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So... I was poking around with the idea of tightly scoped specialist casters on a separate thread, and I'm running into a bit of a three-way squeeze. Our spells are currently arranged into broad traditions, and adding new tags of this variety is expensive in a number of ways. We certainly don't want to go back to 3.x where each spell had half a dozen tags of which niche classes it was supported by. Unfortunately, that means that if we want a tightly scoped list of spells, that all align to a specific, restrictive theme, then we wind up with a list that is static and stagnant. That's not desirable either. If we step back from that, we wind up where we are now, where if your'e a slot caster, your core casting ability is largely indistinguishable from the slot casting of anyone else with your tradition. Get kind of samey. For PF2? It looks like it's too late to fix this. What about PF3, though?
Basic idea is that we set up our spell lists from the beginning so that they're tightly themed and scoped. We have one list that is just "raising the undead, messing with, and buffing the undead." It maybe has some undead-themed maledictions in there too. We have one list that's pretty much entirely composed of spell attacks vs AC. We've got one that's just divinations and another that's just healing and curative spells and another that's just wacky metamagic effects like dispel magic and such... or whatever. You allow a bit of overlap here and there, but each spell should probably fall into only one or two of these... and then you can divvy the themes out to different classes in different ways. Instead of being full-on pick-a-list, you could have things like sorceror bloodlines and witch patrons (and cleric deity) offer a theme or two, on top of the base themes that the class gets by default. Themes become things that it might be reasonable to buy access to with feats. (I'd personally envision the Wizard as being the master of adding new themes to their spell pool.) The Oracle spell list and the Cleric spell list could be similar but not exactly the same... and when you get to specialist casters, you could just say "you get this one feat, and that's it" and you'd immediately have a specialist caster - whose spell list would grow organically along with everyone else's. It also makes it pretty easy to keep track of which capacities you're offering to each class. Do they have access to themes X, Y, or Z? No? Then they can't usefully attack the Will defense. Do they have A or B? If not, then they don't have particularly good access to healing... and so forth.
I prefer this over your class idea by a pretty wide margin. In the arcane spell list thread I mentioned that perhaps instead of wizards being the arcane guy they're the baseline arcane guy who uses that lens to spec into extra spells from other traditions. With whatever limitations are appropriate ofc. Likewise clerics of certain gods should get spells that fit that God. Nethys maybe should give you limited access arcane spells for instance
A sorcerer could maybe get access to maybe only one or two of these lists based on bloodline. Already the sorcerer kind of wants you to "make a theme" with your limited spells know from the tradition you grabbed. So I think this is the obvious next evolution that they become the "themed" caster
I'll pretend that this is in Homebrew for the moment. Because it isn't a bad idea. I'm also not sure why it couldn't be done in PF2 - especially as a homebrew change.
What I am envisioning is something similar to the Wizard Schools or Sorcerer Bloodlines or Animist Apparition spell list. Where your themed list of spells is fairly small and intended to be a fixed and finite set of spells. Probably a bit larger selection of spells than one spell per rank though. Maybe two or three spells of each rank.
What I don't know is what benefit to give a spellcaster that gains their spells this way. Maybe have all of the spells in the list auto-heighten. Maybe have them be cast using focus points instead of spell slots (which would also cause them to auto-heighten).
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I mean this is just spell schools done with more intentionality. Having this kind of organization is pretty beneficial even outside of the notion of hyper-specialized casters and it's one of the things I'm gonna miss real bad in the remaster (I know they had to get away from the classic spell schools but damn they really should have made their own alternative rather than abandoning it entirely).
They still can get themes in the future even if they dont call it spell schools if they would want to. DnD isnt is the only thing that sorts spells after certain criteria. So something like Spell or Magic Classification/Style/Type could spell be applied.
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100% agree on this but I will say Spell Attact vs AC is something I wouldn't really consider a theme of spell it is something that is purely mechanical like to make it a theme I'd imagine you'd align it with something like a Metal theme for spells where most of the damaging spells from the Metal theme target AC where is something like the Electrity/Lightning theme would be better at reflex saves.
Personally I don't think Sorcerers role should be the themed caster class because all casters should be able to play into a theme
I agree there everyone should be able to Theme, maybe in different ways but still.
Sorcerer are Themed immediadly via there magic influenced blood that is there class idendity but they usualy have themes based on the creature type.
Clerics adapt the Theme of there chosen Gods.
Druids have a theme depends on there Order (or Aspects of Nature)
Wizards have themes based on different Types of Magic or field of Studies.
etc.
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100% agree on this but I will say Spell Attact vs AC is something I wouldn't really consider a theme of spell it is something that is purely mechanical like to make it a theme I'd imagine you'd align it with something like a Metal theme for spells where most of the damaging spells from the Metal theme target AC where is something like the Electrity/Lightning theme would be better at reflex saves.
Well yeah kind of... except that I'm a bit clumsy about that sort of thing, and I figure that the Paizo folks can manage that part themselves better than I can. I wouldn't be thinking better, though. I'd be thinking exclusive. Like, the Metal theme only targets AC, or maybe only AC and reflexes. Earth maybe targets AC and Fortitude... and so forth.
It's true that each of the themes should have a solid thematic underpinning that actually makes it hold together in a coherent way... but given that there are wizards out there who clearly have a desire to specialize in single-target blasting, I feel like "single-target blasts" (or something similar) isn't that unreasonable as a theme. "Duelist", maybe? Seems like the sort of thing that might be popular with the Magus characters out there.
I'll pretend that this is in Homebrew for the moment. Because it isn't a bad idea. I'm also not sure why it couldn't be done in PF2 - especially as a homebrew change.
