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perception check wrote:

I could go on, but I need to prepare for today's PF2 session, wherein our martials will hit things, I the wizard will cast my boring, static-DC spells (and will likely resort to hitting things), and the baddies will hit us back. In terms of combat, grappling into submission as an alternate win condition is suboptimal at best. Control spells as an alternate win condition are nonexistent. It's all about damage now. We hit things, the enemies hit us back, and when the dice allow for it, one side wins. Long live my d20.

Harsh. Anyone have a response to this?

Doug M.

I somewhat agree, PF2 wizards were nerfed to below-parity and overall, spells are much less effective. Casters can be boring IME if the couple spells they memorized have little effect (monsters make the save, missed attack roll, move around the Grease/Web, incapacitation, immunities, etc.), then they are left spamming cantrips which are 'effective' - but not really, when compared to other PCs' headline powers, which can often go all day at max effect.

Interestingly, I consider spellcasters from levels 1-3 ish to be the star contributors to the party. Magic Weapon almost doubles the damage of your highest output martial pal - effectively for 2 actions and a spell slot, your contribution for the fight is already as much as your fighter friend. Everything else after that contributed via cantrips is gravy. You cast one level 1 spell per fight and then toss cantrips around.

Can't argue the effectiveness of that, just a boring role for some. Magic Weapon is a bit OP relative to other Lvl1 spells, and makes the fighter shine even more. It conjures the image of if, in PF1, the fighter's best 3/day power had been to grant casters +4 to their Spell DCs or somesuch ;)

Playing a Wizard I've found you'd better hope your DM rolls bad on saves and does not fudge crit fails (IME alot of DMs do this) - this way your few non-cantrip spells can have a worthwhile effect (e.g. lvl1 losing 1 of your 2 daily slots is IMO not a good trade for the boss losing 1 of his 3 actions for 1 round). Don't get me started on Incapacitate ;)

I can confirm you can't assume 4 foes in a fireball in the 'real world', all too often it's just 1. You usually don't know what you will face when memorizing that morning, and the tactical layout of terrain/cover & friendlies. I'd say my average is at best 3 foes/FB.

Wizard is good at mook-cleanup, which from a team perspective means the Wizard is very useful to the team if the DM uses mooks a lot (some prefer 'one big monster'); but mook-handling is not the most appealing role IMO.

I worry about how this wizard will do in marathon sessions - they (IMO) roughly keep up in the 3-4 encounter/day model, how will they do in marathons? Cantrips are fine but boring and weak. I've been lucky so far usually only facing 1 final encounter with just cantrips left, but yeah it's abundantly clear how weak cantrips are in those fights and super boring for me personally.

- So Demons have very few resistances now, and many vulnerabilities. Not sure how they survive the various nasty environments in the Abyss now LOL. I'm wondering how a Demon like a Vrock will hold up with Cold Iron being pretty easy to obtain and it suffers +10 Dmg on every single hit. Their 'special vulnerability' added to that and I wonder if Demons will melt down fast?

- They mention Possession but I see no Demons having such ability, I guess it was just flavor text or future-proofing? Because I like the idea, would've been nice to have it written-in.

- No more Gating and it all happens via Ritual Pacts which take 1 day IIRC. I guess Gating was *really* hard to balance.

Overall I like the fun design aspects of the demons and I like that they still have spells. Just leery that with no damage mitigation and those big vulnerabilities, will they be the fearful encounter they should be (at-level)? This is all theorycraft, any thoughts?

Being in melee is also more fraught. Combat maneuvers like Trip, Grapple, and Shove are seriously good in this edition and just being in melee involves a potential chance to get knocked on your butt, grabbed, or pushed back.

Bear in mind that in PF2E casters are as likely if not more (if the GM is playing Int 10+ monsters tactically to prioritize the glass cannon) to be targeted by melee effects - PF2E's greater mobility works both ways, and shorter spell ranges force the casters closer-in.

Even if your not gaming the monsters saves, its generally a 50/50 shot against a CR equivalent monster on its strongest stat.

Unless I'm reading citricking's table wrong, it's more like 30-40% against a creature 2 levels below for Highest Save. Might be 10-20% at level equivalent i.e. 'don't bother'.

I'm less worried about hit/save chance than the nerfs to the spells themselves. Duration, Range, sustain, Incapacitation, and the spell effects themselves are usually weaker, subtly so sometimes like Obscuring Mist that now you can't hide beyond 5ft, it's only a 20% miss chance at any range. That is huge if your low-HP wizard is trying to avoid bowfire from 50' away for ex., or flyers.

