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If I’m not mistaken, sorcerers in D&D 3rd Edition/Pathfinder 1st Edition did not have signature spells. There was no heightening in these editions. "Heightening" was based on level and as such automatic.
Wands are not designed to be used by non-casters. Stop pretending this is the case. Wands and staves are designed for casters, but designed badly as they provide very little of what staves and wands used to provide. They definitely don't live up to their iconic place in fantasy. Wait. I agree with you that they are piece of crap. And I agree that they could be more. I'm just saying that Wands are used by non-casters and they work well. Like YuriP says, they give you access to Tailwind, typically.
Staves, in the way they are designed, can't be used by non-casters. That's a much better design to create a strong item specifically tailored for casters without having to take care of non-casters grabbing it, too.
Staves and wands in general are pretty sad in PF2. Wands are designed to be used by... non-casters. For non-casters, they are excellent and good bang for your buck. But automatically, the price is inflated for casters, making them not worth it. Staves are a bit different, and some come with nice bonuses. If you want many Sure Strikes, or a lot of small healing for out of combat situations, there are low level Staves. I generally stick with a low level Staff for bonuses or some useful low level spells. Top level Staves are even more expensive than Wands and as such definitely not worth it. While I understand the calculation for Wands, as they can be used by both casters and non-casters, I think Staves could have benefitted from a buff.
All legacy summoners' spells were signature. They aren't in the usual signature spell system, yet all spontaneous classes still have signature spells. Yep, that's why I said it was not having the classical Signature Spell feature. Anyway, the Signature Spell feature could be added to Spontaneous casting now, as the Summoner has changed.
Do me a favor, and name one spontaneous spellcaster class that does not have signature spells. Preremaster Summoner was not having the classical Signature spell feature. While having the classical Spontaneous casting (the difference was for spells known and slots, not for casting itself). But the part the pro-wizard players never mention is they obtain this very minor slot advantage by giving up their Spell Substitution thesis. That is when the Schrodinger's Wizard arguments start. The pro-wizard players oscillate between talking about the more high level slots using Spell Blending, while talking about more versatility with Spell Substitution It's because you don't see that these are actually 2 crowds. I personally never speak of Spell Substitution and Unicore is very much about Spell Substitution. But I agree it's hard to follow (in general, these discussions are super hard to follow as different players have different visions). From my experience, the Wizard lovers are about Spell Substitution and Generalist, the more generic caster lovers are about Spell Blending and Schools. And generally they tend to talk past each other. But it's very much just my point of view :)
I see your point. But there's an other thing that makes Leveraged Specs less interesting: the fact that you need a crit success means that it'll happen mostly on mooks (as bosses will very often ask you to roll a nat 20 on your RK check to crit succeed). And having a -1 to save to one target of your Fireball (or any multi target spell you use) doesn't seem at all appealing. At least, the more general bonus of KiP, especially the defensive one, means that the party will benefit from it somehow. It's the issue I have with Leveraged Specs, in nominal situations it's mostly useless. Now, I won't say that KiP is strong, and it's an absolute pain to track (which is a massive issue if you don't use any form of automatized calculation). But at least the bonus will be useful (unless the enemy immediately dies).
What a glow up! Sure it’s a more selfish and has lost the defensive aspect, but, given how rarely KiP is ever actually work, and how it forced your actions after to be more limited, the multi-turn feature of LS is a massive buff to this otherwise weak ability. I don't get why you're so hyped. Between a 5-round buff and a 1-round buff of 5 PCs, the second one is better (fights rarely last 5 rounds). Knowledge is Power is really hard to use but funny. Leveraged Specs is just bad, it serves roughly no purpose.
One hand they pretty much must use for a runed weapon (it's the way the eidolon accesses runes) Use Handwraps, that's much easier. Or Free Hand Weapons.
If it's that, then an errata is needed. They say "(if higher than your normal proficiency for this weapon)" when it should be "(if lower than your normal proficiency for this weapon)".
I must admit I've read Professional again and haven't understood anything about it. It may come from my mastery of English.
And you need to expend 11 charges out of a 10 charges magazine (by default). Dial it up to 11!!!
While Arcane Bond boosts flexibility, I have to agree with Teridax: I don't see it being "vast".
Define martials :D My Chirurgeon Alchemist starts all fights with Elixirs in both hands. And I was having one with my pre remaster Bomber. My Envoy always has a grenade or 2 at hand at the beginning of the fight. My other martials have their weapons at hand. I just created a Swashbuckler with an empty hand, so I'll certainly have a healing potion in it before I get Guardian's Deflection, then I'll go back to not having a Consumable in it (but I'll certainly grab a Retrieval Prism + Potion of Healing then, as I'll be level 4).
