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If the psychic is a sorcerer and oracle is a sorcerer. Then as I said earlier, a bard must be a sorcerer and I just realized that a witch, druid, and cleric are just wizards. A barbarian, ranger and champion are just fighters. Investigator is just a rogue. Did I miss one?

Foxes are just cats cosplaying as dogs!

Whatever part of the team worked on the Poppet ancestry, thank you! I've always wanted an ancestry like this in a D20 game and I absolutely adore it. Capital job for real.

Hoping for a dedicated shapeshifting class still I guess. One that isn't nature themed, ideally.

I was still looking for advice and really appreciated the thoughts!

I had almost taken it for granted that she was, tbh.

Hey guys,

So, I am looking to play a monk who specializes in using the Fighting Fan for my next game. The GM is allowing a free archetype (so dual-weapon warrior, assassin, etc) are all on the table. If possible, I was hoping to make the build useable with two fighting fans. I've been considering human (of course) and elf (despite the con penalty) because having two fighting fans and a speed of 35-40 ft sounds ridiculously cool.

This is entirely motivated by aesthetic and rule-of-cool. I'm not looking for an excellent, top-tier build, just something that's good enough.

I will note that GM would allow me to take the Fighting Fan with unconventional weaponry, so a dex-to-damage rogue is on the table if I go human.

Any ideas?

My best bet here would probably be cringe.

The attacker is then immune to your Cringe for 24 hours.

This feat needs to be amended. There is no possible way anyone could ever be immune to my Cringe.

2: Plot matters in an RPG. If it doesn't advance the plot, it shouldn't be an encounter.

I feel like is much more true of a novel than an RPG. I often have encounters, locations, details, items and characters who have absolutely nothing to do with the plot so that the world feels much more real and doesn't revolve around the players. In my group, this seems to be appreciated, at least. It adds a lot of roleplay opportunities, a lot of fun fights, allows for some interesting character development, etc. If everything gets focused on the plot I find the above things actually begin to become less common, because the story and world begins to feel fake. The plot (such as "quest to defeat the Lich or what have you") might be narrative miles away at any given time.

In an AP, you can only do this so much- and I would recommend doing it mostly with non-combat encounters so it doesn't become super tedious, but "irrelevant" things (for me, at least) almost have to be there for the world to not feel off somehow.

Repeated encounters with spider swarms probably would be a pointless Hell, though.

Ostensibly this thread: "How well balanced is the wizard compared to other classes and monsters?"

Actually this thread: "If a bard casts in the woods, and no one's around to clap, was it a performance?"

it's way better than tentacles who will indiscriminately hentai the hell out of everyone.

I laughed at this for like a full thirty seconds.

For me, it's not real summoning unless it comes from the Summoné region of Galt. Otherwise, it's *Sparkling Conjuration*.

So one thing is that while it's not impossible to imagine a bard or a cleric or a druid whose goals are something like "world domination", this does sort of work against the themes of those classes. None of these classes are normally great schemers and their whole schtick involves "helping or working with others."

Wizards get the nod because "knows what's best, believes they should be in charge, and has the acumen to pull it off" works against precisely none of the class themes. Like when the big bad is a druid, or a bard that's a subversion.

This is nitpicking, but a bard trying to conquer the world or what have you is definitely not subversion. They're iconic leaders, schemers, villains, and rulers.

I've just called "studded leather" as "brigandine" in every edition, both to remove studded leather and represent brigandine. Two birds with one magic missile.

Can you quote me, please, saying that 10th level spell slots are what balances Wizard? I may have said that was a nice perk - and it was - but I've been adamant repeatedly that extra spell slots in general is what balances Wizard.

I think my main issue with this argument remains that (at least, in my games) extra spell slots get spent simply trying to get up to par with other characters in terms of defense and survivability due to the very low hp and saves of sorcerers/wizards. A little bit of this wouldn't be a bad thing. After all, maintaining the idea that all of a wizards powers comes from his spells can just be flavorful rather than an issue if all balances out.

Just in my experience it doesn't, and I mean vs monsters, not players. Wizards and sorcerers have pretty bad saves compared to other PCs and when they get targeted with effects (which is fairly frequently, them being combatants and all) and thus they tend to have a much higher rate of critical failure than other characters or just failure in general.

