Zecrin's page

I'd agree that people can guess.

I think that people can go a step beyond guessing and make a definitive judgement on whether almost any given statement is a true fact, false fact, or opinion.

The OP is just saying “yes you do, you have to do this and this and this.” Without demonstrating why the game must be run that way.

Rather than get four more pages down the road I asked for evidence.

While I don't agree with the OP, I do feel that “yes you do, you have to do this and this and this” is a somewhat unfair simplification of the arguments they have made.

Also, while asking for evidence may be important, "Prove it to be objectively true for all GM’s running Pathfinder 2nd Edition" is not an evidentiary standard that can be reasonably met. Therefore, I don't think this request was asked in good faith.

On the teleport issue, I feel trapped. If I talk about the actual number of spells that are listed by the CRB at each level, I'm told that it's important to look at the text of 2e's teleport to see how it provides more utility within the context of a single spell.

But if I do look at the text of the teleport spell, thereby examining utility effects by level (which would include greater teleport's capacity to allow movement without any risk of arriving off target), I'm told that I'm blurring the line between utility and quantity.

That's a huge thematic, and in many cases mechanical, difference.

I can't really debate whether this is a huge thematic difference because that's a purely subjective question. However, if a thematic difference between x and y suggests that both variables become less comparable, this actually vindicates my point. After all, numerous thematic differences surely exist between regular spells and rituals.

Mechanical differences can be discussed. In PF1, speaking from my own experience, the DM almost never destroyed items. Even if items were destroyed, which, again, almost never happened, the greater make whole spell remedied the issue almost immediately with minimal, if any, cost to the party.

Still speaking from experience, "stealing" tends to come up most frequently in Eventide Island scenarios, where the particular storyline or adventure deliberately deprives the player of their possessions. The vast majority of rituals will be rendered useless in such situations as attempting things like planar binding typically involves high-cost material components.

In summary, the claim that item destruction and deprivation arise "in many cases" as mechanical issues does not align with my experiences in 3.5, PF1e, or 5e play either as a player or DM. I have also perceived a consensus among many other players, while interacting online and in-person, that DMs ought not send in the rust dragons often or without warning.

You'd have to include them in PF2 as well, then, since that Item still exists and casters are still capable of making it.

A wizard in PF1e can craft magic items without needing formula. Additionally, while casters might still have some notable advantage (aside from int to crafting) when constructing certain magic items, this is no longer the case for the vast majority of them. I could include 75% (accounting for schematic availability) of utility items that arcane casters have some inherent advantage crafting. I suspect, however, that inclusion of items under these parameters would increase PF1e's percentages more so than PF2e's.

Of course, I have no desire to include items on either list because they muddy the water, just as I believe rituals do.

This is technically true if ignoring Rituals and Uncommon spells. Given that the percentage is almost even counting Rituals and Uncommon spells at 50%, I'm pretty sure it isn't true in practice.

This is technically true even if accounting for access to 50% of uncommon spells and more than 50% of the uncommon arcana rituals.

However, because of a typo on my part, I can see why this might not be apparent. The "PF1 Percent Chance a Given Spell Will Be A Utility Spell" should never change from the value at which it was initially presented. Every time I recalculated the data, the second presented percent refers to 2e, not 1e. I apologize for any confusion caused by my error.

To recap my findings for clarity:

For some, 39% is almost the same as 46% and 41% is almost the same 45%. For others, this is a more perceptible difference.

To restate my intent:

My intention is not to prove that the core arcane spell list is in any way lacking. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't "prove" this; it would just be my opinion. My only intention here is to show that, as a percentage of all arcane spells and arcane spells by level, utility spells have decreased. Of course, this decrease might be large and significant to some (like twilightnight) but small and insignificant to others (like DMW). I'm just observing that the decrease exists within the context of the CRB.

It occurs to me that core might focus more on getting all your "classic combat" spells while utility niches get filled in with later books.

I suspect that your prediction is correct. Again, my intention is not to prove that the core arcane spell list is in any way lacking. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't "prove" this; it would just be my opinion. My only intention here is to show that, as a percentage of all arcane spells and arcane spells by level, utility spells have decreased. Of course, this decrease might be large and significant to some (like twilightnight) but small and insignificant to others (like DMW). I'm just observing that the decrease exists within the context of the CRB.

There's no chance of a mishap any more, which I'd say is the more important bit. Landing slightly off target is a rounding error if there's no chance of mishap...and that got lost in the Edition Change (and is thus an example of increased utility from said change).

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I personally have never taken more than 3d10 damage on a mishap, but have arrived off target several times. In other words, I have always been more inconvenienced by arriving off-target than by taking mishap damage. Therefore, for me personally, being able to dimensionally travel to an exact location over a distance is a different spell / utility effect than being able to travel over a theoretically larger distance but always arriving off-target.

And specific spells being lost doesn't really prove the point is spells that weren't in the PF1 core rules were added to replace them (and some new ones were certainly added), so I'm not sure listing spells that just weren't converted is productive.

I agree that this would not be productive in a vacuum...

Many of those high level spells that don't show up on the lists still exist, but as upgraded versions of lower level spells. In PF2, those are just Heightened versions of the low level spell.

Yet in order to address the claim that my conclusion was illusory, I thought that it would be best to provide a few higher level spells that are not accounted for by pf2e's spell list or heightening system. Shadow conjuration and greater shadow conjuration represent some of these unaccounted for spells.

In theory other Classes can. In practice, in order to succeed at, say, a 5th level Ritual, you're making a DC 32 Arcana check. A 10th level Fighter can have Int 18, Master Arcana, and a +2 item for a +22, but 99% of the time he won't. A Wizard, in contrast, will almost always have Int 20, Master Arcana, and that +2 Item for a +23, and is gonna be good at it almost automatically.

Rituals being technically available to anyone allows people to dabble in ritual casting without being a Wizard if they invest significant character resources into doing that specifically, but all Wizards can do so innately and do so better.

Ignoring Rituals because 'anyone can get them' is like ignoring spells on more than one list because 'any caster could get them'. It's technically true, but not actually a reflection of reality.

First, if the goal of this analysis is to ascertain an arcane caster's access to utility as a total percentage of their own list and we still include rituals, then I'll assume that we're discussing the arcane caster in the context of a party, not in the context a single class, just because secondary casters are necessary for many of the rituals. I have no problem doing this. After all, Pathfinder is a team-based game. However, it's important to note the secondary caster limitation, both because it makes certain rituals feel more like party utility than arcane caster utility and because rituals are mechanically distinct from other spells. Based on these two factors alone, I could safely contend that including rituals doesn't make sense in the context of my analysis of the arcane list. Nevertheless, I would like to examine the issue a little bit more closely.

In my view, rituals are not altogether different from magic items. In theory anyone can acquire them, the DM determines how they are dolled out, and they cost gp. They even require a skill check to use.

Staves in PF1e meet these same standards. However, if I were to conduct an analysis of the PF1e sorcerer class, I would not assume that a given sorcerer has access to 50% of the CRB's magic staves, despite the fact that with clever use of WBL and crafting, a sorcerer might be able to come close to achieving this. A wizard could likely do the same thing. As could a fighter, albeit with less benefit. Just because the sorcerer receives more benefit from building so many staves than does a fighter, does not mean I have a license to account for staves when discussing the merits of sorcerer spellcasting.

In a similar vein, PF1e casters were better at crafting magic items than were martial classes despite everyone having the ability to craft. Even so, I did not include the decanter of endless water on the list of PF1e utility spells.

I maintain it's pretty misleading in terms of actual available utility that a Wizard has access to.

I've attempted to make a compelling case for why my conclusion is not misleading. Presuming this is still not enough, I will conduct a 4th analysis, this time including more than 50% of the arcane rituals (and accounting for the rare spell statuette). To restate my opinion, however: these results will be more misleading than those conducted in previous analyses.

My conclusion: "In the CRB, there are fewer accessible arcane utility spells as a percentage of all arcane spells and all arcane spells by level between PF1e and PF2e."

If I were to conduct future analyses, I might consider counting the +4 enhancement line as 1 or 2 spells instead of 12, counting clairaudience and clairvoyance as two spells in PF1e, examining the utility of summon spells across editions and the utility of shapechanging spells between editions, and revaluating how I incorporate 10th level spells. As of yet, I have not to make any of these changes to avoid claims of bias in favor of 1e.

I would not characterize those as primarily utility spells, though I'll grant they can theoretically be used for that.

You are correct. I did not characterize them as utility spells when conducting my analysis. My only point was to illustrate how one effect (+4 enhancement bonus to ability score) being split across 12 different spells negatively impacted the two final values produced when examining utility percent in PF1.

