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getting free Martial proficiency is pretty OP
Don't really agree. With the way weapons are balanced, going from partial to full category proficiency is pretty marginal. Rogues and Bards already had decent weapon options.
It's not a big win for either of them in the same way it's not a big win for Wizards to get full simple (which is why I think it's weird to see people like Unicore acting like it is).
The core problems with the wizard don't have all that much to do with what other classes are capable of, it's that the wizard has all these deficiencies built into its chassis in exchange for... ??? Something.
And the problems will persist as long as Paizo keeps having unrealistic expectations about how people play Wizards, no matter what happens to Bards or clerics or druids or rogues.
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Doom and Glooming about the Wizard when we do not know:
- What the Arcane Theses are now
- What the Wizard's Focus Spells are now.
Since a reasonable way to handle "Arcane Schools are weaker overall" is "make your arcane thesis noticeably better."
I don't know what you guys are talking about, Player Core isn't even going to have any wizard schools. All Wizards are elementalists now and get plenty of curriculum spell slot choices and good focus spells from their specialized elemental trait. Maybe just archetype witch for a third focus point and some illusion/enchantment access.
"Battle school? Yeah, I went there, I'm a fire elementalist, my roomate majored in air. My cousin did earth at the civil school across town."
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I think I am pretty happy with what I have seen about the wizard thus far in the remastery. I think a lot of the loudest voices complaining about the wizard getting "nerfed" are people who have felt like the PF2 wizard was not a good class to begin with. It doesn't seem like they set out to fix the wizard. The wizard is still a really fun class for players who like the challenge of finding just the right magical tool to address the current situation and will continue to fill that role into the future. Their new schools are a little tighter of a fit of narrative to function, and moving away from certain D&D tropes was always going to raise some red flags for some players. GMs are going to have a much, much simpler time of modifying schools and making them feel unique to their game world as well as make their players happy by modifying the school spell lists. If none of the existing schools thrill you, wait several months. It seems pretty obvious that new schools are going to be a common add on for APs and Lost Omen settings.
There are plenty of other casters out there that might better fill any one player's caster fantasy, and maybe the school wizards of D&D truly are dead in PF2 (I think that is debatable, but also, not worth debating), but the PF2 wizard has been a blast in play, and I would be really surprised if it suddenly becomes a dead class that no one wants to play anymore. I am really excited to see the Schools of Magic worked in more to the narrative and lore of Golarion and can't wait to see how the Rune Lords fit into it.
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Doom and Glooming about the Wizard when we do not know:
- What the Arcane Theses are now
- What the Wizard's Focus Spells are now.Since a reasonable way to handle "Arcane Schools are weaker overall" is "make your arcane thesis noticeably better."
I suspect theses and focus spells got a glow up similar to Murksight.
Paizo's PR approach to handling "Arcane Schools are weaker overall" was to do a presentation at GenCon saying "hey guys, look at the exicting and good stuff we did to arcane schools!" If that's what they think is the most positive news, I believe them.
I regret only that you'll all have become too scarred and unfeeling about this by November to feel what you should when this all is revealed.
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getting free Martial proficiency is pretty OPDon't really agree. With the way weapons are balanced, going from partial to full category proficiency is pretty marginal. Rogues and Bards already had decent weapon options.
It's not a big win for either of them in the same way it's not a big win for Wizards to get full simple (which is why I think it's weird to see people like Unicore acting like it is).
The core problems with the wizard don't have all that much to do with what other classes are capable of, it's that the wizard has all these deficiencies built into its chassis in exchange for... ??? Something.
And the problems will persist as long as Paizo keeps having unrealistic expectations about how people play Wizards, no matter what happens to Bards or clerics or druids or rogues.
Speaking as someone who has seen a Bard be pretty effective in melee at high level play (up to 20th) from taking Fighter dedication with a Reach weapon, I'll simply disagree with your sentiment, since I've seen a Bard with a D10 Reach weapon using Power Attack hit just as hard as a Fighter's basic attacks, while having not-so-terrible accuracy compared to even other martials.
I would be more inclined to agree with the "limited to simple" proficiency being superficial, though, since Wizards being able to use Air Repeaters should have been done since square one, both from a lore perspective as well as a mechanics perspective (because you won't see Wizards breaking the game with a minor ranged attack that requires reloading). But with Bards being able to walk around with Halberds without issue/investment, compared to simply sticking to Rapiers and Shortbows (similar with Rogues)? A big difference given their mechanics and chassis. Now they can safely poke from a distance with D10 weapons behind their meat shields who can probably make enemies pay for going after the not-so-squishy Bard. What can a Wizard do, deal D6 damage from a pretty short range? Heck, I'd have better luck taking Ranger dedication and going Crossbow Ace and Gravity Weapon if I want an in-class weapon to be functional compared to a Bard, who can just walk around with a Halberd and spam Inspire Courage/Lingering Performance like a chad.