There's something grimly amusing to me that a wizard is equally vulnerable to a fighter with canny acumen to will saves at almost all levels, assuming both buffed wisdom to the same degree, and yet more vulnerable to everything else.

A lot of their defense options via spells or feats don't come online until mid-game at least, and with at least primal sorcerers, ever (it's a very offensive list in my experience and the few defensive options do little to protect you. If you're a druid, that's fine, if you're a sorcerer, "oh no".) Almost never do those extra spell slots get used to have fun or do something cool, which feels like it defeats the purpose in my case.

Either an extra spell slot at each level for both classes or saves on par with other casters (but not martials) would have fixed this, imo. Couple that with very slightly buffed cantrip damage and maybe an item to boost spell attack rolls and I would have few complaints that wouldn't just be nitpicking.

At the end of the day, I try not to give myself over to the hyperbole that has characterized caster/martial disparity in so many editions, and I would agree the classes are by no means unplayable or totally unfun...but there do seem to be a few slight problems to me that a handful of errata could correct.

I still just wish wizard/sorcerer had saves on par with other casters and that their perception was a bit better.

True Strike is nowhere near as valid a solution as is constantly suggested, simply because a huge amount of casters will never get it.

It's only a band-aid in specific instances. I don't deny its effectiveness, and I would recommend it to a player if it meshed with their concept and their class or character had access to it, but I would like to issue another reminder that this is a much more situational solution than it is presented as frequently on the forums.

It's akin to hearing "Monks in pf1 are very underpowered" and replying with "Not if you play these two specific archetypes, they're not!"

Do people's wizards get targeted by many truly debilitating effects that often?

A lot of GMs tend to spread enemy effects and damage around, which means inevitably you're going to get targeted and you're going to have lower odds to withstand in a lot of cases.

You can use your spells to protect yourself somewhat, but that's less that you have to go on the offensive- and you're a sorcerer or a wizard. Contributing with your spells is all you can do. Every spell spent to survive an effect on yourself is a spell that didn't help your party, but, not to be cliched- the fighter or bard or druid have decent odds to survive on their own and keep contributing all the while.

The more spells you spend just to survive too, is more spells that you didn't actually have over the Bard or Druid or what you have. Your "spell advantage" was illusionary. Buffing saves (reasonably) was the first tweak to spellcasters I made in home games, personally.

Oh absolutely. Turning around to the GM who is kindly offering everyone a free archetype, throwing back in their face and demanding special treatment is definitely a recipe for hurt feelings.

Eh, doesn't feel like rudeness or demanding special treatment to me. "I'm interested in this game, but would rather have X option than Y" feels pretty reasonable. Of course the GM is free to object, but I don't see that many reasons too unless they have a very specific vision for the game and a mold they absolutely need the players to follow. But, different strokes and all.

If your players don't want it you're under no obligation to provide them with something else in return. Just put the offer on the table and they can take it or leave it.

This feels like a recipe for hurt feelings. Leaving one player out just because they weren't interested in such an option has the potential to really not go well.

I'm curious about spell range now that someone has brought it up. In ten+ years of gaming, I have never been in a situation in which a 500ft range fireball was better than a 30 ft cone purely for the range.

Indeed, as another example, I have never seen the second range increment of a longbow even used. Anything past 100 ft or so basically ceases to exist in every game I've played in, and I can't recall a lot of times in APs where this would have come up either (Ironfang, maybe?)

How atypical is my experience? Do people really get a lot of value out of the longbows range or fireball etc? I've never seen it factor in. Where does it happen? How do players set that up? How many times have you actually seen someone cast a fireball at 300 ft?

Unicore wrote:

It feels like this thread and the thread, "some thoughts on 2nd Ed." have switched topics.

I might blame this on the fact that I chose the wrong class for the objective I wanted (which is all-day powerful blasting potential), but Wizards are leagues and bounds behind classes like Witches and Sorcerers as a result of not knowing what sort of niche the Wizard is supposed to fill.

If you mean to imply to sorcerer fills a "blasting" niche, I can't entirely agree because there's a lot of ways you can try and go with a sorcerer. Hag debuffing, imperial generalist, angelic healer, etc. They don't fall into just one category (although quality of sorcerers varies widely.) I'll say a blaster sorcerer might be the "best" way to play one (even if I am not a fan of that) but optimal builds aren't the only ones that exist.

