A more apt comparison would be to the old Ultimate Mage PrC if I remember the name right, that was the one for the sorcerer/wizard multi-classer.
Correct.
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I will ask this: can anyone imagine any situation where they'll ever say, "hmmm, I have a neat character concept... I think arcanist fits it the best!"?
Because to me, this class lacks flavor. It covers no new ground, at all. Wizards are already people with some magic in them who decide to study it. We don't need another class for that. Any arcanist can just as easily be a wizard. I know what I'm saying is not very constructive or helpful for the playtest, but I'd drop the class entirely OR make sure it has a fluff reason to exist. As is, it's really as an alternate wizard class.
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Re-skin the bloodline thing as Arcane Power, drop all association with the bloodline, and open the Arcane Power options to be a better caster. You already added one with +1 caster level and +1 DC for one counter. You can add other options to use these counters on that are more mage-centric instead of bloodline-centric.
- add +1 caster level and +1 DC
- add level to a concentration check to cast a spell
- apply meta magic as 1 level less for 2 counters
- swap memorized spell in the middle of the day
- add level to identify an item or a spell being cast
- treat half the hitpoint damage of a spell as force energy
etc.Much simpler.
i was thinking about something along these lines as well, but i think this might be too simple...
i think you could add some flavor and fix the power by either:
a) creating a list of abilities that can be chosen (similar to rogue talents) some of which are static bonuses and others of which give uses of bloodline focus pool (like ninja talents that use ki); some of these could be school related and others could drawn-from/inspired-by bloodline abilities. or,
b) create a set of 6-12 "Arcane Focus" options, each of which function as a sort of unique school/bloodline feature (with its own set of bonus spells, additional bonus feat options, and abilities similar to what you might expect from a school/bloodline, but balanced for this class- and possibly still relying on a 'pool' mechanic).
Jason mentioned work-shopping blood focus on the forums- (if you read this) i'd love to participate in that or flesh out these suggestions for consideration there (or in the office). if there's any desire, you can PM me and i'll volunteer to write some ideas up :)
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I will ask this: can anyone imagine any situation where they'll ever say, "hmmm, I have a neat character concept... I think arcanist fits it the best!"?
Because to me, this class lacks flavor. It covers no new ground, at all. Wizards are already people with some magic in them who decide to study it. We don't need another class for that. Any arcanist can just as easily be a wizard. I know what I'm saying is not very constructive or helpful for the playtest, but I'd drop the class entirely OR make sure it has a fluff reason to exist. As is, it's really as an alternate wizard class.
Honestly, my main attraction to it is the combination of the flavor of "studied, scholarly mage with spellbook" with spontaneous casting. As a hater of prepared casting, this lets me play a wizard-like character without having to deal with the mechanics of a wizard.
I tolerate Witch because the Hexes and such are cool enough to deal with the prepared casting, and ditto with Magus and its various abilities (also there's at least one archetype that turns Magus into a spont-caster out there somewhere, but I've never touched Wizard for exactly that reason). Arcanist gives me what I want as far as casting method, while keeping what I like about Wizard's flavor.
So now, when I have a concept for a scholarly, tome-surrounded, studious arcane caster that doesn't synch up with Sorcerer's unstudied innate skill, Witch's mysticism, or Magus's combat affinity, I have a class I can go to and still enjoy using without having to fall back on a class I dislike.
I like what you did with this class.
My only significant concern on initial reading is that the integration of bloodline powers is a bit vague. I almost wish it was just left off, as you don't really need it for the class to be effective and it feels kind of like an afterthought.
I too like where the class is headed.
I too feel that the "bloodline" stuff could be left off.
Re-skin the bloodline thing as Arcane Power, drop all association with the bloodline, and open the Arcane Power options to be a better caster. You already added one with +1 caster level and +1 DC for one counter. You can add other options to use these counters on that are more mage-centric instead of bloodline-centric.
- add +1 caster level and +1 DC
- add level to a concentration check to cast a spell
- apply meta magic as 1 level less for 2 counters
- swap memorized spell in the middle of the day
- add level to identify an item or a spell being cast
- treat half the hitpoint damage of a spell as force energy
etc.Much simpler.
Isn't that called the "wizard?" I mean, it just seems like you're moving some numbers around, and then, bam, you cast your wizard spells and sometimes they have a minor bonus (aka metamagic).
