Old_Man_Robot's page

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Don’t listen to anyone else!

You need to take both the Folklorist and Campfire Chronicler dedications.

Spend all actions, every round, everyday, Offering Stories, Spinning Tales, and blasting out the Anthems.

Peak Bard activity.

Ugh, this guy. He doesn't shut up. What happened to the bard that just quipped about stuff or the one that slept with the dragon?

It started as a joke, but now I like the idea of a neurodivergent Bard whose barding methodology is info dumping constantly.

Zoken44 wrote:

So, I'm confused. What's this an announcement of? Release of a new Adventure Path? an Actual Play? more sourcebooks? I'm probably missing some context or something.

What this announcement is will be revealed tomorrow on the stream. You're not missing any context at all.

Definitely a The Mandalorion crossover event.

Pedro Pascal will be doing an Actual Play of the secret new sin, Handsomeness.

Envy Runelords cannot deal damage with the elements nor the void.

If I have to defend myself and deal direct damage which spells can I actually use? How may spells have the mental trait/deal mental damage so that I might be able to deal some form of damage?

So, lets break this out, as there exists two aspects at play with this Anathema.

1) What counts as "the elements"? and 2) What spells can I cast?

1) Pathfinder 2e does not have an "Elemental" damage type. Damage types are defined here. The what we do have is "Energy" damage.

Elemental damage, then, we can reasonably say is probably just a subset of energy damage, but this does not actually appear anywhere in the rules. However, the limitation is not against dealing damage of a certain damage type, but, instead, dealing damage with those elements.

This means that, for instance, if we have a fire spell that does force damage, it would still hit the Anathema because it is the 'element' that is dealing the damage, not the damage type itself.

As of RoE, we have defined the elements as: Air, Earth, Fire, Metal, Water & Wood.

From this we can reasonably infer that if we are dealing damage with a spell which has any of these traits, it would trigger Anathema.

We then have a special crave out for explicitly void. Void is also a trait, just not one of the elemental ones above.

Now, with this, there is a potential problem. What about electricity? Electricity is a damage type, but not an elemental type. Many electricity dealing spells lack either the Air or Metal trait, while some others do. This is not simply a matter of old vs spells, as even some of those that are post RoE/Remaster contuine to see electricity as not a distinct element.

Personally I see this as fine, if a bit unintuitive, it just means that your Runelord have access some reliable early damage spells without being Anathema.

2) As a small point:

Casting a sin spell never invokes the anathema of its school of sin

So if its on your list, you don't have to worry about it.

I’m really hoping that rare pocket library is a mistake.

It’s a solid utilitarian spell that has a lot of flavour. I’ve been having characters cast it since the spell came out.

I don’t see any reason it should suddenly be rare.

If you are Thaumaturge you can make your own daily supply of Retrieval Prisms however.

You have the Inscribed trait (so mostly Scroll Robes).

And items to draw for free, like the Retrieval Belt.

That's those I know of.

Also, you can use a Familiar with Independent and Manual Dexterity to hand you a Scroll every 2 rounds.

Overall, all these methods work if you know what you want to cast. But it's harder to choose from multiple Scrolls outside high level Retrieval Belts.

Don't forget Retrieval Prisms while you are at it. For 12gp a pop, at higher levels they can do some real work.

Runelord does look like a pretty cool midrange wizard from the skimming a did.

I think the new Runelord is actually the best Paizo have put out for them this edition. It does a lot of good things while still being tied to the curriculum system.

Having a mini Staff Nexus baked in with a mini spell substitution alone makes it head and shoulders above the base Wizard.

But, more importantly, it has focus spells I want to cast every combat. Shame they didn’t keep the point expansion.

given how that would require mechanical changes to the class rather than additional feats and schools

I broadly agree with this. Feats and schools are problems for the Wizard, but they aren't The Problem with Wizards.

That said, a 1st level feat could do a lot for the Wizard I would say.

Prerequisite: Arcane Thesis

You gain the Additional Lore skill feat in Academia Lore.

You can Recall Knowledge on any creature you can observe using Academia Lore. When you Recall Knowledge in this way, you may only learn information on that creatures Weaknesses, Resistances, Immunities and Saves.

Simple, effective and flavourful. Also plugs the missing skill I guess.

Part of it is the addictive vs the exclusive nature of the content.

The schools & archetypes exclude each other, you can only be doing one at a time and you can never mix and match.

