Remaster Wizard?

[Old_Man_Robot]

These conversations are one of several levers by which change is affected.

The impact of any given post or thread is probably going to be pretty damn low, but its not like Paizo are some faceless corporation. The designers and developers are right here as well.

If your local government put a bus stop in the middle of your drive way, you wouldn't say "it is what it is". You'd make some noise about it, even if you can't win against City Hall.

[Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich]

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

If your local government put a bus stop in the middle of your drive way, you wouldn't say "it is what it is". You'd make some noise about it, even if you can't win against City Hall.

I wouldn't make much noise personally. I would make the bus stop as unpleasant as legally possible to ensure that others made the noise. Because me repeating the same message over and over is fruitless.

Similarly, the same message being repeated over and over is likely fruitless. If the designers and developers are here, they probably heard the point at least the third time it was expressed 1-2 threads ago.

To think that posts now, repeating the same thing from posts 100+ ago, are going to make a difference as opposed to those previously seems...like a strange outlook.

I suppose I must be resigned to say different people are different.

[Old_Man_Robot]

You're sounding a bit misanthropic, friend. Perhaps take a break for a bit?

[Errenor]

Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich wrote:

Similarly, the same message being repeated over and over is likely fruitless.

How many more times will you repeat this message to us?

[Lelomenia]

A lot of it just feels weird right now, hopefully lore addresses. Weird that schools have 3 8th/9th (combined 2+1) level spells but only 2 1st level. A second level wizard has 7 1st level spells in his book. That seems off…already by second level the vast majority of your spells you learned elsewhere? It’s not possible to stat instructors that only have two spells per level either.

I’ve always imagined that the extra slot was available only to spells of the school because there was something magically unique to the spells of your school, which is rules demonstrated by the typing. That logic feels gone.

And the fun random schools, like civil service, why would they go up to 9th level? Is there a single civil service magic school somewhere led by an nigh all-powerful 20th level planar wandering civil service bureaucrat, or are surprisingly identical civil service wizard schools that go up to 9th level all over?

It would have been really easy to do something flavorful and made good lore sense, e.g., publish a few high level wizard NPCs that ‘established schools’, and wizards can pick one of them and have their spell lists as school spells. Maybe they get automatic access to some Rares etc. Hopefully my brain adjusts and it feels fine/normal after a while.

[Easl]

Lelomenia wrote:

A second level wizard has 7 1st level spells in his book. That seems off…already by second level the vast majority of your spells you learned elsewhere?

IMO, from a game-practical standpoint it would be both too restrictive and too writing-intensive to come up with individualized 1-9 lists for each school. And from an IC standpoint this is easily explained by saying all wizard schools teach a very similar 'basic' curriculum and they vary only in what you specialize in. That is, after all, how real schools usually work. That core curriculm is the whole (common) Arcane list. So the individual school descriptions only need to mention the stuff they teach that *isn't* on it, because 'we teach everything that *is* on it' is implied.

Quote:

And the fun random schools, like civil service, why would they go up to 9th level? Is there a single civil service magic school somewhere led by an nigh all-powerful 20th level planar wandering civil service bureaucrat, or are surprisingly identical civil service wizard schools that go up to 9th level all over?

One standard fantasy trope to explain this is the 'old tome' or 'forgotten glory' notion. i.e. the opportunity for PCs to become level 20 even though there are not level 20 wizards serving as teaching mentors in all these local schools, exists because the material is there in the libraries to learn, written by past generations, but rarely in any generation does even one person figure it out. Your character, as one of the protagonists of the story, is the special exception.

Or maybe not, if you end your campaign at an earlier level, as most seem to do. ;)

[Perpdepog]

Easl wrote:

Lelomenia wrote:

A second level wizard has 7 1st level spells in his book. That seems off…already by second level the vast majority of your spells you learned elsewhere?

IMO, from a game-practical standpoint it would be both too restrictive and too writing-intensive to come up with individualized 1-9 lists for each school. And from an IC standpoint this is easily explained by saying all wizard schools teach a very similar 'basic' curriculum and they vary only in what you specialize in. That is, after all, how real schools usually work. That core curriculm is the whole (common) Arcane list. So the individual school descriptions only need to mention the stuff they teach that *isn't* on it, because 'we teach everything that *is* on it' is implied.

Quote:

And the fun random schools, like civil service, why would they go up to 9th level? Is there a single civil service magic school somewhere led by an nigh all-powerful 20th level planar wandering civil service bureaucrat, or are surprisingly identical civil service wizard schools that go up to 9th level all over?