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I take a bit of issue with how little charisma the arcanist needs, despite being based partially on the sorcerer. I would propose the arcanist requiring both the requisite Intellect and Charisma scores to cast their spells, and then allow them to take the higher stat for the purposes of spells per day and DCs.
That would mean that an arcanist that wanted to cast level 4 spells would need at least an Int and Cha of 14, and if one of those two stats were higher, they would be able to use that stat for DCs.
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One thing I' have decided on, is that there isn't enough wizard blend here, particularly where schools are concerned. They aren't really even mentioned--and thus don't matter one lick--until 20th-level.
I would like to see one or two new class abilities involving schools thrown in at the low and mid levels. That might help with some of the absent flavor people are talking about.
Being able to prep metamagic'd spells and then cast them spontaneously at the normal casting speed is a huge advantage. Being able to still further metamagic anything on the fly is a monstrous advantage.
Yeah, I mean that arcane preparation feat from 3.5 was the one that every sorcerer took, right? Honestly the arcanist doesn't have nearly enough spells prepared each day to pack in metamagic in any substantial level without being unable to cover their bases.
When you compare the spell prep'd from an arcanist and a sorcer, the numbers are surprisingly close. Using a FCB in a comparison to a class that doesn't have FCBs yet isn't a fair comparison...
What? You play the game with what there is. You don't compare the core wizard to the splatbook witch. You compare all available existing options to all existing options. You are throwing out the sorcerer's advantage (huge) in spells known to make your next example look better.
So, lets take another look at level 10s of a sorcerer and an arcanist. Assuming a 28 primary stat. Not including zero level.
Sorcerer
Known/prepared: 6/5/4/3/1 total 19
Per day: 9/8/8/7/5 total 37Arcanist
Known: any/all
Prepared: 5/4/3/2/1 total 15
Per day: 8/7/7/6/4 total 32
A human sorcerer packs
12/8/7/6/4/1vs. the arcanists
9 /5/4/3/2/1
Human wizard packs with the same score and level.
4/8/7/7/5/3
Sorcerer and wizard both have significantly more spells available to them at any given time. 5 and 8 (respectively) of the top level vs. 3. If you don't think that slows the arcanist down we play very different games.
By the numbers, the arcanist has less per day, and less prepared each day. But gains versatility of being able to freely switch out ANY/ALL of their spells each day. Gains versatility to prepare spells with metamagic and cast it without increased casting times, all while retaining the versatility to chain cast whenever it is necessary.
So what you are telling me is your arcanist is going to be filling his high level slots (of which he has at max 3 of each) with metamagic spells, leaving him with 1-2 spells of each level even at level 20? I'll be honest, I'll take the spontaenous metamagic sorcerer with 4-6 spells of each level or the prepared wizard with 6-7 spells of each level over your 1-2 in pretty much every game.
Stop looking at theorycraft. Build a character. Play the game. Stack them up against another fully fleshed out character instead of relying on vague arguments like this that don't hold up. There is a reason this is called a playtest.
Ultimate flexibility AND power. The makings of the newest god tier class. The one to bump all the others down a step as the new reigning champion.
The flexability to have the fewest number of spells available at any one time by a huge margin.
Well, they do have access to every spell in the spellbook... all the wizard/sorcerer ones anyway. Learning all spells and inscribing them isn't so expensive that they couldn't afford literally every spell of every level they could cast. Wizards can, so can arcanists then.
There are ~111 1st level wiard / sorcerer spells. It would cost a minimum of 1,500gp for an arcanist to scribe them into his spellbook (assuming he could get access to all of them). That is 150% of his 1st level WBL, 50% of his 2nd level wealth by level, and 25% of his 3rd level wealth by level.
There are ~147 2nd level wizard / sorcerer spells. It would cost approximately 8,400gp for an arcanist to scribe them into his spellbook (assuming he could get access to them all). That combined with the 1,500gp from before is 9,900gp. 9,900gp is 165% of his 4th level wealth by level. It is 94% of his 5th level wealth by level and 61% of his 6th level wealth by level.
There are ~127 3rd level wizard / sorcerer spells. It would cost a minimum of 11,430gp to scribe all of these spells into the arcanist's spellbook. that combined with the 9,900gp from before is 21,330gp. 21,330gp is 133% of a 6th level arcanists wealth by level. It is 90% of his 7th level wealth by level. It is 64% of his 8th level wealth by level.
