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Those are not the same thing at all.
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Nah I assume the strawman they are talking about is "assuming being perfectly prepared" vs "assuming you can target many things". Which I say is the same thing just worded different. The game expects that you play a specific way and anything short of that (aka anything short of perfect) means you are playing wrong.
Lol. Absolutely not.
There are four defenses a caster can target. Every caster is capable of having a healthy mix of spells for handling what comes at them.
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The wizard class is very fixable.
1. Greatly improve the focus spells and make sure they play well with the school theme.
2. Spell Substitution as a class feature, so the wizard can pick a thesis for fun while still using its strength: lots of spells. Spell Substitution should be the wizard equivalent of Flurry of Blows or Sorcerer Bloodlines.
3. School feats that have quality upgrades.
4. I'd like to see a +1 DC boost ability as a focus spell or class ability myself, but I know they like DCs to be tight. Make the wizard truly a little better at casting when they need it in the same way the fighter is better at hitting. Not all the time, but maybe one time a combat with a focus point metamagic or a 1 time per 10 minute ability that gives them a little DC boost for a single spell.
5. A few more unique high impact spells on the Arcane List.
6. Cheaper spell acquisition costs. I think they're doing this.
7. Simple weapon proficiency which they are doing. Allows more versatile weapon builds.
8. Improve metamagic feats with some high impact metamagic like an Empower type of metamagic usable more often than one time per day. Make metamagic more interesting.
So far the metamagic feat I use the most is reach. Everything else is either class specific or too situational for general use.
I would say the biggest on this list is good focus spells. A good focus spell does so much to make a class more fun and extend their power throughout an adventuring day.
The Thesis would definitely be more fun if Spell Substitution weren't the obvious best choice with Spell Blending being number 2 for those that just want top level slots.
Wizard needs something to make it stand out in the same way the fighter, cleric, and rogue do.
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Yes Arcanist got spells 1 level after wizard, but it was the same level as the sorcerer and other spontaneous casters. So that point is moot.
That point is not moot. That point is a jet-black mark against arcanist. Delaying spell access hurts a LOT. High level spells are KING in PF 1E. You do not want to delay your access to wall of force or teleport or any of the summoning spells or heaven forbid 9ths.
Also no, sorcerer had no way to poach and exploiter wizard was very limited. exploiter wizards got an exploit at 1st and every 4th, as opposed to at every odd level; Not to mention that exploiter wizards did not get greater exploits.
There aren't THAT many good arcanist exploits. I've played that class. I agree counterspelling is pretty neat (though admittedly, mythic counterspell is good enough that I just used that so my viewpoint is skewed) but for the most part they're not really stronger than wizard bonus item crafting/metamagic feats. Which is why item crafting/metamagic are exploit options, of course.
And then there's the excruciating "your spells prepared" list for arcanist. Which is, however you want to slice it, rather painful when you want to use more than one spell of the highest level you can cast. Which, well, it's PF 1E. You generally do.
They have the same delay as the sorcerer, so what are you talking about? They also had the same amount of spells prepared as the sorcerer had spells known. Not to mention the existence of Expanded Preparation (an extra spell prepared) or Spell Latice (an extra spell prepared). As for metamagic/item creation, wizards got 5 feats to get those, while arcanist got 10 exploits for the same.
Yeah the arcanist had weak points. But its strong points were a lot stronger than the weak points.
I don't think Sayre was saying the Arcanist was weak. He was saying the wizard was still more powerful. And it was.
I think the Arcanist might be a step above the sorcerer, but it depends on what you want to do. For pure blasting the sorcerer was top tier.
If you wanted to be an insanely powerful caster doing everything, wizards was that class. They were absolutely nutty, especially the divination wizard. Just nuts what they could do.
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I suspect in the 3rd edition of Pathfinder, your basic "Caster" classes will end up looking very different.At this point it wouldn't surprise me if they rid of spellcasting and everything is just "a focus spell". Which would be the absolute worst.
I mean, "Vancian Casting" is pretty strongly associated with Dungeons and Dragons (you don't really see it in any non-OGL systems). It's probably staying in the remaster since they can't possibly remove it from the game without causing severe compatibility issues. But I see reasons they might want a completely different system for PF3. But it could be literally any other system, so there's no reason to doom and gloom about it. Like other games have had good magic systems before.
He said that it was strictly better than both wizard and sorcerer, so all the posts about how good wizard is in response to that is really only addressing half the statement
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Three encounters is basically the assumed baseline, which is why 3 is the default number of spells per level that core casters cap out at. You're generally assumed to be having about 3 encounters per day and using 1 top-rank slot per encounter, supplemented by some combination of cantrips, focus spells, consumables, limited-use non-consumables, lower level slots, etc.This works fine when it's one or just a few encounters per day. When it gets to about 3 or more, then the model of "build the class assuming they can use highest slot + lower rank slots in every encounter" breaks down. I think the remastering of focus spells is intended to help with this - essentially making them available for every encounter. Am I guessing correctly? Or is there some other remastery update that helps the Wizard class be robust against 3+ combat encounters between morning preparations?
Can I politely suggest putting that information in the revised rulebooks somewhere? It's about half the number of encounters per day recommended in 5e or PF1, and I think groups coming from those systems try to run the number of encounters per day they're used to and end up finding spellcasters aren't able to contribute properly.
I have to admit in PF1 I had more fun with the blood arcanist with spell perfection on fireball when I could cast Empowered Intensified Maximized Fireballs with 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level slots (with other fireballs down to 3rd level with less than all the metamagic at once.)
Of course, I'm also the sort of person who enjoys the Kineticist more than the Wizard.
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What can I say, I'm at least quite satisfied with the idea and act of Ceiling Based Class Balancing.
At least ceilings are way less arbitrary than the hazy "average assumptions" they had when the Other Game's 3e was born...