I mean, I'm actually of the opinion that Paizo doesn't see an issue with Wizard short of filing off serial numbers and having to exchange OGL mechanics with non-OGL ones, but that doesn't make it either the right perspective for Paizo to have, nor the proper one, since even comparing to Bard, an already pretty OP class, still got buffed, as superficial as you might seem to think it is.
Especially since it comes off more as "You can use an Air Repeater in exchange for having less school spells to prepare per rank," and not "We fixed this glaring lore issue to make Wizards who are the Intelligence class not be the least effective at using point-and-shoot weapons compared to non-Intelligence-based classes." After all, "Wizards who are smarter than Sorcerers can't shoot a gun, but a Sorcerer can shoot a gun despite being less Intelligent than Wizards," is basically a forum meme at this point. Now it just comes with a nerfbat on your spell slots and spells known/prepared, because well, maybe Unicore had a point of "Paizo values weapon proficiencies to make them cost something," with me referencing the Weapon Training General Feat as a standard (even if flawed) basis.
I think I am pretty happy with what I have seen about the wizard thus far in the remastery. I think a lot of the loudest voices complaining about the wizard getting "nerfed" are people who have felt like the PF2 wizard was not a good class to begin with. It doesn't seem like they set out to fix the wizard. The wizard is still a really fun class for players who like the challenge of finding just the right magical tool to address the current situation and will continue to fill that role into the future. Their new schools are a little tighter of a fit of narrative to function, and moving away from certain D&D tropes was always going to raise some red flags for some players. GMs are going to have a much, much simpler time of modifying schools and making them feel unique to their game world as well as make their players happy by modifying the school spell lists. If none of the existing schools thrill you, wait several months. It seems pretty obvious that new schools are going to be a common add on for APs and Lost Omen settings.
There are plenty of other casters out there that might better fill any one player's caster fantasy, and maybe the school wizards of D&D truly are dead in PF2 (I think that is debatable, but also, not worth debating), but the PF2 wizard has been a blast in play, and I would be really surprised if it suddenly becomes a dead class that no one wants to play anymore. I am really excited to see the Schools of Magic worked in more to the narrative and lore of Golarion and can't wait to see how the Rune Lords fit into it.
Moving away from OGL customs isn't always going to be a bad thing, this is true, but acting like they will always be a good thing isn't exactly a sensible perspective to have on it either. And it's not like looking at other classes who got buffed is a bad thing (other than maybe Bard, but I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole again), but looking at other problem classes who got little changes, or inherent nerfs to avoid OGL lawsuits, and going "This is fine," isn't exactly a good thing like we make it out to be. Having faith until we get the full product is essentially being hopeful that Paizo simply didn't drop the ball, and I'm just not that optimistic person, even if I genuinely desire for Paizo to not butcher the Wizard class more than I feel they already have; it's just based on what we have knowledge of and what expectations we have for them changing things (or not changing things, if only because such changes are superficial in nature) tells me personally that I shouldn't hold my breath for Paizo to do a 180 on the Wizard class, since it's clear they either don't see the problems I do, or don't acknowledge that they are actually problems (and are basically instead features of the class).
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I feel like the remastered wizard is going to end up very close to where the current wizard is overall power-wise, with just some general changes to the game around them that they will feel more than most other casters because they were always the spell slot focused caster.
School wizards will still have 4 spell slots. None of them are going to have more than 2 focus points without Multi-Classing. Wizards multiclassing into Psychic will still be pretty popular. Most cantrips are getting mild tweaks to make it clear where their niche is. Electric Arc is getting nerfed. I don't think you can really call any of the other changes to cantrips that though, although I don't think we have seen anything for telekinetic projectile or more unique cantrips like imaginary weapon. "Losing attribute modifier to damage" across the board is not really a nerf if we get multiple single target cantrips that use D6 or even D8s and scale regularly. I am also curious about the Daze/Haunting Hymn type spells. Overall, if the cantrip thing feels like a nerf, it is likely because some folks have based their entire caster identity on access to electric arc. Here is hoping there is real options for what cantrips you want to choose.
I agree with Darksol that I think the biggest issue in these discussions on the boards is that the developers do not identify the same issues with the class that some of the players posting here do. So of course they were not going to set out to make changes they didn't see as necessary.
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...
I sure hope they get something. Right now they are really lacking. They have the problem of the cleric with boring feats and bog standard casting without the healing Font to make them useful in some great way.
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I agree with Darksol that I think the biggest issue in these discussions on the boards is that the developers do not identify the same issues with the class that some of the players posting here do. So of course they were not going to set out to make changes they didn't see as necessary.