And so forth. At some point you're probably going to start swapping to blessed books, but if you are buying every spell you can from level 1 you likely won't have the money to do so until ~10th level, at which point you still still spend 11,750gp to buy access to the ~94 5th level spells from another arcanist or wizard. These 94 spells will fill up approximately half of your blessed book.
This number for bought access continues to go up each level, even if you offset the scribing cost. I would eyeball the cost of all wizard and sorcerer spells in your spellbook at somewhere on the order of 200,000-300,000gp between the costs of purchasing spells from other wizards (which assumes you have another wizard to sell you every spell at cost), paying scribing costs at lower levels, and buying new blessed books at higher levels.
That is hardly not expensive.
And they CAN spontaneously have exactly the right spell. In the best ways of both a Wizard and Sorc. They can prep it ahead of time, and then cast it however many times they need of it. Best of both.
Anyone can have exactly the right spell. The sorcerer can snag a scroll for us with his mnemonic vestment or false priest archtype. The sorcerer can happen to know it. The wizard can prepare it. Literally the only time the arcanist comes out ahead here is in the rare circumstance where they need a specific prepared spell more than once. While I'm sure that comes up, I don't think it comes up enough to be game breaking.
And second, what is OP isn't nearly as subjective as you seem to think everyone knows it is. (Again with the presupposing of unknowable knowledge of inner states of other minds) People can disagree about all kinds of things, there can be hundreds of opinions about how tall a building is, for example. But... it has an 'actual' height, that doesn't change simply because you think it should. If something is OP, even if you don't think it is... well, it still is.
Class balance in games with wildly varying plots, enemies, rules, and allowances at every table in the country is absolutely akin to building height (a purely static number).
Come on man.
Is it more versatile than a sorcerer on a day to day basis? Sure. Is it ever going to cast as many spells as a sorcerer?
I think a human sorcerer has greater versatility every day of the week by virtue of having access to nearly twice as many spells of each level at any given time (especially in terms of high level spells where it is 6 vs. 3). The arcanist can be more specialized for a given circumstance and flexible from one day to the next, but the sorcerer will always be more versatile.
Does this class have more spells than a wizard? Well, yes. Is it ever going to have the versatility of a wizard? No, it's not, but it is very, very close. I think that the wizard ends up winning the overall versatility war by having more spells selected (even if they decide to rack several of the same spell) and they have nearly the same number of castings at the end of the day.
This class has the same number or fewer spells per day than a specialist wizard at very single level.
What practice are you referring to? You have extensive practice with this class already huh?
It matches and exceeds the wizard's versatility. Why?
Well, it might have a smaller array of spells it could cast in...
I think in terms of actual experience with a mechanic like this I'm probably more qualified to speak than most.
I've been playing a wizard for 3-4 years that mechanically has mirrored the arcanist in many ways. She prepares spells as a wizard but has the ability to power them from a pool of spontaneous spell slots. Even with the spells prepared of a wizard it has not been game breaking, nor has she overshadowed the party's (human) sorcerer.
At the end of the day preparation and spontaneous casting together still falls victim to the same pitfalls that spontaneous casting and preparation do individually. It is easy to prepare the wrong spells for the day (leaving you casting the same sub par spells over and over again), and in fact it is even easier to do so with the arcanist than the wizard or sorcerer because you will have dramatically fewer spells available at any given time.
When you compare the spell prep'd from an arcanist and a sorcer, the numbers are surprisingly close. Using a FCB in a comparison to a class that doesn't have FCBs yet isn't a fair comparison...What? You play the game with what there is. You don't compare the core wizard to the splatbook witch. You compare all available existing options to all existing options. You are throwing out the sorcerer's advantage (huge) in spells known to make your next example look better.
I think that the point was that using FCB isn't fair because not every sorcerer is a human with all his favored class going to new spells. Would be nice if we all could have that, but that's more of a racial thing and it makes the numbers a little biased and situational.
I think in terms of actual experience with a mechanic like this I'm probably more qualified to speak than most.
I've been playing a wizard for 3-4 years that mechanically has mirrored the arcanist in many ways.
