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Here is kind of the core of my concern, pardon me if I am a broken record.
Currently, say you are a lvl 9 Conjuration wizard, and are prepping you Spell rank 5 bonus slot.
Here are the spells you could put in it, not counting heighen options.
Black Tentacles
Blink Charge
Flammable Fumes
Impaling Spike
Incendiary Fog
Passwall
Pillars of Sand
Return Beacon
Secret Chest
Shadow Walk
Summon Dragon
Wall of StoneNow if you are a civics wizard.
2-3 Spells.It massively cuts down on the options you have for that already annoyingly restrictive bonus slot.
This supposes that they will not change the slots system. I do not remember seeing anything explicitly saying it would stay the exact same.
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It's also possible that new spells will be added, or spells from other disciplines would be brought in.
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I don't think the list will be that small. That would be a rather amateurish mistake for a company of Paizo's caliber to make. My guess would be that either the list will be much longer, or the schools will work differently than they used to so a shorter list won't be a problem. Most likely the former.
They might just add a free slot at every spell rank. Even a short list would still mean bonus slots.
And yes, I could completely see non-Arcane spells in those lists.
For ease of entry, I think a couple overly obvious schools of magic that are supposed to do a very basic player fantasy need giant billboard names. The school of battle magic is good for bullhorning “this is the school for a combat focused wizard.” Names that are too esoteric for very basic options that many players will want will only confound newer players. Hopefully the spell selection in these schools will well match the themes and do what they say on the box.The Schools being changed into something so anodyne they look like they came from an undergraduate college curriculum is depressing.
If Paizo is really that starved for people who are good at naming things, call Onyx Path. They always come up with weird, evocative names for stuff, but I think you can do better than "School of Battle Magic/Civic Wizardry"
Very good points each of you.
I agree with you both.
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I have never gotten Runelords. I haven't had a player try one either.
It just seems such a disservice to rune magic as a concept to tie it into the seven deadly sins. Runes have always in my mind been a discipline about precision and control.
For me the concept is a non starter.
I'm not deeply steeped in the Runelord lore, but I thought I'd read that they were originally associated with seven virtues, and later became evil and came to represent the seven vices.
If my memory is correct, that suggests to me that their schools of magic are morally null, and the virtue/vice thing is a simply a statement of how people use their magic.
In which case your view of them as example of precision and control isn't really affected by the whole 'sins' theme.
The “bonus spell from school” thing is a definite question mark right now, so speculating too hard on what that means is probably an exercise in futility and frustration.
It is hard to imagine 3+1 school spell being seen by anyone as anything but a nerf to the class since we know that schools of magic are getting much more narrow and limited. That means the developers probably see that too. Remember though that “universalist” is now also a school, so a fair bit could be changing with feats and access to how arcane bond works.
It is safe to assume that they know people have been unsatisfied with the wizard in PF2. Where that dissatisfaction was related to options to play into school themes, these changes address that by removing expectations that making the same kind of thematic wizard that was an OGL only story of a wizard is a design focus of the game. The easiest way to help disappointed folks get excited about what they get instead is to make what you get instead meaningful and exciting.
Here is kind of the core of my concern, pardon me if I am a broken record.
Currently, say you are a lvl 9 Conjuration wizard, and are prepping you Spell rank 5 bonus slot.
Here are the spells you could put in it, not counting heighen options.
Black Tentacles
Blink Charge
Flammable Fumes
Impaling Spike
Incendiary Fog
Passwall
Pillars of Sand
Return Beacon
Secret Chest
Shadow Walk
Summon Dragon
Wall of StoneNow if you are a civics wizard.
2-3 Spells.It massively cuts down on the options you have for that already annoyingly restrictive bonus slot.
Damn, now I understand what you actually meant last time. Sorry about that D:
As others have said, the list will definitely be a lot longer than that, so it won't be that big of a deal. Spontaneous casters all have to deal with that to an even greater degree. However, it is still a bespoke list, which is a lot less neat than the previous big categories. On the other hand, it allows for stronger theming, which is probably the intent. Swings and roundabouts I guess.
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What I find weird is that so far we have not seen a move away from wizards, magi and witches often needing to blow substantial amounts of money on learning spells. Meanwhile clerics and druids just know literally everything that's common.