I feel wizard is still going to have the issue of being something that people choose only for flavour until they know the arcane sorcerer exists.
Schools are meh, there was a lot of potential for them but really they are just poorer versions of what we already had and generally feel uninspired the way witch patrons feel.
I feel that people that thought wizards were ok before will feel a slight reduction in choices for school spell over time but otherwise will keep saying wizards are fine rather than looking at them objectively.
I feel the rest will either ignore wizard as a class, use extensive house rules to fix it or just move on to a different system.
I agree with Darksol that I think the biggest issue in these discussions on the boards is that the developers do not identify the same issues with the class that some of the players posting here do. So of course they were not going to set out to make changes they didn't see as necessary.
The biggest problem with this is that if you don't listen to your customer base they move on. While there are 3 vocal positive posters for the wizard, its the same 3 people that can't find issue with anything that Paizo does, the same people that say alchemist and witch were fine when its clear now Paizo realises they aren't.
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There are always going to be people who think of a class as good enough or they are having fun playing it without considering whether they are competitive in capabilities by some measurable metric.
Since I come from a particularly competitive group that likes to see their contribution in roughly equivalent numbers, I like to check how classes perform in a party role.
I'm completely fine if a class does something like the bard who is focused on support or the cleric who is focused on healing where damage isn't the primary benefit of the class. But if that is going to be the case, then make it the primary benefit of the class.
When I look at the wizard, the primary benefit of the class is being able to change out spells on a long spell list. That has not proven to be a particularly useful benefit when a handful of spells are high value and can be used to win 99.999999% of encounters. In fact, I've never seen an instance where stopping to give the wizard time to change out spells was necessary.
On top of that there is only one thesis that allows a wizard to quickly change out spells. That thesis as your only thesis is incredibly boring to have to be locked into just to take advantage of the primary benefit of the class.
Couple that with mostly boring feats and mostly bad focus spells, it's a recipe for a very bland and lower tier class that is easily outshined by most other caster classes.
Makes for a hard sell to want to play a wizard when so many other options look so much more fun to build and play.
All I know for sure is schools or curriculums could have been a lot more fun. I would have rather seen a boosted Spell Attack or DC for school spells like the fighter's boosted accuracy. That would have made choosing between universalist or school wizard a lot more difficult. Then the universalist would be exchanging versatility for more focused power.
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When I look at the wizard, the primary benefit of the class is being able to change out spells on a long spell list.
I mean I think this is the thing. The Wizard has a lot of ways to cast different spells off of a very long list of possible spells, which they have different ways of doing with flexibility and frequency (spell blending, spell substitution, Staff Nexus, even familiar eventually offers this, not to mention higher level feats). That is their thing. If your assessment of spell slot spells is, "there are a handful of spells in each level that I would rather cast as often as possible than try to figure out what is coming up and what spells will be useful in this situation" then you are just not going to like the PF2 wizard.
I think that is ok.
The new schools are much clearer in their thematic approach than the D&D schools, but that clarity comes with a cost of open-endedness. How much of a cost is it? That is where our current debate is, but as someone who likes PF2 wizards, I don't feel like the restrictions on one spell slot per level feel that prohibitive. At the same time, as a GM, I could see certain existing choices very constricting for some players, which is why I think I would offer a house rule for switching out spells to my players, as long as they are willing to embrace the idea of "their school" and explain and defend their choice from an in-game perspective and think about their wizard character as belonging to a scholastic tradition that they will become a major player within. Honestly, I never felt anything close to that with D&D schools and I think there is a lot of narrative and character building potential here that has been largely ignored previously.
As a player, I haven't seen a single school yet (depending exactly on how the focus spells work) that feels unplayable. I have no idea which school my first remastered wizard will be, but I am pretty confident all of them will be able to rise to the challenge of "solve problems with lots of different spells."
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There isn't a class in PF2 that is unplayable.
It's more a matter of do you have fun doing what a particular class does.
I dislike playing bards, but I can still see they are very well designed and powerful for someone that enjoys playing them. You can do things no other class can do very, very well.
When I look at the wizard, I think why not play an arcane sorcerer and pick up wizard archetype to change out spells of level 6 or 8 or lower. Signature spells and 4 spells in the repertoire I can use in any combination is more effective versatility than the wizard and I can still have spellbook with Arcane Evolution to change out daily. And my focus spells are better as well.
An Arcane sorcerer with wizard archetype or even another casting archetype for more versatility is better at the wizard's schtick than the wizard.
If a class is built like that, then why does that class exist? If the Paizo design team can't point at a class and go, "This class has something no other class can do and that makes it worth playing", then I can't say I love the design.