So... the thing that I'm proposing here may be similar to certain homebrew ideas, and if it inspires homebrew ideas then that's great. It's very much not intended as a homebrew thing, though. It's a lot more structural than that. Like, for starters, it would replace the traditions entirely. The Druid wouldn't have access to the Primal list, because there wouldn't be a primal list. Instead, they might have access to Plant, Animal, Healing, Divination, and Transformation themes (or something like that) and that would be their spell list... with access to other themes coming from their class path, feat selection, and so forth. If you're a druid and you want fire spells, be a flames druid. You wouldn't give anything special to casters for getting their spells this way because every caster would get their spells this way. The ones that got lots of themes would have to pay the whole flexibility surcharge on direct power, while those who were significantly more limited would be able to be stronger in their area of specialty, or have other advantages, while maintaining balance.
This is particularly useful for things like the war priest vs cloistered cleric thing. There's a lot of stuff on the divine list that's there because it's obvious that Cloistered Clerics should have it... but it doesn't necessarily have to be there for war priests. Strip war priests down to something like "Healing", "Blessings" (or "Maledictions", depending) and "Divine Wrath", and there's that much more space for handing them a reasonable level of skill with weapons and armor.
It can't be done in PF2 basically because it's too much work for not enough payoff. It would be a massive rebuild of existing classes for relatively small gains. If you don't rebuild the existing classes, then you're splitting things up into themes (putting int he effort to do so and then publishing the results) for essentially no benefit other than the idea that you might use it later for other classes. Simply not worth the effort, especially since the current spells haven't been siloed properly anyway.
Doing it for PF3, though... well, that's going to mean that you're massively rebuilding all of the classes anyway, and probably rewriting the spells. You can have the spells fit the themes, rather than vice versa. You can do things like deciding up front which themes get to have access to which kinds of effects, and use that to decide which classes and paths and whatnot get access to which effects, and then use that as trustworthy fences that you can balance around... and if and when you choose to make exceptions, you can cost those exceptions accordingly. Having it baked in from the beginning gives you all of the advantages with little to none of the otherwise severe conversion costs.
100% agree on this but I will say Spell Attact vs AC is something I wouldn't really consider a theme of spell it is something that is purely mechanical like to make it a theme I'd imagine you'd align it with something like a Metal theme for spells where most of the damaging spells from the Metal theme target AC where is something like the Electrity/Lightning theme would be better at reflex saves.
Well yeah kind of... except that I'm a bit clumsy about that sort of thing, and I figure that the Paizo folks can manage that part themselves better than I can. I wouldn't be thinking better, though. I'd be thinking exclusive. Like, the Metal theme only targets AC, or maybe only AC and reflexes. Earth maybe targets AC and Fortitude... and so forth.
It's true that each of the themes should have a solid thematic underpinning that actually makes it hold together in a coherent way... but given that there are wizards out there who clearly have a desire to specialize in single-target blasting, I feel like "single-target blasts" (or something similar) isn't that unreasonable as a theme. "Duelist", maybe? Seems like the sort of thing that might be popular with the Magus characters out there.
I'll pretend that this is in Homebrew for the moment. Because it isn't a bad idea. I'm also not sure why it couldn't be done in PF2 - especially as a homebrew change.So... the thing that I'm proposing here may be similar to certain homebrew ideas, and if it inspires homebrew ideas then that's great. It's very much not intended as a homebrew thing, though. It's a lot more structural than that. Like, for starters, it would replace the traditions entirely. The Druid wouldn't have access to the Primal list, because there wouldn't be a primal list. Instead, they might have access to Plant, Animal, Healing, Divination, and Transformation themes (or something like that) and that would be their spell list... with access to other themes...
Thanks for taking this ball and running with it. You're presenting things I want in ways I was struggling to articulate.
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First I think we need to be clear if we classify spells according to what they do (heal, buff, debuff, damage, polymorph ...) or how they do it (plant, fire, electricity, animal, mind ...), and maybe also for hostile spells what defence they target.
Or is it a kind of melting pot of all the above ?
And how do we classify spells that do several things ?
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First I think we need to be clear if we classify spells according to what they do (heal, buff, debuff, damage, polymorph ...) or how they do it (plant, fire, electricity, animal, mind ...), and maybe also for hostile spells what defence they target.
Or is it a kind of melting pot of all the above ?
And how do we classify spells that do several things ?
So... the way I see it, this system is trying to do two different things at the same time, but I think it should be possible to do it pretty well, and if it can be done well, I think that the way the two mesh together should be pretty cool.
So the first is that each theme is intended to have a limited scope in what it can do, mechanically. It doesn't need to be only one thing per theme, but it probably shouldn't be all that many. So a "healing" theme might have access to various kinds of HP healing, affliction removal, raising from the dead, possibly a small number of healing-themed buffs, and maybe a few ways to damage the undead. If we wanted to tighten it up a bit, the ability to use Heal to damage the undead might get unlocked if you also have the Divine Wrath theme. That could be cool.
Similarly, the Harm spell (whichever themes it showed up in) might have an "and heals the undead" rider that only kicks in if you have access to the "Undead" theme.
But essentially, it means that you should be able to look at the themes that a caster has, and immediately know what they're capable of (at least theoretically) - which defenses they can target, whether they can summon things, whether they have any real access to divination, whether they have healing, and so forth... and each theme shouldn't add all that many things to the list.
The second thing is that... we want it to actually be a coherent theme. We want it to make sense that being the sort of person who can cast Spell A at level 1 implies that you may well be able to cast Spell B at level 5. I have this image of an aspiring wizard in the Magaambya who's looking at the list of classes they can take and pretty much picking their future themes as an in-character act... and we don't want to have so much overlap between themes that we get the same spell in more than about two or three of them. Ideally, *most* spells would only be in one.
