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So, I am aware of the Stormwind Fallacy.
Stormwind fallacy: a character cannot be created for both role-play and combat effectiveness.
But what do we call this?
My position is not "out of combat abilities" are useless. It's that out of combat abilities should not be part of the equation for balancing a class around combat.Where one hypothetical class is completely balanced in combat effectiveness compared to another hypothetical class, but one of those classes has a lot more out of combat abilities than the other - but for some reason that non-combat use shouldn't be taken into account.
Somehow all classes only need balanced for their in-combat ability. That some are lacking in any ability other than fighting things, but others are masters of investigation or intrigue or tracking makes no difference whatsoever.
Combat is the only aspect of the game that requires what we call "balance." It is the only aspect of the game that can be measured and balanced around numbers for relative performance. It is conducted in rounds and each class is built around a certain paradigm of balance.
Out of combat ability doesn't require balance as it is an open-ended problem with an open-ended solution that can be solved in too numerous of ways to balance with any metrics.
Out of combat stuff can and often times does get organized into rounds. Have you never looked at the chase, heist, and similar rulesets? My group ran a heist sequence as part of the last chapter of a mini-campaign and it was quite fun.
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As far as I can tell every class is balanced for combat without concern for their out of combat abilities except the investigator.
Every class - including the Investigator - is capable of participating in combat.
But some classes focus on it almost exclusively and have to use their standard character build resources like skill feats and Ancestry feats in order to have out of combat utility.
Other classes - like Investigator certainly - but also Alchemist, Thaumaturge, Summoner, and even Ranger can get class features and feats that give them non-combat tools to use. And it seems to me that the classes that have more non-combat abilities available are also the ones that have a bit more fiddly combat mechanics.
Alchemist has lower proficiencies.
Thaumaturge has action costs and skill rolls in order to use their abilities.
Summoner has two bodies to attack.
Ranger has to use an action every time they switch targets.
...
And so on.
You absolutely can. You can ignore any rule. You shouldn't ignore some rules, but thats independent of if they are combat or not. Also, you are confusing out of combat being rules heavy for being balanced. You can have balanced rules light out of combat rules. You can have unbalanced rules heavy out of combat. You appear to not like rules heavy out of combat stuff, and thats ok, but that is not the same as unbalanced out of combat rulesAnd here is the big one, The DM can modify non-combat situations as needed or wave them off if the player comes up with a better solution. You know what? The majority of players enjoy a DM that let's a creative player solution work in non-combat scenarios.If I can just ignore the rules completely, why am I playing the game?You can't ignore the combat rules. They work differently. That is why so much time is invested in ensuring they are balanced.
I like to give my players latitude to handle out of combat in whatever way is available to them with enough rules to provide a framework for them to do so. I will set the difficulties and adjust the situations as needed to make it interesting. Out of combat is there to enhance the story and let characters exercise creative role-play, so that is what I use it for.
As far as I can tell every class is balanced for combat without concern for their out of combat abilities except the investigator.Every class - including the Investigator - is capable of participating in combat.
But some classes focus on it almost exclusively and have to use their standard character build resources like skill feats and Ancestry feats in order to have out of combat utility.
Other classes - like Investigator certainly - but also Alchemist, Thaumaturge, Summoner, and even Ranger can get class features and feats that give them non-combat tools to use. And it seems to me that the classes that have more non-combat abilities available are also the ones that have a bit more fiddly combat mechanics.
Alchemist has lower proficiencies.
Thaumaturge has action costs and skill rolls in order to use their abilities.
Summoner has two bodies to attack.
Ranger has to use an action every time they switch targets.
...
And so on.
There are many different roles in combat.
I believe the designers build around these roles and capabilities. That part is important to balance.
There are some classes that are more focused on a single aspect of combat like the fighter who almost exclusively focuses on single target damage. This is their schtick and they do it well.
Whereas casters can focus on different aspects of combat dependent upon their spell load out.
Healing is another aspect of combat. So a cleric is built with the expectation of powerful healing powers, which will limit the amount of damage they can do consistently because you don't want powerful healing with powerful single target damage on the same class.
There are so many factors to balance around combat, you need to focus on that aspect for each class absent other aspects to ensure the kind of game balance you see in PF2.
I keep hearing of these imaginary power budgets where the designers weight out of combat ability of a class in the equation. Like it works something like the following. The wizard is 10% better at out of combat stuff, so they can be 10% worse in combat.
How exactly do you work that equation out in class design? That is what I wonder.
When I look at that supposition and look at each class, I'm not buying. I don't think the designers lower the combat abilities of a given class because they have some superior out of combat ability.
I think they very much design each class for combat separately covering several different bases:
1. Damage capability (how they deal damage and what sources they can use)
2. Defensive (AC, saves, armor choices)
3. Utility (skills, utility magic, feats)
4. Buff/Debuff (how far a class can shift probabilities for themselves and others)
Just an overall look at what each class offers in a combat encounter with a variety of different builds that also fits thematically.
All the power budget for combat is balanced for each class. What they can do out of combat isn't considered why they are building the combat capabilities of the class.
