Secrets of Magic Speculation / hopes thread

[Stack]

I hope that any alternate magic structures are as robustly supported as words of power in 1st edition.

[BACE]

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

I'm curious how they'll design the Magus.

Maybe we'll get:
* Master Weapon prof / Master Spellcasting?
* Expert weap / Legend casting with some sort of special action to add +hit, like the investigator
* Master Weap / Expert casting, with Spellstrike using the weapon success for the spell like the Eldritch Archer.
* Something weird like a battle stance/casting stance that locks one out of the other.

I think we're guaranteed to at least get master weapon/master spellcasting. Or at least some sort of feature that makes them roughly this way. I say this almost exclusively due to the fact that archetypes grant master spellcasting, and having a caster that's able to get better proficiency from an archetype than from their own class just feels wrong.

If they hadn't already announced that Magus gets 9th-level casting, I would almost just assume they get a free caster multiclass like eldritch rogue, and then also get the spellcasting feats for free. But that's obviously not how it's going to work.

[Lightdroplet]

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

I'm curious how they'll design the Magus.

Maybe we'll get:
* Master Weapon prof / Master Spellcasting?
* Expert weap / Legend casting with some sort of special action to add +hit, like the investigator
* Master Weap / Expert casting, with Spellstrike using the weapon success for the spell like the Eldritch Archer.
* Something weird like a battle stance/casting stance that locks one out of the other.

I feel like they probably will have Master proficiency in weapons and spellcasting.

Them getting Legendary casting would mean they'd be just as good as the actual casters are at casting (and better than Warpriests), which would make them unbalanced since they also would be better at martial fighting. On the other end, them having lower than Master proficiency in casting would also feel strange, since they would then be worse at casting than an archetyped caster.

On the martial side of things, I imagine they'll be getting Master proficiency as well since it seems to be the baseline for any class who is expected to use their weapons frequently. On top of that, Expert is the level of martial abilities other casters get, so having them be that low would clash with their identity of being somewhat better at fighting than other casters are. Also, their key stat won't be a striking stat, so they still would be a bit behind pure martial classes.

Your stance idea has some merit, but I don't think it fits with the Magus' core identity of using both magic and physical capabilities in unison. It would make a great basis for another hybrid class though.

[PossibleCabbage]

Master/Master is going to consume a huge part of your class budget though. Like a Ranger/Monk/Barbarian/Champion tops out at master weapons and nearly half of their class feats to get a small amount of master spellcasting at level 18 (slots up to 8th and fewer of them than the magus probably gets).

I would probably prefer to see something like "accuracy fixers" than automatic great proficiency in everything.

[Unicore]

If they don't get master in casting until 19th level and only get 2 spell slots a level, they are barely coming out ahead of a martial multiclassing into caster. Having master spell casting and barely any spells to cast isn't really all that over powered. I was super opposed to it at first, but getting reduced spells per day than the warpriest and nothing like a divine font, will mean that the vast majority of casting a magus will do will be cantrip casting through a sword attack that will probably work very, very similarly to ELdritch Shot. Hopefully they will have some kind of feature to help them move around the battlefield, but maybe not. Maybe they will be pretty dependent upon other party members to help set up their positioning.

[PossibleCabbage]

I think "Expert Weapons, Master casting, you use your casting proficiency instead of your weapon proficiency and your item bonuses to do spellstrike" could work.

[Temperans]

That would limit entry into Martial Archetypes and Magus is very much more a Martial than a caster.

[Unicore]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I think "Expert Weapons, Master casting, you use your casting proficiency instead of your weapon proficiency and your item bonuses to do spellstrike" could work.

I thought that is how it would be originally, but listening to Logan talk about the class a little bit in the Gen Con panel made it sound very much like it was going the opposite direction as far as spell strike being something that involves casting spells through making weapon attacks.

[Perpdepog]

Most of the things I'm looking forward to are already announced for the book, but there are a few things I'd like to see.

1. The Bladebound magus archetype becoming an archetype that anyone could take. "Character with sapient weapon" is a well-known trope, and one people like, and opening it up to other classes could lead to some fun interactions.
2. A proper "summons hordes of undead" caster. Granted, this can be just as easily accomplished with a Bestiary introducing troops again, and giving us a few undead troops, so it's less of a concern and really, I like that summoners can't fill the field with their minions now without some fairly serious investment and diminishing returns.
3. The biggy. I want a way to have a golem as a follower/minion. I was all excited when I saw just how much less minions cost in terms of gold in this edition, and then crushingly disappointed when the Bestiary pointed out that because of their immunities golems made poor fits for companions. Adding additional weaknesses or some kind of HP sharing mechanic, something to make golems a viable possibility for construct crafters would be hugely appreciated.