Design Manager
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Can I politely suggest putting that information in the revised rulebooks somewhere? It's about half the number of encounters per day recommended in 5e or PF1, and I think groups coming from those systems try to run the number of encounters per day they're used to and end up finding spellcasters aren't able to contribute properly.
That's a broad generalization of the guidelines that are already in the rulebook.
Moderate-threat encounters are a serious challenge to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and face a harder challenge without resting.
Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat. These encounters are most appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.
Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources. This makes them too challenging for most uses. An extreme-threat encounter might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all-out, for the climactic encounter at the end of an entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using advanced tactics and teamwork.
Generally that means that your party should be loaded with enough "ammunition" to successfully tackle 3 Moderate encounters. Low and Trivial encounters don't really require any resource expenditure.
There's a lot of possible permutations to the formula and no "one true way" to assemble encounters, which is why we avoid simplifying things to that degree in the rulebook. You can stretch or compress that number based on the type and severity of the encounters that you put in your adventure.
I mentioned that in a other thread aswell, the Vancian System is strongly associated with DnD but then again so is the Armor Class to hit system.Its also strongly associated with Pathfinder. Despite how many people want to ignore it.
Pathfinder 1E is also know as continuation from Pathfinder 3.5 with tweaks the Term DnD 3.75 comes to mind.
But with the System wanting to distance Pathfinder from there DnD Roots those two mechanics points are still a factor.
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He has a whole angle on why another Kineticist is a risky endeavor.
But done right it isn't.
BELOW is a bit of a tangent. But because I believe the only problem with casters is that there's only one themed choice, 7 books late... for me solving that is the "main event" here.
What they need is to make a class that is an "unthemed themed caster".
Put another way, a "build your themed caster" class.
This topic is of course on reddit also, so I summed up an EXTREMELY ROUGH IDEA for that like this:
***********************
The solution to the Kineticist being economically less viable to publish more of is to make an "unthemed" themed caster.
As in... make a generic themed caster class chassis. At level 1 you pick a theme - and then you grab feats that tailor into that theme.
So...
EXTREMELY ROUGH NOT AT ALL YET BALANCED BECAUSE i CAME UP WITH IT AS I WAS TYPING IDEA HERE:
At level one you pick a "style theme".
The same so many class feats (2-4 per level in the book?)... could be tweaked by your "style theme" into being blaster feats, support feats, etc.
An example feat might be:
**Magic Shot:**With this feat you can do either:
A) Apply one of these conditions to a foe: [a,b,c] - Pick any 2, when casting you can apply one of the 2 you picked. You can take this feat again to get access to 2 more.
B) Apply one of these conditions to an ally: [x,y,z] - Pick any 2, when casting you can apply one of the 2 you picked. You can take this feat again to get access to 2 more.
C) Do xdy damage at 30 feat.
D) Do xdy Healing at 30 feat, target is immune for 10 minutes.
- Pick one of these you can with 1 action, 1 you can do with 2 actions. The 1 action one can have it's range extended by 30 feet for an additional action, or if damage/healing get your caster bonus if done in melee for 2 actions. The 2 action 1 cannot be extended (unless you get the 'extend style' feat).
And some text on how it scales with level.
OBVIOUSLY THIS NEEDS A LOT OF WORK. ITS JUST A SKELETON OF AN IDEA THERE...
And the "style theme would do things to focus this in. Setting the damage type and some traits. Some style themes would hard pick which of the above choices you can take. For example, a style theme with the trait 'blaster' always picks the damage choice as it's 1-action option.
ETC for how to make the other feats...
In this way you could build out a list of fairly generic feats that get customized down by each style, and by picking from choices in that feat
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This kind of game design: give people a balanced toolkit to build the concept, is something we've seen since the very early 80s in some other tRPGs. Some of them do it well and some do it poorly. Often it gets too complex because they put in too many options.
So... we just make sure it's tightly constrained to things fitting to PF2E, and then make sure an individual PC has to make extremely tightly themed choices. Thereby avoiding the "Hero System" overcomplexity into meaningless minutia problem.
I didn't come here from D&D, I came here from Champions, GURPS, BESM, and games like that, then 2 decades in MMOs (that made me appreciate defined classes and themed choices to encourage clear play - something missing in the classless tRPGs I came from). To me a 'class chassis' system makes sense as a 'one and done' way to solve the themed caster issue.
I've seen how it works well, and I've seen where it fails for having too many minor options that slow things down.
So... as long as it's themed... Now we're in "themed unthemed themed caster". :)
But that just really means:
"Pathfinder Fantasy Fitting Themed Caster Class Chassis"
- A narrow set of things in there, not too fine grained, offering simple choices of "pick 1 from this small menu" over and over until you finish it out. And the "Style" pick at level 1 is used to "guide / force" your hand as you level up - to keep you in a theme and avoid the pitfalls of later versions of Hero System, just as much as 'clearly defined choices' avoids the vagueness of BESM.
Balance it to the power level of a Kineticist or Sorcerer, NOT a fighter and NOT as versatile as a Wizard... ;)
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He has a whole angle on why another Kineticist is a risky endeavor.
But done right it isn't.
What they need is to make a class that is an "unthemed themed caster".
Put another way, a "build your themed caster" class.
This topic is of course on reddit also, so I summed up an EXTREMELY ROUGH IDEA for that like this:
***********************
The solution to the Kineticist being economically less viable to publish more of is to make an "unthemed" themed caster.
As in... make a generic themed caster class chassis. At level 1 you pick a theme - and then you grab feats that tailor into that theme.
So...
EXTREMELY ROUGH NOT AT ALL YET BALANCED BECAUSE i CAME UP WITH IT AS I WAS TYPING IDEA HERE:
At level one you pick a "style theme".
The same so many class feats (2-4 per level in the book?)... could be tweaked by your "style theme" into being blaster feats, support feats, etc.