Combine all this at a table where Wizards are held to account (by RAW, e.g. tight spell availability, components/spellbook dmg/loss, monsters targeting them bc they are glass cannons* and they know the martials will take many turns to bring down, etc.) Maybe it'll end up that Wizard roughly keeps up with martials when the GM is 'Wiz friendly', but they will struggle otherwise.

I need to see all this in play but that's what my eyes tell me rn. I had the same misgivings in 5e and it turned out to be true - since almost everything goes thru HP in 5e, the Barbarian that resists all damage is basically unkillable and so the monsters are best off killing the (low AC low HP) rogue and Wiz that are needling them from behind (which they can and do because like PF2 movement is much easier).

*glass pistols at least?

If the enemy spend actions attacking, moving in the web or to avoid the web instead of attacking a PC then the spell did the job.

An enemy attacking a web is an enemy that takes a negative 5 when it attacks you if it even gets to you at all.

LOL I just realized it's a 3 action cast. You all are free to take it but that is one weak spell and waste of a slot or spell known IMO.

Let's see...

10ft burst, difficult terrain, if fails the save -10 speed.

Average speed is 25ft, to move in difficult needs 10ft, so you can only move 2 squares in one action, to cross the spell area you need to move 4 squares so it needs to spend 2 actions to get out of the difficult terrain alone.

If the enemy fails the save it's -10 speed, meaning that together with the difficult terrain the enemy can only move 1 square, that means that even if they spend 3 actions they can't get out of the web area in that round.

75% of squares are on the perimeter anyway so no Difficult Terrain need be crossed - once out of the web you no longer even suffer the -10 speed penalty! *If* you got unlucky and failed your save and are at center, 1 action to do damage frees the next square over and away you go.

In a chase situation, you were better off running for 2 actions than casting Web to delay foes.

I mean you could contrive a circumstance where Web is useful but it ain't likely to happen and plus the saves go your way, Like for plugging up corridors and missile firing an extra round against stupid foes who won't wait a minute around the corner for the spell to end, don't have missiles themselves, aren't otherwise immune to the spell, fail their saves, and so on.

I am surprised the Conjurer gets so well off! Perhaps just in comparison to the others? I just worked through some signature spells from 1e. Web got heavily nerfed, even a success is not really a... success. What is -10 ft to speed good for? Stinking cloud got also hit hard. I mean, the ongoing sickness after leaving the cloud deserved to be banned. But there is no real sickness any more. Just a ridiculous -1 on a failure. And last but not least, tiny hut is gone. But that wasn't meant to be the combat spell it was always used as, right? :)

Web is just sad and nerfed in all dimensions. A tiny 10ft burst of difficult terrain that *if* you luck out and they fail their save reduces speed by -10 for 1 whole round? Wooo, look out I am the mighty quadratic Wizard! I can do this again tomorrow, so shudder in despair! ;)

Has anyone looked at the specialists so far? I think some of them really struggle because of heightening issues and not enough spell variety obsoleting their early bonus spells or making them just kind of suck.

Don't forget Abjuration. Speaking of which ... weirdly Protection (from Evil) is no longer Arcane, and is Uncommon. So ... strange, some of the decisions made. Overall, very few Arcane-only spells i.e. nothing very special about Wizard spells.

Not even complaining about the "Narrative Control" side of things. Been a while since I've seen them mentioned in this thread. I'm talking straight up numbers for killing stuff in combat: The damage of blasts, the power of summons, the duration/power of buffs/debuffs. Things you can quantify with other classes.

I can live with Knock and...

Speaking of spell dmg, the below DPR (if I'm reading it right) points to spell dmg being weak (considering limited spell slots, and the fact some require a hit *and* a failed save):

I realize that's single target so I'm more thinking the single target dmg spells like Disintegrate.

Invisibility makes any character sneak better or at least on par with any rogue.

Kind of. Sound is a thing, Rog can get Invis pretty easily too and is better than Wiz by far if so, at hi levels See Invis is super common on monsters (etc.)

Save or Suck spells can end encounters quicker than any martial ever could etc.

Yes true but it does have to pass the gates of Save, Spell Resistance, Immunities, and ofc the caster can't be disrupted. IME this happened but was not the norm and bosses usually had protections.

