The-Magic-Sword's page

ScooterScoots wrote:

R.E everyone in the thread grousing about magus and focus spells for the 10 millionth time, I’ve done the damage calcs on this and fighter wins handily. And that’s under the ideal whiteroom conditions where magus gets to spellstrike every single round, real non-whiterooms are not so kind to the easily disrupted magus action economy.

Go complain about fighter instead please.

I don’t think magus focus spell spell striking is too powerful a thing by itself. I think that a lack of good damage spell attack roll slot spells, and a class design that pushes players outside of their class make it clear that the magus class isn’t doing what it is supposed to be doing. I think, given the remaster changes to the game, the original playtest magus is really just a better design, with maybe letting cantrip spell attack roll spells work with the one roll for spell attack roll and weapon strike.

The focus point recovery change just made it super clear that “the right way” to play a magus is against its class design. Like the class should not be getting evaluated on the assumption that every magus is going out of class to get access to focus spells, and it is a bad sign that automatically recharging spell strike and doing something else doesn’t feel better than blasting with out of class focus spells for the vast majority of players. I just don’t see why having magi use focus spells for spell striking would be better than just having spell strike do its own kineticist like infinitely repeatable options that could be picked up as feats.

I think the focus spell magus thing isn't really the 'right way' to play a Magus, I think people just find it intuitively comfy because there's a fear of wasting spell slots on whiffed spellstrikes and the imaginary weapon variant of it performed pretty well. But its still objectively higher performance to use Slotted Spells and Striker Scroll for spellstrike, and conflux spells (especially Force Fang) for recharge. This is even more the case for the remastered Magus, where you have more spell slots to fall back on overall.

I feel like it wasn't really a major power difference, it was useful and it changes the way players interact with encounters, and it incentivizes picking up focus spells more rapidly. But ultimately most tables are doing short adventuring days (1-4 overwhelmingly as per reddit polls with large samples, and I can't imagine online spaces are less hardcore than the rest of the pf2e playing population) and real spell slots / scrolls are dramatically more powerful.

Casters did get a buff from one action focus options being more spammable, but mainly at low levels given how focus points worked before.

exequiel759 wrote:

I did play a 3rd-level operative for a one shot, yes.

Have you played a gunslinger? Imagine a gunslinger that doesn't need to reload and adds sneak attack to damage (effectively) for free. That's what an operative is.

I have played a tiny bit of gunslinger, and have GMed a tiny bit more. I found the gunslinger to be slightly more... interesting? Satisfying? Definitely not as good as the operative (actually gunslingers suck a little bit), but more fun. Then again, I'm inexplicably attracted to jank: somebody says "this sucks" and I'm like "new character idea."

But yeah, I keep coming back to how all the operatives I've GMed for just... haven't had as much impact as it seems like they should. I'm not sure what's going wrong. "Ranged rogue with fighter accuracy" sounds awesome, but something's not adding up. I'm really gonna have to go back down to the testing mines and figure this out, because there seems to be a pretty striking split between people who are utterly unimpressed with the operative and people who insist it's crazy strong. I've never not trusted your opinions, exequiel, so the only conclusion I can draw is that I need more hands-on data.

Had a similar-but-inverted experience with the solarian. Popular opinion seems to be that it kinda stinks, and yet it's been a hit with everyone who's tried it on my end. It might be that it drops off past the early game, or that a pure SF2 environment allows it to thrive without competition from better-tuned PF2 martials (melee prowess is intentionally throttled in SF2 in order to power-budget for switch-hitting and give guns more parity). I know the whole "works in their home environment, but not a mixed one" thing is definitely true for envoys, as I described in an earlier comment. Maybe it's the opposite case for operatives: they kind of struggle in their native ecology, but take off like an invasive species when brought outside it?

Apologies to everyone else in the thread for the...

The reason is because they aren't a ranged rogue with fighter accuracy, they're a ranged fighter with fighter accuracy, who can sack actions for a little extra oomph, but the oomph still has to make up for not being in melee and getting ability mod, and/or playing around ranged dice (or unwieldly etc.) They're excellent, but they shouldn't really be any more dominant than well-built gunslingers and ranged fighters are in the sense that there's no mechanism for that to be the case (i do think they get some really distilled feat quality native to their chassis thought, so they've got that going for them which is nice.)

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

Will the Key Note be live streamed for those who are not able to attend?

Manni#7168 is right here! We will have a video on YouTube so you can still watch it!

Any advice for when i should be prepared to hit a play button and perform a write up?

Separately, is anything else being streamed, or video-released from Gencon that I should be prepared for Pathfinder/Starfinder wise?

I like Impossible Spells, though I think they should be *slightly* less restricted, like maybe you can't cast that impossible spell ever again, but you can cast others, or you'd have to relearn it (which the GM would have to facilitate anyway) to ever cast it again.

I think the mention of gods being able to cast them more than once is kind of tantalizing, and based off the description, it sure sounds like there would be A WAY to do it, something like rebirthing the soul.

Actually, there is one quirky way-- some of the war of immortals level 20 immortality type stuff in the mythic destinies and classes, have a variant where someone takes up your mantle.

Does your soul scar transfer to your chosen knight when the Legacy on Monarchs feat is invoked since it says "For all intents and purposes" or if you just train a successor for the Animist Eternal Guide feat.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

I am very close to remaking my witch as a necromancer for both narrative and mechanical reasons, but I'm trying to figure out what to do with her familiar-- its FA so I could just take Familiar Master, but part of me is tempted to do something dumb and make him into her keepsake so I can take Hedge Mage, obviously he won't be a mechanical familiar anymore.

There is an undead familiar feat and enhanced familiar feat for Necromancer.

Yeah, I just don't have room to take it with class feats, lol

I am very close to remaking my witch as a necromancer for both narrative and mechanical reasons, but I'm trying to figure out what to do with her familiar-- its FA so I could just take Familiar Master, but part of me is tempted to do something dumb and make him into her keepsake so I can take Hedge Mage, obviously he won't be a mechanical familiar anymore.

Yes, we are starting to see several examples of Starfinder content in our Pathfinder West Marches. We've seen a Skittermander Soldier with a Plasma Cannon and a jetpack, Dragonkin Mystic, and an Astrozoan Sniper Operative pop up so far with relevant weapons and equipment, and we've had adventures that feature the computer skill, warmachines, assembly oozes, etc.

Our setting has largely been modified to be able to handle it, we have fairly widespread, but not ubiquitous magitech where our existing magic crystals "Manathyst" and some other substances representing various states of magic corresponding to the traditions, allow for the construction of what are essentially high-fantasy-fied (e.g. granite, crystals, with water-bassed displays mediating illusion magic) computers, laser guns, clockwork machine guns, etc.

Our assumed level of powerscaling and high-fantasy-action was high enough to begin with that pathfinder characters were already performing on par or beyond what you might expect from tech in Starfinder's setting, so it doesn't strain credulity at all.

Our mystic has been carrying spare personal communicators and selling them to people who haven't been tuned into the starfinder stuff mid adventure at a slight markup so that Motivating Ringtone works for them.

We've recently been refining what we think an infosphere is in the setting, initially I had the idea they were extremely localized to certain buildings, parts of cities, dungeons, but now we're toying with a system by which Gods broadcast to mortals through the 'Dream' our spirit world, in their dreams, that was suggested by a player.

I don't know that there are enough of these lock/key = level things in the game to really do this, even water breathing is actually just a level 1 thing unless you ban the relevant ancestries and heritages. It'd be easier to have it govern what routes the party might take to get to places in the dungeon, and/or what treasure they get, then focus more on the puzzle box aspect of a zelda dungeon, or the old-school keys-as-currency.

Oh wow, that's shorter than I expected, and I was expecting them to discuss some potential adjustments to the order that Daredevil functions in or something else structural to the way it operates. But I'm happy to hear the Slayer will have stronger Signature Tools that aren't the weapon, since that was really it's only issue.

Since the playtest ended I'm feeling vaguely positive about both classes, neither are necessarily something I'll personally play (unlike Necromancer, Commander, Animist AND Exemplar, etc) but I think they're cool in the context of the game's ecosystem.

Yeah Draconic Codex, NPC Core, Battlecry were all knock-out-of-the-park incredible, in my opinion. I love having all the interesting people statblocks with monster core tier cool abilities, troops are great, the dragons are sick as heck and slotted neatly into my lore while also being awesome in a fight, the player options are excellent especially the commander and guardian!

Add me to the list of "Slayer does not seem to have any resemblance to the PF1 Slayer, so should probably be called something else". Either that or make it more like the PF1 Slayer.

Daredevil is fine as by me, though.

We should just issue a retcon of the PF1e slayer to be more like the pf2e Slayer, so that way it resembles the pf1e Slayer better.

Though I once had to draw the line after I had another player say they wanted to play an 8-foot-tall Changeling that was gaunt with no face and had Barney the Dinosaur tell them to do things. I at first laughed it off as them jesting, but found myself surprised when I asked them if they were serious to find they were 100% serious, and after a week of weighing just letting them have it and vetoing it, I eventually decided to veto it. (Guess that's the result of people who learn of ttrpgs through things like Critical Roll and Avantris).

You have a truly fascinating idea of what goes on at critical role's table.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Prince Maleus wrote:

Any speculations on new and Remastered Magics from the Book of Unlimited Magic section?

Elemental and Rune Magic have both been remastered in Rage of Elements and Rival Academies.

But what about Shadow Magic or Ley Lines?(These two were my personal favorites)

Back when Secrets of Magic was announced, I remember Erik Mona said the was a Blood Magic section that was cut for spacing but would get added to a more appropriate themed book.
That's something I'd like to see as well.

What other types of Magic would you like to see?

I actually asked about the Blood Magic later, and got the answer that it was apparently not-actually-written, just planned.

Ahhhhh. But I want to wield both Blood and Shadow Magic!

We did get Sanguimancer since, and there was a suggestion in the lore for that a separate bloatmage would be occurring.

Any speculations on new and Remastered Magics from the Book of Unlimited Magic section?

Elemental and Rune Magic have both been remastered in Rage of Elements and Rival Academies.

But what about Shadow Magic or Ley Lines?(These two were my personal favorites)

Back when Secrets of Magic was announced, I remember Erik Mona said the was a Blood Magic section that was cut for spacing but would get added to a more appropriate themed book.
That's something I'd like to see as well.

What other types of Magic would you like to see?

I actually asked about the Blood Magic later, and got the answer that it was apparently not-actually-written, just planned.

I'm interested to see what happens, on the subject of reevaluation, and this is just my perspective as a fan obviously-- what a lot of people mention in response to my write ups is that they prefer it as a way to get information out of the stream partially because the stream itself can be such a big ask-- its long form content at a particular time that goes on continuously and any given fan has a mix of things they care about and don't care about discussed, so you're sometimes watching the keynote or something waiting for THE THING, and sometimes it doesn't happen, and its actually easier to get information secondhand.