No way the Paizo designers can know how often non-combat abilities will be relevant or useful to use them as a balance point. All they can know is that when a class enters encounter mode in combat, they have to be able to do interesting and effective things for the player to have fun in whatever role that player is playing whether healing, support, or damage dealing. That aspect of the game has to balanced without regard for other aspects of the game.
I would really love to put the alchemist in the problem column. I really would. But every time I want to do, they prove to be so useful in a group. Such a weird class.
Even yesterday I'm running my group against a bunch of enemy alchemists. They seem like they're super weak and doing nothing. But suddenly my players are low on hit points and having to heal themselves up. No spectacular crits. No real smashing lucky rolls. Just alchemists dropping flasks and doing persistent and splash damage consistently to multiple targets. Using Juggernaut mutagens to ramp their hit points. Elixirs for self-healing. They slowly wore down the party. They weren't paying close attention because it wasn't a huge crit for damage. It was a slow attrition of damage. That's the strangeness of the alchemist. Even when they miss, they do some damage. It adds up over time.
If none of your players had social skills, you wouldn't just pick up your books and leave telling them, "Oh well, you didn't take social skills. Campaign is over. Sorry."This is a straw man, everyone has social skills, just as they have combat skills.
Do you even know what a straw man is? I see that term tossed around so often and yet you are not using it in the proper context.
Your entire argument against my point is a real straw man. You have completely misinterpreted what I stated as "Non-combat is useless. I have all these examples when it is useful."
I said nothing of the kind. You started with a straw man argument, a completely distortion of my original argument.
Now the richness of this is you are accusing me of using a straw man.
I should have known to not even engage. I've seen you on these forums for ages. Your almost sole purpose is to bait people without regard for the quality of your arguments. Not sure why I bit this time.
I should have looked closer at your forum name.
If your free hand folks don't see the an advantage in spending a single action to use an item they have in hand, well, that's more a reflection on them. I'd suggest that your Sorcerer use a Collar of the Shifting Spider, but it sounds that the Drawback is a dealbreaker for them... which I find hilarious, as Drakeheart's Drawback is mild, and it has a built-in off-switch with Final Surge.
Drawback of -1 Will and Reflex is NOT mild, it's a straight numbers swap from them into AC. If a backliner like the Sorc can generally avoid getting run down by melee, it's not worth it at all.
Are you actually feeding your party Elixirs in combat? That's depressing. If that's what you think an Alchemist has to do in combat, no wonder you find it ineffective.
Thanks to the Familiar, every 2nd turn I can 1-action feed, which sometimes makes it worth it.
Aside from throwing bombs (less than a Bomber), feeding Alch items is the only *Alchemist* combat thing I do, which was my point.
All the tools, from the Sun Dazzler to the Flamethrower, are absolutely frustrating to get any use from.
I've got a Runed up Shortbow on my Chirurgeon, and I shoot more arrows than Quick-Bomber bombs. (90% of my thrown bombs are now Perpetual Skunk)
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As your own post indicates, your only *Alchemist* combat interactions are throw bombs, drink a mutagen, maybe a Mistform (got my whole party to use Mistforms when I hit that level up, instant regret when we needed to hit flat checks to Heal. Mistform often makes things *worse*, Cat's Eye + other concealment is the way to go IMO)
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The issue is that as soon as an Alchemist has alternative combat tools, and honestly compares the cost benefit of limited bombs, it's hard to justify throwing bombs. Any sort of buff, even poisoned arrows, makes the Shortbow dangerously close to being superior most of the time.
Investing the subclass and 4-6 Feats might make bombs closer to par, but comparing that to what other classes can do with equivalent investment, or what a non-Alchemist investment can get you, is a joke.
2 Feats into Wiz will get you the Cantrips, 3 of L1, 2, 3 spells per day.
How much is it worth to have 1-action Shield on deck? Haste? Organsight? True Strike, Phantom Steed, ect?
That's what people are trying to say with some flavor of "Alchemist is bad"
It's not if the Alch can sometimes be on par, it's about how much bang for your buck the Alch gets in comparison to other classes.
Yes, investing the whole budget into bombs can make throwing bombs a fair better than a bow. No, that does not mean the class is OK. A huge degree of the design budget is put into Quick Alchemy giving access to the whole Alch item list, and that power goes unused for 90% of the game.
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I'm having fun, and I think my character is contributing in combat.
However, if my party spent the same care/effort to milk the most of their options as I do, I would immediately fall behind.
In general, PF2E is so flexible that it's not the end of the world, and skipping all those bad Alch Feats to spend on other things like Wiz (or even Investigator) may not fix the Alchemist class, but it can certainly help one's played Character.
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There's a simple example of a class being overtuned both in and out of combat. It's called rogue.
And Bard. Which is why I didn't hold those up as examples.
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This fundamental difference in expectations and value placed on non-combat abilities are the core of why Deriven and those who don't value non-combat abilities are never going to see eye to eye with those who do.
And as I am pointing out, the game developers appear to be balancing classes based on the idea that non-combat abilities in-class are at least somewhat valuable and adjusting combat abilities in response.
