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Bounded spellcasting or "wave casting", is a new type of spell slot allocation to allow a more martial inclined chassis to have spell slots.
Looks like THIS
Magus is a little different as they have 2 extras from a class that can only be used for 8 specific spells and only go to the 4th lvl.
So what you think about it? Like, dislike? Would like class archetypes or class paths for classes like Champion or Ranger (Likely at legendary cost Legendary armor or edge benefit for those two) to have an option like that?
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I think that either ranger and champion are too different from a magus/summoner in terms of mechanics.
Removing the hunter edge benefit would destroy the class, since it works around hunt prey and its benefits from either perks and feats.
As for the champion, the class itself works around a reaction which put the enemy in a situation with 2 outcome ( hit the champion, knowing his defenses are above the average, or hit his ally, knowing that he would shield them with a reaction ).
Removing legendary profession would probably turn into a clownfiesta for the enemies ( let's nuke the champion ), especially if the champion is using a 2handed weapon.
I think there will be other classes with the same spellcasting progression, but I doubt we will ever see a champion or a ranger with that choice.
I'm not so sure, for champion at least. AC in this edition isn't so good as to prevent you from getting hit so much as it prevents getting crit. I'd drop legendary armor in an instant for bounded casting. If it ever does show up as an archetype though I expect it to replace champion reaction progression (smite, exalt) rather than legendary armor (or maybe in addition to).
For ranger, I'd argue that adding it as a hunter's edge and replacing every other class feature with bounded casting would be fine if I thought there was much value to something like wild stride or trackless step.
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I think it's a given at this point that the Inquisitor will follow this chassis if they do make it in, as a middle ground between a cleric and champion with bane being a signature spell once they reach level...gonna guess 3.
But I'd sooner expect the Hunter to make it back in before they retroactively apply this casting system to the Ranger. That ship has sailed with the release of secrets of magic as far as I'm concerned.
Does it feels like enough slots for Summoner and Magus?
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The only reason wave casting works at all is because Cantrips scale, but as a whole it still makes the character feel far less magical than it should, lacking lower level spell slots for the key spells a magic character should have access to in perpetuity.
Wave casting was not my preferred solution, but it will work for my group because we will be using Free Archetype which makes getting low level spell slots far less burdensome.
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Does it feels like enough slots for Summoner and Magus?
I think we need to wait a few months to get actual play experience before we can answer that question.
Its easy to do armchair analysis but real experience over a wide range of levels in a wide variety of campaigns really is necessary before we're going to come to something vaguely approximating consensus
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Too soon to tell, although I think that the Magus being able to Spellstrike with cantrips and the Summoner having the Eidolon balances it.
I feel that the Inquisitor would be perfect for a Divine Bound(ed?) caster with bane and (hopefully) solo tactics to complement it.
Maybe the Shifter could work like that as well, complementing its shifting with 4 slot casting.
I'm not so sure, for champion at least. AC in this edition isn't so good as to prevent you from getting hit so much as it prevents getting crit. I'd drop legendary armor in an instant for bounded casting. If it ever does show up as an archetype though I expect it to replace champion reaction progression (smite, exalt) rather than legendary armor (or maybe in addition to).
For Champion: perhaps bounded casting slots of Divine tradition in exchange for Champion focus spells and restriction preventing taking Blessed One archetype.
For Ranger, I have no suggestions.
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Also, I am fairly sure that spellcasting archetypes are meant to replace the 6th level spellcasting classes of previous editions.
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Does it feels like enough slots for Summoner and Magus?
As long as you remember that you're a martial with tricks, not a caster and that you only take the good spells, they're fine. If you want to use other spells you'll need a multiclass dedication.
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I like how wave casting works because it gives much different ways to build a char depending if you take an archetype you can easily do a wave caster more caster with a caster multi-class (allowing to keep the low level spells) increasing the diversity or you can focus in martial your own martial skills with a martial archetype or you can keep your default build focus your own feats that usually do something unique to your class like improve the eidolon from summoners or spellstrikes for magus.
In term of other classes I don't think that wave casting work well for champion or ranger without sacrifice some of their main abilities, for those classes the focus spells works well as magical solution for some situations.
