I still think wizard is better than witch unless your only interest is pet and doing the same 1 action patron effect every turn
I prefer having more options.
But then I also insist flexible caster archetype is more than worth the cost. Given I've played both versions for cleric as well as wizard and it feels miles better to me than a sorcerer.
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Hey, I said halfway decent, not actually decent...Oh I know. But at least Boundaries/Necromancy got some halfway decent focus spells out of it.Focus SpellS? As in plural?
I still utterly fail to see any redeeming quality in Augment/Fortify Summon. The effect isn't terrible, but it's just sooooooo clunky to use.
The poor man's Dirge is nice, admittedly. And funnily enough, it does basically the same for your summons as Fortify Summon. I guess you could stack both if your Summon happens to live long enough? Though chances are the fight is over either way by the time you get all this going.
Fair enough. :)
The fact the spells can all heighten for free means that you end up with a lot of potential spells in your higher rank school slots. In the 6 remastered wizards I’ve built so far, it really is not that big of a deal and getting the extra spell known each rank is nice.
I do get that it feels jarring to some players but for those players both the spell blending thesis and just talking to your GM are very good options. The focus spell is the much bigger deal about schools than anything else.
Choosing a school feels nearly pointless. The focus spells aren't anywhere impactful enough to give a school a mechanical identity. The curriculums need an overaul.
I built a few remaster Wizards myself. One of them is a weapon wielder, so I went wit Universalist for this one, despite the fact that I always found universalists boring. For the three+ specialist Wizards, I haven't even deciced on a school yet, despite all of them being completely built all the way up to level 20, including free archetype.
Why I haven't chosen a school for them? Because it doesn't matter. You are correct that I would very likely end up Blending most of my school slots away. But that locks me into a specific thesis, and even if this is one of the best ones, not having a choice feels terrible. I build every Wizard either as an universalist or "other".
"Other" essentially means "Pick the least-terrible focus spell and get Spell Blending. Curriculum doesn't matter".
If I always end up blending those school slots away anyway, why even have a curriculum in the first place? Might as well just make the class 4 free slots at that point. And THAT is the problem.
Picking a school either leaves you with borderline useless slots or you circumvent it by ignoring your school almost completely.
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I mean if you choose spell blending, you are blending away some slots, so even if there were 10 spells per rank for each school, those are the slots that are getting traded away.
I really can’t believe that you can’t find 3 specialist schools where you found that most of the school spell slots you could choose were “borderline useless.” Like maybe one or two of them, but there is no school that doesn’t get good heightening options by the third rank. Even if you felt like you had three spell slots with less than ideal spells to put in them, that is la very small percentage of your total spells per day. How many casters past level 9 are regularly casting all of their spells every day?
So even if you don’t want to go spell blending, your total “trapped options are like maybe 5 to 8 percent? Compare that to a diabolic sorcerer who gets to know a total of 4 first rank spells and one of them has to be charm. One of them is going to be heal or harm or both, and that will likely be your signature spell, so for your entire career, you are going to have pretty much nothing else to do with your first rank spells, ever.
People are really over exaggerating the school slot issue, usually over trivially useless low rank spell slots that most casters can have so many scrolls to cover by mid levels.
The focus spell is a much bigger deal because you will be casting those many times every day. Force bolt is one of the best focus spells in the whole game. It is a one action, automatic damage spell. It greatly improves a blasters DPR. Augmented summoning is underrated because the best value for summons is out of combat utility (where the action cost is trivial) and for trying to draw fire for action denial. If a summon gets killed before you can use it, then your summon spell was probably well spent any way. The only down side is that it is hard to use as often as force bolt unless you go all in on memorizing summoning spells. The Ars Grammatica protective wards pair rediculous well with a paladin or a redeemer, and the mentalist charming push is also worth using almost every encounter. Boundry, Ars Grammatica and Mentalism all have very good advanced focus spells as well. Battle magics is fairly ho-hum, but all your focus points are going to force bolt in encounters anyway, so pick up utility/healing ones with an archetype and don’t bother with advanced school spell. At least civic wizardry’s earth works has a range of 60ft and can be cast with one action so it can steal an action pretty easily, some times from more than one foe (like in a hall way) and be cast with another spell. Protean form ‘s focus spell got worse than pre-remastery necromancy, but transmutations’s was even worse than now. Even so, the transmuter was dead from the start of PF2, and I guess protean form just keeps it pretty dead. Still, this focus spell ratio is much better than before for the wizard. Mentalism is better than either illusionists or enchanters. Boundry is better than necromancy or conjuration. Ars grammatical is better than abjuration or divination, and battle magic is just evocation, again.
