Why can't wizards and sorcerers cast healing type spells?

[Mazym]

[If I am incorrect on this, I apologize - and I only mean with CRB. Not the ever expanding crunch in other documents.]

I'm not asking about game balance, etc. but in "game world" reasoning.

I am especially confused because bards can heal. Bards don't get their powers from gods, spooky outsiders, Mother Nature, etc.

I think several of these spells should be available, at some level, for arcane casters:

- Cure XX wounds
- neutralizing and removing poison
- removing disease
- restoration spells

Now, Raise Dead and Resurrection, Reincarnation - these might be different, as they might be considered to involve reaching out into the Land of the Dead and fetching the subject's soul. But, you can do this with Wish, right? Maybe that's good enough?

I'm not looking to make these casters more mighty or divine casters redundant (I like playing clerics a lot, actually, for the flavor). Just trying to make sense of it.

[Rynjin]

Because magic.

That's the only non-game balance related answer I can give you.

[mplindustries]

Because of tradition.

Bards break the rules because they originally had Druid spells, not Magic User spells.

[Mazym]

mplindustries wrote:

Because of tradition.

Bards break the rules because they originally had Druid spells, not Magic User spells.

Good point. I remember now seeing them back in AD&D and thinking "Fflewddur Fflam."

[Turin the Mad]

You could dispense with divine casters altogether and roll most of the Cleric list into the Sor/Wiz list.

"White Necromancers" are the guys that primarily cast Conjuration (Healing) spells whilst "Black Necromancers" do the fun stuff such as animating the relatives of his enemies as attack dogs, procuring skeletal scroll caddies/torch bearers and slaying with but a touch, ray or word.

That kind of thing. ^______^

[Umbral Reaver]

You can get all of these spells...

...with the right summon or bound outsider. ;)

[Lumiere Dawnbringer]

Summon a Celestial. you get multiple heals for the price of one.

Summon Monster IV offers the unicorn, which gives a cure serious wounds, 3 cure light wounds, and a neutralize poison, it can also tank hits by becoming a speedbump afterwards. that is plenty of healing for a 4th level wizard spell

5d8+19 over 3 rounds and a 4th round to cure poison.

i'd rather have that than cure critical wounds

[MrSin]

Infernal healing is delicious and even better than cure light wounds when its out of combat.

Witches are another class that gets curing and healing, but they have a weird flavor and some divine background to get the job done.

[Mazym]

Lumiere Dawnbringer wrote:

Summon a Celestial. you get multiple heals for the price of one.

Summon Monster IV offers the unicorn, which gives a cure serious wounds, 3 cure light wounds, and a neutralize poison, it can also tank hits by becoming a speedbump afterwards. that is plenty of healing for a 4th level wizard spell

5d8+19 over 3 rounds and a 4th round to cure poison.

i'd rather have that than cure critical wounds

Excellent suggestion - one to keep in mind.

On a mechanical level, this certainly beats a CCW. I still think those spells should be directly available at a worse level than divine casters, but resourceful summoning can get the job done.

[ericthetolle]

If wizards healed people, then they couldn't just let them sure and turn them into undead.

[David_Bross]

Tradition is the primary reason. Interestingly enough Haste was such a powerful spell they had to give divine casters Blessing of Fervor to become more reasonable in the support role.

As far as summoning Unicorns, you aren't talking about Pathfinder, thats 3.5.

[Nearyn]

David_Bross wrote:

Tradition is the primary reason. Interestingly enough Haste was such a powerful spell they had to give divine casters Blessing of Fervor to become more reasonable in the support role.

As far as summoning Unicorns, you aren't talking about Pathfinder, thats 3.5.

As I've understood, Unicorn summoning will be returning with the new purity book.

[Calybos1]

Healing, restoration, and comforting the afflicted are not 'wizardly' actions; they're part of the clerical tone.

Bards, however, are simply eclectic. They pick up a little bit of everything.

[Artanthos]

Mazym wrote:

[If I am incorrect on this, I apologize - and I only mean with CRB. Not the ever expanding crunch in other documents.]

