Old_Man_Robot's page

So the release of the newer wizard subclass and schools isn't addressing what people feel the class was lacking?

We haven't got a new Wizard subclass since Secrets of Magic.

As for Schools, if more schools used School of Gates as their model, then they would be in a much better shape. Unofortunately, School of Gates is the standout rather than the rule and part of me is half expecting the sustain portion to get errata'ed out.

Same with Wizard feats really. We got some new Wizard feats in Player Core 1, but nothing since then and before that it was once again Secrets of Magic.

What the Wizard is getting is class archetypes.

Class archetypes are great, I love twists on existing classes, espically ones that allow you dial into speifiic niches of the class or on lore-elements which would otherwise be too narrow for the class itself.

The problem with getting all your innovation and expansion through class archetypes is that they are mutually-excluding silos of content.

The two main archetypes, Runelord and Warmage, essentially have to re-do the class features of the Wizard each time, making zero use of the Wizards more modal design with its sub-class options.

In an ideal world the class would be expanding like all the other classes are, with archetypes doing interesting things on top of this organic growth.

Siloing the only new content Wizards ever get isn't actually helping the class.

Madhippy3 wrote:

I disagree. This is a long thread and it isn't filled with wizard defenders. Everyone has one reason or another to explain why the wizard is only playable compared to where other classes are excelling.

Yeah because these arguments have been going on for years now and most people are exhausted. You're late to the party

I've been banging the "Wizards are poorly designed" drum since 2019. The Remaster made them worse, and Paizo seems to constantly have their head in the sand.

Paizo have declined to share how their internally Satisfaction/Success metrics work, so we can only guess at how we truely got to the current state.

I do caution that dreaded powercreep issue, as if this is done by Wiz school choice, then you quickly get a situation where the old schools become "trap" options in the face of a nicely curated and cross-tradition poached list.

This was always going to be the outcome.

The majority of the schools in Player Core 1 just aren't good. The system Paizo chose for them also meant that they would age poorly as the system progressed.

We shouldn't worry about it, they did a bad job in Player Core 1 and there is no dancing around that.

They either make better school going forward, which we are seeing occassionally, or they will provide ways up update/override spell choices in a mechanically meaningful way (not just "You and your GM sort it out, Hasbro's lawyers are on line 2").

Powercreeping schools, and the entire Wizard class as it stands, is not only good for the game but desireable.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Gortle wrote:

Dubious Scholar wrote:

I'm not seeing Frozen Fog (from Battlecry!) in the guide - not really sure how to evaluate it since it's mostly damage over time. What are your thoughts on it?

I haven't got to Battle Cry yet...

Ah, I saw the instant minefield spell already in the list, so just assumed :P.

I saw a discussion about that spell and added it in as a one off.

I'm working through the rest now. Give me a couple of days.

I'd missed Instant Minefield until now. It having the subtle trait is incredibly funny to me.

Just the idea of arming a series of mines behind the chairs of people you dislike around a long banquet table, only for them to off as soon as people stand up at the end of the meal is making me giggle.

Not to mention the potential damage output for proper clustering.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

I don’t think there is any real way to say this isn’t a combat focused game. Combat is in its bones, its ancestors are all combat focused games, by page count, by weight of content, the fact it just got a war gaming supplement.

PF2 is combat focused as part of its core design ethos. It’s not the systems be-all and end-all however.

It’s not wholly focused on combat, and there are several means of getting around encounters without combat itself, but when I look at actual non-combat focused TTRPG’s, they don’t look like Pathfinder.

I think its in the name. They are table top role playing games. So I would say role playing is the genre and umbrella these games fall under. But I guess It would be more correct to concede there is a major focus on combat and it is oart of the draw of the game but its is in the context of a roleplaying game promising endless options and has plenty of options if the GM uses them for players to not have to engage in the well developed combat rules.

There are definitely "breds" of TTRPG.

Games like Wanderhome, Wizards & Wastes and (potentially a deep cut) Nobilis are in the vein of No-to-low combat through and through. They are a markedly different bred of TTRPG vs those that come the D&D lineage, they are all TTRPG's all the same.

I don’t think there is any real way to say this isn’t a combat focused game. Combat is in its bones, its ancestors are all combat focused games, by page count, by weight of content, the fact it just got a war gaming supplement.

PF2 is combat focused as part of its core design ethos. It’s not the systems be-all and end-all however.

It’s not wholly focused on combat, and there are several means of getting around encounters without combat itself, but when I look at actual non-combat focused TTRPG’s, they don’t look like Pathfinder.

I will always be reluctant with any solution which places an additional burden on a GM, at least not while the class remains Common. While I think its true that the current state of the Wizard does already place a higher burden on both the player and the GM than most other classes, and that this burden is generally uncommunicated and sort of left for people to discover on their own, I think this is generally a mistake by Paizo rather than an intentional requirement.

Personally, I think the issue with preparation is already a solved problem in PF2, its just that Wizard's don't generally have it.

Most classes solve the preparation problem by have either good fall back options in the form of either good, general purpose, focus spells or some class actions which are repeatable and worthwhile.

Witches have their Familiar actions and access to a wide range of focus spells, Clerics and Druids have access to a bunch of different focus spells and can tip their toes into other subclass styles, Animists can kind of do whatever they want.

It's largely the Wizard which fails to have good fallback options which allow them to remain relevant and interesting while not having good preparation.

If more focus spells where built like Friendly Push, with additional focus spell options on top of them, it would go a long way to fixing up the gaps in the Wizard.

Friendly Push is the model on which all 1st level Wizard school focus spells should be based. Cheap, repeatable, Impactful, Flavourful and a source of greater subclass identity and something a Wizard may wish to do every turn if possible, and scales as they level.

Imagine if Force Bolt could be sustained, imagine as well if you eventually got to 3 bolts fired per sustain. Or if you could sustain Earthworks to move or reshape every turn.

These would be impactful, identity defining features, which would allow Wizards of different schools to feel different from each other and for them to have options they could do if cause of poor prepation.

You add to this additional focus spell options in general, things Wizards might want, the standard refocus feat at 12th, and you've reformed the class without having to fundamentally rework preparation.

Granted
1. a wizard needs to know they will be up against this creature and the more info about terrain and the creatures abilities the better
2. a wizard needs to have learned other spells that can capitalize on the situation and the creares weaknesses and also eat up an action while doing it.

These, to me, are questions which our at the heart of the balancing problems with the Wizard.

Because the answer to both of these CAN be yes, Paizo have said that they have to assume that it is true.

But how often is it actually true? Further, why does it not extend to all prepared casters?

In the post-remaster era, the Wizard is a 3 slot prepared caster with an additional limited spell slot. The 4th spell slot will generally fail to meet the conditions of (2) unless it just happens to by happenstance. The Wizard has never before had so little control of what goes into that 4th slot, which means the burden of meeting (2) falls on its general 3 prepared slots. This puts it on par with most other prepared caster in the game.

This is generally fine, but the idea that a Wizard has a solution for every problem is no more true for it than for any other caster post re-master. The presumptive burden of this was never addressed however. This is one of the reasons why I've said before that a restructuring of the spell lists should have come with a rework of the Wizard.

Everyone has a pretty good toolbox these days, and the Wizard lost their ability to grab an additional tool of their choice.

For me, however, (1) has always been the real problem with the Wizards assumed point of balance. Even if it was actually true that the Wizard and the Wizard alone could have a solution for every problem, they would also have to:

A) Know the problem exists and is upcoming
B) Know the frequency of the problem for the day
C) Have this knowledge on a somewhat exclusive basis, that leaves them as the lone point of resolution.

But we've all been playing this game for a long time now, we know that no Wizard player has these 3 points at any given point in time, and certainly doesn't have them every day.

So it leaves them balanced around an assumption they can't ever really live up to.

Give wizards a class ability that lets them cast any spell from their spellbook as a 10 min activity. No slots used to do this. Maybe they can use this ability a number of times per day equal to this formula

Top rank 1/day
-1 is 2/day
-2 is 3/day
4/day for any spell -3 or under

Slots get reserved for combat uses and any spell you want to use for utility.
If the number of uses of the ten min spell activity is too much give them less to start and let feats unlock more uses to spec into a more utility capable wizard build.

Without something like comprehensive tags/traits being applied to spells to govern options, I don't see this being workable without something game breaking being open.

Paizo really should have invested the time to add more comprehensive traits to spells overall, as there exists quite a few places where it could have paid off.

But honestly, I think the simplest, best answer is the one thats been circled around on time and time again. Spell Sub should be a default class feature.

Or do that 2nd & 8th level feat tax I suggested, if you need really feel the need to have it cost something else.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

The hype generated by new classes and their playtest just cannot be equaled by new things for existing classes.

I think Paizo will keep with their current MO of 2 new classes and a few things for existing classes here and there.

Until we reach PF3 playtest in a few years, that is.

A well done wizard would excite and unite the community.

I saw War Mage getting hype.

Maybe one or two other Wizard archetypes and then PF3 Wizard.

I do not think re-redoing the PF2 Wizard would generate that much interest within the customers base.

Nah, you're wrong.

People get very excited about reworks and remasters. We saw the massive buzz with the class remasters, people clamour for new content all the time. Another section of the community would be overjoyed if the Wizard threads would stop.

Re-remastering the Wizard would be a win all round.

You want to sell it through? Want to make it a big selling point of a product? Great!

A Treasure Vault style book for all classes.

A big book with new class feats, class archetypes, items, and more! "Hundreds of feats, 11 new class archetypes, the Wizard Perfected, new class options, items and more!"

Going class by class, the book would talk about the role these classes play in different parts of the world. The culture impact, local meaning and importance.

We'd get slices of life, what each classes mean to the people of Golarion, stories, and, weaving through out all of this would be the new options.

The newer classes would naturally get a heavier focus to expand them out as well.

Not just stuff for the sake of stuff, but an "in the life" expansion of each class which otherwise doesn't have a home.

Round it out with the "Wizard Perfected", a new redesign of the class with some additional instructions on how to adopt the existing archetypes.

Maybe introduce some remastered character options like, FA, Dual classing, etc.