Maybe, but that's obviously bad for the game overall. Ho yeah, I've never said it was a good solution. I'm no Wizard lover so obviously I'd hate it.
You're right about the lore emphasizing the power of the wizard, and it's easy enough to keep them as preeminent magic slingers in fiction and stories without causing problems with a game system. But for game balance, it doesn't make a lot of sense (IMO) to have one "best magic user" class in a system with a range of magic user classes. It can be balanced if the Wizard is bad at other things. You can create the overspecialized caster. There are actually similar classes, like the Barbarian has hard time being more than a Barbarian when a Swashbuckler has much more breadth... at a cost. But it's a dangerous path, as players tend to prefer specialization over versatility. So it can lead to the Fighter issue, where you see so many Fighters because it has +2 to hit (I've seen that sentence often: Why play anything but a Fighter when the Fighter has +9 and everyone else as +7?). Anyway, I've always said that the only valid Wizard is an overpowered one. It's the only way to satisfy all the Wizard lovers.
Hands are a "resource" in PF2. Not having a free hand has a cost, there are a lot of things you can't do. Even opening a door asks you to drop your weapon, meaning if the fight starts right away you don't have it (I've never seen a table applying it, though). So the whole "I can't use Consumables when all my hands are full" discussion is moot. It's part of having all your hands used, you can't do anything else with them. Now, a lot of characters have free hands. These are the ones who can use Consumables in combat. In their case it's one action, if you planned for it. And Consumables have to be balanced and designed around builds that can use them, rather obviously.
We're coming to the game from completely different goals. That's a basic assumption considering the complexity of RPGs. So I'm guessing you already knew this, but there are several genres of TTRPG player I wouldn't call them "genres of players", but just that there are many things you can find in a TTRPG. One can love mechanics and roleplay. Yours is a sentiment I hear more often among the more gamer side, whereas I'm from the more roleplay side. I care as much about roleplay as I do about mechanics. I can't play one without the other. I need a mechanically sound and interesting character because I like the mechanical aspect of Pathfinder 2. But I also need to have a specific roleplay. I tend to create weird characters, both from a mechanical and roleplay perspective (but that's just me). I hear more from the gamer side It's definitely a mechanical statement. I'm in a position where I actually have huge item wishlists per character I'm not sure it has to do with "roleplay". I'm also not completely sure it has to do with the discussion. If you have a long list of items to buy, then why would you ask for stronger consumables? That would just force you to buy more items and as such have more issues to get the ones that are filling out your character fantasies. I don't want to jump too hasty conclusions, but I sometimes have issues following you when it comes to items. I feel you have multiple different constraints that you manage to juggle with but that you have hard time conveying (or that I have hard time fully grasping).
But, I can still say what I like and don't like, and if I don't like something, I can say what I think can be done to make me like it. Definitely. But almost universally, a lot of mainline TTRPGs and CRPGs balance consumables similarly. You can't really compare different games on their economy. PF2 has a very different economy than most TTRPGs/CRPGs. In PF2, money is mostly useless. You have a bunch of very important items (mostly Runes) that you absolutely need to have but adventures give you far enough money to get them (and a GM who prevents a proper access to Runes would be considered a crazy one, so players are fully aware that Runes are a given and not something that you choose to buy). And then you have the rest of items which are just preference. None of them is really important. So the GM has a lot of freedom in how much money they give, as long as the necessary items are covered. It's very different from PF1, for example. In PF1 there were loads of items that were directly improving your stats by significant numbers. So the amount of money a party was getting could sometimes give them an entire extra level in terms of power. So, inside PF2 economy, stating that Consumables are weak is obvious, as all items are weak. If you ask me what Items I use besides the mandatory ones, well, nearly only Scrolls. So as a matter of fact mostly Consumables. Changing Consumables power level would be a change in PF2 economy, as a Consumable-loaded party would be significantly better than one with few of them, and as such the quantity of money the GM gives would become much more important. But many people have complained about the overall weakness of items in PF2. I think Paizo shot too low. I personally give level +2/+3 items to my PCs (outside mandatory items) and they really don't see items the same way. They are usable during a few levels, and are strong enough to provide a new strategy for a couple levels before being forgotten and sold (because you need the item to be really strong if you want your players to change their strategy to include it). I remember especially how a Decanter of Endless Water became such a central item in my AV party when I gave it at level 4. Nothing broken, but so much fun.