Personally, for both the write ups and AMAs the reason I started doing them is because I recognized that in other similar communities, they provide a 'festival' atmosphere that gets people hype for whats coming, and they seduce eyes over from other competing products, like "hey, something big is going on with the Pathfinder people, whoa they're getting a COMMANDER CLASS!? WHAT!? Maybe I should talk to my GM" so they always seemed like a good way to boost a game i love as fan (ultimately in the service of me not going through the tragedy of 4e's end of life again.)

In the spirit of both of those things, if I were in the companies shoes and considering how to promote, I'd be looking at sizzle reel content, short trailers (or longer trailers that can be broken up) that explain a specific feature from an upcoming piece of content, like a new class, that can make its way through DND-tock and stuff, or get recommends through the algorithm-- the same stuff we might get in a panel, but condensed. Longer form explanations of anything could be an official AMA on the sub or something, that's easy to find and read digestably.

I think the AP trailers do a decent job, but they're paced a little slow for how short they are, and I think character options are actually better to promote because they're universal-- only a subset of the community plays APs, but every new character has a shot at being a new class. There's a part of me thats even tempted to say that since paizo products have been interlinked in big event pushes lately (Godsrain, Hellfire Crisis) you can basically do both with the same trailer.

E.g. we might see the Slayer explained in the context of being a van helsing type deal in the context of bastard hall, all in a short video, with some music, snatches of players declaring that they're using cool actions intermixed with hype roleplaying lines, with some MTV style punchy editing.

IDK if any of that is realistic of course.

Ok, so first impression was hype, both of these seem fun, and the slayer turned out to be way cooler than I was expecting by being explicitly a Witcher/Monster Hunter (as in, the franchise) and the specialized tools seem super cool.

Second Impression is that I want a bigger emphasis on stunts that earn you Adrenaline for the daredevil because adrenaline already feels like a good benefit-- feats that have the press trait are cool and I like how they intersect with the flurry benefit, but I want more that have the risky trait, and not the press trait. Daring Stunt is fine, but I'd prefer for more feats that serve that niche to mix and match with press stunts.

On the flip, the Slayer is awesome, but I'm concerned primarily with the balance between the subclasses, vis a vis their 'thing' that exists parallel to sneak attack / edge benefit / rage etc.

Bloodseeker feels mandatory right now, because its the best one by far and its reinforce gives a lot of sheer output-- flavorwise I really like Panoply, but the daggers have too much suck factor with their slow rune progression and lack of property runes. I love their intersection with crossbow though, and the feat to upgrade them. Chemyst Vial seems to be lackluster until the level 7-8 when the spec kicks in and the feat becomes available, I think the scaling is just too low for what it's trying to do right now.

We'll see if my feelings change as we get into the playtest period, especially if any of my players choose to test it in our west marches.

I attempted to download the dark archive remaster pdf (single file) today and got the following error, the same thing happened with draconic codex, Monster Core 2 worked when I tested it.

I have two theories:

A. Necromancer and Runesmith are coming in a Secrets of Magic style book that remasters Magus/Summoner, I kind of hope it's this, just because another run at the 'general book about magic' concept has a lot of potential, and SoM has a lot in it that could have used another look, or could be replaced with different content.

B. Necromancer and Runesmith are coming in separate books, each alongside one of the above two classes still in need of remaster.

Woof. Feels like a rough year for rulebooks and rules. Hopefully these packed schedules leads to a big 2026. 2025 felt a little disappointing to me, with no rulebook announcements or play tests, and now skipping errata. Also npc core and monster core 2 were mostly reprints of old material (battlecry was great though).

NPC Core was mostly new material by volume. The big issue is that they did the playtest early (Necromancer/Runesmith) and haven't announced the book (or books? I'm starting to suspect Runesmith and Necromancer aren't the same book) yet.

Woooh! I went ahead and dropped the first review for the player core (it might not be, actually, considering there still isn't one on the page, other people might have also left ones that haven't shown up yet).

I'm kind of excited for this gold thing, I wasn't getting paizo advantage since I didn't have a use for a fourth sub, but now I'll get some discounts out of it.

It also looks like my subs are there... but that they say January First for the sub order, I dropped lost omens sub into my cart and ordered it 'again' to try and reset it before I saw it was a known issue, not sure if that'll work, but I guess it doesn't matter at that point.

This sounds an awful lot like Subscribers now all get our subscriptions exactly two weeks before street date on the same day, if so I applaud this move "Subscriber Day" is going to be so exciting.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

With respect to what you said Tridus, I can understand preferring to play other classes due to the spellbook mechanic, but to me it's on par with tracking a repertoire and signatures-- it's just a list of spells you know, and you just write out what spells you prepped for the day-- you don't have to track what levels you know any given spell at because of how heightening works.

Well the key difference is a repertoire and signatures is one list: it's the list of what I have right now. It's really just a list with an asterisk on some spells.

Wizard has two lists:
1. The list of spells I have prepared right now, which is basically the same as the repertoire.
2. The spellbook list, which is a totally seperate list that at high level gets to be very long.

It's definitely more complex, especially in high level play where it can have 100+ entries, and I'm just not seeing value out of that when we have other classes in the system that work the same way but don't have to do it because the system goes "oh you have all of them, pick what you want for the day."