[TiwazBlackhand]

Magus - Master Weapon skill, Trained spell casting. Spell Strike lets you cast touch spells using your weapon attack roll instead of spell attack. Designed to force you to focus on damage spells with an attack roll instead of spells with saves. [Joke]

[oh god please let me be wrong]
[don't hit me, i bruise easily]

[Kekkres]

One thing I would like to see is summoner having.... not great spell attack and dc growth to limit their power as a offensive caster and lead them more to supporting their eidalon

[Elfteiroh]

Perpdepog wrote:

Most of the things I'm looking forward to are already announced for the book, but there are a few things I'd like to see.

1. The Bladebound magus archetype becoming an archetype that anyone could take. "Character with sapient weapon" is a well-known trope, and one people like, and opening it up to other classes could lead to some fun interactions.
2. A proper "summons hordes of undead" caster. Granted, this can be just as easily accomplished with a Bestiary introducing troops again, and giving us a few undead troops, so it's less of a concern and really, I like that summoners can't fill the field with their minions now without some fairly serious investment and diminishing returns.
3. The biggy. I want a way to have a golem as a follower/minion. I was all excited when I saw just how much less minions cost in terms of gold in this edition, and then crushingly disappointed when the Bestiary pointed out that because of their immunities golems made poor fits for companions. Adding additional weaknesses or some kind of HP sharing mechanic, something to make golems a viable possibility for construct crafters would be hugely appreciated.

Troops are coming in Bestiary 3 that release before Secret of Magic, and a troop of skeletons is front on the cover.

[MaxAstro]

Rushniyamat wrote:

1. A solid and balanced spellcasting point system.

2. Damaging spells for every tradition and damage type.

Agree with the first, but actually disagree with the second.

Divine and Occult shouldn't have a wide breadth of damage spells, it's not really their "thing". For example, right now Occult has almost no spells that target Reflex, and I think that's by design. It does mean my bard player was very happy for animated assault, but I don't think it makes sense to take a "checklist" approach like this.

The result is that the traditions feel too similar.

[DomHeroEllis]

I am looking forward to any and all general archetypes they introduce with a magical theme. Agree with Perpedepog above that a Sapient Weapon archetype would be awesome.

I've been knocking together a Wand Master Archetype that I think would be nice...

[Orithilaen]

Would be nice to see some more support for blaster wizards. It's kind of silly that the optimal way to play a blaster wizard now is to multiclass into sorcerer and take Dangerous Sorcery.

[Rushniyamat]

MaxAstro wrote:

Rushniyamat wrote:

1. A solid and balanced spellcasting point system.

2. Damaging spells for every tradition and damage type.

Agree with the first, but actually disagree with the second.

Divine and Occult shouldn't have a wide breadth of damage spells, it's not really their "thing". For example, right now Occult has almost no spells that target Reflex, and I think that's by design. It does mean my bard player was very happy for animated assault, but I don't think it makes sense to take a "checklist" approach like this.

The result is that the traditions feel too similar.

I personaly think the divine and occult traditions should have more damaging spells (furthermore, I think my post has a wording problem - I meant to say that each tradition should gain new damaging spells and that each damage type should have more spells). I do agrree that spell traditions must have their own theme and style.

[Staffan Johansson]

Rushniyamat wrote:

I personaly think the divine and occult traditions should have more damaging spells (furthermore, I think my post has a wording problem - I meant to say that each tradition should gain new damaging spells and that each damage type should have more spells). I do agrree that spell traditions must have their own theme and style.

I'm a bit of two minds here, and I think the Paizo devs have painted themselves into a corner of sorts.

Traditionally, each caster class has had its own list of spells. The strength of this approach is that it allows designers to tailor each spell list to each class in ways that make them play off one another. In some cases, you even have class features that interact with specific spells (such as the 5e warlock having invocations that affect how eldritch blast works). The disadvantage is that it either requires a fair bit of extra work when expanding either the number of classes or number of spells, and the amount of extra work will only increase as time goes on, or that later classes will mostly be left out of any extra spells.

But in PF2, spells are assigned to one or more traditions, and if you can cast spells of that tradition you can cast that spell (subject to stuff about how your class learns spells and such). No muss, no fuss. No need to discuss whether a hypothetical shaman class (which for the purpose of the exercise would be a spontaneous primal caster) could cast sudden bolt or not - it's a primal spell, so of course they can (assuming they can learn it, since it's Uncommon). The disadvantage is that since the tradition lists aren't directly tied to classes anymore, they have to be balanced on their own. You can't go "clerics have better fighting skills than wizards so they get worse spells", because the divine list also has to work for angelic sorcerers with 6 hp/level and no armor.