I don't see that with the wizard. Even the witch has hex cantrips, but the wizard? The best they can muster is Spell Blending and that is marginally useful at best. Spell Substitution isn't bad here and there, but useful enough for a class defining feature like the Sorcerer's bloodlines and spontaneous casting? Not in my experience.
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When I look at the wizard, I think why not play an arcane sorcerer and pick up wizard archetype to change out spells of level 6 or 8 or lower. Signature spells and 4 spells in the repertoire I can use in any combination is more effective versatility than the wizard and I can still have spellbook with Arcane Evolution to change out daily. And my focus spells are better as well.
LOL. I've done exactly that. It was a total blast.
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There are always going to be people who think of a class as good enough or they are having fun playing it without considering whether they are competitive in capabilities by some measurable metric.
I agree but I don't think that "competitive" is the right word once TTRPGs usually are a cooperative game. But one think I notice from may players is that no one likes to feel less useful specially after some difficult encounter/event. That's the why many times theres a power game focus on character choices and builds.
Makes for a hard sell to want to play a wizard when so many other options look so much more fun to build and play.
Thats the point!
All I know for sure is schools or curriculums could have been a lot more fun. I would have rather seen a boosted Spell Attack or DC for school spells like the fighter's boosted accuracy. That would have made choosing between universalist or school wizard a lot more difficult. Then the universalist would be exchanging versatility for more focused power.
Exactly. When we receive the notice that wizard's schools was going to be revised due the remaster needing to abandon the old school system we expected something new, more interesting, fun and/or versatile that we already get with wizards thats not good enough. But what we get made whats already bad worse and as I said before looks like was a lazy solution instead.
When I look at the wizard, I think why not play an arcane sorcerer and pick up wizard archetype to change out spells of level 6 or 8 or lower. Signature spells and 4 spells in the repertoire I can use in any combination is more effective versatility than the wizard and I can still have spellbook with Arcane Evolution to change out daily. And my focus spells are better as well.
Or now with the improvements in witches take a Witch with a Wizard Dedication getting some more extra spellslots using same spell DC. Probably mixing some good hexes with new familiar special abilities linked to hex and probably better and more focus spells.
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I feel wizard is still going to have the issue of being something that people choose only for flavour until they know the arcane sorcerer exists.
Which is sort of ironic considering Paizo's general perspective on flavor and the wizard class.
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Maybe competitive isn't the right word.
This is a cooperative game. But I haven't met many folks that when they build a class to do damage, they don't enjoy doing competitive damage, meaning when they look at their companions damage numbers they want to be able to match them with the understanding the spotlight can change on a per battle basis.
When one of my players builds a support or healing character, then they expect to do less damage but be good at support and healing. They feel fine if they can do that role well.
When they want to build a damage dealer, they want to do competitive damage and stand out doing so in a variety of situations.
No one in my group complains about damage when playing a champion because they play the champion to block damage and feel powerful defensively. The champion class has powerful defensive abilities and fulfills that role.
The wizard has no standout role. When you build them to do damage, they don't compare. You build them for support, they don't compare. They don't control better than an occult caster.
It's so strange that this PF1 uber class is the PF2 red-headed step child. It's like the Paizo design team went out of their way to flip the power tier of the fighter and wizard in PF1 and succeeded.
In PF1 the fighter was the class most avoided or just dipped into a bit because the overall fighter chassis wasn't all that exciting or powerful. Now in PF2 the wizard is this boring, bland class better to pick up as an archetype than as a main character just to get access to their spell utility to change spells out for downtime or exploration while using a sorcerer or druid for being a power damage dealing caster.
It's only going to be worse now with the kinteticist being so well designed. The only people wanting to play a wizard now are the hardcore players that do it just because they enjoy the class fantasy. If you want to blast, you would be far better off doing Kineticist with the wizard archetype.
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I don't agree. The spell list has gaps in it, but every list does and what it offers is relatively nice. It's probably not as strong overall as Occult, but that's not really the end of the world.
The thing the Wizard (and the rune witch) share is that they have terrible features surrounding that last. The worst chassis in the game, bad innate focus spells, underwhelming features, lots of sketchy feats (although Witch has some good ones), the worst spell learning mechanic in the game. Wizards are even barred from getting refocus 3 (although that's going away in the remaster).
The PF1 wizard got to ignore many similar problems because its spellcasting was so powerful, but that doesn't make the inverse the core of the PF2 wizard's woes.
In a world where Wizard has class features as good as the bard's no one is really making threads like this.
The only real commonality here is that Paizo keeps giving arcane casters bad features, which seems to suggest that they overvalue the arcane list more than anything else (although they claim not to).
