Remastered Wizard reveals and speculation

[Old_Man_Robot]

Blave wrote:

There's at least 6 new schools that have been shown or mentioned, plus the universalist one. If there's only two more unannounced, we'd already be back to where we started.

I don’t think we’re getting 8 schools to replace 8 schools, are we? I thought it was 5/6+ Universalist.

In my other post I was basically asking what focus spells are being removed.

[Deriven Firelion]

So we haven't seen the whole of the wizard yet. Just some of the curriculum material which looks worse than schools in locking you in to a much smaller number of spells with the standard two focus spells which don't look a lot changed.

[Shisumo]

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

Calliope5431 wrote:

Blave wrote:

There's at least 6 new schools that have been shown or mentioned, plus the universalist one. If there's only two more unannounced, we'd already be back to where we started.

What's the list? I only know about Boundaries, Ars Grammatica, Battle Magic, and Civic Engineering (plus Universalist).

We've also heard of Mentalism and Protean Form I believe. They were name dropped sometime a month back and are in the first couple pages of this thread alongside Battle and Civic

Mentalism is in the preview doc.

[Calliope5431]

Yup, found it. Thanks, all. Looks like we've got most of these then. We have complete writeups for:

1. Ars Grammatica
2. Battle magic
3. Boundary
4. Mentalism

Plus we have a scattering of spells for the following

5: Protean form: gouging claw, tanglevine, cursed metamorphosis (baleful polymorph), enlarge, spider sting, "plant spells"

6: Civic Wizardry: summon construct, creation, wall of stone, "some earth spells"

7: universalist is supposed to be similar to the way it was (complete with hand of the apprentice, apparently): "Unified Magical Theory is what's taking over for universalist. You don't have a curriculum, but you gain additional feats and spells like you did beforehand. It functions like the original universalist. The only thing that's different is that the feats that gave you unique spells for universalist like hand of the apprentice are now just School of Universal Magical Theory."

So, um, yeah. Universalist is just a lot better compared to other spell schools now. At least it and hand of the apprentice survived the wizard purge.

I feel there are a few good workarounds.

1. Staff nexus: at low level (1-4), it means if you have a worthless 1st or 2nd level spell, you barely care, because your stick can eat it and spit out a 1st you actually want. At higher levels (especially 8+), when you get actual magic staves, you can throw one or more spells into it.

2. Spell blending. Blend your worthless low-level spells away.

3. Heightening. With battle magic, if you don't like the 7th and 8th level options, just toss a heightened chain lightning into the slot.

So assuming arcane thesis is unchanged, it's not too bad, especially if your GM allows books with more spells such as Rage of Elements, Secrets of Magic, and Dark Archive.

[Unicore]

3-Body Problem wrote:

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

3-Body Problem wrote:

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

What, are you asking me to produce written statements by my gaming group about their preferences? Sure, will carrion pigeon be OK or do I have to send them by fax?

You made a general claim when you said, "People absolutely love rolling moar dice." This flies in the face of what we see proven time and time again in studies of human psychology and also goes against how people played when the option to build for higher baseline numbers was present. Such being the case, I would like you to offer evidence that your claim is valid for a significant section of PF2's player cohort.

Can you point me to those studies of human psychology?

At a high level we can point to the prevalence of risk aversion among the general population:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion_(psychology)

This would predispose most people to want reliable lower variance abilities even if they don't offer the same reward. Example: Most people will reject an 85% chance to win $1000 if it is put up against a 100% chance to gain $800.

There is also negativity bias which shows that while we might revel in the rare cases when the dice spike in our favor most of us will more keenly feel the weight of the times when the dice run below average. It will make more people feel better more often to increase the floor and lower the ceiling on things like spell damage and expected odds of successfully landing all-or-nothing spells.

There don't appear to be many easily available studies that show a preference for or against variability in gaming specifically but we can look at how games are actually played. Whenever players are given a chance they vastly prefer to specialize and try to make imposing their will upon the game world as consistently viable as possible. This proved true in PF1 and proves true in PF2 albeit within much tighter confines. It also proves true with how players build in CRPGs based on TTRPGs which use...

Remember that this is a game to be played cordially with one’s friends. Not a gambling game or an event to win. “Human psychology” for every day living or extreme betting scenarios really are not that relevant.

In this game, “what happens next?” Is players come up with a plan, then roll dice to determine the outcome.

[3-Body Problem]

Unicore wrote:

Remember that this is a game to be played cordially with one’s friends. Not a gambling game or an event to win. “Human psychology” for every day living or extreme betting scenarios really are not that relevant.

So why do people bother optimizing builds then? Why do players, when presented with the option, generally take the abilities that add concrete value instead of taking riskier options?

Quote:

In this game, “what happens next?” Is players come up with a plan, then roll dice to determine the outcome.

Can you stop setting up this strawman already, it's getting tiresome.

