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When I asked him about it, he said in essence that he figured the Wizard would spend most of his downtime and money researching those spells - which makes sense to me.
It does, but again that depends on access. Those numbers kind of rely on the wizard being able to learn the spells for free, for instance (i.e. only paying the scribing cost). On the opposite extreme, if you're learning all the spells from scrolls, you don't actually have enough money at level 9 to learn all your 1st-3rd spells.
I think Ravingdork's report is the most solid evidence that I will enjoy PF2. I trust his analysis.
In PF1, I just had a CR14 creature run through three fights with a party of 9th-11th characters. When it lost initiative to the martials, it got one action before being finished off. When it won initiative on the party, the fight lasted 5 rounds thanks to SLAs. When it lost initiative to the caster, it never got to act.
You will like that part more. Monsters stay up way longer now.
When I asked him about it, he said in essence that he figured the Wizard would spend most of his downtime and money researching those spells - which makes sense to me.It does, but again that depends on access. Those numbers kind of rely on the wizard being able to learn the spells for free, for instance (i.e. only paying the scribing cost). On the opposite extreme, if you're learning all the spells from scrolls, you don't actually have enough money at level 9 to learn all your 1st-3rd spells.
Yeah, I just used the character starting funds to pick up a bunch of spells using the Learning a Spell prices listed on page 238 of the Core Rulebook.
Not all my wizards did that though. Some invested in common-only spells. Some invested in all the spells for a given level, common and uncommon both. My gnome illusionist, Gebralter, didn't pick up any extra spells at all.
I generally tried to stick to the Core Rulebook spells for simplicity's sake. What's more, I ended up getting all of the spells of a given level and lower because it's easier to say "All 3rd-level and lower common wizards spells from the Core Rulebook" than it is to list them all out one by one in a huge list.
You will like that part more. Monsters stay up way longer now.I think Ravingdork's report is the most solid evidence that I will enjoy PF2. I trust his analysis.
In PF1, I just had a CR14 creature run through three fights with a party of 9th-11th characters. When it lost initiative to the martials, it got one action before being finished off. When it won initiative on the party, the fight lasted 5 rounds thanks to SLAs. When it lost initiative to the caster, it never got to act.
It's been my experience thus far that monsters are a LOT more durable, deadly, AND interesting in P2E. In PF1, whoever won initiative won the fight, more often than not. This appears to be quite a rarity in PF2.
It seems to me that a smart wizard would have however many books, at 100 pages each, it takes to record all the spells he knows, and that they would be well warded and locked away someplace safe. When he's adventuring, he'd have another book containing just a selection of spells that he would most expect to need. He might end up with several such "working" spell books, but only carry one (or maybe two) at any particular time.
In general, given the time, money, and effort required to learn and record all his spells, I don't think any wizard would take a chance of losing all that while climbing around the Emerald Spire or whatever.
I think if you have spell A recorded in spell book #1, and spell B recorded in spell book #2, you can prepare both spells as long as you have both spell books with you when you're doing your preparation. Otherwise wizards are arbitrarily limited to at most 100 spells, which while one might think that would be plenty, does not seem intended, since it would have been easy to say so, and they didn't.
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I'm 99.99% certain you can use multiple spell books in both Editions. If you couldn't, you'd have to resort to the Borrow A Spell action to use your own spells, and that's a lot of wasted time and rolling no one is actually going to enforce. Furthermore, if you could only ever have or use one spellbook, there wouldn't need to be a blank spellbook in the equipment chapter.
In any case, there are only 361 arcane spells in the Core Rulebook (34 of which are uncommon and another 16 of which are focus spells), so four spellbooks cover you pretty well.
Yeah, Borrow a Spellbook exists to use other people's spellbooks.
It doesn't make sense to need it for your OWN spellbooks which you scribed via Learn a Spell action.
In PF1 you were required to use multiple books as each spell costed pages equal to its spell level. Between 9 cantrips, ~7 1st lv and 4 each up to 5th lv its 72 pages; a travel spell book holds 75. And that was assuming no extra spells (2 spells learned/lv after 1st).Not if you had a Blessed Book. Again, the rules are unclear in both editions if you can even prepare spells from multiple spellbooks. It does make the dang thing a required magic item if you can't, but pf1 had a lot of required magic items anyway.That's a magic item specifically made so you dont need to carry a bunch of books.
And in checking that I realized I got the page number wrong. Traveling = 50 pages; Compact = 70 pages; Regular = 100 pages.
i would have to say that the alternate books are all very in line with only being balanced if you can carry more than 1.
3 compact spell books weight equal to 1 spellbook and carry the spells of roughly 2 of them. however they cost 50gp each.
this is only useful if you're carrying around a bunch of spell books, why else would the cost be at such a premium other than trying to keep your bulk lower.