But yes, if it takes 2 actions to prepare to heal, even if they are spaced across multiple turns, then it takes 2 actions, no matter how they form. And as they are, with the same amount of actions, I can frankly heal more with spells. As I said, there are ways to remove the action cost of drawing, not to space it. I also don't understand your issue with Consumables. Some people use them, some don't. You recognize yourself being reluctant in using Consumables. So if the game design encourages you to use Consumables, all the less reluctant players will certainly feel forced to use Consumables, and those like me who have absolutely no issue with them will then devise ways to make their use overpowered. That doesn't sound right. If you are, by your own nature, reluctant to use Consumables, then you shouldn't use them. If you use them then the game design is skewed toward Consumable use.
You cannot deliver two in a round unless you have prepped for them the last round. There are multiple ways to remove the action cost of drawing a Consumable. Having them at hand at the beginning of the fight is an obvious one, but there are others. So I don't account for the drawing. If you account for the drawing, and increase the amount of healing as a consequence, then strategies based on not drawing become overpowered. Like you'd then heal more than a 2-action Heal with Potions of Healing, it'd make consumables the best healing in the game. That's definitely not something I'd advocate for, I do think consumables should not outpower character abilities. It should be there for cases where you don't have the ability.One thing I noticed about spell attack rolls is that NPCs don't even adhere to PC rules. NPC spellcasters often have an average spell attack roll 2 points ahead of their DC. Like having a DC of 22 but an spell attack mod of +14 (for an average of 24). So it does not sound too unreasonable for PCs to get similar where they can get boosts to just attack rolls. And from a +1 to a +3 range, with most NPCs getting a +2, and you likely not touching a +3 until level 19, it does not sound unreasonable. The enemy Spell Attack Rolls are based on enemies attack bonuses. Enemies tend to have higher attack bonuses than PCs to represent the fact that they don't have any other form of bonuses (Bard's music, Bless, Trip, whatever). The PCs are supposed to compensate their lower attack bonus through coordination. As Spell DCs don't have many ways to be improved, they are much closer to PCs Spell DCs, without added bonuses. Hence the difference. Now, I don't say that it's fine, I just give a quite obvious explanation for the difference.
You need to double the amount of Healing Potions and Elixirs of Life as you can deliver 2 of them in a single round, and suddenly you realize that everything is actually balanced around the same numbers. In my opinion, the main issue of Consumables is their cost. 1/6th if a permanent item is just way too much when they don't really break the ceiling. 1/10th would have been much easier to use for everyone. 1/20th and they would have been a classic for most players (and people would design builds around consumables). When it comes to loot, if we except Runes, you need to give level +2/+3 items to your players for them to actually be excited about their loot. It's valid for consumables as much as permanent items, so that is not due to consumables.
Unpopular answer, but yes. LLMs are built on stolen information illegally obtained. They can be the future all everyone wants, doesn't change the fact that they stole from people to make their learning arrays. If you can't write but have ideas then, I don't know, collaborate with someone who can write but is short on ideas. Reach out for human community to support your weak areas and in turn, support other people's weak areas. Hell, pay someone to write it for you. Great. Our entire societies are built on a lot of awful things. As I said, your political choices and struggles are not everyone's. It turns out there are enough fights for all of us to choose from. May I ask for the permission to not take your fights on top of mine? Or do I have to impose my fights on everyone? I shouldn't be forced to some political opinions to be able to engage with Pathfinder. It's fine if Paizo has some political views that I can read across the lines of their products, but it's not fine when they enforce them on me.
I wish I could have a caster on par with a martial but through using their 3rd action to attack with a spell rather than a weapon. Martials also have a spare third action. It's the way the system is designed, nearly every character has 2 "main actions", be it a spell or 2 attacks, and then a 3rd action. Martials can make third attacks but roughly everyone agrees they are rather weak 3rd actions. Casters have 3rd action spells (Focus Spells mostly), and they are at a proper level of power, ie. weak. So you can already do that. I'd prefer Paizo not to encourage a single gameplay on caster by providing obvious third actions. Also, they'd be then used by martials, too, because they'd be stronger than normal 3rd actions. I'm not sure I want martials to use casting 3rd actions. Idk, "encounter ability" seems just as arbitrary and gamey as "focus point". There is no level of gamist obfuscation that detracts from my experience, so long as it makes the game run smoothly. Refocus gives a clear in world explanation as to how often you can use your focus spell. Encounter ability... much less. I don't remember 4th ed giving any explanation as to what actually recharges encounter powers, but just the roll of initiative. So it's purely gamey. Now, if they provided a clear information so the GM could make an educated choice of when the ability has recharged and when it hasn't then I think Deriven would have less issue with it. I also think 4th ed went a bit too much into the gamey mechanics without in-world explanations. One can say that daily preparations serve no purpose, that you don't have to explain how and why your daily powers are regenerated. But it actually matters when, as a GM, you are handling a situation where the PCs don't have a classical 9-6 day. And it also helps understanding how to describe situations. That's why when a mechanic is way too far from reality people start to complain. There is some suspension of disbelief we are used to make, others that we are not ready to do (at least not in the blink of an eye, it takes time to adjust).