Nobody is asking to remove all variability from the game, only that Paizo seems to think that variability should be the hallmark of the caster, especially the blaster variety. I'd like to see more blast spells with higher floors and more predictable ceilings, especially for spells that don't have any effect at all when they miss.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Calliope5431 wrote:

Yup, found it. Thanks, all. Looks like we've got most of these then. We have complete writeups for:

1. Ars Grammatica
2. Battle magic
3. Boundary
4. Mentalism

Plus we have a scattering of spells for the following

5: Protean form: gouging claw, tanglevine, cursed metamorphosis (baleful polymorph), enlarge, spider sting, "plant spells"

6: Civic Wizardry: summon construct, creation, wall of stone, "some earth spells"

7: universalist is supposed to be similar to the way it was (complete with hand of the apprentice, apparently): "Unified Magical Theory is what's taking over for universalist. You don't have a curriculum, but you gain additional feats and spells like you did beforehand. It functions like the original universalist. The only thing that's different is that the feats that gave you unique spells for universalist like hand of the apprentice are now just School of Universal Magical Theory."

So, um, yeah. Universalist is just a lot better compared to other spell schools now. At least it and hand of the apprentice survived the wizard purge.

I feel there are a few good workarounds.

1. Staff nexus: at low level (1-4), it means if you have a worthless 1st or 2nd level spell, you barely care, because your stick can eat it and spit out a 1st you actually want. At higher levels (especially 8+), when you get actual magic staves, you can throw one or more spells into it.

2. Spell blending. Blend your worthless low-level spells away.

3. Heightening. With battle magic, if you don't like the 7th and 8th level options, just toss a heightened chain lightning into the slot.

So assuming arcane thesis is unchanged, it's not too bad, especially if your GM allows books with more spells such as Rage of Elements, Secrets of Magic, and Dark Archive.

So basically, they streamlined Universalist to be the best baseline there is by making the curriculums purposefully worse to compensate for the factor that Universalist basically had less slots to begin with. Big yikes for the Wizard with that process in mind, since this translates to "Just play a Universalist, going the other routes basically shoots yourself in the foot for no real gain."

As for the work arounds, Staff Nexus is limited in its ability to work around, since it caps at 3 slots at 16th, which doesn't cover enough of the lower level slots, and is actually worse for you starting out compared to any other option which at least gives you some sort of option to utilize. I mean, I suppose getting an additional cantrip to cast with counts, but Spell Blending can give you two cantrips for the same price, and has more exponential scaling.

Spell Blending is probably the best solution, but given that this feels more like a crutch against an obviously flawed system instead of a new way to interact with spells in a meaningful way that is unique to itself, it's not exactly great.

And Heightening only works for a smaller subset of spells. When you get spells that don't heighten or compete with other equal rank spells, there's a fundamental flaw with the spell choice.

Notice how nobody suggests Spell Substitution; likely because in a fair amount of situations, being able to change between 3 bad spells on that given rank isn't exactly helpful.

[Arachnofiend]

3-Body Problem wrote:

Unicore wrote:

Remember that this is a game to be played cordially with one’s friends. Not a gambling game or an event to win. “Human psychology” for every day living or extreme betting scenarios really are not that relevant.

So why do people bother optimizing builds then? Why do players, when presented with the option, generally take the abilities that add concrete value instead of taking riskier options?

People also take risky options. In a martial context that's picking a Giant Barbarian over the more reliable hits of a Fighter.

Different people do value different things.

[3-Body Problem]

Arachnofiend wrote:

3-Body Problem wrote:

Unicore wrote:

Remember that this is a game to be played cordially with one’s friends. Not a gambling game or an event to win. “Human psychology” for every day living or extreme betting scenarios really are not that relevant.

So why do people bother optimizing builds then? Why do players, when presented with the option, generally take the abilities that add concrete value instead of taking riskier options?

People also take risky options. In a martial context that's picking a Giant Barbarian over the more reliable hits of a Fighter.

Different people do value different things.

What does any of this have to do with my supposition that players would enjoy having the ability to get higher floors and lower ceilings on their spell damage and that such an ability could make sense for Battle Wizards specifically?

Could people actually read the thread instead of just jumping in and making assumptions about what I'm asking for?

[Ed Reppert]

Paizo announce a Remaster Project.
Paizo drops some hints about what's in store.
Four thousand people start expounding on the details, even though 80 percent of what they're saying is pure speculation.

Me, I'm just going to wait until November before I pass judgement on this project.

[PossibleCabbage]

I feel like it was always going to be the case that the new schools are going to give significantly fewer options for bonus spells than the previous schools did, simply because spells aren't going to have things like "the evocation tag".

If you had to list 50 spells for every school, that would be a major problem for "printing new schools in future books.

The real thing I want to see about the Wizard is if their Focus spells are actually good now, since that would solve most of the problems with the class.

[Arachnofiend]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I feel like it was always going to be the case that the new schools are going to give significantly fewer options for bonus spells than the previous schools did, simply because spells aren't going to have things like "the evocation tag".

If you had to list 50 spells for every school, that would be a major problem for "printing new schools in future books.

The real thing I want to see about the Wizard is if their Focus spells are actually good now, since that would solve most of the problems with the class.

The only real possibility for evergreen lists would be to use preexisting properties; giving the Mentalist school every spell with the Mental trait, Battle Wizards getting every damage-dealing reflex or attack roll spell. Good reasons not to do it this way though, just the examples I came up with show how it can get awkward and difficult to search for what spells you actually have access to.

