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Hmm so I suppose the advantage might be more 'sorcerer will be able to have more resonance to spend on other items and get full use out of the staff'?

I think comparing directly healing the cleric will likely win out each time.

Is it worth doing a comparison that is not heal based? So the question is can the Sorcerer build in a significantly different way that might be unique and take advantage of a divine spell list when compared to the cleric (I suspect the answer might be a no though given the above comparisons)

Hi All,

I am interested in this one since I had intended to play test a divine sorcerer in a party that might already have a cleric (rather than replacing them as a primary healer, becoming a secondary heal/buff maybe with some flexibility into the offensive spells)

Then again I don't know how well that will work/compliment more than having a second cleric for example. I'll give it a go and see how it plays out.

One thing though, Staves have a bit of a different investment than wands (since you don't run out from what I can see, they just have x number of uses per day depending on resonance points.) Is there for example a staff of heal?

I guess what is a bit surprising for the Angelic bloodline is that there is not a straight up heal which might be able to compete with channel energy (perhaps it would be better to replace with a heal that works in a different way?

unless the angel bloodline is suppose to less be intended for healing and more offensive divine fury type thing, but then the bloodline powers would need to be more geared to that I would think.

I'll give it a go and maybe report here.

yeah i saw that feat and wanted to give it a playtest at high level, see how often and how long you could chain spells. because the focus requires you to have cast the spell already, which to chain kinda means you have used one of all the lower levels earlier and then saved some big ones.

i suppose it means you could really mess up a big encounter chaining damage spells, but they get weaker as you progressively cast down.

I definitely think that the RAI is 'spell per spell level' so drain only works once for each spell level. But RAW could be a bit better to make that clear.

Also for the Drain Focus it needs to have already been cast for the day (which is not a problem since you either cast it first with a slot or second with a drain.

I have to say when I built my Universalist for playtest I read it the RAI way not the RAW way so it probably gets the intended message across but needs to be fixed for clarity.

Yeah my wife was playing as a wild order druid and she felt exactly this way which probably points to some low level changes to make that feel a bit more effective and differentiated. Wild claws was not really any better than the Scimitar and Shield she was holding.

Potentially Wild claws should do a bit more in melee so you have incentive to cast it at early levels?

Also put me down into the camp that thinks this kind of reworking is a good direction to head in.

I don't know if they are 'pointless' as written. I think the emphasis is really on deciding what kind of druid you want to be is. (wildshape melee, spell damage, pokemon master or... whatever the leaf one is... healing? I need to read a bit more).

Having wildshape baked into the class is no longer there which for some people makes it feel less druidy... but in all honestly it should be about choosing how you want to play the class.

That said I can agree on a couple of things. For wildshape Str should be a class stat replacing wis, you still want wis for your spellcasting but in all honesty that should be the extra utility for wildshape druids.

Form control should be at an earlier level, add to that pest form cannot benefit from it's heightened airborne form which is either a deliberate choice to make an hours worth of flying at a later level or an oversight. (we are talking getting a flying form at either level 12 with this feat and elemental form, or level 10 with the Soaring Shape feat and forgoing some more ground combat options) I think at least Form Control should be earlier, and potential Pest Form should have a 5th level heighten but that's up for debate really.

More uses per day, especially since once you get Form Control it costs you 2 wildshapes to go for an hour unless I am reading that wrong. some extra points baked into the wildshape feats would go ok and allow non wildshape druids that want a little bit of wildshape on the side to get a few more uses out of it, but this may be the reason those feats don't contain those extra charges... if so make those benefits only available to wild order druids.

I do know a lot of people are disappointed with the leaf druids. I don't really now enough except to say that with the specialisation having a familiar (more spells/cantrips from familiar/master traits) that it should be more focused on utility than the others, i think the intent is for these druids to pick more of the metamagic feats but some of the more questionable feats should stay as spells for niche purposes and the feats should be more involved with building your spell point utility instead.

that would give a clear divide on the focus of each specialisation.

Wild: Melee
Animal: Ranged
Storm: Magic Damage
Leaf: Magic Utility

keen to see if they change this one in upcoming updates. I like a good druid class, and my wife plays them a bit compared to other classes. So they have definite fans that are a little disappointed with how they currently work as is.

Hey Guys,

I am yet to try out the Sorcerer to have a real comparison to the Universalist Wizard I playtested, but I do intend to.

From the discussions here and for a few other threads I have seen and from my own opinions as to some of the differences I'd like to put below.

Note this is how I personally view it so understandably I am not saying I am 'right' and that the way other people view it is 'wrong'.

I always considered Sorcerers to be your big combat casters, the innate power to just be a walking nuke in combat for whatever combat situation arises, in this example the Spontaneous casting over prepared casting is essential, your spells are limited but geared to really using exactly the type of combat (control, damage, energy or otherwise) with a mix of a few utility spells in there for good measure (normally the utility has some use in combat as well though, like fly or invisibility)

So when compared to the wizards Quick Preparation feat where they take 10 mins, it's really to only have one of their listed spells for an out of combat situation. This is quite powerful yes but to me the Wizard is all about study and utility. So in my mind the feat really equivalent to saying 'Sorcerers as spontaneous casters are useless with this feat'. That said the feat is powerful, almost a must have at level 4 for Wizards (almost).