Which is one reason why Wizard and other full spellcasters feel less powerful in combat - because of those piles of non-combat utility spells that show up on the spell lists. And why Kineticist feels more powerful in combat - because the non-combat utility Impulses are fewer (though not non-existent, I am aware).
I'm not trying to say that only playing PF2 for the combat is a wrong way to play. I'm just pointing out that the game developers do appear to value non-combat class power. So playing characters that are tuned higher for combat power is going to feel better to combat focused players than ones with more non-combat abilities.
Deriven, wow, we just have utterly different expectations of ttrpgs.
- No, everything but combat cannot be waived
- No, combat is not (only) what I pay for
- Yes, games can function happily with minimal combat
- Yes, parties can non-combat their way around combat. And yes, the devs consider this acceptable ways to address combat scenes. That's why they have an entire section about how to give experience out for times when the party finds a non-combat way to 'defeat' a combat encounter.I could go on. Pretty much everything you have said over the last six hours or so about how you think the game should function or be designed, I disagree with in some part.
I am glad you find PF2E a good game for your combat-focused experience. But if all you want is combat scenes with connecting discussion, that's Gloomhaven or maybe Feng Shui. PF is intended to be much more sandbox, intended to be a much more flexible and adaptable system which can be used to tell social intrigue stories, mystery stories, world exploration stories, and so on.
If you think that is what I said, you have interpreted what I stated incorrectly.
There is a huge difference between saying only combat needs to be balanced and non-combat is open-ended and the seemingly knee jerk response of some posters fabricating that I said "Non-combat can be hand-waved all the time." I think I pretty clearly stated that non-combat is open-ended and is a situation that can't be balanced because players and the DM will work that out with the resources available to them. Which is very different from your knee jerk response.
What I am 100 percent sure on, which was the point of my posts: Classes are not designed or balanced around different sections of the game.
That means classes are not designed by a dev going, "This class is 20% power budget exploration/50% power budget combat/30% power budget down time." But this other classis "30% power budget exploration/40% power budget combat/30% power budge downtime." That theory gets tossed around all the time on these forums when there is zero support for it analyzing the classes.
Each class chassis is designed with balanced combat in mind across the board. It's easy to see this is how they do it. A class will not be weaker because they are better out of combat.
That was the point of my original post because of out combat role-playing and abilities are so varied by table, by players, by skill selection, by DM, and probably more I cannot think by balancing around an open-ended aspect of the game is not something that would be done.
Whereas combat is not open-ended. It has tons of little crunchy rule bits and the most time and effort is put in to balance combat by the design team. It's why we have a rules forum and constant threads on the combat capability of classes and how to interpret such rules.
Somehow this turned into another "Deriven only loves combat thread."
I do all the other stuff, but those parts of the game are open-ended and impossible to discuss as each table with handle that differently. But each table won't handle combat differently meaning you will follow the action system, you will use combat feats, you will use the spells list, you will roll damage, etc.
But role-playing? You think every table is going to role-play the same? I don't. Not at all. I expect even getting over a wall to be handled a bunch of different ways by different groups.
That is why I say I primarily pay for a balanced combat system. It's great they include role-playing help and guidelines. But role-playing is so varied and individual that balancing around it is not something I even spend much time thinking about. I let my players figure out and use the available rules to provide some verisimilitude and challenge.
There's a simple example of a class being overtuned both in and out of combat. It's called rogue.And Bard. Which is why I didn't hold those up as examples.
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This fundamental difference in expectations and value placed on non-combat abilities are the core of why Deriven and those who don't value non-combat abilities are never going to see eye to eye with those who do.
And as I am pointing out, the game developers appear to be balancing classes based on the idea that non-combat abilities in-class are at least somewhat valuable and adjusting combat abilities in response.
Which is one reason why Wizard and other full spellcasters feel less powerful in combat - because of those piles of non-combat utility spells that show up on the spell lists. And why Kineticist feels more powerful in combat - because the non-combat utility Impulses are fewer (though not non-existent, I am aware).
I'm not trying to say that only playing PF2 for the combat is a wrong way to play. I'm just pointing out that the game developers do appear to value non-combat class power. So playing characters that are tuned higher for combat power is going to feel better to combat focused players than ones with more non-combat abilities.
I don't value non-combat abilities? Not what I said.
The role-play part of this game is not a process that requires balance like combat. Role-playing and non-combat is the part of the game where the DM and players have an open, free form method to engage the story. It's the creative part of the game.
Combat is the part you want balanced so a game isn't too easy or hard. So you as a DM in the conflict resolution part of the game have a fairly easy, balanced, and equal method to resolve combat. One that makes the players feel like they have agency and the DM can make the players feel threatened like the combat is dangerous. You want some dynamism to it with the dice rolls.
You can build this into other aspects of the game as well. But that part has no bearing on how well a class performs in combat. It's more of situation where the DM and players are out of combat and the DM can use the tools to make that part interesting tailoring it to the abilities of the PCs.
