Elemental Affinity and Elementalist Wizards?

[Tinalles]

I've been looking over the four elemental-based PC races in Bestiary 2 (undine, ifrit, oread, sylph). Their elemental affinity abilities are weird. I'll talk about sylphs, but this applies to all four races. The Sylph entry says:

Bestiary 2 wrote:

Air Affinity (Ex) Sylph sorcerers with the elemental (air) bloodline treat their Charisma score as 2 points higher for all sorcerer class abilities. Sylph clerics with the Air domain cast their domain powers and spells at +1 caster level.

As far as it goes, I get that. Sorcerers from an elemental race with an elemental bloodline develop their abilities a little quicker. Deities favor clerics whose elemental race matches their elemental domain, so those spells get a bit more oomph.

But ... why are wizards with an elemental school excluded? I'd expect it to add something like "Sylph wizards of the Elementalist (Air) school cast their school powers and spells at +1 caster level", but it doesn't.

A wizard's power is based on the ability to observe, analyze, and understand how things work; surely having a racial affinity to one element should give you a small boost in observing, analyzing, and understanding the workings of that element.

But it looks like a deliberate omission, not an oversight. All four races exclude elementalist wizards. And Bestiary 2 came out after the APG, so it's not that elementalist wizards weren't around when the ability was written.

So ... is there some balance issue I'm not seeing? Or some reason that wizards don't qualify? Or, for that matter, druids who pick up an elemental domain instead of an animal companion.

Not a major issue, since it can easily be house ruled. Just curious as to the reasoning.

[Master_Drow]

Tinalles wrote:

So ... is there some balance issue I'm not seeing? Or some reason that wizards don't qualify? Or, for that matter, druids who pick up an elemental domain instead of an animal companion.

I think it might be an oversight, but for the sake of argument I would have to say that it is because of the spell casting nature of wizard. The Sorcerers power comes from within and is all about how they influence the world. So a fire creature is more fiery within and thus tends to leans more towards fire. The cleric is the same, except the Deity agrees more with the beings fiery passions.

Wizards meanwhile learn there spells from a teacher or by researching the basics a building up. The magic is summoned with incantations and symbols. These symbols and incantations just don't care if you are a pyromaniac at heart they just provide amount of fire X at location Y.

This is the only reason I can come up with.

[Tom Baumbach]

Possibly because elementalist schools appear in the APG, and in an effort to keep Bestiary 2 as universal as possible, they don't inlcude APG references by default.

[Tinalles]

Ah. That makes sense. Yes, I can completely see limiting references to non-core rules in the bestiaries. Easier to edit, and shorter.

Thanks for the replies!

[Darigaaz the Igniter]

Tom Baumbach wrote:

Possibly because elementalist schools appear in the APG, and in an effort to keep Bestiary 2 as universal as possible, they don't inlcude APG references by default.

But they do. Several creatures (including the Undine!) have spells or spell-like abilities from the APG.

[Kalyth]

Darigaaz the Igniter wrote:

Tom Baumbach wrote:

Possibly because elementalist schools appear in the APG, and in an effort to keep Bestiary 2 as universal as possible, they don't inlcude APG references by default.

But they do. Several creatures (including the Undine!) have spells or spell-like abilities from the APG.

What about elemental oracles? Flame/Stone/Wind, etc...