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Ok, I bring this up because in large part I'd mentally categorized them in the two obvious categories which have different names. The obvious divisions.
Spontaneous and Prepared are the ones I think people would immediately come up with. Also, not long after thinking of those, I think many people will be able to come up with Focus casters as another somewhat distinct from. Another might be Cantrip only casters, and we might potentially include impulses as another form of magic.
There are also, an a different axis (how many spell slots and what distribution) that could include the list of normal, wave casters, multi-class archetypes for instance as well.
Well, I want to go back to the first two for a couple reasons. One because I always found it ironic that Spontaneous casters were always singled out for being so flexible, and prepared casters' players would complain having to pick their spells at the start of the day was too hard, because they didn't have enough information.
I couldn't help but notice Spontaneous casters had to pick their spells at character creation (or level up for their progression). It is absolutely true that being able to re-use those spells within a day is an advantage within a specific encounter, so in a way, I can understand how from an encounter-only perspective, if they picked well (at creation), it could be a distinct advantage.
However if you consider a campaign can be played over several modes of play, the spells might have to be selected and divided up between encounter spells, exploration spells, and downtime spells. Prepared casters get the choice to rebalance each day to better optimize for whatever mode of play they anticipate that day.
Some of the most vocal complainers about the flexibility of spontaneous casters was always the wizards, and I saw the list of spells they started out with and would shake my head, realizing that advantage, that and the theoretical ability of them to easily add new spells easily to their spells known, I would get frustrated by their complaints. However it has sunk into my thoughts recently that I could see how if GMs did not really bother to have wizards be able to uncover enemy wizards spell books in the party's travels, or allow them to buy scrolls of spells they don't know, I could see how as they leveled up, that flexibility would absolutely diminish over time if kept very constrained.
This also made me think more about the other prepared casters whom simply 'Know' all the spells. This actually bothered me a bit from early on. It bothered me that with each new book, or even adventure, some casters were suddenly instantly upgraded with new choices. So I actually like one of the early 'rulings' that eventually got reversed, saying that those spell casters knew all the common spells in the core rulebook, plus whatever rulebook they came in, not necessarily all the rulebooks automatically. I honestly wish that there were uncommon spells in the Divine and Primal tradition that were unlocked by certain classes or deities for instance.
But let me continue forward some. It becomes clear that there are more than one 'branch' of prepared casters. Some are limited in the spells known, to specific ones they have encountered and collected. Namely the ones with a spellbook or spellbook like mechanics. They have to go out and specifically come to know any spells they need to prepare, and those spells have to fall into their list. The others simply gain access to all of them in their spell list if they are common.
Wizards are in the group of that greater limited selection of spells to choose from. Presumably this was due to a combination of items. One the history of the spellbook concept, and spells known. I'm sure that was a significant factor, as history and flavor are important to people naturally, and it was obvious that while pathfinder second edition tried to clean up a lot. Historical things that they thought they could still keep and balance well, they tended to keep. The other aspect I'm sure was that in keeping history for what types of spells the wizards had, the Arcane list had lots of spells, and they probably would have balked at the idea of opening up that entire list to any prepared caster. Any prepared caster for the Arcane tradition would be forced to have a gatekeeping mechanism. (we see it for the arcane witch and magus, for instance)
I can see how that gating mechanism is treated by a GM or campaign, could vastly impact the effectiveness of a prepared caster being able to build an array of useful spells to be able to prepare in their slots, in the varieties of play modes.
I'm trying to think through all the shared aspects that cross all the spell-casting spells, at least with respect to spell slots to try to keep in better mind aspects that affect their play.
They all start with a spell list which is based on a Tradition, but is gated by Rarity (for access, but not usability). Many classes have mechanisms, normally be feats or other class choices, which allow your to pull additional spells across from other traditions into yours. These increase your list size, impacting what magical items you can use, in addition to what spells you can learn, and these feats sometimes give you the spell in question as a spell known.
Next spellcasters have a Spells Known aspect. Some classes like Clerics and Druids, you simply know all your common spells from your tradition, plus the additional spells from your feats that expanded your tradition. Others have to collect the spells and pay to learn new spells and add them to you spells known. I think this cost, while not prohibitive, is definitely of note when compared to the classes that simply know all.
