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I think it not necessary to go into details with how involved I have been in threads that discuss magic and spellcasters over the past few weeks.
Those that spend a lot of time on the forums will probably have come across one of my posts on the subject already.
It is a topic that is important to me and it has generated a lot of discussions, most of which usually end up with the same 3-4 people on both sides (myself included) going back and forth over the same issues.
A lot of people are making assumptions and support their claims with the fact that it's what "the majority of players" wants.
Yes, I acknowledge I am one of these people because...I'm only human and I have my own faults.
I'm working very hard at improving on them, don't worry. :P
I have been feeling extremely let down with official surveys, especially the one about classes, because I felt I was unable to convey the feedback that I wanted about magic and spellcasting classes.
The surveys did not go into enough details that I could explicitly express why I was unhappy with most of these classes.
The latest Rules Survey does a better job at giving players the opportunity to provide explanations for their resulting levels of satisfaction and I hope this continues in future surveys as well.
However, I have given up hope on having surveys to cover the topics of magic, spells and spellcasting classes.
It was teased in the Twitch stream that the Rules Survey would cover aspects of the rules for magic and this section ended up being about...magical items only.
What a disappointment.
I'm a very curious individual. I want to know what the playerbase thinks and where it stands when it comes to the current version of spells and spellcasting classes.
Am I truly in the vocal minority?
That might totally be the case.
Unfortunately, none of the Paizo surveys so far have been able to answer my questions and so...I came up with my own.
Below are five individual surveys that cover each of the main spellcasting classes in the CRB.
They do not review spellcasting archetypes, only the primary classes.
Feel free to complete just one if you do not have feedback on all classes or complete all of them if you would like!
They focus on asking questions about the following:
* number of spell slots available per day
* number of spells known at each level for spontaneous casters
* heightening spells for prepared and spontaneous casters
* increases in spell DCs and spell rolls proficiency
* spell points usage across classes
* power level of spells relative to each spell list and classes (Sorcerers having access to all of them makes them unique)
Quick but essential disclaimer:
The survey does not require you share any personal data.
This is not a scientific survey. I will never present it as such.
I tried my best to present each of the questions in the most unbiased way I could achieve and to include the largest amount of possible answers.
Some of the questions will unavoidably be flawed and I know people will try hard to demonstrate this even on occasions that they are not.
It's OK.
I don't intend for these surveys to have any other purpose than give me an hopefully broad sample of what the playerbase thinks when it comes to magic and spellcasters.
I'd be very happy if enough people were to contribute that it gives Paizo an incentive to just take a look at these surveys, or, better yet, make their own.
If no one answers and it goes unnoticed well...I guess I will have wasted 2 hours of my life but other than that, no big deal. :D
You should, theoretically, be able to see what other respondents answered but I'm not sure how it works because I have never used Google Forms before.
When I wrote my thesis, I did qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) surveys only and those do not fit well into forms, so this is a first!
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I think the reason this happened is very simple. Spellcasters in pf1e are strong. Ridiculously strong. like, off the chains pull Supermans pants down strong. (a level 20 pf full caster could probably defeat everyone in the DCU, except the Flash, because he's the Flash)
I love high level play and abilities in pf1e, but i usually ban prepared full casters, why? because of bad experience in play.
I once played kingmaker, my group is not always the best at mechanical optimization, but they are very, very good at cramming the utmost of what they have in actual play.
we had, from level 4 onwards, after being savaged in rusty dagger shanktown and pretty much finalized our party, a party consisting of:
a witch (no archetype)
a druid (no archetype)
a crafting focused transmuter wizard
a paladin (no archetype)
a magus (me) (kensai)
I had originally played a inquisitor, but he got eaten by undead, so i rerolled as a magus, and our witch originally played a summoner, but the problems were evident from level 3 onwards, when our wizard found out about the create pit series of spells. after that, being a hexcrawl, with very limited enemy numbers, every enemy had to eat 2-3 save or sucks in the first round. We breezed through mostly, except during extended dungeon crawls. what got insane though, was when our kingdom expanded and we could afford to give money to our crafter, with lots of downtime (hint, if you are planning on playing kingmaker, ban crafting, seriously). From level 9 onwards, everyone selecting spells usually took more than 1 hour of session time, and we automated kingdom building, since it was too granular.