Throw a bow on it and generate the most hype a single product has ever generated by Paizo.

Not a box ticking excercise, but a love letter to all the concepts and ideas that otherwise don't have a place or a home.

The skill thing is also an issue that most of the Int key stat classes start with very low base skills with the understanding they are probably boosting int.

This is broadly incorrect.

Also all classes default to a standard of at least 4 + Int starting trained skills. This is usually some combo of what’s in the stat line + class granted.

Wizards break this by having only 3+int.

Why Wizards are still missing a skill, even after the remaster, is a testament to the lack of care taken with the class.

The remastered schools should each have granted a trained skill.

I'm glad to see that a lot of this talk has kinda found the sore-spot, that of Wizard's comparatively low power / feature design.

As the remaster ship has long sailed at this point, my own suggested homebrew is just a single change. Spell Substitution is now a baseline Wizard feature, and can be done alongside any refocus activity.

If we were to scale class feats by what we've seen Paizo do so far.

Swapping spells out with your schools spells is a 2nd level feat. Arcane Bond, as seen via the Oracle, is a 6th level feat.

This would place Spell Substitution as either a 4th or 8th level feat. They could split the difference have the 2nd level school swap feat be the preq for the broader version of the feat at 8th. Giving some modality to how much want their Wizard to be able to swap spells.

Given statements from Paizo where they "Don't balance around you having the perfect spell... but yeah we always expect you to have the a really really good spell", it would relieve some of the classes tention points.

And thus, all threads arrive as they are supposed to: with Wizard talk.

They've been the rusty nail sticking up from the floor boards since 2019. No one has fixed it, and its snagging and ruining more clothing over time.

The intersection of the Wizard class and the Arcane list is one of the “original sins” of this edition.

Wizards paid through the nose to access the “best list”, hence why they had weird unique penalties, like being the only class to not have simple weapon prof, they are still missing a skill and are missing focus spells and focus spell options.

But the arcane list was never exclusive to the Wizard, so the price paid was always disproportionately paid by them. Paizo then remaster the other lists to make them stronger, so the value of what the Wizard paid for went down. This is also on top of the other remaster nerfs.

List rebalancing should have came with actual, meaningful, Wizard class rebalancing.

I mean, Wizards getting nerfed (to what degree is debatable outside of the general consensus that they were definitely nerfed) was more like a sad collateral damage from switching from OGL to ORC. With schools going from {b]general classification of magic spells[/b] to the ACTUAL school of wizardry you attended, alongside Paizo probably rushing it, and thus the feature being weaker, does suck though.

This will sound mean, but it wasn’t “collateral damage”, it was sheer lack of effort to render a good product.

The reasons for this lack of effort could be varied, and entirely reasonable, understandable and agreeable in and of themselves, but the OGL changes didn’t force Paizo to make Wizards worse.

But when you look at some of the changes other classes got, it’s clear there was care put in to address specific issues or to aid specific conceptual elements.

They just didn’t do this with the Wizard. Not really.

Part of me wonders if this is why we are seeing so many Class archetypes for the Wizard. They know the fumbled the core features, so they have to fully replace them anytime they do want to give the class anything interesting.

Oracles, and to a lesser extent, Sorcerers made out like bandits.

It’s shocking how much vertical power the Oracle gained.

My definition of a shifter is a martial class that is encouraged to take on different forms to suit different tasks inside and outside of combat. They should be a dynamic, bag-of-tricks class with utility and skill challenge tools rivaling casters.

That's crossing one of the systems true red lines.

A martial focused kineticist is best you can expect here.

The kineticist is probably a good rough template for the Shifter to begin with.

I was looking through Battle Cry with my playgroup and one of my players noticed the Atlas Arcane item.

The Atlas Arcane is a 7th level item with the following effects:

This well-worn vellum scroll has edges trimmed with golden

thread, and it unrolls to reveal a map of the nearby area. The
atlas arcane always shows the surrounding area (out to a 36-
mile radius centered on the map) with a reasonable level of
detail, providing a +1 item bonus to Survival checks and any
skill checks to Recall Knowledge, provided the checks are
related to the location detailed on the map.

Activate—Situation Report [three-actions] (auditory, concentrate,
detection, manipulate) Frequency once per day; Effect You
speak a command phrase, and the map reveals the location
of all troop movements within the area it maps. This intel
is current the moment the phrase is spoken but does not
update afterward, and moving the map does not reveal
further intel.

Said player says that should allow you to know the shape/layout any dungeon you are in - at least on a floor by floor basis.

I can see a case for this, but I also have a feeling the intent is only for the world surface to be shown. This does constraints its usefulness for otherwise all sorts of legitimate applications.

What do we think?

If we want to respect the game, its designers, and our fellow players, we should treat all text in a rulebook as meaningful—because it is.

The caveat here is "except when it isn't".

Do you recall the original wording of Cloud Jump?

Your unparalleled athletic skill allows you to jump impossible distances. Triple the distance you Long Jump (so you could jump 60 feet on a seccessful DC 20 check.) When you High Jump, use the calculation for Long Jump but don't triple the distance.