The companies pushing LLMs into everything are trying to make their use unavoidable, but that doesn't make it true. This ship has sailed a few years ago. We now all know what AI can provide, no need to lie to us. I'm a software developer I was a software developer. I've decided to change career because I hate coding with AI. So I have my grudges against AI, too. Still, I'm not blind. As a business that works with people whose jobs and creative outlets are being actively threatened by the rollout of LLMs, it's a sensible stance. That's 50% of the businesses nowadays. And a lot of them have made or are making the move. Because this is the future... If you and others leave the author reviews Should I leave a "Learn to use ChatGPT" review? Or should I ask ChatGPT to explain the guy how to write a PFS-like adventure?Sorry to be sarcastic but that should certainly be my review. I'd personally rather deal with some grammar and layout quirks Because adventures are better when badly written and badly presented? AI provides clear value to amateurs like us. You can choose not to use it for whatever reason, that's why I've spoken about stating in the adventures how AI's been used. But it should be a choice, not enforced. Not everyone wants to follow Paizo political views or grudges. Also, while I dislike AI in general, I think there's a big difference between "Generate an image so I won't hire an artist" and "Rephrase my adventure because I'm not a real writer". I'm definitely not speaking of replacing the human in the operation. I'm speaking of using AI as a tool to improve presentation, organisation, to translate and such. The goal is to improve the adventure, not to make it instead of us. Also, AI is a fantastic tool for inclusivity. I've spoken about non-native English speakers, but there are lots of people who use AI because they just can't do something in a qualitative manner by themselves. If I can't write, should I been bared from making an adventure when there are tools that exist that would allow me to?
Yeah, everything is done with AI now. That's why I said they should define what's ok and what's not. Rephrasing and translating should definitely be allowed. Using AI for presentation so our adventures look as much as possible like PFS adventures is for the best. Using AIs for maps... well, I'd not be surprised if map tools allow you to make a first map with AI. And obviously for images, AI is used a lot, even when actually making the image yourself. I was anti AI, but I had to change. Being anti AI in 2026 is an anachronism.
But it also seems like people who don't like scrolls are also people who hate using variable action spells with only one action? What do regular sorcerer players think about 1 action spell slot spells like force barrage and blazing bolt? Reaction spells are in general better than 1-action spells. Compare Brine Dragon Bile to Blazing Bolt, it's mostly just better. The issue with 1-action spells is that they burn through your resources like crazy. Also, there are other 1-action options that are at least equivalent (Force Bolt is literally 1-action Force Barrage) but without the slot cost. So if you really want to use them, I think it's better to go that way. I've used 1-action spells, but mostly low rank slots, as they are quite useless to me. Using top rank spells at the rate of up to 3 per turn very quickly becomes a bad idea. That's way too much to sustain.
I wish I could have a caster on par with a martial but through using their 3rd action to attack with a spell rather than a weapon. What do you mean? There are many casters with good damage third action (Witch being the classic example). Weapons are dealing extremely low damage on a caster, for a very high cost (with a shortbow, it starts at 2 points of damage on average with a no-MAP attack at level 1 and ends at 12 at level 20 against an at level enemy). I personally pass. It makes Force Bolt look strong.
I hope Paizo won't do like Chaosium. I've downloaded the first PFS Infinite Adventure and I'd have loved the author to give it a bit of AI polish. Between the layout, the organisation, the illustrations, it's been a useless struggle to use as a GM. I fully agree that AI-produced content is bad, but as hobbyists, AI is a great tool to help us as we are not professionals and can't get professionnal help. A note on adventures to indicate how AI's been used in the writing would be enough for everyone to make an educated choice.
No wonder you'd hate cantrips. Cantrips in SF1 are terrible. I do use cantrips, there are builds that gets the most out of them, hybrids mostly use a combination of weapon attacks and Electric Arc (because when we speak about cantrips, it's very much Electric Arc against the rest of the world). Granted, cantrips are somewhat agreed upon to still be undertuned in comparison to weapons. And while I'm not quite sure it's true, I concede it is possible. Paizo made things trivial, Weapons and Spells compare one to one in terms of damage. Weapon vs spell comparison for 1d6 damageIf a cantrip does 2d4 damage, it's equivalent to a no-MAP attack for 2d4 damage. So it's not hard to see that cantrips are widely weaker than weapons. Not even balanced against ranged attacks, at double the action cost. Electric Arc put aside, they are waste of actions. Even with Electric Arc, you need a martial weapon attack alongside to make it worth using. So I use them at level 1-3 on my casters because at that level they are nice and the competition is bad, but quickly forget them afterwards.