I don't see how that has any bearing on the combat abilities of a class or these imaginary power budgets based on the idea of the "three pillars." I don't think that exists.
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Those power budgets and pillars absolutely exist.
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And I am pretty sure you will find a way to explain this away as you do any argument that does not fit your specific view and keep on telling the world you're the one who has understood everything right and all who disagree just do not understand how the game works.
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That's hardly a fair characterization. DF has only been doing this exact same thing for four years.
At this point, I'm starting to think it's a joke that the rest of us will never be let in on.
And here is the big one, The DM can modify non-combat situations as needed or wave them off if the player comes up with a better solution. You know what? The majority of players enjoy a DM that let's a creative player solution work in non-combat scenarios.If I can just ignore the rules completely, why am I playing the game?You can't ignore the combat rules. They work differently. That is why so much time is invested in ensuring they are balanced.
Why are you playing an RPG? To role-play in creative ways. Not to be rigidly bound by rules in non-combat scenarios where the DM decides everything by a roll regardless of how creative you as a player are.
Please let me explain from another POV.
Remember that who are there (physically) are the characters, not the players. The players can describe or interpret (depending each one play style) which triggers the skill to use. The the roll using all the concerning stuff is the result of the whole.
Let's put an example: in a step of the adventure you need the help of a noble, how do you get it? Just talking and OK go ahead? That noble helps anyone without a reason? Putting aside other ways it could be, one of the players talks to him, according to how it does, GM decides if using Diplomacy, Deception or Intimidation, let's imagine the player is aggressive and GM decides to use Intimidation, and due to the noble personality (remember the adventure being a set of NPC with motivations and personalities?) is a very hard check (so +5 modifier to DC). In this case it could:
- Convince with a success.
- Be kicked out with a failure.
- Put into jail with a critical failure.
From this point if put into jail you can bail to go out earlier, or lose some time (in which other things can happen). Once out (with a previous fail result you continue here) players have to find another way to advance. They could decide to use methods involving Stealth (maybe if the help was an item to steal it), or can improvise that when players watch at the bulletin board or shout by a messenger the noble daughter was kidnapped by bandits. A nice opportunity, and in this game is easy to prepare encounters in few time just using NPC templates and encounter budget.
From here, it is up to players what's next...
IMHO ignoring all that is losing the best part added of playing a TTRPG instead others mechanized (like CRPG), that is having an human directing the game with its inventive and improvisation capability.
The balance is there, in the way of level of the task and character proficiency. It is just that the consequences are different, from nothing happens to die (if climbing without securing).
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You going to as a DM short circuit their attempt because say you guys don't have invisibility, so you can't do it. Or tell them none of it works because they don't all have the right social skills?
Yes, of course. If they don't have the proper tools to break into the fort it just doesn't work.
In general, I'll tell them that they don't see it working. But if they insist, they just fail.My players can come up with creative ideas, and it's highly encouraged, but being excited about an idea doesn't make it work. It also needs to be realistic and properly backed up by skill checks and magic. Otherwise, just try to find another idea. And if the whole party is a bunch of Barbarians who increase only Athletics, then they won't succeed at out of combat encounters and suffer the proper consequences. Well, in general, if the party is a bunch of Barbarians who increase only Athletics, I encourage them to switch characters as they won't be able to play the adventure at all.
Or hire for help to fill that gap. Is another option.
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Or hire for help to fill that gap. Is another option.
Whatever they find.
Roughly, if they want to break into a fort (and not break the fort), the proper skills will be Stealth and Deception, the proper spells Invisibility Sphere and Silence.
If they come up with a realistic idea that may help (build a contraption, turn into a mice) I will normally allow them to work. But it won't entirely bypass the Stealth or Deception check, just help (with circumstance bonuses for example). Ultimately, they'll need Stealth or Deception checks to succeed. And if they can't do it, well, they'll need to completely review their goal. I may, if the campaign is really dependent on the players breaking into the fort, allow a less subtle approach, but I'll in general increase the difficulty of fights accordingly. And if a party wants to use Athletics as a solution to every problem they'll quickly be stopped in their progress. I dislike when a player wants to use their one skill with maximum bonus as a hammer to every problem and clearly don't allow it.
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Well, I don't see either side of this tangent giving it up, so to reiterate: wizard is fine (probably just boring) imo and I'm pretty sure the designers also believe the wizard is fine from what has been previewed bc it seems the class we're going to get will be largely mechanically untouched. If you take issue with wizard that energy of dissent and righteous indignation will best be channeled towards a book of class archetypes (if that ever happens) or the PF3 playtest (when that ever happens). Beyond that, complaints on having the wizard you think should be will not result in actionable change. Is that a satisfying answer? No. Is that reality? As accurately as I can look in my crystal ball, I'm fairly positive.