Likewise, ideally the total number of themes is small enough that it's reasonable for someone with a decent degree of system mastery to actually know what all of them are off the top of their head, and what each of them is good for, while making enough internal sense that someone who *doesn't* have a lot of system mastery can hear that they get to have three themes, pick the three that they think they want, and mostly get access to the sort of effects they would have expected to get access to.
So... I'm thinking between 12 and 20 for total number of themes here, and probably try *not* to add new themes as we go unless some weird new area of endeavor gets opened up somehow.
/********/
My thought on the process for coming up with the themes is something like this:
- look at each kind of basic caster we want to have in the game initially. Figure out what they ought to be able to do with magic in broad strokes, and then carve that into an appropriate number of thematic chunks. Ideally, try to have chunks that can be reasonably shared between caster types.
- For each theme, try to dial in limits on what that theme can achieve. like, if you have a Fire theme, then you figure out what Fire is supposed to do, and what its area of specialty is, and you set those as hard limits, and then you just don't have the fire spell that targets will defense, because "target will defense" isn't something that Fire does. You put that spell in some other appropriate theme that does target will defense instead.
So... you might get Summoning out of a Dimensional theme, the Animal theme, and the Undead theme. If you want to have spells that produce minions, grab one of those. It might be that HP healing is *only* available through the Healing theme, but that theme is pretty commonly available... and so on.
/*******/
Spells that do several things might well be found inside of themes that cover all of the things they do, especially those that are "damage and" type spells. It may well be that some themes would be stronger in some areas but weaker in others - like a malediction theme that mostly threw around debuffs that occasionally had some damage with them (targeting Fortitude and Will) vs a lightning theme that might mostly deal damage with the occasional secondary debuff (targeting reflexes). Alternately, as above, you might have some spells that exist within one theme, but get some cool little secondary riders or alternate uses if you also have access to a specific other theme.
This might sound a bit excessive but I feel 30-40 is probably a lot more reasonable than 12-20 because I feel you might end up just grouping some themes together which would work much better as separate themes such as Air and Lightning or Water and Ice
Hmmm.
I can see the argument there. There are a number of ways where the 30-40 range would work better. There's a few downsides I see, though... and they represent downsides of the system as a whole.
First, it makes for smaller and more finicky decisions on the part of new players... and PF2 is already kind of dense on those.
Second, for the specific (and critical) case of new players who are trying to create a character out of the books, it makes it that much harder to figure out what spells you have to choose from. Like, the advantage of the list thing is that you can jsut say "I'm Occult list" and then you can go to the list of occult spells and use that. If instead you have three themes that come with your class and two more that you have to pick by some other method, then those two are coming off of a pretty long list to start with, and then you have to dig through the lists to try to figure out which spells are available to you. Much less of an issue if you can use searchboxes on a website, but not everyone knows to do that.
There's also a point of perspective. Currently, there are a total of 20 10th-level spells in the game. That includes Dinosaur Fort. The initial Core Rulebook had 26 cantrips and 511 slot spells total, including 13 of level 10, 19 of level 9, and 22 of level 8. Now, it's reasonable to have *some* overlap, but I feel like each theme should have at least one spell at each level, and if you're rocking 40 themes, then that overlap at the top starts getting a bit heavy.
This might sound a bit excessive but I feel 30-40 is probably a lot more reasonable than 12-20 because I feel you might end up just grouping some themes together which would work much better as separate themes such as Air and Lightning or Water and IceHmmm.
I can see the argument there. There are a number of ways where the 30-40 range would work better. There's a few downsides I see, though... and they represent downsides of the system as a whole.
First, it makes for smaller and more finicky decisions on the part of new players... and PF2 is already kind of dense on those.
Second, for the specific (and critical) case of new players who are trying to create a character out of the books, it makes it that much harder to figure out what spells you have to choose from. Like, the advantage of the list thing is that you can jsut say "I'm Occult list" and then you can go to the list of occult spells and use that. If instead you have three themes that come with your class and two more that you have to pick by some other method, then those two are coming off of a pretty long list to start with, and then you have to dig through the lists to try to figure out which spells are available to you. Much less of an issue if you can use searchboxes on a website, but not everyone knows to do that.
There's also a point of perspective. Currently, there are a total of 20 10th-level spells in the game. That includes Dinosaur Fort. The initial Core Rulebook had 26 cantrips and 511 slot spells total, including 13 of level 10, 19 of level 9, and 22 of level 8. Now, it's reasonable to have *some* overlap, but I feel like each theme should have at least one spell at each level, and if you're rocking 40 themes, then that overlap at the top starts getting a bit heavy.
I feel like this is where having builds for the iconic characters included in the core books would be a real boon. It would take a page, maybe two at most, to show these iconic characters and their 1 to 20 builds. This would alleviate any concerns that new players can't find a build because there are too many options because they would always have the icon character for that class to either play outright or make changes to.
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There's also a point of perspective. Currently, there are a total of 20 10th-level spells in the game. That includes Dinosaur Fort. The initial Core Rulebook had 26 cantrips and 511 slot spells total, including 13 of level 10, 19 of level 9, and 22 of level 8. Now, it's reasonable to have *some* overlap, but I feel like each theme should have at least one spell at each level, and if you're rocking 40 themes, then that overlap at the top starts getting a bit heavy.
One thing that could vastly improve the efficiency of the system is to stop designing spells for each level/rank, and make a lot of spells that are all available at 1st level that scale upward and outward.
