Well, per the threads title, I've been mandated by my group, that the next character I play has to be a caster of some sort. This is not wholly unexpected or unwanted by me. I've played martial types over the last 20 years or so, I guess it's time to muddle around with these things called spells...
I've perused the various classes, looked at spells and it has basically made my head hurt. I simply have no idea where to start.
How does a caster n00b get it going? Does anyone have a few tips or a primer they'd like to share? On first thought, I wouldn't mind going with a summoner, but again, it's all Greek to me.
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Honestly, if you can get your head around the math and building rules for an eidolon a summoner is a pretty good option if you have a lot of experience with martial characters.
Besides from that I would recommend giving paladin a shot, I mean... just as long as you don't have a problem role-playing a decent well meaning person.
For a first time spell caster who seems a bit lost, I recommend playing a spontaneous caster. They remove a lot of the complication by simply taking spells known and then being able to cast any of those spells as long as you have the right level spell slot available.
A Summoner is definitely a good choice if that class interests you, and the Eidolon can easily fill your personal martialist void =P
Honestly, if you can get your head around the math and building rules for an eidolon a summoner is a pretty good option if you have a lot of experience with martial characters.
Besides from that I would recommend giving paladin a shot, I mean... just as long as you don't have a problem role-playing a decent well meaning person.
I would agree with this fellow here. Don't let the spells fool you with the Summoner. This guy can decently play tank with his eidolon. This may not be what your group wants you to do, though. =P
Paladins are nifty. If anyone gives you trouble because you're not playing it absolutely unbending, remember this: Its abilities are not called "Smite Chaos" and "Lawful Aura".
In general, though, as an easy step towards casterland, paladins and rangers are good starts since they still are awesome at melee combat. If you feel like challenging yourself, choose something arcane flavored so you have a ton of options at your disposal. Manipulating the battlefield can be just as satisfying as dropping an enemy to negative twice its Constitution.
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I'd suggest going with one of the spontaneous casters. It removes one of the complications involved with playing a full caster.
Oracle or Sorcerer are the obvious choices, but bard, summoner, or inquisitor are all solid choices too, and can back their spells up with some martial prowess.
Personally I'd recommend looking at the large selection of Sorcerer bloodlines and pick one that strikes your fancy. Get your charisma as high as you can, and pick spells that seem versatile and useful to you. I personally recommend a good blend of buffs, debuffs, and conjuration, with a couple of illusions and evocation blasts thrown in.
If you have no idea whatsoever what to go for, do a quick Google search for "Pathfinder Sorcerer spell selection" without the quotes for some tips.
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This is absolutely essential reading for any caster, but especially wizards. While it hasn't been updated with the APG yet, and it's aimed at arcane casters, it's still really valuable reading, explaining the difference between a typical "blaster" mage, and the far more valuable, but more subtle, battlefield controller.
Too many people see the arcane caster in the group as the "artillery", and the divine as the "healer", where, when well-player, neither is true.
Clerics might be a good fit between your comfort zone and new territory since they fight pretty well, yet have spells to give them new options. You can choose spells as needed from the entire list, as opposed to the somewhat arcane process of choosing prohibited schools and what spells you know like wizards have to. The class features may seem like a lot to deal with, but they're pretty intuitive. Domain choices are huge. For opitimization, look for granted powers and providing spells not on the standard list, i.e. Druid or Wizard spells.For both reasons I love Travel Domain. Otherwise, go for flavor. Enjoy.
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The witch uses both arcane and divine so you can dabble in both. The hexes add buff/debuff to the mix. Looks to be the best new class since bard.
If you want an easier time the spontaneous casters (sorc, bard)are nice since they dont need to prep or have spell book. If you are worried about not having useful spells UMD does wonders for making up for lack of spells known.
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Prepared casters force you to learn all the spells in their list (cleric, druid) or spellbook (wizard, witch) to decide what to prepare for the day.
Sorcerors, Bards, Oracles, Summoners are spontaneous. This means you're only struggling with new spells when you gain a level - and can ask for help and advice much more easily when picking a spell known.