When you Long Jump or High Jump, you can also increase the number of actions you use (up to the number of actions you have remaining in your turn) to jump even further. For each extra action, add your speed to the maximum distance you jump.

Compare this with the 4th printing

You unparalleled athletic skill allows you to jump impossible distances. Triple the distance you Long Jump (so you could jump 60 feet on a successful DC 20 check). When you High Jump, use the calculation for a Long Jump but don't triple the distance.

You can jump a distance greater than your Speed by spending additional actions when you Long Jump or High Jump. For each additional action spent, add your Speed to the limit on how far you can Leap.

Then compare with the remaster version

Your unparalleled athletic skill allows you to jump impossible distances. Triple the distance you jump on a successful Long Jump (so you could jump 90 feet with an Athletics result of 30). When you successfully High Jump, use the distance jumped and distance limit for a Long Jump but don’t triple the distance.

You can jump a distance greater than your Speed by spending additional actions when you Long Jump or High Jump. For each additional action spent, add your Speed to the distance limit.

While this has been a case of both errata and a revision, the intended function of cloud jump hasn't actually changed. Its just that not all the text within Cloud Jump was literal rules text, even when it seems to give clear instructions on use and functionality.

You were never intended to be able break your character speed limits without spending additional resource, but the short, simple, seemingly with an example, text on Cloud Jump used to look like you just got to triple your distance and then could do other things to extend it further.

Up until the remaster, the full and complete sentence "Triple the distance you Long Jump (so you could jump 60 feet on a seccessful DC 20 check.)" did not actually do what it says to do.

To me this a good example of the "flavour" of the feat getting in the way of its actual mechanical function.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

Would that even work? Esoteric Lore is a spell class feature granting a special Lore skill. Can a Skilled Familiar even pick it up and even if they did it would just be normal Esoteric Lore not the super special one Thaumaturge gets...Am I even wrong but if I am not wrong then Tome is a great implement for Recall Knowledge checks and other items which grant Item bonuses to Lore/Recall Knowledge.

While potentially more contentious overall, there is nothing preventing anyone from taking "Esoteric" lore as a lore skill in general, but it will only allow them to RK on anything the GM deems it to, it won't be able to mimic the Thaumaturge class ability.

There is something preventing it, though- "Esoteric" is much broader of a category than is allowed for a lore skill, even if you're taking it as a general lore skill.

We should take this to a different thread as we might be getting into the weeds of pet modifiers and the semantics of if esoteric would actually be too broad a category (given that it returns nothing if you are not a Thaumaturge).

Would that even work? Esoteric Lore is a spell class feature granting a special Lore skill. Can a Skilled Familiar even pick it up and even if they did it would just be normal Esoteric Lore not the super special one Thaumaturge gets...Am I even wrong but if I am not wrong then Tome is a great implement for Recall Knowledge checks and other items which grant Item bonuses to Lore/Recall Knowledge.

While potentially more contentious overall, there is nothing preventing anyone from taking "Esoteric" lore as a lore skill in general, but it will only allow them to RK on anything the GM deems it to, it won't be able to mimic the Thaumaturge class ability.

In this case, you aren't looking to, simply roll the skill check in order to provide aid to Thaum making the actual check. The lore checks themselves are the same, but the Thaum has class features which provide special benefits.

This is, however, immaterial, its just to show that the documents creator is assuming on-level optimisation in some cases for non-Thaums, but not applying the same to Thaums when they have equal access to the same methods. Hence distorting the validity of any comparison.

Some Analysis Here

I'm not sure who made this, but it is riddled with errors and mistakes.

It looks to have been made with the objective of downplaying the thaumaturge as a knowledge class, and so has made several choices to achieve that.

I'm not going to go to tab by tab, but here are some immediate standout issues:

- An assumed -2 penalty has been applied to the Thaumaturges proficiency across the board, without exception. In reality, this penalty is only applied when the Thaumatuge choses to use the Diverse Lore feat to apply Esoteric Lore against something it couldn't normally be used on (Any creature, haunt and curses - creatures being the big one).

The analysis does not make any distinctions here on use and has decided to apply the penalty universally while making no provision for how the other skills are being used.

- It is assuming that other classes with access to the Familiar feat chain will optimise their recall knowledge using Skilled>Second Opinion to grant aid to the caster. This, for some reason, is denied to the Thaumaturge who also has the required Familiar and Enhanced Familiar feats, and there is nothing stopping the familiar from taking Esoteric Lore as an option for Skilled. While this provides the same type of bonus as the Tome implement, it can scale higher quicker for the on-level comparisons.

The circumstance bonus from this option is also universally not scaled correctly. It just assumes famailiars will crit on a DC15 check from level 7 onwards. Probabilistic scaling like this needs to be handled differently.

- It assumes that at higher levels a caster will spend a spell slot of at least a 6th level casting of Pocket Library for a +3 bonus. For some reason it does not assume that a Thaumaturge would upgrade a wand or use one of their esoteric scrolls to do the same, staggering the bonus to deferred levels as per scroll scalaing.

