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I do not like the civics engendering name/ If they want a wizard that works with the community why not a hedge wizard or hedge mage?
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...The Remastered panel at Paizo Con today was really enlightening about SO many things that trying to jam them all in one thread feels impossible. One of the most interesting and exciting changes that the remastery is introducing (by necessity) is the elimination of what I will call the old-schools of magic, replacing them with actual "schools of magic," meaning that your school of magic as a wizard is the actual school you attended to learn your wizardry and it will determine your starting spells in your spell book and possibly some additional elements of the class, probably along the lines of focus spells, if focus spells are still a part of the class at all anymore.
This means that Golarion Wizards really are going to look a lot different than other game's wizards as there are nearly a limitless number of potential schools of magic across Golarion. The one's mentioned in the panel today (that I remember) include a school of battle wizardry that is going to include a lot of evocation options, but also martial battlefield control options like Earthbind, which would be "must learn spells" for any wizard that is going to be casting spells alongside an army. I think this means that you are likely to have some higher level spells in your starting spellbook right from the start, as they are resources your school gives you as you graduate. The other two that I remember being talked about is a school of universal something (which is like the generic wizardy wizard school) and a school with a really cool name that I don't remember that is about bodily transformation and nature magic that i think will respond well to the "this game doesn't support a good transmuter" line of criticism.
I can't imagine we won't get an illusionist school of mirages and misdirection as well as a cheliaxian school of devil summoning. But eventually we could get lots of different options which could include feats as well as spells.
One hypothetical example of how this will let them really break the old
To be fair, a school of martial arts or something is also understood to be the lineage of master and student, so one could certainly imagine your character being part of a less formalized magic educational system like that.
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I think a lot of people are focusing on the idea that this is going to involve actual, physical schools you have to be linked to, but that's pretty much definitely not the case. There isn't one singular school (or apprenticeship, or self-pupillage) for Battle Magic. Battle Magic is a school of thought, a philosophy. It is extremely unlikely that the Player Core would mandate you have gone to Battle Magic University in Rahadoum in order to get battle spells. At most, it's possible that your magic will be linked to philosophies that hail from a specific school (like how some economists follow the philosophy of the Chicago School), even if you probably didn't actually attend them.
Last I checked, not everyone who writes using the Oxford Comma went to Oxford. If they did, I seriously need to beef up my resume.
The most likely outcome is that these "schools" are philosophies and focused areas of study about what a given wizard thinks magic "should" be used for: combat, community service, transformation, etc. We might also get more flavor about actual, physical schools that may focus on a given school of magic--"The Magaambya teaches all kinds of magic, while the Varisian Academy would more likely give a focus on Protean Form or Civic Magic"--but these would be optional. You can still be self-taught.
I regret being part of the initial alarmism around this. We need to stop assuming the worst possible interpretation.
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I do not like the civics engendering name/ If they want a wizard that works with the community why not a hedge wizard or hedge mage?
Because it's a school for building walls, conjuring magical labor forces, and magically transporting goods and people. "Hedge wizard" doesn't fit that at all.
It really sounds like the universal school is going to be the very open one that will let you pick the spells in your spell book. I think the fear of being straight jacketed by the new schools system is really missing the forest for the trees. Spells are no longer being tied to schools at all. That was stated in the panel. Wizard is still the caster that gets a big massive list and will be able to learn whatever spells that they want. You can be as thematic or open ended as you want to be.
It seems like they have heard the feedback about wizards not having enough feats that players want and are going to add more. With the new schools, they could tie in a couple feats to each school, but I kinda hope they don't go too hard on that, at least not more than 1 or 2 feats per school, because those will be feats that very few wizards can get access to, and it would be much better for feats that interact with the traits and damage types of spells to be open for anyone, and for wizards to build into the specialization of their choosing, although that does risk having certain paths be more difficult to follow for new players.
Overall, the change is relatively minor, it just likely means that some areas that some folks were hoping were being reserved for future development actually turned out to be places where the developers decided that they didn't want to go at all.
I do not like the civics engendering name/ If they want a wizard that works with the community why not a hedge wizard or hedge mage?Because it's a school for building walls, conjuring magical labor forces, and magically transporting goods and people. "Hedge wizard" doesn't fit that at all.