Quote:

I also don't think the current schools are especially bad-- I listed off a bunch of good focus spells from them, and in the context of the overall build game, there are options to flex focus spells if a school has subclass slotted spells you like. They're pretty similar to your Sorcerer options, with the likes of Elemental Toss and Hand of the Apprentice being pretty comparable, Force Bolt being comparable to either. You can def pick out individual school spells which aren't as good, but that goes for all of the game's subclass selection.

Ars Grammatica, Battle Magic, Gates, Kalistrade, Magical Technologies, Protean Form, and Rooted Wisdom all have decent focus spells from the jump, with Mentalism, Civic Wizardry, and Boundary having phenomenal advanced spell.

I think we just don't agree on how good the schools are, and thats fine. :) There are some good ones for sure, but I also found a lot...

It's genuinely easier for me to parse prepared casting for whatever reason, probably because when I do spontaneous I do have some non-signature spells learned at multiple levels (say, if they only heighten very sporadically) as if they were different spells. For me, it's very intuitive to just go down the list and write a couple of spells for the slots at each level.

As for uncommon, I don't really worry about it, I don't think there's actually all that many tables that are especially restrictive about it and there's always more builds and options in this game to find something for that individual campaign where something you might like to play is restricted. If a player is pushing for something to be available, I think most GMs would want to err on the side of it being available.

I think you're overrelying on vague notions of the possible variety of the slots to try and make your point and managed to read text that said the damage is higher as being lower-- I used fireball as a flush case and pointed out higher damage spells and their relationship to the status bonus as a ratio.

Even if you blend away a bunch of spell slots, you still have lower level spells to cast throughout the day and all of your other build resources. It's not practical to consider it that kind of tradeoff. We're not talking about a scenario where you can't cast See the Unseen, we're discussing a scenario where you have fewer castings of it-- we're not discussing the value of the first casting of it, but rather the latter castings.

I think that's part of where your argument is derailing-- you're severely overestimating the cost in overall versatility to a wizard from both blended slots and using prep in the first place.

I think a big part of it, looking at your discussion of first edition wizards upthread, is that lock and key thinking, where there are problems and spells match to the problems, so spontaneous slots become skeleton keys that take on a gandful of configurations to fit specific problems.

I would say that the dynamic is different, the name of the game is consistent throughput and you have way more ways across your party to solve lock and key problems, and a greater incentive to shift resources to core activities because fights don't need gimmicks and attrition to be hard.

We've both written relevant guides ; )

You might be able to eke out higher performance as a Sorcerer via Explosion of Power optimization (if you're standing right in front of them, you know I was so excited about that feat until I noticed that when I was creating the sorcerer version of my blaster Wizard, it still takes it because there will be times it works out, but damn) or another bleeding edge trick, like I'm certainly not here to tell you Sorcerers are bad.

I'd also note that a lot of people would argue you can still get ahold of multiclass Dangerous Sorcery for the same reason you can largely still pick spells that weren't reprinted, and there are other means of getting status bonus to spell damage (like Runelord's Personal Runewell, although that specific example really badly wants to be supporting other characters as well to be worth the action economy; and Coven Spell which comes from another character.)

But first to understand why it works, we have to talk about spell scaling, if you take a simple example like fireball, which is worth 2d6 per rank of heightening. Take for granted that I'm using the numbers I'm using because the accuracy is identical:

A rank 5 Fireball is 35 damage, in other words, and the same fireball coming from a Sorcerer is 40 damage, if the sorcerer cast fireball in all four 5th rank slots, you gain 20 damage out of that, we'll call this 160 damage over 4 spell slots.

If you have an extra slot from spell blending, that's worth 35 damage by itself, which means the Wizard has the potential to do 175 damage with the same level's worth of resources without a status bonus to spell damage of their own, note that as the damage of the spell increases, this number scales up but the status bonus doesn't-- e.g. Sudden Bolt/Lightning Bolt are both more favorable because they have an even steeper ratio of raw damage relative to 1/level when you add the extra casting.

The Wizard does require more actions to do that damage, but generally, I don't consider being able to spend more rounds flinging top level fireballs to be a flaw, because you don't want cantrip rounds if you can avoid them. The Sorcerer can even things back out by double dipping the status bonus onto their third action spell, like Elemental Toss, if they use it, assuming the Wizard doesn't have that benefit or one like it, but the Wizard has another extra slot for a rank 4 fireball.

As for the logistics of switching spells situationally, the real answer is broadly that the character has enough resources overall that I always have something I want to do, or a way to coordinate to make my plan the right answer, and then use the Falling Stars slot later-- this I think is where lower level spell slots come back in, or simply the mixed array of prepared spells that I have. On my Wizard I was prepping about half AOE and half single target across my top two spell levels, so we're talking about a situation in which I not only prepped falling stars, but don't have my upcast lightning bolt or whatever is scaling-relevant by that point ready to go in another slot for a different AOE arrangement, and also don't want to single target anything, but the creatures are also still strong enough for me to not want to use a lower level slot on them and rely on the level difference with my dc and their lower HP. We also have to assume my staff can't help me, that I'm out of Drain Bonded Item, that I didn't price this into feats.

Some people think good spell prep is about lock and key design, in reality good spell prep is about powerful splashable spells that cover a variety of fairly common situations.

It gets very frictionless vacuum very quickly.

My experience in actual play is that the Spellblender Wizard is especially powerful and that the added flexibility of the spontaneous casting isn't as important unless I focus on spells that may or may not be useful over spells that certainly will be. Giving up some lower level slots just fundamentally isn't that painful compared to the performance delivered via the extra castings on the top two spell ranks.