I'm not asking about game balance, etc. but in "game world" reasoning.

Because Gygax said so.

[LeoDelmondes]

I think that in a roleplay perspective, a bard is the most empathic type of char that it can be. The energy generated by this empathy can produce his performing effects and at some point, this performance get to such a supernatural level, that it draws energy from many different sources.
In my point of view the bard learn to draw positive energy generated by empathy, through his performance. That´s how he is able to use healing spells.

[amethal]

Its about niche protection rather than game balance.

I would guess that people play wizards so they can cast interesting spells. I doubt many PC wizards would chose to prepare cure moderate wounds instead of glitterdust, even if they could.

[Vod Canockers]

Because at one point in time, the classes were supposed to be specialized in different things.

The Wizard cast offensive spells.
The Fighter fought.
The Thief was sneaky and disarmed traps etc.
The Cleric healed.

Now everyone wants every class to do everything.

[MendedWall12]

My answer to the initial question is because the game has always been about every person at the table having a distinct role, and the role of "healer" has been reserved for other classes. The game doesn't want a player to come to the table to play a sorcerer or wizard so they can heal, it wants them to come to the table to blast stuff with scorching rays, and fireballs.

However, with that said, I do understand that some tables really need a utility caster that can heal as well, for whatever reason.

Interestingly there is a "sort of" solution to this problem.

There is an item called: the ring of spell knowledge. Long story short on this item it lets an arcane caster learn an arcane spell that might not even be on their spell list, and to "know" the spell as an extra spell. Long story longer, in order to teach the spell to the ring, they must encounter a written, active, or cast version of the spell and make a DC 20 Spellcraft check. Witches cast arcane spells, which means they could cast a cure spell and the wiz/sorc could make the check to teach the ring, or the witch could scribe it onto a scroll, and the wiz could learn it that way. At that point you have an arcane healing spell.

Another option, that I've seen a few people use, is just to have the wiz/sorc max out Use Magic Device (which actually works better if you're a Magus or Sorcerer because it is one of their class skills), then they can use healing wands with a DC 20 check.

So a wiz/sorc can cast healing spells, it just takes a little extra work.

[Leonardo Trancoso]

In 3.5 they can!

[Claxon]

If the wizard and sorceror could cast healing spells your incentive to play a full progression divine spell casting class goes out the door. The fact that the wizard and sorcerer are already Gods without healing doesn't mean that they should be given healing to. It is literally all about game balance to me. You give a wizard the ability to heal, he doesn't even need a party anymore, not that he need one that much before.

[Artanthos]

I've always had an issue with AD&D spellcasting.

In home games I used to implement a homebrew solution based off Rolemaster's magic system.

[TriOmegaZero]

Claxon wrote:

If the wizard and sorceror could cast healing spells your incentive to play a full progression divine spell casting class goes out the door.

Can your wizard cast all his spells in full plate? My cleric can.

[Artanthos]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Claxon wrote:

If the wizard and sorceror could cast healing spells your incentive to play a full progression divine spell casting class goes out the door.

Can your wizard cast all his spells in full plate? My cleric can.

Depends on prestige class: Hellknight Signifiers can.

[danielc]

I am still stuck on the question: Why would my Wizard want to cast healing spells. He gets so few spell slots as it is and now you want him to play the healer as well as the wizard?

To be honest, I would not care if you added the spells o the wizard list, I would leave healing to the healer.

[Alzrius]

Personally, I prefer this explanation (this is written as a guest piece on a blog; the blog's original owner's interjections are in italics):

Quote:

Also, note that what The Practical Enchanter says about spell design: it’s a combination of complexity AND power. People all too often ignore the Complexity because Power is obvious and flashy.

Now let’s look at the Cure Wounds series. Power-wise, those spells fit in at their given levels pretty closely. A given healing spell is usually weaker than a same-level attack spell, but they do scale with the spell level and somewhat with the caster level.

So now we know a more powerful caster does affect the spell. This may be important later.

Complexity-wise, healing is way overboard. That 1st-level spell can knit bones, restore organs, push leaked blood and fluid back where it does no harm, erase any chance of infection. If the individual is dying, it will erase all the ongoing damage to the nerves, brain and spine instantly.

