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As many regular forum goers will recognise, I'm quite disappointed with approach to Wizards in general, and Transmutation specialization in particular. I am deliberately not going into details what I see as wrong with them, but instead, I just want to ask:
What is the design goal behind them? What are they supposed to do in a party, in the game?
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As many regular forum goers will recognise, I'm quite disappointed with approach to Wizards in general, and Transmutation specialization in particular. I am deliberately not going into details what I see as wrong with them, but instead, I just want to ask:
What is the design goal behind them? What are they supposed to do in a party, in the game?
Transmutation is a school with a lot of buffs and utility spells. If you want to toss around a lot of transmutation, presumably you'll buff people in combat and use magic to solve problems outside of combat.
If that's not enough, use your transmutation slots for that, and your other slots for whatever you want.
That’s what I do with my transmuter. A lot of buffing and out of combat utility.
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From 5th level and up Arcane Transmutation has zero buff spells excepting the self-only polymorph spells.
I think Transmutation needs a couple things:
- Magic Weapon should scale via Heightened. It would be cool and useful to buff up your martials' weapons, but this is basically useless after level 3 or 4. It should always be slightly better than what you would get with typical treasure-by-level.
- The Polymorph spells need alternate rules for scaling. Yes, there are higher level polymorph spells. But if you want to be a Wizard who turns into a bug and fights, that's not really feasible because Pest form highest Heighten is 4th. A more robust alternate rule for scaling would be getting attack/damage tables similar to the GMG for creating creatures. Then you could be a 20th level Wizard that casts a 10th level Pest Form or whatever. Great rule option for Secrets of Magic, I think.
- More spells, duh. Goes without saying, but Transmutation needs more high level buff spells, or better Heighten scaling for the lower level buff spells. It's a tricky design space for them since they are trying to avoid the power creep from 1E buffs, but hopefully it can be done.
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At 7th, you do get multi-target Haste, which is really good.
But yeah, I didn't really notice the higher-level limitations. Sounds like those will be utility slots.
(As for myself, I'm fine with "turning into a housecat" being a really awful combat plan at high levels.)
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(As for myself, I'm fine with "turning into a housecat" being a really awful combat plan at high levels.)
I get your point but it is a bit of a disingenuous strawman. This is not how the polymorph spells work. Check out Dinosaur Form, which is one of the better designed polymorphs; as you Heighten to higher levels, your size gets larger along with your other combat stats.
A hypothetical animal form spell that let you turn into a house cat for a 1st level spell slot, would in fact turn you into a Gargantuan feline kaiju for a 10th level spell slot. Which is pretty cool.
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Part of the problem I think is looking at specializations as specializations.
They aren't. There's no such thing as a Transmuter Wizard. There's only a Generic Wizard who happens to be required to prepare a transmutation spell in at least one spell slot per level.
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Part of the problem I think is looking at specializations as specializations.
They aren't. There's no such thing as a Transmuter Wizard. There's only a Generic Wizard who happens to be required to prepare a transmutation spell in at least one spell slot per level.
Sure. But I think conceptually a lot of people like playing a Wizard who focuses on a specific spell school. It's part of the fantasy to be a necromancer, an evoker, a transmuter, etc.
Anyway, that is not really the issue at hand; currently, if you play a transmuter you have very limited options as to what to do with your transmutation spell slots. At higher levels, it's basically turn into monsters and that's it.
The question posed in the title was: "What are transmutation specialization design goals" to which the apparent answer is polymorphing into different creature types. But I don't think that's what people really expect when they envision a transmuter. So it's a mismatch in expectations.
I don't personally believe that a Transmuter specialization wizard is useless, but I do think it doesn't capture the concept of what someone who picks it is looking for. It's an easy fix (more spells) and one hopefully that will make it in Secrets of Magic.
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Transmutation is not just about changing your shape. Its also about: Controlling gravity, Changing material properties of items, Changing the landscape, Manipulating weather, Manipulating time, Adapting to different planes and environments, Increasing the potential of a creature, Move things, Give creatures abilities, Create and mess with Constructs, Or even just straight up getting buffs. There are also some damage spells (Ex Arcane Cannon) and debuffs (Imbue with Addiction).
In 1E. Clearly the goal in 2E is not to permit most if any of that.
If the problem is that people come into 2E with 1E expectations, tough. They'll learn the new paradigm eventually, or be put off and stick with what they know.
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Hm. Let's take a look at few of the claims here:
1. Transmutation is the "buff" school - but is it? I can think of 3 actual buffing spells: Magic Weapon (basically useless once you hit level 2 and everyone gets their +1 rune), Enlarge (sometimes nice but nothing amazing), and Haste (even with the nerf, still great).
