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The argument shouldn't be over, "Are those changes enough?" It should be over, "Are those changes too much?"
Because they're a lot. I don't know if they're too much, but they're a lot. Sorcerer's meant to be the main 4-slot caster--their whole shtick is, "I only have a few tricks, but I can hammer them over and over again". Giving wizards 4 fully customizable slots and a spontaneous spell would blur those lines a little and greatly expand their existing advantages while reducing their key weak points.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, of course! I just think we should be careful about letting the Overton Window drift too far. That kind of change should be on the further end of what wizards could get, not the baseline.
I know it's an unpopular opinion lately, but wizards are pretty darn strong. They do at times feel a little clunky, but... well, this comparison won't help a lot of people, but I see them as sort of like the Heavy Weapons Guy from the fighting game Team Fortress 2. The Heavy is meant to be a sluggish tank, a guy who can put out massive damage with his minigun while holding a relatively small, sheltered position. He's a very vulnerable class who struggles with versatility, but buffing him incautiously would make him one of the deadliest classes in the game for his ability to secure a choke point.
I'm excited for wizards to get a bit of a buff, though, or at least for the Divine list to be made a bit less competitive with the Arcane list for versatility.
Given that Sorcerer is pick-a-list with better focus powers (mostly) and better feats, I don't think it's that big of a deal. Wizard has only a few feats that are good, a couple of which are better for Sorcerer than Wizard due to Charisma-based casting, for example, and can't even be an Occultist spellcaster like a Sorcerer can. And Sorcerer has some feats that Wizards wish they could have themselves, but can't for obvious reasons.
Also, some of those changes are proposed as a result of the changes from school spellcasting, so it's something that would have to be addressed regardless of balance concerns. Before, when Wizards had specific proficiencies with weapons, it was an annoyance, but given Wizards aren't a martial class, not many people cared. Tacking that on now to their available spell lists/slots is even worse given that they are meant to be a spellcaster class, one not restricted by spell knowledge (compared to Sorcerer).
It was something that a thesis like Spell Blending band-aided to prevent from being forced to prepare garbage like 1st level Magic Missile as a 13th level spellcaster, for example, but making it become restricted to certain spells makes this apparent problem even more glaring when new spells get released later.
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The Schools being changed into something so anodyne they look like they came from an undergraduate college curriculum is depressing.
If Paizo is really that starved for people who are good at naming things, call Onyx Path. They always come up with weird, evocative names for stuff, but I think you can do better than "School of Battle Magic/Civic Wizardry"
Okay, this is a super late reply, but I've got a fun story to add here.
I'm one of Onyx Path's freelancers. We love those weird evocative names. But they also have a downside: they are harder for new players to track and comprehend.
Now, that may not apply to you personally Leon, I know several people who don't skip a beat with them, but I also know many people who find them obtuse and difficult. The solution is to have multiple names for our splats, some werid and evocative, other straightforwards.
That's why Ashem Mummies are also known as the Jackles, the Ferrymen, or Anpu's Torch. I love the Hirfathra Hissu, but trying to remember their First Tongue name is a pain, so I just call them Bone Shadows. That means something *to me*, but it means nothing to someone picking up Werewolf the Forsaken for the first time. We can imbue meaning into the plain english name, but each splat (at least in Chronicles of Darkness) gets multiple pages in core explaining what they are about. And more often then not get at least another chapter in a suppliment.
That's not going to happen for School in Pathfinder, so I think the School of _______ format works well enough. They could be jazzed up a bit, but for the role they play and the information they need to communicate, they fit. Coming up with a more escoteric name could risk losing clarity or require more wordcount that could be better used elsewhere.
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Tell Dave to revive Mage the Awakening!
I'm one of Onyx Path's freelancers.
Spoilers since it is off-topic
While I worked on Dave for Tome of the Pentacle, I definitely don't have that kinda pull! XD
But hopefully Paradox comes to their senses and lets Dave and/or Onyx Path write more books. But if not, keep an eye on the Storyteller's Vault. I know he has more he wants to write!
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They said the thesis is staying.