[Blave]

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Blave wrote:

There's at least 6 new schools that have been shown or mentioned, plus the universalist one. If there's only two more unannounced, we'd already be back to where we started.

I don’t think we’re getting 8 schools to replace 8 schools, are we? I thought it was 5/6+ Universalist.

We know of 6 + Universalist, but I don't think a definite number has been given. So there might be more.

Quote:

In my other post I was basically asking what focus spells are being removed.

That's unknown as well, as far as I'm aware.

We know Charming Word will become Charming Push (same effect, but loses Linguistic and Auditory traits).

Looking at the schools shown in the GenCon preview, it looks like some new focus spells will be added, like Fortify, Spirit of Horrors and Rune of Observation. Those could be just old ones renamed, of course.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Nothing was added to improve the wizard? Nothing we haven't seen? It's just change the name of the schools to curriculum, toss on some spells, and roll with it. Somewhat cheaper spells added to the spellbook?

We obviously don't know if there's some buff we haven't seen. From the information we got so far, wizard was improved in three ways:

- Proficiency in all simple weapons.
- 9 additional free spells known spread out over 17 levels. Looks like you can even grab a few uncommon ones this way (depending on your curriculum, of course).
- Magical Shorthand was buffed to turn Success into Crit Success when Learning a Spell. That means you can Learn all spells at half cost. Affects all casters, of course, but it's obviously most impactful on Wizard and Witch.

AoN currently lists 560 spells in the arcane tradition (not counting the already school-less ones from RoE). So on average, a pre-master specialist gets to fill his extra school slots with 70 different spells. That number will be cut down to about 20 and will no longer automatically improve as new books are released.

[Calliope5431]

Arachnofiend wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I feel like it was always going to be the case that the new schools are going to give significantly fewer options for bonus spells than the previous schools did, simply because spells aren't going to have things like "the evocation tag".

If you had to list 50 spells for every school, that would be a major problem for "printing new schools in future books.

The real thing I want to see about the Wizard is if their Focus spells are actually good now, since that would solve most of the problems with the class.

The only real possibility for evergreen lists would be to use preexisting properties; giving the Mentalist school every spell with the Mental trait, Battle Wizards getting every damage-dealing reflex or attack roll spell. Good reasons not to do it this way though, just the examples I came up with show how it can get awkward and difficult to search for what spells you actually have access to.

Yeah replacing the spell schools was never going to be fun, and I get why the decision turned out the way it did. Personally, I might still have gone for the big list, though. 3.x did it, by printing class lists in every single book they published with spells. It would be a lot easier with online databases nowadays than it was back then.

Alternatively, you could do what Paizo did, but made wizard a 4-slot-per-spell-rank class. Or made everyone a universalist (in terms of drain bonded item usages) for free. Or given everyone 1-2 "open" curriculum spells per spell rank so they could customize them. For instance, battle magic at 3rd rank might have fireball plus an open curriculum slot where you could put lightning bolt , earthbind , or any other spell of your choice.

We technically haven't seen the wizard spell slot table or drain bonded item rules, so they might have done one of the above, but I doubt it.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Ed Reppert wrote:

Paizo announce a Remaster Project.

Paizo drops some hints about what's in store.
Four thousand people start expounding on the details, even though 80 percent of what they're saying is pure speculation.

Me, I'm just going to wait until November before I pass judgement on this project.

A fair amount of exposition from both sides is speculation. People saying that it's going to be just fine have just as much information available as those that say it's going to be a train wreck. Sure, we don't have the full picture, but given that the Remaster project announced at Gen Con is meant to tease significant changes, and we have access to those at least, the idea that we need to wait for the full release to pass judgement doesn't really track if we already have the information from the previous version that is changed only superficially, which means we actually have more of a picture on the class than what people seem to think we have (which is apparently not much of one).

The thing is, we were given a "trailer" for what we can expect from the Wizard, and we are going to have opinions on this, which will determine whether we decide the class will be good/fun to play in the future. And as it stands, it's looking more like it isn't than it is to many simply because it's a reduction with not much to compensate for instead of an addition, which was honestly needed to make the class stand out compared to other classes.

[Themetricsystem]

Did they reveal the Feat list and descriptions of them or something? It feels like there is a LOT of speculation that nothing is being changed here.

One thing I'm wondering is if Eschew Materials has been improved from being a Class feat to save 5 SP.

[Blave]

Themetricsystem wrote:

Did they reveal the Feat list and descriptions of them or something? It feels like there is a LOT of speculation that nothing is being changed here.

One thing I'm wondering is if Eschew Materials has been improved from being a Class feat to save 5 SP.

We have a list of all class feat names. I don't think Eschew Materials is still in the game.

Most of the feats on that list were just the old ones. They could still be buffed, of course, but just reading the names, nothing really stood out as looking like a super amazing game changer.

[Captain Morgan]

Themetricsystem wrote:

Did they reveal the Feat list and descriptions of them or something? It feels like there is a LOT of speculation that nothing is being changed here.

One thing I'm wondering is if Eschew Materials has been improved from being a Class feat to save 5 SP.

