Heighten Spell: Why The Limitation?


Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells


5 people marked this as a favorite.

Can anyone give a decent reason as to why this is so limited? Here are two really WTF choices:

1) Sorcerers need to re-learn a spell as a heightened version in order to cast it as a heightened spell.
2) Spontaneous Heighten isn't spontaneous at all. They need to be prepared at the beginning of the day.

If casters are already limited by spells per day, why even bother having a limit on heightened spells? If someone would rather cast a heightened fireball than greater teleport, why should they not be able to? It seems extremely reasonable to me to presume that if a caster knows how to put more into spells like Magic Missile for more missiles (adding in more components), then surely they also know how to put ever-so-slightly-more in (cast as a level 2 spell) in order to get one more.

I for one am house ruling these stupid limitations out of my games, but can anyone understand why they exist at all?


Speaking of unnecessary limitations, here are a few more suggestions: Drawing a weapon and taking/picking up things should be a free action, drawing and drinking a potion should be one action, and using an action to stride should give you movement up to your max movement that you can use throughout your turn allowing you to move attack move without wasting two entire actions on moving short distances.


Auto heightening gives sorcerers huge numbers of spells known with their high level slots. It doesn’t matter for the damaging ones, but it’s a big advantage for the Charm/Paralyze/invisibility/Dominate spells and similar which get upgrades to mass/monster/greater via heightening.

A PF1 Sorcerer with free Mass Hold Monster, Dominate Monster, and Mass Charm Monster as spells known because of choices at 1st, 3rd, and 5th level would have been very damaging to the spells known balance.


7 people marked this as a favorite.

I couldn't disagree more. I have played a lot of 5e over the past couple of years and being able to spontaneously heighten any spell you know didn't create any amount of imbalance at all (which is interesting, since heightening in 5e is also more powerful than what I've seen in PF2. Charm, for example, gets multiple targets every other level instead of only as an 8th level spell), and it was a LOT more fun to play. Having them as separate spells is bloated and unnecessary.

As for what you said about choices made at early levels, you can change spells whenever you level up so that doesn't matter.


6 people marked this as a favorite.

I'm afraid that 5e did far better job with preparing spells and auto-hightening them.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Yeah, it really did. And Paizo learned nothing from it. :(


1 person marked this as a favorite.

The reasons they gave were that:
1) free heightening is too powerful, which reasonable people can disagree on
2) it creates "analysis paralysis" at the table, which just about everyone sees as a b*@**!+* argument at best, and a "problem" that should be solved at the table, not by the designer.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Let's look at a mid-level sorc. He's just got 6th level spells. Let's simplify spells known at each level, and call it, after cantrips, 3/3/3/3/2/2 - mostly because I don't have the pdf on hand

If they all have heighten options, and they're all different, that means his 6th level slots have 16 options. A wizard, if preparing 3 spells per day, will have... 3 options. Sure, he can change them out during rest stops with Quick Study, but in combat the sorc would have over 5x as many options. This quickly becomes a power issue, even besides the analysis paralysis argument. The disparity grows with levels.

With 2 heightenings, he's picking between 4 spells for his 6th level slots. Pretty similar to the wizard. With 4 heightenings (I think this is what the bard gets and would be okay seeing it given to Sorc, maybe for a feat) he has 6, which is a lot more than the wizard, and a nice balancing factor against Quick Study.

Free-heighten-everything really does feel absurd to me, but I think a flat limit of 2 is a bit too timid.


They should let the Sorc select the additional heightening feat (like the bard) and not take away feats for them getting bloodline powers (current Sorc gets two less feats, I think, than other casters).


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Lyee wrote:

Let's look at a mid-level sorc. He's just got 6th level spells. Let's simplify spells known at each level, and call it, after cantrips, 3/3/3/3/2/2 - mostly because I don't have the pdf on hand

If they all have heighten options, and they're all different, that means his 6th level slots have 16 options.

It's worse than that, actually, because each time you gain a bloodline spell you also obtain another spell slot of the highest level you can cast, which means your 11th level sorc above would have 4/4/4/4/4/3 (you also got the number of slots of next highest level wrong), for a total of 23 options. Now, not every spell is heightenable to every level, obviously, so there's never really going to be that many options, but still...

Shadow Lodge

I'd prefer an undercasting mechanic for spontaneous casters. Knowing say a 3rd level spell as a 6th level spell slot allows you to cast it heightened using 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th level spell slots. Depending how a character's spell selection is set up this might give some option paralysis around the mid level spell slots.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

...However, most of the time you're going to only be looking at one or two viable spells. "Its weak to fire, do I cast Burning Hands or Flaming Sphere?" Right now the answer is "whichever one you've prep-heightened" followed by "which ever one is the higher spell level."

What'd I'd rather have is picking a spell for its coverage and elemental type and not be penalized on damage/spell rolls because "oh that isn't one of the ones you heightened today."


Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

The only thing that I think Sorcerer's should get in addition to their current auto-heighten is an expansion to their existing two spells that they can choose. Similar to Bards I think that they should get a lower level class feat that allows them to choose 4 spells that they can auto-heighten instead of limiting them to just 2.

I think that would be a fair and happy medium.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

The sorceror should have more on the go oprions. That's the whole point of a sorceror - they're tactically flexible. Wizards, on the other hand, are more strategically flexible since they can cast one of a much wider variety of spells from that same slot with more prep time.

Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Pathfinder Playtest / Player Rules / Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells / Heighten Spell: Why The Limitation? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells