benwilsher18's page

I think the fluff of Distracting Performance is that you draw so much attention to yourself that the target(s) that fail against it find it hard to focus on your chosen ally. This means until that ally makes some kind of action or reaction, regardless of line of sight, they have the bonus from Hidden.

Hidden wouldn't just immediately end on the monster's turn when they go to attack the target you chose to make Hidden, unless the monster uses an action to Seek first. Otherwise this feat would be pointless. It should last against every creature that failed their roll until that ally takes a reaction, or gains their turn and takes their first action (as long as that action isn't to Sneak).

https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e/actions/create-a-diversion-rm

Does the action have unlimited range, as long as the target can see you (or hear and understand you if you use words)?

The reason I'm asking is because of the Distracting Performance feat, which allows a character to Create a Diversion and have one of their allies become Hidden instead of them. A character standing very far away from the battlefield and using this feat to grant the Hidden condition to their allies seems quite powerful (combined with the Confabulator skill feat also to allow this trick to be attempted repeatedly).

benwilsher18 wrote:

Me and a friend were chatting about this thread and about wizards in general in this system, and he offhandedly said:

"If a level 19 wizard had every single wizard class feat and every single arcane spell that exists in their spellbook, they would barely be any stronger than a wizard who took no feats at all and had the normal number of spells"

I argued against it at first, but the more I thought about it the more true it seemed. That's pretty sad

It's part of PF2 design: The bulk of your progression comes from your class and not from options you choose.

For me, it's not sad, it's an asset of PF2: I don't have to build a Wizard this way or this way for it to work. I can build it the way I want and the difference with the optimized characters will be marginal.

That's not strictly true though is it? Most classes get feats at certain level thresholds that can change the way they play their class entirely.

To use another prepared spellcaster as an example, an Animal Order druid who picks up as many feats to advance their animal companion as possible feels a lot different to another Animal Order druid who picks up only Mature Animal Companion at level 4, then focuses on Order Explorer and Untamed Form to ride their companion around and make melee strikes.

There are no feats that can make two wizards of the same school and thesis feel any different from each other in any meaningful way. The only way to customize your wizard experience is through your spell choices, while other classes get to both have that cake AND eat the cake of having interesting feats as well.

Me and a friend were chatting about this thread and about wizards in general in this system, and he offhandedly said:

"If a level 19 wizard had every single wizard class feat and every single arcane spell that exists in their spellbook, they would barely be any stronger than a wizard who took no feats at all and had the normal number of spells"

I argued against it at first, but the more I thought about it the more true it seemed. That's pretty sad

I would quite like to see a few generic class archetypes (like Elementalist) that are clearly intended for spellcasters, but don't just add more spell slots or miscellaneous cleric domain spells, and instead radically change how you build and play your character.

Maybe a "mage assassin" archetype that lets you cast spells with certain traits without losing Hidden, feats to add precision damage and minor debuffs to attack roll spells, and some action compression with casting and Stealth actions/taking cover.

Maybe a "pacifist" style archetype which lowers your spell attack bonus and spell save DC, in exchange for significantly improved defenses and optional armor proficiencies, action compression with moving/raising shields/spellshapes when casting buffs and healing, and numerical bonuses to healing and buff durations.

Maybe a "fundamentalist" style archetype which continues to gain higher rank spell slots as they level, but can only learn and slot a small custom list of low rank spells into them. In exchange they would be better at casting those spells in various ways; not necessarily improved DCs or accuracy, but maybe being able to combine lower level slots into higher ones if they contain the same spells, or increasing the number of targets, or shaping areas to exclude their allies more easily, or misfortune effects on saves if they burn extra slots and their reaction.

Etc.

I feel Elementalist could be great if it had a lot more feats, so I would like see it expanded upon as well. Realistically if it had at least four feat options at every step (4, 6, 8, etc.) with each feat at these steps representing different elements then it could actually be a lot of fun; but as it is at level 4 you either get a familiar or you get a water-element spellshape and that's it, and that kills a lot of elemental mage character fantasies instantly without even touching on the lack of feats at later levels.

As someone invested in this thread and in the wizard class, people arguing in here until they are blue in the face that "wizard is bad because imperial sorcerer is better" or "wizard can be better than imperial sorcerer is these specific scenarios where having more spells known or max rank slots actually matters" have been dominating the thread, and it's getting tiresome. It just isn't constructive, and it isn't going anywhere.

Objectively, the wizard class has some issues that make it less fun than it should be to build and play. Taking inspiration from other classes to decide what changes could be made to improve this is fine, but realistically making the wizard unconditionally more powerful shouldn't be the goal of any changes we should be requesting. The wizard class is already playable and competitive with many other classes, it is just not as fun or interesting as it should be.

Here are some of the reasons many have repeated throughout this thread that I actually think are constructive criticisms.

- The wizard class lacks interesting low level class feats, and it has a lot of weak or "flavour" options that lack impact in actual gameplay.