Consider Chilling Spray and Cone of Cold. Both are cone-shaped ice damage spells, one at level 1 and one at level 5. Instead of creating another cone at 3, another at 7, and another at 9, it would be much better if we just had one single spell that handled "I want to shoot a spray of ice." That way, instead of having to design a Cone of Flames to pair with Burning Hands, one spell handles it all.
Cone of Cold could be a level 1 spell, a 15 foot cone that deals ice damage and penalizes movement. At the end of the spell description, it could have a description or table that shows how it scales in size and damage with each level, and the level 5 stats would have the size and damage of the current version (but keep the slow, because that fits the theme of ice). As long as they crunch the math, something this edition did extremely well, they can make spells that are balanced in all their incarnations. Fireball can be a tiny burst at level 1, and scale upward to a bigger and bigger explosion, Summon Animal can have stats balanced at all ranks, so the spell is playable at all levels, etc.
So when a Spell Theme/Sphere/Essence/Category is designed, it might only have around 15-20 spells total. Over half of them would be available at or near level 1 and cement the concept of that spell theme. Some concepts would definitely need to be higher ranks (powerful conditions, off-brand abilities like summoning on an element theme, etc), and it would be nice to give each theme at least one capstone spell that represents ultimate mastery, but a lot of them could be compressed down. Anything more eclectic could be handled by a more robust ritual system, or even things like skill feats with Theme tags that require access to that theme.
So the Fire theme would focus heavily on attacks combined with some buffs and utility, and end up looking something like this...
Low Level - burst spell (Fireball), cone spell (Burning Hands), ranged attack (Scorching Ray), melee strike (Shocking Grasp but fiery), cylinder (Flame Vortex), sustained AoE (Flaming Sphere), mixed control and damage (Heat Metal), offensive buff (Blazing Blade/Flame Dancer), utility (Smoke cloud), utility (Pyrotechnics)
Mid Level - mobility (Blazing Dive), control (Wall of Fire), empowerment (Fiery Body/Mantle of the Magma Heart), retaliatory defense (Fire Shield), complex attack (Volcanic Eruption), summon (Summon Fire Elemental)
Capstone - big, beefy spell (Meteor Swarm)
That list certainly isn't perfect, but something like that would do a reasonable job of representing what a theme is all about. Fire burns things. That can sometimes be useful for utility effects, but it mostly just roasts everything. Themes of Ice, Mind, Holy, or Plant would look dramatically different, but distilling them down into their core concepts and making those concepts scale across all ranks would make things far more efficient and easier to read through. Much like how they represented the elements so well in the kineticist, each theme could take its main concepts and turn them into a master list of iconic effects.
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That is like Rolemaster worked, and loved it. It used spell lists, instead individual spells, with different effects and greater versions at higher levels. So we had "Fire Law", i.e.
But, if use that, it is recommended some kind of limit for not getting all the spells in the list so easily.
In fact it was an idea to apply to D&D I already was thinking about, use thematic groups of spells at a greater cost, so if you get:
- Fire group: fire bolt, burning hands, scorching ray, fireball, fire wall, etc.
- Movement: leap, feather fall, misty step, fly, dimensional door, etc.
As noticed for characters getting repertoires like Sorcerer or Bard is easier to set a limit, but for those getting from the list like Cleric or learning unlimited like Wizard is harder.
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So the Fire theme would focus heavily on attacks combined with some buffs and utility, and end up looking something like this...
Low Level - burst spell (Fireball), cone spell (Burning Hands), ranged attack (Scorching Ray), melee strike (Shocking Grasp but fiery), cylinder (Flame Vortex), sustained AoE (Flaming Sphere), mixed control and damage (Heat Metal), offensive buff (Blazing Blade/Flame Dancer), utility (Smoke cloud), utility (Pyrotechnics)
Mid Level - mobility (Blazing Dive), control (Wall of Fire), empowerment (Fiery Body/Mantle of the Magma Heart), retaliatory defense (Fire Shield), complex attack (Volcanic Eruption), summon (Summon Fire Elemental)
Capstone - big, beefy spell (Meteor Swarm)That list certainly isn't perfect, but something like that would do a reasonable job of representing what a theme is all about. Fire burns things. That can sometimes be useful for utility effects, but it mostly just roasts everything. Themes of Ice, Mind, Holy, or Plant would look dramatically different, but distilling them down into their core concepts and making those concepts scale across all ranks would make things far more efficient and easier to read through. Much like how they represented the elements so well in the kineticist, each theme could take its main concepts and turn them into a master list of iconic effects.
With all respect, I feel there would be little difference with a Fire kineticist.
What would make them different ? Casting slot spells and cantrips instead of using Impulses ?
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This proposal looks a lot like the popular Spheres of Power third-party system made for 1e, which I'm all for. I'd be interested in seeing a game that uses that kind of ability theming, whether PF3e or another game entirely, as I feel most players tend to lean towards specific themes when building characters, and would therefore be much better-served by a system that would let them pick a few themes and have their build follow from there.
If we're talking about brand-new systems, though, I feel that in a hypothetical future edition, one could also very well implement spells as feats: given how 2e implements feats with active abilities already, there is nothing preventing spells from being implemented as feats with appropriate traits attached. Plenty of feats belong to multiple classes, and the Kineticist offers a model for how to "prepare" feats, so outside of presentation, it'd be possible to obtain similar or even identical caster gameplay through feats, with more specialized classes having much smaller feat lists in exchange for other benefits.
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I feel like giving each class only a handful of "themes" to work with will hamper their utility, unless they make sure to cover all the bases in each theme. And at that point, what's the point of picking a theme?