I've actually done that before with people who are newer to the game. It definitely can make a pretty big difference imo. I've also got some experience wouldntcha' know it. Really depends on the person and circumstances though. Some people can use it to attain ultimate power, others are a little more mellow about it. I think a lot of people are mellow, but potential is something to consider with things. Ultimate arcane power is a hard gig to turn down.
Coming off as a little aggressive there btw. Not sure if your trying to be, but its probably doing more harm than good. Might want to take a few deep breaths or something and take a more passive approach.
One thing I' have decided on, is that there isn't enough wizard blend here, particularly where schools are concerned. They aren't really even mentioned--and thus don't matter one lick--until 20th-level.
I would like to see one or two new class abilities involving schools thrown in at the low and mid levels. That might help with some of the absent flavor people are talking about.
I agree here, I think abilities from Wizard may be a better fit. They have the bonus feats, but that's about it. Blood Focus is a little wacky, I think Bloodrager used the Bloodlines to much better effect.
So what I'm guessing the General Consensus is,
1.We want the range of spells available to prepared casters (unlimited with spellbook), but we want to cast them spontaneously like an innate caster.(# per level per day needs tweaking)
2.We want our powers to be innate, yet have the ability to specialize in specific fields of magic.(Choose magic to specialize with yet have benefits like bloodlines)
3.The Blood Focus ability either needs work or needs to be replaced with something else.
4.Spellcasting Mechanics seem faulty, while class ability or flavor seems bland or underdeveloped.
I believe that's the gist of the suggestions so far.
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I will ask this: can anyone imagine any situation where they'll ever say, "hmmm, I have a neat character concept... I think arcanist fits it the best!"?
Yes.
- a character that wants to be able to tap into innate magical power without the wackiness of bloodlines doing uncontrolled things
- a character that studies at a wizard's school only to find that magic comes slightly easier to them
- a character for a newer player that allows for early choices to be easily corrected without having to worry tracking which spell was cast already
- a generalist mage that can excel in all the schools of magic
I am hoping they drop the "blood" powers in lieu of more general "arcane" powers. It's much easier to fit a character concept onto a framework without lots of weird attachments predetermining a shape for that character.
- A wizard is exaclty what you described here -not every single person can study magic, only those with some measure of innate power can. So what you described is *exactly* a wizard.
- that could easily be an arcane bloodline sorcerer.
- that is also a sorcerer - for a newer player, the near to zero bookkeeping of a sorcerer is ideal.
- A generalist mage that is good with every school already exists and is, in fact, called a generalist wizard.
While I think that the flexibility the Arcanist gives you is greater than the one of the Sorcerer, the downsides of the class are all there for the naked eye to see: You need to procure spells, have vulnerable spellbooks and you have the bad spontaneous caster spell progression. Additionally, your spells prepared per day are less than the number of spells you can cast per day, which gives the Wizard still the edge in versatility. I also miss school powers, which in some cases are so good as to be considered a major class feature (Divination and Conjuration(Teleportation) come to mind).
The biggest turn-off is that the Arcanist seems to be devoid of flavor, i.e. it has no real identity like the Wizard and Sorcerer do.
I still have to playtest it, but on reading I don't think I would ever play an arcanist.
I like the casting, although I'd like it more if it was based on charisma, or a mix of the two:
·Intelligence to determine which levels of spells he can prepare but charisma for the rest (He has the power over magic, but lacks the instinct to manipulate it).
I'd get rid of blood focus and give them an ability that escalates with level and is also the capstone ability (tied to their bloodline) and one, two or three (depending on their power) abilities tied to the arcane schools and keyed off intelligence.
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I would just say that while I like all the other classes (even the Brawler which is woefully underpowered), I absolutely loathe the Arcanist. While all the others feel like "I want to do this, lets make it halfway between two classes instead of an AT or a totally new class", this feels like "The editors say we need a sorcerer/wizard hybrid. Lets make something."
Sorcerer and Wizard are ALREADY just a few steps away from each other, and the compromises here aren't good ones in any case.
-The strange spellcasting method doesn't make this between Sorcerer and Wizard. It just makes this do silly things, granting insane versatility. Yes, it's at the slower sorcerer progression, but it still feels overall better than wizard or sorc for most purposes... But more importantly it's clunky and annoying. It feels like a shoehorned compromise rather than an interesting method of casting in its own right. A preferable answer would be for it to cast like a sorcerer mostly, but be able to prepare one slot per level with something else (anything else, perhaps! Don't even need a spellbook?) at the start of the day.