They revealed the feat list, and a good chunk of the schools. Unclear how many more schools there are, and we don't have descriptions of the feats yet. You can check out the screen shots in a thread Ravingdork made.

Eschew materials is no longer listed as a feat. It probably doesn't exist in any form since material components are largely gone.

[Calliope5431]

Captain Morgan wrote:

Themetricsystem wrote:

Did they reveal the Feat list and descriptions of them or something? It feels like there is a LOT of speculation that nothing is being changed here.

One thing I'm wondering is if Eschew Materials has been improved from being a Class feat to save 5 SP.

They revealed the feat list, and a good chunk of the schools. Unclear how many more schools there are, and we don't have descriptions of the feats yet. You can check out the screen shots in a thread Ravingdork made.

Eschew materials is no longer listed as a feat. It probably doesn't exist in any form since material components are largely gone.

Yeah I went through the feat list and mapped them to existing feats here:

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43tqe&page=24?Remastered-Wizard-reveals-an d-speculation#1161

("unchanged" in this context means "same name", I don't know about the feats themselves for the most part except things like steady spellcasting, which we saw on witch was unchanged)

Tl;dr they look like mostly the same feat names (they may errata the feats themselves but I doubt it, that'd be a mess) except for secondary detonation array and explosive arrival, which I am guessing are going to be detonating spell and something similar to the summoner's "when you summon something, it emits a damaging burst when it first arrives" respectively.

Incidentally, "errataing the spells themselves would be confusing" is a good argument for why chain lightning's damage is unchanged. We've seen them errata stuff ( flame strike became divine immolation, cone of cold became howling blizzard) and change up damage numbers/abilities, but I don't think we've actually seen something's name unchanged and the underlying spell also changed for the most part.

[Cyder]

No reason to play a wizard over an arcane sorc now, they are inferior in just about every way that matters.

[Calliope5431]

Cyder wrote:

No reason to play a wizard over an arcane sorc now, they are inferior in just about every way that matters.

Well, arcane sorcs have pretty bad focus spells, especially at low level (looking at you, dragon claws and ancestral memories ). At least force bolt and company are decent.

And drain bonded item does mean you still get an extra top level slot compared to the sorc!

[Cyder]

Most first level wizard focus spells are terrible though, either extremely situational or just plain bad.

Drain bonded item is ok but really the choice of 4 + 1/spell rank from signature spells at top level is far far more practical and useful most of the time.

Charisma is generally a better stat than intelligence to max out. Sorcs don't need to pay to learn any of their core spells, just the ones they want in a spellbook to swap out for so that is a wash.

[Calliope5431]

Cyder wrote:

Most first level wizard focus spells are terrible though, either extremely situational or just plain bad.

Drain bonded item is ok but really the choice of 4 + 1/spell rank from signature spells at top level is far far more practical and useful most of the time.

Charisma is generally a better stat than intelligence to max out. Sorcs don't need to pay to learn any of their core spells, just the ones they want in a spellbook to swap out for so that is a wash.

Honestly I can see Cha vs Int being a wash. And I say this as someone who has repeatedly cried over an inability to disable haunts with absurd religion/occultism DCs before they murdered me or deal with silly-high arcana DCs on skill challenges. I think a party generally needs both Int and Cha.

As for focus spells - I don't disagree. But between force bolt, energy absorption, and hand of the apprentice, we know of at least three decent ones that are in the remastered wizard.

But I don't disagree with you. Sorcerer is a much better chassis. It's just that arcane sorcerer is sort of okay rather than phenomenal. Especially when it comes to focus spells.

[Deriven Firelion]

Calliope5431 wrote:

Cyder wrote:

No reason to play a wizard over an arcane sorc now, they are inferior in just about every way that matters.

Well, arcane sorcs have pretty bad focus spells, especially at low level (looking at you, dragon claws and ancestral memories ). At least force bolt and company are decent.

And drain bonded item does mean you still get an extra top level slot compared to the sorc!

Ancestral Memories is an excellent focus spell, very helpful to a GM. You can make a roll for almost everything and not have to waste time taking the skills since you will likely get Unified Theory at high level.

[Calliope5431]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Calliope5431 wrote:

Cyder wrote:

No reason to play a wizard over an arcane sorc now, they are inferior in just about every way that matters.

Well, arcane sorcs have pretty bad focus spells, especially at low level (looking at you, dragon claws and ancestral memories ). At least force bolt and company are decent.

And drain bonded item does mean you still get an extra top level slot compared to the sorc!

Ancestral Memories is an excellent focus spell, very helpful to a GM. You can make a roll for almost everything and not have to waste time taking the skills since you will likely get Unified Theory at high level.

That's fair, and at low level (1-6, maybe?), I'd agree. At higher level, trained (or even expert...6th rank spell = level 11...) doesn't really cut it anymore, since a lot of DCs expect higher levels of proficiency.

But I think you're right and ancestral memories has some uses. Even so, wizard focus spells do as well.

[Arachnofiend]

Calliope5431 wrote:

Cyder wrote:

Most first level wizard focus spells are terrible though, either extremely situational or just plain bad.