I'll admit I am very biased here, though, as blasters have always been my least favorite way to play casters and sorcerers have always been a favorite class so I am glad they were kept out of that niche somewhat (and honestly, I wish Dangerous Sorcery had just been Dangerous Wizardry and a class bonus for the evoker.) Druids feel like the best blasters overall, to me, but that's as speculative as any answer.

I guess in my ideal world, sorcerers would have been the best casters in terms of spell slots and raw magic power and wizards would have occupied the "versatile caster" niche. I suppose that ship has sailed, but as it stands neither class is really all that good regardless of what niche you consider it to occupy.

But what niche does witch fill? Debuffing? I don't know that she's great at it, even versus monsters of any level.

In any case, I am still wondering from earlier in the thread how true strike helps attack roll spells be viable across the board when a huge amount of casters don't get it. It feels like across the board optimal builds are the only ones that get considered in these threads. What if you have a primal caster making a lot of spell attack rolls without it? It seems like a lot of novice to moderate players could easily make that mistake.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

#2: I've added an item adding +1 to +3 to spell attack rolls. It also grants an additional attack cantrip. I may have the higher level versions grant once per day spells at some point, but I haven't decided for sure.

Did you consider just making this a property rune that goes on a weapon, allowing the Weapons Potency Rune to apply to spell attacks?

It seems like the "lightest weight" solution if you wanted to go this direction, creates parity across all classes, and creates both a gold and minor opportunity cost (in addition to gold, theres also the rune slot and need to wield a weapon) but it also has the double benefit of encouraging casters to care about weapons like martials do - and helps them have a stronger third action if they need to smack someone.

Weapon runes that gave casters cool casting benefits would actually be indescribably awesome, in general, and really mesh particularly with the Magus I feel.

Now, if you are a GM, and you are aware of all of these potential issues, and your players really scoff at the idea of using true strike, but really want to keep choosing spell attack roll spells, I think it is fine to homebrew solutions like items that give...

I get you, but "scoff at the idea of using true strike" doesn't really apply to the large amount of casters who don't get it. It doesn't provide any real support unless all casters get it.

A primal sorcerer might really want to use a fair amount of spell attack roll spells, for example, and probably didn't go with that option just to spite the true strike spell.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

HammerJack wrote:

I think it's a little harder to add an item at this point, just because they wouldn't want something that changes the fundamental math of all the casting classes to be outside of core.

Honestly, an item for attack rolls only in the Secrets of Magic book seems totally plausible to me. That fiddles with the math, sure, but really only for a very narrow subset of spells, and it's the first actual magic book, so magic essential items being in it makes sense to me.

Yeah, honestly I don't think a Spell Potency that started at +1 at level 5, and went up to +2 at 15 would break anything, alternatively a one action metamagic that applied the effect of True Strike to a spell, but with no slot expenditure required.

I'm actually going to be testing "True Strike as metamagic" in a home game soonish. Seemed like a fun idea to me.

Which is somewhat amusing to me, I admit, as I remember asking one of the designers about the design goals for sorcerers and having more spells than other spellcasters seemed high on that list.

Of course, priorities shift and this was years ago during the playtest, but I still can't help but chuckle. Wizards still ended up with more, even though that was considered to have been one of the problems with the 1st edition wizard/sorcerer paradigm.

Ubertron_X wrote:

KrispyXIV wrote:

But the base chassis is perfectly functional, and I assume a lot of people (like myself) feel that the best way to help Wizard is curated and balanced new content, and not a massive boost to the base chassis.

The thing is that regardsless of class this does not work for people that limit themselves to the holy trinity of CRB, GMG and MM. So unless the CRB gets a reprint or we get an update like 3.0 => 3.5 classes that currently struggle will continue to struggle.

But I mean, if someone has a problem with Core but doesn't want to use stuff outside Core, isn't that sort of a self-made problem?

I think he meant like play at tables with certain kinds of GMs, etc. If I'm not mistaken.

If nothing else, I feel that all casters should get saves and perception on par with bards, clerics, and druids.

Yeah, it's definitely *not* a competitive game. At all.

But, I do dislike that some classes are just allowed to be and remain better than others (I assume for fear of swinging the pendulum back the other way.) It does the game a huge disservice to never correct these odd quirks. In mild cases it's fine but sometimes gaps can get relatively large.