Uh...you can counterspell with any Dispel Magic, in either edition. Area Dispels are certainly gone, it's true, but I wouldn't call that a utility effect, but a combat one. In terms of non-combat utility, multiple single Dispel Magics are about as good (if more resource intensive).

You'll have to pardon my general lack of knowledge on counterspell but I thought that a feat was required to counterspell (maybe that's just to do it as a reaction though?)

Uh...Heightened Teleport does basically this. It's not identical, but it's as close as most other conversions between editions. That also covers Interplanetary Teleport, for that matter.

Back in the days of 3e, greater teleport was called teleport without error, the implication being that removing the chance of displacement when moving over long distances was a substantial enough change to teleport that it warranted it's own spell. If we look at spell lists exclusively, we lost greater teleport. If we look at effects, we lost the ability to teleport without arriving off-target. No matter how I look at it, utility options were lost. Remember, though, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, I'm just observing that it occurred.

This is a weird spell for this, both because it only duplicates other spells, and because basic Shadow Conjuration hasn't made the jump...

Well the fact that it didn't make the jump serves my purpose perfectly if I'm trying to establish that PF2e has a net reduction of utility spells as a percentage of the arcane spell list. Remember, spell duplication is some of the best utility around, that's why wish and limited wish are such strong options, especially in 2e.

My analysis has thus far been focused exclusively on the arcane list. Rituals are not on that spell list, but, yes, arcane casters can receive a ritual from the DM or AP and then use it for additional utility. As you know, all classes can do this.

I wouldn't count leadership as a utility power of arcane spellcasters in PF1e, because anyone can acquire leadership. Neither do I buy a similar argument made by some who play 3.5: the fighter, as a class, is redeemed in terms of utility by magic items. To quote Syndrome here, "if everyone's super, no one will be."

However, based on what you've said, I will revise my conclusion:

"There are fewer accessible arcane utility spells as a percentage of all arcane spells and all arcane spells by level between PF1e and PF2e.

Many of those high level spells that don't show up on the lists still exist, but as upgraded versions of lower level spells. In PF2, those are just Heightened versions of the low level spell. Sure, Greater Dispel Magic is gone as a separate spell...but 6th level Dispel Magic is not.

Well, three things here. First, there were a lot of small technicalities that affected the final percentages. For example, illusory object and creature vs. major image. However, most of these technicalities hurt the PF1e percents, not PF2's. This was especially true at 2nd and 6th level, because of the +4 to an ability score / mass +4 to an ability to score spell lines.

Second, I might be missing something here, but greater dispel magic allowed you to dispel multiple effects on a single target; a heightened 6th level dispel magic does not. You also can't area dispel or counterspell with heightened dispel magic. An effect like greater dispel magic simply does not exist in this edition.

Third, while I will concede greater invisibility, there are (again, to my knowledge) no equivalents to:

-Greater Teleport
-Create Greater Undead
-Greater Arcane Sight
-Greater Scrying
-Greater Shadow Conjuration
-Greater Planar Binding
-Greater Prying Eyes

I also disagree strongly with not counting Rituals or Uncommon spells. In both cases the PF2 book outright states that you should give PCs ways to get any they really desire, not just those specifically outlined in an AP. Not counting them quite as highly I can see, but omitting them entirely? That's just shooting PF2 in the foot for comparison purposes.

I'll be honest with you: I really don't like rarity and think it kind of shoots the system in the foot all by itself (which I know is not what you were saying). However, I'm rather worn out of debating the merits of rarity, who actually ends up getting what, and how generous the average DM is so I think we can compromise for analysis' sake and say that the wizard gets access to 50% of the uncommon+ spells. While I have personally never played in a game with this degree of access, I think it's possible that some generous DMs play with all uncommon spells and other, more restrictive ones, play with none. Again, because I don't want to speak for any nonexistent silent majorities, I'm just going to go with the safe bet of 50% here.

After redoing my initial calculations by going down the arcane spell list and adding every other uncommon spell, my conclusion remains the same: there are fewer accessible utility spells as a percentage of all spells and all spells by level between PF1e and PF2e. Whether this lack is significant, as twilightknight believes, is a matter of opinion, and I agree with you that categorizing the "vast majority" of spells as direct attack, physical damage, and save or suck is inaccurate.

Um...what? I'm really unclear on what makes you think this. There are certainly fewer utility spells inasmuch as there are fewer spells of all types, but as a percentage? I don't think so. Just looking through the AoN Arcane Spell List, I'm seeing a whole lot of utility, at least as much percentage wise as in PF1.

I'll make an attempt at demonstrating why someone might think this:

I'll answer this in a spoiler box, which no one should read if they're playing published AP's and care about spoilers.

Thanks for letting me know!

You'll hear no dissent from me about clairvoyance being a fantastic spell, although I am curious if the first line of prying eyes does allow you to bypass the line of effect rules. Clairvoyance explicitly states that it does, but prying eyes does not. However, I do understand how a DM could interpret the spell to work as you describe.

Scrying isn't even very good - I also didn't mention that spell.

Heloooo Scry and Die.

While the name of the spell is technically "scrying" and not "scry," the phrase "scry and die" or "scry and fry" references a tactic from 3.5 and PF1e that combined the utility of the scrying spell with that of the teleport spell, so this seems a little disingenuous.

And unfortunately for wizards everywhere:

Scrying works like clairvoyance, except that the image you receive is less precise, insufficient for teleport and similar spells.

Goodbye Scry and Die

Now you could cast clairvoyance and then teleport to skip 500 ft. of a dungeon. I suppose this is useful for skipping hazards and traps. However, there are two flaws with this approach.

1st - Wizards can't learn teleport unless the DM gives it to them. Nevertheless Krispy, you have probably read more AP's than I have, so I'd be very curious to know how many of them offer players the teleport spell. If the answer is several, I'd be happy to walk back this contention.

2nd- Teleport (and I presume clairvoyance) require you to "identify the location precisely by its position relative to your starting position" which means if you want to skip some hazards to get to the boss, you'll have to know the boss' location within the dungeon. How will you know this? Additionally, how will you know you're skipping hazards and not monsters that will join in the boss fight when they hear a pitched battle, thereby making the entire encounter more difficult than it otherwise would have been?

Now, I'm not saying you couldn't give me a long list of valuable uses for clairvoyance + teleport, but this tactic requires DM intervention (which validates many of the claims up thread that wizard is DM dependant) and isn't even close to as effective a strategy as it was in 1e.

You may think that the 1e comparison means nothing, or that the changes to scry and teleport actually create a better, more balanced game. In both cases, I would lean towards agreement and I thus implore you not to cite "scry and die" as a reason to look at [2e] arcane casters / wizards as good. "Scry and Die," as I understand it, is a relic of 1e and not something that exists in this edition.
_________

Also, to my understanding, spells like prying eyes won't allow you to map a whole dungeon, because the eyes lack any capacity to bypass an unlocked door.

Bad players gonna be bad players, is basically what you've said there.

Actually, that was part of my explanation for why rarity is a red herring mechanic.

which can both sound like a pro rather than a con to some people and sound like the GM's goal is to make the game harder than "normal." which is a con for some people.

So we agree. Rarity exists to change how things sound. They distract from the real reasons that a DM’s banning something, which you claim are:

Because it’s my campaign

Or

"It would trivialize some of the challenges of this campaign"

In my initial post, I pretty much agreed with you when I said that providing these reasons can make people resent the DM.

Specifically though, you said that these explanations don’t

sit well with a lot of people

So, I have to ask, are you saying that the majority of the playerbase are bad players? Or do you perhaps intend to imply that people don’t actually enjoy it when the DM restricts access, and so the DM needs a red herring of sorts to make it feel as if the rules are restricting access instead?

Might players begin to dislike rarity either because it’s assumed the role of access restrictor or because it’s system a designed to deceive them?

because the rules options that can trivialize certain types of challenges are marked uncommon or rare

As others have noted, uncommon rarity means a player should be able to work with the DM to get the item or spell. This explanation doesn’t inform new DMs that contingency could break their campaign, it just tells them how to introduce the spell.

Finally, if you're claiming that all or most of the uncommon core spells can trivialize certain types of challenges in ways that other common features cannot, I think you assume a rather large burden of proof.

I am curious, however, should somebody establish that a spell or feat was not encounter-breaking, would you support making it common?

I think you may be missing the key point he's trying to make (a point I very much agree with fyi): namely that there was an emergent problem with the system in PF1 - in that it unintentionally was enabling and encouraging (certain kinds of player) to come to the GM and demand things which the GM didn't necessarily want to grant. Paizo themselves publicly acknowledged this was an issue, and that one of their design aims for 2e was to put more power back in the hands of the GM. Which they have done very successfully imho.