This does presume relatively normal biophysics of course – but an awful lot of d20 games do indeed presume that, even though the rules do a pretty poor job of actually representing it. -Thoth

Cure Light Wounds is at LEAST at fifth-level complexity. I’d say sixth for practical purposes. With a few hundred years of development and polishing it might be possible to get the spell down to fifth level.

So why is it so cheap? Well, remember that divine spellcasters get a hidden bonus. They have a deity, and probably an entire divine staff, processing, preparing, and weaving the spells. Druids get that same edge from nature gods or local spirits or some such. Those spellcasters may be storing and casting their healing spells, but they don’t have to do all the work.

I can’t explain Bards. Bards are just weird, and they do their own thing. They’re something of a problem because it’s not clear how, exactly, they learn their own spells. Furthermore, they originally got their spells from a semi-religious force, so… Bards are just Bards.

Bards presumably get it from their attunement to the harmony of the universe or from the muses or something. I have to agree with Editorial0; Bards arcane healing spells have been a headache since third edition came out. -Thoth

Not every spell needs this level of complexity – but divine spells are notorious for having a lot of control, being especially targetable, or (at least in the old days) being frequently reversible. They traditionally offer such options a lot more often than arcane spells.

So we know the deity is handling the complex pre-arrangement of spells. They won’t do this for every spell, but healing magic is definitely a worthwhile investment. What else offers so large and obvious an aid to the faithful? And as the priest’s ability to handle power improves, he or she can channel additional healing with each Cure Wounds. The spell is already quite complex, so there’s no reason not to pour on more power once the cleric can handle the flow.

You may ask why, if the God does this for Cure Spells, they don’t for all other spells. First, the deity isn’t devoting all his (her/its/other/etc.) attention to the problems of every priest. There’s only so much power available even to d20 god, and there’s only so many things which can really benefit from it. Some other spells do benefit, just not as much. And of course, all the extra work takes out some of the brute force.

Not to mention that Healing spells are about the most generically useful spells in existence, and are pretty vital for maintaining your congregation in a d20 universe. -Thoth.

In any case, Arcane spellcasters get none of this benefit – or its costs. They get all the raw power they can handle, but nobody’s helping them cast complex spells. And if you somehow manage to gather a large group of people channeling energy to you, servant spirits taking care of trivial spell effects you’re not interested in, and remove yourself to the Astral or Outer Planes, then you’ve already become a deity in DnD terms.

Mere mortal beings must live with their limitations. A single Cure Light Wounds spell might be worth spending a single fifth level slot on for a wizard on rare occasions, but usually they’re far better off with a potion or a magic item and using the spell slot to stop your enemies, evade traps, or avoid damage. Arcane spellcasters who get to that level aren’t likely to waste a lot of time studying really weak magical effects, or bothering to make scrolls and hand them down. They have better things to do.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do healing effects. You can. It’s just a lot more trouble than its worth. Do you really want to give up 5th-level spell slot for a Cure Light?

And if we look at existing spells, we do see that arcane spellcasters have a lot of ways to manipulate life energy. They can steal it, donate it, and exchange it. With some work, it wouldn’t that hard to create a battery of life energy you could then draw from with spells, or hand out to your friends. But it’s never going to be as easy as the divine spellcaster’s tricks.

[Matthew Morris]

Well, if you expand necromancy to positive energy, you can get thematic healing.

I'm trying to finish up the first in (hopefully) a new series of Donna's Dozens called 'If all you have is a hammer' Looking at new ways of using the 'traditional schools' To that end I have a few spells, like this.

Spoiler:

Vitality Surge
School necromancy; Level wizard/sorcerer 3
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
Target one creature
Range touch
Duration 1 round/level
Saving Throw Fortitude negates (harmless); Spell Resistance yes (harmless)
By conducting positive energy into a target you touch, you stimulate its natural healing processes. For the duration of the spell, the target gains fast healing 1. This increases to fast healing 2 at 10th level, and fast healing 3 at 15th level The target is also immune to fatigue for the duration of the spell.