Personally, I don't care for this aspect of the school - it's cool that it has it, I prefer doing other stuff.
2. Utility school : this is a part of the school I like, and one I think it's mostly fine, although many spells are far too limited.
3. Changing Shape : this is the part I like the most, and I disagree it's that prevalent. Sure, we got levels where we don't have any other spells, but does it make the school depend on it? Hardly.
For one thing, 1/3rd of a character development we have no shapechanging spells (Pest Form is a too nerfed to be useful. Tried using it, 10 mins is simply too little time, and not being able to Climb just ruins it)
At 7th level we get one spell, and afterwards we keep getting spells, but we're no better than other casters at it (actually SIGNIFICANTLY worse than Druid). Not to mention that as others have pointed out, you don't get to stay with a form you like, you have to change all the time.
4. "Controlling gravity, Changing material properties of items, Changing the landscape, Manipulating weather, Manipulating time, Adapting to different planes and environments, Increasing the potential of a creature, Move things, Give creatures abilities, Create and mess with Constructs" : we don't get almost any of these. And often when we get it, it's ridiculously nerfed (looking at you, Animate Rope).
I have a level 6 Transmuter in PFS. You know what is one single Transmutation spell that is actually fun and interesting to use? Jump. That's it. I've used a few others successfully (Magic Weapon quickly lost appeal, Haste is popular although not always a big deal, mostly for slow dwarf martials who can use extra movements), many were wasted slots (I've had Knock prepared for 3 levels now and never ever had a chance to use it - gonna get Longstrider and replace it now).
He's Str-maxed with Expert Athletics specifically so I could find a use for Physical Boost. Almost never get to use it - usually don't have the action to spend on it when I need to do the maneuver, or there is a better use for the action. GMs pretty much never allow it outside combat due to short duration.
I'm playing a tank and not at all a Wizard, much less a Transmutation "Specialist".
The APG has finally fulfilled the Transmutation specialist's true role - ranged tripping. Push strength as high as you can, max Athletics proficiency as early as possible, pick up martial weapon proficiency, take staff nexus to add True Strike to a staff with lots of charges, and throw bolas boosted by both True Strike and your focus power (+2 status to athletics) to knock down things at range.
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The APG has finally fulfilled the Transmutation specialist's true role - ranged tripping. Push strength as high as you can, max Athletics proficiency as early as possible, pick up martial weapon proficiency, take staff nexus to add True Strike to a staff with lots of charges, and throw bolas boosted by both True Strike and your focus power (+2 status to athletics) to knock down things at range.
I have a problem, an improvement, and a counterproposal to your suggestion.
Problem: Trip is not an attack roll, so True Strike is not applicable.
Improvement: Take Call Bonded Item so your can repeat it.
Counterproposal: Be anything else and cast Gust of Wind. Or Grease if you want to target Reflex.
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Last I checked, Athletics to trip had the Attack trait and thus IS an attack roll.
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Last I checked, Athletics to trip had the Attack trait and thus IS an attack roll.
Where is that said?
Take a look at Telekinetic Maneuver wording:
You can attempt to Disarm, Shove, or Trip the target using a spell attack roll instead of an Athletics check.
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Anything that has the attack trait IS an attack, so any roll you make with an attack action is an attack roll. That includes spell attacks, maneuvers or anything else with the trait. What Telekinetic Maneuver lets you do is use your spell attack modifier instead of a skill, but both are still attacks as per the attack trait. Disarm, Trip, Shove and Grapple just happen to also be skill checks, these are not mutually exclusive.
Pest form being unable to climb is a major set back. I get that it is tricky to have combat maneuvers tied to the same skill as climb, so a squirrel shouldn't be good at grappling medium sized opponents, but it is unfulfilling to have a spell that basically lets you assume the shape of a small animal, but not actually be a small animal in anyway. The athletics penalty applies to jumping too. Personally, as a GM, I let my PCs use acrobatics for a lot of the little climbing and jumping things that small animals should be able to do, unless they are trying to leap great horizontal distances.
Physical boost taking an action and only lasting for one roll is pretty rough on the transmuter. I don't think it would have been too over powered if the ability had been a reaction that could be applied after one of the 4 roll types, although I think it would almost exclusively be used for saving throws in that instance. But it would have had to be limited to the caster in that case, and I am guessing part of the appeal for some folks is giving that +2 to athletics to a specialized grappler.