You can argue that 'the GM should just say no'. But GMs don't want to have to say no ideally, and players don't want to hear 'no'. As Zapp said, it's much more enjoyable to be able to say 'yes' when a PC is asking for uncommon item in 2nd edition than it was to have to say 'no' in 1st edition when a PC came asking for something esoteric.

Clearly people's playing experience differs greatly. But there's no question that a not insignificant group of players find stuff on Archives of Nethys, decide they want it for their character, and are annoyed if they're not allowed to have it. The rarity system is a simple and successful way to help manage this imho.

For all this talk of “guys, let’s not assume the DMs are evil,” this particular contention strikes me as just the opposite.

I could say that: “There are certain types of adversarial DMs who actively oppose player fun, and rarity will help them in this endeavor; therefore, we should not have rarity.”

As many others have pointed out, this isn’t really an argument against rarity as a mechanic. It’s an argument against bad DMs.

When you point to “certain kinds of players” who are aided and abetted in making “demands” by lack of rarity, you appear to be making a very similar argument.

You contend that the GM doesn’t want to say “no” and the players don’t want to be told “no.” Well, what happens if I ask for a rare item that the GM doesn’t want me to have?

“No, you can’t have it because it’s rare”

But… what happens if I ask for the rare item and the DM does want me to have it? Well, I will eventually receive it.

Essentially, rarity does not remove the yes/no component. It simply adds a “Here’s Why.”

I’ve sought to establish that if a player asks for an item or spell of high rarity and the DM says yes or no, rarity plays no role in whether they get the item (unless, of course, the DM denies the player the item or spell only because it is rare). Only DM preference is the sole determinant.

However, if rarity serves the purpose you describe, then players will be bought over by that “Here’s Why.” They’ll look at the rules and say: “Oh, teleport is uncommon, it makes sense that my DM won’t let me copy it into my spellbook on level up”. Before, these “certain kinds of players,” who really want to be able to make a teleporting character would become resentful towards the DM. Now they just become resentful towards the Rarity rules.

I theorize that the reason adversarial DMs keep coming up in this discussion is that many people are seeing through the rarity system’s “Here’s Why” and are beginning to realize that the entire mechanic is a red herring.

There are two circumstances, though, under which rarity is more than a red herring.

1). When the DM doesn’t really care either way about players getting a spell or item and the players don’t ask for it, but wouldn't mind having it.

2). When the DM denies the player the item or spell only because it is rare.

I don’t suspect that either of these scenarios will come up too frequently, but they will come up. We already have talk in this thread, of players who, despite wanting something, would not feel comfortable approaching their DM for it.

What happens when a DM has a player that asks for Magnificent Mansion, and the DM says, “Okay, that’s uncommon, but you can definitely get it if you go on this short quest or pay this small fee” and the player decides that it’s not worth the minor hassle and picks another spell instead.

No matter how you spin it, rarity will sometimes decrease player access to things that they otherwise would have acquired, despite the fact that the DM doesn’t care either way whether they have that thing.

This doesn’t affect me personally because I don’t play with the rarity rules. But it does make me sad that there could be thousands of new players with slightly less access to some of my favorite game elements from previous editions.

In conclusion, I’ve attempted to muster two arguments. First, rarity is a red herring for player frustration (whether this frustration is justified is a wholly different question). Second, rarity will SOMETIMES restrict player access when no restrictions are explicitly wanted by the DM or the players.

Overall, I understand why rarity was implemented, but I do not like the mechanic.

being able to pull it off if your group is in place

And proper positioning counts as just having a rogue and fighter flank an enemy (which they’d be doing anyway) and having a bard nearby (which they already should be)? Seems like a pretty low bar for supposedly instant win, game breaking tactics.

If a fighter can walk up to another equal level fighter and have a 50% chance of disarming them, it would break the game.

I assure you, PC fighters disarming their foes wasn’t what broke 3.5. Likewise, 5e battlemaster didn’t break any games. Sure 3.5 had locked gauntlets, but it also had sunder. A fighter could sunder a locked gauntlet and then disarm the enemy as normal in the same turn.

Being able to reliably end an otherwise challenging fight with one action at the start of the first round is not something worth suspending disbelief to allow.

You’ll notice that here I was refuting the argument “disarm is hard in real life and thus should be hard in the game,” not “disarm should be hard in the game.” In fact, I agree with this second argument. Do you agree with the first?

Disarm is a free consequence of having Athletics. You can attempt it all day every day. Spells have slots.

Now this is the argument I take issue with. This exact logic is why spellcasters are almost always more powerful than melee characters. Would you allow a disarm on a success if the fighter could only do it 3/day? Because, if disarm is as game-breaking as some have claimed, then you couldn’t possibly.

You know, it seems strange to me that some people are simultaneously claiming both:
A. If disarming were easily doable, it would break the game
B. Without very much investment, disarming is currently very doable.

To the people arguing that disarming is difficult to do in real life and therefore should be very difficult in the game I say “this is why martials can’t have nice things”. I have seen this argument manifest over and over and over again in different contexts. You know, some may ask, is it really all that possible to grapple a person holding a sword? Does armor really provide much protection against warhammers? Why can’t the Katana one hit kill? I mean seriously, at some point you just have to suspend your disbelief.

A fighter can spend actions to have a fairly low chance of instantly forcing a single humanoid enemy who has no natural attacks, who is not a spellcaster or monk and who does not carry a spare weapon and is in melee range, to run away. A wizard can cast charm.

Disarming was much more doable in 3.5, PF 1, and 5e. Though, to my knowledge, in none of these cases was it ever considered to be a meta-defining ability.

All this being said, in 2e, I’m very happy that disarm is so difficult to pull off. As has already been noted, players need their magic weapons to keep up with the game’s tight math and these magic weapons are not easily replaceable. Conversely, in 3.5 or 5e, magic weapons aren’t all that necessary. Honestly, I REALLY prefer the latter model, but if I have to live with the former, I’d like options that permanently reduce my character’s functionality and fun to be tightly restricted or just absent.

Alright, here are the few modifications that I'd make to the alchemist (specifically regarding poisons). First, I’d make powerful alchemy affect all alchemical items made by the alchemist. Second, I’d remove the DC cap from potent poisoner and make it a 16th level feat. Third, I would add poison weapon as a 4th level alchemist feat. Finally I would create clearer rules for contact and inhaled poisons.

Is there anyone who thinks any of these changes would be a bad idea?

Yeah, if you're in a specific type of adventure where you know where the fights are going to happen significantly in advance it's pretty strong. If you need to defend a position for instance the ranger can just spam out snares.

Any sort of "the enemy will arrive in X days" scenario and snares swing the other way and become kind of problematic, honestly.

But I still don't think that makes them very great in most situations.

Alternative situations where snares could be very useful include if an invisible ranger snuck into the enemy camp and covered it with inexpensive, low level, high save DC snare. Or if you're in a dungeon, in room A, and you open the door going to room B where room B contains a monster that relies on melee attacks. When the monster attempts to move from A to B to attack the party, it triggers a plethora of snares.

I believe, and again, I could be wrong, that if you create a snare right in front of a creature, it wouldn't see the snare unless its perception proficiency is high enough and it wastes actions to actively search. If this is the case, you could place snares all around yourself and no one would be the wiser.

To me it seems like snares are pretty good at low level, and very good at high level. In either scenario, though, I'm still convinced that they're better than poisons.

I'm curious why you say poisons require a large time commitmen to create? Its the normal daily allotment for an Alchemist (or quick alch I guess). Same as the daily allotment of snares for Rangers.

On this count, I totally misread advanced alchemy, missing the line of text reading "and any alchemical reagent requirements." I think I skimmed over, it not interpreting it as an ability to ignore gp costs. In other words, I was 100% wrong about the issue of cost.

When talking about time commitment, I meant that when not using limited resources such as infused reagents of prepared snares, snares can be constructed in either 1 minutes time or with three actions (if you have quick snares) whereas poisons cannot be. Especially at higher levels, crafting low cost snares with very high save DCs is an pretty good option available to the Ranger. An alchemist can't do the same unless he wants to spend a limited resource for a low level effect with a low save DC and even then can't do so on the fly with injury poisons.

So there are some comparisons being made between snares and poisons. Just to be clear though, with snare specialist, you can create a snare with a 3 action commitment, without spending any gold. Poisons, on the other hand require a large time commitment to create, a 3 round action commitment to apply, and require, especially at higher levels, massive gold piece expenditures. Sure you can apply poisons before combat, but then again, you can also preset snares. Also with feat investment, snares scale on your class DC, while poisons do not. I’m not saying that snares are more powerful than poisons, simply that the snare system seems to be far better designed for player use than the snare system.