The "classes" I could se some benefit of wave casting is:
- The warpriest that this way could have a good option to be a good martial without sacrifice their spellcasting ability and also allows to choose what to focus using archetypes.
- The eldritch trickster that could have a more magical option than currently racket that's basically just a free spellcaster archetype.
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Like, dislike?
Dislike. Wasn't a fan of it in the playtest.
Would like class archetypes or class paths for classes like Champion or Ranger (Likely at legendary cost Legendary armor or edge benefit for those two) to have an option like that?
LOL I'd like to see less wave casting, not more.
Does it feels like enough slots for Summoner and Magus?
Going from the playtest [as I don't even have the book yet], NO.
The only reason wave casting works at all is because Cantrips scale, but as a whole it still makes the character feel far less magical than it should, lacking lower level spell slots for the key spells a magic character should have access to in perpetuity.
This is my thinking as well.
We already know from the playtest survey it was unpopular. Having played summoner to level 18 I think 2 slots isn't enough for AP adventuring, but could easily work for homebrew. Maybe with some more options it might turn out better.
I don't think wave casting would be bad on other martial classes, the three action system is a nice limiter on it.
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We already know from the playtest survey it was unpopular.
If that were actually true, it would have been discussed in the post playtest blog, or changes would be made.
Instead, what you see is that only people who don't like it really feel inclined to comment on it for the most part, which creates the illusion of most/many dislike it.
Actually very unpopular things get changed in pretty much every playtest. I don't think wave casting counts.
I for one think it's an elegant solution to provide the exact thing I felt was missing before these classes, while allowing martial Strike proficiencies.
I like it because it gives me hope to see a 2e Inquisitor under this framework. I also broadly don’t like playing full casters; this gives me enough toys to feel special without all of that, and Archetypes can always get you more if you want.
I'm really curious how playing a Wave Caster with Wellspring Magic would feel like. One spell slot per eligible level, but it recharges sometimes during the day.
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I think it might be a reasonable trade to make for a war priest to get bumped up to martial-like proficiencies.
Wave casting gets you fewer spells, but you also don't need to spend as many of them getting your numbers into competitive range. And low-level spells are not great for damaging attacks anyway, just because the amount of damage is not worth the action cost.
Of course, you could use some of the good non-damaging spells, like Calm Emotions and Hideous Laughter. But think about the action economy of your mostly martial character - do you really want to be chained to spending an action to Sustain every round?
I think the sheer value of the slots you lose wasn't quite so high anyway, which makes the loss bearable.
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I really like it. Magus and summoner have enough going on outside the slots to make it fine. Four big boy magic slots on top a full martial with zero investment is good stuff.
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Does it feels like enough slots for Summoner and Magus?
From some limited playtime, I find it works okay for the Magus because the Magus gets by better with spellstriking cantrips and etc.
But for the Summoner I haven't been as impressed, just because the "Summoner" half of the Summoner has so little going for it after it runs out of spell slots.
Feel like the extra spell slots at 7 and the martial weapon proficiency are what hold the magus together and it was sort of a mistake not to give the Summoner something similar.
From a purely mechanical perspective, you can just give your whole turn to your eidolon or spam electric arc with Act Together, but that just doesn't feel satisfying in the same way the Magus does.
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Summoner does feel pretty tight, especially with a repertoire that caps out at five spells.
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Just correcting one thing, but Magus don't have Effortless though.
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I like it. The class chassis provides cantrips and a handful of high powered magic to work in conjunction with some other core feature of the class e.g. eidolon/martial combat. If players want a little more low to mid level casting you have the option of multiclass archetypes. Seems fair to me.
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How much casting should they have gotten in terms of proficiency, max level and frequency? What of their other class features should be given up to achieve this?
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But Magus whose entire schtick was casting many low spells with weapons. Its a slap in the face
Don't really agree. Cantrips basically fill the same role shocking grasp did in 1e. Except you don't need to wait until a campaign is half over before it becomes an effectively bottomless resource.
Honestly in our low level games the PF2 Magi are significantly more magic than their PF1 counterparts between cantrips and focus spells.
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I don’t think it’s that bad for summoner, who doesn’t seem to need to cast slotted spells to contribute much in combat, as strike-strike-electric arc is actually fairly competitive damage with fighter/barb/ranger/swash.
