So 5e has vastly toned down the power of full casters without making them useless. The inbuilt feature of many spells allowing them to be cast in a higher slot in exchange for a more powerful effect made it far less necessary for casters to end the day with 10-15 lower-level spells uncast and wasting space on your sheet. And spell save DCs depend on your caster level, not the spell level, so the spells you learned at 3rd level have a chance to land even at level 20.
So that's the good news for casters.
Now obviously if we just made those changes to the PFRPG and didn't change anything else, we'd just make the problem of caster-martial disparity even worse. So here's some of the changes 5e has made regarding casters.
Apart from instantaneous blasts, there are almost no fire and forget spells.Stinking cloud, cloudkill, most of the wall spells, dominate effects, and pretty much every spell Treantmonk rated as blue require concentration, or else they fail, and most have a maximum duration of 1 minute or 10 minutes or 1 hour, depending on what effects they're going for.
Also, many buffs and utilities also have a duration of concentration. This includes invisibility, blur, fly, bless, and a couple of others.
This kind of makes sense. James Jacobs tried to put a limit on simultaneous buffs into the core PF rules but couldn't do it without breaking backwards compatibility. If the buffs require concentration, then it becomes a much more nuanced decision as to whether or not to cast haste before combat. Self-buffs like divine favor don't have this limitation, and are in fact auto-Quickened.
Other changes of note: animate dead costs nothing, but you have to recast it within 24 hours or you lose control of them. Wish costs nothing (there are no such things ss inherent bonuses) but unless you use it for straight spell duplication, you'll be taking Str damage whenever you cast another spell until you rest and regain spells, and if you used it for something more powerful than, say, a wishport or group instaheal, you have a 33% chance of losing the ability to cast wish at all, ever again.
So which changes would you think some pathfinder campaigns could benefit from, and which would break the system?
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I think there's already been discussions about this.
EDIT: Pardon my rudeness. I am a very sleepy man today.
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I think there's already been discussions about this.
So don't link to them or anything...just pop on and threadcrap away.
To the OP, I love what 5e has done with casters and I would just say Yes. Yes to anything and everything that 5e changed, port it all over and add it to Pathfinder....however you are going to get resistance from players that like being wizzo-gods. I took another path. My group just straight-up switched to 5e and we are loving it. The game is fast, simple and easy to play and everyone is feeling like an equal part of the game instead of one or two players with uber-game mastery or an interweb-build of destruction being the main reason the party stays alive.
Other than that, you could shoehorn in parts of the system into the existing but I doubt that many players are going to like it and you are left with a mish-mash of game rules that weren't meant to coexist. It will take a lot of tweaking to make them run smoothly together imo.
Yeah, I started one of them. Or something like it. I think it was more of a "what mechanics, of any kind, could we use in the PFRPG" rather than specifically casters, though, which is what I'm interested in at the moment.
Also, some more time has passed and those who play it have gained more experience with 5e by now than they did when the system launched.
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Also, many buffs and utilities also have a duration of concentration. This includes invisibility, blur, fly, bless, and a couple of others.
Making buffs concentration spells effectively removes them from the spellbooks of some casters.
Magus: I use spell combat to cast Blur and attack.
GM: Blur goes off, but as soon as you roll your attack dice the spell goes away.
Magus: Mirror Image? Haste? Or should I only memorize Intensified Maximized Shocking Grasp in my higher level spell slots.
How would this impact the Warpriest, who has a major class feature allowing him to buff as a swift action while attacking. Do his buffs immediately disappear when he attacks?
Fixed my above post.
I do wish Pathfinder used concentration in more interesting ways. Maybe it could have been similar to 4th Edition where you have to spend a swift action instead of a standard action to maintain a concentration effect.
Fixed my above post.
I do wish Pathfinder used concentration in more interesting ways. Maybe it could have been similar to 4th Edition where you have to spend a swift action instead of a standard action to maintain a concentration effect.
EDIT
Also, many buffs and utilities also have a duration of concentration. This includes invisibility, blur, fly, bless, and a couple of others.Making buffs concentration spells effectively removes them from the spellbooks of some casters.
Magus: I use spell combat to cast Blur and attack.