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Point of order, as the threads OP, this thread exists to document and discuss what changes have been announced about the wizard and how that may play out. It might have been over run with people decry the wizard and casting doom and gloom over the class, but that was not the point of the thread, nor is it the unanimous position of PF2 players. Most folks who feel the class will be fine probably don’t feel the need to refute every point made by people who have been dissatisfied with the class from the beginning of PF2.
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Point of order, as the threads OP, this thread exists to document and discuss what changes have been announced about the wizard and how that may play out. It might have been over run with people decry the wizard and casting doom and gloom over the class, but that was not the point of the thread, nor is it the unanimous position of PF2 players. Most folks who feel the class will be fine probably don’t feel the need to refute every point made by people who have been dissatisfied with the class from the beginning of PF2.
Let's just say that I was 100% sure my next long-term character was going to be a Wizard before the recent reveals. Because I've always liked the class and my first ever PF2 character was a wizard (this was back during the playtest in 2018!).
With everything we know so far, the most satisfying "Wizard" build I can find is an occult Witch.
The new schools are too limited, some of them come with slots that are literally dead after a few levels. A better curriculum spell selection would help a lot, but ultimately still not enough because I want flexibility from my prepared casters and having slots that are limited to a scant few different spells is just wrong. If I want to repeat the same spells every day, I'll play a sorcerer.
I though about playing an arcane Witch instead but that's pretty damn hard to justify as well, seeing how that patron got the short end of the usability stick - again. Admittedly, the primal patrons might end up even worse, but at least I can play a druid and be satisfied instead.
The only prepared arcane "caster" I wouldn't feel bad about right now is the Magus. That's just wrong.
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I don't agree. The spell list has gaps in it, but every list does and what it offers is relatively nice. It's probably not as strong overall as Occult, but that's not really the end of the world.
The thing the Wizard (and the rune witch) share is that they have terrible features surrounding that last. The worst chassis in the game, bad innate focus spells, underwhelming features, lots of sketchy feats (although Witch has some good ones), the worst spell learning mechanic in the game. Wizards are even barred from getting refocus 3 (although that's going away in the remaster).
The PF1 wizard got to ignore many similar problems because its spellcasting was so powerful, but that doesn't make the inverse the core of the PF2 wizard's woes.
In a world where Wizard has class features as good as the bard's no one is really making threads like this.
The only real commonality here is that Paizo keeps giving arcane casters bad features, which seems to suggest that they overvalue the arcane list more than anything else (although they claim not to).
If we're slaughtering sacred cows with the remaster then normalizing the features of the d6 casters would be a damn good start... Surely not ALL of the wizard's defenses should be bad, right? They should get legendary in will?
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Heck they gave bards martial by default while keeping legendary casting, a legendary save, a the best focus spells. But they nerf one of the 2 things wizard had going for it.
Not to mention that bards get armor proficiency, more HP and are still the only caster with master perception.
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Point of order, as the threads OP, this thread exists to document and discuss what changes have been announced about the wizard and how that may play out. It might have been over run with people decry the wizard and casting doom and gloom over the class, but that was not the point of the thread, nor is it the unanimous position of PF2 players. Most folks who feel the class will be fine probably don’t feel the need to refute every point made by people who have been dissatisfied with the class from the beginning of PF2.
Please stop posts like this.
You have no claim to some silent majority. You do not get to decide how people should feel or how people should talk. You’ve been trying to “other” people who don’t agree with you on this and other topics for years.
Post as yourself, for yourself, and cease this constant claim to other peoples voices.
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I find it very funny that bards get master will saves two levels before psychics
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I really would love them to make summoning useful even if they went the battle form route with preset summons. I want them useful at the levels against the tough enemies you would use them against. they are way too far behind in level in a game using PF2 math to be useful.
The way summons are designed right now is bad for the designers too as it is one of the very few aspects of the PF2 game where the PF2 math completely fails because the level difference is too high. But if they raise the level difference the monsters might be too powerful. It leaves them stuck in a bad place for summon design and balance.
They should scrap the summon creatures based on CR and come up with a template for an appropriate level creature for the spell and some abilities that work for the summon based on type and level.
That would open up the PF2 design space much better than the CR based summons that are too far behind to be truly useful across levels.
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Point of order, as the threads OP, this thread exists to document and discuss what changes have been announced about the wizard and how that may play out. It might have been over run with people decry the wizard and casting doom and gloom over the class, but that was not the point of the thread, nor is it the unanimous position of PF2 players. Most folks who feel the class will be fine probably don’t feel the need to refute every point made by people who have been dissatisfied with the class from the beginning of PF2.With all due respect, this is crazy talk.
If anything, there ought to be a giant outcry about the changes done to the wizard, which is by far one of the weakest classes in PF2, bar the investigator or alchemist (also - stop adding pointless classes. Focus on existing ones instead of adding pointless garbage no one cares about).