I like the idea behind it, it makes thematic sense for the more studious characters to need to learn. I just don't see the need to punish them in the process.
The argument that the number of options would be paralyzing to some players otherwise also no longer holds much water in my eyes. The divine spell list has 227 common spells at this point. Yes, arcane has 410; However, how much does the chance of decision paralysis really increase when you are already choosing between 20 options at many levels? Not to mention the witch having access to other traditions that don't even have that excuse.
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I think the divine spell list is going to shrink in the remaster. They are getting rid of legacy spells and grouping a lot together in the remaster. The spell lists are another thing that is going to feel like a big change when we actually, finally see it.
Honestly, it would make a lot of sense for Divine's list to shrink a little in its versatility, but get some strategic buffs, like what's coming to divine lance. Maybe merge moonlight ray and sunbeam, or outright replace the latter with the former if the OGL requires it.
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Removed some posts and quotes about real world stuff that had the potential to spiral. Please abide by the Community Guidelines.
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The condensing of spells will definitely feel like a buff and not a nerf. You will have many less condition removal spells that you might potentially have to have memorized , and I think I remember saying that it will focus more on the condition than the source.
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The condensing of spells will definitely feel like a buff and not a nerf. You will have many less condition removal spells that you might potentially have to have memorized , and I think I remember saying that it will focus more on the condition than the source.
YES! This was desperately needed. Those have basically always been "scroll spells". This is also a perfect change for the Divine list--fewer, but stronger spells.
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If they manage to nerf the already mediocre wizard for flavor, of all things, and manage to buff the witch's mechanics enough to pass it I'll laugh for a week.
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Here are the spells you could put in it, not counting heighen options.
Black Tentacles
Blink Charge
Flammable Fumes
Impaling Spike
Incendiary Fog
Passwall
Pillars of Sand
Return Beacon
Secret Chest
Shadow Walk
Summon Dragon
Wall of StoneNow if you are a civics wizard.
2-3 Spells.It massively cuts down on the options you have for that already annoyingly restrictive bonus slot.
I totally understand where you are coming from, but when I look at that list again trying to step back from the Old schools, it is pretty easy to see how meaningless the categories were that were grouping these spells together. Shadow walk, wall of stone, summon dragon, blink charge, flammable fumes all belonging together in the same school?
Meanwhile a necromancer got
Blister
blood feast
cloudkill
Invoke spirits
Mariner's curse
Wyvern Sting
2 of which are uncommon and only one of which really fits in the theme of being a necromancer casting spirtly/death magic
Like how is incendiary fog conjuration, but poison fog necromancy?
At least moving schools away from arbitrary traits that had to be stuck on everything and onto arbitrary lists that are built from the ground up to stick to a theme, it will be a lot easier to go to your GM and say, "can we switch this spell for this spell because it makes a lot more sense to my vision of the school of magic my wizard belongs to? And even that will only really be necessary if every school gives a bonus spell per day that has to be selected from that list, which is going to be really weird with the universalist one that is probably just built by the player themselves from whatever spells they want.
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Reminder that fear is enchantment in PF2, but was necromancy in D&D. The spell schools have never made sense.
Honestly, maybe a hot take, but the original schools were more like this new proposition than one might initially assume. Necromancy, back in the old D&D days, wasn't an objective school of life and death--it was just a blanket term for "dark, spooky magic". We might even get a similar school in PF2 now.
I personally can't wait to play a wizard from a school sponsored by a fallen Prophet of Kalistrade that went political and only enjoys spreading anguish.
:>
The “bonus spell from school” thing is a definite question mark right now, so speculating too hard on what that means is probably an exercise in futility and frustration.
It is hard to imagine 3+1 school spell being seen by anyone as anything but a nerf to the class since we know that schools of magic are getting much more narrow and limited. That means the developers probably see that too. Remember though that “universalist” is now also a school, so a fair bit could be changing with feats and access to how arcane bond works.
I have to agree here, I can't imagine them being 4+1 or something like that. I don't even know what else it could be either if it isn't 3+1
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“Pathfinder 2 got D&D’s schools of magic (brought fully over into PF1 with barely any change) all wrong, how could they decide to get rid of them when people are constantly complaining that D&D schools of magic don’t work right in this game, especially when the game has to take active steps away from things that clearly originate with D&D?”