For me to feel like Spontaneous casting is meaningfully better as described, I would have to be ending up in situations where I'm not casting all my prepareds because they aren't filled with useful spells, or where I'm feeling the sting of needing to spend them in a different way.

Our prepared casters don't underperform the spontaneous casters, and the Wizard specifically hasn't fallen behind any of our optimized Sorcerers.

I def don't think lower level spells are like, actively bad, but spells generally get stronger as you go up in level. Using spells with scaling damage frequently enough in your higher ends slots makes you the party's highest DPR, so extra top 2 level slots are very useful for casters who use those kinds of spells. Many utility spells and debuffs also either get stronger or have an effective replacement for their effect at high level, for example, you can always cast rank 1 fear, but agonizing despair is generally better, or even something Mask of Terror, you're always trying to maximize efficacy into as few actions as possible-- and the exponential curve of gold makes spells like See the Unseen or whatever cheap as scrolls once you're more than two ranks above them, or they're decent fodder for scroll savant.

Depending on what your build is designed to do (and presumably, you're building around what you take here) it's two extra rounds of higher damage, which translates to a much higher average over a number of encounters. This is especially nice since Arcane has all of the best damage-scaling spells on one list, like Lightning Bolt, Sudden Bolt, Force Barrage.

@Trip H. I think my thought process is more that spontaneous is neutral, if you don't spend the slot when X happens because you don't have the right spell, you'll just use it in situation Y later. If you're planning on running down your resources by the end of the day either way, the only remaining question is which expenditure buys more value, which may or may not favor spontaneous.

I learned that playing my Invoker, sometimes my flexible slots would give me an opportunity to do something useful, and then later I'd be thinking "hmm, I was so excited to spend the spell slot but that could have been a soothe in this situation, shouldn't have blown the slot" and it was one of the reasons I switched to Seneschal, unless I'm trying to make a lot of use of spells that simply might not come up, it's similarly effective to just have 'good stuffz' spells prepped and go, and running completely out on these high slot castings is rare either way.

I like to put utility spells in scrolls so that I can just carry the scroll until it comes up then replace it. I've played a spellblending wizard to 18, and recently built an alt-universe version of the same character for a different setting as a sorcerer (partially because he's so bombastic charisma felt more apropo) I'm also currently playing a Seneschal that used to be an Invoker.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

3. Why? The limited number of signatures is a bigger pain in the butt, I like freely heightening the spells I learn.

What are you talking about? How is this hard to see? I'm serious. How is this problem hard to see?

Let me clarify again.

Wizard: 6th level Prepared: Chain Lightning. Slow Heightened, Chain Lightning, with one use of Arcane Bond.

You cast one heightened slow and chain lightning, then maybe use arcane bond for a 3rd.

Sorc: 6th level: Repertoire: Chain Lightning, Phantasmal Orchestra, Truesight, Wall of Force.

I use them in whatever way I wish according to what is needed.

It is this way for all 9 ranks of spells. Then I toss in sig spells with a slow and I can cast slow all day.

Gee, you have two top spell lots. What are you going to put in there? Another group slow? Do you have anything more powerful than a group slow? I can do it all day and keep it in a level 3 slot.

This is another one of those wizard arguments I hear over and over again about Spell Blending and more top slots. You think those top slots mean much? They don't. They won't outperform the spontaneous casting and sig spells.

I blew off my top spell slots doing...I don't know...they're top slots, they must be better. That's a refrain said over and over again which isn't true at all.

Then it just gets worse when the sorc gets Greater Mental Evolution and they're picking five spells a level to use interchangeably.

The extra damage and healing from sorcerous potency has no cost.

Heard this claim a thousand times on these forums and never seen it matter ever because the idea that a higher level slot is better is not at all true. It's still far, far more powerful to use a spell like a slow or great blasting spell than pretend an extra rank 9 slot is better costing you what? All your 3rds is better.

It isn't. Spontaneous casting with sig spells beats prepared all the time with the number of spells you can learn now.

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Curricula and Bloodlines

...

I don't think you managed to clarify anything here, because there wasn't anything to clarify-- both the Sorcerer and the Wizard will cast the same number of times before spell blending because their casting resources are designed to be the same. Prepping the spells at the beginning of that day doesn't cause you to end up with more casting. I think you're trying to assert the inherit of power of being able to use different spells in the same slot when the opportunity to use them comes up, I'm telling you that while that's cool, it's not a significant advantage because the spell you would have had in the slot has to be less useful, which is priced into your spell prep and the length of your adventuring day.

You can blow a spell slot to solve a problem earlier in the day, the prepped spell will be useful in the situation it was intended to be useful in unless it was a really bad pick by me. You casting Wall of Force in encounter 2 doesn't stop me from launching the Lightning Bolt I prepped in the comparable slot in encounter 4, and you don't get that slot back for encounter 4 by spending them in encounter 2-- unless you prep spells that are unusable the adventure day is a shell game where the combination of problems and solutions are weighted both by circumstances (the importance of having a spell solution to a problem) and luck (the enemy's save where that matters.)

In addition to that, it's further priced into your choice of thesis, when you spell blend, you increase each of your top two spell levels by one slot, which, if you're using 2-3 action spells like Force Barrage, Fireball, Slow, whatever, means two additional rounds of casting in your day. You lose castings of lower level spells to do that, but it matters if we're talking damage spells in particular because of scaling. When we're talking damage spells, being more aggressive with your slots in an encounter means a higher DPR, being more aggressive with your slots means running out faster, so more slots at a higher level means more offensive in the same number of encounters, and spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt have better scaling than 1*rank.