I'm a caster player, but even I agreed that magic needed toning down. But the toning down just went way too far.
You can't nerf summoning, and spell duration, and number of spells per level, and bonus spells, and spell damage, and spell effects, and minions, and golems, and adding rarity to spells, and adding secondary casters to rituals (did I miss any other aspect?), and raising saving throws and armor class to the point most spells will reliably fail, while simultaneously making ever other base class except champions better than they used to be.
The second edition kneecapped magic. The wizard is only about magic. They have no other class abilities. Now we can see that the remaster, as far as magic schools is concerned, is a rush job. The main focus of it seems to be making Paizo not suable for plagiarism, with little consideration for gameplay.
There definitely should be as much discussion as possible about this, precisely BEFORE it's too late. Once November comes and people who said "Let's just wait and see" (and who probably do not play wizards or do not care...), well, it's too late and nothing will change before a...
Well, I can't speak for the "silent majority", but I personally agree with Unicore here. This thread has been filled with so many toxic personalities and not so veiled swipes at the developers I have no interest in posting in it.
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Point of order, as the threads OP, this thread exists to document and discuss what changes have been announced about the wizard and how that may play out. It might have been over run with people decry the wizard and casting doom and gloom over the class, but that was not the point of the thread, nor is it the unanimous position of PF2 players. Most folks who feel the class will be fine probably don’t feel the need to refute every point made by people who have been dissatisfied with the class from the beginning of PF2.Please stop posts like this.
You have no claim to some silent majority. You do not get to decide how people should feel or how people should talk. You’ve been trying to “other” people who don’t agree with you on this and other topics for years.
Post as yourself, for yourself, and cease this constant claim to other peoples voices.
On closer reading, you may notice that Unicore didn't say "most people are fine with it" but "those who are fine with it probably don't feel the need to shout about it". They said nothing about whether those people were in the majority or not.
As it happens, I would much rather this thread rein back in a little to the 'reveals' part of the topic and save at least some of the speculation for if/when that time comes. I'm sure another "Wizard Nerfs and Why They're Bad" thread would gain plenty enough traction as it is--I myself am not really fond of the appearance that Wizards have nothing on Arcane Sorcerers except a hypothetically larger (but practically not) repertoire.
Even so, I find this nerf insignificantly small compared to what is to me a much more significant buff to the flavour of the wizard. The execution of the new spell schools may be underwhelming, but having a study that says something about them besides "1/8th of all magic that fits under an arbitrary definition of vaguely similar effects" might mean somebody at my table is finally interested enough in the flavour of a wizard to play one instead of another Sorcerer (regardless which is technically more powerful).
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If we're slaughtering sacred cows with the remaster then normalizing the features of the d6 casters would be a damn good start... Surely not ALL of the wizard's defenses should be bad, right? They should get legendary in will?I don't agree. The spell list has gaps in it, but every list does and what it offers is relatively nice. It's probably not as strong overall as Occult, but that's not really the end of the world.
The thing the Wizard (and the rune witch) share is that they have terrible features surrounding that last. The worst chassis in the game, bad innate focus spells, underwhelming features, lots of sketchy feats (although Witch has some good ones), the worst spell learning mechanic in the game. Wizards are even barred from getting refocus 3 (although that's going away in the remaster).
The PF1 wizard got to ignore many similar problems because its spellcasting was so powerful, but that doesn't make the inverse the core of the PF2 wizard's woes.
In a world where Wizard has class features as good as the bard's no one is really making threads like this.
The only real commonality here is that Paizo keeps giving arcane casters bad features, which seems to suggest that they overvalue the arcane list more than anything else (although they claim not to).
More or less agree. The existing chassis seems to be mostly a legacy thing.
I'm not sure if Paizo even considers it a balancing factor at all. The witch chassis is mechanically deficient in every way compared to the Druid or Cleric's, but there's no obvious advantage conferred to the class somewhere else, most of its other features have clear parallels in competing classes.
... So it kind of feels like 6 hp, no armor, and manual spell learning are just sort of treated like ribbon features rather than legitimate weaknesses.
Even so, I find this nerf insignificantly small compared to what is to me a much more significant buff to the flavour of the wizard.
Conceptually I agree with you, but when flavor improvements largely manifest as mechanical nerfs I can get why it feels bad. I love the idea of 'real schools' but from what we've seen the payoff for it is less than amazing.
It doesn't help that Paizo's design approach to the wizard otherwise encourages players to trade flavor for power.
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It's only going to be worse now with the kinteticist being so well designed. The only people wanting to play a wizard now are the hardcore players that do it just because they enjoy the class fantasy. If you want to blast, you would be far better off doing Kineticist with the wizard archetype.