Is spell sub still a thesis, always felt like it should have been a feat or a baseline class feature. Real feels bad thesis for me because one of my favorite things to do is switch out spells, but not really fun enough (I guess that's how I want to word it not sure) to be felt like a worthwhile choice.
Sigh, hard to put a feeling to words. :/
Either way,
That and better and more fun focus spells and I'll be over the moon.
They said the thesis is staying.Is spell sub still a thesis, always felt like it should have been a feat or a baseline class feature. Real feels bad thesis for me because one of my favorite things to do is switch out spells, but not really fun enough (I guess that's how I want to word it not sure) to be felt like a worthwhile choice.
Sigh, hard to put a feeling to words. :/
Either way,
That and better and more fun focus spells and I'll be over the moon.
they moved it from being a feat to a thesis from the original playtest, so it is probably staying there.
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You could easily have a thousand schools of magic all over the Inner Sea. They do not have to be large, formal schools. They could be "Lucky's Legerdemain & Lore," or "Master Mikhail's Dojo of Mysticism." They could be really large formal academies as well. Anything is possible. There could be on major school in a city and 15 smaller dojo-style schools or any combination or lack of combination.
The 3+1 slot system can be maintained by saying school trained wizards acquire the extra slot whereas generalists retain their current slots. We could also say the generalists are self-taught or traditional wizard-apprentice types of wizards.
Schools could offer all kinds of spells and have a few higher spell ranks spells be original. Or not at all. Anything is possible. I am in favor of having as few restrictions on this aspect as possible so the writers can be as creative as they can with this. This is also a way for writers to create new spells for schools in their adventures for a specific school.
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You could easily have a thousand schools of magic all over the Inner Sea. They do not have to be large, formal schools. They could be "Lucky's Legerdemain & Lore," or "Master Mikhail's Dojo of Mysticism." They could be really large formal academies as well. Anything is possible. There could be on major school in a city and 15 smaller dojo-style schools or any combination or lack of combination.
The 3+1 slot system can be maintained by saying school trained wizards acquire the extra slot whereas generalists retain their current slots. We could also say the generalists are self-taught or traditional wizard-apprentice types of wizards.
Schools could offer all kinds of spells and have a few higher spell ranks spells be original. Or not at all. Anything is possible. I am in favor of having as few restrictions on this aspect as possible so the writers can be as creative as they can with this. This is also a way for writers to create new spells for schools in their adventures for a specific school.
I see you too went to Upstairs Absalom Wizard College!
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hope old school and thesis are both gone and combine into something more interesting
new school are very interesting concept but may have narrative difficulty if paizo want to add new school
would it need to come with world changing event like return of whispering tyrant or runelord everytime a new school added
or some existing school in the setting suddenly change everything they ever teached
maybe turn arcane bond turn into focus spell that give wizard lower level spell slot in combat
basically wellspring but much weaker and stable
It has been confirmed that Thesis stays.
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I see you too went to Upstairs Absalom Wizard College!
...and now I want to see some sort of social benefit/connection/implication for people going to the same college. It would probably be pure flavor rather than anything else, but it is a point of commonality, and the fact that that other guy over there want to your alma mater feels like it should be at least potentially significant.
Like, you could totally even have an adventure that's like a street-tier Strength of Thousands. The players all start off as level 1 wizards associated with this one grubby little wizard college, trying to save and/or prove the value of their school. Often you'd get some of your quest rewards in the form of benefits for the school, which would then apply to all of the players... and of course there's the entertainment value of trying to figure out how to run a campaign when every player in the party is a wizard.
Not really worth doing as a longer piece, because the "no, really, everyone is a wizard" is going to turn off some players, but potentially entertaining enough for a one-shot.
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I mean, "I cast spells that are good at blowing things up" is more in tune with "what the player who would choose this option wants to do" than "I cast evocation spells."
Like "Dancing Lights" was evocation and "Incendiary Fog" was conjuration and I'm pretty sure the "War Mage" training would emphasize the latter more than the former.