Overall, streamlined focus spells and free spells known is a decent enough trade off compared to one or two low level spell slots that the new schools are minimally even with the old ones mechanically, they are just very different narratively and that is throwing some folks off.
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Something I haven't seen mentioned is the change to Magical Shorthand. The change is huge for wizards. It is a very solid upgrade.
I mentioned it in previous threads on the Wizard (and Witch). And yes, it's an amazing buff. They should really have given it to all wizards for free at level 1.
I mean if you choose spell blending, you are blending away some slots, so even if there were 10 spells per rank for each school, those are the slots that are getting traded away.
Yes, but what do I do with those slots if I DON'T want to pick Spel Blending?
How many casters past level 9 are regularly casting all of their spells every day?
It's not about casting all spells. It's about having them available to cast IF I need them. More spells available means more flexibility, which was still supposed to be the big strength of casters last time I checked. And no, casting from items is not the same, at least not in combat.
So even if you don’t want to go spell blending, your total “trapped options are like maybe 5 to 8 percent? Compare that to a diabolic sorcerer who gets to know a total of 4 first rank spells and one of them has to be charm. One of them is going to be heal or harm or both, and that will likely be your signature spell, so for your entire career, you are going to have pretty much nothing else to do with your first rank spells, ever.
I agree that sorcerer bloodline spells have similar problems but at least I'm not forced to spend any slots on them every single day. Even if I'm locked into having charm and (sort of) locked into heal, I still have two more spells to pick which I can use freely from all four slots. If I'm a high level caster, I'd much rather have four 1st rank Fear spells at hand than a 1st rank Force Barrage.
People are really over exaggerating the school slot issue, usually over trivially useless low rank spell slots that most casters can have so many scrolls to cover by mid levels.
I found most curriculums to carry their weight by rank 5 or 6. The lower rank slots become questionable rather quickly in most cases.
And being able to use scrolls is fine. Being required to use scrolls to fix one of your main class features is not.
The focus spell is a much bigger deal because you will be casting those many times every day.
No, I won't. At least not nearly all of them. Force Bolt? Sure. Fortify Summoning? Scramble Body? Probably not.
The Advanced spells are better on average but many are still not worth an 8th level feat.
I really can’t believe that you can’t find 3 specialist schools where you found that most of the school spell slots you could choose were “borderline useless.”
I left this part for the end of my post to stress it. For the aforementioned reasons, I value each and every one of my spell slots, no matter at what level I'm playing at. Having one per rank stuck with an extremely small number of spells to choose from goes against everything I like about and want from prepared casters. And it's even worse if many of these spells are simply not pulling their weight on your average adventuring day. Other spells are decent by themselves but you use them so rarely that daily preparation is simply not necessary. Those are spells best left for scrolls/wands/staves like Translate or Earthbind.
I'm sure some of it comes down to playstyle and preference. I never had any use for Humanoid Form or Mist, for example. But it's just sad that I can't find a single school that's appealing to me, even ignoring the very hit-or-miss quality of their Focus Spells. Picking the "least bad" instead of the "best" school is just depressing.
Breaking up messages like this is a bad way to argue as it doesn't deal with what someone said in a holistic way. Breaking it into fragmentary parts which lack nuance and coherency that the original message had. For instance when you replied to focus spells, you brought up a focus spell that unicorn already acknowledged as bad when talking about transmutation, and its successor Protean Form, being dead-on-arrival. It's not much of a response to say say "but look at these bad focus spells" when that's already acknowledged. It's also avoiding some of the particularly good options like the new dread aura, which is the same, but still really really good
It's also very silly to me to not consider wands, scrolls and staves part of the class kit of casters. Weapons are part of the class kit of martials after all and being able to use these items is built into every caster but requires using feats and skill boosts to do inadequately on a martial. There is some resistance to viewing those items as part of the class features of casters, and I have to assume it's because people feel like they themselves are not casting the spells when doing this? For some reason a sword easy to see as a necessary part of being a fighter, but wands, scrolls and staves are considered alien to characters and something they begrudgingly use. It's a little goofy if you ask me
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Breaking up messages like this is a bad way to argue as it doesn't deal with what someone said in a holistic way. Breaking it into fragmentary parts which lack nuance and coherency that the original message had.