Whereas class feats can be taken in a much more adaptive way. It expands the class to a greater degree in some ways, because they can expand all characters potentially equally. Whereas subclass options cannot do that.

I agree that some people are be overly unfair on the contents number. This is, by far, the most thought Paizo have given Wizards in years. The “technology” they are deploying here with the curriculum spells is a much needed elevation of the otherwise awful remaster change.

So it is good all round.

I just wish there was more of it on more fronts.

Monk made out like a bandit.

Can’t wait for Monasteries of Golarion, with 15-20 new Wizards feats because one of the monasteries likes to read.

So... Rivals.

Surprisingly a lot of content for an LO book.

Somehow even less Wizard content than even I thought there would be.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

We should start a pool.

Money goes to a charity to aid in childrens literacy.

I'll pledge 250USD that we get to 12 books, both Rules & Lost Omens, after Player Core 1, before Wizards get another new class feat printed.

Come on Paizo! Take my money, prove me wrong!

On a crazy note inspired by what you just wrote there, I would love to see a book where every class (feats, subclasses and all) up to the point is compiled in one book and another book where every ancestry is compiled.

I know we have the Archives to find stuff but for old timers like me that love books in hand, it is a complete mess sifting through books to find stuff, especially with the various heritages being in the various Lost Omen books.

Those would be some hefty tomes!

I can see those being a nice end-of-life product for 2nd edition. A couple of big, heavy, books which compile various things in particular books. Maybe about 4/5 in total.

We should start a pool.

Money goes to a charity to aid in childrens literacy.

I'll pledge 250USD that we get to 12 books, both Rules & Lost Omens, after Player Core 1, before Wizards get another new class feat printed.

Come on Paizo! Take my money, prove me wrong!

Wizards haven’t got any new Wizard-specific content in the last 6/7 books, be they rules or LO. (There was an AP with a new school however! )

I haven’t seen Rivals yet, but Wizards have long overdue some actual content.

A lack of actual class feats is just sad to see. It’s hard to think of a book more perfect to drop a handful of new feats for specific things.

Scrotor wrote:

Apparently in the new book rival academies there are no wizard feats, just a lot of spells and schools

I mean, we know it contains a class archetype that exclusively for the wizard, so to say it has no wizard feats is misleading.

But I don't find it that surprising that it doesn't include additional, more generic wizard feats. Adding more schools is already a "1 class only benefit" feature for a book to dive into, and one that is probably much more important to address, as it is where I think most of the remaster wizard frustration is coming from. The remaster did add a number of new feats for the wizard and many of those are very good.

I know you personally don’t agree, but I cannot express enough how anaemic the Wizard is.

New schools were NEEDED as a bare minimum because the remaster took more schools and focus spells than it gave back. Resulting in a net loss of options. The wizard still had the least class feats of any core class.

I’ve heard there is only actually 3 new schools as well, but I’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Are you playing a Remastered Witch or a Premaster? The Witch got a lot more unique and stand-outish in the remaster, so if you aren’t using the remaster, I would look into that!

The second thing I’d ask is what drew you to the Witch initially? Perhaps it’s not right for what you want to be doing and another class does make sense!

Also, it would be wise to chat to your GM if they are constantly targeting your familiars. While there is meant to be a risk/reward element to using familiars directly in combat, if it happens constantly, your GM may need to alter their game style. It’s not intended for the Witch to consistently lose out on a chunk of their class features everyday.

This thread really blew up. I've never played Wizard but it does seem like the idea is for it to be "the" prepared caster so much of its identity has to do with interacting with that system. It's just not very flashy.

It’s a standard 3 slot prepared caster, like a Druid or Cleric.

It has a 4th, limited slot, which allows for a selection of under 20 spells in edition to the standard 3.

It has some thesis options which allow you to play with slots a bit, but it’s no more complicated than a clerics font.

The simple truth of the Wizard is that they are not actually “the” anything. The best they can claim is some marginal gains over some other casters.

Just wanted to pop in and say thank you to everyone for cleaning up this thread! Constructive disagreement is encouraged because it's enlightening in surprising ways! For example, I've never played a Wizard, and after reading this thread, I find myself considering it, which I have never been compelled to do before! lol Anyway, thank you all. Carry on! ^^

Just out of curiosity, does there exist a venue by which we could get the developers to answer some of the more recurring questions or concerns about the class.

