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I personally love Free Archetypes, it provides an additional layer of depth and character building that I really miss when I have to go without. Both as a player and as a GM, I've implemented and have implemented FA in a couple of different ways, and all of them are solid. I've done:
Of the above, Full has been the perference of both myself and the 3 groups I most common play with. The one I think people found the most annoying was the Different Multiclassing only. Martial archetypes for casters tend to be meh, but we didn't restrict anything beyond the MC options. These days, I find it hard to build a Wizard without FA to help me fill in the several holes in the class (but this a Wizard speific thing)
I was going to say that the Seneschal Witch new cantrip, Manifest Will, might have introduced a possible reason to play an Arcane Witch. But then the 6th level feat, Multifaceted Will, let's you do what you want with that route. Personally I'm really digging the Seneschal right now for it's more unique line of play.
Gives me the classic Black Blade/ Black Razor vibes.
The 14th level Archfiend feat, Manipulate Realm, seems to be in error. The feat doesn't grant the player the ability to use the listed actions beyond the initial use when they manifest their realm. Each action has a trigger of "Your previous action was to Sustain your manifested realm". The intention seems to be that you can perform one of the 3 listed free actions when you sustain your realm each round, and you can spend a mythic point when you first manifest your realm to use one as well. However the feat doesn't actually enable or allow this. So, on the whole, the feat doesn't actually seem to work.
I feel the reason Tumble Through gets interpreted as cheesy is because its mechanics just lead to really weird imagery: because as a baseline it lets you Stride with an additional benefit for the same action cost, it is strictly better to Tumble Through instead of any other type of movement unless you get a specific benefit tied to moving in some other way, which when applied in-game turns every encounter into a circus act where everyone's cartwheeling all over the place. This was the same with pre-errata Cloud Jump early in the edition. After 15th level, those with Quick Jump never walked again, everyone with access was Single-action long jumping everywhere because it was strictly better. Gave games a "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon vibe" which, If I'm honest, I was into. On topic, I guess Animist-Acrobats are going to be a thing.
The easiest way to fix this would be to make it not apply to Mythic proficient abilities, the same as every other option in the book, since most Mythic defensive abilities are meant to counteract non-Mythic effects in the first place, which makes sense; the main point of Mythic is to create a tier that can only be (reasonably) fought by entities on the same tier. Look at Mythic Resistance; you can only bypass it if you are also Mythic. Why Mythic Resilience isn't likewise balanced this way makes no sense. This is the only reasonable approach.
They need to get over it and change that their expectations of what an internally balanced game can be. /s
What kind of Mythic rituals are we looking at?Also, are there any new spells of regular play? Or is it all Mythic Spells? Are the old 1e time dilation exploits back?!
I pointed this out in the product thread, but this ability seems out of line. If we take the 11th level caster scenario from the above, the entire outcome structure is inverted. A 25% chance of success becomes a 75% chance of success. They would have a 95% to succeed on any non-mythic spells. Either Mythic Resilience needs a mythic point to power it, or it needs a bypass method. Otherwise this is just bad.
I saw some people talking about new Fighter feats. Did any other classes get additional feats, outside of class archetypes?Yes, the Avenger Class Archetype section has a little section stapled onto the end that provides two spear feats for the Rogue Ranger AND Fighter. Spear Rogue you say, now that could be interesting.
I think, ultimately, for the variation and nuance that can happen in and between any given encounter, the issue remains that there is the assumption of Item Bonus access baked into AC scaling. Meaning that spell attack will return worse results overall because they are favoured to do so. In any given individual encounter, your results will very on a number of factors, but the disadvantage gets you in the long run! That said, there are other ways to solve it without actually adding flat numbers. An item that allows you to treat your proficiency bonus for spell attacks as tier higher, placed at the right level, would have a similar effect without pushing the post 19 ceiling higher, for example.
I think it is fair to say the topic has evolved a bit. If we look at both player cores, we can see that Paizo have made changes to soften the problem. Wizard's got Knowledge is Power, Oracles got Whispers of Weakness and Sorcerers got Ancestral Memories. Not all of those are equal (not by a long shot...) but it does show that there has been a recognition that Spell Attack math is generally quite bad. But even before that, with the advent of the Kineticist and Gate Attenuator's giving a permanent item bonus to caster scaling, we see movement. That said, Paizo was pulling different levers with Kineticist in general. So yes, there is - general - and always has been a sore spot in regard to Spell Attacks. We have recently seen moves to soften that in some places. So the topic has progressed.