Not for nothing, but I looked at your post history and can see you doing the exact same thing. No reason to throw stones from a glass house.
its an easy and natural way to address certain topics within a long post. Unicore loves to post essays and the reply function only captures so much before it cuts off, so its a practical way to address specific points in verbose replies.
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Breaking up messages like this is a bad way to argue as it doesn't deal with what someone said in a holistic way. Breaking it into fragmentary parts which lack nuance and coherency that the original message had. For instance when you replied to focus spells, you brought up a focus spell that unicorn already acknowledged as bad when talking about transmutation, and its successor Protean Form, being dead-on-arrival. It's not much of a response to say say "but look at these bad focus spells" when that's already acknowledged. It's also avoiding some of the particularly good options like the new dread aura, which is the same, but still really really good
The thing is, if Unicore already acknowledges that some of the Focus Spells are pretty bad, the whole argument of them being "a big deal" because you can cast them multiple times per day is pointless. You could give me Fortify Summoning at will and I still wouldn't use it. Wich leaves a Boundary Wizard with a dead focus point until at least level 8 unless I go into Archetypes.
It's also very silly to me to not consider wands, scrolls and staves part of the class kit of casters. Weapons are part of the class kit of martials after all and being able to use these items is built into every caster but requires using feats and skill boosts to do inadequately on a martial. There is some resistance to viewing those items as part of the class features of casters, and I have to assume it's because people feel like they themselves are not casting the spells when doing this? For some reason a sword easy to see as a necessary part of being a fighter, but wands, scrolls and staves are considered alien to characters and something they begrudgingly use. It's a little goofy if you ask me
I'm not a fan of consumables in general. Martials also work perfectly fine without talismans, so why should a caster be required to use scrolls?
As for Wands and Staves, I didn't say you shouldn't use items or that they are bad. I said having more usable spells to fill my slots with has a completely own merit that is different than that of items.
And I 110% stand by my statement that no class should ever be required to use items to fix shortcomings in one of their main class features.
Action economy wise, casting first rank fear spells in encounters when you are level 10+ is often worse than casting damaging cantrips. By higher levels, your low level spell slots are pretty much all for out of combat use anyway, minimally because it is trivially easy to have rank -3 spells to cast unlimited through items. Any summon spell is better than fear for rank 1 spells when rank 1 is more than 3 ranks behind your top slot. It is only a psychological issue to feel like having 1 rank 1 spell slot locked into a spell you don’t like is an actual problem for your character.
The feel of classes is important and if that is the thing that makes you feel like you don’t like the wizard, then you don’t like the wizard, and you have every right to voice your complaints. I am not trying to silence discussion. I am just saying the issue is much more cosmetic than mechanical, and that is also why GMs being kind about letting wizards change school spells around, especially low rank ones, should barely be an issue unless the player is trying to change it every session. That spell slot is really nothing more than window dressing by the time the player will feel like the school spell options are completely useless.
I would much rather get force barrage as a free spell I can up cast into any of my school slots than have 1 more fear spell I can cast every day, even if it means I basically start the evening campfire with my fire breath every night.
I think the change from warped terrain to earth works was in part because the illusory terrain exploit was so poorly explained and not intended from the beginning. You not only couldn’t use it to block line of sight, you couldn’t even use it for cover or concealment. Narratively, having “slight terrain modification effect” be an illusion was more of a headache than it was worth.
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At level 10+ you likely should never cast any spells below rank 3, the sole exceptions being hideous laughter on bosses and true strike. Things like 4th rank invisibility and 4th rank enlarge provide encounter-long buffs and are practically always worth it, and are extremely cheap (slot wise) ways to get the most of your magic.
I assume you mean “in encounters.” Because out of encounter mode there are lots of fun ones.
Even in encounters, some one action and reaction spells can be worth it in low level slots, but I even then it can be questionable, and the reason I kinda like wizard focus spells is that many of them fill in these 1 action options better than any low level spell slot.
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It is only a psychological issue to feel like having 1 rank 1 spell slot locked into a spell you don’t like is an actual problem for your character.
I am not trying to silence discussion
*Blows Whistle*
Stop! Foul!
Telling someone their concerns are imaginary is silencing discussion.
2 Minutes in the Box!
__
You don't get to decide what is and isn't an impactful part of someones character, nor how a change gets to feel to them. You certainly don't get to decide its merits in an any objective sense. You personally don't get to arbitrate validity of anyones points.