Maybe we can get an oracle of organizational psychology as well
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I do not like the civics engendering name/ If they want a wizard that works with the community why not a hedge wizard or hedge mage?Because it's a school for building walls, conjuring magical labor forces, and magically transporting goods and people. "Hedge wizard" doesn't fit that at all.
Plus, I think a lot of people view a "hedge mage" as being fundamentally more an indicator of skill or formality of training. Like, if we got a "hedge magic" school, that to me would be the "you cobble together magic from all over, relying on more esoteric methods and clunky-but-effective techniques" subclass. Maybe, like, give them some elements from the Ritualist, too.
EDIT: I wonder if these schools, instead of providing a firm "here are all the Arcane spells that fall under Battle Magic" rule, will be more, like, "your training encompasses all normal Arcane spells, but you can also pick a certain number of spells with these specific traits from any discipline".
Probably unlikely, since wizards are supposed to be the iconic arcane class, but it'd be neat.
Maybe witches, especially with the cuadendera background seem more hedgy.
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I like the idea of schools as a way to represent where and how you have studied and your focus.
I think if it is a straight replacement for existing schools with all the same mechanics it is a little problematic because a curated list vs traits has issues as discussed.
That being said, the devs are players too, and are fully aware of this, so I suspect it is not a straight school replacement with identical mechanics. We only know a little about how this works after all!
They were really specific in the panel about how spell schools as traits for spells are a mechanic that is being abandoned. So they told us that there is no chance that the new system is a direct drop over the existing school system. I think that information just didn't make it into anyone's write up (mine included) clearly enough because it was so much new information all at once. We don't know about how the underlying structure of the wizard and the number of spells or how they learn new ones but we could ask James Case in the discord "ask a developer" if we want. He is in a panel right now but might answer later in the day.
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I will say, from the way they are talking about the "elemental philosophies" that underly the new rage of elements book and the Kineticist is that Pathfinder 2nd edition is largely walking away from static, knowable cosmologies, and lean much harder into theories and philosophies that represent subjective applications of magic.
This change for schools fits very well within that larger structure of getting away from having standardized boundaries that are truly cosmic in scope. Even with traditions now, wizards seem to be the only ones limited truly to only being able to cast spells from a single tradition, and it is entirely possible that even wizards are getting ways to break through tradition expectations with schools.
If you can trust your players, letting them just choose a number of thematic spells at each rank that are part of their school would be a very satisfactory solution to me.
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About the barkskin tangent, the good part of "no more spell schools" is that now you're free to design spells that should belong in multiple schools.
I will say, from the way they are talking about the "elemental philosophies" that underly the new rage of elements book and the Kineticist is that Pathfinder 2nd edition is largely walking away from static, knowable cosmologies, and lean much harder into theories and philosophies that represent subjective applications of magic.
This change for schools fits very well within that larger structure of getting away from having standardized boundaries that are truly cosmic in scope. Even with traditions now, wizards seem to be the only ones limited truly to only being able to cast spells from a single tradition, and it is entirely possible that even wizards are getting ways to break through tradition expectations with schools.
Where would this leave the Cascade Bearers and the Mwangi schools?
Are they getting rid of spell traditions (divine, primal, etc?)
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The school changes does appear to impact at least some of the mechanics of Secrets of Magic, and outright gut much of the lore/flavor, neither of which bodes particularly well for compatibility.
I get that they're kinda walking a tightrope here, but I wonder if this isn't a bit much for a "remaster." This level of change may have best been kept for an eventual 3E. Then again, perhaps they're acting on specific legal advice.
Where would this leave the Cascade Bearers and the Mwangi schools?I will say, from the way they are talking about the "elemental philosophies" that underly the new rage of elements book and the Kineticist is that Pathfinder 2nd edition is largely walking away from static, knowable cosmologies, and lean much harder into theories and philosophies that represent subjective applications of magic.
This change for schools fits very well within that larger structure of getting away from having standardized boundaries that are truly cosmic in scope. Even with traditions now, wizards seem to be the only ones limited truly to only being able to cast spells from a single tradition, and it is entirely possible that even wizards are getting ways to break through tradition expectations with schools.
Great question! Right now they will continue to exist as archetypes that can change the way you cast spells, but they might get schools of magic written up for them eventually as well for level 1 characters. I asked Luis Loza about the possibility of something like a hardcover remake of the Strength of Thousands AP after the remaster has been done, and he of course wouldn't say yea or nay about it, but he did say that it would be cool, and even if it didn't happen that Lost Omens books might do something with talking about magical schools around Golarion and the schools of magic that operate there.