So while in an ideal world, I agree that the spell lists of a cleric and a warlock (which we can pretend is a prepared occult caster) should look very different, in the world of PF2 there probably needs to be some overlap, because that same overlap is what balances an angelic sorcerer against a hag-blooded one.

[AnimatedPaper]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

You can't go "clerics have better fighting skills than wizards so they get worse spells", because the divine list also has to work for angelic sorcerers with 6 hp/level and no armor

Except that's exactly what they did. "Worse" is subjective, but they deliberately set each tradition to have strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in their coverage.

In any case, my wish for the Secrets of Magic book is more cantrips! Specifically, I'd like to see at least 1 cantrip each with the following traits:

• Emotion
• Fear
• Poison
• Sonic
• Polymorph or Morph
• Disease
• Fortune
• Misfortune
• Teleport or Move
• Curse
• Healing

And at least 1 cantrip that deals bleed, and another precision damage.

Edit: As an aside, I'm still surprised they didn't define conditions that take away or give more reactions. "Dazed" was right there.

[Albatoonoe]

I forgot to mention it in my first post, but I could really use some more shadow magic like the old Shadow Conjuration. I don't expect it to operate exactly the same as it was a bit fiddly, but I always thought the quasi-illusory magic was a neat idea.

[cavernshark]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

But in PF2, spells are assigned to one or more traditions, and if you can cast spells of that tradition you can cast that spell (subject to stuff about how your class learns spells and such). No muss, no fuss. No need to discuss whether a hypothetical shaman class (which for the purpose of the exercise would be a spontaneous primal caster) could cast sudden bolt or not - it's a primal spell, so of course they can (assuming they can learn it, since it's Uncommon). The disadvantage is that since the tradition lists aren't directly tied to classes anymore, they have to be balanced on their own. You can't go "clerics have better fighting skills than wizards so they get worse spells", because the divine list also has to work for angelic sorcerers with 6 hp/level and no armor.

So while in an ideal world, I agree that the spell lists of a cleric and a warlock (which we can pretend is a prepared occult caster)...

I think you're vastly underestimating how complicated it is to maintain individual class spell lists. When new spells come out they have to be stitched back on every class and when each class comes out they have to scour over all the old spells. In practice this resulted in a lot of weirdness and inconsistencies in PF1 spell lists. I can't count the number of times that a spell was released that worked for one of my characters perfectly but which didn't end up landing on my list.

Traditions may be less customizable, but they are infinitely easier to maintain and expand. I'll take that trade as long as they keep publishing options to do some light tradition poaching (Druid's fey magic feat, dragon arcana, cross blooded evolution, etc.)

[Vali Nepjarson]

I would really like to see some new and greater variety of higher level spells. Sure, Meteor Swarm and Cataclysm are great for blasting, Time Stop, Shapechange, Gate, all have their great uses. Nature Incarnate and Avatar are some of my favorite spells ever, and of course all the Wish variants are objectively incredible. Wail of the Banshee and Overwhelming Presence are IMO, the coolest spells in the game as of now.

But I really want to see some different choices for blasting, such as Polar Winter, Scourge of the Horsemen, Ride the Lightning, Parasitic Souls, Sea of Dust, World Wave...and of course, the most important spell of all, Dinosaur Fort (I know that one won't be there, but a guy can dream :P )

[The-Magic-Sword]

I think they were talking about possibly squeezing dinosaur fort in, or at least releasing it in some kind of blog post or something. Mark volunteered to write it in on stream, XD.

[LLuukkee]

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

I think they were talking about possibly squeezing dinosaur fort in, or at least releasing it in some kind of blog post or something. Mark volunteered to write it in on stream, XD.

Any chance someone could give me the brief rundown of where Dinosaur Fort came from? I've been hearing references to it in the streams for quite a while now, and I'm aware it came from some typo, but not much beyond that, so it would be great to learn some more about it haha.

EDIT: Typo'd typo

[PossibleCabbage]

Dinosaur Fort was a typo made by one of the devs in a blog post during the playtest (It was supposed to be Dinosaur Form) and everyone agreed that the mistaken version sounds like something that needed to be in the game.

[LLuukkee]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Dinosaur Fort was a typo made by one of the devs in a blog post during the playtest (It was supposed to be Dinosaur Form) and everyone agreed that the mistaken version sounds like something that needed to be in the game.