Of course, some people feel like because a certain class is viable, it's fine if it's not as useful or mechanically interesting as another class. Essentially, it's playable and contributes, and you know- game of imagination and all- so who cares?

I just fundamentally disagree with the philosophy. In my very subjective and personal experience (before any one yells at me because I don't have a 100,000 surveys sourced lol) players can often get disappointed with a class they previously enjoyed just watching how much another class in the same arena can outshine them. Sometimes they really just should have been playing another class, or they played "poorly" as people love to say here, or the other players just got lucky etc. But sometimes, no matter how hard it can be to believe, it really can just be the game.

Of course, some people like bland classes so they can imagine and play them however they want (which is completely valid) so it's probably more down to taste than anything. To say nothing of how utterly subjective "bland" can also be.

I guess (again, I, personally- merely myself) have never been able to sell a player on what amounts to "Eh, it can't do or have any of the extra things the bard can do or have, but it does one of the bard's things well enough that after level 5 you might not notice, and the party will succeed so that should be fun enough for you of course." No matter how beautifully worded.

Staffan Johansson wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

If you focus on a wild shape druid building up strength using point buy you will end up with a 22 strength with an Apex Item. This will give you a +35 to hit.

24 proficiency +6 strength +3 item +2 Status = +35. One less than a master proficiency martial.

On top of this, you will get a good damage martial attack with temporary hit points, increased mobility, reach, size, and sometimes a breath weapon or some other benefit.

It's a very viable build.

I think you misunderstood my point. It wasn't that wild shape was bad, it definitely isn't. My point was that the +2 status bonus isn't what makes it good, because for the most part the inherent attack bonus of the form is the same as the one you'd get from your class, or one better the level after you get the new form.

I'll admit to not considering an apex item though, which gives the class bonus a one-point advantage from level 14 on, assuming you wouldn't rather have the +2 to Wisdom.

I'm going out the +2 status bonus built into the ability is very nice compared to a wizard.

If you're going to go all in for shapeshifting, Apex item on strength is the way to go. If you roll stats rather than do point buy, you might even be able to push this to +36 with a maxed out strength.

That's the gist of the issue in my opinion. Wizard's just don't have these options to build really cool characters around their schools. Their schools offer some usually lame focus spell with one other upgrades. Whereas druids or bards or clerics offer very thematic builds built around powerful abilities like wild shape or tempest surge, maestro or polymath, or divine font. The wizard is supposedly this specialist in the magic of a particular school and they get an extra spell slot and a weak focus spell.

You would think an evocation wizard would unleash awe-inspiring destruction, but I'd take a storm druid or sorcerer for awe-inspiring blasting. You would think a transmutation wizard would be...

I'll say that while the sorcerer is a slightly better blaster, that's about where the advantage ends. You do anything else with a sorcerer, they're equally lackluster, and a divine sorcerer or occult sorcerer is just a cleric/bard without any of the additional features of those things.

A dedicated polymorphing class is something I have always wanted. It doesn't need to be a caster. Just the ability to shapeshift for every fight, and not just into animals but other cool things (dragons, aberrations, whatever.)

Obviously it would have to be limited (sort of like the polymorph spells just let you refluff certain stat blocks) but thematically it would be cool and would make an amazing magical martial (just probably without any actual magical ability outside of shapeshifting- but what more do you need as long as its buffed to be an effective, all day option?)

Midnightoker wrote:

I'm not sure what range of Lore you're allowed to apply as a selector though.

I think there's still contention on whether Lore (Undead) is legal, especially considering one of the examples in the book is Lore (Vampire), which is a much smaller subsection of Undead (thus sort of by extension implies Undead is "too broad").

That said, I think at my tables I've sort of just decided that the degree of specialization under the Lore skill derives the difficulty of the DC (aka Lore Undead DC on a Vampire a 25 DC, Lore Vampire is a 20 DC, and maybe Religion is a DC 27 standard).

I'm running this as a degrees of specificity myself.

Lore (Undead) is meaningfully more restricted than Religion, and therefore relevant checks are Easy (-2).

Lore (Vampires) is meaningfully more restricted than Lore (Undead), which is more restricted than the base skill Religion, and therefore relevant checks are Very Easy (-5).

Same thing would apply for things like Lore (Fiends) vs Lore (Demons).