- They lack features to meaningfully differentiate the schools/theses from each other and make them feel different to play during combat and exploration, besides what spells they know, daily preparations and generally unimpressive focus spells.

- Prepared casting is limiting enough on its own, but their 4th slots per rank are even more limited due to being locked to school-only spells which are often not great.

- They cannot in any viable way focus on their schools, or any particular aspects or traits of spellcasting or spells, and be as effective as a wizard that takes a more generalist approach to spell learning and preparation. This leads to most wizards learning and preparing similar spells.

- They have no action compression feats at all for any standard actions, move actions or even skill actions, despite having a lot of trained skills as an Intelligence class.

- They are classically quite booksmart and knowledgeable, yet their interactions with the Recall Knowledge system are limited and uninteresting outside of one bland feat and specific arcane spells.

- They have terrible defenses and need protecting in difficult combat encounters most of the time, unless they go well out of their way and take significant opportunity costs or resources to shore up those defenses.

- Their options in combat when they don't want to expend any resources are terrible, as they are limited to only 2 Focus Points unless they multiclass, many of their Focus spells are weak or niche, and their cantrips cannot be improved or scaled up in any way.

- Experimental Spellshaping is weak, Spell Blending doesn't become worthwhile until level 5, Staff Nexus is interesting but ultimately casting lots of the same lower level spells is generally not effective compared to other playstyles, and Spell Substitution is solid but combined with the need to separately Refocus it eats up too much exploration time to be consistently useful at every table.

- The low level (1-4) experience as a wizard can be pretty miserable due to a combination of pretty much all of the above points, combined with low level spells being quite underwhelming compared to the impact you could have if you just built towards picking up big weapon and hitting things. This often leads to players feeling like it's better to focus on supporting their allies who ARE doing that, rather than doing what they actually wanted to do.

Every one of these issues could be addressed completely independently of comparisons to the power levels of other classes, and I personally feel like that is the right way to go about it. What the wizard really needs is some individuality and identity, outside of "I know the most arcane spells!" which just isn't a mechanically satisfying niche in this system.

I honestly feel like all of the prepared spellcasters (not just wizard) could do with feat options that allow spellcasters you expend their spell slots on things besides casting the spells themselves. As it is, at higher levels it feels like a huge opportunity cost to cast lower level spells a lot of the time, as you may not get that many turns in a day, and ending the day without casting spells from your higher rank slots feels very wasteful. For some examples of random stuff I came up with:

- Heighten Spell (one action spellshape).
If your next action is to Cast a Spell of a rank 5 ranks below your highest spell rank or lower, you may expend an additional spell slot of the same rank or lower in order to heighten the spell that you cast by a number of ranks equal to the rank of the additional expended spell slot.

- Overchannel.
Whenever you cast a spell that deals one type of energy damage on a successful spell attack roll or with a basic save, you can choose to expend an additional spell slot at the same time containing a spell that deals at least one different type of energy damage. If the spell that you cast deals any damage, it also deals an additional 1d6 x rank damage of one of the damage types of the additional expended spell.

- Energise (one action, Self target, Manipulate, Magical traits).
As a part of this action, expend a spell slot. You gain Fast Healing of a value equal to the rank of the expended spell slot for 1 minute, and while you have this Fast Healing you have a +1 status bonus to saving throws against spells and magical effects. This bonus is increased to +2 if the expended spell slot was of 4th rank or higher, or +3 if the expended spell slot was 7th rank or higher.

- Share Magic (one action, Manipulate, Magical traits).
Choose an ally within 30 feet of you, and expend a spell slot of 6th rank or lower. That ally regains a number of Focus points equal to half the rank of the expended spell slot (minimum 1).

I'm quite surprised Munitions wasn't nerfed into the ground. Now if only you didn't have to spend an action to activate alchemical ammunition for some reason...

The reason for the action tax is so that there is a reason to not use alchemical ammunition on every single shot, besides resource management. It means that Munitions Crafter is is just an option that gives you a way to hit weaknesses or apply debuffs that you might otherwise not be able to, while generally you will be using standard ammo most of the time.

If alchemical ammunition was superior to standard ammunition in every way, Munitions Crafter would become a feat tax for everyone that wanted to wield a firearm as it would effectively be providing quite a lot of "free" damage every single day.

Staff Nexus features are good, but staves themselves are underpowered in the system in my opinion.

I personally feel like it doesn't make sense that you can't heighten spells cast from staves by consuming more charges - for example if you are a 5th level wizard with a Staff of Fire there is absolutely 0 point in casting 3x 1st rank Breathe Fire spells when you can just cast a cantrip instead and do MORE damage, but if you were allowed to consume all 3 of your charges to cast it at 3rd rank once a day maybe there would actually be some purpose.

As it is, looking for staves that have "evergreen" spells on them or little passive +1s to things is all they are good for unless you can get your hands on an overlevelled staff without burning all of your gold on it, which is quite disappointing. Wands and scrolls are usually better options for your gold due to this.