Standardised and inflexible Martial progression does not elicit much criticism though AFAIK. That's because it's only trying to do the one thing, which is treated the same at all times. Caster Progression is trying to do two things at once, which aren't treated equally. The games AC scaling assumes a normative progression on par with an optimised, master-tier, martial. Because caster progression is tied closely to save scaling instead of AC, spell attacks can't fit into this assumed progression. This makes Spell Attacks mechanically predisposed to fail against on-level and higher enemies. This issue could have been somewhat sidestepped if Paizo had opted to design Spell Attack with failure riders like most save spells, but with the exception of Live Wire, they did not. Making Spell Attacks the least reliable type of spell in a spellcasters potential arsenal. The true bugbear here is the inability to gain an item bonus' to spell attacks, creating a barrier to operate on the normative progression which can't be overcome. None of this information is fronted or discussed with the player or GM, it needs to be discovered. /whole problem in a nutshell. --- Also, for what it is worth, we do not have wholly standardised martial scaling. Fighters and Gunslingers doing their thing.
This is true. To put numbers to this (This assuming that each character is optimising the timing of each boost and trying to drive their KAS as high as possible): Levels 1-4: Magus is at -1 compared to Full Casters.
So the progression of the Magus' Spell DC/Spell Attack is actually a pretty strange one. It spends:
To put this into perspective, the Magus is at Par with any Master-tier martial from 1-20.
That just sounds like the Psychics Dancing Blade cantrip with some added visual descriptions. It's never got an errata, so it still technically benefits from Weapon Potency runes as well.
I suppose "Wizard" was too "outdated" for a term in the Starfinder universe, even though the oldschool computer installation programs were called Wizards. Funny how that works. We also used to summon daemons all the time! But yes, the only reason I mentioned the caster archetype totals to begin with is simply to point out that that being a 4 slot caster - originally deemed to be a benefit in and of itself - has transformed into a "type" of caster. With the Wizard remaining to be charged for it as if it was a unique benefit. _______ As an aside, I was building an Oracle for a friend the other day and took a good look at the class. Between it and the Sorcerer, this new breed of 4 slot casters are incredibly strong.
I see a fair number of Wizard players not taking a school at all (or the unified school as its called now). I don't know if that's actually better per-se, but it seems a lot of players just value the ability to get a spell they actually want a second time more than they value another slot that is locked down tightly. That or Spell Blending. Both methods of sidesteping the entire slot. It certainly doesn't feel like a unique class thing to get a 4th slot that is tightly restricted when Oracle got one with no restrictions at all*. Sorcerer also already had it, but its becoming more common now. So it's not this particularly special thing anymore, especially a restricted one. We're currently a few weeks out from having the 4th 4-slot caster. We don't yet know the final shape of the Animist, but currently only the Wizard has a restriction in this way. This puts the breakdown of caster types at:
So being a 4-slot caster is no longer particularly special in and of itself.
But it will make some people feel that the original schools are trap options if the focus spells are leagues apart in power. I mean, lets just call it like it is here, the school redesigns that PC1 aren't great, and being beholden to that power level - while in Paizo's wheelhouse for the Wizard - isn't good for the class. There was some clear errors in judgement with some designs (Looking at you Battle Magic). Along with the fact it reduced the number of available schools along focus spell options. If PC1 schools serve a generic, common tagged, list of ever-green but "mid-at-best" options then that could be a solid place for them. New schools, representing specific literal schools or specific approaches to magic - along with either uncommon or rare tags as is appropriate for their concept - that then ratchet up what schools can do, should be the evolution of the feature.
I am 100% prepared to be utterly disappointed in both the number and quality of new schools. The real problem is, when would Wizard's ever get a healthy number of schools? What might even be a good number? We have 61 domains and around 20 Sorcerer bloodlines, compared to 7 Wizard Schools. 20 seems solid to me, as school design is closer to bloodlines than domains, but they realistically sit somewhere between. New Schools have more to them than domains but less than bloodlines, so maybe 30 or so as good end-of-system total. _____ But ultimately, unless Paizo start peppering new content with them, we aren't ever going to reach a decent number. Especially if the upcoming Lost Omens is light on actual options. I was less than thrilled by the lack of Wizard content in the recent Tian Xia books.