An example feat might be:
**Magic Shot:**With this feat you can do either:
A) Apply one of these conditions to a foe: [a,b,c] - Pick any 2, when casting you can apply one of the 2 you picked. You can take this feat again to get access to 2 more.
B) Apply one of these conditions to an ally: [x,y,z] - Pick any 2, when casting you can apply one of the 2 you picked. You can take this feat again to get access to 2 more.
C) Do xdy damage at 30 feat.
D) Do xdy Healing at 30 feat, target is immune for 10 minutes.
- Pick one of these you can with 1 action, 1 you can do with 2 actions. The 1 action one can have it's range extended by 30 feet for an additional action, or if damage/healing get your caster bonus if done in melee for 2 actions. The 2 action 1 cannot be extended (unless you get the 'extend style' feat).
And some text on how it scales with level.
OBVIOUSLY THIS NEEDS A LOT OF WORK. ITS JUST A SKELETON OF AN IDEA THERE...
And the "style theme would do things to focus this in. Setting the damage type and some traits. Some style themes would hard pick which of the above choices you...
I don't really think I agree with this approach, because it feels like it just hacks apart PF 2e casters, removes them, and just puts in a Mutants and Masterminds character creator where casters used to be.
I like my casters to have different flavors and class abilities that separate them. I like druids and their unique focus spells that change how they play. I like wizard being a generalist who uses a book and tweaks their spells. I really enjoy oracle and the way their curses work to make them feel unique. I absolutely adore the unleashe psyche of the psychic and its focus on cantrip blasting.
Differences in how these casters interact with the game, it's what I really enjoy. Just as I hate the idea of taking all of these classes and throwing them in the gutter, which is what I see a proposal like this doing.
Because there's no way to balance having a class that can be built to do everything that other casters can do but better. Where you can build your perfect spells, and stitch together the best parts of other casters to make a min-maxed monster that has Unleashed Psyche with Sorcerers Bloodline and the ability to shoot out free spells from a Font.
And this unthemed-themed caster is going to have that problem. It's going to be like the 1e Eidolon issue where it just becomes a Ball of Claws of Mouths that flies around, because that's the most optimized form of this "make your own monster" class feature. And there's no way this doesn't end up dumpstering the other casters in the same way the Rogue in 1e got dumpsters when every class and their grandma got their own Sneak attack that scaled just as well as a normal rogues, but also having stuff like Invisibility on demand.((Yeah i'm looking at you Vivisectionist)).
It also has the consequences of just being ungodly long. The kineticist is triyng to just be 1 theme, an Elemental Blaster, and it's got so many pages dedicated to it. This class you're proposing is going to take up a whole book with how many class feats it's going to need to cover every flavor of caster possible.
And also, if I wanted to do the whole "Genetic templates you flavor yourself" type of powers, as stated above, I would honestly rather just play Mutants and Masterminds where that concept is the entire way the game is played and built. Instead of just making the divide between Martial and Casters an impassable gulf of different mechanics.
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A "kineticist-style" framework requires massively more work and page count than a standard class, so it would generally be incompatible with another class being printed in the same year, and the book the class it appears in becomes more reliant on that one class being popular enough to make the book profitable. A necromancer *might* be a pretty big gamble for that type of content. And that holds true of other concepts, as well. The more a class wants to be magical and the less it wants to use the traditions, the more essential it becomes that the class be popular, sustainable, and tied to a broad and accessible enough theme that the book sells to a wide enough audience to justify the expense of making it. Figuring out what goes into the game, how it goes into the game, and when it goes in is a complex tree of decisions that involve listening to the communities who support the game, studying the sales data for the products related to the game, and doing a little bit of "tea reading" that can really only come from extensive experience making and selling TTRPG products.
I really hope that doesn't mean that we won't get any new Kineticist stuff in future books.
As an aside, the Kineticist is a fantastic class and should be the new paradigm how class design can and should be balanced, IMO, i.e. around the 3 action economy.
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I guess one of the draws of Wizard is the caster who keeps on finding new spells to put in their spellbook.
And, with the PF2 choice of leaving behind class-specific spell-lists, it means adding new spells to the Arcane list, and to other lists for those spells that make sense. And adding new spells to other lists too, even if they are not Arcane, because all Traditions deserve some love.
That is pretty much the opposite of the Kineticist and their small own world nicely self-contained and with very little interactions with the wider world of PF2's spells, weapons ...
These are fascinating insights on casters and encounter balance. The more I read through this, though, the more it feels like the game's traditional implementation of spells and spell slots carries a lot of baggage:
Effectively, if every class were put on the same pacing, and didn't have to rely on daily attrition, we wouldn't have to make any assumptions of how many encounters a party can be expected to deal with in a day, and the resulting encounter difficulty system would be much simpler and more accurate. If spells were feats instead, it wouldn't be so costly to create more focused classes, as you could draw from a shared wealth of feats instead of having to design bespoke feats each time that emulate the effects of spells. Obviously, the ship has sailed for 2e, and there's something to be said about wanting to avoid excessive homogenization, but in a hypothetical future edition, perhaps Paizo might want to go about this problem differently.
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In a hypothetical system where every spell were a feat instead
Spells can't be made into feats without a significant change to spellcasting. For example, Stone to Flesh at level 6 means that by the time you get to level 11 Petrification is something most parties should be able to handle. Creating a feat out of it would mean creating a level 10-12 feat that no one would take considering how niche it is. It would also mean that nearly every party would be unable to handle Petrification.
Also, spells have a certain "lifespan". Burning Hands is hardly useful past the very first levels and it's OK. If you make a feat out of it, you'll have to find a way to either make it useful during your whole adventuring career or a way to replace it at no cost.
Overall, it's extremely easy to create tons of spells as you don't have to balance them much.