About the barkskin tangent, the good part of "no more spell schools" is that now you're free to design spells that should belong in multiple schools.
Was anything actually stopping anyone from tagging spells with multiple schools in the first place?
I expect the end result will just be something in that vein anyway. Spells having one or more traits and schools being more like venn diagrams overlapping with others in different areas with one or two inevitably having the lions share of good spells due to one or two traits just having higher quality spells than the rest.
I think that they will eventually have to remaster every class that was created prior to Rage of the Elements if the system is going to be cohesive.
In a way what they are doing sounds to me like the revised D and D set to come out next year, but without calling it a 2.5 or a new edition.
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The school changes does appear to impact at least some of the mechanics of Secrets of Magic, and outright gut much of the lore/flavor, neither of which bodes particularly well for compatibility.
I get that they're kinda walking a tightrope here, but I wonder if this isn't a bit much for a "remaster." This level of change may have best been kept for an eventual 3E. Then again, perhaps they're acting on specific legal advice...
It really sounds like any game element that could potentially come down to lawyers and judges deciding on "who did it first" was going to be something that needed to be very thoroughly reworked to avoid that even being a possibility. The old school schools of magic is something that was living in that space under the best possible cases.
I also think Secrets of Magic specifically is going to need so much rework that it will need a Secrets of Magic: Revisted, rather than an errata. I think a lot of the ideas in that book were test ideas that have gone on to influence the larger changes we are seeing in the remaster, but they were kinda hedged bets between PF1 OGL ideas and newer PF2 ORC ideas. The good news is that I think it is the only rules book that really fell outside of easily compatible.
I do not like the civics engendering name/ If they want a wizard that works with the community why not a hedge wizard or hedge mage?Because it's a school for building walls, conjuring magical labor forces, and magically transporting goods and people. "Hedge wizard" doesn't fit that at all.
It does feel like the Wizard is supposed to be "the person who went to university for Magic" and spending a considerable portion of your young adulthood learning rather than doing anything that makes money is generally only going to be pursued via "people who come from families who are quite wealthy" and "people or organizations that are quite wealthy and will sponsor people to learn the magic that's useful to them."
So things like "War" and "Building" and "Whatever the Ustalavic Aristocracy fancies" do make a lot of sense to me.
The Hedge person, who did not go to University, is more aptly a Witch or Sorcerer rather than a Wizard.
It really sounds like any game element that could potentially come down to lawyers and judges deciding on "who did it first" was going to be something that needed to be very thoroughly reworked to avoid that even being a possibility. The old school schools of magic is something that was living in that space under the best possible cases.
Yes, that is kinda my read too; it feels like they're making the best of a bad situation.
I also think Secrets of Magic specifically is going to need so much rework that it will need a Secrets of Magic: Revisted, rather than an errata. I think a lot of the ideas in that book were test ideas that have gone on to influence the larger changes we are seeing in the remaster, but they were kinda hedged bets between PF1 OGL ideas and newer PF2 ORC ideas. The good news is that I think it is the only rules book that really fell outside of easily compatible.
Agreed. I think a few of the items in Treasure Vault are now kinda iffy (non-metal shields, for instance), but it is Secrets of Magic which will take the biggest hit by far.
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And why should my spells be pre-chosen for me when the Wizard class was almost always defined as being the most versatile of the spellcasters (via preparation and spell learning)?
One of the schools is called "unified theory" which sort of sounds like the old universalist. If not there will probably be something similar, it would be kind of weird if there wasn't (I would share your disappointment if that ends up being the case though).
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While I am a fan of these changes, the Schools change is a big deal. While for most of the releases after the original core books can still carry over well, Secrets Of Magic is the only book I can think of which will need the most changes as none of the Lost Omens books have any major change, nor do Guns & Gears or Dark Archives have any needed change.
Secrets of Magic on the other hand,
1.The Eight Arches of Incantation is no longer relevent.
2.The Summoner Dragon Eidolon will need updating.
3.Minor clean-up work for the Magus.
4.Full rework of the Runelord Wizard Archetype to deal with the changes with full school writeups.
5.Elementalist expansions for the new planes if not in Rage of Elements already.
6.Soulforged armaments update and cleanup due to alignment removal.