Also, I couldn't actually parse what you were trying to say about 3rd rank spells and 9th rank spells, were you trying to assert that you might as well use low rank spells as high rank ones, or were you trying to say heightening isn't worth it compared to higher level spells in the first place?

Personally, I think the casters are in a really tight pack balance-wise to the point that I think the subclasses compete between the classes more than the classes actually do, but Druid or Psychic is probably the least inspiring to me, they're low slot caster with focus spells, some of which are cool, but eh, anyone can get comparable ones, of the two Psychic has way better flavor packed into the abilities it does have.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Quote:

The Wizard discourse on the forums are the same handful of people it's been since the switchover from first edition. I wouldn't say they've ever successfully established that there's anything wrong with the wizard, and the general trend in paizo forums wizard threads is to gloss over establishing a problem in favor of solutions that suggest there's a consensus about the problems so that the reader inferences it, and that's been going on for years. I think it was only recently that the anti-caster sentiment lost credibility overall.

It has been well-established what's wrong with the wizard, which the Remaster made worse.

I'm not sure what your criteria is for proving. A bunch of people proved the problems with the fighter and rogue in PF1, it took years to have the problems addressed in Pf1. Didn't in anyway mean Paizo wasn't aware of the problem.

I think they're well aware the wizard is not holding up to being the wizard in PF2 given all the changes. I think the biggest reason we don't and won't see much change is lack of consensus on the design team for how to fix it.

I truly believe that the design team intentionally made sure the wizard did not do what it did in PF1 where it was broken beyond belief. They do not want that again.

The wizard isn't unplayable. It's just on weak and boring side. All casters follow a template now and if you can cast a spell with up to Legendary proficiency, then you are playable. If you want an interesting class that can do what a wizard does, but with more interesting class features you pick another caster.

I think that has been pretty clearly proven. The wizard has weak class features with weak focus spells. You can't argue they are most versatile when you're handing a sorc a repertoire with 36 to 45 or more spells they can cast dynamically with 4 slots. The wizard can prepare 27, 36 if not a universalist of limited spell slots based on curriculum that are prepared and once

...

1. They shouldn't, you can get that benefit in a couple of ways if you want it, and then combine it with the other benefits of being a wizard-- and it's like 3 damage per maxed rank at level 5, it's not bad but it's not exactly incredible either, it's a minimal percentage, I wouldn't give up two rounds of spellcasting at top two spell ranks for it, so it certainly doesn't beat out spellblending.

2. Curricula and Bloodlines are really close, it's true some bloodlines can dip other spells lists, but that benefit consumes action economy you could have also just done useful arcane things with-- you have to rate that other spell list's option against the other uses for your action economy.

3. Why? The limited number of signatures is a bigger pain in the butt, I like freely heightening the spells I learn.

4. But like, practically, both casters are going to use a far smaller number of bread and butter spells in nearly every slot, with set consistently useful exploration magic alongside it, the sorcerer isn't really benefitting from that

I wouldn't sell the Wizard the way you're suggesting I might on some kind of versatility argument, I'd sell it on the magical scholar flavor, the arcane list itself, and on the mix of free heightening and spell slot manipulation you get. I've personally never played the wizard as a bat-shark-repellant-character, I played the wizard as a no-compromise blaster and buffer/debuffer who has higher DPR than other casters because I was able to sling more top level spells over the length of our day, and back up my other utility magic with scroll savant. If I wasn't using spell blending I'd be replicating the benefits of spell blending by milling utility magic that doesn't get used into more blasting and buffs/debuffs as the day wears on using spell sub. I'd conduct more research to organize the best way to use it, but nexus is interesting, especially once runelord happened, I like the idea of setting up Personal Runewell as either pre-buff or in a caster heavy team to give multiple people the benefit of sorcerous potency though.

With respect to what you said Tridus, I can understand preferring to play other classes due to the spellbook mechanic, but to me it's on par with tracking a repertoire and signatures-- it's just a list of spells you know, and you just write out what spells you prepped for the day-- you don't have to track what levels you know any given spell at because of how heightening works.

I also don't think the current schools are especially bad-- I listed off a bunch of good focus spells from them, and in the context of the overall build game, there are options to flex focus spells if a school has subclass slotted spells you like. They're pretty similar to your Sorcerer options, with the likes of Elemental Toss and Hand of the Apprentice being pretty comparable, Force Bolt being comparable to either. You can def pick out individual school spells which aren't as good, but that goes for all of the game's subclass selection.

Ars Grammatica, Battle Magic, Gates, Kalistrade, Magical Technologies, Protean Form, and Rooted Wisdom all have decent focus spells from the jump, with Mentalism, Civic Wizardry, and Boundary having phenomenal advanced spell.

Finally, I will point out that "The Wizard is worse than the other classes" is a positive claim, but the "the Wizard isn't bad" would be proving a negative, particularly in such a radically balanced game, I'm trying to argue in good faith along the positive line "the wizard is good" but most of that seems self-evident because I'm not being given much of a reason anything is actually bad-- most of effectiveness for a caster is baked into the number of slots and the base proficiency which they all share, even some of the actual arguments being made aren't committing to that and are staying on the side of 'fine but uninspiring' as a more nebulously subjective proxy for what other people are solving as 'bad.'