I like bards because you get good buffs and controlling spells, but can participate in fights well, but any spontaneous caster might be easiest for a first try.
Good luck!
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The witch uses both arcane and divine so you can dabble in both. The hexes add buff/debuff to the mix. Looks to be the best new class since bard.
Well, technically that's not true, all of the witches spells are arcane. It is just simply that they have access to some spells that were traditionally only on divine lists like the cure spells... but that is a nitpick.
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For a first time spell caster who seems a bit lost, I recommend playing a spontaneous caster. They remove a lot of the complication by simply taking spells known and then being able to cast any of those spells as long as you have the right level spell slot available.
Oh dear god no. Spontaneous casters maybe easier in play, but they are oh so easy to screw up beyond repair. I would recommend either the druid or cleric instead. Try the spell out and just find what works for you.
Well, per the threads title, I've been mandated by my group, that the next character I play has to be a caster of some sort. This is not wholly unexpected or unwanted by me. I've played martial types over the last 20 years or so, I guess it's time to muddle around with these things called spells...
I've perused the various classes, looked at spells and it has basically made my head hurt. I simply have no idea where to start.
How does a caster n00b get it going? Does anyone have a few tips or a primer they'd like to share? On first thought, I wouldn't mind going with a summoner, but again, it's all Greek to me.
Do you hate the book keeping? Why not one caster in all this time?
Curious demi-liches want to know.
Oh dear god no. Spontaneous casters maybe easier in play, but they are oh so easy to screw up beyond repair. I would recommend either the druid or cleric instead. Try the spell out and just find what works for you.For a first time spell caster who seems a bit lost, I recommend playing a spontaneous caster. They remove a lot of the complication by simply taking spells known and then being able to cast any of those spells as long as you have the right level spell slot available.
I agree. If you pick the wrong spells, then you only have the wrong spells for a day.
+ 1 to the idea of Cleric or Druid.
Spontaneous casters can be pretty cool, but as Cold Napalm said, they're also easy to screw up. I have played plenty of clerics and a few wizards along with a lot of melee brutes, and I find spontaneous casters more challenging to write correctly.
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Oh dear god no. Spontaneous casters maybe easier in play, but they are oh so easy to screw up beyond repair. I would recommend either the druid or cleric instead. Try the spell out and just find what works for you.For a first time spell caster who seems a bit lost, I recommend playing a spontaneous caster. They remove a lot of the complication by simply taking spells known and then being able to cast any of those spells as long as you have the right level spell slot available.
Yes, but no player being told to play a spellcaster by his group should be expected to level the character without assistance or advice from the rest of the party. And I find the most difficult part about playing a spellcaster for the first time is dealing with time limits and fellow player expectations during a gaming session, rather than choosing your spells without assistance from friends while leveling.
Prepared casters require reasonable ability to judge the usefulness of a spell during a game session, as the caster draws up spells known for the day with an eye toward the party's current situation. this gives the prepared caster great versatility and power - but requires much more system mastery than playing a spontaneous caster.
Druids are quite complex as a class, actually. You have to keep track of the entire spell list and choose which spells to memorize in a given day from a very varied spell list - healing, damage, buffs, debuffs. You also have to understand summoning, wild shaping, your animal companion, as well as handling all the regular character stuff. Clerics are more simple than druids, but they still have a large spell list to contend with, and many of the spells on the cleric's spell list are rather subtle in their effect - buffs are among the most powerful, but most difficult for new spellcasting players to grasp, I've found.
Loaba: Spontaneous casters are easy to play. But they are difficult to level. If you pick a poor spell, you are stuck with it for a very long time. I would suggest you choose to play a spontaneous caster, AS LONG AS your group agrees to help you choose spells known when you level. Check out threads here talking about casters to understand which spells are good, which spells are bad, and why.
Prepared casters are easy to build. If you pick a bad spell to memorize for the day, you simply don't use that spell again in the future. But you will have a lot more work to do each gaming session picking spells to memorize from your list. If you don't ahve time to consider spell choices carefully and/or no one in your group is willing to help you choose your spells each level, this may be the route to go. You will be more likely to slow down the game as you struggle with what to do, but any mistakes you make can be corrected relatively quickly, once you recognize them.
