds fun and fitting -- not bring in a Wizard specialized in Stinking Cloud and/or Phantasmal Web. That means that unless optimization is the name of the game, there's a lot more room to work with in character concepts. When the accepted standard is an 8th-level martial character dealing less damage than any modestly mechanics-focused player could with a 1st-level greatsword Fighter, it's perfectly okay to take that 5% or even 10% ASF, or build a Gunslinger that misfires on 1-3. I've even brought out multiple of those "awful" unoptimized multiclass builds and played them myself, still accidentally outshining other party members just by making the mechanical pieces fit together better even if the class combination is purely worse than going all of one or the other.
There's another side to this as well, which is that you talk about all the methods one can use to get out of ASF for a character concept. This is a much more table-dependent point and will probably apply to a considerably smaller portion of players, but I've played at plenty of tables where there are very fundamental differences between using arcane and divine magic from world lore perspectives. Things that can affect how the rest of the world and even allies perceive a person. Things that can limit or change choices and options available, like differences in the ability to research custom spells based on house rules. These circumstances will obviously vary so greatly that it's impossible to make any blanket arguments about them, but it's still worth considering that there may be more mechanically relevant reasons based on table variation to accept some ASF once in a blue moon than are readily apparent in the direct rules of the game.
EDIT: Adding on to my thoughts at the end of the third paragraph, I'd go as far as to say that milking the most power possible out of dysfunctional builds has actually become a hobby of mine. Just building a bad character isn't mechanically engaging. Character building is fundamentally like a puzzle to me. But accepting a limitation like distributing equal character levels in three classes for an entire character's career, when all three can't be martial -- that's a proper challenge. Sometimes I still overshoot my mark like I mentioned, but it's a way to engage with Pathfinder's build mechanics at a level I can sink my teeth into while not bowling over anyone enjoying the game at their own pace.
Bullet Point Version:
-There are different kinds of new players; I personally find the type of person who makes poor build choices for the sake of concepts represents a minority of them
-I've found it to be an almost universal norm to have and maintain 0% ASF, which is propagated as a school of thought beyond individual tables
-Players who aren't mechanics-focused, regardless of whether they're new or not, will generally be happy to accept advice from others if offered which leads to them quickly removing any ASF they might have considered
-Tables have huge optimization variance, making potentially self-crippling mechanics viable or even interesting depending on the group
-The existence of potentially deep houserules or world lore can still present situations where taking ASF is more meaningful or viable than it first appears, but this can't really be assessed except to note that there can be cases where it applies
I have played, been in a party with, and GM'd for characters with an ASF chance. With that said...in my experience (extensive, but still anecdotal at the end of the day), ASF is exceedingly rare. The only people I've seen dabble in it tend to be at the intersection of "extremely knowledgeable about all system rules and mechanics" and "...but I still want to focus on making a concept come to life even if the mechanics involved end up fairly bad."
If you're an arcane caster, you are almost guaranteed to have access to much better ways to protect yourself than AC, so even if you're getting a substantial amount of AC by combining the feat line with low ASF armor/equipment to reduce the amount to an acceptable value, it's almost never going to be the best solution. The only times you would do it are just because you like the concept, or if the arcane aspect of the character is very low-impact and it's not going to make or break your day if one of your 1st-level spells fails.
To clarify in more succinct terms:
1. Exceedingly rarely, but not unheard of.
2. Always. If you're running ASF, you either have no idea what you're doing (and will likely quickly correct it after someone points it out) or you tend to know exactly what you're doing, as far as my personal experience.
I don't like being told what to do. Period. I absolutely want the wiggle room to be selfish and cruel. I want the illusion of choice.
Also, I feel playing a Paladin is a commitment to a cause... that mindset is exhausting, even to roleplay. If I cannot do the concept justice, I won't even bother. Gotta be in the right mood to take on that role.
For as little as I care about religion, there's something about the Paladin class I madly respect. And I refuse to half-@$$ it just for some stupid mechanical reason like Smite or Divine Grace. There is a certain part of that unwaivering devotion that is intriguing, it is awe inspiring. Paladins are supposed to be these bastions of hope and goodness.
Me, personally, I am not that convicted in anything. I am fickle and wishy-washy by comparison, and there's that part of me that looks up to the steadfast nature of the Paladin. I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I played a Paladin poorly. The concept, itself, deserves reverence in my opinion... and that is a lot of baggage to bring to a fantasy game. I refuse to be that last little glimmer of hope that flickers out in the darkness...