Staff Nexus can customize some evergreen spells onto one of these utility staves (my personal favourite is Grease) and then basically cast them so many times that they might as well be cantrips, which is nice and can be quite fun - but is hardly what I would call powerful.

However, combining both Spell Blending and Staff Nexus would give the wizard two strong ways to burn away their lower rank school slots for more power and utility, which would put them quite far above other prepared spellcasters like Witch and Druid in terms of flexibility. That isn't necessarily a problem for balance and it might be fine, but it is significant enough to make it worth considering before recommending that all wizards should get a second thesis for free.

If you have a group of creatures casting something like Sunburst which I've encountered that are lower level compared to your level, is it really better for you to counterspell one of them rather than nuke them?

In your scenario, no it wouldn't be better to Counterspell one Sunburst cast by one of a group of monsters than it would be to hit them with an AOE spell, and it wouldn't be better than casting Shadow Siphon either.

But there are other scenarios where Counterspell is good to have, like counteracting buff spells cast by minions on a bigger threat, or counteracting debuffs that could cripple you or an ally. So it has a niche, and it's something other spellcasters legitimately can't do as well as a wizard can.

Unfortunately it's not common enough a situation that it is worth the investment in every campaign, but the same can be said for pretty much all wizard exclusive feats except a scant few. I like it as it is, but like most wizard things it could use some improvements.

Why do you think Counterspell is a good feat? How many wizard players are taking counterspell given the 50/50 success rate and requirement of the exact spell to counter it at the right level? Are you really making that roll and are you really expending a high level resource to counter a spell that may fail rather than using the spell as an effect?

Don't get me wrong, the Counterspell feat itself is not very good at all - at least not until you can get Clever Counterspell to improve it, which is quite good.

There are a lot of creatures that can cast spells in PF2E, and not all of them are going to be bosses that have hugely high DCs for you to roll against and barely ever succeed. Being able to use spell slots that just share traits with what your enemy is casting makes it quite common to identify a spell with Quick Recognition or Oddity Identification, and then find that you have a lower rank slot to try and counter with.

Honestly though, it's one of those things that I would retrain into at a higher level if given the opportunity, or take on a wizard starting at a higher level. Having Counterspell for so long and barely getting to use it because of the strict requirements would feel quite bad in a campaign that started at level 1.

THE main problem with the wizard in my opinion is their class feats. They have so few class feats that are both unique to the wizard class and also worth taking, that it leaves them without much of an identity outside of their level 1 features.

Wizards can't meaningfully change how they approach combat encounters in any significant way through their unique feats, only through spellshapes available to most casters, or through their spell and item selection.

Bond Conservation, Explosive Arrival, Advanced School Spell, Forcible Energy and the Counterspell feat lines are basically the only exceptions to this that I really think have any worth before level 14, and the first two of these feats aren't even that good.

Wizards do have some good and interesting options at level 14 and beyond, but level 14 is quite late into most campaigns, if they even reach those levels at all.

What I personally really want from any changes or new content that might be made to the wizard class are feats which meaningfully change how wizards with different theses and curriculums deal with problems and encounters, outside of just having different spell lists and focus spells.

These options wouldn't even have to be mechanically powerful, just interesting and varied enough to allow Bob the Human Battle Magic Spell Blending Wizard and Dave the Human Protean Form Staff Nexus Wizard to feel meaningfully different from each other in how they approach challenges, even if they have 90% of the same spells prepared that day.

In my first post, I said we give the wizard all thesis except familiar (so as not to step on the witche's toes). I think it's a step in the right direction, giving the wizard what he needs most: options.

Options to use metamagic, options to turn his slots into higher level ones through Spell Blending, options to turn them into lower level utility through Staff Nexus, options to change them on the fly through Spell Substitution...

I would personally be massively against this. It's one thing to have feats that let you pinch certain aspects of other subclasses for your main class while still not giving you full access (like the druid Order Explorer feat) but entirely another to just functionally have no subclasses at all and smush all of those features together at level 1.

I would much prefer "more options" to be "your choice of thesis and spell school gives you more options and choices to make as you level up" rather than "here's 500 options at level 1, but you have no choices you just get them all".

I love the flavour of wizards, and to me they don't feel bad or weak to play in this game at all (except maybe at levels 1 and 2 specifically, but that problem applies to all of the squishy armorless spellcasters). I have enjoyed playing as a wizard in two campaigns now, and not regretted picking the class or felt like a liability.

Perhaps wizard comes out unfavourably when directly compared to other spellcasting classes in some ways, but that doesn't mean that the class is useless or not worth playing.

I personally think it doesn't matter whether or not imperial sorcerer is better than a wizard or not, so all of the hundreds of posts arguing the differences in this thread are pointless to me. The classes have completely different flavour, which is enough of a reason for people to pick one over the other without considering the maths. It's like comparing a rogue to an investigator; one is surely better than the other and if a party has one they probably don't need the other, but the weaker one feels totally different to play and is still worthwhile - so what's the problem?