New School: "The Thaler Academia of Behavioral Arcanomics"Grants the Nudge Fate hex cantrip.
This is also how I liked to play my wizards. This just isn't an option now. The wizard doesn't have a good selection of buffs or debuffs, and the debuffs it does get are to hard to land, to the point I just gave up. It would have made sense that curriculum spells, cast from curriculum slots, would be more powerful. That should have been built into the chassis. You should be better at those arcane theses spells, any wizard can cast charm, but yours is more difficult to resist, and if it doesn't land it should remain uncast. If your thesis is spell shaping, they should be a free action, because it's what you specialize in. We are almost level 5, and I have had a single battle where my wizard made a difference. I don't need to compete as a fighter, but it would be great to be as valuable as a fighter. To land my spells as often as the fighters sword hits (who doesn't run out of sword juice). Is the wizard weaker? Not everyone agrees, but I think so. It certainly isn't as valuable a core class anymore. I've said before there is an apparent departure in design for the Wizard when it comes to encouraging behaviour. Paizo have made it so that, in order to encourage casting curriculum spells, they locked a spell slot per level to those spells. A "stick" approach. Contrast this with Sorcerers, for instance, who are encouraged to cast their bloodline spells by getting a reward in the form of Blood Magic for doing so. A "carrot" approach. Feats and abilties that do interesting things with curriculum spells would certainly be a path to making the whole mechanic more appealing.
Wizard, Magus and Summoner are biggest 3 in need of "unchaining".
Create food being a 2nd level spell means your question somewhat answers itself. The number of 4th level casters in the world vs the number of hungry mouths probably means its impact is realistically non-existent. This is probably the answer to most things where the caster needs access to anything above cantrips. There is whats possible, then there is whats economically viable. It's why we get fantasties about "Wonder Cities". Places that do leverage their magical capacity to do amazing things. But they are always generally singular places, where the scale makes it viable and functional. Oh, and war.
There would still be an economy. It would just look radically different. Economies don't just stand for the Mixed/Market economies of today, as long as people need to trade with others to survive, there will be some sort of economy. In a world where Geb is an unceasing, mostly labour-cost free, breadbasket of a continent, lowering food prices across the inner sea as well, people will find other things to spend their gold on.
Yep! Both work fine for a Ruffians sneak attack, as long as you don't two-hand the Earthbreaker.
We can do deeper: A new class archetype only for Gnomes that have undergone the bleaching. Turns their KAS to Constitution. Gains a bonus to RK checks based on the amount of damage they've taken recently.
The complaint levied is that not it cannot be customised, but that it means the Wizard, when taken on a whole, along with the other issues noted in this and other threads, is simply too GM dependant and has the greatest amount of table variance. What you might or might not allow at your table is all well and fine, but it's equally plausible that someone might go a different way for a number of different reasons. It's not exactly outlandish to way a concept like "Civic Wizardy" might mean different things to different people from different places. So it means there is an additional level of uncertainty introduced.
A big issue is that drives a hard-wedge in player experience across different tables, GM's and society play. No two Wizard players can expect the same outcome by default. It takes what was formally the strength of the Wizard, their larger spell variety, and places several asterisks over it.
@Old Man Robot, I wonder, would a thesis, or class archetype that basically replaced thesis, that granted the lore master archetype dedication feat at level 1, and maybe granting the bardic lore feat at level 2, then just access to lore master feats be enough of a class archetype/option to cover your vision of an erudite wizard? That would be pretty weak, all things considered. Especially given that the Wizard can generally just take Loremaster at 2nd anyhow. Loremaster fits well as an "any-class" evergreen option for those who want to expand their options, it's not strong enough to be a tent-pole feature of a class. But Knowledge should be tent-pole feature of the Wizard. So it would need to be something like the Thaumaturges Estoeric Lore, or the Commander's Warfare Expertise. The Wizard has such a balance-debt at present that a feature like the above could just be added to the class outright, without fixing anything else. It's also such a light-weight mechanical addition that it fits into the same new-feature-via-errata size that Alchemists got.
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The full text of the drain ability reads Drain (healing, positive) Drinking deep instead heals the drinker 3 Hit Points for each level you have. After the chalice is drained, it's left with only its slowly collecting dregs; the chalice can't be drained again, though it can still be sipped from. If 10 minutes pass without anyone drinking from the chalice, it refills itself and can be drained again. If the drinker has negative healing, it can still heal in this way, and the effect has the negative trait instead of healing and positive. The bolded bit confirms that yes, it works fine.