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One of the reasons I am really enjoying running Fists of the Ruby Phoenix is because they have some pretty extreme combat encounters difficulty-wise, but the consequences for losing them are not campaign ending. As a GM it is inspiring and far more interesting to be able to get to play with combat encounter design space where victory, but at too high a resource drain might be a tactical mistake on the part of the players. Peppered in with som full on brawls where the players can go all in, still lose, and the campaign only swerves, it doesn’t end…as opposed to our failed Outlaws of Alkenstar run, where a weird, plot irrelevant trap combat encounter TPK’d the party at a point in the narrative where the story line is essentially over and we just decided Alkenstar essentially doesn’t exist any more in our Golarion, and the situation in the impossible lands is very, very bad. Which was us, the players winning, because we were not enjoying the pacing or design of the 3rd book and were all ready to move on to a new story anyway.
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That's just not true. Social and Exploration both have bespoke rules, and thus have balance taken into consideration.It is true. A DM will not short circuit a game due to social and exploration failures. I have yet to see it happen. I don't do it. I haven't played with a DM that does unless you're in a competition which can sometimes occur at conventions.
Whereas if the party dies in combat, game is over. It is what is known as a TPK.
How often you hear of a non-combat TPK? Or some DM that went, "You failed your Diplomacy check. The game is over. Sorry." How often does that happen?
This is such a fundamentally different perspective to just about all of those I've played ttRPGs with. The inbuilt assumption to this is that there only relevant factor is if you TPK or not. In addition to the previous comments about PFS (where I definitely have seen more meaningful consequences for PCs from failed skill checks than from combat), I routinely have significant consequences for the story from rolls in social or exploratory situations. A particularly spectacular success at a contract-deciphering minigame let them see a loophole in an infernal contract, allowing them to completely change the direction of the story to overcome a key obstacle, instead of just mitigating it as the adventure presumed. The party's exploration was so effective that they got to the site of the portal before it was closed, allowing them the chance to go through it and gain knowledge of the enemy's plans 10 levels ahead of where they should be in the AP. They failed to escape the haunted city before the undead rose, and so instead of protecting their allies from the hordes, they had to bunker down in the haunted area and protect only themselves, leading to much more destruction to the city and their allies than otherwise would've happened. They were unable to convince their potential allies of the benefit of the alliance, and so were left on their own for the fight, dramatically affecting how well their army performed and the difficulty of the finale of the story. They were unable to convince everyone involved of their high-stakes plan, so to assuage doubts, they had to back up their words with action in an area they weren't planning on going to, delaying when the plan takes place and giving them a different perspective on that region that they'd otherwise have missed.
To the best of my memory, I've never seen something equivalent to a TPK from social/exploration checks, mostly because that's pretty boring - even when combat has ended in TPK, we normally look for ways for it not to be player death. PCs kidnapped for a ritual and needing to break out is just a more interesting development than permanent death. But we absolutely have had significant consequences for the story from the checks made in the social and exploration spheres of the game. Your post here feels like it's assuming that those changes don't matter, that there's a single story that you'll experience regardless of how your out-of-combat choices and rolls pan out, and so the only part of rolling the dice that matters is death or not. That seems like a very limiting way of playing these stories to me, and I'd likely rather just play a video game at that point - I want to explore how the characters' actions affect what happens in the world when I'm playing a ttRPG, and out-of-combat dice rolls absolutely affect that in a huge way.
I think Deriven's point comes from GMing style.
GMs put the difficulty wherever they want. I think we have all known GMs who will never kill a PC and who start fumbling dice or downplaying enemies the second they feel there's a risk of character death. If you only play with such GMs you can legitimately feel that character deaths never happen and that combat abilities are not important.
Similarly, I know some GMs who will always allow the PCs to move on whatever they do. It's actually a thing in PFS. There's even an adventure where the fastest route to the end is to fail half a dozen checks in a row. In such an environment, I can see a player thinking that out of combat efficiency is useless.
But that's just one experience, not everyone's.
I personally very often modify combat difficulty based on out of combat actions. Easier if I find that the PCs made good things and had good ideas, harder (up to extreme) if I find that the PCs have poorly engaged with out of combat encounters. Around my table, you clearly don't dismiss out of combat abilities unless you want to chain crazy fights.
The apogee of relevance of character skills decisions and distribution is playing with long-term characters.
Use PWL (Proficiency Without Level), a set of adventures sorting them by ending level, maybe slow XP advancement, and play always with the same characters.
The good thing of PWL is not to be so attached to tight maths, you cannot be confident against lower level hazards, but at the same time can face those with higher level with increased chance.
No problem if the party is level 12 and begins a new adventure for 1st level characters at start, probably with some adjustments as mentioned with PWL can be made preserving the original creatures, also not every encounter have to be deadly or hard. Probably in many cases the situation requirements will be the most demanding for them.
I played that style in Rolemaster, due to its slow level advancement and the combat rules, in the case of PF2 noticed that PWL would be the most close to it.
Well in this case each one had their character and played always with the same one. Then how each character had its specializations and other lessers proficiencies, looking how each one contributes with them, following the adventures of a party that stayed together were the best times of TTRPG.
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If you take issue with wizard that energy of dissent and righteous indignationThis stuff needs to stop. Its pointlessly vitriolic.