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In other words, as far as niches go we still have the Universalist, evokers (battle magic), transmuters (protean form), and others right? Even if they are rough analogs, they are still similar roles and should be mechanically similar?Not quite.
As it currently stands currently Evocation Wizards can get an extra slot of every level (except 10th) to cast any evocation spell that they know from the entire list of arcane spells. The new system appears to only grant a small list of spells closer to what sorcerers bloodline and cleric deities get.
So the wizard is losing a tons of versatility (what was its bread and butter). For a single unique spell and the flavor of "I went to college" that was already provided by the fact that they got a thesis and had it all over their feats.
To be clear, we have not been informed of any changes in the total number of castings, if anything reading between the lines of exactly what they said with regard to slots and the variety of spells; it sounds like the slot will still be there but that the spell in it will be constrained to the spells off the specialized list, so you're always carrying an extra spell of each level like before, but from a narrower list of spells. I say this because they were talking about having fewer options because of the school change than 'everything of X school' and the only thing on the Wizard that actually could apply to is the school slot.
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My speculation: There will be some "suggestion" schools that include a bundle of spells but at the end of the day it is going to be something along the lines of the following:
- Choose one of the following Focus Spells, X, Y, Z, etc
- You add one Spell from the Highest Tier Slot you can cast (they're replacing Level with Tier, right?) at 1st Level and every 2 Levels afterward. This is a School Spell for you. Each day when you prepare Spells you automatically Prepare one additional copy of this Spell in addition to the remainder of your Slots. You may exchange or consume this Slot as you would with any other Spell for the purpose of other Wizard Abilities such as Spell Substitution and similar Abilities granted via Feats or your Wizard Thesis.
- You may spontaneously substitute any Prepared Spell for any School Spell of the same Spell Slot Tier.
In short, if they're going to do away with the existing packages of Spells for the Schools I think that they are NOT going to make it HARDER on themselves by forcing out dozens of different new lists, instead, they'll have each Wizard make their own School Spell lists while also providing a handful of suggested lists much like the example Character builds Paizo creates for Classes in their various RPGs. You'll build your own much like how Spontanous Caster builds their own Signature Spell list.
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I'll say that I seriously doubt that they're going to make the Wizard weaker. I think that some of the earlier suggestions we were seeing in this thread went kind of overboard, especially if taken as a "yes and also", but... well, Paizo is good at what they do. I'm quite certain that they've been paying attention to which classes are struggling a bit, and wizard... is on that list. Now, I wouldn't really expect a huge boost, but I'd be seriously surprised if they don't come out of this process clearly better off than they went in. If they're taking away a bit of flexibility with the Schools feature (which to my eye seems likely but not certain), I'm pretty sure they're going to hand that value back with interest somewhere else.
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I'll say that I seriously doubt that they're going to make the Wizard weaker. I think that some of the earlier suggestions we were seeing in this thread went kind of overboard, especially if taken as a "yes and also", but... well, Paizo is good at what they do. I'm quite certain that they've been paying attention to which classes are struggling a bit, and wizard... is on that list. Now, I wouldn't really expect a huge boost, but I'd be seriously surprised if they don't come out of this process clearly better off than they went in. If they're taking away a bit of flexibility with the Schools feature (which to my eye seems likely but not certain), I'm pretty sure they're going to hand that value back with interest somewhere else.
That's basically what we are paying for to get Simple Weapon Proficiency; same de facto thesis choices (nothing new or changed), forced school slots (which seems more limiting than before, even if it's necessary because of the OGL), and probably still having the same bad school focus spells.
As far as I'm concerned, Wizard was pretty bad before this, and I don't think they'll come out any better, even if they're given Simple Weapon Proficiency to compensate, since all that does is fix stupid legacy rules (which by RAW does not apply to the OGL version).
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I think "the focus spells are good now" but "the list of extra spells you get with your specialist slot is smaller" is a reasonable tradeoff.
Like one of the things that having a list of specialist spells that's manageable does is it helps train people who haven't been playing prepared casters forever "what kind of spells are good to have in your daily set." Since assuredly there were some "trap" options if you're just preparing "conjuration spells" and perhaps the best options were in the backmatter of APs or something since the list was ever-increasing.