As long as a class is fun, interesting to play, not so weak that it can't contribute, and it has valid choices to make each time they level up, then in my opinion it is in a good place. Currently only two of those things are true for wizard, because it has many niche, uninteresting or simply bad class feats. It is also a bit boring that your choice of thesis and spell school does not give you access to anything interesting that other wizards don't have, besides the initial features and a single focus spell choice.

And about the whole prepared/spontaneous thing; spontaneous is surely mechanically stronger, but that doesn't make prepared spellcasting itself a problem that needs to be fixed or changed. A wizard wouldn't feel like a wizard without it, they would just feel like an intelligence-based sorcerer. Nothing is as satisfying or feels as wizardly in RPGs as doing the groundwork to find out what spells could save your ass tomorrow, and those choices paying off.

I feel like there should be more feats like Linked Focus that refer to curriculum spells, and they should be stronger.

Curriculum spells are basically never referenced by Wizard class feats outside of this one fairly useless feat, and that is a real shame as there is a lot of design space to work with there.

For example, the above feat could be instead "Once every 10 minutes when you expend a spell slot or use Drain Bonded Item to cast one of your curriculum spells, you regain one Focus Point" and it still wouldn't even be that strong, but it might actually be worth considering.

Other ideas:

- A feat which allows you to teleport scrolls that you are wearing into your hands as a free action if those scrolls contain curriculum spells of any rank

- A feat which grants a free action spellshape which can only be applied to curriculum spells, allowing you to cast them without the Manipulate trait

- A feat which allows you to heighten a curriculum spell prepared in a lower rank spell slot to a higher rank once per day (probably max rank -2)

- A feat which allows you to expend as many curriculum spells slots as you want when preparing a staff and adding charges to it

- A feat which lets your familiar cast 1 or 2 action spells from your lower rank curriculum slots with it's own actions

- A feat which lets you sustain a summon spell as a free action as a part of expending a slot casting a curriculum spell

etc. etc.

In addition, much like other classes have feats which let each subclass dip into the focus spells of the other subclasses, it would be nice if wizards got a similar feat to allow them to borrow focus spells or even curriculum spells from the other schools.

I'll go with my experience. The spells getting used have massive ranges...

I've played (and GM'd for) 5 tables now, and not a single one of them has an experience similar to what you are describing. Most combat encounters - and by most I mean basically all - take place on battlemaps that are 30x30 or less, and typically if there are larger maps they are in environments with walls and obstacles that prevent easy targeting from one side of the map to the other anyway.

Most spellcasters that I have played with and played as don't prepare more than one big AOE blasting spell a day, and maybe one of the melee martial characters will carry around an Eruption item, and these will be the extent of the ranged AOE damage options the party has access to outside of cantrips. They are only situationally useful, and spells like Fear and Slow that target individuals within X range are much easier to make use of and I see them much more often - and they have 30 feet of range (or 60 with Reach Spell or Familiar Conduit) which rarely feels inadequate.

We've discussed spell blending at length in the old threads, and it's honestly pretty divisive. Personally, I've come to agree with the people who are a bit down on spell blending. A top level slot is not always worth two lower level slots—especially if those lower level slots contain important evergreen spells, like Slow or Laughing Fit. In many cases, spell blending can actually decrease your staying power, not increase it.

===

Spellsub sounds powerful. But in actuality, it requires significant investment into learning spells, and enabling concessions from both party and GM. Most class features need neither. Worse, spellsub usually won't buy you that much of an advantage over a Sorcerer's selection of on-level+signature spells.

You're right that a top level slot is not always worth 2 lower level slots - until you realise that you still get 3 of that "evergreen" spell rank anyway if you want, because of spell blending.

If you have rank 5 spells, you have the ability to blend away two rank 1 spell slots to gain an additional 3rd rank slot, and then blend away two rank 3 spell slots to gain an additional rank 5 slot. This leaves you down only one rank 3 slot compared to if you hadn't used it. Trading two rank -4 slots and one rank -2 slot for an additional max rank spell is almost always worth it.

You can also choose to blend away your school slots if the spell options at those ranks wouldn't often be worth casting.

Spell Substitution on the other hand is less powerful when viewed through the lens of combat, and more powerful when you consider how it can be used to solve problems outside of combat. Spell Substitution gives you a cheap way to convert your lower rank slots into absolutely huge array of utility options, and it can help you overcome the limitation of having no signature spells by letting you swap in heightened spells like Dispel Magic, Invisibility or Fly when you need them to deal with non-combat or pre-combat encounters as well.

Which PF2e has is, luckily few, examples of classes that don't deliver on their promise. IMO the classes that are like that would be investigator (yes, even with the PC2 buffs), the inventor, and wizard. I could probably mention a couple more but I think these three are the ones I find don't deliver on their promise at all.

...In the case of the wizard their only real shtick is being Int-based and not being forced into having a familiar if you don't want it because otherwise any arcane caster can do what a wizard does and they still have other things to do. Witches have their hex spells, sorcerers have blood magic, bloodline spells, and cool feats. Even the psychic that I don't like that much has a very unique chassis and...

