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Their answer is the remastered version of the class (and the adjacent rules stuff like spells and so on). I seriously doubt we'll get any more than that anytime soon.
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Casters had to be brought under control somehow and this is how they choose to do it.
The game works fine. Yes a lot of people don't like some of their design choices. Yes a few things are not perfect. Keeping everyone happy is nigh impossible.
As for their answers, look at Thaumaturge, Pyschic, Kineticist, and soon the Remaster.
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There’s been some long twitter threads about it. The main issue with the wizard is how extremely general the traditional view of the class is: the D&D wizard can do pretty much ‘everything’ except healing. Historically the wizard has not just been able to do (almost) everything, but has also been very good at all those things. But the commentary is: with that flexibility there needs to be balance introduced through other limitations. So those ‘shortcomings’ are very much intended. The games’ greatest generalist can’t reasonably also be a very good specialist. At least with how wizards are currently envisioned. Perhaps the narrowing of schools in the remaster will provide more room in the future for increased specialisation.
Personally I think that extreme flexibility + power in older versions created expectations that needed to be reset. 2e did that, which is wonderful! The complaints of some wizard players just illustrates that the changes worked. But i’ve been playing since the days when a level 1 wizard had 1d4 hit points and one spell. Everyone seems to have different and very varied expectations when it comes to wizards - which is the heart of the problem.
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I'm just curious that since the release of CRB, negative views on wizard have appeared in everyone's eyes almost a few times a month. How do the designers at Paizo view the shortcomings of this profession? In what areas will players' experience be improved in the future
The developers do not recognize the shortcomings of the Wizard as shortcomings, and instead as functioning as intended. We've been told that, for us to come to a consensus on what a Wizard's functionality is, that we need to "change our definitions" of what a Wizard is and can do.
It ultimately boils down to "Too bad, deal with it, put up or shut up, this is not going to change anytime soon."
Meanwhile, they are significantly nerfing a major facet of Wizard and implementing pseudo-trap feats in exchange for simple weapon proficiency. As such, the idea that a player's "experience" will improve is a little hard to both extrapolate and justify.
It would be like giving a character an Investigator in place of a Rogue for the Remaster and saying that you have to change your perceptions on what a Rogue is for you to appreciate the class' function. Though honestly, even in this instance, I would probably be more inclined to accept it, since at least Investigator can do some things a Rogue can't, whereas Wizard is worse across the board.
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I'm just curious that since the release of CRB, negative views on wizard have appeared in everyone's eyes almost a few times a month. How do the designers at Paizo view the shortcomings of this profession? In what areas will players' experience be improved in the futureThe developers do not recognize the shortcomings of the Wizard as shortcomings, and instead as functioning as intended. We've been told that, for us to come to a consensus on what a Wizard's functionality is, that we need to "change our definitions" of what a Wizard is and can do.
Time and time again, that definition from the people dissatisfied with the direction wizard is taking seems to have been "do everything everyone else can do but better... except healing".
Wizard is not the only class and the developers are trying to build a relatively balanced ecosystem of classes with some overlap but also interesting niches. I, personally, have little interest in returning to the days of struggling to find a way to make my character interesting and relevant while the party's caster nuked every single problem immediately. Having a specialist build feel like the back-up option when a wizard is in the room ain't a great feeling.
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I'm just curious that since the release of CRB, negative views on wizard have appeared in everyone's eyes almost a few times a month. How do the designers at Paizo view the shortcomings of this profession? In what areas will players' experience be improved in the future
Not everyone has a negative view of the wizard in PF2, especially a few times a month. I think that criticism of classes generally comes in waves, and knowing there were some changes coming to the wizard has most of the same people who have been critical of the class coming back to vocalize, plus some new criticism based upon premature evidence of the changes. We’ll see what happens when we can actually look at all the parts together.
When some people just feel like spell slot casting in PF2 is generally underwhelming, the one class that puts the absolute most of its power budget into spell slot casting was obviously going to be the class that catches the ire of players making those criticisms. Developers have multiple streams a of data on class design and player satisfaction with classes. When they make changes to classes, it is not to up end current class design trends, but meet specific needs that fit their development model.
So players saying things like “give wizards more focus spells and easier in class access to them” are missing the forest for the trees, while “some of these focus spells that wizards can get are underwhelming and difficult to use effectively” is a complaint that is getting addressed.
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I'm just curious that since the release of CRB, negative views on wizard have appeared in everyone's eyes almost a few times a month. How do the designers at Paizo view the shortcomings of this profession? In what areas will players' experience be improved in the futureThe developers do not recognize the shortcomings of the Wizard as shortcomings, and instead as functioning as intended. We've been told that, for us to come to a consensus on what a Wizard's functionality is, that we need to "change our definitions" of what a Wizard is and can do.Time and time again, that definition from the people dissatisfied with the direction wizard is taking seems to have been "do everything everyone else can do but better... except healing".