- The "Optimised FA Build" tab pits a fully optimised Int caster against an only partially optimised Thaum, robbing them of potentially 6 points of bonus (+2 Chr, +2 proficiency, +2 status from Pocket Library)

All in all, its deeply flawed and I wouldn't use it for actual judgements.

I don’t want it, and I don’t think it’s needed, but I can see the Thaumaturge catching a nerf or two.

People have complained about Diverse Lore for years, so I can see that be revisited.

inline with the wizard buff.

The What now?

It is one of the limitations of PF2 that gaining a widely applicable "Lore" is restricted to the Cha-based bard and thaumature classes (the Bardic Lore feat can be picked up via the multiclass archetype; Bardic Lore is still Int-based, however); or by taking an archetype.

An elf witch or a wizard can leverage the Ancestral Longevity/Expert Longevity/Universal Longevity ancestry feats with the Loremaster archetype to fill pretty much the same role (possibly a bit better, by selecting applicable lore skills [which often have slightly lower DCs] for the expected encounters).

For what its worth, Bestiary Scholar and Universal Theory work great here as well, and can scale up to legendary with Arcana.

It’s uncommon, but any given elf or half-elf could make a case for it.

I don't see any once per round limitations built into the spell's sustain text. Ergo, you could potentially move someone three times in a round, or move three people. Or four with Effortlesss Concentration!

This is my thinking as well. It can be sustained multiple times, up to four as you say (5 if we poach Cackle), allowing for you to potentially move your entire party about.

I'm eyeing this for the Commander when it comes out as well. Bring an ally into position for a formation, or whatever the release version may be called.

Kyrone wrote:

Wait, it that a decent Wizard focus spell? What a miracle. What the other one do?

According to a Reddit AMA guy with the book: "the advanced one lets you teleport after taking damage to move away and gain resistance to the

trigger equal to your level." (I haven't seen the range.)

So kind of similar to the 6th level Volcanic Escape fire kineticist impulse, except you avoid rather than inflicting damage, and teleport instead of leap. Extremely similar to the SF2 playtest witchwarper feat 2 Predictive Positioning, with a 10 minute cooldown and a subclass lock.

Furthermore:

Quote:

Curriculum cantrips: message, telekinetic hand; 1st: fleet step, lock, thoughtful gift (Player Core 2 253); 2nd: knock, warping pull U (page 149); 3rd: echo jump U (page 148), trade items U (page 149); 4th: flicker, translocate; 5th: king’s castle U (page 149), magic passage U; 6th: collective transposition (Player Core 2 243), teleport U; 7th: interplanar teleport U, planar seal U; 8th: quandary, sudden transposition U (page 149); 9th forest of gates U (page 148)

School Spells initial: friendly push U; advanced: rapid retreat U

Pretty much got it!

It’s a reaction teleport spell when triggers when you take damage from an attack or spell. Lets you teleport 20ft in the direction of your choice and grants you aforementioned resistance.

Schools of Gates looks like one of the best schools overall.

We also now have enough teleport spells to fill a personal staff.

Ohhh, I somehow missed that this was sustained. With just the one use, it seemed like the usual Wizard "a little worse than a real focus spell", but this is great.

- Use this in a party with a Commander, and you can really start to arrange the battlefield to your liking.

- Effortless Concentration brings back the relevance of this at high levels, allowing a free scoot every round.

I do feel like this is a plant for Battlecry. The school overall has a lot of teleportation and movement options, all of which would be perfect for the more tactical lines of play that I think we are expecting there.

Effortless Concentration comes online just 3 levels after the 30ft movement is achieved, so the two work well.

Poaching Cackle from the Witch also opens it up a little as well, while getting an additional focus point.

Liturgist doesn't interact with it since it can only sustain apparition or vessel spells with its benefit.

Whoops! Good catch!

Shining Kingdoms gives us a new Wizard school, the School of Gates. I actually quite like this school, as both its focus spells seem very useful and it grants several school spells I quite like (Warping Pull and Echo Jump being stand outs).

I would like to focus in on the 1st level focus spell, Friendly Push, however. It reads:

FRIENDLY PUSH [one-action] FOCUS 1
UNCOMMON CONCENTRATE FOCUS MANIPULATE WIZARD
Range 60 feet; Targets 1 willing creature
Duration sustained up to 1 minute

You exert magical force to propel a willing creature up to 10 feet in a straight line, including upward, though if they aren’t on solid ground or have another way to maintain their height (such as a fly Speed) when the movement ends, they fall. When you Sustain the spell, you can move them again or choose a new target within range and move them instead.

You can cast this spell on an unconscious ally, and if you do, the movement from this spell doesn’t trigger reactions.

Heightened (4th) The distance increases to 20 feet.
Heightened (7th) The distance increases to 30 feet.

Off the bat this has a lot going for it.

- It falls into that realm of focus spell where it can conceivably be used in every encounter for your entire adventuring career, and has a very iconic, "Build around me" feel.

- It can be sustained multiple times a round.

- Post 13th level, it can function as either a side-grade or upgrade to your own stride actions.

- Being a single action, there are several possible applications for the Ready Action

- It has a fun interaction with Catfall/Rolling Landing

- Probably some fun things can be done by a Liturgist Animist who poaches it.