GM: Blur goes off, but as soon as you roll your attack dice the spell goes away.
Magus: Mirror Image? Haste? Or should I only memorize Intensified Maximized Shocking Grasp in my higher level spell slots.
In 5th Edition, concentration doesn't expend your standard action.
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Fixed my above post.
I do wish Pathfinder used concentration in more interesting ways. Maybe it could have been similar to 4th Edition where you have to spend a swift action instead of a standard action to maintain a concentration effect.
EDIT
In 5th Edition, concentration doesn't expend your standard action.Also, many buffs and utilities also have a duration of concentration. This includes invisibility, blur, fly, bless, and a couple of others.Making buffs concentration spells effectively removes them from the spellbooks of some casters.
Magus: I use spell combat to cast Blur and attack.
GM: Blur goes off, but as soon as you roll your attack dice the spell goes away.
Magus: Mirror Image? Haste? Or should I only memorize Intensified Maximized Shocking Grasp in my higher level spell slots.
Full attacking, or using spell combat, is a full round action. The magus will also be using swift actions for class abilities nearly every round. Telling the magus he cannot use his Arcana while maintaining a spell is going to push the class into a much narrower set of pure DPR builds.
Hm, that's a good point.
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Making it harder to layer multiple buffs does sound like a good change, especially if you design the available buffs so that there's no single one that's always the best for every situation. Meaning that you really need to think about what buff to lay on.
I'm not sure if concentration is the best way to do it, because that way you can still buff other people (and profit from a Leadership-driven regiment of support casters).
A straight maximum on the number of spells that can affect you at the same time (X buffs, Y debuffs) seems nicer. If you exceed it a random previous one goes away. ("Hit me with some more Dazzle effects, maybe you'll randomly evict that Blindness curse...") That could also put a limit on the more obnoxious SoS builds (the ones that ruin all the GM's fun).
If you're gonna design limits, I think you should be honest about them; not hiding prestige classes behind a "can cast level X spells" if what you really want is to say "must be level Y". If Paizo had just said "you must be level 6 before becoming Mystic Theurge", we wouldn't have this embarrassing early entry thing.
Likewise, if you want to limit the number of buffs, just put a cap on them; making it harder just pushes people to try harder.
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Pretty sure in 5e, maintaining Concentration is no action. You can do whatever you want while having such a spell up, however, you can't have multiple concentration spells running at once, and you have to make a check if you take damage.
D&D 5e did one thing quite well: non-scaling spells.
Also the non-scaling spell's effect is level appropriate.
Magic missile spell (CL 1): 3 glowing darts 1d4+1 damage each.
Flaming sphere spell (Cl 3): 2D6 fire damage (5 ft sphere)
Fireball spell (CL 5): 8d6 fire damage (20 ft radius)
@Fake Healer, D&D 5e is a simple system with its own appeal, yet it doesn't have the complexities and nuances of Pathfinder.
Not to mention this (simple vs complex) is disingenuous. D&D (5e) without including storytelling is more of a fire-and-forget game. The nuances of pathfinder fuels paizo's rules and homebrew forums. There is so much to consider and think about.
Full attacking, or using spell combat, is a full round action. The magus will also be using swift actions for class abilities nearly every round. Telling the magus he cannot use his Arcana while maintaining a spell is going to push the class into a much narrower set of pure DPR builds.Fixed my above post.
I do wish Pathfinder used concentration in more interesting ways. Maybe it could have been similar to 4th Edition where you have to spend a swift action instead of a standard action to maintain a concentration effect.
EDIT
In 5th Edition, concentration doesn't expend your standard action.Also, many buffs and utilities also have a duration of concentration. This includes invisibility, blur, fly, bless, and a couple of others.Making buffs concentration spells effectively removes them from the spellbooks of some casters.
Magus: I use spell combat to cast Blur and attack.
GM: Blur goes off, but as soon as you roll your attack dice the spell goes away.
Magus: Mirror Image? Haste? Or should I only memorize Intensified Maximized Shocking Grasp in my higher level spell slots.
