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So I was excited when I heard of the spell forbidding Ward and thought “finally an ally abjuration!”, then found out it wasn’t arcane...

What’s even worse, diviners seem to have an even smaller selection of spells, with their extra spellslots they’re forced to take true strike and comprehend language before they get real divinations. See invisibility sucks because it doesn’t fully negate invisibility and it’s the same spell level as invisibility itself too, just throw flour. True strike is very meh as not all diviners will use attack rolls often (they’re probably tied with enchanters for most politically inclined types) and is literally the only first level spell for diviners

Necromancers are probably in a similar situation, traditionally they’ve also never been real necromancers until they finally raise undead, but seeing goblin pox in the list seems promising, haven’t bothered looking anything up.

Why are all early abjuration wizards just crappy tanks? Why are necromancers and diviners worse off or even better universalist wizards until they get create undead and clairvoyance?

I think the main reason is that wizards (and necromancy in general) in terms of abjuration and divination are flavoured around very specific high level effects. Conjurers just make stuff and have a plethora is spells, transmutation gets literally everything that doesn’t fit into any other school, enchantment and illusions are focused on lower level effects, but abjuration wizards and divination wizards are different.

For divination, anything with any sort of uncertainty gets an “unexact witchcraft” connotation and gets removed and placed into divine and occult, like augury. Which sucks, I could want to make for example an astrologer or fortune teller wizard and have literally no spells to help with this, as anything regarding the future will have uncertainty and therefore no chance of being an arcane spell, and anything exact is either so basic everyone will take it anyway (detect magic) or so specific you need to beg the DM. Or 3rd level spell level and later.

For abjurers, any early helpful spell is occult/divine for some reason? I think it’s because they’re specific in a slightly arbitrary way, like forbidding Ward targets an ally or enemy and stops one from targeting the other, and this goes against the exact, academic nature of a wizard I guess. Abjurer flavour wise are probably thought of as magic circle users, excorcists (though they compete with divine casters for demons and occult casters for spirits) and these tend to be high level. There are a few good ones like endure elements though.

I think that the spell lists should be expanded for these schools, but a short term solution is a specialist school only wizard feat that lets you choose one spell per level to be from another list but same school.

As for examples of cantrips/low level spells for abjurers, necromancers and diviners:
Diviner:
Aura’s whisper - cantrip
You may target an object in range or a place you are in. You may read or place a message in the target’s aura. If you place a message, you may choose a subject. If you read the aura you hear a random message placed earlier that you have not heard, filtered only to the subject or specific message if you choose to only listen for a specific message or subject. Anti magic and any dispel magic on the target clears their aura.
Penetrate wall - 1st level spell 1 hr or until dismissed
Target a 5 ft circle on a surface - the spell fails if the surface is over 5 ft thick to the other side. A faint symbol appears on the other side of the surface, and the target circle shows what is behind the surface as if it were an inch thick hole.
(Heighten increase duration, size/thickness, or make symbol invisible)

Abjurer:
Repulsion aura - cantrip
Target creature rolls fort save if unwilling, or you may choose which degree of success occurs otherwise.
Critical success: target is unaffected
Success: target is surrounded by an unstable force aura and gains +1 to tAC but -1 to attack rolls until the end of your next turn
Failure: target gains +2 to tAC but -3 to attack rolls until the end of your next turn
(Heightened increase bonus and penalty)

Necromancer:
Bone club - cantrip
raise a floating bone. You may use an action to move it 30 ft, or make it take the strike action. It deals 1d3 damage and uses your spell attack roll. Any bone may move as many times per turn but only strike once. They may flank, or take the trip action. They each have one health and an AC of 14
(Heightened - raise 3 bones at once, increase damage)

I'm okay with spells in general requiring scaling, however I am worried about evocation *specifically* where blaster wizards have usually fallen short to utility ones.

Now, blaster wizards get less spells that scale with enemies, which can be a bit of a problem. Utility will always find a use no matter what spell level, but damage quickly becomes irrelevant if it's too inefficient action-to-damage wise.

Cantrip that are automatically highest level helps, but it sort of destroys flexibility in that wizards can't specialize as much and get more out of breadth and covering everything since it's as simple as picking a single cantrip. The peaceful enchantment wizard and purely primal elemental destruction wizard are both just shooting themselves in the foot (as opposed to slightly cutting themselves in the foot but getting 20 bucks as part of a dare or something) because in PF1e you had to put in spell slots and learn the spells, and while it wasn't perfect, many spells scaled up automatically so there'd be plenty of options in combat. In PF2e it seems the go to strategy is that you take a cantrip, sometimes learn the spells and sometimes just cast a higher level version of a spell you already have, and have a ton of free slots and spells to learn for utility. Your higher level spells will deal tons of damage, your lower level spells will never have damaging spells unless you specifically know you're going to have very very weak minions all bunching together (assuming DM is trying to make the encounter CR appropriate, he'll need a tonnn of enemies since in this game it's easier to kill a lot of weak enemies than in 5e)

I guess if they make the damage higher in general it helps slow down this problem, but it doesn't fix it.

If cantrips are going to be sort of comparable (maybe a bit weaker) to weapon attacks, spells should rarely go too far below that damage, and use it as a minimum. Possibly as a feat in the evocation school, all damage evocation spells have a minimum spell level equal to 1/3 of their highest level spell slot even when cast with first level spell slots.

Or the damage scales with level, but the secondary effect goes up with spell slot. Or add a spell that increases the damage of your next spell (add 1d6 damage per level of spell slot or something, can be casted with an action or while doing a spell component).

I don't play damage wizards though, so take my comment with a grain of salt.

Y'all are here hyping about weapons while I'm afraid the blowgun won't appear at all D:

I don't want to turn this into an outright general ethics discussion but a lot of the arguments against the removal of poison that "paladins aren't supposed to be 'ends justify the means' people and therefore poison should be forbidden" feel disingenuous.

As someone who agrees to a degree that ends justify the means, I usually get ridiculous questions when I express this belief along the lines of "oh so you'd kill nine million people to save an orphan instead of pressing a button that does so instantly with zero risk??". Well no, but if I had to lie to save an orphan or let him die I'd choose to lie and have no guilt doing so. Of course I'm exaggerating with the example, but this applies even if the two outcomes come scarily close - I'd rather actively do 'evil' than let a slightly worse evil happen and say "oh but it's not my fault" (it's important to note things like death vs murder, intent, and incomparable situations especially involving murder of A vs murder of B making things complicated but that's for another thread). This is one of the highest forms of 'honour' imo.

But more on point, the fact that paladins have a hierarchy in code already shows that PF2e wants to make paladins closer to adhering to this belief (but maybe not to such an extreme degree). Especially with something with such a big gap in how good it is as using poison dishonourably vs. saving lives. And it makes sense, plenty of paladins aren't supposed to be naive and focus on doing the right thing instead of sitting around saying "but no that's wrong!". And poison isn't inherently dishonourable as others have pointed out, especially since honour is really hard to define and could mean that you're not even allowed to have a better sword/armour/magic, or give your all vs. someone who has had less training but is a serial killer.

That doesn't mean I'm completely on either side though, there is a very, very important sentiment that I think should always be preserved for paladins. They're meant to strictly follow a code, some no-win situations should be possible, and taking the right choice in these extreme situations should still take your powers away. But it shouldn't be with poison. It should be a huge plot important event, like someone kidnaps four people and he literally can't be stopped, and tells you to kill three randomly chosen by him so the fourth can live, not "I tranquilize him before he harms anyone else without killing him" - "oh sorry that's poison you lose your powers". It reinforces the idea LG gods act like tough enforcers and must reluctantly punish the paladin to a degree that isn't permanently crippling, while the paladin must realize his powers are in the end not as important as the good of all. Of course the god sends a cleric on a mission for that atonement ritual ASAP.

But I think "bad DMs" just kinda have to ruin it for everyone and will aim to screw over paladin PCs at level 1 so good DMs can't sparingly put in these interesting situations and the rules are made stricter for something that relies purely on DM story.

Keep in mind I have no problems with poison being an anathema - and I'm actually a bit annoyed that gods have a complete exception clause, like Shelyn lets you destroy art if it stops harm on other (being required to destroy art as part of a normal non plot related action is REALLY hard, anti poison gods are opt-in, so that's why I'm specifically okay with these). But at the same time it's better than a no exception ruleset, which screws you over. Maybe there should be a sort-of-penalty until the situation is fixed (you destroyed this painting to convince the rich kidnapper to go shopping for one and expose himself early, before he kills someone... but until you actually save the kidnapped you'll be penalized)

Witch all the way

I'd also want every single psionic class including the prestiges but psi points are complicated and not even by paizo...

Can there be rules to allow casting to last between move than one turn? Like I spread a spell cast over two turns, using the first turn to use a verbal component and move 60 ft, then the next to do the somatic or material component.

This'll help out characters that want to mix in martial and magic actions, which have been traditionally pretty weak. Since spells lose efficiency if you don't use the maximum amount of actions (and you already have less spell slots), and attacks lose efficiency as you make more than one per turn, I remember there's to-hit penalties for attacking more than once per turn, but you can make three attacks if you want (and they probably have weaker to hits and damage already). Meaning a battlecaster kind of lose when they use turn 1 to cast a spell with three actions and turn 2 to attack three times. And it feels weird to just pause swinging a sword and do a weird performance to cast a spell.

