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Doktor Weasel wrote: John Mechalas wrote: N N 959 wrote: This illustrates the impossible problem Paizo faces. In P1, casters enjoy a power level that you admit is "silly." As you astutely point out, it starts by level 5 and the gap just keeps growing. I play only PFS, where casters cannot even craft magic items and the disparity is prominent. If Paizo is going to bring casters in-line with martials, the changes will have to be drastic compared with P1. I don't think anyone (well, anyone reasonable) is arguing that drastic changes are not needed. The question is, how drastic do they need to be? I believe Red Griffyn is merely suggesting that the (at least) 6 different nerfs to spells and casters is, perhaps, excessive.
In exchange for that, casters were given tools to make them more effective in direct combat (e.g. auto-scaling cantrips, easier access to weapons and armor). Which is kind of depressing, since utility wizards didn't want that anyway, and battlefield control is now harder and less fun. And that is ironic, since that was the primary way a caster with "silly" power levels could intentionally dial themselves back, still have fun, and ensure everyone at the table is having fun, too. Oh yeah, the weakening certainly seems excessive. I don't even play casters and it's painful to see all the dramatic reductions from multiple angles: Spells per day, power level of spells, short durations, few targets, punishing concentration with it's action tax and ease of losing the spell, etc. Even Unseen Servant and Rope Trick have been dramatically weakened to the point that I can't see anyone ever using the spells. I did start another thread with a proposed fix for unseen servant, turn it into a ritual and tie it to a location. And not only that, have you read the rules for spell disruption? Is ridiculous easy to disrupt spells.
This are my thoughts on magic
Doktor Weasel wrote: By far, this is the biggest complaint my group has had with the playtest, along with resonance. It's caused a lot of disappointment and anger. I've tried to explain to them that power reductions for casters is widely popular, and it just boggles their minds. Most of them recognize that some reduction was likely needed, but what happened is very excessive. I certainly didn't wanted casters to be dragged down in line with martials, and would have instead preferred that martials be elevated in line to casters.
John Mechalas wrote: I don't think anyone (well, anyone reasonable) is arguing that drastic changes are not needed. The question is, how drastic do they need to be? I believe Red Griffyn is merely suggesting that the (at least) 6 different nerfs to spells and casters is, perhaps, excessive. I think it's easy to pay lips service to that concept, but it's a lot harder to accept it.
I think the only nerfing that caster are going to accept is that which is trivial and has no real impact on the classes power or effectiveness. Red isn't even willing to agree to nerf a spell that almost never comes up in the first place.
Quote: Perhaps the limitation on create food is that the level you cast it at can dictate the food quality (in the event you're going to have a feast to impress someone). Really? The only nerf he'll accept is in the flavor of the food? Sorry, but I have to literally laugh out loud. In the six years that I've been playing PFS, I don't recall Create Food ever being cast, but Red has resorted to insulting me and trying to misrepresent my motivations in order to defend it. I wouldn't call that being reasonable.
D&D 3.5 set the bar so high for casters, that psychologically, players would probably quit rather than play what is truly fair. Red calls the power levels "silly" but that is an understatement by an order of magnitude. It's a safe bet that P2 isn't going to nerf enough, the complaints and the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair will most likely get Paizo to back off, especially in the face of all the other unpopular changes. So we'll be right back here if any of us is around for P3, including Paizo.
Quote: In exchange for that, casters were given tools to make them more effective in direct combat (e.g. auto-scaling cantrips, easier access to weapons and armor). Which is kind of depressing, since utility wizards didn't want that anyway, and battlefield control is now harder and less fun. And that is ironic, since that was the primary way a caster with "silly" power levels could intentionally dial themselves back, still have fun, and ensure everyone at the table is having fun, too. I play PFS and I don't see casters dialing themselves back in the least. Not one iota. Maybe 5 star GMs who've played the scenario might delay a spell a round or two, everyone else brings out the big guns on every encounter. And when there are only 3-5 combat encounters a game, it is a trivial thing for the caster to dominate them all.
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N N 959 wrote: I think the only nerfing that caster are going to accept is that which is trivial and has no real impact on the classes power or effectiveness. Red isn't even willing to agree to nerf a spell that almost never comes up in the first place. The first statement is an extreme generalization.
As to the spell, the reason you are getting pushback is because it's a spell that rarely, if ever, materially affects the game. Even in the Jade Regent AP in PF1, where you literally have to track your resources for a 3000 mile journey, 1500 of which are across an arctic desert with no place to stop and resupply, the impact of the spells you are worried about tends to be zero. Why? Because they don't create enough food and water, creating food takes too long to cast, and even if you did load up on them and could solve the time problem they would chew up spell slots you need for other things.
They just aren't game-breaking spells except in the exact campaign scenario you want to play, and that scenario is pretty circumstantial. I'm not saying you're having badwrongfun, just that the game wasn't designed for what you want. It was designed around general adventuring and dungeon-crawling with a little RP, and clerics were inspired by individuals in the history of the world that we labeled as prophets or divine, who were believed to do miraculous things like create food and water.
We don't need to change the whole game for an edge case. Just modify your world with a house rule and the problem is solved.
Quote: Really? The only nerf he'll accept is in the flavor of the food? Sorry, but I have to literally laugh out loud. Morale is a real thing. In fact, it's literally a game mechanic in the Jade Regent AP. Instead of laughing, work with the tools you are given.
Quote: I play PFS Now we're talking about two different things. Are you wanting a campaign with a survivalist theme, or do you want PFS?
PFS is, as everyone is quick to point out, not the same as general campaign play. You have literally no control over who you play with, and optimizers/min-maxers play alongside newbies and they have few to no incentives to play nice. (Edited to add: PFS scenarios are also designed to be played in a fixed amount of time which easily falls into the trap of the 15 minute adventuring day). They may as well be different games.
In a regular campaign, the GM has the freedom and leeway to set the tone of the game.
That being said, hamstringing the non-combat options and replacing them with enhanced combat options doesn't seem like we're headed in the right direction. It's just doubling down on combat being the focus of the game.
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I might say the unpopular thing here, but maybe it's not that the casters are too powerful. The way I see the whole issue is that the "mundanes" are pretty crap overall (even if in PF2 they seem to be a bit better than the average).
Why keep going in this downward spiral of nerfing magic in a FANTASY game, a genre that is almost defined by exactly the existance and power of magic in the first place?
Wouldn't it be better to make mundanes more heroic and both powerful and useful instead?
D&D/PF keeps tossing casters from high fantasy in the same game with mundanes that are straight out of a nerfed version of history (monk, fighter and barbarians first of them).
And I think that's the source of the issue.
If the mundanes were to have the power they deserve (and often have in fantasy settings), magic would get to be both awesome and much less at risk of "stealing the scene" from the rest of the party.
Maybe I'm the weird one, but I want my monk to be like a charater from asian fantasy, like Guo Jing from the classic Legend of the Condor Heroes, or even better someone out of a xianxia. Not some close-to-real-life shaolin monk that has been the butt end of jokes since 3.0.
I want my warrior to be like a warrior from the legends, like Beowulf, Heracles or Cu Chulainn (spelling?), not some random historically accurate-ish fighter.
Funnily enough, comic and games have been solving this issue by making mundanes more powerful since ages ago, but for some reason RPGs are stuck on "if I'm a mundane I don't get good things that might look too close to magic" mindset.
After all, if you play a game to be a hero, would you really rather be an average warrior with a nerfed-to-s$!*farming caster besides you or an epic one fighting side by side with an actual caster?