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That's basically what we are paying for to get Simple Weapon Proficiency; same de facto thesis choices (nothing new or changed), forced school slots (which seems more limiting than before, even if it's necessary because of the OGL), and probably still having the same bad school focus spells.
As far as I'm concerned, Wizard was pretty bad before this, and I don't think they'll come out any better, even if they're given Simple Weapon Proficiency to compensate, since all that does is fix stupid legacy rules (which by RAW does not apply to the OGL version).
I don't know why you'd expect that. Do you feel that Paizo has at any point showed themselves to be incompetent in balancing, or unwilling to listen to playtest feedback? I mean, they straight-up said that they considered the last 4 years to be an extended playtest that they're using to make adjustments for this remaster... and based on that feedback, even I can tell that the Wizard could use some extra love. Not, like, a huge amount, but some.
I think that the current situation of the Wizard is an artifact of the fact that they had to cram All The Classes out the door all at once to get things started, they hadn't had the same level of experience with fine-tuning the balance, and they were (justifiably) concerned about the possibility of making casters in general and wizards in particular OP. So the wizard came out of things a bit undertuned. At the same time, Paizo was trying not to do the errata thing too much, especially when not reprinting, and the Wizard wasn't that bad. It was playable. It was better than alchemist, which was also playable (for players with the right mindset). So Alchemist got some nudges (because it really was kind of suffering) but Wizard wasn't quite down at that level.
Well, now they're pulling everything out and changing things up, and in this shining moment, making changes is easy. So... I expect the wizard that comes out of this to look pretty much like what we'd expect to see if the old wizard had been the playtest version, and they'd gotten the feedback they've gotten on it... except that four years of feedback will have left them with an even more precise idea of how far to tweak it. Old wizard was a bit undertuned (not as undertuned as playtest classes often are, but still a bit below par) and we should expect that overall it's going to get a nudge upwards.
Simple Weapon Proficiency is basically a ribbon. It's not like the staff is a bad weapon, as simple weapons go. It is worth no points. i expect that the schools will indeed have pretty seriously limited lists, and that's going to be a real (but small) reduction in wizard flexibility, so that's worth a bit. They're going to have a number of spells, feats, and so on tuned up from "terrible" to "not bad", just like everyone else is. This is also pretty much free, on a combination of "everyone is doing it" and "it doesn't really increase raw power, it just gives you more viable options."
So there's going to be a small-to-moderate but meaningful chunk of upgrade left after that, and I'd expect that it's going to come in some form that the blasters in particular will like, since that's the bit where wizards in particular are suffering. I'm going to guess something like...
- One or two especially blasty schools are going to get particularly nice blasty focus spells - not OP or anything, but just really nice. Satisfying.
- A smattering of the more blaster-focused Arcane spells are going to get a bit of a nudge upward, especially Arcane-only ones.
- A few feats sprinkled lightly through their new class feat list that will make blasters immediately think "Why yes, I do want that." Again, nothing particularly OP. Just... something to look forward to.
Then add on the fact that we know they're going to be rejiggering attack cantrips (best guess - bring a number of other attack cantrips up to a level where they can compete with EArc on quality). I think that, when we finally walk out of this one, Wizards in general are going to have a bit more spring in their step, and blaster wizards will be downright smiling. Again, I don't expect anything huge... but I do expect enough adjustments in the aggregate to move the needle in a meaningful way, and make the overall play experience a lot nicer.
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I think "the focus spells are good now" but "the list of extra spells you get with your specialist slot is smaller" is a reasonable tradeoff.
Why do we need a "reasonable tradeoff" when the issue is part of the wizard kit being garbage? Paizo can simply make the bad thing better without being forced to insert some compensatory amount of misery somewhere else.
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fwiw I agree with Temperans. I don't know what the devs' mechanical strategy is here but I'm having a hard time imagining how this is gonna be anything but a more limited and harder to maintain version of what we already have. They're removing the reliance on Trait-based organization but keeping the organization; that's like trying to color-code something without using colors. If the goal is to flavor a wizard based on application-of-knowledge, leaving the current system in place and adding Feats seems like more bang for less buck.