Okay, so here’s what I’m hearing. Powerful alchemy is not actually a tax; it’s a trap. The alchemist can’t quick alchemy poisons. Poisons are not effective unless you apply them before combat, in which case they only improve your situation marginally, while still requiring a high gp investment. This strategy only works up to about 13th level, at which point poisons become progressively less useful as you level up. Any class with master weapon proficiency and alchemical crafting actually makes a better poisoner than an alchemist who invests in poison at every available opportunity.

Only one I can answer right now is number 1, sorry.

1. Because poisons are items, not spells. It does feel a bit feat tax-y to me as well, but it is at least one that is applied equally. Rangers also need to take Powerful Snares in order to have their snares scale off their DC rather than the innate item level. Likewise your magic items that have effects that require saves don't scale automatically with your character DC, either.

If alchemists had a feat like powerful snares, which read "when you create a poison, the DC for that poison is equal to its normal DC or your class DC, whichever is higher" poisons would be infinitely more workable. This would still, in my mind, be an automatic tax for anyone using poisons. However, issues 2 and 4 would disappear while issues 5 and 7 would be mitigated. Yet even with a buff as impactful as this one, issue 3 still feels very significant.

I have a few small queries about an alchemist using poisons.

Here are my questions:

1. Am I the only one that thinks that powerful alchemy is a feat tax? It’s kind of weird that the DCs don’t scale by default, like they do for every other class. What’s the difference between this and a hypothetical “powerful evocation” feat, that makes evocation spells’ DC scale to your level?

2. How do you utilize the powerful alchemy feat with poisons? It takes one action to create a poison with quick alchemy, and then three actions to apply almost every injury poison in the game. Is this only possible with the enduring alchemy feat, am I reading this incorrectly, or is there a feat that allows you to apply poisons more swiftly?

3. If I’m correct about #2 (which I very well may not be), is there any way to utilize injury poisons in conjunction with quick alchemy without taking the enduring alchemy feat?

4. Why doesn’t potent poisoner increase the DCs of poisons you craft up to your class DC instead of +4 to a maximum of your class DC? For that matter, why does it require so many feats to attain baseline competency in poisoning?

5. Are there no injury poisons above 13th level? If so, doesn’t this make Powerful Alchemy a mandatory feat for poisoners?

6. Why can’t you apply a contact poison to a weapon? Apparently this involves the “logistics of delivering them without poisoning without poisoning yourself?” Why am I more likely to poison myself while applying the substance to the tip of my spear, than I am while applying it to a doorknob? Why could I do this in 1E but now can’t in 2e?

7. At higher levels is the high action cost of applying a poison actually worth the effect?

8. Is there a rule that prevents you from applying multiple poisons to the same object?

If any of these questions have exceedingly obvious answers, you'll have to forgive me; I don't currently have access to my core rule book and am mostly relying on the Archives on Nethys

I don't have any problem with raise dead being common, mostly because
A. The spell only functions at the GM's discretion.
B. The spell requires a mostly intact body. (In other words: a second level of DM discretion).
C. Has a high material cost.
D. Inflicts "clumsy 2, drained 2, and enfeebled 2 for 1 week" on the one being raised, which means that if you're playing in a time crunch campaign, you may be better off just making a new character.

Given how limited the spell is, I don't really see it as much of a problem. Resurrection on the other hand, I would likely relegate to uncommon.

Right, but over the course of level 3, you get precisely two level 3 consumable items, and two level 4 ones. That's not enough to get a level 3 Permanent Item. It's not even half of enough. Add in the level 2 ones, and it probably is half enough, but only half.

You would need to save up and invest every single consumable you get between 3rd and 5th levels (a total of 18 consumables) in order to afford a single level 5 item.

So...you're either getting below level items by selling consumables, or you're selling a lot more than 8 of them.

You may have already answered this elsewhere, but do you think that consumables are appropriately priced? Do you believe that the cost of consumables justifies purchasing them or crafting them over continuous items? If you had a choice between 4 appropriately leveled consumables vs 1 appropriately leveled permanent item which would you choose?

I'm actually coming around to the idea of uncommon spells. Don't get me wrong, I'll be completely ignoring them at my table, but I get that this is my preference of game style. The uncommon spell designation could well be the price we pay to get a teleport spell that isn't completely hobbled by restrictions that require liberal interpretations just to function at all (last I checked "GPS" wasn't on the list of available equipment. How exactly am I supposed to know the exact distance and direction to my destination that's hundreds of miles away?)

With that said, the difficulty of learning uncommon spells needs to be brought down, especially for the charisma-based casters. They shouldn't have any additional requirements to learn if your GM is allowing them.

I, on the other hand, am not a big rarity fan. I know that teleport is the poster boy of uncommon spells, and I understand that there are many DMs out there who don’t want it at there table. However, teleport is by no means the only uncommon spell. Other past-edition classics appear on the list including the likes of contingency, dominate, and all the power word spells.

While many DMs will be happy to allow such material at their tables, others, I believe will not. Just as many DMs have, in the past, disallowed 3pp material simply because it is 3pp, so to will many DMs disallow rare spells simply because they are rare.

The default assumption in pf2e is as much that no PC cleric will have access to protection from evil as it is that no PC fighter will have access to control weather. Personally, I find this irritating.

If anything less than "full strength before every fight" is "too weak", why even call it Treat Wounds or Medicine? At that point just call it "health bar regen" that occurs after every fight and call it a day.

I mean, I could apply this logic to anything that has any fluff. Why use the term longsword when you could just say 1d8 points of damage?

Furthermore, because of the critical failure effect, treat wounds cannot extend an adventuring day indefinitely. Given the difficulty of pf2e monsters and the fact that most AP encounters are still very challenging even when PCs start at max hit points, I don't really have a problem with the current system.

Also from a DM perspective, balancing all my encounters under the assumption that players begin each encounter with almost full hp is so much easier than assuming they don't.

Under the previous 2e rules set, PCs already have infinite out of combat healing in the form of the 15 min adventuring day, which has an opportunity cost of lost time. Lost time is only an issue if the DM makes it an issue, and that remains the case even with Treat Wounds.

In my personal experience when the players exhausted all their healing resources, that was the end of the adventuring day. In lost star, my players would constantly retreat for a day and then return to the sewers as soon as the alchemist ran out of resonance and return to full hp anyway. To this end, I would significantly have preferred treat wounds.

I actually really like the idea of stamina. However, at this point in time, treat wounds solves most of my biggest concerns and so I find myself satisfied.

I just want a game where my PCs can't stock up on half a dozen wands of cure X wounds and trivialize any encounter that isn't potentially lethal. I'm tired of having to throw CR = APL +2-4 JUST to have an exciting fight, then feeling bad when there is a TPK.

If your players are dead set on going into an encounter with full hp, they'll probably find a way to do so (see 15-minute adventuring day). It seems to me as if it would be much easier to just balance CR around the assumption that PCs are going into most fights with close to full hit points.

Also, combats that aren't potentially lethal are probably going to be perceived as trivial anyway.

I love pretty much all these changes.

Hopefully the mundane healing will do away with the 15 minute adventuring day (which has been one of my biggest gripes with 2e thus far).

I would say that these changes are step in the right direction, but, at this point, it feels much more like we're moving in leaps and bounds.

Now, if only we could get more single action cantrips, and about 3/4ths of the spells off of the rare/uncommon list.

His whole adventure was pretty classic actually, we were to be knocked unconscious, transported to an island (actually another plane), and it was survival and escape from then on.

So, we walk into the ballroom, and the "no save drop unconscious gas" was released. Only to have our wizard go "Ugh... Unconscious? That triggers my contingency . and this teleports me to my tower..."

Poor guy didn't know what to do with the wizard suddenly leaving the picture.

1. In 2e you cannot have a contingent teleport. At this point in time I'm specifically talking about uncommon spells besides teleport.

2. If the GM was willing to cheat away saving throws, I don't see why he wasn't willing to cheat away teleportation.

3. What if one of the players was wearing a necklace of adaptation, or was playing a wyrwood, or had a periapt of proof against poison, or succeeded on the 50-50 to hold their breath, or succeeded a search check to find the trap? I feel like a good dungeon master has to plan ahead, anticipate that not everything will go exactly the way he wants, and create flexible quests that accommodate high level players. Sure some new GMs may have trouble with this at first, but I have confidence they'll quickly learn how.

That's terrible.

Let's force new GMs to read every little sidenote (and add like 10 pages to the book) so that more experienced players can be more powerful 5% of the time.

That will show them new GMs.

/sarcasm off

No. Just no.

Make the easy choice for the least experienced, and the experienced choice for those who have it.

The only justification for the opposite is "but mah candy wahhhhh".

Let’s look at some rare spells:

Antimagic field: Not only is this spell a higher level. Moreover, it can now be dispelled via a high level dispel and greatly diminishes party effectiveness (since magic items are now tied to damage output).

