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In my experience, the people who will have problems with a Wizard, are those that don't know how prepare properly... Or they have a GM who is deliberately keeping him from preparing properly.
And in MY experience, GM's who allow their players to know everything that's coming ahead of time, make sure their characters have all the divination spells they could want and don't throw any curves in their sessions are spoon-feeding their players and robbing them of any actual excitement.
The versatility of prepared casters is, in MY experience, largely a myth. Yes, if you know for certain what you will be facing (and also the circumstances under which you'll be facing them) and have access not only to all the spells you need to divine those threats but also access to all the spells that are ideally suited to what you'll be facing then of course you'll have an advantage.
Much, much more often I find prepared casters with half their spells left unused or inappropriate to the circumstances - victims of the old adage that the best laid battleplans are usually worthless once the first arrow is fired. On the other hand, the practical versatility of spontaneous casters (as opposed to the theoretical versatility of prepared casters) always seems to find them with something they can use.
Simple example:
A Wizard divines/uses knowledge/is spoonfed by the GM the fact that he's going to be facing both fire-dependant and cold-dependant foes in his upcoming encounters and prepares a handful of cold spells, a handful of fire spells and of course a handful of the other spells he normally prepares... So in the upcoming encounter he has to ration each and hope he guessed correctly when it came to the ratio of cold and fire based foes he will face.
A Sorcerer on the other hand knows one fire-based spell and one cold-based spell and ends up with exactly the number of each he needs for every encounter, effectively doubling or tripling his arsenal - and that's not including the ability to spontaneously use higher level slots for more of a lower level spell.
What can I say? I HATE GMs who play soft ball and rob the sense of accomplishment from the players.
In my experience these things are generally used by only the most B of BBEG's.Just exactly how many encounters are you running into that are protected by things such as Screen, Nondetection, Mind Blank, Illusions, ect anyway? Like I said.. 95% of encounters don't involve that.
It seems to me that your GM hates his players.
95% of the encounters aren't against BBEG anyway, so it's quite pointless to use scry+fry vs the 7th Frost Giant Patrol in the 4th room of the 3rd floor of a Dungeon anyway.
I love my WoP
Cleric over Oracle. Prepared is the way to go! :)
So does anyone have anyone actually have any better arguments other than,
sorcerers are good because they can do wizard stuff as well.
wizards are good because they can do sorcerer stuff as well.
It's almost like each has their own strong points and merits and, with investment, borrow the other one's merits. I play sorcerers because I don't like having to prepare. Does that mean I think they are better than wizards, absolutely not. Spontaneous is a playstyle just like prepared, and having read through this whole thing I just don't see why one is sooooooo much better than the other.If that were all it was they'd be even. Bards and Magi are pretty much even. Sorcerers and Wizards, though, there's the whole spell level access delay and one spell known problem. Oracles are even worse. They have a spell list designed around the assumption that clerics automatically know everything on their list.
You took haste at 6th level because it's the most powerful and universally useful third level spell? Hope you don't find yourself in a situation that calls for fly or dispel magic.
You're 7rd level and meet a CR7 spectre and someone got level drained. If you're a cleric you probably should have seen this coming and prepared restoration. Undead are frequently telegraphed. If you're an oracle you don't have fourth level spells.
You're an 8th level oracle. Which of Remove Curse, Remove Disease, Remove Paralysis, and Remove Blindness/Deafness did you not learn? Oh, you wanted Summon Monster III? The fail is strong with this class.
I learned none of them. I went for the spells that are always at least partially useful (and can benefit from spamming) instead of the ones that will only ever be situationally useful after a specific failed saving throw.
My oracles always stick by the "not a healer" adage. And at least with them it's actually true! =)
It's usually made possible to succeed without one anyway.
restoration can be solved by scrolls. In my current campaign we don't have a cleric (or an oracle for that matter), and we have no problem with level drain.
Actually, without 3rd party... I like witch best for playstyle because I love the idea of hexes, but I think it could use more support so I usually go to wizard. I actually like oracles better than I like clerics because I feel like I've always had more fun with oracles, but I usually end up playing a druid because the group wanted/needed a druid. Weird how all that works out.
Now I would admit that both classes do very different things and play very differently.
Better is an odd term and doesn't really apply.
Preference does though. In 3.5 I preferred playing sorcerers to wizards. For divine casters, druid is my favorite in both 3.5 and pathfinder. With prepare it is nice to be able to change your play style from day to day. Since arcane casters are limited in spells known regardless, I prefer sorcerers. I have yet to play a PF wizard, but I have play some satisfying sorcerer characters.
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here is my sorcerer that i like to play in home games, we use the PFS building rules.
level 1 sorcerer (undead bloodline or infernal depending on the champaign)
str 7
dex 13
con 14
wis 13
int 12
cha 18 (half elf)
spells known (1st level)
vanish
charm person
cantrips:
disrupt undead
ray of frost
orb of acid
traits:
metamagic master (charm person)
magical lineage (charm person)
feats:
heighten spell
skill focus diplomacy
skills:
diplomacy (11)
perception (4)
linguistics (only really care about bonus languages)
UMD (8)
this character is the most powerful character in the group at that level, assuming a non unead heavy campaign i can get a +19 at first level on my save dc to charm person. i dont blast but i end enounters very quickly.
once 5th level hits i take scribe scroll and gain the spell paragon surge when i hit 6th. once that happens my character is able to carry around any spell he needs at any time. cast PS now i know that spell i needed, burn the appropriate spell level and BAM communal fly, haste, summon monster 800 ect... i dont get how sorcerers are so limited in there spell slection? i mean yes i have to use a REALLY powerful spell to do it, but i can "know" more spells then a wizard and be the face of the party.
not to mention that charm person/monster can be effective all the way to 20th level and its a first level spell.