As was mentioned, keeping concentration is a no-action. So the Magus could cast blur and attack just like in Pathfinder. But if he gets attacked, there's a chance that the blur spell will end due to taking damage.
Nonscaling spells are enough to keep me from touching 5e. The fighter doesn't have to ration his effective attacks and then attack like he's a level or five lower. There's no point in having multiple levels of spell slots at all if only the highest are useful.
Neither does the wizard. They have at-will cantrips that are actually useful. Ray of Frost does 1d3 damage at level 1 in Pathfinder, and 1d3 damage at level 20 in Pathfinder. Ray of Frost does 1d8 damage at level 1 in 5th edition and 4d8 damage at level 20 (starting at 17th) in 5th edition.
This helps limit the exponential scaling of casters. A high level wizard in 3.x can end encounters with his highest level spells, or just contribute on the level of everyone else with his low level spells. And as mentioned, cantrips do scale. The Warlock is all about blasting away with Eldritch Blast all day.
5th Edition shifts much of the wizard's power into cantrips. In fact, the game very carefully regulates how many cantrips a spellcaster receives.
Is non-scaling spells really all that great. I am playing a level 10 wizard now. In really dangerous situations I'll throw off a 3-5 levels spells, but I like to be able to use scaling lower level spells to continue and contribute without overwhelming an encounter. Using a scaling MM is great for that. Make it non-scaling and you force the caster to focus on using higher level spells. Keep in mind, it'll still be a rare day that a high level wizard will run out of useful spells even after 5 encounters with your limit, so why remove the ability to continue to contribute with lower level spells.D&D 5e did one thing quite well: non-scaling spells.
Also the non-scaling spell's effect is level appropriate.
Magic missile spell (CL 1): 3 glowing darts 1d4+1 damage each.
Flaming sphere spell (Cl 3): 2D6 fire damage (5 ft sphere)
Fireball spell (CL 5): 8d6 fire damage (20 ft radius)
@Fake Healer, D&D 5e is a simple system with its own appeal, yet it doesn't have the complexities and nuances of Pathfinder.
Not to mention this (simple vs complex) is disingenuous. D&D (5e) without including storytelling is more of a fire-and-forget game. The nuances of pathfinder fuels paizo's rules and homebrew forums. There is so much to consider and think about.
Using higher level spells to deal with tough encounters is an appropriate reaction.
A 5e fireball spell does 8d6 damage...spells are more powerful to compensate for the fact they do not scale.
A 9th level Sorcerer with 18 Charisma with 7 8d6 fireball spells, that's a lot of firepower at their disposal.
Spell-casters should be on par with warriors at low levels and the reverse at higher level play.
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The Eldritch Knight fighter path has advantage on concentration checks to avoid losing concentration when damaged. The Eldritch Knight is the closest thing 5E has to Magus.
As to scaling/non-scaling, yes and no. Fireball does 8d6 damage no matter your caster level, but you are able to cast it as a higher level spell, and it does more damage when you do.
In fact, 'caster level' is not a game mechanic at all! The particulars of a spell (range, duration, number of targets, damage dice, etc.) are totally divorced from caster level. Even the damage done by cantrips is based on character level, not caster level.
And 1st level spells do around three or four damage dice, and more when you cast them as higher level spells. They never become pointless at higher levels.
Even the save DC of your spells isn't based on spell level; the save DC for spells you cast is the same for every spell you cast. Therefore, your 1st level spell has just as much chance of affecting the baddy as your 9th level spell.
I do like the idea of the fighter having a spellcasting archetype.
I do miss caster level scaling though...
5E concentration is similar to M&M Sustained powers. As long as you are capable of taking a free action the power/spell is maintained.
The only time you loose the spell is if you cast another concentration spell, take a lot of damage and fail the concentration check or get knocked out.
5E also seperates Spells prepared from Spells per day. This works well for their "Spells scale by Spell slot" set up.
A 5th level wizard with 18 intelligence will prepare 9 spells for the day (I think). Those 9 spells can be anywhere from 1st-3rd spell level, with no fixed prep limits. To cast those preped spells he has 4/3/2 spell slots. I don't think they get bonus slots for high stats, could be wrong though.