Drain bonded item is ok but really the choice of 4 + 1/spell rank from signature spells at top level is far far more practical and useful most of the time.

Charisma is generally a better stat than intelligence to max out. Sorcs don't need to pay to learn any of their core spells, just the ones they want in a spellbook to swap out for so that is a wash.

Honestly I can see Cha vs Int being a wash. And I say this as someone who has repeatedly cried over an inability to disable haunts with absurd religion/occultism DCs before they murdered me or deal with silly-high arcana DCs on skill challenges. I think a party generally needs both Int and Cha.

As for focus spells - I don't disagree. But between force bolt, energy absorption, and hand of the apprentice, we know of at least three decent ones that are in the remastered wizard.

But I don't disagree with you. Sorcerer is a much better chassis. It's just that arcane sorcerer is sort of okay rather than phenomenal. Especially when it comes to focus spells.

Ignoring specific skill checks that require specific skills, in terms of raw power from your attribute you're basically picking between Demoralize/Bon Mot vs. Additional Lore. Both of those things are pretty damn good. Really wish Wizards got more distinct knowledge stuff though.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Arachnofiend wrote:

Calliope5431 wrote:

Cyder wrote:

Most first level wizard focus spells are terrible though, either extremely situational or just plain bad.

Drain bonded item is ok but really the choice of 4 + 1/spell rank from signature spells at top level is far far more practical and useful most of the time.

Charisma is generally a better stat than intelligence to max out. Sorcs don't need to pay to learn any of their core spells, just the ones they want in a spellbook to swap out for so that is a wash.

Honestly I can see Cha vs Int being a wash. And I say this as someone who has repeatedly cried over an inability to disable haunts with absurd religion/occultism DCs before they murdered me or deal with silly-high arcana DCs on skill challenges. I think a party generally needs both Int and Cha.

As for focus spells - I don't disagree. But between force bolt, energy absorption, and hand of the apprentice, we know of at least three decent ones that are in the remastered wizard.

But I don't disagree with you. Sorcerer is a much better chassis. It's just that arcane sorcerer is sort of okay rather than phenomenal. Especially when it comes to focus spells.

Ignoring specific skill checks that require specific skills, in terms of raw power from your attribute you're basically picking between Demoralize/Bon Mot vs. Additional Lore. Both of those things are pretty damn good. Really wish Wizards got more distinct knowledge stuff though.

Additional Lore is too niche to be helpful a lot of the time in my experience, and even some of the examples are pretty bad.

Meanwhile, Charisma is only bad if you ever face mindless/fear immune enemies, which aren't very common. In fact, I would say it is less common than enemies with offensive reactions like AoO.

[Arachnofiend]

Additional Lore means Intelligence characters can cover all monster identification off of their core attribute, hardly niche. If Undead Lore is a valid lore skill to get from a background then all of the major monster types are. Admittedly it is most relevant to the Investigator who can easily grab every relevant Lore skill and never have to roll Nature or Religion and still have room for Medicine feats.

[Calliope5431]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Additional Lore is too niche to be helpful a lot of the time in my experience, and even some of the examples are pretty bad.

Meanwhile, Charisma is only bad if you ever face mindless/fear immune enemies, which aren't very common. In fact, I would say it is less common than enemies with offensive reactions like AoO.

ehhhh. Bon Mot is situational to Will-based stuff, and regardless you have 1-action focus spells built into your class you could be casting. Arcane sorcerers have fewer of those, but the wizard has plenty ( force bolt for instance). So the arcane sorc can use the Cha skill abilities, and the wizard can use focus spells/recall knowledge. Comes out fairly even in terms of 3rd action usages, I'd say.

Of course, for both wizard and sorcerer, sometimes you won't be spending a third action on either Recall Knowledge or Cha-based skills or focus spells - you'll be moving with that third action. Which is more common than a lot of people think...

[Unicore]

In extinction curse, my fighter had additional Lore Xulgath and it was amazingly good for learning about all the different abominations we faced. Kind GMs will even let you retrain the feat to have a different lore skill if it has fallen out of use.

As a GM, my take on schools is probably going to be pick one, as normal, but every even level you can refine your school as you become a more well renown wizard and you can trade out one current spell school for any spell you want in your book. However, challenging the conventions of your tutors and teachers takes its toll as you literally rewrite the book on your school of magic, and you lose the spell you traded away from your spell book. Tossing a spell out of your book buts a mental strain on your ability to memorize it in the future, although I’d still let the spell be cast from any scroll wand or staff.

I doubt every GM will do something similar, but I think it will be more fun for quickly progressing wizards to become important figures in establishing the traditions and discourse of their school. I’ll probably make the player provide a defense of their choice of switching a school spell by explaining the logic to me the GM, but also in character writing that defense in a letter sent to a ranking member of the school.

All around this version of schools is a lot more narratively colorful to me and makes wizards feel more wizardly. It is such an easy mechanic to custom fit to your campaign as well. I hope other GMs consider how to make it a “yes, and” addition to their games and not a “no fun for you” nerf bat for their players.

[Squiggit]

Arachnofiend wrote:

Additional Lore means Intelligence characters can cover all monster identification off of their core attribute, hardly niche.

