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And what point is that? It seems like you have more of a problem with spellcasters in general rather than just the Arcanist. If you have a problem with spellcasters in general this really isn't the thread to discuss that. This is a thread for the Arcanist specifically, not spellcasters as a whole. I am comparing the Arcanist to its two alternate classes. It is coming up weaker in ways that its versatility just can't make up for. All they would have to do is let them add their Cha modifier to their Arcane reservoir each day and they won't be forced to carry a crossbow at level 1.

I would be totally in favor of that change, it would help out newer players while not really changing things for people like myself or Prince of Knives. But it should be accompanied by changes that make its versatility less absurd when actually played to its full potential or when its best tricks are used. Tricks along the lines of taking potent magic and preparing color spray, in this case.

0. Put the 5s Back

1. Give the arcanist bonus prepared spells as well.
2. Put a 0 one level up on all spell levels for both tables
3. Switch Spells Per Day with Spells Prepared.

Would you care to support your reasons for thinking these are the best changes that can be made?(I can see some of them I think, but others are odd.)

Insightful commentary.

Yes, thank you. Someone who works with string theory is not the same as someone who works with architecture, it doesn't matter that their field is fundamental to architecture, they still won't be designing better buildings than the architect. And if anything, they're more of a specialist than the architect is, not less. Wizards are smart people, it says so right on their abilities line and is further screamed at you with every one of their class features. They also are people who want to cast spells effectively. If dividing things into schools did not in some way help them to cast spells effectively they would not be doing it.

As a matter of fact, I did. Take the Sorcerer (which is not broken), subtract spells per day and spells known, add versatility in spells known. That's what we like to call a "trade-off", and it's how balance is maintained. Taking a balanced class, making it more versatile in one area in return for making it less powerful in another leaves you with a balanced class, in the same way that four plus two minus two still equals four. Just because it's balanced in a different way doesn't make it unbalanced.

This is not 4-2+2, it's 8-1+4. Compared to the wizard's 10 or so. And the fighter's 3 or 4. The fact that something is being added and something is being taken away does not necessarily mean that those two somethings are of equal value. Consider 3.5's spell-to-power erudite. The psion was a powerful, but not overpowered, class quite similar to the sorcerer. The Erudite was a modification to that class which gave some extra versatility while imposing some additional limitations. The Erudite was almost universally considered to be a more effective version of the psion both in theorycraft and in actual play. The spell-to-power version of the Erudite traded away just a little bit more for the ability to use spells as well as powers and is widely considered to be one of the two most powerful classes ever printed(the artificer was its only competition). This is not new ground. We have been here before.

Inferior spell-like abilities, fewer spells per day, and nothing that adds static bonuses to their spells and yet people are still calling Arcanist overpowered...

So you're saying an arcanist using their weakest tricks is worse than a wizard or sorcerer using their weakest tricks. Wow, thanks for supporting one of my points.

Luckily, Pathfinder is a high-fantasy game about wizards and warriors, not electrical engineers. The entire point of the Arcanist is that their innate understanding of how magic works is what makes them good mages. Removing their understanding of over a third of the magical schools is not the way to support that concept.

Recall, these are pathfinder style restricted schools, they can still get at those spells it's just more difficult. And frankly, I'd expect someone with an innate understanding of how to do things to be less broadly educated than one who understands them with rigorous study. They're really, really good at the things they understand, but those things aren't quite as complete as a wizard's studies.

How is it broken, exactly? They trade 2 spells per day and one spell known* of each spell level in return for being able to change their spells known each day. I'd say that's a pretty decent trade, especially when you consider that an Arcanist's one-day versatility is no better than a Sorcerer's. They can have a different spell list on any given day, but within that day, they're no more versatile than a Sorcerer, and they have fewer spells per day and spells known.

Read Prince of Knives' talk on the matter. This has been discussed.

That feedback was far more helpful than what you gave before, because that feedback was actually based on a part of the class, rather than some nebulous claim of "It's too powerful!" without giving an explanation. It's also more helpful because it gave me something concrete to work with so I could explain why it's not, in fact, broken, and thus why it doesn't need to be changed.

You have not explained why it is not broken and not needful of change. You have effected any meaningful progress towards improving the class with that post.

Any class played by a more experienced player is going to produce a character that seems more "powerful" than a novice player with the same class.

This is because of said experience and system mastery.

Yes, but the divergence is far greater than for most other classes, this isn't a matter of the experienced player dealing twice as much damaged, the experienced players are building invincible gods while the inexperienced players are struggling to not run out of juice halfway through the adventuring day.

Trying to limit the schools that an Arcanist can use flies in the face of their very concept. The whole point of the class is someone that manipulates the very basic essence of magic rather than using rote and ritual. Requiring them to sacrifice three (or any!) schools of magic negates that. If you're shaping raw magic rather than spells, then the school to which a spell belongs shouldn't matter for you. An Arcanist doesn't see "Evocation spell" or "Transmutation spell", he sees "Magic energy".