Fair enough, poor choice of words on my part. After so many caster/wizard threads and so many years in this edition AND a remaster that will presumably lock in the wizard after 3+ years of discourse surrounding the class....I just get confused by people spinning their wheels when I can't see a finish line as to what it actually WINS them. Like, what's the prize? What's the goal? What's the expected outcome and will the discourse achieve it? Those are the things that run through my head and the resulting wizard threads between the remaster dropping and a new edition will similarly seem like a lot of directionless, pointless (not bc it's meritless but bc no change will be resultant) noise.
But hey, hypocrisy is a natural fact of life and me writing out this whole post is about as efficacious as all the caster/wizard threads...so consider my foot planted firmly in my mouth. I'll stop making posts trying to shut people down
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Still, Deriven has a point. I mean, a TPK is likely a campaign-killer, but a botched social encounter or investigation is not. Can even lead to great RP and story/character beats.
Botched investigation/social encounters also lead to TPKs.
I got my party executed once: The party was mostly lawful and decided not to run away but to convince the judge we were not guilty but just incompetent. I think we convinced them of our incompetence, at least.
I also TPKed a group who decided to attack a group of entrenched enemies by knocking at the front door. They nearly got through the ensuing 4-hour long Severe encounter with reinforcements but other wrong choices lead to their doom. We can blame combat for their death, or out of combat choices.
Combat definitely leads to TPK, but out of combat, too. It's very much GM dependent.
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If I may join, I think sir Deriven is being a tad misunderstood. He is talking about how you need sound and solid rules for combat mainly because combat is a life threatening situation first, and about player/character contribution second.
One can fail forward a social encounter for the sake of the plot or be more lenient with the outcome. But you can't do it with combat when the bad result ends in being mauled by your local monster.
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If you take issue with wizard that energy of dissent and righteous indignationThis stuff needs to stop. Its pointlessly vitriolic.Fair enough, poor choice of words on my part. After so many caster/wizard threads and so many years in this edition AND a remaster that will presumably lock in the wizard after 3+ years of discourse surrounding the class....I just get confused by people spinning their wheels when I can't see a finish line as to what it actually WINS them. Like, what's the prize? What's the goal? What's the expected outcome and will the discourse achieve it? Those are the things that run through my head and the resulting wizard threads between the remaster dropping and a new edition will similarly seem like a lot of directionless, pointless (not bc it's meritless but bc no change will be resultant) noise.
Is it meritless or is it just not a universally agreed topic?
There are issues that are specific to the Wizard that I've talked about for years, and will, in all honesty continue to talk about, regardless, because I don't feel that I'm wrong. I'm also, slowly, getting some results towards the things I want:
- Wizards will no longer be the only class in the game to lack simple weapon proficiency. I've personally complained about this god knows how many times since the game came out. And now its changing.
- Wizards have also had no class interactions around Recall Knowlegde, despite most of the classes themes and name conventions implying a very strong academic/knowledge basis. In the remaster Wizards are now getting access to Knowledge is Power, which (if unchanged) is not what I was hoping for, but it is at least something.
I have other gripes with the Wizard:
- I've always felt there has been relatively little mechanical match-up with the themes of the Wizard as a scholarly character. So I want to see changes in that area.
- I'm miffed that Paizo don't seem to see the changes to the curriculum spell slot as a downgrade, even though, you know, it is. The available options I have to fill that spell slot are going down markedly are the positives of the new school system don't make up for it. The flavour change is nice, and I hope we see some expansion on the system in the future in terms of spells added and focus spell quality. But right now, its a downgrade.
- Wizards having the least amount of trained starting skills of any class (bar the Magus, who inherited the Wizard template) is just weird. Its a relic from the 3.x days, but its still here. Wizards have less starting skills than the Witch or the Psychic even, who are also/can be Int based prepared casters!
So yeah, because I like and care about Wizards, I'm going to keep talking about these things which urk me about them.
Then there are other things around prepared casters I would like to see changed, but that isn't specific to the Wizard. There is a terrible tendancy to conflate Wizards and all casters in general in conversations, just always hurts the conversation.
I would love for all prepared casters to have some inherent version of Spell Substitution. Themed, flavoured and costed per class, but available without taking away another class options as part of it. I don't think its ever going to happen, but I think it would improve the game on a whole if it was just a part of being a prepared caster.
Also, as a complete aside, conversation and discourse aren't things to be won or lost. I don't have to be getting something from talking about an issue. Its just conversation and discourse.
If you take issue with wizard that energy of dissent and righteous indignationThis stuff needs to stop. Its pointlessly vitriolic.Fair enough, poor choice of words on my part. After so many caster/wizard threads and so many years in this edition AND a remaster that will presumably lock in the wizard after 3+ years of discourse surrounding the class....I just get confused by people spinning their wheels when I can't see a finish line as to what it actually WINS them. Like, what's the prize? What's the goal? What's the expected outcome and will the discourse achieve it? Those are the things that run through my head and the resulting wizard threads between the remaster dropping and a new edition will similarly seem like a lot of directionless, pointless (not bc it's meritless but bc no change will be resultant) noise.