If you take additional lore like 8 times.

[Captain Morgan]

Squiggit wrote:

Arachnofiend wrote:

Additional Lore means Intelligence characters can cover all monster identification off of their core attribute, hardly niche.

If you take additional lore like 8 times.

Technically true, but you can often effectively achieve the same result by taking it one or two times based off the specific enemies your campaign throws at you.

[Old_Man_Robot]

The Wizard isn't a knowledge class. Plain and simple. They just have Int as their key stat.

Until the release of the Remaster and the inclusion of Knowledge is Power, the Wizard has no feats, class features, or focus spells which interact with the Recall Knowledge system.

The Wizard even starts with 1 less trained skill than every other class (Apart from the Magus). And they are don't get any additional skill boosts involving lore or the tradition skills.

You can make it work, especially if you are using Free Archetypes, but that isn't the same as it being an actual strength or feature of the class.

At endgame, a Wizard may have, at most, a +2 advantage over any other character who decides to be Knowledge focused. But even this isn't guaranteed thanks to numerous ways for other classes to get bonuses as part of their kits.

The Wizard is rewarded for going down the knowledge route because it is advantageous for them to do so, but they aren't Investigators, or Rogues, or Thaumaturges or even Bards. They don't even have something like the Witches Discern Secrets.

They aren't a knowledge class, as they aren't given any of the tools to do so. They have to spend the more generic character resources to get there, which limits the other things you may wish to do with your character.

If you want a class as a whole to do something, you need to give it signpost abilities, or features or just anything really, to encourage it and aid it along that path.

[Temperans]

Wizard's knowledge ability was the ability to get more skill ranks than those who dumped Int. But that was removed when skill ranks were removed and Rogue, Bard, Investigator, etc. were given ways to get free mass skill proficiencies.

[wegrata]

Cyder wrote:

No reason to play a wizard over an arcane sorc now, they are inferior in just about every way that matters.

Optionally maybe sorcerers will also get worse in the remaster. Maybe we'll see bloodlines only get a slot dedicated so it can only cast a bloodline spell similar to what we see here.

[Nicolas Paradise]

Would the school slot be more acceptable if it auto heightened maybe with a 3rd level class ability similar to Signature spell?

[Blave]

Nicolas Paradise wrote:

Would the school slot be more acceptable if it auto heightened maybe with a 3rd level class ability similar to Signature spell?

That seems a bit much as it would give level 19+ Wizards 9 additional rank 10 spells per day.

[Unicore]

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

The Wizard isn't a knowledge class. Plain and simple. They just have Int as their key stat.

Until the release of the Remaster and the inclusion of Knowledge is Power, the Wizard has no feats, class features, or focus spells which interact with the Recall Knowledge system.

The Wizard even starts with 1 less trained skill than every other class (Apart from the Magus). And they are don't get any additional skill boosts involving lore or the tradition skills.

You can make it work, especially if you are using Free Archetypes, but that isn't the same as it being an actual strength or feature of the class.

At endgame, a Wizard may have, at most, a +2 advantage over any other character who decides to be Knowledge focused. But even this isn't guaranteed thanks to numerous ways for other classes to get bonuses as part of their kits.

The Wizard is rewarded for going down the knowledge route because it is advantageous for them to do so, but they aren't Investigators, or Rogues, or Thaumaturges or even Bards. They don't even have something like the Witches Discern Secrets.

They aren't a knowledge class, as they aren't given any of the tools to do so. They have to spend the more generic character resources to get there, which limits the other things you may wish to do with your character.

If you want a class as a whole to do something, you need to give it signpost abilities, or features or just anything really, to encourage it and aid it along that path.

Diviner’s sight is a really cool focus spell that I hope sticks around in some form. It has a pretty interesting effect on recalling knowledge, as it lets you know your roll.

[Old_Man_Robot]

I'll give you that, as Diviner’s sight does in fact interact with the Recall Knowledge tangentially.

What the Wizard needs is something like the Bestiary Scholar feat as a class feat.

[Temperans]

Blave wrote:

Nicolas Paradise wrote:

Would the school slot be more acceptable if it auto heightened maybe with a 3rd level class ability similar to Signature spell?

That seems a bit much as it would give level 19+ Wizards 9 additional rank 10 spells per day.

They would be 9th level since you cannot get bonus 10th level outside of focus spells and cantrips (both of which aren't "slots").

[The Raven Black]

Temperans wrote:

Wizard's knowledge ability was the ability to get more skill ranks than those who dumped Int. But that was removed when skill ranks were removed and Rogue, Bard, Investigator, etc. were given ways to get free mass skill proficiencies.

Trained in a skill is the exact PF2 equivalent to PF1 putting a rank in your skill at each level.

So, Wizard (and other high INT builds) stayed the same actually.

[YuriP]

wegrata wrote:

Cyder wrote:

No reason to play a wizard over an arcane sorc now, they are inferior in just about every way that matters.

Optionally maybe sorcerers will also get worse in the remaster. Maybe we'll see bloodlines only get a slot dedicated so it can only cast a bloodline spell similar to what we see here.

It's very unlikely.