Drain Bonded Item, Spell Substitution and Spell Blending may not be super interesting, but they are all very powerful features - especially at higher levels.

No other casters (besides cleric with their fonts) can cast as many max rank spells in a day as a wizard can; and the higher level you get, the more valuable it is to have more casts of these high rank spells than everyone else does as spells continue to rise on power throughout the game.

Imperial Sorcerer is stronger than wizard because wizards having 1-2 more max rank spells is not equal to the sorcerer's spontaneous casting, powerful focus spell, blood magic, and better class feats.

However arcane Witch has got 2-3 less max rank spells than a wizard instead of just 1-2 like sorcerer, they have class feats that are barely any better than wizard, the arcane familiar ability and hex spells are really not that good, and being a prepared spellcaster without wizard thesis features makes witches even less flexible than wizards are. I think wizards are actually significantly better at level 5+.

Wizard is my favourite class in pretty much any RPG where it exists, including in PF2E. Despite having a few flaws, they aren't as weak as people think - and they are definitely not lower than the middle of the pack in terms of balance, because arcane spells are powerful and they can learn and cast the most of them.

Another class beating them at their own game in many areas does not make them weak in a vacuum, it just means there is a superior choice if you are optimising.

In my opinion, the only changes that wizard would need to make it as good as Imperial Sorcerers are similar to the below:

1. Better focus spells, and some kind of passive effect, action compression or bonus/penalty that occurs when casting them (like Blood Magic). Just some suggestions; casting their focus spells could be linked to "wizardly" things like Recall Knowledge, Counterspell, Drain Bonded Item, sustaining spells, spellshapes, etc. depending on the school of focus spell.

2. Spell Substitution should really just be a part of the base class rather than a thesis as many people have already said, and you should be able to Refocus at the same time as substituting spells (most GMs would allow this anyway as things are now, but you might as well write it into the rules officially).

3. Experimental Spellshaping is so weak that it isn't worth taking. I think that wizards with this thesis should be able to apply one action spellshapes to cantrips as a free action, and they should be able to expend lower level spell slots instead of actions to apply spellshapes to their levelled spells. The capstone should also come with the option to use two spellshapes at once.

4. General slight improvements to their class feats would be nice. Wizards have many weak or overly situational feats across their entire level range that I personally couldn't ever see myself taking.

The Counterspell feat chain is a notable example of what I mean by this, as Counterspell is a classic wizardry trope in many games; but in PF2E it takes too much investment and too many levels to become usable.

...A melee martial who has to spend a few rounds to close to battle will often do less DPR in fights where a caster can unleash ranged AoE by a huge number because everything will be heavily annihilated prior to the martial getting to start their attack sequence...

This makes sense as a general concept, but fights where a melee martial character or melee attacking enemies start too far away to attack anything on their first turn are extremely uncommon in my experience, much less there being "a few rounds" before they get to do anything.

It's far more common for combat encounters to take place in cramped environments with lots of walls and obstacles, where any AOEs larger than a 5 foot burst are too awkward to cast most of the time without impacting one or more of your own allies, and everyone involved in the combat starts within 60 feet of each other.

I have suggested several options to make those turns more interresting, notably by expanding on what ArcCsd allows you to do (either as basic features or through feats giving you new strike options outside of spellstrike, could also have purely movement or utility options in there)

Maybe making all focus spells recharge (but remove the ability to spellstrike with them) could allow off turns to cast a focus spell from any source for its own benefits (ranged attack, sure, but also support or control) and recharge your spellstrike to prepare for the next round.

The first part of what you've said makes sense somewhat; but I think passive buffs to all Strikes the Magus makes works better for them than new Strike actions, unless those new options are conflux spells. Otherwise hybrid study conflux spells besides Force Fang will still get totally ignored because of MAP.

The second part of what you've said would just make things worse. Sure it would fix the Imaginary Weapon/Fire Ray problem, but every Magus would still take an archetype to grab a one-action focus spell from another class, like Lay on Hands or Zealous Rush or amped Shield or Witch hexes, so that they could recharge Spellstrike essentially for free. Hell there are probably some free-action or reaction focus spells you can use on your own turn out there that I'm not remembering that would make recharging Spellstrike LITERALLY free if that change was made. It would actually buff Starlit Span the most and you really don't want to do that.

What do you think of this idea; while in Arcane Cascade, if the Magus casts a two or three action attack roll spell, they can choose to substitute their usual spell attack bonus for their attack bonus with one weapon or unarmed strike option that they have. If the attack hits and deals damage to an enemy, it recharges their Spellstrike.

The thing about the combination of Spellstrike being very strong and having a one action recharge that does nothing else but let you Spellstrike again is that it's pretty boring to play like a turret that never moves and just repeat the same actions forever, which is currently "optimal" Magus.

One action conflux spells that incur MAP (i.e. all of the hybrid study spells) are basically never used except as a sort of consolation prize on turns when a Magus has no option but to move or spend an action on something else like Stunned, because if you Spellstrike afterwards it is likely to miss.