Seeing a Paladin fall should be terrifying and sad for everyone involved. You should feel betrayed and disappointed. It should be emotionally crushing to even witness. The infallible has fallen, everything you held dear is a lie, you should be mad that the Paladin tricked you into thinking they would do right at the end. You should feel like your best friend just revealed they are someone else entirely. The world should suddenly seem big and scary because things you held as fact became fiction before your eyes.
I don't think I am explaining myself correctly, so I am going to just stop.
I feel like I see fully eye-to-eye with you about 2% of the time, but that was an absolutely magnificent way to phrase those thoughts. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post.
For myself, I like Paladins a great deal, though I don't view them in quite the same way. I do see them as the embodiment of ideals, but I have always house-ruled that Paladins are the highest calling of divine warriors to a particular deity, and must match the alignment of the deity they serve (which can be of any alignment). They can be of any alignment, and receive slightly different class features depending on what faith they serve. A Paladin, to me, is akin to a warrior-philosopher. They may uphold very different ideals, but a Paladin, above all, represents more than the fate of a single soul. They are as beacons. They might be beacons of righteousness and goodness, or they might embody the most terrifying fates imaginable given form through the mortal will to carry them out, but the presence of a Paladin is something that should always affect those around them.
Occultist, hands down. I never get tired of coming up with new Occultist builds, and they perform so differently depending on the build order that even if you end up heading in a similar direction long-term, they can feel like a completely different class because of how different they are in the interim. They do suffer from really needing to burn a standard action at the start of most battles to unleash their full strength, but two thirds casting, occult skill unlocks, and the suite of other utility features they bring to the table more than makes up for it in my eyes.
Compare to the Monster Creation guidelines and you have roughly an answer. Ideally as a DM, you're tweaking encounters to your party's general level of skill. Our goal as DMs are to present challenges but not so ludicrous that the players can't win. I guess a thing to remember is that the players are supposed to win. Or rather, the players should generally be favored to win. Circumstances might change that a bit, maybe bad decisions might put them in a disadvantageous position and bring that favor more closely to the 50/50. A truly disastrous string of actions may favor their own doom.
The simple answer as to why you don't do this is...The DM will always win any kind of possible arms race. No ifs ands or buts. The party dies? The game is probably over. Very very few campaigns can simply pick back up with a new party. A dead party jars players from actually being immersed in what's going on if they need to roll up new characters every book.
Just my 2 cp.
I'd also add to this (and in response to Mark Hoover's post directly above), while there is certainly an artistry to optimization and build creation, these aren't steps you're required to go through as a GM nor is there any particular benefit to doing so. You are already choosing the level and available resources of the opponents in question. You are choosing their special abilities and templates. You don't need to have created a hyper-optimized character if you want an entity to deal damage in a certain range -- you could simply put something there that does that damage with a low-optimization setup that requires significantly less work, if that's how strong the opponent is supposed to be.
My own mentality with the design of NPCs is always driven by simulationism. Even if I think it's likely that a particular character will become an opponent of the party, I don't design them as a "villain" in the first place, but rather give them the abilities appropriate to them for who they are in the world and setting. I love the granularity Pathfinder provides for fleshing out characters and adding small elements of depth, and make extensive use of them when creating elements of the world...but not for the sake of optimization.
Spending extensive effort to create an elaborate build for maximum potential at a specific level is a great deal more work when you could have simply changed some ability scores around and put in something 3 levels higher. You are already choosing what level best approximates the strength of opponent the party is fighting. I feel like there is a mentality that if it's possible to create a build that does X, Y, or Z at a particular level, that makes it "fair" for that level. An exercise in justifying the challenges they present. But it's well-established that CR is an extremely flawed system in the best of cases, and outright nonsense at worst. From the players' side of the table in the midst of combat, the difficulty that went into creating the build of their opponents means nothing -- only the challenges they present, regardless of whether they're reasonable or unreasonable.
Since the capabilities of a party at any given level will vary greatly (as has been demonstrated by showing contrasting builds at specific levels in this topic already), how dangerous a certain encounter is will always be relative to the party facing them. This is one of those areas where you simply need to learn the thresholds and strengths of the party in question, ideally erring on the conservative side for the reasons Scavion mentioned before you get a really good grasp on them. Experience helps, but even that can still be imperfect since player tactics and expertise can still mean more than how good their build is.
Edit: Also something I see rarely mentioned, though encounter more often at the table, is the concept of enemies with poor tactics. These could be a result of personal philosophies, grudges, or biases, but the point being that an enemy that should be far too powerful may be prone to making poor decisions -- not in a misguided effort to "go easy" on the PCs, but in the interests of being true to their character. This can be a tricky thing to present, but it again shows that difficulty is an intricate spectrum, since an opponent may not always bring the full destructive potential they have to bear. Just another thing muddying the waters of what kind of "challenge" is appropriate to a given party.