Wizard is not the only class and the developers are trying to build a relatively balanced ecosystem of classes with some overlap but also interesting niches. I, personally, have little interest in returning to the days of struggling to find a way to make my character interesting and relevant while the party's caster nuked every single problem immediately. Having a specialist build feel like the back-up option when a wizard is in the room ain't a great feeling.
The idea that the complainers just want PF1 levels of power (which isn't even true for the current best spellcaster in the game) is a strawman. It also acts like there isn't a middle-ground, which is ultimately what we want, in which case if the system can't permit a fun Wizard class without breaking it, then maybe axing the Wizard class would be more favorable than publishing garbage.
We want option parity and spell identity. As it is, Wizards have hardly any good feats (when dedications are better 90% of the time, it's a problem), too many trap/useless options (which is being used as a benefit to the class somehow), and has very little Arcane-exclusive spells. Why have 600+ spells when maybe 50 of them are any good, and only the Summon spells are Arcane-exclusive? Spell bloat is not a boon like it was in PF1, where spells quadratically scale, and for every 1 bad spell, there were half a dozen or more good ones.
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I'm just curious that since the release of CRB, negative views on wizard have appeared in everyone's eyes almost a few times a month. How do the designers at Paizo view the shortcomings of this profession? In what areas will players' experience be improved in the futureThe developers do not recognize the shortcomings of the Wizard as shortcomings, and instead as functioning as intended. We've been told that, for us to come to a consensus on what a Wizard's functionality is, that we need to "change our definitions" of what a Wizard is and can do.Time and time again, that definition from the people dissatisfied with the direction wizard is taking seems to have been "do everything everyone else can do but better... except healing".
Wizard is not the only class and the developers are trying to build a relatively balanced ecosystem of classes with some overlap but also interesting niches. I, personally, have little interest in returning to the days of struggling to find a way to make my character interesting and relevant while the party's caster nuked every single problem immediately. Having a specialist build feel like the back-up option when a wizard is in the room ain't a great feeling.
The idea that the complainers just want PF1 levels of power (which isn't even true for the current best spellcaster in the game) is a strawman. It also acts like there isn't a middle-ground, which is ultimately what we want, in which case if the system can't permit a fun Wizard class without breaking it, then maybe axing the Wizard class would be more favorable than publishing garbage.
We want option parity and spell identity. As it is, Wizards have hardly any good feats (when dedications are better 90% of the time, it's a problem), too many trap/useless options (which is being used as a benefit to the class somehow), and has very little Arcane-exclusive spells. Why have 600+ spells when maybe 50 of them...
Who is "we" ?
Many things you mention here seem quite reasonable and I hope Wizard gets them in Remastered.
But really people asking for better Wizards include other things and not only, and sometimes not even, those you mentioned.
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We have already seen the "high points" of the Wizard remaster, and they aren't very promising. Reduced bonus slot options makes Universalist all the more appealing, and the one feat they highlighted isn't very potent, and has presentational issues. So the idea they will get the things they need is both doubtful and not shown by any measure.
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We have already seen the "high points" of the Wizard remaster, and they aren't very promising. Reduced bonus slot options makes Universalist all the more appealing, and the one feat they highlighted isn't very potent, and has presentational issues. So the idea they will get the things they need is both doubtful and not shown by any measure.
Give Paizo the benefit of the doubt. I think there's a general agreement on the Wizard position: Not good but not irredeemably bad. Maybe Paizo will come with a good idea (from what I understand they remove the Universalist, so maybe will they give all Wizards the Universalist Bonded Item on top of the School, which should be a nice buff to the class). Wait and see.
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Why have 600+ spells when maybe 50 of them are any good, and only the Summon spells are Arcane-exclusive? Spell bloat is not a boon like it was in PF1, where spells quadratically scale, and for every 1 bad spell, there were half a dozen or more good ones.
What an incredibly rose-coloured vision of PF1 spells. Look through the Wizard list in PF1 and you'll find far more niche spells, or just outright bad ones, than a 10:1 ratio of good to bad. Of the 25 (!) spells that start with the letter A on the wizard 3rd-level spell list, I've seen 3 of them be recommended in any meaningful way. On top of that, there really aren't only 50 spells that are any good on the PF2 list. For whatever reason, you're of the opinion that every fight that is challenging has to be against a single higher-level enemy. This is ignoring the published reality that many difficult fights are against multiple weaker enemies. A whole range of spells are highly effective in a fight against 4 level-1 enemies that aren't highly effective against a level+3 enemy, and those fights are about equally difficult. Your constant insistence that there are only a handful of spells worth casting at every spell level is just reflective of an extremely limited view of how the game should be played, and it's not even a view of the game that aligns with published material.