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With respect to what you said Blue Frog, I don't really see that as a problem mostly because either the adventuring day won't be long enough to push your slots to the extent that it matters (especially since you have so many), or if it is, at least one of those encounters is going to feature enemies who dive the backline, and you can always put yourself in a position to soak damage to make sure it gets used-- our wooden doubles always end up expended simply because creatures like to dive blasters and healers.

_

Exequil759, I think the Spellshape option and Familiar Option aren't quite as good (though I have seen the familiar path defended in light of Inscribed One Witch not being all that good), but Staff Nexus is generally considered pretty potent, and it now has what is essentially a major upgrade path through Runelord.

Quote:

The Wizard discourse on the forums are the same handful of people it's been since the switchover from first edition. I wouldn't say they've ever successfully established that there's anything wrong with the wizard, and the general trend in paizo forums wizard threads is to gloss over establishing a problem in favor of solutions that suggest there's a consensus about the problems so that the reader inferences it, and that's been going on for years. I think it was only recently that the anti-caster sentiment lost credibility overall.

It has been well-established what's wrong with the wizard, which the Remaster made worse.

I'm not sure what your criteria is for proving. A bunch of people proved the problems with the fighter and rogue in PF1, it took years to have the problems addressed in Pf1. Didn't in anyway mean Paizo wasn't aware of the problem.

I think they're well aware the wizard is not holding up to being the wizard in PF2 given all the changes. I think the biggest reason we don't and won't see much change is lack of consensus on the design team for how to fix it.

I truly believe that the design team intentionally made sure the wizard did not do what it did in PF1 where it was broken beyond belief. They do not want that again.

The wizard isn't unplayable. It's just on weak and boring side. All casters follow a template now and if you can cast a spell with up to Legendary proficiency, then you are playable. If you want an interesting class that can do what a wizard does, but with more interesting class features you pick another caster.

I think that has been pretty clearly proven. The wizard has weak class features with weak focus spells. You can't argue they are most versatile when you're handing a sorc a repertoire with 36 to 45 or more spells they can cast dynamically with 4 slots. The wizard can prepare 27, 36 if not a universalist of limited spell slots based on curriculum that are prepared and once used, are used up. It's pretty easy to see the problem that the...

Right but this is what I mean, 27 spells vs. 36 spells vs. 45 spells doesn't matter that much because how many spells are we expecting the player to need?

That's a really abstract difference in actual play where most players find a fairly stable rosters of spells they like and change up what they're prepping for the day around the edges based on what situations they think are likely to come up. When the Sorcerer spontaneously makes 3 of their 4 slots on fireball, and the Wizard prepares 3 of those 4 slots to be fireball, it's kind of academic.

The two classes otherwise have very similar class features, with the sorcerer giving away Thesis to get Sorcerous Potency and Blood Magic. You can certainly prefer the trade, but I wouldn't really characterize it as being better.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

I still think both the arcane list and the wizard class are in a fairly strong place.

Well I agree with one of those statements. :)

Wizard is just... I mean, I don't see why I'd ever play one? What's the hook? It feels like a Cleric with more work (tracking a spellbook) but not much going on to pay that off. It also feels like there's more interesting focus spells in domains than in schools.

How do you mean? They're an arcane caster who has more castings per spell rank than the cleric does, and those spells don't have to be heal/harm. Clerics can't mill lower end slots for higher end ones with Spell Blending, or swap their preps with Spell Substitution, to name two of them ore unique options. The focus spells are fine, and are more consistently useful than many (but not all) of the domain spells. In my experience the spellbook isn't much of a problem, since gameplay doesn't tend to revolve around radically shifting spell prep day to day, and the number of spells you can easily get in your book via leveling and the occasional scribed spell is plenty.

Is that is why we get so many threads complaining about it? also why did you feel the need to add "fairly" as a caveat?

The Wizard discourse on the forums are the same handful of people it's been since the switchover from first edition. I wouldn't say they've ever successfully established that there's anything wrong with the wizard, and the general trend in paizo forums wizard threads is to gloss over establishing a problem in favor of solutions that suggest there's a consensus about the problems so that the reader inferences it, and that's been going on for years. I think it was only recently that the anti-caster sentiment lost credibility overall.

In this instance the mitigative term 'fairly' suggests that while I think the class is strong, it isn't the strongest class in the game, I'm not sure why you're latching onto an innocuous qualifier that a single class isn't the single-strongest?

I wouldn't say the wizard is in a strong place. I wouldn't say its unplayable either. It's very overshadowed by how well built every other class is now. It doesn't add much to a party when you have so many other classes taking stuff from the wizard while having all their own very goods tuff...

Overall I think that middle of the pack is a pretty good place to be, otherwise we end up in 'why do most of these classes even exist, there will only be a handful of best classes' territory. I think that in comparison to other class benefits the spell manipulation tools that the wizard gets are heavily underrated. Being able to spend 10 rounds on your top two spell levels is huge, to use spellblending as an example.

There's plenty of other build-specific unique tech, like being able to switch onto/off of utility spells when they look like they might be useful in exploration mode or you need more combat magic to make it through more encounters, moving others with the school of gates focus spell, personal runewell for the runelord giving caster heavy parties possibly-pre-buff access to status bonus to damage (something the Witch can do once per round as a reaction for one person.)

They can generate free scrolls per day with a different feat. They have several other good focus spells like Spiral of Horrors, Force Bolt, and Hand of the Apprentice. War Mage now offers an entire backline tank-and-support option that imo is better than the psychic's version of it.

