A (maybe useless) idea to give more identity to wizard and magical traditions

[Yoveu]

Not talking about houserules I have tested and proved balanced or anything else, just an idea that I want to discuss.

PREMISE:

I don't have any link, but I remember the devs said that when selecting spells for the traditions they were bounded to give to wizards (and so to arcane list) most of what it had in Pathfinder; otherwise veteran players would feel a too wide gap between what they could do and what they will be able to.

I also read many threads about differentiation of lists (here an example: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42ber?Could-we-have-less-crossover-between-the #4 ), and recently a new thread about how to distinguish more wizards and sorcerers ( https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42d8h?Taking-a-look-at-the-Division-of-Niches- for ).

I have made a simple sheet to compare the 4 traditions: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13sRbT4KZ9mlk1uLdL1iPuGFU0G4gJV-Eo3m XI1cny1g/edit?usp=sharing

It's clear that arcane tradition has more or less all the spells except for the healing ones and the ones thematic of the other traditions (divine support, emotion control, nature), this cause an imbalance and limits the design space -I suppose.

PROPOSAL:

Make the arcane list thinner, removing some of the more generical spells from the 8 schools (3-7 each for example) and change the wizard specializations in a way similar to Dominions and Bloodlines: they now grant a selection of spells to the wizard not already in his tradition list.
The point would be to make Arcane school less factotum without take away identity from Wizard: he would instead distinguish himself from another Arcane caster for his augmented versatility -his proper niche.

EXAMPLE 1:
Arcane tradition loses 40 spells, 1 spell for each spell level from 4 to 8 for each magic school.
Let's say now a Wizard has the capability to study and cast (through his deep researches on the field) Arcane Spells and 5 more (from the 48 we took), the ones which were of his specialization.

EXAMPLE 2:
Arcane tradition loses 48 spells, 1 spell for each spell level from 2 to 7 for each magic school.
Let's say now a Wizard has the capability to study and cast (through his deep researches on the field) Arcane Spells and 36 more (from the 48 we took), which depend on his specialization: we would exclude the 16 from the opposite schools (a concept we don't have anymore).

EXAMPLE 3:
Arcane tradition loses 40 spells, 1 spell for each spell level from 3 to 7 for each magic school.
Let's say now a Wizard has the capability to study and cast (through his deep researches on the field) Arcane Spells and 40 more (the ones we took from the list).

We can change the variables as we like, and I have offered three examples from "School really matters for the wizard" to "nothing really changes".

What do you think? It's not a ponderated fix to the game, just an idea to share.

[Wolfism]

I like the idea but I'm not sure what that would do to the universalist.

[Yoveu]

Ok, let's see what could be done...

Generalist wizard is the "wider knowledge but not so deep" one, right? I think it could be done letting him take more extra spells but not so with the same power of the specialist ones, three possible ways could be:

1) His list has more spells, distribuited among each school but with a spell level cap;
2) His list has more -or all the lost- spells, but he can take learn them only by research;
3) His list has more -or all the lost- spells, but he can take learn them only by research after he can cast spells at least 1 level higher.

I'll reuse the examples of the first post:

EXAMPLE 1.1

Arcane tradition loses 40 spells, 1 spell for each spell level from 4 to 8 for each magic school.
Let's say now a generalist Wizard has the capability to study and cast (through his deep researches on the field) Arcane Spells and 10 more (from the 40 we took), which must be in the 4-5-6 range of levels.

EXAMPLE 1.2

Arcane tradition loses 40 spells, 1 spell for each spell level from 4 to 8 for each magic school.
Let's say now a generalist Wizard has the capability cast Arcane Spells, but he can also research by study the following 40 spells (not anymore in the Arcane List): ...

EXAMPLE 1.3

Arcane tradition loses 40 spells, 1 spell for each spell level from 4 to 8 for each magic school.
Let's say now a generalist Wizard has the capability cast Arcane Spells, but he can also research by study the following 40 spells (not anymore in the Arcane List): ...
There's a limit in this research of new spells: to learn an external 4th level spell he must know how to cast 5th, and so on.

EXAMPLE 2.1

Arcane tradition loses 48 spells, 1 spell for each spell level from 2 to 7 for each magic school.
Let's say now a Wizard has the capability to study and cast (through his deep researches on the field) Arcane Spells and 36 more (from the 48 we took), the ones in the range 2-3-4-5.

EXAMPLE 2.2

Arcane tradition loses 48 spells, 1 spell for each spell level from 2 to 7 for each magic school.
Let's say now a Wizard has the capability to cast Arcane Spells, but he can also research by study the following 48 spells (not anymore in the Arcane List): ...

EXAMPLE 2.3

Arcane tradition loses 48 spells, 1 spell for each spell level from 2 to 7 for each magic school.
Let's say now a Wizard has the capability to cast Arcane Spells, but he can also research by study the following 48 spells (not anymore in the Arcane List): ...
There's a limit in this research of new spells: to learn an external 4th level spell he must know how to cast 5th, and so on.

EXAMPLE 3 would not be modified -not depending on specialization.

[Starfox]

We already have sorcerers for narrow concept spell lists. A wizard is a magical mechanic, and a mechanic has a wrench for each bolt, or he's not a mechanic.

[Wolfism]

That's a bit of a bad metaphor considering the different specialist wizards being the base idea behind the wizard in Pathfinder. The magic tinkerer in pf1 was the arcanist the wizard was more like an engineer. A mechanical engineer has a very different toolkit than a electrical engineer.

[Yoveu]

Starfox wrote:

We already have sorcerers for narrow concept spell lists. A wizard is a magical mechanic, and a mechanic has a wrench for each bolt, or he's not a mechanic.

Interesting point, what about the Arcane list?

Putting aside wizard, do you think the list is already ok or that it needs some tweaks?
Because also the Sorcerer uses the list, and maybe the Arcanist in the future, do we want that they’ve got all the wideness of the wizard?

EDIT: it seems the link previous link to the sheet doesn’t work, this one should:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13sRbT4KZ9mlk1uLdL1iPuGFU0G4gJV-Eo3m XI1cny1g

[shroudb]

i think it's ok that wizards are like a swiss knife.

now if only we can also make the sorc being a machete...

As for better specialization identity, the only thing that's still required is to make the school powers (as well as the domain powers and the bloodline powers) much much better.