Jump is a great spell and spider climb is actually a really strong second level spell as well, especially when your second level spells are not your highest level spell slot. The movement spells open to a transmuter are pretty cool, they just have nothing special to do after they have done that movement.
We have already debated the value of animate rope, but played by the rules as written, that strikes cannot target objects:
You attack with a weapon you’re wielding or with an unarmed attack, targeting one creature within your reach (for a melee attack) or within range (for a ranged attack).
Animate rope is a pretty useful spell if you play to its strength, although it does have some issues with how slow the rope is capable of moving, since it can only be sustained once a turn.
At higher levels the transmuter has some very versatile spells, but often times only one or two total spells per spell level and usually they are some form of polymorph spell.
It looks like transmuters are supposed to grow into tactical transformers that exploit the environmental terrain with the best possible form for the situation. They have some decent debuffing options, but the real problem with that is that the Transmuter is torn between wanting to focus on physical attributes and not cast offensive spells, or else have to rely entirely on forms to do your physical stuff, which is very difficult before level 7 but arial form is pretty powerful once you get there, so that is probably the "smart" option, but you have a lot of levels where your abilities all push you to be good at athletic type things and you won't have the attributes to really live up to it.
A transmuter with a bow could be interesting to look into because the movement powers they have are almost monk like.
They have a few interesting battlefield control spells which can play into their superior movement options as well.
When I look really closely at it, I think there could be a really cool Transmuter build that MC's into Monk. Would it be better than going the druid route? Probably not if your goal was just to shapeshift and fight all the time, but I just might have to play around with the options.
Pest form being unable to climb is a major set back. I get that it is tricky to have combat maneuvers tied to the same skill as climb, so a squirrel shouldn't be good at grappling medium sized opponents, but it is unfulfilling to have a spell that basically lets you assume the shape of a small animal, but not actually be a small animal in anyway. The athletics penalty applies to jumping too.
Climbing is allowed. Its just that there is a penalty to athletics. Using Acrobatics makes more sense in this case as you say.
I'm fairly confident the other uses of Athletics that have the attack trait will be allowed in all the Battle Forms spells with errata
Climbing is allowed. Its just that there is a penalty to athletics.
It's not just a penalty. That -4 becomes your Athletics modifier.
Doesn't matter if you were a 20th-level caster with 22 Strength and a +34 Athletics. When you cast pest form, your Athletics modifier becomes -4 for the spell's duration.
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lThe athletics penalty applies to jumping too. Personally, as a GM, I let my PCs use acrobatics for a lot of the little climbing and jumping things that small animals should be able to do, unless they are trying to leap great horizontal distances.
Yeah, I often tell my players that for basic stuff like climbing and jumping (without extra loads), pick Acrobatics or Athletics. But that's a houserule.
We have already debated the value of animate rope, but played by the rules as written, that strikes cannot target objects:
You attack with a weapon you’re wielding or with an unarmed attack, targeting one creature within your reach (for a melee attack) or within range (for a ranged attack).Animate rope is a pretty useful spell if you play to its strength, although it does have some issues with how slow the rope is capable of moving, since it can only be sustained once a turn.
Nice way you try to pretend your way is rules as written. As you said, we already debated this in the other thread, where I pointed out all the places in rules that make it clear you can strike objects (not to mention you break the game with this restriction). If you want to continue this discussion, let's make a new thread specifically about it.
But for the same of argument, let's say you are right. It's still a bad spell. You can't really do anything else, and it's a worse situational variant of a Cantrip. You need to be in a situation where enemies are far away that speed reduction is truly useful, but not in a position to hide or move away from the rope (since it's so slow you'll never catch them).
Not to mention you pretend that spell allows your rope to shoot out to the range of the spell, which is a dubious interpretation in the first place. Otherwise you need to rope laid down far enough, which makes it even more situational.
It looks like transmuters are supposed to grow into tactical transformers that exploit the environmental terrain with the best possible form for the situation.
Are they? You can't really use lower level forms on higher levels, they are too weak. So you don't have much choices to "exploit" terrain, you'll have maybe one or two forms at your disposal at any given time.
Climbing is allowed. Its just that there is a penalty to athletics.It's not just a penalty. That -4 becomes your Athletics modifier.
Doesn't matter if you were a 20th-level caster with 22 Strength and a +34 Athletics. When you cast pest form, your Athletics modifier becomes -4 for the spell's duration.
Assurance(Athletics) will get around that pesty drawback quite nicely, however.
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Assurance(Athletics) will get around that pesty drawback quite nicely, however.Climbing is allowed. Its just that there is a penalty to athletics.It's not just a penalty. That -4 becomes your Athletics modifier.