The solution to this isn't making recharge action more interesting or straight up better, because then still 3/4 of the class main features (spellcasting, Arcane Cascade and unique martial action compression focus spells) will still get ignored. Magus should be about more than just Spellstrike, as any class with only one viable action will be inflexible and boring in actual play fairly often.

I don't know what the correct solution is, but it definitely involves making the Magus "off" turn where their Spellstrike isn't charged more fun than it is now, by giving them interesting options to use that still result in them being able to Spellstrike again on the 3rd turn.

Spending an action that does nothing to change the state of the battle and only recharges Spellstrike is not interesting, so players should be encouraged to only spend an action doing that when there is nothing better for them to do with it. Current Magus is not like that, which is the crux of the issue.

Any suggestions made here that make the basic recharge action stronger in any way (action compression etc.) might make Magus more interesting, but they will essentially be a straight buff to the current playstyle of laser-focusing on doing nothing but Spellstriking, which is already the strongest and least flexible way to play the class. What actually needs to be changed needs to make other playstyles viable and interesting.

I think you guys have missed a big point of why using Channel Smite has extra benefits that Spellstrike does not; the version of Harm or Heal that is being cast is a one-action spell. There is 0 action compression going on there at all - a warpriest could just Strike and then cast the spell for the same number of actions without the feat anyway, and in fact has probably been doing that from levels 1 to 3.

The Magus has a tighter action economy because they want to recharge Spellstrike after using it once, not because of Spellstrike itself - which actually compresses a Strike and a 2-action spell into 2 actions, making it theoretically much stronger than Channel Smite.

On a somewhat related note, how would Magus players feel about making Spellstrike HARDER to recharge (probably by removing the basic recharge action completely and leaving conflux spells as the only way to recharge) but in exchange giving the class multiple free resources for attack roll spells at their highest spell rank? As an analogue to the heal and harm fonts.

How much damage to AC do you think would make it worthwhile ?

Personnaly I hardly see any amount that would unless it enables more options in your actions.
Arcane Cascade could add a flat +10 damage it wouldn't really change much to your playstyle. It would only make the non spellstrike turns more bearable.

This is pretty much what the rest of us are getting at - the ideal way to make the Magus more fun to play and feel less "clunky" without making it far, far stronger than it already is to slightly nerf Spellstrike and to buff Arcane Cascade, so recharging it via the hybrid study conflux spells becomes a fun and worthwhile way to play the class rather than just "bearable".

You also don't want to overbalance and make Arcane Cascade way stronger than Spellstrike though either, as Magus does not need a straight buff like that. It just needs to be worth using, so that in combat encounters where it isn't practical or easy to repeatedly Spellstrike easily, you have a second gameplan that is fun and at least somewhat competitive.

I think the bare minimum needed to make this option feel worthwhile would be that hitting with a hybrid study conflux spell and a second strike while in Arcane Cascade does more damage than Spellstriking without spending a spell slot at all levels for all melee builds. It is harder to successfully hit twice with MAP in most scenarios than it is to just use recharge or Force Fang and then Spellstrike again so this seems fair, and it also means in cases where you don't have a 3rd action to spare you still have something interesting to do on your turn.

That's quite a lot of additional steps, i'm not sure it would really change things for the better.

It'd make recharging even more action intensive.
Because for that you need to first enter the stance, then use the conflux spells/cantrips (if they still recharge)
This is way more combursome this way.

Plus those higher feats are definitely way too necessary. Sure they are very high level (18/20 is about when you can get the "quickened to recharge spellstrike" feat) but until then it actually takes less actions to just do the normal 1 action recharge.

Arcane Cascade being significantly better in general might persuade more players that Spellstriking every single turn isn't a requirement, and spending more time in the stance casting offensive spells and using their cool magic strike cantrips would be the alternative that I would want to encourage.

The loop of every Magus just wanting to stand still recharging and Spellstriking shouldn't be impossible, but it should be discouraged by making more flexible gameplay actually be rewarding and fun while not doing so much less damage that it feels bad. I think these changes might help accomplish that.

Although I realised that I didn't put in my post that there would need to be two more changes with this in order for it to work; Magus would need some focus spells of their own that are not conflux spells so they can get more focus points, and that Spellstrike would need to not be usable with focus spells anymore (which we have all mentioned several times as being a desirable standalone change anyway).

I've been brainstorming how I would change the Magus to fix some of the issues discussed in this thread, and I came up with these ideas:

1. Arcane Cascade is now a one-action focus spell (meaning the Magus would start with two focus points) and no longer requires that a spell has been cast before you can enter it.

2. You cannot cast focus spells while in Arcane Cascade stance.

3. All conflux spells are now cantrips and don't cost Focus Points, but they require you to be in Arcane Cascade stance to cast them and you can only cast one per turn (like Witch hexes).

4. Your Arcane Cascade damage bonus applies to one target when you use 2 or 3 actions to Cast a Spell. A spell must target AC or saves to qualify. (This wouldn't stack with the bonus already added to a Spellstrike, as Cast a Spell and Spellstrike are different activities).