Breaking up messages like this is a bad way to argue as it doesn't deal with what someone said in a holistic way. Breaking it into fragmentary parts which lack nuance and coherency that the original message had. For instance when you replied to focus spells, you brought up a focus spell that unicorn already acknowledged as bad when talking about transmutation, and its successor Protean Form, being dead-on-arrival. It's not much of a response to say say "but look at these bad focus spells" when that's already acknowledged. It's also avoiding some of the particularly good options like the new dread aura, which is the same, but still really really good
It's also very silly to me to not consider wands, scrolls and staves part of the class kit of casters. Weapons are part of the class kit of martials after all and being able to use these items is built into every caster but requires using feats and skill boosts to do inadequately on a martial. There is some resistance to viewing those items as part of the class features of casters, and I have to assume it's because people feel like they themselves are not casting the spells when doing this? For some reason a sword easy to see as a necessary part of being a fighter, but wands, scrolls and staves are considered alien to characters and something they begrudgingly use. It's a little goofy if you ask me
In fairness there is pushback against swords on fighters too, at least when said swords are magical; it's why ABP is a thing, and a fairly popular thing on these boards.
Some people just don't like the idea that their character needs outside help when doing their thing, whether that's to cast an extra spell from a scroll or to hit gooder better with a sword.
And APB's lack of addressing spell slots is a very big problem with that variant rule, especially for GMs running published material where there are assumptions that the characters will be getting tons of loot and using that loot to buy items that make their characters do their thing better. APB is a variant rule that greatly favors martials over casters.
The feel of a class is as important as the mechanics. For very many players, the feel of the new schools is better than the old schools because they feel unified around themes that make sense, without being a particularly big burden on the character as far as limiting what spells you will really be casting in a day. For other players, the change itself was such a big blow to the feel of the class, that it is hard to get a good feel for it when characters that you used to be able to build are not really the same characters anymore.
Both of those feelings about the class are legitimate. Changing the feel of the class was going to be an inevitable consequence of trying to divorce the game from OGL content. The wizard's role in Golarion is deeply rooted in unique lore that Paizo should be proud of, and the only places that really created a potential problem was with the rune lords, and the characters that players have made over the more than a decade Paizo has been publishing Golarion content. Narratively, characters that used to be possible, really are not going to be the same, but the class itself, in play, didn't get weaker as a result of the remastery changes.
I am just encouraging players to think about whether they are getting tripped up over changes that are really going to change how the class plays, or how it looks on the character sheet.
Again, I am not saying that feeling bad about how it feels on the character sheet is badwrong players who just don't understand the genius of Paizo developers, I am saying that those feelings about characters that used to be possible that are not quite the same isn't really an issue that mechanically crosses over into actual game play balance as much as the people on these threads are making it sound.
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As one example of interesting and unique Paizo wizard lore: Old man Jatembe is a pretty unique wizard in fantasy lore. I desperately want more arcane lore for the world built up around him and the gifts of magic he brought to Golarion. I would love for strength of thousands to get a full ORC reboot, with significant changes to the we card side of the Magaambya school.
Aroden as a wizard has room to grow more interesting in the future as a result of ORC changes, as does the whispering Tyrant, Geb, Nex and the runelords themselves.
I guess if you come to PF2 assuming there is nothing interesting or special about Golarion wizards it is pretty easy to feel like their inability to represent the same generic wizards of D&D fantasy feels like more more of a nerf than just a difference.
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Old Mage Jatembe gets marked as specifically a wizard but that's never really sat right with me since I read his whole thing as using both arcane and primal pretty equally, I feel like he should have what most NPCs get in a special title rather than being wizard
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I have a very robust and compelling response, but as a new graduate of the school of civic wizardry, that empty pit on lot 13A in Korvosa isn't going to turn itself into a park without my help.
Seriously, I really enjoy the themes of the schools, and I am having fun with my new wizard, albeit if most of the class isn't all that different. I was a person who was lamenting the loss of spell schools in the game, but after seeing the final product, I dig it.
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People are really over exaggerating the school slot issue, usually over trivially useless low rank spell slots that most casters can have so many scrolls to cover by mid levels.
On the other hand, I feel like you're putting too much emphasis on spell blending.
You can definitely optimize away a lot of the complaints people have of the remaster (and in turn optimize into the positive changes), but the problem is and has always been more about wizards who aren't doing that.