Just as an example.

[Matthew Morris]

Another alternative, using the essay posted above, might allow an arcane caster to bolster some effects. Off the top of my head...

Spells that accellerate natural healing (necromancer if inputting positive energy, transmutation if speeding up metabolism, better have food handy for the later.

Using negative energy to supress germs/positive energy to bolster the target's resistance to disease for necromancers. (depends on if germs cause disease in your world). It won't be a 'poof you're cured' more of a super antibiotic.

A transmutation or necromancy spell that restores the body to 'life' but the soulless, followed by a conjuration spell that shoves the spirit back in.

[Artanthos]

A nice article, offering a perfectly valid explanation.

I mentioned Rolemaster above. One of the things that games spell system did was break injuries down by type. There were separate spell lines for managing bleeding, repairing bones and healing concussion damage.

While non-divine casters were capable of learning those spells, it was more expensive in terms of character development cost. This helped maintain balance and was explained as a caster trying to learn magic to which he was not well suited.

An alternate explanation to complexity: Cure light wounds simply encourages the bodies existing healing processes, taking direction from the bodies own awareness of its natural state of being.

[MrSin]

Artanthos wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Claxon wrote:

If the wizard and sorceror could cast healing spells your incentive to play a full progression divine spell casting class goes out the door.

Can your wizard cast all his spells in full plate? My cleric can.

Depends on prestige class: Hellknight Signifiers can.

How? They boost Arcane Armor mastery by 10% which is only 30% off. Full Plate is still 35% so you would need to make it mithril, but at that point your not using heavy armor. Its also over the course of many levels so even if you made it mithril you would have to slowly replace all the armor you already had.

Edit: Also cost several feats(or a dip) and action economy.

[voska66]

Claxon wrote:

If the wizard and sorceror could cast healing spells your incentive to play a full progression divine spell casting class goes out the door. The fact that the wizard and sorcerer are already Gods without healing doesn't mean that they should be given healing to. It is literally all about game balance to me. You give a wizard the ability to heal, he doesn't even need a party anymore, not that he need one that much before.

I'd say the incentive to play a Cleric would increase if wizards and sorcerers could cast healing magics. You play a cleric and there are expectations that you play it a certain way and if you don't others get upset with you. I hate burning my Divine Power spell to cast Cure Critical Wounds. By being the healing class there are expectations that you will be healing. Having healing with other classes has helped with this. Allowing the wizard and sorcerer to cast healing spells would just make the Cleric a more attactive class as the burden of healing is spread around.

[Claxon]

voska66 wrote:

Claxon wrote:

If the wizard and sorceror could cast healing spells your incentive to play a full progression divine spell casting class goes out the door. The fact that the wizard and sorcerer are already Gods without healing doesn't mean that they should be given healing to. It is literally all about game balance to me. You give a wizard the ability to heal, he doesn't even need a party anymore, not that he need one that much before.

I'd say the incentive to play a Cleric would increase if wizards and sorcerers could cast healing magics. You play a cleric and there are expectations that you play it a certain way and if you don't others get upset with you. I hate burning my Divine Power spell to cast Cure Critical Wounds. By being the healing class there are expectations that you will be healing. Having healing with other classes has helped with this. Allowing the wizard and sorcerer to cast healing spells would just make the Cleric a more attactive class as the burden of healing is spread around.

Perhaps in your group it would, it my group it would still be "Here, you play the healbot, I'm off to conquer the universe."

I think the best thing that they did from a game design standpoint was allow good clerics to spontaneously convert any spell to an equivalent level cure spell. That allows clerics to be more than just heal bots because they can prepare any spells they want and just turn them into healing if they don't need it. I also think that, outside of combat, channeling isn't a terrible thing to use even if your number of uses is gimped by low charisma.

[Jeven]

Summon Monster VI gives you a Lillend Azata. She can cast 5 Cure Light Wounds and 2 Cure Serious Wounds which would provide you with an average of about 75hp of healing.
During combat it's not so useful as it would take 7 combat rounds, but outside of combat 42 seconds is nothing.