If they HAVE to change this anyway cause of the OGL, why not just rename the existing 8 schools? Or hell if you were planning on going through all the spells anyway to curate new school lists, why not just add some more schools to the existing 8, right now? Here's another option: make spells able to have multiple old-school traits so something can be Conjuration AND Evocation (like we do with Traditions). Or some combo of the above.
It's hard to believe they didn't think of this, so I can only conclude that the devs are aware of these options and must've elected to just ... not do those things. I would love to know why. Some kind of Town Hall or vlog thing regarding this decision, in much more depth, would be nice.
- Jee
Well, the tradeoff is necessary since having a list like
But as long as the school gives you at least a choice of "at least two spells you almost always want to have in a day in each spell tier" with some text like "A GM can add additional spells to this list", that is acceptable. So we need to improve something else to balance out this loss, so "the focus spells are good now" seems reasonable.
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If they HAVE to change this anyway cause of the OGL, why not just rename the existing 8 schools? Or hell if you were planning on going through all the spells anyway to curate new school lists, why not just add some more schools to the existing 8, right now? Here's another option: make spells able to have multiple old-school traits so something can be Conjuration AND Evocation (like we do with Traditions). Or some combo of the above.
It's hard to believe they didn't think of this, so I can only conclude that the devs are aware of these options and must've elected to just ... not do those things. I would love to know why. Some kind of Town Hall or vlog thing regarding this decision, in much more depth, would be nice.
- Jee
It's a long thread but the answer to "why not keep the classic schools" is as you said, D&D made up those schools and continuing to use them is a major risk in the face of Hasbro's willingness to make their ownership of their licenses everyone's problem. As for why not simply rename them and file off the serial numbers, it's my understanding that the name of something being different is relatively trivial when the flavour remains the same. For example you could never keep the drow the same and rename them to svartalfar and expect that to protect you.
As for why not just make more schools, I don't necessarily see how that's supposed to help the problem of people wanting to keep the old system unchanged as an objective universal classification or help with the fundamentally limited total number of wizard subclasses. It really only helps with the idea of the wizard bonus slot and we don't really know anything about how what's actually planned for that
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I don't know what the devs' mechanical strategy is here but I'm having a hard time imagining how this is gonna be anything but a more limited and harder to maintain version of what we already have.
I mean, it's only more limited if Paizo intentionally chooses to direct the class in a more limited way. I'm not saying that's impossible, but it's also essentially approaching the problem from the assumption that Paizo's primary goal is to hurt its players.
That's the position Temperans has invested in, but it seems just as likely that Paizo... doesn't do that at all and the updated Wizard ends up the same or purely better than before.
Well, the tradeoff is necessary since having a list like ** spoiler omitted **... under each school would make it harder to just print new schools in future books, or would consume columns that would be better used for "telling you what the school is about" kind of flavor text. If you instead put school traits on spells that wouldn't easily be future-proof for more schools later.
I mean, there's always the easy alternative of just giving wizards 4 slots no questions asked.
Why do you assume that Wizards have to "pay" for simple weapon proficiency? Are the designers so bad at their jobs that they will go "giving wizards the same proficiency as sorcerers will unbalance the game, quick, give them worse casting"? We don't know if the thesis's will change, we don't know of they will still have forced school slots, and we don't know if they will have better focus spells, but the designers aren't stupid. They might not give them a huge buff, but they are probably aware that wizards need at least a small buff. I have the feeling that they will at least try to make the wizard better. They might be too conservative, but they won't make it worse. At least not on purpose to "pay" for simple weapons.
If Simple Weapon Proficiency was free for all classes, everyone would have it. The fact that the Wizard didn't have it is indicative that it indeed has value, and has a cost associated with it. The question becomes "What does the Wizard have to give in order to get that added to their chassis?" I'm not inclined to believe that it's going to get buffed, because it's been 4 errata cycles since its release, and it hasn't changed (much) since then; meanwhile Alchemist got several proficiency changes with armor and such, so the idea that they couldn't do it before when they were doing it for other classes is BS. (Technically speaking, it probably won't change for the OGL print, this is a Remaster-specific change.)