If I decide that by level 9 you should be able to fill a tax form very easily, I can create the spell "Fill tax form", put it level 5 and then it's done. I don't have to balance it against anything nor think about how niche it is.
If I create a level 3 spell that deal damage, I just have to balance it against Fireball and put a heightened effect that is slightly less interesting than grabbing higher level spells and I'm pretty sure the spell is balanced. I don't have to think about its use at level 15 because there won't be any.
The notion of a prescribed adventuring day never really appealed to me
The prescribed adventuring day affects every class. There are lots of limited abilities (Battle Medicine for the most common) that martials have, too. After a few tough fights, everyone wants a long rest.
As much as I agree with you that a lot of players don't manage to handle the limitations in caster's spell list, removing all "once per day" abilities is also a significant change to the game, one I'm not sure everyone wants.ordering encounters so that your party deals with 1 tough encounter first and then 11 easy encounters, instead of going through 11 easy encounters and faceplanting on that 1 tough encounter last
That's unnecessary hassle. The only basic thing every GM should think about is to avoid crazy long adventuring days full of trivial fights. But I've never seen such a thing.
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Many of these responses about hours and days spent pre-reading APs and using divination spells feel disconnected to Michael's words. It's injecting a lot of stuff into Michael's words and then reacting to that injection.
Perhaps it's just differing interpretations of the words, but I would think that Occam's razor is much more on the side of this interpretation than "perfect foreknowledge".
OK "perfect" is definitely too far. But the counter reaction and your own statement here is too much as well. Because often "reasonable" foreknowledge is hard to get. The wizard needs some sort of preparation or they are just a terrible sorcerer.
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Spells can't be made into feats without a significant change to spellcasting. For example, Stone to Flesh at level 6 means that by the time you get to level 11 Petrification is something most parties should be able to handle. Creating a feat out of it would mean creating a level 10-12 feat that no one would take considering how niche it is. It would also mean that nearly every party would be unable to handle Petrification.
I think this much is obvious, hence talk about a hypothetical system. Spells get to be extremely specific right now because casters can equip dozens of them at a time, as opposed to less than a dozen class feats over the course of their entire career. In a feat-based system, you would still have room for more specific abilities, as we can already see now, but you wouldn't be able to take on as many of them.
Overall, it's extremely easy to create tons of spells as you don't have to balance them much.
Hard disagree. Just because you design something as a spell doesn't mean you can abdicate good balancing practices, and spells as they exist need to be balanced fairly tightly when they cover certain functions, or else they rarely see play or become must-picks. "Fill tax form" needs to be made appropriate to its rank or else it becomes a spell nobody will pick, and chaff like that only clogs up a game that tries to make all of its choices valid.
The prescribed adventuring day affects every class. There are lots of limited abilities (Battle Medicine for the most common) that martials have, too. After a few tough fights, everyone wants a long rest.
Battle Medicine is not an option you are being made to rely on every encounter, and options exist to enable it, i.e. Godless Healing. Healing in-between encounters, however, has no resource limit, so it is possible for a martial class to heal to full or near-full hit points each time.
As much as I agree with you that a lot of players don't manage to handle the limitations in caster's spell list, removing all "once per day" abilities is also a significant change to the game, one I'm not sure everyone wants.
I agree, and I certainly wouldn't want 2e to remove those effects. I do, however, believe there is value in having a different system that does away with that sort of attrition. No implementation will ever satisfy everyone, whether the current one or a hypothetical 3e, but that shouldn't stop anyone from trying to do things differently, as Paizo did largely for 2e compared to 1e.
That's unnecessary hassle. The only basic thing every GM should think about is to avoid crazy long adventuring days full of trivial fights. But I've never seen such a thing.
It's not, and I am in fact paraphrasing Mark Seifter, co-creator of PF2e here. Order matters. This is not "unnecessary hassle", it is a critical function of balancing your encounters as a GM, so that you don't accidentally wipe your party.
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Schools were given weak focus spells
The rank 1 wizard focus spells are not terrible but not really great either. You end up looking at your focus point and thinking I could spend it better elsewhere.
The rank 4 wizard focus spells however are mostly good if you can wait for them. Particularly Dimensional Steps, Dread Aura, Invisibility Cloak, Vigilant Eye.
But all of that has presumably changed.
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Hard disagree. Just because you design something as a spell doesn't mean you can abdicate good balancing practices, and spells as they exist need to be balanced fairly tightly when they cover certain functions, or else they rarely see play or become must-picks. "Fill tax form" needs to be made appropriate to its rank or else it becomes a spell nobody will pick, and chaff like that only clogs up a game that tries to make all of its choices valid.
Considering the number of spells akin to "Fill tax form", it looks like the designers think they don't really need to balance them much. It's certainly part of their fantasy of magic to have a lot of utility spells that are not really linked to combat.
It's not, and I am in fact paraphrasing Mark Seifter, co-creator of PF2e here. Order matters. This is not "unnecessary hassle", it is a critical function of balancing your encounters as a GM, so that you don't accidentally wipe your party.
Mark bases himself on the definitions from the book and the definitions from the book are rather general, they don't go into details as to what is too much.
So I agree that thinking about your encounters is important, but being so precise that you choose the position of the Severe encounters in the adventuring day is unnecessary hassle to me.Having one severe and 3 moderates or 3 moderates and 1 severe doesn't change anything in terms of resources: You still need resources for 1 severe and 3 moderates. The only question is: Are 1 severe and 3 moderate encounters too much to handle for my party? It can be a taxing adventuring day.
Also, it's a personal point of view, but I think many players have hard time handling a spell list. From my experience, they hoard spell slots far more than needed and end up with half full (or half empty) spell lists at the end of the day.
Considering the number of spells akin to "Fill tax form", it looks like the designers think they don't really need to balance them much. It's certainly part of their fantasy of magic to have a lot of utility spells that are not really linked to combat.