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I think what Unicore is getting at (and correct me if I am wrong) is that the new wizard rules allow for your character to have a wizard whos school can be created to exist specifically in golarions lore. The current schools are generic but if paizo wants to introduce adventures in specific settings with new wizard schools like a Magaambya school they have the open design space to do it. Also they opened the design space for any of us to make it for our own campaigns.
Is it unique in the sense that these concepts and patterns are new? No, but is it unique in the sense that it is specific to golarian lore and specific to characters in golarian lore? It can be and a structure was presented in the new rules to do it yourself.
To add here, yes any game can be homebrewed to do anything. The unique part on paizos end is basically saying heres the format we used to make schools make more if you want.
I think what Unicore is getting at (and correct me if I am wrong) is that the new wizard rules allow for your character to have a wizard whos school can be created to exist specifically in golarions lore. The current schools are generic but if paizo wants to introduce adventures in specific settings with new wizard schools like a Magaambya school they have the open design space to do it. Also they opened the design space for any of us to make it for our own campaigns.
Is it unique in the sense that these concepts and patterns are new? No, but is it unique in the sense that it is specific to golarian lore and specific to characters in golarian lore? It can be and a structure was presented in the new rules to do it yourself.To add here, yes any game can be homebrewed to do anything. The unique part on paizos end is basically saying heres the format we used to make schools make more if you want.
What was stopping Paizo from doing that before but making class Archetypes for these unique schools? Or even just giving lists of spells that are iconic to Wizards who trained at a particular school?
Don't know, i would guess it wasn't on design radar, they were thinking in a box of set arcane schools based on the existing dnd model they were using.
Now they are not using it and came up with something else. To me it looks like they did make method for generating a wizard school and gave some general examples. But they also provided the template to a degree. We just dont have a formula for making balanced focus spells.
I would love to make a school of Lighting wizardry. Pick spells that have the lightning tag and spells that let the player move fast or teleport to emulate lighting and spells that stun for the theme.
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I have a very robust and compelling response, but as a new graduate of the school of civic wizardry, that empty pit on lot 13A in Korvosa isn't going to turn itself into a park without my help.
Seriously, I really enjoy the themes of the schools, and I am having fun with my new wizard, albeit if most of the class isn't all that different. I was a person who was lamenting the loss of spell schools in the game, but after seeing the final product, I dig it.
Makes me think of Disney's Elemental; city bureaucracy, but with wizards.
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Breaking up messages like this is a bad way to argue as it doesn't deal with what someone said in a holistic way. Breaking it into fragmentary parts which lack nuance and coherency that the original message had.Not for nothing, but I looked at your post history and can see you doing the exact same thing. No reason to throw stones from a glass house.
its an easy and natural way to address certain topics within a long post. Unicore loves to post essays and the reply function only captures so much before it cuts off, so its a practical way to address specific points in verbose replies.
You have to scroll back pretty far to find anything like that, soonest was Oct 2nd and to address different topics going on at the same time in chat. I frequently use the quote feature to show quotes, but I deliberately avoid breaking up a single topic/overarching point where possible. When responding to someone like Unicore, I copy paste the text into the quote and clean up earlier replies to make something easy to get the context from
In fairness there is pushback against swords on fighters too, at least when said swords are magical; it's why ABP is a thing, and a fairly popular thing on these boards.
Some people just don't like the idea that their character needs outside help when doing their thing, whether that's to cast an extra spell from a scroll or to hit gooder better with a sword.
I would wager this is a minority and that people generally enjoy getting loot. It's a pillar of the game after all
I would wager this is a minority and that people generally enjoy getting loot. It's a pillar of the game after allIn fairness there is pushback against swords on fighters too, at least when said swords are magical; it's why ABP is a thing, and a fairly popular thing on these boards.
Some people just don't like the idea that their character needs outside help when doing their thing, whether that's to cast an extra spell from a scroll or to hit gooder better with a sword.
Oftentimes loot is like leveling up, but in between the level ups. :)
Oftentimes loot is like leveling up, but in between the level ups. :)I would wager this is a minority and that people generally enjoy getting loot. It's a pillar of the game after allIn fairness there is pushback against swords on fighters too, at least when said swords are magical; it's why ABP is a thing, and a fairly popular thing on these boards.
Some people just don't like the idea that their character needs outside help when doing their thing, whether that's to cast an extra spell from a scroll or to hit gooder better with a sword.