Sounds like a circular argument into disappointment. I get being upset about it, but if you have been disappointed in how schools of magic have worked in PF2 thus far, clearly it is time they go a different direction, right?
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Again the issue was not the schools, those were specific about they were about. Its the fact that they changed spells from the school that they were meant to be in with disregard.
So Cure Light Wounds being conjuration and Fear being necromancy was how they were "meant to be"?
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It is another change from simulationist type approach to a gamist approach.How is "arbitrary categories picked by writers for reasons of gameplay considerations" less gamist than instead categorizing spells based on the methodology and educational disciplines that characters within the setting use?
I feel like sometimes the whole simulationist/gamist thing has just become shorthand for thing I like/thing I don't like.
No it is a real tend. Make the game have better game play, versus make the game simulate some fictionaly reality. Playablility versus flavour. Some people are all the way at one extreme in terms of what they like. Most people want some sort of balance.
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Again the issue was not the schools, those were specific about they were about. Its the fact that they changed spells from the school that they were meant to be in with disregard.So Cure Light Wounds being conjuration and Fear being necromancy was how they were "meant to be"?
Obviously not. Which is the point. The writers never embraced it. OR perhaps were never given the time to do that. Which made it almost impossible for the fans to. It is a sorry saga. It would have been a richer game if it had been built on. But now it has to go.
To be clear, I believe Temperans has earlier implied there was a time when schools "worked", and Pathfinder has moved away from that halcyon era. I know you see it pretty differently.
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Also universal used to be a school, so it and illusion being the only ones that stay is just off.
I swear I'm not trying to follow you, this is just a conversation I happen to be interested in:
It would be very weird if illusion was being kept as a school completely distinct from every other school having specific themes. I don't believe this is going to be the case. Rather, the explicit reason why 'illusion' is still a tag that matters is because the illusion school tag is the only one that had any mechanical text tied to it.
What is more likely to happen is that the illusion tag will remain to denote the mechanics of disbelief, and some kind of School of Imaginary Things will collect the most iconic illusory spells into a curriculum themed around using figments and glamours to alter one's perception of reality.
Meanwhile, while calling Universal a school of magic is technically correct, it's a bit misleading as it had less than a dozen spells, and the Universalist wizards were known as those who do not specialize in any school of magic. The concept of a non-specialist wizard school continuing to exist is a feature, not a bug.
I wouldn't be surprised for us to have a couple of different schools that fit within themes of past schools of magic eventually. Like a school of shadows is going to be different than a school of distracting light, but both be possible in PF2, and far more likely to happen than the old subschools of schools of system from PF1.
Obviously not. Which is the point. The writers never embraced it. OR perhaps were never given the time to do that. Which made it almost impossible for the fans to. It is a sorry saga. It would have been a richer game if it had been built on. But now it has to go.
Again the issue was not the schools, those were specific about they were about. Its the fact that they changed spells from the school that they were meant to be in with disregard.So Cure Light Wounds being conjuration and Fear being necromancy was how they were "meant to be"?
I very much respect this position and the feelings behind it. The conversations after this announcement has crystalized and made clear to me that the problem is that "doing it right" for the folks that really enjoyed the metaphysical framework of schools of magic from D&D through PF1 would never be satisfied with something that moved away from a magic system that was just going to scream "THIS IS OGL content!!!" Like there really was no way to make it not "D&D magic."
I had feelings that something was off with it, and have been talking about that in conversations about wizards and the schools not feeling like a good fit over the traditions of magic for a while now, but didn't realize how deeply the "OGL"/"D&D" element was the missing piece of the picture. (It really seems like developers are trying to steer us towards talking about "OGL" content to focus the conversation on the license instead of wizard of the coast product in what they are having to move us away from, it is hard to separate them in my head though).
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We've already gone over all the old problems with 3.5's schools. Every criticism I've made of school's inconsistencies has been sourced from my 3.5 books, not my Pathfinder ones. The strange placements of fire shield, cure light wounds, fear, shield, wall of force, mage armor, acid splash and flaming sphere (among others) all started in 3.5. Actually, Pathfinder fixed a couple--fear is enchantment now, cure light wounds is necromancy.