(and yes, I did like the Tome of Battle if you were wondering and still had any doubt about it)
John Mechalas wrote: The first statement is an extreme generalization. Based on the responses in this thread and those around the forums, I don't believe it is extreme in the least. Red Griffin clearly understands the issue. He has a rock solid grasp on the problem, and refuses concede even one functional aspect of the spelll.
Quote: As to the spell, the reason you are getting pushback is because it's a spell that rarely, if ever, materially affects the game Uh ..yeah. If a person can't give up something that rarely effects the game, then how do you expect they are going to react vs something that has a substantive impact on the game? You ever heard the term, pick your battles?
Quote: Why? Because they don't create enough food and water, creating food takes too long to cast, and even if you did load up on them and could solve the time problem they would chew up spell slots you need for other things. I've never played the AP to which you refer, but CF takes 10 minutes to cast in P1, so I don't understand your logic here. One casting feeds three and can be extended 24 hours by casting a 0 level purify food and water. But there's nothing to be done about P1.
Quote: They just aren't game-breaking spells except in the exact campaign scenario you want to play.*** Are you wanting a campaign with a survivalist theme, or do you want PFS?***We don't need to change the whole game for an edge case. Just modify your world with a house rule and the problem is solved. You seem to be confusing me with the OP. I don't want to run a survivalist campaign. As I've stated, I think the Forager Skill feat is bad design because it solves a problem that generally never comes up in the typical campaign. But this whole discussion is proxy for the larger problem: Casters have too much agency. And the unwillingness to even concede a spell that has almost no substantive impact on the game, is proof positive of the uphill battle Paizo faces.
Quote: clerics were inspired by individuals in the history of the world that we labeled as prophets or divine, who were believed to do miraculous things like create food and water. And adventures in fiction aren't dominated by casters. I don't recall a movie with there entire party of heroes was full casters. In fact, in Lord of the Rings, there is only one caster in the party and he's absent half the time. The Hobbit is a band of zero casters. So your fiction angle kind of backfires.
Quote: Morale is a real thing. In fact, it's literally a game mechanic in the Jade Regent AP. Instead of laughing, work with the tools you are given. Your response is wholly disingenuous. Refusing to admit the ridiculousness of Red's compromise prevents further meaningful discussion.
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N N 959 wrote: Uh ..yeah. If a person can't give up something that rarely effects the game, then how do you expect they are going to react vs something that has a substantive impact on the game? You ever heard the term, pick your battles? Yes, and I don't think it means what you think it means. In this case, picking your battles means picking the ones that matter. Pick spells that materially affect game play. CFW barely registers on that scale so why waste time on it? You're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Quote: I've never played the AP to which you refer, but CF takes 10 minutes to cast in P1, so I don't understand your logic here. The AP assumes your caravan has a 12-hour travel day, with short breaks for meals. You have a party of 4-6 PC's, 4 significant NPC's, 2 minor NPC's, and horses to pull them all. To cover just the humanoids, you are looking at 3-4 castings at 10 minutes each. And you still have six horses to deal with.
Quote: You seem to be confusing me with the OP. I don't want to run a survivalist campaign. As I've stated, I think the Forager Skill feat is bad design because it solves a problem that generally never comes up in the typical campaign. My mistake then.
PF1 is littered with feats with more flavor than gameplay value.
Quote: Casters have too much agency. And the unwillingness to even concede a spell that has almost not substantive impact on the game, is proof positive of the uphill battle Paizo faces. Again, pick your battles. Pick the ones that affect game play. You know what spell my wizard casts most often in our game? Haste. It's crazy good. It's so good we made a wand out of it.
Haste needs a nerf. And, lo and behold, it got one.
John Mechalas wrote: Yes, and I don't think it means what you think it means. In this case, picking the right battle means picking the spells that materially affect game play. CFW barely register on that scale. Princess Bride plagiarism aside, it means exactly what I think it means. The need to fight everything and concede nothing is a failure of casters to pick their battles.
Quote: Again, pick your battles. Pick the ones that affect game play. You know what spell my wizard casts most often in our game? Haste. It's crazy good. It's so good we made a wand out of it.
Haste needs a nerf. And, lo and behold, it got one.
And there's where we don't agree. Haste didn't need a nerf. Why? Because it doesn't replace any skill or feat. It arguably benefits maritals more than casters. Haste is exactly the type of spell that casters should have. Spells that buff others and let them excel at what they do is good design. Spells that completely obviate the need for others is bad design.
N N 959 wrote: And there's where we don't agree. Haste didn't need a nerf. Why? Because it doesn't replace any skill or feat. It arguably benefits maritals more than casters. Haste is exactly the type of spell that casters should have. Spells that buff others and let them excel at what they do is good design. Spells that completely obviate the need for others is bad design. PF1 Haste is one of the best damage-dealing spells in the game. Add an attack to every party member, along with +1 to their attack roll and AC. Right out of the gate, it also targets multiple party members, and lasts multiple rounds. So add up all those attacks over your entire party for the full combat and the damage output of Haste dwarfs mid-level blast spells, and especially it's fellow 3rd-level spells.
Putting it on a wand is even more broken. Each charge gives you 5 PC's for 5 rounds. Combat in PF rarely goes beyond 3 or 4 rounds, and in a 6-person party you can still target everyone but yourself (who can't really benefit from it, anyway). Unlike a blast spell whose damage output scales by level, there is almost no downside to the limits of putting Haste on a wand. It's expensive, sure, but a one-time investment will set you up for 50 encounters.
There is way more to bad game design than one thing obviating the need for another. One of the big factors is whether a capability over- or under-performs relative to others at the same power level.
We are worlds apart. You will never get a satisfactory answer on this thread because you are looking at game design in a fundamentally different way than most of the folks who are commenting here.
John Mechalas wrote: Haste is one of the best damage-dealing spells in the game. Add an attack to every party member, along with +1 to their attack role and AC. Right out of the gate, it also targets multiple party members, and lasts multiple rounds. So add up all those attacks over your entire party for the full combat and the damage output of Haste dwarfs mid-level blast spells, and especially it's fellow 3rd-level spells. And? The issue in this thread is martial/caster disparity, Haste actually reduces the disparity.
Is Haste too good for the game compared to other spells? I have no interest in debating that.
Quote: There is way more to bad game design than one thing obviating the need for another. I never claimed otherwise. Identifying one element of bad design is not tantamount to claiming there are no others. Please do not put words in my mouth or falsely attribute statements.
Quote: One of the big factors is whether a capability over- or under-performs relative to others at the same power level. Sure, but that intra-class concerns have nothing to do with the title of this thread. The OP is talking about spells obviating the need for non-casting solutions. He's not claiming CF is too good compared to other 2nd level spells.
Quote: We are worlds apart. You will never get a satisfactory answer on this thread because you are looking at game design in a fundamentally different way than most of the folks participating it. Eric AD already gave me a satisfactory answer. At least he's willing to concede the problem exists and agrees that boosting a player's skill is better than simply replacing the skill. Can you concede as much?
Finally, Paizo is the one that needs convincing that they need to do this. I expect there will be a large contingency of casters that simply won't accept any nerfs to their class and will eschew P2 altogether. I'm hoping that if Paizo can get the rest of it right, bringing down casters to a reasonable level of power and agency will vastly improve the experience for non-casters, and the net benefit will be greater than keeping status quo.