It works because spells can be used in multiple slots and some of the more utility style spells can be done as 10 minute rituals instead of preped spells if he wants.
Another thing of note: The sorcerer and wizard have different spell lists.
Also, the sorcerer does not have a delayed casting progression: they get access to spell levels at the same time as the wizard.
The sorcerer spell list is smaller and doesn't have every single battlefield control option the wizard has, but they get some pretty intense spells that wizards don't, like earthquake.
They can also sacrifice lower-level spell slots to convert them into higher-level spell slots or to add metamagic to a spell (and the sorcerer is the only class that gets metamagic).
It seems that the paradigm is "3 1st-level spells known and 2 spells known of levels 2 through 5, and 1 of levels 6-9. But of course since you can exchange a lower-level spell known for a spell of any level you can cast at each class level, you can easily swap out all your lower level spells for higher-level ones and cannibalize your 1st-level slots for metamagic.
But I would recommend against that. At the very least, you'll want mage armor.
On the subject of the sorcerer, I've been wanting a homebrew add-on to the sorcerer that adds sorcery points.
and then you have the warlock. Very few Spells known, but always casts them at full power
Interesting note:
Finger of death seems quite well-balanced, damage-wise. A 13th-level wizard using it on another 13th-level wizard has an almost 50% decent chance of killing the wizard, provided the wizard fails the save and has no other protections up, and a Constitution of 13 or lower.
Anyone hardier than the wizard will need softening up first, but finger of death on the opening round will put the fear of god into literally anything.
And the kicker? If you kill someone with finger of death, you get a free permanent zombie minion! This is in contrast with animate dead, which requires you prepare it twice each day and cast it to refresh the duration before it expires and all the dead become uncontrolled.
Another thing of note: The sorcerer and wizard have different spell lists.
Also, the sorcerer does not have a delayed casting progression: they get access to spell levels at the same time as the wizard.
The sorcerer spell list is smaller and doesn't have every single battlefield control option the wizard has, but they get some pretty intense spells that wizards don't, like earthquake.
They can also sacrifice lower-level spell slots to convert them into higher-level spell slots or to add metamagic to a spell (and the sorcerer is the only class that gets metamagic).
It seems that the paradigm is "3 1st-level spells known and 2 spells known of levels 2 through 5, and 1 of levels 6-9. But of course since you can exchange a lower-level spell known for a spell of any level you can cast at each class level, you can easily swap out all your lower level spells for higher-level ones and cannibalize your 1st-level slots for metamagic.
But I would recommend against that. At the very least, you'll want mage armor.
D&D 5e design change of giving the sorcerer and wizard different spell list makes the sorcerer its own class instead of being just a spontaneous casting wizard.
I know paizo gave the sorcerer class bloodlines, and WOTC borrowed that idea and by giving them their own spell list took the design of the sorcerer class to a logical design conclusion.
Don't agree that metamagic should be a 'sorcerer only' affair. Not all spell-casters are predictable and would have a personal take on common spells.
An idea easily conceived in fantasy literature. One could imagine that Gandalf's fireball spell would be different from Merlin's or Mellisandre's fireball spell.
My major issue with the caster changes from 5e is that much of it seems focused on damage dealing and less on bf control. Why would you ever be a wizard to do damage, that's the barbarian's job. There's zero fun in being a caster unless you do something different and better than other classes, traditionally that's battlefield control. I don't want a class that is essentially sapped of its flexibility and it's most useful features because I can buff and evade.
I'd rather lose fireball than stinking cloud every single time.
You can keep stinking cloud. It even works pretty much the same (area is heavily obscured, creatures in cloud must make a saving throw using their Constitution modifier or spend their standard action that turn vomiting instead of doing anything useful, cloud doesn't affect creatures that don't breathe or are completely immune to poison, etc). You just can't be invisible, flying in the air at the limit of medium range, cast stinking cloud, and remain invisible and out-of-reach while casting a Quickened transmute rock to mud to turn their base land speed to "Haha ft." before summoning flying poison-immune monsters with blindsight to kill the enemies while they can't fight back.
You can have battlefield control, you just can't have three or four effects going on at once to ROFLstomp an encounter.