Except they did. Minor, flavorful spells are low-level, and if they have a useful function out of combat, they are balanced appropriately, because combat is not the only part of gameplay in Pathfinder that warrants balancing. When a spell isn't balanced appropriately, it shows, and Paizo explicitly announced the intent to buff and combine less powerful spells and cantrips, with the remaster preview being a proof of concept of this.
Mark bases himself on the definitions from the book and the definitions from the book are rather general, they don't go into details as to what is too much.
So I agree that thinking about your encounters is important, but being so precise that you choose the position of the Severe encounters in the adventuring day is unnecessary hassle to me.Having one severe and 3 moderates or 3 moderates and 1 severe doesn't change anything in terms of resources: You still need resources for 1 severe and 3 moderates. The only question is: Are 1 severe and 3 moderate encounters too much to handle for my party? It can be a taxing adventuring day.
Also, it's a personal point of view, but I think many players have hard time handling a spell list. From my experience, they hoard spell slots far more than needed and end up with half full (or half empty) spell lists at the end of the day.
You've missed the point of what Mark has said: sure, one severe encounter followed by three moderate encounters is the same composition of encounters as three moderate encounters followed by one severe encounter, but depending on how you order them, players will find those encounters more or less difficult. Starting with the severe encounter means players blow their resources appropriately and are then more likely to manage their remaining resources well enough to take on the remaining moderate encounters, whereas putting the moderate encounters first will incur a risk of players blowing too many resources, then finding themselves under-resourced for that severe encounter, which becomes much more difficult. Order matters.
The point to all this is that these are a lot of extra considerations that come specifically from a per-day attrition system, and that these considerations complicate GMing in ways that aren't immediately recognizable, as the above demonstrates. These rules are generally too fuzzy and numerous to write down, and it's generally assumed that you pick these skills up through GM experience, but in the meantime that means there's lots of ways of getting tripped up, and throwing encounters at your party that are far tougher or easier than their listed difficulty. If there was no difference between running a day with one encounter and a day with ten encounters, none of these complications would exist.
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These are fascinating insights on casters and encounter balance. The more I read through this, though, the more it feels like the game's traditional implementation of spells and spell slots carries a lot of baggage: ...
The PF2 Core Rulebook has its entire 7th chapter about spells and spellcasting from page 296 to 415. One hundred and twenty pages is around 18% of the rulebook. Yes, that is a lot of baggage.
The notion of a prescribed adventuring day never really appealed to me, not even one with as many caveats and as much flexibility as Pathfinder's. It just creates this needless rigidity in my opinion that causes certain classes to either perform too well on days with fewer encounters, or not well enough on days with more, while adding all of these added expectations on the GM to balance and adjust encounters in ways that aren't explicitly marked (e.g. ordering encounters so that your party deals with 1 tough encounter first and then 11 easy encounters, instead of going through 11 easy encounters and faceplanting on that 1 tough encounter last). It's not a prescription that is always followed, and in my opinion no such prescription should exist in a tabletop gaming environment that has evolved to the point where many tables play bite-sized sessions after work hours, and not just marathon sessions on days off. All of this only exists because casters deal with attrition, even though martial classes themselves don't have attrition...
Back on June 27 this year I created a thread Encounter Balance: The Math and the Monsters, which would be a better place for a discussion of the adventuring day. It has been inert for only 2 months, so the thread necromancy would be trivial.
However, just because a GM or a module writer plans an adventuring day, the players don't necessarily follow the plan. My own players are masters of conserving daily resources and will push on past the stopping points in the modules. To balance that challenge, I roleplayed a lot of enemies caught by surprise.
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Except they did. Minor, flavorful spells are low-level, and if they have a useful function out of combat, they are balanced appropriately
So what's the justification of Water Breathing being level 2 when Tongue is level 5 and Fireball level 3?
Looks like they are not at all balanced between each other. Paizo is just deciding at what level it's funny and expected to learn new languages and at what level it should be easy to hand-wave it.You've missed the point of what Mark has said
Am I? Or are you reading too much from his post? Because the post you linked doesn't state anything about order of encounters.
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The PF2 Core Rulebook has its entire 7th chapter about spells and spellcasting from page 296 to 415. One hundred and twenty pages is around 18% of the rulebook. Yes, that is a lot of baggage.
That is also not the baggage being discussed. I am talking about the unspoken, more indirect implications of slot-based spellcasting, rather than what is explicitly spelled out in the rules. This entire discussion is in fact based on Michael Sayre's insights on the matter, so I'm not sure a sarcastic response is really warranted here. I also don't see the need to resurrect your thread when what is being discussed flows directly from the main topic of conversation, rather than your own.
So what's the justification of Water Breathing being level 2 when Tongue is level 5 and Fireball level 3?
Looks like they are not at all balanced between each other. Paizo is just deciding at what level it's funny and expected to learn new languages and at what level it should be easy to hand-wave it.
Except they are; just because you personally feel differently about it doesn't imply otherwise. Being able to breathe water, speak in every language, or deal 6d6 fire damage in an area are all powerful in different amounts, so that they are ranked differently. Truespeech in particular is coherent with feats that give you better language proficiency, such as Multilingual or Legendary Linguist, so it in fact fits within the framework of the game. The designers have clearly put some thought into this.
Am I? Or are you reading too much from his post? Because the post you linked doesn't state anything about order of encounters.
You are clearly reading the wrong comment. Once again, here is the comment I linked (notice it is highlighted in a slightly different color from other comments), and here is the transcript:
It's very true that multiple factors make it very difficult to predict what's going to happen (yet another reason trying to have a set number is doomed to failure). There was a stream for DM Lair somewhere where I was asked about this and I talked about this issue in detail, including what you mention (and it can be "worse" from a resource-saving perspective than what you mentioned: some players even if they know how hard the fight will be still want to just throw the biggest splashiest spell at it anyway and watch everything burn, I mentioned that as a significant factor).