I've seen just as many times where e.g. a Paladin will crit for like 175 pts of damage and 1-shot a boss, no one ever really said that invalidated the wizard.

Anyway I don't deny caster supremacy happened (although IME CoDZilla was the real problem not Wizards, talking CRB here don't own all splats), but I am leaning on they overnerfed the Wizard in PF2E - will know for sure after some solid game-time with it.

What effect does the Noisy Armor Trait have on Stealth Check?

I couldn’t seem to find it in the rule book.

Thanks.

Yep this looks like an error. Also it only references Noisy in Exploration mode, which makes no sense as players will try to Stealth in combat too!

I may have this completely wrong, but isn't the material component the only one with the "manipulate" trait? So it's the only bit of casting that would provoke an AoO.

(I know AoOs aren't anything like as big a deal as in PF1 but still nice to avoid)

Like I said, still going through the rules so I may be completely off here (I also did the playtest so my head hasn't caught up with the changes yet).

Somatic also has the Manipulate trait :(

Yeah I was indeed looking at this as a way for the Wiz to survive early levels, for those (hopefully rare) occasions that foes break through the front line.

BTW, this is the 1st version of D&D to accurately mechanically represent Eric from the D&D Cartoon! I mean, my hypothetical Wiz character would be whimpering from behind his shield as the ogre strikes in exactly the same way ;)

Arachnofiend wrote:

Yes, wizards got nerfed. This is fine because the 3.5 Wizard ranks towards the top of classes in any RPG that really needed a nerf.

Don't play wizards much huh? Lowest hit points, little to no armor, worst saving throws, no useful weapon skills, no skills for that matter, and every GM aiming for thew wizard first. Far from needing a nerf they need some boosting to be on par with other classes. A low level wizard should be able to at least come close to damage and defense when compared to a cleric or fighter of similar level. At 2nd level a 1ed wizard does around 1d8 in a round IF they use a crossbow, a 2nd level fighter has a d10-d12 plus several bonuses from stat and feats. Once we get into the mid range and up the wizard is only powerful IF the martial characters DON'T run up and stand toe to toe with the enemy, making it a choice of doing nothing or blasting your own party in the bargain.

This is interesting to me because I've seen such variance on how GMs run Wizards (how they do/don't gun for them, grapple/disrupt spells, hold them accountable to rules, threaten vs. spellbooks, control scribing time, etc.) So I've seen Wizards be insanely powerful when 'left to their own devices' at some tables, and back-benchers next to the martials when pinned down (using RAW) by GMs that have the time/inclination. Across all 3.x/PF and different groups and years of gaming. Now, I'm talking Core here.

What I will say is IME CoDZilla was definitely nuts. Wizards had more weaknesses. Druids walking in with a Huge Companion Spinosaur as good as the fighter, plus spells almost as good as the Wiz, plus Wildshape into whatever convenient animal/elemental form or just turn into a flea to get anywhere ... tough to GM that ;)

Well in PF1 your touch attacks were made with your attack roll, which was much lower than a full BAB martial.

In PF2 you have to hit the full AC but you roll with spell attack, which is based on your spell profiency,...

Good point, but Touch ACs were SO low (14 or lower often, at high levels) that it was usually an auto-hit IME. I haven't run the numbers but I don't think (purely head-simming) the improvement in Wizard 'BAB' vs. PF1 makes up for going against PF2 ACs in the 30-40s.

Disintegrate is actually really strong, because the assumption is you're casting True Strike first on a hopefully debuffed target (flat-footed for -2 circumstance to AC is easy, another -1 or -2 status penalty isn't hard), and if you crit you bump up the success level on the save (which is hopefully suffering at least a -1 or -2 status penalty). So on a crit hit a successful save is turned into a failure, and a failure is turned into a critical failure (and double damage). You can whiff, but the potential is there for mega damage if you take the time to maximize it.

I guess maybe they balanced these spells assuming True Strike (lvl1 slot), Disintegrate is worth it but not Ray of Enfeeble.

But good suggestion on the TS+Dis, that is good gravy (although I wish TS still gave +20 for the crits!) I wonder how that compares dmg-wise to Fighter offense at that level with similar buffing (i.e. a lvl 1 slot).

Tangential to the conversation but I've been snooping the spells and some options that jump out as really bad are the 'hit with a spell attack vs AC and then target gets a save (usually Fort)'. Eg. Ray of Enfeeble or Disintegrate.