What I mean is, say the Cleric gets one default theme: Healing. And then one or two themes based on their deity. I pick Shelyn and get Protection (defensive buffs) and Passion (enchantment-type spells). Now I have no way to directly deal damage to my opponents.
Meanwhile, a Druid gets all the elemental spells. But that covers a whole lot, from defensive (Barkskin, Protector Tree), offensive (Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Cone of Cold), control (Mud Pit), support (Endure Elements), and so on. Unless you force them to also make a choice (only have Fire and Water spells, for example), at which point they basically become a Kineticist.
You're basically reinventing the wheel and making up new spell schools based on theme and handing them out to different (sub)classes. Which seems cool at first glance, but pigeon-holes builds even more and potentially cuts them off from options available to them otherwise.
And don't forget that flavour can justify basically anything if you're not careful (see also early Magic: the Gathering, where Blue could do direct damage, or Red had counterspells). Fire is the go-to element of destruction (damage spells), but could so be seen as cleansing (healing or status removal). If you don't curate those spell lists very carefully, you can undo the whole balance of each theme (assuming you want them balanced in the first place).
I'm much more in favour of handing out a few select spells or themes as a bonus, rather than to design the whole system around it. But that's basically already happened: Clerics can learn non-divine spells through their deity's portfolio, Sorcerers get bloodline spells, and so on. If they expanded on this and gave basically every spellcasting class these options, you'd have very much what you wanted in the first place.
And like people said, it makes character creation hell for new players. Right now, a Cleric gets the divine list, easy as that. But imagine a first-time player having to decide from 30+ themes which they want to be stuck with for the rest of their character's career? And when you're starting out, you don't know all the spells or their potential.
What would be cool I think is if certain classes got bonuses depending on the spells they actually use. Sorcerers kinda get that with their Blood Magic. Though maybe that gets too complicated with too many floating modifiers. But imagine a Cleric of Sarenrae getting a bonus on hit points healed when they cast a Heal spell, a Bard getting a free round of a spell that's normally sustained, and so on. The spells stay the same, but depending on which class casts them, they get unique effects and feel more distinct.
I mean, the spell lists are big umbrella lists for a reason. If they had to split up all the spells by alignment or theme, it'd become a mess. It's easier to have a few exceptions to the rule rather than a whole bunch of separate rules to fit everything (and potentially keep expanding when more deities are released).
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I do believe that 'pigeonholing' is...kind of the point of the idea.
As Paizo designers have made abundantly clear that they significantly value versatility in balancing, (and this will remain the case since that's a reasonable thing to do lest gigabrain caster players easily break the game in two with that unchecked power,) the current default state is for all casters to be able to do many, many things...less effectively than an option-limited specialist could, and with need to properly leverage that versatility to be as effective as they're designed to be.
Which directly links to the issues some of the playerbase has with casters, on both feel and mechanics. The general inability to specialize in a theme rankles in such cases, especially because it's a common desire that links to more fantasy archetypes than just, like, Merlin. Or the absurdly versatile D&D mage. I'm generalizing here, but I think that's the crux of the issue.
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With all respect, I feel there would be little difference with a Fire kineticist.What would make them different ? Casting slot spells and cantrips instead of using Impulses ?
As someone who thinks the Kineticist is the best class Paizo has ever designed, I see this as an absolute win.
On a more serious note, since we're talking about class design for a hypothetical third edition, nothing about the existing class list would necessarily be on the table. Resembling the 2nd Edition Kineticist wouldn't be an issue, since everything would be designed for the 3rd edition. The Kineticist itself might not even exist, though lessons from the class would hopefully live on.
And yes, it's true that multiple classes that pick the Fire sphere might feel pretty similar when they're casting fire spells. It's worth noting, though, that that's even more true for the current giant spell lists. Is there that big a difference between a Familiar Thesis Wizard and an arcane Rune Witch? How about the differences in what spells you cast during a battle between a Cleric, an Oracle, a Divine Sorcerer, a Divine Witch, and the Animist currently being playtested? The differences are largely going to come down to class features and individual abilities like focus spells, not the bread-and-butter casting they do during the adventure.
I feel like giving each class only a handful of "themes" to work with will hamper their utility, unless they make sure to cover all the bases in each theme. And at that point, what's the point of picking a theme?
To continue discussing the Kineticist for a moment, I think the major advantage of a spell theme system would be what Amaya/Polaris points out. It enables the choice between versatility and specialization.
The Kineticist is absolutely brilliant because they found a way to balance a class that can choose to have a versatile repertoire of different abilities or focus on doing one thing really, really well, and both options come out relatively fun and balanced. It works so well because they designed the impulse list to combine with the junction system, buffs specifically designed for that element to enhance its overall theme.
That split is something sorely lacking for casters in the current system. Michael Sayre posted an article on their class balance a few days ago that discussed how they had to balance casters under the assumption that they would have the appropriate spell for any given situation. If you've decided to play your wizard as a dedicated necromancer, a blasting battle mage, an artistic illusionist, the game is not balanced around making those themes actually work on their own. It's balanced under the assumption that you'll prepare the best spells in your giant spell list for a given situation...the same spell list that every wizard possesses.
Imagine the wizard had the same kind of decision as a kineticist. A battle mage might get the Arcana theme for being a wizard, and the Battle Mage school grants them Warding and a choice between Fire/Lightning/Ice/Acid/Thunder. Over time, the mage takes the Expanded Studies option to pick up more elements and a few other war-appropriate themes for a huge repertoire of spells. This mage exploits elemental weaknesses to bombard enemies and pairs it with a few buffs or summons for good measure. They are versatile, and powerful as a result.