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Why have 600+ spells when maybe 50 of them are any good, and only the Summon spells are Arcane-exclusive? Spell bloat is not a boon like it was in PF1, where spells quadratically scale, and for every 1 bad spell, there were half a dozen or more good ones.What an incredibly rose-coloured vision of PF1 spells. Look through the Wizard list in PF1 and you'll find far more niche spells, or just outright bad ones, than a 10:1 ratio of good to bad. Of the 25 (!) spells that start with the letter A on the wizard 3rd-level spell list, I've seen 3 of them be recommended in any meaningful way. On top of that, there really aren't only 50 spells that are any good on the PF2 list. For whatever reason, you're of the opinion that every fight that is challenging has to be against a single higher-level enemy. This is ignoring the published reality that many difficult fights are against multiple weaker enemies. A whole range of spells are highly effective in a fight against 4 level-1 enemies that aren't highly effective against a level+3 enemy, and those fights are about equally difficult. Your constant insistence that there are only a handful of spells worth casting at every spell level is just reflective of an extremely limited view of how the game should be played, and it's not even a view of the game that aligns with published material.
I'll also mention Darksoul'e myopic view of single enemy combats ignores an area where wizards are probably better than anyone else: out of combat utility.
Anyway, rather than try to paraphrase the designer's stance on the wizard through an extremely biased filter, I'll just post it.
https://twitter.com/MichaelJSayre1/status/1701282455758708919
Pathfinder2E design rambling: "perfect knowledge, effective preparation, and available design space"
Following up my thread from the other week, I've seen a lot of people talking about issues with assuming "perfect knowledge" or 'Schroedinger's wizard", with the idea that the current iteration of PF2 is balanced around the assumption that every wizard will have exactly the right spell for exactly the right situation. They won't, and the game doesn't expect them to. The game "knows" that the wizard has a finite number of slots and cantrips. And it knows that adventures can and should be unpredictable, because that's where a lot of the fun can come from. What it does assume, though, is that the wizard will have a variety of options available. That they'll memorize cantrips and spells to target most of the basic defenses in the game, that they'll typically be able to target something other than the enemy's strongest defense, that many of their abilities will still have some effect even if the enemy successfully saves against the spell, and that the wizard will use some combination of cantrips, slots, and potentially focus spells during any given encounter (usually 1 highest rank slot accompanied by some combination of cantrips, focus spells, and lower rank slots, depending a bit on level).
So excelling with the kind of generalist spellcasters PF2 currently presents, means making sure your character is doing those things. Classes like the kineticist get a bit more leeway in this regard, since they don't run out of their resources; lower ceilings, but more forgiving floors. Most of the PF2 CRB and APG spellcasting classes are built around that paradigm of general preparedness, with various allowances that adjust for their respective magic traditions. Occult spells generally have fewer options for targeting Reflex, for example, so bards get an array of buffs and better weapons for participating in combats where their tradition doesn't have as much punch. Most divine casters get some kind of access to an improved proficiency tree or performance enhancer alongside being able to graft spells from other traditions.
There are other directions you could potentially go with spellcasters, though. The current playtest animist offers a huge degree of general versatility in exchange for sacrificing its top-level power. It ends up with fewer top-rank slots than other casters with generally more limits on those slots, but it's unlikely to ever find itself without something effective to do. The kineticist forgos having access to a spell tradition entirely in exchange for getting to craft a customized theme and function that avoids both the ceiling and the floor. The summoner and the magus give up most of their slots in exchange for highly effective combat options, shifting to the idea that their cantrips are their bread and butter, while their spell slots are only for key moments. Psychics also de-emphasize slots for cantrips.
Of the aforementioned classes, the kineticist is likely the one most able to specialize into a theme, since it gives up tradition access entirely. Future classes and options could likely explore either direction: limiting the number or versatility of slots, or forgoing slots. A "necromancer" class might make more sense with no slots at all, and instead something similar to divine font but for animate dead spells, or it could have limited slots, or a bespoke list. The problem with a bespoke list is generally that the class stagnates. The list needs to be manually added to with each new book or it simply fails to grow with the game, a solution that the spell traditions in PF2 were designed to resolve. So that kind of "return to form" might be less appealing for a class and make more sense for an archetype.
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.
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Do we really need another thread about this? As a rule, you can't expect to get a developer response about whatever crosses your mind, so this is just going to devolve into another caster whining post.
Why have 600+ spells when maybe 50 of them are any good, and only the Summon spells are Arcane-exclusive? Spell bloat is not a boon like it was in PF1, where spells quadratically scale, and for every 1 bad spell, there were half a dozen or more good ones.What an incredibly rose-coloured vision of PF1 spells. Look through the Wizard list in PF1 and you'll find far more niche spells, or just outright bad ones, than a 10:1 ratio of good to bad. Of the 25 (!) spells that start with the letter A on the wizard 3rd-level spell list, I've seen 3 of them be recommended in any meaningful way. On top of that, there really aren't only 50 spells that are any good on the PF2 list. For whatever reason, you're of the opinion that every fight that is challenging has to be against a single higher-level enemy. This is ignoring the published reality that many difficult fights are against multiple weaker enemies. A whole range of spells are highly effective in a fight against 4 level-1 enemies that aren't highly effective against a level+3 enemy, and those fights are about equally difficult. Your constant insistence that there are only a handful of spells worth casting at every spell level is just reflective of an extremely limited view of how the game should be played, and it's not even a view of the game that aligns with published material.