I think the person in my group who GMs when I don't would really go along with this system, and now I love the idea of a character obsessed with a single very specific monster like owlbears who's legendary in the skill and knows every possible thing about them at the lowest possible DC.

It wouldn't be super useful of course, but the idea is amusing and wouldn't really cost any significant resources.

Arcane and Occult are fine with longstrider, mirror image, blur, levitate and invisibility all as powerful low level spells that help you stay alive.

Divine and Primal however do fall behind there lacking those options. Ofc classes with those spell lists are generally hardier but the fewer spells they have like Barkskin just don’t stand up well.

This is also a place where things like scrolls and wands work nicely since most of these defensive spells are low level and you can be pretty effective using minimal gold for upgrades there.

This is honestly my biggest problem with the way spells get divided up. A primal sorcerer for instance having few of the defensive options of the Druid or the arcane spell list alike.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Martialmasters wrote:

Bard is not broken or near broken. It may be binary but it's also the base level of caster performance. Less than bard and it's underpowered.

Bard level power should be baseline for casters. All casters should be around bard power level.

No offense, but this is an incredibly silly view of balance.

If I could take a 1-action effect which let me increase the whole party's effectiveness by ~15%, it'd be a near guaranteed pick on every character.

That's the Bard's level 1 skill.

I'm a tad confused on your position. Are you saying the bard is not merely good, but in fact overpowered?

Are you saying that the bard has something very good, but only they should have something of that level of power (regardless of what the power is, such as buff, debuff, battlefield control etc.) in order to create something of "ceiling of usefulness" we know other casters shouldn't be able to reach? In other words, we should pick a casting class, make it the best, and then balance all other casters below it just to be safe for the sake of the game?

Or are you assuming Deriven meant that all casters should be able to use bard cantrips?

I think what Deriven meant to imply in any case was not that all casters should be bardic super buffers, but in that in their own arena, they should feel like equivalent options to play (rather than say, the witch feeling worse at debuffing, arguably its shtick, than the bard does at buffing.)

There's not much of a game balance reason why Bards, Clerics, and Druids get better armor, better weapons, and more HP compared to Sorcerers, Wizards, and Witches.

While not exactly the OPs topic, the issue most people have is that clerics, druids, and bards get a lot more than just that. Better saves, better focus spells, better perception, etc. Individual druids and clerics are a bit more hit/miss on some of that, but bards as far as I know are across the board.

That said, the thread is comparing one of the weakest classes to arguably the best class in the game pound for pound, so that discrepancy was bound to be huge (though not as big as those gaps were in PF1, and definitely wizards, witches and sorcerers are playable if curiously conservatively tuned.)

The ability to pick up multiple hex cantrips and a few more powerful hex options and feats in general would do a lot for the witch. They could be raised in power a full 25% and still wouldn't come close to threatening the core classes overall imo.

It's true an arcane witch in that scenario might outclass a wizard, but almost everything right now outclasses the wizard. A better solution to that might be to fix the wizard (I guess ideally through new options for the poor mages.) Sorcerers need a lot of love too.

As long as they keep the bard as the ceiling it currently is, I don't think they actually risk power creep in the rules. They do have to be a little careful, of course, but I don't think they need to wring their hands over it.

Honestly, the only thing that still leaves me a bit irritated regarding casters in PF2 is the fact that I feel the sorcerer was really left in a rough place. If nothing else, I would have preferred the sorcerer at least have been the undisputed master of spell slots. It shouldn't be tied with anyone in that arena, especially considering it was designed to do that and not have anything else going for it as a consequence. Spontaneous casting, imo, is not nearly as strong as the devs believe and free auto-heightening plus a maximum of 5 slots or something would have kept the class actually relevant in regards to the Druid or Bard.

Of course there's a lot of general issues (divine sorcerers vs clerics, occult sorcerers vs bards, etc.) that also bring them down but at least let them cast more than anyone else (on paper, it currently appears that they do but they're actually tied in a few cases if you factor everything in, specialist wizards and so on). It's all they can do, why not let them do it?

Some items that boosted spell attack rolls, though, or a metamagic feat that functioned like true strike with a per day limit usage and an extra action cost or something would be cool for everyone. At least then the other two spell lists could approximate it.

How to save the wizard or alchemist, I'm really not sure. All other casters are gold, with the bard arguably having been too much.