Understand that in practice Paizo did not nerf the wizards directly, what happened in practice is that with the announcement of class revisions and with the removal of the old schools of magic, an expectation was created that the wizard would get some new system that makes it more interesting or powerful or useful. But in the end what you ended up getting was a lazy variant of the sorcerer's bloodline system.

The catrips nerfs in practice affect all casters, not just wizards and IMO was a side effect of a general move by designers to lower MAD.

And the 3rd point is that the other 2 main changes, which was the change from alignment damage to spiritual damage and the simplification and improvement in the focus spell system, in practice benefits the wizard very little.

This added to the fact that some improvement was expected that left this feeling that the wizard was heavily nerfed, when in fact the only real nerf done directly to him was the new schools.

Also contributing to this feeling that the wizard has been "enhanced" is also the fact that 3 of the other 4 spellcasters received significant improvements. Clerics no longer need to invest in Cha to be able to heal more, druids are now able to use better armor and therefore are less dependent on Dex (decreasing their MAD as well), witches received very cool improvements to familiars that integrated very well with hexes, which at once integrated and improved their 2 signature traits at once, from a situation where they were considered weak, if not bad and very limited, to a situation where they are powerful, interesting and fun and even the bards turned out to be improved by gaining access to martial weapons (I know that the wizard also received access to simple weapons, but their chassis are so different to deal with weapons and armor that the benefit of bards ends up being much higher).

Having said all that, aside from the fact that no one really thought anything bad about the sorcerer, I find it very unlikely that they will make any significant changes to him. Even because the Core 2 adjustments will probably already be much more focused on alchemists, investigators, oracles, champions and swashbucklers:

Alchemists will likely receive some further buffs, expected mostly master proficiency with weapons or at least bombs, as the cleric received buffs in this regard.

Investigators have not had anything announced, but Paizo is aware of complaints about the Devise Stratagem having a rather rigid and complicated equity economy.

Swashbucklers are in an even worse situation than investigators, because they don't even have the excuse of being a skill monkey focused on getting extra information, not to mention taking excessive risks to perform their main ability.

Oracles because if the curses are not reviewed they may end up being indirectly "harmed" by the new focus system, since they have an extra limiter on the use of their focus spells (you need to make adjustments or you will create a stimulus even higher for picking up focus spells via multiclassing with the sorcerer/psychic).

Champions because with the end of the alignment system they will probably need to be tweaked more than clerics.

That's why I think it's VERY unlikely that they mess with sorcerers that are already working well as they are.

[Old_Man_Robot]

Let’s be real here. There was unenumerated ways to redesign the whole magic school system. Anyone one here could probably spit ball a dozen or so off the top of their head.

Either by intent or oversight, the one chosen appears to be a substantial nerf. Any personal stance on flavour aside, the functional value of that slot has diminished.

As of this moment, there does not appear to be anything given to the Wizard to compensate.

The Wizard already had a number of issues which impacted performance, at the moment these do not look to have been addressed either.

So the Wizard looks, presently, to be going backwards while most other classes are moving forward.

But at least we have simple weapons, removing at least one of the Wizards other random limitations.

[Unicore]

It is also possible that adding simple weapons was seen as a boost to the wizard class and so no additional boosting was really needed. It was what some of us were worried about from the beginning of people asking for it: a side-grade move that does nothing for wizards who are wizards to focus on spell casting.

I still think it is premature to jump to conclusions about the state of wizards as a whole until we get the monster core book and the player core 1 book. Wizards have a very diverse pool of damage types that they can do and if the apparent shift to more weaknesses and resistances holds up across more monsters, it really will be a buff to wizards without changing anything about them.

[Temperans]

The Raven Black wrote:

Temperans wrote:

Wizard's knowledge ability was the ability to get more skill ranks than those who dumped Int. But that was removed when skill ranks were removed and Rogue, Bard, Investigator, etc. were given ways to get free mass skill proficiencies.

Trained in a skill is the exact PF2 equivalent to PF1 putting a rank in your skill at each level.

So, Wizard (and other high INT builds) stayed the same actually.

Not really because you are forgetting PF2 is balanced around having legendary skill.

Legendary is equivalent to 20 ranks + Class skill + Class bonus. Wizard getting only trained is at best just 20 ranks. Also, for reference, Rogues had 6+Int vs Bard's 6+Int vs Wizard's 2+Int now Rogues have 9+Int vs Bard's 6+Int+Infinite Knowledge vs Wizard's 3+Int.

In no way can you say that Int is a valuable stat when its the most unused stat and the few characters who do use it are generally considered the worst classes.

[Old_Man_Robot]

Unicore wrote:

I still think it is premature to jump to conclusions about the state of wizards as a whole until we get the monster core book and the player core 1 book. Wizards have a very diverse pool of damage types that they can do and if the apparent shift to more weaknesses and resistances holds up across more monsters, it really will be a buff to wizards without changing anything about them.

Player Core 1, certainly. Monster core, not a chance.

Generally changes to the environment impact everyone. All boats rise and fall with that tide. A “buff” by proxy of a proxy does not impact any of the class specific issues that have been highlighted over the years.

Also, the whole “simple weapons mean we can’t have nice things” is just so dumb. It’s not even worthy of consideration.