Okay, let's say I was wrong about the spells. They still quadratically scaled, making them better than PF2 by default, and on top of that, it's a problem that has been replicated in PF2, but even worse. So why are we essentially "un-evolving" the spell list? If spell bloat is an issue, then I don't understand why PF2 perpetuates it just as much as, if not worse than, PF1. Also, given that the Wizard is wholly defined by their tradition and doesn't have hardly any class features divorced from it, the problem essentially becomes "the spell list is the class," and not the other way around.
As for the encounters thing, the higher level enemies (usually) have higher stats, which means these are the things that best "stress-test" the numbers of spellcasters, and compared to martials, they struggle a lot more. Yes, flinging a dozen Level-2 enemies can be problematic for a party, more so for martials in the earlier levels than spellcasters. But it's not like we can't toss Burning Hands to good effect or a Fireball at the enemy and have it not work, or not work out very well, nor is that really a problem highlighted by Wizards in particular, which is what the thread is about.
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I'll also mention Darksoul'e myopic view of single enemy combats ignores an area where wizards are probably better than anyone else: out of combat utility.
They have the best narrative convenience with the likes of Teleport, and Disintegrate being able to make holes in walls, but no way are they better out of combat than a skill-focused class like the Rogue, or classes with feats that work with their skills, of which Wizards don't get much from. Scroll Savant is good and all, but one feat out of the 50 or so hardly represents them having good out of combat utility. And most APs don't care much for narrative convenience unless they give you the options for it.
Although, this one again highlights that the spells define the class, and not the other way around, whereas other spellcasters do not have this issue.
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We have already seen the "high points" of the Wizard remaster, and they aren't very promising. Reduced bonus slot options makes Universalist all the more appealing, and the one feat they highlighted isn't very potent, and has presentational issues. So the idea they will get the things they need is both doubtful and not shown by any measure.Give Paizo the benefit of the doubt. I think there's a general agreement on the Wizard position: Not good but not irredeemably bad. Maybe Paizo will come with a good idea (from what I understand they remove the Universalist, so maybe will they give all Wizards the Universalist Bonded Item on top of the School, which should be a nice buff to the class). Wait and see.
Personally, I'm not holding out hope for any surprise uplift. It wouldn't make much sense to hold back on a major positive selling point while showing us the negative changes ahead of time.
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Personally, I'm not holding out hope for any surprise uplift. It wouldn't make much sense to hold back on a major positive selling point while showing us the negative changes ahead of time.
I understand you and I must admit I'm certainly a bit too hopeful. But I don't want to talk about the remaster Wizard... before it is even out. We don't even need to wait for a month to know what will happen to the Wizard.
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We have already seen the "high points" of the Wizard remaster, and they aren't very promising. Reduced bonus slot options makes Universalist all the more appealing, and the one feat they highlighted isn't very potent, and has presentational issues. So the idea they will get the things they need is both doubtful and not shown by any measure.Give Paizo the benefit of the doubt. I think there's a general agreement on the Wizard position: Not good but not irredeemably bad. Maybe Paizo will come with a good idea (from what I understand they remove the Universalist, so maybe will they give all Wizards the Universalist Bonded Item on top of the School, which should be a nice buff to the class). Wait and see.
As much as I try to give the benefit of the doubt whenever possible my faith in the remaining PF2 and marketing team has begun to wear pretty threadbare.
There is absolutely zero reason to show off something that is NOT improved when previewing a new product and every single time they pull back the curtains on the Wizard what is shown amounts to a botched emergency surgery that, while still functional, is worse and less attractive that the base PF2 Core version of it. Every measurable metric that a Wizard operates on other than the changes that are baseline to ALL Spellcasters (such as the elimination of Tradition-based Profs and across-the-board provision of Simple Weapon Training) has either stayed the same or gotten much worse. The only real way you can argue that it's gotten better in any way is by pointing at the various Trap Feats that were left on the cutting room floor such as Eschew Materials but that's no improvement but more of a bug fix.
There was this notion on the forums and various social media websites for a while, before the previews, that NOTHING was going to be nerfed because that's a "no-no" and would be bad, especially when talking about things that objectively SHOULD be nerfed to bring it in line with everything else in its role/niche (cough*Bard*couth) and rather that weaker options should be improved... well, that doesn't really seem to be happening with the Wizard and now we know that they HAVE been nerfed and the whole "they're not nerfing stuff" narrative is a load of bunk, but sadly, it seems like their focus for the nerf-bat has been on things that didn't need to be taken down a peg at all. Perhaps that idea itself never actually originated within Paizo but instead was the offspring of, for lack of a better word, fanatic apologists, and the idea that it wasn't going to happen was just hope-fueled misinformation the whole time.