I would say a very important thing to remember is: Sometimes the best thing to do in a situation is....nothing. it is better to 'waste' a turn using a small power or shooting your crossbow than to waste a good spell on a situation that doesn't really require anything.
Good luck!
Do you hate the book keeping? Why not one caster in all this time?
Fighters are, well, just natural for me. Throw in a healthy dose of sociopathic tendencies and a Devil-may-care attitude, and it's in the bag. I've played Rangers as well, so there's a little spell use, but that's the extent. Done the Gnome Barbie thing, played a Rogue or two (think Dexter) and that's it.
Full-on casters, just, well... They kind of intimidate me. :)
EWHM (per usual) makes a great case, as do others, for Cleric. Y'all are quite right, they can be much more than band-aids. It's just not very intuitive for me, is all.
Loaba,
What kind of character are you looking to play? Do you want something relatively simple? Do you want someone who flies over the battlefield and rains death and/or calls up monsters from hell? Do you want to be a skilled party face with lotsa skills, or perhaps a deformed but useful crazed caster(thinking of Oracle here)? Perhaps your input could help us help you further.
Jess Door - thinks for the info. If I were gonna go Wizard, I think Universalist would be easier than choosing a Specialist. As for Druid, my group is very experienced, so I know I'd get support with leveling decisions.
What I am most concerned about is combat effectiveness. You're quite right about not wanting to let my party down, choosing the wrong spell etc. With a Fighter, I know what to do, whether it's a Classic Tank or a nimble Dex Monkey.
Cleric is appealing because they do have excellent melee ability (but would I fall back into old habits?)
Loaba,
What kind of character are you looking to play? Do you want something relatively simple? Do you want someone who flies over the battlefield and rains death and/or calls up monsters from hell? Do you want to be a skilled party face with lotsa skills, or perhaps a deformed but useful crazed caster(thinking of Oracle here)? Perhaps your input could help us help you further.
You said "raining death" - you have no idea how appealing that is. :)
Ultra bad form - third unanswered post in a row. :)
The most important thing for me is to get ideas for the things I can do with various classes. I don't want to be hand fed necessarily, I want to learn to make informed choices on my own.
Cleric seems to be a great choice, but I worry that it's too close to Fighter.
Wizard will definitely challenge me, and maybe that's what I need.
Druid interests me greatly (I am currently player an Elven Ranger and absolutely loving it) if only from an outdoors perspective. However, I am led to believe the learning curve is quite high.
Sorcerer seems like a great way to be a one-dimensional damage-dealer. Or have I got that wrong?
I agree with several of the posters above, I'd go for a cleric.
Not to mention if you want to cut down on your spell workload, you could check to see if your DM will allow you to use the cleric feat from the campaign setting that lets you eschew your domains for d10HD and Fighter BAB.
I agree with several of the posters above, I'd go for a cleric.Not to mention if you want to cut down on your spell workload, you could check to see if your DM will allow you to use the cleric feat from the campaign setting that lets you eschew your domains for d10HD and Fighter BAB.
This seems desirable, but I think the point for me is to learn how to effectively select and use spells.
You are! You still get the cleric spells, but don't have to worry about the extra from the domains, and the added tracking those would cause.. Small steps. *cheeky grin*
"The most important thing for me is to get ideas for the things I can do with various classes. I don't want to be hand fed necessarily, I want to learn to make informed choices on my own."
Well said and here are some links to handbooks. First Treantmonk's guides are incredibly useful. This will bring you to his Lab where there are guides to Druids and Wizards. Note that the Druid features two different flavors and forces you to focus fairly early on between the Mystic variety and the Brawler (you'll see, he explains the choices and advantages).
For sorcerers, there's this nicely detailed guide but the other posters warnings are best heeded- be very careful because you mess a spontaneous caster up and it's not a pretty sight!
Your thought about an inquisitor? They are casters but very much still a combat class.