To be clear, I believe Temperans has earlier implied there was a time when schools "worked", and Pathfinder has moved away from that halcyon era. I know you see it pretty differently.Well...it all worked fine in D&D3.5. That was like 2 editions ago. That it failed now is more because it was altered from it's original shape. Why that happened is anyone's guess. IMO, it might have been a change to differentiate PF2 from it's WotC grandparent. But I doubt we'll ever know.
Whether the new changes are good or bad, I'm a wait and see.
I don't really think whether it worked well or not is the subject of the debate so much as whether the logic truly panned out the way proponents are saying. The question is more like "If you are saying the schools as they existed in 3.5 made perfect sense, why is "scare somebody" mind-affecting spell a part of the school that wields the energy of life and death but not the school that manipulates people's minds? Furthermore, why is the healing spell that uses the energy of life not?
The argument being made seems to be "If you think it doesn't make sense now, it's because they changed it, and it used to be completely logical" to which the counterargument is "It has never been completely logical, there have always been corner cases that prove the system was not objective"
I think the argument for cure light wounds is that you're "conjuring" positive energy--hence it also hurting undead. Why inflict wouldn't also be Conjuration is a whole other age of worms.
To me, necromancy clearly always wanted to be the "spooky scary evil-ish magic" school, not some sort of Objective Measurement. That explains the spells it got in 3.5--inflict spells, fear and scare, bestow curse, magic jar, symbol of pain, eyebite, and astral projection fit right in alongside animate dead, command undead, symbol of death and contagion if you read necromancy as deliberately being the "icky magic" school.
And like I said earlier, I'd... kind of love that? Like, that would fit in perfectly in our new school system. You could give them all the spooky, morally-gray powers. Dominate, animate dead, fear and torturous trauma would all fit great together in a school like that.
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That is the thing for me, magic is magic. It doesn't actually make sense in the real world, so it was always going to have to work within a fictional framework. It is a lot easier to do that when you get to pick the framework that fits the world that you are trying to build, rather than trying to take someone else's framework and make it work for you.
When you are a fledgling company that no one has heard of, there can be an advantage to trying to build your world to work in someone else's framework. But eventually that starts to hold you back from ideas that really make your world your own. PF2 is going all in on traditions of magic that are cosmologically connected, but also still pretty mysterious and not something you can fully prove with logic or science, and are intentionally fallible and imperfect boundaries. This is going to be the case with the elemental planes too, and separating "stories that some people tell in the world" from "things that are real and actually happen" is something that players and GMs should explore together, rather than something everyone knows and has to project or not project on their games.
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To me, D&D's version of the necromancy school clearly always wanted to be the "spooky scary evil-ish magic" school, not some sort of scientific Objective Properties of Death Magic school. That explains the spells it got in 3.5--inflict spells, fear and scare, bestow curse, magic jar, symbol of pain, eyebite, and astral projection fit right in alongside animate dead, command undead, symbol of death and contagion if you read necromancy as deliberately being the "icky magic" school.
And like I said earlier, I'd... kind of love that? Like, that would fit in perfectly in our new school system. You could give them all the spooky, morally-gray powers. Dominate, animate dead, fear and torturous trauma would all fit great together in a school like that. You could even give them some of the "summoning evil creatures" spells.
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No it is a real tend. Make the game have better game play, versus make the game simulate some fictionaly reality.
But again, how does defining spells based on in-setting practices and use cases equate to a more gamist approach, because that was your assertion.
I think Gortle is talking about the original changes to, say, give more of "transmutation's spells" to other schools for the sake of all schools being on even footing.
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To me, D&D's version of the necromancy school clearly always wanted to be the "spooky scary evil-ish magic" school, not some sort of scientific Objective Properties of Death Magic school. That explains the spells it got in 3.5--inflict spells, fear and scare, bestow curse, magic jar, symbol of pain, eyebite, and astral projection fit right in alongside animate dead, command undead, symbol of death and contagion if you read necromancy as deliberately being the "icky magic" school.
And like I said earlier, I'd... kind of love that? Like, that would fit in perfectly in our new school system. You could give them all the spooky, morally-gray powers. Dominate, animate dead, fear and torturous trauma would all fit great together in a school like that. You could even give them some of the "summoning evil creatures" spells.