One standard fantasy trope to explain this is the 'old tome' or 'forgotten glory' notion. i.e. the opportunity for PCs to become level 20 even though there are not level 20 wizards serving as teaching mentors in all these local schools, exists because the material is there in the libraries to learn, written by past generations, but rarely in any generation does even one person figure it out. Your character, as one of the protagonists of the story, is the special exception.

Or maybe not, if you end your campaign at an earlier level, as most seem to do. ;)

It's also not like 9th rank spells don't exist either way. Including them in the curriculum could simply be an exercise in wishful thinking by whoever hands them out.

"Almost none of our alumni ever reach such heights, but we all have the potential. Perhaps you will be the first ... and if you are then might I interest you in becoming a patron of the institution that spurred you on your way?"

[Unicore]

Prepared casters can heighten all of their spells for free, so when we are talking about how many spells does a specialist have available to memorize for their rank 9 school slot, the minimum answer is going to be 10 (2 at level 1 and 1 from each other rank, assuming you never learn your other school spells from any of the other ranks).

Also the remastered spell lists have been massively consolidated. There are 7 rank 9 arcane spells in the player core. Every school is going to end up with a bunch of same spells on their list if schools even just had 2 of them.

[thenobledrake]

...wait... was someone thinking that a wizard with all the spells in their book mostly from the same school was actually ever* a good idea?

Your specialty isn't supposed to be the only thing you know; it's supposed to be the part of your kit that is different from a mage from a different school.

*"ever" in this case referring to the decades since spells got put into a single school only instead of having any number of schools such that you could easily pick alteration as your specialty and still cast the majority of spells that existed in the game.

[J R 528]

Personally while I can see what alot of individuals are talking about with regard to the ReMasters impact on the Wizard I feel that what could've been done but wasn't was bring more to allow for indivdualaztion between the wizards which was lacking with the old school divisions and is still lacking with the new ones.

Looking at either version of the schools why would someone look to hire a wizard from any particular school over another. The system never addressed anything that differentiated schools in a significant way and please bear in mind I'm not talking about over powering I'm just talking reasonable differences between them. For example under the old the system if your were person dealing with a missing or lost person you would think that it would make sense to go to hire someone from the Divination School or under the present system a similar school might be called the Seekers but the game still has is next nothing that makes a wizard from either of these schools any better at doing the job than a Universalist with the various Clairvoyance or similar spells. There are no feats tied to schools except for Necromancy which I think is now sort of related to the Boundary school but I'm not clear on that and honestly the focus spells are seriously lacking.

Just to be clear I had hoped for this but I really didn't expect it considering the time frame they had for releasing the books and the amount of additional work that would be required but still some sort of suggestions or guidelines would have helpful and I at thought there could have been a little improvement on the feats and focus spells without hurting the page count or time for production to much.

Unfortunately this wasn't the case and we are still left with a class that outside few things and must of them were already part of the game when PF2 first came one wizard is pretty much interchangeable with another with very little to make unique.

[Calliope5431]

Lelomenia wrote:

A lot of it just feels weird right now, hopefully lore addresses. Weird that schools have 3 8th/9th (combined 2+1) level spells but only 2 1st level. A second level wizard has 7 1st level spells in his book. That seems off…already by second level the vast majority of your spells you learned elsewhere? It’s not possible to stat instructors that only have two spells per level either.

I’ve always imagined that the extra slot was available only to spells of the school because there was something magically unique to the spells of your school, which is rules demonstrated by the typing. That logic feels gone.

And the fun random schools, like civil service, why would they go up to 9th level? Is there a single civil service magic school somewhere led by an nigh all-powerful 20th level planar wandering civil service bureaucrat, or are surprisingly identical civil service wizard schools that go up to 9th level all over?

It would have been really easy to do something flavorful and made good lore sense, e.g., publish a few high level wizard NPCs that ‘established schools’, and wizards can pick one of them and have their spell lists as school spells. Maybe they get automatic access to some Rares etc. Hopefully my brain adjusts and it feels fine/normal after a while.

Yes, there are level 20 guards wandering around Golarion. And just recently I got jumped by level 16 pickpockets in an AP, because apparently they really have nothing better to do.

