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Given the new edition coming around, I would chime in on a desire to see both clerics and wizards to be different from each other by what they specialise in. In PF1 they tried but it really didn't come across. This does somewhat come from the Warhammer roleplaying game but I think it makes sense here and I will elaborate what I mean. In Pf1 when you became a specialist wizard or a followed a specific god as a cleric all you got was 3-6 abilities that where often not all that impactful in the way one played the character and had no effect on the role playing side of the character. Universally I think both of school specialisation and domains should affect somewhat how the character looks, necromancers will look paler and more skeletal, those with the strength domain will look stronger and healthier. Secondly I think that school specialisations and domains should have an equal weight to spells on how a character acts in combat. Looking at the previous examples, I think necromancers would have all sorts of abilities that represent their ties to death, like abilities that allow them to resist effects and abilities that allow them to hurt the living or empower the death. The Strength domain would equally provide abilities that would mirror powers seen in comic book heroes for short periods of time, like being able to break a stone wall or leap dozens of feet in the air. Now while I don't think every necromancer or cleric of Irori should look, act and play the same I do think there should be marked differences. If a player says "I'm a cleric of Shelyn" there should be a marked expectation that is different from a player saying "I'm a cleric of Rovagug". And as a bonus I think that if done correctly people will stop seeing clerics as first aid kits on legs. In the same manner I think wizards should be distinguished from their specialisation more and thus if a player says "I'm a diviner" it should mean something to the group compared to them saying "I'm an transmuter", at least as much as what spells they have in their spell book.
Anyway those are my thoughts, what do you guys think?
Well, there actully is this clear distinction in the lore. If you play in Golarion and have read Inner Sea Gods you will see that Clerics of different deities have vastly different style and favored weapons. (This why clerics get trash proficiencies, to nudge em toward deity weapon). Not to mention different codes of conduct and beliefs. That class is already distinct betwen choices if the player cares to Roleplay.
Wizard, however, often doesn't have guidelines on how to play different specializations besides the crunch benefits.
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I was going on more on the mechanic side of things, I think that mechanically speaking it should feel different to play clerics of different deities. As for favoured weapons, 9 out of 10 times the cleric will only use their weapon as a last resort because they're out of spells, so I don't really think that makes a big difference.
Restricting spell lists by domain/school (with the option of expansion through class feats) is another way you can step this up, which would both help with balance (each prepared caster no longer having an I-win button for every scenario) and flavor/differentiation (necromancers feeling more like necromancers, priests of the sea god feeling more like priests of the sea god.)
I am wondering about the spell lists.
Since no one else has asked (to my knowledge), I will ask here.
4 spell lists.
1. Arcane
2. Divine
3. Nature (?)
4. (?)
What does this mean for the spell-casters?
I was going on more on the mechanic side of things, I think that mechanically speaking it should feel different to play clerics of different deities. As for favoured weapons, 9 out of 10 times the cleric will only use their weapon as a last resort because they're out of spells, so I don't really think that makes a big difference.
Huh? Attack Clerics are pretty common! There's many ways to build em.
But I guess they do mostly end up prepping the same stuff, thought he cleric spell list isnt THAT wide. Mostly ways to remove debuffs and generic buffs.
I am wondering about the spell lists.
Since no one else has asked (to my knowledge), I will ask here.
4 spell lists.
1. Arcane
2. Divine
3. Nature (?)
4. (?)What does this mean for the spell-casters?
The 4th list is almost certainly for Bards or Alchemists, depending on what they want to differentiate (by spell list, at least) more. In the podcast they mentioned wanting to be able to rethink how alchemy works out the gate, which could be interpreted either way - that they want to differentiate the spell list more, or that they want to focus on non-spell features.
They also mentioned rethinking how schools and so on are categorized, which could mean more room for customizing class spell lists that way. ("Bards have access to two arcane schools of their choice, one of which must be Illusion or Enchantment," or whatever.)
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I am wondering about the spell lists.
Since no one else has asked (to my knowledge), I will ask here.
4 spell lists.
1. Arcane
2. Divine
3. Nature (?)
4. (?)What does this mean for the spell-casters?
My guess is Arcane-Divine-Nature-Alchemy.
That would be great for various reasons: no more losing your mind to remember if a spell is in the paladin or ranger list or not, and no more being at loss when creating a new class for the necessity to create a personalized spell list to update every month.Of course, I hope we!ll have a fifth list (Occult) in time...