But magus really needs slotted spells to be competitive in combat. Cantrips aren’t quite enough, only getting you about 90% of the way there and they need to be recharged. On your off turn, you’re about 80% of the way there (just master prof, no booster except the absolute joke of a damage boost that is arcane cascade) so you can average that out to say they’re about 85% as effective as a real martial when they don’t use their slots.
Having played the playtest one from 2-9, and now release at level 1 (just about to hit level 2), you really do fall flat in long(er) days. If you do 1-2 encounters a day, the class will probably feel fine, strong even. But if you’re running non SoT APs with their insane amount of encounters a day, you struggle.
People probably won’t see issues with the class though, because when it works (i.e. crits) it looks super strong due to all the damage being stacked into one attack, and hitting the optimization cap for it is easy (just true strike your spellstrike, using items to get the extra firsts, it’s almost never worth preparing spell attacks in your actual slots last like level 6).
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I don’t think it’s that bad for summoner, who doesn’t seem to need to cast slotted spells to contribute much in combat, as strike-strike-electric arc is actually fairly competitive damage with fighter/barb/ranger/swash.
The problem I have with SMN is less whether or not they're functional and more that strike-strike-electric arc is really goddamn boring and kind of overbearing.
It feels like there's a decided lack of knobs for the summoner to deal with and you're mostly just going to have your eidolon make vanilla strikes while you support in a very limited capacity. You sort of play like a fighter who doesn't take any feats at all.
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I haven't gotten to play a wave caster yet (or even barely see one) but I just want to toss in my hope that Bards eventually get a class archetype that trades for wave-casting and better martial proficiencies, possibly with another shtick to make it interesting. Most of the Bards that have appeared in my games have been skilled fencers who use their morale boosting music to bridge the gap between them and the mainline martial while buffing the whole party, then using a little bit of magic to add extra buffs or for niche circumstances.
Don't get me wrong, I love that Bard is an Occult full caster, that was an excellent move over all, I just would like to see more of the arcane duelist style back as an option.
Plus I feel like there's a solid niche for a wave-casting cleric that's a more Warpriest than the current Warpriest. I feel like a true Warpriest should have a solid core focusing on their deity's favoured weapon with spells as a back-up. Champion is not far off (and this is not the least of which reason I've spent so many words arguing for the Tenets of Neutrality), but I still feel like there's a missing niche for a true Warpriest between the code-bound champion defender and the full-casting cleric where their weapon is a solid back-up option, not their main swing. Maybe keftiu's Inquisitor hopes will bring that (perhaps under a different name) to the table.
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It feels like there's a decided lack of knobs for the summoner to deal with and you're mostly just going to have your eidolon make vanilla strikes while you support in a very limited capacity. You sort of play like a fighter who doesn't take any feats at all.
As I said in the playtest, they really are 'eidolon, the class' where the summoner feels like the minion that cast a few spells here or there but most rounds spams cantrips. I could work with that is the eidolon was exciting enough but it's mostly what flavor of unarmed strike you want... Well in a week I'll see it for myself how it is but it doesn't sound much changed from the playtest.
I haven't gotten to play a wave caster yet (or even barely see one) but I just want to toss in my hope that Bards eventually get a class archetype that trades for wave-casting and better martial proficiencies, possibly with another shtick to make it interesting.
Bard would have been one of the classes that would have worked the best with wave IMO. They could lean into Composition cantrips that could spice things up as something to switch up for the situation along with cantrips and/or weapon attacks. With a good enough list of Compositions, I don't think you'd miss the spells as much. Much the same, witch could have gone this path with the ability to cast multiple Hex cantrips and the ability to pick up more and that way, you'd miss the spellcasting less.
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I feel one ingredient that is missing from making wave casters solid is having good focus spells. Both Magus and Summoner seem to have more supplementary focus spells which makes it feel like there’s no bridge between your all day cantrips and blowing one of your four slots for the day.
If you had middle ground focus powers, and perhaps enhanced focus recharge (1 at 1, 2 at 7, 3 at 13) it could help sell wave casting a bit more. In this case, focus spells and cantrips are supposed to be your every encounter baseline options, whereas the four slots are your big novas.