[Calliope5431]

Unicore wrote:

Wizards have a very diverse pool of damage types that they can do and if the apparent shift to more weaknesses and resistances holds up across more monsters, it really will be a buff to wizards without changing anything about them.

This has come up a few times - and I'm not sure it's true. Where are people seeing more resistances and weaknesses? It should be pretty easy to find, since elementals in particular are really consistent across elements at having them.

Going through them

Air: looking at some of the older elementals (zephyr hawk, living whirlwind, elemental hurricane) they all had immunities bleed, paralyzed, poison, sleep. Looking over the ones from Rage of Elements...same immunities. Except for a few of them like "despairing pall" which have electricity immunity because they're living thunderstorms. Things like Picture-In-The-Clouds and Veiled Current, which are pure air, have the exact same immunities as the bestiary air elementals.

Earth: looking at older stuff (living landslide, living boulder, elemental avalanche) Immunities bleed, paralyzed, poison, sleep. Same on the Rage of Elements creatures.

Fire: same immunities, now have weakness to water, which some GMs had already houseruled because yes of course. The brass bastion is the big standout...and we've all accepted that it's pretty much a discount brass golem, meaning that its immunity to magic actually got downgraded to resistance only.

Water: older elementals like elemental tsunami have immunities bleed, paralyzed, poison, sleep; Resistances fire 10. So do most of the ones from Rage of Elements. No new immunities, resistances, or weaknesses.

Metal and wood are new and thus harder to compare to past elementals, but they're pretty much what you'd expect.

Metal: Looking at kinzaruk, abysium horror, and skymetal striker: Immunities bleed, paralyzed, poison, sleep; Resistances electricity 5. Standard elemental immunities + one resistance, just like water. A few have some physical resistance where appropriate.

Wood: looking at snapdrake, carved beast, and pine pangolin: Immunities bleed, paralyzed, poison, sleep; Weaknesses axes 5, fire 10. Standard elemental immunities + poison for slow metabolism, vulnerability to what you'd expect. Seems like a mirror image of fire to me.

I'm just not seeing a seismic shift in monster design. "Fire elementals now have water weakness" is really the only thing I can see that changed, and that's a change that's been overdue for years.

[Themetricsystem]

I really don't think anyone should be looking at RoE monsters as an example of any kind of shift in monster design for resistances/immunities/weaknesses at all. The inclusions in that book are inextricably linked to the elements and part of that is the theme of elements that are opposed to one another and that have specific interactions between them so it was only natural for them to all have a greater number of resistances/immunities/weaknesses than you'd find in any other more general grab-bag Bestiary style book because these are all fit to form for the book they're in and aren't representative of how all other creatures will function.

[Deriven Firelion]

wegrata wrote:

Cyder wrote:

No reason to play a wizard over an arcane sorc now, they are inferior in just about every way that matters.

Optionally maybe sorcerers will also get worse in the remaster. Maybe we'll see bloodlines only get a slot dedicated so it can only cast a bloodline spell similar to what we see here.

If they were to knock down other classes to make the wizard look better, I think they will piss off their customer base more than they can imagine. It would be a severe, severe mistake by Paizo designers that may not even be fixable at this point. I doubt they do it.

It's one thing to not fix an already bad class like the wizard or witch and entirely another thing to ruin classes people enjoy that isn't imbalanced at all.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

wegrata wrote:

Cyder wrote:

No reason to play a wizard over an arcane sorc now, they are inferior in just about every way that matters.

Optionally maybe sorcerers will also get worse in the remaster. Maybe we'll see bloodlines only get a slot dedicated so it can only cast a bloodline spell similar to what we see here.

If they were to knock down other classes to make the wizard look better, I think they will piss off their customer base more than they can imagine. It would be a severe, severe mistake by Paizo designers that may not even be fixable at this point. I doubt they do it.

It's one thing to not fix an already bad class like the wizard or witch and entirely another thing to ruin classes people enjoy that isn't imbalanced at all.

Sure, but this is acting like this was their only choice when it was not. Or that they didn't have a choice at all in regards to this. And no, I'm not taking "Paizo had to change things to conform to the ORC and avoid the OGL" as an excuse for Wizards being nerfed even more than what they already are, because it's not like they couldn't have come up with a more elegant system than what they're implementing now. And it's not like they couldn't do it for the Wizard when every other class is getting a buff in some fashion or another, even if it's something as simple as "Free Martial Proficiency." Bard is already pretty solid at melee because of Inspire Courage, getting free Martial proficiency is pretty OP, since before it used to be an entire Muse to get it. Rogue can walk around wielding D8/Reach Finesse/Agile weapons without (much) issue now. Clerics can have automatic staying power without attribute investment. Sorcerers? They get stronger with each bloodline that gets released.

And what does the Wizard get? A reduction in bonus spell slot options while maintaining the same mediocre at-best Focus Spells that is really only there just to exist and remind you that you could have had better options if you just played a different class, with little to no increase or change to their feats. Short of like, 3-4 feats in the class, the rest is gargbage or number adjustments, and they're bad compared to other classes that get more, better feats, some of which give better number adjustments at even lower levels!