[Shain Edge]

I've always preferred Wizards to be 'generalist' magic casters, which could include healing as well. When you combine the science of healing with the magic of getting things done, what you have is the ability to directly mend injuries, put bones back together and killing diseases.

Wizards might need to use the healing skill to use healing magic where as divine casters just need faith that their source knows how bones knit. That makes it kind of nifty, if you work in a new class that has more skill points, but in return can only cast spells based on their skills. skill Magic (Evocation) would be required to cast evocation spells, and then only to the maximum level spell as the number of ranks in the skill, and maybe using the magic skill as the caster level.

This sounds like it could be an interesting system. You would have casters who could cast spells, as long as they had the skills for the magic type involved. Likely the casters would have a few areas where they specialized in, (Continuous adding of skill points), with a peppering of skill points along the other magic types.

Other Systems-
There are a few alternate magic systems I've enjoyed using for D&D that ignore the difference between arcane and divine magics: Elements of Magic, and Colors of Magic.

Colors of Magic redefine spells based on their effects into 'colors'. But basically, it is still a spell slot system in which Healing is just another type of magic, specifically, Yellow magic, with specialist Yellow Casters known as Physicians.

Elements of Magic, on the other hand, is a free form point based system. You can have preferred spells memorized, so it is easy to cast them. But you also have an option of creative casting on the fly, though that is a 2 round action. Spell Lists consist of Noun+Verb.

Heal Humanoid, being one such 'List'. Heal+Animal, another list. Heal+Death another list, though only healing undead, and not including negative effects on living creatures, which is the domain of Evoke Spells. You can Evoke+Life to harm Undead directly, with little chance of harming living targets in the area, but the usual Evoke spells, include Evoke+Fire and Evoke+Metal (Slashing Damage).

[Artanthos]

MrSin wrote:

Artanthos wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Claxon wrote:

If the wizard and sorceror could cast healing spells your incentive to play a full progression divine spell casting class goes out the door.

Can your wizard cast all his spells in full plate? My cleric can.

Depends on prestige class: Hellknight Signifiers can.

How? They boost Arcane Armor mastery by 10% which is only 30% off. Full Plate is still 35%

Heavens forbid anything in Pathfinder should have a 1 in 20 chance of failure.

[MrSin]

Artanthos wrote:

MrSin wrote:

Artanthos wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Claxon wrote:

If the wizard and sorceror could cast healing spells your incentive to play a full progression divine spell casting class goes out the door.

Can your wizard cast all his spells in full plate? My cleric can.

Depends on prestige class: Hellknight Signifiers can.

How? They boost Arcane Armor mastery by 10% which is only 30% off. Full Plate is still 35%

Heavens forbid anything in Pathfinder should have a 1 in 20 chance of failure.

Well in that case my normal wizard can cast in full plate. He just has a 35% chance of failure. Was just asking how you got a hell knight that cast in full plate without mithral.

[Artanthos]

MrSin wrote:

Well in that case my normal wizard can cast in full plate. He just has a 35% chance of failure. Was just asking how you got a hell knight that cast in full plate without mithral.

There is a world of difference between a 7 in 20 fail chance and a 1 in 20 fail chance. Many people are more than willing to accept a 1 in 20.

For those unwilling to accept 1 in 20 failure, Mithral Hellknight Plate is still an option with only 4 levels of Signifier. Personally, I don't believe it is worth spending 9k to eliminate that last 5%.

[MrSin]

There a huge different between 0 in 20 and 1 in 20 because with one of these I don't even have to roll, and the other I bog down the game and there is an off chance I had a wasted action.. By the time you get the 25% off 9k isn't that much anyway.

No need to respond with animosity. Was just curious.

[My2Cents]

This is a power vs. precision thing.

Arcane magic has a lot of power but limited precision. All the control comes from the user, that is why spells have to be learned. It is limited by the users ability to understand all the details involved, so destructive effects are much easier than constructive. Consider the classic fireball spell which probably works something like: set up an enclosure then open a portal to the plane of fire, siphon off a bit into the enclosure, then close the portal, transport the enclosure to the designated point, and release.

