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Wizards are just too used to wands and hold the firearm wrong-way-round.
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"Another case of wizard teens hopped up on reagents confusing the wand and the gun again. If I had a silver piece..."
Just say it. Gunmages.
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Just say it. Gunmages.
Hmmmm, visually those are uncannily close to the central army in Brian McClellan's Powder Mage books.
Just say it. Gunmages.Hmmmm, visually those are uncannily close to the central army in Brian McClellan's Powder Mage books.
I'm not familiar, but I'll check it out.
Either way, the gunpowder mage so to speak is too popular a trope to not be made an option.
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It really is just a bizarre penalty at this point.
Maybe if there was random proficiencies for other classes, then one could say it’s a legit flavour thing, but at present, it’s just a kick in the teeth.
Time to fix this Paizo!
Exactly. It doesn't really add much to the flavor of the setting or class, and does cost word count.
Also, giving rogues the choice of martial proficiency in either Swords, Bows, or Clubs weapon group, and Bards the choice of Swords, Bows, or Flails, would make good use of the weapon group system and maintain most of the flavor.
And it would naturally lead to a feat where you open up advanced weapons in that group for your character at the same proficiency level. More flavor! Keep the word count and moving parts low. Another natural addition: subclasses that grant extra access to weapon groups. Like, say, firearms (to bring this back on topic).
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I can’t help but feel focus spells would have been better in that case! But either way, they just don’t feel like they were given enough love.My pet theory on this is that the Wizard, as it currently stands, was designed early in the PF2 development process, but not revisited much as development continued.I don't think you're right. I think it was designed late in the PF2 process, because there was no-one championing Wizard and it was like "oh, yeah, we have to push that out too, I guess give it extra spells, that's wizardry, right?" and called it a day.
We know both scenarios are wrong.
Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue were the "core 4" classes that were made first, and got a pass from absolutely everyone working on the new edition many times over. And they were changed and tweaked from the first moment the system was worked on to the last.They talked about it a couple of times. Assuming a lack of love from the designers is not a good thing to do when they put a lot of work into them. :(
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We know both scenarios are wrong.
Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue were the "core 4" classes that were made first, and got a pass from absolutely everyone working on the new edition many times over. And they were changed and tweaked from the first moment the system was worked on to the last.
They talked about it a couple of times.
I haven't seen any time they said anything like this, but I also haven't been keeping that close an eye, so fair enough.
Assuming a lack of love from the designers is not a good thing to do when they put a lot of work into them. :(
I'm only calling it as what I see. I played a Wizard up to level 7 in PFS and I was mechanically the least able to contribute with my Wizard powers. My focus spell was/is useless, chance I'd have the right really useful spell prepared almost nil (like once every 4 scenarios), and my skills are less than most classes.
Most mileage I got out of my non-Wizard-specific abilities, such as specializing in Athletics.
Every time a new book comes out, I get disappointed both by the amount of content for Wizards, but also how badly what little they put in is done (clearest but hardly the only example: Form Retention).
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I really do not understand any of this outrage at all... Wizards are supposed to be bad with weapons by design, that's as baked into the tradition of RPGs as concepts like "Heavy Armor is better" or "Rogues disable traps" so I must say it's somewhat confusing.
If you want to make your Wizard better with weapons then you need to invest resources to do so, just like how you need to invest resources on a Barbarian if you want spellcasting or an Animal Companion for your Monk...
Seriously, this is all solved via Archetypes and it will only get better with time. Sure it's disappointing that we don't have a Wizard Class Archetype that "fixes" this issue yet, but come on guys, this entire discussion is RIFE with hyperbole about how this is unfair when in reality the class chassis traded out weapon trading for the rest of its kit. I also still don't buy the criticism that Wizards are weak but subscribe to the school of thought that this perception that people have is tainted by the 30 years of uninterrupted God-Wizard combat supremacy.
That being said... I DO personally hope that G&G is released with Gunmge support in the form of Feats and Archetypes and I firmly believe that SoM will end up "patching" the lack of weapon training with options for not just Wizard but likely ALL Spellcasting classes as well.