Now is where things split out more, based on slots granted.
Prepared casters daily make a list of what spells they are preparing based on the slots they have available, selecting out of their known spells. So these are their prepared slots.
Some prepared casters have swapped their normal prepared slots via a Flexible archetype for Collection slots. Their collection slots they pick spells out of their known spells and they can cast them as many times as they have usable slots for them. They populated these each morning as their preparation.
Spontaneous casters have a Repertoire of spells they build at character generation (and upon leveling up). These spells can be cast as many times a day as you have an appropriate slots for them. Signature spells allow you to heighten a spell using spell slots of other ranks than the rank where you have it slotted, increasing the usefulness of your spell slots for that spell.
Really, focus casters are sort of like a form of spontaneous caster advancement, as they get the ability to cast that spell with their 'focus' slots, but they aren't dedicated to that spell, and the focus slots are always at current max rank.
Wave casters can be either prepared or spontaneous, it just affects how many slots they get, and which ranks they keep. Perhaps further looking could be put into how the feats that give back limited use of lower rank spell slots for utility casting, but I'm not sure how much that helps this retrospective at the moment so I'm going to skip it right now.
Arcane Evolution is certainly a powerful option for sorcerers allowing a sorcerer to actually have flexibility on a daily basis with at least one spell. I would point out however, that it makes the spellbook, similar to a wizards spellbook, but writing all your naturally known spells becomes free. Yet adding spells costs the same as a wizard writing a new spell into the book. I kind of wish there was a small cost to write spells irrespective of if it were new or not as the implication is that writing spells into a spell book requires rare and magical materials. I wish there was a separate cost of learning and practicing a new spell. You had to know the spell before you could write/copy it into your book. It is a slight different, but I think it makes things more clear. It would also allow wizards to make smaller travelling spellbooks for their most used spells, etc. Things/ideas that are worthwhile concepts details for such stories.
While going through these comparisons, it really makes me feel like the Animist, in the new playtest, should really have its Spontaneous spells be described as being a Collection, since flexible spellcasting Collections are built entirely based choices made during your daily preparations. So your choices of apparitions during daily prep would fill out your Collection for the day.
I also want to point out that all normal cantrip casting is spontaneous, as you don't lose the cantrip (unless from a feat that is 1/day) after casting. So when comparing spontaneous and prepared classes, and their access to cantrips. Prepared casters get to choose from a wide selection of cantrips, based on what they expect the day, but the spontaneous casters are stuck with a static set which is normally the same size as a prepared caster. I think that over time/levels, spontaneous casters should learn new cantrips, so they can build some versatility over time.
I also think there should be some room for Cantrips which have a Minimum Rank to know/cast. These could even be things that would help prepared casters, as they could be VERY useful if you know you are going to need them, but might not always be powerful enough to invest in as a spontaneous caster, unless you get it free from your bloodline, for instance. Which that might even be the 'flavor' origin of some of these cantrips, as advanced bloodline cantrips (or witches advanced cantrips) that other arcane casters eventually learned how to reproduce.
For me it's pretty easy
Spontaneous
Prepared
That's pretty much it. Everything else is just the extra they bolted onto the class
I see magus as a martial with limited baseline prepared casting and summoner as a double body of each type that uses limited baseline spontaneous casting.
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You made it far too complicated. The difference between Spontaneous and Prepared, and the reason why Spontaneous casters are much more flexible, is that Spontaneous casters cast spells from a bigger spell list.
For example, a 6th level Sorcerer who wants to cast a 3rd level spell has the choice between 6 different spells (the 4 3rd level spells in their repertoire and the 2 Signature spells from lower levels).
The Wizard, in the same situation, has the choice between 4 spells at most (considering that the Wizard doesn't prepare the same spell twice). And everytime the Wizard casts a spell they have one less choice. So the Wizard will have the choice between 4, then 3, then 2 and then 1 spell for an average of 2.5 spells, nearly 3 times less choice than the Sorcerer. Even with Arcane Bond taken into account, you end up with an average of 2.8 spells.
Having more than twice the choice of a Prepared caster is what makes Spontaneous casters the versatile casters.