Overall it can give your turns a very tactical "Chess master" feel with your party, and can have just some fun general interactions in several scenarios.

So What hijinx can we pull with it?

Party builds and combos, item interactions, everything is on the table.

My Bloodlord Necromancer Wizard doesn't really work anymore.

They were a Lepistadt graduate who used the necromancy slot to take all the antonomy heavy necromancy spells. Less raise-the-dead necromancer, more body horror.

Post remaster I can still technically do this, but I have to trade out normal spellslots to do it while being lumbered with schools spells from School of the Boundary I don't particularly want. I guess he would actually be closer to Protean Form these days, but I also don't really want most of those spells either.

So the remaster didn't kill the character as such, just forced me to trade effectiveness for theme and gave me nothing in return for making me worse.

I was actually rather excited when I thought Rivals was going to introduce Lepistadt as an actual school. I had hoped this character would have been restored, but alas.

From my absolutely-not-statistically-relevant experience the Oracle changes were a failure. The class is even less played now than it was preremaster.

Which is werid, given that that made the remaster Oracle so much more powerful but lost a lot of its uniqueness.

I think most of us would say that "physical injury" is the most universally accepted definition of 'harm'.

Though this is very context sensitive, Blinding someone temporarily or binding them doesn't really consitute physical injury, but blinding someone permanently absolutely does.

What I'm hearing from this discussion, however, is that to the class already most susceptible to and punished by Table Variance, the Runelord now adds additional layers to that.

I can see how that if the you think anathema aren't really restrictions and don't play them as such, then yes, its the archetype isn't due much reward.

If they are played as actual restrictions, then the archetype is now missing a real payoff for those restructions.

We need to take into account that with the remaster the Wizard got a substantial nerf to horizonal power, and lost the crown for having the most top-level spell slots (either tying with or being replaced by the Oracle, depending on build).

I guess I had hoped that the rare archetype of the Runelord was a partial correction for these nerfs.

But I guess not.

Considering that the anathema is basically saying-but-not-saying the old restricted schools of magic, I'd have preferred if the anathema pointed to trait tags or something clearer.

The removal of schools would have gone much better, and the system itself would be much more robust and flexible, if it had been paired with a serious application of traits to spells.

Obviously the time constraints of the remaster prevented this, but a comprehensive trait system is the answer to a lot of issues in and around magic.

If nothing else, it would allow Personal Staves to have some life again.

an insertion of meaning where there is room for error.

I'll give you this, on the condition that you accept that there are already potentially hundreds of instances already in the game line that we just accept every day.

In this instance we know due to an errata, but there exists quite a bit of room for this sort of error all over the system. In which case we can't know until we know.

A perfectly valid errata may have also clarified the preparing issue without touching the additional charges, for instance. We can't take any potential ambiguity as a red flag because... well, Paizo leave a ton of ambiguity everywhere.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

They may not have intended it to the final, printed, version of the ability, but its a clear vision of a feature which is perfectly functional as written and makes sense.

It's all very well, but there's one small hitch: all this text never said anything that the base rule 'prepare only one staff per day' is removed. So yes, you add charges from a prepared staff. And your weapon is a staff. You prepare only one as usual though. So it always was only one set of charges. Functional and makes sense.

Because it doesn't need to.

Your functional staff is not an actual staff that gained charges from being prepared. It is a functional staff that gained charges as described in the ability.

If you chose to prepare an actual staff, you used those rules as normal, and if you merged them you used the actions as governed by the text.

Yes they needed to state that the functional staff could not be prepared separately as it was not explictly clear. But your functional staff never said it could be prepared anyhow.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

"with charges equal to the highest rank of spells you can cast" is a clear feature, which is then referenced later in the next paragraph to tell you how to handle those extra charges with the staff merge function.

They may not have intended it to the final, printed, version of the ability, but its a clear vision of a feature which is perfectly functional as written and makes sense.

Paizo are allowed to change their mind or walk things backs, but its not something that was created due to some muddled wording.

This has been discussed though, The text is not as clear as you think it to be. "Functions as a staff" previously didnt make it clear if you had to prepare it like you would need to with a staff. Which is why they added "The weapon functions as a staff only you can prepare".

Similarly the second paragraph doesnt make any note of this being additional charges to the previously prepared bonded item or adding the staff's charges to your (now empty,non-prepared) bonded item. Which is inline with how it worked pre-remaster. So they changed it to "When you prepare your bonded weapon, you can merge it with a staff"

You are correct that either reading works but the issue is specifically that depending on personal bias and experience different people will come to different conclusions when reading the previous text.

So we can't really draw conclusions as to if their vision was to replicate the old feat or something else, Nor as to wether they changed their mind or reevaluated it. Which lets be honest, if that was the case it would've been pushed much later. Only that people couldnt agree on what the text actually said and needed clarification.

Never let it be said that I think Paizo word their abilites well, and there is certainly room to improve it.

My contention was more around the additional charges granted to the initial staff was not an error or wording, or, if it was, they went out of their way to insert additional language for the sole purpose of making room for error.