Unlike PF1 you are trying to hit full AC here not touch. Then defeat the best save in the game. Then, the effects even if both those gates are crossed don't look impressive enough to justify the <20% (my guesstimate) chance to pull it off.

Like for Enfeeble, you'd be lucky to just hit and get Enfeebled 1 on the target for 1 min., which is worse than Bane which can hit multiple foes and no attack roll required.

It almost seems like they balanced these spells *assuming* a hit (like in PF1), whereas that is far from given vs. full AC. Just some thoughts, I haven't played it out yet.

Anyone who tries to argue wizards are just as good as fighters hasn't done the comparison.

It looks like Casters are the low-level mook-killers now. Rules like Incapacitation and Sustain, Save-every-round, etc. are all working to make spells limited to lower level foes or easily disrupted. The higher dmg on some spells I believe just paces higher PF2 monster HP.

I suppose that would be fine but the nature of PF is that *every* class murders low-level mooks (beat AC by 10 crits, multi-attack MAP vs. low AC, etc.) So it's not really a fun niche to be relegated to IMO.

It looks like HL fighters can average like 60+ dmg/hit, based on other threads, which is like Disintegrate *if* opponent fails save, for 2 actions and a 7th lvl slot.

Anyway, bears testing out, it may be the arcane casters are best in a utility role, buffing the martials in combat and staying out of the way.

Dominate: The change to target and dropping it to a 6th level spell means you can control monsters as early as level 11. With the 4 degrees mean even if the enemy makes their save they're still stunned until you prepare spells again.

Stunned 1 just means lose 1 action (of 3) and it's gone, I believe.

Good finds although I caution that (I think, based on PCs having more HP) HP are much higher in PF2, so the small increased damage to many spells might just be treading water. Not sure.

Seems like no Prof is required for Raise Shield, and a Human Wiz can easily get Shield Block Gen Feat.

A wizard can use a shield with 1 free hand to cast, using Raise Shield (+2AC) then a 2 action Cast, then Shield Block as a reaction. Seems pretty good for staying alive?

Am I missing something? I've only quickly skimmed my brand-new CRB ;)

Definitely nerfed. But in a non-linear way that will take alot of playtime to get a handle on. For ex. Sleep , which on the surface is much weaker in combat, but now has no HP limit so has more longevity and utility use. Ditto no more Charm Person /Dominate Person - it's any creature now.

On the plus side there is no more spell resistance so that's one less gate to surmount to push a spell thru.

Slightly tangential, but having played 5E for a couple years I found the system to be really elegant and simple, with one major flaw that has me looking at PF2 with excitement: the monsters. 5E is easy To DM and the classes are cool & balanced, but I found the monsters really mostly ... boring. Almost everything is a bag of HP that does x HP damage, like even poison does HP damage etc., with only a few exceptions. When everything goes through HP ablation combat gets predictable as the Barbarian slowly sees his health bar melt and paces himself accordingly etc. I found myself missing those surprises and wonky effects that can force the party to switch tactics in a scramble or even flee despite being at decent HP levels.

The conditions under debate in this thread are a part of that and what I’ve seen of the monsters so far in PF2 looks promising indeed. I still feel like I have to go page by page in the 5E MM and add spells/abilities, especially to demons and the like - totally doable but a bit of a chore.

I also think the "LFtr/QWiz, Angel Summoner" crowd has taken things way too far in the last 5+ years, the net effect of which (IMO) damaged D&D by bringing on the 4e knee-jerk.

Here's the thing: wizard spells always look meaner on paper than they actually play. Saves, SR, ER, immunities, allies in the area of effect, concentration checks, bad rolls, etc. All these contribute to making spells (IME) rarely being as nasty in the fog of war as on paper.

I am saddened to say that the 5e Wiz looks like a win for the LF/QW side. Spells look weak, already, on-paper. Spells don't scale. Saves look easier. Less spell slots. Scrolls aren't as good. Mirror image has 2 images. Etc. Yet Wiz still gets d4 HD, no armor, and still has a spellbook to worry about. Basically, the weaknesses of 1e with the spells markedly scaled back. At-will cantrips does not make up for this ;)

Now, this is a cursory examination of an early test, but the philosophy of Wiz nerf-batting seems ingrained (the reason for Monte's departure?). This 5e is sure making me appreciate PF more every day ;)