You're the one who said "pick your battles". That invites comparisons between game elements and which is the right battle to pick. I'm just pointing out that there are better battles to pick. Nothing more.
We're done. You don't agree and that's fine. But maybe you've gotten a little insight into why others have larger concerns than the one you raise.
The.Bard wrote: Why keep going in this downward spiral of nerfing magic in a FANTASY game, a genre that is almost defined by exactly the existance and power of magic in the first place?
Wouldn't it be better to make mundanes more heroic and both powerful and useful instead?
This a fair question. The answer is complicated.
1) The short version is that it's harder to play, for both GM and players, when everyone is super powerful compared to how they start out. More powers means more rules means more complicated interactions. GM a game of level 1 players...then GM a game of level 15 players. You'll note that the options and spells and abilities for the level 15's, dramatically increases the difficulty in adjudicating outcomes.
Paizo seems to want to bring down the overall power level for PCs. I assume to address the "rocket-tag" aspect of high level play.
2) The nature of the game makes it hard to make everyone more powerful. It essentially requires that you give Fighters the equivalent of spells or spell-like powers. Some posters have joked that Paizo should just get rid of martial classes and make them all casters. The way the game is set up in P1, that's probably the only way to do it.
3) Power is a relative thing in a game. If you start making that Martials can trivialize casters, Casters wills tart screaming bloody murder. They'll complain their Fireball can't kill nearly as many NPCs a the Fighters Tornado Strike.. Bottom line is you can't make everyone happy..
Based on what I've seen, Paizo seems to be trying to boost the low level casters so that they are more fun to play right out of the gate, and then couple that with a much more gradual power gain as they level.
John Mechalas wrote: You're the one who said "pick your battles". That invites comparisons between game elements and which is the right battle to pick. I'm just pointing out that there are better battles to pick. Nothing more. You're bringing up things that have nothing to do with the title of the thread and then trying to convince me that they are what we should be arguing about. I've picked a battle: Reduce the agency. Boost others, don't obviate them.
You don't like how powerful Haste is? That's a different thread.
Quote: But maybe you've gotten a little insight into why others have larger concerns than the one you raise. No, I was already aware of the full caster uproar. It's a result of the obvious: people don't want to give up what they have. There are exceptions of course. I've seen people who claim to play P1 druids and admit that the class was over the top. But these people are the minority. And as I said, it's easy for people to play lip service to fairness, but when it's time to give up a few hens, then the histrionics and name-calling shows its ugly face.
Let me add something so everyone is clear:
I get it. It sucks to have the class feel like it's being gutted. I hope Paizo can solve the problem and keep people who play full casters happy while simultaneously making sure that casters don't dominate like they did in P1. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
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The.Bard wrote: I might say the unpopular thing here, but maybe it's not that the casters are too powerful. The way I see the whole issue is that the "mundanes" are pretty crap overall (even if in PF2 they seem to be a bit better than the average).
Why keep going in this downward spiral of nerfing magic in a FANTASY game, a genre that is almost defined by exactly the existance and power of magic in the first place?
Wouldn't it be better to make mundanes more heroic and both powerful and useful instead?
D&D/PF keeps tossing casters from high fantasy in the same game with mundanes that are straight out of a nerfed version of history (monk, fighter and barbarians first of them).
And I think that's the source of the issue.
If the mundanes were to have the power they deserve (and often have in fantasy settings), magic would get to be both awesome and much less at risk of "stealing the scene" from the rest of the party.
Maybe I'm the weird one, but I want my monk to be like a charater from asian fantasy, like Guo Jing from the classic Legend of the Condor Heroes, or even better someone out of a xianxia. Not some close-to-real-life shaolin monk that has been the butt end of jokes since 3.0.
I want my warrior to be like a warrior from the legends, like Beowulf, Heracles or Cu Chulainn (spelling?), not some random historically accurate-ish fighter.
Funnily enough, comic and games have been solving this issue by making mundanes more powerful since ages ago, but for some reason RPGs are stuck on "if I'm a mundane I don't get good things that might look too close to magic" mindset.
After all, if you play a game to be a hero, would you really rather be an average warrior with a nerfed-to-s!%&farming caster besides you or an epic one fighting side by side with an actual caster?
(and yes, I did like the Tome of Battle if you were wondering and still had any doubt about it)
Exactly this, I really thought that PF2 was going to cover the niche of high fantasy that 5e left available, but looks like is not going to be the case. And on top of that right now PF2 feels too similar to 5e for me, and if that ends to be the case in the final version I rather play 5e or stay with PF1.
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N N 959 wrote: If you start making that Martials can trivialize casters, Casters wills tart screaming bloody murder. I disagree.
I mostly play casters not so I can be the most awesome player at the table. I play them because I like having as complicated a Lego box as possible to build solutions out of. If martials were more enabled, I wouldn't complain... I'd just either play them, or incorporate them into my schemes more*.
*I tend to play casters who enable the party, not necessarily shine in their own light.
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N N 959 wrote:
This illustrates the impossible problem Paizo faces. In P1, casters enjoy a power level that you admit is "silly." As you astutely point out, it starts by level 5 and the gap just keeps growing.
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It also stands to reason that the vast majority of people who played casters, and enjoyed that immense power imbalance, aren't going to be happy.
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I think it's easy to pay lips service to that concept, but it's a lot harder to accept it.
I think the only nerfing that caster are going to accept is that which is trivial and has no real impact on the classes power or effectiveness.
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You are vilifying 1e players for choosing to be spell casters when the problem was built into the core rules? I don't think you are reading our responses. So lets reiterate 'your solution' vs. 'the solution that many of us in this thread are advocating for'.
N N 959 wrote:
My solution is to create more specialization. Give each class a box or two they want to play in and limit the effectiveness of that PC to the box. This has already done to martial classes, but it's not been done to casters. Casters can be powerful, but only in that narrow range/category of magic. So if you want Create Food, then you don't get Fireball. You want Conjuration? Then you don't get Evocation. The idea is casters pick a specialty. Don't nerf the spells, just force casters to pick a lane and don't let them drive out of it....like everyone else who isn't a caster.
I fundamentally disagree. This creates party composition requirements. For example you can't disable a trap without a rogue so someone has to play one, even if no one wants to. You can't heal without a cleric so someone is forced to play that class. The change you advocate for will pidgeon hole people. The greatest part of 1e is the ability to customize your class/role. That is a core concept of pathfinder that I want available going forward. It also is not self-consistent. To 'not nerf spells' runs counter to your desire to nerf said spells. It also runs counter to the concept of reducing the power ceiling of casters who are primarily made powerful by powerful spells.
N N 959 wrote:
The other solution is to let everyone do everything. I thought Paizo was going to do that more with P2. All the talk of Rituals and Trinkets and expanded skills. But I don't see it. I see casters still have all the agency they had (albeit less potent) but martials don't have anything remotely as close to the versatility of spells.