Bind Soul: Prevents enemies from being resurrected. Niche use. Requires you to kill the creature first. Attached an expensive material component. Also since many “return to life” spells require a body, this spell’s main effect can be replicated via mundane means.

Circle of Protection: Fairly good buff. Little out of combat effect.

Contingency: A classic escape/avoid TPK spell. Contingent teleport no works (because of casting time restrictions).

Crusade: High will saves means this spells duration will be next to nothing unless used on low level targets.

Detect Alignment: Only detects divine spellcasters, undead, and outsiders.

Detect Poison: Easily replaced by a small animal.

Dimension Lock: High level. Prevents annoying teleporting enemies from escaping over and over again.

Discern Lies: Short duration. Provides a sizeable, but not absurd bonus to a particular use of a particular skill.

Disjunction: Doesn’t provide any real benefit unless fighting an NPC with a magic weapon.

Dominate: Very good spell.

Drop Dead: Fun, higher level invisibility. Costs only a reaction to cast but requires concentration.

Echoing Nightmare: Would be a good debuff if it didn’t confuse you when the target successfully saves. Currently a good reward attached to a steep cost.

Ethereal Jaunt: Requires concentration. I think this spell allows you to move through objects.

False Vision: Niche use, misleads scryers. Promotes player creativity.

Globe of Invulnerability: No longer moves with you, short duration, no longer provides guaranteed protection against low level spells.
Hallucinatory Terrain: Player creativity spell. Long casting time.

Magic Aura/Undetectable Alignment: Super niche use. Exists to foil a cantrip.

Magnificent Mansion: A spell that makes the 7-minute adventuring day slightly less tedious to deal with. No combat utility.

Mind Blank: A solid and classic spell. Helps players keep control of their own characters.

Mind Probe / Mind Reading: Allow good characters to gather information from enemies without resorting to torture. Mind reading now has a caster penalty attached to critical success.

Modify Memory: Great out of combat spell. Promotes player creativity.

Nondetection: Prevents divinations. Only retains functionality at higher levels if heightened.

Passwall: I don’t like this spell. But it doesn’t do much more than a player attacking a wall with their adamantite pick for hours would.

Plane Shift: Allows players to explore their GM’s world. Highly inaccurate. Can’t be used in combat or against enemies.

Possession: A really cool spell. Tons of strategic utility. However, like many other spells, possession’s out of combat utility is diminished by it’s short duration. Also, it leaves your body extremely vulnerable, and the target can take actions even if they fail their save.

Every Power Word Spells: Great spells. Some of the only spells with one action casts. Not as effective against high level creatures.

Private Sanctum: Like mind blank and nondetection, private sanctum foils divinations (except this time in an area).

Protection from _______: An iconic buff. Now only lasts for one encounter.

Raise Dead: Did your character die? Do you not want your character which you’ve spent countless hours building/playing/developing to be dead forever? Well then this is the spell for you. Also, the cost the bring your 20th level character back has been more than quadrupled.

Read Omens, Stone Tell, Talking Corpse: The utility of this spell is totally dependant on the DM. Great opportunity for some creative DMing.

Reverse Gravity: May cause minimal fall damage. Disadvantages creatures without reach, flight, ranged attacks, or teleportation.

Revival: Roughly equivalent to a heightened heal with the added benefit of restoring dead allies. More useful the closer you are to a TPK.

Rope Trick: Now higher level. “We leave the dungeon and then come back the next day”, or “We barricaded ourselves in the dungeon room and set up camp” becomes “I cast rope trick.”

Scrying: One of the classics. Scry and die no longer works.

Shadow Blast: A direct damage spell.

Shadow Walk: A spell that mitigates travel time, but doesn’t prevent random encounters. Imprecise.

Spell Turning: Functions once, requires a reaction and a check, has to be precast.

Telepathic Bonds: A spell that allows party members speak freely while around NPCs. Curbs metagameyness in certain situations.

Tongues: Inferior to comprehend language.

Tree Stride: Would mitigates travel time but only works on a single party member.

Waking Nightmare: Terrible. Assuming the target has a 51% or greater chance to succeed his saving throw, this spell buffs whoever you cast it on.

Zone of Truth: A potentially better anti-lying spell than discern lies, assuming targets fail their saving throw.
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It seems to me like you'd have to be a really incompetent DM to let most of these spells “ruin your campaign”. I know it’s fun to go after teleport, but what about every other spell on the uncommon list? Such broad restrictions seem arbitrary at best, and heavily restrictive of player agency at worst.

Also, I really dislike your “More experienced players can be more powerful 5% of the time” line of reasoning. A new player may want to cast Magnificent Mansion as much if not more than an experienced player. In fact, a lot of these spells don’t even have to do with direct power; they are utility spells that have benefited entire parties for decades. I have never seen people calling for restrictions to spells like magic circle against ______ and contingency and yet here we are.

Two more things. First, one of the big problems with the rarity system is not that it prevents GMs from including certain spells in the game but instead that it deters them from doing so, especially in the case of APs. Second, The idea that new GMs may want some explanation as to why they are encouraged to restrict access to certain spells doesn’t seem as outlandish as you make it out to be. Transparency in design is always a good thing.

Nope. Not using hyperbole. A core Druid or Cleric could put martials to shame. My Dragonborn sorcerer, with his limited spell list, could do things my swordsages and crusaders could only dream about. But even if ToB classes weren't totally over shadowed by casters, its still absolutely ludicrous to make the suggestion that casters should be made OP again and martials should be turned into the gamey nonsense that ToB was. Its also not something martial players necessarily want. I sure as hell don't want to deal with all that nonsense again.

Sorry if I was unclear. I was talking about the "casters are demigods" statement. The ToB classes are not equal to casters, on this we agree. However, as I said this is likely because ToB has only one books worth of support whereas casters have... well... almost every book. Again the ToB classes can do some things that most casters can't: Give themselves and their allies extra turns with WRT, put out the sun (ending all life on the material plane) with IHS, and teleport into/out of an antimagic field at low levels.

The versatility and core power of the average player playing your average caster was far higher than a competent melee player. I do not want that for PF2.

Neither do I. I want all classes to be highly versatile, and, in the hands of a competent player, highly powerful, not limited and weak.

I don't see the problem. There is nothing wrong with tagging certain spells as possibly problematic and empowering the DM not to allow those in his game. As I stated elsewhere, the DM spends hours prepping a session. The player takes minutes to peruse a spell list. If the player feels bothered that he may need to talk to his DM about some spell he likes, oh well, deal with it. The system needs to do what it can to empower and help new DMs so there are more DMs. If people feel frustrated behind the screen, then less games are run and that's good for no one.

Marking a spell as potentially problematic is not the same thing as saying "This spell is not allowed without specific GM approval." Also, the GM doesn't need to be empowered, they can already do whatever they want. In fact, I could argue that the rarity system pressures GMs into not including certain spells in their campaigns because rarity implies that the spell in question shouldn't be in player hands to begin with. But this is just a matter of opinion.

My real problem involves APs. Most GMs seem to run APs as written so if the AP doesn't say you get the rare spell, then you never do. I want to cast circle of protection? Better hope I'm playing the right AP.

Finally labeling things as "rare" just to restrict player access to them feels, courtesy of 3.5's complete arcane, "capricious and arbitrary."

Also I don't appreciate the 5-hours of work argument. I had a dungeon master who used a similar line of reasoning to defend the fact that every door in every dungeon was:
1. Locked
2. Indestructible
3. Unpickable
5. Surrounded by indestructible walls
6. Immune to magic, psionics, ect.
Instead we had to search through every room in the dungeon for every key... which was fun maybe the first 4-5 times but quickly became tedious. I believe that it's fine to spend as many hours as you like building an adventure while also being cognizant of the fact that players have access to the teleport spell.

You are being silly. I think 3.X/PF casters are "demi gods" compared to non casters (even ToB martials). I thought that came through but you want to take things literally. You are arguing semantics.

If you want to argue semantics because it makes you feel better, go ahead. Feel free to quote pages in some monster manual or something. I will simply ignore the post.

I believe that ToB classes could easily have approached the power of casters if only they had more support. I mean they already had access to some amazing things that casters couldn’t readily replicate (i.e. white raven tactics, iron heart surge, extraordinary teleportation).

I feel like saying that casters were demigods compared to every other class isn’t true. But, I’m assuming you’re using hyperbole since the claim itself has been proven empirically false. I think what you’re trying to say is that a relatively optimized wizard can trivialize your average fighter. This I agree with; martials generally have fewer options compared to casters, and in a game where versatility trumps big numbers, this can be crippling.

This is why a fair number of people like ToB content. Because it gives martial characters in combat options abilities beyond 5-ft step, full attack.