Is it meritless or is it just not a universally agreed topic?
There are issues that are specific to the Wizard that I've talked about for years, and will, in all honesty continue to talk about, regardless, because I don't feel that I'm wrong. I'm also, slowly, getting some results towards the things I want:
- Wizards will no longer be the only class in the game to lack simple weapon proficiency. I've personally complained about this god knows how many times since the game came out. And now its changing.
- Wizards have also had no class interactions around Recall Knowlegde, despite most of the classes themes and name conventions implying a very strong academic/knowledge basis. In the remaster Wizards are now getting access to Knowledge is Power, which (if unchanged) is not what I was hoping for, but it is at least something.
I have other gripes with the Wizard:
- I've always felt there has been relatively little mechanical match-up with the themes of the Wizard as a scholarly character. So I want to see changes in that area.
- I'm miffed that Paizo don't seem to see...
I said it wasn't meritless
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I think the relevance of the “Balance around combat only or broader aspects of the game” conversation is relevant to the wizard beyond out of combat utility spell selection.
If you believe that combat balance is the only balance that matters every class that has class feats that aren’t about fighting is a trap option designed to make your character sub-optimal. So conceal spell? Trap option. The whole of the dandy archetype? Trap option. Any kind of lore master option? Maybe not a complete trap, but if you mostly feel recalling knowledge a waste of an action, then probably a trap option too.
I agree with what super bidi talked about doing as a GM, and think there should be more of it woven into Adventures, even as I admit the “what ifs” can get complicated. Even so, a little direction to help GMs figure out how to connect combat difficulty with exploration mode choices and the consequences of non-combat encounters would be useful. Some APs (and a lot of PFS scenarios) do this with explicit reward systems for non-combat encounter victory point systems. I’d love to see more of that explicitly spelled out.
I think the most obvious way a party can really make things easier for themselves in combat with out of combat actions and choices, which is very GM dependent, is learn more about the encounters ahead and what keys can be used to make those encounters easier. When there aren’t time constraints, spending a day scouting, observing and even researching clues before rushing into the dungeon can make a world of difference for how powerfully the wizard will impact the next days encounters. This isn’t only true for a wizard, but it is a bigger deal for prepared casters and resource users like the alchemist. At the same time, any party can go buy consumables for a specific fight that will make it a lot easier.
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The biggest thing I've seen wizard players groan about is a lack of one action options compared to some of the other classes, and most of the time, they're using moves or readying an object.
The "3rd action" problem was generally an all-caster issue at the start of the edition. Where the dynamism of the 3 action system felt like it was gated for casters, due to most spells being 2 actions as standard and metamagic eating the 3rd if used, meant that casters could be spending their entire turns locked in place doing a single thing.
This has got better over time with more single actions over all, and even more/better variable action spells.
It did feel like it hit non-Charisma casters a bit worse, since Charisma has things like demoralise, bon mot, even feint, all built from it. Whereas Int and Wisdom didn't have the same sort of impactful actions as readily available.
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I think the relevance of the “Balance around combat only or broader aspects of the game” conversation is relevant to the wizard beyond out of combat utility spell selection.
I think it's even more broadly relevant to prepared casters in general. Most (if not all) of the examples where prepared casting was shining had to do with out of combat while most of the complaints about prepared casters seem to be about combat.
This would easily explain the differences in how people view the Wizard as it's a class that is all about prepared casting.
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Is it meritless or is it just not a universally agreed topic?
There are issues that are specific to the Wizard that I've talked about for years, and will, in all honesty continue to talk about, regardless, because I don't feel that I'm wrong. I'm also, slowly, getting some results towards the things I want:
...
I have other gripes with the Wizard:
...
I feel this is the sort of airing of grievances that genuinely advances discussion, and I'd support more of this regardless of my personal level of agreement (and, incidentally, I do very much agree that the Wizard could use much more mechanical connection to their scholarly theme and Recall Knowledge, if only so that it carves out more of a niche for other, non-scholarly arcane casters). Where I empathize with WWHsmackdown, and where I often personally get exhausted by this kind of conversation in this space and others, is that often the complaints made around this kind of topic tend to be aimless, a venting of frustrations towards the game, its developers, and even other players without any real intent of working towards any defined goal. It makes any actual conversation difficult to have, because often both the criticisms and the requests are vague, if any requests are even made at all.
By contrast, what you list out here is the exact opposite: tangible, actionable criticisms and setting of clear expectations that can be discussed and taken in as feedback. People don't have to agree on everything, but at least those specifics set a common ground for discussion that others can broach with equally concrete opinions of their own. If everyone voiced their criticisms in this way, conversation would be a lot more productive, and Paizo would probably have to sift through a lot less noise when looking for feedback.
What I can particularly agree with is the general lack of connection between the wizard and Recall Knowledge, or just scholarly feats in general. Even the existence of Arcana skill feats isn't a reason for this in my opinion, as there is precedent for feats in the form of "X skill feat, with extras". This I think is also one of the reasons why the wizard currently feels a little too broad, and I also suspect makes it more difficult to feature other arcane casters that aren't some flavor of wizard. If the wizard were refined specifically as a magical scholar, that could leave possible room for an arcane caster who's defined by something other than formal study.