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I am wondering about the spell lists.
Since no one else has asked (to my knowledge), I will ask here.
4 spell lists.
1. Arcane
2. Divine
3. Nature (?)
4. (?)What does this mean for the spell-casters?
My guess is Arcane-Divine-Nature-Alchemy.
That would be great for various reasons: no more losing your mind to remember if a spell is in the paladin or ranger list or not, and no more being at loss when creating a new class for the necessity to create a personalized spell list to update every month.
Of course, I hope we!ll have a fifth list (Occult) in time...
Alchemist doesn’t use a list- part of including it in core means accomodating it more naturally without patching it into an existing spell system.
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In AD&D 2e there was a cleric "subclass" called a specialty priest - druid was presented as an example. If the DM put in the work, you could have quite distinct clerics for every faith with unique abilities and spell lists, but it was a lot of effort because it involved making nearly a complete class for each deity. I did it for my homebrew world back in the day, but my pantheon only had 10 deities so it was a relatively small project. The system had some other flaws, like the "spheres" used to create spell lists had big glaring holes at some levels. I think one of my created faiths only had a single 6th level spell to choose from. It was a neat concept though.
Alchemist doesn’t use a list- part of including it in core means accomodating it more naturally without patching it into an existing spell system.I am wondering about the spell lists.
Since no one else has asked (to my knowledge), I will ask here.
4 spell lists.
1. Arcane
2. Divine
3. Nature (?)
4. (?)What does this mean for the spell-casters?
My guess is Arcane-Divine-Nature-Alchemy.
That would be great for various reasons: no more losing your mind to remember if a spell is in the paladin or ranger list or not, and no more being at loss when creating a new class for the necessity to create a personalized spell list to update every month.
Of course, I hope we!ll have a fifth list (Occult) in time...
Yes, alchemists are no longer pseudo-casters, they instead get free alchemical items (think of a grenadier's grenades in starfinder), and get bonuses on using alchemical items. I hope this means alchemical healing is viable now.
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one thing I'm guessing about 4 spell lists is that things follow the way the warpriest did. That 6th casters just use the first 6 levels of spell list X. and paladin uses first 3-4 of a spell list.
PF1.0 actually made wizards *less* specific than in DD3.5, since specialist wizards no longer are barred from their opposition schools, they just have to take double spell slots for them, and have a few penalties.
If you want to make specialist wizards more unique you have two options:
1) bring back opposition schools that prevent you from ever learning from those two groups of spells; or
2) restrict specialist wizards to *only* learning spells from their chosen school. Effectively, all other schools would become opposition schools.
I suspect that PF2.0 will not do either of those things, and that specialist wizards will continue to have access to their opposition schools, at double spell slot cost. But then again, the guys at Paizo might just surprise us and make specialist wizards even more unique than they are in PF1.0.
They are certainly hinting at greater specialization for all classes. Time will tell.
PF1.0 actually made wizards *less* specific than in DD3.5, since specialist wizards no longer are barred from their opposition schools, they just have to take double spell slots for them, and have a few penalties.
If you want to make specialist wizards more unique you have two options:
1) bring back opposition schools that prevent you from ever learning from those two groups of spells; or
2) restrict specialist wizards to *only* learning spells from their chosen school. Effectively, all other schools would become opposition schools.I suspect that PF2.0 will not do either of those things, and that specialist wizards will continue to have access to their opposition schools, at double spell slot cost. But then again, the guys at Paizo might just surprise us and make specialist wizards even more unique than they are in PF1.0.
They are certainly hinting at greater specialization for all classes. Time will tell.
Something between these two might be to give wizards something like occultists' implement schools. (Everything about occultists is needlessly complex, but you could implement something like (2) with access to additional schools gated behind class feats for something similar but simpler.)
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one thing I'm guessing about 4 spell lists is that things follow the way the warpriest did. That 6th casters just use the first 6 levels of spell list X. and paladin uses first 3-4 of a spell list.
That's pretty much similar to the AD&D 1e and 2e method. Paladins got low level cleric spells, bards got druid(1e) or wizard(2e) spells, and so forth.
One thing that would lend some unique flavor to specialist wizards would be to restrict 1-2 spells at each level such that only appropriate specialists could use them. That would add some distinctiveness to the various flavors of wizard and also prevent some possible spell combo shenanigans.