Ahhh form. Had been trying to come up with what the true word had been, but I could only come up with a single potential spell title and it seemed even less likely than Dinosaur Fort :)

[Elfteiroh]

Didn’t it actually came from a playtest thread about « what one letter you could change in the book to make it more awesome? »

[cavernshark]

On the topic of this thread, I don't know if it'll come in this book or something else, but I really enjoyed the premade spell books with preparation rituals for both prepared and spontaneous casters. The once per day activation feels like it fits perfectly with most of the other magic items.

[MaxAstro]

Elfteiroh wrote:

Didn’t it actually came from a playtest thread about « what one letter you could change in the book to make it more awesome? »

This is correct.

[Unicore]

This is maybe more of a wish than an speculation, but I really want to start to see rituals get filled in more as a part of party preparation and play. Like I'd like to see ritual tatoo's that fade after a day that can give party members +1 status bonuses to various things (skills, saves maybe) for a full day. If the bonuses are status bonuses and highly specific, this won't really be unbalancing because they won't stack with anything magical, so you won't have PF1's problem of adventure obliteration by culmination of +1s. Just a way for magic users to work with their party (I love that rituals require secondary casters), to provide thematic and situational support.

Like if the party is going to be involved in a full day of climbing a cliff face on a wind blasted shore, It would be cool if they could start the day with a ritual that they all participate in to get a +1 status bonus to athletic checks to climb, that lasts the whole day. Sure they might be able to get through parts of the adventure with spell slots for fly or spider climb, but if the wind is torrential more than 5ft away from the cliff, and the party has to meaningfully be able to move from encounter location to encounter location up the cliff, it would be cool to have magical ways to support the sustained adventure in a way that feels tied to class choices and skills, not just skill feats.

[Staffan Johansson]

AnimatedPaper wrote:

Staffan Johansson wrote:

You can't go "clerics have better fighting skills than wizards so they get worse spells", because the divine list also has to work for angelic sorcerers with 6 hp/level and no armor

Except that's exactly what they did. "Worse" is subjective, but they deliberately set each tradition to have strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in their coverage.

Having different traditions have different strengths, weaknesses, and gaps is good. What they can't, or at least shouldn't, do is to balance the spell lists against the rest of the class.

Back in AD&D, when things were less customizable, clerics were quite a bit better than wizards at fighting. In 2e, clerics advanced their THAC0 twice as fast as wizards (2 points per 3 levels instead of 1 point per 3 levels), had about twice as many hp before Con adjustment (which was less common), and could use any armor or shield for a far better AC. They weren't quite as good as fighters, but close (before accounting for weapon specialization and such). But the cleric spell list was much inferior to the wizard spell list, with far fewer offensive spells, as well as topping out at 7th level instead of 9th. So, the cleric's better combat ability is, at least in theory, balanced by the wizard's better spellcasting.

You can't (or shouldn't) do that in PF2, because it's not the "cleric" or "wizard" list - they're the "divine" and "arcane" list. You no longer only have to worry about balancing the cleric with the wizard, but also the angelic sorcerer with the imperial sorcerer, or the fervor witch with the rune witch. They should have different spells, but neither should be "better".

[Staffan Johansson]

I'd love to see more love given to rituals. Rituals was one of my favorite aspects of 4e, because they separated utility magic (rituals) from combat magic (class powers), and made the utility magic accessible to anyone (with the right skills and feats of course).

[MaxAstro]

Thirding (fourthing?) more rituals, although I feel like that is a very safe bet for a book like this.

[AnimatedPaper]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

Having different traditions have different strengths, weaknesses, and gaps is good. What they can't, or at least shouldn't, do is to balance the spell lists against the rest of the class.

Not sure where anyone is saying that they should. You were responding to a comment about how Divine and Occult traditions needed more damaging spells, not about how clerics or bards needed more damaging spells, so it sounded like you were arguing that the spell lists needed to be balanced against each other and that gaps like "damage spells" shouldn't exist.

In fact,

Staffan Johansson wrote:

So while in an ideal world, I agree that the spell lists of a cleric and a warlock (which we can pretend is a prepared occult caster) should look very different, in the world of PF2 there probably needs to be some overlap, because that same overlap is what balances an angelic sorcerer against a hag-blooded one.

sounds like you are arguing that strengths, weakness, and gaps are not good, or there would be a clear winner between a divine or occult sorcerer.

If you don't feel that, fine, I misread, but I was not saying to balance the spell list against the rest of the class.

[Perpdepog]

I'm also hoping for more rituals. I really like how rituals work in PF2E, particularly in tandom with the skill system. It makes them actually doable by most anyone, rather than claiming it was possible but being nearly impossible in practice unless you were already a caster or specialized in ritual-specific skills like in PF1E.