Do you really need the archetype? Probably just take Kinetic Activation and Trick Magic Item is enough to meet any needs.
Zooming out on the issue of the PF 2e wizard...
The PF 1e wizard was a god. It could do everything (except heal, and it could do that via summons and limited wish) and equally important, other classes could not easily replicate what it did . The sor/wiz list was fantastic, and contained numerous spells that simply didn't exist on the druid, bard, or cleric lists (excluding domain slots, which don't really count). I'm ignoring witch, oracle, and psychic for the moment, since in many ways oracle was a spinoff of cleric and witch was a spinoff of wizard. And psychic was published late and was more "out there."
Chain lightning? Sor/wiz exclusive. Dominate monster? Sor/wiz exclusive. Forcecage and wall of force? Sor/wiz exclusive. Wish? Gate? Polymorph any object? All sor/wiz exclusive powerhouses.
At lower level, there were similarly spells that wizard got faster than the partial casters (bard, magus, spiritualist, bloodrager, all the classes PF 1e got so much credit for) and thus were basically wizard early access: I'm talking things like stinking cloud, haste, and slow.
But I'd say one of the big reasons the wizard is so much weaker in PF 2e than in PF 1e (in addition to the obvious elimination of the vaunted save-or-die and no-save-just-die effects) is because the arcane list lost its monopoly on many of these effects. The creation of the occult tradition and the spinning off of many sor/wiz spells to the primal tradition was a seismic shift that broke the sor/wiz monopoly wide open.
The arcane list now has to share forcecage , crushing despair , confusion and the like with the occult list, while haste and slow are now shared with the primal and occult lists. Moreover, it now has the dubious designation of being the only tradition with no healing. Even summons don't help it heal, since celestials were moved to be divine-exclusive.
In short, the issues with 2e wizard can be at least somewhat traced back to weakening of the...
I get your point but honestly I loved how the spells was redistributed between the traditions. IMO the problem wasn't about the wizard lost the exclusiveness from these spells (with exception of summon celestials all these stay in arcane list too).
The problem is with this differential removed the wizard didn't get enough in to the class to compensate.
Most thesis are good but at same time looks like they are a workaround to compensate the wizard class limitation that other classes don't have or don't care.
The schools gives you a limited spellslot that you can use only with a small set of spells (and with remasters this will be smaller) and universalist looks like a bad compensation because you don't really get a real spell slot but the ability to recast a spell per rank.
And to complete most feats are just meh to the point that every wizard consider to take an archetype because the lack of useful feats.
So I agree that the lost exclusiveness affected the class effectiveness but this should be compensated in class features but it wasn't.
If we're slaughtering sacred cows with the remaster then normalizing the features of the d6 casters would be a damn good start... Surely not ALL of the wizard's defenses should be bad, right? They should get legendary in will?
The point of wizard chassis being weak comes from the wizards are completely focused in their magic studies so their lack of focus in other things justify their weak chassis. But to this works their magical abilities needs to compensate, something that currently doesn't happen anymore.
Makes the wizard class chassis more robust won't solve the mechanical and conceptual problems this will only mischaracterize the class.Instead wizard needs to be stronger enough in the thing that is conceptually designed to be, using magic.
I really would love them to make summoning useful even if they went the battle form route with preset summons. I want them useful at the levels against the tough enemies you would use them against. they are way too far behind in level in a game using PF2 math to be useful.
The way summons are designed right now is bad for the designers too as it is one of the very few aspects of the PF2 game where the PF2 math completely fails because the level difference is too high. But if they raise the level difference the monsters might be too powerful. It leaves them stuck in a bad place for summon design and balance.
They should scrap the summon creatures based on CR and come up with a template for an appropriate level creature for the spell and some abilities that work for the summon based on type and level.
That would open up the PF2 design space much better than the CR based summons that are too far behind to be truly useful across levels.
I honestly don't like this. This will end like this.
The main problem of summons is in the expectation. The main concept of many people expect is that big creature or a group of summoned by a caster to fight in its place. But the summons design that Paizo made was they are living Flaming Spheres.
So if you see from this viewpoint of summons currently does this job. For example if we compare a summoned Young White Dragon with a rank 6 Flaming Sphere.
For this viewpoint it's a useful spell to use as 3rd action just like flaming sphere is but more versatile.
The thing I miss is that the Paizo instead of made this spell 3-action + sustain they could made the summon spells being 2 to 3 actions with 2 variant. The 2-action with 1-action sustain being how this spell currently are to working as acessory spell to help you to complete your 3rd action and the 3-action version with a higher level creature (probably the double of spell rank -1) with an special 2-actions non-efortless sustain to fit the concept of summoned creature to fight in place of its master.
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This thread is a nightmare.