[Perpdepog]

Calliope5431 wrote:

Lelomenia wrote:

A lot of it just feels weird right now, hopefully lore addresses. Weird that schools have 3 8th/9th (combined 2+1) level spells but only 2 1st level. A second level wizard has 7 1st level spells in his book. That seems off…already by second level the vast majority of your spells you learned elsewhere? It’s not possible to stat instructors that only have two spells per level either.

I’ve always imagined that the extra slot was available only to spells of the school because there was something magically unique to the spells of your school, which is rules demonstrated by the typing. That logic feels gone.

And the fun random schools, like civil service, why would they go up to 9th level? Is there a single civil service magic school somewhere led by an nigh all-powerful 20th level planar wandering civil service bureaucrat, or are surprisingly identical civil service wizard schools that go up to 9th level all over?

It would have been really easy to do something flavorful and made good lore sense, e.g., publish a few high level wizard NPCs that ‘established schools’, and wizards can pick one of them and have their spell lists as school spells. Maybe they get automatic access to some Rares etc. Hopefully my brain adjusts and it feels fine/normal after a while.

Yes, there are level 20 guards wandering around Golarion. And just recently I got jumped by level 16 pickpockets in an AP, because apparently they really have nothing better to do.

How else are they gonna afford their gear? The WBL table is a harsh mistress.

[Ryangwy]

Bluemagetim wrote:

Ryangwy wrote:

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.

I disagree about choosing a school in line with your values because many of the schools don't have values, really. I think I can articulate what I find wrong about the schools now thanks to your description - they feel like the name of the school was decided first, and each spell was chosen to match the name of the school but with no concern as to how the school feels as a cohesive whole.

Ars Grammatica has a variety of spells relating to words, but they all relate to words in different ways. What is the value system of a school that teaches mind control and strengthening runes as the same subject. Likewise, Battle Magic consists of spells usable on the battlefield... but why these spells and not, say, fear? It's an arbitrary slice of the potential battle magic space, and it lacks any deeper rationale. Even for the better themed schools, why does Civic Wizardry randomly have disintegrate? Sure, i can understand why any individual civic wizard might have prepared disintegrate, but was there really no other creation based spell they could have taught instead that's more in line with the school values?

The schools currently aren't tightly themed enough to easily understand the themes, and yet have few enough options you can't discover your own theme within. Frankly, if they wanted to sell the schools as something common in Golarion, they should have picked the Common staves instead - they're proof lots of people teaches that exact spellist

[3-Body Problem]

The other issue is that these new schools are still beholden to the spells that existed before the ORC/OGL split so when they're smaller schools with the same spells we had access before, but in smaller numbers, it's really hard to see the change as anything but a downgrade.

[AestheticDialectic]

The stated reason for why Civic Wizardry has disintegrate was for demolition. I do think theme first, then choose spells that fit the theme was correct. "What spells would a wizard who works in infrastructure prepare" is a good way to go about it

[thenobledrake]

3-Body Problem wrote:

The other issue is that these new schools are still beholden to the spells that existed before the ORC/OGL split so when they're smaller schools with the same spells we had access before, but in smaller numbers, it's really hard to see the change as anything but a downgrade.

For me, at least, the old schools were incredibly non-equal in how much it felt like I could benefit from having picked a particular school.

That led to, for example, my playing my blaster wizard with the conjuration school despite that I was actually going to focus on evocation because letting one focus spell be something I'd mostly ignore and having the other be extremely helpful for positioning (setting up for cones or getting away from the front lines) instead of magic missile jr. (a good spell too, but not as good as a thing I couldn't already do plenty of) and the one that only really works well if I planned on hanging out near enemies (which I didn't), while also being able to prep mud pit and obscuring mist instead of blasty spells I was no longer actually going to cast... but if I made that character today with the remaster, I'd be happy to be school of battle magic.

It's not a universal thing, but there are probably more than just that one character for whom people with the old schools were looking at numerically longer lists of spells to figure out what to have in their bonus slot but that just meaning taking longer to reach the conclusion they don't really want to use any of them - while the new schools have a much shorter list, but each has at least something that is actually worth spending the time to cast at every rank (though battle magic rank 1 is just hanging on to a force barrage in case an enemy is definitely almost dead so you can do a small but guaranteed to happen bit of damage, so it's debatably not hitting the mark)

And with focus spell improvements (like how battle magic gets "the good one" from both evocation and abjuration) it's actually easy for me to imagine a lot of characters that have been wizards pre-remaster would be better off post-remaster despite the "downgrade".