I don't think a Wizard offers less than other classes actually do, especially in the context of the full build game.

I still think both the arcane list and the wizard class are in a fairly strong place.

Heh, my watch continues

To be clear, its completely normal for you to not get it, and will be for a few more days. It won't be weird until the 26th.

I think the discrepancy some people are confused about is between people who think of the gold given as being a more flexible form of the scenario benefit and people who don't.

Some people see it as losing the scenario benefit and think they should get the scenarios and the extra gold as separate promotions, other people like that they can take the promotion that was giving them scenarios and can apply it elsewhere, a few people seem to not care but have strong feelings about not having an auto-updating scenario library (I guess you could just pick up the subscription manually, it doesn't seem like there's a way to automate using the discount on that mentioned though.)

Personally, I'm of the second school, though I'm one subscription short of having had the scenario benefit, we mainly run homebrew content and being able to put the same value toward foundry modules or just defraying my overall costs is more valuable.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

It is one thing that 4e always did well with-- separating flavor text and mechanical text to make it easier to track.

See, I would count this among the worst things about 4e (an edition I liked a lot, actually)- my eyes would glaze over reading 4e spells and I'd have basically no clue about what happens when you cast the spell other than the mechanics. Like "1W + StrMod damage, Target is Pushed 1 square" is clear, but what actually happens?

the 4e spell has the flavor text in italics, so you do know what actually happens.

I am so excited since auth emails should start going out today (shipping isn't for a few more days) and while we know a fair amount about this book, a lot of it still feels mysterious, especially about like, archetypes. I recall the necromancer-ish one, and the personal siege weapon one, but we still don't how either work, or what else is there (if anything.)

I'm also interested in what support for casters the Commander got, how the Guardian actually turned out for realses. Gah, I'm just so thrilled to get my hands on this pdf.

One thing that I will say is that flavor text is inconsistent, sometimes it's pretty clear that a line is followed by a rule telling you what the text is describing. Other times that relationship is not clear. It is one thing that 4e always did well with-- separating flavor text and mechanical text to make it easier to track.

I am so excited for this subscription month, Battlecry and Starfinder is such a huge content drop and the team's been putting out fire lately.

Oh this works really well for me I think. I objectively spend a lot of money but didn't get advantage since I'm only gonna be subbed to 3 lines.

That art is such elegant brutality, I love it (and the colors are extremely nice.)

I hope ya'll aren't going too far away from the jailbreak spellshapes, they were the best part!

The thing is, I wouldn't expect a huge buff for Psychic because i don't think the Remaster actually nerfed them-- the extra focus point thing wasn't really a buff, it was a lubricant to allow for the amp playstyle to function at low levels, which was just buying back the power of their missing spell slot as sustain, whereas I think the power is in the actual subclass mechanics and amps. Now granted, I don't think they'd be busted with a third spell slot per level or something, so we'll see.

I don't know about that exact phrasing of causality, BUT we're stoked to combine the games-- I've set up my setting, people are running around toting ceramic magitech laser cannons, and earthenware tablets that can tether to larger Computational Spell Matrixes to access (much more local) infospheres and while some of the ancestries will still be from beyond the planet of our home setting, we're fantasyifying space and finding homes for many of them right alongside the pathfinder ancestries.

Mechanically I've already got a Soldier running around with a Plasma Cannon and a Jetpack who is super cool, but isn't really outcompeting the likes of our rogue and we're prepared to ad lib magical powers or other ranged attacks wherever necessary to compensate for the flight... which we've already delimited for Pathfinder Ancestries using the provided sidebar.

So long as they didn't mess up the core numbers after the playtest, we're golden.

Really interested in this primarily due to a kingmaker character who was following the Draconic Druid 1e inspiration and we can adapt some of this potentially. Any odds of ensuring this stuff will be added as compendium data for roll20/foundry, even as an addon?

The Foundry PF2e system isn't maintained by Paizo but they also add everything pretty much religiously, so you should be good on that front.

Since the Wizard was already pretty good, I can see why they wouldn't want the runelord to be significantly stronger.

Tactical Drongo wrote:

I think the main problem is that the OP thinks of 'Tanks' in mmo turns and not in tabletop terms

being able to get hit by all the enemies in an encounter standing upright, mitigating damage and forcing them to 'waste' their action on the character while the healer pumps lifepoints into them

I'd disagree that there Is any fundamental difference in concept inbetween a mmo tank and a ttrpg tank.

A tank has to do Two things:
-take aggro
-being able to resist damage After taking up aggro.

How would you define a tank otherwise? Cause every glass cannon can take aggro quite easily

Active Defense, like the assorted champion reactions that give resistance to a struck ally or the amped shield for Tangible Dream Psychic, or penalties like taunt on guardian which might be used for the penalty, rather than to get them to hit you, or even intercept which can be more useful than actually getting hit.

A Tank doesn't actually have to take aggro, a tank has to reduce the incoming damage.

Paizoblog wrote:

… You’ll also be able to earn gold by writing reviews of your purchases, by referring your friends to the new store, by following Paizo on social media, by joining the new program, and on your birthday!

Can’t believe no/one else has pointed out that this seems to follow a trajectory that isn’t dissimilar to that of shonky videogames…virtual gold….inducement to social media…payment for review…payment for recruiting etc…

Also practically every restaurant in central city Philadelphia.

Yay, this schedule is actually pretty darn optimal for me, since sunday doesn't have anything and I make time-and-a-half at work that day, lol.