This is another reason why you don't want to just pick a certain number, and also why order matters. Like if you do 12 encounters in a day, with 11 low and one severe at the end, you can potentially be in huge resource trouble for the reasons you and I discussed, whereas one severe followed by 11 low will be A-OK for many groups.
So once again, the opinions you are holding as truth are directly contradicted by one of co-creators of the very game you are discussing.
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Except they are; just because you personally feel differently about it doesn't imply otherwise. Being able to breathe water, speak in every language, or deal 6d6 fire damage in an area are all powerful in different amounts, so that they are ranked differently. Truespeech in particular is coherent with feats that give you better language proficiency, such as Multilingual or Legendary Linguist, so it in fact fits within the framework of the game. The designers have clearly put some thought into this.
There may be a misunderstanding of my words: I don't say that the designers haven't put thought into this, but that these spells are not balanced between each other. Tongues is not level 6 because of Chain Lightning. If they were feats, they'd have to be balanced between each other, because there's no way you'd take Tongues as a feat if there's Chain Lightning next to it. That's why spells require less balancing compared to feats: You can just put them at a level that feels right. As a fact, there are so many spells with a lot of them being super niche and no one bats an eye when a feat like Murksight makes people crazy.
You are clearly reading the wrong comment.
I missed his second post.
And I think his example is bad. Having 12 encounters is the issue, not the order of encounters. Once you get above an average adventuring length of 3 to 5 fights you can consider that all your casters are out of spells and as such any Severe encounter can lead to a TPK, be it the 6th, 7th, 8th or 12th encounter. So it's not the order that is really important.Of course, I can't deny that you have more tools at the beginning of the day to handle an encounter and as such a Severe encounter as first encounter has less chance to be deadly than a Severe encounter as last encounter. But if you don't stretch your adventuring day beyond normal lengths your casters should have enough resources to handle a Severe encounter at the end of the day.
There may be a misunderstanding of my words: I don't say that the designers haven't put thought into this, but that these spells are not balanced between each other. Tongues is not level 6 because of Chain Lightning. If they were feats, they'd have to be balanced between each other, because there's no way you'd take Tongues as a feat if there's Chain Lightning next to it. That's why spells require less balancing compared to feats: You can just put them at a level that feels right. As a fact, there are so many spells with a lot of them being super niche and no one bats an eye when a feat like Murksight makes people crazy.
Except they are balanced between each other, and plenty of existing class feats offer choices between combat-focused power and power out of combat. I really don't understand where you're getting this idea that spells are an exception to balance in Pathfinder.
I missed his second post.
And I think his example is bad. Having 12 encounters is the issue, not the order of encounters. Once you get above an average adventuring length of 3 to 5 fights you can consider that all your casters are out of spells and as such any Severe encounter can lead to a TPK, be it the 6th, 7th, 8th or 12th encounter. So it's not the order that is really important.Of course, I can't deny that you have more tools at the beginning of the day to handle an encounter and as such a Severe encounter as first encounter has less chance to be deadly than a Severe encounter as last encounter. But if you don't stretch your adventuring day beyond normal lengths your casters should have enough resources to handle a Severe encounter at the end of the day.
You mean, the post I linked to you twice? And you're still missing the point: Mark Seifter mentions 11 of those encounters being low difficulty, which you'll generally be able to complete without expending resources. The reason why ordering matters is because if you lead with low-difficulty encounters, casters at full resources will feel better-disposed to use their resources anyway, which puts them at a disadvantage against that severe encounter later on. By contrast, draining a caster's resources early on with that severe encounter means they'll be managing their resources more conservatively for those subsequent low-difficulty encounters, and would thus have far less of an issue. Again, order matters, and so because of caster attrition.
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Note also that players have no way of knowing what the rest of the day will be like.
They will just assess how likely it is that they can survive another average encounter with the resources they have left.
If the Severe encounter leaves us with few resources left, then we are very likely to stop the day then and come back the day after. Whether the next 10 encounters were extremely easy or not will not matter since we will not play them on the same day.
Note also that this holds true for the whole party and not only the casters. I never saw martials keeping on exploring while the casters were calling it a day.
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Note also that players have no way of knowing what the rest of the day will be like.
They will just assess how likely it is that they can survive another average encounter with the resources they have left.
If the Severe encounter leaves us with few resources left, then we are very likely to stop the day then and come back the day after. Whether the next 10 encounters were extremely easy or not will not matter since we will not play them on the same day.
Note also that this holds true for the whole party and not only the casters. I never saw martials keeping on exploring while the casters were calling it a day.
Not every adventure will let the party drop everything and call it a day the moment an encounter leaves some of the party members running low on resources. Resource management is an important part of playing a caster, and failing to do so incurs consequences when there's time pressure. If your own table lets you rest whenever and wherever you like, more power to you, but that's not how every table plays, nor the default way of playing Pathfinder.
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Not every adventure will let the party drop everything and call it a day the moment an encounter leaves some of the party members running low on resources. Resource management is an important part of playing a caster, and failing to do so incurs consequences when there's time pressure. If your own table lets you rest whenever and wherever you like, more power to you, but that's not how every table plays, nor the default way of playing Pathfinder.Note also that players have no way of knowing what the rest of the day will be like.
They will just assess how likely it is that they can survive another average encounter with the resources they have left.
If the Severe encounter leaves us with few resources left, then we are very likely to stop the day then and come back the day after. Whether the next 10 encounters were extremely easy or not will not matter since we will not play them on the same day.
Note also that this holds true for the whole party and not only the casters. I never saw martials keeping on exploring while the casters were calling it a day.
Any GM that forces an exhausted party to keep on advancing into TPK is no one I am interested in playing with.
And it's not "some of the party members". It's the party as a whole deciding the risks are too high.