Teleporting trivialized the hexcrawl completely
As soon as we heard about an enemy, our solution was to scry them, preplan everything (taking more in session time than the actual combat)
and go in with a perfect gameplan, obliterating everything that stood in our way.
Having less utility options than the full casters, me and the paladin often had to suffer through long...
Short Version: Spellcasters had their fun, now they can suck for 10 years?
It doesn't matter what a class was in the past, but how it is now and in the future. Of course the past can give ideas of how it can be improved, but the goal of the game is that all characters are useful and valuable. Nobody has to "pay" for mistakes from the year 2000.
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At my table, spellcasters don't dominate, even at high levels. Likely because we enjoy buffing the fighters.
There was a post in the survey blog post from one of the designers, Jason I think, said they're going to do an entire separate survey on magic. They are waiting because if they do to many surveys at once they get less answers, but it is coming.
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I had originally played a inquisitor, but he got eaten by undead, so i rerolled as a magus, and our witch originally played a summoner, but the problems were evident from level 3 onwards, when our wizard found out about the create pit series of spells. after that, being a hexcrawl, with very limited enemy numbers, every enemy had to eat 2-3 save or sucks in the first round.
The game is designed expecting multiple encounters per day. If you change that to one, anyone who has limited use powers suddenly can ignore those limits and will get stronger because of it. Throw ten encounters in one day at that Wizard and see how he's doing by the last one. (The result will be the exact opposite of what happens when they get a single one.)
We breezed through mostly, except during extended dungeon crawls.
Of course, because extended dungeon crawls typically let you go at a one encounter per day pace.
As soon as we heard about an enemy, our solution was to scry them, preplan everything (taking more in session time than the actual combat)
and go in with a perfect gameplan, obliterating everything that stood in our way.
Sounds like your party was smarter than the enemies were, then. There's tools in the toolbox to foil that, especially since scrying a target you have "heard of" is already difficult. Stick an enemy spellcaster and false vision in there and they will get a fun surprise.
Or hey, have someone come after the party in an ambush where they get to do the planning and the party doesn't.
Having less utility options than the full casters, me and the paladin often had to suffer through long planning sessions in which we could not really contribute anything meaningful except our brawn in the execution. the three caster players loved it, but i had to leave due to irl concerns, and i then found out they had breezed through everything up until level 13, when both the paladin and the GM had ragequit. The GM could not tell the story he wanted to tell, and the paladin felt useless outside combat, despite being king and all.
What I'm really getting out of this story is that there was a mismatch of expectations between what some players wanted and what some other players wanted the game to be like. That's unfortunate and all, but it probably be solved another way than nerfing spellcasting so far into the ground that casters aren't fun to play anymore.
For the amount of work it takes to prepare spells, plan ahead for what you might need, manage them as a limited resource, and know the spell list well enough to know what to cast without slowing the game to a crawl... one would hope you wouldn't wind up being less effective than "I swing my sword." Because if that's the case, it's probably easier to skip all the extra work and just hit things with swords.
By they way, how quickly do casters in pf1 go through spell slots? I currently play a sorcerer at lvl 11 (primarily as a blaster), and so far I have yet to run out of spells, aside from my 5th lvl ones that one time, and I have 5 of those (and 7 3rd and 4th slots, and 8 1st and 2nd). I know part of it has to do with how I mostly use persisting spells like lightning orb to handle threats, but it feels like I got to the point where I can't really run out of spells in a realistic fashion, even if I am using a good amount of them to buff the party as well.
And can't you use scrolls or leave slots blank in case you run into something your not prepared for? I remember wizards can craft scrolls during downtime.
I agree that spells are a bit too weak, especially the cantrips, but I do think that the smaller number of slots could work in pf2, provided class abilities and cantrips can pull their weight.
There was a post in the survey blog post from one of the designers, Jason I think, said they're going to do an entire separate survey on magic. They are waiting because if they do to many surveys at once they get less answers, but it is coming.
I know, I was the one who asked about it. :)
It took 2 months to get that answer and I still don't know when they'll be coming, hence the reason why I made my own in the meantime.
Director of Game Design
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Folks,
I appreciate everyone's passion here to try and get us some data, but you really need to give us the time to create surveys that ask the questions we need answered. The spells and magic survey is coming. It is behind a few other things in line that need to happen first.
Creating your own surveys on other sites is not helpful to our process.
This thread is locked.