Maybe it won't be the case, but if this stops casters from casting another spell (if they do the first component on one turn, they can't begin another spell, and then when they finish the second component on the second turn, they still can't begin another spell, they have to wait. So instead of two fully powered spells, they get one over two turns) then I really like the idea of trying to find the balance between action economy, slot efficiency, and outright power being something a wizard should think of (and it's in an otherwise completely intuitive system)

Can we get some more spells like vampiric exsanguination that explores secondary themes that 5e kind of just gives a single weak ability for and a single spell in the entire list to call a day? I really want to be able to make a diviner that can actually see far into the future (or at least guess to the same level augury clerics can) instead of being this weird lucky generalist, or be a more vampiric blood magic necromancer (really hoping there's a spell that increases magic on kill rather than just health. Like heighten next spell by 1 upon killing creature) instead of undead army

At first I read the part about school powers and thought there was a list you can choose from until I noticed it said "take a look at the nifty power you can pick up" which was pretty disappointing. Still, I'm really hoping PF 2e will be more flexible with its wizards than 5e.

Necromancers and diviners don't get to do much divination and necromancy until they get 3rd level spells (for diviners, magic items are super rare early on, detect magic is a ritual that everyone uses anyway, DM has to go out of his way to put in intelligent beings that can't speak common, but they can read thoughts I guess. Necromancers get generic debuffs that could literally be transmutation spells and no one would bat an eye). On the other hand PF had a huge SRD worth of spells from many different sources.

Diviner school features were better with enchantments and transmutation save-or-sucks or replaced divinations (ahem see invisibility, in darkness, or in the ethereal plane as an ability when it's meant to be a spell) or made them cheaper as if they were a tax rather than cool powers. They were just fluffed universalists honestly. Necromancers were forced into the raise an undead army trope (at least pathfinder was flexible and let you have one big baddy since it measured skeletons in HD not numbers of stock mooks), abjurers had this weird "I'm a taaanky maaage" thing going on for a majority of the game when I'd rather focus on protective spells for others like magic circles to keep out spirits, stopping evocationists from burning things down or banishing demons.

Really hoping it'll be easy to port pathfinder 1e spells to pathfinder 2e, or that from the get go the spells will be really diverse. And that iconic spells like scrying (like some sort of see/hear through a single wall), fireball (firebolt in 5e) and animate dead (animate a single bone that dies in one hit and deals 1d2 damage) will have equivalents in early levels or at least give wizards more than combat spells like grease, sleep, and magic missile (when creating the character, not as in more spell slots or something) as the only spells worth preparing (everything else is either a ritual which I agree in making free, or it's so rare it's not worth precious slots unless you get a day's notice)

I was reading through the psychic spell list (and not considering class features) and noticed that Psychic magic takes a bit too much from arcane classes. Spells that I'd consider iconic to wizards (Hallucinatory Terrain, Haste, Disguise self, Charm person, Fox's Cunning, even wish) were put into the psychic spell list but there isn't much from divine classes (cure/inflict, reincarnation, resurrection, miracle). I'm even surprised that the cleric doesn't even get possession while wizards do, despite the fact I'd associate ghosts and possession more with divine magic than arcane. I thought that dealing with the astral and ethereal planes would extend to a bit of negative and positive plane energy.

If it weren't for the fact there's no prepared 9 spell level psychic class (which surprises me, I'd love to play as a prepared psychic class), I think psychic classes would be able to replace non blaster sorcerers and witches (which have below average spell lists to begin with) except for a few situations (Bards and Witches because there's no cleric for some reason and a bit of healing is needed). On the other hand, healing, defensive buffs and being able to whack things while casting spells will still be dominated by clerics and druids.

Ok, seeing as this game is trying to be close to the original tabletop pathfinder game, I have a some very important questions that games like nethack have had problems fixing (and decided to leave out, and that's why its so combat oriented.)

• How will Dominate Person and magic jar(which is necromancy, but still) spells work, especially in PVP? If you decide to remove those spells, how will you handle both the enchantment spells powers to make it on-par with other spells, and how will you handle the rage of several enchanter wizard fans?
  
• Can you tie people up, use bind soul, grapple, etc, if so, won't people just go offline from waiting for so long for a rescue?
  
• Seeing as you've made this a non-turn based game because this is an MMO(don't want to wait 5,779,031 turns, excluding the incapacitated and paralyzed people.),how will you balance characters that are based on speed, with other characters? by level 20 you'd probably have the ability to do actions quicker than your keyboard can handle, or non-speed-oriented-characters/low-levelled-characters will have to be EXETREMELY slow so the level 20 speedy characters can have reasonable-difficulty gameplay?
  
• How will roleplaying affect this game, will it be like WoW, or will it actually have an impact on the game?
  
• If you have more than one character (and you have the same problem as the first or second question), would metagaming be a problem because puzzles will be easy if you memorise them, and you'll know the weakness of the enemies inside, making it easy for you to rescue yourself?