This is literally what I and others in this thread are advocating for. They dropped the power floor AND ceiling. I think many people knew a drop in ceiling was required, but we disagree that the floor needed to be dropped so far. We would have preferred a smaller floor drop for casters and a bigger floor increase for martials so they were more in line with each other. As it stands, I and others in this thread have pointed out a number of mechanics where caster have been over nerfed in 2e. You appear to not agree with this premise and think they should be further nerfed by having the mechanical benefits of their spells further reduced (despite stating above that you don't want spells nerfed). Doing this systematically means spells will serve little function and be largely flavour vs. mechanical. That is why I stated that you want a 'low magic' game because the results of what you are asking for are a game where ALL classes are closer to a generic medieval commoner in terms of capabilities. I would love it if every martial had access to SLAs that were extraordinary abilities that replicated a subset of spells. In 2e they HAVE done this and I provided a few examples of that to you which you didn't comment on. I think they should do more though and not lock some of them behind higher level (L14/L16) requirements for feats. This would make martials more like a 'iron caster' build from 1e and bring their power floor up to match general casters. It would also be simple enough to have it in an entry level class so as not to turn off new players with 100s of spells. Maybe the fighter gets access to a list of 5 SLA abilities that allow him to address self hasting, invisibility, flying, or other fundamental threats from a spell point pool based on STR or DEX separate from their resonance pool. I would love to see that.
We clearly have different design philosophies. I want to increase agency for all so it is roughly equal between classes. You want reduce or remove agency. I think my design philosophy will create a more flexible and diverse system for play. I also thing the end result of your philosophy are default party compositions (ie., 1 fighter/1 wizard/ 1 cleric/ 1 rogue), one trick ponies (due to narrow focusing), and a series of situations that are insurmountable by PCs. A wizard who can summon high level extra planar beings should be able to manifest mundane gruel to feed himself without running into perceived game balance issues.
N N 959 wrote:
Red isn't even willing to agree to nerf a spell that almost never comes up in the first place.
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Really? The only nerf he'll accept is in the flavor of the food? Sorry, but I have to literally laugh out loud. In the six years that I've been playing PFS, I don't recall Create Food ever being cast, but Red has resorted to insulting me and trying to misrepresent my motivations in order to defend it. I wouldn't call that being reasonable.
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Red calls the power levels "silly" but that is an understatement by an order of magnitude. It's a safe bet that P2 isn't going to nerf enough, the complaints and the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair will most likely get Paizo to back off, especially in the face of all the other unpopular changes.
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Based on the responses in this thread and those around the forums, I don't believe it is extreme in the least. Red Griffin clearly understands the issue. He has a rock solid grasp on the problem, and refuses concede even one functional aspect of the spelll.
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Uh ..yeah. If a person can't give up something that rarely effects the game, then how do you expect they are going to react vs something that has a substantive impact on the game? You ever heard the term, pick your battles?
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You seem to be confusing me with the OP. I don't want to run a survivalist campaign. As I've stated, I think the Forager Skill feat is bad design because it solves a problem that generally never comes up in the typical campaign. But this whole discussion is proxy for the larger problem: Casters have too much agency. And the unwillingness to even concede a spell that has almost no substantive impact on the game, is proof positive of the uphill battle Paizo faces.
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Your response is wholly disingenuous. Refusing to admit the ridiculousness of Red's compromise prevents further meaningful discussion.
Please point out the "insulting me and trying to misrepresent my motivations" portion of my text in this thread. I stated that these spells should not be nerfed because they are already sub optimal spells. They don't meaningfully impact the game and only exist to make it easy for campaigns to function when players are asked to perform menial tasks of accounting for food/rations/gold weight/arrows. These are things that, in my opinion, distract from the fun role playing and roll playing. These spells need not be made worse because they were already nerfed from 1e in a manner that will make the spells more obsolete than they already were. It would be better for Paizo to cut the spells entirely and replace the page space with meaningful spells vs. continuing to waste printing space on trap spells that no one will ever use.
We then pivoted discussion to discuss your opinion that spells are too powerful when they replace skill feats. I pointed to multiple examples of how that was the expected result (i.e., mundane skills vs. wonderous spells with 2e core rulebook references) and was aligned with the pathfinder design philosophy. Skill feats in 2e are largely flavour, not mechanical, and my advice was to improve the skill feats such that the power floor of these feats would be increased. This is consistent with my desire to bring up the power floor for mundane things, instead of nerfing spells to drag them down to the same level.
I pointed out that randomly throwing out a M/C disparity comment was a red herring and off topic (as evidenced by your own text). Then I addressed the examples of M/C disparity that you provided and pointed to the multiple ways that 2e has addressed them and tried to correct the disparity you are worried about. My main discussion point on M/C wasn't saying it didn't exist. It was again to clarify that the power ceiling needed to come down but to also point out that there is an over correction point we must be careful not to cross.
Your main critique of me is my unwillingness to simply accept that the OP and or your suggestions are the logical balancing mechanisms required. By your own admittance, the spells your are critiquing from 1e have never been cast in 6 years of play. I posit that instead of nerfing them again (such that they become more irrelevant) you should leave them alone OR just get rid of the spell and replace it with something better (empower your players with meaningful options). Your presupposition that a lack of compromise invalidates my critique is fallacious logic (that is truly disingenuous to having an open and spirited debate).
Your position that spells should be nerfed is further undermined by one of your latest statements:
N N 959 wrote:
Haste didn't need a nerf.
You are entitled to your opinion, but Haste is one of the most cited OP spells in 1e. It is the exact kind of upper ceiling nerf that was required for casters and I have never heard, before now, that haste didn't require some kind of change. This kind of statement makes your position internally inconsistent (nerf irrelevant spell options but don't nerf overpowered spell options) and difficult to reconcile.
I would recommend the following going forward: stop vilifying 1e spell casters (they can agree to logical mechanical changes despite your insistence that they can't), stop stating that critique of your ideas constitutes attacking you (it doesn't), stop stating a lack of compromise invalidates someones position (it doesn't). We are all trying to participate in the play test and provide constructive feedback. We should all purport ourselves with this goal in mind.
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I'm reminded of "Animated Spell booK" series on youtube. The speaker had a similar issue with goodberry and also had it consume it's material component
Red Griffyn wrote: You are vilifying 1e players for choosing to be spell casters when the problem was built into the core rules? I've done no such thing. I've flagged your post for attempting to misrepresent my position and insinuating I'm vilifying anyone for playing anything.
This is a discussion about spells that render skills pointless, not the people who use them.
Quote: This creates party composition requirements. No, it doesn't. It requires that authors provide more than one way to skin a cat, which they already do for skills.
Quote: The change you advocate for will pidgeon hole people Earth calling Red...Martial are already pigeonholed.
Quote: To 'not nerf spells' runs counter to your desire to nerf said spells. It also runs counter to the concept of reducing the power ceiling of casters who are primarily made powerful by powerful spells. You accuse me of not reading your responses, yet you, since your first rebuttal, have completely ignored what it is I am advocating: Reduce agency.
Reducing agency is not the same as reducing effectiveness. A spell's power is more about effectiveness. I have no issue with spells being effective. The full casters's power comes from too much agency and, at least in P1, the ability to obviate/trivialize entire classes. Paizo has admitted to this. YOU have admitted to this.
Quote: The greatest part of 1e is the ability to customize your class/role. While I would disagree, that customization happens once for martials. It's a one way ticket. A martial makes their choices and they are essentially stuck with them (with exceptions like the Brawler). All the power that martials have comes from feat and ability choices that are essentially permanent. That is not true for full casters who derive their power from spells and a host of magic items which make the spells even more powerful, or free up more spell slots. This allows a full caster a broadband ability that far outstrips anything martials come close to. The only non-caster class that has this kind of capability is the Factotum and that class isn't even in PF.