Lastly, without being too personal about it, on the topic of MS... that X/Twitter thread that is quoted above is absolutely CHOCK-FULL of problems, misunderstandings about what the Class is/represents/how it's actually played, strawmen, flat-out inaccuracies, and is a perfect example of why the senior Paizo staff stopped making public statements about the game (with the exception of marketing buzz) a long time ago, oftentimes when they DO speak up it ends up causing arguments or showcases them putting their foot in their mouth.
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Generally I feel better about the Wizard in the last month, namely because I did what Paizo suggested and changed my expection on it. I now better understand Paizo's position on the Wizard and what it actually is to them. Check out the below thread, most importantly, the reply from Michael Sayre. Quoted below.
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43vmk&page=2?Michael-Sayre-on-Casters-Bala nce-and-Wizards
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. (exactly what level you are determines what that general assumption might be, since obviously you don't have lower-rank spells that aren't cantrips at 1st level.)
Some classes supplement this with bonus slots, some with better cantrips, some with better access to focus spells, some with particular styles of feats, etc., all kind of depending on the specific class in play. Classes like the psychic and magus aren't even really expected to be reliant on their slots, but to have them available for those situations where the primary play loops represented by their spellstrike and cascade or amps and unleashes don't fit with the encounter they find themselves in, or when they need a big boost of juice to get over the hump in a tough fight.
So lets look at the Wizard in this context, and how it fits into the class ecosystem as laid out roughly in the above.
What does the Wizard have?
The 3 standard spell slots + a bonus one, and some negligible focus spells on top.
Why are those focus spells negligible? Because its not their purpose to help the Wizard meaningfully in combat. The supplimental to the standard 3 slots is the bonus slot, not focus spells.
Why is the utility, then, of that 4th slot being reduced without seemingly anything in return? Because it still fills its primary purpose regardless, in the face of the necessary change Schools had to go through.
Casters are generally structured as 3 slots standard, with something to compliment them. As long as the Wizard continues to fit this bill, then Paizo look at them as "fine". Even if what you can do with that Something isn't always good.
Its easy to see why the Witch is getting such a big rework however, as its Complimentary Something, hexes, were not filling the requirement.
But what about all the other stuff that is associated with Wizards? Those don't overly matter to the classes functioning. It doesn't make a materal difference if your Wizard can't tell a Troll from their mother. Do you have enough spell slots to perhaps have filled one of them with a spell whose save the Troll is probably weak against? Cool, objective achieved.
Limiting factors to overall effectiveness aren't really part of the equation. As long as the class can deliever on having a reasonable chance of having 1 top slot spell per encounter be advantageous to resolving that encounter, then it passes muster.
... and that's all there really is to it.
So if you want to be a cream of the crop Wizard, take Spell Blending, get an Endless Grimoire, get a Ring of Wizardry, get a staff, get Bestiary Scholar if you can, and you will have achieved the heights of the classes intended function.
And I know I have been somewhat flippant in this post, but I don't actually see this, overall, as a bad thing. The class is just much narrower in scope and function than is generally considered intended. But that is the expectation that needs to change.
Its actually just a small class with big expectations.
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I really value Michael Sayre's feedback on casters and willingness to state design decisions even though he knows that there will be some agreement, some disagreement, and some vocal minority of players who feel entitled to make bold, unsupported but authoritative statements littered with unncessary capitalization about the game as if their opinion and feelings about game design choices are statements of facts, even when the evidence that they use to support their opinions are based on play experience with a single group, or in certain types of campaigns, or sometimes solely off of internet banter with no play experience at all.
It takes a fair bit of courage to recognize that there are 9 fans of the game that appreciate direct engagement and the opportunity to learn about the process of game design from professionals in a respectful manner for every one person who is upset and just looking to vent their frustration without really thinking about the hard work and human labor that goes into making a wonderful and fun game.
I am personally staying out of conversations about whether changes to the wizard class in the end will amount to a nerf to class or not until we can see all the moving pieces together. There are so many little things changing in the game all at once that it is easy to get worked up about things that just are not even relevant or connected anymore. Spell components leaving the game entirely for example, except by explicit mention in the description of the spell, and for number of free hands to be called out by individual spells if it is greater than 0 seems like an ORC move that we will need to see over more than the 3 or 4 spells we have seen in Rage of Elements to really figure out how any of that plays out.
And people getting worked up about Shocking Grasp not being in the game anymore when thunderstrike is a massive upgrade for wizards ability to do single target damage, without touching anything in the class. Or the nearly doubling of cantrips that target saves or target multiple enemies that we have seen thus far, without even seeing the final spell lists.
A class defined by how they use spells will inevitably be boosted more than any other class if the spells that that they can cast are generally boosted.
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I also consider the Spell Blending Specialist to be the build you can only do with a Wizard. Having so many high level spell slots is impossible to all other classes. For the rest, Spell Substitution is not bad but going Sorcerer is just so much easier and nets you higher flexibility that I hardly see the point in going through the hassle of Spell Substitution.