This alone is a least 1/3 of the book, so I think of all the non-core rulebooks this is the only one that would be worth a Remaster.
they can also,
1.Enhanced the descriptions of the different types of magic by making a chapter for each (Arcane, Divine, Occult, Primal), taking some of the Book of Unlimited Magic material and spreading them among the relevant chapters.
2.giving an overarching narrative to tie the book together like they started doing with Book Of The Dead, maybe using the characters from the Tradition Treatises and On Essences sections to act as the books narrators.
3.Revise the Spells and Magic Items from the original release and add some new ones.
If the print run of the book is almost sold out this might be a good idea to do by the developers.
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Are they getting rid of spell traditions (divine, primal, etc?)
Nope, its just spell schools (abjuration, evocation,..etc). The only exception is illusion, which will be retained in a different form.
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I think a lot of people are focusing on the idea that this is going to involve actual, physical schools you have to be linked to, but that's pretty much definitely not the case. There isn't one singular school (or apprenticeship, or self-pupillage) for Battle Magic. Battle Magic is a school of thought, a philosophy. It is extremely unlikely that the Player Core would mandate you have gone to Battle Magic University in Rahadoum in order to get battle spells. At most, it's possible that your magic will be linked to philosophies that hail from a specific school (like how some economists follow the philosophy of the Chicago School), even if you probably didn't actually attend them.
Last I checked, not everyone who writes using the Oxford Comma went to Oxford. If they did, I seriously need to beef up my resume.
The most likely outcome is that these "schools" are philosophies and focused areas of study about what a given wizard thinks magic "should" be used for: combat, community service, transformation, etc. We might also get more flavor about actual, physical schools that may focus on a given school of magic--"The Magaambya teaches all kinds of magic, while the Varisian Academy would more likely give a focus on Protean Form or Civic Magic"--but these would be optional. You can still be self-taught.
I regret being part of the initial alarmism around this. We need to stop assuming the worst possible interpretation.
Even in my initial disappointment about the loss of the old categories, this concept is what has kept my brain on fire. The moment when I considered that for example the school of Battle Magic is something that might be taught at every military college across Golarion? That's engaging. Perhaps they're not identical curricula between the (former) war college of Lastwall and say Cheliax, but the mechanical foundation is similar enough to use the one school yo represent both.
One thing this gives wizards that I felt they were seriously lacking is a logical role in the world aside from "ivory tower academic" and "archwizard". These schools really feel like the major you went to study at magic university. Especially the Civic [something] school made me think of functionally a "magic achitect" degree. Other wizards make walls of stone by pulling a slab of rock out of the air, you make a wall of stone carved with columns in the fashion of ancient Taldor. Reminds me of Fullmetal Alchemist in a way.
And of course, there's always the universalism Unified Magical Yheory for those who don't care to study magic for any specific purpose, they just want to dive into the theoretical underpinnings of arcane metaphysics.
It's such fertile ground for making new schools, especially since they aren't limited to inventing entirely new philosophies like "schools objectively exist but these wizards don't use them, they only use fire spells" because sooner or later those traits were going to run out even if you could tease out a new school for every trait that wizards can wield.
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After re-reading the current Wizard class, I think it would be best to just open the prepared cantrips and slots to any spell you have in your spellbook. Your school would then just add to your spellbook and, maybe but not necessarily, give you a Focus spell. Those could be transferred to Thesis though.
Then to design a school, you would just need to list the spells it proposes for every level, preferably those from other Traditions that fit its theme.
And create a Focus spell. This being more complicated to do is the reason why I definitely hope Focus spells will be part of the Thesis.
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I feel like focus spell would still naturally fit better with schools. A battle magic focus spell or a construction focus spell just seems to fit better to me than a... staff nexus focus spell or a spell blending focus spell.
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One of the things that I used to like about the schools of magic was how every spell could fit into an objective category that was etched into the fundamental principles of magic... And then I came to realize that the differences between one school and the next were astonishingly arbitrary.
For the most, the distinction of whether a spell belongs to one school or another was based entirely on feel or intended function, rather than what fundamental principles underpinning the cosmos it manipulates. Why is manipulating light for illumination 'evocation' and manipulating light to create a hologram 'illusion'? Mostly because illusions are decided to be separate from blasting spells. Why are illusions which create an image in a target's mind different from manipulating that target's mind with enchantment? Same reason.