Quote: They dropped the power floor AND ceiling I disagree that they've dropped the floor for casters, I've seen in actual playtest and on forums that scaling cantrips are "awesome." I sat across from a Sorc with Telekinetic Projectile out-damaged by archery Ranger at range, and that was with a Bear granting me an additional 1d8 slashing. Plus, he was able to change the projectile type and change the damage type. Archers apparently don't have that option at any level (though I expect they'll get blunt arrows at some point). But I don't have a problem with that. Being able to do damage in combat is a staple of the game, so I everyone should have some option.
They've also given casters way more hit points and given all casters an ability to perform Untrained skill checks and have a non-trivial chance of succeeding. Clerics have more skills, Sorcerers have more skills. Clerics have better init, and the list goes on. So gap between what martials could do and what casters could not do has been dramatically reduced. But I don't see Fighters with crowd control, AoE, condition removal, and a long list of other things that have been the domain of casters and casters only. No, now martials have to use an action to simply gain the benefit of their shield.
Quote: As it stands, I and others in this thread have pointed out a number of mechanics where caster have been over nerfed in 2e. I think those who are emotionally invested in casters are less likely to be objective about the nerfs. Do you honestly think a 10th level Fighter is now as capable as a 10th level Wizard? Can the 10th level Fighter contend with all the things that Wizard can? Do you honestly think a party of level 10 P2 Fighters is going to outperform a level of lvl 10 Wizards.
Quote: You appear to not agree with this premise and think they should be further nerfed by having the mechanical benefits of their spells further reduced (despite stating above that you don't want spells nerfed). No. You repeatedly misrepresent my position. I want the agency reduced, not the effectiveness. Limit the scope, not the power.
Quote: That is why I stated that you want a 'low magic' game because the results of what you are asking for are a game where ALL classes are closer to a generic medieval commoner in terms of capabilities. I've never said anything remotely close to that and it is a prime example of you intentionally misrepresenting my position to make it seem ridiculous. This is bad faith discussion and the reason why I am going to start flagging your posts every time you continue to do this.
Quote: We clearly have different design philosophies. Correct. I'm looking at the game from a holistic level and realizing that you can't just make everyone as good as full casters at everything. The system might as well be classless. What you can do is force casters to pick something and be stuck with it, like all the rest of the classes. This gives more players at the table a chance to shine instead of the WIzard having an answer for everything. Alternatively, the Wizard's "answer" is to empower someone else to succeed but not such that a party of Wizards can do it all.
Quote: A wizard who can summon high level extra planar beings should be able to manifest mundane gruel to feed himself without running into perceived game balance issues. And by that logic, that should be able to turn lead into gold, but funny how the game doesn't let that happen. Which means that everything in the games is intentional and contrived for the purpose of playing game. So please dispense with the treatise on what should be possible with magic. What matters is what makes the game fun to play. And watching full casters solve every problem and feeling like the party has no chance to succeed without one, is not good for the game. When's the last P1 adventure past level 5 you felt the party needed a Fighter?
Quote: These are things that, in my opinion, distract from the fun role playing and roll playing. Yes, foraging for food is, imo, a terrible skill feat for this game. I get why they felt that it makes sense to have it, but it shouldn't be a feat choice or stuck to a background. But the fact that you can't even give up an inch on Create Food, or acknowledge the problem with it obviating the Forager skill feat, is indicative of the mindset of many full casters: don't touch my stuff!!
Quote: We then pivoted discussion to discuss your opinion that spells are too powerful when they replace skill feats. No. I said casters are too powerful when they have all the spells to replace skills and can readily swap those out with spell to do damage or remove conditions.
Quote: Your main critique of me is my unwillingness to simply accept that the OP and or your suggestions are the logical balancing mechanisms required. My critique of your response is that your only concession to the OP's problem is to control the quality/flavor of the food. Dude, sorry, but that makes me laugh every time I think about it. Then John Mechalas tried to defend it by saying morale is a big deal because one AP talks about it, so your concession is somehow substantive? Really?
Quote: Please point out the "insulting me and trying to misrepresent my motivations" portion of my text in this thread. I've done that in this thread alone.
The rest of your post is assertions that I'm not being consistent which result from your misrepresenting my position that I want spell power nerfed.
I'll repeat what I said above. I hope Paizo finds a way to keep you casters happy and fix the "silly" power levels of casters from P1. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
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I think Vancian spellcasting, and more specifically, prepared spellcasting, is the problem, and that's unfortunate considering that that's a sacred cow that's never ever going to die.
I agree with N N 959 when he says its the flexibility of getting to recustomize your class features every day that breaks spellcasters. When your class features are so often silver bullets to problems, getting to pick new bullets every day means there are precious few problems you can't solve. Any other class without that flexibility in silver bullets is going to feel left behind. Note that while the fighter's ability to switch class feats is nice, it's nowhere near the same because fighter abilities are rarely silver bullets. Switching from a melee emphasis to a bit of ranged fighting is nice, but it doesn't solve problems like "prepare combat spells for combat days, prepare utility spells for travel/social days" does.
On the other hand, I agree that the effectiveness of spells in PF2 was probably lowered too much for them to feel exciting or worthwhile. Which brings me back around to how problematic prepared spellcasting is.
Spheres of Power, a 3rd party magic system for those not familiar, uses a much more flexible form of spontaneous spellcasting. You learn magic abilities and spend points from a pool to power them, just like spell points in PF2. Every spell is autoheightened to your full caster level. That means, in contrast with PF1, all spells are at your full DC and, in contrast with PF2, all effects manifest more powerfully as you level up without any additional expenditure of resources. Man, that sure seems awful familiar to Cantrips and Powers in PF2. Keep that in mind; it's going to be important.
The thing with Spheres of Power spell effects is that they're incredibly effective. Often far more effective than what a Vancian spellcaster could do at the same level. Blasters have vastly more flexibility in damage type, so can work around resistances easily. Hostile polymorphing and teleportation are available at level 1. A 10th level caster can hit all enemies in a cone with 1d3 negative levels, when a 10th level Vancian caster hits 1 enemy for 1d4 levels, and spend less of their daily resources doing it. Heck, SoP allows mass mind control of non-humanoid creatures, a 13th level spell effect in PF1.
Sounds overbearing, right? Hasn't turned out that way in my experience. Spellcasters are really really good at what they do. It makes thematic spellcasters ("I'm a Time Mage" etc) way easier to realize and way more effective. However, they're good at only what they've invested in, and then can't invest in everything. They're rewarded for investing in a theme (as opposed to a Sorcerer creating a "greatest hits" spells known list). They step on only the toes they overlap with, the same way a Barbarian steps on a Fighter's toes. They're simultaneously better at what they do than all but the most overoptimized Vancian spellcaster while being so much less problematic to party play because they don't do everything. They feel good to play and to play with.
The crazy thing is that I think Paizo might wish to do something a lot like Spheres of Power, but they can't kill the sacred cow because it's too beloved. Their design of Powers and Cantrips show that they've hit on all the same innovations the designers of Spheres of Power did. If they didn't have to worry about Vancian flexibility, they'd be a lot more free to make spellcasting really freaking good at what it does. For my part, I'll be waiting to switch to PF2 until there's a Spheres of Power 2 to go with it, because it solves these spellcasting problems so much more thoroughly than any patch to Vancian can.