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...As it happens, I would much rather this thread rein back in a little to the 'reveals' part of the topic and save at least some of the speculation for if/when that time comes..As far as I can tell, what we know is only:
(1) schools rearranging.
(2) "one extra slot per level for school spells + school focus spell + one first level spell" changing to "one extra slot per level for school spells + school focus spell + one school spell per spell level."
(3) some descriptions of the new school spells, which are a mixed bag.
(4) Simple weapons.The other main changes to how the wizard will play, that we know about, are really general changes to magic. Such as removing the attribute bonus to damage and replacing it with an extra die, adding a bunch of direct damage spells with Rage of Elements, and changing how focus spells work.
What am I missing?
Mentalism school gets a buffed Version of the old enchantment focus spells. Same effect, but loses the Auditory and Linguistic traits.
And the buff to Magical Shorthand, which will benefit witches and wizards more than anyone else.
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I am not here to tell people that they have to like PF2 wizards or any specific part of casting, but I see players use summons and damaging spells all the time to great effect. It was similar with battle forms too for a while, but even many of the folks who initially were wary of them now seem to consider battle forms some of their favorite spells.
How GMs run encounters can be important in determining whether summoning creatures is worth while or not, and so I can see why there is still some frustration here, but if the GM has the encounter engage with the summon at all, it is usually a net win for the caster over doing something like cast slow against a target with a high will save. Even at higher levels of the game I see other players casting summons fairly frequently, and feel like their characters are making vital contributions, even during difficult encounters.
Even at high levels, the difference between 3 spell casters like clerics and druids and 4 spell casters like sorcerers and wizards feels noticeable to me in play. Especially because 3spell casters tend also to spend a fair bit of their wealth on martial combat items and that further eats into the casting potential of a character. I think it is good there are a diverse array of classes at this point that all feel different from each other. Of course that means every player is going to like the design of some over others. I have had some bad experiences with some classes too and it will be a while before I play a magus, an investigator, a Druid, a bard or a ranger again. I don’t hate their design, I just find their routines tedious and static. I have never found that to be the case with the PF2 wizard. Nothing about the remastery changes make me feel like the wizard is getting locked down. I don’t like every spell in every school that has been revealed, but I see a spell worth learning for free for every school at every level so far revealed. And again, far more importantly:
These new spell schools are far easier for GMs to integrate into their games and be player friendly with the support that they provide than the D&D schools. Players who work with their GMs are going to have no problem making the schools an interesting and fun part of the story, something I have actually never seen with any wizard player thus far in PF2.
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Wizards are pretty potent even before the remaster, and the focus spell changes are a pretty big buff to just about every caster so since the monster math isn't changing I think they've just been buffed.
Even the 'smaller' spell list on the schools is a wash, because between having useful spells directly on those lists that simply weren't the same school in the first place, thematic spells the text encourages your GM they should feel free to approve (its hard to imagine a GM trying to rationalize True Strike as not thematic for Battle Magic), and the ability to sack an offending slot (like Battle Magic's First Level Spells) into a staff for the extra charge instead, its hard to imagine a situation where they're being held back. I'd rather have this than try to fill low level evocation slots-- I was sacrificing them to spell blender whenever possible.
Then you factor in the ability to more closely theme Wizard subclasses to different concepts, many of which are pulling from multiple schools to make it happen, as a Wizard player I'm pretty excited-- I'm really hoping we see a dedicated Chronomancer school subclass at some point.
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I'm really hoping we see a dedicated Chronomancer school subclass at some point.
A Chronomancer would probably be the only school-based Wizard I would want to play that isn't garbage, since most time-based spells are universally useful to all manner of play.
I can even anticipate what spells it will have per rank based on the example Mentalist School:
Cantrips: Warp Step, Time Sense
1st: Sure Strike, Quick Sort, Longstrider
2nd: Loose Time's Arrow, Mirror Image
3rd: Haste, Time Jump
4th: Blink, Dimension Door
5th: Quicken Time, Rewinding Step
6th: Awaken Entropy, Cast Into Time
7th: Momentary Recovery, Time Beacon
8th: Disappearance, Maze
9th: Foresight
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Darksol, this is very much what I mean about wizard schools now being a very, very easy tool for GMs to give their players interesting and story relevant mechanics.
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Darksol's curriculum is better than each and every one of the official curriculums we have seen so far.
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I can even anticipate what spells it will have per rank based on the example Mentalist School:Cantrips: Warp Step, Time Sense
1st: Sure Strike, Quick Sort, Longstrider
Longstrider is now Tailwind and an air trait spell, so no time for you. I'll be interested to see how many other formerly abstract school concepts got reconceptualized with an elemental flavor and attached trait.
Elemental archetype is the true school specialist for wizards.