Doesn't matter if you were a 20th-level caster with 22 Strength and a +34 Athletics. When you cast pest form, your Athletics modifier becomes -4 for the spell's duration.
That is an interesting question. Transmutations give you a flat value for your skill. Wouldn't assurance (athletics) with pest form be a 6 for all checks?
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Honestly, that list of transmutation spells says to me a lot of spells that had absolutely no reason for being in transmutation just kind of were. Like why was Message in transmutation? I don't recall Ghost Sound or Ventriloquism being there. Or Jolt?
Definitely they need a real cantrip though, good lord.
Also, Statue is still around - it's a ritual.
That is an interesting question. Transmutations give you a flat value for your skill. Wouldn't assurance (athletics) with pest form be a 6 for all checks?Assurance(Athletics) will get around that pesty drawback quite nicely, however.Climbing is allowed. Its just that there is a penalty to athletics.It's not just a penalty. That -4 becomes your Athletics modifier.
Doesn't matter if you were a 20th-level caster with 22 Strength and a +34 Athletics. When you cast pest form, your Athletics modifier becomes -4 for the spell's duration.
However, assurance in acrobatics would allow you have a 20 at level 1. And future form spells with larger bonuses to athletics and acrobatics become very powerful.
As far as Transmuters having a lot of flexibility with their form spells, I think that you have to look at a lot of the higher level polymorph spells as two or three spells in one, with the different forms you can take. Shapechange is basically all of your form spells heightened to 8th level.
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Honestly, that list of transmutation spells says to me a lot of spells that had absolutely no reason for being in transmutation just kind of were. Like why was Message in transmutation? I don't recall Ghost Sound or Ventriloquism being there. Or Jolt?
Look at the current Evocation list. It makes no sense whatsoever.
As far as Transmuters having a lot of flexibility with their form spells, I think that you have to look at a lot of the higher level polymorph spells as two or three spells in one, with the different forms you can take. Shapechange is basically all of your form spells heightened to 8th level.
Shapechange is a really bad spell. At that level, it's easier to simply heighten those spells manually. It's not even flexible since those forms are either too weak, or why are you not preparing them at that level already.
Shapechange is good for constantly spamming dragon breath and/or renewing your temporary HP every turn. Otherwise it's not good, but those are two legitimate uses.
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That is an interesting question. Transmutations give you a flat value for your skill. Wouldn't assurance (athletics) with pest form be a 6 for all checks?Assurance(Athletics) will get around that pesty drawback quite nicely, however.Climbing is allowed. Its just that there is a penalty to athletics.It's not just a penalty. That -4 becomes your Athletics modifier.
Doesn't matter if you were a 20th-level caster with 22 Strength and a +34 Athletics. When you cast pest form, your Athletics modifier becomes -4 for the spell's duration.
Form spells change your athletics modifier. Assurance works off of your proficiency bonus.
what is your proficiency bonus when you are polymorphed? The values are static, unless yours is higher. Except for pest form and athletics. It seems against the spirt of the rules for you to be able to use assurance and get your own proficiency value for that case in particular.
However, if I am in monstrosity form, at level 15, with trained athletics (as getting a boosted athletics modifier would be a huge incentive for a wizard to not try to maximize their character values), and I use assurance with athletics, what is my result? 27 (my proficiency modifier+10)? that is a full 4 points below what I could get rolling a 1. Would it be 40? There is no way to know what the strength modifier of forms is/the point of the spell was to simplify that process.
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That is an interesting question. Transmutations give you a flat value for your skill. Wouldn't assurance (athletics) with pest form be a 6 for all checks?Assurance(Athletics) will get around that pesty drawback quite nicely, however.Climbing is allowed. Its just that there is a penalty to athletics.It's not just a penalty. That -4 becomes your Athletics modifier.
Doesn't matter if you were a 20th-level caster with 22 Strength and a +34 Athletics. When you cast pest form, your Athletics modifier becomes -4 for the spell's duration.
It's a gray area to be sure. As a corner case too, it is unlikely to get clarification any time soon.
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While it could arguably be an unintended loophole, there's nothing ambiguous about it. RAW, pest form changes your modifier to -4. Assurance ignores your modifier and uses your proficiency bonus.
Your proficiency bonus is your level + 2 for trained level +4 for expert, etc. So assurance at level one gives you a 13, no matter what modifiers are affecting you. It even clarifies that in the feat, ignore all modifiers. Assurance is, for most uses, terrible, however, if you are under a bunch of penalties, it still lets you make a level-2 DC.