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Movement and utility spells were deliberately restricted for the sake of story telling purposes, not some mechanical balance issue. That was a change for the sake of adventure designers and being able to have skills be a more meaningful choice for players for a longer period of time. Having spells just cover everything that skills can do, only better was a design flaw of D&D.PF1 spell due to caster level scaling had better damage, duration and range. So even if you only knew a few you could do a lot with the right spells. A great example is Fly.
** spoiler omitted **
No, it's good design. There should always be multiple solutions, and there's no reason you shouldn't be able to use magic to accomplish mundane tasks. What do you think real wizards would use magic for? Making their lives easier. Doing things magically so they don't need the physical skill or ability. Getting around with a minimum of effort and time. That's what needs to be supported by magic, before we even think about chucking fireballs and summoning walls of ice.
Unless your universe is like warhammer and magic is likely to just screw you over completely, your storytelling has to take that into account. PF1 spells were well designed, PF2 spells are lackluster at best.
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Kind of bizarre. Back in 3.5 and PF1 I remember a lot of people griping about how ineffectual blasting was outside specific (and sometimes exploity) combinations of options.
Now all of the sudden seeing people turn around and act like nobody would ever want to blast with a wizard and ridiculing the idea of even bringing up damage spells.
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So what is the purpose of a wizard now? Minor debuffs and (relatively, compared to buffed hit points) weakened blasting? People who wanted to blast played sorcerers. People who wanted to solve problems played wizards. Without utility spells, without worthwhile crafting, without anything unique or especially useful about them, why bother?
Serious question for those who've played a bit: would your party be much better with 3 fighters and a cleric, or a fighter, cleric, wizard, rogue?
A wizard just brings less damage, way less hp, less defense, and no utility. What's the point of the class? To AoE level -2 groups?
I guess they could counterspell a boss. Assuming the wizard has the counterspell feat, and the boss is casting a spell of lower level. Or you're level 12, and you use clever counterspell (2 feats now, a lot dedicated to this), and if the boss is a full caster, casting his highest level spell, you have to crit succeed if you're even level, or succeed at odd level (against level +3 full caster DC), possibly taking a -2 penalty (gm arbitrariness to negate), and also using one of your highest level slots. Sounds not great.
I'm really curious, what do you think a wizard brings to the table?
I’m going to have to agree with Rysky on this one. Your point on the usefulness of wizards is a gross understatement. I’ve been playing for two months, and without a doubt, casters are completely essential to the success of parties. Those “minor debuffs” when used intelligently (even if used sparingly) have saved many encounters from member loss or tpk. Just today, our dispel was used on a hazard in combat to stop it from causing the entire party from being blinded, and in another encounter, a fireball reduced every enemy low enough that they each fell with another follow up attack. Of course, each spell was useful in the right situation, but if one spell solves every problem, then there is no point in having any other magic.
And from what I’ve seen, crafting is very worthwhile for wizards, not because it controls the economic power of the party through a wizard being the sole resource for receiving magical upgrades, but because crafting is useful in other areas outside of arms manufacture, such as in construction. And wizards are the most likely candidates for high intelligence in any given party.
As for utility, wizard spells also grant that in spades. Now, however, utility is not an automatic win button for encounters and dangers, forcing characters to really think about opportunity cost instead of casting utility spells that last the entire day (hyperbole on my part) and completely overshadow any skill use. Wizard’s utility can also be supported with skill use as well, skills that they should have in spades since intelligence influences the number of trained skills.
Wizards are unique in the whole package approach of the character, not because of one specific thing. Of course, just like any other class, every wizard can be built differently while still maintaining effectiveness. Instead of looking at each part separately, it would be better to look at all the thing wizards can do together as well as how those parts interact with each other, the party, enemies, and the environment.
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And no one said that Casters should be masters of all trades. There is a big difference between, "can use magic to occasionally make life easier" (PF1) and "can use magic to do anything" (No system). Right now magic "can maybe occasionally possibly make life easier, maybe."
I'm curious, could you list the trades you are considering when you make this statement? As well as an example "anything" that a caster in PF1 could not do, but that some other class could?
Is this just damage output?
Or are we talking about healing, damage mitigation, transportation, information gathering, encounter bypass, setting traps, and other things likes that?
Perhaps I have different 3.5/PF1 experiences than you do, as I seem to remember casters having pretty good options for all of that, and in many cases the best options. A level 11 wizard could have at least 2 castings of a strong solution for all of those categories. And thats not including backup scrolls. Non-casters I don't think could do all of those in a single class.
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Having access to something and being able to do it aren't always the same thing. Sure, a hypothetical PF1 caster could do anything, but in a gameplay scenario where they don't have perfect forsight, all available spells in their spell book, or spells known, nor the perfect spell memorized or slot left open, they are typically giving the party the option to bypass something tomorrow, or at a gold cost for scrolls or wish, if the party can't figure it out today.