Deriven loves to give Bows to his casters. As a side note, there are many things to do with a third action, Demoralize, RK, Battle Medicine, etc...
You'll have a lot of different visions on it. For example, I'm not a native English speaker. So when it comes to RPG texts, especially descriptions, I ask ChatGPT to rephrase them in a more beautiful way. Maybe this is not perfect, but it's much better than me writing English, as even if my English's not bad, I make much more typos, grammar errors and such than a native speaker. Also, my English is not poetic in the slightest. Chaosium forbids that. Thanks... in once again only considering US citizens. As that's not theft or whatever, it's just help. Also, AI is a tool. It can genuinely help in some ways. If you're good at telling stories but bad at painting characters, why not using AI to help you with your weaknesses. The goal is to provide the best product. And the theft, when it comes to writing, is not that big. It's not exactly as if I was expecting to be paid for writing this post. On the other hand, I fully agree that full-AI work is lazy and bad. And more importantly: spammy. That's the true issue with AI, how do we manage the crazy amount of work it can produce? Because there are reviews, and it's their goal. As long as you give bad AI work it's proper review, nearly no one will buy it. But how do you find good adventures in the middle of bad AI work... For me, AIs force us to change the way we use Internet. You can no more open a website like DriveTHRU and expect people to publish things in it, with close to no cost. AIs will swarm it soon and it will disappear. We have to find a way to allow human production and AI augmented human production while blocking spamming AIs. It's a complete change of paradigm. I expect a lot of websites to close in the coming years because their model is not AI compatible.
While I agree with you, I think there's no real solution for that. Players are complaining right from the start about the difficulty to use consumables like Potions and Elixirs, it hurts the "vending machine" Alchemist a lot. Removing entirely the draw action specifically for these consumables would be weird, and actually overpowered if someone decides to go all in on that (if you remove the need to draw, look at how much Potions of Healing heal, you can end up with video game healing where you drink potions while swinging a sword and end up functionally invulnerable as long as you have available potions). So they removed it for "one or 2 items". It serves its role as emergency usage, but it can't become a nominal way of playing. Now, if you see a better solution, then shoot. But I think it's the kind of things that were just not enough thought out in the beginning.
It was in SF1 at that time. I learned this playstyle in SF1 and imported it in PF2. They were slightly different in the beginning as drawing a Spell Gem was functionally free in SF1 but not in PF2 but with new items getting released it actually became easier in PF2 than in SF1 (due to the economy being more forgiving in PF2 and the need to use Scrolls being lower, too). And yes to your spoiler, if my memory serves me well (it was 10 years ago).
I think this is where we could make a bridge. I agree. While writing it I thought about that. To give you a bit more context, because I don't really hate cantrips in and by themselves. It was Dead Suns book 2, last dungeon (slight spoiler ahead, but I don't think anyone cares of Dead Suns in 2026). The dungeon is unorthodox. It's short, not very hard, and there are no clear boss fight. On top of it, the hardest fight has been the first one in our case. So I finished the dungeon with a couple spells used. I was literally disgusted. First, I couldn't play my character: casting Cantrips is not the fun part of being a caster. Second, I was facing the point 4 you reported during the entire dungeon: What if I use a spell and it fails, or worse, it's not the good moment to use it? A form of paralysis of choice. So I was never having fun like the others did, by just blasting stuff without a second thought. And then I realized: I can't blame neither my GM nor the writer. Dungeons are not supposed to give you clear hints as to when to use your limited resources. That'd be video gamey, and I don't play a TTRPG to end up with a video game. Also, I'm not supposed to know the bestiary by heart, that'd be metagaming (in this case, it was the very beginning of Starfinder, so I couldn't know when a fight was tough or not without making a blind guess). That's where I had to move to something else. 1. I am going to assume you like to buy scrolls of your highest spell rank or higher. Even as a flexible spellcaster that say, has chain lightning prepared, once you're out of your 3 top spells, you'd want to still stack scrolls at that level to keep the high-level rolls going. Because even flexible spellcasting will have to go down a rank after the 3rd blast. I use my 2 top ranks (with occasional situations where the best spell for the job is not on of my top spells, I'm not playing stupidly). At high level, I start using the third one. Using only the top rank would be unsustainable, even with Scrolls. And I buy only top rank spells as they last longer (2 extra levels compared to second to top rank spells), as said above, I don't use them that often. 