Wizards have generated smoke for years, but I feel like a lot of the things we see from the dev side all come due to specific things (new books, etc). A Q&A style with some submitted questions might go a ways to clearing some things up.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Counterpoint, it's very easy to do data analysis wrong if you don't have the internal resources to ensure you are doing it right.

For years now I've been working with researchers and engineers on projects which most of you would probably name-check on. Even "professional scientists" get their analysis wrong on occassion. It can be shockingly easy to do if you don't have a robust understanding on how to structure and contextualise your data correctly.

I'm not saying it's the case here, but just having data isn't the same...

Yeah, obviously. But I don't think the feedback on PF2 classes is an extremely hard to understand piece of data.

Let's consider the counterpoint: How can the Wizard blow the Sorcerer out of the water?

Lets pump the breaks here.

This doesn't actually relate to what I was saying, and we're muddying the waters too much if we want to have this part of the conversation properly.

The Wizard would have it's issues even if Sorcerers didn't exist. Yes, the existence of Sorcerers does given some comparative points by which we can judge things, but it's not the real point of value.

The question of how Paizo gathers, interprets and utilises the data it acquires from customers is something we - from the outside - can only guess at. The internal metrics they use to understand their success in a given area is also not something we know.

We can't say how things like positive or negative feedback is understood at Paizo, or how that fits into any rubric of how classes are balanced.

Essentially we can't presuppose that "Something is the way it is because Paizo have data which shows the way it is is good", because it's too opaque for us to gleam anything from.

For example, in one of the previously linked threads, when someone asked about data gathering around Wizards, Sayre replied by talking about the commercial success of PF2. That is an example of how the data gathering around the quality of content is potentially understood internally, but, anyone who has worked with sort of stuff before will know that the road between QA and commercicals can be a long one with lots of interesting forks. In some cases, there might not even realistically be a road, depending on a lot of other factors (would you stop buying all Paizo products just because Rangers sucked? or swear off Coke forver because their new sugar free cherry flavour isn't to your taste?)

But the long and short of it is, the idea that there is "positivie data" which stands for one position or another is too vague to be meaningfully understood without a proper contextulaisation. Which we just don't have.

It's why I, personally, try to avoid aggregated-sentiment based arguments. I know I don't have the data, and we don't know enough about how those who might have it understand it, to make claims one way or another.

But, even beyond that, there still lots of scenarios where something can be qualitatively bad but popular, because those two metrics aren't necessarily tied together. You would have to do the work to figure out the relationship and judge accordingly.

"The data exists" is then, largely meaningless, really, if we can't understand it enough to talk about it in the ways we want to talk about it.

We also don't even know, for instance, if some sort of internal class quality guage even exists for Paizo - or, if it does - how that impacts how things are designed or products developed. We can probably assume there is something like that in place, but we are simply too removed to invoke the data potentially behind to mean one thing or another.

R3st8 wrote:

At this point, I'm more interested in whatever data is telling the developers that Wizard is fine. There must be something wrong with the data or its interpretation, because I just can't believe that's the case.

Lots of people have issues with Spontaneous casting and prefer Prepared casting for pure personal tastes.

Lots of people like the Wizard fantasy of previous D&D editions which PF2 Wizard conveys perfectly.

I don't think Paizo is bad at gathering data, it'd be rather obvious to them if their data came from a specific subset of players. I definitely think there's something with the Wizard. And this something can be obviously seen with the endless discussions the Wizard (and only the Wizard) generates. So there may be an equal amount of positive feedback, invisible to us. Because we are in an echo chamber.

From my experience (I worked in video games), there is always something players are focusing on, which is fine, but that they endlessly consider problematic. And no matter what proof you bring them (stats, opinions, etc...) they always consider you, as a game designer, are the one making a mistake, that something's wrong with your data, stats, opinions.

And from my experience, players are much worse at game design than game designers.

Have you even tried to consider the opposite point of view, that Wizard's fine and you are the one working on flawed data? After all, Paizo can ask you the very same question.

Counterpoint, it's very easy to do data analysis wrong if you don't have the internal resources to ensure you are doing it right.

For years now I've been working with researchers and engineers on projects which most of you would probably name-check on. Even "professional scientists" get their analysis wrong on occassion. It can be shockingly easy to do if you don't have a robust understanding on how to structure and contextualise your data correctly.

I'm not saying it's the case here, but just having data isn't the same as being able to understand what it's telling you correctly.

Why do we always do this when it comes to Wizards?