I'm not sure what else to say. There are multiple posts on this thread detailing the ancestry, class, and archetype options that have been published in PF2 as of October 2020 that can help someone create a reasonable approximation of the Winter Witch character concept in this game.

I get that they don't entirely fit your vision for what a Winter Witch should be, but what do you expect us to do? Break into the Paizo Offices and hold a gun to the design team's head long enough for them to write one up? Right now, there is no official Winter Witch archetype and no indications of when or even if one will be officially published.

I don't know about all that, but I just wanted to contribute to the amount of people hoping for one.

Sure, you could create a somewhat reasonable approximation with current mechanics (as you could with many things that got dedicated archetypes or options too) but having a neat cold caster package that you could slap onto different characters would be cool. The Viking archetype for places like the Linnorm Kingdoms was cool, a mammoth rider would be cool for the mammoth lords (if there isn't one already) and if they do end up doing one for Irrisen, a winter witch (even if its class agnostic, which would actually rule) would be a perfect fit imo.

Sure, it's a bit niche, like Aldori Swordlords or Grey Maidens etc but a lot of people love it and it would just be fun. Nothing occupies that spot the whole package could perfectly (what if I want to be a cold resistant Changeling Witch, I think wintertouched human would be off limits?) etc.

No, my avatar in no way indicates I have strong feelings about this, why do you ask?

Ultimately, it's a pretty unique thing to Golarion (in the form that it's in) and huge in the lore, so it's really likely to get ported at some point.

I desperately hope they make one. I need it.

Attracting new players is good. For that, you need to make things simpler where you can, only keeping something that is worth keeping. Ability scores, spell levels and the use of d20s are some examples in my opinion of things that are just being kept for the sake of tradition.

That's actually not true in the way you're implying. There's a point of diminishing returns where you start losing old players for the sake of gaining new ones.

But the thing is, even this gain of new players only happens in the short term, because old players do the bulk of the work of bringing in new ones. Alienate them too much? You actually cost yourself a lot of new players as well. You also need those people to teach the game to new players, and that will be hard to do if you have a huge break from form.

You have to balance the needed changes carefully with your already existing customer base. Paizo did this very, very, well, and most of the more extreme changes you're proposing really could only have happened in a vacuum and preserved the company I think.

We also have the fact that "tradition" is innately good in this kind of scenario so long as it isn't harmful. That is to say, that continuity is something people like for the sake of it, and that's a net gain on its own, not a neutral thing.

In other words, all something has to be in order to be worth keeping is "not actively bad" (such as ability scores.) It's implicitly good on its own, so long as it isn't causing harm or confusion. It's inverse of change in this kind of scenario. The goal is to build an ever improving system, not radical experimental shifts that drive long time fans and friends away.

As an example, ironically enough, we come from different worlds on on the ability score issue. I have had many more new players who would have been confused by the idea of pure modifiers rather than also having stats, because video games especially have ingrained the idea that stats are a thing. Paizo alone changing that would just be confusing, not innovative, even if again as other forum-goers say in a vacuum it would be reasonable.

People like familiarity and tradition. This is why, although you could suddenly change the rules of soccer to be "better" (subjectively) it isn't likely to happen (and for that matter, probably wouldn't attract new fans. Like anything you hit a certain maximum of the people who would ever be interested.)

Paizo did a great job of understanding this, keeping the traditions that were aesthetically or mechanically valuable and slaughtering the sacred cows that had to go. They knew old players were needed to grow the fan base, and that things had to still be streamlined overall to attract new people at a steady rate. They knew things had to be somewhat simplified to attract new players, but not become so simple that no one stayed due to lack of depth (or just played 5e because why compete with them that directly?) They did a great job overall.

Incidentally, I am confused by what you meant in one of your posts by "in the wider world there are no d20s" etc. Isn't D&D hugely successful by any metric? Like, monumentally, pop-culture/my grandmother knows what it is/ successful? Did I mistake you?

Humans are a superior variety of goblin. They adapt to any environment, and have a heavy tendency to cross breed with any nearby species.

I definitely missed the update where goblins had a heavy tendency to crossbreed with other ancestries. No wonder they went from ostracized to common citizens so quickly...

I definitely don't understand people well enough to RP knowing human lore. Most confusing ancestry to be honest.

You don't change for the sake of it. You change because the proposed change is good.