The flexibility of choosing your spells in the morning doesn't help much as you'll rarely change more than 10% of your spells.
The style of a spellcaster is seen from three different viewpoints: the caster's viewpoint, the fellow party member's viewpoint, and an outsider's viewpoint.
The caster's viewpoint is also the player's viewpoint. It influences how much work the player has to put into spell selection. Selecting spells for a spontaneous caster is once per level, while for a prepared cast it is once per day. A focus-based caster and a kineticist performs spell selection through feats, which excludes other feats. Cantrips and additional focus spells matter a great deal, because they are the caster's tools for Low-Threat combat where the caster wants to preserve spell slots.
The fellow party member's viewpoint is about which spellcasting needs the spellcaster can handle reliably. A few adventures together tell them the spell repertoire of a spontaneous or feat-selected caster. A prepared caster, in contrast, can change spells every day. This is handy for divine prepared casters, who can often deal with a disease or curse the next day. Except for those special cases such as Remove Disease, the prepared casters don't change their spells much and can be predictable for their teammates. For example, the druid in my most recent campaign against the armies of the Ironfang Legion always prepared several area-of-effect spells that destroyed armies.
The outsider's viewpoint can seldom tell the difference between a prepared and a spontaneous caster. A spontaneous caster is more likely to repeat a spell, that's all. But the enemy outsider would assess the spellcaster to defeat them, so looks for clues. No armor typically means a caster with a lot of spell slots yet fewer hit points: they are vulnerable to melee combat. A bard gives their class away by singing Inspire Courage. Silence the bard so that the bard's allies will be less effective. Psychics have weird spell components. Kineticists have an element in hand. An oracle might have a visible curse active. A summoner would definitely have an eidolon. The spell tradition--arcane, divine, occult, or primal--offered clues, but some classes such as sorcerer had no fixed tradition.
The outsider's viewpoint is also good for flavor and combat style. It ought to matter for the story whether the Big Bad Evil Guy is a wizard, a magus, an arcane sorcerer, a rune witch, or a summoner with a construct or dragon eidolon, even though all of them are arcane casters. The magus and summoner's eidolon would engage in melee, but the wizard, sorcerer, and witch won't. The witch might be the bad guy because their patron wants something awful, but the wizard would be working from their own motives. For those arcane casters in the party, the wave casters magus and summoner would lack the low-level spells often devoted to utility. The summoner might gain replacement utility through special abilities on the eidolon from evolution feats or evolution surge. In contrast, the magus is tough rather than utilizable.
Whether the spellcaster relies on their spell slots for everything or has alternatives is a major difference in style, even though the style of spellcasting itself is not necessarily different.
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The outsider's viewpoint can seldom tell the difference between a prepared and a spontaneous caster.
Well.. if you're fighting an NPC caster and they just used a spell that absolutely wrecked your party, it's gonna be quite relevant. Because the spontaneous caster can just keep hammering you with the same thing over an over if they found your problem spot.
Whereas with a prepared caster it might be "okay, we figured out he's a wizard, and he's just used a lightning bolt... well we could try really hard not to stand in a line, but odds are that the next thing is gonna have a different AoE shape"
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The outsider's viewpoint can seldom tell the difference between a prepared and a spontaneous caster.Well.. if you're fighting an NPC caster and they just used a spell that absolutely wrecked your party, it's gonna be quite relevant. Because the spontaneous caster can just keep hammering you with the same thing over an over if they found your problem spot.
Whereas with a prepared caster it might be "okay, we figured out he's a wizard, and he's just used a lightning bolt... well we could try really hard not to stand in a line, but odds are that the next thing is gonna have a different AoE shape"
I've never been able to tell the difference in all the PFS scenarios I have been playing for years.
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I've never been able to tell the difference in all the PFS scenarios I have been playing for years.The outsider's viewpoint can seldom tell the difference between a prepared and a spontaneous caster.Well.. if you're fighting an NPC caster and they just used a spell that absolutely wrecked your party, it's gonna be quite relevant. Because the spontaneous caster can just keep hammering you with the same thing over an over if they found your problem spot.