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If I were looking to make the move from a martial class to a caster I would go with a cleric geared toward combat. Pick domains that grant powers and spells that boost your damage and overall combat effectiveness. The bonus to clerics is that you can use any spell on their list making the process a little less daunting. Pick spells that enhance your preferred combat style. You still have the ability to heal when the need arises and your still in your comfort zone of being a hands on combatant.
I agree. If you pick the wrong spells, then you only have the wrong spells for a day.Oh dear god no. Spontaneous casters maybe easier in play, but they are oh so easy to screw up beyond repair. I would recommend either the druid or cleric instead. Try the spell out and just find what works for you.For a first time spell caster who seems a bit lost, I recommend playing a spontaneous caster. They remove a lot of the complication by simply taking spells known and then being able to cast any of those spells as long as you have the right level spell slot available.
I've seen way too many people screw up prepared casters by getting lost in the options. Spontaneous casters are a lot easier to focus, and really aren't that hard to screw up if you focus them on a school (especially necromancy in my opinion). Also, if you talk to the other players as you level up, as was said by other posters, it is really almost impossible to screw up.
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The witch uses both arcane and divine so you can dabble in both. The hexes add buff/debuff to the mix. Looks to be the best new class since bard.Well, technically that's not true, all of the witches spells are arcane. It is just simply that they have access to some spells that were traditionally only on divine lists like the cure spells... but that is a nitpick.
Yes you are correct. I meant they have arcane and divine spells in their list. Still a very cool new class IMO.
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If you're a melee man with a need for casting, you could always see if your GM would allow you to use the Magus which though still in its testing stages of life I found to be a pretty decent class. For other casters (and yes, I will second or third or fourth the Summoner as a damn good class) and if you don't mind shelling out a few extra dinero I suggest taking a look at Lone Wolf's Hero Lab. It has a selection of different game systems to include Pathfinder and it does all the math for you as well as letting you print out a copy of the character sheet you create. Plus the GUI is amazingly detailed, well set up, and overall, worth the penny I put on it.
Note - Its also very easy to keep up with the spells for a caster.
2nd Note - Hero Lab is any character. Not just casters.
Druids are super versatile. You can also get your tank yayas through the animal companion while learning how to be an effective spellcaster with the druid. Heck, you can even get your fighting yayas through the spontaneous summons of the druid too! At higher levels, wildshape also lets you tank pretty dang well as well! And, when a water elemental, tank as the water in a tank or well as well pretty dang well! :-P
In 3.5, I played an elven druid archer from 1st through 16th level, and it was really fun. I was archer, artillery, buffer, healer, diplomat, summoner, blaster, transportation, summoner, tank, utility, tracker, etc. etc. etc.
I also DMed for an absolute newbie from 2nd level to 17th-ish as a druid. Her husband helped her a lot with her build, pre-generating her summons, etc., but she learned the game with what is arguably the most complex class and still shone.
I'd try a wizard. That's what I did after playing many, many noncasters in a series of games. It was a lot of bookkeeping, but it had a lot of flexibility to it. I was able to learn which spells and tactics were useful to the group I was with, and over time I became very good at planning for expected encounters and keeping a good spread of utility spells available for different situations.
I made a lot of mistakes, but wizards are generally given some room to learn and recover from them -- and you can always buy more spells if you miss some important ones early on.
This is absolutely essential reading for any caster
No, it's not. I know lots of people who never bothered to read that, and nothing untoward happened to them. Well, at least not because of not reading that...
I've seen way too many people screw up prepared casters by getting lost in the options. Spontaneous casters are a lot easier to focus, and really aren't that hard to screw up if you focus them on a school (especially necromancy in my opinion). Also, if you talk to the other players as you level up, as was said by other posters, it is really almost impossible to screw up.I agree. If you pick the wrong spells, then you only have the wrong spells for a day.Oh dear god no. Spontaneous casters maybe easier in play, but they are oh so easy to screw up beyond repair. I would recommend either the druid or cleric instead. Try the spell out and just find what works for you.For a first time spell caster who seems a bit lost, I recommend playing a spontaneous caster. They remove a lot of the complication by simply taking spells known and then being able to cast any of those spells as long as you have the right level spell slot available.