I hope they will improve the Wizard as right now it is at great risk of becoming the new Witch.
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I also consider the Spell Blending Specialist to be the build you can only do with a Wizard. Having so many high level spell slots is impossible to all other classes. For the rest, Spell Substitution is not bad but going Sorcerer is just so much easier and nets you higher flexibility that I hardly see the point in going through the hassle of Spell Substitution.
I hope they will improve the Wizard as right now it is at great risk of becoming the new Witch.
Clerics have Fonts, which give more of their best spell on their list, and that just got a significant buff.
Isn't the cleric font change just a flat 4 spells for the whole 20 levels? Rather than something that can potentially increase to 5 by the late game? I don't know that I would call it a buff as much as front-loading,
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Isn't the cleric font change just a flat 4 spells for the whole 20 levels? Rather than something that can potentially increase to 5 by the late game? I don't know that I would call it a buff as much as front-loading,
Pretty sure it auto scales to 5 at lvl 5 and 6 at lvl 16
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My group is really benefiting from Sayre's "3 moderate fights per day" statement. I straight-up told them that every 3 fights they could rest, and now the casters are way less hung up on resource conservation.
That honestly has been the secret-sauce recently. AP's generally don't flow like this, at least not consistently, which perhaps has been a source of the problem. So switching up the general flow of sessions to be more in-line with this is showing positiive results thus far.
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I don't blame anyone for this, and no I would not have figured it out and done better myself in their shoes...
...but a lot of opinions about the state of PF2 and casters in PF2 feels like it got set on these boards from people playing fall of plaguestone and Age of Ashes. Which happen to be 2 very high difficulty adventures that don't necessarily help newer GMs figure out how to smoothly pace encounters together.
Although to be fair, in age of ashes in particular, it is mostly players who seem to be in a rush just because the martials all got healed up to full and have no daily resources to monitor pushing casters to keep moving forward in difficult dungeons that have no time pressure to them what-so-ever.
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Yeah I'm GMing extinction curse currently after playing through it. And there are tons of dungeons like that.
That's why I told my players about Sayre's comments, so that they remembered to take deep breaths and play the game as it was intended to be played.
There is a bit of room for issue here where its not narratively satisfying/reasonable for the players to take a long enough break to allow for daily preparations.
So you need to shuffle up pacing in places. So its a bit more work than before.
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Extinction Curse is rough. The early PF2 balance issues are exacerbated by the expectations that you should build circus performers. And then you wind up with an overly complicated and difficult circus ruleset with very little intersection of the "main" story, and grueling chaining of back to back encounters which seems designed for the hardiest of murder hobos. I'm a little bitter about it.
Book 2 was the only one that felt like it properly interacted with the circus stuff. I might try running it as a stand alone at some point, but even then I'd probably ditch a ton of encounters and give players an extra level above the curve.
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If 3 moderate fights a day are the expectation, they need to communicate this to AP writers.
Just looking at the start of book-1 of Outlaws of Alkenstar
And this AP does not have the excuse of being an early one.
And to answer the OPs question. From what I have seen, The designers seem to think those who don't enjoy the wizard or think it is too weak are playing the game wrong.
A bit more effort than what? In PF1, the same thing basically happened if the players knew the cure light wand trick, but they just weren’t as likely to assume that 2 martial characters out of four would be able to handle the upcoming threats, especially because PF1 casters were so much more useless without their spell slots. It is almost like good, scaling cantrips are the problem because the whole party assumes that casters operating at50% of their potential is fine.
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While it's not authoritative as JJ is more of a setting/lore/flavor dev it is worth mentioning that the only feedback mentioned in terms of the length of an adventuring day came from him some years ago and was also part of the GMG and the whole "3 encounters per day" thing that MS brought up is a brand new development and piece of guidance that came in an unofficial X/twitter post from the least experienced lead on the system... Folks talking about how X AP or Y modules aren't friendly to that assumption is to be expected because there was no such guidance given to players/GMs and APs were never created with that assumption.
Hopefully that guidance is baked into the guidance and information provided for the system in both the PC1 GMC 1 books as part of the design goal changes for the Remaster because it is in direct contradiction to the assumption beforehand which was basically "no notes, adventure until you feel like you have to rest, oh and pick up Medicine Skill Feats to lengthen it + Cantrips are unlimited so you're supposed to use those." If the 3 encounters a day is intended to be the norm and to be known it needs to be part of the information that is published and it should at least be roughly enforced in APs/Modules going forward.
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While it's not authoritative as JJ is more of a setting/lore/flavor dev it is worth mentioning that the only feedback mentioned in terms of the length of an adventuring day came from him some years ago and was also part of the GMG and the whole "3 encounters per day" thing that MS brought up is a brand new development and piece of guidance that came in an unofficial X/twitter post from the least experienced lead on the system...
Ignoring the fact that I'm actually the most experienced designer actively making content for the game after Bulmahn and Logan and you seem determined to insult me despite your own misunderstandings, or more charitably, disagreements...