Most of the things you described aren't leftovers, they're features. No reason to "leave them behind" just so you can innovate. Innovation is great but it comes about for genuine need. With things like the d20 etc. they're already perfect as they are and Paizo would be changing them just to look cool (and mechanically, for the worse).

The two exceptions are Vancian casting (which I've never been huge on) and the ability score thing (which Rysky explained perfectly).

So uh, how about this weather we're having, right?

Just dropping in to say this thread's idea is really good.

Last I checked, Sorcerers having their spell list tied to bloodline was supposed to be the big draw to the class. I guess Paizo decided "Hey, let's do the same thing here, the Sorcerer isn't being trampled to the ground enough by the other classes having much better powers and tools at their disposal."

Man. I felt this in my soul.

I thought the books actually went into this when I read them. Am I wrong? Saying "they'll have to wait until she's redeemed, etc."

keftiu wrote:

This is the next game from the Kingmaker devs, Owlcat Games. Info seems scarce at the moment, but they've confirmed Witch and Oracle will be in, along with a new race that I haven't seen elaborated on yet.

Any hopes, expectations, fears?

Wrath can get pretty dark though and very adult with all the demons and corruption about so that'll be interesting to see how its handled.

That's what makes it fun! Let's let the adults have something for once.

I think making one dimensional caster's who focus on mainly one thing has always bad.

This isn't an argument per se, but a salt-to-taste type thing. I enjoy playing hyper-specialized casters such as save-or-suck Enchanters or Cold Caster builds in much the same way someone loves playing a dexterous rogue or a fighter who specializes in greatswords. Nobody is wrong for wanting casters who can't over specialize to dominate one area of the game (although I would disagree that thats unfun or overpowered to allow), but I don't like that my favorite thing has become far less viable.

I will say I wanted sorcerers to be able to heighten at will. I just don't think they were as good without it, and I don't buy the choice paralysis argument.

Ultimately, a lot of this comes down to preference, vision for the game, etc. But most of the serious "casters were over nerfed arguments" won't appear here because this board tends to lean heavily in favor of Paizo's design decisions for obvious reasons. Not that there are not plenty of dissenters, of course, but the majority of dissent is going to be found in reddit/rpgnet/random forum here etc. To get a good argument, you'll need to go somewhere else and talk to somebody WAY smarter than me, or get lucky and bait one of the wise old timers here on the other side to feel wordy.

Both sides also accuse the other side of being the hostile perpetrators of bad faith arguments and disagreements, which probably perpetuates the endless cycle of these threads.

I am a minority-of-one on my view of casting in any case, it seems. My lonely camp is "only blasting is good now" which seems to be the exact opposite of experience of everyone else. My view comes from play and armchair rocking alike.

I still enjoy the game and want it to thrive. I think some of the changes have been positive. I like that items are much more important to casters now, but I wish the spell DCs of casters scaled better and sooner. I want a spell to crit as often as a rogue's sword because while that would be more powerful, spells are also hardcapped now. There is no more infinite charisma/insane amount of spell shenanigans. You need to be getting more out of your best spells than a fighter does out of her mace, because you're waiting for those opportunities with a lot more eagerness.

I utterly despise the incapacitate trait, which prevents casters from ending encounters with spells like paralysis while for some reason, a fighter one-shotting the ogre with a crit is fine (this really happened in my game, it is not a hypothetical*.) The counter argument says its all about the cinema of the game. One simply doesn't feel good while the other feels exciting and like earning it. I disagree, but either opinion is arbitrary. It is gone from every one of my games until the end of time.

Basically, casters are not useless, they just lack the exciting interactions with the very good new action economy martials enjoy. Their DCs are close-ish but need to be better, they need for variety in terms of class features, etc. Some things were done to make them more viable but I just don't like the design direction.

For instance, casters can do a lot more non-magic things better now as a trade-off. I hate that. I want more magic, not more mace-swinging viability. To other people though, while a fighter can be all about fighting, a wizard who does only magic feels boring or silly. Again, opinions, opinions.

*The fighter did have some help from magic weapon to do this, but a caster's role should not be to simply help the martials. In any case, as far as I can tell he could have done it without the help. This is why healbots are bad and boring, in my eyes. The reverse is true. A fighter shouldn't just be a wizard's bodyguard for when black tentacles can't cut off enemy charges.

Why is Irrisen so awesome?