2. Whether it's flexible spellcasting or spontnaeous casting, there is always sufficient spells to do a job, but there is never actually truly enough. For example, the decision to create food, or even have another spell to improve the food's taste, or which condition healing spell to prepare, or whether I want to keep my flexible slots focused purely on heals and buffs while scrolls only go toward attack scrolls, ensure scrolls have usefullness in a savvy player's repertoire. There are 2 things in this point. I don't count utility Scrolls when I speak of Scrolls. I always have a bunch of utility Scrolls, but that's been a constant in the gaming group I learned to play D&D with. The party was expecting casters to be able to handle all the Water Breathing, Fly, Spider Climb, Detection, Teleport and stuff like that, preferably without having to rest an entire night. Utility Scrolls is a tangential question.2. Whether it's flexible spellcasting or spontnaeous casting, there is always sufficient spells to do a job, but there is never actually truly enough. This is actually the opposite in PF2. The main thing about Scrolls is not that you use Scrolls (I don't use them much, especially on 4-slot casters), but to realize that your spell list is much bigger than you think. Having a buffer of Scrolls removes the fear of missing out, the famous slot that you keep for the unexpected last Severe Encounter at the end of the day (that never happens). It removes the encounter level calculations and stuff like that. And it has a strong impact on your playstyle.You're actually much more effective by playing like that. You use more spells, going to the end of your spell list. Obviously, using this last spell slot no one ever uses gives you extra oomph. But also you don't hesitate to start every fight with a massively impactful spell. The end result being that you contribute more, so fights last less, so you use less resources than you assumed in the first place. In general, you use a couple spells per fight, sometimes even a single one. In a normal adventuring day, I never have to draw a Scroll. By normal, I mean that nothing went south, not that it had a specific duration. Very long dungeons that would go through your entire spell list and beyond are an absolute exception I don't remember having faced once. The only case where I had to draw a Scroll were fights going south. These fights do last, in general half a dozen rounds, and you really don't want to dial the power down as these are life or death situations. In these fights, I tend to do the job nearly all alone, dealing sometimes up to 70% of the party damage. And obviously, I use my whole spell list and then my Scrolls. Anyway, after the fight, the party asks for a break, always. Especially when the hero of the day had to go through Scrolls. And I love these fights (I have a competitive nature). Also, again, the buffer of Scrolls increases my impact in the exact moment I want it the most, I use my Scrolls for near TPKs mostly. That's why I encourage people to adopt this playstyle, even those like you who don't want to waste resources because in the end, you realize you never actually face this feeling (outside life or death encounters, which are very different in nature). It's been a breath of fresh air for me, it made me love casters.
Scrolls take an action to draw, then two actions to cast. You have Scroll Robes and especially Retrieval Prism to negate the action cost. You also have Retrieval Belt. If you plan on using Scrolls, you can do it well.Generally casters in our group follow a different way of resource management. If the fight is easy and the martials can wipe them out fairly easy, then use cantrips. I don't do that. I did it, hated it with all my heart to the point of disgusting me to play the character and then bought a truckload of Spell Gems (it was in Starfinder 1) as the last attempt before switching character. And then I discovered it was awesome and never stopped doing it. I won't go back to Cantrips. I use Cantrips at level 1-2 and never afterwards. It's better for my heart.I also use scrolls and wands to address the need for more situational spells when playing spontaneous casters. For instance, I would rarely include water breathing in a spell repertoire; instead, at lower levels, I would use scrolls for it, and at higher levels, I would keep an heightened version of the spell in a wand. Scrolls and wands are a great solution for handling situational spells for spontaneous casters. It's a different use case. But when I speak of Scrolls on casters, I don't speak of these utility spells. Not having utility Scrolls is in my opinion sad, this is one of the easiest way to shine as a caster, and it costs nearly nothing (as you buy them when they are functionally free).
The idea is good if you only have martials who can switch weapons. But if someone needs a Finesse Reach one-handed weapon for their playstyle to work, it is quickly annoying.
You have Scroll Robes and especially Retrieval Prism to negate the action cost (you'll need to wait a bit for their price to be low). Later on, you also have Retrieval Belt. And at low level, you don't have much items you can carry in your hands so you can have a couple Scrolls (even if I do like Potions of Healing really early on). It's not that hard to negate or at least reduce the cost. There really are very different ways to play a wizard and my approach is different from Superbidi’s even though we do a lot of similar things. Definitely, our focus is different, hence your taste for Prepared casters (I definitely prefer Spontaneous ones as I literally never change my base loadout, and that's why I play Flexible Wizards). But general principles on playing casters apply whatever your preferred focus, as long as your focus is not "being less effective than you can be".
I’m not entirely convinced there’s a direct link between an aversion to using consumables and the prepared spellcasting system. I agree, these are different topics. As a side note, Scrolls have more effects on Prepared casters than they have on Spontaneous casters. With a Spontaneous caster, you start using Scrolls when your spell list is depleted, as you can cast the same spell as much as you want as long as you have spell slots.
It even increases the consumable issue as for a Spontaneous caster you use a Scroll because you can't cast anymore when on a Prepared caster you use a Scroll while you can still cast, just not the proper spell. So the feeling is that it's less useful to use a Scroll. But the effect is bigger. If you don't use Scrolls on a Prepared caster, you tend to either keep spells forever or use them when they are not the best solution. If you use Scrolls, you also cast more spells, and as such end up more often using all your spell slots in the proper situations. But it's significantly more expensive also, as you start using Scrolls earlier. It's a bigger trade-off, more bang for more bucks.
and I think many or most players, even in 'everything available' games will feel that way too. Most players dislike consumables. That's why the Viper Technomancer ended up with free Spell Gems everyday, as a lot of players were complaining that a subclass based on consumable was (from their point of view) unplayable. I was sad as I did like the Viper Technomancer before that and I would have prefered its power to come from something else than a crutch.
I got a GM who wanted to play in the old D&D way. No runes, if you find a Flaming Striking weapon you have a Flaming Striking weapon and no way to transfer its abilities. And if you want a magic weapon of a specific type, you roll a die and get random enchantments (and if the specific type is an Uncommon Advanced weapon you'd better roll a nat 20). We laughed a lot. And no one accepted to play that way. Not every idea is good. The GM has to take care that every character can be properly played.
I am not complaining. The point of ttrpgs to me is to get together with my friends and play, it is not about minmaxing. However, it is a counterargument to your point about using consumable resources with the wizard; that is simply not something players can count on during character concept development, because their availability will be widely table (and level, and campaign) dependent. We can bring any form of counter arguments when the GM starts coming up with specific rules against your playstyle. Like Rogue is a very bad class if every enemy is immune to Precision. But that's not supposed to happen.
I said from the moment I brought scrolls up that I think there is a correlation between people dissatisfied with the wizard (especially) I do think it's more general than that and hits casters in general. From my experience in PFS (where I've played with literally tons of players), you see a lot of very different ways to play a caster. From the extremely conservative ones who will never use a slotted spell unless the party is close to TPK (I've seen it, you can't even tell what class they are playing), to the "unlimited casters" who just use their 2 top ranks and ignore both Cantrips and Focus Spells, there's a constellation. And central to these playstyles the question of how to handle limited resources, and especially the negative feeling of lacking resources/wasting money.
The GM decides how much money you receive. And the GM decides what's available in the shop. I quite literally hate controling GMs. They are forcing everyone to play by their playstyle instead of following the book. Like when the GM gives full access to Striking Runes because "they are necessary to martials" and will annoy you because you want to buy a second Scroll of Force Barrage as "this is not how a caster should be equipped". In general, it doesn't end well with me as I rarely equip my characters the same way they do. Fun experience: In Sky King's Tomb, we dropped a "Mushroom Staff" (I call it like that because it was made of mushrooms) at the end of a session, that my Primal Witch ended up with. The very next session, we had to perform a Primal ritual. And the GM asked us to have "primal components" for a very high price, money that we absolutely didn't have at that time. I asked him if a Mushroom Staff could be considered a primal component? So I ended up breaking the Staff to perform the ritual (which was super visual to me, I loved it).
I didn't took it literally. If you'd actually become mad then, yeah, I remove what I said, the discussion is closed. I took it as a form of hyperbole. Sorry about that.
You are wrong in your affirmations: 1. If you don't use the Scroll, you lost 300 gp... at level 20 (or maybe slightly earlier depending on when it becomes fully obsolete). So close to nothing. You only lose the money when it becomes osbolete and PF2 economy makes sure its cost will be negligible by that time (also, you can sell it for half value, so you lose only half the price).2. If you do use the Scroll, then it saves the day. So you're not mad, you're actually happy. I've saved the party from TPKs with my Scrolls, I didn't care about the cost, because a TPK is much more costly anyway. 4. You didn't buy enough Scrolls then (but you can buy them one by one). Always buy enough Scrolls to turn the tide of battle, don't count on luck for that. Buying Scrolls is moving from scarcity to abundance, this is the mindset you have to adopt. But I agree, moving to a mindset of abundance is not easy. The great asset with PF2 is that it's rather cheap, doing the same in everyday life can lead to much worse disasters than "I lost 300 gp in a game."