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Having access to something and being able to do it aren't always the same thing. Sure, a hypothetical PF1 caster could do anything, but in a gameplay scenario where they don't have perfect forsight, all available spells in their spell book, or spells known, nor the perfect spell memorized or slot left open, they are typically giving the party the option to bypass something tomorrow, or at a gold cost for scrolls or wish, if the party can't figure it out today.
I feel like there needs to be the opposite of a Schrodinger's Wizard, where the argument is that wizards don't use the always useful spells that bypass entire narratives on their own with no check
Like, the moment the Wizard has Overland Flight, that wizard never has to worry about traversing a short distance again, period. A perfect fly speed for the entire adventuring day is a brainless choice for any wizard, and is something that no adventure designer can account for without just cutting all movement-based challenges in their adventures.
First you'd need to find a list of always useful spells. I'm not sure fly slowly qualifies as we already need to load up on teleport spells and wall of stone spells to negate encounters.
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PF2 still has illusion spells, in fact much improved illusion spells with greatly increased clarity in how they work. It still includes sorting and teleporting and flying and invisibility and wish. It has changed level access to many of these iconic narrative defying abilities, and it has put rarity tags on many of them to force GMs and players to have conversations about them before the player shows up at the table having selected one of them at a new level without the GM having considered how it will change the story.
As a GM, I am fine with players derailing the narrative. I am also ok with a company that primarily gets by on the strength of its published adventures dialing in the spells that are most often disruptive to high level play to keep their APs approachable to new players. Experienced players and GMs can always reintroduce these elements with relative easy. Mark Seifter runs games as a GM for players that often play at the higher end of system mastery and talks about how to dial up the challenge level of games to compensate. He has his own twitch stream for those who are interested in running games more in that vein, even in PF2.
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Or are you expecting they should have the most versatility and equal effectiveness to a specialist - the Jack of All Trades and Master of All Trades rolled into one character?I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they're expecting, yes.
sherlock is a strategist. They've talked in the past about how building and constructing characters is the most important and intriguing aspect of the game for them. The act of playing out the character is less the point in this method of play and more a way to test the concept, with the goal of absolutely annihilating any challenges put before it.
You ever seen those competitions where people build and program little robots then have them run courses or smash into each other? The act of building and programming is the main challenge and the actual course is just a way to test the efficacy of the design.
I will note that I always put a great deal of effort into writing up a backstory and then having my character act accordingly. I just do it after I've designed them. The RP aspect is enjoyable, even if it is secondary to the build and strategizing.
That said, I usually get tired of the character eventually and then let them die off so I can try out a new one. And I'm never upset when they die naturally in the course of things.
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I feel like Sherlock's problems with 2E aren't design problems, they're design goal problems. 2E was designed with some particular goals in mind which run counter to Sherlock's ideal experience. (examples of these goals are: reduce the difference between optimized and unoptimized characters; Move a lot of optimization/strategy away from character creation and into combat; Reduce caster/martial disparity).
For me, a lot of these design goal are perfect and I believe 2E pulls off a lot of what it sets out to do quite brilliantly. For me, 2E has kept all the good stuff from first edition and removed the stuff I hated.
For players like Sherlock however, playing 2E might be like trying to use a lemon juicer to peel a potato. No matter how good the juicer is at juicing lemons, it will still be lousy when faced with that task.
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I feel like Sherlock's problems with 2E aren't design problems, they're design goal problems. 2E was designed with some particular goals in mind which run counter to Sherlock's ideal experience. (examples of these goals are: reduce the difference between optimized and unoptimized characters; Move a lot of optimization/strategy away from character creation and into combat; Reduce caster/martial disparity).
For me, a lot of these design goal are perfect and I believe 2E pulls off a lot of what it sets out to do quite brilliantly. For me, 2E has kept all the good stuff from first edition and removed the stuff I hated.
For players like Sherlock however, playing 2E might be like trying to use a lemon juicer to peel a potato. No matter how good the juicer is at juicing lemons, it will still be lousy when faced with that task.
I'm actually on board with reducing caster/martial disparity, but it should have been done by elevating martials Tome of Battle style, instead of nerfing magic into the ground.
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They elevated martials to be roughly as powerful as the 1E Bard and Inquisitor were. Elevating them to the point of Wizards and Druids would have just meant that everyone is absurd.
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I mean you could have elevated everyone to wizard power and also souped up all the monsters. I don't really know what that would have looked like, but the end result would have been the same.
Personally I prefer what we got. Magic as a whole has been overall reduced in power but made more consistent and (in my eyes) more exciting to use since you're consistently getting a good effect out of combat spells due to degrees of success. Martials and casters alike have also gotten new useful toys in skill actions.
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but some people just find any excuse to say its fine or that magic deserved to be severely nerfed.