5. Arcane Cascade ends when you Spellstrike. There should be a feat (maybe at level 2 or 4) which would allow you to recover a focus point if you miss your Spellstrike while in Arcane Cascade, and another feat in the same chain at higher level (maybe 16 or 18) which would stop Arcane Cascade from ending when you miss Spellstrike.

6. Each hybrid study should gain a status bonus to one type of skill action and one type of save or defense while in Arcane Cascade stance, equal to the usual 1/2/3 bonus. The hybrid studies should also just give trained proficiency in these skills at level 1, as Magus is quite skill-starved honestly.

Obviously a lot of feats would need rethinking to implement some of these, for example Capture Magic and Cascade Countermeasure. A lot of Magus feats need reworking anyway, even outside of the context of these suggestions... they don't have very many and a good 1/3 of them are pretty bad in general.

This can be said of any caster poaching Imaginary Weapon or Fire Ray.

I poach it on my regular casters and use it with reach...

You can't use Reach Spell with Imaginary Weapon amped as per the Amp rules:

"The singular focus required to amp a psi cantrip means that unless otherwise noted, you can apply only one amp to a given psi cantrip, and you can't apply both an amp and a metamagic ability to a cantrip at the same time."

https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=21

Which is one of the reasons why this spell is much more powerful on a Magus than anyone else, as they can use it amped with more safety via reach weapons (or ranged weapons in the case of Starlit Span) while also being more accurate due to adding their potency rune and making use of their faster attack roll proficiency progression to overall make them much more accurate with the spell than casters.

Fire Ray is extremely powerful for any Charisma or Wisdom casters that can grab it from Oracle, Champion or Cleric dedications though, no doubt about that.

Let us hypothetically make two characters that are both going to be in the same party in the same Pathfinder 2e game, using no variant rules.

Let's next say that both characters start with the same ancestry, base class and attribute distribution, and they both pick Magus as their class. As they level up and choose different class feats/dedication feats, as long as they don't make incredibly awful decisions, theoretically these two characters should stay roughly as strong as each other right? There should never be a point where one character does 25-40% more damage for less resource cost than the other correct?

This isn't the case if one Magus takes a dedication to get either Fire Ray or Imaginary Weapon, and the other doesn't. One will be significantly stronger than the other. This is a significant problem with Magus and these spells that needs addressing, as it warps all discussion around the class and makes it difficult to judge whether any of the other problems that people bring up are actually relevant or not.

I feel like if there is ever a remaster of this class, this is Big Issue #1 that needs to be looked at. New players bounce off of this class (and sometimes this game) because they want to play a gish character in their own way, and then they find out that there is an objectively stronger way to build their character that they "should" have done and understandably aren't very happy about it.

It isn't clear how the goblin ancestry feat "Kneecap" interacts with MAP. It lacks the Attack trait, but it calls for you to make a Strike as a part of the action. I think it needs to be mentioned in the next errata, to either add the missing Attack trait or to confirm whether or not it counts as an attack when increasing MAP or calculating it's accuracy.

Neither of those stances are mutually exclusive. Its like saying it would be weird for a heavy armor melee fighter to dump Dex because they are making their ranged weapon attacks worse. Probably that character never intended to ever use ranged weapons at all. If you dump Int as a magus but somehow expect to be decent as save-based spells thats on you.

I think you agree with me and just haven't realised it lol. If a Magus dumps Intelligence, then they clearly never intended to cast save-based spells on enemies - but to then turn around and complain that their character isn't flexible and is clunky to play after they cut a huge chunk of their options away with their build decisions and self-imposed a "rotation" on themselves in combat doesn't make any sense.

After all, you don't hear players of heavy armour melee Fighters complaining about their lack of ranged attacking options - because they built that weakness into their character themselves and they knew it when they did it, or they built their character with some tools to make themselves more useful in those situations. Magus players need to have the same awareness.

I've already chimed in with what my players think about their issues with Magus, so I won't go into that topic any further; but reading through this thread a bit more thoroughly I do want to touch on something else that I have seen come up several times.

Does anyone else in this thread find it strange that people are stating that it is a valid choice to dump Intelligence when playing a melee Magus, but then saying in followup posts that the Magus "rotation" is boring or linear? You are basically cutting off your foot by making all of your ranged attacking and debuffing options useless and laser focusing on only Spellstriking, so of course you feel crippled!

The arcane spell list has dozens of great spells that force enemies make saves, and depriving yourself of all of that flexibility seems crazy to me. I personally would never start with less than a +2 to Intelligence as a Magus. If you choose to do this, you are basically saying that you are fine never targeting enemies with spells except when you Spellstrike; you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Complaining about lacking options after making that decision would be like Fighter players complaining that they have no options to deal with enemies that don't fight in melee, after they chose to leave their Dexterity score at 10 for the entire campaign. It's a valid choice sure, but it isn't the fault of the class or the class design.

I think if people were more ready to accept that spending the first turn of a combat buffing, controlling, defending, repositioning, using ranged cantrips, and letting melee enemies spend their actions approaching is actually a good strategy, then maybe they would enjoy Magus more. Just because a Magus is slightly less effective at these things than full spellcasters does not make them taking these actions irrelevant. You should definitely Spellstrike whenever the opportunity arises, but if you try to constantly and repeatedly force it to happen you are probably setting yourself up for frustration.

As someone who hasn't been playing this game that long, but is a part of three ongoing weekly campaigns that all have a melee Magus player (including one that I GM for), the common issues with the class that I have heard from those players are paraphrased below in order of how commonly I hear them:

1. "I hate how often I get knocked unconscious if the enemies focus on me, I wish I'd picked Starlit Span"

2. "Psychic dedication doesn't fit my character concept but I feel like I should have taken it anyway"

3. "Magus class feats and focus spells are usually really bad"

4. "I feel like if I miss my spellstrikes then I'm useless"

5. "Debuffs affect Magus worse than they affect everyone else"

6. "Enemies with Reactive Strike are really not fun for me to fight"

I feel like if Magus is ever remastered, addressing these issues would probably be quite easy with a few changes.

Primarily I would make going into Arcane Cascade recharge Spellstrike, also give a status bonus to either AC or a save while it is active depending on the hybrid study, and give the Magus the choice of ending Cascade on a missed Spellstrike to avoid losing the charge.

Additionally, it would be nice if they got some class feats that added some action compression which would allow them to take actions such as Stride, Raise a Shield, Parry, Demoralise, Recall Knowledge, etc. more easily while they use their key actions of spellstriking, casting spells and going into Arcane Cascade.

In exchange for all of these buffs, disallowing them from spellstriking with focus spells seems like it would be a fair compromise, and it would encourage more diverse builds when using Free Archetype.

Just my two cents, apologies if the perspective of a relatively new player and GM who hasn't read this entire thread isn't helpful to the discussion.

I feel that the Psychic dedication feat is a little too strong, and it is a double-edged sword. It's attractive to pick it up at 2nd level on pretty much every single Magus or Int/Cha spellcaster for the immediate power boost compared to the often lackluster feats offered by these classes, but because it gives so much of the Psychic chassis away for free there is very little incentive to actually play a Psychic over one of these other classes with the Psychic dedication. Pretty much any Psychic build you could make would probably be better as a Magus, Bard or Sorcerer with the dedication, and that's not really great design.

My personal fix would be to move the focus point + cantrip amp into a 4th level feat, and have the dedication only give the improved unamped version of one of the Subconscious Mind cantrips as a baseline.

Combining the above change to the dedication with making the Psychic a 3-slot caster and adding a "Safe Elements" style feat to allow them to exclude their allies from harmful mental effects would be enough for me to be interested in playing one.

I would really like to see some new Eidolon types for summoner that are not creature types like the others, but actually change how the summoner plays a bit.

One thing could be a "clone" eidolon that is a translucent copy of your character and uses your weapon runes rather than your unarmed runes.

Another could be an "animated armour" eidolon which would give you unique options and proficiencies when you use the Meld Into Eidolon feat (maybe with a new feat chain to make melding more interesting for players with other eidolon types too).

Last idea I had was a "time" eidolon which could let you store actions into it when you Act Together, in order to cash them in later and have a crazy turn - along with adding some time and space options like Blur, Haste, Slow etc. to the spell list for more flavour and power.

There's no singular space where tattoos go and block other tattoos (unless both specifically go on the same space or whole body). So multiple is fine, their "slot" being the investment cost.

Yes, you could have multiple of the same, much like you can invest multiple 1/day boots, cloaks, etc. (though in the latter case you'd have to swap them out between special uses).

If tattoos were a consumable, I'd say Dispel Magic could destroy them, but a permanent tattoo would simply be suppressed like a magic dagger would be. Not sure when "altered" would factor in.

This all makes sense to me, I'll pass this on and hopefully he has a good time with this character. Thanks for the quick reply!

A player in one of my games wants to play a magical tattoo artist orc barbarian, which sounds like a cool idea - but there were a couple of rules I wanted to check before OKing it.

1. Can you have and simultaneously use multiple magical tattoos of different types at the same time? Or are you limited to "wearing" one at a time like you are with a cape or a pair of boots?

2. If the answer to question 1. is "yes" then can you have multiple of the SAME type of tattoo? For example, investing multiple tattoos which have a a once-per-day trigger in order to use the triggered power multiple times?

3. It is mentioned that tattoos can be altered or removed with dispelling magic - but does this just remove the magic or does it completely remove the tattoo?

Thanks in advance

Ysoki's incisors are interesting. They are a very basic finesse 1d4 piercing attack at first like a dagger, but with the improvement feat they are bumped up to a 1d6 and also gain backstabber. Combining this with the 5ft extra movement granted by the desert rat heritage when you are empty handed is quite nice for many melee Dexterity builds. You can also retrain out of them later any time you like, unlike most other ancestry feats.