I'm assuming that the Remaster isn't enough of a change to warrant the Wizard's features changing short of what we know is stated to change, such as the schools and the proficiencies, probably because of OGL reasons. In my opinion, Wizards getting Simple Weapon Proficiency comes at the cost of these limited new schools being implemented. The rest probably won't change, and the rest is relatively weak.
But good job strawmanning my argument to mean "Paizo is incompetent," when that's not what I am saying. I am saying Paizo doesn't find the rest of the class to be a problem, and are only changing what's problematic because of the OGL. 4 errata cycles of little to no change is proof of this concept, since this is basically just an Errata+ publication.
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If Simple Weapon Proficiency was free for all classes, everyone would have it. The fact that the Wizard didn't have it is indicative that it indeed has value, and has a cost associated with it.
That's circular logic. The mere existence of a thing does not inherently give it value.
I mean, there's always the easy alternative of just giving wizards 4 slots no questions asked.
If they did that, what would be the difference between universalists and specialists?
Since the trade off of "more drain bonded item" and "more slots" seemed reasonable to me.
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I don't know why you'd expect that. Do you feel that Paizo has at any point showed themselves to be incompetent in balancing, or unwilling to listen to playtest feedback? I mean, they straight-up said that they considered the last 4 years to be an extended playtest that they're using to make adjustments for this remaster... and based on that feedback, even I can tell that the Wizard could use some extra love. Not, like, a huge amount, but some.
I think that the current situation of the Wizard is an artifact of the fact that they had to cram All The Classes out the door all at once to get things started, they hadn't had the same level of experience with fine-tuning the balance, and they were (justifiably) concerned about the possibility of making casters in general and wizards in particular OP. So the wizard came out of things a bit undertuned. At the same time, Paizo was trying not to do the errata thing too much, especially when not reprinting, and the Wizard wasn't that bad. It was playable. It was better than alchemist, which was also playable (for players with the right mindset). So Alchemist got some nudges (because it really was kind of suffering) but Wizard wasn't quite down at that level.
Well, now they're pulling everything out and changing things up, and in this shining moment, making changes is easy. So... I expect the wizard that comes out of this to look pretty much like what we'd expect to see if the old wizard had been the playtest version, and they'd gotten the feedback they've gotten on it... except that four years of feedback will have left them with an even more precise idea of how far to tweak it. Old wizard was a bit undertuned (not as undertuned as playtest classes often are, but still a bit below par) and we should expect that overall it's going to get a nudge upwards.
Simple Weapon Proficiency is basically a ribbon. It's not like the staff is a bad weapon, as simple weapons go. It is worth no points. i expect that the schools will indeed have pretty seriously limited lists, and that's going to be a real (but small) reduction in wizard flexibility, so that's worth a bit. They're going to have a number of spells, feats, and so on tuned up from "terrible" to "not bad", just like everyone else is. This is also pretty much free, on a combination of "everyone is doing it" and "it doesn't really increase raw power, it just gives you more viable options."
So there's going to be a small-to-moderate but meaningful chunk of upgrade left after that, and I'd expect that it's going to come in some form that the blasters in particular will like, since that's the bit where wizards in particular are suffering. I'm going to guess something like...
- One or two especially blasty schools are going to get particularly nice blasty focus spells - not OP or anything, but just really nice. Satisfying.
- A smattering of the more blaster-focused Arcane spells are going to get a bit of a nudge upward, especially Arcane-only ones.
- A few feats sprinkled lightly through their new class feat list that will make blasters immediately think "Why yes, I do want that." Again, nothing particularly OP. Just... something to look forward to.Then add on the fact that we know they're going to be rejiggering attack cantrips (best guess - bring a number of other attack cantrips up to a level where they can compete with EArc on quality). I think that, when we finally walk out of this one, Wizards in general are going to have a bit more spring in their step, and blaster wizards will be downright smiling. Again, I don't expect anything huge... but I do expect enough adjustments in the aggregate to move the needle in a meaningful way, and make the overall play experience a lot nicer.