Why does it have to be some 'excuse'?
I've made it clear in this thread that I think wizards have a lot of problems right now, but that doesn't mean the people who don't think that are lying about it just because they secretly get off on the idea of wizards being bad or something.
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Frankly, if you increase martial power to the point of a PF1 wizard you end up with even more of a "whoever wins initiative wins the combat" problem than PF1 already did. That's another issue that PF2 was trying to resolve.
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I also would have preferred that they move the counter abilities around somewhat so that they were more accessible. The PF1 design shapes martials quite a bit like sorcerers, where their abilities are locked in and they will often encounter things they can't really counter. PF2 does this a bit as well by locking actions behind feats locked behind classes, so if you want a martial that can silence, or knock someone from the sky, you needed to make that decision really early. It's an improvement though.
I'd think you'd want martial counters to supernatural abilities to be as available and flexible as those abilities are themselves. Give one class a series of hard counters that are fairly specific and chosen daily, and give another a few broad soft counters that are permanent; ensure that those abilities appear at about the same time as the ability shows up, and it all should work out.
There are some narrative killers, mostly teleport, that should be replaced with something else. I much prefer shadow walk or phantom chariot as they let the player bypass travel somewhat but still give the DM some insert points for adventures if they feel it's needed.
The current solution feels like a fake-doors-in-a-videogame sort of limitation.
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I mean you could have elevated everyone to wizard power and also souped up all the monsters. I don't really know what that would have looked like, but the end result would have been the same.
Sure, if you wanted to create the Tippyverse. When literally everyone has the world-breaking potential of a wizard, don't expect the vast majority of worlds to survive in the wake of that.
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Frankly, if you increase martial power to the point of a PF1 wizard you end up with even more of a "whoever wins initiative wins the combat" problem than PF1 already did. That's another issue that PF2 was trying to resolve.
This is exactly why buffing everyone wouldn't have helped. Rocket Tag was a major issue, I experienced it commonly after level 10.
Most of the time, when we reached that point, the group would become "bored" with it. Lower levels of play have a lot more interesting things unfold in combat because things are not so binary.
I had to prepare much longer for sessions at high level just to come up with combat situations drastically out of favor or constrained in some way to create artificial "even play" of sorts.
I like that now you can realistically progress to high levels and experience the same types of combat intrigue as low levels (seemingly, my group is nowhere near there yet).
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Personally I prefer what we got. Magic as a whole has been overall reduced in power but made more consistent and (in my eyes) more exciting to use since you're consistently getting a good effect out of combat spells due to degrees of success. Martials and casters alike have also gotten new useful toys in skill actions.
I find it...extremely disheartening that it appears that my offensive spells are apparently designed to fail. Throwing out limited resources only to see them consistently saved against isn't terribly fun for me I'd rather they just list the diminished effect as the given one and lower saves. At least then I wouldn't feel like I'm consistently throwing out failing spells and getting a consolation prize effect.
And yes, I understand that I still get *some* effect out of the spell, provided it wasn't one that had a spell attack roll that missed, however that doesn't make it any more enjoyable to me. It's a perception issue more than anything, from what I can tell.
I'm not sure where my additional toys in skill actions are- most of those duplicate what I used to use magic for, now it just doesn't eat a scroll or I don't have enough spell slots to take it. I do really like the new wand format though, that's really handy for frequently used utility spells that you don't need to be able to spam.
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Frankly, if you increase martial power to the point of a PF1 wizard you end up with even more of a "whoever wins initiative wins the combat" problem than PF1 already did. That's another issue that PF2 was trying to resolve.
I keep seeing this - having played 3 campaigns to 20 - this was only true if your encounter was wildly off the cr scale (high or low).
Oddly when you play by the rules - that doesn't happen. (Although I'll admit the mythical situation where the wizard has a perfect spell for the specific encounter might happen - but we played mythic with 'cast anything' and still never saw this.)
*edit*
I mean it's fine to call out people saying wizards are 'horrible' as being over the top - but it's just as bad to make up stuff that was 100% untrue like 'whoever wins init wins'.
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I find it...extremely disheartening that it appears that my offensive spells are apparently designed to fail. Throwing out limited resources only to see them consistently saved against isn't terribly fun for me I'd rather they just list the diminished effect as the given one and lower saves. At least then I wouldn't feel like I'm consistently throwing out failing spells and getting a consolation prize effect.
And yes, I understand that I still get *some* effect out of the spell, provided it wasn't one that had a spell attack roll that missed, however that doesn't make it any more enjoyable to me. It's a perception issue more than anything, from what I can tell.
You realize that any time your spells are half as effective swinging a sword would have done nothing, right
Like that's how rolls work
Spells get compensation on a miss because they're a limited resource but if you're always missing with spells then boy howdy would you feel useless playing a martial