I feel this is the sort of airing of grievances that genuinely advances discussion, and I'd support more of this regardless of my personal level of agreementIs it meritless or is it just not a universally agreed topic?
There are issues that are specific to the Wizard that I've talked about for years, and will, in all honesty continue to talk about, regardless, because I don't feel that I'm wrong. I'm also, slowly, getting some results towards the things I want:
...
I have other gripes with the Wizard:
...
I think a lot of it has to do with tone and purpose.
If your intent is to voice what you want to create for your character that you currently have problems creating - that is great and wonderful. That is how we got Psychic and Kineticist. By people saying that they wanted a spellcaster that could cast in combat all day without running out of juice.
If your intent is to holler about how big of a mistake the game developers are making with spellcasters and gripe and whine that Wizard class specifically doesn't meet your expectations, and demand that Wizard be rebuilt to your personal preferences - that isn't productive. And is rather rude and entitled.
I don't forsee the Wizard class itself changing drastically. But I do see room in the class roster for a fragile INT-based spellcaster that casts more similarly to Kineticist. Focused on a small array of magical effects instead of having an entire tradition spell list to pick from.
But it still won't be called "Wizard". And that may still irritate some people.
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If none of your players had social skills, you wouldn't just pick up your books and leave telling them, "Oh well, you didn't take social skills. Campaign is over. Sorry."This is a straw man, everyone has social skills, just as they have combat skills.
Nobody in the party invested in Diplomacy/Intimidation/Deception or even Performance is the literal RAW of "you have no social skills," because the rules of the game require these types of checks for social encounters, with maybe some Macguffins that let you avoid having to make some of them, but those are more exceptions than anything.
And since all skills are mostly opt-in (short of some classes coming trained with specific skills, which lose potency over time unless constantly invested into), I have seen plenty of parties that do not have "mandatory" skills like Medicine to treat wounds/examine bodies, or Thievery to disable traps/open locks, or Survival to track enemies or determine if a food is poisonous try to function and (nearly) wipe, and some parties won't have a high enough Perception proficiency to be able to spot certain traps.
So the idea that campaigns can't end because players don't invest in crucial skills is plain BS, and even some of those skills are impossible to attain (such as Legendary Perception).
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I don't forsee the Wizard class itself changing drastically. But I do see room in the class roster for a fragile INT-based spellcaster that casts more similarly to Kineticist. Focused on a small array of magical effects instead of having an entire tradition spell list to pick from.But it still won't be called "Wizard". And that may still irritate some people.
Its too late for the Wizard to change, at least in line with my aims for it. It could be done, but it hasn't.
But I still think the idea of scooping out what people want and making a new class out of it is an inherently unsatisfying idea.
If, say, Paizo were to create a class called the "Archivist" - a prepared, Int based, arcane/occult caster with mechanics related to the use and exploitation of knowledge, then I'm sure it would be great. Hell, make it a 3 slot caster with some scroll gimmicks and decent focus spells and you'll have yourself a hit.
But all that is doing is hollowing out the concept and design space that the Wizard could have filled.
"Spell slot guy" isn't really narratively evocative, it doesn't capture the imagination. At least not to me. People don't tell stories about the person who has marginally top level spell slots than other magic users. They tell stories about magical scholars, seekers of forbidden knowledge, the wise old hermit filled with secret lore, mad magical scientists, knower of things arcane.
If you make a class that's mechanics align with that concept, and plays to that role, then you've just made a Wizard but called it something else. And you've done so for very unsatisfying reasons.
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I don't forsee the Wizard class itself changing drastically. But I do see room in the class roster for a fragile INT-based spellcaster that casts more similarly to Kineticist. Focused on a small array of magical effects instead of having an entire tradition spell list to pick from.But it still won't be called "Wizard". And that may still irritate some people.
Its too late for the Wizard to change, at least in line with my aims for it. It could be done, but it hasn't.
But I still think the idea of scooping out what people want and making a new class out of it is an inherently unsatisfying idea.
If, say, Paizo were to create a class called the "Archivist" - a prepared, Int based, arcane/occult caster with mechanics related to the use and exploitation of knowledge, then I'm sure it would be great. Hell, make it a 3 slot caster with some scroll gimmicks and decent focus spells and you'll have yourself a hit.
But all that is doing is hollowing out the concept and design space that the Wizard could have filled.
"Spell slot guy" isn't really narratively evocative, it doesn't capture the imagination. At least not to me. People don't tell stories about the person who has marginally top level spell slots than other magic users. They tell stories about magical scholars, seekers of forbidden knowledge, the wise old hermit filled with secret lore, mad magical scientists, knower of things arcane.
If you make a class that's mechanics align with that concept, and plays to that role, then you've just made a Wizard but called it something else. And you've done so for very unsatisfying reasons.
I agree with "spell slots guy" not being all that gripping for either wizard or sorcerer. There's not really any class there to sink my teeth into