If you forget the merging aspect for a moment and just look what was in the first paragraph, its a fairly unambiguous ability.

I agree that the reading where people thought you could get 2 full staff charges + the additional was always wrong and not supported in the text.

they just messed up the wording of the rule a bit.

Lets be honest here. That is not really what happened.

Lets compare text.

Runelords hail from an era where even a scholar was expected to be able to defend themself with arms if necessary, leading to the practice of attaching a blade to the typical wizard's staff. You must choose a polearm or spear as your arcane bond. In place of an arcane thesis, you have a personal rune, which appears on your bonded weapon. The weapon functions as a staff with charges equal to the highest rank of spells you can cast and contains the sin spells from your sin up to that rank (including your cantrips). Your personal rune isn't a property rune and doesn't count against the weapon's limit of such runes.

If you prepare a magical staff, it merges with your bonded item until your next daily preparations, adding its charges and spell list. While merged, the weapons haft takes on aesthetic aspects of the staff.

Runelords hail from an era where even a scholar was expected to be able to defend themself with arms if necessary, leading to the practice of attaching a blade to the typical wizard’s staff. You must choose a polearm or spear as your arcane bond. In place of an arcane thesis, you have a personal rune, which appears on your bonded weapon. The weapon functions as a staff only you can prepare and contains the sin spells from your sin up to the highest rank of spell you can cast (including your cantrips). Your personal rune isn’t a property rune and doesn’t count against the weapon’s limit of such runes.

When you prepare your bonded weapon as a staff, you can physically merge one other staff in your possession into it, adding the staff’s spells to your bonded weapon until your next daily preparations. While merged, the weapons haft takes on aesthetic aspects of the staff

"with charges equal to the highest rank of spells you can cast" is a clear feature, which is then referenced later in the next paragraph to tell you how to handle those extra charges with the staff merge function.

They may not have intended it to the final, printed, version of the ability, but its a clear vision of a feature which is perfectly functional as written and makes sense.

Paizo are allowed to change their mind or walk things backs, but its not something that was created due to some muddled wording.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Perhaps if players were allowed to strick their fingers in mousetraps at the start of each session, that woud suffice.

Bringing up something deliberate ridiculous doesn't make your point look stronger. It actually makes it look like you don't even feel you have a point so you're distracting from that with what is just one step removed (since you didn't actually attribute this ridiculous thing to me) from a straw man.

Sometimes ones want to be argumentative hides for the forest for the trees.

I'm saying that your outlook on the situation is absurd, not that you have said an absurd thing on its face.

You are making the case that downsides, or costs, should not be something which can be mitigated. You want these costs to hurt, so that any potential upside is paid for.

Its a fine idea on paper, but the nature of the medium means that there exists no real costs a player could be asked to pay that aren't in some way mitigatable if - and this is where we cross the absurdity boundry in your reasoning - we don't count "no longer does certain things" as a cost.

Encouraging changes in behaviour is the goal of things like the anthema system. To say that because the system works to meet its intended goal, it is then, not a restriction or cost to the player, is silly.

Reductions in agency which encourage alternative lines of play is the entire point!

This the "stick" (or Negative incentive) portion of Carrot & Stick behavioural economics. My general problem with this errata is that it removed most of the expected carrot (our positive incentive).

Paizo has made it clear they want Wizards to be most defined by the spells they cast. This is at odds with the "toolbox" approach they have generally positioned the class as.

We can see the (awful) changes to the school spell slot as means to get Wizards closer to that desired spot of "defined by the spells they cast" approach. Paizo have thus far opted to it all through negative incentives. Restrictions and lack of options, as opposed to Carrots.

With the initial release of the Runelord, it looked like Paizo had actually struck a good balance.

Being able to cast their sin spells more often than other spells, while also allowing them to prepare their other spells in their core slots, safe in the knowledge that could fall back into those sin spells with 10m break, was actually great.

The additional Runelord restrictions all made sense in this context and it served as a great example of the carrot and stick coming together to make Wizards that not only felt different from each other, but were actually more defined by the spells they cast.

Then they threw it away.

Ectar wrote:

Imo, it's more akin to a rogue promising to never train in Thievery for a bonus to Stealth.

Sure... but that's not actually any different despite your presentation that it is.

Wanting to be sneaky no more implies that you also actually care about being able to pick pockets, open locks, and disable devices than want to play a spell caster implies you actually want to be able to do every kind of magic there is to do.

Especially when we get to the "you were only actually going to prepare so many spells in the first place" of it, missing out on broad categories of magic - no matter how desirable they are - is not actually a problem for the player.

In order for it to be an actual obstacle or inconvenience there'd have to be a pronounced weakness inherent to the scenario of "I couldn't choose that" that isn't just as present in the scenario of "I didn't choose that even though I could". And since there's no difference between "this character doesn't know electric arc or fireball" and "it would violate this character's anathema to cast electric arc or fireball" there is no actual inherent value in that anathema.

And that you can point at every runelord option and say desirable spells it can't do - which happen to be other sins go-to sorts of spells - proves that getting by without certain things is hardly even inconvenient outside of having the GM/group inflicted case of "I was allowed to pick an option that is awful in the campaign and am not being allowed to do anything other than tough it out."