Meanwhile, another wizard might decide to be a dedicated necromancer. They have Arcane, Necromancy, and Malediction from their class and school. They forgo Expanded Studies in favor of Secrets of Magic and unlock a bunch of Necromancy-specific abilities tailored directly for the spells in that theme. They don't care about versatility at all, because they're here to animate corpses and chew bubblegum, and they're damn good at it.
That sort of design would give the wizard the same choice as the Kineticist. Do you want to be decent at many things, or really good at one thing? It's the best of both worlds, and if they can do it for one class, they can do it for many.
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I mean, the spell lists are big umbrella lists for a reason. If they had to split up all the spells by alignment or theme, it'd become a mess. It's easier to have a few exceptions to the rule rather than a whole bunch of separate rules to fit everything (and potentially keep expanding when more deities are released).Well, sure. But the divine list especially falls into the unfortunate trap of it really being two opposing lists with some but not a ton of overlap. There's the "goodness, light, healing, and blessings" list and the "darkness, pain, necromancy, and curses" list.
I can buy "you annoyed Iomedae, so she gives her clerics the power to rain the power of dark eclipses upon you, plagues-of-Egypt style." That's fine. Iomedae is a tough god.
What I find harder to swallow is priests of vampiric demon lords dropping sunbursts and good-aligned followers of the omnibenevolent goddess of love and beauty (Shelyn) creating vampiric maidens that slowly and painfully drain the life from their victims. Or cursing their enemies with agonizing despair . Or ripping the blood from their bodies with vampiric exsanguination .
Thankfully Zura (and all deities) is played by the GM who is perfectly within their rights to forbid some spells, even Divine ones, to that deity's Clerics.
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TBH while I'm not sure about the specific proposal, it always has felt like a failure of the Cleric class that it's so bad at aligning itself with the themes of its own deity.
Like in any other setting or system, a Kuthite torturer, a weather-priest of gozreh, and a crusading cleric of iomedae would all feel radically different from each other... but in D&D spinoffs they're all just clerics and mostly indistinguishable from each other mechanically.
The wizard is a little bit the same way, where ultimately transmuters and evokers and conjurers are still pretty much just generic wizards at their core.
It would be cool if some of your choices mattered more and these things actually contributed to your identity.
What I find harder to swallow is priests of vampiric demon lords dropping sunbursts and good-aligned followers of the omnibenevolent goddess of love and beauty (Shelyn) creating vampiric maidens that slowly and painfully drain the life from their victims. Or cursing their enemies with agonizing despair . Or ripping the blood from their bodies with vampiric exsanguination .
I'd like to say that just because players can, doesn't mean they will. Any person who takes their RP seriously won't take those spells, because it's not what their character would do. And hey, even then, spells are just tools. I can totally see someone worshiping that vampiric demon priest preparing a Sunburst, purely because it's a powerful tool to be used. The ends justify the means and all that. And hell, Sudden Blight is on the Primal list. If Druids get access to a spell that destroys plantlife, I'm okay with a hippie Disney princess deity like Shelyn gaining Vampiric Maiden.
Imagine the wizard had the same kind of decision as a kineticist. A battle mage might get the Arcana theme for being a wizard, and the Battle Mage school grants them Warding and a choice between Fire/Lightning/Ice/Acid/Thunder. Over time, the mage takes the Expanded Studies option to pick up more elements and a few other war-appropriate themes for a huge repertoire of spells. This mage exploits elemental weaknesses to bombard enemies and pairs it with a few buffs or summons for good measure. They are versatile, and powerful as a result.
I mean, this is overlapping with the "What Exact is the Wizard Anyway?"-thread, but that's exactly why the Wizard had spell school specialisation (or schools in the remaster), right? They want you to be able to specialise in a specific theme without overcommitting. Like I said earlier, say I specialise in mind-affecting spells. Phantom Pain, Sleep, Agonizing Despair, and so on. All my spells are in this category. And now I'm fighting oozes. Or mindless undead. Or golems (though golems are an "f- you" to spellcasters in general). What are you gonna do now? The school you choose is supposed to be a bonus, a thing you excel at, not your bread and butter. It's to prevent you from making bad decisions you don't know are bad until way later. The remaster especially fixes this with a small list of bonus spells so that it's easy to homebrew extra schools without requiring hours of research or balancing. You get a handful of extra spells on top of your regularly allotted spells to show you've specialised in this subject, but not at the cost of anything else. Hell, even the Kineticist, who goes all-in on one or two damage types, has a failsafe built in. All the blasts (except fire) have two damage types they can do, just in case your enemy is immune to one of them. And there's two different feats to alter those blasts even more, making sure you're never out of options.
And hell, don't forget about Focus Spells. They're the ideal way to give each existing theme some spice without cribbing from other spell lists. Most of the classes can choose between several options to differentiate themselves from others of the same class. Giving them themed spells on top of that feels like overkill.
Oh totally. I'm one of those people who thinks domain should determine like 80 percent of your spells. Obviously it's not a perfect solution, but the way sorcerers work in 2E is close to what I'd like to see. Clerics of Nethys get the arcane list, clerics of Gozreh get primal, and so on.But obviously that is still pretty broad. And Zon-Kuthon doesn't fit any established spell list. Ditto Forum.
Oh, I would love a WIS-based caster with variable spell lists. INT has the Witch and CHA has the Sorcerer, but unless I'm derping really hard, WIS doesn't have one yet. But I don't know if the Cleric is the right class for that. As you said, a lot of deities don't have a closely associated spell theme, but I liked how PF1 had the domain spells, where each domain had specific spells you could cast. Not sure why they did away with that and only tied spells to deities (probably too many domains that made it too easy to mix and match or to keep track of), but at least that reasonably differentiated a Cleric of Gozreh from a Cleric of Iomedae quite a bit.