My group doesn't much use scrolls, potions or what not past the low levels. Staves are most used to use a spell when wanting to preserve a slot in a weak fight. Even staves are usually good for one good cast, then you forget about it. Maybe pull out a wand, but that often isn't even worth the action cost to draw. I really miss wands and staves with more uses per day. Your group plays at high level, I play much more at low level. At high level, there are much more good spells, at various ranks, so you don't really need Scrolls to cast forever. At low level, you very quickly get to the end of your good spells, so using Scrolls is much more important.
Yep, I know. There are distortions like that. Consumables are often disregarded and penalties are doubled (roughly). It creates lots of issues. I'm pretty sure it's the main reason why people blame casters for being "weak". They are perfectly balanced but players downplay them. As a result, most players are trying to determine if the encounter is "worth" using top rank spells, which is metagaming to me (I do know how encounters are built and how dungeons are built, but my character is just fighting for its life, it should not downplay its impact) and also extremely unpleasant (I don't have a crystal ball, so it's impossible for me to get a satisfying conclusion). So I've felt the change of state of mind. It's actually very similar to what one person raised in this discussion (I even wonder if it's you but I'm too lazy to find the post in the hundreds of messages in this discussion): How would you feel if you can just use your spells without restrictions? Well, I don't have to imagine, that's already what I do with my casters. I never cast Cantrips past level 2 and only 1-action Focus Spells, I just cast my top spells over and over again and love the feeling.
Scroll casting is a powerful and well-recognized tactic if used right, but I think it's a bit of a high-level play tactic above even that is needed to play specific prepared casters in the first place. Honestly, it's trivial. It is actually way easier than playing a caster without Scrolls. You don't have to think "What spell should I use now?", you just use the best spell and don't have to think twice (it is actually the reason I moved to Scrolls, as I once badly answered this question and ended up downplaying my caster during an entire dungeon and getting bored because of that). There's a leap in the dark that has to be made the first time you try it, as you effectively don't know what it gonna do. And quickly you realize that your spell list is big enough to support most of your adventuring days (I'm speaking of offical content, obviously, as homemade content can be anything), so you nearly never use scrolls. In the long run, you buy a couple of Scrolls per spell rank, and it doesn't even cost the price of a fully runed weapon. And it's the best bang for your bucks, I regularly have people asking me when I run out of Force Barrage/Fireballs, and my answer is always "Never!" (which is a bit of a lie as I ran out of them once... in thousands of hours of play).
Yeah, it's definitely a buff. It's also eating the Wizard lunch. It's meant to be Prepared + Spontaneous. Hence the spell slot cost (cantrip cost is useless).
D&D 5e spells are much more front loaded than PF2 spells. They have heightening, but it is not nearly as large a percent of a damage boost to heighten a spell in 5e, so something like a rank 3 D&D fireball stays relevant much longer than a rank 3 Pathfinder 9ne, but the ability to cast fireball as a max rank spell is more useful in Pathfinder, so having that spell in your flexible rep is better in pathfinder than in D&D because heightening D&D spells isn’t that valuable. Thanks Unicore. I was expecting small but significant differences. When it comes to optimizing spell lists, the smallest differences actually change a lot the way you build it.
In D&D5E, lower rank slots are still used I really don't think D&D5 is a good inspiration to help with PF2 casters. Are there valid cantrips and Focus Spells in D&D5, or anything similar? From your message it looks like low level spells are the equivalent of Cantrips and Focus Spells. So yeah, I agree that you use something when the fight is easy. That's the same in PF2, you just don't use low rank spells as these compare negatively to Focus Spells and sometimes even cantrips.Are there mechanics like Incapacitation to prevent low level spells to be effective at high level? Once again, I doubt it, so low level spells will be much more powerful like they used to be in earlier D&D editions. PF2 has a very strong focus on top spells which is not the case of other D&D inspired games. Overall, I don't think you'll end up with any useful comparison. If I had a small list where I could have both dispel magic and chain lightning in the pocket, would I be having more or less fun if I could just use that slot for the first of the relevant instances to come up? I'm sure you'd have more fun. You'd also have more fun if you could get twice more spells and higher spell DC or whatever. Selling a buff is not hard.But I fail to see the point of such a question in current discussion (if we consider there's a single "current discussion", I'm not really sure of that).
It's not a buff that numerically changes the game, because savvy players can still get the same, and potentially even better results. It's only a buff that closes the distance between a novice player and a veteran player. Call me a novice player, but I get a definite buff from Flexible Spellcasting. Sure, you can say that if I had prepared the exact spells I did cast with Flexible then it's the same, but that's the ideal situation. Flexible is close to ideal Prepared, where your Prepared spell list is perfect. That's a massive boost, I don't need a crystal ball anymore. It's also a QoL buff, as you don't have to choose the spell slot you'll put your spell in, you can choose the spell and decide the spell rank later. But that's the minor effect of Flexible if you ask me. |