This fundamental arbitrariness is what made me finally grasp some of the appeal of the Runelords. Because the majority of modern magic is in some way founded on the techniques and principles set down by the rulers of ancient Thassilon, in the categories they defined according to what jived with their personal wheelhouses, we have an answer for where these categories came from, why they (were) so ubiquitous, and why they are so arbitrary.
Meanwhile, arguably the introduction of the traditions really shakes up the idea that all kinds of magic, not just wizardry, are based on the techniques and practices established by the runelords 10,000 years ago, we have every reason to understand that these are only ways of categorising an incredibly complex system of spells by similar features which seemed fundamental to ancient superwizards, but which aren't necessarily representative of the true nature of reality. Something like how our understanding of the tree of life gets more complicated every single time we look deeper.
TBT I believe the exact same reasoning could (and should) be applied to the Arcane Tradition to pare it down to spells that are really Mental and Material.
I sincerely hope the change in Wizard's schools will pave the way for this.
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I feel like focus spell would still naturally fit better with schools. A battle magic focus spell or a construction focus spell just seems to fit better to me than a... staff nexus focus spell or a spell blending focus spell.
I see this too, but I think it's only a holdover we have from the previous all-encompassing school system.
It would make it rather onerous to try and create a new balanced Focus spell every time a GM or player has a great idea for a school of magic.
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Pretty sure the schools will be generic ideas. If you are the School of Battle Magic, it will be some idea of you are a battle mage working for such and such army or you were trained by Mr. Wizard that was into dueling or you stole the notes from Dark Elf battle mage such and such and learned his battle magic. Paizo rarely puts people in strait jackets for background and character design.
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I feel like that's part of the fun. Sort of in the same vein of how we have a focus spell for every single cleric domain.
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Your character isn't invalidated, though. "School of X" doesn't have to be a literal school. See: the school of life, the school of hard knocks, schools of thought, etc. In this case, your character self-taught using notes from the school of protean form, which is what fleshwarping falls under. It's like saying that patrons becoming more evocatively mysterious invalidates a Witch who knows who their patron is- it was always a little off of the class's directly presented fantasy, but remains just as valid now as before.
We don't really know how that works. At the very least, an equivalent to universalist is still kicking around.
Wizards' advanced focus spells have some bangers. High-level illusionists can spend all day invisible without touching their spell slots, necromancers get healing in the arcane list as a spell rider, diviners get one action Clairvoyance with six times the duration, extendable to all day. Witch has two common greater hexes that have to be taken two levels greater, and they're both worse than any of those. I get complaining about the intro focus spells, absolutely, but the 8th level focus spells are generally really good.
... Huh? The whole point is that spells and Wizard subclasses aren't going to be tied to eight schools anymore? And I really don't see why they'd replace thesis when this pretty clearly replaces the schools of magic subclass part of Wizard. Sorry, just not following this paragraph.
The difference is that the rules there point out that it doesn't have to be handled that way. Unless the revision also points this out, I will accept the interpretation of "You must come from a Ye Olde Magick School of Hogwarts" as being the only existing option to being a Wizard, not unlike "Paladin" being the only existing Cause to the Champion class in the playtest, because another one doesn't technically exist within the confines of the class. Even if there is an argument that there can be, until it's printed, it's all conjecture. All Wizards are currently discount Harry Potters until they clarify it in the setting, and my character is now no different than that by proxy.
Picking a School to specialize in (or just not specializing at all) had mechanical impacts on your character, where you got bonus slots specifically for that School of spell (meaning if I wanted more Evocation slots, I'd have to be an Evoker, and so on), or you had additional uses of your Bonded Item for each spell level you could cast if you were a Universalist. Telling people to play a specific subclass means I now have to pick mechanics that I don't like just to be able to pick/learn the spells that I want (because one spell I might like not on my list can't be learned now), when previously, I never had to make that sacrifice. This mechanic already exists in the Runelord Dedication tree, which was purely opt-in; let's not make it a core class feature where you can't cast X spells if you take Y school. By the way, where are my Occult tradition Wizards?
I've never seen anyone tout School Focus Powers as being anything special, and that's mostly because they aren't. The Illusion one you say is "a banger" is pretty meh in a combat situation, especially in the higher levels, where enemies can see through it on a regular basis (which invalidates its usage for safety and scouting). It might be neat from an out-of-combat standpoint, but it also requires good Stealth, which isn't a guarantee, and one bad roll leads to being discovered and chased. Necromancers self-healing as a Reaction shouldn't be used regularly if they're utilizing their positioning, otherwise it's just plain bad, and the Clairvoyance is pretty niche in use, unless you're scouting and/or keeping watch. Witch Focus spells are bad, but Wizards are probably worse.