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Er...I don't think people are outraged. I personally am not. I just don't think it adds enough flavor to be worth the extra friction.
Frankly, I'd rather wizards were trained in no weapons except unarmed strikes rather than a select sample. THAT would be flavorful and fit the simplicity I desire.
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I also still don't buy the criticism that Wizards are weak but subscribe to the school of thought that this perception that people have is tainted by the 30 years of uninterrupted God-Wizard combat supremacy.
Come on Metric, cool it with the poison pill "You just want to be OP" stuff, this is a simple thread about weapon proficiency. We've had dozens of threads like this in the past, we don't need anymore.
Seriously, this is all solved via Archetypes
I mean, its not. Or, rather, yes it can be - but that makes an exclusive feat tax to 1 specific class.
All other classes have simple weapon prof, all other casters have simple weapon prof, all other prepared arcane casters have simple weapon prof.
this entire discussion is RIFE with hyperbole about how this is unfair when in reality the class chassis traded out weapon trading for the rest of its kit.
There is nothing in the Wizard chassis that was traded for weapon prof:
- Sorcerers, 4 spell slots, Simple weapon prof
- Witches, prepared arcane casters, simple weapon prof
- Wizards have the least starting skills, including other Int based classes.
Just cool it with the class-fight stuff. It's a unique inequality with the Wizard and firearms that I thought I would bring up in the play test area for the book which introduces firearms.
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I don't buy it, wizards have 20-50% more spell slots than any other spellcaster and can even expand on this beyond what non-arcane spellcasters are able to with Ring of Wizardry. This doesn't even touch on the fact that the Wizard effectively has TWO "Class Paths" that they choose right away at level 1 in the form of Thesis and Arcane School. They traded out weapon training for extra slots, bonus Class Feats, and the functional ability to know every Arcane Spell in the game as long as they continue to invest about 30% of their wealth by level to add them to their Spellbook during downtime.
This is like whining that you can use bleach to clean your tub but not wash your dark clothes... that's not what they created bleach for, it's not unfair to all of the bleach lovers out there that it's not designed to do Y when it was never meant to, it has plenty of other "edges" over competing options on its own.
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Just say it. Gunmages.Hmmmm, visually those are uncannily close to the central army in Brian McClellan's Powder Mage books.
I'm not familiar, but I'll check it out.
Either way, the gunpowder mage so to speak is too popular a trope to not be made an option.
Oh 100%! The PF1 Spellslinger is even mentioned on the TV Tropes page about it.
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when in reality the class chassis traded out weapon trading for the rest of its kit.
It doesn't though. The Wizard's chassis is the standard 4-slot spellcaster chassis. There's no fancy super-secret power-up they get for having worse weapon proficiencies.
That makes sense too. Weapons on spellcasters aren't very good. Giving Wizards some kind of mechanical boost in order to make up for their inability to wield light maces would be silly because there's no power advantage to being able to wield light maces with the way Wizards work.
A wizard who devotes significant resources to trying to integrate weapons into their playstyle is probably making themselves worse if anything (although an elf spending an ancestry feat to be able to shoot a bow as a third action isn't the worst idea).
Sort of in the same vein as that there's nothing about the Bard as a spellcaster that's demonstrably worse than a Druid or Cleric just because the Bard can wield rapiers and the Druid can't. Far from it, Bards are often called one of the strongest classes in the game, even if they never touch their bonus weapons.
I can understand why people might have strong feelings about this, but at this point in the game's life cycle, it is probably not something that is going to get retconned backwards into the core rulebook. At the same time, it is a really, really easy change to make at the house rule level and it is not going to break the game to give wizards simple weapons generally.
Even so, after looking at the math closer, the design of fire arms is such that if a spellslinger build is going to be a thing, it is going to take a lot more than just letting wizards have access to simple firearms proficiency. It will need to be an archetype that compensates for the fact that fire arms are not great weapons for a class that caps at expert proficiency, since so much of fire arms power rests on getting crits.