Some people might be kind of mad that they can't have a battlefield control and a buff up at the same time. "Why should I be unable to fly if I want to cast stinking cloud to control the battlefield?"
Well, put simply, at the level you get it, fly is the best battlefield control spell in the game. Why use stinking cloud on a group of enemies that are unfortunate enough not to have ranged attacks when you can simply fly up out of their reach and kill them with cantrips? Note that for each spell level above 3rd that you raise it, fly can target an additional creature.
Air superiority is incredibly, insanely powerful. And so is haste. To many player's horror, 5e nerfed haste pretty hard. It's only one target, and when the spell ends they lose a turn's worth of actions. But it's still powerful, because it lasts twice as long as it used to when you first got it at level 5 (1 minute rather than 30 seconds), and the extra weapon attack is still there (which itself is 95% of the spell's reason for being).
It's just that now you have to make a choice about who to buff with it.
Just kidding. Use it on the fighter.
Haste isn't for the whole party. It's for one character only now.
And you can make other party members fly, too. Multiple ones, in fact, by level 7, and all of them by level 11.
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Again, haste is only for one character.
If you lose concentration on haste, the target loses a turn.
It's still not garbage, though, because the extra weapon attack is still there, and there's also an option to take your move without provoking from anything you happen to pass by.
It's about time the whole game stopped revolving around one single spell that isn't even that iconic outside of the D&D context.
"Hey guys, I know we got into this game to project ourselves into a fantastic universe, but the very mechanics we use to determine success or failure tell me that launching a ball of fire to obliterate our foes is objectively, provably worse than turning all of you into a shakey-cam effects shot from Crank 2. So put on your Statham face, because rules interactions and probability calculations that weren't fully thought through at the time by some guys in Seattle during the Clinton administration have gone on to break immersion for thousands of players for over a decade."
I'm not sure if WotC "stole" from Pathfinder when they gave bloodlines to sorcerers. Sorcerers had bloodlines in 4th Edition, the book they appeared in released and developed around the same time as the PF CRB. The bloodlines listed in 5th Edition take from 4th Edition, however, the dragon bloodline does look rather similar to the one in PF.
Getting an extra attack is actually way better for 5th Edition than 3rd Edition. It's more difficult to obtain iterative attacks for non-martials. Martials, obviously, do more damage and tend to have higher ability scores since they receive score increases more frequently and most of the martial feats grant ability score increases, negating the cost of the feat.
Having ability score increases scale off of BAB would actually be kind of neat in PF and help reduce martial dependency on belts. How about a character receives a +1 ability score increase at +3, +6, +9, +12, +15, and +18 BAB? This means martials get bonuses every three levels. Gishes get bonuses every four levels as normal. And full arcane casters get bonuses every six levels.
Bloodlines first appeared in either a Dragon Magazine or Unearthed Arcana for 3rd edition. I also remember people wishing they could have their sorcerer get the innate magic from something other than dragons, like demons or angels or mindflayers, etc. Not sure if there are sorcerer bloodlines in UA, but I remember bloodline feats in a dragon magazine for sorcerers (also reprinted in Dragon Compendium vol 1). I believe that could be where Paizo got the sorcerer bloodline idea from.
I just hope the 5e sorcerer ends up with more than just dragon bloodline and wild magic.
Again, my memory could be bad on when bloodlines first appeared for sorcerers in 3rd edition. I just remember the feats in a Dragon magazine, and assume Paizo took those and made them actual class features for the sorcerer.
I just hope the 5e sorcerer ends up with more than just dragon bloodline and wild magic.
Agreed. One of my biggest complaints against the PHB is lack of content. Every class only received two or three specializations. No magic items. Almost no content for higher level of play as the developers admittedly centered the game's design around the first few levels.
I'm not sure if WotC "stole" from Pathfinder when they gave bloodlines to sorcerers.The entire concept of someone getting angry that WotC "stole" an idea from Paizo is massively hilarious.
No one has remotely implied that they are angry that WOTC stole an idea.
Your comment is antagonistic and untrue.
Its reasonable to say Pathfinder (due to its popularity, strong community and financial success) made a impact on WOTC design decisions.