If you get help both types will be ok, but some groups, such as my first one, leave you out to dry.
If you take Cleric make list of all Domains of your God, and take note of the ones that one Cleric list any way put them on your list to prepair so you will heve theme right there.
I do NOT suggest cleric. I've seen several newbie players get very frustrated with clerics because they know ALL spells, and choosing which spells to prepare per day becomes a far more onerous task than it ought to be.
If you want 3/4 BAB (like the cleric) and some decent options in addition to spellcasting, I would suggest the Bard. Especially since you're transitioning from playing non-casters to casters, I think the Bard with its skillmonkey and support focus would be the direction to take. Plus the spellcasting part of it is less overwhelming because you have a much smaller, neater, "spells known" list and spontaneous casting, which others have mentioned the virtues of. The main thing to remember with the Bard is that he's not bad in combat, but spell and ability wise, what he's best at is making everyone better at things. If tracking bardic performances seems daunting on top of tracking spells, look at the APG archetypes; some of them have ability replacements that may be easier to track. (I will also note that one of my players who was very frustrated with the cleric loved the bard.)
If you want to go full caster, I would suggest sorcerer. Sorcerers IMO are easier to play than Wizards (don't have to keep track of your spellbook and how many pages you have etc. etc. etc.; don't have to worry about losing your familiar/bonded item unless you play an Arcane sorcerer...) and have a lot of fun but fairly straightforward flavor from their bloodlines.
As mentioned, the challenge of the sorcerer and other spontaneous casters is that you can feel locked in to a poor decision if you find you picked a spell that doesn't work for you---but REMEMBER that in the rules, you can trade off spells every few levels, and furthermore, a nice GM should be willing to let a newbie spellcaster player re-do a spell list if it really isn't working out.
I don't recommend any APG classes; they all seem unnecessarily fiddly to me.
Update - thank you all for your advice, I really like hearing what folks have to say about things (especially when my my knowledge is a bit lacking.)
I do have a concept in mind; I think it would be fun to play an older, human, wizard. I picture a greying gentleman who spent the majority of his life working in a library of some sort, perhaps as clerk. He's read so much, but never left home. Now, he's discovered that he can actually cast magical spells...
I don't know how it will play out exactly, but there's the seed.
Umm, what level are you starting at?
Umm, what level are you starting at?
We always start at 1st. :)
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Honestly loaba, that kind of character sounds (To me) more like a witch than a wizard to me. Wizards have always struck me as someone who spends countless hours and years in formal education of the "proper way" of doing magics while witches kinda just figure it out through their own wit or on accident. To me a witch has always just seemed like a wizard that never went to college but figured out how to get along just fine anyway. Sure they do things a little differently and might have to cut a few corners (Maybe even make a few shady back room deals) but they end up getting to a very similar place.
Plus it would seem a witch would have much more fun time "raining death" than an old limey bookwork.Just my 2 cp though.
What kind of "mood" and personality are you trying to go for with him?
Honestly loaba, that kind of character sounds (To me) more like a witch than a wizard to me. Wizards have always struck me as someone who spends countless hours and years in formal education of the "proper way" of doing magics while witches kinda just figure it out through their own wit or on accident.
You have a point there, fair enough.
Plus it would seem a witch would have much more fun time "raining death" than an old limey bookwork.
There's that whole "raining death" thing that I find so darned attractive. lol
What kind of "mood" and personality are you trying to go for with him?
I'm going for, well, someone like me. If I choose a Wizard (and really, I think that will challenge me the most), I would do it from the angle of lots of book learning but no real experience in practical application.
I might just shelve the old man thing, but I am married to the notion of playing a character who really has no idea what his potential might be. Everything about magic will be known to him, but he just doesn't know how to use it in the real world.
His catch phrase, after the fact mind you, might be something like "Oh, well why didn't you say so, I have spell for that!"
Awesome choice,Loaba even though I was pro-Cleric. Starting at level one is great opportunity to enjoy a challenging but powerful class one step at a time. Not to be a mother hen, but just get your feats lined up several levels ahead and presto. And don't forget to floss, too. Sorry.