I expect it because these complaints have been brought up for years and they won't address it because it's both too much work with no apparent profit margin to gain (and no, vocal complaints from randos on an internet forum does not count as an indication of profit margin for their product), as well as because Paizo does not see these things as an issue. Seriously, prior to them announcing the Remaster, when have they stated that they underperformed and are implementing changes to the class to put them up to snuff? They did this for the Alchemist. Not for the Wizard, though. If they were, Paizo would have changed them. Also, the Remaster isn't a playtest because it requires surveys and input from outside sources (we have no say in what we think about the apparent changes, especially since we don't precisely know what they are until it releases), so saying they will listen to playtest feedback as an argument for them changing things in the Remaster is irrelevant.
I'm more of the opinion that the Wizard was held closer to tradition than most other classes, which is ironic since they nerfed the ever-loving hell out of the OP-ness of them (even if it was relatively justified), and the proficiencies they had were evidence of this, since it was a 1:1 tread of the proficiencies from 1E. Same with Rogues, Bards, etc. Them changing proficiencies is basically them breaking from tradition (AKA OGL allegations), since they had plenty of ample opportunity to do so in the errata, but didn't because they likely didn't see an issue with it. And since Alchemist got proficiency changes in errata, the excuse of "They couldn't do it in an errata" is BS.
I do not expect them to buff blasting significantly because martials are the damage dealers, not the spellcasters, so building spellcasters to be damage-dealing means they can't infringe on martial toes. It's why they curtailed some of the blasting buffs during the playtest. It's also especially important when it's considered that above-level threats are usually spellcasters with some relatively potent blast spells with DCs that result in either failures or critical failures (unless they are highest-attribute class-boosted saves).
I am 90% sure that one of the devs has said that wizards not getting simple weapons was for legacy reasons, not for balance reasons. However I can not find that quote, so I'll leave it at that. However, all of us can agree that wizards getting simple weapons will effect balance so negligibly, that its not really a consideration. What have sorcerers given up for their simple weapons?
They also didn't buff warpreists, druids, or oracles, yet we are directly getting buffs. So wizards getting a slight boost in power is not out of the question,
We can all agree that simple weapons are not worth a substantially more limited selection of spells for its bonus spell slot. We can also agree that most of the wizard focus spells are extremally weak and do not see use very often. Paizo probably knows this, and they probably don't want wizards to become weaker, nor do they want to waste print space on focus spells that won't be used. So why wouldn't they do some slight buffs? maybe they will have a limited bonus spell slot, but keeping the useless focus spells would be either incompetence or laziness. I do not know what else to call it. And I do think that better focus spells will make this a net benefit over a more limited bonus slot.
Sorcerer had the same simple weapon proficiencies as they had in 1st edition, so I don't see how they had to "give up" anything when the argument of "it's legacy proficiencies" can easily apply all the same to the Sorcerer.
And why do you think that is? The obvious answer is "Because Paizo doesn't see a problem." Paizo doesn't see the Wizard being reviewed as "pretty meh, Bard is better in every aspect" as a bad thing.
Refer to the previous paragraph to the answer behind that question. "Slight buffs" don't track for the effort and editation behind it if Paizo doesn't find them to be problematic to begin with. Again, I suspect the changes to the Rogue and Wizard (and Bard) proficiencies are because Paizo wants to avoid OGL allegations (because using legacy things like this risks OGL lawsuits), not because they think the classes genuinely need those boosts.
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I know it sounds silly but I'm excited about the concept, because somehow I never thought of changing up a wizard school of thought magic to be more than just the spell categories and this makes me very inspired to think something up if any of my players in my first GM attempt soon wants to play a wizard. It's silly because I know I could've just thought this up myself, but I'm just not very creative on my own and this helps spark my little tiny flame.
Now I dunno about the mechanics and I have no horse in that race.