-Bloodline Focus is clunky as well, and compromises two things that didn't need to be compromised. The reduced bloodline abilities in exchange for being able to just buff spells instead is odd, and considering most bloodlines I feel it will usually result in just not using bloodline abilities. One of my big issues with this is that most of my favorite bloodline powers are passives, and using a standard action to activate them for a few rounds. I think this would make a lot more sense if you just sort of "got" a sorcerer bloodline, but at reduced level... But even then, it has this whole "On the fence" feel rather than feeling like its own class. If anything, Arcanist shouldn't have ANY bloodline powers, and should instead have something like "Arcane Talents" that it can take every few levels.
-Bonus feats. This is the easiest thing to get rid of to make something more interesting or to do something interesting with.
Also, this class could really use some strange features going up. Something that makes it feel like its own man. I really think Blood Focus and the bonus feats need to just /go away/ in exchange for a Talent list like some of the other classes have. Or even keep them with a number of "Blood" points per day, but give them more unique things to do with them the way Monks, Investigators, Swashbucklers, and everyone else with points per day gets a sizable list.
All in all: I'd like to see this class be taken further from Sorcerer or Wizard, and I'd like to feel like it /does/ something that makes it its own class.
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My pre-build impressions.
1) How the Arcanist casts spells feels way more unique than it actually is so I think that part is a success. By far it is the best part of the class.
2) I love how it casts off of the Wizard spell list. I'm a big fan of unified spell lists. It makes it easier to apply third party spells without having to beg for new products to support the new classes. A+ for that.
3)I feel like Blood Focus could do something different. Mostly because it requires a lot of cross referencing between books to make a combination of bloodline/arcane school. Also thematically I cant see them having access to bloodline powers.
No other opinions until I run some scenarios with my players.
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- A wizard is exaclty what you described here -not every single person can study magic, only those with some measure of innate power can. So what you described is *exactly* a wizard.
- that could easily be an arcane bloodline sorcerer.
- that is also a sorcerer - for a newer player, the near to zero bookkeeping of a sorcerer is ideal.
- A generalist mage that is good with every school already exists and is, in fact, called a generalist wizard.
I gave situations where I would prefer the arcanist over the wizard or sorcerer. You asked. I answered.
Fair enough. As a GM I'd never approve of that, but I'm not your GM so that doesn't matter. If you honestly believe an arcanist is a better fit for those situations... well, I guess you and I have differing opinions there.
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As a GM I'd never approve of that
So if a player's view of their character doesn't match up to yours, you'd ban it? Man, that's all kinds of not cool.
That'd be like me banning Wizards and Rogues at my table just because I personally don't like them and think Sorcerers and Alchemists do their job much better and with a flavor I prefer.
Quick question -
An Arcanist picks up a Ring of Wizardry. Which spellcasting progression does this item double - Spells Prepared (as a wizard) or Spell Slots (as a sorcerer)?
Prepared... just as the item itself specifies. It's a big advantage, you have more spells at the ready, even if the amount of slots to power them does not increase.
It actually says:
"This special ring comes in four varieties, all of them useful only to arcane spellcasters. The wearer's arcane spells per day are doubled for one specific spell level. A ring of wizardry I doubles 1st-level spells, a ring of wizardry II doubles 2nd-level spells, a ring of wizardry III doubles 3rd-level spells, and a ring of wizardry IV doubles 4th-level spells. Bonus spells from high ability scores or school specialization are not doubled."
So I'd say it doubles the spell slots.
Quick question -
An Arcanist picks up a Ring of Wizardry. Which spellcasting progression does this item double - Spells Prepared (as a wizard) or Spell Slots (as a sorcerer)?
Prepared... just as the item itself specifies. It's a big advantage, you have more spells at the ready, even if the amount of slots to power them does not increase.
That... Is sorta awesome. I've always though Pearls were vastly superior to rings but with the Arcanist, it would appear that Rings are sorta awesome.[edit, just saw the posts above lol. Guess I can continue to think Pearls are better]
As for those who dislike the flavor, I for one am a fan. I genuinely like the concept of someone who has innate talent and puts in the time to understand it too. In my homebrew game our Wizard has come across a Fetchling who has raw magical talent(Expert who could be a Sorc) but as a Wizard he doesn't really wanna teach her to be a Sorc and would like some sort of middle ground.