And, yes, I understand that fighters could build to do cool things and contribute in combat, but then they tend to do only that thing. A great example being imperious command from 3.5. This super powerful feat allowed fighters to make a skill check to skip an enemies turn. Optimize this skill check and you become godlike. With some magic items, a fighter with this feat could solo almost any encounter the DM could throw at you. Yet every turn you are doing the exact same thing.

An optimized wizard on the other hand, in addition to being godlike, was also dynamic in combat. Are you going to cast celerity, or irresistable vertigo field, chain gate an army, shapechange into a chronotyryn? I’m not saying it’s balanced, but at least its more fun than the melee equivalent.

Just to give some anecdotal evidence for that last claim, I have played in campaigns with both God-wizards and uber chargers, almost always as a roguelike character. I loved the campaign I played with the GOD wizard. He would keep me invisible, enchant my weapon, boost my AC, summon in flankers for my sneak attack. I’m not saying all wizards play this way, but any online GOD wizard guide will recommend you do. The uber-charger on the other hand… he would go in deal 1,000,000 and always one shot the monster. I did nothing, I never participated in a combat past 10th level. It’s not as if the player in question was being malicious, this was just the only way he was able to optimize his character.

In every game, there will always be optimizers. Even in 5e, which I find to be a very well balanced game, you can go pretty crazy. Combine the diviner wizard’s portent with the monk’s quivering palm and oh boy. In 5e the monk is not a broken class, neither is the wizard. I guess I just don’t understand why we are judging certain classes fairly (martials) and others (casters) almost exclusively by their power ceilings.

What I’m also not claiming is that casters should be left totally untouched. I think that a few spells should be nerfed, and others (I’m looking at you blood money and paragon surge) totally removed. But, as numerous people have pointed out on this thread, this is not at all what happened. Almost every spell was hit, and hit hard, utility spells (prestidigitation, unseen servant) especially. Certain fan favorites were made “uncommon” so that in certain APs you likely will never be able to cast them. The number of spells you can cast per day has been reduced. As has already been noted, these nerfs have a compounding effect.

I’m also not sure why you seem so surprised by the pro caster reactions. In PF1, 7 of the 11 core classes were casters. If your favorite class was one of the 7, chances are you got nerfed. Does it really surprise you that at least a portion of the playerbase is unhappy?

Gaterie wrote:

Attack cantrips are plain worse than a +1 returning javelin; the magic javelin deals the same damages for 1 action, can be thrown at 40 feet, and everyone is trained with the javelin except the Wizard (but maybe you shouldn't play a wizard?). Not to mention, the returning property is free when you create a level 5+ character: a +1 returning javelin is a level 4 item as the vanilla +1 javelin.

So you can spam some fancy spell to feel magic, but you probably shouldn't.

nope it isn't.

a +1 potency rune is a 4th level treasure.
a returning property rune is a level 4 item

a +1 returning javelin is NOT a 4th level item, it's 2 4th level items.

it's probably better to get a +1ac, +1 saves, and a lesser fire staff and rely on your cantrip (and still have "money" left, than get a +1 returning javelin for a tiny bit extra damage.

I was under the impression that such a weapon would constitute a single item.

"The level of an item with runes etched on it is equal to the highest level among the base item and all runes etched on it; therefore, a +1 mace (4th level) with a disrupting rune (5th level) would be a 5th-level item."

Notice how it says 'a' 5th level item, not one 5th level item and one 4th level item.

In a world where Teleport is Uncommon, higher level, and has a longer casting time, I can see it being more activity used, without taking away from other parts.

While I don't particularly like the nerfs to teleport (see why I think teleporting is used), I understand why they were put in place. The problem is, they didn't just nerf the spell, they made it uncommon which means the spell will be less actively used, not more.

Okay, let's pick a really low-difficulty comparison here. A 9th-level wizard can prepare Teleport, Polymorph, Locate Creature, Tongues, Fly, Invisibility Sphere, Dispel Magic, Resist Energy, and Charm Person. What can a 12th-level martial do to compare with that narratively? What can a 14th-level martial do to compare with that narratively?

Not much. Martials have always have had little narrative ability; this isn't the fault of casters, though. People, for some reason, don't seem to like narrative ability for whatever reason. The discussion usually goes something like this:

Person A: Casters have too much narrative ability compared to martials.

Person B: Well, I enjoy playing casters precisely because I like having a character who has versatility and the ability to alter the flow of the narrative with his actions. I want to feel impactful and powerful. What's more I want to take advantage of the high fantasy setting to do fantastical things without relying on DM granted magic items. Why don't we make these kinds of options available to martial classes?

Person A: No. Giving martials supernatural abilities breaks my immersion. I hold one specific class to a standard of realism because it's called "fighter." If a person flies and shoots fireballs out of their hands, they better be called a wizard or else that's ridiculous. I refuse to play any character that's not a mundane.

Person B: But mundane sucks. I want high fantasy with lot's of narrative options. You can play mundane, but why do I have to suffer for it?

Person A: Because, when I play mundane, your character trivializes mine.

Now, I openly admit, I dislike mundane characters. I could go into great detail about why this is, but it really comes down to personal preference. Because of this, I hope that pathfinder 2e will not shaft every other non-mundane character build for the sake of balance. However, if this is the case and that's what the majority of players actually want, then that's fine; I'll just stick with 1E and 3.5.

Still not seeing any issue with uncommon spells.

IF a player wants teleport and the GM is okay with it, he doesn't need to create weird sidequests to find a specific spell. He can just drop it as loot via a spellbook over the course of the adventure. Martials frequently get their equipment upgrades in a similar fashion. Wizards and other casters will now have a lot more to look forward to when looting enemies for finding lost treasure.

I'm not a fan of "You want to do this? Ask your GM." I don't have a problem with a DM telling his players before hand that they can't have access to a specific thing, but the rarity system does this proactively and without any consideration of what is or is not disruptive to a given campaign.

Furthermore, spells are already able to be dropped as loot via spell book. It's just that now the only way to aquire certain spells is through loot where before you could learn them by level up or through loot acquisition.

Wizard spells shouldn't be the equivalent of the fighter's magic sword; the wizard's magic staff should be the equivalent of the fighter's sword. I don't think fighter's would appreciate if things like cleave could only be aquired through potentially randomly generated loot.

The other problem with the idea that spells = magic items for other classes is that even if you don't get the magic items you want you can still buy/ craft them. I could be missing it but I don't think there is a similar system in place for rare spells.

Heh, man, everyone's games are different I guess. I see a plot seed and opportunity for emergent play, you see a hoop and wasted time.

Let's just cut to the chase, make everyone 20, give them all their items and spells and call it a day I guess.

I mean, really, why jump through all these hoops?

That's not a fair argument. I can do the same:

Let's just cut to the chase, everyone starts at level 1 with no race, class, items. To get your race you go on a quest, to get your class go on a quest. Want class features? Go on a quest; to get each individual item go on a quest. Look at all these narrative opportunities.

It has been commonly held that classes (including features) and races are in players hands while items and experience are in those of the DM. I have no problem with DMs taking these choices away from their players, I just want them to admit that that's what they're doing and not hide behind a rarity system.

As a DM, players who see those narrative opportunities as "hoops" are not often welcome in my games. Players who respect the work those "hoops" take to make and work to add to party fun and experience often get what they are after.

Doing research and going on quests just to aquire a specific spell likely doesn't tie into many campaign's central narrative. Also, it's dull for the rest of the party, unless the fighter's magic sword, and rogue's magic dagger are hidden right next to it. Moreover, every wizard will always want access to these spells, which means every time a player rolls up a character, they know that they're going to have to go on a certain special quest so that they can get what, in my opinion, amounts to a handout from the DM. That's why I call it a narrative hoop.

I dunno. I think alot of this will come down to the APs. If an AP has NPCs and spell drops with said spells, I don't think you will see the default reaction will be to lock the spells out.

Also, just talk with your DM. If you have a spell or two you really like, mention that. Say that if he is wary of it, you character will be happy to work for it. Do research or quests for it. It will add to the narrative and if he had concerns, you will talk with him to ensure you don't wreck key elements of his narrative.

If a player was open with me about it, it would be cool by me. My goal is to run a fun game for him and others anyways.

Like you, there are many DMs who want to maximize player fun, but there are also DMs who will, as you described above, force their players to jump through narrative hoops in order to do things that, in past editions, were doable without hoop-jumping.

As a DM, I appreciate the flexibility to say "Sorry, this doesn't work well here." Having this clearly reflected in the rules is awesome.

A good example of this done well would be the Zeitgiest AP. Basically, no long duration flight. Great AP though. The limitation makes sense for the AP and helps the story.

