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Count me in for being hugely disappointed in the change to the Spells school items. No auto-heightening and a much narrower list (not to mention only getting 1 item) makes this benefit much harder to take advantage of.
I don't think the scrolls ever auto-heightened. I understood it to be the spells lower on the list were available to select as the Pathfinder level rose and the item level rose.
However, I don't understand why that changed. If I'm a level 10 druid and the only healer, sent on a mission not involving (or expecting to involve) extraplanar creatures, I can't select Heal 5. I either take the max Heal scroll I can, Heal 3, 5 levels lower than I qualify for, or take the offensive Cone of Cold. Why force this choice?
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I think auto-heightened means something different to me than some people.
Being 3rd level and able to pick a Level 2 Heal is not auto-heightened. You picked Heal heightened to Level 2 as your item.
To me, auto-heightened is was having 3 points in scrolls, picking Barkskin as my level 2 item and Heal as my level 1 item, and that Heal scroll is "automatically heightened" to Level 2 ("max level"), which is not how it worked.
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Yeah, I always viewed it as you were able to get a heightened version of any spell lower on the spell list. For example, heal is listed at level 1, but you could choose a heal heightened to level 4 if you were level 7, as your at-level scroll choice.
Right, this was my interpretation also. So at level 7 I could get a level 4 scroll of fireball and a level 2 scroll of heal.
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Really disappointed in this change on a lot of levels. My gish was using (abusing) the spells items to grow his spellbook.
I never got around to actually using them, but I liked the idea of being able to cast a Soothe scroll (for example) with Trick Magic Item. Now I'm debating whether I should retrain that feat... Hopefully I can do it with some kind of free rebuild after this nerf to the list.
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I feel like they're trying to "force" us to use their vision of useful spells for some reason.
The list is so bad for a character focused on healing (and erratically mish-mash in general) that I may have to switch School.
Their ought to be an offensive, healing, status removal, and defensive/support spell at each spell level accessible to each spellcasting tradition.
EDIT: And being able to take heightened versions of the lower level spells is the simplest and easiest way to ensure that.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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I think some of this change is caused by the Witch class.
“Your familiar can learn new spells independently of your patron. It can learn any spell on your tradition's spell list by physically consuming a scroll of that spell in a process that takes 1 hour.”
Every Witch character can automatically learn any spells that the Scrolls faction gives away for no resource cost.
Wizards can also learn spells from scrolls, but it costs them cash to do so. It also costs them if they critically fail the attempt. Since there is some cost and it isn’t any different from what I can tell from learning it from an NPC I do not think this is a problem for Wizards.
I do think that some of the spells do need to be auto-heightened in order to be useful as anything other than copy bait: Dispel Magic, Mage Armor are the two that strike me as almost useless without it.
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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I think auto-heightened means something different to me than some people.
Being 3rd level and able to pick a Level 2 Heal is not auto-heightened. You picked Heal heightened to Level 2 as your item.
To me, auto-heightened
iswas having 3 points in scrolls, picking Barkskin as my level 2 item and Heal as my level 1 item, and that Heal scroll is "automatically heightened" to Level 2 ("max level"), which is not how it worked.
I never understood it this way. The scroll was the level of the scroll, not the level of the caster.
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Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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Here is the wording from v.09 version:
All of the consumable items granted by the Spells school take the form of magical scrolls (Pathfinder Core Rulebook page 564), and the item options below simply list the spells that can appear on these scrolls. When selecting a scroll, you can heighten its spell level to the Scroll Level listed below. For example, a 7th-level character could select a scroll of heal heightened to 4th level.
There is nothing there about auto-heightened. It said that a character could select a scroll that is heightened at the appropriate level.
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Here is the wording from v.09 version:
All of the consumable items granted by the Spells school take the form of magical scrolls (Pathfinder Core Rulebook page 564), and the item options below simply list the spells that can appear on these scrolls. When selecting a scroll, you can heighten its spell level to the Scroll Level listed below. For example, a 7th-level character could select a scroll of heal heightened to 4th level.There is nothing there about auto-heightened. It said that a character could select a scroll that is heightened at the appropriate level.
That's what I'm saying. "Auto-heightened" means something very different to me than the way it worked.
I don't know where "auto-heightened" came from for 2.0 to tell us they are "no longer auto-heightened."
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I think some of this change is caused by the Witch class.
“Your familiar can learn new spells independently of your patron. It can learn any spell on your tradition's spell list by physically consuming a scroll of that spell in a process that takes 1 hour.”
Every Witch character can automatically learn any spells that the Scrolls faction gives away for no resource cost.
Wizards can also learn spells from scrolls, but it costs them cash to do so. It also costs them if they critically fail the attempt. Since there is some cost and it isn’t any different from what I can tell from learning it from an NPC I do not think this is a problem for Wizards.
I do think that some of the spells do need to be auto-heightened in order to be useful as anything other than copy bait: Dispel Magic, Mage Armor are the two that strike me as almost useless without it.
But it looks like witches can already heighten their spells, so they just need to feed their familiar the lower level version. They gain no benefit from being able to pick up Heal 2 or Heal 4.
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Yeah, I always viewed it as you were able to get a heightened version of any spell lower on the spell list. For example, heal is listed at level 1, but you could choose a heal heightened to level 4 if you were level 7, as your at-level scroll choice.Right, this was my interpretation also. So at level 7 I could get a level 4 scroll of fireball and a level 2 scroll of heal.
This is what I meant when I said auto-heightened. Heal was only on the spells list at level 1, but I could heighten it to whatever level instead of being stuck with it only at 1st and 3rd level (or whatever levels) in the new list.