With that in mind I hope they do have a CHA based archetype. Also I honestly would like the option of an additional school spell prepared since I find it sorta sad you get a school but not the additional spell slot(unless I missed it in my initial read).
I'm building out one right now to throw at my parties Wizard come Monday and see how the 2 compare. I'll throw up my stuff in this thread afterwards.
3) they have less prepared spells than a sorcerer has spells knownNot a significant disadvantage. Getting more spells slots is cheap and easy. You get them simply by raising your main attribute, which you'd do anyway. And scrolls more than compensate for this.
I'm sorry if I'm missing something, but I don't understand this response. MikeY is saying that an arcanist's prepared spells will be fewer than a sorcerer's known spells. Talking about how the arcanist gets bonus spell slots (spells per day) with a high casting stat, just like all other casters, doesn't actually address his point. An arcanist's casting stat doesn't affect spells prepared.
Hey there folks,
I think a lot of the calls of "overpowered" will play out to be untrue in actual play examples, but I will gladly wait to see those come in (thanks thought to the folks who did some build analysis, we did that work weeks ago when building the class, but at least I dont have to repost it).
Jason Bulmahn
Lead DesignerSorry, Jason, but I honestly can't see that happening.
...You know there is one way you could prove him wrong right...you know...actually playtest the class?
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At the moment the Arcanist just feels like an Alternate Spellcasting system for Wizards.
Which is great from a World building perspective and for people who just don't like the Vancian spellcasting system
but He is basically occupying the same spot in the world as the Wizard.
Blood Focus seems to be the point intended to make him distinct from the wizard but at the moment it's just poorly done.
What if instead of spending blood focus over the day for stuff it was something you spend during spell preparation to Load Bloodline abilities and other tricks. Making it so the Arcanist has this innate magic within him but his studies let him customize how he uses it, instead of just having it manifest the way a Sorcerer bloodline does.
-1 point to have a 1st level Bloodline ability from your bloodline
-1 point to have the arcana for your bloodline
-1 point to prepare a single spell at +1 CL or +1 DC
-2 point to access your 3rd level Bloodline Power
-X points to have a bonus metamagic feat for the day. X is equal to how many levels the feat adds to a spell.
-4 points to have access to your 9th level bloodline ability
-1 point/spell level to prepare a extra spell for the day
etc...
Maybe even have a "Blood Arcanist" archetype that gets less spells but more Blood Focus and access to multiple Bloodlines.
I would say that it's not big of a deal to have fewer spells prepared than the Sorc does know. By my read that they have less prepared because they can change them out while a Sorc is stuck with his/her spells forever(Retraining aside) so it's a perceived buff.
I think the bigger issue is the number of spell slots they get and that they advance at the rate of a Sorc. Cause okay, they definitely have less spells than a Sorc(6>5), but look to have "more" than a Wizard till you look at their spell progression and take into account they have as many spells as a Wizard when you take into account their school slots. The easiest fix is to either give them the spell slot/prepared slot for schools or to let them advance at the rate of a Wizard for when they learn their next level of spells. Even if it's a 0 spells per day, their casting stat would help them get some spells if nothing else.
Also gonna be seeing a lot of taxes for pages of Spell Knowledge and so on to up the number of prepare-able spells, since it says: "Feats and other effects that modify the number of spells
known by a spellcaster affect the number of spells the
arcanist can prepare." Don't know how I feel about it, but I imagine that will also help offset their problems.
I will ask this: can anyone imagine any situation where they'll ever say, "hmmm, I have a neat character concept... I think arcanist fits it the best!"?
Because to me, this class lacks flavor. It covers no new ground, at all. Wizards are already people with some magic in them who decide to study it. We don't need another class for that. Any arcanist can just as easily be a wizard. I know what I'm saying is not very constructive or helpful for the playtest, but I'd drop the class entirely OR make sure it has a fluff reason to exist. As is, it's really as an alternate wizard class.
Yeah this is my concern more so than relative power level (which I think is not as bad a people claim).
Arcanist in this sense really strikes me as an alternate wizard for a setting where people can only learn magic if they have "magic in their blood". Which is a pretty common trope in fantasy. Wizards in the Dresden books for instance are pretty much Arcanists, not DnD Wizards.