Limitations are not a bad thing. If the DM goes too far for your tastes and won't listen, play with a different DM.

The rarity system doesn't do exactly what you're claiming. What the book should say is "any player option written into the book that causes problems for you campaign can be banned without remorse." Instead it implies that a DM should restrict certain spells, and only those spells, regardless of whether they cause issues.

I dunno, on the teleport issue: It seems as if "making it uncommon" is basically equivalent to the GM having to constantly work up methods to make it not work when its inconvenient.

It seems like an uncessary change. Before DMs who didn't want unlimited teleportation could simply:

Also, why do players teleport? I find it's usually because they don't want to do X. X being travel 100s of miles, backtrack through a dungeon where all the traps have reset, fight a billion mooks when they feel prepared to face the BBEG. Generally, players only teleport past things that they don't want to do, and, as a DM, I don't see any problem letting players skip past parts of my adventure that they find boring. If a party thinks it's fun to teleport in and kill the bad guy, then teleport out, I want to help them have fun by making interesting and engaging boss battles, not telling them that what they find enjoyable is not the "correct" way to play the game.

Finally, most adventure paths have a built in safeguard against too much teleportation: experience and treasure. You'll miss out on both if you don't explore, which means that while you get to the BBEG fast, you won't be able to pull off a victory. If there are parts of the adventure that aren't giving a character xp or gp, can you really blame your players for wanting to skip them?

Dasrak wrote:

You've actually missed the worst part of this spell: there's a catch-22 that makes it impossible to cast! The spell can only be cast as a reaction after you're submerged, but requires a verbal action as part of the casting. To cast a spell with a verbal action underwater, you'd need to be under the effect of a spell like air bubble... oops?

Reaction can happen before the things that triggered them, so the spell should work fine.

Actually, that does not appear to be directly stated anywhere, so arguably no Reaction actually work. But if you are fine with the Shield Block reaction working, then Air Bubble does too.

magnuskn wrote:

Those spells have been a common part of D&D since before 3.0 came out 17 years ago. And now suddenly they always have been bad and poor helpless GM's were calling for their nerfing or removal for all that time?

"Suddenly"? Are you really trying to claim with a straight face that people have not been calling for the ridiculous power of 3.PF casters to be reigned in pretty much the whole time?

Anyway, and I say this as someone who mostly plays casters*, doing a comprehensive review of the spell list and nerfing problematic spells and spell combinations is exactly what they should be doing. I cannot yet comment on the specifics myself as I have only played one session (and none with an arcane caster). I am perfectly prepared to believe that they have overdone it in some cases (they certainly have form - see the jingasa of the fortunate soldier nerf, for example).

But I also think that they may have done so deliberately. Since some people were going to complain about even the smallest nerf to casters, better to overnerf and then roll it back than undernerf and then have to do more.

I do strongly agree with you that spontaneous casters having to learn the spell separately at different levels is really annoying and unfun. The devs might be right that choosing between up to 10 different versions of each spell on the fly will create analysis...

I wouldn't say that all people have been calling for blanket nerfs to all spells since 3.5. Many (but maybe not a majority) would like to see martial buffs as supposed to caster nerfs. Also, while casters could certainly be optimized to the point of ridiculousness in 3.X, so could almost every class. Uber chargers who could dish out thousands of damage per turn, crusaders who exploited infinite loops to do infinite damage, paladins who summoned Pazuzu, you name it. However, I think one of the big issues isn't even the nerfs, it is flat out removal of certain previously common spells. Now, I understand that some DMs may not want teleportation, but these DMs have always had the power to say "No Teleportation." What I don't appreciate is when core material cannot be accessed at all, without express GM approval. This has always been the domain of homebrew, 3pp publishers, and dragon magazine, not 1st party material.

edduardco wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

The prospect of a new edition is inevitably going to bring back the conflict between the "I hate the way my Fighter/Rogue was made to look obsolete by a Wizard/Druid/Magus" crowd and the "I like playing an awesome caster who can do anything" crowd.

Is just me or seems like both issues could have been solved by giving martials more toys? High level martials would play like mythological heroes and casters would still be awesome.

Yes, but that brings out another group: "This isn't realistic! I wanted Tolkienesque fantasy, not this anime nonsense!"

I agree. But, Tolkienesque principals being applied to rpgs breeds a very different game than either D&D or Pathfinder.

Throughout the whole series, Frodo, who was a great hero, had tactics that consisted of "run away."

Aragorn, a fantastic example of a "martial" character, would likely loose to Gandalf, Sarumon, and Sauron, all of whom are casters. His in-combat abilities consisted of swing a sword or move in and then swing a sword. Gandalf on the other hand, could summon eagles, create fire, create a barrier of light, deflect arrows, magically disarm someone, call lightning, and even come back from the dead.

Unless martials are given some sort of option besides "use weapon" they will be unable to ever compete with a caster. If you believe that fighters should be mundane that's fine, however you can't then also expect that because fighter is mundane every other class has to be balanced against the fighter. That makes for a game that is baseline low fantasy, as supposed to one that starts as high fantasy and then can easily be toned down by a canny GM.

Zecrin wrote:

I do wish that instead of supporting severe casters nerfs, we could see significant buffs to martial classes. I think that maneuvers like those seen in path of war and tomb of battle offer melee characters significantly more battlefield options than the baseline PF1 or 3.5 combat feat systems.

I also feel as if, in high fantasy settings, fighter shouldn't have to equal mundane. If for example, a fighter wants to teleport 60 ft. into the air to slam a flying enemy into the ground with a hammer the size of a grand piano, more power to them.

Even if you don't like the idea of a super magical fighter, you can refluff many existing spells as fighter abilities. For example, fireball becomes hail of dragonfire arrows. Haste becomes rally allies. Time stop becomes battlefield acceleration.

I'm not saying we should give martials all a casters toys, just something to bring them past: 5ft. step, full attack over and over again.

I understand that their are people out their who enjoy playing mundane characters. But its unreasonable to expect other characters to be balanced (mechanically) around such an obvious limitation in a fantasy setting.

Finally, Casters are not perfect in either 3.5 or PF1. However, I find their main issue to be certain specific spells that consistently cause problems at a table when in the hands of power-gamers. Power gamers will always find a way to break the game, especially when it is a game that offers lots of player choice (I still remember a player with a tier 0 paladin build that made my 3.5 game especially unpleasant). In the end, its just up to the DM to tell a player no.

Defualt fighter being magical is probably a no no but there is no reason why you can't have an arcane using warrior or a fighter archetype that can use magic. or pick feats.

I think you need an in game explanation though for why a character can do that (supernatural being, blessed by the gods, magic, psionics etc).

Let's say you want to make fighter and wizard equally viable. Sure you can balance based on game impact, but let's hypothetically say you want to balance based on power. You want a 20th level fighter vs. a 20th level wizard to be about a 50-50.

In 3.5 the wizard casts fly and wins, in PF1 the wizard casts fly and wins, in PF2 wizard casts fly and wins. If, by chance the fighter is an archer, you cast fly then invisibility, then you win.

Sure you could take away fly from the wizard, but then you have to take fly away from monsters, and combat just lost a whole dimension.

As it stands martial classes are ridiculously magic item dependent because quite simply: magic > mundane.

It feels horribly unfair to the martials that people turn a blind eye to casters being able to do the impossible, the fantastical, and the awesome just because "magic," but when a barbarian tries to do something like jump 30 ft. into the air to smack the puny wizard out of the sky people say "Well that's unrealistic and breaks my immersion."

If you approach gameplay from this perspective then you will be forced to choose between fun and balance. A poor choice in my opinion.

Also, on the topic of psionics, In 3.5 psionic characters were able to bend reality with sheer willpower. There was never any psionics comes from a god, or from a weave that comes from a god, or from a shadow-weave that comes from a god. It was just excepted that your character, simply by focusing, could, for example, rip out someones brainstem.

I do wish that instead of supporting severe casters nerfs, we could see significant buffs to martial classes. I think that maneuvers like those seen in path of war and tomb of battle offer melee characters significantly more battlefield options than the baseline PF1 or 3.5 combat feat systems.

I also feel as if, in high fantasy settings, fighter shouldn't have to equal mundane. If for example, a fighter wants to teleport 60 ft. into the air to slam a flying enemy into the ground with a hammer the size of a grand piano, more power to them.

Even if you don't like the idea of a super magical fighter, you can refluff many existing spells as fighter abilities. For example, fireball becomes hail of dragonfire arrows. Haste becomes rally allies. Time stop becomes battlefield acceleration.

I'm not saying we should give martials all a casters toys, just something to bring them past: 5ft. step, full attack over and over again.

I understand that their are people out their who enjoy playing mundane characters. But its unreasonable to expect other characters to be balanced (mechanically) around such an obvious limitation in a fantasy setting.