Instead an archetype would be more interesting if it focused on letting casters cast spells through fire arms in interesting ways.
"Another case of wizard teens hopped up on reagents confusing the wand and the gun again. If I had a silver piece..."
"This is wand with a silencer on it. Why? But I ask again, why?"
If the Fighter multiclass archeytype feats are any indication, a wizard should be able to get up to expert proficiency with all firearms for a couple of multiclass feats.
Also, the Magus playtest had a synthesis that combined ranged weapons with spellcasting. I am not sure whether that synthesis would be available to someone who multiclasses into Magus.
Of course, the feat cost for multiclassing into both fighter and magus might make this approach difficult, unless of course Guns and Gears introduces a specific archetype that combines these options into a single archetype.
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I can understand why people might have strong feelings about this, but at this point in the game's life cycle, it is probably not something that is going to get retconned backwards into the core rulebook.
This wouldn't be a retcon, it would be errata. There have been several examples of them pulling or changing some aspects of printed classes via errata, the various alchemist fixes being the most prominent examples.
I am comfortably confident we will see more such fixes, even in the CRB. If only because of unintended interactions with stuff that wasn't yet printed, like what apparently happened when they were writing the APG. Edit: Or, in this case, if instead of a select set of weapons they just gave wizards simple weapon proficiency with a single weapon group. Dwarves can use their clan daggers! All wizards get a pistol!
To be clear, I don't really think it is unbalanced exactly. But it would eliminate an unneeded edge case and establish a baseline that is easier to grok.
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I don't buy it, wizards have 20-50% more spell slots than any other spellcaster and can even expand on this beyond what non-arcane spellcasters are able to with Ring of Wizardry. This doesn't even touch on the fact that the Wizard effectively has TWO "Class Paths" that they choose right away at level 1 in the form of Thesis and Arcane School. They traded out weapon training for extra slots, bonus Class Feats, and the functional ability to know every Arcane Spell in the game as long as they continue to invest about 30% of their wealth by level to add them to their Spellbook during downtime.
This is like whining that you can use bleach to clean your tub but not wash your dark clothes... that's not what they created bleach for, it's not unfair to all of the bleach lovers out there that it's not designed to do Y when it was never meant to, it has plenty of other "edges" over competing options on its own.
Not exactly. They have an Arcane Bond that's basically a "Get out of Jail Free" card, not usable if their Arcane Bond is disarmed, stolen, destroyed, or killed (if a familiar). If they're Universalist, they can use Arcane Bond to regain one of their 3 cast spellslots per spell level they can cast It's flexible, but by no means any more spell slots than a specialist Wizard, it sure as hell is no 20-50% increase compared to Sorcerers who can spam their always-solid repertoire spells, or a Cleric's Font that is useful in most every situation.
Additionally, a Ring of Wizardry is an uncommon item, good luck getting one if a GM seems hellbent to limit you to a less-than-barebones proficiency list for weapons. Also, it's not like Arcane Sorcerers or Witches or Summoners or Magi can't make use of this item as well. In fact, if the Summoners and Magi are limited to their bare bones 4 spell slot loadouts, they are going to be quite essential items for them, in my honest opinion.
The fact you think the game assumes I am both willing and able to spend 30% of my wealth on spells/scrolls for a spellbook is both a daring assumption and a subject not founded anywhere in the Core Rulebook. What if I'm in a low magic or small settlement for the majority of the game, where I won't have access to higher level or Uncommon/Rare spells? What if there are other pressing things to spend my gold on that would have to take precedent? Plus, having access to a spell doesn't mean I will always have it every time it's needed, this is the Schrodinger's Wizard argument all over again, it was stupid in PF1, and it's even more stupid in PF2. Honestly, Schrodinger's Sorcerer or Cleric make more sense.
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Instead an archetype would be more interesting if it focused on letting casters cast spells through fire arms in interesting ways.
I called this. Spellslinger thesis with proficiency in all firearms and slings, with the ability to treat ammunition as Spellstriking Ammunition (maybe as a Focus Point or something) would make for a pretty fun playstyle.