Also, I like Clerics being the posterchild Wisdom-caster. I mean, in the Core Rulebook they compete with the Druid, but so does the Sorcerer with the Bard. Anyway, I feel like with all the history behind them, I think it feels strange to alter the Cleric too much now. It's an easy argument that "we've always done it that way," and sometimes that can change (look at the Sorcerer: at first they were similar to the Wizard, but now they get to choose their tradition), but some things are tradition for a reason. A non-divine Cleric just feels wrong to me. No status removal spells, no "f@%@ you, evil spawn" spells, and so on... Again, specific Focus Spells and more deity/domain spells would fix most of that problem much more elegantly. It keeps the core of the class intact, and it still gives customisation.
I mean, this is overlapping with the "What Exact is the Wizard Anyway?"-thread, but that's exactly why the Wizard had spell school specialisation (or schools in the remaster), right? They want you to be able to specialise in a specific theme without overcommitting. Like I said earlier, say I specialise in mind-affecting spells. Phantom Pain, Sleep, Agonizing Despair, and so on. All my spells are in this category. And now I'm fighting oozes. Or mindless undead. Or golems (though golems are an "f- you" to spellcasters in general). What are you gonna do now? The school you choose is supposed to be a bonus, a thing you excel at, not your bread and butter. It's to prevent you from making bad decisions you don't know are bad until way later. The remaster especially fixes this with a small list of bonus spells so that it's easy to homebrew extra schools without requiring hours of research or balancing. You get a handful of extra spells on top of your regularly allotted spells to show you've specialised in this subject, but not at the cost of anything else. Hell, even the Kineticist, who goes all-in on one or two damage types, has a failsafe built in.
It's definitely overlapping a lot with the What Exactly is a Wizard thread, I agree.
It's interesting that you bring up failsafes, though, because I think there's a big difference between how the two classes you mention handle it. The Kineticist failsafe enhances the class by further empowering the chosen theme. They correctly identified that the specialists would encounter major problems with damage resistance/immunity, and provided multiple tools to circumvent that (except against golems, which are just borked, and will hopefully change in the remaster). The blast usually gets multiple damage types, there's a weapon infusion to gain physical damage, and Extract Element is built into the core chassis. Nothing will make you feel like the unrivaled master of the fire element like stealing a creature's immunity to fire and then burning it to ash.
On the other hand, the failsafe for most core casters in the game is to abandon their theme in the moment. You are absolutely correct that your mind wizard would have issues against mindless creatures, but the game's solution is to make you bring along spells that go outside your theme. You'll need to pack some elemental blasting spells or summons or curses that have nothing to do with the type of wizard you wanted to play, because there's no way for a dedicated specialist to overcome those walls.
If the mind theme was designed like a Kineticist element, it would A) have multiple mechanical roles, so a lot of your spells are control effects on enemies, but some might buff allies as well, giving you thematic options, and B) provide a way to empower your own magic to overcome the walls they know you specifically will hit. Maybe that means your mind magic can control the base instincts of the ooze, reprogram constructs, or mimic the commands of the necromancer who raised those undead. Or maybe it just means that these creatures are constructed a bit differently, so that they automatically critically succeed saving throws against mind-altering effects, but you have an ability that turns all enemy critical successes into normal successes to future-proof it. It could take many forms. In this model, your spell school IS your bread and butter, and it's very toasty bred with delicious butter that has a built-in way to overcome mold (the metaphor is breaking down). But if you were a wizard who chose to diversify, you would simply set that undead on fire. Both options would be available, and both would be fun and viable.
With all respect, I feel there would be little difference with a Fire kineticist.
What would make them different ? Casting slot spells and cantrips instead of using Impulses ?
First, it's the fact that you're using a combination of slots, focus spells and cantrips rather than the kineticist use-anytime powers. The fact that you have a bunch of dailies does a lot of important stuff to the balance math - not least of which is that you can keep healing the same party member over and over with multiple castings of the same spell.
Second, it means that a full-caster is still going to have a lot more flexibility than a kineticist. A kineticist can only ever get 17 impulses total, and that's if they never spend any feats on anything else. At a (very) rough estimate (with a bunch of assumptions), your average semi-generalist full caster might have something like 5-12 themes to draw from, and each theme would have significantly more than 4 spells, even just to start with... and then likely get more as the game progressed.
If we're talking about brand-new systems, though, I feel that in a hypothetical future edition, one could also very well implement spells as feats: given how 2e implements feats with active abilities already, there is nothing preventing spells from being implemented as feats with appropriate traits attached. Plenty of feats belong to multiple classes, and the Kineticist offers a model for how to "prepare" feats, so outside of presentation, it'd be possible to obtain similar or even identical caster gameplay through feats, with more specialized classes having much smaller feat lists in exchange for other benefits.
The problem with spells-as-feats is that that pretty much is the kineticist thing. It's awesome, but it's also very resource-intensive on the Paizo side. It only works if there's enough hunger for the concept that you get enough people to buy it. Kineticist had that. It was also way more popular than a bunch of these other concepts.
I mean, the spell lists are big umbrella lists for a reason. If they had to split up all the spells by alignment or theme, it'd become a mess. It's easier to have a few exceptions to the rule rather than a whole bunch of separate rules to fit everything (and potentially keep expanding when more deities are released).