As for the heightening? I definitely agree that Sorcerers should just get Heightening as a thing that is really their schtick, To me any spell they know at a low level that has the ability to Heighten should be available to a Sorcerer if they just spend the spell slot. No need to relearn at a higher level or to only have a limited number of heightens per day (I am not fully across the rules here for Heightening, but in general I think that's how it should work) this then allows the Sorc to still be that big Nuke package but give access to some more spells to round out either the combat or add a little utility in, but it's a big advantage over prepared casters and gives them that very definite identity. This also ties in with them having a large amount of skills, even if the amount of skill points are the same in the end thanks to the Wizard's high In they tend to (usually, not always) spend them in knowledge, lore or crafting skills, whereas the Sorc can be a bit more liberal with Social or Physical skills.

I actually think the less spells per day is ok since they supplement with more Cha for resonance anyway. potentially they need some feats around boosting resonance but I don't really know if that is actually needed. People have varying opinions on this that the Sorc should have a lot more magic than a Wizard but I think that is going to come down with how you think the class should be, and personally I think that is less the identity than the combat spellcasting.

Anyway long post, again just my opinion there. I am intending to playtest a few things and see how they compare.

I'll need to read on that feat to act on their own. Those minion rules are open to heavy interpretation on the GMs part but maybe that's for the best... Or worst depending on your GM!

Yeah I was wanting to test how many animals I could have out at once with summon nature's ally so I can see it being a bit of a balance thing. I also saw the bonded animal feat but it does state you can't have a bonded animal and an animal companion (there goes my wolfpack idea... Or Pokemon master?) Should be fun to play with either way. Sucks for the Ranger though.

Cheers

I have a question for this one I can't see answered yet but I may not have found it, so apologies if it's here somewhere.

I am looking at taking a druid for one of my playtest games, and taking the animal companion route. I have a few ideas around this but I did want to know what do animal companions do when not commanded in combat rounds?

I get that if you are yet to command them to act they may stay next to you/where they are. but if they are being actively attacked by something I would find it hard to believe they would not retaliate. granted you can use an action to specifically command them to hold an attack (which would require a command on your part). Do they always require an command to act or do they continue doing the last thing they were commanded to do?

RAW in the playtest rulebook says each round they get 2 actions if you command them so that would imply that if for example you commanded them to attach one round, then the next round took a full round action (all 3 actions) to cast a spell, the animal companion would do nothing but let themselves get wailed on.

Might be a balancing issue but I do find that hard to believe common sense wise.

what do you think?

Well I can now say after the first part of the playtest, my suspicion is confirmed with the extra spell really hurting at level one. I had mage armor and magic missile preped using mage armor at the start of the day left me with 2 MM (I took the familar feat for the wizard to get the extra cantrip which helped a bit bringing me to 5 - light, electric arc, detect magic, read aura, shield. still not really sure why detect magic and read aura are different spells or they should be differentiated more)

It did leave me fee limited of when I could use my first level spells. As i said I suspect this will be alleviated somewhat later when you are getting magic staves, feats and wands to help supplement spells but at least a this level you feel it. thats not even talking about the 'powers' you would otherwise get.

I did enjoy the playtest though. I do think the cantrips otherwise made sense and gave me flexibility to move around where I needed to be on the map. I did swap around some cantrips between rest during the game so some more playing around with that loadout would be fun.

Good discussions, I do think I generally agree that they generalist is a little bit behind and less flexible when i should be more. I did see all the conserve focus feats that you can spend to get more reuses and I had considered that for the overall benefit later. I suppose as it is right now I am building a L1 character and in the short term it seems to get the short end of the wand, but in the long term it might not.

I kind of feel like you should still get the additional cantrip at L1 to equal the specialist cantrips (and if you take the familar feat you could get an additional) to really drive home the utility but i'll see how it plays.

Also a bit weird that empowering focus requires a school so it limits that from the universalist wizard... maybe a balancing option as late half the spells an generalist can cast would have a higher DC?

hmmm, for this one I went halfling wizard (for story purposes), I intentially went story over powergaming min/maxing (though not saying playing an elf or gnome is specifically doing that). I still feel it needs a little more to compensate for losing some of the cool powers and extra spells from the specialist but that is what the playtest is for after all! I guess I should play a specialist wizard in a different playtest to compare.

Hmm I see what you mean, though I still feel you are missing an extra spell out of the focus. Though that is negligible later (hurts at level 1 since I have 2 level 1 spells instead of 3)

I guess I was looking for it to be more in utility rather than the extra metamagic feat.

I am looking at taking Reach Spell as that level 1 feat at this stage.

Edit: oh but I only get 4 cantrips as a universalist, not 5 right?

Edit Edit: ah reading is tech though, the familiar would give me access to an extra cantrip?

I've been reading up on the universalist wizard as for the playtest story I am making a character that really suits that style over going a specialist. I am noticing when using RAW though that they seem to give up a lot over specialist ones.

At level 1, they lose a spell slot (which the specialist gains) and a cantrip. Sure those slots must be in their specialisation but that is not hard to chose your other spells around that. sure the universalist is supposed to get more uses out of the arcane focus drain but at level 1 this is still only a single use.

At higher levels the arcane drain looks like it beefs up to keep pace with the specialist spell slots... but specialist can still use the arcane drain at least once which gives them an extra spell in total to use.

specialists also get access to a pool of spell points with some power that function like some free spells.

the trade off is supposed to be a level 1 wizard feat, which considering they lose a full spell, a cantrip and give up powers seems to be a poor trade off. I understand you can choose a power for the universalist wizard so basically you are trading your feat to equal that power. but the lack of spell selection early and given the arcane focus can only recast previously cast spells (whereas you can simply prepare another spell as a specialist) seems a bit underwhelming.

I would think the idea for a universalist is to give them the ability to be more utility? If so they have less utility than a specialist which just seems weird.

I can think of a few ways this could be altered but going RAW I think it needs another pass. Unless I am reading it way wrong.