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N N 959 wrote: Some posters have joked that Paizo should just get rid of martial classes and make them all casters. The way the game is set up in P1, that's probably the only way to do it. Joked? If you are referring to me, I was quite serious. Imagine the world of pathfinder - it has the usual, real life laws of physics, but also additional physical laws of magic which describe how magic behaves, as well as bridging laws between those two sets. Now you have two kinds of people - one kind(mages) can interract with the latter set, while the other(various mundanes and muggles) can't. How can you expect mages not to dominate the design process here? It'd be like if in real life some people could only move, look and interract with objects in two dimensions, while some others could jump, climb, raise their head to look at things above or below them and otherwise move in three dimensions. Obviously the latter kind would be ridiculously overpowered. They could sneak past people by climbing a tree and moving along the branches, kill people without repercussions by dropping things on them (not like 2-d people would know why a person suddenly died), heal diseases nobody else could heal (how can you heal a sprained ankle if you can't look down to notice your ankle is sprained?), and so on.
IMO if you want players to be in some sense equal, then the least you should do is make it possible for all players to interract with all laws of physics, instead of a ridiculously limited subset. The.Bard mentioned they (and many others) want their fighters to be "like a warrior from the legends, like Beowulf, Heracles or Cu Chulainn (spelling?), not some random historically accurate-ish fighter." Well, Cu Chulainn was a reincarnation of a god. Heracles was a son of a god. Beowulf (unlike the other two) wasn't of literal divine descent, but he did do things like:
- In order to kill a monster at the bottom of a lake, he dives into it. In full plate armor. It takes him a day to sink to the bottom, which does little more that bore him because dude just can hold breath that good. He then kills the monster, and swims out of the lake (still in full plate) while carrying it's head.
- Gets into a week-long swimming contest across the sea. He loses, but only barely, and because he was doing it in full plate armor and had to waste time killing 9 leviathans along the way, while swimming, without rest.
- When asked to get rid of a realy scary giant fella, decides that it would be only fair to not use any weapons, since the giant doesn't use weapons either. He then rips the giant's arm off and wins the fight.
- Gets into a fight with a dragon. Dragon bites him clean through the neck, which lightly inconveniences Beowulf as he proceeds to disembowel the dragon with a dagger. He dies later, but not because of something lame like horrific blood loss, but because of epic-level dragon poison that was on it's fangs.
As far as their respective worlds were concerned, those three were the casters of their respective settings. Or at the very least, they had full access to the full set of laws of magic in their respective universes. So IMO, if you want "balanced" parties, give everyone magic. Monks use magic to become tough enough to drop from orbit, fly through the air, and so on, warriors use it to punch out dragons and make their swords cut through light to become invisible or what not, and casters use it to change shape and send fire from the heavens. Nice and balanced, using the same force of magic.
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See also: the Earthdawn method. Everyone's an Adept (aka magic user) but rather than spending time learning how to throw fireballs, some people channel that mojo into casually leaping across football fields leading into 10 or so slashes with their sword or vanishing behind a 1" thick pole like he was Bugs Bunny.
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Pandora's wrote: I think Vancian spellcasting, and more specifically, prepared spellcasting, is the problem, and that's unfortunate considering that that's a sacred cow that's never ever going to die. We can only dream. :(
Pandora's wrote: On the other hand, I agree that the effectiveness of spells in PF2 was probably lowered too much for them to feel exciting or worthwhile. Which brings me back around to how problematic prepared spellcasting is. I think the reducing spell effectiveness and not reducing agency is a double-whammy for Paizo. It means casters aren't going to be happy because they spells are not as good and martials aren't going to be happy because casters still have some type of answer for everything, as they did before. So it's hard to perceive an improvement on either side of the fence.
Add to this that Paizo has voiced a desire to reduce the "rocket tag" aspect of high level play, means everyone is potentially getting nerfed on some level.
I believe it would be easier for most players to accept a more limited scope rather than a less powerful spell. I don't mind a caster having a silver bullet, but limit it to a narrow range of problems, 'a' bullet as in "one". Let them use it as much as they want because the author/GM can determine whether it works or not. Obviously there are other nuances to how this could works. You can still have utility casters, but they give up spell levels for each school of magic they keep on their list. You want to cast from all schools? Great, you don't get higher than 3rd level spells in any of them. If you focus, then you get 10th level in one school and 4th in one more.
Quote: Spheres of Power, a 3rd party magic system... I'm not that familiar with any 3PP stuff. But it's not surprising that others have come up with this system. If my memory serves me (and it may not) AD&D required casters to choose schools of magic and give up one school entirely. So the concept of limited scope for casters, has its roots in AD&D (IIRC)
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N N 959 wrote: If my memory serves me (and it may not) AD&D required casters to choose schools of magic and give up one school entirely. It wasn't part of AD&D; it was added in 2nd Ed. There were two opposition schools and they were fixed based on your speciality school.
N N 959 wrote: I'm not that familiar with any 3PP stuff. But it's not surprising that others have come up with this system. I'm not familiar with much, but Spheres is the best quality 3rd party supplement I've seen. You should seriously consider checking it out. It's free on d20pfsrd, though the organization is a bit messy. Spheres isn't perfect, but is a vast improvement to the Vancian system along a lot of the lines you're advocating.
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N N 959 wrote: Red Griffyn wrote: You are vilifying 1e players for choosing to be spell casters when the problem was built into the core rules? I've done no such thing. I've flagged your post for attempting to misrepresent my position and insinuating I'm vilifying anyone for playing anything.
This is a discussion about spells that render skills pointless, not the people who use them.
You made statements that summarize to the following (see quote in my previous post where you made these statements): how 1e casters enjoy immense power imbalance, won't be happy with change, are readily willing to 'pay lip service' to accepting mechanical nerfs (but not really accept them), will only accept trivial changes with no impact on power, and that many have a mindset of 'don't touch my stuff!!'.
The first definition for "villify" from my google search:
Villify: to say or write unpleasant things about someone or something, in order to cause other people to have a bad opinion of them.
Your vilification is of the people who played 1e as spell casters who you are saying are unwilling to accept mechanical nerfs to their class or the classes abilities (like spells) consistent with the ones you advocate. One anecdotal example would be you stating that I (presumably as someone from that group of people) is unwilling to accept a nerf to "Create Water" and "Create Food" spells. Here is an example of one of the many times where you have disparaged my critique:
N N 959 wrote: Your response is wholly disingenuous. Refusing to admit the ridiculousness of Red's compromise prevents further meaningful discussion.
This is also somewhat ironic as you go on to state:
N N 959 wrote: I've never said anything remotely close to that and it is a prime example of you intentionally misrepresenting my position to make it seem ridiculous. This is bad faith discussion and the reason why I am going to start flagging your posts every time you continue to do this.
Thus the only results that you are advocating are either I am ridiculous or you are right. I apologize if you feel misrepresented, but one common technique used in conversation is forecasting how a singular or situational change might impact the broader discussion. Thus, to make predictions on how your your design philosophy or suggested changes might impact the broader game isn't an attempt to misrepresent your views. It is just a way to meaningfully critique your opinions. However, the attempts to sit there and flag every post is a bullying tactic even if you thought you had done nothing wrong. This is likely something we will have to 'agree to disagree' on at this point if you aren't willing to deescalate.
N N 959 wrote: Red Griffyn wrote: This creates party composition requirements. No, it doesn't. It requires that authors provide more than one way to skin a cat, which they already do for skills.
Quote: The change you advocate for will pidgeon hole people Earth calling Red...Martial are already pigeonholed. Prediction 1:
Reduction in agency by requiring 'in class specialization' will lead to less flexibility for individual PCs and for aggregate groups composed of those individuals. To make this critique precise I will use the following definition of Agency:
Agency: the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.