Finally, Casters are not perfect in either 3.5 or PF1. However, I find their main issue to be certain specific spells that consistently cause problems at a table when in the hands of power-gamers. Power gamers will always find a way to break the game, especially when it is a game that offers lots of player choice (I still remember a player with a tier 0 paladin build that made my 3.5 game especially unpleasant). In the end, its just up to the DM to tell a player no.

I fear that if a party used to full healing out of combat suddenly looses their access to wands of CLW then we will see the return of the 15 minute adventuring day (which is worse, because then not only are they going back to full hit points after every combat but also full spells, powers, ect). Once you hit CLW, you have to hit the ability of players to retreat, or put the players on a clock. Both of these options force players to burn recourses but at the same time become annoying and/or start to break suspension of disbelief after a while. Furthermore, in this scenario, from a DM perspective it may be easy to budget player recourses but from a player perspective it can be very difficult. If you don't know the number or nature of the upcoming encounters how can you be expected to budget enough healing resources for the next battle? This may be easy in video games where you can learn a levels design, die, then breeze through it the second time around, but in an action rpg I don't like the "oh, we guessed there were three encounters before we got to a place we could rest, but surprise, there were actually 5 so we ran out of healing and died."

Also as a DM, you always have to account for players making a mistake, this means I have to assume that, at least occasionally players will budget their recourses incorrectly and will go into an encounter with low hp, or that because of limited resource mechanics my players will never go into any encounter past the first without full hp. This not only makes encounters difficult to balance but also shifts the focus of early encounters from "lets kill the monsters without losing too much hp" to "let's be super cautious and lose as few hp as possible". I personally would be less likely to take risks and try cool things if I new that my true enemy wasn't encounters that would challenge my character at their prime but would instead whittle away my hp so that I would die in a later encounter.

Zecrin wrote:

Jurassic Pratt wrote:

Alchemists fire and acid vials are really cheap and effective at dealing with low level swarms.

"A swarm composed of Fine or Diminutive creatures is immune to all weapon damage."

vs
"A swarm takes half again as much damage (+50%) from spells or effects that affect an area, such as splash weapons and many evocation spells."

Does this mean that only swarms composed of creatures larger than diminutive are damaged by splash weapons? Or that the swarm of fine creatures take only double the splash from such weapons? Or that they take double the regular and the splash damage? I can imagine the difficulty of a first level swarm hinges on the DM's answer.

I'm inclined to go with the second, and seeing as how CR 1 swarms have pretty good AC, 2 damage per successful attack still makes swarms a difficult encounter.

"Splash weapons" are their own category of item and aren't a "weapon" in the sense listed there, so it's #2. They do 1.5x damage to swarms.

1.5, my mistake. Doesn't that mean swarms take 1 (1.5 * 1 splash damage rounded down) per successfully hit with an alchemist fire? With a high AC, that's a difficult fight, even assuming everyone has alchemist fires.

Alchemists fire and acid vials are really cheap and effective at dealing with low level swarms.

"A swarm composed of Fine or Diminutive creatures is immune to all weapon damage."

Does this mean that only swarms composed of creatures larger than diminutive are damaged by splash weapons? Or that the swarm of fine creatures take only double the splash from such weapons? Or that they take double the regular and the splash damage? I can imagine the difficulty of a first level swarm hinges on the DM's answer.

I'm inclined to go with the second, and seeing as how CR 1 swarms have pretty good AC, 2 damage per successful attack still makes swarms a difficult encounter.

Zecrin wrote:

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Steve Vermin wrote:

(in the email sent to all the players before the game):

I will remind you to be prepared for the basics.

Disease
Poisons
Ability damage (potentially drain)
Swarms
Invisible opponents
Incorporeal opponents
Extremes in temperature
Being grappled
Religious extremists who do not like you
Travel in an area where Pathfinders are not legal

Then, after you leave the venture captains office...

any of those things can TPK a party.

The fact that Martial characters have significate difficulties with Swarms is not a surprise... but that's why the Party should not be exclusively Martial characters right? This is often a Rock-Paper-Scissors game.

I can recall encountering a Shadow at 1st level (in more than one PFS1 settings) -
Or encountering a scenario full of zombies when the Party of PCs had only one slashing weapon among the six of them (a dagger that was in a Pathfinder Pack), and the cleric was a Neg. channeling cleric (noticed an issue with wands of infernal healing vs cure light wounds then).
Or an animated stone object (Hardness/Mindless) when the PCs didn't have a Power Attacking Barbarian...

When playing PFS1e, Swarms are something the players (IMHO) need to prepare for. I have seen a Rogue with UMD pull a partly changed wand of burning hands (CL3) to finish off 2 swarms at once. That was her "paper" to counter the "rock" of the swarm.

So all it takes is having an item that greatly exceeds the wealth by level of a first level character? No problem then.

Well, assuming that they were almost at 2nd level, each party member should have almost 1000 gp. I believe the value of a wand or burning hands (CL 3) with only about 10 charges is only 450 gp, which by no means greatly exceeds the rogues wealth. However, if the swarm was one of the party's first encounters, then they probably wouldn't have such an item. However, in this case, I

...

I agree that, without DM intervention, a party of first level players is not likely to acquire a partially charged wand of burning hands. However,such an item doesn't necessarily greatly exceed wealth by level unless, as I said, the swarm was one of the party's first encounters.

The most common 1st level swarm is, unfortunately, the spider swarm, which places 1st level players, especially those who are inexperienced, in a very dangerous situation.

My biggest problem with fine and diminutive swarms is their poorly written "immunity to weapon damage." If, this weren't the case, the level 1 party in question could escape (taking advantage of the swarms slower speed and lack of intelligence) and come back later for any easy kill with alchemists fires/acids. If they couldn't run, torches could be used to output at least minimal damage against the swarm. But as written, neither of these options are viable.

Steve Vermin wrote:

(in the email sent to all the players before the game):

I will remind you to be prepared for the basics.

Disease
Poisons
Ability damage (potentially drain)
Swarms
Invisible opponents
Incorporeal opponents
Extremes in temperature
Being grappled
Religious extremists who do not like you
Travel in an area where Pathfinders are not legal

Then, after you leave the venture captains office...

any of those things can TPK a party.

The fact that Martial characters have significate difficulties with Swarms is not a surprise... but that's why the Party should not be exclusively Martial characters right? This is often a Rock-Paper-Scissors game.

I can recall encountering a Shadow at 1st level (in more than one PFS1 settings) -
Or encountering a scenario full of zombies when the Party of PCs had only one slashing weapon among the six of them (a dagger that was in a Pathfinder Pack), and the cleric was a Neg. channeling cleric (noticed an issue with wands of infernal healing vs cure light wounds then).
Or an animated stone object (Hardness/Mindless) when the PCs didn't have a Power Attacking Barbarian...

When playing PFS1e, Swarms are something the players (IMHO) need to prepare for. I have seen a Rogue with UMD pull a partly changed wand of burning hands (CL3) to finish off 2 swarms at once. That was her "paper" to counter the "rock" of the swarm.

So all it takes is having an item that greatly exceeds the wealth by level of a first level character? No problem then.

Well, assuming that they were almost at 2nd level, each party member should have almost 1000 gp. I believe the value of a wand or burning hands (CL 3) with only about 10 charges is only 450 gp, which by no means greatly exceeds the rogues wealth. However, if the swarm was one of the party's first encounters, then they probably wouldn't have such an item. However, in this case, I can see why the DM would give his players such an item.

NimbleW wrote:

And that's a guard dog, I can't even begin to fathom why you'd need any of the stats of a cart-pulling donkey.

The latter is easy: Wolves attack while setting camp, and go after the donkey first. As a GM I need its stats to fairly adjudicate how long the heroes have to save their donkey from the wolves. I've also had Bullette attack the party wagon before, good thing I had the wagon's, and it's horses' stats handy.

Regarding the former, I wouldn't buy a guard-dog from a GM that refused to let me know its relevent statistics*, just like I wouldn't buy a suit of armor if the GM refused to let me look up its statistics. But I wouldn't even ask. If I have a guard-dog, or can summon Fiendish Ravens, I'll have their stat-block in my dosier just like an Animal Companion (or else a link to the bestiary entry for the summoned being if possible).

*Out-of-character that is, and barring common-sense exceptions. My character would obviously know only as much as 'Common Knowledge' dictates in-character. Even though his dog's stat-block is right in front of me.

Well, if in-game animals are more similar to their real life counterparts than in past editions, the donkey may actually be able to stand up to the wolfpack (for a time, at least). But this only illustrates the point that it would be nice to have the donkey's statistics. However, I feel that this is a somewhat niche scenario, and would be fine if the donkey's stats did not appear in the playtest.