I think his point was saying WotC stole something from Pathfinder is hilarious because Pathfinder stole a massive portion of what it is from WotC. I could be wrong.
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I just hope the 5e sorcerer ends up with more than just dragon bloodline and wild magic.Agreed. One of my biggest complaints against the PHB is lack of content. Every class only received two or three specializations. No magic items. Almost no content for higher level of play as the developers admittedly centered the game's design around the first few levels.
The inherent design of every class includes a choice of path. Although only two or three are given for some classes, and up to eight for wizards, this actually means that there is infinite possibility for other paths to be published later....
...just like, say....Pathfinder?
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5e has more class and race choices in the PHB than Pathfinder has in the CRB.
This exactly. And as far as I have seen every one is a viable choice. It also sets a premise for future books to follow of offering up different racial and class-specific options....as long as they don't keep pushing the power level up to negate or outshine the original ones. I am looking for to seeing how they approach the classes and races in the future, it should be pretty cool to see, but I see a ton of diversity just in the PHB even if you don't include the optional "feats" part of the book.
5e has more class and race choices in the PHB than Pathfinder has in the CRB.
Pathfinder CRB has way more character building options and also has magic item listings, rules for intelligent items, and game mastering rules. I wasn't even comparing PF's CRB to 5th Edition in my earlier statement. While not as many classes as 5th Edition's PHB, 4th Edition's classes had a ton more crunch into it and the book had magic items. That book was about 35 bucks.
I'm not trying to make this into a PF vs 5e argument. I'm just saying that I expected more content for a $50 book when the previous edition had more pages, a competitor had twice the page count, and a percentage of the book was made free.
I just hope the 5e sorcerer ends up with more than just dragon bloodline and wild magic.Agreed. One of my biggest complaints against the PHB is lack of content. Every class only received two or three specializations. No magic items. Almost no content for higher level of play as the developers admittedly centered the game's design around the first few levels.The inherent design of every class includes a choice of path. Although only two or three are given for some classes, and up to eight for wizards, this actually means that there is infinite possibility for other paths to be published later....
...just like, say....Pathfinder?
Aye, specializations are basically a built-in archetype system. I'm not that crazy about how they implemented them, but I really like some of them. (It still tempts me to make an Eldritch Knight archetype for the fighter).
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For the record, the Pathfinder Core Rulebook is a combo of Player's Handbook and DMG in one book. There is a huge amount of difference in how D&D separates the books and how Pathfinder decided to go. I absolutely agree that the price of the new D&D books is outrageous but content-wise you can't compare the 2. D&D 3.5 had prestige classes, traps, poisons, magic items, and a bunch of other stuff in the DMG while the Players handbook was core classes, races, basic equipment, and stuff. If you want to compare Pathfinder core to D&D 5 for content you need to compare Player's handbook and DMG together to the core.
While the PHB does have more classes and races than the CRB, I believe overall the CRB had more choices for the classes (there is no doubt that the PHB has more races, even when you don't count the subraces, which I think is so much better than 3rd editions hundred elves and such). Sorcerer has about 5x the choices, clerics have more choice in domain, barbarians and rogues with their talents/powers. Not all are good choices, but there are more.
That said, I look forward to seeing more subclasses added to the classes, and would also really like more actual classes, instead of just putting everything into the subclass shoe. Because everyone is the same for the first 2-3 levels. Thief, Assassin, and Arcane Trickster Rogues are all just your generic rogue until level 3. Only a couple get to be differentiated at level 1 (if any, I don't have my book in front of me).
To be more on topic: I think too big of a change to this kind of system in Pathfinder may not work, and you may end up having to change so much more. At that point, it may just be easier to play 5th edition and make attempts to convert some of your favorite Pathfinder things. I believe that the APs (which people say are the best thing about Pathfinder) would be simple to use straight up, just substitute 5th edition monsters and NPCs in. And if you could wait until December, the DMG will apparently have rules and suggestions on adding in character class or extra hit dice to monsters and NPCs, which would make the conversion easier.
But that's up to (generic) you. You could attempt to port over the 5th edition caster system, but I don't know how much work would end up happening in case of a snowball effect.