An electrical engineer who saw everything they looked at as being a set of resistors, capacitors and inductors would not be a very good electrical engineer. They would be functional, and they would be able to get to the correct answers eventually, but they would be far better served by using any of a vast number of models, subdivisions and approximations to do most jobs. Those models subdivisions are there for a reason, they give you ways of thinking about problems that make those problems easier to solve. If they did not make the problems easier to solve no one would use them, not even wizards.

And people keep saying it's still overpowered, and pointing to the same few features that have repeatedly been shown to not be nearly as powerful as people think. Spell Tinkering needs to be split into two abilities, but that's about the extent of their "brokenness". Instead of trying to saddle the class with yet more restrictions, how about pointing out exactly what you seem to think is so broken, and suggesting a way to fix that feature specifically?

Very well, the feature I think is broken is their basic spellcasting system. That could be fixed by having them cast as a wizard or sorcerer instead. You see how that feedback is less helpful than the feedback that I gave?

How does restricting three schools make things easier for new players?

"In exchange, they could get a power boost that helps less experienced players without meaning much to more experienced ones, bumping their spells per day up to the sorcerer level for example. "

I have nothing against experienced players, I am one. I'm trying to limit the experienced players somewhat while also making things easier for less experienced ones. Also, please read fully.
"In exchange, they could get a power boost that helps less experienced players without meaning much to more experienced ones, bumping their spells per day up to the sorcerer level for example. "

So there are still people who think this is overpowered, myself included. Decreasing the spells per day helps a little, but it's using a club where a scalpel will do. If spells per day are low enough even the most skilled players won't want to play an arcanist, but the less skilled ones will be messed up by the change far before that. Instead any nerf should try to hit the arcanist in the versatility where it will most hurt the skilled players while significantly but not critically impacting the less skilled ones. Once that's been done to some degree you can also start buffing the arcanist with things that will be a great asset to less skilled players but not for more skilled ones. Here is one such system that I think would work well, though it is certainly not the only option.(I waive all rights to this if there is some legal reason you aren't supposed to use direct suggestions as I have seen suggested elsewhere.)

Base Principles:
The Arcanist works not with rituals and routines of magic but with its underlying principles, building a grand unifying principle from the base upwards. While this does grant them the unparalleled versatility for which they are known it also leaves gaps in their knowledge which other casters can more easily address by simply using different tools.
At first level the Arcanist must select three restricted schools of magic. One of those schools must be either conjuration or transmutation. Arcanists who selected conjuration must select two of Evocation, Divination and Necromancy as additional restricted schools while those who selected transmutation must select two of Abjuration, Enchantment and Illusion.
Arcanists who prepare spells from their restricted schools must use two preparation slots instead of one and pay a number of points from their arcane resevoir equal to the level of the spell.
<Insert more wizard copypasta here>

So the Arcanist would be a full spell level behind a wizard in at least one, and probably two, important school and would be mutilating their spells prepared and per day if they try to prepare too many such spells. In exchange, they could get a power boost that helps less experienced players without meaning much to more experienced ones, bumping their spells per day up to the sorcerer level for example.
The school combinations were chosen with a mind to putting similar things together, conjuration and evocation because they deal damage, conjuration and necromancy because they use minionmancy, conjuration and divination because they gather information. That being said, they could certainly be swapped around. Just don't put enchantment and evocation together since those are usually first picks for banning.

Any thoughts?

Off the top of my head, you could force the arcanist to "bar" several schools of magic like a specialist wizard, but an exploit could allow the character to overcome that restriction by spending points from the arcane reservoir.

Sample wrote:

At 1st level, the arcanist must select two schools of magic to bar. In order to prepare spells belonging to the barred school, the arcanist must expend a number of points from her arcane reservoir equal to the spell's level. These points cannot be regained in any manner (including via consume spells and similar effects) until the arcanist rests and re-prepares her daily allotment of spells."

This I can get behind. It would be a meaningful nerf that wouldn't require a total rewrite.(Though a higher number of barred schools might be a good idea. If you set the number high enough and/or forced them to select meaningful schools somehow you could even safely boost the spells per day up again.)

Renegade Paladin wrote:

Ciretose, I'm going to put this as succinctly as I can: One word on one line of a chart does not equate to flavor in any meaningful sense of the word. Saying that Shelyn favors the glaive tells me nothing about how to roleplay one of her followers, and in fact is likely to give the completely wrong idea taken in isolation. You keep harping on and on about flavor in relation to something that in the vast majority of cases is arbitrary; if you want to enforce flavor on the warpriest, devise deity-specific codes of behavior, religious dogma, the ideals of the deity, in short things that actually have some form of substance that informs how one would/should roleplay the character. Favored weapon doesn't do that in any meaningful way.