"The situation's turning dire/
we can't succeed with ease/
we might not last for six more seconds/
so could you slow down for a bit, please?"
Paralyze
"I really wish you'd just hold still/
sudden movements leave me quite ill/
so by my power this day you'll rue/
I'll stand still four seconds, you stand two."
Sleep
"I'd be so happy if you'd just pass out/
your deepest rest I would foment/
I hoped this incantation would bore you to slumber/
but weren't you at least distracted a moment?"
I have never done this, nor am I greatly interested in playing in campaigns where this kind of thing is prevalent, but I also don't want to make it sound like I'm implying that it's intrinsically wrong. Different people are looking for different experiences, after all. As a GM, I want to bring the world to life and make the experience as organic and immersive as possible, and I try to seek out the same type of experiences when I'm a player. With that said, I've seen it more than a couple times from the player side.
To answer the actual question posed, though -- I think the best way to deliver "the quest" is...don't. Don't do it. There is no "the quest." Or at least, there doesn't need to be. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be goals in the campaign, whether it's a broad overarching task or simply a set of things the party has set up as their present goals, but there's no need to frame it in a game-like sense. At the end of the day, the players are calling the shots and making the decisions. I am handling everything else.
To frame it another way, if there is any "quest" in a game I am running, then it's one that's been delivered by organic dialogue anyway. Someone has, as a real person with real wants/needs/goals within the setting, either asked, told, or commanded the party to do something. And they can do it, refuse, or inquire further at their own discretion, as well as reap the consequences of those choices, both good and ill.
I'm not responding to any one person in relation to the subject matter, but more to the topic of paid GMing in VTTs as a whole -- this is a subject I'm fairly passionate about for reasons I hope would be understandable.
I've been a full-time professional GM for several years now, and a GM of tabletop games in general for over two decades. I know that experience dwarfs some and is dwarfed by others, but I'm neither new to the hobby nor the oldest on the block. I've also been fairly active over that span of time, sometimes playing and running in a combination of ten sessions a week for long spans of time.
To address the matter of player retention first -- I don't think it's a big deal. I know it can be hard when you're earning your living off of it to deal with setbacks and extenuating circumstances with player attendance and departure, but in my experience that is always going to be the norm. I realize my accounts are purely anecdotal, but it doesn't matter whether you're hosting free games, paid games, any kind of games...player turnover is always going to be an issue to some extent or another. I've actually had more issues with players leaving in the private game I run for my personal friends than I have in any game I've run for pay in the past few years.
To the matter of price -- I always try to have a good handle on the market, so I frequently check what other GMs of varying quality and presentation are running for places in their games. From my perspective, your rates seem perfectly reasonable. I charge more, but I also offer what I consider a highly premium service amongst professional GMs, and routinely check on competitors to make sure I'm always offering the best quality available. I certainly don't think the price you're asking for is outrageous if you're providing GMing on par with other professional GMs in that range I've looked into...but I do think that being a professional GM of even middling quality is, as others have said, an immense amount of work. When you're running a game for free, some players might be more discontent than others if you neglect a few of the twenty or so hats a GM is expected to wear, but you either need to be proficient with most if not all of them to get by when you're selling your services, or be so outstanding in a few of them that players are willing to overlook your deficiencies and still pay, ideally marketing yourself with your best foot forward. None of this is a comment on your own skills, RD; I have no idea where you lie on the spectrum, but this is just how I see the environment. People are paying for a service and expect quality -- they want nice maps, music, tokens, acting, voices, pacing, group management, clear rules adjudication, interesting area design, world consistency, world and area lore, and so on (some of these apply more to homebrew than to running modules, but being able to do either is important if you're trying to optimize your client base; flexibility will always net you more). Not everyone wants every thing, but the other thing is that clients don't need to be reasonable in their expectations, either. You can do everything right and still lose someone who thinks they can do better for the price elsewhere even if they're wrong.
All of that said, demand for paid GMs has been absolutely insane the last few years, especially since early last year. As life continues to return to normal I expect part of that spike will decline, but even before disaster struck last year there was still a growing and significant demand for people with the skills. I think the market is still volatile, scary, and unreliable in the best of times, but it's definitely possible to make a living at it if you're willing to put in the legwork. I could certainly make more and work fewer hours at many other jobs, and honestly sometimes GMing can be a waking nightmare...but I also wouldn't have the opportunity to experience days where I can wake up at noon with all of my prep for the evening done with the knowledge that I run games for a living.