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Except they are balanced between each other
You really think Tongues is balanced against Chain Lightning? Allow me to strongly disagree.
Mark Seifter mentions 11 of those encounters being low difficulty, which you'll generally be able to complete without expending resources.
How? You tell your players: Please don't use resources during this fight as it's meant to be really low difficulty?
Casters use resources during all fights and that's why chaining low difficulty fights is a very bad idea as it will drain casters without giving any form of challenge.Casters use spells. It's what their meant to do. An adventuring day where they are supposed to only use cantrips will be as frustrating as an adventuring day where you force the Barbarian to use a bow. So I continue to think that a 12-encounter adventuring day is as ridiculous as an adventuring day where all fights happen at long range.
Now, if you consider a 4-fight adventuring day, I don't think the position of the Severe encounter is really important. If it's the last fight, I expect casters to still have some steam by that time.
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The PF2 Core Rulebook has its entire 7th chapter about spells and spellcasting from page 296 to 415. One hundred and twenty pages is around 18% of the rulebook. Yes, that is a lot of baggage.That is also not the baggage being discussed. I am talking about the unspoken, more indirect implications of slot-based spellcasting, rather than what is explicitly spelled out in the rules. This entire discussion is in fact based on Michael Sayre's insights on the matter, so I'm not sure a sarcastic response is really warranted here. I also don't see the need to resurrect your thread when what is being discussed flows directly from the main topic of conversation, rather than your own.
I am terrible at understanding sarcasm, so I avoid it myself. I meant that 120 pages in the Core Rulebook is metaphorical baggage, a very large package of game design that defines Pathfinder. In order to toss out 18% of the rules, we would need a 3rd Edition, not just a remastering.
I am surprised that the discussion of indirect implications of slot-based spellcasting did not already bring up a classic problem from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition and Pathfinder 1st Edition: the 15-minute workday. In those editions, the spellcasters consuming all their highest-level spell slots made many adventuring parties feel vulnerable, so they quit for the day. They resumed adventuring after daily preparations refreshed all the spell slots. And since the players had planned on clearing only a few rooms in the dungeon before retreating, the spellcasters were happy to show off by casting their highest-level spells in the first few encounters, so that their adventuring day spent only 15 minutes in the dungeon.
That does closely tie the design of the wizard class to the adventuring day. Nevertheless, I still think that discussions concerning, "This is another reason why you don't want to just pick a certain number, and also why order matters. Like if you do 12 encounters in a day, with 11 low and one severe at the end, you can potentially be in huge resource trouble for the reasons you and I discussed, whereas one severe followed by 11 low will be A-OK for many groups," are more appropriate for an encounter design thread than a wizard design thread.
The developers of PF2 did an excellent job of eliminating the 15-minute workday by introducing scaling cantrips and focus spells for the spellcasters and providing Treat Wounds (an invention in the first PF2 playtest update not in the original PF2 playtest document) as an alternative to healing spells.
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So what's the justification of Water Breathing being level 2 when Tongue is level 5 and Fireball level 3?
Looks like they are not at all balanced between each other. Paizo is just deciding at what level it's funny and expected to learn new languages and at what level it should be easy to hand-wave it.
They are balanced around adventure needs. In the 1st module, Fires of Creation, in the Iron Gods adventure path, the party reached the air-filled adventuring caves by swimming down a lake into some water-filled caves. This would be very dangerous for 1st-level characters with rotten swimming skills. But a local cleric could cast Water Breathing on them. Exiting the caves was more risky if the Water Breathing spell had worn off, but by then the party knew the shortest route. My party had taken the time while water-breathing to set up a rope for pulling oneself hand over hand out of the caves rather than relying on swimming speed.
For a PF2 example, my PF2 party with 7 members and an animal companion (they eventually reached three animal companions) was too big for transportation spells such as Teleport. To travel more quickly than walking, they conjured Phantom Steeds. That required one 2nd-level spell per party member, except for the fast monk and the champion riding her animal companion., so five 2nd- and 3rd-level spell slots. That is a lot of magic for the sorcerer who had Phantom Steed in her spell repertoire. But once the sorcerer had 4th- and 5th-level spell slots, she could safely use up her lower-level spell slots for utility.
Tongues is 5th level, but Comprehend Languages is only 2nd level, 3rd level for speaking the language, too. Low-level characters sometimes need to listen to other languages. Tongues is higher level because it is the elite all-languages version of the spell.
As for Fireball the damage-dealing spells have to deal appropriate damage for their level.
Thus, technically the spells are balanced against the needs of the adventures rather than against each other.
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Any GM that forces an exhausted party to keep on advancing into TPK is no one I am interested in playing with.
And it's not "some of the party members". It's the party as a whole deciding the risks are too high.
It's not about advancing into a TPK, it's about the party having to manage their resources properly, or else they will fail the adventure's time constraints. The undead army arrives and kills the village because you dawdled, that sort of thing. You don't have to wipe your party, but if you blow your resources too quickly, that will frequently incur consequences, including in Pathfinder's official APs. You can't just pretend that the game starts and stops at the pace of the party's casters, because at that point the players can just have their casters go on full blast every encounter and take a full rest in-between. You also have cantrips and focus spells you are meant to use, so even if you're not at full power, you will always have something to fall back on.
You really think Tongues is balanced against Chain Lightning? Allow me to strongly disagree.
I do, and you are welcome to disagree as much as you like. Damage isn't everything in this game, and Michael Sayre's own insights in this discussion should hopefully help explain why.
How? You tell your players: Please don't use resources during this fight as it's meant to be really low difficulty?
You don't, that's the point of Mark's comment. As a GM, you're not really going to be putting a big signpost indicating the difficulty of every encounter, but as a result you will be expected to order your encounters appropriately so that your party doesn't find themselves completely drained of resources by the time they're meant to fight a really tough encounter.