There is quite a bit of circular reasoning in this.

You are asking for it to hurt, and for the player to be made to feel that hurt everyday, but the practical cash-outs are virtually identical. The players still aren't casting the proscribed spells.

The players intention of ever using those spells is immaterial. It is, however, impacting what happens within the confines of the game and limits the possible scope of solutions that player could bring. The correlate of being a prepared caster is that for every spell you prepare, you are not preparing every other spell that could also fill its space. Restricting what can and cannot be prepared causes the spells in this correlate to shift as a natural consequence.

Saying this doesn't impact balance is kind of silly.

If impacting the types of magic a Wizard can do is not enough, then what would a real cost look like?

- A HP deduction for additional slots? - Wizards try to avoid being hit regardless, so evidently this is aso not an actual obstacle or inconvenience.

- A scaling penalty to saves for slots? - Wizards strive not to be impacted by harmful effects anyhow, so this is also not an actual obstacle or inconvenience.

- A loss of feats for extra slots? - Wizard class feats of note are few and far between, so trading them away would not be an actual obstacle or inconvenience.

And with those 4 options, we have expended the resoures afforded in the Wizard chasis.

Beyond that, all we could offer would be penalties to the classes proficiencies with Magic. Which seems like a rather pyric trade at best.

Perhaps if players were allowed to strick their fingers in mousetraps at the start of each session, that woud suffice.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Drawbacks can be offset by benefits.

AKA MinMaxing.

Not in this context… that term just doesn’t even apply here.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Finoan wrote:

I'm putting my vote in the 'no, you don't get to prepare two staves and get the free charges on both of them' column. That was a TGTBT ruling that wouldn't fly at my tables to begin with. If you want to play it that way at your tables you are still certainly able to houserule .

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about this rule right here:

Preparing a Staff wrote:

No one can prepare more than one staff per day

That is the power ceiling for all characters of any class.

Runelord was never intended to bypass that to get extra charges by preparing both their Arcane Bond weapon and a regular staff. It isn't how I would run it at my tables even before the errata. You could combine the staves together first and then prepare the combination as one staff.

Is there a part of that that is still confusing?

I guess I’m confused by you patting yourself on the back for now allowing an interpretation that I personally never saw anyone bar you advance.

So I guess good work on that!

I fully agree that being able to prepare two staffs, get the charges from both, and then add your max spell rank in additional charges on top of that is not what the original text said. Mostly because it never said that.

Blave wrote:

That "extra top rank slot" is limited to two spells. Oh, and at level 15+ it's reduced to a single spell. You at least get to spontaneously choose which one you want to cast before then.

Then there's spell quality. Getting to choose between 2 spells isn't great if one or even both of them are just bad or highly situational.

Sure, you can use the charges to spam a few lower level spells but even for those many are bad - or become bad as levels go on because they rely on damage, counteracting or have the incapacitation trait.

There's maybe 2 sins with a spell list that really benefits from those extra top rank slots at all levels.

The errata'd Runelord is barely worth dealing with the anathema. And only because the base wizard is somehow even worse, if more flexible.

Well, that is a bunch of other things that are valid critiques of the archetype.

None of them are fixed by giving the wizard extra staff charges.

Drawbacks can be offset by benefits.

I'm putting my vote in the 'no, you don't get to prepare two staves and get the free charges on both of them' column. That was a TGTBT ruling that wouldn't fly at my tables to begin with. If you want to play it that way at your tables you are still certainly able to houserule .

What are you talking about?

It’s a functional staff which has your sin spells, and a number of charges equal to your highest spell rank + a regular staff.

So at most + 10 charges at 19th level.

What a poor change to Runelords.

Bad job Paizo, bad job.

That is it, that is the post.

I won't rehash the myriad issues I have had Wizards over the years. Just revert the change that so that Runelords can remain as an actually good version of the class. The whole archetype has the rare tag already.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Perpdepog wrote:

It's the Return of the Return of the Rise of the Revenge of the Runelords.

Return of the Return of the Rise of the Revenge of the Runelords: REVENGEANCE

2 Rune 2Lordius!

Rise 3: Tian Xia drift!

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

A summon will cause indirect harm.

If you are reaching to this level of abstraction, the class will begin to have basic functionality issues.

Any aid whatsoever they lend to the party would then count as indirect harm.

That's nonsense.

Just look at it from the perspective that is already established in game:
If an action counts as a hostile action (e.g. to break Invisibility), then it should be considered active involvement. And if it causes injury, then it is doing harm.

Sure, you can summon a Fire Elemental, but once you command (sustain) it to attack someone, then that is definitely using your magic to cause harm with an element.

For at what point would that be different than casting Floating Flame? Both are temporarily summoned forms of elemental fire that require your direct command to harm others.

This feels like we are in arbitrary and capricious territory.

Would casting Conductive Weapons on an allies weapon be Anathema to you?

A summon will cause indirect harm.

If you are reaching to this level of abstraction, the class will begin to have basic functionality issues.

Any aid whatsoever they lend to the party would then count as indirect harm.