If they're trying to do away with the 8 schools of magic, which I suspect is because of the OGL, then it's going to be very tough for the Wizard class to not be cookie cutter spell lists of specific spells (think of the current Elemental list currently available), since there is now no means of which to identify what sort of spells behave in what manners. And if they're not trying to do away with that, then it's a reinvention of a wheel that is already, in my opinion, still pretty damn functional, in which case I don't know what sort of problem this change is expected to solve.
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I think a lot of people are focusing on the idea that this is going to involve actual, physical schools you have to be linked to, but that's pretty much definitely not the case. There isn't one singular school (or apprenticeship, or self-pupillage) for Battle Magic. Battle Magic is a school of thought, a philosophy. It is extremely unlikely that the Player Core would mandate you have gone to Battle Magic University in Rahadoum in order to get battle spells. At most, it's possible that your magic will be linked to philosophies that hail from a specific school (like how some economists follow the philosophy of the Chicago School), even if you probably didn't actually attend them.
Last I checked, not everyone who writes using the Oxford Comma went to Oxford. If they did, I seriously need to beef up my resume.
The most likely outcome is that these "schools" are philosophies and focused areas of study about what a given wizard thinks magic "should" be used for: combat, community service, transformation, etc. We might also get more flavor about actual, physical schools that may focus on a given school of magic--"The Magaambya teaches all kinds of magic, while the Varisian Academy would more likely give a focus on Protean Form or Civic Magic"--but these would be optional. You can still be self-taught.
I regret being part of the initial alarmism around this. We need to stop assuming the worst possible interpretation.
The way they described it is like a prompt-- you studied battle magic, so that might imply an education at a certain kind of (in this case military) institution. But the details of "where did I actually go to school?" are still up to you to decide, if you went to school at all. They did mention that they like features that emphasize the wizard as an actual scholar, so the default flavor of it is probably that there was some kind of curricula being passed down to you through a school or apprenticeship or whatever.
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If you prefer the PF2 wizard to the remastered wizard, keep using the same one. If you are upset because PF2 moved away from schools of magic really mattering in their initial design, and you held out hope they were coming back for it eventually and just ran out of space in both the CRB and Secrets of Magic, the answer is “no, they weren’t.” You can write your own if you want to, but it would have to be published under OLG and not ORC so wizards of the coast is going to potentially have some weird ownership rights over your work. If that sounds like a risk to you, congratulations, you now understand why the choice was made.
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All Wizards are currently discount Harry Potters until they clarify it in the setting, and my character is now no different than that by proxy.
So you have chosen to assert a headcanon, explicitly for the purpose of being upset about it?
I mean to each their own I guess but I feel like that's a pretty wild way to approach making characters.
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Excuse me, Harry Potter is a discount Anchor Root.
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Looking at how people are analyzing the traditional schools, I am beginning to think that the Mage the Ascension sphere division is better.
Was it like Energy, Matter, Life, Mind, Soul, Space, Time, and 2 more? As I never played MtA before, the names should be incorrect... Anyway said classification solely based on WHAT(subject) your magic meddles with is at least way more consistent than D&D-ist spell classifications...
All Wizards are currently discount Harry Potters until they clarify it in the setting, and my character is now no different than that by proxy.So you have chosen to assert a headcanon, explicitly for the purpose of being upset about it?
I mean to each their own I guess but I feel like that's a pretty wild way to approach making characters.
To be clear, that is what the OP has stated is what is going on with the class:
One of the most interesting and exciting changes that the remastery is introducing (by necessity) is the elimination of what I will call the old-schools of magic, replacing them with actual "schools of magic," meaning that your school of magic as a wizard is the actual school you attended to learn your wizardry and it will determine your starting spells in your spell book and possibly some additional elements of the class, probably along the lines of focus spells, if focus spells are still a part of the class at all anymore.
So, if that's not what is actually happening, then it's misleading, which I highly doubt is the case. And if it is actually what was said on the panel, then it's not an assertion, it's cold hard fact that a Wizard has to have learned their magic from a spellcasting school; especially considering the Strength of Thousands AP being all about the PCs being students at a spellcasting school.