Divine magic, especially healing, uses little power but usually a lot of finely detailed work, so complex in fact that it is beyond the capabilities of mortals. What a divine caster does is trading his work (religious devotion) for a deity/superior being/immortal whatever for spells/favors/tools that she uses to carry out her tasks. The actual fiddly bits of the spell are handled the deity. This also why divine casters do not have to learn their spells, when they cast the spell they supply the power but the deity, for whom the details are trivial, who directs it. Look at the classic healing spells, they have to, as a minimum, line up and reconnect capillaries, muscle fibers, bone cracks, and nerve axons. Most of these are too small to see with the naked eye, and there are literally thousands of these to repair even in a simple cure light wounds spell.

[LazarX]

MendedWall12 wrote:

My answer to the initial question is because the game has always been about every person at the table having a distinct role, and the role of "healer" has been reserved for other classes. The game doesn't want a player to come to the table to play a sorcerer or wizard so they can heal, it wants them to come to the table to blast stuff with scorching rays, and fireballs.

However, with that said, I do understand that some tables really need a utility caster that can heal as well, for whatever reason.

Interestingly there is a "sort of" solution to this problem.

There is an item called: the ring of spell knowledge. Long story short on this item it lets an arcane caster learn an arcane spell that might not even be on their spell list, and to "know" the spell as an extra spell. Long story longer, in order to teach the spell to the ring, they must encounter a written, active, or cast version of the spell and make a DC 20 Spellcraft check. Witches cast arcane spells, which means they could cast a cure spell and the wiz/sorc could make the check to teach the ring, or the witch could scribe it onto a scroll, and the wiz could learn it that way. At that point you have an arcane healing spell.

Another option, that I've seen a few people use, is just to have the wiz/sorc max out Use Magic Device (which actually works better if you're a Magus or Sorcerer because it is one of their class skills), then they can use healing wands with a DC 20 check.

So a wiz/sorc can cast healing spells, it just takes a little extra work.

Or... play a witch?

[Rynjin]

Or a Samsaran Wizard.

[Mystery Meep]

Tradition, and one I'm really not sold on at all. But then, I'd rather play the healing mage than the armored cleric. There is the problem of balance, though, in terms of just adding them on directly: wizards can already more or less do everything else, so this would exacerbate that problem even further.

[mcv]

Every class has their own style. Wizards cast spells that feel wizardly, arcane, reality-altering or academic in some way, clerics cast supporting, building, uplifting stuff, bards cast bardy stuff, druids cast nature-related stuff.

There's tons of grey area, of course, and it's extremely setting-dependent. If you want your setting to have healing wizards, by all means change it. Tweaking and DIY-ing is also tradition.

Just keep in mind that giving wizards more stuff is going to make them even more powerful. Maybe let wizards choose among all spells, no matter the spell list, but they have to choose one or two schools and can't cast anything from another school, or something. Or completely reorganize the spell lists in whatever way your group deems appropriate. You may or may not wreak havoc to the balance and feel of the game, but you have lots of fun with that and make your setting's magic significantly different from the standard Pathfinder setting.

[ciretose]

Jason explained it well in the "Ask Jason post", with regards to balance so I'll quote him and then comment.

"Depends heavily on what you mean by balanced. In terms of combat effectiveness, no, they are not, nor were they designed to be. We understand that each class has a niche to fill and sometimes that means better advantages in one area of play over another. A lot of folks get really hung up over combat effectiveness, and for them, there are certainly some classes that rise above the rest. That is ok. I can live with that so long as we are also providing a bounty of options for players that are more interested in other parts of the game."

Wizards and sorcerers aren't healers. They are Artillery. Not in the blasty damage sense, but in the fragile and vulnerable but very very powerful. If they have the advantage, you are in trouble. If you have the advantage...

Divine casters aren't as powerful, but they can heal. It is what they do. It isn't all they do, but it is a niche they fill.

If Arcane casters could heal in a real and effective way, that would take out that niche.

[Kthulhu]

My problem with that explanation is that they don't really seem to give a damn about the wizard/sorcerer spell list trampling practically every other niche in the game.