Note that all the form spells just give you an athletics modifier that replaces your own. They do not alter your proficiency in any way. If you were untrained in athletics and cast animal form, you would have an athletics of +9 as per the spell, but you still couldn't disarm, as that is a trained only use of a skill you are untrained in.
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At a high level, there’s been some level of concern about the extent to which any wizard identity can be adequately supported by current options, so it shouldn’t be surprising if there isn’t necessarily enough there to really support each of 7 different school specialties + universalist at this point. Most classes started with maybe 3 subclasses.
1) They didn't need to, they could've built in a single feature that just improves the school Wizard specialises in. Purely as example what I mean, giving them Extend Spell metamagic feat but you can only use it on your school. Or maybe change the thesis up so they interact with your specialization instead of being orthogonal.
2) If they couldn't properly support specializations, then they shouldn't've put them into the rulebook. They could've said "listen, we have Universalist, Illusionist, Evoker in the Core, rest will come later" and be done with it. This approach of "here's your options except they change nothing" is really not good.As the next book is supposed to magic focused, i think it would be reasonable to hold off to see that before judging things.
Why? I'm judging things as they are now. If they didn't want to support an option before next years' book, they should not have put in the current book.
Not to mention that same things were said for APG.
And most importantly, why do you think Paizo realises/considers this a thing? As far as we know, they think it's all perfect with Wizards. In fact, given Form Retention feat they put in APG, they neither know what Wizards can do, much less have an idea what they should do or how to do it.
Although if this is really just intended as an open question, i think previous posters are correct that the answer is ‘buffs and shapeshifting’, along with a general view that transmutation had a huge share of spells in PF1 and it was needed to reallocate some things to broaden options for other schools.
While it is true Transmutation had a lot of spells in 1e and could use some prunning, they really went overboard. Everything is now Illusion and Evocation. Transmutation now doesn't even have a cantrip of its own!
Also, it's not quite as much spells in 1e as people often think. I mean, yes, there was a ton of spells listed under Transmutation, but so many of those were extreme cases of circumstancial or underpowered entries. "Crafter's Fortune" and such.
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2) If they couldn't properly support specializations, then they shouldn't've put them into the rulebook.
<snip>
If they didn't want to support an option before next years' book, they should not have put in the current book.
<snip>
In fact, given Form Retention feat they put in APG, they neither know what Wizards can do, much less have an idea what they should do or how to do it.
"They should have" is just as big a clue that someone is about to create an imaginary reality as "once upon a time".
And following that with a statement that the developers and designers don't have any idea about the rules they have written for a game they've been designing for for more than 15 years highlights the imaginary nature of the story the poster is telling.
If you are so much better as a designer/developer, start publishing. Demonstrate how much more people like your ideas than they like Paizo's.
It's attacks like this against the people who create Pathfinder that make gaming companies such unpleasant places to work. If you're so much smarter, demonstrate it by beating them in the market place.
Designing a RPG, specially one as complex as PF (both 1 and 2) is no easy task. Is not just the really high number of rules interactions. I think the most daunting part is the fact that the same set of rules must be played by vastly diferent play groups. Some very tactics, some not. Some highly optimised, some with low optimisation.
That does not mean I like or agree with everything. I still have to read carefully the APG, but the Witch and some other things show that the developers are too much cautious with the pure caster options, they seem (too me at least) to be afraid of losing control of them, to the point that, on my opinion, many of those look bland and not as powerful as the most martial options.
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And following that with a statement that the developers and designers don't have any idea about the rules they have written for a game they've been designing for for more than 15 years highlights the imaginary nature of the story the poster is telling.
From the WIZARD FEAT Form Retention:
For example, if you prepared animal form in a 4th-level slot with Form Retention, you would cast a 2nd-level animal form that lasts for up to 10 minutes.
Animal Form is a Primal-only spell Wizards cannot cast. Whoever wrote this spell doesn't seem to know it.
Also, on a separate note, it's also not possible to use this feat before level 11, since Arcane doesn't have any 1 minute self-polymorphs lower than spell level 4.
If you are so much better as a designer/developer, start publishing. Demonstrate how much more people like your ideas than they like Paizo's.
If you're so much smarter, demonstrate it by beating them in the market place.
This is an example of a logical fallacy of Ad Hominem. I don't have to prove I can do it better to be able to criticize them for doing something badly.
If they couldn't take the effort to make it work in the first place, they could've just skipped it.
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To be honest, I feel like people are interpreting Nemo's words in the worst way possible. I think he brings up some pretty good points that most people didnt notice, and rather than harping on him for being slightly inflammatory about it, focus on taking the legitimate criticism for what it is.