So how does the goddess of beauty and love get a glaive as her favored weapon? Shelyn bears the glaive gifted to her half brother in exchange for him swearing the Unbreakable Oath. The weapon was crafted by the former god of smiths, who fell during the same murderous spree that claimed Shelyn’s mother. When he received it, the weapon corrupted Zon-Kuthon and convinced him to go to war against the other deities. It was during this war that Shelyn lost her mother and became goddess of love. When created, Whisperer of Souls was given the ability to absorb souls (hence its name) and once it absorbs 100 powerful souls (not just anybody’s soul will do) it will become a god in its own right and bring about an era of murder and death. When Zon-Kuthon received the weapon it held no souls. By the time Shelyn stole Whisperer of Souls it had almost all it needed. In the time since, Shelyn has been able to free most of those souls thanks to the help of Nethys and brave adventurers (a grand quest of goodness must be performed to release a soul). Much to the frustration of Whisperer of Souls, it can’t seem to corrupt Shelyn or influence her in any way (earning her the title "the...

So what I'm getting from this is that a warpriest of Shelyn should be able to use any intelligent evil weapon as a favored weapon. I don't see how it being a glaive is the least bit significant.

Kudaku wrote:

Cheapy wrote:

Prince of Knives wrote:

If this is a general trend I think I may have learned something valuable about how this community understands balance.

And I think we all just learned a lot about the Giant in the Park community's views on balance.

How about neither one of you draw conclusions and make snide comments based on a single post from either community?

This community would say that.

Prince of Knives' comment wasn't snide, Cheapy. He has to interact with this community when designing products so of course understanding its views on how the game works is valuable. Yours was. (Giant in the Park?)

This is overpowered. Terribly, terribly overpowered.
The casting system might be workable, but the number of spells prepared per day needs to be reduced significantly. Check out the spirit shaman in 3.5 for a reasonably balanced option. Of course, the spirit shaman was only casting off the druid list and dropped a lot of really powerful class features while the arcanist casts off the wizard list and barely has any class features worth dropping...

I really like this class, it'll be good to have a more balanced cleric type class available. Still, improvements could be made.

Warpriest really, really needs to get channel energy at first level. Given how MAD the class is, guided hand is going to be a very popular option and players shouldn't have to spend their first two levels being useless until they get it.

Something should probably also be done to even out the alignments a bit, as things stand negative energy channelers are better fighters because they can use channel smite and positive energy channelers are better at utility because they can prepare more utility spells. It makes alignment into too much of a mechanical decision for my tastes.

It might be a good idea to rebase channel energy on wisdom. Warpriests need a lot of good abilities just because they expect to be a gish, no good reason to further restrict those who want to use channel smite.

Lawful warpriests are significantly stronger than chaotic ones, adding ghost touch(an ability which is almost always useless but sometimes incredibly powerful) to their weapon on a day to day basis is much better than adding vicious(which is always okay but never better than okay).

It could be cool to add a version of spellstrike that only works with cure/inflict spells. It wouldn't be a huge power boost since they don't have spell combat, but it would give a nice bit of mobility.

Lyee wrote:

A reduced, or even removed, spell list that fits the theme better in exchange for some other benefits - perhaps some more, even permanent at an earlier point animal aspects - would be what would make this fit the niche I wanted it to.

We would really like to avoid creating a new spell list for any of these classes, which is why none of them have unique spell lists (they all use the spell list of another class). Every time we create a new class spell list, we have to (1) spend a lot of lines in the book re-listing all of the existing spells that should be on that list, and (2) add to the amount of text in a spell stat block to call out which classes the spell belongs to.

As an example of #1, the list of alchemist extracts, inqusitor spells, and summoner spells in the APG each take up an entire column of space (or close to it), and ditto for the magus spell list in UM. Likewise, the spell lists in Ultimate Magic take up 9 pages, 3 of which are spell lists for classes that aren't in the Core Rulebook. If those classes didn't have unique spell lists, that's 3 additional pages of spells we could have had in Ultimate Magic. Now, I'm not saying that ALL new classes shouldn't have unique spell lists, but as all of the classes in the ACG are hybrids of existing classes, it's reasonable to try giving them access to existing spell lists.

As an example of #2, a spell stat block already has to call out alchemist, antipaladin, bard, cleric, druid, inquisitor, magus, paladin, ranger, sorcerer/wizard, summoner, and witch.
ACG classes could potentially add arcanist, bloodrager, hunter, investigator, shaman, skald, and warpriest listings.

Do not all of the spells on the druid spell list seem to be a perfect fit for the hunter? Sure.
But not all of the spells on the cleric spell list fit for fire clerics, death clerics, or healing clerics... but there are many, many types of cleric characters you can build, and there will be many, many types of hunter characters you'll be...

So why not just say that they access the druid spell list and also have a short list of spells which they can cast at a lower level than normal(and possibly also some that they can't access if you insist).