[ciretose]

Kthulhu wrote:

My problem with that explanation is that they don't really seem to give a damn about the wizard/sorcerer spell list trampling practically every other niche in the game.

I think the expectation is that it is a cost to use the spell to accomplish the goal and/or have the spell available at that time in that place.

The 15 minute workday, the magically quiet place in the middle of the dungeon, the free pre-buff, etc...are more table features than game features, particularly when you look at how days go in most APs (Kingmaker being the outlier, as it is so sandbox)

[Matthew Morris]

Kthulhu wrote:

My problem with that explanation is that they don't really seem to give a damn about the wizard/sorcerer spell list trampling practically every other niche in the game.

The spell list also doesn't make any sense.

I mean, explosive runes is abjuration. Well I guess that might be justified because it is a defensive ward- Wait, none of the symbols are abjuration! And why is shield abjuration, and mage armor conjuration, when most every other spell with the force descriptor is evocation?

I'd love a top to bottom rewrite of the spell lists. If you give up defense (allegedly Abjuration) you shouldn't get it back willy nilly with the blasting school (evocation), for example.

Now if you want *higher level, less effective* evocation spells that defend you, sure.

[JohnB]

I always rule that bards get their spells through their muse - which more than justifies them getting spells that wizards or sorcerers don't get :)

[ciretose]

Matthew Morris wrote:

Kthulhu wrote:

My problem with that explanation is that they don't really seem to give a damn about the wizard/sorcerer spell list trampling practically every other niche in the game.

The spell list also doesn't make any sense.

I mean, explosive runes is abjuration. Well I guess that might be justified because it is a defensive ward- Wait, none of the symbols are abjuration! And why is shield abjuration, and mage armor conjuration, when most every other spell with the force descriptor is evocation?

I'd love a top to bottom rewrite of the spell lists. If you give up defense (allegedly Abjuration) you shouldn't get it back willy nilly with the blasting school (evocation), for example.

Now if you want *higher level, less effective* evocation spells that defend you, sure.

And this is part of why I think we are ready for a new version.

Pathfinder was, respectfully, a rush job.

If you had the time to sit down and revise the system, you could do things like this and still have almost full backward compatibilty.

It wouldn't hurt the core buisness model (APs and Modules) and could reinvigorate the books, which are frankly approaching splat at this point. Speaking only for myself, I've bought all the hardcovers so far except the NPC codex, but I have little interest in the Ultimate Campaigns and aside from Epic Rules, no interest in Mythic Adventures.

I'm not sure where they go next, and 5 to 7 years for a version change (backward compatible and OLG) seems reasonable to me. 3.0 is going to be 13 soon, with 3.5 and "3.75" coming at intervals, 15 seems like the right time to have the next interval update.

[LazarX]

ciretose wrote:

And this is part of why I think we are ready for a new version.

"We" being you and those who seem to feel that we need to remake our games every few years or so.

I on the other hand see enough invested into this edition, that it would be hard to argue the benefits outweighing the sheer pain of a 2.0 that was nothing more than a language cleanup of 1.0.

Monopoly has survived unchanged for a century now. Why the urge to take apart our favorite game every half decade or so? Is there some sort of naive belief that remaking the game will put an end to the flood of rules questions and exploits? One might permit me my deep skepticism to such a stand.

[ciretose]

LazarX wrote:

ciretose wrote:

And this is part of why I think we are ready for a new version.

"We" being you and those who seem to feel that we need to remake our games every few years or so.

I on the other hand see enough invested into this edition, that it would be hard to argue the benefits outweighing the sheer pain of a 2.0 that was nothing more than a language cleanup of 1.0.

Monopoly has survived unchanged for a century now. Why the urge to take apart our favorite game every half decade or so? Is there some sort of naive belief that remaking the game will put an end to the flood of rules questions and exploits? One might permit me my deep skepticism to such a stand.

Because Monopoly doesn't need to keep publishing books for people to buy Monopoly.

And Pathfinder is basically a clean up of 3.5, which was a clean up of 3.0.