I posit that when a PC loses agency to solve a problem that they are more restricted. As an extension someone else in that group must compensate for that loss of agency to ensure the party as an aggregate whole can still deal with that possible challenge. If they don't then the group is incapable of dealing with the challenge. This challenge could be flying creatures, invisibility, battlefield control spells, dispelling magical effects like runes/alarms, condition removal (poison, curses, etc.), damage dealing (quickness and overall damage) to end encounters, picking locks, being able to convince NPCs to talk, climbing walls to drop a rope, speaking a local language, etc. Agency, in 2e is provided via the following mechanisms (there may be more than what is listed):
1.) Feats (Skill/General/Ancestry)
2.) Class Feats
3.) Class Features
4.) Skills
5.) Spells
6.) Magic Items
7.) Mundane Items
8.) Stat Bonuses
The ability to forage for food/water is covered in items 1 (skill feat), item 3 (indirectly limiting skill proficiency increase to the survival skill via 'signature skills'), item 4 (scaling bonus from proficiency/level and per skill use), item 5 (the spells in question), item 6 (coyote cloak), item 7 (rations/food, tools like a fishing tackle), and item 8 (pumping wis bonus).
As you can see there are a number of ways for people without access to item 5 to still express agency for this particular challenge. Your critique is that item 5 is too powerful with respect to the other items. I disagree and believe the converse is true. Specifically that items 1, 4, and 6 are too weak. So instead of reducing agency by making item 5 mechanically worse, I want to make other expressions of agency like skill feats (which are largely not mechanical in 2e) more mechanically beneficial.
The design philosophy to reduce agency will force more people to invest in survival. Especially because there are not many good options for feeding multiple people at once outside of the spell. Ideally, a group would have one character cover this in the event it comes up, but unless your group has picked a class that provides survival as a signature skill you simply won't get much use out of the forager feat (hence making it more powerful). Forcing investment into a skill/skill feat/class with a particular signature feat that people don't want forces a loss of individual and group aggregate agency. Thus in a 2e where those spells are mechanically irrelevant (i.e., making the changes you suggested) you have now forced someone to pick a class with survival as a signature skills, use skill feats, and skill proficiency bumps to even remotely provide for a party via foraging. Forcing a selection of these things means party composition becomes more restricted. As a prediction, the continued application of your design philosophy to all spells you consider to express too much agency will further restrict PC and aggregate group choices. As an extension of this less choices, feats, stat bumps, etc. also lead to singularly focused builds (i.e., one trick ponies), which reinforces the min-max meta builds that plagues 1e (especially in PFS where RAW is enforced).
Alternatively, as you suggested above you can force GMs/writers to make caveats and rule sub systems for particular encounters that override the general rules for foraging. However, many who play PFS know how poorly this functions in real life application. I think empowering your PCs is more fun (i.e., more agency) than requiring more adjudication, writing overhead, or rule subsystems to be prepared for scenarios/campaigns.
Sidebar 1: the survival skill has more uses than simply foraging for water/food and the agency provided by the spells are not overpowered. The survival skill has the following uses:
i.) Sense Direction
iia.) Survive in the Wild (Foraging for food/water)
iib.) Survive in the Wild (Build/maintain a shelter)
iii.) Cover Tracks
iv.) Track
Thus, the power level we are talking about is two spell slots (one level 1 and one level 2) to execute a small portion of one skill. As identified multiple times earlier. A feat to spell comparison is not overpowered. For example the level 1 fighter feat 'sudden charge' is equivalent to an all day haste spell in action economy. Haste is a 3rd level spell, which you are okay with per your previous comments (however you did state that it didn't need a nerf from 1e to 2e). Class feats are more mechanically powerful then skill feats. Two lower level slots represent more expenditure than one spell slot. Thus when you consolidate the logic L1 Class feat > 3rd Level Slot > 1st level skill feat >= 1xL1 slot + 1xL2 slot. QED the spells are not overpowered and do not require a further mechanical nerf.
N N 959 wrote: Reducing agency is not the same as reducing effectiveness. A spell's power is more about effectiveness. I have no issue with spells being effective. The full casters's power comes from too much agency and, at least in P1, the ability to obviate/trivialize entire classes. Paizo has admitted to this. YOU have admitted to this...
No. You repeatedly misrepresent my position. I want the agency reduced, not the effectiveness. Limit the scope, not the power...
You don't have agency if the application of your power is not effective. Your suggestion to nerf a spell's effectiveness because it provides too much agency, thusly reducing a spell caster's power is evidence that the two are not independent. I have admitted that high level spells were too powerful in 1e. However, we have a clear divergence on what spells we are talking about. Power ceiling spells LIKE haste, or massive AOE control spells like black tentacles are what need nerfs. Whereas, you have made evident that spells like haste did not require a nerf. I want casters to be able to provide utility and buffs (spells that increase agency) as a means to empowering them. I don't complain about a caster being able to spider climb up a wall, cast fly on the fighter to get him into melee range, or generate water/food. I do complain about the intensified empowered fireball specialized admixture evocation wizard who nukes entire encounters. You have suggested nerfing a subset of utility spells (i.e., Create Water and Create Food) and not nerfing combat only spells (like haste). Note that despite you 'misrepresenting my view' on what spells need nerfs I have not reported your post.
N N 959 wrote: Red Griffyn wrote: The greatest part of 1e is the ability to customize your class/role. While I would disagree, that customization happens once for martials. It's a one way ticket. A martial makes their choices and they are essentially stuck with them (with exceptions like the Brawler). All the power that martials have comes from feat and ability choices that are essentially permanent. That is not true for full casters who derive their power from spells and a host of magic items which make the spells even more powerful, or free up more spell slots. This allows a full caster a broadband ability that far outstrips anything...
I'm looking at the game from a holistic level and realizing that you can't just make everyone as good as full casters at everything. The system might as well be classless. What you can do is force casters to pick something and be stuck with it, like all the rest of the classes. This gives more players at the table a chance to shine instead of the WIzard having an answer for everything. Alternatively, the Wizard's "answer" is to empower someone else to succeed but not such that a party of Wizards can do it all...
Increasing agency across the board for martials doesn't make a system ubiquitous. For example, giving martials more skills/skill proficiency bumps would achieve the same result with respect to reducing the opportunity cost for investing in survival. Forcing people to pick with and be stuck with things reduces agency, leading to (as discussed above) forced party composition even if the player doesn't want to do it. That reduces fun in the game. The alternate solution is to provide martials more flexible agency instead of forcing casters to be fixed and 'brought low' in line with martials. Seems like a 'simple' suggestion and not something that should require you to call people who support my idea 'ridiculous' as you have done in previous posts. Your comment above implies that I am not thinking holistically about the game. Some might say that is patronizing and/or condescending, when clearly I have done so but with an opposite design philosophy from you.
N N 959 wrote: And by that logic, that should be able to turn lead into gold, but funny how the game doesn't let that happen. Which means that everything in the games is intentional and contrived for the purpose of playing game. So please dispense with the treatise on what should be possible with magic.
Except there is a spell in 1e for this exact case (Transfiguring Touch). It also wasn't released in core, so I wouldn't expect to see it just yet. I have provided a lot of evidence that the game philosophy on magic diverges from your own. Specifically that game philosophy wants magic to be able to replicate and go beyond mundane skill applications. The rationale for pointing out game design philosophy, is to show that your assumption that a skill feat should be more powerful than a spell is incorrect. It also shows that game design philosophy wants to provide characters with more agency using magic (contrary to your suggested balance changes to reduce agency). Thus if the game seeks to provide more fun through the application of its design philosophy, then it would be more consistent to provide martials with more agency (my suggested balance strategy), not strip it from casters. Your dismissal of my 'treatise' is not convincing and does not address the gap between your philosophy and game design philosophy.