No other class that was buffed in the remaster was unplayable or mechanically broken. A class shouldn't need to be in such a state to get looked at. That would be abject failure on behalf of paizo to release something in such a state.

It's not some threshold that should be met or is required for action, because, if it's in that state, multiple people have failed in their jobs at several levels. It's not something that should be expected to happen ever, let alone as something which is a needed requirement for change.

The Wizard is a bad class for multiple reasons, none of which are based on their ability to mechanically function at a base level.

I don't really agree the wizard should be a RK beast though. That it should have tools to make it easier? Totally. That it should be part of the chassis of the class? IMO no. The wizard is highly associated with Intelligence, but the wizard isn't a monster hunter like a thaumaturge that knows everything about their enemies. In fact, I don't recall a single wizard from media that plays the "I know everything about this foe" kind of deal. However, I would like schools giving you an auto-scaling lore and a trained skill (someone pointed out earlier wizards have less trained skills than most classes. I think this would be the perfect way to compensate that). Wizards are IMO more of an expert in their field of knowledge rather than an overall knows-it-all, so this makes more sense to me.

Most of the above listed classes have even less of a claim to the concept of being a know-it-all than a dyed in the wool academics would.

If the conversation is pivoting to “does this classes concept extend to cover this?” Then we would need to strip it out from most of them. Professional scholars and scientists have much more of a conceptual stake to be able to know things or pick apart bits of disparate lore into a frame of understanding than a generic “monster hunter” would. Sure, on the job training, trade craft, etc, are all valid concepts. But so is straight up scholastic enterprise.

If we look at how Arcana is positioned, when we look at feats like Unified Theory, it certainly already allows for a framework to understand the “mechanics” of things greater than any other single skill.

Really it is the thaumaturge that is really eating the wizard’s potential lunch here because the got all these abilities that would be amazing to combine with the wizard

Setting aside that I strongly believe that this SHOULD be a core feature of the Wizard, the Thaumaturge is far from alone these days.

Bards, Oracles (kinda, Whisper of Weakness is closer to your idea), Sorcerer (LOL), Thaumaturges, Animists, Commanders, and Necromancers, all have mono-skill recall functions or their effective equivalents.

Sine the Thaumaturge, Paizo has been giving it out like candy.

Wizard should have a special auto-scaling mono-lore skill, like a special Academia Lore, that lets them identify enemy resistances, weaknesses and saves.

Make it a 1st level feat, with a preq that makes it non-poachable via archetyping.

Plugs several holes in the class at once.

as I understand this is one of the reasons why the Wizard and the Magus have a below-average number of baseline trained skills.

Nah. It's bad design driven by legacy assumptions, which, for some reason, didn't merit correction in the remaster. These are the only classes without an effective 4+Int trained skills at base.

The Wizard and the Wizard alone is the only Int class that Paizo felt the need to "control" for Int.

Every other Int based class has 4 skills, either directly or given for use via a class feature to bring it up to 4.

I think it might help some of the discussion if we framed it a bit better.

I think the Wizard is a bad class.

I do not think the Wizard is a bad class. I think the Wizard is a bad class.

In that it the Wizard is structurally poor and mechanically subpar for the enviorment it finds itself in.

The floor of the Wizard is that of a legendary spellcaster, and has all the power and function of a legendardy spellcaster. They are not bad at casting spells, because they largely can't be bad at casting spells by the nature and structure of the game. This means they are mechanically serviceable and don't have any blockers (unlike, for example, early Alchemists who had literal blockers to be able to do what they were intended to do).

If all you wish from the Wizard is someone who can cast spells, then they check that box. Your choice of Wizard for that function will be as valid and fulflling as any other full caster you might wish to choose.

But that's not a class.

I bet L1-10 there's practically no difference in 'party rounds to kill' between sorcerer and wizard. But yeah, it's a bit of a clunkier, more-forward-planning-required road.

Lower levels is where, in my experience, the difference is more pronounced, not less.

Wizard's have to split out their potential combat vs utility options ahead of time and represents an opportunity cost that is recoverable - mostly - only once a day.

A Wizard who preps a utility spell forgoes the use of that spell slot for damage and vice versa.

Since Sorcerers can make this decision more on the fly, and combat is generally the aspect of the game with the most limiting factors, the ability to forgo a utility spell when - in that moment - you really need a fireball, is paramount.

Plus, you know, Sorcerers inherently do more damage these days anyhow.

Gears are turning.

SquintingFry.Meme