Whereas with a prepared caster it might be "okay, we figured out he's a wizard, and he's just used a lightning bolt... well we could try really hard not to stand in a line, but odds are that the next thing is gonna have a different AoE shape"
I had a running joke in my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign that the hobgoblin soldiers in the Ironfang Legion repeatedly called the gnome stormborn druid in the party a wizard. The source material said that hobgoblins had fought elven wizards so much that they had a cultural hatred for wizardry. The druid favored Lightning Bolt, Fireball, and Chain Lightning, which are in both the Arcane and Primal traditions, so the hobgoblins thought of her spells as wizardry.
More critical to the styles of casting is that because I was porting the adventure path to PF2, I had to rewrite every unique opponent to PF2 rules. Some PF1 classes did not yet exist in PF2, so I had to make changes. Other times I made new NPCs when the players invented their own side quests. I had to think about both the story impact and the combat impact of the character's class.
For example, in Assault on Longshadow the upcoming Ironfang assault on the Nirmathi city of Longshadow was supported by several individual war camps. The camp that trained warbeasts was run by a hobgoblin hunter Repral. Hunter class does not exist in PF2, but it casts divine spells from the ranger and druid spell lists. I had trouble porting Repral as a ranger, because something seemed missing from the story. Then I ported her as a warpriest cleric of Lamashtu, who trained monstrous warpriests because she loved monsters. This gave her character, so that she could talk with the party rather than blindly fight them.
I was a bewildered that one of the final villains, the CR 19 dark naga Zanathura, was a sorcerer rather than a wizard. Zanathura had been long foreshadowed, and we learned that she loved magical research and magical artifacts, traits associated more with high-intelligence wizards rather than high-charisma sorcerers. Zanathura's stats were Str 12, Dex 26, Con 24, Int 20, Wis 21, Cha 26, so intelligence was actually her second-lowest ability score, though due to ability-score inflation at high levels, she was legitimately a genius. I ported her to PF2 as an arcane spontaneous caster, but instead of declaring her a sorcerer and giving her a bloodline, I merely expanded the Arcane Spontaneous Spells of an ordinary 7th-level PF2 Dark Naga up to 10th level.
In combat, she lacked time to cast any spell more that once. She would have used Time Stop more than once, but she had only one 10th-level spell slot.
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I remember a weird case of a spontaneous caster making use of the same spell repeatedly. She was my GMPC Amaya of Westcrown in the Forests of Spirits module of the Jade Regent adventure path.
Near the end of the previous module, one party member Ebony Blossom had become infected with mummy rot, a disease that required both Remove Disease and Remove Curse to cure. GMPC time oracle Amaya was the party healer, but as a spontaneous caster she had learned neither of those specialized spells. Instead, Amaya cast Lesser Restoration on Ebony Blossom every day to keep her alive until they reached a big city in two weeks. But they leveled up a few days later after fighting giant spiders, so Amaya learned new spells and retrained an old spell. She learned Remove Curse and Remove Disease, a bad choice for a spontaneous caster, to immediately cure her teammate. I am willing to abuse my GMPCs to make the game run smoothly.
Before she leveled up again, the party explored a dungeon. They were after information related to their main quest, so they would rather have enemies surrender than die. One encounter in the dungeon was four hobgoblin lepers. The lepers' attacks had a chance of infecting people with leprosy. Amaya stepped up and made touch attacks with the spell Remove Disease. Without the threat of disease, the former lepers were pretty helpless and awkwardly grateful, so they surrendered.
I had not expected the Remove Disease spell to matter after Ebony Blossom was cured. But it did matter and it mattered that Amaya could cast it four times without advance knowledge.
I've been meaning to address this for a bit.
I see prepared casters and spontaneous casters.
In PF1 prepared casting was well-supported and better than spontaneous casting. In PF2 spontaneous casting is better than prepared casting in combat.
PF2 built magic differently than PF1, which has elevated spontaneous casting to the superior casting style.
Within the PF2 paradigm, magic works the following ways:
1. Short Duration: This means any buffs casts will have to be recast multiple times. You do not have as many long-term buffs and there is no innate scaling by level. All scaling is from heightening which may or may not increase duration. So being able to cast a buff multiple times as needed is superior to slotting a buff in multiple slots.