Casters use resources during all fights and that's why chaining low difficulty fights is a very bad idea as it will drain casters without giving any form of challenge.
Casters use spells. It's what their meant to do. An adventuring day where they are supposed to only use cantrips will be as frustrating as an adventuring day where you force the Barbarian to use a bow. So I continue to think that a 12-encounter adventuring day is as ridiculous as an adventuring day where all fights happen at long range.
No, absolutely not. You have cantrips and focus spells for a reason, and as pointed out by both Mark Seifter and Michael Sayre, two key figures in PF2e's design, casters are designed to be able to fight low-difficulty encounters without expending resources. Who says casters have to blow spell slots every encounter, no matter how trivial?
Now, if you consider a 4-fight adventuring day, I don't think the position of the Severe encounter is really important. If it's the last fight, I expect casters to still have some steam by that time.
Why would you? If casters are blowing their spell slots every encounter, they are going to run into that Severe encounter with far fewer slots. If your caster is blowing a top-rank slot every encounter, they won't have one for that Severe encounter unless they're a Sorcerer or Wizard.
I am terrible at understanding sarcasm, so I avoid it myself. I meant that 120 pages in the Core Rulebook is metaphorical baggage, a very large package of game design that defines Pathfinder. In order to toss out 18% of the rules, we would need a 3rd Edition, not just a remastering.
Fully agreed. I don't think it's really possible, much less desirable, to take slot-based spellcasting out of 2e. It's just that slot-based casting carries a lot of implications for other parts of the game, including encounter design, that aren't really explicitly listed, which is why much of what Michael Sayre's telling us now is registering as new. Stuff like proper ordering of encounters is a skill the GM is expected to have, but that isn't really listed anywhere, and the general indications for adjusting difficulty based on resource expenditure are fairly wishy-washy because of how situationally dependent they are.
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The 15 minute work day from PF1 got a little bit of bad wrap from people imagining that it meant walking into a room, throwing away all the high level spells you have and then calling it after that encounter.
At my tables, the PF1 15 minute days occurred most often because the party spent a day or more preparing to tackle a dungeon as effectively as possible. Usually this included some recon, some light skirmish encounters with fringe/patrolling guards, divination spells, illusion spells, basically one full day of probing/not commuting to the big fight, and then a “15 minute” adventure day the next day where the main opponents who would break the dungeon had been identified and the fastest routes to them planned out with strategies for distracting or delaying reinforcements put into motion.
Tackling 3x or more the number of encounters in a day by careful pre planning and utilizing durational resources to their fullest is still a very viable PF2 game strategy, and one I am thankful has not been removed. If casters generally are memorizing spells like heroism, bless, haste, mirror image and their parties are fighting single encounters that last 3 turns and then rest 10 minutes+ to heal martials, then those casters are being sabotaged. They will feel weak and useless because the party is adopting tactics that exploit the strength of martials and minimize the strength of casters.
As a GM, it is important to vary encounter types to give every party member opportunities to shine.
I agree with Michael’s analysis of both PF1 and PF2 and value his voice on the development team. I am thankful that there is a class like the wizard that can be played as an intelligent character that prepares different load outs of spells for the day ahead and is rewarded for utilizing their whole party’s strengths to figure out what that is. Cat and mouse play in PF1 was fun, but absolutely exhausting as a player or GM. In PF2 it still works, but the ceiling on it is so much tighter and more clearly defined. GMs can feel freer to give out useful information to clever players without the whole dungeon turning into a single save or loose situation that took days to build. Days for the players to plan around and then 6 to 12 seconds to resolve in game play.
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What's with the influx of new posters with a chip on their shoulders about casters? I understand we have this same conversation once a week, but a lot of new faces with no prior history this time around.
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I mentioned that in a other thread aswell, the Vancian System is strongly associated with DnD but then again so is the Armor Class to hit system.
Absolutely. Armor class goes all the way back to first edition, if I remember right. I'm going to get off on a tangent here, since we're already slaughtering sacred cows. Spoiler to keep the thread on track.
Revised Star Wars d20 did this back in the day (god, I'm dating myself...) and it seems even easier to implement in Pathfinder with the auto scaling armor class by level. Just give the dodgy characters (monks, rogues, etc) a buff to their unarmored defense, and make heavier armors give DR along with a penalty to the character's defense score. Wraps up neat differentiation from DND and a more realistic feel for a lot of nerds like me.
Heavily armored characters act as tanks on the battle field, with most light weapons pinging off of their armor unless the enemy gets a lucky hit, requiring heavy weapons to penetrate. Meanwhile, lightly armored combatants dance out of the way of incoming attacks, but if they get hit they get hurt quickly. This gives some weapons the option to be armor piercers (Picks, anyone?) where they deal relatively small damage but penetrate armor better than, say, a sword. Other weapons deal massive damage but might have a penalty vs an armored target. Others are more balanced. This is another thing that will likely have to wait till 3e, but goodness I'm hoping... /rant over
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What's with the influx of new posters with a chip on their shoulders about casters? I understand we have this same conversation once a week, but a lot of new faces with no prior history this time around.
This make me feel like I should introduce myself. Hello, I am a retired mathematician who's first roleplaying game was in high school in 1979. But since all party members died in the first room, I tend to count college Dungeons & Dragons games in 1980 as my real beginning. Besides, the cute genius-smart gamer girl whom I married was in those college campaigns, too. I like to analyze the mathematics inside games, so I am easily lured into discussions about the reasons behind technical details.
The design of the PF2 wizard and their spells is a good topic for discussion. Some topics such as how alignments should be played, have deep disagreements, but the balance of spellcasting has a much smaller chip on the shoulder. Since magic is imaginary, people see different balances of magic in other roleplaying systems and are naturally curious about Pathfinder's reasons for its magics.
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Oh, man, now I'm concerned that MM forgot that we've interacted at least a few times here before.