Well to carry on the analogy a bit, what you are describing here isn't apples or peaches or any potential filling. Thats the "cobbler" parts, the crust, the shell that contains the fillings, whatever that's actually called (I'm not a baker, I don't know the proper terms). The PF2 Wizard is similar to the PF1 Wizard only if we reduce its essential theme down to "Casts spells". But in that case all casters are identicial. Their function is to cast spells and they do that.
Going back to my list of things which the Wizard lacks / has less of, these (and we are really pushing this analogy now) are the ingredients which our bland, unflavourful pie is currently lacking. But, importantly, the "peaches" the thing which names the dish and which those in the market for peach cobbler are initially here for, are missing.
The Tian Xia character guide gave us some interesting new things for the Marshal archetype. While it's clearly a plant for the upcoming Commander class, it doesn't mean there some good stuff in there! Stratgeist Stance put's enemies off-guard against you or an allies next attack after a successful RK. Form up! Will have a lot of practical applications for general re-positioning, espcially if you are planning some AoE action the turn after. General's Gambit can have a bunch of interplay with things like Fleeing Diversion and Swift Sneak skill feats, for an interesting and fun tactic.
I'm very new to pf so this may be a silly question, but where are you getting the fourth int boost in your necromancer example build? Seer of the Dead appears to only give a single wis or con boost. (Also sorry for posting in a two month old thread :p) I think it's just been an oversight. Not a lot of Backgrounds only grant a single boost. Most follow a pattern of "Select from X or Y + Free".
Customer: "This Peach Cobbler doesn't taste right, how did you make it?" Vendor: "Oh, our peach cobbler uses apricots instead" Customer: "Why is it called peach cobbler then?" Vendor: "A lot of our customers like how it tastes, perhaps peach cobbler just isn't for you." Customer: "Okay... do you have anything like peach cobbler? I really like peaches" Vendor: "We could make you an apple cobbler that uses peaches instead, but I don't think we will" Customer: "Why not?" Vendor: "Because people would be mad it isn't called peach cobbler!" ____ But on a more serious note, what is the PF2e Wizard's ortolan? The real answer is that its legacy assumptions from an edition that they were moving away from. It's a reaction to an enviorment which no longer exists and the Wizard doesn't find itself in. If the PF2 design was remaster within PF1, then a lot of decisions would make sense. But we aren't in PF1.
I've always hated this. It's my smoking-gun of Paizo overcharging the Wizard for their concept. What is so special about the Wizard as to be problematic but not any other prepared caster?
It's a standardised track progression for all full casters. I don't consider it a positive or a negative of the class, since full casters never deviate from it. If the contention is "You can't have a bad full spellcaster", I think there is enough specific issues with the Wizard design in particular to disagree. Many premaster Witch players would probably also find it untrue.
Charisma has several math-impacting, class-agnostic, abilites. - Intimidate inflicts the Frightened condition
All accessible from level 1 and only needs 1 feat. So Charisma has a more direct-line to impacting combat in a way that Intelligence doesn't.
or if the Wizard had more features that interacted with their Intelligence (such as, I don't know, Additional Lores or Recall Knowledge abilities), it could be more interesting. This is the ground I feel that needs expanded on. Most of the actually issues with the class can't be solved within our existing framesworks. To bring it back to the subject of this thread for a moment, a suitably large class archetype is an avenue to address things, but it would, in essence, just be the Wizard 2.0 and probably be absurdly large. Giving the Wizard several feats and perhaps a new Thesis which opens them up into a Knowledge class, with good and solid rewards for knowledge, makes the most sense. It plays into the classes theme, gives more purpose to their KAS, and expands on a function they already want to be doing.
I'm seeing the word "Fine" used for the wizard a lot. Not quite "excellent," "great," or even "good." They are still a mechanically functional class, so they are "fine" by that metric. They aren't good, and people don't want to say bad, so fine it is. I'm prone to it as well. "Bad" feels more combative, so "subpar", "has issues", "left behind", "weak" all get used in its place. And, in truth, the Wizard does have its moments. No one else*(except several classes at higher level) can cast as many Sure Strikes a day as a Staff Nexus Wizard! We should just say bad and move on.