You used to be able obtain wands with 50 charges to offset the need for filling slots with buff spells. The cheap, high charge wands would allow you to continuously cast a buff. But that is no longer the case.
A prepared caster must memorize the buff.
A spontaneous caster can cast it as needed with available number of slots. More often if a signature spell.
This also affects debuffs and utility spells making it better to be able to chain cast a debuff spontaneously or a fly as needed rather than having to slot it multiple times.
2. Low number of slots: Both types of casters have a lower number of slots.
This means a prepared caster must prepare a spell in a slot to use it. So if they want to prepared for multiple types of encounters, they must slot multiple spells in different slots that once used cannot be used again save by a wizard one additional time using Arcane Bond.
A spontaneous caster has slots for use and a repertoire. The repertoire makes each slot have 3 to 4 options. This allows a great deal more flexibility in real time when using spontaneous slots.
For example, if an opponent saves against your slow spell, the prepared caster must have another slow spell slotted but a spontaneous caster can cast the same slow spell again using a same level slot.
Even a wizard using arcane bond gains only one additional use per day, while a spontaneous caster with slow as a signature spell can cast slow with all their 3rd, 4th, and all the way up to 10th level slots if needed.
In real play time, a spontaneous caster is far more effective at ensuring a particular high value spell will land whereas a prepared caster if their spell fails maybe has one more spell to use.
Since both types of casters can supplement with magic items, there is no advantage to the prepared caster for magic item use.
3. Magic Items: Magic items like wands are now single use items for practical purposes. This provides no real practical advantage to either type of caster. Wands, staves, and scrolls all extend casting.
A prepared caster can cast more often with items providing a little of the benefit of a spontaneous caster.
A spontaneous caster can expand their repertoire further with scrolls of spells that might prove occasionally useful or useful for a single encounter.
Gone are the 50 charge wands that favored prepared casters in PF1 allowing them to buff all day so they could focus their slots on high value spells without wasting many slots for low level buffs.
4. Fewer High Value Spells: With the incap trait, higher enemy saves, lack of innate spell scaling, and far fewer save or suck or save or die spells, you don't have many options a prepared caster can take advantage of that will effectively end fights.
For an incap spell to be effective, it must be prepared in the highest possible slots just to be useful against even an even level to even a few levels lower enemy.
A spontaneous caster can better take advantage of incap spell by taking it as a signature spell at low level like say charm or suggestion and making it a signature spell so they can heighten it to the level needed on demand.
Where a prepared caster would have to slot charm or suggestion in a high level slot just to be sure it would be useful against a given opponent of a high level.
5. Feats: Spontaneous casters have better feats for simulating the advantage of prepared casting by changing out spells with feats like Esoteric Polymath or Arcane Evolution or Occult Evolution than prepared casters have for simulating spontaneous casting like Arcane Bond or the feats that allow an open slot a few levels lower.
6. Slots are set during a single preparation time: Slots for prepared casters are set at a single preparation time daily. Only one wizard thesis and a few feats for specific spell types allow this to be altered. If the wizard takes this thesis, they are locked into that thesis. It still requires 10 minutes to change out a spell in a single slot.
7. Metamagic: Metamagic is a wash for both types of casters. Metamagic is a feat requiring actions now. It's the same for all casters.
Metamagic used to heavily favor prepared casters since they could slot spells with metamagic modifictions. This was enormously powerful in PF1 and 3E. That advantage is gone.
Prepared casting was dominant for most of D&D and PF1. Early D&D did not offer options to Vancian prepared casting, so it was dominant by default. Prepared casting reached its apex in 3E and PF1 where it has several advantages which no longer exist.
Spontaneous Casting is now superior for combat with rare exception.
Prepared casting is better for exploration or downtime because you wouldn't take a lot of the utility/scouting spells in a high value spell repertoire slot unless it would be commonly used in the adventure.
A lot of the exploration or downtime activities can be accomplished with skills, so spells and skills become can be equally valuable for activities like scouting or bypassing doors or moving over or through obstacles or feeding everyone or finding someone, especially with the greatly weakened versions of scrying or teleport (10 minute casting time let's you get in, but you're not getting out quick).
That's how I see spontaneous versus prepared casting in PF2.