[Angel Hunter D]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

I'd love to see more love given to rituals. Rituals was one of my favorite aspects of 4e, because they separated utility magic (rituals) from combat magic (class powers), and made the utility magic accessible to anyone (with the right skills and feats of course).

I'd love to see rituals with short casting times, stuff you can do in the dungeon so to speak.

[HekateKey]

I would also love to see the Bladebound Magus - I like the idea of the Magus having a strong bond with their weapon

[Staffan Johansson]

AnimatedPaper wrote:

sounds like you are arguing that strengths, weakness, and gaps are not good, or there would be a clear winner between a divine or occult sorcerer.

That's not quite what I'm arguing. What I mean to say is that something like this is good: "The divine list is the best at healing, strong at buffing, and pretty bad at direct damage."

But this is bad: "Clerics/warpriests are supposed to be holy warriors with decent weapon and armor proficiencies, so the divine list should have lots of personal buffs that make them fight better."

The first statement talks about strengths and weaknesses of the divine list compared to other traditions. The second statement makes the list dependent on a particular class, and that is bad because what is true for the cleric/warpriest is probably not true for the angelic sorcerer or fervor witch.

The divine list in particular does have a number of spells that are clearly designed with a cleric in mind, namely all the ones that have effects based on their deity. One of the selling points of the sorcerer and oracle classes is getting divine magic without being beholden to a deity, but doing so loses you access to a significant portion of the divine list (Divine Lance, Spiritual Weapon, Divine Wrath, Spiritual Guardian, Divine Decree, Divine Vessel, Divine Aura, Avatar). This is clearly a case where the tradition is designed around one class, and then retrofitted to other classes where it doesn't work as well. The place for deity-based effects should be in the Cleric class, not in the divine spell list.

[AnimatedPaper]

Was anyone disagreeing with that point?

[Themetricsystem]

Elfteiroh wrote:

Didn’t it actually came from a playtest thread about « what one letter you could change in the book to make it more awesome? »

Yup, that's correct.

o7

[QuidEst]

I'd really enjoy an occult-based Investigator methodology. We had two archetypes for it in PF1. I can understand if that's more something for a later, more occult-centric book, of course.

[Old_Man_Robot]

QuidEst wrote:

I'd really enjoy an occult-based Investigator methodology. We had two archetypes for it in PF1. I can understand if that's more something for a later, more occult-centric book, of course.

The Occult tradition, with its mix of psychic powers and necromancy is perfect for a host of popular fictional character would who find the Investigator role.

Hellblazer, Hellboy, and very lightly Harry Dresden (though he would probably be an actual Wizard or Druid.)

[Ryan Heck | Aqualith Media]

As the OP mentioned, definitely more elemental magic, as well as new bloodlines and domains where it makes sense for this book.

[SOLDIER-1st]

I'd love a wis based occult caster.

[Midnightoker]

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

QuidEst wrote:

I'd really enjoy an occult-based Investigator methodology. We had two archetypes for it in PF1. I can understand if that's more something for a later, more occult-centric book, of course.

The Occult tradition, with its mix of psychic powers and necromancy is perfect for a host of popular fictional character would who find the Investigator role.

Hellblazer, Hellboy, and very lightly Harry Dresden (though he would probably be an actual Wizard or Druid.)

First thought was totally Constantine, man that’d be fun

[Gaulin]

One thing I realized while listening to a pf1 podcast is that casters in 2e need feats to improve their action economy. Martial classes get plenty, but casters are usually cast and one action. I hope there's some feats like the following;

A metamagic that allows a step or stride when you cast a spell, but limits you to a single stride or step that turn (no double move as that would be too strong).

Free recall knowledge metamagic as you cast a spell with a single target.

Quick draw and activate for staves and wands.

Etc. I'm not super familiar with 1e rules but was listening to a casters turn where they recalled knowledge, moved, casted a spell, activated a wand, attacked with their summon... All in one turn. I know casters are needed in 2e but I think spells being weaker is enough of a nerf.

[Martialmasters]

Variant versions of certain spells they can be substituted in to better future proof the system vs binary reductive choices.

Like bards inspire courage. True strike. Magic weapon and fang before striking runes. Etc.

[KaiBlob1]

Product page for this is up, and it specifies that the new types of magic that will be in the book are:

Quote:

elementalism, geomancy, shadow magic, rune magic, and even pervasive magic

[Henro]

Incarnate spells are the thing I didn’t know I needed until I saw it. I think it’s going to add a ton of desperately needed variety to a summoner playstyle.