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The difference is that the rules there point out that it doesn't have to be handled that way. Unless the revision also points this out, I will accept the interpretation of "You must come from a Ye Olde Magick School of Hogwarts" as being the only existing option to being a Wizard, not unlike "Paladin" being the only existing Cause to the Champion class in the playtest, because another one doesn't technically exist within the confines of the class. Even if there is an argument that there can be, until it's printed, it's all conjecture. All Wizards are currently discount Harry Potters until they clarify it in the setting, and my character is now no different than that by proxy.
All right. That sounds like a deeply unfun way to play the game, but that's your call. My wizard is a magical artist who tricks rich people into thinking their art reflects the subject's soul, when in reality they're just doing a bunch of snooping to dig up dirt to subtly reference in their illusions.
Picking a School to specialize in (or just not specializing at all) had mechanical impacts on your character, where you got bonus slots specifically for that School of spell (meaning if I wanted more Evocation slots, I'd have to be an Evoker, and so on), or you had additional uses of your Bonded Item for each spell level you could cast if you were a Universalist. Telling people to play a specific subclass means I now have to pick mechanics that I don't like just to be able to pick/learn the spells that I want (because one spell I might like not on my list can't be learned now), when previously, I never had to make that sacrifice. This mechanic already exists in the Runelord Dedication tree, which was purely opt-in; let's not make it a core class feature where you can't cast X spells if you take Y school. By the way, where are my Occult tradition Wizards?
Ah, I think I might get why this seems so terrible to you? No, you don't just learn spells from your school, any more than Enchanters could only learn enchantment spells before. They just can't have the category "enchantment magic", so there will probably be a school that focuses on mental spells- maybe mind-reading gets thrown in as well, for instance. They aren't going to be limited to not learning blasts and shape-shifting and conjuring magical mansions. Arcane magic still exists as a whole, and that's still what wizards learn; they can just specialize.
I've never seen anyone tout School Focus Powers as being anything special, and that's mostly because they aren't. The Illusion one you say is "a banger" is pretty meh in a combat situation, especially in the higher levels, where enemies can see through it on a regular basis (which invalidates its usage for safety and scouting). It might be neat from an out-of-combat standpoint, but it also requires good Stealth, which isn't a guarantee, and one bad roll leads to being discovered and chased. Necromancers self-healing as a Reaction shouldn't be used regularly if they're utilizing their positioning, otherwise it's just plain bad, and the Clairvoyance is pretty niche in use, unless you're scouting and/or keeping watch. Witch Focus spells are bad, but Wizards are probably worse.
*shrugs* I'll take long-lasting concealment (which is all See Invisibility downgrades it to), healing on a class that doesn't get it, and Clairvoyance over condition removal or a death curse that requires four actions, four turns, and four failed fortitude saves to kill.
If they're trying to do away with the 8 schools of magic, which I suspect is because of the OGL, then it's going to be very tough for the Wizard class to not be cookie cutter spell lists of specific spells (think of the current Elemental list currently available), since there is now no means of which to identify what sort of spells behave in what manners. And if they're not trying to do away with that, then it's a reinvention of a wheel that is already, in my opinion, still pretty damn functional, in which case I don't know what sort of problem this change is expected to solve.
Why are spells going to be more cookie-cutter when they have their restrictions removed? Any time the old framework would have been useful, the designers can always secretly think in their heads, "I'd like to add a spell that would have been categorized as abjuration" and then write a protective spell.
Excuse me, Harry Potter is a discount Anchor Root.
I don't understand.
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Excuse me, Harry Potter is a discount Anchor Root.I don't understand.
Anchor Root is a very popular character from the Strength of Thousands campaign. She has a twitter now.
Yeah, I am actually getting more concerned. Devs indicated they covered the major mechanical changes in wizard, and kind of said bonus spells still work on schools.
So if I have a school with 18 spells, I get what, 2 choices of bonus spell per spell level? And odds are a bunch of the spells are "thematic" as in not that good.
That seems like a big nerf to me.
However, still reserving judgement, but not loving that.
Yep. That said, solid heightening options can smooth out some of the rough edges there. (And since theses aren't changing much, there's always spell blending fodder.) We'll see. If the basic focus spells are on par with the other classes now, I'm pretty chill.
There might be some characters where I just ask the GM to play the old version, though. Illusionist especially, since illusion is the one case where everything that would be in the school still needs to be tagged as an illusion going forward.