So... yeah. They currently are big umbrella lists, and this "themes" thing is intended to be a fix for some of the problems that raises. If you want your standard super-flexible casters, the solution is easy - just give them a bunch of themes. I'm not trying to prevent people from playing the batman wizard who has a spell for every occasion. Thing is, though, there's a lot of the playerbase that wants to play magic-users who aren't that... and the spell list thing means that every full caster pretty much is that, automatically. That's why we cant' give casters the really good buffs. We have to limit their spell DC because they have enough breadth in their spells to pick whichever defense they want to target. We have to limit the effectiveness of battle forms because after they're done playing around in battle form, they get to come back up out of it and use a bunch of spells that aren't battle form. Also... there are serious and largely unavoidable similarities between any two classes on the same list. There are differences between a divine sorceror and a divine witch and an oracle, but they're not as significant as we might want. So this structure lets them easily have both classes that get a lot of themes (and the breadth that goes with them) and only a few themes (and the ability to get other stuff with the budget that that specialization frees up).
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This just seems like it takes the thing people complain about wiry things like the divine list lacking offensive capability or casters prioritizing certain spells, and just magnifies the problem. For example , it seems like these themes aren't going to be balanced around being able to tackle a wide array of issues but only fill a singular niche.
The issue is given the examples given thus far, you're going to get list that do not interact with combat, a major focus of pathfinder 2e. This is the "some focus spells are uselsss" cranked up to "some spell lists are useless" instead. All this looks like to me at least is creating a situation where casters go from a tradition with hundreds of spells, down to just 3 themes that will inevitably be deemed the best while the others are regarded as underpowered or useless, and if the class doesn't get that tradition list of the top tier meta it gets disparaged as being a class not worth taking or playing.
And I know that because that's exactly how you guys complaining about casters are acting right now with current casters, and I doubt you'd suddenly embrace playing suboptimally out of the blue to stick to this themed list conviction. People treat the witch and alchemist as unplayable due to the community reacting to its lack of optimized firepower, and they treat the inability to just nuke an enemy for more damage than 2 barbarian crits in a row as a failure of game design. Yall will just find the top 2 or 3 themes, only pick those, and then complain the other 47 ain't as good.
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My hope is that they just take a page from video games and Kineticist for PF3.
Having every class having about 50-100 unique spells would be far more interesting. Then the feats can really be tailored for fun. Of course a few abilities can be shared.
Having 500+ spells for each traditions makes it very hard to make fun feats and make casters different.
This just makes me think of all the threads I have read over the years...
Why play Occult Sorcerer over Bard
Why play Witch over Wizard.
Why play Primal Sorcerer over Druid etc.
Right now they do a pretty good job with focus spells differentiating classes but sometimes I do just feel like I am playing a slightly different character if I am playing a character with the same tradition.
I am often just using the majority of my turn casting slow, haste, fear etc...
The problem with spells-as-feats is that that pretty much is the kineticist thing. It's awesome, but it's also very resource-intensive on the Paizo side. It only works if there's enough hunger for the concept that you get enough people to buy it. Kineticist had that. It was also way more popular than a bunch of these other concepts.
Just to reiterate the opening sentence to that paragraph:
If we're talking about brand-new systems, though, I feel that in a hypothetical future edition, one could also very well implement spells as feats:
I'm not talking about 2e, I'm talking about a hypothetical 3e, same as you. I agree that reimplementing 2e's more than a thousand spells as feats would be a mammoth task, but in a new edition where those effects have to be rewritten anyway, it would be no more resource intensive to have them as feats than as their own independent system. In fact, it would likely be simpler, and plug in better to the rest of such a hypothetical edition's customization system. There's the presentation issue of whether such classes would feel like "real" casters as we've known them in current and past editions, but feat-based spells I think would be much easier to work with than the system we have now.
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Those spells that were not consolidated via heightening are notably some of the most iconic DND spells, which likely played a large part in them staying distinct. Given that things being iconic in DND is no longer a major factor in Pathfinder design I would not be surprised to see many of those spells go away.
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My hope is that they just take a page from video games and Kineticist for PF3.
Having every class having about 50-100 unique spells would be far more interesting. Then the feats can really be tailored for fun. Of course a few abilities can be shared.
Having 500+ spells for each traditions makes it very hard to make fun feats and make casters different.
This just makes me think of all the threads I have read over the years...
Why play Occult Sorcerer over Bard
Why play Witch over Wizard.
Why play Primal Sorcerer over Druid etc.
Right now they do a pretty good job with focus spells differentiating classes but sometimes I do just feel like I am playing a slightly different character if I am playing a character with the same tradition.
I am often just using the majority of my turn casting slow, haste, fear etc...
This feels disingenuous because it makes it seem like this is a caster problem, but this is more just an actual "this is a game and requires mechanics" issue.
This exact argument exists for materials as well with "Why play Barbarian when Fighter exists?" or "Why outwit ranger when rogue exists?" The claim that casters of the same tradition play the same is identical to complaining that all strength-based characters play the same of getting a big weapon and using athletics in combat.
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This feels disingenuous because it makes it seem like this is a caster problem, but this is more just an actual "this is a game and requires mechanics" issue.This exact argument exists for materials as well with "Why play Barbarian when Fighter exists?" or "Why outwit ranger when rogue exists?" The claim that casters of the same tradition play the same is identical to complaining that all strength-based characters play the same of getting a big weapon and using athletics in combat.
There's a difference. Casting class features do a lot more heavy lifting, which generally means there's less room for other stuff, so the classes in practice tend to feel more similar.
That said if you feel like Paizo doesn't do enough make martials feel distinct there's nothing stopping you from making a thread about it.