A school of magic dedicated to the absolute rule of Law, and a warring school dedicated to creation and destruction in cycle would be a really fun and funny approach to the end of Law and chaos as cosmological axes. It feels fitting for them to be something magic scholars are still trying to make "real."
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"Alignment debates" are, in-universe, when a wizard who believes that magic is aligned towards mending entropy and a wizard who believes magic is aligned towards causing entropy get in a duel to the death.
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Which is how a hellknight signifier school of absolute order for the abolishment of uncertainty and chaos would view a Firebrand school of freedom and flair in the face of tyranny school.
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My worry around schools is that the Runelord influence may be more direct than people are taking it so far.
That is, instead of Wizard focus spells, each school grants access to themed domain spells, much like the Runelord archetype does.
For example, the Civics school could grant access to things like the Cities, Earth and Protection domains. Replacing the Wizard unique focus spells with domain spells.
This way, Wizard schools would be like a mix of Bloodlines and doctrines.
That said, very much on board with the Wizards being standard 4 slot casters. It schools automatically add spells to your spellbook at each rank, but slots themselves are unrestricted, that’s a very solid change.
To me, D&D's version of the necromancy school clearly always wanted to be the "spooky scary evil-ish magic" school, not some sort of scientific Objective Properties of Death Magic school. That explains the spells it got in 3.5--inflict spells, fear and scare, bestow curse, magic jar, symbol of pain, eyebite, and astral projection fit right in alongside animate dead, command undead, symbol of death and contagion if you read necromancy as deliberately being the "icky magic" school.
And like I said earlier, I'd... kind of love that? Like, that would fit in perfectly in our new school system. You could give them all the spooky, morally-gray powers. Dominate, animate dead, fear and torturous trauma would all fit great together in a school like that. You could even give them some of the "summoning evil creatures" spells.
I think those necromancy spells all fit together except scare and fear. Assuming we have like something like miasma theory or some other old idea of disease. One less biological. Necromancy deals in life essences according to d&d and I think curses fit that. Though I can see an argument for curses being enchantment. I would also say that healing could be argued to be just about any school of magic except illusion, divination, and enchantment probably. Evocation for channeling energy(positive in this case), conjuration for conjuring said energy, transmutation for shaping the flesh to fix it, necromancy for manipulating life essences, and I'm sure someone could argue abjuration even
There is a lot to be said about how evocation and conjuration are both magic that conjures things though
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The cool thing is, we are never going to have to debate what school of magic a spell could fit into again! And I am pretty sure the panel made it clear that each school is granting a unique focus spell. Not one from somewhere else.
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I don't think the list will be that small. That would be a rather amateurish mistake for a company of Paizo's caliber to make. My guess would be that either the list will be much longer, or the schools will work differently than they used to so a shorter list won't be a problem. Most likely the former.
I'd argue they already made this mistake with the elemental spell list and the deity spells for clerics. Paizo doesn't have a great track record with curated lists of spells, they tend to be overly narrow and always get left behind when new and flavor appropriate spells are released in later books.
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One un-asked for benefit of this which has nothing to do with anybody living outside of my head, but when I was cobbling together the spell lists for the various necromancer-type characters in the Whispering Way, I often ended up loaded with a spell list heavy on Fort saves, which was sometimes a struggle to land with the front liners of the party being a Champion and a Dwarf Monk who loved to shut down casters by grappling them XD
The Deity spell lists are small because of the 250+ different deities that grant spells, I figure.
Like even if they were going to give Asmodeus and Torag special attention because they're in the Core 20, that a deity list consisted of 20 spells instead of 3 would be a disincentive to give us rules for playing Clerics of Arshea, Casandalee, Noctucula, Nivvi Rhombodazzle, Trudd, Horus, or Grandmother Spider.
There probably will not be 200 Wizard schools.
The cool thing is, we are never going to have to debate what school of magic a spell could fit into again! And I am pretty sure the panel made it clear that each school is granting a unique focus spell. Not one from somewhere else.
Yeah, and I have no strong feelings towards this at all. In some ways it makes more sense people would learn magic that is practical to their circumstances and what they're doing. I don't dislike the old way either though