You just normally see "Arcanists" taking the place of "Vancian Wizards", not both in types in the same setting and with equivalent power levels. Which kind of gives a sense or redundancy to the class. I actually could see people running homebrews ban the Wizard and make the Arcanist the default wizarding class. Hell I kind of want to do that
The Arcanist does seem awfully powerful. I've been thinking, the only thing my wizard needs is is spontaneous casting and a bloodline power or two- things I acquired just fine with a bonded object and the Eldritch Heritage feat, respectively. This class grants too much while giving up too little in way of balance.
This, however, is intriguing:
... having a 1/2 BAB no-armor divine caster would have been a better idea, in my opinion. You could even claim that it's a cleric/wizard hybrid, too!
There's a 3rd party class that emulates this, the Priest, but it would be better to have an official Paizo version.
But alas, that's another thread. How to balance the Arcanist?
You just normally see "Arcanists" taking the place of "Vancian Wizards", not both in types in the same setting and with equivalent power levels. Which kind of gives a sense or redundancy to the class. I actually could see people running homebrews ban the Wizard and make the Arcanist the default wizarding class. Hell I kind of want to do that
I personally would be okay with this, but as said above just because I prefer one version of the class doesn't mean all my players would, and banning one just because I prefer the other kind of is a jerk move, so I leave the option open for each player to use the variant they prefer.
my biggest issue is the total lack of flavor in the arcanist, and the lack of interesting class features outside of its unique casting structure. after thinking of a solution for a while i've come up with the following suggestion:
tie them into rune magic, as far as i am aware the closest we can get to rune magic as is would be a sorcerer taking the sin schools, which done really lend themselves to runes,a few suggestions for implementing this;
1 restricting the class to sin schools, this actually synergizes thematically with school mastery rather nicely and two missing schools would do quite a bit to reduce the perceived or actual overpoweredness
2 strip out the bonus feats and scribe scroll and add in some interesting rune magic abilities, it doesn't have to be powerful or even amazingly useful (spells pulling most of the use here anyway) just something to add some flavor and fill out the dead levels
just my two cents on how i would make this class interesting.
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I'm not going to touch the whole question of how this class casts spells and how over/under powered it is, as I have no playtest experience with it and have not run the numbers as others have.
My biggest issue with this class is the lack of flavor that other people have mentioned. When this class was first announced I was very excited, picturing the possibility of a class that brought interesting new mechanics and class abilities to the table. My ideal vision would be a class that does for the wizard/sorcerer the same thing the magus did for the wizard/fighter, providing a class that provides some of the benefits of each while having enough differences both mechanically and flavor-wise to make it stand out as its own thing.
I know that this is my own personal view, but I was picturing more of the "master of the arcane" type, who specialized in magic itself while mostly eschewing the bloodline and school focus mechanics of other classes. However, instead the arcanist seems to try to mix the class abilities of the sorcerer and wizard while providing nothing really new and exciting beyond its new type of spellcasting, and limiting the class features it does incorporate so that they are nowhere near as useful.
For me the idea of an arcanist should try to break new ground by introducing new material, like many of the other new classes have. My ideal arcanist would have some or all of the following:
-A mix of spontaneous and prepared casting (which was done, but could be done another way, such as the limited number of spontaneous slots some have recommended)
-The ability to modify or enhance how they cast specific spells or types of spells (someone already mentioned the Spellbinder)
-The ability to focus on specific themes of magic or styles of spells separate from the bloodlines and schools, granting themed abilities and bonuses on those types of spells (someone else already mentioned this. Perhaps a commander who relies on summoning, animation, and buffing allies; or a mastermind who uses illusions, mind control, and deceptive spells)
-Perhaps something revolving around the manipulation of magic itself, buffing or hindering other characters spellcasting (perhaps this could be a specialization like I mentioned above)
-Perhaps the ability to use spell slots in new and interesting ways (splitting or combining spell slots, converting spells into effects like Arcane Blast or Arcane Shield)
-Perhaps a way of gaining access to Arcane Discoveries or Bloodline Powers in a very limited way, leaving those as the purview of the proper classes.
These are just my thoughts. I think that the Arcanist concept has potential but I don't think that just preparing spells in a different way is enough to make a new class interesting, just as it took until Pathfinder to make Wizards and Sorcerers really feel different to an interesting degree.
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Which is ridiculous.