We don't say "3 combats a day" officially because it's an over-simplification. It doesn't have to be 3 combats a day. It could be 6, if 5 of them were Low difficulty and didn't necessarily require any resource expenditure at all. It could be 5, with two skill challenges and one each of Low > Moderate > Severe building up to a big boss fight.
My Twitter and most of my public posts are to help people struggling with the game, and if you're not sure how to approach running or playing, getting guidelines that are tighter than the official ones but more useful for people actually sitting around the table can go a long way. You've got the people right here in this thread noting how that insight has helped them, and those are the people that insight is for. If your players and GM are struggling and they're feeling suppressed by the rules instead of elevated by them, leaning into that 3 encounter per day structure that the core spell system synchs with is a good way to build the foundation necessary to take the game higher.
Conversation about class balance often does revolve around APs, particularly early ones, and that can be unfortunate. In PF1, the game was pretty unbalanced and so the style of published adventure design leaned towards being very challenging. Most APs also didn't go all the way to 20th level, either. Early PF2 APs in particular struggled with this, because both adventure authors and adventure developers were working with new (and in some cases still in progress) rules, and their own experience up to that point could betray them. Unlike in other systems, severe really meant severe, and on the other side of that there was also the pressure to squeeze in enough experience points fast enough to get to the desired level destinations in the game. That made Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, and Agents of Edgewatch in particular much more brutal than they should have been.
If you look at a PFS scenario, these are generally much more typical of what a "standard" adventure looks like, because they don't have those pressures on them, and their publication cycle is much faster, so it's easier for the devs to learn and adjust quickly. In comparison, APs exist a full year in the future ahead of design books; I was writing volume 2 of Agents of Edgewatch before the CRB had even been sent to the printer. APs also take much longer to absorb than rules content, and people like to play them in order, so many people are still playing their way through earlier APs, or jumped straight from an early AP to an experimental AP like Quest for the Frozen Flame, which intentionally suborns certain core expectations to set a particular tone.
None of those adventures are doing anything "wrong", but they do reflect different times and expectations. People who've been actively playing for the last 3-4 years go back to some of those adventures and often wonder why people think they're so difficult, and that's very much an evolution of the playerbase. PF2 was, for all intents and purposes, a brand new game that looked very much like an older game. Everyone, including developers, adventure writers, and players alike, had to relearn it, and in some cases it was the people who had been most invested in PF1 who had the hardest time adapting, in no small part because many of the PF1 pain points that PF2 set out to fix had become tools those same people had become accustomed to relying on.
The Rules & Lore team that I manage is heavily data-driven in what and how we design, and it's been very successful for us so far. PF2 is the most successful product we've ever produced, despite being produced in one of the most challenging times the industry has been faced with. The playerbase has grown almost exponentially year after year going all the way back to the game's release, and consumer engagement remains on a solid upwards trend that is actually encouraging us to start considering the reintroduction of product lines we'd previously planned on winding down after downward trends that began in PF1's cycle.
So when we look at the class options, there are two things we consider: what's the discourse, what's the performance, and what are the risks vs. rewards of trying to change that equation? Wizard is a class that often evokes a negative knee-jerk response from players coming from PF1 or 5E, but it's also consistently one of the most popular and highest rated classes in polls, surveys, and play data. It's also a class where people's opinions of it generally evolve significantly (in a positive way) over time as they get more comfortable with the game. So it's one we'll treat as gently as we can, polishing and elevating where we're able while carefully avoiding doing anything that's going to halt the momentum or undermine the satisfaction of the audience currently enjoying the class, which is the largest audience Paizo has ever had. Balance and stability are, by the vast majority of accounts, huge selling points of PF2 that have drawn in an exceptional audience. Maintaining that balance and stability is going to be something we're always very intentional about.
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Ahhh. I love those little looks behind the curtain. The insight into the fuller picture of the feedback they're getting on the Wizard is especially interesting.
...and, of course, it's nice to hear that they're doing well.
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I really hope there's some missing piece, something that for some reason the marketing team didn't mention when hyping up the class, but as of now, I'm pretty sad at what the future seems to have for Wizards. While everyone else is getting buffs and QoL changes, including some of the strongest classes in the game like Bards and Clerics, the Wizard seems left with only a few changes that we might spend eons discussing if they're negative or neutral, but are absolutely not positive in terms of power level.
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but it's also consistently one of the most popular and highest rated classes in polls, surveys, and play data.
Do you think it would ever be possible for us to see some of this data? Not questioning it at all, I'm just suprised to hear it is one of the most highly rated.
When I have seen polls on things like reddit and discord, it generally seems to sit around the lower-end of middle, so it would be pretty interesting to see reactions from different audiences at different times. As imagine there is a good bit of varience between responce sources. Plus, obviously, you folks are actively collecting it vs just whatever I happen to see.
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If 3 moderate fights a day are the expectation, they need to communicate this to AP writers.