We're looping. The Wizard is not a complex class. There is nothing inherently more difficult to playing a Wizard than any other prepared caster. The "higher difficulty curve" often cited to the Wizard comes from the Wizard have fewer and weaker options outside of spell preparation. The Wizard's function and role lives and dies on largely on spell preparation alone. This is contrasted with things like the Druid, who has powerful and iconic focus spells, and the Cleric - whose primary function as a healer / harmer is given special mechanics to operate beyond their preparation (and also can have a large host of possible Focus spells). The Witch also now has powerful and iconic abilites which elevate their existing spell prep and focus spells. If the Wizard also had powerful focus spells or unique mechanics which elevated their spellcasting, then they would not be worse off than the others in terms of a "curve".
This is entirely counter to how Paizo intend and treat prepared casters. It is true that they are not adaptive, which is the great weakness of prepared casting, but they are intended to be versatile. A lot of the Wizard's power balance is meant to be tied up in this supposed versatility. The 4 slot prepared caster with access to the largest spell list. Versatility is meant to be their jam. The problem is, it's not really. Not anymore. And it's why the change to the school system is so fundamentally wrongheaded. Foregoing arguments around the value of the Arcane spell list, the eroded value of which - in the face of Occult - has been talked about countless times, for a moment. The Wizard is a 3 slot prepared caster with a additional slot per level dedicated to one of 2/3 spells. This places them, in terms of versatility, only slightly higher than any other standard 3 slot caster. I would argue that this slight difference in potential versatility is largely only an on-paper advantage, because the spells in your curriculum slot by&large are set and can't realistically be altered beyond GM fiat (which was always an option). The Wizard's 4th slot has never been truely unrestricted, by the old schools did have a large breadth to them - even if some were thinner than others. But it's important to note that the Wizard doesn't have access to their entire list, unlike Clerics and Druids. The actual potential versatility of a Wizard is much much smaller in actual play than we tend to assume for these discussions, but it's an actual impediment to the class. This aspect of the class, a legacy feature really, was intended to stem the versatility of the 3.x/PF1 era Wizard and at least make them work a bit for it. When brought over into PF2, and especially post re-master PF2 it becomes part of a larger limitation. Lack of access their full list, eroded spell list to begin with, limitations on preparation, etc. These combine to create the versatility space that the Wizard operates in. The Wizard is still a very versatile caster, but not much more than any other prepared caster. Over the years I've called the Wizard the "King of Marginal Advantage", normally this in reference to spell slot totals, but it applies here as well. Wizard's pay a heavy premium for the potential to have slightly more than someone else, and it's bad design. It's certainly not cool or engaging. --- So let's go back to my first point in this particular post. Wizard's having less. Wizard's have less features and less fall-back options because they are paying an excessive premium for this potential marginal advantage. In my personal opinion, I would rather this potential marginal advantage not exist, and have a much fuller, cooler, well designed class with actual depth. When I think of what is appealing about the concept of a Wizard, I don't think 'spell slot manipulation' - that is Paizo's take on the "magical scentist" approach they sort-of gave the class - and I certainly don't think 'marginal advantage'. But this is why Wizard's have less. "Having less" is also something that ripples across the whole Wizard design. They also:
Less, less, less, less, less. --- So let's circle back to why, why they have less. It's because the things the Wizard was designed to excel at, and where Paizo thought they were putting the bulk of the Wizard's power, operate in a different enviroment from the ones it was designed to be in. The Wizard clearly has in its design the baggage of assumptions brought over from PF1 that are simply not true in this edition. For some reason Paizo clearly still fears re-examaining these assumptions for the Wizard in the same way they did for the Sorcerer, the Witch, the Oracle, etc. And, if they are worried this marginal advantage might tip into some actual advantage which elevates them beyond these already buffed other casters... well, well I don't know what to tell you. Perhaps they should have actually remastered the class when the opportunity was on the table. In any case, the Wizard is not a good class. They are mechanically functional as a spellcaster, and, as with any RPG class in any game, your personal enjoyment of your character is for you to make. I have loved many of the Wizard's I have played in this edition. I don't really love them because they are Wizard's, but being a Wizard conceptually is something that clearly strong appeals to me. All in all, it feels like the failings of the Wizard's design simply come from the wrong place, and sadly it still seems to be a place that Paizo are in.
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