I would assume it's a core reason to play a game like this. I think boring loot is complained about, and when loot is just statistical adjustments that's pretty meh. Gloves of storing used to instantly pull out a wand with no action cost is something I always loved. If only you could put something like five wands or five scrolls in an upgraded version of this. But ig that's what valet is for on a familiar
Boundary I think is actually the strongest in theme except for the starting focus spell which I think should have been different. Boundary is about transgressing boundaries, what lies beyond them. It's not really about death at all, its got "dark tapestry" vibes. It's quasi occult
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I'm going to disagree - the concept of rooting schools in Golarion's lore is good, but what we've actually gotten are hodgepodge schools which have no fixed place and use fairly arbitary criteria to determine what goes in.
I disagree a bit here. What I mean is the focus of a school now can be narrow or broad in concept.
Ars Grammatica is themed on what that school believes to be the underpinning of all magic words, runes, and speech. The power to ward, compel, repel, confine, or unravel are themed in many of the curriculum spells. What ties it together is a story of what these wizards value and believe about magic.Battle magic has a different idea of what is important, utility of spells on the battlefield, these wizards don't value knowledge for its own sake but for its ability to win battles.
These kinds of themes drive character creation because you don't pick curriculum for the spell they have on their lists only anymore, you choose a school because its values are in line with your character's values.
If your character only values the spell list Universalist is your pick because the that gives you the most freedom and doesn't tie you down with what your character may see as silly lenses for viewing the world and the nature and use of magic.
I think they could have included some non mandatory but adoptable edicts and anathema for each school.
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These kinds of themes drive character creation because you don't pick curriculum for the spell they have on their lists only anymore, you choose a school because its values are in line with your character's values.
This is only true if you decide on theme, flavor and story of your character first. If you start by looking at the mechanics instead and build the RP upon it, the schools can seem a bit random.
I'm also wondering ow many more schools we will ultimately end up getting. Paizo has stated mutliple times that they try to avoid producing content that only works for a single class, which is why we nearly never get class-exclusive class archetypes or new subclasses.
These kinds of themes drive character creation because you don't pick curriculum for the spell they have on their lists only anymore, you choose a school because its values are in line with your character's values.This is only true if you decide on theme, flavor and story of your character first. If you start by looking at the mechanics instead and build the RP upon it, the schools can seem a bit random.
You have a point. There is no wrong place to start for character creation. Ive made character before solely because I wanted to swing a particular weapon around and then worked my way to everything else.
I think there is a strength to it though. The strength is that now no theme no matter how broad or loosely conceived is off limits.
These kinds of themes drive character creation because you don't pick curriculum for the spell they have on their lists only anymore, you choose a school because its values are in line with your character's values.This is only true if you decide on theme, flavor and story of your character first. If you start by looking at the mechanics instead and build the RP upon it, the schools can seem a bit random.There is no wrong place to start for character creation. Ive made character before solely because I wanted to swing a particular weapon around and then worked my way to everything else.
I think there is a strength to it though. The strength is that now no theme no matter how broad or loosely conceived is off limits.
Oh, I wasn't triying to imply that either way of character creation is right or wrong. All of them are perfectly fine. I'm just saying "pick your school based on your character's flavor" is not really an option for players who start with mechanics.
As for the strength of concept variety, I think it might be true at some point in the future. The number of schools we have so far is rather limited, as is the amount of spells they can draw from. If you take all 650+ spells currently on the arcane list, you can definitely get more different concepts into the school selection.
This of course still depends heavily on how frequently we get new schools.
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I would love to make a school of Lighting wizardry. Pick spells that have the lightning tag and spells that let the player move fast or teleport to emulate lighting and spells that stun for the theme.
It's kind of odd that his couldn't be done with the Elementalist. We don't have an elemental plane of electricity, and the air schools seem to totally lack eletric/lightning options. Ligthning Elements come from the plane of Air, so you'd think there would have been a few spells on the list.
The only spells with both the Air and Lightning traits that I can think of aren't on the Arcane list, apart from Cataclysm.
That said, there isn't all that many spells with the Electricity trait to begin with. You couldn't even fill a curriculum with the ones presently on AoN.
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I know it shouldn't, but somehow it still boggles my mind that the discussion of school curriculum spells and focus spells continues. Is there really anything new to talk about?
I mean, when they changed staves to no longer allow property runes, I was pretty disappointed. Really disappointed. But *shrug* it is what it is. I didn't make threads or take over threads just to rehash the discussion over and over again. So what is the motivation here? What am I missing that makes this iteration of the conversation valuable?