Just looking at the start of book-1 of Outlaws of Alkenstar ** spoiler omitted **And this AP does not have the excuse of being an early one.
And to answer the OPs question. From what I have seen, The designers seem to think those who don't enjoy the wizard or think it is too weak are playing the game wrong.
I will point out you definitely feel like you're supposed to be resting in that second area you mentioned. There's a literal campsite there. I don't know why you think you shouldn't be resting at the literal campsite surrounded by friendly characters.
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When I have seen polls on things like reddit and discord, it generally seems to sit around the lower-end of middle, so it would be pretty interesting to see reactions from different audiences at different times. As imagine there is a good bit of varience between responce sources. Plus, obviously, you folks are actively collecting it vs just whatever I happen to see.
I wouldn't necessarily treat the polls in either of these as genuine data when it can easily be skewed/hacked/cheated in one way or another.
That being said, Wizard probably requires the most system mastery to be viewed as a "strong" class, because guaranteed, if I didn't have the system mastery I had, our group would have TPK'd at Age of Ashes.
And given that Paizo made the game, if they chose to play the Wizard out with their knowledge in mind, it wouldn't be any surprise that the Wizard isn't seen as a problem, because they already know of the do's and don'ts for the class.
But I will say that Wizard probably has the biggest pit falls compared to any other class, since, if a Sorcerer or Druid screws up their spell selection, they still have decent focus spells, and Clerics have fonts. Wizards have...a quarterstaff. I wish I was joking here, because the Wizard focus spells are usually that bad/unhelpful. When one of the best actions I can do as a Wizard was get in the front lines and Aid an Attack Roll for a martial, you know that their secondary options are pretty bad.
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I'll simply offer my apologies for causing offense, it wasn't meant to be a personal attack in any way so I'll leave it be, your decision to speak your perspective is indeed invaluable, the main thrust of the point I was making about X encounters per day balancing considerations for how classes, features, and adventures are designed was that if that's the intent and how it is done then I think the page space to discuss and explain that would be worth its weight in gold in the Remaster books and that I hope it's included as a yard-stick to help GMs and Players understand the flow of gameplay when they buy the books or read the rules via online SRDs.
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but it's also consistently one of the most popular and highest rated classes in polls, surveys, and play data.Do you think it would ever be possible for us to see some of this data? Not questioning it at all, I'm just suprised to hear it is one of the most highly rated.
When I have seen polls on things like reddit and discord, it generally seems to sit around the lower-end of middle, so it would be pretty interesting to see reactions from different audiences at different times. As imagine there is a good bit of varience between responce sources. Plus, obviously, you folks are actively collecting it vs just whatever I happen to see.
I would expect that one of the easiest and most unbiased sources for data would be registered PFS characters. What class they are, how often they are played, how recently they have been played, and how many times are they played and what level they reach.
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Ahhh. I love those little looks behind the curtain. The insight into the fuller picture of the feedback they're getting on the Wizard is especially interesting.
...and, of course, it's nice to hear that they're doing well.
Survey data vs. forum tone can often be really surprising.
With the animist, for example, I thought the split prepared/spontaneous spellcasting was something we'd likely be axing because I kept seeing posts across here, the Discord servers, and Reddit where people were saying it was too complicated and they didn't like it. I'd actually already started planning some alternatives when we pulled up the survey data and saw that it was actually something that the vast majority of respondents were hugely positive about and less than 10 survey respondents in total had negative feelings about.
Kineticist had a similar thing in regards to people wanting energies associated with the elemental blasts that only had physical damage types. I think it was even Themetricsystem who posted "Surely we're not just a vocal minority" in the response thread, but the reality is that that group very much was. Survey data had it at 13 out of around a thousand people who cared about / wanted that change. What was fun for us though, was that we were able to give it to those 13 people anyways, since we had enough room in the design space to do so.
I would expect that one of the easiest and most unbiased sources for data would be registered PFS characters. What class they are, how often they are played, how recently they have been played, and how many times are they played and what level they reach.but it's also consistently one of the most popular and highest rated classes in polls, surveys, and play data.Do you think it would ever be possible for us to see some of this data? Not questioning it at all, I'm just suprised to hear it is one of the most highly rated.
When I have seen polls on things like reddit and discord, it generally seems to sit around the lower-end of middle, so it would be pretty interesting to see reactions from different audiences at different times. As imagine there is a good bit of varience between responce sources. Plus, obviously, you folks are actively collecting it vs just whatever I happen to see.
Good call on this one, I too would be interested in this catalogue. And the best part is, this should all be recorded info, meaning it should be trackable.
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Wizards have...a quarterstaff.
Fully aware that this isn't the point, but wizards do have all simple weapons now, which has the side buff of also meaning they actually get the full standard benefits from the various ancestry and archetype feats they previously didn't get the full use of. Which can be a buff to things like hand of the apprentice, since the possibilities for "held melee weapon with which you are trained" start much larger and grow much more easily.