N N 959 wrote: I disagree that they've dropped the floor for casters, I've seen in actual playtest and on forums that scaling cantrips are "awesome." I sat across from a Sorc with Telekinetic Projectile out-damaged by archery Ranger at range, and that was with a Bear granting me an additional 1d8 slashing. Plus, he was able to change the projectile type and change the damage type. Archers apparently don't have that option at any level (though I expect they'll get blunt arrows at some point). But I don't have a problem with that. Being able to do damage in combat is a staple of the game, so I everyone should have some option.
They've also given casters way more hit points and given all casters an ability to perform Untrained skill checks and have a non-trivial chance of succeeding. Clerics have more skills, Sorcerers have more skills. Clerics have better init, and the list goes on. So gap between what martials could do and what casters could not do has been dramatically reduced. But I don't see Fighters with crowd control, AoE, condition removal, and a long list of other things that have been the domain of casters and casters only. No, now martials have to use an action to simply gain the benefit of their shield.
As stated previously casters have been nerfed substantially in a number of ways Please address those mechanisms and how you think they are compensated for. Cantrips are not as powerful as archery. They take a minimum of two actions to cast. The Telekinetic Projectile cantrip also requires material of a specific kind be available to 'throw'. That might require an interact action to pull material from your inventory taking 3 actions. Meanwhile a fighter archer by L6 could have point-blank (no volley penalty), double shot, and triple shot, a magic compo longbow with 14 STR for 2D8+1 deadly 1d10, and a higher to hit (more dex due to no casting stat being required and master proficiency in the weapon group). The fighter can take 4 shots per round (5 with haste) which, without diving into the math of the iteratives is a lot more damage output than the caster who is getting 1d8+casting stat once a round if they hit with worse accuracy at that level. At L10 you can add a slow effect to your iteratives (a 3rd level spell btw) or at L16 the multi-shot penalty goes down to -1 or -2 with the right feat. If you review the forums you will realize that rangers, as is in 2e, are NOT ranged fighters due to lack of feat support and the requirement to use crossbows (mechanically much worse than a comp. longbow due to the reload action) for their one good feat. You would also realize that animal companions are not as OP as they used to be and are more of a liability. If it were up to me, I would 'at a minimum' allow rangers to use longbows AND allow them to access many of the fighter ranged feats (i.e., INCREASE their agency as opposed to shut down a desirable ranged ranger build).
Casters don't have more 'relative' hit points. Average hp per hit die in 1e (like in PFS) was 4 for 1d6, 5 for 1d8, 6 for 1d10, and 7 for 1d12. Now everyone gets full HD which translates to MORE relative HP difference between classes than in 1e (i.e., everyone got more, but now martials have 2-4 more per level vs. 1-2 as in 1e). Similarly, ALL classes can do untrained checks (that isn't a caster specific upgrade) and ALL classes must 'raise a shield' to get a shield bonus (that isn't a caster specific nerf). I have identified many ways in which casters have been specifically nerfed relative to martial (both power floor and ceiling). The anecdotal evidence from your play test experience doesn't override the fundamental math behind 2e to substantiate the opposite narrative.
A 'new' nerf that I hadn't realized until today was the increased scaling of monster saves vs. spell DCs. Monsters on average will pass spell saves generally 50% of the time at L1 and have that percentage increase as their level increases for CR equivalent fights (up to 82% in some cases by L19). That means beyond the 'bad stuff' on spells being mechanically nerfed, the monsters you face are less likely to 'fail' or 'critically fail' (Source). If you want to critique the math of the game, please provide concrete examples. It isn't useful to list changes in 2e that impact equally all classes when trying to point out relative differences between class chassis power.
N N 959 wrote: Red Griffyn wrote: Please point out the "insulting me and trying to misrepresent my motivations" portion of my text in this thread. I've done that in this thread alone.
I disagree. I asked for examples so we could clear up misunderstandings. From my point of view you have called people who agree or support me ridiculous, suggested I am only willing to 'pay lip service' to my suggested changes, have a mindset of 'don't touch my stuff!!', admitted multiple times to laughing at my critique of how to resolve perceived balance issues (both condescending and patronizing), been the one who first implied I have performed ad hominem attacks without substantiating your claim, and threatened to start reporting my posts on the basis that we might be communicating past each other (something that happens in discussions) and not understanding each other's intent. Meanwhile you have also pointed to multiple parts of my critique and dismissed them offhand without actually discussing the point (spells vs. mundane skill feats in 2e game design, relative nerfs to casters, uses of survival skill beyond foraging, feat equivalents to spells for martials, etc.). Perhaps we are both interpreting too much 'voice' and 'intent' in online writing, but in the interest of the discussion maybe we can both move past it.
I am mystified by these supposed wizards that could 'do everything'. From my experience, wizards in PF1 picked one thing to focus on (usually charming, summoning, or blasting) and then prepared spells to do that with a handful of 'mandatory' buff/utility spells (haste, fly, d-door, etc) and that's it, they never completely changed what they did between days - partially because the feats they chose made the other types of spells un-optimal and partially because they didn't want to waste the money learning spells outside of what they wanted to do.
Now that wizards only have 3-4 spells per day, I imagine they're going to stick to a single way of playing even more as they won't have the room to prepare anything else. And poor sorcerers are going to be too busy relearning heightened versions of spells they already know to be very flexible.
If you're complaining about the diversity available in the wizard class (which pretty much boils down to 'different ways of dealing damage and different ways of buffing/debuffing') vs the diversity of the fighter class (which is sadly just 'different ways of doing damage and different ways of being slightly tankier') then I think that there's just a need for fighters to access more utility.
I mean, Paladins can be pretty diverse (assuming they fix the terrible retributive strike being the basis of so much of their class) and have access to healing and potentially status removal, Monks can actually get quite a bit of utility/control, and Rogues are just ridiculous with the amount of skills they can get. Rangers seem like they could be flavorful/provide unique utility, they just need some archery support and tweaks to make them less terrible.
Honestly, it's only Fighters and Barbarians that are super limited as far as just being focused on being able to hit things better/more (although some of the barbarian feats are ultility-ish). And maybe that's okay if they have distinct enough playstyles and can contribute enough with their rather narrow focus. Otherwise maybe they need some more utility/control focused feats.
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N N 959 wrote: Red Griffyn wrote: A level 1 AND level 2 spell being equivalent to a level 1 skill feat seems under-powered... for the spells. Uh...no. Create Food feds six at level 1. Forager feds 1....until level 6. And let's not pretend a GM is going to make someone cast Create Food and Create Water.
My favorite is the Quick Climb skill. A level 7 feet, requiring a master in Athletics. On "Success" you can move at half your speed. Yeah, that measures up real well to Spider Climb which gives you 25 climb without having to make a single roll. Sure, Spider Climb only lasts 10 minutes, don't remember anyone needing to climb longer or more than once an adventuring day. But if you know you have to climb a cliff, wouldn't be problem to prepare it more than once or metamagic the duration. What's more, the caster can bestow it on someone else. Can't really do that with skills can you?
But hey, Casters dominating the game isn't a thing is it? Hmmm, attack the caster, lowest hit pints, 1-2 hits, no more csater. Very dominating?
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