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I know it shouldn't, but somehow it still boggles my mind that the discussion of school curriculum spells and focus spells continues. Is there really anything new to talk about?
I mean, when they changed staves to no longer allow property runes, I was pretty disappointed. Really disappointed. But *shrug* it is what it is. I didn't make threads or take over threads just to rehash the discussion over and over again. So what is the motivation here? What am I missing that makes this iteration of the conversation valuable?
Well some people seem to think its a purely cosmetic change, while others say its a change to the class balance which hasn't been implemented well.
So there is discussion from that tension.
My personal opinion is that the chances to Schools on a whole are fine in concept, but the options given in the core are too regressive to existing character concepts and too narrowly focus future ones, and so should have had a few additional ones in the core. My other opinion is that the implementation of the Curriculum spell slot is one of the worst ways they could have approached the idea, impacting the Wizards overall power in a negative way. It also introduces a logistical problem where whole spell ranks provided by that slot become "dead" as you level.
The converse side of this is that others think that none of these concerns are a big deal or matter all that much. That the impact of the changes will be next to non-existent and that the overall improvements to casters more than makes up for any loss felt.
There is some further contention over the "narrative" qualities of the change. Where some people are happy with the greater creative freedom this gives to create more, discrete and interesting schools. Others point out that this was always an option, and the 8 fundamental schools never prevented Paizo from making a more robust school system on top of the existing.
For Paizo's part, they opted to show case with the new creative freedom of the schools by reducing the core number from 8 to 6, but have teased others. These will come at some point in the future.
The homebrew element of Wizards has increased however, with the ability to homebrew schools as a creative win for those who are able to enjoy such, and is somewhat forced on those who are unhappy with the spell selection of their chosen school at any given level. And, as anyone who spends anytime with this community knows, homebrewing gets a generally a mixed reaction at best.
I know it shouldn't, but somehow it still boggles my mind that the discussion of school curriculum spells and focus spells continues. Is there really anything new to talk about?
I mean, when they changed staves to no longer allow property runes, I was pretty disappointed. Really disappointed. But *shrug* it is what it is. I didn't make threads or take over threads just to rehash the discussion over and over again. So what is the motivation here? What am I missing that makes this iteration of the conversation valuable?
We got the whole remaster now. The first time the discussion came up, we had only limited information and at least some of us were hoping that the complete version of the remastered Wizard would have something to balance the loss of power/flexibility. But it doesn't. It's the only Core class that took a hit to one of its main features, while literally every other class only got improvements. So we keep bringing it up in hopes for a future errata - or at the very least better thought-out future curriculums.
Discussing the schools might not be overly useful at this point. But neither is leaving wrong statements unanswered. If someone says Wizard focus spells improved (which they barely did) or are a big deal (which they never were and still aren't in my opinion), that's something that needs to be commented on to give players looking for information the full picture. Or at least more than one side of it.
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A solid summary.
Also expressing nothing that hasn't been expressed multiple times in at least one other thread.
So...
My question repeated, why continue discussing what has already been discussed?
Honestly, I am curious, what is the thought process? Is there some idea that a new point will be brought up? Truly, what is the point?
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| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
A solid summary.
Also expressing nothing that hasn't been expressed multiple times in at least one other thread.
So...
My question repeated, why continue discussing what has already been discussed?
Honestly, I am curious, what is the thought process? Is there some idea that a new point will be brought up? Truly, what is the point?
I think the answers you seek lie beyond an internet forum about a TTRPG.
A solid summary.
Also expressing nothing that hasn't been expressed multiple times in at least one other thread.
So...
My question repeated, why continue discussing what has already been discussed?
Honestly, I am curious, what is the thought process? Is there some idea that a new point will be brought up? Truly, what is the point?
People can pace around in circles for so long they bore holes to china. Pointing out such just means you're shutting down discourse and are generally the bad guy. I've learned to keep my mouth shut and let be. For your purposes, yea, wizard is what it is and it's either ok or needs a homebrew fix. That won't change until pf3 and there's not much to say beyond that.
Pointing out such just means your shutting down discourse and are generally the bad guy.Now that is curious. Why would anything I have said shut down discourse?
*Shrug* not sure, just relating was told to me whenever I pointed out people spinning wheels. Something about not needing to achieve goals and discussing just to discuss even if nothing comes of it or moves a topic forward